Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds.

May 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment

images-3A survey of thousands of per-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.

Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.

The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers. Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.

The study described the dissent as a “vanishingly small proportion” of published research.

“Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary,” said John Cook of the University of Queensland, who led the survey.

Public opinion continues to lag behind the science. Though a majority of Americans accept the climate is changing, just 42% believed human activity was the main driver, in a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre last October.

“There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception,” Cook said in a statement.

The study blamed strenuous lobbying efforts by industry to undermine the science behind climate change for the gap in perception. The resulting confusion has blocked efforts to act on climate change.

The survey was the most ambitious effort to date to demonstrate the broad agreement on the causes of climate change, covering 20 years of academic publications from 1991-2011.

In 2004, Naomi Oreskes, an historian at the University of California, San Diego,surveyed published literature, releasing her results in the journal Science. She too came up with a similar finding that 97% of climate scientists agreed on the causes of climate change.

She wrote of the new survey in an email: “It is a nice, independent confirmation, using a somewhat different methodology than I used, that comes to the same result. It also refutes the claim, sometimes made by contrarians, that the consensus has broken down, much less ‘shattered’.”

The Cook survey was broader in its scope, deploying volunteers from the SkepticalScience.com website to review scientific abstracts. The volunteers also asked authors to rate their own views on the causes of climate change, in another departure from Oreskes’s methods.

The authors said the findings could help close the gap between scientific opinion and the public on the causes of climate change, or anthropogenic global warming, and so create favourable conditions for political action on climate.

“The public perception of a scientific consensus on AGW [anthropogenic, ie man-made, global warming] is a necessary element in public support for climate policy,” the study said.

However, Prof Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University who studies the forces underlying attitudes towards climate change, disputed the idea that educating the public about the broad scientific agreement on the causes of climate change would have an effect on public opinion – or on the political conditions for climate action.

He said he was doubtful that convincing the public of a scientific consensus on climate change would help advance the prospects for political action. Having elite leaders call for climate action would be far more powerful, he said.

“I don’t think people really want to come around to grips with the fact that climate change is a highly ideological issue and it is not amenable to the information deficit model,” he said.

“The information deficit model, this idea that if you just pile on more information people will get convinced, is just completely inadequate, he said. “It strengthens the people who actually read and pay attention but it is certainly not going to change or shift the opinions of others.”

Jon Krosnick, professor in humanities and social sciences at Stanford university and an expert on public opinion on climate change, said: “I assume that sceptics would say that there is bias in the editorial process so that the papers ultimately published are not an accurate reflection of the opinions of scientists.”

via Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Filed Under: Climate Change, Natural World, WHAT'S NEW IN THE NEWS Tagged With:

Boom in Mining Rare Earths Poses Mounting Toxic Risks

March 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Courtesy by: Mike Ives. Environment 360

images-2The mining of rare earth metals, used in everything from smart phones to wind turbines, has long been dominated by China. But as mining of these key elements spreads to countries like Malaysia and Brazil, scientists warn of the dangers of the toxic and radioactive waste generated by the mines and processing plants.

In November, the first shipment of raw “rare earth” minerals arrived at an $800 million processing plant on Malaysia’s east coast near the home of Tan Bun Teet. The plant, run by Australia’s Lynas Corporation, has since begun refining the rare earth metals, essential components in wind turbines, hybrid cars, smart phones, cruise missiles, and other high-tech products. Once fully operational, the plant would become the world’s largest processing facility of rare earths, breaking China’s near-monopoly on producing the prized elements.

But Tan and others in the region are concerned that the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant, known as LAMP, will be plagued by the severe environmental problems that have been the hallmark of rare earths processing plants in China and, more than two decades ago, in Malaysia itself. The plant lies in an industrial zone atop reclaimed swampland, just 12 miles from Kuantan, a city of 600,000. The chief worry is that the rare earth elements are bound up in mineral deposits with the low-level radioactive element thorium, exposure to which has been linked to an increased risk of developing lung, pancreatic, and other cancers.

“We are not against rare earths processing,” says Tan, a retired schoolteacher who leads a citizens’ group opposed to the plant. “We’re only against the inappropriate choice of site, and the way they’re going to keep the waste.” Tan echoes scientists’ concerns that the plant’s toxic wastewater will leach into groundwater, and that its storage ponds are vulnerable to the monsoons that slam the swampy coastline every autumn.

