Desdemona Despair

By The Associated Press
April 30, 2010, 11:47AM

MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER -- Oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico oozed into Louisiana's ecologically rich wetlands today as storms threatened to frustrate desperate protection efforts.

Crews in boats patrolled coastal marshes early today looking for areas where the oil has flowed in, the Coast Guard said.

The National Weather Service predicted winds, high tides and waves through Sunday that could push oil deep into the inlets, ponds and lakes that line the boot of southeastern Louisiana. Seas of 6 to 7 feet were pushing tides several feet above normal toward the coast, compounded by thunderstorms expected in the area Friday.

As the sun rose over Venice, dozens of boats, some carrying booms that will help hold back the oil, sat ready at Cypress Cove pier. Fishing guide Mike Dickinson, 56, was taking out some fishermen from Georgia in hopes of making money before more oil washes in.

"We've been getting calls from customers concerned about the fishing, whether it's going to open," he said.

The weather will keep crews from skimming oil off of the surface or burning it off for the next couple of days because of the weather, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Waves may also wash over booms strung out just off shorelines to stop the oil, said Tom McKenzie, a spokesman for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is hoping booms will keep oil off the Chandeleur Islands, part of a national wildlife refuge. …

Volunteer Valerie Gonsoulin, a 51-year-old kayaker from Lafayette who wore an "America's Wetlands" hat, said she hoped to help spread containment booms to hold back the oil.

"I go out in the marshes three times a week. It's my peace and serenity," she said. "I'm horrified. ... I've been sitting here watching that NASA image grow and it grows. I knew it would hit every place I fish and love." …

Storms threaten protection efforts as Gulf of Mexico oil spill comes ashore

By PAUL TATNELL
April 30, 2010 - 4:53PM

Sydney has experienced its fifth warmest April on record with a month of balmy nights and little rain.

But don't put away the warm clothes just yet with predictions that winter is on the way; it's just running a little late.

The average April minimum temperature was 1 degree above the average of 16 degrees. Combined with high humidity and little wind, temperatures rose.

With the average April maximum of 25 degrees, Sydney recorded its second highest maximum temperatures averages in 151 years.

Meteorologist for Fairfax company www.weatherzone.com.au, Samuel Terry, said a number of high pressure systems meant pleasant weather, but, in bad news for our water catchments, very little rain. …

Mr Terry said Sydney had received well below its normal rainfall for 2010, which is unusual considering most of Sydney's rain usually comes before July.

He said unless Sydney receives some "good rain" in May "we could be in a bit of trouble".

"As well as being a warm month, April was a dry month, with the city collecting only 30 millimetres; just under a quarter of what is normal," he said.

"This made it the driest April in four years for Sydney, and it was similar for most other suburbs across the Sydney Basin, including Canterbury and Penrith." …

Sydney has fifth warmest April in 151 years

By Rhett A. Butler, www.mongabay.com
April 28, 2010

Industrial soy expansion in the Brazilian Amazon has contributed to deforestation by pushing cattle ranchers further north into rainforest zones, reports a new study published the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The authors — including Elizabeth Barona, Navin Ramankutty, Glenn Hyman and Oliver Coomes — analyzed annual census data on deforestation, crop harvest area, livestock population, and pasture area between 2000 and 2006 from municipalities in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Their analysis found that deforestation shifted 39 km to the northeast during the period, while pasture shifted 87 km to the northwest, from northeastern Mato Grosso to southwestern Para, and soybeans moved 82 km to the northeast, from southern to northeastern Mato Grosso. The researchers also noted that soybean expansion was accompanied by a decline in pasture area in many municipalities in Mato Grosso, lending support to the argument that "decreases in pasture in Mato Grosso owing to soybean expansion may have been compensated by increases in pasture elsewhere in northern Mato Grosso, Para and Rondônia causing some deforestation indirectly, i.e., 'displacement deforestation.'" …

Soy production in the Amazon exploded in the early 1990s following the development of a new variety of soybean suitable to the soils and climate of the region. Most expansion occurred in the cerrado, a wooded grassland ecosystem, and the transition forests in the southern fringes in the Amazon basin, especially in states of Mato Grosso and Pará — direct conversion of rainforests for soy has been relatively limited. Instead, the impact of soy on rainforests — as suggested by the Environmental Research Letters study — is generally seen to be indirect. Soy expansion has driven up land prices, created impetus for infrastructure improvements that promote forest clearing, and displaced cattle ranchers to frontier areas, spurring deforestation.  …

Large-scale soy farming in Brazil pushes ranchers into the Amazon rainforest

By Chris McGreal in Washington, Terry Macalister and Adam Gabbatt 
www.guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 April 2010 20.16 BST

The United States mobilised its military tonight in an attempt to help deal with the vast oil slick spreading across the Gulf of Mexico amid predictions that it will begin to hit the Louisiana coast within hours and could cause one of the country's biggest environmental disasters.

The US coastguard said today that oil was flowing into the sea at five times the rate previously estimated.

The government has taken broad control of efforts to contain the spill from last week's blowout on the Deepwater Horizon rig, with the White House saying it had imposed "oversight" of BP's efforts and is pursuing an "aggressive" response that includes mobilising naval ships.

