The city of Los Angeles is known for its wide, sandy beaches, mild temperatures, and lack of humidity.

The combination of cool winters and warm summers sets it apart from almost every other city in the nation.

"Los Angeles is a hedonist’s paradise," Matthew Kahn wrote in his 2010 book "Climatopolis."

But rising temperatures are already putting that paradise at risk.

"Climate change will likely degrade LA’s ideal climate," wrote Kahn. "In the future LA’s climate will look like Jacksonville, Florida’s, climate today."

Sea level rise also threatens LA county's famous beaches, piers, and boardwalks, which attracted almost 41 million tourists who accounted for more than $16 billion in expenditures in 2012, according to a study by the University of Southern California Sea Program.

We've outlined some of the most significant effects of climate change today and how this will affect the LA region in the future.

Los Angeles County, which includes the city of Los Angeles, covers a land area of 4,000 square miles (shown in red). It stretches north along the coast past Malibu, south to include Long Beach, and includes two islands, 88 cities, and Angeles National Forest.

Los Angeles County is home to about 10 million people, making it among the most populated counties in the U.S.

Source: Business Insider

Los Angeles is known for its mild weather and year-round pleasant temperatures. It has warm winters with a January average of 59 degrees F and cool summers with an average July temperature of 73 degrees F.

Source: Los Angeles Almanac

(Reuters) - A new mammal discovered in the remote desert of western Africa resembles a long-nosed mouse in appearance but is more closely related genetically to elephants, a California scientist who helped identify the tiny creature said on Thursday.

The new species of elephant shrew, given the scientific name Macroscelides micus, inhabits an ancient volcanic formation in Namibia and sports red fur that helps it blend in with the color of its rocky surroundings, said John Dumbacher, one of a team of biologists behind the discovery.

Genetic testing of the creature – which weighs up to an ounce (28 grams) and measures 7.5 inches (19 cm) in length, including its tail – revealed its DNA to be more akin to much larger mammals.

"It turns out this thing that looks and acts like shrews that evolved in Africa is more closely related to elephants," said Dumbacher, a curator of birds and mammals at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

  The findings, published in the Journal of Mammalogy, floored scientists, who said the only visible link between an African elephant and the diminutive shrew is its trunk-like nose.

An elongated snout is a common feature of various shrew species, many of which look like long-nosed mice externally, though shrews are not classified as rodents.

  Dumbacher likened the newly discovered mammal to a small antelope in its physique and sleeping habits and to a scaled-down anteater in hunting techniques and preferred prey.

  Like an antelope, the creature has long, spindly legs relative to its body size, and hunkers down next to bushes to sleep rather than burrowing. Like an anteater, it uses its extended nose to sweep the ground in search of ants and other insects.

  The desert-dwelling shrew is prone to giving birth to twins, which hit the ground running like the calves of some types of African antelope.

  Biologists plan to return to Africa in the coming months to outfit the new mammals with miniscule radio collars to learn more about their habits, Dumbacher said.

(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman from Salmon, Idaho; Editing by Steve Gorman and Sandra Maler)

Join the conversation about this story »

The Good Country Index ranks 125 nations based on how much they do for others globally in seven areas: science and technology, culture, international peace and security, world order, planet and climate, prosperity and equality, and health and well being.

The ranking was created by merging of 35 data sets produced by organizations like the UN, WHO, and UNESCO over a period of nearly 3-years, according to The Economist.

"What I mean by a 'good country' is a country that contributes to the greater good," Simon Anholt, an independent policy advisor who made the index, told Business Insider. "We’ve given each country a balance-sheet to show at a glance whether it’s a net creditor to mankind, a burden on the planet, or something in between."

DISCLAIMER: Anholt's expertise has been at the service of individual governments, it is unclear if he was paid for his research.

Here are the key findings from the report (and here is the full index):

Ireland Contributes The Most Good To Humanity

For the size of its economy and a combined score in all seven categories, Ireland out ranks 124 other nations in contributing the most good to the global community.

Europe Contributes The Most Good To Humanity

An overwhelming majority of the top 30 nations listed on the index are European, making this region the most significant 'cluster of goodness' in the world, according to the report. Nine European countries hold a position in the top 10 spots.

The United Kingdom ranks 7th overall and holds the highest position in the 'science and technology category.'

Belgium, Malta, and the Netherlands lead Europe in the exportation of creative goods and services, offer lax visa restrictions, and aim for a strong freedom of the press movement. 

Although Germany contributes more than any other country in the World Order category — which measures indicators like charity giving and number of UN treaties signed — Germany's overall ranking (13th)  is slightly compromised by a low ranking in the 'international peace and security' category. The country receives a rank of 109th because the index penalizes countries involved in significant armed conflicts abroad as well as arms trade.  

America, The Global Police Force

As the United States begins to slowly creep back into Iraq to slow the rapid territorial gains made by ISIS extremists, the Americans take a low ranking in the 'international peace and security' (114th) category. 

Outside Of The English-Speaking Realm

The highest ranked country outside of Western Europe and primary English-speaking nations is Coasta Rica at 22nd. Other Latin American countries within ballpark are Chile (24th) and Guatemala (29th).

Kenya Leads African Nations 

The African nation which contributes most to the global commons is Kenya, which, at 26th place, is the only African nation to break into the top 30.

"For me, the best result was Kenya ranking 26th, as it demonstrates that contributing to the greater good doesn't have to be a question of money," Anholt wrote via email.

The Weak Links 

Libya holds the last spot in the Good Country Index, next to Iraq and Vietnam. 

Russian ranks 95th overall, on par with nations like Honduras, Kuwait, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

SEE ALSO: MAP: The World Is Becoming More Violent — Here Are The Most And Least Peaceful Countries

Join the conversation about this story »

The biggest threat to emperor penguins may not be leopard seals or even killer whales, but a much larger predator: global warming.

Climate change, which is quickly melting the sea ice this species depends on for survival, could cause dramatic drops in the number of emperor penguins across Antarctica by the end of the century, a new study finds. Specifically, more than two-thirds of Antarctica's emperor penguin colonies will decline by more than 50 percent by the end of the century under future climate change scenarios.

The researchers, from France, the Netherlands and the United States, are pushing to have this iconic species listed as endangered before its numbers hit critical lows. Doing so, the researchers said, may establish "a new global conservation paradigm for species threatened by future climate change." [See Photos of Antarctica's Amazing Penguin Chicks]

The research, detailed yesterday (June 29) in the journal Climate Change, is based in part on a 50-year intensive study — supported by the French Polar Institute (IPEV) and Zone Atelier Antarctique (LTER France) — of an emperor penguin colony in Terre Adélie, East Antarctica. Researchers have been closely monitoring the Terre Adélie population each year, collecting biological measurements of the penguins there and charting the population's growth and decline.

