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Are Flame Retardants Especially Toxic to Minority Kids?

David Tuller — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:34:35 +0000

Earlier this month, the Chicago Tribune published an eye-opening investigation of how the chemical industry, through a far-reaching disinformation campaign, has spent years undermining efforts to ban flame retardants. These chemicals have long been added to household items like furniture, clothes, toys, blankets, and TVs, but many have been linked to cancer, neurological and developmental problems, and other serious health risks.

The Tribune series sparked headlines across the country, as well as loud calls for greater scrutiny and regulation of the potentially hazardous chemicals. Now a study posted yesterday by Environmental Health Perspectives, a leading peer-reviewed journal, provides an effective reminder of just how widespread and tenacious the problem is. The researchers examined exposure to flame retardants commonly found in furniture and reported measurable levels in the blood of all 77 toddlers, in all samples of dust collected during home visits to their households, and on 98 percent of hand swipes taken from the children, all of whom were from North Carolina.

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New Climate Threat to Critically Endangered Leatherback Sea Turtles

Julia Whitty — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:12:56 +0000

Leatherback sea turtle hatchling: Florida Fish and Wildlife via FlickrA new paper in PLoS ONE reports that critically endangered leatherback sea turtles nesting in Costa Rica—a stronghold of the surviving population—are severely affected by the warmer and drier climate that accompanies El Niño cycles.

Unfortunately, a warmer and drier climate is also exactly what's forecast for Costa Rica in a warming world in the coming century, according to IPCC projections... a whopping 3°C (5.4°F) warmer and 25 percent drier on the Pacific coast.

As the authors note, leatherback turtles are already critically in danger of extinction from egg poaching and bycatch in fisheries. Now climate change threatens them further. From the paper:

Egg-burying reptiles need relatively stable temperature and humidity in the substrate surrounding their eggs for successful development and hatchling emergence. Here we show that egg and hatchling mortality of leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) in northwest Costa Rica were affected by climatic variability (precipitation and air temperature) driven by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Drier and warmer conditions associated with El Niño increased egg and hatchling mortality... Using projections from an ensemble of global climate models contributed to the IPCC report, we project that egg and hatchling survival will rapidly decline in the region over the next 100 years by ~50–60%, due to warming and drying in northwestern Costa Rica, threatening the survival of leatherback turtles. Warming and drying trends may also threaten the survival of sea turtles in other areas affected by similar climate changes.

Hatching success and emergence rate projections of leatherback nests in 100 years of climate change: Pilar Santidrián Tomillo, et al. PLoS ONE. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0037602

In the graphs above you can see the authors' projections of both hatching success (the percentage of eggs within a clutch that develop completely) and emergence rate (the percentage of hatchlings that successfully emerge from the nest within two nights of the initial emergence event). From the paper:

Our model projected that both hatching success and emergence rate would significantly decrease between years 2001 and 2100 due to a warming and drying of the area encompassing northwest Costa Rica. Of the 17 IPCC models used here, 13 of them projected a decrease in precipitation while all models projected an increase in air temperature. Our projections indicated that hatching success would decrease from a 10-year moving average ~0.42 to ~0.18 from the beginning to the end of the 21st century, and emergence rate from ~0.76 to ~0.29.

Leatherback sea turtle hatchling: Ken Clifton | algaedoc via Wikimedia Commons

As the IUCN Red List notes, the decline in nesting of leatherback turtles has been far greater than 80 percent in most Pacific populations, the species' major stronghold. Global adult female populations have fallen by more than 70 percent in less than one turtle generation. Current annual nesting mortality for females is estimated at ~30 percent.

That means adult females stand a nearly one-in-three chance of dying every year.

Add to that the increasing rates of nesting failure in a warming world and you get the fast-track to extinction for a species that's survived 110 million years of pre-human challenges.

The paper:

Santidrián Tomillo P, Saba VS, Blanco GS, Stock CA, Paladino FV, et al. (2012) Climate Driven Egg and Hatchling Mortality Threatens Survival of Eastern Pacific Leatherback Turtles. PLoS ONE 7(5): e37602. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037602

Polluters Ran Amok Under Romney, Says Watchdog

Kate Sheppard — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:49:00 +0000

As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney made a number of decisions that significantly limited the state's ability to crack down on environmental crimes, according to the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

On Thursday, the group released a recap of Romney's efforts to cut and reorganize the state's enforcement agencies. His time as governor was marked by budget cuts, understaffed and underfunded agencies, and lax enforcement, PEER said.

Just weeks after taking office in 2003, he announced a plan to centralize the state's legal services and lay off as many as half of its attorneys, including many within the Department of Environmental Protection. In rolling out the plan, Romney's chief legal counsel Daniel Winslow singled out environmental positions as a target for cuts in an interview with Lawyers Weekly. Critics said the move would limit the state's ability to prosecute environmental crimes, as the DEP was already "chronically understaffed" and would likely have to drop some cases. In the end, Romney's reorganization plan was stymied by opposition from enviros, unions, and residents.

