Global Warming New York | Search results for "time"

You might assume that Chicago dislikes environmentalists, judging by the response they get along Michigan Avenue. They loiter on its crowded sidewalks, trying to stop people with the brightness of their T-shirts, the authority of their clipboards and the innocence of their question: “Do you have a minute to save the earth?” Almost no passerby has that minute, let alone $20 to donate to the cause. What most people have is a scowl, a dismissive wave of the hand and the accelerating stride of a running back. In a city synonymous with Al Capone, do-gooder appeals are about as practical as a citizen’s arrest. But although 2.8 million residents of Chicago may scoff at the notion that noble intentions can stop climate change, that doesn’t mean they think the problem can’t be solved. The city’s leaders know that to get people to save the earth, you must appeal to their bank accounts, not just their consciences. And those leaders are putting their reputation on the line to prove it. [More] Cap and Dividend, Not Trade: Making Polluters Pay If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More]

Tags: carbon, cap, permits, people, chicago

The past year has been both tempestuous and exciting--from pet food, E. coli and toy poisoning scares to political fireworks over embryonic stem cell research to forest fires ravaging California. A controversial Nobel scientist (James Watson) went down in a blaze of infamy, tumbling from grace after putting his foot in his mouth one time too many, whereas a former vice president and defeated presidential candidate (Al Gore) rose from the ashes to become a Nobel Peace prize (and Oscar) winner for raising awareness on the urgency of global warming. The honor came on the heels of official worldwide recognition that climate change is not only a pressing problem, but one that was almost completely caused by humans--and one, too, that humans must fix. On a related note, we discovered that the North Pole is melting, beloved freshwater dolphins are practically extinct and nuclear power--feared since the 1979 near-meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuke plant in Middletown, Pa.--has become the clean-energy alternative du jour that even has the backing of some enviros. For the first time, too, we enjoyed (depending on how you look at it) an extra month of daylight saving time, thanks to Congress, which made the move to save energy and, lawmakers said, to cut down on traffic accidents--and, perhaps most important, to make Halloween more special and safe. [More]

Tags: time, nobel, energy, humans, nuclear

The Colorado River, the life vein of the Southwestern United States, is in trouble. The river's water is hoarded the moment it trickles out of the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado and begins its 1,450-mile journey to Mexico's border. It runs south through seven states and the Grand Canyon, delivering water to Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego. Along the way, it powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation's crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans. [More] Cap and Dividend, Not Trade: Making Polluters Pay If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More]

Tags: carbon, permits, water, cap, pay

You might assume that Chicago dislikes environmentalists, judging by the response they get along Michigan Avenue. They loiter on its crowded sidewalks, trying to stop people with the brightness of their T-shirts, the authority of their clipboards and the innocence of their question: “Do you have a minute to save the earth?” Almost no passerby has that minute, let alone $20 to donate to the cause. What most people have is a scowl, a dismissive wave of the hand and the accelerating stride of a running back. In a city synonymous with Al Capone, do-gooder appeals are about as practical as a citizen’s arrest. But although 2.8 million residents of Chicago may scoff at the notion that noble intentions can stop climate change, that doesn’t mean they think the problem can’t be solved. The city’s leaders know that to get people to save the earth, you must appeal to their bank accounts, not just their consciences. And those leaders are putting their reputation on the line to prove it. [More] Cap and Dividend, Not Trade: Making Polluters Pay If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More]

Tags: carbon, cap, permits, people, chicago

If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More] Clean Cities and Dirty Coal Power--China's Energy Paradox CHONGQING--This year china surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And coal is largely to blame. The dirty black rock is burned everywhere, from industrial boilers to home stoves, and generates 75 percent of the nation’s electricity. More than 4,000 miners die every year digging the fossil fuel out of China’s heartland. One consequence of the country’s reliance on coal is most visible in the air. Smog cloaks cities, reducing the sky to little more than a blue patch amid a blanket of haze. As the pollution builds, it forms a brown cloud, visible from space, that in a week’s time crosses the Pacific Ocean to the western U.S., where it accounts for as much as 15 percent of the air pollution. The haze means no true horizon can be seen when one is walking the streets of Chong­qing, an inland port city on the Yangtze River that produces most of China’s motorcycles as well as other industrial goods. It seems the entire Rust Belt of the U.S. has been crammed into this “furnace of China,” as it is known--a single community of more than 30 million people, twice the size of the New York City metropolitan region. [More]

