Biology
Breach
May 8, 2013, from Maclean's
... It's just one of many such stories of muzzled federal scientists and suppressed research that are being brought to the union's attention, he says. All against the backdrop of sweeping cuts to water, air and wildlife monitoring programs, a total restructuring of federal environmental reviews, and the downloading of responsibility for lakes and rivers to the provinces. "It's almost like this government doesn't want any of this stuff to be open to public discussion," says the union leader. "What we're seeing is a total lockdown."
Since taking power in 2006, Stephen Harper's government has rarely been caught on the wrong foot. Disciplined on the hustings, in the House, and above all with the media, Tory ministers and MPs have largely avoided the gaffes and unvarnished opinions that used to plague the conservative movement. But to many of its critics, Ottawa's obsession with controlling the message has become so all-encompassing that it now threatens both the health of Canada's democracy and the country's reputation abroad....
Current policy doesn't just seek to dampen the odd controversial story, it passes every bit of information through a political filter from which almost nothing emerges. "All the government scientists I know tell me that it's never been worse," says Hutchings. "It's like an Iron Curtain has been drawn across the communication of science in this country. And I think there's reason for all of us to be worried about that."
May 8, 2013, from Huffington Post
The Arctic ecosystem, already under pressure from record ice melts, faces another potential threat in the form of rapid acidification of the ocean, according to an international study published on Monday....
Cold water absorbs carbon dioxide more readily than warm water, making the Arctic especially vulnerable. The report said the average acidity of surface ocean waters worldwide was now about 30 percent higher than at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
"Arctic marine waters are experiencing widespread and rapid ocean acidification," said the report by 60 experts for the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, commissioned by the eight nations with Arctic territories.
"Ocean acidification is likely to affect the abundance, productivity and distribution of marine species, but the magnitude and direction of change are uncertain."
May 8, 2012, from Huffington Post
...Disadvantaged kids not only breathe disproportionate amounts bad air, but they also can be more vulnerable to the ill effects of that bad air. As The Huffington Post reported in March, asthma is likely the most notorious of these ailments. Nearly one in four Hispanic and Puerto Rican kids living in poverty in the U.S. has been diagnosed with the condition that can cause wheezing, coughing, breathlessness and chest tightness, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That compares with about one in 13 middle-class or wealthy white children. (The agency also reports similar disparities in exposures to air pollution.)... Just why lower income families more commonly reside in places with dirty air is not clear...
May 8, 2009, from Syracuse Post-Standard
A dedicated band of gardeners have been tilling Syracuse's soil as a way of building community and providing fresh fruits and vegetables to their families. But the plots they have been eating from and others they have been working to develop are contaminated with toxic metals.
In at least some cases, Syracuse city workers were likely the ones who laid down the polluted dirt.
A recent study of six local community gardens by scientists at the State University College of Environmental Science and Forestry showed that all but one of the plots contained elevated levels of lead, according to preliminary results. Samples from one garden in development -- the Isabella Street Community Garden -- exceeded health standards set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The normal level of lead in soil is between 40 and 50 parts per million. The Syracuse gardens have lead levels that range from 46 to 820 parts per million.
Moreover, arsenic levels in all of the plots except for one were off the charts, said ESF professor Venera Jouraeva, who led the study.
May 8, 2009, from Charleston Gazette
The Bush administration kept secret for nearly five years data that showed increased cancer risks from drinking water polluted by coal-ash impoundments, according to a new report issued Thursday.
Under President Bush, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials never made public an October 2002 study that outlined increased risks of as high as 1 in 50 additional cancer cases.
EPA later published some of the data in an August 2007 study. But even then, the agency report left out some key information about additional dangers to aquatic ecosystems and wildlife from toxic metals leaching out of unlined or inadequately lined coal-ash dumps.
The Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice on Thursday issued a report that tries to explain in simple language the findings in both EPA documents, which examined more than 200 coal-ash landfills and surface impoundments.
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Climate
Chaos
May 8, 2013, from CBCNews
The biggest oil and gas pipeline company in Canada is breaking National Energy Board safety rules at 117 of its 125 pump stations across the country, but Enbridge says it's not to blame.
Enbridge was ordered by the Canadian energy regulator to disclose whether or not it had backup power to operate emergency shut-down systems in the facilities that keep oil flowing through its pipes. The company told the NEB only eight of its pump stations complied with the board's backup power system regulation.
On top of that, Enbridge disclosed that 83 of its pump stations were missing emergency shut-down buttons.
May 8, 2013, from Bloomberg News
Methane emissions from coal mines escaped being curbed by the Environmental Protection Agency, which said mandatory U.S. budget cuts didn't leave it with the resources to determine if the pollution is a significant risk.
