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Cigarette butts are, by some counts, the world's number one litter problem.

Butts represent the most numerous form of trash that volunteers collect from the world's beaches on the Ocean Conservancy 's cleanup days. More than two million cigarette parts were recently collected in a single year around the world-double the amount of both food containers and beverage containers.

The hard numbers from some other sources are staggering.

New York state, for instance, produces an estimated 1.5 million tons of cigarette butts a year. And butts account for about 13 percent of the litter accumulated on Texas highways, 130 million butts a year.

The problem extends well beyond the gross factor. Cigarette filters are made from wood-based plastic fibers that take generations to fully decompose, says Tom Szaky, CEO and founder of the New Jersey-based recycling company TerraCycle.

And the filters can leach nicotine and tar into the ground or water.

Butts are also often eaten by birds, fish, and other animals, who can choke on them or be hurt from the poisons they contain.

As seen in the video above, TerraCycle is one of a handful of companies that is working to collect and recycle spent butts, by turning them into plastic lumber that can be used for benches, pallets, and other uses.

Another company, EcoTech Displays, is working on a system to recycle butts into insulation, clothing, and even jewelry.

Governments have also increasingly taken note of the problem, by beginning to enforce littering laws against those who toss their butts or imposing extra taxes on cigarettes to help defray the cost of cleanup, from Maine to San Francisco.

Follow Brian Clark Howard on Twitter and Google+.

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Watch: Cigarette Butts, World's #1 Litter, Recycled as Park Benches

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Cigarette butts are, by some counts, the world's number one litter problem. Butts represent the most numerous form of trash that volunteers collect from the world's beaches on the Ocean Conservancy 's cleanup days. More than two million cigarette parts were recently collected in a single year around the world-double the amount of both food containers and beverage containers.

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Cigarette Butts, World's #1 Litter, Recycled as Park Benches

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Cigarette Butts, World's #1 Litter, Recycled as Park Benches

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TerraCycle is a company that is collecting/recycling spent butts, and turning them into plastic lumber that can be used for benches, pallets, and other uses.

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Solar Plane Set for 5-day “Earhart Leg” of Epic Flight

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Solar Plane Set for 5-day “Earhart Leg” of Epic Flight

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The solar plane will have a nearly week-long nonstop flight from Nanjing, China across the Pacific to Hawaii.

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Wedged into the tiny cockpit of the Solar Impulse 2, an airplane powered entirely by sunlight, a Swiss adventurer will soon begin an unprecedented journey across the Pacific Ocean.

André Borschberg will take off from a runway in Nanjing, China, on the seventh leg in a planned 12-part circumnavigation of the globe. Once airborne, the former fighter pilot will spend the better part of a week aloft, steering round the clock toward Hawaii at altitudes of up to 30,000 feet. He will fly far from the consolation of islands, landing strips, or easy rescue across a desolate expanse of ocean similar to the one in which Amelia Earhart disappeared 77 years ago.

The journey, scheduled to begin Tuesday weather permitting, is expected to last at least five days and possibly up to seven as the lightweight, custom-built aircraft battles oceanic winds and weather on the 5,077-mile passage to Honolulu.

If successful, Borschberg's flight will be the first ever made across such a vast expanse by a solar-powered plane, and it will set a new bar for transport using clean technologies.

"It's going to be the moment of truth," Borschberg said recently. "We've done a lot of tests, but we've never done this."

With a laugh he added, "I'll tell you, the engineers are quite nervous."

The journey was designed by Borschberg and his partner-in-adventure, the Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, to push the limits of solar flight and highlight the potential of renewable energy.

Piccard conceived the idea more than 12 years ago when he nearly ran out of fuel during an attempt to make the first round-the-world flight in a gas-powered balloon. Ultimately he succeeded, completing the circuit in 19 days. But by the end of his historic voyage Piccard vowed never to let fuel limit him again.

"I wanted to be able to fly forever," he said.

Today, after years of research and experimentation, the Solar Impulse 2 is built to do exactly that, at least in theory. With a wingspan of 236 feet, wider than that of a Boeing 747 passenger jet, and a long, slender fuselage composed of ultra-light carbon, the plane's form follows its function.

A skin of more than 17,000 photovoltaic cells runs along the wing tops and down the spine of the plane, and this network powers all of its systems, from onboard computers and cockpit cameras to its four electric motors. The cells also feed four highly-efficient batteries, which store enough energy during the day to power the aircraft through the night.

The multi-day ocean crossing to Hawaii will provide the first major real-world trial of Solar Impulse 2, and this test will be followed almost immediately by a second, when Piccard takes the yoke and flies east to Phoenix, Arizona, without landing.

Piccard and Borschberg themselves will also be tested as they each spend days alone in a cockpit about the size of a car trunk, sitting on a seat that doubles as a toilet. They will be unable to stand, though the seat does recline, and will sleep only briefly, catnapping when the flying is calm.

"It's the first time we'll be so long in the airplane," said Borschberg, who for many years flew fighter jets in the Swiss air reserves. "Each cycle of day and night will be different. There will be a lot of information coming at us."

The men began their journey in March, lifting off from a military airport in Dubai and heading east to Oman and Myanmar, to India and China. During stops for maintenance and rest, Piccard and Borschberg and a team of support staff worked to spread their clean technology message, hosting talks for local communities and opening their hangar to thousands of curious visitors.

So far the aircraft's systems have performed well during flights of up to 20 hours, the pilots said. Small technical problems-an ill-fitting oxygen mask, the failure of solar cell, a misfiring alarm system in the cockpit-have been irritating, but easily fixed by the team's ground crew.

I almost disappeared from the air traffic controller's radar because I was flying backward.

A more persistent challenge for the pilots have been strong crosswinds. Such winds rarely deter heavier, more powerful aircraft, but they can have outsized effects on the slow-flying, lightweight Solar Impulse 2, pushing it off course or forcing changes to the flight plan as the pilots hope to complete their Pacific travel before the start of monsoon season.

During their travel across Asia, crosswinds delayed takeoffs and landings several times. Piccard was even shoved backward by crosswinds on his approach to the airport in Chongqing, China.

"I almost disappeared from the air traffic controller's radar because I was flying backward," he said.

The takeoff for Hawaii will send the plane and its pilots into a new dimension of variables, where the weather may be more extreme and harder to predict, and minor malfunctions can't be easily fixed. Exhaustion, too, will dog the men and may be the heaviest burden of all.

But Piccard and Borschberg said they had spent years planning for the risks and searching for ways to stack the odds in their favor.

With the German navy they had parachuted into the cold waters of the North Sea and practiced untangling themselves from twisted cords and hauling themselves into a life raft. With yoga instructors and medical doctors they had designed meditation schemes and nutrition plans to keep them alert and healthy.

And, during each leg of the journey, a mission control team based in Monaco will monitor the plane's progress and provide regular weather reports. Former aviators-some of them old military friends of Borschberg's-will also be on hand to offer advice and support.

Should Borschberg or Piccard need to ditch, he will take with him down to the sea a parachute, a life raft, food, and a radio. After that the plan is to call for rescue, either by way of some friendly navy, or by the luck of a passing ship.

[Amelia Earhart] was such a beautiful person. I will have a thought for her when I'm flying over.

For Piccard, such possibilities have long been woven into a family tradition of adventure. In 1960, Bertrand Piccard's father, Jacques, descended in a bathyscaphe to the deepest parts of the Pacific. In 1931 his grandfather, Auguste, floated into the stratosphere aboard a balloon equipped with a pressurized passenger capsule.

Auguste knew Amelia Earhart. Bertrand Piccard remembers seeing them together in an old photograph.

"I'm a little jealous of my grandfather for that," he said. "She was such a beautiful person. I will have a thought for her when I'm flying over."

Borschberg said before his flight that he was eager to see how weather, technology, and human endurance would combine in the days ahead. He had spent more than a decade thinking about this flight. Dreaming of it, and trying not let the dream become an obsession.

"Being humble and being a little bit detached is important," he said. "To not be too target-focused. I am more excited about what's coming than I am nervous. I believe we have a great airplane."

For the next several days he will put that faith into practice over the earth's greatest ocean, flying by light alone. At a certain point he knows his thoughts will turn toward that first glimpse of green on the blue and the soft shudder of his wheels touching down. He said he would try not to want it too much.

Neil Shea is a writer based in Boston and a longtime contributor to National Geographic.

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Solar Plane Set for 5-day "Earhart Leg" of Epic Flight

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Wedged into the tiny cockpit of the Solar Impulse 2, an airplane powered entirely by sunlight, a Swiss adventurer will soon begin an unprecedented journey across the Pacific Ocean. André Borschberg will take off from a runway in Nanjing, China, on the seventh leg in a planned 12-part circumnavigation of the globe.

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Do Sunscreens' Tiny Particles Harm Ocean Life in Big Ways?

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Do Sunscreens' Tiny Particles Harm Ocean Life in Big Ways?

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Nanoparticles in sunscreens could be harming the embryos of ocean creatures.

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Tiny particles used in sunscreens and other consumer products may harm marine creatures by disabling the defense mechanisms that protect their embryos, according to a new study.

Small amounts of microscopic metals in some sunscreens, toothpastes, cosmetics, and boat paints can alter the cells of sea life in ways that make the animals more vulnerable to damage inflicted by other toxic pollutants, according to the study published in the journal Environmental Science and Toxicology.

The findings add to growing evidence that nanomaterials-which are 100,000 times smaller than a human hair-sometimes affect plants and animals in unexpected ways. Previous research has shown that nano-zinc, nano-copper, and other metal nanoparticles widely used in consumer products can harm tiny marine worms, crustaceans, algae, fish, mussels, and other sea creatures.

While the new study was conducted on sea urchin embryos, the researchers say the effects could be similar for other forms of sea life.

"When they were exposed to these nanomaterials, even in extremely low concentrations that you wouldn't expect to have an effect, we saw all sorts of unusual patterns of development," says study co-author Gary Cherr, interim director of the University of California, Davis, Bodega Marine Laboratory.

When they were exposed to these nanomaterials even in extremely low concentrations that you wouldn't expect to have an effect we saw all sorts of unusual patterns of development.

For example, some urchin embryos exposed to nano-zinc oxides in sunscreen or nano-copper oxides in boat paint never grew to become larvae or appeared to grow normally but then were unable to eat and died.

Effects on Ocean Life Debated

Scientists now are researching and debating whether nanomaterials in sunscreens and other products are risky to the environment.

Scientist Hunter Lenihan says that simply walking into the water on a crowded beach while wearing sunscreen can expose marine creatures to traces of metal particles that may be harmful.

In big places like Los Angeles or Florida, it could cause significant problems.

Hunter Lenihan UC Santa Barbara

"We think that the exposure through sunscreen is probably the most important route for animals in aquatic systems," says Lenihan, a professor of marine ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied nanomaterials. He was not involved in the new study.

"I think it would scale up with the size of the beaches. In big places like Los Angeles or Florida, it could cause significant problems," Lenihan says.

But other scientists see little cause for alarm.

Paul Westerhoff, a professor at Arizona State University's School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, says the new research does not prove that sunscreen has significant impacts on marine life.

"The tradeoffs in this paper are not severe in my mind, relative to the concentrations likely to be in water," he says.

