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Yale Environment 360
Apple’s Main Data Center Will Use Only Green Power by 2013
Fri, 05/18/2012 - 11:02Apple Inc. has received approval to build two solar power installations at its main data center in North Carolina, allowing the technology giant to run the center entirely with renewable energy by next year. The two solar farms, which will cover 250 acres near its core data center in Maiden, N.C., will utilize high-efficiency solar cells and an advanced solar-tracking system provided by SunPower Corp and startup Bloom Energy. The solar arrays will generate 84 million kWh of electricity per year. Apple, which produces the popular iPhone and iPad, says that all three of its main data centers ultimately will be powered by coal-free electricity. “I’m not aware of any other company producing energy onsite at this scale,” Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer told Reuters. The company is also developing a 5-megawatt fuel cell facility on the Maiden site. A recent Greenpeace report cited Apple, whose data centers require an ever-expanding amount of power, for lagging behind in efforts to use clean energy.
Categories: Environmental News
EU Fisheries Observers Are Intimidated, Bribed by Crews, Report Says
Fri, 05/18/2012 - 10:29Observers placed on European Union fishing boats to reduce the amount of illegal and unreported catches are often subject to threats, intimidation, and bribes when they try to do their jobs, according to a report in the Guardian. After interviewing more than 20 former and current fisheries observers and examining EU records, the newspaper said that the threats and harassment are common on Spanish and Portuguese fishing boats, which are notorious for egregious overfishing. The observers told the Guardian that crew members would steal their records of fishing violations, threaten them with an “accident” at sea, kick their cabin doors to keep them awake at night, and take elaborate steps — including making illegal hauls while observers were eating — to conceal the extent of overfishing. Independent observers are placed aboard every vessel operating in the Northwest Atlantic Fishery Organization. But because of fishing industry pressure, observers who spot violations are only allowed to summon an inspector on board, but cannot provide the inspector with any details or records of infractions.
Categories: Environmental News
Humanmade Pollutants May Be Expanding Tropical Zone, Study Says
Thu, 05/17/2012 - 11:38U.S. scientists say emissions in the Northern Hemisphere of black carbon aerosols and ozone, both of which absorb solar radiation, are likely causing the hemisphere’s tropical regions to expand poleward. After comparing observations of tropic expansion — which suggest that the tropics have widened 0.7 degrees per decade since 1970, largely because of global warming — with climate models, researchers at University of California, Riverside, found that the climate models tended to underestimate that shift by about a third. But when they included either black carbon or tropospheric ozone — or both — into the models, the simulations mimicked observations better, suggesting that the emissions are playing a role in tropical expansion because of their radiation-absorbing effect. “If the tropics are moving poleward, then the subtropics will become even drier,” said Robert J. Allen, a professor Earth sciences and lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature. “If a poleward displacement of the mid-latitude storm tracks also occurs, this will shift mid-latitude precipitation poleward, impacting regional agriculture, economy, and society.”
Categories: Environmental News
Retreat of Columbia Glacier Vividly Captured in NASA Satellite Images
Thu, 05/17/2012 - 10:51Two false-color thermal images taken by NASA satellites depict the rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier in Alaskaover the past 25 years. Since 1986, the
NASA Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, 1986—2011 glacier’s end-point, or terminus, has retreated 12 miles up an inlet in Prince William Sound, and the glacier has lost about half its total thickness and volume. The top image, taken by a Landsat 5 satellite in 1986, shows two branches of the glacier joining together just north of Heather Island. By 2011, the terminus had retreated far up the inlet, and is identifiable in the bottom image. The blue in the water below the 2011 terminus is floating ice that has calved off the leading edge of the Columbia Glacier, which descends from a 10,000-foot ice field. By 2011, the two branches of the glacier had become separated. The turquoise in the images is snow, and it is more prevalent in 2011 because that image was taken in May, while the top image was shot in July.Categories: Environmental News
The Vital Chain: Connecting The Ecosystems of Land and Sea
Thu, 05/17/2012 - 08:00A new study from a Pacific atoll reveals the links between native trees, bird guano, and the giant manta rays that live off the coast. In unraveling this intricate web, the researchers point to the often little-understood interconnectedness between terrestrial and marine ecosystems. BY CARL ZIMMER
Categories: Environmental News
Wildlife in Tropical Regions Has Declined 60 Percent Since 1970
Wed, 05/16/2012 - 11:59Wildlife populations in the world’s tropical regions have fallen by more than 60 percent during the last four decades, according to the latest version of the Living Planet Index. The Index — which tracks populations of 2,688 vertebrate species in tropical and temperate regions worldwide — found that species abundance in the tropics declined by about 44 percent on land, 62 percent in the oceans, and 70 percent in freshwater ecosystems from 1970 to 2008. Cumulatively, species abundance declined by about 1.25 percent annually every year compared with a 1970 baseline, according to the report, which is published by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London. Wildlife populations declined by 38 percent in Africa during that period; about 50 percent in Central and South America; and 64 percent in Indo-Pacific regions. Overall, the global index dropped almost 30 percent during the same period. These steep population declines are the result of many factors related to human activities, including deforestation, habitat loss, pollution, overfishing, and climate change.
