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These 18 'Very High Threat' Volcanoes Could Wreak Havoc On The US

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18 Mt St Helens Lyn Topinka USGS

The United States has 169 active volcanoes — 55 of which are designated as serious threats by the United States Geological Survey's Volcano Hazards Program.

Of these, 18 are "Very High Threats"— volcanoes that, were they to erupt, could disrupt air travel and threaten people's lives.

A caveat: this is not a ranking of the volcanoes by their danger level.

As Wendy Stovall, a geologist with USGS, told Business Insider in an e-mail:

There are many volcanoes that are threatening due to factors such as tectonic setting, population density, eruption frequency, and potential to erupt again. The variations in these factors make each of the ... 'high threat' volcanoes uniquely dangerous.

Since they pose such substantial threats, we figured we should get to know them a little better. So, here are the 18 most dangerous volcanoes in the US.

Mount Akutan, in the Alaskan Aleutian Island chain, last erupted in 1992, releasing ash and steam for nearly three months.



In May of 2005, Augustine Volcano in Alaska began experiencing a number of "microearthquakes," which built to explosive eruptions of ash that reached nine kilometers above sea level.



Makushin Volcano, located in the Aleutian island chain of Alaska, has erupted 34 times in the last 250 years— most recently in 1995.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Don't Worry, Earth Will Survive Climate Change — We Won't

Why Australia Won't Be America's Ally On Climate Change

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obama australian prime minister tony abbottTony Abbott’s refusal to attend this week’s United Nations climate summit is embarrassing for Australia.

There was never any way he’d be at this meeting but his absence would not have appeared so conspicuous if he hadn’t been travelling to New York anyway.

Given he is going to the special UN Security Council session on foreign fighters, he had no reasonable excuse for missing the climate summit.

He could easily have left Australia a little earlier and been there, along with more than 100 leaders, including Barack Obama and Britain’s David Cameron (though neither China nor India is being represented at leader level).

Abbott has spread his wings on the international stage recently, but this doesn’t extend to the climate issue. On that, the Coalition remains in election campaign mode. It boasts as one of its major achievements the dismantling of the nation’s carbon pricing. It would like to cut back or even quash the renewable energy target, although the Senate and the public popularity of the RET are complications.

What the Prime Minister privately thinks about climate change – as opposed to his formal position that it is real and humans contribute to it - is unclear given his conflicting and shifting statements over the years. But he certainly does not accord it a high priority.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who will represent Australia at the summit, set out the government’s position in remarks to the UN’s Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate this week.

Reaffirming that Australia was committed to reducing emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020, she said this would be a reduction of “22% against business as usual levels” which “compares well to other major economies”.

The target would be met through the Direct Action Plan, she said. (That plan still has to be negotiated through the Senate.)

Bishop said Australia was committed to helping achieve a global, enduring and ambitious climate agreement next year, when countries will meet at the Paris conference.

“For Australia, it is important that the new agreement encourages economic growth while delivering realistic and effective environmental outcomes.”

She said that “all countries, especially the major emitters must take real and comparable action to reduce emissions.

“Broad participation will sustain economic growth by safeguarding our respective competitiveness. It is critical that we move beyond the outdated developed and developing country groupings of 1992,” she said, adding that these didn’t reflect today’s reality, let alone the future.

Australia would consider its post-2020 target as part of its review next year of its targets and settings. “This review will focus on the extent to which other nations, including the major economies and Australia’s trading partners, are taking real and comparable action to reduce emissions. For Australia, it is important that we see the pledges of the major emitters,” Bishop said (suggesting Australia is likely to hang back in presenting its target). She welcomed comments from American Secretary of State John Kerry on the hope that the two largest emitters, the United States and China, could agree on targets.

Bishop stressed that “economic growth and competitiveness must be at the forefront of our thinking as we design the new global agreement. A strong global economy improves our global capacity to address the full range of challenges that climate change presents.”

Bishop’s remarks lacked engagement with the dimension and seriousness of the problem of a changing climate. In contrast, Kerry was passionate in speeches this week, ranking climate change with terrorism as an international challenge.

“When you think about terrorism, which we think about a lot today; poverty, which is linked obviously to the levels of terror that we see in the world today; and, of course, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – all of these are challenges that don’t know any borders.

“And that’s exactly what climate change is. Importantly, climate change, without being connected in that way to everybody’s daily thinking, in fact, ranks right up there with every single one of the rest of those challenges.

“You can make a powerful argument that it may be, in fact, the most serious challenge we face on the planet because it’s about the planet itself. And today, more than 97 percent of all the peer reviewed studies ever made confirm that,” Kerry said.

He said that the 2015 UN agreement “is not going to be the final step towards solving climate change. But … it’s going to be the most important one we’ve had perhaps since Kyoto and may be the demarcation point for the reality of whether we have a chance of getting there or don’t.”

Unlike with the challenge of terrorism, the US won’t be finding its good friend Australia offering enthusiastic assistance in this effort.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Australia Can Get To Zero Carbon Emissions While Continuing To Grow The Economy

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People's Climate March (11 of 20)

Today more than 120 world leaders are gathered in New York for the Climate Leaders' Summit. With global emissions continuing to rise, it is easy to be pessimistic.

But new research released today shows that it is getting easier to achieve a very low emissions future for all major countries. Australia could go to zero net emissions by 2050, without compromising prosperity and with new economic opportunities if the world goes low carbon.

Deep Decarbonisation Pathways

The aim of international climate policy is to limit global warming to a maximum temperature rise of 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century. This requires global emissions to more than halve by 2050, then continue toward net zero.

At the summit, new research from 15 countries has been presented to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to give confidence to these world leaders that near-zero carbon energy systems are achievable by all the major economies by 2050.

Australia is one of those top 15 emitting countries. The others are Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, the UK and the USA. Together they account for 70% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

An interim report by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network shows all 15 countries found ways to achieve near zero carbon electricity by 2050 while sustaining economic growth.

The Australian contribution is led by ClimateWorks and the Australian National University, and draws on modelling from the CSIRO and Victoria University's Centre for Policy Studies.

Australia's pathway to a low carbon economy

Our report published today shows the Australian options for deep decarbonisation of our economy while still maintaining economic prosperity, in a decarbonising world. The report,Pathways to Deep Decarbonisation in 2050: How Australia can prosper in a low carbon world finds that Australia can reach net zero emissions by 2050 while the economy continues to grow at a similar rate as today — 2.4% of GDP per year.

australiaNot only can we reach net zero emissions by 2050, this can be achieved without major structural changes to the economy, and minimal impact on Australians' lifestyles. Major technological transitions are needed in some industries and many activities, but no fundamental change to Australia's economy is required.

Other recent work goes further than our analysis in identifying economic and social opportunities from cutting emissions. The New Climate Economy project led by British economist Nick Stern points out a raft of policy options that will improve the quality of economic growth and help with climate change. Even the fiercest critics of this report do not seem to dispute that many options to cut emissions have substantial co-benefits for local environments, communities, and government budgets.

The pillars of decarbonisation

Australia's decarbonisation pathway relies on greatly improved energy efficiency across the economy, a nearly carbon free power system, and switching to low carbon energy sources in transport, buildings and industry. In addition to these three pillars that are common to all countries, Australia's pathway also involves reducing non-energy emissions in industry and agriculture.

The illustrative pathway modelled in the report found ambitious energy efficiency in all sectors leads to a halving of the final energy intensity of the economy between now and 2050.

The report also outlines three scenarios for decarbonising the electricity system. In one scenario, electricity is solely supplied from renewable energy. The other two scenarios also include renewables with a mix of carbon capture and storage or nuclear power.

The remainder of fossil fuel use in the economy is shifted to either bioenergy or low emissions fuel such as gas where possible, particularly for freight and industry. The analysis also shows the potential to entirely offset any residual emissions by carbon forestry plantings.

Action in economic sectors

Some parts of the Australian economy have excellent opportunities to reduce emissions.

