Waste Managment

Waste Management is the term that refers to the collection, processing, recycling, transport, and monitoring of waste products. The waste products means the various materials produced by human activity and is undertaken for reducing their effect on health, environment or aesthetics. Another application of the waste management is to recover the various resources from it. It involves the management of solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes. Each type of waste requires a different methods and fields of expertise. The practices of waste management differ from developed and developing nations. In fact, there is difference in methods used in the urban and rural areas, and also for industrial or residential producers. It is the responsibility of local government authorities to manage non-hazardous residential and institutional waste in metro areas. On other hand the management for non-hazardous commercial and industrial waste is done by the generator. There are various methods of waste disposal including integrated waste management, Plasma gasification, Landfill, Supercritical water decomposition and Incineration. There are lots of concepts about waste management which differ in their usage as per the varying regions or countries. Some of the widely used concepts include Waste hierarchy, Extended producer responsibility and Polluter pays principle. The waste hierarchy points to the “reduce, reuse and recycle” that classify waste management strategies as per their effectiveness in regards to waste minimization. The waste hierarchy is the cornerstone of majority of waste minimization strategies. It focuses on taking out the maximum practical advantages from products and generating least amount of waste. The Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a strategy that is intended for the integration of all costs related with products across their life cycles into the market price of the product. The Polluter Pays Principle suggests that in case of waste leading to any impact on the environment, the polluting party is held responsible and it needs to pays for it. The waste management refers to the need for a waste producer to pay for proper waste disposal. source wastemanagement.in.

Hurricanes Have Doubled Due to Global Warming, Study Says

The number of Atlantic hurricanes that form each year has doubled over the past century and global warming is largely to blame, according a new study.

The increase occurred in two major steps of about 50 percent each, one in the 1930s and the second since 1995. "It hasn't been a steady, gradual increase," said Greg Holland, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The increases coincide closely with rises in sea surface temperatures in the eastern Atlantic tropics. Previous studies have attributed these rises to human emissions of greenhouse gases. "That [correlation] implies there is a substantial contribution by greenhouse warming to the current crop of tropical cyclones," Holland said. The study also shows that the proportion of major hurricanes to less intense hurricanes has sharply increased in recent years, which agrees with earlier studies showing an increase in stronger storms. However, the new study found the proportion of major hurricanes has fluctuated with a "remarkably constant period of oscillation" over the past century, Holland said. The oscillation appears to be a natural variability not associated with warming. So while the storms' severity seems to fluctuate in a natural cycle, their frequency is on the rise, he explained. "What we're seeing [now] is a high point of major storms, which has been a very, very stable oscillation, combined with a sharp increase in the frequency of all storms, which has been a trend," Holland said. Holland and Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta published their findings online today in the research journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. He is a leading critic of studies that link increased storm intensity to global warming, saying historical data are too crude to determine long-term trends. The same, he argues, is true for storm frequency. "The doubling in the number of storms that they find in their paper is just an artifact of technology, not climate change," he wrote. Airplanes and satellites outfitted with sensitive instruments to monitor tropical storms did not exist a hundred years ago. Aircraft began monitoring hurricanes in 1944, satellites about 1970. Recent research by Landsea finds three to four tropical storms were missed before the mid-1960s. And one storm a year was missed from the 1970s to the 1990s. "When one takes into account these missing storms, the upward trend disappears and large multiyear variations remain," he said. According to Holland, however, the technological improvements cannot account for all the observed increase in tropical storms. His new study accounts for three missed storms per year in the pre-satellite era, and a statistically significant increase is still present, he said. "So, yes there's uncertainty, there's no doubt about that," Holland said. "But it doesn't change our conclusions." Frequency Transitions According to the study, the period from 1900 to 1930 saw an average of six Atlantic tropical storms a year, with four of those storms growing into hurricanes. From 1930 to 1940, the annual average increased to ten, with five hurricanes and five tropical storms. Then, from 1995 to 2005, the average number of storms increased to 15, with 8 hurricanes and 7 tropical storms. Even 2006, which seemed mild in the wake of the record-breaking 2005 season, saw ten tropical storms, the authors note. Holland likened the transition phases to a thunderstorm in the Rocky Mountains—the sun rises and warms up the clear blue skies for hours, and then suddenly a thunderstorm develops. "That's a very good example, but what we're looking at is happening on the global scale," he said. The most recent period has yet to stabilize, leading the authors to conclude there may be even more active hurricane seasons in the future, though other factors may dampen the storm activity. "What I will say is there is no evidence that I'm aware of and nothing I can think of which indicates they are going to go back down," Holland said. Increase your knowledge and be aware about global warming and its impact, for more knowdlage visit (Courtesy:nationalgeographic.com)

