Tag Archives: Eureka

Trump’s pick to head chemical safety at the EPA is no longer in the running.

Forests in the American West are having a harder time recovering from wildfires because of (what else?) climate change, according to new research published in Ecology Letters.

Researchers measured the growth of seedlings in 1,500 wildfire-scorched areas in Colorado, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Across the board, they found “significant decreases” in tree regeneration, a benchmark for forest resilience. In one-third of the sites, researchers found zero seedlings.

The warmest, driest forests were hit especially hard.

“Seedlings are more sensitive to warm, dry conditions than mature trees, so if the right conditions don’t exist within a few years following a wildfire, tree seedlings may not establish,” said Philip Higuera, a coauthor of the study.

Earlier this month, a separate study found that ponderosa pine and pinyon forests in the West are becoming less resilient due to droughts and warmer temperatures. Researchers told the New York Times that as trees disappear, some forests could shift to entirely different ecosystems, like grasslands or shrublands.

You’d think the rapid reconfiguration of entire ecosystems would really light a fire under us to deal with climate change, wouldn’t you?

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Trump’s pick to head chemical safety at the EPA is no longer in the running.

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Trump officials want to add a coal display to the EPA museum, because of course.

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Trump officials want to add a coal display to the EPA museum, because of course.

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Eat Almonds, Drink Almond Milk, Live Free, Make Love, Hold, Touch, Dance, Laugh, Be Happy Always

Mother Jones

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California’s water problems sleep with the fishes, who are thrilled.

Governor Brown did not praise the drought Friday. He buried it. It will spend the rest of eternity entombed in the ground, forced to watch helplessly as its mortal enemy, groundwater, flows resurgently.

Over the years many pages of this august publication have been dedicated to the drought. (It was often noted by the Mother Jones bureaus in DC and NYC that the San Francisco bureau appeared “obsessed” with the drought, which led to this passive-aggressive headline) Though my colleagues in California knew this was coming—the writing was on the wall—they are in shock. And jubilation has erupted in their office. Reports are coming in from Slack that the almond-fueled celebration could continue well into the weekend.

Why are they celebrating with almonds? Because almonds did the drought and if you ate almonds while the drought was going on you are a bad person. But now the drought is over and the almonds, they rain from the sky like kisses from heaven! And the almond milk! My god, the almond milk, once a controversial hipster indulgence, now flows like the roaring rapids of the Colorado river. A new era of cheap broccoli hedonism dawns!

Here is a list of some of the things we said you were not allowed to do because of the drought which you now can in fact do.

1. Eat almonds.

2. Eat nuts in general.

3. Drink almond milk.

4. We felt very strongly about almond milk.

4. Drink mimosas.

5. Eat avocados.

6. Have dairy of any kind, but specifically Greek yogurt.

7. Shower.

8. Do laundry.

9. Not be a total asshole to your neighbor.

10. Eat vegetables during the winter.

11. Ski.

12. Eat romaine lettuce.

13. Enjoy a complimentary glass of water at a restaurant.

14. Drink a drink with really large ridiculous ice cubes.

15. Almonds again.

16. More almonds.

17. Wow, we wrote a lot about almonds.

RIP California’s drought, survived by its loving children, mudslide and fire.

Let me tell you a story. In 2014 in an editorial meeting people were talking about the drought and I asked “where did the water go?” and they all laughed. “Ha ha,” they said. “Ha ha ha.” And I said, “I don’t think you know.” And they said, “everyone knows.” And I said, “where is it? There used to be water, now it’s gone. Where is it?” And they flipped the table over and stormed out, never answering my question. We have published a lot of really great stories about the drought since but none answering the question. I have encountered many theories. There was the theory of the blob and that the water was in the ocean. Maybe it was stuck in a cloud above the ocean. Maybe it was in France. Because here’s the thing, the water didn’t disappear. It’s somewhere. To find the water, you have to think like the water. What place had more water than before? I thought it might have been Seattle, but Seattle actually had a drought too. So, what do you think? You’ve been reading this paragraph and think I’m stupid. You’ve been chuckling along because you know where the water is. So, where is it? I want you to think in your mind where you think the water went. Maybe you think it is an unanswerable question. If that is what you think then I have a surprise for you: Researchers at Stanford, I recently found out, answered the question. I now know where the water went and I’m going to tell you where the water is and none of you will have guessed accurately. Ready? It’s in Alaska.

