Health – Happiness – Page 182

Climate Change Might Be Threatening the Future of Apples

Bloomberg

Climate Change Might Be Threatening the Future of Apples

Eric Francis June 7, 2021

(Bloomberg) — Patrick and Sara McGuire have been growing apples since they were married 25 years ago. Their 150 acres in Ellsworth, Michigan—dubbed Royal Farms—are a mix of sweet apples and the bitter varieties suited for making hard cider.

Last spring they put in a new crop of Honeycrisps, one of America’s favorite apples, only to discover an unwelcome visitor just a few weeks later: A bacterial menace known as fire blight.

“We actually removed about $10,000 worth of trees by hand,” Patrick McGuire said. “It might’ve been 25% of that lot.”

Fire blight is a bacterial pathogen that spreads easily during blooming season. It has the potential to kill not just individual trees but entire orchards. Though not a new problem for apple growers, it’s been looming larger as the climate crisis brings longer, warmer and rainier springs that expand the window for it to infect trees.

The disease poses a particular threat to cider apple growers. Terry Bradshaw, a research assistant professor at the University of Vermont, said they are at risk because the European varieties they rely on are biennial, making them especially vulnerable to fire blight. “[They will produce] a lot of fruit in one year and a little in the other,” said Bradshaw. “It’s just wall-to-wall blossoms during bloom—those are a whole lot more targets [for the bacteria] to hit.” Making matters worse, they bloom later in the year.

If one crop of cider apples is lost to fire blight, it will be two years before those trees produce again, he said. And with a 10-year pipeline from ordering trees to producing fruit, that kind of setback could prevent growers from staying afloat. “Twenty-five years ago, fire blight was novel, it was rare,” said Bradshaw. “Now climate change is a thing, and fire blight is a thing, and everyone thinks about it every year.”

But it’s not just cider apples that are at risk. Increasingly, all apples as well as other fruit crops such as pears are in danger from such climate-induced afflictions.

Nikki Rothwell, a specialist with the Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center at Michigan State University [MSU], said the climate crisis isn’t just problematic in terms of fire blight, but also because it’s allowing for more generations of insect pests each year.

“If growers cannot mitigate risk in some way, fruit farming is not a sustainable model or business,” she said.

Apples used in ciders, with flavors described as “bittersweet” and “bittersharp,” can be traced back to traditional cider apples from England, France and Spain, said Gregory Michael Peck, an assistant professor of horticulture at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. They have high levels of tannins and phenolic compounds that make them unpalatable for eating, but ideal for cider.

The craft cider industry has been on a decade-long growth spurt, according to Michelle McGrath, executive director of the American Cider Association, an industry lobby. In 2019, Nielsen research said the sector was worth $1.2 billion, with about 1,000 cider makers in the U.S.

Over the last decade, the industry grew tenfold both in terms of sales and producers, according to McGrath. Regional and local craft brands account for 35% of market share, Nielsen reported. In 2020, despite pandemic lockdowns (or perhaps because of them), sales reached $577.4 million, representing more than 9% growth over the previous year and 23% over three years. Regional brands earned 51% of sales, edging out national brands for the first time.

But climate change and the resulting uptick in fire blight may put an end to the good news, warned researchers and orchard operators.

Karen Lewis is a regional fruit tree specialist with the Center for Precision & Automated Agricultural Systems at Washington State University. Her state is the nation’s leading apple-producer. “From 2016 to 2018, we had considerably more days of fire blight risk during bloom than in the previous 10 years,” said Lewis. “In areas where climate change results in warmer springs, fire blight risk will increase.”

Once inside a tree—through a blossom, a broken stem, even a torn leaf—the bacteria causes growths that can girdle the tree and kill it. A few weeks after infection, it will produce “ooze,” explained George Sundin, a professor at MSU who researches fire blight. “Ooze is what the pathogen uses to travel between trees. When rain hits an ooze droplet, a cloud of pathogen can rise from there and be taken by the wind to settle wherever. And if that’s on another apple tree, it can lead to infection.”

Since fire blight is easily spread by wind, rain and insects, stopping it in the McGuires’ Honeycrisps was key to reducing the chance it would infect their 60 acres of cider trees. “Fire blight was not typically a problem in northern Michigan, because we’re so far north and these bacteria really love warm weather,” said Rothwell of MSU. “That’s really changed.”

Rothwell said colleagues in Canada have contacted her because they are seeing fire blight for the first time and have no experience in treating it.

MSU tracks the epiphytic infection potential, or EIP, of fire blight by using a model that gauges how rapidly the bacteria can reproduce, depending on environmental conditions. In the past, “when EIP got close to 100, we would tell growers that’s when you need to spray,” she said. “We’ve backed that down to 70; we’re being much more conservative now.”

Francis Otto, the orchard manager for Cherry Bay Orchards in Suttons Bay, Michigan, started noticing a buildup in fire blight about 7 years ago. Last spring, he said, the conditions for infection in their 275 acres of trees were unprecedented.

“We had a really cold spring and all of a sudden, once we started blooming, we were a couple of days in the eighties with rain showers every other day,” said Otto, who has been growing apples for 30 years. “The EIP was over 400 for a couple of days.”

Otto said they were able to ward off fire blight last year by using sprays including copper sulfate and streptomycin. This year he started spraying his trees the first week of April—20 days earlier than usual.

