·:[ Environmental News Bits ]:·
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Via Docuticker.

World’s Large Marine Ecosystems Heating Up, Altering Fisheries Catches
Source: United Nations Environment Programme/NOAA

A new United Nations report, with key contributions from NOAA, found that 61 of the world’s 64 large marine ecosystems — large coastal ocean waters adjacent to continents — show a significant increase in sea surface temperatures in the last 25 years, contributing to decreasing fisheries catches in some areas and increasing catches in others.

Harvests in several northern Atlantic LMEs, including the Norwegian Sea, the Faroe Plateau and the Iceland Shelf, are increasing due to the increase in zooplankton, a vital fish food, brought about by the warming waters.

However, catches are declining in several European LMEs, including the North Sea, the Celtic Biscay Shelf and the Iberian Coastal LMEs, according to the United Nations Environment Programme report, The UNEP Large Marine Ecosystem Report: a Perspective on Changing Conditions in LMEs of the World’s Regional Seas.

+ Full Report

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First-Ever Global Report on Shellfish Finds 85 Percent of World’s Oyster Reefs Have Vanished
Source: Nature Conservancy

Today, The Nature Conservancy released the first-ever comprehensive global report on the state of shellfish at the International Marine Conservation Congress in Washington, DC. The report, which finds that 85 percent of oyster reefs have been lost worldwide, concludes that oyster reefs are the most severely impacted marine habitat on the planet.
…
The report, written by scientists across five continents, from conservation organizations as well as academic and research institutions, focuses primarily on the distribution and condition of native oyster reefs.

Besides being a culinary favorite and a long-standing staple in seafood restaurants around the globe, oysters provide benefits to humans in less obvious ways. For example, they act as natural water filters and improve water quality, provide food and habitat for fish, crabs and birds, and serve as natural coastal buffers that help to protect shorelines and keep coastal marshes intact, an important factor in protecting communities against increased storm surges and sea-level rise expected with climate change.

+ Shellfish Reefs at Risk

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The Climate Lobby’s Mushrooming Growth
Source: Center for Public Integrity

As Congress focuses this week on landmark legislation to reduce global warming, nearly 140 new businesses and interest groups –  led by a diverse array of technology firms — have joined in the already intense lobbying on climate change, according to “The Climate Lobby’s Nonstop Growth,” a new analysis by The Center for Public Integrity.

Microsoft, Google, and eBay are among the technology firms that helped drive an increase of more than 14 percent in companies and organizations lobbying on climate in the first quarter of 2009, compared to the same period last year, Senate disclosure forms show. The 880 firms and groups that reported weighing in on climate policy are still dominated by big energy producers and users; more than half are manufacturers, power companies, or firms in the oil and gas industry.

California Democrat Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and his energy subcommittee chairman, Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, move forward this week with a mark-up of the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Their legislation seeks to curb the global warming threat through a complex cap-and-trade system. In its comprehensive analysis, the Center found that the interests weighing in on this issue are more diverse than ever. Those groups include not just technology firms, but food interests like the American Meat Institute and the National Turkey Federation; consumer goods manufacturers like Levi Strauss & Co. (active in a new business coalition organized by the investor group Ceres); and alternative transportation interests like Segway.

+ The Climate Lobby’s Nonstop Growth

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BPA, Chemical Used to Make Plastics, Found to Leach from Polycarbonate Drinking Bottles Into Humans
Source: Environmental Health Perspectives (via Harvard School of Public Health)

A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles, the popular, hard-plastic drinking bottles and baby bottles, showed a two-thirds increase in their urine of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA). Exposure to BPA, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans. The study is the first to show that drinking from polycarbonate bottles increased the level of urinary BPA, and thus suggests that drinking containers made with BPA release the chemical into the liquid that people drink in sufficient amounts to increase the level of BPA excreted in human urine.

The study appears on the website of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives and is freely available at:
http://www.ehponline.org/members/2009/0900604/0900604.pdf. (PDF; 140 KB)

Read the press release.

In a recent, much talked about Op Ed in The New York Times, Mark C. Taylor opines that we must “end the university as we know it” and make higher education “more agile, adaptive, and imaginative” if we want to solve the real problems facing the world today. An existing Master’s degree, with a new partner, is designed to better prepare community leaders to advance global conservation — offers a look at how things might be done differently.