"Long-term studies like this are invaluable for measuring the response of survival and breeding to changes in sea ice," said Hal Caswell, a scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts and the University of Amsterdam. "They provide our understanding of the role sea ice plays in the emperor penguin's life cycle."

Emperor penguins breed and raise their offspring almost exclusively on sea ice. And changes in sea ice concentration (SIC), or the relative area of water covered by sea ice, affect not only penguins, but also the entire Antarctic food web, down to the smallest of species, the researchers noted.

"The role of sea ice is complicated," said Stephanie Jenouvrier, a biologist with the WHOI, in a statement. "Too much ice requires longer trips for penguin parents to travel to the ocean to hunt and bring back food for their chicks. But too little ice reduces the habitat for krill, a critical food source for emperor penguins. Our models take into account both the effects of too much and too little sea ice in the colony area."

Both Jenouvrier and Caswell have previously studied how changes in the concentration of sea ice might affect emperor penguin populations over the next several decades. In 2012, the two scientists and their team published a study in the journal Global Change Biology, which found that the Terre Adélie penguin population could decline by 80 percent by the end of this century. [Happy Feet: A Gallery of Pudgy Penguins]

For their newest study, the researchers expanded on this previous work, using the established population models from Terre Adélie to project how all 45 of Antarctica's known emperor penguin colonies would respond to future climate change. The projections included in the study are based on the current sea ice concentration and anticipated ones at each location.

The models take into account physical processes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and land surfaces.

"If sea ice declines at the rates projected by the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] climate models, and continues to influence emperor penguins as it did in the second half of the twentieth century in Terre Adélie, at least two-thirds of the colonies are projected to have declined by greater than 50 percent from their current size by 2100," Jenouvrier said. "None of the colonies, even the southern-most locations in the Ross Sea, will provide a viable refuge by the end of 21st century."

The colonies located between the Eastern Weddell Sea and Western Indian Ocean showed the largest declines, while those penguin colonies in the Ross Sea would experience the smallest decline. Some 20 percent of emperor penguin colonies will be nearly extinct by 2100, the analysis showed.

Based on their research, the study's authors found that the emperor penguin, which is currently under consideration for inclusion on the U.S. Endangered Species Act, is fully deserving of endangered status due to climate change. Securing the species a spot on the endangered species list, the researchers believe, could both protect this iconic animal and set a precedent for how to protect other species that are also affected by climate change.

"When a species is at risk due to one factor — in this case, climate change — it can be helped, sometimes greatly, by amelioration of other factors," Caswell said in the statement. "That's why the Endangered Species Act is written to protect an endangered species in a number of ways — exploitation, habitat, disturbance, etc. — even if those factors are not the cause of its current predicament."

For instance, listing the emperor penguin as endangered could lead to improved fishing practices of U.S. vessels in the Southern Ocean, as well as provide an impetus for reduction in emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide across the globe, Jenouvrier explained.

The researchers also point out that the Ross Sea, in the south of Antarctica, will be the last place impacted by climate change, and that conservation management strategies for emperor penguins should focus there.

Follow Elizabeth Palermo on Twitter @techEpalermo, Facebook or Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook&Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• In Photos: The King Penguins of Possession Island
• Image Gallery: Sex Habits of Penguins
• Images of Melt: Earth's Vanishing Ice

Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SEE ALSO: These Two Maps Show How Climate Change Is Destroying The Oceans

Join the conversation about this story »

A new study reveals that plastic in our oceans is disappearing, but scientists aren't sure where the debris is going.

An increasing amount of plastic has been entering our oceans since the 1980s. However, when researchers attempted to map all of this ocean garbage, they found that the amount of trash floating on the water's surface was smaller than expected.

"These studies suggest that surface waters are not the final destination for buoyant plastic debris in the ocean," researchers wrote in a study published on Monday, June 30, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Where is the plastic going?

Most plastics that enter the ocean tend to get broken down by the sun and waves into smaller particles around 1 centimeter or less. For this reason, scientists expected to find the tiniest pieces, 1 millimeter or less, in the greatest abundance. But, in most of the samples they took, these tiny pieces were missing.

In the chart below, you can see what scientists expected (orange) versus what they actually observed (blue). While smaller plastic was expected to be found in larger abundance, actual observations showed a mysterious drop off (left) in the smaller-sized plastics. The size of the plastics increase as you move right on the graph.

Scientists aren't sure where the plastic is going or the mechanism that's causing it to move, but they have a few theories:

Theory 1
Washed ashore: One possibility is that the small plastics head for land.
The problem: Scientists think this is unlikely since there is no reason to suspect only smaller things would wash ashore.

Theory 2
Broken down: The small plastics could be continuously degrading into smaller, undetectable pieces.
The problem: While plastic pieces are continually being broken down in the ocean, there is no reason to believe that the rate at which plastic is being degraded has increased, the authors said. Plus, degradation of plastic can take hundreds to thousands of years. Other degrading factors could be at play though, such as small bacteria helping to break down the plastics.

Theory 3
Sinking: Oceanic epipyphytes — nonparasitic plants that usually grow on other plants — will often latch onto anything that floats. For a particle with a lot of surface area for its size, plant growth on the outside of the plastic would make it heavy, causing it to sink.
The problem: Previous studies have shown that when a plant-ballasted plastic sinks in the open ocean, the plants growing on it die and fall off, causing the object to pop back up.

Theory 4
Someone's dinner: Zooplankton, tiny animals about the same size as the missing plastic, make up the bottom of the ocean food chain. Fish that eat zooplankton might mistake the plastic as food.

The ocean is full of zooplankton-eating mesopelagic fish, or fish that live between 200 and 1,000 feet deep. These fish tend to migrate to the surface — where the plastic is — at night for feeding. The researchers believe that, if consumed, the plastic could stay inside the fish for anywhere from a day to a year. The garbage can be transferred to larger predators if the smaller fish is eaten. Ingested plastic could easily sink to the seafloor if the fish dies, or if it's removed in the animal's excrement, which is known to sink quickly.

"These microplastics have an influence on the behavior and the food chain of marine organisms," lead researcher Andres Cózar Cabañas of the Universidad de Cadiz at Puerto Real (Spain) said in a press release. The small plastics contain contaminants that can be passed onto to the organisms who eat them or, perhaps worse, get lodged inside them, he said. "Small oceanic fishes are the main trophic linkage between the plankton and marine vertebrates, and serves as staple food for many commercial fish such as tuna or swordfish," he said in an email.

