Environment

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20636883

This indirect use of palm oil is often overlooked in the zero-deforestation accounting process, despite its growing use, according to a report by U.S.-based advocacy group Rainforest Action Network (RAN). The report found that palm oil-based animal feed is now the single largest palm oil product category imported by the U.S., accounting for 36% of all palm oil imports into the country by weight.

archived article (Wayback Machine)

archived report from RAN (Wayback Machine)

Only 9.5% of plastic materials produced globally in 2022 were manufactured from recycled materials. The findings, reported in Communications Earth & Environment, are part of a comprehensive analysis of the global plastics sector, which also reveals a large increase in the amount of plastic being disposed of by incineration and substantial regional differences in plastic consumption.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/19354588

A marine rewilding initiative to restore an underwater kelp forest in West Sussex is celebrating "remarkable" results, a wildlife trust has said.

The project was launched after the implementation of a new bylaw prohibiting trawling in a 117 sq mile (302 sq km) coastal area between Shoreham-by-Sea and Selsey in March 2021.

Celebrating its fourth anniversary, Sussex Kelp Recovery Project (SKRP) researchers have reported positive signs of recovery, including an increase in the populations of lobster, brown crab, angelshark and short-snouted seahorse.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/41960022

The leaves are soft and the size of a square of toilet paper. The plant grows up to 2 m tall.

Many of the suburbs and cities hit hardest in recent years were caught off-guard, and key stakeholders are racing to understand the dynamics that drive these fires

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20559234

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20597671

archived (Wayback Machine)

Main Takeaways

• Internal combustion vehicles – those that run on gasoline and diesel fuel – produce CO~2~ and a number of air pollutants.
• Over recent decades, big improvements have been made in reducing vehicle-emission pollution; however, it is still problematic at a global scale.
• Transport accounts for one fifth of CO~2~ emissions globally; of this portion the majority comes from road transport (cars, motorcycles, buses, and taxis).
• Rising atmospheric CO~2~ from vehicle emissions and other human activities has been driving recent global warming.
• Air pollution from vehicles has health effects like respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and even an increased risk of getting cancer.
• You can reduce your vehicle pollution by using more sustainable transport options like electric vehicles, ride sharing, walking, bicycles, and public transport.

Related: Some of that air pollution actually counters the greenhouse effect, and climate models have so far underestimated this.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20598636

archived (Wayback Machine)

A UK company has developed a loop system which turns methane gas into hydrogen and graphene. It’s being tested at several farm sites.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20554167

archived (Wayback Machine)

...one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot. The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure future researchers could locate and study it.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot — and failed.

Compost your fruit scraps! (Or just throw them on the neighbour's pasture land.)

Chevron has been ordered to pay $744.6 million to a Louisiana parish government to help restore coastal wetlands the company destroyed.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he’ll scrap the industrial carbon tax, a proposed emissions cap and key environmental rules

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20541313

archived (Wayback Machine)

research cited (Wayback Machine) - page 420 of PDF

Mercury pollution accumulating in trees could offer a new way to monitor destructive gold mining operations

Archived link of the article

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19706595

2024 climate trends should be a "wake-up call that we are increasing the risks to our lives, economies and to the planet,” said Celeste Saulo

In a drought-hit Mexican border region at the center of growing competition with the United States for water, conservationists are working to bring a once-dying river delta back to life.

Thorn forest once blanketed the Rio Grande Valley. Restoring even a little of it could help the region cope with the impacts of climate change

Some of the country’s most loved native species, including the koala and the hairy-nosed wombat, are on the brink. Is this their last chance at survival?

BR-319: Paving the way for Indigenous displacement and environmental catastrophe.

Based on data in the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register and the life cycle approach, the Amalur EIS environmental information system, created by the Ekopol group of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), enables environmental impacts at national, regional and/or municipal level to be analyzed. The researchers also analyzed the results of data collected at industrial plants in the Basque Country between 2007 and 2022.