ARKive - Discover the world's most endangered species Wildscreen's Arkive project was launched in 2003 and grew to become the world's biggest encyclopaedia of life on Earth. With the help of over 7,000 of the world’s best wildlife filmmakers and photographers, conservationists and scientists, Arkive.org featured multi-media fact-files for more than 16,000 endangered species. Freely accessible to everyone, over half a million people every month, from over 200 countries, used Arkive to learn and discover the wonders of the natural world. Since 2013 Wildscreen was unable to raise sufficient funds from trusts, foundations, corporates and individual donors to support the year-round costs of keeping Arkive online. Therefore, the charity had been using its reserves to keep the project online and was unable to fund any dedicated staff to maintain Arkive, let alone future-proof it, for over half a decade. Therefore, a very hard decision was made to take the www.arkive.org website offline in February 2019.
Alex Lin, Teenage Activist He's overseen the recycling of 300,000 pounds of e-waste. He's successfully lobbied the Rhode Island state legislature to ban the dumping of electronics. He's used refurbished computers to create media centers in developing countries like Cameroon and Sri Lanka to foster computer literacy. He’s Alex Lin and he’s just 16 years old. “I don’t see anything uncommon in it,” says Lin, a high school senior from Westerly, Rhode Island. Lin’s catalytic moment came in 2004 when he chanced upon a Wall Street Journal article. E-waste, or electronics garbage, is the fastest growing section of the U.S. trash stream. While there is no federal law banning e-waste, 20 states have passed legislation mandating statewide e-waste recycling. If only the states with e-waste laws in their 2010 legislative pipeline—Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Utah, to name a few—had an Alex Lin at their disposal. Alex Lin, third from right, has taken e-waste matters into his own hands. Reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Climate change: the effects on ocean animals The “poster child” for global warming is the polar bear. But many other animals are already feeling the effects of global climate change on the oceans. Find out about the changing climate's impact on the earth’s population of sea turtles, right whales, penguins, seals, lobsters, and cod. The Arctic’s top predator, the polar bear, is affected both by the reduction in sea ice and by reduced stocks of its primary food, the ringed seal. Polar bears use sea ice as a platform for hunting their prey and for resting. But sea ice is decreasing throughout their Arctic range due to climate change. As sea ice becomes thinner and multi-year ice disappears, a greater proportion of females make their dens on land, expending more energy to get there. Polar bears are often described as completely dependent on ice for their survival. In 2008, the U.S. Back to top Taken by New England Aquarium Educator Jessica Lavash in Padre Island, Texas. Adult feeding patterns are also affected by climate change.
Ingenious 19-year-old Develops Plan to Clean up Oceans in 5 Years Image Credit / boyanslat.com By: Amanda Froelich, True Activist. With millions of tons of garbage dumped into the oceans annually and repeat incidence of oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, it’s the Ocean which has taken the brunt of unsustainable methods from man. In effect, it’s estimated almost 100,000 marine animals are killed due to debris entanglement and continually rising pollution. To a degree, individual lessening of consumerism and utilizing sustainable methods to re-use and eliminate waste is very beneficial. Slat’s idea consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world. Economically, the Ocean Array Project also rises to the top due to its sustainable construct; it’s completely self-supportive, by receiving energy from the sun, currents, and waves. To find out more about the project and to contribute, click here. Sources: Boyan Slat Inhabitat Trending on the Web
Living on Earth: E-waste Youth Activist Air Date: Week of January 4, 2008 stream/download this segment as an MP3 file Alex Lin (Courtesy of Alex Lin) Living on Earth interviews Alex Lin, who won the Brower Youth Award for his pioneering work on electronic waste. Transcript CURWOOD: One kid who needs no New Year’s resolutions on the environment is 14-year-old Alex Lin. When the electronic devices we use every day get taken apart or dumped, toxic substances, like lead, leech into the environment. And this year he received the prestigious Brower Youth Award for young environmental leaders. LIN: Thanks a lot. CURWOOD: So one day you’re reading the newspaper. LIN: I think what helped me choose to do this was that it’s such a little known problem, really. CURWOOD: So how many computers are you guys recycling? LIN: Recycling-wise we’re not really sure about the amount. CURWOOD: So it’s what—5,000 pounds a month or something like that? LIN: Something like that. CURWOOD: Now you’re working internationally. CURWOOD: Hey, Alex. LIN: Yeah.
Hurricane Sandy-level flooding is rising so sharply that it could become normal | Environment The frequency of floods of the magnitude of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated parts of New York City in 2012, is rising so sharply that they could become relatively normal, with a raft of new research laying bare the enormous upheavals already under way in the US due to climate change. These findings and two other fresh pieces of research have highlighted how the US is already in the grip of significant environmental changes driven by warming temperatures, albeit in different ways to the processes that are fueling hurricanes. An analysis of past storms and models of future events as the planet warms has shown that Sandy-like floods have become three times more common in the New York area since 1800. There is a range of uncertainty around exactly how frequently major flooding events will occur, based on different rates of sea level rise and hurricane occurrence. “Sandy was a wake-up call, and New York has been starting to do things, such as coastal defences and some mitigation.
