In the News: Climate Change Perceptions
In an ironic confluence, several news articles and reports have been issued discussing public perceptions surrounding climate change. While each article or resource that has been published discusses this issue in a slightly different way, the underlying theme of each is that while the populace acknowledges Climate Change, most people have very little interest in following the issue or have no ambition/ability to "do" anything about it. For some of most recent articles and reports on this topic see below:Debra Cassens Weiss, Law Prof Has an Explanation for Differing Opinions on Climate Change, A.B.A. J. (July 25, 2012). See also
- Daniel M. Kahan et al., The Polarizing Impact of Science Literacy and Numeracy on Perceived Climate Change Risks, Nature Climate Change (May 27, 2012).
- Yuko Heath & Robert Gifford, Free-Market Ideology and Environmental Degradation: The Case of Belief in Global Climate Change, 38 Env't & Behavior, no. 1, 2006 at 48-71;
- Robert Gifford, Psychology's Essential Role in Climate Change, 48 Can. Psychol. 2008 at 273-80.
- Jon D. Miller, Climate Chnage: Generation X Attitudes, Interest, and Understanding, 1 Generation X Rep., no. 4, 2012;
- Longitudinal Study of American Youth, U. Mich. (last visited July 27, 2012).
With large swaths of oceans, rivers that snake for hundreds of miles,
and behemoth glaciers near the north and south poles, Earth doesn't seem
to have a water shortage. And yet, less than one percent of our
planet's mass is locked up in water, and even that may have been
delivered by comets and asteroids after Earth's initial formation.
Astronomers have been puzzled by Earth's water defici
A remote-controlled Earth-observing camera system called ISERV was
launched to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency's third H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-3) on
July 20. Once installed, the system will be directed by researchers on
the ground to acquire imagery of specific areas of the globe for
disaster analysis and environmental studies.
ISERV P
The American sage Yogi Berra once said: "You can see a lot by just
looking." The Landsat program is the longest continuous global record of
Earth observations from space - ever. Since its first satellite went up
in the summer of 1972, Landsat has been looking at our planet. The view
of Earth that this 40-year satellite program has recorded allows
scientists to see, in ways they never imagined, h
Mexico will start vaccinating some 10 million poultry Thursday against
the highly contagious bird flu strain that has already led to the deaths
of five million birds which either fell ill or were slaughtered.
"Starting tomorrow, we are going to vaccinate hens and chicks across the
country to put an end to this bird flu epidemic," Mexican President
Felipe Calderon said.
The president indi
The drought in America's breadbasket is intensifying at an
unprecedented rate, experts warned Thursday, driving concern food prices
could soar if crops in the world's key producer are decimated.
The US Drought Monitor reported almost a threefold increase in areas of
extreme drought over the past week in the nine Midwestern states where
three quarters of the country's corn and soybean crops a
The world's first industrial plant producing biofuels from seaweed will
be built in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco in late
2013, the official in charge of the project said Thursday.
The factory to be set up by Austrian firm SAT on a sugar cane plantation
that yields ethanol, will produce 1.2 million liters of algae-based
biofuels annually, Rafael Bianchini, head of SAT's Braz