As global demand has surged in recent years for rare earth elements, fears have grown that China, which accounts for more than 95 percent of rare earths output, will withhold supplies, as it did temporarily two years ago during a dispute with Japan. As a result, across five continents and numerous countries — including the United States, Brazil, Mongolia, and India — rare earth processing projects are being launched or revived. With them comes the potential threats to the environment and human health that have plagued China’s processing sites.

“As the world’s hunger for these elements increases… the waste is going to increase,” says Nicholas Leadbeater, a chemist at the University of Connecticut whose research focuses on developing green technologies. “The more mines there are, the more trouble there’s going to be.” To avoid such problems, Leadbeater says some researchers are now looking into ways of recovering rare earths from existing products, and of manufacturing products capable of running without rare earths. Toyota, for example, is developing an electric motor that does not use rare earths in its battery, as most currently do.

Contrary to their name, the 17 rare earth elements are relatively common — their rarity comes from the labor involved in separating them from surrounding rock. The process requires a cocktail of chemical compounds and produces a “tremendous amount” of solid waste, according to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. China’s rare earths mines have used only a fraction of the world’s total supply, and substantial untapped reserves are found in Australia, the United States, parts of the former Soviet Union, and other countries. Global demand for rare earths dipped last year on the heels of a speculative bubble, but the EPA said in December there is a “high likelihood” that some of the elements will be in short supply by 2014.

In California, Molycorp Minerals recently reopened a rare earths processing operation that it abandoned in 2002 near Death Valley, after retooling its operation to meet environmental concerns over contaminated groundwater. In Brazil, mining giant Vale is considering whether to process rare earths at a copper mine in the Amazon. India recently agreed to export rare earths to Japan, and a Toyota subsidiary is preparing to mine rare earths in Vietnam. In Greenland, several companies are preparing to mine and process that island’s abundant rare earth resources, which will become more accessible as Greenland’s ice sheet continues to melt.

All of these projects, however, must come to grips with the toxic and radioactive legacy of rare earth mining. Scientists say under-regulated rare earths projects can produce wastewater and tailings ponds that leak acids, heavy metals and radioactive elements into groundwater, and they point out that market pressures for cheap and reliable rare earths may lead project managers to skimp on environmental protections.

In Malaysia, Mitsubishi Chemical is now engaged in a $100 million cleanup of its Bukit Merah rare earths processing site, which it closed in 1992 amid opposition from local residents and Japanese politicians and environmentalists. It is one of Asia’s largest radioactive waste cleanup sites, and local physicians said the thorium contamination from the plant has led to an increase in leukemia and other ailments. The legacy of that project has led many Malaysians to be wary of rare earths mines.

Few independent studies chart the industry’s global ecological fallout. But no country has as many rare earths processing plants, and their attendant environmental problems, as China. Last year, China’s State Council reported that the country’s rare earths operations are causing “increasingly significant” environmental problems. A half century of rare earths mining and processing has “severely damaged surface vegetation, caused soil erosion, pollution, and acidification, and reduced or even eliminated food crop output,” the council reported, adding that Chinese rare earths plants typically produce wastewater with a “high concentration” of radioactive residues.

Bayan-Obo, China’s largest rare earths project, has been operating for more than four decades. According to the Germany-based Institute for Applied Ecology, the site now has an 11-square-kilometer waste pond — about three times the size of New York City’s Central Park — with toxic sludge that contains elevated concentrations of thorium.

China’s lax environmental standards have enabled it to produce rare earths at roughly a third the price of its international competitors, according to a 2010 report on the country’s rare earths industry by the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. The report noted that China “has never actually worked out pollutant discharge standards for the rare earth industry.”

Like nuclear power plants, rare earths projects require strict independent auditing in order to prevent environmental damage, according to Peter Karamoskos, a nuclear radiologist and the public’s representative at Australia’s Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. But as the rare earths industry expands to developing countries like Malaysia and Vietnam, such oversight will be unlikely. “A regulator will either be in the pocket of the industry or a government,” he says.

According to Gavin Mudd, an environmental engineer at Australia’s Monash University, rare earths mining provides a wide range of economic and social benefits and can be exploited in a responsible way. However, he says no company — including Mitsubishi and Lynas — has managed to set a good example.

Mudd says Lynas decided to process its rare earths in Malaysia rather than Australia, where they are mined, because it received tax incentives. But he says that Lynas hasn’t meaningfully engaged Malaysian communities to hear their concerns. A key problem with the company’s proposals, he adds, is that it never took a baseline sample of the environment before it began operations, making it difficult to gauge the future environmental impacts. “Their approach to solid waste management has been very haphazard,” says Mudd, who has offered unpaid advice to both the company and the activists who oppose its plans.

