Mon, Sep 6, 2010 from Miller-McCune: Viewing Poisons at Our National Parks America's national parks are heralded as pristine pockets of natural beauty, but that news hasn't stopped airborne pollutants from accumulating at alarmingly high rates in parks in the West.
Eight years ago, spurred by reports of contaminants found in alpine and polar ecosystems far from where the pollutants originated, National Park Service leaders assembled an interdisciplinary team of researchers drawn from experts at several universities, government agencies and research groups.... The news wasn't good:
• Of the 100 or more toxic substances tested for, 70 were found...• Many fish in parks have reached or exceeded the threshold level of contaminants for consumption by humans or other animals that eat them. ...
How do we know they aren't just tourist airborne pollutants?
Mon, Sep 6, 2010 from via ScienceDaily: Global Warming's Silver Lining? Northern Countries Will Thrive and Grow, Researcher Predicts ...As worldwide population increases by 40 percent over the next 40 years, sparsely populated Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and the northern United States will become formidable economic powers and migration magnets, Laurence C. Smith writes in "The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future" (Dutton Books), scheduled for publication Sept. 23....these resources will pour from northern rim countries -- or NORCs, as Smith calls them -- precisely at a time when natural resources elsewhere are becoming critically depleted, making them all the more valuable... Other tantalizing predictions:
* New shipping lanes will open during the summer in the Arctic, allowing Europe to realize its 500-year-old dream of direct trade between the Atlantic and the Far East, and resulting in new access to and economic development in the north.
* Oil resources in Canada will be second only to those in Saudi Arabia, and the country's population will swell by more than 30 percent, a growth rate rivaling India's and six times faster than China's.... ...
Sun, Sep 5, 2010 from The Asian Age: Indian Ocean rising faster than others Newly detected rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean have led Indian scientists to conclude that the Indian Ocean is rising faster than other oceans.
Dr Satheesh C. Shenoi, director, Indian National Centre for Ocean Infor-mation Services, speaking at a workshop on "Coasts, Coastal Populations and their Concerns” organised by the Centre for Science and Environment, warned that sea surface measurements and satellite observations confirm that an anthropogenic climate warming is amplifying regional sea rise changes in the Indian Ocean. This would have far-reaching impacts on the climate of vulnerable nations, including the coastlines on the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka and parts of Indonesia as a result of human-induced increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases. ...
Being ahead of everyone else ain't always a good thing.
Sat, Sep 4, 2010 from Chemical and Engineering News: Accumulating Contaminants Kick Off Concerns Certain members of a class of compounds used in personal-care and cleaning products have been steadily growing in the waters around Manhattan, delivered through shower drains and passing relatively unscathed through wastewater treatment plants into the environment. Now researchers report that levels of at least one of these contaminants have increased exponentially over the past decade...
Rarely studied, these quaternary ammonium compounds--known as QACs or "quacks"--are cationic surfactants used in household cleaners, fabric softeners, shampoos, and other personal care products. Various compounds from this chemical family have been reported in watery sediments in Europe and the U.S., at concentrations sometimes as high as micrograms per gram. But long-term trends have remained unreported. ...
Hey, Cationic Surfactants is the name of my surf rock band, dude! How weird!
Sat, Sep 4, 2010 from San Diego Union-Tribune: Dead zones a coastal threat Dead zones increased dramatically in U.S. waters over the past 50 years, threatening ecosystems and fisheries nationwide, according to a sweeping report Friday by the federal Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The multiagency assessment said that incidents of hypoxia -- a condition in which oxygen levels drop so low that fish and other animals are stressed or killed -- have risen nearly 30-fold since 1960 due in part to man-made pollutants...."If current practices are continued, the expansion of hypoxia in coastal waters will continue and increase in severity, leading to further impacts on marine habitats, living resources, economies, and coastal communities,” the report's authors said. ...
Fri, Sep 3, 2010 from PhysOrg: Rolling the dice with evolution: Massive extinction will have unpredictable consequences New research by Macquarie University palaeobiologist, Dr John Alroy, predicts major changes to the rules of evolution as we understand them now. Those changes will have serious consequences for future biodiversity because no one can predict which groups will come to dominate after the current mass extinction..... Thus, a group's average rate of diversification or branching into new species in the past is not a good predictor of how well it will fare after a mass extinction event.... Organisms that might have adapted in the past may not be able to this time, he said.
"You may end up with a dramatically altered sea floor because of changes in the dominance of major groups. That is, the extinction occurring now will overturn the balance of the marine groups."
When there is a major mass extinction, it's not just a temporary drop in richness of species, he said.
Alroy likens what is happening now to rolling the dice with evolution.
"What's worrisome is that some groups permanently become dominant that otherwise wouldn't have. So by causing this extinction, we are taking a big gamble on what kind of species will be around in the future. We don't know how it will turn out. People don't realise that there will be very unpredictable consequences." ...
Thu, Sep 2, 2010 from Jeffrey Sachs, in Scientific American: The Deepening Crisis: When Will We Face the Planet's Environmental Problems? During the four years of this column, the world's inability to face up to the reality of the growing environmental crisis has become even more palpable. Every major goal that international bodies have established for global environmental policy as of 2010 has been postponed, ignored or defeated. Sadly, this year will quite possibly become the warmest on record, yet another testimony to human-induced environmental catastrophes running out of control.
This was to be the year of biodiversity. In 2002 nations pledged, under the auspices of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, to slow significantly the planetary loss of biodiversity by 2010. This goal was not even remotely achieved. Indeed, it was barely even noticed by Americans: the U.S. signed the convention in 1992 but never ratified it. Ratification fell victim to the uniquely American delusion that virtually all of nature should be subdivided into parcels of private property, within which owners should have their way.... The Senate, true to form, sustained its 18th year of inaction on global warming since ratifying the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992.... Fifth, vested corporate interests have mastered the dark arts of propaganda, and they can use their deep pockets to purchase a sea of deliberate misinformation to deceive the public.
...
The free market of corporate politics is my friend! They told me so!
Thu, Aug 26, 2010 from Church of England, via Christian Ecology: Bellringing for Biodiversity, Sept. 22 Church bells across the country will ring in tune with the United Nations next month to mark crucial international talks on biodiversity.
As the bells toll at the UN headquarters in both New York and Nairobi, bell ringers from small parish churches to large cathedrals and minsters are being encouraged to ring on September 22. 2010 is the UN's International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) and the Church of England is one of the official partners in the UK.
The UN General Assembly will discuss for the first time ever the crisis affecting the world's biodiversity on September 22, underlining the importance of how plants, animals and life as we know it are all linked and the loss of one species through human actions can affect many others.... "Ringing the church bells is a great way for the wider community to be reminded and to celebrate the beauty of creation. Rural churches are at the heart of village life and their churchyards are part of the collective history and memory of that community. Celebrating the biodiversity of countryside and churchyard will bring a community together and ringing the bells is a very prominent way of doing it." ...
Ring it in the morning, ring it in the evening, all over this la-and.
Mon, Aug 23, 2010 from New Scientist: Biosemiotics: Searching for meanings in a meadow Biology, of course, already concerns itself with information: cell signalling, the genetic code, pheromones and human language, for example. What biosemiotics aims to do is to weave these disparate strands into a single coherent theory of biological meaning.... "Biosemiotics", then, might sound like the name of some arcane mix of biological science and linguistic philosophy. Luckily, though, the true message of biosemiotics is clear: we may do better to stop thinking about the biological world solely in terms of its physical and chemical properties, but see it also as a world made up of biological signs and "meanings".... For von Uexkll, both views were wrong. Each creature in the meadow lived in "its own world filled with the perceptions which it alone knows", and it was in accordance with that experiential world - and not the entirety of the whole, unseen but physically existing world - that the creature had to coordinate its actions to eat, flee, mate and sustain itself.... [Pierce] saw logic as a formal doctrine of signs, and his theory of signs is important in modern biosemiotics.
Most of us naively conceive of a "sign" as standing for something concrete: a red traffic light for most of us simply means "stop". In other words, the two things - a sign and its meaning - are directly connected in a sign relationship. Peirce, however, saw a sign as representing a relation between three things. ...
Said the dying songbird/to the dying bee/I wish those humans/would finally see./Burma Shave
Fri, Aug 20, 2010 from Bangor Daily News: Gulf of Maine: changing? ... But what would happen if the entire Gulf of Maine ecosystem changed at once?
We may soon find out. Excess carbon dioxide, or CO2, in our atmosphere is causing ocean acidification. The ocean absorbs atmospheric CO2, and when CO2 mixes with seawater, carbonic acid develops. Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere has subsequently increased the acidity of seawater, lowering its pH. And the oceans are expected to become even more acidic over the next 200 years, as CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to rise. In fact, atmospheric CO2 levels are predicted to nearly double over that time.... [S]helled organisms exhibit different responses to increasingly acidic marine environments. Mollusks such as bay scallops, whelks, periwin-kles, oysters, conchs, quahogs and softshell clams build their shells more slowly as the amount of atmospheric CO2 increases. And in some cases, the shells of these organisms actually begin to dissolve away.... Under high CO2 conditions, quahog shells had fewer ridges, conch shells had smaller knobs and the spines of pencil urchins became truncated. These organisms are thought to have evolved their ridges, knobs and spines for burrowing, stability and motility, respectively. Without them, these animals would be even more vulnerable to predators.... The bottom line is that the net effect of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems will likely be more severe than the sum of the responses of individual species. At the ecosystem level, it is unlikely that the weakening of some species (the mollusks) will be offset by the strengthening of others (the crustacea). ...
That's the "symphony effect": if it sucks for one instrument, it makes every other instrument off key. Wait -- is that right?
Thu, Aug 19, 2010 from Climatewire: Pakistan -- a Sad New Benchmark in Climate-Related Disasters Devastating flooding that has swamped one-fifth of Pakistan and left millions homeless is likely the worst natural disaster to date attributable to climate change, U.N. officials and climatologists are now openly saying. Most experts are still cautioning against tying any specific event directly to emissions of greenhouse gases. But scientists at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva say there's no doubt that higher Atlantic Ocean temperatures contributed to the disaster begun late last month.
Atmospheric anomalies that led to the floods are also directly related to the same weather phenomena that a caused the record heat wave in Russia and flooding and mudslides in western China... ...
Better to be "sad" about climate change than terrified.
Sun, Aug 15, 2010 from InvestigateWest: States struggle to curb pollution by cruise ships In a single day, the federal Environmental Protection Agency estimates, passengers aboard a typical cruise ship will generate:
* 21,000 gallons of sewage
* One ton of garbage
* 170,000 gallons of wastewater from sinks, showers and laundry
* More than 25 pounds of batteries, fluorescent lights, medical wastes and expired chemicals
* Up to 6,400 gallons of oily bilge water from engines
* Four plastic bottles per passenger - about 8,500 bottles per day for the Carnival Spirit
Cruise ships incinerate between 75 and 85 percent of their garbage, according to the EPA in its 2008 study, contributing to smog in coastal communities and on the ocean. They also release incinerator ash and sewage sludge into the ocean. They contribute nutrients, metals, ammonia, pharmaceutical waste, chemical cleaners and detergent to deep marine environments from sewage treatment systems that either don't work as planned or aren't able to remove such substances, according to tests in Washington and Alaska, interviews with state officials, the EPA study, and information provided by the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. It's legal to discharge untreated sewage in most areas of the United States farther than three miles from shore. ...
Sat, Aug 14, 2010 from BBC: Rain triggers fresh China landslides Torrential rain has brought landslides to more areas in China, as relief teams in devastated Zhouqu county battle against the bad weather.
Teams are continuing to recover bodies in the remote region in Gansu province, in the wake of Saturday's landslides that left 1,700 people dead or missing.
Elsewhere in Gansu 24 people were killed in landslides, and five people died in Sichuan province to the south.
More rain is forecast for the area in the next few days. ...
Sat, Aug 14, 2010 from London Independent: Children bear the brunt of Pakistan's nightmare ...Two weeks after unprecedented monsoon rains started causing chaos and devastation in the north-west of the country, in this region the effects are still being felt. Further south, in Sindh province, it is likely that the worst is yet to come.... Half the people being rescued by the troops and volunteers are children. Experts estimate that of the 14 million people affected by these floods, six million children are at risk. In every natural disaster, it is often children who suffer the most. When food is in short supply, they are often the last to eat, they are more vulnerable to contagious diseases and water-borne illnesses such as cholera, and under such hardship a child's needs may not always be a family's priority.
In these floods, many children, inclined to swim and splash in the deep brown waters, have been attacked by snakes. ...
Whatever happened to the meek inheriting the earth?
Fri, Aug 13, 2010 from Christian Science Monitor: China mudslides were predicted 13 years ago Monster monsoon rains may have loosened the mud and rock that buried and killed more than 1,000 people in the northwestern Chinese Province of Gansu over the weekend, but the mudslide in Zhouqu was more than a natural disaster.
Official records show that government-run lumber companies cut 313,000 acres of forest from the slopes of Zhouqu county between 1952 and 1990, denuding the geologically vulnerable mountainsides and subjecting them to soil erosion.
Thirteen years ago two Chinese scientists published a paper warning that following "the destruction of the eco-system" in the district, "a rainstorm will carry debris down the gully, destroying farmland, houses, roads, bridges, water facilities, and power systems and causing death and injury." ...
What were those scientists' names -- Nostra and Damus?
Fri, Aug 13, 2010 from Scientific American: Plastic Surf: The Unhealthful Afterlife of Toys and Packaging By now even schoolchildren know that the plastics we discard every year in the millions of tons persist in the environment for hundreds of years. And we have all heard of the horrors caused by such debris in the sea: fur seals entangled by nylon nets, sea otters choking on polyethylene six-pack rings, and plastic bags or toys stuck in the guts of sea turtles....Scientists fear the possible effects of this plastic confetti on zooplankton and other creatures at the base of the marine food web, which get consumed by larger organisms--turtles, fish, birds--and, ultimately, by us. ...
So if schoolkids know this, then why do they keep asking Santa for this crap!?
Thu, Aug 12, 2010 from Agence France-Press: New superbugs spreading from South Asia: study Plastic surgery patients have carried a new class of superbugs resistant to almost all antibiotics from South Asia to Britain and they could spread worldwide, researchers reported Wednesday.
Many hospital infections that were already difficult to treat have become even more impervious to drugs thanks to a recently discovered gene that can jump across different species of bacteria.
This so-called NDM-1 gene was first identified last year by Cardiff University's Timothy Walsh in two types of bacteria -- Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli -- in a Swedish patient admitted to hospital in India.
Worryingly, the new NDM-1 bacteria are resistant even to carbapenems, a group of antibiotics often reserved as a last resort for emergency treatment for multi-drug resistant bugs. ...
Nothing gets an ApocaDoc's blood racing like a new class of superbugs!
Wed, Aug 11, 2010 from New York Times: Russian Fires Raise Fears of Radioactivity As if things in Russia were not looking sufficiently apocalyptic already, with 100-degree temperatures and noxious fumes rolling in from burning peat bogs and forests, there is growing alarm here that fires in regions coated with fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 24 years ago could now be emitting plumes of radioactive smoke. Several fires have been documented in the contaminated areas of western Russia, including three heavily irradiated sites in the Bryansk region, the environmental group Greenpeace Russia said in a statement released Tuesday. Bryansk borders Belarus and Ukraine. ...
Where there's radioactive smoke there's radioactive fire!
Wed, Aug 4, 2010 from Telegraph.co.uk: What Lies Beneath The Sea: Census of Marine Life The Census of Marine Life also points to the effect of so-called "alien species" being found in many of the world's marine ecosystems. The Mediterranean has the largest number of invasive species - most of them having migrated through the Suez Canal from the Red Sea. So far, more than 600 invasive species have been counted, almost 5 per cent of the total marine creatures in the Mediterranean.
Those annoying jellyfish on the Spanish holiday beaches may be sending us a message, or at least a warning. In recent years there have been other jellyfish "invasions". In 2007, 100,000 fish at Northern Ireland's only salmon farm were killed by the same "mauve stingers" that are affecting the Spanish beaches. The swarming jellies covered 10 square miles of water.
In 2005, and again last year, Japanese fishermen battled swarms of giant Nomura jellyfish, each measuring six feet across and weighing 200kg. Once seen infrequently, they now regularly swarm across the Yellow Sea, making it impossible for Japanese boats to deploy their nets. One fishing boat capsized after the jellyfish became entangled in its nets.
There is evidence that the global jellyfish invasion is gathering pace. As Mediterranean turtles lose their nesting sites to beach developments, or die in fishing nets, and the vanishing population of other large predators such as bluefin tuna are fished out, their prey is doing what nature does best: filling a void. Smaller, more numerous species like the jellyfish are flourishing and plugging the gap left by animals higher up the food chain. According to the Spanish environment ministry: "Jellyfish blooms have been increasing in recent years, and one of the suggested causes is the decline in natural predators - as well as climate change and pollution from land-based sources." ...
I'm so happy that I can choose to believe that our actions don't have consequences.
Wed, Jul 28, 2010 from Dalhousie University via ScienceDaily: Marine Phytoplankton Declining: Striking Global Changes at the Base of the Marine Food Web Linked to Rising Ocean Temperatures A new article published in the 29 July issue of the journal Nature reveals for the first time that microscopic marine algae known as "phytoplankton" have been declining globally over the 20th century. Phytoplankton forms the basis of the marine food chain and sustains diverse assemblages of species ranging from tiny zooplankton to large marine mammals, seabirds, and fish. Says lead author Daniel Boyce, "Phytoplankton is the fuel on which marine ecosystems run. A decline of phytoplankton affects everything up the food chain, including humans."... documented phytoplankton declines of about 1 percent of the global average per year. This trend is particularly well documented in the Northern Hemisphere and after 1950, and would translate into a decline of approximately 40 percent since 1950.The scientists found that long-term phytoplankton declines were negatively correlated with rising sea surface temperatures and changing oceanographic conditions. ...
Does this mean I won't be able to get my Phytoplankton Krispies?
Wed, Jul 28, 2010 from San Francisco Chronicle: Scientists say soot a key factor in warming Soot from diesel engines, coal-fired power plants and burning wood is a bigger cause of global warming than previously thought, and is the major cause of the rapid melting of the Arctic's sea ice, Stanford climate experts say.
The evidence of mounting pollution by carbon particles in soot has been inadequately counted in international government debates over policies to cope with the warming problem, according to Stanford's Mark Z. Jacobson, leader of the university's Atmosphere and Energy program and a professor of civil and environmental engineering.
...
Tue, Jul 27, 2010 from The Daily Climate: Spread of disease linked to warming climate A deadly infectious disease once thought to be exclusively tropical has gained a toehold in the Pacific Northwest, and health experts suspect climate change is partially to blame. Last week the CDC issued a report warning U.S. doctors to be alert for patients showing signs of a cryptoccocal infection.
The infection is spread by a fungus, Cryptococcus gattii, that attacks the nasal cavity and spreads to other body sites, causing pneumonia, meningitis and other lung, brain or muscle ailments. The disease also affects animals.
Until 1999 most human cases were limited to Australia and other tropical and sub-tropical regions, including Asia and Africa, along with parts of southern California. ...
Mon, Jul 26, 2010 from Christian Science Monitor: Activists frustrated at Obama's environmental record ...recently, Obama and his administration have been taking flak from the left on the environment.
This past week, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the US Forest Service for failing to monitor and protect endangered species and habitat in Arizona and New Mexico national forests....But it is the inability to get comprehensive energy and climate legislation that environmental advocates see as Obama's biggest failure.
"Obama is the first president in history to articulate in stark terms both the why and how of the sustainable clean energy vision," writes physicist and author Joseph Romm. "But the question now is whether he really believed what he said." ...
Give it a rest, activists. With all your complaining... you'd think the world was at stake!
Thu, Jul 22, 2010 from GMA News: Adaptation critical in fight vs climate change - CCC As the country braces for the possible arrival of stronger typhoons this year, the Climate Change Commission (CCC) said adaptation is the "critical aspect" in the fight against climate change.
CCC, the government arm tasked to promote climate change mitigation and adaptation, said it will forge an agreement with the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to ensure that aggressive adaptation measures will be advocated in all levels of governance.
CCC vice-chairman Secretary Heherson Alvarez said the CCC will sign this month a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the DILG and the Centre for Initiatives and Research in Climate Change Adaptation (CIRCA) of Albay province.
...
Tue, Jul 20, 2010 from Yale environment 360: Does Egypt Own The Nile? A Battle Over Precious Water A simmering dispute over who owns the waters of the River Nile is heating up. From its headwaters in Ethiopia and the central African highlands to the downstream regional superpower Egypt, the Nile flows through 10 nations. But by a quirk of British colonial history, only Egypt and its neighbor Sudan have any rights to its water.
That is something the upstream African nations say they can no longer accept. Yet as the nations of the Nile bicker over its future, nobody is speaking up for the river itself -- for the ecosystems that depend on it, or for the physical processes on which its future as a life-giving resource in the world's largest desert depends. The danger is that efforts to stave off water wars may lead to engineers trying to squeeze yet more water from the river -- and doing the Nile still more harm. What is at risk here is not only the Nile, but also the largest wetland in Africa and one of the largest tropical wetlands in the world -- the wildlife-rich Sudd. ...
That ownership thing humans do... just hasn't worked out so well.
You're still reading! Good for you!
You really should read our short, funny, frightening book FREE online (or buy a print copy): Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies!
We've been quipping this stuff for more than 30 months! Every day!
Which might explain why we don't get invited to parties anymore.
Tue, Jul 20, 2010 from ILRI, via EurekAlert: Experts warn rapid losses of Africa's native livestock threaten continent's food supply Urgent action is needed to stop the rapid and alarming loss of genetic diversity of African livestock that provide food and income to 70 percent of rural Africans and include a treasure-trove of drought- and disease-resistant animals, according to a new analysis presented today at a major gathering of African scientists and development experts.... "Africa's livestock are among the most resilient in the world yet we are seeing the genetic diversity of many breeds being either diluted or lost entirely," said Abdou Fall, leader of ILRI's livestock diversity project for West Africa. "But today we have the tools available to identify valuable traits in indigenous African livestock, information that can be crucial to maintaining and increasing productivity on African farms." ...
If monoculture is good for Iowa, it's good for Africa.
Mon, Jul 19, 2010 from The Daily Climate: New conservation model emerges in Canada's boreal The scale of the conservation effort is staggering: 470,000 square miles - half the size of the Louisiana Purchase, five times the size of the U.S. national park system - forever shielded from logging, mining and damming. It is part of an ongoing and unprecedented drive to protect Canada's northern boreal forests, peat bogs, wetlands and tundra - a drive that is also changing how land managers view their stewardship, civic leaders approach economic growth and companies view their bottom line. And for the first time, some of the protections have a climate component. "It's our gift to future generations," said Alan Latourelle, chief executive officer of Parks Canada, the agency managing the nation's parks, which is in the process of doubling their size. "We're the last generation that can do that." ...
Hey, climate refugees! Have I got an ideal place for you!
Thu, Jul 15, 2010 from New York Times: Animal Autopsies in Gulf Yield a Mystery The Kemp's ridley sea turtle lay belly-up on the metal autopsy table, as pallid as split-pea soup but for the bright orange X spray-painted on its shell, proof that it had been counted as part of the Gulf of Mexico's continuing "unusual mortality event."... Despite an obvious suspect, oil, the answer is far from clear. The vast majority of the dead animals that have been found -- 1,866 birds, 463 turtles, 59 dolphins and one sperm whale -- show no visible signs of oil contamination. Much of the evidence in the turtle cases points, in fact, to shrimping or other commercial fishing, but other suspects include oil fumes, oiled food, the dispersants used to break up the oil or even disease. ...
Wed, Jul 14, 2010 from University of Colorado at Boulder via ScienceDaily: Sea Levels Rising in Parts of Indian Ocean; Greenhouse Gases Play Role, Study Finds Newly detected rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean, including the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Java, appear to be at least partly a result of human-induced increases of atmospheric greenhouse gases, says a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The study, which combined sea surface measurements going back to the 1960s and satellite observations, indicates anthropogenic climate warming likely is amplifying regional sea rise changes in parts of the Indian Ocean, threatening inhabitants of some coastal areas and islands, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Weiqing Han, lead study author. The sea level rise -- which may aggravate monsoon flooding in Bangladesh and India -- could have far-reaching impacts on both future regional and global climate. ...
At least maybe the encroaching ocean will be warm.
Tue, Jul 13, 2010 from Reuters: Climate-related farmer suicides surging in eastern Kenya Eastern Kenya is seeing a surge in suicides after farmers hit by unusual weather and unable to repay loans are taking their lives, police say.
As many as 2,000 people in Kenya's Eastern Province, many of them farmers, have committed suicide in the past year, up from a normal suicide rate of 300 per year in the area, Kenyan police records show.
The deaths come as eastern Kenya has experienced extremely poor crop harvests as result of prolonged drought and unusual rainfall at harvest time, which has led to contamination of maize harvests with aflatoxins, produced by fungus that grows in wet grain. ...
As our habitat deteriorates, voluntary exit will become all the rage.
Tue, Jul 13, 2010 from Seattle Times: Puget Sound waters now more corrosive The waters in Puget Sound's main basin are acidifying as fast as those along the Washington Coast, where wild oysters have not reproduced since 2005.
And in parts of Hood Canal, home to much of the region's shellfish industry, water-chemistry problems are significantly worse than the rest of Puget Sound.
Scientists from the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned Monday that the changing pH of the seas is hitting Puget Sound harder and faster than many other marine waters.
That increasingly corrosive water -- a byproduct of carbon-dioxide releases from industries, power plants and vehicles -- is probably already harming shellfish, and over time it could reverberate through the marine food chain. ...
Plus, it will burn your swim suit right off your body!
Mon, Jul 12, 2010 from Reuters: Rising sea drives Panama islanders to mainland Rising seas from global warming, coming after years of coral reef destruction, are forcing thousands of indigenous Panamanians to leave their ancestral homes on low-lying Caribbean islands.
Seasonal winds, storms and high tides combine to submerge the tiny islands, crowded with huts of yellow cane and faded palm fronds, leaving them ankle-deep in emerald water for days on end.... World leaders have failed so far to reach a global accord to curb the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change. A U.N. climate change conference later this year in Mexico aims to make progress toward a binding agreement.
If the islanders abandon their homes as planned, the exodus will be one of the first blamed on rising sea levels and global warming. ...
Mon, Jul 12, 2010 from Columbia University: What's Killing Farmed Salmon? New Virus May Also Pose Risk to Wild Salmon Farmed fish are an increasingly important food source, with a global harvest now at 110 million tons and growing at more than 8 percent a year. But epidemics of infectious disease threaten this vital industry, including one of its most popular products: farmed Atlantic salmon. Perhaps even more worrisome: these infections can spread to wild fish coming in close proximity to marine pens and fish escaping from them....Now, using cutting-edge molecular techniques, an international team led by W. Ian Lipkin, MD, the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, has found evidence that the disease may be caused by a previously unknown virus. The newly identified virus is related but distinct from previously known reoviruses, which are double-stranded RNA viruses that infect a wide range of vertebrates. ...
Nothing gets the blood flowing like "a previously unknown virus."
Sun, Jul 11, 2010 from Associated Press: Scientists roll out mats to kill Lake Tahoe clams Scuba-diving scientists are unrolling long rubber mats across the bottom of Lake Tahoe coves in an attempt to quell a clam invasion that could cloud the world-reknown cobalt waters.
The half-acre mats are designed to smother dime-sized nonnative Asian clams that can reach populations of 5,000 per square yard.
Geoffrey Schladow, director of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center run by the University of California, Davis, said the clams promote so much algae growth that they can turn some coves from blue to green.
"They suck in the water and they filter out the algae. Their excretions are highly concentrated packages of nutrients," he said. ...
Sun, Jul 11, 2010 from Associated Press: BP claims progress on new cap as oil spews freely Oil was spewing freely into the Gulf of Mexico as BP crews claimed progress Sunday in the first stages of replacing a leaky cap with a new containment system they hope will finally catch all the crude from the busted well.
There's no guarantee for such a delicate operation nearly a mile below the water's surface, officials said, and the permanent fix of plugging the well from the bottom remains slated for mid-August.
"It's not just going to be, you put the cap on, it's done. It's not like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste," Coast Guard spokesman Capt. James McPherson said. ...
Hell, I can't even get my kids to do that at home.
Fri, Jul 9, 2010 from New Scientist: Prawns on Prozac, whatever next? Crabs on cocaine? Second-hand Prozac in waste water could be sending shrimps' swimming patterns haywire, making them easy targets for predators.
Alex Ford and Yasmin Guler at the University of Portsmouth in the UK collected local shrimp, Echinogammarus marinus, and observed their behaviour in the lab. The shrimp were exposed to different levels of the antidepressant fluoextine - or Prozac - to test whether the presence of the drug would affect the way the shrimp respond to light.
In humans, Prozac acts as a mood enhancer by prolonging the effect of serotonin at nerve terminals. The shrimp, on the other hand, responded to increased serotonin levels by swimming towards the light (Aquatic Toxicology DOI:10.1016/j/aquatox.2010.05.019).
The pair found that shrimps exposed to the same Prozac levels present in waste water that flows to rivers and estuaries are five times more likely to swim toward the light instead of away from it. ...
Whatever you do... don't... go... to... the light!
Thu, Jul 8, 2010 from London Guardian: China launches armada to head off algae plume Chinese authorities have dispatched a flotilla of more than 60 ships to head off a massive tide of algae that is approaching the coast of Qingdao.
The outbreak is thought to be caused by high ocean temperatures and excess nitrogen runoff from agriculture and fish farms.
Scientists involved in the operation say the seaweed known as enteromorpha needs to be cleaned up before it decomposes on beaches and releases noxious gases.
According to the domestic media, the green tide covers an area of 400 sq km. Newspapers ran pictures of coastguard officials raking up the gunk as soon as it reached the shore.
As well as the 66 vessels sent to intercept the approaching algae, a net has been stretched offshore as an extra defence. Ten forklift trucks, seven lorries and 168 people were clearing up the many tonnes of seaweed that still got through. ...
Thu, Jul 8, 2010 from Word Resources Institute, via Mongabay: Goodbye to the Gulf: oil disaster hits region's 'primary production' According to a new analysis by the World Resources Institute (WRI), the many ecosystem services provided by the Gulf of Mexico will be severely impacted by BP's giant oil spill. 'Ecosystem services' are the name given by scientists and experts to free benefits provided by intact ecosystems, for example pollination or clean water. In the Gulf of Mexico, such environmental benefits maintain marine food production, storm buffers, tourism, and carbon sequestration, but one of the most important of marine ecosystem services is known as 'primary production'.
