Desdemona Despair

U.K. report: Warming to increase climate-related deaths in summer – ‘The country may sleepwalk into disaster’

2012-01-27T10:02:00.001-08:00

By Reed Landberg
25 January 2012

Sugar and wheat farming probably will become more productive as the average temperature rises across the U.K. in the next 40 years, the government concluded in a report [pdf] assessing the impact of climate change.

Sugar beet yields may rise 20 percent to 70 percent and wheat yields by as much as 140 percent because the atmosphere is warming, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said today.

“A warmer climate presents opportunities to grow new crops such as soya, sunflowers, peaches, apricots, and grapes,” the department said a statement in London.

The study also found that climate-related deaths would increase in the summer and decline in the winter and that both floods and dangerous droughts would become more frequent. The report is meant to advise Prime Minister David Cameron’s government on the measures it needs to endorse to adapt to climate change.

“Without an effective plan to prepare for the risks from climate change, the country may sleepwalk into disaster,” John Krebs, a lawmaker who leads the Committee on Climate Change, said in the statement.

The number of days that the temperature rises above 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) may increase from about 18 currently to 27 to 121 days by the 2080s, Defra said. That would reduce the need for heating in buildings and increase the demand for air conditioning.

Premature deaths in cold weather that currently range from 26,000 to 57,000 a year in the U.K. may decline to 3,900 to 24,000 by the 2050s. An additional 580 to 5,900 people may die in heat waves by then, the report said.

U.K. Expects Warming to Boost Crop Yields From Sugar to Wheat

Technorati Tags: United Kingdom,global warming,climate change,agriculture,epidemic,heat wave,flood,drought

Pakistan PM wants to work with India on climate change

2012-01-27T09:35:00.001-08:00

DAVOS, 26 January 2012 (The Times of India) – Pointing out that Pakistan has "excellent" relationship with India, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Thursday said cooperation between the two to tackle climate change was "doable".

He said Islamabad wants to work with New Delhi on this front.

"Yes, certainly there can be cooperation. We have excellent relationship with India and we want to work together," Gilani said when asked if India and Pakistan can work together to tackle climate change.

"We have been having a number of delegations from both countries on various matters like finance and industry. Certainly cooperation is doable", Gilani said during a panel discussion on climate change at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012.

Earlier in his address, Gilani said Pakistan has been hit by "horrible" droughts and floods last year and sought a "global fund" to tackle the climate risk issues.

"It (climate change) is quite visible in my country. We have suffered both drought and heavy rains in past one year. It was horrible, not just by our estimates but also as per the estimates of World Bank and Asian Development Bank," Gilani said.

"There has to be global solution to these problems. The first step we can take is establishing a global fund to tackle the climate risk issues and Pakistan would be happy to partner," Gilani said.

The United Nations has already proposed a USD 100 billion Green Climate Fund.

The fund was central to agreements reached in 2010 by UN treaty negotiators in Cancun, Mexico.

"If the glaciers in Himalayas melt, there will be huge floods in Pakistan," he said adding that Pakistan has taken some steps by creating a disaster management cell which he himself was overseeing.

Gilani arrived here yesterday from Islamabad. This is his first visit outside Pakistan since the memo scandal erupted late last year throwing his government in a political whirlpool that even threatened his continuity at office.

One year after the worst flooding disaster in the history of the region, more floods triggered by heavy rains had devastated parts of Southern Pakistan last year.

Pakistan wants to work with India on climate change: Yousuf Raza Gilani

Technorati Tags: Pakistan,India,global warming,climate change,flood,drought,Himalayas,glacier,deglaciation,Asia

Scientists: ‘Look, one-third of the human race has to die for civilization to be sustainable, so how do we want to do this?’

2012-01-27T09:15:00.001-08:00

[This is Desdemona’s kind of satire.]

WASHINGTON, 26 January 2012 (The Onion) – Saying there's no way around it at this point, a coalition of scientists announced Thursday that one-third of the world population must die to prevent wide-scale depletion of the planet's resources—and that humankind needs to figure out immediately how it wants to go about killing off more than 2 billion members of its species.

Representing multiple fields of study, including ecology, agriculture, biology, and economics, the researchers told reporters that facts are facts: Humanity has far exceeded its sustainable population size, so either one in three humans can choose how they want to die themselves, or there can be some sort of government-mandated liquidation program—but either way, people have to start dying.

And soon, the scientists confirmed.

"I'm just going to level with you—the earth's carrying capacity will no longer be able to keep up with population growth, and civilization will end unless large swaths of human beings are killed, so the question is: How do we want to do this?" Cambridge University ecologist Dr. Edwin Peters said. "Do we want to give everyone a number and implement a death lottery system? Incinerate the nation's children? Kill off an entire race of people? Give everyone a shotgun and let them sort it out themselves?"

"Completely up to you," he added, explaining he and his colleagues were "open to whatever." "Unfortunately, we are well past the point of controlling overpopulation through education, birth control, and the empowerment of women. In fact, we should probably kill 300 million women right off the bat."

Because the world's population may double by the end of the century, an outcome that would lead to a considerable decrease in the availability of food, land, and water, researchers said that, bottom line, it would be helpful if a lot of people chose to die willingly, the advantage being that these volunteers could decide for themselves whether they wished to die slowly, quickly, painfully, or peacefully.

Additionally, the scientists noted that in order to stop the destruction of global environmental systems in heavily populated regions, there's no avoiding the reality that half the world's progeny will have to be sterilized.

"The longer we wait, the higher the number of people who will have to die, so we might as well just get it over with," said Dr. Chelsea Klepper, head of agricultural studies at Purdue University, and the leading proponent of a worldwide death day in which 2.3 billion people would kill themselves en masse at the exact same time. "At this point, it's merely a question of coordination. If we can get the populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Beijing, India, Europe, and Latin America to voluntarily off themselves at 6 p.m. EST on June 1, we can kill the people that need to be killed and the planet can finally start renewing its resources." […]

Scientists: 'Look, One-Third Of The Human Race Has To Die For Civilization To Be Sustainable, So How Do We Want To Do This?' via Ketsugami

Technorati Tags: doom,population,overpopulation,resource depletion

‘Monster’ rules Nepal village on frontline of global warming

2012-01-27T07:29:00.001-08:00

By Gopal Sharma; editing by Paul Casciato
27 January 2012

BARAHBISE, Nepal (Reuters) – Looking at the swirling grey waters of the Bhote Koshi River, Ratna Kaji remembers when it turned into a "monster," leaving behind a trail of death and destruction.

"It came down roaring, washed away homes and people when they were sleeping," the 77-year-old said of the 1996 flood, caused by a massive landslide that blocked the river which eventually gushed out by breaking its mud wall.

"People had hardly any time to gather their belongings."

Within minutes, the flood washed away 54 people in this beautiful but rugged area, destroying 22 houses and a section of the Kodari road, a major artery connecting the Nepali capital of Kathmandu to Tibet. The road is also used by climbers to get to the northern side of Mount Everest.

That wasn't the first time that Kaji saw tragedy strike the area around Barahbise, a trading town of more than 6,000 people some 100 km (62 miles) northeast of Kathmandu -- and climate scientists fear it won't be the last.

Global warming, which is hitting Nepal particularly hard, is causing glaciers to melt, raising the spectre of another disaster like the one in 1981. Then, the flow from a glacial lake in Tibet set off a flood that killed at least five people in Nepal and caused widespread destruction.

There are more than 3,200 glaciers in Nepal, and 14 of them are at risk of bursting the dams which control the melting water that flows from them, officials say.

"The melting of glaciers that forms lakes can only be attributed to climate change," said Arun Bhakta Shrestha, climate change specialist at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which studies climate change in the Hindu Kush Himalayas.

"There is no reason other than this for the change in the glaciers."

According to ICIMOD, which oversees a vast swathe of rugged land from Pakistan to Myanmar, the earth's temperature has increased by an average of 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years.

But warming across the Himalayas has been greater than the global average, with dire consequences.

Government officials said the average temperature in Nepal was rising by 0.06 degrees Celsius annually, due in part to its location between India and China, two of the world's heaviest polluters.

Over the past three decades, Bhutan's glaciers have shrunk by 22 percent and Nepal's by 21 percent, according to three studies recently released by ICIMOD.

They add that the melting glaciers will have an adverse impact on biodiversity, hydropower, industries, and agriculture, flooding hydroelectric plants and inundating fields.

The region is also becoming ever more dangerous to live in.

The area in Tibet where the Bhote Koshi River originates has several glacial lakes, Shrestha said. Nine of them are at risk of bursting their dams.

"This could happen any time and the downstream areas are at very high risk of another flood," said the bespectacled scientist. […]

"Monster" rules Nepal village on climate frontline

Technorati Tags: Himalayas,global warming,climate change,glacier,deglaciation,flood

Singapore raises sea defenses against tide of climate change – ‘A rise of two meters would turn Singapore into an island fortress’

2012-01-27T07:11:00.001-08:00

By David Fogarty; Editing by Ron Popeski and Sanjeev Miglani
26 January 2012

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A 15-km (10 mile) stretch of crisp white beach is one of the key battlegrounds in Singapore's campaign to defend its hard-won territory against rising sea levels linked to climate change.

Stone breakwaters are being enlarged on the low-lying island state's man-made east coast and their heights raised. Barges carrying imported sand top up the beach, which is regularly breached by high tides.

Singapore, the world's second most densely populated country after Monaco, covers 715 square km (276 sq miles). It has already reclaimed large areas to expand its economy and population -- boosting its land area by more than 20 percent since 1960.

But the new land is now the frontline in a long-term battle against the sea.

Every square metre is precious in Singapore.

One of the world's wealthiest nations in per-capita terms, it is also among the most vulnerable to climate change that is heating up the planet, changing weather patterns and causing seas to rise as the oceans warm and glaciers and icecaps melt.

Late last year, the government decided the height of all new reclamations must be 2.25 metres (7.5 feet) above the highest recorded tide level -- a rise of a metre over the previous mandated minimum height.

The additional buffer was costly but necessary, Environment Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told Reuters in a recent interview.

"You are buying insurance for the future," he said during a visit to a large flood control barrier that separates the sea from a reservoir in the central business area.

The decision underscores the government's renowned long-term planning and the dilemma the country faces in fighting climate change while still trying to grow. It also highlights the problem facing other low-lying island states and coastal cities and the need to prepare.

A major climate change review for the Chinese government last week said China's efforts to protect vulnerable coastal areas with embankments were inadequate. It said in the 30 years up to 2009, the sea level off Shanghai rose 11.5 centimeters (4.5 inches); in the next 30 years, it will probably rise another 10 to 15 centimeters. […]

The U.N. climate panel says sea levels could rise between 18 and 59 centimetres (7 to 24 inches) this century and more if parts of Antarctica and Greenland melt faster. Some scientists say the rise is more likely to be in a range of 1 to 2 metres.

Singapore could cope with a rise of 50 cm to 1 m, coastal scientist Teh Tiong Sa told Reuters during a tour of the East Coast Park, the city's main recreation area.

"But a rise of two metres would turn Singapore into an island fortress," said Teh, a retired teacher from Singapore's National Institute for Education. That would mean constructing more and higher walls to protect against the sea. […]

Climate change presents a host of other challenges.

More intense rainfall has caused embarrassing floods in the premier Orchard Road shopping area.

And the government says average daily temperature in tropical Singapore could increase by 2.7 to 4.2 degrees Celsius (4.9 to 7.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from the current average of 26.8 deg C (80.2 F) by 2100, which could raise energy use for cooling.

Here lies another dilemma. The country is already one of the most energy intensive in Asia to power its industries and fiercely air conditioned malls and glass office towers -- a paradox in a country at such risk from climate change. […]

Singapore raises sea defences against tide of climate change

Technorati Tags: Asia,sea level,coastal erosion,global warming,climate change

Video: Fukushima animals abandoned and left to die

2012-01-27T06:53:00.001-08:00

[Apologies in advance for the ad.]

By Kyung Lah, CNN
26 January 2012

Inside Fukushima Exclusion Zone, Japan (CNN) – When you stand in the center of Japan's exclusion zone, there is absolute silence. The exclusion zone is the 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, an area of high radiation contamination.

On March 12, the day after the quake and tsunami hit, 78,000 people were evacuated out of this area, believing they would return within a few days. As such, thousands of people left with their dogs tied up in the backyard, cats in their houses and livestock penned in barns.

Nearly a year later, animal carcasses litter the region.

Cows and pigs starved to death, their bones still in pens. Dogs dropped dead with disease. A cat skull sits on a neighborhood road.

This is perhaps an inevitable outcome to a nuclear emergency, but animal rights activists call it an outrage.

"It's shameful," says Yasunori Hoso with United Kennel Club Japan. "We kept asking the government to rescue these animals from the beginning of the disaster. There must have been a way to rescue the people and the animals at the same time following the nuclear disaster at Fukushima."

Japan's environmental agency tells CNN the government's position has been to rescue as many livestock and animals possible. But it points out that because of the risk posed to people entering the contaminated area, the government has chosen to take a prudent attitude toward animal rescue.

Last December, the government allowed animal rights groups like UKC Japan to enter the exclusion zone and rescue any surviving animals. Hoso entered with his members, carrying cages and food.

On one of those days, Hoso's group approached a house. A six-week-old female puppy lay dead in the living room in a pool of blood. It appeared to have died from disease. From the back of the house, the UKC volunteers heard weak barking. The puppy's two brothers were still alive, hiding in another part of the house. They were traumatized and afraid of the rescuers, having never been around people before. The volunteers soon rounded up their mother.

Those dogs now reside at the UKC Japan shelter near Tokyo. 250 dogs and 100 cats, all from the exclusion zone, live in cramped cages at the shelter. UKC Japan, which survives on donations, says it has tracked down 80% of the owners.

But that hasn't meant the animals can reunite with owners. Shelters and temporary apartment housing have not allowed the owners to live with their pets, Hoso said.

Unfortunately, he added, the owners can't live with their animals because they are homeless themselves.

Fukushima's animals abandoned and left to die

Technorati Tags: Fukushima,Japan,infrastructure failure

Video: What happened to Chernobyl children 7 years after the accident (from a Japanese TV program in 1993)

2012-01-26T18:26:00.001-08:00

By arevamirpal::laprimavera
26 January 2012

When it was someone else's problem (Chernobyl), Japan was telling the truth about the effect of radiation, particularly on children.

Here’s Tokyo Brown Tabby's translation and captioning of a TV program from 1993.

Ironically, the female newscaster has morphed into one of the strongest proponents (even today) of nuclear power generation. The journalist on the right has remained a journalist; he was seen investigating and reporting from the high-radiation areas in Fukushima, right after Reactor 1 blew up at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

Tabby's description of the YouTube video:

This video is from a Japanese evening news program broadcast on Nihon TV, seven years after the Chernobyl accident (around 1993).

I hope the families in Fukushima who still hesitate to voluntarily evacuate their children will watch this and change their minds.

The original video is at: http://youtu.be/tWWICnIQE9k.

The German version is at 007bratsche's channel: http://youtu.be/_9F9M1Sq7KI.

The French version is at kna60's channel: http://youtu.be/oWvQT6ei8C0.

What Happened to Chernobyl Children 7 Years after the Accident (from a Japanese TV program in 1993)

Technorati Tags: Fukushima,Chernobyl,Japan,Asia,epidemic,pollution,infrastructure failure

Graph of the Day: Fertilizers and Ocean Dead Zones

2012-01-26T16:18:00.001-08:00

Industrially produced nutrient fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus) are essential to global food security and have been the main driver of dramatically improved agricultural yields over the last sixty years to feed a growing population. At the same time, excess nutrients from inefficient use in farming and insufficient treatment of nutrients in wastewater, have made their way into rivers, aquifers, coastal areas and oceans, leading to degradation of marine ecosystems and groundwater at a global scale.

Nutrient loads from continents to oceans and the coastal zone have increased roughly three fold from pre-industrial levels, primarily from agricultural run-off and poorly or untreated sewage. Mainly due to the addition of manufactured nitrogen (from atmospheric nitrogen and natural gas), the amount of reactive nitrogen entering the earth’s biogeochemical system has increased by about 150% compared to pre-industrial times.

A 2009 Nature Report, “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity”, determined that excess nitrogen in the environment was one of 3 of the 9 ‘planetary boundaries’ that had already been exceeded. In effect, mankind is ‘mining’ the atmosphere for nitrogen; with a practically limitless supply, this process could proceed for hundreds if not thousands of years leading to continually worsening conditions for coastal areas and groundwater.

The environmental and socioeconomic impacts of nutrient pollution are massive and occurring over wide areas globally. The occurrence of coastal hypoxic zones caused by
eutrophication has increased exponentially in recent years, and nitrate pollution is one of the main groundwater contaminants in the developed and also increasingly in the developing world. Coastal hypoxia impacts fisheries, tourism and various ecosystem services provided by healthy coastal ecosystems. For the EU alone, the economic costs of damage to the aquatic environment from excess reactive nitrogen are estimated at up to € 320 billion per year. Initial evidence from the EU and US suggests that the overall benefits from improved nutrient management exceed costs and that this cost/benefit calculus occurs in other parts of the world.

A paradigm shift is needed in the way we produce, use and treat nutrients, from a dominantly ‘linear’ approach to a much more cyclic approach with substantial recovery of ‘waste’ nutrients. Without this change our oceans will continue to degrade through increased hypoxic zones with disastrous consequences to coastal communities dependent on marine resources for food and livelihoods. The ‘business as usual’ approach where we use sizeable fossil fuel energy resources to convert atmospheric nitrogen to fertiliser for production of food, and then use significant energy and infrastructure through conventional wastewater treatment to convert a portion of this reactive nitrogen back to atmospheric nitrogen, is highly wasteful. A move to a far more efficient and closed recycling approach to nutrients will not only protect the freshwater and ocean environment from pollution but will improve livelihoods through creation of new business and job opportunities and reduce fossil fuel energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions.

Green Economy in a Blue World [pdf]

Technorati Tags: dead zone,eutrophication,ocean anoxia,nitrogen,phosphorus,pollution,agriculture,United Nations

New extinction risk to Thai elephants: eating them

2012-01-26T16:08:00.001-08:00

26 January 2012 (AP) – Thailand's revered national symbol, the elephant, may face a new threat of extinction: being poached not just for their tusks, but for their meat.

Two wild elephants were found slaughtered last month in a national park in western Thailand, alerting authorities to the new practice of consuming elephant meat

"The poachers took away the elephants' sex organs and trunks ... for human consumption," Damrong Phidet, director-general of Thailand's wildlife agency, told The Associated Press. Some meat was to be consumed without cooking, like "elephant sashimi," he said.

Consuming elephant meat is not common in Thailand, but some Asian cultures believe consuming animals' reproductive organs can boost sexual prowess.

Damrong said the elephant meat was ordered by restaurants in Phuket, a popular travel destination in the country's south. It wasn't clear if the diners were foreigners.

Poaching elephants is banned, and trafficking or possessing poached animal parts also is illegal. Elephant tusks are sought in the illegal ivory trade, and baby wild elephants are sometimes poached to be trained for talent shows.

"The situation has come to a crisis point. The longer we allow these cruel acts to happen, the sooner they will become extinct," Damrong said.

The quest for ivory remains the top reason poachers kill elephants in Thailand, other environmentalists say.

