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Archive for January 5th, 2016
An investment strategy to save the planet
Posted by New York Times: Tina Rosenberg on January 5th, 2016
New York Times: If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to do your part against climate change, keep reading. Now you can — with your investments.
You’d be following New York State’s example. At the Paris climate change talks last month, the state’s comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, announced that the state’s Common Retirement Fund, for public employee pensions, will put $2 billion into a new investment fund created by Goldman Sachs that prioritizes companies with smaller carbon footprints. If that goes well, the...
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Peering into the Amazon’s future
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 5th, 2016
ScienceDaily: Harvard researchers are challenging the widely-held theory that climate change could cause Amazon forests to rapidly change from forests to savannah. A new model, based on the effect of water stress on individual trees, suggests the change would be a gradual transition from high-biomass forests to low-biomass forests and woodland ecosystems. The study is described in a recently published paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "In earlier approaches, they use an aggregated...
Earth is Experiencing a Global Warming Spurt
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on January 5th, 2016
Climate Central: Cyclical changes in the Pacific Ocean have thrown earth's surface into what may be an unprecedented warming spurt, following a global warming slowdown that lasted about 15 years.
While El Niño is being blamed for an outbreak of floods, storms and unseasonable temperatures across the planet, a much slower-moving cycle of the Pacific Ocean has also been playing a role in record-breaking warmth. The recent effects of both ocean cycles are being amplified by climate change.
A 2014 flip was detected...
Scientists move one step closer to turning water into fuel, cheaply
Posted by Christian Science Monitor: Eva Botkin-Kowacki on January 5th, 2016
Christian Science Monitor: Scientists have cleared one hurdle on the path to deriving hydrogen fuel from water affordably, a breakthrough that could drastically change the way we power vehicles.
Hydrogen has the potential to fuel incredibly environmentally-clean cars. But making that fuel hasn't been so efficient or economical. Pure hydrogen gas does not occur naturally on Earth, so scientists must devise ways to separate hydrogen from naturally-occurring compounds, like H2 O.
Until now, cars that run on water have been...
Mississippi River crest rolls toward Tennessee; singer’s body found
Posted by Reuters: Suzannah Gonzales and Tim Ghianni on January 5th, 2016
Reuters: Tennessee residents girded on Monday for the rapidly rising Mississippi River to crest within days as Oklahoma officials found the body of a country-rock singer whose boat capsized on a lake in late December.
The swollen Mississippi and rivers that feed into it wreaked havoc in Missouri and Illinois after late December heavy rain and severe storms brought flooding across several central U.S. states, leaving at least 33 people dead.
Officials on Monday found the body of Craig Strickland, 29,...