Climate-Environment friendship

  The temperature in the Antarctic peninsula will increase by 0.5 to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2044 because of climate change, finds a new study. The projections also showed that precipitation -- a threat to ice if it manifests as rain -- will likely increase on the peninsula by about 5 per cent to 10 per cent over that same time period. "We are concerned about these findings. We've been seeing overall quite big changes on the peninsula, generally getting warmer and ice shelves and glaciers discharging into the ocean," said lead author David Bromwich from The Ohio State University. Since the 1950s, the peninsula, along with the rest of the western part of Antarctica, has been one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth. And because it is covered in mountains -- the highest peak is just over 10,600 feet -- standard climate models overlook some of the nuances of how climate change affects the peninsula, the researcher said. "The issue for the Antarctic peninsula is that i...

Ocean scientists are on a mission to find barrels of DDT and other harmful chemicals that are believed to be submerged in the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles, in the US.  And to execute this, they’re taking the help of two robot submarines dubbed REMUS or Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS that can go as low as 20,000 feet underwater. In case you didn’t know, DDT or Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane was essentially an insecticide that was commonly used for agricultural as well as household purposes.  However, by the 60s, environmentalists revealed how harmful they were to both animals as well as humans, resulting in a ban that followed in 1972 by the EPA, classifying it as a probable human carcinogen.  However, in October 2020, early fifty years later, millions of barrels of DDT were discovered in the waters off Santa Catalina Island, according to a report by the LA times. The reports exposed LA’s Montrose Chemical Corp — a leading manufacturer of DDT to be responsible fo...

  Keeping girls in school and taking young climate leaders seriously are keys to tackling climate change, Nobel Peace Prize winner  Malala  Yousafzai said on Friday. Speaking to a virtual panel,  Malala , 23, said educating girls and young women, particularly in developing countries, would give them a chance to pursue green jobs and be part of solving the climate crisis in their communities. "Girls' education, gender equality and climate change are not separate issues. Girl's education and gender equality can be used as solutions against climate change,"  Malala  told an online event by British think-tank Chatham House. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, some 130 million girls worldwide were already out of school, according to the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO, which said more than 11 million may not return to classes after the pandemic. "When we educate girls ... they can become farmers, conservationists, solar technicians, they can fill other green job...

T ech-giant Mark Zuckberg has predicted that his company could be 'teleporting' (a hypothetical transfer of matter or energy from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them) into other people's homes and workplaces by 2030 to combat climate change, using smart glasses.If things go his way, face-to-face meetings would be replaced with virtual conferences and made possible with some form of augmented reality (AR) headset, he predicted. The ultimate vision would involve a normal looking pair of electronic glasses, which can present contenton its lenses beyond the real world, he added. THE ADVANTAGES According to Zuckerberg, an augmented or virtual reality-based teleportation would not only help in eliminating journey times but would also result in cutting down the fossil fuel emissions that contribute to climate change. Such technology could even fundamentally-alter the nature of the daily commute, allowing people to live wherever they want, such a...

A team of students has developed an innovative portable and lowcost machine, which efficiently collects discarded plastic bags. The machine, created by six final year engineering students from the Sona College of Technology in Salem, Tamil Nadu, is currently undergoing rigorous trials on the streets, within the municipal limits of the steel and textiles town. "The plastic waste collecting device is mounted on a sturdy frame with an infra-red sensor attached to a mobile vacuum chamber. It is capable of sensing plastic on the roads and attract it," project leader TV Kishore Kumar said.The idea and the execution. The Idea and execution Kumar, along with classmates N Javeeth Khan, R Akash, S Lokeshwar, R Dinesh Babu and R Ilavarasan, were inspired to create this device, after a call by the PM to make India plastic-free. The team integrated a shredder as an add-on accessory, which shreds the collected plastic bags. This shredded material was then mixed to concrete as a replacement...

  Coronavirus restrictions led to a record 7% fall in global carbon emissions last year, but the drop will be short-lived unless efforts to phase out fossil fuel are intensified, a study by scientists in the journal Nature Climate Change said. The study by scientists from institutions in Australia, Britain, France, Norway and the United States, confirmed preliminary estimates from May last year that global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels fell by 7%, or 2.6 billion tonnes, to 34 billion tonnes. On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency said global CO2 emissions dropped by 5.8% in 2020. The study in Nature Climate Change analysed daily CO2 emissions across 71 countries and six economic sectors, using data from daily electricity use and mobility tracking services. To keep the global temperature rise to 1.5-2 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) this century, emissions must decrease by 1-2 billion tonnes a year, the United Nations says. "When fossil fuel infrastructure is put in...