# data[].attributes.body
Sea temperature and the lunar cycle predict the arrival of jellyfish in Israel. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 26 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160825102330.htm a jellyfish in Israel swim to the coast when the water is a certain temp. these jellys only travel only on full moon nights when the water is 28.2 to 30 degrees celsius

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http://www.livescience.com/55820-california-blue-cut-wildfire-nighttime-satellite-photo.html

California's Blue Cut Wildfire Glows in Nighttime Satellite Photo. (2016). Live Science. Retrieved 22 August 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/55820-california-blue-cut-wildfire-nighttime-satellite-photo.html

The blaze had ballooned to about 35,969 acres, with 22 percent of that contained, according to CalFire.
The amount of damage from the erratic fire has been difficult to estimate, though authorities have said "numerous" buildings have been destroyed

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(2016). Seattletimes.com. Retrieved 18 August 2016, from http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/students-join-project-to-track-air-quality-in-yakima-valley/

The battle against air pollution in the Yakima Valley, where air quality in winter months can sometimes be as bad as in traffic-choked Seattle, is about to get reinforcements in the form of students.

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Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water for six million Americans: Drinking water samples near industrial sites, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants have highest levels of fluorinated compounds. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 17 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809121418.htm

There are industrial chemicals being used in everyday items. Even drinking water have those chemicals. The chemicals being used have been also linked to chemicals.

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RED EARTH CREEK, Alberta - Kristyn Housman grabbed the end of a sampling auger, a steel tube that two colleagues had just drilled into a moss-covered hummock in a peat bog, and poked through a damp, fibrous plug of partly decomposed peat.

Peat has been building up for centuries in this bog, where the spongy moss is interspersed with black spruces and, on a late spring morning, the air is teeming with mosquitoes. The sample, taken from three feet down, is at least several hundred years old, said Ms. Housman, a graduate researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

"There's literally tons of carbon here," she said, looking around the bog, which covers several acres off a muddy oil-company road amid the vast flatness of northern Alberta.

In discussions of how nature regulates carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, forests receive most of the attention for their ability to absorb and store carbon. But peatlands play an important role, too.

There are an estimated 1.6 million square miles of peatlands, or about 3 percent of the earth's land surface, mostly in northern latitudes in Canada, Alaska, Europe and Russia.

Image

Students collecting a peat sample from the ground using an auger in Red Earth Creek, Canada, on June 17, 2016. Credit Ed Ou for The New York Times

Peat is made up of sphagnum and other mosses, which hold a large amount of water and contain compounds that inhibit decomposition. The peat slowly builds up over centuries because the annual growth exceeds the decay.

A relatively small amount of peat is mined to burn as fuel, to improve backyard gardens or to add smokiness to Scotch. But most of it stays where it is, and because it accumulates carbon over such a long time, it contains more carbon than is in all the world's trees and plants, and nearly as much as the atmosphere does.

Like forests, peatlands are threatened by climate change. Warming temperatures can dry out bogs, making them more susceptible to fires, and to deeper, more intense burning. A peat fire, which can smolder like a cigarette for months, can release a lot of carbon.

"It's carbon that has accumulated over several thousands of years," said Mike Waddington, a McMaster professor who has been researching peat in Alberta and elsewhere for more than two decades. "If it were to be released, the global CO ₂ concentration would be much higher."

The world has already had vast releases of carbon from peat, in Indonesia. Last year, bogs that had been drained for agriculture, and were drier because of El Niño-related warmth, burned for months, creating a haze visible from space and causing widespread health problems. At their peak in September and October, the fires released more carbon per day than was emitted by the European Union.

A peat sample showing the history of wildfires dating back hundreds of years. Scientists can trace the history of wildfires to better understand how the peat land acts as a carbon sink. Credit Ed Ou for The New York Times

While few people foresee that level of disaster in northern peatlands, concern about fires is growing. A major worry is that as climate change and other disturbances affect peatlands, the intensity of fires will increase, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere.

"They take thousands of years to develop," said Merritt Turetsky, a peat researcher at the University of Guelph in Ontario. "And in five minutes, a wildfire can blow through that area and release five to six hundred years of peat accumulation and change it forever."

The enormous spring wildfire that destroyed much of Fort McMurray, a city of 90,000 people 150 miles east of here, burned bogs as well as trees. In June, the trees were no longer on fire outside the town, but crews were overturning peat with backhoes in an effort to extinguish smoldering hot spots.

In a large wildfire in May 2011 that burned in and around the town of Slave Lake, about 80 miles south of here, some peat continued to burn through the winter, until spring rains and melting snow finally extinguished it.

Peat is generally resistant to burning, because sphagnum moss, which is dominant in a healthy bog, holds a lot of water. "If you have a large amount of this moss in a peatland, you aren't going to get a very severe fire," Dr. Waddington said. Typically only the top few inches of the peat will burn.

Warming, however, alters the system. Drier peat allows more oxygen to get to the roots of trees and other vegetation. This causes them to grow bigger, which means they use more water, further drying the peat.

As trees grow, they also provide more shade, which favors the growth of other mosses that, because they hold less moisture than sphagnum, are less fire resistant.

When the bog does catch fire, it may be more severe, with the combustion spreading deeper into the peat.

Other disturbances, like draining bogs to grow trees or to produce oil and gas, can also make a fire more severe. Dr. Waddington and others are doing research on how to restore bogs that have been drained, to reduce the risk of carbon loss through fires.

Normally a bog recovers slowly after a wildfire, with certain mosses and other vegetation taking over in stages until sphagnum mosses dominate. At the bog where Ms. Housman and her colleagues took samples, a section was deliberately burned last year. It is showing signs of recovery, with clumps of singed sphagnum moss already producing small shoots of regrowth.

The site of a recent prescribed burn in Red Earth Creek, Canada on June 17, 2016. After each wildfire, peat moss grows and accumulates carbon, building a new layer on top of each other. Credit Ed Ou for The New York Times

But an intense fire, or a combination of other factors, can delay or even halt recovery.

That is the case at a small bog south of Red Earth Creek that researchers have nicknamed "Scorcho" because it was severely burned in the 2011 Slave Lake fire. As much as four feet of peat was consumed in some parts of the bog.

"All that peat, combusted and gone," said Sophie Wilkinson, a McMaster doctoral student.

Five years later, the bog is showing few signs of returning to its old self. "It is definitely on the brink," Ms. Wilkinson said. "There's little to no sphagnum recovery, which is very worrying, because if it's going to return to a carbon-accumulating system, which is what you would hope, really, it needs to get that sphagnum back."

Scorcho may ultimately turn into something other than a bog - drier land with leafy trees like birches and aspens replacing the black spruces, with little to no moss and, as a result, less carbon storage.

The bog is laced with instruments to measure the water table, the evaporation of water from vegetation and other characteristics, but researchers are still uncertain why it is not recovering.

What is clear is that recovery from a fire is a delicate process, one that global warming will complicate.

"Climate change will determine the severity and frequency of burns the bog has to be resilient to," Ms. Housman said.

Referring to Scorcho, Ms. Wilkinson said: "Like, if this was to burn again? Who knows, really, what's going to happen."

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As Peat Bogs Burn, a Climate Threat Rises

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RED EARTH CREEK, Alberta - Kristyn Housman grabbed the end of a sampling auger, a steel tube that two colleagues had just drilled into a moss-covered hummock in a peat bog, and poked through a damp, fibrous plug of partly decomposed peat.

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Samples of public drinking water supplies for six million people in the US show levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems exceed federally recommended safety levels.

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water for six million Americans: Drinking water samples near industrial sites, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants have highest levels of fluorinated compounds." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 10 August 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809121418.htm>.

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hevay winds are down southeast in lousisiana to florida

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http://www.livescience.com/53858-rare-triple-waterspout-severe-weather.html

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160815114836.htm

Today's electric vehicles can make a dent in climate change: Electric vehicles can meet drivers' needs enough to replace 90 percent of vehicles now on the road. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160815114836.htm

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Tighter air pollution standards may save thousands of lives, greatly improve public health: New report includes online tool with searchable information on health risks. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160810113649.htm
People need to learn to quit polluting so much so that way the earth can live longer #gogreen

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Environmental Science Articles & Journals | EnvironmentalScience.org

Environmental Science Articles & Journals | EnvironmentalScience.org. (2016). Environmentalscience.org. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.environmentalscience.org/articles-journals

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Latitude is the main factor which determines the organic pollutant concentration in Antarctic giant petrels -emblematic species in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions-, according to an article from the journal Environmental Research in which Professor Jacob González Solís, from the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute of the University of Barcelona (IRBio) takes part.

The research, directed by experts of the Institute of General Organic Chemistry (IQOG-CSIC), analyses the impact by persistent organic pollutants (COP) -toxic compounds with a high permanency on the environment which bio-accumulate in organisms- on oceanic birds present in areas of different latitudes in the Antarctic Ocean.

Northern giant petrels ( Macronectes halli) and southern ones ( M. giganteus) are the great scavengers in sub-Antarctic and Antarctic environments, and they have an extreme life strategy based on a long longevity and low fecundity (an only egg per each reproductive period). They are widely distributed in the southern ocean and can cover thousands of kilometres to feed themselves, but their population are highly vulnerable to any threat affecting their adult survival.
High latitudes, less pollutants
"In general, the further south you go, the lower the levels of organic pollutants are in marine birds. These pollutants, created by human activity, reach all places on earth via atmospheric transport, mainly. They reach the Antarctic too but in less quantity," said Professor Jacob González Solís, author of several genetic and marine bird population studies in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Antarctic oceans.

"Unfortunately -he continues- we still don't know the effects these compounds could have on ocean birds. Now the detected levels are low, therefore if there is any negative effect it is light so it would be hard to detect. However, we need to do more research in order to discover the effects of chemical pollution on wild fauna."
A chemical footprint for the entire planet
According to the experts, the organic pollutant levels are similar in Arctic and Antarctic birds. "These chemical compounds, widely used in the past, have probably reached both poles. The organic compounds with a more recent use, such as flame retardants, are now more common in the Arctic than the Antarctic, probably because emission sources are more abundant and closer to the poles in the northern hemisphere rather than in the south. Someday, however, they will get everywhere," warned González Solís.
When mercury gets to Antarctic latitudes
Albatross and giant petrels are the ocean birds with more exposure to mercury pollution in Antarctic and sub-Antarctic environments, according to another study by González Solís (Environmental Pollution, 2016).

"This fact is probably related to the increase of mercury emission in emerging countries," says González Solís. "In general, diet is the main entrance of pollutants in marine birds -continues the expert-. Lots of pollutants (such as COP and mercury) are biomagnified through the trophic network. This makes the most vulnerable species to be found in higher trophic levels (albatross and petrels), since they feed from fish or squids, or in the case of giant petrels, from penguin and seal carrion." Most of the average sized Antarctic penguins, however, feed from krill and therefore their pollution levels are lower.

This other study analyses mercury concentration on feathers, an efficient methodology to control pollution levels of this metal in birds around the world. "With age -says the researcher- these animals can bio-accumulate some of these pollutants in organs such as the liver; but in general they have excretion ways that prevent pollutants from reaching toxic concentrations."

"In the case of mercury, one of the most important excretion ways is the feather changing. To confront the feather wear, most of the birds change them once a year and this process is a mercury excretion mechanism that reduces the levels of this pollutant on the organism," says González Solís. Another excretion way is the creation of the egg, and thus after the egg laying, females use to show lower pollutant levels compared to males.
Is it possible to lower pollutant emissions?
The effects of pollutants (COP, mercury) vary among the different Antarctic ecosystem organisms. Migrating to lower latitudes and northern hemisphere polluted areas and occupying a higher level in the trophic level are facts that increase the effects of pollutants in ocean birds. Although the toxicity of these products is well documented, its real impact on wild fauna population is still unknown for the scientists.

"These aspects are, in particular, the ones we study with the research in the University of Barcelona, focusing on analysing ecology and preservation of this group of birds" said the author. In this sense, understanding the environment pollution levels is done by studying the ecology of each species, since it is the key factor in final pollution levels. According to the UB-IRBio researcher, "the best way to fight environmental pollution is by reducing its emission sources; but to do so we need international agreements which are hard to get."

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nature; fish; birds; zoology; air quality; environmental science; pollution; air pollution

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Chemical pollution gets to Antarctic marine bird colonies

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Latitude is the main factor which determines the organic pollutant concentration in Antarctic giant petrels -emblematic species in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions-, according to an article from the journal Environmental Research in which Professor Jacob González Solís, from the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute of the University of Barcelona (IRBio) takes part.

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Industrial chemicals are being used in everyday items, including our drinking water. They have found that these chemicals are linked to cancer.

Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water for six million Americans: Drinking water samples near industrial sites, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants have highest levels of fluorinated compounds

Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water for six million Americans: Drinking water samples near industrial sites, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants have highest levels of fluorinated compounds. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2

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As Peat Bogs Burn, a Climate Threat Rises. (2016). Nytimes.com. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/science/climate-change-carbon-bogs-peat.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FGlob

About 3% of earth's surface is covered in peatlands, and they contain compounds of decomposition. Warming temperatures can dry out bogs and then they become more susceptible to fires. A peat fire can release a lot of carbon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/science/climate-change-carbon-bogs-peat.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FGlobal%20Warming&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=collection&_r=1

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Managing uncertainty: How soil carbon feedbacks could affect climate change. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160802125603.html

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160815185826.htm

Van Allen probes catch rare glimpse of supercharged radiation belt

Van Allen probes catch rare glimpse of supercharged radiation belt. (2016).ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016,  from
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160815185826.htm

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Next time the news reports on poor ozone or air quality, you may want to heed the warning.

A recent study, dubbed the "Health of the Air" report, from New York University reveals the impact pollution has on life in metropolitan areas. As expected, the results can be hazardous to your health.

An estimated 168 people die every year in Connecticut and about 472 people also have a major health event due to pollution, according to the report. The report also estimates 344,567 days are impacted each year, which involve restricted activity days, acute respiratory symptom days, work loss days, and school loss days, because of pollution.
Related: Fairfield County may have the worst air in the state
Locally, the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk metropolitan area sees approximately 48 deaths per year, 149 major health incidents, and 116,253 impacted days per year due to pollution.

To arrive at their results, NYU measured the 8-hour ozone levels and fine particulate matter collected across three years in selected metropolitan cities.

In a release last June, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Robert Klee blamed Connecticut's air quality on outside sources.

"Connecticut has the highest ozone levels in the Northeast - which adversely impacts the health of our citizens and the quality of life in our state," Klee said in a press release, petitioning for federal assistance. "Air pollution transported into Connecticut from upwind sources and emissions from diesel-powered trucks are beyond our jurisdiction, and these petitions are part of our ongoing effort to have EPA address these sources."

But before you begin living behind a gas mask, NYU's report has some cautions.

"It is important to note that these results represent population-level impacts and are not directly representative as an estimate of individual risk," the report said. "Thus, cities with high estimates of air pollution related health impacts are typically those with both large populations and elevated pollution concentrations."
Related: What to do on rainy days in southwestern Connecticut
However some health concerns were not addressed, which may still cause readers to exercise a little more safety in the future.

"There are also additional adverse health impacts from air pollution not included in our analysis, particularly chronic outcomes such as cancer, new-onset asthma, and diabetes," the report said. "Deaths from these causes, and longer term nonfatal exacerbations of chronic illness, were not captured in this analysis but would add to the total health burden of air pollution outcomes."

Fairfield County recently received an "failing" grade in ozone levels in the American Lung Association's "State of the Air" report earlier this year. All Connecticut counties failed in ozone levels, as well.

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Study: Connecticut's air quality kills nearly 200 every year

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Next time the news reports on poor ozone or air quality, you may want to heed the warning. A recent study, dubbed the "Health of the Air" report, from New York University reveals the impact pollution has on life in metropolitan areas. As expected, the results can be hazardous to your health.

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The Guanting Basin would have been under water the height of one-third the Empire State Building during China's "Great Flood."

Credit: Wu Qinglong

With the help of a channel-digging dragon and magical, water-absorbing dirt, the legendary Emperor Yu is said to have saved China from a Great Flood that lasted thousands of years. While this tale is the stuff of myths, with plenty of embellishments added through the years, geologists are finding that at least part of the story is based in reality.

The ancient Chinese legend holds that a devastating flood of the Yellow River forced people from their homes and washed away farmland, leading to famine. Emperor Yu is said to have tamed the floodwaters by dredging the river bed. The heroic emperor went on to establish the Xia Dynasty, the first in Chinese history.

Until now, a lack of geological evidence for such a flood left some scholars questioning whether the legend tells the story of a real disaster or if it was propaganda used to justify imperial rule. [ Top 10 Deadliest Natural Disasters in History]

Now, a team of scientists has provided geological evidence for a disastrous flood that occurred around 1920 B.C., which could be the origin of the legend. The research, published today (Aug. 4) in the journal Science, reconstructed ancient events along the Yellow River - including an earthquake, a landslide and a dam burst - that led to a catastrophic flood.

If this ancient flood is in fact what came to be known as the Great Flood, then Emperor Yu's Xia Dynasty likely started several centuries later than historians had thought, the researchers said.

"Because this flood happens at a critical turning point in the development of Chinese civilization, this geological event takes on even greater significance," said study co-author David Cohen, an archaeologist at the National Taiwan University. "This is because the flood dates to the likely time period for China's legendary Great Flood, and this is the first time a flood of the scale large enough to account for it has been found."

The study shows that an enormous flood surged down the Yellow River after a dam broke. In their research along the Yellow River, in China's Qinghai province, the scientists found remains of a landslide, dam and outburst flood sediments downstream that allowed them to reconstruct the flood's size.

"The flood was about 300,000 to 500,000 cubic meters per second [about 10,600,000 to 17,650,000 cubic feet per second]. To put that into perspective, that's roughly equivalent to the largest flood ever measured on the Amazon River, the world's largest river," said study author Darryl Granger, a geologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. "It's more than 500 times larger than a flood we might expect on the Yellow River from a massive rainfall event."

The researchers were able to determine the flood year by dating human remains from people who died in the same earthquake that triggered the landslide that dammed the river. Granger said the remains of children, because they grow so quickly, their bones give an accurate and reliable age at the time of their death. This allowed the researchers to narrow the time frame in which the flood would have occurred.

Given the timing of this flooding event, plus information from historical texts and astronomical evidence, the researchers said the Xia Dynasty likely began around 1900 B.C., with Emperor Yu starting his reign in 1914 B.C.

Much of Chinese dynastic history is dated as a "floating chronology," Cohen said. Evidence drawn from ancient documents has allowed historians to determine the duration and order of the reigns, but not necessarily specific years. Especially in the case of the Xia Dynasty, which was originally thought to have begun in 2070 B.C., the historiographic evidence was lacking, he said.

Cohen explained that the basic calculations for each reign was based on a "leapfrogging" approach, the historians would move backward from a known point to determine each predecessor's reign.

"There has to be an anchor point somewhere in that," Cohen said.

This flood, if it is indeed the legendary "Great Flood," could be the Xia Dynasty's anchor point, the researchers said. Beyond supporting the legend of Emperor Yu's flood, the new research could offer researchers a greater understanding of China's ancient history, they said.

Original article on Live Science.