Categories: Environmental News
State Oversight Helps Reduce Effects of Fracking, Study Says
Wed, 05/16/2012 - 11:51A new study conducted by the University of Buffalo has found that state regulation helped reduce environmental problems associated with unconventional forms of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania since 2008. In an analysis of 2,988 violations at nearly 4,000 Pennsylvania hydraulic fracturing drill sites, university researchers found that roughly 38 percent (845 violations) were environmental in nature. Among these violations, 25 were classified as “major” — including site restoration failures, contamination of water supplies, land spills, blowouts, and venting and gas migration. As the number of drilling sites increased, the percentage of environmental violations compared to the number of wells drilled dropped from 58.2 percent in 2008 to 30.5 percent in 2010, largely as a result of increased state oversight, the study said. But the total number of environmental incidents tripled from 2008 to 2011 as the number of wells increased. The report’s three lead authors have energy industry ties, but lead author John Martin said the report was funded entirely by the university.
Categories: Environmental News
Interview: Taking Green Chemistry Out Of the Lab and into Public Policy
Wed, 05/16/2012 - 07:52Paul Anastas is credited with coining the term “green chemistry,” the movement to make chemicals and industrial processes more environmentally friendly, and during two stints in Washington, D.C., he has worked to
Michael Marsland/
Yale University
Paul Anastas
promote those principles at the U.S. Environmental Protection. Anastas, 49, recently left his post as EPA assistant administrator and science advisor to return to teaching at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he talks about his role in EPA’s decision to approve the use of chemical dispersants after the BP oil spill, why a chemical-by-chemical approach to toxicity testing is not the best model for protecting the environment or human health, and why companies are increasingly applying the concepts of green chemistry to the design of materials and products. “For every one process or product that’s being reinvented using green chemistry and green engineering,” he says, “there may be a hundred or a thousand that have yet to be rethought under these terms.”
Read the interview
Categories: Environmental News
Record Number of Fish Stocks ‘Rebuilt’ in 2011, NOAA Study Says
Tue, 05/15/2012 - 10:44U.S. officials say a record number of fish stocks recovered to healthy population numbers in 2011 while a declining number of species were subject to overfishing. In a reportto Congress, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Wikimedia Commons Chinook salmon Administration (NOAA) declared that six species have been “rebuilt,” including the Bering Sea snow crab, the summer flounder found on the mid-Atlantic coast, the haddock in the Gulf of Maine, the Chinook salmon on the northern California coast, the Coho salmon on the Washington coast, and the Widow rockfish on the Pacific coast. Meanwhile, the number of stocks subject to overfishing decreased by four, and overfished stocks declined by three compared with the 2010 report. Samuel D. Rauch III, a NOAA deputy assistant administrator, said the findings underscore the fact that fisheries management — including sometimes unpopular catch limits — has been effective.
Categories: Environmental News
U.S. Companies Use Steel Linked to Amazon Destruction, Greenpeace Finds
Tue, 05/15/2012 - 10:07U.S. car makers such as General Motors, Ford, and Nissan are purchasing steel made from pig iron that is smelted using large amounts of illegally logged timber from the Amazon rainforest, according to a two-year investigation by Greenpeace. The environmental group also said that the pig iron smelting, fueled by charcoal produced from tropical forest trees, has resulted in virtual slave labor and illegal logging of indigenous lands in northeastern Brazil. The Greenpeace investigation said that Brazil’s Carajas region — where three-quarters of the forests have been cleared, mainly for charcoal production — is home to 43 blast furnaces used by 18 different companies. Two of the major companies, Viena and Sidepar, sell pig iron to a U.S. steel mill operated by Severstal, Greenpeace said. That mill sells steel to General Motors, Nissan, BMW, and Mercedes, according to Greenpeace. As illegal charcoal operations have decimated the forests in Carajas, loggers have entered conservation areas belonging to indigenous tribes, who have lost 30 percent of their lands to illegal loggers, Greenpeace said.
