https://news.yahoo.com/doggone-exciting-historic-treatment-begin-204249785.html

‘Doggone exciting.’ Historic treatment to begin on decades-old Hanford nuclear waste

:}

I dare you. Go there and read. More next week.

:}

The post Handling Hanfords Radioactive Waste – It has been a fiasco from the begining appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://digg.com/video/heres-why-the-united-states-drained-its-ninth-largest-lake

If you want to read about it. You can go here:

http://www.tularebasinwildlifepartners.org/history.html

Hydrologic History of the Tulare Basin

:}

The post How We Drained The Largest Lake West Of The Mississippi – OH My appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-world-is-stuck-with-decades-of-new-plastic-it-can-t-recycle?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Ants are useful creatures. As the most numerous insects on Earth, they have colonized nearly every habitat on land. So when a researcher wants to understand how far a contaminant has spread, they turn to ants.

In 2012, a group of French researchers found phthalates in the body of every ant they sampled. Ants from France, Hungary, Spain, Morocco, the Greek island Egine, and Burkina Faso all had at least some of the common plastic additive embedded in their skin. In the conclusion to the paper announcing their findings, they added a restless-sounding note: “In an attempt to find ants bearing no phthalate on their cuticle,” they wrote, they would next look farther afield. There had to be ants out there not yet full of plastic.

But there were not. Five years later, the team published their follow-up. They had sampled ants from the most remote forests of Guyana, and the areas in the Amazon rainforest farthest from any urban center. Again, phthalates were embedded in their skin. “These findings suggest that there is no such thing as a ‘pristine’ zone,” they wrote in a 2017 paper.

:}

Go there and read. More next week.

:}

The post The Oil Companies Have Poisoned The World – I am not talking about their refined fuels appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution

Rare-earth mining in China comes at a heavy cost for local villages

Health hazard … pipes coming from a rare-earth smelting plant spew into a tailings dam on the outskirts of Baotou in China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters

From the air it looks like a huge lake, fed by many tributaries, but on the ground it turns out to be a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world, collectively known as rare earths.

The town of Baotou, in Inner Mongolia, is the largest Chinese source of these strategic elements, essential to advanced technology, from smartphones to GPS receivers, but also to wind farms and, above all, electric cars. The minerals are mined at Bayan Obo, 120km farther north, then brought to Baotou for processing.

The concentration of rare earths in the ore is very low, so they must be separated and purified, using hydro-metallurgical techniques and acid baths. China accounts for 97% of global output of these precious substances, with two-thirds produced in Baotou.

The foul waters of the tailings pond contain all sorts of toxic chemicals, but also radioactive elements such as thorium which, if ingested, cause cancers of the pancreas and lungs, and leukaemia. “Before the factories were built, there were just fields here as far as the eye can see. In the place of this radioactive sludge, there were watermelons, aubergines and tomatoes,” says Li Guirong with a sigh.

:}

Go there and vomit. More next week.

:}

The post In The Race To Despoil The Environment, China Wins – They are First, Second and Third appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.erienewsnow.com/story/42470351/canadian-ice-shelf-larger-than-manhattan-collapses-into-the-sea

Canadian ice shelf larger than Manhattan collapses into the sea

“Above-normal air temperatures, offshore winds and open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of the recipe for ice shelf break up,” according to the Canadian Ice Service.

AND THIS

https://news.yahoo.com/heat-wave-bakes-california-more-123049167.html

Tony Barboza, Louis Sahagun, Joseph Serna,

LA Times•August 18, 2020

Go there and read. More Next week if I survive.

:}

The post Do Not Have To Be A Weatherman To Know Which The Wind Blows appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/22/875961137/the-worrisome-link-between-deforestation-and-disease?utm_source=digg

June 22, 20205:00 AM ET

Nathan Rott

In 2013, an 18-month-old boy got sick after playing near a hollow tree in his backyard in a remote West African village. He developed a fever and started vomiting. His stool turned black. Two days later, he died.

Two years and more than 11,000 deaths later, the World Health Organization put out a report saying the Ebola outbreak that likely emanated from that hollow tree may have been caused in part by deforestation led by “foreign mining and timber operations.”

