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Category: Environment

Air pollution is shaving years from people’s lives

Air pollution is shaving years from people’s lives

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McClatchy reports: People could add years to their lives in California and other smog-plagued parts of the world if authorities could reduce particulate pollution — soot from cars and industry — to levels recommended by the World Health Organization, a new study reported Monday. No other large U.S. city would benefit more than Fresno, which has soot concentrations at roughly twice the WHO guidelines. Fresno residents would live a year longer if the region could meet the health organization’s recommended…

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Trump plans on keeping his coal warrior in charge of the EPA

Trump plans on keeping his coal warrior in charge of the EPA

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HuffPost reports: President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to nominate Andrew Wheeler to be the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, installing the former coal lobbyist permanently in a position he’s filled in an acting role since July. Speaking at a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House, Trump said: “Acting administrator, who I tell you is going to be made permanent, he’s done a fantastic job and I want to congratulate him.” Jeff Goodell writes: If…

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Humanity is destroying life on Earth

Humanity is destroying life on Earth

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  The Guardian reports: Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation. The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the…

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Humanity is ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists

Humanity is ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists

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The Guardian reports: Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, including the branch we are sitting on, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. The new research calculates the total unique evolutionary history that has been lost as a result at a startling 2.5bn years. Furthermore, even if the destruction of wild areas, poaching and pollution were ended within 50 years and extinction rates…

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‘Hyperalarming’ study shows massive insect loss

‘Hyperalarming’ study shows massive insect loss

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The Washington Post reports: Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of long-term studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations. A new report suggests that the problem is more widespread than scientists realized. Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico, the study found, and the forest’s insect-eating animals have gone missing, too. In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past…

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How the loss of Native American languages affects our understanding of the natural world

How the loss of Native American languages affects our understanding of the natural world

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Dance is a unique way of passing on cultural stories to a younger generation. Aaron Hawkins/Flickr.com, CC BY-ND By Rosalyn R. LaPier, The University of Montana Alaska has a “linguistic emergency,” according to the Alaskan Gov. Bill Walker. A report warned earlier this year that all of the state’s 20 Native American languages might cease to exist by the end of this century, if the state did not act. American policies, particularly in the six decades between the 1870s and…

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Bolsonaro has made grim threats to the Amazon and its people

Bolsonaro has made grim threats to the Amazon and its people

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Climate Change News reports: No more Paris Agreement. No more ministry of environment. A paved highway cutting through the Amazon. Not only that. Indigenous territories opened to mining. Relaxed environmental law enforcement and licensing. International NGOs, such as Greenpeace and WWF, banned from the country. A strong alliance with the beef lobby. In a nutshell, this is what Jair Bolsonaro, who is sailing towards Brazil’s presidency after taking a near-majority in a first round vote on Sunday, has promised for…

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Human-caused climate change severely exposes the U.S. national parks

Human-caused climate change severely exposes the U.S. national parks

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Trees have died in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colo., as climate change has intensified bark beetle infestations and drought. Patrick Gonzalez, CC BY-ND By Patrick Gonzalez, University of California, Berkeley Human-caused climate change is disrupting ecosystems and people’s lives around the world. It is melting glaciers, increasing wildfires, and shifting vegetation across vast landscapes. These impacts have reached national parks around the world and in the United States. Until now, however, no analysis had examined climate change trends across all…

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Scientists fear that insects upon which humans depend are declining

Scientists fear that insects upon which humans depend are declining

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The Associated Press reports: A staple of summer — swarms of bugs — seems to be a thing of the past. And that’s got scientists worried. Pesky mosquitoes, disease-carrying ticks, crop-munching aphids and cockroaches are doing just fine. But the more beneficial flying insects of summer — native bees, moths, butterflies, ladybugs, lovebugs, mayflies and fireflies — appear to be less abundant. Scientists think something is amiss, but they can’t be certain: In the past, they didn’t systematically count the…

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Why do we love bees but hate wasps?

Why do we love bees but hate wasps?

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University College London: A lack of understanding of the important role of wasps in the ecosystem and economy is a fundamental reason why they are universally despised whereas bees are much loved, according to UCL-led research. Both bees and wasps are two of humanity’s most ecologically and economically important organisms. They both pollinate our flowers and crops, but wasps also regulate populations of crop pests and insects that carry human diseases. “It’s clear we have a very different emotional connection…

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A growing wave of extinctions is sweeping across the continents

A growing wave of extinctions is sweeping across the continents

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The Guardian reports: Spix’s macaw, a brilliant blue species of Brazilian parrot that starred in the children’s animation Rio, has become extinct this century, according to a new assessment of endangered birds. The macaw is one of eight species, including the poo-uli, the Pernambuco pygmy-owl and the cryptic treehunter, that can be added to the growing list of confirmed or highly likely extinctions, according to a new statistical analysis by BirdLife International. Historically, most bird extinctions have been small-island species…

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Wildlife preservation depends on saving animals, their habitats, and their cultures

Wildlife preservation depends on saving animals, their habitats, and their cultures

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Ed Yong writes: In the 1800s, there were so many bighorn sheep in Wyoming that when one trapper passed through Jackson Hole, he described “over a thousand sheep in the cliffs above our campsite.” No such sights exist today. The bighorns slowly fell to hunters’ rifles, and to diseases spread from domestic sheep. Most herds were wiped out, and by 1900, a species that once numbered in the millions stood instead in the low thousands. In the 1940s, the Wyoming…

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Death toll from Hurricane Maria higher than 9/11

Death toll from Hurricane Maria higher than 9/11

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CBS News reports: Hurricane Maria killed far more people in Puerto Rico than initially thought, accounting for an estimated 2,975 deaths on the island from September 2017 through February 2018, according to a new analysis. The study found that those in low-income areas, and elderly men, were at greatest risk of dying. The independent analysis was commissioned by the governor of Puerto Rico and conducted by researchers at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. CBS News obtained…

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Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals

Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals

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The Guardian reports: Air pollution causes a “huge” reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health. The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost…

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The human domination of the face of the Earth

The human domination of the face of the Earth

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By Rhett A. Butler Despite ongoing deforestation, fires, drought-induced die-offs, and insect outbreaks, the world’s tree cover actually increased by 2.24 million square kilometers — an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined — over the past 35 years, finds a paper published in the journal Nature. But the research also confirms large-scale loss of the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems, especially tropical forests. The study, led by Xiao-Peng Song and Matthew Hansen of the University of Maryland, is based…

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EPA unveils new coal pollution rules. In the fine print: more deaths

EPA unveils new coal pollution rules. In the fine print: more deaths

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The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has hailed its overhaul of federal pollution restrictions on coal-burning power plants as creating new jobs, eliminating burdensome government regulations and ending what President Trump has long described as a “war on coal.” The administration’s own analysis, however, revealed on Tuesday that the new rules could also lead to as many as 1,400 premature deaths annually by 2030 from an increase in the extremely fine particulate matter that is linked to heart…

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