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Ancient, giant viruses are being unearthed in Arctic ice that's at risk of melting

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arctic ice

Revitalized ancient viruses might one day get added to the list of ominous consequences of melting ice.

Scientists working in the Arctic circle over the past few decades have unearthed several massive viruses that some say could be re-awakened if the permafrost that imprisons them dissolves.

In 2015, researchers in Siberia uncovered one called Mollivirus sibericum, a 30,000-year-old behemoth of a virus that succeeded in infecting a rather defenseless amoeba in a lab experiment. About a decade earlier, scientists discovered the first Mimivirus, a 1,200-gene specimen measuring twice the width of traditional viruses, buried beneath layers of melting frost in the Russian tundra. (For comparison, HIV has just nine genes.)

Recently, some researchers have suggested that these enormous viruses could thaw out, escape, and make lots of people sick. It sounds like something out of a 1990s horror film. But you shouldn't get too concerned — at least not yet.

The likelihood that these viruses will break free and sicken humans is slim, according to New York Times science columnist Carl Zimmer, whose recent book, "A Planet of Viruses," digs into what we know about viruses and the diseases they cause.

"These particular viruses infect amoeba. So if you're an amoeba, yeah you should be really scared," Zimmer told Business Insider in a 2015 interview. "There are no human pathogens that have burst out of the Siberian permafrost. That's not to say that viruses won't emerge, but there are so many viruses circulating in living animals, I think we should put these frozen viruses very low on our list of concerns."

Zimmer added in an email on May 8 that most of these massive viruses have been found after melting samples of Arctic ice in a lab — they're not currently crawling along the the Russian tundra like some microscopic Frankenstein.

They "didn't just thaw themselves out," he says. "They were carefully processed in labs. That's yet another clue that the odds of an ancient outbreak are very low."

But that doesn't mean the recent discoveries are useless. Instead, they're teaching us valuable things about the nature of viruses, which we previously assumed to be fairly small and simple. These ancient viruses, on the other hand, are about 30 times bigger than your average virus, and rival the size of a bacterium.

Mollivirus sibericum, for example, looks like this under a microscope:

mollivirus

In addition to its unusual size, Mollivirus sibericum differs from the vast majority of viruses in that has more than 500 genes that give instructions for making proteins.

"They're in and of themselves fascinating and they really challenge us to think about what viruses are," Zimmer says.

Viruses are technically not considered alive, but these giant ones seem to have some qualities of life, like a functioning metabolism. If we're ever going to reevaluate the characteristics of viruses, these ancient thawed-out ones could make us take a fresh look.

SEE ALSO: Bottled water is a scam for most Americans — but a new report reveals some surprising places where it's dangerous to drink the tap

DON'T MISS: An outlandish surgeon who aims to perform the first head transplant just gave a rat a second head

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NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds


A massive wildfire is burning on the Florida-Georgia border

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wildfire

A massive wildfire burning in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge near the Florida-Georgia border has prompted mandatory evacuations.

The unincorporated community of St. George, Georgia, was under a mandatory evacuation after the West Mims Fire jumped state Highway 94 and headed towards the area, according to Charlton County, Georgia, government officials.

Schools were closed throughout the county on Monday.

"[First] responders are NOT coming door to door because they are fighting this approaching fire to try to save your homes," Charlton County officials said in a statement.

At least 79 people have been evacuated so far in the community, which has around 2,000 people, the Associated Press reported.

The fire has burned over 130,000 acres and was originally caused by a lightning strike on April 6 at the wildlife refuge located in Folkston, Georgia.

Over 535 firefighting personnel have been assigned to fight the blaze, which is 12 percent contained. Firefighting efforts by helicopter were expected to resume by around 7 a.m. EDT Monday.

A tractor plow was overtaken by the fire around 4 p.m. EDT Sunday, but the tractor operator was not injured.

Smoke from the wildfires has been observed on satellite, and the skies around northern Florida and southern Georgia have turned a hazy orange.

A dense smoke advisory is also in effect down to northern Duval County, Florida, near Jacksonville International Airport, the AP reported.

Fire activity was expected to continue at an elevated level on Monday as wind speeds diminish and temperatures rise, according to InciWeb.

"The probability of ignition in dry fuels hit with hot embers will be close to 100 percent," InciWeb stated.

SEE ALSO: The EPA just kicked 5 scientists off a key board — and may replace them with fossil fuel industry insiders

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NOW WATCH: Watch a man's dramatic escape from a raging wildfire in Tennessee

France's president-elect once blasted Trump in a message to US climate scientists: 'Please, come to France'

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Emmanuel Macron

Emmanuel Macron won the French presidential election May 7, and since his victory, a video his campaign posted in February has been making the rounds on American social media.

The Facebook video is addressed to American climate scientists who feel alienated by the Trump administration. Looking straight into the camera, speaking English, Macron tells American "researchers, entrepreneurs, [and] engineers working on climate change" that they have a home in his country.

"I do know how your new president now has decided to jeopardize your budget, your initiatives, and he is extremely skeptical about climate change," he said. "I have no doubt about climate change."

 Macron went on to promise robust funding for climate initiatives.

In Europe, as a general rule, climate change is less of a political issue, with few major political parties arguing against established science.

Macron's opponent in the second round of the election, the far-right candidate Marinne Le Pen, was a bit of an exception to this rule. Le Pen opposed various environmental initiatives and did not acknowledge outright that humans are the primary cause of climate change.

Macron defeated Le Pen 66% to 34%.

You can watch Marcon's appeal to American scientists below.

