Issues like climate change are part of a long list of challenges that could and likely will impact that way we live.
it was also about creating an environment in which it could be successful. Not unlike Steve jobs, Musk is constantly designing his products
At the same time, every new technology also requires new skill sets for those working in those environments. Here are just a few of the skills that will be prized highly in the future. 14 Hot New Skills 1. Transitionists Those who can help make a transition. 2. Expansionists A talent for adapting
along with a growing environment. 3. Maximizers An ability to maximize processes, situations, and opportunities. 4. Optimizers The skill and persistence to tweak variables until it produces better results. 5. Inflectionists Finding critical inflection points in a system will become a much-prized skill. 6. Dismantlers Every industry
Environmental Minimizers Sound diminution engineers, visual aesthetic reductionists, etc. 45. Drone Traffic Optmizers 46. Automation Engineers 47.
Geoengineers Weather Control Specialists We are moving past the age of meteorology and climatology to one where the true power-brokers will wield the forces of nature.
At Brown's Ranch just east of Bismarck N d. the community has gone 70 days with less than half an inch of rain.
It's not how much rainfall you get explains Brown. It's how much you can store.
or soak up heavy rainfall. This means less water is wasted and it also means that Brown who received a 2012 Growing Green award from NRDC doesn't need to rely on federal crop insurance to cover his losses in times of drought or other weather extremes.
which we all pay the costs of climate change which is driving more droughts flooding and extreme weather.
As our climate warms crop insurance claims from farmers will continue to rise according to the USDA placing an even bigger burden on the FCIP and therefore taxpayers.
and other weather extremes and more likely to rely on crop insurance. In a new NRDC report my colleague Claire O'connor who comes from a long line of Nebraska farmers herself calls for an overhaul of the FCIP.
it makes sense to climate-proof our farms. Brown is among a growing number of farmers who use a suite of techniques to build soil's natural capacity to retain moisture discourage weeds and pests and nurture crops.
No-till farming means that instead of plowing-under that rich soil ecosystem every planting season Brown plants directly onto the stubble of last year's crops.
The nation can't afford to put our farmland or our farmers not to mention taxpayers at risk by not protecting farms from extreme weather.
Reforming the FCIP to encourage soil-protective climate-proofing techniques will make our farms more resilient
and our farmers more secure ease the burden on taxpayers and protect our environment. You can learn more about soils
The National Weather Service pegged the tornado as an EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale meaning winds reached more than 200 mph (322 km h).
Only about 1 percent reach EF5 status. Predicting which storms will generate monster tornadoes or any tornadoes at all remains a challenge.
When wind and humidity conditions are right thunderstorm systems can begin to rotate and become what are called supercells.
Supercells are marked by the presence of a mesocyclone a rotating updraft of air that can sometimes create a funnel cloud.
Exactly why this happens in some storms and not others is a key mystery. We're trying to be able to figure out why of two pretty much identical supercells one will generate a tornado
Radar can't sense every component of the wind's movement for example. By using simulations she
and her colleagues want to set up at least 100 storms they can tweak at will altering one variable such as humidity
So far Mcgovern and her team have created about 10 storms she said far fewer than the 100 they need.
The team has done similar work to predict airplane turbulence with great success so once the database of simulated storms is built using them to predict real-world weather should be said successful she.
On Monday the National Weather Service office in Norman Okla. gave residents 16 minutes of warning before the tornado even formed based on radar indicators that the storm clouds were circulating in such a way that a tornado was likely.
or a funnel cloud in the sky. We believe our computer weather prediction models might be getting good enough that we might be able to give people somewhat more warning maybe an hour
Narrow valleys can also funnel wind into tornadoes from a mile or so away Gallus said causing damage far afield from the actual funnel cloud. 50 Amazing Tornado Facts Moore in particular has been hit by three violent tornadoes in less than 15 years:
and now being moved to Dallas-Fort worth Texas allows researchers to get full three-dimensional information about how wind is moving.
Traditional radar provides only one component of wind movement. What we are about is getting higher resolution in space
Likewise homes in neighborhoods hit by the tornado were destroyed completely. As of Wednesday the death toll stood at 24 10 of
In Joplin Miss. a 2011 tornado killed 158 according to the National Weather Service (the city of Joplin pegs the death toll at 161.
