Category Archives: Springer

Hurricane Matthew has brought the weather deniers out of hiding.

by ReneHEHFqudao Posted on October 6, 2016

The U.S. and all of its major allies have now ratified the Paris climate agreement, pushing it over the threshold needed for it to go into effect in 30 days — just before the U.S. presidential election.

Donald Trump has promised to “cancel” Paris if he’s elected — and that may have unintentionally sped things along.

Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, told Grist by email, “the threat of a Trump presidency has pushed countries to go forward with ratification more quickly than anyone had anticipated at the time of Paris.” For historical comparison, ratification of the Kyoto Protocol took five years.

Once the deal is underway, it would be more difficult for Trump to extract the U.S. He’d need to give three years notice and allot an additional year for withdrawal.

Still, Trump could simply decide not to deliver on the U.S.’s pledges, by, say, refusing to implement the Clean Power Plan.

Even then, Stavins argues that progress would continue to be made in energy efficiency and at the state level. “Trump could slow down action on climate change, but not as dramatically as Trump may think he could.”

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Hurricane Matthew has brought the weather deniers out of hiding.

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Say hello to the man who could dig us out of this whole climate change mess.

by KaraFelanvng Posted on October 6, 2016

The U.S. and all of its major allies have now ratified the Paris climate agreement, pushing it over the threshold needed for it to go into effect in 30 days — just before the U.S. presidential election.

Donald Trump has promised to “cancel” Paris if he’s elected — and that may have unintentionally sped things along.

Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, told Grist by email, “the threat of a Trump presidency has pushed countries to go forward with ratification more quickly than anyone had anticipated at the time of Paris.” For historical comparison, ratification of the Kyoto Protocol took five years.

Once the deal is underway, it would be more difficult for Trump to extract the U.S. He’d need to give three years notice and allot an additional year for withdrawal.

Still, Trump could simply decide not to deliver on the U.S.’s pledges, by, say, refusing to implement the Clean Power Plan.

Even then, Stavins argues that progress would continue to be made in energy efficiency and at the state level. “Trump could slow down action on climate change, but not as dramatically as Trump may think he could.”

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Say hello to the man who could dig us out of this whole climate change mess.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Ringer, Springer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Say hello to the man who could dig us out of this whole climate change mess.

The rest of the world is practically daring Trump to stop climate action now.

by AntonetMVNZ Posted on October 6, 2016

While methane from fracking and other fossil-fuel activity hasn’t increased over the last 10 years, agriculture, landfills, and wetlands are getting gassier, according to a new study in Nature.

From 2007 to 2013, methane emissions rose by about 28 million tons a year. No one knew why. Fires, fossil fuels, and microscopic archaea (which make methane by decomposing things, whether in a trash heap or a cow’s stomach) all release slightly different versions of the gas.

The new study found that around 2007, the mix of methane in the atmosphere suddenly featured a lot more from decomposing archaea — and that, it turns out, could be big.

“If the methane is mainly coming from cows or ag, then we could potentially do something about it,” lead scientist Stefan Schwietzke of NOAA said in a press release. “If it’s coming from decaying vegetation in wetlands or fresh waters, then … it could be part of a self-reinforcing feedback loop leading to more climate change. Those are big ifs.”

The latest findings reflect the most comprehensive information we have, but our understanding is still hazy. Bryan Duncan of NASA, unaffiliated with the study, summed it up: “There are too many [methane] sources and not enough data.”

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The rest of the world is practically daring Trump to stop climate action now.

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It’s official: Hurricane Matthew is a monster.

by ArlenBrient526 Posted on October 6, 2016

The U.S. and all of its major allies have now ratified the Paris climate agreement, pushing it over the threshold needed for it to go into effect in 30 days — just before the U.S. presidential election.

Donald Trump has promised to “cancel” Paris if he’s elected — and that may have unintentionally sped things along.

Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, told Grist by email, “the threat of a Trump presidency has pushed countries to go forward with ratification more quickly than anyone had anticipated at the time of Paris.” For historical comparison, ratification of the Kyoto Protocol took five years.

Once the deal is underway, it would be more difficult for Trump to extract the U.S. He’d need to give three years notice and allot an additional year for withdrawal.

Still, Trump could simply decide not to deliver on the U.S.’s pledges, by, say, refusing to implement the Clean Power Plan.

Even then, Stavins argues that progress would continue to be made in energy efficiency and at the state level. “Trump could slow down action on climate change, but not as dramatically as Trump may think he could.”

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It’s official: Hurricane Matthew is a monster.

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The Government Says This Popular Pesticide Doesn’t Cause Cancer. Here’s the Problem With That.

by EstelaDuckworth Posted on September 20, 2016

Mother Jones

Back in 1996, seed and chemical giant Monsanto introduced crops engineered to withstand a weed killer called glyphosate (brand name: Roundup). Soon after, glyphosate emerged as by far the globe’s most prolific pesticide, its use spiking ninefold in the United States and nearly fifteenfold globally. All the while, it enjoyed a reputation as a relatively benign agrichemical compared with older, harsher herbicides like 2,4-D and dicamba.

Last year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which evaluates potential carcinogens for the World Health Organization, detonated a stink bomb in global agriculture and public-health circles by declaring glyphosate “probably carcinogenic to humans,” after completing a lengthy assessment of the existing science.

But in a report released last week, staff scientists for the US Environmental Protection Agency—which is in the middle of reevaluating glyphosate and a host of other commonly used chemicals—pushed back, declaring that their own review of the scientific literature found the weed killer “not likely” to be carcinogenic to humans. The EPA will host a panel of outside scientists in October to evaluate the report.

The EPA’s in-house assessment criticized the IARC report, claiming that some of the more damning studies that led to the “probably carcinogenic” conclusion were “low quality” and therefore irrelevant.

The EPA isn’t the first major public authority to contradict the IARC’s finding. The European Food Safety Agency concluded last year that glyphosate is “unlikely” to cause cancer, though it did propose a “new safety measure that will tighten the control of glyphosate residues in food.” In May, another arm of the WHO teamed up with the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to assemble a panel to evaluate glyphosate. The joint WHO/FAO team, too, found it an unlikely carcinogen.

One subtle difference between the IARC’s review and that of the EPA, the EFSA, and the FAO involves the question of whether to evaluate glyphosate as an isolated chemical or the way it’s actually used in farm fields. To make a usable herbicide, agrichemical companies mix an active ingredient like glyphosate with other chemicals, called adjuvants and surfactants, that help ensure the pesticide penetrates beneath a weed’s surface, or coats its leaves, to administer the poison. As I’ve shown before, these chemical additives are lightly (at best) regulated by the EPA, and can have harmful effects.

The IARC indicates that it took data from studies that used both “pure” glyphosate and real-world formulations of glyphosate with other chemicals. The group found “strong” evidence that in both isolated and mixed forms, the famed herbicide can cause cancer.

While the EPA and the EFSA disagree with that conclusion about pure glyphosate, they have so far not taken a position on the stuff as it’s actually used. In its assessment, the EPA states that it evaluated only the “human carcinogenic potential for the active ingredient,” not that of “glyphosate-based pesticide formulations.” As for the EFSA, its conclusion, too, was based on pure glyphosate, and it acknowledged that one common ingredient in glyhpsate-based herbicides, POE-tallowamine, is more toxic than glyphosate itself. The carcinogenic potential of real-world glyphosate formulations “should be further considered and addressed,” EFSA added.

The European Union banned POE-tallowamine in July. In a blog post a few weeks later, Monsanto claimed that it had “already been preparing for a gradual transition away from tallowamine to other types of surfactants for commercial reasons,” adding that “tallowamine-based products do not pose an imminent risk for human health when used according to instructions.” (For more on this, see this excellent piece from the Intercept‘s Sharon Lerner.) The company did not say what it planned to replace POE-tallowamine with.