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Dragons and Magical Dirt: Legendary 'Great Flood' Left Real Evidence

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With the help of a channel-digging dragon and magical, water-absorbing dirt, the legendary Emperor Yu is said to have saved China from a Great Flood that lasted thousands of years. While this tale is the stuff of myths, with plenty of embellishments added through the years, geologists are finding that at least part of the story is based in reality.

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Dragons and Magical Dirt: 'Great Flood' Legend Left Real Evidence

Dragons and Magical Dirt: 'Great Flood' Legend Left Real Evidence. (2016).Livescience.com. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/55658-china-great-flood-legend-geological-evidence.html
http://www.livescience.com/55658-china-great-flood-legend-geological-evidence.html
During chinas crazy flood Myths talking about Dragons came up alot during the empire but most of there myths seem to be reaility but there are still more studys going on about it.

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Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems -- polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) -- exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the U.S., according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

The study will be published August 9, 2016 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

"For many years, chemicals with unknown toxicities, such as PFASs, were allowed to be used and released to the environment, and we now have to face the severe consequences," said lead author Xindi Hu, a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard Chan School and Environmental Science and Engineering at SEAS. "In addition, the actual number of people exposed may be even higher than our study found, because government data for levels of these compounds in drinking water is lacking for almost a third of the U.S. population -- about 100 million people."

PFASs have been used over the past 60 years in industrial and commercial products ranging from food wrappers to clothing to pots and pans. They have been linked with cancer, hormone disruption, high cholesterol, and obesity. Although several major manufacturers have discontinued the use of some PFASs, the chemicals continue to persist in people and wildlife. Drinking water is one of the main routes through which people can be exposed.

The researchers looked at concentrations of six types of PFASs in drinking water supplies, using data from more than 36,000 water samples collected nationwide by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2013-2015. They also looked at industrial sites that manufacture or use PFASs; at military fire training sites and civilian airports where fire-fighting foam containing PFASs is used; and at wastewater treatment plants. Discharges from these plants -- which are unable to remove PFASs from wastewater by standard treatment methods -- could contaminate groundwater. So could the sludge that the plants generate and which is frequently used as fertilizer.

The study found that PFASs were detectable at the minimum reporting levels required by the EPA in 194 out of 4,864 water supplies in 33 states across the U.S. Drinking water from 13 states accounted for 75% of the detections, including, in order of frequency of detection, California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Georgia, Minnesota, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

Sixty-six of the public water supplies examined, serving six million people, had at least one water sample that measured at or above the EPA safety limit of 70 parts per trillion (ng/L) for two types of PFASs, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Concentrations ranged as high as 349 ng/L for PFOA (Warminster, PA) and 1,800 ng/L for PFOS (Newark, DE).

The highest levels of PFASs were detected in watersheds near industrial sites, military bases, and wastewater treatment plants -- all places where these chemicals may be used or found.

"These compounds are potent immunotoxicants in children and recent work suggests drinking water safety levels should be much lower than the provisional guidelines established by EPA," said Elsie Sunderland, senior author of the study and associate professor in both the Harvard Chan School and SEAS.

Other Harvard Chan authors of the study included Philippe Grandjean and Courtney Carignan.

Funding for the study came from the Smith Family Foundation and a private donor.
PFASs and reduced immune response
Another Harvard Chan School study, led by Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, also suggested negative health impacts of PFAS exposure. That study looked at a group of about 600 adolescents from the Faroe Islands, an island country off the coast of Denmark. Those exposed to PFASs at a young age had lower-than-expected levels of antibodies against diphtheria and tetanus, for which they had been immunized. The findings suggested that PFASs, which are known to interfere with immune function, may be involved in reducing the effectiveness of vaccines in children.

Funding for this study came from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH (ES012199); the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (R830758); the Danish Council for Strategic Research (09-063094); and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency as part of the environmental support program DANCEA (Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic).

Journal References:

1. Xindi C. Hu, David Q. Andrews, Andrew B. Lindstrom, Thomas A. Bruton, Laurel A. Schaider, Philippe Grandjean, Rainer Lohmann, Courtney C. Carignan, Arlene Blum, Simona A. Balan, Christopher P. Higgins, Elsie M. Sunderland. Detection of Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs) in U.S. Drinking Water Linked to Industrial Sites, Military Fire Training Areas, and Wastewater Treatment Plants. Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 2016; DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00260

2. Esben Budtz-Jørgensen, Ulla B. Mogensen, Flemming Nielsen, Pal Weihe, Carsten Heilmann, Philippe Grandjean. Serum Vaccine Antibody Concentrations in Adolescents Exposed to Perfluorinated Compounds. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2016; DOI: 10.1289/EHP275

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health policy; workplace health; today's healthcare; water; environmental policy; environmental issues; stem education; ocean policy; world development

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water for six million Americans: Drinking water samples near industrial sites, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants have highest levels of fluorinated compounds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems -- polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances -- exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the US, according to a new study.

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Cleaner air may be driving water quality in Chesapeake Bay

Cleaner air may be driving water quality in Chesapeake Bay. (2016). EurekAlert!. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/uomc-cam072616.php
cleaner air makes cleaner water supply which means more drinking water for the people #cleanwater

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809121418.htm
Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water for six million Americans: Drinking water samples near industrial sites, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants have highest levels of fluorinated compounds. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809121418.htm
There's a new study that says that there are levels of industrial chemicals that exceed the federal safety limits in our public drinking water. It's possible that 100 million people in the US have drank water that might be able to cause cancer or other health problems.

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Brookshire, B. (2016). 50 years ago, humans could pick the oceans clean.Science News. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencenews.org/article/50-years-ago-humans-could-pick-oceans-clean?mode=topic&context=60&tgt=nr

The number of fish caught over a decade has concerned the fishiers and Aquaculture Department of the United Nations. Some of the endagered or threatend types of fish are some of the worlds favoirte food.

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Wildlife-friendly farming shown to benefit UK moths. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811131643.htm

Wildlife farming schemes can help boost the abundance of many UK moth speices, a new study by the University of Liverpool. Numbers have fallen in moths by 28% in the UK, the situation is worse in britain by 40%. The findings show that even a small scale habitat can beneifit the moth population by 40%.

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The lava in Kilauea's crater formed what looks like a smiley face.

Credit: Mick Kalber/Paradise Helicopters via YouTube

A "smiling" volcano has gone viral.

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has been actively erupting since 1983, and it's one of the most active volcanoes in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). But the volcano received more attention recently when the volcano's lava formed what looks like a smiley face.

The smiley face appeared in a lava lake crater on the west flank of Pu'u 'O'o, on Kilauea's East Rift Zone, according to Janet Babb, a geologist with the USGS' Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. [ Explosive Images: Hawaii's Kilauea Erupts for 30 Years]

Pu'u 'O'o also recently made headlines when the lava flow reached the ocean for the first time in three years.

While it may seem like Kilauea was smiling for the cameras, the "face" has a more scientific explanation: The bright spots and incandescent line that created the face shape were produced by normal volcanic activity.

As a lava lake circulates, lava upwelling and downwelling will occur on opposite sides of the lake, according to the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. This often results in a spattering of molten lava, which creates bright spots on the dark-colored, semi-solid lake surface. Circulation can also cause sections of the surface to pull apart, revealing the lava beneath and creating lines.

By chance, these processes occurred in a pattern that created the smiling image, Babb said.

"The Pu'u 'O'o lava lake just happened to produce two spattering sources (bright dots) that have been interpreted as 'eyes' and an incandescent line that has been interpreted as a 'mouth' - with the two lake surface features located relative to each other to produce the iconic symbol of a smiley face," Babb told Live Science.

The spattering and cracking also happened to occur as Mick Kalber, of a helicopter tour company called Paradise Helicopters, was flying overhead, where he was able to capture the volcano's "smile."

Original article on Live Science.

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The Science Behind Hawaii's 'Smiley Face' Volcano

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A "smiling" volcano has gone viral. Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has been actively erupting since 1983, and it's one of the most active volcanoes in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). But the volcano received more attention recently when the volcano's lava formed what looks like a smiley face.

# data[].attributes.body
The Science Behind Hawaii's 'Smiley Face' Volcano

The Science Behind Hawaii's 'Smiley Face' Volcano. (2016). Livescience.com. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/55630-science-of-kilauea-volcano-smiley-face.html
http://www.livescience.com/55630-science-of-kilauea-volcano-smiley-face.html
In Hawaii there is a active volcano that has been erupting for years and years.  Throughout the years cracks have been developing and getting bigger.  They all end up looking like a smiley face.

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Wildlife-friendly farming schemes can help boost the abundance of many UK moth species, a new study by the University of Liverpool has found.

Large moths (macro-moths) play an important role as pollinators, but numbers have fallen in the UK by 28% since 1968. The situation is particularly bad in southern Britain, where numbers are down by 40%, with habitat loss thought to be behind the decline.

The kinds of moths that benefited the most from the schemes were those commonly found on grassland, but there was a group of specialised chalk grassland moths that only benefited when the schemes were close to remnants of this rare habitat.

Scientists from the University of Liverpool and Natural England assessed the impact of schemes which are creating grassland habitats on the edge of arable farming fields.

The team surveyed macro-moths species on arable fields with and without wide grass margins, and on protected flower-rich chalk grasslands in southern England.

The findings, which are published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, show that even small-scale habitat creation can benefit the moth population, with the abundance of grassland moths 40% higher on wide grass margins compared to margins outside schemes.

Furthermore, moth species that are normally specialised to chalk grassland habitats also benefited from these schemes, provided that habitats were created close to existing chalk grassland.

Agri-environment schemes provide funding to farmers and land managers to farm in a way that supports biodiversity, enhances the landscape, and improves the quality of water, air and soil.

The study's lead authors, Jamie Alison and Dr Jenny Hodgson from the University's Institute of Integrative Biology, suggest that 'spatial targeting' of new habitats could help to increase the conservation benefits per pound spent on the schemes.

PhD student Jamie said: "We have found some of the strongest evidence to date that priority species could be more effectively conserved if land managers choose carefully where they create new wildlife habitats.

"It's clear from our results that protected habitats like chalk grassland form important refuges for many kinds of wildlife, including moths, in intensively farmed landscapes."

Dr Mike Morecroft from Natural England said: "It is important that we approach conservation at a landscape scale: this study shows how protected sites and wildlife friendly farming can complement each other to bring added benefits for species."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
nature; soil types; insects (including butterflies); agriculture and food; grassland; ecology; sustainability; exotic species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wildlife-friendly farming shown to benefit UK moths

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wildlife-friendly farming schemes can help boost the abundance of many UK moth species, a new study by the University of Liverpool has found. Large moths (macro-moths) play an important role as pollinators, but numbers have fallen in the UK by 28% since 1968.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Last year, we learned what is probably the worst global warming news yet - that we may have irrevocably destabilized the massive ice sheet of West Antarctica, which contains the equivalent of nearly 11 feet of sea level rise. The rate of West Antarctic ice loss has been ominously increasing, and there are fears that if too much goes, the slow and long-term process of ice sheet disintegration could accelerate.

Humans have a hard time conceiving of the incredible scale of an ice sheet, so the consequences of such a change can be lost upon us. But in a new paper in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Forensic Engineering, researchers Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., and John Abraham of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. - summarize what we now know about West Antarctica. That includes a finding that may serve as a wake-up call for Americans in particular.

Namely: If West Antarctica collapses entirely - a process that would likely play out over centuries, but that could substantially begin in this one - the expected 11 feet of sea level rise won't just spread out evenly across the ocean. The United States will actually get a lot more sea level rise than many other parts of the world - possibly over 14 feet. Call it geophysical karma - we're the nation most responsible for global warming and, at least in this particular case, we'll get more of the consequences.

So what source of cosmic equity will mete out just deserts in this case? As it turns out - and the mechanisms will be explained in much more detail below - the answer is none other than Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation - which states that all objects in the universe attract one another in relation to their masses (and the distance between them).
The U.S. has caused more global warming than any other country
Let's first consider who's responsible for the global warming that the world is currently experiencing and will continue to experience in the future.

You may have heard that China has recently surpassed the United States in annual greenhouse gas emissions - becoming the largest emitter. That's true, but it's a relatively recent occurrence (within the last decade). Looking back over time, the United States is far and away the number one emitter.

This analysis from the World Resources Institute shows that from 1850 to the year 2011, the United States, a single country, produced 27 percent of the total carbon dioxide emissions of the world. No other single country was close - indeed, the U.S. even outdistanced all the nations of the European Union combined:

And the thing about carbon dioxide is, it stays up in the atmosphere for a very, very long time. A recent study by geoscientist Raymond Pierrehumbert of the University of Chicago found that, for a sudden pulse of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that raises the concentration to 1,250 parts per million over pre-industrial levels (which were about 280 parts per million), about 900 parts per million of carbon dioxide will still be up there after 100 years. Indeed, concentrations will only decline to 675 parts per million over another 900 years.

Thus, much of the carbon pollution emitted over the last 150 or 160 years is very much still with us. It's still determining our future even today. Which means that for the global warming that the world is currently experiencing and will experience, the United States remains more responsible than any other single country.
Gravity's revenge
And now the comeuppance: In the event of a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, scientists have determined that the United States will receive more sea level rise than almost any other part of the world. (Granted, so will other countries in North America, like Canada and Mexico, which have considerably less global warming responsibility.)

Here's how it works: The ice sitting atop West Antarctica is incredibly massive. Basically, we are talking about nearly 500,000 cubic miles of ice, because the vast ice sheet is well over a mile thick in many places. This is why West Antarctica can lose the equivalent of a Mount Everest worth of ice every two years, and seem to barely even change.

And because West Antarctica is so massive, it has a dramatic gravitational pull on the objects around it. This is Newton 101. "It's really fundamental. What you might almost call high school physics," explains Jonathan Bamber, a professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

In this case, West Antarctica is so large that it pulls the global ocean toward it, which slopes upward toward the ice sheet and the Antarctic continent in general. But if West Antarctica were to lose a substantial part of its ice, then the gravitational pull would relax, and sea level would actually decrease near the ice sheet even as it spreads and increases across the global ocean.

But not evenly. Instead, areas farther from West Antarctica would get more sea level rise, and North America and the United States might get more than any other inhabited place on Earth. "The water that had been held close to West Antarctica spreads out across the ocean," explains Penn State glaciologist Richard Alley, "and we're far enough away that we weren't in the 'pile' that was held close to West Antarctica when the ice sheet was there and its gravity attracted the water to make the pile, but we get our share of the water from that pile when it spreads out."

How much extra water is that? I interviewed two scientists who have both studied and published on this matter - Bamber and Harvard University's Jerry Mitrovica. They disagree slightly on how much the United States gets punished, but only slightly. Let's go through their findings.

Here's a figure from Bamber's research, showing the distribution of sea level rise after a full loss of West Antarctica, equivalent to 3.3 meters or about 11 feet of sea level rise, globally averaged:

In the figure above, to determine how much sea level rise various regions get, you multiply the globally averaged sea level rise, 11 feet, by an additional factor as shown in the figure. According to Bamber, at the high end, the U.S. might get about 25 to 27 percent more sea level rise than the global average. So multiply 11 by 1.27 and you get just shy of 14 feet. (Not every part of the U.S. coast gets exactly the same amount, of course, due to local factors.)

Harvard's Mitrovica puts the number slightly higher. Here's a figure of his own, with a different color scheme but the same punchline:

"The peak areas are 30 to 35 percent higher" for the U.S. coast, says Mitrovica. So here, you could conceivably be pushing toward 15 feet.

The consequences would be staggering. We don't know what the United States will look like far in the future, when such an amount of sea level rise might be realized. But for the present day, Climate Central researcher Benjamin Strauss has calculated that "12.8 million Americans live on land less than 10 feet above their local high-tide line."
Don't mess with geophysics
So why does the United States get extra sea level rise? It turns out to be a geophysical "triple whammy," in Mitrovica's words.

The first and largest part of the effect is simply gravity. But that's not the only effect.

In addition, explains Mitrovica, taking a gigantic amount of ice off of the land of West Antarctica leads the crust of the Earth to rebound and thrust upward - pushing the ocean away from it. "That Jack in the Box will be pushing water out of the Antarctic," says Mitrovica. Some of that pushed water also comes all the way to the northern hemisphere and adds additional sea level rise.

And then, there's the most mind-boggling effect of all - what Bamber calls "true polar wander." Basically, moving this massive amount of ice off of West Antarctica also shifts the planet's axis of rotation slightly. Bamber likens it to how a spinning wheel with gum stuck to it will change its spin somewhat if you stick the gum somewhere closer to the center of the wheel, where the axis of rotation is.

For this reason, says Bamber, "the water sloshes about a little bit in the east-west direction," and North America gets more of it than Europe does. Triple whammy indeed.

There is, however, one way for the United States to get out of this special problem - albeit not a very good one. It is to cause even more global warming, so much so that we lose not only West Antarctica, but also the even bigger ice sheet of Greenland (which is generally considered the second-most-unstable major ice sheet).

Greenland has the same gravitational effect on the ocean. But in this case, its loss would send more water back toward the Southern Hemisphere, as its own "pile" of collected ocean water sloshes away.

So in some sense, if both Greenland and West Antarctica go, gravity's scales would be more balanced. Not that this is good news for anybody. After all, on top of West Antarctica's 11 feet of sea level rise, Greenland would contribute 20 more feet if it fully melted. So the world overall would experience truly massive sea level rise - albeit somewhat more evenly distributed between the two hemispheres.

Barring that, though, the justice meted out by gravity looks to be uncannily accurate. The United States has historically contributed 27 percent of all emissions, and according to the estimates by Bamber and Mitrovica, it will get almost exactly as much extra sea level rise (as a percentage).

What will never be equitable, though, is this: The U.S. is a rich country. It can pay a lot more to adapt to climate change and to rising sea levels. Poorer countries might get a little less sea level rise in scenarios like the one discussed here - but they're radically less able to cope with it.

And gravity can't do anything about that.
This article is part of our new Energy and Environment coverage. If you enjoy our section, please bookmark our page, follow our Twitter account, sign up for our e-mail newsletter and return often!

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The U.S. has caused more global warming than any other country. Here's how the Earth will get its revenge.

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Last year, we learned what is probably the worst global warming news yet - that we may have irrevocably destabilized the massive ice sheet of West Antarctica, which contains the equivalent of nearly 11 feet of sea level rise.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We're no stranger to shocking statistics related to meat production and the environment. We've reported on studies warning ' Eat Less Meat to Prevent Climate Disaster' and organizations recommending lowering meat and dairy consumption to preserve the Earth's biodiversity and enhance sustainability.

But the infographic below from CulinarySchools.org really nails it, providing a nice summary of just how wasteful meat production really is. Just a few of the startling statistics:

Going vegan brings greater environmental benefits than buying a hybrid vehicle or eschewing showers for 6 months.

It takes 2,400 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat.

Raising animals for food uses 30 percent of the Earth's land mass - or an area about the size of Asia.

7 football fields of land are bulldozed every minute to create more room for farmed animals.

Check out the infographic below to learn more...

Infographic by CulinarySchools.org

Browse through some recent posts below:

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Infographic: Veganism and The Environment - One Green Planet

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We're no stranger to shocking statistics related to meat production and the environment. We've reported on studies warning ' Eat Less Meat to Prevent Climate Disaster' and organizations recommending lowering meat and dairy consumption to preserve the Earth's biodiversity and enhance sustainability.