Westerhoff says the doses of nanoparticles that the embryos were exposed to, while small, seem too large to be realistic. "You would almost never find these concentrations in the marine environment," he says.

Cherr agrees that most studies do show exceptionally small amounts of nanomaterials get into the environment. But that varies by location.

"It could be the amounts we tested are, in fact, higher than you would see. But when you look at the potential for a busy enclosed beach, we don't know that," he says.

Pros and Cons of Nanomaterials

In the new study, scientists exposed urchin embryos to different levels of nanoparticles used in some sunscreen and boat paint. They found that the materials harmed the creatures directly and indirectly.

For example, nano-copper oxide used in paint doesn't dissolve easily in water. Urchins exposed to small amounts took up particles that did not initially harm them. But over time the animals amassed these particles, which then dissolved inside the embryo, exposing the urchins to toxic amounts of copper.

In both paint and sunscreen, the nanomaterials also disrupted cellular pumps that organisms use to flush away toxic compounds. That made the embryos more susceptible to damage from other toxic compounds.

There's always some potential for risk we just may not understand.

"When you introduce new forms of chemicals into the environment, there are all these potential positives," Cherr says. "Some, compared to their bulk counterparts, may be safer. But ... there's always some potential for risk we just may not understand."

Nano-copper oxides are considered an improvement over traditional forms of copper, which can affect basic marine life processes, such as how salmon use smell to find spawning grounds. Nanomaterial paints also don't have to be applied as often.

"You're putting much less paint on boats and the loading to the environment is less-or so that was the hope," Cherr says.

The advocacy organization Environmental Working Group has named zinc oxide as the best available sunscreen option for most consumers. But the group says that the products should be better monitored and regulated to protect people and the environment.

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Do Sunscreens' Tiny Particles Harm Ocean Life in Big Ways?

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Tiny particles used in sunscreens and other consumer products may harm marine creatures by disabling the defense mechanisms that protect their embryos, according to a new study.

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Santa Barbara Beaches Slicked With Oil After Pipeline Breach

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Santa Barbara Beaches Slicked With Oil After Pipeline Breach

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An oil slick coated Refugio State Beach and nearby coastline in Goleta, California, spreading to a slick nine miles long.

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Mark Tautrim was checking fences along his coastal cattle ranch 20 miles west of Santa Barbara on Tuesday afternoon when he caught a whiff of oil so strong it gave him a headache.

"Gosh, do you think the pipeline is leaking?" his wife, Susie Tautrim, asked him.

Tautrim headed toward the beach to investigate. He was among the earliest witnesses to an oil spill that has coated several miles of beaches along one of California's most ecologically important shorelines.

A broken pipeline off Goleta, California, spilled an estimated 21,000 gallons of heavy black crude oil into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday. The spill is along the same beaches contaminated by a 1969 oil-platform blowout that is widely credited with sparking the U.S. environmental movement.

The oil has spread to a nine-mile slick off Refugio State Beach and an adjacent shoreline, forcing authorities to shut down the popular state beach and campground as Memorial Day weekend approaches. It is near protected nesting grounds of an endangered bird.

Mark Tautrim says humpback whales are moving through the region now, and other witnesses have reported seeing whales and sea lions swimming through the sheen.

This is the jewel in the crown of the Central and Southern California coast. It's protected. It's beautiful.

"It's horrible," Susie Tautrim says. "This is the jewel in the crown of the Central and Southern California coast. It's protected. It's beautiful. We regularly see dolphins and whales. It's really biologically diverse."

Rescue centers officially said Tuesday that they had found no oiled birds, but photos are emerging on social media. Western snowy plovers, a federally protected threatened species, nest on protected beaches nearby at University of California, Santa Barbara's Coal Oil Point Reserve, but the location had not been hit by oil as of Wednesday morning.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials said in a press conference Wednesday that they have seen pictures of dead fish and birds but had no official estimate of ecological damage.

"Undoubtedly there's been impacts to wildlife," says Capt. Mark Crossland, an enforcement officer with the state wildlife agency.

State officials closed shellfish and fishing up to a quarter-mile off the coast and one mile on each side of Refugio State Beach.

The spill hit the state beach popular with kayakers and campers just as the summer beach season is about to kick into high gear this holiday weekend.

Authorities aren't sure what caused the leak in the 24-inch underground pipeline owned by Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline. The line carries up to 2,000 barrels of crude an hour and was built in 1991. But around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, oil bubbled to the surface on land across Highway 101, then poured from a culvert onto Refugio State Beach.

"We're sorry this accidental release happened," says Plains All American spokesman Darren Palmer. "We're bringing in all the resources at our disposal to respond."

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials say the pipeline had been regulated by the California State Fire Marshal until two years ago, when budget issues forced the agency to transfer responsibility to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Officials say they stopped the leak within hours of its discovery, and they had the spill site secured. Three "skimmer" boats, designed to pull oil off the surface, were on the water by Tuesday evening, says Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni.

By midday Wednesday 150 people were involved in cleanup, according to Santa Barbara County Emergency Management officials. Crews were planning to spray oil off rocks and try to lift it off sand beaches, says Coast Guard Capt. Jennifer Williams, who is helping lead the cleanup response. She says the work would likely prove complicated.

"It could be a slow process, but we want to make sure we do it right," she says.

Mark Tautrim, whose ranch is about three-quarters of a mile from the spill, says southwest winds on Tuesday initially kept the oil close to shore, and for several hours a stretch of rocky coast near his home was still oil-free. Then by late afternoon Tuesday that stretch, too, had been hard hit.

"It was this thick crude, lapping up onto the rocks, coating everything," he says. Later he could see a plume 300 yards wide moving out to sea.

The stench was so overwhelming, a neighboring rancher sent his work crew home and his adult daughter took her child to a hotel for the night.

The spill is a fraction of the size of the region's most memorable environmental disaster, which occurred in January of 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel, when an oil platform six miles offshore leaked an estimated 3 to 4 million gallons of crude oil. That spill stretched across hundreds of miles of ocean and coated 30 miles of beach. It killed elephant seals and other marine mammals and thousands of birds, and prompted new laws that helped create the template for many of today's environmental regulations.

"I was around during that spill, and this is nothing like that," says one of Tautrim's neighbors, a rancher in Goleta. "But this is really sad-it's going to do some damage."

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Santa Barbara Beaches Slicked With Oil After Pipeline Breach

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Mark Tautrim was checking fences along his coastal cattle ranch 20 miles west of Santa Barbara on Tuesday afternoon when he caught a whiff of oil so strong it gave him a headache. "Gosh, do you think the pipeline is leaking?" his wife, Susie Tautrim, asked him.

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Top 10 New Species: Cartwheeling Spider, Psychedelic Sea Slug

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Top 10 New Species: Cartwheeling Spider, Psychedelic Sea Slug

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The list highlights a small part of the 18,000 new species found annually.

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Top 10 New Species: Cartwheeling Spider, Psychedelic Sea Slug

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The world's most fascinating plants and animals of 2014 also include a giant stick insect and a frog that gives birth to live tadpoles.

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5 Water-Saving Ways to Replace Lawns During California’s Drought

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5 Water-Saving Ways to Replace Lawns During California’s Drought

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As the drought persists in California, homeowners’ interest in finding ways to conserve water has grown, and these 5 steps shown are ways they can help.

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A grass-busting landscaping company, Turf Terminators launched last July with just three employees. Now the Los Angeles business boasts more than 535 full-time workers and has replaced millions of square feet of grass lawns with water-saving ground cover and drought-tolerant plants.

As the drought persists in California, homeowners' interest in finding ways to conserve water has grown: Turf Terminators, for instance, already has received more than 60,000 customer inquiries.

For each square foot of grass they remove, homeowners save an average of 44 gallons of water a year. That means grass removal is "an important piece" of addressing California's ongoing water crisis, says Andrew Farrell, head of business development for Turf Terminators.

Demand for such services has been spurred by California Governor Jerry Brown, who has ordered water suppliers to cut usage 25 percent in the midst of the worst drought in the state's recorded history. Utilities have helped grease the way by offering homeowners rebates for replacing lawns with water-saving plants and features, in a process called xeriscaping.

Watering lawns accounts for more than half of typical home water use in California, according to a state fact sheet. Nationwide, landscape irrigation is responsible for about one-third of residential water use, totaling nearly 9 billion gallons per day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The massive Metropolitan Water District of Southern California offered a rebate of $2 per square foot to every customer that wants to replace a lawn. The program was so popular that funds were exhausted by May, but the agency expects to restart the program with a new authorization on May 26. Some local water authorities under the district's umbrella have also added incentives. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power offers a total of $3.75 per square foot for the first 1,500 square feet, and $2 per square foot after that.

Customers can apply for a rebate directly and install their own water-efficient landscaping. Or they can hire a company like Turf Terminators, in which they sign over their rebate rights to the company, which then applies for the credit. The customers pay nothing for the conversion of their lawn while Turf Terminators recoups its costs and makes a profit, entirely through the rebates that accrue.

Farrell says the company is working on allowing greater customization, but now customers have two options: a "desert" package or an "oasis" package, depending on the plants offered. All require modest amounts of water.

Whether homeowners redo their lawns DIY or hire a company, here are a few options for replacing water-hungry turf grass:

Made famous on sports fields, synthetic grass, or astroturf, is becoming an increasingly popular choice for homeowners, from California to Virginia. A lot of research has gone into the material in recent years, to make it softer underfoot and to reduce the temperature it achieves under intense sun.

Still, there has also been controversy around potential health risks, especially to children, from the chemicals that make up the material.

Farrell says Turf Terminators decided not to offer synthetic turf as a "complex business decision," but other providers will sell it to those who want to leave watering, and mowing, behind.

Instead of grass, a wide range of ground covers can be used to keep out weeds and reduce erosion, which would otherwise be a problem if people suddenly ripped out their grass. Alternatives include rocks and mulch, some of which can be locally sourced. Crushed shells are popular for properties near a beach. Sand also is an option, particularly for those going for a Zen garden look.

Many traditional nurseries offer plants that are native to a local area (or try this online search tool). Native plants are adapted to the local climate and require little or no watering to thrive, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Native plants also can provide habitat for local birds, mammals, and insects. They typically earn points for green certification systems like LEED or can help homeowners achieve a "wildlife friendly" designation from their state or a nonprofit.

4. Drought-Tolerant Grasses and Shrubs

In addition to native plants, homeowners also can choose from a wide range of drought-tolerant grasses and shrubs from around the world. Examples include lavender, sage, kangaroo paw, and tea tree.

Turf Terminators installs a drip irrigation system with each project because the new plants should be watered sparingly for six months. Operated by an automatic, solar-powered controller, the system drips a few gallons a month to the plant roots. After six months, the plants don't need to be watered at all, so they "effectively wean people off outdoor water use," Farrell says.

In contrast, a traditional sprinkler system uses 40 to 100 gallons of water an hour. And about half of that water is typically wasted due to evaporation, wind, and runoff, reports the EPA.

People can exchange grass for such water-sippers as succulents and cactus. These plants are often widely available at nurseries, and they can be kept in pots and moved indoors during colder months in cooler climates. They can be used in large numbers or as accents.

