Drug Runoff→

Sam Machkovech, reporting for Ars Technica:

“Last week, the American Chemical Society released the results of a 2011 study that analyzed water contamination levels measured before, during, and after a massive music festival in Taiwan. In news that shocked roughly 27 parents, the 600,000-plus crowd of young people who stormed that year’s Spring Scream fest introduced considerable amounts of MDMA (ecstasy), caffeine, and antibiotics into nearby rivers, along with a range of over-the-counter, prescription, and illegal drugs.

What was less obvious, according to the study (which was coordinated by multiple medical research facilities in Taiwan), was the intense impact an isolated, highly attended event could have on a region’s ecology. “To our knowledge, up to now no study has comprehensively dealt with Emerging Contaminants (ECs) residues and demonstrated the impact of tourism—especially of a time limited mass event,” the report stated.”

Impacts of Emerging Contaminants on Surrounding Aquatic Environment from a Youth Festival

Always two there are, no more, no less: a human and a consequence.

Our Clothing Fibers are Getting into Our Lakes→

John Flesher, writing for the AP:

Star Tribune

“Scientists who have reported that the Great Lakes are awash in tiny bits of plastic are raising new alarms about a little-noticed form of the debris turning up in sampling nets: synthetic fibers from garments, cleaning cloths and other consumer products.

They are known as “microfibers” — exceedingly fine filaments made of petroleum-based materials such as polyester and nylon that are woven together into fabrics.

”When we launder our clothes, some of the little microfibers will break off and go down the drain to the wastewater treatment facility and end up in our bodies of water,” Sherri “Sam” Mason, a chemist with the State University of New York at Fredonia, said Friday.

The fibers are so minuscule that people typically don’t realize their favorite pullover fleece can shed thousands of them with every washing, as the journal Environmental Science & Technology reported in 2011...

Ominously, the fibers seem to be getting stuck inside fish in ways that other microplastics aren’t. Microbeads and fragments that fish eat typically pass through their bodies and are excreted. But fibers are becoming enmeshed in gastrointestinal tracts of some fish Mason and her students have examined. They also found fibers inside a double-crested cormorant, a fish-eating bird.

”The longer the plastic remains inside an organism, the greater the likelihood that it will impact the organism in some way,” Mason said, noting that many plastics are made with toxic chemicals or absorb them from polluted water. She is preparing a paper on how microplastics are affecting Great Lakes food chains, including fish that people eat.

There’s also a chance that fibers are in drinking water piped from the lakes, she said. Scientists reported last fall that two dozen varieties of German beer contained microplastics.”

Looking? Found something you have, eh? Our stuff keeps moving with negative consequences. Happens to everything we create sometimes this does.

Plastic, Plastic, Plastic→

Marcus Eriksen et al., research reporting in PLOS ONE:

“Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. Here we report an estimate of the total number of plastic particles and their weight floating in the world’s oceans from 24 expeditions (2007–2013) across all five sub-tropical gyres, costal Australia, Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea conducting surface net tows (N = 680) and visual survey transects of large plastic debris (N = 891). Using an oceanographic model of floating debris dispersal calibrated by our data, and correcting for wind-driven vertical mixing, we estimate a minimum of 5.25 trillion particles weighing 268,940 tons. When comparing between four size classes, two microplastic <4.75 mm and meso- and macroplastic >4.75 mm, a tremendous loss of microplastics is observed from the sea surface compared to expected rates of fragmentation, suggesting there are mechanisms at play that remove <4.75 mm plastic particles from the ocean surface.”

George Carlin

“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails. And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!

We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, ‘Why are we here?’

Plastic… asshole.”

— George Carlin

Great Lakes Polluted More By Land Activities and River Sources

Newswise:

US EPA

“A chemical oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island who measured organic pollutants in the air and water around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario has found that airborne emissions are no longer the primary cause of the lakes’ contamination. Instead, most of the lakes’ chemical pollutants come from sources on land or in rivers.

According to Rainer Lohmann, professor of chemical oceanography at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography, water quality in the Great Lakes has been slowly improving for many years. Historic studies of the lakes has usually pointed to atmospheric deposition as the primary cause of pollution in the lakes – from industrial emissions, motor vehicle exhausts and related sources. But as air pollution has decreased, he has found a shift in the source of Great Lakes chemical pollutants.

