Word: carbonated
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...that Earth's most important elements move in cycles, circulating from sky to land and sea and back again. The human presence has become so dominant that we have disrupted even these most basic mechanisms of the planet. Most familiar, of course, is what we have done to the carbon cycle. Because we are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than land and seas can reabsorb it, the accumulating gas is trapping heat and upsetting the climate. The result is not only rising seas and fiercer storms but also a possible repositioning of the world's ecosystems...
...seem to point that way: storms have become more intense and weather patterns more erratic; the past decade has been by far the hottest on record; and the rise in temperature has been greatest in polar regions and around cities. These facts dovetail ominously well with the theory that carbon dioxide (CO 2), released by burning coal, oil and gasoline for heat, electricity and transportation, is trapping excess energy from the sun. Global warming is real--and will probably get worse...
...bill brought by Gabrielle B. Dreyfus '01, which called for the University to monitor and reduce its emission of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide...
...blocks for any entity that we would call "alive"? Or do all earthly creatures share these features only because we have inherited these properties from a common ancestor that used one configuration among a million alternatives unknown to us but quite conceivable and workable? Indeed, would we, in our carbon-based parochialism, even recognize otherworldly forms of life--pulsating sheets of silica, perhaps--well beyond...
...gases are already beginning to have an impact on another important cycle, known as the North Atlantic or Arctic Oscillation. In this case it's not the warming these gases create in the lower atmosphere that is key, but the cooling they cause in the stratosphere, where molecules of carbon dioxide and the like emit heat to space rather than trapping it in the upper atmosphere. This stratospheric cooling, Wallace and others speculate, may have biased prevailing wind patterns in ways that favor a wintertime influx of mild marine air into Northern--as opposed to Southern--Europe...