Archive for the 'Environment' Category
Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry
April 24th, 2018Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Where’s the electricity coming from to charge up those buses? A lot of it is still coming from coal, but China’s coal use has peaked: The real game changer is clean energy. The price of solar photovoltaic is at an all-time low, enough to compete […]
World Wine Output Falls to 60-Year Low
April 24th, 2018DOOOOOOOM! Via: Reuters: Global wine output fell to its lowest level in 60 years in 2017 due to poor weather conditions in the European Union that slashed production in the bloc, international wine organization OIV said. Wine production totaled 250 million hectoliters last year, down 8.6 percent from 2016, data from the Paris-based International Organisation […]
New Zealand: Billion-Dollar Soils Washing Into Rivers
April 19th, 2018Via: Newsroom: We’re losing soil at an alarming rate, but there are some gaping holes in our knowledge about why and where from, reports Eloise Gibson You can’t grow a lot of food without soil, certainly not in a dairy-, wine- and vege-hungry nation like New Zealand. Yet dirt – the foundation of our food […]
Plutonium Dust Released from Closed Hanford Nuclear Weapons Site
April 16th, 2018Via: Los Angeles Times: As crews demolished a shuttered nuclear weapons plant during 2017 in central Washington, specks of plutonium were swept up in high gusts and blown miles across a desert plateau above the Columbia River. The releases at the Department of Energy cleanup site spewed unknown amounts of plutonium dust into the environment, […]
Woman Behind Effort to Stop Release of Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Found Dead in Swimming Pool
April 12th, 2018Via: MemoryHole: On Tuesday, April 10 Washington DC authorities recovered the body of Key West-based environmental activist Milagro de Mier from the pool of a hotel close to the DC Convention Center . de Mier was in the nation’s capital to raise awareness and petition the US Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency […]
Battery Makers Descend on Australia, Canada Cobalt Developers
March 18th, 2018Via: Reuters: Nervous Asian battery makers are turning to early-stage cobalt projects in Australia and Canada to lock in supplies of the critical battery ingredient ahead of expected shortages as demand for electric vehicles revs up. Mine developers say interest from Japanese and Korean firms is particularly strong as they compete with rivals from China, […]
Tepco’s ‘Ice Wall’ Fails to Freeze Fukushima’s Toxic Water Buildup
March 8th, 2018Mmm hmm. This was treated like comedy gold on Cryptogon when it was announced. And now, not only has it not worked, but the problem is worse. Via: Reuters: A costly “ice wall” is failing to keep groundwater from seeping into the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, data from operator Tokyo Electric Power Co shows, […]
Men’s Sperm Counts Are Dropping, and Scientists Don’t Know Why
March 4th, 2018Via: Yahoo News: The topic of overpopulation has been much discussed over the past few decades, but what if the real issue is a severe decline in population? It sounds like something straight out of a dystopian nightmare, but new research shows sperm counts are drastically dropping across the Western world. Researchers from Hebrew University-Hadassah […]
Norway Will Spend $13 Million to Upgrade Its Doomsday Seed Vault
February 26th, 2018Via: The Verge: Norway will spend 100 million Norwegian Crowns ($12.7 million) to upgrade the doomsday seed vault it built 10 years ago. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was constructed in an abandoned Arctic coal mine to store and safeguard the world’s crops and plants from global natural or man-made disaster. If nuclear war or […]
The Secret on the Ocean Floor
February 19th, 2018Via: BBC: In the summer of 1974, a large and highly unusual ship set sail from Long Beach in California. It was heading for the middle of the Pacific where its owners boasted it would herald a revolutionary new industry beneath the waves. Equipped with a towering rig and the latest in drilling gear, the […]