His administration also cut the DEP's budget by almost a third, and temporarily closed its Northeastern Regional Office in Wilmington, Mass. An internal DEP memo that the Boston Globe obtained noted that these cuts were hurting the state. "Over the long term ... these budget and staffing cuts cannot be sustained without significantly increasing risks to public health and the environment and increasing serious operational and service delivery problems for the agency," it said.

In 2004, Romney's administration was accused of suppressing a report that detailed problems within the Massachusetts Environmental Police (MEP), which enforces laws related to pollution, wildlife and marine safety. The report, which was conducted by the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, found that the police staffing was "inadequate," the programs were "grossly under-funded," and that the department had "weak leadership and management." Just 105 of the 130 full-time posts were filled, and the pay for environmental enforcement officers was far lower than other law enforcement in the state.

PEER later conducted its own survey of MEP staff, and found that 97 percent of respondents felt that the police force was not sufficiently funded "to fulfill its environmental mission." Ninety-nine percent felt it wasn't sufficiently staffed. Nearly three-quarters disagreed with the statement that they had "confidence in the professionalism" of the MEP managers they report to. Staff confidence in the state's enforcement agency was pretty abysmal.

New England PEER Director Kyla Bennett says this history is indicative of Romney's disregard for enforcing the state's environmental laws. "Romney's approach to enforcement was to use it as a last resort, and to be as friendly to business as possible," she said. "I shudder to think what it would be like if he implemented those policies nationwide."

Heartland Institute in Financial Crisis After Billboard Controversy

Suzanne Goldenberg — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:43:07 +0000

This story first appeared on the Guardian website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The ultra-conservative Heartland Institute admitted it was in financial crisis on Wednesday, with the flight of corporate donors making it difficult to pay staff or cover the costs of its annual conference aimed at debunking climate science.

In a speech at the close of this year's climate conference, Heartland's president, Joseph Bast, acknowledged that a provocative ad campaign comparing believers in made-made climate change to psychopaths had exacted a heavy cost.

However, Bast also attributed Heartland's current problems to his weakness in financial management.

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Climate Change Will More Than Triple Annual US Heat-Death Toll

Kate Sheppard — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

In an average summer in the United States, there are 1,332 heat-related deaths. But climate change will make that number rise to 4,608 by the end of the century, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council. In total, the US can expect 150,000 deaths due to excessive heat by 2100, the report projects.

The paper is based on research recently published in the journal Weather, Climate and Society that looked at the impact that hotter days and nights would have on heat-related deaths. Scientists expect temperatures to rise 4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century due to human-induced climate change, and the number of days where the temperature presents a health threat will tick upward. That will be felt most in cities, where all that asphalt and glass amplify the heat and the dense population leaves more people vulnerable. Thirty-seven of 40 cities studied will see increases in heat-related deaths, they predict.

The hardest hit will be Louisville, Detroit, and Cleveland, researchers found. The average number of deaths in Louisville was 39 per summer from 1975 to 2004. That figure is expected to grow to 257 per summer by mid-century and to 376 by 2100. That's a total of 18,988 more deaths than would occur without climate change. Detroit can expect 17,877 additional deaths over the rest of this century, and Cleveland 16,625. Many of the most affected cities are in the Midwest and Northeast, where the weather is more variable and where populations aren't as adapted to extreme heat. By comparison, Miami currently averages zero heat-related deaths, which researchers expect will continue because the temperature, while hot, is relatively stable and air conditioning is widely available.

"As temperatures continue to rise and climate variability continues to increase, we're going to have some real problems," said Larry Kalkstein, one of the paper's authors and a senior professor of geography and regional studies at the University of Miami. These heat deaths are "a silent killer," he added. It's not like a tornado, where destruction and the death tolls are readily apparent, so the public often doesn't notice escalating body counts.

And those figures might be conservative, according to NRDC's program director for climate, Dan Lashof, because they don't take into account projections on population growth in those cities, or anticipated growth in the number of sick or elderly people, who are often hit hardest in heat waves. Kalkstein also noted that it's often difficult for medical examiners to determine that a death was definitively due to heat, since it often exacerbates preexisting heart or respiratory issues. That means the baseline figures for cities could already be low. (See Mother Jones' interview with climatologist Matthew Huber for more dystopian projections.)

"This is a real wake up call," said NRDC's Lashof. "Carbon pollution has real life or death consequences."

A Little Anti-Social Behavior With Your Organic Carrots?

Kate Sheppard — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Are people who buy organic food a bunch of selfish, judgmental a-holes? That's basically the conclusion of a new study published in the journal Social Psychology & Personality Science.

