| Another Inconvenient Truth: The World's Growing Population Poses a Malthusian Dilemma By 2050, the world will host nine billion people --and that's if population growth slows in much of the developing world. Today, at least one billion people are chronically malnourished or starving. Simply to maintain that sad state of affairs would require the clearing (read: deforestation) of 900 million additional hectares of land, according to Pedro Sanchez, director of the Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program at The Earth Institute at Columbia University. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Interior Secretary Outlines How to Use North American Continent to Combat Climate Change COPENHAGEN--U.S. forests and soils store some 90 billion metric tons of carbon, or 50 years worth of present U.S. emissions from fossil fuels , according to a new study from the U.S. Geological Survey. As negotiators here at the United Nations' climate summit continue to struggle to draft a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions --including efforts to reduce deforestation and protect natural sinks--the U.S. Department of Interior is transforming the business of public lands and waters to help combat climate change . [More] rss.sciam.com |
Worm Charmers (preview) If you happen to be hiking in the right part of Florida at dawn, you might catch the sound of a predator hidden in the vegetation. Surely an alligator must be the source of these calls, you say to yourself. But the sound does not come from an alligator, or a mother bear, or some newly introduced predator from the Amazon. It comes from a human predator--a “worm grunter.”Worm grunters have mastered the art of charming worms out of their burrows so they can be collected and sold as bait. First, the hunters pound a stob, or wooden stake, into the soil, and then they rub the stake with a flat piece of metal called a rooping iron. The vibrations resonate through the ground. In response, hundreds of large earthworms emerge, some as far as 12 meters from the baiter. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Very Sick, and Now a Curiosity A Colorado woman who became ill after a vacation to Uganda becomes a bit of a medical wonder after surviving a case of Marburg hemorrhagic fever. nytimes.com |
Floyd Bennett Field Panel Looks to Map Park’s Future Brightening a part of the Gateway National Recreation Area in Brooklyn that has long been in disrepair is the goal of a blue-ribbon panel. nytimes.com |