“Some contaminants still come from the atmosphere, but it is now mostly from wastewater plants, contaminated industrial sites and inputs from major rivers,” Lohmann said. “It’s quite a bad mix, but it’s getting better. And hopefully the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative will improve things even more.”

His research was reported today at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Lohmann and a team of volunteers deployed passive samplers – sheets of polyethelene that absorb pollutants – in the air and water at more than 30 sites around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario from 2011 to 2014. Following chemical analysis, he determined the quantity and source of a variety of pollutants in the lakes.

Legacy pollutants – those that have been banned for decades but still are detected at relatively high levels, like pesticides and PCBs – have declined considerably in the lakes, except near the outflows of the Detroit River and the Niagara River and, to a lesser extent, near Erie and Rochester. The waters around Cleveland, however, have lower concentrations of these legacy pollutants.

“Because these pollutants have been banned for such a long time, they’re no longer in the atmosphere in high concentrations and so aren’t entering the lakes that way,” said Lohmann. “But we still see evidence of them coming from Superfund sites and old industrial sites. And the lakes are now cleansing themselves by releasing these old pollutants back to the atmosphere.”
Of increasing concern, according to the URI professor, is a group of what he calls “emerging contaminants” that are increasingly being detected in water bodies around the world. These include personal care products, like synthetic musks, and industrial flame retardants, among others.

“Musks come from products like deodorants and shampoos, so they are primarily detected near where lots of people live, since they don’t get broken down in wastewater treatment facilities,” Lohmann said. “As the lakes are slowly being cleaned of old organic pollutants, they are replaced by all kinds of compounds of emerging concern.””

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) Are High Risk→

Mark Buchanan, reporting for Bloomberg:

OLIVIER MORIN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

“Like many people, I’ve long wondered about the safety of genetically modified organisms. They’ve become so ubiquitous that they account for about 80 percent of the corn grown in the U.S., yet we know almost nothing about what damage might ensue if the transplanted genes spread through global ecosystems.

How can so many smart people, including many scientists, be so sure that there’s nothing to worry about? Judging from a new paper by several researchers from New York University, including “The Black Swan” author Nassim Taleb, they can’t and shouldn’t.

The researchers focus on the risk of extremely unlikely but potentially devastating events. They argue that there’s no easy way to decide whether such risks are worth taking — it all depends on the nature of the worst-case scenario. Their approach helps explain why some technologies, such as nuclear energy, should give no cause for alarm, while innovations such as GMOs merit extreme caution.”

The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms)

Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view. Where low probability, high consequence, and systemic risk are, the precautionary principle must be applied. Impossible to see the future is. Risk is a function of both probability and consequence. Discount potential consequences will help you not.

A City is an Ecosystem→

Courtney Humphries, reporting for the Boston Globe:

“Cities may strike us as the opposite of “the environment”: As we pave streets and erect buildings, nature comes to feel like the thing you find somewhere else. But scientists working in the growing field of urban ecology argue that we’re missing something. A city’s soil collects pollutants, but it also supports a vast system of microscopic life. Water courses beneath roads and buildings, often in long-buried streams and constructed pipes. And city ecosystems aren’t static; they change over time as populations grow, infrastructure ages, and different political structures and social values shape them.

Seen this way, the city is a distinct form of “environment,” and an important one. Truly understanding how it works—and how it affects the millions of people who may live and work there—will mean studying the whole city as a living system, both its organisms and its pipes, roads, and landfills. As cities grow, maintaining clean air and water in a place like Boston may depend on how well urban areas support trees, plants, and microbes.”

Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view. Truly wonderful the ecology of a city is.”

The Status of the Rural Creative Class →

Richard Florida, reporting for CityLab:

USDA

“Two kinds of rural counties are experiencing growth, according to Wojan’s analysis. The first are nonmetro creative class counties close to major metros. The second are rural creative class counties that are home to colleges and universities, which are themselves knowledge economy hubs. This proximity effect is likely to become more important, as larger metros and knowledge economy hubs play an increasingly important role in driving economic growth across the nation. What may be happening: The Internet is enabling creative-class workers to stretch the boundaries of their commuting sheds and locate on the rural periphery of major metros, far enough to work from countrified and comfortable home offices, but close enough to come in for meetings.”

Through the Force, things you will see. Other places. The future…the past. Old friends long gone.