The backbone of the marine food chain, primary production refers to the process whereby some marine organisms turn carbon dioxide into organic compounds--in this case corals, sea grass, algae, and the most important of all phytoplankton.... Although considered 'free' by most economists, ecosystem services are worth far more than most people realize. According to Earth Economics one acre of Mississippi Delta produces approximately $13,000 in ecosystem services annually. But oil pollution will greatly diminish such long depended on and cryptic returns.... The WRI argues that from now on ecosystem services must be taken into account when officials grant offshore drilling licenses. They are currently ignored by public officials handling oil drilling. ...
Jeez, Mom, you want me to help pay for groceries? I'm only 51!
Thu, Jul 8, 2010 from New Scientist: Sea otters worth $700 million in carbon credits Want to slow global warming? Save a sea otter. So says Chris Wilmers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, whose team has calculated that the animals remove at least 0.18 kilograms of carbon from the atmosphere for every square metre of occupied coastal waters.
That means that if sea otters were restored to healthy populations along the coasts of North America they could collectively lock up a mammoth 1010 kg of carbon - currently worth more than $700 million on the European carbon-trading market.... The figures are part of a growing realisation that predators play a crucial ecological role, promoting the growth of vegetation by controlling herbivore populations. Just as wolves benefit trees and shrubs by killing deer, sea otters allow the luxuriant growth of kelp by consuming sea urchins.
In former kelp forests that have lost their otters, Wilmers says, "all you are left with is piles of urchins and very little else". ...
Are you crazy? We're not even paying them minimum wage!
Wed, Jul 7, 2010 from Science Daily: Thousands of Undiscovered Plant Species Worldwide Face Extinction, Study Reveals Dr Joppa explained: "By using a model that incorporates taxonomic effort over time, we calculated that the current number of species should grow by ten to 20 percent, meaning that there are between ten and 20 percent more undiscovered flowering plant species than previously thought -- a finding that has enormous conservation implications, as any as-yet-unknown species are likely to be overwhelmingly rare and threatened."
Dr Roberts said: "If we take the number of species that are currently known to be threatened, and add to that those that are yet to be discovered, we can estimate that between 27 percent and 33 percent of all flowering plants will be threatened with extinction."
Dr Joppa added: "That percentage reflects the global impact of factors such as habitat loss. It may increase if you factor in other threats such as climate change." ...
I think you're mixing "known unknowns" with "unknown unknowns."
Tue, Jul 6, 2010 from New Scientist: IPCC report is 'reliable but flawed': Netherlands A tendency to highlight worst-case scenarios undermined parts of the last assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to a new study by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL).
The inquiry was ordered by embarrassed Dutch ministers after it emerged that a mistake in the 2007 IPCC report originated with its own scientists. The report stated that 55 per cent of the Netherlands is below sea level, when in fact the true figure is half that.
Overall, the Dutch investigators said, the IPCC report's conclusions were "well-founded". But it found several judgements that were "misleading" and appeared to have no firm research basis.
For instance, the IPCC concluded that by 2050, "freshwater availability in central, south, east and south-east Asia, particularly in large river basins, is projected to decrease". This matters because some 3 billion people live in this part of the world and most rely on river flows to irrigate their crops. However, the Dutch investigators found confusion over data. Some studies cited measured absolute river flows, while others assessed per-capita flows. This made it "hard to establish the line of reasoning" and meant the conclusion could not be relied on, they said. In another case, the IPCC stated that "on balance health risks are very likely to increase" as a result of climate change. The PBL researchers said the report lacked a "quantitative underpinning for the statement". ...
Imagine! Scientists can be imperfect in predicting world-scale complexity!
Mon, Jul 5, 2010 from Wired: Study claims hydroelectric dams hurt climate more than oil Hydroelectric power is normally listed in the same breath as solar, wind and wave as a world-saving renewable energy source. But a study from Brazil's National Institute for Research in the Amazon claims that it could be considerably more damaging to the atmosphere than generating the same amount of energy from oil.
The study, which is due to be published in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, asserts that Hydroelectric's "green" image is false and that traditional dam-based hydroelectric power generation systems could be releasing significant amounts of methane into the environment, thanks to the rotting vegetation submerged when the reservoir floods. ...
Sat, Jul 3, 2010 from McClatchy: Oil found in Gulf crabs raises new food chain fears University scientists have spotted the first indications oil is entering the Gulf seafood chain -- in crab larvae -- and one expert warns the effect on fisheries could last "years, probably not a matter of months" and affect many species.
Scientists with the University of Southern Mississippi and Tulane University in New Orleans have found droplets of oil in the larvae of blue crabs and fiddler crabs sampled from Louisiana to Pensacola, Fla.
"I think we will see this enter the food chain in a lot of ways -- for plankton feeders, like menhaden, they are going to just actively take it in," said Harriet Perry, director of the Center for Fisheries Research and Development at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. "Fish are going to feed on (crab larvae). We have also just started seeing it on the fins of small, larval fish -- their fins were encased in oil. That limits their mobility, so that makes them easy prey for other species. The oil's going to get into the food chain in a lot of ways."... "I had a sort of breakdown last week," Perry said. "I've driven down the same road on East Beach in Ocean Springs for 42 years. As I was going to work, I saw the shrimp fleet going out, all going to try to work on the oil, and I realized the utter futility of that, and I just lost it for a minute and had to gather myself."
...
I guess we'll soon find out who's the weakest link!
Thu, Jul 1, 2010 from New Scientist: Zoo plans to bring rare animals back from the dead TAKE frozen cells from a dead animal, reprogram them to become sperm and eggs, then use these to bring endangered species back from the brink.
That's the aim of a collaboration between the San Diego zoo and The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.... The team's long-term goal is to coax iPS cells into becoming sperm and eggs. They will be making iPS cells from tissue held by San Diego zoo's Frozen Zoo project - which has samples from some 8400 individuals representing more than 800 species. The sperm and eggs could be used in IVF treatments to add genetic diversity to captive breeding programmes. "You could actually breed from animals that are dead," says Loring. ...
Wed, Jun 30, 2010 from PhysOrg: Nutrients, viruses and the biological carbon pump Adding nutrients to the sea could decrease viral infection rates among phytoplankton and enhance the efficiency of the biological pump, a means by which carbon is transferred from the atmosphere to the deep ocean, according to a new mathematical modelling study. The findings, published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, have implications for ocean geo-engineering schemes proposed for tackling global warming.
Tiny free-floating algae called phytoplankton dominate biological production in the world's oceans and sit at the base of the marine food web. Their population dynamics are controlled by sunlight, nutrient availability, grazing by tiny planktonic animals (zooplankton) and mortality caused by viral infection.
"Viruses are the most abundant organism in the world's oceans, and it is thought that all phytoplankton species are susceptible to infection. Our aim was to model the interaction between viruses, phytoplankton, zooplankton grazing and nutrient levels".... The researchers took an 'eco-epidemic' modelling approach, taking into account the mutual interaction between the effects of ecology and disease epidemiology. This approach has been used previously to model the effects of infection by pathogens on the population dynamics of mammals and invertebrate animals.... Artificial enhancement of the biological carbon pump by fertilizing the oceans with nutrients has been proposed as a possible geo-engineering 'fix' for global warming caused by the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide from anthropogenic sources.
"The decrease in viral infection rates caused by artificially adding nutrients to the sea could in the future benefit humans by increasing the efficiency of the biological carbon pump, making these proposed ocean geo-engineering schemes more viable," said Dr Rhodes. ...
As far as I know, extra nutrients never caused any problems anywhere else.
Fri, Jun 25, 2010 from Washington University in St. Louis, via PhysOrg: Pond communities bear lasting imprint of random events in their past A seven-year experiment shows that pond communities bear the imprint of random events in their past, such as the order in which species were introduced into the ponds. This finding locates one of the wellsprings of biodiversity but also suggests that it may not be possible to restore ecosystems whose history we cannot recreate.... He set out 45 Rubbermaid cattle tanks in an old field, added a bit of dirt to each and filled them with well water.
The 300-gallon tanks are not as big as regular ponds, he says, but they're "decent sized. "I've even had herons come and try to hang out in them, although they're a bit small for that." He dosed the ponds with nutrients in the form of nitrogen- or phosphorus-containing chemicals. Each pond received either low, medium or high levels of nutrients throughout the experiment.
And then he began inoculating the ponds with species. The species pool for inoculation consisted of zooplankton from each of 15 ponds, 30 insects and small invertebrates such as snails, 9 vascular aquatic plants and 12 kinds of filamentous green algae.... So each pond received species in a different order but in the end, every pond got exactly the same species.
"Then we let nature take over," Chase says.... "The low productivity ponds were very predictable, very deterministic," he says. "The high productivity ponds were more stochastic. History mattered more."... Far from being carbon copies, ecosystems are historical artifacts, their final form a sensitive record of their past. ...
So we can't recreate ecosystems we've already changed. I'm sure we can do it better!
Thu, Jun 24, 2010 from New York Times: Asian Carp gets to threshold of Great Lakes After months of worrying over hints and signs and DNA traces suggesting that Asian carp, a voracious, nonnative fish, might be moving perilously close to the Great Lakes, the authorities here have uncovered the proof they did not want. They caught a fish. One bighead carp -- a 19.6-pound, 34.6-inch male -- became entangled Tuesday in a fishing net about six miles from Lake Michigan, in part of a waterway that connects the Mississippi River system to the Great Lakes. The authorities have searched for nearly a half-year with nets, chemicals and electrofishing equipment, but the fish was the first actual Asian carp to be found beyond an elaborate electric fence system officials spent years devising to avoid this very outcome.... Around the Great Lakes, where scientists fear that the arrival of Asian carp could upend the ecosystem, the discovery reopened a simmering fight. ...
But I had heard that carp-pooling was a good thing.
Thu, Jun 24, 2010 from Penn State, via EurekAlert: Discovery of how coral reefs adapt to global warming could aid reef restoration Discovering how corals respond to ocean warming is complicated because corals serve as hosts to algae. The algae live in the coral and feed on its nitrogen wastes. Through photosynthesis, the algae then produce the carbohydrates that feed the coral. When this complex and delicate symbiosis is upset by a rise in ocean temperature, the coral may expel the algae in a phenomenon known as coral bleaching, which may cause the death of both algae and coral. The challenge is to figure out why some corals cope with the heat stress better than others.... "Our study shows that the response of larvae to changing conditions depends upon where the parent colonies lived," says Baums. "Clearly the coral larvae from Mexico and Florida respond differently to heat stress, even though they belong to the same species, showing adaptations to local conditions. The two populations have different adaptive potential."... "Variation among populations in gene expression offers the species as a whole a better chance of survival under changing conditions," Baums said. "We might be able to screen adult populations for their ability to produce heat-resistant larvae and focus our conservation efforts on those reefs." ...
Wed, Jun 23, 2010 from 3News New Zealand, from DesdemonaDespair: Squid-fishing industry starving whales of food Mr O'Shea has been studying beached whales for seven years and their food source, squid, for 20 - and he doesn't like what he's seeing.
Around 10,000 whales have died on New Zealand beaches in the last 30 years. Research by marine biologist Steve O'Shea shows many of these whales now beaching are in such a poor state of health he believes they may be starving.
"We're exploring the possibility that these animals are hungry, are both hungry and thirsty in fact, because they get all of their food and their water from squid and if you take the squid out of the food chain there's obviously going to be cascading effects," he says. Mr O'Shea's team will take samples from the dead whales' stomachs; almost 100 percent of the whales they've studied so far have had ulcers.... The young pilot whales at Raglan have worn teeth, a sure sign they're eating the wrong food - in their case that's anything other than squid. ...
Tue, Jun 22, 2010 from CBC: Scientist apologizes to oilsands researchers A scientist who works for the Alberta government has apologized to two scientists for calling their research "a lie."
Dr. Preston McEachern, an environmental effects biologist who works for the government of Alberta, issued a letter of apology and retraction to Kevin Timoney, a researcher with Treeline Ecological Research, and Peter Lee, executive director with Global Forest Watch Canada.
Timoney's and Lee's lawyer had contacted him after he said in a presentation at the University of Alberta in March that the two "chose to remove data" from a study about the environmental impact of the oilsands, and called their findings a "lie."
"You did not lie," McEachern wrote. "You did not choose to remove data from your study. You did not actually remove data from 1985, 2003 and 2004. The statements in my presentation that you did these things were false and I regret very much that I made these statements. I unequivocally retract them."...
Timoney and Lee published the study "Does the Alberta Tar Sands Industry Pollute? The Scientific Evidence," which suggested the physical and ecological changes that result from oilsands industrial activities are detectable.
One of the conclusions in the study is that the ecological and health effects of these activities deserve immediate and systematic study....
"The government of Alberta seems more concerned about the reputation of the tarsands industry than it is about learning about the destructive and dangerous impacts this industry has."
...
With such a controversial conclusion -- "more study is needed" -- it's no surprise that the tar sands industry freaked.
Mon, Jun 21, 2010 from Telegraph.co.uk: Nightingale population down 91 per cent The number of nightingales in Britain has declined by 91 per cent in 40 years, prompting fears over the survival of the species. The population of the songbird was known to have dropped but researchers were shocked to learn of the rate at which nightingales are dying out.
A study by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) revealed that numbers reduced by more than nine in ten between 1967 and 2007 - the largest recorded fall of any bird still breeding in Britain except the tree sparrow (93 per cent).... Experts believe the dwindling population could be down to an increasing number of deer, who are blamed for destroying the undergrowth which is the bird's natural habitat.
There could also be factors relating to its winter home in west Africa, which it shares with other declining species including the willow warbler, garden warbler and cuckoo. ...
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/
Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?
Fri, Jun 18, 2010 from Associated Press: Gulf oil full of methane, adding new concerns It is an overlooked danger in the oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico's fragile ecosystem.
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.
That means huge quantities of methane have entered the Gulf, scientists say, potentially suffocating marine life and creating "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.
"This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history," Kessler said. ...
In other words this is the most massive fart ever!
Fri, Jun 18, 2010 from Utrecht University via ScienceDaily: Climate Change Threatens Food Supply of 60 Million People in Asia According to an article by three Utrecht University researchers published in the journal Science on 11 June, climate change will drastically reduce the discharge of snow and ice meltwater in a region of the Himalayas, threatening the food security of more than 60 million people in Asia in the coming decades. The Indus and Brahmaputra basins are expected to be the most adversely affected, while in the Yellow River basin the availability of irrigation water will actually increase. ...
Doesn't McDonald's sooo feed that many folks in, like, ten minutes?
Thu, Jun 17, 2010 from London Guardian: Cutting greenhouse gases will be no quick fix for our weather, scientists say Global warming will continue to bring havoc to the world's weather systems for decades after reductions are made in greenhouse gas emissions, a new study shows.
Scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter say climate change could bring greater disruption to the planet's water cycle than previously thought.
The research suggests that increased floods and droughts could continue long after future efforts to stabilise temperature may succeed. ...
Creedence asks: "Who'll stop the rain?" ...looks like nobody!
Wed, Jun 16, 2010 from CanWest News Service: Arctic bird poop loaded with environmental poisons, biologists say High Arctic seabirds carry a "cocktail" of contaminants, confirms new research, which analyzed the excrement of Arctic terns and eiders nesting on a small island north of Resolute Bay.
The seabirds' cocktail is not a particularly healthy mix for the birds or the land they nest on, a team of biologists from the Canadian Wildlife Service and Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., determined.
That's because, in addition to pesticides, the seabirds are loaded with heavy metals such as cadmium and lead, which they pick up from the foods they eat. ...
Tue, Jun 15, 2010 from Politico: Henry Waxman puts Big Oil on trial Henry Waxman's war on Big Oil has begun.
The California Democrat, along with Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), will force top oil executives to defend or condemn industry practices and profits, according to series of pre-hearing questions obtained by POLITICO, foreshadowing an intense, made-for-TV hearing Tuesday that could create an iconic Washington moment for the petroleum industry... BP may be first in the line of fire, but experts said the whole industry will be on trial Tuesday. Executives from BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron are scheduled to testify.
...
Tue, Jun 15, 2010 from New York Times: Efforts to Repel Gulf Oil Spill Are Described as Chaotic ...For much of the last two months, the focus of the response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion has been a mile underwater, 50 miles from shore, where successive efforts involving containment domes, "top kills" and "junk shots" have failed, and a "spillcam" shows tens of thousands of barrels of oil hemorrhaging into the gulf each day.
Closer to shore, the efforts to keep the oil away from land have not fared much better, despite a response effort involving thousands of boats, tens of thousands of workers and millions of feet of containment boom.
From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively. ...
Somehow I think our response to the Apocalypse will be similarly disorganized.
Thu, Jun 10, 2010 from New York Times: Going to War Against Grasshoppers LUSK, Wyo. -- The duel began just after sunrise on Wednesday, at 150 miles per hour, 50 feet above the ground. Below: billions of voracious, recently hatched migratory grasshoppers, Melanoplus sanguinipes, shock troops of the worst insect infestation here in at least 25 years....Bug wars have long punctuated life in the nation's grassy midsection, but this year is an exclamation point. At least $25 million in hay, wheat and alfalfa alone in this corner of Wyoming is up for grabs, state officials say, to be eaten by insects, or saved. Huge areas of Montana and South Dakota are also at risk, especially from sanguinipes, the migrator, one of the most feared of 100 grasshopper species on the plains because of its startling mobility. In Wyoming alone, about 7,800 square miles -- an area the size of New Jersey -- is infested and scheduled for aerial treatment. ...
Thank goodness the chytrid fungus is preventing the follow-on "plague of frogs."
Sat, Jun 5, 2010 from PhysOrg: Some Iowa cicadas make unexpected appearance four years ahead of schedule The 17-year cicadas found in central and southeast Iowa aren't supposed to come out until 2014, but a small percentage are emerging now, four years ahead of schedule. "These cicadas appeared in 1963, 1980, and 1997," said Donald Lewis, professor of entomology at Iowa State University. "They should not have appeared until 2014."... Lewis started getting reports of these early-risers two weeks ago. The insects are found in much of the state from Boone County south to the Missouri border and east to the Mississippi River.
Periodical cicadas live underground for 17 years then transform to the adult stage to appear above ground for a brief period. They are known for their mass emergences of tens of thousands per tree. The adults mate, lay eggs and die. The 17-year cycle is by far the longest of any insect in Iowa.... "There's a whole lot of mystery to what the cicada is counting and what happened in (some) winters that made it count it twice," he said. "We do know we've got to enjoy it while we've got it.... "The alarming part is, what has changed so much in our lifetime that the cicadas would change a fundamental part of their lifecycle and make this mistake?" he asks. "Climate change is one possibility." ...
Sat, Jun 5, 2010 from Mongabay, via DesdemonaDespair: French company to break moratorium on shipments of illegally logged rosewood from Madagascar SEAL, a French transport company, is scheduled to ship 79 containers of rosewood tomorrow from the port of Toamasina on its vessel Terra Bona, reports Midi Madagascar. The shipment -- worth nearly $16 million -- comes less than three months after Madagascar's ruling authority banned timber exports after international uproar over the organized logging of the country's national parks in the aftermath of last year's military coup. SEAL's shipment of timber will be in direct violation of the moratorium.
Madagascar's Ministry of Environment estimates there are some 1,500 containers' worth of precious hardwoods awaiting shipment in northeastern Madagascar. The street value of a container full of rosewood is around $200,000, according to a study published last year by researchers at the Missouri Botanical Garden. ...
Fri, Jun 4, 2010 from Boulder Daily Camera: Oil from Gulf spill likely to reach Atlantic, travel up coast The oil that has been gushing out of a broken well in the Gulf of Mexico for more than a month will likely reach the Atlantic Ocean and then travel up the coast to North Carolina with the Gulf Stream, according to a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder....The model focused on the Loop Current, which connects the Gulf to the Atlantic. ...
Wed, Jun 2, 2010 from Bloomberg News: BP Oil Leak May Last Until Christmas in Worst Case Scenario ..."The worst-case scenario is Christmas time," Dan Pickering, the head of research at energy investor Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. in Houston, said...
Ending the year with a still-gushing well would mean about 4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, based on the government's current estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels leaking a day. That would wipe out marine life deep at sea near the leak and elsewhere in the Gulf, and along hundreds of miles of coastline, said Harry Roberts, a professor of Coastal Studies at Louisiana State University.
So much crude pouring into the ocean may alter the chemistry of the sea, with unforeseeable results, said Mak Saito, an Associate Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. ...
Instead of coal, Santa will be pouring oil into our Christmas stockings.
Sun, May 30, 2010 from AP, via PhysOrg: Alaska sues feds over predator control The state of Alaska sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Friday, seeking a court order allowing it to go ahead with a controversial predator control program. At issue is the state's plan to kill wolves to preserve a caribou herd inside the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge on Unimak Island, beginning as early as Tuesday.... While the program is in place in at least six locations around Alaska, it would be the first time in recent history that aerial predator control would be used inside a national refuge in Alaska.... The feds responded Monday, cautioning the state that killing the wolves without a special use permit would be considered "a trespass on the refuge" and immediately referred to the U.S. attorney. ...
Natural systems out of whack? Just call Humans™ and we'll set things right!
Sat, May 29, 2010 from Charlottesville Daily Progress: Creeping kudzu poses new threat Researchers have found a new reason to hate kudzu, the much maligned and rapidly spreading invasive plant that is often referred to as the "vine that ate the South."
Kudzu, a green leafy vine native to Japan and southeastern China, emits the chemicals isoprene and nitric oxide, which combine with nitrogen in the air to form ozone -- a pollutant that can be harmful to human health and crops, trees and other vegetation.
A new study has found that kudzu is a significant contributor to surface ozone pollution and the problem is projected to grow as the vine continues to spread. ...
Soon, we shall call it the "vine that ate the planet."
Fri, May 28, 2010 from Toronto Star: Polar bear population could fall by 30 per cent in a year: study A mathematical analysis for the first time has uncovered the prospect of a sudden, dramatic decline among Canadian polar bears as they starve to death.
"This is much, much different. This is not a gradual change," said Dr. Andrew Derocher, one of the world's leading polar bear authorities and co-author of the study. "We're looking at a decrease by 20 or 30 per cent or even much more in a year."....Scientists factored in the shrinking sea ice, which affects how many seals the bears can eat before they hibernate and how easily they can find mates. Without enough food or opportunity, mating is less successful, fewer, less robust cubs are born, and teenage bears spend longer "wandering around trying to find something to eat." ...
Tue, May 25, 2010 from Kansas City Star: Cancer panel warning: Babies born pre-polluted Toxic chemicals - some known to cause cancer - are in our bodies and in our newborns as well. Researchers have found some 300 contaminants - industrial chemicals, consumer product ingredients, pesticides and pollutants from burning fossil fuels - in umbilical cord blood of newborn babies, rendering our babies 'pre-polluted' according to the esteemed scientists and medical experts of the President's Cancer Panel... Some 80,000 chemicals are produced and used in the U.S. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been able to require testing on just 200 and only five have been regulated under the Toxics Substances Control Act. Even asbestos, known to cause lung cancer, has not been entirely banned from use in commercial products because of flaws in the law.
...
Mon, May 17, 2010 from Brown University, via EurekAlert: Geologists show unprecedented warming in Lake Tanganyika Lake Tanganyika, the second oldest and the second-deepest lake in the world, could be in for some rough waters.
Geologists led by Brown University have determined the east African rift lake has experienced unprecedented warming during the last century, and its surface waters are the warmest on record. That finding is important, the scientists write in the journal Nature Geoscience, because the warm surface waters likely will affect fish stocks upon which millions of people in the region depend.... Lake Tanganyika, one of the richest freshwater ecosystems in the world, is divided into two general levels. Most of the animal species live in the upper 100 meters, including the valuable sardines. Below that, the lake holds less and less oxygen, and at certain depths, it is anoxic, meaning it has no oxygen at all. What this all means is the lake is highly stratified and depends on wind to churn the waters and send nutrients from the depths toward the surface as food for algae, which supports the entire food web of the lake. But as Lake Tanganyika warms, the mixing of waters is lessened, the scientists find, meaning less nutrients are funneled from the depths toward the surface. Worse, more warming at the surface magnifies the difference in density between the two levels; even more wind is needed to churn the waters enough to ferry the nutrients toward the fish-dwelling upper layer. ...
Isn't it time these darned scientists started reporting the good news?
Sun, May 16, 2010 from London Daily Mail: After 12,000-mile flight to green meeting, there's MUTINY in the Climate Camp A decision by a climate-change group to fly leading activists 12,000 miles to a conference threatens to tear the movement apart.
The leadership of Climate Camp - which is opposed to flying and airport expansion - have been accused of hypocrisy after they sent two members on a 1,200 [pounds] round-trip to Bolivia.
The leaders argued it was necessary to attend the 'transnational protest' - even though the flights generated eight tons of carbon dioxide greenhouse gases. Now a furious backlash against the trip threatens to split the group, which in the past has blockaded Heathrow airport and clashed with police at demonstrations against coal-fired power stations.
...
Thu, May 13, 2010 from Post-Tribune: Feds: State pollution regulations too soft MERRILLVILLE -- The state of Indiana is too lax in its proposed rules for when polluters can discharge more pollution into Lake Michigan and other lakes and rivers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says.
In some circumstances, revamped state rules would allow up to 2.5 times more pollution than federal law allows, the EPA says.
By request from environmentalists, the agency has intervened to require the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to change the rules to make them acceptable. ...
Hoosiers tend to be 2.5 times more resilient than average Americans.
Wed, May 12, 2010 from SciDev.net: Biodiversity leaders lament failure to reach the powerful Poor communication has contributed to the failure to meet the 2010 global conservation targets, according to a major report released yesterday (May 10).
The world is nearing ′tipping points′ in which whole ecosystems could collapse, said the third Global Biodiversity Outlook, produced by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
But, though the importance of biodiversity loss has reached some parts of many governments around the world, it has failed to be absorbed by those with the power to act, the report finds....
"The CBD has very nearly universal participation from the world's governments, yet those involved in its implementation rarely have the influence to promote action at the level required to effect real change," says the report. ...
There, there, biologists. You just go and do another of your little studies, and we'll put it on our "to be read" stack.
Mon, May 10, 2010 from London Times: BP to try golf long shot to stop Gulf of Mexico oil leak BP was last night considering a new plan of attack in its attempts to stop a massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico - blocking the ruptured well with golf balls and rubber tyres.
Forced back to the drawing board following the failure of a salvage effort on Saturday - when a 120-tonne steel box was lowered to the seabed to cover the leak, only to become blocked by icy sludge - it was looking into changing tack with an operation that its chief executive, Doug Suttles, likened to "stopping up a toilet."
Thad Allen, commandant of the US Coast Guard, explained: "The next tactic is going to be something they call a 'junk shot'.
They're actually going to take a bunch of debris - shredded up tyres, golf balls and things like that - and under very high pressure shoot it in...and see if they can clog it up and stop the leak." ...
Gosh, if that doesn't work, how about a giant piece of bubblegum?
Mon, May 10, 2010 from BBC: Nature loss 'to damage economies' The Earth's ongoing nature losses may soon begin to hit national economies, a major UN report has warned.
The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) says that some ecosystems may soon reach "tipping points" where they rapidly become less useful to humanity.
Such tipping points could include rapid dieback of forest, algal takeover of watercourses and mass coral reef death.
Last month, scientists confirmed that governments would not meet their target of curbing biodiversity loss by 2010.... The global abundance of vertebrates - the group that includes mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and fish - fell by about one-third between 1970 and 2006, the UN says.... "If the world made equivalent losses in share prices, there would be a rapid response and widespread panic."... "Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world: the truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050." ...
And who are you to be calling my belief system an illusion?
Sun, May 9, 2010 from Times Online: Third of all plants and animals face extinction ANIMAL and plant species are being killed off faster than ever before as human populations surge and people consume more, a United Nations report is expected to say this week.
It will warn that the expansion of countries such as China, India and Brazil is adding hugely to the environmental threats already generated by developed western nations, and that a third of species could face extinction this century.
The report is one of the starkest issued by the UN and the decision to draw an explicit link between extinction rates and economic growth makes it politically sensitive.
It will point out that the extinction threat extends across all main ecosystems, affecting living things as diverse as tree frogs, coral reefs and river dolphins.... "The magnitude of the damage [to ecosystems] is much bigger than previously thought," said Djoghlaf. "The rate of extinction is currently running at 1,000 times the natural historical background rate of extinction." ...
That sounds a little alarmist. How about "only three orders of magnitude greater"?
Sat, May 8, 2010 from ThinkProgress: Gulf Coast Wildlife: 'All Bets Are Off' As Nancy Rabalais, a scientist who heads the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, said, "The magnitude and the potential for ecological damage is probably more great than anything we've ever seen in the Gulf of Mexico."... ThinkProgress' Brad Johnson was blogging from the Gulf Coast and spoke with Gulf Coast marine scientists who all agreed that the "unfolding oil disaster could mean devastation beyond human comprehension" and "all bets are off."... "I can't imagine we're not going to have some mass casualties" among birds in the Gulf region, predicted Michael Parr of the American Bird Conservancy.... At least 38 endangered sea turtles "have washed up dead on beaches along the Gulf of Mexico,"... Comyns told Johnson that he found blue fin tuna larvae "right in the vicinity" of the oil rig's discharge. Even the dispersant BP is using -- Corexit 9500 -- has a "toxicity to early life stages of fish, crustaceans and mollusks" four times greater than petroleum.... Officials shut down additional fishing grounds, effectively putting out of work hundreds more in an industry that is the lifeblood of the region, as well as the Breton National Wildlife Sanctuary. Out in the gulf, birds dove into oily water, dolphins coughed and sharks swam in weird patterns, said marine specialists who have been out on the water tracking the disaster." ...
Thank you, BP, for using the lowest bidder and thereby saving each of us a trillionth of a cent.
Fri, May 7, 2010 from Inter Press Service: Small Islands Urge Action at UN Oceans Meet Faced with rising sea levels, dying coral reefs and decreasing fish stocks, small island developing states (SIDS) are feeling the effects of ocean decline, and they want wealthier countries to do more to ensure the survival of the world's seas and other waterways.
"We are seeing the threat that fisheries will collapse, the threat of tourism-collapse and the loss of biodiversity," said Rolph Payet, special advisor to the President of the Seychelles.