Unfortunately, more research is needed to crack the case of the disappearing plastic.

The beginning

The question first occurred to the study authors while examining data taken from the 2010/2011 Malaspina circumnavigation research trip that sampled water from thousands of sites across the world.

"This task was not initially in our objectives for the circumnavigation, but the plastic presence in the first samples was striking," Cózar told Business Insider. They found that 88% of their samples contained plastic.

The also discovered that the plastic appeared to be most abundant in areas where the subtropical gyres — giant ocean-wide currents — converged. Where these gyres come together they make huge "conveyor belts," bringing trash from shores into the surface of the open ocean.

Based on the data collected, the scientists expect the surface of the open ocean holds anywhere between 7,000 and 35,000 tons of plastic, which is "far less than expected," they wrote.

The Plastic Age

The missing plastic is only a small part of the problem. "Our estimates indicate that the tens of thousands of plastic tons floating on the surface waters could represent only 1% of the plastic pollution into the oceans," Cózar said. More could be hiding below the surface.

"Indeed, the quantity of plastic floating in the ocean and its final destination are still unknown," the researchers concluded.

SEE ALSO: One Chart Shows Where All The World's Plastic Is Going

Join the conversation about this story »

This is no big revelation, but it's a question I've been pondering recently: What is the state of the world, not counting climate change? Or rather, what if we managed to reduce CO₂ emissions to necessary levels, what would our focus be on then?

Don't get me wrong, climate change is real, and if you need a proper education on why it is, please see John Oliver's excellent ribbing on the topic. Rather, what I am wondering here is: what are the pressing environmental issues left, once climate change is left outside the conversation?

There are two reasons for asking this question: first, perhaps climate change is side-lining other environmental issues that need urgent attention; second, perhaps there are synergies between "solving" climate change and the other issues.

To the first issue, I am no ecopragmatist à la Nordhaus or Lomborgh, and I'm not going to say it's a zero-sum world and we can't try to solve climate change and malaria at the same time: we can. Nor am I saying that if you do something such as expand a marine preserve, you're not able to fight an insurgency in Iraq; sorry, but human beings can multi-task. However, the fact remains that there is a very, very narrow window of the environment in the media, and that window keeps narrowing.

To the second issue, there are already-identified intersections for cooperation and synergy in improving the state of the environment and climate. Some synergies are already taking place, such as increased attention to the climatic effects from deforestation and the role of oceans as heat sinks.

So what exactly are the big areas of concern? Oceans, forests, and soil perhaps?

What got me thinking about non-climate-change issues was an article in The Guardian newspaper on June 24^th, showing results from a report that the global food supply might be in peril due to insecticides. This sounds like Silent Spring all over to me, and unfortunately it appears to be pretty much along those same lines. The End of Food? I hope not.

However, it's not all doom-and-gloom; there are some promising moves in the right direction.

• President Obama has recently put together a bee task force to understand why the world's bee population is crashing, which is hopefully a good step towards preventing the "End of Food" as we know it. And in similarly promising news, he also plans to create the world's largest ocean reserve, building on the reserve created by his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
• Despite Brazil and Indonesia climbing the rankings of historical CO_2­ emitters due to deforestation, at least Brazil seems to be turning the tide, and might even be called a success story.
• UNESCO rejected Australia's unprecedented move to have Tasmanian forests delisted from their UN Heritage status for the following reason: they had already been degraded before. Fortunately, the kibosh was put on that reasoning where logic could not.

So all in all, among the glimmers of hope, there are some very worrying developments that we need to keep track of, outside all the attention climate change is getting, but again, just because the news cycle can only focus on one item at a time, doesn't mean we have to.

SEE ALSO: John Oliver Hosts A 'Statistically Representative' Climate Debate

Join the conversation about this story »

Three new volcanoes were spotted in southeast Australia; one is 4 million years old and another spits out ash after magma quickly cools. The researchers believe there are likely many more such erupters waiting to be discovered in the area.

The researchers from Monash University in Australia discovered the volcanoes by combining satellite images with NASA topography models. The models revealed locations where the distribution of magnetic minerals resembled that commonly found in a volcanic center; this is the center of a volcano's mound, where such minerals and ash are concentrated. Once the researchers located the potential new volcanoes, the team visited the sites to confirm.

"This technique has already helped to uncover a lot more volcanoes in the area," lead researcher and graduate student Julie Boyce told Live Science in an email. "As part of my ongoing research, I have found another 20 probable small eruption centers. I haven't driven out to visit most of them yet, though." [See Amazing Photos of the World's Wild Volcanoes]

The three new volcanoes are part of the Newer Volcanic Province (NVP) in South Australia. The region has over 400 known volcanoes and includes some of the youngest volcanoes in the country. Those found in this region are not considered "typical volcanoes," Boyce said. They form when magma bubbles up from the Earth's mantle about 30 miles (50 kilometers) below the surface and hardens to form small volcanoes less than 330 feet (100 meters) high. Typical volcanoes form when tectonic plates collide or break apart.

The new survey of the NVP region covered an area of about 7,335 square miles (19,000 square km). The largest of the three new volcanoes, named Cas Maar, is almost 0.6 miles (1 km) wide, and is an unusually large volcano for the area, Boyce said. Cas Maar is a special kind of volcano that forms when magma hits groundwater, rapidly cools and spits out an ashy eruption. Boyce said Cas Maar is probably around 300,000 years old.

The other two volcanoes are lava shields, which form from layers of lava flow. Boyce named one Jays Hill and estimates it is almost 2 million years old. She named the other Burgers Hill and it is about 4 million years old.

Even though none of volcanoes in the area have erupted in the past 5,500 years, scientists still consider the NVP area an active volcano region. Since the Earth's mantle remains very hot and is still releasing carbon dioxide, which means magma is coming to the surface. The area has averaged at least one volcano eruption every 10,800 years, so geologists think future eruptions are still possible.

"Finding undiscovered volcanoes is really important for calculations of eruption frequency, which is the active time of the volcanic field divided by the number of volcanoes," Boyce said. "So the more we know about the province, the better calculations we can make, and the more we know about the kinds of eruptions we get."

Details of the discovery are published in the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Follow Kelly Dickerson on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• Amazing Images: Volcanoes from Space
• Gallery: The Incredible Eruption of Mount St. Helens
• Fire and Ice: Images of Volcano-Ice Encounters

Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Join the conversation about this story »

Move over, chimpanzees — there's a new brainiac in town, and this one has gills.