Greenland’s glaciers double in speed

The contribution of Greenland to global sea level change and the mapping of previously unknown basins and mountains beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet are highlighted in a new film released by Cambridge University this morning.
The work of glaciologist Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Director of Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute, is the focus of This Icy World, the latest film in the University's Cambridge Ideas series.
A frequent visitor to both the Arctic and Antarctic, Dowdeswell's research has found that the glaciers around Greenland are the fastest flowing in the world.
He said: "There is evidence that some parts of the ice sheet have doubled in speed up to 10 km per year in the last decade. That means the contribution of Greenland to global sea level change is increasing."
"The numbers of icebergs released into the seas around Greenland is also increasing. We need to know just how fast these changes are taking place.
"Things are changing very rapidly here because the Arctic is the most sensitive part of the global climate system. Over the coming century, temperatures are likely to rise at double the global average here."
Professor Dowdeswell, who has spent a total of more than three years in the polar regions, also reveals that his work in Antarctica as part of an team of international scientists, using radar systems pioneered in Cambridge, has mapped sub-glacial mountains hidden beneath the ice sheet that scientists were not aware of before.
The Scott Polar Research Institute, a research centre within Cambridge University, has about 40 scientists and post-graduate students working on various aspects of polar research. Professor Dowdeswell's next polar trip, funded by a large grant from the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, will be in March and April to the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Airborne radar systems will be used to measure ice thickness and the presence of lubricating water at the ice-sheet bed. This should yield key information relating to the recent speed-up of the ice.
He said: The ice in Antarctica is an average of 2-3 km in thickness, with the deepest ice almost 5 km thick. It's changes in the volume of the ice sheet that will affect global sea level.
"Glacier and ice-sheet change is a reality at both poles. The ice is thinning and retreating and that means water is flowing back into the global ocean. Today, sea level is rising 3mm per year; over the coming century, sea level is likely to rise by up to about 1m and it's actually that rise - with the worst storm waves you can imagine - that could cause real damage.
"In those circumstances, sea defences can be breached and low lying areas of the world can be flooded. That has serious implications for humankind." Resources www.cam.ac.uk

Proof of Global Warming

Although most scientists are convinced that global warming is very real, a few still harbor doubts. But a new report, based on an analysis of infrared long-wave radiation data from two different space missions, may change their minds. "These unique satellite spectrometer data collected 27 years apart show for the first time that real spectral differences have been observed, and that they can be attributed to changes in greenhouse gases over a long time period," says John Harries, a professor at Imperial College in London and lead author of the study published in Nature.

As the sun's radiation hits the earth's surface, it is reemitted as infrared radiation. This radiation is then partly trapped by the so-called greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as well as water vapor. Satellites can measure changes in the infrared radiation spectrum, allowing scientists to detect changes in the earth's natural greenhouse effect and to deduce which greenhouse gas concentrations have changed.

The researchers looked at the infrared spectrum of long-wave radiation from a region over the Pacific Ocean, as well as from the entire globe. The data came from two different spacecraft�the NASA's Nimbus 4 spacecraft, which surveyed the planet with an Infrared Interferometric Spectrometer (IRIS) between April 1970 and January 1971, and the Japanese ADEO satellite, which utilized the Interferometric Monitor of Greenhouse Gases (IMG) instrument, starting in 1996. To ensure that the data were reliable and comparable, the team looked only at readings from the same three-month period of the year (April to June) and adjusted them to eliminate the effects of cloud cover. The findings indicated long-term changes in atmospheric CH4, CO2, ozone (O3) and CFC 11 and 12 concentrations and, consequently, a significant increase in the earth's greenhouse effect.resouces:scientificamerican.com

Disappearing world-Global warming claims Tropical Island

Disappearing world: Global warming claims Tropical Island

For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas. Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports


Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.
As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.
Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.
It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.
Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger.
Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.
Human cost of global warming: Rising seas will soon make 70,000 people homeless
Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and the disappearing Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas. Courtesy: independent.co.uK, Photo published by greenlivingtips.com

Global Warming Causes Genetic Changes

For the first time ever, a University of Alberta researcher has discovered that an animal species has changed its genetic make-up to cope with global warming. In the past, organisms have shown the flexibility - or plasticity - to adapt to their surroundings, but this is the first time it has been proven a species has responded genetically to cope with environmental forces.

Dr. Stan Boutin, from the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, has been studying a North American red squirrel population in Canada's southwest Yukon for almost 15 years. The squirrels, faced with increasing spring temperatures and food supply, have advanced the timing of breeding by 18 days over the last 10 years—six days for each generation. His findings appear on First Cite and will appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society London B next month.

Boutin and his colleagues used an approach called quantitative genetics, long used in agriculture but never before applied to a wild species. Through analytical modelling, the team of researchers was able to sort out how much of the squirrels' adaptation is due to a plastic, individual response and how much is due to genetics. "This has never been done before," said Boutin. "Other researchers have stopped at plasticity."

Phenotypic plasticity is measured by how an individual squirrel can change the timing of a reproductive cycle from one year to the next compared to one generation to the next, which is what Boutin is studying. "Only by having long-term lineages can we get at this research," he said.

