Connecticut's governor "takes partial blame for illegal cutting of 186 trees on neighbor's property"

NBC:

The wealthy two-term Democrat, along with one of his neighbors and a neighborhood organization, have been accused of removing trees in protected wetlands — property they do not own — to get a better view of a pond.

Lamont denied that charge, telling reporters on Monday the trees were damaged in previous storms and the plan was to clean up the area. Yet he admitted partial responsibility for inadvertently cutting trees on someone else’s land.

...

“Now I know and it will never happen again,” he said.

"A fertilizer spill in Iowa this month wiped out much of the aquatic life across a 60-mile stretch of rivers in two states"

"The latest die-off started, Iowa officials said, when a valve was left open over a weekend on a storage tank at ... an agricultural business" 

(The article is a choose-your-own adventure with an early quote calling it "the big one," and a later paragraph saying, "But the biomass affected is likely pretty low as the kill was mostly minnow and chub species.")

Remarkable photos and video from the protest against coal mining in Germany

19:42 Bagger extrem nah an Arbeitern und Polizei. Strategie von RWE; Aktivistisch nutzbare Fläche schnell wegbaggern. #Luetzerath pic.twitter.com/anQchh7tpc

— @mariusmichusch@hessen.social (@marius_mich) January 4, 2023

Joining California, Oregon, and Alaska, Washington banned net-pen fish-farming; Biologists discover "zoop soup"

Seattle Times:

the 2017 Cooke Aquaculture net-pen collapse ... released some 260,000 nonnative Atlantic salmon into the sea

...

“It’s about the disease vectors and how that can escape into wild populations”

(Longer article on such fish farming)

Related, Reuters from February:

In an experiment a decade in the making, biologists are releasing hatchery salmon onto flooded Northern California rice fields, seeking to replenish endangered fish species while simultaneously benefiting the farmers' business model

...

Now, for the cost and inconvenience of flooding their fields, rice farmers are earning goodwill and betting that a healthy salmon population will avoid new regulations to protect wildlife and keep adequate water flowing.

In recent years, biologists discovered that as rice straw decomposes in flooded fields it creates a broth rich in fish food. They call it "zoop soup."

"The zooplankton are so big and they're so juicy, it's like filet mignon"

Last month's heatwave crashed the computers at two of the UK’s leading hospitals

Guardian:

He was speaking nine days after the hospitals’ computers crashed, on 19 July, as a direct result of the record-breaking heat.

...

Without access to electronic records, doctors have not been able to tell how patients were reacting to their treatments. “We were flying blind,” said one senior doctor at St Thomas’. “Getting results back from the labs was an absolute nightmare and involved porters carrying bits of paper to and from the lab.

“However, people often did not specify where a patient was in the hospital. So there were groups of porters and lab staff wandering around the hospital looking blindly 

"Monsanto Company agreed to plead guilty to 30 environmental crimes related to the use of a pesticide on corn fields in Hawaii"

 "All told, the financial penalty for Monsanto totals $22.2 million."  The name of the product in question was "Forfeit 280."

Plans to mine California's Salton Sea, believed to house a massive amount of lithium

Vice:

The Salton Sea was created accidentally in 1905 after a portion of the Colorado River spilled out of its irrigation system

...

The Salton Sea was once a resort area, with a series of small towns and vacation spots on its coasts. It is now so toxic that few creatures can live in its waters, though it is still an ecologically important area for migratory birds. Some of the towns, such as Bombay Beach, have essentially become ghost towns over the past few decades.

...

The area is understood to hold one of the nation’s largest lithium brine stores, capable of supplying up to 40 percent of global demand for the mineral, according to the California Energy Commission (CEC). 

...

Lithium-ion batteries are key [to producing electric cars]

"Why planting tenacious tamarisk seemed like a good idea until it wasn’t, and other harrowing tales of Colorado’s invasive species"

Colorado Sun:

Tamarisk can grow 12 feet in one summer. Tamarisk can hold its breath underwater for 70 days.

...

Because this beetle eats only one thing, it also resides in and around Kazakhstan. So some U.S. scientists deployed butterfly nets in Genghis Khan country, flew home, threw some diorhabda into cushy lockdown in laboratories across the West, and then started filing paperwork.

