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for the past thirty years, Jones City, OK, has experienced only two earthquakes per year, at a 3.0 magnitude. Halfway through 2014, however, the state of Oklahoma has already experienced 230 earthquake and is surpassing California as the number one state that is prone to earthquake. This is rather surprising, since Oklahoma doesn't sit on a fault line. The supposed source of these quakes seem to be from a process in the fracking system- when salty water is injected deep into the ground. The water is chemical-laced and is wastewater. The evidence is building up about how fracking is linked to Oklahoma's fracking problems, and today people are finally accepting the cause of these unprecedented tremors/quakes. Is the government willing to find a solution to this problem? Fast forward to the year 2017 where earthquakes have increased due to fracking, and no feasible solution has been put in place. Causation is now linked to ground water contamination and fracking as well, which can hurt Oklahoman's. The future of Oklahoma is relying on the government, which seems to want to increase fracking in America.

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The French Ecology Minister, Ségolène Royal, is trying to tell people not to consume Nutella. This is because palm oil is found in it. This is causing hard to many tropical forests, especially Oceania's. She is saying how France needs to replant a lot of trees since deforestation is at a record high in France and is a main factor of an increase in global warming, especially in countries where these palm plantations/farms are located. Oil palms are replacing trees and creating damage to ecosystems and the overall environment. Nutella has recently come out with a statement about how they plan to get and use their palm oil in a responsible way but didn't use specific evidence of how they are going to do so. Could the French Minister of Ecology make an environmental movement against Nutella? Possibly.

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Stefano Rellandini / REUTERS

Quelle horreur! French Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal says people should stop eating Nutella because it is harming the environment.

Her boeuf isn't with the delectable spread's chocolate or hazelnut components, but with the fact that it contains palm oil. Demand for this commodity has driven destruction of tropical forests around the world, especially in Oceania.

"We have to replant a lot of trees because there is massive deforestation that also leads to global warming. We should stop eating Nutella, for example, because it's made with palm oil," she said during an interview with French television network Canal+ on Tuesday. "Oil palms have replaced trees and therefore caused considerable damage to the environment," she added, advocating that it be made with other ingredients.

According to AFP, Ferrero, the Italian company that makes Nutella, gets nearly 80 percent of its palm oil from Malaysia. The remainder comes from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Brazil.

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The company released a statement on Tuesday saying that it has made commitments to source palm oil in a responsible way, without going into more specifics or referring explicitly to Royal's comments.

More than two years ago, French legislators attempted to levy a 300 percent tax on palm oil, saying it was fattening and harmful to the environment, but that measure failed.

In related news, a recent study found that increased prices for palm oil could help save tigers and orangutans; deforestation driven by demand for the product is destroying the Sumatran forests in which orangutans live, as well as wrecking the forests of Oceania and Southeast Asia that are home to the big cats.
See all of the best photos of the week in these slideshows
In the paper, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists analyzed the finances of a palm oil company and estimated how much it would cost to raise palm trees sustainably, while setting aside significant amounts of land for preservation. The researchers found that consumers would largely be willing to pay for the resulting higher palm oil prices for so-called "conservation grade" oil, if they were guaranteed the product was grown in a way that didn't harm wildlife.

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French Minister Urges People to Stop Eating Nutella

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Quelle horreur! French Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal says people should stop eating Nutella because it is harming the environment. Her boeuf isn't with the delectable spread's chocolate or hazelnut components, but with the fact that it contains palm oil. Demand for this commodity has driven destruction of tropical forests around the world, especially in Oceania.

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Deadnettle Acts as Precursor for Climate Change

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Deadnettle Acts as Precursor for Climate Change

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At the end of winter, the deadnettle flower starts to grow out of the ground. Research conducted by Richard Fitter allowed his son to look at when flowers bloomed and compare it to when flowers bloom in the 1990s. On average, these flowers being researched were blooming around five days earlier than they have in decades past. Because plants are so decisive, their stems grow and get a bud and that bud turns into a flower. Also, a seed is rarely produced from pollination, so flowers that are pollinating earlier are now having a severe problem trying to get their pollen around. In Illinois, the frost damage has increased by a factor of seven. This isn't going to end well since if flowers die, then humans are affected as well.