Louisiana has declared a state of emergency and the White House said the president, Barack Obama, and the joint chiefs of staff were being briefed regularly on the situation. Tonight, Obama said the British company was "ultimately responsible" for the spill.

The reassessment of the scale of the disaster, which came after a third leak was discovered, sent BP's share price plunging, with more than £13bn knocked off the company's market value since the explosion.

Under US law, the company is responsible for the costs of dealing with the crisis, including paying for use of the military.

Environmentalists warned that the spill, which covers an area about the size of Cornwall and is just a few miles off the Mississippi river delta, could turn out to be as catastrophic as the impact of the Exxon Valdez tanker spill off Alaska was 21 years ago.

The most immediate threat is to birds, dolphins and turtles in the area and to the Louisiana coast, as strengthening winds push the slick toward the shore.

Environmentalists say the oil is likely to hit the delta and a series of barrier islands that have still not fully recovered from hurricane Katrina six years ago and which are home to more than 400 species. But if the oil continues to spread it could hit Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. …

Deepwater Horizon oil slick to hit US coast within hours

By Jim Robbins

For many years, Diana Six, an entomologist at the University of Montana, planned her field season for the same two to three weeks in July. That’s when her quarry — tiny, black, mountain pine beetles — hatched from the tree they had just killed and swarmed to a new one to start their life cycle again.

Now, says Six, the field rules have changed. Instead of just two weeks, the beetles fly continually from May until October, attacking trees, burrowing in, and laying their eggs for half the year. And that’s not all. The beetles rarely attacked immature trees; now they do so all the time. What’s more, colder temperatures once kept the beetles away from high altitudes, yet now they swarm and kill trees on mountaintops. And in some high places where the beetles had a two-year life cycle because of cold temperatures, it’s decreased to one year.

Such shifts make it an exciting — and unsettling — time to be an entomologist. The growing swath of dead lodgepole and ponderosa pine forest is a grim omen, leaving Six — and many other scientists and residents in the West — concerned that as the climate continues to warm, these destructive changes will intensify.

“A couple of degrees warmer could create multiple generations a year,” she said, as she chopped off a piece of bark on a dead lodgepole pine to show the galleries of burrowing larvae. “If that happens, I expect it would be a disaster for all of our pine populations.”

Across western North America, from Mexico to Alaska, forest die-off is occurring on an extraordinary scale, unprecedented in at least the last century-and-a-half — and perhaps much longer. All told, the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the United States have seen nearly 70,000 square miles of forest — an area the size of Washington state — die since 2000. For the most part, this massive die-off is being caused by outbreaks of tree-killing insects, from the ips beetle in the Southwest that has killed pinyon pine, to the spruce beetle, fir beetle, and the major pest — the mountain pine beetle — that has hammered forests in the north.

These large-scale forest deaths from beetle infestations are likely a symptom of a bigger problem, according to scientists: warming temperatures and increased stress, due to a changing climate. Although western North America has been hardest hit by insect infestations, sizeable areas of forest in Australia, Russia, France, and other countries have experienced die-offs, most of which appears to have been caused by drought, high temperatures, or both.

One recent study collected reports of large-scale forest mortality from around the world. Often, forest death is patchy, and research is difficult because of the large areas involved. But the paper, recently published in Forest Ecology and Management, reported that in a 20,000-square-mile savanna in Australia, nearly a third of the trees were dead. In Russia, there was significant die-off within 9,400 square miles of forest. Much of Siberia has warmed by several degrees Fahrenheit in the past half-century, and hot, dry conditions have led to extreme wildfire seasons in eight of the last 10 years. Russian researchers also are concerned that warmer, dryer conditions will lead to increased outbreaks of the Siberian moth, which can destroy large swaths of Russia’s boreal forest. …

What’s Killing the Great Forests of the American West?

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com
April 28, 201

Niall O'Connor from the World Wildlife Fund warns in a Carte Blanche production that if the ecological destruction of Madagascar continues, the poor island country could become "Haiti-like", where he says, "most of the biodiversity, most of the forests are gone".

Carte Blanche, an African investigative journalism show, went to Madagascar to look into the current environmental crisis where rosewood is being logged in National Parks threatening Madagascar's unique biodiversity.

The program catches up with local tour guides who are fighting the illegal rosewood trade and lemur-research Erik Patel, who is studying one of Madagascar's most endangered lemurs: the Critically Endangered, silky sifaka. The segment is available below in two parts.

Video: Madagascar could become "Haiti-like"

By Thomas Hubert; Editing by Tim Cocks, David Lewis and Mark Trevelyan
KINSHASA
Wed Apr 28, 2010 3:09pm EDT

(Reuters) - United Nations peacekeepers in Congo have used helicopters to airlift endangered baby gorillas to a sanctuary after they were rescued in a conflict zone where they faced being captured or eaten.

The animals ferried to safety are eastern lowland gorillas, a species that only lives in Democratic Republic of Congo and is classified as "endangered" on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) red list.

The four gorillas, which had been rescued from traffickers in various parts of Congo's rebel-infested east, were flown by helicopter on Tuesday from Goma to the Kasugho Sanctuary in North Kivu province.

"If you use vehicles, there is a great risk of losing the animals because they are traumatized. We used aircraft because we really wanted to reduce their stress level," Benoit Kisuki, Conservation International's country director, told Reuters.