...

New Mexico was happy.

Arizona? Not so much.

Arizonans love a bird called the Southwestern willow flycatcher.

...

the increasingly homeless flycatcher sought refuge.

In tamarisk.

"Sunny day flooding" in Northern California

Taking bus back to airport following #AGU19, we're confronted by "sunny-day flooding" along #SanFrancisco Bay. Following season of "Public Safety Power Shutoffs" due to wildfire risk, I am struck by growing prevalence of euphemisms for daily disruptions caused by #ClimateChange. pic.twitter.com/p83VncVpfi

— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) December 14, 2019

Ten funny tweets

Omg cnn sent a reporter to Greenland to be on the scene I’m screaming pic.twitter.com/F4lwExV6AU

— Stephanie McNeal (@stephemcneal) August 16, 2019

"engaged in an extended Twitter debate with his successor, who is also named Nate" is a basically perfect sentence. https://t.co/FxRM8q3T70

— Tom Gara (@tomgara) August 15, 2019

Perfect card from my sister @mamalizzie. 🔪 pic.twitter.com/Uuadt5GHxA

— katie rosman (@katierosman) August 16, 2019

wow, Latin duolingo looks wild pic.twitter.com/IDd8a818Dl

— Danny Bate (@DannyBate4) August 15, 2019

He's learned to climb..
Now he cannot be stopped#babyvulture pic.twitter.com/gBsFq2qf7k

— Foxfeather Zenkova (@foxfeather) August 16, 2019

You can't understand how popular Donald Duck was in 1946. There's basically no way Donald Trump isn't named after him.

— brans💋n reese (@bransonreese) August 16, 2019

all these adults attacking a child for demanding action on climate change like they’re Captain Planet villains

— JuanPa (@jpbrammer) August 16, 2019

The villain in every single YA fantasy novel be like: pic.twitter.com/RM0eo3PKaO

— Joel Kim Booster (@ihatejoelkim) August 16, 2019

pic.twitter.com/xlRUsfmcwE

— [👁 ˍゝ👁 ] (@kpIusm) August 16, 2019

If a goth gets really into fitness & develops a powerful booty does that make them Gothicc?

— Lukedovician (@Beardynoise) August 16, 2019

My boss was gone one day so I put his dog’s bed in my office so he wasn’t lonely and now every morning this happens pic.twitter.com/TZSnNLQ7dR

— Tori (@toriavaa) August 16, 2019

*More funny posts.

"Residents of a coalmining region in Siberia have been posting online videos showing entire streets and districts covered in toxic black snow"

Related:

This is Interstate 70 westbound near Concordia, Missouri. The video was shot by Heather Wolff. She’s traveling in the eastbound lanes toward St. Louis. It’s a rough go. @kmov. pic.twitter.com/FwrB9nYTla

— Chris Nagus (@ChrisNagusKMOV) February 15, 2019

And:

At least 60 illegal gold miners were feared dead in Zimbabwe on Friday after water flooded two disused shafts in a mining town southwest of Harare, a government minister said.

Between 60-70 "artisanal" miners were in the two shafts when they were flooded

Finally:

People who thought Blade Runner strained credulity showing Los Angeles raining all the time in 2019 should have waited for actual 2019

— Mike Costa (@MikeCosta) February 15, 2019

my bus just went through a whole ass lake. the bay area doesn’t do rain well. pic.twitter.com/lK62oZL5xH

— EricaJoy (@EricaJoy) February 14, 2019

"Mexican farmers claims Volkswagen 'hail cannons' caused drought"

Telegraph:

Volkswagen, which has a major plant in Puebla, has been using "hail cannons" - sonic devises that purport to disrupt the formation of hail in the atmosphere - to disperse storm clouds menacing the thousands of new cars parked on its lots.

But farmers in Cuautlancingo, the rural municipality where the plant is located, say the controversial technique is causing a drought that has made them lose 2,000 hectares (nearly 5,000 acres) of crops.

Scientists are skeptical over whether hail cannons actually work.

...

Volkswagen tried to defuse the conflict this week by announcing it was taking the cannons off automatic mode and would only fire them when potential hail storms approached.

