Earth quickly being depleted of resources
In WWF’s eye-opening Living Planet Report 2012, scientists reveal the world’s population currently uses natural resources at a rate of 1.5 times the planet can provide. The report goes on to say that if we don’t change course, by 2030 the resources from two planets will not be enough to sustain our rate of consumption.
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Sea lions getting strangled by ocean debris
Debris that gets tossed overboard, such as packing bands and fishing nets, is finding its way around the necks of sea lions, sometimes deeply cutting or even killing the creatures.
Plastic debris in ocean may be greater than current estimates
“Almost every tow we did contained plastic regardless of the depth.”
So says Giora Proskurowski, an oceangrapher from the University of Washington, who recently commented on his findings from a 2010 North Atlantic expedition. During his trip, he and his team collected samples at the surface, plus an additional three or four depths down as far as 100 feet.
And on a more recent expedition in the Pacific Ocean, Proskurowski noticed something new: The water was littered with confetti-size pieces of plastic debris, until the moment the wind picked up and most of the particles disappeared.
The discovery that wind that was pushing the lightweight plastic particles below the surface meant that years of research that estimated the quantity of plastic debris in the world’s oceans was far below the true amount.
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Earth Day facts and goals for the future
Earth Day, an annual event officially designated on April 22nd, was started in 1970 by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson. This day in history was created in protest to the unbridled corporate and consumer activities that were contributing to excessive environmental pollution. Of special concern to Senator Nelson were the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California.
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Solar tornadoes five times the size of the Earth spotted for the first time
For the first time, monster solar tornadoes several times the size of the Earth and swirling at speeds of up to 190,000 miles per hour were filmed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
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World’s oceans turning acidic at an unprecedented rate
A new study in the journal Science reports that today’s ocean acidification rate may be unprecedented compared with the last four major extinctions in the Earth’s 300-million year geologic record.
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Seagrass is the world’s oldest known living organism
Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica ranks amongst the slowest-growing and longest-lived plants in existence, according to Carlos Duarte of the University of Western Australia in Perth. Duarte estimates the minimum age to be between 80,000 and 200,000 years, projecting the origin of the clones well into the late Pleistocene, and making it the oldest known living organism on the planet.
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