Dirty cigarette butts on pavements could be a thing of the past if an idea from two Northumbria University students takes off.
Lisa Hanking and Lucy Denham came up with the concept of a biodegradable cigarette – and took joint first prize in a sustainability project organised by Northumbria’s School of Design and Chester-le-Street District Council.
The “environmentally-friendly’’ cigarette uses expandable vegetable starch for the filter which would simply be washed away by
Scientists working at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission have developed a new way to interpret data from satellites observing the earth. The satellites monitor the nature, state and evolution of the earth’s vegetation. This enhanced monitoring capacity will make it more possible to determine the impact of major climatic events, such as the severe drought and heatwave in Western Europe in 2003. The new method involves the use of practical algorithms to interpret remote sensing data
Two months from now comes a landmark day in planetary history: the Kyoto Protocol finally comes into legal force on 16 February 2005. However Kyoto was intended only as an initial step in mitigating climate change: a 6000-strong Buenos Aires gathering due to conclude today has spent a fortnight discussing follow-up strategies, with ESA among them.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change aims to lessen the effects of climate change by se
Winds and changing climate converted parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Texas into a giant ’dust bowl’ in the 1930s. In response, the 1937 ’Shelterbelt Project’ involved the planting of trees to reduce erosion and provide relief from the biting winds that blew soil from farms and drove people west to California. Now, almost 75 years later, NASA scientists have found that planting trees also can significantly reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Tree planting and insect co
If global warming shuts down the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean, the result could be catastrophic climate change. The environmental effects, models indicate, depend upon whether the shutdown is reversible or irreversible.
“If the thermohaline shutdown is irreversible, we would have to work much harder to get it to restart,” said Michael Schlesinger, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a co-author of a re
A new method of measuring emissions from cookstoves could help improve human health and enhance the accuracy of global climate models.
Wood-fueled cooking stoves are commonly used in Central America and other Third World nations. Producing copious amounts of noxious smoke, the stoves can be detrimental to human health. Lack of knowledge about the characteristics and quantities of emissions from millions of these modified campfires is a major contributor to uncertainties in globa
Leading coral reef experts are meeting today, 16 December 2004, at the Zoological Society of London to discuss the alarming rates of decline and formulate an action plan to prevent the demise of these important ecosystems. With approximately 20% of coral reefs already destroyed, it is thought that close to 50% may be close to collapse.
Coral reefs are critically important for the goods and services they provide to millions of people, with a global value estimated at $375 billion
A simple stroll after a full day of field research near a high Andean glacier in Peru led glaciologist Lonnie Thompson to discover a bed of previously hidden plants that date back at least 50,000 years.
And while that discovery is novel enough to please any scientist, it’s the implication that those perfectly preserved plants may suggest that really excites him.
Thompson, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University and a world-class glaciologist, has made
Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson worries that he may have found clues that show history repeating itself, and if he is right, the result could have important implications to modern society.
Thompson has spent his career trekking to the far corners of the world to find remote ice fields and then bring back cores drilled from their centers. Within those cores are the records of ancient climate from across the globe. From the mountains of data drawn by analyzing countless ice cores, and
North Sea fishermen should be allowed to play a greater part in taking care of the marine environment as part of a new strategy to protect the sea’s wildlife and habitats.
European scientists, led by a team at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, have come up with a pioneering North Sea fisheries management plan which recognises the importance of humans and their interaction with the marine environment, or ecosystem.
The scientists, who are funded by the European Union
Ten percent of all bird species are likely to disappear by the year 2100, and another 15 percent could be on the brink of extinction, according to a new study by Stanford University biologists. This dramatic loss is expected to have a negative impact on forest ecosystems and agriculture worldwide and may even encourage the spread of human diseases, according to the study published in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in December.
A researcher has discovered an effective way to remove a troubling new pollutant from our nation’s water sources.
Pratim Biswas, The Stifel and Quinette Jens Professor of Environmental Engineering Science and director of the Environmental Engineering Science Program at Washington University in St. Louis, has found a method for removing the toxin MTBE from water. MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) has been detected at low levels in municipal water sources around the nation and in
The Pacific Northwest has seen its share of major environmental battles. Now a new historical study of the fur trade indicates that early Europeans and Americans in the region struggled with similar issues nearly two centuries ago as they sought to exploit and preserve the area’s natural resources.
In a pilot study examining the historical record for the National Park Service, a University of Washington researcher has found that the Hudson’s Bay Company, the dominant o
Coral reefs around the world could expand in size by up to a third in response to increased ocean warming and the greenhouse effect, according to Australian scientists.
“Our analysis suggests that ocean warming will foster considerably faster future rates of coral reef growth that will eventually exceed pre-industrial rates by as much as 35 per cent by 2100,” says Dr Ben McNeil, an oceanographer from the University of News South Wales. “Our finding stands in stark contrast to prev
Atmospheric scientists have developed simple, physics-based equations that address some of the limitations of current methods for representing cloud formation in global climate models – important because of increased aerosol pollution that gives clouds more cooling power and affects precipitation.
These researchers – led by the Georgia Institute of Technology — have also developed a new instrument for measuring the conditions and time needed for a particle to become a cloud drop
The UK should use its presidency of the G8 and EU to move forward international action to analyse future risks due to climate change and develop and implement evidence-based adaptation strategies for coping with the immediate impacts of climate change, the British Ecological Society has urged. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on Wednesday 8 December 2004, Professor Alastair Fitter of York University and president of the British Ecological
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