First and foremost, the electricity sector has multiple options available to reach near zero emissions. Taking the carbon out of electricity is the backbone of a decarbonisation strategy for Australia, and it is easier than in many other countries that lack Australia's plentiful potential for renewable energy, as well as carbon capture and storage.

This can then flow through to emissions reduction in the buildings sector, given the relative ease to switch energy use in buildings to electricity.

Emissions from transport and industry are cut back substantially through energy efficiency and switching from fossil fuels to carbon-free electricity and biofuels or gas. It is not as easy in transport to switch to electric energy, so biofuels have an important role.

Non-energy emissions from industry are reduced through substituting with less emissions-intensive materials, process improvements and carbon capture and storage in some applications.

Agriculture emissions are reduced through best practice farming, but in some parts of agriculture opportunities to reduce emissions are limited, in particular from beef consumption, in substantial part for export.

Our report, based on new analysis by CSIRO, shows very large opportunities to sequester carbon in forestry. In our illustrative scenario, carbon sequestration increases over time to compensate for all remaining emissions at 2050. In aggregate, the scenario meets the carbon budget identified by the Climate Change Authority as compatible with Australia's contribution to a global 2 degrees C outcome.

New international advantage

If all countries take action to decarbonise their economies, Australia's abundance of low carbon energy opportunities could provide us with a comparative advantage. Whether the global energy system is high carbon or low carbon, Australia can be an energy superpower.

Australia is rich in renewables and geological storage, key resources for decarbonised energy systems. This could be the basis of a renewed advantage in energy intensive industries for Australia.

Australia also has large gas reserves — a transition fuel — and uranium, which can fuel nuclear power — a key component in many countries' decarbonisation strategies.

Time to act

Achieving deep emissions cuts requires a significant transition for Australia. The pathway identified is not a reconstruction of our economy, but it is a major upgrade of energy supply infrastructure and energy-using equipment and transport systems, along with rapid and large scale expansion of reforestation.

A successful low carbon transition requires a thorough understanding of the options, opportunities and challenges. It also needs long-term policy signals to encourage the investment decisions needed for a decarbonised economy.

A global effort is required to enable the world to reduce emissions, and indeed concerted global action is the frame of reference for our report. Australia must be ready to play its part, and to grasp the opportunities that can come.

Global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and it is getting more urgent to turn the ship around. Thankfully, it is becoming clearer that a very low-carbon economy is possible and will not compromise economic growth. It is not about a trade-off between economy and environment, it is about synergies.

SEE ALSO: CLIMATE MARCH PHOTOS: Here's What Happened At America's Biggest Political Gathering In Years

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Rutgers Student Dies After The First Deadly Black Bear Attack In New Jersey In 150 Years

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American Black Bear New Hampshire

On Sept. 21, a black bear killed a 22-year-old Rutgers student in the first fatal bear attack in New Jersey since 1852.

Darsh Patel was out hiking with four other friends in Apshawa Preserve when the bear started to follow the group.

In an effort to get away, they scattered and ran in different directions. When four of them found each other later, they called local West Milford police, who found Patel's body.

Police say they "immediately euthanized" the 300-pound bear at the scene, where it was circling an area near the body, according to the Associated Press.

Kelcey Burguess, who heads Division of Fish and Wildlife’s black bear project, told the AP that the bear was probably looking for food and may have smelled granola bars that the hikers were carrying. Wildlife ecologists say that running from a bear may incite it to give chase instinctually.

The black bear population has "grown out of control," especially in the north of state— which is where Apshawa Preserve is located, about 40 miles from New York City — according to a statement to the New York Times by Larry Ragonese, spokesperson for the State Department of Environmental Protection.

The high numbers of bears makes rare but potentially dangerous encounters more likely, even though the bears are generally not considered aggressive.

Black bears are usually fairly scared of people, but they're big enough that any encounter can end up deadly. And because so many now live in an area that's close to people and find their food in trash cans, some encounter enough people to lose some of the natural fear they have of humans.

Officials say that bear numbers peaked in 2009, at which point they created a bear hunting season to get the population under control.

They believe New Jersey's bear population is now somewhere between 1,800 and 2,400 bears.

Still, the number of dangerous encounters this year is almost 50% higher than it was last year — perhaps because of a shortage of berries and acorns that normally make up much of the animal's diet.

SEE ALSO: A Drone Captured This Stunning Video Of A Family Of Killer Whales

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Jon Stewart Nails The Insane Reason We Need To Keep Talking About Climate Change

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Burn Noticed StewartIf 99.9% of the scientific literature shows that climate change is real and worsened by human action, why do we still need marches like the one that recently flooded the streets of New York City?

It's an appropriate question, and one that comedian Jon Stewart answers eloquently in a recent Daily Show episode.

As he notes on the show, some members of the White House Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology hold some very strange and unscientific views on the matter. They apparently consider themselves allies of the 0.1% — the 0.1% of scientific research that doesn't definitively implicate humans as chiefly responsible for an increasingly warmer Earth.

As a result, instead of discussing solutions to climate change or forging agreements to lower greenhouse gas emissions, as they should be doing, the committee spent hours "debating" global warming, even though really, truly, for real, there is no debate in the scientific community:

pie chart consensusIn his frustration over this topic, Stewart calls out these members of the Science, Space And Technology committee for their absolutely asinine ideas and complete misrepresentation and misunderstanding of the science of climate change.

First up: Representative Larry Bucshon (R-Indiana) says the science on climate change still isn't clear.

"There's public comments out there that that question [about whether humans are causing climate change] has been asked and answered saying no."Representative Bucshon tells Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy John Holdren. 

Just as the comments below a news article aren't the best place to look for facts, neither are the public comments on climate change the authority on global warming.

Responding to Representative Bucshon, Director Holdren suggests he take a look at the scientific literature instead.

Rather than doing that, however, Representative Bucshon counters by saying: "I could read that," Representative Bucshon says, "But I don't believe it."

His reason? Money. "Climatologists rely on the climate changing," says Representative Bucshon, "to keep themselves publishing articles."

Though that's simply not true, it's even more ridiculous for Buschon to make this argument, Stewart points out, because his three biggest campaign donors are some of the world's leading coal industry backers: Murray Energy Corporation (America's single largest underground coal mining company), Koch Industries (which oversees crude oil refineries that produce more than 600,000 barrels per day) and Peabody Energy (the largest private-sector coal company in the world).

donors"If scientists could be bought," says Stewart, "these companies would have already made it rain in nerd town."

Buschon's not the only one: During that same congressional meeting Representative Steve Stockman (R-Texas) decided that he could out-science the climatologists with some "facts" that in his mind remain unanswered. The extreme climate changes caused by Earth's periodic tilts on it's axis, known as global wobbling, are not being accounted for in the scientists' models of climate change, Representative Stockman says, so how can they possibly be right?

The problem? The effects of the Earth's orbit tilting every 22,000 and 100,000 years, is a super slow process, are very tiny in a global warming models' timescale of 100 years.

Sorry, Representative Stockman. Wobbling doesn't explain the climate warming over the last few decades, let alone millennia.

Basically, we need to keep talking about it because the deniers are wrong. And sadly, these deniers are in our government and even on the science committees. So, we have to keep protesting, writing, and talking about climate change to make our voices heard.

Watch the whole clip to see Stewart's hilarious reactions to these utterly uneducated questions from the committee, courtesy of the Daily Show:

SEE ALSO: Celebrities, Politicians, And More Than 300,000 People Show Up To NYC's Climate March

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Watch A Lake Shrink To Nothing In Just 14 Years

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lake


In the 1960s, the Soviet Union undertook a major water diversion project on the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The region’s two major rivers, fed by snowmelt and precipitation in faraway mountains, were used to transform the desert into farms for cotton and other crops.

Before the project, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers flowed down from the mountains, cut northwest through the Kyzylkum Desert, and finally pooled together in the lowest part of the basin. The lake they made, the Aral Sea, was once the fourth largest in the world.

