Taming the Butterfly

Plunge in CO2 put the freeze on AntarcticaAtmospheric carbon dioxide levels plunged by 40% before and during the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet 34 million years ago, according to a new study. The finding helps solve a long-standing scientific puzzle and confirms the power of CO2 to dramatically alter global climate.

Technology for making an "artificial leaf" holds the potential for opening an era of "fast-food energy," in which people generate their own electricity at home with low-cost equipment perfect for the 3 billion people living in developing countries and even home-owners in the United States. That's among the prospects emerging from research on a new genre of "electrofuels" described in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the American Chemical Society's weekly newsmagazine.

The threat to climate change posed by thawing permafrost, which could release stocks of stored carbon, is greater than estimated, a group of scientists said on Wednesday.

A European drive to forge a legally-binding deal on climate change by 2015 that would include all major carbon polluters is "too much", a senior Chinese negotiator said at UN talks here.

As global temperatures rise and climatic zones move polewards, species will need to find different environments to prevent extinction. New research, published today in the journal Molecular Ecology, has revealed that climate change is causing certain species to move and adapt to a range of new habitats.

International climate negotiators were at odds Tuesday on how to raise billions of dollars to help poor countries cope with global warming. A major shipping group is willing to help, endorsing a proposal for a carbon tax on vessels carrying the world's trade.

Droughts and floods which devastate crops and rising seas which imperil coastal cities will become potent triggers for famine, disease and homelessness, in turn inflaming tensions and leading to unrest, say experts.

The composition of the Earth's core remains a mystery. Scientists know that the liquid outer core consists mainly of iron, but it is believed that small amounts of some other elements are present as well. Oxygen is the most abundant element in the planet, so it is not unreasonable to expect oxygen might be one of the dominant "light elements" in the core. However, new research from a team including Carnegie's Yingwei Fei shows that oxygen does not have a major presence in the outer core. This has major implications for our understanding of the period when the Earth formed through the accretion of dust and clumps of matter. Their work is published Nov. 24 in Nature.

Climate change could mean unthinkable loss for South Africa, which hosts talks on global warming that will bring government negotiators, scientists and lobbyists from around the world to the coastal city of Durban next week. Guy Midgley, the top climate change researcher at the South African National Biodiversity Institute, said evidence gleaned from decades of recording weather data, observing flora and fauna and conducting experiments makes it possible for scientists to "weave a tapestry of change."

Scientists are a step closer to predicting when and where earthquakes will occur after taking a fresh look at the formation of the Andes, which began 45 million years ago.

Scientists at Oxford University and The University of Sheffield have demonstrated that natural silks are a thousand times more efficient than common plastics when it comes to forming fibres. 

The Belchatow power plant is seen in September 2011 in Poland. The world has just five years to avoid being trapped in a scenario of perilous climate change and extreme weather events, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned

Elizabeth Demaray, an associate professor of fine arts, is cultivating lichen on the sides of New York City skyscrapers to counteract the lack of native vegetation found in the city. Her "Lichen for Skyscrapers Project" was featured as part of New York's Art in Odd Places Festival from Oct. 1-10 and is currently on view as a site-specific installation on 14th Street between Union Square Park and the Hudson River. "Metropolitan centers figure into local temperatures in an interesting way," Demaray says. "They are sometimes referred to as 'urban heat islands' because they create heat and they trap heat. A large part of this process is due to the materials that we build with and the actual architecture of the buildings that we create." Demaray says one of the ways to reduce heat in these cities is to cultivate lichen, which forms a protective barrier, insulating its supporting building from harmful elements. It can lower cumulative temperatures by absorbing sunlight and reflecting heat due to its light color palate while making oxygen and creating green space on the sides of buildings.

UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller and others were looking at the so-called urban heat island effect - the notion that because more urban temperature stations are included in global temperature data sets than are rural ones, the global average temperature was being skewed upward because these sites tend to retain more heat. Hence, global warming trends are exaggerated. Using data from such urban heat islands as Tokyo, they hypothesized, could introduce "a severe warming bias in global averages using urban stations." In fact, the data trend was "opposite in sign to that expected if the urban heat island effect was adding anomalous warming to the record. The small size, and its negative sign, supports the key conclusion of prior groups that urban warming does not unduly bias estimates of recent global temperature change."

The fact that the average American home is slowly but surely shrinking - and will most likely continue to do so if and when the country shakes off its current financial woes - isn't exactly revolutionary news. But when members of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) were asked earlier this year what they anticipate the new home size will be 2015, it's how they think single-family homes will shrink - which standard features of the average home will disappear to compensate for less square footage and which ones will remain or become more popular - that's the most revealing about the shifting needs and wants of homeowners.

Lowering energy consumption associated with computer data storage (specifically, cloud computing) and saving millions of dollars are possible now, thanks to new memory technology, a field that researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have been exploring through a four-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded in 2009 titled, "Large: Storage Class Memory Architecture for Energy Efficient Data Centers."

Both climate change and humans were responsible for the extinction of some large mammals, like the musk ox in this photo, according to research that is the first of its kind to use genetic, archeological, and climatic data together to infer the population history of large Ice-Age mammals. The large international team's research, which will be published in the journal Nature, is expected to shed light on the possible fates of living species of mammals as our planet continues its current warming cycle.

Large increases in urbanization can lead to more concrete and asphalt reducing an area's flood mitigation services. Low density housing, however, has little effect on flood mitigation services but does cut down losses in the amount of land available for food and carbon storage, the study showed. Researchers investigated how a projected 16 per cent increase in the human population in Britain by 2031 would affect key ecosystem services depending on how cities expanded to meet the growing demand.

"Photovoltaic solar panels actually start paying for themselves right after installation," says Buzard. He estimates 10 solar panels in 235-watt sizes cost about $14,000 installed; add in a 30 percent federal credit, register for renewable energy credits and you pay for the system in less than 10 years.