Calculating the role of lakes in global warming -- ScienceDaily As global temperatures rise, how will lake ecosystems respond? As they warm, will lakes -- which make up only 3 percent of the landscape, but bury more carbon than the world's oceans combined -- release more of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane? And might that create a feedback loop that leads to further warming? To predict the effects of rising air temperatures on the carbon cycle of lakes, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers will link computer models of changing weather, water temperature, and emissions of carbon dioxide and methane for 2,000 lakes across the United States, including Lake George, through 2105. "We know lakes are important in the global carbon cycle -- absorbing and emitting carbon -- and that's critical to regulating global air temperatures. Carbon enters a lake as organic matter (such as falling leaves or soil suspended in runoff) and is cycled through the food chain, feeding plants and then animals.
Meet John D. Liu, the Indiana Jones of Landscape Restoration | Regeneration International [ English | Español ] Author: Alexandra Groome He’s known to some as the “Indiana Jones” of landscape degradation and restoration. John D. We recently sat down with Liu, the newest member of the Regeneration International (RI) Steering Committee. In order to survive as a species, Liu explains, humanity must shift from commodifying nature to ‘naturalizing’ our economy. Interview with John D. RI: What is the significance of the Paris Agreement, reached at the COP21 Climate Summit in December (2015), for the pioneers, such as yourself, of the landscape restoration movement? Liu: There is now recognition of soil carbon, which was not the case in the past. One of the things that I have been learning about, and that has most impressed me, is the difference between natural systems, which have huge organic layers, and human systems, which are massively degraded and actually have lost their organic material. In Paris, we’ve started to turn the corner. There is a way forward.
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Biólogo y doctor ingeniero de Montes, el madrileño Luis Gil es catedrático de la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería de Montes, Forestal y del Medio Natural de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). En ella dirige el Grupo de Investigación Genética, Fisiología e Historia Forestal, trabajando desde hace décadas en el estudio genético de las especies forestales. Por su actividad, que ha permitido conocer mejor nuestro patrimonio forestal, su historia y cómo preservarlo para que tenga futuro, ha recibido el Premio de Investigación 2016 de la UPM. El galardón también aquilata la destacada trayectoria profesional y la labor docente de este profesor de notable personalidad, que ha contagiado su vocación científica a varias generaciones de estudiantes. Luis Gil trabaja no solo para rehacer la vida de los árboles y dar continuidad a las especies arbóreas. R.- Para cualquier observador sería excelente, por el elevado porcentaje de flora y fauna que posee.
The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH' Calhoun inside Universe 25, his biggest, baddest mouse utopia. (Photo: Yoichi R. Okamoto/Public Domain) On July 9th, 1968, eight white mice were placed into a strange box at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. This is a far cry from a wild mouse's life—no cats, no traps, no long winters. The man who played mouse-God and came up with this doomed universe was named John Bumpass Calhoun. Calhoun displaying scarring on the tail of a color-coded Universe 25 mouse. In 1947, to keep a close eye on his charges, Calhoun constructed a quarter-acre "rat city" behind his house, and filled it with breeding pairs. This fascinated Calhoun—if the rats had everything they needed, what was keeping them from overrunning his little city, just as they had all of Baltimore? Intrigued, Calhoun built another, slightly bigger rat metropolis—this time in a barn, with ramps connecting several different rooms. Still, at a certain point, each of these paradises collapsed.
Explicit cookie consent THIS year the world’s power stations, farms, cars and the like will generate the equivalent of nearly 37 billion tonnes of waste carbon dioxide. All of it will be dumped into the atmosphere, where it will trap infra-red radiation and warm the planet. Earth is already about 0.85°C warmer than last century’s average temperature. It would be better, then, to find some method of disposing of CO2. A paper just published in Science offers a possible solution. Dr Matter’s project, called CarbFix, is based in Iceland, a country well-endowed with both environmentalism and basalt. Between January and March 2012 he and his team worked at the Hellisheidi geothermal power station, near Reykjavik. They collected 175 tonnes of it, mixed it with a mildly radioactive tracker chemical, dissolved the mixture in water and pumped it into a layer of basalt half a kilometre below the surface. They followed this success by burying unscrubbed exhaust gas.
