Category Archives: ONA

Reduce Your Plastic Footprint

by Sam185909217 Posted on December 16, 2018

On World Environment day this past June 5, the United Nations (UN) called for the end of single-use plastic. Using the #beatplasticpollution hashtag, there were all kinds of conversations on Twitter about how to minimize your plastic use.

Plastic takes significant amounts of energy to create. It doesn?t decompose, which makes it a huge environmental issue, especially for our oceans. It is all too common for birds and other animals like sea turtles to die from eating plastic. And because plastic never entirely breaks down, lots of that plastic stays in the food chain; some of it even ends up in the food we eat.

I want to share some of the top tips from the UN and the Nature Conservancy of Canada for trying to reduce your plastic footprint.

1. Do a plastic audit

This is also a fun thing to do in your workplace. After discovering how much plastic your workplace uses, set goals as a team and maybe even have prizes for successfully reaching your goal.What does that mean? It means collecting all of your plastic use for a set period of time. I suggest at least two weeks so you get a shopping trip or two in during that time. Then count all of the plastic that you have amassed so you can know how big your plastic footprint is. One idea is to gather all of the plastic so that you can have a visual for how much plastic you use. You can then set a goal to cut back and consume less of it. It is amazing how many bags, containers and other plastic objects you only use once. Set a goal that is realistic but meaningful.

2. Ditch the single-use plastic water bottle

If you haven?t already invested in a good reusable water bottle, it is the easiest way to cut your plastic consumption. By drinking out of a reusable water bottle you are not only helping to keep plastic out of the landfill and ocean, you are also saving money in the long run.

Reusable water bottles are in style right now too. They come in all shapes and sizes, but it seems like bright colors and patterns are very stylish at the moment. Get with the trend and get a reusable water bottle.

The next time you go for a hike, take a garbage bag and fill it with any trash that you find along the trail. We recommend taking plastic gloves or a trash grabbing stick. You only have to go once or twice to see a noticeable difference in your local trail, especially in the city.

3. Do a plastic cleanup

My parents do this every spring at their favorite park. One walk through the park with a garbage bag in May means the walk will be more beautiful for the rest of the summer.

Invite some friends and have a competition to see who can pick up the most garbage. You would be surprised how much fun this can be!

4. Avoid pre-made food when possible

Many groceries stores now stock ready-to-eat meals that almost always come in plastic containers. Soups, salads, sushi or sandwiches are often over-packaged in plastic. We are all busy people who sometimes want a quick meal, but you can significantly reduce your plastic use by buying fresh fruits and veggies that aren?t over packaged in plastic. Ask for them wrapped in paper if you can.

5. #Banthebag

Start saying “no” to plastic grocery bags, and bring your own reusable?cloth bags. Plastic bags are almost indestructible in nature and are easily carried by the wind. It is no wonder our oceans are becoming clogged with them. Bringing a reusable shopping bag helps lessen the number of bags ending up in nature.

It has become a global movement to avoid single use plastic bags at grocery stores. Many cities, like Montreal, have gone so far as to ban them altogether. The hashtag #banthebag has become the unofficial slogan of refusing to use single-use plastic bags.

Anything beats single-use plastic bags, but if you really want to be an eco-friendly shopper, use the multi-use polyurethane bags that are sold at most grocery stores. These bags take less energy to create than standard canvas bags, which makes them more carbon friendly.

#Beatplasticpollution

Hopefully these helpful tips will help you try to do your part. Together we can beat plastic pollution.

This post was written by Logan Salm and originally appeared on the Nature Conservancy of Canada?s blog, Land Lines. The Conservation Internship Program is funded in part by the Government of Canada?s Summer Work Experience program.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Reduce Your Plastic Footprint

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Global warming should be called global heating, says key scientist

by Nina55Twyeiebi Posted on December 16, 2018

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

“Global heating” is a more accurate term than “global warming” to describe the changes taking place to the world’s climate, according to a key scientist at the U.K. Met Office.

Richard Betts, who leads the climate research arm of Britain’s meteorological monitoring organization, made the comments amid growing evidence that rising temperatures have passed the comfort zone and are now bringing increased threats to humanity.

