Category: Nature
Keystone Pipeline application resubmitted with route that bypasses Nebraska’s Sand Hills
The energy hot potato known as the Keystone XL pipeline was back to the State Department, which announced Friday that it had received a new application from developer TransCanada that includes a reworked route through Nebraska. Environmental groups and industry quickly lined up on opposite sides, while the Obama administration said a final decision is not likely before next year. In Nebraska, Republicans had joined Democrats in objecting to an initial proposal of routing the $7 billion natural gas pipeline from Canada through the sensitive Sandhills region and over the Ogallala Aquifer.
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Keystone Pipeline application resubmitted with route that bypasses Nebraska’s Sand Hills
Just how far can a polar bear swim?
Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are capable of swimming incredible distances, according to a new study published in Zoology, which recorded polar bears regularly swimming over 30 miles (48 kilometers) and, in one case, as far as 220 miles (354 kilometers). The researchers believe the ability of polar bears to tackle such long-distance swims may help them survive as seasonal sea ice vanishes due to climate change.
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Just how far can a polar bear swim?
Major Apartment Air Quality Issue: Tobacco Smoke
One of the reasons that smoking has been banned in so many places in cities like New York is because the population density is so high. There are people everywhere you look, many of whom feel their right to privacy is violated by someone else’s smoke blown in their breathing zone. One place where this right is overlooked is in apartments, where many people live in close proximity to smokers. A new study from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) shows that tobacco smoke can seep from one apartment to another. Along with noisy neighbors and odorous cooking smells, unwanted tobacco smoke ranks high as a major indoor environmental issue in apartments.
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Major Apartment Air Quality Issue: Tobacco Smoke
Stream Temperatures Don’t Parallel Warming Climate Trend
A new analysis of streams in the western United States with long-term monitoring programs has found that despite a general increase in air temperatures over the past several decades, streams are not necessarily warming at the same rate.
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Stream Temperatures Don’t Parallel Warming Climate Trend
Greenland’s Ice Melting Overestimated
A new study has some reassuring news about how fast Greenland’s glaciers are melting away. Greenland’s glaciers hold enough water to raise sea level by 20 feet, and they are melting as the planet warms, so there’s a lot at stake. A few years ago, the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland really caught people’s attention. In short order, this slow-moving stream of ice suddenly doubled its speed. It started dumping a whole lot more ice into the Atlantic. Other glaciers also sped up. “Some people feared if they could double their speed over two or three years, they could keep doubling and doubling and doubling and reach very fast speeds,” says Ian Joughin of the University of Washington’s Polar Ice Center.
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Greenland’s Ice Melting Overestimated
Are there toxic chemicals in your gardening equipment and supplies?
Spring time is here and a lot of people are indulging in gardening. But did you know that there are a lot of chemicals that may be harmful to your health in your gardening supplies? According to Ann Arbor-based Ecology Center, high amounts of lead, phthalates and the toxic chemical BPA were all found in the water of a new hose after it sat outside in the sun for just a few days.
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Are there toxic chemicals in your gardening equipment and supplies?
Recycling electronics waste
Many electronic manufacturers are looking beyond the production and marketing of electronics. They are actively engaged in recovery and recycling of electronic equipment once they fulfill the intended use. Manufacturers are also thinking ahead and incorporating after life use of recycled materials. One good example is Panasonic Corporation’s program of recycling panel glasses of old CRT televisions into glass wool known as Vacua which is used to make refrigerators. They also separate plastic material used in electrical appliances.
Panasonic is actively engaged in recovery and recycling of electronic waste in Europe, United States and China through many initiatives. In the U.S., the Electronic Manufacturers Recycling Management Company, LLC, (MRM) is expected to establish 1,600 recovery bases by 2013. In Germany, the EcologyNet Europe GmbH (ENE), operates a recycling management system in partnership with universities and smelting companies to promote technologies for recovery and recycling. Panasonic is the first Japanese company to start a home appliance recycling program in China.
Programs like what Panasonic is implementing are aimed at promoting eco-friendly manufacturing, recovery and reuse of electronics waste. Many other responsible manufacturers are cooperating with one another to promote similar goals. We salute all those manufacturers who make an effort to help the environment.
Fracking and its impact on the environment
If you have been to the gas station lately you would have noticed the price of a gallon of gasoline. It takes more dollars to fill the same gas tank that you filled few weeks ago at a lesser price. When good weather come price of a gallon of gasoline is going to be higher than what it is today.
Gas hungry U.S. consumers are demanding even more gasoline. Higher prices are an incentive for the drillers to carry out more and fracking to extract oil in places like Ohio and other states.
Hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking, is a method of extracting oil and natural gas from hard to reach places. This method involves blasting rocks to open up oil deposited in them. Drillers use fracking fluid and generate brine from drilling. Fracking fluid is believed to contain rust inhibitors and anti-bacterial agents. As a result, pollutants are building up under the earth. Drillers pump these harmful chemicals to underground storage wells. Ohio alone pumps about 511 million gallons a year into these wells.
There is also a belief that recent series of earthquake in the region may have been caused by drilling for underground waste water wells.
California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines
Guidelines are regulations that explain, interpret and implement the CEQA. The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research is responsible for updating the Guidelines. It is a self-enforced collection of requirements and all public agencies are entrusted to follow the Guidelines.
Public agencies should decide whether a project is subject to CEQA or not. The Guidelines provide criteria to make a determination.
When the public agency determines that the activity is a project, the Guidelines provide criteria to apply to see whether the activity is exempt from CEQA review or not. If it is a listed exempt activity, then the public agency will prepare a Notice of Exemption and if necessary, file with certain other public agencies for public review incompliance with the Guidelines.
If the project is not Exempt, then the public agency needs to make a determination whether the project will have any impact on the environment or not. Certain impacts can be mitigated through mitigation measures. So, the public agency following Guidelines prepares a Negative Declaration or Mitigated Negative Declaration for adoption by the decision maker of the project.
If there are impacts that can’t be mitigated to a level insignificance, a costly Environmental Impact Report will be prepared.
Do trees offset carbon fumes
With so many concerns arising with regard to global warming it is important to understand how we can reduce our carbon foot prints.
Global warming is caused by greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which creates a blanket around the earth that traps the heat from the sun within the earth rather than reflect it back to space.
Can trees absorb the carbon emissions and reduce the effects of global warming? Trees have the ability to absorb the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and release oxygen which will reduce the greenhouse effect, causing global warming.
But new research shows that the process of global warming may affect the trees ability to store carbon. Research over a period of seven years was carried out in Massachusetts where the temperature of a part of a forest soil was artificially elevated by 9 degrees Fahrenheit without altering the greenhouse emissions, showed that the rising temperature caused the trees to decompose faster and that this process released more carbon dioxide to the environment.
The research also showed that though trees decomposed faster, there was a significant increase in the rate of growth of trees due to the increased nitrogen in the soil caused by the increased temperature.