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April 6, 2011 Core of Stricken Reactor Probably Leaked, U.S. Says By MATTHEW L. WALD and ANDREW POLLACK WASHINGTON — The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that some of the core of a stricken Japanese reactor had probably leaked from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure, implying that the damage was even worse than previously thought. The statement came as the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, started to inject nitrogen into the reactor containment vessel of unit No. 1 to prevent a possible explosion. The Nuclear Regulatory...

What may be a new outermost layer of the Earth's core has been found, geoscientists have revealed. This discovery could help solve mysteries of the planet's magnetic field, researchers say. The Earth's core is composed mainly of iron, divided into a solid inner center roughly 1,500 miles (2,440 kilometers) wide covered by a liquid outer layer about 1,400 miles (2,250 km) thick. Even though the bulk of the core is iron, researchers also knew it contained a small amount of lighter elements such as oxygen and sulfur. As the inner core crystallized over time, scientists think this process forced out...

The head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America responded to plans for a rival church body, urging fellow Lutherans to avoid slander. "We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light," said the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the ELCA, as he recited words from the Evangelical Lutheran Worship. Hanson made the statement in a pastoral letter Tuesday, days...

STATE COLLEGE — The Rev. Paull Spring's beliefs have endured more than four decades of cultural influence since his ordination in 1965. But last August, the 72-yearold’s tolerance for change hit a tipping point when the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s highest governing body voted to ordinate homosexual pastors and “recognize, support and hold publicly accountable” same-sex relationships. Spring said the decision, which never mentions the word “marriage,” culminates a debate over human sexuality that, since the 1990s, has pressured the ELCA to reinterpret 2,000-year-old Christian doctrines. “What is the final authority of our faith,” asked Spring, of State College....

Although I am a registered Republican, I never really considered myself a party-line kind of guy. Party-line people are concerned with the survival of the party, no matter the consequence. Although I realize that this isn’t the ideal situation or approach to political governance, party survival is critical if the party you are trying to preserve is representing your political values in the governing process. However, I consider myself a conservative first, Republican voter second. The basic core values of conservatism from a governance standpoint are less government, less taxes, more personal freedom. Less government is good government because the...

The organization orchestrating the split from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will not be part of the new church. Dissident Lutherans overseeing a split from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) outlined their plan for launching a new denomination Thursday. But at the same time they announced that the new church will remain separate from the group that got it started. BACKGROUND:Lutheran CORE, an umbrella group of organizations, led the fight against the ELCA proposal to roster gay and lesbian pastors last summer. When the vote went in favor of gay pastors, CORE announced it would have a...

The largest Lutheran church in the country decided last summer to welcome gay pastors to the pulpit and two local churches are learning what that decision means for their congregations. The decision came during the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) held in Minneapolis in August. The Assembly voted to direct changes to ministry policies that would allow gays and lesbians to serve as clergy and professional lay workers as long as they were in, “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogomous, same-gender relationships.” The decision to call a gay pastor will be left to individual congregations. The vote...

Earth's north magnetic pole is racing toward Russia at almost 40 miles (64 kilometers) a year due to magnetic changes in the planet's core, new research says. The core is too deep for scientists to directly detect its magnetic field. But researchers can infer the field's movements by tracking how Earth's magnetic field has been changing at the surface and in space. Now, newly analyzed data suggest that there's a region of rapidly changing magnetism on the core's surface, possibly being created by a mysterious "plume" of magnetism arising from deeper in the core. And it's this region that...

A young woman wrote to me after the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted that it would allow persons in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-sex relationships to serve in some cases as pastors. She asked why we in the Lutheran Coalition for Renewal were so exercised about a few prohibitions from the Old Testament, while we ignored others from the same passage. She had a point. I enjoy shrimp, which is also forbidden in Leviticus. Of course, I also believe that loving your neighbor as yourself is binding on Christians, and that, too, comes originally from Leviticus. Certain principles from...

