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Washington Post: “Seventy-nine thousand tons of plastic debris, in the form of 1.8 trillion pieces, now occupy an area three times the size of France in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, a scientific team reported on Thursday. The amount of plastic found in this area, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is …
“The worsening impacts of climate change in three densely populated regions of the world could see over 140 million people move within their countries’ borders by 2050, creating a looming human crisis and threatening the development process, a new World Bank Group report finds. But with concerted action – including global efforts to cut greenhouse …
“New computer screenshots released by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday made clear that Russian state hackers had the foothold they would have needed to manipulate or shut down power plants.” Nicole Perlroth and David Sanger in the NYT: Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants. “The Trump administration accused Russia …
Migratory birds have made their thousand-mile flights for millennia, but we are just now learning to map their mesmerizing journeys. “Different types of birds take routes of widely varying lengths. Some round-trip migrations can be as long as 44,000 miles, equivalent to almost two round-the-world trips. Others are much shorter. Some birds even migrate on …
Yale Environment 360: “Summers in the city can be extremely hot — several degrees hotter than in the surrounding countryside. But recent research indicates that it may not have to be that way. The systematic replacement of dark surfaces with white could lower heat wave maximum temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius or more. And with …
AccuWeather: “In anticipation of the annual springtime National Cherry Blossom Festival, millions of people await the announcement of the peak bloom date of Washington, D.C.’s famous cherry blossoms each year. Flowers from the cherry trees, which were gifted from Japan to the United States in 1912, have bloomed earlier in recent years. Warmer weather appears …
Data Driven Journalism: “On January 9th of 2017, the official Twitter account of MillionTreesNYC (@MillionTreesNYC) announced that they had reached the initiative’s ambitious goal to plant and care for one million new trees across the City’s five boroughs. Starting in April of 2007 as a joint venture between the city’s Parks Department, private organizations, residents, …
The New York Times: “Even before President Trump officially opened his high-profile review last spring of federal lands protected as national monuments, the Department of Interior was focused on the potential for oil and gas exploration at a protected Utah site, internal agency documents show. The debate started as early as March 2017, when an …
Oliver E J Wing et al 2018 Environ. Res. Lett. 13 03402. Estimates of present and future flood risk in the conterminous United States. Open Access. “Past attempts to estimate rainfall-driven flood risk across the US either have incomplete coverage, coarse resolution or use overly simplified models of the flooding process. In this paper, we …
“[February 28, 2018] the Congressional Safe Climate Caucus sent a letter condemning the White House’s systematic effort to reduce and suppress public access to climate change resources through federal channels. The members highlighted many examples and expressed their concerns that these efforts violate the intent of the Federal Records Act. The letter comes after a …
The Economist “…of the 6.3bn tonnes of plastic waste produced since the 1950s only 9% has been recycled and another 12% incinerated. The rest has been dumped in landfills or the natural environment. Often, as with disposable coffee cups, drinks bottles, sweet wrappers and other packets that account for much of the plastic produced in …
A small city in remote Alaska is working to reduce contamination from the nearby Red Dog Mine: “…The village has long had issues with the mine. Ore from Red Dog is transported by eighty-ton haul trucks along a 50-mile road that links the mine to a port on the Chukchi Sea south of Kivalina. There …