Although irrigation made the desert bloom, it devastated the Aral Sea. This series of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite documents the changes. At the start of the series in 2000, the lake was already a fraction of its 1960 extent (black line).

The Northern Aral Sea (sometimes called the Small Aral Sea) had separated from the Southern (Large) Aral Sea. The Southern Aral Sea had split into eastern and western lobes that remained tenuously connected at both ends.

By 2001, the southern connection had been severed, and the shallower eastern part retreated rapidly over the next several years. Especially large retreats in the eastern lobe of the Southern Sea appear to have occurred between 2005 and 2009, when drought limited and then cut off the flow of the Amu Darya.

Water levels then fluctuated annually between 2009 and 2014 in alternately dry and wet years. Dry conditions in 2014 caused the Southern Sea’s eastern lobe to completely dry up for the first time in modern times.

As the lake dried up, fisheries and the communities that depended on them collapsed. The increasingly salty water became polluted with fertilizer and pesticides. The blowing dust from the exposed lakebed, contaminated with agricultural chemicals, became a public health hazard.

The salty dust blew off the lakebed and settled onto fields, degrading the soil. Croplands had to be flushed with larger and larger volumes of river water. The loss of the moderating influence of such a large body of water made winters colder and summers hotter and drier.

In a last-ditch effort to save some of the lake, Kazakhstan built a dam between the northern and southern parts of the Aral Sea. Completed in 2005, the dam was basically a death sentence for the southern Aral Sea, which was judged to be beyond saving.

All of the water flowing into the desert basin from the Syr Darya now stays in the Northern Aral Sea. Between 2005 and 2006, the water levels in that part of the lake rebounded significantly and very small increases are visible throughout the rest of the time period. The differences in water color are due to changes in sediment.

The lake in 2000:

Aral Sea

The lake in 2014:

aralsea_tmo_2014231

SEE ALSO: Here's What Makes China's Pollution So Bad

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This Brooklyn Startup Wowed The Science Community With Lab-Made 'Meat Chips'

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cows farm cattle

The cattle industry has a lot of critics, and not without reason: Cattle take up a lot of space, contribute to habitat destruction and deforestation, belch harmful methane into the atmosphere and consume massive amounts of food. But one Brooklyn-based start-up is aiming to address these issues with an innovative, if unexpected, solution: lab-grown meat.

Co-founded in 2011 by Andras Forgacz, Gabor Forgacz, Francoise Marga, and Karoly Jakab, Modern Meadow is using a technology called tissue engineering to grow leather and meat from the confines of a laboratory — no animals harmed in the making. With the help of a process called "bioprinting," which allows scientists to 3-D print tissues that are cultured from animal cells in the lab, the entrepreneurs are able to produce a humane and eco-friendly animal product.

Andras Forgacz spoke about the research this week at the MIT Technology Review, and Modern Meadow scientists presented a taste of their research earlier this year at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin with a plate of "steak chips"— potato chip-like discs of lab-grown meat, which Andras Forgacz says can be produced for less than $100 apiece.

It's not the first time such a venture has been attempted. Last year, professor Mark Poke of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, produced a lab-cultured hamburger and presented it at a public tasting in London — an achievement that won him the World Technology Award for Environment. Unfortunately, his burger won't be available at your local fast food joint any time soon — it cost more than $300,000 to make.

The research comes at a critical time for Planet Earth. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that an area of rainforest the size of New York City is lost to cattle grazing land each year, and the Food and Agriculture Organization reports that the industry pours 2.9 gigatonnes of carbon emissions into the atmosphere annually. Additionally, recent research from the United Nations projects that the world's population could top 12 billion people by 2100. If production costs become cheaper, lab-grown meat could be one way to feed an ever-growing human population without continuing to destroy the environment.

But tissue engineering has plenty of other applications, as well — most notably as a way to grow tissues and organs for use in medical research and procedures. In fact, before founding Modern Meadow, Andras Forgacz co-founded Organovo, a company that bioprints human tissues.

For now, research continues in Modern Meadow's lab. They don't have any products commercially available yet, but as environmental advocates continue to put the heat on the livestock industry, a safe and eco-friendly alternative to farm-raised animal products may be just what the doctor ordered.

SEE ALSO: Here's How Scientists Plan To Get Us All Eating Lab Grown Meat

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The 10 Greenest Cities In America

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seattle seaplane rideCities across the U.S. have taken great strides toward green and sustainable living, outpacing the federal government’s sluggish response to climate change. City lawmakers have increasingly adopted measures to cut their cities’ carbon emissions, recycle waste and fast-track legislation to protect the environment.

There is no official government ranking for the greenest U.S. cities, and there are several factors to consider. The size of a city’s “carbon footprint” (i.e., the amount of greenhouse gases it emits) is one indication of a city’s environmental friendliness. The number of so-called LEED-certified buildings (i.e., structures designed with minimal nonrenewable energy use and reduced water consumption) is also a good gauge of a city’s ecological consciousness. Cities with high proportions of green space also get two (green) thumbs up.

Based on these and other criteria, below are the 10 greenest cities in the U.S., in no particular order:

1. San Francisco. The city’s curbside compost pickup program is just one of its many eco-friendly features. It was also the first U.S. city to ban plastic grocery bags.

2. Chicago. Chicago has more green roofs (i.e., roofs partially or completely covered in vegetation) than does any other city in the U.S. Green roofs help cut the amount of energy it takes to heat and cool a building, while also improving air quality.

3. Austin, Texas. The city has pledged to go carbon-neutral by 2020 and is the country’s top seller of renewable energy. Its 50 miles of trails and luscious greenbelts also don’t hurt.

4. Seattle. With seven parks per 10,000 residents, Seattle has more green space than do most other major U.S. urban centers. The city’s residents are also among the most sustainability-savvy around. More than 20 public buildings in Seattle are LEED-certified or being constructed for LEED certification. (LEED is the acronym for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.”)

5. Long Beach, Calif. It is among the most walkable cities in the U.S. and has an aggressive solar-energy program. In addition to Long Beach’s many solar-power sources, including trash cans, parking lots and dog parks, the city plans to harvest 10 megawatts of solar power by 2020, as noted by USA Today.

6. Portland, Ore. The heart of bicycling culture, Portland has an admirable mass-transit system, plenty of green space and a robust recycling program. It is also in the lowest 20 percent of U.S. cities for total carbon emissions per capita, according to the Brookings Institution in Washington. (The Brookings Institution describes itself as a think tank promoting the economic and social opportunity, security and welfare of all Americans: It is funded by individuals, corporations and foundations, as well as U.S. and foreign government agencies.)

7. Fresno, Calif. This city in central California has one of the highest rates of recycling in the country. An impressive 73 percent of Fresno’s trash is diverted from landfills versus 30-50 percent in most cities.

8. Burlington, Vt. This city of just 42,000 people recently transitioned to 100 percent renewable energy. Vermont’s largest city gets one-third of its power from hydroelectric dams, one-third from wind energy and one-third from biomass renewal.

9. Oakland, Calif. Oakland boasts the country’s cleanest tap water as well as an extensive hydrogen-powered public-transit system. The city gets 17 percent of its energy from renewable sources.

10. Cambridge, Mass. In 2002, city officials pushed ahead with a comprehensive sustainability plan that included a citywide compost collection project. Most of Cambridge’s vehicles are fueled by low-emission B20 biodiesel or electricity, the Mother Nature Network reported.

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A 13-Year-Old Has Invented A Completely New Approach To Cleaning Up Oil Spills

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broadcomfinalistThis 13-year-old is trying to save the world one ecosystem at a time.

Chythanya Murali, an eighth grader from Arkansas, has created a safe, effective, non-conventional method to clean oil spills, by harnessing the cleaning properties of bacteria — specifically the enzymes they use to break down oil particles. These enzymes disassemble oil molecules, making way for the bacteria to convert it into harmless compounds.

