In 2007 its consumption was above 12 million tons, with an average annual growth rate in its use of about 5 percent.

Since the 1950s, one billion tons of plastic are thought to have been discarded and the waste may persist for hundreds or even thousands of years.

As part of Yale’s Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory educational program, the researchers scoured the Ecuadorian rainforest for plants and cultured the micro-organisms within their tissue.

According to the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, they say, ‘Endophytes were isolated from plant stems collected in the Ecuadorian rainforest.

Endophytes are micro-organisms that live within the inner tissues of plants, but do not cause any noticeable disease symptoms in their hosts.

They often play a key role in the decomposition of the plants after death, but never before have they been tested for their ability to degrade synthetic materials.

The Yale researchers who are authors of the study hold out hope that further exploration of properties of endophytes could reveal more miracle metabolizers that could potentially be used to degrade other kinds of plastics.

‘Each of the more than 300,000 land plant species on Earth potentially hosts multiple endophyte species,’ according to the researchers.

‘Endophytes reach their greatest diversity in tropical forests. Individual trees can harbor hundreds of endophytic species, some of which are known but many of which are new to science.’

With the findings, U.S. researchers now believe that a fungus could be used to break down plastic, and so rescue the world from one of its biggest man-made environmental threats.

The world’s populace patronizing to plastic packaging and products, threatens to choke many of the Eco-systems that life relies on for survival.

The plastic eating fungi’s discovery is a breakthrough that could give us hope and save the world from its biggest man-made ecological threat, the deliberate proliferation of plastic wastes in our environment.

The methane gas they have produced could be enormous and have heated up the earth.

The vegetarian dinosaurs recognizable by their long necks and whip like tails and weighing from around 20 tons like the Apatosaurus and as high as 110 tons like the largest and the longest among them the Diplodocus, a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaur were widespread and are predominant species around 150 million years ago (Mesozoic Era) and they produced a lot of wind.

Scientists believe that ruminant herbivorous animals, just as in cows, methane-producing bacteria aided the digestion of sauropods by fermenting their plant food.

Microbes in the stomachs of ruminant species produce methane gas as they break down vegetable matter which is released as flatulence.

By measuring up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs, as a whole, produced 520 million tons of gas annually.

They suggest the gas could have been a key factor in the warming of the earth during those times.

“Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources, both natural and man made put together,” according to study leader Dr. Dave Wilkinson, from Liverpool John Moores University.

Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, with a stronger ability to trap heat and is known to absorb infrared radiation from the sun, trapping it in the Earth’s atmosphere and leading to increased temperatures.

Current methane emissions amount to around 500 million tons a year from a combination of natural sources, such as wild animals, and human activities including dairy and meat production.

Expressing his surprise at the comparative figures, Dr. Wilkinson added that dinosaurs were not the sole producers of methane at the time.

“There were other sources of methane in the Mesozoic so total methane level would probably have been much higher than now,” he said.

Previous studies have suggested that the Earth was up to 10 degrees Celsius (18 degree Fahrenheit) warmer in the Mesozoic Era than today.

The research was published in the journal Current Biology.

Satellite data over a large area in Texas, is now covered by four of the world’s largest wind farms, it has found that over a decade the local temperature heats up by almost 1 degree Celsius as more turbines are built.

Wind turbines could warm local climates up to ten times faster than the natural rate, a study has shown.

Researchers found air temperatures around the area had increased by up to 0.72 degree Celsius in a decade. In contrast, Earth’s average temperature has warmed by only 0.8 degree Celsius since 1900.

As more wind farms are built, temperature increases may have a long-term impact on wildlife and regional weather patterns, with experts warning that the effects from large farms could alter wind and rainfall patterns.

Publishing the scientists’ findings in the scientific journal Nature, they said: ‘We attribute this warming primarily to wind farms.

Some scientists have suggested that giant wind farms, comprising hundreds of thousands of turbines, would not only alter the weather but could be used to control it.

‘The temperature change could be due to the effects of the energy expelled by farms and the movement and turbulence generated by turbine rotors.

‘These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.’

But they warned that firm conclusions should not be drawn until more research had been carried out.

