It carries nearly 8.5 million people across America's densest city each day. If its tracks were laid out in a single line, it would stretch all the way from Manhattan to Chicago. Its 500 stations and 6,000 trains are together worth more than $32 billion.

It's the New York City subway, North America's biggest public transit network. And it is at risk of total failure.

A massive report issued back in 2011 accurately predicted which of the city's subway stations would fail in the event of a hurricane like Sandy. In the future, these kinds of intense storms are expected to make landfall every one to four years, rather than every 100 years.

But storms aren't the only issue highlighted in the report — based on climate models it shows the potential damage of rising seas, warmer summers, and colder winters.

And it looks more and more like a doomsday scenario.

Flooding

Global warming is making dangerous storms like Hurricane Sandy, which threaten to overwhelm the subway system with flooding, more intense and more frequent.

Many existing subway tunnels in lower Manhattan, the report says, can flood completely in just 40 minutes if waters rise to the levels seen during Sandy. Pumping that water out takes at least a week per station, according to the report, and it's only the first step to recovering our transit system.

The MTA was able to rescue the subway from the brunt of Sandy's damage. In just a few weeks of intense pumping, drying, and reconstruction, several flooded stations were up and running again. Years later, only a few stations carry the scars of the storm's devastation. Aside from lingering repairs, we're pretty much back to business-as-usual.

But not quite.

Flood waters from the next storm will certainly overwhelm the subway stations flooded during Sandy (all five tunnels between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn and the Steinway Tube between Midtown and Queens flooded), but 14 more stations near the Harlem and East Rivers are also at risk.

Aside from the work in actually draining the tunnels, though, there's another problem: All that salty water doesn't play well with 20th-century steel and cast iron.

Storms And Salt

Storms like Sandy stir up the salty water in oceans and estuaries and carry it to shore. There, the sea salt mixes with the salt already on the ground — about a million tons are used each year to de-ice snowy New York streets — and begins eating away at the metal underground. Bigger winter storms and plunging temperatures from a disturbed polar vortex could make this problem worse. 

"Our subway system and salt water do not mix," Joseph Lhota, the MTA chairman during Sandy, told The Wall Street Journal.

Salt is a relentless foe — it degrades motors and metal fasteners, eats away at the relays that run the subway's signal system, and conducts electricity, potentially barring train conductors from communicating — something they need to do to prevent trains from colliding.

Worse still, salt's chemical composition makes it react with iron, steel, and concrete — all components of the subway system. When it does that, it also changes the materials' chemical makeup, reducing solid black iron into crumbly brown rust, for example.

Many of these damaged parts will need to be replaced. But because the city's first subway lines opened back in 1904, many of those parts no longer exist. As a result, construction crews will have to redesign entire portions of the subway system, a task that will most likely be as costly as it is daunting.

Extreme Heat

As temperatures rise, summers will heat up. July in Brooklyn will feel like August in Miami. All that heat won't just hurt people — it could cripple the metal and iron equipment that keeps the trains running.

Summers already turn New York's subway platforms into sweltering, foul-smelling caverns of misery. As these months heat up as a result of climate change, though, this temporary discomfort could become dangerous.

Hotter subway platforms could harm older people who are already at risk for heat stroke, which often strikes suddenly and can be deadly. Older people can't control their body temperature as well as they once could — anyone over age 65 should limit their exposure to extreme heat, according to the CDC. Only one subway platform in the entire New York City network is air-conditioned: the 4, 5, 6 platform at Grand Central Station. And it barely functions.

Trains suffer from the heat, too. A recent panel convened by Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York found that higher temperatures could put extra stress on rail tracks, increasing the chances they could buckle. Buckling causes bends in the tracks, which can slow trains.

Rescuing New York's Transit System

Fixing the massive problems that climate change presents to the subway system will be a challenge.

But we have some great models to learn from.

In the Netherlands, engineers have designed a flood-protection system that combines a series of giant flood gates and several low-lying drainage canals to hold back the sea from the city's densest communities, while letting some of the rising water spill over into areas designated for that purpose.

The Japanese have a massive, $3 billion water discharge system that diverts floodwaters from Tokyo to a special facility, ensuring that heavy rains and high storm waters don't destroy the city's public transit network.

And in New York, a group of engineers has designed a plan to surround all of lower Manhattan with 10 miles of artificial embankments, gardens, and sloping green hills to protect the island from surging seas. The strategy would do little for the tunnels linking Manhattan to Brooklyn and the Bronx, however. Other potential rescue plans for the city include combinations of flood barriers and sea walls and attempts to use waterways for transit.

As far as heat goes, Cuomo's transit experts say lighter trains could help cool the system, because they produce less heat. Other options include adding screen doors to platforms to lock in air-conditioned air, and improving ventilation throughout the tunnels.

NOW WATCH — Here's Where New York City's Sewage Really Goes

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A new superthin material can cool buildings without requiring electricity, by beaming heat directly into outer space, researchers say.

In addition to cooling areas that don't have access to electrical power, the material could help reduce demand for electricity, since air conditioning accounts for nearly 15 percent of the electricity consumed by buildings in the United States.

The heart of the new cooler is a multilayered material measuring just 1.8 microns thick, which is thinner than the thinnest sheet of aluminum foil. In comparison, the average human hair is about 100 microns wide. [Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas]

This material is made of seven layers of silicon dioxide and hafnium dioxide on top of a thin layer of silver. The way each layer varies in thickness makes the material bend visible and invisible forms of light in ways that grant it cooling properties.

Invisible light in the form of infrared radiation is one key way all objects shed heat. "If you use an infrared camera, you can see we all glow in infrared light," said study co-author Shanhui Fan, an electrical engineer at Stanford University in California.

One way this material helps keep things cool is by serving as a highly effective mirror. By reflecting 97 percent of sunlight away, it helps keep anything it covers from heating up.

In addition, when this material does absorb heat, its composition and structure ensure that it only emits very specific wavelengths of infrared radiation, ones that air does not absorb, the researchers said. Instead, this infrared radiation is free to leave the atmosphere and head out into space.

"The coldness of the universe is a vast resource that we can benefit from," Fan told Live Science.

The scientists tested a prototype of their cooler on a clear winter day in Stanford, California, and found it could cool to nearly 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) cooler than the surrounding air, even in the sunlight.

"This is very novel and an extraordinarily simple idea," Eli Yablonovitch, a photonics crystal expert at the University of California, Berkeley, who did not take part in this research, said in a statement.

The researchers suggested that their material's cost and performance compare favorably to those of other rooftop air-conditioning systems, such as those driven by electricity derived from solar cells. The new device could also work alongside these other technologies, the researchers said.

However, the scientists cautioned that their prototype measures only about 8 inches (20 centimeters) across, or about the size of a personal pizza. "We are now scaling production up to make larger samples," Fan said. "To cool buildings, you really need to cover large areas."

The scientists detailed their findings today (Nov. 26) in the journal Nature.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Measuring the thickness of Antarctic sea ice, an important gauge of environmental conditions in this remote polar region in a time of global climate change, has proven to be a tricky task. But an underwater robot is providing a nice solution.

Satellite measurements can be skewed by surface snow, and some ice floes are simply too difficult to reach by ship, even icebreakers, to make direct measurements by drilling into them.

Scientists on Monday unveiled the first detailed, high-resolution 3-D maps of Antarctic sea ice, based on measurements of the underside of ice floes by a remote-controlled submarine's upward-looking sonar.

The measurements, covering an area of about 5.4 million square feet (500,000 square meters), were made in 2010 and 2012 using a so-called Autonomous Underwater Vehicle dubbed SeaBED launched off a British and an Australian ship at three sites around the Antarctic Peninsula.

The scientists found sea ice thickness in some places up to about 55 feet (17 meters), with average thickness much less. The findings indicate the ice cover may be thicker in some areas than previously thought.

