From 1850 to the 1970s, glaciers in the European Alps lost about 35 percent of their area. The melting then sped up, and now the 5,150 glaciers cover about 50 percent of the area they did in 1850. Hot Topic Goldilocks and the Greenhouse What makes Earth habitable? This LiveScience original video explores the science of global warming and explains how, for now, conditions here are just right. By the end of this century, they could be nearly gone, according to a new computer model. The projection, from scientists at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. will be published July 15 in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. It indicates that if summer air temperatures rise by 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 Celsius) by the end of the century, 80 percent of the glacier cover will be gone. If summer temperatures were to increase by 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 Celsius), the Alps would become almost completely ice-free by 2100. The forecast is based on temperature projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has stated that an increase in summer air temperatures of 2 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (1 […]
The United States, Israel, the United Nations and the European Union have reluctantly concluded that despite punishing military attacks, Hezbollah is likely to survive as a political player in Lebanon, and Israel now says it is willing to accept the organization if it sheds its military wing and abandons extremism, according to several key officials. ‘To the extent that it remains a political group, it will be acceptable to Israel,’ Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon said yesterday in the strongest sign to date that the Israelis are rethinking the scope and ultimate goals of the campaign. ‘A political group means a party that is engaged in the political system in Lebanon, but without terrorism capabilities and fighting capabilities. That will be acceptable to Israel.’ In a bid to contain Hezbollah, the United States is hoping to persuade Arab allies over the next week — Saudi Arabia in talks today and Egypt and Jordan at an emergency meeting Wednesday in Rome — to get Syria to stop arming, funding and facilitating Hezbollah’s military operations, U.S. officials said. Because Syria is also the physical conduit for all Iranian arms and personnel bound for Lebanon, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad […]
ST. LOUIS — Another day of severe storms knocked out electricity for tens of thousands of additional residents, but brought along a cold front that was welcome relief for those waiting for power to be restored. A strong thunderstorm rolled through the region Friday, two days after one of the worst storms in recent memory caused more than 500,000 Ameren Corp. customers to lose power. Utility crews had trimmed that number significantly by Saturday morning, but the total rose again after the storms, adding another twist to a week that has seen at least 29 heat-related deaths across the nation. About 440,000 homes and businesses in the St. Louis area were still without electricity Saturday morning, but about 130,000 had been restored over the previous 24 hours. Ameren spokeswoman Susan Gallagher said it still could be early next week before all outages are resolved. Late Friday, a 36-inch water main broke near the St. Louis Science Center, flooding Interstate 64. By 8 a.m. Saturday, eastbound lanes of I-64 were still shut down, and many residents and businesses were without water. As the weather improved, there was hope the outages were becoming more of an inconvenience […]
BOSTON – So once more we reach into the right-wing toolbox, a political chest so spare that it holds almost nothing but a wide assortment of wedges. Who would have believed that the wedges used so successfully to divide America would end up dividing conservatives? That they would finally expose the differences between the right and the, um, loony right? The latest of these wedge issues is stem-cell research. But it’s not the only one. Over the past year, we’ve begun to see daylight emerge between common sense and nonsense. Wedge One: Abstinence or Death. Remember last October, when the vaccine against HPV – the leading cause of cervical cancer – was first announced? Pro-family groups were less than enthusiastic about this breakthrough. Cervical cancer was, after all, a mainstay of the abstinence-only miseducation textbooks. A vaccine, said the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, ‘sends the wrong message.’ The far-right message was that losing your virginity could give you cancer. Today, the FRC and its cohorts still oppose routine vaccination for girls. But after the sex-or-death brouhaha, they were compelled to regroup and offer choked approval of a ‘tremendous medical achievement.’ Wedge Two: South Dakota or […]
Modern humans may have overcome Neanderthals, but they have yet to figure them out. Now a multimillion-dollar project to decipher the genetic code of Neanderthals may help explain not only why humanity’s closest cousin became extinct but also which genetic features have made Homo sapiens so successful. The Neanderthal genome project was unveiled yesterday in a news conference held at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Institute scientists plan to complete the project in two years in collaboration with the American biotechnology company 454 Life Sciences, a subsidiary of the Branford, Conn.-based CuraGen Corp. 454 has developed a speedy new approach to studying DNA. Knowing more about Neanderthal’s genes should give scientists a new window into human evolution. ‘The Neanderthal will be like modern humans in most ways, but more like a chimpanzee in others,’ said Svante Pääbo, the Max Planck geneticist who will head the effort. The skull of a Neanderthal discovered in France. Most scientists believe modern humans and Neanderthals come from a common ancestor but diverged about 500,000 years ago. Neanderthal was a heavy-boned hominid who was adapted to cold, made use of stone tools, and thrived in […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