Advances in oil cleanup are dearly needed. Right now, the mixtures of oil-cleaning enzymes that we use can be more harmful than helpful to the environment. In 2012, a study found a chilling discovery about the oil-cleaning agents dispersed in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. When combined with the oil, the resulting mixture was 52 times more toxic to small animals like plankton than oil alone.

In fact, it was this very same spill that motivated Murali to make a difference. "My inspiration for this project began [from] the immense damage caused by the BP oil spill in early 2010."Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill_ _May_24,_2010To improve oil-cleaning methods, Murali designed a project for the science fair that explored the different mixtures of oil-eating enzymes and oil-breaking-down bacteria, to see how they affect the marine environment.

"The combination of bio-additive enzymes and oil-degrading bacteria as a novel combination for short- and long-term cleaning, and its effect on ecosystems was not explored before," Murali told Business Insider.

So it only seemed natural to Murali to combine the two and see what happened. She discovered that in a small-scale aquarium, the combination of her chosen oil-cleaning agents could help remove oil while preserving the health of the overall ecosystem, something that some of the oil-cleaning agents we use today cannot achieve.

Murali hopes her new approach can be further developed and can eventually help clean up oil spills. Earlier this month, her science fair oil-breakdown project won her a position as a Broadcom Math, Applied Science, Technology, and Engineering Rising Stars (MASTERS) finalist. She is one of 30 Broadcom MASTERS finalists in the country.

Murali has yet to apply her mixture on a large scale to test its commercial potential, so she might run into trouble scaling up the project.Oil_clean_up_at_impact_site_(5015342704)"I did not have the funding to conduct this on a larger scale, so it would need more time and support ... to see if it works in in vivo conditions," she said. "Afterwards, this novel combination of biological agents can be used to clean oil spills in real world scenarios."

If Murali were to win this year's Broadcom MASTERS grand prize of $25,000, she would certainly move closer toward that goal.


NOW WATCH: 7 Crazy Facts That Sound Fake But Are Actually True

 

SEE ALSO: The Stuff We Use To Clean Up Oil Spills Might Make The Oil MORE Toxic

READ MORE: A Massive Oil Spill Is Threatening Mexico's Third Largest City's Water Supply

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Startling New Evidence Confirms That Humans Are Devastating Wildlife Across The Globe

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Mozambique Elephant Poaching 2 537x331

Paris (AFP) - Wildlife numbers have plunged by more than half in just 40 years as Earth's human population has nearly doubled, a survey of over 3,000 vertebrate species revealed on Tuesday.

From 1970 to 2010, there was a 39-percent drop in numbers across a representative sample of land- and sea-dwelling species, while freshwater populations declined 76 percent, the green group WWF said in its 2014 Living Planet Report.

Extrapolating from these figures, "the number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish across the globe is, on average, about half the size it was 40 years ago," it said.

The 52-percent decrease confirmed mankind was chomping through Nature's bounty much faster than the rate of replenishment, the WWF warned.

The last Living Planet Report, in 2012, found a 28-percent drop in numbers from 1970-2008, but that was based on only 2,688 monitored species.

The new report tracks the growth or decline of more than 10,000 populations of 3,038 species ranging from forest elephants to sharks, turtles and albatrosses.

It stressed that humans were consuming natural resources at a rate that would require 1.5 Earths to sustain -- cutting down trees faster than they mature and harvesting more fish than oceans can replace.

"We are using nature's gifts as if we had more than just one Earth at our disposal," WWF Director General Marco Lambertini said in the foreword to the biennial publication.

"By taking more from our ecosystems and natural processes than can be replenished, we are jeopardizing our very future."

While agricultural yield per hectare has improved through better farming and irrigation methods, the sheer human population explosion has reduced per capita "biocapacity", or available life-sustaining land.

Human population numbers shot up from about 3.7 billion to nearly seven billion from 1970 to 2010.

"So while biocapacity has increased globally, there is now less of it to go around," the report said.

And, it warned, "with the world population projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 and 11 billion by 2100, the amount of biocapacity available for each of us will shrink further".

The survey highlighted differences between nations and regions in consumption and biodiversity loss.

"Low-income countries have the smallest footprint, but suffer the greatest ecosystem losses," it said.

The wildlife decline was worst in the tropics with a 56 percent drop, compared with 36 percent in temperate regions.

Latin America suffered the most drastic losses with an overall decline of 83 percent. 

Kuwaitis have largest footprint

There were also vast differences in nations' "ecological footprint" -- the mark their consumption leaves on the planet, measured per capita. 

The people of Kuwait had the biggest overall footprint, followed in the top 10 by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Belgium, Trinidad and Tobago, Singapore, the United States, Bahrain and Sweden.

Rich countries' biggest mark was in carbon emissions, while the impact of poor countries, at the tail end of the list, was mainly in consumption of land and forest products.

"If all people on the planet had the footprint of the average resident of Qatar, we would need 4.8 planets," the report said, and 3.9 at US rates.

Yet despite this vast consumption, almost a billion people do not have enough food and 768 million do not have access to clean water, it added.

Protecting nature's endowment is equally important for rich and poor nations, Lambertini said.

"We are all in this together. We all need nutritious food, fresh water and clean air, wherever in the world we live."

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Scientists Have Identified One Of The Clearest Links Ever Between Climate Change And Heat Waves

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Heatwave Australia

A handful of studies published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society on Tuesday draw a direct link between human-caused climate change and last year's heat waves in Australia.  

That means scientists were able to calculate how much human actions influenced a specific weather event, beyond any natural factors.

"It is perhaps the most definitive statement climate scientists have made tying a specific weather event to global warming,"Justin Gillis at The New York Times writes of the finding's significance

For this study, five different research groups looked at factors related to record heat in Australia in 2013, NOAA said. All teams concluded that natural variability could not account for record-breaking temperatures alone. According to one computer model "the fraction of risk of these extreme events attributable to anthropogenic forcing [human factors] was 100% or close to 100%."

The evidence linking climate change to other extreme weather events — including droughts, heavy rain, and storms — was not as cut-and-dried.

"The influence of human-caused climate change on these kinds of events was sometimes evident, but often less clear, suggesting natural factors played a far more dominant role," NOAA writes. 

Sixteen extreme weather events in North American, Europe, Asia, and Australia, were analyzed for the report, "Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 from a Climate Perspective."

Extreme Climate Map

SEE ALSO: Before And After Pictures Show How Climate Change Is Destroying The Earth

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These Countries Have The Highest Energy Usage Per Person

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Wind turbines and coal power plant

Next time you get into your car and drive to the supermarket, think about how much energy you consume on an annual basis. It is widely assumed that Westerners are some of the world’s worst energy pigs. While Americans make up just 5 percent of the global population, they use 20 percent of its energy, eat 15 percent of its meat, and produce 40 percent of the earth’s garbage.

Europeans and people in the Middle East, it turns out, aren't winning any awards for energy conservation, either.

While some of the guilty parties are obvious, others may surprise you. A note about the figures: we used kilograms of oil equivalent (koe) per capita, which refers to the amount of energy that can be extracted from one kilogram of crude oil. “Koe per capita” can be used to compare energy from different sources, including fossil fuels and renewables, and does here. The numbers represent the most recent data available from the World Bank.

Iceland Filming-Game of Thrones

1.    Iceland - 18,774 kg. 

Yes, that’s right, Iceland. Of all the countries in the world, including the richest and largest oil producers, Iceland consumes the most energy per person. How can that be? The reason is basically overabundance. With most of Iceland’s energy coming from hydroelectric and geothermal power, Icelanders are some of the planet’s least energy-conscious. Click here for a fascinating video of why the Nordic nation uses so much energy.

2. Qatar – 17,418 kg. 

Qataris are addicted to oil. According to National Geographic, the population is provided with free electricity and water, which has been described as “liquid electricity” because it is often produced through desalination, a very energy-intensive process. Qatar's per capita emissions are the highest in the world, and three times that of the United States.