“Global heating is technically more correct because we are talking about changes in the energy balance of the planet,” the scientist said at the U.N. climate summit in Katowice, Poland. “We should be talking about risk rather than uncertainty.”

Earlier this month, the Met Office produced a new report that showed the searing heatwave that hit the U.K. this summer — along with other parts of the northern hemisphere — was made 30 times more likely by human-caused climate change.

Betts said the shifting climate was pushing some natural processes — such as the blossoming of trees and laying of eggs — out of sync: “That’s already happening. We are also seeing higher temperatures of heatwaves. The kind of thing we saw this year will happen more often.”

“The risks are compounding all the time,” he said. “It stands to reason that the sooner we can take action, the quicker we can rein them in.”

His views were echoed by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a professor of theoretical physics and founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He said his recent Hothouse Earth report, which was one of the most widely quoted and downloaded studies of this year, had helped to change the language used to describe the climate crisis.

“Global warming doesn’t capture the scale of destruction. Speaking of hothouse Earth is legitimate,” he said.

The scientists expressed frustration at the slow pace of action by political leaders. In signing the 2015 Paris agreement, governments around the world aimed to keep global warming to within 1.5 to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. But current commitments are far off track.

The Met Office upgraded its forecasts this week to show the planet is on track to warm by between 2.5 degrees C and 4.5 degrees C. “We have broadened out the range of possibilities,” said Betts, who is conducting a risk assessment based on the new projections. In the U.K., he said the trend was toward wetter winters with more floods, hotter summers with more droughts interspersed with increasingly intense rain.

At 3 degrees C of change, Schellnhuber said southern Spain would become part of the Sahara. Even 2 degrees C, he said, could not be guaranteed as safe.

The Paris pact was a firewall, he said: “It’s not helping us to keep the world as it is now. We’ve lost this opportunity already. It’s a firewall against climate chaos.”

Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said “cracks” were starting to appear in the climate system that were pushing nature from being a friend that absorbs carbon dioxide to an enemy that releases carbon dioxide. These concerns are fueled by the growing intensity of forest fires, the effect of melting ice-sheets on the jet stream, and the rising risk of permafrost thaw, which would release trapped methane.

Although he stressed it might not yet have passed a tipping point, he said the warnings were getting louder. “This shift from friend to foe is no doubt a scientific nightmare. That is the biggest worry that we have,” he said. “It does terrify me. The only reason we sit here without being completely depressed is that we see we have policy measures and technology to move in the right direction.

“We need to have a diagnosis just like a patient who comes to a doctor and gets a really bad diagnosis. But if the science is right, the technology is right, and the policy is right, you can cure that very dire situation. There is no scientific suggestion that the door is shut.”

This week’s climate talks have crept forward with only small progress toward a new global rulebook, but emissions continue to rise and the planet continues to heat.

“Things are obviously proceeding very slowly,” said Betts. “As a scientist, it’s frustrating to see we’re still at the point when temperatures are going up and emissions are going up. I’ve been in this for 25 years. I hoped we’d be beyond here by now.”

Schellnhuber concurred: “I’ve worked on this for 30 years and I’ve never been as worried as I am today.”

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Global warming should be called global heating, says key scientist

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To clean up space junk, some people grabbed a net and harpoon

by ShawnaTao064 Posted on December 16, 2018

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This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Clyde Tombaugh spent much of his life peering at telescope data. He discovered Pluto in 1930, and he spent years poking around the outer solar system. But as the scientific community began to dream about launching a vehicle into the great beyond, he focused his gaze much closer to home.

At the time, the smaller stuff in our immediate space environment remained largely a mystery. People like Tombaugh worried whether orbiting gunk would make spaceflight that much harder. If they ever built a spaceship, would space litter pummel it irreparably?

As part of a 1950s Army project, Tombaugh tried to find out. But before he finished, the Soviets sent the world’s first object to orbit. When Sputnik first spun around Earth, in 1957, Tombaugh’s equipment caught it: a shiny sphere, just about two feet across. The fact that he could spot it meant that if dangerous debris had been orbiting, he likely would have found it, too. And he hadn’t. When he published his final report in 1959, Tombaugh concluded that rockets faced little risk of colliding with natural objects.

