Project Press
Another Threat to Tuna: Ocean Acidification
By John R. Platt | Scientific American | June 22, 2016 More acidic oceans could soon start dissolving tuna fish as they swim, long before they make it to consumers’ plates. This worrying news comes from a study published last month in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology which found that increasing acidification in the Pacific…
Read More‘Finding Dory’ Could Lead to Dangerous Demand for Blue Tangs as Pets
By Brent Lang | Variety | June 22, 2016 “Finding Nemo” centers on an adorable clownfish who is separated from his father before being reunited to live out his days, swimming wild and free in his ocean home. The success of the 2003 film created a huge demand for the finned cuties, as fans of the…
Read MorePlastiglomerate: The New And Horrible Way Humans Are Leaving Their Mark On The Planet
By Carla Herreria | The Huffington Post | June 19, 2016 Humans will now be forever inscribed into the Earth’s geological history. Our everlasting signature? Plastic-infused stones. The newly identified stone, according to a report from The Geological Society of America, has been officially named plastiglomerate. It is formed when plastic trash melts and fuses together with…
Read MorePodcast: On the Way to Peak Phosphorus
By Generation Anthropocene | Smithsonian.com | June 17, 2016 Phosphorus is an essential element to life on earth, but it’s not distributed equally, to say the least. Geologic deposits of phosphorus are concentrated in just five countries, and experts say the rate at which we’re consuming it is unsustainable, predicting we may reach peak phosphorus this century…
Read MoreVenice has unusually high levels of water but the locals are getting on just fine
By Harley Tamplin | Metro.co.uk | June 17, 2016 If there’s one place in the world that should cope fine with some flash flooding, it’s Venice. That’s the case in the beautiful Italian city at the moment – and judging by the pictures, the locals don’t seem to mind. There are unusually high levels of water as…
Read MoreSeven climate records set so far in 2016
By Adam Vaughan | The Guardian | June 17, 2016 From soaring temperatures in Alaska and India to Arctic sea ice melting and CO2 concentrations rising, this year is smashing records around the world Continue reading on The Guardian.
Read More“Smartest Person,” “Anthropocene” receive Bell Fund cash
The Bell Fund has distributed CDN$6.4 million (US$5.04 million) across 39 broadcast and digital media projects. Unscripted English-language broadcast and digi projects to receive funding from the fund’s production program include Mercury Films’ feature documentary Anthropocene (TMN, TVO); Little Engine Moving Pictures’ Canada Crew (TVO); season three of Canada’s Smartest Person (pictured, CBC), from Media Headquarters Film & Television; marblemedia’s Driving Me…
Read MoreBiggest US coal company funded dozens of groups questioning climate change
By Suzanne Goldenberg and Helena Bengtssen | The Guardian | June 13, 2016 Peabody Energy, America’s biggest coalmining company, has funded at least two dozen groups that cast doubt on manmade climate change and oppose environment regulations, analysis by the Guardian reveals. The funding spanned trade associations, corporate lobby groups, and industry front groups as well as…
Read MoreBell Fund – May 2016 Funding Decisions
The Board of Directors of the Bell Fund has announced its decisions for the May 2, 2016 round of applications. Over $6.4M in grants has been approved for 39 of the 60 (English and French) applications received, as follows: The following English language projects received Production Grants under the Bell Fund’s Production Program: Continue reading on Bellfund.ca.
Read MoreSince the Late Pleistocene Humans Were Already Radically Transforming the Earth
By Jackson Landers | Smithsonian Magazine | June 7, 2016 “The idea of trying to restore things to a pristine state is not possible,” says Melinda Zeder, senior research scientist and curator of old world archaeology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “Humans are very much a part of nature,” Zeder says. “The ways in…
Read MoreSuccess! U.S. Effectively Bans Ivory Trade
By Andrew Harmon | WildAid | June 2, 2016 WASHINGTON (June 2, 2016) — In a bold effort to save Africa’s elephants, the Obama Administration has released strong, clear rules aimed at effectively shutting down the U.S. ivory market, one of the world’s largest. Released Thursday, the final Endangered Species Act special rule for the African elephant substantially limits…
Read MoreCloud-Seeding Surprise Could Improve Climate Predictions
By Davide Castelvecchio | Scientific American | May 26, 2016 Molecules released by trees can seed clouds, two experiments have revealed. The findings, published on May 25 in Nature and Science, run contrary to an assumption that the pollutant sulphuric acid is required for a certain type of cloud formation—and suggest that climate predictions may have underestimated the role that…
Read MoreAre We in the Anthropocene Yet?
By Zach St. George | Nautilus | May 23, 2016 In the early 1990s, a few miles west of El Kef, a town in Tunisia, geologists set a small golden spike in between two layers of clay that remains there to this day. They wanted to mark the tiny yet striking layer of iridium—a hard, dense, silvery-white…
Read MoreCoal made its best case against climate change, and lost
By Dana Nuccitelli | The Guardian | May 11, 2016 Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal company (now bankrupt), recently faced off against environmental groups in a Minnesota court case. The case was to determine whether the State of Minnesota should continue using its exceptionally low established estimates of the ‘social cost of carbon’, or…
Read MoreFirst report of all the world’s plants finds 1 in 5 species facing extinction
By Ben Guarino | The Washington Post | May 10, 2016 Plants pervade almost every part of human life — not only do we eat them and wear them, we use plants for fuel, medicine, building materials, poisons and intoxicants. To limit the world’s plants to those that meet a human need, however, would be doing the leafy kingdom a…
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