The end result is a more unique environment than a typical lawn, which coats 45 million acres across the U.S., about eight times the size of New Jersey. In her recent book Lawn Gone!, authorPam Penick notes that our current sea of grass is "like driving cross-country on the interstate and seeing the same four fast-food restaurants at every exit."

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5 Water-Saving Ways to Replace Lawns During California's Drought

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A grass-busting landscaping company, Turf Terminators launched last July with just three employees. Now the Los Angeles business boasts more than 535 full-time workers and has replaced millions of square feet of grass lawns with water-saving ground cover and drought-tolerant plants.

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Study Finds Low Cost in Reducing Methane Emissions

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Study Finds Low Cost in Reducing Methane Emissions

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Reducing gas emmisions could give us money to start fighting for climate control.

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Reducing methane leaks from oil and gas operations around the world could provide a relatively inexpensive way to fight climate change, according to a new report commissioned by the Environmental Defense Fund.

The amount of methane that escaped worldwide in 2012 was roughly 3.6 trillion cubic feet and would have been worth $30 billion on the market, said Kate Larsen, a director of the Rhodium Group, which produced the study. A country that produced that amount of gas would rank seventh in the world, coming in just after Russia, she said.

Methane, the major component of natural gas, is also a powerful greenhouse gas. It is valued as an alternative to coal because it produces half of the carbon dioxide that coal does when burned in power plants. But released directly into the atmosphere, methane has short-term climate effects that are much greater than those of carbon dioxide.

"Methane is both a serious climate challenge and also, in our view, a major untapped opportunity to start reversing the tide of global greenhouse gas emissions," said Mark Brownstein, chief counsel for the environmental fund's United States climate and energy program.

Previous research sponsored by the group suggests that leaks from natural gas facilities could be reduced by 40 percent at a cost of 1 cent per 1,000 cubic feet.

In the United States, the Obama administration has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to as much as 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, and to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production by up to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025.

Without action to combat leaks, Ms. Larsen said, methane emissions will grow 23 percent by 2030. According to the report, if the 30 nations that emit the most methane from oil and gas reduced emissions 50 percent by 2030, the impact on climate change of curtailing that waste would be as great as stopping the combined carbon dioxide emissions of India and the entire European Union in 2012.

The new study is one of 16 sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund to gain a better understanding of the methane problem. This study, which was not published in a scientific journal, was financed entirely by the Environmental Defense Fund, said Drew Nelson, senior manager in the group's natural gas program.

A spokesman for the petroleum industry said its companies were already at work to reduce leaks. Carlton Carroll, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, said that industry and government had worked together to reduce methane emissions.

"Even as U.S. oil and natural gas production has risen dramatically, methane emissions have fallen thanks to industry leadership and investment in new technologies," he said. "Emissions are low and will continue to fall as operators innovate and find new ways to capture and deliver more methane to consumers, and existing E.P.A. and state regulations are working," he continued, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Correction:

An article on Wednesday about reducing emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, misstated the amount of the gas that escaped worldwide in 2012. It was 3.6 trillion cubic feet, not 3.6 billion.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: Study Finds Low Cost in Reducing Methane Emissions. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Study Finds Low Cost in Reducing Methane Emissions

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Reducing methane leaks from oil and gas operations around the world could provide a relatively inexpensive way to fight climate change, according to a new report commissioned by the Environmental Defense Fund.

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Mayor Bill Finch of Bridgeport helped to build the largest fuel-cell generating station in North America.

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BRIDGEPORT, Conn. - It is no secret that Mayor Bill Finch idolizes President John F. Kennedy. He has converted a room off his office into a shrine filled with campaign buttons, banners and busts of the former president.

He says that of all President Kennedy's accomplishments, what fired his imagination most was the challenge to send a man to the moon. "He raised our aspirations and expectations," Mayor Finch said during an interview in the Kennedy Room, "and that's what I'm trying to do here in Bridgeport."

One of the first things that Mayor Finch, a tall, white-haired 59-year-old, did after becoming mayor in 2007 was to sign an executive order promoting sustainability, committing his city to a range of clean-energy policies that will reduce carbon emissions by 2020. That is a pretty tall order considering the rundown condition of the city, Connecticut's largest, and the presence on the city's shore of the 400-megawatt Bridgeport Harbor Generating Station, one of the last coal-fired power plants in the region.

There was not much that the mayor could do about the behemoth coal plant, which continues to operate, but he has achieved some noteworthy results in his attempt to turn his city green. A recent report from the United States Energy Department highlighted Bridgeport's efforts to build the largest fuel-cell generating station in North America.

What most people think of as fuel cells are found in futuristic vehicles that emit only water. Figuring out how to carry around the hydrogen has stalled development and kept fuel-cell cars out of showrooms. But the confluence of government incentives, utility company needs and local willingness to team with innovators helped stationary fuel cells arrive in this city.

Stationary fuel cells - far larger than those in cars and hooked up to continuous sources of fuel - can take the place of electric power plants. Bridgeport's 14.9-megawatt fuel-cell complex generates enough electricity to power 15,000 of the city's 51,000 homes. In addition, a 1.4-megawatt fuel cell is about to go online at the University of Bridgeport, and work will start soon on a 2.8-megawatt fuel cell that will be part of a renewable energy complex on a closed landfill in the city.

It seems odd to think of fuel cells as new technology when the basic concept behind them was first laid out in the 1800s. Basically, they operate like batteries but are able to continuously turn out electricity as long as hydrogen passes through or around an electrolyte barrier to combine with oxygen. Despite the simplicity, fuel cells have not been widely adopted because early models used platinum, which made them uneconomical compared with conventional power generation.

Modern fuel cells rely on a variety of cheaper materials. For example, those here have electrolytes composed of molten carbonate, a salt mixture.

Fuel cells do not burn the fuel they use. Rather, like batteries, they rely on a chemical process to convert fuel to electricity.

The NASA space program has been using fuel cells for decades. An accident involving an onboard fuel cell endangered the Apollo 13 moon mission in 1970.

Mayor Finch recalled that when he saw the 1995 Ron Howard film about the mission he asked himself why, if fuel cells were being used in space when he was a teenager, they were not everywhere on earth 25 years later. He asked essentially the same question when he took office in 2007.

His impatience is shared by others. "We would love for it to be further along, but we have to be patient," said Frank Wolak, vice president for government relations at FuelCell Energy, which has its company headquarters in Danbury.

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Mayor Bill Finch of Bridgeport, Conn., committed his city to a range of clean-energy policies that will reduce carbon emissions by 2020. Credit Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

Mr. Wolak said the industry was slow to adopt new technology, but when innovation is embraced rather than resisted, change can be rapid. FuelCell built the world's largest fuel-cell power plant, a 59-megawatt complex in Hwasung City, South Korea, which went online in 2014.

Closer to home, a state incentive program intended to drive innovation, combined with city tax policy and the enthusiastic support of Mayor Finch, who is also co-chairman of the United States Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Task Force, helped persuade reluctant utility companies to embrace alternative technologies.

FuelCell built the plant here on a once-contaminated but now remediated industrial tract near Interstate 95 in less than a year. Individual cells are like gigantic Legos, each about the size of a large shipping container, that are made in Torrington and then shipped to the site for final assembly.

While they are operating, the cells run with practically no vibration and no noise except for the hum of blowing fans. On a day when the Bridgeport Harbor Generating Station was spewing clouds of exhaust that could be seen for miles, the fuel cells produced no visible emissions.

Dominion Energy owns the plant, and Eversource, a utility that provides power to Connecticut, buys the electricity it produces.

Fuel cells come in different types, and they use a variety of sources for the hydrogen that powers them. The large complex here runs on natural gas, which initially is heated to about 1,000 degrees to break out the hydrogen. Then the chemical process is similar to that of a standard hydrogen fuel cell.

The fuel cell complex here is 47 percent electrically efficient, a measure of the electricity derived from the fuel source, in this case natural gas. The 650-degree to 750-degree heat coming off the fuel cell is used to generate additional electricity, which raises the units' efficiency rating to 51 percent, about double that of a coal plant generating the same amount of electricity.

The extreme heat and chemical processes break down the components of the cells, requiring that they be replaced every seven years. However, their design makes that as easy as lifting one unit and replacing it with a new one. The components of the old cell can then be recycled.

Fuel cells produce very little nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide or particulate matter. Because natural gas is the fuel source, the unit does give off carbon dioxide, but less than half that of a coal-burning plant of similar size.

The project qualifies under Connecticut's Renewable Energy Portfolio specifications, even though the natural gas it uses is not a renewable energy source.

"The expectation that renewable resources is going to be a universal solution is just not practical," Mr. Wolak said. "There needs to be a diversity of solutions."

Mr. Wolak said he believed that fuel cells represented a bridge to cleaner technologies, and could run on alternative fuels like biogas and the methane from wastewater treatment plants. One of his company's plants in California uses the methane from decomposing onion skins as fuel.

Deciding how to classify fuel cells in the clean-energy mix can be a matter of compromise. Nathanael Greene, director of the renewable resources project at the Natural Resources Defense Council, has supported the inclusion of fuel cells in renewable energy portfolios because doing so encourages innovation.

But as technology progresses, clean-energy advocates like Mr. Greene think it may be time to reconsider including fuel cells that rely on natural gas in renewable portfolios. "At some point these policies need to pivot toward pushing the next step of evolution," Mr. Greene said.

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BRIDGEPORT, Conn. - It is no secret that Mayor Bill Finch idolizes President John F. Kennedy. He has converted a room off his office into a shrine filled with campaign buttons, banners and busts of the former president. He says that of all President Kennedy's accomplishments, what fired his imagination most was the challenge to send a man to the moon.

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Cleveland Indians Have Home-Field Advantage on Recycling

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Cleveland Indians Have Home-Field Advantage on Recycling

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At Cleveland's Progressive Field food scraps are processed into energy and fertilizer.

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John Vanco and his father, Jim, at Cleveland's Progressive Field, eating while watching an Indians game. Food scraps at the stadium are processed into energy and fertilizer. Credit... Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times

CLEVELAND - Well before the start of a Cleveland Indians game at Progressive Field, as players warmed up on the jewel-green field, it was business as usual in the garage behind left field for C. L. Gholston, a dishwasher.

He had wheeled down gray bins full of kitchen scraps - pineapple and melon rinds, carrot shavings and tomato ends - that were all part of the mix he fed into a contraption he calls the energy machine.

Built by InSinkErator, the garbage disposal maker, the machine grinds all types of food waste, including skin, fat, flesh and bone, into a slurry that is later transformed into energy and fertilizer at a plant operated by the renewable energy company Quasar.

As governments and industry seek to reduce emissions of methane - a more powerful heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide - by limiting the amount of organic waste in landfills, large food processors are looking for new ways to get rid of their leftovers. Food waste, an estimated 34 million tons a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's most recent figures, is the largest component of landfills, which are responsible for roughly 18 percent of the nation's methane emissions.

Here in Cleveland, the Indians began using the process last year, following the Browns, who started in 2013, and a casino has recently joined the effort. InSinkErator's system, called Grind2Energy, is winning customers elsewhere as well, including at some Whole Foods Market stores in Boston.

