Blacksmith Institute, which addresses pollution-related problems in the developing world, published its annual list of the most polluted places, with more detail available on each: Sumgayit, AzerbaijanLinfen, ChinaTianying, ChinaSukinda, IndiaVapi, IndiaLa Oroya, PeruDzerzhinsk, RussiaNorilsk, RussiaChernobyl, UkraineKabwe, Zambia As the Institute says: Living in a town with serious pollution is like living under a death sentence. […]
Read more...The title above is the headline of a story in Science Daily, which reports on the recommendations of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which in turn cites a recent report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The FAO report found that over-reliance on a few highly productive livestock breeds, such […]
Read more...Eeeew…..I much prefer the US solution of neuter and release. From the BBC: Australians have come up with a novel solution to the millions of feral cats roaming the outback – eat them. The felines are the descendants of domestic pets and kill millions of small native animals each year. A recent Alice Springs contest […]
Read more...The BBC, citing a study in Nature, informs us that climate change models have underestimated the risk of flooding. High atmospheric carbon dioxide levels mean plants suck less water out of the soil. Wetter soil means faster soil saturation in heavy rains, hence more serious flooding. From the BBC: Researchers say efforts to calculate flooding […]
Read more...Aah, there is so much good stuff out there that I can’t begin to do it justice. Hopefully you will enjoy these items: VoxEU features a very good international study on the gender income gap. The Boston Globe tells us that negotiating courses don’t address the fact that people lie. APEC is set to issue […]
Read more...An Associated Press story, courtesy the Houston Chronicle’s website, tells us that an Alabama nuclear reactor had to be shut down because the river whose water was used as coolant was too hot: The Tennessee Valley Authority shut down one of three units at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant Thursday because water drawn from a […]
Read more...A good piece from the Associated Press via Yahoo on the potential of geothermal energy as a fossil fuel replacement. Geothermal energy has the advantage of being clean and abundant. In fact, it’s already used in some homes in northern Europe, where a geothermal well beneath a house contains water that has been heated by […]
Read more...Periodically, the Earth has experienced significant species die-offs. While the so-called K-T extinction, which marked the end of the dinosaur age, has been attributed to an asteroid crash, other declines remain something of a mystery. An article in Science magazine, summarized on its website, recounts a study by researchers from the University of Kansas in […]
Read more...It turns out that those who blame the recent increase in the number of Atlantic hurricanes on global warming aren’t nuts. A study just published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society analyzed storms over the last century. It found that the increase since 1980 was due to climate change, and attributed 50% to […]
Read more...An article in Nature magazine, as reported by the BBC, has found that ozone is a more significant greenhouse gas than previously recognized. Ozone interferes with plant photosynthesis, which reduces their effectiveness as a carbon sink. The study estimated that it reduced plant productivity by 14% to 22%, which is a large enough level to […]
Read more...My Japanese friends have often said that China has a 5,000 year history of not living up to its potential. When I’ve passed that view along to Westerners, they’ve scoffed, viewing the Chinese juggernaut to be unstoppable. The Japanese may yet be proven correct. This post at Gristmill points to an article by Christina Larson […]
Read more...A Canadian study, “Food Web–Specific Biomagnification of Persistent Organic Pollutants,” published in Science Magazine, identifies a new class of chemicals that pose a potential threat to human health. This conclusion results from a more fundamental insight: the traditional method of looking at bioaccumulation did so by studying marine life. However, air-breathing creatures discharge toxins differently […]
Read more...The Journal has a not-too-bad page one story on Australia’s drought and the government efforts to address it, but it’s wrong enough so as to merit comment. I lived in Australia for a couple of years not too long ago and have met Malcolm Turnbull, who is now the environmental minister for Australia. The story […]
Read more...The headline in Mark Thoma’s blog is more colorful: “To Reduce Crime, Get the Lead Out.” His post points to a Washington Post story, “Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity,” in which economist Rick Nevin says lead exposure is the biggest factor behind crime. Now as any statistician will tell you, correlation is not causation, […]
Read more...Most news stories touting the findings of a ten year investigation of organic versus conventionally farmed tomatoes make broader claims (example; CNNMoney “All-natural veggies good for heart“) than the study’s immediate findings, namely that the fruit, when raised organically, has nearly double the level of some key flavinoids (quercetin and kaempferol. Flavinoids have been found […]
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