e360 digest

16 May 2012: Wildlife in Tropical Regions
Has Declined 60 Percent Since 1970

Wildlife populations in the world’s tropical regions have fallen by more than 60 percent during the last four decades, according to the latest version of the Living Planet Index. The Index — which tracks populations of 2,688 vertebrate species in tropical and temperate regions worldwide — found that species abundance in the tropics declined by about 44 percent on land, 62 percent in the oceans, and 70 percent in freshwater ecosystems from 1970 to 2008. Cumulatively, species abundance declined by about 1.25 percent annually every year compared with a 1970 baseline, according to the report, which is published by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London. Wildlife populations declined by 38 percent in Africa during that period; about 50 percent in Central and South America; and 64 percent in Indo-Pacific regions. Overall, the global index dropped almost 30 percent during the same period. These steep population declines are the result of many factors related to human activities, including deforestation, habitat loss, pollution, overfishing, and climate change.
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16 May 2012: State Oversight Helps Reduce
Effects of Fracking, Study Says

A new study conducted by the University of Buffalo has found that state regulation helped reduce environmental problems associated with unconventional forms of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania since 2008. In an analysis of 2,988 violations at nearly 4,000 Pennsylvania hydraulic fracturing drill sites, university researchers found that roughly 38 percent (845 violations) were environmental in nature. Among these violations, 25 were classified as “major” — including site restoration failures, contamination of water supplies, land spills, blowouts, and venting and gas migration. As the number of drilling sites increased, the percentage of environmental violations compared to the number of wells drilled dropped from 58.2 percent in 2008 to 30.5 percent in 2010, largely as a result of increased state oversight, the study said. But the total number of environmental incidents tripled from 2008 to 2011 as the number of wells increased. The report’s three lead authors have energy industry ties, but lead author John Martin said the report was funded entirely by the university.
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Interview: Taking Green Chemistry
Out of the Lab and into Products

Paul Anastas is credited with coining the term “green chemistry,” the movement to make chemicals and industrial processes more environmentally friendly, and during two stints in Washington, D.C., he has worked to promote those principles at the U.S. Environmental Protection. Anastas, 49, recently left his post as EPA assistant administrator and science advisor to return to teaching at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he talks about his role in EPA’s decision to approve the use of chemical dispersants after the BP oil spill, why a chemical-by-chemical approach to toxicity testing is not the best model for protecting the environment or human health, and why companies are increasingly applying the concepts of green chemistry to the design of materials and products. “For every one process or product that’s being reinvented using green chemistry and green engineering,” he says, “there may be a hundred or a thousand that have yet to be rethought under these terms.”
Read the interview
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15 May 2012: Record Number of Fish Stocks
‘Rebuilt’ in 2011, NOAA Study Says

U.S. officials say a record number of fish stocks recovered to healthy population numbers in 2011 while a declining number of species were subject to overfishing. In a reportto Congress, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that six species have been “rebuilt,” including the Bering Sea snow crab, the summer flounder found on the mid-Atlantic coast, the haddock in the Gulf of Maine, the Chinook salmon on the northern California coast, the Coho salmon on the Washington coast, and the Widow rockfish on the Pacific coast. Meanwhile, the number of stocks subject to overfishing decreased by four, and overfished stocks declined by three compared with the 2010 report. Samuel D. Rauch III, a NOAA deputy assistant administrator, said the findings underscore the fact that fisheries management — including sometimes unpopular catch limits — has been effective.
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15 May 2012: U.S. Companies Use Steel Linked
To Amazon Destruction, Greenpeace Finds

U.S. car makers such as General Motors, Ford, and Nissan are purchasing steel made from pig iron that is smelted using large amounts of illegally logged timber from the Amazon rainforest, according to a two-year investigation by Greenpeace. The environmental group also said that the pig iron smelting, fueled by charcoal produced from tropical forest trees, has resulted in virtual slave labor and illegal logging of indigenous lands in northeastern Brazil. The Greenpeace investigation said that Brazil’s Carajas region — where three-quarters of the forests have been cleared, mainly for charcoal production — is home to 43 blast furnaces used by 18 different companies. Two of the major companies, Viena and Sidepar, sell pig iron to a U.S. steel mill operated by Severstal, Greenpeace said. That mill sells steel to General Motors, Nissan, BMW, and Mercedes, according to Greenpeace. As illegal charcoal operations have decimated the forests in Carajas, loggers have entered conservation areas belonging to indigenous tribes, who have lost 30 percent of their lands to illegal loggers, Greenpeace said.
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14 May 2012: Various Uses of Wood
Determine Emissions from Deforestation

