Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Canada to formally withdraw from Kyoto accord

Canada will formally withdraw from the Kyoto accord on climate change, Environment Minister Peter Kent said.
Kent made the announcement in the foyer of the House of Commons, after his return from an international summit in Durban, South Africa, on the issue of global warming.
Canada to formally withdraw from Kyoto accord

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Landsat Satellites Track Yellowstone's Geothermal Activity

Yellowstone National Park sits on top of a vast, ancient, and still active volcano. Heat pours off its underground magma chamber, and is the fuel for Yellowstone's famous features -- more than 10,000 hot springs, mud pots, terraces and geysers, including Old Faithful.But expected development by energy companies right outside Yellowstone's borders have some fearing that Old Faithful could be cheated out of its energy.
The park funded a study by Lawrence and his co-author Shannon Savage to apply a new perspective to the problem of tracking geothermal activity. Their work is being presented at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco on December 9. Lawrence and Savage used both visible light and heat-sensitive Landsat data channels to get a broad view of the park's geothermal activity....

Friday, December 2, 2011

Whales win, walruses lose in warmer Arctic

The Arctic zone has moved into a warmer, greener "new normal" phase, which means less habitat for polar bears and more access for development, an international scientific team reported.Arctic air temperatures were higher - about 2.5 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) higher in 2011 than the baseline number for the previous 30 years - and there was a dramatic loss of sea ice and glacier mass, the scientists said in a telephone briefing.
read here

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Walnut Trees May Not Be Able to Withstand Climate Change

Warmer, drier summers and extreme weather events considered possible as the climate changes would be especially troublesome -- possibly fatal -- for walnut trees, according to research at Purdue University.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

London Bridge Will Soon Be All Lit Up With LEDs!

It was over 25 years ago that the London Bridge lighting system, used to illuminate the landmark at night, was last upgraded. But GE and its UK partner EDF Energy recently received a formal approval to retrofit the 800-foot bridge with new energy efficient LED technology and a cabling system that will bring it into the 21st century with style.
read here

Friday, November 18, 2011

Galaxies learned to "go green" early in the history of the universe

Galaxies learned to "go green" early in the history of the universe, continuously recycling immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy elements to build successive generations of stars stretching over billions of years.This ongoing recycling keeps galaxies from emptying their "fuel tanks" and therefore stretches out their star-forming epoch to over 10 billion years. However, galaxies that ignite a rapid firestorm of star birth can blow away their remaining fuel, essentially turning off further star-birth activity....
read more here

Friday, October 28, 2011

Three New Planets and a Mystery Object Discovered Outside Our Solar System

 Three planets -- each orbiting its own giant, dying star -- have been discovered by an international research team led by a Penn State University astronomer.
read here

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

NASA Telescopes Help Solve Ancient Supernova Mystery

 A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveal how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains ultimately spread out to great distances.
read here

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Astronomers Find Elusive Planets in Decade-Old Hubble Data

 In a painstaking re-analysis of Hubble Space Telescope images from 1998, astronomers have found visual evidence for two extrasolar planets that went undetected back then.
Read Here

Sunday, September 25, 2011

NASA's UARS Re-Enters Earth's Atmosphere

NASA’s decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 23 and 1:09 a.m. Sept. 24, 20 years and nine days after its launch on a 14-year mission that produced some of the first long-term records of chemicals in the atmosphere.

The precise re-entry time and location of debris impacts have not been determined. During the re-entry period, the satellite passed from the east coast of Africa over the Indian Ocean, then the Pacific Ocean, then across northern Canada, then across the northern Atlantic Ocean, to a point over West Africa. The vast majority of the orbital transit was over water, with some flight over northern Canada and West Africa.