Humans have since sent thousands of rockets to space. In their cargo holds, they have stored satellites that help humans communicate, wage war, watch TV, and grok planetary processes. Sometimes, as Sputnik did not long after launch, these objects finish their useful lives, slip back into the surly bonds of Earth, and burn up in the atmosphere. There’s the glove that a Gemini astronaut let slip from the first spacewalk, and a spatula from a shuttle mission. Once, a tool bag escaped an ISS astronaut and floated around for eight months. Other times, however, junk remains in orbit long after it’s useful. A Chinese missile, for instance, smashed a Chinese satellite into thousands of pieces, some of which continue to circle and circle.

These pieces of trash could pose a version of the threat that Tombaugh had worried about: that they’ll get in the way of humans’ desire to send stuff to (and keep it in) space. Earth’s front porch is now littered with around 24,000 pieces of debris bigger than a large orange, and millions and millions of bits smaller than that. Meanwhile, the number of new satellites humans want to launch is on the rise. According to consulting company Euroconsult, around 7,000 smallsats may hop to orbit in the next decade. Elon Musk, though famous for missed deadlines, plans to launch the initial satellites in his space-internet megaconstellation in 2019, as does internet provider OneWeb.

Satellites in low Earth orbit are supposed to spiral back down, burning up in Earth’s atmosphere 25 years after they complete their missions. The process can happen naturally as their orbits decay over time. Alternately, these craft can point thrusters into space and willfully plunge into the atmosphere. But sometimes more aggressive measures are needed to clean up the junk circling overhead. Making sure satellites obey the 25-year guideline, and watching them closely in the meantime, has spawned a whole sector of creative solutions. Here are some of the latest experiments in de-junking space:

Grim Reapers

The satellite industry calls it “active debris removal,” but think of it as a space robot that’s out to kill. In June, scientists at Surrey Space Center and their partners dispatched a mission called RemoveDEBRIS from the International Space Station. Soon after, it deployed a net and captured a small CubeSat that the team had previously released. The net wrapped around the satellite, cocooning it and ending its life. RemoveDEBRIS will also test a harpoon on a dead satellite, and use a sail to then drag itself back down.

A company called Astroscale is pursuing a similar approach. “The best way to avoid a bunch of small pieces of debris that could harm large satellites is to remove large satellites that become small pieces of debris,” says Chris Blackerby, the company’s COO. Astroscale’s first mission, called ELSA-d, a cheery acronym that hides the ominous “End-of-Life Service” hidden within it, aims to show that a reaper-style space robot can find lost debris, match a dead satellite’s tumble, and dock.

Pushers

Traditionally, satellites have thrusters that push them to the orbits they need, keep them there, and then (assuming the gas gauge doesn’t read “empty”) send them shooting down to Earth when the time comes. But conventional chemical engines are way too heavy for small satellites, so lots of the little guys don’t really have propulsion systems — which can pose a space-junk problem if their orbits don’t wind down quickly. They need thrusters that are appropriately sized for smallsats.

“The use of propulsion is the beginning, middle, and end of a mission,” says Beau Jarvis, an exec at a propulsion company called PhaseFour. The PhaseFour system, which you will be able to plunk on your satellite, uses radio waves to turn gas into plasma, which shoots from the spacecraft, pushing it in the opposite direction.

Many similar gas pedals require expensive cathodes and anodes, but ones that don’t are easier to make en masse. Another engine-maker, Accion, also dispenses with the expensive parts: Its engines use a liquid salt that shoots from the craft. Zoom zoom.

Draggers

Not long ago, a distressed customer approached Roccor, a space manufacturer. “They had a satellite that was basically built and ready for launch,” says CEO Douglas Campbell. They had just one problem: Their de-orbit plan needed some work. So Roccor made them a new one, involving … space feathers.

At the end of a satellite’s life, two thin composite sheets — coiled tight like a tape measure during the rest of the mission — will pop from it, making the satellite resistant enough that it slips down and crosses the Kármán line that delineates Earth and space. The system weighs between around 1 and 4 kilograms (2.2 to 8.8 pounds), and is basically another way of doing a dragsail. “Low Earth orbit is beachfront property,” says Campbell, who plans to sell the “Rocfall” feathers so more satellites don’t become space junk. “Everyone wants to be there. We don’t want to ruin the environment.”

