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Category: Environment

Wildfire smoke killed more than 50,000 Californians over a decade

Wildfire smoke killed more than 50,000 Californians over a decade

Yale E360 reports: A new study finds that more than 50,000 Californians died from exposure to wildfire smoke over a little more than a decade. Smoke contains tiny particles, small enough to enter the bloodstream when inhaled, that can raise the risk of dying from heart or lung disease. For the study, researchers modeled particulate pollution from wildfires across California from 2008 to 2018. They then compared their model with local mortality numbers to infer the number of deaths from…

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‘If the land is sick, so are we’: Australian First Nations spirituality explained

‘If the land is sick, so are we’: Australian First Nations spirituality explained

By Joshua Waters, Deakin University First Nations peoples have been present on the Australian continent for more than 65,000 years. During this time, they have managed to develop and maintain continuous, unbroken connections with the land, water and sky. Understanding the deep interrelatedness between humans and their (human and nonhuman) kin and ancestors instilled a sense of responsibility, through custodianship of their environment. The aim of this was to survive, and to promote a sense of ecological and cosmological balance….

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Warm water is sneaking underneath the Thwaites Glacier — and rapidly melting it

Warm water is sneaking underneath the Thwaites Glacier — and rapidly melting it

Science News reports: In Antarctica, the warm ocean is stealthily attacking a major glacier through a previously unknown route — undermining its foundation on a daily basis. As each rising tide lifts the coastal terminus of the southern continent’s Thwaites Glacier a tiny bit off the seafloor, warm salty water squeezes in underneath, satellite measurements reveal. This inrush of seawater forces its way many kilometers inland as it melts the ice from beneath. The melt water and seawater are then…

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Latin America shows why ecocide must be an international crime

Latin America shows why ecocide must be an international crime

Rodrigo Lledó writes: Before leaving power in 1990, Chilean general and dictator Augusto Pinochet created a legal framework that guaranteed him absolute impunity. It didn’t work. He was arrested on charges of genocide and terrorism in London in 1998 by order of the Spanish justice system and, upon his return to Chile, finally had to face justice. Years later, I had the opportunity to lead a team of public lawyers trying nearly 900 cases of crimes against humanity during the…

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Where the ocean exhales

Where the ocean exhales

Nautilus: When one thinks of Antarctica, one imagines a vast landscape in shades of blinding white, ice and snow stretching as far as the eye can see. But to really consider Antarctica is to consider its water. The Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica, is where the ocean exhales. It is the primary place where the water of the deep oceans rises to the surface, mingles with the atmosphere in a kind of embrace, and then sinks back into the depths….

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Two new studies reveal signs of fundamental climate shifts in Antarctica

Two new studies reveal signs of fundamental climate shifts in Antarctica

Bob Berwyn writes: Antarctica’s vast ice fields and the floating sea ice surrounding the continent are Earth’s biggest heat shields, bouncing solar radiation away from the planet, but two studies released today show how global warming is encroaching even on the sunlight reflector in the coldest region on the planet. Research by scientists with the British Antarctic Survey focused on last year’s dizzying sea ice decline. During the austral winter of 2023, Antarctic sea ice extent was about 770,000 square…

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Increase in infectious diseases strongly associated with loss of biodiversity

Increase in infectious diseases strongly associated with loss of biodiversity

Anthropocene reports: When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world in 2020, it drew attention to the ways environmental damage can set the stage for disease outbreaks. Scientists pointed to the potential roles of urbanization, habitat loss, and trade in live animals for helping to fuel a disease that many scientists think leapt from wild animals to people. While all those factors might have influenced this particular pandemic, they aren’t the main ways that environmental destruction threatens to amplify infectious disease….