The world’s wind farms last year had the capacity to produce 238 gigawatts of electricity at any one time a 21 percent increase in 2010.

Sir John Sulston, who led the team behind People and the Planet, said the growing population in the developing world must be addressed as a key part of tackling rising carbon emissions and extinction of species.

He said voluntary family planning should be available to all. The Least Developed Countries could be provided with free contraception for just US$ 10.5 billion (£7 billion) a year and developing countries could improve services with help from the rich world.

Sulston also said consumption needs to be addressed in the developed world by encouraging people to use less fossil fuels. This could be done through switching to low carbon energy, improving technology and change in behavior.

Developing countries will be building the equivalent of a city of a million people from now until 2050, but this can be part of the solution by making sure these cities are sustainable by providing public transport and efficient buildings.

Despite fertility declining, the population is still growing at about 80 million annually.
The world’s poorest people should have free access to contraception, according to a new report from the Royal Society.

“There are at least 200 million women in the world who have an unmet need for contraception,” according to Sulston . “That is to say if someone was offering them the means, they would want it. It does not mean they don’t want children, they want the opportunity to space their children out.

“It is extremely good value for aid because it has such a good knock-on effect for women and children.”

Sulston has suggested, that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) should be replaced by a new measurement that takes into account natural capital in order to encourage Governments to protect the environment.

He said addressing the growing population, rising consumption and developing a new international measurement to encourage green growth must be priorities for the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June.

“The world now has a very clear choice. We can choose to address the twin issues of population and consumption.”

In its 42nd year, the occasion’s organizers have called on people worldwide to pledge ‘one billion acts of green’, ranging from switching off lights at home to eating locally grown food.

Earth Day devotees claimed one billion people would gather at events around the world to raise support for a sustainable future and draw attention to the havoc wrought by global warming.

Demonstrations were today taking place on every continent, as campaigners once again pooled their efforts to demand stricter rules on environmental protection.

In the U.S., mass events were planned across the country, with the main event set to take place at the National Mall, Washington DC, with bands and speakers.

With the Kyoto Protocol expiring this year, campaigners are calling for a new deal to curb global carbon emissions at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit this June.

On the eve of Earth Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the Rio+20 summit a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity that all of us must seize.’

He said: ‘We must use Rio+20 to promote better respect for nature and to cultivate an environment, natural and social, in which all children feel safe and all people can prosper.’

In a proclamation issued by the White House, President Barack Obama called on Americans to ‘recommit to the spirit of togetherness and shared responsibility that galvanized a movement 42 years ago.’

The White House statement hailed environmental laws which ‘ignited a spirit of stewardship that has driven progress for over four decades.’

President Obama also mentioned his own administration’s eco-friendly agenda, including new standards in fuel economy and limits on mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants.

‘Our country is on the path to economic recovery and renewal, and moving forward, my Administration will continue to fight for a healthy environment every step of the way,’ he proclaimed.

It was Gaylord Nelson who spearheaded the idea of Earth Day, he was then a senator from Wisconsin, when he realized that if he could infuse that youthful energy with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution, it would force environmental protection onto the national political agenda.

Senator Nelson then utilized the media in educating people and promote awareness on the environment and persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservative congressman as his co-chair and Denis Hayes as national coordinator, who built a national staff of 85 to promote events across the U.S.

As a result, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies.
Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment.

Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, road building, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

The first Earth Day led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.

Today, the success of the environmental movement is plain to see across the U.S., but its proponents nevertheless claim that it faces greater challenges than ever.

The puzzling find has baffled scientists and comes at a time when glaciers in other parts of the region, and across the world, are shrinking.

Scientists have found it almost impossible to study the glaciers on the ground, for the region lies at great altitude in a border area, and access is hampered by snow avalanches and glacial debris.

French scientists from the National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Grenoble, were forced to rely on satellite images, to study the region, because much of the Karakoram range is inaccessible.

They compared observations made in 1999 and 2008 and found a marginal mass increase.
They estimated the glaciers had gained between 0.11 and 0.22 meters of ice each year.

