Desdemona Despair

Press Association
Friday, 30 July 2010

Scientists are on the lookout for an Asian beetle that could ravage British trees after one was found last week, the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) said today.

The Citrus Longhorn Beetle was found at a school in Langham, near Oakham, Rutland, Leicestershire, last week.

The beetle, occasionally imported with trees accidentally, devours native broadleaved trees and shrubs and an outbreak could seriously threaten UK horticulture and forestry, Fera said.

A spokesman said scientists are now hunting for the host plant in case there are more in the area, although currently it is only considered a finding and not an outbreak.

He said the beetle was found at Langham Church of England Primary School last Thursday and was identified by scientists on Monday.

They are 20-40mm long, shiny black with white markings and their long, black antennae have pale blue or white rings.

Adults lay eggs just under bark and larvae bore into wood. They take up to four years to grow so are difficult to detect, Fera said today.

The spokesman said a range of deciduous trees and shrubs can be hosts, although all UK findings so far have been on Japanese maple (Acer palmatum).

Derek McCann, from the Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate, said: "To rule out the existence of an established colony of this pest we need to look at all possible host plants within a 100 metre radius of the original finding, including private gardens.

"In the meantime we would like to ask members of the public to be on the alert for the beetle and let us know if they find anything."

Fera said two other findings were reported this year by members of the public at Haydock, Merseyside, and Hastings, East Sussex, and both emerged from Acer plants in their back gardens bought two years ago.

The first sign of an infestation is often between May and October when an adult beetle emerges from a hole about 10mm in diameter. The holes may be found just above ground level in stems and roots, and other signs include chewing damage to leaves and bark or sawdust-like debris from the trunk.

Fera today urged members of the public to report suspected sightings or captures to its Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate at 01904 465625 or http://www.defra.gov.uk/fera.

Fears for Britain's trees after Asian beetle discovered

By DEBRA JOPSON
July 30, 2010

Peter Hammond cradles the tiny white eggs in his hand that could ruin his 2200-hectare sheep and cattle property near Lake Cowal when they hatch in spring.

''When you squash them, they create moisture, so you know that they're actually alive, that there's grasshoppers in them,'' he said.

Farmers are on alert across the four Murray Darling Basin states to watch for the first hatchings from egg beds laid so extensively and in conditions so kind to locusts that a massive plague potentially costing billions of dollars has been predicted this year.

And now the senior ranger at the Lachlan Livestock Health and Pest Authority, Craig Ridley, said the predicted hatching date of mid-September for central western NSW may be brought forward because of mild weather.

''It's going to be a war of some note and we can't let the locusts win,'' said Graham Falconer, an agronomist and the deputy mayor of Forbes Shire Council, who has calculated a ''little plague'' in autumn wiped out 35,000 hectares of crops worth about $40 million there. …

Mr Hammond's father, James, aged 95, remembers a 1930s plague so bad that the locusts ate the farmhouse's green blinds.

The son, Peter Hammond, said that after running an irrigation property for 10 years without water, if locusts eat his crops and pasture, he will have to quit, but wonders by how much it will devalue his land. ''Even worse, if we wanted to get out we probably couldn't,'' he said.

After drought, farmers must now face a plague of locusts

UPDATE: Desdemona failed to notice that this story is from 1998 and thanks readers for the QA.

BBC
October 10, 1998

The scale of the damage caused by recent forest fires in Russia's Far East amounts to a world-wide ecological disaster, a United Nations team has said.

The Russian news agency, Itar-Tass, said the team was shocked by the destruction it saw on the island of Sakhalin and the vast region of Khabarovsk near the border with China.

The experts said the damage would have far-reaching consequences not only for neighbouring countries, but for the entire northern hemisphere.

The head of the team, Vladimir Sakhorov, said the UN was seeking further funding to tackle the devastation.

"We are convinced that such fires must be fought not only through efforts at the local level but also through moves by Federal authorities of Russia, as well as with assistance from other countries," he said.

More than 1.5 million hectares of taiga, the coniferous forest-land characteristic of Siberia, have been destroyed since the fires began early this year. Two-thirds of Sakhalin Island has been affected by the blazes, which have killed three people and left 700 homeless.

In many places fires are still raging, despite snow and rain. Heavy smoke is preventing air surveys from being carried out and there has been difficulty finding sufficient funds to tackle the situation.

Russian fires are 'world disaster'

By CARA ANNA, Associated Press Writer, and AP researcher Yu Bing
July 30, 2010

BEIJING — China's worst known oil spill is dozens of times larger than the government has reported - bigger than the famous Exxon Valdez spill two decades ago - and some of the oil was dumped deliberately to avoid further disaster, an American expert said Friday.

China's government has said 1,500 tons (461,790 gallons) of oil spilled after a pipeline exploded two weeks ago near the northeastern city of Dalian, sending 100-foot- (30-meter-) high flames raging for hours near one of the country's key strategic oil reserves. Such public estimates stopped within a few days of the spill.

But Rick Steiner, a former University of Alaska marine conservation specialist, estimated 60,000 tons (18.47 million gallons) to 90,000 tons (27.70 million gallons) of oil actually spilled into the Yellow Sea.

