Consumers who switched from polycarbonate-plastic water bottles to metal ones in hopes of avoiding the risk that bisphenol A will leach into their beverages aren’t necessarily any better off, a new study finds. Some metal water bottles leach even more BPA — an estrogen-mimicking pollutant — than do ones made from the now-pariah plastic. Read the full story.
Archive for Environment
Metal Water Bottles May Leach BPA
Greenland Ice in Danger of Thaw
Scientists have uncovered a potentially potent risk to Greenland’s ice sheets during the next century and beyond: rapidly warming deep water. The subsurface ocean off Greenland is now expected to warm at roughly double the rate that is projected for such waters globally, including off the coast of Antarctica.
Nobel Scientist Calls for Population Control
A 93-year-old Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine received a standing ovation from hundreds of scientists June 30 at the end of a speech in which he urged the world’s young people to take measures to control runaway population growth in order to resolve related ills that have resulted from humans’ remarkable evolutionary success as a species.
Oil is Needed to Create Greener Energy
The world is waiting for a clean revolution, a shift away from the greenhouse gas-emitting, mountain-leveling, air-polluting, fossil-fuel burning way of life. The world may have to wait a long time if past energy transitions are anything to go by, according to environmental scientist Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba—especially since fossil fuel energy is so cheap. “Energy is dirt cheap. Oil is cheaper than any mineral you can buy,” Smil noted. “The percent of disposable income devoted to energy is about 10 percent.” Read the full story.
Oceans Appear to Be in Trouble
Most people know that wild fisheries are dwindling, and we might know that low-oxygen aquatic dead zones are blooming around the planet’s most crowded coasts. But the oceans appear to be undergoing fundamental changes — many of them for the worse — that we can barely understand, in part because we barely understand that vast blue territory that covers 70% of the globe. That’s the conclusion of a surprising new report issued by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), a global panel of marine experts that met this year at Oxford University to examine the latest science on ocean health. That health, they found, is not good. According to the authors, we are “at high risk for entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.” It’s not just about overfishing or marine pollution or even climate change. It’s all of those destructive factors working cumulatively and occurring much more rapidly than scientists had expected. “The findings are shocking,” says Alex Rogers, the scientific director of IPSO. “We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime, and worse, our children’s and generations beyond that.” Read the full story.