Desdemona Despair

By Doug Fraser, dfraser@capecodonline.com

WOODS HOLE — Cape Cod is one of the top areas in the world for marine mammal strandings. The animals are sometimes loaded with parasites or are sick. But, despite a long history of pollution in our coastal waters, the toll pollution takes on sea creatures has been harder to establish.

In a study, recently published in the journal Environmental Pollution, Eric Montie, a University of South Florida scientist who did most of his research while a doctoral student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found high levels of man-made chemicals in the brains and fluid surrounding the brains of marine mammals.

Scientists have known for a while that dangerous compounds like the pesticide DDT, the insulating material PCB (polychlorinated biphenyls) and the flame retardant PBDE (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) accumulate in the fatty tissue of mammals, particularly top-of-the-food-chain predators that eat chemical-laden prey.

They are also passed on through milk from mother to calf.

Although the compounds are very stable and resist being broken down within animals, studies have shown metabolized forms of these compounds in the plasma of dolphins and polar bears, and the blood of Pacific killer whales. While prior research on these chemicals had focused on their role as carcinogens or as hormone disrupters, Montie wants to discover their effects on brain development.

"People had not looked at the brain," Montie said last week.

Montie theorized that while most contaminants are fat soluble, some become more water soluble inside animals and could possibly be able to bind to a thyroid hormone protein and pass into the central nervous system. …

Study links strandings to pollution

From Calculated Risk:

The graph is of the monthly Philly Fed data of the number of states with one month increasing activity. Most of the U.S. has been in recession since December 2007 based on this indicator.

Almost all states showed declining activity in April. Still a widespread recession. …

Philly Fed State Coincident Indexes

LONDON, UK, May 28, 2009 (ENS) - Populations of migratory wading birds in Europe, West Asia and Africa are declining more quickly than ever, and they need better protection of wetlands along their flyways, finds the first comprehensive overview of key sites for these small waterbirds in Europe, West-Asia and Africa.

The Wetlands International's Wader Atlas released May 20 in London contains this overview and also shows that there is an incomplete network of protected areas for these birds, especially in Africa and the Middle East.

The product of 10 years of work by thousands of coordinated expert observers in nearly 100 countries, the atlas was funded by the governments of Belgium, the UK and The Netherlands, and a United Nations treaty, the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement.

Waders are small waterbirds such as lapwings, plovers, godwits, curlews and sandpipers as well as larger birds such as flamingoes. Many of them undertake long distance migrations from their Arctic breeding grounds to wintering areas as far away as Southern Africa. Some concentrate in huge numbers at just a few sites, making these wetlands critical for their survival.

The European Union has established a comprehensive network of protected areas for waders in Europe under the Birds Directive.

But outside the EU the protection and management of key sites is still inadequate. A string of wetlands concentrated on the western coast of Africa, in the Sahel zone along the Senegal and Niger rivers, around Lake Chad, and in East Africa in the Sudd, along the Rift Valley and eastern coast of Africa, is crucial for the survival of many migratory waders, the atlas shows.

Wader Atlas author Simon Delany said, “Waders such as the ruff are heavily protected in the EU; farmers receive thousands of Euros for nest protection. These same birds are for sale in the markets of Mopti, Mali for just 25 cents each! If just a part of the finance available in the EU for waterbird protection were to go to the areas where these same birds winter, a huge difference could be made.” …

Migratory Wading Birds At Risk Across the Middle East, Africa

American west threatened by more heatwaves than past models have predicted

By Hannah Hoag

Extreme temperatures are expected to become more common in the western United States by 2040 if greenhouse gases continue to rise, researchers say.

Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and his colleagues simulated climate change for the United States in decade-long periods from 2000 to 2039 using a climate model that divided the land into areas just 25 kilometres square. It is the first time that the region's temperature extremes have been modelled at such high resolution. The new projections were reported on 26 May at the joint assembly of the American Geophysical Union in Toronto, Canada.

Some regions where high seasonal temperatures had occurred just once during the second half of the twentieth century are projected to experience extreme temperatures many times in a single decade, according to the model. "The once-in-50-years event becomes the five-times-in-ten-year event, and in the western United States it is much higher than that — up to eight times per decade," says Diffenbaugh. Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah stand to be the most affected.

The new simulation indicates that the western United States will experience more temperature extremes than projected by the global climate models used in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Many of those models do not account for the topography of the region — which includes the Sierra Nevada Mountains, for example — in a realistic way, says Diffenbaugh.

An increase in the frequency of temperature extremes could affect crops, river flow and electricity consumption in the western states. For example, regions with the climatic conditions suitable for premium wine grape production might shift, shrink or even disappear with rising temperature extremes1.

"If humans and ecological systems have adapted to the current climate and if they experience temperatures they have never before experienced, it may be a problem for some systems," says Alan Robock, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "But Diffenbaugh doesn't say which ones." …

Hot times ahead for the Wild West

By Mark Hume

With growing evidence that pollutants are causing fish deformities in the Athabasca River and one native village struggling to understand its elevated cancer rates, 33 communities in the Northwest Territories have called for a moratorium on oil sands developments because of fears about water quality.

At a conference in Inuvik, the NWT Association of Communities passed a resolution expressing “widespread concern” that the governments of Canada and Alberta have not managed the oil sands in a way that protects the environment.

