Biology
Breach
April 27, 2011, from USA Today
Most U.S. cities with the dirtiest air are getting cleaner, but about half of Americans still live in areas where it's often difficult to breathe, the American Lung Association reports today. The group's 12th annual "State of the Air" report comes amid congressional efforts to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions....EPA's 2009 data, released last week, shows total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions -- primarily carbon dioxide -- fell 6.1 percent from 2008, the largest decline in at least five years. The agency, which began a multiyear plan to regulate these emissions in January, attributed the drop to less polluting fuels and lower energy consumption because of the recession.
April 27, 2011, from Houston Chronicle
Aiming squarely at guarding the rights of sportsmen and America's ammo, bait and tackle shops, a powerful group of congressmen is pushing back against environmentalists and any federal regulation that would restrict the use of lead in outdoor gear... The bill's sponsors have drawn support from the nearly 300-strong Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus, created to serve as "the sportsmen's ally and first line of defense in Washington promoting and protecting the rights of hunters, trappers and anglers."
Environmentalists see it differently; they say residual deposits of lead left by hunters and fisherman are being ingested by waterfowl, raptors and mammals, killing eagles, swans, cranes, endangered California condors and countless other wild animals.
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Climate
Chaos
April 27, 2011, from EnvironmentalResearchWeb
The boreal forests of Siberia are a vast, homogenous ecosystem dominated by larch trees. The trees survive in this semi-arid climate because of a unique symbiotic relationship they have with permafrost - the permafrost provides enough water to support larch domination and the larch in turn block radiation, protecting the permafrost from intensive thawing during the summer season.
This relationship has now been successfully modelled for the first time, revealing its sensitivity to climate change.
Ningning Zhang and colleagues from Nagoya University, Japan, have predicted that the larch trees will not be able to survive even the most optimistic climate change scenario of a 4 degree C increase in summer temperature in Siberia by the year 2100.
"We found that the larch-dominated boreal forest-permafrost coupled system in Siberia would be threatened by future warming of 2 degrees C or more," Zhang told environmentalresearchweb. "However, our simulations also show that, even with 4 degree C warming, some tree species can still survive, but with considerable loss of biomass."
April 27, 2009, from New York Times
With diminished rice harvests, seawater seeping into aquifers and islands vanishing into rising oceans, Southeast Asia will be among the regions worst affected by global warming, according to a report scheduled for release on Monday by the Asian Development Bank.
The rise in sea levels may force the sprawling archipelago of Indonesia to redraw its sea boundaries, the report said... Southeast Asia is particularly vulnerable to global warming because of the number of people who live near coastlines and the high rate of poverty. About 19 percent of those in Southeast Asian, some 93 million people, live on less than $1.25 a day and are more vulnerable to the projected increase in typhoons, drought and floods.
April 27, 2009, from London Independent
Could the Sun play a greater role in recent climate change than has been believed? Climatologists had dismissed the idea and some solar scientists have been reticent about it because of its connections with those who those who deny climate change. But now the speculation has grown louder because of what is happening to our Sun. No living scientist has seen it behave this way. There are no sunspots.
The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it's gone on far longer than anyone expected -- and there is no sign of the Sun waking up. "This is the lowest we've ever seen. We thought we'd be out of it by now, but we're not," says Marc Hairston of the University of Texas. And it's not just the sunspots that are causing concern. There is also the so-called solar wind -- streams of particles the Sun pours out -- that is at its weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun's magnetic axis is tilted to an unusual degree.
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Resource
Depletion
April 27, 2009, from Dhaka Daily Star
Soft attitude of the government towards polluters and lack of awareness among city dwellers have literally left dead all the rivers and other surface waters in and around the capital.
Over the years the government agencies conducted small-scale drives against the polluters without yielding any major success. The polluters have meanwhile continued polluting the rivers side by side with city dwellers linking excreta discharge to the storm sewerage that ultimately falls into the rivers.
The immediate past caretaker government had earlier directed industrialists to install Effluent Treatment Plants (ETP) at their respective industries by October 31, 2007. But most of the industrialists defied the directive and the government also did not go for action against the violators.
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Recovery
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