Stalkers

Two government groups in the U.S. keep abreast of what’s what in space, and help orbiters avoid collisions. NASA’s Orbital Debris Office deals with the minute, while the US Strategic Command tracks everything bigger than 10 centimeters (about 4 inches) and issues the “duck!” alerts to satellite operators. Last year, though, the Trump administration said it would turn some responsibility for space traffic management over to the Department of Commerce (although the details of how aren’t yet fully fleshed out). Why? Because satellites are increasingly commercial operations.

“In the past, the U.S. government got into ‘space situational awareness’ because it was primarily a military issue,” says Dan Ceperley, CEO of the private satellite-tracking company LeoLabs. It’s still a military issue — secret communications, spying, navigation — but it’s also morphed into an everyone-else issue. So the Department of Commerce and companies like LeoLabs will help shoulder some of the defense sector’s past burdens. LeoLabs has two radar systems, with plans for more, and they hope to give customers information about satellites’ whereabouts with more regularity than the government.

Beepers

Federal trackers traditionally find satellites using either radar or optical telescopes. But those devices don’t necessarily tell you whose object you’re pinging, or give you its position every hour of every day. You have to extrapolate an object’s orbit using physics, so there’s some fuzziness in the calculation of its position, and uncertainty in collision red-flags. But a scientist at the Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research and development center, has a reasonable question. Why not put GPS transponders on new craft? Just like if you put one on your enemy’s car, you could know where it was, and what it was, all the time, no home radar required. Similarly, a Los Alamos project called ELROI proposes slapping laser-beaming “license plates” on orbiters so that they’re easier to detect and identify.

The metal bits and spent rocket stages already dirtying Earth orbit are unlikely to get license plates or GPS devices. They’ll continue to circle our planet like overhead reminders that our environmental contamination has expanded, like a growing gray cloud, beyond terra firma. But because there are so many clean-up artists, maybe it won’t be too late.

If we end up with too much trash, we won’t only make our desire to launch lots of little satellites untenably complicated. We could also, someday, make it impossible to send a rocket safely beyond Earth, just like Tombaugh and his cohort feared before anyone had even tried.

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To clean up space junk, some people grabbed a net and harpoon

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Ryan Zinke is resigning, and the internet’s reaction is priceless

by RudyLeroy388 Posted on December 15, 2018

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Ryan Zinke is resigning, and the internet’s reaction is priceless

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Solar Probe Sends Back First Image and Data From the Sun

by Posted on December 14, 2018

The Parker Solar Probe survived its first swoop around our star and will get even closer on its next two dozen trips

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Solar Probe Sends Back First Image and Data From the Sun

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Earth911 Podcast, Dec. 14, 2018: EnergySage on the State of Solar

by AndersoKellett Posted on December 14, 2018

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Earth911 Podcast, Dec. 14, 2018: EnergySage on the State of Solar

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Green Giving: 5 Nonprofits Clobbering Climate Change

by JRXSadie40838 Posted on December 14, 2018

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Darwin’s On the Origin of Species – Daniel Duzdevich

by Myrna Posted on December 14, 2018

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Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

A Modern Rendition

Daniel Duzdevich

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: February 24, 2014

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


An essential new edition of the 19th-century scientific masterpiece that translates Darwin’s Victorian prose into modern English: “Most useful” (Walter Brock, Columbia University).   Charles Darwin’s most famous book On the Origin of Species is without question one of the most important books ever written. Yet many students have great difficulty understanding it. While even the grandest works of Victorian English can be a challeng for modern readers, Darwin’s dense scientific prose is especially difficult to navigate.   For an era in which Darwin is more talked about than read, doctoral student Daniel Duzdevich offers a clear, modern English rendering of Darwin’s first edition. Neither an abridgement nor a summary, this version might best be described as a translation for contemporary English readers. A monument to reasoned insight, the Origin illustrates the value of extensive reflection, carefully gathered evidence, and sound scientific reasoning. By removing the linguistic barriers to understanding and appreciating the Origin , this edition brings 21st-century readers into closer contact with Darwin’s revolutionary ideas.