Chemical sprays aren’t an option for Tieton Cider Works in Yakima, Washington, since the company is working toward organic certification for its 50 acres of apples. General Manager Marcus Robert said Tieton anticipates selling about 150,000 cases of cider this year, representing about $5.5 million in sales, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, California and Idaho.

Robert said they’ll visually inspect the orchard for any signs of infection, prune bad stems off the trees, take them out of the orchard and burn them. But there is a price to be paid.

“By June or July, you’re seeing a lot of impact in the orchard,” he said. “You end up with less canopy, and less canopy means less fruit.”

Republicans pledge allegiance to fossil fuels like it’s still the 1950’s

The Guardian

Republicans pledge allegiance to fossil fuels like it’s still the 1950’s

Oliver Milman June 7, 2021

Joe Biden may be pressing for 2021 to be a transformational year in tackling the climate crisis, but Republicans arrayed in opposition to his agenda have dug in around a unifying rallying theme – that the fossil fuel industry should be protected at almost any cost.

For many experts and environmentalists, the Republican stance is a shockingly retrograde move that flies in the face of efforts to fight global heating and resembles a head in the sand approach to the realities of a changing American economy.

In a recent letter sent to John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, more than a dozen Republican state treasurers accused the administration of pressuring banks to not lend to coal, oil and gas companies, adding that such a move would “eliminate the fossil fuel industry in our country” in order to appease the US president’s “radical political preferences”.

The letter raised the extraordinary possibility of Republican-led states penalizing banks that refuse to fund projects that worsen the climate crisis by pulling assets from them. Riley Moore, treasurer of the coal heartland state of West Virginia, said “undue pressure” was being put on banks by the Biden administration that could end financing of fossil fuels and “devastate West Virginia and put thousands of families out of work”.

“If a bank or lending institution says it is going to do something that could cause significant economic harm to our state … then I need to take that into account when I consider what banks we do business with,” Moore, who has assets of about $18bn under his purview, told the Guardian. “If they are going to attack our industries, jobs, economy and way of life, then I am going to fight back.”

The shunning of banks in this way would almost certainly face a hefty legal response but the threat is just the latest eye-catching Republican gambit aimed at propping up a fossil fuel industry that will have to be radically pared back if the US is to slash its planet-heating emissions in half this decade, as Biden has vowed.

In Louisiana, Republicans have embarked upon a quixotic and probably doomed attempt to make the state a “fossil fuel sanctuary” jurisdiction that does not follow federal pollution rules.

In Texas, the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has instructed his agencies to challenge the “hostile attack” launched by Biden against the state’s oil and gas industries while Republicans in Wyoming have even set up a legal fund to sue other states that refuse to take its coal.

The messaging appears to be filtering down to the Republican electorate, with new polling by Yale showing support for clean energy among GOP voters has dropped dramatically over the past 18 months.

But critics say Republicans are engaged in a futile attempt to resurrect an economic vision more at home in the 1950s, rather than deal with a contemporary reality where the plummeting cost of wind and solar is propelling record growth in renewables and a cavalcade of countries are striving to cut emissions to net zero and, in the case of some including the UK and Germany, completely eliminate coal.

“We are seeing desperate attempts to delay the inevitable, to squeeze one more drop of oil or lump of coal out of the ground before this transition,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at New York University. “They are looking to go back to a prior time, but the trend is absolutely clear. The stone age didn’t end for the lack of stones and the oil age won’t end for the lack of oil,” he added, paraphrasing a quote attributed to the former Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani.

The Republican backlash is characterized by a large dose of political posturing, according to Wagner. “If you have aspirations of higher office in some states, you just want to signal you will sue those hippie liberals,” he said. “These are delay tactics and some of them are very ham-fisted.”

Supporters of of Donald Trump wearing mining gear attend a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, in 2018. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

The US emerged from the second world war with more than half a million coalminers but this workforce has since dwindled to barely 40,000 people, amid mass automation and utilities switching to cheap sources of gas. Large quantities of jobs are set to be created in renewable energy, but some places built upon fossil fuels risk being left behind.

Biden has proposed a huge infrastructure plan which would, the president says, help retrain and retool regions of the US long economically dependent upon mining and drilling. The administration has promised a glut of high-paying jobs in expanding the clean energy sector and plugging abandoned oil and gas wells, all while avoiding the current ruinous health impacts of air pollution and conditions like black lung.

But unions have expressed wariness over this transition, with Republicans also highly skeptical. The promise to retrain miners is a “patronizing pipe dream of the liberal elites completely devoid from reality”, said Moore, who added that previous promises of renewable energy jobs have not materialized. “And now they are trying to sell us on the same failed idea again.”

However the shift to cleaner energy happens, it’s clear the transition is under way – last year renewable energy consumption eclipsed coal for the first time in 130 years and US government projections show renewables’ overall share doubling by the middle of the century. A key question is whether the completion of this switch will be delayed long enough to risk triggering the worst impacts of disastrous global heating.

“The Republican response is predictable and pathetic. It is from a very old playbook,” said Judith Enck, who was a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency under Barack Obama. “The party will cling to fossil fuels to the bitter end. It’s so sad because so many Republican voters are damaged by climate change, if you look at deaths from the heat or wildfires we are seeing in California. But the party right now is just completely beholden to the fossil fuel industry.”

“Mega-drought” depletes system that provides water to 40 million

CBS News

“Mega-drought” depletes system that provides water to 40 million

This morning, our series “Eye on Earth” looks at the punishing drought gripping much of the western U.S.

Scientists are calling it a “mega-drought” brought on by climate change.

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor Map shows large areas of the Southwest are “exceptionally dry,” the worst category.

/ Credit: National Drought Mitigation Center

It’s taking a dramatic toll on the Colorado River system that provides water to 40 million people in seven states — and may force the federal government to make a drastic and historic decision.

For more than eight decades, the iconic Hoover Dam has relied on water from Nevada’s Lake Mead to cover up its backside. But now, at age 85, it finds itself uncomfortably exposed. Much of the water the dam is supposed to be holding back is gone.

“This is like a different world,” said Pat Mulroy, the former head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. She told CBS News senior national and environmental correspondent Ben Tracy that Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, is on track to soon hit its lowest level ever recorded.

This part of the Colorado River system is a crucial water supply for Las Vegas, Phoenix and Southern California. It makes the vast agricultural land of the desert Southwest possible.

Mulroy said, “This landscape screams problems to me. I mean, just look at the bathtub rings. To me, that is an enormous wake up call.”

Water levels at Lake Mead have dropped precipitously due to the ongoing western drought.  / Credit: CBS News — Water levels at Lake Mead have dropped precipitously due to the ongoing western drought. / Credit: CBS News

Lake Mead is at just 37% of its capacity.

It hasn’t been full since back in 2000, when the water came right up to the top of Hoover Dam:

A view of the Hoover Dam in 2000. / Credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

This is what it looks like now:

The view at Hoover Dam, 2021.  / Credit: CBS News — The view at Hoover Dam, 2021. / Credit: CBS News

Since 2000, Lake Mead has dropped 130 feet, about the height of a 13-story building. Islands in the lake that used to be completely submerged are now visible.

Back in 2014 Tracy had visited the dam, and asked Mulroy about water levels at Lake Mead, which she described as being at “a pretty critical point.”

Today, Tracy asked, “If you look at 30 feet lower now, what point are we at?”

“We’re at a tipping point,” said Mulroy. “It’s an existential issue for Arizona, for California, for Nevada. It is just that simple.”

For the first time ever, the federal government is expected to declare a water shortage on the lower Colorado River later this summer. That will force automatic cuts to the water supply for Nevada and Arizona starting in 2022. Homeowners have higher priority and, at first, won’t feel the pain as badly as farmers.

Dan Thelander is a second-generation family farmer in Arizona’s Pinal County. The water to grow his corn and alfalfa fields comes from Lake Mead. “If we don’t have irrigation water, we can’t farm,” he said. “So, next year we are going to get about 25% less water, means we’re going to have to fallow or not plant 25% of our land.”

In 2023 Thelander and other farmers in this part of Arizona are expected to lose nearly all of their water from Lake Mead, so they are rushing to dig wells to pump groundwater to try to save their farms.

“The future here is, honestly I hate to say it, pretty cloudy,” Thelander said.

Back at Hoover Dam, facility manager Mark Cook has his own concerns. Lake Mead has dropped so much that it has cut the dam’s hydropower output by nearly 25%.

Cook wanted to show Tracy the brand-new turbine blades they just installed, designed to keep power flowing efficiently at rapidly-dropping lake levels. At some point, the dam could stop producing electricity altogether.

“Our previous number [for cutoff] was at elevation 1,050, and now we’ve lowered that number to 950,” Cook said. “So, we bought ourselves 100 feet.”

Mulroy said a rapidly-retreating reservoir may be the new normal – and the millions of people who rely on this water supply will have to quickly learn to live with less of it. “We don’t change unless we absolutely have to,” she said. “Well, when you look out at this lake, I think that moment of ‘it’s absolutely necessary’ has arrived.”

We’re Inching Towards Actual Violence Over Access to Water

Esquire

We’re Inching Towards Actual Violence Over Access to Water

Charles P. Pierce June 7, 2021

Photo credit: Robert Alexander - Getty Images — Photo credit: Robert Alexander – Getty Images

Here at the shebeen, one of the larger elements in our portfolio is water—specifically, the increasing political salience of water, especially in the West, where they are experiencing such profound drought conditions that the Hoover Dam, of all things, is losing its reason for being. From CBS News:

For more than eight decades, the iconic Hoover Dam has relied on water from Nevada’s Lake Mead to cover up its backside. But now, at age 85, it finds itself uncomfortably exposed. Much of the water the dam is supposed to be holding back is gone. “This is like a different world,” said Pat Mulroy, the former head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. She told CBS News senior national and environmental correspondent Ben Tracy that Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, is on track to soon hit its lowest level ever recorded.

The dam is estimated to have lost a quarter of its customary hydroelectric power. Worse, the lower Colorado River, without which the country would have a lot of new deserts, is at a crisis stage, and the federal government may have to take serious action that will affect the region’s farmers—and that I guarantee you will set off the Bundy-ite fringe.

For the first time ever, the federal government is expected to declare a water shortage on the lower Colorado River later this summer. That will force automatic cuts to the water supply for Nevada and Arizona starting in 2022. Homeowners have higher priority and, at first, won’t feel the pain as badly as farmers. Dan Thelander is a second-generation family farmer in Arizona’s Pinal County. The water to grow his corn and alfalfa fields comes from Lake Mead. “If we don’t have irrigation water, we can’t farm,” he said. “So, next year we are going to get about 25% less water, means we’re going to have to fallow or not plant 25% of our land.” In 2023 Thelander and other farmers in this part of Arizona are expected to lose nearly all of their water from Lake Mead, so they are rushing to dig wells to pump groundwater to try to save their farms.

