Category: Environmental

Polluted politics in Flint

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Cyber Security Summit at U of M

Michael Moore is right: Arrest Gov. Snyder!

Lansing — Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said Thursday replacing her city’s myriad of lead-leaching water pipes could cost as much as $1.5 billion, while the state’s top health official deemed Flint’s water unsafe to drink without filtration.

“We have not done a final assessment of that,” Weaver said Thursday after a closed-door meeting with Gov. Rick Snyder at his Lansing office. “We’ve heard from millions up to $1.5 billion. We’re doing assessments right now to see what it’s going to cost.”
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Lamar Smith attacks climate findings

~ susie

When the findings of a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) become problematic for the Chair of the House Committee on Science, what better way to fight inconvenient facts than by personally attacking the scientists? October, 2015 was officially the warmest on record, and the findings of the NOAA point to the factors… Continue reading “Lamar Smith attacks climate findings” →

Hurricane Patricia bearing down on Mexico…

~ Boohunney

NOAA

Here’s photo of Hurricane Patricia from the AP. This one is going to be really dangerous.

Residents of a stretch of Mexico’s Pacific Coast dotted with resorts and fishing villages boarded up homes and bought supplies ahead of Friday’s arrival of Hurricane Patricia, a monster Category 5 storm that forecasters say is the strongest ever recorded in the Western hemisphere.

With maximum sustained winds near 200 mph (325 kph), Patricia is the strongest storm ever recorded in the eastern Pacific or in the Atlantic, said Dave Roberts, a hurricane specialist at the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Patricia’s power was comparable to that of Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 dead or missing in the Philippines two years ago, according to the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization.

In Mexico, officials declared a state of emergency in dozens of municipalities in Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco states that contain the bustling port of Manzanillo and the posh resort of Puerto Vallarta. The governor of Colima ordered schools closed on Friday, when the storm was forecast to make what the Hurricane Center called a “potentially catastrophic landfall.”

Rain pounded Manzanillo late Thursday while people took last-minute measures ahead of Patricia, which quickly grew from a tropical storm into a Category 5 hurricane, leaving authorities scrambling to make people safe…

A hurricane warning was in effect for the Mexican coast from San Blas to Punta San Telmo, a stretch that includes Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta. A broader area was under hurricane watch, tropical storm warning or tropical storm watch.

The Hurricane Center said Patricia was expected to bring rainfall of 6 to 12 inches, with isolated amounts of up to 20 inches in some locations. Tropical storm conditions were expected to reach land late Thursday or early Friday, complicating any remaining preparation work at that point.

“We are calm,” said Gabriel Lopez, a worker at Las Hadas Hotel in Manzanillo. “We don’t know what direction (the storm) will take, but apparently it’s headed this way. … If there is an emergency we will take care of the people. There are rooms that are not exposed to wind or glass.”

First wildlife bridge to be constructed in Washington State…

~ Boohunney

I always thought this a cool idea; a bridge for wildlife to cross over a busy highway.

According the I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition, which has been advocating for the construction of the wildlife bridge, 28,000 vehicles travel along I-90 each day. Such heavy traffic makes it extremely difficult for wildlife to cross the highway, and has devastating impacts on local wildlife:

“If we prevent them from moving, we’re blocking their ability to find food, we’re blocking their ability to find places to live when conditions change, like the large wildfires we saw last year, and we’re blocking their ability to find new mates and have some genetic diversity in the population. The I-90 wildlife overcrossing and the newly completed undercrossings are monumental step forward for wildlife on the move in our region,” remarked Jen Watkins, coordinator for the I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition.

Wildlife bridges are relatively common in Europe — there are over 600 wildlife overpasses and underpasses on roads throughout the Netherlands alone. There are notably fewer of the crossings throughout the United States, however.

“This project is a shining example of WSDOT’s future direction. It embraces our values, goals and strategies for a safe transportation system that improves mobility and supports economic growth,” remarked Deputy Secretary of Transportation Cam Gilmour.

Sunscreens and the environment …

~ Boohunney ~ 1 Comment

Starting when I was younger, I have been curious about the stress that humans have put on the environment. The dangers of CFC’s to the ozone, microbeads in personal care products, endocrine disruptors getting into the water system are the types of things that have brought concern.

For years, science has told the public to slather on the sunscreen to protect from skin cancer. Now, there is evidence that sunscreens are harmful to the environment.

The sunscreen that snorkelers, beachgoers and children romping in the waves lather on for protection is killing coral and reefs around the globe. And a new study finds that a single drop in a small area is all it takes for the chemicals in the lotion to mount an attack.

The study, released Tuesday, was conducted in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Hawaii several years after a chance encounter between a group of researchers on one of those Caribbean beaches, Trunk Bay, and a vendor waiting for the day’s invasion of tourists. Just wait to see what they’d leave behind, he told the scientists – “a long oil slick.” His comment sparked the idea for the research…

The study was published Tuesday in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. Fauth co-authored the study with Craig Downs of the nonprofit Haereticus Environmental Laboratory in Clifford, Va., and Esti Kramarsky-Winter, a researcher  in the Department of Zoology at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Their findings follow a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study two weeks ago that said the world is in the midst of a third global coral bleaching event. It warned that pollution is undermining the health of coral, rendering it unable to resist bleaching or recover from the effects…

“The use of oxybenzone-containing products needs to be seriously deliberated in islands and areas where coral reef conservation is a critical issue,” Downs said. “We have lost at least 80 percent of the coral reefs in the Caribbean. Any small effort to reduce oxybenzone pollution could mean that a coral reef survives a long, hot summer, or that a degraded area recovers.”