The study found that subjects who are exposed to images of organic foods "reduce prosocial behavior" and "harshen moral judgments" of others. The researcher, Kendall Eskine of Loyola University in New Orleans, took 60 people and split them into three groups. The first group was shown photos of clearly-marked organic foods, the second was shown comfort foods like cookies, and the third was shown control foods like rice or oatmeal. Then a variety of situations were laid out for them—like "second cousins having sex" or "a lawyer on the prowl in an ER trying to get people to sue for their injuries"—and they were asked to assign a moral judgment to each, on a scale of 1 to 7.

Eskine found that the organic group was more likely to judge the people in the stories harshly. The organic test subjects averaged a 5.5, while the controls averaged a 5 and the comfort food subjects averaged a 4.89. The scientists also asked the participants to state how much time they would offer to volunteer, from 1 to 30 minutes, and found that the subjects who saw the organic food photos were still jerkier than the rest. The organic food group offered to volunteer 13 minutes, while the rice people offered 19 minutes and the cookie people offered 24.

But why was the organic group meaner than the others? Eskine offers a suggestion:

"People may feel like they've done their good deed," he says. "That they have permission, or license, to act unethically later on. It's like when you go to the gym and run a few miles and you feel good about yourself, so you eat a candy bar."

The study has inspired a number of responses online to the tune of, "See, we knew those pointy-headed argula eaters were a bunch of self-important dicks." But as Jess Zimmerman points out over at Grist, the study is pretty flawed and probably aimed at pissing off organic eaters. For one, it treats shoplifting, eating your dead dog, and cousins engaging in consensual sex as equal moral issues when it averages their judgments. And secondly, it was a tiny sample size and all the subjects were college students.

Most importantly, no one in the study was actually eating food. They weren't even buying it. They were just looking at pictures of it! Staring at pictures of food would probably make me hungry and therefore more judgy and selfish, too.

Fracking: The Music Video

— By Eric Umansky, ProPublica — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

Have you been curious what all the hubbub on "fracking" is about? Here is a fabulous music video explaining it:

Here's more about the video, which was done by David Holmes and other talented journalism students at Jay Rosen's NYU's Studio 20. It was part of their collaboration with us to build better explanations for stories. For more on fracking, its lack of regulation, and the potential for drinking water contamination, check out our now nearly three-year running investigation.

Heartland Institute Adviser: "The People That Warm Spells Kill Are Already Moribund"

Suzanne Goldenberg — Tue, 22 May 2012 23:35:28 +0000

This story first appeard on the Guardian website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

It was an odd choice of icon for the ultra-conservative Heartland Institute. But there he was in round glasses, beard, and halo of curls staring out from T-shirts and coffee mugs at their gathering of climate change contrarians this week, the scientist whose internet sting set Heartland on its current course of collapse.

Heartland's seventh climate conference, which runs until Wednesday, was a much diminished event, compared to earlier lavish gatherings which spilled out over several floors of a hotel in New York City's Times Square and attracted up to 800 followers.

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Rich People vs. Wildlife Conservation Trusts

Stephanie Mencimer — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:35:27 +0000

It's long been clear that the super rich often believe that the law is just a minor annoyance that expensive lawyers can find away around, especially if it involves off-shore tax havens. Now, apparently, some of them are training their sights on legal restrictions that prevent them from cutting down trees to maximize the panoramic views of their country estates or expand their private jet runways.

Over the past few decades, land owners hoping to preserve wilderness areas or green space have created hundreds of conservation easements that they have then donated to land trusts. This is supposed to ensure that any future owners of the property abide by the environmental conservation restrictions. But lately, according to the New York Times, the nation's land trusts are winding up in epic legal battles with property owners who have bought land covered by such easements and proceeded to ignore them.

The Times reports on cases where wealthy property owners had ignored conservation easements to cut down hundreds of trees on wetlands, built a gravel road over a protected trout stream, and installed a manorial lawn and gardens on land required to remain in a natural wilderness state. Such flagrant violations have forced underfunded land trusts to sue the property owners to prevent more violations and to remedy the damage if possible. The Times notes that the legal battles have a common denominator: "the wealth of the property owners challenging restrictions." The legal battles have become so ubiquitious that the land trusts have been forced to set up an insurance company to help them pay the bills. The trusts typically win the cases, but which can take a decade or more to resolve, as the Times reports:

In East Haddam, Conn., defending one case against a landowner took almost a decade and cost the local trust $415,000, about half of which was covered by insurance. "It nearly brought us to our knees," said Anita Ballek, a co-founder of the East Haddam Land Trust.

The story was buried in the Sunday Times, but was a depressing piece of news, especially for people who had set up the easements in the first place to preserve their little corner of nature. The penalty for cutting down hundreds of protected trees could be a decade of expensive litigation, but the rich offenders will continue to enjoy the unobstructed views from their verandas in the meantime. And of course, once old tress are cut down, it will be decades before they return to their original state, if ever.

