Home/Posts Tagged ‘US’
Posts Tagged ‘US’
Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Jun 12th, 2012,
Residents and visitors of a popular beach in the US State of Oregon were stunned when a massive rectangular dock float washed up on shore last week. The float turned out to be one of four from the fishing town of Misawa, Japan, which were pulled out to sea during last year’s tsunami. Another float washed up on a nearby island, while the other two have not been found. The dock was covered in hundreds of millions of flora and fauna, native to Japanese waters, but strangers to the Pacific Coast of the United States. The structure is home to…
Tags: debris, japan, Oregon, tsunami, US
Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Mar 29th, 2012,
The jury is in: common agricultural pesticides disrupt the navigation systems of honeybees and reduce the weight and number of queens in bumblebee hives. Two separate studies showed strong links between pesticides and the epidemic disappearance of honeybees in the US and UK, known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Experiments showed that honeybees died or failed to return to their hives in much greater numbers than expected. Bumblebees exposed to typical levels of pesticides saw their hives populations shrink by 10% versus hives not exposed. What’s worse is they almost lost their ability to produce new queens. Only queens live…
Tags: bumblebees, CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder, honeybees, pesticides, UK, US
Animals, Videos & Documentaries, Wildlife & Flora, Feb 14th, 2012,
I grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC in the 70s and 80s, when deer sightings in the area were not common, though not exactly rare occurrences. By my mid 20s, however, they were everywhere – munching on my mother’s daffodils or dashing into the street to get hit by an SUV. The reason for this is two-fold. First of all, suburban sprawl means the deer’s forest habitats shrink and keep shrinking in the face of unstoppable, endless developments of McMansions. The other reason is a nationwide population explosion in deer, whose predators (bobcats, coyotes and wolves) have been…
Tags: capital, cull, DC, deer, population, rock creek park, US, Washington, white-tailed
Pollution, Feb 1st, 2012,
Rubbish is piling up in Mexico’s capital after the city’s largest waste dump, Bordo Poniente, was closed after the landfill was, for lack of a better word, filled. The landfill, in fact, was meant to close back in 2005, but the city managed to delay closure by 6 years. Now garbage is accumulating in illegal dumps in Mexico City, on street corners and even in front of monuments. The fact that Mexico lags behind in waste reducing measures, such as recycling programs, compounds the problem in the DF. From the Guardian: The demise of the Bordo Poniente exposed how acutely…
Tags: border, Bordo Poniente, garbage, Mexico City, US, waste
Climate Change, Natural disasters, Dec 30th, 2011,
Happy New Year, everyone! Best wishes for 2012. Hopefully it will not be the year of environmental catastrophe that 2011 was. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, even if it would slightly reduce my own personal CO2 output. Let’s have a quick rundown of the stresses and bad headlines that dominated eco-news in 2011. Firstly: • The global population reached 7 billion. • The second worst nuclear incident in history occurred in Fukushima as the result of a catastrophic tsunami. • Greenhouse gases rose to record levels, Arctic sea ice went down and global temperatures…
Tags: 2011, drought, environmental, record, tsunami, US
Climate Change, Politics, Dec 12th, 2011,
A last minute deal at COP17, the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, managed to secure a legally binding global treaty, even amongst those most reluctant to sign on: big polluters the US, China and India. But what does the deal entail and is it really any good? First of all, the treaty is to be signed in 2015 and enforced in 2020 – too little too late according to environmentalists and most climate scientists. But what the hell do they know? The climate ‘road map’ was the brainchild and goal of the European Union, who desperately tried…
Tags: China, climate, COP17, deal, Durban, emissions, environmentalists, India, reactions, scientists, South Africa, US
Climate Change, Politics, Nov 7th, 2011,
A recent BBC News article concerning the upcoming climate change summit in Durban, South Africa, which takes place at the end of the month, includes a carbon emissions chart according to countries or political/geographic areas. The article, by Richard Black, outlines the major conflicts and cleavages between various individual and groups of countries. The large rapidly industrializing BASIC group of Brazil, South Africa, India and China form one bloc with the position that they should be allowed to develop and emit, as they do not have anything near the cumulative, historic emissions of the US and Europe. The US, Japan,…
