Biology
Breach
April 23, 2013, from New York Times
... Levels of deadly pollutants up to 40 times the recommended exposure limit in Beijing and other cities have struck fear into parents and led them to take steps that are radically altering the nature of urban life for their children.
Parents are confining sons and daughters to their homes, even if it means keeping them away from friends. Schools are canceling outdoor activities and field trips. Parents with means are choosing schools based on air-filtration systems, and some international schools have built gigantic, futuristic-looking domes over sports fields to ensure healthy breathing.
April 23, 2011, from Nature
Eco-friendly plastics disintegrate, but might just linger in the environment. The environmentally friendly version of polythene might not be so friendly after all.
Polyethylene is one of the most widely used materials in the world, and the discarded plastic bag has become one of the most potent symbols of human impact on the environment. As worries over the vast scale of waste from this plastic has grown, so has the use of purportedly 'degradable' forms of it... Although it is clear that 'degradable' plastic bags, for example, will fall apart in the environment, the resulting fragments can persist for a long time, and there are no long-term studies on these pieces. A key issue is that products can be described as biodegradable without reference to the timescale it takes them to fully biodegrade.
April 23, 2009, from Indianapolis Star
Dozens of Brazilian residents are suing five chemical giants, including drug maker Eli Lilly and Co. and pesticide maker Dow AgroSciences of Indianapolis, claiming they dumped, buried or burned tons of toxic waste that had been banned in the U.S. since the 1970s.
The toxins contaminated the air and water and caused medical problems for workers and nearby residents, the lawsuit claims. Exposure to the chemicals resulted in cancer, genetic abnormalities, physical deformities and premature deaths, according to the lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis. It asks for unspecified damages....The suit also names Shell Oil Co., American Cyanamid Co. and BASF Corp. The plaintiffs claim Lilly used its plant incinerator to burn "untoward substances" for Shell and other companies.
April 23, 2009, from Environmental Health News
A new study with rats shows that long-term exposure to the common agricultural pesticide atrazine causes weight gain in animals fed normal diets and obesity in those fed high fat diets. These health conditions can lead to diabetes, and they may be triggered by damage to critical structures in cells responsible for making energy. The new results suggest a mechanism to explain prior studies that found an association between areas of the United States with heavy atrazine use and high obesity prevalence.
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Climate
Chaos
April 23, 2014, from VOX
...[J]ust this month, the IPCC put out a new report saying, OK, not great, but we can still stay under 2 deg C. We just need to act more drastically and figure out some way to pull carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere. (Never mind that we still don't have the technology to do the latter.)...
At current rates, the world will exhaust its carbon budget and breach 2°C in roughly three decades. (If climate sensitivity turns out to be low, that only buys us an extra decade or so.)
If we want to stay within the budget and avoid 2 deg C, then, our annual emissions need to start declining each year. Older, dirtier coal plants would need to get replaced with cleaner wind or solar or nuclear plants, say. Or gas-guzzling SUVs would need to get replaced with new low-carbon electric cars. But the longer we put this off, the harder it gets -- the carbon budget gets smaller, and there are more coal plants and SUVs to replace.
April 23, 2013, from Sioux Falls Argus Leader
South Dakota took part in a 26-state effort to update the way K-12 schools teach science, but the resulting standards face a series of hurdles on the way to implementation.
The Next Generation Science Standards, released this month, emphasize the practice of science and critical thinking in place of rote memorization. But the standards, which map out what students should know and be able to do, already are drawing both praise and criticism for their unskeptical take on humans' role in climate change... But many politicians consider man's influence on global climate change to be unresolved.
April 23, 2013, from Bloomberg News
More than half the U.S. states with laws requiring utilities to buy renewable energy are considering ways to pare back those mandates after a plunge in natural gas prices brought on by technology that boosted supply. Sixteen of the 29 states with renewable portfolio standards are considering legislation that would reduce the need for wind and solar power, according to researchers backed by the U.S. Energy Department. North Carolina lawmakers may be among the first to move, followed by Colorado and Connecticut.
The efforts could benefit U.S. utilities such as Duke Energy Corp (DUK). and PG&E Corp (PCG). as well as Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM)., the biggest U.S. oil producer, and Peabody Energy Corp (BTU)., the largest U.S. coal mining company.
