Biology
Breach
December 16, 2013, from Christian Science Monitor
Environmentalists fear that approval for one of the world's largest coal ports and an associated dredging operation to create a 'shipping super-highway' will cause severe damage to Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
December 16, 2011, from Science, via ScienceDaily
In "A World Awash in Nitrogen," Elser, a limnologist, comments on a new study showing that disruption to Earth's nitrogen balance began at the dawn of the industrial era and was further amplified by the development of the Haber-Bosch process to produce nitrogen rich fertilizers.
Until that time nitrogen, an essential building block to life on Earth and a major but inert component of its atmosphere, had cycled at low but balanced levels over millennia. That balance ended around 1895.
"Humans have more than doubled the rate of nitrogen inputs into global ecosystems, relative to pre-industrial periods, and have changed the amounts of circulating phosphorus (like nitrogen, a key limiting ingredient for crops and other plants) by about 400 percent due to mining to produce fertilizers," Elser said....
"Overall, changes in nutrient regimes (due to human acceleration of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles) cause various problems, but especially reduction in water quality, in water supplies and deterioration of coastal marine fisheries ('dead zones')," Elser added.
December 16, 2009, from GreenBuildingElements
Today the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released a study of indoor air quality in new homes. The report found that new homes have too little ventilation and too much formaldehyde.
Ventilation in the majority of homes did not meet code.... Inadequate ventilation causes formaldehyde to concentrate inside homes. All homes in the study had unsafe levels of formaldehyde.
"Nearly all homes had formaldehyde concentrations that exceeded guidelines for cancer and chronic irritation, while 59 percent exceeded guidelines for acute irritation."
Formaldehyde causes asthma, bronchitis, sinus infections, and headaches. Formaldehyde is also a carcinogen, and it has been linked to leukemia.
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Climate
Chaos
December 16, 2013, from New England Center for Investigative Reporting
Sand is becoming New England coastal dwellers' most coveted and controversial commodity as they try to fortify beaches against rising seas and severe erosion caused by violent storms.
From Westerly, Rhode Island to Eliot, Maine, debates over who gets sand, who pays for it and where it comes from are fast becoming some of the region's most contentious oceanfront issues. In many cases, taxpayers are being asked to foot some of the bill for beach-rebuilding projects.
"It's called the sand wars," said S. Jeffress Williams, a coastal geologist and scientist emeritus with the United States Geological Survey in Woods Hole and the University of Hawaii. The disputes, happening across the coastal U.S., "are only going to get more intense," he said.
December 16, 2013, from Reuters
Continental Resources, one of the companies that has committed to ship crude on TransCanada Corp's proposed Keystone XL pipeline, now says the controversial pipeline is no longer needed.
Continental has signed on to ship some 35,000 barrels of its own oil from the Bakken field of North Dakota on the 1,179-mile, $5.4-billion Keystone XL line. But construction of the pipeline has been delayed for years as TransCanada has sought regulatory approvals, and Continental has since turned to railroads to get its crude to oil refineries...The largest U.S. railroads will likely transport about 400,000 carloads of crude oil in 2013, versus just 9,500 in 2008, according to estimates from the Association of American Railroads.
December 16, 2013, from Ohio State University
It's official: East Antarctica is pushing West Antarctica around. Now that West Antarctica is losing weight--that is, billions of tons of ice per year--its softer mantle rock is being nudged westward by the harder mantle beneath East Antarctica.
The discovery comes from researchers led by The Ohio State University, who have recorded GPS measurements that show West Antarctic bedrock is being pushed sideways at rates up to about twelve millimeters--about half an inch--per year. This movement is important for understanding current ice loss on the continent, and predicting future ice loss.
December 16, 2009, from New Scientist
It reached a peak earlier this year, when the UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) turned down freedom of information (FOI) requests for its temperature records. Last week, the UK's Met Office attempted to quell the growing anger at its lack of openness by "releasing" data from 1700 weather stations around the world. The move was a token gesture. The Met Office has admitted to New Scientist that those figures were already publicly available through the World Meteorological Organization.... What they have not yet publicly revealed is that under a confidentiality agreement between the Met Office and the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, a portion of the UK's own temperature measurements is only made available to "bona fide academic researchers working on agreed NERC-endorsed scientific programmes". Why? So that the data can be sold privately. "We have to offset our costs for the benefit of the taxpayer, so we balance that against freedom of access," says David Britton, a spokesman for the Met Office.
December 16, 2009, from Green Bay Press Gazette
MILWAUKEE -- Cities around the country that have installed energy-efficient traffic lights are discovering a hazardous downside: The bulbs don't burn hot enough to melt snow and can become crusted over in a storm -- a problem blamed for dozens of accidents and at least one death... Many communities, including Green Bay, are using LED bulbs in some of their traffic lights because they use 90 percent less energy than the old incandescent variety, last far longer and save money. Their great advantage is also their drawback: They do not waste energy by producing heat.
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
December 16, 2013, from Bloomberg News
MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., the power unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (A:US), agreed to buy wind turbines valued at more than $1 billion from Siemens AG (SIE) for five projects in Iowa, in the supplier's biggest order to date for land-based wind equipment.
Siemens will provide 448 of its 2.3-megawatt turbines with total capacity of almost 1,050 megawatts, enough to power about 320,000 households... "The U.S. is leading the way toward grid parity," Tacke said, the point when the price for power from renewable sources becomes competitive with conventional sources of energy such as natural gas and coal. "The industry needs volume and these large orders help drive down the costs of wind power."
December 16, 2009, from ACS, via EurekAlert
The report describes development of a practical, inexpensive storage system for achieving personalized solar energy. At its heart is an innovative catalyst that splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen that become fuel for producing electricity in a fuel cell. The new oxygen-evolving catalyst works like photosynthesis, the method plants use to make energy, producing clean energy from sunlight and water. "Because energy use scales with wealth, point-of-use solar energy will put individuals, in the smallest village in the nonlegacy world and in the largest city of the legacy world, on a more level playing field," the report states.
December 16, 2009, from New York Times
COPENHAGEN -- Negotiators have all but completed a sweeping deal that would compensate countries for preserving forests, and in some cases, other natural landscapes like peat soils, swamps and fields that play a crucial role in curbing climate change. Environmental groups have long advocated such a compensation program because forests are efficient absorbers of carbon dioxide, the primary heat-trapping gas linked to global warming. Rain forest destruction, which releases the carbon dioxide stored in trees, is estimated to account for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally. The agreement for the program, if signed as expected, may turn out to be the most significant achievement to come out of the Copenhagen climate talks, providing a system through which countries can be paid for conserving disappearing natural assets based on their contribution to reducing emissions.
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