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Category: Environment

Scientists discover what’s driving record die-offs of America’s honeybees

Scientists discover what’s driving record die-offs of America’s honeybees

The Guardian reports: Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers. Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. “Every time I went out to…

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Melting glaciers might trigger volcanic eruptions around the globe, study finds

Melting glaciers might trigger volcanic eruptions around the globe, study finds

Live Science reports: Melting glaciers could make volcanic eruptions more explosive and frequent, worsening climate change in the process, scientists have warned. Hundreds of volcanoes in Antarctica, Russia, New Zealand, and North America rest beneath glaciers. But as the planet warms and these ice sheets melt and retreat, these volcanoes are likely to become more active, according to the authors of a new study analyzing the activity of six volcanoes in southern Chile during the last ice age. The researchers…

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Meteorologists say the National Weather Service did its job accurately predicting flood risk in Texas

Meteorologists say the National Weather Service did its job accurately predicting flood risk in Texas

Wired reports: Some local and state officials have said that insufficient forecasts from the National Weather Service caught the region off guard. That claim has been amplified by pundits across social media, who say that cuts to the NWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, its parent organization, inevitably led to the failure in Texas. But meteorologists who spoke to WIRED say that the NWS accurately predicted the risk of flooding in Texas and could not have foreseen the…

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Ocean acidity has reached critical levels and the impacts could be far worse than we thought

Ocean acidity has reached critical levels and the impacts could be far worse than we thought

Science Alert reports: Ocean acidity is one of the key markers of Earth’s health, because if it tips too far towards acidic then the results can be catastrophic – and a new study suggests the world’s waters are now entering this danger zone. A team of scientists from the US and UK looked at what’s known as the planetary boundary for ocean acidification, defined as a 20 percent drop in average surface aragonite saturation – that’s the calcium carbonate material…

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Will America’s national parks — ‘the best idea we ever had’ — survive Trump?

Will America’s national parks — ‘the best idea we ever had’ — survive Trump?

Ted Kerasote writes: Like a cinnamon river overflowing its banks, thousands of elk have been making their way across Jackson Hole, Wyo., to their summer range below the high, jagged peaks of Grand Teton National Park. This is one of the world’s most spectacular migrations, protected by the creation and expansion over the last half century of what is now a 485-square-mile park. As the weather has warmed, cars and vans carrying tourists from far and wide have been lining…

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Federal judge orders Trump administration to restore environmental grant funding

Federal judge orders Trump administration to restore environmental grant funding

Inside Climate News reports: A federal judge said Monday he would order the Trump administration to restore $176 million granted by Congress to 13 nonprofit groups and six municipalities nationwide. The decision by Judge Richard Gergel, a U.S. District Court judge for the District of South Carolina, represents one of the first final judgments in a case challenging the Trump administration, as it has fired employees, frozen funding and dismantled agencies, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center. The organization,…

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Sea level rise will cause ‘catastrophic inland migration’, scientists warn

Sea level rise will cause ‘catastrophic inland migration’, scientists warn

The Guardian reports: Sea level rise will become unmanageable at just 1.5C of global heating and lead to “catastrophic inland migration”, the scientists behind a new study have warned. This scenario may unfold even if the average level of heating over the last decade of 1.2C continues into the future. The loss of ice from the giant Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s due to the climate crisis and is now the principal driver of sea…

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Humans are killing helpful insects in hundreds of ways − simple steps can reduce the harm

Humans are killing helpful insects in hundreds of ways − simple steps can reduce the harm

Dragonflies, just like bees and butterflies, face threats that humans can help prevent. Christopher Halsch By Christopher Halsch, Binghamton University, State University of New York and Eliza Grames, Binghamton University, State University of New York Insects are all around us – an ant on the sidewalk, a bee buzzing by, a butterfly floating on the breeze – and they shape the world we experience. They pollinate flowering plants, decompose waste, control pests, and are critical links in food chains. Despite…

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David Attenborough: ‘If we save the ocean, we save ourselves’