Kisuki said the air transfer was part of a wider project to combat the illegal trade in baby gorillas, which has intensified in recent years with the proliferation of armed groups and constant insecurity in eastern Congo.

"The objective is to reintroduce them in their natural environment," he added.

The gorillas are often caught, trafficked and sold for thousands of dollars on the world market as exotic pets. Others are killed and sold locally as "bush meat." …

Six other individuals, currently under protection in Rwanda, are due to be flown in on June 10 to "socialize" with the first group and "form a family of 10," Kisuki said. …

U.N. helicopters fly baby Congo gorillas to safety

BY GWYNETH DICKEY

New evidence gleaned by analyzing calcium embedded in Chinese limestone suggests that volcanoes, which spewed massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for a million years, caused the biggest mass extinction on Earth.

In a paper published April 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers led by a Stanford geologist said that as carbon dioxide gas dissolved in the oceans, it raised the acidity of seawater.

The research team said it was a deadly combination – carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and higher acidity in the oceans – that eventually wiped out 90 percent of marine species and about three-quarters of land species, in a cataclysmic event 250 million years ago known as the "end-Permian extinction."

Back then, the ocean teemed with corals, algae, clams and snails. Soon after, however, there was an abrupt change to a thick layer of bacteria and limestone, a "slime-world," dominated by bacteria.

Lead author Jonathan Payne, an assistant professor of geological and environmental sciences at Stanford, said the calcium found in limestone from Guizhou Province in southeast China helps answer a question scientists have been debating for decades: What caused the mass extinction? …

"Our best geologically supported idea is that the carbon dioxide release is related to the Siberian Traps volcanoes," Payne said.

Payne calculated that the eruptions, which lasted upward of a million years, released 13,000 to 43,000 gigatons (1 gigaton equals 1 billion tons) of carbon in the atmosphere. By comparison, scientists estimate we would release an estimated 5,000 gigatons of carbon if we used up all the fossil fuels in the Earth. …

Stanford scientists link ocean acidification to prehistoric mass extinction via Ocean Acidification 

Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deaths from heat waves, property damage from floods and rising seas from melting glaciers are a few of the things Americans can expect as a result of climate change, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a report released Tuesday.

The report, called Climate Change Indicators in the United States [pdf], examined the impact of global warming on 24 environmental indicators, such as ice cover and ocean temperatures.

It said there was scientific evidence that climate change was making 22 of the 24 indicators worse.

For instance, eight of the top 10 years for extreme one-day floods or heavy snowfalls in the United States have occurred since 1990, the report said.

In addition heat waves have increased steadily since the end of the 1970s. "For society, increases in temperature are likely to increase heat-related illnesses and deaths, especially in urban areas," said the report, which relied on data from a variety of U.S. and international agencies and sources. …

The report found that the science surrounding some indicators is too young to conclude climate change is making them worse.

For instance, from 2001 to 2009 some 30 to 60 percent of the U.S. land area experienced drought conditions at any one time, it said. But the data have not been collected long enough to determine whether droughts are increasing over time, it added.

Overall, however, the indicators will likely get worse. …

Climate change increases heat waves, floods: EPA

By ROBERT, Louisiana, April 28, 2010 (ENS) - There is five times as much oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon's undersea wellhead than was originally thought, a Coast Guard official said late tonight.

Rear Adm. Mary Landry, the federal on-scene coordinator for the oil rig disaster, told reporters that based on analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 5,000 barrels a day are now spilling from the wellhead left open by the explosion and fire that sank the Deepwater Horizon on April 22.

To add to the massive oil spill, a third underwater oil leak was detected today in the pipeline that connected the oil rig to the wellhead, said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP, the party that contracted the rig and is responsible for stopping and cleaning up the oil spill.

"It's premature to say this is catastrophic, but I will say this is very serious situation," said Landry at a news conference this afternoon. …

The massive spill threatens coastal wildlife refuges, beaches, estuaries and shellfish beds in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

The oil has been drifting closer to shore by the hour and is now located less than 20 miles from Louisiana.

At a news conference earlier today, NOAA's Charlie Henry said the leading edge of the oil plume will be near the Mississippi Delta by Friday evening. …

Five Times the Oil Gushes From Broken Gulf Wellhead

By JESSICA MAHAR
April 21, 2010

THE rain dances must have worked, with NSW suffering less drought than at any time in the past nine years - this month, just 7.3 per cent of the state is drought declared.

The Primary Industries Minister, Steve Whan, said he hoped the figures marked a turning point for the drought, after some parts of the northeast and southern areas received up to 200 millimetres of rain last month.

"Not since the drought began nine years ago has the situation been this good across the state,'' Mr Whan said.

"It is a very welcome boost from January when 81 per cent of the state was in drought."

But as good as the statewide picture appears, some farmers still are wondering when their big dry will end.

''It feels like we haven't been out of drought at all,'' a sheep and crop farmer, Graham Hosegood, said. ''What's tending to happen is we get larger dumps of rain and then nothing and it's back to where we were.

''Last year was terrible and things are as grim here as they have been in the past 10 years.'' …

Many farmers have seen improvements yet more than half of the state is still declared marginal, Mr Whan said.

''Without continued good rains these areas could slip back into drought,'' he said. …

Nine-year wonder as state's big dry shrinks

LONDON
Wed Apr 28, 2010 1:38pm EDT

(Reuters) - The world's floating ice is in "constant retreat," showing an instability which will increase global sea levels, according to a report published in Geophysical Research Letters on Wednesday.

