Billions of tons of valuable polymetallic nodules are dozing on the Pacific Ocean floor southeast of Hawaii, a key potential source of materials for making EV batteries.
The temperatures of the deep ocean may be warming at a slower pace, but a new study suggests that climate change will have a stronger impact on life in the deep sea.
Two months of the Coronavirus lockdown have done what successive governments could not do in 25 years with over Rs 5,000 crore at their disposa l- clean up the Yamuna river.
The mountainous star coral off Great Harbour caught researchers attention after a searing 2015 bleaching event hit reefs across the islands. As water temperatures on Mermaid Reef soared above 91 degrees, the coral survived.
Since 2019, a humanitarian crisis has been unfolding directly across the U.S.-Mexico border from Brownsville, Texas. The pandemic has made food delivery considerably more complicated.
Florida is trying to figure out the daunting prospect of asking residents to evacuate for their safety during a storm after asking them to stay at home for the coronavirus.
Nonprofits are sending fewer volunteers. Local emergency managers risk being overwhelmed. FEMA is trying “virtual” assistance. And hurricane season starts June 1.
A coalition of more than 5,000 villagers and a provincial government has built a legal challenge against the world's most productive battery nickel plant.
Because of increasing rates of sea level rise fueled by global warming, the remaining 5,800 square miles of Louisiana's coastal wetlands in the Mississippi River delta will disappear.
John Davis lost all his belongings in the March 2019 flood, which he attributed to climate change. Heavy precipitation is a symptom of a changing climate. Warmer air temperatures hold greater volumes of moisture, leading to severe rain and snow storms.
Let's visit a city of 600,000 that, until a few days ago, I didn't know existed.
<p>Bulawayo is the second largest city in Zimbabwe. It's gripped by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zimbabwe-water/zimbabwes-drought-hit-bulawayo-limits-tap-water-to-just-a-day-a-week-idUSKBN22R2ET" target="_blank">an epic drought</a>, and its citizens have access to tap water one day per week. </p><p>One day a week. </p><p>Think of how often you use water to drink, launder, bathe, cook, flush. </p><p>One day a week. </p><p>A year ago, southern Africa was in such deep drought that Cape Town's 4.5 million people <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZmxEY6QoUY" target="_blank">came within weeks </a>of running their water supply dry. </p><p>The five million people of Jordan's capital, Amman, have often lived with <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-water/concerns-over-water-shortages-jump-in-jordan-amid-coronavirus-lockdown-idUSL8N2BF0HU" target="_blank">restrictions</a> allowing water use as rarely as one hour per day. </p><p>The 161 million people of Bangladesh face an increasingly likely future of rising seas, more intense typhoons, and decreasing freshwater supplies from rivers fed by the dwindling glaciers of the Himalayas.</p><p>More water risks, anyone? </p><p>Rising seas plus increased demand on coastal freshwater supplies could equal saltwater intrusion—the ruin of drinking water. This month, <em>Yale Environment 360</em> reported water supplies for Philadelphia and much of South Jersey could be compromised as the <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-sea-levels-rise-will-drinking-water-supplies-be-at-risk" target="_blank">Delaware River's "salt front" moves upstream</a>. </p><p>The salt front is the farthest extent that tidal saltwater reaches the fresh river water. It's currently 40 miles from the closest drinking water intakes. Three feet of sea level rise could bring the front to within a dozen miles, while a protracted drought could draw it much closer.</p><p>From<a href="https://www.postandcourier.com/rising-waters/sea-rise-floods-to-dramatically-change-sc-coast/article_701a3380-655c-11ea-be79-ef7801744ac7.html" target="_blank"> the Carolinas</a> to northern Florida, the equation is rising seas plus draining aquifers. Drinking water from these subsurface lakes has enabled booming coastal growth. </p><p>There's increasing concern that encroaching seawater could forever spoil the aquifers. In addition, an influx of saltwater could upset the salt/fresh water balance in estuaries, not only in the Southeast U.S. but along coastlines worldwide. </p><p>This would spell catastrophe for the shellfish industry. Oystermen in the Florida Panhandle have already been in a quarter century long battle over water rights in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River basin. Upstream water users, notably metro Atlanta, stand accused of taking too much water, leaving Apalachicola Bay too salty to grow its prized oysters.</p>