The majority of this Master’s Degree in Communication — launched by the environmental non-profit, Rare (www.RareConservation.org), in partnership with the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) — takes place ‘in the field.’ Students from areas of highest biodiversity around the world implement an entire social marketing campaign designed around a specific conservation goal, by mobilizing constituents in their communities.

Read the full story in Environmental Protection.

On May 19, the response to the Obama Administration’s national fuel efficiency policy — requiring an average fuel economy standard of 35.5 mpg in 2016 — seemed supportive all around.

In attendance at the announcement were several C-level automaker executives; the United Autoworkers’ president; Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, and California authorities; U.S. legislators, and Leaders of League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, and Union of Concerned Scientists.

Read the full story in Environmental Protection.

Numerous states are holding corporate and institutional violators of fluorescent lamp handling requirements accountable for their actions.

The Product Stewardship Institute (PSI) commends the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state governments for taking these violations seriously. While EPA and other agencies recommend that all mercury-containing lamps be recycled, requirements vary state to state, and some residents may not be aware of bans on the disposal of such products that have been enacted in California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, with an incinerator ban in Florida.

Read the full story in Environmental Protection.

A new study indicates inhalation of certain particulates can actually cause some genes to become reprogrammed, affecting both the development and the outcome of cancers and other diseases.

The research was presented on May 17 at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego, Calif.

More than 200 scientists, regulators, and policy makers from around the world convened recently at EPA’s first ToxCast Data Analysis Summit to discuss results of the first phase of ToxCast.  ToxCast is an innovative approach for profiling how chemicals in our environment impact important biological pathways that are critical for the function of the body’s systems such as the heart, lungs, brain or reproductive organs.

EPA launched the ToxCast research program in 2007 to develop a cost-effective approach for prioritizing the toxicity testing of large numbers of chemicals in a short period of time.  This new approach to determining how toxic chemicals could impact human health uses cutting-edge biological tests to determine how chemicals affect cellular functions.  ToxCast will help EPA determine under what conditions environmental exposures pose risks to human health.

During the first phase of ToxCast, EPA researchers conducted more than 200,000 experiments looking at the interactions between approximately 300 chemicals and 500 biological targets such as hormone receptors and liver enzymes.  EPA researchers provided early access to the initial ToxCast data to research groups around the world, and this data was the foundation for discussions at the meeting.  To evaluate the value of ToxCast, the new data is being compared to those generated by traditional toxicity testing methods

Based upon input from the meeting, EPA researchers are now preparing to launch a second phase of the ToxCast program that will expand on and verify the ability of this approach to predict potential human toxicity.  EPA expects to complete this second phase of ToxCast over the next several years, and at that time be ready to deliver an innovative computational method for evaluating potential health impacts of environmental chemicals.

EPA and Pfizer, Inc. announced at the meeting that the company is making public clinical data on more than 100 drugs that showed adverse effects in clinical human testing.  EPA will run the compounds through ToxCast, which will provide a critical and direct link to human toxicity outcomes.

Information on the ToxCast program: http://www.epa.gov/ncct/toxcast/index.html

Read the full story in Waste & Recycling News.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry will have on his desk a bill requiring television manufacturers to provide Texas residents with free and convenient recycling for their old units.

Read the full post at Mother Nature Network.

It’s easy to think of water as cheaper than electricity, since power bills often dwarf water bills. But water is much more valuable because it’s finite — we can get endless electricity from renewable sources like wind and the sun, but we’re stuck with the water we’ve got.

The problem is we’re constantly using more of it, since there are constantly more of us. We’re especially thirsty in the United States, with each American using an average of 90 gallons a day, compared with 53 by the average European and three to five by the average resident of sub-Saharan Africa. Dwindling water supplies have worsened recent droughts in the American West and Southeast, underscoring the real possibility of running out.

To make matters worse, it takes a ton of energy to pump all our water through the nation’s pipes and sewers, costing utilities about $4 billion a year. According to the EPA, a faucet left running for five minutes uses as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb burn for 14 hours. And if that was hot water running down the sink, it used even more energy. So not only are we wasting water when we take 20-minute showers, we’re wasting electricity, too. And since most of our electricity still comes from coal, wasting water contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.