Meanwhile, a few degrees north, the High Country News reports the drought is killing fish and local economies, in that order.

Fish have been dying on the Klamath since around May 4, according to the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department. At that time, 97% of the juvenile salmon caught by the department’s in-river trapping device were infected with the disease C. shasta, and were either dead, or would die within days. Over a two-week period, 70% of the juvenile salmon caught in the trap were dead.

Irrigators upriver from the fish kill were told in mid-May that for the first time since “A” Canal in the Klamath Project began operating in 1907, they would not receive any water from it. The irrigators say they need 400,000 acre-feet of water but this year, they will receive just 33,000 acre-feet from the Klamath Project — a historic low. The situation has put pressure on an embattled region already caught in a cyclical mode of crisis due to a drying climate. “For salmon people, a juvenile fish kill is an absolute worst-case scenario,” Myers said in a statement.

As is obvious, this is all yet another crisis within the general climate crisis. We are inching closer to the days when we might see actual violence over access to water. As if we all need another excuse.

Tickproof Your Yard Without Spraying Pesticides

CR – Consumer Reports

Tickproof Your Yard Without Spraying Pesticides

Paul Hope June 5, 2021

For many of us this past year, our backyards took on a profoundly important role. In the era of social distancing, yards were transformed into outdoor oases, and even now, there are no signs that the trend is slowing down—increasing demand and a national lumber shortage has made it difficult to acquire wood to build a deck.

In order to stay safe in your yard this spring and summer, it’s crucial to avoid exposure to ticks, which can transmit about a dozen common diseases. The past few years have been some of the worst on record for ticks, and not just in the Northeast. At least one variety of disease-transmitting tick has been found in all of the lower 48 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And a lab at Cornell University has identified 26 species of ticks along the East Coast alone—far more than the deer ticks most of us associate with Lyme disease.

With a little bit of work, including cutting your grass more often, you can significantly limit exposure to the insects in your yard.

“Tick control is mostly about wildlife,” says Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, coordinator of New York State’s Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell. “If you have an open yard where animals can enter, you’re almost certainly going to have ticks.”

One way to know for sure? Perform what’s called a tick drag. Cut a 5-inch-square swatch of fabric and tie it to an 18-inch-long pole or stick. Holding the pole, drag the fabric along tall grass or weeds, particularly near woodland edges of your lawn. Ticks will typically transfer themselves to the swatch.

If you spot them on the fabric, you’ll need to deal with the problem now to safely enjoy your yard. And even if you don’t find ticks, it could pay to be proactive. Follow these five steps to deal with them effectively.

1. Keep Your Grass Short

“Black-legged ticks, the type that transmit Lyme disease, don’t like dry, hot environments,” Gangloff-Kaufmann says. The taller the grass, the cooler the environment, because taller blades cast a shadow and create shade. That means that leaving your lawn a little shaggy is a bad idea in tick-rich areas.

Gangloff-Kaufmann says it’s okay to let your grass reach the 4 to 4½ inches that Consumer Reports recommends, then trim it down to about 3 inches with each cut. That strategy promotes healthy growth. If you shear your lawn down to an inch or two, you’ll send the grass into a panic and it will grow too tall, too fast, and suffer from a weak root structure. The trick is to be vigilant about keeping up with mowing and not letting grass grow to a height of 5 or 6 inches.

If you miss a week and the grass gets tall, it’s a good idea to use the bagging attachment with your tractor or lawn mower, because leaving those long lawn clippings behind can create the perfect environment for ticks.

2. Make a Mulch Moat

Many tick varieties, including the Lyme-transmitting black-legged variety, favor the dense cover of woodlands over open lawn. That makes any wooded areas adjacent to your property potential hotbeds for ticks. Adding a 3-foot-wide protective barrier of mulch around the perimeter of your yard does double duty.

First, it creates a physical barrier that’s dry and sometimes hot, something ticks can’t tolerate. Second, it serves as a visual reminder to anyone in your household to be especially careful once they step past the perimeter.

For the border, you want mulch made from broad, dry wood chips or bark, not the damp, shredded variety, which creates exactly the kind of cool, damp conditions ticks love.

3. Trim Tall Grass and Weeds

“Ticks like to climb to the top of tall grass blades and look for questing opportunities—the chance to grab on to animals like deer or humans,” Gangloff-Kaufmann says.

By keeping grass and weeds at bay with a string trimmer, you’ll minimize those chances and make it more difficult for ticks to latch on to you or members of your family, or to travel around your property by hitching a ride on your dog.

4. Eliminate Tick Habitat

CR has long recommended mulching grass clippings when you mow. That’s because these clippings break down and release nitrogen into the soil, feeding your yard and potentially reducing the amount of fertilizer you use by about 20 percent.

And in many instances, it’s okay or even preferable to leave behind fallen leaves to nourish the lawn for the same reason. But if you live in an area with a large tick population, you might benefit from a different approach.

By bagging grass and blowing leaves into piles for collection, you keep your yard clear and cut back on tick-friendly places. You’ll want to recycle leaves and grass clippings through your town if possible, or compost them in a pile far from the house.

