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I don't think you actually read those articles, nor anyone that modded you insightful. Did you only read the headlines?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070730-hurricane-warming.html
On the first page, one group claims their study shows that the number of hurricanes has doubled in the last century. On the second page, another group claims that study is "sloppy" and uses incomplete data. When the second group added their own data, the results conveniently reflected their own preconceived conclusions, but then they admit that their data is still incomplete.
Summary: Reliable records do not exist from a century ago, which leads to multiple interpretations, which are exploited by political biases.

http://www.science20.com/news/global_warming_may_mean_fewer_hurricanes
This article talks about how most people reference warming oceans when talking about hurricane trends, but increasing wind shear is also a major factor, which can, in some cases, negate warming waters.
Summary: The climate is monstrously complicated and predictive modelling can lead to conclusions which seem counterintuitive if you don't take the time to understand them.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2009/0109-global_warming_causes_severe_storms.htm
This is a blatant TV fluff piece. It isn't even about hurricanes, just severe storms. You know, regular old thunderstorms.
Summary: There is no real content here.

You can find studies that show more hurricanes, less hurricanes, more sever hurricanes all due to global warming. It's getting old attributing every possible outcome to Advance Global Warming. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070730-hurricane-warming.html http://www.science20.com/news/global_warming_may_mean_fewer_hurricanes http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2009/0109-global_warming_causes_severe_storms.htm

Can someone explain why this was modded down? He made a point and backed it up links. If you don't agree, that's fine. Reply and tell him why he's wrong.

Modding a comment down simply because you disagree with it against the moderation guidelines.

You can find studies that show more hurricanes, less hurricanes, more sever hurricanes all due to global warming. It's getting old attributing every possible outcome to Advance Global Warming. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070730-hurricane-warming.html http://www.science20.com/news/global_warming_may_mean_fewer_hurricanes http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2009/0109-global_warming_causes_severe_storms.htm

You do realize that a hurricane and a "severe storm" are rather different things, right? Your last Science Daily citation is about severe storms, not hurricanes. It never even uses the word "hurricane" nor does it indicate that it's talking about storms that only affect coastlines. A thunderstorm and a hurricane are two very different events. Are you going to complain that global warming reports are in direct conflict over precipitation figures and then link to stories about increased monsoon seasons and decreased snow fall?

You can find studies that show more hurricanes, less hurricanes, more sever hurricanes all due to global warming. It's getting old attributing every possible outcome to Advance Global Warming. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070730-hurricane-warming.html http://www.science20.com/news/global_warming_may_mean_fewer_hurricanes http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2009/0109-global_warming_causes_severe_storms.htm

Usage of the unqualified term pound reflects the historical conflation of mass and weight resulting from the near uniformity of gravity on Earth. This accounts for the modern distinguishing terms pound-mass and pound-force.

Gravity on earth is not uniform.

From http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120325-james-cameron-mariana-trench-challenger-deep-deepest-science-sub/ ..."is to jettison steel weights attached to the sub and shoot back to the surface."

Can't we go anywhere and follow the "Leave No Trace" ethos? What effect will those weights have on the local ecosystem?

- Jasen.

It seems the dive is complete http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120325-james-cameron-mariana-trench-challenger-deepest-returns-science-sub/ and he is back on the surface. A little quicker than expected.

1/10 pound at normal earth gravity = 45.3 grams mass. Happy now?

Nope. Where on earth?

I'm neither genetic engineer nor patent lawyer, but my guess would be that what is patentable here is transporting the gene from one species to another one.

Not always. This, this, this, this ... all of them indicate that merely identifying the gene allows them to be patentable.

Not create. Not move from one species to another. Merely identifying the existence of it.

Sorry, but in my mind they're naturally occurring and have no business being patented.

please remind me again how the modern human is 'designed to eat meat', and how 'natural' meat is

Here's a pretty good article on the subject.

NGC here has a good article. One of the issues though again is cheaper labor and lax restrictions in China. Processing rare earths is labor intensive and can generate toxic and radioactive by-products which are fare more expensive to deal with in our regulatory system from an environmental and worker safety perspective.

Yeah - I was expecting some sort of expected lifting power. The concept originally was to do it to lift heavy payloads into orbit cheaply. The elevator costs a fortune to build, but once built is can be run very economically. I also think if humans are serious about space exploration, it is essential to have one, if only for the pollution control alone because Ammonium Perchlorate rocket fuel is horrible for the ozone layer.

