There's no denying that the seasons are out of whack. Besides affecting our moods and making us complain more, the weird weather will inevitably affect our food.

Agriculture requires very specific environmental conditions, and when these conditions aren't met, the agriculture suffers. As a result, we may not be able to enjoy some of our favorite foods for much longer.

Here are some that may go extinct in our lifetime due to climate change.

SEE ALSO: 13 of the biggest myths about dieting, debunked

Avocados

It takes 72 gallons of water to make just one pound of avocados — that's just about two medium-sized avocados! And to put 72 gallons of water into perspective, that's about how much water is used in four average American showers.

It just so happens that more than 80% of America's avocados are grown in California, where there's a drought. This means that growing avocados is becoming both more expensive and more difficult. Charley Wolk, an avocado farmer, told Grub Street,  "The avocado’s native environment is tropical, and we’re growing them in a desert."

Chickpeas

Similarly, it takes 76 gallons of water to make just one ounce of chickpeas (a can of chickpeas is 15 ounces).

Worldwide production of these legumes has gone down 40 to 50 percent due to droughts all across the globe, and by that rate, hummus may become a thing of the past.

Coffee

70 percent of the world's coffee could be wiped out by 2080, according to CBC News.

Most coffee is made from Arabica beans, which grow best between 64 F and 70 F. If the temperature rises above that, the plants ripen too quickly, which affects the taste of the coffee.

As the temperatures keep rising thanks to climate change, coffee yield and quality are decreasing.

The Global Seed Vault in Norway was built to shelter millions of crops from any potential natural or man-made disaster.

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PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement could accelerate damage to his family's real estate empire in the coming decades, especially his properties that lie just feet from the encroaching sea in low-lying South Florida.

The president's Mar-a-Lago estate, the soaring apartment towers bearing his name on Miami-area beaches and his Doral golf course are all threatened by rising seas, according to projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the South Florida Regional Climate Change Compact.

Severe damage may come sooner rather than later if the U.S. abandons the international agreement aimed at curbing emissions of heat-trapping gases that cause climate change.

"His properties live off of tourism — golfing communities, places where fat cats go and spend money and hobnob. It's all related to the tourism economy in South Florida," said Jim Cason, the Republican mayor of Coral Gables, a small city south of Miami that is aggressively planning for sea-level rise.

South Florida roadways already flood routinely during storms or unusually high "king tides," forcing cities to raise or move them and install expensive pumping systems.

"If the beaches are gone or the streets are flooded, it's going to affect the value of his property," Cason added. "So as a prudent businessman, he ought to conclude that the science is right and we need to prepare and plan."

Trump's 123-room Mar-a-Lago mansion and private club sit on a barrier island with the Atlantic Ocean to the east and Florida's Intracoastal Waterway to the west. If the sea level climbs by 2 or 3 feet in this century — an amount that falls squarely within scientists' predictions — that would push seawater onto the mansion's western lawns. Nearby roads and bridges used to access the property would also be affected.

At some point this century, water is expected to completely cover many of the state's barrier islands, especially during storms.

Trump's beloved National Doral Miami golf course is inland, but it's still at risk. As seas rise and Florida's water table rises, state geologists predict that Florida's porous limestone geology will allow water to easily percolate upward, flooding inland and coastal areas alike. If the course isn't severely damaged by flooding, there will be more days when it's too swamped for golfers.

The commander in chief's sea-level headache doesn't end in Florida. The Trump International Hotel & Tower in Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, is vulnerable too, as is his golf course in Ireland. The president also has business interests in properties near the ocean in Vancouver, Canada; Panama City, Panama; Uruguay and Mumbai, India, according to the Trump Organization website.

But the problem is especially fraught in Florida. Using the worst-case prediction of a 6-foot sea rise, real estate data provider Zillow estimates that 934,000 of the state's homes, or nearly 12.6 percent, will be underwater by 2100. In Palm Beach, which includes Mar-a-Lago, about 51 percent of homes worth a total of $10.9 billion would be underwater, according to the data.

"We're already in for a sea-level rise that will put all low-lying coastal areas out of business, and that's using U.S. government projections," said Harold Wanless, chairman of the University of Miami's Department of Geological Science, who has been studying sea-level rise for decades. "At some point in the not-too-distant future, we'll be leaving Miami ... we're all moving somewhere."

So far, the threat of rising seas has not affected property values on Florida's coast. Flood insurance rates are already high because of hurricane risks, but that hasn't stopped the wealthy from investing in beachfront property.

Big changes will begin when the first bank denies a 30-year mortgage for a coastal property due to surging seas, leading to a "cascade" of other denials, Cason said.

Despite the scientific consensus that the climate is warming and sea levels rising, Trump has publicly called global warming a "hoax" perpetrated by the Chinese to gain an economic edge on the U.S.

Still, Trump has used the threat of climate change when it suited his business interests. He cited sea-level rise in a permit application to build a nearly 2-mile stone wall between the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Ireland and the Atlantic Ocean.

Local officials say they don't have the luxury of ignoring the problem.

"Inaction is not an option for us in South Florida," said Susanne Torriente, chief resilience officer for the City of Miami Beach. "The streets are flooding and days are getting warmer. It's not a partisan issue for us. At a local level, we're being much more practical."

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Dearen reported from Gainesville, Florida.

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Follow Jason Dearen on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JHDearen . Follow Alex Sanz at http://www.twitter.com/AlexSanz .

SEE ALSO: These 20 images of Earth over the past 70 years show why countries signed the Paris Agreement

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In early June, President Trump announced his intention to pull the US out of the landmark Paris climate agreement. 

But not all US states (or cities) are on board.

Eleven states, plus Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, have vowed to pursue policies that will uphold the US' commitments to the accord. They've joined the the United States Climate Alliance, a growing, bipartisan group that seeks to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions nationwide.

Washington governor Jay Inslee, New York's Andrew Cuomo, and California's Jerry Brown announced the formation of the group on June 1, following Trump's announcement about the Paris Agreement. A day later, another unnamed group, which contains 30 cities and over 80 university presidents, also pledged to work towards the emissions reduction goals that the US set as part of the accord. 

The Paris Agreement, established in 2015, aims to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold that scientists say would have catastrophic and irreversible effects on the planet. The US, which is now expected to leave the accord in 2019, set a goal to reduce national emissions 26% below 2005 levels by 2025 as part of the agreement.

As of 2016 data, the US Climate Alliance's member states make up about 36% of the US population and 30.6% of the US GDP. The were responsible for nearly a fifth of the US' carbon dioxide emissions in 2014.

The map below shows the states that have signed onto the alliance along with potential members (states whose governors have expressed support but haven't officially joined), and the 2014 carbon emissions from each state.

SEE ALSO: Pittsburgh plans to power itself with 100% renewable energy

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NOW WATCH: Economist: Climate change won’t be the only major concern if Trump pulls out of the Paris Accord

Few sights in nature are as awesome as molten lava pouring into the ocean.