Six years after the end of its productive scientific life, UARS broke into pieces during re-entry, and most of it up burned in the atmosphere. Data indicates the satellite likely broke apart and landed in the Pacific Ocean far off the U.S. coast. Twenty-six satellite components, weighing a total of about 1,200 pounds, could have survived the fiery re-entry and reach the surface of Earth. However, NASA is not aware of any reports of injury or property damage.
read here

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Gold Comes From Meteorites

 Ultra high precision analyses of some of the oldest rock samples on Earth by researchers at the University of Bristol provides clear evidence that the planet's accessible reserves of precious metals are the result of a bombardment of meteorites more than 200 million years after Earth was formed.
read here

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Don't rebuild communities in landslide-stricken areas

This advice comes from Dr. Beatriz Cuevas-Jadina of the Visayas State University (VSU) in Baybay City, Leyte, who has been studying high-risk landslide areas in Leyte.
read here

Friday, August 12, 2011

Arctic Ocean will have an ice-free summer byr 2100

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had released its most recent report in 2007. It forecasts that the Arctic Ocean will have an ice-free summer by the year 2100. However, that finding has been contradicted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They say the Arctic summer will be ice-free several decades earlier, within many people’s lifetimes.
read here

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Solar storms to hit Earth

Three large explosions from the Sun over the past few days have prompted U.S. government scientists to caution users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment to prepare for possible disruptions over the next few days.
read here

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Sugar Doesn't Melt -- It Decomposes, Scientists Demonstrate

Flying in the face of years of scientific belief, University of Illinois researchers have demonstrated that sugar doesn't melt, it decomposes.
read here

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Mount Rainier Has Lost One-Seventh of Its Ice and Snow

About 14% of the ice and permanent snow atop Washington's Mount Rainier melted in the last 4 decades, a new study suggests. Researchers arrived at that figure by comparing the estimated thicknesses and extents of ice seen in a 1970 aerial survey with those measured by an airborne laser altimeter in 2007 and 2008. All but two of the 28 glaciers and snowfields have thinned and shortened at their lower edges, and the exceptions likely thickened only because large amounts of rock fell upon the ice in recent years and insulated it from warming temperatures. Overall, the volcanic peak lost about 0.65 cubic kilometers of ice—enough to cover the entire state of Rhode Island to a depth of 20 centimeters—during the 38-year interval between surveys, the researchers report online inGeology. Prior to the ongoing meltback, Mount Rainier's ice and snow coverage expanded from the late 1950s to around 1980 during a wetter-than-normal phase of a multi-decadal climate cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. These recent trends indicate that Mount Rainier's glaciers are very sensitive to warming and could grow again with modest changes in temperature or precipitation, the scientists say.
source:Science Shots

Friday, July 1, 2011

Your iPhone and Macbook can Detect Earthquakes!

Launch the Safari browser on your iOS device, or Google Chrome if you using a Macbook, and then open this page - isthisanearthquake.com. Now shake your phone /computer and the website will capture these movements in real-time much like a seismograph.
read more

A young, wayward Emperor penguin won't be getting a free ride back to Antarctica

An Emperor penguin found in New Zealand will be released into the ocean when fully fit so it can swim the 1,900 miles home to Antarctica, wildlife experts said.  The penguin, nicknamed "Happy Feet," was found wandering on a beach near Wellington last week and was taken to the city's zoo when it became sick after eating sand and sticks.
read here 

Monday, June 20, 2011

Glimpsing the End of Our Solar System

 Researchers at the University of Leicester are investigating the possible eventual fate of the solar system by examining 'white dwarf' stars elsewhere in our galaxy.
read here 

MARS MOON PHOBOS SAILS BY JUPITER

click here

Tropical Storm Beatriz forms off Mexico coast

 Tropical Storm Beatriz, the second named storm of the Pacific hurricane season, formed off Mexico's Pacific Coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Sunday.
read here 

Thursday, June 16, 2011

IS THE SUN ABOUT TO FIZZ OUT?