Rather than letting them rot in a landfill, you can let your leaves and clippings break down naturally and use the resulting compost to feed and fertilize plants around your yard.

5. Consider a Targeted Approach

Following the four steps above will make your yard less inviting to ticks. But if you want to make a serious dent in the tick population on your property, you’ll need to focus on methods that kill them.

Many people opt for spraying their entire yard with pesticide, an approach that CR’s experts say is ineffective and potentially dangerous.

“Spraying your yard provides a false sense of security,” explains Michael Hansen, PhD, senior scientist at Consumer Reports. “Instead, consider products that treat the fur of mice or deer with small quantities of tick-killing agents.”

Why target mice or deer rather than your yard? “Mice play an important role in the transmission cycle of Lyme disease,” says Laura Goodman, senior research associate in Cornell’s department of population medicine and diagnostic sciences. If you can stop critters from transmitting ticks, you can curb the tick population in and around your yard.

“Tick tubes” are one product we’ve encountered. They’re essentially cardboard tubes stuffed with cotton treated with permethrin, a tick-killing chemical. Mice collect the cotton and take it back to their nests. The permethrin binds to oils on their fur, killing any ticks that try to attach without harming the mice.

The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (PDF) has found that such systems have resulted in statistically meaningful drops in tick levels after several years of use. And at about $4 per tube, they’re cheaper than tick bait boxes.

Bonus: Tickproof Yourself

When working in the yard, wear a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, socks, and closed-toe shoes. Use insect repellent; the best in our tests provide more than 8 hours of tick protection.

“And regardless of the time of year, perform a tick check as soon as you return indoors,” Goodman says.

If you do suffer a bite, Goodman advises properly removing the tick. For more information about ticks in your area, check your state health department’s website. Connecticut, home to the town of Old Lyme, where the disease was first documented, has a particularly comprehensive guide to ticks (PDF).

Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright © 2021, Consumer Reports, Inc.

The poison used to eradicate a biblical mouse plague ravaging southeast Australia is having a deadly effect on native wildlife

Insider

The poison used to eradicate a biblical mouse plague ravaging southeast Australia is having a deadly effect on native wildlife

Zac Ntim June 5, 2021

australia mouse plague — Mice scurrying around stored grain on a farm near Tottenham, Australia, on May 19, 2021. Rick Rycroft/AP

The poison that is being used to cull Australia’s mouse infestation is damaging the native wildlife.
Experts say birds in New South Wales have died after ingesting poison intended for mice.
The infestation has ravaged large parts of southeast Australia.

The poisonous bait that is being used to eradicate a huge mouse plague ravaging large parts of Australia is having a deadly effect on native wildlife, experts have warned.

Earlier this week, an image of dozens of Galah Cockatoo birds dead in a cemetery in Parkes, New South Wales, went viral after it was shared on Facebook by Kelly Lacey, a volunteer for the NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service (WIRES).

In the post, she said: “Seeing them sitting with each other under trees, knowing they were suffering until they have eventually died, has utterly broke me. Found 2 still alive, sadly 1 died on way home. (whatever the poison was it is more potent then I have experienced, and they have bled internally).”

Later during an interview with The Guardian, Lacey said that she found over 100 dead Galahs in the cemetery.

“I received a call from another WIRES member, saying ‘I think you might want to see this, there are dead galahs everywhere,'” she told the newspaper. “My heart sank. When I arrived and began collecting all the dead bodies I was in shock.”

In a statement released earlier this week, the New South Wales Environmental Protection Agency asked the public to “think carefully” about the location and amount of poisonous bait that is being used after an investigation by the organization found that dozens of birds in the state had died after ingesting the poison.

“The safe baiting of mice is an important step in reducing mice numbers and pesticide users must make sure they handle baits safely and are careful to always follow the directions on the label to protect their family, neighbors, domestic animals, wildlife, and the environment from harm,” the statement read.

A mixture of poisonous bait and other deadly traps have been deployed across southeast Australia to deal with the huge rise in mice populations. Experts say that the infestation is the result of wet weather that has provided ample food for the mice, fueling their fast reproductive cycle.

Farmers across the region have felt the brunt of the infestation with reports of mice ravaging crops, destroying farming equipment, and causing electricity blackouts. The state government has called the plague “absolutely unprecedented” and warned that it could cause huge economic damage.

The NSW Farmers Association, an agricultural group in the state, estimated that the plague could cost farmers a total of 1 billion Australian dollars ($771,000) during the winter crop season, which runs from June to August, the AP reported.

Earlier this month, Adam Marshall, the agriculture minister for New South Wales, announced a $50m support package to help farmers that include the wide-scale use of bromadiolone, a poison described as “napalm” for mice.

“It’ll be the equivalent of napalming mice across rural NSW,” Marshall told the ABC. “This chemical, this poison, will eliminate mice that take these baits within 24 hours.”

A ‘megadrought’ in California is expected to lead to water shortages for production of everything from avocados to almonds, and could cause prices to rise

Business Insider

A ‘megadrought’ in California is expected to lead to water shortages for production of everything from avocados to almonds, and could cause prices to rise

Grace Kay June 4, 2021

California is facing its worst drought in four years.
As water levels continue to fall, farmers have left large portions of their fields unseeded.
The state’s $50 billion agriculture industry supplies over 25% of the nation’s food.

A megadrought in California is threatening to push food prices even higher.

The state is already facing its worst water shortage in four years and the its driest season has only just begun, according to data from the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS).

