Biology
Breach
July 17, 2013, from MLive.com
COVERT TOWNSHIP, MI -- Palisades Power Plant has had two more leaks since it shut down May 5 for more than a month to repair a leaking water storage tank, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said during a July 16 webinar with the public.
The NRC will be conducting further investigation into at least one of the leaks, said Jack Geissner, branch chief of Region III, which oversees Palisades.
The NRC is also investigating the May 5 incident, in which about 80 gallons of very diluted radioactive water leaked from the safety injection and refueling water tank (SIRW tank) into Lake Michigan. The NRC will be issuing its report in coming months, said Geissner.
July 17, 2012, from Anchorage Daily News
For two hours before a big Shell drilling ship stopped near shore Saturday afternoon, a Dutch Harbor resident noticed it slowly moving in that direction, an observed time that contradicts with the much shorter period of uncontrolled drifting in Shell's account of the close call.
July 17, 2009, from Mongabay
The population of Burmese pythons has exploded following its introduction into Florida's ecosystems by irresponsible pet owners in the early 1990s. Tens of thousands continue to be imported into the United States for the pet trade, including 144,000 between 2000 and 2005. The snake, which can reach a length of 26 feet and weigh more than 200 pounds, has decimated local wildlife, even going after alligators.... "They reproduce 50 to 100 eggs when they lay the eggs," Behnke said. "They have the ability to withstand different temperatures so there's a possibility they could move north. Now is the time to get started on this and try to prevent it before it becomes even a bigger problem."
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Climate
Chaos
July 17, 2014, from AFP, via Daily Times (Pakistan)
Australia on Thursday axed a divisive carbon tax after years of vexed political debate, in a move criticised as regressive and out of step with the rest of the world.
The upper house Senate voted 39-32 to scrap the charge, which was imposed by the former Labor government on major polluters from 2012 in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions....
Prime Minister Tony Abbott went to the polls in September with repealing the pollution levy as a central campaign platform, arguing the cost was being passed to consumers, resulting in higher utility bills. "Scrapping the carbon tax is a foundation of the government's economic action strategy," said Abbott, who once said evidence blaming mankind for climate change was "absolute crap".
July 17, 2013, from Smithsonian Institution
Under elevated carbon dioxide levels, wetland plants can absorb up to 32 percent more carbon than they do at current levels, according to a 19-year study published in Global Change Biology from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md. With atmospheric CO2 passing the 400 parts-per-million milestone this year, the findings offer hope that wetlands could help soften the blow of climate change.
July 17, 2013, from Mother Jones
Debate over a proposed open-pit iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin went from heated to outright bizarre last week when masked guards brandishing assault rifles showed up at the site in the remote and scenic wilderness of Penokee Hills.
Local activist Rob Ganson, 56, first came upon three heavily armed guards while leading a small group on a hike to view the mining site. (The drilling site is on private land, but the owner has been given a tax break in exchange for keeping it open to public use.) The guards, said Ganson, carried semi-automatic guns, were dressed in camouflage, and wore masks covering their faces. "As you can imagine, it was quite a shock for five middle-aged people out for a walk," he said. Ganson tried to engage the guards, but was "met with stony-faced silence."... Gov. Scott Walker signed sweeping changes to the state's mining regulations into law in March, thus allowing the mine to move forward. The new law, which creates a separate set of laws for taconite mining, abbreviates the permitting process, reduces the number of opportunities for public comment, and weakens rules on dumping mine waste into wetlands and waterways.
July 17, 2013, from DeSmogBlog
A recent DeSmogBlog investigation reveals that Robert Bauer, former White House Counsel and President Obama's personal attorney, works at the corporate law firm Perkins Coie LLP, which does legal work for TransCanada's South Central Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Project, formerly known as Alaska Gas Pipeline Project. Furthermore, Dan Sullivan, current Commissioner of Alaska's Department of Natural Resources, and former Alaska Attorney General and former Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, is also a former Perkins attorney.
July 17, 2012, from CBC Canada
The Pacific Ocean is growing more acidic at a much faster rate than anticipated, scientists say, putting everything from corals to mussels in jeopardy.
Researchers say carbon dioxide from the atmosphere forms carbonic acid in the ocean, changing the seawater enough that it can dissolve the shells of coral and shellfish.
The water off the west coast of Vancouver Island is changing at an unprecedented rate, meaning vulnerable life forms in the ocean's food chain must adapt or die.
July 17, 2012, from University of Delaware
An ice island twice the size of Manhattan has broken off from Greenland's Petermann Glacier, according to researchers at the University of Delaware and the Canadian Ice Service. The Petermann Glacier is one of the two largest glaciers left in Greenland connecting the great Greenland ice sheet with the ocean via a floating ice shelf... According to Muenchow, this newest ice island will follow the path of the 2010 ice island, providing a slow-moving floating taxi for polar bears, seals and other marine life until it enters Nares Strait, the deep channel between northern Greenland and Canada, where it likely will get broken up.
July 17, 2012, from The Daily Climate
Generation X may not be the stereotypical slackers of those '90s cult classic movies, but here's one issue they have trouble caring about: climate change.
