Biology
Breach
August 5, 2009, from NUVO Newsweekly
A fast and toxic algae growth spurt on Central Indiana waterways in recent weeks is responsible for hundreds of dead fish in White River in Indianapolis, as well as warnings to those using the Geist or Morse reservoirs for summer recreation... "When the algae are in very high concentrations, like they are right now in the White River, they make oxygen during the day, but rob oxygen from the water at night," according to Lenore Tedesco, director of [the IUPUI Center for Earth and Environmental Science]. "Without enough oxygen, fish will basically suffocate."
While the presence of this type of algae is natural, the excessive and fast growth as seen in recent weeks, and the resulting dead fish, are not produced by natural causes.
"Right now we are seeing algal blooms in may of our freshwater systems," Tedesco said. "This suggests excessive nutrients in the water."
August 5, 2009, from Environmental Health News
Rural residents who drink water from private wells are much more likely to have Parkinson's disease, a finding that bolsters theories that farm pesticides may be partially to blame, according to a new study. The risk to people in California's Central Valley was 90 percent higher for those who had private wells near fields sprayed with certain insecticides. People with the incurable neurological disease "were more likely to have consumed private well water, and had consumed it on average 4.3 years longer," UCLA scientists reported. Unlike municipal water supplies, private wells are largely unregulated and are not monitored for contaminants.
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Climate
Chaos
August 5, 2014, from Cliff Mass Weather Blog
As global warming takes hold later in the century, where will be the best place in the lower 48 states to escape its worst effects?
A compelling case can be made that the Pacific Northwest will be one of the best places to live as the earth warms. A potential climate refuge.
August 5, 2013, from Washington Post
While environmentalists, energy executives and elected officials across North America await the State Department's critical decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, a little-noticed trial scheduled for next month in Nebraska could spell problems for the $5.3 billion project.
Despite two attempts by Nebraska's attorney general to have the case thrown out, Lancaster County District Court Judge Stephanie Stacy has set a Sept. 27 trial date for arguments in a lawsuit that contends the state legislature unconstitutionally gave Gov. Dave Heineman (R) authority to approve the pipeline route. A win for the plaintiffs -- three Nebraska landowners who oppose the pipeline -- would force TransCanada, the company that wants to build the 1,179-mile northern leg of the project, to go through the entire siting process again. Even supporters do not believe that would permanently block the project, but it could add years to the timeline.
August 5, 2013, from London Guardian
Rising ocean temperatures are rearranging the biological make-up of our oceans, pushing species towards the poles by 7kms every year, as they chase the climates they can survive in, according to new research.
The study, conducted by a working group of scientists from 17 different institutions, gathered data from seven different countries and found the warming oceans are causing marine species to alter their breeding, feeding and migration patterns.
August 5, 2013, from BBC
Shifts in climate are strongly linked to increases in violence around the world, a study suggests.
US scientists found that even small changes in temperature or rainfall correlated with a rise in assaults, rapes and murders, as well as group conflicts and war.
The team says with the current projected levels of climate change, the world is likely to become a more violent place.
August 5, 2009, from London Metro
Billions of people will go to war as they are forced to leave areas made uninhabitable by global warming, climate change expert Lord Stern has warned.
Lord Nicholas Stern said innovative skills in maths, software, communications and business needed to be fully harnessed to find a way towards low carbon growth.
Lord Stern, author of the landmark 2006 Stern Review on the economic implications of climate change, made his prediction as he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Brighton.
August 5, 2009, from via ScienceDaily
What do the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone," global climate change, and acid rain have in common? They're all a result of human impacts to Earth's biology, chemistry and geology, and the natural cycles that involve all three. On August 4-5, 2009, scientists who study such cycles -- biogeochemists -- will convene at a special series of sessions at the Ecological Society of America (ESA)'s 94th annual meeting in Albuquerque, N.M.... Now, with global warming and other planet-wide impacts, biogeochemical cycles are being drastically altered. Like broken gears in machinery that was once finely-tuned, these cycles are falling out of sync.
August 5, 2009, from Washington Post
Experts fear a collapse of the entire ecosystem, threatening not only some of the nation's most popular tourism destinations - Everglades National Park and the Florida Keys - but a commercial and recreational fishery worth millions of dollars.
Florida Bay is a sprawling estuary at the state's southern tip, covering nearly three times the area of New York City... to the north of the bay, man's unforgiving push to develop South Florida has left the land dissected with roads, dikes and miles of flood control canals to make way for homes and farms, choking off the freshwater flow and slowly killing the bay.
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Resource
Depletion
August 5, 2013, from McClatchy
The windswept prairies of the Midwest are undergoing an energy transformation the electric grid can't handle.
Wind turbines tower over rural vistas in the heartland, where the clean energy source is becoming increasingly popular with utility companies that face state-mandated renewable energy standards. Unfortunately, the nation's aging power grid is hampering those efforts.
At the end of last year, installed wind-generation capacity totaled 60 gigawatts nationwide -- 5 percent of the nation's production capacity -- according to data from the U.S. Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Another 135 gigawatts of potential wind production awaits development and connection to the grid, according to industry data.
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Recovery
August 5, 2011, from Maggie Koerth-Baker, on BoingBoing
This is a story that contains a whole lot of yesbut. Yes, it really does make sense that climate change could trigger earthquakes. But it's very, very unlikely that that effect is responsible for any of the monster quakes we've experienced recently. And behind that apparent contradiction lies some really, really interesting science.
Let's start with a quick overview of why scientists think climate change and earthquakes are connected....
It begins with the forces that cause earthquakes. The surface of this planet, what we see, is actually the crust--just the crispy coating on a ball of nougat. The crust is broken up into large pieces and those pieces move over the surface of the gooey mass beneath. At the borders, the pieces of the crust are riddled with faults. These are places where the crust has broken and different pieces are moving in different directions--away from each other, towards each other, or slipping past one another....
Basically, it boils down to this: Climate change can trigger earthquakes. There's evidence that naturally occurring climate change did that in the past. There's some evidence that anthropogenic climate change might be doing that today. And there's evidence that we could see more climate change-related earthquakes in the future. But, if you're actually concerned about evidence (and you should be) then you can't go around, pointing to earthquakes that make the news today, and calling them consequences of climate change. And we can't oversimplify research to the point of forgetting all the yesbut.
August 5, 2009, from London Daily Telegraph
Leading shoemakers, including adidas, Clarks, Nike and Timberland, have demanded suppliers stop sending them leather from illegal ranches in the Amazon, after Greenpeace published a report highlighting the problem. The environmental charity found that shoe companies were unknowingly accepting leather from cattle raised on ranches set up on land that had been illegally cleared.
Greenpeace said leather from cattle raised on legal and illegal ranches was often mixed up by the time it was exported from Brazil, making it impossible to trace a piece's origin.
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