Biology
Breach
August 15, 2012, from Associated Press
Researchers say increasing amounts of underwater noise, largely from shipping traffic, is enveloping rare right whales in "acoustic smog" that makes it harder for them to communicate.
The endangered North Atlantic right whale relies far more on sound than sight, using distinctive noises to maintain contact.
August 15, 2012, from San Francisco Chronicle
The Richmond refinery fire that sent more than 9,000 people to emergency rooms could have been touched off when a cloud of flammable vapor reached an idling and abandoned Chevron fire truck, investigators said Tuesday.
A company surveillance videotape that captured the two minutes before the blast showed that a dense vapor cloud fueled by the leak expanded to more than 200 feet wide and 200 feet high at the refinery's Crude Unit No. 4, surrounding as many as a dozen workers, who fled just in time.
August 15, 2011, from Agence France-Press
Royal Dutch Shell Plc was silent yesterday on the status of an oil leak of unspecified size in the North Sea and authorities said they had no information on whether the leak had been stemmed, provoking anger from environmentalists.
The Anglo Dutch oil major said on Friday that it had discovered the leak from a flow line at its Gannet Alpha Platform and said then it was working to stem the flow. The company declined to comment yesterday.
August 15, 2011, from Washington Post
The White House is engaged in an intense debate over how much it should tighten national smog standards, an issue that has sparked a battle between business and public health groups.
On Friday the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would "shortly" issue the final rules, which were delayed three times last year and again late last month. As the Office of Management and Budget reviews the agency's final proposal, which was submitted July 11, business groups have joined many state and local officials in launching a concerted push to delay any new standards until 2013...While the most polluted areas would have up to 20 years to meet the new standards, business leaders suggest it could delay the permitting of not only new industrial facilities but the expansion of existing ones.
August 15, 2011, from Huffington Post
The bright red skull-and-crossbones signs are hard to miss and increasingly common on Pacific Northwest beaches. A whole new fleet just popped up along the shores of a small bay between the Pacific Ocean and Puget Sound.
On Friday, Washington State health officials reported the first U.S. illnesses linked to one particular strain of toxin triggered by an algal bloom. Three people came down with Diarrhetic Shellfish Poisoning (DSP) after eating mussels from Sequim Bay, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The bay is now closed to shellfish harvesting....
Although the culprit biotoxin hadn't been previously detected at unsafe levels in U.S. shellfish, thousands of people in Europe, Asia and South America have reportedly suffered its unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms in recent years....
Excess nutrients entering the waterway, including fertilizers, pet waste and sewage, might also contribute to the proliferation of the microscopic marine plants. "A heavy rainfall could produce the last slug of nutrients for algae to start blooming in mass," said Moore.
August 15, 2009, from Telegraph.co.uk
Underfoot, the earth has been poisoned to a depth of 20cm (8in). The water in the wells is undrinkable.
The plight of Shuangqiao ... where three people have died and 509 are sick from poisoning by the heavy metals cadmium and indium, produced by a nearby factory, has drawn widespread attention since residents took to the internet to air their grievances.
"We wouldn't be here today if the Government had paid attention to us in 2006 when we first told them the factory in our village was spreading pollution," said one villager, who gave his name only as Li, for fear of official retribution. "Now it's the responsibility of the factory and the Government that ignored us to help us." ... Waste water and earth from the processing of the heavy metals have been dumped into a narrow valley at the back of the plant. The stream runs into a river 500m away that feeds into the main Xiang River, which provides drinking water for 20 million people.
The factory was supposed to produce the feed additive zinc sulphate. Instead, it illegally processed ore from zinc production to extract cadmium and rare indium, a key material in liquid crystal display screens and solar panels.
The price of indium soared from less than $600 (£360) a kilogram in 2003 to $1,000 by 2006. China now meets 30 per cent of world demand and at its peak the Xianghe factory produced 300kg of indium a month.
August 15, 2009, from Discovery News
Unseen and odorless, microscopic particles of air pollution wafting overseas and across continents kill some 380,000 people each year, according to a new study.
Exhaust from diesel engines, sulfur from coal-fired power plants, and desert dust swirl into an insidious cocktail of of tiny particles that can spend weeks airborne.
The most harmful are the smallest, less than 2.5 microns in diameter; when inhaled they can irritate the lungs or pass directly into the bloodstream and damage arteries.
|
Climate
Chaos
August 15, 2012, from Live Science
Last month, the planet saw the fourth warmest July since record-keeping began in 1880, according to U.S. weather records.
Most areas of the world experienced above-average monthly temperatures, including most of the United States and Canada... Last month, the continental United States saw a bigger milestone. July 2012 was the warmest month on record for the lower 48 states, surpassing the previous record holder, July 1936.
August 15, 2012, from Mongabay
A satellite image released by NASA last week shows a key channel that forms part of the Northwest Passage is partially free of ice....
Predictions range widely, but many experts expect the Arctic to be free of summer sea ice entirely within a few decades. By almost all standards, sea ice is disappearing faster than expected, partly a consequence of a positive feedback loop triggered by retreating ice. Sea ice typically helps cool the Arctic by reflecting sunlight back into space. But when sea ice melts, the dark areas of open water absorb the sun's radiation, warming the region and worsening melting.
August 15, 2011, from Anchorage Daily News
About half the recent record loss of Arctic sea ice can be blamed on global warming caused by human activity, according to a new study by scientists from the nation's leading climate research center. The peer-reviewed study, funded by the National Science Foundation, is the first to attribute a specific proportion of the ice melt to greenhouse gases and particulates from pollution.