"Activists and news media often claim that Americans use 500 million plastic straws per day, for example, which sounds awful"

Bloomberg:

But the source of this figure turns out to be a survey conducted by a nine-year-old. Similarly, two Australian scientists estimate that there are up to 8.3 billion plastic straws scattered on global coastlines. Yet even if all those straws were suddenly washed into the sea, they'd account for about .03 percent of the 8 million metric tons of plastics estimated to enter the oceans in a given year.

...

at least 46 percent of the plastic in the garbage patch by weight comes from a single product: fishing nets. Other fishing gear makes up a good chunk of the rest.

"Goodyear Could Face $105 Million Fine if It Failed to Properly Report Crashes Involving RV Tire"

"the tire failed on as many as one-in-10 motorhomes"

Related:

A company which let potentially toxic dust blanket Port Augusta early last year has been fined $2,200 by South Australia's Environment Protection Authority

"Madrid’s government [has placed] Hundreds of birdhouses and 'insect hotels' around the city" to increase biodiversity

CL:

The flagship project of Madrid’s quest for biodiversity is centered on the Manzanares River, a modest stream that flows across the city, and that has suffered from decades of bad ideas. In the 1950s, urban planners built seven floodgates along the river to raise the water level so it would look more like the prominent rivers of London, Rome, and Paris.

Lofty expectations soon gave way to a 130-foot-wide, 6.5-foot-deep, greenish—sometimes stinky—still-water plate along a four-plus-mile channel.

...

Now, the Manzanares is no more than about 11 inches deep, but life is booming on the river banks, and the sandy islands of sediment between the natural meanders are covered in bulrushes, reeds, and young willows.

Related:

A new community park will open where the Los Angeles River and Caballero Creek meet in Tarzana

...

The swath of green land is the result of a $750,000 city bond fund, and will be converted from what officials say is a 1.6-acre underused site off of Lindley Avenue, between Victory Boulevard and Erwin Street.

...

The wetlands will be used by the biology classes and by the larger Tarzana community.

"Using these devices, he says oil companies can squeeze the longest possible oil exploration season into steadily shrinking winters"

NPR:

Oil companies now help support a cottage industry of consultants and product manufacturers in Alaska, all providing workarounds for the fact that the frozen ground they rely on to produce oil isn't as frozen as it used to be.

Although Shumaker says when he talks to customers, he doesn't bring up why temperatures are rising.

...

"To be honest, climate change is pretty good business for our company," says Ed Yarmak, who runs Arctic Foundations and gets about half his work from oil companies on the North Slope. "We're in the business of making things colder."

"A celebrity chef . . . poisoned a neighbor’s giant silver maple tree because it blocked sunlight from the solar panels on his Windsor Terrace home, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office says"

NYDN:

the sprawling, majestic maple — which is more than 60 years old, measures 53 inches in diameter and resides in the backyard of a Seeley St. home — is clinging to life. Half of its leaves have wilted since the April 30 attack. An arborist who inspected the tree told its owner that it’s a matter of waiting and seeing if it will pull through.

...

One neighbor recorded him after he sneaked into his own yard from his neighbor’s around noon that day.

Video footage shows him taking off a mask and gloves with a power drill connected to his house and a jug lying on the ground near him. Prosecutors believe the jug contained the herbicide Roundup, sources said.

Neighbors said that after they saw him they called 911. By the time police arrived, Harvey had disappeared. However, he returned to his backyard after officers left, neighbors said.

Cell phone video from another neighbor shows him then use a hand drill to bore holes into the tree, which sits on the edge of his yard.

"California is on the verge of making solar standard on virtually every new home built in the Golden State" starting in 2020

"If approved as expected, solar installations on new homes will skyrocket."

"Del Mar [California] has decided to include 'managed retreat' as a last-resort option for dealing with sea-level rise, despite widespread objections from homeowners in the tony, seaside enclave"

SD:

The idea is especially controversial in Del Mar, where hundreds of multimillion-dollar homes are built near sea level on the northern end of town near the beach and the San Dieguito River.

...

Residents fear their property values will plummet if word gets out that the city is considering managed retreat.

"Ominous views of Japan's new concrete seawalls"

Photo gallery.