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Climate Change Bird Atlas

Julia Whitty — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:41:24 +0000

American goldfinch: Mdf via Wikimedia Commons.

There's an interesting database online through the US Forest Service called the Climate Change Bird Atlas. It's based on another database, the Climate Change Tree Atlas (both are forecasts for eastern forests and birds). One leads to the other, since the fate of forests will affect the future of many species of birds. From the USDA/Forest Service site:

Changing forests mean changing habitat for the wildlife species that depends on them. The current and modelled distribution of 150 bird species is presented in the accompanying Climate Change Bird Atlas.

The database is interactive and reasonably easy to figure out. Here you can see one potential future for the American goldfinch, the iconic state bird of three widely separated states—New Jersey, Iowa, and Washington. The goldfinch is a truly common bird that's benefited greatly from living alongside us, thriving at weedy roadsides and backyard bird feeders.
American goldfinch abundance change map: USDA/Forest Service. From: Matthews, S.N., L. R. Iverson, A.M. Prasad, A. M., and M.P. Peters. 2007-ongoing. A Climate Change Atlas for 147 Bird Species of the Eastern United States [database]. But parsed against three climate change scenarios and two emissions scenarios, the future of the American goldfinch gets sketchy. The map on the left shows current abundance of the American goldfinch in the Eastern US, with pink being the most abundant.

The map on the right shows a forecast decline in abundance based on high climate change/emissions scenarios... Looks like the "Canadian goldfinch" could be set to become the iconic provincial bird of Quebec, New Brunswick, and Ontario.

If you visit the Climate Change Bird Atlas you can play around with the outcomes for many eastern birds, compare projections, and run basic animations.

Credit: Dori via Wikimedia Commons.The atlas is derived from a paper in the science journal Ecography. Here's an excerpt:

Mounting evidence shows that organisms have already begun to respond to global climate change... We therefore developed statistical models of 147 bird species distributions in the eastern United States, using climate, elevation, and the distributions of 39 tree species to predict contemporary bird distributions... These models were then projected onto three models of climate change under high and low emission scenarios for both climate and the projected change in suitable habitat for the 39 tree species.

The paper is open access if you want to read more about the authors' modeling methods and the climate change/emissions scenarios they worked with. Their overall findings:

Breeding habitat will decrease by at least 10% for 6,179 species.
Breeding habitat will increase by at least 10% for 3,852 species in the eastern United States.

Most interesting about this paper was how it expanded the envelope beyond the usual climate/elevation-only models to include the effects of changing forests/vegetation. In some cases, refugia of forests may keep birds in places we are accustomed to seeing them, even when most of their kind have moved away or dwindled away.

The paper:

Matthews, S. N., Iverson, L. R., Prasad, A. M. and Peters, M. P. 2011. Changes in potential habitat of 147 North American breeding bird species in response to redistribution of trees and climate following predicted climate change. Ecography, 34: no. DOI:10.1111/j.1600-0587.2010.06803.x

EPA to Cruise and Cargo Ships: No More Dumping on California's Coasts

Jaeah Lee — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:13:19 +0000

Great news, Golden State: Federal regulators have ruled that, starting next month, no more sewage shall be dumped on your coasts. Or at least not without consequence. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency designated California's 1,624-mile coastline (stretching from Mexico to Oregon) a federal no-discharge zone, banning large vessels like cruise (PDF) and cargo ships from unloading sewage and other types of pollution into the state's coastal waters. (Of course, oil leaks and spills and their aftereffects will continue to be a problem.)

"California's coastal waters will no longer serve as a sewage pond for big ships," said state EPA Secretary Matthew Rodriguez in an agency press release. "For too long, pollution from these vessels has endangered our marine environment, jeopardized public health, and threatened the coastal communities that rely on recreation and tourism dollars." The EPA estimates that the no-discharge zone will prohibit more than 22 million of the 25 million gallons of treated sewage dumped by vessels in California waters each year. A small boater flushing untreated sewage into the water produces as much bacterial pollution as that of treated sewage produced by 10,000 people, according to a 2003 study by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. The marine conservation group Oceana estimates (PDF) that an average cruise ship generates 30,000 gallons of human waste every day. Untreated sewage, chemical, and oil runoff from marine vessels can contaminate water with toxins, coliform bacteria (the family of bacteria that includes E. coli), and invasive species, all of which can disrupt marine ecosystems.

The new sewage ban, which creates the nation's largest no-discharge zone to date, will apply to some 2,000 cargo ships that traverse the state's ports each year. It could also effect the nearly 77 percent of Californians who live on or near the coast, as well as marine and other wildlife. The state coastline is home to four national marine sanctuaries, portions of six national parks and recreation areas, and more than 200 other marine reserves and protected areas, according to the EPA.

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Energy Reboot

Julia Whitty — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:36:08 +0000

A cute British appeal to get off dirty energy and dump their big six energy companies. (Although here in the US—for me at least—the video also evokes memories of other falling towers.)