Tags: carbon, china, coal, permits, air

The 19th-century creators of neoclassical economics--the theory that now serves as the basis for coordinating activities in the global market system--are credited with transforming their field into a scientific discipline. But what is not widely known is that these now legendary economists--William Stanley Jevons, Léon Walras, Maria Edgeworth and Vilfredo Pareto--developed their theories by adapting equations from 19th-century physics that eventually became obsolete. Unfortunately, it is clear that neoclassical economics has also become outdated. The theory is based on unscientific assumptions that are hindering the implementation of viable economic solutions for global warming and other menacing environmental problems. The physical theory that the creators of neoclassical economics used as a template was conceived in response to the inability of Newtonian physics to account for the phenomena of heat, light and electricity. In 1847 German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz formulated the conservation of energy principle and postulated the existence of a field of conserved energy that fills all space and unifies these phenomena. Later in the century James Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann and other physicists devised better explanations for electromagnetism and thermodynamics, but in the meantime, the economists had borrowed and altered Helmholtz’s equations. [More] Rainforest Climate Change Sensor Station Goes Wi-Fi For more than half a century, the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica has provided researchers with the data needed to study everything from local amphibian and reptile populations to global warming. To meet a growing demand for La Selva's treasure trove of biological and environmental data, the main facilities are getting a $785,000 high-tech makeover that includes wireless access to measurement systems that collect and transmit data and provide a dynamic 3-D analysis of the rainforest canopy. [More]

Tags: economic, century, global, economist, theory

If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More] Coal War: Georgia Court Halts Construction of New Coal-Fired Plant A Georgia court this week halted construction of a new 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant on the Chattahoochee River, dubbed Longleaf, because backers failed to provide a plan to limit climate change–causing carbon dioxide emissions from it. [More]

Tags: carbon, cap, permits, coal, dioxide

Plastic imbued with clay nanoparticles helps make Miller Brewing Co. beer bottles less likely to break as well as improves how long the brew lasts in storage. Simply H's Toddler Health nutritional drink mix includes 300-nanometer (300 billionths of a meter) iron particles. And a wide range of cooking and cleaning items now employ nanosize silver particles to kill microbes. [More] News Bytes of the Week--Flooding the Grand Canyon to Save a Fish Man-made deluge scours Grand Canyon in the name of endangered fishTo survive, the humpback chub--an endangered fish with a prominent hump of flesh immediately behind its long-snouted head--needs sandbars in the Colorado River. These silt deposits create calm waters where the fish can spawn and also cloud the river creating conditions in which the chub can thrive. But the building of the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s ended the natural ebb and flow of the river that courses through the Grand Canyon, which severely altered the natural conditions in which the chub evolved, pushing the silvery-green fish onto the path of extinction. This week, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne personally supervised the release of 41,500 cubic feet (1,175 cubic meters) of water per second over a 60-hour period to mimic a natural flood that will enlarge existing sandbars. The bars themselves, however, won't survive very long--they'll be quickly eroded when river levels are shifted to maximize electricity generation. And there are no plans to repeat the inundation, which is itself a repeat of similar efforts in 1996 and 2004 that didn't succeed in helping the fish. One environmental advocate told The New York Times that the well-publicized event was a "charade." (USGS, The Economist, The New York Times)  [More]