I was thinking of this one: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1122_051122_old_seed.html

"Children have fully adult brain function at an average of age eight. The rest of childhood, as far as the brain is concerned, is learning stuff, beginning with the word "WHY"! I think this author seems to disagree with you: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/teenage-brains/dobbs-text Brain scientists are leaning toward saying that our brains are not mature until they are around age 25.

It's not a new idea. George W. Bush of all people was probably the first president to suggest with a straight face a manned moon station.

it will not happen not because it is a wacky idea, but because there's too much money to be made on earth from terrestrial wars and bank-sanctioned Ponzi-schemes.

In fact, Mars was warming at the same time earth was.

Good luck getting the mass media to even ask the question. No taxes can be extracted from the truth.

"It won't affect glaciers on land. I don't see where you get that. The glaciers on land are melting too by the way. The glaciers on land melting will cause the sea levels to rise (Antarctica etc.)."

The concern is similar to that in the Antarctic, where most of the large glacier meet the sea. Water has a high heat capacity, once heated when it reaches the tongue of a glacier, it is capable of melting the ice from below faster than the ice may otherwise melt from exposure to air. As the tongue melts the faster ice in the glacier, which is essentially moving river of ice, moves, since the ice in front of no longer impedes its flow. As it moves faster, if it is not added to at is source faster than it flows, it recedes until it is completely gone.

This can be readily seen as in this video of the retreat of the Columbia glacier near Valdez, Alaska: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/extreme-ice-survey-article.html

Note toward the end of the video the speed of the ice on the glacier to the left of the video. This phenomenon was not previously well modeled in atmospheric models relying on air temperature alone and one of the reasons many oceanographers and climatologists now believe explains why such models have consistently underestimated the amount of ice loss. If the process accelerates, there is a distinct possibility that most arctic ice masses will disappear far more quickly than had previously been supposed, based solely on atmosphere only models.

There is also the issue of albedo. Without an ice cover the entire ocean will be directly exposed to the sun directly heating the water rather than being largely radiated into space because of its ice cover. Consequently, the entire arctic environment will be warmed more quickly because more solar heat will be retained by the system. It is not yet clear, how abrupt the change will be but studies show that presently the extent of winter arctic ices is the lowest on record at 463,000 square miles of ice less than seen in 1979-2000 period baseline, with a total loss of all oceanic ice during summer sometime between 2015 and 2050, although some are predicting a much earlier time.

From a biological perspective this implies a total restructuring of arctic ecosystems within the next 20-50 years.

Why are you under the impression that global warming won't increase the amount of arable land?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html

It may (or may not) increase the amount of arable land, but as northern areas like Sweden & Canada become warmer and more arable, there's unlikely to be much winter crop production as the amount of available hours of sunlight will not increase.

Can't grow food, especially ripen food in low levels of light.

Why are you under the impression that global warming won't increase the amount of arable land?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html

Bingo. One of the things that has always bothered me about the global the warming/climate change thesis that its advocates predict nothing but negative consequences. That's extremely improbable. Even if we grant that these theories are correct, it's clear that their proponents stress the negative impact because they need to induce fear to motivate funding and to justify the additional bureaucratic power that they crave.

Why are you under the impression that global warming won't increase the amount of arable land?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html

The Colorado river, which supplies most of the water for southwestern cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas, no longer reaches the ocean. All of the water is diverted and used up along the way, mostly for agriculture.

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2010/07/29/colorado_river_aspen_environment_forum/
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/all-rivers-do-not-run-to-the-sea/

Horse crap. Toronto starting building a system like this in 2001. A large portion of the downtown including almost the entire financial district has been using this technique since 2004. It's called Deep Water Lake Cooling and takes 4 degree Celsius water from a point 5 km offshore and 83 metres deep in Lake Ontario. The water is treated first and much of it goes to the municipal water system directly, but some is diverted to the closed loop heat exchangers used in the cooling system and then on to the municipal water supply so that there is no waste heat transmitted back to the lake. All the buildings connect to this heat exchanger. Toronto has 2.5 million people and the financial district is around 20 square blocks. There are at least 140 buildings on the system now, including most if not all of the up to 80 story sky scrapers that occupy the core of the area. It is the largest system of its kind in the world. It has a capacity (PDF File) to cool 29,000,000 square feet (about 2.7 million sq metres) of office space. And if that doesn't beat all, it was mentioned on Slashdot in 2004.

Come ON people! In 1900 the average life expectancy of a male in the U.S.A. was only 46 years for Pete's sake. No wonder on average most of the 'BIG' work was done before age 40. In 1940 life expectancy was 60 years, and in 1960 it was 66. Considering that even 50 years ago, as people approached these ages many were in nowhere near as good good health as people are today when approaching end of life, so they likely weren't productive at anything in the last few years (back then smoking was advertised as good for your health... heavy bacon and eggs was a 'healthy' breakfast, exercise was not part of the urban or the new 'drive everywhere' suburban vocabulary, etc etc. etc.).

Now we have a life expectancy of over 80 years old in some countries like Canada and some Western European countries. Heck even in the U.S. with it's criticized health care system the average age is over 77.5. And to top it off, people are in much, much better health all the way to within a couple of years of the end. I see people who are in their 70s now-a-days who like folks who were in their 60s or younger a few decades ago. Mind you there are still people living unhealthy life styles, but they are the ones who are keeping the life expectancy averages lower than they could be (i.e. they die earlier than they should).

For a good example of how modern health care keeps us "younger" as we age, look at the Afghan girl (in a Pakistani refugee camp) that was on the iconic front cover of National Geographic in 1984. And then how she looked in 2002. When she was maybe 13, 14, or 15 she captured the worlds attention with her stunning eyes and the photo became one of the most viewed in the world. They went back in 2002 to find her. She had gone back to Afghanistan and had 4 children (one had died by then... life expectancy...) and even though they figured she was between 26 and 29 then (even she wasn't sure) she looked like a 45 or 50 year old woman, maybe older in Europe or North America. Interestingly and sadly, the average life expectancy in Afghanistan today is the same as what it was in America in 1900. Think about it.

So this whole notion of looking back and making judgements about what we should expect our productive ages to be is utter horseshit. Because of advances in medicine, better food, and better life style in general, the only way to determine when someone is less productive is when they are less productive. To arbitrarily say that after 50 you aren't able to think anymore is something that someone who doesn't think to begin with would say. No matter how old they are. We live far longer, and healthier lives. Therefore our productive years are far longer. That is the bottom line.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/pictures/110624-cocaine-subs-submarines-first-submersible-science-colombia-drug-smuggling/

Why are you under the impression that "global warming" increases desertification? On the contrary, it increased humidity which leads to less arid areas. The greening of Sahara, observed for decades, is one example.

Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall.

This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html

Transparent aluminum floors? More seriously though, what about the problem of sinkholes like this one in Guatemala? That particular sinkhole ate a 3-story building.

Actual science says Sahara is greening: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html

OP made the common mistake of projecting things as he knows it into contexts he shouldn't.

Happens all the time even in the US. State laws are similar here, not the same. Many folks can barely distinguish between States and the Fed, for that matter. So it only requires a smidgeon of unworldliness to make a mistake. And granted that we are of course the natural masters of the world (grin), please don't expect too much of us when it comes to worldliness:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1120_021120_GeoRoperSurvey.html

Anyway; while his subsequent behavior itself has no excuse, one thing is true: it wasn't necessary to personalize the matter.

Were we cranky today?

What was placed on the arctic ocean floor at the North Pole on Aug 2nd, 2007?

a Russian flag

As the Earth heats, we can expect to find less arable land.

That's news to Africans seeing the desert go green around them as it becomes more moist, not less.

Throughout Earth's history, hot = wet, most of the time.

Again, it's only a local phenomenon [...]

So, how exactly is glaciers melting around the world a local phenomen?

This is what the most damaging of the denialists do. Sow doubt.

Yes, I can see where sowing doubt is damaging to people who prefer an audience that merely nods up and down on cue without questioning The Obviously Important Person At The Podium With The Fancy Charts. As a scientist, you of all people should *welcome* questions, *welcome* doubters, *welcome* deniers. If your data is as ironclad, conclusive, and unassailable as you claim, you'll defeat them handily and put this whole business to rest once and for all. After the applause dies down you can head home and spend the rest of your life polishing your Nobel prize. The only people who are afraid of questioners and skeptics are those who know they don't have all the answers needed to shut them up.