Here in the United States, more than 3.5 billion pounds of pure glyphosate have been applied since 1974, about two-thirds of that in the last decade alone. It’s great to know that on its own, glyphosate doesn’t likely trigger cancer. It would be better still to know more about its effects as it’s actually used, mixed with other, lightly studied chemicals.

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The Government Says This Popular Pesticide Doesn’t Cause Cancer. Here’s the Problem With That.

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People don’t trust hypocritical climate scientists, study finds

by GeorgetDabney Posted on June 21, 2016

Snakes on a plane

People don’t trust hypocritical climate scientists, study finds

By on Jun 21, 2016 6:01 amShare

Climate scientists face a conundrum: To get their message out and conduct research, they often have to hop on a plane — but flying is exactly the sort of carbon-intensive behavior they discourage others from doing. And according to a new study from Indiana University, climate researchers lose credibility with their audience when they don’t follow their own advice.

That inconsistency is one that the general public is starting to notice. Shahzeen Attari, an author of the study, told Grist she was presenting on energy consumption a couple of years ago when an audience member asked her, “Hey, how did you come to the conference? Did you fly here?”

She was inspired to look into hypocrisy and how it changes the dynamic between climate experts and their audiences. Through two online surveys taken by almost 5,000 Americans, participants read a narrative about a researcher who offers advice on reducing personal energy use by flying less, conserving energy at home, and taking public transportation. The survey included one of several of statements about the researcher’s personal energy consumption. For example:

You later find out that the researcher flew across the country to the talk that you attended and that he/she regularly flies to lectures and conferences all over the world. Flying like this leads to increased negative climate impacts.

Then, the survey had participants rate the researcher’s credibility. When participants stated their own intentions to reduce energy use, their answers varied based on the researcher’s behavior. To put it simply: It turned out they were much more likely to take advice from someone who, well, takes their own advice.

But the effect wasn’t equally strong for all energy-consuming activities. According to the research, people are more forgiving of a climate scientist who flies often than one who lives in an enormous mansion. “If I live in a huge, gargantuan house … my credibility completely plummets,” Attari says. She suspects this is because people are more likely to understand that climate researchers are required to fly for work, while they have more choice over what they do at home.

Some climate researchers have started to limit their flights, but it’s really hard, Attari says. (Read the account of one climate scientist who decided not to fly.) During our interview, she admitted that she couldn’t talk very long since she had to catch a plane. “I know it’s ironic,” she said.

In a time where climate advocates like Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore have been lambasted for private-jet lifestyles, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that communicating with the public about climate change is a tricky business. Attari’s advice for climate experts: “Talk to your audience about your own carbon footprint and the ways you’ve been able to actually change it.”

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People don’t trust hypocritical climate scientists, study finds

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Kids who breathe polluted air have higher rates of mental illness

by omkelaine1015 Posted on June 15, 2016

cough cough

Kids who breathe polluted air have higher rates of mental illness

By on Jun 15, 2016Share

We know air pollution is linked to heart disease and puts people at risk for stroke. Now a new study reveals that even a small rise in air pollution is associated with a significant rise in mental illness in young people, as reported in The Guardian.

Researchers in Sweden tracked more than 500,000 children under the age of 18 for the study. They matched air pollution concentrations with mental-illness medication dispensed for kids, ranging from sleeping pills to antipsychotics. Places with elevated rates of air pollution were more likely to be places where young people had prescriptions for psychiatric drugs.

Mental illness can hamper a child’s development and “the potential to live fulfilling and productive lives,” the researchers wrote. Although they conducted their study half-a-world away, they pointed to other research that links air pollution to anxiety and depression in California, adding to the growing body of evidence that air pollution can be harmful.

