While not a stand-alone climate change-fighting measure, converting roofs and pavements in tropical and temperate cities of one million or more people to light-colored materials would provide the equivalent one-time benefit of eliminating two years' worth of global CO2 emissions, or eliminating the emissions of 300 million vehicles for 20 years.
Data for the 2009 Toxics Release Inventory, released July 28, 2010, includes only about 80% of the total expected submissions so it's not possible to look at category totals, trends, and other aspects that require 100% of the data until later this year. However, you can report immediately on many local emitters, including evaluations of their totals and trends.
Sandia National Laboratories and the Natural Resources Defense Council independently publish similar conclusions based on a range of scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report, in conjunction with various economic models.
"If the Chevy Volt's $40,000 price tag sounds a bit too steep, you could always go the do-it-yourself route of Oregon teenager Ashton Stark. He just finished a yearlong conversion of his grandfather's 1972 Volkswagen Super Beetle into an electric car."
"The House of Representatives on Friday approved the toughest reforms ever to offshore energy drilling practices, as Democrats narrowly pushed through an election-year response to BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."
"Environmentalists are suing U.S. EPA over a rule that aims to regulate greenhouse gases from only the largest industrial sources, arguing that the agency exempts too many big polluters."
"The EPA says that the brew of oil and dispersants still swirling in the Gulf of Mexico can be highly to moderately toxic to marine organisms at certain concentrations determined in a lab setting. The agency did not say whether those acute toxic levels are present in the open waters of the Gulf."
"Scientists say this year that the 'dead zone' area that forms every summer in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest ever measured."
"The BP spill is by far the world's largest accidental release of oil into marine waters, according to the most precise estimates yet of the well's flow rate, announced by federal scientists on Monday."
Writing about birds? This tri-country resource is a handy starting place for learning bird identification by sight or sound. With free registration, you can contribute photos and recordings, and even customize your own species list for study.
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