"Some people think that this is just a simple matter to be brushed aside, and to continue with business as usual, emitting greenhouse gases (GhGs) as usual,'' Payet said. "The data shows us that we should be worried, and we should be acting. In fact we should have acted yesterday," he said.
...
Thu, May 6, 2010 from University of Leeds via ScienceDaily: Organic Farming Shows Limited Benefit to Wildlife, Researchers in UK Find Organic farms may be seen as wildlife friendly, but the benefits to birds, bees and butterflies don't compensate for the lower yields produced, according to new research from the University of Leeds. In the most detailed, like-for-like comparisons of organic and conventional farming to date, researchers from Leeds' Faculty of Biological Science found that the benefits to wildlife and increases in biodiversity from organic farming are much lower than previously thought -- averaging just over 12 percent more than conventional farming. ...
Thu, May 6, 2010 from Environmental Health News: President's Cancer Panel: Environmentally caused cancers are 'grossly underestimated' and 'needlessly devastate American lives.' The President's Cancer Panel on Thursday reported that "the true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated" and strongly urged action to reduce people's widespread exposure to carcinogens.
The panel advised President Obama "to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."
The 240-page report by the President's Cancer Panel is the first to focus on environmental causes of cancer. The panel, created by an act of Congress in 1971, is charged with monitoring the multi-billion-dollar National Cancer Program and reports directly to the President every year. ...
Thu, May 6, 2010 from Associated Press: Deep beneath the Gulf, oil may already be wreaking havoc on sea life, contaminating food chain The oil you can't see could be as bad as the oil you can.
While people anxiously wait for the slick in the Gulf of Mexico to wash up along the coast, globules of oil are already falling to the bottom of the sea, where they threaten virtually every link in the ocean food chain, from plankton to fish that are on dinner tables everywhere... Oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of at least 200,000 gallons a day since an offshore drilling rig exploded last month and killed 11 people. On Wednesday, workers loaded a 100-ton, concrete-and-steel box the size of a four-story building onto a boat and hope to lower it to the bottom of the sea by week's end to capture some of the oil.
Scientists say bacteria, plankton and other tiny, bottom-feeding creatures will consume oil, and will then be eaten by small fish, crabs and shrimp. They, in turn, will be eaten by bigger fish, such as red snapper, and marine mammals like sea turtles. ...
Tue, May 4, 2010 from Guardian: Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.
The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.
The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8 percent last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).
The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26 billion to the global economy.... The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives. ...
Mon, May 3, 2010 from Agence France-Press: Jordan River could die by 2011: report The once mighty Jordan River, where Christians believe Jesus was baptised, is now little more than a polluted stream that could die next year unless the decay is halted, environmentalists said on Monday.
The famed river "has been reduced to a trickle south of the Sea of Galilee, devastated by overexploitation, pollution and lack of regional management," Friends of the Earth, Middle East (FoEME) said in a report.
More than 98 percent of the river's flow has been diverted by Israel, Syria and Jordan over the years.
"The remaining flow consists primarily of sewage, fish pond water, agricultural run-off and saline water," the environmentalists from Israel, Jordan and the West Bank said in the report to be presented in Amman on Monday.
...
Mon, May 3, 2010 from GlobalPost: 10 worst man-made environmental disasters As oil threatens the Gulf Coast, a list of 10 other disasters both forgotten and infamous, from the Dust Bowl to Bhopal... The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is now about the size of Puerto Rico. It's already reached the marshes of Louisiana. Oil-covered wildlife are starting to show up along the shores. Shrimp, fish and oyster harvest areas have been closed. Residents of Mississippi and Alabama are just waiting for the oil to hit.
As environmental calamity for the Gulf Coast appears imminent, GlobalPost looks at 10 other man-made environmental disasters -- both forgotten and infamous -- that could have been prevented. ...
Strangely, nowhere on the list is Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice."
Sun, May 2, 2010 from The ApocaDocs: From the ApocaDesk: The 'Docs are in We've been hearing from you. You're calling, you're emailing (ApocadocsATgmail.com), you're hurting. This oil of river pouring from the wound in the Gulf of Mexico is just beginning.
Your hearts are breaking, and so are ours, but we are Doctors of the Apocalypse and we are here to help with some advice.
First: Keep an eye on it. Take breaks, but stay with the horror. Look it square in the face.
Second: Realize that, despite how terrible this seems, it is happening, more or less, all over the planet. Just read our site -- Biology Breach is a clarifying scenario for this. Climate Chaos, too. People everywhere are already in the grips of habitat collapse, whether due to toxins like oil or ewaste or plastic -- or by climate change itself. Ask the Inuits, the Indians, the Australians, the Tanzanians.
Third: Do something, today. Commit to some change in your consumer or energy-use behavior. Stop driving your car. One day a week. Then make it two. Stop using plastic, whether in packaging or, worst of all, water bottles. Let this be the beginning of your stewardship of the earth.
Fourth: Speaking of stewardship, start something. Go to our Recovery scenario, then read the amazing feats that humans can do. Just yesterday, we found the story of an 82 year old woman who convinced her town of Concord, Massachusetts, to outlaw plastic water bottles.
Fifth: Hold the criminals accountable, whether they are politicians who do nothing to address climate change, or CEOs who don't change their corporate cultures to care for the planet. The rights of nature MUST BECOME transcendent.
Sixth: Download our book. This is not self-promotion. The book is free. You can read it in one afternoon (if you have the stomach). We want you to see what we are learning, what we are witnessing.
Let the horror of what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico be the awakening we need.
Sun, May 2, 2010 from Mobile Press-Register: Gulf of Mexico oil spill 2010: The worst-case scenario The worst-case scenario for the broken and leaking well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico would be the loss of the wellhead currently restricting the flow to 5,000 barrels -- or 210,000 gallons per day.
If the wellhead is lost, oil could leave the well at a much greater rate, perhaps up to 150,000 barrels -- or more than 6 million gallons per day -- based on government data showing daily production at another deepwater Gulf well.
By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was 11 million gallons total. The Gulf spill could end up dumping the equivalent of 4 Exxon Valdez spills per week. ...
Fri, Apr 30, 2010 from NUVO Newsweekly: Oil disaster as metaphor Some are calling it a "river of oil" now, instead of an oil spill. "Spill" makes it sound like the oil rig exploded, then "spilled" some oil, which is now creeping toward the coast.
Instead, the broken rig is pouring 210,000 gallons of oil into the sea each day, and might continue, according to estimates, for two months or more.
I could weep, I could scream, I could wax holy as I did not use petroleum products to get to work today. Except for all I know the asphalt I rode my bicycle on -- as well as parts of the bicycle itself (and my helmet), were made of petroleum.
Or the keyboard I type on.
But I don't want to go there. I want to see this event as larger, as a metaphor.
Think of it this way.
We humans are the initial explosion. ...
Tue, Apr 27, 2010 from Nashville Public Radio: Bat-Killing Fungus Spreading Faster Than Expected, Could Affect Agriculture A fungus that kills bats by the thousand is spreading faster than expected through Tennessee's caves. White-nose syndrome first turned up a few years ago in a cave in New York, and has since rippled out from one cave to the next, wiping out millions of bats. And in this last few months it's begun to show up in caves in Middle Tennessee.... The fungus has wiped out millions of bats in New England and can devastate populations in just a few years' time. And that's bad news for farmers, who depend on the bats to keep many flying insects in check. "Bats are the number-one predator of night-flying insects. You think about the night-flying insects we have in the southeast in Tennessee and it's mosquitoes, it's moths, beetles - things that can be large crop pests and agricultural pests." ...
I'll just spray-mist Moth-B-Gone and Beetle-B-Dead hourly, all night long. Problem solved!
Tue, Apr 27, 2010 from NPR: How Cap And Trade Was 'Trashed' It's not clear whether climate-change legislation has any chance in the Senate this year. What is clear is that even if the chamber does manage to pass a bill, it will be much less ambitious than the version approved by the House last year.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spent months negotiating with Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) over what was expected to be the Senate's blueprint for action on the issue. Over the weekend, Graham pulled out of the effort, canceling the bill's introduction, which had been set for Monday... Graham has been castigated in his home state for working with Democrats on the issue and had not been able to win over any GOP co-sponsors. Climate change has become an increasingly partisan issue. ...
The planet is not partisan, though the poor will suffer far more than the rich.
Mon, Apr 26, 2010 from Agence France-Press: BP struggles to cap leak as US oil slick spreads British oil giant BP used robotic underwater vehicles Sunday to try to cap a leaking well and prevent a growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico from developing into an environmental disaster.
Satellite images showed the slick had spread by 50 percent in a day to cover an area of 600 square miles (1,550 square kilometers), although officials said some 97 percent of the pollution was just a thin veneer on the sea's surface.
BP has dispatched skimming vessels to mop up the oil leaking from the debris of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which sank on Thursday, still blazing almost two days after a massive explosion that left 11 workers missing presumed dead. ...
Use of fossil fuels is ALREADY an environmental disaster.
Mon, Apr 26, 2010 from Telegraph.co.uk: David Attenborough warns of ecological disaster in 'Silent Summer' The naturalist made his comments in the foreword to a new book, Silent Summer, in which 40 prominent British ecologists explain how humankind is wiping out many species.... The new book explains the negative impact of pesticides, population growth, farming and other factors on the plants and species that prop up Britain's ecosystems.... The book details how three quarters of British butterfly species are in decline, thanks in part to the destruction of the plants caterpillars feed on, treated by farmers as weeds.
Moth numbers were down by a third from 1968 to 2002 for the same reasons, with at least 20 species having seen populations decline by more than 90 per cent.
Rivers in Britain have also suffered, with caddis flies, mayflies and stoneflies said to have badly suffered from the increased use of pesticides on sheep and cattle, which can wash off and poison the water if the animals enter a river or stream. ...
Sun, Apr 25, 2010 from BBC: Scientists investigate Ecuador's receding glaciers ...A study to be published this year by Ecuadorean glaciologist Bolivar Caceres suggests that the country's glaciers lost more than 40 percent of their surface area between 1956 and 2006.
For example, the Cotopaxi mountain with its famous volcanic cone has lost 40 percent of its glacial cap since 1976.... The gradual disappearance of the glaciers is not just a matter of aesthetic regret. Several Andean cities are thought to be dependent on the melting glaciers for part of their drinking supply, particularly in the dry season. ...
The German word for "nostalgia for lost glaciers" is heimglagefyhlput.
Sun, Apr 25, 2010 from Minnesota Public Radio: Study finds levels of pharmaceuticals in wastewater widespread In the most comprehensive study of a variety of chemical compounds coming from municipal sewage plants, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency confirmed widespread, but low concentrations of water contamination from human medications and antibiotics... The study reinforced what earlier researchers learned, that pharmaceutical compounds used by people are very common in rivers and lakes across the state.
Researchers also found another class of chemical compounds in their water samples -- endocrine disruptors proven to alter fish reproduction.
The compounds researchers found most often include carbamazapine, a drug used to treat attention deficit disorder. They also found various antibiotics and diphenhydramine, a common antihistamine. ...
Sun, Apr 25, 2010 from Sacramento Bee: Bee exclusive: Livestock waste found to foul Sierra waters ...parts of the high Sierra are not nearly as pristine as they look.
Nowhere is the water dirtier, [Robert Derlet] discovered, than on U.S. Forest Service land, including wilderness areas, where beef cattle and commercial pack stock - horses and mules - graze during the summer months. There, bacterial contamination was easily high enough to sicken hikers with Giardia, E. coli and other diseases. In places, slimy, pea-green algae also blossomed in the bacteria-laden water. That contrast has prompted Derlet and Charles Goldman, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Research Center, to mount a publicity campaign calling for dramatic management change in the Sierra. Cattle, they say, should be moved to lower elevations. And Forest Service areas where they now graze should be turned into national parks.
"At one time, cattle were important for developing civilization here," said Derlet. "But now, with 40 million people in California, the Sierra is not for cattle. It's for water. We need water more than Big Macs."
...
Sun, Apr 25, 2010 from : Full Godwin, complicity, and consumption 'Doc Michael muses on the Weltanschauung of the Germans during the Nazi period, the worldview of pride and certainty, economic expansion, and a belief in natural hierarchy, and finds parallels with our current worldview of human dominance, economic expansion, and pride and certainty. The parallels aren't pretty. "In the mid-1930s, after a deep depresion, the German economy was rolling again. The Nazi programs had brought them out of their depression, and they were riding high. A hundred thousand upper-middle-class careers were entwined with the worldview.... It created a framework of it-must-be-so, of organizations and commissions and businesses and offices and departments, each with territory to protect, and a mission to further the cause. The Weltanshauung produced a set of legal government policies that were intrinsically self-justifying, and a set of business rules that were self-rational. The bureaucracy then mobilized to manifest and profit from the policies implicit in their laws and rules." ...
Sat, Apr 24, 2010 from Living on Earth: Carp Cuisine Roughly 600 million invasive Asian Carp have made themselves at home in Midwestern Rivers. As officials struggle to keep them out of the Great Lakes, one local company has a solution. It's started to ship the carp back to China as food, where they're considered a delicacy... HARONO: Absolutely. Asian carp is viewed as a delicacy in Asia. The bones don't create a problem because we're used to eating with chopsticks and we spit the bones out. It's just sort of an educated mouth and tongue in how to eat these fish. And they're very tasty, so that there is a tremendous demand for this fish in Asia.... part of the marketing strategy is that we're marketing it as a natural fish grown wild in the Mississippi River and Illinois River that jumps out it has so much energy, so when you eat it you'll get some of that energy also.
...
Perhaps they could take our zebra and quagga mussels as well!
Fri, Apr 23, 2010 from Los Angeles Times: Flaming oil rig sinks in Gulf of Mexico As the odds of survival for 11 missing workers diminished Thursday, officials warned that the dramatic explosion and fire that sank an oil rig off the Louisiana coast may pose a serious environmental threat if oil is leaking thousands of feet below the surface.
"It certainly has the potential to be a major spill," said Dave Rainey, vice president of Gulf of Mexico exploration for the oil company BP, which leased the Deepwater Horizon, the $600-million mobile offshore rig that vanished underwater Thursday morning. ...
Thu, Apr 22, 2010 from The Charleston Gazette: Study links stream pollution to higher cancer rates West Virginians who live near streams polluted by coal mining are more likely to die of cancer, according to a first-of-its kind study published by researchers at West Virginia University and Virginia Tech. The study provides the first peer-reviewed look at the relationship between the biological health of Appalachian streams and public health of coalfield residents.
Published in the scientific journal EcoHealth, the paper compares cancer death rates to population figures, coal production figures and a new index of how far people live to various types of coal-mining operations.
"We've known for years that stream organisms can be sentinels of environmental quality," said study co-author Nathaniel Hitt, a Virginia Tech stream ecologist who now works for the U.S. Geological Survey. "What we have now shown is that these organisms are also indicators of public health." ...
Wed, Apr 21, 2010 from Associated Press: International Court of Justice backs paper mill, says Uruguay and Argentina must cooperate A U.N. court rejected Argentina's claims Tuesday that a Uruguayan pulp mill is pumping dangerous pollution into the river on their mutual border, angering Argentine protesters who have waged a three-year campaign against the mill.
The dispute over the mills has soured normally friendly relations between the countries, with Argentine protesters blockading a key bridge over the river.
Uruguayans hoped that the court ruling would lead quickly to the reopening of the international bridge between Guayleguachu, Argentina, and Fray Bentos, Uruguay. But activists blocking the bridge Tuesday reacted angrily to the verdict and vowed not to give up their fight, raising the possibility of a violent confrontation if Argentine police intervene.
Watching on a big screen beside their roadblock, many shouted and cried, complaining that the court let them down. ...
Tue, Apr 20, 2010 from Dayton Daily News: $44M in crops threatened by high honeybee deaths through winter Think the 2009-10 winter was tough on you? Consider the state's honeybees.
An estimated 50 to 70 percent of hives kept by beekeepers died, said Cindy Kalis, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
The losses are in keeping with heavy fatality rates experienced since 2006 -- a year when 600,000 bee colonies in the U.S. mysteriously fled their homes and disappeared, said James Tew, Ohio State University's state honeybee specialist.
"The average person should care," he said. "Bees of all species are fundamental to the operation of our ecosystem." ...
Then as an above average person, I should care a lot!
Tue, Apr 20, 2010 from Hartford Courant: Deadly Bat Fungus Appears To Be Spreading It's the grim news that wildlife biologists have dreaded all winter: Officials from the state Department of Environmental Protection will confirm this morning that population counts of hibernating bats show that they continue to be decimated by the disease known as white-nose syndrome, and that some species might even be threatened with extinction... in one Litchfield County cave from 2007 to 2009, the population of little brown bats plummeted from 2,320 to 108, results that are expected to be even more ominous when the DEP announces its cave counts today... Bats are one of nature's most efficient filters. Individual bats can consume as many as 1,200 mosquitoes and flies an hour as they flit around at night, making them a vital insect-control species. Some species -- such as Connecticut's big brown bat -- also are critical to agriculture because they consume large hatches of insects and moths that swarm upon crops. ...
Tue, Apr 20, 2010 from Greenwire: Iconic Status Can't Spare Grand Canyon From Myriad Threats From the rim, the Grand Canyon, 15 miles wide at its most expansive and a mile deep, looks like one of the wildest, most timeless places on earth... But a closer look reveals a canyon ecosystem that has been deeply altered by human forces. And today, the park is facing an unprecedented convergence of threats, the long-term effects of which are largely unknown... But as more and more people have followed Roosevelt's advice -- about 4.5 million tourists visit the Grand Canyon each year, compared to about 44,000 in 1918, the year Congress elevated the monument to national park status -- pressures on the unique environment have increased in ways Roosevelt likely could not have foreseen.
A major upstream dam now regulates the Colorado River's flow through the park and has rendered the river unnaturally clear and cool. And invasive species like salt cedar and trout are crowding out native species such as willow and the endangered humpback chub. ...
Sat, Apr 17, 2010 from Reuters: Ice cap thaw may awaken Icelandic volcanoes A thaw of Iceland's ice caps in coming decades caused by climate change may trigger more volcanic eruptions by removing a vast weight and freeing magma from deep below ground, scientists said on Friday. They said there was no sign that the current eruption from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier that has paralysed flights over northern Europe was linked to global warming. The glacier is too small and light to affect local geology.
"Our work suggests that eventually there will be either somewhat larger eruptions or more frequent eruptions in Iceland in coming decades," said Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a vulcanologist at the University of Iceland.
"Global warming melts ice and this can influence magmatic systems," he told Reuters. The end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago coincided with a surge in volcanic activity in Iceland, apparently because huge ice caps thinned and the land rose. ...
All those extra, unnecessary consonants can't be helping the situation!
Thu, Apr 15, 2010 from USDA/Agricultural Research Service via ScienceDaily: Geraniums Could Help Control Devastating Japanese Beetle Geraniums may hold the key to controlling the devastating Japanese beetle, which feeds on nearly 300 plant species and costs the ornamental plant industry $450 million in damage each year, according to scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). The beetle, Popillia japonica Newman, can feast on a wide variety of plants, including ornamentals, soybean, maize, fruits and vegetables. But within 30 minutes of consuming geranium petals, the beetle rolls over on its back, its legs and antennae slowly twitch, and it remains paralyzed for several hours. The beetles typically recover within 24 hours when paralyzed under laboratory conditions, but they often succumb to death under field conditions after predators spot and devour the beetles while they are helpless. ...
Wed, Apr 14, 2010 from University of Washington via ScienceDaily: Traumatized Trees: Bug Them Enough, They Get Fired Up Whether forests are dying back, or just drying out, projections for warming show the Pacific Northwest is becoming primed for more wildfires. The area burned by fire each year is expected to double -- or even triple -- if temperatures increase by about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2 C) in our region, according to University of Washington and USDA Forest Service research... "The difference between now and our prior history is the magnitude of the impact," said Elaine Oneil, UW research associate in forest resources. "We basically have massive bark beetle outbreaks in the western U.S. and Canada over the entire extent of pines that are susceptible. We're seeing these massive mortality events of millions and millions of acres." ...
The trees' trauma may include grief for fallen comrades.
Sun, Apr 11, 2010 from CanWest News Service: Scientists turn to Inuit traditions to collect data on Arctic weather Using traditional Inuit weather knowledge passed down through generations, environmental scientists have uncovered new data on Arctic climate change.
In a study appearing this month in the journal Global Environmental Change, researchers working closely with Inuit elders were able to "zero in on what we'd been hearing from the Inuit people for a number of years," said Elizabeth Weatherhead, chief author of the study and environmental scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder... the study found Inuit consider a number of environmental factors when predicting the weather, such as interactions between wind, ocean currents, cloud formations and animal behaviour. The researchers were able to use that traditional knowledge to find evidence of the changes Inuit were describing. ...
Sounds to me like nothing more than a bunch of nanookery.
Fri, Apr 9, 2010 from BBC: UN climate talks to resume amid fear of more divisions The first round of UN climate talks since December's bitter Copenhagen summit opens in Bonn on Friday with the future of the process uncertain.
Developing countries are adamant that the UN climate convention is the right forum for negotiating a global deal and want it done by the year's end.
But others, notably the US, appear to think this is not politically feasible.
Some delegates are concerned that the whole process could collapse, given the divisions and lack of trust. ...
Fri, Apr 9, 2010 from USA Today: On Plains, concern about another Dust Bowl ...Seventy-five years have passed since the worst of the Dust Bowl, a relentless series of dust storms that ravaged farms and livelihoods in the southern Great Plains that carried a layer of silt as far east as New York City. Today, the lessons learned during that era are more relevant than ever as impending water shortages and more severe droughts threaten broad swaths of the nation...Gary McManus, a climatologist for Oklahoma's state-run climate organization, says global warming could have a "catastrophic" impact across the parts of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma that suffered most in the "Dirty Thirties."
He says the region's climate is so dry, even in the best of times, that just a small increase in average temperatures could quickly cause critical amounts of moisture in the soil to evaporate. ...
My concern is more that we won't have John Steinbeck around this time.
Fri, Apr 9, 2010 from Bloomberg News: Great Barrier Reef at Risk as Coal-Ship Traffic May Jump 67 percent The corals, whales and giant clams of Australia's Great Barrier Reef are in the path of a "coal highway" to China that may see shipments jump 67 percent by 2016, increasing the threat of an ecological disaster after a coal carrier ran aground last week.
Trade at Gladstone port in Queensland may rise to about 140 million tons, mostly coal, in six years from 84 million tons in the year ending in June, Gladstone Ports Corp. Chief Executive Officer Leo Zussino said in an interview. The port was the loading point for the Shen Neng 1, which hit a sand bank on April 3 at full speed carrying 68,000 metric tons of coal and 975 tons of fuel oil.
"It's only a matter of time before a serious oil spill occurs unless we have a better system for regulating the traffic," said Peter Harrison, a professor at Southern Cross University in New South Wales who has studied the impact of oil pollution on coral reefs for three decades. "It's a difficult place to navigate." ...
Perhaps a name change is in order: the Great Passageway Reef.
Thu, Apr 8, 2010 from Greenwire: Frightened, Furious Neighbors Undermine German Co2-Trapping Power Project ...The first electric utility in the world to launch a coal-fired power plant designed from the ground up to capture its carbon dioxide emissions, Vattenfall has found that building the complicated 70 million [Euros] pilot plant may have been the easy part. Finding a home for its captured gas? Now that's hard.
For more than a year, the plant has been doing its job, capturing 90 percent of its CO2, the heat-trapping gas that drives global warming. Nestled in strip-mining country in eastern Germany, the plant could provide the prototype for the next generation of relatively affordable "clean" coal plants. But until Vattenfall finds a place to stash its CO2, those dreams will be as intangible as the CO2 it collects and vents every few days back into the atmosphere. Vatenfall AB, which is owned by the Swedish government, has been frustrated by boisterous local opposition to its plans to pump CO2 more than a kilometer underground into porous rock formations. ...
NIMUPRF: Not In MY Underground Porous Rock Formations
Thu, Apr 8, 2010 from Yale 360: The Natural World Vanishes: How Species Cease To Matter Once, on both sides of the Atlantic, fish such as salmon, eels, and, shad were abundant and played an important role in society, feeding millions and providing a livelihood for tens of thousands. But as these fish have steadily dwindled, humans have lost sight of their significance, with each generation accepting a diminished environment as the new norm.... Every generation takes the natural environment it encounters during childhood as the norm against which it measures environmental decline later in life. With each ensuing generation, environmental degradation generally increases, but each generation takes that degraded condition as the new normal. Scientists call this phenomenon "shifting baselines" or "inter-generational amnesia," and it is part of a larger and more nebulous reality -- the insidious ebbing of the ecological and social relevancy of declining and disappearing species.... As species disappear, they lose both relevance to a society and the constituency to champion their revival, further hastening their decline. A vivid example of this was highlighted in a recent study in Conservation Biology, in which researchers found that younger residents along China's Yangtze River knew little or nothing of the river dolphin, the bajii -- now believed to be extinct -- and the threatened paddlefish. ...
If a species falls in a forest and nobody cares, does it matter?
Wed, Apr 7, 2010 from London Guardian: Salvage experts work to stabilise Chinese ship aground on Great Barrier Reef Salvage workers and tugboats were today attempting to stabilise a coal-carrying ship that ran aground on Australia's Great Barrier Reef in order to prevent it breaking up and further damaging the world's largest coral structure.
The Chinese-registered Shen Neng 1 was off course and travelling at full speed when it hit the Douglas Shoals - an area in which shipping is restricted - late on Saturday.
Environmentalists warned that the effects could be devastating if the vessel broke up.
"We would potentially be looking at an environmental disaster," Gilly Llewellyn, the director of conservation for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Australia, told Reuters. "It would be an extremely large spill."
Around two of the 950 tonnes of fuel on board the ship have leaked, creating a slick stretching for two miles (3km). ...
This stranded ship, my friends, is starting to sound more and more like a metaphor for the whole planet.
Tue, Apr 6, 2010 from Oregon State University, via EurekAlert: Forest epidemic is unprecedented phenomenon, still getting worse The Swiss needle cast epidemic in Douglas-fir forests of the coastal Pacific Northwest is continuing to intensify, appears to be unprecedented over at least the past 100 years, and is probably linked to the extensive planting of Douglas-fir along the coast and a warmer climate, new research concludes.
Scientists in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University have also found that this disease, which is affecting hundreds of thousands of acres in Oregon and Washington and costing tens of millions of dollars a year in lost growth, can affect older trees as well as young stands - in some cases causing their growth to almost grind to a halt.... "We can't say yet whether climate change is part of what's causing these problems, but warmer conditions, milder winters and earlier springs would be consistent with that."
Another key suspect, scientists say, is the planting for decades of a monoculture of Douglas-fir in replacement of coastal forests, which previously had trees of varying ages and different species. ...
Biodiversity is so messy. Monocultures are at least consistent.
Sun, Apr 4, 2010 from South Bend Tribune: Local beekeepers worry about downward trend Last winter, he lost more than half of his colonies.
It's a trend noticed around the region and the country.
"We're all losing bees, lots of bees," beekeeper Jerry Shaw said.
Shaw's collection once topped 600 hives. Now he's down to 200. He suspects Colony Collapse Disorder is responsible for the population decline.
"You'll generally have quite a bit of honey left, but there are no bees," Shaw said....
"We think the deaths are caused by viruses, parasitic mites, diseases and pesticide residue, or a combination of those things," said Michael Hansen of the Michigan Department of Agriculture. "The big problem is more colonies of bees are dying now than they did 10 or 20 years ago. "
...
These bees got the blues: they're leaving their honeys behind.
Sun, Apr 4, 2010 from Los Angeles Times: Great Barrier Reef rammed by Chinese coal ship Australians on Sunday scrambled to ensure that a Chinese-owned bulk coal carrier that rammed into the Great Barrier Reef would not break apart and seriously damage the planet's largest coral reef.
Peter Garrett, the nation's environment protection minister, told reporters that the federal government is concerned about the impact an oil spill could have on the environmentally sensitive reef, which was selected as a World Heritage site in 1981.
Environmentalists said they were "horrified" at the possible damage the mishap might cause to the ecosystem, which is 1,800 miles long and comprised of more than 3,000 individual reefs, cays and islands -- providing a habitat for countless sea species.
Video taken late Sunday showed the 755-foot vessel stranded about nine miles outside the shipping lane, leaking what seemed to be a streak of oil into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park near Great Keppel Island off the west coast of Queensland state.... The Shen Neng 1, hauling more than 65,000 tons of coal, hit the reef at full speed late Saturday in a restricted zone of the marine park. The impact ruptured the vessel's fuel tanks, prompting Australian officials to activate a national oil spill response plan. ...
Whoops! Sorry officer, I must've taken a wrong turn back there!
Sun, Apr 4, 2010 from The Charleston Gazette: EPA study confirms damage from strip mining Federal government scientists say a "growing body of evidence" shows that mountaintop removal coal mining is destroying Appalachian forests and dangerously polluting vital headwater streams...While EPA scientists focused on direct damage to streams that are buried and on pollution downstream from valley fills, the 119-page report also warns that damage to ecologically important forests is greater than some routinely cited statistics suggest.
Last week, EPA published the study by the agency's Office of Research and Development in conjunction with the issuance of new water quality guidance intended to reduce mining's adverse impacts on aquatic life. ...
This study, courtesy of the Duh!partment of the Obvious.
Sat, Apr 3, 2010 from Political Economy Research Institute via Truthout: Meet the Toxic 100 Corporate Air Polluters Researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst today released the Toxic 100 Air Polluters, an updated list of the top corporate air polluters in the United States.... The Toxic 100 Air Polluters index is based on air releases of hundreds of chemicals from industrial facilities across the United States. The rankings take into account not only the quantity of releases, but also the toxicity of chemicals, transport factors such as prevailing winds and height of smokestacks, and the number of people exposed. The top five air polluters among large corporations are the Bayer Group, ExxonMobil, Sunoco, DuPont, and Arcelor Mittal. ...
We're gonna need, like, a whole extra planet to detox from all this poison.
Sat, Apr 3, 2010 from Scientific American: Are cadmium-contaminated insects killing endangered carnivorous plants? Around the world carnivorous plants are on the decline, the victims of habitat loss, illegal poaching and pollution. But now a new factor has come to light: The very insects the plants rely on for food may be poisoning them.
