Past climate anomalies explained
Lead paragraphs from the BBC story:
“Unusually warm and cold periods in Earth’s pre-industrial climate history are linked to how the oceans responded to temperature changes, say scientists.
The researchers focused particularly on intervals known as the “little ice age” and “medieval warm period”.
In the journal Science, they report that these climate “anomalies” were likely caused by changes to El Nino and the North Atlantic Oscillation.”
This story, interesting in itself, gained an addition dimension for me when I recognised the name of the lead researcher, Michael Mann. Professor Mann (as climate mavens will know) was one of the researchers named in the emails recently hacked and publicised on the Web. (These emails are being represented as evidence of a conspiracy to stifle dissent in climate research – see the NYT story here.)
The clothesline revolution explained
Can we save the world by hanging our clothes on a line instead of using a dryer?
Maybe not, but there is an interesting movement in the United States, Project Laundry List, to encourage line drying clothes. Maybe this is not such a big deal in Australia (we all hang our clothes on the line, don’t we?). However, this article from Grist has some pertinent information about how the movement arose, some of the roadblocks in its path, and how it is trying to change people’s behaviour and raise their consciousness of green issues.