Apple Dumps Coal—Sort Of

Azeen Ghorayshi — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Last Thursday, Apple announced that it would meet the energy demands of its massive Maiden, North Carolina, data center—one of the sites providing virtual space for our ever-increasing piles of digital detritus—using entirely renewable sources by the end of 2012. The announcement came one month after Greenpeace released a damning report titled "How Clean Is Your Cloud?" targeting Apple's Maiden facility in particular for its less-than-clean sourcing from utility giant Duke Energy, which produces 60 percent of its electricity in North Carolina from coal. (Watch the Climate Desk's video about the new data center here.)

The "cloud" is slated to increase in size roughly 50-fold by 2020, a fact that Greenpeace argues makes it imperative that IT giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple start greening their energy, and soon. Each of these companies has numerous data centers busily converting tons of energy for our data needs, and many are located in regions where they can buy their energy on the cheap. (Check out the map after the jump to see if there's one near you). With Thursday's announcement, Apple joins the two other companies in what Greenpeace has called Duke's "dirty data triangle"—Google and Facebook—in attempting to clean up its image.

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Nuclear Regulator Resigns Under Industry Pressure

Kate Sheppard — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:33:00 +0000

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko resigned on Monday, ending what had been months of fighting both over and within the panel charged with regulating the US nuclear industry.

"After an incredibly productive three years as Chairman, I have decided this is the appropriate time to continue my efforts to ensure public safety in a different forum," he said in a statement. "This is the right time to pass along the public safety torch to a new chairman who will keep a strong focus on carrying out the vital mission of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

Jaczko had served on the commission for nearly 8 years, and Obama tapped him to serve as its chairman in May 2009. He'd been under fire from the nuclear industry, as well as its allies in Congress and on commission. In the past years, battles over building a waste repository at Yucca Mountain and safety changes in response to the Fukushima disaster in Japan had put pressure on Jaczko, a reform-minded regulator who had worked for Rep. Ed Markey and Sen. Harry Reid before joining the NRC, to resign.

Jaczko's main opponent on the panel was William Magwood, an Obama appointee and nuclear industry insider who had waged a campaign to push the chairman out. Magwood had previously worked for the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, a major provider of nuclear fuel, technology, plant design, and equipment, and had a record of championing expansion of the industry. He and the three other more industry-sympathetic commissioners accused Jaczko of mismanaging the commission. They expressed "grave concerns" about his leadership in a letter to the White House, and said he "intimidated and bullied" NRC staff.

But critics of the nuclear industry were fans of the chairman. "Jaczko did all he could to stand up to the political and economic influence of the nuclear industry and set commonsense reforms to make the industry safer post-Fukushima," said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program in a statement. "But it wasn't enough. The other commissioners didn't want to be so tough on industry."

The White House will need to appoint a new chairman to replace Jaczko.

Unplugging These 6 Gadgets Will Cut Your Electricity Bill

Kiera Butler — Mon, 21 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

We all know we're supposed to unplug our technological gadgets when we're not using them, and back in the days when we only had a few home electronics—a TV here, a stereo there—that wasn't so hard to do. But as our devices proliferate (see chart below), this formerly simple task has become increasingly annoying. Who wants to spend an extra 10 minutes every morning stalking around the house and finding phone chargers and cable boxes to unplug like we're on some kind of weird easter egg hunt? And furthermore, would the energy savings from unplugging really be enough to make it worth the effort? I asked a few experts to weigh in.

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2007: The Good Old Days

Kate Sheppard — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:19:05 +0000

While doing some research today, I came across this 2007 blog post from US News & World Reports discussing a Mitt Romney television appearance before he formally announced his intent to run for office:

Romney gave some vague answers regarding his views on dealing with climate change, other than to emphasize that he wanted market-oriented solutions. But Romney, a guy who is trying to portray himself as a follower of Reaganomics, never really contested the underlying science. And probably no major 2008 candidate will either, for fear of being labeled a scientifically illiterate know-nothing.

Oh, 2007. You were so quaint!

Gas Company Goes After Fire-Breathing-Hose Blogger

Kate Sheppard — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:09:00 +0000

Natural gas company Range Resources Corp. is suing a Texas landowner and environmental consultant for $3 million in damages, and may be coming after a blogger as well for damaging its reputation.

In 2010, Texas landowner Steven Lipsky made a video (see below) that showed a garden hose shooting out fire, which he blamed on nearby natural gas extraction. He sent the video to Texas blogger Sharon Wilson, who posted it online, and he hired environmental consultant Alisa Rich to come test the water and send the results to the EPA.

ï»¿Bloomberg reports that Range is accusing Lipsky and Rich of a "conspiracy to harm its reputation" in the suit, and demanding information from Wilson to prove it:

Range won one round in its fight this week, when a judge ruled that Wilson had to turn over e-mails she exchanged with the EPA and Lipsky, as she is a "central and recurring character in the conspiracy lawsuit."

