7 Visions of Our Hot, Awful Future

It wasn't so long ago that some hope lingered around global warming--a dedicated international effort could still turn things around and prevent catastrophic change. But have we now crossed the threshold? Last year in A World Without Ice, Henry Pollack put it simply: "Change is underway and is certain to continue, because of inertia in both the climate system and the global industrial economy; it is impossible to simply pull the plug and stop these systems in their tracks." Global warming is going to happen, and perhaps disastrously so.

And the zeitgeist has turned towards resignation, if 2010's books--with their gloomy covers featuring melting ice and submerged skyscrapers--are any indication. We've assembled their predictions, so you know what to expect from our hot future.

Pacific islands left thirsty by La Niña

The Pacific island nations of Tuvalu and Tokelau have declared a state of emergency due to severe water shortages. In response, New Zealand has sent water and two desalination units, and Samoa has also sent water.

Both nations rely on rain for drinking water, but there has been little rainfall for the past four months, says Richard Gorkrun of the Tuvalu Meteorological Service in Funafuti, Tuvalu. "Some villages in Tokelau only have enough water until the end of this week," says Jo Suveinakama of the Tokelau government.

A weak La Niña is causing the drought by cooling the surface of the sea around Tuvalu, says Daniel Corbett of forecasters MetService in Wellington, New Zealand. The cool waters have forced a large band of cloud off course.

"Normally the band would be flirting with Tuvalu and producing afternoon showers over the islands," says Corbett. "But now it's too far south, so they have been bone dry."

The clouds are not expected to return until next year.

Groundwater greed driving sea level rises

SLOWLY and almost imperceptibly the seas are rising, swollen by melting ice and the expansion of seawater as it warms. But there's another source of water adding to the rise: humanity's habit of pumping water from underground aquifers to the surface. Most of this water ends up in the sea.

Not many scientists even consider the effects of groundwater on sea level, says Leonard Konikow of the United States Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. Estimates were published as far back as 1994 (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/367054a0), but without good evidence to back them up, he says. The last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that changes to groundwater reserves "cannot be estimated with much confidence".

Konikow measured how much water had ended up in the oceans by looking at changes in groundwater levels in 46 well-studied aquifers, which he then extrapolated to the rest of the world. He estimates that about 4500 cubic kilometres of water was extracted from aquifers between 1900 and 2008.

That amounts to 1.26 centimetres of the overall rise in sea levels of 17 cm in the same period (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2011gl048604).

That 1.26 cm may not seem like much, but groundwater depletion has accelerated massively since 1950, particularly in the past decade. Over 1300 cubic kilometres of the groundwater was extracted between 2000 and 2008, producing 0.36 cm of the total 2.79-cm rise in that time. "I was surprised that the depletion has accelerated so much," Konikow says.

It's not clear if the acceleration will continue. Konikow points out that some developed countries are cutting back on aquifer use and even trying to refill them when there is plenty of rainfall. "I would like to see that implemented more," he says.

"While there remain significant uncertainties, Konikow's estimate is probably the best there is for groundwater depletion," says John Church of CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

Ice-age nettles may survive in dark Chinese caves

Walk into a cave in south-west China and you could be stepping back 30,000 years in time.

So says Alex Monro, a researcher in tropical plant diversity at the Natural History Museum, London, who thinks the caves could be a time capsule preserving rare nettles from the time of the last ice age.

Working with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Monro has identified seven species of nettle that grow in isolated, dark corners of the karst landscapes of Guangxi and Yunnan provinces. Some species can survive in conditions in which just 0.02 per cent of sunlight penetrates the cave – that's less than reaches 100 metres deep into the oceans. "They grow at the backs of the main caverns in near-dark conditions," says Monro.

"Some of the specimens came from areas with very low light levels indeed, and one can easily interpret the site as being under full cave conditions," says Frank Howarth of the Hawaii Biological Survey in Honolulu, a speleologist who specialises in karst caves and their ecologies.

"There must be something quite special about their photosynthesis," says Monro, although the team has not yet investigated the photosynthetic mechanism. "They probably activate the photosynthetic process very quickly, which enables them to take advantage of very short bursts of light, and they might go for slightly different wavelengths," he says.

The nettle species seem to be unique to the remote caves and gorges, growing in isolated groups. One species, Elatostema retrorstrigulosum, is limited to only 10 adult plants, some growing in a grotto, hidden among stalagmites. The team have identified two of the species as "critically endangered" under the criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature; the rest are either "endangered" or "vulnerable".
Cold blast from the past

Nettles like these are not found in the surrounding tropical forest. To explain the discovery of these pockets of rare plants in an environment that is too tropical to support them, Monro suggests that the rare species could be "relicts of a vegetation from a previous cooler climate that resembled that of the caves".

Ancient cave paintings threatened by tourist plans

Prehistoric paintings in northern Spain could be irreparably damaged if plans to reopen the Altamira cave to tourists go ahead. Local officials want to reopen the cave to boost the local economy, but visitors could heat the caves and introduce microbes that destroy pigments.

The Altamira cave paintings were discovered in 1879 and are thought to be at least 14,000 years old. The paintings have attracted huge numbers of visitors – 175,000 in 1973, the busiest year on record. But the cave was closed to the public in 2002 after photosynthetic bacteria and fungi were found to be consuming pigments at alarming rates.

Plans to reopen the caves could restart the damaging processes. A team from the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid have modelled the effect of visitors over a number of years and say that tourists would increase the temperature, humidity and carbon-dioxide levels in the cave, creating conditions in which microbes would thrive.

In addition, visitors would bring with them organic matter in the form of skin flakes, clothing fibres and dust, which microbes can consume. Air turbulence created by moving people would spread bacterial and fungal spores to other, previously unaffected spaces.
Another Lascaux?

Although reopening the caves might boost the economy in the short term, says lead researcher Cesáreo Sáiz Jiménez, the damage would outweigh the benefit. "The paintings are a legacy from the past and their importance exceeds local culture."

The researchers say they want to prevent the scale of damage that occurred at the Lascaux cave in France, where mismanagement led to successive waves of pathogens attacking wall paintings there. For example, pesticides intended to destroy microorganisms became a source of nutrients for them instead.

Sáiz Jiménez and his colleagues conclude that only isolation from the outside world can prevent the same kind of damage at Altamira.

Why size matters in the plant world too

Over 60 years ago, evolutionary biologist Bernhard Rensch calculated that males are typically the larger sex in big-bodied species such as humans, whereas females outdo them in small-bodied species such as spiders. Now it turns out that many plants obey Rensch's rule too.

Most plants produce both male and female sex organs, but around 7 per cent are dioecious, meaning individuals are purely male or female. Kevin Burns and Patrick Kavanagh at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand measured the leaf and stem sizes of 297 plants from 38 dioecious plant species in herbarium collections of the National Museum of New Zealand and discovered that they follow the sex-size rule

Hot Zone—A Warming Planet's Rising Tide of Disaster

It was a hot, sticky day when patient zero arrived at a local hospital in Brownsville, Texas, in June 2005. Her body was racked with chills, she couldn’t stop vomiting, her blood pressure was perilously low, and she was passing blood in her urine. Clueless as to the cause, doctors pumped her up with fluids to treat dehydration, dosed her with antibiotics, and sent her home. But when blood tests and clinical evaluation were done with the help of the regional Texas Border Infectious Disease Surveillance project, a surprising culprit was unmasked: dengue hemorrhagic fever, a deadly viral disease usually regarded as a risk only in the tropics.

Long thought eradicated in the United States, dengue is roaring back. There had been prior cases of the disease’s milder cousin, classic dengue fever, in Brownsville, a bustling metropolis of about 140,000 people at the southernmost tip of Texas on the Gulf coast. But this was the first well-documented case of the more serious form of dengue infection, hemorrhagic fever, in a Texas resident infected in the continental United States. It is unlikely to be the last. From 1995 to 2005, some 10,000 cases were reported in the United States and the Texas-Mexico border region. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) believes that many cases are never counted, so these figures may be a vast underestimate.