“This is no longer just an issue for Albertans, and now poses a risk to all downstream communities in the Mackenzie Basin … in terms of risks to water quality in the Athabasca River posed by leaks from, and even possible failure of, oil sands tailings ponds,” states the resolution.

The resolution calls for a halt to new oil sands development until a trans-boundary agreement is in place “that ensures water flowing into the Northwest Territories is clean.”

Kevin Kennedy, a Yellowknife city councillor and delegate at the conference, said Tuesday all the communities in the NWT voted in support of the motion.

“Everyone is concerned.…we are hearing all kinds of stories from Fort Chipewyan about human health problems and are concerned with the health of the Northwest Territories as a whole,” he said. “We are all downstream from the oil sands.” …

 Fearing water pollution, NWT towns call for oil sands slowdown

'Uncontacted' tribes forced to flee armed gangs and bulldozers in forests of Peru, Brazil and Paraguay, says Survival International

By John Vidal, environment editor

Five "uncontacted" tribes are at imminent risk of extinction as oil companies, colonists and loggers invade their territiories. The semi-nomadic groups, who live deep in the forests of Peru, Brazil and Paraguay, are vulnerable to common western diseases such as flu and measles but also risk being killed by armed gangs, according to a report by Survival International, which identifies the five groups as the most threatened on Earth.

Sixty members of the Awá tribe are said to be fleeing from gangs of loggers and ranchers on their land near Maranhão, Brazil. "Logging roads have been bulldozed through a part of their territory, where the uncontacted groups are living. The ranchers want land to graze cattle for beef. The loggers regularly block roads to prevent government teams from entering the area to investigate," says David Hill, a Survival researcher and co-author of the report.

Little is known about the group of 50 Indians who live along the River Pardo in the western Brazilian Amazon, although there is plenty of evidence for their existence, including communal houses, arrows, baskets, hammocks, and footprints along river banks. "Loggers operating out of Colniza have forced them to be constantly on the run, unable to cultivate crops and relying solely on hunting, gathering and fishing. It is believed that the women have stopped giving birth," says the report.

Perenco, an Anglo-French oil company working in a proposed Indian reserve in northern Peru, is endangering several uncontacted tribes, says the report. "The company plans to send hundreds of workers into the region. In recent weeks, indigenous protesters have blockaded the Napo river in order to prevent Perenco boats from passing. In response, a naval gunboat was called in to break the blockade."

One group is believed to be a sub-group of the Waorani, and another is known as the Pananujuri. Perenco denies the tribes exist.

Other tribes in trouble include several living near the Envira river in the Peruvian Amazon. "They are being forced to flee across the border into nearby Brazil. Despite being provided with evidence of their existence, Peru's government has failed to accept that uncontacted Indians are fleeing from Peru to Brazil. Peru's president, Alan Garcia, has suggested the tribes do not exist," says the report.

Ranchers are bulldozing land where a fifth group lives – the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode in the Chaco forest of western Paraguay. This week a Paraguayan court ruled that a company had the right to log on their land, further endangering their existence. …

Oil firms and loggers 'push indigenous people to brink of extinction'

by Debora MacKenzie

Fishing is causing cod to evolve faster than anyone had suspected it could, fisheries scientists in Iceland have discovered. This turbo-evolution may be why the world's biggest cod fishery, the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, crashed in 1992 and has yet to recover.

The Icelandic cod fishery, almost the only large cod fishery left anywhere in the world, is about to go the same way unless urgent conservation measures are applied, the scientists warn.

Einar Árnason's lab at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik is part of MADFish, a network of Nordic scientists studying molecular mechanisms of adaptation in fish. They have discovered a gene in cod, Pan I, that seems to govern the depth at which the fish live.

Cod with the B form of Pan I live deeper down, except when they are on the shallow spawning grounds. Cod with the A form of the gene spend all their time closer to the surface.

As the cod close to the surface are most likely to get caught, survival chances of fish with the A gene are only 8 per cent of those with the B gene. As a result, fish with the A gene are disappearing rapidly. …

Turbo-evolution shows cod speeding to extinction

As climate change causes temperatures to increase in Hawaii's mountains, deadly non-native bird diseases will likely also creep up the mountains, invading most of the last disease-free refuges for honeycreepers -- a group of endangered and remarkable birds.

A just-published U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) review discusses the likelihood of a forthcoming “disease invasion” by examining the present altitudinal range of avian malaria and pox, honeycreeper distribution, and the future projected range of diseases and honeycreeper habitat with climate change.

At one time, the Hawaiian Islands had no mosquitoes – and no mosquito-borne diseases. But, by the late 1800s, mosquitoes had set up permanent housekeeping, setting the stage for epidemic transmission of avian malaria and pox. Honeycreepers – just like people faced with novel viruses such as swine flu – had no natural resistance against these diseases.

Before long, Hawaii’s native honeycreepers significantly declined in numbers and geographic range. It was likely that malaria swept rapidly across all of the lower Hawaiian Islands after the disease was introduced, leaving few survivors. Today, native Hawaiian birds face one of the highest rates of extinction in the world. Of 41 honeycreeper species and subspecies known since historic times, 17 are probably extinct, 14 are endangered, and only 3 are in decent shape. …

Climate Change Threatens Endangered Honeycreeper Birds of Hawaii

From Calculated Risk:

The graph shows the year-over-year change in both indices.

The Composite 10 is off 18.6% over the last year.

The Composite 20 is off 18.7% over the last year.

This is near the worst year-over-year price declines for the Composite indices since the housing bubble burst started. …

Case-Shiller: Prices Fall Sharply in March

U.S. Department of the Interior will grant $15 million to 55 projects to "thin overgrown forests" [logging] and remove potential fuels for wildfires on public lands" [so the wood can be burned elsewhere]. The "hazardous fuels reduction" projects selected will create jobs in 12 states. The DOI press release on this program reports that "wood removed during such projects is generally of a poor quality that is not wanted by lumber mills, but it can serve as an excellent source of biomass energy." Bambi, reportedly, is conflicted about this use of taxpayer dollars, because, while it reduces the chance of losing Mom to a forest fire, it also means fewer places for Thumper to hang out.

"Thinning" as in these projects, likely involves far more hand labor than the usual mechanized logging project would. …

US Government Awards Millions To Create "Forest Thinning" Jobs

By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press Writer

SAN DIEGO – Six months ago, Jim Wiseman didn't even have a spare nutrition bar in his kitchen cabinet.

Now, the 54-year-old businessman and father of five has a backup generator, a water filter, a grain mill and a 4-foot-tall pile of emergency food tucked in his home in the expensive San Diego suburb of La Jolla.

Wiseman isn't alone. Emergency supply retailers and military surplus stores nationwide have seen business boom in the past few months as an increasing number of Americans spooked by the economy rush to stock up on gear that was once the domain of hardcore survivalists.

These people snapping up everything from water purification tablets to thermal blankets shatter the survivalist stereotype: they are mostly urban professionals with mortgages, SUVs, solid jobs and a twinge of embarrassment about their newfound hobby.

From teachers to real estate agents, these budding emergency gurus say the dismal economy has made them prepare for financial collapse as if it were an oncoming Category 5 hurricane. They worry about rampant inflation, runs on banks, bare grocery shelves and widespread power failures that could make taps run dry. …

Art Markman, a cognitive psychologist, said he's not surprised by the reaction to the nation's financial woes — even though it may seem irrational. In an increasingly global and automated society, most people are dependent on strangers and systems they don't understand — and the human brain isn't programmed to work that way.

"We have no real causal understanding of the way our world works at all," said Markman, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin. "When times are good, you trust that things are working, but when times are bad you realize you don't have a clue what you would do if the supermarket didn't have goods on the shelves and that if the banks disappear, you have no idea where your money is." …

Crisis spurs spike in 'suburban survivalists'

A fifth of reptiles and almost a quarter of amphibians in Europe are threatened with extinction on the continent, according to the European Commission.

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent

The first European Red Lists of threatened species for the two groups of species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) shows 23 per cent of amphibians and 21 per cent of reptiles are at risk of dying out.

Most of the pressure the species in danger face comes from human destruction of their habitat, climate change, pollution and the presence of invasive species.

The studies, released on International Biodiversity Day, also show that more than half of frog, toad, salamander and newt species (59 per cent) in Europe are suffering declines in their populations. And 42 per cent of reptiles are in decline, the IUCN said.

The reports on the status of amphibians and reptiles show they are more at risk of extinction than European birds and mammals.

Dr Helen Temple, programme officer for the IUCN Red List unit, said: "Natural habitats across Europe are being squeezed by growing human populations, agricultural sprawl and pollution.

"That is not good news for either amphibians or reptiles." …

Reptiles in Europe more at risk of extinction than birds and mammals

BY ALAN CLENDENNING

SAO PAULO -- Across the Amazon basin, river dwellers are adding new floors to their stilt houses, trying to stay above rising floodwaters that have killed 44 people and left 376,000 homeless.

Flooding is common in the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness, but this year the waters rose higher and stayed longer than they have in decades, leaving fruit trees entirely submerged. Only four years ago, the same communities suffered an unprecedented drought that ruined crops and left mounds of river fish flapping and rotting in the mud.

Experts suspect global warming may be driving wild climate swings that appear to be punishing the Amazon with increasing frequency.

It's ''the $1 million dollar question,'' says Carlos Nobre, a climatologist with Brazil's National Institute for Space Research.

While a definitive answer will take years of careful study, climatologists say the world should expect more extreme weather in the years ahead. Already, what happens in the Amazon could be affecting rainfall elsewhere, from Brazil's agricultural heartland to the U.S. grainbelt, as rising ocean temperatures and rain forest destruction cause shifts in global climate patterns.

''It's important to note that it's likely that these types of record-breaking climate events will become more and more frequent in the near future,'' Nobre said. ``So we all have to brace for more extreme climate in the near future: It's not for the next generation.''

The immediate cause of the unusually heavy rains across northern Brazil is an Atlantic Ocean weather system that usually moves on in March, but stayed put until May this year.

Almost simultaneously, southern Brazilian states far from the Amazon have suffered from an extended drought, caused by La Nina -- a periodic cooling of waters in the Pacific Ocean. And La Nina alternates with El Nino, a heating up of Pacific waters that is blamed for catastrophic forest fires plaguing the Amazon in recent years. …

Amazon hit by climate chaos of floods, drought

People have been listening to skylarks singing in Britain for 10,000 years. But now they, and many other much-loved species, are vanishing fast.

By David Adam, environment correspondent

…the star attraction of the neighbouring fields has flown. Until a year ago, a clutch of woodlark nested there, one of Britain's rarest birds with just 1,000 or so thought to remain. Then their home was ploughed up and replaced with a giant field of swaying hemp plants. The woodlark have not been seen since.

