Biology
Breach
December 26, 2012, from Environmental Health News
Pregnant women exposed to higher levels of air pollution had a small increase in risk of stillbirth as compared to pregnant women exposed to lower levels of air pollution, found a study from New Jersey.
Some of the air pollution components appeared to be more important risk factors early in pregnancy and some of the components appeared to be more important risk factors later in pregnancy. This study contributes to a small number of studies looking at air pollution and stillbirth, although not all studies have observed similar adverse associations.
In the United States, about 1 in 160 pregnancies (26,000 per year) ends in stillbirth, defined as fetal death after the 20th week of gestation. Rates of stillbirth are higher in the United States than in many other developed countries.
December 26, 2012, from Associated Press
Volunteers who patrol California beaches for plastic, cigarette butts and other litter will be on the lookout this winter for flotsam from last year's monstrous tsunami off Japan's coast...
The March 2011 disaster washed about 5 million tons of debris into the sea. Most of that sank, leaving an estimated 1 1/2 million tons afloat. No one knows how much debris -- strewn across an area three times the size of the United States -- is still adrift.
December 26, 2012, from Los Angeles Times
To expand service, cellular phone companies are turning to a higher power.
They're not increasing the wattage of their transmitters. They're looking for churches near residential areas willing to let them hide cell sites in steeples, belfries and crosses.
December 26, 2009, from Mumbai Daily News and Analysis
Mumbai: Mumbai, beware! The list of most polluted industrial clusters in the country, which were announced on Thursday, figures five in and around the city. Domivli, Navi Mumbai, Tarapur, Chembur and Pimpri-Chinchwad are names that appear in the top 50 most polluted areas out of the 88 areas identified by the Union environment and forest ministry. The areas have reached their top level in terms of air, water and land pollution. And, the worst is that all the five clusters have reached critical levels of pollution, which has forced the Centre to put on hold expansion in these areas.
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Climate
Chaos
December 26, 2013, from Scientific American
You probably think of computers when you hear the words "climate model." But some intrepid media staffers at Columbia University had a different vision: Convince climate scientists there to model for a 2014 calendar. Surprisingly, 13 researchers decided to bare it all--well, their inspirations, if not their bodies--for the project. And, yes, Columbia calls it a "pinup" calendar.
December 26, 2013, from Toronto Globe and Mail
Canadian insurers are grappling with the prospect of financial damage from yet another severe storm, capping off a brutal year that raised serious questions about how the industry will deal with the costs of climate change.
After suffering a $3-billion hit from natural disasters such as the summer floods in Alberta and the Greater Toronto Area, property and casualty insurers are now racking up claims from the ice storm that hit Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. It is still too early to determine the costs, but insurers are bracing for a bruising... Insurers aren't the only ones on the hook - they share the burden with reinsurance companies that take on a portion of the risk - but the latest storm reopens a deep wound. The property insurance industry is coming to grips with evidence that severe weather events are becoming more frequent.
December 26, 2013, from InsideClimate News
The U.S. Energy Department has sharply cut its forecast for crude oil imports in the next several years, saying that domestic oil will replace imports at a much faster rate than it expected just a few months ago.
Imports in 2016 will be one million barrels a day lower than it projected in April... So what looks like good news from the standpoint of U.S. energy independence is cold comfort to those environmental advocates and scientists who say that the U.S. and the rest of the world must act swiftly to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide in order to avoid the worst effects of global warming in the coming century. For them, higher production of fossil fuels is progress in the wrong direction.
December 26, 2013, from New York Times
In an unmarked greenhouse, leafy bushes carpet an acre of land here tucked into the suburban sprawl of Southern California. The seeds of the inedible, drought-resistant plants, called jatropha, produce a prize: high-quality oil that can be refined into low-carbon jet fuel or diesel fuel... The technology also could be used to domesticate wild fruits and vegetables, company scientists said. They said the technology has the potential to unleash a new green revolution for a world that will need to grow 70 percent more food by 2050, according to the United Nations, as agricultural productivity is slowing
December 26, 2012, from The ApocaDocs
No better way to wrap up 2012, than looking to our top 100 stories of horror. 2012 will end up one of the warmest years on record, and so our extreme weather events are no coincidence.
December 26, 2012, from Live Science
...Record-breaking warmth: The data for the last of the year isn't in yet, but this year looks "virtually certain" to take the title of warmest year on record for the lower 48 states, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)... Until this year, July 1936, during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, held the record for hottest month on record in the lower 48 states going back to 1895, but this July's heat surpassed even that record...
