glacier-breakdown

Scientists have thought that if planetary warming could be kept below a 2-degree Celsius increase, perils such as catastrophic sea-level rise and searing heat waves could be avoided.

Ongoing data, however, indicate that three global feedback mechanisms may be pushing Earth into a period of rapid climate change even before the 2-degree C “limit” is reached: Ice melting into the oceans, which warms surface seawater, leading to more melting; thawing of permafrost, which releases carbon dioxide and        methane into the atmosphere, raising the air temperature and melting more permafrost; and glaciers breaking up and falling into the sea, which lessens the amount of sunlight reflected into space, thereby heating the atmosphere and further degrading glaciers.

The feedbacks could ultimately alter weather by changing the jet stream’s path, magnify insect infestations and spawn more and larger wildfires.

Tar sands consist of heavy crude oil mixed with sand, clay and bitumen. Extraction entails burning natural gas to generate enough heat and steam to melt the oil out of the sand. As many as five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of oil.

The Tar Sands and Climate Change

Tar sands oil is the worst type of oil for the climate, producing three times the greenhouse gas emissions of conventionally produced oil because of the energy required to extract and process tar sands oil.

Additionally:

• Increased greenhouse gas emissions associated with tar sands development is the main reason Canada will not meet its Kyoto reduction commitments.
• In 2010, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions are projected be nearly 35 percent higher than 1990 levels.

Health and Environmental Effects of the Tar Sands

Across the United States, oil refineries are seeking permits to expand their facilities to process heavy crude oil from the tar sands. Processing tar sands oil will mean more asthma and respiratory diseases, more cancer, and more cardiovascular problems. Many local communities are opposing the expansions.

In Canada, the toxic burden on communities near the tar sands is already enormous. In addition to direct human exposure, oil contamination in the local watershed has led to arsenic in moose meat—a dietary staple for First Nations peoples—up to 33 times acceptable levels. Drinking water has also been contaminated.

The alternative is simple: we need to break our addiction to oil and fossil fuels. We could be on the road to a new energy future if we simply redirect the investment capital slated for the tar sands into sustainable alternatives. Heightened investments in clean energy also mean the creation of new green jobs. We need to stop investing in dirty fossil fuels and start funding the future.

Source:  ran

This cautious man has also been arrested multiple times.

His acts of civil disobedience started in 2009, and he was first arrested in 2011 for protesting the development of Canada’s tar sands and, especially, the Keystone XL pipeline proposal that would serve to open the spigot for such oil even wider. “To avoid passing tipping points, such as initiation of the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, we need to limit the climate forcing severely. It’s still possible to do that, if we phase down carbon emissions rapidly, but that means moving expeditiously to clean energies of the future,” he explains. “Moving to tar sands, one of the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels on the planet, is a step in exactly the opposite direction, indicating either that governments don’t understand the situation or that they just don’t give a damn.”

He adds: “People who care should draw the line.”

Hansen is not alone in caring. In addition to a groundswell of opposition to the 2,700-kilometer-long Keystone pipeline, 17 of his fellow climate scientists joined him in signing a letter urging Pres. Barack Obama to reject the project last week. Simply put, building the pipeline—and enabling more tar sands production—runs “counter to both national and planetary interests,” the researchers wrote. “The year of review that you asked for on the project made it clear exactly how pressing the climate issue really is.” Obama seemed to agree in his second inaugural address this week, noting “we will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”

At the same time, the U.S. imports nearly nine million barrels of oil per day and burns nearly a billion metric tons of coal annually. China’s coal burning is even larger and continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Partially as a result, global emissions of greenhouse gases continue to grow by leaps and bounds too—and China is one alternative customer eager for the oil from Canada’s tar sands. Neither developed nor developing nations will break the fossil-fuel addiction overnight, and there are still more than a billion people who would benefit from more fossil-fuel burning to help lift them out of energy poverty. The question lurking behind the fight in North America over Keystone, the tar sands and climate change generally is: How much of the planet’s remaining fossil fuels can we burn?

The trillion-tonne question
To begin to estimate how much fossil fuels can be burned, one has to begin with a guess about how sensitive the global climate really is to additional carbon dioxide. If you think the climate is vulnerable to even small changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases—as Hansen and others do—then we have already gone too far. Global concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached 394 parts per million, up from 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution and the highest levels seen in at least 800,000 years. Hansen’s math suggests 350 ppm would be a safer level, given that with less than a degree Celsius of warming from present greenhouse gas concentrations, the world is already losing ice at an alarming rate, among other faster-than-expected climate changes.

International governments have determined that 450 ppm is a number more to their liking, which, it is argued, will keep the globe’s average temperatures from warming more than 2 degrees C. Regardless, the world is presently on track to achieve concentrations well above that number. Scientists since chemist Svante Arrhenius of Sweden in 1896 have noted that reaching concentrations of roughly 560 ppm would likely result in a world with average temperatures roughly 3 degrees C warmer—and subsequent estimates continue to bear his laborious, hand-written calculations out. Of course, rolling back greenhouse gas concentrations to Hansen’s preferred 350 ppm—or any other number for that matter—is a profoundly unnatural idea. Stasis is not often found in the natural world.

Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may not be the best metric for combating climate change anyway. “What matters is our total emission rate,” notes climate modeler Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, another signee of the anti-Keystone letter. “From the perspective of the climate system, a CO2 molecule is a CO2 molecule and it doesn’t matter if it came from coal versus natural gas.”

Physicist Myles Allen of the University of Oxford in England and colleagues estimated that the world could afford to put one trillion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere by 2050 to have any chance of restraining global warming below 2 degrees C. To date, fossil fuel burning, deforestation and other actions have put nearly 570 billion metric tons of carbon in the atmosphere—and Allen estimates the trillionth metric ton of carbon will be emitted around the summer of 2041 at present rates. “Tons of carbon is fundamental,” adds Hansen, who has argued that burning all available fossil fuels would result in global warming of more than 10 degrees C. “It does not matter much how fast you burn it.”

Alberta’s oil sands represent a significant tonnage of carbon. With today’s technology there are roughly 170 billion barrels of oil to be recovered in the tar sands, and an additional 1.63 trillion barrels worth underground if every last bit of bitumen could be separated from sand. “The amount of CO2 locked up in Alberta tar sands is enormous,” notes mechanical engineer John Abraham of the University of Saint Thomas in Minnesota, another signer of the Keystone protest letter from scientists. “If we burn all the tar sand oil, the temperature rise, just from burning that tar sand, will be half of what we’ve already seen”—an estimated additional nearly 0.4 degree C from Alberta alone.

As it stands, the oil sands industry has greenhouse gas emissions greater than New Zealand and Kenya—combined. If all the bitumen in those sands could be burned, another 240 billion metric tons of carbon would be added to the atmosphere and, even if just the oil sands recoverable with today’s technology get burned, 22 billion metric tons of carbon would reach the sky. And reserves usually expand over time as technology develops, otherwise the world would have run out of recoverable oil long ago.

The greenhouse gas emissions of mining and upgrading tar sands is roughly 79 kilograms per barrel of oil presently, whereas melting out the bitumen in place requires burning a lot of natural gas—boosting emissions to more than 116 kilograms per barrel, according to oil industry consultants IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. All told, producing and processing tar sands oil results in roughly 14 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the average oil used in the U.S. And greenhouse gas emissions per barrel have stopped improving and started increasing slightly, thanks to increasing development of greenhouse gas–intensive melting-in-place projects. “Emissions have doubled since 1990 and will double again by 2020,” says Jennifer Grant, director of oil sands research at environmental group Pembina Institute in Canada.

Just one mine expansion, Shell’s Jackpine mine, currently under consideration for the Albian mega-mine site, would increase greenhouse gas emissions by 1.18 million metric tons per year. “If Keystone is approved then we’re locking in a several more decades of dependence on fossil fuels,” says climate modeler Daniel Harvey of the University of Toronto. “That means higher CO2 emissions, higher concentrations [in the atmosphere] and greater warming that our children and grandchildren have to deal with.”

And then there’s all the carbon that has to come out of the bitumen to turn it into a usable crude oil.

Hidden carbon
In the U.S. State Department’s review of the potential environmental impacts of the Keystone project, consultants EnSys Energy suggested that building the pipeline would not have “any significant impact” on greenhouse gas emissions, largely because Canada’s tar sands would likely be developed anyway. But the Keystone pipeline represents the ability to carry away an additional 830,000 barrels per day—and the Albertan tar sands are already bumping up against constraints in the ability to move their product. That has led some to begin shipping the oil by train, truck and barge—further increasing the greenhouse gas emissions—and there is a proposal to build a new rail line, capable of carrying five million barrels of oil per year from Fort McMurray to Alaska’s Valdez oil terminal.

Then there’s the carbon hidden in the bitumen itself. Either near oil sands mines in the mini-refineries known as upgraders or farther south after the bitumen has reached Midwestern or Gulf Coast refineries, its long, tarry hydrocarbon chains are cracked into the shorter, lighter hydrocarbons used as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The residue of this process is a nearly pure black carbon known as petroleum (pet) coke that, if it builds up, has to be blasted loose, as if mining for coal in industrial equipment. The coke is, in fact, a kind of coal and is often burned in the dirtiest fossil fuel’s stead. Canadian tar sands upgraders produce roughly 10 million metric tons of the stuff annually, whereas U.S. refineries pump out more than 61 million metric tons per year.

Pet coke is possibly the dirtiest fossil fuel available, emitting at least 30 percent more CO2 per ton than an equivalent amount of the lowest quality mined coals. According to multiple reports from independent analysts, the production (and eventual burning) of such petroleum coke is not included in industry estimates of tar sands greenhouse gas emissions because it is a co-product. Even without it, the Congressional Research Service estimates that tar sands oil results in at least 14 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than do more conventional crude oils.

