Ecoclimax

We see plastic litter on beaches and streets, but much of the plastic problem is made of pieces you don’t notice at first glance. When bottles, tires, paint, or synthetic clothing break down, they fracture into fragments that behave very differently from the original object: some sink into sediments, some float and travel long distances, and the smallest particles can move through air and pass into living tissue.  How small are we talking? Microplastics are generally defined as fragments smaller than 5 millimetres (5,000 microns) and extending down into microscopic and nanoscale sizes; many researchers call particles smaller than 1 micron “nanoplastics.” To give that some weight: an average human hair is about 70–80 microns across and a grain of table salt is roughly 60 microns, so the tiniest particles scientists measure are dozens to thousands of times smaller than items you touch every day. The visualization below, created by VisualCapitalis , shows how small microplastics ar...

When we think about plastic in the sea, the first image is often bottles bobbing in the waves or bags tangled on the sand. But the reality runs much deeper. Once plastic slips into rivers or coastal waters, it doesn’t stay put. It drifts for months, even years, carried by tides and currents until it shows up somewhere completely unexpected. A wrapper tossed in Manila or a bag left in Rio might one day end up on an African beach - or swirling far out in the Pacific. A recent map from Visual Capitalist , based on data from the Global Plastic Hub , makes this global journey impossible to ignore. It tracks how much plastic each country leaked into the ocean between 2010 and 2019, only to resurface on foreign shores. The biggest contributors won’t shock anyone familiar with the issue: China, the Philippines, and India. Together, they account for millions of tonnes of waste - China alone for about 2.6 million . Add in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Bangladesh, and the picture is clear. Across much ...

I keep waiting for that crisp fall morning, and it just doesn't come like it used to. Climate Central just released numbers showing I'm not imagining this - every US county has warmer falls now than in 1970. The average increase is 2.8°F (1.6°C) across 237 cities. Some places got hit harder than others. Reno went up 7.7°F (4.3°C). El Paso jumped 6.5°F (3.6°C). Las Vegas is 6.2°F (3.4°C) warmer. The Southwest overall increased 4.0°F (2.2°C), with the Northern Rockies and Plains close behind at 3.5°F (1.9°C). Even the Southeast, with the smallest changes, still warmed 1.9°F (1.1°C) everywhere. An interactive version of this map can be found here . Trees Don't Know When to Drop Their Leaves This temperature shift messes with nature's timing. Trees hold leaves 6-10 days longer now, according to the USA National Phenology Network . The real problem comes in spring - warmer temperatures cause insects and plants to emerge earlier, but many migratory birds still arrive based o...