Biology Breach
March 19, 2014, from Reuters
A major oil pipeline owned by Sunoco Logistics Partners LP leaked thousands of gallons of crude oil into a nature preserve in southwest Ohio late on Monday.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 gallons (26,000-38,000 liters) of sweet crude leaked into the Oak Glen Nature Preserve about a quarter of a mile from the Great Miami River, according to early estimates from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
March 19, 2014, from Wired
One of agricultural biotechnology's great success stories may become a cautionary tale of how short-sighted mismanagement can squander the benefits of genetic modification.
After years of predicting it would happen -- and after years of having their suggestions largely ignored by companies, farmers and regulators -- scientists have documented the rapid evolution of corn rootworms that are resistant to Bt corn.
Until Bt corn was genetically altered to be poisonous to the pests, rootworms used to cause billions of dollars in damage to U.S. crops. Named for the pesticidal toxin-producing Bacillus thuringiensis gene it contains, Bt corn now accounts for three-quarters of the U.S. corn crop. The vulnerability of this corn could be disastrous for farmers and the environment.
March 19, 2013, from USA Today
...The [Anerican] Bird Conservancy, one of the nation's most active bird-conservation groups, released a 97-page report Monday that says that independent studies of the damage to birds and aquatic ecosystems they depend upon for food raise "significant environmental concerns" and that the Environmental Protection Agency has been too lenient in allowing the use of this class of insecticides, called neonicotinoids.
Their possible role in the decline of honeybee populations in the USA and Europe has spurred intense debate among scientists, wildlife advocates and manufacturers, and the EPA is re-evaluating its registration of this class of insecticide.
March 19, 2013, from Associated Press
A power failure at Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant on Monday night has left three fuel storage pools without fresh cooling water for hours, the plant's operator said.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the power failure at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant was brief at its command center but continued for hours at three of the seven fuel storage pools and at several other facilities, including one that treats water contaminated with radioactivity.
March 19, 2012, from CTV
Arctic sea ice that's been melting at a dramatic rate in the last few decades is releasing a chemical soup that could poison the food chain with mercury and other dangerous chemicals, a new study suggests....
Over the last 30 years, the amount ice that survives the summer melt and grows again in the winter is becoming significantly smaller (12 per cent per decade), resulting in a much thinner and more salty form of ice.
When the "new" ice melts, it releases a higher concentration of the chemicals into the air that create the mercury, the study found....
Mercury is a toxic substance that can enter the food chain and eventually be ingested by humans through food consumption.
"This is being concentrated in things like fish and it's working it way up the food chain," geochemist Norman Halden said in the report.
March 19, 2011, from The Vancouver Sun
No matter where you travel on the B.C. coast, no matter how remote or seemingly untrammelled and pristine the fiord or inlet, a piece of plastic, Styrofoam or other garbage has been there before you. God knows how it got there: Dumped recklessly off a vessel, swept down a river or through a storm drain, blown by the wind off the land, or brought in by the ocean currents flowing across the vast North Pacific - including debris from the Japanese tsunami, which could start arriving on our coast in two years.
What we do know is that marine garbage is ubiquitous and wreaking havoc at every level of the marine environment.
A new B.C. study estimates there are 36,000 pieces of "synthetic marine debris" -garbage the size of fists to fridges -floating around the coastline, from remote inland fiords to 150 kilometres offshore.
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Climate Chaos
March 19, 2014, from New York Times
...the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society ... released a stark report Tuesday on global warming.
The report warns that the effects of human emissions of heat-trapping gases are already being felt, that the ultimate consequences could be dire, and that the window to do something about it is closing.
"The evidence is overwhelming: Levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising," says the report. "Temperatures are going up. Springs are arriving earlier. Ice sheets are melting. Sea level is rising. The patterns of rainfall and drought are changing. Heat waves are getting worse, as is extreme precipitation. The oceans are acidifying."
March 19, 2014, from McClatchy
The Rocky Mountain wildflower season has lengthened by over a month since the 1970s, according to a study published Monday that found climate change is altering the flowering patterns of more species than previously thought.
Flowers used to bloom from mid-May to early September, but the season now lasts 35 days longer, from April to mid-September, according to researchers who collected 39 years of data at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte, Colo.... The scientific paper is the latest to document one of the strongest signs that global warming is shaking up the natural world. Scientists studying phenology - the timing of seasonal events in nature - are observing rapid shifts in when flowers bloom, trees leaf out and bees, birds and butterflies appear in the spring.
