July 23, 2021 (ZME Science) -Norway is investing 1.7 billion euros into a full-scale carbon capture, transport, and storage project. The project named “Longship” is now under construction, and Norway is inviting other countries to join the project.

If we want to ensure a sustainable future without catastrophic climate damage, we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions — especially carbon dioxide. That can be done in several ways; one approach is to replace fossil fuel energy with renewable energy; another is to replace diesel cars with electric cars, or bicycles; changing our diets to less carbon-intensive foods can also make a big difference.

July 22, 2021 (ENN Network) -Oxygen-depleted bottom waters occur seasonally along the continental shelf of Washington and Oregon when strong winds blowing along the coast in spring and summer trigger upwellings that bring deep, cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface. These waters fuel blooms of plankton that feed small animals like krill, which are food for many marine creatures.

When these blooms die off, they sink to the bottom, where their decomposition consumes oxygen, leaving less for organisms such as crabs and bottom-dwelling fish.

July 21, 2021 (The Guardian) -There’s more below the surface than we thought – something even worse than the water companies’ disgusting habit of filling our rivers with raw sewage. After a deep dive into the data, the team that made Rivercide last week discovered that while sewage now dominates our perceptions of river pollution, it’s not their major cause of death.

On the border between Wales and England, we found a great river dying before our eyes. The Wye is covered by every possible conservation law, but in just a few years it has spiralled towards complete ecological collapse.

The vast beds of water crowfoot, the long fluttering weed whose white and yellow flowers once bedecked the surface of the river, and which – like mangroves around tropical seas – provide the nurseries in which young fish and other animals grow and adults hide and breed, have almost vanished in recent years. Our own mapping suggests a loss of between 90% and 97%.

July 21, 2021 (NY Times Climate Forward) - Wildfire smoke from Canada and the Western United States stretched across the continent this week, covering skies in a thick haze and triggering health alerts from Toronto to Philadelphia. Air quality remained in the unhealthy range across much of the East Coast on Wednesday morning as the haze pushed southward.

In recent weeks, a series of near-relentless heat waves and deepening drought linked to climate change have helped to fuel exploding wildfires. In southern Oregon, the Bootleg Fire grew so large and hot that it created its own weather, triggering lightning and releasing enormous amounts of smoke. But more than 80 large fires are currently burning across 13 American states, and many more are active across Canada.

July 16, 2021 (greener ideal) -When it comes to the world of food storage, nothing beats Ziploc bags, yet. Since its inception in the 1960s, these flexible bags have made packing lunch or freezing leftovers a tad bit easier.

However, as much as they are helpful, they risk polluting the environment with plastic waste. Ziploc bags fall under the category of single-use plastic bags, and most people are guilty of discarding them in the trash bin without much thought.

This waste ends up in landfills and bodies of water, affecting birds and marine life. Even worse is the fact that plastic bags take hundreds of years to degrade. Some never do.

The good news is that there are plenty of natural and Eco-friendly alternatives to Ziploc bags. From Lunchskin sandwich bags to Vegan food wraps, the article focuses on eight options you can try out

July 14, 2021 (The Guardian) -The emissions amount to a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to a study. The giant forest had previously been a carbon sink, absorbing the emissions driving the climate crisis, but is now causing its acceleration, researchers said.

Most of the emissions are caused by fires, many deliberately set to clear land for beef and soy production. But even without fires, hotter temperatures and droughts mean the south-eastern Amazon has become a source of CO2, rather than a sink.

July 13, 2021 (The Guardian) - What’s remarkable is not that a water company knowingly and deliberately poured billions of liters of raw sewage into the sea to cut its costs. What’s remarkable is that the Environment Agency investigated and prosecuted it. Every day, water companies pour tonnes of unprocessed filth into England’s rivers and seas, and the government does nothing.

Even in the wake of the sentence last week, under which Southern Water was fined £90m, the company’s own maps show a continued flow of raw filth into coastal waters.

July 12, 2021 (The Guardian) - More manatees have died already this year than in any other year in Florida’s recorded history, primarily from starvation due to the loss of seagrass beds, state officials have said.

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that 841 manatee deaths were recorded between 1 January and 2 July, breaking the previous record of 830 that died during the whole of 2013 because of an outbreak of toxic red tide.

