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Can cloning redwoods help fight climate change?
A recent study revealed Earth is currently warmer than any given point in the past 11,300 years. So what should we do?
One idea: Clone and plant a lot of gigantic trees with a glutton’s appetite for carbon dioxide. Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is spearheading a movement to plant California’s towering redwood trees in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Germany, and other parts of the United States.
According to NASA previous research has demonstrated that these monstrous organisms are capable of digesting much more carbon than any other tree on the planet.
Photo from: DLILLC/Corbis
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4 annoying ways climate change will make your life a bummer
Get ready for bumpy flights, horrible allergies, and watered-down beer. Climate change will definitely affect you. -
Since the 1980s, a hole in the ozone layer has loomed over Antarctica for three months of every year. During these months, the concentration of the ozone decreases, and harmful ultraviolet light, which causes sunburn and skin cancer, seeps through to the Earth’s surface. Environmentalists have long looked to the ozone hole as evidence of man’s negative impact on the atmosphere, but recent findings may ease their minds: Measurements indicate the hole in the ozone layer is the smallest it has been in 10 years, and could be completely gone within a few decades.
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2012 was a record-melting sizzler, the hottest year on record in the continental United States:
55.3 — Average temperature, in degrees Fahrenheit, across the continental U.S. in 2012. That’s a full degree Fahrenheit higher than the previous record set in 1998, and is 3.3 degrees above the 20th century average.
34,008 — Daily high records set at weather stations across the country in 2012
100 — Percent of the 10 warmest years on record that have occurred over the last 15 years
7 — Percentage of the U.S. that experienced an all-time hottest day ever last year
61 — Percentage of the nation plagued by drought in 2012, which obliterated corn and soybean crops and sent prices sky high
(Source: theweek.com)
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Two young filmmakers camped out in the freezing cold for weeks to capture this thunderous, rare shot of a massive 4.6-cubic-mile glacier in Greenland crumbling apart. This brief clip of the largest glacier calving ever caught on camera is just a small segment in the recently debuted documentary Chasing Ice, which is dedicated to chronicling the perhaps-irreversible impact of climate change on glaciers (and sea levels) around the world. Filmmaker James Balog says watching the roaring landscape shift is like watching “Manhattan breaking apart in front of your eyes.” Seeing is believing, says Will Oremus at Slate. Here, “[Balog’s] team succeeded in capturing the awesome effects of climate change in a way that papers published in Science just can’t.” Terrifying? You bet. (Video via The Guardian)
(Source: theweek.com)
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If you’ve never been to California to see its giant redwoods, you should probably go soon. It might be only a matter of time before they’re all gone. Research released Friday indicates that the world’s oldest trees are dying at an alarming rate. “It is a very, very disturbing trend,” says lead researcher William Laurance of James Cook University. “We are talking about the loss of the biggest living organisms on the planet, of the largest flowering plants on the planet, of organisms that play a key role in regulating and enriching our world.”
The rapid die-off of the world’s oldest trees
(Source: theweek.com)
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Pedestrians cross the flooded St. Mark’s Square on Nov. 20, 1952 (top) — just as they will 60 years later (bottom).
Venice is notoriously prone to flooding, particularly in autumn. But after this week’s heavy rains, nearly three-quarters of the canal-laden city was submerged, with the tidal mark reaching its sixth-highest level since 1872. Nonetheless, Italians and light-hearted tourists carry on, utilizing makeshift bridges, donning swimsuits, and lounging in the veritable pool that is St. Mark’s Square. More images of Italy’s flooded wonderland throughout history.
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The British government’s meteorological service recently released new figures on global temperatures that prompted the Daily Mail, a conservative British tabloid, to declare: “Global warming stopped 16 years ago.”
The bold headline rekindled the often bitter debate over climate change, and what world leaders should do about it. Have climate scientists changed their minds about what’s happening to Earth’s temperatures, and how pollution affects those temperatures? Did global warming really stop 16 years ago?
Photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
(Source: theweek.com)
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Photo of the day: A tourist sits outside a cafe in flooded St. Mark’s Square in Venice. High tides have topped more than 1 meter above sea level in the low-lying, canal-carved city, and on Oct. 15, as much as 9 percent of Venice’s surface was underwater.
PHOTO: AP Photo/Luigi Costantini
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Scientists in Scotland have developed an unorthodox plan to help fight climate change: They want to trigger a far-off asteroid to spew a large dust cloud into space. This dust would function as a cosmic shade to block some of the sun’s harmful radiation from reaching Earth.
The nearest potential asteroid for the project, 1036 Ganymed, could potentially emit a cloud 1,600 miles wide with a mass of roughly 11 quadrillion-pounds, says Shane McGlaun at Slashgear. That’s more than enough to block a sizeable chunk of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation from hitting Earth.
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Scorching heat got you down? Better get used to it. A new NASA study reveals a “stunning increase” in the frequency of extremely hot summers over the past six decades. And even more sweltering days are on the horizon.
Think of it this way: On any day you could roll a six-sided die with low, average, and above-normal temperatures each having equal odds, or two sides assigned to each. Researchers call this concept the “climate dice.”
Since the ’80s, that metaphorical die has become more heavily weighted toward hotter days. In fact, since the year 2000, the die has had 4.5 sides dedicated to above-normal temperatures.
Are extremely hot summers becoming the norm?
(Source: theweek.com)
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Generation X: They’re the Americans who “grew up with MTV, Nirvana, and the dot-com bubble,” says The Atlantic. These individuals are better educated than their parents and work longer hours. They sit on their children’s school boards and are often active in their communities. “But, when it comes to climate change, Gen Xers voice a resounding ‘meh.’”
In a recent survey, just 16 percent of polled Gen Xers said they followed the issue of climate change “very” or “moderately closely,” which is a 22 percent drop from 2009. People who said they did “not closely” follow the issue in 2009 were at 45 percent; in the most recent results that percentage climbed to 51 percent. So not only do fewer Gen Xers pay attention to climate change, but more and more are completely indifferent to the issue.
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The remains of a motorcycle, ruined homes, and signs of resilience. Colorado’s wildfires: A slideshow