The volume of greenhouse gases released when a forest is cleared depends on how how the trees are used and in which part of the world the trees are grown, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Davis. Analyzing how 160 countries use wood from cleared forests, the researchers found that if the wood is generally used to create solid wood products, such as timber for housing, up to 62 percent of the carbon in the trees remains in storage. Temperate forests in the U.S., Canada, and Europe are cleared primarily for use in such products. But the study found that wood from tropical forests in places like Brazil and Indonesia is generally used in paper, pulp, and bioenergy production, and such uses lead to an almost complete release of the carbon stored in trees. Reporting in the journal Nature Climate Change, the researchers said that early studies assumed that most of the carbon stored in trees was released once they were felled. The new study, however, gives a more nuanced picture of carbon releases from deforestation.
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14 May 2012: Americans Willing to Pay
Slightly More For Clean Energy, Study Says

A new study finds that the average American would be willing to pay slightly more for clean energy in support of government initiatives to promote low-carbon electricity generation. In a national survey conducted last year, researchers from Yale and Harvard universities found that Americans, on average, would be willing to pay $162 more per year for their electricity bills — an average increase of about 13 percent — as part of a policy requiring 80 percent of energy come from green sources by 2035. However, that willingness varies greatly depending on political affiliation, age, and geographic region, according to the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. For instance, support was significantly lower among Republicans, independents, and those with no party affiliation — by 25, 13, and 25 percentage points, respectively. Also, according to the analysis, researchers found that the additional cost per household for clean energy would have to fall below $59 per year to pass the current U.S. Senate, and drop below $48 per year to get through the U.S. House of Representatives.
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11 May 2012: Eel Breeding Innovation
Sought to Conserve Wild Populations

Japanese biologists are racing to develop a type of food that would enable fish farmers to breed eels on a commercial scale using for the first time larvae produced in captivity, a step that could reduce pressures on collapsing eel populations worldwide. While farmers have long bred captive eels — a popular delicacy in many countries — until now they have only been able to do so on a commercial scale using baby eels trapped in the wild, a step that has exacerbated the catastrophic decline in wild eel populations from the Far East to North America. The reason, scientists say, is that it has been difficult and expensive to produce the foodstuff critical to the development of eel larvae: a mixture of marine detritus known as “marine snow.” Scientists so far have considered a wide range of possible ingredients, including the yolk from shark’s eggs. “Whoever gets there first has made a tremendous discovery; you’re recovering a cultural tradition,” David Righton, a scientist with the UK-based Cefas marine laboratory, told the Guardian. “Whoever does this is culturally important as well as becoming very rich.”
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11 May 2012: Study Calls Selective Logging
Most Realistic Conservation Strategy

A new study says that well-managed selective logging may be the only realistic solution to conserving tropical forests in the face of a rapacious global demand for timber resources. In an analysis of more than 100 studies, researchers at the University of Florida found that while even selective logging has a significant impact on biodiversity in tropical forests and carbon storage capacity, those impacts are “survivable and reversible to a degree” if the forests are given time to recover. In fact, the researchers found that, on average, 85 to 100 percent of animal and plant species present before initial logging were still around after selective logging and that forests retained about 75 percent of their carbon after initial harvest. By contrast, the researchers say, forest loss for the planting of rubber or palm oil plantations is permanent. “We’re not advocates for logging,” said Jack Putz, a professor of biology and lead author of the study published in Conservation Letters. “We’re just acknowledging that it is a reality — and that within that reality, there is a way forward.”
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10 May 2012: Lack of Profitability Drives
U.S. Company Out of Biofuels Business

A U.S.-based company that used genetic engineering to develop a technology to convert sugar into biofuel has announced that it will stop producing the fuel, at least temporarily, because the process simply isn’t profitable. Amyris, a San Francisco firm that also produces cosmetic products, had engineered a type of yeast that can eat sugar and secrete an oil similar to diesel. While the company had some success using this process in the production of biofuels, including for use by buses in Brazil, it achieved greater profits selling the chemicals for use in other products, such as moisturizers and fragrances, according to a report by MIT’s Technology Review. According to the report, the average selling price for the company’s products is about $7.70 per liter ($29 per gallon), which is far higher than the cost of petroleum-based diesel. And even the $7.70 price was propped up by the amount the company can earn by producing moisturizers. According to Amyris officials, the company will stop producing biodiesels by mid-year, but the firm remains interested in developing commercial-scale fuel plants in the future.
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10 May 2012: New Interactive Website
Maps Distribution of Global Species