SEE ALSO: The EPA just kicked half the scientists off a key board — and may replace them with fossil fuel industry insiders

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NOW WATCH: Arctic and Antarctic sea ice just hit record lows — here's what would happen if all the ice melted

Senate attempt to repeal Obama-era methane regulation was just dealt a surprising blow

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John McCain

Senate Republicans were dealt an unexpected loss May 10 in their attempt to repeal an Obama-era regulation on methane emissions.

The Senate tried to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to overturn recent executive orders, to strike down a regulation that places limits on the amount of methane that can be released from oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

But three Republican senators broke ranks and voted against a motion to proceed: John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Susan Collins. Those defections tipped the scales to 51 votes in favor of keeping Obama’s methane limit.

According to The Hill’s Devin Henry, Vice President Pence was on his way to the Capitol to cast a tie-breaking vote on the CRA repeal, but McCain’s surprise no vote tipped the scales in the Democrats' favor. The regulation will therefore likely stay on the books.

Methane is the primary component of natural gas, a fuel source that has become increasingly popular in the US because it is often cheaper and more environmentally friendly than other fossil fuels. The rise of natural gas, however, has led to a surge in methane emissions — in 2014 and 2015, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere rose by more than 20 parts per billion, according to The Guardian.

Methane is the most significant human-caused greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. While it doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long as CO2, methane is much more damaging — the Environmental Defense Fund estimates it’s 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide after 20 years.

The EPA estimates that oil and gas companies release approximately 9.8 million metric tons of methane into the air annually. The regulations that the Senate voted to keep, however, only apply to drilling efforts on federal land.

This vote was the first time since Trump was elected that Republicans failed in an attempt to use the CRA to overturn Obama-era rules. The time period in which Congress can use the CRA to roll back regulations is set to end at the end of this week.

SEE ALSO: The White House meeting on whether to stay in the Paris climate agreement has been postponed

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NOW WATCH: Northern Alaskan lakes are leaking a greenhouse gas that's 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide

5 green energy innovations that could change the world

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solar power

Innovations in energy storage, smart grid, and electricity generation technologies will affect every part of the source-to-consumer supply chain for powering the planet.

Energy storage tech improves the viabilities of wind and solar power – two energy sources that remain cost prohibitive due to expenses related to batteries that would store generated energy.

Smart grids will regulate the movement of energy throughout a city or state, insuring the areas from crippling blackouts.

Developments in electricity generation make sure we make the most out of fossil fuels and other energy sources to improve efficiency.

What follows is a survey of progress in the development of five different technologies that promise to change the face of the energy industry in the next 20 years.

1. Fuel Cell: Truck manufacturers Kenworth, Toyota, and UPS have begun investing in fuel cell technologies, which would allow transport vehicles to run on hydrogen and oxygen, releasing only heat and water as emissions. Modern hydrogen production still requires copious fossil fuel use, but the process could soon be powered by renewable energies, making fuel cell vehicles extremely clean alternatives to current trucking solutions.

In Europe, fuel cell production facilities will begin pumping out 50,000 fuel cell stacks by the year 2020, making United Kingdom-based Intelligent Energy the market leader in bringing the green technology to the masses. “Hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles are available now, but to continue to drive customer adoption, we need to ensure future fuel cell stacks are robustly industrialised and remain cost competitive in the future,” said the company’s Manufacturing Head Richard Peart.

2. Lithium-air batteries: These storage units, also known as Lithium-oxygen fuel cells, have been gestating in scientific labs all over the world since the beginning of electric vehicles. Science Daily says two instabilities in the technology’s current form have prevented it from hitting mass markets: unpredictable short circuiting and speedy loss of battery power. Cornell University recently tackled the second capacity face problem, meaning we could be just one witty solution away from long-range electric cars.

3. First Generation Smart Grid: The first step in making a reliable and responsive smart grid system requires the installation of smart meters in every household and building. The new meters will send usage information in real time to your energy provider, allowing adjustments in availability to fluctuate according to the area’s latest needs. So far, countries like the United Kingdom are having trouble adjusting the technology to fit the national infrastructure and business norms. The United States jumped on the smart grid bandwagon in 2007 and set up a taskforce to ensure a synchronized adoption of the new technology. The process has been slow, but small communities have begun “microgrid” projects that will allow consumer demand to drive implementation.

4. Tidal turbines: Much like wind turbines, these underwater pinwheels harness energy from wave movement. This green energy has had small-scale success so far, but objections from fishermen, as well as accidents, have set the technology back in California – tidal energy Ground Zero – in recent months. But the science behind tidal energy continues its march forward. Scotrenewables Tidal Power announced the launch of a new low-cost turbine off the coast of Scotland. It’s also the “largest and most powerful” turbine of its kind in the world with a power generation capacity of two megawatts, according to its manufacturers. A retractable arm gives the facility a separate transport mode and an operation mode, which allows easy portability and an impermanence that would please local fishing industries.

5. Space-based Solar Power: Solar power captured from-the-beyond has been a sci-fi concept since the 1970s. The high cost of transporting the panels and other equipment into space has prevented the idea from becoming fruitful for commercial energy production. In addition, the transfer of generated energy back to Earth has been a concern. Solar power panels installed on the ground connect to the local power grid to deliver their harnessed goods, but it is comical to imagine a satellite in space hooked to the planet via cable for efficient energy delivery, prompting scientists to develop wireless energy transfer technologies akin to the iPhone 8’s anticipated wireless charging feature. None of the existing methods have proven to be feasible on a massive scale. Suggestions are welcome.

The advances mentioned above are inter-related: progress in the lithium-air battery efforts will pave the way for the success of electric cars, which could be recharged with energy hardheaded from the tides or space-based solar power. It's one small step for science, one giant leap for green energy-kind.

