Ukraine wants to turn Chernobyl into a massive solar farm. It’s money versus Nature and commonsense all over again

A story recently hit the news that Ukraine is seeking investors to turn radiation-riddled Chernobyl into a massive solar farm. If successful, it would produce 1 gigawatt of power from an array in the 1,000 square mile “exclusion zone.”

How a new source of water is helping reduce conflict in the Middle East

Editor:   The following is an excerpt of an article by Rowan Jacobsen. It offers an intriguing idea and opportunity that not only could help bring water to countries (and villages) parched by continuing drought but also help resolve conflicts between warring nations.

Scientists and others look to desalination as a way to unite longtime enemies in a common cause.

Israel’s Sorek Desalination Plant – an opportunity for water and easing conflicts

July 19, 2016 — Ten miles south of Tel Aviv, I stand on a catwalk over two concrete reservoirs the size of football fields and watch water pour into them from a massive pipe emerging from the sand. The pipe is so large I could walk through it standing upright, were it not full of Mediterranean seawater pumped from an intake a mile offshore.

“Now, that’s a pump!” Edo Bar-Zeev shouts to me over the din of the motors, grinning with undisguised awe at the scene before us. The reservoirs beneath us contain several feet of sand through which the seawater filters before making its way to a vast metal hangar, where it is transformed into enough drinking water to supply 1.5 million people.

Why Australia’s loss of 7,000 hectares of mangroves will have serious consequences

Dead mangrove forest off Australia’s east coast, photo by James Cook University

Climate change has wrecked havoc not only on our weather patterns but on the world’s forest and ecological systems. And the impact is devastating.

In the U.S., severe drought and major insect infestations have been responsible for almost unimaginable die-offs of old growth forests. In Australia El Nino conditions have caused the die-off of a 7000 kilometer (approximately 4,349 miles) stretch of mangrove shoreline in the southern reaches of the Gulf of Carpentaria.