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A First In The Climate Change Fight | Earth Wise

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Under a new initiative, builders in New Jersey will have to take climate change into account in order to win government approval for projects.  New Jersey is the first state in the United States to enact such a requirement, which will leverage land-use rules to control what and where developers can build, and limit the volume of pollution. 

Through executive order, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy will require the state Department of Environmental Protection to draft new building regulations.  The changes, to be adopted by January 2022, do not require legislative approval, but could face political and legal challenges. 

Climate change is expected to have a significant impact on New Jersey and its 130 miles of coastline.  According to a recent study from Rutgers University, the sea level along the New Jersey coast rose 1.5 feet since 1911, which was more than twice as much as the global average. The sea level is expected to rise by as much as another foot by 2030.  At the same time, some coastal areas of New Jersey are gradually sinking.

The initiative by New Jersey comes on the heels of a Trump administration proposal which would allow federal agencies to not take climate change into account when evaluating infrastructure projects. The federal changes are geared towards speeding up approvals for highway construction, pipelines, oil and gas leases, and other major infrastructure projects.   

In the absence of anything resembling leadership on climate change from the federal government, it remains for states like New Jersey to continue to press ahead.  In addition to the new building initiative, New Jersey also plans to produce 100% clean energy by 2050. 

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Excluding Climate Change From Infrastructure Planning | Earth Wise

With 130-Mile Coast, New Jersey Marks a First in Climate Change Fight

Photo, posted August 27, 2016, courtesy of Rashaad Jorden via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

What Is An Endangered Species? | Earth Wise

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Biodiversity is declining rapidly throughout the world and people are mostly the reason.  Species are disappearing because of changes in land and sea use, the direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and invasive alien species resulting from globalization.  The challenges of conserving the world’s species are many and difficult.  Among these challenges are determining which species are endangered and how and when to protect them.

What constitutes an endangered species is not necessarily obvious. 

Extinction risk increases as a species is driven to extinction from portions of its natural range.  Most mammal species have already been driven to extinction from half or more of their historic ranges because of human activities.

According to a recent survey of ordinary Americans, three-quarters of participants said that a species deserves special protections if it had been driven to extinction from any more than 30% of its historic range.  This compares with the language of the U.S. Endangered Species Act that defines an endangered species as one that is “in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range.”

Experts and decision-makers are more accepting of risks and losses because they believe greater protection would be impossibly expensive.  Decision-makers tend to be influenced by special interest groups with a vested interest in not instituting protections.

Before human activities began elevating extinction risk, a typical vertebrate species would have experienced an extinction risk of 1% over a 10,000-year period.  Current policies consider a 5% risk over 100 years to be acceptable.  Policies consider whether we can afford to protect species.  Given the dangers of declining biodiversity, we should ask whether we can afford not to.

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What Is An Endangered Species?

Photo, posted July 29, 2018, courtesy of Sergio Boscaino via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Engineering Mosquitoes | Earth Wise

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Tropical regions grapple with the spread of diseases – such as dengue, yellow fever, zika, chikungunya, and malaria – by mosquitoes.  A fairly successful strategy has been the Sterile Insect Technique, which is essentially insect birth control. The process involves rearing large quantities of sterilized male mosquitoes in dedicated facilities, and then releasing them to mate with females in the wild. As they do not produce any offspring, the insect population declines over time.

A problem with this approach is that while mosquitoes create health problems for people, they also play important roles in various ecosystems, such as providing food for bats and other animals.  Eliminating mosquito populations on a large scale can trigger major changes in ecosystems.

Recently, an international team of scientists has synthetically engineered mosquitoes that halt the transmission of the dengue virus.  They genetically engineered mosquitoes with an antibody “cargo” that gets expressed in the female mosquitoes that spread the dengue virus.  Once the female mosquito takes in blood, the antibody is activated which hinders the replication of the virus and prevents its dissemination throughout the mosquito, thereby preventing its transmission to humans. Essentially, what the researchers have done is transfer genes from the human immune system to confer immunity to mosquitoes.  The researchers are testing methods to neutralize mosquitoes against other viruses they spread.

