Biology
Breach
December 13, 2011, from CBS News
A U.N. conference on climate change ended Sunday without a major deal to cut toxic emissions. No country emits more carbon dioxide than China -- a byproduct of its booming economy. And, as CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports, those Chinese emissions are having a big impact in the U.S.
Chinese officials insist the murky air over Beijing this month is just fog. But measurements taken at the U.S. embassy there show dangerously high levels of air pollution -- so bad that traffic has been disrupted and flights have been delayed or cancelled.
"It's no longer just their problem; it's our problem," said Kim Prather of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Prather studies atmospheric chemistry. CBS News met her at a scientific conference in San Francisco, where she was presenting research that shows what's in the air over China can affect the weather in America.
December 13, 2009, from PhysOrg.com
If he catches a fish that swims here year round he tosses it back. But if he hooks a walleye -- only an occasional visitor to the river and has lower dioxin levels than the year-rounders -- then it's time for dinner.
"I don't think it's as big a concern as what people are saying it is," said Mitchell, 51, as he sat on a pail on the muddy bank and cast his line out into the water.
"I can remember when the rivers never froze in the winters and now they're freezing over, so the pollution in the rivers has got to be a lot less than it was."
The Tittabawassee may be clean enough to freeze now, but it remains one of the most contaminated waterways in the United States and a key example of the nation's struggle to deal with its industrial past....
Dioxins are chemicals so toxic they get measured in trillionths of a gram. They linger for years in both the environment and the body and pose a host of health risks from cancer to birth defects.
For most of the last century, Dow Chemical Company dumped waste from the sprawling complex near its Midland, Michigan headquarters right into the Tittabawassee and burned it in unfiltered incinerators.
December 13, 2009, from Than Nien News (Vietnam)
The Dong Nai River supplies water to some 15 million people in southern Vietnam, but that has not stopped callous companies from dumping so much toxic sludge in the river that scientists say it will soon be too poisonous to use.
"Tests since 2006 have found pollution near the Hoa An Pump Station has increased to serious levels with an especially high concentration of organic [toxic] substances," said Truong Khac Hoanh, vice director of Thu Duc Water Supply Company in Ho Chi Minh City.
"With such an increase in pollution, this water supply will soon be unusable," he said.
A top official at the Binh An Water Plant in HCMC also said the Dong Nai would soon be like its tributary the Thi Vai, where aquatic life can't survive due to the high levels of pollution.
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Climate
Chaos
December 13, 2011, from New Scientist
It's the most urgent call for geoengineering yet: begin cooling the Arctic by 2013 or face runaway global warming. But the warning -- from a voice on the scientific fringe -- may be premature, according to experts contacted by New Scientist.
John Nissen, a former software engineer who has become alarmed at the possibility of reaching a climate "tipping point" argued for Arctic geoengineering as soon as possible in a poster presentation at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco last week.... Although Nissen's opinion is not in the scientific mainstream, he has the backing of a leading expert on sea ice, Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge, who recently suggested that the Arctic ocean may be ice-free at the end of each summer from 2015 onwards. Wadhams says that accelerating climate change in the Arctic has forced him to abandon his scepticism about geoengineering. "One has to consider doing something," he says.
December 13, 2011, from Los Angeles Times
Vermont Law School, which has one of the top-ranked environmental law programs in the country, just released its second annual Top 10 Environmental Watch List of issues and developments that should be closely followed in 2012.
Top of the list? Republican attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency. According to an innovative online database set up by L.A.'s own Rep. Henry Waxman, there have been 170 anti-environmental votes under the Republican majority in the 112th Congress, and 91 of them attacked the EPA.
Other hot topics on the watch list include that same EPA and the White House clashing over ozone standards, the activist effort to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, and landmark settlements under the Endangered Species Act.
December 13, 2011, from London Independent
Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane -- a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide -- have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed....
"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."
December 13, 2011, from Associated Press
Canada pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change Monday, saying the accord won't help solve the climate crisis. It dealt a blow to the anti-global warming treaty, which has not been formally renounced by any other country.
Environment Minister Peter Kent said that Canada is invoking its legal right to withdraw and said Kyoto doesn't represent the way forward for Canada or the world... "The Kyoto Protocol does not cover the world's largest two emitters, United States and China, and therefore cannot work," Kent said. "It's now clear that Kyoto is not the path forward to a global solution to climate change. If anything it's an impediment."
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
December 13, 2011, from London Guardian
Europe could cut its transport greenhouse gas emissions by more than 25 percent if every population cycled as regularly as the Danes, according to a pioneering study which tracks the environmental impact of cycling down to the extra calories consumed by riders.
If the EU cycling rate was the same as it is in Denmark, where the average person cycles almost 600 miles (965km) each year, then the bloc would attain anything from 12 percent to 26 percent of its targeted transport emissions reduction, depending on what forms of transport the cycling replaced, according to the report by the Brussels-based European Cycling Federation (ECF). This figure is likely to be a significant underestimate as it deliberately excludes the environmental impact of building road infrastructure and parking, or maintaining and disposing of cars.
December 13, 2009, from New York Times
Alarms are sounding near the edge of the Great Lakes. Genetic evidence of Asian carp -- a mammoth, voracious, non-native conqueror among fish, long established in the Mississippi River -- has turned up just a few miles from Lake Michigan in the waterway that links the river system to the lake. If such creatures were to swim on into Lake Michigan, some scientists say they fear the fish would ultimately upend the entire ecosystem in the lakes that make up a fifth of the earth's fresh surface water....The carp can weigh as much as 100 pounds, and the silver carp has a habit of jumping, seeming to challenge boaters as much as it does other fish. They eat pretty much all the time, vacuuming up the plankton that other fish depend on and crowding the others out.
December 13, 2009, from 350.org
From Bill McKibben: "It's been a remarkable day for those of us here in Copenhagen, but mostly not because of anything happening at the climate conference.
Instead it's because of what you all did out in the rest of the world over the last 24 hours. We don't have a full count of vigils around the world, but in something like 3,000 cities and towns across the planet your vigils sent the most powerful of messages to the leaders here: stop playing games, and start protecting the planet. Here in Copenhagen, there were more than 100,000 people marching in the streets--99 percent of them peaceful and dignified--to call for climate solutions bold enough to meet the scale of the crisis. As the sun set on this city, thousands lit candles to stand in solidarity with those on the front lines of climate change--a moving and unprecedented moment in this movement.
December 13, 2009, from Mongabay
The world's largest user of palm oil, Unilever, has suspended its $32.6 million contract with the Indonesian group Sinar Mas after an independent audit proved that Sinar Mas is involved in the destruction of rainforest, reports Reuters.
The audit was conducted early this year after a report by Greenpeace alleged that Sinar Mas was engaged in deforestation and the draining of peatlands, both of which release significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Deforestation across Indonesia and Malaysia, in part for oil palm plantations, has also added pressure on many many endangered species, including orangutans, tigers, elephants, and rhinos.... "Unilever's decision could represent a defining moment for the palm oil industry. What we're seeing here is the world's largest buyer of palm oil using its financial muscle to sanction suppliers who are destroying rain forests and clearing peatlands," said Greenpeace director John Sauven in a statement.
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