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Eat Almonds, Drink Almond Milk, Live Free, Make Love, Hold, Touch, Dance, Laugh, Be Happy Always

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Here’s Some Good News for Sexual-Assault Victims

Mother Jones

The Department of Justice announced more than $38 million in funding on Monday to help state and local agencies address the backlog of untested sexual-assault kits. The funding, part of a national initiative launched last year, will go toward increasing the inventory and the testing of kits, training law enforcement officers on sexual-assault investigations, helping police departments collect DNA that could lead to the identification of serial sex offenders, as well as several other efforts.

Sexual-assault kits, more commonly known as rape kits, are the DNA swabs, hair, photographs, and detailed information gathered from victims of sexual assault and used as evidence for the prosecution of rapists. The forensic exam can often be long—from four to six hours—and, as activists note, invasive, but it can provide key evidence for identifying assailants. But getting the contents of a rape kit tested is expensive, costing between $1,000 and $1,500 on average. Lack of funding in police departments, as well as murky protocols around testing, has created a backlog of more than 400,000 untested kits across the country, according to a 2015 estimate. As a result, victims may never see their cases prosecuted, and serial rapists could go on to commit more crimes. New York, among other states, is still in the process of counting the number of untested kits it has, while others simply do not know how many untested kits there are, according to the Joyful Heart Foundation’s Accountability Project.

This round of funding could go a long way toward helping cities and police departments close cases, identify serial offenders, and better handle sexual-assault cases in the future. (Last fiscal year, the DOJ awarded nearly $80 million in grants to state and local agencies in 27 states, but there are still states that have yet to participate in the initiative.) After Detroit received a pilot grant to test rape kits, its police department has been able to make DNA matches, identify potential serial rapists, and secure convictions against perpetrators. In a 2011-13 DOJ-funded study on rape kit testing in Detroit, researchers had found that in many cases, law enforcement stopped investigating cases after minimal effort and were biased in how they conducted sexual assault investigations, with officers expressing “negative, victim-blaming beliefs about sexual assault victims.” The DOJ later released guidance on how police departments could better address gender biases in how they investigate sexual assault and domestic violence. A study this June by Case Western Reserve University of nearly 5,000 rape kits collected in and near Cleveland found that serial rapists are more common than previous research has suggested.

Maile M. Zambuto, CEO of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a sexual-assault advocacy organization, applauded the new funding in a statement. “Testing rape kits sends a fundamental and crucial message to victims of sexual violence,” she said. “You matter. What happened to you matters.”

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Here’s Some Good News for Sexual-Assault Victims

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Over half of Antarctica’s badass Adélie penguins could get wiped out by climate change

Have An Ice Life

Over half of Antarctica’s badass Adélie penguins could get wiped out by climate change

By on Jun 30, 2016Share

Adélie penguins are kind of the bad bitches of the Antarctic: They regularly fight turf wars with their Emperor penguin nemeses, and are also known to do some pretty serious sexual negotiating.

But climate change is heating up their home, and they’re not happy about it. A warming Antarctic might lead to declines in 60 percent of penguin colonies by 2099, a new study reports. The West Antarctic Peninsula is warming more rapidly than almost anywhere else on the planet — and it’s home to about half the world’s Adélie population. This isn’t the first time we’re hearing of threats to the tuxedo-clad birds — in February, we learned that a colony on Cape Denison had dropped from 160,000 penguins to 10,000.

Now, using a combination of satellite and climate data, the new Scientific Reports study finds that the temperature increase across the West Antarctic Peninsula has reached a tipping point toward a habitat that’s no longer suitable for Adélies. Additionally, warm sea surface temperatures could make chick-rearing particularly difficult for penguin fathers. (Yes, men help raise the kids in Penguinlandia — we said they were bad bitches.)

But there’s some hopeful news: Refugia — areas relatively unaffected by climate — may still exist in Antarctica beyond 2099, preventing a species-wide decimation.