This opens up a whole new approach to interrupt mosquito-borne human diseases.  Mosquitoes are among the deadliest killers on the planet because they are the messengers that transmit deadly diseases.  Until now, the only real solution has been to kill the messenger.  The new approach may be a better way to deal with a serious problem.

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Mosquitoes engineered to repel dengue virus

Photo, posted June 20, 2014, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Record Low Ice In The Bering Sea | Earth Wise

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The Bering Sea is the area of the far northern Pacific Ocean that separates Alaska from Russia.  Sea ice in the Bering Sea shrank to its lowest levels in recorded history in 2018, an event with profound effects on northwest Alaska residents who depend on marine resources for food, cash, and culture.

The loss of ice is indicative of very rapid change in the entire northern Bering Sea ecosystem with ramifications for everyone in the region.  A new peer-reviewed study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society examined the details and consequences of the drastic changes in the Bering Sea.

The study found that the maximum daily Bering Sea ice was the lowest on record, and the widespread impacts of that fact include unprecedented weather effects, marine wildlife die-offs, and sightings of animals outside of their normal range.  Ecological changes included the first documented mass strandings of ice-associated seals, a redistribution of thermally sensitive fish, and a multispecies die-off of seabirds due to starvation.

Persistent and anomalous warm winter weather contributed to poor ice conditions that resulted in a fatal accident on an ice road and retreating and fractured sea ice led to ice-laden flooding that caused power outages and infrastructure damage.  In addition, there have been more than 50 reports of unusual events related to weather and marine wildlife.

The record-low sea ice is a consequence of the warming climate resulting in a warmer ocean, later arrival of sea ice, and more frequent storms than in the pre-industrial era.  These conditions are continuing to increase in occurrence.

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Record low level of Bering Sea ice causes profound, widespread impacts

Photo, posted April 7, 2014, courtesy of Allen Smith via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Meeting Climate Goals With Current Energy Infrastructure

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The Paris Climate Agreement set forth a goal to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius as well as a more optimistic (and preferable) goal of keeping the temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees.  Reaching either of these goals requires getting to net-zero emissions by the middle of the century.

A new paper, published in Nature, looks at the issue of whether existing power plants and other fossil-fuel-burning equipment (including vehicles) can continue to operate until they age out of functionality, or whether they need to be retired early.

The results of the study are that future emissions from existing facilities would take up the entire carbon budget needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and almost 2/3 of the budget needed to keep warming below 2 degrees over the next 30 years.

So, the good news is that we can still avoid a 2-degree rise without having to shut down all the existing power plants early.  But we would definitely have to stop building new things with smokestacks and tailpipes that dump CO2 into the atmosphere. 

That good news is tempered by the fact that the number of fossil fuel-burning power plants and vehicles in the world has increased dramatically over the past decade, spurred by rapid economic and industrial development in China and India.  In fact, China is predicted to produce more than 40% of all the carbon emissions over the next 30 years.

The 2-degree climate goal is not at all the most desirable result.  The 1.5-degree target would be far better for the climate.  But if the world is to achieve it, there will be dramatic changes needed in the existing infrastructure – either shutting it down or retrofitting it to drastically reduce emissions.

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Two-Degree Climate Goal Attainable Without Early Infrastructure Retirement

Photo, posted March 5, 2010, courtesy of Tennessee Valley Authority via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Shifting Ecosystems

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The Great Plains ecosystem has been shifting northward over the past fifty years, driven by climate change, wildfire suppression, energy development, land use changes, and urbanization.  The ecosystem is an area historically rich with grasslands and shrub steppe and is prime habitat for grassland birds.

According to a recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the northernmost ecosystem boundary of the Great Plains has moved more than 365 miles north since 1970, amounting to about 8 miles a year.  The region’s southernmost ecosystem boundary has shifted 160 miles north, or about 4 miles a year.

The study used bird distribution data as an indicator of shifting ecosystem boundaries.  The researchers analyzed 46 years of data for 400 bird species across a 250-mile-wide strip stretching from Texas to North Dakota.  They tracked how the birds’ distributions changed as a measure of how these ecosystems were shifting.

