Digging into an environmental scandal on the Isle of Man
I first spoke to freshwater scientist Calum MacNeil in February 2022. He explained to me that The Isle of Man – a self-governing island in the Irish Sea between the UK and and Ireland – was being cast as world's only 'all-nation' Unesco biosphere reserve.
He explained how, in 2014, before its Unesco designation, contaminated silt was deliberately dumped in the Irish Sea. While designated as a biosphere, contaminated silt dredged from a marine harbour has been contained in a sealed pit but leachate from that has discharged into Peel Bay, where people regularly swim from the sandy beaches.
As an environmental journalist, the story stood out to me and the more we spoke, the more the plot thickened.
Read more:
I spent hours of my spare time digesting the evidence he sent me – all of it in the public domain. Government reports, online pollution policies, local news coverage, the biosphere nomination documents.
MacNeil, who worked for the Isle of Man government between 2004 and 2017, knew what he was talking about.
But the more I looked into this, the more I felt up against smoke and mirrors. Beautiful beaches, clean seas and a thriving ecotourism destination (according to the government's tourism marketing). Contrast that with contaminated waste ending up in the ocean.
Three years on, and The Conversation's Insights team and I have been working closely with Professor of Water Science at Liverpool John Moores University, Patrick Byrne. He has analysed and interpreted the consequences of this pollution.
While pollution is rife around the world to a certain extent, this instance is particularly shocking, he explains.
Now, The Conversation is proud to present our exclusive Insights investigation, Leaked, in two key parts. An introductory news article written Byrne explains the backstory and highlights the prominence of Isle of Man's Unesco biosphere status.
Further analysis unfolds in an in-depth Q&A between Byrne and MacNeil. Byrne explains the gravity of legacy contamination from synthetic toxic chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and why transparency is so key.
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation's environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who've subscribed so far.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Could trees know when the summer solstice is?
This article was originally featured on The Conversation. People have been celebrating the summer solstice with elaborate rituals since prehistoric times. But humans aren't the only species to take mark June 21 as a special time. Studies are showing the summer solstice is an important cue for plants too. Recent studies, including one of my own, have proposed that trees may use the longest day of the year as a key marker for their growth and reproductive cycles. The solstice seems to act like a calendar reminder for trees. For example, at the solstice, trees growing in cold places slow down the creation of new wood cells and focus their energy on finishing already formed but still incomplete cells. This ensures trees have time to complete cell construction before winter hits. Incomplete cells are damaged by freezing winter temperatures, rendering them useless for water transport the following year. Along similar lines, trees use the solstice to fine-tune the 'winding down', or senescence, of their leaves in preparation for autumn. Senescence allows the tree to reabsorb critical nutrients from the leaves before they fall. This process is timed to balance missing out on sunlight from 'winding down' too early, against leaving it too late and losing nutrients if still-green leaves are killed by autumn frosts. Satellite observations of forests, and controlled experiments in greenhouses, reveal that warmer temperatures immediately prior to the solstice cause the onset of leaf browning to start earlier that autumn. In contrast, warmer temperatures just after the solstice slow down the senescence process. This means a longer transition period from green to fully brown leaves. This fine-tuning enables trees to extend the period of photosynthesis in years when temperatures stay warmer for longer, so they don't miss out on these favourable conditions. But not all scientists are convinced. From an evolutionary perspective, the solstice may not be the best seasonal marker for timing these transitions. For example, in forests in the far north, leaves do not appear until early June, only days before the solstice, and the growing season can extend late into October. In these forests, using the solstice to initiate the winding down process makes little sense for trees that have only just started growing for the year. Nevertheless, there is more consensus about plants using the solstice to synchronise reproduction. In many plants, especially trees from the temperate mid-latitudes, the number of seeds they produce varies dramatically year on year, known as masting. A large European beech tree can produce hundreds of thousands of seeds in a bumper year (a 'mast event') and forgo reproduction altogether in other years. Beech trees vary their annual seed production in step, often on a continental scale. They do this to increase the efficiency of their reproduction. A small moth, Cydia fagiglandana, lays its eggs in beech flowers. When the grubs hatch, they eat and destroy the developing seeds. Cycles of famine and bumper years help protect their seeds from these moths. UK beech trees typically lose less than 5% of their seeds to Cydia because the cycles starve the moths into low numbers ready for masting years. But when trees are out of sync, seed loss can increase to over 40%. For decades we have known that beech mast events happen in the year after a warm summer. These warmer temperatures trigger an increase in the formation of flower buds. More flower buds usually lead to a greater crop of seeds that autumn. Scientists have long puzzled over how beech trees across Europe seem to use the same seasonal window to control mast events. Their seed production is determined by temperatures in late June and early July, irrespective of where they grow in Europe. But how can a beech tree know the date? In my team's 2024 study, we showed that they use the solstice as a seasonal marker. As soon as the days start to shorten after the solstice, beech trees across Europe seem to simultaneously sense the temperature. Anywhere temperatures