Newsweek‘s ace Sharon Begley writes this week that with so much global warming already cocked and doomed to fire at us no matter what we do, adaptation is almost as big a priority as to eventually turn down the greenhouse gases that put us in this fix. Adaptation, she writes, will cost a lot of money and means a lot better than more muscular air conditioners. It’s a long list. One question arises over her lead-off example, however. She posits that warmer air, being less dense, forces airplanes to reach a higher speed before their wings get enough aerodynamic purchase to lift them off the runway. So we’ll need longer runways. That’s logical. But aren’t runways already built long enough for the occasional hot spell, anyway. Will O’Hare really need longer ones? Just wondering.
Related News in Newsweek: Andrew Muir provides a short profile of a stubborn, inventive woman born in Ethiopia and her development, at Caltech, of a new and promising, highly efficient fuel cell .
-CP
Leave a Reply