Floating ice had disappeared at a steady rate over the past 10 years, according to the first measurement of its kind.

"It's a large number," said Professor Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds, lead author of the paper, estimating the net loss of floating sea ice and ice shelves in the last decade at 7,420 cubic kilometers.

That is greater than the loss of ice over land from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets over the same time period, highlighting the impact of warming oceans on floating ice.

Ice melt ebbs and flows from winter to summer. The report's calculations referred to the net loss over the past decade.

"There's a constant rate of retreat (annually)," said Shepherd. "It's a rapid process and there's no reason why it won't increase over the next century." …

Global floating ice in 'constant retreat’: study

By ALLEN JOHNSON
April 28, 2010 - 11:00AM

The Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster will develop into one of the worst spills in US history if the well is not sealed, the coast guard officer leading the response has warned.

BP, which leases the Deepwater Horizon platform, has been operating four robotic submarines some 1500 metres down on the seabed to try to cap two leaks in the riser pipe that connected the rig to the wellhead.

But the best efforts of the British energy giant have yielded no progress so far, and engineers are frantically constructing a giant dome that could be placed over the leaks as a back-up plan to try and stop the oil spreading.

Time is running out as a huge slick with a 965km circumference, seen in satellite images released by NASA, has moved within 34km of the ecologically fragile Louisiana coast despite favourable winds.

The US authorities said they were considering a controlled burn of oil captured in inflatable containment booms floating in the gulf to protect the shorelines of Louisiana and other southern states.

''I am going to say right up front: the BP efforts to secure the blowout preventer have not yet been successful,'' Rear Admiral Mary Landry told a press conference on Tuesday, referring to a 450-tonne machine that could seal the well.

Asked to compare the accident to the notorious 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster, Landry declined but said: ''If we don't secure the well, yes, this will be one of the most significant oil spills in US history.'' …

US oil spill 'may be one of the worst in history'

Private water suppliers poised to grow as demand set to surge

By Juliette Jowit in Paris
www.guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 April 2010 14.47 BST

Private companies are poised for a surge in demand to take over water supplies, despite widespread opposition to privatisation of what is seen as a life-giving public service.

Global Water Intelligence analysts expect the water supply market to grow about 20% in the next five years, and demand is especially strong in North Africa, the Middle East and China, GWI's publisher Christopher Gasson told the Guardian. …

Despite huge controversy over privatisation of water suppliers in the last couple of decades – most famously violent protests in Bolivia over huge big bill increases – a World Bank report last year showed the population served by private companies has continued to expand, from almost zero in 1991 to more than 160m in 2007. …

Passionate opposition remains however, and not everything is going the private operators' way: officials in Gary, Indiana, in the US, want to terminate their private contract early, claiming they can do the job for half the price; and the concession to supply 2 million residents in central Paris was recently awarded to a public authority, after 25 years of private operation.

Maude Barlow, chair of Food & Water Watch campaign group, told delegates that although private companies could help build networks and big infrastructure, they should not be able to make a profit from supplying water.

"I don't think anybody should be making money from delivering water because it can be done in the public sector on a not-for-profit basis," said Barlow. "No corporation can survive on that basis ... You make decisions about life and death because you have to make a profit, and that's the issue here."

Oxfam said it was concerned about big private operators "cherry picking" the most profitable customers, and suing governments if they tried to terminate contracts for poor performance or exorbitant prices – as Bechtel tried to do in Bolivia.

"Market-led solutions have often undermined the provision of essential services and have had a negative impact on the poorest and most vulnerable communities," said a spokesman. "Water privatisation is the most notorious example."

Private water suppliers poised to grow as demand set to surge

By Ntungwe Elias Ngalame
26 Apr 2010 13:26:00 GMT

YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AlertNet) - When visitors arrived in Yaounde recently for the 8th annual meeting of the African Road Maintenance Funds Association, they got an odd greeting from a Cameroon host delegate.

"Yaounde, a city flanked by seven hills, is an environmentally friendly place with a traditional charming cold climate in the early mornings and late evenings. We are, however experiencing strange persistent rains over the past months that require our visitors to arm themselves with the necessary equipment - raincoats, warm clothes, umbrellas - to cope with the changes," warned Tsimi Evouna, a government delegate to the meeting.

Residents of Cameroon's capital are suffering through a climate nightmare this year as heavy rains that have fallen since January flood streets and homes in what is normally a dry period of the year.

"Formerly there were at least four months of dry season with rains in April to November and the dry season characterized by persistent sunshine from December to March. Strangely, however, we have had rains throughout this year," said Elvis Mbong, a worker with the Ministry of Agriculture in Yaounde.

Mama Susan, 49, a "buyam-sellam" trader who lives in a squalid shelter she calls home in the Etoug-ebe quarter, says rain boots have become her permanent footwear

"I put on my rain boots regularly to go to the market, church or social gatherings because I cannot risk damaging my leather shoes in water. We have been having persistent rains and floods for the past five months," she lamented.

Like Etoug-ebe, many quarters in the capital city have been virtually submerged in water, with many alleyways leading to homes covered by floods.