Soraida Salwala, the founder of Friends of the Asian Elephant foundation, said a full grown pair of tusks could be sold from 1 million to 2 million baht ($31,600 to $63,300), while the estimated value of an elephant's penis is more than 30,000 baht ($950).

"There's only a handful of people who like to eat elephant meat, but once there's demand, poachers will find it hard to resist the big money," she cautioned.

Thailand has fewer than 3,000 wild elephants and about 4,000 domesticated elephants, according to the National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department.

The pachyderms were a mainstay of the logging industry in the northern and western parts of the country until logging contracts were revoked in the late 1980s.

Domesticated animals today are used mainly for heavy lifting and entertainment.

New extinction risk to Thai elephants: eating them

Technorati Tags: elephant,mammal decline,deforestation,poaching,Asia,endangered species,extinction

Protecting the seas is good business: UN

2012-01-25T09:35:00.001-08:00

25 January 2012 (Agence France-Presse) – The worldwide fishing industry could benefit from a $50 billion boost annually if stocks were allowed time to recover, the UN said Wednesday.

Already 32 percent of the world's fish stocks have been depleted by years of overfishing and poor coastal management, according to a UN Environment Programme report released in the Philippine capital Manila.

"The potential economic gain from reducing fishing capacity to an optimal and restoring fish stocks is in the order of $50 billion per annum," a summary of the UN report said, without giving details on how the figure was reached.

The report said overfishing, pollution from land-based farming and industry, and the destruction of habitat, including coral reefs and mangroves, were all having an effect on fish stocks.

This was directly affecting the 540 million people around the world who are dependent on the fishing industry, experts at the launch of the Green Economy in a Blue World report said.

Cutting pollution would help fish stocks and fishermen's catches to rebound, Amina Mohammed, deputy executive director of the UN programme, said.

"Many ocean industries and businesses stand to benefit directly from cleaner, more ecologically robust marine ecosystems," she said.

While overfishing reduces fish stocks, pollution from the overuse of fertiliser in farming is also a major problem, she said.

The fertiliser washes into the sea, resulting in runaway growth of algae which sucks up all the oxygen in the waters and causes fish to "drown".

Experts have said there are over 500 oxygen-deprived "dead zones" in waters around the world created in such a way.

Europe could save at least $100 million annually just through improvements in fertiliser use to stop it affecting the oceans, said Linwood Pendleton, an oceans and coast expert from the US's Duke University. […]

It also called for more measures to curb destruction of coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds and other marine habitats, as well as measures to prevent the spread of "invasive species" carried by ships' hulls.

Such species cause an estimated $100 billion in losses each year, the report said, without giving further details.

Protecting the seas is good business: UN

Technorati Tags: pollution,overfishing,ocean overexploitation,Europe,agriculture,dead zone,eutrophication,ocean anoxia,nitrogen,phosphorus,United Nations,invasive species,habitat loss,coral,ecosystem disruption,algae bloom

In Mackerel’s plunder, hints of epic fish collapse – ‘We’ve got to fish harder before it’s all gone’

2012-01-25T07:27:00.001-08:00

By MORT ROSENBLUM and MAR CABRA
25 January 2012

TALCAHUANO, Chile – Eric Pineda, a dock agent in this old port south of Santiago, peered deep into the Achernar’s hold at a measly 10 tons of jack mackerel — the catch after four days in waters once so rich they filled the 17-meter fishing boat in a few hours.

Mr. Pineda, like everyone here, grew up with the bony, bronze-hued fish they call jurel, which roams in schools in the southern Pacific.

“It’s going fast,” he said as he looked at the 57-foot boat. “We’ve got to fish harder before it’s all gone.” Asked what he would leave his son, he shrugged: “He’ll have to find something else.”

Jack mackerel, rich in oily protein, is manna to a hungry planet, a staple in Africa. Elsewhere, people eat it unaware; much of it is reduced to feed for aquaculture and pigs. It can take more than five kilograms, more than 11 pounds, of jack mackerel to raise a single kilogram of farmed salmon.

Stocks have dropped from an estimated 30 million metric tons to less than a tenth of that in two decades. The world’s largest trawlers, after depleting other oceans, now head south toward the edge of Antarctica to compete for what is left.

An eight-country investigation of the fishing industry in the southern Pacific by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists shows how the fate of the jack mackerel may foretell the progressive collapse of fish stocks in all oceans.
In turn, the fate of this one fish reflects a bigger picture: decades of unchecked global fishing pushed by geopolitical rivalry, greed, corruption, mismanagement, and public indifference. Daniel Pauly, an eminent University of British Columbia oceanographer, sees jack mackerel in the southern Pacific as an alarming indicator.
“This is the last of the buffaloes,” he said. “When they’re gone, everything will be gone.” […]
Meanwhile, industrial fleets bound only by voluntary restraints compete in what amounts to a free-for-all in no man’s water at the bottom of the world. From 2006 through 2011, scientists estimate, jack mackerel stocks declined 63 percent. […]
The jack mackerel crisis has hit hardest in Chile, where industry leaders and the authorities admit to serious excesses during the unregulated years in what they call “the Olympic race.”
In 1995 alone, Chileans fished more than four million tons. That is eight times the amount S.P.R.F.M.O. scientists said could be landed in a sustainable way in 2012. From 2000 to 2010, Chile landed 72 percent of all jack mackerel in the southern Pacific.
“The slaughter was tremendous, unbelievable,” said Juan Vilches, who scouts fish for a large company. “No one had any idea of limits,” he added. “Hundreds of tons were thrown overboard if nets came up too full for the hold. Boats came in so loaded that fish were squashed, their blood so hot it actually boiled.”
Reporters and staff of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, working with the Chilean investigative journalism center Ciper, traced how eight groups with a near monopoly had pressured the Chilean government to set quotas above scientific advice. Six of these groups are controlled by powerful families. And, together, the eight of them own rights to 87 percent of Chile’s jack mackerel catch.
Eduardo Tarifeño, a marine biologist at the University of Concepción, said that Chile now had only sardines in relative abundance.
“We have no more jack mackerel or hake or anchoveta,” he said. “Fisheries that produced a million or more tons a year have simply run out from overfishing by big companies.”
He added: “If we don’t save jack mackerel today, we won’t be able to do it later. We need a total ban for at least five years.”
At the fisheries secretariat in Valparaiso, Italo Campodonico said: “As a marine biologist, I have to agree. We should have a five-year ban. But as a civil servant, I must be realistic. For economic and social reasons, it won’t happen. Outsiders can go fish in other waters. We can’t.” […]

In Mackerel's Plunder, Hints of Epic Fish Collapse via The Oil Drum

Technorati Tags: South America,overfishing,ocean overexploitation,extinction,ecosystem disruption,fish decline,corruption,Chile

In Brazil, fears of a slide back for Amazon protection

2012-01-25T07:14:00.001-08:00

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
24 January 2012

SÃO PAULO, Brazil – Brazil has made great strides in recent years in slowing Amazon deforestation and showing the world it was serious about protecting the mammoth rain forest.

The rate of deforestation fell by 80 percent over the past six years, as the government carved out about 150 million acres for conservation — an area roughly the size of France — and used police raids and other tactics to crack down on illegal deforesters, according to both environmentalists and the government. Brazil’s former environment minister, Marina Silva, became an internationally respected defender of the Amazon. She ran for president in 2010 on the Green Party ticket and won 19.4 percent of the votes.

But since Dilma Rousseff was elected president in late 2010, there have been signs of a shift in the government’s attitude toward the Amazon. A provisional measure now allows the president to decrease the lands already created for conservation. The government is granting more flexibility for large infrastructure projects during the environmental licensing process. And a proposal would give Brazil’s Congress veto power over the recognition of indigenous territories.

“What is happening in Brazil is the biggest backsliding that we could ever imagine with regards to environmental policies,” said Ms. Silva, who now devotes her time to environmental advocacy.

Now, a bill seeking to overhaul the 47-year-old Forest Code, a central piece of environmental legislation, is the most serious test yet of Ms. Rousseff’s stance on the environment.

The debate over the law has revealed the stark disconnect between a population that is increasingly supportive of conserving the Amazon and a Congress in which agricultural interests in the country’s rural north and northeast still hold sway. The furor comes as Brazil is set to hold a United Nations conference on sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro in June.

Before taking office last January, Ms. Rousseff promised to veto any revision of the Forest Code that granted amnesty to landowners who had previously deforested illegally. Then her government negotiated a version of the code, approved by the Senate in December, that would give amnesty to farmers who broke the law before 2008 — provided they agreed to plant new trees. The House is expected to debate the legislation once again in March, with Ms. Rousseff holding final veto power.

The fight over the Forest Code has stoked the age-old struggle over development versus conservation in Brazil, a country that bears the weight of international pressure to protect the Amazon from deforestation because its sheer scale could affect global climatic conditions. Ms. Rousseff, a former energy minister, has so far flashed a more pro-development stance, environmentalists say, shifting the balance from the administration of her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who appointed Ms. Silva.

Agriculture represents 22 percent of Brazil’s gross domestic product. The so-called ruralists in Congress say that the old code is holding back Brazil’s agricultural potential and that it needs updating to allow more land to be opened up to production. Environmentalists counter that there is already enough land available to double production and that the proposed changes would open the door to a surge in deforestation.

Last May, the House approved a more sweeping amnesty for those who had illegally deforested, outraging environmentalists and scientists. It did not help that the deputies refused to receive a group of respected Brazilian scientists that issued a report condemning the changes.

“In the House, there was very little consultation with scientists,” said Carlos Nobre, a scientist at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research who specializes in climate issues. Still, he said, scientists “waited too long to realize that the House wanted to radically change the Forest Code, creating a broad and unrestricted license to deforest.” […]

“The ruralists have pushed so much to change the Forest Code because the government actually started enforcing it under Marina Silva,” said Stephan Schwartzman, director for tropical forest policy at the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington.

“The skewed proportional representation in Brazil has shown that the environmentalists have much less power in Congress than they have in public opinion,” said Gilberto Câmara, director of the National Institute for Space Research, which monitors Amazon deforestation. […]

In Brazil, Fears of a Slide Back for Amazon Protection

Technorati Tags: Amazon,rainforest,deforestation,agriculture,corruption,Brazil,South America,habitat loss,ecosystem disruption,poaching

Graph of the Day: Distribution of Temperature Anomalies for 11-year periods, 1951-2010

2012-01-24T13:04:00.001-08:00

Abstract: The "climate dice" describing the chance of an unusually warm or cool season, relative to the climatology of 1951-1980, have progressively become more "loaded" during the past 30 years, coincident with increased global warming. The most dramatic and important change of the climate dice is the appearance of a new category of extreme climate outliers. These extremes were practically absent in the period of climatology, covering much less than 1% of Earth's surface. Now summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (σ) warmer than climatology, typically cover about 10% of the land area. Thus there is no need to equivocate about the summer heat waves in Texas in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, which exceeded 3σ – it is nearly certain that they would not have occurred in the absence of global warming. If global warming is not slowed from its current pace, by mid-century 3σ events will be the new norm and 5σ events will be common. […]

The distribution of Jun-Jul-Aug and Dec-Jan-Feb temperature anomalies divided by the standard deviation for 11-year periods beginning in 1951 is shown in Figure 4 for the three choices of standard deviation in Figure 2. For comparison the normal (a.k.a. Gaussian or bell-curve) distribution of anomalies is shown by the black line. The data curves were obtained by binning the local anomalies divided by local standard deviation into intervals of 0.05

The data for 1951-1980 happen to fit the normal distribution best when the standard deviation includes the effect of unrealistically small Southern Ocean variability (left column in Figures 2 and 4), as the data artifact broadens the distribution of anomaly divided by standard deviation. More realistic standard deviations based on 1981-2010 data yield a frequency distribution for observed temperature anomalies that is more peaked at small anomalies than the normal distribution. Observed anomalies in the base period have a smaller chance of being in the range 1-3σ than for the normal distribution.

The important point is the large shift of the probability distribution function toward the right in each successive decade in the past 30 years. The distribution also becomes broader in recent decades. The frequency of occurrence of 3σ, 4σ and 5σ anomalies, close to zero in 1951-1980, is substantial in the past decade, consistent with the large brown areas in Figure 3. The frequency of seasons colder than the 1951-1980 average temperature (cases with σ < 0 in Figure 4) is much smaller than it was in 1951-1980, but it is still far from zero.

Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice [pdf]

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,flood,heat wave,drought,hurricane

Floods and typhoons affect 8 million in Asia – Thailand flooding one of the costliest natural disasters in history

2012-01-24T13:02:00.001-08:00

Geneva, Oct 15, (IANS) – At least 650 people have died and over eight million people have been affected by floods and typhoons in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and the Philippines, the UN has said.

So far, Thailand and Cambodia are the worst affected and the situation is expected to worsen as more rains, high tides, and run-off from the north are predicted over the weekend, Xinhua reported Friday, quoting the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In Thailand, 2.4 million people in 26 provinces remained affected by the floods, and 12 provinces were on high alert for heavy rain and overflowing rivers.

This included the capital Bangkok, where the water level at the Chao Phraya river bank had increased to 2.1 metres from 1.9 metres, with the height of the river bank being at 2.5 metres.

One million people were also being affected in Cambodia, 250,000 in Vietnam, 490,000 in Laos, and four million in the Philippines.

Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the OCHA, told media Friday that over half a million sq km were flooded in the region along the Mekong river, which originates in China and passes through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

It is considered the seventh longest river in Asia.

Floods affect 8 million in Asia: UN

By Ben Berkowitz; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Gerald E. McCormick, Dave Zimmerman
January 23, 2012

Last year’s flooding in Thailand is shaping up to be one of the costliest natural disasters in history, with insured losses alone estimated at more than $15 billion.

The following is an updated list [Allied World and Argo have been added] of the expected losses reported by insurance and reinsurance companies, ordered by size. The figures have been converted to U.S. dollars where applicable.

Insurer Loss

Munich Re $641.9 million

Swiss Re $600 million

XL Group $135 million – $185 million

SCOR $179.9 million

Everest Re $100 million – $125 mill

PartnerRe $120 million

Endurance $76.5 million

Transatlantic $72 million

Valid us $55.5 million

Aspen $54 million

Allied World $40 million – $50 million

Axis Capital $48 million

Argo Group $25 million – $35 million

Alterra $30 million

NOTE: PartnerRe has estimated the industry’s total loss at more than $15 billion. Validus has estimated industry losses in excess of $12 billion. Germany’s Allianz has said losses would be at least $10 billion.

UPDATE: Insured Loss Estimates from Thailand Floods

Technorati Tags: Asia,flood,hurricane,infrastructure failure,global warming,climate change,climate refugees,agriculture

All hazardous containers removed from Rena’s deck – Environmental effects of chemicals unknown

2012-01-24T08:59:00.001-08:00

24 January 2012 (Radio New Zealand) – Salvage work on the Rena reached a milestone on Tuesday with all containers holding hazardous material now removed from the upper decks of the vessel.

Thirty-two containers of dangerous goods, including flammable and toxic chemicals, were on board the Rena when it ran aground on Astrolabe Reef on 5 October last year.

Maritime New Zealand says the containers on the deck of the ship were most at risk of being lost into the sea and it is a relief to have them safely removed.

There are still a number of hazardous containers below deck, but the agency still does not know how many went overboard when the wreck broke in two on 7 January this year.

Meanwhile, four fridges have washed ashore: one on Slipper Island, one on Matakana and two east of Opotiki.

Some 2325 tonnes of waste has now been recovered from the sea and shores since the ship ran aground.

All hazardous containers removed from Rena's deck

24 January 2012
By MICHAEL DALY

Researchers are trying to work out how the mixing of different substances from the wreck of the Rena will affect the environment.

The cargo ship ran aground on Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga in early October 2011, then split into two sections in heavy seas early this month, with the stern section slipping under the water a few days later.

About 250 containers are estimated to have been lost overboard, while around 350 tonnes of oil was spilled in the days after the grounding, with a much smaller amount leaking out after the ship ripped apart.

Among the 1368 containers in total on board the Rena, 21 contained the aluminium smelting byproduct aluminium trisodium hexafluoride, also known as cryolite. About 490 tonnes of the byproduct in total was aboard the ship.

Although not declared as such in the original manifest provided to Maritime New Zealand, that material is classed as dangerous.

Many of the containers of cryolite are now thought to be on the seafloor near the wreck.

While cryolite is listed as "toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects", MNZ said the relatively small amount that may be dissolved would be massively and rapidly diluted.

It was only slightly soluble in water, and the rate of release was expected to be diminished due to the packaging, with the material packed in 1-tonne bulk bags inside the containers. The bags had a polyethylene liner and were made of polypropylene, so were water resistant, but not watertight. Water was likely to have seeped into the bags within the container, MNZ said.

Professor Chris Battershill, who holds Waikato University's chair in coastal science, said that while the manufacturers considered cryolite to be relatively stable, the implications of it mixing with leaked oil products should be considered.

Advice was being sought from chemists about what might happen if cryolite, or other dangerous goods on the Rena, came into contact with the hydraulic fluids, heavy fuel oil, and possibly diesel that had spilled from the ship.

The petrochemical products might mobilise trace metal elements in the cryolite and possibly make them more available to the environment. Were that to happen aluminium signatures would be seen, and so far none had.

A lack of research on such mixtures anywhere globally meant the issue was hypothetical.

"Ships have been grounding around the world for a long time, but we seem to be somewhat in the dark ages in our ability to predict what might happen. We do not consider mixtures of contaminants in a real environmental context. To be prudent, we should," Battershill said. […]

A different kind of risk from the Rena was posed by the small plastic beads from the cargo that had fallen into the sea.

The beads "go everywhere", Battershill said. From studies in Australia they had been known to block the digestive tracts of seabirds and turtles, and persisted in the marine environment for a long time.

Environmental effects of Rena chemicals unknown

Technorati Tags: plastic,pollution,ecosystem disruption,coral,Oceania,bird decline,reptile decline,fish decline,oil spill

Last Days, Last Words

2012-01-24T08:32:00.001-08:00

[Here’s a Desdemona-approved doom essay, via Guy McPherson.]

By John Rember
14 January 2012

[...] I’ve decided it’s better to be an honest observer of a dark world than to make up cheery lies for people desperate to spend their lives in culturally-prescribed illusion. If I wanted to make up lies I would have gone into advertising and made a lot more money and had a secretary who looked like Christina Hendricks.

So I’m exploring the end of this world as I see it. I don’t know if anyone will read my writing in a hundred years, or if anyone will be able to read in a hundred years. I don’t even know if anyone will be alive in a hundred years, unless it’s bacteria hanging out in hydrothermal reservoirs a mile beneath the surface of the earth. But if bacteria can read, I’d like them to understand that in the last few decades of human existence, one of those humans looked around himself, observed carefully and thought about what he observed, and wrote down the results of that thinking — dark existential jokes, mostly, which I’m pretty sure deep-biosphere bacteria prefer above all other forms of humor. Other than the jokes, there’s a certain last will and testament quality to what I’m writing, not because I’m planning on dying anytime soon, but because there’s a lot to elegize these days. [...]

