Photo courtesy of quinn.anya

Seafood lovers hooked on $1 oyster nights may soon have to find a new source of comfort for the work week blues.

Thanks to an increase of carbon in both the atmosphere and our water bodies (which absorb about a third of all carbon emissions), carbon munching critters like crabs, lobsters and shrimp are getting bigger and hungrier, say scientists at the University of North Carolina’s Aquarium Research Center. After analyzing blue crabs from the Chesapeake Bay in tanks pumped full of carbon, researchers found that the crabs grew nearly four times faster in high-carbon tanks versus low-carbon tanks.
 
Though bigger crabs sound like a delicious side effect of climate change, they’re not all that they’re cracked up to be, since crabs tend to put all their energy into building larger shells, not meatier flesh. Even worse, super-sized crabs with equally super-sized appetites could also affect the rest of the typical seafood platter, since bigger crabs will no doubt be eating bigger helpings of other seagoing creatures, like oysters.
 
Unfortunately, voracious crabs aren’t the only thing that oysters have to worry about. Because oceans are one of the world’s greatest carbon sinks, taking in 22 million tons of carbon dioxide every day, ocean chemistry is changing rapidly. This is putting a strain on shelled creatures like oysters, shellfish and corals that don't like acid baths because they depend on a pH-balanced lifestyle to build their calcium carbonate shells.
 

Although the electricity used by any one transformer is small, the losses add up on a national scale.  (iStockphoto)

In 2007, we filed a lawsuit challenging the Bush administration's weak energy efficiency standards for electricity distribution transformers, those gray boxes mounted on utility poles that power all our homes and businesses. The results of that lawsuit are new standards from the U.S. Department of Energy that were published in the Federal Register on Thursday. The standards were updated as part of an agreement settling that lawsuit. Along with Earthjustice, parties to the suit include the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and several states.

Studies have shown that airline cabins contain high levels of flame retardants. Photo courtesy of chinaoffseason (Flickr)

Airplanes may contain high flame retardants levels
New research has found that commercial airliners contain high levels of flame retardants, a suite of chemicals that have been under fire lately due to concerns over health hazards, reports Environmental Health News.

Because having a plane catch fire mid-air could be disastrous, federal regulators require that all airlines pass strict fire-safety tests, hence the intense usage of flame retardants onboard the aircraft. But though chemical companies have long maintained that flame retardants are safe, several recent studies have linked them to detrimental health effects like reduced IQs and attention problems in children. Flame retardants, which are found in common household items like furniture, electronics and even baby clothes, have also been shown to build up in the body over time. And even worse, some studies suggest that flame retardants may not be all that great in slowing fires and may actually increase deadly emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.

Earthjustice received some superb video today from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, of Shell’s beat up Arctic drilling rig, the Kulluk, as it was lifted onto a huge dry haul ship to be carried to Asia for repairs:

This comes on the heels of a report from the Department of Interior, which summarized  a 60-day investigation into Shell’s 2012 Arctic Ocean drilling season and was highly critical of the oil giant’s operations.