Lutheran Churches in Eastern Europe have added their voices to those of Lutherans worldwide who are critical of the decisions of the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly to endorse same-sex unions and to allow pastors to be in same-sex sexual relationships. The leaders of the Lutheran Churches in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania met Nov. 3-4. The bishops issued a message noting the crisis of faith and fellowship caused by the actions of the ELCA and the Church of Sweden in endorsing same-sex sexual relationships. These churches are all members of the Lutheran World Federation. “At the present time a common witness...

The Oromo Evangelical Lutheran Churches have unanimously voted to join Lutheran CORE. Lutheran CORE is honored to have these faithful Christians standing with us. We are humbled by their faithful witness both during the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly and since then. These faithful Christians faced persecution in their homeland of Ethiopia. They know what it means to stand firm in faith even in the face of intense opposition. Their witness is a source of encouragement to all who bear the name of Christ and to all who stand on the witness of Scripture and thus in opposition to the ELCA...

IRON MOUNTAIN - A regional chapter of Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal) will be formed when Lutherans from across Upper Peninsula, northern Wisconsin, and northern Lower Michigan gather on Saturday. The Rev. Corinne Johnson, interim pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church in Escanaba, and a member of the Lutheran CORE Advisory Council, said the meeting will begin at 9 a.m. and conclude at 4 p.m. at Our Saviour's Lutheran Church in Iron Mountain. The chapter will be formed in the afternoon. There will be about 150 people at the event, 15 of them pastors, and two keynote speakers. "After the events...

A decision at the highest level of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America about homosexuality has sent discontented ripples into Polk County, and a local church is holding discussions with a potential splinter group. At Abiding Savior Lutheran Church in Winter Haven on Sunday, a representative of Lutheran Coalition for Renewal, or CORE, met with about 80 parishioners to answer questions, said the Rev. Alan Ford, pastor of Abiding Savior. The Rev. Rebecca Heber of Lake Mary told those present the Evangelical Lutheran Church is moving away from its historic standards of scriptural authority by loosening restrictions on gays in...

Hurt by the recession and decisions by some Lutheran congregations to withhold their support, the Chicago-based Evangelical Lutheran Church in America acted last Sunday to reduce its budget by 10 percent and eliminate more than 40 full-time positions. Many Lutheran congregations, including some in Rowan County, have redirected their mission support to the ELCA in protest of the national organization's recent vote to allow gays and lesbians to serve as clergy. In October, about 450 Lutherans met at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Rowan County to discuss the ELCA's change in ministry policies. Those assembled approved a resolution to form...

NEW BRIGHTON, Minn. – The split over gay clergy within the country's largest Lutheran denomination has prompted a conservative faction to begin forming a new Lutheran church body separate from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Leaders of Lutheran CORE said Wednesday that a working group would immediately begin drafting a constitution and taking other steps to form the denomination, with hopes to have it off the ground by next August. "There are many people within the ELCA who are very unhappy with what has happened," said the Rev. Paull Spring, chairman of Lutheran CORE and a retired ELCA bishop...

For several years as uneducated sycophants in the media gushed and fawned over every utterance from former Vice President Al Gore, NewsBusters has informed readers of just how absurd the junk science he's peddling really is. Last Thursday, NBC "Tonight Show" viewers got a perfect example of how the Nobel Laureate basically makes things up, and that his poor grades in college were quite an indicator of just how little he understands about science.

The head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America reported that 40 positions may be cut as the denomination struggles financially. "These have been very painful days in this organization," ELCA Presiding Bishop the Rev. Mark S. Hanson told the Church Council Friday, according to the ELCA News Service. Lutherans are looking to reduce their 2010 budget by 10 percent due to decreased giving over the past 30 years, the economic downturn, and the decision by some congregations to withhold funding. Several congregations have decided to cut all funding to the ELCA following the controversial vote in August by the...