Last Days, Last Words via Nature Bats Last

Technorati Tags: doom

Climatic warming-induced change in timings of 24 seasonal divisions in China since 1960

2012-01-24T07:22:00.001-08:00

Contact: Yan ZhongWei, yzw@tea.ac.cn
Science in China Press
24 January 2012

The Twenty-four Solar Terms are ancient Chinese terms used for about 2000 years. They describe 24 stages or timings associated with seasonal changes in phenology and agricultural activity throughout a year. Qian et al. from the Key Laboratory of Regional Climate-Environment for East Asia, Chinese Academy of Sciences, quantitatively defined the somewhat 'astronomic' term for the first time, based on modern temperature records. This facilitated an investigation of changes in the climatic Solar Terms under global warming over the past half-century. Their results were based on a recently developed homogenized dataset of daily temperature observations, dating to 1960. According to these results, the timings of the climatic Solar Terms during the warming phase (around spring) of the seasonal cycle have significantly advanced (by 6-15 days) from the 1960s to the present.
Across China, timings during the cooling phase (around autumn) have delayed by 5-6 days on average. This is mainly because of a warming shift of the entire seasonal temperature cycle, as illustrated in the figure. Four particular phenology-related climatic Solar Terms, namely the Waking of Insects, Pure Brightness, Grain Full, and Grain in Ear, have advanced almost everywhere in the country (as much as 20 days in North China). This has important implications for agricultural planning. The numbers of extremely cold (Great Cold) days decreased by 56.8% over the last 10 years as compared with the 1960s, whereas those of extremely hot (Great Heat) days increased by 81.4%. The paper titled “Climatic changes in the Twenty-four Solar Terms during 1960-2008” is published in Chinese Science Bulletin, 2012, Vol 57(2).
The present results imply that under concurrent global warming and consequent earlier / delayed timings of the climatic Twenty-four Solar Terms, planning various human activities (especially agricultural ones) based on traditional experience requires adjustment. It has been suggested that decision-making regarding climate change adaptation should take into account more climate elements, such as changes in precipitation and climate extremes, plus technological advances.
See the article: Qian C, Yan Z W, Fu C B. Climatic changes in the Twenty-four Solar Terms during 1960-2008, Chinese Sci. Bull., 2012, 57(2): 276-286

Climatic warming-induced change in timings of 24 seasonal divisions in China since 1960

Technorati Tags: China,Asia,agriculture,global warming,climate change,heat wave

Sumatran elephant population plunges – WWF calls for moratorium on deforestation

2012-01-24T07:15:00.001-08:00

January 24 (mongabay.com) – The Sumatran elephant subspecies (Elephas maximus sumatranus) was downgraded to critically endangered on IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species on Tuesday, prompting environmental group WWF to call for an immediate moratorium on destruction of its rainforest habitat, which is being rapidly lost to oil palm estates, timber plantations for pulp and paper production, and agricultural use.

"The Sumatran elephant joins a growing list of Indonesian species that are critically endangered, including the Sumatran orangutan, the Javan and Sumatran rhinos and the Sumatran tiger," said Dr. Carlos Drews, Director of WWF’s Global Species Programme, in a statement. "Unless urgent and effective conservation action is taken these magnificent animals are likely to go extinct within our lifetime."

By IUCN estimates, the population of Sumatran elephants has declined by more than 50 percent since 1985. During the same period, Sumatra lost nearly 70 percent of its lowland forest — the preferred habitat for elephants. The loss has been particularly steep in Riau province, where remaining lowland forests are increasingly at risk of conversion for industrial plantations. WWF says that less than 20 percent of Riau's 1985 population of elephants remains.

"Riau Province has already lost six of its nine herds to extinction. The last surviving elephants may soon disappear if the government doesn’t take steps to stop forest conversion and effectively protect the elephants," said Anwar Purwoto of WWF-Indonesia. "Forest concession holders such as pulp and paper companies and the palm oil industry have a legal and ethical obligation to protect endangered species within their concessions."

Pulp and paper suppliers operating in key elephant habitat include Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings (APRIL) and Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), according to environmentalists. The paper giants have been criticized recently for ongoing conversion of natural forests for plantations, although both maintain their activities are legal under Indonesian law.

While Indonesia has taken steps to protect blocks of elephant habitat, forest loss and fragmentation exacerbates the risk of human-elephant conflict outside protected areas. WWF says "a large number" have been killed as a result of forest conversion and encroachment.

Accordingly, WWF is now calling for "an immediate moratorium on habitat conversion to secure a future for Sumatran elephants." The group is urging the Indonesian government "to prohibit all forest conversion in elephant habitats until a conservation strategy is determined for protecting the animals."

"Urgent measures are needed to protect Sumatra’s remaining natural forests so that future generations of Indonesians can inherit a natural heritage that includes wild elephants, tigers, orangutans, and rhinos," said the group.

Sumatran elephant population plunges; WWF calls for moratorium on deforestation

Technorati Tags: elephant,mammal decline,endangered species,deforestation,Indonesia,Asia,extinction,habitat loss,ecosystem disruption

Japan task force kept no records of nuclear crisis response

2012-01-24T07:07:00.001-08:00

By Yoko Kubota and Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher
24 January 2012

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan's energy minister admitted on Tuesday that no records were kept of top level discussions in the critical early days on how to respond to the world's worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

The admission, and apology, by Trade Minister Yukio Edano comes in the face of widespread debate over the government's response to the Fukushima nuclear crisis triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami last March.

"It is inconceivable that there were no records kept. It may have been difficult to keep official logs during the extreme confusion after the crisis, but they could have taken simple memos," said Kenji Sumita, an emeritus professor at Osaka University who specializes in nuclear engineering.

"Perhaps there were some goings on that the participants did not feel comfortable being made public," he said.

A government task force was set up by then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan to deal with the nuclear disaster. Its failure to keep records emerged after public broadcaster NHK sought details of its discussions.

NHK said it found only one-page logs that listed the agenda items discussed at each meeting. […]

Japan task force kept no records of nuclear crisis response

Technorati Tags: Fukushima,Japan,infrastructure failure,pollution

Pangolins imperiled by internet trade – Are companies responding quickly enough?

2012-01-24T06:59:00.001-08:00

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com
24 January 2012

You can buy pretty much anything on the internet: from Rugby team garden gnomes to Mickey Mouse lingerie. In some places, consumers have even been able to purchase illegal wildlife parts, such as ivory and rhino horn. In fact, the internet has opened up the black market wildlife trade contributing to the destruction of biodiversity worldwide. Pangolins, shy, scaly, anteater-like animals in appearance, have not been immune: in Asia the small animals are killed en masse to feed rising demand for Chinese traditional medicine, placing a number of species on the endangered list.

"Pangolins are used in traditional Chinese medicine and consumed as a tonic and delicacy, mainly in China," Rhishja Cota-Larson, editor of the blog Project Pangolin. "Pangolins (especially the scales) are marketed as a treatment for many ailments, including boils, insufficient lactation in women, hysterics, malaria, jaundice, hepatitis, heart disease, strokes, comas—and worryingly, even cancer."

Project Pangolin recently blogged about discovering pangolin scales and meat for sale on Alibaba.com, a major e-commerce site out of China. Pangolin meat was selling for $12,000-$15,000 a ton by one supplier on the site. The supplier wrote that it could provide thirty tons of meat a month, which would take around 2,000 poached pangolins (weighing about 15 kilograms a piece) to meet one month's supply. It's not suspiring then that rising demand for Chinese traditional medicine is largely behind the listing of two species of pangolin—the Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and the Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla)—as Endangered by the IUCN Red List. The species are also listed as number 91 and 92 of the EDGE mammal's list, which catalogues the world's most endangered and evolutionary unique animals.

Once notified of the sale of pangolin meat and scales on their site, Alibaba.com responded by removing the content.

"The listing or sale of any animal (including any animal parts which may include pelts, skins, internal organs, teeth, claws, shells, bones, tusks, ivory and other parts) protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) or any other local law or regulation is strictly forbidden on Alibaba.com," Pamela Muñoz with Alibaba.com told mongabay.com. The website also forbids the sale of shark fins, cat or dog parts, and bear bile.

When asked how the pangolin products slipped past Alibaba.com's regulations, Muñoz said, "Alibaba.com is a user-generated site and relies on a series of keyword filters to help ensure legitimate and ethical postings. As with anything, this system is not perfect and so, we also rely on our staff to go through the site for additional screening. With millions of listed products on the site, generated by our 72.8 million registered users, challenges to fully screen each new posting remain. As such, we also appreciate help by site users and groups, like Project Pangolin, to notify us if any questionable products on the site. Registered users can notify us through our site with the “Report Suspicious Activity” link; non-registered users can email registeredagent (@) hk.alibaba-inc.com directly."

Cota-Larson says that she was happy with Alibaba's swift action on the issue, but warns that the illegal wildlife trade persists as a serious issue for commerce companies online.

"The internet is a significant factor in the illegal wildlife trade and this certainly presents a challenge for any site that relies on user-generated content," she says. "Fortunately, online marketplaces and social networking sites are always striving to improve verification processes and filters to keep undesirable content out. Each time something slips through the cracks is an opportunity to fine-tune the system."

Aside from the Sunda and Chinese panolgin, two other Asian pangolin species—the Philippine pangolin (Manis culionensis) and the Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata)— are also imperiled, currently listed as Near Threatened. Pangolins make-up their own evolutionary order: Philodata with their closest living relatives being carnivores, even though pangolins only eat insects and look little like the world's predators. Project Pangolin estimates that 40,000 to 60,000 pangolins may have been killed for food and medicine in 2011.

So, the question, as it always is with endangered species, remains: will regulations, laws, and societal changes come in time to save these elusive, nocturnal, forest-dwellers from extinction or will pangolins one day vanish entirely from Asia's forests.

Pangolins imperiled by internet trade--are companies responding quickly enough?

Technorati Tags: China,Asia,Indonesia,endangered species,poaching,wildlife

California cattle range to decrease as climate changes

2012-01-23T17:41:00.001-08:00

By FELICITY BARRINGER
23 January 2012

To see how thoroughly the concept of ecosystem services — the economic analysis of the natural world’s intersection with human endeavors — is embedded in climate change research, check out this forecast from a group led by researchers at Duke University and the Environmental Defense Fund.
It examines the future of cattle ranching, an industry that is bound up with America’s self-image, thanks to Hollywood, pulp novels and Cormac McCarthy, through the lens of a climate-changed California landscape. It concludes that, whether the state’s climate becomes warmer and wetter or warmer and drier, it will be more expensive to raise cattle because there will be less forage to sustain the animals.
Significant amounts of forage — nature’s free “service” to the cattlemen — will either be dessicated (under the warmer and drier projection) as the arid conditions in southeastern California inch northward or will be replaced by less-digestible scrub and brush (under the warmer and wetter projection), the study projects.
The loss will cost California ranchers tens of millions of dollars annually if it is warmer and wetter over the next 60 years or so, and $123 million to $209 million a year if it is warmer and drier, the article suggests.
In coming decades, “there will be fewer places to graze cattle and cattle grazing lands will be less productive,” said Linwood Pendleton, one of the study’s lead authors, an ecosystems services specialist at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “And because we’ve built up cities and highways around them, there’s nowhere to move to.”
Rebecca Shaw of the Environmental Defense Fund agrees. “If you look at the way climate is going to change the distribution of ecosystems in California, we are likely to see a decrease in grasslands and range lands and an increase in woody biomass and shrubs” — in the warmer and wetter projection — or a spread of arid landscapes where little grows, under the warmer and drier projection, she said.
Shrubland, while biodiverse, does not provide good cattle forage, Dr. Shaw said, “so shrublands grow at the expense of grasslands.” […]
The findings of the new report, published in the journal Climatic Change, can be extrapolated well beyond California’s boundaries, to Plains states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, where cattle are a bigger slice of the agricultural economy, Dr. Pendleton said.
“It is the grass-fed beef that everyone’s telling us we should be eating that is going to take a hit,” he said, adding that in most cases, “you will just have fewer cows on the same land.”
One variable that could upend some of the study’s projections is the number and intensity of wildfires in a climate-changed California. Dr. Shaw said that the bigger and hotter a fire, the more likely it would consume the woody scrub growth and give grasses a chance to regrow. […]

Home, Home … on Less Range

Technorati Tags: California,North America,agriculture,soil degradation,global warming,climate change,habitat loss,drought,freshwater depletion,plant decline

Food waste denounced by ministers as almost 1 billion people go hungry

2012-01-23T17:17:00.001-08:00

By Rudy Ruitenberg
23 January 2012

Food waste was denounced by farm ministers and policy makers gathered in Berlin as almost 1 billion people in developing countries go hungry.

Consumers in rich countries dispose of 220 million metric tons of food waste every year, equal to the entire food output of sub-Saharan Africa, Jose Graziano da Silva, the director general of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, told 64 agriculture ministers meeting in Berlin over the weekend.

“We must change our way of thinking, we must have more education, we must have discussion about best-before dates,” German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said. “Every food item thrown away is wasted.”

One third of the food produced in the world every year is lost or wasted, amounting to 1.3 billion metric tons, according to Graziano da Silva. As many as 925 million people faced hunger worldwide in 2010, based on the FAO’s most recent estimate.

The ministers meeting in Berlin said food should be treated “responsibly and carefully,” particularly to reduce waste, according to a joint declaration by countries including Germany, France, Japan and the U.K. on Jan. 21.

“In developed countries, the waste of food is really something that is a concern,” Graziano da Silva said. “Even today, we produce enough food, despite that we have 1 billion people undernourished.”

World food prices tracked by the FAO reached the highest ever last February on surging grain prices, before slipping 11 percent through December. The FAO food-price index averaged a record 228 points last year, 23 percent more than in 2010 and above the 200 points recorded in 2008, when food riots erupted from Haiti to Egypt. The index began in 1990. Wheat and corn climbed for a third consecutive day in Chicago today.

“We see our brothers and sisters in Africa suffering from hunger, at the same time we see people in developed countries having too much food and suffering from diseases such as obesity,” Indonesia’s Agriculture Minister Suswono Asyraf said. […]

The FAO has said global food output must rise 70 percent by 2050 to feed a world population expected to grow to 9 billion from 7 billion now and as increasingly wealthy consumers in developing economies eat more meat. Raising production alone is not enough, according to Ciolos.

“Farmers already make a lot of effort to produce more,” Ciolos said. “It’s now up to us to look at these foods with different eyes. It’s a priority in industrialized countries to better value the production that we have.”

Lawmakers only have “vague estimations” of food waste, according to Aigner. The minister said she’s commissioned a study in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, to gain a better understanding of where food is wasted. […]

Food Waste Denounced by Ministers as Almost 1 Billion People Go Hungry

Technorati Tags: agriculture,famine,Europe,poverty,United Nations

Apple shows us why manufacturing will never return from China

2012-01-23T07:25:00.001-08:00

By Michael Santo, Tech Buzz Examiner
22 January 2012

Reports such as SACOM's from May of 2011 have shown us of the stresses, low wages, and unsafe conditions of plants such as those used for manufacturing iDevices and other electronics. Yet, on the surface, a New York Times report seems to point to more than just cheap labor as being the reason just about everything is manufacturered overseas. They're right too; it's not just cheap labor; it's virtual slave labor.

The New York Times article is titled "How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work." A few of the points made for Apple using China, and not the U.S.:

Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

When Apple redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, […] A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. “The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” [We would modify that statement. As a corporation, their only obligation is to increase shareholder value. That means dismissing the 99 percent, and enhancing the 1 percent. In the long run, when "peak oil" hits with full force, globalization will prove unsustainable and localization will be forced onto people – globally.]

“They [Foxconn] could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

[In a small section of the article, the NYT made Apple into an Occupier's target, with just one sentence, and details to back it up (emphasis ours).] As Apple’s overseas operations and sales have expanded, its top employees have thrived.

[More Occupier material.] “Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.” [Interestingly enough, a cynic would say this just proves that companies are human, as Citizens United said. They're greedy and selfish, just as humans are.]

“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”

Despite what the article says, the bottom line is still – the bottom line. Claims are that the people in China are more nimble, quicker to adjust when things change. There's a reason for that.
Put 200,000+ people into a "dormitory," and that's the obvious reason for the flexibility. Need to wake the grunts up because something has changed? It's easy when they are all in their dorms, not living at home.
Easy to hire people? Of course it is. Even at the low Foxconn wage, it's a good wage for a Chinese worker.
Do you think those Foxconn workers grab onto the job because they love it? The Foxconn suicides of 2010 (and even threats from earlier this year) belie that possibility.
Consider also what we know to be true: the CEO of Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai believes his employees are "animals," and --- we're sure --- treats them that way.
The fact that the Chinese government is a Communist one, and doesn't really care all that much about labor and environmental laws, and it's obvious. It's still all about the money, no matter what anyone tries to say.

Apple shows us why manufacturing will never return from China

Technorati Tags: China,Asia,financial collapse,poverty,corruption,North America

Graph of the Day: Price Indices of Commodity Groups, January 2000 - September 2011

2012-01-22T14:48:00.001-08:00

After sliding considerably in the first half of 2010, the agricultural commodity price indices of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) rose sharply, reaching peaks around February 2011 (figure II.9). Despite subsequent falls, prices remain comparatively high. The food price index averaged 268 points from January to September 2011, up 21.8 per cent from the same period in 2010. Within this category, the average price of the main cereals (wheat, maize, and rice) has continued its upward movement, although rising at a slower pace than in the previous year. Meat, vegetable oils, and sugar prices have also been on the rise.

The impact on net food-importing countries has been considerable, but variable. For example, the Horn of Africa was hit by famine following prolonged drought, compounded by conflict and insecurity, while other countries in Africa enjoyed good harvests of maize and sorghum. In developing Asia, in particular, rising prices for wheat, edible oil and other food items have been a major factor in accelerating headline inflation.Where food price increases were contained by food subsidies, they have given rise to widening fiscal deficits, as was the case in Western Asia.

The outlook for wheat crops in 2012 is uncertain. Increased production projections for the European Union (EU) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), together with competitive prices relative to maize, may continue to encourage the use of wheat for livestock feed, which could push up prices. The sugar price may continue its rise in 2012, underscored by higher projected world demand for refined sugar in the light of anticipated market deficits. The tropical beverages price index, which has risen steadily since December 2010, may show moderation as a result of better-than-expected supply conditions. The vegetable oilseeds and oil price index has declined from its all-time high of February 2011, but price volatility may continue amidst uncertain supply and demand prospects in major oilseed-producing and -importing countries.

The average price index for agricultural raw materials increased by 91 points over the first three quarters of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010, mostly as a result of supply shortfalls generated by adverse weather conditions and strong demand in Asian emerging economies. Natural rubber prices remained high in 2011 owing to strong demand for tyres in emerging market economies and high energy costs (especially crude oil) which affected synthetic rubber prices. Supply disruptions from poor weather conditions in major producing countries also contributed to increased prices. [My emphasis.] This pattern was evident for cotton, too, which reached a historic high in March 2011 ($2.3 per lb), up 63 per cent from its 2009 average.

