Trump signs order undoing Obama climate change policies / why Trump’s climate order won’t bring back many coal jobs

The president said this would put an end to the "war on coal" and "job-killing regulations".President Donald Trump has signed an executive order rolling back Obama-era rules aimed at curbing climate change.

The Energy Independence Executive Order suspends more than half a dozen measures enacted by his predecessor, and boosts fossil fuels.

Business groups have praised the Trump administration's move but environmental campaigners have condemned it.

Inside, the president was flanked by coal miners as he signed the order, saying: "My administration is putting an end to the war on coal.

coal mining employment is in decline for a wide variety of reasons: automation of mining; competition from cheap natural gas in the power sector; collapsing demand at steel mills in China. Environmental rules are only a part of the story, and, as many experts have pointed out, repealing those rules won’t bring back many jobs. At best, it would slow the decline In the years ahead.

And there’s a fairly simple way to see this.

The biggest thing Trump’s new order would do to help the coal industry is try to repeal or shrink the Clean Power Plan, which forces emissions reductions in the electricity sector. As it happens, the US Energy Information Administration modeled the effects of CPP repeal on America’s coal use earlier this year. The agency estimated that without the CPP, US coal consumption would rebound to … roughly 2015 levels:

He is not helping anyone but those who continue to line their pockets with profits off hard workers who are stuck in communities dependent on the coal and older practices  

Mr Trump has in the past said climate change had been "created by and for the Chinese". It is now unclear where exactly the US stands in relation to the deal. 

The president's order will be resisted by environmentalists, who have promised to challenge it in the courts.

Whatever the US chooses, the EU, India and China say they will stick to their pledges made in Paris.

http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/28/15088350/trump-climate-order-coal-jobs

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39415631

Animal friendly Six-Pack Holders

Saltwater Brewery a craft brewing company in Florida promotes lifestyle that revolves around the ocean. Their goal is to maintain the world’s greatest wonder by giving back to the ocean through Ocean Based Charities (CCA, Surfrider, Ocean Foundation, MOTE).

 "Our passion for making Quality Beer for you is the way we can ensure we give back to the ocean as much as possible! Come with us to "Explore the Depths of Beer","

Most plastic beer six‐pack rings end up in our oceans and pose a serious threat to wildlife. Together with WeBelievers, Saltwater Brewery ideated, designed, tested and prototyped the first ever Edible Six Pack Rings. A six‐pack packaging, made with byproducts of the beer making process, that instead of killing animals, feeds them. They are also 100% biodegradable and compostable.

If you see one let us know and spread the word on this great idea
http://www.saltwaterbrewery.com/home/

 

The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness.

It was 25 million years old

A scientist who recently visited the Great Barrier Reef has said "if it was a person, it would be on life support", as researchers strive to highlight the plight of the reef.
New images have shown the worrying extent of the damage done to the reef by climate change.

Rising water temperatures have damaged the world’s largest reef system, which stretches for over 1,400 miles off the coast of Australia.

read more

There are other reports that  there is still hope 

The news isn’t good, but it may not be as dire as the obituary may have you believe. 

“For those of us in the business of studying and understanding what coral resilience means, the article very much misses the mark,” said Kim Cobb, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “It’s not too late for the Great Barrier Reef, and people who think that have a really profound misconception about what we know and don’t know about coral resilience.”

Read more

The longest lived vertebrate takes the title by at least a century

Imagine having to wait a century to have sex. Such is the life of the Greenland shark—a 5-meter-long predator that may live more than 400 years, according to a new study, making it the longest lived vertebrate by at least a century. So it should come as no surprise that the females are not ready to reproduce until after they hit their 156th birthday.

The longevity of these sharks is “astonishing,” says Michael Oellermann, a cold-water physiologist at Loligo Systems in Viborg, Denmark, who was not involved with the work. That’s particularly true because oceans are quite dangerous places, he notes, where predators, food scarcity, and disease can strike at any time.

Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus) had been rumored to be long-lived. In the 1930s, a fisheries biologist in Greenland tagged more than 400, only to discover that the sharks grow only about 1 centimeter a year—a sure sign that they’re in it for the long haul given how large they get. Yet scientists had been unable to figure out just how many years the sharks last.

Intrigued, marine biologist John Steffensen at the University of Copenhagen collected a piece of backbone from a  Greenland shark captured in the North Atlantic, hoping it would have growth rings he could count to age the animal. He found none, so he consulted Jan Heinemeier, an expert in radiocarbon dating at Aarhus University in Denmark. Heinemeier suggested using the shark’s eye lenses instead. His aim was not to count growth rings, but instead to measure the various forms of carbon in the lenses, which can give clues to an animal’s age.

Then came the hard part.

READ MORE

By Elizabeth Pennisi

The First Mammal Has Gone Extinct Due To Climate Change

Few people have heard of the Bramble Cay melomys, but its name could go down in history as the first mammal species to be wiped out through human-induced climate change.
As recently as 1978, hundreds of these rodents (Melomys rubicola) inhabited Bramble Cay, a tiny island that forms part of the Great Barrier Reef. But there have been no sightings of the animal since 2009, and a comprehensive survey of the island has now confirmed the worst.
Despite leaving small mammal traps across Bramble Cay – which is only the length of three football pitches – for 900 nights, none were caught. Camera traps operating for 60 nights found no sign of the rodent either.


The rat was essentially drowned as sea levels gradually overwhelmed his native habitat. The University of Queensland report points out that seawater claimed about 97 percent of the animal's already minuscule habitat in just about a decade.
"There is almost no doubt the Bramble Cay melomys is extinct, and there is no doubt that this is caused by habitat loss due to sea level rise," James Watson of the University of Queensland told New Scientist.


Read More

Finding Dory will make the blue tang fish popular and that’s not a good thing

I was working in a pet store during the Nemo craze. It was painful how poorly educated people were on the care and ecosystem they need to survive. First you need to be 18 to buy a pet in my state or have an adult present. 

A teenage girl came to me asking for a Nemo, red flag, so I ask what size is her tank etc.

 "oh I have a old goldfish tank." 

"how big is it?" measures out maybe a gallon with her hands

"that is not big enough" 

I then go into how you set up a saltwater tank the sizes you need tests needed and how you need to have it run for a certain amount of time to get everything ok. 

"oh I was just going to add salt to the water" 

"and you'll kill Nemo in 20 minuets" 

huffy face 

"we also do not do returns on saltwater fish because they are so fragile and die easily" pointed to the sign for emphasis.

 That stopped her

 

When Pixar’s Finding Nemo was released in 2003, it unleashed a tidal wave of demand for the cute orange clownfish, the species that the character Nemo is based on. Sales of clownfish rose as much as 40%, according to some estimates. Some scientists were concerned that the population of the fish would be severely depleted if too many were caught in the wild. Aquarists, however, soon figured out how to breed clownfish in captivity, reducing the impact of lots of them being taken from coral reefs.

Now, scientists are bracing for Nemo’s sequel, Finding Dory, which will be released on June 17. Dory is a blue tang. Unlike the clownfish, scientists and aquarists have not been able to breed the blue tang in captivity so far. That’s led to worries that now this species could face severe pressure from overcollecting on reefs (primarily in the Indo-Pacific, one of the world’s top sources for wild tropical fish), if movie viewers turn out to be as interested in owning pet blue tangs as they were in owning clownfish.

One animal rights group is petitioning the Walt Disney Company to put out a public service announcement asking people not to buy the fish. Their petition cautions, “If Disney does not place an explicit warning at the beginning of the film asking viewers not to adopt Blue Tang like Dory, then we will see a sharp decline in their population.”



 Origiinal link
http://qz.com/694462/finding-dory-will-make-the-blue-tang-fish-popular-and-thats-not-a-good-thing/