Tags: fish, canyon, river, grand, natural

If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More] Clean Cities and Dirty Coal Power--China's Energy Paradox CHONGQING--This year china surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And coal is largely to blame. The dirty black rock is burned everywhere, from industrial boilers to home stoves, and generates 75 percent of the nation’s electricity. More than 4,000 miners die every year digging the fossil fuel out of China’s heartland. One consequence of the country’s reliance on coal is most visible in the air. Smog cloaks cities, reducing the sky to little more than a blue patch amid a blanket of haze. As the pollution builds, it forms a brown cloud, visible from space, that in a week’s time crosses the Pacific Ocean to the western U.S., where it accounts for as much as 15 percent of the air pollution. The haze means no true horizon can be seen when one is walking the streets of Chong­qing, an inland port city on the Yangtze River that produces most of China’s motorcycles as well as other industrial goods. It seems the entire Rust Belt of the U.S. has been crammed into this “furnace of China,” as it is known--a single community of more than 30 million people, twice the size of the New York City metropolitan region. [More]

Tags: carbon, china, coal, permits, air

If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More] Coal War: Georgia Court Halts Construction of New Coal-Fired Plant A Georgia court this week halted construction of a new 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant on the Chattahoochee River, dubbed Longleaf, because backers failed to provide a plan to limit climate change–causing carbon dioxide emissions from it. [More]

Tags: carbon, cap, permits, coal, dioxide

Plastic imbued with clay nanoparticles helps make Miller Brewing Co. beer bottles less likely to break as well as improves how long the brew lasts in storage. Simply H's Toddler Health nutritional drink mix includes 300-nanometer (300 billionths of a meter) iron particles. And a wide range of cooking and cleaning items now employ nanosize silver particles to kill microbes. [More] News Bytes of the Week--Flooding the Grand Canyon to Save a Fish Man-made deluge scours Grand Canyon in the name of endangered fishTo survive, the humpback chub--an endangered with a prominent hump of flesh immediately behind its long-snouted head--needs sandbars in the Colorado River. These silt deposits create calm waters where the fish can spawn and also cloud the river creating conditions in which the chub can thrive. But the building of the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s ended the natural ebb and flow of the river that courses through the Grand Canyon, which severely altered the natural conditions in which the chub evolved, pushing the silvery-green fish onto the path of extinction. This week, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne personally supervised the release of 41,500 cubic feet (1,175 cubic meters) of water per second over a 60-hour period to mimic a natural flood that will enlarge existing sandbars. The bars themselves, however, won't survive very long--they'll be quickly eroded when river levels are shifted to maximize electricity generation. And there are no plans to repeat the inundation, which is itself a repeat of similar efforts in 1996 and 2004 that didn't succeed in helping the fish. One environmental advocate told The New York Times that the well-publicized event was a "charade." (USGS, The Economist, The New York Times)  [More]

Tags: fish, canyon, river, grand, natural

Plastic imbued with clay nanoparticles helps make Miller Brewing Co. beer bottles less likely to break as well as improves how long the brew lasts in storage. Simply H's Toddler Health nutritional drink mix includes 300-nanometer (300 billionths of a meter) iron particles. And a wide range of cooking and cleaning items now employ nanosize silver particles to kill microbes. [More] News Bytes of the Week--Flooding the Grand Canyon to Save a Fish Man-made deluge scours Grand Canyon in the name of endangered fishTo survive, the humpback chub--an endangered with a prominent hump of flesh immediately behind its long-snouted head--needs sandbars in the Colorado River. These silt deposits create calm waters where the fish can spawn and also cloud the river creating conditions in which the chub can thrive. But the building of the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s ended the natural ebb and flow of the river that courses through the Grand Canyon, which severely altered the natural conditions in which the chub evolved, pushing the silvery-green fish onto the path of extinction. This week, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne personally supervised the release of 41,500 cubic feet (1,175 cubic meters) of water per second over a 60-hour period to mimic a natural flood that will enlarge existing sandbars. The bars themselves, however, won't survive very long--they'll be quickly eroded when river levels are shifted to maximize electricity generation. And there are no plans to repeat the inundation, which is itself a repeat of similar efforts in 1996 and 2004 that didn't succeed in helping the fish. One environmental advocate told The New York Times that the well-publicized event was a "charade." (USGS, The Economist, The New York Times)  [More]

