PreemptivePacifist comments on Ban On Tuna Labeled Dolphin-Safe Shows How TPP Will Crush Consumer Rights: ... dolphin-safe labeling of tuna managed to reduce annual deaths of the mammals from over 100,000 to only 3,000 but the World Trade Organization jus. A Weird Side-Effect Of the Wildfire Surge Is Putting 65 Million Acres of Forest At Risk. SnarfMcSnarfSnarf comments on Dispersants did not help oil degrade in BP spill, a new study suggests. Study: Dispersants did not help oil degrade in BP spill. The chemical sprayed on the 2010 BP oil spill may not have helped crucial petroleum-munching microbes get rid of the slick, a new study suggests.
And that leads to more questions about where much of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill went. Climate Change. The Plan to Make California Wet By Bringing Back Beavers. This mile-long, floating device is taking on the ocean’s plastic pollution. TIL of "Mr. Trash Wheel", a solar-powered device in Baltimore's Inner Harbor that has removed 160 tons of garbage from the harbor in just under a year. : todayilearned. A Massive Bleaching Event is Threatening the World’s Coral Reefs. Chinese Beekeepers Actually Have a Good Reason for Hanging Hundreds of Beehives Off a Cliff. The Ocean's "Dead Zones" Could Be Getting A Lot Worse. Game over man, game over.
Microbes Living in Tiny Water Droplets Help Break Down Oil. It doesn’t take much to keep oil-consuming microbes happy and working.
Researchers have discovered communities of microorganisms that live in the tiniest droplets of water suspended in natural tar lakes, where they actively break down oil from the inside out. These thriving microhabitats need very little water to support them, and they could be harnessed for cleaning up disastrous spills. How Whales Will Save The World – If We Let Them. Can we fact check this?
"But despite the ability of 1500 penguins to eat the same food as a single blue whale, their biomass is only 8% of the whale. " I have a hard time buying the idea that a blue whale is more than 33,000 penguins. I'm not pooing on the idea completely, (save the whales) just the idea that they are better carbon sinks than 33,000 penguins merely because of their size. It's hard to weigh a blue whale, but a reasonable estimate for the mass of an average blue whale is on the order of 180 metric tons or 180,000 kilograms. 8% of that is 14,400.
Developing Nations Deal with Climate Change More Successfully. 19-Year-Old Figured Out How To Clean Up The Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch In Just 10 YearsElite Daily. Global warming isn’t the only environmental nightmare that scientists are struggling to solve.
Millions of tons of plastic waste litter the world’s oceans, converging together in rotating currents called gyres and blanketing the water’s surface. On average, these gyres now hold six times more plastic than plankton by dry weight. Fortunately, 19-year-old Boyan Slat, founder and president of The Ocean Cleanup, claims to “have invented a method to clean up almost half of the great Pacific’s garbage patch in just 10 years, using currents to [his] advantage.” The self-described environmentalist and entrepreneur first presented his revolutionary ideas at a TEDx Talk in the Netherlands and was recently named one of Intel’s 20 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs Worldwide (Intel EYE50). How Wolves Change Rivers.
There is a scientific reason why it always rains on weekends. These maps show where species will have to go as climate changes. The non-replacement of climate migrants in climate source areas may result in net loss of species richness, and facilitate the establishment of new species into abandoned niches...
A larger number of inbound climate migrants in convergent areas, corridors and sinks implies that local communities should face greater reshuffling of species and novel ecological interactions, and compromised genetic diversity through gene swamping but with increased adaptive gene flow. Climate migrants face local extinction in climate sink areas, unless the species involved can adapt to changed conditions. To put a silver lining on all of this, "novel ecological interactions" is just another way of saying that, for example, polar bears learn to hunt people instead of seals.
Here's how city life is actually affecting your health. My apologies in advance for this somewhat long-winded, meandering, and less-than-polished response.