Although this discovery shows the red squirrel is adapting well to its warmer environment, the future is still a concern to scientists especially considering the rapid rate of climate change. Predicting the squirrel's threshold is also impossible, said Boutin, so it is difficult to know if the animal has reached is peak of "adaptation skills." The next step is to look at different components of the genome to see if researchers can pinpoint more closely the set of genes responsible for these changes.

No second chance: can Earth explode as a result of Global Warming?

Summary:


by Dr Tom J. Chalko, MSc, PhD,
Head of Geophysics Division, Scientific E Research P/L, Melbourne, Australia
submitted on 8 April 2001


Consequences of global warming are far more serious than previously imagined. These consequences relate to the newly discovered properties of the "inner core" of our planet.

It is a well established fact, verified by decades of seismic measurements, that the Earth's inner core is a nearly spherical solid of about 1220 km radius that occupies the central position of our planet. The generally accepted view today is that this solid grew slowly to its current size as a result of the "crystallization" of the surrounding liquid. The "latent heat" of this "crystallization" allegedly explains how the inner core generates heat.

This article considers global hydro-gravitational equilibrium conditions for the Earth's inner core and presents a proof that the solid core of our planet could never be smaller or lighter than a certain minimum, otherwise the core would not be able to remain in the center of the planet.

Since the inner core could have only been larger and heavier in the past than it is today - it cannot be the result of any "crystallization". This simple conclusion has astonishing consequences.

Imagine a gigantic object of 1220 km radius that slowly becomes smaller, lighter and gives off heat for millions of years. What could it be? It can only be an object that generates heat by nuclear decay.

The main consequence of the above is that all heat generated inside Earth is of radionic origin. In other words, Earth in its entirety can be considered a nuclear reactor fuelled by spontaneous fission of various isotopes in the super-heavy inner core, as well as their daughter products of decay in the mantle and in the crust.

Life on Earth is possible only because of the efficient cooling of this reactor - a process that is limited primarily by the atmosphere. Currently this cooling is responsible for a fine thermal balance between the heat from the core reactor, the heat from the Sun and the radiation of heat into space, so that the average temperature on Earth is about 13 deg C.

Since the radionic heat is generated in the entire volume of nuclear fuel (the entire Earth) and cooling can occur only at the surface, the hottest point of the planet should be in the very center of the planet.

This article examines the possibility of the "meltdown" of the central part of the inner core due to the reduced cooling capacity of the atmosphere, which traps progressively more solar heat due to the so-called greenhouse effect. Factors that can accelerate the meltdown process, such as an increased solar activity coinciding with increased emissions of greenhouse gasses are discussed.

The most serious consequence of such a "meltdown" could be a gravity-buoyancy based segregation of unstable isotopes in the molten inner core. Such a segregation can "enrich" the nuclear fuel in the core to the point of creating conditions for a chain reaction and a gigantic atomic explosion. Can Earth become another "asteroid belt" in the Solar system?

It is a common knowledge (experiencing seasons) that solar heat is the dominant factor that determines temperatures on the surface of Earth. In the polar regions however, the contribution of solar heat is minimal and this is where the contribution of the heat from the inside of our planet can be seen best. Raising polar ocean temperatures and melting of polar caps should therefore be the first symptoms of overheating of the inner core reactor.

While politicians and businessmen still debate the need for reducing greenhouse emissions and take pride to evade accepting any responsibility, the process of overheating of the inner core reactor has already begun - polar oceans have become warmer and polar caps have begun to melt. Do we have enough imagination, intelligence and integrity to comprehend the danger before the situation becomes irreversible?

There will be NO SECOND CHANCE...

How many degrees is the "inner core" from its meltdown point? Do we know enough to predict the intensity of solar activity in the next decade? Full article

Volcanoes become active and erupt violently not because the Earth's interior "crystallizes" as it is currently believed, but because the planetary nucleus is a nuclear fission reactor that needs COOLING.

We are not the first "civilization" on Earth to be wiped out due to the lack of understanding of Nature. Are we to be the LAST one? Do notorious abusers of Nature deserve to exist?

"The proof: If intellect is unwilling or unable to understand the analysis - no proof is possible." [The Freedom of Choice]

This summary can be freely distributed, providing that no content is altered or removed. Someone needs to do something. We will continue to do research and publish it. You can begin helping out by forwarding this abstract (or a link to it) to all your friends and anyone who is conscious enough to comprehend the information above. The only chance we have is to inform enough people across the planet so that they can consciously and intelligently CHOOSE to DEMAND action from "leaders" whom they elected. Believing is not enough. People need to KNOW.

Published by:http://sci-e-research.com/geophysics.html
Pr.Contact:
Dr Thomas J. Chalko MSc, PhD
email: tjc@sci-e-research.com
Fax: +61 5681 6361
945 Gunyah Rd, Mt Best,
Vic 3960, Australia