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.
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.
The Devils hole pupfish perhaps the rarest of all fish, the world’s loneliest species, and the most isolated animal species on Earth.
And now scientists believe they have finally established where it came from. fish lives in a single limestone cavern, known as Devils Hole in Nye County, Nevada.
Although the cavern opens to the air, the water inside is not connected to any other source.
How did the Devils Hole pupfish come to live inside Devils Hole?
Some 15 metres below the cavern’s opening, is a pool of water, within which every wild Devils pupfish has ever lived.
At one end of this pool is a small limestone shelf, measuring just 3 metres by 6 metres. This shelf is the fish’s only known feeding and spawning ground.
As a result, the pupfish has the smallest geographic range of any vertebrate species.
The fish also survives continually harsh conditions; a constant temperature of 32-33 degrees Celsius, low levels of oxygen, and sporadic changes in water levels.
The fish’s extreme rarity led to it, in 1966, being one of the first species listed under the original US Endangered Species Preservation Act, and the US Supreme Court once ruled in the fish’s favour, banning the pumping of nearby groundwater, that may have threatened its habitat and existence. That ruling strengthened the legal protection later offered to a range of endangered species.
However, such rarity raises a fundamental question; how did the Devils Hole pupfish come to live inside Devils Hole?
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.
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.”
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.
There have only been 157 recorded blooms ever between 1889 and 2008. But this year in the US alone, at least seven flowers have bloomed.
What is a corpse flower? Amorphophallus titanum (from Ancient Greek amorphos, "without form, misshapen" + phallos, "phallus", and titan, "giant"), known as the titan arum, is a flowering plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world.
Due to its odor, which is like the smell of a rotting animal, the titan arum is characterized as a carrion flower, and is also known as the corpse flower, or corpse plant. The titan arum, grows in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo in Sabah and Sarawak. It is listed on the endangered species list as threatened due to deforestation.
These gigantic flowers bloom about once every six years. So far, seven corpse flowers have bloomed around the US within months of each other The Guardian notes
that corpse flowers are expected to bloom soon (or have just started
blooming) in New York, Washington, D.C., Bloomington, Indiana, and Sarasota,
Florida. with blooms earlier this year in Chicago, Charleston, Illinois, and Winter Park, Florida.
Are they all related? One of most popular hypotheses right now is
that the rampant blooming is due to US greenhouses and botanical
gardens sharing seeds with one another, meaning most of the corpse
flowers that are currently blooming are likely related
unfortunately, little is known about the origins of many of the flowers
currently blooming, so the “cousins” theory is difficult to verify.
Math? Another hypothesis is that corpse flowers are more popular now than ever among botanical gardens in the US, so more are blooming because, well, there are simply more of them and the planets have aligned where they are all blooming this year.
Science? Could it be that we are learning more about plant care and have enough facilities with the technology to create the ideal blooming environment for a happy plant. The crowds come to see the blooms bring business and the more blooms the more business.
Earlier this summer, my next door was complaining to me about how costly his electric bill had gotten due to running his air conditioning
system. I was shocked when we compared inside temperatures and bill
amounts and realized that despite the fact that his house is a
single-level home and about 70 years newer than my 1920’s split-level,
his electric expense is considerably higher. “How can that be?” he asked
“That drafty old house should cost you an arm and a leg!” I replied “I
guess they just don’t make them like they used to!” Not until the last
few weeks did I realize just how right I was. That conversation got me
thinking about all the things about older homes that are basically
designed to conserve energy.
It makes sense, really. Air conditioning systems didn’t become a
common feature in American homes until after World War II, and homes
built before then had to have architectural and strategic features to
help them and their residents stay cool in the summer. Here is a
breakdown of some of those features, as well as a few extra tricks used
by our grandparents’ generation to avoid melting during the sweltering
heat of summer back in the “old days” before we became reliant on air
conditioning.
Interior Controls:
Wall Thickness
One of the biggest things about older homes that helped them conserve
energy was the thickness of the walls. The exterior walls of many
quality older homes were made of brick or stone, which provided a great
deal of insulation and protection from the outside weather. In fact, in
southern states where the weather got especially hot in the summer,
brick and stone walls were commonly made 12-24 inches thick, a huge
difference from the 2×4 or 2×6 lumber used in most modern construction.
While the thick stone walls kept heat from penetrating the house
during the day, they did absorb heat, which could more easily be
eliminated from the homes later in the day when cooler night air
prevailed. Which brings me to my second point:
Airflow, Airflow, Airflow! The split-level designs of many older homes featured open stairwells
that freely and naturally allowed warm air to rise to the upper levels.
In fact, some older homes even had turrets or towers that sat above the
living spaces of the home to collect heat and allow it to be vented from
the home. Even without turrets, however, strategic opening of windows
in the home maximized the flow of cool air through the home. For
example, if the wind was from the west, basement or first-floor windows
would be opened on that side of the house, and on the opposite side of
the house, windows on the second floor would be opened to essentially
draw cool air through the house and eliminate heat with the natural
force of the outside breeze. Fans could also be used to increase this
effect.
