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Category: Environment

Support for the Endangered Species Act remains high as Trump administration and Congress try to gut it

Support for the Endangered Species Act remains high as Trump administration and Congress try to gut it

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The endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep. USFWS By Jeremy T. Bruskotter, The Ohio State University; John A Vucetich, Michigan Technological University, and Ramiro Berardo, The Ohio State University The Endangered Species Act, or “the Act,” is arguably the most important law in the United States for conserving biodiversity and arresting the extinction of species. Congress passed the ESA in 1973 with strong bipartisan support (the House voted 355-4 in favor of the law) at the behest of a Republican president,…

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Fueled by climate change, wildfires erode air quality gains

Fueled by climate change, wildfires erode air quality gains

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E&E News reports: Fourteen years ago, University of Washington researcher Daniel Jaffe installed an air pollution monitor on a mountainside outside Eugene, Ore. His intention was to measure pollution levels, with a particular focus on tracking emissions from China that drift into the United States in the spring. But in recent years, the monitor has unexpectedly produced a second and more urgent data set: tracking fine particle pollution from wildfires in the western United States. “We spend more of our…

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Plastic doesn’t ever really disappear

Plastic doesn’t ever really disappear

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Zoë Schlanger writes: Since the end of World War II, plastics have proliferated, becoming a part of nearly everything we use in nearly every aspect of daily life. Yearly production has grown from 2 million metric tons of plastic in 1950 to 380 million metric tons in 2015. In total, according to a paper published on July 19, 2017, in Science Advances, humans have made 8.3 billion metric tons of new plastics since 1950. And, thanks in large part to…

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Orcas of the Pacific Northwest are starving and disappearing

Orcas of the Pacific Northwest are starving and disappearing

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The New York Times reports: For the last three years, not one calf has been born to the dwindling pods of black-and-white killer whales spouting geysers of mist off the coast in the Pacific Northwest. Normally four or five calves would be born each year among this fairly unique urban population of whales — pods named J, K and L. But most recently, the number of orcas here has dwindled to just 75, a 30-year-low in what seems to be…

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A massive study solidifies the link between air pollution from cars and diabetes

A massive study solidifies the link between air pollution from cars and diabetes

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Olga Khazan reports: It’s fairly well known that a bad diet, a lack of exercise, and genetics can all contribute to type 2 diabetes. But a new global study points to an additional, surprising culprit: the air pollution emitted by cars and trucks. Though other research has shown a link between diabetes and air pollution in the past, this study is one of the largest of its kind, and it’s unique because it both is longitudinal and includes several types…

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What makes the new acting EPA chief even worse than Scott Pruitt

What makes the new acting EPA chief even worse than Scott Pruitt

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Alexander C. Kaufman reports: Just one year ago, Andrew Wheeler worked as one of the coal industry’s most powerful lobbyists, serving as coal baron Bob Murray’s Capitol Hill muscle, challenging environmental regulations and casting doubt on the science behind climate change. On Monday, Wheeler will take over at the Environmental Protection Agency, after Administrator Scott Pruitt’s sudden resignation Thursday amid a five-month avalanche of ethics and legal controversies. Wheeler’s ascension, while expected to return stability to the scandal-struck EPA, demonstrates…

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Where have all Britain’s insects gone?

Where have all Britain’s insects gone?

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Robin McKie reports: When Simon Leather was a student in the 1970s, he took a summer job as a postman and delivered mail to the villages of Kirk Hammerton and Green Hammerton in North Yorkshire. He recalls his early morning walks through its lanes, past the porches of houses on his round. At virtually every home, he saw the same picture: windows plastered with tiger moths that had been attracted by lights the previous night and were still clinging to…

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‘Shocking’ die-off of Africa’s oldest baobabs

‘Shocking’ die-off of Africa’s oldest baobabs

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AFP reports: Some of Africa’s oldest and biggest baobab trees — a few dating all the way back to the ancient Greeks — have abruptly died, wholly or in part, in the past decade, researchers said Monday. The trees, aged between 1,100 and 2,500 years and some as wide as a bus is long, may have fallen victim to climate change, the team speculated. “We report that nine of the 13 oldest… individuals have died, or at least their oldest…

