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What to do with explosion craters and destroyed landscapes? Solutions that work
https://rubryka.com/en/article/explosive-burst/, posted Sep '22 by peter in environment ukraine war
Environmentalists from the organization Environment.People.Law developed a study devoted to the methods of restoring the environment after hostilities. What do the experts suggest to do? We analyze each of the solutions.
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Toyotabackad start up gör vodka av koldioxid
https://www.di.se/hallbart-naringsliv/toyotabackad-start-up-gor-vodka-av-koldioxid/, posted May '22 by peter in drink entrepreneurship environment inswedish
”Vi arbetar med partners som fångar in koldioxiden innan den släpps ut i atmosfären. Vi använder det sedan i vår process för att framställa alkohol”, säger Gregory Constantine, vd och medgrundare för Air Company, till CNBC.
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The Amazon's Little Tipping Points: Nearing a point of no return?
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/climate-un-amazon-tipping-point/, posted Oct '21 by peter in environment nature science
Some scientists fear we are nearing a point of no return in the Amazon rainforest, which exerts power over the carbon cycle like no other terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. Evidence is mounting that in certain areas, localized iterations of irreversible damage may already be happening.
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Vehicles Are Still Firmly in Control of City Streets
https://www.governing.com/community/vehicles-still-firmly-in-control-of-city-streets, posted Aug '21 by peter in environment politics toread urbanism usa
In Boston they just did a poll where they asked "even though it means less space on the streets for cars, do you want to keep the parklets we've put in during COVID?" Eighty-one percent said keep the parklets. They asked about keeping the bike lanes and 79 percent said keep the bike lanes. This is a randomized poll, they're not stopping cyclists on the street. That's where public opinion is, but that's not necessarily what the leaders are hearing whenever the question comes up about keeping or eliminating an individual parklet or bike lane.
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Why has nuclear power been a flop?
https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop, posted 2021 by peter in energy environment health opinion
The standard story about nuclear costs is that radiation is dangerous, and therefore safety is expensive. The book argues that this is wrong: nuclear can be made safe and cheap. It should be 3 c/kWh — cheaper than coal.
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Stringfoot Pigeon Help - What is stringfoot?
https://www.stringfootpigeon.com/, posted 2021 by peter in bird environment health
Stringfoot is a term used to describe pigeons whose feet have become entangled with foreign matter, whether actual string, thread, monofilament, real or artificial human hair (most common), dental floss, yarn, or the many other materials discarded by the human population of cities.
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Whether adult birds or chicks, these foreign materials wrapped around their feet or legs — and sometimes binding their feet together — results in pain, infection, loss of digits or entire feet, and the subsequent inability to walk, stand, perch, land, feed or bathe properly, sometimes leading to illness or death...
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Future of the human climate niche | PNAS
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/28/1910114117, posted 2020 by peter in environment science
We show that for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth’s available climates, characterized by mean annual temperatures around ∼13 °C. This distribution likely reflects a human temperature niche related to fundamental constraints. We demonstrate that depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y. Absent climate mitigation or migration, a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to mean annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today.
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The meat we get from factory farms is a pandemic risk, too - Vox
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/4/22/21228158/coronavirus-pandemic-risk-factory-farming-meat, posted 2020 by peter in environment food health
That’s because we eat a ton of meat, and the vast majority of it comes from factory farms. In these huge industrialized facilities that supply more than 90 percent of meat globally — and around 99 percent of America’s meat — animals are tightly packed together and live under harsh and unsanitary conditions.
“When we overcrowd animals by the thousands, in cramped football-field-size sheds, to lie beak to beak or snout to snout, and there’s stress crippling their immune systems, and there’s ammonia from the decomposing waste burning their lungs, and there’s a lack of fresh air and sunlight — put all these factors together and you have a perfect-storm environment for the emergence and spread of disease,“ said Michael Greger, the author of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching.
To make matters worse, selection for specific genes in farmed animals (for desirable traits like large chicken breasts) has made these animals almost genetically identical. That means that a virus can easily spread from animal to animal without encountering any genetic variants that might stop it in its tracks. As it rips through a flock or herd, the virus can grow even more virulent.
Greger puts it bluntly: “If you actually want to create global pandemics, then build factory farms.”
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Japan Races to Build New Coal-Burning Power Plants, Despite the Climate Risks
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/climate/japan-coal-fukushima.html, posted 2020 by peter in energy environment fukushima health japan jpquake politics
It is one unintended consequence of the Fukushima nuclear disaster almost a decade ago, which forced Japan to all but close its nuclear power program. Japan now plans to build as many as 22 new coal-burning power plants — one of the dirtiest sources of electricity — at 17 different sites in the next five years, just at a time when the world needs to slash carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming.
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The Plastic Industry’s Fight to Keep Polluting the World
https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plastic-recycling/, posted 2019 by peter in business environment politics propaganda usa
The APBA began pushing back against plastics restrictions around the country in 2011. Around 2015, the industry group upped its game. Rather than just opposing individual bans, the APBA began lobbying for state preemption laws. The approach, which another Koch brothers-affliated group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, has used to fight local action on other issues, including pesticide restrictions and living wage laws, prevents cities and towns from passing local plastic bans. In the past eight years, the American Chemistry Council has helped pass preemption bills based on ALEC’s model in 13 states. According to Seaholm, who joined the group in 2016, 42 percent of Americans now live in states where they can’t pass local bans on plastics.