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Category: Environment

The surprising recovery of once-rare birds

The surprising recovery of once-rare birds

Sandhill cranes can be spotted in many states, but in the 1930s their populations had crashed to a few dozen breeding pairs in the eastern U.S. Rsocol/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY By Tom Langen, Clarkson University When I started bird-watching as a teenager, a few years after the first Earth Day in 1970, several species that once thrived in my region were nowhere to be found. Some, like the passenger pigeon, were extinct. Others had retreated to more remote, wild areas…

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Scientists transform plastic waste into efficient carbon dioxide capture materials

Scientists transform plastic waste into efficient carbon dioxide capture materials

University of Copenhagen: Chemists at the University of Copenhagen have developed a method to convert plastic waste into a climate solution for efficient and sustainable CO2 capture. This is killing two birds with one stone as they address two of the world’s biggest challenges: plastic pollution and the climate crisis. The work is published in the journal Science Advances. As CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere keep rising regardless of years of political intentions to limit emissions, the world’s oceans are…

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AI has a hidden water cost − here’s how to calculate yours

AI has a hidden water cost − here’s how to calculate yours

How many AI queries does it take to use up a regular plastic water bottle’s worth of water? kieferpix/iStock/Getty Images Plus By Leo S. Lo, University of Virginia Artificial intelligence systems are thirsty, consuming as much as 500 milliliters of water – a single-serving water bottle – for each short conversation a user has with the GPT-3 version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system. They use roughly the same amount of water to draft a 100-word email message. That figure includes the…

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Collapse of critical Atlantic current is more likely than previously thought, study finds

Collapse of critical Atlantic current is more likely than previously thought, study finds

The Guardian reports: The collapse of a critical Atlantic current can no longer be considered a low-likelihood event, a study has concluded, making deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions even more urgent to avoid the catastrophic impact. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system. It brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. The Amoc was already known to be…

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Human connection to nature has declined 60% over the last 200 years, study finds

Human connection to nature has declined 60% over the last 200 years, study finds

The Guardian reports: People’s connection to nature has declined by more than 60% since 1800, almost exactly mirroring the disappearance of nature words such as river, moss and blossom from books, according to a study. Computer modelling predicts that levels of nature connectedness will continue to decline unless there are far-reaching policy and societal changes – with introducing children to nature at a young age and radically greening urban environments the most effective interventions. The study by Miles Richardson, a…

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From sea ice to ocean currents, Antarctica is now undergoing abrupt changes – and we will all feel them

From sea ice to ocean currents, Antarctica is now undergoing abrupt changes – and we will all feel them

By Nerilie Abram, Australian National University; Ariaan Purich, Monash University; Felicity McCormack, Monash University; Jan Strugnell, James Cook University, and Matthew England, UNSW Sydney Antarctica has long been seen as a remote, unchanging environment. Not any more. The ice-covered continent and the surrounding Southern Ocean are undergoing abrupt and alarming changes. Sea ice is shrinking rapidly, the floating glaciers known as ice shelves are melting faster, the ice sheets carpeting the continent are approaching tipping points and vital ocean currents…

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Federal Judge orders Florida to tear down Alligator Alcatraz within 60 days

Federal Judge orders Florida to tear down Alligator Alcatraz within 60 days

Mother Jones reports: A federal judge in Miami has ruled that operations at the controversial detention facility Alligator Alcatraz must begin to wind down, ordering state and federal officials to stop transferring detainees there and relocate current detainees within 60 days. Two weeks after US District Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, ordered a temporary pause on any new construction at Alligator Alcatraz, in response to a suit by environmental groups, she has now ordered the dismantling of equipment at…

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Data centers consume massive amounts of water – companies rarely tell the public exactly how much

Data centers consume massive amounts of water – companies rarely tell the public exactly how much

The Columbia River running through The Dalles, Oregon, supplies water to cool data centers. AP Photo/Andrew Selsky By Peyton McCauley, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Melissa Scanlan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee As demand for artificial intelligence technology boosts construction and proposed construction of data centers around the world, those computers require not just electricity and land, but also a significant amount of water. Data centers use water directly, with cooling water pumped through pipes in and around the computer equipment. They also…

