Planet of Polluted Water

Image of the Day:

The [Polluted] Water Planet

How Polluted is the Water on Your Planet?

From the space you cannot yet see how polluted the water is on the ‘Water Planet!’

Detailed, photo-like image of Earth based largely on observations by MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite.Click Image to enlarge. Download large image (1 MB, JPEG). Image acquired July 10, 2005.

Related Links:

• The Water Cycle [NASA E/O]
• Canceling Your Life Insurance Policy with Nature
• Drying Aquifers, Sinking Cities

• Our Dying Oceans

CO2 forcing deadly changes in the oceans

Rising GHG is choking the oceans, devastating marine ecosystems and destroying the food chain: Study

Quote of the Day:

“We are becoming increasingly certain that the world’s marine ecosystems are approaching tipping points. These tipping points are where change accelerates and causes unrelated impacts on other systems.” John F. Bruno, marine researcher at the University of North Carolina.

Related Links:

• May Global Temperature Warmest on Record
• Ocean Accumulated Significant Heat Content Since 1993
• Verifiable Impacts of Climate Change (Part II)
• Verifiable Impacts of Climate Change Despite Dinosaurs

• Ocean Deserts Source of GHG
• North Atlantic Ocean Garbage Patch
• Back from the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”
• WILD FACTS SERIES: Our Oceans Are Dying!
• Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO₂

• Tourism: A Major Destructive Force Killing Oceans:Thousands of marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds and others, are choked or poisoned each year by eating trash discarded in the ocean…

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part V : Hundreds of thousands of tons of surplus chemical weapons including large quantities of arsenic, cyanide, mustard gas, sarin gas and VX nerve gas are dumped off the US Atlantic coast as well as off other countries. [And a number of nuclear weapons are lying down there, too!]

• Terrible Ocean Headlines : About one third of the world’s annual emissions of CO2 is absorbed by the surface of the oceans forming carbonic acid (ancient name acid of air or aerial acid), H₂CO_3, which is increasing the acidity of the oceans to as much as 7.7 pH in some areas off the California coast. [Pre-industrial (1700s) ocean pH: 8.179]

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV : Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico.

• Human carbon emissions make oceans corrosive : ‘Carbon dioxide spewed by human activities has made ocean water so acidic that it is eating away at the shells and skeletons of starfish, coral, clams and other sea creatures …’

• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish : How Your Car’s Exhaust Emissions Helps Create Dead Zones and Kill Our Fish.

• Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study : Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures.

• The Floating Toxic Garbage Island : A patch of garbage twice as large as the continental United States and dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in North Pacific Gyre.

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III : Tourism: The Most Destructive Human Activity After Warfare

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part II : Major Problems: Fertilizer Runoff; Tourism; Coastal Developments [and Ocean Warming due to climate change]

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part I : Our Oceans Are Now Dying!

• Dead Zones : Eutrophication—the overenrichment of water by nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus—has emerged as a leading water quality problem. This report identifies over 415 areas worldwide that are experiencing eutrophication symptoms, and there are significant information gaps in many regions. (Source: WRI)

Mafia Solves Nuclear Waste Problem

Nuclear Waste Disposal Doesn’t Have to Be So Expensive: Mafia

The enterprising corporate arm of Mafia has found an answer (!) to the age old problem of energy growth: Go Nuclear!

And don’t worry about the astronomical cost of “disposing” of the permanent waste. They will dump it in the ocean for you at premium prices.

Italian authorities have located the wreck of a vessel with 180 barrels of toxic waste on board, which they say was sunk by the mafia, off the south coast of Italy. The sunken ship  is reported to be one of more than 30 scuttled by Cosa Nostra.

Photo: ANSA.it. Image may be subject to copyright.

Italian officials say the 110-meter long sunken vessel, which lay in 500 meters of water in the Tyrrhenian sea,  may contain radioactive waste, a report said.

The ship’s location was revealed by Francesco Fonti, an ex-member of Calabria’s feared ‘Ndrangheta crime group, who confessed to using explosives to sink this vessel and two others.

The ship lay less than 28  km off the coast of Calabria in southwestern Italy, and was filmed by a remote-controlled submarine. A short video is available at:  toxic dump.

Video images show an empty barrel lay on the seabed, which appears to have fallen out of a gaping hole in the sunken vessel’s damaged hull.

“There could be problems of toxins and heavy metals … this is an issue for the whole international community,” Silvestro Greco, head of Calabria’s environment agency, was reported as saying..

Greco said investigators believed there were 32 ships carrying toxic waste sunk by the mafia since the introduction of tighter environmental legislation in the 1980s made illegal waste disposal a lucrative business for crime groups.

“The Mediterranean is 0.7 percent of the world’s seas. If in this tiny portion there are more than 30 (toxic waste) shipwrecks, imagine what there could be elsewhere,” he said.

Related News Links:

• Toxic shipwreck calls for action
• Mafia ‘sank nuclear waste ship’
• Italy finds wreck of toxic waste ship sunk by mafia

Related FEWW Links:

• STOP Killing Our Oceans!
• Back from the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”
• The Garbage Patch [You Tube Video]
• Algalita Photo Gallery
• Pt. 1 “Plastic in the Ocean” Interview with Capt. Charles Moore [You Tube Video]
• Pt. 2 “Plastic in the Ocean” Interview with Dr. Marcus Eriksen

• WILD FACTS SERIES: Our Oceans Are Dying!

• Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO₂
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV :  Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico.
• Human carbon emissions make oceans corrosive : ‘Carbon dioxide spewed by human activities has made ocean water so acidic that it is eating away at the shells and skeletons of starfish, coral, clams and other sea creatures …’
• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish : How Your Car’s Exhaust Emissions Helps Create Dead Zones and Kill Our Fish.
• Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study : Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures.
• The Floating Toxic Garbage Island : A patch of garbage twice as large as the continental United States and dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in North Pacific Gyre.
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III : Tourism: The Most Destructive Human Activity After Warfare
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part II : Major Problems: Fertilizer Runoff; Tourism; Coastal Developments [and Ocean Warming due to climate change]
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part I : Our Oceans Are Now Dying!

• “Climate Engineering” Best Option: Economists
• New Stars Are Born
• Seeking Toxic Asylum
• Naples Garbage Opera – Act II
• Naples Garbage: First Commercial Dividends
• Naples: The Triangle of Death

• Italy: Submerged in Floodwaters, Sinking in Garbage
• Collapsing Cities
• Nessun dorma (None Shall Sleep)
• The $500-a-barrel professors!
• Out of the Italian Mafia Frying Pan, Into the Swiss Mafia Fire

Amazing Images: Mandarinfish

As colorful as a butterfly!

Mandarinfish or mandarin dragonet (Synchiropus splendidus) in aquarium-Muséum Liège (Belgium). Credit: Luc Viatour. GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or later.

Native to the Pacific [an area extending from the Ryukyu Islands to northern Australia,] the tiny [6cm long] mandarinfish are reef dwellers, and feed on small crustaceans.

Related Links:

• Rising CO2 accelerates coral bleaching: study