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As much as 47 percent of the edible seafood supply for the United States is lost each year. The main reason stems from consumer waste. Humans around the world are being encouraged to eat more seafood, but overfishing and other practices are putting fish populations at risk. People are being told to eat more seafood at the same time that seafood supply is being threatened. Researchers estimate that there is 4.7 billion pounds of seafood supply in the U.S. every year. Of this, 2.3 billion pounds are wasted each year. 330 million pounds are lost in distribution and retail, 573 million pounds are lost when fishers catch the wrong species of fish, and 1.3 billion pounds of seafood is lost at the consumer level. The lost protein is enough to meet the annual requirements for 10 million men or 12 million women. The seafood lost could fulfill 36 percent of the gap between current seafood consumption levels and recommended seafood consumption levels. It is recommended that people eat eight ounces of seafood per person per week, but in doing so, we would have to double our seafood supply. Suggestions on how to reduce seafood waste include limiting the percent of wrong species caught while fishing and packaging seafood into smaller portions to encourage more purchasing. This issue is of particular importance because we are currently overfishing our seafood populations already, and yet we are encouraged to eat more of it. The key issue though is the wastefulness in not eating the seafood. People in the United States currently throw away over forty percent of the food the buy, a large portion of which is still edible. A lot of food is simply not harvested or tossed out just because it is not aesthetically appealing. Food waste appears to be a cardinal sin, especially when there are many people in the world struggling to find their next meal. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150923182216.htm
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Satellite imagery from NASA points that the arctic sea ice summertime minimum is the fourth lowest on record since space imagery began. The minimum this year was 1.70 million square miles, an amount that is 699,000 square miles lower than the 1981-2010 minimum average. The sea ice cap grows and shrinks on a seasonal cycle, but its minimum has been decreasing ever since 1970, due to warmer temperatures. The lowest minimum on record occurred in 2012 and was the result of an August cyclone that fractured the ice and accelerated its melting. However, there seems to be no real meteorological cause for the low minimum this year. Changing winds or late-summer heat may further reduce the ice minimum this year. The thick ice will likely decrease as well as the surface temperature along the ice is increasing. This year, the ice melted slowly in June, a lot in July, and still a lot in August. It is unclear whether the large El Nino of this year will have an impact on the ice, but since the ice is thinner now, we may be able to track the effects. This issue is particularly important because melting ice means that the ocean is getting warmer and thus increasing our ocean levels. As the ice melts, more ocean is exposed to the sun, and since the sun is darker than ice, it absorbs more of the heat from the sun than the ice does. So, the ocean warms up and rises, since water expands at higher temperatures. Also, the warmer oceans then lead to more ice being melted because the ice is not used to such warm temperatures. The melting of ice is in turn causing the melting of more ice. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150915211529.htm The southern ocean, near Antarctica, absorbs and releases carbon dioxide periodically as if it is breathing the carbon dioxide in and out. Recently, however, it was discovered that the carbon "sink" of these oceans is actually increasing. This comes as a shock because it was thought to believe that the carbon sink had been saturated, as models showed that carbon uptake was stagnating. The new data was put into a new computer model to calculate the gaps in the data that occurred due to some areas of the ocean being more tested than others. The data depicts that the carbon sink began its upswing around 2002. It has been recently speculated that the carbon sink fluctuates periodically, rather than the previous assumption that uptake increased with atmospheric carbon dioxide. More testing needs to be conducted to prove this hypothesis, however. Weather may be to blame for the upswing, as new areas of high and low pressure have caused the wind patterns to change. These new wind patterns have resulted in less upwelling, an action that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, from deeper levels of the ocean. Upwelling had previously caused the ocean's carbon sink to stagnate and decline. The weakening of the upwelling system means the ocean can absorb more carbon dioxide now. This particular issue is important because it has to do with carbon dioxide and the warming of the planet due to an increase in greenhouse gases. The southern ocean accounts for forty percent of the global oceanic absorption of carbon dioxide. A rise in the carbon sink of this ocean means that it will be able to absorb more carbon dioxide and hence help to, at least somewhat, reduce the effect of carbon dioxide we are pumping into the atmosphere. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150910144049.htm Scientists recently undertook a new study to try and figure out just how many trees there are in the world. The results calculated that there are around 3.04 trillion trees in the world, a large difference from the previous assumption of 400 billion trees in the world. Despite the seeming abundance of trees in the world, there used to be more: humans have cut down almost half of the trees in the world. We are cutting down trees at a rate of 15 billion per year, which is alarming since trees play such a huge role in the carbon cycle and help to alleviate some of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. This is such a pressing issue because trees play a key role in somewhat lessening our contribution to greenhouse gases. The finding that we have cut down half of the trees in the world may encourage countries to establish better conservation laws than are currently in place. Knowing just how many trees there are in the world will help us better understand climate change and how trees can affect the weather. |
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April 2016
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