"Sea ice thickness and its variability in the Antarctic remains one of the great unknowns in the climate system," said sea ice expert Ted Maksym of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Unlike in the Arctic region, where large declines in thickness have been measured in recent decades, scientists do not really have a good handle on the average Antarctic sea ice thickness or on any possible trends there, Maksym said.

"By demonstrating that detailed mapping of the thickness of the ice over large areas is possible deep in the ice pack, this represents and important step toward greater understanding of the processes that control the ice volume, particularly in areas that have been difficult to access," Maksym added.

The twin-hull underwater robot, about 6 feet (2 meters) long, operated at a depth of 65 to 100 feet (20 to 30 meters).

"While we have not measured all Antarctic sea ice thickness and cannot state if Antarctic sea ice is getting thicker, this study is a huge step toward the sort of expanded and more routine measurements we will need to do to truly answer these questions," said polar oceanographer Guy Williams of the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies in Australia.

The research was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Some volcanic eruptions are sparked by a simple trick home cooks know: adding a little warm broth can revive yesterday's leftovers.

At California's Lassen volcano, small blobs of fresh molten rock reheated part of the volcano's old, cooling magma, triggering several recent eruptions, a new study reports. The magma beneath the volcano resembled congealed leftovers — a warm slush of crystals surrounded by small pockets of molten rock too thick and sticky to erupt.

Moreover, the new molten rock can stir up eruptions in a short time frame — only a few hundred years, researchers report today (Dec. 3) in the journal PLOS ONE.

"I'm trying to dispel this idea that volcanoes are mountains sitting on top of a giant cauldron of swirling magma," said lead study author Erik Klemetti, a volcanologist at Denison University in Ohio. Instead, "at Lassen, we've probably got a big body of mush that's left to cool and solidify, and you have to defrost it to start it erupting again," Klemetti said.

Brewing eruptions

Lassen is the southernmost active volcano in the Cascade Range. Lassen's most recent eruption began in 1914. Though tiny by volcanic standards, it started with spectacular steam blasts, which were followed in 1915 with a stratospheric ash explosion and a devastating avalanche called a pyroclastic flow. The aftermath was preserved as Lassen Volcanic National Park. An larger, earlier eruption built lava domes called the Chaos Crags 1,100 years ago. The eruption that created Lassen Peak took place 27,000 years ago. [Amazing Images: Volcanoes from Space]

Each of these three eruptions left behind lavas with zircons, which are crystals that provide researchers with a record of the conditions in Lassen's magma chamber. As magma cools underground, zircons in the molten rock slowly grow layers that can be read like tree rings, providing information on the magma's temperature, timing and changing chemical makeup. The crystals also indicate when new batches of magma intruded into the mush beneath Lassen.

The recent eruptions tapped into a warm pocket of crystals and magma pooled a few miles (about 5 kilometers) beneathLassen volcano, according to the analysis by Klemetti and co-author Michael Clynne of the U.S. Geological Survey. Though the three eruptions span 27,000 years in time on the surface, the zircons are much older, and the different lavas all had crystals that were similar in composition and age. "I think it's interesting. It shows [the eruptions all contained] the same shared body of crystals," Klemetti said. [The World's Five Most Active Volcanoes]

Lassen volcano was more dynamic 300,000 years ago, spreading ash across several states during powerful outbursts, but the frequency and size of its eruptions declined starting 190,000 years ago. The majority of the zircons collected during the study crystallized during the volcano's long quiet period, 190,000 to 90,000 years ago, the researchers reported. (The history of volcanic activity at Lassen goes back 800,000 years.) During this quiet period, new magma was injected into the underground volcanic system without causing surface eruptions, the researchers discovered.

Reuse and recycle

A pulse of hotter basalt magma pushing into the mushy crystal mix from below set off the recent eruptions by heating and liquefying a small portion of the older magma. This process was relatively quick — it was likely a few decades to centuries between the new magma arriving and the eventual eruption, the researchers reported. Like grains of sugar in hot liquid, zircon crystals can't survive for long in hot magma, which helps pin down the timing. Finding zircons in the erupted lavas means the crystals had a quick trip to the surface.

"We can say that it was probably decades to centuries of heating before an eruption occurred in order for the zircons to be preserved," Klemetti told Live Science.

Lassen now joins a growing list of active volcanoes that hoard mushy old magma. And some scientists are proposing that molten rock is worth a closer look as a risk factor for impending eruptions. However, both the new study and earlier work have found that new magma can intrude without triggering a volcanic blast.

Nor can researchers yet answer why new magma suddenly rises from deeper levels of the Earth, or how often it appears. "It's still an open question as to why the injections are happening and when they are happening," Klemetti said. "That is something the zircons aren't going to be able to solve."

Follow Becky Oskin @beckyoskin. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Originally published onLive Science.

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Landmark climate change decisions are being drafted in Lima, Peru, this week, and India is at the forefront of this international debate.

Leaders from around the world have gathered in Lima for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where they are expected to draft a binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally.

One of the major players in this agreement will be India, which has yet to set a cap on its still-growing emissions.

Several other nations have already pledged to reduce their emissions, including China, the US, and the European Union, who respectively emit the first-, second-, and third-largest amounts of greenhouse gases in the world.

Now, India, as the fourth-largest emitter, is at the center of debate.

To be fair, India — while one of the world's top five emitters of greenhouse gases — pours out significantly less than China: only 6% of the world's emissions, in comparison to China's whopping 23%. But as a developing nation, India has a unique set of priorities.

Among the most urgent of these is bringing electricity to the estimated 300 million people in the country who currently live without it, a goal that is cheaply met with coal-fired power plants — the kind that emit a ton of greenhouse gasses.

The country is already very dependent on coal energy: Coal accounted for 44% of India's energy consumption in 2012, according to the US Energy Information Administration, while renewable sources, like nuclear and hydroelectric plants, made up just 5%.

This coal use will likely get worse as they expand power coverage in the country. 

In developing countries, the desire to serve their people and improve the economy directly butts heads with the need to curb emissions and combat climate change — even though those developing countries are likely to be the most impacted by climate change.

These developing countries think they are getting a raw deal, since the vast majority of the greenhouse gases causing climate change now were put there by now-developed nations while they were growing.

Now, those nations are stable enough now to afford cutting back on their carbon output, and are asking developing nations to do the same, an act that will hamper their growth. 

India's attitude toward emission reduction clearly shows this conflict.

While national leaders from around the world convened in New York City in September for the 2014 UN Climate Summit, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi was absent, sending instead his minister for environment, forests, and climate change, Prakash Javadekar.

At the summit, Javadekar expressed concern over the dangers of climate change and announced plans to increase its wind and solar power capacity. But in a subsequent interview, reported by The New York Times, Javadekar reiterated that in order for the country to grow, India's emissions would continue to increase for at least another 30 years.

While economic growth is good, continuing to increase its greenhouse gas emissions will only cost India down the road.

Financial experts predict that the cost of climate change's impacts — fires, droughts, floods, severe storms, and famines — will far outstrip the cost of efforts to avoid them.

And in the near-term, India's air quality is a major public health concern, with outdoor air pollution the fifth leading cause of death in the country. Major driving factors of this pollution include automobiles and coal-powered industries.

So, as world leaders convene in Lima to discuss climate mitigation and outline emission reduction plans in preparation for Paris meeting next year, all eyes have turned to India, waiting to see if it will change its stance and what kind of commitment the country will make.

If lowering emissions still seems outside the current realm of possibility, perhaps India will set a concrete time line on its emissions growth — China, for instance, has recently pledged to cap its emissions in 2030.

Or perhaps, as a recent Bloomberg editorial suggested, India could commit to lowering its carbon intensity — the amount of carbon it emits per unit of energy produced. Investment in renewable energy could help with such a goal.

