Environment

Do we have a nitrogen emergency? Most people aren't aware of the role nitrogen plays in our atmosphere. According to NASA, Nitrogen makes up about 78% of our atmosphere. Despite being so prevalent, we give it relatively little thought. We've spent years worrying about carbon dioxide and its impact on the environment that nitrogen has slipped by relatively unbothered. Yet nitrogen pollution is a significant enough problem to demand attention from the United Nations. The EPA notes that nitrogen pollution is one of the most prevalent and economically severe problems the US faces. With such an…

In 2016, after over a half century of fighting, the communist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) gave up. The revolutionaries had hidden in the Andes-Amazon region and the occupied rainforest remained under-developed for obvious violent reasons: if you want to have a successful takeover, you can't make people happier, you have to make them miserable and hope they blame the government.  It didn't work, and instead simply created multi-generational terrorism. The only winner during the attempted overthrow was, strangely, the environment, according to a new paper. With…

One of the things that scientists rely on to accurately predict climate change is the amount of carbon sequestered underground. Carbon dioxide in the air leads to increased global warming, exacerbating climate change. When plants have a lot of access to carbon dioxide, they photosynthesize more. Scientists have assumed for a long time that this led to a high concentration of carbon sequestered under the ground. As plants took in this carbon dioxide, they transformed it into compounds and organic structures such as roots and leaves, which would add to the amount of carbon stored underground.…

Climate change is one of the most pressing concerns our civilization has. Time Magazine paints a grim picture of what the role is likely to look like in less than thirty years if we don't address the issue. However, it's not as simple as changing one thing. Several inputs and outputs affect climate change. There's no question that leaving it unattended could spell disaster for some communities, however. One by one, these communities will see an evident difference in their climate and weather. The American West is one of those areas that is seeing a definite shift in the environment. Known for…

With climate change a constant hot button issue, the rise of any new industry to a massive and global scale always attracts interested parties. The same has also been true for the CBD industry, which was globally valued over $500 million USD in 2020 and expected to top $4 billion USD by 2027.  That is a significant amount of growth in a short time, relatively speaking. With the environmental impact of mass agricultural farming increasingly being viewed as a negative, you might be interested the forecasted growth in CBD products. CBD, or cannabidiol, is a natural compound that is…

Allergies are nothing new for many people. They grow up suffering the effects of hay fever from season to season. A recent study in the journal Thorax has explored a link between hay fever and being exposed to prenatal pollutants. The findings are pretty surprising. The body of research on the topic isn't as large as it should be, but the study hopes to present conclusions based on a large sample size of subjects. If air pollutants are indeed causing this increase in hay fever, how do we prevent its continued increase? Before we explore the study's findings, we must first understand hay fever…

Horizon We've all seen how helpful solar panels are in renewable energy. From a consumer perspective, solar power is still an up-and-coming challenger to the existing fossil fuel infrastructure that most power generation systems take advantage of. The University of Michigan estimates that as little as 1.8% of US power generation in 2019 came from solar sources. Part of the reason this number is so low is why more commercial users haven't tapped into the technology. It makes little sense to go to the expense of installing a solar generation system based on the returns that it offers. However,…

Artwork is one of the newest purchasable commodities on the crypto market, thanks to a new technology known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). NPR informs us that an NFT is a crypto token that isn't interchangeable but is tied to a specific commodity. The easiest way to think about them is an analog to how they're being used. For the first time in its history, blockchains can be used to hold and trade collectibles. Yet, the trade of these collectible tokens brings with it some alarming environmental concerns. Tons of Power Consumption We already know how energy inefficient some crypto coins are.…

Just like people, trees can die of thirst, especially during a drought, but a recent field study found that a rapid collapse in the hydraulic system of trees is happening more rapidly than previously thought. The heatwave of summer 2018 was exceptional and that can be hard on trees but it was an opportunity for researchers at the University of Basel to closely study the reaction of trees to this weather phenomenon. In 2018, the Norway spruce suffered most as a result of the drought. It is the most important conifer both in Switzerland and in central Europe. The results of the study are…

Using their own proprietary consultant as the sole source for their "evaluation", US Fish and Wildlife Service once tried to extort up to $30 million from a private landowner in Louisiana, by stating they needed to created a habitat for an "endangered" frog and that was the only suitable location. And the landowner had to pay for it. Except the frog already lived just fine in Mississippi. Its name was literally the Mississippi Gopher Frog. Had sue-and-settle groups like Center for Biological Diversity actually won, not only would they have gotten fat from 'legal fees' paid by you and I, they…