Worldwide shortages could lead to water wars

Get ready for the water wars. Most of the world’s population takes water for granted, just like air. But a Hindustan Times blogger said that in India right now, as in so many other places around the globe, drinkable water has become such a “precious commodity” that it’s dragging the world into “water wars to […]

Agriculture Land Shrinking in China

Growing population, industrialization and rapid economic growth are putting unprecedented pressure on China’s agriculture resources, and have become a threat to food security in the country and the world. According to China’s national land survey figures released recently, total arable land in the country stood at around 135.4 million hectares at the end of 2012. […]

Massive Fireball From North Dakota Oil Train Derailment Caught On Tape

*NO INJURIES REPORTED FROM BNSF TRAIN FIRE IN NORTH DAKOTA Wind is taking toxic smoke towards areas southeast of Casselton, ND, after train derailment. Residents urged to stay indoors A train has derailed west of Casselton, North Dakota just before 2:20 p.m. Monday. As Valley News Live reports, several area emergency teams are on scene […]

Is Petroleum Sucking the Life out of the Planet?

It was either a Freudian slip or a moment of rare political candour when Alberta’s Municipal Affairs Minister related to an audience on the other side of the country that oil and gas wealth is sucking the life out of everything else in Alberta. In defence of his pronouncement he told the legislature in which […]

Jeremy Jackson: Ocean Apocalypse

Evening Lecture | Jeremy Jackson: Ocean Apocalypse | January 7, 2013 What are the impacts of overfishing? (10:55) What if the world’s garbage, sewage and toxic waste had been piled up on land instead of dumped in the ocean? (17:40) Global Warming: Are the penguins and polar bears doomed? (28:22) How much will the sea […]

PatternDynamics: Following The Way Nature Organizes Itself to Deal with Complexity

The natural world is staggeringly complex, and yet amazingly elegant in how it manages the multitude of interconnected parts into organized, unified wholes that thrive. What is the secret for harnessing this elegance for use in human systems? Tim Winton found that observation of the most common patterns found in the natural world led to […]

Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals Linked to Fracking Found in Colorado River

The Colorado River flows through the town of Rifle in Garfield County, Colorado. Photo (taken 1972) by David Hiser, courtesy of U.S. National Archives, Flickr/Creative Commons. This week, more evidence came in that hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) poses potentially serious risks to drinking water quality and human health. A team of researchers from the University […]

Study Links Fracking to Sex Change in Animals

Reuters Protesters were arrested during clashes with police at Balcombe over fracking The debate about the rights and wrongs of hydraulic fracturing – “fracking” – to extract natural gas from shale rock looks set to become even more heated. Scentists in the United States have published a study claiming that many of the chemicals used […]

US Sailors, Assisting With Fukushima Clean Up, Crippled By Cancer

Back in December 2012, we wrote that it was only a matter of time before Japan’s criminal lying about the radioactive exposure in the aftermath of the Fukushima catastrophe caught up with it, as well as with countless numbers of people who would soon succumb to radiation induced cancers and other diseases. What we found […]

Fukushima: Wave of Radiation Will Be Ten Times Bigger than All of the Radiation from Nuclear Tests Combined

Putting Fukushima In Perspective There was no background radioactive cesium before above-ground nuclear testing and nuclear accidents started. Wikipedia provides some details on the distribution of cesium-137 due to human activities: Small amounts of caesium-134 and caesium-137 were released into the environment during nearly all nuclear weapon tests and some nuclear accidents, most notably the […]

Ugo Bardi: Gaia the missing bride

Toby Tyrrel’s book “On Gaia” is an interesting book in many respects, but it misses some fundamental features the  the self-regulating planetary system that keeps the Earth alive: Gaia. (image from Alternative Energy Action Now)   Imagine that a friend of yours invites you to his marriage. You go there and there is everything you […]

Environmental Limits to Population Growth

Logistic growth of a population size occurs when resources are limited, thereby setting a maximum number an environment can support. fig. 1 Logistic population growth (a) Yeast grown in ideal conditions in a test tube show a classical S-shaped logistic growth curve, whereas (b) a natural population of seals shows real-world fluctuation. Key Points The […]

Natural gas saves water, even when factoring in water lost to hydraulic fracturing

For every gallon of water used to produce natural gas through hydraulic fracturing, Texas saved 33 gallons of water by generating electricity with that natural gas instead of coal (in 2011). Credit: University of Texas at Austin A new study finds that in Texas, the U.S. state that annually generates the most electricity, the transition […]

Can Coal Feed The Global Energy Appetite In A Healthy Way?