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And it was the unassuming little deadnettle that stood out the most: its first flowering had been pushed back by a whopping 55 days. Since the 1990s, Lamium album has marked winter's end, on average, by Jan. 23 - the day the plant looks up and declares its flower shop open for business.

Back in the 1950s, it did not bloom before March.

The long days of summer are the true theater of nature, its rising action having been blocked across eons of evolution. While both plants and animals awaken via distinct changes in metabolic functioning, most plants prefer to err on the side of caution, waiting for hints of full-on summer before they bloom.

Only a few, like the deadnettle, celebrate the end of winter with flowers, rising from the earth to observe their own private Groundhog Day. Unlike its rodent analog, however, Lamium album never, ever sees its shadow.

It invariably proclaims spring, effective immediately, then sets about making itself irresistible to bumblebees - who haven't even begun to think about pollen collection, by the way. The strategem makes a kind of desperate sense: After all, you might as well embrace the best case when you've absolutely no option to return underground.

This is just one way that plants differ from animals: After they go forward, there's no going back. Plants are decisive to a fault. A stem produces a bud that flowers once and once only. It offers pollen that is either dispersed or goes nowhere. One pollen grain either enters a stigma or it falls upon stony ground. An ovum is either fertilized or the whole project stalls out.

Only very rarely is a seed produced. And even more rarely does a seed successfully grow into a new plant. For the last 30 years, I have been searching for a scientific term that captures the plant's impetus for reproduction more robustly than the word "hope." I have not found one.

Alas, disasters do occur. If the air should suddenly re-freeze, as we saw last week, all of the soft, new and precious tissues of the optimistic plant - buds, sepals, petals - will break and bleed, finally rotting like the bag of celery you shoved too far back in your refrigerator and then forgot.

Ironically, while decades of global warming have decreased the duration of cold air outbreaks in North America, they may very well be increasing in frequency and intensity, as climate change tampers with the polar vortex. That's the world we live in now: We drive and chop and burn and fly, while the plants around us freeze and die.

We dance, and the plants pay the piper - until they can't pay anymore. Then the bees pay. Then the farmer pays. Then we all pay.

For more than 30 years, scientists have been warning us that global warming could decimate agriculture by leaving plants vulnerable to frost damage, with devastating consequences for a huge variety of cash crops, from apples to spruce lumber.

The single spring freeze that swept across the continental United States over Easter weekend 2007 obliterated crops from Nebraska to Maryland, from Texas to South Carolina. The agricultural losses in North Carolina alone were estimated at over $110 million, causing the state's governor to request federal disaster assistance.

More recently, after the biologist Carol Augspurger examined more than a century of weather and forestry records from Illinois, she concluded that the yearly probability of frost damage had increased by a factor of seven since 1980, compared to the odds of frost damage during the 90 years of weather that came before.

Always pause when you see a flower, at least long enough to wish luck to the plant that made it. The flowers are going to need it.

Because of you and me, and the 10 billion tons of carbon that we put into the atmosphere last year, the flowers of the near future must rely more and more on dumb luck as their tried-and-true blooming strategies leave them stranded and vulnerable to the unnatural climate that we have foisted upon them.

This spring, take time to smell the flowers, and consider how not long after their luck runs out for good, ours will too.

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Hope Springs Early, but Not Eternal, for the Deadnettle - or for Us

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And it was the unassuming little deadnettle that stood out the most: its first flowering had been pushed back by a whopping 55 days. Since the 1990s, Lamium album has marked winter's end, on average, by Jan. 23 - the day the plant looks up and declares its flower shop open for business.

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Sea birds are consuming plastic because they think it smells like food. Researchers have said how the scent that the plastic gives off is similar to a ascent that sea birds have been relying on for decades to find food. A study took place in the Monterey Bay and used the plastics found in most products, like high-density polyethylene, low-density polyethylene and poly-propylene, to see how the sea birds would react. The plastics emitted a scent that is similar to when krill eat algae, which is a main food source for many sea birds. Albatrosses, petrels and other tube-nosed species are the ones most affected by these plastics. Because these birds in particular burrow and hide in small places, they are overlooked and don't get researched a lot, causing them to have been affected for a longer time.

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REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

Sea birds are making the mistake of eating plastic waste because its smell reminds them of food, a study has found.