“This has everything to do with Range trying to shut me up, and further intimidate opponents,” Wilson said in an interview. Wilson, who said she didn’t even receive the video of Lipsky’s flaming hose until after the EPA acted, said she fears she may be added to the suit against Lipsky and Rich.

Lipsky says he sought Rich's help, along with the EPA's, after state regulators didn't respond to his concerns. EPA staff then came out and did its own tests, finding alarming levels of methan that they believe posed an "imminent and substantial risk of explosion or fire." The agency ordered Range to take immediate action to correct the situation. But then state regulators in Texas decided that the Range wasn't responsible. So Lipsky sued Range, and the company countersued the pair for defamation, accusing Lipsky and Rich of conspiring to get the EPA involved.

It's a fairly complicated back story, but it raises some concerns. For one, should a company be able to sue individuals for raising concerns to the EPA? And second, should the company be able to obtain correspondence between those individuals and an outside blogger? To make things more complicated, Wilson now works for the Earthworks Oil & Gas Accountability Project, which the judge used to argue that she should not be afforded any protections as a journalist and thus needs to hand over the emails.

It's certainly a case worth watching. Here's the video that got the whole thing started:

The Endangered Species Act Really Works

Julia Whitty — Fri, 18 May 2012 17:36:12 +0000

Gray wolves were hunted to near extinction in the western US. By 1973 none remained in the wild. Listed as endangered in 1967, they recolonized the Rocky Mountains from Canada. Protected, they grew to 1,679 wolves by 2009, delisted in 2011: Martin Mecnarowski via Wikimedia Commons

Just in time for Endangered Species Day the Center for Biological Diversity analyzed 110 species protected under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) and found that 90 percent are on track to meet recovery goals set by federal scientists, with some far exceeding expectations. From the report:

Critics of the Endangered Species Act contend it is a failure because only 1 percent of the species under its protection have recovered and been delisted... To objectively test whether the Endangered Species Act is recovering species at a sufficient rate, we compared the actual recovery rate of 110 species with the projected recovery rate in their federal recovery plans. The species range over all 50 states, include all major taxonomic groups, and have a diversity of listing lengths.We found that the Endangered Species Act has a remarkably successful recovery rate: 90 percent of species are recovering at the rate specified by their federal recovery plan.

We confirmed the conclusion of scientists and auditors who assert that the great majority of species have not been listed long enough to warrant an expectation of recovery: 80 percent of species have not yet reached their expected recovery year. On average, these species have been listed for just 32 years, while their recovery plans required 46 years of listing.

Meet a few of the success stories:

Bighorn sheep: Philipp Haupt via Wikimedia CommonsThe Peninsular bighorn sheep declined to near extinction because of housing developments, agriculture, collisions with cars, predation by mountain lions and diseases contracted from domestic sheep. Sheep populations plummeted from 971 in 1971, to 276 in 1996, but since being listed as endangered in 1998, the number of bighorns has increased to 981 as of 2010.

Green sea turtle: Brocken Inaglory via Wikimedia CommonsGreen sea turtles in the Pacific are threatened by habitat loss, egg collection, hunting, beach development, bycatch mortality in commercial fisheries, and sea level rise due to global warming. In Hawaii, more than 90 percent of nesting occurs at French Frigate Shoals. Since being listed as endangered in 1978, the number females nesting there increased from 105 to 808 in 2011.

Piping plover: Mdf via Wikimedia Commons

Atlantic piping plover populations declined due to 19th-century hunting and the millinery trade. After these threats were eliminated, its numbers increased, but began declining after 1950 due to beach development and predation by native and introduced predators. It was listed on the ESA in 1985, and gained habitat protection, control of recreationists on beaches, and predators, which allowed its population in the US to increase from 550 pairs in 1986 to 1,550 in 2011. The US population reached its overall recovery goal in three of the past five years, but some of its subpopulations haven't reached recovery yet. Its associated Canadian population has grown little.

From the report:

The corollary to claiming the Endangered Species Act is 1 percent successful because only 1 percent of species has been delisted is that the other 99 percent are failures. In fact, many still endangered species have increased dramatically since being placed on the list. Among them are the California least tern (2,819 percent increase in nesting pairs), San Miguel island fox (3,830 percent increase in wild foxes), black-footed ferret (8,280 percent increase in the fall population), Atlantic green sea turtle (2,206 percent increase in nesting females on Florida beaches) and El Segundo blue butterfly (22,312 percent increase in butterflies).

"Saving species from the brink of extinction—and bringing them back to a point where they're going to survive into the future—can't happen overnight," says lead author Kieran Suckling. "Calling the Act at failure at this point is like throwing away a 10-day prescription of antibiotics on the third day and saying they don't work. It just makes no sense."

You can read the entire report and meet some of the other species being aided by the ESA here.