July 12, 2021 (ZME Science) -Although they cover only 2% of Earth’s surface, cities are major contributors to the climate crisis we’re currently facing. Some cities like Tokyo or Delhi, with populations numbering in the tens of millions, harbor more people than entire medium-sized countries, with greenhouse gas emissions to match. According to a recent analysis, just 25 such mega-cities are responsible for 52% of global urban greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

July 12, 2021 (National Geographic) -Emerging from a nearby mountain gorge, the Vjosa River radiates across the vast gravel expanse below this historic, hill-set town. Its fast-flowing, turquoise waters weave a whimsical web of channels and streams. This is a river that runs where it wants.

It is also what many rivers in central Europe once looked like long ago, before they were polluted, dammed, and fragmented over the last two centuries. Today, more rivers in Europe have been altered and obstructed by man-made barriers than on any other continent. The Vjosa, which flows unimpeded through southern Albania to the Adriatic Sea, is one of the last major European rivers that still runs wild. That makes it the flagship for conservation efforts to protect smaller free-flowing rivers throughout the Balkans, which also remain relatively intact.

July 12, 2021 (NY Times Climate Forward) -For much of the past decade, oil companies engaged in drilling and fracking have been allowed to pump into the ground chemicals that, over time, can break down into toxic substances known as PFAS — a class of long-lasting compounds known to pose a threat to people and wildlife — according to internal documents from the Environmental Protection Agency.

July 9, 2021 (NY Times Climate Forward) -The Sea of Marmara, fabled for centuries for its blue waters and sparkling fish, laps the shores of Istanbul. Its perfect form inspired a 19th-century historian to describe the ancient city as “a diamond set between two sapphires.”

But the Marmara has been sickening for a long time, and this year, it suffered a paroxysm that choked its waters and suffocated marine life. In April, thousands of fish died and by May a natural secretion called mucilage emerged, smothering harbors and beaches with its slimy film.

July 8, 2021 (greener ideal) -As our collective adoption of technology and electronics continues to grow, so does the amount of electronic waste (or e-waste) that’s building up around the globe.

Between TVs, cell phones, computers, and everything else with a circuit board, it’s already a considerable amount – 50 million tonnes of it are produced every year!

For instance, in 2020 alone, small household equipment such as irons, kettles, toasters, vacuum cleaners, etc., made up 37% of e-waste. Larger equipment contributed 22% to the e-waste problem, while small IT gadgets like phones and laptops added 9% to e-waste.

July 8, 2021 (ZME Science) -Environmental agencies such as the EPA regularly monitor water supplies for pharmaceuticals designed to treat human afflictions so as to avoid the contamination of aquatic wildlife. However, illicit drugs can also be a huge concern, especially the highly addictive ones like cocaine or methamphetamines. After a hard weekend of partying or in the aftermath of a festival, the water can be contaminated with trace amounts of illicit drugs after they’re excreted by users.

One study, for instance, found that wastewater in Amsterdam contains 1,028mg of cocaine per one thousand people, the highest recorded in Europe thus far. It’s not clear how exactly aquatic wildlife is affected by drugs flowing through city drains, but a new study raises concerns.

July 7, 2021 (REUTERS) -Tourists visiting the picturesque port at Cassis, southern France, often see an unedifying sight: plastic bags, discarded drinks bottles, and even used surgical masks, floating in the water among the boats in the marina.

But the port has found a solution, in the shape of a bright yellow remote-controlled electric powered boat that weaves around the harbor sucking the trash into a net that it trails behind its twin hulls.

The boat, called Jellyfishbot, is about the size of a suitcase and so can get into the corners and narrow spaces where rubbish tends to accumulate but which are difficult for cleaners with nets to reach.

July 6, 2021 (CPR News) -Gov. Jared Polis will sign House Bill 21-1162 into law today, marking the slow end of plastic bags for major Colorado retailers, grocery stores and restaurants.

The ban, which will also apply to single-use foam containers, won’t fully go into effect until 2024, but the state will start introducing those restrictions in 2023. Customers will have to pay 10 cents per paper or plastic bag at establishments that have to follow the ban.

60% of the money raised by the temporary bag tax will go toward local recycling or composting programs. The rest will go to the businesses themselves.

July 5, 2021 (greener ideal) -The food waste problem has existed ever since technology enabled us to produce more food than we actually need; and like many other environmental issues, it can’t be solved until every one of us gets involved.

However, while the bad news is that we have created a real problem, the good news is it’s totally solvable and preventable with minimal efforts from the end consumers.

July 5, 2021 (ZME Science) -A European Union (EU) directive from 2019 restricting certain single-use plastic products has now officially come into force, forcing governments to stop selling cutlery, straws, stirrers, bags, cotton bud sticks, and polystyrene drinks and food containers — plastics which account for 70% of the marine litter in Europe.

The ban is part of a larger effort by Europe to cut plastic pollution by creating a circular economy model. By the end of the decade, the bloc aspires to have a de facto ban on throwaway plastics, a comprehensive reuse system for all other plastics, and an expensive and potentially lucrative European market for recycled plastics.

July 5, 2021 (ZME Science) -Cows, which are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, could end up helping in another environmental crisis. According to a new study, the cow gut can digest certain types of plastic and offer a sustainable way of reducing plastic litter — not by having cows eat plastic, but by recreating the bacteria in a controlled environment.

The stomachs of cows (like other ruminants) have four compartments, the largest of which is called the rumen. The rumen favors the development of a microbial community that is essential to the cows’ wellbeing. Cows can’t technically digest much of the food they eat, so instead, microbes in the rumen ferment the food and produce volatile fatty acids, which are the cows’ main source of energy.

July 2, 2021 (REUTERS) -A fire on the ocean surface west of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula early on Friday has been extinguished, state oil company Pemex said, blaming a gas leak from an underwater pipeline for sparking the blaze captured in videos that went viral.

Bright orange flames jumping out of water resembling molten lava was dubbed an "eye of fire" on social media due to the blaze's circular shape, as it raged a short distance from a Pemex oil platform.

July 2, 2021 (National Geographic) -It’s no secret that fireworks can cause some serious air pollution, in the United States as well as in other countries where holiday displays are common, like China and India. But not everyone is equally at risk from the noxious particles that suffuse the sky during our pyrotechnic light shows. In California, for example, vulnerable populations are more exposed to fireworks pollution on the Fourth of July.

That’s according to a recent study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on air pollution exposure across the state due to Independence Day fireworks.

July 2, 2021 (THE CONVERSATION) -As North America enters its peak summer growing season, gardeners are planting and weeding, and groundskeepers are mowing parks and playing fields. Many are using the popular weed killer Roundup, which is widely available at stores like Home Depot and Target.

In the past two years, three U.S. juries have awarded multimillion-dollar verdicts to plaintiffs who asserted that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, gave them non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. Bayer, a German chemical company, bought Roundup’s inventor, Monsanto, in 2018 and inherited some 125,000 pending lawsuits, of which it has settled all but about 30,000

July 2, 2021 (ZME Science) -Clean, disinfected water is essential for a good life, but millions of people around the world lack access to it. Researchers at the Cardiff University plan to change this state of affairs with an on-site disinfection approach that is massively more efficient than our current disinfection approaches. The method relies only on atmospheric hydrogen, oxygen, and a gold-palladium catalyst.

The new method aims to provide clean, safe water for consumption and hygiene in areas without access to such resources or reliable disinfection methods. All in all, it could help improve life for billions of people who are struggling with lack of water or water insecurity.

June 30, 2021 (The Guardian) -Via an unprecedented wave of lawsuits, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for the devastation caused by fossil fuels

After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes.

June 29, 2021 (National Resources Defense Council(NRDC)) -When the backers of the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline pitched their project in 2008, they couldn’t have foreseen this ending.

Back then, the Canadian fossil fuel giant TC Energy, formerly known as TransCanada, figured it would easily snag the necessary permits and soon be on its way to piping more than 800,000 barrels of tar sands crude each day from northern Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska. From there, the new pipeline extension would connect with Keystone I, which would then carry the oil down to refineries.

June 24, 2021 (NY Times Climate Forward) -Wrangling a 25-foot-long tube of straw up a steep hillside studded with charred pine trees, three volunteer workers placed it in a shallow trench that had been dug along the slope.

Locked in place with wooden stakes, the sausage-like tube was part of an effort to avoid a potentially large and long-term problem with the drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people to the east. The tube, with others above and below it, should help prevent the hillside, made unstable last fall by a large wildfire, from choking the water supply with sediment when the thunderstorms known as monsoon rains arrive as expected this summer.

June 28, 2021 (KQED) -A new analysis from an environmental advocacy group highlights a dirty secret about California-produced oil: It is responsible for higher carbon emissions than the oil the state imports.

Scientists with the Center for Biological Diversity examined the carbon intensity of the crude oil supplied to California refineries and released their analysis on Monday, which shows that producing gasoline from heavy crude oil drilled in places like Kern County takes a lot of energy and creates tons of pollution.

They found that the carbon intensity of oil produced in California has climbed by 22% since 2012.

June 24, 2021 (NY Times Climate Forward) -Shipping produces 2.9% of global carbon-dioxide emissions, almost as much as the entire continent of South America. With every country benefiting from global trade, it could be argued that shipping is everybody’s responsibility, but it is treated as if it is nobody’s.

In the vast but liminal space of the ocean, cargo vessels — some of the largest machines on the planet — have generally operated in obscurity. The industry’s greenhouse-gas emissions have only grown as world trade has expanded, about 10% in the last six years. Shipowners, charterers and regulators have done little about the situation.

June 24, 2021 (ZME Science) -Gabon, an equatorial country located at the western end of the Congo Basin rainforest, has just become the first African country to receive payment for reducing carbon emissions by protecting its rainforest. More than 90% of the country is covered by forests, which means it captures more CO2 than what it emits.

Some believe this could be a pathway to getting developing nations (which have historically produced less greenhouse gas than developed nations) on board for reducing their emissions.

Gabon has received $17 million from the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), an organization launched in 2015 by the United Nations and backed by international donors. The payment came after independent experts verified Gabon’s results, showing a decline in the country’s emissions in 2016 and 2017, the government said. It’s not a large sum, but it can help get the ball rolling.

June 23, 2021 (greener ideal) -There are all kinds of things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint, and the list is likely familiar to many of you by now—biking to work, turning off household lights when you’re not using them, buying local produce. But one method you may not have thought of is to buy Eco-friendly curtains.

Our curtains are one of the features of our house that we may not actively think about much, but they serve so many purposes (decoration, warming the house, keeping out light, giving us privacy) that we would be hard-pressed to live without them.

However, the synthetic fibers that many curtains are made of have an extremely negative effect on the environment. What’s an environmentally-conscious person to do, then? That’s where Eco-friendly curtains come in.

June 23, 2021 (ZME Science) -Filtering wastewater through the roots of willow trees could help scrub over 30 million liters per hectare of trees, which is quite a decent amount. While these trees won’t overtake our current water treatment sites just yet, they do show great potential for the job.

Willow trees are not just very effective at extracting compounds like nitrogen out of wastewater, the team explains, but they can also tolerate high volumes of it (which is a bit of a prerequisite for a filtration system).

Additionally, the trees can eventually be harvested for their biomass, and used, for example, to make biofuels.

June 22, 2021 (ZME Science) -A combination of innovations in digital agriculture, crop and microbial genetics, and electrification could bring down emissions from agriculture by up to 70% in the next 15 years, according to a new study.

It’s a win-win situation — these technologies are already available and could help agriculture decarbonize while increasing resilience, profits, and productivity.

June 22, 2021 (ZME Science) -Our everyday exposure to UV rays, ozone, cigarette smoke, industrial chemicals, and other pollutants might be even more damaging than we’ve believed.

Such factors can lead to the production of free radicals in our bodies, highly reactive chemical molecules that damage tissues or DNA. A new study from West Virginia University, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, reports that unrepaired DNA damage incurred from these radicals can cause us to age faster.

From their research on aging and cell damage in animals, the team is confident in the effect pollution could have on these factors in humans.

June 18, 2021 (Mother Jones) -You probably know by now that when you wash a load of synthetic clothes, like yoga pants or moisture-wicking sweatshirts, tiny bits of them tear loose and flush out to a wastewater treatment facility, which then pumps them out to sea

A single load of laundry releases perhaps millions of these microfibers (technically a subspecies of microplastics, defined as bits smaller than 5 millimeters). So it’s no wonder that scientists are finding the particles everywhere they look, from the deepest seas to what’s no longer a pristine Arctic.

June 17, 2021 (Los Angeles Times) - The dominant narrative about labor unions and climate change is that fossil fuel workers are a major roadblock to action. There’s good reason for that reputation. In California, building trades unions have fought against limiting oil and gas extraction and won industry-friendly changes to climate policies. Nationally, labor leaders have urged President Biden not to block oil pipelines such as Keystone XL (which was just canceled) and Minnesota’s Line 3 (where the Biden administration sand-blasted protesters this week).

So it’s worth slowing down to examine a groundbreaking new report — endorsed by 19 unions, including two representing thousands of California oil workers — that offers a preview of what the path forward might look like.

June 17, 2021 (NBC NEWS) -Every week, Burlyn Cooper parks on the edge of a winding two-lane road, unloads a dozen plastic jugs from the trunk of his car, and uses a hose to fill them with the spring water that drips from a mountain's exposed rock face. For Cooper and many of his neighbors, the mountain's runoff is their most reliable, and trusted, source of drinking water.

"I've got so used to it, I wouldn't know how to act, to turn the faucet on and have good water," he said. "I can't imagine it."

June 17, 2021 (NBC NEWS) -A container ship carrying chemicals sank off Sri Lanka's capital on Thursday nearly a month after catching fire, raising concerns about a possible environmental disaster, officials said.

The ship's operator said the wreck of the Singapore-flagged X-Press Pearl "is now wholly sitting on the seabed at a depth of 70 feet."

A salvage crew was at the site to deal with any debris and report any spill, X-Press Feeders said.

June 16, 2021 (Allegheny Front) -The 10 biggest industrial polluters in Allegheny County released more toxic pollution into the air in 2019 than they did in previous years, according to a report PennEnvironment released Tuesday. But while overall emissions were higher, there are signs that several sites will pollute less in the future.

“Collectively, we found that the ‘Toxic 10’ combined released more than 1 million pounds of pollution in 2019,” said PennEnvironment’s Zachary Barber. “That is an increase in pollution across the 10 facilities versus the last report,” said Barber. “That is obviously a step backwards.”

June 15, 2021 (ScienceNews) -A new chemical analysis has revealed an ugly truth about beauty products: Many may contain highly persistent, potentially harmful “forever chemicals” called PFAS.

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, include thousands of chemicals that are so sturdy they can linger in the body for years and the environment for centuries. The health effects of only a few PFAS are well known, but those compounds have been linked to high cholesterol, thyroid diseases and other problems.

“There is no known good PFAS,” says chemist and physicist Graham Peaslee of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

June 14, 2021 (The Guardian) -There is now so much ocean plastic that it has become a route for invasive species, threatening native animals with extinction.

Japan’s 2011 tsunami was catastrophic, killing nearly 16,000 people, destroying homes and infrastructure, and sweeping an estimated 5m tons of debris out to sea.

That debris did not disappear, however. Some of it drifted all the way across the Pacific, reaching the shores of Hawaii, Alaska and California – and with it came "hitchhikers."

June 14, 2021 (ZME Science)-The invention of plastic has been one of the most important cornerstones to raising our standard of living in the past century. However, the same qualities that make plastic so desirable to consumers — in particular, its very low cost and high durability — also make it a bane to the environment.

This is why scientists across the world are busy researching sustainable solutions to our growing plastic litter problem, either at the source (i.e. finding biodegradable alternatives) or during waste treatment.

One such effort focused on the latter. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland devised an experimental method that converts treated polyethylene terephthalate (PET) — the lightweight plastic used to package everything from beverages to food — into vanillin, the primary ingredient extracted from vanilla beans that creates the characteristic taste and smell of vanilla.

June 13, 2021 (CleanTechnica)-At the summit, the leaders of the G-7 countries — the UK, USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and Italy, and the EU — will be joined by guest nations Australia, India, South Korea, and South Africa. Tackling climate change is one of the four policy priorities on the agenda.

Ahead of the Leaders’ Summit, the finance ministers of the G-7 nations met last week. The highlight of that meeting was the announcement of a commitment to a global minimum tax rate of 15% for major corporations.

June 11, 2021 (National Geographic) -Rivers are often seen as nature’s lifeline. That is certainly true here, in one of the hottest places on Earth, where life prevails because of a waterway that, for the most part, can’t be seen.

The river is the Amargosa, and for much of its 180-mile course, from the desert highlands of southern Nevada through California’s Mojave Desert and into Death Valley, it runs below ground, underneath a barren moonscape of crag and crust.

But in the stretches and springs where the river surfaces, an explosion of life occurs; some of the plants, birds, and fishes found here exist nowhere else in the world. But for all its richness, life in the Amargosa River Basin is intensely fragile, and appears to be growing increasingly so.

June 11, 2021 (Oregon Public Broadcasting)-Developers appear to be calling it quits on a long-planned and controversial proposal to build a $2 billion methanol plant on the banks of the lower Columbia River.

The Port of Kalama announced Friday that the developer, NW Innovation Works, had terminated its lease, effectively ending the project. It would have converted fracked natural gas into methanol to be shipped to Asia.

June 11, 2020 (THE CONVERSATION)-Ships carry more than 80% of world trade, and they rely heavily on some of the least environmentally friendly transportation fuels available.

There are no cheap, widely available solutions that can lower the shipping industry’s planet-warming carbon emissions – in fact, shipping is considered one of the hardest industries on the planet to decarbonize – but some exciting innovations are being tested right now.

June 10, 2021 (ZME Science)-Researchers affiliated with the World Mosquito Program, a non-profit concerned with protecting communities across the world from mosquito-borne diseases, just reported that its most recent trial meant to cull dengue in Indonesia was a stunning success.

After releasing treated mosquitoes that were infected with a bacteria that makes them sterile, over the course of three years the number of dengue cases plummeted by nearly 77% while the number of dengue hospitalizations dropped by 86%.

June 9, 2021 (The Guardian)-The last decent rain on Banaba was more than a year ago.

Without rain, people on the isolated central Pacific island, which is part of the country of Kiribati, have been forced to rely on a desalination plant for all their water for drinking, bathing and growing crops.

But in late November the plant broke down and the situation became desperate for the nearly 300 people living there. Harrowing stories emerged of people forced to drink contaminated water, outbreaks of diseases and fears of starvation.

June 8, 2021 (GIZMODO)-Glaciers in the French Alps look like the scene of a massacre. Normally topped with pristine, white snow, they’re increasingly covered with dark, bloody-looking spots dubbed “glacier blood.”

The blotches aren’t actually blood—they’re microalgae blooms. It’s a phenomenon known as Chlamydomonas nivalis, wherein species of green algae that contain a red pigment undergo photosynthesis and stain the snow. But while the scenes may not show an actual murder, they do portend a dangerous future for ice in the Alps.

June 8, 2020 (THE CONVERSATION)-Record-breaking fires over the past decade suggest the western U.S. has entered a new era of megafires.

Fire itself is not the problem – it has been characteristic of the North American West for millennia. The problem is when fires, fueled by dry and overgrown forests, grow into giant blazes that move fast, fill the skies with smoke, and threaten homes and cities.

June 8, 2021 (DW News)-Central to ocean sustainability is stopping widespread overfishing and illegal fishing, which is threatening highly biodiverse marine life around the world. While Chinese trawlers are in the spotlight for plundering waters in Latin America for example, Greenpeace has long called out the "massacre" of threatened bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, and is demanding the creation of marine reserves.

June 8, 2021 (ZME Science)-Carbon dioxide levels have hit an all-time high — again. In May (the month scientists use to compare year-to-year CO2 shifts), carbon dioxide in the atmosphere averaged 419 parts per million, according to data from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Unfortunately, that in itself would hardly even classify as news anymore. But what really is striking is that CO2 levels haven’t been this high since before humans emerged as a species. We’d have to go to the Pliocene Epoch, between 4.1 to 4.5 million years ago, to see similar levels — a period when sea levels were nearly 80 feet higher and temperatures were about 7°F above the preindustrial era.

June 8, 2021 (ZME Science)-A new review of eight existing studies published in the journal Environmental Research Letters has found that livestock farms and feedlots in North America may be emitting far more methane than previously assumed.

The researchers from New York University and Johns Hopkins University found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — which estimates methane from livestock as part of a greenhouse gas inventory — does not verify its estimates by measuring concentrations of the gas in the air.

June 7, 2021 (National Resources Defense Council(NRDC)d) -When the Wilmington, North Carolina, StarNews broke a story in 2017 about the rampant contamination of the region’s drinking water supply by a chemical called GenX, Tom Kennedy had just finished four months of chemotherapy for his stage 2 breast cancer.

During the radiation treatment that followed, Kennedy, then 45, learned that the cancer had metastasized to his brain, newly classifying him as a stage 4 terminal patient with 6 to 12 months to live. Four years later, with some 60 rounds of chemotherapy under his belt, he’s still going strong.

But also four years later, the Cape Fear River watershed—which supplies drinking water for Kennedy’s family and around 350,000 other North Carolinians—remains contaminated with the perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that DuPont, and its spin-off, Chemours, dumped into the river for more than four decades.

June 7, 2021 (ZME Sciencey), -The Field Museum made news recently, as it published findings from its unique library. The library, described sometimes as a bunker, an underground warehouse, or even a “library of life on Earth”, contains fish specimens preserved in jars. In their latest study, researchers from Loyola University looked at the presence of microplastics in fish.

Tim Hoellein, a professor, and grad student Loren Hou have been examining the timeline of the microplastics buildup in fish, looking to see when and how plastic started accumulating in fish — and what we can expect for the future.

June 7, 2021 (INHABITAT), -According to Reuters, the European Union is considering a draft proposal that would impose tariffs carbon emissions-based tariffs on a variety of imported goods, including steel, cement, and electricity. The news was first reported by Bloomberg last Wednesday. The new tariffs are designed to protect the 27 member nations of the EU from lower cost products made in countries with few or no carbon emission restrictions.

The draft under consideration may be amended before final publication on July 14. The proposed tariffs would be applied in full beginning in 2026, with a potential transitional period starting in 2023. The products subject to the new tariffs include iron, steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizers, and electricity.

June 4, 2021 (pv magazine), -Steel is a major building block of our modern world, used to make everything from cutlery to bridges and wind turbines. But the way it’s made – using coal – is making climate change worse.

On average, almost two tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) are emitted for every tonne of steel produced. This accounts for about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Cleaning up steel production is clearly key to Earth’s low-carbon future.

(The Guardian), June 4, 2021 -The root cause of pandemics – the destruction of nature – is being ignored, scientists have warned. The focus of world leaders on responding to future outbreaks overlooks the far cheaper and more effective strategy of stopping the spillover of disease from animals to humans in the first place, they have said.

The razing of forests and hunting of wildlife is increasingly bringing animals and the microbes they harbor into contact with people and livestock. About 70% of new infectious diseases have come from animals, including Covid-19, Sars, bird flu, Ebola and HIV.

(ZME Science), June 2, 2021 -By now, you probably all know that coral reefs around the world are struggling. Waters that are too warm and too acidic are causing corals to bleach — to eject their symbiotic algae under stress. If this happens enough times in rapid succession, reefs can see massive damage and coral death.

We’ve been trying to find a solution to this problem for quite a while. New research may have found something that will help us, in the form of the table coral Acropora. These can regenerate habitats in reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef faster than any other coral type.

(NY Times), June 2, 2021 - As the world’s oil and gas giants face increasing pressure to reduce their fossil fuel emissions, small, privately held drilling companies are becoming the country’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, often by buying up the industry’s high-polluting assets.

According to a startling new analysis of the latest emissions data disclosed to the Environmental Protection Agency, five of the industry’s top ten emitters of methane, a particularly potent planet-warming gas, are little-known oil and gas producers, some backed by obscure investment firms, whose environmental footprints are wildly large relative to their production.

(The Guardian), June 1, 2021 - Swimmers in the UK hoping to enjoy waters certified clean and healthy this summer have been let down again. Only 110 coastal and inland sites were judged excellent in the latest bathing water quality data from Europe’s environmental watchdog.

Most of the UK’s bathing sites were not classified in 2020, however, because Covid-19 restrictions prevented sampling. This meant that out of 640 sites, 457 received no verdict in the rankings, compiled annually by the European Environment Agency and published on Tuesday.

(National Geographic), June 1, 2021 -Across the flatlands of the American Midwest, concrete low-head dams served for decades as important tools in flood management, as gauging stations, and for irrigation. They’re also highly dangerous—nicknamed “drowning machines” by some water management agencies.

The hydrodynamics caused by the fast flow off the dam’s ledge result in water moving in a reverse circular motion between the dam wall and the water boil point, typically a couple of yards downstream. Anything—or anyone—caught in the current gets pushed underwater, turned up and pushed back down again.

(ZME Science), May 31, 2021 -If you’re an explorer visiting for the first time one of the deepest trenches of the ocean, you’re probably expecting to find many cool and new things, such as deep-sea creatures. For Dr. Deo Florence Onda, who just returned from visiting the Philippine Trench, the findings included something much more ubiquitous – plastic waste.

(REUTERS), May 31, 2021 -An Italian court on Monday sentenced the former owners of the Ilva Steelworks, Fabio and Nicola Riva, to 22 and 20 years in jail respectively for allowing it to spew out deadly pollution.

Once the largest steel producer in Europe, the factory emitted a lethal cocktail of carcinogenic dioxins and mineral particles for more than half a century, that medics say caused a surge in cancer in the adjacent city of Taranto.

(The Guardian), May 28, 2021 - Sewage sludge that wastewater treatment districts across America package and sell as home fertilizer contain alarming levels of toxic PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, a new report has revealed.

Sludge, which is lightly treated and marketed as biosolids, is used by consumers to fertilize home gardens, and the PFAS levels raise concerns that the chemicals are contaminating vegetables and harming those who eat them.

(ZME Science), May 28, 2021 -If you’d take a time-lapse view of some parts in Mexico City, you’d probably notice a lot of differences. Buildings, historic sites, and streets all seem to exhibit a growing number of cracks and fissures. Hidden from the surface eye, the same thing is happening to sewage, gas, and water lines in the city.

At first glance, you’d be inclined to attribute this to the strong earthquakes that sometimes strike Mexico City. But while earthquakes can cause their own damage, they’re not the main culprit here. Instead, it’s something much more inconspicuous: subsidence.

(Deutsche Welle), May 28, 2021 -From the dumping of defoliants like Agent Orange on forests in Vietnam to oil wells set ablaze during the Gulf War and the contamination of the aquifers bombed in Gaza, environmental destruction has long been a by-product of conflict.

Less talked about is the impact of war and the military on the climate crisis. This is partly because military emissions have been largely exempted from international climate treaties, starting with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

(NY Times Climate Forward), May 27, 2021 -Built in the 1950s to speed suburban commuters to and from downtown, Rochester’s Inner Loop destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, replacing them with a broad, concrete trench that separated downtown from the rest of the city.

Now, the city is looking to repair the damage. It started by filling in a nearly-mile-long section of the sunken road, slowly stitching a neighborhood back together. Today, visitors of the Inner Loop’s eastern segment would hardly know a highway once ran beneath their feet.

(ZME Science), May 27, 2021 -Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell will have to reduce its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 (from 2019 levels) following a ruling of a Dutch court. That’s a much larger drop than the company’s current aim of 20%. Civil society largely celebrated the move, which they argue will have implications for other fossil fuel companies around the world.

This is the first time that a court has ruled a company has to reduce its emissions in line with the global climate targets, according to Friends of the Earth, the environmental organization that brought the case against Shell. It comes a week after the International Energy Agency asked fossil companies to stop drilling for oil and gas right now.

(ZME Science),May 27, 2021 -A new report claims that a dietary tool can be used to simultaneously reduce unhealthy eating and climate change impacts. The “double-pyramid”, which takes into account cultural differences in the consumption of food, has already been used with success in areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, researchers say.

The article contains a graph for a better understanding of the Double Pyramid.

(Center for Biological Diversity), May 27, 2021 -Following the recent discovery that up to 500,000 barrels of the banned pesticide DDT were dumped into the Pacific Ocean off Southern California, the Center for Biological Diversity sent Montrose Chemical Corp. and its successor parent company, Bayer Corp., a notice of intent to sue them today. Today’s notice letter calls for the companies to take responsibility for this toxic threat to public health and wildlife.

Starting in 1947 and continuing through at least 1961, Montrose employees transported barrels of DDT and acid sludge waste from the company’s Torrance, Calif. facility to barges, where they were dumped into the ocean near Santa Catalina Island.