Canadian Press - Estrogen from birth-control pill in water linked to rising prostate cancer cases

Canadian Press  11-15-11

http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=11896&Section=Disease

TORONTO - Researchers suggest there may be a link between estrogen from oral contraceptives that has found its way into the environment and rising rates of prostate cancer among men around the world.

In a study in the online publication BMJ Open, researchers at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto looked at the percentage of women using the pill, intrauterine devices, condoms and vaginal barrier contraceptives in 87 countries, then examined the incidence and deaths from prostate cancer.

"Looking at these percentages, we find a strong correlation between female use of oral contraceptives at a population level and both new cases of prostate cancer and mortality from prostate cancer," said lead author Dr. David Margel, a urologist and fellow in uro-oncology.

"This was not found among other contraceptive modes," he said. "We also checked the percentage use of intrauterine devices or condoms or vaginal barriers and the same relation was not found."

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Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) - New Report Finds Power Plants Contributing to Water Stress

CONTACT: Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/energy-and-water-report-0570.html

To Manage Risk, Power Plant Planners Must Consider Impact of Water Use

WASHINGTON - November 15 - Power plants are stressing freshwater resources around the country, according to a new report by the Energy and Water in a Warming World Initiative,  a three-year research collaboration between the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a team of more than a dozen  scientists. The report, “Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants: Electricity’s Thirst for a Precious Resource," is the first systematic assessment of how power-plant cooling affects freshwater resources across the United States and of the quality of the data available on power plant water usage.

“Our research found that power plants can be very important in terms of the pressure put on the freshwater resources we depend on—rivers, streams, lakes, and aquifers—even in unexpected places,” said lead researcher Kristen Averyt, who is deputy director of the Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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Food & Water Watch - New Analyses Show Oil and Gas Industry Is Inflating the Job-Creating Potential of Shale Gas Development

CONTACT: Food & Water Watch http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/pressreleases/new-analyses-show-oil-and-gas-industry-is-inflating-the-job-creating-potential-of-%E2%80%A8%E2%80%A8shale-gas-development/

Food & Water Watch Study Shows One Job Claim Exaggerated by 900 Percent

WASHINGTON - November 15 - Will the oil and gas industry create 1 million new jobs for Americans, as its latest advertisement claims? The American Petroleum Institute and major oil and gas corporations are spending millions to convince Americans that with unrestricted access to natural resources, they can lift us from our economic slump in part by fracking our nation’s shale gas reserves. But Exposing the Oil and Gas Industry’s False Jobs Promise for Shale Gas Development, a new set of analyses released today by the national consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch, finds that the oil and gas industry is exaggerating the capacity of shale gas development to generate jobs and economic opportunity for Americans, in one case exaggerating projected job creation by 900 percent.

“The oil and gas industry has tried to stand on three legs, claiming that shale gas is good for the environment, good for American energy security and good for the economy. The first two legs have already been kicked out, and our new analysis kicks out the third,” said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “They have no legs left to stand on.”

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American Chemical Society - Weird world of water gets a little weirder

Public release date: 9-Nov-2011

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/acs-wwo110911.php

American Chemical Society

Strange, stranger, strangest! To the weird nature of one of the simplest chemical compounds -- the stuff so familiar that even non-scientists know its chemical formula -- add another odd twist. Scientists are reporting that good old H2O, when chilled below the freezing point, can shift into a new type of liquid. The report appears in ACS' Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

Pradeep Kumar and H. Eugene Stanley explain that water is one weird substance, exhibiting more than 80 unusual properties, by one count, including some that scientists still struggle to understand. For example, water can exist in all three states of matter (solid, liquid,gas) at the same time. And the forces at its surface enable insects to walk on water and water to rise up from the roots into the leaves of trees and other plants. In another strange turn, scientists have proposed that water can go from being one type of liquid into another in a so-called "liquid-liquid" phase transition, but it is impossible to test this with today's laboratory equipment because these things happen so fast. That's why Kumar and Stanley used computer simulations to check it out.

They found that when they chilled liquid water in their simulation, its propensity to conduct heat decreases, as expected for an ordinary liquid. But, when they lowered the temperature to about 54 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, the liquid water started to conduct heat even better in the simulation. Their studies suggest that below this temperature, liquid water undergoes sharp but continuous structural changes whereas the local structure of liquid becomes extremely ordered -- very much like ice. These structural changes in liquid water lead to increase of heat conduction at lower temperatures. The researchers say that this surprising result supports the idea that water has a liquid-liquid phase transition.

Steven Wishnia - Two Big Decisions Loom on the Fate of Drinking Water for 15 Million People Living Near the Marcellus Shale

By Steven Wishnia, AlterNet

Posted on November 1, 2011, Printed on November 2, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152934/two_big_decisions_loom_on_the_fate_of_drinking_water_for_15_million_people_living_near_the_marcellus_shale

The fate of fracking in the Northeast may be determined soon.

On Nov. 21, the Delaware River Basin Commission, comprising representatives from four states (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware) and the federal government, will vote on whether to allow the intensive method of natural-gas drilling in the river's watershed. The watershed, which supplies drinking water for more than 15 million people, overlaps the eastern end of the Marcellus Shale, an underground geological formation touted as the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas."

The commission's rules, which will apply in the Delaware watershed, will overlap with state regulations. Pennsylvania already allows fracking. New York is in the process of developing regulations about where it might be allowed and under what conditions. The state Department of Environmental Conservation will hold public hearings in November, and says it will decide sometime next year. Many environmental activists believe Gov. Andrew Cuomo is fast-tracking the issue.