Al Qaeda and The Whales

Asawin Suebsaeng — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:57:02 +0000

Did whales benefit from the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Turns out that question isn't as boneheaded as it sounds.

In July 2001, scientists from the New England Aquarium began a study of right whales in the Bay of Fundy in the Gulf of Maine, testing whale excrement for "hormone-related chemicals" that indicated the animals' stress levels. And when the September 11 attacks happened, a window of opportunity was suddenly open for examining whether sound pollution was a major cause of stress for these whales.

AFP has the story:

The steady drone of motors along busy commercial shipping lanes not only alters whale behaviour but can affect the giant sea mammals physically by causing chronic stress, a study published Wednesday has reported for the first time.

The findings were made possible, researchers said, by an event that at first glance seems far removed from the plight of cetaceans: the attacks on New York's Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Only a catastrophe of that magnitude, they explained, could have caused maritime traffic to suddenly drop off, making it possible to measure the impact of varying levels of sound pollution in the sea.

Over the last 50 years noise caused by cargo and military vessels, along with high-decibel sonars used for oil exploration, has gradually increased in intensity and scope. Baleen whales communicate at the same low-frequency wavelengths emitted by these ships, in the range of 20 to 200 hertz (Hz), and some species have adapted by emitting louder and more frequent acoustic signals.

Fascinating stuff.

How to Cook After a Catastrophe

James West — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:00:00 +0000

A weather presenter and a celebrity chef walk into a kitchen…that was the novel hook for this cooking class (and, hell, it's not often Climate Desk gets to film a cooking show).

This is about as far away from the dry, cracked soil of a Texas cattle ranch as it gets: Fifth Avenue, New York City. At a seminar that cost $225 a head, a small selection of guests learned about the impact of 2011's record number of billion dollar disasters—there were 12, including the ongoing drought in Texas—and how to cook around them using substitute ingredients. While author and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich talked about the ingredients affected by last year's weather, TV meteorologist Bonnie Schneider (you've probably seen her on CNN) explained how climate change is causing tougher farming conditions and leaving Americans with bigger food bills.

The take-out lesson? Disaster cooking is about more than simple substitution.

"Recycling food is not about reheating food," Bastianich said. "It's about making something new." After demonstrating how to create a delectable ragout, she added, "There's going to be a run on oxtails!"

Lidia Bastianich at Eataly, New York: James West

Birds Near Fukushima Hit Harder Than at Chernobyl

Julia Whitty — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:03:17 +0000

Bird populations in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture appear to be more whacked by the effects of low-level radiation than expected—based on responses by the same species around Chernobyl after that nuclear power plant disaster. This according to a new paper in the science journal Environmental Pollution.

Last July, four months after the earthquake and tsunami, a team of European, Japanese, and American researchers identified and counted birds at 300 locations in Fukushima prefecture between 15 and 30 miles (25 and 48 km) from the nuclear complex. Most of these areas were still open to human occupation and were experiencing external radiation levels from 0.5 to 35 microsieverts per hour.

The team compared the results to their similar investigation in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone between 2006 and 2009, 20 to 23 years after that nuclear disaster.

Their findings:

Overall, as expected, the bird community in Fukushima declined significantly in the more contaminated areas.
For 14 species of birds that appeared in both Fukushima and Chernobyl, the decline in population size was more pronounced at Fukushima than Chernobyl.
Among all birds, including the species not common to both areas, more birds declined in Chernobyl than Fukushima.

Why these discrepancies? Possibilities include:

The Fukushima birds have never experienced radiation of this intensity before and may therefore be especially sensitive to radioactive contaminants.
Overall more birds declined at Chernobyl because it's been more than two decades since that disaster, during which many species have basically disappeared from the most contaminated regions.

Neither of those possibilities bode well for Fukushima's birds in the long run.

The authors note that the March 11, 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima occurred at the height of the main breeding season when birds were working at or close to their maximum sustainable level of energy output. Though presumably the Chernobyl birds, hit by radiation beginning on April 26, 1986, were experiencing similar stressors.

According to senior author Timothy Mousseau at the University of South Carolina's College of Arts and Sciences:

Our results point to the need for more research to determine the underlying reasons for differences among species in sensitivity, both initially and following many generations of exposure... [and that] large-scale studies be initiated in Fukushima immediately to make the research potentially much more revealing.

The paper:

Anders Pape Møller, Atsushi Hagiwara, Shin Matsui, Satoe Kasahara, Kencho Kawatsu, Isao Nishiumi, Hiroyuki Suzuki, Keisuke Ueda, Timothy A. Mousseau. Abundance of birds in Fukushima as judged from Chernobyl. Env Poll. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2012.01.008.

Maldives Political Turmoil Ousts Leading Voice on Climate Change

Kate Sheppard — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:25:00 +0000

The president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, resigned on Tuesday amid what has been described in some press accounts as a coup. There are plenty of questions about the circumstances of his departure from power, but what is clear is that it means the loss of one of the most powerful and visible international leaders on climate change.