SEE ALSO: The CEO of a major solar company said he's 'skeptical' Tesla can pull off the solar roof — here's why

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NOW WATCH: These are the small, agile new aircraft carriers meant to take F-35s into battle

America’s first offshore wind farm just shut down a diesel plant

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block island wind farm

America’s first offshore wind farm just helped to shut down a small diesel-fired electric power plant on Block Island, Rhode Island.

Block Island officials on Monday switched on a connection between the island and a cable linking the wind farm to Rhode Island’s mainland power grid. The connection allowed the island’s only electricity source — a small diesel-fueled power plant — to shut down. The island’s 2,000 residents burned about 1 million gallons of diesel fuel annually.

“The emissions that go along with nearly a million gallons of diesel a year — that’s all going to go away,” said Jeff Wright, chief executive of the Block Island Power Co.

Diesel releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other common petroleum-based fuel except for residential fuel oil, according to the EPA. Less than 1 percent of electricity in the US is generated using liquid petroleum, including diesel.

SEE ALSO: America's largest offshore wind farm could put up to 200 turbines off the coast of New York

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NOW WATCH: Watch a Trump surrogate get shut down after calling Trump the 'Martin Luther King of healthcare'

Antarctica's cracking ice sheet is part of a process that could reshape the world

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Adelie penguins stand atop ice near the French station at Dumont díUrville in East Antarctica, January 22, 2010. REUTERS/Pauline Askin/File photo

The first summer without an Arctic ice sheet is already on the horizon. The massive chunk of frozen ocean has capped the northern pole of our planet year-round for millennia, but it's now at risk of receding until it disappears entirely. 

Unlike its northern sibling, the kilometers-thick Antarctic ice cap in the south is seated on a buried continent rather than on water. It's bigger and older than the Arctic ice sheet, and less vulnerable to threats of a warming climate.

Researchers generally agree, however, that the Antarctic will also lose significant amounts of ice mass as the Earth's temperature rises. The timeline and extent of that loss is just less clear. Unlike the charts of the Arctic's annual ice, which seem to have taken a plunge toward zero over the last decade, the Antarctic's process has been more wobbly. As recently as 2014, the southern ice cap reached is largest extent on record.

Here's what we know about Antarctica's strange, ancient ice, and what could happen in its future.

SEE ALSO: The EPA just kicked half the scientists off a key board — and may replace them with fossil fuel industry insiders

DON'T MISS: A huge crack in a 1,000-foot-thick Antarctic ice block has taken an alarming turn

Most Antarctic ice sits on land, not open ocean.



That means the possibility of it melting poses a bigger threat to the planet — when Arctic ocean ice melts, sea level stays the same. But when Antarctic ice drains into the water, sea levels rise all over the world.

Source: Yale Climate Connections



In early April, Antarctica's ice broke records for daily lows that had been set in 1980. As of May 10, the ice is still low but not record-breaking — there's 8.078 million square miles now, compared to 1980's 7.958 square miles.

Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

We tried the seaweed that 'tastes like bacon' and is healthier than kale — here's the verdict

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bacon

When I heard rumors of a type of sea vegetable that, when cooked, tasted like bacon, I wanted in. 

But by the time I reached out to the researchers growing it, they'd already been inundated with requests and didn't have samples to go around. As it turned out, this seaweed-bacon was already the trendiest health food around, and it hadn't even reached stores yet.

But last week I took a trip to the original source of the stuff — a fishing village in Ireland — and got a chance to taste it. Here's how it went.

SEE ALSO: 15 of the healthiest fast-food menu items

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The story of this tasty sea vegetable began in 2015, when researchers at Oregon State University patented a new strain of seaweed that allegedly tasted like bacon when cooked. Fisheries professor Chris Langdon came across the vegetable while trying to find a good food source for edible sea snails, or abalone, a popular food in many parts of Asia.



When Langdon's colleague, OSU business professor Chuck Toombs, caught a glimpse of the growing seaweed, Toombs suggested the veggie had "the potential for a new industry for Oregon," according to a 2015 press release.

Source: Oregon State University



The seaweed resembles red lettuce and has twice the nutritional value of kale. It's a new type of red algae that normally grows along the coastlines of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Glacier National Park once had 150 glaciers, but only 26 remain

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sperry glacier

The era of the glacier will end in the United States within decades, according to researchers who worked on a major new study of glacial health in Montana.

A report released by Wednesday the United States Geological Survey follows 39 glaciers in Montana — 37 of them in Glacier National Park — from 1966 to 2015.

During that period of significant warming around the world, those 39 glaciers — lumbering, ancient bodies of ice that still move through high altitudes — shrank by an average of 39%. Some shrank by as much as 85%.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were as many as 150 glaciers in the region. But in the time studied, 13 of the 39 glaciers shrank to less than 25 acres, the minimum size to be considered a glacier. That leaves just 26.

The shrinking Montana glaciers are part of a larger story. Humans are now the leading driver of glacial melt on Earth, since climate change has led to warmer winters that carry more rain into frigid glacial zones. 

NASA estimates that around the world, glaciers have lost 400 billion tons of ice per year every year since 1994. That's about 67,000 Great Pyramids of Giza worth of landlocked water melting into streams and oceans.

The 48 states in the continental US have a significant but rapidly declining glacier population distributed across Montana, Colorado, Washington, Wyoming, California, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah. In Colorado, a 1,000-year-old glacier is expected to disappear within 25 years.

Speaking to the Guardian, Daniel Farge, the lead scientist on the study, said it is now "inevitable" that all of those glaciers will disappear within decades.

“It’s inevitable that we will lose them all over the next few decades,” Farge said. “The Colorado glaciers started melting before Montana’s and while there are larger glaciers in the Pacific north-west that will hold on longer, the number vanishing will steadily grow until none are left.”

So if you're hoping to get a look at the US' ancient, wandering ice blocks, now is probably the time.

SEE ALSO: The EPA just kicked half the scientists off a key board — and may replace them with fossil fuel industry insiders

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Arctic and Antarctic sea ice just hit record lows — here's what would happen if all the ice melted

This floating food garden in NYC has 200 vegetables you can eat for free

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We visited a floating food garden located in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The garden is part of a collaborative project called Swale, and it's designed to build a connection between the urban jungle and the environment.

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A 22-year-old is moving ahead with a controversial plan to trap plastic floating in the great Pacific garbage patch

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Boyan Slat Ocean Cleanup

Dutch innovator Boyan Slat's audacious plan to clear plastic from the marine area known as the "great Pacific garbage patch" is undergoing some major design changes. But the 22-year-old tells Business Insider that the first cleanup array is set to launch sooner than expected.

"Instead of late 2020, the cleanup will now start in just 12 months from now, and parts of it are already in production," Slat says.

Slat's nonprofit, The Ocean Cleanup, plans to try to install systems to remove vast quantities of plastic from the Pacific ocean. The systems are designed to float on the surface of an area that collects pollution from around the world, and skim plastic off the top layer of water.

Slat's original design involved mooring a massive plastic-collecting trap to the seabed 4.5 kilometers below — a controversial plan that gave rise to concerns among scientists. Slat says the group now plans to deploy smaller arrays with underwater "anchors" that drift about 600 meters beneath the surface. Theoretically, the anchors will hold the plastic collecting systems in the spots where they can collect garbage most efficiently. 

The team showed off the anchors at their most recent press conference on May 11.

"These systems will automatically drift or gravitate to where the plastic is," Slat says. "Instead of us being able to clean up 42% of the patch in 10 years, we can now clean up 50% of the patch in five years."

Slat says models of the new system show improved efficiency, but no tests have been run with an actual array in the sea to verify those claims. Slat also says the design change helped convince a group of donors to give $21.7 million to the nonprofit, raising its total funding since 2013 to $31.5 million. The new donors include San Francisco-based philanthropists Marc and Lynne Benioff, an anonymous donor, and Peter Thiel, among others.

But will it work?

The Ocean Cleanup computer rendering, close-up view.

A swirling vortex of garbage

The Ocean Cleanup hopes to address a problem that's serious and complex. Plastic garbage from all over the globe flows into the world's oceans, then over time gets carried by currents to five regions of the ocean known as gyres — natural gathering points for marine debris.

These "garbage patches" don't look like islands of plastic — many people who have sailed through them say you don't see much trash while passing through. But the plastic is there, and it's ugly and dangerous. Animals like sea turtles, seals, and birds eat it, which poisons them. And as it breaks down into little particles, the microplastic debris ends up in fish that often enter our own food supply.

When Slat first suggested that a 65-mile floating V-shaped array could collect plastic floating near the surface and funnel it to a collection point, the idea gained traction. He gave a viral 2012 TEDx talk about the plan, but a number of marine scientists were skeptical about the unproven plan to create the "largest offshore structure ever assembled."

The Ocean Cleanup computer rendering, anchor close-upSlat's team has only tested the new system in labs and simulations, so it's still theoretical. But the advantages offered by the smaller, one-kilometer-long arrays may help assuage some concerns. Each can function as an individual test to see how well the systems are working; they're probably easier to fix or remove if something goes wrong; and it's simpler financially to scale up construction over time, building and launching arrays once there's enough funding.

Slat also claims that these smaller systems will be more efficient — it's "better, faster, and cheaper," he says.

Reasons for skepticism

Still, the absence of real-world evidence that the arrays will work is likely to raise questions among marine scientists and oceanographers who have previously expressed doubts about The Ocean Cleanup's plans. The forces of the ocean are strong, and no one knows how well these systems will hold up when subjected to storms or extreme currents. If they break, they could contribute to the trash problem.

Scientists have also expressed concerns that the systems may attract fish and other marine life that might then ingest the plastic. Plus, it's hard to know how much of the plastic that gets collected will actually be recyclable; and some researchers say the trash is deeper and will be harder to collect than The Ocean Cleanup team anticipates.

Furthermore, much ocean garbage sits too deep for the arrays to collect, Nancy Wallace, director of the Marine Debris Program at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Associated Press. But she says the project should be praised for bringing attention to this issue.

"The more people are aware of it, the more they will be concerned about it," Wallace tells the AP. "My hope is that the next step is to say 'what can I do to stop it?' and that’s where prevention comes in."

The Ocean Cleanup computer rendering, underwater full system view.But there may be more efficient ways to accomplish The Ocean Cleanup's goals. One of the project's most prominent critics, oceanographer Kim Martini, has argued that the arrays should be placed off the shores where most plastic enters the ocean in the first place.

Other groups simply attempt to collect plastic before it goes out to sea. The Ocean Conservancy has collected more than 200 million pounds of trash from beaches, and Baltimore has a trash-collecting water wheel that has trapped almost 1.5 million pounds of trash in the Inner Harbor since May 2014.

True, these approaches don't capture the plastic that's already traveled out through ocean. If an array works as the team at The Ocean Cleanup hopes, therefore, it would be a fantastic, impressive achievement. The early results of Slat's audacious plan should become available next year — if he sticks to this new schedule.

SEE ALSO: These are the worst stings in the world, according to a guy who's experienced them all

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NOW WATCH: Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted

This disgusting, mysterious sea monster washed up on an island in Indonesia

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sea monster indonesia

A dead unknown sea animal has been found washed up on an island in Indonesia.

The bloodied creature lay in shallow waters on the shores of Seram Island.

Local man Asrul Tuanakota made the discovery Tuesday evening.

It is thought to be nearly 50 feet (15 meters) long and 6 to 7 meters wide.

While the local media outlet Beritasatu.com has reported the find is a giant squid, others suspect it could be a whale or even an elephant.

Domenico Baggio says: "It's an elephant."

Solt Chalupa says: "Nah it is just a whale. you can see it's 'teeth' at the beginning that stuff that looks like some filter."

See it for yourself here.

 

SEE ALSO: We tried the seaweed that 'tastes like bacon' and is healthier than kale — here's the verdict

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This man spent 6 weeks working undercover in an iPhone factory in China — here's what it was like

A video of 15 sharks circling near paddleboarders in California hides a bigger problem

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Great White Shark

The video opens with a close-up shot of a great white shark swimming in a turquoise ocean. But when it zooms out, the camera reveals the bustling coast of a Southern California beach.

"You are paddleboarding next to approximately 15 great white sharks," says a voice. "The sharks are as close as the surf line."

The voice belongs to Deputy Brian Stockbridge of the Orange County Sherriff's Department, who on Wednesday advised a group of paddleboarders at Capistrano Beach to "exit the water in a calm manner," according to The Orange County Register.

The sharks were seen just south of California's San Onofre State Beach, where a woman was bitten by a shark last month. The area was put under shark advisory, according to an announcement from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

But while it might seem as though sharks are becoming a bigger threat to people, experts say the opposite scenario is closer to the truth.

"We may never know exactly how many sharks are out there, or exactly how many are killed each year," said David Shiffman, a marine biologist. "What we do know, from a variety of different types of analysis, is that many species of sharks are decreasing in population at alarming rates."

The causes? Hunting sharks for their meat and fins, and irresponsible fishing practices.

According to a recent report by the nonprofit conservation group Oceana, thousands of sharks are caught and trapped in fishing nets and other fishing gear every year. Some estimates say this unintended catch, or "bycatch," is 40% of the world's total catch, or about 63 billion pounds a year.

One frequently cited survey analyzed data gathered from fisheries between 1986 and 2000 and found that hammerhead populations had declined by an average of 89%, great whites by 79%, tiger sharks by 65%, thresher sharks by 80%, blue sharks by 60%, and mako sharks by 70%.

shark declines chart

In sharp contrast to the way they're typically portrayed, sharks also possess several characteristics that make them vulnerable to exploitation, such as maturing later and having fewer young.

"We all know sharks are in trouble,"Jennifer Schmidt, a geneticist and the director of science and research for the nonprofit Shark Research Institute, wrote in a recent blog post for the institute.

Shiffman told Business Insider that although some shark populations, including great whites, were recovering, declining populations spell trouble for other marine life since the animals play a role in oceans' health.

Sharks are apex predators, which means they keep dozens of other ocean populations in check, according to the nonprofit organization WildAid. Sharks keep food webs in balance, stabilize other fish populations, and prevent the fish they prey on from taking over vital seagrass bed habitats.

"Recent victories in restricting shark fishing and regulating the fin trade are essential to prevent extinction of many shark species," Schmidt said, "but it will take a long time for these actions to impact such depleted populations."

SEE ALSO: We went to see the tiny, super rare pocket shark whose 'pocket' remains a mystery to scientists

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NOW WATCH: Punching a shark in the nose is not your best defense

The 200,000-year history of how bedbugs infested our minds and homes

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Bedbugs

Recently, I spent a nasty several days cleaning out an apartment infested with bedbugs.

The bedbugs landed in my partner's former apartment (which she shared with her cousin) just weeks before she was supposed to move into mine. The critters announcing their arrival with a splash of red welts along her cousin's back. 

We spent a weekend taking apart furniture, spraying everything down with rubbing alcohol, and stacking piles of their possessions in the middle of the apartment for the exterminators. 

For me, the best part of the cleaning weekend was when the one-eyed Plott hound that lived in their apartment started retching uncontrollably, possibly from the stench of alcohol in the air, and I got to escape for a few hours to walk her to the vet. The vet mentioned that bedbugs don't really feed on or impact most household pets. Unlike lice, ticks, and fleas, bedbugs are an especially human-adapted species. They love our bald skin and penchant for draping our dens with all kinds of comfy hidey-holes where females can lay one to five nearly invisible eggs a day.

That got me wondering where and how our two species stumbled into our current, mutually-antagonistic relationship.

A bedbug infestation is as much an infestation of your mind as your house or apartment. Bedbugs don't leave behind any diseases, just ugly marks. And the critters are tiny, with even the adults nearly impossible to spot. Some people are immune to bedbug bites, and others won't find them for weeks after the deed was done. Even one pregnant female left alive can start an infestation from scratch.

The human-bedbug story between goes back more than 200,000 years. As Brooke Borel, who literally wrote the book on bedbugs, explained in 2015 for Popular Science, bedbugs do infest at least one other species: bats.

When early humans started sharing caves with bats, it seems, some bat-bed-bugs made the leap to humans. And some of those bedbugs enjoys the taste of our flesh enough to come out of those caves with us. They followed us through history, from ancient Egypt to England, Germany, and Greece, and then, by way of colonists, to North America.

The modern bedbug is human-adapted, and genetically distinct from the cousins it left behind with the bats.

We nearly had them beat in the 20th century. Growing up in the '90s and early 2000s, I never heard the creatures mentioned, except in that fragment of nursery rhyme Goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.

That's because of the success of DDT. Invented in Germany in 1874, the colorless, nearly odorless synthetic chemical was put to work during World War II clearing cities and countrysides of mosquitoes, ticks, and, yes, bedbugs. Rates of infestation fell all over the world.

DDTBut DDT was a poisoned apple. As Rachel Carson first popularly claimed in her famous 1962 book Silent Spring, the chemical that saved so many lives from malaria and other bug-borne illnesses was also wiping out wildlife and threatening human populations with cancer. Decades of science have confirmed Carson's claims. (It's a hardy poison though; chemical signals of DDT still turn up in 99% of people tested by the Centers for Disease Control, as well as in the food supply.)

By 2001, countries all over the world were ready to get on board with a DDT ban. At that year's Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the pesticide was outlawed all over the world with few exceptions.

The year 2001 is also a good marker for when bed bug infestations, almost unheard-of in the wealthy nations of the world at that point, began to climb. These days, over 99% of exterminators report that they've dealt with bedbugs in the last year, and about one in five people in the US has had them in their homes.

It's an especially big problem in dense urban areas, where cities are writing laws and pouring funds into efforts to limit the epidemic.

No one has a good solution beyond fallible containment schemes. Search the very active network web forums devoted to clearing out bedbugs, and you'll even find folks who advocate bringing back DDT, cancer rates and bald eagles be damned.

Even if we did risk bringing back DDT to American life, it probably wouldn't work. When we were busy spraying DDT everywhere, bedbugs were busy mutating. Most are now resistant to the stuff.

For now, the best thing any of us can do is thoroughly check our clothes and suitcases when we return from trips, respond immediately when we do find bedbug bites on our bodies, and scoot our chairs surreptitiously away from anyone who mentions their home is infested.

So given the alternative, if bedbugs are a sign of falling DDT use, it's a good thing we have them.

SEE ALSO: This revolting video of a spurting clam is going viral

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NOW WATCH: Bedbugs are evolving right before our eyes

A entire beach in Ireland has returned 33 years after being washed away

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In spring 1984 a whole beach disappeared. Over just two days, the golden sands of Dooagh on the island of Achill, off the west coast of Ireland, were stripped away to reveal bare rocks.

This occurred during a series of southwesterly storms and, importantly, during peak equinox – short periods in spring and autumn when tides are particularly strong due to the nature of the Earth’s movement around the sun. Jutting out into the Atlantic, Achill is exposed to the worst the ocean can throw at it and southwesterly winds (from the south west) can generate substantive waves.

Thirty-three years later, in April 2017, the beach returned and the rocks were covered with sand once again.

Though it may seem baffling to most people, there’s nothing miraculous about what happened in Achill. This “magical reappearing beach” is simply a great example of a process that happens in coastal seas more regularly that you might think.

Bye bye beach

First, let’s consider how Dooagh beach disappeared in the first place. The movement of pebbles, sand and sediment around the coast is caused by a mixture of waves, tides, and what is growing on the seafloor. Waves not only have the ability to stir up the sea bed and to wash beach sand into the ocean, but they can also create longshore drift as they strike a coast at an angle, gradually shifting sediment along the coast.

Achill IslandRip-currents are created in certain circumstances where water piles up close to the shore and can only exit the beach in narrow and intense flows. These strong currents are best known to humans for causing many fatal swimming accidents, but they can also carry sand and pebbles far offshore. Seaweed can help stabilise those fragile sediments, but its growth is limited in the early months of the year.

When a beach gets unlucky and all of these factors come together – strong tides and abnormally high sea levels, a lack of seaweed – it can suddenly disappear. This is what happened to Dooagh in spring 1984, and had previously happened in a similar incident there in 1890.

Enter sand

So, what brought the beach back in 2017 (and in 1927)? Almost the same processes that stole it in the first place. Some of the conditions were identical: April has the highest tides of the year and low algal growth. However this time the beach replenishment occurred during northerly winds.

It’s hard to say for sure where the sand had been for the past 33 years but likely it was simply sitting on the seafloor some miles offshore and also in adjoining bays. The strong tides lifted the sand from the seafloor (and from the neighbouring bays that had benefited from the loan), unhindered by algae, and the northerly winds meant the waves carried it onshore.

This didn’t happen overnight. Over the past two years surfers had reported seeing sand offshore. By March 2017 (the second highest tide of the year) local fishermen reported the appearance of a sand bar offshore and a small amount of sand was deposited at the low water mark. The continued northerly winds followed by the exceptional April tides gave the final push and returned sand to Dooagh, depositing it well above the mean water level mark on the beach.

Changing coastlines

People in Achill shouldn’t get too complacent as there’s no doubt Dooagh beach will disappear again at some point in future. It just needs to experience similar conditions to those of 1890 and 1984.

A beach disappearing so quickly is rare but not unheard of. In January 2015, for instance, the residents of Porthleven in Cornwall woke to a rocky shore after a strong southwesterly storm stripped the sand from their beach, again overnight. The bay has the same southwards orientation as Dooagh. It occurred during a spring tide, which is a fortnightly high tidal flow (not to be confused with spring the season). However in this case a shift of the wind (and hence waves) to southeasterly returned the sand just one day later.

In 1995 I was involved in deploying some equipment to measure flows on a pebble beach near the town of Southsea on the English Channel. Overnight a strong storm hit, and on returning the following day the beach and all of our scientific equipment had gone, leaving behind a soft, sandy beach with an entirely different shape. Great for tourism, not so for science. In fact, the only science we achieved was through recovering some of our battered and heavy equipment – much of it ten miles to the east – which is presumably where most of the pebble beach had gone (though where the sand had come from is still a bit of a mystery, perhaps it was beneath the pebbles all along).

These are just a few examples; I could cite many others. The coastline of the British Isles is constantly in flux for good reason. Each cubic metre of seawater weighs a tonne and Britain and Ireland are exposed to the pounding of Atlantic storms as well as some of the strongest tides on the planet. Predicting where and when the coast will erode is far from simple. There is also the issue that one coastal area’s loss is another’s gain. If beaches are overprotected without careful planning, retention of the beach-line in one location could mean that there is no longer replenishment sand further along the coast, causing a new problem.

The sea has shaped and re-shaped our coastlines since the Earth first had oceans, and will continue to do so for many more years yet. Ireland’s “reappearing beach” is just a tiny snapshot of this process.

By Simon Boxall, Lecturer in Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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This abandoned Disney water park has been rotting for over 15 years

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When Disney River Country opened in 1976, visitors flocked to Orange County, Florida, to ride the winding slides and traverse the wooden bridges.

The park closed down 25 years later. After leaving the park empty and abandoned for 15 years, Disney finally drained and filled River Country's 330,000-gallon pool in 2016.

As the Orlando Sentinel reported, the Upstream Plunge pool was filled with concrete, since standing water can attract mosquitoes — a growing concern because of the Zika virus. Disney said that the work was not related to Zika and that it didn't plan to reopen the long-closed park, the rest of which is still decaying.

A Cleveland-based photographer who works under the pseudonym Seph Lawless documented the abandoned park in his photo series "Dismaland." (This is also the name of Banksy's 2015 art exhibition, a fake apocalyptic theme park near Bristol, England.)

Lawless captured ghostly portraits of the once busy attraction. Take a look.

SEE ALSO: The National Park Service turns 100 today — and Obama just protected 87,000 acres of Maine land

River Country in Orange County, Florida, was Walt Disney World's first water park.



It is one of just two Disney parks, along with Discovery Island in Orange County, to close permanently. Both parks were left to deteriorate.



Lawless took about 150 photos of the decaying park, he tells Business Insider.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

This idyllic remote island has no residents but 17 tonnes of plastic waste

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Plastic litters one of the world's remotest islands - Henderson Island

One of the world's most remote places, an uninhabited coral atoll, is also one of its most polluted.

Henderson Island, a tiny landmass in the eastern South Pacific, has been found by marine scientists to have the highest density of anthropogenic debris recorded anywhere in the world, with 99.8% of the pollution plastic.

The nearly 18 tonnes of plastic piling up on an island that is otherwise mostly untouched by humans have been pointed to as evidence of the catastrophic, "grotesque" extent of marine plastic pollution.

Nearly 38m pieces of plastic were estimated to be on Henderson by researchers from the University of Tasmania and the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, weighing a combined 17.6 tonnes.

Henderson island

The majority of the debris – approximately 68% – was not even visible, with as many as 4,500 items per square metre buried to a depth of 10cm. About 13,000 new items were washing up daily.

Let's not wait for more science. Let's not debate it... we need to do something now.

Jennifer Lavers, of the University of Tasmania's institute for marine and antarctic studies, told the Guardian the sheer volume of plastic pollution on Henderson had defied her expectations.

"I've travelled to some of the most far-flung islands in the world and regardless of where I've gone, in what year, and in what area of the ocean, the story is generally the same: the beaches are littered with evidence of human activity...

"However, my thought was the remarkable remoteness of Henderson Island would have afforded it some protection. I was totally wrong.

"The quantity left me speechless and that's why I went to such pains to document it in such detail."

Lavers found hundreds of crabs living in rubbish such as bottle caps and cosmetics jars, and has been told of one living inside a doll's head.

"From the looks on people's faces, it was quite grotesque," she said. "That was how I felt about all these crabs – we are not providing them a home, this is not a benefit to them.

"This plastic is old, it's brittle, it's sharp, it's toxic. It was really quite tragic seeing these gorgeous crabs scuttling about, living in our waste."

The largest of the four islands of the Pitcairn Island group, Henderson Island is a Unesco World Heritage Listed site and one of the few atolls in the world whose ecology has been practically untouched by humans.

All corners of the globe are already being impacted.

The island exhibits remarkable biological diversity given it covers only 3,700 hectares, with 10 endemic species of plant and four land bird species. Its isolation had, until recently, afforded it protection from most human activities.

Lavers said her findings had proved to her nowhere was safe from plastic pollution. "All corners of the globe are already being impacted."

Like seabirds and turtles, remote islands serve as sentinels for the health of the wider marine ecosystem, "acting like a sieve or a trap, filtering out the ocean", she said.

The state of Henderson – "the most polluted, most remote island in the whole world"– was indicative of the extent of the problem, and the "absolutely mind-boggling" rate at which plastic was being produced globally.

The 17.6 tonnes of plastic on Henderson accounted for only 1.98 seconds' worth of annual production, found the paper – co-written by Lavers with Alexander Bond – published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.

"Across the board, no country got a free pass on this – we found bottles from Germany, containers from Canada, I think it was a fishing crate from New Zealand. What that says is we all have a responsibility in this, and we have to sit up and pay attention to that."

... marine plastic pollution is the new climate change...

The threat to biodiversity posed by plastic debris has come under increased scrutiny as findings reveal the extent of the problem, with millions of tonnes ending up in the ocean every year.

In February, scientists reported "extraordinary" levels of toxic pollution in the Mariana trench, with plastic waste facilitating the spread of industrial chemicals to one of the most remote and inaccessible places on the planet.

At the world oceans summit in early March, Indonesia pledged to put up to $1bn a year towards reducing plastic and other waste products polluting its waters, setting a goal of a 70% reduction in marine waste within eight years.

