By Brad Plumer 20 February 2013 (Washington Post) – America’s prairies are shrinking. Spurred on by the rush for biofuels, farmers are digging up grasslands in the northern Plains to plant crops at the quickest pace since the 1930s. While that’s been a boon for farmers, the upheaval could create unexpected problems. A new study […]
By Jeff Hecht9 February 2013 (New Scientist) – Geoengineering is being tested – albeit inadvertently – in the north Pacific. Soot from oil-burning ships is dumping about 1000 tonnes of soluble iron per year across 6 million square kilometres of ocean, new research has revealed. Fertilising the world’s oceans with iron has been controversially proposed […]
By Kathryn Doyle28 November 2012 It’s hard to stop a bad idea with enough money behind it—even rogue science on the high seas. Russ George, a wealthy American businessman with a history of big, controversial ideas, launched his latest one this October: dumping 200,000 pounds of iron sulfate into the North Pacific. His aim was […]
By Jeremy Hance8 October 2012 (mongabay.com) – From 1990 to 2010 almost all palm oil expansion in Kalimantan came at the expense of forest cover, according to the most detailed look yet at the oil palm industry in the Indonesian state, published in Nature: Climate Change. Palm oil plantations now cover 31,640 square kilometers of […]
By Rhian Waller of NG Explorers18 October 2012 (National Geographic) – Unbeknownst to most scientists until a few days ago, two hundred thousand pounds of iron sulphate were dumped into North Pacific Ocean in July, with the aim to trigger a large plankton bloom. This experiment was conducted by the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, under […]
Media ContactsNAU Office of Public Affairs: opaffairs@nau.edu or +1 928.523.2282 Christopher Schwalm: +1 928.523.8413NSIDC Press Office: natasha.vizcarra@nsidc.org or +1 303.492.149730 July 2012 A new scientific study indicates the turn-of-the-century drought in the North American West was the worst of the last millennium—with major impacts to the carbon cycle and hints of even drier times ahead. […]
30 July 2012 (CSIRO) – The Southern Ocean is an important carbon sink in the world – around 40 per cent of the annual global CO2 emissions absorbed by the world’s oceans enter through this region. Reporting this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Australia’s national […]
[Desdemona prefers this solution: Atmospheric Vortex Engine] By Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk 3 May 2012 Combating climate change will require an expansion of nuclear power, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Thursday, in remarks that are likely to dismay some sections of the environmental movement. Prof Sachs said atomic energy was needed because it […]
By Dean Kuipers27 February 2012 Hear the sound of chewing out in our vast forests of lodgepole pine, spruce and fir, the chewing that’s already destroyed half the commercial timber in important regions like British Columbia? That’s the sound of climate change, says biologist Reese Halter. Global warming in the form of a bark beetle. […]
Media Contact: David Stauth, 541-737-0787 Stephen Giovannoni, 541-737-1835 CORVALLIS, Oregon – As oceans warm due to climate change, water layers will mix less and affect the microbes and plankton that pump carbon out of the atmosphere – but researchers say it’s still unclear whether these processes will further increase global warming or decrease it. The […]