“The Cape Adare region of the Ross Sea… has the largest known Adélie penguin rookery in the world. Though the climate there is expected to warm a bit, it looks like it could be a refugia in the future,” said Megan Cimino, lead author of the study, in a press statement. Understanding the ecology of these halfway homes for penguins is critical to understanding the future of the species.

So stay strong, little fighters. While the Emperors might be glad you’re gone, we won’t be.

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Over half of Antarctica’s badass Adélie penguins could get wiped out by climate change

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A handful of the world’s coral reefs are actually thriving

A handful of the world’s coral reefs are actually thriving

By on Jun 16, 2016Share

Coral reefs seem to be having a bad century, with global bleaching events and the Great Barrier Reef fading away before our eyes.

But there’s a bright spot, folks! Actually, there are 15 of them, according to a new study published in Nature.

A group of marine researchers has identified places where reef ecosystems are thriving despite environmental and human pressures. These “bright spots” are rays of hope for future conservation efforts, which may use them to apply better practices to less lucky places.

The study drew data from 2,500 reefs in 46 countries. The 15 reefs with unexpectedly robust fish populations were not necessarily in the most remote areas with low fishing activity. In fact, most of them included “localities where human populations and use of ecosystem resources is high,” the study notes. They are also typically found in the Pacific Ocean, in places like the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and parts of Indonesia.

The bright spots, it turns out, tend to benefit from responsible local management and traditional customs. For example, on Papua New Guinea’s Karkar Island, locals have the right to prevent outsiders from fishing in their particular plot of ocean. They also practice a rotational fishing system where, as in farming, they leave off fishing a part of the reef to allow populations to recover.

On the flip side are the 35 “dark spots” the study identified, where fish stocks aren’t faring too well. These are places like Hawaii and Australia where locals tend to have greater access to fishing technologies — such as nets and freezers for stockpiling fish — that aid and abet intensive exploitation. Dark spots also were more likely to be suffering from recent environmental shocks, like bleaching.

Experts hope to use the bright spots as blueprints for more creative conservation efforts.

“We believe that the bright spots offer hope and some solutions that can be applied more broadly across the world’s coral reefs,” says Josh Cinner, the lead author on the study. “Specifically, investments that foster local involvement and provide people with ownership rights can allow people to develop creative solutions that help defy expectations of reef fisheries depletion.”

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A handful of the world’s coral reefs are actually thriving

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Earth is getting greener. Here’s why that’s a problem.

Earth is getting greener. Here’s why that’s a problem.

By on May 2, 2016Share

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

A new study just published in the journal Nature Climate Change reached an interesting, if not totally surprising, conclusion: The Earth has become significantly greener over the past 33 years.

The main reason? All the extra carbon dioxide we humans dump into the air.

Let me be clear right away: This is a kinda sorta good thing, but don’t celebrate the positive aspect of climate change just yet. The effect almost certainly won’t last, and this small positive is completely buried under a long, long list of negatives.

The research used satellites to examine vegetation growth over time, assuming that the extra green is coming from leaves on plants and trees. Using a computer model to estimate leaf growth, they find the extra greening is equivalent to adding about 18 million square kilometers of vegetated land to the globe, more than twice the area of the mainland U.S. That’s pretty astonishing.

Map showing vegetation across the globe.

Myneni et al.

The growth is due to added CO2 in the air. Plants use sunlight for energy and convert CO2 (plus water) into sugar, which is stored for food. In a naive sense, more CO2 means more food for plants (this is called carbon dioxide fertilization), so there’s more growth.

The good news, such as it is, is that this means plants are able to soak up more carbon from the atmosphere. The bad news is, it’s not nearly enough. This is made clear by a graph showing atmospheric carbon dioxide content, as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii:

Scripps Institute of Oceanography

As you can see, the amount of CO2 in the air is still increasing, even with this extra vegetation. Worse, look at the increase from 1980 (roughly the start of the new study’s time range) to 1995. If you extend that slope, you’ll see that the increase has increased since 1995; in other words, we’re putting out even more CO2 per year than we did 35 years ago.

All that extra plant growth can’t keep up with the 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide humans dump into the atmosphere every year.