World Economic Situation and Prospects 2012 [pdf]

Technorati Tags: agriculture,poverty,global warming,climate change,flood,drought,heat wave,United Nations,crop failure

Come hell with high water: Global warming in Bangladesh

2012-01-22T09:44:00.001-08:00

By DAN MORRISON
20 January 2012

DHAKA, Bangladesh – Earlier this month, Bangladesh’s foreign minister chided the world’s developed nations for failing to honor their pledge to help this low-lying, water-logged nation adapt to the effects of climate change. Of the $30 billion that poor countries were promised three years ago, just $2.5 billion have been disbursed. “Our achievements — social, economic, environmental — of the past decades” are at risk, Dipu Moni told the Guardian.
Bangladesh, much of which sits less than 20 feet above sea level, may be asking for the wrong thing. Clamoring for funds to mitigate the effects of a changing climate isn’t enough. If greenhouse gas emissions aren’t reversed in the next few decades, it may be impossible for some countries to adapt to global warming. Rather than rattling its cup, Bangladesh should be pounding tables in Washington, Beijing, Brussels and Delhi.
Bangladesh has the unique moral authority to convince big polluters to change their ways: it is especially vulnerable to climate change and cannot be blamed for causing it. Scientists say that a one-meter rise in sea level could inundate 17 percent of its land mass.
Meanwhile, its annual carbon dioxide emissions are a paltry 0.3 metric tons per person (compared with 19.34 for the United States).
The regional security consequences of rendering uninhabitable this densely populated country of 158 million people would be severe. Where will Bangladeshis go? Not to India. That country has already ringed the border with barbed wire and machine guns. Australia? I don’t think so.
According to the Bangladeshi government’s climate change action plan, as many as 20 million Bangladeshis may need to be resettled as soon as 2050. “Preparations in the meantime will be made to convert this population into trained and useful citizens for any country,” the plan (pdf) says. How many more will be displaced later this century or in the next one?
Unfortunately, Bangladesh’s sense of urgency isn’t felt elsewhere. One problem is that, despite media reports featuring supposed climate-change refugees, many effects of global warming aren’t obvious. Migration has multiple causes, and the erosion of riverbanks is a fact of life here, at the delta of three major rivers. A recent British government report (pdf) cites just three mild “climate observations” in its summary on changing conditions in Bangladesh over the past few decades: “widespread warming” during both the hot season and the cool season since 1960, fewer cool nights and more warm ones and “a small increase in total precipitation.”
To its credit, Bangladesh’s action plan (pdf) doesn’t make dramatic claims about the present effects of climate change. But the future perils are real. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Earth’s temperature is likely to increase by between 2 and 4.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. According to the I.P.C.C., sea levels are expected to rise by between 0.18 and 0.59 meters during that time. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency goes further, noting that if polar ice continues to melt “in step with global average temperature,” sea levels could increase by 0.49 to 0.79 meters by 2100.
Bangladesh can adapt to this increase in sea levels (pdf) at moderate expense by repairing, extending and better maintaining its 7,000 kilometer-long system of coastal dikes. The country is already conducting research into saline-resistant rice varieties.
But an increase in temperature of four degrees or more would likely unlock a series of so-called “positive feedbacks” that would speed the melting of Arctic ice and raise sea levels at rates that current computer modeling can’t predict. Disappearing ice reveals the dark ocean surface, which in turn attracts more solar radiation, leading to increased warming. Melting permafrost could release long-stored greenhouse gases, and that, in turn, could bring greater warming, more melting and even higher sea levels. These positive feedbacks are immune to human effort: at some point, dikes and canals aren’t enough to keep the ocean at bay.
That’s why Bangladesh should take charge now, not to get money for adaptation, but to convince the United States, China, Europe and India to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Its leaders shouldn’t be pacified with adaptation money. They should be raising hell.

Come Hell With High Water

Technorati Tags: Bangladesh,global warming,climate change,sea level,coastal erosion,hurricane,agriculture,salination,climate refugees

Japans citizens take food safety into their own hands – ‘The government’s food-monitoring system is simply not credible’

2012-01-22T08:54:00.001-08:00

By MARTIN FACKLER
21 January 2012

ONAMI, Japan – In the fall, as this valley’s rice paddies ripened into a carpet of gold, inspectors came to check for radioactive contamination.

Onami sits just 35 miles northwest of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which spewed radioactive cesium over much of this rural region last March. However, the government inspectors declared Onami’s rice safe for consumption after testing just two of its 154 rice farms.

Then, a few days later, a skeptical farmer in Onami, who wanted to be sure his rice was safe for a visiting grandson, had his crop tested, only to find it contained levels of cesium that exceeded the government’s safety limit. In the weeks that followed, more than a dozen other farmers also found unsafe levels of cesium. An ensuing panic forced the Japanese government to intervene, with promises to test more than 25,000 rice farms in eastern Fukushima Prefecture, where the plant is located.

The uproar underscores how, almost a year after a huge earthquake and tsunami caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan is still struggling to protect its food supply from radioactive contamination. The discovery of tainted rice in Onami and a similar case in July involving contaminated beef have left officials scrambling to plug the exposed gaps in the government’s food-screening measures, many of which were hastily introduced after the accident.

The repeated failures have done more than raise concerns that some Japanese may have been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation in their food, as regrettable as that is. They have also had a corrosive effect on public confidence in the food-monitoring efforts, with a growing segment of the public and even many experts coming to believe that officials have understated or even covered up the true extent of the public health risk in order to limit both the economic damage and the size of potential compensation payments.

Critics say farm and health officials have been too quick to allow food to go to market without adequate testing, or have ignored calls from consumers to fully disclose test results. And they say the government can no longer pull the wool over the public’s eyes, as they contend it has done routinely in the past.

“Since the accident, the government has tried to continue its business-as-usual approach of understating the severity of the accident and insisting that it knows best,” said Mitsuhiro Fukao, an economics professor at Keio University in Tokyo who has written about the loss of trust in government. “But the people are learning from the blogs, Twitter, and Facebook that the government’s food-monitoring system is simply not credible.”

One result has been a burst of civic activism, rare in a nation with a weak civil society that depends on its elite bureaucrats more than citizen groups to safeguard the national interests, including public health. No longer confident that government is looking out for their interests, newly formed groups of consumers and even farmers are beginning their own radiation-monitoring efforts.

More than a dozen radiation-testing stations, mostly operated by volunteers, have appeared across Fukushima and as far south as Tokyo, 150 miles from the plant, aiming to offer radiation monitoring that is more stringent and transparent than that of the government.

“No one trusts the national government’s safety standards,” said Ichio Muto, 59, who farms organic mushrooms in Nihonmatsu, 25 miles northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. “The only way to win back customers is to tell them everything, so they can decide for themselves what to buy.”

Mr. Muto is one of 250 farmers in Nihonmatsu who started a makeshift radiation-testing center at a local truck stop. On a recent morning, he and a half-dozen other farmers gathered in the truck stop’s tiny kitchen. There, they diced daikon, leeks and other produce before putting them separately into a $40,000 testing device that was donated by a nongovernmental group.

The farmers test samples of every crop they grow, and then they post the results on the Internet for all to see. Mr. Muto knows firsthand how painful such full disclosure can be: he destroyed his entire crop of 110,000 mushrooms after tests revealed high radiation levels.

But such efforts do not address one of the biggest questions asked by consumers: whether farming should be allowed at all in areas near the plant. […]

Japanese Struggle to Protect Their Food Supply

Technorati Tags: Japan,Asia,pollution,infrastructure failure,agriculture,Fukushima

Feeding the world gets short shrift in climate change debate

2012-01-21T09:04:00.001-08:00

By Nancy Shute
20 January 2012

Food is getting elbowed out of the discussion on climate change, which could spell disaster for the 1 billion people who will be added to the world's population in the next 15 years. That's the word today from scientists wondering why food and sustainability get such short shrift when it comes to thinking about how humans will adapt to climate change.
In the past year, we've seen drought in Texas, floods in Australia and massive drought and wildfires in Russia, all of which have had a big impact on global food supply and prices. Those are good examples of the extreme weather events and changes in weather patterns that scientists expect to see with climate change.
"Agriculture is going to be a critically important part of the conversation," says Molly Jahn, a professor of genetics and agronomy at the University of Wisconsin who works on agriculture's impact on climate change. "We rely on agriculture to to feed ourselves. And we know that agriculture is and can be a better form of planetary care, particularly when in management of greenhouse gas emissions."
Last month, when nations met at the United Nations-sponsored climate change meeting in South Africa, the bulk of the effort went into trying to come up with a plan to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. But the many questions surrounding how agriculture and food production will adapt to climate change were left largely unanswered.
Why is it so hard to get traction on food security? You'd think that the threat of starvation would be motivating. In today's issue of the journal Science, Jahn and other scientists involved in the discussions spell out why.

Reasons include the need to pour a lot of energy into hammering out a global pact to reduce greenhouse gases; the fact that developing countries are leery of any agreements that could limit their ability to convert forests to agriculture; and a schism between high-income and low-income countries, with developed countries pushing to put efforts into mitigation, while developing nations favor adaptation programs. Then there's the question of who will pay.
But that's not to say that good things aren't happening. The authors cite one example: an agroforestry project in Niger that's increased grain production and improved the livelihoods of more than 1 million households. Agroforestry mixes crops and livestock with trees and shrubs. Trees that increase nitrogen levels in soil are planted next to corn crops in Africa, for instance, more than doubling corn yield. The practice can also reduce erosion and deforestation. (Here's an NPR report on efforts to grow cacao plants in the Brazilian rainforest.)
These sorts of sustainable agricultural practices could reduce the impacts of climate change, the Science authors say, both by assuring access to food and by reducing agriculture's contribution to greenhouse gases and environmental degradation.
"There's a great deal we can do at the landscape scale, and the local scale," Jahn says. But she thinks that has to be matched by big, innovative global efforts with enough muscle to meet the immensity of the challenge.
For more on how climate change may make it harder to feed the world, check out this recent discussion on Science Friday.

Feeding The World Gets Short Shrift In Climate Change Debate

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,famine,agriculture,Africa

Orcas targeting sea lion pups, alarming scientists

2012-01-20T10:43:00.001-08:00

[Desdemona suspects this: Sequential Collapse of Marine Mammals in the North Pacific Ocean and southern Bering Sea.]

By Remy Melina, LiveScience.com
19 January 2012

Killer whales and other ocean predators are targeting and killing the pups of a threatened northern sea lion species at an increasingly high rate, scientists warned this week.
Without a reduction in predators, the sea lion population will have difficulty recovering, the researchers added.
The researchers focused on the endangered western population of the Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus), which is the largest member of the eared seals family. The population has declined by 80 percent from its peak about four decades ago.
They monitored 36 juveniles in the Kenai Fjords and Prince William Sound region of the Gulf of Alaska from 2005 to 2011. The pups had tags implanted in their abdomens to record body temperature, surrounding light levels and other conditions during the sea lions' lives.
After each sea lion's death, the tag data was transmitted to satellites and then analyzed by the researchers. This technology allowed scientists to determine the manner in which the sea lions died, because traumatic deaths and non-traumatic deaths left different "signatures" on the recorders.
"The transmitters are amazing recorders of the life history of the animals, and can tell us in most cases how they died," study researcher Markus Horning, a marine mammal expert at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore., said in a statement.
Temperature and light can reveal how long it took the tags to become dislodged from the pup or reach the water's surface; this information can then indicate the type of death suffered by the pup.
"Gradual cooling and delayed extrusion are signs of a non-traumatic death, say disease or starvation, or of entanglement, drowning or shooting," Horning said. "When the sensors record precipitous drops in ambient temperature along with immediate sensing of light and the onset of data transmission, it is indicative of acute death by massive trauma — usually associated with dismemberment by predators."
All 11 pup deaths recorded indicated predation as the cause, the researchers said. These results along with a computer model on survival rates "suggest predation on juvenile sea lions as the largest impediment to recovery of the species in the eastern Gulf of Alaska region," the researchers wrote online Jan. 17 in the journal PLoS ONE.
The findings also suggest that predators are increasingly targeting younger Steller sea lions, reducing the number of potential mates.
"The focus of predators on juveniles has the end result of heavily capping female recruitment — or the number of females that survive until they are old enough to have pups," Horning said.
Because young sea lions spend more time close to shore, where they are suckled by their mothers, predators can find them more predictably than they can locate and target older animals, according to the researchers. The pups' worst enemy may be so-called transient killer whales, or orcas, which most commonly predate the sea lions; other predators include salmon sharks and Pacific sleeper sharks. (Past research has suggested, to meet their caloric needs, an adult killer whale would have to consume two to three Stellar sea lion pups per day or one adult female sea lion every two to three days.)
Researchers warn that there are not enough Steller sea lions being born each year to rejuvenate their population, which is alarming news considering that the marine mammal's population, which has declined by 80 percent over the past four decades, is continuing to decrease.
"As the density of more 'profitable' adults declines, more juveniles may be targeted and never grow to adulthood, which makes rebuilding their populations problematic," Horning said.

Killer Whales Targeting Sea Lion Pups, Alarming Scientists

Technorati Tags: marine mammal,mammal decline,endangered species,ocean overexploitation,overfishing,ecosystem disruption,Alaska,Arctic

NASA sees repeating La Niña hitting its peak

2012-01-20T10:21:00.001-08:00

Contact: Alan Buis, 818-354-0474, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov
18 January 2012

La Niña, "the diva of drought," is peaking, increasing the odds that the Pacific Northwest will have more stormy weather this winter and spring, while the southwestern and southern United States will be dry.

Sea surface height data from NASA's Jason-1 and -2 satellites show that the milder repeat of last year's strong La Niña has recently intensified, as seen in the latest Jason-2 image of the Pacific Ocean, available at: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/images/ostm/20120108P1.jpg.

The image is based on the average of 10 days of data centered on Jan. 8, 2012. It depicts places where the Pacific sea surface height is higher than normal (due to warm water) as yellow and red, while places where the sea surface is lower than normal (due to cool water) are shown in blues and purples. Green indicates near-normal conditions. The height of the sea surface over a given area is an indicator of ocean temperature and other factors that influence climate.

This is the second consecutive year that the Jason altimetric satellites have measured lower-than-normal sea surface heights in the equatorial Pacific and unusually high sea surface heights in the western Pacific.

"Conditions are ripe for a stormy, wet winter in the Pacific Northwest and a dry, relatively rainless winter in Southern California, the Southwest and the southern tier of the United States," says climatologist Bill Patzert of JPL. "After more than a decade of mostly dry years on the Colorado River watershed and in the American Southwest, and only two normal rain years in the past six years in Southern California, low water supplies are lurking. This La Niña could deepen the drought in the already parched Southwest and could also worsen conditions that have fueled recent deadly wildfires."

NASA will continue to monitor this latest La Niña to see whether it has reached its expected winter peak or continues to strengthen.

A repeat of La Niña ocean conditions from one year to the next is not uncommon: repeating La Niñas occurred most recently in 1973-74-75, 1998-99-2000 and in 2007-08-09. Repeating La Niñas most often follow an El Niño episode and are essentially the opposite of El Niño conditions. During a La Niña episode, trade winds are stronger than normal, and the cold water that normally exists along the coast of South America extends to the central equatorial Pacific.

La Niña episodes change global weather patterns and are associated with less moisture in the air over cooler ocean waters. This results in less rain along the coasts of North and South America and along the equator, and more rain in the far Western Pacific.

The comings and goings of El Niño and La Niña are part of a long-term, evolving state of global climate, for which measurements of sea surface height are a key indicator. Jason-1 is a joint effort between NASA and the French Space Agency, Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES). Jason-2 is a joint effort between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, CNES and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). JPL manages the U.S. portion of both missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

For more on how La Niña and other climate phenomena are affecting weather in the United States this year, see: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/17jan_missingsnow/ .

For more information on NASA's ocean surface topography missions, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov .

NASA sees repeating La Niña hitting its peak

Technorati Tags: NASA,Jason,drought,flood,global warming,climate change,South America,North America,California,Colorado River,freshwater depletion

Video: ‘Unemployed graduates’ set themselves alight in Morocco

2012-01-20T10:00:00.001-08:00

RABAT, Morocco, January 19 (AP) – Five unemployed Moroccan men set themselves on fire in the capital Rabat as part of widespread demonstrations in the country over the lack of jobs, especially for university graduates, a rights activist said Thursday. Three were burned badly enough to be hospitalized.

Self-immolation has become a tactic of protest in the Middle East and North Africa over the past year. In December 2010, a vegetable seller in Tunisia set himself on fire to protest police harassment, setting off an uprising that toppled the government and sparked similar movements elsewhere in the region.

The Moroccans were part of the "unemployed graduates" movement, a loose collections of associations across the country filled with millions of university graduates demanding jobs. The demonstrations are often violently dispersed by police and in some towns and cities have resulted in sustained clashes.

While the official unemployment rate is only 9.1 percent nationally, it rises to around 16 percent for graduates.

Around 160 members of the movement have been occupying an administrative building of the Ministry of Higher Education for the past two weeks in Rabat as part of their protest. Supporters would bring them food until two days ago when security forces stopped them.

"The authorities prevented them from receiving food and water, so five people went outside to get food and threatened to set themselves on fire if they were stopped," said Youssef al-Rissouni of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights.

Of the three who were hospitalized, two were in serious condition, he said. The other two just had their clothing singed, al-Rissouni added.

Photos afterwards showed men with large sections of their skin burned. The online newspaper Goud reported that two of the men had second degree burns and were going to be sent to the Casablanca burn unit.

While the Moroccan economy has posted steady growth rates for the last several years of around 4 to 5 percent, it has been unable create enough jobs for the growing numbers of young people entering the work force every year.

The self-immolation of Tunisia's Mohammed Bouazizi in the hardscrabble town of Sidi Bouzid in December 2010 became the symbol of the depths of despair to which the poor of North Africa and the Middle East have sunk. Last week, four more people set themselves on fire in Tunisia, including a father of three who died from his burns.

Moroccans elected a new Islamist government in November which ran on a platform of social justice and tackling unemployment.

'Unemployed graduates' set themselves alight in Morocco

Technorati Tags: Africa,financial collapse,poverty

NASA finds 2011 ninth-warmest year on record

2012-01-20T09:36:00.001-08:00

Text issued as NASA Headquarters release No. 12-020
Steve Cole, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., 202-358-0918
stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov
Leslie McCarthy, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, N.Y., 212-678-5507
leslie.m.mccarthy@nasa.gov
19 January 2012

The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880, according to NASA scientists. The finding continues a trend in which nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which monitors global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated analysis that shows temperatures around the globe in 2011 compared to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience warmer temperatures than several decades ago. The average temperature around the globe in 2011 was 0.92 degrees F (0.51 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline.
"We know the planet is absorbing more energy than it is emitting," said GISS Director James E. Hansen. "So we are continuing to see a trend toward higher temperatures. Even with the cooling effects of a strong La Niña influence and low solar activity for the past several years, 2011 was one of the 10 warmest years on record."

The difference between 2011 and the warmest year in the GISS record (2010) is 0.22 degrees F (0.12 C). This underscores the emphasis scientists put on the long-term trend of global temperature rise. Because of the large natural variability of climate, scientists do not expect temperatures to rise consistently year after year. However, they do expect a continuing temperature rise over decades.

The first 11 years of the 21st century experienced notably higher temperatures compared to the middle and late 20th century, Hansen said. The only year from the 20th century in the top 10 warmest years on record is 1998.

Higher temperatures today are largely sustained by increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. These gases absorb infrared radiation emitted by Earth and release that energy into the atmosphere rather than allowing it to escape to space. As their atmospheric concentration has increased, the amount of energy "trapped" by these gases has led to higher temperatures.