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Darwin’s On the Origin of Species – Daniel Duzdevich

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Hurricane Maria cut the height of Puerto Rico’s forests by a third

by ElsaWickens Posted on December 14, 2018

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Hurricane Maria inflicted “unprecedented” and “fundamental” changes to Puerto Rico’s ecosystem, according to new studies conducted by NASA scientists and other experts. It’s part of the latest evidence that the 2017 hurricane was one of the worst natural and humanitarian catastrophes in modern American history.

Using extremely high-resolution mapping equipment, NASA measured every tree in Puerto Rico before and after Hurricane Maria, and found that the hurricane knocked over so many big ones, it reduced the average height of the island’s forests by about one-third. The storm caused 60 years worth of natural tree-falls in just a day. That will have profound effects on everything from water quality (destabilized soils are more likely to produce murky runoff) to the long-term health of the island’s tropical ecosystems.

The researchers unveiled the findings in a series of presentations at this week’s annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C., about 15 months after the storm struck, killing 2,975 people and kicking off one of the largest power blackouts in world history.

While many of the island’s tourist areas are back in business, its cities and people are still struggling to recover. On Monday, Gov. Ricardo Rossello signed a $2 billion tax break, a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated $43 to $159 billion in damages from the storm.

Incoming House Democrats have vowed closer oversight of the watchdog institution charged with Puerto Rico’s recovery, where red tape has stalled thousands of reconstruction projects. Meanwhile, political leaders, like Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, have called for Puerto Rico to be a test-bed for Green New Deal ideas.

Although the frenetic news cycle has long since moved on from what’s happening in Puerto Rico, it’s still one of the most important places to understand our shared climate future — the tradeoffs that are currently taking place will define how people there survive the coming decades of escalating climate impacts.

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Hurricane Maria cut the height of Puerto Rico’s forests by a third

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‘Future-proofing’ is how you say climate change in Texas

by RoslynCann16 Posted on December 13, 2018

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There’s a new term for all the work needed to prepare coasts and cities for the consequences of climate change, and it’s blissfully free of the words “climate change.” Introducing “future-proofing.” As in, it’s time to “future-proof” Texas to brace for future disasters like Hurricane Harvey, according to a new comprehensive report.

Prepared by Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s reconstruction commission, the report recommends myriad ways for the state to “future-proof”: elevate homes, construct storm-surge barriers, and offer buyouts for homes at high risk of flooding, to name a few.

What’s more interesting is what’s missing. Take the time to read the 168-page report, and you’ll find mention of rising sea levels and more intense storms. You might scratch your head upon finding phrases such as “changing human and environmental conditions” or “changing future weather patterns.” It would be hard to miss “future-proofing,” a phrase that’s employed 44 times. But you won’t find the exact words “climate change” anywhere except for the footnotes, as Dallas News reported on Thursday.

If you were reading very closely, you’d find a sole reference to the “changing climate” sitting in plain sight at the top of page 114. Score! (Governor Abbott shakes fist at sky.) The endnotes include scientific studies whose titles feature the words, too.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that climate change only makes one meaningful appearance in the report. When Abbott, a widely-reported climate denier, sent a 301-page plea to the federal government asking for aid after Hurricane Harvey last year, he neglected to mention “climate change,” too. His request did, however, use the term “future-proofing.”

Maybe avoiding the double-C phrase is just how you get things done in Republican-controlled Texas. Sure, sure, multiple scientific studies showed that climate change made Harvey wetter and more likely to occur. But why say it if you don’t need to?

The new report reflects a pattern of censorship in the Trump era. The Federal Emergency Management Agency dropped “climate change” from its long-term strategy this year, replacing it with oblique terms such as “pre-disaster mitigation.” The phrase has also vanished from government websites, with euphemisms like “sustainability” and “resilience” taking its place. Even National Science Foundation scientists have begun dropping the term from public summaries of their research, replacing it with terminology like “extreme weather” and “environmental change.”

Here’s the thing: According to the recent National Climate Assessment, Texas is unprepared for sea-level rise, stronger hurricanes, and intense flooding. Even if you don’t say the climate is changing, it still is.

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‘Future-proofing’ is how you say climate change in Texas

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