This fearsome yet beautiful process slowly builds islands like Hawaii — arguably the tallest mountain on Earth, thanks to the Kilauea volcano — by rapidly cooling the liquefied rock into new land, throwing up billowing clouds of steam in the process.

Every once in awhile, though, an extra-special phenomenon occurs below these piping-hot clouds: A vortex of steam will rise up from the ocean and merge with the larger plume.

Catching one or two vortices form is rare enough, says Bruce Omori, a native-Hawaiian photographer, but in 2009 he caught at least six twist up into a plume — all at once:

"These vortices form and dissipate so quickly, it's always a challenge to capture images of them," Omori told Business Insider in an email. Seeing this many at the same time, he says, was a "once in a lifetime experience."

Omori saw a similarly exceptional batch of steam tornadoes just two weeks before taking this image, which we first saw at the photography community site 500px. But Omori says he was too gobsmacked to do anything at the time.

"I just stood there, watching… and watching… and watching… until I finally realized that I could've shot the scene if I had pulled out my gear!" he says. "Wanted to kick myself for not trying."

He was determined not to miss any more vortices, if he ever saw so many again — and luckily, he did during a hike across the lava fields of Waikupanaha. When he spotted the steam vortices, he quickly pulled out his camera, changed a lens, and captured a few images. "Never saw another like this since," Omori says, calling the scene "incredible".

Vortices like these form only if lava steam plumes induce "a spin upon columns of rising air from the heated sea," Omori says. These columns twist upward and become visible by carrying steam at the water's surface into the plume.

"[T]hey do not create a lot of sound, although a bit of whirring can be heard if close enough," Omori says.

SEE ALSO: How scientists grow perfect diamonds in the laboratory

DON'T MISS: What it's like to ride a boat up to rivers of molten lava in Hawaii

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NOW WATCH: This river of lava is flowing from a volcano that's been erupting nonstop for 33 years

Despite the controversy surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline, it commenced operations on June 1 under an executive order from Donald Trump.

The pipeline is now shuttling barrels of North Dakota-produced oil to refining markets in Illinois. But many members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe say the pipeline, which snakes through their only water source, is a death sentence.

To Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the $3.8 billion project, it's a necessary part of the US energy network.

But the project could now face a temporary shutdown because of a new ruling from a US District Judge.

In a ruling issued June 14, Judge James Boasberg said that the agency in charge of the pipeline didn't adequately consider some matters important to the Standing Rock tribe, such as how an oil spill might affect the tribe's fishing and hunting rights, and whether the tribe would be disproportionately affected by a leak.

Legal battle

In July of last year, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers claming that the legal and environmental review process for the pipeline was rushed and undertaken largely without the tribe's input.

Judge Boasberg's recent ruling appears to lend some support to that claim, but he also determined that the agency "largely complied" with environmental law when approving the pipeline.

Nevertheless, Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II called the ruling "a major victory" in a recent statement.

Jan Hasselman, an attorney for Standing Rock, told the Associated Press that Boasber's decision is enough to "reset the clock to where we were last fall," when the tribe demanded a comprehensive environmental study of the pipeline and asked the Army Corps of Engineers to consider alternate routes that would not threaten their water supply.

But representatives of Energy Transfer Partners say it's unlikely to have any real impact.

"It's business as usual today," Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, an organization that represents some 500 energy companies including Energy Transfer Partners, told the AP. Still, Ness added that the group won't know for sure how the decision will affect them for several months.

"Obviously, we don't know how all that plays out," he said. "But clearly the pipeline is running. It's a critical element of the nation's energy infrastructure."

That may not last, however. The Corps will now need to reassess the pipeline. Then it could either re-grant the same permit that it initially approved or suggest an alternate route.

Energy Transfer Partners said in a statement to AP that it believed the Corps "properly evaluated both" of the issues that Judge Boasberg said were not adequately addressed, including how an oil spill might affect the Tribe.

"Pipeline operations can and will continue as this limited remand process unfolds," the company said.

'It's going to affect our water'

People who gathered in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, several months ago to protest the pipeline's construction say the threat of a leak was a primary driver of their opposition to the project.

"The main reason it's such a big deal here is that it's going to affect our water supply," Aries Yumul, a self-identified water protector with the Oceti Sakowin (the proper name for the people commonly known as the Sioux) told Business Insider in January.

"Our aquifers and rivers are fed by this river," Yumul said. "If it were to get contaminated, it would affect all of the tribal nations. The idea of that ... it would be a death sentence at this point."

Devashree Saha, a senior policy associate at Brookings Institution, told Business Insider in January that the Standing Rock Sioux seemed to have a solid case.

"If this leaks, it is going to spill into the river. So the tribe's legal stance — that they were not adequately consulted, that there are potential water issues here — their legal concerns are strong," said Saha.

Pipeline leaks are not infrequent — from 2013 to 2015, an average of 121 accidents happened every year. Since 1995, there have been more than 2,000 significant accidents involving oil and petroleum pipelines, according to data obtained by the Associated Press from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Added up, the property damage from those totals to roughly $3 billion.

Public health repercussions of these leaks include digestive problems and rashes. In severe cases, some evidence has even suggested a link between a burst pipeline and an increased risk of cancer in the surrounding population.

An in-depth 2010 report from Worcester Polytechnic Institute looked at the effects of three major oil spills and found that people who used contaminated water for bathing or laundry appeared to experience a higher incidence of skin problems, ranging from mild rashes to severe and lasting eczema and malignant skin cancers. They also found increased incidences of digestive problems — and some types of cancer — in people who ingested the oil directly in drinking water or indirectly by eating the meat of livestock exposed to the oil.

These risks are one of the reasons that most large-scale pipeline projects require extensive legal and environmental review, and must comply with laws like the National Environmental Policy Act to ensure all potential impacts are considered.

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: Obesity rates are skyrocketing, and dietitians say a key factor may be to blame

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NOW WATCH: Animated map shows where your bottled water actually comes from

A block of ice about the size of Delaware could break off of Antarctica "within days," researchers suggest. And a new animation shows just how close the humongous iceberg is to calving.

Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf — one of the largest such shelves in the southern continent — began developing the crack in 2010. That rift lengthened and widened over the years, but has grown most rapidly since 2016. In early June, new satellite images showed the rift had split, turned north, and begun moving toward the Southern Ocean.

Now Adrian Luckman of Swansea University in the UK, who is closely monitoring Larsen C with his colleagues, has released a new animation of the rift's rapid growth.

"Waiting for the final [jump]!" Luckman said in a tweet about the video on June 16.

The images reveal how the rift "jumps" as it slices through bands of weak ice, slows when it hits denser ice, and speeds up again when it encounters more weak ice. In the animation, the ocean is shown in emerald green (top right), the Larsen C ice shelf is the light blue patch, and the glacier behind it is white.

