Biology
Breach
July 27, 2013, from Forbes
Scientists at Oregon State University have pinpointed a reason for the mysterious die-offs of young oysters in the Pacific Northwest, a phenomenon that threatens the survival of one of America's prime seafood delicacies.
Pacific oyster larvae, two days old or younger, are among the shellfish most at risk as the oceans become more acidic, according to a study released in a June issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The release of carbon into the atmosphere, caused by humans' burning of fossil fuels, is in turn adding carbon to the ocean, changing its chemistry and endangering entire marine food webs.
During the first two days of life, an oyster's prime directive is to build a shell of calcium carbonate to protect itself against predators. To do this, it relies entirely on energy from its own egg, as it has not yet developed the ability to feed....
Many of America's favorite seafoods, including mussels, crabs, scallops, abalone and lobster, are at risk for perishing in coming decades as their shells fail to develop properly in more acidic ocean water. The scourge also affects tiny plankton that are the base of the food web that produces prized Alaskan salmon.
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Climate
Chaos
July 27, 2011, from Conservation Magazine
"The more you think you know, the more you think you're right," goes an old saying. Now comes a study of sex, skin color and political ideology that suggests it pretty much sums up how some white male conservatives in the United States respond to climate change.
"Even casual observers" of those who argue that climate change isn't a serious problem "likely notice an obvious pattern," Aaron M. McCright of Michigan State University in East Lansing and Riley E. Dunlap of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater write in Global Environmental Change: The most prominent denialists are conservative white males" -- from media pundit Rush Limbaugh to politicians like Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. But the pair wondered: "Does a similar pattern exist in the American public?"... Overall, while 29.6 percent of conservative white males (CWMs) believed that the effects of global warming "will never happen," just 7.4 percent of all other adults shared that view. Similarly, 58.5 percent of CWMs -- but only 31.5 percent of all other adults -- denied that recent temperature increases are primarily caused by human activities.
July 27, 2011, from Los Angeles Times
A Utah man lionized by environmentalists for crashing a 2008 government auction of energy leases near two national parks was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $10,000 on Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Dee Benson in Salt Lake City ordered Tim DeChristopher taken into custody immediately.
"I'm not saying there isn't a place for civil disobedience," Benson said. "But it can't be the order of the day."
In a roughly 35-minute address to the court, DeChristopher, 29, said his actions were necessary to highlight the threat that climate change poses to the planet. "My intent both at the time of the auction and now was to expose, embarrass and hold accountable the oil and gas industry, to point that it cut into their $100-billion profits," he said.
July 27, 2009, from Guardian (UK)
The world faces a new period of record-breaking temperatures as the sun's activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted over the next five years, according to a new study.
The hottest year on record was 1998, and the relatively cool years since have led to some global-warming sceptics claiming that temperatures have levelled off or started to decline. However, the new research firmly rejects that argument.
The work is the first to assess the combined impact on global temperature of four factors: human influences such as CO2 and aerosol emissions; heating from the sun; volcanic activity; and the El Nino southern oscillation, the phenomenon by which the Pacific Ocean flips between warmer and cooler states every few years.... As solar activity picks up again in the coming years, the new research suggests, temperatures will shoot up at 150 percent of the rate predicted by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
July 27, 2009, from Radio Australia
A new report says climate change could produce 75 million refugees in the Asia Pacific region in the next 40 years.
It urges Australia to put new immigration measures in place to help with people movements, and to cut deeply into its own climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.
The report, by aid agency Oxfam Australia and a think-tank, the Australia Institute, says the effects of climate change are already being felt in the region.
It says addressing the immigration question is vital, as is giving more financial assistance to the region targeted specifically at measures to help communities adapt.
July 27, 2009, from London Observer
More than two million people living on the banks of Lake Kivu in central Africa are at risk of being asphyxiated by gases building up beneath its surface, scientists have warned.
It is estimated that the lake, which straddles the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, now contains 300 cubic kilometres of carbon dioxide and 60 cubic kilometres of methane that have bubbled into the Kivu from volcanic vents. The gases are trapped in layers 80 metres below the lake's surface by the intense water pressures there. However, researchers have warned that geological or volcanic events could disturb these waters and release the gases.
The impact would be devastating, as was demonstrated on 21 August 1986 at Lake Nyos in Cameroon, in West Africa. Its waters were saturated with carbon dioxide and a major disturbance - most probably a landslide - caused a huge cloud of carbon dioxide to bubble up from its depths and to pour down the valleys that lead from the crater lake.
Carbon dioxide is denser than air, so that the 50mph cloud hugged the ground and smothered everything in its path. Some 1,700 people were suffocated.
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Resource
Depletion
July 27, 2015, from Vice
Humans are depleting underground aquifers around the world at alarming rates, threatening hundreds of millions of people who rely on them for survival, according to a comprehensive study conducted by researchers from NASA and the University of California, Irvine.
Twenty-one of the world's 37 largest aquifers are losing water at a greater rate than they're being refilled, falling victim to population growth and climate change. Thirteen of those diminishing water sources are experiencing "significant distress," including the Arabian Aquifer System, which supplies Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, the Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern Africa, the Indus Basin of India and Pakistan, and the Central Valley Aquifer System in California.
"It's very serious," Jay Famiglietti of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an author of the report told VICE News. "All over the world, we use more water than we have available to us on a renewable basis." ...
"There's serious ecological damage being done right now. The ground is sinking in California, streams are being depleted, the water table is falling, wells are running dry, the quality of water is degrading," Famiglietti told VICE News. "We really are past these sustainability tipping points, so it sure as heck would be good to know how much water is left. We're depleting it very quickly."
July 27, 2013, from New York Times
For years, power companies have watched warily as solar panels have sprouted across the nation's rooftops. Now, in almost panicked tones, they are fighting hard to slow the spread.
Alarmed by what they say has become an existential threat to their business, utility companies are moving to roll back government incentives aimed at promoting solar energy and other renewable sources of power. At stake, the companies say, is nothing less than the future of the American electricity industry.
July 27, 2012, from AP, via Yahoo, via DesdemonaDespair
The widest drought to grip the United States in decades is getting worse with no signs of abating, a new report warned Thursday, as state officials urged conservation and more ranchers considered selling cattle.
The drought covering two-thirds of the continental U.S. had been considered relatively shallow, the product of months without rain, rather than years. But Thursday's report showed its intensity is rapidly increasing, with 20 percent of the nation now in the two worst stages of drought -- up 7 percent from last week.
The U.S. Drought Monitor classifies drought in various stages, from moderate to severe, extreme and, ultimately, exceptional. Five states -- Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska -- are blanketed by a drought that is severe or worse. States like Arkansas and Oklahoma are nearly as bad, with most areas covered in a severe drought and large portions in extreme or exceptional drought.
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Recovery
July 27, 2011, from Reuters
A snail in Alabama has become the first in U.S. history to recover from the brink of extinction and is now merely threatened rather than an endangered species.
In 1991, the Tulotoma snail was barely clinging to one small place, extinct in 99 percent of its historic range. The snail now has expanded to 10 percent of its range.
"The Clean Water Act and improved land use conditions have allowed the snail population to start growing again," said Jeff Powell, senior biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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