Spam has a carbon footprint. The time and energy wasted by spam email uses the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion gallons of gas. The majority of the energy consumed is due to spam maintenance, a study has found. “If spam filters were used universally, the energy saved would be equivalent to taking 2.3 million cars off the road, the report said.“ Read more…
In this video Watchmojo.com challenges you through engaging and thought-provoking experiences in science.
Instead of global warming, some experts are now warning that the world may soon plunge into the next Ice Age. They predict most of Scotland, Northern Ireland and England to be covered in ice 3,000 feet thick. These same experts blame global warming on falling greenhouse gas levels. Read more…
Scientists at the University of Calgary have designed a way to capture carbon dioxide from the air. This technology will be especially important in relation to emissions from airplanes and cars. Read more…
According to research released today, we haven’t done enough to reduce our carbon emissions. In fact, not only have we not done enough, but greenhouse gas emissions have actually surpassed scientists’ worst-case-scenarios, despite the measures put in place by policymakers worldwide. Read more…
This summer saw the second-lowest sea ice levels in the Arctic in the fifty years since they started tracking it. This ice serves the greater global purpose of moderating weather and temperatures throughout the world. Less ice equals a bigger environmental impact. Yeah, so? That’s global warming/climate change: nothing new.
Here’s what’s new: This lack of ice is having a significant effect on polar bears, and other Arctic inhabitants. Polar bears are starving, drowning and even resorting to cannibalism because they can’t get their usual food. And, as of right now, polar bears are considered a “threatened” species. Read more…
Greenland, the world’s largest island, holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 23 feet. Add the ice sheets of Antarctica and the oceans would deepen more than 200 feet!
Satellite measurements from space confirm that global warming is making an impact and turning ice into water. As glaciers begin to melt, the question everyone asks is how much and how long?
If Greenland alone was to raise sea level by just six feet (two meters)? “The answer turned out to be huge: about 49 kilometers [30 miles] per year, 70 times faster than those glaciers move today,” Pfeffer says, “and three times faster than we’ve ever observed an outlet glacier to move.”
Given that Greenland’s glaciers are not presently moving anywhere close to that pace—Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier, the fastest, reached speeds above nine miles (14 kilometers) per year in 2005—the researchers also looked at ice that could contribute from the rest of the world. Assuming that the largest remaining ice shelves in East Antarctica—Filchner-Ronne and Ross—will remain intact, sea level rise from all other melting ice and the expansion of seawater as the weather gets warmer over the next century would be somewhere between 2.6 feet (0.8 meter) and six feet (two meters)—or nearly twice as much as projected last year by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
These numbers are not even taking into account how much sea level might swell from the meltdown of the numerous small glaciers in Alaska, Argentina, Canada and Russia, which already contribute 60 percent of sea level rise from glacial melt.
Continue here to read more about the deep thaw.
According to the Globe and Mail:
A four-square-kilometre chunk has broken off Ward Hunt Ice Shelf - the largest remaining ice shelf in the Arctic - threatening the future of the giant frozen mass that northern explorers have used for years as the starting point for their treks.
Scientists say the break, the largest on record since 2005, is the latest indication that climate change is forcing the drastic reshaping of the Arctic coastline, where 9,000 square kilometres of ice have been whittled down to less than 1,000 over the past century, and are only showing signs of decreasing further.
Humpback whales in the Pacific Ocean have recovered swimmingly since the start of worldwide conservation programs in the 1960s and ’70s.That’s the finding from a large-scale, collaborative research effort by more than 400 whale experts throughout the Pacific region.
The new research reveals that the overall population of humpbacks has rebounded to nearly 20,000 animals in the Pacific, up from less than 10 percent of that number five decades ago. The mammals are found in all the world’s oceans.
Some isolated populations of whales, especially those in the western Pacific, have not rebounded at the same rate and still suffer low numbers. Read more…
According to Anne Minard
Ocean waters along North America’s west coast are becoming more acidic than expected in response to atmospheric carbon emissions, which will likely cause significant changes to economically vital marine ecosystems, a new study says.At one spot in northern California, waters acidic enough to corrode seashells now rake the shore, researchers point out.
“The models suggested they wouldn’t be corrosive at the surface until sometime during the second half of this century,” Richard Feely, a chemical oceanographer with the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, said via email.
Scientists have long known that the oceans serve as a giant carbon sink, moderating the effects of global warming by absorbing about a third to a half of human-caused carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Read more…
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