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advice

  • Umbra on global warming and you

    Dear Umbra, I love the scientific ins and outs, really I do, but what oh what can we do about global warming? And I mean us ordinary folks with a house and mortgage and some percentage point of kids and a few compact fluorescents and maybe even a hybrid in the driveway. We’re right there […]

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  • Umbra on organic cashews

    Dear Umbra, I work in a grocery store. Recently a customer refused to purchase our cashews because they weren’t organic. Does it really matter if nuts are organic? Are they sprayed with chemicals during production? Did the customer have a point, or should she have sucked it up and bought our cashews? Brianna Farmington Hills, […]

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  • Umbra on herbicides and lawns

    Dear Umbra, My husband just spread some very toxic weed-killer on our lawn, and I told him there must be a safer way to get rid of weeds. Our children and pets were not allowed on the lawn for 24 hours. We have a well and septic system, and I was wondering if that stuff […]

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  • Umbra on herbicides

    Dear Umbra, How do herbicides (organic, if such exist, or non-organic) work? David Burch South Bend, Ind. Dearest David, Herbicides are considered a subcategory of pesticides, for all you confused by my last pesticide comments. Herbicides kill plants with a vast array of ingenious torture and maiming techniques. (Maiming a plant isn’t quite like maiming […]

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  • Umbra on water vapor and climate change

    Dear Umbra, Coming from a scientific background, I was under the assumption that water vapor was the worst — or you could say the best — at causing global warming. Do you believe this to be false, and if not, why is no one talking about it? Erik Nash Dearest Erik, I’ve decided to use […]

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  • Umbra on the greenhouse effect

    Dear Umbra, Man-made greenhouse gases are blamed for recent global-warming trends. But man-made greenhouse gases account for only 5 percent of the greenhouse effect. Water vapor, over which civilization has virtually no control, accounts for some 95 percent of that greenhouse effect. Why has so much attention been focused on man-made gases when they comprise […]

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  • A climate-change compendium

    Dear Umbra, I know you don’t make up questions, but in this instance I think it’s acceptable. Could you suggest a collection of resources on climate change? I think it might help us all get better educated on this vital topic. Even if they don’t spend an hour of their Earth Day sifting through the […]

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  • Umbra on climate-induced relocation

    Dear Umbra, Given that there is a possibility/probability that sea levels will rise significantly [due to climate change], and that some parts of the world may become too hot while others could become too cold, where in the world will things be relatively “safe”? If I start thinking about moving my family to another country, […]

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  • Umbra on climate-change patterns

    While I am in no doubt about the effect of human activity on climate change, I have a friend who is convinced that even if we weren’t destroying the earth, the earth’s own weather patterns would be in global-warming stage anyway. How do we know the current climate change isn’t just an inevitable part of […]

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