Category Archives: Environment

Woods Hole Research Center responds to misleading NY Times op-ed on climate change

Climate scientists everywhere reacted with stunned outrage  as word spread about an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Sept. 20, 2014 under the headline: “To Save The Planet, Don’t Plant Trees.” Operating on kernals of truth that distort and misinterpret far larger facts and realities about the role of forests — tropical and otherwise — in mitigating the damage of climate change, Nadine Unger, an atmospheric chemist at Yale, wrote, somewhat incredulously, “It is a myth that photosynthesis controls the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Even if all photosynthesis on the planet were shut down, the atmosphere’s oxygen content would change less than 1 percent.” Not so, climate scientists say. Not even close.

The full story is here at National Geographic NewsWatch.

Photo by Justin Catanoso

Peru’s first-ever high-resolution carbon map could help the world breathe easier

To put an accurate price on carbon, you need to know how much you have and where it’s located, researchers say. Stanford University scientists have produced the first-ever high-resolution carbon geography of Peru, a country whose tropical forests are among the world’s most vital in terms of mitigating the global impact of climate change. Click here for the whole story at National Geographic NewsWatch.

Photo courtesy Greg Asner

Eden fights to set the record straight on coal ash spill

Dan River behind the spill

The Dan River in Eden, N.C., just above the Duke Energy plant and site of one of the nation’s worst coal-ash spills.

After 39,000 tons of toxic coal ash rom Duke Energy retention ponds spilled into the Dan River just outside Eden, N.C., in early February 2014, the news coverage by local, state and national media was intense. I wrote early on about the environmental impact, too, but saw a larger business story. Two-thirds of the Dan River was unaffected by the spill, yet the communities, and businesses, along that still-clean stretch of the river couldn’t be heard above the outcry over the massive spill. My cover story in the Triad Business Journal explores that angle.

Excerpt: “Add this irony for Eden and a host of Dan River communities west — upstream — of the spill: Their Dan River has no coal ash. It is just as clean and safe as in the days before the massive spill. That simple point has been lost in the great deluge of ongoing media coverage. Eden and Rockingham County have perhaps never gotten so much sustained national attention. Virtually all of it negative. Water, and coal ash, flow downstream. But a toxic perception has flowed in both directions.”

Brian Williams, Dan River Steam plant, coal ash spill, Duke Energy, Eden

Brian Williams, a program manager with the Dan River Basin Association, dredges the river bottom across from the Duke Energy steam plant.

Unlined and Dangerous: Duke Energy’s 32 coal ash ponds in North Carolina pose a threat to groundwater

coal ash spill

Coal ash pulled from the bottom of the Dan River near the site of the Duke Energy spill in Eden, N.C. (Photo courtesy of Dan River Basin Association)

I posted this story to the National Geographic NewsWatch site in March 2014, just a month after the Duke Energy coal-ash spill in Eden, N.C., It made clear early on that coal ash stored in retaining ponds across the state was already threatening ground water in those places. The story caught on through social media and found thousands of readers.

Excerpt: “These coal ash ponds are unlined, and people don’t realize that,” said Dean Naujoks, the Yadkin Riverkeeper who has been monitoring the Dan River spill. “They are continuously leaching arsenic, chromium, cadmium, mercury, all kinds of toxic heavy metals, into the ground and eventually into groundwater. Duke Energy has 32 of these ponds on 14 sites around the state, and every one of them is unlined. Every one of them is a threat to groundwater.”

Climate change policy: Can green replace gold when it comes to REDD?

Tropical forests, like this one in Manu National Park in southern Peru, harbor most of the world’s biodiversity and provide an array of vital ecological services. (Photograph by Justin Catanoso)

I wrote this story for National Geographic NewsWatch following the UN climate change negotiations in Warsaw, Poland, which took place in December 2013. Chris Meyer, a policy expert at the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., proved an excellent source. The story focuses on the slow-moving, much-criticized policy called REDD — “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” — and my best explanation of how it could work (and also why it’s not working yet).

Excerpt: “I think we’re hitting a tipping point with REDD,” Chris Meyer told me. “A lot of countries are committing millions of dollars a year to REDD — the U.K, the United States, Germany, Norway. To invest all this money and then not link it to something bigger in the future, where an international climate structure is built, is very unlikely.”

Video: Climate change’s impact on tropical forests

In Peru's Amazon jungle with biologist Miles Silman.

In Peru’s Amazon jungle with biologist Miles Silman. Photo by Ken Feeley.

My reporting on the impact of climate change on tropical forests such as those in Peru’s Amazon Basin was sponsored in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, D.C. This invaluable organization makes it possible for freelance foreign correspondents to cover important stories around the world that otherwise would go unreported. Each Pulitzer reporter is asked to produce a Meet the Journalist video that explains his or her project.

My video is here, produced by Meghan Dhaliwal of the Pulitzer Center.

Will Climate Change Imperil Your Cup of Starbucks?

This broad-leafed plant in the rubiaceae, or coffee, family was spotted at 8,000 feet elevation in the Amazon basin of the Peruvian Andes. Such species are not normally seen at such high elevations. Photograph by Justin Catanoso

This broad-leafed plant in the rubiaceae, or coffee, family was spotted at 8,000 feet elevation in the Amazon basin of the Peruvian Andes. Such species are not normally seen at such high elevations. Photograph by Justin Catanoso

I wrote this story for National Geographic NewsWatch following news coverage of a UN report that spelled out how global warming is endangering future food supplies.

Excerpt: “As I learned in my reporting last summer, (2013) in temperate or cold climates, trees and plants are adapted to wide temperature ranges and can migrate to latitudes for many miles north to stay in their ecological comfort zones. In the tropics, where most of the world’s biodiversity exists, trees and plants live in extremely narrow temperature ranges. To survive, they will need to reproduce in higher altitudes where space is far more limited and upslope soils might not be accommodating – hence the possible threat to coffee growing in the future.”

Rain forest plants race to outrun global warming

Tagged trees in the Amazon rainforest.

Tropical plants are migrating due to climate change, but can they move fast enough?

Tropical biologists are coming to understand the impact of of global warming on our warmest climates.  Given the enormous importance of tropical forests in places such as the Amazon basin of Peru, where I spent more than two weeks in July 2013, to influence weather patterns, the water cycle and carbon storage from greenhouse-gas emissions, there is much at stake. My story here on National Geographic News explains.

Photo by Justin Catanoso