While climate change has been a major driver of these ecosystem shifts since the 1970s, several other factors such as wildfire trends, land use changes, and invasion of tree species into grassland habitat have also played a role.  Like most things in ecological systems, the changes are likely to have multiple causes.  One cannot really separate causes like tree invasions, warming climate, and wildfires, as they are all interrelated.

Using bird distribution patterns for tracking ecosystem shifts could be a useful tool for scientists and land managers in the coming decades to give them an early warning of how habitats are changing in response to rising global temperatures and therefore allow them to take action to protect vulnerable species.

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Great Plains’ Ecosystems Have Shifted 365 Miles Northward Since 1970

Photo, posted March 24, 2017, courtesy of Rick Bohn / USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change Is Not Natural

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It has been the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community for a long time that human activity and other external factors are responsible for the continuing rise in global temperature.  Despite this widespread agreement, there have been those who argue that natural ocean cycles might be influencing global warming over the course of multiple decades.

A new study, published in the Journal of Climate, provides an answer to the question of how much influence natural cycles might have, and that answer is very little to none.

The study looked at observed ocean and land temperature data since 1850 and, apart from human-induced factors such as greenhouse gas concentrations, took into account other occurrences such as volcanic eruptions, solar activity, and air pollution peaks.  The findings demonstrated that slow-acting ocean cycles do not explain the long-term changes in global temperatures.

Based on the study, the researchers can state with confidence that human factors like greenhouse gas emissions and particulate pollution, along with year-to-year changes caused by natural phenomena like volcanic eruptions or El Niño, are sufficient to explain virtually all the long-term changes in temperature.  The idea that the oceans could have been driving the climate either in a colder or warmer direction for multiple decades in the past and therefore will do so in the future is unlikely to be correct.

A number of previous studies have compared flawed observations with flawed modeling results to claim that naturally-occurring ocean cycles have played a large role in global temperatures.  The new study shows that such cycles have little influence on the climate.  Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is really what we need to do.

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Global temperature change attributable to external factors, confirms new study

Photo, posted November 13, 2007, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Another Problem For Coral Reefs

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Coral reefs around the world have been suffering in recent years from warming ocean temperatures as well as from increasing ocean acidification.  Corals are very sensitive organisms that can only tolerate relatively slight changes in their environment.  Thus, the majority of reef-building corals are found in tropical and subtropical waters with favorable conditions.

New research has confirmed that drastic changes in ocean salinity from, for example, severe freshwater flooding, provoke similar stress responses in corals as the heating that has resulted in freshwater bleaching and, eventually, coral death.

The coast of northeast Queensland in Australia has experienced abnormal monsoon-related freshwater flooding that caused extreme and sudden changes in the ocean salt concentration.  In places, nearshore reefs were exposed to water with only half the normal ocean salinity.  The result has been a shock response in corals that prevents normal cell function.  Unlike their response to heat stress, corals exposed to reduced salinity experience a complete collapse of their internal cellular protein balance.

The central Great Barrier Reef has actually been relatively free from mass thermal bleaching events this Australian summer, but many coastal reefs instead have been battling dramatic changes in water conditions as a result of massive plumes of floodwater.

The wild weather in Australia is undoubtedly associated with the changing climate and this new research shows that it is leading to yet another threat to the world’s coral reefs.  With the frequency and severity of heavy rainfall and runoff events predicted to continue to increase over the next few decades, proactive measures to increase the resiliency of coral reefs are needed more than ever.

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Reduced salinity of seawater wreaks havoc on coral chemistry

Photo, posted December 12, 2010, courtesy of Gareth Williams via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

New Nutrition Labels

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Food and beverage packaging in this country has included a Nutrition Facts panel for nearly 25 years.  Over 700,000 products have the labels which provide consumers with information like serving sizes, calories per serving, ingredients, and nutritional content.

Surveys indicate that 77 percent of all U.S. adults claim to use the labels at least some of the time.  Whether the labels are actually useful is somewhat debatable.  A couple of years ago, the FDA released a proposal to update the labels to make them more useful and to reflect more recent nutritional research.  The new labels are finally going to be implemented and food manufacturers with annual sales exceeding $10 million have until January of 2020 to update their packaging with the new labels.

