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Heat Wave Drives Up Emergency Calls, Possible Deaths

July 22, 2011 by ·

The scorching temperatures affecting almost half of the U.S. population isn’t just causing heatstrokes — it’s also causing people to feel drained and more susceptible to other health problems. The humidity can wreak havoc and feel suffocating to people who have breathing or heart-related problems.

The National Weather Service issued heat watches, warnings and advisories Wednesday morning in more than 30 states, stretching from most of the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states, warning that temperatures will feel like 100 to 110 degrees or higher during the afternoon.

In some places, the heat index values — which measure how hot it feels — have been as high as 131 degrees, according to the weather service. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Environment, Global Warming ·

Electromagnetic Pollution

July 19, 2011 by ·

RIGHT now, you’re probably wondering what electromagnetic radiation means. Many people are not aware what electromagnetic radiation is. If you work on a computer or own a mobile phone, make sure you read this article. What you do not know may be a major cause of ill-health.

Electromagnetic radiation (or EMF pollution) is a term given to all the man-made electromagnetic fields (EMF) of various frequencies, which fill our homes, workplace and public spaces. When we call something in our environment a pollutant, we are implying that it is somehow harmful to nature and to ourselves.

The source of electromagnetic pollution in our environment has been growing exponentially for the past 30 years or so. From desktop computers to mobile phones, we have a potential crisis of sorts with the “pollutants” that come from these and other similar technologies. It’s called electromagnetic pollution. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Computers & Internet, Environment, Health, Technologies ·

Julia Gillard’s Clean Energy Crusade

July 11, 2011 by ·

JULIA Gillard has committed Australia to emissions cuts of 80 per cent within 40 years, moving to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy in the most dramatic economic transformation since the lowering of the nation’s tariff barriers in the 1990s.

Declaring an “avalanche of science” dictated that the nation act to combat climate change, the Prime Minister said her carbon tax package announced yesterday would cut 159 million tonnes from Australia’s emissions by 2020 and allow the nation to “seize its clean energy future”.

“My message to Australians today is we are now moving from the days of words to deeds,” Ms Gillard said as she prepared to embark on a crucial two-week sales pitch for the package aimed at rescuing the government’s fortunes. “We are going to get this done. We are going to have a clean energy future.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Biotechnology, Energy, Environment, Solar Power ·

Plant A Tree In The Fall For Shade In Years To Come

July 8, 2011 by ·

The hot summer weather may have home owners thinking about trees, but experts say now’s not the best time to plant them.

If you can, wait until fall because fall trees do better, said Brian Jervis, horticulture extension educator with Tulsa Master Gardeners.

A 3- to 6-inch layer of mulch and daily water are important to helping keep any plant healthy in this heat, he said.

Jervis recommends home owners plant trees in September, October or November.

If home owners or landscapers must plant trees now, Jervis said, keeping the root ball intact is critical. Trees can’t pull up the necessary moisture if the root ball is broken. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Ecology, Environment, Nature ·

India’s Rural Poor Give Up On Power Grid, Go Solar

July 7, 2011 by ·

Boommi Gowda used to fear the night. Her vision fogged by glaucoma, she could not see by just the dim glow of a kerosene lamp, so she avoided going outside where king cobras slithered freely and tigers carried off neighborhood dogs.

But things have changed at Gowda’s home in the remote southern village of Nada. A solar-powered lamp pours white light across the front of the mud-walled hut she shares with her three grown children, a puppy and a newborn calf. Now she can now cook, tend to her livestock and get water from a nearby well at night.

“I can see!” Gowda said, giggling through a 100-watt smile. In her 70 years, this is the first time she has had any kind of electricity. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energy, Environment, Solar Power ·

Global Warming Pause Linked To Sulfur In China

July 5, 2011 by ·

Scientists have come up with a possible explanation for why the rise in Earth’s temperature paused for a bit during the 2000s, one of the hottest decades on record.

The answer seems counterintuitive. It’s all that sulfur pollution in the air from China’s massive coal-burning, according to a new study.

Sulfur particles in the air deflect the sun’s rays and can temporarily cool things down a bit. That can happen even as coal-burning produces the carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming.

“People normally just focus on the warming effect of CO2 (carbon dioxide), but during the Chinese economic expansion there was a huge increase in sulfur emissions,” which have a cooling effect, explained Robert K. Kaufmann of Boston University. He’s the lead author of the study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Environment, Research & Study ·

Oceans On Brink Of Catastrophe

June 23, 2011 by ·

Marine life facing mass extinction ‘within one human generation’ / State of seas ‘much worse than we thought’, says global panel of scientists

The world’s oceans are faced with an unprecedented loss of species comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory, a major report suggests today. The seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted, the report says, because of the cumulative impact of a number of severe individual stresses, ranging from climate warming and sea-water acidification, to widespread chemical pollution and gross overfishing.

The coming together of these factors is now threatening the marine environment with a catastrophe “unprecedented in human history”, according to the report, from a panel of leading marine scientists brought together in Oxford earlier this year by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). [Read more...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Environment, Global Warming, Nature, Research & Study ·