According to new research by Christopher Moody and Iain Green of Bournemouth University in England, prey insects could be contaminated with toxic metals such as cadmium that, when ingested by meat-eating flora, affect the plants' growth.... Cadmium is widely used in fertilizers, metal coatings, electronics, batteries and other products. Both metals can accumulate in the environment, and thus in insects, through improper waste disposal. ...
Thu, Apr 1, 2010 from NUVO Newsweekly: Waste in our water: The coal ash problem For the past thirty years Jeff Stant has gained a reputation around Indiana as a relentless and tenacious environmental defender. "I grew up in the woods in Zionville, springing animals from traps before trappers got them, I was in love with nature," he says. His current battle is to get coal ash, the by product of burning coal for power, deemed as a hazardous waste by the federal government, "It could be an epic move," says Stant.
The push to regulate coal ash comes from those like Stant, who believe it to be harmful. Because coal contains traces of heavy metals, so will the ash that is left behind after coal is burned to produce electricity. Arsenic, lead, copper, mercury, nickel, selenium, zinc and many other metals are commonly left behind in coal ash....The EPA has waffled on the subject for 30 years, meandering through missed deadlines and lawsuits. But the coal ash problem is one that has lingered, refusing to go away. The EPA is now poised to make another ruling on the byproduct of burning coal. ...
Tue, Mar 30, 2010 from New Scientist: A killer in the bat cave CORPSE upon corpse they lie, a carpet of emaciated, fungus-ridden carcasses. Where once healthy animals hung in slumber from the cave roof, now there is a mass grave on the floor. It is a scene that is repeated throughout the eastern US, from Vermont to West Virginia. America's bats are in crisis, under threat from a mysterious killer.
The first sign that something was up emerged in February 2006, when a caver photographed hibernating bats with white muzzles at Howe's Cave in Albany, New York state. Soon afterwards bats were observed behaving strangely - waking from hibernation early and in a state of serious starvation. Some even ventured out of their roosts during daylight to search for food. Inside the caverns, the floors were littered with bodies, most with the characteristic fuzzy white mould growing on their noses, ears and wings... The fungus has recently been identified as Geomyces destructans.... It is the prime suspect and the focus of an intense research effort. Even so, there remains the possibility that it is not actually the killer but just an opportunistic pathogen hitching a ride on the back of some other deadly foe.... "It terrifies everybody in the bat community," says Emma Teeling at University College Dublin, Ireland.... The most promising candidate kills the fungal spores on culture plates and does not harm healthy bats, but it does not seem to cure sick ones. "[It has] very strange results on the pathology of WNS bats," is all Barton will say. ...
I'm sure ubiquitous pesticides wouldn't weaken bat immune systems. After all, they're birds.
Sun, Mar 28, 2010 from London Guardian: The trillion-dollar question is: who will now lead the climate battle? Some of the planet's most powerful paymasters will gather in London on Wednesday to discuss a nagging financial problem: how to raise a trillion dollars for the developing world. Those charged with achieving this daunting goal will include Gordon Brown, directors of several central banks, the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, the economist Lord (Nicholas) Stern and Larry Summers, President Obama's chief economics adviser.
As an array of expertise, it is formidable: but then so is the task they have been set by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. In effect, the world's top financiers have been told to work out how to raise at least $100bn a year for the rest of this decade, cash that will be used to help the world's poorest countries adapt to climate change. ...
Since nothing else has worked, I'd say let's give the antichrist a shot!
Sun, Mar 28, 2010 from Pottstown Mercury: Toxic plumes spreading into groundwater Twin underground plumes of potentially carcinogenic chemicals from two industrial sites are merging and mingling with the groundwater beneath 47 homes, fouling their wells and posing health hazards for the residents there, state officials have confirmed.
The source of the contamination is believed to be the Teleflex Inc. plant on South Limerick Road and the former Stanley Tool Works, on Lewis Road, said Lynda Rebarchak, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection... The chemicals found in the well water samples are familiar to those familiar with headlines in the region in recent years -- trichloroethylene, more commonly known by its call letters TCE; tetrachloroethylene, or PCE; 1,1-dichloroethylene, or DCE; 1,2 dichloroethene or Cis, as well as 1,4-dioxane. ...
Thu, Mar 25, 2010 from The Vancouver Sun: New way of fish farming could help fix environment New designs for fish farms could keep them in the ocean and help restore damaged marine environments at the same time, says a biologist working on a five-year nationwide aquaculture project.
Marine biologists in New Brunswick and in B.C. are employing mussels, oysters, sea cucumbers, urchins and seaweed to dramatically increase the amount of food created by salmon farms, and they believe they can extract excess carbon and nitrogen pollution from the sea in the process. ...
That's a win-win! Er, except for the fish, of course.
Thu, Mar 25, 2010 from Discovery News: Taking Showers Could Contaminate Drinking Water With every shower you take, you may be unwittingly polluting the environment.
As you scrub off dirt, you also wipe off medicines from your skin and pharmaceuticals excreted in sweat, according to a new study. Those chemicals pass through the sewage system and might even end up in our drinking water... Their research revealed that human skin fails to absorb much of the medicine that is applied topically, such as antibiotic ointments and steroid creams. Showers, baths and laundry wash those drugs directly into the sewage system. Chemically, these compounds often remain whole, unlike the broken-down versions in feces and urine. ...
Mon, Mar 22, 2010 from London Guardian: Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study finds Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is down to the region's swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming, a new study reveals.
Ice blown out of the region by Arctic winds can explain around one-third of the steep downward trend in sea ice extent in the region since 1979, the scientists say.
The study does not question that global warming is also melting ice in the Arctic, but it could raise doubts about high-profile claims that the region has passed a climate "tipping point" that could see ice loss sharply accelerate in coming years.
The new findings also help to explain the massive loss of Arctic ice seen in the summers of 2007-08, which prompted suggestions that the summertime Arctic Ocean could be ice-free withing a decade. About half of the variation in maximum ice loss each September is down to changes in wind patterns, the study says. ...
Shoo-eeee!! Maybe we can bio-engineer ourselves out of this mess after all!
Mon, Mar 22, 2010 from Reuters: Waste water kills mlns of children, pollutes sea Human beings are flushing millions of tonnes of solid waste into rivers and oceans every day, poisoning marine life and spreading diseases that kill millions of children annually, the U.N. said on Monday.
"The sheer scale of dirty water means more people now die from contaminated and polluted water than from all forms of violence including wars," the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said. In a report entitled "Sick Water" for World Water Day, UNEP said the two million tonnes of waste, which contaminates over two billion tonnes of water daily, had left huge "dead zones" that choke coral reefs and fish.
It consists mostly of sewage, industrial pollution, pesticides from agriculture and animal waste ...
Sun, Mar 21, 2010 from National Geographic News: Silent Streams ...Lakes, swamps, and rivers make up less than 0.3 percent of fresh water and less than .01 percent of all the water on Earth. Yet these waters are home to as many as 126,000 of the world's animal species, including snails, mussels, crocodiles, turtles, amphibians, and fish. Almost half the 30,000 known species of fish live in lakes and rivers, and many aren't doing well; in North America, for instance, 39 percent of freshwater fish are imperiled, up from 20 percent only a few decades ago. Freshwater animals in general are disappearing at a rate four to six times as fast as animals on land or at sea. In the United States nearly half the 573 animals on the threatened and endangered list are freshwater species.... ...
Sat, Mar 20, 2010 from Winnipeg Free Press: Mysterious bat-killing illness previously seen in the U.S. now in Ontario A mysterious illness that has killed upwards of 500,000 bats in the northeastern United States has now been detected in the animals in Ontario.
The Ministry of Natural Resources is confirming the first case of bats with a disease known as white-nose syndrome in the Bancroft-Minden area, in eastern Ontario.... It was first documented in Albany, N.Y., in the winter of 2006.
Since then, the syndrome has spread across nine states in the northeastern U.S. and has wiped out anywhere from 75 to 98 per cent of the overwintering bat population.
Ontario says it will continue monitoring for the syndrome until bats leave hibernation sites in May. ...
Thu, Mar 18, 2010 from Guardian: Bluefin tuna fails to make UN's list of protected fish Japan, Canada and scores of developing nations opposed the measure on the grounds that ban would devastate fishing economies.... Global talks on the conservation of endangered species have rejected calls to ban international trade in bluefin tuna, raising new fears for the future of dwindling stocks.
Countries at the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Qatar voted down a proposal from Monaco to grant the fish stronger protection. The plan drew little support, with developing countries joining Japan in opposing a measure they feared would hit fishing economies. ...
It's clear the long-term interests of the economy are in good hands.
Wed, Mar 17, 2010 from AP, through DesdemonaDespair: Nonbinding shark conservation proposal defeated at UN meeting China, Japan and Russia helped defeat a U.S.-endorsed proposal at a U.N. wildlife trade meeting Tuesday that would have boosted conservation efforts for sharks, expressing concern it would hurt poor nations and should be the responsibility of regional fisheries bodies.
The opposition to the shark proposal came hours after the marine conservation group Oceana came out with a report showing that demand for shark fin soup in Asia is driving many species of these big fish to the brink of extinction. The nonbinding measure, which called for increased transparency in the shark trade and more research into the threat posed to sharks by illegal fishing, had been expected to gain approval by a committee of the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES.... Oceana, a Washington, D.C.-based group, found that as many as 73 million sharks are killed each year, primarily for their fins, with much of the trade going to China.... Shark fin soup has long played central part in traditional Chinese culture, often being served at weddings and banquets. Demand for the soup has surged as increasing numbers of Chinese middle class family become wealthier. ...
It's as if our short-sighted rapaciousness never stops moving forward.
Wed, Mar 17, 2010 from London Daily Telegraph: The Biggest Dump in the World Fifty years ago, most flotsam was biodegradable. Now it is 90 per cent plastic. In 2006, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that there were 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in every square mile of ocean. With its stubborn refusal to biodegrade, all plastic not buried in landfills - roughly half of it - sweeps into streams and sewers and then out into rivers and, finally, the ocean. Some of it - some say as much as 70 per cent - sinks to the ocean floor. The remainder floats, usually within 20 metres of the surface, and is carried into stable circular currents, or gyres "like ocean ring-roads", says Dr Boxall. Once inside these gyres, the plastic is drawn by wind and surface currents towards the centre, where it steadily accumulates. The world's major oceans all have these gyres, and all are gathering rubbish. Although the North Pacific - bordering California, Japan and China - is the biggest, there are also increasingly prominent gyres in the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Our problems with plastics are only just beginning. ...
Tue, Mar 16, 2010 from New York Times: A Risk of Poisoning the Deepest Wells Fertilizing the oceans with iron has been proposed as a way of fighting climate change. The idea is that iron will promote blooms of phytoplankton that will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. When the phytoplankton dies and sinks, the carbon will effectively be sequestered in the deep ocean. Enthusiasm for the idea has waned, in part because of concerns about large-scale manipulation of ocean ecosystems. Now, a study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences points out a specific risk: by promoting the growth of certain organisms, iron enrichment may result in the harmful production of a neurotoxin[, domoic acid].... The researchers found evidence that increased domoic acid production enabled Pseudonitzschia to outcompete other phytoplankton. "So it's more toxic than it was before," Dr. Trick said, "and there's more of it." ...
Good thing we have other consequence-free geoengineering options to turn to!
Tue, Mar 16, 2010 from NUVO Newsweekly: Lucky animals get a whole week! Governor Daniels proclaimed March 15-21 as National Wildlife Week in Indiana. To celebrate, animals throughout Indiana will experience a pause in the relentless destruction of their habitat.
Indiana animals will enjoy a pristine environment for seven days, as coal-fired plants will suspend operations. Therefore the mercury, arsenic and other damaging pollutants will temporarily cease to contaminate the air, water and soil.
Indiana CAFO operators won't dump hog, chicken and cow manure and Indiana farmers won't pour fertilizer into nearby streams and waters, so the fish and amphibians and other aquatic beings won't have to ingest phosphorus and other dangerous toxic substances -- or have the oxygen in the water robbed by algal blooms. ...
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 from Vancouver Sun: Chinese dams blamed for Mekong's dwindling flows and fish stocks ...there are widely differing views on why the Mekong has shrunk to its lowest levels in 20 years, with only half its normal volume in some places, so that vital fish migrations have been disturbed and river shipping had to be halted.
Some blame global warming and shrinking glaciers in Tibet where the Mekong starts its 4,900-kilometre journey through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia before spreading out through Vietnam's "Nine Dragons" delta and easing into the South China Sea.
Others blame the El Nio effect on Southeast Asia's monsoons and especially the lack of rain in Laos, which in normal times supplies 35 per cent of the water in the main reaches of the Mekong. But a favourite culprit among the peoples of the five countries of the lower Mekong is China and its massive program of hydroelectric dam building on the river as it flows through Yunnan province. ...
Thu, Mar 11, 2010 from National Geographic News: Sea Spray Detected 900 Miles Inland Sea spray has been detected in the middle of the United States, some 900 miles (1,400 kilometers) from any ocean, a new study says.
Scientists discovered chlorine -- "a key element in sodium chloride, or the type of salt found in seawater -- "in Boulder, Colorado's (see map) mountain air.
Boulder's sea spray is too sparse to taste or even smell. But it's still much more abundant than previously thought "and it may be contributing to air pollution, said study team member Joel Thornton, an atmospheric chemist at Seattle's University of Washington.
"We discovered chlorine chemistry happening in a region that we didn't expect it to be happening," Thornton said. ...
Crazy! You'd think the earth was one, holistic entity!
Wed, Mar 10, 2010 from CBC: Seal pups beached -- lack of sea ice off Newfoundland An exceptional lack of sea ice on the Gulf of St. Lawrence this winter has left seal mothers with few places to bear their young or to feed their pups.
The conditions have led to numerous sightings of fuzzy, days-old critters wallowing on beaches, where many will die.
Some of those seals are being born on Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula....
But Mike Hammill doesn't believe the added deaths would have a major impact on the Eastern Canada seal populations, which number about seven million in total.
An Environment Canada ice forecaster recently said the sea-ice levels recorded in the Gulf this winter are about as low as any readings since the 1960s.
Earlier this week, Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea said poor ice conditions may cause the cancellation of this year's Gulf of St. Lawrence seal hunt. It usually begins at the end of March.
...
Operation Ice-Free Arctic is going exactly according to plan....
Sun, Mar 7, 2010 from Charleston Gazette: EPA delays action on mountaintop removal plan The Obama administration has delayed action on a set of broad-ranging and specific measures to reduce the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal, after details of the plan were leaked to coal-state mining regulators...Agency officials are pushing for more stringent water pollution standards, tougher permit requirements and more extensive monitoring downstream from mining operations.
Among the initiatives are initial steps toward tighter mining discharge limits on the toxic pollutant selenium and on electrical conductivity, which serves as a measure of harmful salts and metals and has been identified by scientists as an indicator of coal-mining water damage. An announcement had been planned for Wednesday, but has been delayed for at least several weeks. ...
If you've been to the mountaintop, then you know there is no more time to waste.
Fri, Mar 5, 2010 from Freeport Tribune: 'Too great a risk for the Bahamas' The commercial fishing of Yellow-fin Tuna using purse seine nets in Bahamian waters poses too great a risk for the Bahamas, fisheries conservationist Dr David Philip warned.
He is urging the government not to permit the use of this technique - in which, he says, large game fish, dolphins, sea turtles, and other species are likely to be caught and killed along with the tuna in the large nets. "This is a huge issue and the Bahamas should take leadership and stand to be leaders in this manner and say no to this kind of fishing," said Dr Philips, a representative of the Fisheries Conservation Foundation.... Craig Riker, president of the Grand Bahama Dive Association, says no one wins with purse seine fishing. "If you take the big fish out of the ocean, what fills its place is jellyfish. Jellyfish eat baby fish and fish eggs, and even if you leave some fish to breed they can't because the jellyfish get them.
"Once that happens there is very little chance of getting fish back. It is a very dangerous slope to jump off," he said. ...
You want to take away my freedom to fish just to save the ecosystem?
Thu, Mar 4, 2010 from SciDev.net: Farmers and pesticide blamed in Thai rice pest invasion Thai farmers keen to exploit high rice prices have made an outbreak of a devastating pest worse by overplanting and using too much pesticide, according to ecologists.
An outbreak of brown planthoppers has destroyed 368,000 hectares -- about four per cent of Thailand's rice paddies -- since August last year.
The pests have periodically plagued Asian rice farming for decades, eating their way through rice crops and spreading viral diseases that can stunt growth and prevent rice grain formation.... To ensure good yields, farmers overuse fertilisers -- thought to increase the planthopper's fertility -- and pesticides such as synthetic pyrethroids, which have no effect on planthoppers but kill many of their natural enemies such as spiders.
Golsalvitra said the problem remains unabated despite state efforts to control the situation and the pest is migrating south to the Central Plains -- the country's rice bowl, which is preparing for the next rice season in May.... He said the outbreaks are preventable and that the best way to deal with them is to restore biodiversity rather than destroy it. ...
Thu, Mar 4, 2010 from New York Times: Fuel Taxes Must Rise, Harvard Researchers Say To meet the Obama administration's targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon.
To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving must simply increase, according to a forthcoming report by researchers at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
The 14 percent target was set in the Environmental Protection Agency's budget for fiscal 2010. ...
Wed, Mar 3, 2010 from Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases: Mountain Plover Responses to Plague in Montana We studied the effects of plague and colony spatial characteristics on the occupancy of 81 prairie dog colonies by nesting plovers in Phillips County, Montana, during a 13-year period (1995-2007).... A recent study using many of these same prairie dog colonies (Augustine et al. 2008) found that declines in prairie dog colony area as a result of plague corresponded to rapid (<2 years) declines in mountain plover nesting activity. This is presumably a response to vegetative (Hartley et al. 2009) and possibly other changes that negatively impact the plover.... In this study we further demonstrated negative effects of plague to the plover by examining how they depart and later recolonize colonies affected by plague.... ...
Tue, Mar 2, 2010 from New York Times: For Pennies, a Disposable Toilet That Could Help Grow Crops A Swedish entrepreneur is trying to market and sell a biodegradable plastic bag that acts as a single-use toilet for urban slums in the developing world. Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces. The bag, called the Peepoo, is the brainchild of Anders Wilhelmson, an architect and professor in Stockholm. ...
Tue, Mar 2, 2010 from Sacramento Bee: Study of hospitals puts price tag on California's dirty air California's dirty air led to nearly $200 million in hospital spending over a three-year period -- including $9 million in Sacramento County -- because of asthma, pneumonia and other pollution-triggered ailments, according to a study released today.
With its research, Rand Corp. attempts to put a price tag on the state's bad air. The study analyzed records from hospitals and air quality agencies from 2005 to 2007. As many as 30,000 people statewide sought relief in emergency rooms because of air pollution during that period, the report states...The study focused on pollution from ozone, most commonly derived from automobile tailpipe emissions, and fine particulate matter, such as soot from fireplaces and wood-burning stoves. ...
Mon, Mar 1, 2010 from West Virginia Public Broadcasting: More bats infected with deadly disease found in WV cave An expedition into Hellhole cave in Pendleton County last month revealed that bats in one of the largest and most important bat hibernation caves in the state are infected with white-nose syndrome.... "We've had a constant stream of bats just flying out of the cave during the day, during snow, so theyre obviously very distressed and fleeing the site," he added.... Seth Perlman, who lives in New York, accompanied Youngbaer into Hellhole Cave. He hopes white-nose syndrome does not have the same effect in West Virginia that it's had in the North East.
"We've seen up to 90 percent mortality in some of the bats and it's manifested in caves where there are just piles of dead bats," Perlman said. ...
Is that a cloud on the horizon, or an insect swarm?
Sun, Feb 28, 2010 from Living on Earth: Here Comes the Sound ...Across the American West, millions of acres of forests are dead because of beetles about the size of a grain of rice -- the pine bark beetles. The beetles' range is expanding due, in part, to climate change. Warmer winters mean the beetles survive farther north and higher up. And drought weakens a tree's resistance.
Forestry experts call it the largest insect infestation in North American history and warn some 20 million acres could be lost in the next decade or so. Now an unusual trio of researchers -- a sound artist, a scientist, and a student -- might have a powerful new way to control the beetles... why not use military control technology where they use acoustics to control crowds or Somali pirates to push them off. ...
Sun, Feb 28, 2010 from Madison Wisconsin State Journal: Tracking a rising tide of waste Wisconsin is churning out permits for industrial-scale farms to spread millions of gallons of manure on state fields but provides little oversight after that, inspecting them only once or twice every five years, a Wisconsin State Journal investigation has found.
At stake is the health of thousands of homeowners who draw their drinking water from wells near the giant farms or the fields where the manure is spread... But a review of the state's oversight of the huge farms turned up weaknesses and missteps, including farms operating without permits, a dearth of on-site inspections and a monitoring system that consists largely of inspectors filling out paperwork at their desks. ...
Sun, Feb 28, 2010 from US News and World Report: Air Pollution: It's Not Just Your Lungs That Suffer ...research has revealed more about how far air pollution's harms go beyond the respiratory system. "People thought that when we inhale pollutants the lung is the main target, but the lung is surprisingly resilient. It turns out the cardiovascular effects are predominant," says Aruni Bhatnagar, an environmental cardiology researcher at the University of Louisville. One major study, which followed subjects for 16 years, found that people living in cities with higher levels of fine particulates were at greater risk of cardiovascular death. A difference of 10 micrograms per cubic meter increased the risk of dying from ischemic heart disease (narrowed arteries) by 18 percent, arrhythmia by 13 percent, and cardiac arrest by 21 percent, the study revealed. It seems air pollutants incite processes that lead to high blood pressure, blood clotting, and electrical instability in the heart, which can translate into heart attack, stroke, and sudden cardiac death. Even short-term exposure can be hazardous. Research shows spikes in cardiac deaths, emergency room visits, and hospital admissions in the hours and days that follow a spike in cities' levels of particulate matter. ...
Sat, Feb 27, 2010 from Shanghai Daily News: Country's infertility rate 'on the rise': Shanghai The country appears to be suffering from rising infertility levels, with a number of regional surveys showing up to 10 percent of couples who have regular sex being unable to conceive within a year, reproduction experts have said.
No nationwide epidemiology surveys on infertility have been conducted yet, but experts have estimated that the infertility rate stood at 3 percent in the early 1980s.
For women, childbirth after 35 years of age and previous abortions were often to blame for increasing infertility, said Zhou Canquan, director of the department of obstetrics and gynecology under the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University.
Male infertility was on the rise as well, with sperm counts decreasing from 100 million per ml on average in the 1970s to 40 million per ml currently, Zhou said on Friday. ...
Sat, Feb 27, 2010 from CBC: Massive icebergs drift from Antarctic coast An iceberg about the size of Luxembourg that struck a glacier off Antarctica and dislodged another massive block of ice could lower the levels of oxygen in the world's oceans, Australian and French scientists said Friday.
The two icebergs are now drifting together about 100 to 150 kilometres off Antarctica following the collision on Feb. 12 or 13, said Australian Antarctic division glaciologist Neal Young.... This area of water had been kept clear because of the glacier, said Steve Rintoul, a leading climate expert. With part of the glacier gone, the area could fill with sea ice, which would disrupt the ability for the dense and cold water to sink.
This sinking water is what spills into ocean basins and feeds the global ocean currents with oxygen, Rintoul explained.
As there are only a few areas in the world where this occurs, a slowing of the process would mean less oxygen supplied into the deep currents that feed the oceans.
"There may be regions of the world's oceans that lose oxygen, and then of course most of the life there will die," said Mario Hoppema, chemical oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany.
...
Wed, Feb 24, 2010 from Haaretz: Bomb plant seepage creating Israel's worst-ever water pollution Rocket fuel and remains of explosives that seeped into the aquifer from the Israel Military Industries Ramat Hasharon plant are continuing to spread, according to data presented yesterday for the first time by the Water Authority and obtained by Haaretz.
The materials, which are now present in a 16 square-kilometer area, were detected at levels thousands of times greater than allowable U.S. standards, constituting the worst instance of water pollution in Israel's history. Ten water wells have been closed so far as a result... One toxic material discovered in the ground water is an explosive known as RDX, detected at 1,300 times recommended safe levels for drinking water in the United States.
...
Wed, Feb 24, 2010 from Mongabay: Extinct animals are quickly forgotten: the baiji and shifting baselines Lead author of the study, Dr. Samuel Turvey, was a member of the original expedition in 2006. He returned to the Yangtze in 2008 to interview locals about their knowledge of the baiji and other vanishing megafauna in the river, including the Chinese paddlefish, one of the world's largest freshwater fish. In these interviews Turvey and his team found clear evidence of 'shifting baselines': where humans lose track of even large changes to their environment, such as the loss of a top predator like the baiji. "'Shifting baseline syndrome' is a social phenomenon whereby communities can forget about changes to the state of the environment during the recent past, if older community members don't talk to younger people about different species or ecological conditions that used to occur in their local region," Turvey explains. "These shifts in community perception typically mean that the true level of human impact on the environment is underestimated, or even not appreciated at all, since the original environmental 'baseline' has been forgotten."In other words, a community today may see an ecosystem as 'pristine' or 'complete', which their grandparents would view as hopelessly degraded. In turn what the current generation sees as a degraded environment, the next generation will see as 'natural'. The shifting baseline theory is relatively newfirst appearing in 1995and so it has not been widely examined in the field. ...
How handy! The extinctions are just a figment of our memories.
Tue, Feb 23, 2010 from New York Times: EPA's Gradual Phase In of GHG Regs Garners Qualified Praise From Senators Facing mounting pressure from congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, the Obama administration yesterday vowed to gradually phase in climate regulations for industrial sources. U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said that no stationary sources will face greenhouse gas regulations this year and that small sources will not be subject to permitting requirements any sooner than 2016. EPA is also considering "substantially" raising the thresholds in its proposed "tailoring" rule to exempt more facilities from requirements that they minimize their greenhouse gas emissions. ...
Mon, Feb 22, 2010 from London Independent: Methane levels may see 'runaway' rise, scientists warn Atmospheric levels of methane, the greenhouse gas which is much more powerful than carbon dioxide, have risen significantly for the last three years running, scientists will disclose today -- leading to fears that a major global-warming "feedback" is beginning to kick in.
For some time there has been concern that the vast amounts of methane, or "natural gas", locked up in the frozen tundra of the Arctic could be released as the permafrost is melted by global warming. This would give a huge further impetus to climate change, an effect sometimes referred to as "the methane time bomb". ...
Mon, Feb 22, 2010 from Associated Press: Study: Warming to bring stronger hurricanes Top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming, seeming to settle a scientific debate on the subject... The study offers projections for tropical cyclones worldwide by the end of this century, and some experts said the bad news outweighs the good. Overall strength of storms as measured in wind speed would rise by 2 to 11 percent, but there would be between 6 and 34 percent fewer storms in number. Essentially, there would be fewer weak and moderate storms and more of the big damaging ones, which also are projected to be stronger due to warming.
An 11 percent increase in wind speed translates to roughly a 60 percent increase in damage, said study co-author Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at MIT.
The storms also would carry more rain, another indicator of damage, said lead author Tom Knutson, a research meteorologist at NOAA. ...
How about just one giant storm?! Oh wait... that's the Apocalypse.
Mon, Feb 22, 2010 from Penn State via ScienceDaily: Diversity of Corals, Algae in Warm Indian Ocean Suggests Resilience to Future Global Warming Penn State researchers and their international collaborators have discovered a diversity of corals harboring unusual species of symbiotic algae in the warm waters of the Andaman Sea in the northeastern Indian Ocean. "The existence of so many novel coral symbioses thriving in a place that is too warm for most corals gives us hope that coral reefs and the ecosystems they support may persist -- at least in some places -- in the face of global warming," said the team's leader, Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Todd LaJeunesse. According to LaJeunesse, the comprehensiveness of the team's survey, which also included analysis of the corals and symbiotic algae living in the cooler western Indian Ocean and Great Barrier Reef area of Australia, is unparalleled by any other study. ...
Sun, Feb 21, 2010 from Reuters: Senate weighs final push to move climate bill A last-ditch attempt at passing a climate change bill begins in the Senate this week with senators mindful that time is running short and that approaches to the legislation still vary widely, according to sources.
"We will present senators with a number of options when they get back from recess," said one Senate aide knowledgeable of the compromise legislation that is being developed. The goal is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists say threaten Earth. ...
Sun, Feb 21, 2010 from Associated Press: Feds outline plan to nurse Great Lakes to health The Obama administration has developed a five-year blueprint for rescuing the Great Lakes, a sprawling ecosystem plagued by toxic contamination, shrinking wildlife habitat and invasive species.
The plan envisions spending more than $2.2 billion for long-awaited repairs after a century of damage to the lakes, which hold 20 percent of the world's fresh water... Among the goals it hopes to achieve by 2014: finishing work at five toxic hot spots that have languished on cleanup lists for two decades; a 40 percent reduction in the rate at which invasive species are discovered in the lakes; measurable decreases in phosphorus runoff; and protection of nearly 100,000 wetland acres. ...
I know how to push that 40 percent to 100: just ignore 'em!
Sun, Feb 21, 2010 from Scientific American (per DesdemonaDespair): Bad news for bats: white-nose syndrome reaches Tennessee The bat-killing fungal infection known as white-nose syndrome (WNS) has spread into Tennessee for the first time. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) has confirmed that infected bats were found in Worley's cave in Sullivan County, where they had been hibernating....WNS has killed hundreds of thousands of bats in the U.S. since it was discovered in New York State just three years ago, including large numbers of endangered Indiana bats (Myotis sodalis). Vermont has lost at least 95 percent of its bats since WNS was first observed within its borders.... Unfortunately, funding to help study WNS has been cut from the Obama administration's most recent budget. Congress approved $1.9 million for WNS research last year. Any continuing WNS research will now need to be funded by private and state sources. ...
We'll just import bats from China or Mexico. Problem solved!
Sat, Feb 20, 2010 from University of Miami via ScienceDaily: Arctic Glacial Dust May Affect Climate and Health in North America and Europe Residents of the southern United States and the Caribbean have seen it many times during the summer months -- a whitish haze in the sky that seems to hang around for days. The resulting thin film of dust on their homes and cars actually is soil from the deserts of Africa, blown across the Atlantic Ocean. Now, there is new evidence that similar dust storms in the arctic, possibly caused by receding glaciers, may be making similar deposits in northern Europe and North America...dust activity from the newly exposed glacial deposits will most likely increase in the future in Iceland and possibly from other glacial terrains in the Arctic. ...
That means I'll have to use scarce water resources to wash my car more often!