Coral reefs are more than just exotic displays of color on the sea bed. The National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the NOAA, placed their value for U.S. fisheries at $100 million. They spawn the fish humans eat and protect miles of coast from storm surge.

Measurements of oxybenzone in seawater within coral reefs in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands found concentrations ranging from 800 parts per trillion to 1.4 parts per million,” according to the authors. That’s 12 times higher than the concentrations needed to harm coral.

“This study raises our awareness of a seldom-realized threat to the health of our reef life… chemicals in the sunscreen products visitors and residents wear are toxic to young corals,” said Pat Lindquist, executive director of the Napili Bay and Beach Foundation in Maui. “This knowledge is critical to us as we consider actions to mitigate threats or improve on current practices.”

 

 

 

Passing gas

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Scientists have detected a disproportionate number of methane bubble plumes off the Washington and Oregon coast. The warming Pacific ocean may be triggering the release of this powerful greenhouse gas, which has remained frozen beneath the seafloor for thousands of years.

The new study, which has been accepted for publication in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, details over 160 bubble plumes observed over the past 10 years. An inordinate number of these plumes were observed at a critical depth where frozen methane “ice”, or hydrate, decomposes on account of warmer ocean temperatures. Lead researcher H. Paul Johnson from the University of Washington says these plumes are probably not coming from the seafloor sediments, but rather from decomposing frozen methane.

The downstream effects of this leaking methane aren’t entirely clear, though historically, methane has contributed to sudden and dramatic swings in the Earth’s climate. Once in the Earth’s atmosphere, methane acts as a powerful greenhouse gas. On a related note, warming-related methane emissions have also been detected in Arctic permafrost and off the Atlantic coast.

methane gas

This map shows the locations of the 168 bubble plumes included in the study. (Credit: University of Washington)

It’s also not clear how much methane gas is actually getting to the surface. The researchers say that most of the deep-sea methane is getting gobbled up by marine microbes during the journey up. These microbes convert the methane into carbon dioxide, which results in low-oxygen and acidic conditions in deeper offshore waters. From there, this tainted water trickles along the coast and makes its way into coastal waterways.

“Current environmental changes in Washington and Oregon are already impacting local biology and fisheries, and these changes would be amplified by the further release of methane,” noted Johnson in an AGU statement.

S. Carolina emerged from flooding that left 12 dead

~ susie

nc weather map

Just want to note that the SC congressional delegation all voted against relief aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy:

Even South Carolina residents who had been through Hurricane Hugo a quarter century ago said they have never seen anything like this, the deadly torrents that have crumbled roads, submerged houses and cars and killed at least 12 people. “They’re saying it’s a once-in-1,000-year rainstorm, and I’m inclined to believe it,” said Sean Brennan, a real… Continue reading “S. Carolina emerged from flooding that left 12 dead” →

One of those crazy things

~ susie

https://youtu.be/ux3WcLdBH-g

Where it rains and people die!

(CNN)Horrific accounts of people drowning in a retirement home and being trapped in a road tunnel by floodwater have emerged after the French Riviera was hit by extreme downpours.

Rainfall on an “exceptional scale” set off flash floods that wreaked havoc along France’s southeastern Mediterranean coast late Saturday, killing at least 16 people and leaving three more missing, authorities said.

“The assessment isn’t yet complete, which just goes to show the intensity of what happened,” the French presidency said on its official Twitter account.

As much as 180 millimeters (7 inches) of rain in a span of three hours inundated parts of the Alpes-Maritimes district late Saturday, authorities said. The area is home to famous seaside resorts such as Nice, Cannes and Antibes.

Hurricane Joaquin

~ susie

The computer models are all over the place on this one, but the good news is (fingers crossed), the majority of them this morning have Hurricane Joaquin moving offshore. So there’s that for those of us on the coast (not so much for the Bahamas, where the slow-moving storm will sit all day).

Even if Joaquin doesn’t make a direct landfall, there will still be major flooding for much of the east/southeast. This storm is getting stronger, and your basic Historic Rainfall Event is expected, even if it only sideswipes the coast. (They’re saying Athens, Georgia may get as much as two feet of rain.) This is the same area that’s had heavy rain all week unrelated to this storm, and we’ve already seen serious beach erosion and flooding.
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So now we admit it

~ susie

publicherald_oklahoma_fracking_aljazeera

I remember all those years when they kept telling us any connection was all in our heads:

The central US state of Oklahoma has gone from registering two earthquakes a year to nearly two a day and scientists point to a controversial culprit: wastewater injection wells used in fracking.

Located in the middle of the country, far from any major fault lines, Oklahoma experienced 585 earthquakes of a magnitude of 3.0 or greater in 2014. That’s more than three times as many as the 180 which hit California last year.

As of last month, Oklahoma has already experienced more than 600 quakes strong enough to rattle windows and rock cars. The biggest was a 4.5-magnitude quake that hit the small town of Crescent.

[….] From 1975 to 2008, the state experienced anywhere from zero to three earthquakes a year which registered at 3.0 or higher. Then the numbers jumped: there were 20 in 2009, 35 in 2010, 64 in 2011, 35 in 2012, 109 in 2013 and 585 in 2014.