Global what?

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GLOBAL WHAT?

It’s hard to make changes and save the planet when the majority of us apparently have the attention span of the average second grader. At least that’s one interpretation of a new Stanford University poll that shows that our support for measures designed to curb global warming is already in decline even though many of the changes losing popularity have yet to even be implemented.

The new poll asked potential voters the same questions as another poll conducted in 2010 regarding our level of support for various steps to cut greenhouse gases. The comparison found that our support for cutting the harmful gas emissions had actually declined by 10 percent even though more scientists than ever now accept that global warming is a reality.

According to USA Today, the Stanford poll’s lead researcher Jon Krosnick says, “Most Americans (62 percent) still support industry taking steps aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but they hate the idea of consumer taxes to do it.”

Translation: Apparently most of us would rather keep an extra 3 percent of our paychecks than save the world for future generations.

LIGHT A MATCH DINO

New research from the category of what else can we get a grant to study, has found that dinosaur farts may have actually ushered in global warming back in the day.

The new study was conducted by British researchers and was just published in the May 8 issue of the journal Current Biology. The researchers admit that their findings are based on best guestimates but the research does make sense. We know that modern day ruminants such as cows and sheep are adding between 50 and 100 million metric tons of methane into the atmosphere each year.

The researchers believe that the dinosaurs, which reached up to 20 tons in size, could have been farting and belching as much as 520 million metric tons into the atmosphere each year, enough to cause global warming and subsequently climate change.

What a way to go.

ENDANGERED LANGUAGES AND SPECIES LINKED

It was suspected for years, but now it has been confirmed. New research published in the May 7 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that in the areas of the world where languages are disappearing the fastest, so too are the most species of plants and animals becoming extinct. This makes sense because of the many tribal languages spoken in such biodiversity hot spots. In fact, 70 percent of all languages occur in such areas. It appears that the loss of languages may be happening more quickly than the loss of species which is currently occurring at the staggering estimate of 1,000 times the historic rate. Linguists now estimate that 90 percent of the world’s languages could disappear by the end of the 21st century.

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