A range of factors influence the spread of the dengue virus, but rising global temperatures may be the most important of all. Like many tropical diseases, dengue is spread by mosquito bites, and mosquitoes are exquisitely sensitive to climate. Frost kills both adults and larvae, which is why the disease hadn’t previously been able to get a foothold in the United States. With the advent of warmer winters, there is nothing holding the insects back. As a result, the two species of mosquito capable of transmitting dengue fever—Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, also called the Asian tiger mosquito—have substantially expanded their habitat range since the middle of the 20th century

The Future History of the Arctic

Viewed through certain eyes, the diminishing ice cover at the top of the world is not a harbinger of destruction but an open door to commerce. The Northwest Passage is coming, at last. The Arctic is loaded with resources, and today as the ice recedes and open water stretches further, energy developers are licking their lips at the chance to get at all that hydrocarbon booty buried beneath frigid seas. The fight to come is: Who has the rights to what?

Writes Charles Emmerson: "If there is a scramble for the Arctic, it is a scramble in slow motion." That's because going after Arctic energy resources requires not just waiting for the waters to become passable, but also negotiating the fact that "different legal regimes apply to the land, the sea, and the seabed." It might be easiest to negotiate a new treaty to govern the newly open Arctic, but Emmerson doubts this will happen. If for no other reason, he writes, the pool of Arctic nations would be inviting other nations to join the deliberations if they did so. It looks like the future of the Arctic will be legal mess, but it will be a legal mess sorted out by Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway, and Denmark (owner of Greenland) while the rest of the world watches from the sidelines.

The Weather of the Future

Can the Big Apple, a city of islands (and DISCOVER's home), be spared from rising seas and fiercer storms? As we covered earlier this year, there's plenty to do to save New York from encroaching waters. Some architects see a circle of marshland around Manhattan to keep the waves at bay, bringing back mollusks to create natural reefs, or raising buildings off the ground to keep them from flooding. But none of this will be cheap. In Peter Ward's thought experiment that saw Miami's doom, "the fight for New York alone had necessitated cuts to national defense to the point that that United States had completely withdrawn from its foreign bases, defaulted on its Social Security obligations, and abandoned its short-lived national health care system."

In her book, Heidi Cullen explains that there are more mundane annoyances on the way. She quotes Columbia University energy expert Steve Hammer: "For New York, climate change means blackouts." Plain and simple, more extreme heat means more AC running non-stop, and the city's power system won't be able to keep up. The water supply will be stressed as less precipitation will fall as snow on the Catskills, meaning less meltwater to flow to the city's taps.

Climatopolis

We are an adaptive species. Unlike the birds and butterflies, Matthew Kahn writes, we humans can adapt to whatever new world comes our way. An optimist in a pessimistic group, he focuses the upside of a disaster. For one thing, the Rust Belt could receive an overdue makeover. Given the steady declines of Cleveland, Buffalo, and Detroit, it sounds like a joke today to imagine them vibrant again. However, Kahn points to the revitalizations of Boston and New York City after the dreadful 1970s. If global warming makes the Sun Belt too sunny and unlivable, perhaps what was old will become new again. Foresight, he says, will be the key. People who buy Detroit property today for next-to-nothing will look good if the city booms again. "Climate change will create big profit opportunities for insurance companies that are nimble enough to accurately price the real-time risk that policy owners (such as homeowners) face in different locations," he writes.

His oddly specific prediction: We're all going to eat dried fruit in the future. Kahn reasons that growers will want to hold inventory to deal with market fluctuations brought on by climate-related agricultural disasters, and dried fruit keeps.

How to Cool the Planet

Britain's Royal Society is celebrating its 350th anniversary this year, and even such an august scientific organization is no longer putting its stock in humanity's ability to curtail its CO2 emissions in time to prevent disaster. Last year the society complied a full report on plan B schemes--ways to tinker with the planet on a grand scale to save us from ourselves. Ideas to hack the Earth are now mainstream, as seen in the mass market books by Jeff Goodell and Eli Kintisch that hit the now-familiar plans: seeding the sea with iron to encourage the growth of carbon-sequestering plankton, seeding the clouds with aerosols to reflect away more sunlight, seeding space with giant mirrors to cut the amount of solar energy that reaches our little blue marble.

"The rising interest in geoengineering is driven less by mad scientists than by spineless politicians," Goodell writes. He, like the scientists at the Royal Society, would prefer that we address our carbon emissions proactively and many years down the road look back at the idea of sci-fi scale planet tampering as sheer madness. But, we probably won't. We, most likely, will wait until the last minute and then splurge to save ourselves. However, he writes, geoengineering isn't a quick fix. It buys us some time, but we'll still have to live with the world we've created.

Fracking Nation

Environmental ?concerns over a ?controversial mining method could put America's largest ?reservoirs of clean-burning natural ?gas beyond reach. Is there a better way ?to drill??

Tracy Bank was concerned. A geochemist, she makes her living studying how water interacts with rocks. And four years ago, when she arrived at the State University of New York at Buffalo, water was definitely interacting with rocks.

Buffalo is perched on the edge of the largest known reservoir of natural gas in America, a geologic formation known as the Marcellus Shale (pdf). The 95,000-square-mile slab, which lies under sizable portions of West Virginia, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, could contain up to 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—enough to meet the nation’s natural gas needs for at least two years. Owing to this bounty, the areas above the shale are now in the grip of an unprecedented gas-drilling boom. The gas is extracted using a method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique that involves pumping millions of gallons of water laced with ?chemicals deep underground to blast open the shale and release the gas trapped inside. The blasting is what got Bank worried.

Fracking has already drawn considerable scrutiny from environmental groups, unhappy homeowners, and teams of lawyers who blame the drilling method for polluting pristine rivers, turning bucolic farmlands into noisy industrial zones, and leaking enough methane to make ordinary tap water as flammable as lighter fluid. Bank is now bringing attention to yet another problem: radiation. Her research shows that high-pressure fluids striking the shale could dislodge naturally occurring radioactive compounds such as uranium and strontium, putting groundwater at risk of contamination.

Climate Science Wins a Round, But the Campaign Goes Poorly

In 2010 climate researchers struggled to move past the controversy that had rocked their community the year before. The accusation was incendiary: that scientists had grossly exaggerated the case for global warming by manipulating their data. The evidence was murky: more than 1,000 e-mails and documents exchanged by leading climate scientists, which had been hacked from their computers. But the verdict, as delivered by five separate investigations, was clear: The accused scientists were exonerated of any misconduct.

Three British investigations focused on the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, site of the stolen e-mails and a leading center for studying global warming. Meanwhile, two American panels examined the integrity of Michael Mann, a prominent climate researcher at Pennsylvania State University. All five groups concluded that none of the scientists had violated academic standards. “We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” declared a report headed by Sir Muir Russell, chair of one of the British investigations.

Lisa Graumlich, a University of Washington paleoecologist who served on another British group, led by Lord Ronald Oxburgh, looked into a broader charge: whether there was something “fundamentally broken” about the integrity of the Climate Research Unit. Such charges, she determined, were baseless. On the contrary, as the Ox­burgh panel’s final report (pdf) put it, the attacks leveled against the scientists “showed a rather selective and uncharitable approach to information made available by the CRU.” Michael Mann was more blunt. In an e-mail to me, he asserted that the people who attacked his work “don’t have the science on their side, and they surely know this. So smears and disinformation are all they have left.”

Ice falls to near record low

This mosaic of satellite images over the Arctic Ocean shows ice levels nearing a record low set in 2007. Acquired from the European Space Agency's radar satellite Envisat ASAR, the blue areas represent regions where ice accounts for more than 80 per cent of the sea surface. ASAR captured the high resolution images over the course of three days beginning 9 September. The satellite's radar penetrates the obscuring effects of the Arctic's frequent dark hours and thick cloud cover.

Sea ice levels have plummeted since 1979, when satellite records of conditions in the Arctic began. By the 1980s, minimum ice levels observed at the end of each summer summer had already fallen 50 per cent.

The past five years have seen the five lowest levels on record. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, this year's minimum ice extent is 4.33 million square kilometres, just 160,000 square kilometres above the 2007 level. However, a team of researchers at the University of Bremen in Germany have come up with a separate estimate using a microwave sensor on board NASA's Aqua satellite. They suggest sea ice extent may have shrunk beyond 2007's minimum extent to an all-time low.

Fukushima's radioactive sea contamination lingers

Levels of radiation in the sea off the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant remain stubbornly high six months after the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on 11 March.

After levels peaked at around 100,000 becquerels per cubic metre of seawater in early April, much of the radioactive iodine, caesium and plutonium from Fukushima was expected to rapidly disperse in the Pacific Ocean.

Instead, it seems that the levels remain high. That could be because contaminated water is still leaking into the sea from the nuclear plant, because currents are trapping the material that's already there, or both.

Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts, has told The New York Times that he has received samples of seawater taken in July from near the plant that contained 10,000 becquerels per cubic metre. The corresponding level last year, only months before the disaster, was just 1.5 becquerels, he says.

Simon Boxall, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton, UK, says that much of the radioactive material will still be sinking down to the seabed and being absorbed by marine life.

Arctic ozone hole breaks all records

In the first three months of this year, something unprecedented happened in the skies over the Arctic. A large hole appeared in the ozone layer, far bigger than any seen there before.

The Arctic ozone layer suffers a little damage every winter, but the effect is normally short-lived. "This is a clear step beyond that," says Neil Harris of the University of Cambridge. As the measurements came in, ozone researchers began to debate whether the loss could be compared to that seen over the Antarctic. "It's the first time we've even discussed that question," says Harris.

Between 18 and 20 kilometres up, over 80 per cent of the existing ozone was destroyed. "The loss in 2011 was twice that in the two previous record-setting Arctic winters, 1996 and 2005," says Nathaniel Livesey of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The hole was similar in size to those seen in Antarctica in the 1980s. The Antarctic hole has continued to grow since then, and is far larger today.

The Arctic ozone hole will have allowed more ultraviolet radiation than before through, but it is unlikely anyone has been seriously harmed, says Bruce Armstrong of the University of Sydney, Australia. "Occasional ozone depletion episodes such as this would add very little to the underlying population's risk of UV-related cancer."
Ozone killer

The question now vexing atmospheric scientists is why the hole grew so large, and whether it will open again. Livesey and his colleague Michelle Santee say the hole formed because the stratosphere remained cold for several months longer than usual. The cold air allowed water vapour and nitric acid to condense into polar stratospheric clouds, which catalyse the conversion of chlorine into chemically active forms that destroy ozone.

But we don't know why the stratosphere stayed cold for so long.

Air pollution is stunting India's monsoon

India has been drying out for half a century, and air pollution thousands of kilometres away is partly to blame.

The monsoon has been weakening since the 1950s. Indian air pollution has been blamed, but now it seems that emissions further afield are also a factor.

"The summer monsoon provides up to 80 per cent of total annual rainfall in south Asia, and supports 20 per cent of the world's population," says Yi Ming of Princeton University in New Jersey. With his colleagues, Ming used climate models to assess how different factors changed the monsoon.

The monsoon is brought by large-scale wind patterns that transport heat between the northern and southern hemispheres. For half the year the northern hemisphere experiences more solar heating and so is warmer than the southern hemisphere; the situation is reversed during the other six months. As the winds head north over the Indian Ocean during the northern hemisphere's summer they pick up moisture, which falls as rain over south Asia.

Air pollution in the form of aerosols can weaken these long-distance wind patterns, however. That's because it reflects sunlight back into space, cooling the polluted area. Thick aerosol pollution over Europe in summer ensures that the northern hemisphere isn't much warmer than the southern hemisphere, so there is nothing to drive the winds – and nothing to trigger the monsoon.

Lurching rains

Ming says his modelling suggests that the effect of European aerosol pollution accounts for about half the drop in the volume of monsoon rainfall – the other half is down to pollution over south Asia. In as-yet-unpublished experiments, he confirmed the important role that the European pollution plays in weakening the monsoon. He ran his models again, this time assuming no aerosol pollution over south Asia. Even so, India had a significantly weaker monsoon.

The study supports existing evidence that air pollution is weakening the monsoon, says Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the University of California, San Diego.

Another form of pollution – greenhouse gas emissions – is pushing the monsoon in the other direction, towards greater rainfall, says Ramanathan. The competing forces of the greenhouse effect and air pollution may lead to a much more variable monsoon, with drought one year followed by floods the next. He says this erratic behaviour is "more worrisome" than the overall decrease in rainfall.

Engineers can build a low-carbon world if we let them

The engineering solutions to combat climate change already exist. Politicians must be brave enough to use them before it's too late

One word sums up the attitude of engineers towards climate change: frustration. Political inertia following the high-profile failure of 2009's Copenhagen climate conference has coupled with a chorus of criticism from a vocal minority of climate-change sceptics. Add the current economic challenges and the picture looks bleak. Our planet is warming and we are doing woefully little to prevent it getting worse.

Engineers know there is so much more that we could do. While the world's politicians have been locked in predominantly fruitless talks, engineers have been developing the technologies we need to bring down emissions and help create a more stable future.

Wind, wave and solar power, zero-emissions transport, low-carbon buildings and energy-efficiency technologies have all been shown feasible. To be rolled out on a global scale, they are just waiting for the political will. Various models, such as the European Climate Foundation's Roadmap 2050, show that implementing these existing technologies would bring about an 85 per cent drop in carbon emissions by 2050. The idea that we need silver-bullet technologies to be developed before the green technology revolution can happen is a myth. The revolution is waiting to begin.
Climate call

The barriers preventing the creation of a low-carbon society are not technological but political and financial. That's why at a landmark London conference convened by the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 11 national engineering institutions representing 1.2 million engineers from across the globe, under the banner of the Future Climate project, made a joint call for action at December's COP17 climate change conference in Durban, South Africa.

The statement calls on governments to move from warm words to solid actions. They need to introduce legislation and financial support to get these technologies out of the workshop and into our homes and businesses and onto our roads. Targeted regulation and taxation will also drive innovation. This will require bold politics, and spending at a time when money is scarce. It is far from unaffordable, however. The UK's Committee on Climate Change, which advises the British government, continues to support the view of the Stern reportMovie Camera – an assessment of the climate change challenge in the UK – that the move to a low-carbon society will cost no more than 1 per cent of GDP by 2050.

Resistance to wind turbines and the power lines they feed, nuclear power and electric cars, as well as the economic costs, all make public opinion a powerful brake on change. However the alternative seems certain to be worse. It is not only the challenges of a deteriorating climate: with inaction comes a great risk to our economy in the long term. The green technology revolution, just like the industrial revolution before it, will give jobs to those countries which have created the right conditions for it to flourish.

Nuclear elephant

nvestment in renewable energy is vital for a prosperous, low-carbon society. However, decision-makers cannot ignore the elephant in the room – nuclear power. The enormous cost of implementing 100 per cent renewable power is not realistic for most nations, so nuclear offers our best chance of making a low-carbon society achievable and affordable. Yet the incident at Fukushima earlier this year has reinforced some long-standing concerns.

Unlike road use or smoking, nuclear power stirs anxieties in many of us that are out of proportion with its true risks. This is not to be complacent about the potential danger of a nuclear plant, but it is striking that nuclear power has killed fewer than 5000 people in its entire history. Compare that with coal mining, which in just one year and in one country – China in 2006 – killed 4700.

Fluorescent fish glows to show feminising chemicals up

FOR people worried about the feminising effect of oestrogen-like chemicals in the water there is now a modern-day equivalent of the canary in the coal mine: a genetically modified fish in a bowl.

Male fish exposed to oestrogen have delayed sperm development and grow smaller testes. Some industrial chemicals, such as bisphenol A, mimic oestrogen, but little is known about how the effects of different oestrogen-like chemicals add up in water.

To find out, Xueping Chen and colleagues at Vitargent, a biotechnology company in Hong Kong, have created a genetically engineered fish that glows green when it is exposed to oestrogen-like chemicals. Chen's team took the green fluorescent protein gene from jellyfish and spliced it into the genome of the medaka fish, Oryzias melastigma, next to a gene that detects oestrogen. Chemicals that have oestrogen-like activity cause the fish to express the modified gene, making them glow.

When the team tested the fish at eight sites around Hong Kong, they found that some chemicals that showed weak or no oestrogenic activity, including UV filters used in sunscreen, had combined in water to amplify or create an oestrogenic effect. The work is as yet unpublished.

William Price of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, warns the approach does not detect a biological response.

Since this article was first posted, William Price has asked us to clarify his opinion. His letter is posted below.

From William Price, University of Wollongong
I was quoted in your report on a transgenic fish that fluoresces when exposed to oestrogenically active chemical contaminants (11 June, p 16). My comment, as used, is slightly ambiguous. To clarify, the creation of a transgenic fish that glows in the presence of oestrogenically active compounds in the water is an advance and a novel invention. This development is essentially measuring a response to particular levels of contaminants. However, what is not being measured is whether the chemicals at those concentrations are likely to have an adverse biological (eg reproductive) or physiological effect on the transgenic fish or other biota in the water.
Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia

Climatequake: Will global warming rock the planet

FEW things are more likely to prompt instant ridicule from climate sceptics than the idea that there might be a link between global warming and geological disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. "Earthquakes are caused by tectonic plate movements - they are not caused by Bubba driving his SUV down the highway," is typical of the responses found in the denialist blogosphere.