Fri, Feb 19, 2010 from Telegraph.co.uk: Penguins in Antarctica to be replaced by jellyfish due to global warming The results of the largest ever survey of Antarctic marine life reveal melting sea ice is decimating krill populations, which form an integral part of penguins' diets.
The six-inch-long invertebrates, also eaten by other higher Southern Ocean predators such as whales and seals, are being replaced by smaller crustaceans known as copepods. These miniscule copepods, measuring just half a millimetre long, are too small for penguins but ideal for jellyfish and other similarly tentacled predators.... Any decrease in sea ice will inevitably affect the delicate balance of the Antarctic marine food chain.
For creatures such as penguins who lives on the melting sea ice, a rise in temperatures will also shrink the size of their breeding grounds. ...
Fri, Feb 19, 2010 from Nature: Asian pollution delays inevitable warming The grey, sulphur-laden skies overlying parts of Asia have a bright side -- they reflect sunlight back into space, moderating temperatures on the ground. Scientists are now exploring how and where pollution from power plants could offset, for a time, the greenhouse warming of the carbon dioxide they emit.
A new modelling study doubles as a thought experiment in how pollution controls and global warming could interact in China and India, which are projected to account for 80 percent of new coal-fired power in the coming years. If new power plants were to operate without controlling pollution such as sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOX), the study finds, the resulting haze would reflect enough sunlight to overpower the warming effect of CO2 and exert local cooling. ...
I think I'd rather die of pollution than be killed by global warming.
Wed, Feb 17, 2010 from Chicago Tribune, via DesdemonaDespair: Carp invasion 'catastrophic' for Illinois river towns While Midwest lawmakers and the White House ratchet up efforts to keep Asian carp out of Lake Michigan, boating and fishing communities up and down the Illinois River are under siege.
In Peoria and farther downstate, invasive bighead and silver carp are so abundant that they're out-competing native fish for food, disrupting spawning habits and injuring boaters and water skiers.
In Spring Valley, an old coal-mining town 100 miles southwest of Chicago, signs proclaim the city the sauger fishing capital of the world. The Illinois River is so critical to the local economy and tourism that area residents say the town might cease to exist without it.
"Losing the river would be catastrophic, at least," said Bill Guerrini, a longtime Spring Valley resident and founder of the town's Walleye Fishing Club. "That's what we're talking about here, the loss of the river. And, unfortunately, there are a lot of people who won't realize it until it's gone." ...
Mon, Feb 15, 2010 from Cleveland Plain Dealer: Oil and gas drilling's threat to our drinking water is local, national debate GRANGER TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- Sandy Mangan draws a small glass of water from her kitchen faucet. It stinks and small bubbles slip up the side of the cup.
She looks almost as if she is about to gulp down a nasty soft drink. But the Mangans don't drink their tainted tap water anymore. They haven't since Sept. 29, 2008 -- the day a Mahoning County company was drilling a gas well in a park near their State Road home.
They say their well went temporarily dry, then returned at lower pressure five days later -- murky, salty, bubbly and smelly. ...
Mon, Feb 15, 2010 from Telegraph.co.uk: Pollution creating acid oceans Researchers from the University of Bristol looked at how levels of acid in the ocean have changed over history.
They found that as ocean acidification accelerated it caused mass extinctions at the bottom of the food chain that could threaten whole ecosystems in the future. The rapid acidification today is being caused by the massive amount of carbon dioxide being pumped out by cars and factories every year, which is absorbed by the water. Since the industrial revolution acidity in the seas have increased by 30 per cent.... Dr Ridgwell said acidification is actually occurring much faster today than in the examples they looked at from the past therefore "exceeding the rate plankton can adapt" and theatening the basis of much of marine life. This would mean fish and other creatures further up the food chain that human beings eat may be affected as soon as the end of this century. ...
Plankton? We don't need plankton! We just need fish.
Sun, Feb 14, 2010 from TIME Magazine: How Global Warming will Change Ecosystems ...It's reasonable to expect, for example, that ecosystems will change as plants and animals respond to a rising thermometer -- but how do you measure the change of an ecosystem that may consist of hundreds or even thousands of species?... A team of scientists led by Stephen Thackeray, an expert on lake ecology at the United Kingdom's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has combed through observations of more than 700 species of fish, birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, plankton and a wide variety of plants across the U.K. taken between 1976 and 2005, and found a consistent trend: more than 80 percent of "biological events" -- including flowering of plants, ovulation among mammals and migration of birds -- are coming earlier today than they were in the 1970s.
On average, these events are occurring about 11 days earlier, and the pace of change has been accelerating with every decade.
...
If everything comes earlier and earlier how will I ever catch up?
Sun, Feb 14, 2010 from Health Day: Witnessing Uplifting Behavior May Spur Good Deeds Seeing someone else do a good deed appears to inspire you to do the same by making you feel uplifted, new research suggests.
In an experiment, researchers recruited volunteers who watched a "neutral" video clip of scenes from a nature documentary or a clip from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in which musicians thanked their mentors. The participants then wrote essays about what they watched, were paid for their time and asked to indicate whether they'd want to take part in another study.
Those who saw the Oprah Winfrey clip were more likely to volunteer to take part in another study.
The positive, uplifting emotion that makes people feel good and may inspire them to help others is known as "elevation," the researchers explained in a news release about the experiment from the Association for Psychological Science. ...
But what if it's only Oprah that has this power to inspire?
Sun, Feb 14, 2010 from Indianapolis Star: Cold air traps pollution, leading to city smog alert Officials are predicting a rare wintertime Knozone Air Quality Action Day for the high pollution levels expected in the Indianapolis area today.
Lingering cold temperatures combined with snow on the ground have formed a pollution pocket over the city that could pose a health risk -- especially to the young, elderly and asthma sufferers, said Kren Haley, director of the city's Office of Sustainability. "Our temperature has been pretty stagnant," Haley said, noting that the city's air quality monitors began seeing pollution levels spike in the past few days.
The smog from vehicle engines, factories and other sources typically rises into the jet stream and blows away. ...
There's something downright vengeful about our smog not blowing away!
Fri, Feb 12, 2010 from London Times: Tofu can harm environment more than meat, finds WWF study Becoming a vegetarian can do more harm to the environment than continuing to eat red meat, according to a study of the impacts of meat substitutes such as tofu.
The findings undermine claims by vegetarians that giving up meat automatically results in lower emissions and that less land is needed to produce food.
The study by Cranfield University, commissioned by the environmental group WWF, found that many meat substitutes were produced from soy, chickpeas and lentils that were grown overseas and imported into Britain.
It found that switching from beef and lamb reared in Britain to meat substitutes would result in more foreign land being cultivated and raise the risk of forests being destroyed to create farmland. Meat substitutes also tended to be highly processed and involved energy-intensive production methods. ...
Fri, Feb 12, 2010 from TIME Magazine: Glaciers: Changing at a Less Than Glacial Pace ...a new study published in the Feb. 12 issue of Science indicates that the balance of the world's ice may be shifting faster than scientists thought, which may have consequences in a warming world. A team of scientists traveled to the Spanish island of Mallorca, where they visited a coastal cave that has been submerged off and on by the Mediterranean Sea for hundreds of thousand of years, as glacial periods have waxed and waned. They dated the layers of the mineral calcite, which were deposited by the seawater in rings on the cave walls, as on a bathtub.... "It's fair to say that this means glaciers may change somewhat faster than we once inferred," says Jeffrey Dorale, a geoscientist at the University of Iowa and the lead author of the Science paper.
...
Maybe we need a different word for "glaciers." How about raciers?
Thu, Feb 11, 2010 from Guardian, via DesdemonaDespair: Climate changes desynchronizing biological cycles in Britain The analysis confirms that spring and summer are occurring earlier, but also shows that this trend appears to be accelerating. The shift could pose problems for animals, birds and fish that rely on springtime flowering of plants to supply food for their young.... The new study compiled 25,000 records of springtime trends for 726 species of plants, animals, plankton, insects, amphibians, birds and fish across land, sea and freshwater habitats. It analysed them for changes in the timing of lifecycle events, such as egg laying, first flights and flowering, a science known as phenology.
The results showed that more than 80 percent of trends between 1976 and 2005 indicated earlier seasonal events. On average, the study showed the seasonal timing of reproduction and population growth shifted forward by eleven days over the period, and that the change has accelerated recently. ...
If springtime comes early, won't Punxatawny Phil always see his shadow?
Wed, Feb 10, 2010 from NUVO Newsweekly: On Easter Island and Asian carp The story of the devastation of Easter Island is a compelling narrative, so next time the conversation wanes at a dinner party or in a bar, you can tell your friends all about it. This comes from author Jared Diamond (Collapse), whose recounting of the story first appeared in Discover Magazine in 1995.
This tale gets more metaphoric every day... There's something delicious (so to speak) about a society that would destroy itself through -- in part -- the transportation of these statues. Food and warmth is one thing, but transporting statues seems superfluous, a symptom of a diseased magical thinking, and thus, well, just plain stupid.
You'd think we've gotten smarter over the centuries, but this whole saga reminds me of the controversy surrounding the Asian carp and their inexorable march to the Great Lakes. ...
Tue, Feb 9, 2010 from BBC: Climate change will make world more 'fragrant' As CO2 levels increase and the world warms, land use, precipitation and the availability of water will also change.
In response to all these disruptions, plants will emit greater levels of fragrant chemicals called biogenic volatile organic compounds.
That will then alter how plants interact with one another and defend themselves against pests, according to a major scientific review.
According to the scientists leading the review, the world may already be becoming more fragrant, as plants have already begun emitting more smelly chemicals. ...
Plus, there'll be the additional smell of us crapping our pants!
Tue, Feb 9, 2010 from Washington Post: U.S. proposes new climate service The Obama administration proposed a new climate service on Monday that would provide Americans with predictions on how global warming will affect everything from drought to sea levels. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Service, modeled loosely on the 140-year-old National Weather Service, would provide forecasts to farmers, regional water managers and businesses affected by changing climate conditions... A Web portal launched Monday at www.climate.gov provides a single entry point to NOAA's climate information, data, products and services. ...
Mon, Feb 8, 2010 from Los Angeles Times: Industrial solvent linked to increased risk of Parkinson's disease Exposure to the industrial solvent trichloroethylene increases a person's risk of developing Parkinson's disease nearly sixfold, California researchers said Sunday. Animal studies had suggested a potential problem with the solvent, but the new study by Dr. Samuel Goldman of the Parkinson's Institute in Sunnyvale is the first to quantify the risk.
Parkinson's disease, caused by the death of cells in the brain that secrete the neurotransmitter dopamine, is characterized by severe tremors, rigidity in the limbs and other symptoms. It strikes an estimated 100,000 Americans each year and is ultimately fatal. Genetics play a role in susceptibility to Parkinson's, but it has also been linked to head trauma, pesticides and illicit drugs.
Trichloroethylene, or TCE, is a solvent that was once widely used in dry cleaning and to clean grease off metal parts, and it was once used as an anesthetic, especially during childbirth. ...
Used "during childbirth"? So the newborns would be spankin' clean?
Mon, Feb 8, 2010 from Associated Press: Even if you're careful, drugs can end up in water The federal government advises throwing most unused or expired medications into the trash instead of down the drain, but they can end up in the water anyway, a study from Maine suggests.
Tiny amounts of discarded drugs have been found in water at three landfills in the state, confirming suspicions that pharmaceuticals thrown into household trash are ending up in water that drains through waste, according to a survey by the state's environmental agency that's one of only a handful to have looked at the presence of drugs in landfills.
That landfill water - known as leachate - eventually ends up in rivers. Most of Maine doesn't draw its drinking water from rivers where the leachate ends up, but in other states that do, water supplies that come from rivers could potentially be contaminated.
The results of the survey are being made known as lawmakers in Maine consider a bill, among the first of its kind in the nation, that would require drug manufacturers to develop and pay for a program to collect unused prescription and over-the-counter drugs from residents and dispose of them. ...
Seems the only right course is to consume the unused or expired meds and store them — permanently — in your fatty tissues.
Mon, Feb 8, 2010 from Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine via ScienceDaily: Link Between Birth Defect Gastroschisis and the Agricultural Chemical Atrazine Found In a study to be presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting, in Chicago, researchers will unveil findings that demonstrate a link between the birth defect gastroschisis and the agricultural chemical atrazine. Gastroschisis is a type of inherited congenital abdominal wall defect in which the intestines, and sometimes other organs, develop outside the fetal abdomen through an opening in the abdominal wall. The incidence of gastroschisis is on the rise, increasing two to four times in the last 30 years....Of the 805 cases and 3616 controls in the study, gastroschisis occurred more frequently among infants whose mothers resided less than 25 km from the site of high surface water contamination with atrazine. ...
I wonder if you have to be pregnant to attend The Pregnancy Meeting?
Sun, Feb 7, 2010 from Chicago Tribune: Asian carp discussion moves to Washington A critical week in the battle against Asian carp kicks off Monday when Gov. Pat Quinn plans to meet with governors from Michigan and Wisconsin at the White House to hash out a plan to keep the invasive species out of the Great Lakes.
Some think the Obama administration will use the occasion to introduce its own Asian carp attack plan, using the resources of the Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies.
On Tuesday, lawmakers will debate proposed Asian carp legislation at a congressional hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
On Wednesday, attorneys general from Illinois and other Great Lakes states are invited to talk carp strategy with officials from the U.S. Department of Justice.
On Friday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will discuss carp control efforts and take recommendations from the public and stakeholders at a meeting in Chicago. ...
Ya gotta think the carp are having their own, high-level meetings, as well.
Sun, Feb 7, 2010 from NUVO Newsweekly: The Ohio Valley's toxic kids Robert Owen would rise up from his grave in righteous indignation if he knew what has happened to the kids in his adopted Indiana home of New Harmony. The 19th-century visionary established a utopian settlement there in 1825, to establish “a model community where education and social equality would flourish,” as the University of Southern Indiana’s Historic New Harmony Web page puts it.
But the type of education that has blossomed on the banks of the Wabash can’t possibly be what Owen envisioned.
At a disturbingly high rate, students categorized as needing special education services are directly downwind of mercury-emitting, major power plants that have gone essentially uncontrolled for decades. ...
Sat, Feb 6, 2010 from Canwest News Service: Arctic melting to cost $2.4 trillion U.S. by 2050: Study IQALUIT — The global cost of Arctic melting could reach $2.4 trillion U.S. by 2050 if current warming trends continue, according to a study released Friday.
"The cumulative cost of the melting Arctic in the next 40 years is equivalent to the annual gross domestic products of Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom combined," according to the authors of the study prepared for the Pew Environment Group...
The study notes that the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet.
According to the findings, Arctic melting this year alone will be "equal to 40 per cent of all U.S. industrial emission this year or (similar to) bringing on line more than 500 large coal-burning power plants"... ...
Sat, Feb 6, 2010 from London Daily Telegraph: China threatens world health by unleashing waves of superbugs China's reckless use of antibiotics in the health system and agricultural production is unleashing an explosion of drug resistant superbugs that endanger global health, according to leading scientists. Chinese doctors routinely hand out multiple doses of antibiotics for simple maladies like the sore throats and the country's farmers excessive dependence on the drugs has tainted the food chain.
Studies in China show a "frightening" increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also know as MRSA. There are warnings that new strains of antibiotic-resistant bugs will spread quickly through international air travel and internation[al] food sourcing. ...
Fri, Feb 5, 2010 from Science News: EPA reviews hints of weed killer's fetal risks Last October, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it was reopening what the pesticide industry had hoped was a closed chapter on allegations of a popular herbicide’s toxicity. The agency will be convening meetings of its Science Advisory Panel on pesticides throughout 2010 to probe concerns about the safety of atrazine, a weed killer on which most American corn growers rely.
The first meeting of these outside experts started Tuesday. And although a large number of studies have indicated that atrazine can perturb hormones in animals and human cells — and might even pose a possible risk of cancer amongst heavily exposed people, these outcomes were not the focus of EPA’s review Tuesday. Risks to babies were.
During the SAP’s morning session, Aaron Niman, an EPA scientist, reviewed five recent studies linking atrazine to birth defects and other risks in newborns. ...
Thu, Feb 4, 2010 from Environmental Protection: Ecologists Create a More Precise Way to Measure Human Impacts Ecologists from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Baylor University in Texas have developed a new method for measuring the impact of human-caused environmental degradation on biodiversity that is significantly more precise than current methods and has revealed a dramatically lower ecological "tipping point" at which species are threatened.... Baker said the precision of their new method is significantly greater than methods that have been widely used for the past 40 years.
For example, a decade-old analysis widely cited by environmental professionals and policymakers suggests that it takes up to 15 percent of impervious surface (meaning roads, roofs, or parking lots) or about 20 to 30 percent developed land in a given area before local water systems no longer sustain normal aquatic life. Baker and King's new method demonstrates that aquatic life actually shows significant loss of biodiversity with only 1 to 3 percent developed land in a watershed. ...
"Tipping points" presume that we're currently balanced.
Thu, Feb 4, 2010 from Los Angeles Times: Obama urges greater use of biofuels The Obama administration gave a boost to the corn and coal industries Wednesday, announcing a series of moves to accelerate biofuel use and deploy so-called clean-coal technology on power plants.
Unveiling the actions in a meeting with energy-state governors at the White House, President Obama said the steps would create jobs in rural areas, reduce foreign energy dependence and curb the emissions that scientists blame for global warming... Most notably, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made final a regulation that could give corn ethanol a much larger share of the renewable-fuel market mandated by Congress in 2007. ...
Wed, Feb 3, 2010 from Telegraph.co.uk: Giant squid invade California Giant squid weighing up to 60 pounds (27 kilograms) have swum into waters off Newport Beach and are being caught by sport fishermen by the hundreds.
The squid were noticed last week and fishermen started booking twilight fishing trips to catch them the huge creatures.... The Humboldt squid is also called the jumbo squid or jumbo flying squid and squirts ink to protect itself.
They can grow up to 100 pounds in weight and six feet long and follow food sources.... But the giant squid is not unknown off the coast of America.
In September a record-breaking 19ft-long squid, weighing 103 pounds, was caught off the Gulf of Mexico. ...
If they follow food sources... and this is unprecedented... then what's happening with their normal food sources?
Wed, Feb 3, 2010 from Associated Press: UN says nations' greenhouse gas pledges too little The reduction goals announced by the nations responsible for the bulk of the world's greenhouse gas emissions are likely to fall short of what many scientists say is needed to limit the disastrous effects of climate change, a U.N. official said Monday... "It is likely, according to a number of analysts, that if we add up all those figures that were being discussed around Copenhagen, if they're all implemented, it will still be quite difficult to reach the 2 degrees," Pasztor told The Associated Press.
"That is the bottom line, but you can look at it negatively and positively. The negative part is that it's not good enough," he said. "The positive side is that for the first time, we have a goal, a clear goal that we're all working toward, and we know what the commitments are. ... Before we would just talk." ...
Tue, Feb 2, 2010 from BBC: Brazil grants environmental licence for Belo Monte dam Brazil's government has granted an environmental licence for the construction of a controversial hydro-electric dam in the Amazon rainforest.
Environmental groups say the Belo Monte dam will cause devastation in a large area of the rainforest and threaten the survival of indigenous groups.
However, the government says whoever is awarded the project will have to pay $800m to protect the environment... However, critics say diverting the flow of the Xingu river will still lead to devastation in a large area of the rainforest and damage fish stocks.
They say the lives of up to 40,000 people could be affected as 500 sq km of land would be flooded. ...
Shouldn't the river itself have something to say about this?
Mon, Feb 1, 2010 from London Guardian: Global deal on climate change in 2010 'all but impossible' A global deal to tackle climate change is all but impossible in 2010, leaving the scale and pace of action to slow global warming in coming decades uncertain, according to senior figures across the world involved in the negotiations.
"The forces trying to tackle climate change are in disarray, wandering in small groups around the battlefield like a beaten army," said a senior British diplomat.
An important factor cited is an impasse within the UN organisation charged with delivering a global deal, which today will start assessing the pledges made by individual countries by a deadline that passed last night. ...
Sun, Jan 31, 2010 from Washington Post: Tough choices follow in wake of invasive species Which is worse? Closing two locks on a waterway that's used to ship millions of dollars' worth of goods from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi basin? Or allowing a voracious Asian carp to deplete the food supply of native fish sustaining a Midwestern fishing industry that nets $7 billion a year?
And how do you put a price tag on the damage caused by the Burmese python and other constrictor snakes that are strangling the precious ecology of the Everglades?
Invasive species, long the cause of environmental hand-wringing, have been raising more unwelcome questions recently, as the expense of eliminating them is weighed against the mounting liability of leaving them be. ...
Why don't we just sit back, relax, and let these deck chairs on the Titanic re-arrange themselves?
Sun, Jan 31, 2010 from Fort Myers News-Press: Much of Collier, Lee counties put at risk by rising sea For the first time, three big government agencies in South Florida are issuing a red alert on global warming.
They all acknowledge that global warming is happening and may be accelerating, that the climate is changing and the sea is rising because of it.
Now they want to do something about it, with each issuing new climate change directives in the last six months.... This means that any remaining debate, complacency or indecision government agencies once had about the threat of global warming has given way to urgency. ...
Sun, Jan 31, 2010 from Telegraph.com: Row threatens plan to save bees The British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA), the country's largest beekeeping body, believes that money put aside for a 2.8 million Whitehall initiative to protect the health of honeybees is being misspent.
The organisation has now walked out of the management board set up to run the Healthy Bees strategy, which is aimed at reversing the decline in honeybees in Britain.... The report says that without them, many crops would need to be pollinated by hand, an exercise that could cost 1.5 billion pounds a year.
If such action was not taken, farm income could slump by 13 per cent, costing the economy more than 440 million pounds.
The latest research has revealed that managed honeybee populations in England have declined by 54 per cent in the past 20 years while numbers of wild bees such as bumblebees have also plummeted. ...
Sat, Jan 30, 2010 from Houston Chronicle: Officials fear another whooping crane die-off The world's last remaining natural flock of endangered whooping cranes, which suffered a record number of deaths last year, will probably see another die-off because of scarce food supplies at its Texas nesting grounds this winter, wildlife managers said.
The flock lost 23 birds in the 2008-2009 winter season, in part because its main source of sustenance, the blue crab, all but vanished from drought-parched southern Texas. The rains eventually came, but they were too late to produce healthy amounts of blue crabs for this winter.
"We're looking at a pretty slender year, prey-wise, and it's going to make the cranes work harder to get food," said Allan Strand, field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in South Texas. "I feel that we're probably going to have a die-off. It's conceivable that we could have a significant die-off."... According to the most recent aerial survey, there are an estimated 263 birds in the Texas flock. The survey, conducted last week, found that one chick has already died and another was missing. ...
Fri, Jan 29, 2010 from Detroit Free Press: Fatal fish virus now in all of the Great Lakes A fatal fish virus has been detected in Lake Superior for the first time, meaning it has spread to all the Great Lakes, Cornell University researchers said Wednesday. Scientists said they recently detected the viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS, while testing fish in the largest of the Great Lakes.
VHS has been identified in 28 freshwater fish species within the Great Lakes watershed since 2005, including sport and commercial varieties such as walleye, muskellunge and whitefish. It causes bleeding, bloated abdomens and bulging eyes in fish before killing them.
Although not dangerous for humans, the virus has caused large fish kills in Lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron. It also has turned up in Lake Michigan. ...
Fri, Jan 29, 2010 from Louisville Courier-Journal: Kentucky greenhouse-emission growth is worst in nation, panel told Kentucky's greenhouse gas emissions are increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the nation, according to a draft inventory prepared for state environment officials. The Center for Climate Strategies found greenhouse gases -- mainly carbon dioxide -- rose 33 percent from 1990 to 2005, compared to 16 percent for the nation. Left unchecked, emissions are projected to increase to 62 percent above 1990 levels by 2030... "it's an important issue, said Len Peters, secretary of the state's Energy and Environment Cabinet, because many thousands of jobs are at stake in the state's coal, automotive, aluminum and steel industries if electricity rates go too high.
"As we go forward, we have to link energy, the economy and the environment together," he said. ...
Thu, Jan 28, 2010 from China Daily: China sea levels reach record high The sea level in China late last year hit a record high for the past three decades, threatening the safety of thousands of people in the coastal areas, the national ocean agency said yesterday.
The average rise in sea level for the past three decades occurred at a rate of 2.6 mm a year, much higher than the average rate of 1.7 mm annually across the world, a report on the sea-level rise in China for 2009 released by the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) showed.
"Last year, the sea level was 8 mm higher than 2008 with the rise in sea level in Hainan Province reaching 113 mm, the highest across the country," Lin Shanqing, director of forecast and disaster relief department of the SOA, said yesterday. ...
Wed, Jan 27, 2010 from NUVO Newsweekly: Remembering the White River fishkill On Dec. 13, 1999, a white wall of foam came pouring out of the Anderson, Indiana, Wastewater Treatment Plant. A few days later, dead fish began to be discovered downriver, and by Christmas some 100,000 fish were estimated to be dead.
Eventually, it was understood that aquatic life for 57 miles along the White River had been profoundly harmed, either completely killed or partially killed, including the death of 4.6 million fish.
The source of the toxins: a discharge from Anderson-based Guide Corp., a factory that made automobile headlights.... Money was dispensed, remediation practices were put in place, and the White River was, ostensibly, restored.
But it wasn't. I know because the White River is in my backyard. ...
Mon, Jan 25, 2010 from London Independent: Campaign to save tropical forests failed by food giants Western food manufacturers are buying so little sustainable palm oil that the system set up to limit damage to tropical forests caused by the world's cheapest vegetable oil is in danger of collapse. Palm-oil producers say the industry may quit the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) because so few firms are financially backing the scheme.
Houshold products giant Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) founded the RSPO seven years ago, to encourage producers of the oil, used in products such as biscuits and margarine, to minimise forest destruction, greenhouse gas emissions and loss of endangered wildlife, such as tigers and orangutans. Palm oil is in hundreds of branded foods such as Kit Kat and Hovis and household products such as Dove soap and Persil washing powder.
The first certified RSPO supplies arrived in Europe in November 2008, yet only 27 per cent of present supply has so been sold, leading to claims of hypocrisy among Western buyers. ...
That roundtable is starting to look pretty square.
Mon, Jan 25, 2010 from Environmental Health News: Younger mothers' breast milk has highest levels of flame retardants A study of breast milk samples from more than 300 women in North Carolina finds flame retardants contaminate the milk from almost three-quarters of the woman in the study. Women older than 35 had the lowest levels of PBDEs in their milk. The highest levels were measured in breast milk from women aged 25 to 29, followed by women younger than 25 years old.
The results suggest that younger mothers may have higher exposure to these flame retardant chemicals through their environment or lifestyles.
PBDEs are chemicals used in electronics, furniture, carpeting and textiles to reduce the risk of fire. In rats, early life exposures to PBDE has been associated with altered thyroid hormone function, hyperactivity and poorer learning and memory. Human health effects are not so well understood.
Most Americans have detectable levels of PBDEs in their blood. Dust and food may be the biggest sources for people. Breast fed babies are exposed through breast milk, however, experts agree that breastfeeding also provides important nutritional and immune benefits for the infant. ...
I can eat less food... but I don't think I can give up my beloved dust!
Sun, Jan 24, 2010 from Agence France-Presse: Indians keep faith with Ganges despite pollution For India's devout Hindus, the sacred River Ganges is always clean and always pure -- even if its waters are a toxic stew of human sewage, discarded garbage and factory waste.
The belief that the Ganges washes away sin entices millions of Hindus into the river each year, and huge crowds of pilgrims are currently passing through the town of Haridwar for the three-month Kumbh Mela bathing festival.
But concern over pollution along the length of the 2,500 kilometre (1,500 mile) river is growing, and the city of Kanpur -- 800 kilometres downstream of Haridwar -- is the site of one of the worst stretches of all... Worshippers like Ram Sharma, who regularly wades in the water for an early morning bath with only a cloth tied around his waist, are proof that for many Indians faith outweighs science.
"How can you call this water dirty?" asked Sharma incredulously.
"For us it is holy water," he said as he dipped his cupped hands in the river and took a slurp. ...
Just like me in Indiana, breathing its sacred, coal-plant polluted air... every day.
Sun, Jan 24, 2010 from San Francisco Chronicle: Despite downpour, drought still with us It might seem odd to talk about a drought after a weeklong series of thundering storms drenched the Bay Area and heaped snow on the Sierra, but California's water lords know the state's lingering thirst cannot be quenched by one showy display of wet weather. The recent downpours have temporarily brought the state back from the dusty brink, but officials with the California Department of Water Resources claim much more rain and snow will have to fall if the Golden State is going to pull out of its drought... Regardless of how things go this winter, water districts across Central and Northern California will not be resting easy. If not the vagaries of the weather or climate change, they have to worry about crumbling infrastructure and environmental disputes limiting water pumping through the critical Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
...
Sat, Jan 23, 2010 from Lake County Record-Bee: Growing concerns: Advisory board broaches the issue of pot on public land The unregulated land use practice of marijuana grows on public property creates a host of environmental problems. Greg Guisti, Lake County Fish and Wildlife Advisory Committee chair compares the task of tackling the subject with "wrestling an octopus."
Lake County is one of the leading counties in the state in regard to illegal growing of marijuana on public lands. That was brought home to approximately 30 area citizens who attended a meeting of the Lake County Fish and Wildlife Advisory meeting on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Guisti said that these are the first public meetings he has heard that address the growing of cannabis on public lands.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Ranger Lee Johnson told the crowd that illegal marijuana gardens in the Mendocino National Forest are a major problem because they decimate fish, wildlife and the environment. ...
Like "wrestling an octopus"? He musta been high when he thought of that.
Sat, Jan 23, 2010 from BBC (UK): Governments 'must tackle' roots of nature crisis Governments must tackle the underlying causes of biodiversity loss if they are to stem the rate at which ecosystems and species are disappearing.
That was one of the conclusions of an inter-governmental workshop in London held in preparation for October's UN biodiversity summit in Nagoya, Japan.
Delegates agreed that protecting nature would bring economic benefits to nations and their citizens.... "We have a chance of a much tougher target for 2020 than we had for 2010, which would be about having no net biodiversity loss," he said.
"I think the key thing is whether we'll see over the next few years concerted action on the drivers of biodiversity loss -- if we don't see that in the next few years, then we certainly won't see good results by 2020." ...
