Wild Bee Loss Puts Crops At Risk
Between 2008 and 2013, the United States lost nearly a quarter of its wild bees. Some 39% of our nation’s croplands rely on pollinators. Important farming regions – from California’s Central Valley to the Midwest’s Corn Belt – are among the areas grappling with wild bee declines.
San Diego Green
While 195 countries reached agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in December, the city of San Diego made a major commitment of its own. Whereas the Paris climate accord is non-binding, San Diego has gone much further.
Crocodiles And Climate Change
Crocodiles are large aquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Australia. The first crocodiles appeared approximately 240 million years ago – around the same time as dinosaurs. And while the resilient species did survive the last great extinction, crocodiles might not be climate change-proof after all.
Community Solar On The Rise
Most Americans are bullish on solar power. However, the majority of Americans are unable to install their own rooftop solar system because either they don’t own the place where they live or because their home is unsuitable for installing solar panels for one reason or another.
California’s Methane Leak
It’s being called the largest environmental disaster in California’s history. On October 23, 2015, a massive natural gas leak erupted at a storage well operated by Southern California Gas in Aliso Canyon, outside of Los Angeles. The leak has forced more than 2,800 families from their homes, and to make that worse, they have no idea when they’ll be able to return.
Pulling Carbon Out Of The Air
The world is increasingly united in the desire to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere. There is much emphasis on reducing and someday eliminating our use of fossil fuels, which is the main culprit in the situation we find ourselves in today. More and more we are embracing the use of renewable energy sources to produce electricity and we are starting to slowly move away from internal combustion engines to power our cars.
Road Salt
Snow season is here. The chances are good you’ll find yourself behind a truck spreading salt on the roads in an attempt to deice them. You may even try a little salt on your own front porch. Annually we spread about 20 million tons of road salt in the U.S., and we’ve been doing it since the late 1930s.
Norway And Electric Cars
One of the standard criticisms aimed at electric cars is whether they actually are good for the environment when everything is taken into account. For example, people worry about the amount of energy expended and the environmental impact of actually building the car. Recent studies have shown that this balances out over a relatively short amount of the car’s lifetime.
Powering The Hydrogen Highway
2016 is the first year that hydrogen fuel cell cars are available to the general public. There aren’t very many of them as yet, but Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai all have fuel cell vehicles on the market. All these companies are betting on hydrogen-powered cars as the future of personal transportation.
Right now, California is where almost all the action is for fuel cell cars but even there, there are only a handful of hydrogen fueling stations. The automakers are providing a great incentive to owners of their fuel cell cars: free hydrogen for the first couple of years. But free or not, it has to be available.
There are plans to build many more hydrogen fueling stations in California, but one problem is that it takes quite a while to commission new stations. Every car manufacturer has to perform validation tests that take weeks. As a result, it can take months to bring stations online.
California hopes to bring online a network of more than 50 stations by the end of 2016, mostly in Southern California and in the San Francisco Bay Area. Thanks to a new device developed by Sandia National Laboratories and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, this rapid deployment of new stations now looks possible.
It is called the Hydrogen Station Equipment Performance device, or HyStEP, and it acts like a surrogate for vehicles and eliminates the need for each manufacturer to test separately. Testing can be done in less than a week.
Streamlining the process for commissioning hydrogen fueling stations is one important step towards building the hydrogen highway.
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Web Links
Speeding up the hydrogen highway
Photo, posted June 14, 2014, courtesy of Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Primates And Toucans As Climate Allies
Many of us have a soft spot for primates and toucans. These charismatic creatures are prized for their intellect and beauty. But did you know they also play a vital role in combating climate change?
Pumped Hydro Storage
There is much talk these days about energy storage. As more and more wind and solar power enters the electrical grid, there is an increasing need to be able to store excess energy and have it available when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Much of the talk centers around battery technology, and having storage batteries distributed throughout the grid is the most versatile and widely applicable way to provide storage.
The World’s Lakes Are Heating Up
Climate change is causing the world’s lakes to warm, with repercussions for fisheries and freshwater supplies. So reports an ambitious new study, funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation, and recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.
China And Renewable Energy
When it comes to carbon dioxide, three countries are responsible for half of the world’s emissions into the atmosphere: China, the US, and India. On a per capita basis, we are far worse than China, but its population is so huge that that it produces twice as much CO2 as the United States and nearly one-third of the world’s emissions.
Listening To Forest Data
The forest is playing a symphony. By tapping into environmental monitoring sensors at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a tool called WaterViz captures a real-time audio visualization of the forest’s water cycle.
Is Natural Gas Cleaner Than Coal?
The widespread use of hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) as well as improved drilling techniques have created a major boom in natural gas production. This unquestionably has positive economic impacts for many. One of the important consequences of this is that natural gas is increasingly taking the place of coal for powering electrical generating plants.
Food Deserts
A food desert is a geographic area – often an urban area – where affordable and nutritious food is difficult to obtain, particularly for those without access to an automobile. Food deserts disproportionately affect occupants of poor, low-income neighborhoods where there are often no groceries stores or farmer’s markets. These are places were food comes from convenience stores or fast-food chains. More than 20 million Americans are thought to live in food deserts.
Composting Pays
Many people compost their food scraps and yard waste because they think it is the right thing to do. In some places, like San Francisco and Seattle, there is curbside pickup available to have these organic materials composted.
Ecology And Designing Future Cities
When most people hear the word ‘ecology’ – chances are it conjures up images of scientists working in distant, wild landscapes, such as old growth forests or remote mountain lakes. Increasingly, however, ecological studies are focused on urban and suburban areas.
