Category: Environment,

Scientists Predict ‘Mini Ice Age’ Will Hit Earth in Five Years

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

Every cycle is different, and it’s not possible to entirely predict what’s coming, but by looking at certain signs in the sun’s solar activity, Zharkova has made some educated guesses about the upcoming cycle.

If Zharkova’s predictions are correct, starting in 2021, the sun will quiet down a lot, letting off a lot less energy and heat. This, then, will affect our planet, as global temperatures drop as a result of less light and heat making it to the Earth.

…Miniature ice ages (known scientifically as “Maunder minimum” periods) have come many times in the past – a similar one, for example, was reponsible for low temperatures that froze the River Thames in London back in the seventeenth century.

…Of course, the danger of news like this is that certain people can willfully ignore its full implications. It’s nice to hear that the world will be cooling slightly and that some of the terrible weather effects we’ve been seeing recently will likely slow, but this doesn’t mean that major polluters are off the hook. This is a grace period, providing us with enough time to sort out our crap (sometimes literally), but eventually the bubble will burst, the sun will heat up, and we’ll all be in danger if we don’t clean up our act.

Bundle Up: Scientists Predict ‘Mini Ice Age’ Will Hit Earth in Five Years

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Toxic tensions in the heart of ‘Cancer Alley’

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Gulf Coast Region,Leave a comment

The town of LaPlace, Louisiana, lies along the Mississippi River, a stone’s throw from Lake Pontchartrain and the Maurepas Swamp. It sits in the heart of an area that’s become known by locals as “Cancer Alley,” a vast industrial stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge where dozens of petrochemical plants dot the landscape.

One sign posted by a local advocacy group warns the town’s 29,000 residents that they are “more likely to get cancer due to chloroprene air emissions.” The warning refers to the Denka Performance Elastomer plant at the edge of town, where a vast network of pipes and valves stand testament to industry.

The facility looms over Fifth Ward Elementary School, where children run around the playground oblivious to the toxic emissions in the air.

Toxic tensions in the heart of ‘Cancer Alley’ – CNN

Sigh….

The “Crying Indian” Ad That Got the Environmental Movement Off Track

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

KAB needed to propagandize without seeming propagandistic and [counter] the claims of a political movement without seeming political. At the moment the tear appears, the narrator, in a baritone voice, intones: “People start pollution. People can stop it.” By making individual viewers feel guilty and responsible for the polluted environment, the ad deflected the question of responsibility away from corporations and placed it entirely in the realm of individual action, concealing the role of industry in polluting the landscape.

…The shift to the throwaway was responsible, in part, for the rising levels of litter that KAB publicized, but also, as environmentalists emphasized, for the mining of vast quantities of natural resources, the production of various kinds of pollution, and the generation of tremendous amounts of solid waste.

The “Crying Indian” Ad That Fooled the Environmental Movement | Essay | Zócalo Public Square

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Corals eat plastic because we’ve made it tasty, study suggests 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,Leave a comment

Ocean plastic is an indiscriminate hazard. It harms fish and kills seabirds, which wash up with bellies full of trash. Turtles swallow it because, the thinking goes, they mistake the floating waste for jellyfish. Less well known are the ways plastic damages the ocean’s smaller inhabitants, plankton and corals, which sometimes are found with particles wedged in their teeny guts.

…Savoca also didn’t expect corals to prefer plastic. In 2016, he and his colleagues reported that seabirds were attracted to smelly, bacteria-covered plastic, and he recently demonstrated that anchovy fish swarm around the odor of fouled plastic.

“We need to be thinking about the taste of plastic as a paradigm,” Seymour said, “not just a problem for corals.”

…Yet there is no question that plastic has penetrated the ocean, and even its remotest corner is not beyond human influence. Robot submersibles have spotted plastic bags on slopes leading to the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Pacific. Where no explorer will ever plant a flag or footprint, there is already plastic.

Corals eat plastic because we’ve made it tasty, study suggests – New Haven Register

Sigh….

Hurricane Irma left a poop problem in its wake.

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Gulf Coast Region,, Infrastructure and Transportation,Leave a comment

There’s a lot of sewage still to clean up.

….Pollution reports submitted to Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection show that, due to power outages and flooding caused by Irma, human waste has been spilling into streets, residences, and waterways across the entire state. At the time of this article’s publication, at least 113 “Public Notices of Pollution” had been submitted to the DEP. Combined, those discharge reports showed more than 28 million gallons of treated and untreated sewage released in 22 counties. The total amount is surely much more; at least 43 of those reports listed either an “unknown” or “ongoing” amount of waste released, and new reports continue to roll in—sometimes as many as a dozen per hour.

In other words, Irma was a literal shitstorm. But it’s no laughing matter. Sewage spills pose a major threat to public health, and they’re likely to become more common due to two increasingly connected crises facing America: an aging infrastructure and climate change.

 

Hurricane Irma left a poop problem in its wake.

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