# data[].attributes.body
Enviomental Science
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811131643.htm
Eviralmentalism

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/infographic-veganism-and-the-environment/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We're no stranger to shocking statistics related to meat production and the environment. We've reported on studies warning ' Eat Less Meat to Prevent Climate Disaster' and organizations recommending lowering meat and dairy consumption to preserve the Earth's biodiversity and enhance sustainability.

But the infographic below from CulinarySchools.org really nails it, providing a nice summary of just how wasteful meat production really is. Just a few of the startling statistics:

Going vegan brings greater environmental benefits than buying a hybrid vehicle or eschewing showers for 6 months.

It takes 2,400 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat.

Raising animals for food uses 30 percent of the Earth's land mass - or an area about the size of Asia.

7 football fields of land are bulldozed every minute to create more room for farmed animals.

Check out the infographic below to learn more...

Infographic by CulinarySchools.org

Browse through some recent posts below:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Infographic: Veganism and The Environment - One Green Planet

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We're no stranger to shocking statistics related to meat production and the environment. We've reported on studies warning ' Eat Less Meat to Prevent Climate Disaster' and organizations recommending lowering meat and dairy consumption to preserve the Earth's biodiversity and enhance sustainability.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wildlife-friendly farming schemes can help boost the abundance of many UK moth species, a new study by the University of Liverpool has found.

Large moths (macro-moths) play an important role as pollinators, but numbers have fallen in the UK by 28% since 1968. The situation is particularly bad in southern Britain, where numbers are down by 40%, with habitat loss thought to be behind the decline.

The kinds of moths that benefited the most from the schemes were those commonly found on grassland, but there was a group of specialised chalk grassland moths that only benefited when the schemes were close to remnants of this rare habitat.

Scientists from the University of Liverpool and Natural England assessed the impact of schemes which are creating grassland habitats on the edge of arable farming fields.

The team surveyed macro-moths species on arable fields with and without wide grass margins, and on protected flower-rich chalk grasslands in southern England.

The findings, which are published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, show that even small-scale habitat creation can benefit the moth population, with the abundance of grassland moths 40% higher on wide grass margins compared to margins outside schemes.

Furthermore, moth species that are normally specialised to chalk grassland habitats also benefited from these schemes, provided that habitats were created close to existing chalk grassland.

Agri-environment schemes provide funding to farmers and land managers to farm in a way that supports biodiversity, enhances the landscape, and improves the quality of water, air and soil.

The study's lead authors, Jamie Alison and Dr Jenny Hodgson from the University's Institute of Integrative Biology, suggest that 'spatial targeting' of new habitats could help to increase the conservation benefits per pound spent on the schemes.

PhD student Jamie said: "We have found some of the strongest evidence to date that priority species could be more effectively conserved if land managers choose carefully where they create new wildlife habitats.

"It's clear from our results that protected habitats like chalk grassland form important refuges for many kinds of wildlife, including moths, in intensively farmed landscapes."

Dr Mike Morecroft from Natural England said: "It is important that we approach conservation at a landscape scale: this study shows how protected sites and wildlife friendly farming can complement each other to bring added benefits for species."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
nature; soil types; insects (including butterflies); agriculture and food; grassland; ecology; sustainability; exotic species

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wildlife-friendly farming shown to benefit UK moths

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wildlife-friendly farming schemes can help boost the abundance of many UK moth species, a new study by the University of Liverpool has found. Large moths (macro-moths) play an important role as pollinators, but numbers have fallen in the UK by 28% since 1968.

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Enviralmental science
University of Liverpool. "Wildlife-friendly farming shown to benefit UK moths." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 August 2016. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811131643.htm. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811131643.htm

Enviralmentalism:
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/infographic-veganism-and-the-environment/

Jennifer Valentine.  Inphographic: Veganism and the Enviornment.  One Green Planet.  12 July 2012.

Update:
Friendly farming can help boost abundance of the UK moth species.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811131643.htm
Wildlife-friendly farming shown to benefit UK moths

Wildlife-friendly farming shown to benefit UK moths. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/0

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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http://www.livescience.com/55630-science-of-kilauea-volcano-smiley-face.html
By Kacey Deamer, Staff Writer |  August 3, 2016

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Hawaii has what looks to be a smiling volcano.  The volcano has actually erupting since 1983.  It has been slowly cracking since it started erupting and is "cracking a smile."

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The lava in Kilauea's crater formed what looks like a smiley face.

Credit: Mick Kalber/Paradise Helicopters via YouTube

A "smiling" volcano has gone viral.

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has been actively erupting since 1983, and it's one of the most active volcanoes in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). But the volcano received more attention recently when the volcano's lava formed what looks like a smiley face.

The smiley face appeared in a lava lake crater on the west flank of Pu'u 'O'o, on Kilauea's East Rift Zone, according to Janet Babb, a geologist with the USGS' Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. [ Explosive Images: Hawaii's Kilauea Erupts for 30 Years]

Pu'u 'O'o also recently made headlines when the lava flow reached the ocean for the first time in three years.

While it may seem like Kilauea was smiling for the cameras, the "face" has a more scientific explanation: The bright spots and incandescent line that created the face shape were produced by normal volcanic activity.

As a lava lake circulates, lava upwelling and downwelling will occur on opposite sides of the lake, according to the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. This often results in a spattering of molten lava, which creates bright spots on the dark-colored, semi-solid lake surface. Circulation can also cause sections of the surface to pull apart, revealing the lava beneath and creating lines.

By chance, these processes occurred in a pattern that created the smiling image, Babb said.

"The Pu'u 'O'o lava lake just happened to produce two spattering sources (bright dots) that have been interpreted as 'eyes' and an incandescent line that has been interpreted as a 'mouth' - with the two lake surface features located relative to each other to produce the iconic symbol of a smiley face," Babb told Live Science.

The spattering and cracking also happened to occur as Mick Kalber, of a helicopter tour company called Paradise Helicopters, was flying overhead, where he was able to capture the volcano's "smile."

Original article on Live Science.

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The Science Behind Hawaii's 'Smiley Face' Volcano

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A "smiling" volcano has gone viral. Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has been actively erupting since 1983, and it's one of the most active volcanoes in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). But the volcano received more attention recently when the volcano's lava formed what looks like a smiley face.

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On a cloudy day in July, in a remote village in northeastern India, Charu Das excitedly imitates the awkward movements of a stork with her hands.

In a few months, the greater adjutant stork-called hargilla, which means "swallower of bones" in Sanskrit-will descend on this hamlet, situated in Assam's Brahmaputra Valley, to breed in large numbers.

"You will soon catch sight of this dark, quirky-looking bird, with large, thick bills, stalking over the beds of these wetlands or on the rain-soaked paddy fields in its typical military gait," Das says.

Dadara and two nearby villages, Pasariya, and Singimari, are flanked by food-rich wetlands and brimming with tall trees perfect for nesting. The region has become a major stronghold for this homely creature: Due mostly to deforestation and widespread development of wetlands, only between 800 and 1,200 greater adjutant storks remain in India and Cambodia, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

But thanks to the efforts of the Hargilla Army, a conservation brigade of 70 local women, the region is now "the biggest greater adjutant nesting colony in the world," says Purnima Devi Barman, a wildlife biologist with Aaranyak, a conservation nonprofit in Assam.

Half-or around 550-of the big birds live in these three villages, according to a 2015 study led by Barman.

"Such a large number of nests have not been recorded in other .... colonies in India or in Cambodia."

Backed by the district administration and local conservation groups, the Hargilla Army has been successful reducing threats and protecting habitat of the stork that the group won the United Nations Development Program India's 2016 Biodiversity Award.

From Filthy to Famous

Not too long ago, however, the bird wasn't quite as welcome.

Many villagers considered the birds "filthy" because of their smelly droppings; harsh calls; and tendency to litter their food, sometimes collected from garbage dumps, Barman says.

Because the birds are so large-up to 18 pounds (eight kilograms)-and live in colonies, trees have to be strong enough to hold them and their many nests.

However, most tall, hardy trees grow on private lands, and local people would often chop the trees down to get rid of the storks, she says. ( Take National Geographic's bird quiz.)

The solution, Barman thought, was to work with the local communities to conserve the animal. Because women play decisive roles in Assam's rural households, Barman began befriending them, especially those from the families of tree owners.

Sacred Bird

She organized small, informal meetings to talk about the bird's role in the environment, such as scavenging and disposing of dead animals and its essential link in the food chain of the surroundings wetlands. Barman also emphasized the bird's importance in Hindu mythology, as Lord Vishnu's mount.

Thus the Hargilla Army was born.

"We were awestruck ... by the newfound importance of our villages due to this bird and the trees," recalls Nilima Das, a brigade member who's now an active conservationist. (Das is a common last name in Dadara.)

"Soon we realized that the bird in our backyard is not ordinary. It is sacred, and with just a few hundred left in the world ... we are fortunate to own the trees where they breed," she says with pride. (See more stork photos.)

After the women convinced their families to save the nesting trees, the people began developing a sense of ownership toward them-and since 2010, no one has cut down a tree, Barman claims.

Ornithologist Asad Rahmani says the brigade's work has helped the bird.

"I have personally visited the villages and witnessed the tremendous community-based effort of the Hargilla Army," says Rahmani, senior scientific advisor at the Bombay Natural History Society, who has not been involved in the project.

"The best part is that the brigade has been drawn from the rural community women" who know their environment well, and are thus best suited to safeguard the birds.

The conservation brigade, organized into 14 groups with five members, also has the support of many district administrators, police, and local nonprofits, says Barman, whose dedication to the species has earned her the nickname "Hargilla Baido," or "Stork Sister."

"It was my childhood dream to work on this spectacularly distinct bird, being pushed dangerously close to extinction," she says. (Also see " Beloved Storks, Emblems of Fertility, Rebounding in France.")

The conservationists have taken their message to schools, where children paint the bird. In one school, the women erected a plaster idol of the bird. The women are also learning to weave stork motifs into traditional products and garb that will be put up for sale.

Sometimes the women even play the part of greater adjutants themselves, donning masks in street-corner plays.

We "sing naam [prayer songs] to augur well for the mother birds and their eggs," says Pratibha Das, a brigade member who represents the local conservation committee.

The women have also written hymns just for the storks. Translated into English, the beginning of one reads: "Hargilla, you are safe in our village. Come and breed here and grow your family. We are blessed with your presence here."

'An Army Without Arms'

More challenges remain for the species, in particular chick deaths. If strong winds or storms knock the youngsters from their nests-which are sometimes 75 feet (23 meters) high-they could be injured or die.

As a result, the local government and conservation brigade has placed nets around trees to catch fledglings. If villagers notice fallen chicks, they inform the local police station. Officials then take the animals to the Assam State Zoo, where they'll recover before being released back into the wild. ( Read about the myth of storks as baby bringers.)

Since installing the nets, chick deaths have fallen considerably, Barman says.

Such accomplishments have encouraged the brigade to expand their protections to other greater adjutant nesting colonies in the Brahmaputra Valley.

"Our Hargilla Army is an army without arms," she says, "yet armed with the commitment and determination to battle against all odds in saving this endangered bird."

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All-Women 'Army' Protecting Rare Bird in India

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On a cloudy day in July, in a remote village in northeastern India, Charu Das excitedly imitates the awkward movements of a stork with her hands. In a few months, the greater adjutant stork-called hargilla, which means "swallower of bones" in Sanskrit-will descend on this hamlet, situated in Assam's Brahmaputra Valley, to breed in large numbers.

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With droughts and downpours in the chesapeake bay area the nitrogen levels are rising. When the nitrogen levels rise in this ecosystem, the algae that already exists starts to grow. These algae spores can cause great damage to this body of water because if it gets to high the bacteria can kill fish, plants, and anything that lives in that body water. And this isn't just happening over there, this can happen to any body of water if the nitrogen levels get to high. But runoff from farms or fields are also are also to blame for these levels rising. "With Droughts And Downpours, Climate Change Feeds Chesapeake Bay Algal Blooms". ScienceDaily. N.p., 2016. Web. 16 Aug. 2016.

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(NaturalNews) Just two weeks after the release of my new book Food Forensics, which identifies dangerous levels of lead contamination in turmeric products, the FDA has taken bold enforcement action on the subject. At least three turmeric spice manufacturers -- Gel Spice, JM Exotic Foods and Gel Spice -- have been forced to issue "voluntary" recalls of their turmeric products due to dangerous levels of lead found in their spices. (See photos of the recalled products below.)

See the official FDA recall notices here, here, and here.

For once, it seems, the FDA is actually doing its job!

As Natural News readers know very well, I've been warning consumers for years about lead in turmeric. Any person consuming turmeric products without knowing their lead test results is no doubt eating huge quantities of a dangerous heavy metal linked to brain damage, bone disorders and heart damage. Lead is notoriously common in turmeric powders and turmeric products because turmeric is usually grown in high-lead soils in India, then imported into the United States.

"Lead can accumulate in the body over time," warns one FDA recall page. "Too much can cause health problems, including delayed mental and physical development and learning deficiencies. Pregnant women, infants and young children especially should avoid exposure to lead. People concerned about blood lead levels should contact their physician or health clinic to ask about testing."

To my best knowledge, we are the only health product manufacturer and retailer in the world that tests everything we make and sell for heavy metals. See HealthRangerStore.com for our product line, which includes this popular turmeric extract liquid. We currently reject about 80% of raw materials batches due to high lead content, accepting only 20% for production use.

I personally oversee all the laboratory testing for heavy metals, which is conducted via ICP-MS instrumentation at my ISO-17025 accredited laboratory, CWClabs.com. There, every raw material we use is tested for lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, copper and over a dozen other elements. This is what allows us to reject high lead materials from ingredient suppliers.

Interestingly, all the lots we reject as being TOO TOXIC are purchased by some other turmeric manufacturer who sells their own toxic products to an unsuspecting public. Lead-contaminated products are sold right now at Amazon.com, Whole Foods and just about everywhere.

The FDA spot checks food and supplement manufacturers across America, visiting their facilities and taking samples of their products for testing via ICP-OES or ICP-MS. Yet, shockingly, the FDA still refuses to tell the public how much lead is required to trigger a recall.

Sadly, the FDA still has never published any lead limit information for foods, beverages or dietary supplements. (Only children's candy has an established lead limit.) This means that it is perfectly legal for food and spice manufacturers to sell products containing insanely toxic levels of all sorts of heavy metals. Many of these are even labeled ORGANIC as I've documented in my book Food Forensics.

For example, organic rice protein products sold in the United States right now continue to be heavily contaminated with cadmium and lead. Root spices such as turmeric and ginger are also routinely contaminated with not only toxic heavy metals, but extremely high bacteria counts as well (due to soil microbes, which technically may not be very dangerous compared to something like E.coli).

The surprising truth is that the FDA is far behind food safety standards that exist in European countries or even Canada, for that matter. For some reason, the FDA has never established heavy metals limits for food, beverages, spices and supplements sold in the United States. And because of that, dishonest, fraudulent retailers like Whole Foods are free to keep selling toxic products that contribute toxic loads to their unsuspecting customers.

Watch my stunning new mini-documentary, The WHOLE TRUTH about Whole Foods here: (has been viewed nearly 1 million times on Facebook alone...)

Now, at least, the FDA has essentially confirmed that my warning about lead in turmeric was right on the money. To my knowledge, my laboratory is the only ISO-accredited private laboratory in the world that's openly publishing off-the-shelf food composition analysis results in the interests of public safety.

And that's just sad, because this is the job the FDA should have been doing in the first place. See my science journal NaturalScienceJournal.org for nationwide water testing results that also show the mass lead contamination of municipal water supplies.

If you want CLEAN turmeric products that have been tested for heavy metals, my online store offers Organic Turmeric Root Powder, our Turmeric Gold Liquid Extract and this innovative Organic Golden Turmeric Paste Kit that combines turmeric with black pepper and coconut oil for enhanced absorption. I openly invite anyone -- including the FDA -- to test all these products for lead, cadmium and every other element known to modern science. You won't find toxic concentrations of these items in anything we sell.

If you want to see just how much lead really exists in your favorite foods, spices and supplements, check out my book Food Forensics. Here's the video trailer:

Here are some photos of the recalled turmeric products the FDA found to contain dangerous levels of lead:

About the author: Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journalNatural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to becontaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profitConsumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder ofthe email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popularconsumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helpeddefend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has releasedover a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

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Turmeric spices found heavily contaminated with toxic LEAD... FDA forces nationwide recalls for multiple brands (see list here)

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(NaturalNews) Just two weeks after the release of my new book Food Forensics, which identifies dangerous levels of lead contamination in turmeric products, the FDA has taken bold enforcement action on the subject.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems -- polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) -- exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the U.S., according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

The study will be published August 9, 2016 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

"For many years, chemicals with unknown toxicities, such as PFASs, were allowed to be used and released to the environment, and we now have to face the severe consequences," said lead author Xindi Hu, a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard Chan School and Environmental Science and Engineering at SEAS. "In addition, the actual number of people exposed may be even higher than our study found, because government data for levels of these compounds in drinking water is lacking for almost a third of the U.S. population -- about 100 million people."

PFASs have been used over the past 60 years in industrial and commercial products ranging from food wrappers to clothing to pots and pans. They have been linked with cancer, hormone disruption, high cholesterol, and obesity. Although several major manufacturers have discontinued the use of some PFASs, the chemicals continue to persist in people and wildlife. Drinking water is one of the main routes through which people can be exposed.

The researchers looked at concentrations of six types of PFASs in drinking water supplies, using data from more than 36,000 water samples collected nationwide by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2013-2015. They also looked at industrial sites that manufacture or use PFASs; at military fire training sites and civilian airports where fire-fighting foam containing PFASs is used; and at wastewater treatment plants. Discharges from these plants -- which are unable to remove PFASs from wastewater by standard treatment methods -- could contaminate groundwater. So could the sludge that the plants generate and which is frequently used as fertilizer.

The study found that PFASs were detectable at the minimum reporting levels required by the EPA in 194 out of 4,864 water supplies in 33 states across the U.S. Drinking water from 13 states accounted for 75% of the detections, including, in order of frequency of detection, California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Georgia, Minnesota, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

Sixty-six of the public water supplies examined, serving six million people, had at least one water sample that measured at or above the EPA safety limit of 70 parts per trillion (ng/L) for two types of PFASs, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Concentrations ranged as high as 349 ng/L for PFOA (Warminster, PA) and 1,800 ng/L for PFOS (Newark, DE).

The highest levels of PFASs were detected in watersheds near industrial sites, military bases, and wastewater treatment plants -- all places where these chemicals may be used or found.

"These compounds are potent immunotoxicants in children and recent work suggests drinking water safety levels should be much lower than the provisional guidelines established by EPA," said Elsie Sunderland, senior author of the study and associate professor in both the Harvard Chan School and SEAS.

Other Harvard Chan authors of the study included Philippe Grandjean and Courtney Carignan.

Funding for the study came from the Smith Family Foundation and a private donor.
PFASs and reduced immune response
Another Harvard Chan School study, led by Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, also suggested negative health impacts of PFAS exposure. That study looked at a group of about 600 adolescents from the Faroe Islands, an island country off the coast of Denmark. Those exposed to PFASs at a young age had lower-than-expected levels of antibodies against diphtheria and tetanus, for which they had been immunized. The findings suggested that PFASs, which are known to interfere with immune function, may be involved in reducing the effectiveness of vaccines in children.

Funding for this study came from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH (ES012199); the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (R830758); the Danish Council for Strategic Research (09-063094); and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency as part of the environmental support program DANCEA (Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic).

Journal References:

1. Xindi C. Hu, David Q. Andrews, Andrew B. Lindstrom, Thomas A. Bruton, Laurel A. Schaider, Philippe Grandjean, Rainer Lohmann, Courtney C. Carignan, Arlene Blum, Simona A. Balan, Christopher P. Higgins, Elsie M. Sunderland. Detection of Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs) in U.S. Drinking Water Linked to Industrial Sites, Military Fire Training Areas, and Wastewater Treatment Plants. Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 2016; DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00260

2. Esben Budtz-Jørgensen, Ulla B. Mogensen, Flemming Nielsen, Pal Weihe, Carsten Heilmann, Philippe Grandjean. Serum Vaccine Antibody Concentrations in Adolescents Exposed to Perfluorinated Compounds. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2016; DOI: 10.1289/EHP275

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
health policy; workplace health; today's healthcare; water; environmental policy; environmental issues; stem education; ocean policy; world development

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water for six million Americans: Drinking water samples near industrial sites, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants have highest levels of fluorinated compounds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems -- polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances -- exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the US, according to a new study.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems -- polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) -- exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the U.S., according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

The study will be published August 9, 2016 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

"For many years, chemicals with unknown toxicities, such as PFASs, were allowed to be used and released to the environment, and we now have to face the severe consequences," said lead author Xindi Hu, a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard Chan School and Environmental Science and Engineering at SEAS. "In addition, the actual number of people exposed may be even higher than our study found, because government data for levels of these compounds in drinking water is lacking for almost a third of the U.S. population -- about 100 million people."

PFASs have been used over the past 60 years in industrial and commercial products ranging from food wrappers to clothing to pots and pans. They have been linked with cancer, hormone disruption, high cholesterol, and obesity. Although several major manufacturers have discontinued the use of some PFASs, the chemicals continue to persist in people and wildlife. Drinking water is one of the main routes through which people can be exposed.

The researchers looked at concentrations of six types of PFASs in drinking water supplies, using data from more than 36,000 water samples collected nationwide by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2013-2015. They also looked at industrial sites that manufacture or use PFASs; at military fire training sites and civilian airports where fire-fighting foam containing PFASs is used; and at wastewater treatment plants. Discharges from these plants -- which are unable to remove PFASs from wastewater by standard treatment methods -- could contaminate groundwater. So could the sludge that the plants generate and which is frequently used as fertilizer.

The study found that PFASs were detectable at the minimum reporting levels required by the EPA in 194 out of 4,864 water supplies in 33 states across the U.S. Drinking water from 13 states accounted for 75% of the detections, including, in order of frequency of detection, California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Georgia, Minnesota, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

Sixty-six of the public water supplies examined, serving six million people, had at least one water sample that measured at or above the EPA safety limit of 70 parts per trillion (ng/L) for two types of PFASs, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Concentrations ranged as high as 349 ng/L for PFOA (Warminster, PA) and 1,800 ng/L for PFOS (Newark, DE).

The highest levels of PFASs were detected in watersheds near industrial sites, military bases, and wastewater treatment plants -- all places where these chemicals may be used or found.

"These compounds are potent immunotoxicants in children and recent work suggests drinking water safety levels should be much lower than the provisional guidelines established by EPA," said Elsie Sunderland, senior author of the study and associate professor in both the Harvard Chan School and SEAS.

Other Harvard Chan authors of the study included Philippe Grandjean and Courtney Carignan.

Funding for the study came from the Smith Family Foundation and a private donor.
PFASs and reduced immune response
Another Harvard Chan School study, led by Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, also suggested negative health impacts of PFAS exposure. That study looked at a group of about 600 adolescents from the Faroe Islands, an island country off the coast of Denmark. Those exposed to PFASs at a young age had lower-than-expected levels of antibodies against diphtheria and tetanus, for which they had been immunized. The findings suggested that PFASs, which are known to interfere with immune function, may be involved in reducing the effectiveness of vaccines in children.

Funding for this study came from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH (ES012199); the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (R830758); the Danish Council for Strategic Research (09-063094); and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency as part of the environmental support program DANCEA (Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic).

Journal References:

1. Xindi C. Hu, David Q. Andrews, Andrew B. Lindstrom, Thomas A. Bruton, Laurel A. Schaider, Philippe Grandjean, Rainer Lohmann, Courtney C. Carignan, Arlene Blum, Simona A. Balan, Christopher P. Higgins, Elsie M. Sunderland. Detection of Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs) in U.S. Drinking Water Linked to Industrial Sites, Military Fire Training Areas, and Wastewater Treatment Plants. Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 2016; DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00260

2. Esben Budtz-Jørgensen, Ulla B. Mogensen, Flemming Nielsen, Pal Weihe, Carsten Heilmann, Philippe Grandjean. Serum Vaccine Antibody Concentrations in Adolescents Exposed to Perfluorinated Compounds. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2016; DOI: 10.1289/EHP275

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
health policy; workplace health; today's healthcare; water; environmental policy; environmental issues; stem education; ocean policy; world development

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water for six million Americans: Drinking water samples near industrial sites, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants have highest levels of fluorinated compounds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems -- polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances -- exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the US, according to a new study.

# data[].attributes.body
environmental science: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809121418.htm
environmentalism: http://www.naturalnews.com/054964_turmeric_spices_lead_contamination_FDA_recall.html

# data[].attributes.headline
Gabby Clark. Wind power fiercer than expected: As US' first offshore wind farm takes root, study indicates wind may be more powerful, turbulent than expected. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811143541.htm

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Gabby Clark. Wind power fiercer than expected: As US' first offshore wind farm takes root, study indicates wind may be more powerful, turbulent than expected. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811143541.htm

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Score:7
Post: Researchers from Deleware University have found that winds in the north east, based on the atmosphere, are either too unstable or stable

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Forget Sharks, Lightning Poses Big Beach Threat. (2016). Livescience.com. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/55612-why-beachgoers-get-struck-by-lightning.html

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Credit: Kinetic Studios | Shutterstock.com

The beach may be the perfect place to cool off during the summer, but it's also one of the deadliest spots to be caught during a lightning storm. This past weekend, lightning struck and killed a 5-year-old boy on a North Carolina beach, according to news reports. Though it may sound like an unusual accident, this type of tragedy is not as rare as people may think, experts say.

The boy's death is part of a worrying trend, said John Jensenius, a lightning safety specialist with the National Weather Service. It's dangerous to be outside at all during a lightning storm, but the beach is especially dangerous, he said. [ Electric Earth: Stunning Images of Lightning]

The boy's family was vacationing on Carova Beach on Sunday (July 31) when the storm began, and they were moving toward shelter when lightning hit the child, reported United Press International.

"If you are on the beach, chances are you're the tallest thing in the immediate area, which makes you more vulnerable to being struck directly by lightning," Jensenius told Live Science. "One of the problems is that people don't react quickly enough. They don't like to be inconvenienced by thunderstorms, so people tend to wait outside too long before seeking safety."

Moreover, the constant crash of waves may make it hard for people to hear approaching storms, he said.

These factors may explain why the beach is the second deadliest place to be during a lightning storm, Jensenius said. Between 2006 and 2015, a total of 313 people died from lightning strikes in the United States, according to an analysis Jensenius did for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

During that time, 18 people (6 percent) died from lightning strikes while at the beach, he found. Only fishing was more dangerous, accounting for 33 deaths (11 percent) during that period.

Some of the other deadly lightning-related activities included camping (5 percent of all lightning deaths), farming or ranching (5 percent), boating (4 percent), riding a bike, using a motorcycle or all-terrain vehicle (4 percent), and playing soccer (4 percent), Jensenius said.

Golfing accounted for just 3 percent of lightning fatalities, partly because of increased awareness that people should head inside as soon as they see lightning, or simply stay inside when lightning is in the forecast, he said.

Jensenius advised that as soon as people hear thunder, they should head indoors or to a hard-topped vehicle. That's not because the rubber tires on the vehicle offer protection, as many people believe. Rather, it's because if lightning strikes such a vehicle, the electrical charge will run through the vehicle's outer, metal shell, leaving any occupants of the vehicle relatively unscathed, he said.

The 5-year-old boy killed over the weekend was the 21st lightning fatality of 2016 in the country, an amount that's actually a bit below average, according to a NOAA database. In 2015, there were 22 lightning-related fatalities by the end of July, but typically there are 23, according to the agency's 10-year-analysis, Jensenius said.

However, lightning-related deaths have plummeted since the 1940s, when farmers operating tractors and other farm equipment accounted for a large portion of the roughly 200 to 300 people who died from lightning strikes in the United States every year, he said. Now, there is increased awareness about the dangers of lightning and, notably, fewer farmers out in the fields. Also, CPR and other life-saving technologies have reduced the number of people who die from lightning now, he added.

However, the 5-year-old was younger than most lightning victims. The majority of fatalities happen to people between the ages of 10 and 60. There are fewer deaths among people in their 30s, however, possibly because at this age people have young children, and are less likely to engage in risky outdoor activities, Jensenius said.

Original article on Live Science.

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Forget Sharks, Lightning Poses Big Beach Threat

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The beach may be the perfect place to cool off during the summer, but it's also one of the deadliest spots to be caught during a lightning storm. This past weekend, lightning struck and killed a 5-year-old boy on a North Carolina beach, according to news reports.

# data[].attributes.body
environmental science:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160812132716.htm
evironmentalism:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/storks-science-india-animals-rare

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On a cloudy day in July, in a remote village in northeastern India, Charu Das excitedly imitates the awkward movements of a stork with her hands.

In a few months, the greater adjutant stork-called hargilla, which means "swallower of bones" in Sanskrit-will descend on this hamlet, situated in Assam's Brahmaputra Valley, to breed in large numbers.

"You will soon catch sight of this dark, quirky-looking bird, with large, thick bills, stalking over the beds of these wetlands or on the rain-soaked paddy fields in its typical military gait," Das says.

Dadara and two nearby villages, Pasariya, and Singimari, are flanked by food-rich wetlands and brimming with tall trees perfect for nesting. The region has become a major stronghold for this homely creature: Due mostly to deforestation and widespread development of wetlands, only between 800 and 1,200 greater adjutant storks remain in India and Cambodia, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

But thanks to the efforts of the Hargilla Army, a conservation brigade of 70 local women, the region is now "the biggest greater adjutant nesting colony in the world," says Purnima Devi Barman, a wildlife biologist with Aaranyak, a conservation nonprofit in Assam.

Half-or around 550-of the big birds live in these three villages, according to a 2015 study led by Barman.

"Such a large number of nests have not been recorded in other .... colonies in India or in Cambodia."

Backed by the district administration and local conservation groups, the Hargilla Army has been successful reducing threats and protecting habitat of the stork that the group won the United Nations Development Program India's 2016 Biodiversity Award.

From Filthy to Famous

Not too long ago, however, the bird wasn't quite as welcome.

Many villagers considered the birds "filthy" because of their smelly droppings; harsh calls; and tendency to litter their food, sometimes collected from garbage dumps, Barman says.

Because the birds are so large-up to 18 pounds (eight kilograms)-and live in colonies, trees have to be strong enough to hold them and their many nests.

However, most tall, hardy trees grow on private lands, and local people would often chop the trees down to get rid of the storks, she says. ( Take National Geographic's bird quiz.)

The solution, Barman thought, was to work with the local communities to conserve the animal. Because women play decisive roles in Assam's rural households, Barman began befriending them, especially those from the families of tree owners.

Sacred Bird

She organized small, informal meetings to talk about the bird's role in the environment, such as scavenging and disposing of dead animals and its essential link in the food chain of the surroundings wetlands. Barman also emphasized the bird's importance in Hindu mythology, as Lord Vishnu's mount.

Thus the Hargilla Army was born.

"We were awestruck ... by the newfound importance of our villages due to this bird and the trees," recalls Nilima Das, a brigade member who's now an active conservationist. (Das is a common last name in Dadara.)

"Soon we realized that the bird in our backyard is not ordinary. It is sacred, and with just a few hundred left in the world ... we are fortunate to own the trees where they breed," she says with pride. (See more stork photos.)

After the women convinced their families to save the nesting trees, the people began developing a sense of ownership toward them-and since 2010, no one has cut down a tree, Barman claims.

Ornithologist Asad Rahmani says the brigade's work has helped the bird.

"I have personally visited the villages and witnessed the tremendous community-based effort of the Hargilla Army," says Rahmani, senior scientific advisor at the Bombay Natural History Society, who has not been involved in the project.

"The best part is that the brigade has been drawn from the rural community women" who know their environment well, and are thus best suited to safeguard the birds.

The conservation brigade, organized into 14 groups with five members, also has the support of many district administrators, police, and local nonprofits, says Barman, whose dedication to the species has earned her the nickname "Hargilla Baido," or "Stork Sister."

"It was my childhood dream to work on this spectacularly distinct bird, being pushed dangerously close to extinction," she says. (Also see " Beloved Storks, Emblems of Fertility, Rebounding in France.")

The conservationists have taken their message to schools, where children paint the bird. In one school, the women erected a plaster idol of the bird. The women are also learning to weave stork motifs into traditional products and garb that will be put up for sale.

Sometimes the women even play the part of greater adjutants themselves, donning masks in street-corner plays.

We "sing naam [prayer songs] to augur well for the mother birds and their eggs," says Pratibha Das, a brigade member who represents the local conservation committee.

The women have also written hymns just for the storks. Translated into English, the beginning of one reads: "Hargilla, you are safe in our village. Come and breed here and grow your family. We are blessed with your presence here."

'An Army Without Arms'

More challenges remain for the species, in particular chick deaths. If strong winds or storms knock the youngsters from their nests-which are sometimes 75 feet (23 meters) high-they could be injured or die.

As a result, the local government and conservation brigade has placed nets around trees to catch fledglings. If villagers notice fallen chicks, they inform the local police station. Officials then take the animals to the Assam State Zoo, where they'll recover before being released back into the wild. ( Read about the myth of storks as baby bringers.)

Since installing the nets, chick deaths have fallen considerably, Barman says.

Such accomplishments have encouraged the brigade to expand their protections to other greater adjutant nesting colonies in the Brahmaputra Valley.

"Our Hargilla Army is an army without arms," she says, "yet armed with the commitment and determination to battle against all odds in saving this endangered bird."

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All-Women 'Army' Protecting Rare Bird in India

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On a cloudy day in July, in a remote village in northeastern India, Charu Das excitedly imitates the awkward movements of a stork with her hands. In a few months, the greater adjutant stork-called hargilla, which means "swallower of bones" in Sanskrit-will descend on this hamlet, situated in Assam's Brahmaputra Valley, to breed in large numbers.

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Carbon sequestration is leading to the interception of rainfall runoff.

Cap and trade policy for managing water competition from potential future carbon plantations

Cap and trade policy for managing water competition from potential future carbon plantations . (2016).Sciencedirect.com. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science

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Water near industiral sites, military fire training areas, and wastewater treatment plants, may be polluted with high levels of flourinated compounds. Which may be linked to cancer.
August 10, 2016
Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809121418.htm

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Grady Clingerman

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(NaturalNews) Just two weeks after the release of my new book Food Forensics, which identifies dangerous levels of lead contamination in turmeric products, the FDA has taken bold enforcement action on the subject. At least three turmeric spice manufacturers -- Gel Spice, JM Exotic Foods and Gel Spice -- have been forced to issue "voluntary" recalls of their turmeric products due to dangerous levels of lead found in their spices. (See photos of the recalled products below.)

See the official FDA recall notices here, here, and here.

For once, it seems, the FDA is actually doing its job!

As Natural News readers know very well, I've been warning consumers for years about lead in turmeric. Any person consuming turmeric products without knowing their lead test results is no doubt eating huge quantities of a dangerous heavy metal linked to brain damage, bone disorders and heart damage. Lead is notoriously common in turmeric powders and turmeric products because turmeric is usually grown in high-lead soils in India, then imported into the United States.

"Lead can accumulate in the body over time," warns one FDA recall page. "Too much can cause health problems, including delayed mental and physical development and learning deficiencies. Pregnant women, infants and young children especially should avoid exposure to lead. People concerned about blood lead levels should contact their physician or health clinic to ask about testing."

To my best knowledge, we are the only health product manufacturer and retailer in the world that tests everything we make and sell for heavy metals. See HealthRangerStore.com for our product line, which includes this popular turmeric extract liquid. We currently reject about 80% of raw materials batches due to high lead content, accepting only 20% for production use.

I personally oversee all the laboratory testing for heavy metals, which is conducted via ICP-MS instrumentation at my ISO-17025 accredited laboratory, CWClabs.com. There, every raw material we use is tested for lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, copper and over a dozen other elements. This is what allows us to reject high lead materials from ingredient suppliers.

Interestingly, all the lots we reject as being TOO TOXIC are purchased by some other turmeric manufacturer who sells their own toxic products to an unsuspecting public. Lead-contaminated products are sold right now at Amazon.com, Whole Foods and just about everywhere.

The FDA spot checks food and supplement manufacturers across America, visiting their facilities and taking samples of their products for testing via ICP-OES or ICP-MS. Yet, shockingly, the FDA still refuses to tell the public how much lead is required to trigger a recall.

Sadly, the FDA still has never published any lead limit information for foods, beverages or dietary supplements. (Only children's candy has an established lead limit.) This means that it is perfectly legal for food and spice manufacturers to sell products containing insanely toxic levels of all sorts of heavy metals. Many of these are even labeled ORGANIC as I've documented in my book Food Forensics.

For example, organic rice protein products sold in the United States right now continue to be heavily contaminated with cadmium and lead. Root spices such as turmeric and ginger are also routinely contaminated with not only toxic heavy metals, but extremely high bacteria counts as well (due to soil microbes, which technically may not be very dangerous compared to something like E.coli).

The surprising truth is that the FDA is far behind food safety standards that exist in European countries or even Canada, for that matter. For some reason, the FDA has never established heavy metals limits for food, beverages, spices and supplements sold in the United States. And because of that, dishonest, fraudulent retailers like Whole Foods are free to keep selling toxic products that contribute toxic loads to their unsuspecting customers.

Watch my stunning new mini-documentary, The WHOLE TRUTH about Whole Foods here: (has been viewed nearly 1 million times on Facebook alone...)

Now, at least, the FDA has essentially confirmed that my warning about lead in turmeric was right on the money. To my knowledge, my laboratory is the only ISO-accredited private laboratory in the world that's openly publishing off-the-shelf food composition analysis results in the interests of public safety.

And that's just sad, because this is the job the FDA should have been doing in the first place. See my science journal NaturalScienceJournal.org for nationwide water testing results that also show the mass lead contamination of municipal water supplies.

If you want CLEAN turmeric products that have been tested for heavy metals, my online store offers Organic Turmeric Root Powder, our Turmeric Gold Liquid Extract and this innovative Organic Golden Turmeric Paste Kit that combines turmeric with black pepper and coconut oil for enhanced absorption. I openly invite anyone -- including the FDA -- to test all these products for lead, cadmium and every other element known to modern science. You won't find toxic concentrations of these items in anything we sell.