The EPA rejected a petition from environmental groups, which three years ago asked the agency to limit the greenhouse gases released from the mines.... The denial, set to be published tomorrow in the Federal Register, is at least the fourth category of emitters the agency has refused to regulate, disappointing groups and some lawmakers who say that EPA needs to take bolder, quicker action to combat the threat of global warming. EPA turned down a petition to curb emissions from aircraft, ships and off-highway trucks in June.
May 8, 2013, from Al Jazeera
Another week of international climate negotiations ended in Bonn, Germany on Friday, but there was little mid-level bureaucrats could do when world leaders remain in thrall to the fossil fuel industry, say environmentalists.
May 8, 2012, from USA Today
From gas-mileage standards to tax breaks for windmills, public support for "green" energy measures to tackle global warming has dropped significantly in the past two years, particularly among Republicans, a new poll suggests.... Overall, support for various steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions has dropped an average of 10 percentage points since 2010, from 72 percent to 62 percent, lead researcher Jon Krosnick says. "Most Americans (62 percent) still support industry taking steps aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions," Krosnick says, "but they hate the idea of consumer taxes to do it."...Krosnick suggests that distrust of environmental scientists among Republican voters, expressed by about 41 percent of them in the poll, may explain much of the drop.
May 8, 2012, from Chronicle of Higher Education
Scores of animal scientists employed by public universities have helped pharmaceutical companies persuade farmers and ranchers to use antibiotics, hormones, and drugs like Zilmax to make their cattle grow bigger ever faster. With the use of these products, the average weight of a fattened steer sold to a packing plant is now roughly 1,300 pounds--up from 1,000 pounds in 1975.
It's been a profitable venture for the drug companies, as well as for the professors and their universities.
May 8, 2011, from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
A two-part study by scientists from the U.S Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Los Alamos National Laboratory paints one of the most detailed pictures yet of how climate change could impact millions of tons of methane frozen in sediment beneath the Arctic Ocean. Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases.
The initial phase of the project found that buried deposits of clathrates, which are icy crystalline compounds that encase methane molecules, will break apart as the global temperature increases and the oceans warm.
In the second phase, the scientists found that methane would then seep into the Arctic Ocean and gradually overwhelm the marine environment's ability to break down the gas. Supplies of oxygen, nutrients, and trace metals required by methane-eating microbes would dwindle year-by-year as more methane enters the water. After three decades of methane release, much of the methane may bubble to the surface -- where it has the potential to accelerate climate change....
Their research counters the view held by some scientists that the oceans will always consume big plumes of methane. Indeed, small-scale methane releases have been seeping from seafloor vents for eons. In these cases, hungry ocean-dwelling microbes quickly oxidize most of the methane before it escapes into the atmosphere.
But this cycle will be disrupted if the Arctic region's vast stores of clathrates break apart and unleash a rash of new methane seeps, the scientists found.
"Large-scale methane releases have a greater impact than we anticipated," adds Reagan. "When this happens, microbes cannot consume all of the methane because there isn't enough oxygen to fuel them."
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Resource
Depletion
May 8, 2009, from New York Times
Cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, once hailed by President George W. Bush as a pollution-free solution for reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil, will not be practical over the next 10 to 20 years, the energy secretary said Thursday, and the government will cut off funds for the vehicles' development.... The Energy Department will continue to pay for research into stationary fuel cells, which Dr. Chu said could be used like batteries on the power grid and do not require compact storage of hydrogen.
The Obama administration will also establish eight "energy innovation hubs," small centers for basic research that Dr. Chu referred to as "Bell Lablettes." These will be financed for five years at a time to lure more scientists into the energy area.
"We're very devoted to delivering solutions -- not just science papers, but solutions -- but it will require some basic science," Dr. Chu, who won a Nobel Prize for his work in physics, said at a news conference.
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Recovery
May 8, 2009, from DOE, via EurekAlert
America's power grid today resembles the country's canal system of the 19th Century. A marvel of engineering for its time, the canal system eventually could not keep pace with the growing demands of transcontinental transportation.
More than 150 years later, America's infrastructure is again changing in ways that its designers never anticipated. Distributed and intermittent electricity generation, such as wind power, is rapidly expanding, new smart meters are giving consumers more control over their energy usage, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles may someday radically increase the overall demand for electricity.... "Implementing smart grid technologies on a large scale will not be trivial," Petri added. "The challenges go beyond technical and economic issues. The smart grid technologies could fundamentally change how national power grid systems operate and respond to disruptions."
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