3. Trinidad and Tobago – 15,691 kg. 

Trinidad and Tobago is one of the richest countries in the Caribbean, and the region's leading producer of oil and gas; it houses one of the largest natural gas processing facilities in the Western Hemisphere. T&T is the largest LNG exporter to the United States. Its electricity sector is entirely fueled by natural gas.

1024px Kuwait_burn_oilfield (1)4. Kuwait – 10,408 kg. 

Despite holding the sixth-largest oil reserves in the world, and an estimated 63 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, the demand for electricity in Kuwait often outstrips supply. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Kuwait is perpetually in electricity supply shortage and experiences frequent blackouts each summer. The country has become a net importer of natural gas to address the imbalance.

5. Brunei – 9,427 kg. 

The tiny sultanate on the island of Borneo, apart from being a substantial producer and exporter of oil and natural gas to Asia, is also a habitual power hog. The nation of roughly half a million has the region's highest number of cars per capita. Brunei also subsidizes both vehicle fuel and electricity, which is sold to the public at below-market prices.

6. Luxembourg – 7,684 kg. 

Landlocked Luxembourg is almost totally dependent on energy imports, mostly oil and gas. Energy consumption has increased 32 percent since 1990, with transportation responsible for 60 percent of the intake, according to an EU fact sheet.

UAE abu dhabi woman mosque7. United Arab Emirates – 7,407 kg. 

Nothing says conspicuous energy consumption like Ski Dubai. The indoor resort featuring an 85-meter-high mountain of man-made snow burns the equivalent of 3,500 barrels of oil a day. The World Resource Institute estimates the UAE uses 481 tonnes of oil equivalent to produce $1 million of GDP, compared to Norway's 172 tonnes. 

8. Canada – 7,333 kg. 

Oh, Canada. Kind, peace-loving Canadians certainly love their cars, along with space heaters, hot tubs and other energy-sucking toys. But while many equate Canada's energy sector with the oil sands, it is, in fact, other forms of energy that account for the lion's share of consumption. EcoSpark published a pie chart showing over half (57.6 percent) of Canada's electricity comes from hydro, with coal the second most popular choice at 18 percent. Nuclear is third (14.6 percent), with oil and gas comprising just 6.3 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively.

9. United States – 6,793 kg. 

As the world's largest economy and richest nation, the U.S. should obviously be included as a top 10 energy glutton. However, one puzzling fact is that despite annual economic growth, per-capita U.S. energy consumption has remained around the same level since the 1970s. According to the EIA, one explanation is that the U.S. has simply shifted the energy required to satisfy greater consumption to manufacturing centers offshore.

10. Finland – 6,183 kg. 

With over a third of its territory above the Arctic Circle, a cold climate, sparse population and a highly industrialized economy, it is no wonder that Finland is among the highest per-capita energy users in Europe. However, according to the International Energy Agency, Finland plans to diversify its economy away from carbon-based fuels, through a shift to renewables, including biomass, and has approved construction of two new nuclear plants.

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These Crazy Salt Flats Are The Lowest Point In North America

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badwater_1Less than a hundred miles from the highest point in America, Badwater Basin in Death Valley holds the record as the lowest point in all of North America and is generally desolate save for the titular pool of salt water which is constantly evaporating. 

Smack in the middle of miles of treacherous salt flats, Badwater Basin is actually a fairly nondescript point a fair distance from the pool that gives it its name. The actual point sits at 282 feet below sea level at the end of a wooden pier that lets visitors come to the location without the danger of falling through the this layer of solid seeming ground into the mud beneath. A sign denotes the actual spot. 

The pool that gives the spot its name is a small body of water that sometimes seems as though it is not there when the level evaporates beneath the salty crust above. The salt content of the water makes it nearly toxic and gives the location its name. The cycle of evaporation in the low, hot site actually sees the fastest rate of evaporation in the nation. 

Low points aren't usually popular tourist sites, but when you get to claim to be the lowest point in in the great US of A, it doesn't matter if you are depressed or just a geography nut, its a site to see.

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badwater_3

SEE ALSO: The Most Breathtaking Natural Wonder In Every State

Don't miss: 12 Pictures That Will Make You Want To See Bolivia's Breathtaking Salt Flats

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5 Disturbing Ways Climate Change Can Kill You

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Muslim students wear pollution masks Indonesia

A warmer world will change how we eat, how we travel, and where we live. What far fewer of us have considered is how dramatically climate change will alter the way we die.

Even after we adjust our lifestyles to accommodate a less hospitable planet, harsher conditions mean that far more of us can expect to develop mental illnesses, suffer from severe allergies, and contract infectious diseases. Many of us — our children or grandchildren — won't survive.

The BMJ urged the World Health Organization this week to declare climate change a public health emergency. "Deaths from Ebola infection, tragic and frightening though they are, will pale into insignificance when compared with the mayhem we we can expect for our children and grandchildren if the world does nothing to check its carbon emissions,"wrote BMJ editor Fiona Godlee in the editorial.

Earlier this week, the BMJ published a paper intended to educate doctors on the basic science of climate change, in an effort to prepare them to treat the worsening conflagration of conditions and diseases that will become far more common in a warmer world. The new dilemmas that don't kill us will still, in many cases, make daily life more uncomfortable, whether we are contending with a longerallergy season, foods that are suddenlyout of reach, or a host of environmental catastrophes.

But some of the most memorable effects of climate change will be the most personal, those that change not only how we live but how we die. These are some of the most surprising health challenges we'll face.

1. Anxiety and PTSD

In the days and weeks after a wildfire consumes your home or a flood destroys your neighborhood, it's common to experience temporary periods of anxiety, depression, and stress. Depending on the nature and severity of the disaster, however, those feelings can linger for years. In the past five decades, human-induced climate change has fueled increases in the number of heavy rains, prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, and in some regions, severe flooding and droughts. In the US, those changes have been felt as heat waves, hurricanes, and heavy winter storms.

AP560245317289

In 2006, a team of psychologists visited thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina — six months after the original event. They diagnosed nearly half of the residents they visited with a serious anxiety disorder. One in six, the doctors said, had post-traumatic stress disorder, and many suffered from both illnesses. Over time, these disorders can lead to suicidal thoughts and, in some cases, suicidal behaviors.

In the years after Hurricane Katrina, scientists assumed people would gradually recover and their symptoms would disappear (as is usually the case for natural disasters). But something strange happened. As time passed, more and more people showed signs of mental illness. More troubling still, more began to contemplate or attempt suicide.

In 2008, mental health workers returned to New Orleans. To their surprise, the number of people regularly contemplating suicide had risen significantly, as had the number of people with diagnosable serious mental illness. Even in 2009, the number of suicides in New Orleans Parish remained double its pre-Katrina levels.

Because cases of mental illness and suicidal behavior increased in general in the years after the recession, which happened to coincide with the occurrence of Hurricane Katrina, it's impossible to pinpoint Katrina as the sole driving force behind the huge uptick in mental illness here.

However, the pattern of increases in depression and anxiety after any severe natural disaster is well documented: The mental health infrastructure in Haiti nearly collapsed in the wake of the 2012 earthquake there; Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded to hit land, led to a spike in incidences of post-traumatic stress disorder among victims in the Philippines; and the 2011 East African drought in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia caused existing psychosocial support networks in the region to crumble.

2. Heat Stroke — but not for the reason you'd think

Having a psychiatric illness like depression can more than triple your risk of dying during a heat wave.

First, depression can make it harder to take the necessary steps to protect oneself from changes in the environment. People with depression already experience difficulties with self-care, such as staying hydrated, maintaining personal hygiene, and taking their medications consistently. High temperatures can make these activities especially taxing.