If you want to see just how much lead really exists in your favorite foods, spices and supplements, check out my book Food Forensics. Here's the video trailer:

Here are some photos of the recalled turmeric products the FDA found to contain dangerous levels of lead:

About the author: Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journalNatural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to becontaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profitConsumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder ofthe email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popularconsumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helpeddefend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has releasedover a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

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Turmeric spices found heavily contaminated with toxic LEAD... FDA forces nationwide recalls for multiple brands (see list here)

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(NaturalNews) Just two weeks after the release of my new book Food Forensics, which identifies dangerous levels of lead contamination in turmeric products, the FDA has taken bold enforcement action on the subject.

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Environmental science:
http://www.livescience.com/55680-cold-war-toxic-waste-climate-change.html

Cold-War-Era Toxic Waste Could Be Released by Greenland's Melting Ice

Cold-War-Era Toxic Waste Could Be Released by Greenland's Melting Ice. (2016). Live Science. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/55680-cold-war-toxic-waste-climate-change.html

Toxic Waste could be released from the melting ice in the Greenland Ice Sheet.  This is putting people in danger as well as the ecosystems around it.  The ecosystems are already fragile, putting toxic waste into the equation might make the ecosystems disappear forever.

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Sinkhole 50 feet wide opens in front of Florida home

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Temporary work to repair a sinkhole in a Hudson neighborhood has wrapped up for the evening after neighbors discover a sinkhole nearly 50 feet wide underneath the driveway and garage of a home on Mediterranean Court.

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Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems -- polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) -- exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the U.S., according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

The study will be published August 9, 2016 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

"For many years, chemicals with unknown toxicities, such as PFASs, were allowed to be used and released to the environment, and we now have to face the severe consequences," said lead author Xindi Hu, a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard Chan School and Environmental Science and Engineering at SEAS. "In addition, the actual number of people exposed may be even higher than our study found, because government data for levels of these compounds in drinking water is lacking for almost a third of the U.S. population -- about 100 million people."

PFASs have been used over the past 60 years in industrial and commercial products ranging from food wrappers to clothing to pots and pans. They have been linked with cancer, hormone disruption, high cholesterol, and obesity. Although several major manufacturers have discontinued the use of some PFASs, the chemicals continue to persist in people and wildlife. Drinking water is one of the main routes through which people can be exposed.

The researchers looked at concentrations of six types of PFASs in drinking water supplies, using data from more than 36,000 water samples collected nationwide by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2013-2015. They also looked at industrial sites that manufacture or use PFASs; at military fire training sites and civilian airports where fire-fighting foam containing PFASs is used; and at wastewater treatment plants. Discharges from these plants -- which are unable to remove PFASs from wastewater by standard treatment methods -- could contaminate groundwater. So could the sludge that the plants generate and which is frequently used as fertilizer.

The study found that PFASs were detectable at the minimum reporting levels required by the EPA in 194 out of 4,864 water supplies in 33 states across the U.S. Drinking water from 13 states accounted for 75% of the detections, including, in order of frequency of detection, California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Georgia, Minnesota, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

Sixty-six of the public water supplies examined, serving six million people, had at least one water sample that measured at or above the EPA safety limit of 70 parts per trillion (ng/L) for two types of PFASs, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Concentrations ranged as high as 349 ng/L for PFOA (Warminster, PA) and 1,800 ng/L for PFOS (Newark, DE).

The highest levels of PFASs were detected in watersheds near industrial sites, military bases, and wastewater treatment plants -- all places where these chemicals may be used or found.

"These compounds are potent immunotoxicants in children and recent work suggests drinking water safety levels should be much lower than the provisional guidelines established by EPA," said Elsie Sunderland, senior author of the study and associate professor in both the Harvard Chan School and SEAS.

Other Harvard Chan authors of the study included Philippe Grandjean and Courtney Carignan.

Funding for the study came from the Smith Family Foundation and a private donor.
PFASs and reduced immune response
Another Harvard Chan School study, led by Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, also suggested negative health impacts of PFAS exposure. That study looked at a group of about 600 adolescents from the Faroe Islands, an island country off the coast of Denmark. Those exposed to PFASs at a young age had lower-than-expected levels of antibodies against diphtheria and tetanus, for which they had been immunized. The findings suggested that PFASs, which are known to interfere with immune function, may be involved in reducing the effectiveness of vaccines in children.

Funding for this study came from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH (ES012199); the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (R830758); the Danish Council for Strategic Research (09-063094); and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency as part of the environmental support program DANCEA (Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic).

Journal References:

1. Xindi C. Hu, David Q. Andrews, Andrew B. Lindstrom, Thomas A. Bruton, Laurel A. Schaider, Philippe Grandjean, Rainer Lohmann, Courtney C. Carignan, Arlene Blum, Simona A. Balan, Christopher P. Higgins, Elsie M. Sunderland. Detection of Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs) in U.S. Drinking Water Linked to Industrial Sites, Military Fire Training Areas, and Wastewater Treatment Plants. Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 2016; DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00260

2. Esben Budtz-Jørgensen, Ulla B. Mogensen, Flemming Nielsen, Pal Weihe, Carsten Heilmann, Philippe Grandjean. Serum Vaccine Antibody Concentrations in Adolescents Exposed to Perfluorinated Compounds. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2016; DOI: 10.1289/EHP275

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health policy; workplace health; today's healthcare; water; environmental policy; environmental issues; stem education; ocean policy; world development

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Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water for six million Americans: Drinking water samples near industrial sites, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants have highest levels of fluorinated compounds

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Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems -- polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances -- exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the US, according to a new study.

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Environmental science :  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809121418.htm
environmentalism : http://wate.com/2016/08/13/sinkhole-50-feet-wide-opens-in-front-of-florida-home/

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Check out the Makira Natural Park Project

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Operating in the area since 1993, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Madagascar's Ministry of the Environment and Forests began creation of the Makira project in 2003, to safeguard one of the largest remaining rainforests in Madagascar. Its establishment was finalized in 2012 and it is now the largest protected area in the country.

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Just as the planet is being taxed from record-breaking temperatures, new research finds iconic Douglas firs across the West are water- and heat-stressed.

Similar to the humans who find themselves sluggish during a heat wave, when water is scarce, Douglas firs also put the brakes on growing - a choice that could have ramifications for forest carbon stocks and the global carbon cycle.

"If trees are being less productive, if they are not growing as well, they are taking in less CO ₂ from the atmosphere," said Christina Restaino, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis. "Tree stress can lead to the point where trees die, and when we lose tree species on the landscape, there's always the question of what is going to grow back in its place."

Restaino led research that examined data from more than 2,000 tree cores from 122 locations across the Western United States. The study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found increasing temperatures hurt tree growth.

That's because rising temperatures remove water from both the soil and atmosphere, causing the Douglas firs to lose water faster than they can take it in.

As a result, the stressed trees close their stomata, or the tiny pores that take in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and release oxygen as a byproduct.

Using climate models to project into the future, the team found the amount of time increased temperatures are expected to strip the air of moisture could up to double by the 2080s. Similar declines in tree growth are then expected, the study found.

The effects were most pronounced in the Southwest, which is already experiencing higher temperatures. Douglas firs in the Pacific Northwest fared a bit better.

"This is a species that has been logged historically and still is, so it certainly is important in terms of thinking about not only how our ecosystems are responding to changes in climate, but also in changes of the economics of forest management, as well," Restaino said.

Instead of tapping into an extensive and well-regarded tree core data set, the International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB), as done with many other studies, Restaino and her co-authors spent three summers coring trees themselves. The researchers also used tree ring data collected by co-author Jeremy Littell, lead research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey at Alaska's Climate Science Center.

By collecting the cores, Restaino said they were able to get a snapshot of how Douglas firs have responded to climate signals across the species' entire U.S. range between 1916 and 2006. In addition, ITRDB cores are often taken from trees located in the harshest environments so they can be easily connected to the climates of past years, but that means they represent the top of the species' response to climate changes.

"We can tell a larger story about a whole range of tree-growing environments," she said.

Researcher David Peterson, with the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station, was also a co-author.
Reprinted from ClimateWire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net. Click here for the original story.

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Just as the planet is being taxed from record-breaking temperatures, new research finds iconic Douglas firs across the West are water- and heat-stressed. Similar to the humans who find themselves sluggish during a heat wave, when water is scarce, Douglas firs also put the brakes on growing - a choice that could have ramifications for forest carbon stocks and the global carbon cycle.

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Environmentalism | Ideology, History, & Types

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Environmentalism, political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment, claiming that living things other than humans, and the natural environment as a whole, are deserving of consideration in reasoning about the morality of political, economic, and social policies.

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RED EARTH CREEK, Alberta - Kristyn Housman grabbed the end of a sampling auger, a steel tube that two colleagues had just drilled into a moss-covered hummock in a peat bog, and poked through a damp, fibrous plug of partly decomposed peat.

Peat has been building up for centuries in this bog, where the spongy moss is interspersed with black spruces and, on a late spring morning, the air is teeming with mosquitoes. The sample, taken from three feet down, is at least several hundred years old, said Ms. Housman, a graduate researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

"There's literally tons of carbon here," she said, looking around the bog, which covers several acres off a muddy oil-company road amid the vast flatness of northern Alberta.

In discussions of how nature regulates carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, forests receive most of the attention for their ability to absorb and store carbon. But peatlands play an important role, too.

There are an estimated 1.6 million square miles of peatlands, or about 3 percent of the earth's land surface, mostly in northern latitudes in Canada, Alaska, Europe and Russia.

Image

Students collecting a peat sample from the ground using an auger in Red Earth Creek, Canada, on June 17, 2016. Credit Ed Ou for The New York Times

Peat is made up of sphagnum and other mosses, which hold a large amount of water and contain compounds that inhibit decomposition. The peat slowly builds up over centuries because the annual growth exceeds the decay.

A relatively small amount of peat is mined to burn as fuel, to improve backyard gardens or to add smokiness to Scotch. But most of it stays where it is, and because it accumulates carbon over such a long time, it contains more carbon than is in all the world's trees and plants, and nearly as much as the atmosphere does.

Like forests, peatlands are threatened by climate change. Warming temperatures can dry out bogs, making them more susceptible to fires, and to deeper, more intense burning. A peat fire, which can smolder like a cigarette for months, can release a lot of carbon.

"It's carbon that has accumulated over several thousands of years," said Mike Waddington, a McMaster professor who has been researching peat in Alberta and elsewhere for more than two decades. "If it were to be released, the global CO ₂ concentration would be much higher."

The world has already had vast releases of carbon from peat, in Indonesia. Last year, bogs that had been drained for agriculture, and were drier because of El Niño-related warmth, burned for months, creating a haze visible from space and causing widespread health problems. At their peak in September and October, the fires released more carbon per day than was emitted by the European Union.

A peat sample showing the history of wildfires dating back hundreds of years. Scientists can trace the history of wildfires to better understand how the peat land acts as a carbon sink. Credit Ed Ou for The New York Times

While few people foresee that level of disaster in northern peatlands, concern about fires is growing. A major worry is that as climate change and other disturbances affect peatlands, the intensity of fires will increase, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere.

"They take thousands of years to develop," said Merritt Turetsky, a peat researcher at the University of Guelph in Ontario. "And in five minutes, a wildfire can blow through that area and release five to six hundred years of peat accumulation and change it forever."

The enormous spring wildfire that destroyed much of Fort McMurray, a city of 90,000 people 150 miles east of here, burned bogs as well as trees. In June, the trees were no longer on fire outside the town, but crews were overturning peat with backhoes in an effort to extinguish smoldering hot spots.

In a large wildfire in May 2011 that burned in and around the town of Slave Lake, about 80 miles south of here, some peat continued to burn through the winter, until spring rains and melting snow finally extinguished it.

Peat is generally resistant to burning, because sphagnum moss, which is dominant in a healthy bog, holds a lot of water. "If you have a large amount of this moss in a peatland, you aren't going to get a very severe fire," Dr. Waddington said. Typically only the top few inches of the peat will burn.

Warming, however, alters the system. Drier peat allows more oxygen to get to the roots of trees and other vegetation. This causes them to grow bigger, which means they use more water, further drying the peat.

As trees grow, they also provide more shade, which favors the growth of other mosses that, because they hold less moisture than sphagnum, are less fire resistant.

When the bog does catch fire, it may be more severe, with the combustion spreading deeper into the peat.

Other disturbances, like draining bogs to grow trees or to produce oil and gas, can also make a fire more severe. Dr. Waddington and others are doing research on how to restore bogs that have been drained, to reduce the risk of carbon loss through fires.

Normally a bog recovers slowly after a wildfire, with certain mosses and other vegetation taking over in stages until sphagnum mosses dominate. At the bog where Ms. Housman and her colleagues took samples, a section was deliberately burned last year. It is showing signs of recovery, with clumps of singed sphagnum moss already producing small shoots of regrowth.

The site of a recent prescribed burn in Red Earth Creek, Canada on June 17, 2016. After each wildfire, peat moss grows and accumulates carbon, building a new layer on top of each other. Credit Ed Ou for The New York Times

But an intense fire, or a combination of other factors, can delay or even halt recovery.

That is the case at a small bog south of Red Earth Creek that researchers have nicknamed "Scorcho" because it was severely burned in the 2011 Slave Lake fire. As much as four feet of peat was consumed in some parts of the bog.

"All that peat, combusted and gone," said Sophie Wilkinson, a McMaster doctoral student.

Five years later, the bog is showing few signs of returning to its old self. "It is definitely on the brink," Ms. Wilkinson said. "There's little to no sphagnum recovery, which is very worrying, because if it's going to return to a carbon-accumulating system, which is what you would hope, really, it needs to get that sphagnum back."

Scorcho may ultimately turn into something other than a bog - drier land with leafy trees like birches and aspens replacing the black spruces, with little to no moss and, as a result, less carbon storage.

The bog is laced with instruments to measure the water table, the evaporation of water from vegetation and other characteristics, but researchers are still uncertain why it is not recovering.

What is clear is that recovery from a fire is a delicate process, one that global warming will complicate.

"Climate change will determine the severity and frequency of burns the bog has to be resilient to," Ms. Housman said.

Referring to Scorcho, Ms. Wilkinson said: "Like, if this was to burn again? Who knows, really, what's going to happen."

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As Peat Bogs Burn, a Climate Threat Rises

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RED EARTH CREEK, Alberta - Kristyn Housman grabbed the end of a sampling auger, a steel tube that two colleagues had just drilled into a moss-covered hummock in a peat bog, and poked through a damp, fibrous plug of partly decomposed peat.

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The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is set to offer a class this fall consolidating civil rights with environmentalism.

The seminar, titled "Green Lives Matter," will explore the Environmental Justice Movement and examine the deleterious effects of capitalism on poor communities, the College Fix reported.

"This course represents an effort to learn about the Environmental Justice Movement by studying its history, causes, and the struggles of people shaping the movement," the course's description reads.

"Examples of topics to be covered include the following: Flint lead contamination, migrant farm worker pesticide exposure, Cancer Alley (Louisiana), mining on tribal lands, Hurricane Katrina, Alaskan natives, urban environmental harms, and others," it says.

Other courses being offered in the fall at the public university include "Video Game Music," "That's So Gay! Explorations of LGBT Lives and Identities," "From Disney's Pocahontas to the NFL: Stereotypes and the Realities of First Nations People," and "The Sixties."

The Washington Times Comment Policy

The Washington Times welcomes your comments on Spot.im, our third-party provider. Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.

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University of Wisconsin to offer 'Green Lives Matter' class on environmentalism

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The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is set to offer a class this fall consolidating civil rights with environmentalism. The seminar, titled "Green Lives Matter," will explore the Environmental Justice Movement and examine the deleterious effects of capitalism on poor communities, the College Fix reported.

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Next time the news reports on poor ozone or air quality, you may want to heed the warning.

A recent study, dubbed the "Health of the Air" report, from New York University reveals the impact pollution has on life in metropolitan areas. As expected, the results can be hazardous to your health.

An estimated 168 people die every year in Connecticut and about 472 people also have a major health event due to pollution, according to the report. The report also estimates 344,567 days are impacted each year, which involve restricted activity days, acute respiratory symptom days, work loss days, and school loss days, because of pollution.
Related: Fairfield County may have the worst air in the state
Locally, the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk metropolitan area sees approximately 48 deaths per year, 149 major health incidents, and 116,253 impacted days per year due to pollution.

To arrive at their results, NYU measured the 8-hour ozone levels and fine particulate matter collected across three years in selected metropolitan cities.

In a release last June, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Robert Klee blamed Connecticut's air quality on outside sources.

"Connecticut has the highest ozone levels in the Northeast - which adversely impacts the health of our citizens and the quality of life in our state," Klee said in a press release, petitioning for federal assistance. "Air pollution transported into Connecticut from upwind sources and emissions from diesel-powered trucks are beyond our jurisdiction, and these petitions are part of our ongoing effort to have EPA address these sources."

But before you begin living behind a gas mask, NYU's report has some cautions.

"It is important to note that these results represent population-level impacts and are not directly representative as an estimate of individual risk," the report said. "Thus, cities with high estimates of air pollution related health impacts are typically those with both large populations and elevated pollution concentrations."
Related: What to do on rainy days in southwestern Connecticut
However some health concerns were not addressed, which may still cause readers to exercise a little more safety in the future.

"There are also additional adverse health impacts from air pollution not included in our analysis, particularly chronic outcomes such as cancer, new-onset asthma, and diabetes," the report said. "Deaths from these causes, and longer term nonfatal exacerbations of chronic illness, were not captured in this analysis but would add to the total health burden of air pollution outcomes."

Fairfield County recently received an "failing" grade in ozone levels in the American Lung Association's "State of the Air" report earlier this year. All Connecticut counties failed in ozone levels, as well.

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Study: Connecticut's air quality kills nearly 200 every year

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Next time the news reports on poor ozone or air quality, you may want to heed the warning. A recent study, dubbed the "Health of the Air" report, from New York University reveals the impact pollution has on life in metropolitan areas. As expected, the results can be hazardous to your health.

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Enviromental Science:
Study: Connecticut's air quality kills nearly 200 every year

Study: Connecticut's air quality kills nearly 200 every year. (2016).Connecticut Post. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Study-Connecticut-s-air-quality-kills-168-every-9143257.php

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Study-Connecticut-s-air-quality-kills-168-every-9143257.php
Score:8
Summary: An estimated 168 people die every year, and about 472 people have a major health event due to pollution in Connecticut.  Connecticut has the highest ozone level in the North East.

Enviromentalism:
http://www.washingtontimes.com, T.

http://www.washingtontimes.com, T. (2016). University of Wisconsin to offer ‘Green Lives Matter’ class on environmentalism. The Washingtion Times. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/28/university-wisconsin-offer-green-lives-matter-clas/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/28/university-wisconsin-offer-green-lives-matter-clas/

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Environmental Science:
As Peat Bogs Burns, A Climate Threat Rises
Written by: Henry Fountain
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/science/climate-change-carbon-bogs-peat.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FGlobal%20Warming&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=collection&_r=0

Environmentalism:
Social Science
Written by: Lorraine Elliott
https://www.britannica.com/topic/environmentalism

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Environmentalism | Ideology, History, & Types

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Environmentalism, political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment, claiming that living things other than humans, and the natural environment as a whole, are deserving of consideration in reasoning about the morality of political, economic, and social policies.

