Wednesday, September 02, 2020

A bit rich: Business groups want urgent climate action after resisting it for 30 years

Australia has seen the latest extraordinary twist in its climate soap opera. An alliance of business and environment groups declared the nation is "woefully unprepared" for climate change and urgent action is needed.

And yesterday, Australian Industry Group—one of the alliance members – called on the federal government to spend at least A$3.3 billion on renewable energy over the next decade.

The alliance, known as the Australian Climate Roundtable, formed in 2015. It comprises ten business and environmental bodies, including the Business Council of Australia, National Farmers Federation and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).

Last week, the group stated: "There is no systemic government response (federal, state and local) to build resilience to climate risks. Action is piecemeal; uncoordinated; does not engage business, private sector investment, unions, workers in affected industries, community sector and communities; and does not match the scale of the threat climate change represents to the Australian economy, environment and society."

This is ironic, since many of the statement's signatories spent decades fiercely resisting moves towards sane climate policy. Let's look back at a few pivotal moments.

Preventing an early carbon tax

The Business Council of Australia (BCA) was a leading player against the Hawke Government's Ecologically Sustainable Development process, which was initiated to get green groups "in the tent" on environmental policy. The BCA also fought to prevent then environment minister Ros Kelly bring in a carbon tax—one of the ways Australia could have moved to its goal of 20% carbon dioxide reduction by 2005.

And the BCA, alongside the Australian Mining Industry Council (now known as the Minerals Council of Australia), was a main driver in setting up the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network (AIGN).

Don't let the name fool you—the network co-ordinated the fossil fuel extraction sector and other groups determined to scupper strong climate and energy policy. It made sure Australia made neither strong international commitments to emissions reductions nor passed domestic legislation which would affect the profitable status quo.

Its first major victory was to destroy and prevent a modest carbon tax in 1994-95, proposed by Keating Government environment minister John Faulkner. Profits from the tax would have funded research and development of renewable energy.

Questionable funding and support

The Australian Aluminum Council is also in the roundtable. This organization used to be the most militant of the "greenhouse mafia"organizations—as dubbed in a 2006 ABC Four Corners investigation.

The council funded and promoted the work of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), whose "MEGABARE" economic model was, at the time, used to generate reports which were a go-to for Liberal and National Party politicians wanting to argue climate action would spell economic catastrophe.

In 1997, the Australian Conservation Foundation (another member of the climate roundtable) complained to the federal parliamentary Ombudsman about fossil fuel groups funding ABARE, saying this gave organizations such as Shell Australia a seat on its board. The ensuing Ombudsman's report in 1998 largely backed these complaints. ABARE agreed with or considered many of the Ombudsman's recommendations.

Meanwhile, Australian Industry Group was part of the concerted opposition to the Rudd government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In response to the July 2008 Green Paper on emissions trading, it complained: "businesses accounting for well over 10% of national production and around 1 million jobs will be affected by significant cost increases."

Australian economist Ross Garnaut was among many at the time to lambast this complaint, calling it "pervasive vested-interest pressure on the policy process."

Back in July 2014, the Business Council of Australia and Innes Willox (head of the Australian Industry Group) both welcomed the outcome of then prime minister Tony Abbott's policy vandalism: the repeal of the Gillard government's carbon price. The policy wasn't perfect, but it was an important step in the right direction.

In doing so, Australia squandered the opportunity to become a renewable energy superpower. With its solar, wind and geothermal resources, its scientists and technology base, Australia could have been world-beaters and world-savers. Now, it's just a quarry with a palpable end of its customer base for thermal coal.

What is to be done?

Given the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the global pandemic and the devastating fires of Black Summer, it would be forgivable to despair.

It shouldn't have been the case that business groups only acted when the problem became undeniable and started to affect profits.

Somehow we must recapture the energy, determination and even the optimism of the period from 2006 to 2008 when it seemed Australia "got" climate change and the need to take rapid and radical action.

This time, we must do it better. Decision-makers should not look solely to the business sector for guidance on climate policy—the community, and the broader public good, should be at the center.

