https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy en-us 2017-11-08 00:05:24 UTC 2018-05-17 02:39:24 UTC hello@padlet.com 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204634339 One big selling point for political candidates these days is their stance on what does or doesn't need to be done for the environment. Presidential environmental stances have been making big news since around the 1970's, when many environmental catastrophes ensued and President Nixon had to respond to public outcry. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) was formed in 1970, while Nixon was in office. Since, recognition for the environment has only increased, though that has come to a halt with the Trump Administration. Trump is trying to get rid of many already instilled points in the government that protect the environment, such as the Clean Power Plan.

https://today.law.harvard.edu/evolution-american-environmental-law-nixon-trump/]]> 2017-11-08 00:29:15 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204634339 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204635949 Three environmental groups in the Oregon area are angry about  how aquatic wildlife is being affected by the dams that have been implemented in the area. "The Native Fish Society, Wild Earth Guardians and Northwest Environmental Defense Center issued a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over what they’re calling the agency’s failure to improve dam passage for adult and juvenile fish" (Urness). The groups are saying that the dams are creating a block, meaning that fish are not able to pass through where the dams are and now many of these fish are unable to reconnect with other parts of their populations or get back to their usual environment. Additionally, this is leading to many of these fish populations depleting, and even threatening extinction.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environmental-groups-suing-over-oregons-willamette-dams/]]> 2017-11-08 00:38:54 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204635949 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204637774 Though New Jersey is already in debt, one of the polling questions that will be on Nov. 7th's ballot will be if citizens are in favor of the money gained from environmental lawsuits going towards repairing the environment. Some citizens are in favor of this, since they believe that money gained from the environment should go back towards the environment, while other citizens believe that the money should go towards paying off other debts that the state has. Additionally, New Jersey already has some of the highest taxes in the United States, and citizens are almost unanimously not in favor of taxes being raised to gain money for repairing the environment. The results from the poll will lead New Jersey further into deciding how to handle repairing the state's environment.

https://whyy.org/articles/n-j-vote-allocating-funds-environmental-suits-borrowing-libraries/]]> 2017-11-08 00:50:03 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204637774 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204638683 Syria has signed the Paris agreement on climate change, leaving the U.S. isolated as it is in the midst of possibly leaving the agreement. Trump has made it clear to the world that he is not in favor of the agreement, and citizens are waiting to see how that plays out in the government, eager to see if the U.S. will actually follow Trump's word and leave the agreement. The Paris Climate Agreement is an agreement created within the U.N. that aims to have countries monitor their greenhouse gas emissions and other emissions that may be contributing to global warming. The agreement will not go into affect until 2020, but President Obama already brought the United States into the agreement, though Trump is threatening to take the country out of the agreement. If the U.S. were to withdraw from the agreement, it would take years, projected until 2020, for the United States to legally get out of the agreement.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/07/syria-signs-paris-climate-agreement-and-leaves-us-isolated]]> 2017-11-08 00:55:44 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204638683 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204640785 In recent news, it has been made public that North Korea is testing increasingly more powerful nuclear weapons in an attempt to scare other countries into fearing North Korea. Though from the United States, many citizens have no immediate threat to fear, the tale is not the same for those in North Korea and surrounding areas. A South Korean newspaper has been releasing information on some of said nuclear tests, explaining how more than half of the vegetation surrounding the test sites dies. Additionally, children in North Korea and close regions of South Korea have reportedly been having alarming increases in birth defects. These problems are raising more questions about what other repercussions are coming from these nuclear tests.

http://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-nuclear-test-birth-defects-704054]]> 2017-11-08 01:11:23 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204640785 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204645061 France's environment minister has stepped back from previous promises that the country has made about reducing use of nuclear power. The country claims to have made this decision in hopes of focusing more time and energy on reducing use of fossil fuels within the country. Since some of the world's citizens are angered by the country stepping back from the promise, France has responded by setting ambitious goals to decrease contributions to global warming, such as banning gasoline sales and cars that run on diesel by 2040.