You say the degree of human responsibility is "not [sic] longer an open question" and then go on to correlate CO2 increases with temperature increases. Yet CO2 is not the only agent that can cause an increase in global temperatures. There are myriad factors involved from surface albedo to water vapor, with more variables involved than we can understand much less count. Is it possible that anthropogenic CO2 increases are solely responsible for global temperature increases? Yes. But can you prove it? No, you can't, nor can anyone else because our understanding of the climate itself is woefully, hideously inadequate. As a scientist, you of all people should -- indeed *must* -- admit that the "open question" you claim doesn't exist is, in fact, still very open and still very much a question.

You've made up your mind; that is clear. But that doesn't make you right. You may be right. You may also be wrong. But you can't make a definitive claim based on the evidence you provide any more than I can make a counterclaim by saying the same little green men that are causing the melting of the polar caps on Mars are causing our planet to heat up.

There's an existing solution to the problem. If businesses are really getting more haphazard and dangerous, then enforce the regulation on the books. It's not complicated or a deep mystery.

Apart from our previous interactions, I think this statement illustrates your naivety is exceeding your understanding of reality. You will have to work harder to correct this

As to nationalized plants, they have a habit of cutting corners and waiving regulations. That's what happens when the same entity is responsible for operating the plant and vetting the safety and reliability of the plant.

You mean the same way the regulations were bypassed by a private organisation at Fukushima, we've gone over it in the past

For example, there was a vast cleanup problem in the wake of the US nuclear program. Russia, Britain, and France all have similar problems with their military-side nuclear programs

Nice to see you're finally reading some of the links I sent you.

It makes no sense to hand over private nuclear power to the very entity which is failing hard at enforcing existing regulation.

Fortunately private organisations are realizing that it's just not economically viable and when democracies are allowed to speak on the subject, like Italy did, we see that Nuclear power doesn't have much support because the available evidence shows that it is unsafe. But until the Nulcear industry is wound down you can be comforted by knowing that Seimens funding for Nuclear will probably go to make Solar and Wind power more economically viable.

There's been an avalanche of research published in the last year or so regarding these types of things, with a lot more scientific backing than the little bit I read in this article.

In one of many articles on the topic, this one raised a whole new series of questions about our ancestry:

Scientists unveil a newly-discovered, ancient human ancestor

Or check out these that all relate to different areas of genetic research, most empirical, one modeled, all relating supporting information about homo sapiens (that's us!) inbreeding with various offshoots and close relatives, with us apparently coming out the better? for it.

Neanderthal genes 'survive in us'
Sex with Neanderthals boosted human immunity
Neanderthals, Humans Interbred—First Solid DNA Evidence
Frontiers of Anthropology
Ancient DNA Reveals Secrets of Human History
Fossilised finger points to previously unknown group of human relatives

Ssssshhhhhhh ... there is NO positive effects from global warming, euhm I mean global cooling, euhm I mean global warming again, wait scratch that ! Climate Change ! It may not actually be getting warmer (a 95% A-B test on "is the average temperature in 2010 warmer than in 1990" ... answer : no, despite big increases in co2 output*), but let me tell you : it's bad !

* and please read up on statistics before shouting "but look at the graphs"

It's even worse than we thought : an area inside the sahara the size of western europe (plenty more of those in the Sahara though) has started growing forests for unknown reasons !

Of course, given the size of the area, the situation elsewhere will have to get pretty fucking bad before it cancels out this positive effect. That area used to be sand, is now capable of sustaining several hundred million people, rapidly increasing.

If history's a guide, a little warming will make Canada, Russia and Greenland capable of sustaining agriculture in ~90% of their territories. You might want to check just how big those areas are.

National Geographic has been running a series of articles that try and answer the summary's question:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/7-billion

They are working on it http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1343470/Have-scientists-discovered-create-downpours-desert.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110118-abu-dhabi-desert-rain-cloud-seeding-controversy/

I think things like this speak for themselves:

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/photos/antarctica-gallery/

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/07/mongolian-herders-feel-change-in-climate.html

http://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-Masters-Arctic-Ice/dp/B000R7I4AE

Masters of the Arctic Ice recently had a showing on PBS, and it was really disturbing to see that not only is the Western ice shelf melting, but the Eastern shelf is also showing signs of rapid deterioration from the bottom, and not from the top.

If both shelves go, it will put the ocean water levels up by approximately sixty feet or more world-wide.

Oil and gas? Did you read any articles on it? The biological material did not fall on the ground, it fell into deep water where it accumulated in cold anaerobic conditions that inhibit normal decay.