But we aren’t bringing all this up just to bring you down. There’s a lot you can do to save water.

Read the full story at Mother Nature Network.

A few years ago, when Stephen Yemm and his wife set out to build a bigger house for their growing family and home-based business in Marquand, Miss., an architect recommended cork flooring for some areas of the home. Yemm immediately thought of using wine corks for his new floor. “I’ve always been saving them, but never knew what to do with them,” he says. After all, there’s a limit to how many cork bulletin boards one person can make—or use.

But while wine cork recycling programs are common abroad, Yemm couldn’t finda a single one in the U.S. The stage was set for his company, Yemm & Hart Limited, to bring the trend to this country.

Y&H started out in 1981 making office furniture; eight years later, Yemm took a risk and pushed his company in a new direction, making construction materials out of recycled content—old rubber tires, detergent bottles, milk jugs, and the like. His grand experiment in wine cork recycling started in 2004.

http://www.mnn.com/the-home/interior-design/stories/old-wine-corks-to-new-floors

Read the full post at Mother Nature News.

Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor is now President Obama’s official nominee for the Supreme Court, and her background has already been picked apart by liberals and conservatives alike. But what does Sotomayor’s appointment mean in terms of the environment?

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sotomayor has an important environmental ruling under her belt — one that was just overturned by the Supreme Court, but may provide some insight into her environmental views.

Read the full post at Mother Nature Network.

Green energy geeks rejoice! There is a new data playground for you called VIBE — the Virtual Information Bridge to Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy by NREL.

Read the full post from Mother Nature Network, but see if you can guess what they are before you read the article.

If you do a lot of reading on the computer screen and your eyes get as tired as mine do, check out Readability. It’s an easy-to-use web application that eliminates web page clutter and highlights the parts you actually want to read.

Drag the app’s bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar, then click on it the next time you come to an extra busy web page or really long article. You’ll see clean, clear text in the size you want. [Thanks to Very Short List for the link].

For social science teachers of grades six through eight in Cass, Champaign, Ford, Mason, Menard, Logan, McLean, De Witt, Piatt, Macon, Sangamon, Christian, Montgomery, Macoupin, Tazewell and Shelby counties, The Sangamon River: A Sense of Place is a DVD that can help you teach about a local resource, its culture and history. This DVD (56 minutes, closed captioned) was produced by the University of Illinois at Springfield and has been shown on local PBS stations. If you teach in one of these counties and would like a free copy of this DVD, please send your request on school letterhead to Valerie Keener at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, One Natural Resources Way, Springfield, IL 62702-1271 .

Read the full story in Time (from January).

If you’re like some 80% of Americans, you’ll simply toss your obsolete gizmos into the trash. After all, that Jurassic 15-in. (38 cm) computer monitor doesn’t look as though it’s packing up to 7 lb. (3 kg) of lead. Every day Americans throw out more than 350,000 cell phones and 130,000 computers, making electronic waste the fastest-growing part of the U.S. garbage stream. Improperly disposed of, the lead, mercury and other toxic materials inside e-waste can leak from landfills.

Read the full post at Sustainable IT.

The recent release of Energy Star requirements for servers may have coaxed a collective sigh of relief from datacenter operators who’ve felt the pressure to cut energy waste. The well-known Energy Star symbol, after all, is associated with energy efficiency. Thus, having that familiar logo stamped on a server might suggest it will deliver equal or better performance than its non-Energy Star rivals while consuming less electricity.

Unfortunately, the new Energy Star requirements for servers have enough shortcomings that they are unsuitable to be primary criteria for the purchase of new hardware equipment. That’s not to say they have no value whatsoever; as observed by Subodh Bapat, vice president of energy efficiency and distinguished engineer at Sun, they are “a good first step.”

World marketed energy consumption is projected to grow by 44 percent between 2006 and 2030, driven by strong long-term economic growth in the developing nations of the world, according to the reference case projection from the International Energy Outlook 2009 (IEO2009) released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The current global economic downturn will dampen world energy demand in the near term, as manufacturing and consumer demand for goods and services slows. However, with economic recovery anticipated to begin within the next 12 to 24 months, most nations are expected to see energy consumption growth at rates anticipated prior to the recession. Total world energy use rises from 472 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2006 to 552 quadrillion Btu in 2015 and then to 678 quadrillion Btu in 2030.