Categories: Environmental News
Various Uses of Wood Determine Emissions from Deforestation
Mon, 05/14/2012 - 11:01The volume of greenhouse gases released when a forest is cleared depends on how how the trees are used and in which part of the world the trees are grown, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Davis. Analyzing how 160 countries use wood from cleared forests, the researchers found that if the wood is generally used to create solid wood products, such as timber for housing, up to 62 percent of the carbon in the trees remains in storage. Temperate forests in the U.S., Canada, and Europe are cleared primarily for use in such products. But the study found that wood from tropical forests in places like Brazil and Indonesia is generally used in paper, pulp, and bioenergy production, and such uses lead to an almost complete release of the carbon stored in trees. Reporting in the journal Nature Climate Change, the researchers said that early studies assumed that most of the carbon stored in trees was released once they were felled. The new study, however, gives a more nuanced picture of carbon releases from deforestation.
Categories: Environmental News
Americans Willing to Pay More For Cleaner Energy, Study Says
Mon, 05/14/2012 - 10:45A new study finds that the average American would be willing to pay slightly more for clean energy in support of government initiatives to promote low-carbon electricity generation. In a national survey conducted last year, researchers from Yale and Harvard universities found that Americans, on average, would be willing to pay $162 more per year for their electricity bills — an average increase of about 13 percent — as part of a policy requiring 80 percent of energy come from green sources by 2035. However, that willingness varies greatly depending on political affiliation, age, and geographic region, according to the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. For instance, support was significantly lower among Republicans, independents, and those with no party affiliation — by 25, 13, and 25 percentage points, respectively. Also, according to the analysis, researchers found that the additional cost per household for clean energy would have to fall below $59 per year to pass the current U.S. Senate, and drop below $48 per year to get through the U.S. House of Representatives.
Categories: Environmental News
Africa’s Ambitious Experiment To Preserve Threatened Wildlife
Mon, 05/14/2012 - 07:30Five nations in southern Africa are joining together to create a huge conservation area that will extend across their borders and expand critical territory for elephants. But can these new protections reverse decades of decline for area wildlife while also benefiting the people who live there? BY CAROLINE FRASER
Categories: Environmental News
Study Calls Selective Logging the Most Realistic Conservation Strategy
Fri, 05/11/2012 - 10:45A new study says that well-managed selective logging may be the only realistic solution to conserving tropical forests in the face of a rapacious global demand for timber resources. In an analysis of more than 100 studies, researchers at the University of Florida found that while even selective logging has a significant impact on biodiversity in tropical forests and carbon storage capacity, those impacts are “survivable and reversible to a degree” if the forests are given time to recover. In fact, the researchers found that, on average, 85 to 100 percent of animal and plant species present before initial logging were still around after selective logging and that forests retained about 75 percent of their carbon after initial harvest. By contrast, the researchers say, forest loss for the planting of rubber or palm oil plantations is permanent. “We’re not advocates for logging,” said Jack Putz, a professor of biology and lead author of the study published in Conservation Letters. “We’re just acknowledging that it is a reality — and that within that reality, there is a way forward.”
Categories: Environmental News
Eel Breeding Innovation Sought To Conserve Wild Populations
Fri, 05/11/2012 - 00:14Japanese biologists are racing to develop a type of food that would enable fish farmers to breed eels on a commercial scale using for the first time larvae produced in captivity, a step that could reduce pressures on collapsing eel populations worldwide. While farmers have long bred captive eels — a popular delicacy in many countries — until now they have only been able to do so on a commercial scale using baby eels trapped in the wild, a step that has exacerbated the catastrophic decline in wild eel populations from the Far East to North America. The reason, scientists say, is that it has been difficult and expensive to produce the foodstuff critical to the development of eel larvae: a mixture of marine detritus known as “marine snow.” Scientists so far have considered a wide range of possible ingredients, including the yolk from shark’s eggs. “Whoever gets there first has made a tremendous discovery; you’re recovering a cultural tradition,” David Righton, a scientist with the UK-based Cefas marine laboratory, told the Guardian. “Whoever does this is culturally important as well as becoming very rich.”
