Biology
Breach
August 9, 2013, from The Asahi Shimbun, via Desdemona
Radioactivity levels soared 47-fold over just five days in groundwater from a monitoring well on the ocean side of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the plant operator said Aug. 5.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said 56,000 becquerels of radioactive substances, including strontium, were detected per liter of groundwater sampled on Aug. 5 in the "No. 1-5" monitoring well, which is adjacent to the turbine building for the No. 1 reactor. The previous measurement for the well water was made on July 31.
August 9, 2012, from San Francisco Chronicle
The damage caused by a fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond will take months to repair and will hobble one of the West Coast's biggest sources of fuel, industry experts said Wednesday.
And while panic buying appears to have prompted a jump in wholesale gasoline prices after Monday night's fire, analysts say, the longer-term effect on California drivers may not be as dire as initially feared.
August 9, 2011, from Politico
The fight between The New York Times and the natural gas industry is going nuclear.
A series of critical articles in the paper of record has the natural gas industry fuming as it struggles to persuade the public that hydraulic fracturing is a safe, clean, inexpensive and reliable way of securing the nation's energy supply for decades to come. The stories from reporter Ian Urbina have spurred federal investigators and caused falling stock prices. They've questioned the environmental impacts of gas drilling on drinking water as well as the economic health of the industry, casting doubt on rosy federal projections of gas's future and using anonymous quotes to compare the shale gas boom to Enron and the dot-com stock bubble.
August 9, 2011, from Telegraph.co.uk
Some 83 incidents of algae have been reported to environmental authorities so far this year, starving lakes of oxygen and putting native species at threat.
The highest ever number of annual reported incidents was 226 five years ago, but the Environment Agency said this year was an unusually bad one....
The Environment Agency has issued a warning of further 'potential hazards' in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire as more outbreaks are expected....
The Government agency blamed the hot weather and the recent drought, which means the algae can grow faster, for the high levels of algae blooms, along with phosphate nutrients from fertilisers used on farms.
Environmentalists pointed out that there have been cool periods and rain this year, and said the outbreak was made much worse than expected because of pollution from farms and sewage works and water companies taking too much water from the streams.
August 9, 2009, from Environmental Health News
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria can persist in chicken manure that is intended for use as a fertilizer on farm fields.
Large piles of aging chicken manure to be used as fertilizer on farm crops can house bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, finds a study from Johns Hopkins University.
The results raise concern that typical storage conditions may fail to keep the microbes from reaching people through contaminated food or drinking water. Poultry manure is not required to be treated before it is applied to farm fields.
Poultry producers commonly use antibiotics to promote growth of the chickens. This can lead to bacteria in the chickens' digestive system becoming resistant to antibiotics. The antibiotic-resistant bacteria are excreted and wind up in the manure – or poultry litter.
The poultry industry in the United States produces an estimated 13 to 26 million metric tons of manure each year.
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Climate
Chaos
August 9, 2015, from Dahr Jamail, via TruthOut
... As if that's not enough, Hansen's study comes on the heels of another study published in Science, which shows that global sea levels could rise by at least 20 feet, even if governments manage to keep global temperature increases to within the agreed upon "safe" limit of 2 degrees Celsius.... Disconcertingly, another new "normal" this month comes in the form of huge plumes of wildfire smoke over the Arctic. At the time of this writing, well over 12 million acres of forest and tundra in Canada and Alaska have burned in wildfires, and the smoke covering the Arctic sea ice is yet another anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) amplifying feedback loop that will accelerate melting there. The additional smoke further warms the atmosphere that quickens the melting of the Arctic ice pack....
"The results show that based on plausible climate trends, and a total failure to change course, the global food supply system would face catastrophic losses, and an unprecedented epidemic of food riots," the Institute's director, Dr. Aled Jones, told Insurge Intelligence. "In this scenario, global society essentially collapses as food production falls permanently short of consumption."...
August 9, 2012, from University of Alberta
... A University of Alberta-led international research team examined data on a population of Columbian ground squirrels and found a trend of late spring snow falls has delayed the animals' emergence from hibernation by 10 days over the last 20 years. "Losing just 10 days during their short active period reduces their opportunity to eat enough food so they can survive through the next hibernation period of eight to nine months," said [U of A Evolutionary Ecologist Jeff Lane]... The period of plant growth, their food supply, is only three to four months long on their home turf, skirting the Rocky Mountains.
