LONDON — The world's fastest land animal, the cheetah, is in danger of extinction because it is running out of space, research led by the Zoological Society of London has found.

After a sharp decline in numbers there are now just 7,100 cheetahs in the world, or 9% of the historic range, the ZSL, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Panthera study found.

In Zimbabwe, the study found, these pressures have seen the cheetah population plummet 85% from 1,200 to at most 170 animals in just 16 years.

Wildlife experts are calling for the big cat to be rated "endangered," up from "vulnerable" among threatened species, to give it greater environmental protection.

Capable of sprinting up to 75 mph in short bursts, the cheetah is notoriously secretive, and information on its status had been difficult to gather, meaning its predicament had been overlooked, the study said.

"Our findings show that the large space requirements for cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was previously thought," said Dr. Sarah Durant, who is leading the cheetah conservation program.

The study said cheetahs were vulnerable to several dangers such as prey loss caused by overhunting, habitat loss, and illegal trafficking. Added to that, more than three-quarters of cheetahs live outside protected wildlife areas and, because they roam wide, are more vulnerable.

SEE ALSO: Forget what you thought you knew — there are actually 4 species of giraffes

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How much money you need to save each day to become a millionaire by age 65

One year later, the shade balls in the Los Angeles Reservoir have been deemed a success by the L.A. Department of Water and Power.

Follow BI Video: On Twitter

Join the conversation about this story »

President Obama gave environmental advocates a Christmas present when he announced in late December that he was banning oil and gas drilling in huge swaths of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.

This action “indefinitely” protects almost 120 million acres of ecologically important and highly sensitive marine environments from the risks of oil spills and other industrial impacts.

President Obama acted boldly to conserve important ecological resources and solidify his environmental legacy.

But by making creative use of an obscure provision of a 1953 law, Obama ignited a legal and political firestorm.

Republicans and oil industry trade groups are threatening to challenge the ban in court or through legislation. They also contend that the Trump administration can act directly to reverse it. But a close reading of the law suggests that it could be difficult to undo Obama’s sweeping act.

The power to withdraw

Congress passed the law now known as the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act in 1953 to assert federal control over submerged lands that lie more then three miles offshore, beyond state coastal waters. Section 12(a) of the law authorizes the president to “withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf.”

Starting in 1960 with the Eisenhower administration, six presidents from both parties have used this power. Most withdrawals were time-limited, but some were long-term. For example, in 1990 President George H. W. Bush permanently banned oil and gas development in California’s Monterey Bay, which later became a national marine sanctuary.

President Obama used section 12(a) in 2014 to protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay, one of the most productive wild salmon fisheries in the world. In 2015 he took the same step for approximately 9.8 million acres in the biologically rich Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Obama’s latest action bars energy production in 115 million more acres of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas – an area known as the “Arctic Ring of Life” because of its importance to Inupiat Peoples who have lived there for millennia. The order also withdraws 3.8 million acres off the Atlantic Coast from Norfolk, Virginia to Canada, including several unique and largely unexplored coral canyons.

Why Obama acted

In a Presidential Memorandum on the Arctic withdrawals, Obama provided three reasons for his action. First, he asserted, these areas have irreplaceable value for marine mammals, other wildlife, wildlife habitat, scientific research and Alaska Native subsistence use. Second, they are extremely vulnerable to oil spills. Finally, drilling for oil and responding to spills in Arctic waters poses unique logistical, operational, safety and scientific challenges.

In ordering the Atlantic withdrawals, Obama cited his responsibility to “ensure that the unique resources associated with these canyons remain available for future generations.”

Market forces support Obama’s action. Royal Dutch Shell stopped drilling in the Chukchi Sea in 2015 after spending US$7 billion and drilling in what proved to be a dry hole. Since 2008 the Interior Department has canceled or withdrawn a number of sales in Alaskan waters due to low demand. Shell, ConocoPhillips, Statoil, Chevron, BP and Exxon have all to some degree abandoned offshore Arctic drilling.

Low oil prices coupled with high drilling costs make business success in the region a risky prospect. Lloyd’s of London forecast this scenario in a 2012 report that called offshore drilling in the Arctic “a unique and hard-to-manage risk.”

What happens next?

Critics of President Obama’s action, including the state of Alaska and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, say they may challenge Obama’s order in court, in hopes that the Trump administration will opt not to defend it. But environmental groups, which hailed Obama’s action, will seek to intervene in any such lawsuit.

Moreover, to demonstrate that they have standing to sue, plaintiffs would have to show that they have suffered or face imminent injury; that this harm was caused by Obama’s action; and that it can be redressed by the court. Market conditions will make this very difficult.

The Energy Information Administration currently projects that crude oil prices, which averaged about $43 per barrel through 2016, will rise to only about $52 per barrel in 2017. Whether these areas will ever be commercially viable is an open question, especially since rapid changes are taking place in the electricity and transportation sectors, and other coastal areas are open for leasing in Alaska’s near-shore waters and the Gulf of Mexico.

Alternatively, Donald Trump could issue his own memorandum in office seeking to cancel Obama’s. However, section 12(a) does not provide any authority for presidents to revoke actions by their predecessors. It delegates authority to presidents to withdraw land unconditionally. Once they take this step, only Congress can undo it.

This issue has never been litigated. Opponents can be expected to argue that Obama’s use of section 12(a) in this manner is unconstitutional because it violates the so-called “nondelegation doctrine,” which basically holds that Congress cannot delegate legislative functions to the executive branch without articulating some “intelligible principles.”

However, one could argue that Obama’s action was based on an articulation of intelligible principles gleaned from the stated policies of the OCSLA, which recognizes that the “the outer Continental Shelf is a vital national resource reserve held by the Federal Government for the public.” The law expressly recognizes both the energy and environmental values of the OCS.

Thus President Obama’s decision reflects a considered judgment that the national interest is best served by protecting the unique natural resources of these areas, while at the same time weaning the nation from its dangerous dependence on fossil fuels.

The section 12(a) authority is similar in some respects to the authority granted by the Antiquities Act, which authorizes the president to “reserve parcels of land as a part of [a] national monument.” Like the OCSLA, the Antiquities Act does not authorize subsequent presidents to undo the designations of their predecessors. Obama has also used this power extensively– most recently, last week when he designated two new national monuments in Utah and Nevada totaling 1.65 million acres.

Some laws do include language that allows such actions to be revoked. Examples include the Forest Service Organic Administration Act, under which most national forests were established, and the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which sets out policies for managing multiple-use public lands. The fact that Congress chose not to include revocation language in the OCSLA indicates that it did not intend to provide such power.

What can the new Congress do?

Under Article IV of the Constitution, Congress has plenary authority to dispose of federal property as it sees fit. This would include the authority to open these areas to leasing for energy development. Members of Alaska’s congressional delegation are considering introducing legislation to override Obama’s drilling ban. But Democrats could filibuster to block any such move, and Republicans – who will hold a 52-48 margin in the Senate – would need 60 votes to stop them.

On the other hand, Congress may be content to let President-elect Trump make the first move and see how it goes in court. If Trump attempts to reverse the withdrawal, environmental groups contesting his decision would face some of the same obstacles as an industry challenge to Obama’s action. It could be especially challenging for environmental groups to show that the claim is “ripe” for judicial review, at least until a post-Obama administration acts to actually open up these areas for leasing. That may not occur for some time, given the weak market for the oil in these regions.

In the meantime, this decision is a fitting capstone for a president who has done everything within his power to confront the existential threat of climate change and rationally move the nation and the world onto a safer and more sustainable path.

Patrick Parenteau, Professor of Law, Vermont Law School

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

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Animated map shows the most popular fast food restaurants in every state

China’s still getting hit with intense levels of air pollution. 

As of Wednesday, Beijing was under a "red alert" for smog — the highest of four levels — and a "yellow alert" for fog. Other areas, particularly in northern China were still under red alert as of Wednesday for both fog and smog.

This photo, by CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto, shows just how insane the smog has gotten, enveloping the capital so much that just the tops of the buildings can be seen.

The high pollution has been going on for a number of weeks, causing flight delays, and leading to traffic bans, as part of what Business Insider's Louise Liu called  "smog season" or "airpocalypse." Colder temperatures means more coal is burned to heat homes, which exacerbates China's air pollution problem. 

Coal, and things like soot and dust, contain a particulate matter called PM 2.5. The particulates are tiny, which makes it easy for them to get stuck in the lungs, leading to conditions like asthma and chronic lung disease. As of Wednesday, the concentration of PM 2.5 in Beijing was 186 µg/m3 — seven times higher than what's considered healthy. 

Here's a video showing the smog roll in on Sunday.

The smog is expected to lift by the end of the week.

SEE ALSO: Photos of China's 'Airpocalypse' — where industrial smog makes the country a living hell for half a billion people

DON'T MISS: Before-and-after photos of China's air show just how terrible its air pollution is

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Women are more attracted to men with these physical traits

What lies beneath the deep, dark expanse of the ocean is something that has fascinated sailors, fishermen, adventurers, poets and explorers for centuries.

How could residents of New England, for instance, have known that beneath the coastal waters lies a chain of extinct undersea volcanoes and canyons as deep as the Grand Canyon and mountains as high as any found east of the Rockies, harboring rare and endangered whales, sea turtles and fishes and coral as old as the Redwoods?

We have glimpsed this and other worlds beneath the waves thanks to advances in science and technology.

Ocean-going ships and submarines provide a window into the deep. In shallower and warmer seas, scuba-diving scientists have documented a similarly breathtaking, but previously unappreciated, diversity of life. We’ve discovered an unimaginable underwater world. Strange life forms. Unique species. Mysteries waiting to be solved.

But technology also allows us to access, disturb and eliminate these special places, putting them, and often ourselves, at risk. A single pass of a fishing trawler or mining gear can destroy centuries-old species and habitats, including nursery grounds for important fisheries.

Fortunately, governments are increasing the number of marine protected areas, or MPAs, in the ocean. Areas categorized as MPAs mean that something inside is protected, although often not much. However, two MPA subcategories are essential to achieving the goals of protecting ocean ecosystems, improving resilience in the face of multiple environmental changes and providing benefits for both nature and people.

“Fully protected areas” mean no extractive activities are allowed, while “strongly protected areas” mean no commercial and only minimal recreational extractive activities are allowed. The vast majority of MPAs do not fall into either of these two categories and are called “partially protected.” In addition to area-based protection, we also need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, and to sustainably manage fisheries.

As ocean scientists, we are encouraged that multiple governments are now taking action to protect special places in the ocean, but we believe science-driven action for ocean conservation must be greatly accelerated.

Global trend in MPAs

President Obama has taken a leadership role in ocean protection by increasing more than four-fold the amount of “strongly protected” ocean area under U.S. jurisdiction (from 5 percent to over 23 percent). He did this through the creation or expansion of three marine monuments, including the only marine monument in the U.S. Atlantic – the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, created in September 2016. Nearly the size of Connecticut, this new designation encompasses many of the unique canyons, seamounts and species in the deep New England waters.

A few weeks earlier, the president created the largest strongly protected area on the planet – on land or at sea – by expanding Papahānamokuākea Marine National Monument to 1.5 million square kilometers (580,000 square miles) – twice the size of Texas. The U.S. now far exceeds any other nation in the total area of the ocean it strongly protects.

The global picture is also changing rapidly. For decades, strongly protected areas of the ocean hovered at less than 0.1 percent. In the last decade, there has been a surge in protection, resulting in now 3.5 percent of the ocean in MPAs, 1.6 percent of which is strongly protected. The international community has also set a global target of 10 percent ocean protection in MPAs by 2020.

Until very recently, almost all of this protection was in the “Exclusive Economic Zones” (EEZs) of individual countries – the area over which each country has jurisdiction. In a globally significant development at the end of October 2016, the Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Living Marine Resources announced its unanimous decision to create the Ross Sea MPA. At 1.55 million square kilometers, this is now the largest protected area in the world, although the portion fully protected from any extractive activities (1.17 million square kilometers) is slightly smaller than Papahānamokuākea.

The creation of the Ross Sea MPA is significant for many reasons. It’s large (bigger than France, Germany and Spain combined); it’s the first large-scale protected area in the high seas (beyond the EEZs of individual countries); and it was created through the joint efforts of 25 governments. Once the MPA is implemented, the percent of the global ocean that is strongly protected will jump to 2.6 percent – an impressive increase from a decade ago but still far short of global targets.

This action parallels a new willingness to focus on conservation and sustainable use of the ocean at the United Nations. One of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that frame the international agenda for the next 15 years focuses squarely on the ocean. In addition, negotiations are underway at the U.N. about a possible treaty to protect the biodiversity of the high seas, which represent two-thirds of the global ocean.

Results of MPAs

The need for more and greater ocean protection is strongly supported by scientific information.

The benefits of establishing well-designed and enforced fully protected MPAs are well-documented. On average, fully protected areas can increase the total biomass of marine life by more than 400 percent. Fishes and invertebrates like clams and lobsters tend to grow larger and produce many more young. Partially protected areas can provide some benefits, but much less than those in strongly protected areas. The increases in number and size of individual organisms, and the number of species and offspring per individual inside fully protected areas, are substantial.

An equally important benefit of fully or strongly protected areas may be their ability to provide greater resistance to environmental changes and their ability to recover more rapidly from environmental changes. For example, when a low-oxygen event in the Gulf of California killed many abalones and threatened the local fishery, the abalones in the marine reserve were the first to recover and begin to replenish the region. When creating strongly protected monuments, President Obama explicitly linked conservation action with climate resilience.

No one knows the full impact of climate change on ocean ecosystems, but it is logical to assume that restoring to health or protecting healthy marine communities inside strongly to fully protected areas is likely to be one of the best bets for enhancing the resilience of ocean ecosystems for the future.

Impact on fisheries

Research also shows that abundant fish and invertebrates inside fully protected MPAs can spill over into fished areas outside. The Mediterranean region has pioneered the concept of the buffer zone, where a fully protected core area is surrounded by a sustainably fished, partially protected area.

This combination of MPAs and effective fisheries management has led to higher catches in the Mediterranean. But the benefits to fisheries from MPAs have also been seen in areas around the world for both small-scale and larger-scale fisheries outside their borders.

An exciting recent innovation includes the coupling of fully protected MPAs with a fishery management approach that gives fishermen or communities secure access to places to fish. The outcome is that small-scale fisheries are more likely to be sustainable and profitable.

Although restricting access to some areas at sea can shift fishing effort elsewhere, both experience and theory demonstrate that recoveries within strongly protected areas can more than offset losses. Nonetheless, greater effort to employ strategies that are known to effectively offset short-term costs is needed to achieve long-term benefits.

More to explore

Despite the significant progress made in protected areas the last decade, huge challenges remain to achieve the goal of a healthy ocean. Accelerating ocean protection will require continued political will and accountability, monitoring and enforcement of existing areas, and identification of new areas for protection. In parallel, fishery reforms, reduction of plastic, nutrient and chemical pollution, and significant reduction of greenhouse gases are all needed.

It is useful to remember that for most of its history, the ocean was a de facto fully protected area, simply because humans could not access it. It is only in the last half-century that most of the ocean has become accessible to extractive activities. Industrial-scale fishing, for example, is now global, leaving only small fractions of the ocean free from extractive activity.

The ocean supports the well-being of 870 million people who depend directly on the ocean for food and livelihoods. Effective fishery management is urgently needed but must be complemented with parallel efforts to protect more area from all extractive activities.

Suggesting that fixing fishery management alone will suffice assumes that the ocean is valued only for its fisheries. It denies the equally valid perspective that life in the ocean is valued in and of itself, apart from any utilitarian value it has for humans. Moreover, having some nonfished areas can provide insurance against accidental mismanagement or environmental changes. And nonfished areas provide useful controls to evaluate impacts of fishing.

Especially in times of uncertainty, a portfolio of approaches makes good common sense. We should strive to ensure that enough of what lies beneath is protected and preserved for future generations to discover, use and sustain.

Kirsten Grorud-Colvert, Assistant Professor, Oregon State University and Jane Lubchenco, Distinguished University Professor and Adviser in Marine Studies, Oregon State University

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

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How much money you need to save each day to become a millionaire by age 65

A chemical plant in India is the first in the world to run a new system for capturing carbon emissions and converting them into baking soda.

The Tuticorin Alkali Chemicals plant, in the industrial port city of Tuticorin, is expecting to convert some 60,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually into baking soda and other chemicals – and the scientists behind the process say the technique could be used to ultimately capture and transform up to 10 percent of global emissions from coal.

While carbon capture technology is not a new thing, what's remarkable about the Tuticorin installation is that it's running without subsidies from the government – suggesting the researchers have developed a profitable, practical system that could have the commercial potential to expand to other plants and industries.

"I am a businessman. I never thought about saving the planet," the managing director of the plant, Ramachadran Gopalan, told the BBC.

"I needed a reliable stream of CO2, and this was the best way of getting it."

The inventors of the new technique, London-based Carbon Clean Solutions, developed the system in the UK after receiving finance from a British entrepreneur support scheme. Their process uses a patented chemical to filter out CO2 molecules.

In the Tuticorin setup, the plant runs a coal-fired burner to make steam that powers its various chemical-manufacturing processes. A mist containing Carbon Clean's chemical separates the CO2 emissions in the burner's chimney, which are then fed into a mixing chamber with salt and ammonia.

The end product can then be used to produce baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) or a range of other compounds, for use in things such as glass manufacture, detergents, disinfectants, and sweeteners.

The overall idea of separating CO2 molecules from flue gas may not be new, but the team behind the system say that their filtering chemical is more efficient than the amine compounds that scientists have previously used, and requires less energy to run.

According to CEO Aniruddha Sharma, the company's approach is to think realistically, partnering with modest, low-risk enterprises as it builds itself up – and he says the same strategy should be implemented by the carbon capture industry as a whole.

"So far the ideas for carbon capture have mostly looked at big projects, and the risk is so high they are very expensive to finance," Sharma told Roger Harrabin at The Guardian.

"We want to set up small-scale plants that de-risk the technology by making it a completely normal commercial option."

The other compelling aspect of the system is that it actually does something positive with the carbon– making new chemicals and products – rather than simply storing it somewhere in a useless, dormant state (such as burying it underground).

That distinction is the difference between carbon capture and storage (CCS) and what's called carbon capture and utilisation (CCU).

And given the expense involved with building carbon capture systems, the ability to on-sell a byproduct could be incredibly important in making this technology financially viable in the bigger picture.

"We have to do everything we can to reduce the harmful effects of burning fossil fuels," Lord Ronald Oxburgh, the head of the UK government's carbon capture advisory group, told the BBC, "and it is great news that more ways are being found of turning at least some of the CO2 into useful products."

SEE ALSO: Why you shouldn't use Q-Tips to clean out earwax — and what you should do instead

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The best way to clear out a ton of space on your iPhone superfast

Although no one knows the exact amount of carbon that China emits each year, it's a well-known fact that the country has some of the most polluted air in the world. This Wednesday, Beijing went under a "red alert" for smog — the highest of four tiers — and a "yellow alert" for fog. 

In December, pollution so bad that some called it the "airpocalypse" caused a halt of everyday life in Beijing. Cars couldn't be driven, planes were grounded, and schools had to be temporarily closed.  

But Beijing isn't the only city affected. The cold winter months often cause air pollution levels to rise throughout much of China, as more homes are burning coal for heat.

Below, see 29 photos that show China among the smog.

Jack Sommer and Cyrus Engineer contributed reporting to a previous version of this article.

SEE ALSO: 20 photos that show the many ways humans are destroying the Earth

DON'T MISS: 23 shocking photos that show just how crowded China has become

An aerial photo taken during a polluted day in Shenyang, Liaoning province.

Two people ride during heavy smog in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province.

A tree sits between two buildings that tower through the thick smog in Jinan, Shandong province.

A warm, freshwater mass rises and moves north across the Atlantic Ocean.

It's headed toward the Arctic. There, frigid winds will scrape heat and liquid from its surface and it will sink, colder, saltier, and denser to the ocean bottom — and begin a slow journey back toward the lower latitudes, sliding under more warm water headed north.

All that heat scraped from its surface reshapes the local climate. It enters the atmosphere of the North Atlantic, slow-cooking the weather of places like Iceland, Britain, and northern Europe. That's a big part of the reason those regions are, if not toasty, livable.

The cycle of fresher, warmer water moving north over southbound saltier, denser, colder water in the North Atlantic is called the AMOC (or Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation). It's part of a complex, three-dimensional global system, driven by differences in salinity, density, and temperature, that circulates heat and matter through the world's deep oceans.

It's also changing. In a trend dating back to 2004, the AMOC has declined to about two-thirds of its former strength, which may have lead to some harsh winters in the UK and western Europe. A few scientists have even raised the spectre of a total AMOC collapse — a paradoxical warming scenario that would lead to far-harsher winters and expanding ice sheets in the North Atlantic. It would be a paradoxical, but not impossible, consequence of a warming climate.

If all that sounds familiar, there's a good chance you remember it from the bizarre 2004 disaster flick, "The Day After Tomorrow." I confess I haven't seen it recently, but here's my recap from memory of that one time I saw it in middle school: A brave scientist warns his colleagues that the AMOC will collapse over several years. But they're all like, "Nah!" Then it collapses all of a sudden. This is very bad! Now there are three giant ice hurricanes and everyone has to run away to Mexico, but also maybe the New York Public Library? At the end, the Vice President, who bears a close resemblance to Dick Cheney, apologizes.

That movie was, of course, not very scientific. And in the years since, it's become a kind of meme for bashing actual climate scientists. But new research suggests that the kernel of an idea at its center — that climate change could drive a total AMOC collapse — might be a more significant threat than anyone realizes.

In a paper published Wednesday in Science Advances, Yale geophysicist Wei Liu and his coauthors demonstrate what they say is a significant bias in existing climate models toward AMOC stability, and show how increased heat and CO2 in the atmosphere could directly lead to AMOC collapse.

"Climate models overstabilize the AMOC," Liu told Business Insider. "The models show it very stable. Even under global warming they have only moderate weakening."

But his work, he said, based on recent real-world observations, show that the AMOC could transition from one equilibrium — stable — to another — collapsed in fairly short span of time, geologically speaking.

"In this scenario, the cooling in the north Atlantic is so strong that it overcomes the warming [in that region], leading to a net cooling in the north Atlantic."

The result? Even as the rest of the world heats up, parts of Europe could see significant annual cooling over a period of several hundred years.

Liu cautions that this finding is still based on a single model. Rather than work from a steady increase in CO2 over a period of decades, he and his coauthors used a simple doubling of C02 all at once, after which it remains constant in the atmosphere.

That's a rougher model, but its results are significant enough to point the way toward future research. Liu said the next step for researchers is to run similar experiments across a diverse range of complex models. More model data will shine a brighter light on just how likely a total AMOC collapse is, what regions would be impacted, and how soon it could happen.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This NASA map shows the drastic disappearance of Arctic ice

A slab of ice nearly twice the size of Rhode Island is cracking off of an Antarctic glacier, and one scientist says rapid growth in the giant rift between it and the southern continent means its break-off is inevitable in a few months' time.

The giant ice block is part of the Larsen C ice shelf, which is the leading edge of one of the world's largest glacier systems.

It's called an ice shelf because it's floating on the ocean. It's normal for ice shelves to calve big icebergs, since snow accumulation gradually pushes old glacier ice out to sea.

But this piece of floating ice off of Antarctica's prominent peninsula is colossal — more than 1,100 feet (335 meters) thick and roughly 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) in area — and it's destabilizing quickly, likely accelerated by rapid human-caused global warming.

Satellite images suggest the crack began opening up around 2010 and lengthened more than 18 miles (29 kilometers) by 2015. By March 2016, it had grown nearly 14 miles longer.

In November, a team of scientists in NASA's Operation IceBridge survey flew over the rift to confirm it's at least 70 miles long, 300 feet wide, and one-third of a mile deep.

Now another group of researchers — this time at Swansea University in the UK — say the entire block of ice is hanging on by 12 miles of unfractured ice.

How long until it snaps off?

"If it doesn't go in the next few months, I'll be amazed,"Adrian Luckman, a glaciologist at Swansea University, said in a January 6 press release. "It's so close to calving that I think it's inevitable."

Here's how the crack has progressed:

Right now, researchers have limited satellite coverage of the area; NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, mission ended in 2009, and the next similar satellite, ICESat-2, isn't scheduled for launch until 2018. (President-elect Donald Trump's team has said it plans to strip NASA of funding for such earth science missions, which date back to the formation of the space agency 59 years ago.)

That's why estimates of the crack vary somewhat, forcing researchers to fly over the region for confirmation.

NASA's program for this, which is funded through 2019, is (poetically) called IceBridge.

"Rifting of this magnitude doesn't happen so often, [so] we don't often get a chance to study it up close,"Joe MacGregor, a glaciologist and geophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, previously told Business Insider in an email.

MacGregor was more hesitant in December with his estimate for when Larsen C's iceberg would calve.

"Maybe a month, maybe a year," he said. "The more we study these rifts, the better we'll be able to predict their evolution and influence upon the ice sheets and oceans at large."

But scientists agree the iceberg will calve at some point — and sooner rather than later.

When the block does break off, it will be the third-largest in recorded history. MacGregor said it'd "drift out into the Weddell Sea and then the Southern Ocean and be caught up in the broader clockwise ... ocean circulation and then melt, which will take at least several months, given its size."

Computer modeling by some researchers suggests the calving of Larsen C's big ice block mightdestabilize the entire ice shelf, which is about 19,300 square miles— roughly two times as large as Massachusetts — via a kind of ripple effect.

MacGregor downplayed this possibility, saying that other "computer models predict that the eventual calving of this iceberg won't affect the overall stability of the ice shelf."

Luckman backed this up.

"We would expect in the ensuing months to years further calving events, and maybe an eventual collapse, but it's a very hard thing to predict, and our models say it will be less stable," Luckman said in the release, adding that it won't "immediately collapse or anything like that."

However, a rapid ice shelf collapse would not be unprecedented.

In 2002, a large piece of the nearby Larsen B ice shelf snapped off, but within a month — and quite unexpectedly — an even larger swath of the 10,000-year-old feature behind it rapidly disintegrated. The rest of Larsen B may splinter off by 2020.

If there's any good news about the rift in Larsen C, it's that the ice shelf "is already floating in the ocean, so it has already displaced an equivalent water mass and minutely raised sea level as a result," MacGregor said. "Melting of the resulting iceberg won't change that contribution."

The bad news is that if Larsen C collapses, all the ice it holds back might add another 4 inches to sea levels over the years and decades — and that it's just one of many major ice systems around the world affected by climate change.

SEE ALSO: Earth has shockingly little water and ice compared to these ocean worlds

DON'T MISS: Scientists around the world are worried about a Trump team proposal to ax NASA's 58-year mission to study the Earth

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Scientists have discovered an 'unstoppable' trend in Antarctica

Pollution in the Arctic is so bad that chemicals are accumulating in polar bear mother's milk and getting passed onto bear cubs.

A new analysis of pollutants in the Arctic has found that polar bears are at a particularly high risk, compared to other animals like seals.

The study was published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in December and focused on a class of pollutants known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). POPs are toxic, hang around for a long time, and tend to build up in the bodies of humans and animals.

For the study, researchers collected data over a large sector of Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, which considered food chains, diets of animals, concentration of POPs and the surrounding environment. The scientists estimated concentrations of 19 chemicals in Arctic cod, ringed seals, and polar bears.

Their findings including some surprising take-aways. First, the risk of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) was two orders of magnitude higher than the safety threshold for the adult polar bears, which is a difference of about 100 times as much. But it was even higher — three orders of magnitude above, or 1,000 times — for the bear cubs.

Like baby humans, polar bear cubs rely on their mother's milk as their primary source of food, and they are looked after in this way for about 20 months. For comparison, seal pups drink their mother's milk for just a month— they feed on two and a half litres of it every day, and grow by as much as 30kg in two weeks. This means that polar bear cubs are exposed to accumulated chemicals from their mothers for a lot longer, and why the risk of POPs was therefore shown to be pretty low for seals. 

The study made it clear that since the 1980s, there had been a measurable decrease in the risk of POPs for bear cubs, mainly thanks to international control measures. But the composition of POPs changes constantly, and the recent addition of new POPs into the environment, particularly something called perfluorooctane sulfonate, which was used in fabric protector, increased since the 1940s until it was banned in the early 2000s.

"The results demonstrate that international control measures are effective at reducing the risk to ecosystems," said co-lead author Marco Vighi in a statement. "Nevertheless it is fundamental to continuously implement the control of new and emerging contaminants."

SEE ALSO: Scientists might be seriously underestimating the risk of a major freeze in Europe

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Scientists attached a camera to a polar bear and revealed this never-before-seen footage

From Oregon to Maine, the Flint, Mich., water crisis is leading to action in the nation’s schools.

Massachusetts expects to complete testing of about 930 schools by January and is making results available online.

Chicago Public Schools plans to test all its facilities and post the results online.

And New York State has gone furthest, passing a first-of-its-kind law that required schools to test by Oct. 31, report results quickly, and take corrective action when needed.

The action is an acknowledgment that the largely voluntary testing system present in most of the country isn’t sufficient.

But the actions taken are, in most cases, a bare minimum, experts say. Officials know that the problem of lead pipes extends far beyond Flint, so the need is still for parental and public pressure to push for more rigorous testing.

“If you haven’t heard bad news about lead in your schools’ water, you ought to check and see why,” says Marc Edwards, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech who helped expose the Flint crisis. “Is it because they have done good testing and they’ve really shown there’s no problem, or have they done deceptive testing … or have they done nothing?”

In 2006, about half of states were making no efforts to detect lead in school drinking water, and only a handful had a comprehensive program, the Government Accountability Office reported. It’s difficult to assess how much school testing and transparency have improved since Flint, but news reports offer examples of actions taken by several states and school districts:

• New York is the only state to pass a law requiring school water testing, though others have mandated it through health departments. The state Department of Health plans to post the results of the new round of testing online soon, according to a spokesperson. The Buffalo News recently reported that some districts in upstate New York had made the information readily available on their websites, while others were lagging.
• The Oregon Health Authority recently posted an interactive map, searchable by school name, with detailed information about schools that have tested their water. The state Department of Education requires schools to create a plan to test drinking water for lead.
• New Jersey issued state regulations in July giving schools one year to test their water for lead, and set aside $10 million for reimbursing the costs.
• Massachusetts set aside nearly $3 million for testing. A Boston Globe analysis found that of 300 schools tested, about half had at least one source of water with a problematic lead level.

Testing faucets can be a hit-and-miss proposition, even if done regularly, which underlines the importance of constant vigilance. As pipes or solder corrode, particles of lead can show up even at taps that previously tested clean, Dr. Edwards says. In one kindergarten classroom, for instance, about 10 samples showed no problems, but in two other samples taken from the same tap, the amount of lead was “over hazardous waste levels.”

In June, the American Academy of Pediatrics urged that water from school fountains not be allowed to contain lead concentrations above 1 part per billion. New York’s threshold is 15 parts per billion.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D) of Illinois has advocated for a federal standard, but it is doubtful she has enough congressional support. The most cost-effective solution might be to put filters on school taps designated for drinking and cooking – so long as they are certified and maintained, Edwards suggests.

The need is widespread, especially in poorer areas. Districts should spend about $145 billion a year to keep up with a range of health and safety standards, according to the 2016 State of Our Schools report. Currently, they spend about $99 billion.

But that spending is much higher in wealthier districts. From 1995 to 2004, schools in high-wealth ZIP codes spent at least triple what those in the lowest-wealth ZIP codes spent, the study found.

And across the board, state and local officials often only act when pushed.

In Portland, Ore., last spring, the school board requested an investigation by a law firm after elevated lead levels had been found at a school but not been revealed to parents right away. The report noted a lack of consistent procedures for the past 15 years, saying that other than the regular changing of some water filters, most actions were taken only in response to promptings by parents.

In Baltimore, repeated problems with lead in water also came to light through the persistence of parents, and in 2007 the district opted to supply bottled water for drinking rather than continue the cycle of testing and remediation. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A Harvard psychologist reveals the best way to fake it till you make it

In December 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) denied an easement that would have permitted the company Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) to complete one of the final segments of the 1,100-mile Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which seeks to connect the oil fields of North Dakota with terminals and refineries in Illinois.

The denial of ACE’s easement is undoubtedly a victory for the Standing Rock Sioux.

The tribe and its allies in the #NoDAPL movement opposed the pipeline over risks to water quality, the destruction of cultural heritage and the injustice of, once again, having to make sacrifices for the economic gains of others. David Archambault II, chair of the tribe, thanked those who had been gathering for months at the construction site, saying their “purpose had been served,” and that they may leave now.

But as we start a new year, many people are convinced that the need for resistance has not ended even after the tribe’s monumental victory. The Sacred Stone camp, a Spirit Camp dedicated to stopping the pipeline, published the headline “DAPL Easement Suspended, but the Fight’s not Over.”

As an indigenous scholar and activist, I agree that the water protectors’ underlying causes in this high-profile resistance have not been addressed – even if ETP truly halts all construction. Here are five developments people should consider as the incoming Trump administration takes power.

1. Tribal consultation requirements need to be reformed.

In its December memo, the ACE said it did not violate its duty to consult tribes in advance. Moreover, in ruling against the tribe, which had sought an injunction to halt construction, district judge James Boasberg documented the many efforts ACE made to reach out to the tribe as well as efforts of the pipeline builders to avoid damaging places of cultural and historical significance.

Yet nonetheless, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s territory was targeted for the pipeline instead of an area closer to Bismarck, North Dakota, which speaks to the need for reform of tribal consultation policies.

In my personal review and interpretation of ACE’s specific tribal consultation policy and the related Executive Order 13175, I believe agencies can fulfill the duty to consult with tribes without really giving them a fair opportunity for free, prior and informed consent. Some scholars argue that Section 106 policy of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires impacts on cultural heritage to be considered, is not designed to fairly consider tribes’ interests.

Finally, when I reviewed Judge Boasberg’s opinion, what stands out to me are the multiple times when the tribe expressed objections and concerns to ACE and also ETP. Nevertheless, the agency and business interests kept pushing on. This is despite what should have been widely known about the significance of a 1868 treaty area for the tribe and its involvement in a 2012 resolution against future pipelines.

Some critics of the NoDAPL movement, including a North Dakota congressional representative, claim that opposing the pipeline offends the “rule of law.” Yet, for me, this criticism is unclear.

Morally speaking, I believe current tribal consultation policies lack strong enough support for the right to free, prior and informed consent and fail to protect sufficiently religious freedom and cultural integrity. Legally speaking, the U.S. has a long way to make up for a range of unlawful actions, from breaking treaties to swindling indigenous trust assets. In my view, basic respect for the Standing Rock’s treaty rights over the years would have made the current situation unlikely. Such respect would have also, speaking more speculatively, put many tribes in stronger positions, both economically and in terms of government capacity, to negotiate and track the actions of powerful corporations and U.S. agencies.

The ACE did issue a statement in November acknowledging historic “dispossessions of lands” as a factor being weighed, yet it is unclear whether this view will ultimately be used to build improvements into current tribal consultation policies.

2. Tribes everywhere are pressured by extractive industries.

Pipelines, mining, drilling, refining and other extractive and industrial projects continue to try to enter tribal lands and waters around the country.

In the Pacific Northwest, the Lummi tribe recently worked to block plans for a coal-export port that posed risks to their treaty-protected lands. In the Great Lakes, the Menominee Nation hosted a Sacred Water Walk to protect cultural sites and environmental quality from the “Back Forty” sulfide mine. In the Southwest, the Navajo Nation is suing EPA over the Gold King mine’s spilling of contaminated water, including lead and arsenic, into the Animas River. And I could go on to discuss countlessmorecases.

For almost every tribe, this is not their first time dealing with extractive industries and hydropower projects.

The Navajo Nation was devastated by uranium mining in the middle part of the 20th century and still deals with uranium cleanup today. Historic mining and hydroelectric development in Washington and Oregon affected treaty protected habitats of fish, plants and animals for the Lummi and many other tribes, which are still dealing with the ecological impacts today.

Of course, the Standing Rock tribe itself endured losses of valuable lands due to a range of historical factors involving extraction and hydropower including U.S. support of gold prospecting and the construction of the Lake Oahe Dam.

3. The Trump administration is possibly exploring the privatization of some tribal lands.

As the Trump administration comes into power, some tribes recall comments Trump himself made years ago in relation to gaming which demonstrated both disrespect and ignorance.

Now recent stories suggest that the Trump administration – Trump has recently sold his stake in ETP – would seek to explore policies that make it easier for extraction to occur on tribal lands.

Reportedly, some of the options on the table involve privatization of tribal lands, echoing historic allotment and termination policies that sounded good from a U.S. capitalist mindset but that ultimately devastated many Native American economies through weakening tribal governmental sovereignty against the economic interests of U.S. settlers.

4. It is unclear the extent to which the #NoDAPL movement educated anyone.

The failure of U.S. public and private education and many media outlets to consistently cover indigenous histories and current issues means that potential allies of indigenous peoples do not have much background in relevant areas – everything from treaty rights to indigenous activism, to federal Indian law (and its limits), to indigenous religious and cultural values.

While many allies are able to send money or show up for what they understand as “direct action,” they do not know how they can advocate for indigenous peoples beyond the rare highly public issues. They do not, for example, seek to regularly pressure their political leaders to reform the U.S. government’s duty to consult with tribes before construction projects. Or they are not aware of indigenous peoples facing similar struggles to that of Standing Rock who are living right next door to them.

5. US colonialism is not over.

All these points I have just made are really just by-products of one key point: DAPL is not over because many people in the U.S. assume that it is acceptable to keep pushing tribes to make sacrifices for U.S.-endorsed business interests, whether these interests profit individuals or are portrayed as being in the national interest.

From an indigenous perspective, it is deeply frustrating to witness, generation after generation, a U.S. parasitism that continues to build the U.S. economy through infringing more and more on indigenous lands and waters, as we see from many ongoing energy and water projects detailed above.

Why is the underlying assumption always that indigenous peoples must sacrifice their cultures, economies and political self-determination for the sake of the aspirations of businesses and U.S. national interests? This question poses a significant problem for the ethics of DAPL even if it were absolutely certain that the pipeline is far safer, in many respects, than oil transport by rail.

It remains possible that the two-year-long Environmental Impact Assessment will not ultimately respect the involvement of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. Or perhaps ETP will just keep building the pipeline and deal with the financial or legal consequences.

Regardless, tribes everywhere, this year and into the future, will face broken treaty rights, inadequate consultation, uphill battles against rich companies and federal and state agencies whose goals and procedures ultimately do not take to heart indigenous values, histories and sovereignty.

Kyle Powys Whyte, Timnick Chair in the Humanities / Associate Professor of Philosophy and Community Sustainability, Michigan State University

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

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Airplane designers have a brilliant idea for the middle seat

Join the conversation about this story »

If citizens have heard anything about the upheaval in the U.S. coal industry, it is probably the insistence that President Obama and the EPA have waged a “war on coal.” This phrase is written into President-elect Donald Trump’s energy platform, which promises to “end the war on coal.”

The often repeated slogan indexes a set of attitudes and assumptions about government regulation and environmentalism. The foremost if the belief that the (liberal, overreaching) federal government has it out for coal and the American way of life that coal supports.

If only the coal industry could get government and its regulations off their backs, the argument goes, thousands of jobs and our economy would come roaring back, a pledge Trump made during his campaign while touring Appalachian coal country. After the election, Trump doubled down on this rhetoric, saying that, “On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy – including shale energy and clean coal – creating many millions of high-paying jobs.”

Yet mostanalysts agree that the major front in the “war on coal” lies within the market itself. Natural gas production, experiencing explosive growth thanks to the rapid expansion of hydrofracturing, has dealt the biggest blow to King Coal and explains coal’s loss of market share for power generation.

Still, the “war on coal” rhetoric persists. But why? We investigated the public communication strategies used by the industry and found some consistent patterns.

Looking for a lifeline

From the coal industry’s perspective, the war metaphor does capture the situation of an industry under siege and under pressure:

• Coal production in 2016 fell to historic lows, with a 26 percent drop just in the first half of the year.

• Six publicly listed U.S. coal companies, including the iconic Peabody Energy, have declared bankruptcy since April 2015.

• Advocacy group Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign claims 243 coal plants have been shut down and continues to target the remaining 280.

• Although Trump has vowed to scrap the Clean Power Plan, the reguations would, if implemented, have outsize effect on coal-fired electricity generation.

Casting the coal industry as one under siege provides important cover for industry advocates. This framing allows it to shore up government support for big technological projects such as “clean coal” pilot plants and coal export terminals, while at the same time, it justifies the call to get “big government” out of the way by fighting environmental regulations.

Importantly, the coal industry’s rhetorical playbook isn’t limited to so-called “climate change denial”– although there is clear evidence that the industry has financed several organizations that question the fundamentals of climate science.

Instead, industry campaigns reveal several other rhetorical moves that Big Coal uses to garner support from the public and, perhaps more importantly, from government agencies that could provide a lifeline to an industry in upheaval. We outline five of their most powerful moves below.

1. Industrial apocalpytic

Remember how, following the global financial collapse in the late 2000s, big banks claimed they needed government bailouts because they were “too big to fail”? Big coal makes a similar move when it claims the “war on coal” will lead to an economy in ruins and the collapse of the American way of life.

A quintessential example is “If I Wanted America to Fail,” a five-minute video produced by Free Market America, an organization whose mission is “to defend economic freedom against environmental extremism.” The video circulated on websites of coal-friendly groups during the 2012 presidential primaries, and it equates environmental regulations on energy production with America’s economic failure.

Industrial apocalyptic arguments close off critique, shore up status quo approaches to energy policy and build the specter of environmental regulation as catastrophic.

2. Corporate ventriloquism

Coal also enlists a wide array of voices to speak in ways that advance its interests. We call this corporate ventriloquism. It creates the appearance of broad public support for coal and conflates support for “America” with support for coal through the use of voices ranging from local “grassroots” organizations to national campaigns. Campaigns and organizations such as Friends of Coal, a West Virginia-based advocacy group, and America’s Power, a coal industry trade association, emphasize the monolithic support the coal industry claims to enjoy among everyday Americans.

Corporate ventriloquism also allows the industry to position itself as a grassroots citizen voice, blurring the line between corporation and citizen to seize a rhetorical advantage. In conjunction with conservative foundations, think tanks and sympathetic public officials, the coal industry can use its financial resources to circulate a neoliberal, industry-friendly message and make it appear to be a popular, “common sense” position.

3. The technological shell game

The industry also plays what we call a technological shell game. It misdirects audiences to prior pollution abatement efforts, such as reducing dust and acid rain, to suggest the industry is proactively addressing carbon emissions. But this story conveniently ignores both the problems with carbon capture and sequestration technologies, as well as the history of government regulation and financing needed to make environmental and public health gains.

For example, according to the industry-supported group America’s Power website, the coal industry is “ensuring [America’s] future is cleaner than ever before.” The website then points to two “clean coal” plants – the Kemper plant in Mississippi and John W. Turk plant in Arkansas – as technological solutions to the problem of climate change. Yet Kemper has been beset by cost overruns and engineering challenges. Turk’s technologies make it somewhat more efficient than other coal-fired power plants in the U.S. – leading to slightly lower emission levels – but even these levels are well above the emission rates articulated in the now-threatened Clean Power Plan.

When the industry consistently characterizes these two plants as technological fixes to coal’s massive carbon emissions, both of which are heavily subsidized by federal investment and which perform unevenly at best, this is an example of the technological shell game.

4. The hypocrite’s trap

The hypocrite’s trap is a move that gets used with startling frequency against environmental activists, and especially against students advocating for fossil fuel divestment. It silences voices critical of fossil fuel use by pointing to the activist’s own fossil fuel consumption.

We can see this at a celebrity scale when pundits snark about actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s transcontinental flights as a climate activist or former Vice President Al Gore’s electricity bills. At a smaller scale, it’s used to make activists seem naïve about their own complicity in an energy system built on fossil fuels. If you can’t make it without coal and oil, the argument goes, then you can’t say we should divest from those industries.

The counterargument, of course, is that we can critique conditions as they are, even if we also benefit from them. But the hypocrite’s trap is effective because it builds on common conceptions of environmental activists as idealistic dreamers, fossil fuel advocates as hard-eyed realists, and a system that can’t be changed, so why try? The trap turns activists back toward their market role as consumers and silences political dissent.

5. Energy poverty/energy utopia

Given the downturn in domestic markets and environmentalists’ success in branding coal as a “dirty” source of energy, the industry and its allies have attempted to build a “moral” case for expanding the use of coal: its ability to create a utopic future for the world’s poor.

Peabody fashions an entire campaign around this strategy, with images and videos that consistently positions coal as a solution to energy poverty and the key to providing a Westernized version of the good life. Doubling down on the rhetoric of clean coal and the hypocrite’s trap, Peabody’s campaign deflects complicated questions about energy justice and climate change that will be necessary to address in an era of energy transition.

We don’t see these moves as limited to the coal industry – once you understand them, you’ll see them all over the place. They’re used by big industries (oil, gas, nuclear, agribusiness) that see themselves “under pressure” thanks to declining markets or proposed environmental regulations. By naming these rhetorical tools, both academics and activists will be able to do the important work of responding effectively to industry’s standard moves.

Steve Schwarze, Professor, The University of Montana; Jennifer Peeples, Professor of Communication Studies, Utah State University; Jen Schneider, Associate Professor in Public Policy and Administration, Boise State University, and Pete Bsumek, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, James Madison University

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

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Airplane designers have a brilliant idea for the middle seat

Deborah Butler spent three years apologizing for her lawn.

After buying a corner property in Studio City with her husband over three years ago, they inherited a ragged front lawn they didn’t particularly want or need – not with a park across the street, and especially not amidst a five-going-on-six year drought.

Now the former eyesore is curved and contoured around two water-absorbing dips called "bioswales," and covered in green and silvery plants and trees that sprout from a thick layer of mulch.

Ms. Butler doesn’t anticipate the drought-tolerant yard transforming again any time soon.

“I’ve had more and more people say, ‘Oh, you live in the beautiful house,’ ” she says. “It’s been a joy.”

Like thousands of homeowners around the Los Angeles area, Butler wanted a front yard that could be both beautiful and practical in an era of water scarcity. And despite a recent revival of precipitation in the state – punctuated over the weekend by the storm-related toppling of an iconic drive-through Sequoia tree – it’s a trend that shows no signs of going away.

The rains are replenishing groundwater supplies even as they also bring damaging mudslides (closing two state highways as of Monday). But the state's struggles with water supply show no sign of ending. California is moving forward with long-term plans to make aggressive conservation a way of life, and one of the most visible indicators of this wider shift is how a new generation of Angelenos is seeking to recast, both physically and socially, their relationship with water.

After decades of quenching the thirst of its growing population with snow-fed river water piped from hundreds of miles away – while flushing away most of the water that fell onto the city – water managers in the L.A. area are seeking to adapt to a changing climate by becoming less reliant on importing water.

This effort will require a new kind of localized, distributed water infrastructure that can capture, clean, and store as much water as possible.

Enter the new American front yard.

Butler says that for her garden project, a year ago, “the primary reason wasn’t to be ecologically-minded, but it really makes so much sense.” She adds: "It’s the middle of a drought, why would you put in something that must be watered?”

100 years of water imports

A wet winter last year eased the state’s drought to the point that Governor Jerry Brown relaxedmandatory water restrictions, and more relief could follow the potentially once-in-a-decade storm pummeling the state in recent days. The drought is not over, however, and while sustainable gardens alone won’t solve L.A.’s water crisis, the iconic image of the American front lawn is viewed by many as an extravagance Southern California can’t afford.

“We outgrew our water supply a long time ago,” says Hadley Arnold, founding co-director of the Arid Lands Institute (ALI).

In her cramped office in a bustling green technology incubator in downtown Los Angeles last summer, she stood by a large topographical map of the western U.S. and described the region’s controversial water history.

At the start of the 20th century drought hit Los Angeles. With local water sources strained, famed engineer William Mulholland, built the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a gravity-fed system that would draw water from the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains. By the 1920s population growth had the city searching for another water source. Mr. Mulholland and the newly-formed Metropolitan Water District augmented that supply by damming the Colorado River and pumping water west to the city across hundreds of miles of deserts and mountains. By the 1950s, that was no longer enough, so the city built yet another aqueduct, a 420-mile system of open canals and pipelines called the California Aqueduct to carry water from northern and central California to the south.

The city now gets about 90 percent of its water from these distant, snowpack-fed sources. The trouble: Researchers say snowpack is declining due to climate change, while drought periods are likely to get longer.

“Los Angeles depends on snow. That’s what we’ve depended on for 100 years,” says Ms. Arnold. “As that snow diminishes we’re going to have to conserve, we’re going to have to recycle, and we’re going to have to value what falls on us as rain.”

Toward 'a different water culture'

Water managers in the region are investing heavily in that last part (capturing and using as much stormwater as possible), because while snowpack is projected to decline in the state, precipitation in the L.A. area is projected to stay about the same – albeit falling in less frequent but more intense rainfall events, like the recent downpours that dropped a half-inch of rain per hour on Southern California.

“We are working very hard to increase our ability to use local water resources and decrease our reliance on an imported water supply,” says Marty Adams, director of water operations for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP).

It appears that Angelenos are trying to follow suit. After Gov. Brown relaxed the state’s water restrictions this past summer, the DWP and other local water agencies maintained their own water restrictions. The region did not backslide as as sharply as other parts of the state last summer, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis, and amid early signs that a wet winter this year could see another uptick in water consumption, Arnold believes that a conservation mindset is now engrained in the city.

