Biology
Breach
June 3, 2014, from Earth Institute, via Science Daily
Some 56 million years ago, a massive pulse of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere sent global temperatures soaring. In the oceans, carbonate sediments dissolved, some organisms went extinct and others evolved.
Scientists have long suspected that ocean acidification caused the crisis -- similar to today, as humanmade CO2 combines with seawater to change its chemistry. Now, for the first time, scientists have quantified the extent of surface acidification from those ancient days, and the news is not good: the oceans are on track to acidify at least as much as they did then, only at a much faster rate....
"We are dumping carbon in the atmosphere and ocean at a much higher rate today -- within centuries," said study coauthor Richard Zeebe, a paleoceanographer at the University of Hawaii. "If we continue on the emissions path we are on right now, acidification of the surface ocean will be way more dramatic than during the PETM."
June 3, 2009, from University of Minnesota
In addition to a 25 percent overall increase in medicines and chemicals in the wastewater, researchers found caffeine in all samples; salicylic acid (the active compound in aspirin) was in 75 percent of samples, ibuprofen in 50 percent and endocrine disruptors -- typically found in birth control pills and hormone replacement products -- in nearly 85 percent. Researchers also found that water use did not vary from season to season, but was affected by the household's age, with younger households using nearly twice the amount of water per person than households with occupants 55 and older.
The good news is a 33 percent decrease in the amount of oil and grease flushed down the drain. Concentrations of phosphates were also down —due to phosphate-free detergents and household cleansers—while the amount of nitrogen in household wastewater remained the same.
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Climate
Chaos
June 3, 2014, from ABC
Seven in 10 Americans see global warming as a serious problem facing the country, enough to fuel broad support for federal efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions - even if it raises their own energy costs, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds.... Sixty-nine percent of Americans in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, see global warming as a serious problem; among them, eight in 10 favor new regulations, and three-quarters are willing to pay higher energy bills if it means significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions.... Even among Republicans, a group generally more skeptical of government regulation - and less apt to see global warming as a serious problem - 63 percent nonetheless favor reducing power plant emissions, and 57 percent back state-level limits on greenhouse gases.
June 3, 2013, from Associated Press
The CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp. says there's no quick replacement for oil, and sharply cutting oil's use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would make it harder to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.
"What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?” CEO Rex Tillerson said at the oil giant's annual meeting Wednesday.
Tillerson jousted with environmental activists who proposed that the company set goals to reduce emissions from its products and operations.
Shareholders sided with the company and voted nearly 3-to-1 to reject the proposal.
June 3, 2013, from Associated Press
The Southern Co. makes billion-dollar decisions that affect millions of people in Georgia, yet it has attracted little political scrutiny -- until now.
Leaders of the Atlanta Tea Party are challenging Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power over the monopoly's reluctance to increase its use of solar power, the ballooning costs of building a new nuclear power plant and even its legal right to monopoly status.
June 3, 2013, from New York Times
Frank R. Lautenberg, who fought the alcohol and tobacco industries and promoted Amtrak as a five-term United States senator from New Jersey, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 89... He was also the author of legislation requiring that by 2012 all cargo destined for United States ports be screened for nuclear material, a requirement that both the Bush and the Obama administrations said could not be met.
June 3, 2013, from University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Researchers at the University of Arkansas are attempting to help the U.S. dairy industry decrease its carbon footprint as concentrations of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere reach record levels... The researchers found that for every kilogram of milk consumed in the United States per year, 2.05 kilograms of greenhouse gases, on average, are emitted over the entire supply chain to produce, process and distribute that milk. This is equivalent to approximately 17.4 pounds per gallon... The largest contributors were feed production, enteric methane -- gas emitted by the animal itself -- and manure management.
June 3, 2013, from Bloomberg
TransCanada Corp. (TRP)'s proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline would benefit U.S. employment and support efforts to tackle climate change, according to the company's Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling.