Although tar sands may be among the least climate-friendly oil produced at present—edging out alternatives such as fracking for oil trapped in shale deposits in North Dakota and flaring the gas—the industry has made attempts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, unlike other oil-producing regions. For example, there are alternatives to cracking bitumen and making pet coke, albeit more expensive ones, such as adding hydrogen to the cracked bitumen, a process that leaves little carbon behind, employed by Shell, among others.

More recently, Shell has begun adding carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS) technology to capture the emissions from a few of its own upgraders, a project known as Quest. The program, when completed in 2015, will aim to capture and store one million metric tons of CO2 per year, or a little more than a third of the CO2 emissions of Shell’s operation at that site. And tar sands producers do face a price on carbon—$15 per metric ton by Alberta provincial regulation—for any emissions above a goal of reducing by 12 percent the total amount of greenhouse gas emitted per total number of barrels produced.

The funds collected—some $312 million to date—are then used to invest in clean technology, but more than 75 percent of the projects are focused on reducing emissions from oil sands, unconventional oils and other fossil fuels. And to drive more companies to implement CCS in the oil sands would require a carbon price of $100 per metric ton or more. “We don’t have a price on carbon in the province that is compelling companies to pursue CCS,” Pembina’s Grant argues.

In fact, Alberta’s carbon price may be little more than political cover. “It gives us some ammunition when people attack us for our carbon footprint, if nothing else,” former Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert told in September 2011. Adds Beverly Yee, assistant deputy minister at Alberta’s Environment and Sustainable Resource Development agency, more recently, “Greenhouse gases? We don’t see that as a regional issue.” From the individual driver in the U.S. to oil sands workers and on up to the highest echelons of government in North America, everyone dodges responsibility.

Price of carbon
A true price on carbon, one that incorporates all the damages that could be inflicted by catastrophic climate change, is exactly what Hansen believes is needed to ensure that more fossil fuels, like the tar sands, stay buried. In his preferred scheme, a price on carbon that slowly ratcheted up would be collected either where the fossil fuel comes out of the ground or enters a given country, such as at a port. But instead of that tax filling government coffers, the collected revenue should be rebated in full to all legal residents in equal amounts—an approach he calls fee and dividend. “Not one penny to reducing the national debt or off-setting some other tax,” the government scientist argues. “Those are euphemisms for giving the money to government, allowing them to spend more.”

Such a carbon tax would make fossil fuels more expensive than alternatives, whether renewable resources such as wind and sun or low-carbon nuclear power. As a result, these latter technologies might begin to displace things like coal-burning power plants or halt major investments in oil infrastructure like the Keystone XL pipeline.

As it stands, producing 1.8 million barrels per day of tar sands oil resulted in the emissions of some 47.1 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent in 2011, up nearly 2 percent from the year before and still growing, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. In the same year coal-fired power plants in the U.S. emitted more than two billion metric tons of CO2-equivalent. “If you think that using other petroleum sources is much better [than tar sands], then you’re delusional,” says chemical engineer Murray Gray, scientific director of the Center for Oil Sands Innovation at the University of Alberta.

In other words, tar sands are just a part of the fossil-fuel addiction—but still an important part. Projects either approved or under construction would expand tar sands production to over five million barrels per day by 2030. “Any expansion of an energy system that relies on the atmosphere to be its waste dump is bad news, whereas expansion of safe, affordable and environmentally acceptable energy technologies is good news,” Carnegie’s Caldeira says.

There’s a lot of bad news these days then, from fracking shale for gas and oil in the U.S. to new coal mines in China. Oxford’s Allen calculates that the world needs to begin reducing emissions by roughly 2.5 percent per year, starting now, in order to hit the trillion metric ton target by 2050. Instead emissions hit a new record this past year, increasing 3 percent to 34.7 billion metric tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Stopping even more bad news is why Hansen expects to be arrested again, whether at a protest against mountaintop removal mining for coal in West Virginia or a sit-in outside the White House to convince the Obama administration to say no to Keystone XL and any expansion of the tar sands industry. The Obama administration has already approved the southern half of the pipeline proposal—and if the northern link is approved, a decision expected after March of this year, environmental group Oil Change International estimates that tar sands refined on the Gulf Coast would produce 16.6 million metric tons of CO2 annually just from the petroleum coke, which would be enough to fuel five coal-fired power plants for a year. All told, the increased tar sands production as a result of opening Keystone would be equal to opening six new coal-fired power plants, according to Pembina Institute calculations.

Even as increased oil production in the U.S. diminishes the demand for tar sands-derived fuel domestically, if Keystone reaches the Gulf Coast, that oil will still be refined and exported. At the same time, Obama pledged to respond to climate change and argued for U.S. leadership in the transition to “sustainable energy sources” during his second inaugural address; approving Keystone might lead in the opposite direction.