A species of aquarium fish has a surprisingly long memory — it can recall the location of a tasty morsel of food up to 12 days after encountering it, according to a new study. The extended memory may give the fish an evolutionary edge when food is scarce, the researchers suggested.

"Fish that remember where food is located have an evolutionary advantage over those that do not," study co-author Trevor Hamilton, a neuroscientist at MacEwan University in Canada, said in a statement. "If they are able to remember that a certain area contains food without the threat of a predator, they will be able to go back to that area." [See What a Fish Thought Looks Like]

Intelligent animals

In the hierarchy of intelligent animals, fish are typically placed well below chimpanzees, dolphins and rats, but above cockroaches. Popular wisdom holds that fish have anywhere from a 3-second to a 30-second memory.

But after talking with Erica Ingraham, a student at MacEwan University who owned aquarium fish, Hamilton wondered whether some fish species were smarter than usually thought. African cichlids (Labidochromis caeruleus), in particular, tend to show aggression, which would normally require longer-term memory to remember past grievances. In addition, past studies have shown that cichlids use human-like logic.

So Hamilton and his colleagues trained African cichlids to enter a zone of an aquarium to receive a food reward. After three days of 20-minute training sessions, the fish were left to "rest" for 12 days.

Afterward, the fish were allowed to roam the area again as motion-capture software recorded their swimming paths.

The cichlids lingered most often in the area where they had previously found food, likely because they remembered the tasty treats and were seeking them out.

In addition, the fish abandoned their preference for that zone when the researchers trained them to associate a different stimulus with food, suggesting that, indeed, they were hanging out there in hopes of finding food.

The findings suggest that fish have the ability to form longer-term memories and associations, which could aid them in higher-level tasks, the researchers said.

"There are many anecdotes about how smart these fish are," Hamilton said. "Some people even believe that their cichlids watch television with them."

The work on fish memory will be presented Wednesday (July 2) at The Society for Experimental Biology meeting, and has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+.FollowLive Science @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• Photos: The Freakiest-Looking Fish
• Creative Creatures: 10 Animals That Use Tools
• The 5 Smartest Non-Primates on the Planet

Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SEE ALSO: Brain Implants Could Give People Perfect Memories And Night Vision

Join the conversation about this story »

Pickup trucks customized to spew black smoke into the air are quickly becoming the newest weapon in the culture wars. 

"Coal Rollers" are diesel trucks modified with chimneys and equipment that can force extra fuel into the engine causing dark black smoke to pour out of the chimney stacks. These modifications are not new, but as Slate's Dave Weigel pointed out on Thursday, "rolling coal" has begun to take on a political dimension with pickup drivers increasingly viewing their smokestacks as a form of protest against environmentalists and Obama administration emissions regulations.

Last month, Vocativ noted many coal rollers focus their fumes on "nature nuffies," or people who drive hybrids, and "rice burners," or Japanese-made cars. 

"The feeling around here is that everyone who drives a small car is a liberal," a roller named Ryan told Vocativ. "I rolled coal on a Prius once just because they were tailing me."

Weigel spoke to a seller of coal rolling customization equipment who described why some drivers see spewing smoke as a political protest.

"I run into a lot of people that really don’t like Obama at all," the salesperson said. "If he’s into the environment, if he’s into this or that, we’re not. I hear a lot of that. To get a single stack on my truck—that’s my way of giving them the finger. You want clean air and a tiny carbon footprint? Well, screw you."

As coal rollers have become a form of conservative protest, their popularity seems to be exploding. Vocativ found Facebook pages dedicated to the phenomenon have about 16,000 followers and over 100,000 rolling coal posts have appeared on Instagram and Tumblr. According to Google Trends, there were virtually no internet searches for "rolling coal" prior to February 2011. Since then, search volume for the term has increased over 700%.

With this explosion in online attention, the battles between coal rollers and their environmentalist enemies are playing out in social media pages, Youtube videos and internet comment sections. Many of the rolling coal Facebook pages feature memes (like the one pictured on the right) that mock hybrid drivers and liberals. Coal rollers have also posted videos showing their trucks blasting more environmentally efficient cars with smoke. 

Opponents of the practice have also taken to the internet. Weigel noted "a mid-June surge of comments" from progressives attacking coal rolling social media pages in the wake of the Vocativ article. In 2012, one outraged YouTube user posted a video entitled "Victim Of Coal Rolling" that showed a pickup shooting fumes at his car.

"Blow your smoke at me you son of a bitch," the driver says in the video.

Though the clip seemed designed as a criticism of coal rollers, it attracted a slew of comments from people who were clearly on the side of the pickup driver.

"What a loser you are, ain't nothing wrong with rolling some confederate coal," one person replied.

"Stupid ricers. what were you gonna do you bitch?" another said.

Check out some videos of coal rollers hitting the road and blasting other motorists below. 

Join the conversation about this story »

We were flying fast and steady, 300 meters over the fjord, when the helicopter pilot suddenly turned downwards, and our stomachs leapt up to our throats.

Instead of blue sky, we now had ice in front of our eyes.

A wall of ice. Thirty stories of ice, of a delicate pale blue. It felt like being on a fast elevator with glass windows, with the stories passing in front of us at vertiginous speed.

Below, the dark blue sea looked frigid, and was approaching too fast for comfort. Suddenly, another left turn and then up; in a few seconds we were over an iceberg 150 meters high and a kilometer wide. That was a monster of an ice cube, broken away from the Ilulissat glacier in Greenland, the fastest-moving glacier in the northern hemisphere.

Twenty kilometres in 20 years. That’s how much the Ilulissat glacier has retreated as this mighty, flowing river of ice crumbles into the ocean. It sounds like a lot. But I did not fully realize what this meant until we flew over the Ilulissat icefjord. It takes 10 minutes for the helicopter to fly over the amount of ice that has been lost because of global warming – in this glacier alone.

The speed at which the glacier moves has doubled relative to that in 1998. My scientist brain, accustomed to working with numbers and large scales, had a hard time absorbing this information. If I was rationally aware of the consequences of global warming from scientific reports before, now I felt it emotionally. This is what my trip to Greenland with a group of World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders did to us. It made us move from knowing and caring to be desperate to do something about it.

The experience also made us realize that all the international negotiations and agreements to date are not going to help avert the imminent catastrophe. Not even the boldest targets to reduce carbon pollution put forward by the smartest nations are going to move the dial. It’s all an illusion of movement, kind of like Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen, running and running but not going anywhere.

Bob Corell, a reputed climate scientist who took part in the trip, made us simulate international negotiations to try and agree on bolder targets for carbon emission reductions. We were to input targets in a computer model that would show in real time how emissions would decline globally, and how global temperature was going to stabilize before increasing over 2 degrees Celsius – the threshold over which global warming will have dire and irreparable consequences for human life.