Incidentally, some of that greening is in the Arctic. That place is usually covered with snow and ice, except warmer temperatures have been causing it to melt away. That’s not a place we want to see green. White would be way better.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped the deniers, who tend to ignore inconvenient facts like that, and instead just tout how the Earth getting greener must be a good thing. World News Daily and the Cato Institute were two sources I found pretty easily making this fallacious claim. It’s cherry-picking in the worst sort of way, but then deniers have been making this ridiculous claim for a long time now.

What I find funny is that in the press release, one of the authors of the research preemptively smacks down the deniers [emphasis mine]:

The beneficial aspect of CO2 fertilization in promoting plant growth has been used by contrarians, notably Lord Ridley (hereditary peer in the U.K. House of Lords) and Mr. Rupert Murdoch (owner of several news outlets), to argue against cuts in carbon emissions to mitigate climate change, similar to those agreed at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP) meeting in Paris last year under the U.N. Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC). “The fallacy of the contrarian argument is two-fold. First, the many negative aspects of climate change, namely global warming, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and sea ice, more severe tropical storms, etc. are not acknowledged. Second, studies have shown that plants acclimatize, or adjust, to rising CO2 concentration and the fertilization effect diminishes over time,” says coauthor Dr. Philippe Ciais, associate director of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, Gif-suvYvette, France, and contributing lead author of the Carbon Chapter for the recent IPCC Assessment Report 5.

Of course, deniers gonna deny. Using this study to say that climate change is good is like getting in a massive car accident and being happy you don’t have to vacuum out the car anymore.

But hey, if you’re willing to ignore rising sea levels, more extreme weather, melting polar ice, deoxygenation of the oceans, droughts, floods, acidification of the oceans and coral bleaching, more heatwaves, and the displacement of potentially hundreds of millions of people, then y’know, a little more green in your life is just great!

Enjoy it while it lasts.

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Earth is getting greener. Here’s why that’s a problem.

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Climate Change is Putting Your Favorite Foods at Risk

The climate is changing the global temperature is rising, weather patterns are changing, sea levels are rising. Its effects are serious and widespread, but have you ever considered its effects on your favorite foods? Here are 6 foods that will likely be affected if climate change progresses.

Avocados. Scientists expect to see a 40 percent decrease in avocado production over the next 30 years unless farmers uproot and seek more suitable climates. Why? Blame the warming global temperatures. That means a drastic increase in avocado prices, which probably means your guacamole consumption will be cut down in its prime.

Chocolate. Chocolate brings happiness its just scientific fact. But cocoa crops may be on the decline. While cocoas ideal altitude is 100 to 250 meters above sea level, that’s expected to rise to 450 to 500 meters above sea level by 2050. With most cocoa coming from Ghana and the Ivory Coast, this could have a dramatic impact on cocoa costs as yield begins to decrease and arable land diminishes.

Coffee. Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world. However, it’s an environmentally sensitive plant. Coffee-growing regions around the world are experiencing the initial complications of climate change. A serious fungus called coffee rust has been sweeping across Central America, spurred by warming temperatures. A pest in Hawaii known as the coffee berry borer is expected to become an even greater threat to crops in upcoming years if it is allowed to spread. And with the temperature rise, coffee-growing regions in Africa the birthplace of coffee are expected to decrease from 65 to 100 percent. Thats right, 100 percent. No more African coffees if the surface temperature continues to spike.

Almonds. Over the next 30 years, almond production is expected to decrease by 20 percent. Interestingly, the model scientists used did not account for decreased rainfall due to changing weather patterns, so this decrease in yield could indeed be greater. If the drought in California is any indication, we may not be enjoying almond milk as regularly in the future.

Grapes. Grapes are very sensitive to temperature and weather changes. In fact, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that 19 to 73 percent of the land suitable for grape-growing in wine regions will be lost to climate change by 2050. France is already feeling the effects, with some winemakers being forced to harvest earlier due to an increase in mild nights and extreme weather. If this trend continues, grapes may thrive less in these regions, while places like China or Montana may become surprisingly more accommodating.

Potatoes. With rising surface temperatures, potato farmers in the Andes have been forced to move to higher and higher altitudes to grow their crops. Eventually, if temperatures continue to rise, farmers will simply run out of arable land. (Unless were looking to start farming on Mars.) Think of all the traditional foods around the world that are potato-centric! Its the third most consumed crop worldwide after wheat and rice, with over a billion people regularly consuming potatoes.

