Damming Chinese rivers has been in the public consciousness for many years now, if for no other reason than for the impact the construction of the Three Gorges Dam had on the surrounding region: the 400 mile long reservoir of the Three Gorges Dam has flooded 13 cities, 140 towns, 1352 villages, and 100,000 acres of China’s
Evidence that has been at the center of the hypothesis to support the Younger Dryas impact event has been called into question by a new study led by U.S.L Geological Survey scientists, who believe that the evidence is actually the result of natural processes. Elevated levels of iridium, magnetic spherules, and titanomagnetite grains, collectively called
The scientists used a general circulation model known as ModelE (developed at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York). The model calculates ocean-atmosphere coupling effects in addition to allowing varying aerosol inputs.
The initial input for the simulation was 5 teragrams (megatons) of black carbon particles injected into Earth’s upper troposphere. This is the estimated result of the surface detonation of 100 Hiroshima-size bombs (each equivalent to 15K tons of TNT).
Reporting her results from a fifth Gulf of Mexico expedition ending this past December, University of Georgia marine scientist Samantha Joye has been to the bottom and back, and her findings are anything but optimistic. Her team has found numerous expanses of oil and soot covered sea floor that were “chemically finger-printed” as deriving from
It won’t come as a surprise to many to know that the impact we are having on our ocean’s deep seafloor is growing with each decade that passes. New findings have revealed for the first time the actual physical footprint we are leaving on the oceans seafloor, and the biggest problem area is bottom-trawling commercial
Greenpeace announced Wednesday morning that they would be launching a three month expedition to analyse the impact of the BP oil spill. The Greenpeace vessel MV Arctic Sunrise will set sail Thursday morning from Saint Petersburg, Florida, and tour the southern tip of Florida and its Keys before moving northward to where the Deepwater Horizon
A survey by Louisiana State University professors has investigated the health impacts on Louisianan residents following in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. At the time of publication the report noted that it had been 85 since the “onset of the disaster and the flow of oil has just been stopped.” The authors focused
A new exploratory study out of George Mason University has found that people will care more about climate change if it is framed as a public health problem. The authors of the study interviewed 70 Americans and had the respondents read a public health framed essay on climate change. Their results found that, on the
Scientists studying the BP oil spill which has only recently been capped believe there could be a decades-long “cascading” effect on marine life. Experts estimate that some 400 species could be at risk from the impact of oil and the chemical dispersants laid down in an effort to disperse the oil. They believe a massive
A group of 30 leading Earth and Environmental scientists is proposing “nine planetary boundaries”, or “safety zones”, that must not be crossed, in order to preserve the planetary and environmental balance that human civilizations (and much of the rest of the biosphere) require. Crossing these boundaries–and three of them may have already been crossed–could “generate unacceptable environmental change for humanity.”
[social_buttons] Would you be so cavalier in throwing out a disposable razor if you knew how much it actually impacted your local environments? Would you think twice about purchasing a bottle of water if you knew how much it cost you to dispose of? That’s the question asked by the MIT SENSEable City lab these days.