For the tar sands “the climate forcing per unit energy is higher than most fossil fuels,” argues Hansen, who believes he is fighting for the global climate his five grandchildren will endure—or enjoy. After all, none of his grandchildren have lived through a month with colder than average daily temperatures. There has not been one in the U.S. since February 1985, before even Hansen started testifying on global warming. As he says: “Going after tar sands—incredibly dirty, destroying the local environment for a very carbon-intensive fuel—is the sign of a terribly crazed addict.”

Source : Scientificamerican

Sourcing more oil from Canada achieves the politically desirable goal of making the U.S. less dependent on OPEC. But bitumen exacts a heavy toll on the environment. As compared with conventional Saudi oil, it emits twice as much greenhouse gas per barrel because of the resources needed to process it. And although it is net-positive— providing between 7 and 10 Btu (British thermal units) of energy for every 1 Btu put into the tar sands—it is less so than conventional petroleum. Once it is mined, bitumen requires large amounts of gas-heated water to melt and separate it from the coarse grains of sand to which it is bound. At that point, the bitumen is still too tarry to flow, so it has to be chemically manipulated with heat and pressure to become yellowish crude oil, diesel, jet fuel or other typical hydrocarbon products. Or it can be diluted with light hydrocarbon liquids to become pitch-black “dilbit” (for “diluted bitumen”), capable of traveling via pipeline to the U.S.

Some environmental scientists see tapping the oil sands as a disastrous tipping point for global warming. In an analysis of how to restrain warming to an increase of two degrees Celsius or less above preindustrial levels, the International Energy Agency suggested that tar sands production should not exceed 3.3 million barrels a day. Yet approved tar sands production would surpass five million barrels a day—a fact that NASA climatologist James Hansen calls “game over for climate change.”

Of course, the true challenge is reducing the use of all fossil fuels, not just oil. U.S. coal-fired power plants produce 10 times more carbon dioxide than Albertan oil sands. Even so, power plant emissions have begun to decline, while the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers notes that CO₂ pollution from oil sands has risen 36 percent since 2007. As the U.S. weighs construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the problem of tapping the oil sands is only getting stickier.

Source : Scientificamerican

Your decision may depend on whether you’re vacationing in Juneau, Alaska or Jupiter, Florida—and it all comes down to temperature. Recent research suggests that warm weather impairs our ability to make complex decisions—and even causes us to shy away from making these decisions in the first place.

In the sweltering heat of a Florida summer, choosing between dozens of scratch tickets may seem like an insurmountable task—and one you’d rather not make, given the alternative of a relatively simple pick-6 lotto (just grab a ticket, write down a few numbers, and you’re done).  In the cooler climes of Alaska, on the other hand, your ability to make complex decisions—such as choosing your favorite scratch ticket—should be unaffected.  These differences may have profound effects on your path to instant fortune.  In cooler weather, you are able to weigh your options and choose the best one, no matter how cognitively complex the decision may be; in warmer weather, however, you’re more likely to take the easiest available route—in this case, the pick-6 lotto (which, in Florida, has an approximately 1 in 22,957,480 chance of winning the jackpot).

Although the idea that our decisions are swayed by the temperature of our surroundings may seem far-fetched, consider one simple fact: our brains are organs. And, just like all other organs, these decision-making centers need energy to function. Almost everything we do—whether it is a physical behavior or a mental process—uses the same energy source: glucose. We use glucose as we walk, talk, breathe, and perform other physical functions in our daily lives. We also use glucose when we perform effortful mental functions, such as making decisions, exerting self-control, suppressing emotional responses, and even answering math problems.  Crucially, glucose—this fundamental source of both physical and mental energy—is a limited resource.

One of the body’s most important tasks is temperature regulation. When the ambient temperature is unusually hot (Florida) or unusually cold (Alaska), we must use energy—in the form of glucose—to maintain a healthy internal temperature; we shiver and sweat, seeking to avoid hypothermia and heat stroke. These two processes—correcting for excessive heat and unwanted cold—are not equally taxing, however; cooling the body down seems to require more energy than warming it up.

Warm temperatures, then, are more likely to deplete our resources—as our bodies work to maintain homeostasis, we use up large amounts of glucose. Because glucose is also used for mental processes, it may be that the physical demands imposed by excessive warmth reduce our capacity for cognitive functioning, thereby adversely affecting our decision-making abilities.

This possibility intrigued two researchers—Amar Cheema of the University of Virginia and Vanessa M. Patrick of the University of Houston—so they carried out an innovative study of real-world behavior: they gathered sales data for various types of lottery games in St. Louis County for a full year, then looked for differences in sales patterns as a function of each day’s temperature. The results were striking. Sales for scratch tickets, which require buyers to choose between many different options, fell by $594 with every 1° Fahrenheit increase in temperature. Sales for lotto tickets, which require fewer decisions on the part of the buyer, were not affected.