AP418888794114

Worse still, people who take medications to treat mental illness are especially susceptible to heat stroke, a serious condition that results when the body overheats, because many mental health medications interfere with our body’s natural ability to regulate its temperature. Antipsychotics like Abilify and Risperdone, for example, block brain cells from communicating with the body's thermostat, the hypothalamus. Anticholinergics, such as Cogentin and Enablex, inhibit sweating and make it easier to overheat.

3. Infectious Diseases

Increased heat will expand the range of pests carrying deadly disease. In the past few years, mosquitoes carrying malaria have already begun creeping up mountains to recently-warmed, higher-altitude elevations, where they spread malaria to areas never previously exposed to the disease.

Since they've never been exposed before, people living in these areas will have zero protective immunity from the disease. As a result, malaria will be deadlier than ever.

In 2013, malaria infected more than 200 million people, killing about 630,000 (mostly in sub-Saharan Africa). Those numbers will likely rise quickly as areas close to the equator bear the brunt of the rise in heat.

Anopheles_albimanus_mosquito

Mosquitoes, which thrive in warmer climates, also carry diseases like dengue and yellow fever, which collectively kill more than 50,000 people each year. As temperatures rise, more and more areas around the globe will become increasingly hospitable to the pests.

Bacteria, too, will take advantage of their newly-welcoming habitats.

Vibrio cholerae, the comma-shaped bacteria responsible for cholera, prefers to nest in warm, coastal seawaters. As recently as last year, however, the bacteria were discovered floating in usually cooler Baltic Sea that separates Central and Northern Europe. Cholera now kills between 100,000 and 130,000 people worldwide each year, almost entirely in areas where there is a lack of clean water. Warming waters means that the bacteria can live longer and spread to more locations. At one site in Bangladesh, cholera risk rose two to four fold in the six weeks after a 9-degree Fahrenheit spike in water temperature⁠.

4. Starvation

WFP global hunger climate change

Climate change is projected to drive down global food production by 2% every ten years, even as the demand for food increases by 14%. Across Africa and South Asia — regions where much of the world's food is produced — yields of wheat, corn, and millet will fall nearly 10% by mid-century. As a result of this rocky imbalance, the price of rice and corn will skyrocket, likely doubling by 2050.

With the exception of a few, the majority of the world's crops will be ravaged by the new pests and diseases that take advantage of warmer temperatures.

Water scarcity is another emerging threat. Severe droughts have already begun plaguing the west coast of the US. In Tulare County, just north of Sacramento, Calif., the board of supervisors has declared a state of emergency. People can't flush toilets, wash clothes, fill cups, or bathe without buckets of bottled water that are driven in from elsewhere.

In other parts of the world, where crops that feed the rest of the globe depend on a steady stream of slowly-melting glacier water, water scarcity is an even more serious problem. The Himalayan glacier, for example, presently supplies 25% of the world's cereal crop. If it melts too quickly, however — as some estimates suggest it has already begun doing — it will become nearly impossible to meet the needs of a growing, hungrier planet.

5. Respiratory Disorders

Ever wonder why smog always seems so much worse on a hot, sunny day? Your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. The chemical reactions that form ozone— one of smog’s main components — happen faster at higher temperatures.

The warmer it is outside, the more ozone gums up the air. Ozone doesn’t just dirty the horizon, though. The toxin also exacerbates a host of respiratory conditions (from asthma to bronchitis and emphysema) by irritating the delicate tissue lining the lungs.

New Delhi smog

In recent years in some parts of the US, ground-level ozone has reached dangerous levels. Overall, though, the US is a partial success story for the pollutant: Ozone levels started to decline for the first time here in the 1980s.

Ozone levels are still on the rise in other parts of the world, however, leading to more complications and even deaths from respiratory conditions that could have previously been treated. In India, levels of the pollutant were so high in 2014 that scientists estimated it killed enough crops to feed close to 100 million people in poverty.

Already, 43 million Americans live in counties that exceed the EPA's health standards for a certain type of pollution produced by burning fossil fuels called particulate matter.

Particulate matter consists of tiny particles so small that several thousand could fit on the period at the end of this sentence. The particles travel deep into the lungs, where they make breathing difficult, and irritate the eyes, nose, and throat. Particulates also damage blood vessels, worsening heart disease. Even short-term exposure to particulate matter has been linked with heart attack, decreased lung function, and premature death.

SEE ALSO: 22 Devastating Effects Of Climate Change

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There’s A 'Public Health Emergency’ That Is Way More Threatening Than Ebola, And No One's Addressing It

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Muslim students wear pollution masks Indonesia

By midcentury, an emerging public health problem will alter the way we eat, the way we travel, and the places we live. It will also make us more susceptible to mental illnesses like anxiety and depression while exacerbating allergies and increasing the reaches of the world’s most infectious diseases.

It’s climate change, and it’s happening so fast it’s prompted the BMJ to write a letter to the World Health Organization urging them to declare the phenomenon a public health emergency.

"Deaths from Ebola infection, tragic and frightening though they are, will pale into insignificance when compared with the mayhem we we can expect for our children and grandchildren if the world does nothing to check its carbon emissions,"wrote BMJ editor Fiona Godlee in the editorial.

Here's a look at some of the conditions that will plague the next generation in a warmer world.

1. Anxiety and PTSD

AP560245317289

In 2006, a team of psychologists visited thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina — six months after the original event. They diagnosed nearly half of the residents they visited with a serious anxiety disorder. One in six, the doctors said, had PTSD, and many suffered from both illnesses. Over time, these disorders can lead to suicidal thoughts and, in some cases, suicidal behaviors.

In 2008, mental health workers returned to New Orleans. To their surprise, the number of people regularly contemplating suicide hadn't fallen (as is usually the case after a natural disaster). On the contrary, the number of suicidal residents had risen significantly, along with the number of people with serious mental illness. Even in 2009, the number of suicides in New Orleans Parish remained double its pre-Katrina levels.

Because cases of mental illness and suicidal behavior increased in general in the years after the recession, which happened to coincide with the occurrence of Hurricane Katrina, it's impossible to pinpoint Katrina as the sole driving force behind the huge uptick in mental illness here.

However, the pattern of increases in depression and anxiety after any severe natural disaster is well documented: The mental health infrastructure in Haiti nearly collapsed in the wake of the 2012 earthquake there; Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded to hit land, led to a spike in incidences of post-traumatic stress disorder among victims in the Philippines; and the 2011 East African drought in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia caused existing psychosocial support networks in the region to crumble.

2. Heat Stroke — but not for the reason you'd think

AP418888794114

Having a psychiatric illness like depression can more than triple your risk of dying during a heat wave.

First, depression can make it harder to take the necessary steps to protect oneself from changes in the environment. People with depression already experience difficulties with self-care, such as staying hydrated, maintaining personal hygiene, and taking their medications consistently. High temperatures can make these activities especially taxing.

Worse still, people who take medications to treat mental illness are especially susceptible to heat stroke, a serious condition that results when the body overheats, because many mental health medications interfere with our body’s natural ability to regulate its temperature. Antipsychotics like Abilify and Risperdone, for example, block brain cells from communicating with the body's thermostat, the hypothalamus. Anticholinergics, such as Cogentin and Enablex, inhibit sweating and make it easier to overheat.

3. Respiratory Disorders

New Delhi smog

Ever wonder why smog always seems so much worse on a hot, sunny day? Your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. The chemical reactions that form ozone— one of smog’s main components — happen faster at higher temperatures.

The warmer it is outside, the more ozone gums up the air. Ozone doesn’t just dirty the horizon, though. The toxin also exacerbates a host of respiratory conditions (from asthma to bronchitis and emphysema) by irritating the delicate tissue lining the lungs.

In recent years in some parts of the US, ground-level ozone has reached dangerous levels. Overall, though, the US is a partial success story for the pollutant: Ozone levels started to decline for the first time here in the 1980s.

Ozone levels are still on the rise in other parts of the world, however, leading to more complications and even deaths from respiratory conditions that could have previously been treated. In India, levels of the pollutant were so high in 2014 that scientists estimated it killed enough crops to feed close to 100 million people in poverty.