Lum, 26, an unemployed woman, said three days of incessant rain and floods had rendered her a prisoner in her home, unable to get to the nearest market for food. …

Rainboots in the dry season for Cameroon's capital, as climate change takes hold via Carbon-Based Climate Change Adaptation

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com
April 26, 2010

Forests continue to decline worldwide, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). Employing satellite imagery researchers found that over a million square kilometers of forest were lost around the world between 2000 and 2005. This represents a 3.1 percent loss of total forest as estimated from 2000. Yet the study reveals some surprises: including the fact that from 2000 to 2005 both the United States and Canada had higher percentages of forest loss than even Brazil.

Counting forest loss due either to human disturbance or natural causes, the study found that North America lost the most forest of the world's six forest-containing continents. Perhaps surprisingly, thirty percent of total forest loss occurred in North America alone. Combined with South America—the largest extent of tropical forests in the world—the two continents represent half of the world's total forest loss. Africa, in turn, suffered the least forest loss.

Of the seven nations that contain over a million square kilometers of forest—Russia, Brazil, the United States, Canada, Indonesia, China, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—Brazil lost the most total forest during the five year time period.

According to the researchers Brazil lost 26,000 square kilometers (10,038 square miles) per year of its rainforest, and 7,000 square kilometers (2,702 square miles) in its dry tropical forests. Over the five years, total forest loss in Brazil came to 165,000 square kilometers (63,706 square miles). In all this represents 3.6 percent of its total 2000 forest cover: half a percent higher than the global average.

Canada was close behind Brazil: losing some 160,000 square kilometers (61,776 square miles) of its forest cover. However, proportionally Canada's forest loss equals 5.2 percent of the nation's total forest cover: higher than Brazil's percentage and over two points higher than the global average.

But the United States had the greatest percentage loss of the seven nations—even more than Brazil and Canada—losing 6 percent of its forest cover in just five years time, a total of 120,000 square kilometers (46,332 square miles). While fire and beetle infestation played a role in Alaska and the western US, large-scale logging in the southeast, along the western coast, and in the Midwest play a big role in the nation's continuing forest decline. …

United States has higher percentage of forest loss than Brazil

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com
April 26, 2010

The West African nation of Niger is facing an increasingly alarming food crisis as the UN announced it would double the number of people it was feeding today despite continuing budget shortfalls in its World Food Program (WFP). Failing rains have caused crop yields in Niger to decline, while food prices are rising and livestock prices falling. Officials say these trends have created a perfect-storm for a crisis in Niger, which according to Amadou Sayo from CARE International, is occurring "out of the public eye."

"Niger has been hit extremely hard by the drought and the world has to act to prevent massive human suffering and the loss of a generation," said Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of WFP, in a press release.

The WFP is working to reach 2.3 million people in the Sahel region of Niger, which is particularly hard-hit. The agency warns that 1.5 million children are at risk of malnutrition. …

A survey in January found that half of Niger's 13.5 million people suffer from food insecurities. Globally, a billion people currently suffer from hunger.

Currently the WFP is facing a 133 million US dollar shortfall in its budget for Niger and has asked for 190 million US dollars to help fund continuing food programs there.

Food crisis in Niger occurring "out of the public eye"

Reporting by David Ljunggren; editing by Peter Galloway

(Reuters) - In what looks to be another sign the Arctic is heating up quickly, British explorers in Canada's Far North reported on Tuesday that they had been hit by a three-minute rain shower over the weekend.

The rain fell on the team's ice base off Ellef Rignes island, about 3,900 km (2,420 miles) north of the Canadian capital, Ottawa.

"It's definitely a shocker ... the general feeling within the polar community is that rainfall in the high Canadian Arctic in April is a freak event," said Pen Hadow, the team's expedition director. …

The Arctic is heating up three times more quickly than the rest of the Earth. Scientists link the higher temperatures to the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. …

Hadow said a Canadian scientific camp about 145 km west of the ice base had been hit by rain at the same time. …

Experts say the thick multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished, which could make it easier to open up polar shipping routes. U.S. data shows the 2009 ice cover was the third-lowest on record, after 2007 and 2008.

Hadow said the team carrying out the carbon dioxide experiments had noticed that ice was abnormally thin and was moving around more than they expected. The winds were stronger than usual.

Earlier this month an ice floe the team's tent was moored on suddenly broke apart, although no one was injured. …

Arctic explorers get nasty surprise: rain

Caption by Rebecca Lindsey

An estimated 42,000 gallons of oil per day were leaking from an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico in late April, following an explosion at an offshore drilling rig on April 20, 2010. The rig eventually capsized and sank.

These images of the affected area were captured on April 25 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite (top, wider view) and the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite (bottom, close up).

In the top image, the Mississippi Delta is at image center, and the oil slick is a silvery swirl to the right. The oil slick may be particularly obvious because it is occurring in the sunglint area, where the mirror-like reflection of the Sun off the water gives the Gulf of Mexico a washed-out look. The close-up view shows waves on the water surface as well as ships, presumably involved in the clean up and control activities.

The initial explosion killed eleven people and injured several others, and a fire burned at the location for more than a day until the damaged oil rig sank. An emergency response effort is underway to stop the flow of oil and contain the existing slick before it reaches wildlife refuges and beaches in Louisiana and Mississippi.