The researchers decided to test this apparent link between weather and complex decision-making in the lab by performing a series of experiments comparing participants’ cognitive performance at two seemingly unremarkable temperatures: 67° and 77° Fahrenheit. People tend to be most comfortable at around 72° Fahrenheit, so each temperature represented just a 5° deviation from maximum comfort.

Despite this minimal deviation in temperature, the researchers found remarkable differences in cognitive functioning. In one lab study, participants were asked to proofread an article while they were in either a warm (77°) or a cool (67°) room. Participants in warm rooms performed significantly worse than those in cool rooms, failing to identify almost half of the spelling and grammatical errors (those in cool rooms, on the hand, only missed a quarter of the mistakes). These results suggest that even simple cognitive tasks can be adversely affected by excessive ambient warmth.

In a second study, the researchers showed similar effects for more complex cognitive calculations. In this study, another group of participants were asked to choose between two cell phone plans, again in either a warm or a cool room. One plan looked more attractive on the surface, but was actually more expensive; simple patterns of decision-making would therefore lead participants to choose the more expensive plan, whereas more complex analyses would lead participants to correctly choose the more cost-effective plan. Participants in the cool room made the correct choice over half the time; those in the warm room, on the other hand, made the correct choice only a quarter of the time. Warmer temperatures seemed to make participants more likely to rely on simplistic patterns of decision-making, which in turn led to inferior choices. These results suggest that complex decision-making, like simple cognitive tasks, is adversely affected by warm temperatures.

A third study suggests that warm surroundings may not just cause people to fail at complex decision-making—it may cause them to shy away from making these sorts of decisions in the first place. In this study, participants were placed in either a warm or a cool room and asked to choose between two products: an innovative one and a traditional one. Participants in warm rooms, relative to those in cool rooms, were much more likely to choose the traditional product—ostensibly because they did not have the cognitive resources necessary to evaluate the new information relevant to an innovative item.

Of course, demonstrating temperature-related differences in cognitive functioning does not necessarily mean that these differences are due to depleted glucose supplies. Nor does it rule out the possibility that these effects are driven by improvements in cognitive ability under cooler conditions (as opposed to impairment under warmer conditions). With these alternate interpretations in mind, the researchers added one crucial component to each study: they depleted glucose supplies for half of the participants before placing them into warm or cool rooms, and left the other half undepleted.  Participants in warm conditions behaved almost exactly like pre-depleted participants; this suggests that warm temperatures result in natural resource depletion, which in turn impairs cognitive functioning.

Taken together, these studies suggest that higher ambient temperatures change our patterns of decision-making. As our bodies struggle to maintain a healthy internal temperature, they use up resources that would otherwise be available for mental processes. As a result, we are less able to make complex decisions—we give up early, make mistakes, and even shy away from making these decisions in the first place. We choose the easy option—a standard, one-option lotto game—rather than the complex one—selecting one out of dozens of scratch tickets.

These results do not mean, however, that people in warmer climates are reliably prone to making poorer decisions than those in cooler environments. Human beings are remarkably adaptive; we automatically acclimate to changes in ambient temperature and—given a bit of time—are capable of performing just as well in sweltering heat, frigid cold, and a climate-controlled office. It really does matter that you were on vacation when making your lottery decision; if you had been a native Alaskan or Floridian, the temperature would have made little, if any, difference. This research suggests that what does make a difference is slight deviations in temperature from an expected norm. Even though an unusually warm day in northern Alaska may be 50° cooler than such a day in the middle of Florida, the effect on cognitive processes may be the same.

These slight deviations in temperature are a common part of our lives—the warmth of our homes and offices fluctuate throughout the day, stores and restaurants seem to set their thermostats with little regard for human comfort, and temperatures outdoors vary not just from day to day, but from minute to minute. Each of these minor changes in temperature may have important implications for our ability to make decisions, especially when we are unaware of these effects—but, luckily, now you are aware.

Source: scientificamerican

Global warming may have caused extreme events such as a 2011 drought in the United States and a 2003 heatwave in Europe by slowing vast, wave-like weather flows in the northern hemisphere, scientists said on Tuesday.

The study of meandering air systems that encircle the planet adds to understanding of extremes that have killed thousands of people and driven up food prices in the past decade.

Such planetary air flows, which suck warm air from the tropics when they swing north and draw cold air from the Arctic when they swing south, seem to be have slowed more often in recent summers and left some regions sweltering, they said.

“During several recent extreme weather events these planetary waves almost freeze in their tracks for weeks,” wrote Vladimir Petoukhov, lead author of the study at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

“So instead of bringing in cool air after having brought warm air in before, the heat just stays,” he said in a statement of the findings in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A difference in temperatures between the Arctic and areas to the south is usually the main driver of the wave flows, which typically stretch 2,500 and 4,000 km (1,550-2,500 miles) from crest to crest.