"It's enormous. That's at least as large as the official estimate of the Exxon Valdez disaster" in Alaska, he told The Associated Press. The size of the offshore area affected by the spill is likely more than 400 square miles (1,000 square kilometers), he added.

The estimates, though rough, could complicate China's efforts to move on from its latest environmental disaster: Dalian's mayor already declared a "decisive victory" in the oil spill cleanup, state media reported this week.

The spill has caused at least one death when a cleanup worker drowned in the sticky crude, and thousands of Dalian residents have used everything from their bare hands to chopsticks to pick the goo from the sea.

Steiner, who worked on the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, announced the China estimates after touring the oil spill area as a consultant for the environmental group Greenpeace China.

"It's habitual for governments to understate oil spills," Steiner told a news conference. "But the severity of the discrepancy is unusual here." …

Steiner said his estimates came from the fact the oil storage tank that was destroyed had a capacity of about 90,000 tons (27.70 million gallons) and reportedly had just been filled by the tanker.

He said his lower estimate of 60,000 tons (18.47 million gallons) came from the rate of oil recovery by thousands of fishing boats dispatched for the cleanup.

"They've already collected more oil than the official estimate of the spill size," he told The Associated Press. …

U.S. expert: China oil spill far bigger than stated

Data on wildland fires in the United States show that the number of acres burned per fire has increased since the 1980s.

In the western United States, both the frequency of large wildfires and the length of the fire season have increased substantially in recent decades, due primarily to earlier spring snowmelt and higher spring and summer temperatures. These changes in climate have reduced the availability of moisture, drying out the vegetation that provides the fuel for fires. Alaska also has experienced large increases in fire, with the area burned more than doubling in recent decades. As in the western United States, higher air temperature is a key factor. In Alaska, for example, June air temperatures alone explained approximately 38 percent of the increase in the area burned annually from 1950 to 2003.

Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States [pdf]

Beyond Reasonable Drought is a Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House travelling exhibition in association with the MAP Group — Many Australian Photographers. It features images by some of Australia’s best photographers, documenting the impact of the drought on the land, people and psyche of rural and urban Australia.

Beyond Reasonable Drought

ScienceDaily (July 30, 2010) — Chemicals present in two rivers in southern Alberta are likely the cause of the feminization of fish say researchers at the University of Calgary who have published results of their study in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

"What is unique about our study is the huge geographical area we covered. We found that chemicals -- man-made and naturally occurring -- that have the potential to harm fish were present along approximately 600 km of river," says paper co-author Lee Jackson, executive director of Advancing Canadian Wastewater Assets, a research facility that develops and tests new approaches for treating wastewater which will be located at the City of Calgary's new Pine Creek Wastewater Treatment Centre. "The situation for native fish will likely get worse as the concentration of organic contaminants will become more concentrated as a response to climate change and the increase in human and animal populations," adds Jackson.

The study focused on two rivers in the South Saskatchewan River Basin: The Red Deer and Oldman rivers, located in southern Alberta, Canada. The water was analyzed for more than two dozen organic contaminants, many with hormone-like activity, commonly found in wastewater or rivers impacted by human and agricultural activity. Compounds detected in the water included synthetic estrogens (birth control pill compounds and hormone therapy drugs); bisphenol A, a chemical used in making plastics; and certain types of natural and synthetic steroids that are byproducts of agricultural run-off and cattle farming.

Researchers tested a native minnow, longnose dace (Rhinichthys cataractae), and found that at nearly every site, 14 out of 15 locations, males showed elevated levels of a protein, hepatic vitellogenin, which is normally only found in the blood of females and is used by females to produce eggs.

Co-author Hamid Habibi says the results downstream of two communities are striking.

"Most notably, we saw a significant increase in a specific protein marker for the presence of compounds with estrogen-like activity in areas downstream, south of Fort Macleod and Lethbridge. Our results showed females make up 85 per cent of the population of longnose dace. In the upstream locations, females comprise 55 per cent of the population," says Habibi, who is also the director of the newly established Institute of Environmental Toxicology at the University of Calgary. …

Chemicals are likely cause of feminization of fish present in two rivers in Alberta, Canada, researchers find

Indonesia’s largest palm oil and pulp group, Sinar Mas, is continuing to destroy rainforests and peatland despite promises to end the practice

Ecologist
29th July, 2010

A major supplier of palm oil and pulp (paper) to multinationals, including food giant Cargill, has been caught clearing orang-utan habitats and carbon-rich peatlands.

The Sinar Mas group, which has supplied palm oil to Nestlé, Kraft and Unilever, had previously promised to clean up its act and claims it doesn't touch peatland or forests of ‘high conservation value’.

However, a Greenpeace investigation has photographed plant operators clearing rainforest in peatland areas (illegal in Indonesia since 2007) and in a known orang-utan habitat.

Confidential documents obtained by the NGO also reveal that the company has ambitions to expand further into rainforest and peatland areas, which store vast amounts of carbon that is released into the atmosphere when they are burnt in preparation for plantations.

Sinar Mas has one of the largest land banks in the world, with 1.3 million hectares available for plantation expansion. Greenpeace says any expansion will come at the cost of forest ecosystems, and is calling on the palm and pulp giant to release maps detailing all of its landholdings to enable analysis of which areas are critically important for biodiversity and climate protection.

‘We’ve caught Sinar Mas red-handed destroying valuable rainforests and breaching the limited promises it has made to clean up its act,’ said Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace forest campaigner. ‘This is typical of a group that has an appalling record of environmental destruction. Sinar Mas has to be reigned in if there is to be a future for what’s left of Indonesia’s rainforests.’



Nestlé has previously responded to criticism of Sinar Mas by promising to cancel its direct contracts with the company. However, Greenpeace says Nestlé and others still source palm oil from the group through third party suppliers.

Palm oil giant accused of rainforest destruction caught ‘red-handed’

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
Published: July 29, 2010

HOUMA, La. — Loulan Pitre Sr. was born on the Gulf Coast in 1921, the son of an oysterman. Nearly all his life, he worked on the water, abiding by the widely shared faith that the resources of the Gulf of Mexico were limitless.

As a young Marine staff sergeant, back home after fighting in the South Pacific, he stood on barges in the gulf and watched as surplus mines, bombs and ammunition were pushed over the side.

He helped build the gulf’s very first offshore oil drilling platforms in the late 1940s, installing bolts on perilously high perches over the water. He worked on a shrimp boat, and later as the captain of a service boat for drilling platforms.

The gulf has changed, Mr. Pitre said: “I think it’s too far gone to salvage.”

The BP oil spill has sent millions of barrels gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, focusing international attention on America’s third coast and prompting questions about whether it will ever fully recover from the spill.

Now that the oil on the surface appears to be dissipating, the notion of a recovery from the spill, repeated by politicians, strikes some here as short-sighted. The gulf had been suffering for decades before the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20.

“There’s a tremendous amount of outrage with the oil spill, and rightfully so,” said Felicia Coleman, director of Florida State University’s Coastal and Marine Laboratory. “But where’s the outrage at the thousands and millions of little cuts we’ve made on a daily basis?”

The gulf is one of the most diverse ecosystems in the hemisphere, a stopping point for migratory birds from South America to the Arctic, home to abundant wildlife and natural resources.

But like no other American body of water, the gulf bears the environmental consequences of the country’s economic pursuits and appetites, including oil and corn. …

“This has been the nation’s sacrifice zone, and has been for 50-plus years,” said Aaron Viles, campaign director for the Gulf Restoration Network, a nonprofit group. “What we’re seeing right now with BP’s crude is just a very photogenic representation of that.” …

Gulf of Mexico Has Long Been Dumping Site

By MANSUR MIROVALEV, The Associated Press. Associated Press writers Khristina Narizhnaya and Lynn Berry in Moscow and Karl Ritter in Stockholm contributed to this report. 
Fri, Jul. 30, 2010

MOSCOW - Forest fires raged across Russia on Friday, destroying villages, surrounding one southern city and killing at least 25 people, including three firefighters. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin consoled survivors at one smoldering village and urged officials to redouble their efforts against the blazes.

The fires have spread quickly across more than 200,000 acres (90,000 hectares) in recent days after a record heat wave and severe drought. July has been the hottest month in Moscow in 130 years of recorded history. Fields and forests have dried up, and much of this year's wheat harvest has been ruined. …

Fires have all but encircled Voronezh, a city of 850,000 people, some 300 miles (475 kilometers) south of Moscow. The streets of Voronezh were filled with smog Friday and a giant wall of rising black smoke could be seen on the horizon, television footage showed.

More than 900 patients had to be hurriedly transferred out of a Voronezh hospital and nearly 2,000 children were evacuated from 12 summer camps in the path of the flames. Firefighters were pouring water on the forests from the air, emergencies services spokeswoman Olga Izvekova said.

At least 25 people have died in the past two days from the forest fires, officials say. Fires in the Voronezh, Nizhny Novogorod and Moscow regions alone have destroyed more than 1,000 houses and left more than 2,000 people homeless, according to the country's Emergencies Ministry. Fires also were raging in 11 other regions in central and southern Russia.

The death toll includes five people, including one firefighter, in Voronezh, and six residents and a firefighter who died when a fire swept through the Mokhovoye village in the Moscow region. The other deaths were in the Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan and Lipetsk regions, all south or east of Moscow.

The mercury hit 100 (37.8 Celsius) in Moscow on Thursday, setting a new record.

Temperatures for July were 14 degrees (8 degrees Celsius) higher than normal, said Alexei Lyakhov, director of Moscow's meteorological service, who said the heat appeared to be evidence of global warming.

"For the last few years the winters have been warm, so now perhaps a period of hot summers is starting," he told The Associated Press.

No single hot spell should be seen as evidence of global warming, the gradual rise of the Earth's average temperature over several decades. But climate experts predict that summer heat waves will become more frequent and intense as the world warms, raising the risks of crop damage, wildfires and health problems for the elderly and the sick.

