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Environmental News Network: Spotlight |
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Environmental News Network - Spotlight
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Environmental News Network - Spotlight
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The New Science of Sustainable Dynamics
In 1948, Norbert Wiener pondered a new science in his classic book Cybernetics, one that flirted with the "boundary regions of science." Sustainability today occupies a similar state, but the concept is used more as a policy guide and buzzword than as a true science.
As policy, the Bruntland Report in 1987 defined sustainability as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Beyond this important sense of applied ethics, sustainability must also be approached as a discipline governed by the scientific method.
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Podcast: Rain in Arctic Bad for Reindeer
Reindeer in the arctic could face harder times in the future. Lester Graham reports researchers believe global warming might hurt their chances for survival:
It?s not just reindeer, but caribou, muskox ? the hoofed animals in the arctic. They eat lichen and moss when they can find it.
Jaakkoo Putkonen is a researcher at the University of North Dakota. He and his team have studied the arctic herds. He says when it rains in the arctic? it freezes.
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It's 'attack of the slime' as jellyfish jeopardize the Earth's oceans
It has been dubbed the "rise of slime." Massive swarms of jellyfish are blooming from the tropics to the Arctic, from Peru to Namibia to the Black Sea to Japan, closing beaches and wiping out fish, either by devouring their eggs and larvae, or out-competing them for food.
To draw attention to the spread of "jellytoriums," the National Science Foundation in the U.S. has produced a report documenting that the most severe damage is to fish: In the Sea of Japan, for example, schools of Nomurai jellyfish - 500 million strong and each more than two metres in diameter - are clogging fishing nets, killing fish and accounting for at least $20-million in losses.
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Economy, consumer spending shrank in Q3
WASHINGTON - The U.S. economy shrank in the summer, corporate profits fell and consumer spending had its worst showing in 28 years even before the financial crisis struck with full force.
The economy shrank in the summer and corporate profits were falling even before the financial crisis struck with full force. Analysts are forecasting that those small declines will be followed by much larger decreases this quarter as the longest recession in a quarter century gains intensity.
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State officials launch 'green' initiative; The plan would help gauge the safety of chemical products
Is that laundry soap truly "environmentally friendly"? Was that mattress treated with toxic chemicals? Is that sweatsuit fashioned from organic cotton? Is that lipstick "natural"?
California officials launched a sweeping green initiative on Tuesday to inform consumers exactly how hundreds of thousands of products sold in the state are manufactured and transported and how safe their ingredients are.
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Tiny Saturn Moon ID'd As Good Candidate For Alien Life
SAN FRANCISCO, California ? Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus may be one of the best candidates for extraterrestrial life in our solar system.
Scientists for the first time have gathered comprehensive evidence suggesting Enceladus may have all the necessary ingredients to harbor life in the ocean beneath its icy crust.
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Over 2T tons of ice melted in arctic since '03
More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming.
More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA's GRACE satellite, said NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke. The water melting from Greenland in the past five years would fill up about 11 Chesapeake Bays, he said, and the Greenland melt seems to be accelerating.
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