Green Algae Virus Reduces Human Cognitive Function→

Madeline Grant, writing for Newsweek:

Simon Andrews

“ATCV-1 typically infects a species of green algae found in lakes and rivers, and has not previously been known to infect humans. However, when Yolken’s team screened a group of 92 healthy volunteers who were taking part in a study on cognitive function, the virus was found to be present in 43.5% of them.

According to the study, those infected with the virus performed around 10% worse on tests analysing visual processing speeds. In one test, infected volunteers were slower to draw a line connecting a sequence of numbers randomly distributed on a page than their uninfected counterparts.”

The study, published by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: “Chlorovirus ATCV-1 is part of the human oropharyngeal virome and is associated with changes in cognitive functions in humans and mice.”

When you feel the force of a Green Algae virus, careful you must be.

Procrastination on Global Warming Means Coasts Will Continue Flooding→

Simon Buckle, writing for IFLScience:

Pete Markham, CC BY-SA

“In terms of the physical science, there are perhaps three key headline messages: human influence on the climate system is clear; warming of the climate system is unequivocal; limiting the risks from climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of GHG emissions.

Mitigating our use of fossil fuels lies right at the heart of an effective response to climate change. While a 2°C target remains technically feasible, achieving it will be extremely challenging. The IPCC’s mitigation report compared hundreds of energy modelling scenarios that strongly suggest that to achieve a 2°C target, global GHG emissions would need to be around 40-70% lower than 2010 levels by 2050 and near zero by 2100.”

Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)
AR5 provides a clear and up to date view of the current state of scientific knowledge relevant to climate change. It consists of three Working Group (WG) reports and a Synthesis Report (SYR). 

Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped. The risks of abrupt or irreversible changes increase as the magnitude of the warming increases.

If into the reasons for our procrastination you go, only pain will you find. Greed, denial, and delusion. Your science, save you it will not in a world of corruption and immediate profit.

Nature Makes Better Students→

Dave Levitan, Conservation This Week:

“It shouldn’t be surprising anymore that green spaces make us happier, healthier, and just generally better, but every time a hard finding on the topic pops up it seems incredible once again. Just being near nature is enough to bump up kids’ grades—though we’ll need more data to back this up, it probably can’t hurt to head out and look at some trees any chance you and your kids can get.”

We must unlearn what we have learned. Nature makes us great, factory schools not.

Gallons per 1000 miles versus Miles per Gallon→

DataGenetics:

“In the USA, 28% of all energy consumed is used for transportation. Of this transportation energy, 93% comes from petroleum. Cars and light trucks account for 59% of US transportation use, with the average fuel consumption of cars in the USA being around 23 mpg...

A car with a higher fuel efficiency (higher mpg), will always use less fuel than one with a lower fuel efficiency; you should always go for the most fuel efficient car you can, but what I am showing is that similar linear increases in mpg efficiency make different improvements in fuel savings.

The more fuel inefficient a vehicle is, the bigger the improvement in fuel savings will be for a small improvement in efficiency. Replacing a car with a fuel efficiency of 10 mpg with one with a fuel efficiency of 11 mpg will save more fuel than replacing a car with a rate of 30 mpg with one with a rate of 41 mpg!

If your family really needs a huge full-size monster of a vehicle, exchanging it with even a slightly more efficient equivalent monster (possibly a hybrid?) could make a substantial difference to your monthly fuel costs. Conversely, changing an already highly efficient car into a hyper efficient car is not going to make a big change in your monthly fuel bills, even with a, potentially, large step up in efficiency.”

This has been a very positive test for people seeking energy savings.

Road Salt and Urban Streams→

National Science Foundation:

Paul Mayer, US EPA

“Urban landscapes are more complex than they seem, but from coast to coast may work in surprisingly similar ways, says Kaushal.

”Urban ecosystems can change relatively quickly in response to human activities,” he says. “These changes can result in rapid losses of ecosystem functions, like flood protection and pollution filtration—or can result in progress toward ecological health and productivity. The difference depends on how they are managed.”

In an overview article, Kaushal, McDowell and Wollheim point out the factors that affect the evolution of urban ecosystems. For example, the streams, lakes and land surfaces that make up cities’ watersheds show consistent patterns of change over time.

Urban waters are becoming saltier, partly due to road salt used for de-icing, and partly because the salt people eat ends up in urban streams.”

You will find what you spread on the road and lawn. A cause and effect.