Yes, the Earth moves all by itself, but it is becoming increasingly clear that climate plays a role in when and how often. What happens on the surface can suppress quakes and eruptions - and trigger them. There are already signs of such effects in the world's northern regions, which are warming fastest.

So seriously is the issue being taken that an upcoming special report on extreme events and disasters related to climate change, commissioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will include a section on it. So what exactly is going on and what can we expect during the next century and beyond?

The idea that climate change can affect events such as earthquakes is not as outlandish as it might first seem. While the power of earthquakes comes from the movements of tectonic plates deep beneath the surface, even these stupendously massive structures can be influenced by what is happening at the surface. The rapid erosion of huge quantities of material by the monsoon rains in India, for instance, has affected the motion of the Indian plate over the past few million years.

On a more immediate timescale, there is already plenty of evidence that human activity can trigger earthquakes. The building of vast dams has often been linked to seismic activity, for instance. Some blame the Great Quake of Sichuan in 2008, which killed 80,000 people, on the recently constructed Zipingpu dam just 5 kilometres away from the epicentre.

Mining and drilling activities can also trigger small earthquakes, and at least one geothermal project has been cancelled because of fears of further quakes. And if small geothermal projects can trigger quakes, it is not so surprising that altering the climate of the entire planet will have an effect too.

The crux of the problem is simple: anything that increases or decreases the load on the Earth's crust causes stresses and strains. When this happens slap bang on top of one of the world's many volcanoes or geological faults, where the crust is already under strain, it can make the area more or less likely to erupt or slip. And there is a very heavy substance whose movements depend largely on the weather and the climate: water.

During past ice ages, vast ice sheets several kilometres thick built up over northern Eurasia and north America. The weight of the ice pinned down faults and suppressed the flow of magma. When the ice melted, there was a flurry of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as faults began to move again.

2 Degrees of Separation

Outside Boston’s Faneuil Hall, where American revolutionaries first began clamoring for independence in the 1770s, the water is nowhere in sight. Tourists click photos, office workers hurry across the cobblestone paths, and everyone is perfectly dry. As I look around, I try to imagine a different Boston—a Boston of the future, a city that has to fear the ocean.

This is not an easy scene to conjure. The edge of Boston Harbor is several blocks to the east, on the far side of a small green park on a low hill, held back by a seawall of kelp-covered concrete. When I look over the edge at low tide, the water is a good 15 feet below the bulwark. Even at extreme highs, it never reaches the top. Yet the sea level here is slowly but steadily rising. If the trend continues as predicted, ocean waters could climb several feet in the next hundred years.? It would then take only one big storm surge to breach the seawall, just as hurricane Katrina sent floodwaters racing past New Orleans’s levees. Faneuil Hall would be inundated by six feet of water, and Boston would temporarily turn into a series of small island neighborhoods.

Extreme flood risk is just one of many dramatic changes that will come with a warmer planet. The average summer temperature in Boston stands to increase by as much as 14 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, bringing with it a sharp rise in the number of deadly hot spells. In the 1970s this city experienced only ?one 100-degree day per year. By the 2070s, forecasts call for at least 24 such hellish days annually.

The Planet Fixers

On a January evening in New Haven, Connecticut, Discover teamed up with NBC, Citizen Science, Yale University, and the National Science Foundation to convene a town hall meeting on the implications of rising global temperatures. The frigid weather outside was not helping the cause. Just weeks earlier, record amounts of snow had buried the Northeast, leaving millions of people snowbound. Most climate researchers ?regard epic snowstorms as perfectly consistent with the predictions from their models: Warmer temperatures lead to wetter air, which in turn can lead to more snow. But for many Americans, the blustery weather cast doubt on warming claims: How could the planet be heating up when it’s freezing outside? The confusion underscored the difficulty climate researchers face in communicating their findings to the public. A Gallup poll conducted in March indicated that ?18 percent of Americans doubt global warming will have any impact at all—nearly twice the number that felt this way three years ago. Even scientists stand divided on the best way to deal with the threat. Should we tax carbon emissions? Push for radical efficiency standards? Is it possible to address global warming without harming the economy?

Inside Yale’s Kroon Hall, four panelists tackled these questions from widely varying perspectives. Billy Parish cofounded the Energy Action Coalition, the world’s largest youth climate-advocacy organization. Linda Fisher is the chief sustainability officer at DuPont, which has increased profits by reducing its emissions and selling more environmentally friendly products. Rajendra Pachauri is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007, and director of Yale’s Climate and Energy Institute. And Katharine Hayhoe, a professor of geosciences at Texas Tech University, is an evangelical Christian who addresses common misconceptions about climate change from a religious as well as scientific perspective.

Could Dirt Help Heal the Climate?

Ohio State University soil scientist Rattan Lal says the agricultural soils of the world have the potential to soak up 13 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today—the equivalent of scrubbing every ounce of CO2 released into the atmosphere since 1980. The claim is a bold one, but researchers around the globe are digging up evidence that even modest changes to farming and ranching can have a major impact on carbon sequestration.

Some growers have already embraced an approach known as regenerative agriculture, which aims to boost soil fertility and moisture retention through established practices such as composting, keeping fields planted year-round, reducing tillage, and increasing plant diversity. Since these strategies can also significantly increase the amount of carbon stored in the soil, some agricultural researchers are now building a case for their use in combating climate change. This year seven international conferences will examine soil’s potential to sequester greenhouse gases.

Lal first came to the idea of soil as a powerful carbon sink (pdf) not through an interest in climate change, but rather out of concern for the land itself and the people who depend on its productivity. While carbon-depleted soils tend to be dry and prone to erosion, carbon-rich soil is dark, crumbly, fertile, and moist. In the 1970s and 1980s, Lal was studying soils in Africa so devoid of organic matter that the ground had become like hardened cement. There he met Roger Ravelle, a pioneer in the study of global warming. When Lal made a despairing remark about the impoverished soil, Ravelle suggested that the carbon had moved into the atmosphere. “I told Roger I didn’t know where it had gone; I just wanted to put it back,” Lal recalls.

Melting Ice Exposes the Past

As ice patches melt around the world, archaeologists are finding remarkably preserved artifacts emerging from millennia of deep freeze. Last April, Craig Lee of the University of Colorado at Boulder announced the oldest discovery yet: the foreshaft of a 10,400-year-old wooden dart, recovered from melting ice near Yellowstone National Park. The slender birch object still shows the marks left by its maker’s stone tools. Artifacts made of organic materials like wood—much less likely than stone to survive the millennia—give us “another window to the past,” Lee notes.

Over the past decade, “ice-patch archaeologists” have scoured the earth’s northernmost latitudes. Lee looked farther south in the Rocky Mountains, hunting in shady valleys and along north-facing mountain slopes. His success was a matter of timing as much as strategy: Organic artifacts begin to decay the moment the ice melts back. When Lee found the wooden dart, it was “lying under the clear blue sky, exposed,” he says.

Ocean Plant Life Feels the Heat

Balmy ocean waters are putting the squeeze on phytoplankton, tiny plants that collectively fix as much carbon dioxide as all terrestrial greenery combined. Their decline could threaten ocean ecosystems and contribute to global warming.

Daniel Boyce of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and his colleagues estimate that the global phytoplankton stock has plummeted 40 percent since 1950. They reported this finding in July after analyzing 50-plus years of data on light penetration of the ocean surface and plankton abundance in water samples. The die-off is due to a combination of rising sea surface temperatures and decreased ocean circulation between the higher and lower layers, Boyce says. Most phytoplankton dwell within 25 meters of the surface. The warmer this layer is, the more difficult it is for nutrients from the cold depths to mix in. As nutrients dwindle, so do the phytoplankton.

A continued decline would reverberate up the food chain and reduce atmospheric CO2 absorption, potentially accelerating climate change. “I think that the 40 percent global decrease that they report is provocative but not yet fully demonstrated,” says Michael Behrenfeld, an oceanographer at Oregon State University who studies phytoplankton. Analysis of satellite data and historical records could verify the numbers.