As water levels continue to fall, farmers and ranchers will be unable to maintain key crops and feed livestock. As of Tuesday, nearly 75% of California was classified as in “extreme drought,” meaning the land does not have adequate water supplies to sustain agriculture and wildlife, according to the NIDIS.

While farmers have come to expect and prepare for droughts, this year has already been much hotter and drier than previous ones. Scorching California weather is drying up reservoirs, as well as the Sierra Nevada snowpack that helps supply them. The reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be in June, Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis, told Associated Press.

The farmer’s plight could make products like almonds, avocados, and milk more expensive for shoppers as farmers struggle to produce crops of the state’s top exports. California produces over 25% of the nation’s food supply. California agriculture is a nearly $50 billion industry and is known for producing over 400 key commodities, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Dave Kranz, a California Farm Bureau spokesperson, told Insider it’s too soon to tell whether the drought will have a significant impact on grocery prices, but it is sure to be a “catastrophic” year for farmers. He said he’s already seen several farmers scaling back their crops and prioritizing ones that rely less on water supplies.

“A lot of factors play into the prices people see at stores,” Kranz said. “The payment that farmers receive for their crops is a very small portion of the price shoppers pay. Most of it comes from transportation, packaging, and marketing.”

The last time the state faced a drought of this magnitude, experts said shoppers could expect prices to rise about 3% and predicted the Californian agriculture industry could be handicapped for years, Gannett reported. During the 2014 drought, experts told CNBC prices for top California exports like avocados, berries, broccoli, grapes, and lettuce could rise anywhere from 17 to 62 cents, depending on the product.

Any potential price increases do not occur immediately or all at once. They are often felt long after the drought has already wreaked havoc on local farm crops, Annemarie Kuhns, a member of the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service, told the Des Moines Register in 2015.

“It takes time before the effects are seen at the retail level,” Kuhns said. “Once you see drought conditions start to improve you’ll see these effects further down the road.”

Droughts are nothing new for California farmers, who use conservation practices that reduce water runoff and allow moisture to enter the soil. Farmers also focus on crops that require less water, though about 40% of the 24.6 million acres of farmland in California require irrigation, Reuters reported. Many farmers told the publication that they are planning to leave large portions of their land unseeded due to this year’s drought.

The farms are allocated some water from the state, but this year the California Department of Water Resources reduced farmers and growers to 5% of their expected water allocation in March. Last month, Chris Scheuring, California Farm Bureau senior counsel, said it appears the state will soon not be able to deliver even at the 5% level.

“It’s one of those existential years in California, when we’ve got an extreme drought and farmers are going to be hurting all over the place,” Scheuring said. “Some folks may be able to default to groundwater, but it’s going to be a very, very tough year for farmers.”

Farmers can purchase supplemental water if they can find it, but it comes at a hefty price. Supplemental water was priced at $1,500 to $2,000 per acre-foot in mid-May, according to a report from California Farm Bureau.

During the state’s last drought, which ended in 2016, the agriculture industry lost roughly $3.8 billion, according to National Geographic. NIDIS analysts said in their last report that the outlook for this year is “grim.”

The California water shortage and potential for a dip in food exports from the state pile onto a growing supply chain crisis precipitated by COVID-19 shutdowns. California dairy products, almonds, grapes, lettuce, and avocados won’t be the only products in short supply in the coming months. Imported goods like olive oil and cheese are also facing shortages, while meats, including hot dogs, bacon, and chicken have become increasingly valuable.

Known carcinogen found in some popular sunscreens, tests show

CBS News

Known carcinogen found in some popular sunscreens, tests show

Elizabeth Elkind June 5, 2021

Traces of a chemical tied to blood cancers including leukemia have been detected in dozens of popular sunscreens and after-sun products, according to tests conducted by online pharmacy and lab Valisure.

Benzene, a known carcinogen, was found in 78 of nearly 300 sprays and lotions tested — about 27% — including products sold by Banana Boat and CVS, according to Valisure.

In a petition, the company has asked the FDA to recall these contaminated batches. The regulating body is reviewing the claim.

“The FDA takes seriously any safety concerns raised about products we regulate, including sunscreen,” the FDA told CBS News in a statement.

Sunscreens and after-sun, classified as cosmetics, are generally subject to FDA regulation.

The chemical is identified as “a colorless or light-yellow liquid chemical at room temperature.” Valisure states that it’s been used “primarily as a solvent in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.”

Trace levels of benzene can be found in cigarette smoke, gasoline, glues, adhesives, cleaning products and paint strippers.

Valisure also reported that 14 sun care product lots with some of the highest contaminations are sold across four different popular brands — Neutrogena, Sun Bum, CVS Health and Fruit of the Earth. Not all of the aforementioned brands’ products were found to contain benzene, and lists of products found to contain and not to contain benzene are included further down the page in Valisure’s petition form.

For example, Neutrogena’s Ultra Sheer Weightless Sunscreen Spray, SPF 100+ and Ultra Sheer Weightless Sunscreen Spray, SPF 70 were among 14 products Valisure claims have some of the highest levels of benzene tested. But products like Neutrogena’s Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunscreen Lotion SPF 30 and Oil-free Facial Moisturizer with Sunscreen SPF 15 were not found to contain the carcinogen.

All of the samples tested have “contained up to three times the conditionally restricted FDA concentration limit of 2 parts per million” of benzene, according to Valisure’s website.