Sat, Jan 23, 2010 from Fast Company: Walmart's Sustainability Consortium Developing Green Label for Electronics Last year, Walmart announced that it was developing a Sustainability Index for every product on its shelves. At the same time, the retailer revealed that it was providing seed funding to the Sustainability Consortium, a group of NGOs, government organizations, retailers, and suppliers to help develop the lifecycle database for its products. And now the consortium has embarked on its first big project: a green standard for electronics.
Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics, Energy Star, and the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) label are all decent starting points for determining the sustainability of different gadgets, but the consortium wants to make an all-encompassing green label that takes into account everything from labor conditions to end-of-life disposal. The label will also take into account criteria used by other standards, including EPEAT and Energy Star.
The Sustainability Consortium is working quickly with partners including Best Buy, HP, Walmart, and Dell to research and publish lifecycle assessments for all types of electronics, starting with computers and monitors. Data from the first round of research will be released later this year. ...
If the label could only say how quickly obsolete this crap will be.
Fri, Jan 22, 2010 from Chambersburg PublicOpinion: Bats dying from white nose syndrome; means trouble for farmers Biologist Jim Hart said a devastated bat population will cost farmers and impact water quality.
Bats sometimes eat their own weight in insects in a single day. That's about 2,000 mosquito-sized bugs.
"They are worth their weight in gold," said Hart, a mammalogist with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. "They take an enormous toll on agricultural pests. If they all disappear, that's going to be a pretty bad scenario."
Birds won't immediately eat all of the extra bugs, according to Hart. Populations of farm pests will increase quickly and farmers will respond by applying more pesticides, some of which will find their way to streams.... Wildlife biologists estimate that the disorder has killed 750,000 bats in the Northeast since it was first discovered in 2006 in New York. An estimated one million bats overwinter in hundreds of hibernacula across Pennsylvania.
Science is ill-prepared for the crisis.
"In general, we don't know enough about normal bats to know what's different in sick bats," Reeder said....
"The loss of one species is a big deal," Hart said. "The loss of a whole suite of species is a catastrophe. It scares biologists."
They joke about taking up a career that has a future, like computer science. ...
Wed, Jan 20, 2010 from Telegraph.co.uk: Bee numbers in England fell by more than half over the last 20 years The University of Reading research found there was a 54 per cent decline in managed honey bee populations in England between 1985 and 2005 compared to an average of 20 per cent across Europe.
It comes as separate research in France suggested the reason bee numbers are falling is because of intensive agriculture that has led to a fall in the number of wild flowers and plants.... Dr Potts, who will be speaking on the subject in front of MPs this week, blamed the increased use of pesticides, bee disease such as the varroa mite and intensive agriculture.
Meanwhile, in a separate study, the National Institute of Agronomic Research in Avignon proved for the first time that a more diverse diet of different kinds of pollen can boost bee immunity.
This suggests that the monoculture used in today's intensive farming techniques may be contributing to the decline of the honey bee. ...
I know! Let's spray bee-vitamins to boost their bee-immune systems!
Mon, Jan 18, 2010 from The Herald Scotland: Tofu is bad for the environment, finds food study Vegetarians have claimed for years that their meat-shy ways are helping save the world but a new study has found that tofu may actually be worse for the environment than beef.
In a stark report on the environmental impact of the global food industry, WWF has warned that replacing meat with "highly refined" substitutes such as Quorn could increase the area of farmland needed to feed the UK.
Instead, the charity has said, a wide range of measures will be required to bring harmful emissions from agriculture down to a safe level. In the new report, released today, researchers said: "A broad-based switch to plant-based products through increasing the intake of cereals and vegetables is more sustainable." ...
Mon, Jan 18, 2010 from London Guardian: Shell faces shareholder revolt over Canadian tar sands project Shell chief executive Peter Voser will be forced to defend the company's controversial investment in Canada's tar sands at his first annual general meeting, after calls from shareholders that the project be put under further scrutiny.
A coalition of institutional investors has forced a resolution onto the agenda calling for the Anglo-Dutch group's audit committee to undertake a special review of the risks attached to the carbon-heavy oil production at Athabasca in Alberta.
Co-operative Asset Management and 141 other institutional and individual shareholders raise "concerns for the long-term success of the company arising from the risks associated with oil sands." ...
Mon, Jan 18, 2010 from BBC (UK): Biodiversity nears 'point of no return' Much greater concerted effort is needed to stop the plunder of our ecosystems.... Overfishing has reduced blue fin tuna numbers to 18 percent of what they were in the mid-1970s.
The burning of Indonesia's peat lands and forests for palm oil plantations generates 1.8bn tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, and demand is predicted to double by 2020 compared to 2000.
More than seven million hectares are lost worldwide to deforestation every single year.
The restoration of our ecosystems must be seen as a sensible and cost-effective investment in this planet's economic survival and growth. ...
Come on -- how many species do we really need, anyway?
Mon, Jan 18, 2010 from UCSD, via EurekAlert: Wilder weather exerts a stronger influence on biodiversity than steadily changing conditions Climate scientists predict more frequent storms, droughts, floods and heat waves as the Earth warms. Although extreme weather would seem to challenge ecosystems, the effect of fluctuating conditions on biodiversity actually could go either way. Species able to tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures, for example, may be eliminated, but instability in the environment can also prevent dominant species from squeezing out competitors.... "It may depend on the predictability of the environment. If you have a lot of violent changes through time, species may not be able to program their life cycles to be active when conditions are right. They need the ability to read the cues, to hatch out at the right time," Shurin said. "If the environment is very unpredictable, that may be bad for diversity, because many species just won't be able to match their lifecycles to that." ...
Can't they just evolve for predictable unpredictability?
Sun, Jan 17, 2010 from The Tennessean: NASA public relations flap follows official to TVA TVA's new spokesman -- brought in to help rehab its credibility after the coal ash disaster -- was enmeshed at his previous job at NASA in a Bush administration controversy in which climate change scientists said they were censored. David Mould's name is sprinkled throughout a National Aeronautics and Space Administration inspector general's 2008 investigation report that says the agency's public affairs headquarters "managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science." ...
Spokespeople who dissemble are a type of toxic waste.
Sun, Jan 17, 2010 from The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio lets power plants, factories ignore federal mercury limits Since 2004, the state has allowed 42 treatment facilities, power plants and factories to ignore federal limits on dumping mercury into lakes, rivers and streams.
This year, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is considering more than 30 new requests for variances from companies that argue that the cost of keeping mercury out of the water far exceeds any benefits to wildlife and human health.
Some argue that the technology needed to meet the limits set in 1995 does not exist.
"There is no treatment technology available to get to these low levels," said Pat Hemlepp, a spokesman for Columbus-based American Electric Power.
But critics say governments are doing little, if anything, to make businesses develop cheap, reliable filters to remove mercury. ...
Sat, Jan 16, 2010 from NUVO Newsweekly: CAFOs in court Randolph County family farmers Judy and Allen Hutchison are finally getting their day in court. The couple's home is surrounded by more than 75,000 hogs and cows housed on what are called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), a.k.a. "factory farms."
They can see the largest CAFO manure lagoon in the county from their driveway, a manmade, uncovered, 7.2-acre pond that holds roughly 20 million gallons of liquid animal waste. Their clothes frequently smell like manure when they come out of the dryer.
The Hutchisons are among more than a dozen East-Central Indiana citizens who have sued several in- and out-of-state CAFO operators for more than just the daily indignities of life near factory farms, like the odors and the irrepressible flies.
The lawsuits also allege the families have suffered from a number of physical maladies as a result, including skin irritations, nausea, headaches, breathing difficulties, tightness of the chest, sinus infection, stress and burning eyes, noses and throats. ...
Fri, Jan 15, 2010 from London Independent: Voodoo wasps that could save the world They are so small that most people have never even seen them, yet "voodoo wasps" are about to be recruited big time in the war on agricultural pests as part of the wider effort to boost food production in the 21st century.
The wasps are only 1 or 2 millimetres long fully-grown but they have an ability to paralyse and destroy other insects, including many of the most destructive crop pests, by delivering a zombie-inducing venom in their sting... The researchers have decoded the full genomes of three species of parasitic wasp, which could lead to the development of powerful new ways of deploying these tiny insects against the vast range of pests that destroy billions of tonnes of valuable crops each year. ...
Fri, Jan 15, 2010 from Wall Street Journal: The Vexing Bugs in the Global Trading System ... As global trade has mounted, more goods are coming in from overseas, sometimes bringing with them the accidental cargo of destructive bugs and plants. An estimated 500 million plants are imported to the U.S. each year, and shipments through one plant inspection station doubled to 52,540 between 2004 and 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Today, about 30 new invasive insects are discovered annually in the U.S., up sharply over the last decade, the USDA says. The yearly economic impact of invasive species in the U.S. is estimated at $133.6 billion, according to a study in Agricultural and Resource Economics Review in 2006. That includes the cost of control and prevention such as pesticides, inspection programs at ports and damage to crops. ...
Fri, Jan 15, 2010 from London Independent: 42 tons of poison to purge island of rats Lord Howe, an idyllic island off the Australian mainland, carefully conserves its natural treasures. The World Heritage-listed chunk of rock has strict quarantine laws, and limits the number of tourists who may visit. But its unique birds, insects and plants are under threat from an implacable foe: the black rat. Accidentally introduced in 1918 when a ship ran aground, rats are blamed for the extinction of five endemic bird species.
Wildlife experts warn that 13 other native birds, two reptiles, five plants and numerous invertebrates are at risk. Rats are also a threat to the vital tourism industry, which relies on the island's pristine image.... Stephen Wills, chief executive of the Lord Howe Board, which administers the island as part of New South Wales, agrees that the plan -- which involves dropping nearly 42 tons of poison-laced bait from helicopters -- is radical. But there is no other option, he believes. ...
Thu, Jan 14, 2010 from PhillyBurbs.com: Scientist: Bucks County's bats will be dead by the spring White-Nose Syndrome, a mysterious disease that is killing off bat populations up and down the Northeast, has finally hit the Durham bat mine.
Although state scientists are trying a new, experimental treatment for the disease, commission biologist Greg Turner says it's most likely too late and too little to save the 8,000 to 10,000 little brown bats and other species of bats, which hibernate deep inside an abandoned iron mine tucked into a hillside in Durham.
Reports that bats across the Delaware River, in New Jersey, were being affected, brought game commission officials last week to the Durham mine, the second-largest hibernaculum in Pennsylvania.
"Right now, the Durham mine is affected," said Turner, an endangered mammal specialist. "About two-thirds of the bats we had handled all had the fungus on them already."
He estimates that 80 to 90 percent of Durham's bats will be dead by April, the month when healthy bats emerge from hibernation and begin mating season. ...
Tue, Jan 12, 2010 from UC Davis, via EurekAlert: Butterflies reeling from impacts of climate and development "Butterflies are not only charismatic to the public, but also widely used as indicators of the health of the environment worldwide," said Shapiro, a professor of evolution and ecology. "We found many lowland species are being hit hard by the combination of warmer temperatures and habitat loss."
The results are drawn from Shapiro's 35-year database of butterfly observations made twice monthly at 10 sites in north-central California from sea level to tree line.... "... it came as a shock to discover that they were being hit even harder than the species that conservationists are used to thinking about.
... Some of the 'weedy' species have been touted as great success stories, in which native butterflies had successfully adapted to the changed conditions created by European colonization of California. That was the case for many decades, but habitat loss has apparently caught up with them now." ...
What's that line? "When a butterfly doesn't flap its wings in California, a small rain doesn't fall in Kenya"...? Something like that.
Sun, Jan 10, 2010 from London Independent: Who will pay for Amazon's 'Chernobyl'? A film released this week in Britain recounts the 16-year battle by Ecuadorians for damages against Chevron for oil pollution... the people of Lago Agrio and its surrounding area have been fighting back. Sixteen years ago, 30,000 Ecuadorians began legal action against the US oil company -- now owned by Chevron -- they hold responsible. Early this year, from the town's tiny courtroom, a lone judge will deliver a verdict on their class-action case. If the judge rules in favour of the Ecuadorians, Chevron could face damages of $27.3bn (£17bn), making it the biggest environmental lawsuit in history.
This week, while both sides await the verdict, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the case goes on release in Britain. Called Crude, it is directed by Joe Berlinger, whose movie Metallica: Some Kind of Monster charted the band's travails. ...
Now you 'mericans don't need worry your pretty little heads 'bout this.
Sun, Jan 10, 2010 from Lincoln Journal Star: Atrazine getting new scrutiny from EPA Nebraska is corn country.
It's also atrazine country.
That means thousands of corn producers are keeping a watchful eye on a new round of EPA scrutiny of one of their cheapest and most effective weed-killing chemicals. News of what's described as a comprehensive evaluation emerged a few weeks ago. As soon as February, the federal environmental regulator expects to seek a scientific peer review of its proposed plan for adding new health studies into its atrazine risk assessment.
Pulling the product off the market is always an option. Atrazine already is banned in Europe.... [Tyrone Hayes, a biologist at the University of California-Berkeley] has been studying mutating effects of atrazine on amphibians, which he said include male frogs developing female organs. He also cited EPA studies that show atrazine's impact as "an endocrine disrupter" that lowers fertility and inhibits puberty in lab rats. ...
By buying into this system, we essentially are screwing ourselves!
Sat, Jan 9, 2010 from Los Angeles Times: Maldives: Paradise threatened? ...A string of coral islands lying 3 degrees above the equator in the Indian Ocean and 477 miles west of Sri Lanka, the Maldives has 1,190 islands. Only 200 of the islands are inhabited, home to about 390,000 Maldivians. But here's the doomsday foreshadowing: The largest of these 1,190 islands is 2 miles long, and most are smaller than a football field. The highest point in all the islands is less than 8 feet. A basketball hoop is 2 feet taller than the whole country... U.N. pundits say that oceans could rise as much as 2 feet in the next 90 years. Imagine what that might do to an island the size of a football field. ...
Sat, Jan 9, 2010 from Indianapolis Star: State Fair to celebrate Indiana's hogs This year's Indiana State Fair will celebrate the state's $3 billion hog industry by putting hogs and pork products center stage during the 17-day fair.
A series of events, exhibits and displays will toast Indiana's 3,000 hog farming families during the fair's "Year of Pigs" tribute. Indiana Pork Producers executive director Mike Platt says the Aug. 6-22 fair will highlight the large role the hog industry plays in the state's economy.
Last year, Indiana hog farmers raised some 8 million pigs. ...
Displays include a booth that emits manure and urine smells!
Fri, Jan 8, 2010 from McClatchy Newspapers: After review of mountaintop mining, scientists urge ending it Scientific evidence that mountaintop-removal coal mining destroys streams and threatens human health is so strong the government should stop granting new permits for it, a group of 12 environmental scientists report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
The consequences of this mining in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southwestern Virginia are "pervasive and irreversible," the article finds. Companies are required by law to take steps to reduce the damages, but their efforts don't compensate for lost streams nor do they prevent lasting water pollution, it says... "The reason we're willing to make a policy recommendation is that the evidence is so clear-cut" said Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland, the lead author of the Science study and a specialist on the ecology of streams. ...
Fri, Jan 8, 2010 from Nature: Oceans release DDT from decades ago A computer simulation of the environmental fate of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) has revealed that substantial quantities of the pesticide are still being released from the world's oceans, despite widespread restrictions on its use during the 1970s. The calculations show that although remaining DDT use today tends to be in the southern hemisphere, its concentrations are actually growing in the northern hemisphere as it moves through the world's oceans and atmosphere.
An estimated 1.5 million tonnes of DDT were used worldwide between the 1940s and 1970s, both as an agricultural insecticide and to control disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes – the chemical was a key weapon in the war against malaria, for example. But DDT is toxic to a wide range of aquatic life, and its eggshell-thinning effects also had a drastic impact on many bird species. ...
Thu, Jan 7, 2010 from Highland News (UK): Seabird decline is a disturbing trend In many cases it seems there were so many birds that nothing could possibly adversely affect their numbers or breeding success. The drastic declines have been put down to a number of reasons, each with their supporters.
The latest is the global warning issue which is in vogue these days. Amongst the many spin-offs, it has been blamed for the absence of sand eels in any numbers. The catastrophe this has caused with puffin chicks, amongst others, starving to death has been one of the more dramatic turn of events.
However, there have been, and are, others with whole colonies of kittiwakes unable to produce any young to the flying stage and in many cases not even laying any eggs at all.
The role of the piratical great skuas that have actually increased in numbers for several years also came to a head. These large, strong seabirds used to force other birds to give up their food but in recent years they have started eating the young of other birds, the adults and even the young of their own species. The increase in grey seals has also been highlighted by many, as has the invasion of rats to many colonies. Of course, nobody would dream of blaming us for over-fishing, despite it being the scandal of all time. ...
Seabirds may just need to constrain their expectations.
Thu, Jan 7, 2010 from Santa Monica Daily Press: Researchers set sail to study plastic Cummins and Eriksen will be skimming the ocean's surface with a plankton net to collect plastic and fish that surface at night to forage for food. Past expeditions have found fish with plastic in their stomachs. Plastics act as magnets for toxic chemicals like PCB. Smaller fish consume plastics. Larger fish like tuna and mahi-mahi then eat those smaller fish, ingesting the toxins, which could ultimately harm humans.
"We want to see if there are large concentrations of these chemicals in our food chain, ending up on our dinner plates," she said.
Their journey will involve several voyages. The first will launch from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and take them across the Sargasso Sea -- an elongated region in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean roughly 700 miles by 2,000 miles -- to the Azores.... "It will be a honeymoon of sorts," Cummins said. "We got married recently in the middle of a garbage patch so it seemed fitting to make this our honeymoon."
...
Wed, Jan 6, 2010 from Science News: FOR KIDS: Watching out for vultures What's good for one may not be good for all, especially in the animal kingdom. Consider the case of ketoprofen. Ketoprofen is a drug that, like ibuprofen, provides pain relief and reduces swelling. In India, some farmers give ketoprofen to their cattle and other animals for pain relief.
But giving ketoprofen to cattle may ultimately poison vultures, according to a recent study. Vultures are giant, flying scavengers that eat the carcasses of dead animals, including cattle. For farmers, vultures act like nature's janitors. The birds' feasts mean that farmers don't have to figure out how to dispose of the bodies of dead animals. And vultures eat fast: Dozens of birds could take care of a dead animal in 20 minutes.
When a vulture eats a dead animal, however, it may also end up eating medications that were given to the animal. In the case of ketoprofen, this is a big problem, according to a study by Richard Cuthbert and his fellow researchers. Cuthbert is a zoologist, or a scientist who studies animals, in England. He recently led a team of scientists from around the world in a study of how ketoprofen affects vultures. He and his team found that even small amounts of the drug can kill a vulture. ...
Hey kids, the sooner you figure out how stupid adults can be, the better!
Wed, Jan 6, 2010 from San Francisco Chronicle: Vast protected area proposed for leatherbacks The battle to save Pacific leatherback turtles from extinction prompted federal biologists Tuesday to propose designating 70,000 square miles of ocean along the West Coast as critical habitat for the giant reptiles. The designation by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration would mark the first time critical habitat has ever been established in the open ocean for the endangered leatherbacks, which swim 6,000 miles every year to eat jellyfish outside the Golden Gate. If approved, the regulations would restrict projects that harm the turtles or their food. The government would be required to review and, if necessary, regulate agricultural waste, pollution, oil spills, power plants, oil drilling, storm water runoff and liquid natural gas projects along the California coast between Long Beach and Mendocino County and off the Oregon and Washington coasts.
...
Yeah, if it weren't for the turtles why even worry about waste, pollution, oil spills, etc...
Wed, Jan 6, 2010 from Washington Monthly: The Environmental Consequences of War ...With the United States now pondering a postwar future in Iraq and Afghanistan, some policymakers will wind up examining whether -- or how --America might pay for any damage done to the Afghans' and Iraqis' environment and health. Already, for instance, doctors in Iraq are reporting higher-than-normal levels of cancer and birth defects in cities like Fallujah where the fighting was heaviest. So defense planners are looking to the legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam for clues. Yet history shows that America's use of Agent Orange was hardly the first instance in which a country has ignored the environmental and health impacts of its wartime strategies. Indeed, almost without exception, countries do not pay for these legacies, for a number of reasons: the cost of cleanup is prohibitive; policymakers worry about the impact of paying on national security; and international law cannot hold a polluter accountable. ...
Seems our primary war is the one against the environment itself.
Tue, Jan 5, 2010 from Inter Press Service: BIODIVERSITY: Invasive Species Multiply in U.S. Waterways The U.N. says some experts put the rate at which species are disappearing at 1,000 times the natural rate, and invasive species -- which consume the food or habitat of native species, or the native species themselves -- are one factor contributing to this acceleration. Climate change is another major factor.
"Often it will be the combination of climate change and [invasive] pests operating together that will wipe species out," says Tim Low of the Australia-based Invasive Species Council.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature says that 38 percent of the 44,838 species catalogued on its Red List are "threatened with extinction" -- and at least 40 percent of all animal extinctions for which the cause is known are the result of invasive species.
...
Why can't native species fight back? Are they wussies???
Tue, Jan 5, 2010 from Toronto Globe and Mail: U.S. car ownership shifts into reverse Americans' infatuation with their cars has endured through booms and busts, but last year something rare happened in the United States: The number of automobiles actually fell.
The size of the U.S. car fleet dropped by a hefty four million vehicles to 246 million, the only large decline since the U.S. Department of Transportation began modern recordkeeping in 1960. Americans bought only 10 million cars -- and sent 14 million to the scrapyard.... And the overall drop in car ownership has prompted speculation that the long American love affair with the car is fading. Analysts cite such diverse factors as high gas prices, the expansion of many municipal transit systems, and the popularity of networking websites among teenagers replacing cars as a way of socializing. ...
Tue, Jan 5, 2010 from Agence France-Presse: China river oil spill pollution 'serious': govt Two tributaries of China's Yellow River have been "seriously polluted" by an oil spill, further contaminating badly tainted drinking water resources, the government said Tuesday.
Up to 150,000 litres (40,000 gallons) of diesel spilled into the Chishui and Wei rivers on Wednesday last week after a pipeline operated by China's largest oil producer, China National Petroleum Corp., ruptured, state media said... The two rivers flow into the Yellow River, one of China's longest rivers and the source of drinking water for millions of people, including residents of eight cities that lie downstream from the oil spill, Xinhua news agency said. ...
Mon, Jan 4, 2010 from London Independent: Deadly animal diseases poised to infect humans The world is facing a growing threat from new diseases that are jumping the human-animal species barrier as a result of environmental disruption, global warming and the progressive urbanisation of the planet, scientists have warned.
At least 45 diseases that have passed from animals to humans have been reported to UN agencies in the last two decades, with the number expected to escalate in the coming years.
Dramatic changes to the environment are triggering major alterations to human disease patterns on a scale last seen during the industrial revolution. ...
Let's kill all the animals... before they kill us!
Sun, Jan 3, 2010 from London Daily Telegraph: Battle to save tigers intensifies with only 3,200 left on Earth Conservationists say there are just 3,200 tigers left in the world as the future of the species is threatened by poachers, destruction of their habitat and climate change.
The world population of tigers has fallen by 95 per cent in the past century. The WWF said it intends to intensify pressure to save the Panthera tigris by classifying it as the most at risk on its roster of 10 critically endangered animals. ...
Sun, Jan 3, 2010 from New York Times: Fight Against Asian Carp Threatens Fragile Great Lakes Unity Asian carp, the voracious, nonnative fish whose arrival near Lake Michigan is threatening to cause havoc in the Great Lakes, are now setting off strife on land as well. In an urgent effort to close down Chicago-area passages that could allow the unwanted fish to reach Lake Michigan, the State of Michigan is suing the State of Illinois and other entities that govern the waterways here. Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin have filed documents in recent days supporting Michigan’s move, and Indiana says it will soon do the same.
The new rift between these Midwestern states, which would reopen a nearly century-old legal case in the United States Supreme Court over Great Lakes waters, comes at a particularly sensitive moment — just as the numerous entities with interests in the Great Lakes had united in what lakes advocates consider some of their most significant progress in decades. ...
It's the carp's intention to divide us. We can't let that happen!
Sat, Jan 2, 2010 from London Daily Telegraph: We're losing the riches of the world Species are now going extinct at between 1,000 and 10,000 times the natural rate. The consequences will be disastrous... Another year, another Year. After the official 2009 International Year of Natural Fibres – following my favourite, the International Year of the Potato in 2008 – we are now two days into the UN-designated International Year of Biodiversity. And though the celebrations of spuds and sisal may have happily passed you by, this one, I would suggest, is worth noticing.
For a start, it marks one of the most spectacularly broken, but least-known, of all environmental promises. In 2001, EU heads of governments said they would aim to "halt" human destruction of the world's wildlife and wild places by 2010, and the next year world leaders, meeting at the Johannesburg Earth Summit, committed themselves to "a significant reduction" in the rate of loss by the same date. ...
Mon, Dec 28, 2009 from Agence France-Presse: Need for power coal threatens Zimbabwe national park Zimbabwe's already dim electricity supply faces a new threat, as the country's main power plant says it needs to dig for new coal reserves under a river inside a national park to keep running.
Hwange Colliery says it only has enough coal to power its 940 megawatt plant for three more years.
Shortages of coal and working capital, as well as ageing and broken equipment, have already forced the shutdown of three smaller power stations across Zimbabwe, causing daily blackouts that have plagued the country for years.
The company says its only viable new deposits of coal suitable for power generation lie in the heart of the Hwange national park, under a river that supplies nearby towns -- including the world-famous Victoria Falls -- as well as thousands of endangered animals.
Accessing the new coal would mean strip mining one of the environmentally delicate region's few water supplies. ...
Sun, Dec 27, 2009 from Tucson Arizona Daily Star: Why your plants are so confused Gardeners have had a tough year: a dry winter; relatively cool, late spring and early summer; a hot and sputtering monsoon; a near freeze in October; and a warm November.
"I know plants were completely confused," says Michael A. Crimmins, a climate specialist with the Arizona Cooperative Extension.
Some of the weather wackiness can be attributed to the effects of temperature changes in the Pacific known as El Niño and La Niña. But as world climate continues to change, more confusion is inevitable for both plants and gardeners. ...
I don't think the plants are merely confused. I think they're angry.
Sat, Dec 26, 2009 from Mumbai Daily News and Analysis: Disaster is around the corner for Mumbai Mumbai: Mumbai, beware! The list of most polluted industrial clusters in the country, which were announced on Thursday, figures five in and around the city. Domivli, Navi Mumbai, Tarapur, Chembur and Pimpri-Chinchwad are names that appear in the top 50 most polluted areas out of the 88 areas identified by the Union environment and forest ministry. The areas have reached their top level in terms of air, water and land pollution. And, the worst is that all the five clusters have reached critical levels of pollution, which has forced the Centre to put on hold expansion in these areas. ...
Wed, Dec 23, 2009 from Muncie Star Press: Lawyers target pig, dairy farms WINCHESTER -- Neighbors who are fed up living next door to factory farms have found three high-powered trial lawyers who vow to make Randolph County "ground zero" in a courtroom food fight over how Indiana produces pork and milk. Highly aggressive flies, harmful odors, stacks of dead animals and mismanagement of millions of gallons of manure are among the complaints of neighbors suing pork and dairy producers.
The trial lawyers are bringing multiple lawsuits challenging Indiana's industrial or factory model of producing milk and pork in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) promoted by Gov. Mitch Daniels' agriculture department. ...
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Wed, Dec 23, 2009 from Newsweek: The Great Pacific Cleanup Since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the world's biggest communal garbage dump, was discovered swirling about 1,000 miles north of Hawaii in 1997, scientists and environmentalists have dared to dream if a cleanup might be possible. Consisting of an estimated 3.5 million tons of trash and scattered over an area roughly the size of the continental United States, the garbage comes from countries all over the world, most of it flushed through waterways leading to the ocean.... Now an unlikely partnership between ocean scientists and the waste-management industry is working on ways to clean up the mess... There's no perfect way to fish it all out of the ocean, especially not without harming ocean creatures in the process. ...
As a species we have pissed in the wind, and shat where we sleep.
Tue, Dec 22, 2009 from Associated Press: Mich. files suit in US high court over Asian carp Michigan asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to sever a century-old connection between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River system to prevent Asian carp from invading the lakes and endangering their $7 billion fishery.
State Attorney General Mike Cox filed a lawsuit with the nation's highest court against Illinois, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. They operate canals and other waterways that open into Lake Michigan... The lawsuit asks for the locks and waterways to be closed immediately as a stopgap measure, echoing a call by 50 members of Congress and environmental groups last week. But the suit goes further, also requesting a permanent separation between the carp-infested waters and the lakes. ...
Those Asian carp better have a really good lawyer!
Thu, Dec 17, 2009 from Burlington Free Press: Northeast bat toll hits 90 percent Only 10 percent of the Northeast's cave-dwelling bats have survived the massive die-offs associated with a powdery white fungal infection... On Oct. 26, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced six grants totaling $800,000 to support white-nose-syndrome prevention, eradication and decontamination projects.
More than 40 research proposals, with a cumulative price tag of $4.8 million, were submitted, the service reported.
Three days later, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced a $1.9 million appropriation to fund research into causes of and treatments for white-nose syndrome... A rise in mosquitoes and mosquito-borne illnesses might raise the alert level, he said; as would increased insect damage to fruits and vegetables. ...
If we thought of bats as mosquito repellent, maybe there'd be more research money.
Sun, Dec 13, 2009 from New York Times: Be Careful What You Fish For Alarms are sounding near the edge of the Great Lakes. Genetic evidence of Asian carp -- a mammoth, voracious, non-native conqueror among fish, long established in the Mississippi River -- has turned up just a few miles from Lake Michigan in the waterway that links the river system to the lake. If such creatures were to swim on into Lake Michigan, some scientists say they fear the fish would ultimately upend the entire ecosystem in the lakes that make up a fifth of the earth's fresh surface water....The carp can weigh as much as 100 pounds, and the silver carp has a habit of jumping, seeming to challenge boaters as much as it does other fish. They eat pretty much all the time, vacuuming up the plankton that other fish depend on and crowding the others out. ...
C'mon, jump... Let's see who's the conqueror here!
Sun, Dec 13, 2009 from Than Nien News (Vietnam): Pollution soon to render Dong Nai River unusable The Dong Nai River supplies water to some 15 million people in southern Vietnam, but that has not stopped callous companies from dumping so much toxic sludge in the river that scientists say it will soon be too poisonous to use.
