Tuesday, 4 May 2010

Mom turns in son for stealing drugs from her bra

You could take the bag of unused candles your aunt left you to prepare a wonderfully romantic moment with your loved one. Or you could relive your Dungeons & Dragons years and play the fire illusionist. The choice is yours.

@'BadAstronomy'

Plants soon to be considered source of global warming...

More info for the climate deniers to confuse. Seems like the more we learn, the less chance we have of being able to turn things around. I live in a clearcutting country, to my great shame, and even though the consequences on animal habitat are self-evident, the climate issue is news to me.

Trees and other plants help keep the planet cool, but rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are turning down this global air conditioner. According to a new study by researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science, in some regions more than a quarter of the warming from increased carbon dioxide is due to its direct impact on vegetation. This warming is in addition to carbon dioxide's better-known effect as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. For scientists trying to predict global climate change in the coming century, the study underscores the importance of including plants in their climate models.

"Plants have a very complex and diverse influence on the climate system," says study co-author Ken Caldeira of Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology. "Plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but they also have other effects, such as changing the amount of evaporation from the land surface. It's impossible to make good climate predictions without taking all of these factors into account."

Plants give off water through tiny pores in their leaves, a process called evapotranspiration that cools the plant, just as perspiration cools our bodies. On a hot day, a tree can release tens of gallons of water into the air, acting as a natural air conditioner for its surroundings. The plants absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis through the same pores (called stomata). But when carbon dioxide levels are high, the leaf pores shrink. This causes less water to be released, diminishing the tree's cooling power.

More @'ScienceBlogs'