I bet you didn't know solar panels are just LEDs -- as they are both diodes. And you can actually drive an ordinary diode with light, it's uncovered. It's a similar principal that all microphones are speakers, and vice versa.
The disease, which has made kidney failure the second-leading cause of death in Nicaragua and El Salvador, was first reported in the 1990s. It was a strange new type of kidney failure. Sugar cane cutters from plantations in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala were turning up at clinics with end-stage kidney disease. Some had been in what seemed to be perfect health just a few years before. These laborers didn't have diabetes or hypertension or other factors that might explain why their kidneys were failing.
The other day I saw a post about biodegradable camp soap. I thought it was a stupid idea – buying more soap when you already have soap that works just fine at home – and I pointed that out. It’s just more trash to landfill or burn. For one thing, most common soaps are largely biodegradable and while many detergents are not, it’s not like they accumulate in the soil or really cause much in problems in the dispersed, remote country I usually camp in.
I am not saying one should not practice good outdoors practices. Certainly don’t dump soapy water near streams and bury your poop as deep as you can away from camp and water. Pack out whatever you can’t completely burn. Keep your camp site tidy and pick up whatever litter you find within reason.
But don’t be afraid of the woods or fully utilizing our natural resources. They’re not going to destroyed because you use a little conventional dish soap up at camp.
Commentators from Greenpeace to the World Bank agree that climate change is an emergency, threatening civilization and life on our planet. Any solution must involve the control of greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels and switching to alternative technologies that do not impair the human habitat while providing the energy we require to function as a species.
This sobering reality has led some prominent observers to re-embrace nuclear energy. Advocates declare it clean, efficient, economical, and safe. In actuality it is none of these. It is expensive and poses grave dangers to our physical and psychological well-being. According to the US Energy Information Agency, the average nuclear power generating cost is about $100 per megawatt-hour. Compare this with $50 per megawatt-hour for solar and $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind. The financial group Lazard recently said that renewable energy costs are now “at or below the marginal cost of conventional generation”—that is, fossil fuels—and much lower than nuclear.
In theory these high costs and long construction times could be brought down. But we have had more than a half-century to test that theory and it appears have been solidly refuted. Unlike nearly all other technologies, the cost of nuclear power has risen over time. Even its supporters recognize that it has never been cost-competitive in a free-market environment, and its critics point out that the nuclear industry has followed a “negative learning curve.” Both the Nuclear Energy Agency and International Energy Agency have concluded that although nuclear power is a “proven low-carbon source of base-load electricity,” the industry will have to address serious concerns about cost, safety, and waste disposal if it is to play a significant role in addressing the climate-energy nexus.
A bleak new federal report found that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to levels the world has not seen in at least 800,000 years, highlighting the irreversible and mounting deleterious effects of human activity on the planet, as ABC News reported.
Global carbon dioxide concentrations reached a record of 407.4 parts per million during 2018, the study found. That is 2.4 ppm greater than 2017 and "the highest in the modern instrumental record and in ice core records dating back 800,000 years," the report said, according to CNN.
It wasn't just the amount of carbon dioxide that set record levels. Other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide also continued a rapid rise into the atmosphere. Together, the global warming power of greenhouse gases was 43 percent stronger than in 1990, according to the State of the Climate report released Monday by the American Meteorological Society, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information.
Everybody knows that ALBANY is the CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, and how could have it been the hottest month on Earth, if it was not the hottest month ever in Albany?