Negotiations on the draft are still in session now, and participating countries aren't required to submit their mitigation plans until March, so it will be some time before we start getting answers. Until then, the world will be watching. 

SEE ALSO: Here's How Much Carbon The US–China Climate Deal Will Actually Save

SEE ALSO: There's A Huge Climate Meeting Happening In Lima — Here's Why You Should Be Paying Attention

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To say that money makes the world go 'round is no exaggeration — not even when it comes to fighting climate change. In fact, it's so important that the United Nations has created a fund just for climate-related cash – and its balance just broke $10 billion.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established the Green Climate Fund in 2010 as a way to help developing countries curb their carbon emissions without breaking the bank. The fund takes donations from developed nations and distributes them to developing ones to offset the costs of switching to renewable energy sources and adapting to the effects of climate change.

The idea is to help correct an inequality that many developing nations feel is unfair. The vast majority of greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere were put there by developed countries, whose economies are now stable enough to start cutting their emissions and switching to renewable energy sources.

These same countries are now asking developing nations to start slashing their carbon output —which is steadily increasing, as these countries continue to industrialize and build their economies — before they've achieved the same prosperity.

On top of that, these developing nations will be more affected by climate change consequences, like storms, droughts, floods, and famines, all of which could cause increased poverty and civil unrest around the world.

It's not fair, and everyone knows it, but action must be taken to cut carbon emissions from every country — or the whole world will suffer. The Green Climate Fund is meant to make this easier for developing countries, and give developed ones the opportunity to take responsibility for their part in causing climate change.

So far, nations including the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany have pledged a total of nearly $10.2 billion to the fund. But its goals are more ambitious yet.

The UNFCCC hopes to bet on getting $100 billion per year by 2020. It's a lofty target, and one that some nations think isn't possible on the honor system alone. Some want to require developed countries to pledge money to the fund in an internationally binding agreement.

The agreement in question has been in negotiations all week at a UNFCCC climate conference in Lima, Peru. The primary goal at this conference is to draft an emissions reduction agreement, in which all participating countries will submit a plan to reduce their carbon emissions starting in 2020.

Some nations also want the agreement to require developed countries to pledge money to the fund. It's unclear whether this request will make it into the draft, which is expected to be completed tonight.

SEE ALSO: Everyone Is Waiting On India To Make A Move On Climate

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At the United Nations Lima climate summit, Australia's foreign minister Julie Bishop has pledged A$200 million over four years to the Green Climate Fund, which seeks to raise US$100 billion (A$120 billion) per year by 2020 to help developing countries deal with climate change.

The announcement is good PR and plays readily into the narrative that the Abbott government will "reboot" and "re-engage" with voters in 2015.

It also directs attention to the cabinet's "star performer" Julie Bishop, and provides an alternative framing to Australia's embarrassing isolation on climate action.

Scratch beneath the surface, however, and an alternative picture emerges. Put simply, the size of Australia's contribution to the fund does not suggest that the government accepts the moral argument of "climate debt", or that it is willing to put its neighbours' well-being ahead of its own short-term political gain.

Climate debt is financially complex but morally simple. It is the idea that rich countries should pay reparations to poor countries for damage suffered as a result of climate change. Justin Lin, former chief economist at the World Bank, summed up the moral argument succinctly back in 2009:

Developing countries, which have historically contributed little to global warming, are now, ironically, faced with 75 to 80 percent of the potential damage from it. They need help to cope with climate change, as they are preoccupied with existing challenges such as reducing poverty and hunger and providing access to energy and water.

The share of responsibility for fossil fuel-derived greenhouse emissions since 1750 can also be broken down by country. James Hansen, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, provided estimates in an open letter to Australia's former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Hansen estimated that the historical carbon debt of the United States was 27.5% of the total.

Australia has much lower cumulative emissions (1.5%) but is the worst greenhouse emitter per capita among major western nations. Using this figure, groups like the Climate Institute have suggested that A$350 million is the minimum fair contribution to climate financing that Australia should make.

Moral argument rejected

Arguments for climate debt have been persistently rejected by developed nations. For example, before the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, US State Department lead negotiator Todd Stern, denied that the United States should be held retroactively responsible for a problem that could not have been predicted, saying:

For most of the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, people were blissfully ignorant of the fact that emissions caused a greenhouse effect. It's a relatively recent phenomenon.

In Australia, the political rhetoric has traditionally been more nuanced. In 2006, for example, the Labor opposition released a report called Our Drowning Neighbours. It called for a "Pacific Climate Change Strategy" to provide assistance for mitigation, adaptation and emergency response efforts; intra-country evacuations and training; establishing an international coalition to accept climate change refugees; assistance to preserve the cultural heritage of those evacuated; and the establishment of a Pacific Climate Change Alliance.

Labor distanced itself from this report while in government. But it was an early contributor to the Green Climate Fund, providing A$500,000 in 2012 to help get the new fund going, as well as almost A$600m to a precursor "fast-start" fund.

While much more was needed, the contrast between Labor's policy and Abbott's derision of the fund as a "Bob Brown bank" is stark.

Foreign aid to suffer

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Government's announcement is that the pledge will be taken directly from the foreign aid budget. In other words, no new money will be allocated to help developing countries that are currently suffering the effects of climate change.

In light of the havoc currently being wrought by Typhoon Hagupit (Ruby) in the Philippines, this is a particularly callous decision. For the third year in a row, the Philippines has been battered by a major storm at the same time as the annual UN climate talks. The death toll from Hagupit has already reached 27, and many in the region are still recovering from Typhoon Haiyan, which killed at least 6,300 people in November 2013.

Countries like the Philippines do not have the luxury of playing politics with climate finance. At the opening session of the 2013 UN climate summit in Warsaw, Naderev "Yeb" Saño, leader of the Philippines Climate Change Commission, gave a tearful opening statement in which he pleaded:

If not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here in Warsaw, where? What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness. The climate crisis is madness. We can stop this madness.

Following this, Saño did something extraordinary. He told delegates he would fast until the talks yielded progress. He held his fast for two weeks and was joined by hundreds of people at the conference and around the world.

For real progress to be made with the Green Climate Fund, our political leaders need to capture something of the seriousness and ethical integrity displayed by Saño. At present, the fund has only reached 10% of its target.

My fear is that as pressure mounts for climate negotiations to yield progress, power will concentrate in fewer hands and developing countries will continue to be sidelined.

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

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The world's oceans may contain about 10 times more plastic than the most recent studies suggest.

The new figure estimates that the oceans hold more than 250,000 tons of trash, a number vastly different from a past estimate, which suggested the oceans' plastic is mysteriously disappearing.

Scientists arrived at the new number by combining visual estimates of trash volume with data collected from trawling the oceans with nets, said study co-author Markus Eriksen, director of research for the 5 Gyres Institute, an organization aiming to understand the plastic pollution in the ocean. [See Images of Garbage in the Ocean]

World of plastic

The detritus of everyday life has been pouring into the oceans for decades. Everything from plastic bags to water bottles have migrated from the coastlines, harbors and river mouths into the oceans, where gyres, or the ocean's giant conveyor belts, carry them to the most remote stretches of the seas.

About 15 years ago, scientists discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a trash-filled region of the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas. A recent excursion even found that islands of trash were forming in the garbage patch.

In the 1970s, studies suggested that about 45,000 tons of plastic littered the ocean, and the world's production of plastic has increased fivefold since then. But scientists don't agree on just how much of the world's plastic makes its way into the ocean, or how long it lasts before fish, sunlight and currents break it down and carry it into the deep ocean. In dozens of expeditions, scientists have tried to estimate this number by visual counts or by trawling the seas with nets.

