New Carbon Sources: 21st Century Challenges?
December 4, 2008 by Tommy Linsley
Filed under Climate Change
One of the most frustrating and potentially dangerous aspects of climate
change is how failing components of the Earth’s ecosystems can lead to an
acceleration of the warming process. This is already being observed in
Arctic ice melt data, showing that change is accelerating even faster
than the most recent models would suggest.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the very northern parts of
Scandinavia and Siberian Russia. In areas that had been built upon
permafrost, foundations are sinking and collapsing as this long solid
ground is now becoming a muddy swamp. To make things worse, thousands
of years of accumulated peat is being digested by decomposition bacteria
to emit a massive “belch” of carbon dioxide that had been previously
virtually contained.
Also, as polar ice caps melt, the reflectivity of the Earth (the albedo
to meteorologists) decreases, allowing the Sun’s rays to be even more
effective.
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Malaria in New York City?
October 27, 2008 by Tommy Linsley
Filed under Climate Change
Carbon Dioxide Could Bring Malaria to New York City
Malaria is a long-time plague of human beings in tropical areas where specific
mosquito populations carry the infectious organism. Much of North America
and the developed world lives in places where it routinely freezes, effectively
culling populations of mosquitoes that carry the disease. If the average temperature
of the world were to rise 6.4C/11.5F as some climatological models predict, the
range of the mosquitoes that carry malaria could reach just about everywhere.
Yes, climate change rears its ugly head once more.
It has already been noted that countries that suffer from malarial disorders are
only about one-fifth as economically productive as countries where the disease
is unknown. This is largely due to the way the disease leaves adults ill and in
constant pain. Though it accounts for about three million deaths each year, most
of these are in the poorest parts of Africa and among often malnourished children.
For the most part, the disease causes what sociologists call “morbidity” rather
than “mortality.”
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Sustainable Development Can Avert Disaster
October 11, 2008 by Tommy Linsley
Filed under Sustainable Development
The Scope of Sustainable Development Necessary to Avert Climate
Change Disaster
Sustainable Development touches on all aspects of social, environmental
and developmental needs to craft a solution that can help mitigate the
disasters that climate change threatens. To accomplish this, a seemingly
endless laundry list of concerns that sustainable development encompasses
needs to be addressed. This list relates to just about every scope of
human endeavor.
The primary effects of climate change are ripe for immediate action. It
is basic to the concept of sustainability that the biggest problems be
tackled first and that keep things from getting any worse is basic to that
premise. To that end, sustainable development in the 21st century must
focus heavily upon reducing carbon dioxide emissions. And not just to
pre-1990 levels, but to levels not seen since before World War Two.
The secondary impacts of climate change present the greatest challenges
because protecting both human and natural life requires a very precarious
balance be reached in an era of dwindling resources. With the help of
scientific study, it is hoped that leaders and advisors can come up with
attainable solutions.
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Sea Levels Correlate with CO2
October 9, 2008 by Tommy Linsley
Filed under Green Earth News
Rising Sea Levels and Carbon Dioxide Pollution
Perhaps one of the most concerning things about the predicted course of climate
change over the next century is the likelihood of rising sea levels. It is thought that
by 2100, the melting glaciers and ice caps could raise the level of oceans all over the
world by as much as 3.4 meter/11 feet.
While this may not sound like a particularly large rise in sea level, consider that the 20mm
(about ¾ inch) rise in sea levels that have already been observed in the last 150 years
have already been responsible for the submergence of several South Pacific islands and atolls.
The engine that drives this is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and
the one that has the greatest impact in the early 21st century is carbon dioxide. This is
one of the primary by-products of the burning of fossil fuels, which are responsible, in large
measure, for the massive increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
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Solar Power Innovation: Cheap Electric on the Horizon?
October 1, 2008 by Tommy Linsley
Filed under Renewable Energy, Solar
Since people are going to need energy, eliminating carbon dioxide emissions will require adopting renewable energy. However, the cost has been prohibitively high for most of the commonly used and available methods. Home generation has many possibilities, including getting a check from the power company for excess power that you’ve sold back.
The best and only way to make its manufacture as cheap as possible. Several recent innovations in solar technology have brought humankind to the brink of affordable solar power that can be used anywhere. Flexible film solar can be built into just about anything, from awnings to bikinis. New advances is how to put the flexible sheets together has recently come from an American company that literally prints the solar cells onto a substrate at dizzyingly fast rates. Even solar paint is on the horizon.
The next step to really getting solar everywhere as it should be is to have similar revolutionary advances in storage technology.
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