Although the past 12 years have seen the warmest 10 years on record, temperatures have remained fairly steady, even while CO2 emissions grew by nearly a third. Temperatures should have been increasing during this period, rather 1998 was tied with 2010 for hottest on record. Now a
study suggests why (pdf): sulfur emissions from Asian coal plants (China mostly) are so high they mimic the effects of a volcano which can cause short term cooling by reflecting light back into space. Insidiously, the long-term warming caused by CO2 (coal) has been masked by short-term cooling of sulfur (coal).
posted by stbalbach
on Jul 5, 2011 -
85 comments
The
long-polluted New York rivers are
getting cleaner, but can still be dangerous to swim in. There are
efforts underway to clean up the Bronx River, but that will take years, if not decades. Until then,
signs are posted, warning would-be swimmers, yet people still risk sickness to battle the heat. One current safe solution is
the Floating Pool Lady, a barge that was remade into an 82-foot-long city parks department swimming pool.
She first arrived in the Bronx in 2008, and
she'll return to the Bronx in a week. There's a new Big Idea to bring swimmers back into the rivers:
the +Pool, a floating swimming pool located within a river, designed with a series exterior walls to filter the river water and make it safe to swim in. While that's in the early design stages, you can take a chance and
jump in a swimming hole.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 24, 2011 -
26 comments
Coal cares! "Puff-Puff™ inhalers are available free to any family living within 200 miles of a coal plant, and each inhaler comes with a $10 coupon towards the cost of the asthma medication itself."
[more inside]
posted by cmoj
on May 11, 2011 -
23 comments
Yale's 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 163 countries on 25 performance indicators tracked across ten policy categories covering both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality. These indicators provide a gauge at a national government scale of how close countries are to established environmental policy goals.
posted by wilful
on Apr 22, 2011 -
8 comments
Waterlife — No matter where we live, the Great Lakes affect us all. And as species of fish disappear and rates of birth defects and cancer rise, it seems one thing is clear: the Great Lakes are changing and something's not quite right with the water. An interactive documentary film from the
National Film Board of Canada.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Feb 26, 2011 -
20 comments
"The world’s oceans have been experiencing
enormous blooms of jellyfish, apparently caused by overfishing, declining water quality, and rising sea temperatures. Now, scientists are trying to determine if these outbreaks could represent a “new normal” in which jellyfish increasingly supplant fish.. Total jelly domination would be like turning back the clock to the Precambrian world, more than 550 million years ago."
posted by stbalbach
on Jan 13, 2011 -
69 comments
NASA has some
new maps showing air pollution around the world. It shows PM
2.5, that is, Particulate Matter less than 2.5 micrometers in size, small enough to get past normal bodily defenses and cause health problems.
[more inside]
posted by stbalbach
on Sep 23, 2010 -
32 comments
"
Places like Picher are why Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980—better known as the Superfund bill." - Wired Magazine on the most toxic town in America,
Picher, OK , and
the people who still live there
posted by The Whelk
on Sep 5, 2010 -
21 comments
"I don't see any future for whale species except extinction." A
report (pdf) released Thursday by
Ocean Alliance noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. Concentrations of chromium found in some whales was several times higher than the level required to kill healthy cells in a Petri dish. Mercury in some whales was 16 times higher than a typical shark or swordfish, both known for their high mercury levels.
Beyond whales, "You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species."
posted by stbalbach
on Jun 24, 2010 -
68 comments
NASA recently released a series of photographs documenting the
loss of the Aral Sea over the past ten years. The Aral Sea could be the poster child for human damage to the ecosystem. In a mere four decades, it has gone from a surface area of 68000 km^2 to less that a quarter of that, with a 10x drop in water volume. As its
Wikipedia article points out, this is the equivalent of completely draining two of the five Great Lakes.
[more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll
on May 21, 2009 -
14 comments
Not that this is a surprise, but the planned congestion charging/public transport scheme in Manchester has been
rejected. Perhaps those in favor of the charging should have spent less on their
web sites; like the no-campaign people
did. You know, with more primary colours and exclamation marks. Instead, they should have spent their money on
shark costumes.
[more inside]
posted by 13twelve
on Dec 12, 2008 -
37 comments
Smoke and Mirrors: The Subversion of the EPA. "This four-part series details how the Bush administration weakened the
EPA. It installed a pliant agency chief, Stephen L. Johnson. Under him, the EPA created pro-industry regulations later thrown out by the courts. It promoted a flawed voluntary program to fight climate change. It bypassed air pollution recommendations from its own scientists to satisfy the White House."
[Via Reality Base]
posted by homunculus
on Dec 11, 2008 -
19 comments
sandbag.org.uk is a not-for-profit website that allows members to buy up surplus "permits to pollute" that form the currency of the
European Union's emissions trading scheme (or
EU ETSs). Members can then "retire" them so that they cannot continue to be traded between the industrial polluters - cement, steel and car manufacturers etc - forced by EU regulation to operate within the system. "I suppose it's a bit like burning money in front of someone so they can't spend it on something bad," says the founder, Bryony Worthington, to
the Guardian.
[more inside]
posted by lucia__is__dada
on Sep 19, 2008 -
52 comments