I mean no offence by this, but I can not believe that you take this seriously. Have you never read up on, studied, or even watched a stupid documentary on ocean life. Where exactly is this magical place that is immune to the cycles of life? As I recall my original point was where on earth today plants or animals are being buried rapidly enough to preserve the organic materials for the production of oil and gas. Your answer to this is "deep water", like, out in the ocean. The last time I checked the oceans were part of the earth. I have news for you LIFE EXIST THERE TO, and it is "thriving". Perhaps you should go educate National Geographic because it seams fairly obvious that they are, like me, really uneducated.

btw. you might be interested in this
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100226-king-solomon-wall-jerusalem-bible/

Slavery, it gets stuff done. [pyramids.png]

Except the people who built the pyramids were not slaves.

Well, you're talking best case scenario, I'm talking worse case scenario. Actual results are likely to be somewhere in between if we get an event like the 1859 solar storm. Here's an article from March 2011 in National Geographic on the subject. Some of the comments are interesting too.

National Geographic sells the Earth Explorer series. Durable hemp canvas and plenty of padding; sew a patch over the National Geographic logo for stealth (or don't; looking like an NG photographer may be a pro or a con depending on where you're traveling).

I've got the medium, and use it extensively for traveling (albeit not with camera gear), and I'm more than impressed with the quality. I've visited three different continents with it as my only pack, and would buy it again in a heartbeat.

Keep in mind that NG apparently measures laptops differently than everyone else; it would be wise to try fitting your laptop into the bag before purchasing.

See this article from National Geographic... it does happen:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/carroll-text

Also, the program outlined isn't Apple's per se. Apple contracts it out.

No-one has an informed opinion on the experience of dying itself. Do you have any evidence that people in general want, per se, "to live a long time"? Perhaps you mean that people want more time to do stuff? This requires much more than just being alive.

People don't want to die. This isn't complicated. Really. Death sucks. Losing friends and family members sucks. Longer lifespans make that less common.

And there are very few things that are more unpleasant for parents than for them to lose a child.

This happens mostly in countries where people don't have access to appropriate resources and yet continue to get pregnant a lot - perhaps out of the belief that enough children will survive to look after them in old age. For the majority of history, infant death was routine and did not cause the majority of people to become chronically unhappy, although our Western bubbles of privilege allow us the luxury of thinking too much about the children.

Historically people get pregnant for a variety of reasons. One obvious one is lack of choice- if you don't have birth control then sex (which humans have a strong desire for) leads to kids pretty quickly. Moreover, people don't want to lose infants but they also want to have children. This isn't necessarily as selfish as wanting kids to take care of in their old age. Many cultures have a belief that having kids is a good thing. Moreover, the loss of infants creating unhappiness has nothing to do with the "Western bubbles of privilege". Sadness at the death of infants occurs not just in privileged Western civilization but in societies all throughout the world, and even in non-human species http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/05/pictures/110526-gorilla-mother-mourns-dead-baby-science-mourning-feel-emotions-animals/ Moreover if you look at utopian literature from the 17th and 18th centuries, one of thing that shows up repeatedly is the idea that infant death will be the exception rather than the rule. So yeah, it hurt a lot even then.

Moving on to your next claim since you don't like the metrics I was using for happiness levels, do you have another one you would like to use? At this point you seem to be rejecting every possible metric posed. You aren't posing any other metrics or data and are at the same time insisting that you are correct. Do you see why this might not be the most productive stance to take?

Any sensible resource allocation exercise is going to do better bringing everyone in a local unit up to a certain standard of living before it tackles the guy half way across the world.

Actually, that's extremely not obvious to me. Sure, it is easy to tell yourself that that's somehow "sensible" because it fits with basic intuitions. But there's no good moral or ethical reason that proximity should translate into moral importance.

• "Lightning has injured at least 2,000 people in Florida since 1959." -- http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0522_030522_lightning.html
  2000/(2003-1959)=45.45/year
• As of September 8, 2009 a total of 963 tickets had matched 6-of-6 in Florida Lotto to win or share a jackpot. Of these, 27 expired, never being claimed by ticketholders." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_lotto
  (963-27)/( 2009-1988 )=44.57/year

I wonder how many of those 27 unclaimed tickets belonged to people struck by lightning. ;)

I'm not going make a statement one way or the other on fudged data. If his actions were clearly inappropriate there are plenty of scientific bodies whose only reason for existence is managing scientific professional integrity. If he has done something truly inappropriate, he will be dealt with.

