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For every ton of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere, we lose 32 square feet of Arctic sea ice.

by RicardoCorbould Posted on November 3, 2016

This is according to a new study in Science. That’s a sizable slab: Rose and Jack could have floated on a ’burg that big with room to spare (and Titanic would still end with a frozen hunk!).

If you live in the U.S., you are accountable for about 17 tons of CO2 a year. That’s roughly 1.4 tons a month, or one and a half Rose-and-Jack rafts every 30 days. Multiply that by 300 million people in the States, plus Europe, plus Australia, plus … you get the picture. In the last 30 years, we’ve lost enough ice to cover Texas twice over.

Thirty-two square feet per ton is a scary, but useful, statistic. It nails a number to our individual actions, the consequences of which might otherwise seem abstract, says Dirk Notz of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany.

For example, Notz offers, a round trip flight from New York to London knocks out 32 square feet of summer sea ice “for every single seat” — something to factor in when you’re calculating the price of a ticket home.

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For every ton of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere, we lose 32 square feet of Arctic sea ice.

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Scientists May Have Found a Way to Stop Zika Cold

by Kirk7232xaxpr Posted on August 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Mosquitoes may be small, but they pack a mean punch. Weighing in at a measly 2.5 milligrams, these buzzing arthropods are responsible for more deaths than snake bites, shark attacks, and murders combined. A whopping 725,000 people die each year from diseases transmitted by this common pest. Researchers have spent decades and millions of dollars fighting dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya—dangerous viruses that female mosquitoes can spread in a single bite. Now—as scientists rev up efforts to tackle the worsening mosquito-borne Zika epidemic that’s rocked the Americas—some scientists are tapping into Earth’s oldest organic armies as they seek to wipe out these diseases.

In this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, journalist and author Ed Yong explores the emerging science of the microbiome—the trillions of tiny organisms that inhabit the bodies of humans and other animals. Along the way, he tells host Kishore Hari about Wolbachia—one of nature’s most successful land-based bacteria—and its potential to aid the fight against Zika and other mosquito-borne illnesses. Wolbachia, says Yong, has “tremendous promise in bringing tropical diseases to heal.”

Wolbachia is extremely versatile; it can infect more than 40 percent of all arthropod species, including spiders, insects, and mites. Research has shown that female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with the bacteria are unable to transmit common viruses, including Zika and dengue. And because Wolbachia passes from a female mosquito to her offspring, it could spread easily through a wild population. That means releasing a small batch of mosquitoes infected with the bacteria could help eradicate mosquito-borne diseases in a potentially short amount of time, says Yong. For a mosquito whose global range spans six continents—and includes a large chunk of the United States, the impact on global public health could be substantial. You can listen to the full interview below:

Despite years of research, treatments for many mosquito-borne illnesses is limited. Clinical trials for a Zika vaccine are underway, but researchers don’t expect one to be available to the public for at least 18 months. “There are no vaccines,” Yong says. “There are no good treatments for dengue. We need better ways of controlling these diseases.” Field trials of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitos have been underway in Australia since 2011, and in Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam since 2014. The results have shown great promise, with no ill effect on people or the environment.

Yong argues that Wolbachia is safer and more cost-effective than traditional vector control methods, such as spraying with insecticides. And unlike insecticides, bacteria are self-perpetuating. And Wolbachia doesn’t appear to affect mosquito populations, so other insects and animals that feed on these pests won’t miss a meal. “It’s not about killing mosquitos,” Yong says, “it’s about turning them into dead ends for viruses.”

To learn more about the incredible world of the microbiome, you can check out Yong’s new book, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life.

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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Scientists May Have Found a Way to Stop Zika Cold

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Your Olive Oil Is Almost Certainly Fake

by charitys21 Posted on August 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bite is Mother Jones‘ new food politics podcast. Listen to all our episodes here, or by subscribing in iTunes or Stitcher or via RSS.

Walk into your kitchen and pick up your bottle of olive oil. You know, that health-promoting nectar of Mediterranean age-defying prowess, lubricant of pasta, the only thing that makes your kale salad palatable? Yeah, that stuff is almost certainly not what you think it is.

That’s because unless you’ve plucked your own olives from your own backyard grove and crushed the fruit and pressed the oil yourself, that slippery substance was likely cut, adulterated, and deceptively labeled before it reached the bottle in your hands. “It’s amazing how many people there are in America who don’t even know what the real thing tastes like,” laments Larry Olmsted, author of the new book Real Food, Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It and our guest on this week’s episode of Bite. “Most oils sold in the United States are fake,” he writes.