Tags: China, co2, countries, emissions, EU, US
Politics, Pollution, Oct 26th, 2011,
Last week representatives from over 170 countries met at a UN environmental conference in Colombia to work towards a ban on the exportation of hazardous waste from rich countries to the developing world. The measure is to ratify an amendment to the Basel Convention, a treaty forged in 1989 with the aim of ensuring that individual states take care of their own waste instead of dumping it in poor countries. The US, which is the top exporter of e-waste, still hasn’t signed on. The US has no rules for exporting its e-waste, most of which ends up in China as…
Tags: China, e-waste, export, japan, Philippines, toxic waste, US
Green living, Science & Technology, Oct 17th, 2011,
Despite the well-publicized bankruptcy of California-based solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, solar power is a growth industry in the United States and is set to boom, according to the US National Solar Job Census. The new survey shows that job growth in the United States’ solar energy sector grew by 6.8% over a one-year period ending in August, compared to less than 1% for over-all job growth in the US. The industry believes that solar jobs will grow by another 24% over the next year. A quarter of American jobs in the solar power industry are currently located in the State…
Tags: California, energy, job growth, jobs, power, Solar, Texas, United States, US
Natural disasters, Nature, Aug 29th, 2011,
Tropical storms are battering two parts of the world at present: the east coast of the United States and parts of East Asia. Hurricane Irene raged up from the Bahamas through North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and into New York, where it was downgraded to a tropical storm yesterday. According to the Associated Press Irene has claimed at least 21 lives in 8 US states. Two nuclear power plants in the US were shut down due to the hurricane, one in New Jersey (purely as a precautionary measure) and one in Maryland, which suffered minor damage. From the Guardian: A reactor…
Tags: Asia, hurricane, Irene, Maryland, New York, nuclear, tropical storm, typhoon, US
Climate Change, Politics, Oct 6th, 2010,
The UN climate talks currently underway in Tianjin, China are smaller, more subdued and well organized when compared to the major international event at Copenhagen last December. But in the end they are still about China vs. the United States. Tianjin is being seen as an opportunity to find some common ground before the UN summit in Cancún, Mexico later this year, but the chief US envoy is frustrated at the level and speed of progress taking place. Instead of actual progress he sees backtracking. From a report in the Guardian: What is frustrating in these negotiations is to see…
Tags: China, climate, Climate change, copenhagen, low expectations, talks, Tianjin, UN, US
Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Oct 3rd, 2010,
Human beings have severely impacted 80% of the world’s rivers to the point that 5 million people, along with thousands of aquatic species, are in danger. A new global study, published in the scientific journal Nature, identifies various types of human impact on the Earth’s waterways, such as pollution, irrigation and dams, and quantifies how they affect River Biodiversity and Human Water Security. From Rivers In Crisis: The Earth’s limited supplies of fresh water and irreplaceable biodiversity are vulnerable to human mismanagement of watersheds and waterways. Multiple environmental stressors, such as agricultural runoff, pollution and invasive species, threaten rivers that…
Tags: biodiversity, Europe, rivers, security, species, US, water, wildlife
Politics, Science & Technology, Sep 27th, 2010,
It may sound illogical to produce biofuels in the Middle East, a region generally associated with oil. It may sound even stranger to ship biofuel all the way from the US to the Afghanistan in order to power the vehicles of the US military. Well this is geopolitics, don’t try to make simple sense of it. Afghanistan, though neighbors with some big oil producers in the Persian Gulf, does not have a fossil fuel industry. It does, however, have a big opium and heroin economy. A recent study proposes that a biofuel industry in Afghanistan, with the US military as…
Tags: Afghanistan, biodiesel, biofuels, fossil fuels, Military, Navy, opium, poppies, poppy, United States, US, war
Green living, Science & Technology, Sep 21st, 2010,
So-called ‘second generation’ biofuels are fuels derived from biomass which do not come primarily from food sources and thus attempt to avoid the ‘food vs. fuel’ dilemma that has tainted biofuels like corn ethanol. A second generation biofuel can come from the non-edible residual byproducts of crops, like leaves and husks, from non-edible crops like switchgrass or jatropha, or other industrial waste biomass such as wood chips or fruit peels. UK firm TMO Renewables’ genetically modified bacteria turns compost and other waste into bioethanol. The company opened the UK’s first bioethanol plant in 2008, but is now finding far more…