Venue of last resort: the climate lawsuits threatening the future of big oil | Environment In early October, 22 state and federal judges hailing from Honolulu to Albany got a crash course in scientific literacy and economics. The three-day symposium was billed as a way to help the judges better scrutinize evidence used to defend government regulations. But the all-expenses-paid event hosted by George Mason University’s Law & Economics Center in Arlington, Virginia, served another purpose: it was the first of several seminars designed to promote “skepticism” of scientific evidence among likely candidates for the 140-plus federal judgeships Donald Trump will fill over the next four years. The lone science instructor was Louis Anthony Cox Jr, a risk analyst with deep industry ties whose recent appointment as chair of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s clean air scientific advisory committee drew condemnation in public-health circles. Based in George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School, the Law & Economics Center espouses a free-market approach to policy. Since you’re here…
The Prism | Blog and Podcast Exploring the Spectrum of Science Iceland Carbon Dioxide Storage Project Locks Away Gas, and Fast Photo For years, scientists and others concerned about have been talking about the need for carbon capture and sequestration. That is the term for removing carbon dioxide from, say, a coal-burning power plant’s smokestack and pumping it deep underground to keep it out of the atmosphere, where it would otherwise contribute to global warming. C.C.S., as the process is known, has had a spotty record so far. While there are some projects being designed or under construction, only one power plant, in Canada, currently captures and stores carbon on a commercial scale (and it has been having problems). Among the concerns about sequestration is that carbon dioxide in gaseous or liquid form that is pumped underground might escape back to the atmosphere. But scientists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at and other institutions have come up with a different way to store CO2 that might eliminate that problem. One key to the approach is to find the right kind of rocks. Video
El Niño is Earth's rechargeable heat battery | John Abraham | Environment The recent El Niño has been in the news of late because the warm waters in the Pacific have helped lift Earth’s temperatures to new records. Recent research is helping to track energy flows between the ocean waters and the atmosphere as the El Niño builds, then slowly decays and even changes to a La Niña. This new information is an important advancement of our understanding of the Earth’s climate. As a background, a part of the Pacific Ocean flips between cold (La Niña) and warm (El Niño) phases over a few-year-long period. The flipping back and forth always occurs, but the duration and regularity can change. Consider for instance a situation when the waters are warm (El Niño), resulting in more evaporation from the ocean waters into the atmosphere. Simply put, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO; the latter is in the atmosphere) cycle can supercharge this movement of energy, or it can temporarily sequester the heat. So, a new study, led by Dr. I communicated with Dr.
Exploring the Gap Between Business-as-Usual and Utter Doom Post Carbon Institute Predicting the future is a fool’s errand, but everybody does it. As long as we’ve had language—for tens of thousands of years, at last estimate—we’ve been able to formulate the question, “What will tomorrow bring?” The answers have ranged from idyllic to hellish, though the reality has been, more often than not, “a lot like today.” Since the Industrial Revolution, the dominant method employed by forecasters has been to extrapolate recent trends forward in time—trends which, due to the availability during this period of cheap, abundant energy, have been mostly in the directions of economic growth and technological progress. With the advent of coal, oil, and natural gas, industrial societies were able to build a middle class, create jobs, extract and process raw materials in ever-greater amounts, make a cascading array of consumer products, and transport people and goods in quantities, and at speeds and distances, never previously imaginable. That’s where social innovation comes in.
Minneapolis's citizen-centric approach to climate action | GreenBiz With average winter temperatures of just over 15 degrees Fahrenheit, you might think Minneapolis could use a little warming. But even this metropolis is feeling the effects of a changing climate — primarily in the form of increased flooding and extreme heat and humidity. In July, the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for much of Minnesota, with temperatures forecasted to reach anywhere from 105 to 110 degrees. While the city historically has had hot and muggy summers, there is an unmistakable upward swing toward more frequent and higher extremes. "We know that our temperatures are rising; we’re going to be experiencing more hot days but also more extreme humidity days, which tend to be a major driver of our extreme heat events," Kelly Muellman, sustainability program coordinator at the city of Minneapolis, told GreenBiz. Meanwhile, Minnesota has been battered by a significant uptick in severe flooding. Mixed progress on mitigation