Environmental News: January 22-February 1, 2010

Fewer Hawaiian monk seal pups
February 1, 2010
Population down to about 1,100 in Isles, with annual decline of 4% each year
By Christie Wilson
The 2009 Hawaiian monk seal breeding season produced the fewest pups in at least 10 years as the highly endangered marine mammal species continued its slide toward possible extinction.
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Global Warming Slowed by Decline in Atmospheric Water Vapor
January 29, 2010
A sudden and unexplained drop in the amount of water vapor present high in the atmosphere almost a decade ago has substantially slowed the rate of warming at Earth’s surface in recent years, scientists say.
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U.S. Formally Embraces Copenhagen Climate Deal
29-Jan-10

Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON - The United States on Thursday formally notified the United Nations that it has embraced the Copenhagen Accord setting nonbinding goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that was negotiated last month.
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Arctic Could be Ice-Free in future Summers
February 11, 2010
Roger Greenway, ENN
Are warming conditions in the Arctic unprecedented in Earth’s history? It turns out that they are not. The Earth’s climate has gone through warming and cooling times in the past as can be seen in the fossil record that shows tropical species in regions now too cool to support them.
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Shrimp, their environmental impact not shrimpy
January 28, 2010
Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare. The environmental impact of shrimp can be horrific. But most Americans don't know where their shrimp comes from or what's in it. Americans love their shrimp.
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Two states prepare to regulate BPA
MADISON, WIS. (Jan. 27, 4:45 p.m. ET) -- Washington and Wisconsin are one step closer to becoming the third and fourth U.S. states to ban the use of bisphenol A in baby bottles and food and drink containers.
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Scientists link flame retardants and reduced human fertility
January 27, 2010
By Marla Cone
Editor in Chief
Environmental Health News
Scientists for the first time have found evidence that flame retardants - ubiquitous in homes and in the environment - may be reducing human fertility. California women exposed to high levels of the compounds take substantially longer to get pregnant than women with low levels.
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Methane Causes Vicious Cycle In Global Warming
January 27, 2010
Carbon dioxide is the gas we most associate with global warming, but methane gas also plays an important role. For reasons that are not well understood, methane gas stopped increasing in the atmosphere in the 1990s.
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Florida Manatees Counted in Record Numbers, Scores Die in Cold Snap
January 26, 2010
Florida waters have been too cold for manatees this month. The cold snap that began January 2 and lasted nearly two weeks may have eased in recent days but it continues to impact the endangered marine mammals, causing manatee cold-stress syndrome, which can result in death.
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Climate Change Linked to Bigger Waves off Pacific Northwest
January 26, 2010
The highest waves off the Pacific Northwest coast in any 100-year period could reach a maximum of 55 feet, at least 40 percent higher than estimates made as recently as 1996, according to scientists from an Oregon university and an Oregon government agency.
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Tanker collision sends oil into Texas waterway
January 24, 2010
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A barge collided with a tanker on Saturday in the port of Port Arthur, Texas, sending thousands of gallons of crude oil into the water, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
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Save the salmon -- and us
The Obama administration's plan for the Columbia Basin doesn't go nearly far enough.
By Carl Safina
January 24, 2010
Recently, a photograph made its way to me on the Internet: In a surging Alaskan stream, a grizzly bear stands with a salmon in its jaws, and in the shallows, a wolf -- keeping its distance -- also hoists a thrashing salmon. Your eye goes to the bear, then the wolf. But the salmon convened the meeting. Without the salmon, you'd see only water.
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NOAA may prohibit Navy sonar testing at marine mammal 'hot spots'
January 22, 2010
Marine mammal "hot spots" in areas including Southern California's coastal waters may become off limits to testing of a type of Navy sonar linked to the deaths of whales under a plan announced this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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Stricter rules urged on toxic chemicals
Report links exposure to chronic illnesses, cancers
Friday, January 22, 2010
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Americans are exposed to thousands of chemicals that are potentially harmful to their health, according to a broad coalition of labor, health, and environmental organizations calling for tougher federal toxics regulation.
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Mercury levels of whale-eating town's residents 10 times average
January 22, 2010
TOKYO —
Levels of mercury in hair samples of residents of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, which is known for customarily eating small whales caught by coastal whaling, are about 10 times the average in Japan, possibly due to consumption of whale meat with high concentration of mercury, one of researchers who conducted the survey said Thursday.
Read more here.