World oil prices have fallen sharply from their July 2008 high mark. As the world’s economies recover, higher world oil prices are assumed to return and to persist through 2030. In the IEO2009 reference case, world oil prices rise to $110 per barrel in 2015 (in real 2007 dollars) and $130 per barrel in 2030. Total liquid fuels and other petroleum consumption in 2030 is projected to be 22 million barrels per day higher than the 2006 level of 85 million barrels per day. In the reference case, conventional oil supplies from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) contribute 8.2 million barrels per day to the total increase in world liquid fuels production, and conventional supplies from non-OPEC countries add another 3.4 million barrels per day.

In addition, unconventional resources (including biofuels, oil sands, extra-heavy oil, coal-to-liquids, and gas-to-liquids) from both non-OPEC and OPEC sources are expected to become increasingly competitive in the reference case. World production of unconventional resources, which totaled 3.1 million barrels per day in 2006, increases to 13.4 million barrels per day in 2030 in the reference case, accounting for 13 percent of total world liquids supply in 2030.

Recent experience demonstrates that world oil prices can be extremely volatile and, as a result, the IEO2009 includes three world oil price cases that span a very broad range in 2030, from $50 (in 2007 dollars) per barrel in the low price case to $200 per barrel in the high price case. These price paths translate to a fairly broad range of potential supply outlooks in 2030, ranging from 90 million barrels per day in the high price case to 120 million barrels per day in the low price case (compared to 107 million barrels per day in the reference case)

Other report highlights include:

• The rapid increase in world energy prices from 2003 to 2008, combined with concerns about the environmental consequences of greenhouse gas emissions, has led to  renewed interest in the development of alternatives to fossil fuels. Renewable energy is the fastest-growing source of world electricity generation in the IEO2009 reference case, supported by high prices for fossil fuels and by government incentives for the development of alternative energy sources. From 2006 to 2030, world renewable energy use for electricity generation grows by an average of 2.9 percent per year (Figure 1), and the renewable share of world electricity generation increases from 19 percent in 2006 to 21 percent in 2030. Hydropower and wind power are the major sources of incremental renewable electricity supply.

• Worldwide, industrial energy consumption is expected to grow from 175 quadrillion Btu in 2006 to 246 quadrillion Btu in 2030. Industrial energy demand varies across regions and countries of the world, based on levels and mixes of economic activity and technological development, among other factors. About 94 percent of the world increase in industrial sector energy consumption is projected to occur in the emerging economies, where—driven by rapid economic growth—industrial energy consumption grows at an average annual rate of  2.1 percent in the reference case. The key engines of growth in the projection are the so-called “BRIC” countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), which account for more than two-thirds of the developing world’s growth in industrial energy use through 2030.

• In the IEO2009 reference case, which does not include specific policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are projected to rise from 29.1 billion metric tons in 2005 to 40.4 billion metric tons in 2030—an increase of 39 percent. With strong economic growth and continued heavy reliance on fossil fuels expected, much of the increase in carbon dioxide emissions is projected to occur among the developing nations of the world, especially in Asia (Figure 2).

The full report can be found on EIA’s web site at
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/index.html

Read the full story in Governing.

Your computer has an off-button. But if you’re like most people, you don’t use it very often. Maybe you like to leave certain programs or files open so that you can easily pick up working where you last left off. Maybe your computer’s start-up process is frustratingly slow. But leaving these devices on all the time is a problem. A typical desktop computer wastes almost half of the energy it draws, mostly in the form of heat. Turning a computer off when you’re done for the day — and utilizing built-in “sleep” or “hibernate” modes — can reduce the amount of energy consumed by 60 percent. Still, many employees prefer to leave their computers on all night rather than logging off and shutting down.

Read the full (short) story in the Seattle Times.

King County government says it has cut the energy use of personal computers by an average of 38 percent since installing software that reduces PCs’ energy use when they sit unused for more than 15 minutes.

Read more about the project and see photos of the billboard at GreenPatriotPosters.org.

During the spring semester 2009, The Canary Project teamed up with Citizen Schools to teach kids about climate change and engage them in a public art campaign. This billboard is the result.