<p>Finally here are three items from Michigan, the state surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes.</p><p>Torrential rains this week breached two ancient dams upstream from the industrial city of Midland, sending nine feet of water through downtown—past Herbert H. Dow High School; the Grace A. Dow Public Library; the Dow Gardens Arboretum, with its statue of old man Dow; and Dow High's crosstown rival, Midland High (home of the Chemics). </p><p>Well, if you guessed that Midland is a company town, you'd be right, and for 123 years, Dow Chemical has graced Midland with multiple sites full of its leavings. So far, Dow has acknowledged that the floodwaters <a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw-bay-city/2020/05/dow-critics-skeptical-of-companys-claim-floodwaters-pose-no-threat-of-contamination.html" target="_blank">"commingled"</a> with waste at at least one site.</p><p>The Midland floods raise two questions. First, how many other <a href="https://apnews.com/f5f09a300d394900a1a88362238dbf77" target="_blank">unsafe, nearly century-old dams </a>are waiting for climatologists' predictions of more frequent and intense downpours? Also, those downpours may unearth toxic soup at any one of thousands of waste sites, legal or otherwise, known or unknown.</p><p>It's been six years since we learned of Flint's criminal scandal in allowing lead pollution in aging water hookups to thousands of homes. </p><p>Not only are many of these largely poor and minority residents still drinking bottled water, but Flint's plight has been found to exist in hundreds of communities across the nation.</p><p><span></span>And finally, a <em>slightly </em>upbeat item from the Great Lakes region: The <a href="https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/05/state-federal-budget-shortfalls-asian-carp-toxic-cleanups/" target="_blank">U.S. Senate</a> has signed off on a potential increase in funding to combat the spread of invasive Asian carp into the lakes. But cash-strapped states may have trouble keeping their end of the funding alive.<br></p><p>Is there an upside? Between a pandemic of failing dams and a pandemic of poisoned pipes, we have infrastructure projects that could help revive a tanked economy. </p><p>Just sayin.' </p><p><em>Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist. His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate or publisher, Environmental Health Sciences.</em></p><p><em></em><em>Contact him at </em><em><a href="mailto:pdykstra@ehn.org" target="_blank">pdykstra@ehn.org(opens in new tab)</a></em><em> or on Twitter at </em><em><a href="https://twitter.com/pdykstra?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" target="_blank">@Pdykstra</a></em><em>.</em></p><p><em>Banner photo: Students wash their hands at a new well and water pump installed at a </em><em>Bulawayo, Zimbabwe,</em> <em>school in February 2012. (Credit: Save the Children/flickr) </em></p>
The abundance of microplastic pollution in the oceans is likely to have been vastly underestimated, according to research that suggests there are at least double the number of particles as previously thought.
A keen ear could hear the theme of global warming starting to swell in popular music all across the dial in the last two decades as global temperatures started to rise.
"Okay, let’s work it out," the Russian President said after discussing how to transport more seafood from the Far East with the help of Rosatom’s nuclear-powered container carrier.
Texas' coastal marshes absorb large quantities of climate-warming carbon dioxide. The Texas Coastal Exchange lets individuals and companies offset their carbon emissions by paying landowners to preserve these marshes.
Hungry bumblebees can make plants flower up to a month earlier than usual by cutting holes in their leaves, which may help them adapt to climate change.
Aging dams in the U.S. will increasingly fail and cause death and environmental destruction as climate change makes extreme precipitation more frequent, scientists warn.
Floodwaters surged toward Midland, Mich., and one of the nation’s most extensive toxic cleanup sites, raising concerns of a wider environmental fallout from the dam disaster.