It's impossible to say precisely when the rift will snap the ice off, but Dan McGrath, a scientist with the US Geological Survey, thinks it won't be long.

"I would expect it to occur quite rapidly, within days or weeks," McGrath, who researches Larsen C, told Reuters on June 1. The ice block makes up about 10% of Larsen C's total area.

According to Luckman and his Swansea colleague Martin O'Leary, the crack lengthened 11 miles from May 25 to May 31. They also noted that the rift only has to extend through 8 more miles of ice for it to birth a colossal iceberg.

"The rift tip appears also to have turned significantly towards the ice front, indicating that the time of calving is probably very close," wrote Luckman and O'Leary, who collaborate on the Impact of Melt on Ice Shelf Dynamics and Stability project, also known as Project MIDAS. "There appears to be very little to prevent the iceberg from breaking away completely."

More recent satellite data, released on June 6 and June 12, suggests the rift has shown "no significant change ... since May 31", according to Project MIDAS Twitter account (which is run by O'Leary). He added that new satellite data wouldn't arrive in until Sunday, June 18.

When the iceberg does shed, it will not significantly raise sea levels, since it's already sitting in the ocean. But Luckman and O'Leary said that without the soon-to-calve iceberg, the rest of Larsen C "will be less stable than it was prior to the rift".

Put another way: There's a slim chance that the entire Larsen C ice shelf, and an ancient glacier behind it, could later disintegrate and fall into the sea.

The chaos wouldn't be unprecedented in recorded history. In 2002, a neighboring ice shelf called Larsen B collapsed and broke up in the Southern Ocean. If Larsen C and its accompanying glacier collapse, sea levels might rise by up to four inches.

More details about the rift in Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf are available in our most recent feature.

SEE ALSO: Here's what Earth might look like in 100 years — if we're lucky

DON'T MISS: 25 photos that prove we're all stowaways on a tiny, fragile spaceship we call Earth

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Scientists figured out why a giant crack in Antarctica is growing so fast, and it points to an even bigger problem

The INSIDER Summary:

• Fruits and vegetables used to look really, really different.
• They've been genetically modified over hundreds of years.
• Here's what watermelons, bananas, eggplants, carrots, and corn used to look like.

Watermelons didn't always look like watermelons.

Human beings started domesticating crops about 10,000 years ago. Since them, we've developed farming techniques that breed and genetically modify food to taste better, be more nutritious, live in different environments, and look way, way different.

We don't have older versions of bananas and watermelons growing today, or photographs from thousands or hundreds of years ago. So how do we know they used to look so weird? From old paintings! Giovanni Stanchi's painting from the 17th century, in particular, give a lot of clues.

Here's what a few of the most well-known crops looked like before and after generations of agricultural modification.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: See how geologists scoop molten-hot lava into a bucket for testing

WASHINGTON (AP) — Less than one-third of Americans support President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, a new poll shows, and just 18% of respondents agree with his claim that pulling out of the international agreement to reduce carbon emissions will help the U.S. economy.

The survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research earlier this month found that a slim majority — 52% — worry that withdrawing will actually hurt the economy. Twenty-seven percent think it won’t have an impact either way.

But digging deeper into the numbers shows a sharp partisan divide on global warming, with Republicans more likely to align themselves with the president’s views.

Seventy-eight percent of Democrats think withdrawing from the Paris agreement will hurt the national economy. Among Republicans, just 24% think it will hurt, 40% think it will have no impact and 34% think it will help.

Donald Nolan is a New Jersey businessman who has spent years living and traveling overseas. He worries that Trump is undermining U.S. credibility abroad. An independent voter, Nolan said he strongly opposes pulling out of the Paris accord.

“Where I live, we’re 36 feet above sea level. It the polar ice caps melt, there won’t be any dry land here,” said Nolan, 60. “If you are pulling out of something that pretty much every other country in the world is a part of, then that is not seen as being a leader. When I lived overseas, America was always looked at as being first. But I see our position to be deteriorating."

Overall, 44% of Americans are very concerned and 26% are moderately concerned that withdrawing from the agreement will hurt the country’s standing in the world, with that concern also dividing along party lines.

By a 46% to 29% margin, more oppose than favor the U.S. withdrawing from the agreement. Democrats are far more likely to oppose than support withdrawing from the agreement, 69% to 16%. Republicans are more likely to support Trump’s withdrawal, 51% to 20%.

Independents are mixed in their views. Twenty-five percent support the withdrawal, 36% are opposed and 37% don’t feel strongly one way or the other.

Similarly, 43% say they’re very or extremely concerned that the U.S. withdrawing from the agreement will hurt global efforts to fight climate change, while 25% are moderately concerned. Seventy-two percent of Democrats, but just 13% of Republicans, are very concerned about the withdrawal hurting global efforts to fight climate change.

Sixty-four percent of Americans disapprove and just 34% approve of how Trump is handling the issue of climate change, the poll shows. That’s similar to his overall approval rating, but there are other areas where Trump performs a bit better. For example, 43% approve of how he’s handling the economy and 47% approve of how he’s handling the threat of terrorism.

The poll shows about two-thirds of Americans think that climate change is happening, while only about 1 in 10 think it’s not. The remaining quarter aren’t sure one way or another.

Seven in 10 Americans — including some of those who aren’t sure whether climate change is actually happening — think it’s a problem that the U.S. government should be working to address. Among those who do think it’s a problem the government should address, more oppose than support withdrawing from the Paris agreement by a 60% to 21% margin.

More than half of Americans —53% — say climate change is a very or extremely important issue to them. Women are more likely than men to call climate change an important issue, 59% to 47%.

Bonnie Sumner, an independent voter who has lived in Colorado the last nine years, is among those who said doing something to combat climate change is important. She said her community in the Rocky Mountains is still dealing with the after effects of a devastating wildfire.

“It’s definitely gotten hotter than it used to be,” said Sumner, 72. “I try to keep up with science, not people who have money to be made by not wanting things to change.”

The poll shows that 35% of Americans have a great deal of confidence in the scientific community, 51% have some confidence, and 11% have hardly any confidence. But, again, there’s a big political divide: 53% of Democrats, but just 22% of Republicans and 19% of independents, say they have a great deal of confidence in scientists.

Sumner said Trump is too quick to dismiss the evidence of global warming compiled by climate scientists.

“His position, as it is with too many other things, is, ’I know what’s best, I know better than everybody else, and this is a hoax, and this is fake news,’” she said. “I’m frightened for us, my children and my grandchildren. We only have one earth, we have to work together.”

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,068 adults was conducted June 8-11 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1%age points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.

SEE ALSO: TRUMP WITHDRAWING FROM PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT

DON'T MISS: Experts offer optimism that Trump pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement won't doom the planet

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Animated map shows what the US would look like if all the Earth's ice melted

It started with rotting flesh.

