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LICAPA, Peru (AFP) – In a remote corner of the Peruvian Andes, men in paint-daubed boilersuits diligently coat a mountain summit with whitewash in an experimental bid to recuperate the country's melting glaciers. It's a bizarre sight at 4,756 metres (15,600 feet) above sea level. The man behind the idea is not a glaciologist but an inventor, Eduardo Gold. His non-governmental organisation Glaciares de Peru was one of 26 winners of the World Bank's "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" competition in November 2009. Gold has already begun work while he waits for the 200,000-dollar prize money to fund his...

How you can help reduce global warming. Most of us want to help, but don't know how. You can individually help stop global warming. First a little science. The problem is that too much of the sun's radiation is being absorbed in the atmosphere and on the earth's surface. Green-house gases allow high frequency radiation like ordinary visible light into the earth, but block lower frequency radiation like heat radiation from leaving the earth. They act like a one way mirror, energy comes in, but doesn't get back out. "Albedo" means "The fraction of electromagnetic radiation reflected by a celestial...

Probe to 'look inside' asteroids By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff in Paris, France Studies of asteroids would aid Earth-protection strategies A new space mission concept unveiled at a Paris conference aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved. The perceived threat of asteroids colliding with our planet has renewed interest in space missions to understand these...

NASA scientists say that soot, mostly from diesel engines, is causing as much as a quarter of all observed global warming by reducing the ability of snow and ice to reflect sunlight. Their findings on how soot affects reflective ability, known as albedo, raise new questions about human-caused climate change from the Arctic to the Alps. Levels of airborne soot as high as about 100 parts per billion were found in the Alps, enough to significantly reduce the snow's ability to reflect sunlight rather than absorb it. "We suggest that soot contributes to near worldwide melting of ice that is...