4. Infectious Diseases

Anopheles_albimanus_mosquito

Increased heat will expand the range of pests carrying deadly disease. In the past few years, mosquitoes carrying malaria (which killed 630,000 people last year) have already begun creeping up mountains to recently-warmed, higher-altitude elevations, where they spread malaria to areas never previously exposed to the disease.

Since they've never been exposed before, people living in these areas will have zero protective immunity from the disease. The result? Malaria will be deadlier than ever.

Mosquitoes, which thrive in warmer climates, also carry diseases like dengue and yellow fever, which collectively kill more than 50,000 people each year. As temperatures rise, more and more areas around the globe will become increasingly hospitable to the pests.

Bacteria, too, will take advantage of their newly-welcoming habitats.

Vibrio cholerae, the comma-shaped bacteria responsible for cholera, prefers to nest in warm, coastal seawaters. As recently as last year, however, the bacteria were discovered floating in usually cooler Baltic Sea that separates Central and Northern Europe. Cholera now kills between 100,000 and 130,000 people worldwide each year, almost entirely in areas where there is a lack of clean water. Warming waters means that the bacteria can live longer and spread to more locations. At one site in Bangladesh, cholera risk rose two to four fold in the six weeks after a 9-degree Fahrenheit spike in water temperature⁠.

5. Starvation

WFP global hunger climate change

Climate change is projected to drive down global food production by 2% every ten years, even as the demand for food increases by 14%. Across Africa and South Asia — regions where much of the world's food is produced — yields of wheat, corn, and millet will fall nearly 10% by mid-century. As a result of this rocky imbalance, the price of rice and corn will skyrocket, likely doubling by 2050.

With the exception of a few, the majority of the world's crops will be ravaged by the new pests and diseases that take advantage of warmer temperatures.

6. Dehydration

Water scarcity is another emerging threat. Severe droughts have already begun plaguing the west coast of the US. In Tulare County, south of Sacramento, Calif., the board of supervisors has declared a state of emergency. People can't flush toilets, wash clothes, fill cups, or bathe without buckets of bottled water that are driven in from elsewhere.

In other parts of the world, where crops that feed the rest of the globe depend on a steady stream of slowly-melting glacier water, water scarcity is an even more serious problem. The Himalayan glacier, for example, presently supplies 25% of the world's cereal crop. If it melts too quickly, however — as some estimates suggest it has already begun doing — it will become nearly impossible to meet the needs of a growing, hungrier planet.

SEE ALSO: 22 Devastating Effects Of Climate Change

Join the conversation about this story »

Elon Musk Just Made It Way Cheaper To Live Off Solar Power

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solarcity

Outfitting your home with cheap solar power just got a lot easier.

Elon Musk-chaired Solar City, the biggest name in residential solar power, is now offering loans to allow their customers to own their solar panels for cheaper than their current lease offerings.

The loan option, called MyPower, is structured like an energy payment, in that the customer pays off the loan by paying their energy bill — and it's a win-win, because these payments can end up being cheaper than your traditional power bill. And after 30 years, the power is free.

Here's how it works, according to SolarCity founder and CEO Lyndon Rive: customers take out a 30-year loan on a solar power system at 4.5% interest. SolarCity installs and maintains the system at no cost to the customer, and the customer pays for the power — and in the process, pays off the loan.

Typically loans available for homeowners to fit themselves with solar utilities are usually offered by third-party banks and municipalities in partnership with solar companies, and do not take into account how much power is being produced by the system. That means if the system underperforms, the customer loses money.

Instead, with SolarCity's direct financing, "you only pay based on the production of the system," which SolarCity will monitor and guarantee against drops in performance, Rive told Business Insider.

"We're able to do this because we have a very good understanding of how well your system is going to perform," Rive said.

Energy from the power company typically costs, on average, 13 cents per kilowatt-hour (with wide regional variation), ranging as low as 9 cents and as high as 20 cents. The price also increases by 4% to 6% every year. Under the MyPower program, customers will pay 16 cents for every kilowatt-hour they use in the first year, after which most people get a 30% federal tax credit that drives the cost down to 12 cents per kilowatt-hour. Year after year, the price will increase by 2.9% — less than the usual increase from the typical power company.

In the end this loan program ends up cheaper than their leasing agreement offer, the "Power Purchase Agreement," in which customers pay 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, increasing at 2.9% per year. They are going to continue offering the leasing option for customers, though in most cases it will be more expensive to lease than to own. "The only reason you'd go with a lease is if you pay low or no federal taxes," in which case the 2nd year 30% tax credit would not apply, he added.

And depending on where you live, it's potentially much cheaper than traditional power-company power. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the typical US resident used 10,837 kilowatt-hours of power in 2012. For a household paying the average rate of 13 cents per kilowatt-hour, that power would cost about $1400. In the first year, that household would pay about $330 more for their power, but in the second year they would see a savings of about $100. But a household paying 20 cents per kilowatt-hour would see a more dramatic savings of about $430 in the first year, and $870 in the second year. 

In addition to saving money, solar power substantially reduces pollution compared to fossil fuels, and allows households to move towards energy independence.

One possible disadvantage to the MyPower program is that solar power, like virtually all technology, is bound to improve dramatically over the next 30 years, both dropping in cost and increasing in efficiency. In fact, futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that we will have unlimited, free solar energy in just 20 years. If that happens, SolarCity owners could find themselves paying for obsolete equipment.

However, as Jonathan Bass, SolarCity's vice president of communications, wrote in an email: "The value of the solar system is the electricity it produces. Electricity is a commodity, and we expect it to become more valuable, not less, over the next 30 years as retail rates rise, so we don’t expect customers to want to incur the cost of installing a new system during the term."

The MyPower program will help SolarCity expand their residential solar power products into new markets — and could dramatically decrease the cost of power for many people.

SEE ALSO: Kurzweil: Solar Energy Will Be Unlimited And Free In 20 Years

READ MORE: Elon Musk: SpaceX Wants To Build A City On Mars

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Thousands Of Mysterious Green Balls Washed Up On An Australian Beach

Ancient Glacial Melting Sent Building-Sized Icebergs To Florida

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Florida iceberg current model

Imagine icebergs as tall as the Eiffel Tower silently drifting by Florida's balmy beaches.

Add a few braying walruses, and mammoths grazing nearby on a broad coastal plain, and there's Ice Age Florida for you. And believe it or not, the icebergs are among the most indisputable parts of this picture.

During the last Ice Age, massive chunks of ice plowed deep grooves and furrows into the Atlantic seafloor from South Carolina to southern Florida. Named keel scours, after the V-shaped structures on boats, the features record the passage of massive glacial floods unleashed from Canada, according to a study published today (Oct. 12) in the journal Nature Geoscience. The far-traveled floodwaters suggest future ice sheet melting may be more complex than previously thought, the researchers said.

"We can't simply make the assumption that all of the cold, fresh water from ice sheet melting stays in the North Atlantic. Our results show that smaller, coastal currents can be very effective at redistributing this fresh water and impacting a much larger area," said lead study author Jenna Hill, a geologist at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina.

The icebergs likely came from one of the huge glacial lakes, such as Lake Agassiz, that flooded northern North America during the ice ages. Now vanished, Lake Agassiz was once as big as the Caspian Sea. Several large lakes existat any one time during the period when ice sheets were at their peak, between 22,000 and 12,000 years ago. Ice dams walled off these glacial lakes from the ocean. When the dams collapsed, catastrophic floods of frigid freshwater spilled into the North Atlantic via the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the Hudson Bay, carrying an enormous armada of icebergs.

When the huge floodwater pulse reached the North Atlantic, the cold, fresh water sat on top of hotter, salty water, forcing the latter to sink, scientists think. This shut down the ocean's natural currents, which keep the northern hemisphere warm. The rapid shift triggered a long cold snap.