Lynas executives, including Executive Chairman Nicholas Curtis, say the plant will operate under high environmental standards and will dilute the thorium-tainted waste by mixing it with lime until it is below accepted international concentrations for the radioactive material. The lime mixture will be turned into solid structures that could be used for sea walls or construction materials, Lynas has said, although it remains unclear where those structures would be exported, and whether the process would use all of the plant’s toxic waste. Curtis has said that there is no comparison between his facility and the old Mitsubishi one, which “never should have been built.”

A recently released study of the plant by the Institute for Applied Ecology sketches a less sanguine portrait of the potential environmental impacts.

The study faults a Lynas plan to dispose of wastewater through an open channel rather than a closed pipeline; a refusal by the company to disclose what the plant’s exact chemical byproducts will be; and a temporary waste storage facility that the institute predicts will cause radioactive leakage “even under normal operating conditions.” A Lynas spokesperson from the company’s Australia headquarters did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the next two decades, the plant is expected to produce about 1.2 million metric tons of “residue,” according to 2011 report prepared by Lynas for Malaysia’s nuclear regulatory agency. It said the plant’s waste will fall within radioactivity limits set by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and may be safely disposed of in “landfill type facilities with limited regulatory control.”

Our high-tech products increasingly make use of rare metals, and mining those resources can have devastating environmental consequences. But if we block projects like the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, Oswald J. Schmitz and Thomas E. Graedelwrite, are we simply forcing mining activity to other parts of the world where protections may be far weaker?

The waste, however, will emit low levels of carcinogenic radioactivity for centuries, according to scientists. The International Atomic Energy Association recommended in 2011 that Malaysia’s nuclear regulatory agency grant Lynas an operating license only after it submits a permanent decommissioning plan. Unlike Australia, Malaysia is not a party to the IAEA’s legally binding 2001 convention governing appropriate and safe disposal of radioactive waste.

For most of last year, Lynas was locked in court battles against retired schoolteacher Tan Bun Teet and his grassroots coalition “Save Malaysia, Stop Lynas!,” which challenged the government’s January decision to grant the company a temporary operating license. This fall, Lynas finally won its temporary operating license after clearing legal appeals, and Tan says the first truckload of rare earths from the company’s Australia mine rolled into its new Malaysia refinery on November 30 under police escort. But four Malaysian cabinet ministers warned in December that the company must export the radioactive waste from its new plant or risk losing its license.

Tan Bun Teet and his fellow activists, whose street protests in the Malaysian capital have faced tear gas and water cannons, are keeping up their legal fight by filing new appeals. Tan is especially concerned that the 247-acre Lynas plant sits atop reclaimed wetland that is prone to flooding and lies only about two miles from the South China Sea. The area receives about 10 feet of rainfall per year, and recent monsoon rains left the area drenched.

“We are worried,” he says. “We don’t want our environment to be destroyed as it was in China.”

Filed Under: Energy & Transportation, Natural World, WHAT'S NEW IN THE NEWS, World News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Plastic-Free Doesn’t Mean BPA-Free

March 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Courtesy by: Care 2. Kristina Chew

Unknown-1Using a BPA-free water bottle? Going out of your way to avoid soaps, shampoos, cosmetics and other products with phthlates and to eat locally-grown, organic produce? All this may still not be enough to reduce your exposure to these endrocrine-disrupting chemicals, according to a recent study. Scientists from the University of Washington School of Public Health have found that we can still be exposed to these substances via our diet, organic or not, and even if we use non-plastic containers to store food.

BPA or bisphenol A and phthalates are synthetic chemicals that have been found to adversely affect the endocrine systems. In particular, prenatal exposure to phthalates has been linked to abnormalities in the male reproductive system. In girls, fetal exposure to BPA has been connected to hyperactivity, anxiety and depression.

Researchers under Sheela Sathyanarayana studied ten families. Five were given specific instructions on reducing phthalate and BPA exposure. The other five received a specially catered diet for five days, with all the food consisting of local, fresh, organic ingredients that was not prepared, cooked or stored in plastic containers. The researchers predicted that the latter group would, after testing, have lower urinary concentrations of phthalates and BPA.

Instead, the researchers discovered the opposite, that the five families (and the children in partucular) who’d eaten the special diet had 100-fold higher phthalate concentrations than the levels found in the general population (based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

Further testing of the locally sourced and organic ingredients used in preparing the meals for the five families revealed the possible culprits. High rates of phthalates were detected in the food and especially in butter, milk, cheese and spices such as ground cinnamon and cayenne pepper.