Australia's farmers want more climate action, and they're starting in their own (huge) backyards

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Rubber debris litters miles of Puyallup River after artificial turf was used in dam project without permit

by Lynda V. Mapes, The Seattle Times

In black waves, drifts and bands, crumbs of rubber are polluting miles of the Puyallup River after a spill at a dam project last month.

Rubber debris already is likely more than 40 miles downriver in Puget Sound. The pollution is the result of unpermitted use of thousands of yards of artificial turf by the dam's owners while reconstructing parts of the dam.

The Puyallup Tribe was first alerted to the spill by a social media post put up July 31 by Derek Van Giesen, a former employee of Electron Hydro, an owner of the Electron Hydropower Project. He walked off the job over the installation of the turf liner and a large fish kill at the dam that took place the same day of the spill, which occurred overnight on July 29.

Van Giesen said the turf came from a pile stored on the property of a neighboring rock quarry. The pile is at least one story high and as long as a football field.

The company did not inform regulators of the pollution discharge until Aug. 4, according to a consultant's report on the spill prepared for Electron Hydro. A stop-work order was imposed on the company's construction project Aug. 7 by Pierce County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

From the stop order: "The use of astro-turf in a river system where it can break down and discharge potential toxins into the water is not considered a suitable material."

The question now is how to clean up the mess, just weeks before adult chinook salmon listed for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act are expected to arrive on their homeward journey.

According to the consultant's report, the company, as part of its work on a bypass channel at the dam, placed 2,409 square yards of FieldTurf on the channel between July 20 and 27. The turf was intended to function as an underlayment for a plastic liner put on top of it. The company then diverted the river into the bypass channel to create a dry area to continue ongoing work at its dam.

The night of July 29, the diverted river—well known for its rock-chucking high flows—ripped pieces of the liner and turf loose, sending hunks of artificial turf and a torrent of loose black crumb rubber downriver.

The consultant, Shane Cherry of Shane Cherry Consulting of Fort Myers, Florida, estimated that at least 617 square yards of the artificial turf was ruptured by the river; about 1,792 square yards remain in place under the liner.

At least 4 to 6 cubic yards of crumb rubber—each piece about the size of a fat coffee ground—was released to the river, in the pristine upper reaches of the Puyallup, about 6 miles from the boundary with Mount Rainier National Park.

The consultant estimated the rate of travel in the water at 2 mph. The rubber probably reached Orting within nine hours, and Tacoma and Commencement Bay within 20 hours. The river would have deposited crumb rubber all along the way, a distance of some 40 miles, in channel margins, in deep pools, in coves and river bends, and continued redistributing it ever since.

On a visit to the river Thursday with The Seattle Times, Sylvia Miller, vice chairwoman of the Puyallup Tribal council, said she was sick at heart because of the spill.

"I feel anger, so much anger," Miller said. "It hurts to see how much damage they are doing to our lands and waters, everyone's lands and waters."

Everywhere he looked for it along the river, Russ Ladley, resource protection manager for the Puyallup Tribe, saw crumbs of black rubber. Immediately downstream of the dam, it lay in streaks of black on the beach. Fourteen miles down river, there it was again, in black nubby necklaces around rocks, in bands along the shore, in heaps on the river's sandy bank.

Lisa Anderson, tribal attorney, shook her head and grimaced at the mess. The company should not be permitted to resume its work on its project and must instead clean up the river, Anderson said.

Chris Spens, director of regulatory and environmental affairs for Tollhouse Energy Company in Bellingham, which owns the dam with Electron Hydro LLC, said in an email to The Seattle Times that the company is cooperating with the Corps, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), Pierce County and the state Department of Ecology to clean up the spill and do restoration and mitigation work.

The dam, formerly owned by Puget Sound Energy, is 116 years old and produces electricity for about 20,000 homes. Reconstruction at the dam is intended, along with screens and other equipment, to prevent fish and sediment from entering the flume, used to deliver water for the project.

"Electron is committed to providing clean energy and restoring Puyallup River fisheries," Spens wrote, and the company will deal with the spill before continuing work on the dam, he added.

Van Giesen in his social media post showed the placement of the artificial turf in a video in which he kicked drifts of black crumb rubber with his shoe to show the volume of rubber debris. "This is not sand," he said as he took video.

"Millions of tiny rubber beads ... all washed down the river and are polluting my lifelong fishing holes. What is on video here is just a small portion of the spill ...

"All the rubber is actually inside the astro turf ... and spills out when moved."

Van Giesen said in an interview he put up the post because as a lifelong fisherman who grew up along the Puyallup, he was disgusted by what he saw. "I just quit. I knew it was not the right place for me. I don't know how you clean it up, the damage is done and will probably continue past when I am on my deathbed," he said.

He said he knew the spill would happen. "Even I know the water table is right underneath the liner, and I'm just an average Joe," he said.

Before the river tore hunks of the turf away, walking on the liner "was like walking on a waterbed," VanGiesen said.

This was not the first trouble at Electron Dam.

Fish and Wildlife reported a fish kill on the river the same day, as Electron Hydro dewatered a stretch of the river during routine maintenance at its dam, causing what the department described as "a large fish kill, resulting in the loss of ESA-listed species, including Chinook, and bull trout, along with coho, rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, and sculpin."

Electron Hydro crews had neither the proper equipment nor used proper techniques during the dewatering procedure, resulting in fish being killed by high temperatures and lack of oxygen, according to the on-scene report written by Tara Livingood-Schott, a WDFW biologist. She was on hand to assist with fish sampling and counting.

The work became dangerous for the crew, too, as two of them sank in mud up to their waists, she reported.

Canada geese and eagles feasted on stranded fish as all attention was shifted from rescuing the fish in the dewatering channel to rescuing the workers. "The situation was becoming increasingly urgent to free the two, as they were sinking slowly by the minute," she wrote.

"It took around 45 minutes to free the individuals from the mud and during this time no fish recoveries took place as flows continued to drop, stranding more and more fish."

The total number of fish lost was unknown, she reported, "but my best educated guess would be in the thousands," including unauthorized lethal take of ESA-listed fall chinook, winter steelhead and bull trout in all life stages.

For Bill Sterud, chairman of the Puyallup Tribe, the rubber spill is personally painful.

"To me, my church is the river. It is the sound. It is the mountain. It is the forest. And when I see this degrading take place it affects me internally. It hurts."

To him this latest event is nothing new in the history of a dam the tribe never wanted.

"It will always be a fish killer. It should ultimately be taken down. We are going to do our best at the tribe to make that happen. That is my goal and my hope of what we should strive for. It's a new era," he said. "Fish are important. Clean water is important ... we have one mother Earth and it is being degraded as we speak."

The Puyallup originates in glaciers along the slopes of Mount Rainier in the Cascades. It flows about 65 miles to Commencement Bay and forms the third largest tributary to Puget Sound.

The river flows through the reservation of the Puyallup Tribe, which has fished and lived along its waters since time immemorial. The river is home to eight ocean-migrating fish populations, including chinook, coho, chum, pink and sockeye salmon, steelhead trout, bull trout and sea-run cutthroat trout.

Historically the river supported as many as 42,000 chinook. The run is greatly diminished today to a little more than 1,000 fish and was listed for protection in 1999 under the ESA.

Chinook from the river are critical to endangered southern resident killer whales, which primarily feed on chinook.

The Electron dam, about 42 miles southeast of Seattle in Pierce County, is a 10-foot-high wooden dam, about 200 feet long, that diverts water into a 10-mile-long wooden flume conveying water to the dam's powerhouse.

Fish regularly are entrapped and killed at the dam, long a problem known to regulators.

Replacement of the old dam with new equipment is intended to address the problems with a dam, identified in a 2005 watershed analysis as "the most serious single threat to Chinook salmon in the watershed area," according a letter written by federal regulators back when the dam was owned by Puget Sound Energy.

PSE sold the dam to Electron in 2014, but still sells electricity from the project.

Washington dam removal means 37 more miles of salmon habitat restored

U.S. will agree to remove plutonium waste from South Carolina

by Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Ari Natter, Bloomberg News

The Trump administration is settling a long-running dispute with South Carolina over cleaning up weapons-grade plutonium stashed in the state.

The agreement is set to be announced Monday by Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, said two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the deal hasn't been formally unveiled.

Under the terms of the deal, the government will make an up-front payment to the state. In return, South Carolina will agree for several years not to pursue additional litigation on the matter. It wasn't immediately clear how much the U.S. will be paying South Carolina under the deal, but it was described by the people as significant and the largest single settlement in the state's history.

The development comes 17 years after the federal government first committed to clean up more than 11 million tons of radioactive material by 2016, or pay the state $100 million in penalties.

At issue is waste plutonium at a Cold War-era nuclear weapons manufacturing site near the Savannah River. The federal government initially planned to build a reprocessing facility and convert 34 metric tons of the material for re-use as fuel in nuclear power plants.

But in 2018, after the government spent years and some $8 billion of taxpayer money constructing the so-called Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, the Trump administration said it was canceling the project because it would be more cost effective to dilute and dispose of the plutonium than to reprocess it.

The settlement comes after a series of lawsuits by South Carolina over the stalled nuclear cleanup. In one suit filed three years ago, Wilson accused the federal government of trying to make South Carolina a "dumping ground" for plutonium.

The U.S. and South Carolina last month asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to stay proceedings until Aug. 31, because they had entered into settlement negotiations.

Under the administration's dilute-and-dispose plan for dealing with the plutonium waste, the radioactive material could ultimately be stored in other states. But it's unclear how many other states would go along with that.

Already, the Energy Department has been forced to backtrack on a plan to put at least 1 metric ton of plutonium in Nevada, after a quiet shipment of some of the material from South Carolina sparked outrage there.

In a legal filing last year, Nevada's attorney general accused the Energy Department of conducting a "secret plutonium smuggling operation" to send the state highly radioactive waste it didn't want. Under a settlement agreement reached between Nevada and the Energy Department in June, the U.S. government committed to remove the 0.5 metric ton of plutonium it put in the state by the end of 2026, and won't ship another batch it had planned to stash there.

Energy Department says it will remove plutonium from Nevada

Can sunlight convert emissions into useful materials?

by Greta Harrison, University of Southern California

Shaama Sharada calls carbon dioxide—the worst offender of global warming—a very stable, "very happy molecule."

She aims to change that.

Recently published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A, Sharada and a team of researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering seek to break CO2 apart and convert the greenhouse gas into useful materials like fuels or consumer products ranging from pharmaceuticals to polymers.

Typically, this process requires a tremendous amount of energy. However, in the first computational study of its kind, Sharada and her team enlisted a more sustainable ally: the sun.

Specifically, they demonstrated that ultraviolet (UV) light could be very effective in exciting an organic molecule, oligophenylene. Upon exposure to UV, oligophenylene becomes a negatively charged "anion," readily transferring electrons to the nearest molecule, such as CO2—thereby making the CO2 reactive and able to be reduced and converted into things like plastics, drugs or even furniture.

"CO2 is notoriously hard to reduce, which is why it lives for decades in the atmosphere," Sharada said. "But this negatively charged anion is capable of reducing even something as stable as CO2, which is why it's promising and why we are studying it."

The rapidly growing concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is one of the most urgent issues humanity must address to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Since the start of the industrial age, humans have increased atmospheric CO2 by 45%, through the burning of fossil fuels and other emissions. As a result, average global temperatures are now two degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial era. Thanks to greenhouse gases like CO2, the heat from the sun is remaining trapped in our atmosphere, warming our planet.

The research team from the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science was led by third year Ph.D. student Kareesa Kron, supervised by Sharada, a WISE Gabilan Assistant Professor. The work was co-authored by Samantha J. Gomez from Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School, who has been part of the USC Young Researchers Program, allowing high school students from underrepresented areas to take part in STEM research.

Many research teams are looking at methods to convert CO2 that has been captured from emissions into fuels or carbon-based feedstocks for consumer products ranging from pharmaceuticals to polymers.

The process traditionally uses either heat or electricity along with a catalyst to speed up CO2 conversion into products. However, many of these methods are often energy intensive, which is not ideal for a process aiming to reduce environmental impacts. Using sunlight instead to excite the catalyst molecule is attractive because it is energy efficient and sustainable.

"Most other ways to do this involve using metal-based chemicals, and those metals are rare earth metals," said Sharada. "They can be expensive, they are hard to find and they can potentially be toxic."

Sharada said the alternative is to use carbon-based organic catalysts for carrying out this light-assisted conversion. However, this method presents challenges of its own, which the research team aims to address. The team uses quantum chemistry simulations to understand how electrons move between the catalyst and CO2 to identify the most viable catalysts for this reaction.

Sharada said the work was the first computational study of its kind, in that researchers had not previously examined the underlying mechanism of moving an electron from an organic molecule like oligophenylene to CO2. The team found that they can carry out systematic modifications to the oligophenylene catalyst, by adding groups of atoms that impart specific properties when bonded to molecules, that tend to push electrons towards the center of the catalyst, to speed up the reaction.

Despite the challenges, Sharada is excited about the opportunities for her team.

"One of those challenges is that, yes, they can harness radiation, but very little of it is in the visible region, where you can shine light on it in order for the reaction to occur," said Sharada. "Typically, you need a UV lamp to make it happen."

Sharada said that the team is now exploring catalyst design strategies that not only lead to high reaction rates but also allow for the molecule to be excited by visible light, using both quantum chemistry and genetic algorithms.

The research paper marks high school student Gomez's first co-authored publication in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal.

Gomez was a senior at the Bravo Medical Magnet school at the time she took part in the USC Young Researchers Program over the summer, working in Sharada's lab. She was directly mentored and trained in theory and simulations by Kron. Sharada said Gomez's contributions were so impressive that the team agreed she deserved an authorship on the paper.

Gomez said that she enjoyed the opportunity to work on important research contributing to environmental sustainability. She said her role involved conducting computational research, calculating which structures were able to significantly reduce CO2.

"Traditionally we are shown that research comes from labs where you have to wear lab coats and work with hazardous chemicals," Gomez said. "I enjoyed that every day I was always learning new things about research that I didn't know could be done simply through computer programs."

"The first-hand experience that I gained was simply the best that I could've asked for, since it allowed me to explore my interest in the chemical engineering field and see how there are many ways that life-saving research can be achieved," Gomez said.

New catalyst efficiently turns carbon dioxide into useful fuels and chemicals

More information: Kareesa J. Kron et al, Computational Analysis of Electron Transfer Kinetics for CO2 Reduction with Organic Photoredox Catalysts, The Journal of Physical Chemistry A (2020). DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.0c03065

Journal information: Journal of Physical Chemistry A

Provided by University of Southern California

Saving marine life: Novel method quantifies the effects of plastic on marine wildlife

by Tokyo Institute of Technology

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology together with their international collaborators have developed a novel quantitative method to quantify the effects of plastic on marine animals. This method successfully shows that plastic ingestion by sea turtles might be causing population declines, despite a lack of strong effects on individual turtles.

Plastic debris in marine ecosystems is a serious global issue and is the research focus of leading scientists across the globe. Annually, around 10 million tons of waste, mostly plastic, finds its way into the world's oceans. Plastic debris in the open and coastal seas can jeopardize the health of marine wildlife, affecting human health and economy both directly and indirectly.

Almost 700 marine species have been documented to interact with plastic, most commonly by ingesting smaller pieces and becoming entangled in larger pieces. Among the most affected species are sea turtles. All seven known species of sea turtles have been seriously impacted by the presence of plastic waste in marine ecosystems. Ingestion of plastic waste is often not lethal for sea turtles, but it does reduce their ability to feed and can cause negative toxic effects. Scientists have been warning for over a decade about the negative non-lethal effects of ingested plastics, noting that these effects are "particularly difficult to quantify."

Now, in a new study, an international research group, comprising Asst. Prof. Marko Jusup (Tokyo Institute of Technology [Tokyo Tech], Japan), Dr. Nina Marn and Dr. Tin Klanjšček (Ruder Boškovic Institute, Croatia), and Prof. S.A.L.M. Kooijman (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands), presented the first mechanistic model for quantifying the effects of ingested plastics on individuals and populations of sea turtles. Their findings are published in the high-ranking scientific journal Ecology Letters .

The study achieved exactly what previous research has struggled to accomplish: a new method to assess and quantify the effects of plastics ingestion on growth, reproduction, and survival of individuals and consequently populations.

Asst. Prof. Jusup, who co-led the study with Dr. Marn, explains, "In this research, we focused on a well-known and globally distributed protected species of sea turtles—the loggerhead. Our aim was to quantify the effects of ingested plastics on individual animals and subsequently on whole populations. Differentiating between the individual and population breaking points is important because individuals can look healthy and even reproduce, but this may not be sufficient to offset the loss of individuals due to mortality. More extreme cases of plastics ingestion reported in the scientific literature cause the population ecological breaking point to be reached. This is why it is crucial to decisively act now, before it is too late."

Dr. Marn, co-leading author of this study, spent several months at Tokyo Tech working with Asst. Prof. Jusup. She explains her motivation, "Over the past few years, there have been frequent discussions about a large amount of plastic ending up in the oceans, but gathering reliable data on the direct effects of plastic on animal health is still a challenge for the scientific community. One of the main motivations of my doctoral research was therefore to link plastic in the oceans to effects on marine wildlife, particularly on the already endangered sea turtles."

Understanding the link between the amount of ingested plastic waste and reduction in feeding of marine wildlife is crucial to mitigate the negative effects of plastic on marine organisms.

An added value of this model is its wide applicability—not only to other sea turtles but also any of the over 2,000 animal species characterized in the online database called "Add-my-Pet." The database is a brainchild of Prof. Kooijman, another co-author of the study, and is maintained and updated by a collaborative scientific effort in which Dr. Marn participates.

Dr. Klanjšček, a corresponding author of this study, concludes, "The effects of plastics ingestion that we are focusing on are not the only non-lethal effects of ingested plastics; for example, there is also a toxicological aspect of (micro)plastics, which is something we do not characterize at this point. However, our model is a crucial step that brings us closer to a more complete understanding of the effects of plastics on marine organisms. A general approach such as this, combined with an extensive database, enables straightforward applications of our model to other organisms such as sea birds and sea mammals."

Indeed, this new model represents an important step towards conservation of the marine ecosystem, which is—no doubt—the need of the hour.

Newly hatched Florida sea turtles are consuming dangerous quantities of floating plastic

More information: Nina Marn et al, Quantifying impacts of plastic debris on marine wildlife identifies ecological breakpoints, Ecology Letters (2020). DOI: 10.1111/ele.13574

Journal information: Ecology Letters

Provided by Tokyo Institute of Technology

MMMM MEALWORM'S

Study finds insect shows promise as a good, sustainable food source

by Indiana University

With global food demands rising at an alarming rate, a study led by IUPUI scientists has found new evidence that a previously overlooked insect shows promise as alternative protein source: the yellow mealworm.

The research is based upon a new analysis of the genome of the mealworm species Tenebrio molitor led by Christine Picard, associate professor of biology and director in Forensic and Investigative Sciences program at the School of Science at IUPUI.

The work was published in the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed on Aug. 31.

"Human populations are continuing to increase and the stress on protein production is increasing at an unsustainable rate, not even considering climate change," said Picard, whose lab focuses on the use of insects to address global food demand.

The research, conducted in partnership with Beta Hatch Inc., has found the yellow mealworm—historically a pest—can provide benefit in a wide range of agriculture applications. Not only can it can be used as an alternative source of protein for animals including fish, but its waste is also ideal as organic fertilizer.

Picard and her team sequenced the yellow mealworm's genome using 10X Chromium linked-read technology. The results will help those who now wish to utilize the DNA and optimize the yellow mealworm for mass production and consumption. This new technology integrates the best of two sequencing methods to produce a reliable genome sequence.

"Insect genomes are challenging, and the longer sequence of DNA you can generate, the better genome you can assemble," said Picard.

Picard added the mealworm has—and will have—a wide variety uses.

"Mealworms, being insects, are a part of the natural diet of many organisms," said Picard. "Fish enjoy mealworms, for example. They could also be really useful in the pet food industry as an alternative protein source. Chickens like insects—and maybe one day humans will, too, because it's an alternative source of protein."

Next, Picard said the researchers plan to look at what governs some of the biological processes of yellow mealworms in order to harness information useful for the commercialization of these insects.

The next trend in food: Edible insects?

More information: T. Eriksson et al, The yellow mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) genome: a resource for the emerging insects as food and feed industry, Journal of Insects as Food and Feed (2020). DOI: 10.3920/jiff2019.0057

Provided by Indiana University

Sea level rise from ice sheets track worst-case climate change scenario

by University of Leeds

Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica whose melting rates are rapidly increasing have raised the global sea level by 1.8cm since the 1990s, and are matching the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's worst-case climate warming scenarios.

According to a new study from the University of Leeds and the Danish Meteorological Institute, if these rates continue, the ice sheets are expected to raise sea levels by a further 17cm and expose an additional 16 million people to annual coastal flooding by the end of the century.

Since the ice sheets were first monitored by satellite in the 1990s, melting from Antarctica has pushed global sea levels up by 7.2mm, while Greenland has contributed 10.6mm. And the latest measurements show that the world's oceans are now rising by 4mm each year.

"Although we anticipated the ice sheets would lose increasing amounts of ice in response to the warming of the oceans and atmosphere, the rate at which they are melting has accelerated faster than we could have imagined," said Dr. Tom Slater, lead author of the study and climate researcher at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.

"The melting is overtaking the climate models we use to guide us, and we are in danger of being unprepared for the risks posed by sea level rise."

The results are published today in a study in the journal Nature Climate Change. It compares the latest results from satellite surveys from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (IMBIE) with calculations from climate models. The authors warn that the ice sheets are losing ice at a rate predicted by the worst-case climate warming scenarios in the last large IPCC report.

Dr. Anna Hogg, study co-author and climate researcher in the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds, said: "If ice sheet losses continue to track our worst-case climate warming scenarios we should expect an additional 17cm of sea level rise from the ice sheets alone. That's enough to double the frequency of storm-surge flooding in many of the world's largest coastal cities."

So far, global sea levels have increased in the most part through a mechanism called thermal expansion, which means that volume of seawater expands as it gets warmer. But in the last five years, ice melt from the ice sheets and mountain glaciers has overtaken global warming as the main cause of rising sea levels.

Dr. Ruth Mottram, study co-author and climate researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, said: "It is not only Antarctica and Greenland that are causing the water to rise. In recent years, thousands of smaller glaciers have begun to melt or disappear altogether, as we saw with the glacier Ok in Iceland, which was declared "dead" in 2014. This means that melting of ice has now taken over as the main contributor of sea level rise. "

The study, "Ice-sheet losses track high-end sea-level rise projections," is published today (31 August) in Nature Climate Change.

Ice sheet melting: estimates still uncertain, experts warn

More information: "Ice-sheet losses track high-end sea-level rise projections," Nature Climate Change (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-020-0893-y

Journal information: Nature Climate Change

Provided by University of Leeds

Eating your vegetables is easier said than done

by International Center for Tropical Agriculture

"Food systems have the potential to nurture human health and support environmental sustainability; however, they are currently threatening both." This sentence, the opening statement of the EAT-Lancet Report published last year, reflects a growing consensus among global experts on food, nutrition and the environment: Our food system is broken and we need to fix it, fast.

To do so, the EAT-Lancet authors propose a "universal healthy reference diet" that is rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts; and low on red meat, sugar, and highly processed foods. Undertaken at a global scale, this diet would be both good for the planet and the 10 billion people predicted to live on it by 2050.

The good news is this massive food systems transformation is possible.

The bad news is that putting it into action will require an unprecedented level of global cooperation.

Operationalizing the EAT-Lancet diet will require research and bold action on at least five broad themes: economics, politics, cultural norms, equity and governance, according to a group of authors that includes members of the EAT-Lancet commission.

Their analysis was published in Nature Food in August and was led by Christophe Béné of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. The article will be open-access until early September.

"If we really want to enact this change we need to look beyond the technological advances that will contribute to food system transformation," said Béné. "There is a whole series of tricky and challenging changes that come along with it."

In outlining the five priorities, the authors not only point to knowledge gaps but also emphasize real-world actions, some of which are already happening, that will be integral to systemic change.

"To fully realize the recommendations laid out in the EAT Lancet report, policymakers will need to prioritize food systems as a top development agenda. Researchers have an important role in providing the evidence of what works and potential trade-offs to policymakers so they can adapt and prioritize to their own local context," said Jessica Fanzo, Professor at Johns Hopkins University, EAT-Lancet co-author and the Lead of the 2017 High Level Panel of Experts Report on Nutrition and Food System.

Co-authors included Lawrence Haddad, the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and recipient of the 2018 World Food Prize.

Economics

EAT-Lancet's reference diet works for people with access to, the money to buy, and the time to prepare healthier meals. But an estimated 1.6 billion people today do not have the money needed for a healthier diet, according to one study.

The costs of the transformation are unknown: changing land use and food production practices, and reducing food waste (which makes up about 30 percent of all food produced), and research is needed to estimate these costs.

For poor consumers, an already productive strategy has been the provision of discounts for healthy foods, perhaps rerouting production subsidies to the demand side of the economy. Land tenure rights, which incentivize productivity and are critical to conservation goals, could be guided by international technical guides.

Policy

The "global syndemic" of obesity, undernutrition and other health risks caused by poor diets—which together are the leading cause of poor health globally—require a thorough shakeup of the food system's status quo. This will require a complex combination of regulation and incentives to guide industrial food production toward healthier food products.

Often overlooked players in the food system, such as the world's 500 million smallholders, can contribute if there is scaled-up support to produce and consume a greater variety of healthy food.

More public research and development funding should be invested in non-staple, nutritious foods that can benefit small producers, the authors argue.

Other trends that must continue include increased public sentiment in favor of buying local and holding multinational food producers accountable for their role in unhealthy diets.

"The difficulties in implementing the required food transformations may therefore not be so much about the technicalities of the change, as they may be about the realpolitik of that change," the authors write.

Cultural norms

Consumers will be a key driver of the food system transformation. But increased wealth in middle-income countries is already driving transformation in the wrong direction—toward higher meat consumption and away from traditional, healthier foods that are deemed "foods of the poor."

"Unhealthy norms emerge all the time, as foods high in fat, sugar and salt become more widely available and marketed at lower prices throughout the world," write the authors. "Guiding cultural norms towards sustainability may also be challenging, more so because of the infinite diversity of diets from place to place, and the weak or incomplete evidence base on which to encourage these changes."

Equity

A 50 percent reduction in global red meat consumption is core to the EAT-Lancet diet. Such a dramatic shift would improve health and help conserve land that would be otherwise cleared for meat production.

But rural poor in many parts of the world would see their diets improved by consuming more animal-sourced protein, showing that any policies related to meat consumption need to be adapted to local contexts. Poorly nourished women and young children in low-income countries should increase their meat consumption, according to numerous studies.

"Beyond this specific example, the food transformation debate also needs to consider issues of social justice while averting promoting the message that changes involve only high-income countries," write the authors.

Women tend to represent a higher proportion of food system workers. They need additional protections, as do migrant laborers who are vital to harvest seasons worldwide. Child labor and slavery are not uncommon in the seafood industry.

Governance

Finally, the paper says that building the capacities of societies and decision-makers to navigate these different challenges may not be easy but it will be necessary. Grabbing the attention of governments that already need to focus on numerous, often competing priorities—including poverty, migration, security, natural disasters and pandemics—will not be easy.

"There is an urgent need to equip decision-makers at all levels with knowledge and skills to operate in this space," writes Béné.

The authors conclude: "The EAT-Lancet report did an excellent job of waking the world up to the interlinked issues of health and environment and showed that diets are the common denominator. But, at the crux of the great food transformation is the critical issue of science-policy interaction

A major new report has developed a global diet that could improve health and reduce further damage to the planet

More information: Christophe Béné et al, Five priorities to operationalize the EAT–Lancet Commission report, Nature Food (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-020-0136-4

Journal information: The Lancet , Nature Food

Provided by International Center for Tropical Agriculture

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