Categories: Environmental News
New Interactive Website Maps Distribution of Global Species
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 11:03U.S. scientists this week unveiled a new online resource that maps the distribution of species worldwide and will ultimately allow users to update or add species data. The so-called “Map of Life” project — which draws on Map of LifeThe “Map of Life” millions of known locations of various species, expert range maps, World Wildlife Fund data, and the databases of individual scientists — allows users to view distribution records for any terrestrial vertebrate species or fish worldwide, and generate a listing of all species within a 50- to 1,000-kilometer range. An updated version of the site, expected later this year, will include data on plants, trees, and selected invertebrate groups. Ultimately, users will be able to flag and edit data, update their own data sets, and provide feedback on the data. The project, which is funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation, is described online in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
Categories: Environmental News
Melting Sea Ice Could Lead To Pressure on Arctic Fishery
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 07:33With melting sea ice opening up previously inaccessible parts of the Arctic Ocean, the fishing industry sees a potential bonanza. But some scientists and government officials have begun calling for a moratorium on fishing in the region until the true state of the Arctic fishery is assessed. BY ED STRUZIK
Categories: Environmental News
Lack of Profitability Drives U.S. Company Out of Biofuels Business
Thu, 05/10/2012 - 00:03A U.S.-based company that used genetic engineering to develop a technology to convert sugar into biofuel has announced that it will stop producing the fuel, at least temporarily, because the process simply isn’t profitable. Amyris, a San Francisco firm that also produces cosmetic products, had engineered a type of yeast that can eat sugar and secrete an oil similar to diesel. While the company had some success using this process in the production of biofuels, including for use by buses in Brazil, it achieved greater profits selling the chemicals for use in other products, such as moisturizers and fragrances, according to a report by MIT’s Technology Review. According to the report, the average selling price for the company’s products is about $7.70 per liter ($29 per gallon), which is far higher than the cost of petroleum-based diesel. And even the $7.70 price was propped up by the amount the company can earn by producing moisturizers. According to Amyris officials, the company will stop producing biodiesels by mid-year, but the firm remains interested in developing commercial-scale fuel plants in the future.
Categories: Environmental News
Warming Waters Attract New Fish Species to British Waters, Report Says
Wed, 05/09/2012 - 11:41Warming ocean temperatures have changed the distribution of many critical marine species off the British coast, as warm water fish are increasingly expanding into northern waters and cold-water species are swimming to colder depths, according to a new report. The report of the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership, published by the UK and Scottish governments, found that warm water species such as the bluefin tuna and thresher sharks are more frequently appearing in the waters off southwest England and squid have become increasingly abundant in the North Sea. One southern species, the bib, has moved north by 212 miles (342 kilometers) in the last two decades, while common North Sea species such as cod and lemon sole are swimming at an average of 5.5 meters deeper per decade. The report, based on an analysis of scientific studies, warns these changes pose potential threats for native species and the commercial fishing industry as changing water temperatures could introduce invasive species and new diseases.
Categories: Environmental News
Groundwater Pumping Emerges As a Factor in Sea Level Rise, Study Says
Wed, 05/09/2012 - 10:47The vast amounts of water pumped out of the ground for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial uses will increasingly contribute to global sea level rise in the coming decades, according to a new study. According to researchers at Utrecht University, humans pumped about 204 cubic kilometers (49 cubic miles) of groundwater in 2000, much of which evaporated into the atmosphere before ultimately entering rivers, canals and, eventually, the world’s oceans. While in earlier decades the rise in sea level caused by groundwater removal was canceled out by the construction of dams, that changed by the 1990s as humans pumped more groundwater and built fewer dams. By 2000, groundwater extraction resulted in a sea level rise of about 0.57 millimeters annually — compared with about 0.035 millimeters in 1990. According to the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, by 2050 the pumping of groundwater worldwide could cause sea levels to rise about 0.8 millimeters annually.
Categories: Environmental News