Topic: Biodiversity / Biodevastation
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Methane SOS
CREDIT: SHIRSHOV INSTITUTE OF OCEANOLOGY Global warming is on speed, especially in northern latitudes where an international team of scientists led by Igor Semiletov of Tomsk Polytechnic University, Russia’s oldest technical institution, recently made a startling discovery aboard the Academic Mstislav Keldysh (see photo above), the kind of discovery that sends chills down the spine, i.e.,…
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Congo Basin Deforestation Threatens Food and Water Supplies Throughout Africa
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Stretching across Central Africa, the Congo Basin is home to 80 million people who depend on it for everything from food to charcoal to medicinal plants. But they aren’t the only ones; the world’s second-largest rainforest also plays a role in regulating rainfall patterns across other parts of the continent. Its continued disappearance could exacerbate insecurity of…
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Why we can’t just #PlantATree
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As environmental author and journalist Fred Pearce noted in an article in April, “there are growing concerns that the reforestation agenda is becoming a green cover for the further assault on ecosystems.” Be it the claim that planting a trillion trees will save us or the 2011 Bonn Challenge that promises to plant 1.35 million…
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Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Crisis
Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, which experienced three massive meltdowns in 2011, is running out of room to store radioactive water. No surprise! But now, what to do about phosphorescent water? Addressing the issue, Japan’s environmental minister Yoshiaki Harada held a news conference (September 2019). Unfortunately, he proffered the following advice: “The…
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Killing the Ocean
The oceans are crying for mercy, a fact that is starkly revealed in a telling 900-page draft of a forthcoming UN report due for release September 25. The draft report obtained by Agence France-Presse (AFP) assesses the status of the oceans and cryosphere. It’s a landmark UN report, and it’s not a pretty picture. In…
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Sea Level Rise!
Sea level has been stable, at current levels, throughout recorded history for 5,000 years. That’s about to change. Still, it’s very difficult for people to imagine a change in sea level after 5,000 years of rock solid stability. Nevertheless, assuming sea levels do rise markedly, one of the biggest questions of the century is whether…
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Pounding Heat Clobbers Greenland
Greenland is one of the biggest targets for global warming, in part because it’s so big it’s hard to miss. And sure enough, only recently crazy halting weather with inordinate hot temperatures hit Greenland bull’s-eye, dead-on with one helluva meltdown. That’s bad news for pretty much everybody on the planet. On the hottest days, the…
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The Flawed Food Dependency
Book Review: Food or War “The most destructive object on the planet… is the human jawbone.” (Food or War, Cambridge University Press, 2019, p. 177) Whether by sight, taste, touch, feel, or smell, it’s only too obvious that “food” affects every aspect of life and is key to crucial life-supporting ecosystems. Day in, day out,…
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Post-Brexit Farming, Glyphosate and GMOs in the UK
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An Open Letter to Hon Michael Gove Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs It seems likely that a post-Brexit trade deal with the US could mean more of the same and lead to the introduction of GM crops in the UK alongside the lowering of standards for the use of biocides in…
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“Get Your Endangered Species Off My Bombing Range!”
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At Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the “Maneuver School of Excellence,” (as well as the notorious School of the Americas, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), live-fire and other training was threatened by threatened species and their habitats. Now the base and its partners are restoring habitat and offering contiguous land for buyers who…