It is not just the professional birdwatchers of the RSPB who have seen their local landscape transformed. Across Britain, and with little fanfare, the face of the countryside has subtly changed in recent years. Farm fields that stood idle for years under EU schemes to prevent overproduction, such as the one across the road from the RSPB, have been conscripted back into active service. The uncultivated land, previously a haven for wildlife, has been ploughed, and farmers have planted crops such as wheat and barley, with occasional hemp for use in paper and textiles.

As a result, the amount of land available for birds such as the woodlark has halved in the last two years. Without efforts to stem this loss of habitat, conservation experts warn that the countryside of the future could look and sound very different.

Starved of insects in the spring and seeds through the winter, the metallic-sounding corn bunting and plump grey partridge, formerly one of the most common birds on UK shores, are on the brink. And the skylark, whose twittering has provided the soundtrack to millions of countryside walks and inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Ode to a Skylark, to praise its "profuse strains of unpremeditated art", is struggling and could soon vanish from many areas. Numbers fell 53% from 1970 to 2006. "This is not just about birdwatchers. These birds are part of our common heritage," says Gareth Morgan, head of agriculture policy at the RSPB.

Government figures show that populations of 19 bird species that rely on farmland have halved since serious counting started in the 1970s - a decline conservationists blame on intensive farming methods, with insecticide and herbicide sprayed on to monoculture fields shorn of vibrant hedges. …

Where have all our birds gone?

By Tan Ee Lyn

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A paint chemical that is widely used in China is leaking into the Yangtze river and may be responsible for deformities and decreasing numbers of rare wild Chinese sturgeon, a study has found.

In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers said a significant proportion of juvenile sturgeon caught at the river had either one or no eyes, or had misshapen skeletons.

Chinese sturgeon, which have existed on earth for 140 million years, are among the first class of protected animals in China. The slow-growing fish has an increased capacity to accumulate the paint chemical triphenyltin (TPT), which contains tin.

The experts collected two- and three-day old Chinese sturgeon larvae from a spawning area below the Gezhouba Dam, which is 38 km (24 miles) downstream from the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.

They later hatched in a laboratory in Jingzhou city in central Hubei province where 6.3 percent were found with skeletal deformities and 1.2 percent had either no eyes or just one eye.

"Maternal transfer of TPT ... in eggs of wild Chinese sturgeon poses a significant risk to the larvae naturally fertilized or hatched in the Yangtze River," wrote the researchers, led by Hu Jiangying at the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Beijing University. …

Deformities in Chinese sturgeon linked to chemical

From Calculated Risk:

This graph shows broker's commissions as a percent of GDP.

Not surprisingly - giving the housing bubble - broker's commissions soared in recent years, rising from $56 billion in 2000, to $109 billion in 2005. Commissions have declined to an annual rate of $57 billion in Q1 2009 - the lowest since 2000.

As a percent of GDP (shown on graph), broker's commissions are at the lowest level since 1993. All data from the BEA. …

Real Estate Agents Giving Up

By Shar Adams

Australia is exhibiting climate change weather patterns that were not predicted to manifest till 2020, says one of the country’s most prominent climate change scientists.

Professor Ian Lowe, AO, an award-winning scientist and author of a number of books on climate change, said that when he wrote his first book, Living in the Greenhouse, in 1989, he summarised what scientists were saying would occur in 2020 if climate change was not addressed.

This included predictions that average temperatures would increase; it would get drier in southern and eastern Australia, and wetter in northern Australia; there would be more frequent extremes like floods, cyclones, extended dry spells, heat waves and severe bushfires; and vector-borne diseases like dengue fever would spread.

Speaking at a forum organised by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), of which he is president, Professor Lowe said:

“I don’t have to remind you that in February this year, we had extreme heatwaves in South Australia and Victoria, devastating bushfires in Victoria, cyclonic weather on our northern coasts, severe flooding in Queensland and northern NSW, and a dengue outbreak in [north Queensland’s] Cairns that was up to 350 cases [at the time of speaking],” he said.

Professor Lowe went on to say that not one of the events could be described as “unarguably” a result of climate change, but the overall pattern is what had been predicted.

“Perhaps we can be concerned that that was what the science was saying 20 years ago would be occurring by the 2020s and we are already seeing it in 2009,” he said. …

Copenhagen the focus as Australia shows effects of climate change.

By PETER S. GOODMAN and JACK HEALY

As job losses rise, growing numbers of American homeowners with once solid credit are falling behind on their mortgages, amplifying a wave of foreclosures.

In the latest phase of the nation’s real estate disaster, the locus of trouble has shifted from subprime loans — those extended to home buyers with troubled credit — to the far more numerous prime loans issued to those with decent financial histories.

With many economists anticipating that the unemployment rate will rise into the double digits from its current 8.9 percent, foreclosures are expected to accelerate. That could exacerbate bank losses, adding pressure to the financial system and the broader economy.

“We’re about to have a big problem,” said Morris A. Davis, a real estate expert at the University of Wisconsin. “Foreclosures were bad last year? It’s going to get worse.”

Economists refer to the current surge of foreclosures as the third wave, distinct from the initial spike when speculators gave up property because of plunging real estate prices, and the secondary shock, when borrowers’ introductory interest rates expired and were reset higher.

“We’re right in the middle of this third wave, and it’s intensifying,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “That loss of jobs and loss of overtime hours and being forced from a full-time to part-time job is resulting in defaults. They’re coast to coast.”

