Archive for December 11th, 2010

More plant growth could slow global warming: NASA

Independent: In a world with twice as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, plants could grow larger and create a cooling effect on a warming globe, but could not halt or reverse climate change, NASA said Tuesday. One of the main mysteries scientists face with climate change is how to project it over time, particularly how to account for Earth's reaction to warmer temperatures, a phenomenon known as "feedback." It has long been known that plants - which use carbon dioxide, sun and water to grow through...

Water is the greatest gift in the desert.

National: They were the usual concerns for such a senior gathering of Arab officials: security worries over Iran, terrorism and peace in the Middle East were all high on the agenda. But in the end it was "water security" that arguably took centre stage, making it the first time an environmental issue had been discussed at such a high level in the region. It was with good reason that the 31st Gulf Cooperation Council, gathered in Abu Dhabi this week, concluded with a Quranic verse: "We made from water every...

Climate change, wildfires in vicious cycle

CBC: Northern wildfires and climate change are fuelling each other, a new study shows. "Increasing temperatures [are] going to result in increasing fire in both Alaska and Canada," says Merritt Turetsky, lead author of the study published this week in Nature Geoscience. "This results then, according to our data, in more greenhouse gas emissions, which then feeds back to climate warming through the greenhouse effect." Turetsky, an ecology professor at the University of Guelph, and her collaborators...