The tree the boy played near was infested with insectivorous bats — bats that may have been pushed into the boy’s village because upward of 80% of their natural habitat had been destroyed.

“When you disturb a forest, it actually upsets, if you want, the balance of nature, the balance between pathogens and people,” says John E. Fa, a professor of biodiversity and human development at Manchester Metropolitan University, who was part of a team of researchers that linked recent forest loss to 25 Ebola outbreaks that have occurred since 1976.

A finding, he says, that showed a strong correlation between recent deforestation and disease outbreaks.

:}

Go there and Pray.  More next week.

:}

The post Habitat Destruction Squeezes Diseases Out Of Mammals – Then they invade humans and kill us appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://thesouthern.com/news/local/southern-illinois-power-co-op-plans-to-shutter-its-largest-coal-fired-unit-this-fall/article_7ec9c134-48db-5448-953c-4a435aeddcd5.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share

Southern Illinois Power Co-op plans to shutter its largest coal-fired unit this fall

:}

The post I WILL SAVE COAL – Shouted Donnie the Cheeto Burito from the roof tops appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://newrepublic.com/article/157078/climate-crisis-will-just-shockingly-abrupt?utm_source=digg

As governments around the globe debate how to respond both to the coronavirus itself and the economic chaos it has unleashed, a theme that’s come up over and over is how to prioritize what makes it into spending packages. In the United States, right-left fault lines have emerged over the question of bailing out emissions-heavy industries versus a greener stimulus. On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a large-scale rollback of environmental regulations as a response to the pandemic—allowing many emitters to police themselves when it comes to pollution.

While some argue that the oxygen in the climate debate should be taken up by the pandemic instead, the two issues aren’t mutually exclusive, experts say. In a warming climate, more diseases are likely to emerge and spread, making climate change action an important part of addressing future health crises. Moreover, the perception that climate change isn’t as urgent as other crises may rely on misunderstandings about how climate-related changes will happen. The rate isn’t constant: Instead, there’s reason to believe everything from Arctic melt to Amazon deforestation might experience what’s known as “tipping points,” where small changes in nature shift into rapid and irreversible damage.

Greenland and Antarctica are melting six times faster than they were in the 1990s, according to a new study in the journal Nature. Between 1992 and 2017, Greenland and Antarctica lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice. This falls under the worst-case scenario projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the effects are already being felt in many parts of the world. The IPCC predicts that by the end of the century, 400 million people around the globe could be at risk of coastal flooding every year from sea-level rise alone.

:}

Go there and read. More next week.

:}

The post I Am So Excited To Be Posting On Earth Day – The 50th Anniversary appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/11/13/the-energy-202-dakota-access-operators-call-climate-change-undefined-vague-and-ambiguous-in-official-filing/5dcaed9f602ff1184c316408/

By Dino Grandoni

November 13

THE LIGHTBULB

The operators of the Dakota Access pipeline seemed to brush aside concerns about global warming and the effects it may have on their business in an official filing, saying the phrase “climate change” is “undefined, vague, and ambiguous.”

That comment, filed in August with regulators in Illinois, comes as the pipeline’s operators try to more than double the capacity of the crude oil conduit — and as environmentalists still rail against the pipeline that has become a flash point over fossil-fuel infrastructure in the United States. The Obama administration held up the Dakota Access pipeline after months of protests from environmentalists and Native Americans only for President Trump to greenlight the project once taking office in 2017.

The pipeline’s operators are seeking permission from Illinois to add a new pump station to move extra oil in the 1,900-mile pipeline system of which the Dakota Access pipeline is a part.

:}

Go there and read. More next week.

:}

The post Climate Change Is Like A Paperclip – You can bend it however you like appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

There is this:

https://www.dw.com/en/new-delhi-schools-closed-as-air-pollution-worsens/a-51235841

Then there is this:

DW recommends

:}

Go there and read and read and read. More next week.

:}

The post Pollute Till People Die _ Why does every developing Nation have to go through this appeared first on Community Energy Systems.