Climate and currents

But the discovery of icebergs in Florida suggests not all of the ice age floodwaters went east. Some of the icy overflow headed south, beating back the warm Gulf Stream and insulating the icebergs on their journey southward.

"Previous research would have suggested the meltwater would have gone much further north, so people weren't expecting the subtropics to become fresher," said study co-author Alan Condron, an oceanographer at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "This actually has enormous implications for that model and for what triggers climate change."

Condron's detailed models of ocean currents off the shores of North America suggest the glacial floods could have carried icebergs from Canada south to Florida in as little as four months. This southward flow may have temporarily shut down the Gulf Stream, the current that warms the East Coast and Europe.

The iceberg scours match up with the modeling: The southwest-trending furrows indicates the icebergs drifted opposite the direction of the Gulf Stream current. The size and shape of the features also rule out other causes, such as river channels or trawling by fishing boats.

South Carolina Iceberg scours

Hill discovered the scours off the coast of South Carolina, about 660 miles (1,060 kilometers) south of North America's giant Ice Age glaciers. The marks were found as far south as the tip of Florida, more than 3,100 miles (5,000 km) away from Hudson Bay. The furrows are beneath 500 to 660 feet (152 meters to 201 m) of water, because sea level is much higher today than it was during the glacial period.

The scour marks are each as long as a football field and as wide as a city bus is long, measuring about 360 feet (109 m) long and 30 feet (9 m) wide. They are up to 30 feet (9 m) deep. Some sets of marks can be traced for more than 18 miles (30 km). The marks' huge size implies that the icebergs were 100 feet (30 m) tall by the time they sailed past Florida, the researchers said.

As the icebergs neared the end of their journey, some hit shallow ground and got stuck, leaving behind a series of circular pits. The hunks of ice would melt, float forward, get stuck again and then repeat the cycle, like a giant, gleaming-white pogo stick.

Hill said the icebergs may also have had a more local effect on Earth's landscape. Many of the places where she found seafloor iceberg scours are now rich habitats for deepwater corals, fish and other marine organisms. "I have wondered if these corals were living there when the icebergs came through or if the iceberg scour grooves have helped shape the habitat in some way," she told Live Science.

WATCH: Terrifying Iceberg Collapse Caught On Camera

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New Study Says Sea-Level Rise Will Be Noticeable In 15 Years

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Miami Beach

Human activity is driving sea levels higher. Australia's seas are likely to rise by around 70 centimetres by 2100 if nothing is done to combat climate change. But 2100 can seem a long way off.

At the moment, regional sea-level rise driven by warming oceans and melting ice is hidden by natural variability such as the El Niño, which causes year-to-year changes in sea level of several centimetres.

So at any particular place, the sea level might go up in one year, and down in the next. On Australia's northwest coast, for example, the sea level was three centimetres below normal during 1998, but four centimetres above normal the following year.

At the same time, human-caused climate change is driving sea level relentlessly upwards in most regions, eventually pushing it far outside the bounds of historical variation. But when will the difference become clear?

Our new analysis of sea-level projections published in Nature Climate Change today indicates that regional sea-level rise will be generally noticeable before 2030. By then the average sea-level rise globally will be about 13 centimetres higher than the average sea level calculated between 1986 and 2005.

projected sea level chart

Sea-level rise: depends on your perspective

First, it's important to note that global sea-level rise is already attributed to anthropogenic climate change.

Like temperature changes, the sea-level changes are not uniform across the world. One region may experience a very different sea-level change from other regions.

When averaged around the globe, sea level has been rising at a rate of about 1.7 millimetres per year between 1901 and 2010, and about 3.2 millimetres per year between 1993 and 2014.

This is a clear signal of climate change, driven by expansion of ocean waters as they warm and from the increase in the mass of the ocean as water is added from glaciers and ice sheets. Over recent decades, these changes are largely a result of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.

As well as this gradual and relatively steady rise in global sea levels, in any part of the ocean there are also natural variations in sea level. This is associated with climate phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, storm surges and tides that can dominate any sea level variations over short periods.

Sea-level rise is also not uniform across the world's oceans. It can therefore be difficult to separate natural variability from the signal of climate change at a regional scale. But it is this combination of the long-term rise and the natural variability that impacts coastal regions.

A simple home experiment to demonstrate the difference between two signals is to gently slosh the water in a bath tub backwards and forwards with your hand (equivalent to the natural variability in sea level) and at the same time keep the tap running (equivalent to the climate change signal). At any instant in time, the change in height of water will mostly depend on the sloshing, but over time the additional water from the tap will cause the bath tub to overflow.

Emerging evidence

Our Nature Climate Change paper published today provides clear evidence that, at a regional scale, sea-level rise due to anthropogenic climate change will likely exceed natural variability within the next two decades for many areas of the globe.

To estimate this time of emergence, we examined regional sea level in 17 state-of-the-art climate models and recently published regional sea-level projections, and compared them to the average sea level between 1986 and 2005.

We considered two future climate scenarios — one in which greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at a rapid rate (business as usual, called RCP8.5) and the other in which greenhouse gas emissions are stabilised by 2100 (a moderate mitigation scenario, called RCP4.5).

We focused on annual mean sea level. We didn't consider tides and extreme sea level events over short periods (such as storm surges).

From the models we calculated the probability that climate-driven sea level will emerge from natural variability by a certain time. We found that the sea-level change signal is likely to emerge over 80% of the ocean before 2030 for the business-as-usual scenario.

regional sea level change emergence

The date is pushed back by less than a decade to before 2040 for the moderate mitigation scenario.

The date varies between Australia's east and west coasts. Under the business as usual scenario, sea-level rise is likely to emerge on the east coast before 2030, and the west coast before 2040. The later time of emergence on the north and west coast is due to larger natural variability, associated with El Niño and La Niña and Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

In fact, since 1993 when we have had satellite observations of sea level over the global ocean, sea-level rise on the north and west coasts of Australia has been significantly larger than the global average rise, mainly because of this natural variability.

Sea-level rise clear before warming

With the same methodology and models, we also calculated the emergence for surface air temperature, and found that the surface warming signal is likely to emerge over 80% of the Earth's total area by 2070. Thus, sea-level rise will be clear generally before surface air warming.

Similar studies have been done on temperature by others, including research from the University of Hawaii, though their estimates are slightly different due to different calculation and reporting methods, and different climate models.

It's not far away – the time to prepare is now

The projected sea-level changes discussed here add to those already observed during the 20th century.

In the business as usual scenario, the sea-level rise signal on the order of 14 (with a possible range of 9 to 18) centimetres is likely to emerge for the east coast of Australia by 2030, while it's about 18 (possible range of 12 to 26) centimetres for the west coast of Australia by 2040.

The results imply the importance of local risk assessment and adaptation planning for sea-level change. This should be undertaken in anticipation of a sea level that within the next two or three decades is likely to be significantly different to the past two or three decades.

Coastal communities and industries require information on regional sea-level change to develop strategies for reducing the risk to population, infrastructure and the environment.

This requires modelling projections of sea-level rise, estimating the costs and benefits of adaptation options, and understanding the impacts on coastal ecosystems.

Inundation maps that can be used to identify areas that are most vulnerable to rising sea levels are particularly valuable.

Adaptation measures may include land-use planning such as preventing building in low lying areas, increasing or maintaining a vegetated coastal margin that serves as a buffer zone against extreme sea levels, or using protective sea walls in the long run if certain sea level rise thresholds are exceeded.

The Conversation

John Church receives government funding for climate change and sea level research.

Xuebin Zhang received funding from Pacific Climate Change Science Program (PCCSP) and follow-up Pacific-Australia Climate Change Science and Adaptation Planning program (PACCSAP) both of which were funded by the Australian Government's International Climate Change Adaptation Initiative, and also from Australian Climate Change Science Programme (ACCSP).

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

SEE ALSO: 25 Devastating Effects Of Climate Change

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