March 19, 2014, from Reuters
California is coming off of its warmest winter on record, aggravating an enduring drought in the most populous U.S. state, federal weather scientists said Monday.
The state had a average temperature of 48 Fahrenheit (9 Celsius) for December, January and February, an increase from 47.2 F in 1980-81, the last hottest winter, and more than 4 degrees hotter than the 20th-century average in California, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a statement.
Warmer winters could make the already parched state even drier by making it less likely for snow to accumulate in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, NOAA spokesman Brady Phillips said. That snow, melting in the spring and summer and running down through the state's rivers, is vital for providing water in the summer, when the state typically experiences little rain.
March 19, 2013, from London Guardian
At face value, it is not one of the world's most important relationships. When Norway and China fell out two years ago over a Nobel prize awarded to a Chinese dissident, the spat had little wider resonance.
But diplomatic relations are thawing as quickly as Arctic ice â€" and the upshot could be significant for the frigid northern wastes of the planet, which are thought to sit on formidable quantities of mineral reserves.
China has been cosying up to Arctic countries as part of its effort to secure "permanent observer" status on the Arctic Council, an eight-country political body that decides regional policy. Norway was initially sniffy at the approaches because of the Nobel row, but appears to have changed its tune before a formal decision in May.
March 19, 2012, from BusinessGreen
When Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed resigned last month, many people outside the archipelago were shocked to hear the leader, famed for once holding a scuba diving underwater cabinet conference to raise the alarm on rising sea levels, may have been ousted in a de facto coup.
The country was plunged into a political crisis when Nasheed agreed to step down on 7 February amid protests against his rule. He later said he was forced to leave by an army "mutiny" and resigned at gunpoint, a claim denied by Mohamed Waheed -- Nasheed's successor and former vice president, who said the transfer of power was constitutional.... Nasheed's resignation will also come as a blow to those countries arguing for swift action on climate change. He was widely hailed as a leading voice for the small island states, many of which will be the first to suffer from rising sea levels.
March 19, 2012, from Washington Post
Hanover, Germany -- Shiny black solar panels are as common a sight as baroque church spires in this industrial hub, thanks to government subsidies that have helped make Germany a world leader in solar technology.
Now, sudden subsidy cuts here and elsewhere in Europe have thrown the industry into crisis just short of its ultimate goal: a price to generate solar energy that is no higher than fossil-fuel counterparts. Across Europe, governments are slashing public spending to cut their deficits, and green-energy subsidies are a target, too...
March 19, 2012, from McClatchy Newspapers
As natural gas production in the United States hits an all-time high, a major unanswered question looms: What does growing hydraulic fracturing mean for climate change?
The Obama administration lists natural gas as one of the "clean energy sources" it wants to expand. When burned, natural gas emits about half the heat-trapping carbon dioxide as coal. Yet natural gas production can result in releases of methane into the atmosphere.
Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane can enter the atmosphere when gas is stored or transported, but it's particularly a concern with shale gas production during flowback -- when fracking fluids, water and gases flow out of a well after drilling but before the gas is put into pipelines.
March 19, 2011, from Nature
At a subcommittee hearing on 14 March, anger and distrust were directed at scientists and respected scientific societies. Misinformation was presented as fact, truth was twisted and nobody showed any inclination to listen to scientists, let alone learn from them. It has been an embarrassing display, not just for the Republican Party but also for Congress and the US citizens it represents....
[T]he legislation is fundamentally anti-science, just as the rhetoric that supports it is grounded in wilful ignorance. One lawmaker last week described scientists as "elitist" and "arrogant" creatures who hide behind "discredited" institutions....
[T]o deny that there is reason to be concerned, given the decades of work by countless scientists, is irresponsible.
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Resource Depletion
March 19, 2009, from New Scientist
The battering taken by Caribbean coral reefs is finally taking its toll on the fish that dwell in them, a large new study suggests.
"We are seeing striking declines that are amazingly consistent across a huge area and very different types of fish," says Michelle Paddack of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. "The losses affect both large fish that are hunted by fishers and small fish that aren't."... Starting from the mid 1990s, in all regions covered by the studies, fish numbers have fallen by between 2.7 and 6 percent per year.
Paddack suspects that as well as overfishing, coral demise from disease and bleaching is to blame, together with pollution from coastal development.