Laver said individuals and governments had a part to play in reducing the amount of plastic polluting the world's oceans, but the key was urgency.

"For me, marine plastic pollution is the new climate change, but I would like for us to not make the same mistakes. We've been arguing about climate change, and whether it exists and what is changing, for the better part of 40 years ...

"Let's not wait for more science. Let's not debate it. The rate of plastic in our oceans is absolutely phenomenal, and we need to do something now."

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A 22-year-old has raised $30M to trap plastic floating in the great Pacific garbage patch

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one of the most polluted areas of the ocean. 22-year-old Boyan Slat has a potential cleanup solution. 

The Ocean Cleanup uses a boom to capture plastic and keep it in areas where a boat can come and periodically pick it up. The pipe moves with the waves and uses floating anchors. Critics are skeptical of the system's compatibility with the extreme forces of the ocean and its potential impact on ocean life. 

The system should be fully deployed in 2018. $30 million has been raised for the cleanup. 

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5 reasons why you should never use a straw again

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Amy's Drive Thru shake with straws

From curly straws to bendy straws, to little cocktail straws, using a straw can make even the most boring drink more fun. But these tiny tubes may actually be causing more harm than you think. Here's 5 reasons why you should stop using straws right now: 

1.  They'll give you wrinkles.

drunk drinking alcohol fishbowl

You may not care a whole lot about wrinkles right now, but trust me, you'll care a lot when you're 50. I may sound weird, but that little sucking motion may cause you to develop fine lines around your lips. Do your 50-year-old self a favor and ditch the straw. 

2.  They're non-recyclable. 

Woman Drinking Iced Coffee with Phone

Most straws are non-recyclable. Every day 500 million straws are disposed everyday in the United States alone, which is enough to fill more than 127 school buses daily. If you insist on using one, opt for a more sustainable straw made of stainless steel  or bamboo.  

3. They're harming animals.

Men unload trash from a pick-up truck as scavengers sift through garbage at a temporary dump on the edge of Beirut river, Lebanon September 23, 2015. Storks are increasingly spending winters in garbage dumps, scientists say REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

I recently stumbled upon this video of a sea turtle with straw in its nostrils and it absolutely broke my heart. Marine animals such as seabirds and whales put their lives at risk by accidentally consuming them filling up their stomach with plastic straws.

4. They'll make you gassy.

Double Gulp Fountain Drink 7 Eleven

Drinking out of a straw causes extra air bubbles to form, which may cause you to feel gassy and uncomfortable. If you are concerned with getting bloated and burping a lot, going straw-free might be a solution.

5. They aren't really protecting your teeth.

uber teeth

It is widely-believed that sipping beverages through a straw minimizes the tooth decay and staining. However, this only works when the straw is placed in the very back of your tongue, letting the drink go straight into the throat— which is quite challenging.

Drinking with a straw does not really make a big difference as much as brushing your teeth. In fact,  a dental professional claims that your teeth are already exposed if you have tasted the drinks. 

While straws may make drinking more fun, they're actually terrible for our health and our environment. By making the small decision to ditch your straw, you'll make a huge impact. Basically, just say "no" to straws. 

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The Dakota Access pipeline sprung 2 new leaks

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dakota pipeline protest

(Mic) — The United States' most notorious oil project is continuing to prove its detractors correct.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that the Dakota Access pipeline has already leaked on two more occasions in 2017 — bringing the total number to three since President Donald Trump ordered the project to be completed in January.

On March 3, 84 gallons spilled from a leak in Watford City, North Dakota, where two sections of the pipeline connect.

Oil flow was "immediately" cut off to contain the spill, and contaminated snow and soil were removed without any damage being done to local wildlife or waterways, AP reports.

A smaller leak of 20 gallons occurred two days later, on March 5. The second leak happened in rural Mercer County, North Dakota, the result of an above-ground valve malfunction. The two leaks preceded the most widely-known incident to date, which occurred April 4 at a pump station north of Crandon, South Dakota. The April leak spilled 84 gallons of oil before officials contained it, again with no damage being done to the local environment.

"This spill serves as a reminder that it is not a matter of if a pipeline spills, it's a matter of when a pipeline spills," Dallas Goldtooth, a campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network, said in a statement after the April spill.

None of these spills were large enough to warrant categorization as "significant" pipeline incidents by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which requires spills of at least five barrels — or 210 gallons — to be counted in that category. But they go a long way toward validating the concerns expressed by local indigenous tribes and their allies over the past year. 

Between April and December 2016, several thousand protesters — led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe — converged on Cannon Ball, North Dakota, to halt construction on the Dakota Access pipeline. Demonstrators objected to the dangers posed by a section that was slated to burrow under Lake Oahe, a section of the Missouri River, from which the Standing Rock tribe draws drinking water.

Protesters argued that the oil could spill and endanger the water. Energy Transfer Partners — the Dallas-based company responsible for building the pipeline — insisted that everything was safe. No spills have been reported in the Lake Oahe section of the pipeline, but with three spills occurring elsewhere before the pipeline is even fully operational, it has been an inauspicious beginning so far.

north dakota access pipeline

Nevertheless, Trump has remained a staunch supporter of the project. Under former President Barack Obama's U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, construction of the pipeline was halted in December 2016 pending an environmental impact statement that would have assessed how great a danger the project posed to locals. Trump scrapped the delay as soon as he took office. In an executive action, he ordered the project to continue as planned, effective immediately.

Trump owned stock in Energy Transfer Partners — the company building the pipeline — before he reportedly sold them all off in the summer of 2016. The Dakota Access pipeline runs 1,172 miles through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

SEE ALSO: People at the front lines of the battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline are calling it a 'death sentence'

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