U.S. scientists this week unveiled a new online resource that maps the distribution of species worldwide and will ultimately allow users to update or add species data. The so-called “Map of Life” project — which draws on millions of known locations of various species, expert range maps, World Wildlife Fund data, and the databases of individual scientists — allows users to view distribution records for any terrestrial vertebrate species or fish worldwide, and generate a listing of all species within a 50- to 1,000-kilometer range. An updated version of the site, expected later this year, will include data on plants, trees, and selected invertebrate groups. Ultimately, users will be able to flag and edit data, update their own data sets, and provide feedback on the data. The project, which is funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation, is described online in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
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09 May 2012: Warming Waters Attract
New Fish Species to British Waters

Warming ocean temperatures have changed the distribution of many critical marine species off the British coast, as warm water fish are increasingly expanding into northern waters and cold-water species are swimming to colder depths, according to a new report. The report of the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership, published by the UK and Scottish governments, found that warm water species such as the bluefin tuna and thresher sharks are more frequently appearing in the waters off southwest England and squid have become increasingly abundant in the North Sea. One southern species, the bib, has moved north by 212 miles (342 kilometers) in the last two decades, while common North Sea species such as cod and lemon sole are swimming at an average of 5.5 meters deeper per decade. The report, based on an analysis of scientific studies, warns these changes pose potential threats for native species and the commercial fishing industry as changing water temperatures could introduce invasive species and new diseases.
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09 May 2012: Groundwater Pumping Emerges
As a Factor in Sea Level Rise, Study Says

The vast amounts of water pumped out of the ground for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial uses will increasingly contribute to global sea level rise in the coming decades, according to a new study. According to researchers at Utrecht University, humans pumped about 204 cubic kilometers (49 cubic miles) of groundwater in 2000, much of which evaporated into the atmosphere before ultimately entering rivers, canals and, eventually, the world’s oceans. While in earlier decades the rise in sea level caused by groundwater removal was canceled out by the construction of dams, that changed by the 1990s as humans pumped more groundwater and built fewer dams. By 2000, groundwater extraction resulted in a sea level rise of about 0.57 millimeters annually — compared with about 0.035 millimeters in 1990. According to the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, by 2050 the pumping of groundwater worldwide could cause sea levels to rise about 0.8 millimeters annually.
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08 May 2012: Standard EV Charging System
Adopted by U.S., German Automakers

Eight U.S. and German automakers have agreed on a standardized technology system for electric-vehicle charging, a coordinated approach they say will allow drivers to rapidly re-charge their vehicles at most charging stations regardless of power source. The announcement is an important breakthrough for the electric vehicle industry, introducing a common technology that could foster the spread of a recharging infrastructure at gas stations, malls, office buildings, and other locations — a critical step if consumers are to adopt electric vehicle technology. The integrated single-port system — which will be utilized by Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche, and Volkswagen — allows drivers to use numerous charging technologies, including AC- and DC-charging, with one vehicle inlet. The system, which will be unveiled at the Electric Vehicle Symposium 26 in Los Angeles, will reportedly be able to recharge an electric vehicle in 15 to 20 minutes.
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08 May 2012: Highly Endangered Gorillas
Are Captured in Rare Video Footage

A camera trap video in Cameroon has captured nearly two minutes of film of the Cross River gorilla, the rarest of the four sub-species of gorillas and one that is seldom seen in the wild. The footage shows a group of eight gorillas walking through the forest in Cameroon’s Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary, their feet loudly crunching over the leaves on the forest floor. Suddenly, a silverback gorilla, perhaps sensing the camera trap, bluff-charges past the camera, pounding its chest as it runs. The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which helped set up the traps, says it is the best footage ever captured of Cross River gorillas, a sub-species with fewer than 250 individuals remaining. In the footage, one of the gorillas is clearly missing a hand, perhaps the result of it getting caught in a snare. Hunting and habitat destruction in the creatures’ last refuge — the mountainous border region of Cameroon and Nigeria — have whittled away populations of the Cross River gorilla. But the Cameroon government, WCS, and local wardens have launched an improved system of protection that seems to have halted the animals’ decline.
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07 May 2012: Japanese Tsunami Debris
Is Increasingly Washing Ashore in Alaska