In short, my point is that while spatial awareness is good for research, empty categories like rural and urban seem too deterministic and simplistic, given the ways that we arrive at the division. How exactly do you define rural and urban? Russia - Climate Adaptation. Humans Become Unwilling Test Subjects in West Virginia Chemical Spill. Planet likely to warm by 4C by 2100, scientists warn. The role clouds play in climate change has been something of a mystery – until now.
Welcome to the Age of the Superstorm. I've lived through some pretty hellish storms.
Andrew, Charley, Ivan, Jean, Frances, Floyd and countless tropical storms/depressions. It sucks big time, but lumping Sandy in with this storm that had reported 195mph sustained winds? Timeline Photos - From Quarks to Quasars. We have only discovered 14 percent of all species on Earth. Scientists have spent centuries trying to catalog all the different species on Earth, but according to a recent study, less than 15 percent of the 8.7 million species have been discovered.
Yes, apparently 86 percent of the planet’s species are still unknown to us. Florida’s 'red tide' is killing manatees in record numbers. Ah, Veggie Tales. Indoctrinating Children into False Belief everywhere. The parents who show this to their kids should be done for child abuse. Galapagos Goats Exterminated: Capricide on a Pacific Island. If you've ever wanted a job as a professional goat-murderer, sorry, but you've missed your chance. Now please stay far away from us and try to get some help. A team of conservationists have successfully exterminated the invasive Galapagos goats on Santiago, completing a four year campaign of capricide on the Pacific island.
The Galapagos goats (or as they were known back then, "just goats") were introduced in the 1920's and they immediately begin eating so much, so hard, that they didn't just threaten the island's species - they threatened the island itself. Without the plants to hold the soil together erosion accelerated, or put another way, these things eat so hard that the ground goes away. After initial early victories for the human side the goats turned to guerrilla tactics, hiding in remote or otherwise inaccessible regions of the islands and continuing their grass-munching reign of terror.
Consequences of increased global meat consumption on the global environment. By Cassandra Brooks While the global meat industry provides food and a livelihood for billions of people, it also has significant environmental and health consequences for the planet. Experts predict that the worldwide consumption of pork, beef, poultry and other livestock will double by 2020, although this prediction may be dampened by the recent economic downturn. A team of Stanford University researchers has been assessing the environmental impact of the meat industry in light of this inevitable growth and is offering solutions to this global challenge.
What's Happening to Honey Bees? NASA’s Trial Polar Rover Studies One of the Harshest Places on Earth. NASA recently concluded a successful six-week test of a prototype polar rover near the highest point in Greenland, where the robotic vehicle traversed icy terrain in temperatures of minus 30 Celsius to help scientists learn more about how ice sheets are faring in the changing climate — without having to break for hot cocoa. Greenland’s ice sheets are an important area of research because if they melt, the Earth will reflect less of the sun’s energy and warm more quickly. Bizarre GMO wheat mystery in Oregon. Could this incredible engineering project save the polar ice caps? The Greening of the Arctic. China's Toxic Sky - In Focus. Lecture to Oxford Farming Conference, 3 January 2013. A Huge Step Forward for Environmentalism: GMOs Are Not the Enemy. 3 Extreme Climate Fixes. Sea Ice in Arctic Measured at Record Low. This Is What Climate Change Feels Like.
These fish could be harbingers of a major human health crisis. Aerial canopies would let you explore the Amazon rainforest from above. Fantasy forest pulls focus from Singapores skyline. Solar Pillars – Natural Phenomena - Phenomenica. Solar pillars are vertical rays of light above or below the sun. In most cases only the upper solar pillar is visible. Experts: Kill, Don’t Clean, Oiled Birds. Before environmental regulations, Pittsburgh looked like the capital of Hell. "The dream of the GOP" is to allow cities like Pittsburgh to once again address their problems and enact local legislation that effectively targets their own unique issues rather than a one size fits all EPA style system which enforces irrelevant regulations in areas where they aren't needed and removes local decision making from enacting those which need fastrack into enforcement.
Obviously there are still federal concerns for federal issues but one thing that I have learned living in California is that local governments need local control over local problems. Cancun Underwater Museum - MUSA Cancun Underwater Sculptures for diving and snorkeling.