What happens to old solar panels, windmills and high tech batteries?By Amy Joi O’Donoghue@Amyjoi16  Jan 30, 2021, 10:00pm MST

https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/1/30/22249311/why-green-energy-isnt-so-green-and-poses-harm-to-the-environment-hazardous-waste-utah-china-solar

Wind farms and massive arrays of solar panels are cropping up across public and private landscapes both in the United States and abroad as users increasingly turn to “green energy” as their preferred flavor of electricity.

President Joe Biden, in fact, has directed the Interior Department to identify suitable places to host 20 gigawatts of new energy from sun, wind or geothermal resources by 2024 as part of a sweeping effort to move away from a carbon-based economy and electrical grid.

But how green is…

Image of the fungus-like filamentous microfossils. (Andrew Czaja)NATURE

CARLY CASSELLA31 JANUARY 2021

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-635-million-year-old-microfossil-may-have-got-us-out-of-the-last-ice-age

An international team of scientists in South China accidentally discovered the oldest terrestrial fossil ever found, about three times more ancient than the oldest knowndinosaur.

Investigations are still ongoing and observations will need to be independently verified, but the international team argues the long thread-like fingers of this ancient organism look a lot like fungi.

Whatever it is, the eukaryote appears to have fossilised on land roughly 635 million years ago, just as Earth was recovering from a global ice age.

During this massive glaciation event, our planet resembleda big snowball,its oceans sealed from the Sun by more than a kilometre (0.6 miles) of solid ice. And then, in a geologic ‘flash’, our world began toinexplicably thaw, allowing life to thrive on land for the first time.

Fungi might…

57-year-old man had recently returned from visit to Turkey, was largely asymptomatic

ByTOI STAFFToday, 8:14 pm

• https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-who-recovered-from-covid-19-reinfected-with-south-african-strain/
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The arrival hall at the almost empty Ben Gurion International Airport on January 25, 2021. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

For the first time, an Israeli man who previously recovered from the coronavirus was found Sunday to be reinfected with the so-called South African strain, Hebrew media reported.

The diagnosis came amid continued uncertainty on the effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that Israel is using for its mass inoculation program against the new strains of the virus.

Ziv Yaffe, 57, from the central region of the country, recently returned from Turkey. Speaking to Channel 12 news, he said that whereas during his first infection in August he had “all the symptoms,” the second time around he felt fine.

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Extended wolf trapping seasons draws debate

• Tom Kuglin
• Jan 29, 2021 Updated 14 hrs ago
•  https://mtstandard.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/extended-wolf-trapping-seasons-draws-debate/article_a13e504e-776f-5408-85e5-e4fc661e5f76.html

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Tom Kuglin

The first of several expected billsaimed at reducing the population of wolves in Montana saw a northwest Montana lawmaker make the case for extending trapping seasons Thursday, while a number of opponents lined up to ask a committee to vote it down.

Rep. Paul Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, brought House Bill 225 to the House Fish, Wildlife and Parks Committee. The bill’s intent is to lengthen Montana’s wolf trapping season by two weeks earlier and two weeks later, meaning the season would start the Monday after Thanksgiving and go until March 15. The current season runs from Dec. 15 to Feb. 28.

Under the bill, Montana’s seven FWP regional offices could bring recommendations to the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission to set the trapping season within the…

By Kitty Block and Sara Amundson

January 29, 2021 0 Comments

At some canned hunting operations, animals are habituated to eating at feeding stations at regular intervals, and the shooter can lie in wait for them there for a guaranteed kill.Photo by the HSUS2.2KSHARES

The canned hunting industry is often associated with countries likeSouth Africa, where wealthy trophy hunters can pick out and shoot captive-bred lions in enclosures for a hefty price tag. It is, literally, the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel, and it is a practice so shameful, many hunting groups disavow it.

But what is not as well known is that canned hunting is a thriving industry right here in the United States—one that results in cruel and unnecessary suffering and death for thousands of animals each year. Sadly, because of the indifference of some lawmakers who have failed to stop…

Skye KinkadeMount Shasta Herald0:530:52https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.436.0_en.html#goog_417393102

California is home to two new gray wolves, and it appears they’re settling down together in Siskiyou County.

After making his way to Siskiyou in November of 2020, the Oregon wolf known as OR-85 has connected with anotherwolf that biologists believe is most likely a female.

To determine the mystery wolf’s sex and possibly which pack she descended from, biologists are hard at work collecting samples of the wolf’s feces, urine and fur to be genetically tested.

This unglamorous job lands in the lap of Kent Laudon, California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s wolf specialist. He’s an expert in the state’s small population of wolves, which are making a slow comeback to a state they once called home. He works to bridge the concerns of wildlife conservationists with those of ranchers who worry wolves will endanger their livelihoods.https://65ee1cb96bf82fc6dae1b38a9522589c.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

Also keeping an eye on the…

https://komonews.com/news/coronavirus/mutations-have-clinical-consequences-jj-vaccine-less-effective-against-covid-variant

by Leandra BernsteinFriday, January 29th 2021AA

11VIEW ALL PHOTOSFILE – In this Jan. 15, 2021, file photo, Dr. Yomaris Pena, Internal Medicine Physician with Somos Community Care at a COVID-19 extracts the last bit of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine out of a vial so as not to waste it at a vaccination site at the Corsi Houses in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) —Concerns about the emergence of more infectious strains of thecoronavirusovershadowed the good news from Johnson & Johnson that it had completed the third phase clinical trial of its single-dose vaccine.

On Friday, Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceuticals reported their vaccine was 72% effective among trial participants in the United States. But that efficacy went down to 57% in a South Africa trial, where the dominant strain of the virus is more transmissible and apparently…