The Great Lakes, as well as other aquatic systems, have seen the accidental import of many invasive species. Some, as it turns out, are stronger than the native forms which dramatically changes local conditions and not always for the good. Amidst the public battle over handling of the Asian carp threat in the Great Lakes, there is good news on the invasive species front. A New York State appellate court dismissed a challenge brought by shipping interests against the state’s tough new ballast water requirements, which are designed to limit the introduction of more invasive species into the Great Lakes. This is the second time that the state, with help from intervening Non-Government Organizations, has successfully defended the ballast water restrictions in court.

BoingBoing.net is reporting today on a tabletop "hydrogen power station" that produces hydrogen from water using a standard power outlet and costs around $200. While this may sound wonderful on the surface, it merely illustrates how the notion of a “hydrogen economy” is really a myth. Let's get one thing perfectly clear: hydrogen is not a energy resource. Hydrogen does not exist naturally in any sufficient quantities to make it a viable energy source, at least on this planet. To get hydrogen in any useful quantities, it must be extracted from natural gas, water or biomass, and all of these result in a net loss of energy. It is more efficient to use these fuels in their original forms.

A new Chinese government survey of the country's environmental problems has shown water pollution levels in 2007 were more than twice the government's official estimate, largely because agricultural waste was ignored. The data, presented by Vice Environment Protection Minister Zhang Lijun, revives persistent questions about the quality of Chinese official statistics and the effectiveness of a government push for cleaner growth after decades of unbridled expansion.

Beer is an alcoholic beverage. Obviously too much alcohol makes you drunk which is not too good for your health. Yet beer does have its positive benefits. One, of course, is to reduce stress (at least short term). A new study suggests that beer is a significant source of dietary silicon, a key ingredient for increasing bone mineral density. Researchers from the Department of Food Science & Technology at the University of California, Davis studied commercial beer production to determine the relationship between beer production methods and the resulting silicon content, concluding that beer is a rich source of dietary silicon. Details of this study are available in the February issue of the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Society of Chemical Industry.

Climbing beans suited to rainy high-altitude areas are being distributed in Rwanda after a decade of research. The fifteen varieties, developed by the Rwandan Agricultural Research Institute (ISAR) in collaboration with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), could benefit smallholder farmers in similar areas across Central and East Africa. Unlike the more commonly-planted 'bush beans', the beans are resistant to legume diseases such as anthracnose, root rot and ascochyta, which are found in damp, higher altitude areas.

China has an estimated 50 or fewer tigers left living in the wild, but efforts to stabilize one population in the bleak northeast are starting to pay off, a conservationist said on Monday. Tigers once roamed huge swathes of China, right up to the now booming east coast. Their population has collapsed due to habitat destruction on the back of rapid economic development and poaching for tiger products to use in traditional medicine. About 10 still live in the southwestern province of Yunnan, some 15 in Tibet, and 20 or so in northwestern Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, said Xie Yan, China Country Program Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

The sea level in Israel has been rising and falling over the past 2,500 years, with a one-meter difference between the highest and lowest levels, most of the time below the present-day level. This has been shown in a new study supervised by Dr. Dorit Sivan, Head of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. "Rises and falls in sea level over relatively short periods do not testify to a long-term trend. It is early yet to conclude from the short-term increases in sea level that this is a set course that will not take a change in direction," explains Dr. Sivan.

Climate change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice, scientists said on Friday in giving their early findings from the biggest-ever study of Canada's changing north. The research project involved more than 370 scientists from 27 countries who collectively spent 15 months, starting in June 2007, aboard a research vessel above the Arctic Circle. It marked the first time a ship has stayed mobile in Canada's high Arctic for an entire winter.

Wind and solar technology made up over half of Europe’s new electricity generating capacity in 2009, as the number of new coal and nuclear facilities fell More wind capacity was installed in Europe during 2009 than any other electricity-generating technology, according to statistics released today by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). Wind accounted for 39 per cent of increased European energy capacity, ahead of gas (26 per cent) and solar (16 per cent). In contrast, the nuclear and coal power sectors decommissioned more megawatts of capacity than they installed in 2009, with a total of 1,393 MW of nuclear and 3,200 MW of coal decommissioned.

Republican politicians and conservative activists are launching a ballot campaign to suspend California's landmark global-warming law, in what they hope will serve as a showcase for a national backlash against climate regulations. Supporters say they have "solid commitments" of nearly $600,000 to pay signature gatherers for a November initiative aimed at delaying curbs on the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants and factories until the state's unemployment rate drops.

How different species can evolve the same colors and pattern has always puzzled biologists. Now, scientists at Cambridge University have found "hot spots" in the butterflies’ genes that might one of the most extraordinary examples of mimicry in the natural world. A gene is a hereditary unit consisting of a sequence of DNA that occupies a specific location on a chromosome and determines a particular characteristic in an organism. Genes undergo mutation when their DNA sequence changes.

Communicating why biodiversity loss matters for people is essential for reversing it. The failed UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December could hardly have been a less promising prelude to the International Year of Biodiversity, which opened last month (January). As with climate change, the threat of large-scale biodiversity loss — and the need for global political action to stop it — is growing every day.

Scant ice over the Arctic Sea this winter could mean a "double whammy" of powerful ice-melt next summer, a top U.S. climate scientist said on Thursday. "It's not that the ice keeps melting, it's just not growing very fast," said Mark Serreze, director of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. In January, Arctic sea ice grew by about 13,000 square miles (34,000 sq km) a day, which is a bit more than one-third the pace of ice growth during the 1980s, and less than the average for the first decade of the 21st century.

