Day: August 2, 2006

Global Sea Level: An Enigma The rate of global sea level rise and its causes has been debated for a century. Despite 100 years of scientific scrutiny, no definitive conclusion has been reached. Join Dr. Walter Munk as he describes why 20th century sea level rise remains an enigma, and why scientists still grapple with whether seawater warming or continental ice melting had the greatest influence.

According to the data, Global Sea Levels started rising at an increased rate well before the industrial revolution started, and it’s been rising at that same rate ever since. This video is from 2004.

On April 26th, 1986, Chernobyl’s Reactor No. 4 unleashed a thoroughly modern plague that emptied cities, condemned entire regions, and seeped invisibly into the bodies of those exposed to it’s destructive presence.

An interdisciplinary MIT faculty group decided to study the future of nuclear power because of a belief that this technology is an important option for the United States and the world to meet future energy needs without emitting carbon dioxide and other atmospheric pollutants.

The authors of the study emphasized that nuclear power is not the only non-carbon option and stated that they believe it should be pursued as a long term option along with other options such as the use of renewable energy sources, increased efficiency, and carbon sequestration..

A group of physicists claims to have discovered a technique that could make nuclear waste much easier to deal with. The new technique, reported in the August edition of Physics World, would render nuclear waste harmless on timescales of just a few tens of years, instead of thousands.