David Light, the founder and CEO of Valisure, believes the issue is manufacturing contamination affecting specific batches. While the source of the contaminant is unknown and more of the products tested passed than failed, Light urged manufacturers and consumers to take the matter seriously.

“Benzene is one of the most studied and concerning human carcinogens known to science. Its association with forming blood cancers in humans has been shown in numerous studies at trace levels of parts per million and below. The presence of this known human carcinogen in products widely recommended for the prevention of skin cancer and that are regularly used by adults and children is very troubling,” Light said in the company’s statement.

He is also urging the FDA to better define its standards for contamination, and “address current regulatory gaps regarding benzene in both drug and cosmetic products.”

Valisure is encouraging people to send in their own samples of sunscreen and sun care products for evaluation.

The company also made their FDA petition public, which includes a list of the batches with detected benzene levels. The products can be found on pages 12 to 15.

Johnson & Johnson, the maker of Neutrogena products, told CBS News that “benzene is not an ingredient in any of our personal care products.”

The maker of Banana Boat defended its products as well, stating that “our sun care products undergo rigorous testing to ensure safety and quality and meet all FDA regulations.”

CVS said in a statement that products they sell are “safe” and “we are in the process of reviewing and evaluating information in and related to Valisure’s petition and we will respond accordingly.”

Sun Bum told CBS News in a statement, “To further ensure the quality of our products, we will work with suppliers to understand how trace amounts may have been detected.”

However, Valisure stressed to consumers that they should not avoid using sunscreen and should continue to do so.

“It is important for people, especially heading into the summer months, to understand that many sunscreen products tested by Valisure did not have benzene contamination, and those products are presumably safe and should continue to be used, along with appropriate hats and sun-protective clothing, to mitigate skin cancer risk,” Dr. Christopher Bunick, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Dermatology at Yale University was quoted as saying in the company’s press release.

Below is a list of sunscreens and sun care products that were tested by Valisure and found not to contain benzene.

After judge overturns California assault weapons ban, state officials vow to fight back

By Alex Wigglesworth and Thomas Curwen June 5, 2021

Police photos of assault rifles and handguns are displayed during a news conference

Families of mass shooting victims, gun control advocates and California officials condemned a federal judge’s decision to overturn California’s 30-year-old ban on assault weapons, largely because of the manner in which he justified his ruling.

In declaring the ban unconstitutional late Friday, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez compared the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to a Swiss Army knife, calling it “good for both home and battle.”

Benitez, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush and serves in the Southern District of California, issued a permanent injunction against the law’s enforcement but stayed it for 30 days to give the state a chance to appeal.

California is one of seven states, plus Washington, D.C., that ban assault weapons, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

In his 94-page ruling, Benitez wrote that it was unlawful for California to prohibit its citizens from possessing weapons permitted in most other states and allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Advocates for the right to bear arms hailed the ruling.

“This is by far the most fact-intensive, detailed judicial opinion on this issue ever,” said Dave Kopel, an adjunct professor of constitutional law at the University of Denver and adjunct scholar at libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.

State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called the decision “fundamentally flawed” and said he would appeal.

“There is no sound basis in law, fact, or common sense for equating assault rifles with Swiss Army knives — especially on Gun Violence Awareness Day and after the recent shootings in our own California communities,” Bonta said in a statement.

Last month, a gunman opened fire at a light rail yard in San Jose, killing nine co-workers and dying of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Officials said he was armed with three semiautomatic 9-millimeter handguns and 32 high-capacity magazines loaded with additional ammunition.

AR-15s have been used in some of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings, including the attack at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub that killed 49 people in 2016, and one in Las Vegas that killed 58 people in 2017.

“I can assure you — if a Swiss Army knife was used at Pulse, we would have had a birthday party for my best friend last week,” Brandon Wolf, who survived the Florida attack, wrote on Twitter. “Not a vigil.”

Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the ruling made her do a double-take.

“I have two daughters, and they read dystopian fiction, like the ‘Hunger Games,’ and it was kind of like that,” she said. “It can’t be real. Nobody, ever, who is a thinking human being with a heartbeat, could possibly liken a Swiss Army knife to an AR-15.”

In response to several mass shootings on his watch, President Biden announced in April that his administration would take steps toward greater gun regulation.

They include a proposal to require background checks for self-assembled firearms — so-called ghost guns — and a law that would allow family members or law enforcement agencies to request a court order to take guns away from a person who is a danger to themselves or others. Nineteen states, including California, have already passed such laws.

“Today’s decision is a direct threat to public safety and the lives of innocent Californians, period,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday in a statement. “The fact that this judge compared the AR-15 — a weapon of war that’s used on the battlefield — to a Swiss Army knife completely undermines the credibility of this decision and is a slap in the face to the families who’ve lost loved ones to this weapon.”

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed in August 2019 by pro-gun groups, including the San Diego County Gun Owners Political Action Committee, California Gun Rights Foundation, Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition.

The plaintiffs also included three San Diego County men who said they own legal rifles or pistols and want to use high-capacity magazines in them but can’t, because doing so would turn them into illegal assault weapons under California statutes.

In cases in which the government seeks to limit people’s constitutional rights, such as those guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment, the government has the burden of proving the limitation is helping to advance an important public interest, like reducing mass shootings, Kopel said.