Nasheed told reporters on Wednesday he was forced to resign at gunpoint, after what appeared to be a mutiny by police officers and protesters. From Reuters:

"Yes, I was forced to resign at gunpoint," Nasheed told reporters after his party meeting a day after his resignation. "There were guns all around me and they told me they wouldn't hesitate to use them if I didn't resign.

"I call on the chief justice to look into the matter of who was behind this coup. We will try our best to bring back the lawful government."

Yet the newly installed president, Mohammed Waheed Hassan, said on Tuesday that it was a peaceful transition. The change of power has sparked rioting in the streets as well. It's not clear at this point what will happen in the country, and a United Nations political mission is expected to visit later this week.

The tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean has a population of just 395,000, and in 2008 Nasheed became the country's first democratically elected president. In that capacity, he has been a leading international voice advocating action on climate change. To illustrate the threat that sea level rise posed to his nation, he held a cabinet meeting underwater in 2009. And in 2010 his government installed solar panels on the presidential residence and rolled out a plan to cut the country's emissions. As Maldivian Environment Minister Mohamed Aslam told Mother Jones at the time, "We are the front line, we can start dealing with it ourselves."

Farewell Mike deGruy

Julia Whitty — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:29:13 +0000

I was saddened to learn of the death of cinematographer Mike deGruy in a helicopter crash off Australia Saturday. He worked wonders with underwater film and video on nature documentaries for Nat Geo, the BBC, James Cameron, and many others.

Now and then I'd run into Mike at great wild places around the world... places where manatees overwintered or whales migrated or corals spawned. We were always part of different film crews. Yet he was unfailingly generous in sharing what he knew of the place or of his latest cool equipment. He was a fun storyteller too. You can watch his TED talk on octopus here.

I admired his adventurousness in trying novel ways to get out his message about the ocean world he loved. Here's a great clip from a little known 1992 BBC series using an unsual documentary approach back then: underwater talking heads. Mike's the guy in the bubble suit.

In this TEDx talk you can hear Mike talk about his heartbreak over the 2010 BP oil debacle. He was from Mobile, Alabama, and felt the assault on the Gulf's people and wildlife keenly. (BTW, the scars on his arm visible in this clip are from an epic attack by a gray reef shark in the Marshall Islands in 1978.)

The ocean was helped immeasurably by Mike deGruy's work and life... Fair winds and following seas, Mike.

Big Coal Attacks Penn State Climate Scientist (Again)

Kate Sheppard — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:35:00 +0000

We've documented the long-term effort to malign Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann here rather extensively. Now a coal-backed group is running a smear campaign targeting an upcoming speaking event Mann is holding on campus.

The Common Sense Movement and the Secure Energy for America Political Action Committee (CSM/SEAPAC) have started a petition asking Penn State to cancel Mann's Feb. 9 speech. In the petition, they rehash "Climategate" and accuse him of "allegedly manipulating scientific data to align with his extreme political views on global warming." The group offers a template letter for people to send to "daily newspapers near you" attacking Penn State for hosting a speech by "someone of such questionable ethics."

Who is this "Common Sense Movement"? The website claims to represent "a group of individuals and businesses committed to ensuring the availability of affordable, reliable and secure sources of energy for American consumers." But as Brad Johnson reports at Think Progress, it's a coal front group:

SEAPAC is a wing of the Pittsburgh-based astroturf group Common Sense Movement, which is running the "I Am Coal" campaign. Contributors include James Clifford Forrest III, president of coal company Rosebud Mining, David Young, president of the Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association, and the top executives of Swanson Industries, a West Virginia mining equipment company.

Yes, just your average "American consumers."

Andrew Revkin called out the group's attempt to silence Mann as a "shameful attack on free speech." Thankfully, Penn State has not cowed, as The Guardian reported on Friday.

Perhaps the best part of this is that Mann, a respected scientist, plans to talk about his new book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars at the event—a book that's largely about this nasty effort on the part of the fossil fuel industry to undermine his work.

Tell Us: How Do You Teach Your Kids About Climate Change?

James West — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:47:15 +0000

When I was in New Hampshire recently, I met Sarah Larson Dennen, a teacher at Moharimet Elementary School in Madbury. We were talking about something else entirely - the decline of New England's sugar maple - but another part of our on-carmera interview has stuck with me ever since: how Sarah teaches her young students about climate change.

"Language is really key when you're talking to kids," Sarah explained. "I don't use terms like 'global warming'. I use terms like 'climate change'. And I try to back things up by really showing them data."

"I look to see that these kids are care-takers of our whole natural world," she said.

That got me thinking: how do you teach your kids about climate change? You don't want to tell your kids the world is in uttter peril… right? But if they ask about climate change, what do you say?

Climate Desk wants to hear your stories. Leave your comments below. Or - and I encourage this! - head to our YouTube page and click "Create a video response" when you're commenting:

I will include your comments and videos in a feature we're working on right now. You can also get involved by liking us on Facebook, and following us on Twitter.

Is Sugar as Addictive as Alcohol?

