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Sweden officially the 'goodest' country in the world, study says | World Politics | News | The Independent
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/sweden-goodest-country-in-world-good-country-index-a7061341.html, posted 2016 by peter in environment health msm politics science sweden
The country has outranked 162 others to take pole position in the Good Country Index, a league table based on 35 separate indicators from sources including the United Nations and the World Bank.
Sweden scores highest for positive lifestyle contributions including prosperity, equality, health and wellbeing, while also performing well culturally.
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Row-Bot Pollution Eating Robot Walks On Water, Never Needs Charging | BGR
bgr.com/2015/11/13/row-bot-pollution-cleaning-robot-water/, posted 2015 by peter in energy environment robotics
The Row-bot has four tiny buoyant stabilizers for feet and two paddles that extend from the middle of its body. While the feet keep Row-bot afloat, the paddles send it skimming across the surface of a body of water. The device takes water into a cavity in its housing as it moves, where electrogenic bacteria digest pollutants found within the water. The byproducts of that digestion are carbon dioxide and electricity, which in turn fuels the Row-bot and keeps it moving.
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The coming era of unlimited — and free — clean energy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/09/19/the-coming-era-of-unlimited-and-free-clean-energy/, posted 2015 by peter in energy environment opinion
Futurist Ray Kurzweil notes that solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years — as costs have been dropping. He says solar energy is only six doublings — or less than 14 years — away from meeting 100 percent of today’s energy needs. Energy usage will keep increasing, so this is a moving target. But, by Kurzweil’s estimates, inexpensive renewable sources will provide more energy than the world needs in less than 20 years. Even then, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth.
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Nearly every seabird may be eating plastic by 2050
news.sciencemag.org/environment/2015/08/nearly-every-seabird-may-be-eating-plastic-2050, posted 2015 by peter in bird environment science
By 2050, about 99.8% of the species studied will have eaten plastic, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Consuming plastic can cause myriad problems, Wilcox says. For example, some types of plastics absorb and concentrate environmental pollutants, he notes. After ingestion, those chemicals can be released into the birds’ digestive tracts, along with chemicals in the plastics that keep them soft and pliable. But plastic bits aren’t always pliable enough to get through a gull’s gut. Most birds have trouble passing large bits of plastic, and they build up in the stomach, sometimes taking up so much room that the birds can’t consume enough food to stay healthy.
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Here’s what happens when you try to replicate climate contrarian papers | Dana Nuccitelli | Environment | The Guardian
www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/aug/25/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-to-replicate-climate-contrarian-papers, posted 2015 by peter in environment science statistics
You may have noticed another characteristic of contrarian climate research – there is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming. Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert consensus on a cohesive theory that’s overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence, but the 2–3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.
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We don’t trust drinking fountains anymore, and that’s bad for our health
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-dont-trust-drinking-fountains-anymore-and-thats-bad-for-our-health/2015/07/02/24eca9bc-15f0-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html, posted 2015 by peter in environment health usa
The reliance on bottled water rather than fountains also has serious environmental effects. According to the Earth Policy Institute, it takes about 1.5 million barrels of oil to create the 50 billion plastic water bottles Americans use each year. (That’s enough oil to fuel 100,000 cars for a year.) Less than a quarter of those bottles are recycled. And these statistics don’t even account for the fuel used in transporting the water around the country and the world.
Bottled water is also expensive. Drinking eight glasses of tap water a day costs about 49 cents a year. If you got that hydration exclusively from bottles, you’d pay about $1,400, or 2,900 times more. If you’re living at the poverty line, that’s 10 percent of your income.
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BBC - Future - Can a city really ban cars from its streets?
www.bbc.com/future/story/20140204-can-a-city-really-go-car-free?, posted 2015 by peter in environment health planning toread traffic urbanism
The German city of Hamburg has announced plans to become car-free within the next two decades. It is an ambitious idea, but city officials obviously feel that the personal motorcar does not fulfill a function that walking, biking and taking public transport cannot.
The goal of Hamburg’s project is to replace roads with a “gruenes netz” or a green network of interconnected open areas covering 40% of the city. According to the official website, parks, playgrounds, sports fields, allotments and cemeteries will be connected to form a network, which will allow people to navigate through the city without the use of cars.
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New EU label calls palm oil what it is | Environment | DW.DE | 16.12.2014
www.dw.de/new-eu-label-calls-palm-oil-what-it-is/a-18134682?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf, posted 2014 by peter in environment eu food health transparency
Very often, new palm oil plantations result in the clearing of rainforest. Researchers at Princeton University have shown that more than half of the palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia are located in areas where there used to be rainforest. So by choosing a specific product, the consumer unwittingly has an impact on deforestation of rainforest and the fate of endangered species like orangutans or tigers.
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What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change - IEEE Spectrum
spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change, posted 2014 by peter in energy environment science
We decided to combine our energy innovation study’s best-case scenario results with Hansen’s climate model to see whether a 55 percent emission cut by 2050 would bring the world back below that 350-ppm threshold. Our calculations revealed otherwise. Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO2 levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially due to continued fossil fuel use. So our best-case scenario, which was based on our most optimistic forecasts for renewable energy, would still result in severe climate change, with all its dire consequences: shifting climatic zones, freshwater shortages, eroding coasts, and ocean acidification, among others. Our reckoning showed that reversing the trend would require both radical technological advances in cheap zero-carbon energy, as well as a method of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering the carbon.
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Fukushima disaster site 'like a science fiction film'
www.dw.de/fukushima-disaster-site-like-a-science-fiction-film/a-18039892?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf, posted 2014 by peter in energy environment fukushima health japan jpquake
Science journalist Ranga Yogeshwar has gained extensive access to Japan's battered Fukushima power plant. He speaks to DW about exploring radiation-contaminated zones, and how the cleanup has progressed so far.
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