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A U.S. push to use ethanol as aviation fuel raises major climate concerns

A U.S. push to use ethanol as aviation fuel raises major climate concerns

MIT Technology Review reports: Eliminating carbon pollution from aviation is one of the most challenging parts of the climate puzzle, simply because large commercial airlines are too heavy and need too much power during takeoff for today’s batteries to do the job. But one way that companies and governments are striving to make some progress is through the use of various types of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs), which are derived from non-petroleum sources and promise to be less polluting than…

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Tyson Foods dumps millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into rivers and lakes

Tyson Foods dumps millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into rivers and lakes

The Guardian reports: Tyson Foods dumped millions of pounds of toxic pollutants directly into American rivers and lakes over the last five years, threatening critical ecosystems, endangering wildlife and human health, a new investigation reveals. Nitrogen, phosphorus, chloride, oil and cyanide were among the 371m lb of pollutants released into waterways by just 41 Tyson slaughterhouses and mega processing plants between 2018 and 2022. According to research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the contaminants were dispersed in 87bn…

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Academic freedom under fire

Academic freedom under fire

Louis Menand writes: The congressional appearance last month by Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, was a breathtaking “What was she thinking?” episode in the history of academic freedom. It was shocking to hear her negotiating with a member of Congress over disciplining two members of her own faculty, by name, for things they had written or said. The next day, in what appeared to be a signal to Congress, Shafik had more than a hundred students, many from…

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California wants to harness more than half its land to combat climate change by 2045. Here’s how

California wants to harness more than half its land to combat climate change by 2045. Here’s how

The Los Angeles Times reports: California has unveiled an ambitious plan to help combat the worsening climate crisis with one of its invaluable assets: its land. Over the next 20 years, the state will work to transform more than half of its 100 million acres into multi-benefit landscapes that can absorb more carbon than they release, officials announced Monday. The so-called nature-based solutions will span natural and working lands such as forests, farms, grasslands, chaparral, deserts and other types of…

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Save our seabed – the bottom of the ocean needs to become a top priority, and the UN agrees

Save our seabed – the bottom of the ocean needs to become a top priority, and the UN agrees

Seagrass meadows are a hugely important store of blue carbon – and so is the rest of the ocean sea floor. Philip Schubert/Shutterstock By William Austin, University of St Andrews “The science we need for the ocean we want” – this is the tagline for the UN Ocean Decade (2021-2030), which has just held its first conference in Barcelona, Spain. Marine scientists from around the world, including me, gathered alongside global leaders to chart the progress of this ten-year mission…

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Fears of massive ‘forest collapse’ event as Western Australia’s record dry spell continues

Fears of massive ‘forest collapse’ event as Western Australia’s record dry spell continues

  ABC News (AU) reports: After a record-breaking hot summer and significant dry spell, ecologists are warning large pockets of WA’s central to south-west coast are facing a potential forest collapse event, where trees and other smaller plants get so dry they die. One expert has likened it to coral bleaching on land, and just like in the ocean, such an event can have serious implications on the wider ecosystem, impacting breeding habitats and potentially populations of entire species. Murdoch…

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A toxic grass that threatens a quarter of U.S. cows is spreading. Can it be stopped?

A toxic grass that threatens a quarter of U.S. cows is spreading. Can it be stopped?

Robert Langellier writes: America’s “fescue belt,” named for an exotic grass called tall fescue, dominates the pastureland from Missouri and Arkansas in the west to the coast of the Carolinas in the east. Within that swath, a quarter of the nation’s cows — more than 15 million in all — graze fields that stay green through the winter while the rest of the region’s grasses turn brown and go dormant. But the fescue these cows are eating is toxic. The…

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Bees can’t find food in dirty air

Bees can’t find food in dirty air

Lina Zeldovich writes: When foraging for flowers, bees search for the familiar scents that blooms puff out into the air to attract them. Scientists call these little fragrant air pockets “odor plumes.” Once bees detect an odor plume, they start following it, flying from side to side to navigate to wherever the odor is strongest—scientists call this “casting”—until they land on a flower. “If you think of a flower, it’s basically acting as a message beacon,” says Ben Langford, an…

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Urban humans have lost much of their ability to digest plants

Urban humans have lost much of their ability to digest plants

John Timmer writes: Cellulose is the primary component of the cell walls of plants, making it the most common polymer on Earth. It’s responsible for the properties of materials like wood and cotton and is the primary component of dietary fiber, so it’s hard to overstate its importance to humanity. Given its ubiquity and the fact that it’s composed of a bunch of sugar molecules linked together, its toughness makes it very difficult to use as a food source. The…

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