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Category: Environment

Indigenous people may be the Amazon’s last hope

Indigenous people may be the Amazon’s last hope

Collecting firewood on the Waiapi indigenous reserve in Amapa state, Brazil, Oct. 13, 2017. A new bill could open Brazil’s Native lands to development. APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images By Robert T. Walker, University of Florida; Aline A. Carrara, University of Florida; Cynthia S. Simmons, University of Florida, and Maira I Irigaray, University of Florida Brazil’s divisive President Jair Bolsonaro has taken another step in his bold plans to develop the Amazon rainforest. A bill he is sponsoring, now before…

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Is the Amazon rainforest going to turn into dry scrubland?

Is the Amazon rainforest going to turn into dry scrubland?

Nature reports: Seen from a monitoring tower above the treetops near Manaus in the Brazilian Amazon, the rainforest canopy stretches to the horizon as an endless sea of green. It looks like a rich and healthy ecosystem, but appearances are deceiving. This rainforest — which holds 16,000 separate tree species — is slowly drying out. Over the past century, the average temperature in the forest has risen by 1–1.5 °C. In some parts, the dry season has expanded during the…

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The demise of bees will lead to ours too unless we change the way we grow food

The demise of bees will lead to ours too unless we change the way we grow food

Alison Benjamin writes: The oldest love affair in history is between the bee and the flower. It began more than 100m years ago, when nature devised a more efficient way than winds for plants to procreate. About 80% of plant species now use animals or insects to carry pollen grains from the male part of the plant to the female part. The plants developed flowers. Their perfumed scent, colourful displays and sweet nectar are all designed to woo pollinators. Over…

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More evidence of ‘insect apocalypse’

More evidence of ‘insect apocalypse’

The Guardian reports: Two scientific studies of the number of insects splattered by cars have revealed a huge decline in abundance at European sites in two decades. The research adds to growing evidence of what some scientists have called an “insect apocalypse”, which is threatening a collapse in the natural world that sustains humans and all life on Earth. A third study shows plummeting numbers of aquatic insects in streams. The survey of insects hitting car windscreens in rural Denmark…

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Global financial giants stop funding production from destructive oil sands

Global financial giants stop funding production from destructive oil sands

The New York Times reports: Some of the world’s largest financial institutions have stopped putting their money behind oil production in the Canadian province of Alberta, home to one of the world’s most extensive, and also dirtiest, oil reserves. In December, the insurance giant The Hartford said it would stop insuring or investing in oil production in the province, just weeks after Sweden’s central bank said it would stop holding Alberta’s bonds. And on Wednesday BlackRock, the worlds largest asset…

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Iceberg twice the size of Washington cleaves off Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, in a sign of rapid warming

Iceberg twice the size of Washington cleaves off Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, in a sign of rapid warming

The Washington Post reports: An iceberg about twice the size of the District of Columbia broke off Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica sometime between Saturday and Sunday, satellite data shows, confirming yet another in a series of increasingly frequent calving events in this rapidly warming region. The Pine Island Glacier is one of the fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica, and along with the Thwaites Glacier nearby, it’s a subject of close scientific monitoring to determine whether these glaciers are in…

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Rapid permafrost collapse is underway, disintegrating landscapes and our predictions

Rapid permafrost collapse is underway, disintegrating landscapes and our predictions

AFP reports: Permafrost in Canada, Alaska and Siberia is abruptly crumbling in ways that could release large stores of greenhouse gases more quickly than anticipated, researchers have warned. Scientists have long fretted that climate change – which has heated Arctic and subarctic regions at double the global rate – will release planet-warming CO2 and methane that has remained safely locked inside Earth’s frozen landscapes for millennia. It was assumed this process would be gradual, leaving humanity time to draw down…

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Bumblebees’ decline points to mass extinction, scientists say

Bumblebees’ decline points to mass extinction, scientists say

PA Media reports: Bumblebees are in drastic decline across Europe and North America owing to hotter and more frequent extremes in temperatures, scientists say. A study suggests the likelihood of a bumblebee population surviving in any given place has declined by 30% in the course of a single human generation. The researchers say the rates of decline appear to be “consistent with a mass extinction”. Peter Soroye, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa and the study’s lead author,…