Food fraud—or the act of deceiving consumers about a food or ingredient for the sake of profit—affects as much as 10 percent of the global food supply. Of all the instances of food fraud in the United States, according to a scholarly database tracking this very thing, olive oil leads the way, making up 16 percent of cases (followed by milk, honey, saffron, and orange juice). This type of deception has been around for basically as long as we’ve packaged food: Researchers have excavated mislabeled Roman jars containing counterfeit samples of oil.

One of the reasons oil is so often faked is that it’s bottled before you use it, and it travels far before it lands on grocery store shelves. “If it’s something you can’t look at and easily recognize, it’s more likely to be defrauded,” Olmsted explains. The United States imports more olive oil than any other country, and yet regulations on the labeling of said oil are voluntary. The Agriculture Appropriations Bill for fiscal year 2017 urged the Food and Drug Administration to take a harder look at the issue; in an earlier draft report accompanying the bill, the Appropriations Committee stated it was “concerned with reports that consistently describe the prevalence of adulterated and fraudulently labeled olive oil imported into the US.”

Since extra-virgin olive oil is the most valuable oil category in the United States, shady producers and dealers have plenty of incentive to mess with it in hopes of reaping more profit. They defraud consumers in three main ways: by (1) diluting real extra-virgin olive oil with less expensive oils, like soybean or sunflower oil; (2) diluting high-quality olive oil with low-quality olive oil; or (3) making low-quality extra-virgin olive oil, “typically incorporating older—and often rancid—stocks of oil held over from bumper crops of previous seasons,” writes Olmsted. When the University of California–Davis researchers tested olive oil bought off the shelf in 2010, they found that 69 percent of imported “extra-virgin” samples failed to meet international standards.

Aside from imparting rotten flavors and ripping people off, this fraud deprives people of the health benefits that may have prompted them to buy the oil in the first place: Fresh extra-virgin olive oil is high in the omega-3 fatty acids that may reduce the risk of heart disease. It’s also low in saturated fat and contains antioxidants. “Bad oil isn’t just a deception, it’s a crime against public health,” one Italian olive oil trade association president told Olmsted.

So what’s the best way to avoid getting punked? Olmsted offers up some handy advice:

Don’t trust most labels: Be wary of words like “pure,” “natural,” “virgin olive oil,” “premium,” “light,” “made in Italy,” and just “olive oil.” They suggest a low-quality substance, and one potentially made from refining the remainders of the skin and pits of olives rather than the olives themselves. “First cold pressed,” while sounding legit, doesn’t actually mean much these days since extra-virgin olive oil is typically spun out of olives with centrifuges rather than pressed. Even the term “extra-virgin olive oil” gets slapped on bottles of low-grade oil illegally—and enforcement is very sparse—so terminology isn’t necessarily your safeguard.

Stamp of approval: Here in the United States, look for the seal denoting approval by the California Olive Oil Council: “COOC Certified Extra Virgin.” (And here’s its list of 2015 certified oils). Olmsted also recommends Extra Virgin Alliance (EVA) and UNAPROL, the respected Italian olive growers’ association. Concern over olive oil fraud in the United States sparked the Department of Agriculture to add olive oil to its voluntary quality monitoring program in 2012, but so far only two companies participate. (Look for the label “USDA Quality Monitored.”)

Judge the country of origin: “If you have to purchase blindly with no other clue besides where it was made, choose Chile or Australia,” writes Olmsted. The two countries received the highest marks from the US International Trade Commission’s report on average quality of extra-virgin olive oil.

Buy in season and in the dark: Look for bottles with dates listed on them, and buy the oil that was bottled most recently. The end of the year is the worst time to buy oils from the Northern Hemisphere, because they will likely be leftovers from last season; likewise, avoid oils from Chile, Australia, and South Africa during our spring and summer. Olive oil’s quality degrades in the light, so don’t purchase clear bottles that have been sitting by a window; opt for dark glass bottles or cans instead.

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Your Olive Oil Is Almost Certainly Fake

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First mammal goes extinct because of climate change

by AnitraBruce618 Posted on June 14, 2016

my oh melomys

First mammal goes extinct because of climate change

By on Jun 14, 2016Share

Pour one out for the melomys: the first mammal in recorded history to go extinct thanks to climate change.

Wait, the memonly-lemony what? Get ready for a spit take, because the Bramble Cay melomys is — excuse me, was — a rat.

An upstanding resident of a tiny, isolated island in the Great Barrier Reef, the rodent spent its days minding its own business: scrambling through herbaceous vegetation, foraging for succulents, and treating itself to the occasional turtle egg. That is, until the ocean indiscriminately swallowed up its low-lying coral cay, which — it turns out — is a very effective form of pest control.