Slicing into the green skin of a Hawaiian papaya ordinarily yields juicy, salmon-colored fruit that's almost custard-like in its consistency and sweetness. But in the early 1990s, one Hawaiian farmer instead found bits of whitish, dried-out flesh in his recently harvested fruit. On the skin were discolored spots resembling tiny rings.

It was a sign of trouble for hundreds of Hawaiian papaya farmers who, for the next several years, would lose field after field of their crop — altogether an $11-million dollar industry. The culprit was an incurable virus called Papaya Ring Spot Virus (PRSV).

In 1992, Dennis Gonsalves, a plant pathologist at Cornell University who grew up in the region most acutely affected by the virus, came up with a wild idea to stop it. He wanted to vaccinate the papaya crop from the virus using genetic engineering. To do it, Gonsalves and two other scientists (his wife Carol Gonsalves and David R. Lee) opened up the papaya genome and carefully inserted a gene from the ring spot virus into its genetic code.

After nearly a decade of work, Gonsalves and his team created a papaya plant that was genetically resistant to ring spot. The Gonsalves' crops blossomed across farms that had been decimated by the virus. Today, their fruit, which they named the Rainbow papaya, dominates Hawaii's papaya exports.

"We saved the papaya industry," Gonsalves says in a new film narrated by Neil de Grasse Tyson called "Food Evolution", which is set to premier on June 23. "That's it."

This wasn't the first time scientists tried to improve a fruit by tweaking its DNA — in 1994, the FDA approved the Flavr Savr brand of tomato, which scientists had genetically engineered to last longer by using a backwards copy of a ripening gene. But the Rainbow papaya represented the first time the technique was widely successful.

Yet instead of ending a storm, as the crop's name might suggest, the Rainbow papaya unleashed its own tempest.

"Food Evolution" dives into the controversy surrounding genetic modification, and opens with a 2013 scene of the Maui County Council floor. At the time, council member Margaret Wille was introducing a bill to ban GMOs from the Big Island.

Ground zero for genetically modified foods

"We are at a pivotal time in the history of this island," Wille told the Maui County Council in September 2013. "We have an opportunity to act, to do something. We would make history on this island. Let's make this island a model for the rest of the world."

Wille's proposed ban received more vocal support than any bill the council had previously considered — even more than its "perennially popular bids to decriminalize marijuana," according to a 2014 New York Times story by Amy Harmon.

Anti-GMO activists from around the world were video-conferenced in to the hearing to speak in support of the ban. Scientists, on the other hand, were not given as much time to speak. 

Papaya farmers voiced staunch opposition to the bill, which forced Wille to amend it to "grandfather in" the fruit. Essentially, that meant the Rainbow papaya was exempted from the ban, so long as farmers registered with the county and paid a $100 yearly fee.

"They're treating us like we’re criminals,” Ross Sibucao, the chair of the growers' association, told the Times in 2013.

The ban was approved and signed into law in 2014 but subsequently entered a kind of legislative limbo. In 2015, the federal government suggested it might overturn the ban, and sent to the US Court of Appeals for further debate. The following year, a federal judge killed the legislation, ruling that Hawaiian counties could not enact their own GMO bans.

But the GMO debate in Hawaii unleashed a cascade of bills around the country that aimed to limit or ban foods made with genetically modified ingredients. More than 20 other states, including California, Florida, and New York, have active anti-GMO campaigns; activists in many of them have pushed for legislation banning the products or requiring them to be labeled. Last year, Barack Obama signed the first national GMO labeling law, which requires food makers to list any genetically-modified ingredients in their products.

What scientists think of GMOs

A majority of scientific groups support genetically modified foods, citing dozens of studies that suggest the crops are safe for human consumption.

Organizations like the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the European Commission have publicly proclaimed GMO foods to be safe to eat. A large 2013 study on GMOs also found no "significant hazards directly connected with the use of genetically engineered crops." Last summer, Soylent, the producer of Silicon Valley's favorite meal-replacement drink, announced that it made its drinks with GMO ingredients.

Several scientists have also argued that nearly all the food we eat today has been genetically modified in some way. Over thousands of years, farmers have hand-picked the traits they want to see in their crops, breeding and cross-breeding plants with the sweetest flesh and the smallest seeds until they arrived at many of the fruits and veggies we eat today.

According to the USDA, the following American-grown products are genetically modified:

• 94% of soybeans
• 92% of corn
• 94% of cotton
• 95% of sugar beets, one of our main sources of sugar
• 90% of canola oil, commonly used in prepared foods and to deep-fry things like french fries
• 77% of Hawaiian papayas

"I hope people wake up one day and realize, 'Hey, almost everything is GM' — it's in the air, on our bodies, in our medicine. Maybe we can get over the GM foods controversy," Harvard geneticist George Church told Business Insider last year.

Gonsalves agrees. "We did the research and I stand by it," he said.

SEE ALSO: Monsanto may have ended the war on GMOs

DON'T MISS: Here's what fruits and vegetables looked like before we domesticated them

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's what fruits and vegetables looked like before we domesticated them

If humans have any hope of living forever, we should probably take a hint from the dozens of other animals on Earth that far outpace our measly 71 years. One of the longest-lived of these animals is the Greenland shark, which researchers only recently discovered could survive for so long. On a 2017 expedition, researchers learned more fascinating details about the shark, including that it's heart rate is incredibly slow — only beating once every ten seconds. Here are the rest of the longest-living animals on Earth.

SEE ALSO: Everything you thought you knew about aging is wrong

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Humans are finally starting to understand the octopus, and it’s mind-boggling

The Interior Department plans to remove the federal protections that the Yellowstone grizzly bear has had under the Endangered Species Act for the last 42 years, officials announced on June 22.

In 1975, there were as few as 136 Yellowstone grizzly bears; there are now approximately 700.

"As a kid who grew up in Montana, I can tell you that this is a long time coming and very good news for many communities and advocates in the Yellowstone region," Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement. "This achievement stands as one of America's great conservation successes; the culmination of decades of hard work and dedication on the part of the state, tribal, federal and private partners. As a Montanan, I'm proud of what we’ve achieved together."

The main question here is who administers the bear populations. Delisting the grizzly means that states will manage populations and can allow hunting of the bears when they venture outside the National Park. The federal government spent about $1.7 billion on protecting the more than 2,000 species covered by the act in 2012.

Conservation groups say the population recovery is impressive but that there are still major concerns about the decision. Bear populations are still only at 1% to 2% of what they used to be.

SEE ALSO: The tick that makes people allergic to red meat with one bite seems to be spreading

The Interior Department said they will publish the rule removing Yellowstone grizzly protections in the coming days. It will take effect 30 days after publication.

In the 1800s there were approximately 50,000 grizzlies in the lower 48 states but by the late 20th century, populations had plummeted, decimated by habitat loss and hunting.

Source: NPR

Grizzlies were one of the first species protected under the Endangered Species Act. The protections prevent states from allowing hunting since federal officials are in charge and they put limits on how nuisance bears are dealt with.

The bioluminescent sea creatures started showing up along the coastline of British Columbia about two years ago.

The soft, spongy, animals are called pyrosomes and they are not normally found in the Pacific Northwest.

So why are they in BC's waters? 

CBC Canada is reporting that millions of the sea creatures have been spotted off the coast of British Columbia this year, far more than was seen in the past two years when they first appeared.

Vancouver Island-based fisherman Matt Stabler says the pyrosomes — pimply, tube-like animals — were so thick he and his crew had to move to different fishing spots more than once to avoid them.

Canadian scientists don't know too much about pyrosomes because they are not normally seen off Canada's coastline. But everyone is quickly learning the creatures are normally found in the warmer tropics and they can grow up to 10 meters (33 feet) in length.

"There are pictures of people swimming up to these, riding on them as a diver, sticking their head in the opening," said Moira Galbraith, a zooplankton taxonomist at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C.

What are pyrosomes?

While coming across a 10-meter pyrosome would be scary, most of the sea creatures found off BC's coast have been more in the range of eight to 60 centimeters (3.0 to 24 inches) in length. Pyrosomes belong to the genus Pyrosoma and are planktonic, bioluminescent cylindrical or cone-shaped colonies made up of hundreds of thousands of individuals, known as zooids.

So the creatures being seen in B.C. are actually "colonies." Being planktonic, and this means their movements are largely controlled by currents, tides and waves, gives us a clue to how they reached the Pacific Northwest. They are normally found in the upper layers of the open ocean in warm seas.

The odd creatures remain plump and juicy-looking while in the water but become flat as a pancake after being on dry land for a few hours. But it is the sheer numbers of them that have researchers baffled. A central Oregon research team gathered 60,000 individual pyrosomes in around five minutes this year, using a trawling net while trying to find a rare fish they were researching.

Ric Brodeur of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center’s research station in Newport, Oregon has worked off the Oregon Coast since the 1980s and had never seen a pyrosome before 2014. “We’re trying to collect as much information as we can to try to understand what is happening, and why.” 

Pyrosome numbers in the Northern California Current – which encompasses Northern California, Oregon, and Washington – increased in 2015 and again in 2016. However, the unprecedented numbers of them this year is puzzling. This year, for the first time, the pyrosome colonies have reached southeastern Alaska.

Scientists in B.C. and the U.S. have several questions they are pursuing - the pyrosome's feeding behavior, the environmental variables the affect their numbers and the impact on the marine food web. The last question is particularly important because the pyrosomes eat zooplankton, which also supports populations of shrimp, crab, mollusks and other filter feeders.

One of my Digital Journal readers in Canada messaged me, wondering if the strange sea creatures were poisonous and more to the point: Were they edible? Pyrosoma are not dangerous or toxic, however, seals and some whales have been known to chow down on them. As for humans? Maybe my reader will let us know.

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Yellowstone National Park is best known for its Old Faithful geyser and its stunning wildlife.

But the national park also sits atop a supervolcano, simmering just under the surface. You can see some of the evidence of its active state in the hydrothermal activity that bubbles up, including Old Faithful, which shoots water every few hours.

Between June 12 and June 19, Yellowstone experienced an earthquake swarm of 464 events, the majority of which were magnitude 1 or below. The University of Utah, which monitors seismic activity in Yellowstone, noted that these swarms are common.

"This is the highest number of earthquakes at Yellowstone within a single week in the past five years, but is fewer than weekly counts during similar earthquakes swarms in 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2010," scientists from the university told the Star Valley Independent in a statement.  

What is a supervolcano?

Supervolcanos are characterized as volcanic centers that have had eruptions that covered more than 240 cubic miles. The US has two: one at Yellowstone and another at Long Valley in California.

Yellowstone has had three major events in the past 2.1 million years, which led to the creation of the calderas, or large volcanic craters.

It has been hundreds of thousands of years since a major volcanic eruption. The last one was about 174,000 years ago, and it led to the West Thumb Geyser Basin, which extended the Yellowstone Lake.

What would happen if it were to erupt again?

Scientists don't think Yellowstone's supervolcano would be erupting any time soon (at least not in the next thousand years). The odds of it erupting within a given year are one in 730,000, according to the US Geological Survey. So if you're planning a trip there, you shouldn't be too concerned.

If it did erupt, it could have some pretty extreme effects on the surrounding areas.

For starters, the eruption could emit ash that would expand over 500 miles (seen below). For comparison, this map shows the area that the Mount St. Helens' 1980 eruption ash reached.

Molten lava more than 1,000 degrees oozing from an eruption might be less of a concern than the ash. The eruption would likely cover the ground with as much as 4 inches of gray ash, which could be detrimental to crops growing in the Midwest.

Along with the ash, the supervolcano would spew a whole bunch of gasses, including sulfur dioxide, a gas that can lead to acid rain as well as global cooling as it reflects the sun away from the Earth.

The explosion likely wouldn't wipe out human life, but it certainly would be destructive, especially to the western half of the US.

In the meantime, researchers are keeping a close watch on Yellowstone to check for warning signs that an eruption might be underway.

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NOW WATCH: There’s a live supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park — here’s what would happen if it erupted

Westinghouse's bankruptcy culminates the collapse of potential US strategic leadership in world nuclear energy. The US has faltered in many aspects of nuclear technology, now allowing other nations to become the world leaders in nuclear and energy diplomacy.

Regaining the strategic power will be technically straightforward but politically difficult.

The importance of nuclear power

More important even than its 8% share of world GDP, energy is the master resource, enabling industry, agriculture, and services worldwide. Energy is worth a war. Conflicts over energy include China's usurpation of territory in the South China Sea, Sudan atrocities, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and the blockade of Japan's SE Asia oil imports that sparked Pearl Harbor. Energy is important in war and peace.

Nuclear fission can provide virtually unlimited motive power, and selling its energy can provide strategic economic power. Though US officials regularly self-congratulate themselves about US gold-standard nuclear policies, the US hardly advances industrial nuclear technology and sells little of it, so has little strategic influence.

The nuclear nonproliferation treaty implemented the desires of permanent members of the UN security council US, Russia, China, France, and the UK to reserve nuclear weapons for themselves, offering fission power assistance to the have-not-weapons states in exchange for forswearing nuclear weapons. Many countries also have signed bilateral "123" agreements enabling and controlling trade with the US in nuclear-related technology. However, none of these agreements stopped India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, or North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.

In 1994 North Korea agreed to suspend its nuclear weapons program in exchange for two 1000 MW nuclear power plants to be constructed with a target date of 2003, but by 2003 little progress had been made. North Korea demanded compensation for delays, which demand was refused, the civilian nuclear power plant project was suspended, and North Korea resumed its weapons program. Unable to offer a nuclear power carrot, the US now waves a nuclear weapon stick.

Without a strong nuclear power industry and international trade the US has lost negotiating leverage. For example the new 123 agreement with Vietnam does not prohibit it from enriching or reprocessing uranium or other fuels in order to be permitted to trade with US suppliers. The renewed agreement with South Korea weakened limitations on fuel manufacturing and offered some spent fuel processing assistance at US national labs.

Who the US competition is — and why they're winning

Russia is building nuclear power plants on its own territory. This reduces internal consumption of natural gas, which Russia exports by pipeline to Europe. This provides Russia with money and the threat potential to turn off the gas, as happened with Ukraine.

The proffered strategy to supplant Russian power by shipping US liquefied natural gas to Europe won't work. Liquifying and shipping cheap Texas methane far exceeds the cost of gas delivered by existing Russian pipelines. Russia's Rosatom claims $300 billion dollars of signed contracts to export its VVER light-water-cooled nuclear power plants, achieving a 60% market share. Russia often offers to lend construction money or to build, own and operate the power plants, gaining more influence over developing nations.

China already operates 36 nuclear power reactors, with 21 more under construction. With no US nuclear power plants under construction in 1999, Westinghouse was sold to British Nuclear Fuels, then to Toshiba.

In 2007 Westinghouse agreed with China to build four new-design AP1000 nuclear power plants, the first of which will now operate in 2017. China also purchased technology rights to build and export larger versions; China's new CAP1400 has already completed pressure vessel testing. China is already bidding to build foreign nuclear power plants.

South Korea's KEPCO has built and operates 25 nuclear power plants in South Korea, generating up to 23 GW of power, supplying a third of the country's electricity. KEPCO has completed the first of four 1400 GW nuclear power plants they are building in the United Arab Emirates.

12 nuclear fronts on which the US is falling behind

Though the US once led the world in nuclear power technology, from naval ship engines to commercial power plants, these examples illustrate the fall of US nuclear power industry.

1. Uranium. The US imports 85% of its uranium from Russia, Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, and Namibia, though substantial uranium resources exist within the US. For two decades half of US power plant uranium fuel was provided by Russia, which diluted its highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium in a mutual agreement to reduce stockpiles.

2. Uranium Enrichment. Nuclear power plants require uranium fuel enriched from natural 0.7% density of the U-235 isotope to around 6%. Today the single US enrichment plant, owned by a Netherlands company, can satisfy a third of current US needs.

3. Heavy Water. Deuterium dioxide, D₂O, is similar to H₂O except each hydrogen nucleus is twice as massive, able to slow neutrons more effectively than ordinary water. D₂O is used in research and plutonium production reactors. The US has not had a heavy water production capability since 1996, importing it recently from Iran.

4. Spacecraft Power.Plutonium-238 produced in nuclear reactors decays steadily, producing heat to power radioisotope thermoelectric generators that power NASA's space vehicles, some for decades. The US is hardly producing any Pu-238, curtailing NASA's space exploration.

5. Spent Fuel. The US has not fulfilled its commitment to take care of power companies' spent fuel. There are many places to store spent fuel besides Yucca Mountain. Deep boreholes would be safe and economic, but the US DOE backs away from testing at the slightest opposition. NRC has stated that dry cask storage is safe for 100 years or indefinitely.

6. Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX). Reducing the threat of nuclear war, the US and Russia each agreed to destroy 34 tons of weapons-grade Pu-239. The US Savannah River MOX plant is supposed to mix Pu-239 and uranium oxides to make solid fuel to be burned in the country's existing power plants. Areva uses MOX technology successfully in France. The US MOX project overran its initial $5 billion funding by $12 billion, so President Obama moved to end the program, despite the agreement with Russia. The program future is not clear. Meanwhile Russia has just started up its new BN-1200 fast neutron reactor, which will consume Russia's excess plutonium.

7. Sodium Cooled Fast Reactor. A SCFR was the first US electric power plant, EBR-I, designed to use plentiful U-238 fuel at a time when U-235 was thought to be in short supply. Fast neutrons convert U-238 to fissile Pu-239 within the reactor. EBR-II was the prototype for the Integral Fast Reactor project of Argonne National Labs, terminated in 1994, three years before completion. SCFR technology is in the GE S-Prism reactor design and in Bill Gates's Terrapower Traveling Wave Reactor design. Unable to foresee a path to regulatory permission in the US, Terrapower has made agreements with China to build and test the TWR power plant there. GE and Advanced Reactor Concepts are asking Canada for SCRF construction permissions. Russia's new BN-1200 is an SCFR, one of three there.

8. Toshiba/Westinghouse AP1000. Many parties share blame for the Westinghouse AP1000 cost overruns. The selected contractor was inexperienced. The NRC changed the aircraft impact rule after the design was approved, adding a 2.5 year delay, even though "compliance with the rule is not needed for adequate protection to public health and safety or common defense and security." Because of the Westinghouse bankruptcy and Toshiba finances, it's not now known if the 4 US AP1000 nuclear power plants under construction will be completed.

9. High Temperature Gas Reactor. Fourth generation nuclear technologies such as the high temperature gas reactor and molten salt reactor are recognized as safer and better than existing water-cooled reactors. HTGR fuel is half-millimeter grains of uranium oxide, encased in three ceramic layers, permanently containing radioactive fission products even in accidents. Helium transfers the high temperature heat of fission to steam to power generators. The US built two pioneering HTGRs, closed in 1974 and 1989. China's Tsinghua University built a small, pebble bed HTGR based on Germany's experiences, and China is now loading fuel into a commercial version. The US DOE created the Next Generation Nuclear Plant project. Working later with the cost-sharing NGNP Alliance a French Areva design was selected over the US General Atomics or Westinghouse designs. Little has progressed since. Veterans of South Africa's cancelled pebble bed HTGR project have founded X-energy in the US.

10. Molten Salt Reactor. MSR fuel may be melted fluoride salts of beryllium, sodium, uranium, and thorium. Fission takes place as the liquid is pumped through channels in graphite blocks, then through heat exchangers making steam to power a turbine-generator. Hazardous radioactive fission products such as cesium-137 would remain in the low-pressure salt in any accident. The US Oak Ridge National Laboratory built two working MSRs, but the project was terminated in the 1970s. Such walk-away-safe liquid fission power plants promise to generate electric power cheaper than coal-fired plants. US ventures ThorCon, Terrapower, Flibe Energy, and Transatomic Power are designing MSRs. China has hundreds of engineers designing an MSR.

11. Nuclear Regulation. Unit costs for US nuclear power plants tripled after the 1970 Three Mile Island accident, while South Korea's successful KEPCO now builds them for a third of US costs. Obtaining an NRC license to build a conventional water-cooled power plant costs $100-200 million. NRC licensing hearings can stretch out for years. NRC admits third party intervenors to participate in questioning license applications, adding time and cost. NRC says hundreds of annual hearings increase public confidence, but the Big Green opponents (Greenpeace, Sierra Club, National Resource Defense Council, and Union of Concerned Scientists) have the money and legal expertise to use intervention to add delays and costs. Without a stable regulatory system, future investors will fear uncontrollable costs and schedules for building even refined water-cooled power plants. It will be even more difficult for advanced ones. A 2016 audit of NRC by the Government Accountability Office reported that just obtaining a license to build an initial fourth generation MSR or HTGR plant would cost $1 billion and take a decade.

12. Electric Power Regulation. The US electric power market has been distorted by new rules that give subsidies and preferential treatment for selected energy sources such as wind and solar. Nuclear power plants are not easily powered down as the wind freshens and prioritized wind turbine generators come on line. Nuclear plants are sometimes allowed to continue to operate, but paying out money to idled wind or solar generators. Natural gas generators are more easily powered up or down, and natural gas is inexpensive due to modern shale fracking. Legislators and regulators have created state, regional and federal rules, making a complex market rewarding for clever, politically influential ventures. Regulator Travis Kavulla writes"Even experts in certain places, such as New England, profess that they cannot understand the market rules for the product's trade in, say, California." The consequence is that many nuclear power plants are shutting down, though they can generate inexpensive electricity.

4 ways the US could regain a nuclear-powered lead

Regaining strategic power will first require changing public perceptions of radiation dangers created by regulatory agencies' nonscientific rules. With permission to innovate and test, private industry can then best advance the commercialization advanced nuclear power.

Change public fear of radiation

Aside from Chernobyl, no member of the public has been killed by radiation from a commercial nuclear power plant. Nuclear power is statistically by far the safest energy source. Yet unfounded fear of all radiation is the root cause of the changing rules, regulations, hearings, costs, and opposition to nuclear power and innovative radiation medicine.

Regulatory agencies NRC and EPA exacerbate public radiophobia with the scientifically disproven LNT (linear no threshold) model of health effects and the ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) rule for radiation protection.

The history of LNT and ALARA dates back to the beginning of the Cold War when Nobel prize winner Hermann Muller proclaimed "no threshold" at the 1946 award ceremony, but having no evidence below the very high dose levels that he used in fruit fly experiments. The LNT model was adopted by the National Academy of Sciences' BEAR (Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation) committee a decade later, partly to obtain genetics research funding, though Muller was also motivated by his desire to increase fear of nuclear weapons testing that might escalate into global nuclear war.

Radiation safety limits have since been ratcheted down, from 150 mSv/year in 1948 to 5 mSv/y in 1957 to 1 mSv/y in 1991, without supporting evidence, relying on the erroneous LNT model. EPA limits are set a hundred times lower than could cause harm. ALARA leads people, the press, and Big Green to falsely conclude that any radiation exposure may cause cancer and kill you.

EPA and NRC receive petitions from scientists, oncologists, radiologists, and nuclear engineers to relax radiation protection limits. The petitions include references to published articles documenting the observed benign health effects of low dose radiation, along with modern science explaining the biological mechanisms of dose response. Radiation stimulation of the immune system can sometimes suppress cancer. EPA and NRC responses do not counter the presented evidence, which is simply ignored, and the petitions are not granted.

End radiophobia

Today's radiation science makes it clear low dose radiation is not harmful, but changing the regulations will require recanting historical pronouncements by the NRC, EPA, and scientists of the National Council on Radiation Protection and the National Academy of Sciences, negatively impacting the reputations of many people still in power.

Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information (SARI) have petitioned that radiation exposure limits be set to 50 milliSieverts per year and ALARA abolished. SARI is concerned that LNT proscribes promising radiation-stimulated immune-responses therapies to cure cancer, and that LNT induces patients and parents of patients to refuse CT scans, leading to misdiagnoses or risky alternative procedures, and that LNT needlessly forces evacuations of hundreds of thousands of frightened people in the event of a nuclear power plant accident.

Over a thousand people were killed by relocation stress at Fukushima, but none by radiation. Unfounded radiation fear drives the public to reject what would otherwise be the cheapest source of electrical energy, as well as the safest, cleanest, and most sustainable.

Congress can overcome public radiophobia by requiring radiation protection limits to be based on observed evidence and modern science rather than appeasement of frightened, ignorant opponents. This will force revision of many regulations of EPA and NRC, including abandonment of the LNT model and ALARA rules. One benefit will be expanded use of radiation in medicine and improved public confidence that limited radiation exposure is not harmful.

Change government dominance

To re-energize the nuclear industry the US must change its regulatory apparatus to encourage progress rather than impeding it. NRC should be replaced by an organization like the FAA, responsive to technological progress, encouraging and observing safety testing of prototypes, and then licensing similar commercial follow-ons.

Just as SpaceX is taking over much of NASA's role in space rockets, private industry can lead development of advanced nuclear power plants. Today the Department of Energy (DOE) supports some development of several nuclear-related technologies, but envisions itself as selecting the winning design during a proposed 25-year, $10 billion development program. R

ather, competing private industries should make the choice, leading to a more rapid, less costly development of safe, economic advanced nuclear power plants. A constructive DOE might provide developers with the use of prototype parks such as the Hanford Reservation in Washington state.

Regain strategic power

US universities and ventures are still producing nuclear-skilled, ambitious scientists and engineers. Ending NRC overregulation will allow a successful domestic nuclear industry to arise, provided nuclear power is allowed to participate in an economically fair marketplace for non-CO2 emitting energy sources.

Economically displacing fossil-fired power plants with reliable nuclear power plants will prevent additional CO2 emissions, a major contributor to global warming.

With a vibrant domestic nuclear industry the US can rise to compete internationally with the emerging leaders Russia, China, and South Korea. Economic benefits to the US could be very high. Today the world is installing 100 GW of fossil-fuel-fired power plants each year, which could be replaced by safe, less expensive fission power plants, garnering near $200 billion per year of sales.

By becoming a sought-after supplier of nuclear power plants the US will be able to offer the economic and environmental benefits of nuclear power rather than the threats of nuclear weapons.

Robert Hargraves is a founder of ThorCon International, developing liquid fission power to generate electricity cheaper than coal, to power up the developing world with ample clean energy, beginning in Indonesia.

Read the original article on The Energy Collective. Copyright 2017. Follow The Energy Collective on Twitter.

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Earth’s political boundaries will always shift as conflict rises and regimes fall. We are used to this sort of change and the out-of-date maps it produces. But nothing in the history of human diplomacy has prepared us for what’s coming next — countries that physically cease to exist as the land they are made of is swallowed up by rising seas.

For low-lying nation states like the Maldives, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, and Kiribati, it’s not a question of if, but when. Keeping the world to two degrees Celsius of warming, the stated goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change, would still result in 15 feet of future sea level rise, according to analysis by Climate Central. At 16 feet, the Maldives and Tuvalu would be completely submerged. The Marshall Islands would be 99 percent underwater, and Kiribati 97 percent. Even a few feet of sea level rise — within the realm of possibility for this century — would devastate these countries and permanently change their landscapes.

“Life is difficult enough on these small islands, surrounded by the vastness of the ocean, without adding the challenges of sea level rise, more dangerous extreme weather, and the loss of food and fresh water resources,” write Andrew Holland and Esther Babson of the American Security Project in a recent report for the Center for Climate and Security. The islands have made up for their small populations and poor resources by forming alliances with each other, and yet a humanitarian crisis is almost guaranteed.

Kiribati has made some effort to plan for the future, by purchasing land in Fiji that currently grows food for the people of Kiribati and may one day house them as well. But it’s most likely that the exoduses will happen in sudden moments of crisis, when storm surges flood whole islands and poison freshwater resources. “What we should expect is more uncontrolled migration from island to island, to cities and developed countries,” write Holland and Babson.

Where will climate change refugees go when their homes are destroyed, and will they be welcomed when they arrive? Will the magnitude of the crisis prompt nationalist, reactionary policies that see borders shut down and xenophobia climb? You might say that’s already happening today, with refugees from Syria’s brutal war, set off in part by climate change, being portrayed as potential threats in the mainstream discourse of the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.

And what happens to the political entity of a nation state when its physical land is abandoned? What rights do former inhabitants still claim to that region and the economic resources it may still hold? Currently the island nations lay claim to an exclusive economic zone that extends 200 miles in all directions. Who will own the rights to fish when the land is all but gone? The international community has yet to grapple with these questions, and there will be no easy answers.

China has shown an increasing interest in the region, and has upped climate change aid to these countries dramatically. One motivation could be a desire to ultimately have more say in who gets to control these island resources when the people move away.

A power struggle between countries vying for influence is possible, and preventing it will depend on a great deal of international cooperation in a forum where the ground rules have yet to be invented.

The recent promise of United States President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris Agreement ups chances that nations will look to their own interests before helping their neighbors. The U.S., after all, is the richest country in the world and the one that has contributed the most to climate change. If it will shirk responsibility for the damage it has wrought, why would another step up?

And the rest of the world will certainly have its own troubles. “These problems are not unique to small, poor island nations,” write Holland and Babson. “It is only that they will be forced to deal with them first.”

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Michelin's visionary concept tyre is 3D printed so when the tread becomes worn it can be printed on again, meaning you'd never need to replace the tyre.

The tyre is made from natural and biodegradable materials so it wouldn't be bad for the environment.

Michelin designed the concept to show what the tyres of tomorrow might look like.

Tomorrow can’t come soon enough!

Produced by Leon Siciliano

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LOS ANGELES — Drifting throngs of jellylike, glowing organisms native to tropical seas far from shore have invaded Pacific coastal waters from Southern California to the Gulf of Alaska this year, baffling researchers and frustrating fishing crews.

Known as pyrosomes, they are tubular colonies of hundreds or thousands of tiny individual creatures called zooids, enmeshed together in a gelatinous tunic roughly the consistency of gummy candy.

No relation to jellyfish, they resemble bumpy, opaque pickles in the water, typically a few centimeters or inches long, though some grow 1 or 2 feet (30 or 60 centimeters) in length.

They feed by filtering microscopic algae, or phytoplankton, as they float with the current. They're also known to glow in the dark, a bioluminescent characteristic that gives the organism its scientific name: pyrosoma, Greek for "fire body."

Pyrosomes have rarely if ever been seen along the US West Coast until 2012, when first spotted in California waters. Since then, they have gradually multiplied and spread north, before exploding in numbers this spring, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Although harmless to humans, they have been especially troublesome to the commercial salmon catch in Oregon, with large globs of the rubbery critters clogging fishing gear by the thousands in recent months. Some have even washed ashore.

"It gets to a point where they're so abundant, you can't even fish out there, so you have to pick up your gear and move elsewhere," Nancy Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Oregon Salmon Commission, said on Monday.

A single five-minute trawl with a research net by scientists off the Columbia River in late May scooped up roughly 60,000 pyrosomes, NOAA reported.

Fishing crews were also hit in southeastern Alaska, where some suspended operations earlier this year when pyrosome densities were at their height, said Aaron Baldwin, a fishery biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

"There were clouds of them in the water," he said.

Karen Johnson, who fishes for halibut and tracks pyrosome reports on her Facebook page in Sitka, Alaska, said she had seen them glowing in a bucket of live specimens caught by her brother.

"I stuck them in a dark room and moved the water a little bit, and sure enough, they were bioluminescent," she told Reuters.

Scientists believe the pyrosome phenomenon is related to elevated sea temperatures along the Pacific Coast that have brought other changes to marine life during the past few years, including a surge in California sea lion strandings.

More baffling is how far from the tropics pyrosomes have strayed.

"Certainly being up in Alaska is way out of their range," NOAA research biologist Ric Brodeur said.

Still unclear is whether they will linger long enough to significantly upset the region's food web.

Pyrosomes are extremely efficient filters of phytoplankton, the principal diet of tiny shrimplike krill, which in turn are a staple for some species of fish, whales, and even seabirds, according to biologists.

Organisms like pyrosomes typically reproduce quickly, though their numbers could crash again once conditions become less favorable, NOAA scientist Keith Sakuma said.

"We just don't know what the long-term implications area," he added.

SEE ALSO: Millions of glowing tropical sea creatures have started to appear in the Pacific Northwest

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Hundreds of jellyfish threaten to shut down an Israeli power plant every summer. In recent years, several other power plants around the world have faced the same threat.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers released a proposal on Tuesday to repeal the 2015 Clean Water Rule, the latest move by the Trump administration to unwind environmental regulations put in place under former President Barack Obama.

The agencies are working to rescind the rule, known as the Waters of the United States rule, and reinstate the language of the rule before it was changed in 2015.

"We are taking significant action to return power to the states and provide regulatory certainty to our nation's farmers and businesses," EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said.

In 2015, EPA and the Army Corps issued what they called the Waters of the United States rule to clarify which bodies of water should be regulated under the Clean Water Act.

The act, passed in 1972 and last amended in 1987, is intended to protect the nation's waters from pollution.

In February, President Donald Trump said during the signing of an executive order calling for a review of the rule that the act should apply only to navigable waters that affect interstate commerce.

Some lawmakers from states with large rural areas praised the move.

“Out of state D.C. bureaucrats shouldn’t impose regulations that hurt Montana farmers, ranchers and landowners,” said the state's Republican senator, Steve Daines.
Environmental groups criticized the move, saying it ignores public input and would put parts of the country like the Midwestern Great Lakes at risk.

"This foolish rollback of clean water standards rejects years of work building stakeholder input and scientific data support, and it imperils the progress for safe clean drinking water in the Midwest,” said Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center.

The rule had been placed on hold in 2015 by a federal court appeals court.

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