Based on all this, the researchers estimated that an average child of three to six years old has been exposed to 183 milligrams per kilogram of their body weight per day, far in excess of the 20 mg/kg/day limit recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Clearly, as Sathyanarayana comments, the study shows how

“…very little control [we have] over what’s in our food, including contaminants. Families can focus on buying fresh fruits and vegetables, foods that are not canned and are low in fat, but it may take new federal regulations to reduce exposures to these chemicals.”

Even when (as many of us do) we seek to control our exposure to chemicals, we’re far less in control than we’d like — meaning that, it’s even more necessary to push for policies to protect our food supply. As the researchers make very clear, “food contamination can be a major source of DEHP [phthalate] exposure.”

Sathyanarayana’s and her colleagues’s study is another reminder to keep food safety at the top of the agenda, and be wary of salads that could be killing you, genetically engineered foods and foods imported from other countries where regulations are even more lacking.

Filed Under: BUSINESS & ORGANIZATIONS, Conscious Shopping, Eco-Friendly Products, HEALTH & LIFESTYLE, WHAT'S NEW IN THE NEWS, World News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Cancer risk higher among people who eat more processed meat, study finds

March 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Courtesy by: Danis Campbell. The Guardian

Unknown-1Biggest consumers of food such as ham, bacon and sausages are 44% more likely to die prematurely, according to research

Those who ate high levels of meat such as bacon had a 72% higher risk of death from heart disease and 11% higher risk of death from cancer.
People who eat a lot of processed meat such as ham, bacon, sausages and burgers run a greater risk of premature death and developing conditions such as cancer and heart disease, research shows.

The study, which included data from 448,568 people in 10 European countries, including the UK, found that the biggest consumers of processed meat were 44% more likely to die prematurely from any cause than those who ate little of it. High levels of consumption increased the risk of death from heart disease by 72% and cancer by 11%.

If everyone ate no more than 20g a day of processed meat – about one rasher of bacon, chipolata sausage or thin slice of ham – then 3% of all premature deaths could be avoided, according to an estimate by the authors, led by Professor Sabine Rohrmann from the University of Zurich. Their results are published in the journal BMC Medicine.

But a small amount of red meat also seems to benefit health, because it contains important nutrients and minerals, they add. Risks rise in line with the level of consumption, the researchers found. The results are in line with previous studies. Dr Rachel Thompson, deputy head of science at the World Cancer Research Fund, said the research bore out its own findings in 2007 – disputed by the meat industry at the time – about the health risks of processed meat.

It has found that consuming bacon, ham, hot dogs, salami and some sausages heightened the risk of bowel cancer. The charity estimates that 4,100 fewer Britons a year would be diagnosed with the disease if everyone ate no more than 10g of processed meat a day, though advises avoiding it altogether.

Dr Carrie Ruxton, a nutritionist who sits on the meat industry-funded Meat Advisory Panel, said the study’s findings were not robust enough to justify changing public health advice. The fact those who consumed the largest amounts of processed meat also displayed other unhealthy habits meant it was hard to confidently ascribe risk of death to meat eating alone, she said.

“The occasional bacon butty isn’t going to do you much harm. People shouldn’t avoid bacon or salami because they think it’s going to kill them, because it won’t. We can’t say that from this study. But we do know that processed meat has a higher salt and fat content, so having bacon or salami in moderation, and switching to lean red meat products, is a good idea,” Ruxton added. Tracy Parker, a heart health dietitian with the British Heart Foundation, said people who ate a lot of processed meat should try to eat a more varied diet, such as chicken, fish, beans or lentils.

Filed Under: Agriculture & Food Sources, Food and Healing Recipes, HEALTH & LIFESTYLE, WHAT'S NEW IN THE NEWS, World News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why food riots are likely to become the new normal | Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed | Environment | guardian.co.uk

March 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Courtesy by: Naafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. The Guardian

images-1Just over two years since Egypt’s dictator President Hosni Mubarak resigned , little has changed. Cairo’s infamous Tahrir Square has remained a continual site of clashes between demonstrators and security forces, despite a newly elected president. It’s the same story in Tunisia, and Libya where protests and civil unrest have persisted under now ostensibly democratic governments.

The problem is that the political changes brought about by the Arab spring were largely cosmetic. Scratch beneath the surface, and one finds the same deadly combination of environmental, energy and economic crises.

We now know that the fundamental triggers for the Arab spring were unprecedented food price rises. The first sign things were unravelling hit in 2008, when a global rice shortage coincided with dramatic increases in staple food prices, triggering food riots across the middle east, north Africa and south Asia. A month before the fall of the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported record high food prices for dairy, meat, sugar and cereals.

