Word: planetful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...image of Earth as organism--famously dubbed Gaia by environmentalist James Lovelock-- has probably been overworked, but that's not to say the planet can't behave like a living thing, and these days, it's a living thing fighting a fever. From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us. Scientists have been calling this shot for decades. This is precisely what they have been warning would happen if we continued pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping the heat that flows in from...
...reasons the loss of the planet's ice cover is accelerating is that as the poles' bright white surface shrinks, it changes the relationship of Earth and the sun. Polar ice is so reflective that 90% of the sunlight that strikes it simply bounces back into space, taking much of its energy with it. Ocean water does just the opposite, absorbing 90% of the energy it receives. The more energy it retains, the warmer it gets, with the result that each mile of ice that melts vanishes faster than the mile that preceded...
FROGS Amphibians have been hopping, swimming and crawling about the planet for 350 million years. But their future is hardly assured. A global assessment of the state of this entire class of vertebrates found that nearly one-third of the 5,743 known species are in serious trouble. Climate change may well be the culprit in most cases, either directly or indirectly. The home habitat of the golden toad (at right, bottom) in Costa Rica moved up the mountain until "home" disappeared entirely. More than two-thirds of the 110 species of colorful harlequin frogs in Central and South America...
...trade in their gas guzzlers for hybrids, for example, and tax exemptions for home owners who switch from oil heating to renewable energy. Indeed, whereas Americans are likely to complain about higher taxes or infringements on their rights, most Swedes seem to embrace the idea of helping save the planet...
...efficiency audits to all residents and businesses, retrofits schools and installs insulation and shade screens to reduce sunlight in low-income housing. "We're frustrated by the lack of national leadership," says Mayor Will Wynn, an early backer of the Nickels initiative. "This is about the future of the planet...