10 places to visit before they’re gone: A bucket list for a warming world
The places to go and the climate change effects that threatens them:
- Ocean City, Md., U.S.A. (raising sea levels)
- Great Barrier Reef, Australia (carbon-driven ocean acidification)
- Death Valley, Calif., U.S.A. (so hot its decreasing biodiversity)
- Salzburg, Austria (melting alps+decreasing biodiversity)
- The Statue of Liberty (rising sea levels+extreme weather)
- Michoacán, Mexico (decline in monarch butterfly population with warming and extreme weather events throwing off temperature signals they rely on for migration. Other threatening contributors: deforestation, habitat loss, and pesticide use.)
- Everglades, Fla., U.S.A. (rising sea levels+decrease in rainfall compounding problem of exploitation)
- Bangkok, Thailand (rising sea levels+sinking city +more typhoons)
- Chicago, Ill. USA (will just be way too hot)
- The Sheep Heid Inn, Edinburgh, Scotland (unpredictable & extreme weather threatening barley, a vital part of the scottish whiskey distilling process). By Jim Meyer on Grist.
New smartphone battery fully charges 30 seconds was inspired by nature
Wasting electricity and time waiting for your phone to charge is not ideal and especially irritating for us environmentalists; however, a new technology wants to make this a thing of the past. Israeli nanotechnology company StoreDot Ltd unveiled its new battery technology that can be fully charged in seconds rather than hours. Other existing nano dot technologies are metal based, which makes them toxic, but StoreDot’s nano dots can be made from many different bio-organic raw materials that are environmentally-friendly and abundant. Their ability to self assemble means that manufacturing will be cheaper and simpler. Mass production planned for 2016. Megan Treacy on Treehugger.
U.N Climate Panel Highlights Lack of Action on Rising Temperatures
In Berlin, IPCC discussed findings that temperatures are in fact rising and we are not doing enough to mitigate and adapt to climate change; commentary points out that the longer we wait the higher the costs will be. Changes in investments to transition to low-carbon economy are proving more and more necessary. ‘Without additional measures to contain emissions, global temperatures will rise about 3 degrees to 4 degrees Celsuis (5 degrees to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 compared to current levels’. Also interesting to note that in Berlin there was dispute over including charts that showed emissions from large developing countries are rising the fastest with expanding economies. Developing countries said linking emissions to income growth would divert attention from the fact that historically, most emissions have come from the developed nations, which industrialized earlier. Karl Ritter AP on Huffington Post.
The Sustainability Co-Op 