Earlier this year, the United Nations announced some much-needed positive news about the environment: The ozone layer, which shields the Earth from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation, and which was severely depleted by decades of human-derived, ozone-destroying chemicals, is on the road to ozone recovery. The dramatic turnaround is a direct result of regulations set ...
Chemical clues in waters near Marcellus Shale gas wells in rural Pennsylvania can identify new drilling-related sources of methane contamination, according to scientists. The findings provide a new tool for distinguishing potential environmental impacts of shale drilling from pre-existing methane levels commonly found in Pennsylvania waterways, the researchers said. Scientists also found that methane contamination ...
Elevated concentrations of strontium, an element associated with oil and gas fracking wastewater, have accumulated in the shells of freshwater mussels downstream from fracking wastewater disposal sites, according to researchers from Penn State and Union College. Nathaniel Warner, assistant professor of environmental engineering at Penn State, said: “Freshwater mussels filter water and when they grow ...
A potent ozone-depleting substance from eastern China has been found as ongoing significant emissions by researchers from the University of Bristol. The compound, carbon tetrachloride, contributes to the destruction of the Earth’s ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. As a result, the production of carbon tetrachloride has been banned throughout the world ...
The interaction between a chemical slurry and ancient shale during hydraulic fracking is producing radioactive waste, according to Dartmouth College research. The study, detailed in twin papers appearing in Chemical Geology, is the first research that characterizes the phenomenon of radium transfer in the widely-used method to extract oil and gas. The findings add to ...
Committed to addressing the country’s severe air pollution, China is attempting a shift from coal to natural gas and is considering a variety of sources, including domestic and imported gas options, as well as creating its own synthetic gas from coal. A team of researchers led by Princeton University investigated the environmental impacts of transitioning ...
Europe’s decision to promote the use of wood as a “renewable fuel” will likely greatly increase Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions and cause severe harm to the world’s forests, according to a new comment paper published in Nature Communications. European officials agreed on final language for a renewable energy directive earlier this summer that will almost double Europe’s use ...
The release of the Paradise Papers and Panama Papers exposed how multinationals, politicians, and the wealthy use offshore tax havens to conceal their wealth and money flows, and reduce their exposure to tax. Now, a team of researchers from the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) at Stockholm University and the Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere (GEDB), Royal ...
If the global population adopted the recommended guidelines of North American diets, there wouldn’t be enough land to provide the food required, according to a new study co-authored by University of Guelph researchers. The researchers found that global adherence to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines would require one giga-hectare of additional land — ...
For the first time, scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and five other organizations have shown that human influences significantly impact changing seasons — the size of the seasonal cycle of temperature in the lowest layer of the atmosphere. To demonstrate this, they applied a so-called “fingerprint” technique. Fingerprinting seeks to separate human and ...
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