environment
The Global Vertebrate Population Is Struggling
According to a new report by the World Wildlife Fund, the planet’s populations of vertebrates have dropped an average of 60% since 1970.
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Powering Africa With The Sun
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.
More Power From The Sun’s Heat
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.
Bad News For Beer
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 And Humans
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.
Greenland Turning Pink
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.
Fumes From Gas Stations
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.
Turning Plastic Waste Into Green Energy
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 And New York City
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.
Wildfires And The Water Supply
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.
Environmental Impact of Wind Power
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.
How To Measure Carbon Emissions
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.
Electric Buses On The Rise
Electric buses are replacing conventional diesel-fueled buses at an accelerating rate that is outpacing the adoption of battery-powered cars. According to forecasts by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, by 2030 some 28% of car sales will be electric vehicles while 84% of new buses will be electric buses. So far, some 12 years away, the actual adoption of electric buses is outpacing this optimistic projection.
Clean Water In The Corn Belt
Iowa is grappling with a growing battle over the integrity of its water. Nitrogen and phosphates have been flowing in ever-increasing quantities into Iowa’s public water supplies and dealing with the problem has become a major political issue in the state.
Glacial Engineering
As the world struggles with trying to limit carbon emissions and slow the pace of global warming, there is increasing analysis of various forms of geoengineering. Often, these consist of nearly unthinkable efforts to intervene in the climate on a global scale with unpredictable and possibly catastrophic consequences.
Diesel Is Dirty
Three years ago, Volkswagen was found to have illegally cheated federal emissions tests in the US using devious programming of emission control devices. The subterfuge enabled 11 million passenger cars to meet U.S. emissions standards in the laboratory despite that fact that they actually produced up to 40 times higher emissions than the legal limit in real-world driving.
Airports and Rising Seas
There are many low-lying coastal airports around the world. These airports are increasingly vulnerable to the rising sea levels and the more extreme weather brought about by climate change.
Rapid Response To Climate Change More Important Than Ever
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a new report emphasizing the importance of taking rapid action to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and examining the consequences of allowing temperatures to rise 2 degrees instead.
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