Showing posts with label pollution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pollution. Show all posts

15 February 2026

Inuit Researcher Finds High Arctic Micro-Plastic Pollution in Greenland

 Creating his own micro-plastics filter, a researcher kayaked around a Greenland glacier to look for the presence of micro-plastics. Toxic dust in the air and ocean currents to have redistributed micro-plastic pollution globally and made the Arctic a sink for microplastic pollution. The fossil fuel derivatives evidently harm cod eggs and human health. 

https://www.euronews.com/green/2026/02/14/meet-the-inuit-scientist-kayaking-around-greenland-to-highlight-just-how-far-microplastics

Plainly President Trump should stop sanctions on Russia to expedite the end of the Ukraine war and develop a program to expedite a transition away from fossil fuels- even auto tires lose 15 to 30% of mass over use time as it converts to dust that can become airborne. TWPs (tire wear particles) are a major source of micro-plastic pollution. Every year another two or three billion are manufactured and released to float micro-plastics into the atmosphere and Earth. Ending the Ukraine war would enable closer work together among nations to war upon high Arctic micro-plastic pollution that is probably harmful to whales and various fish species instead of on other humans.

Hydrogen is a good direction for alternative fuels to take. New science is progrogressing on developing hydrogen from seawater at low cost with common materials. Alternatives to fossil fuels are taking many forms and the U.S. tends toward lagging behind in the race to China, Australia and other nations. Solar panels are reducing in price globally although the U.S.A. may have sanctions on importing them. Maybe the administration doesn't want the U.S.A. to develop as an independent off-grid society in order to concentrate wealth to fossil fuel energy corporations.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-gm-join-tesla-energy-220000595.html

https://www.rmit.edu.au/research/impact/hydrogen-from-seawater-no-desalination

Gemini wrote this about the Australian hydrogen research;

Gemini- Australian researchers, notably from the University of Adelaide and RMIT University, have developed a groundbreaking method to produce green hydrogen directly from seawater without pre-treatment or desalination. Using specialized catalysts and a Lewis acid layer, this technique achieves near 100% efficiency, offering a sustainable, cost-effective alternative to traditional, water-intensive methods.

Key Breakthrough Details
  • No Desalination Needed: The process skips energy-intensive purification, directly splitting raw seawater into hydrogen and oxygen.
  • Catalyst Innovation: Researchers, including those from the University of Adelaide, used a catalyst with a specialized layer (e.g., Lewis acid) to prevent chloride corrosion, allowing the system to run for over 100 hours.
  • Efficiency: The technique demonstrated performance close to platinum-based catalysts that currently require highly purified water.
  • Environmental Impact: This method provides a sustainable pathway for producing green hydrogen, utilizing the ocean as an "almost infinite resource" while avoiding chlorine byproduct issues.
New Developments (2026)
Recent advances in 2026 from the University of Sydney have introduced a method using liquid gallium and sunlight, allowing for the direct extraction of green hydrogen from seawater without requiring external electricity, furthering the efficiency of the process. 
This innovation is considered a major step toward making the green hydrogen economy more viable, bypassing the need for freshwater, which is crucial for water-scarce regions."- end Gemini quote 
Humans apparently occupied a cave site in Greece named Theoptera from 130,000 BC. A structural weather wall was built there about 23,000 B.C. It is notable that politicians find it so difficult to advance from a dysfunctional polluting fossil fuels tool kit to a newer one technologically. It was perhaps difficult for Neanderthal and human political leaders at Theoptera to accept new technologies when they appeared as well. 



18 October 2025

The Greatest Ever Chiseled

 Presidents recently have wanted to be ranked as the greatest or smartest in history. They would have their images imposed on Mt. Rushmore if they could after a month or year in office. They are given Nobel prizes or Popes to feel good about themselves- so why not go ahead and use some kind of laser-holography to put their images on Mt. Rushmore at night over those already existing in repose, chiseled serenely in stone by day.

  When the next greatest ever leader arrives the new face of glory may be presented to awestruck masses breathing free with some minor percent of carbon monoxide spoiling the purity of things.