Since 2008, global food prices have been consistently higher than in preceding decades, despite wild fluctuations. This year, even with prices stabilising, the food price index remains at 210 – which some experts believe is the threshold beyond which civil unrest becomes probable. The FAO warns that 2013 could see prices increase later owing to tight grain stocks from last year’s adverse crop weather.

Whether or not those prices materialise this year, food price volatility is only a symptom of deeper systemic problems – namely, that the global industrial food system is increasingly unsustainable. Last year, the world produced 2,241m tonnes of grain, down 75m tonnes or 3% from the 2011 record harvest.

The key issue, of course, is climate change. Droughts exacerbated by global warming in key food-basket regions have already led to a 10-20% drop in rice yields over the past decade. Last year, four-fifths of the US experienced a heatwave, there were prolonged droughts in Russia and Africa, a lighter monsoon in India and floods in Pakistan – extreme weather events that were likely linked to climate change afflicting the world’s major food basket regions.

The US Department of Agriculture predicts a 3-4% food price rise this year – a warning that is seconded in the UK. Make no mistake: on a business-as-usual scenario, this is the new normal. Overall, global grain consumption has exceeded production in eight of the past 13 years. By mid-century, world crop yields could fall as much as 20-40% because of climate change alone.

But climate is not the only problem. Industrial farming methods are breaching the biophysical limits of the soil. World agricultural land productivity between 1990 and 2007 was 1.2% a year, nearly half compared with 1950-90 levels of 2.1%.

2008 also saw a shift to a new era of volatile, but consistently higher, oil prices. Regardless of where one stands on the prospects for unconventional oil and gas for ameliorating “peak oil”, the truth is that we will never return to the heyday of cheap petroleum.

High oil prices will continue to debilitate the global economy, particularly in Europe – but they will also continue to feed into the oil-dependent industrial food system. Currently, every major point in industrial food production is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. To make matters worse, predatory speculation on food and other commodities by banks drives prices higher, increasing profits at the expense of millions of the world’s poor.

In the context of economies wracked by debt, this creates a perfect storm of problems which will guarantee high prices – eventually triggering civil unrest – for the foreseeable future.

It’s only a matter of time before this fatal cocktail of climate, energy and economic challenges hits the Gulf kingdoms – where Saudi Arabia is struggling with an average total oil depletion rate of about 29%. If oil revenues reduce in coming years, this would lower subsidies for food and fuel. We’ve already seen how this can play out, for instance, in Egypt, whose domestic oil production peaked back in 1996, reducing government spending on services amid mounting debt.

The link between intensifying inequality, debt, climate change, fossil fuel dependency and the global food crisis is now undeniable. As population and industrial growth continue, the food crisis will only get worse. If we don’t do something about it, according to an astounding new Royal Society paper, we may face the prospect of civilisational collapse within this century.

The Arab spring is merely a taste of things to come.

Filed Under: Agriculture & Food Sources, Politics & Economics, WHAT'S NEW IN THE NEWS, World News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Bad News: The North Pole Could Be Open to Shipping Very, Very Soon

March 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Courtesy by: Kristina Chew. Care 2

images-3By the middle of this century, the North Pole could be open for routine shipping traffic. It’s yet another sign of how global warming is changing the world.

The melting of the sea ice in the arctic at a faster rate than forecast has meant that people have already been developing routes through Canada’s Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route above the coast of Russia. Such routes would significantly lessen the amount of time and fuel — as much as 18 days and 580 tons of bunker fuel — currently needed to transport goods between Asia and both Europe and North America. Shipowners could save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Emphasizing how much the thickness and extent of late summer has shrunk in just the past seven years, UCLA geographers Laurence C. Smith and Scott R. Stephenson predict (via computer modeling) that, by 2050, ordinary vessels and some that are only moderately ice-strengthened — equipped to break through the ice — should be able to pass over the North Pole and most likely in September, when the sea ice is at its smallest extent.

Last year, 46 ships went through the trans-Arctic passage. To do so, they had to be accompanied by ice-strengthened ships from Russia at a considerable cost. The moderately ice-strengthened ships are known as Polar Class 6 or PC6 vessels. As John Timmer explains on Ars Technica, PC6 vessels are specifically built to “withstand transit through first-year ice (ice that froze during the previous winter).”

Under current climate prediction models, the sea ice will have melted so much that, by mid-century, PC6 vessels can use the Northern Sea Route in any year. Ships will be able to go directly over the pole from Europe to Asia annually, on a route that is shorter from those going through the Suez or Panama canals.

