The heat waves happening across the world this year are just a warming up of what’s to come. The most profound aspect of events is how nothing is being done to adapt.
Category: Environment
Soil is a significant store of carbon. Warming soils will release more CO2 into the atmosphere than previously supposed, accelerating global warming well beyond what current climate models predict.
Presented with bad news, most people tend to play it down if they can. Professional forecasters are no exception. Alas, their untoward optimism often hurts those they smile upon.
The world hotting up has made wildfires more frequent and intense. Siberia, which has the world’s most extensive forest, has been ablaze for months.
Half of the world’s land has been degraded by man’s exploitation: an unsustainable percentage that keeps rising. One unintended consequence is the increasing unleashing of infectious disease.
Climate models fail to predict wind, which is an extremely significant forecasting facet. That wind is predictable highlights how pathetic climate model forecasts are.
US households emit 20% of that nation’s greenhouse gas exhaust. If considered a country, American residences would be the world’s 6th most significant polluter. The wealthy do more than their share.
In northeastern North America over the past 30 years, habitat destruction and man-made pollution, including pesticides, have annihilated the intimate networking between plants and pollinators. 94% loss of plant-pollinator networks were disrupted.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with ~86 times the warming power of carbon dioxide for 2 decades. As it ages, methane oxidizes and loses hotness – but is still 26 times more warming than carbon dioxide for a century.
Planting massive numbers of trees to demonstrate concern about climate change is just a stupid publicity stunt at best.
Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is widely used as an insulator in high-voltage electrical equipment for electricity production and transmission. SF6 is also the most potent greenhouse gas, and its emission is burgeoning.
2 types of advanced-technology refuse are especially noxious to the environment: plastic and electronic waste. Both are unsustainably burgeoning.
Since its widespread commercialization in the early 1950s, plastic has become ubiquitous: first in products and their packaging, and now everywhere on Earth.
Plastic debris concentrates on the surface of the ocean via the currents of ocean gyres, with agglomerations shockingly visible from space. Plastic pollution further flows into the deep sea, following the same currents that historically have provided nutrients.
Coral reefs worldwide have been stressed by pollution, warmer seas, and outright destruction by men. Cyclones add another hazard.
The Devonian period closed with multiple mass extinction events. The 2 most severe were the Kellwasser Event 372 million years ago (MYA) and the Hangeberg Event, which ended the Devonian 359 MYA.
Global warming is making cyclones more frequent and intense.
China had ranked 3rd in turtle species diversity. Now its wild turtles face extinction.
The rate of environmental destruction portends the pace of humanity’s demise. A recent satellite survey discovered global urban expansion in recent decades grew 4 times greater than previously estimated.
Whereas rising CO2 levels headline climate change news, water vapor is the predominant atmospheric warming agent. Changes in the water cycle portend accelerating global warming.
The Great Lakes of North America is the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth, holding 20% of the world’s surface freshwater. Careless pollution has made it a hazardous source of drinking water.
By far the most varied and abundant of animals, insects are vital to the biological integrity of macroscopic life on Earth: serving as pollinators of plants (and their corpses fertilizer), food for many animals (notably birds), and ecosystem cleaners.
Consuming animal meat is the primary source of infectious disease, as covid-19 morosely illustrated. As forests continue to be lost to human devastation, the unleashing of new diseases is expectable.
Plastic is a petrochemical fabrication promoted by oil companies. To take the perceptual edge off the mountains of forever garbage that plastic becomes, the oil industry promoted the idea of recycling plastic. That was a scam and plastic producers knew it.
Clean water is the elixir of life – as essential for keeping clean as for drinking. Its shortage during the covid-19 pandemic is putting more than half of the global population at risk.