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Archive for March 8th, 2016
US lawmakers seek independent review coal cleanup subsidy
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 8th, 2016
Reuters: Federal auditors should examine a program that has allowed leading coal companies to lower cleanup insurance costs and could leave taxpayers on the hook if the miners declare bankruptcy, Democratic lawmakers said on Tuesday.
Coal companies are responsible for spent mines and they typically use cash, bonds or other financing to cover future cleanup costs.
But some of the largest producers use self bonds, which are not backed by concrete collateral, to insure such costs. Regulators worry those...
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Eastern US forests more vulnerable to drought than before 1800s
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 8th, 2016
ScienceDaily: Over thousands of years, most forests in the eastern United States evolved with frequent fire, which promoted tree species and ecosystems that were both fire and drought resistant. In little more than a century, humans upset that balance, suggest researchers, who blame the change, in part, on the well-meaning efforts of Smokey Bear. Since the 1930s, the composition of forests in the region has changed markedly, according to Marc Abrams, professor of forest ecology and physiology at Penn State. Drought-sensitive,...
Sea level rise threatens larger number of people than earlier estimated
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 8th, 2016
ScienceDaily: More people live close to sea coast than earlier estimated, assess researchers in a new study. These people are the most vulnerable to the rise of the sea level as well as to the increased number of floods and intensified storms. By using recent increased resolution datasets, Aalto University researchers estimate that 1.9 billion inhabitants, or 28% of the world's total population, live closer than 100 km from the coast in areas less than 100 meters above the present sea level.
By 2050 the...
Even Plant-Supporting Soil Fungi Affected by Global Warming, UCI Study Finds
Posted by Newswise: None Given on March 8th, 2016
Newswise: On a cool, fog-shrouded mountain of Costa Rica, University of California, Irvine biologist Caitlin Looby is finding that warming temperatures are becoming an increasing problem for one of the most ecologically diverse places on Earth. Seeking to determine how shifts in the tropical mountain cloud forest ecosystem would affect resident fungal species in Monteverde, Looby and fellow ecology & evolutionary biology graduate student Mia Maltz and their adviser, Kathleen Treseder, found that as the moist...