One of the biggest changes is that the “serving size” section of the label will be changed to more accurately reflect the actual portions consumed by the typical American.  For example, a 20-ounce soft drink will now be labeled as a single serving because most people will drink the whole bottle in one sitting.

The new labels will no long list the amounts of Vitamin A and C, because recent research shows most Americans are not deficient in these nutrients.  Instead, the amount of Vitamin D and potassium will be listed, two nutrients lacking in many diets.  New labels will also show amounts of “added sugars”, defined as caloric sweeteners with no nutritional value. The new labels will also display the calories per serving in much large type making that piece of information far more noticeable.

There is surely more to be done to make food labeling more transparent and useful for consumers, but the new changes at least seem to be in the right direction.

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Nutrition Labels Get a Makeover: Will It Make a Difference?

Photo, posted September 9, 2014, courtesy of Mike Mozart via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Endangered Language Species

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There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken in the world today but only about half of them are expected to survive this century.  There are many factors contributing to the decline in languages.  Perhaps the most significant is globalization, which pushes countries and individuals to shift to national or international languages for economic reasons.   Other factors include the lack of support for regional languages in educational systems and mass media, persecution of minority linguistic groups by governments, and disruption of communities during war and emigration.

Predicting which languages will survive and which won’t is difficult.  A potential tipping point for languages is the same one affecting the survival of species:  climate change.  Many small linguistic communities are located on islands and coastlines that are vulnerable to hurricanes and rising sea levels.  Other communities live in places where increases in temperatures and erratic rainfall threaten traditional farming and fishing economies.

These climate-related changes will force communities to relocate,creating climate change refugees. Dispersing these people will lead to the splintering of linguistic communities and the need for the use of other languages.  Such changes will place additional pressures on languages that are already struggling to survive.

There are endangered languages in many places around the world.  Some are exotic such as the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, which is home to dozens of distinct languages spoken by no more than a few thousand people. Others are much closer to home, such as in indigenous communities in Canada.

The rich tapestry of human language is just another of many things threatened by the changing climate.

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The Conversation: The impact of climate change on language loss

Photo, posted May 19, 2009, courtesy of Flickr. 

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Cold Weather In A Warming Climate

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The climate is warming.  The average global temperature is going up year after year, bringing about significant changes to weather around the world.  But the fact is that these changes don’t always lead to warmer weather.  And ordinary variations in local weather can also go in either direction.

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Climate Change Threatens the U.S. Military

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According to a new study from the Pentagon, nearly half of United States military sites are threatened by wild weather linked to climate change.  The U.S. Department of Defense states that drought, wind, and flooding that occur due to reasons other than storms topped the list of natural disasters that endanger 1,700 military sites around the world – everything from outposts to large bases.

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Climate Change And Barley

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The impacts of increased carbon dioxide and the changing climate are often complicated and, it turns out, not always negative.  In some areas of the world, people can actually benefit from increased CO2 and climate change. Barley, the most important feed crop for beef production in Alberta, Canada, as well as the province’s beef industry itself actually stand to gain from the changes that are most assuredly not a good thing for much of the world.

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New Year’s Resolutions

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2018 is just around the corner.  Popular resolutions for the New Year always seem to include things like improving health, traveling more, spending less money, and so on.  But one resolution that isn’t as popular but could collectively have a major impact is committing to living a cleaner and greener life. 

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The Dirty Laundry On Dirty Laundry

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We’ve discussed the problem of microplastics polluting our oceans at great lengths on this program before.  Much of the small plastic particles result from the breakdown of plastic litter, such as plastic bags, packaging, and other materials.  Another source is microbeads, which are often found in health products such as face scrubs and even some toothpastes.  But there is a another source of microplastic pollution that is quite troubling: dirty laundry.

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Widespread Local Extinctions

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Plants and animals have evolved over time to live in specific environmental niches.  As the climate warms, parts of the ranges in which they live may no longer offer the conditions under which they can thrive.  Species can respond to these changes in three ways:   they can adapt to new conditions by undergoing niche shifts; they can relocate to better conditions, such as by moving to higher elevations or latitudes; or they can locally go extinct.

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