But a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, blamed on human activities led by use of fossil fuels, is heating the Arctic faster than other regions and slowing the mechanism that drives the waves, the study suggested.

RUSSIA, PAKISTAN

Weather extremes in the past decade include a European heatwave in 2003 that may have killed 70,000 people, a Russian heatwave and flooding in Pakistan in 2010 and a 2011 heatwave in the United States, the authors added.

“Here, we propose a common mechanism” for the generation of waves linked to climate change, they wrote.

Past studies have linked such extremes to global warming but did not identify an underlying mechanism, said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute and a co-author.

“This is quite a breakthrough,” he wrote. The scientists added that the 32-year-period studied was too short to predict future climate change and that natural variations in the climate had not been ruled out completely as a cause.

The study only considered the northern part of the globe, in summertime. Petoukhov led another study in 2010 suggesting that cold snaps in some recent winters in Europe were linked to low amounts of ice in the Arctic Ocean.

Almost 200 governments have agreed to work out by the end of 2015 a deal to combat rising global greenhouse gas emissions that will enter into force from 2020.

Source : scientificamerican

As for why Apple has decided to introduce a 128GB model, it comes down to the iPad’s increasing use in business environments. Apple says 85 percent of the Global 500 companies use the iPad in some form, and many of them work with large data such as CAD files, X-rays, music, or film. Doubling the available storage is a reaction to that.

Apple also sees consumers wanting the extra storage too, though. The company see the increasing number of apps and the files some of them work with as needing the extra space. AutoCAD, Auria, and iWork are all mentioned in this regard.

Apart from the additional storage nothing seems to have changed on the iPad. It’s the same spec tablet with a $100 added to the price for that extra storage space.

What would like to store on a 128GB iPad?

According to Apple, the increase in storage is a response to the tablet becoming more widely used in a business environment, such as in the music or film industries. Apple also notes that the company feels average users want more storage — that’s where we raise our collective eyebrow.

So, we tried to think of some things that non-business user types would do with a 128GB iPad. Here is what we came up with…

• The maximum file size of an iOS app is 2GB, so you can fit 64 size-capped apps
• If the average size of a standard MP3 is 5MB, you can fit 26,214 tracks in your music library
• A scene release of an episode of Family Guy is usually around 60MB to 90MB, with an average of 75MB. So, you can fit 1,747 Family Guy episodes (sorry, there are only 199 episodes total). A non-720p scene release of Parks and Recreation is about 170MB, thus you can fit around 771 episodes of the fantastic show
• The iPad version of Angry Birds: Angry Birds HD  is 45.4MB. You can fit 2,887 instances of this game on your iPad, which you probably need to do for your iPad to reach its full potential
• George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones on iBooks is 11.3MB, so you could read 11,599 digital copies of the book, assuming you remove the one you just finished before starting on the next identical copy
• A full run of all six seasons of Lost in HD on iTunes is around 170GB, so you’ll unfortunately have to switch to SD — which is around 70GB or so — if you absolutely can’t live without the entire series on your tablet at once

If anyone out there can find actual-everyday uses for all that space on an iPad other than “all the music I can possibly download and rarely listen to” or “tons of raw images and video that I’ll occasionally look at maybe once, who knows,” we’d love to hear about them.

Children have an incredible capacity for strength, and parents can play a great role in helping their children deal with with terribly difficult events. Here are some practical guidelines for our fellows:

#1: Be honest about your emotions while modelling strength.

Our children will cope only as well as we do. Children who see their parents overwhelmed with anxiety, fear, and grief also will become overwhelmed. On the other hand, kids will not have an opportunity to learn healthy expression of feelings if parents stuff their feelings inside.

The key is being honest about your emotions while showing that your family remains strong. For example, you might give your child a hug and say:

This is a very sad thing. Sometimes I feel like crying about it. It also makes me mad. But I know that we will be OK…because we are strong!

#2: Limit your child’s exposure to media coverage of the event.

Turn the television and radio off when your kids are in the room. Repeated exposure to the visual and spoken images of the tragedy will create more anxiety and fear. Younger children who don’t understand that the scenes are being replayed often believe the actual events keep happening over and over.

#3: Tell them the facts about the event.

Don’t try to keep the tragedy a secret! First, it’s simply impossible to do. Second, humans create information when they lack it. When children get bits and pieces of bad news, they “fill in the blanks” with their imagination. Typically their fears, or rumors that float about at school, produce more anxiety than the truth.

Children, even as young as two-years old, may need you to lay out the facts about the event. Tell them the basics, while leaving out the more sensitive details. Remember, your tone of voice must communicate compassion and strength.

#4: Listen, listen, listen.

There is nothing more powerful than an open ear, heartfelt understanding and a warm hug.

#5: Let them know that they are safe.

Our children need to hear about the thousands and thousands of wonderful people who are working day and night to keep us safe. Despite any fears or doubts we may have, our kids need to hear that they are safe.

