There are roughly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who currently live without electric power. Putting in the infrastructure to supply power to these people in their various countries has been a major economic and logistical challenge.
When we think of solar power, we usually are talking about the panels that generate electricity using the photovoltaic effect. These panels are on millions of rooftops around the world and in utility-scale solar farms. There are also solar water heating systems that use the sun’s heat to provide hot water for homes and businesses.
As extreme weather events become increasingly common, arctic ice disappears, and wildfires burn for weeks on end, many people wonder just what it will take to change some of the entrenched opinions about climate change.
Microplastics are everywhere. The tiny plastic particles pose a massive environmental challenge. Microplastics are polluting oceans at an alarming rate. Much of the oceanic microplastics result from the breakdown of plastic litter. Another source of microplastics pollution is microbeads. Microbeads, which are commonly added to cleansing and exfoliating personal care products, pollute the environment when they get flushed down the drain.
Turning seawater into drinkable water is a highly desirable capability given that fresh water is generally in short supply and seawater is endlessly abundant. Desalination plants typically strain salt out of seawater by pumping it through films made of polyamide. Polyamide filters are riddled with tiny pores that allow water molecules to squeeze through, but not sodium ions.
The Caribbean is home to nearly 30 island nations and more than 7,000 individual islands with a combined population of around 40 million. All of the islands are susceptible to disasters such as hurricanes that can leave residents without electrical power for extended periods of time.
Historically, rhino horn and tiger bone were used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat various illnesses, despite the lack of any evidence of their effectiveness. In fact, rhino horn is simply keratin, a protein that is found in human fingernails and hair. Rhino horn is used to treat everything from cancer to gout in traditional Chinese medicine. Similarly, a paste made from crushed tiger bone is thought to treat a variety of ailments, including rheumatism and back pain.
A burgeoning ecosystem of algae is turning parts of the Greenland ice sheet pinkish-red. It isn’t just colorful. It is contributing more than a little to the melting of one of the biggest frozen bodies of water in the world.
Plastic straws have become outcasts these days and for good reasons. But they are not the only bad actors in the world of plastic products. Single-use plastic water bottles are another example of a real trouble maker.
As the climate warms, the planet’s landscape is changing. The Arctic ice is shrinking, the ocean is rising altering coastlines, and plants, animals and diseases are on the move. The world’s climate zones are changing in significant and measurable ways.
A study by environmental health scientists at Columbia University examined the release of vapors from gas station vent pipes and found that emissions were 10 times higher than the estimates used to establish setback regulations that determine how close schools, playgrounds, and parks can be to the facilities.
In the Back to the Future movies, the DeLorean time machine ran on garbage. We aren’t any closer to building time machines, but it might soon be practical to produce fuel from garbage.
Cloudbursts are intense rainstorms that drop enormous amounts of water over a short period of time. Climate change is expected to make cloudbursts occur more frequently. Cities around the world are looking for better ways to cope with weather phenomena like cloudbursts.
Hotter and dryer conditions are leading to an increasing number of wildfires in North America and elsewhere around the world. The damage they cause is well-known. But one aspect of that damage that tends to be overlooked is the impact on aquatic environments and drinking water supplies.
It is increasingly clear that the rate at which carbon dioxide emissions are being reduced is not sufficient to prevent dire consequences of climate change. It appears that it will be necessary to try to actually remove carbon dioxide from the air. Such actions are termed “negative emissions.”
A recent study by Harvard University researchers published in two papers looked at the environmental impact of installing sufficient wind power to meet all the energy needs of the US. While doing so would be far better for the environment than burning coal, it would not have negligible impacts.
PCBs belong to a broad family of man-made organic chemicals known as chlorinated hydrocarbons. PCBs were once widely used in electrical equipment like capacitors and transformers, as well as in paints, dyes, and heat transfer fluids.
Investors in the US are starting to catch up with their European counterparts with respect to taking environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles into account.
The Paris climate accord by nearly 200 countries seeks to reduce global carbon emissions. But how can the actions of these countries be monitored, reported, and verified? It is not an easy task.