Paul Della-Marta, a climate scientist working at Partner Reinsurance Company in Switzerland, said heat waves have clearly increased in temperate regions, the heavily populated areas between the polar and tropic regions.

"The evidence indicates that over the last 50 years a lot of the world's temperate areas have had a significant increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves," Della-Marta said. "In the future we can expect a continuation of these trends."

He was the lead author of a 2007 study that showed heat waves in Western Europe had doubled in frequency and nearly tripled in length since 1880.

Della-Marta said many previous hot spells, including a severe 2003 heat wave in Western Europe that killed tens of thousands of mostly elderly people, have been preceded by long periods with little rainfall.

"When soils are very dry, it sets up a climate feedback where the sun's energy is not being used to evaporate water from the surface but its energy gets transferred to the air, making the air temperature a lot hotter," he said.

Moscow is not well-equipped to handle heat in any case. Few Russian apartments and offices have air conditioning, and opening windows in the capital this week brought in the smoky smell of burning peat.

Dried up peat bogs are highly flammable and smolder underground, giving off dangerous fumes. Environmentalists say smog that blanketed Moscow in 2002 from burning peat killed hundreds of people.

25 dead as forest fires rage across Russia

By RIAZ KHAN AND ROSHAN MUGHAL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Boats and helicopters struggled to reach hundreds of thousands of villagers cut off by floods in northwest Pakistan on Friday as the government said 430 people had been killed in the deadliest such disaster to hit the region since 1929. …

Three days of heavy monsoonal rains across the northwest caused scores of rivers to burst their banks, tearing down 60 bridges and scores of roads and buildings. Hundreds of villages and towns, along with massive swaths of agricultural land, were under several feet of water.

Associated Press Television News footage showed a powerful torrent running through the center of Mingora town in the Swat Valley, carrying debris and trees with it. Hundreds of residents trudged through flooded streets as rescue officials used loudspeakers to urge them to evacuate homes in low-lying areas.

An AP reporter traveled in an army helicopter dropping tents and food supplies to stricken communities in the northwest. He flew over around 150 villagers that were inundated close to the border with South Waziristan. The three major roads in the region were all blocked. …

Nadeem Ahmed, who heads the country's National Disaster Management Authority, said 21 army helicopters and 150 boats were being used to reach affected communities and move them away from the floods. Hussain estimated 400,000 people were still stranded.

More rains were expected in coming days, according to Pakistan's meteorological department.

Hussain said at least 408 people had been killed, making it the deadliest flooding in the region since 1929. In Pakistani-controlled Kashmir further to the west, at least 22 people were confirmed dead as of Thursday evening, the area's prime minister, Sardar Attique Khan, told reporters. …

Floods ravage NW Pakistan, kill 430 people

During an historic heat wave and severe drought, more than 90,000 hectares (200,000 acres) are burning out of control. July has been the hottest month ever recorded in Moscow, fields and forests have dried up, and much of this season’s wheat harvest has been ruined.

Fires and smoke in eastern Siberia, 30 July 2010, viewed from the Terra satellite.

Fires and smoke in western Russia, 29 July 2010, viewed from the Aqua satellite.

By Staff Writers
Nairobi (AFP) July 29, 2010

Wildlife officials in Kenya warned Thursday that an antelope species, whose entire global wild population of 103 exists only in the east African country, was on the verge of extinction.

Habitat loss, genetic factors, predation and disease were threatening to wipe out the mountain bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci), the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said in a statement.

The elusive mountain bongo is the largest mountain antelope and weighs up to 300 kilogrammes (660 pounds). It has white stripes against a chestnut brown hide and both males and females have twisted horns.

In Kenya, they are found in four forested mountains mainly in the country's central regions.

"The mountain bongo is now the most threatened antelope in Kenya and possibly the most endangered large land mammal south of the Sahara," the statement said.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the mountain bongo as critically endangered.

The KWS said the more than 500 mountain bongos in zoos across the world were originally from the Aberdares forest in central Kenya.

World's 103 wild mountain antelopes face extinction: Kenya

Lagos (AFP) July 27, 2010 - Nigeria, the eight largest oil exporter, recorded at least 3,000 oil spills between 2006 and last month, the environment minister said Tuesday.

Evoking the figure at a meeting with oil company chiefs, John Odey told them to work with authorities to tackle the problem, the official News Agency of Nigeria quoted him as saying.

"In the light of this (the oil spills), it is imperative that you adequately review your processes in collaboration with National Oil Spill Detection and Remediation Agency," Odey said.

The minister, who did not venture a guess how much oil had been spilled during the period, said that the companies should boost efforts to improve education and awareness about the problem.

He said a top-level committee aimed to drum up funds both locally and abroad to clean up sites hit by oil spills.

The minister pointed out that after a BP oil rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and unleashing millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, a compensation fund had been set up to help affected people.

"We should explore similar opportunities, we need to take advantage of appropriate global resources and technology to achieve our task in a cooperative manner," Odey said.

Oil companies in Nigeria often blame oil spills on armed militants operating in the Niger Delta, who campaign for a fairer allocation of oil revenue to locals in the oil-rich region.