Building in tornado country Even in Tornado Alley buildings are designed to withstand only 90 mph (145 km h) straight-line winds said Partha Sarkar who studies wind engineering and aerodynamics at Iowa State university.
The standard is based on historic measurements of thunderstorm winds and doesn't take into account even the most common types of tornadoes.
) What's more Sarkar said rotational tornado winds can put even stronger stresses on buildings than straight-line winds.
The buildings are designed simply not to withstand that level of wind he told Livescience. The Deadliest Tornadoes in U s. History Designing a tornado-proof building is said expensive Sarkar.
The storm shelters today are designed for 250 mph (402 km h) wind speeds and we feel that is higher than will ever be experienced at the ground level in a tornado said Ernst Kiesling a mechanical engineer at Texas Tech and the executive director of the National Storm Shelter Association.
Shelter from the storm Unfortunately cost prevents homeowners in even tornado-prone areas from installing these shelters.
In Oklahoma Kiesling said perhaps one in every five newer homes has an in-home shelter
and that each remains clean in their respective environment says Bhushan. This observation lead the investigators to suspect that like shark skin
And it stands out because of the social and environmental ramifications of human-powered vehicles which offer very tangible benefits to people in both developed and undeveloped nations.
The HPVC mission encourages engineering students to consider the social environmental and economic benefits of the vehicles they design.
 Students participating in the HPVC are designing transportation solutions for a world faced with economic stress and poverty climate change and strife over energy supplies.
The passenger pigeon the dodo and the woolly mammoth are just a few of the species wiped off the Earth by changing environments and human activities.
but the experiment proved de-extinction was possible. 6 Extinct Animals That Could Be brought Back to Life We can use some of these techniques to actually help endangered species improve their long-term viability said ecologist Stanley Temple of the University
Reviving the passenger pigeon The passenger pigeon filled the skies of North america in flocks of millions during the 19th century.
I don't think it has any merit at all said conservation ecologist Stuart Pimm of Duke university N c. It totally ignores the very practical realities of what conservation is about.
The environment is different in every respect Ehrenfeld said. Temple took a more moderate view.
#Precision farming Gains Global Foothold (Op-Ed) Lloyd Treinish leads the environmental science team in the Industry Solutions Department at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research center.
and the surrounding region to help predict weather conditions and optimize operations. While collecting real-time data on weather soil health of crops and air quality is important as is the availability of equipment
if skies are clear above your farm just outside of the city. At IBM we developed a precision agriculture weather-modeling service using Deep Thunder our Big data analytics technology for local customized high-resolution and rapid weather predictions.
With high accuracy Deep Thunder can deliver hyper-localized weather conditions up to three days in advance with calculations as fine as a single mile and as granular as every 10 minutes.
In practical terms a farmer armed with precise weather forecasting information may choose to hold off on fertilizing an area of a farm expecting heavy rains;
or he may irrigate only that portion of the farm that will not receive rainfall. With 70 percent of the world's freshwater supply already going to agriculture every drop counts.
and heavy rain can cause trucks to get stuck in mud. Coupling predictive analytics and modeling techniques with other sophisticated farming methods can prove to be quite beneficial
In 2011 Modern Meadow took up the challenge setting out to make ecological and economical leather and meat from bioprinters.
because there are climate issues and social aspects that have to be included Scanlon told Livescience. Projections are so difficult because
Scanlon pointed out that the new study does not consider the impact of extreme weather such as droughts or floods.
which means if some farmers employ more efficient irrigation techniques they will also be pumping up salty deposits that are washed not adequately away by rainfall.
and several plans call for a reduced-pressure environment in the Mars habitats as well. In the near term before colonists can construct greenhouses they will have to use artificial light from LEDS for example to power their plants'photosynthesis. NASA has conducted plant-growth research in microgravity aboard the International Space station (ISS) and in the Long Duration Exposure
Still the effects that these factors will have on plant growth specifically in a Mars environment are still largely in the theoretical stages of research.
