Home/Posts Tagged ‘Pacific’
Posts Tagged ‘Pacific’
Climate Change, Politics, Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Jun 5th, 2012,
As controversial as the Keystone XL pipeline is, it could get worse. Now Canadian PM Stephen Harper is looking to sell Alberta tar sands oil to China, which would involve another massive pipeline to carry the oil west to the Pacific coast. The problem is the pipeline would cross some pristine wilderness and that is a worrying prospect to environmentalists and anyone who gives a damn about not polluting heavily, destroying nature, etc. What’s more is that in order to expedite oil extraction and exportation Harper is rewriting Canada’s environmental regulations. From the Washington Post: The government has added…
Tags: Alberta, Canada, China, Pacific, pipeline, tar sands
Climate Change, Wildlife & Flora, Jun 27th, 2011,
Arctic ice melt due to warming temperatures is causing marine plankton to migrate from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic via Arctic waters. This may have huge consequences for marine ecosystems of which plankton form the basis. An EU-funded study, the CLAMER project, discovered that a species of phytoplankton called Neodenticula seminae has returned to the Atlantic Ocean, where it has not lived for 800,000 years. And it’s not just algae. Warming ocean temperatures are also causing animal plankton to migrate into new waters – and they are bringing along larger animals that feed on them. The appearance of a…
Tags: algae, arctic, Atlantic, Northwest Passage, ocean, Pacific, plankton, species, warm
Climate Change, Politics, Mar 1st, 2011,
In return for casting their votes with European nations, poor Pacific island states will receive 90m euros ($124m US) to help with climate change adaptation. Pacific island nations, like Vanuatu – which is due to host a climate conference on EU-Pacific cooperation – are considered to be on the front lines of climate change due to rising sea levels and violent tropical storms. The cash is relatively small in European terms, but significant for small developing nations. The funds – which according to the commission are redeployments of existing development funds rather than new sources of climate financing as many…
Tags: Climate change, EU, Europe, funds, island states, Pacific, Vanuatu
Pollution, Weird Stuff, Aug 11th, 2010,
It sounds like a complete fantasy and it probably is, but a group of Dutch environmental designers at WHIM Architecture want to turn the Great Pacific Garbage Patch into an eco friendly island paradise. But then again, a lot of great ideas start off as fantasies. The plan, dubbed ‘Recycled Island’, would simultaneously clean up the plastic from the Garbage Patch and create a livable, sustainable island space. With a hundred million tons of plastic floating in the Patch – most of it broken down into microscopic beads, which in turn absorb toxins and enter the food chain through being…
Tags: architects, Dutch, ECO, garbage, island, Pacific, Patch, plastic, recycled, sustainable, WHIM
Climate Change, Videos & Documentaries, Jun 13th, 2010,
If you like your environmental news to be short, sparkly and easily digestible, then check out Planet 100 from Discovery’s planet green. It’s not exactly hard-hitting, deep or analytical, but it certainly caters to a short attention span, is humorous and the host – Sarah Backhouse, an experienced environmental journalist – is, well… not exactly hard on the eyes. Anyway, it’s only 100 seconds and packs a surprising amount into that limited span of time. Perfect for the post-MTV Nintendo generation. Check out the below video, which explains the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, to see what I mean. Well-done and…
Tags: Backhouse, discovery, news, Pacific, Planet 100, planet green, pretty, Sarah, trash, Vortex
Nature, Weird Stuff, Wildlife & Flora, May 13th, 2010,
A gray whale has been spotted in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel. Gray whales, thought to be extinct in the Atlantic Ocean – what to speak of the Mediterranean – are large baleen whales previously believed to only live in the North Pacific. From a BBC News report: Once, three major populations of gray (also spelt grey) whale existed: in the western and eastern North Pacific Ocean, and in the North Atlantic. However, the North Atlantic population of gray whale became extinct sometime in the 17th or 18th Century, for reasons that are not clear. Scientists are…
Tags: Atlantic, False Creek, gray, Mediterranean, north, ocean, Pacific, scientists, sighting, Vancouver, whale
Climate Change, Green living, Pollution, Recycling, Weird Stuff, Mar 17th, 2010,
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that stew of broken down plastic trash that lies in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is getting bigger. An article in Tuesday’s Telegraph cites various estimates of the Patch’s size, which may have doubled over the past ten years: Dr Simon Boxall, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, goes even further: “It’s the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it’s only one very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem.” Plastic waste spells death for a million birds and 100,000…
Tags: garbage, great, ocean, Pacific, Patch, plastic, Plastiki, Rothschild, Telegraph, trash
Climate Change, Green living, Pollution, Recycling, Wildlife & Flora, Feb 25th, 2010,
Not to be outdone by its fellow large expanse of sea and longtime nemesis, the larger Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean can now claim a colossal plastic garbage patch of its own. According to reports from the BBC and AP, the Atlantic ‘Rubbish Patch’ – located within the latitudes of 22 and 38 degrees N in the North Atlantic Ocean – is comparable to the better-known Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The researchers carried out 6,100 tows in areas of the Caribbean and the North Atlantic – off the coast of the US. More than half of these expeditions revealed floating…
Tags: AP, Atlantic, BBC, garbage, great, north, ocean, Pacific, Patch, plastic, poison, pollutants, rubbish, sea, trash
Climate Change, Politics, Jan 21st, 2010,
In an unprecedented and audacious move to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, the Federated States of Micronesia – a small nation of islands in the western Pacific Ocean – have appealed against the refitting of a coal plant in far off Prunerov, Czech Republic. Prunerov – owned by the utilities conglomerate CEZ – is one of the largest coal-fired power stations in the EU and the largest single source of CO2 emissions in the Czech Republic. According to the Norwegian environmental NGO Bellona, the Czech plant emits 40 times as much yearly CO2 as the entire Federated States of Micronesia….
Tags: Bellona, Climate change, co2, coal, copenhagen, Czech, Czech Republic, emissions, environment, Federated States of Micronesia, global, island, Micronesia, ocean, Pacific, plant, power, Prunerov, Times