"We're a wasteful nation," said Steven M. Smith, Quasar's chief financial officer. The company, he said, repurposes "material that is either being landfilled, incinerated - that's not good for the economy - and we extract the energy and concentrate the nutrients, and we have water at the back end."

Both InSinkErator and Quasar see potential in their system, which uses naturally occurring bacteria to speed decomposition. Less than 5 percent of American food waste is recovered and recycled, but it can be a potent source of energy for electricity, heat and transportation fuel.

The idea of using food or municipal and farm waste to generate energy is not new. Europe is far ahead in harnessing biogas, said Mackinnon Lawrence, who leads the Energy Technologies and Utility Transformations programs at Navigant Research. In the United States, with plenty of land left to fill, he said, there had not been much incentive to change the practice of dumping organics, so it has remained "a niche opportunity," but one that is expected to expand.

A recent Navigant report for the Advanced Energy Economy, a business-backed policy and advocacy group, estimated that the waste-to-energy market could generate $40 billion in revenue over the next decade. Already, energy-recovery projects contribute nearly $500 million in annual revenue in the United States.

Wastewater and manure treatment plants have been using anaerobic digesters to capture methane for decades. Some companies like Waste Management convert landfill gas to vehicle fuel for use in their trucks, but much of it is still collected and burned off.

As government policies shift to encourage extracting the energy from organic trash, the United States is beginning to catch up. The East Bay Municipal Utility District in California, for example, has been funneling food waste from restaurants and other large producers to a digester for years as part of a federal pilot program, and some cities have experimented with similar diversion efforts. Harvest Power, a start-up backed by Waste Management and Kleiner Perkins and based in Waltham, Mass., has been operating a facility in Orlando, Fla., since 2013 that turns waste from Disney World into fuel and fertilizer.

In theory, adding food to digesters processing manure or sewage has advantages, said Chad Kruger, director of the Washington State University Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, chief among them that it increases methane production. But without an infrastructure in place to handle, transport and process the material, building that kind of energy system has been too difficult and expensive to spread widely.

"We've kind of stalled out on some of these issues," he said. "That said, the industry, the composters, in particular the bigger ones, are really set on this - they think it's the right thing to do."

The partnership between Quasar and InSinkErator follows years of research and development at both companies. Managers at InSinkErator had been looking into the potential of anaerobic digestion and energy production at wastewater treatment plants. They came upon Quasar, a fast-growing company that was incubating its business at Ohio State University's agricultural research campus in Wooster and was aiming to build a digester network nationwide.

"One of the things that they basically were looking for was a clean feedstock of organic material that was consistent and low in contamination but had high energy content in terms of methane potential," said Matt Whitener, general manager of the Grind2Energy business at Emerson, the parent company of InSinkErator. "On-site, point-of-generation grinding technology was kind of the missing piece to make an efficient model where the food waste generator has a mechanism to convert their food scraps into a slurry."

At Progressive Field, Mr. Gholston and the other dishwashers feed loads of food waste into the grinder, which is about 13 to 20 times as powerful as home models. The milkshake-consistency slurry that results from the discarded fruit and vegetable peelings, uneaten pasta, used cooking grease or leftover hot dogs that cannot go to a food bank is then pumped into a 3,000-gallon tank.

Once the tank signals to Grind2Energy that it is full, Quasar is alerted to send a truck to take the mass to its plant, where it is put into giant anaerobic digesters full of bacteria that break down the slurry. The system captures the released gas, which is then converted into electricity for the grid or transportation fuel. The leftover solids become fertilizer.

Peg Kalberer, assistant manager of concessions at Delaware North Sportservice, which runs the stadium's food operation, said she was happier with the system than one that funneled the waste to a composting company, in part because it helps document their sustainability efforts.

"Over all it worked, but this is better," she said. "I don't know what happened to the product when it left. Here I know exactly what's happening: 90 days from tank to energy."

For now, workers are feeding only preconsumer waste to the machine, except for food from the Terrace Club, where workers scrape plates and can keep contaminants like paper napkins or plastic wrappers out of the mix. Indians fans dining there were largely unaware of the fate of their leftover fried pickles and uneaten cheeseburgers, but expressed support for the program.

"That's better than going to the landfill - reuse, energy, that's all cool," said Jim Vanco, 57, a commercial real estate broker who was eating wings, calamari and crab dip with his son John, 27, and their friend Roger Riachi, 49. "Wind, solar - any independence you can get from the Middle East is best."

At a table just below them, Barb Saiter, 60, and her brother Bob, 63, also welcomed the approach.

"Using it as an energy source - that works," she said. He agreed: "Too many people waste - it's a throwaway society."

And Mr. Gholston, who makes about eight trips to the energy machine during games and took roughly six minutes to process about 20 pounds of food scraps, said it had changed his habits.

"It made me think about being green at home," he said, as hundreds of Progressive Insurance employees wearing aprons like their pitchwoman, Flo, prepared nearby for pregame festivities. He and his wife recycle more now, but he is also simply fond of the contraption.

"I enjoy big machines," he said, pointing out how the slurry moves from the grinding apparatus up through tubes into the tank. "I'm just a guy that likes any machine."

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Cleveland Indians Have Home-Field Advantage on Recycling

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CLEVELAND - Well before the start of a Cleveland Indians game at Progressive Field, as players warmed up on the jewel-green field, it was business as usual in the garage behind left field for C. L. Gholston, a dishwasher.

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Schools Turn to Propane Buses as Stricter Emissions Standards Loom

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Schools Turn to Propane Buses as Stricter Emissions Standards Loom

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Propane buses cost about $15,000 more than diesel, but are cheaper to operate and maintain so more schools are turning toward them.

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Wheels

MACON, Ga. - For many Americans, propane is that stuff from the home improvement store that fuels backyard barbecues and patio dinners. But in a growing number of cities across the country, it is what gets children to school.

Of the top 25 school bus markets, 19 have propane-fueled vehicles in their fleets, including New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia and Phoenix. Boston just bought 86 of the alternative-fuel buses for the fall, while in the Mesa County Valley district in Grand Junction, Colo., administrators recently signed a five-year, $30 million contract that includes 122 propane buses.

And here, about an hour and a half southeast of Atlanta, Bibb County school administrators are so happy with the 33 buses they started running last year that they have ordered 20 more.

"They're healthier, they're cleaner burning, they're much quieter than the diesel option," said Anthony V. Jackson, the district's transportation director. "Right now, it's projected that over time we'll see significant savings."

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Thomas Gray, a bus driver, refueling a propane-powered school bus in Macon, Ga. Credit Kevin Liles for The New York Times

With tougher emissions standards looming and the constant pressure to save money, propane has become increasingly attractive as an alternative to traditional fossil fuels for some vehicles. Burning propane reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 22 percent compared to gasoline-powered buses or 6 percent compared to diesel, according to the Propane Education and Research Council, an industry-funded group.

Sales of new diesel buses, which run cleaner and safer than older models, their proponents say, outstrip those using propane. But it is one among many alternatives that vehicle fleets are finding to traditional gasoline and diesel fuels.

The number of alternative fuel fleet vehicles on the road has steadily increased in the last decades, reaching nearly 1.2 million in 2011 from 247,000 in 1995, according to the Department of Energy. Most run on ethanol, propane, compressed natural gas and electricity.

Other fuels are increasingly in the mix, including liquefied natural gas for long-haul trucking and biomethane, derived from decomposing organic waste. This month, for instance, United Parcel Service announced an agreement to buy such renewable natural gas from Clean Energy Fuels, a company backed by T. Boone Pickens, for its alternative fuel and advanced technology fleet. Over all, the company has more than 2,500 vehicles that run on alternative fuels.

In Blue Bird, a leading manufacturer based in Fort Valley, about 35 minutes southwest of here, said that the annual demand for its propane buses - often distinguished by a green bird logo in place of the traditional black - had increased to thousands from hundreds since 2011, said Phil Horlock, Blue Bird's chief executive.

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Students in Macon, Ga. Propane buses cost about $15,000 more than diesel, but are cheaper to operate and maintain. Credit Grant Blankenship for The New York Times

"Everyone wants to show their school district, their parents in the school district, 'Hey, I've got a green fuel here - we're doing great things for the environment,' " he said. Nationwide, there are 480,000 school buses, the American School Bus Council estimates.

The fuel, a byproduct of oil refining and natural gas processing, is abundant and less expensive than diesel, running about $1 less per gallon equivalent in Bibb County, for instance. School districts using the fuel have generally been able to claim a federal alternative fuel tax credit of 50 cents per gallon.

Proponents of the fuel's use say that although it is highly flammable, it is less so than other petroleum products used in transportation. It ignites only when the propane-air mix contains 2.2 to 9.6 percent propane vapor - considered a narrow range - and at a temperature of at least 940 degrees, much higher than gasoline's ignition point of 430 to 500 degrees, according to the propane council.

The buses, which now represent about 20 percent of Blue Bird's business, come at a premium - about $103,000 for the buses on the way, Mr. Jackson said, roughly $15,000 more than a diesel model - but they are cheaper to operate and maintain, requiring less oil and fewer filters than conventional vehicles.

Although companies running other types of vehicle fleets - delivery vans, city buses, long-haul trucks - are likely to continue migrating toward compressed or liquid natural gas for similar economic and regulatory compliance reasons, propane has other potential applications, said Roy Willis, chief executive of the propane council.

Esther Muhammad in her school bus. Bus drivers say that students riding in the quieter buses tend to be quieter, too. "When I had to use a spare bus and it was loud, they're loud," she said. Credit Kevin Liles for The New York Times

For instance, the fuel is becoming popular for use in smaller motorized equipment like lawn mowers, especially at golf courses near residences because the lower noise allows work to start earlier.

With the school buses, that relative quiet may offer a different benefit, administrators and operators say: It helps make the children, and the ride, more orderly and easier to manage. On the diesel buses, said Cami Hamlin, the assistant principal at Springdale Elementary School, the children often yell, which can be distracting or it difficult for the driver to spot problems.

"They're not trying to be trouble - they're just trying to talk to their friends," she said, adding that this year she had not had to discipline any children for disruptions on the propane buses. "Riding the bus to school or even going on a field trip, you can actually have a conversation. Kids can actually talk to their friends and hear without being a safety hazard to the bus drivers."

Esther D. Muhammad, a driver, said that she, too, had noticed the difference among her charges.

"When I had to use a spare bus and it was loud, they're loud," she said.

Even some of the riders say the buses are quieter - though they are hardly rolling libraries.

"It's kind of noisy sometimes because of all the people talking," said Tyler Otero, 9, who used to ride a diesel bus. "It was louder last year, but it's still loud."

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Schools Turn to Propane Buses as Stricter Emissions Standards Loom

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Wheels MACON, Ga. - For many Americans, propane is that stuff from the home improvement store that fuels backyard barbecues and patio dinners. But in a growing number of cities across the country, it is what gets children to school.

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The Pope is stepping in to stop/slow down human caused global warming.

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Since his papacy began in March 2013, Pope Francis has amply demonstrated his readiness to take on tough social and political causes. Now, much to the dismay of some conservatives, he is confronting human-caused global warming. A high-level workshop in the Vatican this week on the moral dimensions of climate change is one of several major events planned by the Roman Catholic Church in anticipation of an encyclical on the environment the pope plans to issue this summer. Though only the broad outlines are known, the encyclical is already raising hopes among environmentalists and deep alarm among climate-skeptics.