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/11/07/world/europe/ap-eu-france-nuclear.html]]> 2017-11-08 01:36:59 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/204645061 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223371727 For more than fifty years, NOAA has been collecting air samples to put into their Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. One of the recent places that they collected air samples was Niwot Ridge in Colorado. "The sample was carried down the mountain and then measured for carbon dioxide at a lab in Boulder, Colorado. The result: 322.4 parts per million" (NOAA). The research is used to show how climate change and other things are affecting air quality of different environments, making it a valuable resource to see how the atmosphere is changing.

http://www.enn.com/sci-tech/article/53717]]> 2018-01-22 15:19:49 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223371727 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223372337 Students at the University of Colorado, Boulder have been researching soil from different parts of the world to determine what is in the soil and how it affects the environment it is in. "Researchers collected soil samples from 237 locations on six continents and in 18 countries. They then analyzed the microbes’ DNA to track similarities and differences and created a list of 500 bacteria that account for almost half of all soil microbes" (Yale Environment 360). The students on the project admitted that there is not much known about the microbes contained in soil, but working on this research will help them understand what is really in soil. The students have created the first worldwide atlas of soil microbes.

http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/53718]]> 2018-01-22 15:20:37 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223372337 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223372671 It's no secret that climate change is very real and affecting the world around us, making it not surprising that the Earth's increasing heat trend was continued in 2017. Average temperatures in 2017 were 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.90 degrees Celsius) warmer than the temperatures recorded from 1951 to 1980. "The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (a little more than 1 degree Celsius) during the last century or so, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere. Last year was the third consecutive year in which global temperatures were more than 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) above late nineteenth-century levels" ("Long-term Warming"). Other phenomenon that back up research of NASA and NOAA are recent El Niño and La Niña , which change the dynamics of regional temperatures.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180118173711.htm]]> 2018-01-22 15:21:05 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223372671 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223379431 Scientists in Greenland are looking into how underground geothermal activity is affecting the ice sheets around them. The warmer the heat underneath the ice sheets become, the more glaciers melt off the ice sheets and slide into the ocean. "For more than ten years, the researchers have measured the temperature and salinity in the fjord Young Sound, located at Daneborg, north of Scoresbysund, which has many hot springs, and south of the glacier Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, which melts rapidly and is connected to the North-East Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS)" ("Heat Loss"). Scientists are able to research how the water temperature has changed over long periods of time, but since it is hard to determine geothermal temperatures, they are unable to dissect what is entirely happening under the ice sheets, though the increased geothermal temperatures are almost certainly accredited to climate change.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180122091321.htm]]> 2018-01-22 15:32:57 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223379431 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223379777 Australia's Great Barrier Reef is home to a large portion of the sea turtle population in the world, and scientists are researching how climate change is affecting the gender of the turtles born. Studies have shown that warmer sand temperatures around the nests of the sea turtles result in female sea turtles. This has been shown recently through the huge uprising in the amount of female sea turtles being born, as the females greatly outnumber the males in the Great Barrier Reef. "Green sea turtles from cooler southern nesting beaches were about 65 to 69 percent female, testing showed. Sea turtles from warmer northern beaches leaned even more heavily female, with 86.8 percent of adult turtles, 99.8 percent of sub-adult turtles, and 99.1 percent of juvenile turtles turning out to be female" ("Rising Temperatures"). Scientists are trying to research what they can do to make sure that the turtle populations are able to continue on as they are faced with this problem and hoping that the population will soon evolve and adapt so that more males are born, but that seems very unlikely at the current time.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180111101408.htm]]> 2018-01-22 15:33:36 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223379777 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223757999 As the climate change crisis continues, scientists are searching far and wide to find a way to reverse the situation. "The technology, known as bioenergy combined with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), comes in many variations. But the core idea is burning trees or other plants for energy while pulling in the resulting carbon dioxide and storing it below ground" (Mooney). Though many people were hopeful that this could be a final solution to global warming, this theory has been disregarded as it is said to take too much water and land, leading to later environmental problems due to taking up so many resources. It would take millions of acres to have a place to store all of the gases they want to remove, and putting the gases in these places would also destroy the environments of those areas.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/science/ct-climate-change-technology-20180122-story.html]]> 2018-01-23 13:35:39 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/223757999 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401771 Since Australia is known for many of its odd species that can't be found anywhere else in the world, it is always big news when one of these species is added onto the endangered species list. The most recent species in Australia to be added to the list is the Mary River turtle, best known for it's ability to breath through its and ability to stay underwater for up to three days. Scientists are unable to pinpoint one specific reason that these turtles are going extinct, but are mostly accusing poaching and climate change as the main suspects of the endangerment of this turtle.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/12/asia/mary-river-turtle-endangered-intl/index.html]]> 2018-04-13 01:31:46 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401771 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401790 As the temperatures of the ocean water rises due to climate change, the feeding grounds of whales are being altered and disturbed. This is causing the whales to have to relocate to find new areas for food sources, causing whale sightings to have heavily decreased in most areas that they are usually found. Due to needing to relocate, whales are going to areas that they are not known to usually go into, which increases their chances of being tangled in fishing nets or other fishing gear, causing them to die. When discussing an area in Maine that scientists regularly go to to observe whales, the article states, "This past summer, the numbers of humpback whales identified from the rock were abysmal — the team saw only eight instead of the usual dozens. Fifty-three humpbacks have died in the last 19 months, many after colliding with boats or fishing gear."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/science/humpbacks-right-whales.html?action=click&contentCollection=Science&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article]]> 2018-04-13 01:31:55 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401790 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401801 As more information about just what Brexit entails becomes available, many people have become concerned about what Brexit means for the environment. A group called Friends of the Earth did an outline of risk analysis for the environment involving Brexit. When outlining some of the most prevalent public concerns about the environment under Brexit, Friends of the Earth stated, "Nature protection policies, concerning habitats and birds, were judged to be especially vulnerable as they are at a very high risk under all possible Brexit scenarios." This shows that in order to keep the environment of England sustainable, the government may need to take a look at how Brexit will impact their environment and make changes depending upon what will make things more sustainable.

http://www.euronews.com/2018/04/12/brexit-set-to-diminish-every-area-of-uk-s-environmental-policy-report-finds]]> 2018-04-13 01:31:58 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401801 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401808 One of the biggest advancements in modern history has been medicine, but many people overlook the negative aspects that come with having so many pharmaceuticals available around the world. Recently, the amount of pharmaceuticals that have been found in waterways, especially rivers, has been found to be highly dangerous to the surrounding wildlife, people, and has been causing people to describe the rivers as being "clogged." Some of the drugs that are specifically being found to be disruptive to the environment are analgesics, antibiotics, anti-platelet agents, hormones, psychiatric drugs, antihistamines.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/11/drug-waste-clogs-rivers-around-the-world-scientists-say]]> 2018-04-13 01:32:01 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401808 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401814 In response to the climate change that is disrupting the environment of the Earth, "The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has announced it aims to launch a satellite called MethaneSAT by 2021 to scan the globe and make major leaks public." This satellite has the ability to detect methane leaks from oil and gas plants from space, then send that information back to Earth for the government to take action against companies that are causing major damage to the Earth's atmosphere. "MethaneSAT is intended to provide a new level of precision and to regularly monitor about 50 major oil and gas regions, accounting for more than 80% of global production. Cattle and other  as they digest their fodder and EDF says the new satellite will be able to measure emissions from feedlots."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/new-satellite-to-spot-planet-warming-industrial-methane-leaks]]> 2018-04-13 01:32:04 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401814 19chengl https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401823 While many pet stores advertise their pythons as being bred and not wild, not all of them are being truthful. "At a meeting last summer, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species — a treaty meant to regulate wildlife trade and ensure that it does not detrimentally impact species — identified 18 instances in which animals are exported as captive-bred, but likely are not." What does this mean for the environment? Some python populations, such as those on remote islands, are being depleted and almost brought into extinction in that area because the population is unable to produce enough pythons to quickly balance back out the amount of pythons present. This may lead to major problems with depleted python populations in the wild, if this trend in pet stores continues.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/science/illegal-wildlife-reptiles-amphibians.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront]]> 2018-04-13 01:32:09 UTC https://padlet.com/19chengl/am456xpzwjhy/wish/251401823