The study used supercomputers named Bluefire and Franklin and one of the world's most sophisticated climate models to reach its conclusions, said lead author Jennifer Kay, a staff scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The paper was published last week in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.
In a telephone interview from Boulder, Colo., where NCAR is headquartered, Kay said her study was an attempt to learn how much Arctic Ocean melting can be attributed to "natural variability" -- complex changes wrought by non-human forces -- and how much has been caused by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and by atmospheric particulates.
August 15, 2009, from Canwest News
As Prime Minister Stephen Harper heads north next week for what's become his annual summer visit to the Arctic, he will encounter a world scientists believe is in the midst of an unprecedented and irreversible transformation, where retreating sea ice and related environmental changes are radically reshaping the region's future....
In the upcoming days, researchers from around the world will reassess the state of the Arctic Ocean ice cover and gauge whether this summer's retreat -- already viewed as another "extreme" thaw -- will surpass the 2007 meltdown that shocked even veteran observers of the polar realm.... [T]he biggest floes now jamming the fabled Arctic shipping corridor are southward-floating, orphaned chunks of the thickest, oldest "multi-year" ice mass that has been steadily disintegrating -- in North America, Europe and Asia -- along the edges of the central Arctic Ocean.... The region is, Howell told Canwest News Service, "past the 'tipping-point,'" when increasing expanses of darker, open water absorb ever more heat and the diminished ice cover -- normally able to reflect sunlight because of its lighter surface -- melts more quickly.
|
Resource
Depletion
August 15, 2015, from Christian Science Monitor
Planet Earth crossed into the ecological red Friday.
Thursday marked Earth Overshoot Day - the day when the world's population officially exhausts all the natural resources the Earth can generate in a single year, as defined by the sustainability think tank, Global Footprint Network....
GFN estimates that the current population demands the resources of 1.6 Earths.
August 15, 2011, from MSNBC
The world's oceans are getting more acidic, and a new mission to the Arctic will help scientists figure out what this means for delicate marine life.
For the second straight year, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will embark on a research cruise aboard the U.S. Coast Guard vessel Healy to the Arctic Ocean on Aug. 15 to collect water samples and other data to determine trends in ocean acidification from the least explored ocean in the world.
What the scientists learn from the data collected during the seven-week cruise will provide an understanding of the extent to which the Arctic Ocean 's chemistry is changing and detail potential implications for carbonate species -- such as phytoplankton and shellfish -- that are vulnerable to greater ocean acidity created by climate change.
"Ocean acidification can have broad global impacts on industry, ecosystems, tourism and policy, so it is of vital importance to determine trends and whether impacts are already occurring in oceans around the world," said USGS oceanographer Lisa Robbins.
August 15, 2011, from Indian Country Today
For years, Native opponents of a massive strip mine on Black Mesa in northern Arizona have said longstanding extractive practices of Peabody Energy Corp. (formerly Peabody Western Coal Co.) have depleted a major aquifer on which they depend and a recent analysis seems to bear them out.
"The mining-related impacts on the aquifer are more significant than have been recognized or acknowledged," said Dr. Daniel Higgins, who performed the analysis as part of Arid Lands Resource Studies, graduate interdisciplinary programs, University of Arizona, Tucson....
The aquifer Higgins studied for more than five years provides drinking water to Native communities and is a source of water below Black Mesa that feeds sacred springs. Opponents object to the further industrial use of the pristine aquifer water....
But it's not like a bank account, he explained,"because being able to see any change or reversal (in aquifer depletion) is going to take a tremendous amount of time in a large aquifer. The impacts will get worse before they get better--it's not like flipping a switch."
A federal geochemical analysis in 1997 determined that 90 percent of the water in the N-Aquifer is 10,000 to 35,000 years old. "Technically, that 90 percent of the water is not replenishable on a human time-scale but only on a geological time-scale," he said.
|
Recovery
August 15, 2011, from Scientific American blogs
The article1, by a PhD candidate named Christie Wilcox, was compromised by a slew of elisions and exaggerations. If the intention was to myth-bust, mark this one a fail: The article spread new misconceptions about the methods of organic food production.
As the co-manager of an urban farm2 that uses organic practices, I was annoyed by the distortions in the article. So I'm pleased that the Scientific American editors have dedicated some space for a rebuttal....
Any approved sprays must either be produced from a natural substance or, if they are synthetic, must be proven to "not have adverse effects on the environment" or "human health."...
She writes: "Why the government isn't keeping a watch on organic pesticide and fungicide is a damn good question." Well, actually, the government is -- through the highly detailed rules regarding organic certification.5 Farmers hoping to be certified as organic must keep records covering the "production, harvesting, and handling" of their crops -- and maintain those records (including receipts for purchases of any off-farm inputs like sprays) for at least five years. Organic growers also submit to an annual on-site inspection from an organic certifier. Yes, the certifiers are independent, non-government agencies, but the level of scrutiny is intense.
No, the government doesn't record the use of non-synthetic pesticides on organic farms. And neither does it record the use of synthetic pesticides on individual industrial farms. A national law, FIFRA (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act), expressly forbids the EPA from requiring pesticide applicators to report how they use synthetic chemicals6. The only information the federal government collects on pesticide usage is at the aggregate level....
Still, given the demands of yearly on-site inspections, it's fair to say that organic-certified farmers, ranchers, and processors are the most highly regulated sector of the US food system and consent to far more oversight than any industrial farmer....
It would make more sense, then, to reverse Wilcox’s question: Why the government requires far less reporting on the production methods of industrial farmers than it does reporting from organic farmers is a damn good question. The burden of proof seems askew.
|
ApocaDocs