Debris from last year’s tsunami in Japan, including some potentially toxic materials, is increasingly being discovered along the Alaska coastline. Since January, millions of pieces of debris have washed ashore along the Alaska coast, from soccer balls and buoys to motorcycles and large drums containing unknown materials, according to the Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation (MCAF), a Juneau-based group monitoring the debris. In some areas, the group has observed mysterious sludge that apparently had leaked from the containers. “So we’re looking at a potential large-scale environmental problem, and what we’re dealing with now is just the start of it,” Merrick Burden, director of the MCAF, told the Juneau Daily News. Much of the debris that has reached Alaska so far was likely pushed by west-to-east winds, and larger materials, driven by ocean currents, will start to reach the coast next year, officials say. To help state officials better understand the future threats, MCAF is urging mariners, fishing boats, and beachcombers to take photos when they spot debris and report it to their project and the federal government.
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07 May 2012: Economic Boom Leaves Myanmar
Vulnerable to Environmental Abuses

Conservationists warn that a development boom in Myanmar resulting from a recent opening-up of the country could trigger rampant environmental destruction. Harboring some of Asia’s richest biodiversity, Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is embracing increased economic development following government reforms that have loosened military control in the impoverished nation. But environmental advocates say government corruption and a lack of strict environmental rules leave the Asian nation ripe for environmental exploitation. In recent months, international business interests have flocked to the country, targeting lucrative opportunities in land development, mining, and rubber and oil plantations. “The ‘development invasion’ will speed up environmental destruction and is also likely to lead to more human rights abuses,” Pianporn Deetes of the International Rivers Network told the Associated Press. “Industries will move very vast, while civil society is just beginning to learn about the impacts.”
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04 May 2012: Greenland Glaciers Moving
More Slowly Than Previous Estimates

A new U.S. study says that Greenland’s glaciers are sliding into the sea more slowly than previously estimated, a finding that may indicate future sea level rise will not be as high as some projected worst-case scenarios. Using satellite data to track changes to 200 outlet glaciers from 2000 to 2011, a team of scientists calculated that Greenland’s glaciers accelerated by an average of 30 percent during the decade — a significant amount but not as rapidly as feared. In an earlier study, scientists calculated that glacial flow would increase by 100 percent between 2000 and 2010, and then stabilize at the higher speed, contributing as much as 19 inches to global sea level rise by the end of the century. According to the new study, published in the journal Science, the glaciers are expected to continue gaining speed in the coming decades, possibly contributing four inches to sea level rise by 2100. The researchers cautioned, however, that a 10-year study is too short to make any conclusions on long-term behavior.
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04 May 2012: Japan Goes Nuclear-Free
For the First Time in Four Decades

Japan will shut down its last working nuclear power station this weekend, culminating — at least for now — a national shift away from nuclear energy in the aftermath of last year’s Fukushima disaster. The shutdown of the No. 3 Tomari reactor in Hokkaido will leave the country without nuclear power for the first time since 1970. Given public concerns about nuclear safety, it may become difficult to switch the plants back on if the country makes it through the summer months without power shortages or blackouts. “Can it be the end of nuclear power [in Japan]? It could be,” Andrew DeWitt, a professor of energy and policy at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, told Reuters. Before the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors provided nearly 30 percent of the nation’s electricity. While Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has suggested the country cannot afford to go without nuclear power for the long term, the government has no timetable to switch the plants back on and the country has yet to develop a long-term, nuclear-free energy policy.
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03 May 2012: Earth Observation Satellites
Threatened by Budget Shortfalls in U.S.

Budget shortfalls, launch failures, and mission changes have caused a decline in U.S. earth observation satellites over the last five years, a trend that could undermine the nation’s ability to forecast weather and monitor natural disasters and climate change, according to a new report. The report, published by the National Research Council (NRC), said that a lack of satellite-based earth monitoring technologies “will have profound consequences on science and society.” One factor slowing progress is a shortage of reliable medium-class launchers to send satellites into space, the NRC said. The report said that NASA is making up for some of the shortfalls in earth observation systems by increasing sub-orbital missions and jet flights, and by cooperating on missions with other countries that have launched earth observation satellites. “It’s likely our capabilities will decline fairly precipitously at just the time they’re most needed,” Dennis Hartmann, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington and chair of the committee that wrote the report, told the New York Times.
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03 May 2012: Experiments Underestimate
Plant Responses to Global Warming