Oh, and just a reminder: Here in the U.S., your race too often indicates whether you live with polluted air and all its consequences.

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Kids who breathe polluted air have higher rates of mental illness

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Dungeness crabs threatened by, you guessed it, climate change

by LupitaPrior Posted on May 25, 2016

Dungeness crabs threatened by, you guessed it, climate change

By on May 25, 2016

Cross-posted from

Climate CentralShare

When it comes to American culinary institutions, the Dungeness crabs that are hauled ashore from California to Washington state every winter season are the crustacean equivalents of apple pie.

The bountiful crab meat is a holiday staple in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. When crabbing was suspended in the fall by an algae outbreak, journalists flocked to docks to produce lead news stories — just as they did when crabbing was restricted following a 2007 oil spill.

Research published this month could give a crab connoisseur a case of acid reflux.

Dungeness crabs for sale in Seattle.

erikzen

Scientists reported in the journal Marine Biology that ocean acidification, which is caused when carbon dioxide pollution dissolves into oceans, can kill and stunt young crabs, potentially jeopardizing whole populations.

“It’s something that’s projected into the future, but you don’t want to wait until a crisis,” John Mellor, a Dungeness crab fishermen who docks his boat in San Francisco, said during an interview last week in Washington, D.C., where he was meeting with lawmakers and others. “I’m here to try to convince people to give money for research.”

Scientists grew eggs and larvae from Puget Sound crabs in water containing pH resembling current and future conditions. They reported that more acidic seawater slowed the development of embryos and larvae and caused an “appreciable” number of larvae to die.

Ocean acidification is caused by carbon dioxide pollution — the same pollutant from fuel burning and deforestation that changes the climate. After carbon dioxide dissolves into seawater, it undergoes chemical reactions that change the pH and remove chemicals needed by corals, shellfish, and other creatures to produce rigid body parts.

West Coast waters are more prone to acidification than other regions. As the threat of acidifying waters weighs on the minds of crabbers, those who grow shellfish are already being directly affected. The Pacific Northwest’s oyster growing industry has been experiencing substantial losses of young shellfish linked to acidification since 2005.

“The really tough situation with the shellfish industry on the West Coast was the first major alarm bell,” said Jeff Watters, director of government relations at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. “That was the first moment where you literally had an industry who said, ‘Holy cow, this could shut us down.’”

Seth Miller, a Smithsonian Environmental Research Center scientist who wasn’t involved with the new study, said it added Dungeness crabs to the “long list of crustaceans and other invertebrates that will likely be negatively impacted” by ocean acidification during their larval stages.

“If Dungeness larvae develop slowly under acidified conditions, they’re likely going to struggle even more when you layer on other climate-related stressors like rising temperatures,” Miller said.

Miller said the research provides a “first look” at how acidification could affect crab populations. Scientists don’t know whether acidification is affecting crab populations already — nor do they precisely know how it could affect them in the future.

Dungeness crabs caught off California.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife

“We don’t have any direct evidence that they’re currently being affected, except that in some places we see a decreased survival under conditions that currently exist in some places,” said Paul McElhany, a NOAA ecologist who participated in the new study.

“We’re completely into new territory,” McElhany said. “Carbon dioxide has never changed this rapidly as far as we can tell.”

The West Coast’s crab population is a large one, occupying vast territory in the Pacific Ocean, raising hopes that it may harbor enough genetic variety to help it withstand environmental tumult, such as acidification. But how resilient it will actually be remains unknown.

“We’re only able to do experiments on a few life stages for a certain amount of time,” McElhany said. “So the question of the role that diversity might play in potential evolutionary response — that’s something that’s really just unknown at the moment.”

The coastal Washington state district of Rep. Derek Kilmer, a Democrat, contains thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on shellfish. He has introduced legislation designed to spur more research through federal grants and innovation prizes.

“I think there’s a real concern that, as you see changing ocean chemistry, that that’s a threat to their livelihood,” Kilmer said. “We’re trying to shine a bright light on the problem.”