As Wired UK points out, this is a fabulous develop for commercial shipping and for companies wanting to explore and harness the yet-untapped natural resources — oil — of the Arctic.

But there’s no question that all this could spell simple disaster for the unique ecosystems of the Arctic and the rich wildlife, animal and plant, that lives there. Earlier studies have already shown that an increase in arctic shipping poses a risk to marine mammals and would also affect the local communities who rely on these animals for food security and cultural identity.

In addition, Smith and Stephenson note that the opening of the Arctic for shipping could spell geopolitical conflict among Russia, Canada, the U.S. and other countries, reopening disputes about boundaries and territory.

The scientists emphasize that we need to start now to develop “comprehensive international regulations that provide adequate environmental protections, vessel safety standards and search-and-rescue capability.” Rampant development of industries using fossil fuels has already warmed up our planet by degrees never imagined. Knowing how human activity has destroyed and is damaging wildlife and the environment, we need to start now to create responsible regulations to preserve the resources, beauty and life of the Arctic, which is, as Smith says, “a fragile and dangerous place.”

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy & Transportation, Natural World, WHAT'S NEW IN THE NEWS, World News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Extremely Loud

March 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Courtesy by: Maureen Nandini Mitra. Earth Island Journal

Unknown-2When I last visited Kolkata, India, after a long period of living in the relatively quiet hills of Berkeley, CA, my ears were assaulted by the cacophony of traffic noise from the street outside my parents’ apartment. The daily discordant orchestra of blaring horns, squealing brakes, shouting vendors, and loudspeakers blasting religious songs would start in the wee hours of the morning and go late into the night. It felt like torture: I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate on what I was reading, I couldn’t hold a conversation without raising my voice. The din of my increasingly congested birth city seemed to have risen in volume over the years.

This rising din isn’t just a problem in jam-packed India. Across the world – as our numbers swell, as nations get more urbanized, and societies become more technology-dependent – we humans are getting noisier. “Among environmental factors in Europe, environmental noise leads to a disease burden that is second in magnitude only to that from air pollution,” says a 2011 World Health Organization report. In the United States, noise is now the number one neighborhood complaint, beating out crime and traffic, according to the American Housing Survey conducted by the US Census. There have been incidents of noise conflicts leading to violence and even murder.

So loud and persistent are the sounds we create as we go about the business of living that researchers say there is scarcely any place left on land or water that is free of man-made noise. We have changed what our planet sounds like. Yet there seems to be little understanding of just how seriously noise is threatening our natural world – and us. “It’s like this unrecognized growing tsunami of potential impacts; we are growing louder and louder and no one is noticing,” says Dr. Mike Webster, director of Cornell University’s Macaulay Library, the world’s oldest archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings.

There are reams of research showing that noise – commonly defined as unwanted or unpleasant sound – is not merely an annoyance. Like other forms of pollution, it has wide-ranging adverse health, social, and environmental effects.

In humans, noise pollution damages hearing, disturbs communication, disrupts sleep, affects heart function, intrudes on cognition in children, reduces productivity, provokes unwanted behaviors, and increases accidents. “To say noise simply annoys people is to underestimate the effect it has on our mental and physical well-being,” says Manhattan-based psychologist and noise expert Dr. Arline Bronzaft, whose 1970s research on the effects of noise on children’s learning is considered a landmark in the field. Bronzaft points out that noise pollution has as much to do with persistent low frequency sounds and vibrations – such as those emitted by wind turbines, ventilation systems, or electronic devices – as loud and jarring sounds.

The effect of manmade noise is far more profound on the fragile and complex sound systems of the natural world. Oceans, forests, grasslands, and deserts all have their own internal harmonies. Their unique soundscapes carry important messages for marine and terrestrial animals. When humans interrupt those harmonies, birds and animals can suffer.

“In a natural environment, animal voices are created in such a way that each group of critters can hear each other,” says musician and naturalist Bernie Krause, who has spent four decades recording sounds of the biological world, which he calls “biophony.” Krause found that animals divide up the acoustic spectrum so that “birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals all find their own niches, their own bandwidths to vocalize in” so that when they issue mating calls or cry out warnings, their voices aren’t masked by the sounds being made by other animals. Human noise, which Krause calls “anthrophony,” disrupts this natural symphony. “The critters have to find new bandwidths they can vocalize in,” he says, “and when they do that it becomes very chaotic and has a great impact on them and causes great stress.”