Studies designed to predict how plants and trees will react to rising temperatures have consistently underestimated those responses, with the actual flowering and leafing of plants advancing far more rapidly than most experiments forecast. That is the conclusion of new research by Canadian and U.S. scientists who analyzed 50 plant studies on four continents. By looking at field records of the timing of plant events, the researchers found that leafing and flowering advance by nearly a week for every 1 degree C rise in temperature. But when scientists create experimental plots and heat them to simulate future temperature increases, their predictions usually under-predict plant responses to global warming by at least four-fold, according to the study, published in an online issue of Nature. The timing of annual plant events, known as phenology, has major implications for crop pollination, water supplies, and ecosystem health. The researchers said that plant experiments need to be better designed to reflect the actual impact of future warming.
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02 May 2012: Polar Bears Taking Long Swims
In Absence of Summer Sea Ice, Study Says

A six-year study has found that polar bears are capable of swimming great distances when foraging for food, an increasingly critical skill as Arctic sea ice declines in summer. Using GPS collars attached to 52 adult females in the southern Beaufort and Chukchi seas from 2004 to 2009, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that about a third of the bears — including some with cubs — completed swims greater than 30 miles. Writing in the Canadian Journal of Zoology, the scientists found that in the case of 50 long-distance swims, the bears traveled an average of 96 miles, swimming from one to 10 days; one bear swam 220 miles. While such stamina will become increasingly important for polar bears as a warming climate makes resting on summer sea ice a less available option, the researchers expressed concern that traveling such great distances takes a greater energy toll on the animals. The study sample was too small to draw conclusions about the fate of entire populations, and it is unclear whether such long swims are a new behavior.
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02 May 2012: Fracking Fluid Can Migrate
Into Marcellus Aquifers, New Study Says

A new study estimates that fluids used in the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale region can migrate into underground drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously estimated. The study, based on computer modeling and funded by opponents of fracking, concluded that natural faults and fractures in the Marcellus shale, exacerbated by the effects of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” could allow chemicals to reach shallow drinking water supplies in as little as “just a few years.” Companies involved in fracking for natural gas have maintained that impermeable layers of rock in the Marcellus Shale formation would keep fracking fluids safely locked nearly a mile below water supplies. But independent hydrologist Tom Myers, who published his study in the journal Ground Water, says his modeling shows that is not the case. “Simply put, [the rock layers] are not impermeable,” said Myers. The Marcellus Shale underlies large portions of the northeastern U.S., and thousands of fracking wells have been drilled in recent years. The study was funded by two organizations opposed to gas fracking, and some scientists strongly disagree with its conclusions.
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Interview: The Long Battle to Build
The U.S.’s First Offshore Wind Farm

More than a decade after he announced plans to build the nation's first offshore wind farm off Cape Cod, Cape Wind president Jim Gordon is on the verge of finally starting construction. During a 10-year fight to get approval for the project, Gordon has faced no shortage of challenges, including bitter public squabbles, a regulatory gauntlet of 17 government agencies, court challenges, and now, as he prepares to plant the first turbine, a glut of cheap natural gas that is undercutting renewable energy prices. But backed by Massachusetts laws that require utilities to buy from renewable sources, Gordon is confident the logic of wind power will prevail. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Gordon describes why he has stuck with this project through a decade of turmoil and why he believes Cape Wind’s long struggle will ultimately be good for the clean energy sector. “It was painful, it was costly, it was frustrating,” Gordon says. “But you know something, if it makes it easier for others after me, I take some pride in that.”
Read the interview
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01 May 2012: Oil and Gas Companies See
Offshore Wind Potential in North Sea

An increasing number of oil service companies are working with renewable energy companies to develop offshore wind projects in the North Sea as the region’s fossil fuel resources dwindle and demand for clean energy rises. According to a report by Bloomberg News, companies such as Technip and Subsea 7 are seizing on the similarities between developing deepsea oil installations and building offshore wind platforms. For wind energy developers, as much as 25 percent of capital spending includes services that can be performed by oil and gas companies, said Jayesh Parmar, a UK-based consultant at Baringa Partners LLP. “The synergies available between offshore wind and oil and gas are most apparent in the North Sea,” Parmar said. “It makes sense here to be operating in both areas.” With numerous offshore wind projects planned, the European Wind Energy Association predicts that more than 446,000 people will work in the North Sea’s offshore wind sector by the end of the decade, twice the current workforce.
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01 May 2012: Fukushima Begins Restoration
Of Coastal Forests Destroyed by Tsunami

