Monthly Archives: March 2024

The solar industry is on the brink of a significant challenge as it faces an imminent waste crisis much sooner than anticipated. A recent white paper, led by renewable energy engineering researcher Rong Deng from the University of New South Wales, reveals that solar panel waste is expected to reach critical levels within the next two to three years, a stark contrast to the previously estimated timeline of 2030. This urgent situation arises as the demand for solar panels could potentially increase five to tenfold, posing the risk of depleting global silver reserves within two decades. Deng emphasizes the immediate need for action to address this impending crisis.

The looming waste problem is attributed to two main factors: only Victoria has implemented a ban on disposing of solar panels in landfills, and the recycling costs for solar panels, ranging from $10 to $20 per panel, deter recycling efforts. Moreover, even when recycling is chosen, the current technology falls short of efficiently extracting valuable materials from the panels. Read More

News Credit: The Guardian

Picture Credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The climate crisis has only accelerated concerns about crops’ nutritional value. That’s prompted the emergence of a process called biofortification,
a strategy to replenish lost nutrients or foods that were never had in the first place.

In 2004, researchers at the University of Texas, led by Donald Davis, unveiled a concerning trend: a significant decline in the nutritional content of 43 different food items, predominantly vegetables, observed from the mid to the late 20th century. Their findings highlighted notable reductions, such as a drop in calcium levels in green beans from 65 to 37mg and a nearly 50% decrease in the Vitamin A content of asparagus. Iron in broccoli stalks also diminished.

This issue of nutrient depletion has persisted, with subsequent studies linking the phenomenon to elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). For instance, a 2018 investigation into the effects of increased CO2 on rice revealed diminished levels of protein, iron, and zinc, underscoring the ongoing challenge of declining food nutrient values. Read More

News Credit: The Guardian

Picture Credit: Oscar Wong/Getty Images

The full extent of the damage in Gaza has not yet been documented, but an analysis of satellite imagery shows the destruction of about 38-48% of tree cover and farmland.

Olive groves and farms have been reduced to packed earth, and munitions and toxins have contaminated soil and groundwater. The sea is choked with sewage and waste, and the air is polluted by smoke and particulate matter.

Researchers and environmental organisations say the destruction will have enormous effects on Gaza’s ecosystems and biodiversity. The scale and potential long-term impact of the damage have led to calls for it to be regarded as “ecocide” and investigated as a possible war crime. Read More

News Credit: The Guardian

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In late October 2012, Superstorm Sandy struck New York City with devastating force, causing over $60 billion in damage, claiming lives, and necessitating the evacuation of thousands from hospitals and nursing homes. This catastrophic event unwittingly provided cognitive neuroscientist Yoko Nomura with a unique research opportunity. Before Sandy’s landfall, Nomura had been conducting the Stress in Pregnancy study with a group of pregnant women in New York to examine how prenatal stress affects unborn children, focusing on its potential to alter gene expression related to neurobehavioral disorders like autism, schizophrenia, and ADHD through epigenetics.

The disaster introduced a critical new dimension to her study. Nomura was particularly interested in the subset of her participants who were pregnant during the hurricane, aiming to determine if the prenatal stress from experiencing such a disaster could have a distinct impact on their children compared to those conceived before or after the event.

Years after the storm, Nomura’s findings are profoundly revealing. Children who were in utero during Sandy show significantly higher risks of psychiatric conditions. For instance, girls exposed to the storm before birth have seen a dramatic increase in anxiety and depression rates in later life, while boys show heightened risks of ADHD and conduct disorder. Symptoms of these conditions have appeared as early as preschool, underscoring a stark difference in mental health outcomes based on prenatal exposure to stress. Read More

News Credit: The Guardian

Picture Credit: Ngadi Smart/The Guardian

According to a major new study, Australia’s main carbon offset method is failing globally and doing little, if anything, to help address the climate crisis.

Research by eleven academics found that the most popular technique used to create offsets in Australia, known as “human-induced regeneration,” which was pledged to regenerate scrubby outback forests, mainly had not improved tree cover as promised between about 2015 and 2022. Read More

News Credit: The Guardian

Picture Credit: Hilke Maunder/Alamy

Multiple US cities on the east coast are sinking, increasing the risk of flooding from rising sea levels.

Between 2007 and 2020, the ground under New York, Baltimore, and Norfolk in Virginia sank between 1mm and 2mm a year. Other places sank at double or triple that rate, and Charleston, South Carolina, sank fastest, at 4mm a year, in a city less than 3 metres above sea level.

The subsidence resulted from pumping out groundwater for water supplies or for natural gas, but New York and other cities are sinking under the sheer weight of their buildings pressing into soft ground. Read More

News Credit: The Guardian

Picture Credit: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

Ground-based measuring devices and aircraft radar operated in the far northeast of Greenland show how much ice the 79° N-Glacier is losing. According to measurements conducted by the Alfred Wegener Institute, the thickness of the glacier has decreased by more than 160 meters since 1998. Warm ocean water flowing under the glacier tongue is melting the ice from below.

High air temperatures cause lakes to form on the surface, whose water flows through considerable channels in the ice into the ocean. One channel reached a height of 500 meters, while the ice above was only 190 meters thick.

Due to extreme melt rates, the ice of the floating glacier tongue has become 32 % thinner since 1998, especially from the grounding line where the ice comes into contact with the ocean. In addition, a 500-meter-high channel has formed on the underside of the ice, which spreads towards the inland. Read More

News Credit: Phys.org

Image: Ole Zeising starting pRES (radar) measurement on 79 North Glacier. Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institut / Niklas Neckel

In recent years, Antarctica has experienced a series of unprecedented heatwaves. On 6 February 2020, temperatures of 18.3C were recorded, the highest ever on the continent. This beat the previous record of 17.5C, which had only been set a few years earlier.

Another intense heatwave in Antarctica led to a record-breaking surface ice melt around February 2022. In March of the same year, Eastern Antarctica witnessed its strongest-ever heatwave, with temperatures soaring to 30C or 40C higher than the average in multiple areas. Read More

News Credit: The Conversation

Image: Internet (due credits)

In the present day, virtually all of the world’s largest oil companies have made splashy climate pledges. But when it comes to actually slashing emissions, those firms are “way off track,”.

The analysis from the think tank Carbon Tracker assessed the production and transition plans of 25 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies. The report found that none align with the central goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to keep global warming “well under” 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The analysis comes as oil and gas companies publicly renege on their climate commitments. Read More

News Credit: The Guardian

Picture Credit: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian