Biology
Breach
March 10, 2014, from McClatchy
As public pressure builds to dig up coal ash from waste lagoons in North Carolina, Duke Energy is facing a big cleanup bill that the electric utility has been trying to dodge... Duke chief executive Lynn Good said Friday that Duke would seek to recover the cost through customer rates. Billing Duke's customers for such an extensive cleanup operation would require approval from the N.C. Utilities Commission.
Critics of Duke's coal-ash storage practices say that customers should be spared and that instead the cost should be borne by Duke and its investors.
March 10, 2011, from CBC
The province must do a better job of monitoring the impact of oilsands mining on water quality in northeastern Alberta, concludes a scientific panel.
Environment Minister Rob Renner appointed the six-member panel in September 2010 after a University of Alberta study concluded industry was responsible for increased levels of toxins in the Athabasca River, a claim contradicted by government scientists....
It found industry and government monitoring is inadequate in determining the amount of toxins entering the environment....
"It's not just that we have to have more monitoring, but we have to have a more coordinated system for monitoring."
NDP critic Rachel Notley said Renner has known for years that the current system was lacking but did nothing about it.
"The minister can try to rewrite history, but the record shows that while the Tories barged ahead on development, their commitment to environmental protection was in spin only," said Notley.
March 10, 2011, from CBC
A mysterious resurgence of phosphorus in the Great Lakes is endangering the aquatic food chain and human health, says a binational agency that advises Canada and the U.S.
Fifteen years after the last programs to control phosphorus runoff ended, the International Joint Commission urged on Wednesday a renewed effort to get the oxygen-depleting chemical out of the water....
"We don't know where the phosphorous is coming from," Bill Bowerman, chair of the IJC's science advisory board and a wildlife ecologist at South Carolina's Clemson University, said during Wednesday's IJC news conference.
"Some of our monitoring programs that would allow us to understand this either are under threat or have disappeared over the past 15 years."...
The report suggests key factors likely include inadequate municipal wastewater and residential septic systems, agricultural runoff, industrial livestock operations and the impacts of climate change, which causes more frequent and intense rainstorms....
[M]uch of the lake is back to being coated with slimy green algal blooms in the summer, as it was in the 1960s and early '70s.
"They said, 'Well, we have this one fixed.' Well, we don't have this one fixed," she said.
March 10, 2009, from Mobile Press-Register
Federal scientists were unsparing in their criticism of a new EPA plan to leave high levels of mercury on the bottom of Cold Creek Swamp and hope the Mobile River covers it over with a layer of mud as the years go by.
Those scientists said the mercury from the north Mobile County swamp may have been spreading to fish and wildlife in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta and Mobile Bay for decades.
In 1993, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a plan to remove or contain the bulk of the contamination at the Stauffer Chemical Superfund site. The company released mercury into the swamp between 1966 and 1974 as a waste product from chlorine production. But the plan was never implemented.
Now the EPA has proposed a much more limited cleanup that calls for leaving most of the mercury in the swamp and monitoring it "long term." ...The latest plan ... calls for covering up the mercury in the most contaminated 25-acre area with a layer of clay and monitoring mercury levels in the rest of the swamp.
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Climate
Chaos
March 10, 2016, from ClimateCentral
... "Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years," Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA's Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, said in a statement.
The rate of increase in carbon dioxide concentrations is 200 times faster than the previous extreme jump between 11,000 and 17,000 years ago, when levels rose 80 ppm over about 6,000 years....
Michael Mann, an atmospheric science professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, who is unaffiliated with NOAA, said the carbon dioxide milestone shouldn't be over-interpreted.
"This spike is almost certainly due in substantial part to the ongoing El Nińo event, which is a fleeting effect that increases carbon dioxide concentrations temporarily," Mann said. "Carbon dioxide concentrations are a lagging indicator, and they don't accurately reflect recent trends in the more important variable -- our actual carbon emissions."
March 10, 2015, from The Independent
Sea ice in the Arctic is near its all-time minimum for the end of winter and could break the previous record within the next two weeks if it fails to grow, according to the latest satellite data.
The area of the Arctic covered by floating sea ice is already the lowest for this time of year, highlighting the long-term warming trend experienced by the region in both winter and summer months.
Sea ice expands and contracts with the seasons but satellite data collected since the 1970s shows that it is retreating further and further during the summer months compared to 20 or 30 years ago.
Sea ice in summer has shrunk by 30 per cent on average over the past 30 years while average temperatures in the Arctic have risen by about 4C - more than 3C warmer than the global average.
March 10, 2014, from Indianapolis Star
...In a motion filed Thursday with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, the groups say the plant has been beset by failures and outages that have cut deeply into its ability to generate electricity, even as customers continue to pay for construction and repairs on their monthly electric bills. The plant, in southwestern Indiana, generated only 4 percent of its maximum capacity in January. From June to December, it generated an average of 37 percent of maximum capacity. A typical household using about 1,000 kilowatt hours a month is now being charged $12.67 per month by Duke for costs related to the plant.
March 10, 2009, from New Scientist
that's the first big message to come from the climate change congress that kicked off in Copenhagen, Denmark, today.