June 3, 2009, from Greenwire
Since their drubbing in last year's election, Republicans have been looking for someone who can go toe-to-toe with President Obama and other top Democrats, with most suggesting that person must come from beyond Washington.
On energy and climate, at least, such a Republican has emerged.
Indiana's two-term governor, Mitch Daniels, has delivered an energy message that has drawn praise from conservatives and raised the rumored presidential candidate's profile in what is likely to be a crowded Republican field in 2012.
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
June 3, 2014, from Reuters
BEIJING, June 3 (Reuters) - China will set an absolute cap on its CO2 emissions from 2016, a senior government adviser said on Monday, a day after the United States announced new targets for its power sector, signalling a potential breakthrough in tough U.N. climate talks. Progress in global climate negotiations has often been held back by a deep split between rich and poor nations, led by the United States and China, respectively, over who should step up their game to reduce emissions.
But the adviser's statement, coupled with the U.S. announcement, sparked optimism among observers hoping to see the decades-old deadlock broken. The steps come ahead of a global meet on climate change starting on Wednesday in Germany.
June 3, 2009, from New Scientist
For years many companies, governments and researchers have predicted that our energy future must lie with the universe's simplest element. The mooted hydrogen economy would use the gas to store and transport renewable or low-carbon energy, and power fuel cells in the transport sector or in portable electronics.
But creating the necessary society-wide infrastructure has proved difficult and expensive to get off the ground. And now a rival idea, first suggested in 2006 by Nobel chemistry laureate George Olah at the University of Southern California, has received a boost.
The methanol economy, say its supporters, could be with us much sooner than the hydrogen one. Olah's rationale is that modifying our existing oil and petrol-focused infrastructure to run on methanol will be much easier than refitting the world's liquid-fuel-based economy to deal with an explosive gas.
Methanol has already been used to power portable gadgets and could potentially power vehicles and other devices. Now US chemists have worked out the conditions needed to make the feedstock for methanol production using renewable energy.
June 3, 2009, from Los Angeles Times
Despite a fierce lobbying effort by the U.S. chemical industry, the state Senate narrowly approved a proposal Tuesday that would ban the use of a substance in baby bottles, toddler sippy cups and food containers that independent scientists say is a threat to childhood development.
The bill by state Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) that would prohibit the use of bisphenol A -- commonly dubbed BPA -- now goes to the Assembly, where it is expected to face a wall of resistance from manufacturers of the products that contain the chemical...
Researchers from the chemical industry say the public health threat has been vastly overblown, and manufacturers of BPA argue that it has passed muster with nearly a dozen regulatory agencies in Europe and the United States.
June 3, 2009, from WorldWatch Institute
Innovations in food production and land use that are ready to be scaled-up today could reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to roughly 25 percent of global fossil fuel emissions and present the best opportunity to remove greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, according to a new report by the Worldwatch Institute and Ecoagriculture Partners. As the price of carbon rises with new caps on emissions and expanding markets for carbon offsets, the contribution of land-based, or "terrestrial," carbon to climate change mitigation efforts could increase even further.... Mobilizing agricultural carbon sequestration is therefore an essential tool in the effort to reduce the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases to the 350 parts-per-million level that many scientists argue we must achieve to avoid catastrophic climate change. A recent assessment published by Worldwatch in State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World found that emissions of carbon dioxide will have to "go negative" -- with more being absorbed than emitted -- by 2050 to achieve this goal.
June 3, 2009, from BusinessGreen
The average price of solar panels will drop by over a quarter this year, as falling demand and increased supplies of polysilicon combine to drive down prices.
That is the conclusion of a new study from research firm IC Insights, which predicts that despite the reduction in upfront prices, global solar photovoltaic installations will fall by 22 per cent this year as a result of the recession and the scaling back of some European incentives.
However, the report also forecasts that the expansion of new incentive schemes in the US, China and Europe combined with the fact that the polysilicon supply shortages that dogged the industry in recent years have been largely resolved means that the sector will "come charging back in 2010".
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