Rapid Retreat of Columbia Glacier

Julia Whitty — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:05:57 +0000

Columbia Glacier, Alaska, in 1986 (top) and 2011 (bottom): NASA

Alaska's Columbia Glacier is one of the fastest evolving ice rivers on Earth. It flows from its headwaters 10,000 feet up in the Chugach Mountains towards Prince William Sound. In 1980 it began a rapid retreat that continues today. From NASA Earth Observatory:

These two false-color images, both captured by the Thematic Mapper (TM) instrument on Landsat 5, show the glacier and the surrounding landscape in 1986 and 2011. Snow and ice appears bright cyan, vegetation is green, clouds are white or light orange, and the open ocean is dark blue. Exposed bedrock is brown, while rocky debris on the glacier’s surface is gray. The 2011 image has more snow because it was captured in May, while the 1986 image was captured in July... As the glacier has retreated, it has also thinned substantially, as shown by the expansion of brown bedrock areas. Rings of freshly exposed rock, known as trimlines, are prominent in the later image. Since the 1980s, the glacier has lost about half of its total thickness and volume.

The retreat has also changed the flow dynamics of the glacier. The medial moraine—a line of debris deposited when separate channels of ice merge (seen as a line down the center of the 1986 glacier)—divided the Main Branch from West Branch in 1986. Now the retreating terminus has effectively split the Columbia into two glaciers, with calving occurring on both fronts.

Last 12 Months Hottest in Recorded US History

Julia Whitty — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:53:55 +0000

Record average national temperatures from May 2011 to April 2012: NOAA/NCDC

The last 12 months were the hottest 12 months in US history since record-keeping began in 1895. This according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center's latest State of the Climate report.

This historic heat broke the prior record set from November 1999 to October 2000 by 0.1°F.

Ten warmest 12-month periods in contiguous US since 1895: NOAA/NCDC.

But what's really interesting is if you put this new record in context of the current trend. As you can see in the chart above, all 10 of the hottest 12-year periods have occurred since 1999.

In the US, the 12 months between May 2011 and April 2012 ranked as:

the 2nd warmest summer on record
the 4th warmest winter on record
the warmest March on record
during this time 22 states saw record warmth
during this time 19 states saw top 10 hottest

Contiguous US temperature January-April 1895-2012: NOAA/NCDC

The average temperature in the contiguous US from January to April 2012 was of 45.4°F—that's 5.4°F above the 20th-century average for that period. It shattered the prior record set in 2006 by a huge margin of 1.6°F.

The chart above shows the hot first quarter of 2012 charted against the long-term average since 1895. Specifically:

The warming trend of 1.9°F per century is shown by the red line
The long-term average can be seen in the gray line
Actual temperatures from January to April 2012 are shown in the blue points/line
The green line is a 9-point binomial filter, which shows decadal-scale variations.

United States Drought Monitor as of 1 May 2012.: climate.gov

The gnarly partner to all this heat is drought. The US Drought Monitor (USDM) map above shows the state of drought in the lower 48 as of 1 May 2012. That's a lot of dry territory.

Drought is assessed on the D-scale (D0 to D4)—similar to the scale used for hurricanes and tornadoes—and designed to reflect the unusualness of a drought episode. D1 conditions (pale yellow) are expected to occur only ~10 to 20 percent of the time. Much-rarer D4 conditions are expected no more than every 50 years (darkest orange).

Heat anomalies central and eastern equatorial Pacific in past 12 months: NWS/Climate Prediction Center

One mastermind behind these temperature and drought anomalies in the US is the state of sea surface temperatures in the top ~1,000 feet (300 meters) of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. These reflect our current position in the El Niño/La Niña/Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

The strong La Niña that held sway for most of the last couple of years dissipated in April. The Climate Prediction Center forecasts a return to ENSO neutral conditions this summer—with a strong caveat that at least half the climate models predict a swing to El Niño.

But the ENSO pattern has been changing in recent years too (I wrote more about that here). So we really don't know what's in store, other than the likelihood—based on the trends—of more extremes and, with them, more costly weather and agricultural disasters.

Info About Fracking Concerns Limited in Pennsylvania

Kate Sheppard — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:18:00 +0000

Pennsylvanians say that the state is ignoring their health complaints that they believed could be related to natural gas extraction. Residents say they have a hard time reaching state offices when they are seeking information or trying to register concerns, and the state hasn't done a good job of tracking health issues, according to the Associated Press:

"Everybody kind of just passed the buck," said Sheri Makepeace, a northwestern Pennsylvania resident who said that starting last year she tried calling the Department of Health and other agencies over fears that nearby drilling created health problems. "I've talked to so many different people and have gotten so many different stories."

This story follows up on one from last month in which the Pennsylvania Department of Health reported that it had received just 30 health complaints related to natural gas extraction in the state. After that article came out, residents pointed out that it's actually really difficult to report things to the health department. The recorded message at the phone number listed for health information and referral in the department doesn't list gas-related issues as one of the menu options, or anything remotely close.