A manned construction in low-Earth orbit could simulate a low-gravity environment. Placing a laboratory near the International Space station (ISS) would be one logical way of doing this;
The lab section would have to replicate the atmospheric pressure suggested for future Mars habitats by Dr. Robert Zubrin President of The Mars Society.
Due to the reduced air pressure the crew's section might need to have elevated oxygen levels while the plant section would require elevated carbon dioxide levels to foster plant growth.
Special precautions would be necessary to minimize the danger of fire in the high-oxygen environment.
but consumers worry about the chemical residues they leave on fruit their environmental impact and the potential for pathogens to become resistant to them.
and pharmacology as we learn more about our natural environment. Hopefully too we can develop better ways of reducing the huge amount of food loss that takes place
As an added environmental benefit the process sequesters methane a potent greenhouse gas and provides an economic incentive for methane capture at facilities such as landfills wastewater treatment plants and dairy farms.
A new landmark study in the journal Science found that the U s. Environmental protection agency's (EPA) inventory of greenhouse gases is undercounting total U s. methane emissions by roughly 50 percent.
It causes 86 times as much global warming over a 20-year period as carbon dioxide the single largest contributor to climate change.
According to our analysis at Energy Innovation the methane missing from the EPA's inventory in terms of the contribution to global warming over a 20-year time period would be equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of 252 coal power plants.
At the same time that the scientific community is finding evidence that methane is being undercounted the newly released draft version of the U s. EPA's national greenhouse-gas emission inventory presents data showing that methane emissions from natural gas
whereas the EPA inventory involves many assumptions and depends upon accurate self-reporting of voluntary emission reduction efforts by the extraction companies.
The EPA greenhouse gas inventory uses data from bottom up studies to develop emission factors for different components of the entire natural gas system from production (extraction from the ground) to processing transmission and distribution.
A limitation of the bottom-up studies upon which the EPA inventory relies is a requirement that researchers obtain access to natural-gas operations.
The EPA should take a more active role in generating the comprehensive data needed to improve the inventory's estimate of methane emissions.
The draft inventory states that the EPA will continue to refine the emission estimates to reflect the most robust information available.
The EPA should quickly embrace new monitoring technologies to improve the accuracy of government emissions monitoring
and limit methane's contribution to climate change. The authors'most recent Op-Ed was States Take National Lead in Regulating Fracking.
and videos as well as chart the geographic coordinates of deforestation or degradation occurring within threatened areas said Gabriel Ribenboim a researcher who's leading the project for FAS.
and climate of protected areas and this information is combined with Street view imagery videos photos and 3d buildings to provide a comprehensive picture of the region he added.
and compare the social economical and environmental improvements and land-use changes through Street view imagery said Victor Salviati coordinator of special projects at FAS.
and the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry captured images of 12 tigers in Sumatra in an area that was set for deforestation.
Concerned about the potential destruction of this tiger habitat WWF used Google earth to illustrate the effects of deforestation on the Bukit Tigapuluh region a critical tiger habitat.
Through this effort the organizations hope to illustrate how deforestation in Sumatra fueled by demand for products like palm oil
In addition the Google mapping project has helped WWF build public support to stop irresponsible logging companies that contribute to Sumatra's deforestation said Craig Kirkpatrick WWF's managing director for Borneo and Sumatra.
Although the long time between satellite images makes it difficult to actively search for threats to tigers he said Google technology has been helpful in illustrating the pace of deforestation in the region and its effects on tiger and elephant habitat.
For instance Defenders of Wildlife is utilizing Google maps API to help demonstrate the impacts of the BP Deepwater horizon oil spill
And the United nations'environmental voice the U n. Environment Programme is using Google technology to explore the Earth's changing landscape
and visualize the effects of climate change and other environmental impacts. Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.
What can achieve the intensification of food supply we require but in a way that is also sustainable and less harmful to the environment?
hydroponics or aeroponics and environmental controls that regulate temperature humidity and light to produce vegetables fruits and other crops year-round.
and wind turbines with greenhouses to provide self-generated renewable electricity on-site. But the single technology that will be key to making vertical farms possible is lighting.
or even sand and works in greenhouse facilities so it can be used in nearly any climate.
arguing that direct regulation would be faster and cheaper than using carbon markets under a global climate treaty.
