Archive for the 'Environment' Category
Delhi Pollution: The Road to Hell
November 6th, 2016Via: Quartz: New Delhi is ghastly right now. So much so that the government in the national capital has shut down 1,800 schools for the first time ever, forcing a million students to stay at home to avoid breathing in the deadly smog that continues to shroud the city. This comes a week after firecracker […]
Batteries May Trip ‘Death Spiral’ in $3.4 Trillion Credit Market
October 23rd, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Via: Bloomberg: Battery technologies starting to disrupt the electricity and automobile industries may also emerge as a trillion-dollar threat to credit markets, according to Fitch Ratings. A quarter of outstanding global corporate debt, or as much as $3.4 trillion, is linked to the utility- and […]
Nano-Spike Catalysts Convert Carbon Dioxide Directly Into Ethanol
October 20th, 2016Via: PhysOrg: In a new twist to waste-to-fuel technology, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an electrochemical process that uses tiny spikes of carbon and copper to turn carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into ethanol. Their finding, which involves nanofabrication and catalysis science, was serendipitous. “We discovered somewhat by […]
Tick Bites That Trigger Severe Meat Allergy on Rise Around the World
October 6th, 2016Via: Guardian: People living in tick-endemic areas around the world are being warned of an increasingly prevalent, potentially life-threatening side effect to being bitten: developing a severe allergy to meat. The link between tick bites and meat allergies was first described in 2007, and has since been confirmed around the world. Sufferers of “tick-induced mammalian […]
Pacific Garbage Patch Far Worse than Previously Thought
October 5th, 2016Via: Guardian: The vast patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean is far worse than previously thought, with an aerial survey finding a much larger mass of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items than imagined. A reconnaissance flight taken in a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft found a vast clump of mainly plastic […]
First Evidence of Deep-Sea Animals Ingesting Microplastics
September 30th, 2016Via: Science Bulletin: Scientists working in the mid-Atlantic and south-west Indian Ocean have found evidence of microfibers ingested by deep sea animals including hermit crabs, squat lobsters and sea cucumbers, revealing for the first time the environmental fallout of microplastic pollution. The UK government recently announced that it is to ban plastic microbeads, commonly found […]
Power Outage Grips Entire State of South Australia
September 28th, 2016Via: Stuff: The entire state of South Australia is currently without power, with the region in the grip of what could be one of the most extreme weather systems to hit in 50 years. A mass blackout began on Wednesday afternoon, with the a “weather event” behind the unprecedented outage. Premier Jay Weatherill said the […]
Facebook Censored Live Stream Video Posted by Dakota Pipeline Protesters
September 15th, 2016Via: The Verge: Facebook has admitted to censoring a video posted by activists protesting the Dakota Access pipeline, with the social network blaming the removal on its automated spam filter. The live stream video, published on Tuesday by the media collective Unicorn Riot, showed police arresting around two dozen protesters at a Dakota pipeline site. […]
Thousands Protest North Dakota Pipeline
September 9th, 2016Via: CBC: Thousands of people have joined the Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s fight against construction of a contentious oil pipeline, a showdown Indigenous leaders in North Dakota warn won’t end anytime soon. They’re opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline, a multimillion-dollar project that’s supposed to transport light sweet crude oil from the Bakken oilfield near […]
Bill Gates Doubles His Bet on Wiping Out Mosquitoes with Gene Editing
September 6th, 2016Via: MIT Technology Review: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation plans to double the sum it is spending to create a mosquito-killing technology that relies on CRISPR gene editing. The technique, called a gene drive, is a way to spread traits through wild populations of animals, but its ability to alter nature is drawing opposition […]