December 26, 2011, from London Daily Telegraph
...The study of cocoa plantations in Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, where more than half of the world's cocoa is grown, found that the amount of land suitable for production could halve due to temperature rise of just 2.3C by 2050.
December 26, 2011, from BBC
...The Nepalese Himalayas have been warming significantly more than the global mean temperature in recent decades.
Glaciers in much of the region are showing signs of shrinking, thinning, and retreating; and this is producing a lot of melt water.
On Ngozumpa, some of this water is seen to pool on the surface and then drain away via a series of streams and caverns to the snout of the glacier.
There, some 25km from the mountain, an enormous lake is growing behind a mound of dumped rock fragments.
This lake, called Spillway, has the potential to be about 6km long, 1km wide and 100m deep.
The concern is that this great mass of water could eventually breach the debris dam and hurtle down the valley, sweeping away the Sherpa villages in its path.
December 26, 2011, from New York Times
Three decades ago, when Mick Fowler climbed the north face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps, he used crampons and ice axes to haul himself up sheer walls of snow and ice. Nowadays, during a hot summer, "you'll find virtually no snow and ice on its face -- none,” he said. "It's a huge change over the last 20 to 30 years.”
Like Mr. Fowler, mountaineers around the world find themselves forced to adjust to a warming world. Routes that were icy or glaciated in the middle part of the past century, when the world's highest peaks were being conquered for the first time, are turning into unstable and unappetizing rock.
December 26, 2011, from Oregon State University via ScienceDaily
Forest thinning to help prevent or reduce severe wildfire will release more carbon to the atmosphere than any amount saved by successful fire prevention, a new study concludes. There may be valid reasons to thin forests -- such as restoration of forest structure or health, wildlife enhancement or public safety -- but increased carbon sequestration is not one of them, scientists say... even in fire-prone forests, it's necessary to treat about 10 locations to influence fire behavior in one. There are high carbon losses associated with fuel treatment and only modest savings in reducing the severity of fire...
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Resource
Depletion
December 26, 2009, from Deutsche Welle
Christmas has become a traditional time for over indulgence in Western countries. The holiday season seems to provide everyone with an excuse to eat and drink to excess. Supermarkets burst with sweet treats and a mind-boggling selection of festive fare. While most of it will be ingested, more than a third of food in Europe and the United States will grow moldy fur in the back of the fridge, pass its use-by date and land in garbage.... Experts believe that much of the responsibility for reducing food waste rests with the manufacturers. The food industry must find ways to reduce waste throughout the production and supply chain, and find ways to redistribute finished food products and reuse by-products of the production process.
December 26, 2009, from New York Times
Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. The world’s dependence on these substances is rising fast. Just one problem: These elements come almost entirely from China, from some of the most environmentally damaging mines in the country, in an industry dominated by criminal gangs.
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Recovery
December 26, 2013, from Politico
Coal-fired power plants are shutting their doors at a record pace -- and for the most part, nobody's building new ones.
The latest round in the war on coal? Not exactly. The reality is that Americans' lights will stay on just fine even as coal plants continue to close, thanks to a quiet revolution in energy efficiency and a boom time for cheap natural gas. Throw in some stricter rules for older plants, and the result is a sharp drop in the economic viability of coal-fired power. Since 2008, coal has dropped from nearly half the U.S. power market to about 37 percent. In the next several years, industry analysts say, hundreds of older coal-fired units will power down for good.
December 26, 2013, from London Guardian
A 19-year-old student has set a new record for the fastest journey from the coast of Antarctica to the south pole.
Parker Liautaud, who went to school at Eton, is the youngest man to have skied to the pole, having completed the expedition in 18 days.
The teenage environmental campaigner has been on three expeditions to the north pole, the first when he was just 15.
He said he had set off for the 561km trek on 3 December with two main goals: "The first was to undertake scientific research and collect data samples. nd the second was to reignite the dialogue on climate change by creating a story that people can engage with and be a part of."
December 26, 2012, from China Daily
The capital's initiative to rid the city of polluting vehicles has taken 458,000 old cars off the road, and the government is providing more benefits to local motorists to encourage them to scrap aging vehicles.
"The campaign has not only boosted the local car market to some extent, which had been stagnant, but has also substantially improved the capital's air quality," Li Kunsheng, director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau's department of motor vehicles, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
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