Across U.S., Toxic Blooms Pollute Lakes

TOLEDO, Ohio – In the middle of a muggy summer night, Keith Jordan got an urgent text: Toledo’s tap water wasn’t safe to drink.

“I thought it was a joke," said Jordan, who works with at-risk youth in Toledo’s inner city. He went back to sleep. When he got up a few hours later, he took a shower and had a cup of coffee, then turned on the news.
“They were saying don't drink the water, don’t take a shower – the water is messed up,” Jordan said. “You couldn’t even touch the water. It was something you could not believe was happening here in Toledo.”

That was Aug. 2, 2014. For the next three days, half a million people in and around this industrial city at the western edge of Lake Erie scrambled to find safe water.
Continue reading at: Across U.S., Toxic Blooms Pollute Lakes

A Quarter of Humanity Faces Looming Water Crises - The New York Times

BANGALORE, India — Countries that are home to one-fourth of Earth’s population face an increasingly urgent risk: The prospect of running out of water.

From India to Iran to Botswana, 17 countries around the world are currently under extremely high water stress, meaning they are using almost all the water they have, according to new World Resources Institute data published Tuesday.
Many are arid countries to begin with; some are squandering what water they have. Several are relying too heavily on groundwater, which instead they should be replenishing and saving for times of drought.
In those countries are several big, thirsty cities that have faced acute shortages recently, including São Paulo, Brazil; Chennai, India; and Cape Town, which in 2018 narrowly beat what it called Day Zero — the day when all its dams would be dry.
Continue reading at: A Quarter of Humanity Faces Looming Water Crises - The New York Times

National Drive Electric Week 2019 - Event Map

National Drive Electric Week™ is September 14-22, 2019.
Join us for a celebration near you.

If you're thinking of organizing or helping at an event, please join us for a National Drive Electric Week Webinar:
Drive Electric Week: Engaging With Media Tuesday , August 20, 2019 at 9:00 am Pacific/12:00 pm Eastern
Drive Electric Week: Engaging With Attendees Tuesday , August 27, 2019 at 9:00 am Pacific/12:00 pm Eastern

National Drive Electric Week 2019 celebrations will take place across the US and other countries. The map below shows all of the event locations. Click on a pin to get more information about any of the 238 2019 events.
Continue reading at: National Drive Electric Week 2019 - Event Map

A new map is the best view yet of how fast Antarctica is shedding ice | Science News

The research could help improve projections of sea level rise
Decades of satellite observations have now provided the most detailed view yet of how Antarctica continually sheds ice accumulated from snowfall into the ocean.

ICE ICE BABY  Glaciologists used observations from a cohort of satellite missions over decades to create the most detailed map yet of ice flow across Antarctica. ΑΝΑΣΤΑΣΊΑ ΠΟΡΤΝΆ/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The new map is based on an ice-tracking technique that is 10 times as precise as methods used for previous Antarctic surveys, researchers report online July 29 in Geophysical Research Letters. That offered the first comprehensive view of how ice moves across all of Antarctica, including slow-moving ice in the middle of the continent rather than just rapidly melting ice at the coasts. 
Charting Antarctic ice flow so exactly could reveal the topography of the ground underneath, as well as improve forecasts for how much ice Antarctica stands to lose to the ocean in the future. Ice melting off the continent is already known to be a driver of global sea level rise (SN: 7/7/18, p. 6).
Glaciologists at the University of California, Irvine, uncovered subtle movements of Antarctic ice with a kind of measurement called synthetic-aperture radar interferometric phase data. By using a satellite to bounce radar signals off a patch of ice, researchers can determine how quickly that ice is moving toward or away from the satellite. Combining observations of the same spot from different angles reveals the speed and direction of the ice’s motion along the ground.
Continue reading at: A new map is the best view yet of how fast Antarctica is shedding ice | Science News

New UN climate report is bleak, but there's a solution: trees

Humanity must overhaul the global food system to stop the climate breakdown, according to a dire report released today.

The report, issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), lays out in stark terms the disastrous environmental impacts of unsustainable agriculture and its potential to exacerbate the effects of climate change.
The world’s food system — from farming to transportation to grocery store packaging — is a top cause of deforestation, contributing approximately 30 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, the report finds. It also projects that climate change from deforestation will create additional stress on agricultural land systems, adversely impacting crop yields and food security, and causing soil erosion. As countries continue to clear forests and peatlands for agriculture, their commitments under the Paris Agreement to cut climate-warming carbon emissions edge further out of reach.
In response to the report, conservationists called for the widespread restoration of forests, which absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere.
“Restoring forests is the only thing on Earth that can reverse the emissions that drive global warming,” Conservation International CEO M. Sanjayan said, calling the report a “wake-up call.”
A recent study quantified 1.7 billion hectares of treeless land around the world where forests would naturally grow and planting programs could thrive, without encroaching on food production or living area.
Continue reading at: New UN climate report is bleak, but there's a solution: trees

Climate Change: The Science and Global Impact | edX

Free to attend - $49 for certificate

About this course
Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge of our time. Human activity has already warmed the planet by one degree Celsius relative to pre-industrial times, and we are feeling the effects through record heat waves, droughts, wildfires and flooding. If we continue to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, the planet will reach two degrees of warming by 2050 - the threshold that many scientists have identified as a dangerous tipping point. What is the science behind these projections?
Join climate scientist expert Michael Mann to learn about the basic scientific principles behind climate change and global warming. We need to understand the science in order to solve the broader environmental, societal and economic changes that climate change is bringing.
By the end of this course, you will:

• Develop a deep scientific understanding of HOW the climate system has been changing;
• Articulate WHY the climate system is changing;
• Understand the nature of these changes;
• Develop a systems thinking approach to analyzing the impacts of climate change on both natural and human systems.

Continue reading and enroll at: Climate Change: The Science and Global Impact | edX

Paris Is Building the World's Largest Organic Rooftop Farm

It will be roughly three football fields in size.
Why Global Citizens Should Care: Urban agriculture can help cities improve food security for their residents, while also combating climate change and air pollution. The United Nations encourages countries to invest in innovative agricultural methods to end hunger by 2030.
A 150,695-square-foot organic rooftop garden will open in the heart of Paris in 2020, according to the Guardian.

Image: Valode & Pistre Architectes

More than 30 different plant species will be grown on the roof and gardeners will be able to harvest a metric ton worth of fruit every day. The fresh produce will be used to feed local communities and supply a restaurant in the building. The project will use state-of-the-art watering technology and doesn’t require soil, making the farming process incredibly resource-efficient.
This verdant feat of engineering will be the largest such farming project in the world and its realization provides a window into a rapidly growing form of agriculture that could significantly improve global food security, combat climate change, and reduce air pollution. 
Continue reading at: Paris Is Building the World's Largest Organic Rooftop Farm