August 9, 2012, from University of Colorado at Boulder
An international research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Helsinki has discovered a surprising new chemical compound in Earth's atmosphere that reacts with sulfur dioxide to form sulfuric acid, which is known to have significant impacts on climate and health. The new compound, a type of carbonyl oxide, is formed from the reaction of ozone with alkenes, which are a family of hydrocarbons with both natural and human-made sources, said Roy "Lee" Mauldin III, a research associate in CU-Boulder's atmospheric and oceanic sciences department and lead study author. The study charts a previously unknown chemical pathway for the formation of sulfuric acid, which can result both in increased acid rain and cloud formation as well as negative respiratory effects on humans.
August 9, 2012, from Live Science
The record-breaking temperatures of the past few years are getting more people thinking about bigger solutions to climate change. Ideas once thought of as wacky are now receiving careful consideration, including an idea that sounds straight out of science fiction: cooling the earth by launching reflective mirrors into space.
Lowell Wood of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory proposed a giant space mirror in the early 2000s, though he cautioned that the mirror should be considered only as a measure of last resort. Why? Because the mirror would have to have an area of 600,000 square miles - a slightly smaller area than Greenland - and launching something that big would be prohibitively expensive. Another option: billions of smaller mirrors. Roger Angel, researcher and optics expert at the University of Arizona, proposed that idea in 2006.
August 9, 2011, from International Business Times
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that focuses on the condition of the oceans and atmosphere, said a severe solar storm could cause global disruptions in GPS systems, power grids, satellite communications, and airline communications. With solar activity expected to peak around 2013, the Sun is entering a particularly active time and big flares like the recent one will likely be common during the next few years... some scientists believe that another such event is now overdue...This is a special problem in the United States and especially a severe threat in the eastern United States as Federal Government studies revealed that this extreme solar activity and emissions may result in complete blackouts for years in several areas of the nation. Moreover, there may also be disruption of power supply for years, or even decades, as geomagnetic currents attracted by the storm could debilitate the transformers.
August 9, 2011, from McClatchy Newspapers
The Obama administration, facing withering criticism from business that onerous environmental rules are behind the stalled economy, looks poised to miss another key deadline for new standards to clean up smog, according to lobbyists and environmentalists.
After agreeing to work with environmentalists who had sued the administration over the standards, the Environmental Protection Agency has delayed issuing rules on low-level ozone, the main ingredient in smog, four times since 2010.
August 9, 2011, from ThinkProgress
The Arctic is all but certain to be virtually ice free within two decades (barring extreme volcanic activity). I'm happy to make bets with any bloggers, like Andy Revkin, who apparently believe otherwise.
The recent scientific literature makes clear that while that death spiral could theoretically be reversed, it would require policies that climate science deniers have successfully demonized, policies many in the traditional media regularly pooh pooh or undercut.
So we have passed a de facto tipping point, "the critical point in an evolving situation that leads to a new and irreversible development." If that wasn't obvious from observations, then it should have been clear from a December study in Nature widely misunderstood by the media. That study showed sea ice extent crashing by two thirds by the 2030s and then collapsing to near-zero shortly thereafter -- unless we cut GHG emissions about 60 percent to 70 percent almost immediately and have further cuts after that, an implausible assumption the authors never spelled out clearly....
The best recent models show staggeringly high Arctic warming this century if we stay on our current emissions path (see "M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10 deg F -- with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20 deg F"). Cooling ain't in the cards. Quite the reverse.
August 9, 2009, from Associated Press
The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles (square kilometers) of ice on Sunday in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap... As of Thursday, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported, the polar ice cap extended over 2.61 million square miles (6.75 million square kilometers) after having shrunk an average 41,000 square miles (106,000 square kilometers) a day in July -- equivalent to one Indiana or three Belgiums daily.
The rate of melt was similar to that of July 2007, the year when the ice cap dwindled to a record low minimum extent of 1.7 million square miles (4.3 million square kilometers) in September.
August 9, 2009, from New York Times
The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say. Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
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Resource
Depletion
August 9, 2012, from Nature
Almost one-quarter of the world's population lives in regions where groundwater is being used up faster than it can be replenished, concludes a comprehensive global analysis of groundwater depletion, published this week in Nature.
