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Archive for December 17th, 2015
Cells use mechanism to eat each other before becoming toxic
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 17th, 2015
ScienceDaily: In much the same way PAC-MAN® gobbles through an intense maze of dots eating and destroying its aggressors, researchers from the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University have revealed for the first time how a similar mechanism in the eye lens does exactly the same thing. They have discovered that cells in close proximity to each other can sense when a cell is dying due to environmental stressors like UV light, smoke and other pollutants, and eat the cell before it becomes...
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Carbon emissions from Indonesian peat fires vary considerably based on fire type, research shows
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 17th, 2015
ScienceDaily: Carbon emissions caused by burning tropical peatlands in Indonesia vary considerably depending on if the fires are initial or recurrent, according to new research conducted at the University of Leicester.
The study, which was co-authored by Professor Susan Page and Dr Kevin Tansey from the University of Leicester's Department of Geography, also found that peatlands closer to canals have a higher probability of high frequency fires, which release harmful carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
The...
Encouraging Fracking, Britain Offers More Than 150 Sites for Exploration
Posted by New York Times: Stanley Reed on December 17th, 2015
New York Times: The British government, in an effort to stoke interest from energy companies in extracting fuels from shale rock, said on Thursday that it was offering licenses for oil and gas exploration on 159 tracts of land. The government said that 75 percent of the licenses being offered related to areas thought to contain shale gas or oil. Most of the blocks are in Northwest and Northeast England, and are believed to have substantial shale potential. “We need to get shale gas moving,” Britain’s energy minister,...
Should The World Emulate US Crop Insurance?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 17th, 2015
Inter Press Service: With the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events adversely affecting agricultural outputs and farmers' incomes, commercial crop insurance has been touted as the solution for vulnerable farmers all over the world. Financial and farm interests have been promoting US crop insurance as the solution. It is instructive to consider lessons from the 2012 drought. Driven by the expectation of high maize prices, owing to the maize bio-ethanol mandate introduced almost a decade ago, US farmers...
Droughts could kill many of the world’s trees
Posted by LiveScience: Tia Ghose on December 17th, 2015
LiveScience: Drought could kill vast swaths of forests around the world if global warming isn't contained, new research suggests.
That's in part because a fundamental structure found in trees may limit how much they can adapt to parched conditions.
What's more, climate predictions seem to suggest that droughts will be much more common in the United States, said William Anderegg, a biologist at Princeton University who studies forests and climate change. [Dry and Dying: Images of Drought]
"The droughts...
Burning Amazon forests and a rain-drenched Calif. are likely to come with El Niño – researchers
Posted by ClimateWire: Gayathri Vaidyanathan on December 17th, 2015
ClimateWire: The Amazon forests of Central and South America are at increased risk of fires in 2016 due to the ongoing El Niño, according to NASA scientists.
This El Niño, which has helped trigger more than 100,000 fires in Indonesia and spewed an estimated 1.75 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents into the atmosphere, will next threaten tropical forests in Southeast Asia and in southern Mexico, Guatemala and other countries in Central America, said James Randerson, an Earth system scientist at...
Report: Climate change could cost 11,000 outdoor jobs
Posted by Great Falls Tribune: None Given on December 17th, 2015
Great Falls Tribune: The cost of unabated climate change in Montana could be 11,000 jobs and $281 million in labor earnings by 2050, according to a new report that attempts to quantify its economic impacts on the state's outdoor economy, including hunting, fishing, skiing and snowmobiling.
The report, released Tuesday, was completed by Donovan Power Consulting, a Montana-based economic consulting firm headed by the former head of the economics department at the University of Montana, at the request of the Montana...
Globally, lakes warming at an alarming rate, study finds
Posted by OPB: Ashley Ahearn on December 17th, 2015
OPB: It's not in your head. Seattle`s Lake Washington is getting warmer and more comfortable to swim in every year. And it's not the only lake experiencing a rapid rise in temperature. For the first time, scientists have brought together a comprehensive data set from 235 lakes around the world, containing more than half of the world's fresh water. The study, which was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that globally, lake temperatures are rising more rapidly than ocean or air...
New Research Suggests Warm Water ‘Blob’ Could Hurt Salmon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 17th, 2015
National Public Radio: New research from Oregon State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week suggests a large patch of warm water off the West Coast could harm future salmon runs in the Northwest.
The study compared the effect of cold and warm water conditions on the eating habits and overall health of juvenile Chinook salmon.
OSU senior faculty research assistant Elizabeth Daly and NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center researcher Richard Brodeur studied salmon data from 1981-1985...
UK to allow shale gas fracking beneath national parks
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 17th, 2015
Reuters: British lawmakers on Wednesday voted in favor of the use of fracking to extract shale gas under national parks, weakening a decision against fracking in national parks made earlier this year and giving shale gas explorers access to more resources. Britain is estimated to have substantial amounts of gas trapped in underground shale rocks and Prime Minister Cameron has pledged to go all-out to extract these reserves, to help offset declining North Sea oil and gas output. But the use of fracking,...