Month: September 2015

Climate change, Publications, Wildlife

Climate change threatens perch, other warm-water fish

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Read the full story at Great Lakes Echo.

Some fish may find that short, warm winters are not fun in the sun, according to a recent study of Lake Erie perch.

In fact, climate change may cause more harm to certain fish than researchers once thought.

Fish living in mild-temperature regions benefit from some aspects of climate change, such as more water flowing through rivers. But the negative impacts outweigh the positive ones, according to the study “Short Winters Threaten Temperate Fish Populations” published in Nature Communications last July.

Colleges and universities, Food waste

Illinois Reduces Food Waste With Homemade Tomato Sauce

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Read the full story from ISEE.

The perfect tomato is one of the joys of summer. It’s perfectly round, with smooth bright red skin, and inside it is juicy and full of robust flavor. The Student Sustainable Farm at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign grows hundreds of these beauties every season.

But the farm also grows thousands more tomatoes that — while still delicious — have imperfections like bug bites, uneven color, odd shape, or scarring. What is the fate of these “ugly” tomatoes? As of summer 2015, they’re being turned into Illinois “house-made” tomato sauce.

A partnership between the farm, the Department of Crop Science, the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition’s Pilot Plant, Dining Services, and the Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) is making sure that every tomato grown on campus lives up to its potential as the signature taste of summer.

Energy, Green building, Web resources

UCLA’s free Energy Atlas uncovers L.A. buildings’ role in greenhouse gas emissions

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Read the full story from UCLA.

UCLA researchers launched their new L.A. Energy Atlas today, a free searchable database that combines never-before-released data from energy utilities with public records to reveal previously undetectable patterns about how people, buildings and cities use energy.

Researchers from the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA have assembled information in a database that allows users to sort it by household income; building age, size or use; city or neighborhood; energy use per square foot; energy use per capita; and other metrics.

Climate change

Four Ways Climate Change Affects Women More Than Men

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Read the full story in Pacific Standard.

Plus, five ways women have led, or might lead, climate-change adaptations that narrow the gender gap.

 

Climate change, Oil and gas industry, Publications, Regulation

Lawmakers: You Don’t Have to Choose Between Cleaning the Air and Stabilizing the Climate

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Read the full story in Pacific Standard.

A new study by scientists based in Europe and China, in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, argues that air quality and climate change measures should be viewed as complementary rather than counter-balancing. Many steps to address air pollutants can also limit global warming, if policies look at the root problem rather than taking weaker actions aimed at containing the damage.

 

 

 

Climate change, Communicating science

AP Styles ‘Deniers’ into ‘Doubters,’ Creating Newsroom Skeptics

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Read the full story from Inside Climate News.

A week after the Associated Press changed its official style on how to describe people who do not accept climate change science, its attempt to clarify the issue has resulted in little clarity. There is little agreement among climate reporters on if and how they would follow the new recommendation, and whether it will make any difference.

Climate change

Getting to $100 Billion in Climate Change Aid

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Read the full story in the New York Times.

Where’s the money?

Six years ago in Copenhagen, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, brought the moribund negotiations on a deal to slow climate change back from the dead with a single promise of $100 billion a year to help the world’s poor nations.

The world’s advanced industrial nations committed to “mobilizing jointly $100 billion a year by 2020, to address the needs of developing countries.” The money was to come from “a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance.”

Halfway toward that target date, policy makers are preparing for yet another climate conclave in Paris starting at the end of November. It is shaping up to be the most important yet, drawing in every country — rich and poor — to the collective effort against a changing climate, which poses its greatest immediate threat in places like Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa.

But where’s the money?

Agriculture, Environmental remediation, Tribal/First nations

For U.S. Tribes, a Movement to Revive Native Foods and Lands

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Read the full story in Yale Environment360.

On ancestral lands, the Fond du Lac band in Minnesota is planting wild rice and restoring wetlands damaged by dams, industry, and logging. Their efforts are part of a growing trend by Native Americans to bring back traditional food sources and heal scarred landscapes.

Air quality, Oil and gas industry, Regulation

EPA sets stricter emission standards for oil refineries

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Read the full story from the Associated Press.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced new rules Tuesday to reduce toxic air pollution from oil refineries by forcing operators to adopt new technology that better monitors and controls emissions.

Agriculture, Environmental health, Regulation

EPA Revisions to the Worker Protection Standard – Pesticides

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Via Be Spacific.

“EPA is announcing stronger protections for the nation’s two million agricultural workers and their families working on farms, forests, nurseries, and greenhouses. These revisions to the 1992 Agricultural Worker Protection Standard will afford farmworkers similar health protections that are already afforded to workers in other industries….There is a clear need for better protection for farmworkers. Each year, between 1,800 and 3,000 occupational incidents involving pesticide exposure are reported from the farms, forests, nurseries and greenhouses covered by the Worker Protection Standard. There is widespread underreporting. By better protecting our agricultural workers, the agency anticipates fewer pesticide exposure incidents among farmworkers and their family members. Fewer incidents means a healthier workforce and avoiding lost wages, medical bills, and absences from work and school. In addition, EPA is concerned about low level, repeated exposure to pesticides that may contribute to chronic illness.”

Read the revised Worker Protection Standard.

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