After our negotiations we came up with what we thought were improvements on the status quo. Bob entered the new agreed dates and reduction targets in his model; feeling like wise world leaders, we were expecting conspicuous reductions in global warming trends and a stabilization of the average global temperature. Bob entered the data and pressed ‘enter’. Our eyes were fixed on the screen. Nothing happened.

What we thought were compromises between short-term interests and the long-term needs of the planet had no impact at all. Zero. I suddenly realized, with more clarity than ever, that all the international negotiations to reach agreements are not having any significant impact. I was speechless. Even a scientist like me, with no doubts about the consequences of global warming, was in shock.

At the end of the Greenland journey, we all wanted to commit to doing something. No one person alone can convince governments to price carbon, or industries to move towards cleaner practices and reduce carbon pollution. The question is: can we do something that has a measurable positive impact? In my case, as an oceanographer and explorer, I will try to help protect as much as the sea as possible from fishing and pollution, so that ocean life can be more resilient against the effects of global warming. I leave it up to you to think about what you are willing to do.

Enric Sala is a National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader

SEE ALSO: Here Are The Areas Of Earth At The Biggest Risk Of Extreme Weather

Join the conversation about this story »

This week, the Heartland Institute is holding a conference on climate change in Las Vegas, which they've dubbed "the biggest gathering of global warming skeptics in the world." If ever there was an event perfect for a mockumentary, it's this disinformation party.

It reminds me of John Oliver's recent take on climate change on Last Week Tonight. In response to an opinion poll on climate change, he said, "You don't need people's opinions on a fact. You might as well have a poll asking which number is bigger — 15 or five? Or, do owls exist? Or, are there hats?"

Thankfully, public opinion is largely on the side of fact. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 70 percent of Americans accept climate change as real, and perhaps more importantly, want their leaders to combat it. This includes a majority of Republicans.

Many of the Americans with whom I speak want to combat climate change because they view it as a moral obligation — they want to protect generations to come. They also want action, of course, because the facts on global warming are clear: After decades of warnings, climate change is here and now, and doing serious damage.

It's leading to heat waves, drought, sea-level rise, floods, superstorms, and other types of destructive, costly, and deadly extreme-weather events. In 2012 alone, extreme weather cost our country more than $140 billion; taxpayers picked up nearly $100 billion of the cost of cleanup, according to an NRDC analysis.

And we've identified the No. 1 culprit: carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels. Here in the US, power plants kick out 40 percent of the country's carbon pollution, making them its single largest source.

Right now we limit mercury, arsenic, lead, and other dangerous pollutants from power plants, but somehow there has been no national limit to how much carbon pollution these plants may spew into our air. That's just wrong. It's time to close the pollution loophole and put in place the common-sense safeguards we need to reduce the dangerous carbon pollution that's warming the planet and threatening our future.

Thankfully, President Barack Obama is doing just that. He instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to create the first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants.

In response, EPA released the "Clean Power Plan," which will accelerate the move to a modern, clean energy system to power our future — one that relies on wind, solar, and other forms of renewable energy. It also means new investment in efficiency, so we can do more with less, save money, and make our workers more competitive.

This effort will protect our communities, our air, our water, and our health. It also creates an opportunity to drive innovation, investment, and jobs. Done right, cutting carbon pollution from power plants could stimulate $52 billion to $121 billion in cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable energy between now and 2020, and could save US families and businesses more than $37 billion on their electricity bills by the same year. That's about $100 a year in savings for the average household.

Get ready for more false claims by big polluters. Read more here.

So it's no wonder that the support for this is broad and growing. That 70 percent of Americans who believe climate change is real includes all sorts of people — from business to labor to military to religious groups. We're talking about everyone from the Hip Hop Caucus to the Garden Club of America. Everyone is involved.

As for the last remaining climate skeptics, they can have their fun in Las Vegas this week — it looks like temperatures could reach 110 degrees, so I hope they stay hydrated — but the fact is that their numbers are dwindling swiftly. And I can only hope the media covers it the way John Oliver advises, by reporting that the skeptics are wrong, not just opinionated.

Despite the Heartland Institute's best efforts, America is no longer debating climate change. We're now working to solve it. Folks can help make sure what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas by voicing their support for EPA's Clean Power Plan today.

Frances Beinecke is the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

SEE ALSO: John Oliver Hosts A 'Statistically Representative' Climate Debate

Join the conversation about this story »

Volvo just released information about the engine it will install in its new SUV, and both extremely powerful and clean.

The XC90, set to debut in 2015, is the company's first major major redesign of the SUV in over a decade. Its top-of-the-line T8 model will have a four-cylinder engine that produces 400 horsepower and 472 lb./ft. of torque, Volvo announced this week. 

At 400 horsepower, the XC90's tiny two-litre inline four-cylinder engine outpowers sportscars like Dodge's Hemi powered Challenger (375 hp) and even Porsche's legendary 911 (350 hp). The technical wizards at Volvo managed to squeeze all of this power out of the pint-size engine by installing a supercharger and a turbocharger along with an 80 horsepower electric motor in a system the company calls "twin engine."

In the T8 plug-in hybrid, the twin engine will function by having the gasoline engine send power to the front wheels while the electric motor powers the rear. The "twin engine" system is also clean. Volvo's plug-in hybrid technology emits only 60 g/km of carbon dioxide, putting the SUV squarely in Toyota Prius territory. (Normal hybrid models produce 94 g/km and plug-in Priuses pump out just 49 g/km of CO2.) The difference is even more stark when you compare the Volvo to its likely competitors, the Mercedes ML350 BlueTec diesel and BMW X5 xDrive 50i, which emit 179 and 292 g/km of carbon dioxide, respectively.

Those looking for a less ambitious powertrain in their XC90 can opt for a T6 model, which will by powered by a two-litre 316 hp four-cylinder; the same engine found in Volvo's S60 T6 sedan. The XC90 will also be available with a series of diesel engine options, but Volvo has not yet released further details. 

The engine announcement is part of Volvo's scaled reveal of the XC90. The SUV's interior design was released in May, and a final reveal with exterior styling and pricing is scheduled for next month in Sweden. 

SEE ALSO: Cuba's New Auto Sales Policy Is A Total Flop

Join the conversation about this story »

This week, the Heartland Institute is holding a conference on climate change in Las Vegas, which they've dubbed "the biggest gathering of global warming skeptics in the world." If ever there was an event perfect for a mockumentary, it's this disinformation party.

