POWER PLAY: Climate change, clean power and energy efficiency are back on the front burner of U.S. politics, it seems, as the Obama administration and Senate Democrats begin ramping up their climate efforts following a summer focused heavily on health-care reform. Speaking at a solar-power plant in Arcadia, Fla., on Tuesday, President Obama announced $3.4 billion in new grants for 100 projects that would upgrade the nation's electricity grid with "smart meters," automating utility substations, digital transformers and sensors. "There's something big happening in America in terms of creating a clean-energy economy," Obama said, making sure to point out the job-creating potential of creating a nationwide smart grid. Meanwhile, the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee began a series of hearings Tuesday on its climate bill, and while Republican support for the cap-and-trade bill remains elusive, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank points out that Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., has become the committee's only member who still thinks climate change is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Other Republicans' more nuanced stances suggest the debate in Congress over climate change is at least now a logistical rather than philosophical one. (Sources: New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Associated Press)

 

LOSING STRIPES: The world's tigers are quickly dying out, wildlife experts say, and the iconic animals are in danger of becoming extinct within 20 years unless drastic measures are taken. Biologists, conservationists and activists met in Nepal this week to discuss the big cats' precipitous decline — there are now fewer than 4,000 tigers on Earth, down from about 100,000 a century ago, and all of them are confined to 13 countries in Asia. Habitat loss is one danger, but the experts gathered in Nepal focused on the illegal wildlife trade as the leading threat facing the species. "Our challenge is to make landscapes with tigers alive worth more than landscapes where tigers have been killed," says the chief scientist at the Smithsonian National Zoo's Conservation Ecology Center. "I think we have a decade from where we will slip from being caretakers to undertakers." (Sources: Reuters, Agence-France Presse, AP, Times of London)

 

GIRL POWER: The best hope for saving mankind is most likely womankind, writes theoretical physicist Lawrence M. Krauss in Scientific American's November issue, pointing out that since women hold the key to reproduction, they're also uniquely positioned to help stop the root of many environmental and public-health problems: overpopulation. By making sure young girls around the world are well-educated, especially in developing countries, Krauss writes, we may be able to slow the runaway rates of population growth in places like India, Somalia and Sudan that are already struggling to save their existing citizens from starvation, dehydration and disease. Studies have shown that not only do better-educated women usually have more money and fewer children, but their kids are less likely to embrace violent extremism — another growing problem in poor parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries across Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. (Source: Scientific American)

 

ACID TEST: Even minor boosts in ocean acidity can wreak havoc with clams, scallops and oysters, according to one of the first studies to focus on the effects of acidic seawater on shellfish. Researchers from New York's Stony Brook University found that the shellfish larvae are extremely sensitive to acidic seawater, which is increasingly being created as the world's oceans absorb more carbon dioxide from the air. When they lab-raised clam and scallop larvae in acidic water similar to what's expected over the 21st century, the researchers noticed a 50 percent drop in survival, with those that did survive growing smaller and taking longer to develop. Oysters also grew more slowly at this level of acidity, but they managed to survive well enough until the acidity reached what's expected to occur in the 22nd century. "This could be an additional reason we see declines in local stocks of shellfish throughout history," one of the study's authors says. "We've blamed shellfish declines on brown tide, overfishing, and local low-oxygen events. However it's likely that ocean acidification also contributes to shellfish declines." (Source: ScienceDaily)

 

SHADY GROVE: Deforestation is a rampant problem around the world — especially in Borneo, Brazil and other areas featuring tropical rain forest — with farmers and ranchers doing much of the damage as they clear land for crops and cattle. But the situation may not be as dire as we thought, according to a new study by scientists at Kenya's World Agroforestry Center. By examining satellite imagery, they deduce that trees cover a significant amount of the planet's farmland, totaling more than 247 million acres. Central America's farms are the most forested, followed by South America's and Southeast Asia's, where trees cover about 80 percent of various fields. Even in North America and Europe, where industrialized agriculture often dominates vast tracts of land for a single crop, trees still flesh out around 40 percent of all farmland, the researchers found. (Source: Christian Science Monitor)

 

— Russell McLendon