According to the recently published book, “Green to Gold,” by Daniel C. Esty and Andrew Winston, the top ten environmental issues facing the world today are:
1. Climate Change
2. Energy
3. Water
4. Biodiversity and Land Use
5. Chemicals, Toxics and Heavy Metals
6. Air Pollution
7. Waste Management
8. Ozone Layer Depletion
9. Oceans and Fisheries
10. Deforestation
These issues clearly cut across and [...]
This enhanced satellite image shows the current extent of the Arctic Ice Cap (August 25, 2008). It is now 220,000 square miles larger than 2007’s lowest extent which was the smallest the ice cap had ever reached. (Image: National Snow and Ice Data Center)
The space surrounding Earth is becoming a giant landfill… or shall we call it spacefill? Space junk - also known as space trash or debris - floats throughout our solar system at extraordinary speeds, most reaching 17,000-plus miles per hour.
In the past 50-plus years of space exploration, we have generated a vast wasteland of junk in [...]
They are called “dead zones”, increasingly large areas of coastal ocean that can no longer support life.
Fishermen off the shores of Oregon report that more amounts of dead rockfish, crabs and other bottom fish have been appearing in their nets and along the coast line.
There is a huge plastic waste dump site in the Pacific Ocean that is twice the size of the continental United States.
It is estimated that 10 percent of the world’s plastic waste finds its way into the sea and slowly but surely most of it ends up in the Pacific Ocean.
Tourists had to be evacuated by helicopter from one of Canada’s major Arctic parks as abnormal temperatures caused severe flooding, washing away hiking trails and a bridge.
“We lost huge proportions of what was formerly the trail in the park. It’s disappeared - gone,” said Pauline Scott, speaking for Parks Canada.
Not only is the Arctic ice cap shrinking, it is shrinking at a pace that places its disappearance two to three decades ahead of the gloomiest previous forecasts.
It is now generally predicted that the Arctic ice cap will totally disappear in 20 - 25 years, leaving the Arctic Ocean totally free of summer ice as [...]
The East African nation of Kenya has a problem. They import two very expensive commodities, sugar and fuel.
Their solution. Grow lots of sugar cane, which would help reduce their need to import over 200 thousand tonnes of sugar a year, and relieve their dependency on oil by producing considerable amounts of sugar cane bio fuel [...]
The world’s wetlands are in danger and if they are damaged further they could release a “carbon bomb” which could greatly affect Global Warming conditions.
Wetlands are natural carbon traps that contain the same amount of carbon that is currently in the earth’s atmosphere, in all they contain a fifth of the world’s carbon.
Science is an art of exploration. The dedication of the explorers is sometimes directed by other discoveries, a chance encounter or simply just the pure serendipity of a crazy idea.
Consider Peter Flynn when he began thinking about the Gulf Stream which carries warm water into the North Atlantic and returns cold water into the southern reaches [...]
The temperature in Los Angeles is dangerously hot, Ohio is inundated with flood water and Toronto has only seen 3 normal summer days this June. Welcome to the new weather, and like the new math, it is hard to figure out.
A new United States government report is quite blunt about our weather future.
In recent years the beaches of Florida haven’t been as they once were. Increasingly the beaches have been forced to close periodically as a result of unsafe levels of bacteria in the water. Red tides, huge patches of potentially toxic algae, have appeared threatening both swimmers and marine life.
The main culprit for the deterioration of [...]
