General Awareness

ENVIRONMENT - December 2018

Dec 2018

Jun 27, 2019

Greenland Ice Sheet

Scientists have identified more than 50 new lakes of liquid water lying under the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Only four had previously been detected.
Antarctica hides some 470 lakes beneath its ice but this latest UK/US study proved the northern polar region also has its share.

Jun 24, 2019

Pacific Trash Clean-up

A floating device designed to catch plastic waste was redeployed in a second attempt to clean up a huge island of trash swirling in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii.
Boyan Slat, creator of The Ocean Cleanup project, announced that a 600-metre-long floating tube that broke apart late last year (2018) was sent back to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch after four months of repair.
Fitted with solar-powered lights, cameras, sensors and satellite antennas, the device communicate its position in real time, allowing a support vessel to fish out the collected plastic and transport it to dry land.
The plastic barrier with a tapered three-metre-deep screen is intended to act like a coastline, trapping some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that scientists estimate are swirling in the patch while allowing marine life to safely swim beneath it.

Jun 22, 2019

Forest Cover Up

According to Union Minister for Environment Prakash Javadekar, India's forest cover was up by 1% in the last one year, while former Minister and his own party's MP Maneka Gandhi told that the additional forest cover could be a result of satellite imagery being taken where the sugar cane crops could be mistaken for trees.
Mr. Javadekar said that for one tree chopped for development work, three to four were planted either in the same area or elsewhere.
Responding to Ms. Gandhi, he said satellite imagery was taken at regular intervals and it was unlikely that sugar cane crops were counted as such.
According to a latest report, over 24.39% of the country's geographical area now constitutes of green cover.

Jun 20, 2019

Himalayan Glaciers Melting Far Faster

According to a study, Himalayan glaciers have been melting twice as fast since the start of this century, underscoring the threat the climate crisis poses to water supplies for hundreds of millions of people across Asia.
The new analysis, spanning 40 years of satellite observations across India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, showed glaciers have been losing the equivalent of more than a vertical foot-and-a-half of ice each year since 2000. That represents double the rate between 1975 and 2000.
Although melting ice caps at Earth's north and south poles are already destabilising the climate system, the retreat of Himalayan ice has more direct consequences for some 800 million people who depend on meltwater to sustain their rivers.

Jun 19, 2019

DPCC Stops Free Registration

The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) stopped the free online registration of non-polluting white category industries, after it came to light that a section of such units, operating from non-conforming areas, were misusing the facility to get themselves registered illegally without paying any charge.
Now owners of even white category industries would have to pay a registration fee of Rs. 10,000.
The DPCC would change its online software to ensure industries from non-conforming areas will not be able to register at all.
White category industries, introduced by the union government in 2016, are the least polluting among other categories, red, orange and green.

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