It reminds me of John Oliver's recent take on climate change on Last Week Tonight. In response to an opinion poll on climate change, he said, "You don't need people's opinions on a fact. You might as well have a poll asking which number is bigger — 15 or five? Or, do owls exist? Or, are there hats?"

Thankfully, public opinion is largely on the side of fact. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 70 percent of Americans accept climate change as real, and perhaps more importantly, want their leaders to combat it. This includes a majority of Republicans.

Many of the Americans with whom I speak want to combat climate change because they view it as a moral obligation — they want to protect generations to come. They also want action, of course, because the facts on global warming are clear: After decades of warnings, climate change is here and now, and doing serious damage.

It's leading to heat waves, drought, sea-level rise, floods, superstorms, and other types of destructive, costly, and deadly extreme-weather events. In 2012 alone, extreme weather cost our country more than $140 billion; taxpayers picked up nearly $100 billion of the cost of cleanup, according to an NRDC analysis.

And we've identified the No. 1 culprit: carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels. Here in the US, power plants kick out 40 percent of the country's carbon pollution, making them its single largest source.

Right now we limit mercury, arsenic, lead, and other dangerous pollutants from power plants, but somehow there has been no national limit to how much carbon pollution these plants may spew into our air. That's just wrong. It's time to close the pollution loophole and put in place the common-sense safeguards we need to reduce the dangerous carbon pollution that's warming the planet and threatening our future.

Thankfully, President Barack Obama is doing just that. He instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to create the first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants.

In response, EPA released the "Clean Power Plan," which will accelerate the move to a modern, clean energy system to power our future — one that relies on wind, solar, and other forms of renewable energy. It also means new investment in efficiency, so we can do more with less, save money, and make our workers more competitive.

This effort will protect our communities, our air, our water, and our health. It also creates an opportunity to drive innovation, investment, and jobs. Done right, cutting carbon pollution from power plants could stimulate $52 billion to $121 billion in cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable energy between now and 2020, and could save US families and businesses more than $37 billion on their electricity bills by the same year. That's about $100 a year in savings for the average household.

Get ready for more false claims by big polluters. Read more here.

So it's no wonder that the support for this is broad and growing. That 70 percent of Americans who believe climate change is real includes all sorts of people — from business to labor to military to religious groups. We're talking about everyone from the Hip Hop Caucus to the Garden Club of America. Everyone is involved.

As for the last remaining climate skeptics, they can have their fun in Las Vegas this week — it looks like temperatures could reach 110 degrees, so I hope they stay hydrated — but the fact is that their numbers are dwindling swiftly. And I can only hope the media covers it the way John Oliver advises, by reporting that the skeptics are wrong, not just opinionated.

Despite the Heartland Institute's best efforts, America is no longer debating climate change. We're now working to solve it. Folks can help make sure what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas by voicing their support for EPA's Clean Power Plan today.

Frances Beinecke is the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

SEE ALSO: John Oliver Hosts A 'Statistically Representative' Climate Debate

Join the conversation about this story »

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Regulators in drought-stricken California are proposing stringent new conservation measures to limit outdoor water use, including fines of up to $500 a day for using a hose without a shut-off nozzle.

The most populous U.S. state is suffering its third year of drought and in January Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency, allowing the state to request federal aid.

In some cities and towns about half the water residents use is for lawns and cleaning cars, according to the State Water Resources Control Board, which made the proposal public on Tuesday. Voluntary measures do not go far enough, it said.

"It's not meant to spank people, it's meant to make people aware and say, 'This is serious; conserve'," said agency spokesman Timothy Moran, noting that the rules authorize local law enforcement agencies to write tickets imposing fines.

The new restrictions prohibit watering gardens enough to cause visible runoff onto roads or walkways, using water on driveways or asphalt, and in non-recirculating fountains.

Urban water agencies would be subject to daily fines of up to $10,000 for not implementing water-shortage contingency plans, which restrict how many days a week residents can engage in outdoor watering, among other limits on their customers.

Moran said the regulations, which constitute the first such statewide mandates for residents and urban water agencies, are subject to public comment and regulators will vote on July 15. If passed, they would take effect in August and remain in place for nine months with the possibility of being extended.

"California has been subject to multi-year droughts in the past and there is no guarantee that precipitation this winter will lift the State out of current drought conditions," the proposal says.

(Reporting by Madeleine Thomas; Writing by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Join the conversation about this story »

Michele Kuruc is the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) acting senior vice president for marine conservation. She oversees WWF's work to build healthy and resilient marine ecosystems. She has more than two decades of experience in protecting the world's oceans and combating illegal fishing. She contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Most people have watched someone play the card game three-card monte at some point in their lives. To win the bet, all the player needs to do is follow one of three cards as the dealer quickly rearranges them on a table. The player — who closely tracks his card as the shady dealer tries to confuse him about which card is which — then picks out the card he thinks is the correct one.

It's a very simple game, but one where the dealer somehow always wins. Why? Because he uses confusion, misdirection and a little sleight of hand to conceal the true movement of the card from the person tracking it.

While three-card monte is something you typically see late at night on city streets, it's happening every day in the planet's oceans . But there, it's not just a card game — it's an international problem called illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. And the con men that play it are making up to $23 billion each year.

In the same way the dealer hides the movement of his cards, illegal fishermen work to hide the movement of their catch. Illegal product infiltrates the market as seafood moves among multiple fishers, processors, importers and exporters. As the cards are shuffled — as seafood is combined, shipped, processed and shipped again without consistent documentation — regulators, retailers and consumers lose the ability to differentiate legal from illegal product.

While the challenge before law enforcement is immense, the tide is beginning to turn against those profiting from illegal fishing. Government leaders, along with the fishing industry itself, now recognize the true scope and scale of illegal fishing and are actively taking steps to end it.

In fact, last week — in front of ocean leaders from more than 80 nations at the U.S. State Department's Our Ocean conference — U.S. President Barack Obama announced a new initiative designed to coordinate efforts among all federal agencies to close U.S. markets to illegally caught seafood. The administration recognizes that it's past time to break the unintended link between U.S. dollars and illegal fishing, and to provide security to seafood retailers and consumers.

The U.S. government should use this moment to bring together the public and affected stakeholders to design smart regulations that would require bait-to-plate traceability (essentially standardized information about the who, what, where, when and how of fishing) and proof of legality as conditions of import. This transparency will open up the system and make it harder for illegal fish to mix with those responsibly sourced.