Biologists have found that some birds in urban areas are finding it hard to hear each other and their young, which impairs chicks’ growth, as they are less likely to be fed, leading to a decline in their numbers. In forests and deserts and plains a range of animals from gleaning bats to frogs to the endangered pronghorns in Arizona’s Sonoran desert are abandoning their habitats in order to escape the noise of chainsaws and low-flying jets. The situation might be even worse under water. Ocean noise has been increasing by about three decibels every decade in the past 50 years due to sonar blasts by navies, shots from air guns used in deep-sea oil and gas exploration, and the thrum of cruise and freight ships. The cacophony disorients and sometimes leads to the death of marine animals, especially whales and dolphins, that rely on their acute and highly specialized hearing for communication, navigation, and detecting predators.

As even the most remote forests and the deepest depths of the oceans are invaded by humanity’s rumble, our world’s natural sound rhythms are going mute. Krause says: “A great silence is spreading over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening.”

Stay tuned for an in-depth audio report on noise pollution by the Journal and Making Contact at www.radioproject.org.

Filed Under: Energy & Transportation, HEALTH & LIFESTYLE, Natural World, WHAT'S NEW IN THE NEWS, World News Tagged With: , , , ,

Ending Animal Testing for Cosmetics: Will India Be Next?

March 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Courtesy by: Alicia Graef. Care 2.

UnknownAnimal advocates are celebrating a landmark decision handed down from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) to fast-track the removal of two final tests of cosmetic products on animals from India’s safety standard.

“The directive was issued during an emergency meeting of the Bureau of Indian Standards PCD19 Cosmetic Sectional Committee, to which HSI/India was a special invitee, and marks the beginning of the end of acute oral toxicity (lethal poisoning) and oral mucosal irritation animal testing for cosmetic purposes in India,”according to the Humane Society International.

From now on, companies who want to test their products or ingredients will have to submit a non-animal testing proposal to the DCGI for approval.

“It’s unthinkable that in this day and age, animals are still choking on cosmetic chemicals in decades-old poisoning tests while companies choke on their own inertia in switching to a cruelty-free business model,” said HSI India Be Cruelty-Free Campaign Manager Alokparna Sengupta.

In the absence of non-animal alternatives, validation by the regulator will be done on an individual basis. The regulator is currently examining the European Union’s ban, according to the Hindu Business Line.

After decades of campaigning, the EU is set to finalize its ban this month, and animal advocates are counting down the days. This historic victory for animals means that from March 11 onwards, anyone who wants to sell new cosmetics products and their raw ingredients in the EU may not test either on animals anywhere the world.

Israel also recently enacted a law banning animal testing for cosmetics, personal care and household products that went into effect on December 31.

Both of these moves send a strong message in support of cruelty-free products to the rest of the world and have peaked curiosity and support from a number of countries, including Korea, who will hopefully follow suit.

“Following the European marketing ban we are seeing doors open in all the major exporting countries as industry tackles the job of converting all their safety testing to modern non-animal methods. We are particularly pleased to see the active interest of Korean industry and we will do all we can to encourage progress,” said Cruelty Free International Director of Policy, Dr Nick Palmer.

To find cruelty-free products already available on the international market, visit gocrueltyfree.org.

via Ending Animal Testing for Cosmetics: Will India Be Next? | Care2 Causes.

Filed Under: BUSINESS & ORGANIZATIONS, Conscious Shopping, Eco-Friendly Products, Good News, HEALTH & LIFESTYLE, Natural World, Politics & Economics, WHAT'S NEW IN THE NEWS, World News Tagged With: , , ,

Cool New Sponges Can Recycle CO2 Into Fuel

March 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Courtesy by: Care 2. Beth Buczynski

UnknownWhen your ice tea overflows the cup, forming a puddle on the counter, how do you clean it up? A sponge of course. Now scientists are working to see if the same idea will work with all that excess carbon dioxide that’s swirling around in our atmosphere.

Researchers at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, are developing a smart material called a MOF (metal organic framework) that could make it possible to capture C02 without using further coal-based energy. Using only the power of sunlight, these ‘solar sponges’ could be a new way to recycle carbon emissions without creating more in the process.

Traditionally, carbon dioxide capture has been accomplished through the use of liquid absorbers to catch flue gases at a coal-fired power plant before they escape into the atmosphere. The gases must then be heated to release the CO2 which is then stored and can be re-used. While slightly better than letting pollutants fly free, this process can consume as a much as 30 percent of a power plant’s production capacity. Not exactly efficient, especially when talking about power from fossil fuels.