But the first method is better at picking up large objects, such as buoys and fishing nets, whereas the second method may be more reliable for tiny, broken down pieces of plastic that are floating in the water column.

New model

In the new study, Eriksen said he and his colleagues looked at ocean plastic estimates from 24 expeditions to all of the world's five gyres, from Iceland to the Bay of Bengal.

The team combined both visual plastic surveys and net hauls with mathematical models for how ocean circulation would transport plastic, and compared these results based on the size categories of the plastic garbage. The new estimates suggest that about 5.25 trillion plastic particles, weighing about 269,000 tons, litter the oceans. Nearly 75 percent of that weight came from large plastic objects such as buoys, buckets and other fishing gear.

The model also suggests that ocean circulation acts like "giant shredders," breaking down large plastics that predominate at the coastlines into smaller bits, with the tiniest pieces overrepresented in the subpolar regions, Eriksen told Live Science.

Given that much of the ocean detritus is heavy gear such as buoys or fishing nets, it's not feasible to use robots to trawl the seas and collect trash, Erikson said. Instead, an incentive program — for instance, offering a dollar per pound for fishermen to bring in plastic trash — could help people clean up the oceans on their own, he added.

Conflicting estimates

The work's main strength comes from combining a visual census with net yields, as well as separating plastics into different size classes, said Andrés Cózar, an ecologist at the University of Cadiz, in Spain, whose previous work suggested that much of the ocean plastic is disappearing.

However, relying too heavily on visual census data can be problematic, Cózar told Live Science in an email.

Most of the plastic items in the study are buoys, "which can swim fast with currents and winds. Diverse studies caution that the counts derived from visual census may be strongly overestimated for moving objects," Cózar said.

Cózar's team also suspects that the model Eriksen used may overestimate the amount of trash in areas with relatively little trash, he added.

The new findings were published today (Dec. 10) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+.Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Originally published on Live Science.

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Humans think of cats as fuzzy and cute. Birds and small mammals have a vastly different perception.

Domestic cats kill between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 and 20.7 billion mammals (mostly mice, shrews, rabbits, squirrels, and voles) each year, according to a study published last year in Nature Communications.

The study indicated that both stray and owned cats are responsible for a far greater number of bird and mammal deaths in the contiguous United States than previously estimated, outpacing other threats such as collisions with windows, buildings, communication towers, cars, and poisoning, the report notes.

Free-ranging cats are "likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic (man-made) mortality for US birds and mammals," according to the report.

Un-owned cats (farm cats, feral cats, and stray cats that are fed by humans, for example) are the main perpetrators, but owned cats do their fair share of killing, too.

Researchers guess that a single cat may kill between 100 and 200 mammals annually, meaning an estimated population of between 30 and 80 million un-owned cats would result in the death of 3 and 8 billion mammals. And that's a low-end estimate. The researchers calculated that there are around 84 million owned cats, the majority of which are allowed outdoors.

"The magnitude of our mortality estimates suggest that cats are likely causing population declines for some species and in some regions," the study authors write.

Island cats are thought to be particularly deadly. A study published several years ago in the journal Global Change Biology estimated that island-dwelling feral cats have contributed to at least 14% of the world's bird, mammal, and reptile extinction. That study's authors also estimated that feral island cats were the primary threat to 8% of all critically endangered birds, mammals, and reptiles on earth.

Some experts, including the authors of this study, are critical of current tactics to control feral cat populations, including Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), a project aimed at capturing and sterilizing feral cats before returning them to the wild, where they can continue to prey on wildlife.

A 2010 letter published in the journal Conservation Biology argued that TNR programs afford wild animals "second-class treatment at the expense of cats." The authors argue that it is conservation biologists' responsibility to advocate for laws making it illegal to maintain cat colonies on public lands. They also call for a more open dialogue between conservationists and veterinarians, animal shelters, and other pet advocates.

Others have been even more abrupt in their calls to action. Last January, a prominent New Zealand economist upset the international cat community when he called for the eradication of cats, citing their threat to the country's unique wildlife.

Animal activists rightly criticized the plan. The author of this post does not condone harm to any animals. 

SEE ALSO: New Zealand Economist Calling For The Eradication Of Cats Tells Us Why They Have To Go

NOW WATCH: Why People Spend Thousands Of Dollars On These Cats

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Should nuclear energy be part of Australia's (and many other countries') future energy mix?

We think so, particularly as part of a solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent dangerous climate change.

But there are other reasons for supporting nuclear technology.

In a paper recently published in Conservation Biology, we show that an energy mix including nuclear power has lowest impact on wildlife and ecosystems — which is what we need given the dire state of the world's biodiversity.

In response, we have gathered signatures of 66 leading conservation scientists from 14 countries in an open letter asking that the environmental community:

weigh up the pros and cons of different energy sources using objective evidence and pragmatic trade-offs, rather than simply relying on idealistic perceptions of what is 'green'.

Energy demand is rising

Modern society is a ceaseless consumer of energy, and growing demand won't stop any time soon, even under the most optimistic energy-efficiency scenario.

Although it goes without saying that we must continue to improve energy efficiency in the developed world, the momentum of population growth and rising living standards, particularly in the developing world, means we will continue to need more energy for decades to come. No amount of wishful thinking for reduced demand will change that.

But which are the best forms of energy to supply the world, and not add to the biodiversity crisis?

Assessing our energy options

In short, the argument goes like this.

To avoid the worst ravages of climate change, we have to decarbonise fully (eliminate net carbon emissions from) the global electricity sector. Wildlife and ecosystems are threatened by this climate disruption, largely caused by fossil-fuel derived emissions.

But they are also imperilled by land transformation (i.e., habitat loss) caused in part by other energy sources, such as flooded areas (usually forests) for hydro-electricity and all the associated road development this entails, agricultural areas needed for biofuels, and large spaces needed for wind and solar farms.

In the paper, we evaluated land use, emissions, climate and cost implications of three different energy scenarios:

• a "business as usual" future dominated by fossil fuels

• a high renewable-energy mix excluding nuclear promoted by Greenpeace

• an energy mix with a large nuclear contribution (50% of energy mix) plus a balance of renewable and fossil-fuel sources with carbon-capture-and-storage.

We then ranked seven major energy types: coal, gas, nuclear, biomass, hydro, wind, and solar based on economic and safety costs, and environmental benefits. We also tested the sensitivity of these rankings to bias stemming from philosophical ideals.

For instance, if you were most concerned about pursuing low carbon emissions, you might weight that criterion twice as heavily in the analysis as the lowest-cost option.

When compared objectively with alternatives, nuclear power performs as well or better that other options in terms of safety, cost, scaleability, reliability, land transformation and emissions. And overall, the mix including a substantial role for nuclear performed better than the other scenarios.

Although our analysis was based on existing nuclear designs, we were most excited about the advantages offered by next-generation nuclear power now under construction in Russia and China.

If deployed widely, this technology could provide emissions-free electricity, by recycling a highly-concentrated energy source in a way that consumes waste and minimises impacts to biodiversity compared to other energy sources.

0% fossil fuels, not 100% renewables

Ultimately, there is no perfect energy source. Conservation professionals and environmental advocates need to take an evidence-based approach to consider carefully the combined effects of energy mixes on biodiversity conservation.

Much as leading climate scientists recently advocated the development of safe, next-generation nuclear energy systems to combat global climate change, we argue that only by leaving our energy options open can we maximise our chance of conserving biodiversity and natural habitats during this century and beyond.

For example, the use of nuclear energy for electricity generation is prohibited federally within Australia under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (see section 140A). This needs to change if we are serious about maximising our changes of displacing fossil fuels.

There is strong evidence for supporting advanced nuclear power systems with complete fuel recycling as part of a portfolio of sustainable energy technologies, that also includes appropriate use of renewables, energy storage and energy efficiency.

We must accept that trade-offs and compromises are inevitable and require advocating energy mixes that minimise net environmental damage.

A key message is that the ideal mix of nuclear and renewables will be regionally dependent – being modified by, for example, available land area and renewable potential – and should be compared objectively without prejudice or preconceived notions. The environmentalist mantra on energy needs shift from "100% renewables" to "0% fossil fuels". That should be the primary goal.

It is time that conservationists make their voices heard in this policy arena.

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

SEE ALSO: New York State Is Going To Ban Fracking

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For one of the most powerful cities in the world, we sure could've picked a better location.

New York City is poised to bear the brunt of climate change's effects — from rising seas to shifting temperatures — over the next five decades, and signs of the coming scenario are already beginning to appear across the state.

Hurricane Sandy, which struck without mercy, was our first warning. 

Climate change will make storms like Sandy far more common and more intense. As the earth heats up, more water vapor — the fuel for storms — enters the atmosphere. This combination of increased storms, more extreme temperatures, and rising sea levels will put many of New York City's most prized resources — from its beachfront property to sizable chunks of its subway system and its local food scene — at risk.

Here's a glimpse of what you should enjoy before it's too late.

1. Waterfront Homes And Beaches

As oceans get warmer and northern sea ice begins to melt, sea levels will rise, increasing the frequency of floods. Eventually, entire sections of New York City will be permanently submerged.

Sizable chunks of lower Manhattan and the majority of waterfront property in Brooklyn and the Rockaways — a total of up to 250 miles of coastline — will flood; much of it will be completely destroyed. Many of these areas are also home to some of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods, like Long Island City, Queens, and Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

Beaches in those areas will also, quite literally, be washed away. In their 2014 hazard mitigation plan, New York City planners write that "long-term coastal erosion is 100% probable" for Coney Island, Brooklyn, the Rockaways, Queens, and South Shore, Staten Island.

2. North America's Largest Public Transit System

After Hurricane Sandy struck, the MTA was able to rescue the subway from the brunt of the damage. In just a few weeks of intense pumping, drying, and reconstruction, several flooded stations were up and running again. Years later, only a few stations carry the scars of the storm's devastation.

But flood waters from the next storm could overwhelm the same subway stations flooded during Sandy (all five tunnels between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn and the Steinway Tube between Midtown and Queens flooded), despite the MTA's planning efforts. An additional 14 stations near the Harlem and East Rivers are also at risk.

3. Farmer's Markets

Say goodbye to your local farmer's market.

Shifting temperatures will make Northeastern dairy farms unsuitable for cows. Apple orchards will find they can't produce enough of the fruit to turn a profit; Macintosh and Empire apples will disappear from farmer's market shelves by 2100. 

In warmer waters, local populations of salmon (which, when made into lox, graces every good New Yorker's Sunday bagel and schmear) will migrate north. Native brook trout will disappear from New York waters, too. Bass might come to the area in their place, as the species loves warmer water.

4. Hiking And Camping

Love hiking, fishing, or camping in the Adirondacks or the Catskills? Better enjoy them now.

None of the plants or animals native to these 16 million acres of gorgeous spruce-fir forests will survive in a climate just five degrees warmer. Scientists estimate both forests will begin to die out as soon as 2050.

5. The Coffee Scene

New Yorkers drink 7 more times more coffee than people in any other American city. But most of that java comes from places around the globe where warming temperatures and altered weather patterns are killing the precious crop. A combination of coffee rust, a fungal infection that attacks the leaves of the coffee plant, and invasive species like the coffee berry borer are slowly destroying coffee plantations across the globe.

A recent study in the journal PLOS One found that the number of coffee-growing regions in Africa (where a mix of the right temperature, altitude, and soil moisture allow the plant to be grown in bulk) could be reduced by somewhere between 65% and 100% in the next 7 decades.

SEE IN-DEPTH: New York Is Facing Its Biggest Threat Ever, And People Are Still In Denial

READ MORE: A Huge Problem Is Threatening New York's Subway System, And No One's Talking About It

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BI Answers: How do winter storms get their names?

Less than a month after Hurricane Sandy felled trees, knocked out power lines, and smashed homes along the stretch of coastline from Maryland to Massachusetts, another storm was barreling towards the northeast.

Days later, the entire region was coated in a record-breaking layer of thick snow.

For the first time in history, The Weather Channel decided to name the winter storm. They called it Athena, for the Greek goddess of warfare. (She's also the goddess of courage, civilization, inspiration, law, wisdom, and justice, but we're pretty sure these aren't what TWC had in mind when they came up with the moniker.)

"A storm with a name is easier to follow," TWC's chief winter weather forecaster, Tom Niziol, wrote on its website, "which will mean fewer surprises and more preparation."

With the majority of the region still heaving from Sandy's effects, Niziol said, it was important to make announcements about a second storm clear and simple. Sounds pretty reasonable, right?

Wrong. Naming winter storms is a big no-no, at least as far as the National Weather Service is concerned.

Shortly after TWC's announcement, the NWS issued a press release stating it would not recognize any of TWC's names for winter storms; the agency also sent out an internal memo advising its staff to "please refrain from using the term Athena in any of our products."

Why All The Fuss Over A Name?

At first glance, it seems like it should have been no big deal. The Weather Channel named the storm because they thought it would make it easier for people to protect themselves from its effects.

Whenever an announcement was made about incoming winds or severe temperatures associated with the storm, they could shout out the name Athena. Anyone listening would know instantly that the information was related to a bigger pattern of events; one that could be severe and long-lasting.

This same idea is what inspired the government to start naming tropical storms for the first time in the early 1900s. The naming system worked so well that it became official policy in 1953. For nearly three decades, every Atlantic tropical storm was named using a database kept by the National Hurricane Center. The original list featured only women's names, but men's were added in 1979.

We've been doing this for hurricanes and tropical storms for years. Why not do the same for winter storms?

Here's the problem: Hurricanes and winter storms are radically different tempests, and lumping them in together can be misleading. Only about 100 hurricanes happen every year across the globe, New York University Center of Atmosphere Ocean Science professor Olivier Pauluis told us. By contrast, winter storms can be thought of as including all of our "bad weather" days — times when it's extra windy or raining heavily, said Pauluis.

The difference between a hurricane and winter storm is a lot easier to see via satellite. While hurricanes have a single, well-defined center (the eye) that the rest of the storm rotates around — meaning they often follow a pattern that meteorologists can track — winter storms can have multiple centers that move and shift dramatically.

Each beast forms differently, too. While winter storms develop when there's a large temperature gap between two blobs of air, hurricanes form near the equator when the heat from warm ocean waters combines with powerful winds to create large water droplets.

Those droplets condense into thick columns of clouds, which eventually power a spinning storm. Depending on the storm's windspeed, meteorologists decide if it's a tropical storm or a hurricane.

Overall, adopting the same naming convention for winter storms that we use for hurricanes could confuse the public, meteorologists who protested the decision said.

And a confused public is often an unprepared one.

Imagine you see a tweet from The Weather Channel, for instance, that says that Winter Storm Triton is approaching. It's going to be a doozy — lots of rain, wind, the whole deal. You consider canceling your weekend trip upstate. But then you get home and tune into your local weather station to see if there's an update. The weather person mentions that heavy rains are coming, but says nothing about any big storm, not to mention anything named Triton. Should you still cancel?

Chances are, you won't be getting an answer any time soon.

Hurricanes are named according to a standardized international system that cycles through a predetermined set of names, while these named winter storms are nothing more than a made-for-TV creation. But despite any confusion that's resulted from TWC's latest tradition, the company has no plans to stop naming winter storms.

Their list of potential storm names for the winter of 2014-2015 includes names like Juno, Quantum, and Thor, with one possibility for every letter of the alphabet. (The year's first significant winter storm got the "A" name, Astro.)

