EXXON HATES YOUR CHILDREN. IT’S A SERIOUS ACCUSATION. AND IT DESERVES A SERIOUS EXPLANATION.
The amount of carbon dioxide the world released rose again last year by 3 percent. So scientists say it’s now unlikely that global warming can be limited to a couple of degrees, which is an international goal.
The overwhelming majority of the increase was from China, the world’s biggest carbon…
GIANT STRIP MINE THREATENS ALASKA’S ICONIC BRISTOL BAY
PICK THE WORST PLACE ON THE PLANET FOR A GIANT STRIP MINE, IN THE HEART OF AMERICA’S WILDEST AND MOST PRODUCTIVE ECOSYSTEM. THAT’S EXACTLY WHERE ONE IS PLANNED.
by Ted Williams
What possibly could unite these diverse and in some cases adversarial players in outrage and action: 700 businesses; 700 hunting and angling groups; 77 commercial fishing groups; 200 chefs and restaurant owners; the National Council of Churches, representing 45 million people; major newspapers; leading jewelry retailers; and ultra-conservative legislators?
It would be a plan to gouge and hack the Bristol Bay watershed of southwest Alaska with the continent’s biggest strip mine.
A vestige of what America used to be survives here. The region is the size of Ohio, with a population of 7,500. It is changeless and timeless, laced by pristine rivers that rush and dawdle through forests never logged and un-scarred tundra that alternately blazes with wildflowers and glistens with snow. There are no access roads. You enter by plane or helicopter, threading between jagged, ice-clad peaks. The vastness and wildness start to sink in after you’ve flown for, say, two hours and seen no hint of human defilement.
Everything about Bristol Bay takes someone’s breath away. For me it’s the beauty, the fishing, and especially the wildlife. For folks like John Shively, CEO of the Pebble Limited Partnership, it’s the $500 billion worth of copper, gold, and molybdenum in the “Pebble Deposit” under the headwaters of the world’s two most productive salmon rivers—the Kvichak and the Nushagak…
(read more: Audubon Magazine) (photo: Michael Medford/Nat. Geo.)
Satellites and tide-gauges show that oceans are rising 60% faster than the worst case scenarios of climate scientists. This new report analyzing reality vs computer models shows that scientific estimates of rising sea levels were too low and too slow.
“The rate of sea level rise of the past decades, on the other hand, is greater than projected by the IPCC models. This suggests that IPCC sea level projections for the future may also be biased low.”
This is very bad news, and I’m nearly speechless after reading the report… The folks at Climate Central, who wrote this piece covering the report, are much more optimistic than I am.
(via randomactsofchaos)
Environment minister Izabella Teixeira said it was thanks to government action against offenders.
Figures show the rate of deforestation fell 27% in the year to July compared with the previous 12 months.
Even so, more than 4,600 sq km (1,780 sq miles) of rainforest have been lost in a year.
“It is the lowest deforestation rate since Brazil began its monitoring,” Ms Teixeira told a press conference.
“I believe that it is the only good piece of environmental news.”
World Bank Fears Devastating 4.0 Degree Warming: “A four-degree warmer world can and must be avoided. We need to hold warming below two degrees,” said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. “Lack of ambitious action on climate change threatens to put prosperity out of reach of millions and roll back decades of development.”
…and as deadly Hurricane Sandy proved, after rampaging through the Caribbean and US, weather extremes are only going to get worse… Read more
Reclaiming Poisoned Land With Manure
When the last of the zinc and lead mines of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri shut down in 1970, the operations left behind a ghastly legacy across thousands of acres of poisoned earth. Nothing would ever grow there; nothing could live there. Erosion became a serious issue during rain storms, and the poisons spread in the running water. The soil became contaminated by high acidity, and toxic chemicals.
But now, researchers might have found a way to neutralize the ground to at least halt the erosion by using cow manure compost.
“The compost reduces the overall bulk of the toxic material and the heat it generates reduces pathogens and concentrates the inorganic nutrients,” said Paul White, a research soil scientist at the Department of Agriculture’s Sugarcane Research Unit in Houma, La.
No one will ever grow crops on the affected land again, White said, but it’s possible to grow a ground cover that will stop erosion and it surely looks better.
The general area between Tulsa, Wichita, and Springfield, Mo., had been mined since the 1850s and was in full operation for 100 years. Besides smelters — which left toxic sites — the mines produced tailings called “chat,” which added to the pollution.
The pollution is extraordinary. Bret Koehler, a geologist at the California Department of Conservation, said one abandoned zinc mine near Redding in Iron Mountain, Calif., is so bad that the Environmental Protection Agency designated it one of about 1,300 current Superfund sites in need of comprehensive clean-up. The soil produced one of the highest acidity measurements on Earth, Koehler said.
The aim of the Midwest experiment, White said, was to increase the carbon in the soil so that microorganisms that recycle nutrients could have a chance. The scientists also wanted to see whether the compost could reduce the lead and zinc.
They took 3-by-6 foot plots and spread either 20 or 120 tons of beef cattle manure compost to the land on some. White said they also filled in holes but none of them went very deep; the soil was compacted with the mining detritus. Then they spread switchgrass seed on all the plots and took samples over a two-year period.
The results were both visible and demonstrable in the lab. The soils in the plots with the highest amount of compost had a greatly elevated pH, meaning they were much less acidic. There was more phosphorus, nitrogen, carbon, and available water in the soil, all things plants need to survive and grow.
The nitrogen also fed the microorganisms that produce enzymes that convert phosphorous into something plants can use.
They also found that in the areas they used the most compost, the lead and zinc diminished, which meant less of it ran off in rainwater. The heavy metals attached themselves to the organics in the compost.
(via ikenbot)
Walruses Forced Ashore As Arctic Ice Disappears
by Becky Oskin
Arctic summer sea ice is the walrus equivalent of a maternity ward and a mall food court.
But in the past five years, warming temperatures have caused substantial ice melt and left little to no ice for resting between feeding dives or giving birth, leading Pacific walruses to change their habits, U.S. Geological Survey scientists announced at a news conference in Anchorage, Alaska, on Wednesday (Nov. 14).
When sea ice disappeared, the bewhiskered, bellowing mammals spent more time on land and foraged close to shore, instead of at their rich feeding grounds at sea. Females also gave birth on land, putting babies at risk of trampling by adults. In addition, walruses spent more time traveling at sea, putting them at risk of running into ships or other human activities. The research was presented at the news conference and published in this month’s issue of the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series…
(read more: Live Science) (photo: S.A. Sonsthagen, USGS)
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When the United States’ landmark Clean Water Act (CWA) was signed into law in 1972, the nation’s waterways and coastlines were in crisis. Oily debris in the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, had notoriously caught fire several times. The southernmost of North America’s Great Lakes, Lake Erie, had been pronounced dead or dying. Fish in Californian coastal waters were so laced with the pesticide DDT that it disrupted the reproductive systems of brown pelicans, threatening them with extinction.
Forty years and billions of dollars later, rivers no longer burn, Lake Erie is much healthier and pelicans are off the endangered species list. But much remains to be done, scientists said yesterday at the North American meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in Long Beach, California.
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From Nature (via Scientific American) Clean Water Act at 40: Rivers No Longer Burn but Climate Threats and Runoff Now Rush I
Also, check out our recent water series, Clean Water: The Next Act.
(via earthfix)