“You’re essentially weighing how much of a burden you are inflicting on law-abiding people versus how much you are reducing whatever problem you’re trying to deal with,” he said. In this case, he said, the judge found that “we’re not getting any reduction in mass shootings, and it’s imposing quite a severe burden on innocent people, like people who want to have these types of firearms for protection in the home.”

Other legal experts found the judge’s reasoning less compelling.

“The judge in this case, in declaring the ban on assault weapons to be a failed policy experiment and therefore unconstitutional, was engaging in his own policy judgment,” said Susan Estrich, professor at the USC Gould School of Law. “His very reasoning undercuts his own conclusion.”

California became the first state to ban the sale of assault weapons in 1989 in response to a shooting at a Stockton elementary school that left five students dead. The ban, signed into law by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian, has been updated multiple times since then to expand the definition of what is considered an assault weapon.

Each time, those who owned the firearms before they were prohibited were required to register them. There are an estimated 185,569 such weapons registered with the state, Benitez said.

In response to the ban soon after it was enacted, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found the 2nd Amendment applied only as a limitation on the federal government, not state governments, Kopel said.

But in 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling saying the 2nd Amendment applies to cities and states, which helped pave the way for this decision, he said.

In the current case, the state attorney general’s office argued that assault weapons are more dangerous than other firearms and are disproportionately used in crimes and mass shootings. Similar restrictions have previously been upheld by six other federal district and appeals courts, the state argued.

But the judge said the firearms targeted by the ban are most commonly used for legal purposes.

“This case is not about extraordinary weapons lying at the outer limits of 2nd Amendment protection,” he wrote. “The banned ‘assault weapons’ are not bazookas, howitzers, or machine guns.”

“In California, murder by knife occurs seven times more often than murder by rifle,” he added.

The state is also appealing two other rulings by Benitez: one from 2017 that overturns a ban on buying and selling magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, and another from April of last year that blocks a 2019 law requiring background checks to buy ammunition.

In the case of the assault weapons ban, the decision will almost certainly be stayed beyond 30 days, pending an appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and there’s an excellent chance the court will issue a reversal, given its liberal tendencies, Estrich said.

“Ultimately,” she said, “the question may be whether the United States Supreme Court, with its new conservative appointees, sees this as an opportunity to dig into assault weapons bans.”

That could imperil gun control laws that are on the books across the country, Brown said.

“The Supreme Court overturning these kinds of laws that are designed to promote public safety has huge negative implications, not only for assault weapons bans but for every public safety law that we have ever crafted to regulate guns, including the Brady law.” she said, referring to the 1994 requirement that firearm purchasers undergo federal background checks.

“So yes, I’m very concerned about it.”

Honeybee Venom Kills Aggressive Breast Cancer Cells, Study Shows

EcoWatch

Honeybee Venom Kills Aggressive Breast Cancer Cells, Study Shows

Olivia Rosane Repeated From September 02, 2020

Honeybee venom has shown promise against an aggressive type of breast cancer. Susan Walker / Moment / Getty Images

Could honeybees hold the key to treating an aggressive form of breast cancer?

A new study out of Australia found that honeybee venom rapidly killed the cells for triple-negative breast cancer, a type of breast cancer that currently has few treatment options.

“It provides another wonderful example of where compounds in nature can be used to treat human diseases,” said Western Australia Chief Scientist Professor Peter Klinken in a Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research press release.

The research, published in Nature Precision Oncology Tuesday, was led by Dr. Ciara Duffy of the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and the University of Western Australia.

As far back as 1950, bee venom was shown to kill tumors in plants. It has also been shown to work against other cancers like melanoma, BBC News explained. However, Duffy said in the press release that this was the first time honeybee venom had been tested against every type of breast cancer cell, as well as normal breast cells.

Duffy and her team tested both the venom itself and a synthetic version of a compound in the venom called melittin. They found that both were effective against triple-negative breast cancer and HER2-enriched breast cancer cells. In fact, a certain concentration of honeybee venom could kill 100 percent of cancer cells without seriously impacting healthy ones.

“The venom was extremely potent,” Duffy said.

Duffy explained to Australia’s ABC News how the melittin worked.

“What melittin does is it actually enters the surface, or the plasma membrane, and forms holes or pores and it just causes the cell to die,” Duffy said.

The researchers also found that the melittin interfered with the cancer cells’ messaging system, which is essential for the cancer to reproduce and grow.

The fact that melittin makes holes in the cancer cells actually means it could potentially be paired with existing chemotherapies that would enter the cancer cells through the openings it carved and kill them. Duffy found this treatment strategy worked to shrink tumors in mice.

However, outside scientists cautioned that there is a big difference between killing cancer in a lab and successfully treating it in humans.

“It’s very early days,” Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney associate professor Alex Swarbrick told BBC News. “Many compounds can kill a breast cancer cell in a dish or in a mouse. But there’s a long way to go from those discoveries to something that can change clinical practice.”

Duffy agreed that more research had to be done before the melittin could be used on human patients.

“There’s a long way to go in terms of how we would deliver it in the body and, you know, looking at toxicities and maximum tolerated doses before it ever went further,” she told ABC News.

For the study, Duffy gathered venom from 312 honeybees and bumblebees in Perth, Western Australia; England; and Ireland.

“Perth bees are some of the healthiest in the world,” she said.

She found that the national origin of the honeybees did not alter their venom’s impact on the cancer. The bumblebee venom, however, had no cancer-killing powers.