Biology
Breach
June 9, 2009, from University of Montreal, via EurekAlert
Antibiotics, antimicrobials and antifungals are seeping into the waterways of North America, Europe and East Asia, according to an investigation published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP).... [T]he review found that consumption of anti-infectives for human and agriculture use contributes to their release into the environment and even into drinking water.
"Anti-infectives are constantly discharged, at trace levels, in natural waters near urban centres and agricultural areas," says senior author Sebastien Sauve, a Universite de Montreal professor of environmental analytical chemistry. "Their potential contribution to the spread of anti-infective resistance in bacteria and other effects on aquatic biota is a cause for concern."
June 9, 2009, from Mongabay
After highly-publicized poisonings of lions in Kenya’s national parks, the Kenyan Parliament has begun addressing longstanding concerns regarding the pesticide Furadan.
Since 1995 Furadan has been used to illegally kill 76 lions, 15 hyenas, 24 hippos, over 250 vultures, and thousands of other birds in Kenya. These numbers are likely low due to under-reporting, according to Kenya-based conservation organization, Wildlife Direct.
Furadan is the trade name for Carbofuran, which is manufactured by Farm Machinery and Chemicals Corporation(FMC) in the United States. The deliberate poisoning of wildlife in Kenya by Furadan is often in retaliation for predators killing a farmers' livestock. On the other hand, birds die from ingesting the pesticide off of crops.
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Climate
Chaos
June 9, 2016, from http://phys.org/news/2014-07-vapor-global-amplifier.html#
"The study is the first to confirm that human activities have increased water vapor in the upper troposphere," said Brian Soden, professor of atmospheric sciences at the UM Rosenstiel School and co-author of the study....
Using the set of climate model experiments, the researchers showed that rising water vapor in the upper troposphere cannot be explained by natural forces, such as volcanoes and changes in solar activity, but can be explained by increased greenhouse gases, such as CO2....
Climate models predict that as the climate warms from the burning of fossil fuels, the concentrations of water vapor will also increase in response to that warming. This moistening of the atmosphere, in turn, absorbs more heat and further raises the Earth's temperature.
June 9, 2009, from The Vancouver Sun
Global warming may benefit certain marine life, a study by University of B.C. researchers suggests.
Rebecca Gooding, a UBC PhD student, found that young purple ochre sea stars grow faster, heavier and larger as water warms and concentrations of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of global warming, increase.
“Global warming … could be good for it,” said Gooding.
“In an evolutionary sense, if they’re bigger, that’s probably better, because if they reach adulthood faster, they can spend more time producing offspring,” she said.
June 9, 2009, from Guardian (UK)
David Sandalow, assistant secretary of state for energy, said the continuation of business as usual in China would result in a 2.7C rise in global temperatures by 2050 even if every other country slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent.
"China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change," said Sandalow, who is in Beijing as part of a high-level negotiating team that aims to find common ground ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit at the end of this year.
No effective deal will be possible without the US and China, which together account for almost half of the planet's carbon emissions.
Since Barack Obama entered the White House, hopes for a closer working relationship on climate change have surged along with a softening of rhetoric, but the official negotiating positions of the two sides remain far apart.
June 9, 2009, from Sydney Morning Herald
Scientists have slammed Family First's Steve Fielding after he returned from the US suggesting solar flares rather than human activity are responsible for climate change.
Senator Fielding said he wanted to debate the cause of global warming with government scientists before he votes on Labor's climate change legislation.
He recently returned from a trip to the United States where he met climate change sceptics who blame global warming on solar flares, not human activity or carbon emissions.
It is a theory he believes has some credibility.
June 9, 2009, from TIME Magazine
First, in late March the bodies of about 1,200 penguins were found on a remote beach in southern Chile. Next came the sardines -- millions of them -- washed up dead on a nearby stretch of coastline in April, causing a stench so noxious that nearby schools were closed and the army was called in to shovel piles of rotting fish off the sand. Then it was the turn of the rare Andean flamingos. Over the course of approximately three months, thousands of them abandoned their nests on a salt lake in the Atacama Desert in the far north of Chile. Their eggs failed to hatch, and all 2,000 chicks died in their shells. Finally, in late May came the pelicans -- nearly 60 of them, found dead on the central Chilean coast. No one knows exactly what has caused these four apparently unrelated environmental disasters in as many months. Global warming has been blamed, as has overfishing, pollution and disease.
June 9, 2009, from Mother Jones
You've heard of credit default swaps and subprime mortgages. Are carbon default swaps and subprime offsets next? If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is signed into law, it will generate, almost as an afterthought, a new market for carbon derivatives. That market will be vast, complicated, and dauntingly difficult to monitor. And if Washington doesn't get the rules right, it will be vulnerable to speculation and manipulation by the very same players who brought us the financial meltdown... According to data compiled by the Center for Public Integrity, the financial services industry has 130 lobbyists working on climate issues, compared to almost none in 2003. They represent companies like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and AIG (before it was shamed into temporarily halting its lobbying activities last fall). The industry "wants lawmakers to create a brand-new revenue stream for its bottom line, and cap and trade would do it," says Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen, who is a member of a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) advisory committee considering how carbon trading should be regulated.
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
June 9, 2009, from Associated Press
If delegates from 190 countries have trouble reaching a new global warming agreement, they can turn to a ready-made treaty prepared by environmental activists.
Negotiators can take comfort from knowing it wasn't easy for the activists either.
Nearly 50 representatives of nonprofit groups in about 20 countries worked for months to draft a mock treaty they believe national delegations can accept. Their document was being released Monday at the latest round of U.N. negotiations in Bonn, Germany.
June 9, 2009, from London Daily Telegraph
We humans like to think we're pretty good at design and technology – but we often forget that Mother Nature had a head start of 3.6 million years. Now, the way that geckoes climb walls, or hummingbirds hover, is at the centre of a burgeoning industry: biomimicry, the science of "reverse-engineering" clever ideas from the natural world....biomimicry is becoming fashionable.
"Imitating natural systems is about trying to mimic the amazing effectiveness of ecosystems, where the waste from one system or animal is used as the nutrients for another," says Michael Pawlyn, the director of a sustainable architecture firm and one of the designers of the Eden Project in Cornwall. "Often, by applying ideas from ecosystems you can turn problems into solutions that are better both environmentally and commercially."
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