April 23, 2013, from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Wisconsin Power & Light Co. and three other utilities will spend $1.2 billion to clean up coal-fired power plants and shut down older plants under a settlement announced Monday with federal regulators.
Under a settlement filed in federal court in Madison on Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency and Justice Department will assess a civil penalty of $2.45 million for alleged violations of air pollution laws over the years.... Utility ratepayers won't have to pay for the civil penalties... But it's possible they could pay for the environmental mitigation costs.
And over time they will be on the hook for paying for the construction of environmental controls at the coal boilers that will remain open.
April 23, 2013, from Los Angeles Times
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday criticized the State Department's environmental impact review of the Keystone XL pipeline, saying there was not enough evidence to back up key conclusions on gas emissions, safety and alternative routes.
In a letter to top State Department officials, the agency said it had "environmental objections" to their review, which concluded the pipeline would have minimal impact on the environment. The analysis could complicate efforts to win approval for the controversial $7-billion project.
April 23, 2013, from TckTckTck
A groundbreaking new study, published in Nature Geoscience, has found that global temperatures were warmer between 1970 and 2000 than any other 30-year period in the last 1,400 years.
The research, compiled by 73 scientists from 28 institutions worldwide, is the most comprehensive reconstruction of global temperatures to date. It used corals, ice cores, tree rings, lake and marine sediments, historical records, cave deposits and climate archives to help establish temperature trends over the last 2,000 years... The timing of the warming period correlates directly with an increase in carbon emissions from human activity over the same period and broadly confirms an ever-growing message from climate scientists: climate change is happening, it is caused by humans and billions of people will fall victim to it without urgent action.
April 23, 2011, from Science News
Earth's warming in recent years has had an exaggerated impact in the Arctic. There, temperatures have soared relative to temperate areas, resulting in an increased summer melting of sea ice. But new research indicates that the local warming would be even more dramatic if it weren't for salt sprays kicked up by whitecaps from the Arctic's increasingly open waters.
Snow and sea ice reflect much of the sun's warming rays back into space. As an increasing share of the Arctic Ocean's year-round cover of sea ice has disappeared, the sea surface has darkened -- or reduced its albedo -- and become an increasingly better absorber of solar energy. The open water starts to develop in spring and doesn't ice over again until fall. Year-round ice is ice that survives the summer...As expected, the salt clouds can exert a subtle cooling of the Arctic, the team reports online April 13 in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
April 23, 2009, from London Daily Telegraph
The new research found that plants have been taking in more carbon dioxide over the last 40 years because pollution makes it easier for plants to convert sunlight to energy.
However as the world produces more electricity from renewables and transport is made cleaner, the skies will be clearer - slowing the ability of plants to absorb the greenhouse gas and therefore contributing to global warming. The study, published in Nature, warned that the reduced ability of plants to absorb carbon dioxide as the air becomes cleaner makes it even more important to cut emissions in the future....The increase in the amount of carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas, may have helped to slow global warming. However as the world cuts pollution it will speed up again.
April 23, 2009, from Washington Post
The Colorado Rockies, including the headwaters of the Colorado River and the Rio Grande, have experienced 11 serious dust storms this year, a record for the six years researchers have been tracking them.
More important, an increasing amount of airborne dust is blanketing the region, affecting how fast the snowpack melts, when local plants bloom and what quality of air residents are breathing.
The dust storms are a harbinger of a broader phenomenon, researchers say, as global warming translates into less precipitation and a population boom intensifies the activities that are disturbing the dust in the first place.
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
April 23, 2009, from London Guardian
Sections of coral reef in Australia's Great Barrier Reef have made a "spectacular" recovery from a devastating bleaching event three years ago, marine scientists say.
In 2006, high sea temperatures caused severe coral bleaching in the Keppell Islands, in the southern part of the reef — the largest coral reef system in the world. The damaged reefs were then covered by a single species of seaweed which threatened to suffocate the coral and cause further loss.
A "lucky combination" of rare circumstances has meant the reef has been able to make a recovery. Abundant corals have reestablished themselves in a single year...
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