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Earth’s continents are drying out at an unprecedented rate, new study warns

Earth’s continents are drying out at an unprecedented rate, new study warns

Science Alert reports: All over the world, fresh water is disappearing, and a new analysis reveals that much of it is entering the ocean, with drying continents now contributing more to the alarming rise in global sea levels than melting ice sheets. The research team, led by Earth system scientist Hrishikesh Chandanpurkar from FLAME University in India, says that urgent action is required to prepare for much drier times ahead, thanks to climate change and human groundwater depletion. Using more…

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‘Sponge city’: How Copenhagen is adapting to a wetter future

‘Sponge city’: How Copenhagen is adapting to a wetter future

E360 reports: In just two hours on July 2, 2011, a torrential, once-in-a-millennium storm battered and flooded Copenhagen, pounding parts of Denmark’s capital with more than 5 inches of rain. Critical infrastructure at the city’s largest hospital was swamped, as were major roads, basements, and businesses. The city that had been engaged with advanced sustainability planning for decades, it turned out, was woefully unprepared for the fierce rainfall, which caused $1.8 billion in damages. Shaken by the calamity, the city…

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On controlling fire, new lessons from a deep indigenous past

On controlling fire, new lessons from a deep indigenous past

Yale Environment 360 reports: Climate change is extending the season during which hot and dry weather encourages fire across North America. At the same time, a long post-settlement history of stamping out wildfires has changed much of the continent’s landscape: Forests are thicker, which allows fires to spread up into the canopy, and more uniform, with fewer bare patches that might otherwise slow a fire’s progress. As a result, wildfires now tend to grow hotter and bigger: Some say we…

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Plastic and other waste has penetrated our brains and virtually everything else on the planet

Plastic and other waste has penetrated our brains and virtually everything else on the planet

David Wallace-Wells writes: Everywhere they look, they find particles of pollution, like infinite spores in an endless contagion field. Scientists call that field the “exposome”: the sum of all external exposures encountered by each of us over a lifetime, which portion and shape our fate alongside genes and behavior. Humans are permeable creatures, and we navigate the world like cleaner fish, filtering the waste of civilization partly by absorbing it. There is plastic in salty sea foam freshly sprayed by…

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The history and future of societal collapse

The history and future of societal collapse

Damian Carrington writes: “We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. “I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.” Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and…

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Hurricane Helene and subsequent cleanup efforts have decimated North America’s most biodiverse waters

Hurricane Helene and subsequent cleanup efforts have decimated North America’s most biodiverse waters

Inside Climate Change reports: In Knoxville, Tennessee, there’s a minuscule warehouse tucked off the side of the road. Its tiny gravel parking lot is full. In the back of the cramped, wood-paneled building are dozens of aquarium tanks filled with endangered, threatened, imperiled, and at-risk fish species. This is Conservation Fisheries Incorporated (CFI), a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Appalachian freshwater diversity. It began as a graduate school project in the 1980s and has grown into a conservation powerhouse. One of…

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As EPA axes scientific research arm, Trump regime favors corporate profits above public health

As EPA axes scientific research arm, Trump regime favors corporate profits above public health

The New York Times reports: The Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday that it would eliminate its scientific research arm and begin firing hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, after denying for months that it intended to do so. The move underscores how the Trump administration is forging ahead with efforts to slash the federal work force and dismantle federal agencies after the Supreme Court allowed these plans to proceed while legal challenges unfold. Government scientists have been…

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Nanoplastic pollution of oceans found on a vast scale

Nanoplastic pollution of oceans found on a vast scale

The New York Times reports: What do human brains, placentas and dolphin breath have in common? Signs of plastic pollution in the form of tiny particles known as microplastics. The ocean is also polluted with plastic, and the issue may be even more extensive than previously thought. A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature estimates the volume of nanoplastics, which are even smaller than microplastics and invisible to the naked eye, to be at least 27 million metric tons…

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