Maddie Oatman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:10:00 +0000

As I sit down to write this post, I'm munching on a chocolate-orange cookie, something I grabbed to get me through a mid-morning energy slump. Packed with processed sugar, this treat could be considered just some empty calories I burn off as long as I take a rigorous walk at lunch or practice yoga after work. But scientists from the University of California–San Francisco, whose article "The Toxic Truth About Sugar" came out yesterday in Nature, are hoping to change this mindset. "There is nothing empty about these calories," they write, arguing that a growing body of evidence places the blame of the worldwide increase in chronic diseases such as liver toxicity, obesity, and pancreatitis squarely on the shoulders of this pervasive ingredient.

If UCSF researcher Robert H. Lustig and his team had their way, sugar would be regulated similarly to alcohol and tobacco, and would be knocked off of a USDA list of foods "Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS)," which allows food manufacturers to add unlimited amounts to any food. Using four criteria established in 2003 to justify regulating alcohol, these scientists make a case for why sugar is a public health concern and should be regulated:

Sugar is unavoidable: In recent years, it is being added to almost all processed foods. Even if I avoid cookies and desserts, for example, and I think I'm controlling my intake, I'm probably still taking in more sugar than what's necessary through processed snacks, bread, condiments, and beverages. According to the USDA (PDF), the average American ate the equivalent of 52 teaspoonfuls of sugar a day in 2000, compared to the 10 teaspoonful daily maximum recommended. Per capita consumption was up 39 percent from the 1950s.
It's toxic: The paper maintains that excessive consumption of sugar affects health beyond just adding empty calories. The food has been linked to metabolic dysfunction and its ensuing diseases, and Lustig asserts that fructose (one of two molecules that along with glucose makes up sugar) can have the same impact on the liver as alcohol. For more on fructose, read my coworker Kiera Butler's piece on sugar versus corn syrup. Also, see Gary Taubes's article on sugar's toxicity, which features Lustig, in the New York Times magazine last spring.
It's addictive: This claim appears a little extreme (hard to imagine a group called Sugarholics Anonymous), but the paper cites various studies that examine human dependency on sugar. The sweetener dampens the suppression of hormones that signal hunger and satisfaction to the brain, so the more we eat, the less likely we are to realize when we've had enough of the stuff, and the more likely we are to want more.
Sugar has a negative impact on society: It's been linked to metabolic dysfunction, which can lead to heart disease, obesity, liver disease, and diabetes. In 2011, the United Nations declared that for the first time ever, chronic non-communicable diseases like these posed a greater burden on the world than infectious diseases. A 2011 University of Minnesota study linked the uptick in sugar consumption over the last 30 years to an increase in average body weight. Currently, seventy-five percent of all US health-care dollars are spent on treating metabolic syndrome and its resulting diseases.

So what's to be done to curb our demand for sugar? The pie in the sky solution for the UCSF scientists is to get food manufacturers to stop adding it to everything under the sun. "But sugar is cheap, sugar tastes good and sugar sells, so companies have little incentive to change," write Lustig and crew. Another solution is to make it less accessible by taxing it. Denmark is considering a sugar tax, and the United States may soon start taxing sugary sodas per ounce.

But the idea of regulating sugar is going to face plenty of protest from the massive sugar lobby, something that Lustig and colleagues recognize. Taking hope from the success public health officials have had in fighting the tobacco lobby and regulating smoking in places nationwide, the UCSF researchers are optimistic about the government's ability to take on sugar like it has taken on smoking.

Republicans Want to Throw Kids Under the Bus. Literally.

Kate Sheppard — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:52:42 +0000

On Tuesday, House Republicans released a transportation package that environmental groups have labeled as a massive giveaway to oil and gas interests.

It's got everything that oil companies have asked for over the years and more: drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, increasing oil shale production, allowing much larger trucks on highways, and cutting funds for high-speed rail. And Speaker John Boehner has said he wants to attach a provision to the bill that would force approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline as well.

But here's where it gets really sad: The bill would also cut the Safe Routes to School program, a $202 million grant program that helps states and school districts make improvements so that kids and their families can walk to school without getting run over. There are many reasons this program is a good idea. Pedestrian deaths have been up in recent years, and this is one way to address that challenge. It's also better for everyone else when kids don't need a fleet of polluting minivans to get to school. And walking is good for you. Unless you get run over, that is. Then walking is bad for you.

When It Comes to Your Genes, How Much is Too Much Information?

Azeen Ghorayshi — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:32:14 +0000

Would you want to know if you are at risk of developing a life-threatening disease? What if it's totally incurable? What if there's only a 5 percent chance it would even happen in your lifetime? On Tuesday, an ethics group at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge launched a site designed to wrestle with exactly these types of moral questions quickly cropping up due to the increased prevalence of gene sequencing.

If you are a volunteer in a medical study, for example, and have handed over a spit sample of DNA, the survey tries to determine what responsibility researchers have to let you know if they discover something sticky you may not know about along the way. The survey (chock full of images of "scientists" very seriously pipetting) is designed to crowd-source the data collection process in hopes of gauging broad public attitudes towards genomic testing; the eventual goal is to help inform emerging public policies on the issue. And don't worry if you don't consider yourself super science-literate—the questions are all designed to hit pretty close to home. The harder part will be figuring out how you really feel about knowing what's in the cards for you.