NASA finds 2011 ninth-warmest year on record

Technorati Tags: NASA,global warming,climate change,carbon dioxide

Brazil begins preliminary damming of Xingu River as protests continue

2012-01-20T09:33:00.001-08:00

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com
19 January 2012

Damming of the Xingu River has begun in Brazil to make way for the eventual construction of the hugely controversial, Belo Monte dam. The Norte Energia (NESA) consortium has begun building coffer dams across the Xingu, which will dry out parts of the river before permanent damming, reports the NGO International Rivers. Indigenous tribes, who have long opposed the dam plans on their ancestral river, conducted a peaceful protest that interrupted construction for a couple hours.

"We will continue to resist this monstrosity and work to call attention of the Brazilian public and the world that this wanton destruction of the Amazon will hurt us all," said Antônia Melo, coordinator of the Xingu Vivo movement that organized the protest. "To take away the river is to take away the life of its people, because water is life."

Diverting 80 percent of the Xingu River's flow, the Belo Monte dam is also expected to displace 16,000 people, according to the Brazilian government; although environmentalists estimate that 40,000 could be forced to move. Amazon Watch, a group campaigning against Belo Monte, says the dam will flood more than 40,000 hectares of rainforest. The issue has sparked considerable attention outside of Brazil with 600,000 people around the world signing a petition against the dam.

Indigenous tribes say they were not notified that Norte Energia (NESA) had begun constructing coffer dams until the river became red-colored with mud.

"When we learned what they were doing, it practically killed us with sadness," Josinei Arara, a member of the Arara indigenous community 10 miles downstream on the Xingu from the Pimental dam site, told International Rivers. "The dam builders have kept none of their promises to compensate our village; in they meantime, they’re assassinating our river."

The Brazilian government says the megadam must be built to meet the rising nation's power needs. The dam would provide enough energy to power 23 million homes, yet during three to four months of the year critics say it will run on only 10-30 percent capacity due to low waters, an issue climate change will likely exacerbate.

Last November, a Brazilian court ruled that indigenous communities do not have a right to free, prior and informed consultation regarding the Belo Monte dam because it is physically located on tribal lands.

Brazil begins preliminary damming of Xingu River as protests continue

Technorati Tags: Brazil,South America,Amazon,rainforest,deforestation,habitat loss,ecosystem disruption,freshwater depletion,global warming,climate change

Graph of the Day: Global Distribution of Physical Water Scarcity by Major River Basin

2012-01-20T09:18:00.001-08:00

Water scarcity is growing and salinization and pollution of groundwater and degradation of water bodies and water-related ecosystems are rising, the State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW) reports. Large inland water bodies are under pressure from a combination of reduced inflows and higher nutrient loading — the excessive build up of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. Many rivers do not reach their natural end points and wetlands are disappearing.

In key cereal producing areas around the world, intensive groundwater withdrawals are drawing down aquifer storage and removing the accessible groundwater buffers that rural communities have come to rely on.

“Because of the dependence of many key food production systems on groundwater, declining aquifer levels and continued abstraction of non-renewable groundwater present a growing risk to local and global food production,” FAO’s report cautions.

Agricultural Systems At Risk: Human Pressure On Land And Water [pdf]

Technorati Tags: freshwater depletion,United Nations,drought,agriculture,pollution,phosphorus,nitrogen,soil degradation,wetland

U.S. releases draft strategy for responding to climate change impacts

2012-01-20T09:11:00.001-08:00

Contact: David T. Eisenhauer (FWS), 703-358-2284
John Ewald (NOAA), 202-482-3978
Laura MacLean (AFWA), 202-624-7744
19 January 2012

WASHINGTON – In partnership with state, tribal, and federal agency partners, the Obama Administration today released the first draft national strategy to help decision makers and resource managers prepare for and help reduce the impacts of climate change on species, ecosystems, and the people and economies that depend on them.
The draft National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, available for public review and comment through March 5, 2012, can be found on the web at www.wildlifeadaptationstrategy.gov.
The strategy represents a draft framework for unified action to safeguard fish, wildlife and plants, as well as the important benefits and services the natural world provides the nation every day, including jobs, food, clean water, clean air, building materials, storm protection, and recreation.
“The impacts of climate change are already here and those who manage our landscapes are already dealing with them,” said Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes. “The reality is that rising sea levels, warmer temperatures, loss of sea ice, and changing precipitation patterns – trends scientists have definitively connected to climate change – are already affecting the species we care about, the services we value, and the places we call home. A national strategy will help us prepare and adapt.”
Congress called for a national, government-wide strategy in 2010, directing the President’s Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of the Interior to develop it. CEQ and Interior responded by assembling an unprecedented partnership of federal, state and tribal fish and wildlife conservation agencies to draft the strategy. More than 100 diverse researchers and managers from across the country participated in the drafting for the partnership.
The partnership is co-led by Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, representing state fish and wildlife agencies.
The strategy will guide the nation’s efforts during the next five years to respond to current and future climate change impacts such as changing species distributions and migration patterns, the spread of wildlife diseases and invasive species, the inundation of coastal habitats with rising sea levels, and changes in freshwater availability with shifting precipitation and habitat types. The strategy does not prescribe mandatory activities that agencies must take nor suggest regulatory actions; rather, it provides a roadmap for decision makers and resource managers to use in considering climate change implications to their ongoing wildlife and habitat management activities.
Elements of the draft strategy include:

Descriptions of current and projected impacts of climate change on the eight major ecosystems of the United States, the fish, wildlife and plant species those ecosystems support and the vital ecosystem services they provide;
Goals, strategies, and actions to reduce the vulnerability and increase the resilience of fish, wildlife, plants and the communities that depend on them in the face of climate change;
Collaborative strategies and actions that agriculture, energy, transportation and other sectors can take to promote adaptation of fish, wildlife and plants, and utilize the adaptive benefits of natural resources in their climate adaptation efforts; and
A framework for coordinated implementation of the strategy among government and non-governmental entities from national to local scales.

"For more than a century, state fish and wildlife agencies have been entrusted by the public to be good stewards of their natural resources. To do that, we constantly are called upon to address threats to our natural resources,” said Patricia Riexinger, Director of the Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. “Today's pressures on fish and wildlife and their habitats are exacerbated by climate change and together they emphasize the need for increased conservation and science-based management. The strategy is our nation's insurance for managing healthy and robust ecosystems in uncertain future conditions."
“This strategy provides a framework for safeguarding America’s fish, wildlife and plant resources and the valuable services they provide over the long-term,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “NOAA is committed to working with federal, state, tribal and local government agencies, non-government organizations and the public in this process because we all have important roles to play in preparing all regions of our nation in a changing climate.”
Leading the development of the strategy is a Steering Committee that includes government representatives from 16 federal agencies, five state fish and wildlife agencies and two inter-tribal commissions. The Steering Committee includes representatives from the California, Washington, Wisconsin, New York and North Carolina fish and wildlife agencies to ensure that all 50 states’ fish and wildlife concerns are considered. The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies is providing staff support for developing the strategy.
Public comments can be submitted online through the strategy website via a special link. Written comments may be submitted via the U.S. mail to the Office of the Science Advisor, Attn: National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 4401 N. Fairfax Drive Suite 222, Arlington, VA 22203. In addition, there will be five public information sessions in various locations around the country and two webinars to provide details and encourage dialogue on the strategy and its development. To register for these meetings and for more information on the public comment process, visit http://www.wildlifeadaptationstrategy.gov/public-comments.php

National Strategy Proposed to Respond to Climate Change’s Impacts on Fish, Wildlife, Plants

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,North America,wildlife,wetland,drought,flood,coastal erosion,sea level,freshwater depletion,endangered species,fish decline,plant decline,mammal decline

Native forest birds in Hawaii in unprecedented trouble

2012-01-20T08:42:00.001-08:00

Contact: University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Leonard Freed, (808) 956-8655
Rebecca Cann, (808) 956-5521
19 January 2012

Native birds at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge are in unprecedented trouble, according to a paper recently published in the journal PLoS ONE. The paper, titled “Changes in timing, duration, and symmetry of molt of Hawaiian forest birds,” was authored by University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Zoology Professor Leonard Freed and Cell and Molecular Biology Professor Rebecca Cann.
In the paper, Freed and Cann report that birds are now so food-deprived that they take up to twice as long replace their feathers, an annual process known as molt. The authors confirmed the hypothesis that Japanese white-eye (Zosterops japonicus) birds are effectively competing with most species of native birds. Their research found that both young and adult birds took longer to complete their molt. Young birds normally complete their juvenile molt in five months, beginning before June and ending in October. Now it is taking the birds as late as March of the following year to finish that molt. Adults are also taking that much longer to replace their feathers. Freed and Cann propose that this change in molt matches those in studies that experimentally starve birds.
In addition, the authors report that more adults are beginning their molt early, during months when they normally breed. Some molting females even had active brood patches. Birds generally avoid this overlap in their life history because both activities require extra energy. In their study, Freed and Cann have identified that the endangered Hawai‘i creeper had the greatest molting changes. The record change for an individual bird, a Hawai‘i amakihi, was set by an individual that finished its juvenile molt from the previous year in March only to begin its adult molt in May. All Hawaiian honeycreepers had significant changes.
Usually birds molt the same primary flight feathers on the two wings at the same time to maintain maneuverability. However, by 2002, all species had asymmetric molt of these feathers. This is the first time asymmetric molt has been documented throughout a community of birds. This molt was experimentally seen previously in food-limited birds. In laboratory situations, starvation of birds to 60% of normal diet leads to the changes in molt that Freed and Cann observed in nature. Native birds died at a greater rate during the months of extended molt during 2000-2004, and survival worsened each year. A control set of years in the 1990’s, with fewer white-eyes, showed no trend in survival.
The authors reported that the changes in molt were associated in every detail with the increase in Japanese white-eye birds, a bird intentionally introduced to Hawai‘i in 1929 to control insects. According to Freed and Cann, the molt study complements a previous 2009 Current Biology paper by the authors showing that all species of native birds have stunted growth and lower survival. The authors suggest that no section of the refuge is safe from the competitive effects of this introduced bird, especially the lower closed forest section of the refuge which had the greatest non-normal molt in 2006.
To view the research paper, visit:http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029834.

Native forest birds in Hawaii in unprecedented trouble

Technorati Tags: bird decline,Oceania,invasive species,ecosystem disruption,phenology

Video: Rena stench adds to salvors’ challenge – 500 containers remain unaccounted for

2012-01-19T09:13:00.001-08:00

January 19 (ONE News) – For the first time salvage crews have removed containers from the front section of the stricken Rena.

ONE News got close to the cargo vessel for the first time today since it split in half 12 days ago.

Reporter Kim Vinnell said that as well as the pungent smell of rotting food and cow hides, tonnes of twisted steel can be seen protruding from the water.

Many containers are still precariously perched on the ship and those that can't be reached by crane are now simply being pushed off by a tug.

Maritime New Zealand said the Rena's bow position on the Astrolabe Reef off the Tauranga coast means the crane barge Smit Borneo cannot get close enough to the port side to lift off some containers.

Two containers were pulled from the vessel by a tug into the sea today then lifted by crane onto the recovery barge.

Ten containers have been lifted off the Rena since it split but more than 500 remain unaccounted for and divers are still working to figure out exactly where containers from the back section have fallen. […]

Meanwhile the pungent smell is lingering for kilometres over the area and Maritime New Zealand admits "it's not pleasant".

Salvage Unit Manager Kenny Crawford said the gases are monitored all the time for the safety of the salvors.

Divers are still assessing the two sections of the vessel but despite calm seas, dive conditions remain difficult because of the dark, sea surges and jagged steel.

Crawford said tests are being carried out on the toxicity of water in the aft section to ensure the safety of salvors. […]

The forecast for ongoing container removal remains good for the next few days but the on scene commander said it is too difficult to say how long it may take to get the Rena itself off the reef.

"I'd say we're not looking at months, I'd say longer than that," Mick Courtnell said.

Rena stench adds to salvors' challenge

Technorati Tags: Oceania,pollution,coral,ecosystem disruption,oil spill,bird decline,penguin

Michael Mann: The climate scientist targeted by the fossil fuel industry – ‘Scientists have to recognise that they’re in a street fight’

2012-01-19T08:38:00.001-08:00

By Steve Connor
16 January 2012

He is one of the most vilified men in the highly vilified field of climate science, yet Professor Michael Mann is surprisingly jolly. Despite being the focus of a brutal campaign orchestrated by the fossil-fuel industry and senior politicians within the US Republican Party, Mann's cheery stoicism is positively infectious.
"I've been the focus for attack by those who deny the reality of climate change for so long that it almost seems like forever," the professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University says. "I'm a reluctant public figure, but I have embraced the opportunity to communicate the science."
Mann became a chief target of the climate change contrarians for being the outspoken author of an iconic graph of global warming science known as the "hockey stick" – the most politicised graph in science, according to the journal Nature.
It was the hockey stick that generated much of the opprobrium heaped upon climate scientists as a result of the "climategate" emails stolen from the University of East Anglia and leaked on to the internet two years ago. Indeed, many of the leaked emails were copies of correspondence between the UEA team in the UK and Mann and his colleagues in the US.
Mann believes the theft of the emails was not the work of a random hacker, but part of a sophisticated campaign. "It was a very successful, well-planned smear campaign intended … to go directly at the trust the public had in scientists," he insists. "Even though they haven't solved the crime of who actually broke in, the entire apparatus for propelling this manufactured scandal on to the world stage was completely funded by the fossil-fuel front groups."
The hockey stick graph appeared to demonstrate how world temperatures had remained fairly steady for several hundred years before shooting up at the end of the 20th century, just like the straight blade jutting out from the shaft of an ice-hockey stick (the analogy doesn't quite work with a curved field hockey stick).
The original study was published in Nature in 1998. Within five years, Mann had become the focus of an orchestrated campaign to undermine the entire field of climate science by rubbishing the hockey stick – a term coined by a colleague rather than Mann himself. Republican Senator Jim Inhofe picked up the hockey stick to beat climate science, famously declaring in 2003 that "global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people".
Mann became the target of Freedom of Information requests and was served with a subpoena by Republican Congressman Joe Barton demanding access to his correspondence. This was followed with a further subpoena from Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican Attorney General of Virginia, and yet more FOI requests from industry front-organisations, notably the American Tradition Institute. […]
But if the aim of the climate contrarians was to browbeat Mann and his ilk into submission, then it clearly hasn't worked. He is publishing his own book on the hockey stick controversy later this year and he shows every sign of continuing the battle. "Scientists have to recognise that they are in a street fight," he warns.

Michael Mann: The climate scientist who the deniers have in their sights

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,propaganda,corruption,coal

Polluted London air ‘puts Olympic athletes at risk’

2012-01-19T08:26:00.001-08:00

By Josephine Forster and Michael McCarthy
16 January 2012

Olympic athletes could suffer impaired performance times and become ill as a result of London's unacceptably high levels of air pollution, leading respiratory scientists are warning.

Fears are growing that during the Games, beginning in July, athletes, who take in much more air than a sedentary person, will take in high levels of pollutants such as particulates, nitrogen dioxide and ozone, and could suffer pulmonary irritation, chest pain, and decreased lung capacity. Such a situation would be a disaster for London when the city is on show to the world.

But it is considered a real possibility in certain weather conditions, as levels in the capital of several pollutants are so high that they are in breach of EU limits, putting the UK at risk of a £300m fine.

London has the highest levels of the toxic gas nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the EU, and has received a series of legal warnings for failing to comply with European laws governing PM10s, tiny specks of particulate matter 10 microns across (a micron is a millionth of a metre). The capital's air quality is also affected by the gas ozone, created by pollutants from vehicle exhausts reacting with sunlight.

Experts say that the risk for the Games is that in certain summer weather conditions – in particular, a "temperature inversion" in which on still, hazy days, a layer of warm air traps pollutants close to the ground – the pollution levels could go so high as to affect athletes' health and performance.

Temperature inversions are common, and affect people more in the summer, according to the Met Office. "It's not a rare thing. It can happen all the time," a Met Office spokesman said yesterday. "If we have a high-pressure temperature inversion period, there may well be high levels of ozone and nitrogen dioxide and these could induce coughs, breathlessness, and other problems," said Professor Sir Malcolm Green, spokesman for the British Lung Association.

Frank Kelly, professor of environmental health at King's College London, said: "If we're unlucky we're going to get bad publicity for our air quality. Athletes, such as marathon runners and cyclists, need to breathe very hard. If it's a high-pollution day, they will be taking in large amounts of pollution. Their chests may tighten up, they may feel pain and shortness of breath, and for certain conditions such as asthma they may need medication.

"A few athletes may not attain the performances they hoped to and they might spend a few days feeling unwell. From an athletic point of view, they will not be at the best of their ability." […]

Since EU limit values for particulate pollution (PM10s) came into force in 2005 – no more than 40 micro- grammes per cubic metre as an annual mean and no more than 35 days over a mean of 50 mcgs per m3 – London has exceeded them every year.

Since EU guidelines on nitrogen dioxide came into force in 2010 – an annual average of 40 mcgs per m3 and no more than 18 hours over 200 mcgs/m3 – London has exceeded the limit values by a factor of two, both in 2010 and 2011.

Polluted air' puts Olympic athletes at risk'

Technorati Tags: United Kingdom,Europe,nitrogen,pollution,epidemic

Roubini: The Straits of America

2012-01-19T08:06:00.001-08:00

By Nouriel Roubini, Project Syndicate
13 January 2012

Macroeconomic indicators for the United States have been better than expected for the last few months. Job creation has picked up. Indicators for manufacturing and services have improved moderately. Even the housing industry has shown some signs of life. And consumption growth has been relatively resilient.
But, despite the favorable data, US economic growth will remain weak and below trend throughout 2012. Why is all the recent economic good news not to be believed?
First, US consumers remain income-challenged, wealth-challenged, and debt-constrained. Disposable income has been growing modestly – despite real-wage stagnation – mostly as a result of tax cuts and transfer payments. This is not sustainable: eventually, transfer payments will have to be reduced and taxes raised to reduce the fiscal deficit. Recent consumption data are already weakening relative to a couple of months ago, marked by holiday retail sales that were merely passable.
At the same time, US job growth is still too mediocre to make a dent in the overall unemployment rate and on labor income. The US needs to create at least 150,000 jobs per month on a consistent basis just to stabilize the unemployment rate. More than 40% of the unemployed are now long-term unemployed, which reduces their chances of ever regaining a decent job. Indeed, firms are still trying to find ways to slash labor costs.
Rising income inequality will also constrain consumption growth, as income shares shift from those with a higher marginal propensity to spend (workers and the less wealthy) to those with a higher marginal propensity to save (corporate firms and wealthy households).
Moreover, the recent bounce in investment spending (and housing) will end, with bleak prospects for 2012, as tax benefits expire, firms wait out so-called “tail risks” (low-probability, high-impact events), and insufficient final demand holds down capacity-utilization rates. And most capital spending will continue to be devoted to labor-saving technologies, again implying limited job creation.
At the same time, even after six years of a housing recession, the sector is comatose. With demand for new homes having fallen by 80% relative to the peak, the downward price adjustment is likely to continue in 2012 as the supply of new and existing homes continues to exceed demand. Up to 40% of households with a mortgage – 20 million – could end up with negative equity in their homes. Thus, the vicious cycle of foreclosures and lower prices is likely to continue – and, with so many households severely credit-constrained, consumer confidence, while improving, will remain weak. […]
It is unlikely that US policy will come to the rescue. On the contrary, there will be a significant fiscal drag in 2012, and political gridlock in the run-up to the presidential election in November will prevent the authorities from addressing long-term fiscal issues. […]
Most importantly, the US – and many other advanced economies – remains in the early stages of a deleveraging cycle. A recession caused by too much debt and leverage (first in the private sector, and then on public balance sheets) will require a long period of spending less and saving more. This year will be no different, as public-sector deleveraging has barely started. […]

The Straits of America

Technorati Tags: North America,financial collapse,poverty

Amazon deforestation reveals earthworks of ancient lost world

2012-01-18T12:46:00.001-08:00

By SIMON ROMERO
14 January 2012

RIO BRANCO, Brazil – Edmar Araújo still remembers the awe.