Nigeria records 3,000 oil spills since 2006: minister

By Alfred Kueppers and Conor Humphries; editing by Matthew Jones/David Stamp
Fri Jul 30, 2010 6:57am EDT

VORONEZH, Russia (Reuters) - Forest fires swept across central Russia on Friday, killing at least eight people and forcing the evacuation of thousands during the hottest summer since records began 130 years ago.

Fanned by strong winds, raging fires ripped through woods and fields already scorched by the heatwave. The emergencies ministry said 866 square km, an area about the size of Berlin, was on fire in hundreds of peat and forest blazes.

"We don't know where to go," said Galina Shibanova, 52, standing outside the charred remains of her family home in the town of Maslovka in the Voronezh region, about 500 km (300 miles) south of Moscow.

"We called the emergency services, and not one person answered the phone," she said, adding that at least 50 homes had been destroyed.

A heatwave has engulfed European parts of Russia and Siberia since June, destroying crops and pushing thousands of farmers to the verge of bankruptcy. …

More than 1,100 homes were destroyed across central Russia, Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. He said 238,000 people had been deployed to fight the fires. …

Thousands were evacuated, including 900 patients from a hospital in Voronezh region that was threatened by the flames and 1,200 children from summer camps in Ryazan region, the emergencies ministry said.

Eight killed as wildfires sweep central Russia

By Catherine Lagrange and Bate Felix; editing by David Stamp

LYON, France (Reuters) - A pocket of water big enough to fill 20 Olympic pools, trapped inside a glacier on Mont Blanc, could burst at any time and endanger lives in a French Alpine valley, officials said Thursday.

Researchers at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) said 65,000 cubic meters of water discovered inside the Tte-Rousse glacier could explode and destroy everything in its path, including nearby villages and nearly 900 homes.

Such a catastrophe happened in the area in 1892, killing around 200 people.

Researchers made the discovery when carrying out a routine check on the glacier. "We did not expect at all to find this pocket of water," said Christian Vincent, a CNRS geophysics engineer.

"This occurrence is very rare. Water in glaciers usually drains naturally, trickling away. In this case, the glacier has imprisoned very cold water and risks exploding under pressure. It now looks like a pressure cooker," Vincent said.

Local authorities said they had warned over 3,000 residents and told them what was being done to drain the water.

"Pumping operations through vertically drilled pockets on top of glacier to drain the water will begin from mid-August to October," said Jean-Marc Peillex, mayor of the nearby town of St Gervais.

Trapped glacier water threatens French Alps valley

ABSTRACT -- Climate change is expected to cause mass human migration, including immigration across international borders. This study quantitatively examines the linkages among variations in climate, agricultural yields, and people's migration responses by using an instrumental variables approach. Our method allows us to identify the relationship between crop yields and migration without explicitly controlling for all other confounding factors. Using state-level data from Mexico, we find a significant effect of climate-driven changes in crop yields on the rate of emigration to the United States. The estimated semielasticity of emigration with respect to crop yields is approximately −0.2, i.e., a 10% reduction in crop yields would lead an additional 2% of the population to emigrate. We then use the estimated semielasticity to explore the potential magnitude of future emigration. Depending on the warming scenarios used and adaptation levels assumed, with other factors held constant, by approximately the year 2080, climate change is estimated to induce 1.4 to 6.7 million adult Mexicans (or 2% to 10% of the current population aged 15–65 y) to emigrate as a result of declines in agricultural productivity alone. Although the results cannot be mechanically extrapolated to other areas and time periods, our findings are significant from a global perspective given that many regions, especially developing countries, are expected to experience significant declines in agricultural yields as a result of projected warming.

Linkages among climate change, crop yields and Mexico–US cross-border migration [pdf] via Rabett Run

By Wynne Parry, Senior Writer
29 July 2010 07:39 am ET

One hundred days ago Thursday, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon began spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. As profoundly as the leak of millions of barrels of oil is injuring the Gulf ecosystem, it is only one of many threats to the Earth's oceans that, many experts say, could change the makeup of the oceans as we know them and wipe out a large portion of marine life.

The waters of the Gulf were already heavily fished, and the Gulf has been home to an oxygen-depleted dead zone generated by agricultural runoff rich in nutrients.

The Gulf and the rest of the world's waters also face the uncertain and potentially devastating effects of climate change. Warming ocean temperatures reduce the water's oxygen content, and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is altering the basic chemistry of the ocean, making it more acidic. There is no shortage of evidence that both of these effects have begun to wreak havoc on certain important creatures.

Human beings created these problems, largely in the two centuries since the Industrial Revolution, but for some researchers, they bring to mind the ancient past. The Earth has seen several mass extinctions, including five that annihilated more than half the planet's species. Experts now believe Earth is in the midst of a sixth event, the first one caused by humans.

"Today the synergistic effects of human impacts are laying the groundwork for a comparably great Anthropocene mass extinction in the oceans, with unknown ecological and evolutionary consequences," Jeremy Jackson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, wrote in a 2008 article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When it comes to the oceans, research shows a parallel to the Permian-Triassic extinction — also known as the Great Dying — which eradicated 95 percent of marine species when the oceans lost their oxygen about 250 million years ago.