The slick may contain dispersant or other chemicals that emergency responders are using to control the spread of the oil, and it is unknown how much of the 700,000 gallons of fuel that were on the oil rig burned in the fire and how much may have spilled into the water when the platform sank.

On April 25, 2010, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Emergency Response Division issued the following update on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident in the Gulf of Mexico: “An attempt to control the leaking well using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) was not successful, and the well continues to leak.” …

Oil Leak from Damaged Well in Gulf of Mexico

NEW YORK, New York, April 26, 2010 (ENS) - Nearly one million people around the world died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, finds a new book from the New York Academy of Sciences published today on the 24th anniversary of the meltdown at the Soviet facility.

The book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, was compiled by authors Alexey Yablokov of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in Minsk, Belarus.

The authors examined more than 5,000 published articles and studies, most written in Slavic languages and never before available in English.

The authors said, "For the past 23 years, it has been clear that there is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe," they said. "Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern Hemisphere."

Their findings are in contrast to estimates by the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency that initially said only 31 people had died among the "liquidators," those approximately 830,000 people who were in charge of extinguishing the fire at the Chernobyl reactor and deactivation and cleanup of the site.

The book finds that by 2005, between 112,000 and 125,000 liquidators had died.

"On this 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, we now realize that the consequences were far worse than many researchers had believed," says Janette Sherman, MD, the physician and toxicologist who edited the book.

Drawing upon extensive data, the authors estimate the number of deaths worldwide due to Chernobyl fallout from 1986 through 2004 was 985,000, a number that has since increased.

By contrast, WHO and the IAEA estimated 9,000 deaths and some 200,000 people sickened in 2005. …

Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People: New Book

Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Bill Trott
CARACAS
Sun Apr 25, 2010 3:18pm EDT

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez on Sunday ordered troops to crack down on wildcat miners who use mercury, chain-saws and high-pressure hoses to strip gold from beneath the South American nation's jungles.

Venezuela's southern forests contain some of Latin America's largest deposits of gold. Industrial mining is scarce in the region, but hundreds of local miners have devastated tracts of forest in the past few decades.

"This is a crime that we cannot keep on permitting. Look at how the jungle ends up," Chavez said, pointing at a photograph of a treeless expanse of red earth.

He deployed soldiers in the southern state of Bolivar to tackle the miners, who live in chaotic camps and villages known for prostitution and drunken machete fights. …

Army tackles wildcat gold mines in Venezuela jungle

By Patrick Oppmann, CNN
April 23, 2010 8:03 a.m. EDT

Hoh Indian Reservation, Washington (CNN) -- For the Hoh, life centers on the silver waters just off their reservation.

Throughout the tiny Native American tribe's history they have lived and fished on the westernmost point of Washington state where the river that shares their name meets the Pacific Ocean. …

Those same waters now threaten the tribe's future.

For tribe member and treasurer Amy Benally, the danger can be seen on the doorstep of her family's home that has stood at the mouth of the river for nearly a century.

Benally grew up there with 12 members of her family. Now the home is a gutted wreck from repeated flooding.

At first the waters took out the garage and the small building Benally's grandfather used to smoke fish. Then the family had to flee upstairs. "We'd see the waves and the logs coming," Benally said standing in the musty ruin of the home. "We'd stand out here on the porch, and my grandfather would get mad at us and tell us to come back into the house. It was pretty scary."

Although the lowlands where her family lived were always prone to flooding, Benally said the water rises more often now. "It never used to be this bad," she said. "The river's changed." …

There are no clear culprits for the tribe's woes. According to Spencer Reeder, the Washington Department of Ecology's lead strategist for climate change policy, the increased flooding could be due to a combination of factors including global warming, logging upriver and cyclical weather patterns that have brought heavy rains.

According to a department study, the coast where the Hoh live could see an additional rise from climate change in sea levels of as much as 3 feet over the next century.

Already, when the reservation floods, the water comes up with terrifying speed. Baseball games have been interrupted, said Penn. "We'll be waist deep on the ball field." …

Constant flooding forces out Pacific Northwest tribe via Carbon Based Climate Change Adaption

By BEN CUBBY ENVIRONMENT EDITOR
April 27, 2010

DOZENS of cliffs have crumbled or collapsed, Aboriginal rock art has been destroyed and metre-wide cracks opened in the earth as a result of coalmining in the Gardens of Stone wilderness area near Lithgow, an independent report has found.

The damage, inflicted over three decades by five coal mines and continuing today, is caused by subsidence from longwall mining, which now almost surrounds the Gardens of Stone National Park, part of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Site. It is likely to be extended further if a new mine plan is approved by the NSW government.

The report, to be launched today by the former premier Bob Carr, documents wide-scale, unpublicised damage, including the destruction of some of the area's unique sandstone pagodas and rock arches.

''In its monitoring reports to government, the coal industry regularly understates the damage caused,'' said Keith Muir, the executive officer of the Colong Foundation for Wilderness, which produced the report. ''Mine operations do not work to minimise environmental damage and have been largely unresponsive to environmental concerns.''

The study based this conclusion on visual observation in the remote bushland and examination of the the environmental assessments used to justify the expansion of mining. In some cases, the assessments predicted that cliffs could crumble but no remedial action was taken. …

Cliffs crumbled due to coalmining, says new report

By ELLIE HARVEY
April 27, 2010

NOT since the April days of 1922 has Sydney had such a run of warm weather so late in autumn.