Tags: fish, canyon, river, grand, natural

So you bought a compact fluorescent lightbulb in a bid to be green. Such bulbs are vastly more energy-efficient than traditional incandescents and screw into standard sockets. Should you treat them like their older cousins? [More] China's Three Gorges Dam: An Environmental Catastrophe? SHANGHAI--For over three decades the Chinese government dismissed warnings from scientists and environmentalists that its Three Gorges Dam--the world's largest--had the potential of becoming one of China's biggest environmental nightmares. But last fall, denial suddenly gave way to reluctant acceptance that the naysayers were right. Chinese officials staged a sudden about-face, acknowledging for the first time that the massive hydroelectric dam, sandwiched between breathtaking cliffs on the Yangtze River in central China, may be triggering landslides, altering entire ecosystems and causing other serious environmental problems--and, by extension, endangering the millions who live in its shadow. Government officials have long defended the $24-billion project as a major source of renewable power for an energy-hungry nation and as a way to prevent floods downstream. When complete, the dam will generate 18,000 megawatts of power--eight times that of the U.S.'s Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. But in September, the government official in charge of the project admitted that Three Gorges held "hidden dangers" that could breed disaster. "We can't lower our guard," Wang Xiaofeng, who oversees the project for China's State Council, said during a meeting of Chinese scientists and government reps in Chongqing, an independent municipality of around 31 million abutting the dam. "We simply cannot sacrifice the environment in exchange for temporary economic gain." [More]

Tags: dam, china, government, project, chinese

So you bought a compact fluorescent lightbulb in a bid to be green. Such bulbs are vastly more energy-efficient than traditional incandescents and screw into standard sockets. Should you treat them like their older cousins? [More] China's Three Gorges Dam: An Environmental Catastrophe? SHANGHAI--For over three decades the Chinese government dismissed warnings from scientists and environmentalists that its Three Gorges Dam--the world's largest--had the potential of becoming one of China's biggest environmental nightmares. But last fall, denial suddenly gave way to reluctant acceptance that the naysayers were right. Chinese officials staged a sudden about-face, acknowledging for the first time that the massive hydroelectric , sandwiched between breathtaking cliffs on the Yangtze River in central China, may be triggering landslides, altering entire ecosystems and causing other serious environmental problems--and, by extension, endangering the millions who live in its shadow. Government officials have long defended the $24-billion project as a major source of renewable power for an energy-hungry nation and as a way to prevent floods downstream. When complete, the dam will generate 18,000 megawatts of power--eight times that of the U.S.'s Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. But in September, the government official in charge of the project admitted that Three Gorges held "hidden dangers" that could breed disaster. "We can't lower our guard," Wang Xiaofeng, who oversees the project for China's State Council, said during a meeting of Chinese scientists and government reps in Chongqing, an independent municipality of around 31 million abutting the dam. "We simply cannot sacrifice the environment in exchange for temporary economic gain." [More]

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CHONGQING--This year china surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And coal is largely to blame. The dirty black rock is burned everywhere, from industrial boilers to home stoves, and generates 75 percent of the nation’s electricity. More than 4,000 miners die every year digging the fossil fuel out of China’s heartland. One consequence of the country’s reliance on coal is most visible in the air. Smog cloaks cities, reducing the sky to little more than a blue patch amid a blanket of haze. As the pollution builds, it forms a brown cloud, visible from space, that in a week’s time crosses the Pacific Ocean to the western U.S., where it accounts for as much as 15 percent of the air pollution. The haze means no true horizon can be seen when one is walking the streets of Chong­qing, an inland port city on the Yangtze River that produces most of China’s motorcycles as well as other industrial goods. It seems the entire Rust Belt of the U.S. has been crammed into this “furnace of China,” as it is known--a single community of more than 30 million people, twice the size of the New York City metropolitan region. [More] Can Nuclear Power Compete? On an August afternoon in Washington, D.C., typically miserable for its heat, humidity and stillness, reporters gathered at a downtown hotel not known for its air-conditioning. Stuffed inside a windowless conference room that was being heated still further by the television people’s lights, we waited for Michael J. Wallace, who had been trying, in fits and starts, to unveil nuclear power’s second act. On arrival, Wallace, a meticulous manager not known for ad-libbing, looked out over the sweating reporters and smiled. “It’s days like today that highlight the real need for new, emissions-free, baseload power,” he said. Unless we get started soon, he added, rolling blackouts could become the norm. [More]

