Graph of the Day: Anthropogenic Footprint in Canada Boreal Forest, 2011

While industrial disturbances have to date been largely concentrated in the south, expansion northward continues. According to a new report by the Pew Environment Group, Canada’s boreal forest contains the world’s largest and most pristine freshwater ecosystem on Earth. A Forest of Blue: Canada’s Boreal Forest, the World’s Waterkeeper Technorati Tags: deforestation,Canada,North America,freshwater depletion,biodiversity,habitat loss,ecosystem […]

Water shortages to damage growth and stoke international tensions: Maplecroft

22 Mar 2011 (BusinessGreen) – Water scarcity could undermine the rapidly growing industrial sectors of China and India, while Europe remains far from immune to water shortage threats, according to new research published to support World Water Day. A quarter of the world’s largest companies are thought to be at risk from water shortages already, […]

Global boiling: Population flight from the growing desert of Central Texas

By Brad Johnson18 March 2011 The state of Texas will be adding four congressional districts due to significant population growth. My colleague Matt Yglesias writes that it’s “fascinating to learn from the Census Bureau that even amidst 20 percent population growth, huge swathes of the state are actually losing people. The result is a state […]

Ethiopia dams on Nile river stir conflict

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (UPI) Mar 16, 2011 – Ethiopia is pressing ahead with plans to build large dams on the Nile as upstream African states put pressure on a reluctant Egypt to share the waters of the world’s longest river more equitably. The Ethiopian Electric Power Corp. has awarded the Italian construction firm Salini Costruttori […]

Photo gallery: Enter the Anthropocene

It’s a new name for a new geologic epoch—one defined by our own massive impact on the planet. That mark will endure in the geologic record long after our cities have crumbled. By Elizabeth KolbertPhotograph by Jens Neumann/Edgar RodtmannMarch 2011 The path leads up a hill, across a fast-moving stream, back across the stream, and […]

Cancer rise and sperm quality fall ‘due to chemicals’

4 March 2011 (BBC) — Sperm quality significantly deteriorated and testicular cancers increased over recent years, a Finnish study says. The study in the International Journal of Andrology looked at men born between 1979 and 1987. The University of Turku research suggests environmental reasons, particularly exposure to industrial chemicals, may be behind both trends. A […]

Cell phone radiation decreases sperm quality: study

  Results of the Wilcoxon-signed ranks test are illustrated in Fig. 2. There was a statistically significant (p = 0.02) reduction in zona binding in RF-EMF-exposed sperms compared with that in controls. Controls bound an average of 31.8 ± 12.8 sperms per hemizona compared with 22.8 ± 12.4 sperms per hemizona of RF-EMF-exposed spermatozoa. Sperm […]

Graph of the Day: Lake Mead Daily Water Levels, 2009 – February 2011

Wet Desert Expeditions7 February 2011 Every year around this time I start to hear comments along the lines of “I heard the lake is supposed to go up 20 feet this winter” or “I was at the lake this weekend and it was up 10 feet!” I call this period the Winter Bump, where for […]

China minister warns pollution, waste imperil growth

By Chris Buckley; Editing by Ken Wills and David Fogarty28 February 2011 BEIJING (Reuters) – China faces acute environmental and resource strains that threaten to choke growth unless the world’s second-biggest economy cleans up, the nation’s environment minister said in an unusually blunt warning. In an essay published on Monday, Zhou Shengxian also said his […]

Photo gallery: Seven Billion

There will soon be seven billion people on the planet. By 2045 global population is projected to reach nine billion. Can the planet take the strain? By Robert KunzigJanuary 2011 …Antoni van Leeuwenhoek started with an estimate that around a million people lived in Holland. Using maps and a little spherical geometry, he calculated that […]

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