Though there is broad scientific consensus that global temperatures are rising, in large part because of the emission of greenhouse gases, international efforts to do something about it have been secular, political and largely unsuccessful. Conservative skeptics have actively campaigned to depict climate change as a hoax, while governments, especially in emerging economies, have been loath to take steps that might hamper growth.

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Pope Francis Credit Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

The pope's encyclical will not be the Roman Catholic Church's first word on the issue. His predecessor, Benedict XVI, also linked environmental and moral issues, but his thoughts lacked the unique authority of an encyclical. Francis, moreover, has developed a far more engaged following than the scholarly and conservative Benedict, and his proclamation of what he calls an "integral ecology" linking development, concern for the poor and responsibility for the environment could well have an impact far beyond his Catholic fans.

Catholic conservatives have argued that the pope has no special authority to delve into matters of scientific fact. But that is no more than another attempt by climate-skeptics to pretend that there remains serious doubt about why the world is warming up or about the potential consequences. What remains is to acknowledge that we all have a moral responsibility to do something about it. As Francis put in a Twitter post this month, "We need to care for the earth so that it may continue, as God willed, to be a source of life for the entire human family."

The encyclical is plainly aimed at influencing the outcome of December's summit meeting on climate change in Paris. The pope is right to speak up for our planet, and the greater the impact the better.

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Opinion | The Pope Joins the Climate Wars

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Since his papacy began in March 2013, Pope Francis has amply demonstrated his readiness to take on tough social and political causes. Now, much to the dismay of some conservatives, he is confronting human-caused global warming.

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Study Finds Climate Change as Threat to 1 in 6 Species

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Study Finds Climate Change as Threat to 1 in 6 Species

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Since temperatures are increasing more animals are finding the Earth's coniditons unlivable,bringing them closer to extinctuion.

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Climate change could drive to extinction as many as one in six animal and plant species, according to a new analysis.

In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, also found that as the planet warms in the future, species will disappear at an accelerating rate.

"We have the choice," he said in an interview. "The world can decide where on that curve they want the future Earth to be."

As dire as Dr. Urban's conclusions are, other experts said the real toll may turn out to be even worse. The number of extinctions "may well be two to three times higher," said John J. Wiens, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona.

Global warming has raised the planet's average surface temperature about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution. Species are responding by shifting their ranges.

In 2003, Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas and Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University analyzed studies of more than 1,700 plant and animal species. They found that, on average, their ranges shifted 3.8 miles per decade toward the planet's poles.

If emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to grow, climate researchers project the world could warm by as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit. As the climate continues to change, scientists fear, some species won't be able to find suitable habitats.

For example, the American pika, a hamsterlike mammal that lives on mountains in the West, has been retreating to higher elevations in recent decades. Since the 1990s, some pika populations along the species' southernmost ranges have vanished.

Hundreds of studies published over the past two decades have yielded a wide range of predictions regarding the number of extinctions that will be caused by global warming. Some have predicted few extinctions, while others have predicted that 50 percent of species face oblivion.

There are many reasons for the wide variation. Some scientists looked only at plants in the Amazon, while others focused on butterflies in Canada. In some cases, researchers assumed just a couple of degrees of warming, while in others they looked at much hotter scenarios. Because scientists rarely were able to say just how quickly a given species might shift ranges, they sometimes produced a range of estimates.

To get a clearer picture, Dr. Urban decided to revisit every climate extinction model ever published. He threw out all the studies that examined just a single species, such as the American pika, on the grounds that these might artificially inflate the result of his meta-analysis. (Scientists often pick out individual species to study because they already suspect they are vulnerable to climate change.)

Dr. Urban ended up with 131 studies examining plants, amphibians, fish, mammals, reptiles and invertebrates spread out across the planet. He reanalyzed all the data in those reports.

Overall, he found that 7.9 percent of species were predicted to become extinct from climate change. Estimates based on low levels of warming yielded much fewer extinctions than hotter scenarios.

By his calculation, with an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in surface temperature, 5.2 percent of species would become extinct. At 7.7 degrees, 16 percent would.

Dr. Urban found that the rate of extinctions would not increase steadily, but would accelerate if temperatures rose.

Richard Pearson, a biogeographer at University College London, called the new meta-analysis "an important line in the sand that tells us we know enough to see climate change as a major threat to biodiversity and ecosystems."

But he said that Dr. Urban was likely underestimating the scale of extinctions. The latest generation of climate extinction models are more accurate, Dr. Pearson said: sadly, they also produce more dire estimates.

Dr. Wiens also noted that the tropics have been underrepresented in climate extinction studies. In Dr. Urban's meta-analysis, 78 studies focused on species in North America and Europe, while only seven came from South America. Yet when Dr. Urban combined all the data from South American studies, he found that 23 percent of species were at risk of extinction. In North America, by contrast, only 5 percent faced extinction.

What makes this imbalance all the more glaring, Dr. Wiens said, is the fact that most of the planet's species live in tropical forests such as the Amazon. If climate extinction research took tropical diversity into account, the planet's overall risk would be much higher.

Dr. Urban acknowledged that his meta-analysis is far from the final word. "This is a summary of the best information we have right now," he said. As predictions improve, Dr. Urban said, they will allow conservation biologists to pinpoint the species at greatest risk of extinction and help plan strategies to save them.

The scientists building these new models may be able to draw from data not just on living species, but extinct ones as well.

In this week's issue of Science, an international team of scientists reported a new finding on ocean extinctions over the past 23 million years.

They found that some groups, such as marine mammals, have been far more prone to extinctions than others, such as mollusks. Biology can put certain species at extra risk: they may produce few offspring, for instance, or have a limited range.

Dr. Pearson said that climate extinction models will need to take other factors into account, as well. "What happens to other species in an ecosystem when a species goes extinct?" he asked. Its partners in that habitat might risk extinction as well.

Dr. Urban saw many other ways in which climate extinction models should improve. For one thing, they should take into account the cities, farms and other barriers that humans have put in the way of species seeking new habitats.

Given the stark results of research so far, Dr. Urban said, these new prediction models can't come too soon. "We need to elevate our game," he said.

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Study Finds Climate Change as Threat to 1 in 6 Species

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Climate change could drive to extinction as many as one in six animal and plant species, according to a new analysis. In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, also found that as the planet warms in the future, species will disappear at an accelerating rate.

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Shell Oil’s Cold Calculations for a Warming World

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Shell Oil’s Cold Calculations for a Warming World

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Plans to stop drilling oil from US as demand for energy increases, and oil is found elsewhere in the ocean.

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Last week, when the Obama administration gave tentative approval to Shell Oil's plan to return to the Arctic after its disastrous attempt to find oil there in 2012, I found myself thinking of a conversation I had several years ago with a man named Jeremy Bentham. A theater-loving Englishman, Bentham leads Shell's legendary team of futurists, whose methods have been adopted by the Walt Disney Company and the Pentagon, among others.

The scenario planners, as they call themselves, are paid to think unconventional thoughts. They read fiction. They run models. They talk to hippies. They talk to scientists. They consult anyone who can imagine surprising, abrupt change. The competing versions of the future - the scenarios - that result from this process are packaged as stories and given evocative titles: "Belle Époque," "Devolution," "Prism." Then the oil company readies itself, as best it can, for all of them.

Over the course of almost half a century, Bentham's predecessors in the scenario-planning group helped Shell foresee and prepare for events like the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of Islamic extremism and the birth of the anti-globalization movement. More recently - before California's historic drought - the team focused on water scarcity. And long before most other oil companies, Shell's scenario planners helped the company understand that climate change was a strategic and scientific reality.

In early 2008, weeks before Shell bid a record-breaking $2.1 billion on oil leases in the melting Arctic Ocean - the basis for the newly approved drilling plan - the company's futurists released a new pair of scenarios describing the next 40 years on Earth. They were based on what Bentham called "three hard truths": That energy demand, thanks in part to booming China and India, would only rise; that supply would struggle to keep up; and that climate change was dangerously real. Shell's internal research showed that alternative energy systems - wind, solar, carbon capture - would take decades to make just a 1-percent dent in our massive global energy system, even if they grew at 25 percent a year. "It takes them 30 years to just begin to start becoming material," Bentham explained to me.

One scenario, called "Blueprints," painted a moderately hopeful vision of green energy and concerted action within the constraints of technological change, of a swiftly rising price on carbon emissions as the world comes together to remake its energy systems. In this vision of the future, there is active carbon trading. There is a strong global climate treaty. There is still far more warming than society can easily bear - approaching 7 degrees Fahrenheit - but the world still averts the very worst of climate change.

The second scenario, called "Scramble," envisioned a future in which countries fail to do much of anything to reduce emissions, and instead race to secure oil and coal deposits. Only when climatic chaos breaks out does society take it seriously, and by then great damage has already been done. Drilling in the Arctic, thought to hold up to a quarter of the world's untapped oil and gas, has a role in both scenarios - but under "Scramble," it is irresistible.

In 2008, Shell surprised observers by announcing that it had a preferred scenario. The company would prepare for both outcomes, but for the good of the world and the good of Shell itself, it hoped for the carbon-constrained future of "Blueprints." The oil giant awaited government action: a market signal in the form of a carbon price. But when I interviewed him four years later, Bentham admitted to me that the future, so far, was looking a lot more like the chaos of "Scramble." We had no working international climate agreement and no real price on carbon. Instead, we had a global race for gas, coal and the last drops of conventional oil.

When I talked to Bentham, it was early December 2012. Three weeks later, on New Year's Eve, Shell's Arctic drill rig, the Kulluk, crashed into an island off the Alaskan coastline in a violent winter storm - a disaster I wrote about in this magazine. After the accident, political and economic circumstances seemed to turn decisively against Shell's Arctic aspirations. The Obama administration began talking tough: "Shell screwed up," said Ken Salazar, the interior secretary at the time. ConocoPhillips and Statoil, Shell's rivals in the Alaskan Arctic, delayed their own offshore-drilling plans. Global oil prices soon dropped precipitously, making expensive plays in the high north even riskier.

Yet the drilling plan that the Obama administration approved on May 11 is not much different from the one that ran aground along with the Kulluk two and a half years ago. One of company's drill ships will be the same as before: the Noble Discoverer, a 49-year-old converted log carrier that was previously at the center of eight felony pollution charges. Last month, the vessel failed another Coast Guard inspection in Hawaii. In place of the Kulluk, Shell will use a squarish, 319-foot-tall behemoth called the Polar Pioneer. This replacement rig flies the same Marshall Islands flag of convenience as the Kulluk and will be towed along the same general route to and from the Chukchi Sea from Seattle - a 2,000-mile voyage by tugboat. The Discoverer and the Pioneer will cross the same churning waters in the Gulf of Alaska. They'll begin drilling in the same assuredly oil-rich patch of seabed in the Chukchi, some 70 miles from shore and a thousand miles from the nearest permanent Coast Guard base from which help could be dispatched if something goes wrong.

