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Category: Environment

Former coal lobbyist becomes second in command at the EPA

Former coal lobbyist becomes second in command at the EPA

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BuzzFeed reports: The Senate just confirmed Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, to be the second in command at the Environmental Protection Agency. The Thursday vote was largely along party lines — 53-45. Sens. Joe Donnelly from Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp from North Dakota, and Joe Manchin from West Virginia were the only Democrats to vote in favor of the confirmation. Wheeler is one of only a handful of President Donald Trump’s picks for the EPA confirmed so far, and he…

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‘Dead zone’ in Gulf of Mexico will take decades to recover from farm pollution

‘Dead zone’ in Gulf of Mexico will take decades to recover from farm pollution

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The Guardian reports: The enormous “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico will take decades to recover even if the flow of farming chemicals that is causing the damage is completely halted, new research has warned. Intensive agriculture near the Mississippi has led to fertilizers leeching into the river, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico, via soils and waterways. This has resulted in a huge oxygen-deprived dead zone in the Gulf that is now at its largest ever extent, covering…

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Land degradation by human activities pushing Earth into sixth mass extinction and undermining well-being of 3.2 billion people

Land degradation by human activities pushing Earth into sixth mass extinction and undermining well-being of 3.2 billion people

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  Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES): Worsening land degradation caused by human activities is undermining the well-being of two fifths of humanity, driving species extinctions and intensifying climate change. It is also a major contributor to mass human migration and increased conflict, according to the world’s first comprehensive evidence-based assessment of land degradation and restoration. The dangers of land degradation, which cost the equivalent of about 10% of the world’s annual gross product in 2010 through…

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‘Shocking’ decline in birds across Europe due to pesticide use, say scientists

‘Shocking’ decline in birds across Europe due to pesticide use, say scientists

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The Independent reports: Bird numbers across France have declined by a third in the past 15 years, according to new figures released by researchers. Linked to changes in agricultural practices such as pesticide use, the dramatic collapse is comparable with trends observed in other parts of Europe, including the UK. Nevertheless, the latest figures have shocked scientists who previously thought France’s bird population was relatively stable. “We had some idea because when you are working in the countryside you find…

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Great Pacific Garbage Patch now covers area three times the size of France

Great Pacific Garbage Patch now covers area three times the size of France

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The Washington Post reports: Seventy-nine thousand tons of plastic debris, in the form of 1.8 trillion pieces, now occupy an area three times the size of France in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, a scientific team reported on Thursday. The amount of plastic found in this area, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is “increasing exponentially,” according to the surveyors, who used two planes and 18 boats to assess the ocean pollution. “We wanted to have a…

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Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros, dies in Kenya

Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros, dies in Kenya

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The New York Times reports: The last male northern white rhinoceros died on Monday at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya following a series of infections and other health problems. At 45, Sudan was an elderly rhino, and his death was not unexpected. Hunted to near-extinction, just two northern white rhinos now remain: Najin, Sudan’s daughter, and Fatu, his granddaughter, both at the conservancy. The prospect of losing the charismatic animals has prompted an unusual scientific effort to develop new…

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After a volcano’s ancient supereruption, humanity may have thrived

After a volcano’s ancient supereruption, humanity may have thrived

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Shannon Hall writes: The Toba supereruption [about 74,000 years ago] expelled roughly 10,000 times more rock and ash than the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. So much ejecta would have darkened skies worldwide, causing scientists to speculate that it might have plunged the Earth into a volcanic winter whose chill could be felt far from Indonesia. Climate models suggest that temperatures may have plummeted by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit. And in such a cold world, plants may have…

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Oil was central in decision to shrink Bears Ears Monument, emails show

Oil was central in decision to shrink Bears Ears Monument, emails show

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The New York Times reports: Even before President Trump officially opened his high-profile review last spring of federal lands protected as national monuments, the Department of Interior was focused on the potential for oil and gas exploration at a protected Utah site, internal agency documents show. The debate started as early as March 2017, when an aide to Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, asked a senior Interior Department official to consider shrinking Bears Ears National Monument in the southeastern…

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Conservation efforts are failing to address the importance of preserving intact forests

Conservation efforts are failing to address the importance of preserving intact forests

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Morgan Erickson-Davis reports: When it comes to habitat quality and ecosystem services, research has shown that natural landscapes do it best. A new study, published recently in Nature, adds fodder to this argument, describing how intact forests are critically important for mitigating climate change, maintaining water supplies, safeguarding biodiversity, and even protecting human health. However, it warns that global policies aimed at reducing deforestation are not putting enough emphasis on the preservation of the world’s dwindling intact forests, instead relying…

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Glacial melting isn’t someone else’s problem

Glacial melting isn’t someone else’s problem

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By Dana J. Graef High in the Ecuadorian Andes, the peak of Cotacachi was once reliably white. But by the early 2000s, the glacier on top of this dormant volcano, which reaches more than 16,200 feet, had disappeared. This made it—as anthropologist Robert E. Rhoades and his co-authors Xavier Zapata Ríos and Jenny Aragundy Ochoa wrote in the 2008 book Darkening Peaks—one of “the first Andean mountains in the past half-century to completely lose its glacier as a result of…

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New mapping shows just how much fishing impacts the world’s seas

New mapping shows just how much fishing impacts the world’s seas

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Science News reports: Fishing has left a hefty footprint on Earth. Oceans cover more than two-thirds of the planet’s surface, and industrial fishing occurred across 55 percent of that ocean area in 2016, researchers report in the Feb. 23 Science. In comparison, only 34 percent of Earth’s land area is used for agriculture or grazing. Previous efforts to quantify global fishing have relied on a hodgepodge of scant data culled from electronic monitoring systems on some vessels, logbooks and onboard…

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The immobilization of life on Earth

The immobilization of life on Earth

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One of the defining characteristics of life is movement, be that in the form of locomotion or simply growth. What is inanimate is not alive and yet humans, through the use of technology, are constantly seeking ways to reduce the need to move our own limbs. We have set ourselves on a trajectory that, if taken to its logical conclusion, will eliminate our need to possess a fully functioning body as we reduce ourselves to a corpse-like condition sustained by…

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As the U.S. weakens protections for wilderness, Peru moves to protect ‘one of the last great intact forests’

As the U.S. weakens protections for wilderness, Peru moves to protect ‘one of the last great intact forests’

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The New York Times reports: The remote rain forests in Peru’s northeast corner are vast — so vast that the clouds that form above them can influence rainfall in the western United States. The region contains species, especially unusual fish, that are unlike any found elsewhere on Earth. Scientists studying the area’s fauna and flora may gain insights into evolutionary processes and into the ecological health and geological history of the Amazon. Now the area has become home to one…

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We’re killing our lakes and oceans

We’re killing our lakes and oceans

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Eelco Rohling and Joseph Ortiz write: On January 5, 2018, a paper published in the journal Science delivered a sobering message: The oxygenation of open oceans and coastal seas has been steadily declining during the past half century. The volume of ocean with no oxygen at all has quadrupled, and the volume where oxygen levels are falling dangerously low has increased even more. We’re seeing the same thing happen in major lakes. The main culprits are warming and — especially…

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