“I think this horse has left the barn,” she says. “Those [backslides] will be sort of zig-zags on the graph, but it’s all going to trend towards a very different water culture.”

The DWP has been nudging private property owners in this direction. Since 2009, the agency’s Turf Replacement Program has provided over 24,000 rebates to replace turf with water-efficient landscaping, just a fraction of the roughly 1.5 million private properties in the city.

Arnold and the ALI have been focusing on mapping the residential water storage potential of the San Fernando Valley basin – a low-lying area in northern LA that absorbs much of the city’s groundwater – to help educate homeowners about how best to conserve the water that falls on their property.

“I think we’ve been able to rely on investments made decades ago by our predecessors, and we haven’t had to do anything that big for a while,” says Mr. Adams. “Now we’re wrestling with the fact that it’s our turn. It’s our turn to make investments in the future.”

Garden knowledge gap

There is still a long way to. To move the process along, the DWP has been holding workshops every few months to teach customers about sustainable landscaping, and those at a workshop last July believe that specific shift is gaining traction in the city.

“The neighborhood is going through a transformation, and I’m left behind,” says Sharon Spencer, a Faircrest Heights resident.

“More and more homeowners are converting over, and you start saying, ‘Hey, why not me?’” says Jim Christensen, a Mar Vista resident.

But the workshop also illustrated a fundamental problem with how the West, particularly southern California, has approached water constraints in recent years. Residents know what to get rid of – turf – they just don’t know what to replace it with. And not every resident can afford to do the same thing.

The result has been some growing pains. The turf removal rebates were so popular some agencies ran out of money for it, but in many cases grass was replaced with alternatives that have their own problems. Gravel or artificial turf don’t require watering but also don’t do well at absorbing rainfall.

Many of the rebates also weren’t cashed in. A report last year from the California Urban Water Conservation Council found that attrition rates for turf rebate programs in the region ranged from 25 to 45 percent, in part due to the cost, complexity, and time commitments of the conversions.

In other words, there is a knowledge gap, says Tom Skelton, an independent landscape contractor who ran the LADWP workshop in July.

“The awareness is there, but what’s lacking is the knowledge to do it, the resources to get it done,” he adds. “People are talking about it, but they’re not walking about it.”

Pamela Berstler – managing member of Green Gardens Group, a sustainable landscaping organization – pointed all this out as she drove her lime green Toyota Prius through Beverly Hills last July, a neighborhood that was publicly shamed in 2015 for not meeting state water conservation mandates.

“They do these one-note messages: ‘Turn off your sprinklers’; ‘Get rid of grass,’” she says. “A better message would be: ‘Make a garden.’ Don’t get rid of grass. Make a garden.”

And while sustainable gardens aren’t a one-step water fix, they do have multiple benefits, she adds. Besides retaining vast amounts of water to recharge underground aquifers, they can also sequester carbon that contributes to climate change, cool the environment, boost pollination, and prevent water pollution.

Much of the region’s water dependency issues could be solved by fundamentally changing what people think a California garden looks like, Ms. Berstler believes. 

“You’re looking at millions of acres,” she says, gesturing at the large properties and towering hedges of Beverly Hills. “If this were a sponge, all of this, everything, a giant sponge doing the job it’s supposed to do [in a watershed], it would make a huge difference.”

In addition to that knowledge gap, there are also financial challenges. Median annual income in the region can range from $72,000 in Santa Monica to $25,000 in Chinatown, and lower-income residents have trouble affording the upfront costs of turf removal to qualify for rebate programs. Butler, from Studio City, saved up over three years for her landscape conversion, eventually paying $45,000 for it.

“Right now we’re still in the $1,000-phone world,” says Berstler. Or to use another analogy, if sustainable gardens were electric cars, there isn’t much choice right now beyond a Tesla.

A resourcefulness resurgence

But people like Arnold see the opportunity, and the capability, to redefine Southern California water management for the better.

That will not be easy. Transforming yards has been riddled with setbacks and trial-and-error, and larger changes will be exponentially more difficult. Meanwhile, the broader 20th century mentality that water management is the responsibility of the government and not the individual is in need of reprogramming.

But the long-term prize is water independence and security in an era of climate unpredictability.

“The resurgence in what it means to manage local water, conserve local water, is actually a resurgence of [Western] resourcefulness itself,” says Arnold.

“I think it requires a different level of engagement from our citizens,” she adds, “and I think this is a city that is capable of that.”

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Wendy's is roasting people on Twitter, and it's hilarious

Oil and gas giant ExxonMobil stands to gain nearly $1 trillion from Trump administration policies, according to a new report from the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

The report, titled "How Exxon Won the 2016 Election," details how the energy and environmental policies of Trump's Cabinet picks could benefit Exxon, the eighth-largest company in the world and the largest of the world's six Big Oil companies.

The CEO of Exxon and Trump's pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, will be grilled in a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday about the potential conflicts of interests he faces as a result of his company's extensive global operations. The company produces oil and gas in 22 countries, and Tillerson owns company shares worth $180 million, according to the report.

Tillerson has promised to sever ties with Exxon if he is confirmed by the Senate, in exchange for a payout that matches the value of his shares. But he is also likely to face questions about his personal ties to Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, whom the US intelligence community said last week ordered an "influence campaign" aimed at diminishing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the presidential election.

Tillerson, whose relationship with the Kremlin dates back to the early 1990s, has struck several major deals with the Russian state-run corporation Rosneft and received the prestigious Order of Friendship award from Putin in 2013.

In 2014, Exxon was on the brink of signing a lucrative deal with Rosneft to drill for oil in the Russian Arctic when the US leveled sanctions against Russia for annexing Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine. The Obama administration sanctioned Russia again late last month for its meddling in the presidential election.

Tillerson's close relationship with Russia and Putin, however, has led to speculation that as secretary of state, he could push for sanctions on Russia to be lifted — allowing Exxon's Arctic agreement with Rosneft, reported to be worth $500 billion, to proceed.

Exxon, meanwhile, still has its eye on the deal. The head of the company's operations in Russia, Glenn Waller,said last April that the company will return to its joint project with Rosneft once sanctions against Moscow are lifted.

Exxon would also benefit from the likely reversal of the Obama administration's executive order requiring a presidential permit to construct cross-border pipelines. The construction of additional pipelines — supported byCanadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — would facilitate the mining and transportation of Canadian tar sands, which make up more than one-third of Exxon's global liquid reserves. The reserves are worth roughly $277 billion at current oil prices, the CAP report estimated.

Trump's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, has sued the agency multiple times to prevent rules that would curb air and water pollution from taking effect.

Pruitt has opposed the EPA's Clean Air and Clean Power acts, arguing that energy regulation should be left to individual states. Exxon, like any oil company, would likely benefit from the relaxation or elimination of anti-pollution laws that have often required companies to invest in research and technology to make their operations safer and more efficient.

Trump's pick to lead the Department of Energy (DOE), former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, has received more than $5 million in contributions from the oil and gas industry, the CAP report said, including $40,000 directly from Exxon. Perry said during a 2011 run for president that he wanted to eliminate the DOE — which, among many other things, regulates fracking and offshore drilling. 

Between Tillerson, Pruitt, and Perry, Trump's proposed Cabinet seems broadly committed to sustaining the fossil fuel industry, eliminating federally mandated environmental protections, and deprioritizing the development of renewable energy. Those policies, the CAP report suggested, will increase oil demand and drive up oil prices, which are "the single largest determining factor in Exxon’s profitability each year."

Exxon may yield influence over the Justice Department, too, which will be led by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions if he is confirmed by the Senate. As attorney general, Sessions would be able to put a definitive end to calls for Exxon to be investigated for allegedly knowing about the dangers of climate change as early as the 19 70s, but failing to disclose them to the public.

Under Tillerson, the company became more accepting of evolving climate change science. But such an investigation could end up setting the company back anywhere from $84 billion to $246 billion in settlement costs or fines.

In 2016, Sessions and four other Republican senators wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking her to “immediately cease” the investigation into Exxon, which they said confirmed that the government was trying "to silence debate on climate change."

It is unclear how much Exxon's lobbying influence would have been quelled by a Clinton administration, however. The Clinton Global Initiative has received between $1 million and $5 million from the oil company, according to its website. And as The Daily Beast noted in May, Ursula Burns, a member of the company’s board of directors, gave the Clinton campaign the maximum contribution of $5,400.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch Former CIA director James Woolsey explain why he won’t advise the Trump transition team anymore

As 2016 wound down and winter kicked into gear in the Northern Hemisphere, an ominous trend began in the Arctic: sea ice dipped to levels far below normal. 