David Attenborough: ‘If we save the ocean, we save ourselves’

  Oceanographic reports: “After almost 100 years on the planet, I now understand the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea,” says Sir David Attenborough, a man who – having spent his working life documenting the world of natural history – is about to launch what he has called “one of the most important films of his career” on the eve of entering his one hundredth year. Perhaps for the first time in those 100…

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Tree-ring records suggest that drought played a role in Roman Britain’s decline

Tree-ring records suggest that drought played a role in Roman Britain’s decline

Molly Glick writes: Roman Britain collapsed into chaos in the spring of 367 A.D.—the rival Picts attacked by land and sea, while the Scotti barged in from the west and Saxons from the south. Anarchy ensued in an event that’s now known as the Barbarian Conspiracy: The invaders captured and murdered senior commanders, and some Roman soldiers may have even joined in. It’s considered a pivotal event in the abandonment of Roman Britain. Historians have surmised some of the potential…

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Greenpeace must pay at least $660m over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury

Greenpeace must pay at least $660m over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury

The Guardian reports: A jury in North Dakota has decided that the environmental group Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the pipeline company Energy Transfer and is liable for defamation and other claims over protests in the state nearly a decade ago. Energy Transfer Partners, a Dallas-based oil and gas company worth almost $70bn, had sued Greenpeace, alleging defamation and orchestrating criminal behavior by protesters at the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017, claiming the organization…

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Trump orders swathes of national forests to be cut down for timber

Trump orders swathes of national forests to be cut down for timber

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump has ordered that swathes of America’s forests be felled for timber, evading rules to protect endangered species while doing so and raising the prospect of chainsaws razing some of the most ecologically important trees in the US. The president, in an executive order, has demanded an expansion in tree cutting across 280m acres (113m hectares) of national forests and other public lands, claiming that “heavy-handed federal policies” have made America reliant on foreign imports of…

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Trump is reversing all U.S. efforts to tackle climate change

Trump is reversing all U.S. efforts to tackle climate change

The New York Times reports: In a few short weeks, President Trump has severely damaged the government’s ability to fight climate change, upending American environmental policy with moves that could have lasting implications for the country, and the planet. With a flurry of actions that have stretched the limits of presidential power, Mr. Trump has gutted federal climate efforts, rolled back regulations aimed at limiting pollution and given a major boost to the fossil fuel industry. He is abandoning efforts…

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How Trump’s bid to control lithium mining in Ukraine would benefit Elon Musk

How Trump’s bid to control lithium mining in Ukraine would benefit Elon Musk

The Daily Beast reports: Elon Musk‘s future prosperity is inextricably linked to lithium, the vital mineral required for many of his businesses, from Tesla to X to SpaceX. Tech may be marching into the future. But it is still battery-powered. Dubbed ‘white gold’, lithium is notoriously difficult to mine in the United States. A $1 billion lithium refinery that Musk is building in Corpus Christi, Texas could use as many as eight million gallons of water a day in a…

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How Trump’s federal funding and hiring freezes increase risk of catastrophic wildfires

How Trump’s federal funding and hiring freezes increase risk of catastrophic wildfires

By Mark Olalde This story was originally published by ProPublica President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to shrink the federal government, launched as the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires burned across Los Angeles, have left the country’s wildland firefighting force unprepared for the rapidly approaching wildfire season. The administration has frozen funds, including money appropriated by Congress, and issued a deluge of orders eliminating federal employees, which has thrown agencies tasked with battling blazes into disarray as individual offices…

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Songbirds being killed by topical pesticides used for pet fleas and ticks

Songbirds being killed by topical pesticides used for pet fleas and ticks

The Guardian reports: Songbird chicks are being killed by high levels of pesticides in the pet fur used by their parents to line their nests, a study has found. Researchers surveying nests for the harmful chemical found in pet flea treatments found that it was present in every single nest. The scientists from the University of Sussex are now calling for the government to urgently reassess the environmental risk of pesticides used in flea and tick treatments and consider restricting…

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