The same phenomenon is taking place in many areas of today's oceans. The entry of fertilizers into rivers and subsequently oceans is eating up the oceans' oxygen — that runoff is the primary source of the Gulf of Mexico's 3,000-square-mile (7,770-square-kilometer) dead zone. Around the world, the number of dead zones, some of which are naturally occurring, increased from 149 in 2003 to more than 200 in 2006, according to a 2008 report by the United Nations Environmental Program. …

Oceans in Peril: Primed for Mass Extinction?

Total annual river discharge to the Arctic Ocean from the six largest rivers in the Eurasian Arctic for the observational period 1936–2008 (updated from Peterson et al. 2002) (red line) and from the four large North American pan-Arctic rivers over 1970–2008 (blue line). The least squares linear trend lines are shown as dashed lines. Provisional estimates of annual discharge for the six major Eurasian Arctic rivers, based on near-real-time data from http://RIMS.unh.edu, are shown as red diamonds. Upper green line shows the September (minimum) sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean over 1979–2009 from NSIDC (http://nsidc.org/data).

Annual river discharge to the Arctic Ocean from the major Eurasian rivers in 2008 was 2078 km3. In general, river discharge shows an increasing trend over 1936–2008 with an average rate of annual change of 2.9 ± 0.4 km3 yr-1. An especially intensive increase in river discharge to the ocean was observed during the last 20 years when the sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean began decreasing. Interestingly, the correlation between Eurasian river discharge and sea ice extent over 1979–2008 is r = -0.72, or greater than the correlation between precipitation (Willmott et al. 1996) and runoff in these Eurasian drainage basins (r = 0.54). This suggests that both rivers and sea ice were responding to changes in large-scale hemispheric climate patterns (Shiklomanov and Lammers 2009). There is also an increasing tendency in river discharge to the Arctic Ocean from North America (Shiklomanov and Shiklomanov 2003; Rawlins et al. 2010). The mean annual discharge to the ocean over 2000–08 from the four large North American Arctic rivers was 6% (31 km3) greater than the long-term mean from 1970–99.

State of the Climate in 2009, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center, as appearing in the June 2010 issue (Vol. 91) of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS). [pdf]

Scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable has been released today in the 2009 State of the Climate report, issued by US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The report draws on data from 10 key climate indicators that all point to that same finding — the world is warming.

The 10 indicators of temperature have been compiled by the Met Office Hadley Centre, drawing on the work of more than 100 scientists from more than 20 institutions. They provide, in a one place, a snapshot of our world and spell out a single conclusion that the climate is unequivocally warming.

Relying on data from multiple sources, each indicator proved consistent with a warming world.

Seven indicators are rising and three are declining.

Rising indicators

1. Air temperature over land
2. Sea-surface temperature
3. Marine air temperature
4. Sea-level
5. Ocean heat
6. Humidity
7. Tropospheric temperature in the ‘active-weather’ layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface

Declining indicators

1. Arctic sea-ice
2. Glaciers
3. Spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere

Dr Peter Stott, Met Office Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution and contributor to the report says: “Despite the variability caused by short-term changes, the analysis conducted for this report illustrates why we are so confident the world is warming.

“When we look at air temperature and other indicators of climate, we see highs and lows in the data from year-to-year because of natural variability. Understanding climate change requires looking at the longer-term record. When we follow decade-to-decade trends using different data sets and independent analyses from around the world, we see clear and unmistakable signs of a warming world.”

Dr Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and US NOAA Administrator, says: “The temperature increase of 0.56°C (1°F) over the past 50 years may seem small, but it has already altered our planet.

“Glaciers and sea-ice are melting; heavy rainfall is intensifying, and heat waves are more common. And, as the new report tells us, there is now evidence that over 90 percent of warming over the past 50 years has gone into our oceans.”

The report points out that people have spent thousands of years building society for one climate, and now a new one is being created — one that is warmer and more extreme.

While year-to-year changes in temperature often reflect natural climatic variations such as El Niño/La Niña events, changes in average temperature from decade-to-decade reveal long-term trends such as global warming.

Each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the decade before. At the time, the 1980s was the hottest decade on record. In the 1990s, every year was warmer than the average of the previous decade. The 2000s were warmer still.

“For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean,” states Deke Arndt, co-editor of the report and chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.

“The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys, and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming.”

You can read the electronic version of the full report on the NOAA website.

Unmistakable signs of a warming world

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2010) — A new article published in the 29 July issue of the journal Nature reveals for the first time that microscopic marine algae known as "phytoplankton" have been declining globally over the 20th century. Phytoplankton forms the basis of the marine food chain and sustains diverse assemblages of species ranging from tiny zooplankton to large marine mammals, seabirds, and fish. Says lead author Daniel Boyce, "Phytoplankton is the fuel on which marine ecosystems run. A decline of phytoplankton affects everything up the food chain, including humans."