As he cleared trees on his family’s land decades ago near Rio Branco, an outpost in the far western reaches of the Brazilian Amazon, a series of deep earthen avenues carved into the soil came into focus.
“These lines were too perfect not to have been made by man,” said Mr. Araújo, a 62-year-old cattleman. “The only explanation I had was that they must have been trenches for the war against the Bolivians.”
But these were no foxholes, at least not for any conflict waged here at the dawn of the 20th century. According to stunning archaeological discoveries here in recent years, the earthworks on Mr. Araújo’s land and hundreds like them nearby are much, much older — potentially upending the conventional understanding of the world’s largest tropical rain forest.
The deforestation that has stripped the Amazon since the 1970s has also exposed a long-hidden secret lurking underneath thick rain forest: flawlessly designed geometric shapes spanning hundreds of yards in diameter.
Alceu Ranzi, a Brazilian scholar who helped discover the squares, octagons, circles, rectangles and ovals that make up the land carvings, said these geoglyphs found on deforested land were as significant as the famous Nazca lines, the enigmatic animal symbols visible from the air in southern Peru.
“What impressed me the most about these geoglyphs was their geometric precision, and how they emerged from forest we had all been taught was untouched except by a few nomadic tribes,” said Mr. Ranzi, a paleontologist who first saw the geoglyphs in the 1970s and, years later, surveyed them by plane. […]

Once Hidden by Forest, Carvings in Land Attest to Amazon’s Lost World

Technorati Tags: Brazil,South America,rainforest,deforestation,ecosystem disruption,habitat loss,agriculture

How will global warming negatively affect water supplies in the U.S.?

2012-01-18T12:37:00.001-08:00

By Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss
15 January 2012

Q: How is it that global warming could negatively impact water supplies in the U.S.?

Climate change promises to have a very big impact on water supplies in the United States as well as around the world. A recent study commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading environmental group, and carried out by the consulting firm Tetra Tech found that one out of three counties across the contiguous U.S. should brace for water shortages by mid-century as a result of human induced climate change. The group found that 400 of these 1,100 or so counties will face “extremely high risks of water shortages.”

According to Tetra Tech’s analysis, parts of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas will be hardest hit by warming-related water shortages. The agriculturally focused Great Plains and arid Southwest are at highest risk of increasing water demand outstripping fast dwindling supplies.

While the mechanisms behind this predicted dwindling of water supplies is complex, key factors include: rising sea levels and encroaching ocean water absorbing lower elevation freshwater sources; rising surface temperatures causing faster evaporation of existing reservoirs; and increasing wildfires stripping terrestrial landscapes of their ability to retain water in soils.

Researchers have already begun to notice dwindling water supplies across the American West in recent years, given less accumulation of snow in the region’s mountains as temperatures rise. According to a 2008 study out of the Scripps Institute for Oceanography and published in the journal Science, Western snowpack has been melting earlier than it did in the past thanks to global warming, leading to markedly longer dry periods through the late spring and summer months in states already suffering from extended droughts. Given that the length and strength of these changes over the last 50 years cannot be explained by natural variations, researchers believe human induced climate change is the culprit. […]

How Will Global Warming Negatively Affect Water Supplies In The U.S.?

Technorati Tags: North America,agriculture,global warming,climate change,freshwater depletion,drought,heat wave,conflict

The Limits to Growth at forty: Is collapse now inevitable?

2012-01-18T09:07:00.001-08:00

By Mícheál O’Callaghan
18 January 2012

Forty years ago, a group of Scientists investigated what the world would look like if we continued on our path of exponential economic growth, with a continued growth in population, pollution and industry. The study resulted in the publishing of the eye opening book, The Limits to Growth, which would surely cause discomfort to even the most ardent of believers in the might of our growth dependent economic system.
The team of scientists inputted various sets of data, based on differing predictions relating to population, pollution and economic growth into the World 3 computer model, which made calculations about the future trajectory of economic growth, in relation to any potential limits to such growth and the consequences of surpassing these limits. In almost all models, where growth continued exponentially, population and industry went into sharp decline following peak.
The most revealing aspect of these models was that where growth continued, it eventually hit the natural and ecological limits to growth, where after it would undergo a steep rather than gentle and gradual decline, otherwise called a collapse. Collapse resulted even in models where an account was made for a potentially greatly increased use of renewable and nuclear energies, as well as higher farm yields or greater birth control. The underlying cause of this resultant collapse was the system of inter related feedbacks between the various aspects of the globalised system. For example, even when there was a great increase in renewable energies, collapse would eventually manifest itself due to increased population, soil erosion and general pollution.
A particularly realistic aspect of these models was that it factored in the delayed response of individuals to the signs of imminent limits, as it accounted for the probability that people would continue to consume and pollute past the sustainable limits of the particular model. Of course, in the real world, many people will continue to consume until it is no longer possible. Could the models have predicted the true extent of the inaction that we have witnessed in the face of the grave threats of climate change, peak oil and bio – diversity loss?
However, the study was not all doom and gloom. In a number of models, population and industrial growth were constrained, and as a result growth did in fact level out, rather than continue exponentially, resulting in a global collapse. The underlying message of the book was one of caution, as well as presenting a call of action to society. It showed the grave risks associated with continued, un – tapered, economic growth, but it presented a positive alternative where, if certain controls were put in place, people could live within the natural means of the planet and continue to benefit from the many advancements and developments of the industrial revolution, without the worry of impending collapse. According to the book, this collapse, if growth continued as it was then, could be expected within 100 years. Of course, forty years on, based on the book’s predictions, we can expect this collapse to manifest itself at some (uncertain) point in the next sixty years.
Has anything changed, and have we managed to divert from the path towards collapse in the intervening forty years? Pause and think about this for a second. It doesn’t take a lot of analysis to realise that little has changed since the first publication of The Limits to Growth. Our economic system is still entirely dependent on the need for long term economic growth to survive, our food, economic and social structures are less resilient than ever before, the effects of Climate Change are becoming more prevalent with increased natural disasters, and we are teetering on the brink of global peak production of oil, the very life blood of our globalised, growth dependent system. All the while, our political leaders continue dither to about fairly weak, verbal agreements to do something about this predicament. The recent talks in Durban were a clear example of this, with politicians stating that they will agree the terms of a new Climate Agreement by 2015 with it coming into effect by 2020. Effectively they are saying, “Yeah this is important, but let’s not deal with it right now.” This is in spite of the fact that the International Energy Authority, has recently stated that we have five years in which to act to avoid irreversible Climate Change. The new treaty, if they ever agree on one, won’t even have taken effect within five years!!
The team of Scientists behind The Limits to Growth have stated that they will not be engaging in a sequel to their study, as starting from current conditions, there is now no plausible assumptions other than over shoot. So, it doesn’t look particularly rosy in terms of avoiding collapse. However, there is still much that can be achieved to lessen the severity of our current predicament. While it may no longer be possible to attain a sustainable and manageable ‘tapering off’ of growth levels, there is still much that we can do to lessen the severity of the collapse. […]

The Limits to Growth at forty: Is collapse now inevitable?

Technorati Tags: resource depletion,financial collapse,Peak Oil,oil depletion,pollution,infrastructure failure,agriculture,population,overpopulation,global warming,climate change

Graph of the Day: Area Covered by Temperature Anomalies, 1900-2010

2012-01-18T08:51:00.001-08:00

By J. Hansen, M. Sato, and R. Ruedy
10 November 2011

Abstract: The "climate dice" describing the chance of an unusually warm or cool season, relative to the climatology of 1951-1980, have progressively become more "loaded" during the past 30 years, coincident with increased global warming. The most dramatic and important change of the climate dice is the appearance of a new category of extreme climate outliers. These extremes were practically absent in the period of climatology, covering much less than 1% of Earth's surface. Now summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (σ) warmer than climatology, typically cover about 10% of the land area. Thus there is no need to equivocate about the summer heat waves in Texas in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, which exceeded 3σ – it is nearly certain that they would not have occurred in the absence of global warming. If global warming is not slowed from its current pace, by mid-century 3σ events will be the new norm and 5σ events will be common. […]

The most important change is the emergence of the new category of "extremely hot" summers, more than 3σ warmer than climatology. The frequency of these extreme anomalies shown in Figure 5 is calculated for the entire area (land and ocean) that has data. However, for practical purposes it is more important to look at the changes over land areas, where most people live, as shown in Figure 6 for Jun-Jul-Aug temperature anomalies. "Extremely hot" (temperature anomaly exceeding +3σ) almost never occurred during 1951-1980, as shown in Figure 6 for the mid-decade years of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. In the past several years the area covered with extreme anomalies, exceeding +3σ, has been of the order of 10% of the land area.

The increase, by more than a factor 10, of area covered by these extreme anomalies reflects the shifting of the distribution of anomalies over the past 30 years of global warming, as shown in the prior figures, most succinctly in Figure 4. One implication of this shift is that the extreme anomalies in Texas in 2011, in Moscow in 2010, and in France in 2003 almost certainly would not have occurred in the absence of the global warming with its resulting shift of the distribution of anomalies. In other words, we can say with a high degree of confidence that these extreme anomalies were a result of the global warming.

Jun-Jul-Aug data on a longer time scale, specifically 1900-present, and different spatial scales are shown in Figure 7. The frequency of extreme anomalies is only slightly larger for land than for land plus ocean, because temperature variability is smaller over the ocean, thus largely compensating for the smaller warming over the ocean. Restricting the data to Northern Hemisphere land, thus restricting the data to summer, also has rather little effect.

Nevertheless, these minor adjustments have an impact on the "climate dice" that people living in the Northern Hemisphere must deal with in the remainder of the current decade. The graph in the lower left of Figure 7 suggests that in this decade 5 of the 6 sides of the dice (~83% probability) will be red ("hot"). More important, two of these sides (~33% probability) will be at least into the category of dark red ("very hot", > +2σ) relative to the climatology of 1951-1980. Most important, the chances of an "extremely hot" summer (> +3σ, represented by brownish-red) seems likely to increase to the point of earning one side of the dice (~17% probability).

Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice [pdf]

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,heat wave,North America

Sea level rise from global warming poses big threat to Washington, D.C.

2012-01-18T08:46:00.001-08:00

By Andrew Freedman
17 January 2012

Global warming-related sea level rise constitutes a major threat to the nation’s capital, with the potential to inundate national monuments, museums, military bases, and parts of the Metro Rail system during the next several decades and beyond, according to a recent study published in the journal Risk Analysis. The study helps localize a problem that is more typically discussed at the global level, and makes clear that public officials must make decisions in the near-term in order to minimize future losses.

Considering the city’s history, it should come as no surprise to learn that Washington, D.C. is vulnerable to sea level rise. The National Mall and Foggy Bottom were originally marshland, and the area between the Anacostia River and I-295 used to be open water. What is rather disturbing and less well known, though, is just how vulnerable D.C. is to even minor amounts of sea level rise, which according to some studies is virtually guaranteed as the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to climb, temperatures rise, and mountain glaciers and ice caps melt.
The study, led by Bilal Ayyub of the University of Maryland, found that even if sea level rise turns out to be at the very low end of projections, it would still cause significant damage in Washington. For example, if the local sea level were to rise by just 0.1 meter, or about 4 inches, by 2043, nearly 68,000 people would be affected, and property damage would total upwards of $2 billion - without including damage to military bases and government property.

The study points out the vulnerability of the military installations the line the Potomac River, particularly Bolling Air Force Base, which would lose 23 buildings to inundation by 2043 if sea level rise proceeds at its recent rate, and many more if it speeds up.
The study is based on an unrealistically optimistic scenario in which the local sea level rises in a straight line, at the same rate it has been during recent years. According to the study, the rate of sea level rise in Washington, which takes into account the effects of gradually sinking land, is currently 3.16 mm per year.
The linear model projects sea level rise of 0.12 meter (about 4 inches) by 2050, 0.27 meters (about 11 inches) by 2100, and 0.42 meters (about 17 inches) by 2150. By comparison, other studies have projected around one meter, or 3.3 feet, of global sea level rise by 2100, which could prove disastrous for D.C. and many other coastal locations. […]

Study: global warming related sea level rise poses big threat to Washington, D.C.

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,sea level,coastal erosion,North America,flood

China report spells out ‘extremely grim’ climate change risks

2012-01-18T08:27:00.001-08:00

By Chris Buckley; Editing by David Fogarty
17 January 2012

BEIJING (Reuters) – Global warming threatens China's march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods, says the government's latest assessment of climate change, projecting big shifts in how the nation feeds itself.

The warnings are carried in the government's "Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change," which sums up advancing scientific knowledge about the consequences and costs of global warming for China -- the world's second biggest economy and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gas pollution.

Global warming fed by greenhouse gases from industry, transport, and shifting land-use poses a long-term threat to China's prosperity, health and food output, says the report. With China's economy likely to rival the United States' in size in coming decades, that will trigger wider consequences.

"China faces extremely grim ecological and environmental conditions under the impact of continued global warming and changes to China's regional environment," says the 710-page report, officially published late last year but released for public sale only recently.

Even so, China's rising emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning fossil fuels, will begin to fall off only after about 2030, with big falls only after mid-century, says the report.

Assuming no measures to counter global warming, grain output in the world's most populous nation could fall from 5 to 20 percent by 2050, depending on whether a "fertilization effect" from more carbon dioxide in the air offsets losses, says the report. […]

The report was written by teams of scientists supervised by government officials, and follows up on a first assessment released in 2007. It does not set policy, but offers a basis of evidence and forecasts that will shape policy.

"Generally, the observed impacts of climate change on agriculture have been both positive and negative, but mainly negative," Lin Erda, one of the chief authors of the report, told Reuters.

"But steadily, as the temperatures continue to rise, the negative consequences will be increasingly serious," said Lin, an expert on climate change and farming at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

"For a certain length of time, people will be able to adapt, but costs of adaptation will rise, including for agriculture." […]

"Climate change will lead to severe imbalances in China's water resources within each year and across the years. In most areas, precipitation will be increasingly concentrated in the summer and autumn rainy seasons, and floods and droughts will become increasingly frequent," says the report. […]

"Since the 1950s, over 82 percent of glaciers have been in a state of retreat, and the pace has accelerated since the 1990s," the report says of China's glaciers in Tibet and nearby areas that feed major rivers.

In low-lying coastal regions, rising seas will press up against big cities and export zones that have stood at the forefront of China's industrialization.

In the 30 years up to 2009, the sea level off Shanghai rose 11.5 centimeters (4.5 inches); in the next 30 years, it will probably rise another 10 to 15 centimeters. […]

"Future climate warming will therefore increase the costs of agriculture," says the report. […]

China report spells out "grim" climate change risks

Technorati Tags: China,Asia,carbon dioxide,agriculture,global warming,climate change,freshwater depletion,flood,drought,heat wave,glacier,deglaciation

Risk of extreme climate events is largely underestimated: statisticians

2012-01-18T08:04:00.001-08:00

By Nicolas Guérin, Mediacom
18 January 2012

EPFL mathematicians have shown that the risk of extreme climate events is largely underestimated. They are developing a model for better understanding the impact of climate change.

Remember the 2003 heat wave? According to the standard weather models, it was impossible. Mathematicians from EPFL’s Chair of Statistics, however, say that there was a five in ten thousand chance for the event to occur. That’s a pretty slight chance, but not completely negligible. To reach this result, they developed a model that specifically deals with extreme weather events. Thanks to this tool, which takes into account various parameters such as climate change, the researchers are already able to more precisely predict the risk of extreme phenomena for the upcoming decades.

“The problem of extremes is that there are so few events, by definition,” explains EPFL mathematician Anthony Davison. “It’s thus necessary to create specific models that are different from those that use innumerable mean values.” The researchers used MeteoSuisse data to simulate a thousand summers, using probabilities and their model of extremes. They were able to determine the risk of elevated temperatures for a given period. To arrive at conclusive results, their model groups weather stations into pairs so their measurements can be correlated.
Combining the stations into pairs for the simulation requires a huge number of calculations. The number of combinatorial operations can quickly escalate. “For example, to simulate heavy rainfall, we were limited to ten weather stations, which already represented several days’ worth of calculations on a high-speed computer network,” Davison explains. In spite of this, the research is already leading to extreme events analyses that are more realistic than those arrived at using traditional models.
For several years now, the scientists have noted that the increase in extreme events associated with climate change appears to be having much more of an impact on society than the increase in mean temperatures. Natural disasters are accompanied by a significant human and economic cost. In the case of exceptional heat waves, the mathematicians found that, based on global warming predictions, the probability of an event at least as severe as the 2003 heat wave will be six times greater in 2050 than it was in 2003.
The specialists are also developing models for other extreme weather events, such as rain, snow, and ice. The challenge is to improve them in terms of precision. “Eventually, we would like to be able to integrate more calculation points in order to better cover the territory. We also need to optimize our models to include dynamic phenomena, which require even more operations,” Davison says.
More information: Geostatistics of extremes, Davison and Gholamrezaee, Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences (2012) vol. 468 (2138) pp. 581-608. http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/468/2138/581.full

Climate and the statistics of extremes

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,flood,drought,heat wave,hurricane

Nearly 7 million bats may have died from white-nose fungus – ‘Regional extinction of multiple species’

2012-01-18T07:47:00.001-08:00

By Darryl Fears
17 January 2012

More than five years since the deadly white-nose fungus was first detected in a New York cave where bats hibernate, up to 6.7 million of the animals are estimated to have died in 16 states and Canada, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday.
The estimate, drawn from surveys by wildlife officials mostly in Northeastern states where the disease thrives, confirmed the worst fears of biologists who have been counting dead bats covered in the powdery fungus in mines and caves every winter and worrying whether the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat and the tricolored bat will survive.
“We’re watching a potential extinction event on the order of what we experienced with bison and passenger pigeons for this group of mammals,” said Mylea Bayless, conservation programs manager for Bat Conservation International in Austin, Tex.
“The difference is we may be seeing the regional extinction of multiple species,” Bayless said. “Unlike some of the extinction events or population depletion events we’ve seen in the past, we’re looking at a whole group of animals here, not just one species. We don’t know what that means, but it could be catastrophic.”
Bats are a top nocturnal predator, picking off night-flying insects that feed on agricultural crops and forests. A reproductive female consumes her weight in bugs each night. In a single summer, a colony of 150 brown bats can eat enough adult cucumber beetles to prevent the laying of eggs that result in 33 million rootworm larvae, according to a study cited by Bat Conservation International.
White-nose syndrome is caused by an aggressive fungus called Geomyces destructans that eats through the skin and membranes of bats. It was first detected at Howes Cave near Albany, N.Y., in 2006.
Since then, biologists in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Vermont, Indiana and other states have returned to caves and mines during the annual winter hibernation of bats and reported alarming numbers of fresh dead to wildlife and gaming agencies.
Tuesday’s estimate of 5.7 million to 6.7 million dead bats dwarfed the previous count of slightly more than a million in 2009. The estimate was derived from winter trips to mines and caves through December 2011.
Clustered as high as 30 feet above the floor, the bats are difficult to see, so digital images are captured and studied, said Jeremy Coleman, national white-nose syndrome coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
“They … basically count the noses,” Coleman said. Otherwise “you look at a big brown smudge of bats. Indiana bats can have 300 in a square foot. You can get a much more accurate count with digital imagery,” he said.
The declining population found in the winter counts was supported by summer counts, where bats are tracked to areas where they feed and roost.
The bats being wiped out by white-nose syndrome are usually long-lived, up to 20 years. Mates produce a pup per year. They usually hibernate in the same places year to year, and they return to the same place to feed.
Biologists said the bats’ decline could begin to affect the general public if their disappearance results in swarms of the insects they feed on, and higher food prices if food crops are invaded, biologists said.
A paper published last year in the journal Science, relying on the lower mortality rate projected in 2009, estimated that 1,320 metric tons of insect pests were not eaten because of the decline in bats.
The paper products industry could also be hard hit if pests such as the emerald ash borer proliferate in the absence of bats. Loggers in states such as Vermont “ought to be concerned, but I don’t think the word has really gotten out to these folks,” said Mollie Matteson, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity in Richmond, Vt.
“It certainly behooves people concerned about the health of forests — loggers or ecologists — to pay attention,” Matteson said. “But it’s hard to make a direct connection between 7 million bats dead and what happens to forest pests.”
A recent report said bat colonies found in Vermont and Pennsylvania were an indication that some are managing to survive the fungus. But those data are inconclusive, and hopes based on the report might be misplaced, Coleman said.
In Pennsylvania, where the mortality rate of the most common bats is nearly 100 percent, farmers and homeowners are showing concern, said Greg Turner, an endangered-mammals specialist for the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
With 95 percent mortality, there’s little hope that the little brown bats will survive in the state, but Turner isn’t giving up on saving them. “I’m going to plug forward all the way to the bitter end, if there is a bitter end. Hopefully, there won’t be,” he said.

