The Geeky Eco Warrior

As you keep denying data and science, President Trump, air pollution is choking your electorate. Dear President Trump, Greetings from the  most polluted capital of the world .  This is regarding the statement you made in a  conversation with Prime Minister Varadkar of Ireland  in Shannon in June this year. You had said, "We have the cleanest air in the world, in the United States, and it’s gotten better since I’m President." Sorry to break your little bubble, President Trump, but nothing could be further from the truth. In your country, the air quality is worse in the past two years than it has been in the past — just a few years prior. The past, in fact, saw your country vastly improving the air quality from the earlier deteriorations. And by past, we mean before you took oath as the President in 2017. Air pollution kills, sir. Ask us Indians —  specifically Delhiites  — and we can tell you in volumes about how it feels to be breathing the t...

  The rivers of the world are coursing with unhealthy levels of antibiotics, over-the-counter and prescription drugs waste, a top-level UK study has revealed. In the  study , researchers analysed samples from 711 sites across rivers in 72 countries for 14 commonly used antibiotics and found that 65% of them were contaminated with antibiotics — some up to 300 times the “safe” levels. This worst-case scenario was found at a site on the river Brahmaputra in Bangladesh where concentrations of the drug Metronidazole — an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections including skin and mouth infections. The samples included some of the world's best-known rivers — including the Brahmaputra, Chao Phraya, Danube, Mekong, Seine, Thames, Tiber and Tigris. According to the reports,  dangerous levels of contamination  were most frequently found in Asia and Africa. However, while the sites in Bangladesh, Kenya, Ghana, Pakistan and Nigeria were found to be exceeding safe ...

While the latest research says that the moon is shrinking, it will take at least another 1500 billion years for it to vanish completely. Saw the moon last evening? Or either of the past two evenings? Did you see a brighter and bigger moon? Let the present sight not fool you. The latest research conducted by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) says that the Moon is shrinking as it becomes cooler from the inside. The phenomenon isn’t new. Science establishes that the romantic’s muse has shrunk by almost 46 meters in the past millions of years. So what happens when the moon shrinks? Imagine a grape shrinking. When it shrinks, it wrinkles and shrivels to a raisin. Similarly, the moon wrinkles as it shrinks, and because the moon’s surface crust is brittle unlike the flexible skin on a grape, the surface breaks with the shrinking and “thrust faults” where one section of the crust is pushed up over a neighbouring part. These thrust faults resemble small stair-step shaped...

IUCN’s study provides practical guidance as to how to make rainforests more climate-resilient. While carbon emissions continue unabated, here is some good news. If IUCN’s   study   is anything to go by, then all is not lost when it comes to combating climate change. The international governing body of protected sites, in its report —  Reforesting for the climate of tomorrow  — analysed the traits of around 250 species of trees and other plants native to the rainforest of Kutai National Park in Indonesia and identified species resilient to the fires and drought conditions that are expected to increase as the climate warms. According to a  statement by IUCN , the climate change-resilient species included those with low sensitivity to changes, high capacity to adapt to them, or both. Two tree species that were singled out for their resilience to fire were a native palm, Borassodendron borneense, and the hardwood tree Eusideroxylon zwageri, known locally a...

Urgent intervention is required at the ground and policy levels to shift the narrative from Udta Punjab to hypertense Punjab.   The viral video of a young girl snorting drugs in a police station shocked the country. (Source: YouTube screenshot) Think Punjab, and this is the first image that comes to mind. The grab is from a video that went viral and shocked the nation last year. A newly married woman is seen snorting ‘chitta’ (synthetic drugs) sitting allegedly inside a police station. The narrative of Punjab’s drug menace took a new turn implying that the drug abuse was not limited to the restricted to the typical demographic of unemployed rural youth in the state, but was rampant among the urban rich brats, spoilt college girls, bored housewives and even cops. According to the  Punjab Opioid Dependence Survey  2015, conducted by the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, and AIIMS, the estimated size of the opioid-dependent population in Punjab is 2,32,856 — tran...

While cow's urine is claimed to cure cancer, science for certain establishes that the urine on degraded pasture is a major contributor to global warming. The cow — and its urine — are touchy topics in India. We have extensive research,   politics ,   controversies   and debate to the   claimed medicinal benefits   of cow’s urine (gau mutra). The latest, of course, is the cure of Sadhi Pragya's cancer.  The BJP candidate from Bhopal, who is also accused in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case, is a breast cancer survivor. "I was a patient of cancer and I cured myself by consuming gau mutra and panchgavya-mixed ayurvedic herbs,"  Sadhvi Pragya told India Today TV .  Sadhvi Pragya called the cure scientific, saying, "I am a living example of its effectiveness." "I was a patient of cancer and I cured myself by consuming gau mutra (cow urine) and panchgavya-mixed ayurvedic herbs," says Sadhvi Pragya. (Photo: Twitter/rahulkanwal) Sceptical science However...