New study links carbon pollution to extreme weather
Human activities are altering the jet stream, which leads to extreme weather patterns getting stuck in place.
Plants have been helping to offset climate change, but now it’s up to us
Plants are currently removing more carbon dioxide from the air than they did 200 years ago, according to new work. This team’s findings affirm estimates used in models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Thirsty mangroves cause unprecedented dieback; Australia’s northern coast
Scientists have discovered why, in early 2016, there was an unprecedented dieback of 7400 hectares of mangroves, which stretched for 1000 kilometres along the Gulf of Carpentaria – the plants died of thirst.
Plastic No More, Also in Kenya
Kenya has just joined the commitment of other 10 countries to address major plastic pollution by decreeing a ban on the use, manufacture and import of all plastic bags, to take effect in six months.
Let’s end war with ocean, Op-Ed by Orrin H. Pilkey
The immediate future most certainly holds more miles of sandbags, resulting in more narrowed and ugly beaches.But this trend can be halted and reversed. Now is the time to make peace with the ocean.The time is now to stop sandbagging, both physically with no more shore-hardening structures, and politically with no more exceptions to the intent of the rules, no more undermining existing legislation, and a return to enforcement.
Over 9 million metric tonnes of beach sand was illegally mined, Tamil Nadu
Despite a ban on mining of beach sand since 2013, illicit mining and transportation of beach sand continued on a massive scale. A court filing reports that in 2013, over 90 lakh tonnes (9 million metric tonnes) of beach sand had been mined from 2 districts located at the southernmost tip of peninsular India, in Tamil Nadu State.
Kailua Beach sand project gets underway, triggers stream pollution fears
Longtime residents believe that the water quality in Kailua bay has degraded.
Ridding the oceans of plastics by turning the waste into valuable fuel
Billions of pounds of plastic waste are littering the world’s oceans. Now, an organic chemist and a sailboat captain report that they are developing a process to reuse certain plastics, transforming them from worthless trash into a valuable diesel fuel with a small mobile reactor that could operate on land or at sea.
Line in the sand, Video
The world is running low on sand. It’s a basic ingredient in construction – think skyscrapers, shopping malls, roads and windows – and cities are growing faster and bigger than at any time in history. Legal supply can’t keep up. So now organised criminals are hitting pay dirt, pillaging millions of tonnes of sand from the India’s beaches, riverbeds and hillsides.