Biology
Breach
September 14, 2013, from Seattle Sun-Times
Imagine every person on Earth tossing a hunk of CO2 as heavy as a bowling ball into the sea. That's what we do to the oceans every day....
Scientists once considered that entirely good news, since it removed CO2 from the sky. Some even proposed piping more emissions to the sea.
But all that CO2 is changing the chemistry of the ocean faster than at any time in human history. Now the phenomenon known as ocean acidification -- the lesser-known twin of climate change -- is helping push the seas toward a great unraveling that threatens to scramble marine life on a scale almost too big to fathom, and far faster than first expected....
"There's a train wreck coming and we are in a position to slow that down and make it not so bad," said Stephen Palumbi, a professor of evolutionary and marine biology at Stanford University. "But if we don't start now the wreck will be enormous."...
Roughly a quarter of organisms studied by researchers actually do better in high CO2. Another quarter seem unaffected. But entire marine systems are built around the remaining half of susceptible plants and animals.... [T]he winners will mostly be the weeds."...
The pace of change has caught everyone off guard.
September 14, 2013, from PLoS One, via ScienceDaily
Acidification of the Arctic Ocean is occurring faster than projected, according to new findings published in the journal PLoS ONE. The increase in rate is being blamed on rapidly melting sea ice, a process that may have important consequences for health of the Arctic ecosystem....
The new research shows that acidification in surface waters of the Arctic Ocean is rapidly expanding into areas that were previously isolated from contact with the atmosphere due to the former widespread ice cover.
"A remarkable 20 percent of the Canadian Basin has become more corrosive to carbonate minerals in an unprecedented short period of time. Nowhere on Earth have we documented such large scale, rapid ocean acidification" according to lead researcher and ocean acidification project chief, U.S. Geological Survey oceanographer Lisa Robbins....
"Not only is the ice cover removed leaving the surface water exposed to human-made carbon dioxide, the surface layer of frigid waters is now fresher, and this means less calcium and carbonate ions are available for organisms."
September 14, 2009, from The Columbus Dispatch
Ohio's 55 debris landfills offer a cheap, final resting place for the millions of tons of waste created at construction and demolition sites each year.
But there's a price.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency found a lot more than old concrete, bricks and lumber at 30 landfills it inspected. The EPA says arsenic, benzene and vinyl chloride -- all suspected carcinogens -- and lead, which can damage the brain and nervous system, all are found in the water trickling through the rubble...
At each of the surveyed landfills, including two in central Ohio, officials found as many as 29 pollutants at levels that exceed drinking-water health limits, pollution standards for streams, or both.
September 14, 2009, from Miller-McCune
Hard as it is to be a voice in the wilderness, Judy Hoy has been sounding an alarm in southwestern Montana for more than 13 years.
For years she's been documenting, through autopsies, photos, articles and scientific papers, changes -- mutations, really -- she's observed in various ungulate species in the valley. In particular, she's seen malformed genitalia among male white-tailed deer. Such observations are not unique. More and more scientists are documenting reproductive changes in male animals ranging from cricket frogs to polar bears. But the response from public health and governmental agencies has been underwhelming.... In 1996, the Hoys noticed something strange among the roadkill. "It started with Buck No. 9," Judy said. "We called him that because he was the ninth buck we had seen with malformed genitalia."... The next year, 25 of 49 males had anomalies in their genitals. Between 1998 and 2000, two-thirds of the bucks examined had abnormalities.... She described examining different endocrine-disrupting compounds, like a detective at a murder scene, eliminating suspects until she met up with chlorothalonil, a broad-spectrum fungicide. It had been the go-to fungicide in 1994 when neighboring farmers in Idaho were fighting potato blight.
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Climate
Chaos
September 14, 2009, from Guardian (UK)
The men, says 55-year-old Hawa, are a day behind the women with what remains of their livestock -- some camels and 18 goats out of the 40 they once owned. The rest perished through lack of water -- or were slaughtered for meat so her family could survive a few more days on their journey.... "We have no water," she explains, "and no food. We have left the pastures because we have lost so many goats. We had to come here to seek assistance. For the past two months we have talked and talked about making this decision. We waited because we thought there might be some rain."... "The way the climate is changing -- if it continues -- it will be very difficult to sustain the nomadic way of living. It is a very hard task. We fear that soon people will begin dying not just from the lack of food but from a lack of water."
He believes that despite the terrible conditions visible already, the nomads are currently only at the beginning of what has become a disaster.
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
September 14, 2012, from ScienceDaily
Recent data show that we face a historical and dramatic decline in the Arctic summer sea ice extent. This has believed to be bad news for marine organisms living under the ice. But new research show that perhaps some of the species actually have adapted to minimal ice cover in summer. The scientists call their hypothesis the "Nemo hypothesis."...
The scientists point to an unresolved paradox concerning the evolution and current distribution of ice associated organisms within the Arctic Ocean: How is it possible to retain a large and viable population of organisms totally dependent on sea ice when their habitat is annually reduced by up to 75-80 percent through melting and the Transpolar Drift through the Fram Strait?