In southern states, where basements are not as common, many homes
would actually be built on top of blocks that allowed breeze to flow
underneath the living space of the house all the time. Higher Ceilings & Larger Windows
Another way that older homes facilitated air movement and removing
heat from living space was through higher ceilings. Most modern homes
are built with 8 foot ceilings being the standard, but in the pre-air
era, ceilings of 10-14 feet were very common. Naturally, heat tended to
rise to the ceiling while lower areas stayed cooler. Ceiling fans also
encouraged this effect, commonly used to draw heat upward in summer
months and to blow it downward in cooler months.
Another way that warm air could be eliminated from rooms in older
homes was through transoms, which were essentially small windows over
doorways. Transoms were very common in older homes, both over interior
and exterior doors to vent heat from the highest points of the room.
Over exterior doors, hinges and special hardware allowed the transoms to
be easily opened to allow airflow but still provided a degree of
security to the home.
Transoms weren’t the only way windows were used differently in the
old days, of course. Many older and historic homes had extra-large,
double-hung windows. During the day, the top window could be opened to
allow heat to escape near the ceiling, and at night, the bottom window
would be opened to let cooler air inside. Not only did windows tend to
be larger in the days before air-conditioning, there also tended to be
more of them. To control the heat of direct sunlight pouring through
these windows, large, heavy drapes were often used. Though there were
other ways to control the effects of the sun, which brings me to my next
point: Read more
Move over, koalas and quokkas. Australia has a new cute marsupial in town.
Meet the eastern bettong. If the name doesn’t sound familiar, that’s because this adorable species was extinct in the Australian mainland for quite some time. Overhunting from farmers and introduced predators, such as cats and foxes, eradicated them in Canberra around the early 20th century.
Fortunately, populations in Tasmania survived. And now for the past four years, they’re being reintroduced to their former habitats in the mainland.
Kate Grarock, an ecologist at the Mulligan’s Flat sanctuary in Canberra, is looking to raise awareness about the species to ensure their survival.
“No-one’s heard of a bettong, except for people who’ve been to Tasmania, or lived in Tasmania,” Grarock told Mashable Australia. “I studied environmental science, and I hadn’t even heard of one. It’s a representation of the sad state of affairs for these little bettongs. They’re really cool little animals.”
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.
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/
Electricity consumption in the country was fully covered by solar, wind and hydro power in an extraordinary 107-hour run that lasted from 6.45am on Saturday 7 May until 5.45pm the following Wednesday, the analysis says.
News of the zero emissions landmark comes just days after Germany announced that clean energy had powered almost all its electricity needs on Sunday 15 May, with power prices turning negative at several times in the day – effectively paying consumers to use it.
The Goldman Environmental Prize honors grassroots environmental heroes from the world’s six inhabited continental regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands & Island Nations, North America, and South & Central America. The Prize recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk. The Goldman Prize views “grassroots” leaders as those involved in local efforts, where positive change is created through community or citizen participation in the issues that affect them.
A public interest lawyer and mother of two, Zuzana Caputova spearheaded a successful campaign that shut down a toxic waste dump that was poisoning the land, air and water in her community, setting a precedent for public participation in post-communist Slovakia.
In one of the most dangerous countries in the world for environmental activists, Leng Ouch went undercover to document illegal logging in Cambodia and exposed the corruption robbing rural communities of their land, causing the government to cancel large land concessions.
A subsistence farmer in Peru’s northern highlands, Máxima Acuña stood up for her right to peacefully live off her own property, a plot of land sought by Newmont and Buenaventura Mining to develop the Conga gold and copper mine.
In a community whose environmental rights had long been sidelined to make room for heavy industry, Destiny Watford inspired residents of a Baltimore neighborhood to defeat plans to build the nation’s largest incinerator less than a mile away from her high school.
Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera helped lead a successful campaign to establish a nature reserve in Puerto Rico’s Northeast Ecological Corridor—an important nesting ground for the endangered leatherback sea turtle—and protect the island’s natural heritage from harmful development.
Edward Loure led a grassroots organization that pioneered an approach that gives land titles to indigenous communities—instead of individuals—in northern Tanzania, ensuring the environmental stewardship of more than 200,000 acres of land for future generations.
For nearly 150 years, a bizarre tree frog species in India was believed to be extinct.
Now, scientists have found the elusive Frankixalus jerdonii in India's West Bengal state, in the foothills of the Himalayas.
Last seen in the wild in 1870, the frogs were rediscovered by accident during a 2007 expedition led by Indian biologist Sathyabhama Das Biju. "We heard a full musical orchestra coming from the tree tops. It was magical. Of course we had to investigate," he told the BBC.
What's more, a subsequent study published this week by Biju and a team of researchers looks at the frog's "enigmatic lineage," and concludes that the amphibian represents an entirely new genus.
The study's co-author Ines Van Bocxlaer tells National Geographic that "the frog's DNA, odd feeding behavior and anatomy shows the species 'represents a deep evolutionary split in tree frog evolution.' "
That led scientists to change the frog's name from the original, Polypedates jerdonii,to Frankixalus jerdonii to reflect the new genus.
