Word: ecosystems
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...composting your organic waste and planting greenery in your garden were enough to earn you a gold star in environmental responsibility, think again. Those sweet-smelling blooms in your backyard patch may brighten the yard, but they could actually be doing much more harm than good to the local ecosystem...
Nature shows are meant to be educational, but face it: we watch them to ogle wild places and cool animals, preferably eating other cool animals. We want to be awed. This 11-episode BBC DVD set is organized by ecosystem, from deserts to the poles, and the $25 million budget secured such awe-inspiring sights as a deep-sea light show by an electrified vampire squid. It's a breathtaking window on the earth's vastness and most secret corners...
...Though some scientists angrily denounced the IPCC report as a hobbled compromise even then, its predictions make frightening reading. The IPCC concludes that global warming has almost certainly triggered changes in the Earth's ecosystem that have already been felt in increased drought, shrinking glaciers and changing seasons, and these effects are expected to intensify. Freshwater stored in glaciers and snow cover will be lost, while rainfall will increasingly come in destructive deluges, reducing the water supply to one-sixth of the humanity - with the teeming masses dependent on the melt water from the Himalayas particularly hard...
...Louisiana, as elsewhere, smart adaptation requires a lot more than good infrastructure and ecosystem management. Economic viability is also important, and that is not possible without insurance. In Louisiana and Florida, insurance companies responded to the burst of hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 by raising rates significantly, even canceling policies outright. How can hurricane-prone states retain coverage? "The only solution is to get the Federal Government to do what it did after September 11 and recognize that some risks are too large and costly for the private-insurance market to absorb on its own," says James Donelon, the state...
...basin collapse, the vegetation of the rainforest will react to high carbon dioxide concentration by closing their stomates, the parts of plants that act as portals for carbon intake and water release. Since the plants release less water, there would be less water in the atmosphere, perhaps leading the ecosystem to spiral into draught...