When last we checked in on the petro-state
of Alberta, in western Canada, there was a huge wildfire burning down the city
of Fort McMurray, hub of the tar-sands energy revolution—tar-sands being the
poisonous glop various multinationals would like to pump all over the continent
through pipelines in order to maintain our addiction to dead dinosaur juice.
Opposition to our old friend, the Keystone
XL pipeline—the continent-spanning death funnel and current conservative fetish
object—had to do with the inevitability that the pipeline would leak and
destroy some of the world's most valuable farmland. It also had to do with the
fact that the content of the pipeline was the dirtiest fossil fuel ever devised
and that it was a threat to the planet itself if not left in the ground.
The airborne data, supported by further work
with computer models and laboratory experiments, show that 45 to 84 tonnes of
secondary organic aerosols are formed by the oil sands a day. By comparison,
Canada's largest urban area, which includes Toronto and surrounding
municipalities, generates 67 tonnes a day, much of it derived from car and
truck exhaust. "The take-away is that there's more that's emitted into the
atmosphere than we've fully appreciated," said Jeffrey Brook, an
air-quality researcher with Environment and Climate Change Canada who
participated in the oil sands study… Scientists are still trying to understand
the complex health effects those particles can trigger when inhaled, but they
have been linked in previous studies to lung cancer, cardiovascular disease and
diabetes.
Who is doing the cost benefit analysis for this stuff - tobacco industry accountants?
Dozens of the Earth’s most cherished World
Heritage sites are under dire threat from climate change — and some may be
damaged beyond saving, warns a report UNESCO released Thursday.
The agency, alongside the Union of Concerned
Scientists and the United Nations Environment Program, analyzed 31 natural and
cultural World Heritage sites in 29 countries on six continent. The areas range
from America’s celebrated Yellowstone National Park and Venice’s iconic Lagoon
to the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador and the Ilulissat Icefjord in Denmark, all
of which could be damaged by an onslaught of climate-related effects.
Ironically, despite the growing threats,
UNESCO only has a $4 million budget to help assist climate-mitigation efforts
for more than 1,000 World Heritage sites. To put that in perspective, Venice
alone has budgeted more than $6 billion to stem the tide of flooding overtaking
the city.
The authors of the UNESCO report are urging
governments and world leaders to do “all that they can to address the the
causes and impacts of climate change,” and conduct more research about
potential impacts to threatened areas from both humans and the warming planet.
Good luck with that!
Aussies raise the ante on sunlight-to-energy conversion with 50% increase in solar cell efficiency.
University of NSW team led by Professor
Martin Green and Dr Mark Keevers has pushed sunlight-to-electricity conversion
efficiency to 34.5% – establishing a new world record for unfocused sunlight.
Solar energy efficiency has gone up
significantly in recent years, while prices have gone down dramatically making
solar energy more and more plausible as a global renewable solution for energy.
But in order for it to be truly viable, we need to push the limits of
efficiency even more.
“This encouraging result shows that there
are still advances to come in photovoltaics research to make solar cells even
more efficient,” said Keevers. “Extracting more energy from every beam of
sunlight is critical to reducing the cost of electricity generated by solar
cells as it lowers the investment needed, and delivering payback faster.”
“What’s remarkable is that this level of
efficiency had not been expected for many years,” said Green, a pioneer who has
led the field for much of his 40 years at UNSW. “A recent study by Germany’s
Agora Energiewende think tank set an aggressive target of 35% efficiency by
2050 for a module that uses unconcentrated sunlight, such as the standard ones
on family homes.
Tourists loving the place to death. Thai government steps in.
Less than two weeks after the Thai
government closed its Koh Tachai island indefinitely, the country has announced the closure of another three of its
islands in a bid to save its beaches and endangered coral reefs.
On Wednesday, Thai marine officials said
that all tourist activities will be banned at Koh Khai Nok, Koh Khai Nui and
Koh Khai Nai. All three islands are located off the coast of the popular
tourist trap, Phuket.
According to Thailand's Department of Marine
and Coastal resources (DCMR), natural resources around the neighbouring islands
are fast diminishing as a result of increased tourism.
No such thing as biodegradable plastic. Chemistry doesn’t work that way.
Contrary to what their name suggests, a
comprehensive new UN report on marine plastics confirms that most plastics
labeled as biodegradable don't break down in the ocean.
We’ve all seen the photos; the grim images
of marine animals tangled up and tortured in the plastic chaos of our detritus.
Some estimates put plastic pollution as the cause of death for 100 million
marine animals every year, while a study from Imperial College London last year
concluded that plastic will be found in 99 percent of seabirds by 2050.
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