Pollution

Answer: Thermal (warmer water) pollution:

* Lowers the oxygen saturation point of the water making it less desirable for non tolerant species (Carp flourish, trout don't) * Promotes the growth of slimes and molds * Changes the rate of decomposition * Prevents breeding of some fish species * Changes the benthic population * Promotes overwintering of some bird species

Plastic bottles and bags dumped from ships and from storm water drains and rivers float in the oceans and the wind and currents bring them all to this great revolving Pacific Gyre. Plastic ropes and discarded fishing nets are part of it too. Scientists estimate that there is around three million tons of plastic debris there.

The sun and the oceans have broken the plastic down. As the plastic degrades it releases many toxins which get into the food chain. It also breaks up into tiny pieces which are attractive to sea birds and marine creatures. This plastic junk builds up in their stomachs till they die. Some of the particles are microscopic and filter feeders like whales are swallowing them.

"Ghost fishing" from thrown away nets are still trapping fish and marine animals. An estimated 100,000 turtles and other animals die each year, and more than one million birds.

Studies have found that even barnacles are eating tiny shreds of plastic.

The Eastern Garbage Patch has been described as being very large, and compared to the size of the state of Texas; which is one of largest states, if not the largest state, located in the United States. Large circular ocean currents called a gyre hold the trash accumulations.

Yes. Cows are the second major cause of global warning. The first are powerhouses, and the third cars. Many people agree that it's easier to give up with a kind of meat than to stop using your car or elettricity.

It is true that sheep and cattle are major sources of methane, which is some twenty times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. However, there is promising research going on into changing the diet of cattle and thereby reduce the amount of methane they belch, as well as other ways of minimising this problem. It should not come to this, but we could always eat chicken, pork, kangaroo, fish and other forms of meat from animals that are not ruminants and do not produce methane in their digestive systems.

Love Canal was not a spill of anything.

It was an old abandoned section of a canal originally built by William T. Love in the 1890s (thus the name) near the City of Niagara Falls, NY. After it was abandoned the roughly 1 mile long section of canal filled with groundwater and was used by children for swimming. In the 1920s, the canal became a city dump for the City of Niagara Falls. In the 1940s, Hooker Electrochemical Company (later known as Hooker Chemical Company) began searching for a place to dump the large quantity of toxic wastes it was producing. In 1942 the canal was drained and lined with thick clay to prevent its future contents from entering the groundwater. Hooker then began filling it with 55 gallon drums of toxic wastes while the City of Niagara Falls and the Army continued the dumping of refuse. After 1953, the canal was covered with soil, and vegetation began to grow atop the dumpsite.

Soon thereafter the Niagara Falls City School District needed land to build new schools, and attempted to purchase the property from Hooker Chemical that had been used to bury toxic wastes. Against the initial opposition of Hooker Chemical which cited safety concerns the School Board by threatening to have parts of the property condemned and/or expropriated, Hooker Chemical agreed to sell on the condition that the School Board buy the entire property for one dollar, and that the School Board take all liability for any future lawsuits related to the contents of the site.

Two schools and a number of housing developments were constructed on the site and surrounding areas. By the late 1950s the clay liner installed in 1942 was failing and groundwater intrusion began to wash toxic wastes into the nearby Niagara River.

By the middle 1970s severe health problems began to be observed that were unique to the area.

Love Canal, along with Times Beach, Missouri, are important in United States environmental history as the two sites that in large part led to the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) which is commonly referred to as "Superfund" which supplies money to cleanup sites with unusual high amounts of hazardous materials contamination.