Lutheran Bishop David Zellmer said that his attendance at a meeting of the Lutheran Coalition for Renewal, or Lutheran CORE, in Watertown earlier this week should not be interpreted as a lack of support for the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that he leads. “Since there may have been some confusion, it’s important that I make clear that my attendance …was strictly for my own education. It should not be viewed as anything other than my wanting to know firsthand what was and was not being said,” Zellmer wrote on his synod blog Friday. Lutheran...

It was standing room only Monday night at St. Paul's Lutheran Church at a meeting of Lutherans unhappy with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's recent vote to allow gays and lesbians to serve as clergy. Those assembled — about 450, organizers estimated — voted unanimously to approve a resolution to form a Lutheran Coalition for Renewal (CORE) group in North Carolina. CORE is a conservative network of clergy and lay Lutherans who believe the church has fallen into heresy and whose goal is a "reconfiguration of North American Lutheranism." At issue mainly is the ELCA's adoption on Aug. 19...

Many of the North Carolina Synod's 86,000 members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America feel betrayed and frustrated due to action taken at the ELCA's recent biennial Churchwide Assembly - specifically, decisions to allow recognition of same-sex unions and allow persons in such relationships to serve as ordained clergy. Clearly these decisions are moves away from the authority and importance that Lutherans have historically and traditionally ascribed to scripture since Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s.Many read the news in disbelief; some were unaware the church was considering such extreme action even though millions of dollars...

Some area Lutheran congregations are withholding financial support to the national Evangelical Lutheran Church in America while they explore their future in the ELCA. Christ the King Lutheran Church in Newcastle, Wyo., quit sending money to ELCA headquarters in Chicago in September. Earlier this year, the small eastern Wyoming congregation voted to financially support the reform group, Lutheran Coalition for Renewal, which plans to reconfigure Lutheranism in North America because of the ELCA's recent vote to approve of homosexual clergy in committed same-sex relationships. "In some ways we're a little bit ahead of the curve on this," said the Rev....

It looks like the ELCA will remain in tact at least through the rest of the year. Today, hundreds of members from the Evangelical Lutheran church in America gathered in Indianapolis. They're part of a Lutheran group called "core” and are upset of a vote last month, which allowed gays and lesbians in committed same-sex relationships to serve as clergy. The group decided within the next year they’d decide whether or not to split from the church.

CORE meeting at Fishers, IN Sorry this is a bit late; no wireless at the church, so it had to wait until I got home and I got sidetracked drinking a beer. The sanctuary of Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Fishers, IN, was pretty well full (1200 capacity) thirty minutes before the official starting time of the CORE meeting. Pr. Mark Chavez opened the meeting by leading a rousing rendition, first of “A Mighty Fortress” and then “Holy, Holy, Holy” (both sung out of the hymnal in the pew). He reported that when the first call was made about the...

New rules about gay clergy have boosted interest in Lutheran CORE group's national meeting: They'll discuss leaving the ELCA. If the largest Lutheran church body in North America splits over a recent controversial vote on gay clergy, the foundation likely will be laid this weekend.Opponents of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's recent vote to permit gay ministers are meeting in Indianapolis, where the No. 1 item on the agenda is: "A possible reconfiguration of North American Lutheranism."Organizers of the annual Lutheran CORE meeting were unprepared for the huge response, finally capping attendance after 1,200 people signed up -- far...

The presiding bishop of the nation's largest Lutheran denomination warned Wednesday that withholding financial support to protest a recent gay clergy vote would be "devastating" to the church. Bishop Mark Hanson laid out his concerns in a letter to leaders of the 4.7 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is based in Chicago. The ELCA churchwide assembly voted last month to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy, dropping a requirement that gay clergy remain celibate. The Rev. Mark Chavez, director of Lutheran CORE, said the gay clergy vote was the devastating event — "a...