Tags: china, power, air, coal, wallace

CHONGQING--This year china surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And coal is largely to blame. The dirty black rock is burned everywhere, from industrial boilers to home stoves, and generates 75 percent of the nation’s electricity. More than 4,000 miners die every year digging the fossil fuel out of China’s heartland. One consequence of the country’s reliance on coal is most visible in the air. Smog cloaks cities, reducing the sky to little more than a blue patch amid a blanket of haze. As the pollution builds, it forms a brown cloud, visible from space, that in a week’s time crosses the Pacific Ocean to the western U.S., where it accounts for as much as 15 percent of the air pollution. The haze means no true horizon can be seen when one is walking the streets of Chong­qing, an inland port city on the Yangtze River that produces most of China’s motorcycles as well as other industrial goods. It seems the entire Rust Belt of the U.S. has been crammed into this “furnace of China,” as it is known--a single community of more than 30 million people, twice the size of the New York City metropolitan region. [More] Can Nuclear Power Compete? On an August afternoon in Washington, D.C., typically miserable for its heat, humidity and stillness, reporters gathered at a downtown hotel not known for its air-conditioning. Stuffed inside a windowless conference room that was being heated still further by the television people’s lights, we waited for Michael J. Wallace, who had been trying, in fits and starts, to unveil nuclear power’s second act. On arrival, Wallace, a meticulous manager not known for ad-libbing, looked out over the sweating reporters and smiled. “It’s days like today that highlight the real need for new, emissions-free, baseload power,” he said. Unless we get started soon, he added, rolling blackouts could become the norm. [More]

Tags: china, power, air, coal, wallace

It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More] Rise and Fall of Chinese Dynasties Tied to Changes in Rainfall In the late ninth century a disastrous harvest precipitated by drought brought famine to China under the rule of the Tang dynasty. By A.D. 907--after nearly three centuries of rule--the dynasty fell when its emperor, Ai, was deposed, and the empire was divided. According to the atmospheric record contained in a stalagmite, one of the causes of that downfall may have been climate change. [More]

Tags: passage, northwest, water, arctic, dynasty

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More] Will the Opening of the Northwest Passage Transform Global Shipping Anytime Soon? It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More]

Tags: passage, northwest, water, animals, polar

Aggressive optimism. Those two words capture the spirit of Earth 3.0 and, we hope, the spirit that Washington, D.C., will bring to urgent energy, environment and sustainability issues. Right now a new president is calculating his administration’s first steps. If he is serious about ending U.S. dependence on oil, stopping climate change and reversing destruction of land and sea, he has to take strong actions in his first 100 days. Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, talks straight about what those actions should be. One big decision will be how to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Everyone has been calling for a cap-and-trade system, but as entrepreneur Peter Barnes of the Tomales Bay Institute explains, such an approach has a tragic flaw: it will cost average citizens money. Barnes has a better plan, called cap and dividend, that actually pays you and me. [More] Will the Opening of the Northwest Passage Transform Global Shipping Anytime Soon? It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More]

Tags: passage, president, northwest, water, bay

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More] Will the Opening of the Northwest Passage Transform Global Shipping Anytime Soon? It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More]

Tags: passage, northwest, water, animals, polar