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.
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.
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.
A new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance takes a long-term look at the world’s energy production. According to the report, renewable energy, mostly in the form of solar and wind power, is set to provide close to 50% of the world’s energy by the year 2050.
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.”
Nine years ago, engineer Richard Jenkins broke the world land speed record for a wind-powered vehicle with a sailboat on wheels driving across a dry lakebed at 126 miles per hour. After years of engineering development, his technology has now taken on the form of a saildrone that can autonomously sail the sea gathering ecologic, oceanic and atmospheric data.
The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical process by which carbon is exchanged between the atmosphere, the terrestrial biosphere, the ocean, sediments, and the earth’s interior. Its balance is a key factor that influences the climate.
The list of endangered species continues to get longer around the world and society is increasingly faced with the nearly impossible decision of which ones to take off life support.
Cities are responsible for 70% of the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions and it appears that they are taking responsibility for reducing them. Over 7,000 mayors around the world have signed up to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, thereby pledging to act on climate change.
Deforestation is one of the largest contributors to climate change. Forests cover about 30% of the world’s land area and are a crucial sink for carbon dioxide. Over time, we have been steadily reducing the amount of forest in the world to obtain wood and timber, open up farmland, build towns and cities, produce paper, make palm oil, and mine for minerals.
The impacts of increased carbon dioxide and the changing climate are often complicated and, it turns out, not always negative. In some areas of the world, people can actually benefit from increased CO2 and climate change. Barley, the most important feed crop for beef production in Alberta, Canada, as well as the province’s beef industry itself actually stand to gain from the changes that are most assuredly not a good thing for much of the world.
For the third year in a row, global emissions of carbon dioxide have remained unchanged. This indicates that efforts to reduce emissions have had an effect, but that there is much more to be done. It is essential to reduce emissions, not just cap them.
In the 19th century, Britain produced 80% of the world’s coal. Britain was the dominant global power in the industrial revolution with its giant blast furnaces, steam locomotives and steam ships. And with advent of the electric age, coal once again was the power source of choice. Even as late as the 1970s, Britain got 80% of its electricity from burning coal.
A study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science has produced an estimate of the total amount of plastic manufactured worldwide since the 1950s. The researchers then measured that data against statistics on recycling, incineration and discard rates. The results are sobering.
The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country with more than 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It lacks almost every resource one associates with large-scale agriculture. Nevertheless, it is the number two exporter of food in the world, second only to the United States, which is almost 300 times bigger. The Dutch lead the world in exporting tomatoes, potatoes and onions and produce many other crops as well.
Air travel is pretty carbon intensive. For those of us who take plane trips, it represents a substantial part of our individual carbon footprints. It isn’t that plane travel is inefficient fuel-wise on a miles-per-gallon-per-passenger basis compared with driving, for example. It is just that we go so much farther on planes. Currently, aviation accounts for only a few percent of overall carbon emissions, but that is changing for two reasons.
The Paris Climate Agreement seeks to reduce global carbon emissions. The nearly 200 countries who signed it have pledged to reduce their own emissions within their borders. And therein lies the rub: the agreement says nothing about the impact their products have across the world. For some countries, the problem is not so much the emissions they produce; it is those they export.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the global authority for determining species’ vulnerability in the face of threats such as habitat loss and climate change. How widely a species can be found – its geographic range – is a key indicator used by the IUCN to assign an appropriate conservation status.
The Amazon rainforest is the biggest in the world, larger than the next two biggest combined. It covers over 3 million square miles, roughly the size of the lower 48 states. For this reason, it functions as a critical sink for carbon in the atmosphere.
There are many environmental problems associated with ruminant livestock and these problems continue to grow as the demand for meat-rich diets increases around the world. One of the biggest problems is that cows emit methane through eructation (or belching) as they chew their cud. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, some 25 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. More than a quarter of all human-originated methane going into the atmosphere comes from raising livestock.
