|
|
|
C U R R I C U L U M C O N N E C T |
|
|
|
Dead duck
The changing climate may play havoc with our life span.
The death toll will boom in extremely hot summers, and
will not be offset during warmer winters, say
researchers. “The increase in mortality when you have
one extra cold snap is 1.59 per cent, but the increase in
mortality for an additional heatwave is 5.74 per cent,”
says Mercedes Medina-Ramón of Harvard University’s
School of Public Health, Massachusetts, US. Heart
attacks and cardiac arrest would increase greatly with
rise in temperatures. So beware! |
Animatter
The life and death of ancient animals may hold valuable clues to
future adaptation. A study was recently done on how animals cope
with climate change and extinction. Scientists calculated the top
speeds of five meat-eating dinosaurs by using information about
their skeletal and muscular structures, and running a simulation
repeatedly. It built a biological picture that can be used to
understand how dinosaurs adapted to changes in the weather just
before they went extinct, says William Sellers, zoologist at the
University of Manchester.
Mice smell carbon dioxide at higher level than normal air. The credit
goes to their specialised nasal neurons, states a study by scientists
from the National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing. These cells
have carbon dioxide-processing enzyme carbonic anhydrase type II
that help them smell CO2 at 0.066 per cent. But, their behaviour
changed with increased CO2 exposure, and they avoided anything
higher than 0.2 per cent. So, with rising atmospheric CO2 owing to
climate change, their behaviour might also change. |
Pay out
Now you can do away with your role in climate change by
paying some money! You simply need to buy ‘voluntary
carbon offsets’. The idea is a US 55 million dollar industry,
which saw an 80 per cent growth in 2006 alone. Sellers
can be individuals or corporations, who cancel your
greenhouse gas emissions by funding projects that reduce
pollutants. While there is a risk that your money might go
to organisations or projects that could have carried on
without your aid, it may actually boost some useful
projects. But ofcourse, this is just an easy way out, and
erasing one’s ecological footprint is not as simple as this. |
|
|
|