Too Much Miami Heat

It's the year 2120 in Peter Ward's opening thought experiment. Atmospheric CO2 measures 800 parts per million (more than double the current level), and things aren't looking so good in Florida. The oceans have risen by 10 feet with the collapse of Greenland's glaciers, and Miami's freshwater and sewage systems have to be abandoned. The encroaching seawater ruined the Everglades by killing freshwater plants, and it wrecked agriculture by making the soil too salty. The federal government is running out of money trying to save the country from climate change, and when Americans vote on what cities to save, they don't choose Miami. The party's over.

The World in 2050

I hope you like hockey (presuming there's any ice left to play it on). The future, writes UCLA professor Laurence C. Smith, belongs to those places that will be temperate and pleasant in 40 years' time--places like Canada and Sweden. Smith's magic number is 45: Forty-five degrees latitude, that is, a line halfway between the equator and North Pole that cuts a line through northern U.S. states like Oregon, Wisconsin, and New York. It continues around the globe running across France, Romania, southern Russia, northern China, and Japan. Smith argues that the land north of this invisible line stands to prosper in the new manmade climate. So yes, buy your vineyard grounds in British Columbia and that now-cheap Detroit real estate.

But can countries like Canada, Russia, and Sweden--owner of vast tracts of land but comparatively few humans to occupy it--accommodate the flood of climate refugees from roasting southern cities? Smith argues that they can, but that the movement of people will reshape the map. Here's one oddly specific prediction: "I imagine the High Arctic, in particular, will be rather like Nevada--a landscape nearly empty but filled with fast-growing towns fueled by a narrow range of industries."

The Climate Drone That Goes Where Scientists Fear to Tread

How much ice melted on Greenland last summer? Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) knew that dispatching a crew to the glaciers to find out was too risky. So to gather data that satellites could not provide, they turned to unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. The 6-foot-long, 45-pound planes, called Mantas, can run for about six hours on gas-powered engines and fly as high as 16,000 feet. They are built by Advanced Ceramics Research and fitted with scientific equipment by NOAA.

Green gardening secrets: How to eliminate bugs and pests without using poison

As people are turning away from chemical ingredients in everything from cleaning products to beauty products, they are also turning to chemical-free foods by growing food in their own backyards.

In order to keep your homegrown produce as free from harmful chemicals as possible while keeping crop-destroying pests to a minimum use natural pest control methods. If prevention doesn't get the job done, try some home remedies first. As a last resort, you can turn to organic pesticide--just make sure all the ingredients are listed and they are all things you are not afraid to put on your food.

Prevention

Preventing pest problems before they start is the best way get ahead of the problem (http://eartheasy.com/grow_nat_pest_...). You can do this by following some commonsense guidelines, such as pulling out any weak or already infected plants, building healthy soil to nurture strong plant growth, disinfecting tools after working on infected plants and minimizing breeding grounds for pests by getting rid of non-essential areas of the garden that might serve as a habitat. It is also useful to interplant and rotate crops because it will stop spreading or reinfestation of the many pests that are specific to one type of plant.

Nanoparticles destroy soil and the environment, study finds

Though some might argue that nanotechnology offers benefits not afforded by normal molecules, the environmental and human health consequences of this "breakthrough" technology appear dire, to say the least. New research published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials explains that nanoparticles damage beneficial soil bacteria and ultimately ruin plants' ability to uptake necessary nitrogen.

Researchers Niraj Kumar and Virginia Walker from Queen's University in Canada set out to investigate the effects of nanoparticles in the environment, comparing soil from the Arctic -- which they believed would be the least contaminated with nanoparticles -- to soil that was deliberately contaminated with various nanoparticles, including silver nanoparticles.

"We hadn't thought we would see much of an impact, but instead our results indicate that silver nanoparticles can be classified as highly toxic to microbial communities," the team wrote. "This is particularly concerning when you consider the vulnerability of the arctic ecosystem."

According to the team's analysis, uncontaminated soil contains beneficial microbes, some of which are necessary to help plants absorb nitrogen. But when nanoparticles enter the picture, these microbes are largely killed off. The end result is plants that lack nitrogen, and which thus lack the ability to grow properly and maintain necessary levels of vital nutrients.

The experiment, however, involved highly-concentrated applications of nanoparticles on soil samples for roughly six months. In actual environmental conditions, however, it is difficult to say whether or not all nanoparticles are harmful. Silver nanoparticles in particular, which can be found in colloidal silver, offer helpful benefits in naturally mitigating disease (http://www.naturalnews.com/colloida...).

Get rid of moth balls and other harmful insecticides and use natural alternatives

People still use mothballs to get rid of moth larvae when storing clothes and bedding. Although the sale of mothballs containing dangerous chemicals has been banned in Europe since 2008, in other parts of the world mothballs are still sold and used regularly. Avoid using volatile, chemical insecticides and opt instead for natural insect repellents that will not harm people, animals or the environment.

Australia calls for a ban on harmful insect repellents

In a report published on 7 February 2011, Professor William Tarnow-Mordi of Australia's Westmead International Network for Neonatal Education and Research stated that babies could develop massive breakdown of their red blood cells within hours of being wrapped in clothing stored with moth balls.

He warned that "without further measures, more babies could sustain brain damage, or die. While acknowledging the importance of raising awareness of the dangers of naphthalene, we believe that the safest course is prevention, that is, an Australia-wide ban on mothballs containing naphthalene."

Chemical ingredients in mothballs

Moth balls currently produced in the United States and other countries contain one of two chemical ingredients: naphthalene or paradichlorobenzene.

According to Silent Menace, "Naphthalene has been classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemical. PBT does not readily break down in the environment, does not easily metabolize, and may be hazardous to human health or the environment."

In a chemical profile listing of paradichlorobenzene conducted by Cornell University, PDB has an acute (high) toxicity, and people, who were exposed to PDB for a prolonged length of time, developed anorexia, nausea, vomiting and weight loss, as well as death.

Paradichlorobenzene will react with and melt some hard plastics and may even melt plastic buttons or ornaments on clothes.

The solid balls slowly transition into a gas that is toxic to moths. Because the chemicals are so toxic, mothballs can affect adults, children, pets and wild creatures. According to the National Pesticide Information Center, "When you smell mothballs, you are inhaling the insecticide."

Minnesota attorney general files lawsuit against 3M for years of environmental pollution

Minnesota attorney general Lori Swanson is determined to hold the 3M Company, one of the world's largest multinational corporations based near St. Paul, responsible for years of environmental pollution that tainted the Mississippi River and contaminated water supplies in the east-metro area of the Twin Cities. Swanson recently filed a lawsuit against 3M requesting that the company pay for residual cleanup costs associated with the pollution it caused.

"The company caused damage to the environment," Swanson is quoted as saying in the Star Tribune. "We are simply asking, let's make it right."

For many years, 3M was dumping perfluorochemicals, or PFCs, into the environment. PFCs do not decompose, and they gradually build up in the environment over time. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) indicates that the chemicals cause brain, nervous system, and organ damage, as well as reproductive and developmental problems, autoimmune disorders, and cancer (http://www.ewg.org/chemindex/term/496).

A spokesman from 3M, however, denies the allegations. He told reporters that PFCs are "not hazardous," and that any water contaminated by the company's PFCs is below government safety thresholds.

But tell that to the numerous residents in the metro area near the 3M plant whose water wells were ruined by PFCs, or the water drilling project of the nearby city of Lake Elmo, Minn., that ultimately failed due to PFC levels that exceeded state safety thresholds. One resident told the Star Tribune that he and his wife drank PFC-contaminated well water for years without knowing it, which ultimately led to his wife dying of cancer.

Though 3M has already paid out several millions of dollars to help remediate certain aspects of the damage caused by its pollution, Swanson does not believe it is enough. If successful, her lawsuit will be one of the first to hold a large corporation responsible for damage it caused to the environment many years prior.

Dry cleaning is hazardous to health, the environment and personal budget

It may seem hard to believe that the first dry cleaning operation opened in France in 1845; today dry cleaning services seem to be everywhere. When many people buy clothing, they don't give much thought to the "dry clean only" tag; many business clothes, uniforms, and outerwear require this type of cleaning. But people should be aware of why this type of cleaning is hazardous--it's dangerous not only to one's health, but also to the environment and even to one's personal budget.

Dry cleaners use harsh chemicals, solvents, and detergents to clean clothing. In fact, the chemicals used today are not the same chemicals used when dry cleaning was first invented. Today, the worst chemicals used are percholorethylene, tetrachloroethylene, and tetrachloroethene (known collectively as PERC), but there are other solvents used as well.