As one researcher working on this topic told me, she called that number numerous times and "never reached a human." She either got a busy signal, she said, or was asked to leave a message. It made one wonder how many complaints the department is actually recording and addressing.

This latest story also comes after doctors and environmental activists in the state have raised concerns about a new law that they argue limits what doctors can do with information related to natural gas extraction. The law, passed in February, allows doctors to access information about the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing in order to treat patients who may have been exposed. But the law also puts limits on how the doctors can use and share that information, requiring them to sign a non-disclousre agreement about whatever information they obtain. Opponents argue that this hampers doctors' ability to study how many people are seeking treatment and to what they might have been exposed, closing down yet another avenue for information.

Today's Sign of the Apocalypse: The Butt-Steered "Personal Mobility Device"

Kate Sheppard — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:19:00 +0000

Honda is introducing a new "personal mobility device" that saves people not only from the horror of walking, but also from using their hands to steer. The latest marvel of human innovation, the Uni-Cub is designed to be steered with your butt:

Designed to mimic the speed and height of walking, the Uni-Cub's lithium batteries power a trick wheel that can move any direction. Using sensors on the seats, riders simply shift their weight in the direction they wish to travel -- there's also a smartphone control app -- and the unit rides high so that the riders have eye contact with people not cool enough to glide around the office up to 3.7 miles on a charge.

If this were intended for people with disabilities that make them unable to walk, that might be one thing. But the ad features perfectly mobile people using these futuristic unicycles to move around their office building. Sometimes, real life gets a little too much like Wall-E.

Brooklynites: Don't Frack Our Beer!

James West and Tim McDonnell — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:00:02 +0000

Does worrying about fracking make you thirst for a drink? Before you raise that pint of ale to your lips, consider the source.

The brewmeister of Brooklyn Brewery says toxic fracking chemicals like methanol, benzene, and ethylene glycol (found in anti-freeze) could contaminate his beer by leaking into New York's water supply. Unlike neighboring Pennsylvania, New York state has promised to ban high-volume fracking from the city's watershed. But environmentalists say the draft fracking regulations are weak and leave the largest unfiltered water supply in the United States—not to mention the beer that is made from it—vulnerable.

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Men Find Vegetables Unmanly

Kiera Butler — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:43:46 +0000

My mom likes to tell a story about how, after coming over for dinner to our vegetarian household, a woman from the neighborhood earnestly asked her how she had managed to persuade my dad to eat vegetables. Apparently this woman had the worst time interesting her husband in salad. Okay. So, just for fun, let's leave aside the troubling question of why exactly this lady's marriage involved this weird infantilization and turn to the much more hilarious matter: Seriously, why didn't this dude like veggies?

According to a new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, it's probably because men don't consider them manly. For reals:

In a number of experiments that looked at metaphors and certain foods, like meat and milk, the authors found that people rated meat as more masculine than vegetables. They also found that meat generated more masculine words when people discussed it, and that people viewed male meat eaters as being more masculine than non-meat eaters.

Another rad finding was that in most languages that have genders, meat is masculine.

As a solution, the study's authors suggest that "reshaping soy burgers to make them resemble beef or giving them grill marks might help cautious men make the transition." See, ladies with veggie-hating husbands? It's that easy.

As Austerity Falters, European Economists Say "Price Carbon!"

Tim McDonnell — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:00:50 +0000

Turmoil over budget cuts roils Greek streets. France elects an anti-austerity president. Even Germany's Austerity Queen Angela Merkel faces electoral backlash. It appears Europeans are getting sick of tightening their belts. But when you can't cut any more, there's little else to do but hustle up more cash.

For governments allergic to raising income taxes, a European Climate Foundation analysis released yesterday shows there's a less painful way to slash deficits—one that could save the planet as it saves the economy: a carbon tax.

The report argues that reforming how Europe taxes energy could, by 2020, cut some countries' 2011 deficits in half. Spain, whose deficit reached $116 billion last year (the third-worst in Europe), could add $13 billion in yearly revenue under the recommended plan. As a bonus, the report found that carbon taxes improve energy security and can reduce climate-changing emissions by up to 2.5 percent.

Clearly a Europe in crisis needs a new idea, says economist Max Krahe of Vivid Economics, which co-authored the report. "There are smart ways of doing it and less smart ways of doing it."

Krahe suggests starting with a tax on household emissions, which in the three case-study countries in the report (Spain, Poland, and Hungary), aren't taxed at all, despite accounting for a quarter of Europe's total emissions. Household carbon taxes are a bit of a hard sell, Krahe admitted, because politicians are loathe to add new taxes where none currently exist.

The fear, he said, is that without a safety net higher energy bills would devastate the families already hit hardest by austerity: "In Eastern Europe, you're going to push some old grandmothers into poverty." But the tradeoff is that revenue could be looped back to Granny in the form of increased social services; under a similar scheme about to commence in Australia, over half the money raised from taxing carbon will be sent back to households via tax cuts and other assistance.

