Gizmorama - July 15, 2013
Good Morning, More bad news for China, according to researchers, apparently the air pollution caused from burning coal is likely shortening the lives of people exposed to it. What's going on over there?
Learn about this and other interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
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Visit and Enjoy: EVTV1.com****-- Study: Air pollution from coal burning in China shortening lives --*CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Air pollution from burning coal in China, in the form of particulates, is likely shortening the lives of people exposed to it, researchers say. A study co-authored by an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, based on long-term data compiled for the first time, projects 500 million Chinese who live north of the Huai River are set to lose an aggregate 2.5 billion years of life expectancy because of extensive regional use of coal to power boilers for heating. The researchers found very different life-expectancy figures for an otherwise similar population south of the Huai River, where government policies are less supportive of coal-powered heating, an MIT release said Tuesday. "We can now say with more confidence that long-run exposure to pollution, especially particulates, has dramatic consequences for life expectancy," said environmental economics Professor Michael Greenstone, who conducted the research with colleagues in China and Israel. Every additional 100 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter in the atmosphere lowers life expectancy at birth by three years, they research suggests. In China, particulate-matter levels were more than 400 micrograms per cubic meter from 1981 to 2001, the researchers said. In comparison, total suspended particulates in the United States were about 45 micrograms per cubic meter in the 1990s. "Everyone understands it's unpleasant to be in a polluted place," Greenstone said. "But to be able to say with some precision what the health costs are, and what the loss of life expectancy is, puts a finer point on the importance of finding policies that balance growth with environmental quality."
*-- Water under antarctic glacier could have impact on sea level rises --*AUSTIN, Texas - A vast swamp-like canal system larger than Florida's Everglades lying under a glacier in Antarctica may impact global rises in sea levels, scientists say. The subglacial water system underlies West Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier, a Florida-sized outlet glacier in the Amundsen Sea considered a key factor in projections of possible rises in ocean levels, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin reported Tuesday. On its own Thwaites contains enough fresh water to raise oceans by about three feet, they said. The dynamics of the subglacial water system may be important in predicting the fate of the glacier, they said. The swamp-like canal system lying under the deep interior of the ice sheet transitions to a series of mainly stream-like channels downstream as the glacier approaches the ocean, the researchers said. The two configurations have contrasting effect on the movement of glacial ice, they said; swamp-like formations tend to lubricate the ice above them whereas streams, which conduct water more efficiently, are likely to cause the base of the ice to stick between the streams. That causes the glacier's massive conveyor belt of ice to pile up at the zone where the subglacial water system transitions from swamps to streams, holding the massive glacier on the Antarctic continent.
"This is where ocean and ice sheet are at war, on that sticking point, and eventually one of them is going to win," geophysicist Don Blankenship said. While Thwaites Glacier appears stable in the short term, holding its current position on the continent, the large pile of ice that has built up in the transition zone could rapidly collapse if undermined by ocean warming or changes to the water system, researchers said. "We now understand both how the water system is organized and where that dynamic is playing itself out," Blankenship said. "Our challenge is to begin to understand the timing and processes that will be involved when that stability is breached."
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