The fact that so fundamentally little has changed since the debacle of 2012 is shocking - unless you understand that our leaders have long shared the oil company's worldview. Drilling the Chukchi is not a choice, say the adults in the room; it's an inevitability. When the federal government auctioned off the Chukchi leases in 2008, Randall Luthi, a Bush appointee who was then the head of the agency then called the Minerals Management Service, gave a speech in Alaska in which he stumbled repeatedly over the word Inupiat - the name of the Alaska Native people whose villages dot the Chukchi coastline - but managed to present this argument perfectly.

"Our demand for energy is going to increase by approximately 1.1 percent a year over the next generation," he declared. "U.S. production is not expected to keep pace. Now, it doesn't take too much to realize that when you're demanding more than you're producing, there's a shortfall." One of Luthi's successors under the Obama administration, Tommy Beaudreau, underscored the "tremendous" size of the prize. Estimates held that "the Chukchi Sea contains more than 15 billion barrels of undiscovered recoverable oil," Beaudreau told the Senate, "which is second only to the central Gulf of Mexico."

For me, living in Seattle as Shell's Arctic fleet again gathers in Puget Sound and activists in kayaks try to stop it with a blockade, it's hard not to think of the arc of the president who just signed off on another drilling mission. In his 2008 campaign, President Obama seemed to plan for an optimistic vision of the future, only to have the opposing scenario unfold. Four years later, his campaign's energy slogan - reiterated in his 2014 State of the Union address - might as well have been written by Shell: All of the above.

Lately, Obama has made climate change a priority. He has signed off on an ambitious climate pact with China, and his administration is finalizing regulations for coal-fired power plants. So far, he has blocked the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. That he is simultaneously opening up the Arctic Ocean only shows the staying power of Shell's three hard truths. In this worldview, where society stays stuck on oil because history shows that we must, there is one kind of abrupt change that remains unimaginable.

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Shell Oil's Cold Calculations for a Warming World

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Last week, when the Obama administration gave tentative approval to Shell Oil's plan to return to the Arctic after its disastrous attempt to find oil there in 2012, I found myself thinking of a conversation I had several years ago with a man named Jeremy Bentham.

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Study Finds Sun Belt Population Growth and Warming Climate Could Quadruple Exposure to Extreme Heat

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Study Finds Sun Belt Population Growth and Warming Climate Could Quadruple Exposure to Extreme Heat

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Global warming will likely contribute toincreased exposure of people to extreme heat.

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A valuable study published this week in Nature Climate Change projects that exposure to extreme heat in the United States is likely to rise enormously by mid century, driven equally by demographic shifts boosting Sun Belt populations and projected changes in heat waves in a warming climate.

Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press has written a nice summary of the research, undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and the City University of New York. Here's the nut:

Between 1970 and 2000, the U.S. averaged about 2.3 billion person days of extreme heat each year. But between 2040 and 2070 that number will be between 10 and 14 billion person days a year, according to the study.

The biggest projected increases in person days is the Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas census region where by mid-century heat exposure will increase by 2.7 billion person days. Right behind is south Atlantic region of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C., where heat exposure is projected to increase by 2.2 billion person days. New England gets off the easiest with an increase of only 71 million person days. [Read the rest.]

The study, " Future population exposure to U.S. heat extremes," is in the May 18 issue of Nature Climate Change.

In a news release from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Brian O'Neill, an author of the study (and someone who has long focused on the interplay of population and climate change), stressed the importance of considering the interplay of societal patterns and climate patterns in gauging evolving risks:

Both population change and climate change matter.... If you want to know how heat waves will affect health in the future, you have to consider both.

The news release has much more background on the study and underlying issues, including this:

Extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather-related event, and scientists generally expect the number of deadly heat waves to increase as the climate warms. The new study, published May 18 in the journal Nature Climate Change, finds that the overall exposure of Americans to these future heat waves would be vastly underestimated if the role of population changes were ignored....

Regardless of the relative role that population or climate plays, some increase in total exposure to extreme heat is expected in every region of the continental United States. Even so, the study authors caution that exposure is not necessarily the same thing as vulnerability.

"Our study does not say how vulnerable or not people might be in the future," O'Neill said. "We show that heat exposure will go up, but we don't know how many of the people exposed will or won't have air conditioners or easy access to public health centers, for example." [Read the rest.]

O'Neill's point is vital to consider.

As with other environmental hazards, from earthquakes to storms, any societal impact will always be a function of the severity and frequency of the danger (in this case periods of high heat), the number of people exposed and their capacity to withstand the threat.

Humans change not only where they live, but how they live. In a 2010 post, " Indoor Living and the Global Greenhouse," I reviewed some literature on the global trend toward ever less outdoor work time, including " Liberation of the Environment," a marvelous 1996 essay by Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University making this point:

In fact, careful records of human time budgets show that not only New Yorkers and Indians but also Californians, reputed nature enthusiasts, average only about one-and-a-half hours per day outside. Fewer than 5 percent of the population of industrialized nations work outdoors. In developing countries, the number is plummeting and should be below 20 percent globally by 2050. As Lee Schipper shows, lifestyles revolve around the household. The achievement of ten thousand years of human history is that we have again become cave dwellers - with electronic gadgets.

Addendum, 4:00 p.m. | On Twitter, some climate curmudgeons tried to imply the study is bunk because the continuing Sun Belt migration illustrates that we prefer hotter temperatures. But, to my eye, that simply shows the importance of O'Neill's point above - that exposure doesn't equate with vulnerability, if policies and lifestyles take it into account.

I encourage you to read "Some Like it Hot," a Cato Institute piece from early 2014 by Chip Knappenberger and Pat Michaels, to get Cato's viewpoint (framed around limited government) on the same dynamics the Nature paper explores:

As both people's mobility and their ability to select the climate they prefer have increased throughout this past century, the core of the U.S. population has moved southward-into warmer climates. The overall migration of people into the southern "Sunbelt" states has created a temperature change over time for the "average American" that far outstrips the most pessimistic measurements of global warming for the past century, and rivals the projections for the next! [Read the rest.]

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national center for atmospheric research

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Study Finds Sun Belt Population Growth and Warming Climate Could Quadruple Exposure to Extreme Heat

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A valuable study published this week in Nature Climate Change projects that exposure to extreme heat in the United States is likely to rise enormously by mid century, driven equally by demographic shifts boosting Sun Belt populations and projected changes in heat waves in a warming climate.

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Europe Unlikely to Meet Climate Goal, Study Finds

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Europe Unlikely to Meet Climate Goal, Study Finds

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Many power stations are using cheap forms of coal in order to produce energy, increasing climate rather than bringing it down.

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BERLIN - The European Union will fail to meet an ambitious goal of significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 unless it takes more aggressive measures to limit the use of fossil fuels and adopts new environmental policies, according to a report scheduled for release on Tuesday.

Although European countries are on track to meet, and even surpass, the goal of reducing 1990-level greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, existing policies are not robust enough to ensure that the 2050 targets are met, the report said. Those targets, scientists have said, are critical to forestalling the most catastrophic effects of climate change, which are linked to carbon emissions caused by human activity.

"The level of ambition of environmental policies currently in place to reduce environmental pressures may not enable Europe to achieve long-term environmental goals, such as the 2050 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95 percent," the report said.

The report also noted that transportation continues to account for a quarter of all carbon emissions within the European Union, and reducing those by 60 percent by 2050 will require "significant additional measures."

The report, which will formally be released on Tuesday, was compiled by the European Environment Agency, based in Copenhagen, and is produced every five years to assess how the Union is progressing toward its environmental goals and to inform European policy. It will be presented to the European Commission and debated in the European Parliament later this month.

The findings are significant because Europeans have taken a lead role in seeking to avert the worst effects of climate change, in some cases putting aside their own economic prospects and political pressures to enact policies that could also serve as models for other countries and regions. The European Union's failure to achieve its goals could discourage efforts by more reluctant nations, like China and India, and could loom large later this year as nations gather in Paris to discuss a global climate treaty.

Hans Bruyninckx, the executive director of the European Environment Agency, characterized the report as an alarming call that provides the 28 European Union member states with a fresh opportunity to set a global example.

"Although we have colored the outlook red, it doesn't have to be red," Mr. Bruyninckx said. He named increased energy efficiency, ecological innovation and improvements to transportation systems as potential areas in which Europeans could adjust their policies to meet their long-term goals.

"Although we have all of these very different countries with very different energy profiles, in the long run, the commitment to these targets is there, the level of ambition to reach the 80 percent is high on the political agenda," Mr. Bruyninckx said.

Setting global emissions targets, however, has proved elusive for years, and the latest assessment of Europe's progress illustrates that once targets are reached, significant difficulties remain in holding countries to their agreed-to goals.

Even a country like Germany, where support for the environment borders on a religion, has faced unforeseen challenges as it aims to revamp its energy sector from reliance on traditional sources of energy, such as nuclear and fossil fuels, to renewable sources, including wind, solar and biofuels.

The race to shutter the country's nuclear reactors by 2022, for example, has resulted in many power providers using brown coal, or lignite, the cheapest and dirtiest of all fossil fuels to keep the power flowing to customers. This, in turn, has led to an increase in carbon emissions.

According to the report, Germany, whose economy is the best in Europe, was the only country with a significant rise in both its emissions reductions and energy consumption last year. Along with Belgium, it is one of only two countries not on track to meet its 2020 targets in either category. According to the German Association of Energy and Water Industries, the country increased its carbon omissions by 20 million tons from 2012 to 2013, instead of reducing them.

In order to meet its goals, Germany must reduce emissions annually by 3.5 percent over the next six years, a feat that will result in substantial increases in energy costs, and generate political pressure to block measures that could hurt the economy.

Harro van Asselt, a researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute's Oxford Centre, said Germany saw a drop in emissions after many polluting industrial sites in the former East Germany were shuttered between the late 1990s and early 2000s. The closings occurred just as Europe began tackling climate change, which assisted the European Union in meeting its 2020 targets, he said.

"The question is not why they might stumble now; the main question is why did they reach their targets before," Mr. van Asselt said.

Now the hard part begins, he said, as the European Union faces the need to undertake more difficult and costly measures in areas like transportation and agriculture to ensure that emissions targets remain on track.

"As long as the European Commission doesn't undertake more measures in these sectors, they are going to have difficulties in even reaching their goals for 2030," Mr. van Asselt said.

Globally, the environmental news is not all bleak. The United States failed to adopt the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, in part because Congress feared it would hurt the country economically. But last year President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China reached an agreement that set new goals for those countries to curb their carbon emissions within the next 15 years. The deal was seen as a breakthrough, helping to resolve some of the differences between two of the world's biggest polluters, whose dispute was partly the reason a climate agreement was not reached in Copenhagen in 2009.

European leaders are counting on recent international efforts to help reach a global agreement in Paris. The most recent report issued by the United Nations last year warned that failure to reduce emissions could alter the climate so drastically that it could endanger life as we know it. The Europeans hope this added pressure, coupled with the moral example they tried to set decades ago, will contribute to a lasting global agreement on emissions reductions.

"I think the role of Europe is essential and we have demonstrated that we can make solid multinational agreements that can work," Mr. Bruyninckx said.