Climate change is real, and our agriculture is extremely sensitive. If you needed a reason to get serious about climate change, what’s more powerful than the threat of losing your favorite foods?

Related
Should You Work Out When You’re Sick?
Lifestyle Habits That Boost Immunity
Is Yogurt the Key to Happiness?

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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Climate Change is Putting Your Favorite Foods at Risk

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Kids Who Breathe More Pollution Have Lower Grades

Mother Jones

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A growing body of evidence suggests pollution can do a number on the brain. The July/August Mother Jones cover story chronicled the research connecting neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to the dirty air we breathe; studies have found that pollution may also age the brain prematurely. And according to new research from the University of Texas-El Paso, pollution’s damage to the brain may start even sooner than was previously thought: Fourth and fifth graders exposed to exhaust emissions, researchers found, don’t do as well in school as their peers who breathe cleaner air.

Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Air Toxics Assessment, researchers estimated how often children were exposed to air pollution in their homes. They then compared that data with the academic performance of close to 1,900 kids enrolled in the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD)—an area prone to high levels of pollution.

Adjusting for other factors that can influence school performance, like socioeconomic status and parents’ education levels, the researchers found that students exposed to more emissions had lower grade-point averages. Areas included in the study were ranked by the amount of air pollution, and students living in areas with the highest levels (in the top 75 percent) had GPAs that were 0.031 points below those who lived where the air was cleaner.

The researchers also found that pollution from “non-road mobile sources”—such as airports, construction vehicles, and trains—had the greatest impact on GPA, even though factories and vehicle emissions often receive the most attention from policymakers.

The American Lung Association reports that some 139 million people—close to half of the nation’s population—live in areas with air that the group deems “too dangerous to breathe,” and the UTEP researchers highlighted that low-income families are more likely to live in the most polluted areas. Poverty alone has been connected to adverse affects on childhood brain development, but the new findings suggest poor students might be at an even greater disadvantage because of pollution levels near their homes.

“This study and this body of literature about air pollution is demonstrating one more negative effect of air pollution in our environment,” says researcher Sara Grineski. “There are many studies that show that higher levels of air pollution are associated with so many negative effects, from asthma, respiratory infections, cardiovascular disease, and autism, to reduced school performance.”

Grineski and her coauthor believe their findings indicate an even greater urgency to implement policies that will curb emissions. “The finding that there is a significant association between residential exposure to air toxins and GPA at the individual level is both novel and disturbing,” they write. “These findings provide another piece of evidence that should inform advocacy for pollution reduction in the USA and beyond.”

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Kids Who Breathe More Pollution Have Lower Grades

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Happy Accidents – Morton A. Meyers

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Happy Accidents

Serendipity in Major Medical Breakthroughs in the Twentieth Century

Morton A. Meyers

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: September 1, 2011

Publisher: Arcade Publishing

Seller: The Perseus Books Group, LLC


Happy Accidents is a fascinating, entertaining, and highly accessible look at the surprising role serendipity has played in some of the most important medical discoveries in the twentieth century. What do penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, X-rays, Valium, the Pap smear, and Viagra have in common? They were each discovered accidentally, stumbled upon in the search for something else. In the 1990s, Pfizer had high hopes for a new drug that would boost blood flow to the heart. As they conducted trials on angina sufferers, researchers noted a startling effect: while the drug did not affect blood flow to the heart, it did affect blood flow elsewhere! Now over six million American men have taken Viagra in their lifetime. Winston Churchill once said, “Men occasionally stumble across the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.” Within the scientific community, a certain stigma is attached to chance discovery because it is wrongly seen as pure luck. Happy accidents certainly happen every day, but it takes intelligence, insight, and creativity to recognize a “Eureka, I found what I wasn&apos;t looking for!” moment and know what to do next. In discussing medical breakthroughs, Dr. Morton Meyers makes a cogent, highly engaging argument for a more creative, rather than purely linear, approach to science. And it may just save our lives!

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Happy Accidents – Morton A. Meyers

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