Planetary Ruin

Susan Greenfield and her girlfriend Llina Kempner couldn’t wait for their new memory-foam mattress top to arrive. For months, they’d heard friends rave about how the high-tech material molds itself to your body. But when they unwrapped the three-inch-thick pad in their Manhattan apartment, they noticed a strong, acrid odor. “My nose and my lungs were miserable,” recalls Greenfield. For the two nights Kempner slept on the mattress top, she felt nauseated. After Greenfield, who is chemically sensitive, had an asthma attack in the middle of the night, the couple returned the mattress pad. But its stench lingered in the apartment for weeks.

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HONG KONG (Reuters) – A population of rare Chinese white dolphins in Hong Kong’s coastal waters may be threatened by several upcoming construction projects including a proposed new airport runway, a dolphin conservation group has warned.

Around 200 Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins — commonly called Chinese white dolphins — survive in Hong Kong’s western waters near the Chek Lap Kok international airport on Lantau island.

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LONDON (Reuters) – The research arm of U.S. bank Merrill Lynch launched a global carbon index on Wednesday to track the international carbon markets, which were worth some $60 billion last year.

Merrill Lynch said its MLCX Global CO2 Emissions Index will allow investors to participate in the world’s carbon markets, including the European Union’s emissions trading scheme and emissions markets under the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol.

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Order from your favorite coffee or tea joint every day, but hate the eco guilt of throwing the paper cup in the trash? “I am not a paper cup” a reusable porcelain cup with silicon lid may alleviate the self-loathing. Due to the overwhelming demand, it becomes available again in April.

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Black carbon, a form of particulate air pollution most often produced from biomass burning, cooking with solid fuels and diesel exhaust, has a warming effect in the atmosphere three to four times greater than prevailing estimates, according to scientists in an upcoming review article in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego atmospheric scientist V. Ramanathan and University of Iowa chemical engineer Greg Carmichael, said that soot and other forms of black carbon could have as much as 60 percent of the current global warming effect of carbon dioxide, more than that of any greenhouse gas besides CO2.

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