are above average in the weeks following the solstice can expect to have a mast event the next year. Weather conditions in the weeks before the solstice, by contrast, seem to be irrelevant. As seen on weather maps, warm and cool spells tend to occur simultaneously over large areas. This allows beech trees to maximise the synchrony of their reproduction, whether that is investing in a mast year (warm temperatures), or forgoing reproduction for a year (low temperatures). Using a fixed marker like the solstice is the key to achieving this synchrony, and the benefits that come from it. The evidence for this phenomenon has come from observations across dozens of forests across Europe. However, my research group is collaborating with about a dozen other groups in Europe to test this effect by manipulating the temperature of beech branches before and after the solstice at different sites. Ongoing research I am involved with seems to show flowering genes are activated at the summer solstice. Also, studies into the circadian rhythms of plants show they have mechanisms in their molecules that allow them to detect and respond to tiny changes in day length. This is the basis for that extraordinary scale of synchronised reproduction. If the weather is warm over the next month or so, then there is a good chance that beech trees in your local area will have heavy seed crops next autumn. What's more, trees across the UK and into northern and central Europe will probably be doing the same.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
How could an explosive Big Bang be the birth of our universe?
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you'd like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@ How can a Big Bang have been the start of the universe, since intense explosions destroy everything? – Tristan S., age 8, Newark, Delaware Pretend you're a perfectly flat chess piece in a game of chess on a perfectly flat and humongous chessboard. One day you look around and ask: How did I get here? How did the chessboard get here? How did it all start? You pull out your telescope and begin to explore your universe, the chessboard…. What do you find? Your universe, the chessboard, is getting bigger. And over more time, even bigger! The board is expanding in all directions that you can see. There's nothing that seems to be causing this expansion as far as you can tell – it just seems to be the nature of the chessboard. But wait a minute. If it's getting bigger, and has been getting bigger and bigger, then that means in the past, it must have been smaller and smaller and smaller. At some time, long, long ago, at the very beginning, it must have been so small that it was infinitely small. Let's work forward from what happened then. At the beginning of your universe, the chessboard was infinitely tiny and then expanded, growing bigger and bigger until the day that you decided to make some observations about the nature of your chess universe. All the stuff in the universe – the little particles that make up you and everything else – started very close together and then spread farther apart as time went on. Our universe works exactly the same way. When astronomers like me make observations of distant galaxies, we see that they are all moving apart. It seems our universe started very small and has been expanding ever since. In fact, scientists now know that not only is the universe expanding, but the speed at which it's expanding is increasing. This mysterious effect is caused by something physicists call dark energy, though we know very little else about it. Astronomers also observe something called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. It's a very low level of energy that exists all throughout space. We know from those measurements that our universe is 13.8 billion years old – way, way older than people, and about three times older than the Earth. If astronomers look back all the way to the event that started our universe, we call that the Big Bang. Many people hear the name 'Big Bang' and think about a giant explosion of stuff, like a bomb going off. But the Big Bang wasn't an explosion that destroyed things. It was the beginning of our universe, the start of both space and time. Rather than an explosion, it was a very rapid expansion, the event that started the universe growing bigger and bigger. This expansion is different than an explosion, which can be caused by things like chemical reactions or large impacts. Explosions result in energy going from one place to another, and usually a lot of it. Instead, during the Big Bang, energy moved along with space as it expanded, moving around wildly but becoming more spread out over time since space was growing over time. Back in the chessboard universe, the 'Big Bang' would be like the beginning of everything. It's the start of the board getting bigger. It's important to realize that 'before' the Big Bang, there was no space and there was no time. Coming back to the chessboard analogy, you can count the amount of time on the game clock after the start but there is no game time before the start – the clock wasn't running. And, before the game had started, the chessboard universe hadn't existed and there was no chessboard space either. You have to be careful when you say 'before' in this context because time didn't even exist until the Big Bang. You also have wrap your mind around the idea that the universe isn't expanding 'into' anything, since as far as we know the Big Bang was the start of both space and time. Confusing, I know! Astronomers aren't sure what caused the Big Bang. We just look at observations and see that's how the universe did start. We know it was extremely small and got bigger, and we know that kicked off 13.8 billion years ago. What started our own game of chess? That's one of the deepest questions anyone can ask. Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@ Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you're wondering, too. We won't be able to answer every question, but we will do our best. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Michael Lam, Rochester Institute of Technology Read more: After our universe's cosmic dawn, what happened to all its original hydrogen? Hubble in pictures: astronomers' top picks Curious Kids: Can people colonize Mars? Michael Lam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
How could an explosive Big Bang be the birth of our universe?
