Archive for the 'Environment' Category
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 […]
The 11 Cities Most Likely to Run Out of Drinking Water – Like Cape Town
February 11th, 2018Via: BBC: Cape Town faces the unenviable situation of being the first major city in the modern era to run out of drinking water. However, the plight of the drought-hit South African city is just one extreme example of a problem that experts have long been warning about – water scarcity.
East China Sea: Worst Tanker Oil Spill in Decades
January 26th, 2018Via: Reuters: The worst tanker oil spill in decades is unfolding across hundreds of miles of the East China Sea after an Iranian oil tanker carrying more than 100,000 tonnes of toxic oil collided with a freighter and exploded, killing all 32 crew onboard. The ship burned, spewing its cargo, for more than a week […]
Miami: Dirty Gold, Clean Cash
January 17th, 2018I’m ticking Covert Operations on this one, just in case. 😉 Via: Miami Herald: When Juan Granda ventured into Peru’s Amazon rainforest to score another illicit load of gold, he boasted that he felt like legendary Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. “I’m like Pablo coming … to get the coke,” he told two co-workers in […]
A Fight to the Death for the Elephants
December 22nd, 2017Via: Los Angeles Times: Kambale Mate huddled beneath a tangle of grass, looking up at bright stars in a moonless sky, a tumble of chaotic events cascading through his mind. Where were the other wildlife rangers, Jean de Dieu Matongo and Joel Meriko Ari? Were they alive? He had been a ranger for only five […]
Plastic Found in Mussels from Arctic to China
December 20th, 2017Via: Reuters: Tiny bits of plastic are contaminating mussels from the European Arctic to China in a sign of the global spread of ocean pollution that can end up on people’s dinner plates. Mussels in apparently pristine Arctic waters had most plastic of any tested along the Norwegian coast, according to a study this month […]
