Jim Johnson's List: Environment

• The reason climate change dooms Miami is a combination of sea level rise, the inevitability of ever more severe storms and storm surges — and its fateful, fatal geology and topology, which puts “more than $416 billion in assets at risk to storm-related flooding and sea-level rise”
• The latest research “suggests that sea level could rise more than six feet by the end of the century,” as Goodell notes, and “Wanless believes that it could continue rising a foot each decade after that.”
• Unfortunately, sea level rise is already 60% faster than projected.
• solutions are not likely to be forthcoming from the political realm. The statehouse in Tallahassee is a monument to climate-change denial.

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• Wells used for drinking water near the Marcellus Shale in northeast Pennsylvania have methane concentrations six times higher than wells farther away.
• The researchers analyzed 141 drinking water wells
• Methane was detected in 82 percent of drinking water samples for homes within a kilometer (0.62 miles or 1,093 yards) of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, wells.

• The study states “the two simplest explanations” for the contamination in drinking water are faulty or inadequate steel casings and imperfections in cement sealings.

   

  Natural gas companies will hopefully work to develop ways to fix the problem of well integrity, but the Duke study shows just how much additional research and investigation into the fracking process is needed, especially by the federal government.

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• Sewer agencies across the country say the rapidly growing use of pre-moistened "personal" wipes
• are clogging pipes and jamming pumps.

• Utilities struggling with aging infrastructure have wrestled for years with the problem of "ragging" -- when baby wipes, dental floss, paper towels and other items not designed for flushing entangle sewer pumps.

  The latest menace, officials say, is that wipes and other products, including pop-off scrubbers on toilet-cleaning wands, are increasingly being marketed as "flushable." Even ever-thickening, super-soft toilet paper is worrisome because it takes longer to disintegrate, some say.
• The wipes also contribute to blockages that cause sewage to overflow into streams and back up into basements.
• What constitutes "flushable" might soon get federal oversight.

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• Every year has seasonal variations, but some scientists say this year may be a harbinger of a more likely occurrence in coming years -- warmer temperatures pushing back the peak foliage season

• "This is precisely the sort of thing we expect to happen," said Penn State University climatologist Michael E. Mann. "Fall comes later, spring gets earlier and summer gets hotter. NASA just reported that the globe just saw the warmest September ever."

    

  In coming decades, he said, extreme weather conditions and warmer autumns "will become the new normal."
• "A tree stressed is a symptom that something larger is wrong with our world. Our civilizations depend on healthy, functioning ecosystems for services such as clean water, erosion control and clean air, not to mention food, fiber and shelter."
• Length of daylight is key to color change and leaf fall. The underlying color of leaves is yellow but photosynthesis produces chlorophyll in warm months that results in the dominant green. When photosynthesis declines in fall, many leaves return to the base yellow before browning and falling. Red, though, is sunscreen for certain leaves, explaining why bright autumn sun creates bold red colors.
• "The best colors are when we have a spring that is warm and wet, a summer that is not too hot or dry and a fall with warm sunny days and cool nights,"

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• If you're a lighting traditionalist who prefers incandescent bulbs in your lamps or other fixtures, it's time to stock up on 60- and 40-watt bulbs. Production will cease Jan. 1 as a result of the federal Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

    

  Stores are allowed to sell their remaining stock, which means you'll still be able to find them for the first few months of 2014, said Robert Jackson, electrical department supervisor at the Home Depot in Ohio Township. But then they'll go the way of 100-watt bulbs in 2012 and 75-watters in 2013.
• To deal with the environmental effects of mercury in CFLs, Home Depot, Lowe's and other big-box retailers accept burned-out bulbs for recycling.

• The drought in California, which has been building for the past few years, really took hold this winter. December-March is supposed to be the region’s wet season, but this year turned out to be a bust. At the beginning of April, nearly all of the state was in a drought — nearly 70 percent was in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, the two highest stages. By the end of the month, the entire state was experiencing at least some form of drought in what has been the driest start to a year in California on record.
• This week, the situation became worse, with 100 percent of the state now in the three worst stages of drought. It's the first time that has occurred since the inception of the Drought Monitor in 2000.
• The heat will exacerbate and accelerate the impact concerns that come with higher demand (for water) and increased fire risk during such heat waves
• The situation in California is unlikely to improve or change much over the summer, which is the dry season for most of the state
• California isn't the only dry part of the U.S. Another major drought spanning the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, as well as parts of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico is also still firmly in place.
• Drought is really intensifying pretty rapidly in the Southern Plains

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• The drought is so dire that experts are considering adding a fifth level to the four-tiered drought scale. That's right: D5. But each almond requires 1.1 gallons of water to produce,
• thousands of endangered king salmon in northern California’s Klamath River are threatened by low water levels because water is being diverted to almond farms.
• demand is driving prices ever higher.
• there had been a spate of thefts and missing almond trucks.
• Over-pumping of aquifers threatens infrastructure like roads, which stand to collapse into sunken ground. Farmers can fallow vegetable fields during droughts, but almond trees need steady supplies of water.
• California's almond industry is also completely reliant on honeybees to pollinate its almond trees.
• Because of colony collapse disorder, honeybees are a commodity
•  The almond farmers' requirements represent approximately 60 percent of the country's managed colonies.
• many of the mercenary pollinating bees brought to California died due to exposure to pesticides.
• when I buy almonds, I don't think about having a hand in killing bees or salmon, or getting someone's truck stolen or collapsing a road. It's just a jumble of what's "good for me," what I feel like eating, and how much things cost. Michael Specter’s feature on GMOs in last week's New Yorker gets into how seven billion people on the planet will be 10 billion by the end of the century, and feeding that population might well be the greatest challenge to humanity ever.
• the point isn’t really nutrition, it's environmental consciousness and sustainability

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