Make your reassurance short and to the point. When parents spend too much time, too many words, and too many emotions trying to reassure kids that they are safe, it backfires. Your message will be more powerful and believable if it is very brief and business-like:

There are thousands of people working to keep everyone safe. We are going to be OK. Have a good day at school. I love you.

#6: To the greatest extent possible, maintain daily routines.

Daily routines give all of us a sense of predictability, control, and safety. When we stick with them, we also communicate to our youngsters that we are strong enough to keep going… and they are too.

#7: Involve them in helping others.

There are few things more therapeutic than helping others. Even actions that may seem small, like writing letters of support or sending a box of food to rescue workers, can mean a great deal.

An elementary school principal who followed these tips voiced amazement at how they work. “I can’t believe how well our school dealt with this yesterday. The teachers were calm, and so were the kids. Everyone is very saddened, but we are going to make it through!”

One last consideration: Following these guidelines can help, but it is just as important to take good care of you. The healthier you are, the healthier your kids will be.

Get started now by using the following steps:

Step 1: Show your kids how to make mistakes and solve them.

Great dads (and moms) don’t try to be perfect. Instead, they allow their children to witness some of their small mistakes, show that they are human, and model what it looks like to be a good problem–solver. For example, on a cool evening, a wise dad might purposefully leave his jacket at home and say to his kids, “Oops! I forgot to bring my jacket. I’m chilly. I sure am going to remember it next time!”

Step 2: Give your kids plenty of opportunities to make “affordable” mistakes.

Love and Logic parents know that the consequences of mistakes grow more dangerous as their children grow older. Therefore, they hope and pray their youngsters will make plenty of small or “affordable” mistakes when they are young, when the “price tags” of these mistakes are small. For example, on another cool evening during the same week, dad might say to his kids, “We are leaving in 10 minutes. I’m going to treat you like big kids. How fun! You get to be in charge of remembering what you need to bring with you.”

Step 3: If a mistake is made, provide a strong “dose” of empathy and hold your child accountable.

Believe it or not, the parents who are loved and respected by kids provide firm consequences for mistakes or misbehavior. The most loved and respected dads (and moms) provide a strong message of caring or empathy before they deliver consequences. If a child forgets to bring his or her jacket, a Love and Logic parent might say very sincerely, “This is so sad. You forgot your jacket, and now you’re chilly. We can’t drive all the way home to get it. Hang in there. I love you.”

Step 4: Give your children the same task again.

The very next day, the same father might say, “We are leaving in 10 minutes. You again get to be in charge of remembering what you need to bring with you.”

When parents give their children responsibility for the same task again, without nagging or reminding them of their previous mistakes, they send a very powerful message: “You are smart enough to learn from your mistakes!”

It’s never too early or too late to give your children the gifts of Love and Logic.

A father I know used these steps with his four–year–old daughter, Amy. He even picked the same decision – remembering one’s jacket. Little Amy forgot her jacket just once! The next evening, as they were preparing to leave for the grocery store, she looked at her father, smiled with pride, and exclaimed, “Daddy! I brought my jacket just in case I’m chilly!”

Give Love and Logic a try and join thousands of parents who have discovered easy and effective ways to increase their children’s responsibility and raise self–esteem.

• Outings

• Outdoor Activities

• Arts and Crafts

• Philanthropy

• Games and Activities

• Computer Activities

• Word/Alphabet Games

• Math/Number Activities

• Physical Activities

So now let’s take a look onto them one by one.