Carbon Dioxide Emissions Map→

View fullsize

“An international research team led by ASU scientists has developed a new approach to estimate CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels – one that provides crucial information to policymakers. Called the “Fossil Fuel Data Assimilation System,” or FFDAS, this new system was used to quantify 15 years of CO2 emissions, every hour, for the entire planet – down to the city scale. Until now, scientists have estimated greenhouse gas emissions at coarser scales or used less reliable techniques.

“With this system, we are taking a big step toward creating a global monitoring system for greenhouse gases, something that is needed as the world considers how best to meet greenhouse gas reductions,” said Kevin Robert Gurney, lead investigator and associate professor in ASU’s School of Life Sciences. “Now we can provide all countries with detailed information about their CO2 emissions and show that independent, scientific monitoring of greenhouse gases is possible.””

Already know you that which you need.

Trout Like Mice →

Matt Miller, writing for The Nature Conservancy:

“Rainbow trout and grayling actually key in on shrews every two to three years when the mammals may be at peak abundance, much as trout will focus on mayflies or caddis flies when these insects hatch. The small mammals could provide important nutritional value to fish. In peak years, about 25 percent of rainbow trout and grayling larger than 12 inches had eaten the small mammals.

Peter Lisi, lead author of the study, was working on other fish research while completing his doctorate under Daniel Schindler at the University of Washington (Lisi is now a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison). The researchers kept finding trout and grayling with shrews in their stomachs. They wondered how often this actually occurred.”

No! Try not. Eat, or eat not. There is no try.

Pavement Science→

Bill Lindeke, writing for MinnPost:

Barr Engineering

““There are two types of pavement, concrete and asphalt, and these industries compete with each other,” explained Lev Khazanovich, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. “Each is always trying to improve their product, and so asphalt and concrete in Minnesota are much better than what was built 30, 40 years ago.”

The difference between the two pavements comes down to cost and lifespan. Concrete is harder and more durable, but asphalt is cheaper. In fact, considered philosophically, these two technologies might even be diametrical opposites.

“Fundamentally, asphalt is a mechanical compaction of the paving products,” Steve Lund explained to me. “It’s a physical compaction and pressing, whereas on the concrete side it’s more of a chemical reaction and hardening of the paving product.”

Concrete is composed of water, aggregate and cement (with occasional other kinds of material, such as coal ash from coal power plant filters). The chemical reaction between cement and water causes it to harden. It can thus be molded, like plastic, into a seemingly infinite variety of shapes. Asphalt, on the other hand, is a form of petroleum mixed with aggregate (mostly sand and gravel), heated up and then pressed down to form our roads, bike paths and parking lots...

“There are several different types of pervious concrete,” explained Nathan Campeau, another engineer at Barr. “It has been around for quite a while now, 10 to 12 years, and installed in several locations around the state. And there’s a corollary in porous asphalt, special mixes that have a lot of void spaces in them. They’re basically like a sponge, and allow water to go from the surface down to the sub-grade below the pavement.”

While the benefits of new pervious pavements are clear, they also present technological challenges. First, it can be tricky to install them, and they require specific equipment and time-consuming construction processes. Many contractors struggle with pervious technologies when using them for the first time.

Second, cities like Shoreview have to carefully maintain their pervious pavements, so that sediment and grit does not clog up its “void spaces.” To do this, cities and property owners have to actually vacuum the sediment out of their pervious roads and parking lots.”

Use pervious surfaces, we must. They are our city rainwater management  hope.

Experts Review State's efforts on Wild Rice and Sulfates→

Stephanie Hemphill, reporting for MinnPost:

Eli Sagor, Flickr

“For two days, the experts picked through three years’ worth of data from Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s lab and field studies, dispensing both praise and criticism for the agency.

The reason for the MPCA studies: The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, representing mining and other industries, is challenging the state’s current limit of 10 milligrams per liter of sulfate in wild rice waters. Wastewater flowing from taconite mines and wastewater treatment plants boosts the level of sulfate in some rivers and lakes far higher than the limit, especially in northeastern Minnesota, and the Legislature has charged the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency with figuring out whether the standard needs to be changed.

MPCA’s efforts included laboratory experiments and field surveys, all of which the agency presented to the independent scientists for review, a standard practice in scientific endeavors....

Shannon Lotthammer, the MPCA staffer in charge of shepherding the process, said she was pleased with the guidance from the reviewers. Agency staffers knew the analysis was not complete, but wanted to get input from the independent scientists before they got further along in the process. A recommendation on whether the standard should be changed is expected by the end of the year.”