A recent report from the University of Queensland confirmed that climate change was the root cause of the melomys’ eradication: Sea levels rose at twice the rate of the global average in the waters surrounding Bramble Cay, drenching a full 97 percent of the melomys’ habitat between 2004 and 2014.

Though it may be the first mammal officially to disappear due to climate change, the melomys is far from the last. Our changing climate is on track to wipe out up to one-sixth of the species on this planet, according to a 2015 study.

But of all the species dead or alive, I think it’s fair to say the poor melomys is the most like a drowned rat. Goodbye, dear melomys: We only learned of your existence today, but we’re sorry we missed our chance to meet you!

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Here’s what a bleaching disaster looks like

by Nannett6946 Posted on June 7, 2016

Here’s what a bleaching disaster looks like

By on Jun 7, 2016Share

The good news: The peak of coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef is over! The bad: The outcome of that bleaching is pretty awful — like, “one of the worst environmental disasters in Australian history.”

That’s according to the Ocean Agency, which recently released photos taken in May near Australia’s Lizard Island. The slimy, smelly corals had the audacity to decompose and drip off the reef, right in front of the camera! Have some self-respect, guys.

Soft coral decomposing and falling off the reef.XL Catlin Seaview Survey

“I can’t even tell you how bad I smelled after the dive — the smell of millions of rotting animals,” Richard Vevers, chief executive of the Ocean Agency, told the Guardian.

Already-warm waters augmented by a strong dose of El Niño have led to the bleaching of 93 percent of corals in the Great Barrier Reef’s central and northern sections. Up to a quarter of all of its corals have already died.

A before and after image of coral bleaching and later dying in March and May 2016. XL Catlin Seaview Survey

When corals bleach, that doesn’t mean that they’re dead yet — just really hungry. Coral polyps — the small, blobby creatures that make up coral structures — don’t make their own food. Their main energy source is zooxanthellae, colorful algae that live in coral tissues and produce energy through photosynthesis. When waters warm up, those algae produce chemicals that agitate coral cells. Bleaching occurs when a coral polyp pushes its algae pals out, turning ghostly white in the process.

If water temperatures drop to normal levels fast enough, corals can invite the zooxanthellae back, recover, and potentially live healthily ever after. If warm conditions persist, well … the corals starve to death, and turn from bone-white to muddy brown as algae grow over their surfaces.

Algae covers dead coral after the bleaching event.XL Catlin Seaview Survey

The bleaching event, which began last year, continues to threaten reefs around the globe, and the latest wave is sweeping the Indian Ocean. Let’s hope those corals fare better, and get their color back.

A dying Giant Clam on the Great Barrier Reef.XL Catlin Seaview SurveyShare

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This Viral Video Has Received More Than 55 Million Views In One Day. You’ll See Why.

by BradleyBrent Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ah. So good. Wait for it. Thanks, Candace Payne. Happy Friday, everyone.

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This Viral Video Has Received More Than 55 Million Views In One Day. You’ll See Why.

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Why Buying Local Flowers is Just as Important as Buying Local Food

by LeandroHogle Posted on May 5, 2016

You may not realize it, but flowers are a part of the buy-local movementand with good reason.

Seventy percent of the cut flowers sold in the U.S. are imported from Latin America. Though the hot climate is just what the flowers need, those constant high temperatures are also conducive to bugs and disease. Consequently, growers in Columbia, Ecuador and many other countries rely on pesticides that have long been banned in the U.S. to produce flowers worth selling in international markets.

As with other crops, applying pesticides to flowers takes its toll on people, especially on mothers who work in the flower fields when they’re pregnant and unavoidably expose their fetuses to the toxic chemicals. Not only that, but researchers found that children whose mothers were exposed to pesticides during pregnancy tended to have higher blood pressure than unexposed children, increasing the chance of risk of cardiovascular disease later in life.

Consumers may be exposed to those chemicals as well. Roses can contain as much as 50 times the amount of pesticides legally allowed on the food we eat, reports the Environmental News Network.When flowers are imported into the U.S., they’re checked for bugs, but not for pesticide contamination. You could bring a lot of unwanted toxic chemicals into your home when you buy a bouquet produced outside the U.S., particularly when you stick your nose right into them.

Importing flowers from Latin America, Europe, Africa and even Australia and New Zealand has another significant environmental impact: climate change.