How much would you really like to know? Visit http://www.genomethics.org to fill out the survey.

America Spends Less on Food Than Any Other Country

Alyssa Battistoni — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:40:54 +0000

Like Kiera—and, I'm sure, many of the readers of her article—I was a bit shocked when I calculated how much I spend on food. I like to think I'm thrifty in my food spending habits—I cook a lot and usually eat out only on the weekends—but I don't usually add up my food costs and rarely make serious estimates for food spending when I make a budget, instead assuming that I'll manage to make do with whatever's left after I cut a check for rent, buy a bus pass, and pay my utility bills.

Of course, this kind of logic is completely insane to most people in the world, for the simple and obvious fact that food is the most important thing to budget for. It's only because I live in a rich country where having enough to eat isn't really an issue that I can be so clueless about my food spending habits; as demonstrated by the chart below, the higher a country's average income, the smaller the percentage of income spent on food.

Gates Foundation

On some level, this is pretty intuitive—food is a basic need, and there's only so much you can eat, no matter how much money you have. But even among developed countries, our food spending is ultra-low: People in most European countries spend over 10 percent of their incomes on food. In fact, Americans spend less on food than people in any other country in the world. Even we Americans didn't always expect our food to be so cheap, though: Back in 1963, when Molly Orshansky, an employee of the Social Security Administration, created the nation's first poverty threshold, she simply tripled the cost of the FDA's "thrifty" food plan, since at the time most families spent about a third of their incomes on food. So how'd we end up spending just a fraction of that four decades later?

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Where's Samuel L. Jackson When You Need Him?

Kate Sheppard — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:48:00 +0000

Several weeks ago, the Obama administration announced that it has finalized a new regulation prohibiting the interstate transport of several varieties of giant snake, some of which can grow up to 18 feet long. Such massive snakes have wreaked havoc on sensitive ecosystems, as a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirms.

The researchers, led by Davidson College biologist Michael E. Dorcas, report that surveys around Everglades National Park discovered a 99.3 percent decrease in the number of raccoons observed between 2003 and 2011. The number of opossums observed was down 98.9 percent, and the number of bobcats declined 87.5 percent. Where did these animals go? Into the bellies of giant, hungry pythons. The researchers conclude:

These findings suggest that predation by pythons has resulted in dramatic declines in mammals within ENP and that introduced apex predators, such as giant constrictors, can exert significant top-down pressure on prey populations. Severe declines in easily observed and/or common mammals, such as raccoons and bobcats, bode poorly for species of conservation concern, which often are more difficult to sample and occur at lower densities.

See the Washington Post, National Geographic, and NPR for more.

And while we're on the subject, here's a video of a python who tried to eat an alligator but exploded.

Chemotherapy Tweaks DNA of Mouse Offspring Too

Julia Whitty — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:58:05 +0000

A new paper in PNAS reports that three common chemotherapy drugs destabilize DNA in mice enough to trigger new mutations long after exposure to the drugs has ceased—mutations which are then passed down to their untreated offspring.

A similar phenomenon has been observed in mice exposed to radiation.

Nature News reports on the original radiation findings:

[Co-author and geneticist Yuri] Dubrova and his colleagues were studying the effects of radiation when, purely by chance, they decided to look at mutation rates in the offspring of exposed mice. 'What we found was the biggest surprise of my life,' he says. The children had several times more mutations in their eggs and sperm than their radiation-treated parents. 'The genomes were unstable, and we still don't know why.'

The researchers surmised that chemotherapy drugs might trigger even stronger genetic effects, since chemotherapy is given systemically and radiation therapy isn't. So they investigated three common drugs—cyclophosphamide, mitomycin C and procarbazine—at mouse doses comparable to people doses, in the offspring of treated male mice. From the PNAS paper:

After paternal exposure to any one of these three drugs, expanded simple tandem repeat mutation frequencies were significantly elevated in the germ line (sperm) and bone marrow of their offspring. This... was attributed to elevated mutation rates at the alleles derived from both the exposed fathers and from the nonexposed mothers, thus implying a genome-wide destabilization.

The researchers caution:

Our data also raise important issues concerning delayed transgenerational effects in the children of survivors of anticancer therapy.

Although Nature News points out that mice only live two years and so pass on their damaged DNA before there's much time for internal repair, whereas most humans treated for cancer are post-reproductive adults or adults made sterile by treatment:

'So we're talking about one group only: childhood cancer survivors,' says Dubrova. One recent study found no significant impact of radiation or chemotherapy on the rate of birth defects in 4,699 children of childhood cancer survivors.

Enviros File SEC Complaint Over Keystone Pipeline

Kate Sheppard — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:14:09 +0000

On Monday, Senate Republicans formally announced that they are introducing legislation that would force the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline with or without the consent of the Obama administration. Unless that bill passes, however, the project remains on hold indefinitely. That has created some interesting business questions for TransCanada, the company that wants to build the pipeline.

