Aug 16 2010

Louisiana shrimp season opens amid spill concern

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Commercial fishermen can now trawl Louisiana's waters for white shrimp as the season opened on Monday, but questions linger about the effects BP Plc's Gulf of Mexico oil spill will have on the harvest. Some state waters have been open for brown shrimping since the well ruptured on April 20, but the overall catch has been down from previous years partly because a number of boats are signed up with BP's oil spill clean-up program. The plump, sweet white shrimp are typically larger than brown shrimp and more desired by chefs. The U.S. government has said that seafood pulled from the areas of the Gulf of Mexico that is open to fishing is safe to eat despite all the oil that gushed into the ocean. More than a fifth of federal waters in the Gulf remain closed due to fear of oil contaminating the seafood.
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Aug 16 2010

LEED Building Standards Fail to Protect Human Health

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The LEED program — Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design — is playing an increasingly important role in the drive to make buildings in the United States greener and more energy efficient. LEED is now the most prominent and widely adopted green building certification program in the country, with architects and developers striving to earn LEED’s coveted platinum or gold rating, and an increasing number of local, state, and federal regulations beginning to incorporate LEED standards into official building codes. But LEED — sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council, an industry group — has a glaring and little-known drawback: It places scant emphasis on factors relating to human health, even as the largely unregulated use of potentially toxic building materials continues to expand. One of LEED's major accomplishments — saving energy by making buildings more airtight — has had the paradoxical effect of more effectively trapping the gases emitted by the unprecedented number of chemicals used in today’s building materials and furnishings.
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Aug 16 2010

Icebergs

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An iceberg is a large piece of ice formed from freshwater that has broken off from a glacier or ice shelf and is floating in open water. It may subsequently become frozen into pack ice. Alternatively, it may come to rest on the seabed in shallower water, causing ice gouging in the land underneath or becoming an ice island. Because the density of pure ice is less than sea water an iceberg will float in sea water with about one-ninth of the volume of an iceberg above water. The shape of the underwater portion can be difficult to judge by looking at the portion above the surface. This has led to the expression "tip of the iceberg", for a problem or difficulty that is only a small manifestation of a larger problem.
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Aug 16 2010

Smithsonian Catalogs Life Before The Gulf Spill

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It'll take years to fully know the effects of the BP oil spill on wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico. One thing we do know now is what that wildlife was like before the 206 million gallons of oil spewed into the water. For that knowledge, we have the Smithsonian Institution to thank. The Smithsonian Institution's Museum Support Center is an anonymous beige warehouse complex just outside Washington, D.C. It doesn't look like anything special until you get inside. These buildings house all the things that don't fit into the museums on the National Mall, in endless rows of jars and bottles and boxes. Among them is the world's largest collection of invertebrates from the Gulf of Mexico, all floating in 150-proof alcohol. It's a pretty comprehensive snapshot of life before the spill.
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Aug 15 2010

Tanzania’s Serengeti Highway plan could destroy major carbon sink

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Environmentalists are dismayed at plans by the Tanzanian government to build a major commercial highway through Serengeti National Park The Tanzanian President has vowed to go ahead with controversial plans to construct a major road through the Serengeti, despite fierce opposition from environmentalists and the tourism industry. The 480-kilometre road will link the Lake Victoria area with eastern Tanzania and, according to the Tanzanian government, bring essential economic development to the region - linking remote communities to the major road network, allowing transport of people and goods and connecting farmers with markets.
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Aug 14 2010

ARKive.org – Discover the world’s most endangered species

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ENN is proud to announce our newest affiliate, ARKive. ENN partners with leaders in environmental and sustainability issues to bring you cutting edge news to help you stay up to date on the important issues of the day. Endangered species are being impacted by deforestation and development on every continent. Most people have only a limited idea of just how many species are endangered, what they look like, what habitats they need to survive, and what we can do to help them stay around a little longer, or perhaps, rebound enough to no longer be endangered. Wildlife films and photos are vital weapons in the battle to save the world's endangered biodiversity from the brink of extinction. So, with the help of the world’s best filmmakers, photographers, conservationists and scientists, ARKive is creating the ultimate multimedia guide to the world's endangered species. In a world in which a species becomes extinct every 20 minutes, films, photographs, and audio recordings may soon be all that remain of these species. However, until now, this valuable imagery has been scattered throughout the world in a wide variety of private, commercial and specialist collections, with no centralized collection, restricted public access, limited educational use, and no coordinated strategy for its long term preservation.
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Aug 14 2010

Few Chernobyl radiation risks from Russia fires

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Fears that fires scorching forests polluted by Chernobyl fallout may propel dangerous amounts of radioactivity into the air are overblown, scientists say, and the actual health risks are very small. Even firefighters tackling the blazes, which officials say have hit forests in Russia's Bryansk region tainted by radioactive dust from the 1986 Chernobyl reactor disaster, are unlikely to run any added nuclear contamination risks. The amount of radiation in smoke would be only a fraction of the original fallout, they say. "Of the total radioactivity in the area, much less than one percent of it will be remobilized," said Jim Smith, an expert on Chernobyl and a specialist in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Britain's University of Portsmouth. Radioactive contamination in the area has substantially diminished in the almost two and a half decades since explosions at Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 caused the world's worst civil nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986.
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Aug 13 2010

The New Breeds of Cars

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Decades ago the only type of car was the internal combustion (gasoline)type. Other varieties have arrived such as Hybrid and electric. With the new choices are other decisions such as which one reduces most the carbon footprint (or is the most green)and which one is the most cost effective. No more is "the miles per gallon" a standard that can be applied across the board as a specification.
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Aug 13 2010

Reinventing the City

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Our cities play a vital role in the quest to achieve global ecological sustainability. They are the largest contributors to greenhouse gases and climate change. However, if we can achieve sustainable construction and use of urban infrastructure, our cities could become a critical leverage point in global efforts to drastically reduce emissions and avoid the social and economic costs associated with climate change, as well as enhance energy security and resilience in the face of high fossil energy prices.
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Aug 13 2010

‘Cheap’ solar geoengineering plans may have unintended consequences

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Researchers warn that individual countries looking to go it alone with 'cheap' solutions to regional climate change could inflict negative impacts on the rest of world. Large-scale 'geoengineering' interventions to alter the climate, such as increasing cloud cover to deflect solar radiation, may not work on a global scale, a new study has warned.
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