Word: polarity
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...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...
...great melt may not bode well for polar bears or Inuits, but it could be a boon for shipping and transportation entrepreneurs, and none has stepped into the icy breach with more foresight than Pat Broe, a Denver-based real-estate and railroad magnate. The press-shy Broe, 58, who describes himself as a junk dealer ("I buy troubled stuff and turn it around," he says), has a history of contrarian investments. When he purchased 807 miles of nationally owned railway stock from the Canadian government for $11 million in 1997, he also picked up, for the token...
...Hudson bay trading post built in 1689 put Churchill on the map, but today polar bears outnumber humans and the town's main businesses are tourism and hunting. It is the nearest port to the cereal fields of central Canada, however, and when the ice melts, it could find itself at the nexus of the first new trade route since the construction of the Panama and Suez canals...
...sheets would continue to disintegrate out of our control, so every several decades we would need to rebuild above a higher shoreline. Those costs would dwarf any costs associated with learning to use energy more sensibly. Second, we'll lose animals and plants. We would push the polar species and alpine species off the planet. On the other hand, the climate change and CO2 in the air will be good for aggressive, weedy plants such as poison...
...Coke to protest alleged abuses—including the University of Michigan, which suspended Coke sales on campus at the beginning of January, and Swarthmore, which ousted Coke from some of its dining facilities. Romero suggested that Harvard turn to alternative soft-drink suppliers such as Worcester, Mass.-based Polar Beverages or Dubai-based Mecca-Cola. Romero praised Mecca-Cola for donating part of its profits to charity. According to the company’s website, 10 percent of profits go to Palestinian humanitarian groups and 10 percent go to “local charitable organizations...