Less of the northern ocean was covered in ice than scientists had ever seen in the satellite record.

The trend began in earnest back in November, when hot air in the far north began cooking the oceans, curbing the formation of ice. Growth sped up a bit in December, so the gap between what satellites saw and what's normal shrank. But the ice cap was still missing enough ice to cover 23 US states, a record-breaking total.

Now it's 2017. New year, same story. The Arctic sea ice is far behind where it should be, and behind anything scientists have ever seen in the Arctic.

So what does that mean? And how does it fit in to the larger story of melting happening all over the world?

Arctic sea ice is not the same as all global sea ice

The first important thing to understand is that Arctic sea ice is not the same thing as all global ice, global sea ice, or even all ice in the Arctic Circle.

Arctic sea ice sits on open water. And, like the ice cubes bobbing in your seltzer, when it melts, it doesn't change sea levels.

In that way, Arctic ice is unlike land-based ice sheets and glaciers in places like Greenland and Antarctica — when that ice tips off its rocky seat into the ocean, high tides all over the planet lap a little farther up the shoreline.

Arctic sea ice also melts and grows separately from Antarctic sea ice, the ring that surrounds the southern continent and helps lock in its vast stores of landlocked frozen water. (Though the Antarctic sea ice is also unusually low this southern hemispheric summer, with one Delaware-size chunk threatening to snap off entirely.)

Where the ocean-bound ice in the Antarctic has waxed and waned over periods of decades, the Arctic has experienced a steady decline. In that sense the record-breaking 2016-2017 Arctic winter cycle is less  shock than the disturbing continuance of an inexorable decline.

So Arctic sea ice decline doesn't raise sea levels, and it isn't directly linked to melts elsewhere in the world. So why does it matter?

Evidence of what's to come

The most straightforward reason is that it's a bellwether. Climate change transforms the polar environment faster than it does the rest of the planet, so a decline in the Arctic is evidence of what's to come elsewhere in the world.

More significantly though, the Arctic plays an important regulatory role in the global climate. All that white ice is like a big mirror, reflecting sunlight back out into space. It keeps additional heat from entering its environment, cooling itself and then shipping cool air and water down over the rest of the planet. Burn up the Arctic ice, and you effectively turn down the AC on the whole planet.

Then there's the local ecosystem — fish, whales, seals, and, yes, polar bears— that relies on a balanced environment at the poles to survive. It's not just an attractive subject for nature documentaries; that ecosystem feeds northern indigenous populations and plays a role in the global food supply.

And here's the last, important thing to consider: The Arctic is an ocean, though up until this point in human history it's been largely impassible on account of the massive block of ice sitting atop it. But as that ice recedes, and likely disappears in the near future (the first truly ice-free day is due any summer now), it opens up a new region of the planet to exploitation and conflict.

There's oil under the arctic ice, and plenty of extracting conglomerates ready to drill it. It's also a potential flashpoint for global conflict as players ranging from the US to Canada to Russia to China vie for their slice of unfrozen resources.

At this point, the question of Arctic sea ice collapse isn't really an if but a when. The rapid decline this year won't necessarily proceed in a straight line — next winter could have a bit more ice, or much less. But the long term trend is clear. So the second question is: Once all that ice is gone, what comes next?

SEE ALSO: A 1,000-foot-thick ice block about the size of Delaware is snapping off of Antarctica

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This startling animation shows how much Arctic sea ice has thinned in just 26 years

The INSIDER Summary 

• Not showering will do more than just make you smell. 
• It can cause illness from bad bacteria and make your skin breakout. 
• If you're traveling, take a power shower with baby wipes.

Unless you’re camping in the backcountry, you probably shower regularly. When on the road, where running water is scarce and habits are thrown for a loop, that bathing ritual could disappear.

It all sounds innocent enough, but as TwentyTwoWords explains, the results of skipping a proper shower for a few days are probably a lot more disturbing than you'd expect.

Bad bacteria can throw things off balance

Humans are covered in bacteria (about 1,000 types) and fungus (an additional 80 kinds). Most of these microbes are good for you, combating harmful germs and viruses. But soap can give the good guys a boost by battling bad bacteria for them. Without help, bacteria—from your commute, the gym, that horrid airplane tray table—can get out of control. They eventually can make their way from your hands and feet into your eyes, nose, and mouth, potentially causing illness.

You’ll harm your skin

We all know what happens when you don’t take off your makeup or wash your face: oils and dirt build up, causing breakouts and irritation (that’s why travelers should really consider stocking up on beauty wipes). Eczema—irritating dry, red, itchy patches of skin—can be exacerbated by skipping showers. And for people who decide showering is highly overrated and do away with the entire ritual, there’s the risk of dermatitis neglecta. According to Bustle, that’s a scientific way of describing a brown plaque formed by the long-term oil and sweat.

You will smell

Perhaps the most immediate (and obvious) consequence of skipping a few too many showers is the odor. But it’s not just sweat that makes you stink. The bacteria multiplying on your body produce gasses as they consume proteins and fatty acids. That is the funk (as many as 30 distinct smells) you really need to worry about.

The exception to all this is over-washing your hair, which can leave it dry and damaged. Consider swapping a head scrub with a fabulous dry shampoo. And for travelers on the road without access to a shower? Dermatologists recommend you still clean your armpits, groin, and face. These areas are particularly disposed to bacteria, so be sure to pack a great deodorant and power shower wipes.

SEE ALSO: 18 'healthy habits' you should give up in 2017

DON'T MISS: Almost all the things you do to avoid germs are useless

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How you're drying yourself off after a shower could affect your health

The rusty-patched bumblebee is now officially on the endangered species list. It's the first bee from the continental US to be be listed for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, after declining 90% since the early 1990s, The Guardian reported. 

Due to many factors such as climate change, increased use of pesticides, and habitat loss, these little bees now inhabit less than half of the states they used to — 13 instead of 28. Scientists believe bees are particularly vulnerable to a kind of pesticide called neonicotinoids, which are widely used to keep bugs off crops and gardens. 

Rusty-patched bumblebees were named after their reddish patches on their bellies. They join several other bee species already on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 

Two other bumblebee species from the US are on the Red List already as "critically endangered," but they have not been listed for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act: Franklin's bumblebee and Suckley's cuckoo bumblebee. There are 29 other species of bees on the list with differing statuses.

Bees of all kinds are crucial for pollinating wildflowers and crops, and arguably society would fail without them. 

Being listed under the Endangered Species Act means that there are restrictions on activities known to harm the species and requires the government to prepare plan for its recovery.

Why bees are important:

• Bees are pollinators, which means one third of the food we eat would not be available if it wasn't for bees.
• They are part of a food chain, and when that gets messed up, we face big problems.
• Things we harvest from bees such as honey, pollen, wax has so many uses from manufacturing to food to medicine.
• Pollination by bees is important to keep genes mixing in plant lines. Without this, plants would be more vulnerable to disease

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 6 'healthy' eating habits you are better off giving up

Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson refused to answer a question Wednesday about Exxon Mobil's alleged efforts to obscure the science of climate change.

Tillerson, who was chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobile for 10 years before stepping down on December 31, 2016, sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to answer questions about his views and his record.

On larger questions about climate change, a policy area where the state department can have considerable influence, Tillerson occasionally broke with the president-elect.

He stated that science is "very limited" in its ability to predict the future of climate, a claim scientists would strongly dispute, but acknowledged that "consequences could be serious enough that action should be taken."

The question Tillerson refused to answer concerned the role his former company allegedly played in spreading misinformation on the science of climate change. You can watch the entire exchange in the video above.

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia identified a series of reports from The New York Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, and InsideClimate News which suggest that Exxon's scientists had worked out the science of climate change decades ago but covered it up and spread misinformation so as not to harm their financial interests.

These reports collectively make up the substance of a scandal dubbed "Exxon knew."

Kaine asked Tillerson, who spent his entire 41-year career at Exxon, to confirm or deny those claims.

Tillerson twice said that because he's no longer with ExxonMobil, Kaine would have to ask the company.

Then Kaine said, "Let me ask you, do you lack the knowledge to answer my question or are you refusing to answer my question?"

"A little bit of both," Tillerson replied.

SEE ALSO: Trump's latest pick reveals his deadly ignorance of science and medicine

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Trump's pick for secretary of state has a personal relationship with Putin that's been called a 'matter of concern'