Those sliding into foreclosure today are more likely to be modest borrowers whose loans fit their income than the consumers of exotically lenient mortgages that formerly typified the crisis. …

Job Losses Push Safer Mortgages to Foreclosure

An unusually high number of the storms has left a film of dust on the Rocky Mountain snowpack, causing it to melt earlier and forcing farmers to adjust. This could be the new normal, scientists say.

By Nicholas Riccardi

Reporting from Denver -- A series of unusual spring dust storms has left the snowcapped mountains of western Colorado stained brown and red, even a bit pink. The dust is speeding up the runoff to rivers that supply millions of people with water and raising fears of an increasingly arid West.

Twelve dust storms barreled into the southern Rockies from the deserts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico so far this year. In contrast, four storms hit the mountains all year long in 2003. Eight occurred in each of the last three years. …

The storms leave a dark film on snow that melts it faster by hastening its absorption of the sun's energy. That, coupled with unseasonably warm temperatures, has sped up the runoff here, swelling rivers to near flood stage, threatening to make reservoirs overflow and fueling fears that there will not be enough water left for late-summer crops. …

Painter has found that dust can speed up snowmelt by as much as 35 days -- in other words, snow that would normally disappear by May 15 would instead be gone by April 10. …

"This is really the story of the wholesale transformation of the West," Painter said. …

Dust storms speed snowmelt in the West

For Risti Ariyani, the dream of working abroad and helping her family is over.

Her contract with a computer components factory in Malaysia was abruptly canceled because of the global financial crisis, leaving her no choice but to return home to Central Java.

“My family was counting on me,” the 20-year-old said. “Everyone, including my sisters now in school, depended on the money I sent back.”

In 2008, some 200,000 Indonesian nationals were sent home from Malaysia because of the recession.

Most come from rural areas of the country, where poverty is particularly rife.

“Due to the global crisis, I see more migrant workers from other sectors returning,” said Choirul Hadi, secretary general of the Indonesian Migrant Workers Trade Union.

Between 1,500 and 2,000 migrants are now returning through Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport every day, he said, with serious implications for thousands of families. …

Migrants Return Home From Working Abroad To Debt and Hardship

Falling water levels trouble residents, raise pollution

By Lee Bergquist of the Journal Sentinel

Scientists and property owners say they are worried about the long-term effects of a prolonged drought on fishing and water quality in northern Wisconsin as they've watched some lakes drop to their lowest point in 70 years.

As people flock to the north this weekend, drought conditions also are evident in tinder-dry forests that experienced a surge in fires last week. …

The main culprit: less rainfall over the last four years.

But a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist says the problem goes back much further than the last couple of years.

Using statistical modeling, Chris Kucharik found that the northern quarter of the state has received 15% to 20% less rain from the decade of the 1950s to the decade ending in 2006.

"This doesn't even include the drought years after 2006," said Kucharik, an assistant professor of agronomy and environmental sciences. "You continue to run a deficit of rain, and the response to the system is the lakes," he said.

Some lakes are at their lowest levels in seven decades. Those most affected are seepage lakes that rely on groundwater and runoff for recharging themselves instead of streams and rivers.

On Anvil Lake in Vilas County, one of the few lakes that have been continuously monitored, the water level is down 7.2 feet - the lowest since 1943.

In Marathon County, the falling water level is a factor in a massive fish kill in March on the Big Eau Pleine reservoir. …

Droughts drain northern lakes

Lands commissioner says our children will live with consequences

By JOEL CONNELLY

State Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark looks out at Washington's unhealthy forests from a pilot's seat, flying his plane from Olympia to his family's ranch in the remote reaches of Okanogan County.

"It is just mind-numbing the damage you see on west facing and south facing slopes … an overburden of dead and dying trees," Goldmark said yesterday, referring mainly to predation by pine bark beetles.

Goldmark had just shared his up-close perspective on global warming, and its consequences for trees in the Evergreen State, at a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hearing here.

The likely future for our forests through the 21st Century: Burn Baby Burn.

"There is a 33 percent chance that we will see 2 million acres burn in one year by 2080: That is about 5 percent of the entire state," Goldmark told the EPA. …

As I drove up into the Sawtooth National Recreation Area of Idaho last weekend, the lodge pole pine forests came in three colors. The green trees were alive. The orange trees were dying. The grey trees were dead. …

Global warming's impacts on state forests: Burn baby burn!

By Laurie Nowell

A NEW El Nino effect is developing in the Pacific Ocean, threatening to extend Australia's crippling drought and bring destructive weather along the east coast.

A new analysis of the El Nino effect suggests they are occurring more frequently - offering further evidence of global warming.

And, in a double whammy for Australia, scientists have identified a new phenomenon, the Indian Ocean Dipole, which could also bring drier conditions to Australia. …

"We have had 18 El Nino's since 1940 -- that's one every 3.8 years on average," he said.

"We've had seven since 1987 - that's one every 3.1 years. But with this one coming that will bring it down to one every 2.75 years.

"By 2020 we may have experienced four more El Ninos.

'These climate trends are disturbing. They point to the possible conclusion that our weather patterns have changed irreversibly." …

No end to the big dry.

Australia has lifted protection levels for the Tasmanian devil, the world's largest surviving marsupial carnivore, from vulnerable to endangered.

The devil population, which is found on the island state of Tasmania, has been decimated by a facial tumour disease.