Last Friday, the temperature reached 30.7 degrees in the city - the hottest day this late in the season for 88 years.

A Weatherzone.com.au meteorologist, Josh Fisher, said April typically had warm days but the recent ''late season heat'' was unusual.

But as the end of the month nears, 21 of 26 days so far have been above the long-term April average of 22.4 degrees. The average temperature so far this month has been 25.1 degrees.

''I would say that we would be coming up with quite a [significantly] warm April,'' Peter Zmijewski, a Bureau of Meteorology forecaster, said.

Mr Zmijewski said ''the unseasonably warm temperatures'' had been caused by strong high-pressure systems and warm water temperatures off the Sydney coast. …

Hottest late April in 88 years

By BRETT CLANTON
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
April 25, 2010, 9:16AM

A slow-motion environmental disaster may be in the making with the discovery Saturday that 42,000 gallons a day of crude oil is spewing from a well on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico near where a huge drilling rig sank last week — and it could be months before it's stopped.

The spill, which a day earlier Coast Guard officials believed was contained within a 16-square-mile area on the surface, now covers some 400 square miles — slightly bigger than the city of Dallas — and could grow as the well continues to leak, Rear Adm. Mary Landry, commander of Coast Guard District 8, said Saturday.

“This is a very serious spill,” she said at a press conference, adding that governments of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida had been warned about the threat of oil coming ashore and invited to participate in the response.

Word of the expanding spill came as the Deep­water Horizon drilling rig was found capsized and lying on the sea floor about 1,500 feet northwest of the well, located roughly 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana. …

Robot submarines equipped with cameras have been deployed in recent days to survey the wreckage and ensure the well was no longer leaking oil.

The Coast Guard said it had not detected oil coming from the well Friday and assumed post-accident efforts to activate the blowout preventer — a huge stack of valves sitting atop the wellhead on the sea floor — had been successful.

But later trips by the remotely operated vehicles, called ROVs, discovered oil shooting from the end of the pipe-like riser that had connected the rig to the blowout preventer.

A second, smaller leak was found in a section of drill pipe near the wellhead. …

Oil may spew for months after rig blast

By Nick Collins
Published: 9:10AM BST 25 Apr 2010

Sir David Attenborough has warned that Britain's wildlife is being destroyed thanks to man's impact on the environment.

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.

It comes fifty years after the publication of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's acclaimed book on pollution of wildlife that helped the growth of the environmental movement worldwide and led to a ban of some pesticides in Britain.

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.

Attenborough writes: "We tend to focus on the bigger animals and ignore the smaller ones – but small creatures like these are the basis of our entire ecosystems and they are disappearing faster than ever.

"That loss is transforming our wildlife and countryside."

The 600-page book, edited by Norman Maclean, emeritus professor of genetics at Southampton University, lays bare the grim reversal in the populations of many butterflies, bees, flies and snails, and the virtual extinction of some species of moth.

Prof Maclean argues that "the evidence is that we could be in the middle of the next great extinction of wildlife, both globally and in Britain."

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. …

David Attenborough warns of ecological disaster

Intersex fish, found across the US, result from a mix of drugs that mimic natural hormones, say scientists

By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
www.guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 April 2010 11.05 BST

More than 80% of the male bass fish in Washington's major river are now exhibiting female traits such as egg production because of a "toxic stew" of pollutants, scientists and campaigners reported yesterday.

Intersex fish probably result from drugs, such as the contraceptive pill, and other chemicals being flushed into the water and have been found right across the US.

The Potomac Conservancy, which focuses on Washington DC's river, called for new research to determine what was causing male smallmouth bass to carry immature eggs in their testes. "We have not been able to identify one particular chemical or one particular source," said Vicki Blazer, a fish biologist with the US geological survey. "We are still trying to get a handle on what chemicals are important."

But she said early evidence pointed to a mix of chemicals – commonly used at home as well as those used in large-scale farming operations – causing the deformities. The suspect chemicals mimic natural hormones and disrupt the endocrine system, with young fish being particularly susceptible.

The chemicals could include birth control pills and other drugs, toiletries especially those with fragrances, products such as tissues treated with antibacterial agents, or goods treated with flame retardants that find their way into waste water. However, Blazer also pointed to runoff from fertilisers and pesticides from agricultural areas. …

'Toxic stew' of chemicals causing male fish to carry eggs in testes via Apocadocs

Consumer waste from the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" is turning a Hawaiian beach "into plastic", Tropic of Cancer presenter Simon Reeve has found.

Conservationist Sam Gon escorted him to the remote Kamilo Beach, where plastic bottles, bags, tyres, rusting petrol cans, and other waste from around the world washes up.

They found more plastic particles than sand, as they dug a hole on what has been described as "the world's dirtiest beach".

Ocean debris turning Hawaiian beach 'into plastic'

By SIMON ROMERO; Maria Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting from Caracas
Published: April 22, 2010

YUNÉK, Venezuela — The mist-shrouded mountains rising out of the forest here form one of the world’s most beguiling frontiers of exploration and research, inspiring Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 fantasy novel “The Lost World” and teams of biologists who still mount expeditions to remote escarpments in hopes of finding species new to science.