The generation that was once poked fun at in pop culture for being underachieving slackers has grown into an educated, wired and scientifically literate generation. But record-breaking heat waves, epic droughts and killer tornadoes haven't sounded the climate change alarm for these adults, aged 32 to 52, according to a University of Michigan report released on Tuesday.
With careers, families and kids, Gen X just has bigger concerns, the long-term survey found. They are only slightly more interested in climate change than their parents' generation -- even though more than half of those surveyed believed climate change is a real problem, the study found.
July 17, 2011, from ABC News
The crisis has been brought on by a deadly combination of severe drought, with no rain in the region for two years, a huge spike in food prices and a brutal civil war in Somalia, where it is too dangerous for aid workers to operate.
Somalians are walking as far as 50 miles to reach the Dadaab complex in eastern Kenya, the largest refugee camp in the world. The trek can take weeks through punishing terrain, which is desolate except for the carcasses that litter the land....
Even after enduring these difficult circumstances, leaving behind everything they own and arriving with only the clothes on their backs, many refugees say they are happier in the camps because at least they can find some food and rations to get by....
Almost 400,000 Somalis now call the Dadaab complex home, and more than 1,300 arrive every day.
July 17, 2009, from BBC
Turkmenistan has launched the latest stage of a plan to channel water across thousands of kilometres of desert to create a vast inland sea.
The lake will be filled with drainage water from the country's cotton fields.
President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said the "Golden Age Lake" plan showed his country was preserving nature and improving the environment.
But critics say the water will be full of fertiliser and insecticides, and will evaporate quickly.
The project is one of the biggest and most ambitious in the world, and could cost up to $20bn (£12bn).
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Resource
Depletion
July 17, 2009, from Mongabay, via DesdemonaDespair
Swiss banks Credit Suisse and UBS, together with the French BNP Paribas, are helping Singapore-listed Golden Agri-Resources raise up to 280 million Swiss francs ($258 million) to finance conversion of large areas of rainforest in New Guinea and Borneo for oil palm plantations, reports the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF), a group that campaigns on behalf of forest people in Southeast Asia.... "The vast majority of future expansion is likely to involve deforestation, some on peatlands and in the habitats of the critically endangered orangutan", said Greenpeace in the report....
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Recovery
July 17, 2012, from Associated Press
The federal government announced Tuesday that baby bottles and sippy cups can no longer contain the chemical bisphenol-A, or BPA.
The U.S. chemical industry's chief association, the American Chemistry Council, had asked the Food and Drug Administration to phase out rules allowing BPA in those products in October, after determining that all manufacturers of bottles and sippy cups had already abandoned the chemical due to safety concerns.... BPA is found in hundreds of plastic items from water bottles to CDs to dental sealants. Some researchers say ingesting the chemical can interfere with development of the reproductive and nervous systems in babies and young children.
July 17, 2011, from Huffington Post
A natural gas drilling company says it's no longer distributing a children's coloring book featuring a hard hat-wearing dinosaur that's been criticized by a Massachusetts congressman and lampooned by Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert.
Talisman Energy says "Talisman Terry's Energy Adventure" is no longer being distributed following a barrage of criticism.
Critics called the coloring book's depiction of land before and after drilling overly rosy. The post-drilling image adds a rainbow and an eagle to the scene where the hydraulic fracturing drilling process took place.
U.S. Rep. Ed Markey mocked the depiction of the "friendly Fracosaurus" in remarks last week on drilling safety. Colbert spoofed the book earlier this week.
Spokeswoman Natalie Cox says the coloring book distributed in northeastern Pennsylvania has received more attention than it should have.
July 17, 2009, from National Geographic
Some call it hubris; others call it cool reason. But the idea that we might combat global warming by deliberately engineering a cooler climate -- for instance, by constructing some kind of planetary sunshade -- has lately migrated from the fringe to the scientific mainstream. We are already modifying climate by accident, say proponents of geoengineering; why not do something intentional and intelligent to stop it? "If a country starts thinking it's in their vital interests to do this, and they have the power, I find it hard to imagine them not doing it," says Ken Caldeira, a climate expert at the Carnegie Institution. Caldeira is talking about the easiest, cheapest form of geoengineering: building a sunshade in the stratosphere out of millions of tons of tiny reflective particles, such as sulfate.
July 17, 2009, from Reuters
The United States released more than a thousand intelligence images of Arctic ice to help scientists study the impact of climate change, within hours of a recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences.
In an unusually fast move by a U.S. government agency, the Interior Department made the images public on Wednesday. The academy's report urging this action was released at 11 a.m. on Wednesday.
Some 700 images show swatches of sea ice from six sites around the Arctic Ocean, with an additional 500 images of 22 sites in the United States. The images can be seen online at gfl.usgs.gov/.
July 17, 2009, from DOE, via EurekAlert
A new method for capturing significantly more heat from low-temperature geothermal resources holds promise for generating virtually pollution-free electrical energy. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will determine if their innovative approach can safely and economically extract and convert heat from vast untapped geothermal resources.... "By the end of the calendar year, we plan to have a functioning bench-top prototype generating electricity," predicts PNNL Laboratory Fellow Pete McGrail. "If successful, enhanced geothermal systems like this could become an important energy source."... "Some novel research on nanomaterials used to capture carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels actually led us to this discovery," said McGrail. "Scientific breakthroughs can come from some very unintuitive connections."
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