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A Texas company plans to build a high-speed rail between Dallas and Houston, turning a four-hour drive between two of the nation's fastest growing cities into a 90-minute train ride. "Not so fast," say the rural residents who live between Dallas and Houston.

City officials favor the Japanese-backed, $10-billion project, but those living between Dallas and Houston are opposed - and rural counties are moving fast to block it. Landowners generally dislike when infrastructure slices their land in half, especially when they aren't likely to benefit from it.

Opposition to the railroad comes down to a question of eminent domain, the government's right to take private property for public use. Critics argue that because Texas Central Partners isn't technically an operating railroad, it can't seize land.

Compared to other industrialized countries, the U.S. is plain pathetic on high-speed rail, and the Texas "bullet train" is currently one of America's most promising prospects for starting to change that.

Other anti-train arguments aren't as sane. This protestor told the Japanese government to "peddle your obsolete technology elsewhere," to which someone in the crowd replied: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Always a valid argument.

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Protests over Texas high-speed rail take a turn for the ridiculous

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A Texas company plans to build a high-speed rail between Dallas and Houston, turning a four-hour drive between two of the nation's fastest growing cities into a 90-minute train ride. "Not so fast," say the rural residents who live between Dallas and Houston.

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Fourteen years ago, when a frustrated Paul Crutzen blurted out the word "Anthropocene" at a scientific meeting in Mexico, the famous atmospheric chemist was expressing his despair at the scale of human damage to Earth. So profound has been the influence of humans, Nobelist Crutzen and his colleagues later wrote, that the planet has entered a new geologic epoch defined by a single, troubling fact: The "human imprint on the global environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of the great forces of nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system."

The science behind Crutzen's claim is extensive and robust, and it centers on the profound and irreversible changes brought by global warming. Yet almost as soon as the idea of the Anthropocene took hold, people began revising its meaning and distorting its implications. A new breed of ecopragmatists welcomed the epoch as an opportunity. They have gathered around the Breakthrough Institute, a "neogreen" think tank founded by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, the authors of a controversial 2004 paper, "The Death of Environmentalism." They do not deny global warming; instead they skate over the top of it, insisting that whatever limits and tipping points the Earth system might throw up, human technology and ingenuity will transcend them.

As carbon dioxide concentrations pass 400 ppm for the first time in a million years, and scientists warn of a U.S. baking in furnacelike summers by the 2070s, Shellenberger and Nordhaus wrote that by the end of the century "nearly all of us will be prosperous enough to live healthy, free and creative lives." The answer, they say, is not to change course but to more tightly "embrace human power, technology and the larger process of modernization."

The argument absolves us all of the need to change our ways, which is music to the ears of political conservatives. The Anthropocene is system-compatible.

This technoutopian vision depends on a belief that, with the advent of the new geologic epoch, nothing essential has changed. This reimagined Anthropocene rests on a seamless transition from the fact that humans have always modified their environments to a defense of a postmodern "cyber nature" under human supervision, as if there is no qualitative difference between fire-stick farming and spraying sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to regulate Earth's temperature.

For this reason, respected palaeoclimatologist William Ruddiman's hypothesis that the Anthropocene began some 8,000 years ago with the onset of farming and forest clearing has immediate appeal to ecopragmatists. It seems to give scientific grounding to the desire to defend the status quo against the evidence that the culprit is technoindustrialism's aggressive fossil fuel-driven expansionism, which began at the end of the 18th century.

The early-Anthropocene hypothesis effectively dissolves the distinction between the Holocene, which started some 11,700 years ago and encompasses the beginning of agriculture, and the Anthropocene, enabling ecopragmatists to argue that there is nothing inherently preferable about a Holocene Earth-a moral claim that permits the conscious creation of a different kind of planet. Hence, their attraction to geoengineering schemes aimed at regulating solar radiation or changing the chemical composition of the oceans. In the words of the most vocal ecopragmatist, the environmental scientist Erle Ellis, "We will be proud of the planet we create." Ellis speaks of "the good Anthropocene," a golden era in which we relinquish nostalgic attachments to a nature untouched by humans and embrace the new epoch as "ripe with human-directed opportunity."

But the idea of a good Anthropocene is based on a fundamental misreading of science. It arises from a failure to make the cognitive leap from ecological thinking-the science of the relationship between organisms and their local environments-to Earth system thinking, the science of the whole Earth as a complex system beyond the sum of its parts. The early Anthropocene hypothesis goes against strong evidence, provided by Crutzen, Will Steffen and other researchers, that only with the beginning of the industrial revolution can we detect a human influence on the functioning of the Earth system as a whole.

The revolutionary meaning of Earth-system science is lost on the ecopragmatists. In reality, the arrival of the new epoch represents not merely the further spread of human influence across the globe but a fundamental shift in the relationship between humans and the Earth system-one in which human activity now accelerates, decelerates and distorts the great cycles that make the planet a dynamic entity. The radical distinctiveness of the Anthropocene lies in the fact that humans have become a novel "force of nature," one that is shaping the geologic evolution of the planet. So far-reaching is the impact of modern humans that esteemed palaeoclimatologist Wally Broecker has suggested that we have not entered a new geologic epoch, a relatively minor event on the geologic time scale, but a new era- the Anthropozoic-on a par in Earth history with the development of multicellular life.

Some climate science deniers believe only God can change the climate; ecopragmatists, by contrast, see humans as "the god species." Here is what the god species and this kind of thinking are certain to give us: an atmosphere with 500 ppm of CO2 (probably closer to 700 ppm) and a climate that is hot, sticky and chaotic. It will indeed take omnipotence to fix the problem without calamity. For those who prefer orthodox climate science, such unbounded optimism is dangerous, wishful thinking.

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The New Environmentalism Will Lead Us to Disaster

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Fourteen years ago, when a frustrated Paul Crutzen blurted out the word "Anthropocene" at a scientific meeting in Mexico, the famous atmospheric chemist was expressing his despair at the scale of human damage to Earth.

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http://www.greenoughsolarfarm.com.au/solar-energy/benefits-solar-energy
https://standfortrees.org/en/protect-a-forest/makira-natural-park-project

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Latitude is the main factor which determines the organic pollutant concentration in Antarctic giant petrels -emblematic species in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions-, according to an article from the journal Environmental Research in which Professor Jacob González Solís, from the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute of the University of Barcelona (IRBio) takes part.

The research, directed by experts of the Institute of General Organic Chemistry (IQOG-CSIC), analyses the impact by persistent organic pollutants (COP) -toxic compounds with a high permanency on the environment which bio-accumulate in organisms- on oceanic birds present in areas of different latitudes in the Antarctic Ocean.

Northern giant petrels ( Macronectes halli) and southern ones ( M. giganteus) are the great scavengers in sub-Antarctic and Antarctic environments, and they have an extreme life strategy based on a long longevity and low fecundity (an only egg per each reproductive period). They are widely distributed in the southern ocean and can cover thousands of kilometres to feed themselves, but their population are highly vulnerable to any threat affecting their adult survival.
High latitudes, less pollutants
"In general, the further south you go, the lower the levels of organic pollutants are in marine birds. These pollutants, created by human activity, reach all places on earth via atmospheric transport, mainly. They reach the Antarctic too but in less quantity," said Professor Jacob González Solís, author of several genetic and marine bird population studies in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Antarctic oceans.

"Unfortunately -he continues- we still don't know the effects these compounds could have on ocean birds. Now the detected levels are low, therefore if there is any negative effect it is light so it would be hard to detect. However, we need to do more research in order to discover the effects of chemical pollution on wild fauna."
A chemical footprint for the entire planet
According to the experts, the organic pollutant levels are similar in Arctic and Antarctic birds. "These chemical compounds, widely used in the past, have probably reached both poles. The organic compounds with a more recent use, such as flame retardants, are now more common in the Arctic than the Antarctic, probably because emission sources are more abundant and closer to the poles in the northern hemisphere rather than in the south. Someday, however, they will get everywhere," warned González Solís.
When mercury gets to Antarctic latitudes
Albatross and giant petrels are the ocean birds with more exposure to mercury pollution in Antarctic and sub-Antarctic environments, according to another study by González Solís (Environmental Pollution, 2016).

"This fact is probably related to the increase of mercury emission in emerging countries," says González Solís. "In general, diet is the main entrance of pollutants in marine birds -continues the expert-. Lots of pollutants (such as COP and mercury) are biomagnified through the trophic network. This makes the most vulnerable species to be found in higher trophic levels (albatross and petrels), since they feed from fish or squids, or in the case of giant petrels, from penguin and seal carrion." Most of the average sized Antarctic penguins, however, feed from krill and therefore their pollution levels are lower.

This other study analyses mercury concentration on feathers, an efficient methodology to control pollution levels of this metal in birds around the world. "With age -says the researcher- these animals can bio-accumulate some of these pollutants in organs such as the liver; but in general they have excretion ways that prevent pollutants from reaching toxic concentrations."

"In the case of mercury, one of the most important excretion ways is the feather changing. To confront the feather wear, most of the birds change them once a year and this process is a mercury excretion mechanism that reduces the levels of this pollutant on the organism," says González Solís. Another excretion way is the creation of the egg, and thus after the egg laying, females use to show lower pollutant levels compared to males.
Is it possible to lower pollutant emissions?
The effects of pollutants (COP, mercury) vary among the different Antarctic ecosystem organisms. Migrating to lower latitudes and northern hemisphere polluted areas and occupying a higher level in the trophic level are facts that increase the effects of pollutants in ocean birds. Although the toxicity of these products is well documented, its real impact on wild fauna population is still unknown for the scientists.

"These aspects are, in particular, the ones we study with the research in the University of Barcelona, focusing on analysing ecology and preservation of this group of birds" said the author. In this sense, understanding the environment pollution levels is done by studying the ecology of each species, since it is the key factor in final pollution levels. According to the UB-IRBio researcher, "the best way to fight environmental pollution is by reducing its emission sources; but to do so we need international agreements which are hard to get."

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nature; fish; birds; zoology; air quality; environmental science; pollution; air pollution

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Chemical pollution gets to Antarctic marine bird colonies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Latitude is the main factor which determines the organic pollutant concentration in Antarctic giant petrels -emblematic species in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions-, according to an article from the journal Environmental Research in which Professor Jacob González Solís, from the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute of the University of Barcelona (IRBio) takes part.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Fourteen years ago, when a frustrated Paul Crutzen blurted out the word "Anthropocene" at a scientific meeting in Mexico, the famous atmospheric chemist was expressing his despair at the scale of human damage to Earth. So profound has been the influence of humans, Nobelist Crutzen and his colleagues later wrote, that the planet has entered a new geologic epoch defined by a single, troubling fact: The "human imprint on the global environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of the great forces of nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system."

The science behind Crutzen's claim is extensive and robust, and it centers on the profound and irreversible changes brought by global warming. Yet almost as soon as the idea of the Anthropocene took hold, people began revising its meaning and distorting its implications. A new breed of ecopragmatists welcomed the epoch as an opportunity. They have gathered around the Breakthrough Institute, a "neogreen" think tank founded by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, the authors of a controversial 2004 paper, "The Death of Environmentalism." They do not deny global warming; instead they skate over the top of it, insisting that whatever limits and tipping points the Earth system might throw up, human technology and ingenuity will transcend them.

As carbon dioxide concentrations pass 400 ppm for the first time in a million years, and scientists warn of a U.S. baking in furnacelike summers by the 2070s, Shellenberger and Nordhaus wrote that by the end of the century "nearly all of us will be prosperous enough to live healthy, free and creative lives." The answer, they say, is not to change course but to more tightly "embrace human power, technology and the larger process of modernization."

The argument absolves us all of the need to change our ways, which is music to the ears of political conservatives. The Anthropocene is system-compatible.

This technoutopian vision depends on a belief that, with the advent of the new geologic epoch, nothing essential has changed. This reimagined Anthropocene rests on a seamless transition from the fact that humans have always modified their environments to a defense of a postmodern "cyber nature" under human supervision, as if there is no qualitative difference between fire-stick farming and spraying sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to regulate Earth's temperature.

For this reason, respected palaeoclimatologist William Ruddiman's hypothesis that the Anthropocene began some 8,000 years ago with the onset of farming and forest clearing has immediate appeal to ecopragmatists. It seems to give scientific grounding to the desire to defend the status quo against the evidence that the culprit is technoindustrialism's aggressive fossil fuel-driven expansionism, which began at the end of the 18th century.

The early-Anthropocene hypothesis effectively dissolves the distinction between the Holocene, which started some 11,700 years ago and encompasses the beginning of agriculture, and the Anthropocene, enabling ecopragmatists to argue that there is nothing inherently preferable about a Holocene Earth-a moral claim that permits the conscious creation of a different kind of planet. Hence, their attraction to geoengineering schemes aimed at regulating solar radiation or changing the chemical composition of the oceans. In the words of the most vocal ecopragmatist, the environmental scientist Erle Ellis, "We will be proud of the planet we create." Ellis speaks of "the good Anthropocene," a golden era in which we relinquish nostalgic attachments to a nature untouched by humans and embrace the new epoch as "ripe with human-directed opportunity."

But the idea of a good Anthropocene is based on a fundamental misreading of science. It arises from a failure to make the cognitive leap from ecological thinking-the science of the relationship between organisms and their local environments-to Earth system thinking, the science of the whole Earth as a complex system beyond the sum of its parts. The early Anthropocene hypothesis goes against strong evidence, provided by Crutzen, Will Steffen and other researchers, that only with the beginning of the industrial revolution can we detect a human influence on the functioning of the Earth system as a whole.

The revolutionary meaning of Earth-system science is lost on the ecopragmatists. In reality, the arrival of the new epoch represents not merely the further spread of human influence across the globe but a fundamental shift in the relationship between humans and the Earth system-one in which human activity now accelerates, decelerates and distorts the great cycles that make the planet a dynamic entity. The radical distinctiveness of the Anthropocene lies in the fact that humans have become a novel "force of nature," one that is shaping the geologic evolution of the planet. So far-reaching is the impact of modern humans that esteemed palaeoclimatologist Wally Broecker has suggested that we have not entered a new geologic epoch, a relatively minor event on the geologic time scale, but a new era- the Anthropozoic-on a par in Earth history with the development of multicellular life.

Some climate science deniers believe only God can change the climate; ecopragmatists, by contrast, see humans as "the god species." Here is what the god species and this kind of thinking are certain to give us: an atmosphere with 500 ppm of CO2 (probably closer to 700 ppm) and a climate that is hot, sticky and chaotic. It will indeed take omnipotence to fix the problem without calamity. For those who prefer orthodox climate science, such unbounded optimism is dangerous, wishful thinking.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The New Environmentalism Will Lead Us to Disaster

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fourteen years ago, when a frustrated Paul Crutzen blurted out the word "Anthropocene" at a scientific meeting in Mexico, the famous atmospheric chemist was expressing his despair at the scale of human damage to Earth.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There's a chestnut tree in a nature reserve in Duesseldorf, Germany, and it has a mailbox. People have sent it 5,500 letters and postcards since 2007.

They wrote to the spirit of the tree named Juechtwind or "where the wind always blows," and every piece of mail was answered.

Last year the almost 200-year-old tree got sick, struck with a fungal disease, and had to be cut down.

But now tree counseling has been taken over by its younger brother named Erona, which means summer breeze.

"Letters come from all over the world," says Andreas Vogt, who empties the letterbox and founded a citizens' initiative to protect the old chestnut tree, and now, the new one.

"Some people write very emotional [notes] about death, birth, weddings, loneliness, or personal fate," he says. Some correspondents want to know more about protection of the environment. Vogt sits down every day for up to two hours to answer them all.

He remembers one woman who wrote from a nursing home. She could not walk and wrote that she would love to come and visit the tree, but just couldn't. So Vogt and his wife drove to see her instead. "It was a very moving moment", Vogt reports, "the woman had collected many articles on the tree and wanted to know more."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and model Heidi Klum have sent autographed postcards to Juechtwind. A lady-in-waiting of Britain's Queen Elizabeth reportedly wrote a note on behalf of the queen. Other letters came from Japan, New Zealand and the United States. Century High School in Sykesville, Md., wrote in 2008. A teacher of German there sent a note about the school planting a small chestnut tree on campus to increase awareness of trees and the climate.

Some people who write to the new chestnut tree in Duesseldorf will receive an answer from 11-year-old Leni Classen as Erona. She's just started her "tree-internship," as Vogt puts it. He organizes benefit events and readings of fairy tales under the tree. And in the fall, people gather to rake the fallen leaves.

Vogt hopes for more. "I would very much appreciate if Barack Obama sent a greeting or an autograph," he says. "And we are looking for partners in the U.S. who want to start a similar project [with their own tree]." Britta Toellner, a spokeswoman for the Deutsche Post mail service says, "The postman cycles a detour of 2.2 kilometers per day to deliver mail to the tree. Many letters are beautifully decorated," she says.

"Erona" is not all alone. There is another tree in northern Germany where people can send letters and anyone can read them. Some couples have met through the Bridegroom's Oak.

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German Chestnut Tree Accepts Letters, Answers Queries, Promotes Environmentalism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There's a chestnut tree in a nature reserve in Duesseldorf, Germany, and it has a mailbox. People have sent it 5,500 letters and postcards since 2007. They wrote to the spirit of the tree named Juechtwind or "where the wind always blows," and every piece of mail was answered.

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Chemical pollution gets to Antarctic marine bird colonies

Chemical pollution gets to Antarctic marine bird colonies. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160721072757.htm
Lattitude has to do with the amount of pollution and how bad it is

enviornmentalism: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-environmentalism-will-lead-us-to-disaster/

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cleaner air may be driving water quality.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/uomc-cam072616.php
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/toxic-chemicals-drinking-water/

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The lava in Kilauea's crater formed what looks like a smiley face.

Credit: Mick Kalber/Paradise Helicopters via YouTube

A "smiling" volcano has gone viral.

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has been actively erupting since 1983, and it's one of the most active volcanoes in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). But the volcano received more attention recently when the volcano's lava formed what looks like a smiley face.

The smiley face appeared in a lava lake crater on the west flank of Pu'u 'O'o, on Kilauea's East Rift Zone, according to Janet Babb, a geologist with the USGS' Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. [ Explosive Images: Hawaii's Kilauea Erupts for 30 Years]

Pu'u 'O'o also recently made headlines when the lava flow reached the ocean for the first time in three years.

While it may seem like Kilauea was smiling for the cameras, the "face" has a more scientific explanation: The bright spots and incandescent line that created the face shape were produced by normal volcanic activity.

As a lava lake circulates, lava upwelling and downwelling will occur on opposite sides of the lake, according to the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. This often results in a spattering of molten lava, which creates bright spots on the dark-colored, semi-solid lake surface. Circulation can also cause sections of the surface to pull apart, revealing the lava beneath and creating lines.

By chance, these processes occurred in a pattern that created the smiling image, Babb said.

"The Pu'u 'O'o lava lake just happened to produce two spattering sources (bright dots) that have been interpreted as 'eyes' and an incandescent line that has been interpreted as a 'mouth' - with the two lake surface features located relative to each other to produce the iconic symbol of a smiley face," Babb told Live Science.