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The internet is invading the night sky

The internet is invading the night sky

Marina Koren writes: Last year, Krzysztof Stanek got a letter from one of his neighbors. The neighbor wanted to build a shed two feet taller than local regulations allowed, and the city required him to notify nearby residents. Neighbors, the notice said, could object to the construction. No one did, and the shed went up. Stanek, an astronomer at Ohio State University, told me this story not because he thinks other people will care about the specific construction codes of…

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Trump withholding $823 million for clean energy, Democrats say

Trump withholding $823 million for clean energy, Democrats say

Bloomberg reports: The Trump administration is withholding nearly a billion dollars for a clean energy program it has unsuccessfully tried to cut, congressional Democrats said Wednesday, raising the specter of political interference. The unspent funds now amount to $823 million in the Energy Department’s office that provides grants and other financial assistance for alternative energy, electric vehicles and energy efficiency, according to Democrats on the House Science Committee, which is holding a joint subcommittee hearing on the topic. The Office…

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Once again, why fossil fuels are on the wrong side of history

Once again, why fossil fuels are on the wrong side of history

Jim Cramer writes: Tesla plus 80, Exxon Mobil minus a dollar and a half. On a huge up day, doesn’t that say it all? I’ve gotten a lot of blowback about my stand on fossil fuels. It’s been roundly criticized by many even as so many others are grateful for my new stand. The funny thing is that the stance itself is often poorly described by others so let’s unpack my comments. First, I have spent a great deal of…

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Unprecedented data confirms that Antarctica’s most dangerous glacier is melting from below

Unprecedented data confirms that Antarctica’s most dangerous glacier is melting from below

The Washington Post reports: Warm ocean water has been discovered underneath a massive glacier in West Antarctica, a troubling finding that could speed its melt in a region with the potential to eventually unleash more than 10 feet of sea-level rise. The unprecedented research, part of a multimillion-dollar British and U.S. initiative to study the remote Thwaites Glacier, involved drilling through nearly 2,000 feet of ice to measure water temperatures in a narrow cavity where the glacier first connects with…

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Poisoning America: Trump removes pollution controls on streams and wetlands

Poisoning America: Trump removes pollution controls on streams and wetlands

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration on Thursday will finalize a rule to strip away environmental protections for streams, wetlands and other water bodies, handing a victory to farmers, fossil fuel producers and real estate developers who said Obama-era rules had shackled them with onerous and unnecessary burdens. From Day 1 of his administration, President Trump vowed to repeal President Barack Obama’s “Waters of the United States” regulation, which had frustrated rural landowners. His new rule, which will…

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Native people did not use fire to shape New England’s landscape

Native people did not use fire to shape New England’s landscape

Old-growth forests prevailed in New England for thousands of years. David Foster, CC BY-ND By Wyatt Oswald, Emerson College; David R. Foster, Harvard University, and Elizabeth Chilton, Binghamton University, State University of New York An interpretive sign stands at the edge of the Montague Plains Wildlife Management Area, a 1,500-acre state conservation property in central Massachusetts. It explains the site’s open land vegetation has been shaped by “millennia of fire” – and that the recent exclusion of fire has led…

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U.S. drinking water contamination with ‘forever chemicals’ far worse than scientists thought

U.S. drinking water contamination with ‘forever chemicals’ far worse than scientists thought

Reuters reports: The contamination of US drinking water with manmade “forever chemicals” is far worse than previously estimated with some of the highest levels found in Miami, Philadelphia and New Orleans, said a report on Wednesday by an environmental watchdog group. The chemicals, resistant to breaking down in the environment, are known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Some have been linked to cancers, liver damage, low birth weight and other health problems. The findings here by the Environmental Working Group…

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Fighting the fossil fuel economy in Appalachia

Fighting the fossil fuel economy in Appalachia

Michael Sainato writes: About 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh, along the Ohio River, lies one of the largest active construction projects in the United States. Dozens of cranes dominate the more-than-300-acre site, where hundreds of construction workers assemble a massive petrochemical facility set to convert natural gas into plastic pellets used to develop a range of products from plastic bottles to car parts. The ethane cracker plant being developed in Monaca, Pennsylvania, by Royal Dutch Shell is one of at…

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