Monday, February 25, 2008

ENN: Chinese green securities, butterfly fish facing extinction, the West grows dustier and much more...

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Monday, February 25, 2008
News of Note

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing has launched a "green securities" scheme aimed at making it harder for polluters to raise capital and requiring listed firms to disclose more information about their environmental record.

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A Norway shopping mall is offering customers carbon offsets for purchase on its shelves. John Acher from Reuters reports that the Stroemmen Storsenter shopping centre outside Oslo began selling the certificates on Saturday, at 165 Norwegian crowns (US$30.58) per tonne for shoppers to pick up with their weekly groceries.

In one weekend, more than 300 Carbon Emissions Reductions (CERs) had been sold, and store managers were considering stocking up with more.

Professor Mike Rowe's long term research interest at the Cardiff School of Engineering has been in thermoelectric generation - employing thermocouples to convert heat into electricity. The conversion technology is used in everyday applications such as controlling the central heating system or refrigerator temperature.

The West has become 500 percent dustier in the past two centuries due to westward U.S. expansion and accompanying human activity beginning in the 1800s, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Sediment records from dust blown into alpine lakes in southwest Colorado's San Juan Mountains over millennia indicates the sharp rise in dust deposits coincided with railroad, ranching and livestock activity in the middle of the last century, said geological sciences Assistant Professor Jason Neff, lead author on the study. The results have implications ranging from ecosystem alteration to human health, he said.

Researchers led by Zhong Lin Wang at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Materials Science and Technology, are developing power fibers that can be used to manufacture shirts and other clothing that can convert energy released during physical motion into electrical energy capable of powering small electronic devices in the field. Applications are widespread and extend beyond soldiers and other military personnel using such power generating clothing to scientists, engineers and other researchers, as well as everyday people eventually wearing them to sustain our ever expanding reliance and fascination with portable electronic devices.

ENN Spotlight

Researchers led by Zhong Lin Wang at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Materials Science and Technology, are developing power fibers that can be used to manufacture shirts and other clothing that can convert energy released during physical motion into electrical energy capable of powering small electronic devices in the field. Applications are widespread and extend beyond soldiers and other military personnel using such power generating clothing to scientists, engineers and other researchers, as well as everyday people eventually wearing them to sustain our ever expanding reliance and fascination with portable electronic devices.

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A beautiful black, white and yellow butterflyfish, much admired by eco-tourists, divers and aquarium keepers alike, may be at risk of extinction, scientists have warned.

The case of the Chevroned Butterflyfish is a stark example of how human pressure on the world’s coral reefs is confronting certain species with ”˜blind alleys’ from which they may be unable to escape, says Dr Morgan Pratchett of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies Media Release and James Cook University.

Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore (25 February, 2008) — Applying organic fertilizers, such as those resulting from composting, to agricultural land could increase the amount of carbon stored in these soils and contribute significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, according to new research published in a special issue of Waste Management & Research (Special issue published today by SAGE).

LONDON (Reuters) - Four environmental campaigners breached security at London's Heathrow airport on Monday, climbing aboard a parked aircraft and unfurling a banner protesting against runway expansion plans.

Police later arrested the four from Greenpeace who walked through security at one of the world's most policed airports.

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Member Press Releases
By: SeaWeb
SeaWeb, a global, non-profit organization, is offering travel scholarships for media to attend the world's preeminent summit on coral reef science and management. At this year's International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from July 7 to 11, the media will have access to leading ocean experts from around the world and to press briefings on the latest scientific findings, as well as a field trip to see firsthand the threats to coral reefs. By: the GLOBE Foundation of Canada
A report by Environmental Defence, a Toronto-based environmental research group, says exploitation of Alberta's Tar Sands is Canada's most serious environmental liability. By: the Center for Biological Diversity
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the removal of wolves from the Endangered Species Act's list of endangered and threatened species in a vast area of the northern Rocky Mountains and adjoining regions Thursday. The move will strip wolves of federal protections throughout all of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana and portions of Utah, Oregon, and Washington. Officials from both Idaho and Wyoming have made clear that they intend to dramatically increase the numbers of wolves that are shot and killed. By: GUARD Colorado
It is a topic that is both controversial and illuminates the passion on both fronts. Both sides armed with information to convince you that they are in the right. It's in newspapers, town meetings; resolutions are circulating and being passed, and people standing up and getting involved in their communities. A true battle has begun in Northern Colorado. All of this in the name of the proposed uranium mining. By: the Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity and Western Watersheds Project reached a settlement this week with the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in eastern Idaho to resolve a lawsuit filed last summer. The settlement requires the U.S. Sheep Station to analyze the environmental effects of the sheep grazing under the National Environmental Policy Act and to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding the impacts of the sheep grazing on threatened and endangered species. The Sheep Station is part of the Agricultural Research Service within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. By: Wildlife Trust
In a paper published by the leading scientific journal Nature, scientists at the Consortium for Conservation Medicine (CCM) Wildlife Trust New York, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Columbia University (New York) and the University of Georgia have announced a major breakthrough in the understanding of what causes diseases like HIV/AIDS and SARS to emerge, and how to further predict and prevent future devastating pandemics by plotting a global map of "Emerging Disease Hotspots." By: the International Fund for Animal Welfare
Senator John Kerry today introduced legislation that would help protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales from injury and death due to ship strikes. The Ship Strike Reduction Act of 2008 would require the Bush Administration to finalize a rule establishing speed limits for specified vessels in migratory paths of North Atlantic right whales. The federal rule enforcing the speed limits, known as “the Ship Strike Rule,” was first proposed in February, 2007, but the rule has been buried in the regulatory process for over a year. By: the Center for Biological Diversity
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday that it is proposing a Hawaiian plant, Phyllostegia hispida, from the island of Molokai as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. The plant is the first of 280 species that are candidates for protection as endangered species, including 105 from Hawaii, to be proposed for protection in more than three years. The agency has not protected a single new species in 650 days, which includes the entire tenure of Dirk Kempthorne as Secretary of the Interior and is by far the longest period without a new species being protected since the landmark federal law was passed.

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