The number of Tasmanian devils in the wild is thought to have fallen by up to 70% since the mid-1990s.

The new conservation status will give the animals greater protection under national environment laws.  

The devils have been ravaged by an outbreak of facial tumours the size of small golf balls.

The cancers are mostly concentrated around the mouth and head. The disease is contagious and is spread among groups of devils through biting.

Tumour cells are not neutralised by the marsupial's immune system because of a lack of genetic diversity among the population that exists in the wild only in Tasmania. ….

Tasmanian devils now endangered

The oldest and largest trees within California's world famous Yosemite National Park are disappearing.

Climate change appears to be a major cause of the loss.

The revelation comes from an analysis of data collected over 60 years by forest ecologists.

They say one worrying aspect of the decline is that it is happening within one of most protected forests within the US, suggesting that even more large trees may be dying off elsewhere.

James Lutz and Jerry Franklin of the University of Washington, Seattle, US and Jan van Wagtendonk of the Yosemite Field Station of the US Geological Survey, based in El Portal, California collated data on tree growth within the park gathered from the 1930s onwards.

Their key finding is that the density of large diameter trees has fallen by 24% between the 1930s and 1990s, within all types of forest.

"These large, old trees have lived centuries and experienced many dry and wet periods," says Lutz. "So it is quite a surprise that recent conditions are such that these long-term survivors have been affected." …

Yosemite's giant trees disappear

“We will only recognize Peak Oil in the rear-view mirror.” -- So They say

The May 2009 edition of Oilwatch Monthly can be downloaded at this weblink (PDF, 2.0 MB, 28 pp). …

1) Conventional crude production - Latest available figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that crude oil production including lease condensates increased by 306,000 b/d from January to February 2009, resulting in a total production of crude oil including lease condensates of 71.91 million barrels per day. The all time high production record of crude oil stands at 74.83 million b/d reached in July 2008. …

Oilwatch Monthly May 2009

By KRIS HUDSON and VANESSA O'CONNELL

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Malls, those ubiquitous shopping meccas that sprang up in the 1950s, are dwindling in number, with many struggling properties reduced to largely vacant shells.

On the low-income east side of Charlotte, N.C., the 1.1-million-square-foot Eastland Mall recently lost a slew of key tenants, including a Dillard's and, next month, a Sears. Sales per square foot at the venue fell to $210 in 2008 from $288 in 2001.

The Metcalf South Shopping Center in Overland Park, Kan., is languishing after plans to redevelop it into an open-air shopping district fizzled. The stretch of shops that connects the two largest tenants -- a Sears and a Macy's -- stands mostly vacant, patrolled by security guards.

With their maze of walkways and fast-food courts, malls have long been an iconic, if sometimes unsightly, presence in the American retail landscape. A few were made famous by their sheer size, others for the range of shopping and social diversions they provided.

But the long recession is helping to empty out the promenades. Some analysts estimate that the number of so-called "dead malls" -- centers debilitated by anemic sales and high vacancy rates -- will swell to more than 100 by the end of this year.

In the 12 months ended March 31, U.S. malls collectively posted a 6.5% decline in tenants' same-store sales, according to Green Street Advisors Inc., a real-estate research firm. The recent slump was led by an average 7.3% sales drop at Simon Property Group Inc., the operator with the largest number of mall locations.

The industry's woes are worsening. Thinning customer traffic, and subsequent hits to tenants' sales and profits, prompted Standard & Poor's Corp. last month to lower the credit ratings of the department-store sector. That knocked Macy's Inc. and J.C. Penney Co. into junk territory and pushed others deeper into junk. Sears Holdings Corp., a cornerstone tenant at many malls, is expected to close 23 stores this month and next. …

Recession Turns Malls Into Ghost Towns

By Stuart Grudgings

ILHA GRANDE, Brazil (Reuters) - No one could say they hadn't seen it coming.

The sand dunes had been advancing for decades before, two years ago, they finally swallowed the houses of Raimundo do Nascimento and 12 other families in Ilha Grande, an island in the Parnaiba river delta in northeastern Brazil.

Standing on the 14-meter (46-feet)-high dune that now completely covers his old home, the 53-year-old Do Nascimento describes the landscape of his childhood -- cashew trees as far as he could see. Not a dune in sight. … 

Experts blame deforestation and population increases for the huge dunes that are advancing by about 25 meters (82 feet) a year, threatening to wipe the town of 8,500 people off the map. But they and residents also blame stronger winds and drier weather in recent years.

"The wind has been getting stronger. It is the motor of this process," said Luiz Roberto del Poggetto, an oceanographer whose firm was contracted by the government to find ways to contain the dunes. …

Unusually heavy rains in the north and northeast have made hundreds of thousands of people homeless and killed about 45. Meanwhile, southern Brazil has been hit by a series of droughts, devastating farmers and cutting by a third the flow of water over the famed Iguacu waterfalls.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has expressed concern.

"Brazil is feeling climate changes that are happening in the world, when there is a severe drought in a place that didn't have them, when it rains in places where it didn't used to," Lula said in a recent radio broadcast. …

In Brazil, extreme weather stokes climate worries.

By Jeremy Hance

The first global report on the state of shellfish was released today at the International Marine Conservation Congress in Washington, DC. Painting a dire picture for shellfish worldwide, the report found that 85 percent of oyster reefs have vanished.

