NewsTrust - Environment - Most Trusted Stories

Gone: Mass Extinction and the Hazards of Earth's Vanishing Biodiversity

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - Beyond a critical point, the collective body of a unique kind of mammal or bird or amphibian or tree cannot be salvaged, no matter the first aid rendered. Too few individuals spread too far apart or too genetically weakened are susceptible to even small natural disasters. A passing thunderstorm. An unexpected freeze. Drought. At fewer than 50 members, populations experience increasingly random fluctuations until a kind of fatal arrhythmia takes hold. Eventually, an entire genetic legacy, born in the beginnings of life on Earth, is smote from the future.

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Sludge Happens

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Josh Harkinson - Apr. 22 (Special Report) - In theory, recycling poop is the perfect solution to the one truly unavoidable byproduct of human civilization. Turning sewage into a potent, inexpensive fertilizer means cleaner rivers and oceans. But as sludge has spread across the country, so have concerns that it may cause as many environmental problems as it solves. In communities where sludge has been used, residents have reported ailments ranging from migraines to pneumonia to mysterious deaths. In a 1994 episode often cited by sludge foes, an 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy died of a staph infection after biking through sludge at an abandoned mine. Sludge's dirty secret is that it may contain anything that goes down the drain

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In The Air

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - By Elizabeth Kolbert - Apr. 23 (Opinion) - Earth Day has lost its edge and, with that, the sense that a different world is possible. Even more than in 1970, what’s needed now is an outpouring that organizes itself—with millions of people and, for good measure, some stinky dead fish in the streets.

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California takes on King Corn

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

wwwp.dailyclimate.org - By Matthew Cimitile - Apr. 21 (News Report) - As they see it, corn is no better – and might be worse – than petroleum when total greenhouse gas emissions are considered. Such a declaration, to be considered later this week by the California Air Resources Board, would be a considerable blow to the corn-ethanol industry in the United States.

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The Next Generation of Biofuels

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - By Melinda Wenner - Apr. 21 (Special Report) - Once the next generation of biofuels becomes available, you could swing by the local energy station and fill up on a liquid that is virtually identical to gasoline. It would be made by U.S. companies, not shipped from the Middle East. And even though biofuels release carbon dioxide when they are burned, the organisms they are made from draw an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide from the air—making biofuels essentially carbon-neutral.

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The Four Biggest Enviro-Scams: Green claims that make us see red

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Amy Tennery - Apr. 22 (Special Report) - as the field of green products grows, so does the number of impostors. The following is a list of some of the most perplexing green products out there-and an assessment of just how scammy they might be:

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An Inconvenient Truth for the GOP

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Jonathan Stein - Apr. 24 (News Report) - Republicans trying to block climate change legislation are abandoned by their once faithful corporate allies.

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Why our obsession with climate change may end up destroying biodiversity

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Brendan Borrell - Apr. 23 (Opinion) - Now, being green is all about greenhouse gases: Neighborhood moms are more apt to fret over food miles than felled forests; organic cattle farmers are more interested in offsetting the methane coming from cow burps than pondering squished tadpoles in hoof prints. Even scientists have grown bored with question of habitat loss, tweaking their grant proposals to emphasize the climate angle no matter how tenuous the connection. Saving the Amazon is so 1980s.

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Giraffe numbers in Kenya's Masai Mara down 95%

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Xan Rice - Apr. 22 (News Report) - The main reason for the population decrease was the rapid expansion of human settlements on the land next to the reserve. The area was traditionally used by wild animals for seasonal grazing but is increasingly being turned over to livestock and crop production.

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Loon festival canceled - lake is drying up

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Sandra Chereb - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - the reason is Walker Lake itself. Its water quality and levels have declined and along with them the rich bounty of small fish that attracted the loons. The result: Hawthorne's Loon Festival, held each year in late April, was canceled, replaced by a day to bring awareness to Walker Lake's teetering ecosystem and ongoing, multimillion-dollar and multifaceted efforts to save it from a salty demise.

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Plastic. Fantastic?

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Jennifer Kahn - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - As the most visible evidence of a disposable, trash-addled society, plastic has become the emblem of a world swimming in waste. Reportedly, plastic shopping bags are used an average of just 12 minutes before being thrown away. Every year, more than 500 billion plastic bags are discarded worldwide; they wave from tree branches so abundantly that South Africans have dubbed them their "national flower," and no fewer than six countries have enacted bans. Shredded packaging fouls shorelines and turns up in the stomachs of trout, albatross, and sea turtles (which mistake plastic bags for jellyfish). In the Pacific Ocean, currents feed scraps into a thousand-mile-wide gyre of synthetic jetsam.

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Why Isn’t the Brain Green?

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jon Gertner - Apr. 20 (Special Report) - “Let’s start with the fact that climate change is anthropogenic,” Weber told me one morning in her Columbia office. “More or less, people have agreed on that. That means it’s caused by human behavior. That’s not to say that engineering solutions aren’t important. But if it’s caused by human behavior, then the solution probably also lies in changing human behavior.”

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Radical Ways to Cool the Planet

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fred Guter - Apr. 20 (Special Report) - As forecasts for global temperatures grow increasingly dire, scientists are taking a serious look at an idea once considered crazy: reengineering the atmosphere.

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How Carbon Caps Could Help Detroit

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Andy Stone - Apr. 25 (News Report) - The auto industry that emerges from the current crisis will face tough new environmental standards, and that's not all bad.

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Poisoned Waters

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Frontline - Apr. 22 (Investigative Report) - More than three decades after the Clean Water Act, two iconic waterways—the great coastal estuaries Puget Sound and the Chesapeake Bay—are in perilous condition. With polluted runoff still flowing in from industry, agriculture, and massive suburban development, scientists fear contamination to the food chain and drinking water for millions of people. A growing list of endangered species is also threatened in both estuaries. As a new president, Congress, and states set new agendas and spending priorities, FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith examines the rising hazards to human health and the ecosystem, and why it’s so hard to keep our waters clean.

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Hurricane-Killing, Space-Based Power Plant

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Alexis Madrigal - Apr. 20 (News Report) - Not that any kind of space-based solar power system is likely to be charging up the grid any time soon either. Despite the PG&E agreement, Solaren's team has yet to raise the billions of dollars necessary to get their project into orbit. And that could be tough, given the dubious profitability of the technology, particularly in comparison to ground-based green tech. Energy analyst Chris Nelder calls the technology a "pure fantasy."

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Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Andrew C. Revkin - Apr. 24 (News Report) - For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

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Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By John Tierney - Apr. 21 (Opinion) - As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy.

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Global Warming Overreach

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Kimberley A. Strassel - Apr. 24 (Opinion) - The Obama team is aware it has trouble, which explains last week's well-timed Environmental Protection Agency "finding" that carbon is a danger. The administration is now using this as a stick to beat Congress to act, arguing that if it doesn't the EPA will. (Reality: Any EPA actions will be tied up in court for years.) It also helps explain EPA's Monday analysis claiming the legislation won't cost all that much. (Reality: The agency could only make this claim by assuming an endless recession.)

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Hill gears up for big climate week

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Lisa Lerer - Apr. 21 (News Report) - Congress is launching the “mother of all climate weeks” on Tuesday, with a monster hearing designed to push forward global warming legislation.

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GOP still using disputed data

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Lisa Lerer - Apr. 23 (News Report) - GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence is defending Republican use of a widely disputed cost estimate on a Democratic global warming proposal, even after an outcry from media, environmentalists, and climate change experts.

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