Sustainable Living
An Aluminum Battery
We live in a battery-centric world. We depend on them for the ubiquitous devices we use every day: cell phones, tablets, notebook computers and lately, smart watches. Increasingly, we use them to power electric cars as well.
Green Roofs In France
France is becoming increasingly serious about environmentalism. That country recently passed new legislation mandating that all new commercial construction projects must incorporate either green roofs or solar panels. Solar panels are increasingly familiar to us on rooftops but to date green roofs have primarily been a European phenomenon.
Time To Hug A Tree
Forest preservation is essential to combating climate change. Growing trees absorb carbon dioxide, storing it in their wood. Forest destruction is responsible for about 20% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Accounting For Sea Level Rise
Several years ago, North Carolina’s legislature voted to ignore sea level rise when setting rules for coastal development. Here is the science that conservationists hope will influence future decision-making.
Growing Wind Power
The global wind power industry had a banner year in 2014, installing more than 50 GW of new capacity. To put this in perspective, the total amount of wind power capacity in the world ten years ago was only 60 GW.
Why Did The Frog Cross The Road?
Here in the Northeast, after a long winter signs of spring have finally arrived. Many of us are tuned into budding plants and migratory birds. It’s also a great time to take a hike and observe the awakening of amphibian life.
Why Volcanoes Are Not Driving Climate Change
Once in a while, one will hear the argument that volcanoes are to blame for rising carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. There are several reasons why this can’t be the case.
[Read more…] about Why Volcanoes Are Not Driving Climate Change
Cooling Cities With Electric Cars
We have previously talked about the urban heat island effect. Crowded metropolitan areas are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas as a result of human activities. Among other things, cities fill up with cars idling in traffic and cars not only produce greenhouse gas emissions, their internal combustion engines also produce a lot of heat.
Earth Day On A Crowded Planet
In 1970, when the first Earth Day was celebrated, there were 200 million people living in the United States. Sometime during 2015, our population will top 320 million, and the Earth seems destined to harbor at least 10 billion of us by the middle of this century.
A New Catalyst for Producing Hydrogen
We have spoken before about the prospects for using hydrogen as a clean auto fuel as well as an energy storage medium. Most hydrogen is produced using the steam methane reforming process, which requires natural gas, uses lots of energy, and produces carbon dioxide as a waste product. Hydrogen made this way is not really a green fuel.
The Value of Woodland Pools
Woodland pools are small, seasonal wetlands. In the Northeast, they are typically covered with ice and snow in the winter. In the heat of summer they dry up. And in the spring and late fall they contain standing water. Now is a great time for exploring the diversity of life in woodland pools.
Designer Wetlands
Drinking water supplies around the world often contain trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, agricultural and industrial chemicals, and other synthetic compounds that can harm reproduction in fish and may be linked to adverse health effects in humans. Many of these chemicals enter the water supply by passing through our bodies, entering the sewage system, and finding their way into rivers and other bodies of water. There are currently no US regulations for medical drugs under the Safe Drinking Water Act, so it is important to attack this problem proactively.
Perennial Rice
Rice is the most economically important crop in the world. It supplies humanity with about a quarter of its calories. Domesticated rice is a short-lived plant that generally dies off after it produces seeds. Rice paddies have to be cleared of vegetation and plowed each year and are highly vulnerable to soil and nutrient loss through erosion, soil compaction and decline in organic matter.
Zero Emission Buses
Most of the news about electric vehicles relates to passenger cars. We hear about Teslas, Leafs, and hydrogen-powered Toyotas all the time. But there is also an expanding fleet of electric and fuel cell buses starting to appear on urban streets in several countries, including the U.S. and China.
Are Weed Killers Killing Us?
The U.S.-based agrochemical giant Monsanto finds itself at the forefront of another controversy. Monsanto, which dominates the agriculture market with its genetically modified seeds and herbicides, has drawn unwanted scrutiny after a new report linked one of its most popular herbicides to potential health hazards.
A Giant Marine Preserve
The marine life and habitats in the oceans are at risk from the activities of humankind. The three major threats to the health of our oceans are overfishing, marine pollution, and the effects of climate change. National parks established around the world have long been a way to protect and preserve wildlife and habitats on land. Only more recently have marine protected areas come into existence. These are special places in the ocean designated to help protect marine life and habitat.
Seeing Smog And Seeking Solutions
Technology is changing the way we ‘see’ air pollution. Advances in environmental sensors, computing power, and visualization software are allowing researchers to monitor and display air quality in many of America’s cities 24 hours a day, in real-time. This is giving clean air advocates unprecedented access to pollution hotspots.
The True Cost Of Meat
It’s not uncommon for Americans to eat meat at every meal – bacon with breakfast, a turkey sandwich at lunch, steak for dinner. Worldwide, meat production has more than quadrupled since the 1960s, when more meager portions were the norm. And mass production has driven prices down considerably.
Trash Into Treasure
