46
votes
Is "Earth Overshoot Day" a useful or reliable metric of humanity's effect on the world?
Yes, the 'ecological footprint' can be useful in suggesting areas where humanity has unsustainable practices which need to be improved.
However, the footprint is usually presented in a very ...
- 11.4k
39
votes
Is moderated livestock grazing an effective countermeasure for desertification?
In the wild, herds of buffalo, elk, etc. cluster together to protect themselves from predators.
As the densely populated group moves around, it clears out vegetation and leaves manure, which their ...
- 3,952
27
votes
In California, is water from the north diverted into the Pacific Ocean?
Not an authoritative source , just a blogger, but a decent attempt to explain some of the cali water issues that's reasonably well sourced itself.
California receives a total of 80 million acre-...
- 9,466
19
votes
Accepted
Is the Great Barrier Reef dead after 25,000,000 years of being alive?
No, the Great Barrier Reef is not dead.
According to Exploring the hidden shallows: extensive reef development and resilience within the turbid nearshore Great Barrier Reef (2016):
Mean coral ...
- 105k
17
votes
Is moderated livestock grazing an effective countermeasure for desertification?
This paper claims
This commentary summarizes the evidence supporting holistic management (HM) and intensive rotational grazing (IRG) to demonstrate the extent to which Sherren and coauthors (2012) ...
- 619
14
votes
Accepted
Do Kaziranga National Park workers shoot and kill poachers?
As far as we can tell, yes. Rangers in Kaziranga park have killed 72 suspected poachers between 2007 and February 10th, 2017
Here is a report from the BBC from February 10th regarding the park and ...
- 22.4k
11
votes
Is moderated livestock grazing an effective countermeasure for desertification?
I'm not an expert on this specific topic, but will put a few contradictory things to balance some of the other answers. A quick search found an article in the journal Rangelands with the title "...
- 227
10
votes
Accepted
Is the honey bee apocalypse real?
There is an ongoing honey bee population and dependency crisis, according to some scientific literature. (Whether that amounts to an "apocalypse" is a matter of opinion.) The gist is that, ...
- 5,419
9
votes
Accepted
Are 100 million sharks culled per year for safety reasons?
The Australian Marine Conservation Society's web site is http://www.marineconservation.org.au/ . Doing a search for shark cull million on their web site gets as the first hit Government on shark watch ...
- 38.9k
7
votes
Accepted
Are there more tigers in private ownership in the US than there are in the wild?
A decade ago, there were more captive tigers in China alone than wild tigers in the entire world. The same was true with the USA.
The 2016, the population estimate of wild tigers was 3890 (an ...
- 141k
7
votes
Are polar bears doing well despite a reduction in sea ice?
We don't really know.
Despite the claims of a population boom, there is no definitive evidence to know how many polar bears there were "to begin with." One can't scientifically determine an end ...
- 2,162
6
votes
Do Americans use 500 million straws per day?
We have this from 2010:
https://www.manufacturing.net/news/2010/12/va-plant-produces-4b-drinking-straws-annually
(Facts as of print time for the article.) There's a plant in VA that produces ...
- 3,647
6
votes
Accepted
Is climate change causing jellyfish to wash up on the beach?
In several articles I've found about it, climate change is only but one factor among several other which have contributed to the boom of jellyfish population. The increase of the jellyfish population, ...
- 394
5
votes
Are species becoming extinct at a rate of 0.01%-0.1% per annum?
776 species have gone extinct since year 1500 according to the most comprehensive global survey of threatened species, The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The number of species that go extinct ...
- 609
2
votes
Do Americans use 500 million straws per day?
According to The Green Book (2007):
Each year, Americans throw away 138 billion straws and stirrers
So, if coffee stirrers are included, that is 378 million per day.
A 29 May 1924 Pulp and ...
- 105k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible