Dolphin species might not be extinct

The baiji or white flag dolphin survived for millions of years but was declared effectively extinct in December after a fruitless six-week search of its Yangtze River habitat. The official Xinhua News Agency reported that a man in the central province of Anhui saw and shot footage of a "big white animal" in the Yangtze river on Aug. 19. The Chinese Academy of Sciences has confirmed that the animal in the footage was a white flag dolphin, it said.

Global warming causes increase in tropical rainfall

Climate change appears to be resulting in higher levels of rainfall in the tropics, reports NASA. Using a 27-year-long global record of rainfall from satellite and ground-based instruments -- the longest and most complete data record available -- scientists found that the rainiest years in the tropics between 1979 and 2005 have mostly occurred since 2001. The rainiest year was 2005, followed by 2004, 1998, 2003 and 2002. The researchers said 2006 may tie 2005 as the rainiest year since 1979.

$1B cleanup of Alaska bases drags on

Alaska became a transit hub for weapons and supplies sent to Russia during World War II. In 1942, the Japanese capture of Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands also spurred speedy military buildup. During the Cold War, radar and satellite stations sprang up along the northern and western coasts to watch for Soviet air attacks over the North Pole. "Our people welcomed the military, our men enlisted, they helped rescue downed planes and the Department of Defense has not taken into consideration the human health effects of these places," said Vi Waghiyi of the Norton Sound Alaska Project, an arm of the nonprofit Alaska Community Action on Toxics.

Environmental impact worrying

Canadians are suffering more from environment-related health problems. “This year’s report card reinforces the intrinsic link between a healthy environment and a healthy population,” said Dr. Colin McMillan, CMA president.“Physicians are seeing more patients with health problems directly related to environmental factors. The degradation of the environment is resulting in increasing emergency room visits, hospitalizations and even premature deaths,”

Canada's increased military presence in the Arctic poses environmental dangers

The Canadian Forces mounted four operations in the Arctic this year, one more than in 2006, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently promised to build a deep-sea port and military training centre to bolster Canada's claim over the region. Russia recently made its own move to assert its sovereignty over the top of the world by placing a flag beneath the North Pole. The federal government has carefully documented its stepped-up Arctic presence with official photographs on the National Defence website showing soldiers firing ammunition rounds.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Bali this December

As an energy exporter and a carbon-intensive economy, Australia can play a decisive role in the international response to climate change. The Government's pillars might at first look superficially impressive. But when we examine the substance, it becomes clear that the five pillars don't actually hold up much weight. The first pillar, support for progress towards a new global framework, is the Government's most abject failure. This failure began with a negative approach to the original Kyoto Protocol negotiations, which saw it achieve the dubious honour of being one of only three industrialised countries to negotiate an increased target of emissions from the 1990 baseline level.

Arctic Ice Shrinks to New Low

The University of Colorado at Boulder said there is a 92 percent chance the 2007 September minimum extent of sea ice across the Arctic region will set an all-time record low. Researchers had previously said the chance of setting a record was only 33 percent. "During the first week in July, the Arctic sea ice started to disappear at rates we had never seen before," said Drobot.

Irrigation may lose to global warming

California's Central Valley has been buffered against global warming by the expansion of irrigated cropland, but the cooling effect may not help much in the future, according to scientists at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Evaporation from irrigation cools the land surface, and the steady addition of newly irrigated land during the past century has counteracted rising temperatures in agricultural areas. The average cooling effect has slowly increased as irrigation expanded to more than 12,700 square miles for a total of between 3.2 and 5.8 degrees.

Dirty City Air Stunts Kids' Lungs

Long-term exposure to high levels of air pollution causes reduced lung growth and function in children, according to a study of almost 3,200 Mexico City eight-year-olds.
They noted that the effect of air pollution on forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) a measure of lung function among children in the study was greater than the effect of exposure to mothers' smoking among children in the United States.

Climate change protest at Heathrow

Hundreds of climate demonstrators set up a tent camp next to London's Heathrow airport on Monday and threatened "direct action" at the world's busiest air hub to protest against global warming. Police with batons were on alert at the field where the camp is based, within one kilometer of the airport complex. The campaigners plan a week of activities they say will culminate on Sunday in 24 hours of "direct action" in a bid to force the government to halt the planned expansion of the airport, which they argue will exacerbate climate change.

Forest fires damage ecology in Algeria

Forest fires in Batna that spread over 5,000 hectares over the past 20 days have caused an ecological catastrophe in the region, El Khabar reported on Wednesday (August 8th). Thousands of rare plants and trees in the forests of Bni Fdala and Larbaa Municipalities, 20 of which could be found only in Algeria and Morocco, were destroyed. Many rare birds and animal species died, the paper quoted the local forest department as saying.

Cloudy forecast for global warming

"All leading climate models forecast that as the atmosphere warms there should be an increase in high- altitude cirrus clouds, which would amplify any warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases," Spencer says in a press release. "That amplification is a positive feedback. What we found in month-to-month fluctuations of the tropical climate system was a strongly negative feedback. As the tropical atmosphere warms, cirrus clouds decrease. That allows more infrared heat to escape from the atmosphere to outer space."

Chinese "environment activist" sentenced to 3 years

A Chinese man who claimed himself to be an environment activist has been sentenced to three years in prison on charges of extortion and fraud on Friday. Wu Lihong, 39, a farmer in Zhoutie Township of Yixing City in east China's Jiangsu Province, was also fined 3,000 yuan (about 390 U.S. dollars), the Yixing City People's Court ruled. Wu had led a campaign to clean up the Taihu Lake in eastern China. He was hailed as an "eco-warrior" for spending years to expose and report on polluting factories.

Pollution from U.S. coal-fired power plants

Ontario has launched a second official complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, saying rule changes for American coal-fired power plants will spew even more harmful pollution across the border. The province filed comments Tuesday arguing the U.S. plans will only relax the rules, allowing out-dated plants to operate longer hours without installing modern pollution controls. “Air pollution from the U.S. coal-fired power plants continues to harm the health, environment and economy of Ontario,” said Environment Minister Laurel Broten.

Al Gore cites Exxon as misleading on warming

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said some of the world's largest energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., are funding research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global warming as part of a campaign to mislead the public.

Without ecology there is no economy

Indian-born Kumar, who visited Sydney recently to promote his ideas, has devoted his life to investigating links between ecology and spirituality, literally walking the talk. At the age of nine he became a child monk, going barefoot, begging for food and wearing a cloth over his mouth to avoid inadvertently killing an insect.
Then, in 1962, he became inspired and outraged by the incarceration of the English philosopher and peace campaigner Bertrand Russell and decided to walk to the four nuclear capitals of the world. Over 18 months, he trekked to Moscow, Paris, London and Washington in a protest against nuclear arms.

Heat waves in Europe nearly twice as long

European heat waves are nearly twice as long as they were a century ago and the number of hot summer days there have tripled, a new study finds. Researchers compiled temperature records from 54 high-quality recording stations from Sweden to Croatia and found that heat waves last an average of three days now (with some lasting up to 13 days), while they lasted only 1.5 days on average in 1880.

Yellowstone’s Wolves Save Its Aspens

But the study found that an “ecology of fear” has helped to restore balance to the valley, protecting young aspen shoots from browsing elk for the first time in decades.
William J. Ripple, a professor in the university’s College of Forestry and an author of the study, said aspens were recovering in areas where it would be difficult for elk to escape a wolf attack. “We think these elk need to balance the risk of being killed versus eating in their favorite places. So it’s a trade-off between food and risk in an ecology of fear,” he said.

The damage that China's double-digit GDP growth is doing to the environment

The outcome of the debate is important for the course of a country that will soon overtake the United States as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and where hundreds of millions of people have no access to clear drinking water. A year ago, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) jointly released China's first green GDP report, estimating the cost of pollution in 2004 at 3.05 percent of gross domestic product.

About 40 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by water, air and soil pollution

"We have serious environmental resource problems of water, land and energy, and these are now coming to bear on food production, malnutrition and the incidence of diseases," said Pimentel. Of the world population of about 6.5 billion, 57 percent is malnourished, compared with 20 percent of a world population of 2.5 billion in 1950, said Pimentel. Malnutrition is not only the direct cause of 6 million children's deaths each year but also makes millions of people much more susceptible to such killers as acute respiratory infections, malaria and a host of other life-threatening diseases, according to the research.

City will pay $12,000 for sewage incident

The city will have to pay up for allowing nearly 300,000 gallons of untreated sewage to flow into Lake Washington in the Madison Park area. "Last April's sewer overflow was caused by the simultaneous failure of a number of systems, any one of which should have prevented the overflow from occurring," Seattle Public Utilities Director Chuck Clarke said. He vowed it would not happen again and said the utility will not appeal the $12,000 fine issued by the state Department of Ecology.

Birds Help Trees Soar

Birds boost tree height up to 33 percent by munching on pesky parasites that can literally suck the life out of the tall-growing plants, a new study shows. Birds remove harmful species of beetles, caterpillars, ants and aphids from branches, Mooney explained, increasing the vigor of trees. His findings are detailed in the August issue of the journal Ecology.

Carbon Emissions Would Drop with New Technology

TONAWANDA, NY (2007-07-31) Carbon emissions at coal-fired power plants would be markedly reduced under new technology unveiled Tuesday at Praxair in Tonawanda. Praxair is working with three other companies and the University at Buffalo in developing technology that will capture carbon dioxide during the power-generating process and permanently store it underground. The new technology will be tested at a new power generating plant the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities is building.