GMO soy is destroying land and the environment

It is not only people that are bearing the brunt of biotech greed, though; the environment in South America is suffering tremendously as well. Sensitive ecosystems like the Amazon Rainforest and the Cerrado, a large and very fragile savannah, have been bulldozed in many areas to make room for more GMO soy. And there is no end in sight to this practice.

In Brazil, 1.2 million hectares of rainforest have already been leveled to cultivate GMO soy. And in Argentina, about 18 million hectares of land are now growing the crop, which represents more than half of the nation's entire growing areas. And all of the GMO crops, as well as many non-GMO crops, are regularly doused in highly dangerous chemical pesticides, which ruin both the environment and human health.

"In Brazil, the toxic and hazardous pesticides paraquat and endosulfan are still used," explained Jaime Weber, a friend of Geleano that works to promote sustainable and non-toxic organic agriculture in Brazil. "It is a myth that these are not used on GM crops. GM soybeans are sprayed just as much with paraquat [as non-GM]."

Paraquat is linked to Parkinson's disease and other neurological disorders (http://www.naturalnews.com/026177_P...) while endosulfan is known to disrupt the endocrine system.

"Both the spraying of conventional farming and GMO cultivation [pose] severe health risks to farm workers and those living around the fields," added Weber, noting that the large, industrial farms routinely violate safety standards and spray in irresponsible and dangerous ways because they know they can get away with it without penalty.

Unsustainable growing methods are causing desertification throughout South America as well. The land used to grow GMO soy is heavily burdened with rigorous chemical applications and is also overused. So much of it becomes infertile after just a few years, which leads growers to continually seek out new land while abandoning the old land. Eventually, there will be no more fertile land available.

If you use pharmaceuticals, you are polluting the water

Any personal use of pharmaceutical products can lead to dangerous water pollution, even if drugs or cosmetics are applied only to the skin, researchers have found.

Researchers have known for several years that after a person ingests a drug, their body may excrete residues of the chemical that remain biologically active. Thus, internal drug use, combined with improper disposal of unused drug stores, has been blamed for residues of everything from antibiotics to painkillers to hormones found in municipal and natural water supplies across the country. Because drugs are specifically designed to produce biological effects at very low concentrations, this pollution is considered a major threat to human and environmental health.

Now a study conducted by researchers from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Touro University in Henderson, Nev., and presented at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in San Francisco has shown that the shower and washing machine may be even more potent sources of pharmaceutical pollution than the toilet.

"We've long assumed that the active ingredients from medications enter the environment as a result of their excretion via urine and feces," study co-author Ilene Ruhoy said. "However, for the first time, we have identified potential alternative routes for the entry into the environment by way of bathing, showering and laundering."

"These routes may be important for certain APIs found in medications that are applied ... to the skin," she said. "They include creams, lotions, ointments, gels and skin patches."

The researchers reviewed hundreds of studies analyzing the body's use and metabolism of drugs, and concluded that drugs including acne medicine, antimicrobials, narcotics and steroids are entering the water system by being washed directly from people's skin in baths and showers. In addition, many medications dissolve in sweat and wash off the body into people's clothing, only to enter the water system when those clothes are laundered.

Pharmaceutical drug contamination of waterways threatens life on our planet

The President's Cancer Panel (PCP) recently released its yearly report to the President outlining the status of cancer in America. This year's report focuses primarily on environmental factors that contribute to cancer risk. According to the report, pharmaceutical drugs are a serious environmental pollutant, particularly in the way they continue to contaminate waterways across the country (and the world).

Many reports have recently appeared about pharmaceutical contamination of water supplies, rivers, lakes and other waterways, but spokespersons from the drug and chemical industries have denied that this pollution poses any risk whatsoever to the environment. But this report, issued directly from PCP, provides a stunning indictment of the dangers associated with pharmaceutical pollution.

The executive summary of the PCP report includes the following statements:

"[P]harmaceuticals have become a considerable source of environmental contamination. Drugs of all types enter the water supply when they are excreted or improperly disposed of; the health impact of long-term exposure to varying mixtures of these compounds is unknown."

It's important to note that PCP is required by law to assess the National Cancer Program and offer a truthful evaluation of the various things it finds to be responsible for causing cancer. The panel is a division of the National Cancer Institute itself, so its findings hold fairly considerable weight in the scientific world (or they should, if the reaction wasn't so politicized).

The report itself is quite extensive, evaluating everything from the environmental and health impacts of drug and pesticide pollution to cell phone radiation and nuclear testing residue. But the section on pharmaceutical drugs is especially interesting when considering the fact that numerous reports have shown that drugs and drug residue that ends up in water supplies typically isn't filtered out by municipal treatment plants.

Humans vs. the environment - A thought experiment

Protecting the environment isn't a "liberal" idea; it's everybody's business. Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, the environment provides life support for us all, and if we fail to recognize that, we are truly doomed as a civilization.

To help explain this, I've put together a simple thought experiment. It begins with three undeniable truths about humans and the environment:
This should be self-evidence, but some people still don't get it. The Earth's resources -- oil, forests, water, energy, and so on -- are finite. They do not exist in infinite quantities. If they did, they would obviously be larger than the Earth itself (and would, in fact, fill the universe). But they don't fill the universe. They are contained within the boundaries of planet Earth, and therefore they are limited.

Of course, many of Earth's resources can be either regenerated or recycled, but that only happens over time -- usually a long time. In the case of oil, it's hundreds of thousands of years. For fossil water it's much the same. The rate at which modern human civilization is using up these resources is orders of magnitude faster than the rate at which they can be naturally regenerated. This holds true for oil, water, topsoil, forests and more.

Humans are altering the environment

You can't argue with this (although some people ridiculously try). Human activity is altering our environment in a huge way, from the massive deforestation of the planet to the release of gases into the atmosphere. We've poisoned the rivers, destroyed natural habitat, polluted the oceans (Gulf of Mexico, anyone?) and altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere. These are undeniable scientific truths. No sane person can reasonably argue that human beings have not radically altered the environment of our planet over the last 200 years.

If you visited North America 200 years ago, for example, you wouldn't even have recognized it as the same continent dominated by human beings today. A few hundred years ago, North America was teeming with life, with huge old-growth forests, pristine rivers and abundant plains. Today it is relatively dead, having been over-developed, over-paved and over-population to a point so extreme that our ancestors would largely consider it "dead".

The Easter Island effect

Now let's work our little thought experiment. Given the four simple truths described above, it is only a matter of time before the continued procreation of human beings collides with the reality of limited resources, causing a crisis of unsustainability.

At some point, in other words, the continued expansion of human beings will destroy so much of the natural environment (and use so many natural resources) that there will not be enough resources available to support the continuation of the existing population.

I call this the "Easter Island effect," in reference to the way in which the natives of Easter Island chopped down all their trees to build ever-larger monuments to themselves, and in doing so they destroyed their entire ecosystem and soon perished. The entire human civilization is now pulling an Easter Island on a global scale.

Pastured cows enrich soil, improve the environment, and make better meat

Cattle, particularly cows, have been the target of many environmental groups that believe raising animals for food is contributing to climate change and causing environmental harm. While true about the vast majority of American livestock that are raised using feedlots, pastured animals that are rotated among fields actually help to improve environmental conditions.

Eliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower, and Barbara Damrosch, gardening columnist at the Washington Post, are two of the most notable organic vegetable gardeners in the country. According to a recent TIME article, they are currently outfitting their farm in coastal Maine with a new barn that will hold a half dozen cows and some sheep. The couple plans to use the grazing animals to improve the soil conditions on their farm and help the environment.

Cattleman Ridge Shinn of Hardwick, Massachusetts, also explained in the piece that rotating cattle among various grass fields ends up contributing back to the environment more than it takes. “Conventional cattle raising is like mining,” Shinn explained. “It's unsustainable, because you're just taking without putting anything back. But when you rotate cattle on grass, you change the equation. You put back more than you take.”

Because grass is a perennial plant, it will continue to grow indefinitely, being spurred to new growth each time cows eat it. Grass roots retain water and microbes which helps to keep the soil healthy. As cows graze, they also work manure into the soil along with other decaying organic matter, enriching it with nutrients and carbon.

Allan Savory, a former wildlife conservationist in Zimbabwe, explained in an interview that rotational grazing actually reverses the effects of land degradation. Soil that was once dead has now become thriving grassland thanks to the efforts of ranchers who rotated their large herds.

