Word: gas
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...better known as the UN climate change summit. It happens every year - the most recent one was held last December on the Indonesian island of Bali - but Copenhagen will be special. The Kyoto Protocol, which now commits nearly every developed nation except the U.S. to specific cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions, expires in 2012. Given the lag time in such mind-bendingly complex international negotiations, we need to have a plan in place by the start of 2010 to ensure that there isn't a fatal gap between the expiration of Kyoto and whatever comes next. (If a year...
...China will be forced to follow, or stand alone against an emerging international consensus. Will that happen? We will have a new Administration by 2009, and both John McCain and Barack Obama are considerably greener than the current White House occupant. But with Americans obsessed over the price of gas - but not rising global temperatures - it'll take real political leadership to from Washington to make Copenhagen a success...
...Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right...
...below the surface, which covers the past few hundred years of climatic history. At this depth what they bring back is not solid ice, but a half-snow, half-ice substance called firn. It's solid but porous, so it can trap some of the gas present in the atmosphere when it accumulated as snow. They can tell how much carbon dioxide was in the air during a given time period (roughly seven years with each layer, because in the porous firn - unlike the frozen ice below - air from different years can mix over time), and by analyzing oxygen isotopes...
...also where the main drilling at NEEM will be done. That won't take place until next summer, but the scientists have already dug out a deep trench where the main drill will bore to the bottom of the ice. Here the cores will be pure ice, inside which gas will be trapped in tiny bubbles - air from over 100,000 years ago. Pulling up those cores will take three years, longer to fully analyze the ancient gases found inside them...