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Humanity is a tiny fraction of life on Earth but has destroyed over 80% of wild mammals and half of plants

Humanity is a tiny fraction of life on Earth but has destroyed over 80% of wild mammals and half of plants

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The Guardian reports: Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet. The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds. The new work is the first…

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Someone, somewhere, is making a banned CFCs that destroys the ozone layer, scientists suspect

Someone, somewhere, is making a banned CFCs that destroys the ozone layer, scientists suspect

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The Washington Post reports: Emissions of a banned, ozone-depleting chemical are on the rise, a group of scientists reported Wednesday, suggesting someone may be secretly manufacturing the pollutant in violation of an international accord. Emissions of CFC-11 have climbed 25 percent since 2012, despite the chemical being part of a group of ozone pollutants that were phased out under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. “I’ve been making these measurements for more than 30 years, and this is the most surprising thing…

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Glyphosate shown to disrupt microbiome ‘at safe levels’, study claims

Glyphosate shown to disrupt microbiome ‘at safe levels’, study claims

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The Guardian reports: A chemical found in the world’s most widely used weedkiller can have disrupting effects on sexual development, genes and beneficial gut bacteria at doses considered safe, according to a wide-ranging pilot study in rats. Glyphosate is the core ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and levels found in the human bloodstream have spiked by more than a 1,000% in the last two decades. The substance was recently relicensed for a shortened five-year lease by the EU. But scientists…

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Rising incomes result in expanding forests

Rising incomes result in expanding forests

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BBC News reports: Forests are increasing around the world because of rising incomes and an improved sense of national wellbeing say researchers. The authors refute the idea that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are the key cause of the spread of trees. As countries become better off, farmers focus on good quality soils and abandon marginal lands, the authors say. As a result, trees are able to rapidly reforest these deserted areas. The study highlights the fact that…

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In the fate of the Delta smelt, warnings of conservation gone wrong

In the fate of the Delta smelt, warnings of conservation gone wrong

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Sharon Levy writes: Peter Moyle, an eminent authority on the ecology and conservation of California’s fishes, stands on the narrow deck of a survey boat and gazes out over the sloughs of Suisun Marsh. The tall, tubular stems of tule reeds bend in the wind as a flock of pelicans soars past, their white wings edged in black. It’s an idyllic scene that hints at an earlier time, back before the Gold Rush, when undisturbed creeks and tidal marsh covered…

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China-backed Sumatran dam threatens the rarest ape in the world

China-backed Sumatran dam threatens the rarest ape in the world

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By Bill Laurance, James Cook University The plan to build a massive hydropower dam in Sumatra as part of China’s immense Belt and Road Initiative threatens the habitat of the rarest ape in the world, which has only 800 remaining members. This is merely the beginning of an avalanche of environmental crises and broader social and economic risks that will be provoked by the BRI scheme. Read more: How we discovered a new species of orangutan in northern Sumatra The…

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Alaskan sea ice just took a steep, unprecedented dive

Alaskan sea ice just took a steep, unprecedented dive

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Scientific American reports: April should be prime walrus hunting season for the native villages that dot Alaska’s remote western coast. In years past the winter sea ice where the animals rest would still be abundant, providing prime targets for subsistence hunters. But this year sea-ice coverage as of late April was more like what would be expected for mid-June, well into the melt season. These conditions are the continuation of a winter-long scarcity of sea ice in the Bering Sea—a…

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How a Eurasian steppe empire coped with decades of drought

How a Eurasian steppe empire coped with decades of drought

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By Diana Crow The bitterly cold, dry air of the Central Asian steppe is a boon to researchers who study the region. The frigid climate “freeze-dries” everything, including centuries-old trees that once grew on lava flows in Mongolia’s Orkhon Valley. A recent study of the tree-ring record, published in March, from some of these archaic logs reveals a drought that lasted nearly seven decades—one of the longest in a 1,700-year span of steppe history—from A.D. 783–850. Decades of prolonged drought…

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