March 19, 2009, from BusinessGreen
The UK's chief scientist will today warn that political and business leaders have just 20 years to prepare for a "perfect storm" of climate change-related impacts on food, water and energy supplies or risk public unrest, conflict and mass migration.... According to Beddington, demand for food and energy will increase 50 per cent by 2030, while demand for fresh water will rise 30 per cent as the population grows to top 8.3 billion.
At the same time, climate change is expected to result in falling levels of agricultural productivity and water shortages across many hot regions, leading to mass migration and increased risks of cross-border conflict.
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Recovery
March 19, 2014, from New York Times
President Obama wants Americans to see how climate change will remake their own backyards -- and to make it as easy as opening a web-based app.
As part of its effort to make the public see global warming as a tangible, immediate and urgent problem, the White House on Wednesday will inaugurate a website aimed at turning scientific data about projected droughts and wildfires and the rise in sea levels into eye-catching digital presentations that can be mapped using an app.
March 19, 2013, from NPR
Cyprus has about as many residents as the Bronx. All Cypriot banks combined are smaller than the 30th-largest U.S. bank. So why is the country's financial system front-page news today?
The answer, in large part, comes down to two words: Deposit insurance. Deposit insurance is one of those boring-sounding finance terms that's central to the way the world works today. Everybody is freaking out over Cyprus because the country just called into question the sanctity of deposit insurance.
Deposit insurance was invented because of a frightening fact: Even the most boring, safe, neighborhood bank is in a crazy, risky business. A bank takes money people put in checking and savings accounts -- money those people are allowed to withdraw at any time -- and lends it out to people who don't have to pay it back for 30 years....
In Cyprus, deposit insurance covers accounts up to 100,000 euros. At least, it was supposed to. But this weekend, the country broke the fundamental promise of deposit insurance.....
March 19, 2012, from The Oregonian
...Bald eagles are back, baby. They're out on Sauvie Island, around Bend, up at Wallowa Lake and throughout the lower Columbia River. Drive down Interstate 5 in late winter and you may see them in bright green fields along the freeway. Ride your bike along Portland's Springwater Trail and it's common to see a baldie giving a baleful stare from tree or transmission tower.
The state wildlife commission took bald eagles off the state endangered species list this month; it was removed from the federal list in 2007.
March 19, 2012, from ClimateProgress
Favorite denier myths such as "it's the Sun" and "CO2 lags temperature" were addressed by Dr. Hansen and shown to be wrong or irrelevant. He also discussed how amplifying feedbacks in the past took small changes in temperature due to slight changes in the Earth's orbit and either initiated or ended ice ages. He then said these same amplifying feedbacks will occur today if we do not stop the warming. "The physics does not change."
Besides the impacts that are already occurring, Dr. Hansen said that if we do not stop the warming, we should expect sea levels to rise this century by 1 to 5 meters (3 to 18 feet), extinction of 20 to 50 percent of species, and massive droughts later this century. He said that the recent Texas heat wave, Moscow's heat wave the year before, and the 2003 heat wave in Europe we "exceptional" events that now occur 25 to 50 times more often than just 50 years ago. Therefore, he concluded, we can say with high confidence that these heat waves were "caused" by global warming.
A key solution to climate change, Dr. Hansen said, is to out a simple, honest price on carbon. He proposed a "Fee and Dividend" approach where an increasing fee on CO2 is paid by fossil fuel companies and 100 percent of the proceeds are distributed to every legal resident. Besides lowering carbon emissions, this will also stimulate innovation and create millions of jobs.
March 19, 2011, from ASA, via EurekAlert
Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas and a precursor to compounds that contribute to the destruction of the ozone. Intensively managed, grazed pastures are responsible for an increase in nitrous oxide emissions from grazing animals' excrement. Biochar is potentially a mitigation option for reducing the world's elevated carbon dioxide emissions, since the embodied carbon can be sequestered in the soil. Biochar also has the potential to beneficially alter soil nitrogen transformations.
Laboratory tests have indicated that adding biochar to the soil could be used to suppress nitrous oxide derived from livestock. Biochar has been used for soil carbon sequestration in the same manner....
Addition of biochar to the soil allowed for a 70 percent reduction in nitrous oxide fluxes over the course of the study. Nitrogen contribution from livestock urine to the emitted nitrous oxide decreased as well. The incorporation of biochar into the soil had no detrimental effects on dry matter yield or total nitrogen content in the pasture.
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