19
Mar
How earthquakes turn water into gold
Alchemists, search no more—seismic tremors hold the solution to your troubles.
19
Mar
How earthquakes turn water into gold
Alchemists, search no more—seismic tremors hold the solution to your troubles.
16
Jan
04
Nov
Scientists coax bacteria to produce pure gold nuggets
Researchers have discovered bacteria with a Midas touch, capable of transforming toxic chemicals into pure 24-karat gold.
20
Jun
In California oasis, ample water leads to waste
Palm Springs says it is committed to saving water — but not before filling its swimming pools and tending to its dozens of verdant golf courses.
24
Oct
‘Gold Rush Alaska’ season two strikes Discovery
Hit reality series follows six men and their efforts to hit it rich in Porcupine Creek, Alaska.
09
Sep
Scientists theorize that gold has its origins in space
Using the difference in the mass of various rocks, scientists believe that gold arrived on Earth during a meteor shower after the planet had cooled.
25
Apr
This is a terrible situation. It also highlights how human culture is intimately linked with the environment.
I heard about a similarly disastrous problem a few days ago when talking to someone from GreenPeace outside the museum. The girl explained that because of deforestation in Thailand, many villagers don’t have a means of obtaining food, which has led to a surge in child slavery - a problem which two of my friends have been involved with addressing, though I doubt they ever considered the contributing environmental cause.There really is much truth to the aphorism that we are one with the earth. I really hope we start to take it seriously.
RCS Highlights:
Deforestation in parts of the Peruvian Amazon has increased six-fold in recent years as small-scale miners, driven by record gold prices, blast and clear more of the lowland rainforest…
The study.. combined NASA satellite imagery spanning six years with economic analyses of gold prices and mercury imports to document the forces responsible for deforestation in Peru’s biologically diverse Madre de Dios region..
“These are small-time miners; there is no big ‘Goliath’ mining company to blame,” Swenson says. The miners often lack modern technology, have limited knowledge of mining’s environmental or human health effects and rarely have safeguards to limit the release of the mercury they use to process their gold into the air, soil or water…
The mining “is now plainly visible from space,” Swenson says. “At the two sites we studied, Guacamayo and Colorado-Puquiri, nearly 5,000 acres [of rainforest] were cleared in just three years, between 2006 and 2009, largely outpacing nearby deforestation caused by human settlement.”…
[Additionally,] Small-scale gold mining is the second-largest source of mercury pollution in the world, behind only the burning of fossil fuels. Mercury from artisanal mines can travel hundreds of miles in the atmosphere or in surface waters — eventually settling in sediments and moving up the food chain into fish, fish-eating wildlife and humans…
It’s been difficult for Peru’s government to monitor and control all artisanal mining within its borders, she says, but another approach, worth considering, may be to be start limiting mercury imports.
via realcleverscience