Using an unprecedented collection of historical and recent oceanographic data, a team from Canada's Dalhousie University documented phytoplankton declines of about 1% of the global average per year. This trend is particularly well documented in the Northern Hemisphere and after 1950, and would translate into a decline of approximately 40% since 1950. The scientists found that long-term phytoplankton declines were negatively correlated with rising sea surface temperatures and changing oceanographic conditions.

The goal of the three-year analysis was to resolve one of the most pressing issues in oceanography, namely to answer the seemingly simple question of whether the ocean is becoming more (or less) ‘green’ with algae. Previous analyses had been limited to more recent satellite data (consistently available since 1997) and have yielded variable results. To extend the record into the past, the authors analysed a unique compilation of historical measurements of ocean transparency going back to the very beginning of quantitative oceanography in the late 1800s, and combined these with additional samples of phytoplankton pigment (chlorophyll) from ocean-going research vessels. The end result was a database of just under half a million observations which enabled the scientists to estimate phytoplankton trends over the entire globe going back to the year 1899.

The scientists report that most phytoplankton declines occurred in polar and tropical regions and in the open oceans where most phytoplankton production occurs. Rising sea surface temperatures were negatively correlated with phytoplankton growth over most of the globe, especially close to the equator. Phytoplankton need both sunlight and nutrients to grow; warm oceans are strongly stratified, which limits the amount of nutrients that are delivered from deeper waters to the surface ocean. Rising temperatures may contribute to making the tropical oceans even more stratified, leading to increasing nutrient limitation and phytoplankton declines. The scientists also found that large-scale climate fluctuations, such as the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), affect phytoplankton on a year-to-year basis, by changing short-term oceanographic conditions.

The findings contribute to a growing body of scientific evidence indicating that global warming is altering the fundamentals of marine ecosystems. Says co-author Marlon Lewis, "Climate-driven phytoplankton declines are another important dimension of global change in the oceans, which are already stressed by the effects of fishing and pollution. Better observational tools and scientific understanding are needed to enable accurate forecasts of the future health of the ocean." Explains co-author Boris Worm, "Phytoplankton are a critical part of our planetary life support system. They produce half of the oxygen we breathe, draw down surface CO2, and ultimately support all of our fisheries. An ocean with less phytoplankton will function differently, and this has to be accounted for in our management efforts."

Marine phytoplankton declining: Striking global changes at the base of the marine food web linked to rising ocean temperatures

Fingers crossed: it looks like the cap on BP's Macondo well will hold until the relief well intercepts and permanently plugs it, and no more oil from this blowout will enter the Gulf.

So here's a map showing the cumulative oil slick footprint for the BP / Deepwater Horizon oil spill, created by overlaying all of the oil slicks and sheen mapped by SkyTruth on satellite images taken between April 25 and July 16, 2010, blogged here, and published in our gallery.

Cumulatively, the surface oil slicks and sheen observed on these satellite images directly impacted 68,000 square miles of ocean - as big as the state of Oklahoma.

BP / Gulf Oil Spill - 68,000 Square Miles of Direct Impact

Scientists suspect starvation from changing water temperatures or overfishing after 500 birds found in 10 days

Associated Press in São Paulo, www.guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 21 July 2010 07.41 BST

Hundreds of penguins that have apparently starved to death are washing up on the beaches of Brazil, worrying scientists who are investigating what exactly killed them.

About 500 penguins had been found in the last 10 days on Peruibe, Praia Grande and Itanhaem beaches in São Paulo state, said Thiago do Nascimento, a biologist at the Peruibe aquarium.

Most were Magellan penguins migrating north from Argentina, Chile and the Falkland Islands in search of food in warmer waters.

Many are not finding it: autopsies done on several birds have revealed their stomachs were entirely empty – indicating they likely starved to death, Nascimento said.

Scientists are investigating whether strong currents and colder than normal waters have hurt populations of the species that make up the penguins' diet, or whether human activity may be playing a role.

"Overfishing may have made the fish and squid scarcer," Nascimento said.

Nascimento said it was common for penguins to swim north at this time of year. Inevitably some get lost along the way or die from hunger or exhaustion and end up on the Brazilian coast far from home.

But not in such numbers – Nascimento said about 100 to 150 live penguins show up on the beach in an average year and only 10 or so dead ones. "What worries us this year is the absurdly high number of penguins that have appeared dead in a short period of time."

Dead penguins wash up on Brazil's beaches via Wit’s End

A boat made from thousands of plastic bottles has sailed into Sydney Harbour, completing a four-month voyage that began in San Francisco.

The boat, called the Plastiki, was built using 12,500 plastic bottles.

Its 9,000 mile (15,000 km) voyage aimed to raise awareness of the dangers posed to the environment by plastic waste.

Hundreds of people turned out in Sydney to welcome the Plastiki and its crew of six.

"It has been an extraordinary adventure," said expedition leader and environmentalist David de Rothschild.

The Plastiki left the US city of San Francisco in March, crossing the Pacific and then travelling via Western Samoa and New Caledonia before arriving in Australia.

It sailed via the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a sea of waste about five times the size of the UK that sits just below the surface between California and Hawaii.

The vessel is a catamaran, with the thousands of plastic bottles attached with organic glue to two pontoons.