Boyan Slat “Human history is basically a list of things that couldn't be done, and then were done.” Boyan Slat (Delft, 1994) combines environmentalism, creativity and technology to tackle global issues of sustainability. Currently working on oceanic plastic pollution, he believes current prevention measures will have to be supplemented by active removal of plastics in order to succeed. “It will be very hard to convince everyone in the world to handle their plastics responsibly, but what we humans are very good in, is inventing technical solutions to our problems. And that’s what we’re doing.” Besides leading The Ocean Cleanup, Boyan is an Aerospace Engineering student at the Delft University of Technology, and is an avid photographer and diver. At age 14, he was awarded the Best Idea of South-Holland award, and a Guinness World Record.
Piles of thrown-out TVs, laptops and phones pose an environmental risk Christmas gifts from past years meet a sad end at Absolute Green Electronics Recycling in California. Computers are dismantled. Their parts get sorted into cardboard bins. One bin holds nothing but hard drives. Another holds AC adapters. Stacked-up printers form a miniature mountain. “There are different grades of boards,” said owner and president Victor Kianipay, stepping past dust-covered TVs to poke into apple boxes filled with circuit boards. E-Waste A Global Problem This is electronic waste, or e-waste. Within five years, the annual figure may reach 65 million tons, the group estimates. A lot of companies send electronic waste to developing countries. “You see all these thousands — literally thousands — of women and young kids whose job is to cook circuit boards,” said Jim Puckett. Thirty-five nations have adopted the ideas of the Basel Convention, Puckett said. The U.S. Boosting Recycling In The U.S. Puckett has spent years investigating the issue. The old TVs are particularly bad.
Evidence The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives. Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal. The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.1 Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. The evidence for rapid climate change is compelling: Sea level rise Global temperature rise Warming oceans Glacial retreat
Young humpback whale freed from crab fishing lines SAN JOSE, Calif. — The passengers on the Point Sur Clipper had spent the morning of April 27 whale watching in Monterey Bay. At first, they didn’t notice anything wrong when they spotted the humpback. But unlike the other whales, the 25-foot-long young adult stuck near the surface. It didn’t dive down to feast on the blooms of krill that attract humpbacks to the bay. “It wouldn’t fluke up,” said Nancy Black, a marine biologist on board the ship that day. Black called the U.S. Passing Through Tricky Waters Centuries of whaling had nearly killed off the whale population. Most crab pots are removed from the water in the winter, after the largest crabs are taken, said Pete Kalvass, a marine biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Humpback Gets GPS Tracking Tag Black called the Coast Guard that Sunday. By 3 p.m., the team had clipped a satellite tag to the gear already wrapped around the whale. By now the seas were churning. Nervous Whale Watching Free To Swim Away
Climate change is a global problem - and one we can all help tackle Last updated 05:00, March 31 2018 Caption Settings Dialog Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. This is a modal window. Video will play in 5 secondsPlay Now! Stop Climate change professor Tim Benton, from the University of Leeds in England, speaking from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Christchurch on Monday. Some of the world's brightest minds have been in Christchurch this week to tackle the most pressing question of our generation – climate change. Climate change is perhaps the most important issue of our age, a peril that threatens the entire planet and one that will likely define the next 100 years or so in the same way the world wars, nuclear crisis and international terrorism did the last. The present occupant of the White House aside, there are few who choose to wilfully ignore the danger signs or blinker themselves from the abundance of evidence around them. New Zealand is no different. Robert Charles Jon Morgan - Stuff
Boyan Slat Climate change What causes climate change? Just as the world’s most respected scientific bodies have confirmed that the Earth is getting hotter, they have also stated that there is strong evidence that humans are driving the warming (2). Scientists agree the main cause of climate change is human activities which magnify the ‘greenhouse effect’ – a natural process in which gases in the atmosphere warm the Earth by trapping heat that is radiating towards space (2) (4). A layer of greenhouse gases, including water vapour and smaller amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, act as a thermal blanket surrounding the Earth. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main greenhouse gas of concern. Warming caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases also increases the amount of water vapour in the air by boosting the rate of evaporation from the oceans and elsewhere. Fossil fuels The greatest source of man-made emissions is the burning of fossil fuels (2).
Malala Fund Blog - Malala's Nobel Peace Prize Speech Join Malala in seeing #TheLast at Malala.org Let us become the first generation to decide to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods, and wasted potential.Let this be the last time that a boy or a girl spends their childhood in a factory.Let this be the last time that a girl is forced into early child marriage.Let this be the last time that an innocent child loses life in war.Let this be the last time that a child remains out of school.Let this end with us.And let us begin this ending…. together…. today….. right here, right now. Topics: #TheLast Nobel Peace Prize youtube.com I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education And Was Shot By The Taliban (Book) Malala Yousafzai (Award Winner) video