The spattering and cracking also happened to occur as Mick Kalber, of a helicopter tour company called Paradise Helicopters, was flying overhead, where he was able to capture the volcano's "smile."

Original article on Live Science.

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The Science Behind Hawaii's 'Smiley Face' Volcano

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A "smiling" volcano has gone viral. Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has been actively erupting since 1983, and it's one of the most active volcanoes in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). But the volcano received more attention recently when the volcano's lava formed what looks like a smiley face.

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It sounds simple: If something has a big carbon footprint and you get rid of it, you eliminate those carbon dioxide emissions. Right?

But it's not always that easy. In a recent study published in The Journal of Industrial Ecology, researchers at the Center for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey in England estimated the annual carbon footprint of crime in England and Wales, and found that reducing crime could actually cause society's overall carbon footprint of society to increase.

The findings illustrated the rebound effect, which describes how reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases in one area can lead to more emissions in the aggregate, because of direct or indirect effects. It's something that policy makers have often been encouraged to consider when they set out to reduce emissions.

Crime is one example where a rebound in carbon emissions could be an issue, according to this study. While there is an energy cost to operating prisons, the study notes, inmates generally consume less than an average citizen in the country, so fewer prisoners might mean higher overall energy consumption.

Additionally, the money saved from reducing crime would go into the government's budget and people's pockets. All that money could be spent in other ways - infrastructure, buildings or goods - that may require more energy to produce or operate, possibly adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Although there is a lot of uncertainty in calculating the rebound effect, the researchers tried to quantify the consequences of reducing domestic burglary by about 5 percent, and determined a rebound effect of 2 percent. That may sound small, but it would mean a growth in society's overall carbon footprint equivalent to about 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide, which is similar to the annual emissions of about 2,250 households in the Britain

It's more common to hear about rebound effects when it comes to certain areas of energy policy, like cars: If a car is more energy efficient, some scientists say, people may drive more, possibly leading to more fuel consumption overall.

Alan Meier, a senior scientist at the Department of Energy's Berkeley Lab who studies behavior and energy consumption, notes that even as electronic appliances become more efficient, people often have more of them, which may also drive up energy use.

"But numerous studies have demonstrated that rebound effects are small and the energy savings dominate," Dr. Meier said.

Other scientists agree, saying that fears of rebound effects are often overblown, and are a distraction from sensible energy policy.

In a 2013 study published in Nature, environmental economists argued that consumer behavior may prune between 5 percent and 30 percent off intended energy savings -- possibly reaching as high as 60 percent in some cases when larger economic forces are taken into account - but doesn't negate the savings altogether.

Kenneth Gillingham, one of the authors of that study and a professor of economics at the Yale School of Forestry, said that studying the carbon footprint and rebound effects of crime was "unusual," but it may help us to better understand the society we live in.

However, "there are probably also productivity effects of reducing crime that lead to more economic growth and more welfare, which may lead to greater energy use and emissions," Dr. Gillingham said.

In the new study, the scientists compared the rebound effect with the one associated with the backup energy sources required for offshore wind energy, or other renewable sources. Since the amount of wind fluctuates, it doesn't generate the same amount of energy all the time, so a backup system, often powered by fossil fuels, is needed.

And while the researchers expressed concern about the rebound effects of reducing crime - and where the money saved from reducing crime would be spent - they conclude that it's important to raise awareness of the environmental costs of crime, and incorporate this in overall policy, though it may be "unrealistic to expect police and criminals to consider their carbon footprint."

Indeed.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Carbon and Crime: More Prisoners Means Smaller Footprint. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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How Lowering Crime Could Contribute to Global Warming

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It sounds simple: If something has a big carbon footprint and you get rid of it, you eliminate those carbon dioxide emissions. Right? But it's not always that easy.

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50 years ago, humans could pick the oceans clean

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Excerpt from the August 6, 1966, issue of Science News Seafood is exhaustible- Man is capable of using up the resources of the ocean ... and if he is going to exploit them intelligently, he has a lot to learn....

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Enviromental Science
http://www.environmentalscience.org/articles-journals
Environmentalism
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-environmentalism-will-lead-us-to-disaster/

# data[].attributes.body
Environmental:https://www.sciencenews.org/article/50-years-ago-humans-could-pick-oceans-clean?mode=topic&context=60&tgt=nr
Credit-sciencenews.org
Environmentalism: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rising-temperatures-stunt-tree-growth/
Credit-scientificamerican.com

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Sinkhole 50 feet wide opens in front of Florida home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Temporary work to repair a sinkhole in a Hudson neighborhood has wrapped up for the evening after neighbors discover a sinkhole nearly 50 feet wide underneath the driveway and garage of a home on Mediterranean Court.

# data[].attributes.body
enviormentalism
http://wate.com/2016/08/13/sinkhole-50-feet-wide-opens-in-front-of-florida-home/
environmental science
http://www.livescience.com/55630-science-of-kilauea-volcano-smiley-face.html

# data[].attributes.body
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/pollution
(2016).Environment.nationalgeographic.com. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/pollution

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Batches of sand from a beach on the Delaware Bay are yielding insights into the powerful impact of temperature rise and evaporation along the shore that are in turn challenging long-held assumptions about what causes beach salinity to fluctuate in coastal zones that support a rich network of sea creatures and plants.

The findings have implications for the migration and survival of invertebrates such as mussels and crabs as global warming drives temperatures higher.

A first major study of the effects of evaporation on the flow of subsurface water and salinity, or salt content, in the beach intertidal zone -- the section of the beach between the low and high tide marks -- is being published today in Scientific Reports, an online affiliate of Nature.

The study, by New Jersey Institute of Technology's Center for Natural Resources Development (CNRDP) and led by two environmental engineers and a coastal geologist, shows that sediments from some sections of Slaughter Beach in Delaware have salt concentrations four times as high as the ocean water that washes over them. The finding came as a surprise.

The nearshore seawater the team measured had salt concentrations of 25 grams per liter (g/L), leading the researchers to expect that the subsurface water in areas of the beach it infiltrated would have similar or even lower levels as seawater mixes with inland groundwater in this zone. However, they discovered that the average salinity in the upper intertidal zone -- the high tide line -- was 60 g/L, with some values reaching as high as 100.

"These elevated levels can only be caused by evaporation, as there is no other mechanism for increasing the salt in pore water -- the water trapped between the grains of sediment," said Xiaolong Geng, a postdoctoral fellow at NJIT and the principal author of the study, noting that the rates of evaporation -- and salinity -- are thus mainly determined by temperature and relative humidity, while tide and wave flows dilute a beach's salt content.

"Previous studies have identified seawater as the primary source of salinity in coastal aquifer systems, thereby concluding that seawater infiltration always increases pore-water salinity by seawater-groundwater mixing dynamics," said Michel Boufadel, director of the CNRDP, who is also an author of the study. "Based on what we learned, we think this finding should alter the way water management in coastal areas is conducted."

The team analyzed nearly 400 sediment samples collected during the sequential phases of a complete tidal cycle, from day to night, on seven discontinuous days.

The intertidal, or littoral, zone, is a dynamic habitat, washed by seawater at high tide and uncovered at low tide, that is favored by crabs, mussels and sea anemones, the birds and sea mammals that feed on them, and plants such as kelp. Many of these animals burrow in the beach to find food and to seek protection from predators and the action of waves, and are in near constant contact with pore water.

The researchers have developed models that show that increases in temperature associated with global warming will not only make inland locations more salty, but would also create drastically different pattern of pore water salinity that will have implications for animals and plants in the intertidal zone.

"Evaporation is an important driver of underground water flow and salinity gradients, and animals such as mussels and crabs are affected by changes in salinity. If the concentrations are too high or too low, they will move away," noted Geng.

Nancy Jackson, a professor of coastal geomorphology in the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science and the study's third author, collected the beach samples from Slaughter Beach and provided interpretations of pore water dynamics.

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marine biology; nature; rodents; water; environmental issues; drought research; resource shortage; environmental policies; ocean policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Global warming's next surprise: Saltier beaches

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Batches of sand from a beach on the Delaware Bay are yielding insights into the powerful impact of temperature rise and evaporation along the shore that are in turn challenging long-held assumptions about what causes beach salinity to fluctuate in coastal zones that support a rich network of sea creatures and plants.

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 Brighton Back     http://www.livescience.com/55680-cold-war-toxic-waste-climate-change.html                             Cold-War-Era Toxic Waste Could Be Released by Greenland's Melting Ice. (2016). Live Science. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/55680-cold-war-toxic-waste-climate-change.html      Did you ever think that a old military base could be leading to the destruction of an island? According to studies an old cold war base is possibly the reason to the melting of ice on greenland.

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 Brighton Back     http://www.livescience.com/55680-cold-war-toxic-waste-climate-change.html                             Cold-War-Era Toxic Waste Could Be Released by Greenland's Melting Ice. (2016). Live Science. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/55680-cold-war-toxic-waste-climate-change.html      Did you ever think that a old military base could be leading to the destruction of an island? According to studies an old cold war base is possibly the reason to the melting of ice on greenland.

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http://www.dr5.org/earth-hour-is-the-perfect-example-of-environmentalism/

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The Northeast have more powerful winds then expected. This wind farm is the first off land wind farm and has powerful turbulents and winds.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811143541.htm

Wind power fiercer than expected: As US' first offshore wind farm takes root, study indicates wind may be more powerful, turbulent than expected. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811143541.htm

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Cold-War-Era Toxic Waste Could Be Released by Greenland's Melting Ice

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The northeast portal to Camp Century during construction in 1959.

Credit: US Army

It may sound like a storyline straight out of a Godzilla movie, but researchers are warning that toxic waste from a long-abandoned Cold War-era camp could leach into nearby ecosystems as a result of warming temperatures in Greenland.

It was thought that the hazardous waste would stay buried and frozen forever beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, but climate change is warming the Arctic and causing portions of the ice sheet to melt, the researchers reported in a new study.

"In the past, militaries, industry and even scientists have given little thought to the lasting impact of their activities, including dangerous waste left behind," Laurence Smith, a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of "The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future" (Dutton Adult, 2010), told Live Science in an email. "That attitude is changing but not gone, and this study shows how the activities of the past are with us still." [ See Photos of the Cold War-Era Military Base]

According to the new study, waste from the Cold War-era camp, known as Camp Century, covers 136 acres (0.55 square kilometers), or about the size of 100 football fields. This includes approximately 53,000 gallons (200,000 liters) of diesel fuel; building materials; and 63,000 gallons (240,000 liters) of wastewater, which includes a large amount of sewage.

"It became pretty obvious that none of these sites had received proper decommissioning," said study lead author William Colgan, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering at York University in Toronto. The base also likely contains a small amount of nuclear waste, but Colgan said this isn't as concerning as some of the other toxic materials.

Perhaps most worrying is that the site contains polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals that were once widely used in electrical structures and equipment, the researchers said. In animal studies, these chemicals were shown to be harmful to the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system and endocrine system, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Similarly wide-ranging effects are likely in humans as well, and PCBs can increase the likelihood of various health problems, including cancer, EPA studies have shown.

Colgan and his colleagues warned that, if human-driven climate change continues on the present course, the ice covering the site could begin to melt in about 75 years. It would be much longer before the base itself would become exposed, but in the meantime, meltwater could move through the ice, saturating structures in the base and carrying toxic waste with it as it flows to the coast, they said.

The new study details the history of Camp Century, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers military base that was built in the Greenland Ice Sheet in 1959. The base, located 125 miles (200 kilometers) from Greenland's northwest coast, was called the "city under the ice," because the entire infrastructure was buried under more than 26 feet (8 meters) of ice to provide protection and camouflage. According to the researchers, Camp Century housed up to 200 soldiers and was powered by a portable nuclear reactor, which Colgan said was removed during decommissioning.

The area, though desolate, was strategic because the Artic provided the shortest route between the United States and the Soviet Union. Camp Century was one of many camps built under an agreement with Denmark to defend Greenland. [ Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 7 Declassified Military & CIA Secrets]

A view inside the main 400-meter (1,300-foot) access trench to Camp Century in 1964. More than 12 150-meter (500-foot) long side trenches radiated out from the main trench.

Credit: US Army

Officially, the camp was used to conduct scientific research and test Arctic construction strategies. Unofficially, it was also a top-secret proof of concept for building nuclear missile launch sites in the ice. This program was known as Project Iceworm because it involved burrowing a 2,500-mile-long (4,000 km) tunnel through the ice, from which up to 600 ballistic missiles could be deployed. This tunnel was never actually built, but something akin to a prototype was created, in the form of a 1-mile-long (1.6 km) underground railway, the researchers said.

The project was not approved by the Danish government and was eventually rejected by the U.S. Department of Defense's Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1963. Camp Century was decommissioned in 1967.

The possibility that these chemicals could leach out of the long-abandoned base is compounded by another problem: The Arctic already experiences a disproportionate burden from PCBs due to a phenomenon called the "grasshopper phenomenon," Colgan said. This occurs when pollutants are released and evaporate in warm areas and then are carried by winds to cold areas, where they settle back toward the surface. [ 6 Unexpected Effects of Climate Change]

And although the area surrounding Camp Century is desolate, Greenland's environment and the people who live off of it could suffer serious consequences, Colgan said.

"The Greenland ecosystem - the Arctic ecosystem, in general - is pretty fragile," Colgan said. "It's just clinging to life." Although the human population is relatively small, there are people in Greenland and nearby areas of the Arctic who hunt for their food, which means they could be exposed to these chemicals through food sources that are crucial to their way of life, he added.

Camp Century is a lesson in climate change that's been largely ignored for decades, according to the scientists. But although the issues at the base are only now being examined, Camp Century is already a well-known site of concern for climate scientists. In fact, it was the first place where an ice-core sample was taken from Greenland, in 1966, to monitor the effects of climate change, Colgan said.

"This work brings fresh attention to a chronic problem in the Arctic," Smith said. "The Arctic is a fascinating place where fast climate change, environmental sensitivity and geopolitics converge."

The findings were published online Aug. 4 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Original article on Live Science.

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Cold-War-Era Toxic Waste Could Be Released by Greenland's Melting Ice

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It may sound like a storyline straight out of a Godzilla movie, but researchers are warning that toxic waste from a long-abandoned Cold War-era camp could leach into nearby ecosystems as a result of warming temperatures in Greenland.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Batches of sand from a beach on the Delaware Bay are yielding insights into the powerful impact of temperature rise and evaporation along the shore that are in turn challenging long-held assumptions about what causes beach salinity to fluctuate in coastal zones that support a rich network of sea creatures and plants.

The findings have implications for the migration and survival of invertebrates such as mussels and crabs as global warming drives temperatures higher.

A first major study of the effects of evaporation on the flow of subsurface water and salinity, or salt content, in the beach intertidal zone -- the section of the beach between the low and high tide marks -- is being published today in Scientific Reports, an online affiliate of Nature.

The study, by New Jersey Institute of Technology's Center for Natural Resources Development (CNRDP) and led by two environmental engineers and a coastal geologist, shows that sediments from some sections of Slaughter Beach in Delaware have salt concentrations four times as high as the ocean water that washes over them. The finding came as a surprise.

The nearshore seawater the team measured had salt concentrations of 25 grams per liter (g/L), leading the researchers to expect that the subsurface water in areas of the beach it infiltrated would have similar or even lower levels as seawater mixes with inland groundwater in this zone. However, they discovered that the average salinity in the upper intertidal zone -- the high tide line -- was 60 g/L, with some values reaching as high as 100.

"These elevated levels can only be caused by evaporation, as there is no other mechanism for increasing the salt in pore water -- the water trapped between the grains of sediment," said Xiaolong Geng, a postdoctoral fellow at NJIT and the principal author of the study, noting that the rates of evaporation -- and salinity -- are thus mainly determined by temperature and relative humidity, while tide and wave flows dilute a beach's salt content.

"Previous studies have identified seawater as the primary source of salinity in coastal aquifer systems, thereby concluding that seawater infiltration always increases pore-water salinity by seawater-groundwater mixing dynamics," said Michel Boufadel, director of the CNRDP, who is also an author of the study. "Based on what we learned, we think this finding should alter the way water management in coastal areas is conducted."

The team analyzed nearly 400 sediment samples collected during the sequential phases of a complete tidal cycle, from day to night, on seven discontinuous days.

The intertidal, or littoral, zone, is a dynamic habitat, washed by seawater at high tide and uncovered at low tide, that is favored by crabs, mussels and sea anemones, the birds and sea mammals that feed on them, and plants such as kelp. Many of these animals burrow in the beach to find food and to seek protection from predators and the action of waves, and are in near constant contact with pore water.

The researchers have developed models that show that increases in temperature associated with global warming will not only make inland locations more salty, but would also create drastically different pattern of pore water salinity that will have implications for animals and plants in the intertidal zone.

"Evaporation is an important driver of underground water flow and salinity gradients, and animals such as mussels and crabs are affected by changes in salinity. If the concentrations are too high or too low, they will move away," noted Geng.

Nancy Jackson, a professor of coastal geomorphology in the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science and the study's third author, collected the beach samples from Slaughter Beach and provided interpretations of pore water dynamics.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
marine biology; nature; rodents; water; environmental issues; drought research; resource shortage; environmental policies; ocean policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Global warming's next surprise: Saltier beaches

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Batches of sand from a beach on the Delaware Bay are yielding insights into the powerful impact of temperature rise and evaporation along the shore that are in turn challenging long-held assumptions about what causes beach salinity to fluctuate in coastal zones that support a rich network of sea creatures and plants.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The consequences of climate change are an increasing concern for humans around the world. How will we cope with rising sea levels and climbing temperatures? But it's not just humans who will be affected by these worldwide shifts -- it's our closest cousins, too: monkeys, apes and lemurs.

A new Concordia study published in the International Journal of Primatology shows that the world's primate populations may be seriously impacted by climate change.

"Our research shows that climate change may be one of the biggest emerging threats to primates, compounding existing pressures from deforestation, hunting and the exotic pet trade," says Tanya Graham, the article's lead author and an MSc student in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment.

She worked with environment professor Damon Matthews from Concordia and primatology post-doctoral researcher Sarah Turner from McGill to assess the exposure and potential vulnerability of all non-human primate species to projected future temperature and precipitation changes. They found that overall, 419 species of non-human primates -- such as various species of lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys and apes -- will experience 10 per cent more warming than the global average, with some primate species experiencing increases of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius in annual average temperature for every degree of global warming.

The researchers also identified several hotspots of primate vulnerability to climate change, based on the combination of the number of species, their endangered status and the severity of climate changes at each location. Overall, the most extreme hotspots, which represent the upper 10 per cent of all hotspot scores, cover a total area of 3,622,012 square kilometres over the ranges of 67 primate species.

The highest hotspot scores occur in Central America, the Amazon and southeastern Brazil, as well as portions of East and Southeast Asia -- prime territory for some of the globe's best-known primates who call these areas home.

The ursine howler monkey, black howler monkey, and barbary macaque are expected to be exposed to the highest magnitude of climate change when both temperature and precipitation are considered. For example, the ursine howler monkey, found in Venezuela, will experience an increase of 1.2 degrees Celsius annually and a 5.3 per cent decline in annual rainfall for each degree of global temperature increase.