Lutheran CORE Plans Next Steps, Intends to be 'Free-Standing' Synod 09-198-JB CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Saying the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has "fallen into heresy," because of actions taken at last month's churchwide assembly, the chair of Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Reform) said the organization intends to be a "free-standing synod" which will carry out ministries apart from the ELCA. In addition CORE is expected to consider initiating conversations with member Lutheran congregations and reform movements in the United States and Canada toward a possible reconfiguration "of North American Lutheranism," said the Rev. Paull E. Spring, State College, Pa.,...

Aug. 13 /Christian Newswire/ -- Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Reform) will be gathering Lutherans from throughout the United States to defend traditional marriage and to defeat proposed changes in church teaching about sexuality. Lutheran CORE will be working to defeat proposals that would change the teaching and policy of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The proposals to be considered Aug. 17-23 by the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis would affirm homosexual relationships and would allow pastors to be in same-sex relationships. "The Churchwide Assembly has no authority to be voting on these matters," said the Rev. Paull Spring of State...

A radical new idea may revolutionise our understanding of one of the most vital forces on Earth Earth's magnetic field, long thought to be generated by molten metals swirling around its core, may instead be produced by ocean currents, according to controversial new research published this week. It suggests that the movements of such volumes of salt water around the world have been seriously underestimated by scientists as a source of magnetism. If proven, the research would revolutionise geophysics, the study of the Earth’s physical properties and behaviour, in which the idea that magnetism originates in a molten core is...

Colorado’s Ken Salazar is facing his first major backlash as Secretary of the Interior. A national civil rights group says Salazar is “going Hollywood on us” and caving into actor Robert Redford’s demands that American oil and gas leases in Utah be cancelled. He is also being accused of going counter to the spirit of economic stimulus by cancelling the leases. Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) says higher energy prices will result from the decision to scrap the leases of 77 parcels of land for oil and gas drilling in Utah’s Redrock country. The group believes low-income families feel the...

It's really awesome when one of the liberal elites gets a taste of their own medicine. I wonder how Robert Redford felt the other day in Utah when he was faced with a mob of African-Americans protesting him...

It's a classic image from every youngster's science textbook: a cutaway image of Earth's interior. The brown crust is paper-thin; the warm mantle orange, the seething liquid of the outer core yellow, and at the center the core, a ball of solid, red-hot iron. Now a new theory aims to rewrite it all by proposing the seemingly impossible: Earth has not one but two inner cores. The idea stems from an ancient, cataclysmic collision that scientists believe occurred when a Mars-sized object hit Earth about 4.45 billion years ago. The young Earth was still so hot that it was mostly...

A civil rights group says it is organizing protests against actor Robert Redford for what it says is his political role as the Grinch who is hurting low-income families by fighting oil and gas drilling in Utah. "If Robert Redford succeeds in blocking natural gas production in Utah, it's going to hurt a lot of people on the other end of the pipeline — especially low-income families who are struggling to pay their heating bills," said Niger Innis, national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality. Innis said CORE and the High Impact Leadership Coalition are launching a "Don't Freeze...

As reported by Ed Morrissey (2008), two years ago when the large nuclear utility Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) wanted Illinois state lawmakers to back a large rate hike two years ago, it took a creative lobbying approach. Its parent company, Exelon Corporation, contracted with ASK Public Strategies, a consulting firm, to a build a fake "front company" that appeared to be devoted to the public interest called Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity (CORE). Then the "front company" (CORE) ran TV ads warning of a “California-style energy crisis” if the rate increase wasn’t approved. The CORE ads, however, failed to disclose in...

Aug 25, 2008 Several Politicians Named as Punishers of the Poor at Press Conference Denver, CO—A coalition of leaders from the African American, civil rights, faith-based and veteran communities this week blasted several Members of Congress as “Punishers of the Poor,” saying that they all scored a perfect zero on an affordable energy voting scorecard. The six politicians who earned top honors as the “worst of the worst” among those supporting higher energy prices—and who were memoralized in a Punishers of the Poor deck of playing cards—are these: Joker: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Joker: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Ace...