Nearly 7 million bats may have died from white-nose fungus, officials say

Technorati Tags: mammal decline,extinction,global warming,climate change,North America,ecosystem disruption,agriculture

Canada government didn’t disclose radioactive iodine in rainwater

2012-01-17T08:35:00.001-08:00

By ALEX ROSLIN, The Montreal Gazette
14 January 2012

After the Fukushima nuclear accident, Canadian health officials assured a nervous public that virtually no radioactive fallout had drifted to Canada.

But last March, a Health Canada monitoring station in Calgary detected an average of 8.18 becquerels per litre of radioactive iodine (an isotope released by the nuclear accident) in rainwater, the data shows.

The level easily exceeded the Canadian guideline of six becquerels of iodine per litre for drinking water, acknowledged Eric Pellerin, chief of Health Canada's radiation-surveillance division.

"It's above the recommended level (for drinking water)," he said in an interview. "At any time you sample it, it should not exceed the guideline."

Canadian authorities didn't disclose the high radiation reading at the time.

In contrast, the state of Virginia issued a don't-drink-rainwater advisory in late March after iodine levels in rain in a nearby city spiked to 3.4 becquerels per litre on a single day. That was less than half of the level seen in Calgary during the entire month of March.

Radioactive iodine also appeared in smaller amounts in March in Vancouver (which saw an average of 0.69 becquerels per litre in rainwater, up from zero before Fukushima), Winnipeg (which got 0.64 becquerels per litre) and Ottawa (which had 1.67 becquerels per litre), the data show.

These other levels didn't exceed the Canadian limit for drinking water. But the level in Ottawa did surpass the more stringent ceiling for drinking water used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The data still isn't posted on Health Canada's web page devoted to the impacts of Fukushima.

Pellerin said he doesn't know why Health Canada didn't make the data public. "I can't answer that. The communication aspect could be improved." […]

Radioactive iodine in rainwater: Public was in the dark via Ex-SKF

Technorati Tags: Canada,North America,Fukushima,Japan,pollution

U.N. report: World economy is on the brink of another major downturn

2012-01-17T08:26:00.001-08:00

[Executive Summary pdf]
The world economy is on the brink of another major downturn. Global economic growth started to decelerate on a broad front in mid-2011 and is estimated to have averaged 2.8 per cent over the last year. This economic slowdown is expected to continue into 2012 and 2013. The United Nations baseline forecast for the growth of world gross product (WGP) is 2.6 per cent for 2012 and 3.2 per cent for 2013, which is below the pre-crisis pace of global growth.
Persistent high unemployment in the United States and low wage growth are holding back aggregate demand and, together with the prospect of prolonged depressed housing prices, this has heightened risks of a new wave of home foreclosures. Growth in the euro zone has slowed considerably since the beginning of 2011 and the ever-simmering sovereign debt crisis heavily weighs on consumer and business confidence across Europe. The failure of policymakers in developed countries to address unemployment and prevent sovereign debt distress and financial sector fragility from escalating has posed the most acute risk for the global economy in the outlook for 2012-2013, with renewed global recession being a distinct possibility.
Meanwhile, developing countries and economies in transition are expected to continue to stoke the engine of the world economy, growing on average by 5.4 per cent in 2012 and 5.8 per cent in 2013 in the baseline outlook. Among the major developing countries, growth in China and India is expected to remain robust. GDP growth in China slowed from 10.3 per cent in 2010 to 9.3 per cent in 2011 and is projected to further slow to below 9 per cent in 2012-2013. India's economy is expected to expand by between 7.7 and 7.9 per cent in 2012¬2013, down from 8.5 per cent in 2010.
Low-income countries have experienced only a mild slowdown. In per capita terms, income growth slowed from 3.8 per cent in 2010 to 3.5 per cent in 2011 and, despite the global downturn, the poorer countries may see average income growth at or slightly above this rate in 2012 and 2013. The same holds for average growth among the United Nations category of least developed countries (LDCs).
Against this background, the report discusses several policy directions which could avoid a double-dip recession, including: optimal design of fiscal policies to stimulate more direct job creation and investment in infrastructure, energy efficiency and sustainable energy supply, and food security; stronger financial safety nets; better coordination between fiscal and monetary policies; and the provision of sufficient support to developing countries in addressing the fallout from the crisis and the coordination of policy measures at the international level.

World Economic Situation and Prospects

Technorati Tags: United Nations,financial collapse,China,India,Asia,Africa

Russia warming at twice the global rate

2012-01-17T08:10:00.001-08:00

Moscow, January 17 (IANS/RIA Novosti) – Temperatures in Russia in the past century rose at twice the rate of warming in the rest of the world, the emergencies ministry said.

“Despite ongoing discussions in the scientific community about the nature and long-term outlook for global climate change, the fact of global warming itself is uncontroversial,” the ministry said in its forecast of emergency situations in 2012.

“Average warming in Russia in the past 100 years was 1.5 to two times higher than overall global warming,” the forecast read.

“In addition, as compared to the 100-year trend, the rate of warming grew several times, annual precipitation figures are growing … as is the frequency and intensity of flooding.”

Temperatures will continue to grow in Russia throughout the 21st century, with Siberia and Arctic Russia being most affected, according to the report.

“Water resources will increase in regions with higher precipitation, while arid zones, on the contrary, will face further precipitation decline,” it said.

Russia warming at alarming pace

Technorati Tags: Asia,global warming,climate change,flood,drought,freshwater depletion,desertification,permafrost,Arctic

Judge prevents Wisconsin town from tightening coal ash regulations

2012-01-17T07:56:00.001-08:00

By Rachel Cernansky, Energy / Fossil Fuels
17 January 2012

The EPA is still deciding how to regulate coal ash, and a bill in Congress would prevent the EPA from regulating it at all. Here's a hint of what happens with weak regulations—in this case, a town is prevented from creating regulations stricter than what the state has decided is sufficient:
Last year, the Wisconsin town of Wilson instituted tighter environmental regulations on a landfill that stored Alliant Energy's coal ash. The town board was responding to residents who had concerns that contaminants from the landfill, which can include toxic metals like arsenic, mercury, and chromium, and a long list of other substances, were leaching into local supplies of drinking water.
What the Rules Would Have Done
The new requirements involved testing drinking water wells in a wider area around the landfill, and giving the town authority to obtain samples from test wells for independent analysis (rather than relying on Alliant for test results), with Alliant reimbursing the town for testing expenses.
Town Prevented From Protecting Itself
Alliant Energy sued, saying Wilson had no authority to issue those new requirements—and last week, the judge agreed. The Sheboygan Press reports the judge ruled that by creating the tighter regulations, Wilson overstepped its authority.
The judge said that under state law, municipalities and residents can petition the state Department of Natural Resources regarding their concerns with coal ash landfills, but local governments cannot create their own landfill regulations. […]

Wisconsin Town Legally Prevented From Tightening Coal Ash Regulations

Technorati Tags: coal,pollution,freshwater depletion,corruption,North America,EPA,mercury

Climate science denial seeps into U.S. science classrooms

2012-01-16T07:42:00.001-08:00

By Neela Banerjee, Washington Bureau
16 January 2012

Reporting from Washington – A flash point has emerged in American science education that echoes the battle over evolution, as scientists and educators report mounting resistance to the study of man-made climate change in middle and high schools.

Although scientific evidence increasingly shows that fossil fuel consumption has caused the climate to change rapidly, the issue has grown so politicized that skepticism of the broad scientific consensus has seeped into classrooms.

Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom.

In May, a school board in Los Alamitos, California, passed a measure, later rescinded, identifying climate science as a controversial topic that required special instructional oversight.

"Any time we have a meeting of 100 teachers, if you ask whether they're running into pushback on teaching climate change, 50 will raise their hands," said Frank Niepold, climate education coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who meets with hundreds of teachers annually. "We ask questions about how sizable it is, and they tell us it is [sizable] and pretty persistent, from many places: your administration, parents, students, even your own family."

Against this backdrop, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), an Oakland-based watchdog group that supports the teaching of evolution through advocacy and educational materials, plans to announce on Monday that it will begin an initiative to monitor the teaching of climate science and evaluate the sources of resistance to it.

NCSE, a small, nonpartisan group of scientists, teachers, clergy and concerned individuals, rose to prominence in the last decade defending evolution in the curriculum.

The controversy around "climate change education is where evolution was 20 years ago," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of NCSE.

At that time, evolution — the long-tested scientific theory that varieties of life forms emerged through biological processes like natural selection and mutation — was patchily taught. Teaching standards have been developed since then, but it's unclear how widely evolution is taught, given teachers' fear of controversy.

Studies show that teachers often set aside evolution for fear of a backlash. Scott worries this could happen with climate science too. […]

Attacks on evolution come largely from conservative Christians who believe in a literal reading of the biblical creation story. Climate change denial is mostly rooted in political ideology, with foes decrying it as liberal dogma, teachers say. The NCSE's Scott said that made it much harder to use the courts to protect climate science education. […]

Climate change skepticism seeps into science classrooms

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,North America,propaganda

Aerosol particle increase linked to more rainfall: study

2012-01-15T14:26:00.001-08:00

By Nina Chestney, editing by Rosalind Russell
15 January 2012

LONDON (Reuters) – A rise in the atmosphere of aerosols - miniscule particles which include soot, dust and sulphates - has led to more rainfall in certain parts of the world and could provide vital clues for future climate predictions, a scientific study shows.

A deeper understanding of rainfall patterns would aid scientists' ability to predict changing trends in the climate.

Aerosols can be produced from burning coal or gas, industrial and agricultural processes, or by the burning of forests.

As well as being harmful for human health, they are blamed for causing air pollution such as smog and smoke.

"For a range of conditions, increases in aerosol abundance are associated with the local intensification of rain rates," said the study published in Nature Geoscience by scientists from Israel's Weizmann Institute, NASA, and other institutions.

"The relationship is apparent over both the ocean and land, and in the tropics, sub-tropics and mid-latitudes," it added, which would include large parts of continents such as Africa, South America and Asia.

The scientists said further work was needed on how aerosols influence regions with lower rainfall rates.

A separate study last November also found that aerosols increase the frequency of rainfall. It is thought that large volcanic eruptions, which release sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, have led to increased rainfall.

Another uncertainty in future climate prediction is over the role of aerosols in cloud formation.

It is thought clouds can be changed by aerosol particles which act as seeds in cloud droplet and ice formation, influencing the way clouds are formed.

Heavier cloud formation could cool the earth's surface temperature by reflecting light back into space.

"A prerequisite to predicting rainfall variability is an understanding of how rain-producing clouds will respond to a changing environment," the study said.

Using satellite data, the scientists found evidence that aerosols do intensify clouds.

"We also find that increases in aerosol levels are associated with a rise in cloud-top height," they said.

Aerosol particle increase linked to more rainfall: study

Technorati Tags: pollution,global warming,climate change,NASA,Africa,South America,Asia,nitrogen,China

Flights confirm Rena wreck unchanged

2012-01-15T11:37:00.001-08:00

16 January 2012 (voxy.co.nz) – Aerial observation flights to Rena this morning by Maritime New Zealand and Svitzer salvors confirm no change to the state of the wreck.

The crane barge Smit Borneo is now in position near the wreck of the Rena.

Swell and sea conditions continue to ease at Astrolabe Reef with more settled weather forecast from Tuesday onwards.

Divers carried out preliminary checks yesterday and remain on standby for the right sea conditions to survey the sunken rear section of Rena.

The dive inspection will confirm the state of the stern and identify any underwater obstructions to help guide the salvage operation.

Braemar Howells recovery team's crane barge Subritzski and a fast response sraft (cat) will resume debris collection in the White Island area from this morning.

A vessel will be collecting debris around Motiti Island today.

People sighting containers or debris are urged to please report it to 0 800 333 771.

Shoreline Clean-up Assessment Teams (SCAT) will be deployed to Motiti Island today, with the assistance of an environmental advisor.

Shoreline clean-up operations will continue at Mount Maunganui, Papamoa, Leisure Island, and Matakana Island.

Protective oil booms will remain in place at Makete, Little Waihi, and Waitahanui.

Flights confirm Rena unchanged

Technorati Tags: Oceania,oil spill,pollution,bird decline,coral,ecosystem disruption

Video: NASA says Canada ‘hot spot’ of ecological change

2012-01-15T10:50:00.001-08:00

[cf. NASA: Climate change to bring big ecosystem changes – Current warming is 100 times faster than end of last ice age. Apologies in advance for the advertisement.]

By Mychaylo Prystupa, CBC News
12 January 2012

A new NASA study predicts massive ecological changes for Canada's Prairies and boreal regions by the year 2100.

Those areas are in "hot spots" highly vulnerable to massive environmental changes this century due to global warming, the study states.

Much of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba is predicted to see major shifts northward of plant and animal species.

"By about 2100, the climate change projections that we have today would suggest that there would be pressure on that grassland so prevalent in [the Canadian Prairies] to move further northward — and at the expense of the forest moving further northward as well," said NASA climate scientist Duane Walliser, who spoke with CBC News from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Walliser said that all across the globe, whole ecological zones such as deserts and tundra will be on the move because of "unprecedented" warming at a pace faster than at any time in 10,000 years.

But Western Canada will be among the areas hardest hit.

A map of the globe on the NASA study shows much the Prairies in bright red "hot spots" of ecological stress, where 100 per cent of the landscape is predicted to see major changes in plant species.

Researchers said the areas are vulnerable because they have wide transition zones where grasslands meet boreal regions.

"So anywhere in Canada where you are currently at what's called an 'ecotone,' or the transition zone between the prairie plant communities and the boreal forest plant communities, that's where the greatest change will be observed," said NASA collaborator, Jon Bergengren, a global ecologist and earth systems scientist.

The Saskatchewan Research Council is reaching similar conclusions.

One of its scientists, Jeff Thorpe, published a report last May suggesting the Prairies will see fewer trees, a loss in wetlands, and an invasion of species dependent on open grassland.

"Some of the grasslands species that we don't have yet, they're down in the United States, we expect them to shift northward into Canada," said Thorpe from Saskatoon Wednesday.

The NASA study says 37 per cent of Earth's land surface will transform from one major ecosystem zone, or biome, into another, while 49 per cent of land surfaces will see at least some changes in plant species.

Bergengren said some wildlife will not survive these transformations.

“Obviously, it is much easier for plants and animals to migrate or adapt to this level of climatic change over 10,000 years than it is over 100 years,” he said. […]

NASA says Canada ‘hot spot’ of ecological change

Technorati Tags: Canada,North America,agriculture,global warming,climate change,invasive species,wildlife,ecosystem disruption,habitat loss,Arctic,NASA,wetland

Image of the Day: Satellite View of Receding Floodwaters around Ayutthaya, Thailand, 9 January 2011

2012-01-15T10:31:00.001-08:00

Ayutthaya, Thailand, 9 January 2011

Ayutthaya, Thailand, 1 December 2011

Caption by Michon Scott
9 January 2012

Flood waters continued receding in Thailand’s historic city of Ayutthaya in December 2011 and January 2012. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured the top image on 9 January 2012, and the bottom image on 1 December 2011.
In December 2011, dark brown-green floodwater surrounds the city, obscuring boundaries between agricultural fields. In January, the patchwork of fields has emerged, especially south of the city. Although considerably more flooded than in January, Ayutthaya does show better conditions in December 2011 than in November, when the city was just starting to dry out.
Located along the banks of the Chao Phraya River north of Bangkok, Ayutthaya is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site. The city was founded in the fourteenth century, and is now attracts many tourists.
References

World Heritage. (2011). Historic City of Ayutthaya. UNESCO. Accessed 13 January 2012.