Now environmental activists are upping the pressure on their foe. Last week, Greenpeace sent a letter (PDF) to Mary Schapiro, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, requesting an SEC investigation into whether TransCanada has been misleading investors about the income it could receive from the pipeline project. In the January 26 letter, Phil Radford, the executive director of Greenpeace, accused TransCanada of violating the SEC's "Employment of Manipulative and Deceptive Practices" rule, arguing that that the company misled investors in its filings and public statements by exaggerating both the number of jobs that the pipeline would create and the amount of money it would bring in.

TransCanada's most recent disclosure projects that Keystone pipeline complex will contribute $1.7 billion in earned income when it becomes fully operational. That amount would represent 26 percent the company's projected earnings in 2015. But with the project on hold indefinitely, those sorts of revenues seem out of reach.

Meanwhile, Corbin Hiar reports at iWatch News that TransCanada spent nearly half a million dollars lobbying for the pipeline last year.

TransCanada plans to reapply for approval in the future. Inside Climate has a good rundown of the company's options going forward. But as Greenpeace's Radford notes in his letter, failing to win approval for the pipeline will "significantly impact the company's future earnings and share price."

Study: Your Child is Not Fat Because You Had a C-section

Asawin Suebsaeng — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:50:48 +0000

There are plenty of risks that come with opting for a Cesarean section: There's always the chance of postpartum infection. There's a possible link between elective C-sections and higher infant mortality. The operation is often performed too early. And the scarring isn't exactly a plus.

But according to a recent study, the concern of "your kid will end up a fattie if you don't suck it up and give birth the way God intended..." can be crossed off the list.

Reuters Health has the story:

Kids born by Cesarean section are no more likely to become obese than if they are born vaginally, a new study concludes...For the new research, [scientists] used data on three groups of several thousand people born in Southern Brazil in 1982, 1993 or 2004...The new research is of particular interest in Brazil, because in 2009 more than half of the babies there were born by C-section. In the U.S., the number has been on the rise for years and is now over 30 percent.

The research does rightly address a controversial Brazilian study published last May that suggested a correlation between C-sections and fatter children. (The working theory was that lack of exposure to bacteria from the birth canal could increase the chances of chunky brood.)

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Greens Go After Obama Admin on Arctic Drilling

Kate Sheppard — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:45:26 +0000

Pew Environment is running some aggressive new ads targeting the Obama administration's decision to allow drilling in the Arctic to proceed. Last year, the Department of Interior approved Shell's drilling plan for the Beaufort Sea. Here's the television ad, which is ran on CNN and MSNBC after the State of the Union address on Tuesday, and which is running this weekend during the Sunday shows:

The group also took out full-page ads in Politico and the New York Times, cosponsored by the Ocean Conservancy. The group said they are expecting some key decisions on Arctic drilling from the administration in the coming weeks.

Image-of-the-Week: Chile's Antarctic Superbug

Julia Whitty — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:07:19 +0000

Escherichia coli: Mattosaurus via Wikimedia Commons.

Escherichia coli bacteria are ubiquitous in the lower gut of warm-blooded critters, and because we're warm-blooded and more or less ubiquitous on planet Earth, so are E. coli. While many strains are harmless, others are deadly. A new paper in Applied and Environmental Microbiology reports that one-fourth of seawater samples collected off Antarctica now contain E. coli that carry genes to make the enzyme ESBL. This enzyme is known to destroy antibiotics and is potentially more dangerous than the superbug MRSA. The contaminated seawater samples were found off three Chilean research stations, none of which deploy any form of sewage treatment. So far none of these superbug E. coli have been found in penguins. The researchers are beginning to investigate the local gulls. WTF, Chile? Clean your mierda.

About That "Clean Energy" Future

Kate Sheppard — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:45:00 +0000

President Obama devoted a significant portion of his energy remarks in the State of the Union to natural gas development on Tuesday. He called for greater production of the 100-year supply here in the US, and pledged to take "every possible action" ensure that it is done safely.

"America will develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk," he told the joint session of Congress. He has repeated his support for natural gas in multiple stops along his "America Built to Last" tour this week, which included a visit to a UPS facility in Nevada to tout a liquefied natural gas refueling station the company received stimulus money to build.

Leaving aside the concerns about safety related to fracking (and there are quite a few), the natural gas push raises a number of other questions about the longer-term safety and well-being of our citizens. For one, natural gas is still a fossil fuel. That means there's a finite supply of it, and 100 years isn't all that long, in the grand scheme of things. My (currently nonexistent) kids might still be alive then!

And then there's the greenhouse gas issue. Yes, in some ways it's cleaner than coal. Burning it releases less CO2, but it's not emission-free. The process of extracting gas from shale also causes a good deal of methane leakage. Cornell University's Robert Howarth, a professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology, released a paper last year that found it shale gas extraction is responsible for 20 percent more greenhouse gases than coal overall. Now he's got a new paper coming out in the journal Climatic Change that reasserts his finding natural gas is actually be worse than coal, which the Inter Press Service covered this week:

However, those climate gains are more than negated by methane leaks both at the well during the fracking process (called flow-back), and through the gas delivery and distribution system. Howarth and colleagues estimate that between 3.6 and 7.9 percent of all shale gas produced leaks—called "fugitive emissions"—into the atmosphere, making it worse than burning coal or oil.

