The Arctic is heating up faster than any other region of the planet. As a result, once-distinct boundaries between the frigid polar ocean and the warmer, neighboring Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are blurring, opening the way for the southern waters to enter the polar regions. The volume of Pacific Ocean water flowing into the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait has increased by 70% over the past decade. The Arctic Ocean’s cold layering system that blocks Atlantic inflows is breaking down.
Global sea levels are rising by about a tenth of an inch per year, but in some places, the rise is faster… much faster. From 2011 to 2015, sea levels rose up to 5 inches – an inch per year – in some locales along the Eastern Seaboard. Places like Norfolk, Virginia and Miami are experiencing so-called sunny day flooding, something that had not been expected for decades according to climate projections. So, what is going on?
Last spring, we talked about a solar-powered water harvester designed to pull water out of even dry desert air. The prototype device was described in a paper by scientists at UC Berkeley and MIT in the journal Science.
Many of us are well aware of the environmental challenge faced because of the proliferation of plastics. Since plastic does not decompose naturally, most of it remains in our environment. Only 12% has been incinerated and only 9% has been recycled. A great deal of plastic ends up in the ocean and other bodies of water. Much of it breaks down into small particles – microplastics – which are now ubiquitous in the oceans. There are also microplastics that started out that way in the form of little beads used in the cosmetics industry. Studies have found microplastics in the bodies of 73% of fish from the North Atlantic.
Almost everyone everywhere comes into contact with plastic everyday. Its use has increased 20-fold in the past half-century, and production is expected to double again in the next 20 years. But is plastic so ubiquitous that we are unwittingly drinking the stuff?
Poaching and habitat loss have reduced Central African elephant populations by 63% since 2001. These losses not only pose dire consequences for the elephants themselves but also for the forests in which they live.
As low-cost solar and wind energy become increasingly pervasive, the prospects for hydrogen-based transportation systems are improving. The reason is that cheap electricity makes it practical to produce hydrogen by breaking down water rather than getting it from reforming natural gas, which results in carbon dioxide emissions. The real goal is for hydrogen to be a renewable and carbon-free fuel.
Some of the world’s biggest lakes are drying up as a consequence of the warming climate, persistent drought, and overuse by people draining crucial water sources.
Earth system scientists say that there are four major human-caused forces that threaten to cause irreversible and abrupt environmental upheaval: climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and excess nitrogen.
Water is life. It’s a fundamental need for every human being on the planet. Each person requires more than five gallons of clean and safe water a day for drinking, cooking, and keeping clean. Dirty water, on the other hand, can be deadly. An estimated 1.8 million people die every year as a result of diarrheal diseases like cholera. And tens of millions of people are seriously sickened by water-related maladies.
According to a European food safety watchdog, most applications of neonicotinoids – the world’s most widely used insecticides – represent a risk to wild bees and honeybees. The use of these insecticides has been restricted in Europe since 2014 following earlier risk assessments.
Hydrogen is touted to be the fuel of the future, particularly for cars. But a more acccurate view of it is that hydrogen is an energy storage medium. And the most promising form of energy to store using hydrogen is solar energy.
Near-shore fish farms have created many environmental problems. Raising large numbers of fish creates concentrations of fish waste and sea lice, which can adversely impact near-shore ecosystems.
Hydraulic fracturing – better known as fracking – is a method of extracting oil and gas from shale deposits in which millions of gallons of freshwater and chemicals are injected into deep underground deposits. There has been a great deal of concern related to the effects that this process has on water quality and also on the stability of the ground in the vicinity of where it takes place.
Protecting biodiversity is a critical challenge facing humanity. Global vertebrate populations – from elephants to amphibians – declined by 58% from 1970 to 2012 and losses are expected to reach 67% in the next two years. Think about it: at least two-thirds of all vertebrate animals on earth have vanished over the lifetime of anyone fifty years old or over.
After many years of false starts and delays, the offshore wind industry in the U.S. finally seems to be gaining momentum. According to the Department of Energy, more than 25 offshore wind projects with a generating capacity of 24 gigawatts are now being planned. Most of these are off of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic coasts.
The Environmental Protection Agency removed its information hub about climate change last year. In response, 17 cities reposted the information on their own city government sites. This is indicative of the fact that cities are increasingly taking on a leadership role in environmental, social and economic change.
Large portions of the Midwest are called the Corn Belt and for good reason. Overall, about 90 million acres or 140,000 square miles of the United States are planted with corn and about half of that is in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Minnesota. In most of the Corn Belt, the corn is planted in rotation with soybeans. Both are warm weather crops and the soil is left barren for nearly half of the year when the two crops are out of season.
The risks of rising sea waters are growing more apparent every year. While the world struggles with taking action to reduce the carbon emissions that are driving the sea level rise, cities around the world are building sea walls designed to protect them from storm surges and flooding. Most of these are massive, complex infrastructure projects that cost billions of dollars and take decades to complete.