Other parts of the boat such as the sails and the mast are made from recycled materials.

Mr de Rothschild said he and his crew had wanted to raise awareness of the damage caused to the ocean by the disposal of plastic waste.

"We have this addiction to single-use, throwaway plastic, which is choking up the ecosystem," he said earlier this week. …

Boat made from plastic bottles completes Pacific voyage

By Bonny Schumaker
Monday, July 26, 2010

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s “aviation wing” has been extremely busy in the Gulf of Mexico for the past couple of months, and especially this past month. In keeping with the strong emphasis being put on collaboration, Sea Shepherd has been working with other NGOs as well as local people and businesses, indigenous groups in the Gulf area, and government agencies in order to maximize effectiveness in protecting and promoting recovery of the Gulf wildlife and ecosystems. …

The look of the surface of the ocean changes from day to day, in part because of winds and currents moving the oil and emulsion around, but also in part because we humans continue to spray a dispersant known as Corexit in massive amounts from large C-130s and other planes, in attempts to break up the oil and make it separate into small particles and sink beneath the surface…  …

We have seen less and less ocean wildlife over the past two months. What we do see is now much closer to shore than it was previously, typically within 50 miles of the coast, and crowded into the shallow waters on the coastal sides of the off-shore islands. Within 30 miles of the coast off Caillou Bay (west of Grand Isle), and within 5 miles of the oil-scarred shores of the Chandeleur Islands, we have seen many schools of cownose rays (Rhinoptera bonasus), golden-colored and swimming very close to the surface, 20-40 in a square-shaped school. Often these rays are followed by sharks. We’ve seen small pods of dolphins, almost always swimming very fast, almost frantically in circles, and often within a few hundred meters of thick patches of brown crude oil emulsion. If we had been seeing this in beautiful clear blue water, we might have thought this was enthusiastic play, but in this toxic pool, we wondered if this isn’t a sign of serious stress.

Having flown over the “water” for hundreds of miles, we know that there is no clear passage for those animals to swim out of the oiled areas and out to cleaner open water, unless they first go several hundred miles along the coasts east or west and then out to open water. Do they know to do that, we have wondered? Perhaps the animals who are still here do not, and we wonder, what will become of them? As hurricane season arrives and blows oil all over the off-shore islands, the thousands of nests with hatchlings—pelicans, egrets, herons, and more—they seem doomed. …

Sea Shepherd Operation Gulf Rescue Update

Freshwater coastal wetlands are more vulnerable to erosion during hurricanes than habitats with higher levels of salinity, a study suggests.

US researchers say freshwater marshes have shallower root systems, leaving them at risk from wave erosion during storm surges.

They added that the results could have implications for wetland restoration projects in hurricane-prone areas.

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"During the 2005 hurricane season, the storm surges and waves associated with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita eroded 527 square kilometres of wetlands within the Louisiana coastal plain," the researchers wrote in their PNAS paper [pdf].

"Low salinity wetlands were preferentially eroded, while higher salinity wetlands remained robust and largely unchanged."

The team said that both freshwater and salt marshes within their study area were exposed to similar conditions during Hurricane Katrina, which struck the US Gulf coastline in August 2005.

"We hypothesise that wave shear stresses generated during the hurricane exceeded the shear strength of the low salinity wetland soils, resulting in failure, whereas greater soil shear strength in the saline wetlands largely precluded erosion," they suggested.

"Soil shear strength and the resistance of the soil to erosion are determined by the properties of the vegetation.

"We propose that resistance to erosion is primarily a function of rooting characteristics, which depend on the dominant species of vegetation - as controlled by salinity." …

Marshes 'at risk from hurricanes'

By Gleb Bryanski, additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk and Amie Ferris-Rotman; editing by Angus MacSwan
Tue Jul 27, 2010 5:37pm EDT

NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia (Reuters) - A prominent scientist said hundreds of people could die as smog from peat fires blanketed a sweltering Moscow for a second day on Tuesday.

Moscow region chief Boris Gromov asked Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to allocate 25 billion roubles ($827 million) to fight the fires smoldering in the forests around Moscow.

Alexei Yablokov, an internationally renowned biologist who runs Russia's Green Party, said air pollution caused by the smog's high amount of carbon dioxide could kill hundreds more people than usual in the Moscow region.

"There will be at least 100 additional deaths per day this time round," Yablokov told Reuters, referring to the last such smog cloud in 2002 in which he calculated 600 people had died each week.

The Moscow government agency overseeing air pollution, Mosekonomonitoring, said the levels of carbon monoxide in the air on Tuesday shot up by 20-30 percent more than normal levels.

Russia's senior public health official suggested on Tuesday employers free their staff while the thick smog and record-breaking heat in the Russian capital surged. …

"According to preliminary estimates, only in one district where fires are now most severe, over 4.5 billion roubles is needed. We have five such districts," Gromov told Putin during an emergency video conference. …

The emergencies ministry said that in the last 24 hours there had appeared 58 new fires in the Moscow region, 30 of them at peat deposits.

Scientist says hundreds may die as smog blankets Moscow