2023 Environmental Chemistry

News article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/03/08/ocean-plastics-pollution-study/ Scientific Paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0281596#pone.0281596.ref006   The article I’ve chosen to write about is “There are 21,000 pieces of plastic in the ocean for each person on Earth”, written in the Washington Post in March of 2023 by Michael Burnbaum. The focus of this article is on the rapidly increasing numbers of plastics and microplastics found in the ocean, as well as the spread of plastics to other regions of the earth. The study that this article draws its data from, “A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required,” was also published in March of 2023, and as the name implies, this scientific article identifies a trend of increasing plastic content of the ocean and seeks to address it.  The Washington Post article is fa...

  News Article: https://www.thedailybeast.com/fish-are-taking-your-birth-control Scientific Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep09303 For this blog post, my initial goal was to find an outright bad news article, or in other words, one that relayed information from a legitimate scientific article in an irresponsible and ridiculous way. I had heard previously of studies showing that pharmaceuticals were making their way from our medicine cabinets into wastewater, and so I wanted to further investigate this topic. Within our current political climate, and among commentators like Alex Jones asserting that “chemicals are turning the frogs gay,” I figured that an article focusing on hormonal disruptions in aquatic ecosystems would sufficiently fulfill my objective. I found my target in the article “Fish Are Taking Your Birth Control” written by Kent Sepkowitz of The Daily Beast, based on a study of transgenerational impacts on fish populations caused by estrogenic compounds con...

 News Article: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse-may-unavoidable-study-finds-rcna120993 Scientific Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01818-x "Comprehensive study of West Antarctic Ice Sheet finds collapse may be unavoidable" is an article written by Evan Bush, published by NBC news on  October 23rd, 2023- the same date as its corresponding scientific paper. The Nature Climate Change published article, titled "Unavoidable future increase in West Antarctic ice-shelf melting over the twenty-first century", is authored by Kaitlin Naughten and Paul Holland of the British Antarctic Survey, as well as Jan De Ryt of Northumbria University. The paper discusses the floating ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea, a body of water off the coast of West Antarctica. Naughten et. al make the claim that the ocean-driven melting of the Amundsen Sea ice shelves, which is the main process in Antarctica's contribution to sea-leve...

 News Article (The New York Times):  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/climate/hurricane-intensity-stronger-faster.html?searchResultPosition=4 Scientific Article (Nature):  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42669-y Published: October 19th, 2023      Andra J. Garner, the author of the scientific article, talks about tropical cyclone (TC) intensification rates and how they are increasing over time. The study has two main parts: the three different time periods that the author identifies and the amount of time elapsed over a TCs lifetime. The three time periods are the "historical era" (1971-1990), the "intermediate era" (1986 - 2005), and the "modern era" (2001 - 2020). The three time blocks that the author used for the study are 12 hrs, 24 hrs, and 36 hrs. The author identified TC intensification rates over 12 hrs, 24hrs, and 36 hrs for various storms in each era she described. Intensification rate is defined as the rate at which a TC's wind s...

News Article: https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/17/world/underground-climate-change-deforming-ground-scn/index.html Scientific Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-023-00092-1        “ ’Underground climate change’ is deforming the ground beneath buildings, study finds ”, by Jacopo Prisco of CNN is a reaction to a Northwestern University study published in Communications Engineering. Both articles were released in July of this year, with the news article published a short six days following the scientific paper’s publication “ The silent impact of underground climate change on civil infrastructure ”, by Alessandro Loria. The ‘underground climate change’ referenced in the above articles are subsurface heat islands formed through the thermal contribution of buildings and infrastructure. The impact of these heat islands upon soil, rocks, and construction materials of the surrounding region leads to deformation. Loria’s research focuses on the impact and...

  News article : https://news.sky.com/story/microplastics-in-clouds-may-be-contributing-to-climate-change-research-suggests-12971517   Scientific paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-023-01626-x Sky news reports in the article  that the study was done by collecting water samples at altitudes  1,300-3,776m. This was done in Japan by Mount Fuji and Mount Oyama. It then goes on to discuss that imaging techniques were used to find 9 types of polymers and one type of rubber were found with most of them being hydrophilic. These were at 6.7-13.9 pieces per liter concentrations and the pieces were 7.1-94.6 micrometers. These plastics could be effective cloud condensation nuclei.  The remainder of the article focuses on quotes from the study, the author and the press release. It simply says that plastics affect climate. There is then discussion of how this one of the first instances of finding tropospheric microplastics and then rising in the atmospher...

  Could the UK’s tides help wean us off fossil fuels? Kelsey Ramp There is an increasing global need for renewable energy sources which can be practically implemented into our modern society. Alongside solar and wind energy, tidal stream energy could replace fossil fuels for a fraction of our energy needs. Tidal streams could become a reliable source of energy generation by using predictable tidal waves to turn a turbine which generates electricity. Tidal energy is not a new concept and has been used to mill grain for 1,000 years, however, it has not been implemented on a large scale due to cost and other environmental or engineering challenges. Despite the costs and challenges, tidal energy remains a viable option for energy generation in areas with powerful tides, such as the UK which experiences some of the world’s most powerful tides. The BBC news article, Could the UK's tides help wean us off fossil fuels? - BBC News , by Justin Rowlatt summarizes how tidal power generat...

Rachel Cooper for 10/24 News Article: Greenland was once actually green, study says. That's an ominous climate change scenario. Journal Paper: Deglaciation of northwestern Greenland during Marine Isotope Stage 11 From USA Today , the article “Greenland was once actually green, study says. That's an ominous climate change scenario.” by Doyle Rice was published on July 20, 2023 and aims to summarize the paper “Deglaciation of northwestern Greenland during Marine Isotope Stage 11” published the same day in Science . The news article explains that approximately 400,000 years ago, Greenland’s ice sheet melted and caused a five foot rise in sea level. It claims that at the time, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere was much lower than it is today at about 280 ppm rather than our current 420 ppm. The article emphasizes this as important to coastal cities. The significance of these findings is emphasized through the inclusion of quotes from Paul Bierman, one of the researche...