Threats such as over-development on coasts, destructive fishing practices, altered river flows, dams, and agricultural runoff, have led the researchers to conclude that oyster reefs are the most devastated marine habitat in the world.

“We’re seeing an unprecedented and alarming decline in the condition of oyster reefs, a critically important habitat in the world’s bays and estuaries,” said Mike Beck, senior marine scientist at The Nature Conservancy and lead author of the report.

Oyster reefs in North America, Europe, and Australia are particularly hard-hit with many of the reef systems considered functionally extinct. Still the majority of wild oysters come from the east coast of North America, where even these productive reefs are in decline. … 

“We want to raise awareness that the world’s remnant oyster reefs and populations are important, since they may in fact represent some of the last examples of reef habitat produced by a particular species of oyster,” said Christine Crawford, a scientist with the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute at the University of Tasmania in Australia and one of the co-authors of the report. …

85 percent of oyster reefs gone, threatening coastal environments and a favored delicacy

From Calculated Risk:

The graph shows weekly claims and continued claims since 1971.

The four-week moving average is at 628,500, off 30,250 from the peak 6 weeks ago.

Continued claims are now at 6.66 million - an all time record. …

Unemployment Claims: Continued Claims at Record 6.66 Million

The most extensive study of pollutants in marine mammals’ brains reveals that these animals are exposed to a hazardous cocktail of pesticides such as DDTs and PCBs, as well as emerging contaminants such as brominated flame retardants.

Eric Montie, the lead author on the study currently in press and published online April 17 in Environmental Pollution, performed the research as a student in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution-MIT Joint Graduate Program in Oceanography and Ocean Engineering and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The final data analysis and writing were conducted at College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, where Montie now works in David Mann’s marine sensory biology lab. …

Montie analyzed both the cerebrospinal fluid and the gray matter of the cerebellum in eleven cetaceans and one gray seal stranded near Cape Cod, Mass. His analyses include many of the chemicals that environmental watchdog groups call the dirty dozen, a collection of particularly ubiquitous pesticides that were banned in the 1970s because of their hazards to human health. But the Montie study goes much further in the scope of contaminants analyzed. And many of the contaminants are anything but benign.

The chemicals studied include pesticides like DDT, which has been shown to cause cancer and reproductive toxicity, and PCBs, which are neurotoxicants known to disrupt the thyroid hormone system. The study also quantifies concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs (a particular class of flame retardants), which are neurotoxicants that impair the development of motor activity and cognition. This work is the first to quantify concentrations of PBDEs in the brains of marine mammals.

The results revealed that concentration of one contaminant was surprisingly high. According to Montie, “The biggest wakeup was that we found parts per million concentrations of hydroxylated PCBs in the cerebrospinal fluid of a gray seal. That is so worrisome for me. You rarely find parts per million levels of anything in the brain.” …

Skip This Cocktail Party: Contaminants in Marine Mammals' Brains

In a dry land where almost everyone has their eye on their uphill neighbor's water, the Andes are already seeing conflicts erupt as global warming changes water patterns.

By Barbara Fraser
For The Daily Climate

ICA, Peru — Two decades ago, the strip of sand between the Pacific Ocean and the Andean foothills was empty except for the occasional fig or carob tree. But  the northern end of perhaps the world's driest desert – a harsh and unforgiving clime —  is now the center of Peru's export agriculture industry.

Rising demand for irrigation and drinking water is draining the aquifer faster than it can recharge, and a scheme to channel more water from the Andean highlands, which receive seasonal rainfall, is pitting big agribusinesses on the coast against Quechua-speaking llama herders in the mountains.

Experts say the conflict is just one sign of rising tensions over water use as supplies of the vital resource dwindle and shift with changes in climate.

"Water belongs to the people who need it most, and we need it most," says Gino Gotuzzo, of the Farmers Association of Ica, who grows asparagus and some other crops on about 60 acres of desert. Up the mountain, however, Quechua-speaking farmers say plans to channel runoff to coastal farms will dry up the spongy high-mountain wetlands where they pasture llamas and alpacas, ruining their livelihood.

El Niño's water refugees

Peruvian officials brush aside the specter of "water refugees." As supplies dwindle, they say, they can channel water from the highlands, where rain falls between October and April, or divert rivers that flow east to Amazonia, which receives more precipitation than its sparse population uses.

Nevertheless, droughts associated with El Niño events in the 1980s and 1990s spurred increased migration from rural areas to cities in Peru, and the exodus from Brazil's chronically drought-stricken northeast is one factor in that country's Amazonian deforestation. …

Glaciers go, leaving drought, conflict and tension in Andes

From Calculated Risk:

Total housing starts were at 458 thousand (SAAR) in April, the all time record low. The previous record low was 488 thousand in January (the lowest level since the Census Bureau began tracking housing starts in 1959).

Single-family starts were at 368 thousand (SAAR) in April; just above the revised record low in January (357 thousand).
Permits for single-family units were 373 thousand in April, suggesting single-family starts will remain at about the same level in May.

Here is the Census Bureau report on housing Permits, Starts and Completions. …

Housing Starts at Record Low in April

By Azad Majumder

DHAKA (Reuters) - It was once the lifeline of the Bangladeshi capital.

But the once mighty Buriganga river, which flows by Dhaka, is now one of the most polluted rivers in Bangladesh because of rampant dumping of industrial and human waste.

"Much of the Buriganga is now gone, having fallen to ever insatiable land grabbers and industries dumping untreated effluents into the river," said Ainun Nishat, a leading environmental expert.