No other fuel source has been tarred more than coal. Yet, no other product has done more to electrify the global population and to bring prosperity to so many. The question the world now faces is whether to up the stakes in relatively cheap coal or whether to make investments in and to depend on […]

Economic Development and Long-Term Consequences of Growth

A population’s growth is strongly influenced by the proportions of individuals of particular ages, which in turn is influenced by economic development. fig. 1 Population bar graphs for stages of demographic change from expansion to contraction The leftmost diagram representing the age structure of a rapidly-growing population indicates that the number of individuals decreases rapidly […]

Pakistan: Water scarcity has put survival in jeopardy

Increasing population worldwide, particularly in Pakistan has caused deterioration of the environment and challenges of food and water security, speakers at a seminar on Integrated Flood Management said on Tuesday. The seminar was organised at the New Senate Hall by the Water Management Research Centre of the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. It was chaired by […]

Baby Steps on Stanching Wasteful Flaring of Natural Gas

I hope you’ll read “Applying Creativity to a Byproduct of Oil Drilling in North Dakota,” a valuable Clifford Krauss feature on baby steps taken by the oil and gas industry to stanch the wasteful, polluting flaring of natural gas from the country’s booming Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. (There’s no infrastructure for storing or […]

Rapid Population Growth Imperils Egypt

The world’s population broke the 7 billion person barrier in 2011 and is projected to increase by 40 percent in the coming forty years. Population growth averages vary among the world’s nations, with the populations of developed nations expected to increase by just 10 percent, and the greater part of population growth expected to come […]

The human over population is near

The human overpopulation is near Earths maximum capacity Overpopulation remains the leading driver of hunger, desertification and species depletion across the planet. Conservative estimates report that China’s most recent food crisis, between 1958 and 1961, led to the starvation of over twenty million people, in part due to the erosion of China’s natural capital. Uncontrolled […]

Our Thirsty Future

Water resources are becoming more strained across a world with a rapidly expanding population. Flickr via Creative Commons/wonderlane As the saying goes, “water, water everywhere” — well, maybe not exactly everywhere. Finding adequate freshwater in a world with an exponentially growing human population is a tricky equation to solve. Droughts can have immediate impacts on […]

Sun Is Weakest in a Century

The sun’s current space-weather cycle is the most anemic in 100 years, scientists say. Our star is now at “solar maximum,” the peak phase of its 11-year activity cycle. But this solar max is weak, and the overall current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, conjures up comparisons to the famously feeble Solar Cycle 14 […]

The Future Of Planet Earth: Are We The Last Surviving Generations? Radioactivity And The Gradual Extinction Of Life

Interviewer: I think you did a lot of research about the radiation, even when it is a low radiation where usually it is said: “Don’t worry, no problem at all”. What have you found out about the effects of low radiation in the long run? Bertell: Well, my background is as a researcher. And I […]

The great suffocation – will we have enough oxygen to breathe?

  The oxygen concentration in the atmosphere as recorded at the Mauna Loa observatory (link). It is going down and the obvious explanation is that it is the result of our burning of fossil fuels. But do we risk to suffocate ourselves in this way? Fortunately, that’s very unlikely, at least in the short run. […]

Japan sets aside $1 billion for nuclear fallout storage

  The total cost of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown may never be known, but the country has at least put a number on how much it anticipates storing the radioactive debris will cost it. Asahi Shimbun reports that the 2014 Japanese budget includes a 100 billion yen provision (roughly $970 million) for the purchase and […]

Rice From Fukushima Was Served To Japanese Government Officials, And Then Something Odd Happened

Two days ago, supposedly in an attempt to demonstrate how “contained” the radiation fallout from Fukushima was, an event was held in Tokyo to demonstrate the safety of the rice grown in the vicinity of the evacuated area around the exploded nuclear power plant according to the source, NHK. And since officials from Fukushima Prefecture […]

Thorium Reactors: Nuclear Redemption or Nuclear Hazard?

Could thorium be the faltering nuclear industry’s salvation — or is it a mirage? Is the U.S. missing an immense energy opportunity? “We should be trying our best to develop the use of thorium,” former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix recently told BBC News. “I am told that thorium will be safer in reactors – […]

Natural Gas: Not All It’s Fracked Up to Be?

  Natural gas is being touted as a “game changer” and a “bridge to a low carbon economy.” It is an abundant, made-in-America energy source.  It is about half as carbon intensive as coal when burned. The figure below suggests that a natural gas fueled transition to a less carbon intensive economy has already begun. […]

Fukushima WAS a Nuclear Explosion, Here Is The Proof

The only way that the tens of tons of uranium and plutonium shown by US EPA air samples could occur was if the explosion came from within the reactor vessel, and/or spent fuel pool.   So clearly the explosion was a nuclear type of explosion from within.    Nuclear promoters have long stated that nuclear plants can’t […]

The Fukushima Coverup: “Biggest Industrial Catastrophe in the History of Mankind”

We knew the world would not be the same. Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now I […]

Highest Radiation Level Ever, Lethal In 20 Minutes, Recorded Outside Reactor

With all the excitement about Japan’s soaring stock market (if plunging wages), crashing non-digital currency (leading to soaring energy prices), recent passage of an arbitrary secrecy bill (“Designed by Kafka & Inspired By Hitler“), and ongoing territorial spat with China, it is almost as if the Abe administration is desperately doing everything in its power, […]

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