"global warming" news and stories

Yep, you read that right. There's a new "low carb" diet being touted out there, but thisone has absolutely nothing to do with your health. It has everything to do with the health of the environment.

Instead of calories of carbs, this diet has you counting carbon. That's right. The Low Carbon Diet is one in which you calculate the "carbon cost" of your food to help reduce the emissions that cause the greenhouse effect and global warming. The goal of the diet, which is actually a program that is being tested by a company called Bon Appetit, is to make people "realize that their food choices can have an effect on climate change."

What does this mean for us? It means that instead of eating a tropical fruit that took a lot of energy to transport to your grocery store, you go to your local farmers' market and buy what's been grown locally.

Hey, now that's a diet I don't mind at all!

Luxist reports that a recent conference on Global Warming and Wines found that traditional wine-making areas may be at risk of losing their wine-making abilities, including the Catalonian regions of Spain and Bordeaux region of France. If current warming trends continue, one speaker at the conference argued, this could be a reality "within the next 40 to 70 years." Grapes in those regions could suffer not only from an increase in temperature, but from a change in the amount of rainfall they receive. Increasingly dry areas may face water-restrictions to conserve water, while other regions may face heavy rains, since many scientists predict changing weather patterns will accompany global warming. On the plus side, some of the areas of the world that are now too cold to successfully cultivate wines on a large, commercial scale will probably be warm enough to grow grapes, leading to new varieties and blends for connoisseurs to enjoy, drowning their sorrows to forget the loss of their favorite Bordeaux.

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It appears that global warming may not be that bad on our food plants. According to New Zealand scientists, who are writing a report for the UN on ozone layer depletion and its consequences, plants are developing a protective layer.

This poisonous layer acts as a shield against harmful ultraviolet rays. It is a pigment that can be toxic to predators and help with disease prevention thus reducing, they suggest, the use of pesticides and fungicides. They are are not sure if these toxins have a negative effect on us and what effect they may have across the whole food chain; so maybe not that good.

Like everything connected with global warming no one seems to know for sure. What most agree on though is that while the pollution that causes ozone depletion is declining, the warming of the atmosphere will see a continuing thinning of the ozone layer across the world.

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