For more than 15 years, the Chinese government has been grappling with some of the deadliest air pollution in the world. Extreme pollution events are a regular wintertime occurrence and health experts estimate that more than a million people die each year in China from particulate air pollution.
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.
Honeybees, which play a critical role in agriculture by pollinating crops, are not native to the United States. Beekeepers manage most honeybee colonies and they move the bees around to support farmers.
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.
Our planet has been through five upheavals over the past 450 million years. During each one, the environment on earth changed so dramatically that most plant and animal species became extinct. After each of these mass extinction events, evolution slowly filled the gaps in the environment with new species.
Fossil fuel-based power plants are increasingly considering the use of carbon capture technologies as a way to reduce emissions. The biggest challenge to the wide-spread adoption of such technology is its energy cost, which of course equates to economic cost. Present-day power plants equipped with carbon capture systems can use up to 30% of the electricity they generate just to power the capture, release, and storage of carbon dioxide.
The glut of plastic in the oceans is a global problem. About 9 million tons of plastic enter the oceans each year. Much of it is discarded fishing gear, plastic bags, and other macroscopic objects. But a great deal of it is in the form of microplastics or small particles. Some microplastics come from cosmetics and other products containing them but a lot of them are the result of larger plastic objects breaking down into small particles.
By the year 2050, scientists predict that there will be two billion more people to feed in the world. And climate change isn’t making that task any simpler. From extreme weather events to rising global temperatures, climate change is expected to affect the types of food we grow, and to negatively affect the food production needed to feed the growing population.
Aerosols – tiny particles in the atmosphere released from fires and other sources – can cool the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space and by increasing cloud brightness.
Commercially-available solar panels are composed of solar cells that are most often made from various forms of silicon. Some panels use thin-film cells made from other semiconductor materials. Solar cells utilize a property of semiconductors that allows them to convert light energy into electrical energy.
Even as Californians fought giant wildfires and Japan struggled with record high temperatures, the unusual summer heat in central and northern Europe has led to the worst drought conditions in over 40 years.
Hydrogen is widely considered to be a desirable source of clean energy. It can be used in fuel cells to power electric motors in cars or can be burned directly in internal combustion engines. If it is compressed or converted to liquid, it can be efficiently stored and transported. Most of all, when it is used as an energy source, the only emission it produces is water.
Air pollution is deadly. Studies have found that fine particulate matter, such as airborne pieces of dust, dirt, smoke, soot, and other microscopic particles can enter our lungs and bloodstream, contributing to major health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, and kidney disease.
There has been a great deal of debate over mandating labels for genetically engineered foods. On the pro side, people argue that they have a right to know whether what they are eating contains GMO – or as they are also called GE — ingredients. On the con side, people argue that the aversion toward GE is unfounded and that labeling foods will simply drive away consumers undeservedly.
Changes in diet have often been proposed as a way to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions. However, there has not been much research about the affordability and feasibility of such changes.
The revered biologist E. O. Wilson once said that “if all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”
A growing body of work is leading to the conclusion that it may be nearly impossible to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) because we are simply not reducing emissions quickly enough. By some estimates, the current level of emissions will lock in that large a gain within the next few years. At that point, the only way to reverse the effects is to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, where it otherwise will stay for hundreds to thousands of years.
It is often said that biodiversity is crucial for staving off extinctions. Ecosystems are complex and are essentially defined by the interdependencies among the various animals and plants. It stands to reason that removing species from an ecosystem can have significant effects up and down the food chain. Extinctions are much more likely when biodiversity diminishes.