Conventional beef raising, on the other hand, confines cows to densely-packed feedlots where they are bulked up on corn and soybeans for the final segment of their lives. Millions of acres of land that once grew grass have been converted into fields that grow corn and soy specifically for animal feed. Much of these crops are likely genetically modified.

It takes a heavy amount of fossil fuels to grow animal feed crops, fertilize them, apply pesticides and herbicides to them, and transport them to feedlots. Since rotational grass feeding is a natural cycle that feeds animals and replenishes the ground with little to no additional effort, pastured animals actually provide a net benefit to the environment as a whole.

Eco Gift Ideas are Kind to the Environment

Our planet is slowly being smothered by manufactured plastic bottles, bags and packaging. Is it not time to step back and see what products can be purchased without harming our beautiful, fragile earth? People are becoming more conscious about the damage that is being caused to the environment, and they are slowly starting to realize that simply throwing something in the trash can or flushing it away is not really getting rid of the problem. This year, consider buying gifts that are made from recycled materials or biodegradable products.

T-shirts, shorts and baby clothes made from bamboo fabric are becoming quite popular and even teenagers will be impressed with some of the trendy designs available. Clothing made from bamboo fibers is said to be cooler than cotton and helps counter body odor, eczema, allergies and/or sensitive skin. Bamboo clothing is reasonably priced and makes a sustainable, environmentally friendly gift.

Look out for necklaces, bracelets and earrings made by disadvantaged communities out of recycled materials such as tin and natural products such as coconuts and driftwood. If you have the time and a creative flair, consider making some hand crafted pieces yourself.

Sick-care industry responsible for 8 percent of US carbon emissions

The Journal of the American Medical Association has published a report conducted by the University of Chicago that estimates nearly 10 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions come from the health care industry. Findings reveal that hospitals are the number one polluter with pharmaceuticals at a close second.

Jeanette Chung, PhD, and study co-author David Meltzer, MD, PhD, procured their findings by analyzing 2007 health care spending numbers through the environmental input-output life cycle assessment (EIOLCA) model. By capturing both direct and indirect environmental effects caused by day-to-day health care industry actions, the model was able to assess the carbon intensity of each dollar spent on various activities and come up with an estimate.

The high energy demands of operating and maintaining hospitals account for their number one position as health care carbon emitters. Similarly, pharmaceutical companies expend tremendous amounts of energy in researching drugs, manufacturing them, and transporting and distributing them.

The goal of the study was to draw attention to the environmental impact of health care in general and to highlight the possibility of improving environmental efficiency in health care. The study's authors hope to bring awareness to the issue of carbon emissions and to encourage innovation that will make the health care industry cleaner with less negative impact on the environment.

Researchers suggest that hospitals can improve their environmental impact by purchasing goods and services from environmentally-friendly suppliers, as well as implementing recycling programs. Architecturally, hospitals can take more advantage of natural sunlight by implementing facility designs that capture natural light and utilize it for energy, light, and temperature control.

The University of Chicago Medical Center has a sustainability program of its own that requires 90 percent of hospital cleaning supplies to bear Green Seal Certification. The center also operates a recycling program that deflects 500 pounds of plastic waste each day from landfills to recycling plants.

The U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification program is another option facilities can strive to achieve by implementing energy efficient designs and technologies. LEED recognizes building and community designs that strategically aim to improve energy savings, water efficiency, carbon dioxide emissions reduction, improved environmental quality, and concerted stewardship of resources that recognizes their environmental impact.

From a preventative perspective, the health care industry needs an ideology overhaul that redirects the focus from symptom treatment to healthy lifestyles that incorporate nutrient-dense diets rich in superfoods and living, whole foods. Proper nutrition and preventative natural medicine will keep people out of hospitals and away from pharmaceutical drugs, which will in turn have a positive impact on the well-being of the populace and on the environment.

Simple Ways to Go Green and Save Money

These days it seems you can`t even go two hours without seeing or hearing something about "being green," whether it`s an advertisement for an Earth-friendly product, news about an environmentally-sound investment, a report about a business or community that`s taking steps to be more eco-conscious, or just general advice on how to save the planet. "Going green" isn`t just the latest trend though; it`s something we all must do to conserve resources, combat climate change, and preserve our planet for generations to come. Here are six easy-but essential-things you can do to "green" your lifestyle (and save a little cash too:)
 Green Clean Your House: Conventional household cleaners and bug-killers can contain as many as 200 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals. These harmful toxins are dangerous for you, your children and your animal companions, as well as harmful to the environment. Chemicals in cleaning products have even been implicated in Parkinson`s disease, infertility, brain damage, cancer, and other health problems.

It`s safer and greener to buy only organic, all-natural cleaning products. Many natural, cruelty-free cleaning products are available in many supermarkets and drugstores. Thrifty cleaners can also make their own green cleaning supplies with everyday, inexpensive ingredients like baking soda, borax, cornstarch, and white distilled vinegar, which is effective for killing bacteria and germs.

Planetary boundary layer

The planetary boundary layer (PBL) is also known as the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL).It is the lowest part of the atmosphere and its behavior is directly influenced by its contact with the ground.

It responds to surface forcings in a timescale of an hour or less.

In this layer physical quantities such as flow velocity, temperature, moisture etc., display rapid fluctuations (turbulence) and vertical mixing is strong.

Physical laws and equations of motions, which govern the planetary boundary layer dynamics and microphysics, are strongly non-linear and considerably influenced by properties of the earth's surface and evolution of the processes in the free atmosphere.

Perhaps the most important processes, which are critically dependent on the correct representation of the PBL in the atmosperic models, are turbulent transport of moisture and pollutants.

Clouds in the boundary layer influence trade winds, the hydrological cycle, and energy exchange.

Tropospheric ozone

Photochemical and chemical reactions involving it drive many of the chemical processes that occur in the atmosphere by day and by night.

At abnormally high concentrations brought about by man's activities (largely the combustion of fossil fuel), it is a pollutant, a constituent of smog.

Many highly energetic reactions produce it, ranging from combustion to photocopying.

Often laser printers will have a smell of ozone, which in high concentrations is toxic.

Ozone is a powerful oxidizing agent readily reacting with other chemical compounds to make many possibly toxic oxides.

The majority of tropospheric ozone formation occurs when nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as xylene, react in the atmosphere in the presence of sunlight.

NOx and VOCs are called ozone precursors.

Motor vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions, and chemical solvents are the major anthropogenic sources of these chemicals.

Atmospheric dispersion modeling

Atmospheric dispersion modeling is the mathematical simulation of how air pollutants disperse in the ambient atmosphere.It is performed with computer programs that solve the mathematical equations and algorithms which simulate the pollutant dispersion.

The dispersion models are used to estimate or to predict the downwind concentration of air pollutants emitted from sources such as industrial plants and vehicular traffic.

Groundwater

Groundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of geologic formations.A formation of rock/soil is called an aquifer when it can yield a useable quantity of water.

The depth at which soil pore spaces become saturated with water is called the water table.

Environmental impact assessment

An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an assessment of the likely human environmental health impact, risk to ecological health, and changes to nature's services that a project may have.
The purpose of the assessment is to ensure that decision-makers consider environmental impacts before deciding whether to proceed with new projects.

The US Environmental Protection Agency pioneered the use of pathway analysis to determine the likely human health impact of environmental factors.

The technology for performing such analysis is properly labelled environmental science.

The principal phenomena or pathways of impact are: soil contamination impacts, air pollution impacts, noise health effects, ecology impacts including endangered species assessment, geological hazards assessment and water pollution impacts.

Biological Response to Post Boreal Forest Fire and Salvage Logging Practices: Preliminary Implications for Forestry Management

Scientists examined how birds nested, foraged and resided in their boreal forest habitat after fire and salvage logging disturbances. With greater understanding of multiple trait-habitat relationships, scientists will be better able to understand the impacts of natural and anthropogenic disturbances on bird communities, and make recommendations to minimize harmful impacts.

Birds were found to respond to the severity of the burn. Bark insectivores preferred low to moderate burns, where insects are likely more available than in severe burns, which were preferred by cavity nesters, likely because of the habitat availability. Several cavity nesters are also bark insectivores, and may utilize both low and highly burned areas for foraging and nesting, respectively.

Also preferring severely burned sites were ground feeders likely due to favourable foraging conditions.

Ground and shrub nesters preferred severe burns that left patchy vegetation along aquatic edges, which would be important nesting habitat for these species.

