MONTEREY BAY NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY, Calif. – If the world ever does get around to significantly reducing carbon emissions, the sea lions, harbor seals and sea otters reposing along the shoreline and kelp forests of this protected marine area will be among the beneficiaries. These foragers of the sanctuary’s frigid waters, flipping in and out of sight of California’s coastal kayakers, may not seem like obvious beneficiaries. But reducing carbon emissions worldwide also would help mend a lesser-known environmental problem: ocean acidification. ‘We’re having a change in water chemistry, so 20 years from now the system we’re looking at could be affected dramatically but we’re not really sure how. So we see a train wreck coming,’ said Andrew DeVogelaere, the sanctuary’s research director, while out kayaking this fall with a reporter in the cold waters. Oceans absorb about 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere from human activities each year, helping to take off some warming pressure. But carbon dissolving in oceans also forms carbonic acid, raising waters’ acidity that damages all manner of hard-shelled creatures, and setting off a chain reaction that threatens the food chain supporting marine life, including the […]
OMAHA, Nebraska — Native American tribes tired of waiting for the U.S. government to honor centuries-old treaties are buying back land where their ancestors lived and putting it in federal trust. Native Americans say the purchases will help protect their culture and way of life by preserving burial grounds and areas where sacred rituals are held. They also provide land for farming, timber and other efforts to make the tribes self-sustaining. Tribes put more than 840,000 acres - or roughly the equivalent of the state of Rhode Island - into trust from 1998 to 2007, according to information The Associated Press obtained from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs under the Freedom of Information Act. Those buying back land include the Winnebago, who have put more than 700 acres in eastern Nebraska in federal trust in the past five years, and the Pawnee, who have 1,600 acres of trust land in Oklahoma. Land held in federal trust is exempt from local and state laws and taxes, but subject to most federal laws. Three tribes have bought land around Bear Butte in South Dakota’s Black Hills to keep it from developers eager to cater to the bikers […]
MANILA, Philippines — Asia-Pacific nations reported better results than the United States when it came to providing goods, products and services that helped in easing the impact of climate change, according to a financial metric pioneered by British banking giant HSBC. In a statement, HSBC said climate-friendly firms in Asian countries, excluding Japan, outperformed their US-based counterparts by 33 percent since the bank started tracking the data in 2004. At the same time, these firms outperformed global equities by an average of 64 percent since the inception of the index, buoyed by large and direct government investments in clean energy and manufacturing capacity. Building on the success of the HSBC Climate Change Benchmark Index-the first comprehensive Climate Change Index launched in 2007-HSBC has since initiated regional and country climate change indices. These indices give fund managers the opportunity to invest in specific elements of global climate change on a selective and focused basis, the bank said. These indices are based on the same quantitative framework as the benchmark index and will enable investors and asset allocators to track and monitor climate-related investments and the transition from a high to low carbon economy for listed companies […]
The evolution of publishing from print to digital has caused a schism in the reading world. There are now two constituencies: readers (and writers) on the one hand, and the publishing world on the other. And they don’t want to hear each other. Readers want books that are plentiful and cheap, publishers want to preserve their profit, and authors want a larger share of revenue. The conflict has created a strident internecine battle inside the publishing industry. At issue are the price and timing of e-books, and who owns the rights to backlist titles. While publishers, agents and Amazon.com bicker, there is little time for conceiving new content that satisfies customer demand. If the book business doesn’t tune in to that demand, it could wind up as a transitional source for the e-readers. We know that readers want content, because it’s clear they’re not dazzled by the device. Consumers have made Amazon’s limited and rudimentary device a hit, which speaks to their desire for books that are cheaper and easier to obtain. It surely isn’t the device’s design or functionality. Both are closer to the computer aesthetic of the 1980s than today’s digital world. The Kindle may have […]
China on Saturday unveiled what it billed as the fastest rail link in the world — a train connecting the modern cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan at an average speed of 350 kilometres (217 miles) an hour. The super-high-speed train reduces the 1,069 kilometre journey to a three hour ride and cuts the previous journey time by more than seven and a half hours, the official Xinhua news agency said. Work on the project began in 2005 as part of plans to expand a high-speed network aimed at eventually linking Guangzhou, a business hub in southern China near Hong Kong, with the capital Beijing, Xinhua added. ‘The train can go 394.2 kilometres per hour, it’s the fastest train in operation in the world,’ Zhang Shuguang, head of the transport bureau at the railways ministry, told Xinhua. Test runs for the service began earlier in December and the link officially went into service when the first scheduled train left the eastern metropolis of Wuhan on Saturday. By comparison, the average for high-speed trains in Japan was 243 kilometres per hour while in France it was 277 kilometres per hour, said Xu Fangliang, general engineer in charge […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
