Free Republic

Our planet's air has cleared up in the past decade or two, allowing more sunshine to reach the ground, say two studies in Science this week. Reductions in industrial emissions in many countries, along with the use of particulate filters for car exhausts and smoke stacks, seem to have reduced the amount of dirt in the atmosphere and made the sky more transparent. That sounds like very good news. But the researchers say that more solar energy arriving on the ground will also make the surface warmer, and this may add to the problems of global warming. More sunlight will...

It took 2 1/2 years for polar explorers Lonnie Dupre and Eric Larsen to plan their trek across the Arctic Ocean. But once launched, it took only three weeks for it to fall apart. Amid a stretch of extraordinarily heavy snowfall, strong winds and broken and shifting ice, the two men from Grand Marais, Minn., who had hoped to become the first adventurers to cross the Arctic Ocean in summer, abandoned their expedition Thursday after advancing only 45 miles in 24 days. Conditions were so treacherous, in fact, that the men, who had hoped to make the crossing to call...