Further research could help determine whether the crabs could evolve quickly enough or learn to adapt to changing pH concentrations. Such research may provide clues as to whether anything could be done to help crabs withstand acidification — apart from drastically curbing fossil fuel burning and deforestation, which is the goal of a new United Nations climate change treaty.

“This bill is not going to solve all the world’s problems,” Kilmer said. “To me, this is one of many things that have to happen.”

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Dungeness crabs threatened by, you guessed it, climate change

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Corals are in the middle of a “global bleaching event.” Here’s what that means

by LorriEstrada Posted on March 7, 2016

Corals are in the middle of a “global bleaching event.” Here’s what that means

By on 7 Mar 2016commentsShare

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

If you have ever been snorkeling in a tropical paradise and seen the psychedelic colors and teeming variety of otherworldly sea critters, you were gazing upon something increasingly rare: a healthy coral reef. That site also does a lot more than dazzle vacationers. Coral reefs occupy just 0.1 percent of the oceans’ bottom but provide habitat to a quarter of the world’s fish species. They also prevent erosion along coastlines and buffer the impact of storms, providing protection, food, and livelihoods for about 500 million people.

A year ago, I warned that something “really, really terrible” was about to happen to the globe’s corals. Since then, that thing has come to pass. The world over, from the South Pacific to the Caribbean to coastal western Africa, reefs are expelling zooxanthellae, the symbiotic algae that feed them and give them color. That’s because corals can only maintain contact with their algal lifeline under certain water temperatures, and climate change has triggered a decades-long warming of the oceans. Add a particularly powerful El Niño like we’re in now — essentially, cranking up the fire under a simmering pot — and you get what’s known as a “global bleaching event.” We are now experiencing only the third one in recorded history. Here’s a timeline, from the XL Catlin Seaview Survey:

XL Catlan Seaview Survey

There are two particularly disturbing things about this current bleaching event. The first is its duration: It started in 2014 and “could extend well into 2017,” Mark Eakin, who directs Coral Reef Watch for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told me. Already, this is the longest coral bleaching on record — the previous ones lasted less than a year, he says. And he expects that this year, bleaching will expand and “hit more reefs” and be “more extreme” than last year.

The second is how little time has passed since the previous global-scale bleaching, which took place in 2010. Once coral lose their zooxanthellae, they quickly begin to decline in health. But given time, they can recover — and many did between the last two coral bleaching events in 1998 and 2010. But this new one is only four years after the last. The shortened interval between bleachings means less recovery time and more losses, Eakin says.

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Warming water isn’t the only way climate change damages corals. About a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels ends up in the oceans, where it drives down pH levels. As a result, the oceans are currently 30 percent more acidic than they were at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. Heightened acidity impedes the growth of any species in the oceans that develop hard surfaces — everything from oysters and crabs to, yes, corals. A recent Nature study found that coral reefs grew 7 percent faster under pre-Industrial Revolution pH conditions than they do now. Slower growth makes it harder to recover from recurring insults like bleaching, Eakin says.

Since the 1970s, the Caribbean region has lost 80 percent of its corals and the Great Barrier Reef along the Australian coast has declined by half. Eakin says climate models suggest the Caribbean’s corals face the biggest threat going forward, and they portend a “fairly dire future” for reefs worldwide. If current greenhouse gas emissions hold, he says, by 2050 we could see global bleaching happen every year — in short, a seascape no longer capable of supporting its vital ecosystems, ones that are are richer in biodiversity than rainforests.

The only hope for averting such a fate, he says, is a global greenhouse gas emissions deal that holds global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Even then, we’ll also have to address what he calls the “local stressors that act in concert to damage corals,” including overfishing and industrial and agricultural pollution. There’s also a direct effect of all those beach holidays in coral-rich regions. A 2015 study by University of Florida researchers estimated that as much as 14,000 tons of sunscreen lotion enters the ocean in coral reef areas annually. Most of it contains a chemical that makes corals more prone to bleaching at extremely low water concentrations (more here).