CALGARY -- Support for Canada's oil sands is coming from an unexpected American group--an anti-poverty coalition led by African-American civil rights and faith leaders. The group is waging a national campaign targeting 50 "extreme" environmental organizations and 100 U. S. politicians it says are restricting energy supplies through climate-change legislation, causing oil prices to spike to levels that are "strangling" the poor. Niger Innis, co-chairman of the "Stop The War On The Poor" campaign and national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the oldest civil rights groups in the United States, said the alliance wants more...

The newest analysis of trace gases trapped in Antarctic ice cores now provide a reasonable view of greenhouse gas concentrations as much as 800,000 years into the past, and are further confirming the link between greenhouse gas levels and global warming, scientists reported in the journal Nature. They also show that during that entire period of time, there have never been concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane as high as the current levels, said Edward Brook, an associate professor of geosciences at Oregon State University, and author of a Nature commentary on the new studies. "The fundamental conclusion that today's...

(IsraelNN.com) Education Ministry officials have decided to keep Arabic in the core curriculum for middle and high school students until further notice. Arabic was removed from the core curriculum earlier in the year as part of an attempt to streamline the curriculum and make it acceptable to the hareidi-religious community. Most hareidi-religious schools have rejected the core curriculum and prefer to operate as private schools with some government funding. However, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the government cannot fund high schools that do not teach the core curriculum, a decision that would leave many hareidi-religious schools facing a budget...

Hormones control growth, metabolism, reproduction and many other important biological processes. In humans, and all other vertebrates, the chemical signals are produced by specialised brain centres such as the hypothalamus and secreted into the blood stream that distributes them around the body. Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] now reveal that the hypothalamus and its hormones are not purely vertebrate inventions, but have their evolutionary roots in marine, worm-like ancestors. In this week's issue of the journal Cell they report that hormone-secreting brain centres are much older than expected and likely evolved from multifunctional cells of the last...

by 2nd Lt. Bryon McGarry 354th Fighter Wing Public Affairs 1/19/2007 - EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska (AFNEWS) -- The "Iceman Team" recently accomplished an enormous undertaking the Air Force way -- Airmen taking care of Airmen. Following the end of its 20-year Sprucewood Homes development lease in August, Eielson leaders made the difficult decision to relocate 241 families on very short notice. "Following unresolved negotiations with the Sprucewood Homes development ownership to continue our lease, we had to move quickly to make sure our families were taken care of before the lowest winter temperatures hit," said Brig. Gen. Dave Scott, 354th Fighter Wing...

SACRAMENTO – For the first time, California has started to map an all-in-one strategy to safeguard an economically vital network of highways, railroads and energy supply lines crisscrossing the heart of the state. This post-Hurricane Katrina response broadens the state's initial list of priorities beyond levees and aqueducts to target overlooked lifelines centered in the Sacramento Delta that are just as vital to the state's fiscal well-being, from San Diego to Silicon Valley. A natural disaster in the delta could disrupt the delivery of goods and services along roads, rail lines and deep-water ports. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. facilities...

BAGHDAD, June 1, 2006 – The top coalition operational commander in Iraq has directed his subordinate commanders to conduct training in "core warrior values" for all coalition forces, highlighting the importance of adhering to legal, moral and ethical standards on the battlefield, military officials here announced today. Officials said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, Multinational Corps Iraq commander, ordered the training to reinforce and sustain training servicemembers received prior to their deployment to Iraq. The order comes as the military investigates allegations of servicemembers killing unarmed Iraqi civilians. "Of the nearly 150,000 coalition forces presently in Iraq, 99.9...