Researchers, including John Church of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, presented evidence that Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice fast, contributing to the annual sea-level rise. Recent data shows that waters have been rising by 3 millimetres a year since 1993. ... By 2100, sea levels could be 1 metre or more above current levels, he says. And it looks increasingly unlikely that the rise will be much less than 50 centimetres.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast a rise of 18 cm to 59 cm by 2100. But the numbers came with a heavy caveat that often went unnoticed by the popular press.... Church says even 50 cm would have a huge effect on flooding events. "Our study on Australia showed that coastal flooding events that today we expect only once every 100 years will happen several times a year by 2100," he says.
March 10, 2009, from eTaiwanNews
The concentrations of methane gas measured at the remote islands of Svalbard rose by 0.6 percent in 2007 compared to the previous year, according to a statement by the Norwegian Pollution Control Authority.
The latest figure was also 1 percent higher than in 2004. A sharp rise in methane levels could dramatically increase global warming, the authority said.
Similar increases were noted at other monitoring stations in Ireland and northern Canada. The cause has yet to be determined but preliminary figures suggest the trend continued in 2008, the statement said.... "That is a relatively large increase, especially since methane levels were virtually stable from 1999 until 2005," said Myhre. "The increases being bigger at Svalbard than other areas can be an indication that the source is in the far north."
March 10, 2009, from National Research Council, via EurekAlert
Currently many state and local governments and private organizations are basing decisions -- such as how and where to build bridges or implement zoning laws -- on the assumption that current climate conditions will continue, an assumption that is no longer valid.
Informing Decisions in a Changing Climte, new from the National Research Council, recommends principles for federal agencies to follow when conveying climate change information to these decision makers, and assesses whether a larger federal initiative to disseminate such information is needed.
March 10, 2009, from London Guardian
Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.
The rapid acidification is caused by the massive amounts of carbon dioxide belched from chimneys and exhausts that dissolve in the ocean. The chemical change is placing "unprecedented" pressure on marine life such as shellfish and lobsters and could cause widespread extinctions, the experts say.
The study, by scientists at Bristol University, will be presented at a special three-day summit of climate scientists in Copenhagen, which opens today. The conference is intended to update the science of global warming and to shock politicians into taking action on carbon emissions.
The Bristol scientists cannot talk about their unpublished results until they are announced later today. But a summary of the findings seen by the Guardian predicts "dangerous" levels of ocean acidification and severe consequences for organisms called marine calcifiers, which form chalky shells.
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Resource
Depletion
March 10, 2009, from Scitizen.com
The genesis of his rather radical views--radical, that is, for a Texas oilman--are a simple question he asked himself several years ago: What happens to oil exports in a world with constrained oil supplies? ... His pondering led to the creation of the the Export Land Model. It goes something like this: A hypothetical oil exporter--let's call it Export Land--has reached its peak in oil production. Assume domestic users consume half of all the oil produced in Export Land at the moment; assume a 5 percent annual decline rate for production; and assume a 2˝ percent annual increase in domestic consumption. The result is that Export Land reaches zero exports in an astonishingly short nine years.
March 10, 2009, from Reuters
t's hard to visualize a water crisis while driving the lush boulevards of Los Angeles, golfing Arizona's green fairways or watching dancing Las Vegas fountains leap more than 20 stories high.
So look Down Under. A decade into its worst drought in a hundred years Australia is a lesson of what the American West could become.
Bush fires are killing people and obliterating towns. Rice exports collapsed last year and the wheat crop was halved two years running. Water rationing is part of daily life.
"Think of that as California's future," said Heather Cooley of California water think tank the Pacific Institute.
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Recovery
March 10, 2014, from New York Times
More Americans used buses, trains and subways in 2013 than in any year since 1956 as service improved, local economies grew and travelers increasingly sought alternatives to the automobile for trips within metropolitan areas, the American Public Transportation Association said in a report released on Monday.
The trade group said in its annual report that 10.65 billion passenger trips were taken on transit systems during the year, surpassing the post-1950s peak of 10.59 million in 2008, when gas prices rose to $4 to $5 a gallon.
March 10, 2011, from Scientific American
Mangroves are tangled orchards of spindly shrubs that thrive in the interface between land and sea. They bloom in muddy soil where the water is briny and shallow, and the air muggy. Salt marshes and sea grasses also flourish in these brackish hinterlands. Worldwide, these coastal habitats are recognized for their natural beauty and ability to filter pollution, house fish nurseries and buffer shorelines against storms.
Less known is their ability to sequester vast amounts of carbon--up to five times that stored in tropical forests. Dubbed "blue carbon" because of their littoral environment, these previously undervalued coastal carbon sinks are beginning to gain attention from the climate and conservation communities....
To date, human encroachment has destroyed more than 35 percent of mangroves, 30 percent of sea grass meadows and 20 percent of salt marshes.
Stopping such destruction could therefore become an important element in confronting climate change.
March 10, 2009, from Christian Science Monitor
More and more, colleges and universities are not only teaching about environmental issues, they’re “walking the walk” by changing they way they operate. In December 2006, 12 college and university presidents joined together to form the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. They pledged to set target dates for becoming carbon neutral – reducing the carbon emissions from their heating, cooling, electrical, and transportation needs as much as possible and then buying carbon offsets to complete the task. A little more than two years later, 614 colleges and universities in all 50 states have made the commitment. They represent about one-third of the student body at colleges and universities in the United States.
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