Marking Peroid 2 by John Twomey

China New Environmental Policies http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/17/chinas-bold-environmental-move/

17twomeyj — 2017-01-24 01:42:54 UTC

China is starting to move toward better environmental standards. China in the past years has been an industrial power house with all of their factories, but with all of these factories the country has been facing a growing pollution problem especially with their air quality. After the US embassy in Beijing released it findings on the pollutants in China's air the activists in the country have become more vocal about wanting more extensive tests run to get a better idea of the challenges they are facing. Recently the Chinese government released a statement making 15,000 companies release reports on their emissions. They also will be using $280 billion trying to fix their air problems. This decision came after the country found it was losing 9 % of its gross national income due to environmental problems.
This shows progress in the Chinese movements to protect their environment and is important for preserving the world for future generations to come.

Managing Global Warming http://www.nbcnews.com/mach/space/geoengineering-effort-could-pose-big-problem-astronomers-n709941

17twomeyj — 2017-01-24 01:43:10 UTC

This article reviews ideas on how to slow down the effects of global warming on the earth.  These ideas include removing carbon from the air and storing it as a liquid or solid state in the ground to keep the amount of green house gases at a lower level.  These carbon compounds could be stored or used in so many way.  Another way it was proposed to slow global warming was to produce artificial clouds to reflect more sunlight back into space and there for lowering earths temperature.  These ideas are not in effect as of now because they don't have a total idea on what other changes these plans might cause to the environment. Also these ideas are designed as temporary plans and cannot solve the problem of global warming on their own.  This is interesting because it shows how intercut the planet is and how one action could cause many different results.  This is also important because it shows an effort by people to preserve the planet for future generations.

Identifying Pollution in New Ways http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/50357

17twomeyj — 2017-01-24 01:43:20 UTC

Cornell engineers are creating a new test system to help better gage the amounts and types of pollutants in water ways. Using a mass spectrometer 18 different samples can be tested at once and will give twice the information given by a traditional test. With this new technology they could test for a much broader range of pollutants where as right now they can only test for specific things that they think might be there. With this new water quality test it would be cheaper and easier to test for a wide range of pollutants that may have been hard to test for before. It also limits the amount of exposure to any potentially dangerous chemicals that may be in some of the samples that are being tested. Being able to test water for pollutants more efficiently will make it easier to monitor water quality and the kind and amount of pollutants in a body of water. This will make sure that the water people are dinking is safe and help scientist know what measures might need to be taken to remove pollutants from water ways.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/01/new-technique-ids-micropollutants-new-york-waterways

Impact of Climate on Water Supply http://www.enn.com/climate/article/50339

17twomeyj — 2017-01-24 01:43:49 UTC

This article encompasses how global warming is a positive feed back loop for fresh water problems and pollution. It explains how when global temperatures rise for every one degree Fahrenheit the amount of water the atmosphere can hold goes up by 4 percent. This would cause more extremes to accrue so in places that have little rain fall will have less and places with high rainfall are more likely to flood. The lack of water in these dry locations would make it so that more water needed to be transported causing emissions to go up in order to produce the energy needed to transport the water. Mean while as the temperatures rise the ice caps melt causing the sea level to rise and when this happens salt water starts to push its way into fresh water aquifers making it harder to obtain fresh water. All of these things can cause an increased stress on the environment. with more run off there is a higher potential to see dead zones appear in bodies of water and more pollutions flowing into the water ways and chemicals leaching into aquifers. All of these things cause problems with pollution or increasing the effects of global warming. It is important to understand how global warming effects the planet because if we don't understand what is happening we will never be able to slow or fix the effects that global warming has on the earth.

http://www.triplepundit.com/2017/01/climate-change-impacts-water-supply/

Ice Valley http://www.livescience.com/57598-valleys-discovered-beneath-antarctica-glaciers.html

17twomeyj — 2017-01-24 01:44:04 UTC

The new information found by scientist show that the glaciers have been melting from within. This is due to the crevasses that run all through the inside of glaciers letting warmer sea water from the surrounding oceans to flow into the inside of the glacier causing deep canyons below the surface that can be completely hidden from the surface view. This new discovery is going to help scientist to better predict the speed at which the glaciers are going to rescind in the coming years. This is interesting because it gives a new view on how the vast canyons form in the ice in Antarctica. It shows that the ice doesn't only crack under pressure but instead the ice melts under the surface even before they are visible from the surface.

Cats and the New Flu http://www.livescience.com/57583-bird-flu-h7n2-strain-strikes-cats.html

17twomeyj — 2017-01-24 01:44:25 UTC

In New York City animal shelters there has been an outbreak of the flu in cats, but this is not the regular flu for cats. This strand H7N2 is common amongst birds but has recently started transmitting to cats in New York. This strand of the flu is passed from cat to cat through bodily fluids and can sit on an object after a cat coughs or sneezes and infect the next cat to touch it or in some rare cases it can be passed to humans. This flu is also irregular because it has caused death in some of the cats. This is interesting to show the evolution of organisms in the world today.

not environmental

2017-01-29 13:28:59 UTC