Low severity burns were favoured by birds that eat insects found in foliage and in bark, and birds that nested in canopies. Severe burns were favoured by birds that nest on the ground or in tree stumps and shrubs, as well as ground foragers.

Leaving more residual trees standing was important for canopy-nesters and bark/foliage insectivores, but ground and shrub nesters preferred more bare salvaged areas.

However, the research team found many exceptions to these findings and proposes further study into trait-habitat relationships. This will help them to determine snag retention rates as well as where, when, and how often and severe to conduct burns/salvage efforts.

Bloody Red Shrimp

Bloody Red Shrimp - An Invasive Species in the Great Lakes Now Found in the St. Lawrence River
The bloody red shrimp (Hemimysis anomala) has invaded all of the Great Lakes except for Lake Superior. Sampling shows the highest numbers in Canadian waters are in the Port of Montréal.  Given its high level of activity, the port could represent a key source of Hemimysis moving into other locations in and out of the Great Lakes.

Montréal Harbour offers adequate habitat and is an important location for species monitoring. Sampling in 2009 and 2010 by Environment Canada showed very high-density swarms (above 1000 individuals per m2) of the shrimp at night in sheltered sites in the Port of Montréal. Lower densities (less than 5 individuals per m2) were reported in more exposed harbour sites along the river mainstream. Daytime collections did not result in any of the shrimp in the samples and the species was virtually absent at non-harbour sites in the St. Lawrence River near Montréal.

Five sampling surveys are underway (May to November 2011) in the St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Samples will be analyzed to elucidate the trophic position of this new invader in the food web and its potential impact on contaminants transfer. This species is potentially a new prey item for fish juveniles and adult planktivorous fish, such as alewife or lake whitefish, whose production may be enhanced in the future.

Forest Age and Cavity-nesting Birds

Scientists sampled 60 stands of forest in Quebec with varying time since their last fire to determine the abundance and characteristics of snags; fallen trees used as habitat for various wildlife but especially cavity nesting birds such as woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches and creepers.

These findings are especially relevant for federal and provincial land and wildlife managers, and NGOs concerned with forestry and wildlife. The findings could have implications in commercial forestry practices to ensure that managed forests support biodiversity.

Forests older than 200 years provided the best habitat for secondary cavity nesting birds like the red breasted nuthatch, boreal chickadee and brown creeper. This is likely due to an abundance of large snags in old growth forests in combination with the amount of time they have been standing, increasing their use by many species and variety in levels of decomposition.

Interestingly, scientists found that primary nesters, such as the black-backed woodpecker, were not necessarily more abundant in recently burned forests, but found somewhat consistently in all forest ages. However scientists acknowledge this may be due to a low detection rate and to a broader definition of ‘recently burned’ forests as under 50 years old, as woodpeckers prefer one to five year old post fire forests, and decrease in areas of older burns.

Snag abundance and characteristics in the samples were typical of unmanaged boreal forests; the most snags were found in young forests that had experienced a fire 50 years ago or less, followed by a transition period of few snags, then an abundance of snags again once the forest aged beyond 200 years

Ocean acidification - Acid rains affecting oceans

Ocean acidification is decrease in the pH in our oceans caused when chemical substances like carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur, or nitrogen mix with seawater. Ocean pH pH has dropped by slightly less than 0.1 units since industrial revolution and it is estimated that it will drop by a further 0.3 - 0.5 units by 2100, mainly because of carbon dioxide.

Ocean acidification has extremely negative results on some marine creatures like sea urchins, corals, and certain types of plankton as it decreases their ability to harness calcium carbonate which they need to harden their outer shells (exoskeletons). Importance of these creatures is highly important in marine food chain since they provide essential food and habitat to other species and they really represent the base of ocean ecosystems. Researcher Gretchen Hofmann recently said: "It's possible by 2050 they may not be able to make a shell anymore. If we lose these organisms, the impact on the food chain will be catastrophic.

Ocean acidification isn't making oceans significantly more acidic on global scale, but it significantly hurts coastal and shallow area and organisms that live in these areas. There are many factors contributing to acid rains such as farming, livestock husbandry and combustion of different fossil fuels. The most affected areas are usually downwind of coal power plants, on the eastern edges of North America, Europe, and south and east of Asia.

So not only our land hurts because of acid rains, but also our oceans and many marine organisms struggle to cope with increased acidity. And if current rates continue, by the end of this century acidity will be five times bigger than today, and this would really mean catastrophe

Indoor air pollution from VOC

Many people still fail to realize that indoor air quality is of equal (if not bigger) importance as the outdoor air quality. This is because we spend majority of our time indoors.

Indoor air pollution is mostly the result of inadequate ventilation. The most common indoor air pollutants are volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Solvents such as paints and protective coatings are the major source of VOCs.

In our offices VOCs are usually the result of new furnishings, wall coverings, and different office equipment. The only proper way to fight against VOC's is by having good ventilation and adequate air conditioning systems.

According to the data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the concentrations of VOCs in indoor air are in average 2 to 5 times greater than in outdoor air. New buildings are usually associated with the highest levels of VOCs.

VOCs concentrations are the highest in winter, up to four times higher than compared to summer because of inadequate ventilation due to cold outdoor weather.

Low VOC emitting products are being used more widely in buildings than they were used before, and there are also several programs that test VOC emissions from building products. But even despite this new measures VOCs have still remained the major source of indoor air pollution.

VOC emissions from building materials and products have often been linked to occupant illness. World Health Organization has stated that around 1.5 million deaths are the result of indoor air pollution.

What is the worst kind of pollution

When discussing the worst kind of pollution people talk about either water pollution or air pollution. Water pollution and air pollution not only harm our environment but also our health. Recent estimates say that around 15,000 people in the world die each day because of the water pollution, while according to the data from the World Health Organization 2.4 million people in the world die each year because of the air pollution.

Waste water and sewage waste are the two biggest causes of water pollution. World population is increasing each year, which means that each year there is more waste compared to previous year(s). According to recent estimates world generates 400 billion tons of industrial waste each year, plenty of which ends up in different water bodies causing huge environmental and health damage.

Despite the fact that we now live in the 21st century there is still more than billion people worldwide who lack access to safe drinking water, and more than two billion people in the world live without proper sanitation systems. When you consider this, the fact that diarrhea causes around 1,5 million deaths of children each year shouldn't be really surprising us.

Air pollution doesn't only refer to outdoor but also indoor air pollution, in fact according to the recent estimates indoor air pollution is responsible for more deaths compared to outdoor air pollution (1,5 million deaths per year as the result of indoor air pollution compared to little less than one million deaths per year caused by outdoor air pollution).

The main sources of air pollution are traffic and industry. Air pollution coming from traffic is causing hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide. Air pollution is not only issue in many China's cities but also in several U.S. cities such as Los Angeles and Pittsburgh.

How can we fight against water and air pollution? The most obvious answer would be to tackle the main sources of the pollution but this is anything but easy, especially in developing world.

The fight against water and air pollution does not only require global environmental conscience but also very large funding, which is why developing world is finding fight against pollution particularly hard.

On the other hand our industry and our vehicles still need fossil fuels because renewable energy is still not ready to jump in and make the difference.

In current situation it is almost impossible to find some logical foundation that would give us the right to an optimistic point of view in regards to pollution.

Air pollution in California - Facts

California is the US state most affected with air pollution. Air quality in some parts of California is doing serious health damage to many people. The cities in California such as Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and Visalla-Porterville, are among the most polluted cities in United States.

Only area around Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania has worst air compared to these Californian cities. The 2008 Cal State Fullerton study found that air pollution in California is killing more people than car crashes do, and this study also stated that pollution levels must fall by 50 percent in both regions for health and economic benefits to occur in California. This however, looks almost impossible to achieve.

It is estimated that there are around 175 million of people in United States which live in areas affected with air pollution, and California accounts for more than third of this number.

Why is air pollution issue so expressed in California? The answer is quite simple, the combination of lot of cars and lot of sunlight.

Air pollution in California isn't only causing serious environmental and health damage but also huge economic damage. The Rand Corporation study has found that polluted air in California accounts each year for around $193 million in hospital costs. They also found out that Los Angeles County spent the most in the state on air pollution-related ailments.

If we look at the top ten cities in the United States with the worst air pollution, California cities have 8 out of 10 for ozone (including the first six on this list, 5 out of 10 for annual particle pollution, and 7 out of 10 for short-term particle pollution.

Bakersfield, California is very likely the city with the worst air pollution in United States.

It is estimated that air pollution kills around 25,000 people each year in California.