Tags: bioethanol, biofuel, biomass, second generation, TMO Renewables, UK, US
Conservation, Politics, Sep 13th, 2010,
The Chagos Islands, aka British Indian Ocean Territory, is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom containing many small islands, the largest being Diego Garcia. Diego Garcia was famously – and forcibly – evacuated by the UK government in the 1960s to make way for a US military base. After several court cases, the islanders have still not been allowed to resettle their homeland. The Chagos’ only inhabitants are currently US military living on Diego Garcia. Furthermore, last April a 250,000 square mile (650,000 sq km) Marine Protected Area (MPA) was established around the archipelago prohibiting commercial fishing. From an…
Tags: billionaire, British, Chagos, Diego Garcia, government, Indian, islands, marine, Military, MPA, ocean, overseas territory, Swiss, UK, US
Videos & Documentaries, Aug 9th, 2010,
Lithium-ion batteries are being touted by US President Barack Obama as the most efficient way to electrify motor vehicles. A mass shift from fossil fuel and conventional combustion engines towards battery-powered electric cars may also receive a boost due to the unfortunate recent events in the Gulf of Mexico. From an article on stockhouse.com: In 2009, alone, the U.S. federal government granted over US$25 billion in loans to automobile and battery makers. Such initiatives promise to help President Obama accomplish his well-publicized mandate to usher-in one million electric vehicles in the U.S. by 2015. A move away from fossil fuels…
Tags: batteries, Bolivia, cars, Chile, electric, lithium, Obama, President, US, vehicles
Politics, Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Aug 4th, 2010,
BP has successfully stopped the oil flowing out of the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico by filling the well with a special kind of mud. It could be necessary to pump more mud into the well and workers may seal the top with concrete to assist in the proposed lasting solution of the two relief wells currently being drilled. From a BBC News report: The US government says the well leaked 4.9 million barrels of oil before being capped last month, with only 800,000 barrels being captured. The US government is expected to announce today that the remaining…
Tags: BP, chemical, cleanup, Deepwater Horizon, dispersants, government, Gulf, Mexico, mud, oil, static kill, US, well
Pollution, Science & Technology, Jul 19th, 2010,
Though the cap on the damaged oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is reportedly holding, hydrocarbon leakage has been detected on the seabed. The hope has been that the cap – successfully placed over the wellhead last week – would stop the flow of oil into the Gulf until permanent relief wells are in place. US Admiral Thad Allen has written to BP chief of operations Bob Dudley demanding answers. He is quoted in a report in the Guardian: I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging…
Tags: Admiral, Allen, BP, cap, detected, government, Gulf, hydrocarbons, leak, oil, plan, seepage, US, well
Climate Change, Jul 17th, 2010,
June 2010 has gone on record as the hottest June since temperatures have been documented, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The scientific body’s National Climatic Data Center records go back to 1880 and also show the January-June and April-June periods to be the warmest ever recorded. Though temperatures were warmer than average throughout much of the globe, Peru, central and eastern US and both eastern and western Asia experienced the most markedly hotter temperatures. Southern China, Scandinavia and the northwestern US were actually cooler than average, as was Spain. From an AFP report: In June,…
Tags: ever, global, hottest, ice, June, NOAA, record, recorded, temperatures, US, warmer, warmest
Climate Change, Health, Pollution, Science & Technology, Jul 9th, 2010,
I’ve assumed that transport via boat, whether shipping goods or people, is less polluting and has a lower carbon footprint than flying or road freight, for example. Not so, according to both scientific research and inside information from the maritime shipping industry. While diesel cars – once known as smelly, noisy polluters – have relatively cleaned up their act to the level of standard petrol or gasoline-fuelled cars, the heavy-duty diesel and low-grade fuel oil engines that power ships are a scourge on the environment and human health. From an article in the Economist: Research by James Corbett of the…
Tags: cargo, cars, Danish, deaths, denmark, diesel, emissions, environment, freight, H2O, Health, industry, nitrogen, ocean, oxide, Pollution, research, ship, shipping, ships, US