As perplexing as it may sound, solar researchers are predicting the sun is about to fall into the doldrums,again.
read here 

'Hidden' Galaxies of the Universe Have Lower Amounts of Heavier Elements

 A unique example of some of the lowest surface brightness galaxies in the universe have been found by an international team of astronomers lead by the Niels Bohr Institute. The galaxy has lower amounts of heavier elements than other known galaxies of this type. The discovery means that small low surface brightness galaxies may have more in common with the first galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang than previously thought.
read here 

Monday, June 6, 2011

Carbon Release to Atmosphere Accelerated 10 Times

 The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. Rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Due to Global Warming, Arctic Access Will be Hampered by Land but Improve by Sea

Global warming over the next 40 years will cut through Arctic transportation networks like a double-edged sword, limiting access in certain areas and vastly increasing it in others, a new UCLA study predicts.
read more here 

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Flights in Risk:Iceland volcano erupts Again with 20 Kilometer Smoke Column

Iceland's most active volcano erupted on Saturday, hurling a plume of ash and smoke far into the sky, which aviation officials were closely monitoring after another volcano shut European airspace for days last year .
read here  and Here

Monday, May 16, 2011

Old levee breaches in Mississippi

The Mississippi River at Vicksburg crept to within inches of its 1927 record on Saturday, as residents anxiously watched flood waters invade their historic city.
read here 

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Atomic Clocks With Unprecedented Accuracy


 A team of physicists from the United States and Russia announced that it has developed a means for computing, with unprecedented accuracy, a tiny, temperature-dependent source of error in atomic clocks. Although small, the correction could represent a big step towards atomic timekeepers' longstanding goal of a clock with a precision equivalent to one second of error every 32 billion years -- longer than the age of the universe.
read here 

Saturday, May 14, 2011

On Pangaea, Latitude and Rain Dictated Where Species Lived

 More than 200 million years ago, mammals and reptiles lived in their own separate worlds on the supercontinent Pangaea, despite little geographical incentive to do so. Mammals lived in areas of twice-yearly seasonal rainfall; reptiles stayed in areas where rains came just once a year. Mammals lose more water when they excrete, and thus need water-rich environments to survive. Results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
read here 

Friday, April 29, 2011

Logging, mining cost Indonesia $36 bn

Land clearance by hundreds of mine and plantation companies operating illegally on Indonesia's Borneo island has cost the country $36 billion....
read here 

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

U.S.:Several Hurricanes Predicted in 2011


The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season will be active with the energy-rich U.S. Gulf Coast facing a significant threat of a hurricane landfall, a leading private weather forecaster predicted.
The forecast by Weather Services International follows one of the busiest seasons on record last year that saw intense levels of storm and hurricane activity but no direct hit on the U.S. coastline.
read here 

Monday, April 25, 2011

Strong quakes hit Indonesia's Sulawesi island


A series of strong earthquakes hit the Indonesian island of Sulawesi early on Monday, damaging houses and causing panic, officials said, but they had no word on casualties.Skip related content
Reports from the area said the relatively shallow quake just after 6 a.m. (12 a.m. British time) hit 55 km southeast of Kendari, the regional capital of over 300,000 people in Southeast Sulawesi.
At least three strong aftershocks followed the initial magnitude 6.2 quake over the next couple of hours, officials said.
read here 

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Fracking methane

read here

New Climate Change Report Released


 Warming temperatureswill cause increased drought and sea-level rises in Australia and New Zealand by 2030 and threaten ecologically rich sites such as the Great Barrier Reef, according to excerpts from a new scientific report released .

The South Pacific Islands, meanwhile, will be swamped by sea level rises as well as increased frequency of cyclones, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Island economies also will suffer as warming waters damage coral reefs and hurt the fishing industries, the report said...
read more here

BuyWithMe is Now in Your City - Sponsored Post

BuyWithMe is Now in Your City - Sponsored Post
Save 50-90% off local restaurants, spas & more. Sign up and get a deal a day in your city

Friday, April 22, 2011

Haryana to tag criminals with GPS-fitted device

In a bid to keep a tab on the activities of criminals, who go out of jails on parole, Haryana police will take the help of GPS (global positioning system) fitted ‘offender tracking device’.
read here

Ozone hole dominates shifting Southern Hemisphere climate

Climate policymakers and scientists need to look beyond global warming emissions of carbon dioxide and take the loss of stratospheric ozone into account, researchers said ...
read here 

Your mom deserves some flowers! - Sponsored Post

Your mom deserves some flowers! - Sponsored Post
Show some love on Mother's day. Click here to get 15% off and order Mom some flowers

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Mekong nations at odds over controversial Laos dam


Officials from Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam met in Vientiane to discuss the planned $3.8 billion Xayaburi dam in northern Laos, an impoverished Communist nation which sees hydropower as vital to its future.
Laos's neighbours raised worries about insufficient environmental studies of the dam's likely impact, according to a statement released after the meeting, while Laos said there was no need for further consultation.
read here 

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Green a Tough Sell in China

While hopes are high that China’s shoppers can help solve what ails the global economy, don’t count on them to do the same for the environment. ....
read here

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Paris to be powered by Waste

 City of Lights is fast becoming the City of Innovative but Slightly Bizarre Energy Solutions, including new ways to harness the heat you might otherwise not want to touch.