"Tests since 2006 have found pollution near the Hoa An Pump Station has increased to serious levels with an especially high concentration of organic [toxic] substances," said Truong Khac Hoanh, vice director of Thu Duc Water Supply Company in Ho Chi Minh City.
"With such an increase in pollution, this water supply will soon be unusable," he said.
A top official at the Binh An Water Plant in HCMC also said the Dong Nai would soon be like its tributary the Thi Vai, where aquatic life can't survive due to the high levels of pollution. ...
Chwistmas Wish: widdle aqualungs for the widdle cweatures.
Sat, Dec 12, 2009 from Canadian Press, via DesdemonaDespair: Climate change played key role in B.C. sockeye stocks collapse, say scientists Food-poor, predator-rich ocean waters caused by climate change likely played a significant role in decimating millions of sockeye salmon in British Columbia's Fraser River ahead of what was supposed to be a bumper year, says a scientific think tank.
A group of more than 20 ocean and ecology experts gathered in Vancouver this week to discuss possible explanations for this year's salmon collapse and announced their assessment on Wednesday, saying they want to keep the issue afloat with a judicial inquiry approaching....
The federal Fisheries Department had estimated more than 10 million sockeye would return to the Fraser River this year, but only about one tenth of that figure showed up. ...
Actually, decimate means one in every ten dies, not nine in ten. I suspect the bears that bulk up for winter on salmon are at least decimated.
Thu, Dec 10, 2009 from PNAS Special Feature: Tipping elements in the Earth System The Earth System (ES) is defined
as the conglomerate
formed by human civilization
and its planetary matrix (i.e.,
all parts of the Earth that interact with
the members and manifestations of our
species)...
Only singular transformations
(that remove, add, or replace constitutive
traits) are able to create entirely
new characters.... but what about
the monsoon systems, jet streams, coral
mega-reefs, tropical rainforests, and
iconic landscapes of the Holocene if the
[Global Mean Temperature] rises by two, three, four, or more
degrees? When answering these quintessential
questions, it is natural to search
for the most vulnerable ES components,
i.e., those characteristic features that
will be switched (out) first and (possibly)
irreversibly as the planet warms.
These features are the so-called tipping
elements (TE)... ...
When scientists create a shorthand abbreviation for something, you know it's really scary!
Wed, Dec 9, 2009 from Telegraph.co.uk: Starving polar bears turn to cannibalism The images, taken in Hudson Bay, Canada, around 200 miles north of the town of Churchill, Manitoba, show a male polar bear carrying the bloodied head of a polar bear cub it has killed for food.
Polar bears usually subsist on seals, which they hunt from a platform of sea ice. But the melting of sea ice as a result of rising global temperatures has made it more difficult for polar bears to hunt seals at sea, confining the bears to land. This has led to malnourishment and starvation as polar bears are unable to build sufficient fat reserves for winter.... Manitoba Conservation normally receive one to two reports of bear cannibalisation annually, but scientists say they are aware of eight cases so far this year. ...
Tue, Dec 8, 2009 from The Providence Journal: Scientist says fish can save coral reefs A marine ecologist who has studied some of the most pristine and untouched coral reefs in the world says there is a way to fight back against devastating deaths of coral reefs caused by climate change and warming oceans.
Enric Sala, a former professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and now a National Geographic Fellow, said damaged coral will grow back if it is in a healthy environment with lots of predator fish.
A healthy fish population will graze on algae that kills coral. Filter feeders, such as giant clams, remove harmful microbes from the water. ...
Sun, Dec 6, 2009 from Washington Post: Fish kill called necessary to save the Great Lakes The poisoned fish began floating to the surface in the cold Illinois dawn, but as scientists and ecologists began hauling their lifeless catch to shore, they found only one carcass of the predator they targeted -- the ravenous Asian carp. Never before have Illinois agencies tried to kill so many fish at one time. By the time the poison dissipates in a few days, state officials estimate that 200,000 pounds of fish will be bound for landfills. But they say the stakes -- the Great Lakes ecosystem and its healthy fish population -- could hardly be higher. ...
it's like cutting off our noses to spite our fish.
Sun, Dec 6, 2009 from Inter Press Service: U.S.: "We All Breathe the Same Air and Drink the Same Water" Some 8,000 kilometres from the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Native American environmental experts from 66 tribes came together at a summit here this week to address the most pressing needs in their communities - problems, all emphasised, that know no geographic boundaries... "There are those who still rely on traditional agriculture for their livelihood and for ceremonial purposes - the growing of corn, the harmonious relationship between the seasons," said Milton Bluehouse of the New Mexico Environment Department, who is also a member of the Navajo Nation.
"Global warming impacts our cultures strongly. In Navajo country, for example, if there's no snow on the mountain, we can't have our yeibichei dances," he told IPS.
A yeibiche dance is a nine-day curing ceremony performed by specially trained medicine people. ...
Think we can get on the Copenhagen agenda our world leaders doing the yeibiche dance?
Sat, Dec 5, 2009 from TIME Magazine: The Tragedy of the Himalayas ...Scientists call it the third pole -- but when it comes to clear and present threats from climate change, it may rank first. The high-altitude glaciers of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau -- which cover parts of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and China -- are the water tower of Asia. When the ice thaws and the snow melts every spring, the glaciers birth the great rivers of the region, the mightiest river system in the world: the Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yellow, the Yangtze. Together, these rivers give material and spiritual sustenance to 3 billion people, nearly half of the world's population -- and all are nursed by Himalayan ice... a new report from the international consulting group McKinsey & Co. estimates that by 2030, India alone will have only 50 percent of the water that it needs under a business-as-usual scenario. Nor is Asia the only region that will grapple with water scarcity in a warmer world: the McKinsey report estimates that the globe will have 40 percent less water than it needs by 2030 if nothing is done to change current consumption patterns. ...
Tue, Dec 1, 2009 from USA Today: Invasive carp threatens Great Lakes Fish and wildlife officials will poison a 6-mile stretch of water near Chicago on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to keep one of the most dangerous invasive species of fish, the Asian carp, out of the Great Lakes.
The Asian carp, a voracious eater that has no predators and negligible worth as a commercial or sport fish, now dominates the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and their tributaries.
The fish has entered the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal -- a man-made link between the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes -- and is knocking on the door of Lake Michigan. Once inside a Great Lake, the carp would have free rein in the world's largest freshwater ecosystem, imperiling the native fish of the lakes and a $7 billion fishing and recreation industry....Asian carp now dominate many parts of major rivers, including the Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Ohio, Columbia and Platte rivers. A survey in an offshoot of the Mississippi River near St. Louis found 97 percent of the fish were Asian carp. ...
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Carp battle not over yet Biologist Duane Chapman knows as much about Asian carp as anyone in the United States, and he says that even though some of the giant fish apparently have breached an electric barrier protecting the Great Lakes, all is not lost...
Chapman said the leaping, plankton-hogging fish that can grow to the size of an Olympic gymnast do indeed pose a dire threat to fishing and recreational boating on the world's largest freshwater system.
But he said that at this point it is all a question about numbers. Will enough fish get into Lake Michigan to establish a breeding population?
First, he said, the fish have to find each other. Then they have to find a place to spawn. ...
Maybe we'll luck out and they won't be attracted to each other.
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 from Environmental Research Web: Arctic Ocean undersaturated for calcium carbonate Shelled organisms in the Canada Basin region of the Arctic Ocean could be about to experience a double whammy. Not only did increased ice melt lead to the area's surface waters becoming undersaturated in 2008 for aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate vital for shell-building, but the retreat of sea ice away from the coast means that undersaturated waters from the depths can now upwell and affect organisms living on the sea floor of the Arctic continental shelf.... "This is the first evidence of omega aragonite undersaturation in deep basin surface waters," Fiona McLaughlin of the Institute of Ocean Sciences, Canada, told environmentalresearchweb. "In a 2009 publication models predicted that the surface waters might be undersaturated in the Arctic within a decade. We're making those observations now, because the ice has melted so fast. Essentially the papers are almost being written at the same time."... Because the Arctic food web is quite simple and short, it could be extremely vulnerable to such changes. But McLaughlin says that it takes time to see how populations are decreasing. "I think this has identified that we need to go out and make counts and do a time series so that we can see whether there are effects and what these organisms' tolerance is," she explained. ...
Thu, Nov 26, 2009 from Toronto Star: Why media tell climate story poorly "The media (are) giving an equal seat at the table to a lot of non-qualified scientists," Julio Betancourt, a senior scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, told a group of environment and energy reporters during a week-long learning retreat in New Mexico.... "The scientific evidence reported in peer-reviewed journals is growing by the day, and it suggests the pace of climate change has surpassed the worst-case scenarios predicted just a few years ago.... More difficult is that scientists such as Betancourt are realizing the climate changes observed are not happening in a gradual, predictable fashion but, instead, in sudden steps. Systems reach a certain threshold of environmental stress and then "pop," they act quickly to restabilize. ...
A "retreat" for "reporters"? I smell a "conspiracy." Those "reporters" and "scientists" are making "billions" selling this "story."
Sat, Nov 21, 2009 from Reuters, via DesdemonaDespair: Feared Asian carp may be near U.S. Great Lakes There are signs Asian carp may have breached barriers designed to keep the prolific fish out of the Great Lakes, which could spell ecological disaster for the vital source of fresh water, authorities said on Friday.... Environmentalists say that if the fish reach the Great Lakes, about 20 miles from the barriers, they would quickly destroy the lakes' $4.5 billion fishery by consuming other fish and their food sources. Only Lake Superior among the five lakes may be too cold for the carp, which can reproduce rapidly and reach 100 pounds (45 kg). ...
Fri, Nov 20, 2009 from Foreign Affairs: Where the Wild Things Were Ten percent of the world's terrestrial surface is now at least nominally under some kind of protection. National biodiversity assessments and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment have provided useful information on the "state of nature" in various places. The world knows more and is doing more about conservation than in the past.
Nevertheless, the loss of biodiversity -- wildlife, genetic material, ecosystems, and evolutionary processes -- has not abated. The United States has still not ratified the CBD, and the UN system for conservation is still weak, lacking sanctions for states that fail to live up to their commitments. Trade in protected wildlife continues and poaching runs rampant. Funding for conservation remains vanishingly small, and important animal populations and entire species are in grave danger.... Savannah elephants have no exit corridors from East African drought; changes in water availability threaten natural areas and force the rural poor to resettle; migrating birds arrive at the wrong time, finding little food or nesting opportunities; small populations of animals are simply blinking out. ...
Why worry about biodiversity? Just build more zoos!
Fri, Nov 20, 2009 from Arizona Daily Sun: Grand Canyon officials to tackle warming Officials at the Grand Canyon are proposing to make the national park one of at least 50 in the country that attempts to counter and respond to global climate change.
Led in part by an administrator formerly charged with tackling global warming for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the national park is weighing how to recycle more, use less energy and water, and cut its greenhouse gas emissions. It will also likely become a hub for teaching the public about climate change, said Kathryn Parker, who is now the climate change coordinator at the park.... The changes come after Park Service and other agencies met recently to discuss climate change. Researchers from Northern Arizona University outlined scenarios in which the deserts move uphill, high alpine vegetation recedes, most of the Southwest warms at the fastest rates, and the Colorado River receives less run-off. ...
Great. Now we have the Park Service behaving like environmentalists. What about the bottom line?
Sun, Nov 15, 2009 from Boston Globe: Bat soup in bat hell Thomas Kunz emerges from Aeolus cave in East Dorset, Vermont, with a half-dozen metal ID bands -- smaller than SpaghettiOs -- cupped in the palm of his latex-gloved hand. They're tiny emblems of death, having once been affixed to the forearms of little brown bats. The renowned bat biologist from Boston University, who bears a passing resemblance to Harrison Ford, minutes earlier had recovered the bands while trudging, like a real-life Indiana Jones, through a slippery mud-like ooze of rotting bat carcasses, liquefied internal organs, toothpick-sized bones, piles of guano, and a strange white fungus on the cave floor.
If bats had come out of hell, it couldn't have been worse than this.
"What we saw was bat soup. There were a lot of bones of wings and skulls and emulsified bodies," Kunz says. "There were dead bats -- decomposing bats -- hanging from the walls of the cave. ...
Bats as sympathetic characters... Who woulda thought!
Sun, Nov 8, 2009 from Cornell, via EurekAlert: Nitrogen loss threatens desert plant life, study shows As the climate gets warmer, arid soils lose nitrogen as gas, reports a new Cornell study. That could lead to deserts with even less plant life than they sustain today, say the researchers.
"This is a way that nitrogen is lost from an ecosystem that people have never accounted for before," said Jed Sparks, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and co-author of the study, published in the Nov. 6 issue of Science. "It allows us to finally understand the dynamics of nitrogen in arid systems"
Available nitrogen is second only to water as the biggest constraint to biological activity in arid ecosystems, but before now, ecologists struggled to understand how the inputs and outputs of nitrogen in deserts balance. ...
Thu, Nov 5, 2009 from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 15,000 reasons to worry about state's lakes ...The natives of the Caspian Sea region first turned up in North America in the summer of 1988, thanks to overseas freighters' longstanding - and ongoing - practice of dumping their contaminated ballast water in the Great Lakes, which are now home to more than 185 non-native species.
None has wreaked more damage than the [zebra] mussels, which feast on Great Lakes plankton and have cost the region billions of dollars in starved fish populations, beach-trashing algae blooms and plugged industrial and municipal water intake pipes.
Now, this ecological mess is spreading inland.... Wisconsin has more than 15,000 inland lakes. ...
Mon, Nov 2, 2009 from Michigan Technical University, via EurekAlert: Wolves, moose and biodiversity: An unexpected connection Moose eat plants; wolves kill moose. What difference does this classic predator-prey interaction make to biodiversity?
A large and unexpected one, say wildlife biologists from Michigan Technological University. Joseph Bump, Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich report in the November 2009 issue of the journal Ecology that the carcasses of moose killed by wolves at Isle Royale National Park enrich the soil in "hot spots" of forest fertility around the kills, causing rapid microbial and fungal growth that provide increased nutrients for plants in the area.
"This study demonstrates an unforeseen link between the hunting behavior of a top predator -- the wolf -- and biochemical hot spots on the landscape," said Bump.... And he adds that on the Arctic tundra, where soil nutrients are limited, others have found that the impact of a muskox carcass on surrounding vegetation is dramatic even after 10 years. ...
Predators have value beyond scary bedtime stories?
Wed, Oct 28, 2009 from The Tennessean: Coal ash poses significant risk: EPA report says A new EPA report says that the potentially toxic pollutants in coal ash – from mercury to arsenic - are of particular concern because they can concentrate in large amounts that are discharged to waterways or seep into groundwater... EPA officials have said they would decide by the end of this year whether coal ash should be regulated as a hazardous waste.
Coal ash industry officials have advocated for leaving coal ash regulations up to individual states.
The EPA report documents cases of fish and other aquatic wildlife kills, as well as contaminated wells and the sublethal affects to wildlife, including damage to reproductive organs and developmental problems.
The cause has been coal ash wastewater released accidentally and also routinely discharged into the environment as part of normal coal-fired plant operations. ...
What's the decision? Whether to name it a "hazardous waste" or an "apocalyptic cesspool"?
Fri, Oct 23, 2009 from New Scientist: How green is your pet? ...As well as guzzling resources, cats and dogs devastate wildlife populations, spread disease and add to pollution. It is time to take eco-stock of our pets.
To measure the ecological paw, claw and fin-prints of the family pet, the Vales analysed the ingredients of common brands of pet food. They calculated, for example, that a medium-sized dog would consume 90 grams of meat and 156 grams of cereals daily in its recommended 300-gram portion of dried dog food. At its pre-dried weight, that equates to 450 grams of fresh meat and 260 grams of cereal. That means that over the course of a year, Fido wolfs down about 164 kilograms of meat and 95 kilograms of cereals. ...
Fri, Oct 23, 2009 from TIME Magazine: Tallying the Real Environmental Cost of Biofuels ...Are biofuels really green? A pair of new studies in the Oct. 22 issue of Science damningly demonstrate that the answer is no, at least not the way we currently create and use them. In the first study, a team of researchers led by Jerry Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., projected the effects of a major biofuel expansion over the coming century and found that it could end up increasing global greenhouse-gas emissions instead of reducing them. In the second paper, another team of researchers led by Tim Searchinger of Princeton University uncovered a potentially damaging flaw in the way carbon emissions from bioenergy are calculated under the Kyoto Protocol and in the carbon cap-and-trade bill currently being debated in Congress. If that error in calculation goes unfixed, a future increase in biofuel use could end up backfiring and derailing efforts to control global warming, according to the paper. ...
Thu, Oct 22, 2009 from London Times: Four-year drought pushes 23 million Africans to brink of starvation ...A four-year drought has pushed as many as 23 million people to the brink of starvation across East Africa, making it the worst in a decade or more. Close to four million of those at risk are in Kenya, where one person in ten survives on emergency rations.
Last week clouds gathered over much of the country, but the rains have come too late to bring much relief. Aid agencies have warned that with them will come flooding, cholera, malaria and hypothermia. In the arid north, pastoralists have watched as their cattle collapsed from exhaustion and thirst, and those that survive now face floods. The people are scarcely holding on and the number of armed skirmishes over water and livestock is rising. ...
When it comes to the Apocalypse... if it's not one thing... it's another.
Wed, Oct 21, 2009 from Daily Climate: Forest's death brings higher temps, researchers suspect Forests of dead beetle-kill could be speeding regional climate change, increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfalls across the American West.... [Tony] Tezak has watched in horror the past three years as mountain pine beetles have infested an estimated 900,000 acres of lodgepole pines in the forest. "The threat shows no signs of abating," he said. The infestation turns the pine needles brittle and leaves the dead trees pockmarked with hundreds of tiny boreholes where the beetles tunneled in to lay eggs and eat the moist inner bark. Tezak estimates more than a third of the national forest's 3 million trees could be dead by the time the current outbreak subsides. But there might be a more consequential impact to the carnage: The beetle kill could be accelerating regional climate change by increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfalls in Colorado, Wyoming and northern New Mexico. ...
Yesterday... all our troubles seemed so far away...
Sat, Oct 17, 2009 from Bloomberg News: Minnesota Pigs Tested for H1N1, May Be First in U.S. (Update2) Three pigs from the Minnesota state fair have been "tentatively identified" as having swine flu in what may be the first U.S. cases of the H1N1 virus among domestic livestock.
The pigs were tested at the fair from Aug. 26 to Sept. 1 and "have probably gone to slaughter," Gene Hugoson, the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, said today on a conference call with reporters. The pigs, which did not exhibit flu symptoms at the fair, were tested as part of a university project.... The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the World Health Organization have said the H1N1 virus is not transmitted through properly handled pork. Concern over the illness has eroded pork demand and U.S. exports of the meat, sending hog futures down 25 percent since April 23, when the outbreak started. China, once the second-largest importer of U.S. pork, has blocked shipments. ...
Fri, Oct 16, 2009 from Wall Street Journal: Aspen Trees Die Across the West [A] mysterious ailment -- or perhaps a combination of factors -- is killing hundreds of thousands of acres of the trees from Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona through Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and into Canada, according to the U.S. government and independent scientists.... That phenomenon was named Sudden Aspen Decline, or SAD, but scientists say they don't fully understand it.
It could get worse. "SAD is progressing at an exponential rate," said Wayne Shepperd, who led research into aspen decline at the U.S. Forest Service before retiring to teach at Colorado State University.
And it has left many locals reeling. "My God, it was a sad year," said landscape photographer Richard Voninski. ...
Wed, Oct 14, 2009 from UPI: Climate change may be faster than expected A team of U.S. scientists has, for the first time, successfully incorporated the nitrogen cycle into global climate change simulations.... "We've shown that if all of the global modeling groups were to include some kind of nutrient dynamics, the range of model predictions would shrink because of the constraining effects of the carbon nutrient limitations, even though it's a more complex model," Oak Ridge scientist Peter Thornton said.
By taking the natural demand for nutrients into account, the authors demonstrated the stimulation of plant growth during the coming century might be two to three times smaller than previously predicted. Since less growth implies less carbon dioxide absorbed by vegetation, the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are expected to increase.
...
Mon, Oct 12, 2009 from Diversitas, via EurekAlert: World will miss 2010 target to stem biodiversity loss, experts say The goal was agreed at the 6th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in April 2003. Some 123 world ministers committed to "achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the local, national and regional levels, as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth."... "Yet changes to ecosystems and losses of biodiversity have continued to accelerate. Since 1992, even the most conservative estimates agree that an area of tropical rainforest greater than the size of California has been converted mostly for food and fuel. Species extinction rates are at least 100 times those in pre-human times and are expected to continue to increase."
However, she adds, "the situation is not hopeless. There are many steps available that would help but we cannot dawdle. Meaningful action should have started years ago. The next best time is now." ...
I hate goals that merely reduce the current rate of loss.
Sat, Oct 3, 2009 from London Independent: The great drought: Disaster looms in East Africa On the plains of Marsabit the heat is so intense the bush seems to shiver. The leafless scrub, bleached white by the sun, looks like a forest of fake Christmas trees. Carcasses of cattle and camels are strewn about the burnt red dirt in every direction. Siridwa Baseli walks out of the haze along a path of the dead and dying. He passes a skeletal cow that has given up and collapsed under a thorn tree. A nomad from the Rendille people, he is driving his herd in search of water... Across East Africa an extraordinary drought is drying up rivers, and grasslands, scorching crops and threatening millions of people with starvation. In Kenya, the biggest and most robust economy in the region, the rivers that feed its great game reserves have run dry and since the country relies on hydropower, electricity is now rationed in the cities. ...
Sat, Oct 3, 2009 from The Nation: The Coalfield Uprising ... More than 3.5 million pounds of explosives rip daily across the ridges and historic mountain communities in West Virginia; a similar amount of explosives are employed in eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee. Mountaintop removal operations have destroyed more than 500 mountains and 1.2 million acres of forest in our nation's oldest and most diverse range, and jammed more than 1,200 miles of streams with mining waste... Coalfield residents are not waiting for the Obama administration to come to their rescue. In fact, in the past year a surging activist and citizen lobbyist campaign has emerged as a fierce counterforce to the Big Coal lobby. The leaders of this growing and increasingly powerful movement are not content with a new era of stricter regulations in the coalfields. Their aim is to abolish mountaintop removal once and for all. ...
Thu, Oct 1, 2009 from Science News: Excreted Tamiflu found in rivers The premier flu-fighting drug is contaminating rivers downstream of sewage-treatment facilities, researchers in Japan confirm. The source: urinary excretion by people taking oseltamivir phosphate, best known as Tamiflu.
Concerns are now building that birds, which are natural influenza carriers, are being exposed to waterborne residues of Tamiflu's active form and might develop and spread drug-resistant strains of seasonal and avian flu. ...
Mon, Sep 28, 2009 from Environmental Health News: Eating venison, other game raises lead exposure An avid hunter, Cornatzer was listening to a presentation on the lead poisoning of California condors when an x-ray of a mule deer flashed on an overhead screen. The deer had been shot in the chest with a high-powered rifle.
Cornatzer was shocked that the deer's entire carcass was riddled with dozens of tiny lead-shot fragments.
"My first thought had nothing to do with California condors; it had to do with what I had been doing as a hunter myself, and what I had been feeding our kids," said Cornatzer, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences.
"I knew good and well after seeing that image that I had been eating a lot of lead fragments over the years," he said.
That realization led Cornatzer and a radiologist last year to X-ray 100 packages of venison that had been donated by a sportsmen group to a food bank. About 60 percent of the packages contained lead-shot fragments, even though it's common practice among hunters to remove meat around the wound. ...
Wed, Sep 23, 2009 from Greenwire: Biodiversity a Bitter Pill in 'Tropical' Mediterranean Sea Two weeks ago, a group of marine biologists from Israel's National Institute of Oceanography set sail from the country's central coast... They had a rich catch that night... pucker-faced dragonet fish, sprawling octopuses and brown crabs, snapping their claws. On the examination table, it seemed a display of the sea's bounty.
Unfortunately, it was another sea's bounty.
Almost all of the species Galil found that night were natives of the Indian or Pacific oceans. Lured by warming waters and a newly improved route through the Suez Canal, tropical marine species have enacted a slow march into the Mediterranean, displacing native species and disrupting ecosystems. ...
Sun, Sep 20, 2009 from New York Times: Belatedly, Egypt Spots Flaws in Wiping Out Pigs CAIRO It is unlikely anyone has ever come to this city and commented on how clean the streets are. But this litter-strewn metropolis is now wrestling with a garbage problem so severe it has managed to incite its weary residents and command the attention of the president... When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash.
The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba. ...
Sat, Sep 19, 2009 from Agence France-Presse: Car sales spike in Beijing, capital nears 4 million auto mark Sales of new cars in Beijing have spiked to about 2,000 a day, a trend that will put up to four million vehicles on the streets of China's capital by year's end, state media said Friday.
About 60,100 cars were sold in the month of August in Beijing -- the largest number of auto purchases this year and nearly double the amount of vehicles sold in the same month in 2008, the China Daily said....an increase of one million cars in just two years. ...
Fri, Sep 18, 2009 from New York Times: Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells ...Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation's rivers and streams, according to the E.P.A. An estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria, including those stemming from human and animal waste, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology...In Brown County [Wisconsin], part of one of the nation's largest milk-producing regions, agriculture brings in $3 billion a year. But the dairies collectively also create as much as a million gallons of waste each day. Many cows are fed a high-protein diet, which creates a more liquid manure that is easier to spray on fields.
...
Tue, Sep 15, 2009 from Yale Environment 360: Green Intelligence: Toward True Ecological Transparency Wal-Mart has handed the environmental movement a new tool for ameliorating the human footprint: using an emerging generation of information systems to create market pressures to upgrade the ecological performance of commerce and industry. This strategy entails making life-cycle-assessment data for products transparent -- that is, labeling them with a sound, independent rating so shoppers can easily take the ecological impacts into account as they decide what to buy.
Indeed, the Wal-Mart announcement has thrust what once seemed merely an intriguing idea into a market reality companies will have to deal with -- not just in tomorrow's strategic plans, but in today's logistics and operations. Wal-Mart's 100,000-plus suppliers (and the likes of Procter & Gamble counts as just one) will be required to reveal their products' ecological impacts or have them dropped from the retailer's stores worldwide.
...
Just as long as they keep using the smiley face, I'm okay with it.
Wed, Sep 9, 2009 from Telegraph.co.uk: North Sea cod 'doomed by climate change' Species of plankton, on which cod larvae feed, have moved away in search of cooler waters. The decline in cod stocks has led to an explosion in the populations of crabs and jellyfish, on which the adult fish feed.
The shortage of predators at the top of the food chain has had a knock-on effect on flat fish, such as plaice and sole, whose offspring are eaten by crabs.... The researchers studied the distribution of surface-dwelling copepod plankton on which young cod feed. Copepod's numbers have declined by more than 60 per cent as the sea has warmed over the last four decades.
Dr Kirkby said: "The plankton that young cod usually eat during March, April and May, a species of copepod that is the size of a grain of rice, prefer cold water and so they have become much less frequent as the North Sea has warmed.... "As top predators such as cod are declining, this appears to have had a cascading effect on the whole ecosystem." ...
Tue, Sep 8, 2009 from CBC News (Canada): Fungus threatens P.E.I. frogs A fungus that's potentially deadly for frogs has been found in ponds on [Prince Edward Island]. Chytrid is an infection that is causing problems for frog populations around the world. The fungus, which lives in the skin of the frog, is causing 200 species of frogs to decline severely or go extinct.
This summer, a team of researchers swabbed 114 frogs at 18 ponds across the Island. More than half those ponds showed cases of chytrid.
"Some of the frogs actually go into spasms, sort of like having a seizure," Maria Forzan, a wildlife pathologist with the Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre, told CBC News last week.
"They lose weight very quickly and within three or four days, basically they're dead." ...
There are frogs in Canada? Oh yeah, it's got that part-French thing going on, doesn't it.
Sat, Sep 5, 2009 from The Daily Climate: Seeking rapid change in human behavior Frustrated by society's inability to tackle pressing environmental dilemmas, Stanford University ecologist Paul Ehrlich on Friday announced a new endeavor aimed at rapidly turning human behavior toward a more sustainable future. Called the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior, or MAHB (pronounced "mob"), the venture seeks to link a broad array of seemingly unrelated human activities that endanger humanity's future - from racism to climate change, loss of biological diversity, water shortages, declining food security, economic justice and pollution.
The hope, Ehrlich said, is that by making these larger connections, more effective solutions can be found.
"Basically, absolutely nothing is happening," he said. "We don't need more scientific evidence that we're screwing ourselves. We need to get beyond the cultural discussions we're having now." ...
Sat, Sep 5, 2009 from Huffington Post: Lobster Wars Turn Violent In Maine With lobster prices down, the animosity has been particularly shrill this summer.
On a July morning, it reached the boiling point when a longtime lobsterman and his daughter drew guns on two fellow islanders. The lobsterman fired, shooting a man he had known for decades in the neck, police reported.
The shooting has shone a spotlight on a long-standing territorial system all along the ragged Maine coast that gives fishermen unofficial rights to specified waters. The rights are legally unenforceable but important and usually accepted.....
Bunker said he shot in self-defense, claiming he had been threatened in the previous days and that he pulled his gun because he feared that he and his daughter were going to be shot when Ames grabbed for the shotgun....
...
Thu, Sep 3, 2009 from Press of Atlantic City: Aficionados miss butterfly's effects This scene is a far cry from spring and early June, when Sutton, a retired naturalist, literally saw no butterflies. It was the first time Sutton had seen such a scarcity in her 30 years of butterfly watching, and they did not return in large numbers to her garden until early August.
Sutton observed a similar shortage in parts of Cumberland County in late June... "It was spooky," she said during a recent garden tour. "We should have been seeing a lot more of them, and there was one of this, one of that."... "I don't think we've ever seen anything like the response we've gotten this year, unsolicited, about the dearth of butterflies," Glassberg said. "It's pretty clear (the loss) is real."... The heavy mosquito boom this year prompted government officials and homeowners to spray malathion to kill adult insects. Sutton and fellow survey volunteer Jackie Parker, of Beachwood, Ocean County, fear the pesticide could have harmed butterflies. ...
When a butterfly doesn't flap its wings, is the world also changed?