In a commentary also carried by Nature Geoscience, Graham Cogley of Trent University in Ontario, Canada, said it was unclear why the Karakoram had so far been spared the impact of warming.

“It seems that, by a quirk of the atmospheric general circulation that is not understood, more snow is being delivered to the mountain range at present, and less heat,” said Cogley.

The French researchers are unsure why the region defies the global trend, but they know from other studies in other parts of the world that in very cold regions, like the Karakoram range, climate change can cause extra precipitation, which then freezes and adds to ice mass.

Stephan Harrison, associate professor in quaternary science at the UK’s University of Exeter, said the new research had showed there is ‘considerable variability’ in the global climate and in how glaciers respond to it.

The Karakoram glaciers are also unusual because they are covered with thick layers of rock debris, which means their patterns of melting and mass gain are driven by changes in that debris as well as in the climate.

Harrison said much of their mass gain also comes from avalanches from the high mountains surrounding them.

“Apparently, the situation in the Karakoram is a little different (from elsewhere), which means that the glaciers are stable for the time being,” according to lead researcher, Julie Gardelle of the University of Grenoble in southeastern France.

“But it does not detract in any way from the evidence for overall global warming,” she cautioned.

The government has put the number of elephants killed since January at 128, but the park says more than 480 have been killed.

The conservation watchdog sought assurances from President Paul Biya that he would do whatever necessary to protect the remaining elephants, there and also in other parks.

Cameroon’s rangers were not properly trained or equipped to deal with the scale of the poaching problem, WWF said.

WWF’s central Africa representative Natasha Kofoworola Quist said at least half of the elephants in the 220,000 hectare park may have been killed.

“The forces arrived too late to save most of the park’s elephants and were too few to deter the poachers,” WWF said of the massacre of the animals for their ivory.

At least three the number of deaths, two soldiers and a poacher, since about 100 soldiers were deployed two weeks ago.

The WWF urged Biya to bring the poachers to justice, and to engage the governments of Chad and Cameroon from where the poachers allegedly come.

“Rangers’ lives are being lost in this battle. The honorable men and women who are putting their personal safety at risk to protect wildlife and to serve communities near protected areas deserve better from their leaders,” WWF said.

Many of these pipelines course through densely populated areas, including neighborhoods in Fort Worth, Texas.

It is released through the drilling method known as fracking, and need to step up oversight to make sure they are running safely.

Most of those miles of pipelines are not regulated by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), which means they are not regularly inspected for leaks or corrosion, according to its report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

In some states, officials don’t know where the lines are.

Many local residents have no idea that the pipelines near their homes are not overseen by federal regulators, according to Emily Krafjack, who lives in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania.

Gathering lines that run in the rural northeastern corner of the state receive no federal oversight if there are fewer than 10 homes within 220 yards of the pipeline.

All over the country, there are about 200,000 miles of gas gathering lines and up to 40,000 miles of hazardous liquid gathering lines in rural and urban areas alike, ranging in diameter from about 2 to 12 inches. But only about 24,000 of those miles are regulated, according to the report.

The industry is not required to report pipeline-related fatality, injury or property damage information about the unregulated lines.

The pipeline agency is considering collecting more data on the unregulated gas gathering lines, but the plans are still preliminary and have met with some resistance from the natural gas industry.

Agency officials are reviewing more than 100 public comments received about their proposal for gas lines, and also plan to propose a rule that will cover hazardous liquid gathering pipelines by the fall, said Jeannie Layson, a PHMSA spokeswoman.

PHMSA delegates some enforcement of its rules to state-level pipeline safety authorities, who the GAO surveyed to understand the array of risks associated with gathering lines.

Those state-level agencies told the auditors that construction quality, maintenance practices, unknown locations, and limited or no information on current pipeline integrity all posed safety risks for federally unregulated gathering pipelines.

But in Fort Worth, where dozens of new gathering lines have been laid in recent years to capture supplies from hundreds of new wells, some residents say there aren’t enough protections from leaks and ruptures due to corrosion.

The recent surge in drilling also has led California lawmakers to write new laws to increase oversight of the industry.