But in the savannas below, the tendrils of smoke hanging over the landscape attest to a custom that has set off a fierce debate among scientists in Venezuela and beyond: the Pemón Indian tradition of repeatedly burning grassland and forest to hunt for animals and grow food.

The drought that afflicted Venezuela this year is intensifying claims that the Pemón have unleashed a surge in fires that rains would normally extinguish. Some forestry specialists say the fires put the Gran Sabana, a region about the size of Ireland that includes the enigmatic tabletop mountains known as tepuis (pronounced tey-POO-ees), at risk of deforestation and species loss.

President Hugo Chávez’s government is already facing broad public ire over electricity shortages, and the state electricity company fears that the fires could diminish the forests that help gather and release water, and boost river sediments into the Guri, the hydroelectric complex that provides Venezuela with most of its electricity.

But many Pemón, along with some of the scholars who study them, say the fires help prevent grasses from building into biomass for much larger fires that could tear through the region, in the way vast wildfires devastated parts of Indonesia in 1997. …

“Why would I change a custom that has worked for generations?” asked Antonio García, 70, a Pemón hunter, as he set out one recent morning near Santa Elena de Uairén, a squalid border town rife with smuggling activity. …

Others disagree. Nelda Dezzeo, a forestry biologist at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research, contends that some forests in the Gran Sabana may never recuperate from repeated fires. She said the threat of fires spreading from savanna to forest were especially worrisome.

“There are cloud forest areas in the Gran Sabana where new tree species are still being studied,” she said. “If damage migrates to these areas, these species could be lost, or we might lose species we’re not even aware of yet.” …

“The government is wrong if it thinks the Pemón are its docile sheep in the savannas,” said Demetrio Gómez, 36, a Pemón leader who took part in a violent protest near Santa Elena de Uairén this year to dislodge squatters from Pemón land. “We burned these lands long before anyone else arrived,” he said, “and we’ll keep burning them into eternity.”

In Venezuela’s Savanna, Clash of Science and Fire

By Ken Ward Jr., Staff writer
April 21, 2010

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- 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."

Hitt wrote the paper with Michael Hendryx, a WVU epidemiologist who has published a series of other scientific articles that linked mining to poor public health and found coal costs Appalachian more in premature deaths that the industry provides in economic benefits.

"We found that cancer rates are linked to environmental quality even after accounting for other major risks such as smoking," Hendryx said. "Furthermore, we saw that the most impaired streams were in close proximity to coal surface mines. This adds to the body of evidence that coal mining is harmful to ecosystems and human health." …

Study links stream pollution to higher cancer rates

By AMY GOODMAN
Published: Friday, April 23, 2010 at 3:00 a.m.
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia

Here in this small Andean nation of 10 million people, the glaciers are melting, threatening the water supply of the largest urban area in the country, El Alto and La Paz, with 3.5 million people living at altitudes over 10,000 feet. I flew from El Alto International, the world's highest commercial airport, to the city of Cochabamba.

Bolivian President Evo Morales calls Cochabamba the heart of Bolivia. It was here, 10 years ago this month, that, as one observer put it, “the first rebellion of the 21st century” took place. Dubbed the Water Wars, people from around Bolivia converged on Cochabamba to overturn the privatization of the public water system. As Jim Shultz, founder of the Cochabamba-based Democracy Center, told me, “People like a good David-and-Goliath story, and the water revolt is David not just beating one Goliath, but three. We call them the three B's: Bechtel, Banzer and the Bank.” The World Bank, Shultz explained, coerced the Bolivian government, under President Hugo Banzer, who had ruled as a dictator in the 1970s, to privatize Cochabamba's water system. The multinational corporation Bechtel, the sole bidder, took control of the public water system.

On Sunday, I walked around the Plaza Principal, in central Cochabamba, with Marcela Olivera, who was out on the streets 10 years ago. I asked her about the movement's original banner, hanging for the anniversary, that reads, in Spanish, “El Agua es Nuestra, Carajo!” — “The water is ours, damn it!” Bechtel was jacking up water rates. The first to notice were the farmers, dependent on irrigation. They appealed for support from the urban factory workers. Oscar Olivera, Marcela's brother, was their leader. He proclaimed, at one of their rallies, “If the government doesn't want the water company to leave the country, the people will throw them out.”

Marcela recounted: “On the 4th of February, we called the people to a mobilization here. We call it ‘la toma de la plaza,' the takeover of the plaza. It was going to be the meeting of the people from the fields, meeting the people from the city, all getting together here at one time. ... The government said that that wasn't going to be allowed to happen. Several days before this was going to happen, they sent policemen in cars and on motorcycles that were surrounding the city, trying to scare the people. And the actual day of the mobilization, they didn't let the people walk even 10 meters, and they started to shoot them with gases.” The city was shut down by the coalition of farmers, factory workers and coca growers, known as cocaleros. Unrest and strikes spread to other cities. During a military crackdown and state of emergency declared by then-President Banzer, 17-year-old Victor Hugo Daza was shot in the face and killed. Amidst public furor, Bechtel fled the city, and its contract with the Bolivian government was canceled.

The cocaleros played a crucial role in the victory. Their leader was Evo Morales. The Cochabamba Water Wars would eventually launch him into the presidency of Bolivia. At the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen, he called for the most rigorous action on climate change. …

GOODMAN: Bolivia, water wars and climate change