TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Steven Chu to greenhouse gases: We will bury you The U.S. Secretary of Energy-- channeling former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev perhaps?--has one thing to say in this week's Science to the greenhouse gases emitted by coal-fired power plants: We will bury you. Nobel laureate Steven Chu's department has funneled $3.4 billion in stimulus dollars to research and develop the technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS). [More] rss.sciam.com |
Zoning for Oceans: Balancing Our Competing Needs in the Seas For decades the seas off U.S. shores have been roiled by controversies over where to drill for oil, how to reel in overfishing , and whom to blame for toxic streams of continental runoff. A failure to manage these problems effectively has already put the nation’s oceanic realms in serious jeopardy. And now we are inviting new industries to stake their own claims on the blue frontier. To generate clean energy from wind and tides, we need permanent installations. To grow more food, we need offshore farms.Without a plan to manage these proliferating activities, they are very likely to exacerbate the existing shambles. President Barack Obama turned a spotlight to this challenge in June, when he charged an interagency task force with detailing the country’s first national ocean policy. Its official report is due out this month, but a draft hints at a bold way of reconciling our competing needs and interests, both economic and environmental: zoning U.S. waters (which extend 200 nautical miles from the coast) much the way we zone our cities and public lands [see “ Ocean Overhaul ,” by Sarah Simpson]. [More] rss.sciam.com |
A Common Herbicide Turns Some Male Frogs into Females The bountiful fields of the U.S. are awash in atrazine . Some 36 million kilograms of the odorless, white powder are applied on farms to control grassy weeds. Some 225,000 kilograms of the herbicide fall with the rain each year, sometimes up to 1,000 kilometers from the source. All that atrazine may be having another effect: turning male frogs female. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Man’s Year of Extremes Is Missing Only Everest Eric Larsen believes he has a chance to become the first person to trek to the North and South Poles and scale the summit of Mount Everest in a span of 365 days. nytimes.com |
Want to Learn More about Climate Change? Some people, such as Judith Curry , raise questions about the way climate policy is conducted and criticize specific aspects of climate science, but scientists--including Curry herself--broadly agree on the fundamentals: that the climate is warming, and that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity is the leading cause. Scientific American has covered aspects of this issue for 50 years, starting with an article in July 1959 (" Carbon Dioxide and Climate ," by Gilbert N. Plass). We offer a selection of articles about root causes of climate shifts, possible solutions to the problem, and policy-related aspects. We hope these articles will help in continuing the discussion of this issue--perhaps the most important facing humans today. From our website: [More] rss.sciam.com |