Sewer water: French children are probably too classy to be delighted by this the way American children would be, but last week a Paris primary school started heating itself with poo. The school recovers heat from nearby sewer pipes, which are full of euphemistic “waste water.” Steel plates in the pipes draw heat from fast-moving water and pump it to the school’s heating system. The new plan should cover about 70 percent of the building’s heating needs, and keep 76 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere -- a drop in the bidet, maybe, but all that waste energy would just go to waste otherwise.

Subway sweat: Also, this year, a public housing project will start drawing heat from the masses of damp, uncomfortable commuters in the Paris metro. The average passenger generates 100 watts of energy a ride, just from generally being alive (plus, you’ve seen the French, you can’t deny they’re hot). When they’re all smashed together, they provide enough heat to power 17 apartments. The building will draw the heat from the station into heat exchangers, which will move it into the pipes. Call it BOthermal.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Macedonia plants three million trees to revive forests

Thousands of Macedonians took a day off work on Thursday to plant three million trees to revive the nation's forests after fires ravaged an estimated 35,000 hectares (86,000 acres) of greenery.
read here 

Air pollution has serious health impact in Bucharest

Air pollution in Bucharest, one of the worst in Europe, has a "serious impact" on the health of its inhabitants, Romanian environmental NGO Ecopolis warned on Wednesday....
read here 
 

Sunday, March 20, 2011

WHO says Japan radiation localized, no immediate threat

The World Health Organization believes the spread of radiation from a quake-crippled nuclear plant in Japan remains limited and appears to pose no immediate risk to health, the WHO'sChina representative said on Friday.
read here 

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Japan accident triggers dilemma over coast as atomic plant sites


Japan's nuclear accident exposes the dilemma of whether to build power plants on tsunami-prone coasts or inland sites where water supplies are unreliable, a problem likely to be aggravated by climate change, experts say.
Many of the world's 442 nuclear power reactors are by the sea, rather than by lakes or rivers, to ensure vast water supplies for cooling fuel rods in emergencies like that at the Fukushima plant on Japan's east coast.
read here 

Anxious Europe examines nuclear safety after Japan quake

Japan's nuclear emergency Monday prompted Germany and Switzerland to halt nuclear programmes as anxious Europe scrambled to review cross-border safety while safeguarding the powerful industry.
read here 

Friday, March 11, 2011

Now Researchers Will 'Crawl' Your Brain

The brain is a black box. A complex circuitry of neurons fires information through channels, much like the inner workings of a computer chip. But while computer processors are regimented with the deft economy of an assembly line, neural circuits are impenetrable masses. Think tumbleweed.
Researchers in Harvard Medical School's Department of Neurobiology have developed a technique for unraveling these masses. Through a combination of microscopy platforms, researchers can crawl through the individual connections composing a neural network, much as Google crawls Web links  

Fight Against Invading Species

Like some bad science-fiction movie, Philippine fishermen are encountering strange alien creatures: tough, speckled fish with sharp spines that tear and rip their nets.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

The World Community has taken sides:UN Security Council votes sanctions on Gaddafi

The World Community has taken sides.The UN Security Council has voted unanimously to impose sanctions on Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime for its attempts to put down an uprising.
read here 

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Tree-planting world record set in Philippines

Philippine environmentalists have set a world record for the most trees planted simultaneously.Nearly 7,000 people helped in the mass planting of saplings in denuded forest and grassland in the eastern province of Camrines Sur on Wednesday, said Mara Joneil Cordova, spokeswoman for El Verde (The Green) project.
read here