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you'd like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@ How can a Big Bang have been the start of the universe, since intense explosions destroy everything? – Tristan S., age 8, Newark, Delaware Pretend you're a perfectly flat chess piece in a game of chess on a perfectly flat and humongous chessboard. One day you look around and ask: How did I get here? How did the chessboard get here? How did it all start? You pull out your telescope and begin to explore your universe, the chessboard…. What do you find? Your universe, the chessboard, is getting bigger. And over more time, even bigger! The board is expanding in all directions that you can see. There's nothing that seems to be causing this expansion as far as you can tell – it just seems to be the nature of the chessboard. But wait a minute. If it's getting bigger, and has been getting bigger and bigger, then that means in the past, it must have been smaller and smaller and smaller. At some time, long, long ago, at the very beginning, it must have been so small that it was infinitely small. Let's work forward from what happened then. At the beginning of your universe, the chessboard was infinitely tiny and then expanded, growing bigger and bigger until the day that you decided to make some observations about the nature of your chess universe. All the stuff in the universe – the little particles that make up you and everything else – started very close together and then spread farther apart as time went on. Our universe works exactly the same way. When astronomers like me make observations of distant galaxies, we see that they are all moving apart. It seems our universe started very small and has been expanding ever since. In fact, scientists now know that not only is the universe expanding, but the speed at which it's expanding is increasing. This mysterious effect is caused by something physicists call dark energy, though we know very little else about it. Astronomers also observe something called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. It's a very low level of energy that exists all throughout space. We know from those measurements that our universe is 13.8 billion years old – way, way older than people, and about three times older than the Earth. If astronomers look back all the way to the event that started our universe, we call that the Big Bang. Many people hear the name 'Big Bang' and think about a giant explosion of stuff, like a bomb going off. But the Big Bang wasn't an explosion that destroyed things. It was the beginning of our universe, the start of both space and time. Rather than an explosion, it was a very rapid expansion, the event that started the universe growing bigger and bigger. This expansion is different than an explosion, which can be caused by things like chemical reactions or large impacts. Explosions result in energy going from one place to another, and usually a lot of it. Instead, during the Big Bang, energy moved along with space as it expanded, moving around wildly but becoming more spread out over time since space was growing over time. Back in the chessboard universe, the 'Big Bang' would be like the beginning of everything. It's the start of the board getting bigger. It's important to realize that 'before' the Big Bang, there was no space and there was no time. Coming back to the chessboard analogy, you can count the amount of time on the game clock after the start but there is no game time before the start – the clock wasn't running. And, before the game had started, the chessboard universe hadn't existed and there was no chessboard space either. You have to be careful when you say 'before' in this context because time didn't even exist until the Big Bang. You also have wrap your mind around the idea that the universe isn't expanding 'into' anything, since as far as we know the Big Bang was the start of both space and time. Confusing, I know! Astronomers aren't sure what caused the Big Bang. We just look at observations and see that's how the universe did start. We know it was extremely small and got bigger, and we know that kicked off 13.8 billion years ago. What started our own game of chess? That's one of the deepest questions anyone can ask. Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@ Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you're wondering, too. We won't be able to answer every question, but we will do our best. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Michael Lam, Rochester Institute of Technology Read more: After our universe's cosmic dawn, what happened to all its original hydrogen? Hubble in pictures: astronomers' top picks Curious Kids: Can people colonize Mars? Michael Lam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
