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Category: Environment

Climate crisis is making days longer, study finds

Climate crisis is making days longer, study finds

The Guardian reports: The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet. The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity’s actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years. The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and…

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To save life on Earth, bring back taxonomy

To save life on Earth, bring back taxonomy

Robert Langellier writes: In 2009, the botanist Naomi Fraga was hunting a flower without a name near Carson City, Nev. Ms. Fraga saw that the plant was going extinct in real time as its desert valley habitat was bulldozed to make way for Walmarts and housing developments. But in order to seek legal protections for it, she had to give it a name. The diminutive yellow flower became the Carson Valley monkeyflower or, officially, Erythranthe carsonensis, allowing conservationists to petition…

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American environmentalism just got shoved into legal purgatory

American environmentalism just got shoved into legal purgatory

Zoë Schlanger writes: In a 6–3 ruling today, the Supreme Court essentially threw a stick of dynamite at a giant, 40-year-old legal levee. The decision overruled what is known as the Chevron doctrine, a precedent that governed how American laws were administered. In doing so, it likely unleashed a river of litigation, much of which could erode away the country’s climate and environmental ambitions. The Chevron doctrine held that when Congress passed ambiguously worded statutes, courts would defer to agencies’ interpretations of how to implement them….

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Inside Leonard Leo’s campaign to end protections for endangered species

Inside Leonard Leo’s campaign to end protections for endangered species

Rolling Stone reports: Leonard Leo, best known as the architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, is fueling an assault on efforts to preserve the environment and the planet. His dark money network has also been funding campaigns to dismantle the Endangered Species Act (ESA) — 50 years after it was established to protect plant and animal species at risk of extinction. Since its passing, the ESA has been credited for saving 99 percent of its listed wildlife including bald…

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Protecting just 1.2% of Earth’s land could save most-threatened species, says study

Protecting just 1.2% of Earth’s land could save most-threatened species, says study

The Guardian reports: Protecting just 1.2% of the Earth’s surface for nature would be enough to prevent the extinction of the world’s most threatened species, according to a new study. Analysis published in the journal Frontiers in Science has found that the targeted expansion of protected areas on land would be enough to prevent the loss of thousands of the mammals, birds, amphibians and plants that are closest to disappearing. From Argentina to Papua New Guinea, the team of researchers…

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Water is a cosmic gift. Climate change is turning it into a weapon

Water is a cosmic gift. Climate change is turning it into a weapon

Marina Koren writes: Water gave every living thing on Earth the gift of existence. And yet, of late, it seems determined to wipe us out. The Atlantic hurricane season, widely predicted to be a fierce one, is here, and early this morning the first named storm, Alberto, made landfall in northeastern Mexico and drenched everything in its path. And in Florida last week, it was as if the heavens had turned on the tap and simply left it running. The…

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Could the global boom in greenhouses help cool the planet?

Could the global boom in greenhouses help cool the planet?

Fred Pearce writes: The world is awash with greenhouses growing fresh vegetables year-round for health-conscious urbanites. There are so many of them that in places their plastic and glass roofs are reflecting sufficient solar radiation to cool local temperatures — even as surrounding areas warm due to climate change. The extent of this accidental climate engineering is becoming ever more apparent as analysis of satellite images dramatically increases estimates of the area of the planet swathed in greenhouses. From southern…

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Chemicals from East Palestine, Ohio, derailment spread to 16 states, data shows

Chemicals from East Palestine, Ohio, derailment spread to 16 states, data shows

The Guardian reports: Chemicals released during the East Palestine train wreck fires in February 2023 in Ohio were carried across 16 US states, new research of federal precipitation and pollution data shows. Analysis of rain and snow samples collected from northern Wisconsin to Maine to North Carolina in the weeks following the crash found the highest levels of pH and some compounds recorded over the last ten years. That includes chloride, which researchers say was largely released during a controversial…

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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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