The idea has been bouncing around in the environmental community for years, but Argentina, the United states and others garnered support to formally explore the idea during the annual Montreal Protocol conference last November in Doha, Qatar.
and government delegates have invited climate negotiators to attend a workshop on the topic in Geneva, Switzerland, in July.
climate change is expanding the Montreal Protocol's horizons. In fact, the Montreal treaty's links to global warming go all the way back to its preamble,
) The team, led by Guus Velders at The netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in Bilthoven, expects to release another analysis of HFCS in advance of the Geneva workshop this summer.
The US Environmental protection agency says that the resulting greenhouse-gas reductions could equate to around 2. 6 billion tonnes of CO2,
and the United nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to avoid having to pay the full market value for HFCS.
when he and others floated the idea at the UN climate meeting in Poland last month,
Mack Mcfarland, global environmental manager for Dupont's fluorochemicals business, says policy-makers are beginning to recognize the problems created
By contrast, the Lieberman-Warner climate legislation introduced in the US Senate last year proposed a stricter phase-down for HFCS than for other greenhouse gases,
better industrial processes and, ultimately, the development of new, more climate-friendly chemicals, says Mcfarland.
and financing of climate technologies that is based largely on the Montreal Protocol. The proposal sets up the same kind of governing board, with equal membership representing developed and developing nations,
They also proposed that developing nations put an eye-popping 0. 5-1%of their gross national product into a climate fund to support these and other actions each year.
The US Environmental protection agency (EPA) has agreed to set new rules governing emissions of mercury and other toxic chemicals from power plants by November 2011,
according to a settlement in a federal lawsuit filed by several environmental and health groups. Environmentalists say that the Clean Air Act required the EPA to set limits by 2002,
but the administration of former US President George w bush avoided this in part by creating a market-based system that would allow mercury emissions to continue at some plants
Environmental groups are protesting after the Mexican government's 15 october approval of the first permits to plant experimental genetically modified (GM) maize (corn.
Mexican environmental and agricultural agencies say that they will keep plantings away from traditional'landrace'maize,
A European council summit meeting in Brussels may firm up European promises to finance climate-change action in developing countries. go. nature. com/1kwxls 2 november The European space agency is scheduled to launch its Soil Moisture
Convention on Climate Change holds its fifth round of international climate talks this year in Barcelona,
The warning, from Robert Socolow, a climate researcher at Princeton university in New jersey, came at the end of a meeting last week that aimed to thrash out guidelines for the nascent field of geoengineering.
The discipline aims to use global-scale efforts to control the climate and mitigate the worst effects of anthropogenic warming
and preserve or perhaps create a climate of its own liking. In another, climate policies result in a world full of forest plantations that are created solely to store the greatest possible amount of carbon, with no regard for preserving biodiversity.
Or what if the very possibility of using geoengineering to mitigate climate change gives political leaders cover to say that greenhouse gases aren't a problem?
The morning after Socolow's sobering talk, the conference's scientific organizing committee released a summary statement, based on attendees'comments,
says Jane Long, associate director for energy and environment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
that detecting changes in the climate system caused by geoengineering would be nearly as difficult as measuring global warming itself.
He says that there should be a way to conduct small-scale experiments that test this kind of technology without perturbing the global climate.
You can't build a wall around the Arctic climate, counters Alan Robock, a climatologist at Rutgers University in New brunswick, New jersey.
He fears that some of his colleagues are pushing forwards too quickly in their hunt for a climate fix,
however, the US Environmental protection agency pulled back the 2011 requirement for cellulosic biofuels from 946 million to 25 million litres,
aims to increase food security by finding genetic traits that might be suited to future climates. Samples of wild plants will now be conserved alongside existing stores of domesticated seeds (such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen.
Canc ae'Â n climate deal United nations climate talks in Canc ae'Â n, Mexico, ended with an agreement by developed and developing countries to reduce greenhouse
Fred Upton (Republican, Michigan) 墉 who has supported frequently environmental legislation 墉 will chair the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
for any contamination of their neighbours'non-GM fields. The Federal Constitutional Court said on 24 november that the 2004 (amended in 2008) legislation,
Oil-spill budget Scientists have welcomed a long-awaited peer-reviewed US government report on the short-term fate of the oil from the Deepwater horizon spill in the Gulf of mexico this summer.