Most names are based on Greek or Roman mythology, with a few exceptions. This year's "B" storm, Bozeman, is in honor of the Montana high school class that helped develop last year's list of names. The "W" storm name, Wolf, was chosen via popular vote.

This post is part of a continuing series that answers all of your questions related to science. Have your own question? Email science@businessinsider.com with the subject line "Q&A"; tweet your question to @BI_Science; or post to our Facebook page.

NOW READ: More BI Answers

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With the news yesterday from President Obama that his administration is moving to normalize relations with Cuba, many experts have argued that ending the embargo would be a boon for the island nation's economy.

But whether it will be an entirely beneficial thing for Cuba's natural environment and surrounding oceans remains to be seen. In the environmental community, many organizations that have been working tirelessly on ocean conservation in the Caribbean hope that there can now be true cooperation between the U.S. and Cuba in the environmental realm.

Dr. David Guggenheim, founder of Ocean Doctor, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and restoring our oceans through hands-on conservation, has legitimate concerns about the impacts of ending the embargo. In October, he joined Thom Hartmann on The Big Picture to talk about the potential environmental effects—good and bad—of ending the embargo.

Guggenheim readily admits the embargo was a "failed policy," but under the embargo, Cuba's environment—namely its pristine national parks and coral reefs—has thrived. He cites the fact that "Cuba has protected 25 percent of its marine waters compared to the worldwide average of one percent." So, the question going forward will be: Can Cuba maintain its pristine environment after it's opened up to the U.S. and the rest of the world?

In a five-part series on EcoWatch, Conor Kennedy explores the pristine coral reefs of theGardens of the Queen after his visit to Cuba this summer with Ocean Doctor. In his piece, Cuba and the Embargo, Kennedy shares his hopes for normalized relations between Cuba and the U.S. that includes policies that will protect Cuba's pristine ocean ecosystem.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) would also like to see an end to the embargo because it will allow them to expand their work to promote an exchange and a dialog around critical conservation issues.

"With normalized relations come great opportunity, but also great challenges,"said Dan Whittle, director of EDF's Cuba Oceans Program and Senior Attorney.

"The doors are now open to U.S. travel and investment, and the rigor of Cuba's environmental rules will be tested. As money begins to flow into Cuba, it is critical that we continue our work helping Cuba build upon its impressive environmental protections and double down. EDF believes the environment will fuel economic growth, but we cannot allow the environment to be sacrificed in the process."

SEE ALSO: 1,200 Turtles Have Washed Ashore In Cape Cod — And No One Knows Why

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When she was asked by the New York Times recently whether the Earth would be a better or worse place by 2050, chimpanzee expert, UN Messenger of Peace, and author of a book titled "Reason For Hope," Jane Goodall had a surprisingly bleak response:

"I see the world in 50 years, perhaps 100, as a dark place," Goodall said.

What's terrifying about Goodall's vision isn't how dystopian it sounds, but rather how prescient it's already proven to be.

From the spread of deadly, antibiotic-resistant superbugs to the destruction of habitats that are home to critical life-prolonging drugs, Goodall was right on the money.

Here are three main predictions Goodall made that are already coming true:

1. People will be fleeing their homes

"Environmental refugees,"Goodall told the Times, "will have fled their destroyed homelands, flooded by the rising seas or buried by the encroaching deserts. Many people will be starving as they fight for access to water and land."

Last year, more than 22 million people, many of whom live in the world's least developed countries, were displaced by natural disasters. A large portion of these countries have the double burden of being located in climate change hotspots — places along the equator, the coast, and elsewhere where the effects of global warming will be magnified.

As the world gets warmer, the lives of the people who reside here will become bleaker: If they do not move, rising floodwaters and warmer temperatures will leave them more susceptible to pests and disease. The economic value of their lands will decrease and they will become poorer. Those who do migrate away will also struggle — these people will have to take on new, possibly different jobs for which they may lack the proper training or education.

2. Infections will be harder to control

"Medical science will be unable to cope with new infections,"Goodall said, "as bacteria build up resistance to more and more antibiotics and the tropical forests where so many medical cures are sourced are destroyed."

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tom Frieden sounded the alarm bells in 2013 by saying we'd soon be in a "post-antibiotic era." Since then, newborns in India have begun dying at alarming rates from infections that were once curable. The same deadly "superbugs" responsible for these deaths are spreading rapidly around the globe.

They've already come to the United States, fueled in part by our country's overuse of antibiotics on farmsand in hospitals. Last year, 23,000 Americans died from bacterial infections that didn't respond to antibiotics. Certain strains of "nightmare bacteria" kill up to half of the patients they infect, and cases are becoming increasingly common across 42 states.

Several diseases the US has kept in check with antibiotics (at least until now) have also developed antibiotic-resistant strains, including gonorrhea and tuberculosis.

Multi-country outbreaks of viral diseases like Ebola have also proven difficult to contain. More than 19,000 people have been sickened by Ebola worldwide; more than 7,000 have died.

Scientists suspect the two-year-old child who was Ebola's patient zero became infected after coming into contact with a fruit bat. The likelihood of people getting animal diseases increases as humans are forced to move into new areas (often destroying animal habitats in the process). Scientists suspect these were driving factors behind the emerging diseases including the 2011 SARS outbreak and the recent US monkeypox outbreak.

3. Continued deforestation will have devastating impacts

Goodall also predicted the destruction of the rainforest, which has only accelerated since she initially spoke about it to the New York Times in 2012. Each year, we lose a chunk of rainforest the size of Panama (18 million hectares, up from 13 million in 2010) to deforestation, the vast majority of which is caused by logging and farming.

The loss of these lush forests won't just affect the animals and plants who live there or the people who live in their immediate vicinity. We get a large portion of our medicines, including the drugs we use to fight deadly diseases like cancer, from the rainforest. The popular cancer drug Taxol, for example, was originally isolated from the seeds of the Cowtail Pine, a small tree that grows only in deep, partially-shaded soils like the kind fostered by the giant trees and sheltered canopies of the rainforest.

"Mother Nature is resilient,"Goodall told the Times, "but the time is fast approaching when she will be battered beyond her ability to restore herself. We must make a choice."

SEE ALSO: Jane Goodall: Man's Closest Animal Relatives Face Extinction

DON'T MISS: There’s A 'Public Health Emergency’ That Is Way More Threatening Than Ebola, And No One's Addressing It

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It's hard to think of too many animals that could take out a grizzly bear.

At nearly 1,000 pounds and standing up to eight feet tall on its hind legs, the razor-toothed beast seems immune to all but the fiercest of contenders — and yet, one of the biggest threats to grizzlies is a tiny animal, hardly bigger than your fingernail.

Meet the mountain pine beetle.

This little insect looks harmless enough, and in fact it's a native species in North America. But it's been wiping out conifer forests all over the western United States — forests that grizzlies rely on for food. Helped along by rising temperatures and a drier climate, expressions of global climate change, the beetle is expanding its range and devastating forests throughout the western half of the country.

Here's how they do it: Adult pine beetles burrow under the outer bark of conifer trees and lay their eggs. Later, these eggs hatch into hungry beetle larvae, which chow down on the tender inner bark, causing serious damage and often death to the tree.

This is bad news for the grizzly bear, which feeds on one of the beetle's favorite targets: the whitebark pine. Whitebark seeds are a major source of calories for grizzly bears, particularly in the fall before they go into hibernation.

And with millions of these trees disappearing up and down the west coast, it's looking like the bears may need to start exploring other options — and fast.

The pine beetle roams everywhere from New Mexico north to Canada, and it's killed more than 70,000 square miles of trees in the last decade, alone. And scientists predict its reign of terror will only grow worse in the coming years.

While global climate change is a major threat to plants and animals all over the world, the mountain pine beetle is actually benefiting from rising temperatures.

