| U of Minnesota study: Destroying native ecosystems for biofuel crops worsens global warming |
| Findings have major implications for climate change policy
Turning native ecosystems into “farms” for biofuel crops causes major carbon emissions that worsen the global warming that biofuels are meant to mitigate, according to a new study by the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy. |
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| SPECIALLY DESIGNED SOILS COULD HELP COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE |
| Could part of the answer to saving the Earth from global warming lie in the earth beneath our feet?
A team from Newcastle University aims to design soils that can remove carbon from the atmosphere, permanently and cost-effectively. This has never previously been attempted anywhere in the world. The research is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. |
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| Sandia supercomputers offer new explanation of Tunguska disaster |
| The stunning amount of forest devastation at Tunguska a century ago in Siberia may have been caused by an asteroid only a fraction as large as previously published estimates, Sandia National Laboratories supercomputer simulations suggest. |
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| Scientists Find Good News About Methane Bubbling Up From the Ocean Floor Near Santa Barbara |
| Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is emitted in great quantities as bubbles from seeps on the ocean floor near Santa Barbara. About half of these bubbles dissolve into the ocean, but the fate of this dissolved methane remains uncertain. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered that only one percent of this dissolved methane escapes into the air – good news for the Earth's atmosphere. |
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| LOOK FORWARD TO A DARKER WORLD |
| It's official: the world is getting darker. Scientists now agree that as cloud cover and particles in the atmosphere increase, the amount of radiation reaching us from the Sun is falling. And although they are nervous about raising the idea, they think the effect may help protect us from global warming. |
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| BAMBOO UNDER EXTINCTION THREAT |
| It’s bad news for pandas. Up to half of the world's 1,200 woody bamboo species are in danger of extinction, a UN report has revealed. Urgent action is needed to protect the plants and the species that depend on them, the study’s authors conclude. |
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| US ARMY MAY HAVE KILLED ITALIAN TREES |
| The US Army may have unwittingly killed hundreds of pine trees in an Italian hunting estate. Genetic analysis suggests that the trees were infected with an American fungus, imported by US troops during the Second World War. |
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| CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS BLOW SKY HIGH |
| An increase in global greenhouse gas emissions over the past two years, due almost entirely to the burning of fossil fuels, has been reported by Australian researchers. |
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| AMAZON RAINFOREST DRUNK ON CARBON DIOXIDE |
| Strange things are happening in lush Amazonian rainforests and rising levels of carbon dioxide could be the cause, scientists announced today. |
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| CLIMATE CHANGE COULD RELEASE OLD CARBON LOCKED IN ARCTIC SOILS, RESEARCHERS SAY. |
| The Arctic Ocean receives about ten percent of Earth's river water and with it some 25 teragrams [28 million tons] per year of dissolved organic carbon that had been held in far northern bogs and other soils. Scientists had not known the age of the carbon that reaches the ocean: was it recently derived from contemporary plant material, or had it been locked in soils for hundreds or thousands of years and therefore not part of Earth's recent carbon cycle? |
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Natural Cataclysm