Assemblyman Bill Wieckowski, D-Fremont, is sponsoring a bill now pending before a state Senate committee that would require gas and oil producers to disclose what chemicals they are using when they engage in hydraulic fracturing.

He studied the weight of both fat and thin people over 22 years, and first started looking for explanations after noticing even thin people were gaining weight.

According to Hersoug, ‘The normal theory is that fat people get fatter because they don’t move as much as they should.

But in the course of his study over a span of 22 years he noticed that even thin people has gained weight.

When he investigated further, he saw how CO2 concentration of the atmosphere had affected our hormones known as orexins, a type of hormone which reside in the brain and stimulate wakefulness and energy expenditure.

The hormones regulate when we go to bed, as well as the stimulation of food intake.

Hersoug also suggests as evidence that obesity increases in the U.S. happened fastest in the period 1986-2010 on the East Coast, which is where CO2 concentrations are highest.

He also cites a 2010 study of 20,000 laboratory animals who all gained weight, despite being in controlled conditions.

Testing his hypothesis, six men were placed in special climate rooms, where some of them were exposed to increased amounts of CO2.

Seven hours later, the men were allowed to eat as much as they liked, and the men with more exposure to CO2 ate six per cent more food than the control group.

On the lighter side, losing weight could lead to less CO2 and methane in the atmosphere and the world’s obese people could help stop global warming by going on a diet, scientists claimed today.

Obese and overweight people were said to be contributing to climate change just by breathing.

Researchers calculated that if all the world’s heavyweights dropped 10kg, C02 emissions would fall by 49.560 metric tons a year.

That’s the equivalent of 0.2 percent of the CO2 emitted globally in 2007.

However, they did not include methane gas emissions from flatulent large people, despite evidence about cows contributing to greenhouse gases.

It has suffered the worst drought in decades, with crops struggling to grow as farmers leave the land untilled.

The drought has also caused habitual summer forest fires to come early and they have already ravaged hundreds of hectares in the north.

Farmers in the Spanish region of Aragon alone which includes the provinces of Huesca, Teruel and Zaragoza will lose around US$ 1.7 billion dollars this season due to the lack of rain, according to farmers’ association Asociación Agraria de Jóvenes Agricultores (ASAJA).

The commission that regulates water used for irrigation in Aragon warned in December that the region’s reservoirs had only one quarter of the water needed for a ‘normal’ growing season.

The Sotonera reservoir, one of the biggest in the region, has dropped to 40 percent of its capacity.

The lack of rain has also pushed up production costs for farmers, which have outpaced any gains in prices for their crops and livestock.

Production costs for livestock growers have risen by 20 percent because the lack of grazing has forced them to buy expensive feed for their animals, according to Spain’s Union of Small Farmers (UPA).

The number of livestock breeders in his region has dropped to five from 40 in recent years and the number of livestock has fallen to 4,000 from 12,000, said Manuel Montesa, a livestock farmer.

“If there is no pasture, we don’t know where we are going to get grass or some other type of feed, and at what price,” said the 27-year-old farmer who usually takes his sheep to graze in lands near the town of Sarinena.

Montesa takes his sheep out to forage in mountains in northern Spain, he must bring water for them because streams near his town have run dry.

Fernando Regano, a farmer who is also from Sarinena in the province of Huesca, points to small, yellowing sprouts of barley and green peas which should be standing tall by this time but which have been stunted by the lack of rain.

The average consumption of water per hectare of land is between 7,500 and 8,000 cubic meters but this year it has been just 2,100 cubic meters per hectare, he said.

“In this plot, if we had the 8,000 cubic meters of water I would for sure be able to raise 20 tons of barley and corn but I am going to have just four or five tons in the entire 70 hectare field,” he said.

Regano said he left 30 hectares of land uncultivated this year because of the lack of rain. He estimates farmers in the region will see drops in production this season of around 80 percent.

The previous three months December, January and February, have been the driest in Spain since at least the 1940s, according to the national weather office.

Authorities are already talking about subsidies for farmers hurt by the drought but according to Regano what is needed is good water control and new dams to better harness river water.