Things I worry about in the middle of the night

(1) Valuable Water Sources Disappearing

Lake Chad: 1972 and 1987. Lake Chad, which supplies water to Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria, was once one of the largest lakes in Africa. But extensive irrigation projects, the encroaching desert and an increasingly dry climate have caused it to shrink to 5% its former size. (The Guardian, 3/4/2008)

(2) Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas

The yellow dots show the pattern that the trash moves so that there are spots where it accumulates into massive areas in the middle of the ocean. Below is the Pacific. The Atlantic has one too (how nice for it). (LA Times, 8/2/2006)

(3) Plastics & Microplastics in our Oceans

It's bad enough to hear about stories like the one about a whale that had basically starved to death because its stomach was full of the crap above. (Banish the Bags, Daily Mail, 2/27/2008) Even worse are the microscopic plastic particles that these plastics break down into that do the same thing to the fish and other marine life who eat them thinking they are plankton. (Invisible Plastic Trash Poses Newfound Threat to Sea Life, Live Science website, 11/2/2007)