Like catching a three-card monte dealer red-handed, ending illegal fishing will not be easy. But the threat it places on marine ecosystems and the livelihoods it supports are too great to ignore.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter andGoogle +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

• Tiny Chinese Island Sets Example for Sustainable Fishing (Op-Ed)
• Planting the Seed of Sustainable Farming: Op-Ed
• Sustainable Future Demands Cross-Discipline Science | Video

Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SEE ALSO: FORGET TUNA: These Are The Seafoods We'll Be Eating In The Future

Join the conversation about this story »

Manhattanhenge— the twice-a-year-event when the sun sets in perfect alignment with the the Manhattan street grid so you can see it setting between the buildings when looking west — happens for the second time this year on Saturday, July 12. The first Manhattanhenge of 2014 was on May 29.

The term Manhattanhenge was coined by Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History and host of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey," as a play on Stonehenge for when the sun lines up with the ancient circle of vertical rocks on the summer solstice.

This year, the sun will set on the grid with half the disk above the horizon and half below on Saturday, July 12, at 8:25 p.m. ET. You can see the full ball of the sun setting on the grid the day before, on Friday, July 12.

"For best effect, position yourself as far east in Manhattan as possible," the American Museum of Natural History suggests on its website. "But ensure that when you look west across the avenues you can still see New Jersey. Clear cross streets include 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, and several streets adjacent to them. The Empire State building and the Chrysler building render 34th street and 42nd streets especially striking vistas."

It's recommended that observers arrive 30 minutes before the sun sets on the grid.

Plan on watching Manhattanhenge? If you snap good photos, email your pictures to science@businessinsider.com and we'll publish them here.

SEE ALSO: The Nation's Salad Bowl Is Turning To Dust

Join the conversation about this story »

Jeffrey Rissman, policy analyst at Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology,contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

A wide variety of policies have been proposed to help cut emissions and stabilize the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. This profusion of options can make it difficult for policymakers to decide what to do: Which policies can achieve emissions cuts on a meaningful scale and at a reasonable cost?

The answer is not "all of the above." There are policies that may sound promising, but in reality would be ineffective or even harmful. For example, one such policy is to convert heavy-duty trucks to run on compressed natural gas (CNG) rather than diesel fuel. Ramón Alvarez and his colleagues at the Environmental Defense Fund, Princeton University, Rochester Institute of Technology and Duke University studied this option and found that it is "not a viable mitigation strategy for climate change," as it would be nearly 300 years after the fuel switch before net climate benefits are achieved.

Given limits on political bandwidth and funding, it is important to focus efforts on enacting policies that work. Policies that are effective at reducing emissions generally come in three types: economic signals, performance standards and policies to support innovation. None of these policy types is sufficient on its own, but when implemented together, they are mutually reinforcing. [Benchmarking Carbon Pollution From 100 Top Power Producers (Op-Ed )]

Economic signals

Economic signals are policies that change the price of goods or activities in order to influence the choices made by people and businesses. Examples include economy-wide measures — such as a carbon tax or cap-and-trade — as well as subsidies for environmentally beneficial technologies and taxes on goods or activities that generate emissions (such as gasoline taxes, roadway usage fees and congestion pricing — all of which reduce driving).

Economic signals counter a key failure of markets: they do not properly value "externalities" (the positive and negative effects of an activity on society). These effects are not limited to climate change. For instance, Steven Barrett and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that air pollution causes the premature deaths of 200,000 Americans each year.

Economic signals have the advantage of flexibility. For example, a carbon tax does not tell a manufacturer specifically what to do in order to reduce emissions, so the company can choose the most cost-effective options available. The manufacturer also has an incentive to engage in research and development to create even more cost-effective options for the future.

These policies are not perfect, nor by themselves sufficient, to achieve the necessary emissions reductions to stop global warming . Problems arise because the real world is far messier than an idealized economic simulation. Businesses and consumers do not have complete information, businesses must satisfy investors whose time horizons may be shorter than would be ideal for long-term planning, and sometimes the payer of a tax is not the same actor who is able to bring about emissions reductions (a problem known as "split incentives.") For example, tenants typically pay the utility bills for their rented homes, while landlords are responsible for purchases that improve the energy efficiency of these homes, such as upgrading to a more efficient water heater or HVAC system. A tax that raises the price of natural gas is unlikely to cause a landlord to buy a more efficient water heater, because the landlord does not pay the tax directly and cannot recover the value of an improved water heater by pricing it into the rent (since prospective renters do not consider the efficiencies of water heaters when deciding which home to rent).

Performance standards

Performance standards include building codes, appliance energy consumption standards, car and truck fuel economy standards, and power plant pollutant emissions limits. Rather than putting a price on an activity's negative effects on society, standards specify a minimal level of performance.

Standards are a strong tool for addressing laggards and removing the worst products from the market, but they are less effective than economic incentives for motivating industry-leading companies and products. Performance standards can help address split incentives, and they reduce the negative impact of a lack of information in the marketplace. (A buyer who knows very little about energy-efficiency options might not be able to quantify or take account of energy savings when choosing a product, but a standard guarantees that the buyer cannot purchase a product any worse than the floor set by the standard.)

Well-written performance standards do not mandate that a particular technology be used in order to meet the standard (allowing for the flexibility and cost minimization brought about by competition between technologies), and they are designed to automatically tighten over time. For example, Japan's Top Runner program periodically sets new standards based on the performance of the best products in the marketplace. This means that the standards continue to improve (driving innovation and reducing emissions), while ensuring they do not tighten so rapidly that manufacturers cannot produce the necessary products (since the new standards are based on products that already exist in the marketplace).

Innovation policies

Policies to support innovation are crucial for research and development (R&D) success. Examples include support for government research or federal funding of research at private companies, research partnerships, improvements to the patent system, tax credits for R&D activities, and improvements to the education and immigration systems that make it easier for companies to hire top science and engineering talent.

Public support for R&D has been tremendously important in the past: Government research or funding has played a role in the development of just about every major energy technology (to name a few: nuclear energy, solar cells, aeroderivative combustion turbines, hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" for natural gas and oil, and compact fluorescent light bulbs).

Government partnerships can also be an asset to private companies' R&D efforts. For example, in order to design a more efficient engine, Cummins Engine Company partnered with Sandia National Laboratory. In an interview I conducted for the American Energy Innovation Council, Cummins' CTO, John Wall, indicated that Sandia offered a "wonderful combustion [research] facility with laser diagnostics." Cummins could not have justified the cost of building or operating such a facility for itself, but they could partner with Sandia to temporarily use their facility, resulting in high-quality research at an affordable price and, ultimately, a more efficient engine on the market.