Susan Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environment Group in WASHINGTON DC, says the agreement showed that management of high seas fisheries was flawed and inadequate.
and food security in response to climate change in the region. go. nature. com/b4gqxb 2 december Commercial spaceflight company Spacex, of Hawthorne, California,
The decision allows Scotts to bypass the years of environmental testing and consultation typically required by the regulators for GM plants,
Scullion, a graduate student in environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, arrived in the Peruvian region of Madre de dios last September, just after the price of gold hit a record high of US$68 per gram.
The informal operations rarely assess their effects on the environment, or develop plans for what to do with the mines once they are exhausted,
and ordered that all miners must formally register a yearlong process that requires the mine operators to produce a work plan, an environmental-impact assessment and a cleanup strategy, among other requirements.
"This is the epitome of a healthy ecosystem, says Enrique Ortiz, vice-president of the Amazon Conservation Association, based in WASHINGTON DC."
the study s authors found that deforestation in two prominent mining zones increased sixfold between 2003 and 2009,
In March, Katy Ashe, a graduate student in environmental engineering at Stanford university in California, published the first study (K. Ashe PLOS ONE 7, e33305;
That finding tallies with as yet unpublished research by Luis Fernandez, a tropical ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, with whom Ashe is about to begin Working in 2009,
The Earth s climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet.
and other policies proposed to address global climate change and what steps can we take to improve our ability to tackle challenges like climate change that cross national boundaries?
Ultimately, the science is an input to the public policy decision; it does not dictate a particular policy response.
and proceeded through his EPA to impose rules that will bankrupt the coal industry. Nowhere along the way has indicated the President
but it will not better the environment. So I oppose steps like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system that would handicap the American economy
is the key to environmental protection in the long run. So I believe we should pursue what I call a"No Regrets policy steps that will lead to lower emissions,
and energy efficiency in American history and proposed an ambitious Clean Energy Standard to generate 80 percent of our electricity from clean energy sources like wind, solar, clean coal,
Since taking office, electricity production from wind and solar sources has doubled already more than in the United states. We are boosting our use of cleaner fuels,
combined with the resources of America s neighbors, can meet all of the continent s energy needs within a decade.
so that America can benefit from the resources of its neighbors. Fourth, I will ensure accurate assessment of the nation s energy resources by updating decades-old surveys that do not reflect modern technological capabilities.
and enforcing strong environmental protections that ensure all energy development activity is conducted in a safe and responsible manner.
But whereas President Obama has used environmental regulation as an excuse to block the development of resources and the construction of infrastructure,
but instead to facilitate responsible use of all energy sources from oil and coal and natural gas, to nuclear and hydropower and biofuels, to wind and Solar energy development, economic growth,
and environmental protection can go hand-in-hand if the government focuses on transparency and fairness instead of seeking to pick winners
We are also working collaboratively with communities around the country on how to best manage freshwater resources in a changing climate,
and cooperative conservation measures will improve the water quality of our lakes, rivers, streams and coastal environments.
and through foreign policy to protect the environmental health and economic vitality of the oceans? We are directing additional funding to Gulf Coast restoration to bring back the fisheries and coastal ecosystems
which are still recovering in the aftermath of the Deepwater horizon spill. We kicked off the Great lakes Restoration Initiative, the largest investment in the Great lakes in two decades,
which is targeting ecological problems such as invasive species, toxic hot spots, and pollution runoff. We are cleaning up the Chesapeake bay,
establishing a"pollution diet for the Bay that will help restore the natural habitat for fish and other wildlife.
and other regulatory information to more efficiently provide the public with information necessary to participate in key environmental decisions.
and including the public in our decision making process will we harness the power of science to achieve our goals â oe to preserve our environment
yet the EPA estimates that the rule will cost $10 billion to reduce mercury pollution by only $6 million (with an"m). This has stopped not the President from trumpeting the rule as"cost-effective and"common sense,
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