"The water of the Buriganga is now so polluted that all fish have died, and increasing filth and human waste have turned it like a black gel. Even rowing across the river is now difficult for it smells so badly," he told reporters.

The plight of the Buriganga symbolizes the general state of many rivers in Bangladesh, a large flat land criss-crossed by hundreds of rivers which faces an uphill battle to keep them navigable and their waters safe for human and aquatic lives.

Bangladesh has about 230 small and large rivers, and a large chunk of the country's 140 million people depend on them for a living and for transportation.

But experts say many of them are drying up or are choked because of pollution and encroachment. …

Bangladesh river pollution threatens millions

New figures show the Big Dry is getting worse across New South Wales - with 60 per cent of the state being classified as in drought.

This includes the western district, which takes in Broken Hill and Wilcannia, while Wanaaring in the Darling district is classified as being in marginal drought.

Primary Industries Minister Ian MacDonald says the figures are a worry.

"This is a disturbing situation given that a large part of the state is in drought and we're just about to enter into the cropping season for the winter crop," he said.

Drought worsening across NSW: data

By Verity Edwards and Pia Akerman | May 18, 2009

FIRST it was salt, now it is acid preventing farmers at Currency Creek and along the Finniss River from using Murray River water.

While it may have been a blessing at the time, heavy rains last month have mobilised acid in exposed soil beds in sections of South Australia's Lower Lakes, sparking warnings to keep livestock away from the two tributaries and fears the flowing water could have an impact on the health of local landowners.

For dairy farmer Don Galpin, the increased acidification could not have come at a worse time.

Mr Galpin, who runs his family's 100-year-old farm on the banks of Currency Creek, has spent the past three years battling drought, falling milk prices, a doubling of feed costs and being forced to buy water to ensure it is of a high enough quality to run his business.

"It certainly is (a nail in the coffin)," Mr Galpin told The Australian. "It's a negative as far as the area is concerned. It's the last thing we need."

The 64-year-old, his wife, Sue, and sons Jarrad and Andrew have battled tough conditions for three years. They considered selling, but are "hanging in there".

There is little water left to pump from the river. When the pipes are not running dry, the water is too acidic. The farmer has spent more than $6000 buying water this year.

"If we hadn't been able to buy water from the Myponga Reservoir, we would have had to close down," Mr Galpin said. "That's more or less saved us at a price."  …

Acidic water could be the final straw

BY TINA LAM

As the sun begins to sink along the Little Manistee River in northern Michigan, researcher Nick Johnson is excited and a little nervous. There's a lot riding on what he's about to do.

It's spawning season for the sea lamprey, a prehistoric creature that invaded the Great Lakes 80 years ago, and Johnson is injecting a love potion into the river to lure female sea lampreys into traps.

The eel-like lampreys are one of the Great Lakes' most destructive invasive species, devouring native fish by sucking out their innards. They invaded the lakes in the 1920s, wiping out lake trout in some lakes by the 1950s. A chemical developed to kill lampreys has helped lower their numbers to about half a million in the lakes, but it is expensive and there still are too many lampreys. …

Lampreys are sucking the life out of Michigan's waterways

By Sam Lister, Health Editor

Climate change poses the biggest threat to human health in the 21st century but its full impact is not being grasped by the healthcare community or policymakers, a medical report concludes.

The report, compiled by a commission of academics from University College London and published in The Lancet, warns that climate change risks huge death tolls caused by disease, food and water shortages and poor sanitation.

The authors said that the NHS would face serious incremental pressures from heat and hygiene-related illnesses because of increasingly hot summers, greater pathogen spread with warmer temperatures, and the heightened risk of flooding.

Professor Anthony Costello, a paediatrician and director of UCL Institute for Global Health, said that he had not realised the full ramifications of climate change on health until 18 months ago.

Describing the threat as a "clear and present danger" that would affect billions of lives, he said that the world needed a 21st-century public health movement to deal with climate change. He added that failure to act will result in future generations feeling the same moral outrage as is felt today towards those "who brought in and did nothing to stop slavery".

"The big message of this report is that climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people, not just an environmental issue about polar bears and deforestation," Professor Costello, the commission leader, said. "The impacts will be felt not just in the UK, but all around the world — and not just in some distant future but in our lifetimes and those of our children." …

Professor Anthony Costello: climate change biggest threat to humans

Phnom Penh (AFP) May 7, 2009 - Lightning strikes have killed about 50 Cambodians in the first four months of the year, a government official said Thursday.

The number of such deaths was up from the same period last year, said a deputy head at the National Committee for Disaster Management, Ly Thuch, without giving a comparable figure for 2008.

At least 95 Cambodians were killed by lightning last year, more than double the 2007 total and the highest-ever annual tally in the country.

"We have noticed that the climate has changed and there have been so many lightning strikes," Ly Thuch said, adding that 10 people were killed by lightning last week alone.

Most of the victims were farmers, he added.

Lightning kills 50 Cambodians in four months: official

From Calculated Risk:

As everyone knows, investment in single family structures has fallen off a cliff. This is the component of RI that gets all the media attention - although usually from stories about single family starts and new home sales. …

Home improvement is at 1.15% of GDP, off the high of 1.30% in Q4 2005 - but still above the average of the last 50 years of 1.07%.

This would seem to suggest there remains significant downside risk to home improvement spending. …

Residential Investment Components