Methane has 105 times the warming potential of CO2 over a 20-year time frame, after which it rapidly loses its warming potential. If large amounts of methane are released through fracking—as seems likely with hundreds of thousands of new wells forecast in the next two decades—Howarth says global temperatures could rocket upward from 0.8C currently to 1.8C in 15 to 35 years, running the risk of triggering a tipping point that could lead to catastrophic climate change.

Anyway, this is all to say that the safety and environmental concerns related to shale gas extraction aren't limited to fracking, and that the "cleanness" of this clean-energy solution isn't entirely clear.

Inside Apple's Hidden Factories. Finally.

Kiera Butler — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Almost everyone I know owns something made by Apple, and while most of us spend a fair bit of time obsessing about our gadgets—which apps are worth paying for? Is Siri useful or annoying?—rarely do we talk about where they came from. In part, that's because Apple wants it that way: The company is famously tight-lipped about its manufacturing process, and few outsiders have ever made it into their factories.

But now, Apple's tough facade has finally begun to crack: Recent coverage (more on this below) has provided a glimpse into Apple's vast supply chain and the massive profits it produces—more than $400,000 for every employee, according to a New York Times investigation. Here at Mother Jones, we've got a somewhat related investigation in the pipeline—come back in a few weeks for the details. Meanwhile, my colleague Dave Gilson made this handy tool.

We've loaded this iPhone up with 10 apps you won't find on a real smart phone. Click on an app to learn where your phone's electronic components really came from.

Supply Side

Apple spends an estimated $100 on the iPhone's 1,000-plus parts. It keeps a tight lid on where in the world they come from. If you deconstruct the gadget, you'll find fewer than 130 parts with a brand name or "made in" label on them.

Bad Apples

iPhones are made in Shenzhen, China, by the Taiwanese company Foxconn, which has been criticized for its working conditions, including long hours, harsh discipline, and a rash of worker suicides. Apple's own reviews found that more than half its audited manufacturers did not meet its labor standards for things such as child labor.

Miner Threat

A 16GB iPhone 3GS contains 12 gold-plated parts. Producing 1 ounce of gold creates 80 tons of waste. Layers of middlemen make it difficult to trace the source of the gold (or any other metal) in an iPhone, making it easy for minerals from conflict zones to slip into the supply chain.

Tantalized

The iPhone includes a tantalum capacitor. After a United Nations report linked its manufacturer, Kemet, to the illegal mineral trade in eastern Congo, the company vaguely announced it "supports avoiding" tantalum from the region.

Negative Charge

Rechargeable batteries have energized demand for lithium. Getting more will mean digging up 3,000 square miles of pristine Bolivian salt flats, home to one-half of the world's lithium reserves.

Tin Soldiers

Tin is used to solder circuit boards. Some 27,000 tons are extracted from Congo annually, earning armed groups an estimated $93 million or more.

Screen Slaver

The 3.5-inch LCD screen is reportedly made in Taiwan and China by Wintek, which has faced allegations of low wages, forced overtime, and ripping off migrant workers.

BadVibes

High-density tungsten is used to make cell phones vibrate. Three-quarters of the world's supply comes from China—not known for its mining safety record—and 1,400 tons are dug up annually in Congo.

MicroPolluter

Making a 0.07-ounce microchip uses 66 pounds of materials, including water and toxic chemicals such as flame retardants and chlorinated solvents. Greenpeace gives Apple a 4.6 out of 10 for its efforts to eliminate hazardous chemicals and minimize e-waste.

Locked In

The list price for a 16GB iPhone 4S is $649. It's yours for less than $200, if you don't mind being locked into a two-year contract with AT&T or Verizon.

This week, the New York Times has launched a series called "The iEconomy," and the first piece in the series focused on Apple's massive outsourcing of jobs to China. No task is too big, no deadline too tight:

One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone's screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

Another article focused on the "harsh conditions" at the Chinese factories where Apple gadgets are made.

A few weeks back, there was an incredible episode of This American Life, wherein Mike Daisey, a monologist and "self-described worshipper in the cult of Mac" visits the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, where iPads are made. What he finds there is mind-boggling. First, the sheer size of the place: 34,000 workers. The cafeterias seat thousands, and the dormitories are so crowded the beds remind Daisey of coffins.

Daisey meets a young woman who cleans iPad screens and discovers that she is just 13. While he is there, a worker dies after a 34-hour shift. But the most chilling part was Daisey's description of the factories as virtually silent. There's no thrum of machinery, he realizes, because there are hardly any machines. What we miss when we wax nostalgic about a time when things were made by hand, he says, is that "There are more handmade things now than there have ever been."