Correction:

An article on Tuesday about a report's finding that the European Union will fail to meet its goal of significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 unless it takes more aggressive measures erroneously attributed a distinction to Germany. Germany and Belgium - not just Germany - are the only countries in the European Union not on track to meet their 2020 targets in emissions.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Europe Unlikely to Meet Climate Goal, Study Finds. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Europe Unlikely to Meet Climate Goal, Study Finds

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BERLIN - The European Union will fail to meet an ambitious goal of significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 unless it takes more aggressive measures to limit the use of fossil fuels and adopts new environmental policies, according to a report scheduled for release on Tuesday.

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Hundreds of Chinese Cities Don’t Meet Air Standards, Report Finds

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Hundreds of Chinese Cities Don’t Meet Air Standards, Report Finds

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More than 90% of Chinese cities didn't meet air standards due to heavy pollution in the first 3 months of data collecting

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BEIJING - Air pollution data from the Chinese government shows that more than 90 percent of 360 Chinese cities failed to meet national air quality standards in the first three months of this year, according to a report released on Tuesday by Greenpeace East Asia.

Interior provinces were found to have the most polluted cities during those months. Cities near the eastern and southern coasts also had dire levels of fine pollutants, but the levels were lower than in the same period one year ago, the report said. The drop could be because of central government policies announced in late 2013 aimed at limiting coal use in China 's most densely populated regions.

Researchers at Greenpeace East Asia, which is based in Beijing, ranked 360 cities after looking at levels of fine particulate matter called PM 2.5, considered more dangerous than other forms of pollutants because it can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream.

Air monitors in 367 Chinese cities record the levels of PM 2.5 and other kinds of pollutants hourly, and the data was released with the approval of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Greenpeace said it discarded data from seven cities for the report because it was flawed.

The average concentration of PM 2.5 in the 360 cities was 66 micrograms per cubic meter, nearly twice the national standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter. The average was more than two and a half times the exposure limit recommended by the World Health Organization. That limit is 25 micrograms per cubic meter over a 24-hour period.

Only 32 cities met the national air quality standard, while 141 cities, or nearly 40 percent, had PM 2.5 levels that were more than twice the standard.

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Despite a recent drop in the growth rate of coal use, China continues to have among the most polluted cities in the world, air pollution data from the Chinese government shows. Credit Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

The most polluted provinces were Henan, Hubei and Hebei. Beijing ranked fourth, and Shandong, on the east coast, was fifth. All of those areas have or are surrounded by heavy industrial factories that rely on burning coal. The three most polluted cities were Baoding, a steel town in Hebei; Kashgar, a traditional Silk Road oasis town in the far western region of Xinjiang; and Xingtai, another industrial town in Hebei. The three cleanest cities, in order, were all in the far west: Linzhi in Tibet, Lijiang in Yunnan Province and Altay in Xinjiang.

The data show that China, despite a recent drop in the growth rate of coal use, continues to have among the most polluted cities in the world, alongside urban centers in India and Iran.

Communist Party leaders are aware that the environmental degradation is a major source of anxiety and discontent among ordinary Chinese. Li Keqiang, the prime minister, promised in March 2014 to carry out a "war against pollution," a vow that he reiterated this March.

Yet some party officials are reluctant to allow the wider public too much of a say in how that war should be waged, as evidenced by the government ban on a hugely popular online video documentary on air pollution, "Under the Dome," that was carried on many Chinese websites for one week in early March.

Zhang Kai, a researcher at Greenpeace East Asia who helped oversee the report, said in an email interview that there was some positive news. He said Greenpeace believed that policies the central government announced in September 2013 to limit coal use in three major population centers had actually led to notable drops in PM 2.5 levels.

Beijing, for example, had a nearly 13 percent drop in PM 2.5 concentration levels from the same three-month period in 2014. The average level in Beijing was 92.4 micrograms per cubic meter - still nearly four times the recommended limit set by the World Health Organization. Mr. Zhang said Hebei over all had a 31 percent improvement in average PM 2.5 concentration, although, as in Beijing, the level was still in a dismal range.

The government's air-monitoring methodology was recently called into question in a report released by the Center for Statistical Science at Peking University. That report said the air monitors and the collection of data by the government failed to take into account wind patterns and other weather phenomena when calculating PM2.5 levels.

Windy months might give a false impression that PM2.5 levels have dropped. The report said that average PM 2.5 levels in 2013 and 2014 were worse than in the two previous years if weather patterns were taken into account.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the unit of measurement used for the concentration of PM 2.5 particles. It is the number of micrograms per cubic meter, not per square meter.

Mia Li contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Report Finds Chinese Cities Fail to Meet Air Standards. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Hundreds of Chinese Cities Don't Meet Air Standards, Report Finds

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BEIJING - Air pollution data from the Chinese government shows that more than 90 percent of 360 Chinese cities failed to meet national air quality standards in the first three months of this year, according to a report released on Tuesday by Greenpeace East Asia.

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Bacteria the Newest Tool in Detecting Environmental Damage

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Bacteria the Newest Tool in Detecting Environmental Damage

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Scientists discovered a form of bacteria to test pollutants in places from well water to the air.

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New Research Will Help Forecast Bad Ozone Days Over the Western US

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New Research Will Help Forecast Bad Ozone Days Over the Western US

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High ozone days and ocean patterns in different parts of Western US are now being used to predict future bad ozone days

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The reaction most people have when they hear the word bacteria is rarely a good one.

While it's true that food- and water-borne bacteria cause untold illnesses and even death around the world, a team of researchers from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has found a way to use bacteria to help prevent some of the very symptoms most people associate with them.

Terry Hazen, the Governor's Chair for Environmental Biotechnology, a joint UT-ORNL appointment, is working with a team of researchers who have developed a method of using bacteria to help test for the presence of a wide array of pollutants.

"Bacteria can be a great bio-sensor for the environment," said Hazen, who holds appointments in environmental engineering, microbiology and earth and planetary sciences at UT. "Critically, even if you can't see the contaminant, the bacteria will react a certain way if pollutants have been there in the past."

For example, someone considering seaside construction who wants to know if there has ever been an oil spill could use the bacteria testing method being developed to be sure about the environmental health of the area, even if the obvious physical signs of a spill have long since passed.

The test also can detect the presence of things even less visible than an oil spill, such as uranium contamination or nitrate pollution.

For the billions of people worldwide who rely on well water, having such a test could make a huge difference in their health and quality of life.

The test isn't overly complicated or time consuming, either.

Starting with the knowledge that bacteria respond to their changing environment in predictable ways, the team used DNA sequencing and gene tracking to come up with a model to help predict contamination.

"By using the latest techniques in DNA sequencing we can determine the community structure and model it to test for contamination," said Hazen. "We've used it on our testing grounds of 93 well clusters in Oak Ridge with hundreds of different parameters and were able to get consistent results for uranium, nitrate and pH concentrations in the groundwater.

"It also accurately predicted oil in water samples taken during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."

All told, the process can be done and results returned overnight for up to 100 or so tests a night.

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dentistry; infectious diseases; ulcers; bacteria; microbiology; extreme survival; pollution; oil spills; environmental issues

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Bacteria the newest tool in detecting environmental damage

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A method of using bacteria to help test for the presence of a wide array of pollutants has been developed by researchers. The scientists say that their method may potentially be used for everything from well water testing to seaside construction purposes.

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New research published in Nature Communications led by Meiyun Lin of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and NOAA's cooperative institute at Princeton University, reveals a strong connection between high ozone days in the western U.S. during late spring and La Niña, an ocean-atmosphere phenomena that affects global weather patterns.

Recognizing this link offers an opportunity to forecast ozone several months in advance, which could improve public education to reduce health effects. It would also help western U.S. air quality managers prepare to track these events, which can have implications for attaining the national ozone standard.

Exposure to ozone is harmful to human health, can cause breathing difficulty, coughing, scratchy and sore throats, and asthma attacks, and can damage sensitive plants.

"Ozone in the stratosphere, located 6 to 30 miles (10 to 48 kilometers) above the ground, typically stays in the stratosphere," said Lin. "But not on some days in late spring following a strong La Niña winter. That's when the polar jet stream meanders southward over the western U.S. and facilitates intrusions of stratospheric ozone to ground level where people live."

Over the last two decades, there have been three La Niña events -- 1998-1999, 2007-2008 and 2010-2011. After these events, scientists saw spikes in ground level ozone for periods of two to three days at a time during late spring in high altitude locations of the U.S. West.

While high ozone typically occurs on muggy summer days when pollution from cars and power plants fuels the formation of regional ozone pollution, high-altitude regions of the U.S. West sometimes have a different source of high ozone levels in late spring. On these days, strong gusts of cold dry air associated with downward transport of ozone from the stratosphere pose a risk to these communities.

Lin and her colleagues found that these deep intrusions of stratospheric ozone could add 20 to 40 parts per billion of ozone to the ground-level ozone concentration, which can provide over half the ozone needed to exceed the standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has proposed tightening that standard currently set at 75 parts per billion for an eight-hour average to between 65 and 70 parts per billion.

Under the Clean Air Act, these deep stratospheric ozone intrusions can be classified as "exceptional events" that are not counted towards EPA attainment determinations. As our national ozone standard becomes more stringent, the relative importance of these stratospheric intrusions grows, leaving less room for human-caused emissions to contribute to ozone pollution prior to exceeding the level set by the U.S. EPA.

"Regardless of whether these events count towards non-attainment, people are living in these regions and the possibility of predicting a high-ozone season might allow for public education to minimize adverse health effects," said Arlene Fiore, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University and a co-author of the research.

Predicting where and when stratospheric ozone intrusions may occur would also provide time to deploy air sensors to obtain evidence as to how much of ground-level ozone can be attributed to these naturally occurring intrusions and how much is due to human-caused emissions.

The study involved collaboration across two NOAA laboratories, NOAA's cooperative institutes at Princeton and the University of Colorado Boulder, and scientists at partner institutions in the U.S., Canada and Austria. It was also supported in part by the NASA Air Quality Applied Sciences Team whose mission is to apply earth science data to help address air quality management needs.

"This study brings together observations and chemistry-climate modeling to help understand the processes that contribute to springtime high-ozone events in the western U.S.," said Andrew Langford, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, whose teams measure ozone concentrations using lidar and balloon-borne sensors.

"You've heard about good ozone, the kind found high in the stratosphere that protects Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation," said Langford. "And you've heard about bad ozone at ground level. This study looks at the factors that cause good ozone to go bad."

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skin cancer; cholesterol; health policy; ozone holes; environmental issues; air quality; environmental policies; stem education; resource shortage

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New research will help forecast bad ozone days over the Western US

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A strong connection between high ozone days in the western US during late spring and La Nina, an ocean-atmosphere phenomena that affects global weather patterns, has been identified by researchers. Recognizing this link offers insight for public health and air quality managers.

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Congress Passes Bipartisan Bill to Improve Energy Efficiency

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Congress Passes Bipartisan Bill to Improve Energy Efficiency

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A moderate bill is passed to not only improve energy efficiency , but create jobs along the way.

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Congress on Tuesday passed a bill focused on improving energy efficiency in buildings and water heaters, a move celebrated by both parties for breaking longstanding partisan gridlock.

