Thanks to compliance with the Montreal Protocol, the ozone layer is beginning to recover and that means Antarctica is about to experience more warming and an increase in snowmelt, a new study in Geophysical Research Letters predicts.

Based on space-borne microwave observations between 1979 and 2009, the study suggests that Antarctic snowmelt levels should revert to higher norms as one of the climate drivers, the SAM (Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode), subsides as the damage to the ozone layer is repaired.

Scientists from MIT say they are developing a new kind of power plant that can generate electricity without emitting any carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and can be built at prices comparable to conventional natural-gas plants, and even to coal-burning plants.

The catch, unfortunately, is that they need the government to inflate the price of coal through a cap and trade scheme or some other carbon tax to make the new power plant a viable alternative.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health say it's time to ban smoking in private residences. Never mind those archaic ideas like choice and private property, this must be done, they argue,  to protect the children. And if you don't want to protect children, well, what's wrong with you?

Their push for tighter restrictions on smoking is based on a new paper published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers&Prevention, which suggests that hair nicotine concentrations are higher in children exposed to secondhand smoke at home, and the younger the children, the higher the concentration under the same level of secondhand smoke exposure at home.

While feeding birds may seem like an ordinary and innocuous activity, scientists are reporting this week that it can have a profound effect on the evolutionary future of a certain species of bird, and those changes can be seen in the very near term.

 A report published online in the December 3rd issue of Current Biology shows that what was once a single population of birds known as blackcaps has been split into two reproductively isolated groups in fewer than 30 generations, despite the fact that they continue to breed side by side in the very same forests.

From The Times, a journalist global warming skeptic changes his tune:

I thought global warming was all bog-standard, apocalyptic nonsense when it first emerged in the 1980s. People, I knew, like nothing better than an End-of-the-World story to give their lives meaning. I also knew that science is dynamic. Big ideas rise and fall. Once the Earth was the centre of the universe. Then it wasn’t. Once Isaac Newton had completed physics. Then he hadn’t. Once there was going to be a new ice age. Then there wasn’t.

My google news alert for "squid" frequently pops up recipes and restaurant reviews, most of which I dismiss out of hand. But a critical mass of alerts mentioning squid ink pasta, risotto, and other dishes finally drove me to a more thorough investigation.