Fri, Aug 28, 2009 from Desdemona Despair: Northeast bat extinctions looming, with 1.5 Million Dead -- white-nose disease to reach U.S. West by 2012 Mounting evidence that several species of bats have been all but eliminated from the Northeast due to a new disease known as white-nose syndrome prompted a conservation group to send a letter today to Sam Hamilton, the new director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, urging that action on the bat epidemic be his first priority.... hite-nose syndrome - so named because of the fungal growth around bats' muzzles - has spread to nine states and killed an estimated 1.5 million bats. Bats from New England to West Virginia are now affected by the illness, and scientists fear that this coming winter the syndrome will show up in Kentucky and Tennessee, where some of the largest bat colonies in the world are located.
"Scientists are saying this disease could be on the West Coast in two to three years, at the rate it is spreading," said Mollie Matteson, a wildlife biologist and conservation advocate for the Center in its Richmond, Vermont office. "Some scientists are even warning that under a worst-case scenario, we may lose all bats in North America. Such a tragedy could have disastrous consequences for agriculture and ecosystems because of the role of bats in insect control and pollination." ...
Wed, Aug 26, 2009 from BBC (UK): 'Flying Fox,' world's largest fruit bat, soon hunted to extinction Researchers say the large flying fox will be wiped out on the Malaysian peninsula if the current unsustainable level of hunting continues.
Writing in the Journal of Applied Ecology they say around 22,000 of the animals are legally hunted each year and more killed illegally.
They say the species could be extinct there by as early as 2015.
Flying foxes can have a wingspan of up to 1.5m and are crucial for the rainforest ecosystems in this part of Asia. Lead author, Dr Jonathan Epstein of Wildlife Trust, told BBC News: "They eat fruit and nectar and in doing so they drop seeds around and pollinate trees. So they are critical to the propagation of rainforest plants."
The most optimistic estimates put the population of flying foxes in peninsular Malaysia at 500,000. ...
Wed, Aug 26, 2009 from University of Oklahoma, via EurekAlert: Global warming threatens tropical species, the ecosystem and its by-products Tropical lizards detect the effects of global warming in a climate where the smallest change makes a big difference, according to herpetologist Laurie Vitt.... Climate change caused by global warming threatens the very existence of these and other tropical species, the ecosystem and its by-products, Vitt maintains.... Tropical species are affected more by the very narrow temperature range of their typically warm climate than are ectotherms living where the temperatures fluctuate in greater degrees. Even the smallest change in the tropics makes a difference to the tropical species most susceptible to climate change. "Climatic shifts are part of our natural history, but years of research indicate global warming has increased the rate at which climate change is taking place, " Vitt states. ...
I know! Let's do some flyovers and spraypaint the canopy of the rainforest white!
Sat, Aug 22, 2009 from New York Times: In Brazil, Paying Farmers to Let the Trees Stand ...Deforestation, a critical contributor to climate change, effectively accounts for 20 percent of the worlds carbon dioxide emissions and 70 percent of the emissions in Brazil. Halting new deforestation, experts say, is as powerful a way to combat warming as closing the worlds coal plants.
But until now, there has been no financial reward for keeping forest standing. Which is why a growing number of scientists, politicians and environmentalists argue that cash payments ... are the only way to end tropical forest destruction and provide a game-changing strategy in efforts to limit global warming. ...
Fri, Aug 21, 2009 from The Canadian Press: Soldiers returning from Afghanistan bringing home superbug MONTREAL Canadian soldiers are bringing home from dusty Afghanistan a powerful, drug-resistant superbug that health officials have been worrying about for several years.
Three Canadian soldiers who recently returned from Kandahar carrying so-called "Iraqibacter" are under quarantine at a civilian hospital in Quebec City.
Two civilian patients who came in close contact with the soldiers at Hopital de l'Enfant-Jesus have also been isolated for fear they may have contracted the superbug officially named Acinetobacter baumannii.
The hospital-acquired germ, commonly found in soil and water, strikes weakened immune systems, especially in those recovering from wounds.
It has been known to cause conditions such as pneumonia, meningitis as well as blood, urinary tract and wound infections. ...
Sun, Aug 16, 2009 from Newsweek: Birds vs. Environmentalists? ... a growing number of species are finding themselves at the epicenter of a new battle being waged by environmentalists and developers... The encroachers aren't the usual suspects -- say, a sprawling McMansion community developer -- but the environmentally friendly wind-energy industry.. Critics charge that wind-energy development can cause habitat fragmentation -- a displacement of a species that can eventually reduce its numbers -- as well as the deaths of birds and bats (a species that is especially vulnerable due to its low reproductive rates) that collide with the wind turbines' massive rotor blades. A 2007 study by the National Academy of Sciences puts the number of birds killed each year at about 20,000 to 30,000. That's a low estimate, says Michael Fry of the American Bird Conservancy. According to his group, turbines kill three to 11 birds per megawatt of wind energy they produce. ...
If only dead birds could be turned into biofuels...
Wed, Aug 12, 2009 from New Scientist: Stowaway insects imperil Darwin's finches The famous Galapagos finches could be among the first casualties of mosquitoes that are stowing away on aircraft, potentially bringing fatal viruses to the islands.
Live mosquitoes captured in the holds of aircraft arriving on the Galapagos from mainland Ecuador were found to survive and breed on the islands. Although none of the captured mosquitoes carried lethal viruses such as the West Nile virus (WNV) -- which decimated bird populations in the US after arriving in New York in 1999 -- they have the potential to do so.... Goodman and his colleagues found 74 live insects after searching the holds of 93 aircraft landing on Baltra Island in the Galapagos. Of these, six were Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes, which transmit WNV and the parasite that causes bird malaria. Two more were caught in aircraft that landed on nearby San Cristobal.
"The consequences for wildlife could be severe," says Marm Kilpatrick of the University of California, Santa Cruz. The findings are probably an underestimate of the true numbers of mosquitoes arriving, he says. ...
Maybe those mosquitoes will evolve different beaks!
Tue, Aug 11, 2009 from Globe and Mail: Crown of Thorns starfish destroying Asian reefs The predator starfish feeds on corals by spreading its stomach over them and using digestive enzymes to liquefy tissue.
The researchers found large numbers of them in Halmahera, Indonesia, which lies at the heart of the Coral Triangle. During a research trip in December, they saw a stretch of reef measuring 10 kilometres in circumference completely wiped out.
"It's quite a stark sight. The crown of thorns choose to eat some species, like staghorn corals, the branching corals disappear and you are left with just a rubble pit," Andrew Baird [said].... Dr. Baird said the outbreak was caused by poor water quality and could be an early warning of widespread reef decline.
"Humans are exacerbating the problem because we put too many nutrients in the water," he said, referring to water pollution caused by sewerage and agriculture fertilizers.
"There are lots of micro-algae and the larvae of the crown of thorns feed on the algae," said Dr. Baird, who was involved in the study. ...
Tue, Aug 11, 2009 from CBC: Acid rain falling on Saskatchewan from Alberta oilsands, says lobby The Saskatchewan Environmental Society issued a news release Monday to say that data, obtained by the society from the Saskatchewan environment ministry, reveals that rain falling in the La Loche area of the province's far north has a pH level that falls under the definition for acid rain.
The generally accepted threshold for normal rain is a pH of 5.6. Environment Canada has determined any value less than five may be termed acid rain.
Ann Coxworth, a spokeswoman for the environmental society, said data from the Saskatchewan government shows the average pH level for rain and snow in the La Loche area is 4.96.
"We have now a combination of that region being the most sensitive forest soil in Canada, most sensitive to damage by acid precipitation and an increase in the acidity of the precipitation," Coxworth told CBC News on Monday. "So it seems to us that is a situation that really needs to be attended to." ...
Mon, Aug 10, 2009 from BBC (UK): Greenpeace in anti-trawling move Greenpeace has begun sinking boulders in EU-protected cod fishing grounds to prevent what it says are destructive forms of fishing in the area.
The environmental group says it will drop 180 boulders off the Swedish and Danish coasts to prevent fishing boats from dragging nets along the sea bed.
Greenpeace says the bottom-trawling fishing method destroys both the sea bed and the marine environment.
Sweden's government described the group's action as "unnecessary".... The Greenpeace project highlights the ongoing debate over the environmental damage caused by over-fishing, in which the size of catches is not the only concern for campaigners.
The environmental impact of different methods of fishing is also a major issue, correspondents say. ...
Wait -- you mean there are ecosystems at the bottom of the ocean? I thought it was just food.
Mon, Aug 10, 2009 from Appleton Post-Crescent: Relentless Japanese beetle invades Fox Cities The Japanese beetle, an invasive bug that has caused gardeners grief for years in parts of Wisconsin and elsewhere in the country, is emerging in pockets of the Valley and spreading across Green Bay.
About two years ago, the beetle was discovered near Riverview Country Club in Appleton, said David Bayer, a horticulture agent with the Outagamie County University of Wisconsin-Extension office. It's also been spotted in other areas of the Fox Valley.
The invasive beetles attack more than 300 species of plants, killing grass, eating roses and turning tree leaves to lace. Vijai Pandian, a horticulture educator with the Brown County UW-Extension office, said the beetles are especially common on the city's west side. He said 25 traps placed last year netted 76,000 beetles. ...
Mon, Aug 10, 2009 from New York Times Op-Ed: You say tomato, I say environmental disaster But this year is turning out to be different -- quite different, according to farmers and plant scientists. For one thing, the disease appeared much earlier than usual. Late blight usually comes, well, late in the growing season, as fungal spores spread from plant to plant. So its early arrival caught just about everyone off guard.
And then there's the perniciousness of the 2009 blight. The pace of the disease (it covered the Northeast in just a few days) and its strength (topical copper sprays, a convenient organic preventive, have been much less effective than in past years) have shocked even hardened Hudson Valley farmers.... According to plant pathologists, this killer round of blight began with a widespread infiltration of the disease in tomato starter plants. Large retailers like Home Depot, Kmart, Lowe's and Wal-Mart bought starter plants from industrial breeding operations in the South and distributed them throughout the Northeast. ...
Sat, Aug 8, 2009 from Concord Monitor: The effects of white-nose on bats Biologists are watching the state's bat population this summer, looking for the fallout of white-nose syndrome, a little-understood illness that has killed thousands of hibernating bats in the Northeast and was found to have reached New Hampshire in January... In Vermont's largest hibernating colony, Mt. Aeolus, where tens of thousands of bats have been documented, scientists found the floor of the cave littered with carcasses. Thousands were dead.... In the meantime, scientists will keep chipping away at the many questions that remain. They aren't sure if the white fungus is what's responsible for killing the bats or if it's a byproduct of another culprit.
"Is it a virus?" Brunkhurst said. "Is it a bacteria? It is some kind of contaminant?"
And what will the fallout be for the bats that make it through the winter? One Westmoreland colony was between 200 and 300 bats strong. In July, someone watching the colony reported that just a few bats remain.
...
Sat, Aug 8, 2009 from BBC (UK): Extinction hits 'whole families' Whole "chunks of life" are lost in extinction events, as related species vanish together, say scientists.
A study in the journal Science shows that extinctions tend to "cluster" on evolutionary lineages -- wiping out species with a common ancestor.
The finding is based on an examination of past extinctions, but could help current conservation efforts.
Researchers say that this phenomenon can result in the loss of an entire branch of the "tree of life".... "In seabirds for example, the same drivers -- climatic change and habitat loss -- are threatening whole groups of species."
Richard Greyner likened this loss to a fire in a library.
"Because whole sections are lost -- the whole of the physics section, or all of the romantic fiction, the overall loss is much worse than if you randomly burned every 400th book." ...
'Family' comes between 'Class' and 'Genus' -- and between 'birth' and 'death.'
Fri, Aug 7, 2009 from New Scientist: Consumerism is 'eating the future' [A]ccording to leading ecologists speaking this week in Albuquerque at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, few of us realise that the main cause of the current environmental crisis is human nature.
More specifically, all we're doing is what all other creatures have ever done to survive, expanding into whatever territory is available and using up whatever resources are available, just like a bacterial culture growing in a Petri dish till all the nutrients are used up. What happens then, of course, is that the bugs then die in a sea of their own waste.... He points out that like the accelerated growth of a cancer, the human population has quadrupled in the past 100 years, and at this rate will reach a size in 2025 that leads to global collapse and catastrophe.... In an ideal world, it would be a counter-advertising campaign to make conspicuous consumption shameful.
"Advertising is an instrument for construction of people's everyday reality, so we could use the same media to construct a cultural paradigm in which conspicuous consumption is despised," he says. "We've got to make people ashamed to be seen as a 'future eater'." ...
The business community and vested interests would surely sponsor those PSAs!
Fri, Aug 7, 2009 from Science, via Science Daily: Scientists Find Universal Rules For Food-web Stability New findings, published in the journal Science, conclude that food-web stability is enhanced when many diverse predator-prey links connect high and intermediate trophic levels.... Natural ecosystems consist of interwoven food chains, in which individual animal or plant species function as predator or prey. Potential food webs not only differ by their species composition, but also vary in their stability. Observable food webs are stable food webs, with the relationships between their species remaining constant over relatively long periods of time.... Applying this innovative modeling approach ... the scientists have succeeded in discovering not just one, but several universal rules in the dynamics of ecosystems.
"Food-web stability is enhanced when species at high trophic levels feed on multiple prey species and species at intermediate trophic levels are fed upon by multiple predator species," says Ulf Dieckmann of IIASA. ...
OK: biodiversity, interdependence, and varied predator-prey relationships yield ecosystem stability. Good work! Now: what happens when we screw it up?
Thu, Aug 6, 2009 from Desdemona Despair: Dramatic Decline in SE Coastal Sharks The eastern seaboards longest continuous shark-targeted survey (UNC), conducted annually since 1972 off North Carolina, demonstrates sufficiently large declines in great sharks to imply their likely functional elimination. Declines in seven species range from 87 percent for sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus); 93 percent for blacktip sharks (C. limbatus); up to 97 percent for tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier); 98 percent for scalloped hammerheads (Sphyrna lewini); and 99 percent or more for bull (C. leucas), dusky (C. obscurus), and smooth hammerhead (S. zygaena) sharks (Fig. 1 and table S5). Because this survey is situated where it intercepts sharks on their seasonal migrations, these trends in abundance may be indicative of coastwide population changes. ...
What happens when there are no sharks left to jump?
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 from NUVO Newsweekly: Unsafe waters in Indianapolis A fast and toxic algae growth spurt on Central Indiana waterways in recent weeks is responsible for hundreds of dead fish in White River in Indianapolis, as well as warnings to those using the Geist or Morse reservoirs for summer recreation... "When the algae are in very high concentrations, like they are right now in the White River, they make oxygen during the day, but rob oxygen from the water at night," according to Lenore Tedesco, director of [the IUPUI Center for Earth and Environmental Science]. "Without enough oxygen, fish will basically suffocate."
While the presence of this type of algae is natural, the excessive and fast growth as seen in recent weeks, and the resulting dead fish, are not produced by natural causes.
"Right now we are seeing algal blooms in may of our freshwater systems," Tedesco said. "This suggests excessive nutrients in the water." ...
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 from via ScienceDaily: Earth's Biogeochemical Cycles, Once In Concert, Falling Out Of Sync What do the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone," global climate change, and acid rain have in common? They're all a result of human impacts to Earth's biology, chemistry and geology, and the natural cycles that involve all three. On August 4-5, 2009, scientists who study such cycles -- biogeochemists -- will convene at a special series of sessions at the Ecological Society of America (ESA)'s 94th annual meeting in Albuquerque, N.M.... Now, with global warming and other planet-wide impacts, biogeochemical cycles are being drastically altered. Like broken gears in machinery that was once finely-tuned, these cycles are falling out of sync. ...
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 from Environmental Health News: Rural well water linked to Parkinson's; California study implicates farm pesticides Rural residents who drink water from private wells are much more likely to have Parkinson's disease, a finding that bolsters theories that farm pesticides may be partially to blame, according to a new study. The risk to people in California's Central Valley was 90 percent higher for those who had private wells near fields sprayed with certain insecticides. People with the incurable neurological disease "were more likely to have consumed private well water, and had consumed it on average 4.3 years longer," UCLA scientists reported. Unlike municipal water supplies, private wells are largely unregulated and are not monitored for contaminants. ...
Mon, Aug 3, 2009 from United States Geological Survey via ScienceDaily: Large Trees Declining In Yosemite National Park, U.S. Large trees have declined in Yosemite National Park during the 20th century, and warmer climate conditions may play a role. The number of large-diameter trees in the park declined 24 percent between the 1930s and 1990s. U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington scientists compared the earliest records of large-diameter trees densities from 1932-1936 to the most recent records from 1988-1999.
A decline in large trees means habitat loss and possible reduction in species such as spotted owls, mosses, orchids and fishers (a carnivore related to weasels). Fewer new trees will grow in the landscape because large trees are a seed source for the surrounding landscape. Large-diameter trees generally resist fire more than small-diameter trees, so fewer large trees could also slow forest regeneration after fires. ...
Mon, Aug 3, 2009 from Science News: The Biofuel Future Biofuels are liquid energy Version 2.0. Unlike their fossil fuel counterparts -- the cadaverous remains of plants that died hundreds of millions of years ago -- biofuels come from vegetation grown in the here and now. So they should offer a carbon-neutral energy source: Plants that become biofuels ideally consume more carbon dioxide during photosynthesis than they emit when processed and burned for power. Biofuels make fossil fuels seem so last century, so quaintly carboniferous. The only way that biofuels will add up is if they produce more energy than it takes to make them. Yet, depending on the crops and the logistics of production, some analyses suggest that it may take more energy to make these fuels than they will provide. And if growing biofuels creates the same environmental problems that plague much of large-scale agriculture, then air and water quality might not really improve. Prized ecosystems such as rain forests, wetlands and savannas could be destroyed to grow crops. Biofuels done badly, scientists say, could go very, very wrong. ...
What the heck are we gonna do w/ all this darn corn!
Sun, Aug 2, 2009 from New York Times: An Underwater Fight Is Waged for the Health of San Francisco Bay ...Every year the damage wrought by aquatic invaders in the United States and the cost of controlling them is estimated at $9 billion, according to a 2003 study by a Cornell University professor, David Pimentel, whose research is considered the most comprehensive. The bill for controlling two closely-related invasive mussels the zebra and the quagga in the Great Lakes alone is $30 million annually, says the United States Federal Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force.
Many scientists say that San Francisco Bay has more than 250 nonnative species, like European green crab, Asian zooplankton and other creatures and plants that outcompete native species for food, space and sunlight. ...
Then there are the darn scientists themselves poking around!
Fri, Jul 31, 2009 from New Scientist: Alaska's biggest tundra fire sparks climate warning The fire that raged north of Alaska's Brooks mountain range in 2007 left a 1000-square-kilometre scorched patch of earth an area larger than the sum of all known fires on Alaska's North Slope since 1950.
Now scientists studying the ecological impact of the fire report that the blaze dumped 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere about the amount that Barbados puts out in a year. What's more, at next week's meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Albuquerque, New Mexico, two teams will warn that as climate change takes hold tundra fires across the Arctic will become more frequent.
Tundra fires only take off once certain thresholds are reached, says Adrian Rocha of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. "But projected changes in climate over the next century increased aridity, thunderstorms, and warming in the Arctic will increase the likelihood that these thresholds will be crossed and thus result in more larger and frequent fires." ...
Just when you thought you'd run out of stuff to worry about...
Tue, Jul 28, 2009 from Toronto Star: Arctic's 'canary in a coal mine' Without a microscope, most plankton are easy to miss. And when the tiny marine creatures do come into focus, they aren't much to look at.
Until you peer closer, and listen to what they have to say.
Way down near the bottom of the oceans' food chain, animals known as zooplankton drift on the currents, feeding on each other, eating still lower life forms such as bacteria and viruses, or in most cases, grazing on microscopic plant life, called phytoplankton.
As tiny, and as hard to love, as plankton are, scientists studying them say that if global warming makes things go bad for these organisms, the pain will run all the way up the food chain to humans. ...
Arrrgghh, matey. We'll be forced to walk the plankton!
Mon, Jul 27, 2009 from Radio Australia: Grim climate warning for Asia Pacific A new report says climate change could produce 75 million refugees in the Asia Pacific region in the next 40 years.
It urges Australia to put new immigration measures in place to help with people movements, and to cut deeply into its own climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.
The report, by aid agency Oxfam Australia and a think-tank, the Australia Institute, says the effects of climate change are already being felt in the region.
It says addressing the immigration question is vital, as is giving more financial assistance to the region targeted specifically at measures to help communities adapt.
...
Mon, Jul 27, 2009 from Environmental Health News: Polar bears on thinner ice Longer ice-free seasons in the Canadian Arctic are leading to diet changes and increased contaminants in polar bears.
Hudson Bay's polar bears are more contaminated with some pollutants now than in the past due to warmer temperatures that are melting ice sooner in the spring and forcing the bears to eat different food.... Fatty acid fingerprints revealed that the bears now eat more harbor and harp seals and fewer bearded seals than before. This shift in diet resulted in higher levels of PCBs and flame retardants (but not the pesticides DDT or chlordane) in their tissues. ...
I'll bet the bearded seals don't mind this change at all!
Sat, Jul 25, 2009 from London Guardian: Dragonflies in danger of extinction seek sanctuary at new rescue centre Dragonflies may have hovered and hunted across the planet for the last 325m years, but their modern relatives are staring extinction in the face. Experts warn that one-third of British species are now under threat, a plight that today sees the opening of the UK's first ever dragonfly centre to celebrate and protect one of the country's most fascinating insects. Located at Wicken Fen nature reserve in Cambridgeshire, the new centre hopes to reverse the decline of the 42 species found regularly in the UK. Conservationists blame the decline on the loss of wetlands, and pesticides and insecticides drifting from farmland. ...
Sat, Jul 25, 2009 from National Geographic News: Alien-Wasp Swarms Devouring Birds, Bugs in Hawaii Attacking from nests as big as pickup-truck beds, invasive western yellowjacket wasps in Hawaii are munching their way through an "astonishing diversity" of creatures, from caterpillars to pheasants, a new study says.
Adult yellowjackets consume only nectar. But they kill or scavenge prey to deliver needed protein to their growing broods.... "They basically just carry it in their mandibles -- you see them flying with their balls of meat," said lead study author Erin Wilson, who just finished her Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego.
In their native habitat in the western U.S., the wasps die off in winter. But in Hawaii the wasps survive the winter, possibly due to mild year-round temperatures or subtle genetic changes. ...
Fri, Jul 24, 2009 from VOA News: Report: 85 Percent of World's Oyster Reefs Have Been Lost A recent study by environmental organizations found that nearly 85 percent of the oyster reefs worldwide have been lost. But beyond providing food around the world, oyster reefs play a key role in the oceans....
"The issue is that oysters face a multitude of stresses in coastal environments; from water quality to algae blooms, to high sediment loads and some of the places are too far gone," he said.
Oysters are ecosystem engineers that filter water and remove pollution and excess nutrients that can spark algae blooms. But, Luckenback says, their capacity has a limit and research shows that oysters expose to a variety of toxins have been shown to be more susceptible to diseases and death. ...
Wed, Jul 22, 2009 from Guardian (UK): Mountaintop mining legacy: Destroying Appalachian streams When mountains are demolished with explosives to harvest their coal seams, the millions of tons of crushed shale, sandstone, and coal detritus have to go somewhere, and the most convenient spots are nearby valleys. Mining operations clear-cut the hillsides and literally "fill" mountain hollows to the brim -- and sometimes higher -- with rocky debris. At the mouth of the hollow, the outer edge of the fill is typically engineered into a towering wall resembling a dam.... Of all the environmental problems caused by mountaintop projects -- decapitated peaks, deforestation, the significant carbon footprint -- scientists have found that valley fills do the most damage because they destroy headwater streams and surrounding forests, which are crucial to the workings of mountain ecosystems.
"There used to be pine trees, and it was a very pretty shaded area. There was a nice trail that went up the hollow and I used to take my granddaughter up there and we'd go ginsenging [harvesting ginseng roots, an Appalachian custom] on up the hill," says Miller, whose grandfather built the family homestead in 1920. "She really misses not being able to do that. She said, 'Can't we go someplace else? There's no hills to climb there.'" ...
The Appalachian Trail will soon be a jogging track.
Wed, Jul 22, 2009 from Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette: Mosquitoes 1, Bats 0 Already on the list of endangered species, the Indiana bat is one of the six species of bats threatened by the deadly syndrome that has killed hundreds of thousands of bats in the Northeastern states. And while some may find it difficult to muster sympathy over the demise of "sky rats," they should be concerned.
Bats serve the beneficial purpose of acting as nature's insecticide.
If the bats die off, insect populations will skyrocket and decimate food crops. Farmers will be forced to increase the use of pesticides leading to an increase in agricultural pollution. The demise of bats means less money in farmers' pockets, less food and more environmental pollution.... According to Parham, one bat can eat between 600 and 1,000 mosquitoes and other insect pests in just one hour. ...
If only they were sky rats, they'd be able to reproduce faster than one pup per year.
Fri, Jul 17, 2009 from BBC: Turkmenistan to create desert sea Turkmenistan has launched the latest stage of a plan to channel water across thousands of kilometres of desert to create a vast inland sea.
The lake will be filled with drainage water from the country's cotton fields.
President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said the "Golden Age Lake" plan showed his country was preserving nature and improving the environment.
But critics say the water will be full of fertiliser and insecticides, and will evaporate quickly.
The project is one of the biggest and most ambitious in the world, and could cost up to $20bn (£12bn). ...
It's charming that "Berdymukhamedov" in Turkmen means "I take on impossible tasks and fail at them."
Thu, Jul 16, 2009 from Haaretz: Israeli study sees link between oral cancer, cell phones A recent study documents a sharp rise in the incidence of salivary gland cancer in Israel that researchers believe may be linked to the use of mobile phones.
The study was commissioned by the Israel Dental Association and directed by Avi Zini of the community dentistry department at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine. The study included examination of the incidence of oral cavity cancers in Israel from 1970 to 2006. Among salivary gland cancer cases, researchers found a worrying rise in the number of cases of malignant growth in parotid glands - the salivary gland located under the ear, near the location where cell phones are held during conversations. ...
Thu, Jul 16, 2009 from New York Times: At Wal-Mart, Labeling to Reflect Green Intent Shoppers expect the tags on Wal-Mart items to have rock-bottom prices. In the future they may also have information about the product's carbon footprint, the gallons of water used to create it, and the air pollution left in its wake. As the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores is on a mission to determine the social and environmental impact of every item it puts on its shelves. And it has recruited scholars, suppliers, and environmental groups to help it create an electronic indexing system to do that.
The idea is to create a universal rating system that scores products based on how environmentally and socially sustainable they are over the course of their lives. Consider it the green equivalent to nutrition labels. ...
Tue, Jul 14, 2009 from London Daily Telegraph: Invasive species 'spread around world in ships' ballast tanks' Creatures such as the Chinese mitten crab, which is on the rise in the Thames and other English rivers, have been able to establish themselves in new habitats after being transported from their natural homes in ballast water.
Around 7,000 marine and coastal species travel across the world's oceans every day, a report for conservation charity WWF said. Some of them become invasive in new sites, breeding prolifically by "escaping" the predators or diseases which would normally keep their numbers under control, competing with local species, disrupting food chains or damaging habitats.
The report estimated that in the last five years, invasive species have cost marine and coastal activities including fisheries, aquaculture, industrial infrastructure and harbours some £31 billion worldwide. ...
It's like these ships are taking a giant crap on us!
Sun, Jul 12, 2009 from European Space Agency via ScienceDaily: Declining Aral Sea: Satellite Images Highlight Dramatic Retreat New Envisat images highlight the dramatic retreat of the Aral Sea's shoreline from 2006 to 2009. The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth-largest inland body of water, but it has been steadily shrinking over the past 50 years since the rivers that fed it were diverted for irrigation projects. As the Aral Sea evaporated, it left behind a 40 000 sq km zone of dry, white salt terrain now called the Aral Karakum Desert. Each year violent sandstorms pick up at least 150 000 tonnes of salt and sand from the Aral Karakum and transport it across hundreds of km, causing severe health problems for the local population and making regional winters colder and summers hotter. In an attempt to mitigate these effects, vegetation that thrives in dry, saline conditions is being planted in the former seabed. ...
Thu, Jul 9, 2009 from New Scientist: Disease runs riot as species disappear Could biodiversity protect humans from disease? Conservationists have long suspected it might, and now they have the evidence to back this up.
Keeping complex ecosystems intact is thought to pay big dividends, by preserving natural balances among species that keep animal diseases in check. These include zoonoses -- animal diseases that affect humans.
Rodents in the Americas carry hantaviruses, which can be lethal to people who inhale them from dried droppings. Some 500 people a year in the US die after being infected with the "sin nombre" hantavirus (SNV) from the common deer mouse.
Laurie Dizney and colleagues at Portland State University in Oregon put four different kinds of live traps in five parks around Portland over four years. In each park, they found variation in both the number of mammal species and the proportion of deer mice with SNV. The less mammal diversity there was, the more deer mice were infected.... In the park with the lowest diversity, infection levels were sky-high. ...
Zoonoses? That's what we get when we visit the monkey house.
Wed, Jul 8, 2009 from Nature: Adapt and die? The ability to adapt to a new environment may not always be beneficial for long-term success -- in flour beetles at least. Beetles that were offered and ate a novel food, even with their ancestral food all around them, suffered over multiple generations, according to a study presented last month at the Evolution 2009 meetings in Moscow, Idaho. The work provides some of the first empirical data for whether behavioural plasticity -- the ability to adapt immediately to changing environments -- helps or hinders the evolutionary success of organisms.
"We saw that these beetles have a massive degree of behavioural plasticity, but that their evolutionary success was hindered due to their adaptability," says Deepa Agashe, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University... ...
Thu, Jun 25, 2009 from Foreign Policy: Climate change will soon be the world's greatest health crisis ... [C]limate change is also a public health issue, one whose profound effects on the lives and wellbeing of billions of people are just beginning to be understood. A major new report launched jointly by The Lancet and University College London, which I coauthored, has concluded that climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. Our findings strongly suggest that health experts and advocates ought to be at the forefront of calling for action on climate change. Their help is urgently needed: plans need to be put in place immediately to manage the worst effects, requiring unprecedented levels of international cooperation.... As temperatures rise, there will be an increased risk of transmission of insect-borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria. As many as 260 to 320 million more people may be affected by malaria by 2080 as mosquitoes spread into newly warm areas. Pathogens also mutate faster at higher temperatures, making treatment more difficult. ...