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Corals are in the middle of a “global bleaching event.” Here’s what that means

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Paradise, Radius, Ringer, solar, solar power, Springer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Corals are in the middle of a “global bleaching event.” Here’s what that means

You’re Running Out of Time to See One of Nature’s Most Spectacular Sites

by LatriceLindsay1 Posted on March 7, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

If you have ever been snorkeling in a tropical paradise and seen the psychedelic colors and teeming variety of otherworldly sea critters, you were gazing upon something increasingly rare: a healthy coral reef. That site also does a lot more than dazzle vacationers. Coral reefs occupy just 0.1 percent of the oceans’ bottom, but provide habitat to a quarter of the world’s fish species. They also prevent erosion along coastlines and buffer the impact of storms, providing protection, food, and livelihoods for around 500 million people.

A year ago, I warned that something “really, really terrible” was about to happen to the globe’s corals. Since then, that thing has come to pass. The world over, from the South Pacific to the Caribbean to coastal western Africa, reefs are expelling zooxanthellae, the symbiotic algae that feed them and give them color. That’s because corals can only maintain contact with their algal lifeline under a certain water temperatures, and climate change has triggered a decades-long warming of the oceans. Add a particularly powerful El Niño like we’re in now—essentially, cranking up the fire under a simmering pot—and you get what’s known as a “global bleaching event.” We are now experiencing only the third one in recorded history. Here’s a timeline, from the XL Catlin Seaview Survey:

XL Catlan Seaview Survey

There are two particularly disturbing things about this current bleaching event. The first is its duration: it started in 2014 and “could extend well into 2017,” Mark Eakin, who directs Coral Reef Watch for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told me. Already, this is the longest coral bleaching on record—the previous ones lasted less than a year, he says. And he expects that this year, bleaching will expand and “hit more reefs and to be more extreme” than last year.

The second is how how little time has passed since the previous global-scale bleaching, which took place in 2010. Once coral lose their zooxanthellae, they quickly begin to decline in health. But given time, they can recover—and many did between the last two coral bleaching events in 1998 and 2010. But this new one is only 4 years after the last. The shortened interval between bleachings means less recovery times and more losses, Eakin says.

Warming water isn’t the only way climate change damages corals. About a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels ends up in the oceans, where it drives down pH levels. As a result, the oceans are currently 30 percent more acidic than they were at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. Heightened acidity impedes the growth of any species in the oceans that develop hard surfaces—everything from oysters and crabs to, yes, corals. A recent Nature study found that coral reefs grew 7 percent faster under pre-Industrial Revolution pH conditions than they do now. Slower growth makes it harder to recover from recurring insults like bleaching, Eakin says.

Since the 1970s, the Caribbean region has lost 80 percent of its corals and the Great Barrier Reef along the Australian coast has declined by half. Eakin says climate models suggest that the Caribbean’s corals face the biggest threat going forward, and they portend a “fairly dire future” for reefs worldwide. If current greenhouse gas emissions hold, he says, by 2050 we could see global bleaching happen every year—in short, a seascape no longer capable of supporting its vital ecoystems, ones that are are richer in biodiversity than rainforests.

The only hope for averting such a fate, he says, is a global greenhouse gas emissions deal that holds global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Even then, we’ll also have to address what he calls the “local stressors that act in concert to damage corals,” including overfishing and industrial and agricultural pollution. There’s also a direct effect of all those beach holidays in coral-rich regions. A 2015 study by University of Florida researchers estimated that as much as 14,000 tons of sunscreen lotion enters the ocean in coral reef areas annually. Most of it contains a chemical that makes corals more prone to bleaching at extremely low water concentrations (more here).

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You’re Running Out of Time to See One of Nature’s Most Spectacular Sites

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