Climate & Environment

Discover, November 22 2010.

World carbon emissions fell by 1.3 percent in 2009, most likely due to the global recession, says a report from the Global Carbon Project published today in Nature Geoscience. Emissions were originally expected to drop further (about 3 percent, as estimated from the expected drop of world GDP), but China and India’s surging economies and increasing carbon output countered the decreases elsewhere.

The largest decreases occurred in Europe, Japan and North America: 6.9% in the United States, 8.6% in the U.K., 7% in Germany, 11.8% in Japan and 8.4% in Russia. The study notes that some emerging economies recorded substantial increases in their total emissions, including 8% in China and 6.2% in India. Read More >

Discover, November 17 2010.

We all heard about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But what if scientists could have actually HEARD it? In the wake of the disaster, several scientists are working to develop new ways to spot and monitor spills over time using sonar–by propagating sonic waves through the water and bouncing them off oil droplets.

Some of this research is being done by Thomas Weber and will be presented today at the Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics. Sonar is useful because it can monitor large and deep swaths of the ocean, and could reduce the need to take individual samples or to visually track oil on the water’s surface. Weber and his team were the first to try using this technology to visualize the oil, going out on several trips to the site. Read More >

Discover, November 15 2010.

How could the government know about a chemical attack before it wreaks havoc? By smelling it. But the problem is, to detect an abnormal stench, the government first needs to know the city’s normal aroma, to have an idea of its “chemical profile.” To that effect, DARPA just released a solicitation looking for suggestions on how to best build chemical composition maps of major United States cities. Spencer Ackerman over at Wired’s Danger Room t0ok a look at the solicitation and explained what DARPA is looking for:

The data Darpa wants collected will include “chemical, meteorological and topographical data” from at least 10 “local urban sources,” including “residences, gasoline stations, restaurants and dry cleaning stores that have particular patterns of emissions throughout the day.” Read More >

Discover, November 12 2010.

Climate change is causing areas of the world to heat and cool, and it seems a controversial new climate change film is doing the same to reviewers. The film is titled Cool It and was based on a book of the same name by Danish writer Bjørn Lomborg, a contrarian who delights in questioning the gravity of our planet’s environmental problems.

The movie was directed by Ondi Timoner, an award-winning documentarian. Lomborg has raised the hackles of environmental activists since he published The Skeptical Environmentalist a decade ago. Since then he has drawn closer to environmentalists on some issues–for example, he now maintains that global warming should be one of the world’s “chief concerns.” Read More >

Discover, November 5 2010.

The planet’s tumult never ceases. Hurricane Tomas is bearing down on Haiti right now, and an erupting volcano continues to wreak destruction on Indonesia.

At 8 a.m. EDT on Nov. 5, Tomas’ center was about 80 miles south-southeast of Guantanamo, Cuba and 160 miles west of Port Au Prince Haiti…. Tomas is moving to the northeast near 10 mph, and is expected to speed up over the next couple of days. Read More >