The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign into law this week, is a modest one. But its authors, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who had worked together for years on more ambitious energy-saving legislation, called it a significant victory.

"On the bill's merits - creating jobs, saving consumers money and reducing pollution - it was never a hard sell," Ms. Shaheen said. "The tough part was convincing Washington to not play politics with a good idea."

Mr. Portman said, "Our targeted energy efficiency bill has garnered widespread support because of a simple fact: It is good for the economy and good for the environment."

The two senators have been working together since 2011 on their broader energy efficiency measure. That bill, which also has bipartisan support, would create incentives for federal mortgage writers to incorporate energy-efficient heating and cooling systems into the value of a home, establish training programs in energy-efficiency construction, create programs to increase the energy efficiency of manufacturing supply chains, and direct the Energy Department to work with manufacturers on energy-efficient technology.

But efforts to bring the bill to the Senate floor have been thwarted by partisan debates over issues like climate change and the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

This year, the senators introduced a bill that incorporated a few elements of the broader measure. The narrower bill would create a voluntary program for landlords and tenants to improve energy efficiency in commercial buildings, mandate that large electric water heaters be run in a highly energy-efficient manner and require federal agencies to perform energy-use assessments on commercial buildings that they lease.

That measure was passed by a voice vote at 4 a.m. on March 27, at the end of an all-night voting session on amendments to a budget bill. The House then passed a companion bill on Tuesday, also by a voice vote.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Congress Passes Bipartisan Bill to Improve Energy Efficiency. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Congress Passes Bipartisan Bill to Improve Energy Efficiency

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Congress on Tuesday passed a bill focused on improving energy efficiency in buildings and water heaters, a move celebrated by both parties for breaking longstanding partisan gridlock. The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign into law this week, is a modest one.

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Hotels Embrace Sustainability to Lure Guests and Cut Costs

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Hotels Embrace Sustainability to Lure Guests and Cut Costs

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Hotels and guests are using a program called called Make a Green Choice in order to find greener ways to stay at hotels. Hotels that take part in this program are finding their business to be booming in CA due to drought.

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Itineraries

Dr. Stuart Gitlow, a psychiatrist, traveled this month to the Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta for a presentation at a conference about treating drug addiction.

During his three-night stay, he dispensed with housekeeping.

"I don't need my bed made every day and can certainly use the same towel three mornings in a row," he wrote in an email.

Dr. Gitlow was rewarded for his green efforts with 500 Starwood Preferred Guest loyalty points for each night of his stay. Had he not chosen points, he also had the option of receiving a $5 voucher for food.

The program, called Make a Green Choice, allows all guests, not just frequent travelers, to opt out of housekeeping. According to Starwood Hotels and Resorts, approximately 6.4 million guests have participated since 2009.

As the drought in California and the Western states draws increased attention to conservation, hotels are turning to sustainability as a way of both attracting guests and cutting costs.

Hotels have three reasons to pay attention to conservation, according to Steve Jennings, lead consultant for hotels and resorts in the United States at Deloitte: corporate sustainability; better expense management; and consumer interest. A 2013 study by TripAdvisor found that 79 percent of travelers placed an importance on properties that use environmentally minded practices.

Another report released in March by the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration showed that while guests were willing to participate in hotel sustainability practices, a greater number of guests join in when hotels offer different types of incentives, which may be charitable or financial. Those who participate in green programs are generally more satisfied with their stay, according to Rohit Verma, a Cornell University professor who has studied hotel sustainability.

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The bees' honey is also a key ingredient in a house cocktail, the Beetini, made with lemon, honey, honey comb, vodka and tequila. Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times

As a result, hotels here and abroad are introducing or augmenting farm-to-table cuisine in restaurants to lower their carbon footprint, providing charging stations for electric vehicles and using kitchen scraps for compost and even recycling cooking oil for experimental biodiesel fuel.

Behind the scenes, hotels are installing energy-efficient light bulbs and digital thermostats and are using recycled water for landscaping. They also are displaying discreet cards in guest rooms about the energy saved by not changing sheets and towels daily.

But they stop short of dictating to guests how to conserve. For example, hotels draw the line at advising guests to take shorter showers.

"Guests typically do whatever they do in their home environment," said Denise Naguib, vice president for sustainability and supplier diversity at Marriott International.

For the most part, hotels' green programs are similar across brands.

"The nature of hotel operations make it difficult to really have a significantly superior practice," said Bjorn Hanson, a professor at the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism at New York University.

Still, like the Starwood loyalty points, some hotel programs are intended to appeal directly to guests.

At Kimpton Hotels, which was recently acquired by the InterContinental Hotels Group, guests can help raise money for the Trust for Public Land and the Nature Conservancy. Guests receive a 15 percent discount for each night of their stay and $10 of the room rate is donated to the respective organization, chosen by the guest. If guests participate in the Nature Conservancy option, a tree is planted on their behalf.

Following the lead of the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, the Fairmont Washington, D.C., in Georgetown is constructing a home for bees. A 13-foot structure with two large planter boxes and root balls is being built by Donny Parrella, assistant director of engineering at the hotel and a beekeeper. It will house 50 mason bees that will join 100,000 Italian honeybees already in residence since 2009. "It looks like nature," Mr. Parrella said.

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A loaf of the Fairmont's honey walnut bread, sweetened with honey from the Washington hotel's rooftop beehive. Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times

The hotel, concerned with the problem of disappearing bees, uses the insects as an educational tool for local students. And the hotel bakers make honey walnut bread that appears on the hotel menu. The bees' honey is also a key ingredient in a house cocktail, the Beetini, made with lemon, honey, honey comb, vodka and tequila.

At the Westin Peachtree Plaza, where Dr. Gitlow stayed, groups are offered behind-the-scenes tours to learn about hotel sustainability. Sites include the kitchen, loading dock and laundry. The hotel has conducted seven tours since the beginning of the year.

It held an initial tour in 2013 during the annual conference of the American Society of Association Executives. Kristin Clarke, director of social responsibility for the trade association based in Washington, led the tour as well as a similar one a year earlier at the Omni Dallas Hotel.

She said that the tour made a vivid impression on attendees, who plan conferences for their own trade and nonprofit associations. "When they see 150,000 pounds of laundry, they understand the impact of linen reuse programs," she said, referring to an average load.

During the tours she asks guests environmental trivia questions. One example: What are the three R's of recycling? Answer: Reduce, reuse and recycle. She awards prizes, like an LED flashlight made from recycled plastic, for a correct answer.

Still, a hotel's green intentions can sometimes backfire. Dr. Gitlow said he had stayed in rooms (not at the Westin Peachtree Plaza) with weak water pressure, insufficient lighting and heating systems that do not properly warm a room, making sleep difficult.

As hotels continue to experiment, at least one expert says hotels may extend the concept of their existing concierge floors to sustainability.

"As hotels find ways to be environmentally sensitive, we may see an energy consumption and waste floor," Mr. Hanson said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: Hotels Embrace Sustainability, With Beehives, Biodiesel and Unmade Beds. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Hotels Embrace Sustainability to Lure Guests and Cut Costs

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Itineraries Dr. Stuart Gitlow, a psychiatrist, traveled this month to the Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta for a presentation at a conference about treating drug addiction. During his three-night stay, he dispensed with housekeeping. "I don't need my bed made every day and can certainly use the same towel three mornings in a row," he wrote in an email.

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Ire in Pakistan over energy conservation plan

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Ire in Pakistan over energy conservation plan

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Even though the government wants to conserve energy due to their excessive use, businesses aren't on board, because they are afraid they will lose money/.

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Offshore wind turbine construction could be putting seals' hearing at risk

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Offshore wind turbine construction could be putting seals' hearing at risk

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Although turbines are great for energy conservation, the turbines are so loud they are harming the hearing of seals.

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Noise from pile driving during offshore wind turbine construction could be damaging the hearing of harbour seals around the UK, researchers have found. They say more research is needed on how noise affects marine mammals' hearing and into engineering solutions to reduce noise levels. The study is published today in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.

There are currently 1,184 offshore wind turbines around the coast of the UK, between them generating around 4GW of power. The next round of construction, which began in 2014, will see hundreds more turbines installed to generate a further 31GW, yet we know little about the impact of construction noise on sea mammals' hearing.

The team of ecologists from the University of St Andrews attached GPS data loggers to 24 harbour seals while offshore wind turbines were being installed in the Wash in 2012. The data loggers collected information on the seals' locations and their diving behaviour, relaying the information onshore via the mobile phone network.

They then combined this data with information from the wind farm developers on when pile driving was taking place to produce models which predicted the noise each seal was exposed to, and compared this with noise levels that other studies show cause auditory damage. The model revealed that half of the tagged seals were exposed to noise levels that exceeded hearing damage thresholds.

Offshore wind turbines are installed using pile drivers - essentially large hammers that drive the foundation posts into the sea bed - which produce short pulsed sounds every few seconds. According to lead author of the study Dr Gordon Hastie of the university's Sea Mammal Research Unit: "These are some of the most powerful man-made sounds produced underwater, noise capable of travelling large distances underwater."

Although we have some information on the effects of noise on harbour seals' hearing, very little is known about the impact of the pulsed sounds produced by pile driving. However, a wealth of data exists on the effect of noise on humans and other terrestrial species, data which shows that powerful pulsed sounds can damage mammals' hearing.

"Like most marine mammals, harbour seals have very sensitive underwater hearing at a much broader range of frequencies than humans," he says. "Seals probably use underwater hearing during the mating season and to detect and avoid predators. They may also rely on their hearing for navigation and finding prey."

The team's results are important because seals are protected under European law and any impacts that might affect their conservation status need to be assessed prior to the construction of wind farms.

"Our predictions highlight that seals may routinely be exposed to potentially hazardous levels of underwater noise during pile driving, with potential implications for the conservation status of some populations. To reduce these potential impacts, regulators and industry are currently investigating engineering solutions to reduce sound levels at source, and methods to deter animals from damage risk zones in order to potentially reduce auditory damage risk," Hastie adds.

The team now hopes to validate their predictions by making hearing measurements on seals using special 'seal headphones', monitoring individual seals' movements at sea, and collecting long-term data on their growth, reproduction and survival.

Harbour seals live around the coasts of the North Atlantic and North Pacific from the subtropics to the Arctic. Around 30% of European harbour seals are found in the UK. An epidemic of phocine distemper virus cut numbers along the east coast of England by half in 1988, and although a second outbreak in the Wash in 2002 resulted in a decline of 22%, the population has increased dramatically since 2009.

Harbour seals weigh in at around 80-100kg and are long lived, living up to 30 years. They dive from the surface to depth to catch a variety of prey, from sandeels and herring to octopus and squid. They haul out in sheltered waters, usually on intertidal sand banks and estuaries, pups are born in June and July and the seals moult in August.

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sea life; dolphins and whales; marine biology; wind energy; acoustics; engineering; energy and the environment; renewable energy; oceanography

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Offshore wind turbine construction could be putting seals' hearing at risk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Noise from pile driving during offshore wind turbine construction could be damaging the hearing of harbour seals around the UK, researchers have found. They say more research is needed on how noise affects marine mammals' hearing and into engineering solutions to reduce noise levels.