Fukushima Prefecture will soon begin a nine-year restoration of coastal forests devastated by last year’s tsunami, including the planting of 4.6 million seedlings over a 90-mile stretch of coastline. With the financial assistance of other prefectures, the Fukushima government will begin collecting pine cones this year that officials hope will grow into the seedlings of new pine forests within two years. While the tsunami triggered by the March 2011 earthquake swamped coastal forests in six prefectures, none was hit harder than Fukushima, where 70 percent of flooded forests were destroyed, according to a report in The Asahi Shimbun. Even trees in areas that survived the disaster are expected to die because of the high levels of salt that saturated the soil. In some areas, including Matsukawaura beach in the town of Soma, the presence of thick forests served as a breakwater, preventing even greater damage inland from tsunami waves and debris.
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30 Apr 2012: Leaf-Mimicking Design
Boosts Output of Solar Panels

By adding microscopic folds onto the surface of photovoltaic materials, a design variation borrowed from a natural leaf, researchers say they have been able to boost the solar output of flexible plastic solar cells by 47 percent. According to the scientists, who published their findings in the journal Nature Photonics, the folds acted as a sort of “wave guide,” channeling light waves and increasing the material’s exposure to light. “I expected that it would increase the photocurrent because the folded surface is quite similar to the morphology of leaves, a natural system with high light harvesting efficiency,” said Jong Bok Kim, a researcher from Princeton University and lead author of the study. “However, when I actually constructed solar cells on top of the folded surface, its effect was better than my expectations.” And since the researchers used relatively inexpensive plastic materials — as opposed to the more expensive silicon commonly used in panels — they hope their findings will help lead to a cheaper and efficient source of solar power.
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30 Apr 2012: Australia Lists Koala As
Threatened Species for First Time

The Australian government has added the koala to the list of threatened species in parts of the country for the first time, saying the iconic species is under threat from habitat loss, urban expansion, disease, and climate change. Following a three-year study, Environment Minister Tony Burke announced that koalas will be listed as vulnerable in Queensland, where populations have declined by 40 percent in two decades; New South Wales, where numbers have dropped by one-third; and the Australian Capital Territory. In addition to the listing, which will impose restrictions on development in areas where the species is threatened, the government committed $300,000 for koala monitoring and habitat research. Not only are koalas facing declining food sources as eucalypt plants are aggressively cleared for development, but scientists say the nutritional value of remaining eucalypts has diminished as a result of climate change. While the government says there are about 200,000 remaining koalas nationwide, the Australian Koala Foundation estimates there are likely fewer than 100,000.
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27 Apr 2012: Warming Climate Has Caused
Water Cycle to Intensify, Study Says

A new study published in the journal Science suggests that the cycle of evaporation and rainfall over the world’s oceans has accelerated 4 percent in the last half-century as a result of global warming, a development that could portend more extreme weather in the decades to come. In an analysis of salinity in oceans from 1950 to 2000, scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California found that the salty areas of the ocean have gotten saltier and fresher areas have gotten fresher, a phenomenon they attribute to stronger patterns of evaporation and precipitation over the ocean. The researchers suggest a 1-degree F increase in global temperatures during that period was enough to trigger the 4 percent intensification of the water cycle. If that trend continues, they say, projected increases in temperatures by 2100 could cause the water cycle to intensify by as much as 20 percent, which means regions already receiving a lot of rainfall will receive even more and areas prone to drought will be even drier.
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27 Apr 2012: Pacific Shark Survey Shows
90 Percent Decline Near Human Populatons

A comprehensive census of Pacific reef shark populations has found that shark abundance has plummeted by roughly 90 percent in waters located near islands inhabited by humans. Using underwater surveys conducted by divers across 46 U.S. Pacific islands and atolls, researchers found that shark numbers near human populations were consistently depressed, regardless of location or ocean conditions, compared with pristine reef areas located farther away from humans. In fact, the researchers estimated that shark populations are less than 10 percent of historically peak numbers in these areas, said Marc Nadon, a University of Hawaii scientist and lead author of the study, published in Conservation Biology. “In short, people and sharks don’t mix,” he said. Researchers say the data helps quantify how human activities, including overfishing and the controversial practice of shark-finning, are decimating shark numbers.
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