<p>Ship logs and pottery show how the geomagnetic field has changed.</p> <p>Old ship records of magnetic north have helped to unravel a record of our planet's field.</p> <p>While sailors plied the Seven Seas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, little did they know that their ships' logs would one day help scientists to reconstruct the history of the Earth's magnetic field.</p>

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Katherine Harris' U.S. Senate campaign lost what was left of its core team when a top adviser, campaign manager, and communications director resigned this weekend. Harris, a Republican congresswoman challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record), said Saturday she would introduce new members of her campaign early in the week. "We are stronger as a campaign today than we were yesterday," Harris said in a press release. Harris said her campaign has lined up people who believe in her candidacy, are committed, and support the "values of mainstream Florida citizens." Former campaign manager Jim...

Tiny amounts of salt and dust trapped in the Antarctic ice sheet for the last 740,000 years shed new light on changes to the Earth's climate. The results, published this week in the journal Nature, come from the team who extracted a 3 km long ice core from Dome C, high on East Antarctica's plateau - the oldest continuous climate record obtained from ice cores so far. Since reporting in 2004 that the Earth experienced eight climate cycles (each consisting of an ice age and warm period) the team have been analysing the chemical impurities in the cores to unravel...

Thursday, Feb. 9, 2006 1:15 p.m. EST CORE Blasts King Funeral 'Outrage' The head of one of the nation's oldest civil rights organizations is blasting former President Jimmy Carter and Rev. Joseph Lowery for politicizing the funeral of Coretta Scott King. In a press release Thursday, Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, called comments by Carter and Lowery attacking President Bush "crass" and "disrespectful." "It was an outrage for such behavior to be exhibited in the presence of the President of the United States, and it was particularly outrageous for it to occur at a funeral for...

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) said efforts by both Democrats and Republicans to reduce the influence of lobbyists are not addressing the core of the problem. Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," the Arizona Republican renewed his criticism of "earmarks," late additions to bills that often provide millions of dollars for lawmakers' pet projects. "If we don't fix the earmarking, then I can assure you the corruption will go on," McCain said. He described an "earmark" as "a single provision in a line that nobody's ever seen or heard of, and most times we don't find out...

On January 16th, I attended the 22nd annual Martin Luther King, Jr. dinner sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality. Held in the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers, suffice it to say, I had an opportunity to meet a large number of very prominent Americans.

WASHINGTON - Loyalty and continuity have marked the Bush White House since early on. After two wars, devastating strikes by terrorists and hurricanes, a bruising re-election and countless legislative battles, President Bush's team is continuing the trend — defying history and shakeup rumors to remain almost entirely intact five years in. "They've been there long enough to qualify for the Medicare prescription drug benefit," quipped Paul Light, a professor of organizational studies at New York University. The big question is how much longer Bush's inner circle can hold together. Only a handful of the president's most senior aides have departed...

Listen While You Freep! Five channels, five programs every day and each one playing for 24 hours and on weekends so tune in when it’s convenient for YOU! Call In Number - 866-884-TALK (8255) Heating the EDGE of a New Media! 1pm est- Straight Talk -Why is Christmas such a threat to society? Why do the liberals come out en masse to plead for the life of black murderers, but not the lives of the 1,500 unborn black children that are murdered every day? Join me for "Straight Talk" on these topics and more on your "right" choice for the...

Stable Carbon Cycle–Climate Relationship During the Late Pleistocene Urs Siegenthaler,1 Thomas F. Stocker,1* Eric Monnin,1 Dieter Lüthi,1 Jakob Schwander,1 Bernhard Stauffer,1 Dominique Raynaud,2 Jean-Marc Barnola,2 Hubertus Fischer,3 Valérie Masson-Delmotte,4 Jean Jouzel4 A record of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations measured on the EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) Dome Concordia ice core extends the Vostok CO2 record back to 650,000 years before the present (yr B.P.). Before 430,000 yr B.P., partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 lies within the range of 260 and 180 parts per million by volume. This range is almost 30% smaller than that of the...