Researchers at the University of California discovered that the smell emitted by ocean-polluting plastic debris is similar to a scent that birds have relied on for thousands of years to find food.

The smell effectively fools the birds into thinking the plastic is a nutritious food source.

"It's important to consider the organism's point of view in questions like this," said lead author Matthew Savoca.

"Animals usually have a reason for the decisions they make. If we want to truly understand why animals are eating plastic in the ocean, we have to think about how animals find food."

The study took place at Monterey Bay and Bodega Bay off the California coast, and used beads made up of the three most common types of plastic found in ocean debris: high-density polyethylene, low-density polyethylene and poly-propylene.

The beads were placed into mesh bags and collected after three weeks of being in the ocean. After studying them, the researchers discovered that they emitted the smell of a compound that is produced when algae is eaten by krill-a favorite food of some sea birds.

See all of the best photos of the week in these slideshows

The birds most affected by the consumption of plastic include albatrosses, petrels and other tube-nosed species.

"This study shows that species that don't receive lot of attention, like petrels and some species of shearwaters, are likely to be impacted by plastic ingestion," said co-author Gabrielle Nevitt.

"These species nest in underground burrows, which are hard to study, so they are often overlooked. Yet, based on their foraging strategy, this study shows they're actually consuming a lot of plastic and are particularly vulnerable to marine debris."

The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

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Sea birds are killing themselves eating plastic waste due to its 'attractive' smell

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Sea birds are making the mistake of eating plastic waste because its smell reminds them of food, a study has found. Researchers at the University of California discovered that the smell emitted by ocean-polluting plastic debris is similar to a scent that birds have relied on for thousands of years to find food.

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Harvard researchers are looking into a new aerosol that is suitable for geoengineering. This means that we will possibly be able to cool the earth at a rapid rate if all works out. Calcite can be used to counter ozone damage and it will do so by neutralizing acids. By adding this aerosol into the stratosphere, the planet will cool and the ozone will start to repair. Although this is groundbreaking research, the researchers are saying how this shouldn't be the response to climate change as a whole. Geoengineering is like a painkiller, and if you take it your symptoms will go away, but they aren't helping get rid of the root of the problem. This aerosol will help with reparations, but that doesn't mean humans should continue to add to the air pollution and green house gas emissions.

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Newsmakers/ Getty Images

A way to cool the planet from greenhouse gases while simultaneously repairing the ozone layer has been developed by scientists.

Researchers from Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) identified an aerosol suitable for something called solar geoengineering: a radical method of cooling the planet.

The cooling effects of solar geoengineering have previously been observed following volcanic eruptions; however, the planet cooling effects of the sulfate aerosols emitted in the eruptions also produce sulfuric acid that is damaging to the ozone.

By modelling stratospheric chemistry, the researchers found that calcite could be used to counter ozone damage by neutralizing acids. "Injecting" the aerosol into the stratosphere would both cool the planet and reverse the effects of ozone damage.

"This research is a turning point and an important step in analyzing and reducing certain risks of solar geoengineering," said David Keith, the first author of the paper.

Despite the success of the research, the scientists warn that solar geoengineering should not be seen as a solution to climate change.

"Geoengineering is like taking painkillers," said Frank Keutsch, co-author of the paper. "When things are really bad, painkillers can help but they don't address the cause of the disease and they may cause more harm than good.

See all of the best photos of the week in these slideshows

"We really don't know the effects of geoengineering, but that is why we're doing this research."

The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Scientists develop aerosol to repair ozone layer

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A way to cool the planet from greenhouse gases while simultaneously repairing the ozone layer has been developed by scientists. Researchers from Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) identified an aerosol suitable for something called solar geoengineering: a radical method of cooling the planet.

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Melted snow is one of California's most prized possessions in terms of water supply. The Sierra Nevada mountain range has had a very wet winter, so the amount of snow available is large compared to years past. Some areas are covered with ten feet of snow. In 2015, most of these areas being looked at had no snow visible. This year's snow pack is comparable to 1983's snow pack which was the record high year for the Sierra Nevada snow accumulation. A snow observatory project has been called into affect and is very important for a state that is dealing with serious drought and climate change. Unlike years past, though, California seems to be in good shape with the amount of unmelted snow that is going to melt throughout the summer time for millions who rely on this main water source.

