Two buildings in New York City collapsed this morning, killing two people and injuring 22, according to ongoing reports. Police are still investigating the cause for the collapses, Reuters reports, but there's some evidence pointing to a natural gas leak. Witnesses reported hearing loud bangs and explosions, plus Con Edison saysit received a complaint about a gas odor in the area about 20 minutes before the disaster. The company dispatched a crew, but the buildings had crashed to the ground before it arrived.
Elizabeth Kolbert writes about ecological disasters-in-progress with such perception andverve that readers come away wanting more. Al Gore recently described her as "a distinctive and eloquent voice of conscience on issues arising from the extraordinary assault on the ecosphere."
Today, the 8.3 million inhabitants of New York City woke up, looked out their windows, uttered a collectiveNope,and spent an additional eight minutes in bed hoping the blizzard was some terrible dream. It was not, though, and the team at the PopSci mothership has been grumbling all day.
What's the greenest roof? A white one. White-painted roofs are three times more efficient than "green roofs"—rooftops that are planted over with grass or other greenery—at countering global warming, a new analysis found. White and green are both are much better for the environment than traditional black-colored roofs, which heat up under the sun, drive up air conditioning bills, and make cities and towns a few degrees warmer than they would be otherwise. Cooler roofs can make a big difference: In a previous study, the same team determined that a 100-square-meter white roof offsets 10 tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide over its lifetime.
Good news on the climate front, sort of: When we cut emissions of heat-trapping gases worldwide, global warming slows down. In a new analysis of temperatures and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, researchers have found that the measurable reduction in emissions of ozone-depleting substances in the past 25 years has been matched by a break in the speed at which surface temperatures increased, compared to prior years.
What debate? A recent draft of an international consensus report offers stronger-than-ever evidence that global warming is driven by human activity. The report also adjusts its expectations for important climate change effects such as how much sea levels will rise, while admitting the difficulty in estimating what will happen to individual cities in the age of climate change.
Science has done a good job of documenting the great divide between liberals and conservatives on the issue of climate change. Several studies have found that watching conservative media outlets, particularly Fox News, makes viewers less likely to accept that global warming is occurring or that it's caused by human activity.
Previous
