Jellyfish clogging the water flow that power plants need in order to run
In Scotland less than two weeks ago, they impacted the water intake for cooling at the Torness nuclear power plant. The latest incident is in Israel, where the city of Hadera was left without electricity when the power station’s cooling system was flooded with jellyfish.
Australia’s The Age reports that at the Orot Rabin Electric Power Station, which uses seawater to cool its reactors, tons of jellyfish clogged the filters. the rise in jellyfish invasions could be tied to climate change: as sea temperatures rise, the cold-blooded animals grow more quickly.
Droughts in USA
Fourteen U.S. states, from North Carolina to Arizona to Texas — where conditions are crushing records set in 1917 — are currently in the midst of devastating droughts. And even though the Dust Bowl droughts of the 1950s were drier, modern day droughts of the last few years are warmer — more like the kind of droughts you’d expect to see with global warming, according to leading climatologists. That’s important to remember as you absorb news of these recent droughts.
‘Invisible’ particles from vehicles
Scientists compared how people reacted to the gases found in diesel fumes — such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide — with those caused by the ultrafine chemical particles from exhausts. The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation, showed that the tiny particles, and not the gases, impaired the function of blood vessels that control how blood is channelled to the body’s organs. The ‘invisible’ particles — less than a millionth of a metre wide — can be filtered out of exhaust emissions by fitting special particle traps to vehicles. Particle traps are already being fitted retrospectively to public transport vehicles in the US to minimise the potential effects of pollution. [Use electric vehicles to stop this issue.]