Across the world, human civilizations depend largely on tapping vast reservoirs of water that have been stored for up to thousands of years in sand, clay and rock deep underground. These massive aquifers -- which in some cases stretch across multiple states and country borders -- provide water for drinking and crop irrigation, as well as to support ecosystems such as forests and fisheries.
Yet in most of the world's major agricultural regions, including the Central Valley in California, the Nile delta region of Egypt, and the Upper Ganges in India and Pakistan, demand exceeds these reservoirs' capacity for renewal.
August 9, 2011, from Fast Company
Would you drink recycled urine? Residents of Big Spring, Texas may not have a choice--the local water district is breaking ground this year on a $13 million treatment plant that will direct 2 million gallons per day of thoroughly cleaned sewage back into the regular water system. It's a practical solution for a drought-stricken state that is hunting for water wherever it can.
It's not as if wastewater recycling is a new idea. Texas has, in fact, used reclaimed water for over a century. But generally, the recycled water doesn't go to the tap; it's used in parks, golf courses, outdoor fountains, and more. The state has plenty of indirect sewage recycling plants--one of the newer plants filters wastewater through a wetland before sending it out to the facilities that want this so-called "raw water".
In contrast, the Big Spring plant will use sewage that has already gone through a traditional wastewater treatment plant, clean it out further, and combine it in a pipeline with lake water before sending it out to be used by residents in their sinks, toilets, and showers. This is, according to KDAF-TV, the first plant of its kind in the state--and one of the only plants like it in the country.
August 9, 2009, from Sacramento News
As the state entered a severe drought, many of the city of Sacramento's biggest water users increased their watering dramatically, including some familiar locations: the City Cemetery, Land Park and Curtis Park... Even when Sacramento issued its first-ever "spare the water" alert this summer, forbidding outdoor watering by residents from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., the city's own park and cemetery workers apparently missed the memo... In the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery off Broadway and Riverside Drive, streams from antiquated jets pooled on crypts. The cemetery may host a drought-resistant garden of native plants maintained by volunteers, but its overall consumption grew by 76 percent from 2006 to 2008, the second-fastest rise of any large user.
August 9, 2009, from Times Online (UK)
Fly over Mongolia in summer and the steppes look as green as they must have done when Genghis Khan and his armies galloped across the land -- but the switch is startling as the flight crosses the border into China's Inner Mongolian region. The ground suddenly turns brown.
The danger facing Mongolia is that its steppes may be transformed into a desert similar to the one eating away at neighbouring China. The culprit is the humble goat -- and the fascination of fashionistas for cashmere. The money to be earned from "diamond fibre" cashmere, so prized among wealthy shoppers in Europe and the US, has resulted in Mongolia's population of cashmere goats soaring to 40 million in 2007 from 25 million in 1993.
The World Bank warned of grave consequences for the environment and for farmers. "Mongolian herds will be at greater risk of severe weather conditions if growing livestock populations and deteriorating pastureland is not reversed," it said in a report. A combination of the sharp hooves of the goats and their voracious consumption of all greenery -- including roots -- is harming the steppes.
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Recovery
August 9, 2011, from Guardian
Only a year ago Russia was overwhelmed by an exceptional heat wave, triggering hundreds of fires that destroyed thousands of hectares of woodland. Burning peat bogs around Moscow stifled the city in a thick cloud of bitter smoke.
Now, Russia is burning again. Since the beginning of this year more than 1m hectares of forest have gone up in flames, or are still burning, outstripping the disastrous record of 2010. But the affected areas are more sparsely populated and far fewer people have been evacuated.
The far north of Russia is among the areas that have suffered the most. During the last week of July, Arkhangelsk and the Komi republic had temperatures exceeding 35C. More than 80 fire outbreaks were reported.....
Greenpeace claims that the government is playing down the situation. "Official reports indicate 93 hectares of land on fire in the Amur area; in fact it is more like 50,000 hectares, as can be seen from satellite images," says an NGO spokesperson.
The Russian authorities have not so far asked for outside assistance. More than 5,000 fire-fighters have already been deployed, backed by 800 specialist units, some equipped with aircraft. Current, more favourable, weather conditions may make life easier, with temperatures dropping to more usual levels all over Russia.
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