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Mammoth Lakes, Calif. - The majestic beauty of California's Sierra Nevada never fails to impress. But the mountain range, which stretches hundreds of miles, is much more than a stunning vista. It's a linchpin that helps make living in an arid state possible.

That's because one of California's most important water supplies is melted snow. Each spring and summer, the Sierra sends runoff down its slopes that recharges rivers and reservoirs, allowing crops to be irrigated and drinking glasses to be filled.

Knowing with precision how much snow has accumulated is crucial for farmers and water managers.

That's where a mapping project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory known as the Airborne Snow Observatory comes in. Using measurements gathered by specialized instruments on a plane, scientists have been able to gain an unprecedented understanding of the amount of water present in the Sierra's snow.

This year, after California's very wet winter, the totals have been remarkably big.

Using the NASA data, we compared this year's snowpack with that of 2015, when the state was in the grip of drought ( which, at least officially, is still ongoing). In the interactive maps below, the white areas had a meter, or 3.3 feet, or more of snow on the ground in March.

High in the mountains, this year's snow blankets the ground in layers tens of feet deep in many places. In 2015, almost none of this area had snow that thick:

At the lower elevations around the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, which collects most of the melting snow runoff in this area and supplies water to millions, there was almost no snow to speak of in 2015. This year, the snowpack reached down to within a few hundred feet of the reservoir's edge:

These maps show parts of the Tuolumne Basin, which in late February was blanketed by 1.2 million acre-feet of snow-water equivalent, or the amount of water that would result if the snow were instantly melted.

That's about 10 times the amount as the same time in 2015, said Thomas Painter, a snow hydrologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, who leads the NASA program.

He added, "And it keeps on coming."

The pattern has held for the central Sierra region as a whole:

The airborne observatory has been detecting snow depths in the mountains ranging from a few feet at lower elevations to more than 70 feet in avalanche areas.

"Some of the snowdrifts have faces of 25 to 40 feet," said Jeffrey Payne, a water resources manager at the Friant Water Authority who has analyzed the NASA data. "So we've got some pretty serious snow."

Ski resorts that typically close in the spring are so deeply blanketed that they have been making plans to extend their seasons.

Officials at Squaw Valley, in the Lake Tahoe area, and Mammoth Mountain, below, in the eastern Sierra, said they anticipated staying open well into summer.

The snow observatory project, which began flights over the Sierra in 2013, is a groundbreaking initiative in California, where aging infrastructure, a warming climate and rapid population growth have made water management a high-stakes job.

For decades, state officials have estimated snowpack levels by extrapolating from ground-based data gathered at points across the range.

The margin of error, unsurprisingly, has been huge.

"It's like turning on your TV screen and four of the pixels turn on, and you can only use those four every single time you watch 'Breaking Bad,'" Dr. Painter said.

Every one to four weeks, the NASA crew circles above the Sierra Nevada in an airplane that fires laser pulses toward the ground. By measuring how fast the pulses bounce back, the scientists are able to create detailed topographical maps.

Compare those with maps of the mountains when bare and factor in the snow's density, and they can tell how much water is present.

With the view from the sky, Dr. Painter said, "we turn on the whole screen, every pixel."

The observatory also measures the reflection of sunlight off the snow, which is critical to understanding how much energy the snow absorbs and how fast it could melt.

Mr. Payne of the Friant Water Authority, which manages water for agricultural land in the San Joaquin Valley, said the new snow data was game-changing for farmers, who will be able to plan their crops with greater confidence.

"We need to be smarter about how we approach water resource management," Mr. Payne said. "And this new technology is sort of a beacon of hope."

For now, the observatory is taking measurements for most of the central Sierra Nevada. The hope is to get more buy-in from state officials and expand to the whole range, Dr. Painter said.

It has been an increasingly easy sell.

"It really has gotten to the point now where we don't call on anyone," Dr. Painter said. "We are simply responding to phone calls."

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national aeronautics and space administration

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We Have Some Good News on the California Drought. Take a Look.

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Mammoth Lakes, Calif. - The majestic beauty of California's Sierra Nevada never fails to impress. But the mountain range, which stretches hundreds of miles, is much more than a stunning vista. It's a linchpin that helps make living in an arid state possible. That's because one of California's most important water supplies is melted snow.