"Most tadpoles of other frog species eat plant material," National Geographic says. Not the Frankixalus jerdonii. Here's how National Geographic describes what happens after the female lays eggs inside tree holes:
"Females attach their eggs to the insides of tree hollows, which hold pools of water. When the tadpoles hatch, they fall in the water, where the females feed them unfertilized eggs until they turn into froglets."
The tadpoles each had "3-19 eggs in their intestines," the study says. And unusually, these tadpoles do not have tooth rows, which differentiates it from similar species.
There are a few theories about how the tree frogs stayed hidden for nearly 150 years, the BBC reports.
"The golf ball-sized frog lives in tree holes up to 6m (19 feet) above ground, which may have helped it stay undiscovered," the BBC says, "although other scientists have suggested it may have gone unnoticed simply because there are so few scientists working in the remote region."
But its survival is uncertain. Citing "alarming" threats, the study says that multiple areas where the species is believed to live are disturbed by slash-and-burn deforestation.
John Hammond:
Condors! Condors are on the verge of extinction. If I was to create a flock of condors on this island, you wouldn't have anything to say!
Dr. Ian Malcolm:
No hold on, this is not some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a damn. Dinosaurs, uh, *had* their shot, and nature *selected* them for extinction!
California Condor photo credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/John McCamman
This quote is a prominent part of the movie arguing the overall theme of Jurassic park. but like most "science" in the movie it is wrong.
When I was born in 1984, six California condors died in the wild, leaving just nine wild and 21 captive condors in the world. Leading to a last ditch effort to capture the last remaining wild condors and rely on an unproven ability to breed condors in captivity to ensure the species’ survival.Yet, 30 years later, progress has been slow for the California condor recovery program.
One of the biggest hurdles is lead poisoning, often from the consumption of carrion, Mostly deer, containing lead fragments from spent shot or ammunition, is the most common cause of death for these scavenging birds. More than 40 percent of condor deaths in the wild, where cause of death could be determined through necropsy, were the result of lead poisoning. Newborns have a 50% chance death from lead poisoning. The sad this is this applies to all An estimated 10 million to 20 million birds, mostly scavengers like vultures bald eagles, etc die each year from lead poisoning. Two men found the eagle shivering in a river in Waverly, Iowa. They brought the eagle to Avenue of the Saints Animal Hospital, where the veterinarians began to treat him for lead poisoning after tests showed lethal amounts in his system,according to KWWL (Waverly). It is believed the lead came from bullet fragments or fish tackle.
More than 230 condors now occur in the wild and roughly 190 are in captive breeding programs or housed in zoos. Approximately 40 of the condors in the wild are either progeny of wild pairs, or were substituted as eggs into wild nests and fully fledged in the wild. This year, two of these wild-fledged condors produced a chick, creating a second generation of "truly wild" condor.
Efforts to monitor the locations and activities of the animals allow biologists to detect early warning signs of lead poisoning. Wild condors are captured once or twice annually to be fitted with tracking devices and identifying tags, tested for blood lead and placed in captivity for chelation treatment if lead exposure is higher than prescribed levels. Clean food is provided to these animals—a practice that began with the release program in 1992—but as condors mature and become more experienced in the wild, their reliance on proffered food declines and natural foraging increases.
Hunters may choose to purchase lead bullets, because they're cheaper and, in some cases, safer than other materials. But, occasionally, these bullets end up killing more than just the targeted animal. California has addressed this issue by outlawing lead ammunition for hunting effective June 2019. In Arizona and Utah, state wildlife agencies have developed aggressive voluntary programs providing free or subsidized non-lead ammunition, shooting events and educational programs. Although efforts to reduce the use of lead ammunition for hunting wildlife within the condors’ range have incurred some public disfavor, they are essential to ensure the species' survival.
Call (209) 742-5579 or visit: YosemiteaAudubon.org for additional information about the program, and call (209) 742-5181 about the field trip.
Substantial portions of this article were excerpted from John McCamman’s recent article in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Endangered Species Bulletin.
The dodo is dead. The passenger pigeon has passed on. But Lonesome George, the iconic Galápagos tortoise whose death marked the end of his species, is in post-mortem luck.
A scientific expedition has discovered some of his close blood relations alive and well. With careful breeding, biologists now hope to revive George’s species and reintroduce the tortoises to the island on which they evolved.
It would be a signal achievement in a place that gave rise to our understanding of evolution and speciation.
Originally there were at least eight species of Galápagos tortoise, scientists now believe. (One was discovered only this year.) At least three species are now extinct, including tortoises on Pinta Island. The last one, George, was discovered wandering alone in 1972 and taken into loving custody. Hisdeath, in 2012 at more than 100 years old, was a powerful reminder of the havoc visited by humans on delicate ecosystems worldwide over the last two centuries.
Last month, scientists : plan to capture and separate tortoises with high levels of Pinta and Floreana DNA, and then breed animals that are genetically closest to the original species.
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.
Now, scientists have found the elusive Frankixalus jerdonii in India's West Bengal state, in the foothills of the Himalayas.
California Condor photo credit:
