Equilibrium/Sustainability — Deepwater’s dolphin damage highlights toxicity of oil

Dolphins exposed to a massive oil slick released by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill have undergone troubling changes to their genomes, a new study has found. 

The animals, sampled in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay in 2013, showed damage to the parts of their genomes that control immune response and cellular health, according to the study, published on Wednesday in PLOS One. 

This discovery tracks with post-spill observations by wildlife veterinarians — who identified dolphins afflicted with conditions from lung disease to reproductive failure, the study noted. 

Many of those conditions seen in the field mirrored those found in laboratory animals exposed to oil, according to a 2013 study in Environmental Science and Technology. 

The 2013 study also found that Barataria Bay dolphins were five times more likely to experience moderate-to-severe lung disease compared to average dolphins. 

The correlation between observed and genomic data could help scientists more accurately assess the damage done to dolphins by future spills, the PLOS paper noted. 

Floods elicit disaster declaration, silence on climate

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed a disaster declaration on Tuesday for 23 counties inundated by the previous day’s severe floods, which left at least one person dead.  

Years of fierce weather pile on: But even as meteorologists described the flooding as a “one-in-a-thousand-years” event, Abbott declined to mention the words “climate change,” The Dallas Morning News reported. 

• This week’s disaster comes after years of heat and cold extremes, wildfires and tornadoes afflicting North Texas.  
  
• The declaration allows the state to implement emergency powers to respond to the situation.    

Ignoring climate change: “We have constant conversation about what we categorize as extreme weather,” Abbott said at a press briefing, acknowledging that “we are dealing with more extreme weather patterns,” according to the Morning News.   

But when a Spectrum News 1 journalist asked the governor specifically about climate change, Abbott refused to respond to the question, the Morning News reported.  

Need for preparedness: While Abbott refused to acknowledge climate change, officials did urge property owners to recognize the changing weather and boost their preparedness, Fox 7 Austin reported.  

• Securing federal aid depends on damage reports generated by residents.  
  
• The state is documenting nearly $50 million of uninsured loss to public property across the state — equivalent to about 800 uninsured homes.   

How extreme has the weather been? The Dallas-Fort Worth area set a record for its wettest August since 1899, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing the National Weather Service.  

• August rainfall in the region surpassed the 1915 record of 10.3 inches.  
  
• Yet much of Texas has been experiencing drought: Before this weekend’s event, Dallas-Fort Worth had a rain deficit of more than 16 inches for the past year.    

Deadly floodwaters: Motor vehicles ended up stuck on roads, while homes and businesses were flooded during the weekend’s storms, according to the Journal.  

• During the nearly 24-hour stretch of rainfall from Sunday through Monday, Dallas’s fire department said it responded to 195 water-related incidents.  
  
• A 60-year-old woman died when her car was swept away in the floods, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins confirmed. 

Native communities fight climate invasion 

On opposite coasts of the United States, two Native American communities are working to restore damage that climate change and invasive species caused to their traditional homes. 

Reclaiming Plymouth: In the heat of the summer, volunteers cleared thickets of invasive Japanese knotweed from the Wampanoag Common Lands project in coastal Massachusetts, according to The Associated Press. 

The project aims to convert a 32-acre plot of coastal Massachusetts back to something like its ecosystem before European colonization, founder Ramona Peters told the AP. 

• The site is highly symbolic: It’s just 5 miles from where the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. 
  
• “This is basically where the first impact of colonization of this country happened,” Peters said. “It’s very significant that it’s been returned to us.” 

Trapping crabs: Meanwhile in Washington State, members of the Shoalwater Bay Indian tribe are racing to stem booming populations of invasive European green crabs, according to a second AP story. 

The tribe hopes to deploy federal funds to trap tens of thousands of the crabs this year, the AP reported. 

• The crabs consume native shellfish and aquatic life, undermining food webs that the regions’ animal — and human — life depends on. 
  
• “We’re not seeing a let-up on any of the numbers we’re trapping and there’s no population reduction we’ve seen anywhere,” Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe Director of Natural Resources Larissa Pfleeger-Ritzman told the AP. 

Low-cost batteries made from plentiful materials

An international team of scientists say they have innovated a new type of battery made from much more abundant and inexpensive materials than today’s lithium-ion cells. 

Their technology aims to fulfill a gap in a world that has become increasingly hungry for energy storage solutions, according to the researchers, who published their findings in Nature on Wednesday.   

For small-scale storage, cars: “I wanted to invent something that was better, much better, than lithium-ion batteries for small-scale stationary storage,” senior author Donald Sadoway, a professor of materials chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a statement. 

What’s in the new battery? The new battery uses aluminum and sulfur as its two electrode materials, with a molten salt electrolyte in between them, as detailed in the study. 

• Aluminum is the second-most-abundant metal in the marketplace and the most abundant metal on Earth.   
  
• The researchers chose sulfur, the cheapest of all non-metals, as the second electrode material.   

And the electrolyte? For this key component of the battery, Sadoway said he and his colleagues decided that they “were not going to use the volatile flammable organic liquids.” 

• Such liquids have caused dangerous fires in cars and in other uses of lithium-ion batteries.  
  
• They settled on molten salts that have relatively low melting points, as the resultant batteries wouldn’t require special insulation and anticorrosion measures.   

What’s wrong with lithium? In addition to being expensive, lithium batteries contain a flammable electrolyte, which makes them more hazardous for use in transportation, the authors explained.

What about the charge rate? The researchers demonstrated that their battery cells could endure hundreds of cycles at what they described as “exceptionally high charging rates.” 

• The projected cost per cell was about one-sixth that of similar lithium-ion batteries.  
  
• Charging rate depended on working temperature, with 110 degrees Celsius (230 degrees Fahrenheit) garnering 25 times faster rates than 25 C (77 F). 

Is this scalable? That remains to be seen. Sadoway has co-founded a spinoff company called Avanti, which has licensed the patents to the system. 

“The first order of business for the company is to demonstrate that it works at scale,” Sadoway said. 

Insect protein could come to convenience stores 

Convenience store snacks might soon receive a bug-derived boost in protein and flavor. 

Scientists from South Korea have formulated seasonings from ground-up mealworms that mimic the flavor of meat — in hopes of sneaking sustainable nutrition into the diets of those reluctant to eat insects. 

Overcoming the ‘yuck’: Mealworms harvested at various ages and cooked in various ways produce convincingly “meat-like” flavors and odors, according to the researchers, who presented their findings at the American Chemical Society’s annual fall meeting. 

• The team identified nearly 100 potential savory flavors in mealworms — 10 of which passed muster with a focus group. 
  
• “Insects are a nutritious and healthy food source with high amounts of fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, fiber and high-quality protein, which is like that of meat,” lead author In Hee Cho of South Korea’s Wonkwang University said in a statement. 

Can small animals replace big ones? Protein from small animals like insects can help the world escape the trap created by reliance on protein from larger ones like cows and sheep, the scientists explained. 

Growing concerns: These issues will likely be magnified in the future, if population projections are fulfilled. The world population is expected to hit 8.5 billion by 2030, reach nearly 10 billion by 2050 and pass 11 billion by 2100, according to the United Nations. 

• “Eating insects has become of interest because of the increasing cost of animal protein, as well as the associated environmental issues,” Cho said. 
  
• Livestock currently takes up nearly 80 percent of current global farmland, but produces less than 20 percent of its calories and less than 40 percent of its protein, according to science publication Our World in Data.  

The growing need for pasture for animals like cattle is a major source of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. 

Water Wednesday

Indian scientists work around drought’s impact on dairy, China’s heat wave cripples hydropower and drought reveals an ancient dinosaur “trackway.” 

Amid drought, scientists in India work to preserve dairy industry 

• Scientists at India’s National Dairy Research Institute are working to maintain the country’s role as a “dairy powerhouse” in a region grappling with climate-induced drought conditions, The New York Times reported. Researchers are exploring everything from testing out shrubs that are higher in protein, running trials on mineral intake of cattle and playing soft flute music to reduce animal stress, according to the Times. 

China’s heat wave cripples hydropower operations 

• The unprecedented heat wave scorching China has become so severe that many areas are encountering hydropower shortages, The Washington Post reported. After hydropower in the province of Sichuan plunged below half its normal level, 67 coal plants had to begin “firing on all cylinders” and produce as much power as possible, according to the Post. 

Drought reveals Texas dinosaur tracks 

• Falling water levels in a north Texas state have revealed enormous dinosaur tracks, according to a video posed by the group Friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park. The 113-million-year-old tracks were left by fast-moving carnivorous Acrocanthosaurs and ponderous long-necked Sauroposeidon, CNN reported. 

Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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