Orca, a new carbon capturing machine, may help fight global warming.
Tag: environment
World Leaders Meet in Scotland on Climate Change
World leaders are meeting in Scotland this week at COP26 to discuss climate change.
Canada, Philippines At Odds Over “Illegal” Trash
The Philippines wants Canada to take back its trash. A hundred and three huge shipping containers filled with plastic and electronic garbage have been sitting at a port near Manila, the country’s capital city. The Philippines is made up of […]
Indonesia Recovering From Earthquake, Tsunami
Lots of medics and emergency workers are helping people in Indonesia after a large earthquake happened there on Friday.
It was a 7.5-magnitude earthquake. (That is how earthquakes are measured in terms of how bad they are. Seven point five is very big.)
The earthquake also caused a tsunami. That is a massive wave of water. When an earthquake happens on or near a large body of water, it can cause huge waves and flowing water that does a lot of damage. The earthquake in Indonesia was along the coast, near a city called Palu, which is on a bay.
Many people helped those who were affected by the disaster.
Teen’s Project Helping To Clean The Ocean
A teenager’s dream of cleaning up the world’s oceans may soon come true.
Boyan Slat is a high school student who lives in Holland, in Europe. Seven years ago, he was swimming in the ocean. He saw more trash in the water, than fish. So for a school project, he made a plan to clean up the ocean.
In 2013, Slat formed a group called The Ocean Cleanup. It raised money to put Slat’s water clean-up plan in action.
On September 8, Slat’s plan began.
In the ocean between California and Hawaii is a lot of floating garbage. It is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Slat’s group will clean it up using a floating tube. The tube will go around the garbage and trap it.
How Much Food Do You Waste?
If all the food that’s thrown away in three American cities could be saved, it would provide 68 million meals for people who don’t have enough to eat, according to a recent study.
A team of researchers in the United States spent a week looking through the garbage bags of 1,151 people living in Denver, New York and Nashville. The researchers wanted to know what kind of food was being thrown away, how much there was, and why it was being tossed.
By asking these questions, the researchers hoped to find ways to reduce the amount of food we throw away, and to give some of that food to people who need it.
The researchers found that, in the cities they surveyed, more than a kilogram of edible food per person is wasted each week. (Edible food is food you can eat. It doesn’t include things like apple cores, egg shells, or bones from meat.)
Fruits and vegetables were the most common edible foods found in the trash, followed by food leftover from meals. Eggs, bread and milk were also commonly thrown out.
“Adventure” Playgrounds Can Build Confidence
At a place called The Land, in Wrexham, Wales, the ground is littered with pieces of wood, old tires, packing crates, and shopping carts. It looks like a junkyard, but it isn’t. It’s a playground.
There’s also a fire pit, hammers and saws, and a rope swing across a creek. Some of the equipment can be dangerous, but the people who run the playground believe that letting children take some risks is good for them.
The Land was created by Claire Griffiths, who has two children of her own. She wanted to build a space where children could play the way they wanted and experiment with different things, without a lot of rules.
California Wildfires
Many people in southern California (on the west coast of the United States) have had to leave their homes.
For more than a week, wildfires have been burning in the “Golden State.”
The fires started after a period with very little rain dried out the grasses on the hillsides. CBC News reports that “hardly any measurable rain has fallen in the region over the past six months.” The new conditions may be due to climate change.
Californians were warned about the fires so they could leave in time. A variety of methods were used to warn residents, including texts sent to their cell phones.
The timely warnings have saved lives, giving tens of thousands of residents time to evacuate their homes.
Large Storms Affecting Caribbean, US
Everyone is talking about Harvey, Irma, Jose and Katia.
They are the names of very large storms, affecting the area around the Caribbean*, Mexico and the southern United States.
Hurricanes are given names, like “Irma” to make it easier to refer to them.
People in these areas are used to dealing with storms. But these storms are much larger than normal. They have very high winds—up to 120 kilometres an hour—with lots of rain that can flood people’s houses and force them to leave the area. (In this case, leaving your home is known as “evacuating.”) In Florida, more than 6.4 million people have been told to evacuate before Irma gets there, according to a report from CBC News.
A Different View Of The World
Students at public schools in Boston, Massachusetts, will soon be looking at the world in a new way. Social studies teachers there will be using a new type of map that shows the world’s continents in slightly different sizes and positions than we usually see them.