"This study highlights the vulnerability of individual species, as well as regions in which primates as a whole may be vulnerable to climate change," says Matthews, who will present the findings of this study during the Joint Meeting of the International Primatological Society and the American Society of Primatologists in Chicago later this month.

"Our findings can be taken as priorities for ongoing conservation efforts, given that any success in decreasing other current human pressures on endangered species may also increase that species' ability to withstand the growing pressures of climate changes," says Graham.

"Primates are often seen as flagship species for entire ecosystems, so conservation can have important ramifications for many other species too. I hope our study will help direct conservation efforts for individual primate species in particular, but also for vulnerable ecosystems in general throughout the tropical regions inhabited by non-human primates," adds Turner.

This study was funded in part by the Concordia Institute for Water, Energy and Sustainable Systems, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de recherche du Québec -- Nature et technologies.

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nature; endangered animals; monkeys; new species; environmental awareness; climate; global warming; environmental policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How climate change will hurt humanity's closest cousins: New research shows rising global temperatures could hit primates hard

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The consequences of climate change are an increasing concern for humans around the world. How will we cope with rising sea levels and climbing temperatures? But it's not just humans who will be affected by these worldwide shifts -- it's our closest cousins, too: monkeys, apes and lemurs.

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Concerned for invertebrates scientists tested spots at a beach. Salt levels were four times higher than the ocean water that washed over them.

Global warming's next surprise: Saltier beaches

Global warming's next surprise: Saltier beaches. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201

Environmental science

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811142647.htm

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A three-year-old Asian elephant made a tragic mistake. Last month it strayed onto a farm Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, chewed on a firecracker that exploded, and later died from its injuries, reports The Indian Express.

Now police have arrested a man whom they suspect illegally kept the explosives on his farm. Law enforcement officers say that a preliminary investigation revealed that the farmer didn't intend to target elephants but rather wild boars that were eating and trampling his crops.

It's not the first time an elephant in India has become a casualty of explosives. Back in 2003, an elephant died after eating an explosives-covered fruit ball. Another died in 2009 after biting on a fire cracker.

The incidents highlight the lack of wild spaces in a country that's brimming with people. India holds 60 percent of the world's Asian elephants, estimated at 27,000, and only about 20 percent of them live in protected areas. The country's human population exceeded 1.3 billion in 2015, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Population Reference Bureau.

Shrinking habitat results in more and more of the animals passing through human settlements and stumbling onto farms, where they eat crops and uproot and scatter almost as many of them. As a result, people kill 40 to 50 elephants each year. (On the flip side, elephants kill 100 to 300 people annually). Asian elephants, which are endangered, also have to contend with poaching for their ivory, meat, and skins.

Here are other wildlife crime busts, convictions, and investigations around the world announced this past week:

BEAR PARTS: Wildlife rangers in Sabah, a state on the Malaysian island of Borneo, arrested two men allegedly in possession of various bear parts, according to Malaysia's New Straits Times Online. The eight bear paws, two bear gall-bladders, and eight teeth are suspected of coming from two Malayan sun bears, whose numbers are believed to be in decline in the wild because of deforestation and the illegal trade in their body parts.

TIGER POACHING: Police busted a man accused of poaching a tiger in the Pilibhit tiger reserve, in Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India, The Times of India reports. Five of the man's suspected accomplices escaped, according to a forest officer. Poaching in the reserve has reduced the number of tigers there to an estimated 23 in 2013, down from 40 in 2010. The animals are killed for their bones, for tiger wine, a potion that's claimed with no validity to treat rheumatism and impotence, and for their magnificent pelts.

GIRAFFE TAILS: Poachers killed three giraffes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Garamba National Park. Documentary filmmaker David Hamlin captured exclusive video footage of the aftermath of the killings. Congolese usually kill the giraffes for one body part: their tails, considered a status symbol in some communities. Meanwhile men from neighboring South Sudan target the giraffes for their meat to feed impoverished villagers.

LOOTING LOGGERS: Law enforcement personnel nabbed three people suspected of illegally logging red sanders trees in the Chittoor district, in Andhra Pradesh, a state in India, The Hans India reports. Members of the red sanders anti-smuggling unit recovered 58 logs. The trees are endemic to India and valued for the rich red color of the wood.

This story was produced by National Geographic's Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by grants from the BAND Foundation and the Woodtiger Fund. Read more stories from the SIU on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife@natgeo.com.

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Baby Elephant's Death a Grim Reminder of Lack of Wilderness

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A three-year-old Asian elephant made a tragic mistake. Last month it strayed onto a farm Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, chewed on a firecracker that exploded, and later died from its injuries, reports The Indian Express. Now police have arrested a man whom they suspect illegally kept the explosives on his farm.

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Hannah Porter Environmental Science VS Environmentalism 

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Hannah Porter Environmental Science VS Environmentalism 

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809121418.htm
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/12/489823311/german-chestnut-tree-accepts-letters-answers-queries-promotes-environmentalism
NPR

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Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems -- polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) -- exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the U.S., according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

The study will be published August 9, 2016 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

"For many years, chemicals with unknown toxicities, such as PFASs, were allowed to be used and released to the environment, and we now have to face the severe consequences," said lead author Xindi Hu, a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard Chan School and Environmental Science and Engineering at SEAS. "In addition, the actual number of people exposed may be even higher than our study found, because government data for levels of these compounds in drinking water is lacking for almost a third of the U.S. population -- about 100 million people."

PFASs have been used over the past 60 years in industrial and commercial products ranging from food wrappers to clothing to pots and pans. They have been linked with cancer, hormone disruption, high cholesterol, and obesity. Although several major manufacturers have discontinued the use of some PFASs, the chemicals continue to persist in people and wildlife. Drinking water is one of the main routes through which people can be exposed.

The researchers looked at concentrations of six types of PFASs in drinking water supplies, using data from more than 36,000 water samples collected nationwide by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2013-2015. They also looked at industrial sites that manufacture or use PFASs; at military fire training sites and civilian airports where fire-fighting foam containing PFASs is used; and at wastewater treatment plants. Discharges from these plants -- which are unable to remove PFASs from wastewater by standard treatment methods -- could contaminate groundwater. So could the sludge that the plants generate and which is frequently used as fertilizer.

The study found that PFASs were detectable at the minimum reporting levels required by the EPA in 194 out of 4,864 water supplies in 33 states across the U.S. Drinking water from 13 states accounted for 75% of the detections, including, in order of frequency of detection, California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Georgia, Minnesota, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

Sixty-six of the public water supplies examined, serving six million people, had at least one water sample that measured at or above the EPA safety limit of 70 parts per trillion (ng/L) for two types of PFASs, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Concentrations ranged as high as 349 ng/L for PFOA (Warminster, PA) and 1,800 ng/L for PFOS (Newark, DE).

The highest levels of PFASs were detected in watersheds near industrial sites, military bases, and wastewater treatment plants -- all places where these chemicals may be used or found.

"These compounds are potent immunotoxicants in children and recent work suggests drinking water safety levels should be much lower than the provisional guidelines established by EPA," said Elsie Sunderland, senior author of the study and associate professor in both the Harvard Chan School and SEAS.

Other Harvard Chan authors of the study included Philippe Grandjean and Courtney Carignan.

Funding for the study came from the Smith Family Foundation and a private donor.
PFASs and reduced immune response
Another Harvard Chan School study, led by Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, also suggested negative health impacts of PFAS exposure. That study looked at a group of about 600 adolescents from the Faroe Islands, an island country off the coast of Denmark. Those exposed to PFASs at a young age had lower-than-expected levels of antibodies against diphtheria and tetanus, for which they had been immunized. The findings suggested that PFASs, which are known to interfere with immune function, may be involved in reducing the effectiveness of vaccines in children.

Funding for this study came from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH (ES012199); the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (R830758); the Danish Council for Strategic Research (09-063094); and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency as part of the environmental support program DANCEA (Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic).

Journal References:

1. Xindi C. Hu, David Q. Andrews, Andrew B. Lindstrom, Thomas A. Bruton, Laurel A. Schaider, Philippe Grandjean, Rainer Lohmann, Courtney C. Carignan, Arlene Blum, Simona A. Balan, Christopher P. Higgins, Elsie M. Sunderland. Detection of Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs) in U.S. Drinking Water Linked to Industrial Sites, Military Fire Training Areas, and Wastewater Treatment Plants. Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 2016; DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00260

2. Esben Budtz-Jørgensen, Ulla B. Mogensen, Flemming Nielsen, Pal Weihe, Carsten Heilmann, Philippe Grandjean. Serum Vaccine Antibody Concentrations in Adolescents Exposed to Perfluorinated Compounds. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2016; DOI: 10.1289/EHP275

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health policy; workplace health; today's healthcare; water; environmental policy; environmental issues; stem education; ocean policy; world development

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Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water for six million Americans: Drinking water samples near industrial sites, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants have highest levels of fluorinated compounds

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Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems -- polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances -- exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the US, according to a new study.

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Enviromental Science:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809121418.htm
Evirimentalism:
https://grist.org/cities/protests-over-texas-high-speed-rail-take-a-turn-for-the-ridiculous/

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from research organizations
Credit: Rachel Collin laboratory
The balmy waters of the Caribbean could turn into a deadly heat trap for countless tiny creatures. Authors of a new study conducted at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama discovered that microscopic sea urchin eggs and larvae may suffer stunting or death when the water temperature spikes just a couple of degrees above normal, adding to the impact of climate change in already warm tropical oceans.

Sea urchins, pincushion-shaped relatives of the starfish, graze the sea floor from shallow coastal areas to deep ocean vents from pole to pole. Their young look nothing like them. Adults release millions of eggs and sperm into the water, which develop into pinprick-sized free-swimming larvae. Only a minute fraction will survive and metamorphose into adults. Scientists think the developmental stages from egg to larvae are extra sensitive to temperature changes, but very few studies compare the vulnerability of the offspring to that of the adults.

"That's because they're tiny and generally inaccessible," said Rachel Collin, STRI staff scientist and lead author of the new study, published in Ecology and Evolution in July. She and coauthor Kit Yu Karen Chan, now at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, collected and studied sea urchins from the lagoons around Bocas del Toro, Panama, which normally experience temperatures around 27 to 29 degrees Celsius (C). They exposed adults and offspring in various developmental stages to two hours of acute heat stress by placing them in water baths with temperatures ranging from 28 to 36 degrees C.

Early stage larvae of one common species, the green sea urchin, Lytechinus variegatus, died at temperatures above 32 degrees C, while eggs and late stage larvae died closer to 34 degrees C. Adults survived up to almost 35 degrees C. Long-term exposure to temperatures above 30 degrees C reduced larval survival and growth, with all larvae dying when temperatures reached 32 degrees C.

"We were surprised at how close these experimental temperatures were to what they already experience in the Caribbean," Collin said.

Field-station recordings show that near one of the collection sites in Bocas del Toro, water temperatures exceeded 30 degrees C during the two warmest months of the year. Larvae may be less tolerant of such conditions than adults.

Temperatures in the tropics continue to rise as a consequence of climate change, giving shallow-water sea urchins few survival options: acclimate to their new normal or shift to cooler, deeper waters or higher latitudes. The microscopic larvae develop during a critically short period of days to weeks and drift according to the currents.

Collin and Chan are gathering data for eight other species of sea urchins, including two species of sand dollar. They hope to compare differences in temperature tolerance in adults and offspring across species, which may help them identify which ones are the most sensitive to heat stress. Collin pointed out that while their experiments give them an upper limit for acute stress--such as midday with the sun directly overhead--long-term, chronic stress due to gradually warming waters may be just as detrimental but harder to measure.

"We can document the tolerance limits of these animals in the lab," Collin said. "But we still don't understand the impact of warming on sea urchin populations in the wild. No one really knows where the currents might sweep the tiny larvae and what temperatures they are exposed to once they leave the reef."

Journal Reference:

Rachel Collin, Kit Yu Karen Chan. The sea urchinLytechinus variegatuslives close to the upper thermal limit for early development in a tropical lagoon. Ecology and Evolution, 2016; 6 (16): 5623 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.2317

Cite This Page:

Below are relevant articles that may interest you. ScienceDaily shares links and proceeds with scholarly publications in the TrendMD network.

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fish; marine biology; endangered animals; insects (including butterflies); climate; global warming; weather; oceanography

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Tropical sea urchins caught between a rock and a hot place

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The balmy waters of the Caribbean could turn into a deadly heat trap for countless tiny creatures. Authors of a new study have discovered that microscopic sea urchin eggs and larvae may suffer stunting or death when the water temperature spikes just a couple of degrees above normal, adding to the impact of climate change in already warm tropical oceans.

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How climate change will hurt humanity's closest cousins: New research shows rising global temperatures could hit primates hard

How climate change will hurt humanity's closest cousins: New research shows rising global temperatures could hit primates hard. (2016). ScienceDaily. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20
the problems of climate change are effecting animals and people all over the world. The climates changes aren't hurting humans the most they are hurting our closest animal cousins apes monkeys and lemurs.

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Science Daily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160815094625.htm

National Geographic
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/wildlife-elephant-india-explosives-crop-raiding-shrinking-habitat/

twiter post summary:
Some water temperatures are becoming too hot for green sea urchin larvea to live. They can live in water that is 30 degrees C, but the waters in some places are now 32 degrees C.

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In a developing /early developing country like Bangladesh, public universities are still suffering a lot regarding the systematic course of environmental science like biology and ecology. Presently, I feel it urgent to know recent objectives and attainment in these fields worldwide.

The pathways of such interdisciplinary approaches must be adopted appropriately. This is only to develop discipline in education from base to top. Initially, environmental problems are pollution of rivers, air and some soils, floods, cyclones, arsenic, plant pathogens, etc.

As a teacher of higher studies at the National University, Bangladesh, Chittagong College Campus, I am starting a quick search work of prime preference.

@pelestears- There are a number of great jobs for environmental scientists, most of which are recession proof. State and local governments, consulting firms, engineering and architecture firms, and the federal government employ most people with environmental science degrees. Government scientists are rarely laid off because they play such a vital role in policy development and the planning of infrastructure.

Most local and state level environmental scientists work with planners, transportation engineers, and other government regulatory agencies to prevent and remediate contamination of vital natural resources like water and air. They analyze and model the impact of projects like transportation throughways, real estate developments, and waste treatment facilities.

Within the federal government, most environmental scientists work for the EPA and the

Department of Defense, but they are increasingly working with the Department of Energy. These scientists will perform research to aid in policy development as well as aid in the development of new technologies and resources.

The private sector environmental scientists tend to have the least job security because their work is often tied to building and development. When the economy is down, the number of consultants needs to be trimmed, but consultancy can be very lucrative. Overall, the government projects environmental scientists will be in much higher demand than most other professions.

@PelesTears- I am applying to environmental science graduate programs at Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara. I have been researching careers in Environmental Science for the past few years, so I have a good idea of the possibilities. I am not sure though what types of professional organizations there are for environmental scientists because I am still working my way through my college degree. I figure I will have an opportunity to join an organization and seek different certifications once I am a little closer to finishing graduate studies.

Environmental scientists can specialize in a number of areas beyond what the article described. One of the schools I am looking at has an Environmental Science and Management program that offers a

number of different tracks based on the career desires of the students. These specializations include thing like marine resource management, corporate environmental management, conservation planning, environmental politics and economics, and energy resource management. The specializations are made up of courses in addition to the core environmental science courses like that deal with environmental policy, law, biogeochemistry, and data analysis.

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In a developing /early developing country like Bangladesh, public universities are still suffering a lot regarding the systematic course of environmental science like biology and ecology. Presently, I feel it urgent to know recent objectives and attainment in these fields worldwide. The pathways of such interdisciplinary approaches must be adopted appropriately.

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Citation:
What is Environmental Science? (with pictures)

What is Environmental Science? (with pictures). (2016). wiseGEEK. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-environmental-science.htm

Post: My website is wisegeek.org as below and it provides the information about environmental which I needed. Firstly, it has logical and prominent paragraph structure as it define environmental science at the first paragraph as well as some relevant examples from other fields. Also it offers the readers an extremely specific data about what environmental science is and what area does it contains.

Environmentalsm
https://www.britannica.com/topic/environmentalism

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The Pripyat Ferris Wheel, viewed from the City Center Gymnasium. Image: Kadams1970

The name "Chernobyl" has become synonymous with the eerie, urban ruins left in the wake of devastating nuclear fallout.

But a new legacy has begun to blossom from the ashes of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), the 1000-square-mile surrounding the remains of the ill-fated Ukrainian power plant and its neighboring city of Pripyat. Once the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, Chernobyl is becoming an unlikely poster child for sustainable energy and environmental renewal.

The most recent example of the Chernobyl's green revival is a new effort to develop a solar power plant within the CEZ. For the past few weeks, Ostap Semerak, Ukraine's minister of ecology, has been pitching Chernobyl as a potential solar hotspot to both foreign and domestic investors.

"We propose for our partners and investors to look on this territory with a quite different understanding; not as a territory of catastrophe, but as a territory of future development," Semerak said during a visit to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London this week.

This is more than a symbolic rebrand, as much of Chernobyl's original infrastructure, including electrical transmission lines, can be repurposed to suit growing solar operations. The disastrous detritus nuclear power plant may find a second life supporting clean, safe, renewable power. Semerak said that Canadian, American, and local Ukrainian investors have already pursued the opportunity to develop in the CEZ. The goal is to install a four megawatt plant there by the end of 2016, according to Bloomberg.

Beyond this move toward solar power, Chernobyl is also gaining a reputation as a lush-and accidental-wildlife preserve. The forced absence of human settlement over the past 30 years has allowed plants and animals to flourish within the exclusion zone. Wolves, moose, boars, badgers, and wild horses teem in the unpeopled wilderness surrounding the abandoned community.

In fact, studies show that Chernobyl's ecosystems are more robust and healthy now than they were before the 1986 meltdown, with the notable exception of outlier groups like invertebrates and birds, which appear to be more susceptible to radiation.

"The wildlife at Chernobyl is very likely better than it was before the accident, not because radiation is good for animals, but because human occupation is much worse," Jim Smith, a University of Portsmouth environmental scientist who has studied Chernobyl's wildlife, told me last October.

Thirty years ago, few people could have predicted that the Chernobyl region would ever recover from the fallout of the meltdown, let alone produce power again. But as the decades wear on and overgrowth reclaims its human-made structures, the zone's legacy has grown from a cautionary tale to a story of rebirth. Perhaps over the coming months and years, Ukrainian communities will come to rely on Chernobyl for energy once more.

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Chernobyl Has Turned into an Unlikely Poster Child for Environmentalism

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The Pripyat Ferris Wheel, viewed from the City Center Gymnasium. Image: Kadams1970 The name "Chernobyl" has become synonymous with the eerie, urban ruins left in the wake of devastating nuclear fallout. But a new legacy has begun to blossom from the ashes of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), the 1000-square-mile surrounding the remains of the ill-fated Ukrainian power plant and its neighboring city of Pripyat.

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Anon

(2016). Seattletimes.com. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/students-join-project-to-track-air-quality-in-yakima-valley/

Website (2016). Motherboard. Retrieved 16 August 2016, from

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/chernobyl-has-turned-into-an-unlikely-poster-child-for-environmentalism
Twitter post
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bn8ub6ZesjbBdsvJzuzOWScI5k3Qaeai3jxU47P09Cs/edit#