In a dark place we find ourselves related to mining, and a little more knowledge lights our way. Difficult to see the long-term consequences of our exploitation of minerals. Always in motion is the future.

Agricultural Runoff is Polluting the Lake→

Tom Henry, reporting for The Blade:

“Jeff Reutter, the Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State University Stone Laboratory director, frequently makes this point to groups hearing any one of the dozens of presentations he makes each year: More than two-thirds of today’s phosphorus in western Lake Erie comes from agricultural runoff. In the 1960s, more than two-thirds of it came from poor sewage treatment...

While people in Toledo may think of Lake Erie water quality as a sewage or factory issue, it is increasingly an agricultural land-use issue. The Maumee River watershed — the largest and the most important for western Lake Erie — is 73 percent agricultural land, Ms. Johnson said.

Mr. Reutter and other officials have been part of a state task force studying the phosphorus problem, which — to no one’s surprise — generally has been trending upward since 1995, when the first major bloom of toxic microcystis algae was detected in western Lake Erie since the 1970s.

One exception was during the drought of 2012. That, according to Mr. Reutter, only amplifies the strong correlation between agricultural runoff and western Lake Erie algae. In its latest report, the task force called for a 40 percent reduction in farm runoff.”

Powerful the agricultural interests have become, the dark side I sense in them.

The Health Benefit of Trees→

James Hamblin, writing for The Atlantic:

“It is becoming increasingly clear that trees help people live longer, healthier, happier lives—to the tune of $6.8 billion in averted health costs annually in the U.S., according to research published this week. And we’re only beginning to understand the nature and magnitude of their tree-benevolence.

In the current journal Environmental Pollution, forester Dave Nowak and colleagues found that trees prevented 850 human deaths and 670,000 cases of acute respiratory symptoms in 2010 alone. That was related to 17 tonnes of air pollution removed by trees and forests, which physically intercept particulate matter and absorb gasses through their leaves.

In terms of impacts on human health, trees in urban areas are substantially more important than rural trees due to their proximity to people,” the researchers wrote. “The greatest monetary values are derived in areas with the greatest population density.””

Mr. Moment - Flicker

 For our own health we need more wildness in the urban areas. You will know when you are calm, at peace.

Straits of Mackinac Oil Pipeline Failure Would be Disastrous→

Keith Matheny, reporting for Detroit Free Press: 

ThiloG: Flickr.com

“A rupture of 61-year-old, underwater oil pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac would be “the worst possible place” for a spill on the Great Lakes, with catastrophic results, according to a University of Michigan researcher studying potential impacts of a spill.

David Schwab, a research scientist at the U-M Water Center, retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he studied Great Lakes water flows and dynamics for more than 30 years. He’s the author of a new study done in collaboration with the National Wildlife Federation looking at different scenarios for potential oil spills in the Straits from Canadian oil transport giant Enbridge’s Line 5.

“I can’t think — in my experience — of another place on the Great Lakes where an oil spill would have as wide an area of impact, in as short of time, as at the Straits of Mackinac,” Schwab said.

Line 5 is a set of two oil pipelines that runs from Superior, Wis., through the Upper Peninsula, underwater through the Straits and then down through the Lower Peninsula before connecting to a hub in Sarnia, Ontario. The lines transport about 23 million gallons of oil and other petroleum products, such as natural gas liquids, through the Straits daily.”

Pain, suffering, death I feel would happen. Something terrible may happen. Terrible pain for this Black Swan.

Zebra & Quagga Mussels are Change Agents in Lake Erie→

“Creatures living on, near, or below the bottom of the lake—is “fundamentally changed from its past,” according to a paper published online in the current journal of the Journal of Great Lakes Research. Lyubov Burlakova, who works with the Great Lakes Center at SUNY Buffalo State, is the first author. The coauthors are Alexander Y. Karatayev, director of the center; Christopher Pennuto, a research associate with the center and biology professor at Buffalo State; and Christine Mayer, associate professor of ecology at the University of Toledo.

“The story of Lake Erie shows how profoundly human activity can affect an ecosystem,” said Burlakova. She traces that activity as far back as the early 1800s, when people cut down forests and built sawmills and dams.”

SUNY Buffalo State

This one a long time have I watched. All it's history many have looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never our mind on what is best for the lake. Hmm? What are we doing?