Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Greener

Greener: "



Two environmental trends headed in a good direction



On the day that a famine is declared in Africa -- thanks as much to Somalia's political dysfunctionality as to a severe drought -- comes news that the world drought severity index has been falling for three decades. You can check for yourself here:





At the same time, a new paper finds that the world is getting greener, not browner:


By analyzing “recent inventory data and long-term field observations coupled to statistical or process models” Pan et al. conclude that “the global net forest C sink was 1.0 ± 0.8 and 1.2 ± 0.9 PgC yr–1 for 1990-1999 and 2000-2007”—indicating that the terrestrial forest sink has been at least consistent, if not expanding, over at least the past 18 years (1990-2007).









"

No comments:

Post a Comment