Outings

• Visit your local Children’s Museum.
• When on your way somewhere (even locally), stopping at historical sites along the way to develop kids interest in history.
• Visit a zoo: learn to use the map or create your own.
• Visit the local government office and look at recently elected officials’ pictures. Collect local budget reports from community agencies (parks and recreation, EPA, Dept of Aging) and discuss why it is important to vote.
• Play at the park.
• Help plan vacation/trip: research attractions, compare and contrast the costs, calculate daily mileage if driving.
• Grocery shopping: read ingredients to help choose the healthiest products for the best prices, find products that you have coupons for, figure out best deal between sizes of items.
• Visit the local dump.
• Counting back change at grocery store, drive through, etc…
• On a drive, see if you can find every letter of the alphabet, in order, on road signs, billboards and Company names. Or just try to find all words starting with a certain letter. Or with numbers.
• Visit historical sites on vacations.
• Learn orienteering. Some cities have Orienteering groups that play games each weekend. They distribute maps with check points and the goal is to get your card punched at each check point. It teaches children to use topography maps and compasses to find their way around.
• Coupon shop game. Find which store doubles or triples coupons. Find the sale and match the coupon. Find out what you will pay for the item after sale and coupon.
• Go to the mall or airport and see how many people you can get to return a smile. Try the same thing at a different mall, or different time of the day. Make a prediction about results or hold a contest. What worked?
• Create field trips for your kids: some ideas: visit a kitchen in a local restaurant, a candy factory, the city jail, the water treatment plant, a brick factory, the power plant, etc…
• Going shopping and computing how much 25/30/50% off would be on the sale price of clothes.
• Go to work with Mom or Dad to see what they do.
• Rounding the bill when shopping to make sure the bill is accurate.
• Go to a play or musical.
• Spring break and summer camps.
• Reading state names on various license plates while in the car make up words using the letters and add up the numbers.
• One person says the name of a geographical place (continent, country, state, city, etc.) and the other person has to name a place that starts with the last letter of that place. For example if one person said Colorado, the other person might say Oregon, followed by New Orleans, then Siberia. (Can be used with any subject)
• Cash Cab: similar to the game show on Discovery Channel were the contestants are quizzed all the way to their destination. If they get 3 strikes (wrong answers) they lose. Quiz on topics like math facts, phonics sounds, geography, social studies, science, etc.
• For a car ride: See It Say It Spell It – find objects in alphabetical order, say them, then spell correcting. No one can take an already spelled object.
• For a car ride: Motor Math – when you see a number come up with a problem it would be the solution to. You can do several variations to fit what your child is working on such as multiples of the number, odd or even, expanded form, etc.
• Trips to the library: look up books by the Dewey decimal numbers.
• On car trips: use an atlas and have a contest to see who can name the capitals of the states, where they are located on the map, major rivers, mountain ranges, etc.
• To learn percentages: take the kids to a clothing store that has a “percent off” sale. Give them 3 minutes to get the EXACT price. You could even buy the item if they are correct.
• Visit a Fish Hatchery.
• Count and compare VW bugs you see on the road.
• Take a city walk to look at how buildings are designed and at art work and murals. Talk about subjects like tagging and graffiti- is it art? Why or why not?
• Visit a community garden.
• Mental Math in the car: Start with the first number that you see and then the team leader (for the trip) calls out add/subtract/multiply or divide so as soon as you see the next number you know how to apply it to the first number. Then shout out that answer and the team leader calls out the next calculation and look for the next number and to apply to the current number. (Numbers can be identified on signs, license plates, street markings, etc)
• Spelling in the car: the team leader thinks of a word, then look for the letters on signs, etc in order and spell the word correctly.
• Geography: count number of different license plates you see while driving.
• Parents can take their children with them to vote.
• Estimating the weight of foods at the grocery store. Using the store scales to see who is closest.
• Visit the same construction site every week to see how a building is going up: watch the progress from the hole in ground, then pipes going in. From there, the foundation, framing, roof and all the other steps in building a home each week can provide new things to talk and think about.
• Grocery store game: let the child pick items from the list. Go to that section of the store and play the “hot” and “cold” game, so they can locate the items.
• Visit local archeological dig sites, and talk about the history of the place as well as the amazing abilities the American Indians had for math and science.
• A game of “Predicting”: It’s a science/logical reasoning game and goes something like this: In the car, you could ask a question such as “Do you predict the snow will be melted off the driveway today?” Then talk about why or why not – the children are little so it’s basic such as, “it’s too cold for snow to melt today; it’s sunny and warm so the snow should have melted.” Another favorite is predicting whether the cows will be in the big field (the person who sent this lives in Maine). Then talk about the time of day when you usually see the cows: in the AM but not so much in the PM. Or, predict whether they’ll be way back in the field or close to the road. The possibilities are endless. It is a terrific language, vocabulary and critical thinking game. It also gets to the scientific processes of observing the world around us, asking questions, etc. Other things to predict: Have the kids ‘predict’ how many times they can jump rope in a given time period, how many steps to get from one place to the next, etc…
• Take a trip to McDonalds: order three sizes of French fries. Before you eat them, count them and divide the cost by the number of fries in the package. The outcome is eye opening and you will learn a lot about packaging and appearances as well as value and expense.
• On any outing, give your kids a tape measure. Have them find something less than 10 inches, find something that is a square, list the inches or cm for the sides, a rectangle, list inches or cm, something 3 meters or feet, etc…
• add more math: add up the cm or inches.
• Keep a book box in the car. Filled with 10 or more books from the library. The kids will always have something new to read on a road trip or even errands around the house.
• “Fire Hydrant Poker”: when you are in the car, choose a side of the road and keep track of all the fire hydrants you see. To add complexity, make up a point scheme, such as one point for silver, two points for red, and ten points for yellow.
• Visit a farm.
• Visit 3 different fast food chains. Order 3 “same” Kid’s Meals (i.e. – plain cheeseburger, fries and small soda). Blend each meal separately combining all of the items into blender — puree and pour into graduated cylinder or measuring cup. Let “settle”; fat content will float. Figure % Fat volume to Total volume. Which chain is the least? Which is the greatest?Click on the next page below to go to the next page…
  ]]> http://www.greedynet.com/go-and-give-your-children-something-other-than-homework/feed/ 1