http://www.physorg.com/space-news/environment/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on the environment, environmental issues, earth science and space exploration. The Dead Sea may soon shrink to a lifeless pond as Middle East political strife blocks vital measures needed to halt the decay of the world's lowest and saltiest body of water, experts say. http://www.physorg.com/news178296235.html Space & Earth - Environment Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:47:50 EST news178296235 In a provocative new study, a University of Utah scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions - the major cause of global warming - cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day. http://www.physorg.com/news178178343.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:59:57 EST news178178343 On the beach at Monster, bulldozers painstakingly turn sand dredged from the bottom of the North Sea bed into dunes in an ambitious effort to safeguard the Netherlands from flooding. http://www.physorg.com/news177946209.html Space & Earth - Environment Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:10:02 EST news177946209 The Dutch government said Wednesday it had approved the experimental below-ground storage of excess CO2 to curb damaging emissions, dismissing concerns of residents who live on top of the project. http://www.physorg.com/news177784093.html Space & Earth - Environment Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:28:54 EST news177784093 (PhysOrg.com) -- A recently published Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study of a naturally bioreduced sediment sample from a former uranium mill tailings site reveals insights that enhance understanding of the long-term persistence of uranium in groundwater. The study provides the first-ever evidence of a useful pyrite mineral formation within the sample. http://www.physorg.com/news177778022.html Space & Earth - Environment Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:49:17 EST news177778022 (AP) -- The battle against global warming could be helped if the world slowed population growth by making free condoms and family planning advice more widely available, the U.N. Population Fund said Wednesday. http://www.physorg.com/news177759813.html Space & Earth - Environment Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:44:18 EST news177759813 (PhysOrg.com) -- While politicians debate the best ways to cut global carbon dioxide emissions, researchers at Idaho National Laboratory's Center for Advanced Energy Studies are charging ahead on a strategy to defuse the CO2 the world already produces. They want to inject the greenhouse gas deep underground, where it would react with rocks and remain, entombed, for thousands of years. http://www.physorg.com/news177686379.html Space & Earth - Environment Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:40:02 EST news177686379 The strongest evidence yet that the rise in atmospheric CO2 emissions continues to outstrip the ability of the world's natural 'sinks' to absorb carbon is published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. http://www.physorg.com/news177686530.html Space & Earth - Environment Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:23:40 EST news177686530 (PhysOrg.com) -- It's the year 2060, and 75 percent of drivers in the Greater Los Angeles area have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that emit only water vapor. http://www.physorg.com/news177606050.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:01:40 EST news177606050 Researchers in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering believe they have pinpointed a pathway by which arsenic may be contaminating the drinking water in Bangladesh, a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists, world health agencies and the Bangladeshi government for nearly 30 years. The research suggests that human alteration to the landscape, the construction of villages with ponds, and the adoption of irrigated agriculture are responsible for the current pattern of arsenic concentration underground. http://www.physorg.com/news177515521.html Space & Earth - Environment Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:52:45 EST news177515521 A "catastrophic accumulation" of dozens of millions of tonnes of "e-waste" from computers, cellphones and television sets is fuelling a global pile of hazardous waste, an international body warned Friday. http://www.physorg.com/news177336945.html Space & Earth - Environment Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:16:09 EST news177336945 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Columbia University have successfully discovered a beneficial use for carbon dioxide in the conversion of organic materials, such as grass and bark, into fuel. Their findings show that if utilized on a broad scale, their technique could help significantly reduce overall carbon emissions, both from the use of carbon dioxide in biofuel production and the creation of a more energy-efficient production process. The study appears this week on the website of the Journal of Environmental Science & Technology. http://www.physorg.com/news177179481.html Space & Earth - Environment Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:31:39 EST news177179481 (PhysOrg.com) -- New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of CO2 has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of CO2 having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. http://www.physorg.com/news177059550.html Space & Earth - Environment Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:50:02 EST news177059550 (PhysOrg.com) -- In the Mojave Desert winds howl across this hottest place in North America, blowing sands across Death Valley and through empty ghost towns, swirling across treeless land for hundreds of miles. But even in the otherworldly Mojave, life thrives. The Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia), an indicator species for this desert, defines the Mojave's boundaries. In spring when the rains come, brightly colored flowers bloom in profusion--nature's paintbrush on an otherwise monotone landscape. http://www.physorg.com/news176660557.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:10:05 EST news176660557 Chinese meteorologists covered Beijing in snow Sunday after seeding clouds to bring winter weather to the capital in an effort to combat a lingering drought, state media reported. http://www.physorg.com/news176293628.html Space & Earth - Environment Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:27:56 EST news176293628 Although declining streamflows and half-full reservoirs have gotten most of the attention in water conflicts around the United States, some of the worst battles of the next century may be over groundwater, experts say - a critical resource often taken for granted until it begins to run out. http://www.physorg.com/news176126485.html Space & Earth - Environment Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:02:11 EST news176126485 New technologies and policies that save energy, remove atmospheric carbon and limit greenhouse gas emissions are needed to fight global climate change - but face daunting technological, economic and political hurdles, a Michigan State University scientist said. http://www.physorg.com/news175792422.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:40:07 EST news175792422 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of 13 prominent scientists and land-use experts has identified an important but fixable error in legal accounting rules for bioenergy that could, if uncorrected, undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse gases by encouraging deforestation. http://www.physorg.com/news175439072.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:05:36 EST news175439072 (PhysOrg.com) -- Pharmaceuticals have been found in freshwater ecosystems in rural areas of central Indiana, says a new study from Ball State University. http://www.physorg.com/news175280924.html Space & Earth - Environment Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:09:35 EST news175280924 (PhysOrg.com) -- Carbon dioxide capture and storage technologies may represent a cost-effective, viable option to help China continue to meet its growing energy demands while also delivering deep and sustained reductions in industrial greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study announced today. http://www.physorg.com/news174757191.html Space & Earth - Environment Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:40:46 EST news174757191 Swiss researchers have found that Alpine glaciers melting under the impact of climate change are releasing highly toxic pollutants that had been absorbed by the ice for decades. http://www.physorg.com/news174735023.html Space & Earth - Environment Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:31:07 EST news174735023 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a study published September 28th ahead of print in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers measured oseltamivir carboxylate (OC), the active metabolite of the popular anti-influenza drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate), in samples of sewage discharge and river water collected near Kyoto City during Japan's 2008-2009 flu season. http://www.physorg.com/news173644288.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:33:28 EST news173644288 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a feat of reverse-engineering, Christian Braudrick of University of California at Berkeley and three coauthors have successfully built and maintained a scale model of a living meandering gravel-bed river in the lab. Their findings point to the importance of vegetation to reinforce the banks and, surprisingly, to the importance of sand in healthy meandering river life. http://www.physorg.com/news173451139.html Space & Earth - Environment Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:52:51 EST news173451139 An Australian town pulled all bottled water from its shelves Saturday and replaced it with refillable bottles in what is believed to be a world-first ban. http://www.physorg.com/news173168696.html Space & Earth - Environment Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:10:01 EST news173168696 Human activities have already pushed the Earth system beyond three of the planet's biophysical thresholds, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world; six others may well be crossed in the next decades, conclude 29 European, Australian and U.S. scientists in an article in the Sept. 24 issue of the scientific journal Nature. http://www.physorg.com/news172937155.html Space & Earth - Environment Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:07:05 EST news172937155 (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the activities that puts a great deal of carbon dioxide into the environment is air travel. Air travel is one of the ways that individuals contribute to an increase in pollution and to global climate change. Some believe that purchasing carbon offsets can help decrease their impact on the planet by contributing money to projects that reduce carbon dioxide, thereby offseting their own activities. In an effort to make this process easier for those traveling by airplane, the San Francisco airport now has kiosks at which travelers can buy offsets before they board. http://www.physorg.com/news172763698.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:14:31 EST news172763698 Cars running on sugarcane ethanol can produce as many harmful pollutants as those using ordinary petrol (gasoline), according a study published by Brazil's environment ministry. http://www.physorg.com/news172391700.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:35:40 EST news172391700 Australians have overtaken Americans as the world's biggest individual producers of carbon dioxide, which is blamed for global warming, a risk consultancy says. http://www.physorg.com/news171889925.html Space & Earth - Environment Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:13:18 EST news171889925 (PhysOrg.com) -- CSIRO researchers have discovered that micro-organisms that help break down contaminants under the soil can actually get too hot for their own good. http://www.physorg.com/news171872430.html Space & Earth - Environment Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:21:27 EST news171872430 "The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past," says Eric Post, associate professor of biology at Penn State University. Post leads a large, international team that carried out ecosystem-wide studies of the biological response to Arctic warming during the fourth International Polar Year, which ended in 2008. The team's results will be reported on 11 September 2009 in the journal Science. http://www.physorg.com/news171811398.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:10:03 EST news171811398