What I will respond to is THE VAST body of work pointing to dramatic changes in global climate. I ask those with an ideological position to defend, to stop for just a moment look at the remarkable amount of indisputable evidence that is now available. Its positively mind numbing.

Your comment about temperature is both uninformed and ludicrous. Scientists have taken wood samples from redwoods and bristlecone pines and with that information they can give you precise climatic information for specific areas including annual rainfall, temperature, and occurrence of catastrophic events. By analyzing human dwelling all over the world we can accurately determine climate through fauna and flora for those regions, spores, seeds and pollen. They tell us precisely what grew, and tell what the climatic conditions were there and when. We have antarctic ice cores with trapped atmospheric samples, we have ocean cores with samples of everything from diatoms to volcanic ash, we have fossils and minerals with trapped air and water going back millions of years, we have rock cores which elegantly give us clear records of temperature over centuries. The body of evidence is overwhelming and rich. Thousands of different sources from hundred of different fields of study, all forming a clear and cohesive picture. Whatever you've been reading, its inaccurate, incomplete, and puts ideology before simple fact and truth. You can absolutely criticize one or two individuals for their poor performance, but that doesn't even begin to indict the work of tens of thousands of scientist all over the world who work in vastly different fields but have all come to the same inescapable conclusion.

The models and theories make specific predictions. Many of those predictions have come to pass. Here are just a few recent facts which are completely incontestable:

• The ice caps are melting: If you haven't read about the disappearing artic ice cap in summer try this source. While some would applaud the economic benefit of opening a new shipping lane, the loss of extinction of many vital species including the loss of arctic krill would produce a devastating crash in global fish stocks and the probable extinction of a variety of whales, seals, penguins, and polar bears.
• Glaciers everywhere are vanishing: Look here for a synopsis. The impact of this is that nearly half the worlds population uses glacial melt for drinking water and for agriculture. When they melt the economic cost (not to mention the cost in human suffering or destabilized governments) will be profound.
• The oceans are changing: Rising sea levels, dropping salinity, increased acidity due to CO2, increasing temperature, and changing currents are all occurring as we speak, and all predictable results of global climate change. The impacts will grow and be devastating. Some include loss of coastal land and cities, weather changes, crash in vital fish populations, crash in all marine life, The ocean are the engine behind climate. Disturbing its integrity has far reaching impact. Already, low lying islands in Polynesia are disappearing and their inhabitants are being displaced.
• Animal are migrating away from the heat: Research is now showing us how climate change is impacting animal migration and we are only now beginning to under

I agree with reading about it on the Internet. I like RSS, but I've found it homogenizes my content so that things don't jump out at me and the really interesting stories get buried with all the mediocre ones. So I keep the following list of bookmarks to check on a weekly basis:

ABC (Australia) Science, ABC (US) Science, Air & Space Magazine, ARKive, Ars Technica, BBC SciTech News, CBS Sci-Tech News, Chet Raymo, Cosmos News, Current: Science, Discover, Discovery News, Edge, Economist Science, EurekAlert!, Flyp media, Futurity, h+, Inkling Magazine, LiveScience, Massimo Pigliucci, Mother Jones Environment, MSNBC Science News, National Geographic News, National Public Radio (US), Natural History Magazine, New Scientist, New York Times Science, New Yorker Science, Newsweek Science, Orion, PhysOrg, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, R&D Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Science Daily, Scientific American, Seed Magazine, Science Cheerleader, Science News, Schrodinger's Kitten, Slashdot Science, Smithsonian, Space.com, The Technium, Time Magazine Science, USA Today Science, US News & World Report Science, Wired News, World Changing

I've thrown all the feeds from each of these sites into Google Reader. In no particular order:

wired.com
slashdot.org
spectrum.ieee.org
scientistscanvas.com
arxiv.org
techcrunch.com
techdirt.com
news.discovery.com
physicsworld.com
newscientist.com
physorg.com
nationalgeographic.com
scienceblog.com

I have plenty more. Any RSS feeder app works. You get some repeats but there's a constant stream of science news.

Here's a few I use all the time:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/

http://www.pandasthumb.org/

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance

http://scienceblogs.com/channel/24-hours/?utm_source=globalChannel&utm_medium=link

http://sciencehack.com/