More bad news: Back in August, the Chinese NGO Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs released a report (PDF) on the pollution created by Apple's sprawling supply chain. Among its findings was that Apple doesn't even seem to be looking for environmental problems during its factory audits:

…the coalition has discovered more than 27 suspected suppliers to Apple that have had environmental problems. However, in the '2011 Supplier Responsibility Report' published by Apple Inc., where core violations were discovered from the 36 audits, not a single violation was based on environmental pollution…Therefore, despite Apple’s seemingly rigorous audits, pollution is still expanding and spreading along with the supply chain.

Of course, none of this is good news for gadget hounds. But is it bad enough to make people swear off iPads? Or at least to pressure Apple to change its ways?

Long Overdue Plant Hardiness Map is a Hothouse

Julia Whitty — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:53:11 +0000

2012 plant hardiness zone map. Click for interactive image: USDA and Oregon State University

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a long overdue new version of their Plant Hardiness Zone Map yesterday—the first update since 1990.

How out of date was the 1990 map? It was based on data from 1974 to 1986. That's 26 years ago.

The new map is interactive, which is cool, and based on a much finer data scale than the old one, which is great. And guess what. It shows that things are getting warmer. The USDA managed to pretty much bury that fact in Bureaucratese in their press release (highlights are mine):

Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in this edition of the map have shifted in many areas. The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States. This is mostly a result of using temperature data from a longer and more recent time period; the new map uses data measured at weather stations during the 30-year period 1976-2005. In contrast, the 1990 map was based on temperature data from only a 13-year period of 1974-1986.

1990 USDA plant hardiness: USDA

In the 1990 map above you can see the scale is less fine. But you can also tell at a glance where things have changed in a big way, compared to the 2012 map... in the southern Rockies, southern Appalachians, upper Michigan, swathes of the Canadian and Mexican borders, coastal California, etc.

The 2012 map comes with its own interesting climate-phobic history, as noted by Cornell University's gardening.cornell.edu:

In 2003 the American Horticultural Society released a draft version of a new map based on data from 1986 to 2002, which showed dramatic northward movement of hardiness zones. USDA pulled this map from circulation and had said they would release an updated map in 2005. Instead, in 2006 the Arbor Day Foundation issued a map noting that indeed climate zones had shifted significantly from 1990 to 2006, implying that the climate was warming. The map released today by USDA confirms many of these trends.

2006 Arbor Day plant hardiness map: Arbor Day Foundation

Here's the 2006 Arbor Day Foundation map, using the same scale as the 1990 map. You can see how things have warmed and how the planting zones are shifting north. If you parse this map against the finer-scale of the 2012 map, they look pretty much the same.

A Victory for Cute Kids, Civic Engagement, and the Trees

Kate Sheppard — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:39:00 +0000

You have to hand it to the enterprising students of Ted Wells' fourth grade class. On Wednesday, I wrote about the kids' Change.org campaign to get Universal Pictures to include more environmental education in the promotional materials for the film version of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. On Thursday, Wells and Change.org announced that Universal has added a huge green icon to the movie site that takes visitors to a a page full of information and tips on protecting the environment.

The "Lorax Project" page includes educational materials about trees around the world and ideas about what young people can do to protect them. Wells found out that Universal had updated its site when a representative from the company gave him a call on Wednesday afternoon. I spoke to Wells on the phone Thursday evening, after the class celebrated at their Brookline, Mass. school.

"I need to teach my students a lot in a year, but if I can teach them that they can make a difference, that it feels really good to be part of something bigger than themselves ... those are life lessons," Wells said. "I am pleased kids can have those experiences at 9 or 10."

Wells also sent some great quotes from his students via email. "We're going to be on earth longer than adults will," said one student in the class, Sophia. "By the time we're adults, it might not look as good as it does now UNLESS people start caring."

"Even though we might be very little we can still make a lot of change in anything we work hard at," said another student, Georgia.

The class petition got more than 57,000 signatures at Change.org. Wells said the class had a dance party during their snack break on Thursday to celebrate the victory.

Defending Climate Scientists

Kate Sheppard — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:44:00 +0000

A few months ago, I wrote about a new effort to provide legal defense support for climate scientists who become the subject of attacks. Now the fund is officially off the ground, and it has raised $25,000.

The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund announced this week that it has found a non-profit sponsor in the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Scott Mandia, a professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College, started the fund last September in response to the ongoing campaign that climate deniers have waged to obtain the emails and other correspondence of Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann. The ongoing fight has created a substantial amount of legal fees. Meanwhile, the American Tradition Institute, the group that has sued to access Mann's emails, has is linked to a number of wealthy fossil fuel interests.

"Academic salaries are not designed to support ongoing legal expenses in fights with corporate-funded law firms and institutes,” said Mandia in a statement announcing the fund's progress so far. "These legal battles also have taken many of our brightest scientific minds away from their research."

As we've reported rather extensively, many climate scientists are the subject of harassment. For more, see James West's piece on MIT's Kerry Emanuel, my piece on Texas Tech's Katharine Hayhoe, or my feature on Mann.