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Archive for February, 2011
Regulation Haters Join Chorus Urging New Clean Water Act Rules
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
GreenWire: Third in a series on federal wetlands regulations. Click here for part one and here for part two.
Environmentalists and Washington lobbyists for agriculture, mining, homebuilding, road building, electric utilities and manufacturing industries have found something to agree on.
It's time, they say, for the Obama administration to write new Clean Water Act regulation.
Both camps say the rulemaking could settle a long-stalled legal argument over what wetlands qualify for federal regulatory oversight....
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Regulation Haters Join Chorus Urging New Clean Water Act RulesUnited States: Hudson River Fish Resist PCBs Through Gene Variant
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
New York Times: Most people think of evolution occurring gradually over thousands of years, but apparently no one told the Atlantic tomcod.
In just 50 years or so, the Hudson River fish has evolved to become resistant to toxic PCBs that polluted the river, researchers reported Thursday. Their secret is a gene variant.
"You're talking about very rapid evolution," said Isaac Wirgin, an associate professor of environmental medicine at New York University School of Medicine.
The speed of evolution depends on...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United States: Hudson River Fish Resist PCBs Through Gene VariantToxic Avengers: Pollution Drove Fish Evolution
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
National Public Radio: Scientists have discovered a strange fish that lives in a soup of some of industry's worst pollutants. The fish, found in rivers in New York and New Jersey, survive because they've evolved to cope with dangerous chemicals. As one scientist who has heard about the fish says, "pollution has driven evolution."
Between 1947 and 1976, high levels of extremely toxic chemicals were dumped into the Hudson River. By the 1980s, about 95 percent of fish in some areas had liver tumors.
Between 1947 and...
Russia: World’s largest lake sheds light on climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Physorg: Siberia's Lake Baikal, the world's oldest, deepest, and largest freshwater lake, has provided scientists with insight into the ways that climate change affects water temperature, which in turn affects life in the lake. The study is published in the journal PLoS ONE today.
"Lake Baikal has the greatest biodiversity of any lake in the world," explained co-author Stephanie Hampton, deputy director of UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis (NCEAS). "And, thanks to the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Russia: World’s largest lake sheds light on climate changeHibernating Bears Keep Weirdly Warm
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
National Geographic: Hibernating black bears can dramatically lower their metabolism with only a moderate drop in body temperature, a surprising new study says.
The North American mammals generally slumber about five to seven months without eating, drinking, urinating, or defecating, and then emerge from their dens in the spring none the worse for wear.
Scientists have long known that to survive this lengthy fast, the bears drop their metabolism, the chemical process that converts food to energy.
But it was...
UT researchers link algae to harmful oestrogen-like compound in water
Posted by Science Centric: None Given on February 17th, 2011
Science Centric: University of Tennessee, Knoxville, researchers have found that blue-green algae may be responsible for producing an oestrogen-like compound in the environment which could disrupt the normal activity of reproductive hormones and adversely affect fish, plants and human health. Previously, human activities were thought solely responsible for producing these impacts.
Theodore Henry, an adjunct professor for UT Knoxville's Centre for Environmental Biotechnology and faculty at the University of Plymouth,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on UT researchers link algae to harmful oestrogen-like compound in waterTallying Coal’s Hidden Cost
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
New York Times: Joshua Anderson for The New York Times Miners in a break car that will take them down into a coal mine in Hazard, Ky.
Coal may be among the dirtiest fuels, but it is also cheap and plentiful in the United States, where it still accounts for nearly half of electricity generation.
Yet coal power`s rock-bottom price for utilities and consumers omits a host of attendant costs associated with its production, from public health impacts to local and global environmental effects. Measuring these impacts...
Saving Madagascar’s little-known star: the fossa
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Mongabay: Saving Madagascar's little-known star: the fossa
The fossa. Photo © Nick Garbutt .
An interview with Mia-Lana Lührs, a part of our Interviews with Young Scientists series.
Madagascar is a land of wonders: dancing lemurs, thumbnail-sized chameleons, the long-fingered aye-aye, great baobab trees, and the mighty fossa. Wait--what? What's a fossa? It's true that when people think of Madagascar rarely do they think of its top predator, the fossa--even if they are one of the few who actually recognizes...
Chevron asks Ecuador judge to clarify ruling
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Reuters: Lawyers for Chevron Corp on Thursday requested clarification of a recent court ruling in Ecuador that ordered the U.S. oil company to pay $8.6 billion in damages for contaminating the Amazon.
Indigenous farmers in Ecuador's jungle region say the company is responsible for polluting a Rhode Island-sized swath of rainforest through faulting drilling practices in the 1970s and 1980s.
Judge Nicolas Zambrano of Sucumbios provincial court on Monday ruled that Chevron contaminated the jungle. He ordered...
Rainfall’s link to carbon emissions quantified
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Nature: Two studies published in Nature this week have demonstrated a direct link between rising greenhouse gas levels and severe rainfall events.
Scientists compared rainfall predictions from eight climate models with data from weather stations around the Northern Hemisphere. Gabriele Hegerl, a climate researcher at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, told NatureNews:
"We can now say with some confidence that the increased rainfall intensity in the latter half of the 20th century cannot be...