11 April 2025

Alaska's Stikine River Fishery is Endangered by a Canadian Mine Upstream

 It won’t be too easy to save the Stikine. The Red Chris Mine was owned by the Newcrest Corporation that was bought in 2023 by the Newmont Corporation. Newcrest was only founded in 1990. Four years ago Newmont bought the Canadian Goldcorp and became a very large corporation. Newmont has returned nearly 7 billion dollars to investors in the past several years. It is the world’s largest gold mining corporation; a multi-national corporation listed on the N.Y.S.E.

https://salmonbeyondborders.org/comment-red-chris-mine?fbclid=IwY2xjawJmjqdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHlOnN5K37o8T-jz2rHZu0Ha2tdM2Xk3k-ZVREMftxmOeAHpWRlUxXMuYgYSx_aem_wo284ki8KRxjGmWDlpLfZQ

The Stikine River king salmon return is estimated to be just 10,000 fish this year. The run used to be millions of fish. The Red Chris Mine about 60 miles away on a tributary of the Stikine, located in a rain forest, is a large open pit copper mine with low grade ore. The corporation wants to expand the mine drilling tunnels horizontally underground and blow them up to sort through the debris. When water runs through the mining channels and demolished rocks it leaches toxic chemicals into waterways eventually.

I have the impression that those large mining corporations typically sell off depleted mines to some foreign shell company. The very rich harvest the profit and leave the cleanup to the E.P.A. and Superfund sites occasionally. The cost of cleaning up the Stikine someday if worst cases develop like that of Leadville  Colorado and Helena Montana could be billions. With the E.P.A. being cut there may be fewer dollars for the work. In the future maybe governments will increase funding to cleanup depleted mining sites.

Gemini described a shell company; “A shell company, or a single-purpose entity, is a legal entity with minimal or no active business operations. Large corporations often use them to sell companies with ecological liability, such as mining companies, to limit their own exposure to potential lawsuits or fines. This is done to shield the parent company from liability for the actions of the subsidiary”

https://www.amazon.com/Leadville-Struggle…/dp/1559633859

16 March 2025

Red Chris Mine in Canada Presents Dangers for American Fish Downstream

 There is a proposed expansion of the Red Chris mine in Canada upstream of the Stikine River from Wrangell. It is an open pit mine and they hope to make tunnels through substrate and then blast to collapse the overhead and extract low grade ore from the  rip rap for rock crushing.  The mining technique is called block caving.

Water running through new underground channels take toxic minerals with it, and that can persist for centuries. Good luck with getting Canadians to be concerned about downstream American fish. There are a couple of books on U.S. experience with the problem. I doubt the current President would care.

https://riveroflostsouls.com/river-of-lost-souls/

https://islandpress.org/books/leadville#desc

08 March 2025

Musk's Starlink Satellites Might Soil the Stratosphere

Elon  Musk's plan to place 42,000 Starlink satellites above the Earth present a danger when making reentry for destruction by releasing aluminum oxide that will reach the stratosphere. So it makes sense that DOGE would want to trim the Environmental Protection agency and prevent legislation from arising to compel those that launch satellites that orbit the Earth to pay a tax for the safe disposal of satellites rather than burning them up in the atmosphere. The amount of aluminum oxide released into the upper atmosphere greatly surpasses anything approaching normal. The consequences may be profound down the road.

https://www.businesstoday.in/visualstories/news/starlink-killing-atmosphere-the-environmental-threat-to-earth-elon-musk-isnt-talking-about-214537-06-03-2025

I once bought a used sailboat on the Severn River and sailed it to the Chesapeake without a motor or  depth charts. Unfortunately with some ways and no wind the vessel eventually rand aground in shallow water with the full keel and the waves took it to a concrete berm where it had holes broken through the fiberglass. I was informed that on the Chesapeake Bay it is illegal to let a boat become derelict-- a felony crime actually. So I therefore had to pay a business $2000 dollars to haul the boat away and break it up safely for disposal. The rich have no kind of similar responsibility to safely dispose of their space trash that threatens the safety or well being of human life on Earth and that is wrong.

Jesse Watters said recently that all boomers are rich and the generation spoiled. Such statements is why people hate journalists.. President Johnson began he war on poverty in the 1960s because so many Americans were poor. Some boomers died in Vietnam and other wars. not everyone was a pampered journalist in the 3rd millennium. Many Boomers are still poor and many never made it to old age. When I got off that sailboat on the Eastern shore I bought some chicken for dinner and ignored the subtle head shake of the sales lady at the service station convenience store. I went to a hotel room across the street and ate a drumstick and got a sharp shard of chicken bone stuck in my throat sideways where it remained until it dissolved much later because I couldn't afford to remove it. Watters would have 911 there if such a circumstance befell him with full medical coverage. He has no idea about the inconvenience of poverty.

Building on automatic trash cleaning machine to gobble up dead satellites in space, compact them and shoot them into the sun should not be beyond the technical capacity of those disposable, non-recycling kind of people that dominate in government. Maybe people would even pay something for the service or face federal charges for placing aluminum oxide sources into the stratosphere above the United States.