A Canadian company, the Bontan Oil and Gas Company, based in Toronto, has found what could be up to $6 billion dollars worth off natural gas off the coast of Israel. This could mean even cleaner energy for Israel which has no formal diplomatic relations with its Arab neighbours who own oil. While natural gas is not the cleanest fuel out there, it does burn cleaner than oil. The Jerusalem Post reports that the Canadian company had been exploring for natural gas off the coast of Israel, and announced yesterday that it had located what appears to be up to 6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas off Israel’s coast in two separate sites.

A Malthusian catastrophe was originally foreseen to be a forced return to subsistence level conditions once population growth had outpaced agricultural production. The catastrophe is that in doing so many people will starve. Sometime around 2050, there are going to be nine billion people roaming this planet two billion more than there are today. It's a safe bet that all those folks will want to eat. Still, not everyone's convinced that feeding nine billion people is a totally impossible task. A Malthusian catastrophe has been predicted before to happen and has not yet done so, A new paper published this week in Science written by Britain's chief scientific adviser John Beddington along with others, outlines a way this could actually be done.

Incorporating 17,000 tropical islands, Indonesia is one of the world's richest areas of biodiversity. However, according to the Jakarta Post, over half of this biodiversity remains unrecorded with only 20 of the more than 400 regencies in the country recording species. Indonesia is one of the 17 largest biodiversity hotspots on the planet, but we have not recorded most of it," the deputy assistant of biodiversity conservation at the State Environment Ministry, Utami Andayani, told The Jakarta Post, adding that, "it is difficult for us to complain if other countries exploit our biodiversity for commercial purposes such as medicine because of the lack of data to prove the species are from Indonesia,"

With congressional action on climate legislation in doubt, two House committee chairmen have filed a bill to block the government from regulating greenhouse gases under its own power. The lawmakers say Congress, not "unelected bureaucrats," should set environmental policy. Congress has squabbled for months over a comprehensive climate change bill. Some members say the best bet is to encourage renewable energy production.

A new independent film from Gregory Kallenberg, Haynesville is being released by Three Penny Productions. Kallenberg’s background is in film and writing, with a focus in journalism and television. His credits include Eating Levi, an internationally successful film about Levi Oliver and his quest for competitive eating fame. Mark Bullard is the producer of Haynesville. ENN was provided a copy of Haynesville to review since energy and environmental aspects are key to the film. Haynesville provides interesting insights into the future role of natural gas in meeting the country’s energy needs. It is essentially two movies intermingled into one. It deals with both the impact of selling gas exploration rights on three parties in northern Louisiana and the promise and pitfalls for an expanded role for natural gas in the US. It can often become a bit confusing as the movie jumps between these two themes.

Pyrethroids, which are among the most widely used home pesticides, are winding up in California rivers at levels toxic to some stream dwellers, possibly endangering the food supply of fish and other aquatic animals, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Southern Illinois University. A pyrethroid is a synthetic chemical compound similar to the natural chemical pyrethrins produced by certain flowers(such as Chrysanthemum). Pyrethroids now constitute a major proportion of the synthetic insecticide market and are common in commercial products such as household insecticides. In the concentrations used in such products, they may also have insect repellent properties and are generally harmless to human beings but can harm sensitive individuals.

It took 12 years, but the medical journal the Lancet has retracted once and for all a controversial paper that drew a link between vaccines and autism and helped fuel a backlash against immunization of children. A 1998 Lancet paper reported on a dozen kids who developed various behavioral and intestinal problems. Eight of them had been vaccinated with a combination shot against measles, mumps and rubella.

President Barack Obama acknowledged on Tuesday that a controversial "cap-and-trade" mechanism to fight climate change could be separated from other aspects of an energy bill before the U.S. Senate. A cap-and-trade system would set limits on greenhouse gas emissions and allow companies to trade permits to pollute. The system, a version of which was approved by the House of Representatives, is controversial, especially among lawmakers who represent states with big coal reserves.

A key deadline for countries to submit emission reduction goals to the United Nations as part of the recently negotiated Copenhagen Accord passed last Sunday. The U.N. received commitments from 55 nations, but 139 countries remain unsupportive of the political statement, leading the international body to push back the commitment deadline indefinitely. Since the high-level climate change summit in Copenhagen concluded in December, global climate talks have been in a state of confusion. Two parallel tracks are already under way - one that includes the United States and one that omits this significant world emitter. The Copenhagen Accord, some say, threatens to introduce a third procedural track, complicating the already tense deliberations.

It's World Wetland's Day! For more than 25 years, February 2nd has been designated as World Wetlands Day. Wetlands are under-appreciated in many areas. First we have to drain the swamps, is still a common approach to development in many areas. This approach, of course, is actually a bad idea, a very bad idea, since wetlands, besides being important to the species that live there, are important groundwater recharge areas. World Wetlands Day 2010: "Wetlands, Biodiversity and Climate Change" stresses the fact that caring for wetlands is a part of the solution to climate change with the slogan: "Caring for wetlands — an answer to climate change."

Brazil's government has granted an environmental license for the construction of a controversial hydroelectric dam in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, the Environment Minister said on Monday. The $17 billion project on the Xingu River in the northern state of Para is to help the fast-growing Latin American country cope with soaring demand for electricity but has raised concern over its likely impact on the environment and on native Indians.

The last Neanderthals in Europe died out at least 37,000 years ago — and both climate change and interaction with modern humans could be involved in their demise. The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Neanderthals are either classified as a subspecies of humans or as a separate species. How and why they died out is a matter of debate.