Monday, February 21, 2011

Tropical forests 're-shaped' by climate changes

Future climate change could change the profile of tropical forests, with possible consequences for carbon storage and biodiversity, a study says.It suggests that if current trends continued, the drier conditions would favour deciduous, canopy species at the expense of other trees.
read here

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Lack of sleep can Lead to Ailing Heart

Sleep deprivation is emerging as a key reason for heart ailments. Recent research from London shows a person who sleeps less than six hours a night has a 48% higher risk of developing or dying from heart disease.The University of Warwick studied 4.7 lakh people across eight countries, including the US, the UK and Japan, to establish this equation. "If you sleep less than six hours a night and have disturbed sleep you stand a 48% greater chance of developing or dying from heart disease and a 15% greater chance of developing or dying of a stroke,'' the university team said. It added, ''Late to bed and early to rise is a ticking time bomb for health.''
read it here

Friday, February 18, 2011

Global Warming May Reroute Evolution

 Rising carbon dioxide levels associated with global warming may affect interactions between plants and the insects that eat them, altering the course of plant evolution, research at the University of Michigan suggests.
read here

NASA Sees Former Tropical Storm Carlos Still a Soaker in the Northern Territory

Now a remnant low pressure area, former Tropical Storm Carlos continues to move southwest inland over Australia's Northern Territory and dump heavy amounts of rainfall. NASA's Aqua satellite saw some of the high thunderstorms within Carlos over land and extending north into the Timor Sea.
read here

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Residents near Japanese volcano Shinmoedake urged to evacuate


Shinmoedake began erupting in late January, in its biggest activity in some 300 years. The volcanic activity has disrupted airline flights and blanketed nearby vegetable farms with ash, but there have been no reports of serious injury or deaths.
The Japan Meteorological Agency expected rainfall of more than 4 mm (0.16 inch) per hour to last until Thursday night, an amount that the local government said could cause mudslides.
read here 


A MASSIVE PLANET IN THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM?


There's a planet, possibly four times the mass of Jupiter, composed of hydrogen and helium, potentially with a system of moons, hiding in the furthest-most reaches of the solar system. That's according to two University of Louisiana scientists anyway.
read here 

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Charles to address EU carbon summit

Charles was invited to speak at the European Parliament event in recognition of decades spent promoting environmental awareness - particularly the last four years focusing on saving tropical rainforests from further destruction.
read here 

Monday, February 7, 2011

Asia-Pacific at risk from climate migration

 Governments in the Asia-Pacific region face the risk of unprecedented numbers of people displaced by floods, storms and other impacts of climate change, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said in a report on Monday.
read here

Friday, February 4, 2011

clean energy shift could save 4 tln euros: WWF

The environmental group WWF argued  that a radical, near total elimination of oil and shift to clean energy within 40 years would generate four trillion euros ($5.4 trillion) in savings a year.
read here 

Sunday, January 30, 2011

CHINA MICRO-BLOGGING SITES CENSOR 'EGYPT'


 The word "Egypt" was censored Saturday by several micro-blogging sites in China, where the ruling Communist Party is wary of issues of political reform, demands for democracy and disturbances to public order, including overseas.
On the sina.com and sohu.com sites, the Chinese equivalents of Twitter, which is censored in China, a query with the word "Egypt" returned the response: "According to the laws in force, the results of your search cannot be given."

Largest Solar-powered boat in world


The Swiss-owned boat set sail from Monaco four months ago and has now reached the archipelago.
The boat is 31 metres long and equipped with 530 square metres of solar panels.
read here

Penske delivers first electric Smart ForTwo

To kick off the latest phase in their electric car program, Smart USA President Jill Lajdzia and Roger Penske, chairman of Smart USA parent company Penske Automotive Group, personally delivered the first Smart ForTwo Electric Drive to a customer in Maryland.

 
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/greentech/#ixzz1CUy1gjve

Friday, January 28, 2011

We will be skiing in Yorkshire rather than sunbathing under palm tree



We are more likely to be skiing in Yorkshire than basking under palm trees, a leading climate change expert has warned as global warming will actually lead to Britain getting colder.....