A 60,000-mile-wide sunspot has scientists worried. The spot - large enough for amateur astronomers see with their personal telescopes - could be an indication that large solar storms may be on the horizon.

According to Live Science, the sun spots have already proven to be very active, firing off several Class C storms. Solar flares are categorized in three main categories: C, M and X, with C being the least powerful and X the strongest.

Mike Hapgood, space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford, England, said the biggest concern would be if a solar storm is responsible for power outages lasting for months.

"A big geomagnetic storm can essentially put extra electric currents into the grid," Hapgood told the Los Angeles Times. "If it gets bad enough, you can have a complete failure of the power grid - it happened in Quebec back in 1989. If you've got that, then you've just got to get it back on again. But you could also damage the transformers, which would make it much harder to get the electric power back."

Solar activity fluctuates on an 11-year cycle. The current one - known as Solar Cycle 24 - is expected to peak in 2013.

The plastic island, known as "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch," has grown 100-fold in 40 years.

Scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego traveled to the plastic island - the size of Texas - and found insects called "sea skaters" or "water striders" are using the trash as a place to lay their eggs in greater numbers than before.

In their research, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, scientists noted that nearly 10 percent of fish in the area had eaten micro-plastic:

"During the voyage the researchers, who concentrated their studies a thousand miles west of California, documented an alarming amount of human-generated trash, mostly broken down bits of plastic the size of a fingernail floating across thousands of miles of open ocean."

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was created by plastic waste that finds its way into the sea and is then swept into one area, the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, by circulating ocean currents known as a gyre.

Researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno have discovered that the entire Sierra Nevada range is being elevated at one to two millimeters every year.

The team of researchers from the Reno geodetic laboratory teamed with scientists from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, to discover that the mountains are growing about half an inch every 10 years.

The team's findings were published in the journal Geology.

"Our data indicate that uplift is active and could have generated the entire range in less than 3 million years," lead researcher Bill Hammond told the Associated Press. "Which is young compared to estimates based on some other techniques."

The study suggests that the mountain range likely formed less than 3 million years ago, making them comparatively young. The European Alps, by contrast, were thought to begin growing about 65 million years ago.

The Sierra Nevada is unique as it was likely created by an uplift after a fragment of a lower plate peeled off the top layer of the earth, called the "lithosphere."

By contrast, the Alps and the Andes were caused by the collision of two tectonic plates.

A Canyon County frozen food company has been hit with an $84,000 penalty for chemical reporting violations.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Rhodes International, which produces frozen cinnamon rolls and other frozen bread products, stored large amounts of anhydrous ammonia without properly reporting it to the Caldwell Fire Department, Canyon County Local Emergency Planning Committee and the State Emergency Response Commission.

According to the EPA, anhydrous ammonia is a pungent, toxic gas that attacks skin, eyes, throat and lungs and can cause serious injury or death. According to EPA documents, the company failed to file inventory forms from 2006 through 2009, as required by law.

In a much-anticipated set of new rules, the U.S. government today unveiled new oversight of so-called "fracking" on public lands. Hydraulic fracturing - or fracking - is the controversial method of injecting high-pressured fluids and solids into the earth's core to enhance drilling for natural gas. New rules, recently adopted by the Idaho Legislature, will allow such methodology as the Gem State pursues a burgeoning natural gas drilling industry.

The U.S. Department of Interior's proposed rules would not affect drilling on private land, where the bulk of exploration is taking place. Still, federal regulators said this morning that they hoped the rules could be used as a template for state oversight.

The proposal requires that companies disclose the fluids used in fracking after completing the process.

"As we continue to offer millions of acres of America's public lands for oil and gas development, it is critical that the public have full confidence that the right safety and environmental protections are in place," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.

Researchers have shown that large wind farms affect local temperatures, particularly at night, by pulling in hot air and pushing it to the ground.

The BBC reports that researchers used data obtained from satellites to measure ground temperatures near wind farms and found that they had indeed risen.

"These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate," read the study, which was conducted in west Texas, where wind farms have expanded from 111 in 2003 to 2,358 in 2011.

Temperatures were more elevated at night when cool air near the ground is offset by the wind turbines. Using wind to counter night and early morning frost is often used by farmers on their crops.

But the study's authors were quick to add that the research should not be used to stop building wind farms, which provide clean energy, as the research is new and the warming may be beneficial.

The study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

A new report suggests that while humans continue to build improved communication systems, millions of North American birds are dying due to collisions with radio and television towers.

The joint American-Canadian study said that birds are often attracted to the lights glowing on the giant towers.

The survey indicated that solid red lights attract more birds but blinking red lights are much less risky.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that North America's 84,000 communication towers kill nearly seven million birds traversing North America to warmer southern climates. Cloudy weather makes the situation even more dangerous, as birds are forced to fly low and risk running into towers.

An Idaho dairy processing facility has agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, acknowledging that it failed to publicly disclose its use and disposal of toxic chemicals.

A statement from the EPA said Idaho Milk Products, which processes tens of millions of pounds of milk annually at its Jerome facility, disposed several hundred thousand pounds of toxic chemicals and failed to disclose its use. The EPA said the facility used nitric acid as a cleaning agent.

As part of its agreement, Idaho Milk Products has corrected the violations and agreed to pay a penalty of $52,100.

A statement from Idaho Milk Products said the violation came as the result of an oversight of filing two documents.

"This violation is not a case of illegal or inappropriate release of any chemicals into the environment," said the statement.  "It is a failure to file two documents on time, which the company regrets."

The company said it had identified improvements in its reporting process and created a new environmental coordinator position to centralize its management of environmental compliance.
 

Oregon's governor is calling for a federal probe into the environmental effects of controversial coal-export projects in the Northwest. Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber said Wednesday that the United States risks locking Asian countries into dependency on fossil fuels "if it expands access to vast American coal reserves."

In February, BW first told you (BW,Feature, The Dirty Dance, Feb. 1, 2012) about plans to haul coal from Montana mines across Idaho's panhandle and on to the Pacific coast before being shipped to Asia. The plan has targeted six ports in Oregon and Washington to ship the coal to power-hungry Asian markets. According the Associated Press, the projects "could mean at least 100 million additional tons of coal shipped per year to Asia."

"Coal trains bring only harm ... no benefit. Not one single job," said Crystal Garner, associate field organizer for the Sierra Club in Spokane. "Basically, we'd be another sacrifice zone for the mining companies. Why should we let Big Coal ram this down our throats and threaten our quality of life?"

The Environmental Protection Agency last week asked the U.S. Corps of Engineers to thoroughly review the potential effects of coal exports, but an environmental assessment on the scale of one like Kitzhaber requested could take years.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game confirmed today that one of its officers killed an aggressive mule deer, which was also suspected in previous attacks. The buck was killed April 7 in rural eastern Idaho near Preston.

An Idaho man who was hiking with two children reported that the buck was circling the trio, "raking its head and stomping the ground." The man called Fish and Game, and when IDFG Officer Korey Owens arrived on the scene, the deer was identified as probably the same animal that had previously threatened others, including a woman who sustained puncture wounds, scratches and bruises in a September 2011 confrontation.

An official statement from IDFG said the deer was "humanely dispatched." The head and neck of the deer have been sent to the Wildlife Health Laboratory in Caldwell for testing to determine if the deer's behavior could be tied to a disease or other health-related issue.