September 14, 2009, from
As a film, The Age of Stupid is a strange brew, a combination science fiction drama and present-day documentary. The premise of the narrative makes it work: An archivist in the year 2050 sits atop the now permanently melted Arctic in a structure that houses all the great art and books and media of the history of humanity. The Archivist, played by Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father, The Usual Suspects), muses aloud about the imminent destruction of the habitat, as he sifts through the footage of the past, trying to figure out the answer to an essential question.
Why didn't we try and save ourselves?
The story is a pastiche of snippets of CNN and Fox broadcasters and other media moments, but six main narratives are threaded together, tied more or less loosely by the idea of oil. These are real people, and they represent a broad cross-section of age and geographical location, from the New Orleans-based Alvin Duvernay to 8 year old Jamila, an Iraqi refugee living, homeless, in Jordan.
A third main thread of the story -- in addition to the archivist and the real humans -- are numerous animated pieces that info-graphically and entertainingly tell the story of how mass consumerism and obsession with oil combined to lead to the ruination of the planet.
Three-fold, these elements of The Age of Stupid hold together, anchored by the sweet sad face of The Archivist.
Director Franny Armstrong tackled one facet of consumerism in McLibel and now she's grappling with a larger -- well, the largest == canvas. It was four years in the making, and funded by a "crowd" - i.e. numerous smaller investors, and her film is an entertaining and harrowing look at now through eyes of later.
According to the filmmakers, the documentary started off as a Soderbergh Traffic-style narrative, weaving the six real folks into one complex story called Crude. Knowing that may help you view the film; for me, giant issues of habitat collapse are missing from The Age of Stupid -- most notably the erosive effects of corporate farming, and the potential for potential pandemic plague to be cooked up its cauldrons. Then there's over-population, only slightly brushed against in the film. But understanding that Armstrong and company were hoping to stay on message with oil helps focus an otherwise potentially overwhelming subject.
So as a film, The Age of Stupid works, and as a piece of persuasion... well, you had me at stupid. The title is fun to say, and can morph into any number of entertaining phrases: "Have you seen 'Stupid' yet?" "I thought 'Stupid' was brilliant." "Hey, I'll join the 'Stupid' team!"
The Age of Stupid is going its own way in hopes of building a team of Stupids to help. On Monday, Sept. 21 at 7:30 (Eastern time), a New York-based live presentation of the film will feature the movie, followed by a panel discussion between the filmmakers, scientists and environmental leaders, with Radiohead's Thom Yorke wrapping up the event with an acoustic performance of the film's title track. This gathering will be as green as green can be, from a carbon emission standpoint, and will tape-delay broadcast to more than 30 countries. Hey, we're all in this together, or, rather, all going down together if we don't take the film's message to heart.
Ultimately, to rate this film, to recommend it, to criticize is absurd. On the brink of the December climate gathering in Copenhagen, on the precipice of disaster, shall we quibble about the entertainment value of a piece of culture like The Age of Stupid? The real question is: Does it contribute to the necessary awakening of humanity?
Our stupid answer is: It sure does, stupid.
For a complete list of screens -- there are more than 440 theaters involved -- go to www.FathomEvents.com. And please, carpool, bicycle or use public transportation. Because driving yourself, alone, to the theater would just be ... well, you know. For more info, go to www.ageofstupid.net.
September 14, 2009, from Treehugger.com
The first piece of news from Nanosolar concerns a solar panel factory in Germany with a capacity of 640MW/year. The fully-automated facility is located in Luckenwalde near Berlin, and its inauguration was attended by Germany's Minister of the Environment and the Governor of the State of Brandenburg, among others.
The 640 megawatts per year number if reached when the factory is operated 24/7 at the rate of 1 solar panel every 10 seconds (!). Nanosolar has also announced that serial production in its San Jose, California, cell production factory commenced earlier this year and that production would be ramping up to meet the $4.1 billion in contracts that they already have....
September 14, 2009, from SciDev.net
Bangladesh is set to host a new international centre for research and training in climate change adaptation activities.
The International Centre for Climate Change and Development's official launch is planned for late November, at the end of its first course, Terry Cannon, the centre's visiting director of studies, told SciDev.Net.... "The idea is to bring together people from around the world who are working on community-based adaptation with vulnerable groups," explains Huq.
Huq says that although several universities in industrialised countries around the world are developing climate change courses, the new centre can provide something more -- particularly for students from less developed countries, who will be able to experience first-hand the realities of climate change in Bangladesh and link them to the situation in their home countries.
"Bangladesh is a living laboratory on climate change adaptation," he says. "We will take students out to see what is happening. It will be more than just a classroom exercise."
September 14, 2009, from Seattle Times
"We don't expect it to be here already," Ormsbee said. "But we need to start doing surveillance early."
More than 1 million bats already have perished in what one expert described as the most precipitous decline in American wildlife in recorded history. Extinctions are likely if the white-nose disease continues to spread, and could lead to a population explosion of mosquitoes and other insect pests normally held in check by the winged predators.... First discovered in 2006 in a popular tourist cave in New York state, white-nose syndrome has spread to hundreds of sites in nine states. Marked by a powdery, white fungus on the bats' noses and wings, the infection can kill 95 percent or more of hibernating animals in a cave.
"When I talk to colleagues back East, they tell me they go into these caves and they cry," said Greg Falxa, a bat biologist with Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia. "They can't walk without stepping on dead bats."...
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