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Kate Fried - Is the EPA Selling Out Your Water?

Published on Wednesday, October 26, 2011 by Food & Water Watch Blog

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/is-the-epa-selling-out-your-water/

by Kate Fried

We were disheartened to learn this week that Nancy Stoner, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) acting assistant administrator for water, is an advocate for water privatization. In an interview with Greenwire (Sorry, but subscription required.), Stoner expressed doubt about the federal government’s ability to help provide the public with drinking and wastewater service, citing them as “too expensive.” She then went on to say,

“I think there’s big money in to be made in how to address the water resources needs for our country, particularly when we are going to have population growth, development, the decay of existing infrastructure and climate change.”

Hearing a top government official in charge of protecting one of our most essential shared resources laud a scheme that has been linked to the degradation of municipal water supplies definitely makes us wonder where our government is placing its priorities. Across the U.S., privatization has been linked to deteriorating water quality, rate hikes, job force reductions and poor customer service.

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"Terra Daily" - Sea levels will continue to rise for 500 years

Terra Daily  

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Sea_levels_will_continue_to_rise_for_500_years_999.html
Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Oct 18, 2011

Rising sea levels in the coming centuries is perhaps one of the most catastrophic consequences of rising temperatures. Massive economic costs, social consequences and forced migrations could result from global warming.

But how frightening of times are we facing? Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute are part of a team that has calculated the long-term outlook for rising sea levels in relation to the emission of greenhouse gases and pollution of the atmosphere using climate models. The results have been published in the scientific journal Global and Planetary Change.

"Based on the current situation we have projected changes in sea level 500 years into the future. We are not looking at what is happening with the climate, but are focusing exclusively on sea levels", explains Aslak Grinsted, a researcher at the Centre for Ice and Climate, the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

Model based on actual measurements
He has developed a model in collaboration with researchers from England and China that is based on what happens with the emission of greenhouse gases and aerosols and the pollution of the atmosphere.

Their model has been adjusted backwards to the actual measurements and was then used to predict the outlook for rising sea levels.

The research group has made calculations for four scenarios:

A pessimistic one, where the emissions continue to increase. This will mean that sea levels will rise 1.1 meters by the year 2100 and will have risen 5.5 meters by the year 2500.

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“Terra Daily” - Severe drought, other changes can cause permanent ecosystem disruption

Terra Daily

Corvallis, OR (SPX) Oct 17, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Severe_drought_other_changes_can_cause_permanent_ecosystem_disruption_999.html

An eight-year study has concluded that increasingly frequent and severe drought, dropping water tables and dried-up springs have pushed some aquatic desert ecosystems into "catastrophic regime change," from which many species will not recover.

The findings, just published in the journal Freshwater Biology, raise concerns that climate change, over-pumping of aquifers for urban water use, and land management may permanently affect which species can survive. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

"Populations that have persisted for hundreds or thousands of years are now dying out," said David Lytle, an associate professor of zoology at Oregon State University. "Springs that used to be permanent are drying up. Streams that used to be perennial are now intermittent. And species that used to rise and fall in their populations are now disappearing."

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"Elliot Spagat" - Mexico's Newest Export to US May Be Water

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/15-2

Published on Saturday, October 15, 2011 by the Associated Press

by Elliot Spagat

SAN DIEGO -- Mexico ships televisions, cars, sugar and medical equipment to the United States. Soon, it may be sending water north.

This undated photo released by the San Diego County Water Authority shows water gushing from an electricity plant in Playas de Rosarito, Mexico, next to a site where government agencies in the western United States are considering putting large desalination plants. (AP Photo/San Diego County Water Authority)

Western states are looking south of the border for water to fill drinking glasses, flush toilets and sprinkle lawns, as four major U.S. water districts help plan one of two huge desalination plant proposals in Playas de Rosarito, about 15 miles south of San Diego. Combined, they would produce 150 million a day, enough to supply more than 300,000 homes on both sides of the border.

The plants are one strategy by both countries to wean themselves from the drought-prone Colorado River, which flows 1,450 miles from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez. Decades of friction over the Colorado, in fact, are said to be a hurdle to current desalination negotiations.

The proposed plants have also sparked concerns that American water interests looking to Mexico are simply trying to dodge U.S. environmental reviews and legal challenges.

Desalination plants can blight coastal landscapes, sucking in and killing fish eggs and larvae. They require massive amounts of electricity and dump millions of gallons of brine back into the ocean that can, if not properly disposed, also be harmful to fish.

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"Terra Daily Staff" - Humanity falls deeper into ecological debt: study

by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) Sept 20, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Humanity_falls_deeper_into_ecological_debt_study_999.html

Humankind will slip next week into ecological debt, having gobbled up in less then nine months more natural resources than the planet can replenish in a year, researchers said Tuesday.

The most dominant species in Earth's history, in other words, is living beyond the planet's threshold of sustainability, trashing the house it lives in.

At its current pace of consumption humankind will need, by 2030, a second globe to satisfy its voracious appetites and absorb all its waste, the report calculated.

Earth's seven billion denizens -- nine billion by mid-century -- are using more water, cutting down more forests and eating more fish than Nature can replace, it said.

At the same time, we are disgorging more CO2, pollutants and chemical fertilizers than the atmosphere, soil and oceans can soak up without severely disrupting the ecosystems that have made our planet such a comfortable place for homo sapiens to live.

Counting down from January 1, the date when human activity exceeds its budget -- dubbed "Earth Overshoot Day" -- had receded by about three days each year since 2001.

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