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Archive for March 2nd, 2016
Japan’s nuclear refugees face bleak return five years after Fukushima
Posted by Reuters: Minami Funakoshi on March 2nd, 2016
Reuters: Tokuo Hayakawa carries a dosimeter around with him at his 600-year-old temple in Naraha, the first town in the Fukushima "exclusion zone" to fully reopen since Japan's March 2011 catastrophe. Badges declaring "No to nuclear power" adorn his black Buddhist robe. (For a video of 'Fukushima refugees face a bleak return home' click here) Hayakawa is one of the few residents to return to this agricultural town since it began welcoming back nuclear refugees five months ago. The town, at the edge of...
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Methane leaks across US pose a much greater threat than Aliso Canyon
Posted by Guardian: Leah Messinger on March 2nd, 2016
Guardian: When Stephen Conley, an atmospheric scientist and pilot, saw an emissions indicator skyrocket in his Mooney TLS prop plane, he knew he had found a significant methane leak. His gas-detecting Picarro analyzer indicated he was flying through a plume of gas escaping at 900kg per hour. The colorless, odorless gas was enough to cover a football field to a height of 20 feet in a single day. But this flight wasn’t over the highly publicized Aliso Canyon in Los Angeles; Conley was circling the Bakken Shale,...
Satellites Report Hottest February By Far, Confirm Global Warming
Posted by ThinkProgress: Joe Romm on March 2nd, 2016
ThinkProgress: February smashed monthly global temperature records, according to the satellite data analyzed by the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). At the same time, a brand new study concludes that miscalculations explain why the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) satellite temperature dataset had appeared to show a relatively slow rate of global warming. So Ted Cruz and his fellow climate science deniers need a new meme to replace their “satellites find no warming since 1998” talking point, which replaced...
Groundwater from coastal aquifers is a better source for desalination than seawater
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2016
ScienceDaily: Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have determined that saline groundwater from coastal aquifers is a better alternative water source than seawater for reverse osmosis (RO) desalination due to reduced membrane fouling and pre-treatment costs. The study was published in Environmental Science & Technology and conducted by researchers at the BGU Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, the BGU Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences and the Israel Geological Survey....
Overfishing increases fluctuations in aquatic ecosystems
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2016
ScienceDaily: Intense fishing of primarily larger fish not only makes fish populations smaller, it changes the remaining fish. When the fish which have a chance to reproduce before being caught are smaller and have reached sexual maturity earlier, these characteristics are passed down to future generations. In many fish populations targeted by intense fishing, e.g., Atlantic cod across the west coast of North America, the sizes of fish have been observed to have decreased and the age of sexual maturity to have...
Invigorating Japanese energy and environmental policy five years after Fukushima
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2016
ScienceDaily: Japanese researchers call for increased interdisciplinarity and internationalization in Japanese energy and environment research to provide effective scientific advice and invigorate Japanese energy and environmental policy five years after Fukushima. In less than two weeks, it will be five years since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami killed over 15,000 people and crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. While Japan has implemented new energy and environment polices after the...
Greenpeace says China increasing coal-fired capacity
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2016
Reuters: Greenpeace East Asia said on Wednesday that China had a total of 210 coal power projects in the pipeline"for environmental assessment permitting at the end of 2015, despite overcapacity in the industry and pollution concerns.
Of those, 95 projects received final regulatory permits that would allow construction to begin, Greenpeace said in a report. Construction began on at least 66 coal power projects with a combined capacity of 73 gigawatts (GW), Greenpeace added, some of which had received approval...
Microorganisms duke it out within algal blooms
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2016
ScienceDaily: An unseen war rages between the ocean's tiniest organisms, and it has significant implications for understanding the ocean's role in climate change, according to a new study.
David Needham and Jed Fuhrman from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences sampled water off the coast of Southern California over the course of five months, almost every day shortly after an algal bloom occurred, and found that the cloud of microorganisms is anything but uniform. Instead, they found traces...
Second hottest February on record sparks fresh concerns over climate change
Posted by Southland Times: None Given on March 2nd, 2016
Southland Times: A scorching end to the summer has lead to New Zealand's second warmest February on record, preliminary data from Niwa shows.
The country's mean temperature for the month was 19.6 degrees Celsius, second only to 1998, said Niwa forecaster Chris Brandolino.
For Wellington it was the warmest February on record, also with a mean temperature of 19.6C, which is 2.4C above average for the capital.
But while the weather was great for those enjoying our pools and beaches, it was concerning to climate...
Bees ‘dumb down’ after ingesting tiny doses pesticide chlorpyrifos
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2016
ScienceDaily: Honeybees suffer severe learning and memory deficits after ingesting very small doses of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, potentially threatening their success and survival, new research from New Zealand's University of Otago suggests.
In their study, researchers from the Departments of Zoology and Chemistry collected bees from 51 hives across 17 locations in the province of Otago in Southern New Zealand and measured their chlorpyrifos levels. They detected low levels of pesticide in bees at three...