Nov 6, 2006

Slashdot.org

Would it have been possible to come across news like this without the Internet?

"A new U.S. study finds evidence for 'Snowball Earth,'
the hypothesis that the entire Earth was ice-covered for long periods
on several occasions, most recently 600-700 million years ago. The icy
conditions (Earth's oceans frozen completely with ice more than a
kilometer thick) ended violently under extreme greenhouse conditions — snowballearth.org
suggests the meltdown could have occurred in as little as 2,000 years.
Snowball Earth challenges long-held assumptions regarding the limits of
global change. Wikipedia has more on the hypothesis."



"While the only permanent solution for human-driven global warming
is developing renewable energy, a temporary hack to counteract possible
abrupt climate change is to build a giant sunshade in space.
The sunshade would be launched in small pieces by electromagnetic
launchers, conventional chemical rockets being far too expensive. The
sunshade could be developed and deployed in 25 years, would last about
50 years, and would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by 2%
— enough to balance heating due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere."



powered by performancing firefox