Recent research, including a study published in the journal Ecology and a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the beetles thrive in warmer temperatures and with less rainfall, two expected impacts of climate change in the western US. This is already apparent, as scientists have noticed the beetles reproducing earlier and spreading farther than ever before, leading to more frequent and severe infestations around the West.

As the climate continues to become warmer and drier, pine beetles will likely continue to multiply and expand their range, which is bad news for conifer forests and the vulnerable grizzlies. Although bears are good at adapting to food shortages and finding other things to eat, this ability often drives them close to human civilization in search of snacks — but end up facing a hunter's gun instead.

Defenders of Wildlife, a wildlife advocacy group, writes that a shortage of whitebark pine seeds can "lead [grizzlies] to seek out sources of food that can come from humans, like garbage, domestic fruit trees and livestock. Grizzly bears that choose to adapt to human-generated food resources often die as a result."

Other studies suggest that mother grizzly bears who eat more whitebark seeds before hibernation have cubs that are healthier and more likely to survive, which is crucial to the future of grizzlies in North America. Fewer cubs that survive mean a smaller and smaller population of grizzlies.

Even more unfortunately, the pine beetle isn't the only organism knocking out whitebark pines. An invasive fungus known as "white pine blister rust" is also killing off trees in the Western US.

Grizzly bears currently enjoy special protections as a "threatened" species under the Endangered Species Act. Out of the nearly 50,000 grizzlies that once roamed the United States, fewer than 2,000 are estimated to remain, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In 2007, the Service moved to de-list the grizzly bear population in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, arguing that the population was sufficiently recovering. But conservation groups sued the US government, and protections were restored, partly thanks to concerns over the declining whitebark pine, reports Nature.

Whether grizzly bears will keep their protected status in the long run remains up in the air. Conservationists remain serious about the threats to the whitebark pine, which — under the influence of beetles, fungus, and climate change — could be in for a long, rough road ahead.

SEE ALSO: 1,200 Turtles Have Washed Ashore In Cape Cod — And No One Knows Why

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With the recent release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's newest climate report, the pressure is on localities more than ever to understand, expect, and curb emissions ahead of our planet's future warming.

While the United States has pledged to cut down on its carbon output, the states are slower in picking up the tab — and some seem to be unable to understand the severity of the situation. Others are even allegedly willing to hide the truth.

Several states have been exposed for their past questionable climate practices, and South Carolina is one of those that has fallen under public scrutiny over a state-sponsored climate report that has stayed on the shelf for more than a year after it was declared ready for public release.

Back in November 2011 South Carolina's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) completed a report on local effects of climate change. At the time, then-DNR director John Frampton pronounced the document ready for public review.

But, the report was not released.

Instead, it was shelved while a series of staff changes took place within the DNR — most notably, Frampton's resignation in December, after the chairwoman of the DNR board asked him to leave. Allegations reported by South Carolina newspaper The Post and Courier claim that DNR board members may have conspired to oust Frampton, who had championed the then-still-unreleased climate report.

In fact, the report didn't come to light until South Carolina news outlet TheState.com caught wind of it and requested a copy, which it published online in February 2013. The Post and Courier reported that the document wasn't even presented to the DNR board until July 2012 — eight months after it was completed.

The DNR finally published the document on its website in 2013, where you can read the report in full. It addresses six major impacts of climate change in the state:

1. Detrimental change in habitat
2. Detrimental change in the abundance and distribution of species
3. Detrimental change in biodiversity and ecosystem services
4. Detrimental change to the traditional use of natural resources
5. Detrimental change to the abundance and quality of water, and
6. Detrimental change in sea level.

The document shows a history of rising temperatures, warming waters, and increases in severe weather events in the state, and also notes concerns for the future. The chart below shows how temperatures at the Greenville-Spartanburg airport have changed between 1895 and 2010.

There's a clear upward trend, especially from 1970 on.

The report warns of rising sea levels, water shortages, severe storms, and species die-offs. It also lays out specifically how certain impacts of climate change could harm human health:

These impacts are real, but South Carolina policy-makers have been largely quiet when it comes to outlining plans for dealing with them.

The DNR acknowledges the state policy-makers' climate change apathy in the now-public climate report, writing the following:

Interest in the effects of climate change in the Southeast is increasing, but there are any number of impediments to understanding and predicting climate change, including public apathy and a lack of awareness, lack of outreach on adaptation options, lack of uniform access to information on current climate change risks and a lack of guidance on what information and tools are available. Climate change documentation and development of adaptation strategies also are limited primarily by a lack of funding, a lack of political will and a lack of government leadership.

The clock is ticking for South Carolina to ramp up its climate initiatives and bolster its vulnerable shorelines, or — as its long-suppressed climate report warns — face dire consequences.

SEE ALSO: This Map Shows How Climate Change Will Screw The Whole World

SEE ALSO: These States Have Reportedly Tried To Hide Scary Climate Data From The Public

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Thanks to the careful work of archaeologists, we learned more in the past year about Stonehenge's hidden monuments, Richard III's gruesome death and King Tut's mummified erection. From the discovery of an ancient tomb in Greece to the first evidence of Neanderthal art, here are 10 of Live Science's favorite archaeology stories of 2014.

1. An Alexander the Great-era tomb at Amphipolis

Rarely do archaeological digs attract so much attention in real time. But at Amphipolis, an ancient coastal city in northern Greece, the discovery of a lavish 2,300-year-old tomb has created a national frenzy. In August, state archaeologists broke through the entrance of a huge burial mound that's been billed as the largest of its kind in the Greek world. (Its perimeter measures about 1,600 feet, or 490 meters.) [See Photos of the Ancient Tomb at Amphipolis]

Excavators found broken sphinxes, two female statues called caryatids, a remarkably intact mosaic floor and some skeletal material, which is awaiting analysis. It's still unclear who was buried inside the tomb, but some have speculated that it could be someone from Alexander the Great's inner circle.

2. Stonehenge's secret monuments

Capping a four-year survey of the landscape around England's Stonehenge, researchers reported that they found signs of at least 17 previously unknown Neolithic shrines. The big announcement — which was accompanied by TV specials on the BBC and Smithsonian Channel — could change the way historians have thought of Stonehenge.

"Stonehenge is undoubtedly a major ritual monument, which people may have traveled considerable distances to come to, but it isn't just standing there by itself," project leader Vincent Gaffney, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham, told Live Science in September. "It's part of a much more complex landscape with processional and ritual activities that go around it." [See Images of Hidden Stonehenge Monuments]

3. A shipwreck under the World Trade Center

In the summer of 2010, archaeologists in New York discovered a school-bus-size shipwreck in an unlikely place: the site of the World Trade Center, still under construction after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. This year, tree-ring researchers who were studying the ship's fragile timbers announced that they had uncovered new details about the vessel.

The ship was likely built in 1773, or soon after, in a small shipyard near Philadelphia, according to the study, which was published in the journal Tree-Ring Research. What's more, the ship's timbers may have originated from the same white oak forest where wood was harvested to build Philadelphia's Independence Hall, the researchers said.

4. Richard III's twisted spine, kingly diet and family tree

Once lost to history, the skeleton of Britain's King Richard III was found under a parking lot in 2012, and since then, the monarch's remains have been a boon for scientists who study centuries-old DNA, diet and disease. Among this year's findings, scientists reported that they found a mitochondrial DNA match between Richard and two of his living relatives, offering further confirmation that the bones really belong to the king. A model of Richard's misshapen spineshowed that he suffered from adolescent idiopathic scoliosis.

Isotopes locked in Richard's teeth and bones revealed that the king ate (and drank) quite well during his two years at the throne. And, after a much-delayed autopsy, researchers also determined this year that Richard likely died a quick death on the battlefield; they found two wounds on the back of Richard's skull that were likely candidates for the fatal blow.