In comparison, the CSIRO team uses a process called dynamic photo-switching, which refers to the reversible light-induced switching of floor or intensity. Instead of using liquid absorbers, the team used MOFs to absorb as much as a liter of nitrogen gas in just one gram of material. The unique material only requires UV light to trigger the release of CO2 after it has been captured from the mixture of exhaust gases. When exposed to concentrated UV light the MOF sponge instantaneously releases up to 64 percent of absorbed CO2, which can then be recycled into usable fuel.

“The capture and release process can be compared to soaking up water with a sponge and then wringing it out. When UV light hits the material its structure bends and twists and stored gas is released,” said Dr Matthew Hill, who was awarded a 2012 Eureka Prize for his MOF research and led the CSIRO group conducting this research. ”This is an exciting development for carbon capture because concentrated solar energy can be used instead of further coal-based energy to driv

Filed Under: Art & Design, Climate Change, Good News, Green Businesses, HEALTH & LIFESTYLE, WHAT'S NEW IN THE NEWS, World News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Hundreds of Baby Seals Saved from Slaughter

March 14, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Courtesy by: Piper Hoffman. Care 2

Unknown-5A seal slaughter in Canada has been cancelled!

The Huffington Post reports that the annual hunt on Hay Island was called off. The seals of Hay Island were spared last year as well. The Hay Island hunt usually kills a few hundred seals each year, out of the hundreds of thousands bludgeoned to death off the Newfoundland coast.

A spokesman for the hunters said that they had suspended the hunt because of low market demand for seal pelts. The president of the Canadian Seals Association agreed: “Right now we’re in a situation where we don’t have very many markets.” He added, “if there is no market, no buyers, there’s not much point in taking the seals.” It is comforting to learn that the killers weren’t bashing in the heads of helpless baby seals just for fun — it was just for money.

The targeted seals really are babies. “Hunters are permitted to kill seal pups when they start to moult their downy white fur at around 12-15 days. As a result many of the seals are only babies that haven’t even eaten their first solid meal or taken their first swim.” 98% of the seals killed are less than three months old.

Here’s how the hunt works, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog:

“For six to eight weeks each spring, the ice floes of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the eastern coast of Newfoundland and Labrador turn bloody, as some 300,000 harp seal pups, virtually all between 2 and 12 weeks old, are beaten to death—their skulls crushed with a heavy club called a hakapik—or shot. They are then skinned on the ice or in nearby hunting vessels after being dragged to the ships with boat hooks. The skinned carcasses are usually left on the ice or tossed in the ocean.

“Thousands of other wounded pups (estimates range from 15,000 to 150,000 per year) manage to escape the hunters but die later of their injuries or drown after falling off the ice (pups younger than about 5 weeks cannot swim).”

Growing international opposition to these slaughters is drying up demand for seal products. Activism has finally led to governments around the world taking action. Perhaps most important is the Russian Federation’s 2011 decision to prohibit importing seal products from Canada, because it was one of the largest markets for the Canadian hunters’ grisly products according to CTV News. (Harp Seals, however, offers government statistics showing that Norway is by far the biggest importer, and it still actively defends Canadian hunts.)

The Russian Federation’s ban followed the adoption of a similar ban in the European Union in 2009. The United States outlawed trade in seal products way back in 1972. The international bans were a seminal coup for the friends of seals because, unlike appeals to the hunters’ hypothetical basic decency, they hit the hunters where they lived — in their wallets.

A long and active history of protests led up to those bans. Going back to the 1970s, “images of fuzzy white seal pups were everywhere as activists fought to end the seal hunt in Canada.” In the 1980s, activism continued, with the International Fund for Animal Welfare calling for a boycott on Canadian seafood. During that time, Canada banned vessel-based seal hunting, which made a big dent in the number of seals massacred, but the motivation was to give the seal population time to recover after hunting dramatically lowered their numbers. The plan was still to resume the killing in time.

Soon the ban on vessel-based hunting was lifted, apparently because of arguments that seals were devastating the populations of certain species of fish, especially cod. Activists went back to work educating the public about the killing and lobbying public officials.

The hunters’ refusal to stop massacring seals because it is the right thing to do has been stubborn and lasting. They have had the backing of Canada’s government, even though most Canadians opposed funneling their tax dollars to subsidize this bloody industry.

The Hay Island slaughter is a drop in the bucket of seal blood Canadian hunters shed each year, but it is a sign that the tide may be turning against the industry.

Filed Under: Canada News, Good News, Natural World, Politics & Economics, WHAT'S NEW IN THE NEWS Tagged With: , , , ,
«Older Posts