Blooms coming from south of our borders may be hauled in temperature-controlled trucks or perhaps flown from one continent to another, stored overnight in refrigerators, then driven on to various marketplaces. In a study done for Valentine’s Day, Flowerpetal.com, an online flower vendor, calculated that shipping100 million roses around the U.S. generated some 9,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). On the other hand, flowers grown in warmer clients do save the energy that might be consumed if the plants were raised in a northern greenhouse.

Still, if it’s possible to purchase flowers grown locally, overall, you’ll probably use less energy, suffer less pesticide exposure and funnel more money back into your local economy. The question is, where to find them?

Farmers Markets – In spring, summer and fall, most farmers markets teem with flowers grown nearby. Some farmers interplant their crops with flowers to attract beneficial insects that will prey on produce-devouring bugs. But other “flower farmers” grow both annuals and perennials as their crop. You can find the nearest source of local flower growers at LocalHarvest.org.

Your Own Yard – As long as you have adequate sunshine and water, you can grow many of the flowers you enjoy, including both perennials and annuals. Real Simple put together this useful guide on how to create a low-maintenance cutting garden that can help you get started.

ACommunity Garden – Don’t have your own yard? Don’t let that stop you. You can rent a plot of land in a community garden and plant to your heart’s content. The American Community Gardening Association makes it easy to find the nearest locale to you.

Garden Club Swaps – Join the local garden club, where you’ll end up swapping seeds and plants with other gardeners in your community. You’ll save money, get rid of your own excess plants, get access to new plants and keep the neighborhood green and in bloom.

Related:

Why Buy Organic Flowers?
8 Beloved Flowers for Every Soil Type
12 Mother’s Day Gifts That Aren’t Flowers or Perfume

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Why Buying Local Flowers is Just as Important as Buying Local Food

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New documentary gives us an idea of what will survive climate change

by hattiepullman4 Posted on May 5, 2016

New documentary gives us an idea of what will survive climate change

By on May 5, 2016Share

“I had to make a place in my heart for despair, and just keep doing the work,” climate activist Tim DeChristopher tells the camera. The statement is a perfect encapsulation of Gasland director Josh Fox’s latest documentary. But despite DeChristopher’s seemingly dreary outlook, Fox’s ode to a post-climate change world is not all doom and gloom.

The film, under the Seussian title How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change, takes Fox across 12 countries on six continents. He highlights communities that are fighting back against fossil fuel extraction and seeks out the things that climate change can’t destroy — like human ingenuity. DeChristopher, for example, bid on federal leases and effectively blocked the sale of thousands of acres of canyonlands in Utah to oil development. How to Let Go is currently screening across the U.S., and Fox is touring with it to meet with activists while promoting the film’s message.

HBO Documentary Films

The film is a departure from the 2010 documentary Gasland, which earned Fox an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary and a reputation as a prominent voice in the movement to ban the process of hydraulic fracturing, bka fracking, across the U.S. In contrast to Gasland, which blew the whistle on an at-the-time unknown extraction technique, Fox’s new film takes a fresh angle on the well-known problem of climate change, and focuses, he says, on solutions.

“What does have an effect is mobilizing in the streets, disrupting the system in some way, through non-violent political action,” he told Grist. “If we had 5 percent of the U.S. population in the streets, you’d see real action.”

So what are the things that climate change can’t destroy? Well, spoiler alert: besides the good attitudes of an army of activists, not a whole lot. But the film does give audiences a crash course in climate organizing to adapt to those changes. In one of the film’s most moving storylines, a group of Pacific Islanders stage a demonstration in traditional canoes at the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle, Australia. With police boats zooming past them to kick up waves, one of the canoes capsizes, forcing its weeping rowers back to shore. But the canoe, quickly repaired, returns to blockade the 40-foot-tall coal tanker. It’s an apt metaphor for the struggle of a tiny group of people who are up against a global catastrophe.

HBO Documentary Films

“We need to win from within,” says Mika Maiava, one of the rowers leading the charge. “So even if the people look at you like you’re losing, you’re not losing, because you already won in your heart. That energy you give out will change someone else’s heart.”

Fox also interviews New Yorkers recovering from the unexpected disaster of Hurricane Sandy, mothers campaigning for their children’s health in the smog-filled streets of Beijing, and other on-the-ground climate warriors. The result is a diverse overview of what people are doing around the world to make the reality of climate change a little less painful.

“What we’re looking at right now is that we are disastrously late in addressing climate change and that extreme measures need to be taken,” Fox said. “Even that won’t stop the havoc, but we have to examine our own lives and the way Americans live.”