5. A teenager in a "black hole"

At the bottom of an underwater cave called Hoyo Negro (Spanish for "Black Hole") in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, divers discovered a near-complete skeleton of a teenage girl. Dubbed "Naia," the girl was found alongside unlikely gravemates: saber-toothed cats, pumas, sloths and bears. Researchers think Naia and the animals likely fell to their deaths 12,000 to 13,000 years ago, before the pit filled with water when the world's glaciers started melting.

Scientists also found that DNA from Naia's remains resembled modern Native American DNA. The discovery, which was reported in May in the journal Science, could help solve the long-standing debate over the identity of the first Americans. [In Photos: Human Skeleton Sheds Light on First Americans]

6. Syria by satellite

The paralyzing political situation in Syria has become somewhat of a test for satellite archaeology. Shut out of the war-torn country, archaeologists have turned to aerial images to learn about the state of Syria's ancient ruins. So far, their findings have been grim.

Five of Syria's six UNESCO World Heritage sites show "significant damage," and some buildings are now "reduced to rubble," according to an analysis of satellite images by the nonprofit and nonpartisan American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Meanwhile, the American Schools for Oriental Research was given a $600,000 grant from the U.S. State Department to fund a Syrian Heritage Initiative for a year. At the organization's annual meeting last month in San Diego, researchers with the initiative reported that 63 of the 400 archaeological sites they analyzed exhibited war-related looting.

7. Jesus' wife?

This story might be more of an "undiscovery." In September 2012, Harvard University divinity professor Karen King announced the sensational finding of a small papyrus fragment written in Coptic. The text contained references to a "Mary" and the translated line, "Jesus said to them, 'My wife, she will be able to be my disciple.'" The suggestion was that Mary Magdalene may have been Jesus' wife — or that some people in ancient times at least believed she was his wife.

Biblical scholars had aired their suspicions about the authenticity of the so-called "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" because of problematic features, such as bad handwriting and grammatical errors. And earlier this year, a Live Science investigation revealed that the papyrus has a flimsy provenance. The anonymous owner of the papyrus claims to have purchased the document from a now-deceased man whose family said he never collected antiquities. The text is looking more and more like a forgery.

8. Mummy cheese

The world's oldest known cheese was found this year, tucked away on the bodies of 3,800-year-old mummies in northwest China's Taklamakan Desert. Scholars had previously uncovered archaeological clues suggesting that cheese making began as early as the sixth millennium B.C., but actual samples of ancient cheese are hard to come by.

Archaeologists found clumps of a yellowish substance on the chests and necks of mummies during recent excavations in China's Xiaohe Cemetery. A chemical analysis showed that these blobs were really cheese. These dairy treats would have been nutritious, easily digestible and quite similar to yogurtlike kefir, according to the study in the Journal of Archaeological Science. The cheese was presumably left in the graves as a snack to be enjoyed in the afterlife.

9. King Tut's 3,300-year erection

Researchers have long noted several anomalies of King Tutankhamun's embalming. The young pharaoh was buried in a lavish tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings without a heart, an excessive amount of black oils and goolike resins were applied to his body, and his penis was mummified erect at a 90-degree angle. A recent study in the journal Études et Travaux suggests that King Tut's unusual burial was part of a deliberate effort to fight a religious revolution unleashed by his father.

King Tut's father, Akhenaten, is famous for trying to introduce monotheism to Egypt. He wanted religion to center on the worship of the Aten, the sun disc, and destroyed images of other gods. King Tut, meanwhile, was trying to bring back polytheism during his reign. To emphasize that return to tradition, Tut's embalmers may have tried to make the king look like Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld, who is often depicted with an erect penis to evoke his regenerative powers.

10. Artists like us?

Sometimes, big discoveries come in small packages. This year, two separate studies of tiny, simple etchings cast doubt on whether modern humans are really the only Homo species to have created art. A geometric carving on a rock in the back of a cave in Gibraltar may have been created by Neanderthals, the closest known relatives of modern humans, some 40,000 years ago, according to one study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers who tried to recreate the gridlike etching said this carving wasn't the accidental byproduct of butchery, but rather an intentional design.

Earlier this month, another group of scientists in Java, Indonesia, reported in the journal Nature that they found a series of slashes and an "M"-shaped zigzag" on a shell that's between 540,000 and 430,000 years old. They attributed the scribbles to Homo erectus, an ancestor of modern humans. In both cases, it's unclear what meaning (if any) the "artwork" held, but the studies suggest our human ancestors and extinct relatives were capable of abstract thinking.

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

• Postmortem Photos: King Richard III's Battle Injuries
• In Photos: The Life and Death of King Tut
• 8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries

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Paul O’Neill, a ranger at Nitmiluk National Park near Katherine in the Northern Territory has captured the moment a massive Olive Python swallowed a wallaby. Whole!

While on patrol in the top end national park, O’Neill found the python feeding on an Agile Wallaby joey after hearing birds making an unusual amount of noise from above the feed site.

He was able to take photos of the snake as it bit-by-bit devoured the entire animal.

On the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Facebook page Greg Smith, from the Territory Wildlife Park, says the wallaby is the biggest prey that the python would be able to eat.

“That wallaby would take about 5 to 7 days to digest completely and the snake would go and hide for at least a month.

“From past experience with breeding and dealing with hundreds of snakes, they have different appetites. Some snakes will start looking for food even if they are overweight and have just eaten, but on average that meal would be sufficient to sustain that snake for at least 3 months,” he said.

The snake finds its prey.

And takes its first bite.

Constricting it in the process.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese man has been jailed for 13 years for buying and eating endangered tigers and making wine out of their blood, state media reported.

The man, identified as a rich businessmen surnamed Xu, organized three trips to the southern province of Guangdong last year to buy the tigers, which he then transported to his home region of Guangxi, Xinhua news agency said late on Tuesday.

Xu and his accomplices witnessed the killing of three tigers in three deals with the sellers, one of which was killed by an electric shock, the report said.

Xu and his friends ate the tiger meat and he was reported to have said: "If anyone asks, say it is beef, horse or big cat meat", Xinhua reported.

Xu was arrested after one of his deals was recorded by someone nearby who reported it to the police.

The report did not say where the tigers came from, only that they were suspected of being smuggled into the country.

Xu was originally sentenced in April and then appealed, but this week a court rejected that appeal, Xinhua said.

Tiger meat is believed by some Chinese to have health-giving properties and to work as an aphrodisiac, which has driven a booming trade in tiger products in recent years as the country has become wealthier.

China is home to tigers, mainly in the remote northeast, but their numbers have shrunk drastically due to poaching and habitat loss despite government conservation efforts.

The South China tiger, one of the world's smallest subspecies and the only one native to central and southern China, is feared to be extinct in the wild.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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From the mightiest beasts in the jungle to the tiniest microorganisms swimming in our pond water, Earth is home to some amazing life-forms.

This year, we've observed some incredible wildlife in action all around the world.

In 2014 we saw leopards battling crocodiles, walruses swarming the Alaskan coastline, and ghostly fish lurking in the deepest parts of the ocean.

This nature shot from London's Richmond Park, titled “Stag Deer Bellowing,” by Prashant Meswani, was an honorable mention in National Geographic's 2014 photo contest.

Source: Here Are The Winners Of The 2014 National Geographic Photo Contest

This shot of a Colored Parson's Chameleon at Andasibe-Mantadia National Park in Madagascar was a finalist in the Nature Conservancy's photo contest.

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This photo, titled "Apex Predators" by Justin Black, was one of the top photos from the BBC photographer of the year competition. Black shot this in the wetlands of the Brazilian Pantanal.

Source: Unbelievable Pictures Of Wildlife From The BBC's Photographer Of The Year Competition