Economic signals, performance standards and innovation policies work best in concert. Performance standards provide clear targets for R&D efforts and a motivation to conduct research in a socially beneficial area, such as emissions reduction. Similarly, economic signals make it financially rewarding to reduce emissions, which makes R&D a better investment and lessens the cost of complying with performance standards. And with good R&D, it becomes easier and cheaper to comply with standards and to obtain the rewards or avoid the penalties offered by economic signals. Other policies — for instance, a requirement that products bear prominent labels disclosing their energy consumption — would complement those three main policy types. [Shift in Renewable Energy Consumption in the U.S., 2011-2012 (Infographic)]

Only with the right set of policies, incorporating all three approaches, will nations be able to cut emissions to the level required to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and stop climate change.

The author's most recent Op-Ed was "To Cut Carbon, a Decade is Too Long to Wait." The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published onLive Science.

• 6 Unexpected Effects of Climate Change
• The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted
• Climate Change, in Real Time (Op-Ed)

Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SEE ALSO: Why Some Cities Get Way Hotter Than Others During The Summer

Join the conversation about this story »

The Appalachian Trail, or AT, stretches more than 2,000 miles along the U.S. East Coast.

Completed in 1937, the longest marked trail in the country runs from Georgia to Maine, connecting 14 states and passing through ridges and valleys of the Appalachian mountain range.

Stretches of the AT are within a couple hours drive for millions of Americans, but few have walked its full length. Each year, thousands of people attempt to hike the entire AT; only one in four succeeds. 

National Geographic explored the wooded footpath, traveling south to north, in a 50-minute documentary. You can take the adventure in our slideshow or watch the movie on Netflix.

The Appalachian Trail, better known as the AT, stretches about 2,175 miles along the eastern United States.

The AT runs from Georgia to Maine, making it the longest marked trail in the country, and one of the longest in the world.

The trail cuts through 14 states along the way, including New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells, a staff writer at New York magazine, recently wrote an essay so sure to be controversial that he began it with a disclaimer.

"Let me make clear my position up front," he writes in the article, The Case for the End of the Modern Zoo. "I love zoos."

Yet he goes on to argue that while zoos do some good for animals and bring a lot of joy to humans, ultimately there is no justifying a life of captivity for so many wild creatures.

He points to "a long-term 1983 study of animal mortality at the San Diego Zoo [that] found cannibalism and infanticide, widespread malnutrition, and frequent deaths from tranquilizer use." He notes that the territory of a wild polar bear is "one million times" the size of their space in a typical zoo. He reviews the evidence against SeaWorld raised by the documentary "Blackfish," which alleged that their star orca was kept "nearly all the time, alone in a tank that measured twenty feet across."

Wallace-Wells takes as a starting point a profile in The New York Times Magazine by Alex Halberstadt, which details the work of Dr. Vint Virga, a skilled veterinarian "whose full-time job is tending to the psychological welfare of animals in captivity." But while the story is a glowing portrait of Virga, it suggests some dark truths about zoos in general. As Wallace-Wells writes:

Most of the issues are hard to imagine arising in the wild. A brown bear develops a form of obsessive compulsive disorder, repeatedly, almost ritually, smashing his head into a metal door in his enclosure. A harbor seal is uneasy about being treated by the vet. A giraffe develops a compulsive fear of men with large cameras. Halberstadt writes, "Disorders like phobias, depression and OCD, documented at zoos, don’t appear to have analogues among animals living in the wild."

Harvard psychologist Irene Pepperberg, renowned for her work with gray parrots, tells Halberstadt that the difference may be because the cushy lives of zoo animals have made them a bit soft. "An animal in the wild can’t afford to be depressed," she says in the Times piece. "It will simply be killed or starve, since its environment requires constant vigilance."

Zoos, Wallace-Wells acknowledges, let animals live with much more safety and security than they would in the wild, with devoted caretakers and medical attention. And they certainly have become more progressive over the years and more responsive to the needs of the animals in their care.

But zoos ask us to pretend that we are observing truly wild animals in an acceptable simulacrum of their natural habitat. That illusion may be crumbling.

So much confinement and artifice is bound to drive the animals crazy, Wallace-Wells argues, even if they've never known anything else.

The whole essay is well worth a read.

Read The Case for the End of the Modern Zoo >>

SEE ALSO: How Aquariums Allegedly Turned A Whale Into A Killing Machine

Join the conversation about this story »

The Asian "crazy worm" looks pretty harmless, as earthworms do, but the little worm can do big damage. 

Unlike the vast majority of approximately 5,00o earthworm species on the planet, Amynthas agrestis, also known as the Asian crazy worm or Alabama jumper, is actually considered a destructive invasive pest, and it has scientists seriously worried.

The worms showed up in Wisconsin for the first time in the fall of 2013, at the arboretum of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But now it has done something scientists were hoping it wouldn't — it turned up again, proving that it can survive the Wisconsin winter (and if you recall, this past one wasn't just any winter).

"We knew their introduction into our state poses a huge threat to the future of our forests," said Bernie Williams, an invasive species specialist in forest health at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, in a press release from the University of Wisconsin.

The worms are originally found in Japan and the Korean peninsula. They grow to 8 inches long and are marked by a light band around their dark bodies — and as you can see in the gif below, they really do jump around like crazy.

In 2009, Scientific American reported that the wriggling invasive pest (along with its kin, the night crawler) was clearing forest floors around the Great Lakes, devouring the layers of the forest floor that new trees depend on to grow, turning a "lush understory" into a barren area with "virtually no tree seedlings."

Wisconsin hasn't had native earthworms for 20,000 years — they were wiped out by the last glacier to cover the state. And while most species currently there don't cause problems and actually aerate soil for gardeners, these are trouble, with voracious appetites and an incredibly rapid breeding cycle.

"It breeds en masse, and is constantly dropping cocoons," Williams said in the news release. "Where the cocoons hatch, at the soil surface you'll see what looks like small filament hairs moving on the soil surface in large numbers."

These worms have been in the southeastern United States for decades, but their spread to new ecosystems that are healthy in their absence is a disturbing development.

Researchers aren't sure how the worms ended up in Wisconsin. Theories include fishermen tossing leftover bait, worms trapped in tire treads, and mulch that is brought into the area.

By clearing the forest floor of normal plants and leaf detritus, the worms encourage erosion and make it easier for other invasive species to gain a root-hold. It also eradicates the natural habitat for local flora and fauna.

They don't generally spread quickly without being carried somewhere, but are considered essentially impossible to eliminate when they get there.

Here's the full video that gif is from:

SEE ALSO: 'Crazy Ants' That Eat Electrical Equipment Are Taking Over The Southeast

Join the conversation about this story »