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Does Eating Corn Syrup Kill Your Memory?

Kiera Butler — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

If you've ever experienced a cupcake coma (you know, the period of extreme lethargy that follows a sugar high brought on by consumption of one or more cupcakes), you might not be surprised by some recent findings on the effects of processed sweeteners. A team of UCLA researchers has observed that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) makes rats more forgetful, while omega-3 fatty acids—chemical compounds that research has shown can protect the brain's synapses—seem to have the opposite effect.

The researchers, whose paper will be published this week in the peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology, trained a group of rats to navigate a maze. Then, they randomly divided the rats into four groups, and for six weeks they fed each group a slightly different diet in addition to the usual rat chow: One group received HFCS in its water; another received omega-3 fatty acids. A third received both HFCS and omega-3s, and the fourth, a control group, received plain old rat chow.

At the end of the six weeks, the group that had been given omega-3 fatty acids but no HFCS was the speediest at remembering how to get out of the maze. The control group (no HFCS or omega-3s) was the second fastest, and the group that had received omega-3 fatty acids and HFCS came in third. The slowpokes of the lot were the group that had only received HFCS. The takeaway: HFCS seemed to impair rats' memory, while omega-3 fatty acids seemed to help it.

In addition to the memory effects, the researchers also noticed changes in the rats' metabolism. The groups that had been fed HFCS showed signs of insulin resistance, a condition that has been linked to diabetes and obesity.

So can you up your recall skills by cutting HFCS out of your diet? Hard to say, since a controlled rat study doesn't exactly count as proof that too much sweet stuff makes humans forgetful. But it's certainly something that merits more scrutiny: The study's lead researcher, biology professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, believes that insulin could affect the brain as well as the metabolic system. "Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain, where insulin appears to disturb memory and learning," said Gomes-Pinilla in a press release. "Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new."

Which Kids' Sunscreens Should You Avoid?

Maddie Oatman — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:45:15 +0000

Ahhh, May. Time to don your sunnies, dig out the sandals, and head for the nearest beach or park for about the next four months. By now, you've probably been lectured enough about the perils of sunburn and skin cancer to bring a tube of sunscreen along, too. But while the stuff is important for staying safe from harmful UV rays, there are still enough confusing labels, dangerous ingredients, and misleading SPF designations in so many common products that you may want to opt for a day under the nearest tree instead. Or pay very close attention to exactly what's in your sunscreen, and how often you'll want to reapply. So says the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which today released its 2012 Sunscreen Guide.

The guide comes less than a week after the FDA pushed back the compliancy requirement for a news set of guidelines (33 years in the making) meant to urge manufacturers to more clearly label their products and toss out misleading terms like "sweatproof" and "sunblock." But even the now-delayed FDA guidelines, says EWG, fall short in some important ways.

For starters, the FDA's new guidelines fail to address the risk of trusting a sunscreen with an SPF higher than 50. For sunscreens that boast SPF 100, for instance, "there's no evidence they provide additional health benefits," says David Andrews, a spokesperson for EWG. The higher value "lends to a sense of invincibility, so that people spend more time in the sun longer," Andrews argues.

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Poll: Americans Will Pay for Clean Energy

Kate Sheppard — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:02:00 +0000

A recent poll found that the majority of Americans want to take measures now to curb our greenhouse gas emissions. But one of the complaints you often hear from lawmakers in Washington is that when it comes to solutions like deploying more renewable energy, Americans aren't willing to pay for them—particularly during a time of widespread economic distress. But, turns out that's not actually the case.

A new paper published this week in Nature Climate Change finds that the average person in the US is actually willing to pay as much as $162 more each year for power in order to deploy more clean energy. The polling, conducted by researchers from Harvard, Yale, and the National Bureau of Economic Research, asked people about their support for a national clean energy standard (NCES). This type of standard would set requirements for how much of our energy portfolio should be generated from sources like wind, solar, and geothermal. More than thirty states already have some form of a clean energy standard, and the researchers found that implementing the policy nationally would probably cost households less than $60.

Creating some sort of "clean" or "renewable" energy standard has been a perennial topic for quite some time. Obama called for an 80 percent "clean energy" standard by 2035 in the last two State of the Union addresses. Meanwhile, Congress has proposed, then failed to pass, some form of the measure many times in the past 10 years. The exact percentages vary among the different versions of the bill, as do the types of energy that would qualify, with some including nuclear power or so-called "clean" coal as acceptable, and others just sticking with straight-up renewables. But the long and short of it is, despite trying to a decade, we haven't been able to pass this sort of measure.

The researchers found that the average household pays $1,250 in electricity bills each year. So, $162 more isn't an insubstantial sum, representing about a 13 percent price increase for them. They also found that respondents were willing to pay up to $199 more for a policy that only included renewables, but would only fork over $142 for a policy that included natural gas and $147 for a policy that included nuclear in the mix.