#20 Birds, Plastic waste and Carbon dioxide emissions

Peerus
Peerus
Published in
3 min readMar 22, 2018

Discover 3 recent science news in our #PeerusWhatsNew, now on Medium.

1 The Museum of Natural History and the CNRS announce that rural birds are experiencing a serious decline in France, which has intensified over the past two years. Pesticides that reduce insect populations could be the cause of this phenomenon.

In a statement, these institutes believe that “this decline reaches a level close to the ecological disaster.”

The situation is similar elsewhere in Europe, especially in the west of the continent. According to two recent studies, Germany and Europe have lost 80% of flying insects and 421 million birds in 30 years.

2 For several months now, the European Space Agency has been trying out a daring experiment: observing the plastic waste in the Earth’s oceans.

The Sentinel 3A satellite of the European Space Agency was involved in this experiment. If the test is successful, the Sentinel 3 satellites will be mobilized for this task until the ESA decides to build a dedicated satellite.

The idea of ESA on this project is to see if Sentinel 3A can discern this plastic waste. As Paolo Corradi, in charge of the project at ESA, points out, “we are not talking about finding floating waste, but rather identifying a spectral signature of the plastic taken from orbit, in the same way that a processing software can now detect concentrations of phytoplankton, suspended sediments and water pollution “.

3 Global carbon dioxide emissions from energy use rebounded in 2017, following three years of stagnation, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

These emissions from the electricity sector, transport or building, rose by 1.4% last year to 32.5 gigatonnes, according to provisional data from the Paris-based energy agency.

“The significant growth in 2017 of carbon-related energy-related emissions indicates that current efforts to combat climate change are far from sufficient,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.

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