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Scientists are fact-checking climate journalism now

by PhyllisMcWilliam Posted on May 2, 2016

Scientists are fact-checking climate journalism now

By on May 2, 2016 6:01 amShare

Here’s an open industry secret: Environmental and climate journalists are disseminating scientific information to the public, but most of us aren’t scientists. Neither are the fact-checkers. And even the most highly circulated, well-read publications have inadvertently spread misinformation.

A handful of respected scientists are stepping out of the lab and volunteering to fact-check climate science reporting through a relatively new project called Climate Feedback. Think of it as the Politifact or Washington Post Factchecker of climate journalism. Unlike these sites, Climate Feedback allows scientists to offer in-situ feedback to journalists and editors using an open-source web tool.  

Since January 2015, Climate Feedback has taken the occasional crack at the likes of Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, The Telegraph, and more. Now, the founders are looking to take it to the next level, by crowdfunding $30,000 to build the project’s capacity to keep apace of highly circulated reporting about climate change with new “feedbacks” given each week.

“After arriving in the U.S. in 2012, I was often frustrated by the amount of ‘climate news’ I knew to be inconsistent with the science,” co-founder Emmanuel Vincent, a climate scientist at the University of California at Merced, wrote Grist in an email, “and the lack of any effective way for scientists with expertise on the subject to respond and have their voice heard.”

The problem, Vincent and co-founder Daniel Nethery point out, is exacerbated by both the fast pace and the staying power of online media.

“Several aspects of the online media environment make it particularly conducive to the spread of misinformation,” noted Nethery, a scientist who is pursuing a PhD. in public policy at the Crawford School in Australia. “In the race to attract the most clicks, editorial standards may suffer, qualified journalists who carry out rigorous research may become cost-ineffective, and eye-catching headlines – ‘click bait’ – can trump more sober reporting of the facts.”

With the crowd-funding campaign, Vincent and Nethery plan to hire a dedicated editor and eventually incentivize accurate science writing through a tool they’re calling a Scientific Trust Tracker. It will point readers toward news sites that have consistently received positive feedback from Climate Feedback’s scientists in order to elevate the “journalists with integrity.” The public, meanwhile, would have a guide for which reporting to avoid.

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Oceans won’t have enough oxygen in as little as 15 years

by KarryRohr0004 Posted on April 29, 2016

Oceans won’t have enough oxygen in as little as 15 years

By on Apr 29, 2016Share

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

It should come as no surprise that human activity is causing the world’s oceans to warm, rise, and acidify.

But an equally troubling impact of climate change is that it is beginning to rob the oceans of oxygen.

While ocean deoxygenation is well established, a new study led by Matthew Long, an oceanographer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, finds that climate change-driven oxygen loss is already detectable in certain swaths of ocean and will likely be “widespread” by 2030 or 2040.

Ultimately, Long told The Huffington Post, oxygen-deprived oceans may have “significant impacts on marine ecosystems” and leave some areas of ocean all but uninhabitable for certain species.

While some ocean critters, like dolphins and whales, get their oxygen by surfacing, many, including fish and crabs, rely on oxygen that either enters the water from the atmosphere or is released by phytoplankton via photosynthesis.

But as the ocean surface warms, it absorbs less oxygen. And to make matters worse, oxygen in warmer water, which is less dense, has a tough time circulating to deeper waters.

For their study, published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Long and his team used simulations to predict ocean deoxygenation through 2100.

“Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it’s been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change,” Long said in a statement. “This new study tells us when we can expect the impact from climate change to overwhelm the natural variability.”

And we don’t have long.

Matthew Long/NCAR

By 2030 or 2040, according to the study, deoxygenation due to climate change will be detectable in large swaths of the Pacific Ocean, including the areas surrounding Hawaii and off the West Coast of the U.S. mainland. Other areas have more time. In the seas near the east coasts of Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia, for example, deoxygenation caused by climate change still won’t be evident by 2100.

Long said the eventual suffocation may affect the ability of ocean ecosystems to sustain healthy fisheries. The concern among the scientific community, he said, is that “we’re conceivably pushing past tipping points” in being able to prevent the damage.

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University, shared these concerns, telling The Washington Post that the new study adds to the “list of insults we are inflicting on the ocean through our continued burning of fossil fuels.”

“Just a week after learning that 93 [percent] of the Great Barrier Reef has experienced bleaching in response to the unprecedented current warmth of the oceans, we have yet another reason to be gravely concerned about the health of our oceans, and yet another reason to prioritize the rapid decarbonization of our economy,” Mann said.

Unfortunately, this reason is unlikely to be the last.

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Oceans won’t have enough oxygen in as little as 15 years

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