Floods Recede in Ayutthaya

Technorati Tags: flood,monsoon,Asia,global warming,climate change,agriculture,crop failure

Rare stonefly, found only in Glacier National Park, threatened by melting glaciers

2012-01-15T10:12:00.001-08:00

Contacts: Scott Hoffman Black, Xerces Society, (503) 449-3792
Noah Greenwald, Center for Biological Diversity, (503) 484-7495
16 December 2011

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Montana – In response to a scientific petition from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today determined that the western glacier stonefly, an aquatic insect facing extinction from accelerated glacial melt spurred by climate change, may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The western glacier stonefly, known from only five small streams on the east side of the Continental Divide in Glacier National Park, is dependent on extremely cold glacial meltwater for its survival. The park’s glaciers are predicted to disappear as early as 2030 as a result of climate change, and with them this unique invertebrate.
“Without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, researchers predict that more than one-third of all plants and animals will go extinct by 2050,” said Sarah Foltz Jordan, a conservation associate with The Xerces Society. “This species is just one more example of why we need to address climate change before it is too late.”
Since 1900, the mean annual temperature in Glacier National Park has increased by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit — nearly two times the global mean temperature increase. Of the estimated 150 glaciers in the park in 1850, only 25 currently remain, and these are continuing to shrink.
“The loss of glaciers in Glacier National Park makes clear that climate change is happening now,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The impending loss of the western glacier stonefly is a harbinger of change that will result in the loss of millions of species, disruption of food production, loss of water storage in mountain glaciers, flooding of coastal areas and other impacts that threaten our very way of life.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service will now conduct a status review of the stonefly to determine if protection is warranted. One goal of the status review is to determine that the stonefly, which has not been collected since 1979, still survives.
Stoneflies are excellent indicators of the health of their freshwater habitats. Extremely sensitive to changes in water quality, they are among the first organisms to disappear from degraded rivers and streams and play a significant role in many aquatic ecosystems, decomposing leaves and other organic material and forming the base of the food chain. Fly fishers have long recognized the important role stoneflies play in providing nutrients for fish. Despite their importance, these insects are one of the most imperiled groups of animals in North America: More than 40 percent of all stoneflies are vulnerable to extinction.
To learn more about the western glacier stonefly, go to: http://www.xerces.org/western-glacier-stonefly/

Rare Stonefly, Found Only in Glacier National Park and Threatened by Melting Glaciers, Moves One Step Closer to Protection

Technorati Tags: insect decline,glacier,deglaciation,North America,global warming,climate change,endangered species,Endangered Species Act,extinction,wetland,pollution

Graph of the Day: Agricultural Systems at Risk – Human Pressure on Land and Water

2012-01-15T09:44:00.001-08:00

ROME, 28 November 2011 (FAO) – Widespread degradation and deepening scarcity of land and water resources have placed a number of key food production systems around the globe at risk, posing a profound challenge to the task of feeding a world population expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050, according to a new FAO report published today. [pdf]

Agricultural Systems At Risk: Human Pressure On Land And Water

Technorati Tags: freshwater depletion,drought,agriculture,soil degradation,desertification

The dark side of new species discovery: Interview with herpetologist Bryan Stuart

2012-01-15T09:41:00.001-08:00

By Laurel Neme, special to www.mongabay.com
21 December 2011

Scientists and the public usually rejoice when a new species is discovered. But biologist Bryan Stuart has learned the hard way that the discovery of new species, especially when that species is commercially valuable, has a dark side-one that could potentially wipe out the new species before protections can be put in place.

Stuart has discovered 27 species unknown previously to scientists - so far. That includes 22 species of frogs, three types of snakes, and two salamanders. His experience with one of these, a warty salamander from Laos with striking markings (Laotriton laoensis), opened his eyes to a dark side of scientific discovery: commercial overexploitation before protections are in place.

Shortly after Stuart described the previously unknown species Laotriton (Paramesotriton) laoensis in a scientific paper published in 2002, commercial dealers began collecting this Lao newt for sale into the pet trade. In essence, the dealers used Stuart's geographic description in the paper as a “roadmap” to find the rare newt.

This situation is not unique. It's also happened with a turtle (Chelodina mccordi) from the small Indonesian island of Roti, which was so heavily hunted that today it is nearly extinct in the wild. Similarly, a rare gecko (Goniurosaurus luii) from southeastern China was extirpated from its locality as prices in importing countries soared to highs of $1,500 to $2,000 each.

It's a dual dilemma. On the one hand, publishing scientific descriptions of new species may inadvertently facilitate their extinctions for commercially valuable species. Yet on the other hand, the conservation benefits of describing the new species can outweigh this potential risk.

To reduce the potential tragedy, Stuart recommends that taxonomists work closely with relevant governmental agencies to coordinate publication of the description with legislation or management plans that can thwart overexploitation of the new species. Indeed, he and his students have worked tirelessly in this regard and, in August 2008, Laos' Department of Forestry protected the Lao newt from commercial trade. Now, the remaining question is one of enforcement. […]

The dark side of new species discovery

Technorati Tags: poaching,endangered species,extinction,amphibian decline

Thousands of horses abandoned by owners last year –Charities overloaded, many horses sold as meat

2012-01-15T09:34:00.001-08:00

By Tim Rich and Jonathan Owen
15 January 2012

Thousands of horses are being abandoned or tied up and left to starve, many by desperate owners unable to afford the costs of keeping them. A national crisis has seen Britain's biggest horse charities under unprecedented pressure from the sheer number of animals needing their help.

Redwings – Britain's biggest charity for abandoned horses – says the situation has reached breaking point. It has seen the number of cases soar from 160 horses in 2009 to 450 last year. So far this month it has taken in up to 10 a day. The charity, which can house 1,200 animals, is now full.

Hundreds of other horses around the country are not so fortunate. Left to fend for themselves, they are savaged by dogs or fall victim to drivers on Britain's roads. The national situation is hard to quantify, but the RSPCA is aware that at least 3,500 horses are left chained or tied up without shelter at any one time. The charity estimates it received more than 7,000 calls in 2011 reporting horses and ponies that had been left tied up – up 21 per cent on the previous year.

Britain is seen as a nation of animal lovers and thousands are expected to flock to cinemas to see Steven Spielberg's War Horse. But, as the recession bites, owners are increasingly desperate, an IoS investigation timed to coincide with the film's release shows. The Blue Cross animal charity estimates the average cost of keeping a horse has almost doubled in the past five years, from £3,600 per year to £6,000.

Nicola Markwell, Redwings' communications manager, said yesterday: "Our latest rescues have involved 19 horses dumped on Bodmin Moor and another left in a colliery in Wakefield. We can't take any more. But some people have taken down our fences and put their horses inside, hoping we won't notice."

Many animals do not get that far: increasingly, new-born foals are being killed, particularly mares which are unlikely to raise any money. Many more horses are being sold for meat. Zoos are among those that benefit: a single tiger can get through 15kg of meat a day. Government figures reveal that almost 8,000 horses were slaughtered for meat in 2010 – a 50 per cent increase on previous years.

A combination of rising costs of essentials like hay and straw, along with a drop in the value of the animals, has created a vicious circle in which horses suffer, according to campaigners. Even charities such as the Blue Cross, which get discounts for bulk buying, have seen a massive jump in costs in the past year – the price of a bale of hay has risen from £2.50 to £4 in some areas.

The falling value of horses means they can change hands for as little as £5. Many are killed before they reach six months, by which age owners are required by law to register them.

Andrew Elliott, an auctioneer at Brightwells in Leominster, Herefordshire, one of the largest horse dealers in Europe, said: "For the very best horses, the cream of the crop, prices have pretty much held up, but in the middle and lower ranks prices have collapsed.

"There was a huge demand for horses, and some of the breeding was pretty indiscriminate, trading was becoming relentless and then, in the autumn of 2008, the bubble burst. I don't like to use the word 'cleanse', but the horse industry is a huge business – it was over-producing and it has to be adjusted."

Increasingly, owners are leaving horses tied up and uncared for or abandoning them altogether, a practice condemned as "extremely dangerous" by Sally Learoyd, the RSPCA's equine rehoming officer.

"We have seen ponies strangled to death by their own tethers and with permanent neck, leg and hoof injuries, all as a result of the animals being tethered," she said.

In Bradford last year, inspectors found a Shetland pony, Susie, with a chain embedded so deeply in her neck that tissue had begun growing through the links. Fortunately, they managed to save her and the pony has since been rehomed.

The upsurge in problems with horses is part of a bigger picture of abuse: the RSPCA gets hundreds of calls each year about horses, ponies and donkeys that have been cast aside.

"Most of the horses brought in by inspectors have been starved and neglected, and many aren't used to human contact because they have never been handled properly or been treated with kindness," Ms Learoyd said.

As well as cruel neglect, some horses face deliberate sadism. A stallion in Stithians, near Falmouth in Cornwall, was mutilated and killed last week. The attacker cut off the animal's genitals, cut out one of its eyes and pulled out its teeth. Just days earlier, a pony had been similarly attacked and killed in a field in Whitland, near Tenby in west Wales.

Many animals are simply turned loose by owners unable, or unwilling, to pay the hundreds of pounds it costs to have them destroyed by a vet.

But the plight of horses in Britain today is part of a wider picture of animal neglect. The credit crunch has proved a tipping point as many households struggle to cover the costs of keeping pets.

Record numbers of people are reporting animals that have been discarded – there were more than 28,000 calls about dumped pets in 2011, according to new figures released by the RSPCA last week. This is the highest number in five years and up a third on the 21,481 in 2007.

Cases of stray and abandoned animals dealt with by the Blue Cross have risen 28 per cent in the past year – from 1,553 in 2010 to 1,991 in 2011.

And the number of people giving up pets because they cannot afford to keep them has doubled, according to Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.

Vicki Alford, equine manager of the Blue Cross animal rehoming centre in Burford, Oxfordshire, said: "We have seen some shocking cases of neglect in recent years, as well as people making the heartbreaking decision to give up their horse because they just cannot cope any more." […]

Thousands of horses abandoned by owners last year

Technorati Tags: United Kingdom,financial collapse,agriculture

Rena anger grows as safety record questioned

2012-01-14T11:40:00.001-08:00

January 15 (Fairfax NZ News) – As cargo from the wrecked Rena continues to wash up on the shoreline, the government faces calls for a royal commission of inquiry into the maritime disaster.

The container ship – which ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef off Mt Maunganui in early October – broke up seven days ago after being battered by rough seas.

About 881 containers remained on board the ship when it split up and about 150 are thought to have spilled overboard in the subsequent hours. Since then, freight such as timber and milk powder has washed ashore.

Green Party oceans spokesman Gareth Hughes has called for an independent commission to investigate the disaster and Maritime New Zealand's overall management of New Zealand's commercial waterways.

"The government still hasn't committed to an independent inquiry. But we need one," Hughes told the Sunday Star-Times.

An internal Maritime New Zealand inquiry would not go far enough and would not criticise the agency's performance.

"Neither Maritime New Zealand nor the salvors will come out and say they should have done a better job. Ministers also won't question their response.

"That is why you need an independent inquiry."

Hughes said a royal commission was necessary because there were too many unanswered questions on the grounding of the Rena, and the performance of Maritime NZ.

They included the agency's levels of disaster preparedness, funding and in-house expertise.

Hughes said the commission could also investigate the impact that deregulation of coastal shipping had had, including claims that numerous unseaworthy ships were operating in New Zealand waters. […]

The Rena had been the subject of safety concerns before the grounding.

The ship was impounded in Australia earlier in the year, partially due to mechanical faults.

Ship management were also warned about the Rena's safety record less than two weeks before the grounding.

It is also alleged that the Rena almost collided with an oil tanker near Napier just two days before running aground. It's understood the tanker had to take evasive action to avoid the container ship.

"The Rena had safety concerns raised about it in China, in Australia, and then in Bluff," Hughes said.

"Is our regime up to standard and are we allowing substandard vessels to ply our waters?"

At least 32 containers on board the Rena contain dangerous goods, three times the number originally claimed. […]

Rena anger grows

Technorati Tags: Oceania,pollution,bird decline,ecosystem disruption,coral,oil spill

Honeybee problem nearing a ‘critical point’

2012-01-14T10:56:00.001-08:00

By Claire Thompson
13 January 2012

Anyone who's been stung by a bee knows they can inflict an outsized pain for such tiny insects. It makes a strange kind of sense, then, that their demise would create an outsized problem for the food system by placing the more than 70 crops they pollinate -- from almonds to apples to blueberries -- in peril.
Although news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has died down, commercial beekeepers have seen average population losses of about 30 percent each year since 2006, said Paul Towers, of the Pesticide Action Network. Towers was one of the organizers of a conference that brought together beekeepers and environmental groups this week to tackle the challenges facing the beekeeping industry and the agricultural economy by proxy.
"We are inching our way toward a critical tipping point," said Steve Ellis, secretary of the National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB) and a beekeeper for 35 years. Last year he had so many abnormal bee die-offs that he'll qualify for disaster relief from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
In addition to continued reports of CCD -- a still somewhat mysterious phenomenon in which entire bee colonies literally disappear, alien-abduction style, leaving not even their dead bodies behind -- bee populations are suffering poor health in general, and experiencing shorter life spans and diminished vitality. And while parasites, pathogens, and habitat loss can deal blows to bee health, research increasingly points to pesticides as the primary culprit.
"In the industry we believe pesticides play an important role in what's going on," said Dave Hackenberg, co-chair of the NHBAB and a beekeeper in Pennsylvania.
Of particular concern is a group of pesticides, chemically similar to nicotine, called neonicotinoids (neonics for short), and one in particular called clothianidin. Instead of being sprayed, neonics are used to treat seeds, so that they're absorbed by the plant's vascular system, and then end up attacking the central nervous systems of bees that come to collect pollen. Virtually all of today's genetically engineered Bt corn is treated with neonics. The chemical industry alleges that bees don't like to collect corn pollen, but new research shows that not only do bees indeed forage in corn, but they also have multiple other routes of exposure to neonics.
The Purdue University study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, found high levels of clothianidin in planter exhaust spewed during the spring sowing of treated maize seed. It also found neonics in the soil of unplanted fields nearby those planted with Bt corn, on dandelions growing near those fields, in dead bees found near hive entrances, and in pollen stored in the hives.
Evidence already pointed to the presence of neonic-contaminated pollen as a factor in CCD. As Hackenberg explained, "The insects start taking [the pesticide] home, and it contaminates everywhere the insect came from." These new revelations about the pervasiveness of neonics in bees' habitats only strengthen the case against using the insecticides.
The irony, of course, is that farmers use these chemicals to protect their crops from destructive insects, but in so doing, they harm other insects essential to their crops' production -- a catch-22 that Hackenberg said speaks to the fact that "we have become a nation driven by the chemical industry." In addition to beekeeping, he owns two farms, and even when crop analysts recommend spraying pesticides on his crops to kill an aphid population, for example, he knows that "if I spray, I'm going to kill all the beneficial insects." But most farmers, lacking Hackenberg's awareness of bee populations, follow the advice of the crop adviser -- who, these days, is likely to be paid by the chemical industry, rather than by a state university or another independent entity. […]

Honeybee problem nearing a ‘critical point’

Technorati Tags: insect decline,pollution,agriculture,ecosystem disruption

Dörte Siedentopf on Fukushima nuclear disaster: ‘They haven’t learned anything from Chernobyl’

2012-01-13T11:13:00.001-08:00

By arevamirpal::laprimavera
7 January 2012

(UPDATE: Second part of the translation is posted, translation done by the reader Florian Zschage.)

(H/T to the readers who did the translation and the summary of the original German article on TAZ. Thank you.)

What struck me about the article interviewing Dr. Dörte Siedentopf, other than the negative health effects on the residents, is the following:

Damage from the nuclear accident will increase, not decrease, over time;

Belarus got highly contaminated because the Soviet government induced artificial rain to fall on Belarus when the radioactive plume threatened Moscow;

It took 10 years to resettle the residents, during which time they continued to live in the contaminated areas;

When the Soviet system collapsed and the money ran out, Belarus declared the end of the accident, Chernobyl as something to be memorialized in a museum.

Well, Japan is well ahead of Belarus and Russia. They already want to memorialize the Fukushima accident by building a museum, "lest the memory of the accident fades away". It doesn't matter to them if their accident is still on-going.
The following is the German-to-English translation of the original article "Ärztin mit sozialer Verantwortung: Der heiße Stein" by Viola:

(English Translation Part 1) Dörte Siedentopf on Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: "They Haven't Learned Anything from Chernobyl"

Technorati Tags: Fukushima,Chernobyl,Japan,pollution,infrastructure failure,epidemic

Geopolitical implications of ‘Peak Everything’ – U.S. is ‘an empire in decline’

2012-01-13T07:28:00.001-08:00

By Richard Heinberg
10 January 2012

From competition among hunter-gatherers for wild game to imperialist wars over precious minerals, resource wars have been fought throughout history; today, however, the competition appears set to enter a new—and perhaps unprecedented—phase. As natural resources deplete, and as the Earth’s climate becomes less stable, the world’s nations will likely compete ever more desperately for access to fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural land, and water.

Nations need increasing amounts of energy and raw materials to produce economic growth, but the costs of supplying new increments of energy and materials are burgeoning. In many cases, lower-quality resources with high extraction costs are all that remain. Securing access to these resources often requires military expenditures as well. Meanwhile the struggle for the control of resources is re-aligning political power balances throughout the world.

This game of resource “musical chairs” could well bring about conflict and privation on a scale never seen before in world history. Only a decisive policy shift toward resource conservation, climate change mitigation, and economic cooperation seems likely to produce a different outcome.

The United States—the world’s current economic and military superpower— entered the industrial era with a nearly unparalleled endowment of natural resources that included an abundance not only of forests, water, topsoil, and minerals, but also of oil, coal, and natural gas. Like all other nations, the U.S. has approached resource extraction using the low-hanging fruit principle. Today its giant onshore reservoirs of conventional oil are largely depleted, and the nation’s total oil production is down by over 40 percent from its peak in 1970—despite huge discoveries in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. Its total coal resources are vast, but rates of extraction probably cannot be increased significantly and will likely begin to decline within the next decade or two. Unconventional hydrocarbon resources (such as natural gas liberated by the hydrofracking of shale deposits) are beginning to be commercialized, but come with high investment costs and worrisome environmental risks. U.S. extraction rates for many minerals have been declining for years or decades, and currently the nation imports 93 percent of its antimony, 100 percent of its bauxite (for aluminum), 31 percent of its copper, 99 percent of its gallium, 100 percent of its indium, over half its lithium, and 100 percent of its rare earth minerals.[1]

America has much to lose from any substantial reshuffling of global alliances and resource flows. The nation’s leaders continue to play the game of geopolitics by 20th century rules: they are still obsessed with the Carter Doctrine and focused on petroleum as the world’s foremost resource prize (a situation largely necessitated by the country’s continuing overwhelming dependence on oil imports, due in turn to a series of short-sighted political decisions stretching back at least to the 1970s). The ongoing war in Afghanistan exemplifies U.S. inertia: most geostrategic experts agree that there is little to be gained from the conflict, but withdrawal of forces is politically unfeasible.

The United States maintains a globe-spanning network of over 750 military bases[2] that formerly represented tokens of security to regimes throughout the world—but that now increasingly provoke resentment among the locals. This enormous military machine requires a vast supply system originating with American weapons manufacturers that in turn depend on a prodigious and ever-expanding torrent of funds from the Treasury. Indeed, the nation’s yawning budget deficit largely stems from its trillion-dollar-per-year, first-priority commitment to maintain its military-industrial complex.

The U.S. currently engages in “special operations” in 120 countries[3], using elite commando units skilled in assassination, counterterrorist raids, foreign troop training, and intelligence gathering. These teams can be deployed to support U.S. geopolitical interests in a variety of ways, including influencing elections or supporting factions within revolutions. The U.S. also maintains the world’s most lavishly funded ($80 billion in 2010) intelligence bureaus, the CIA and NSA, which conduct electronic and human information gathering activities in virtually every country on the planet.[4]

Yet despite America’s gargantuan expenditures on intelligence gathering and high-tech weaponry, and its globe-spanning ability to project power and to influence events, its armed forces appear to be stretched to their limits having continuously fielded around 200,000 troops and even larger numbers of support personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade, where supply chains are both vulnerable and expensive to maintain.

In short, the United States remains an enormously powerful nation militarily, with thousands of nuclear weapons in addition to its unparalleled conventional forces, yet it suffers from declining strategic flexibility. The nation still retains an abundance of natural resources, but its consumption rates of many of those resources have grown to nearly insatiable levels, necessitating growing flows of resource imports from other nations. Meanwhile, its ability to pay for those imports is increasingly in question as its domestic economy shrinks due to financial system volatility, government spending cutbacks, high unemployment, an aging workforce, and shrinking average household net worth. For all of these reasons, the U.S. is widely characterized as “an empire in decline.” […]

Geopolitical implications of “Peak Everything”

Technorati Tags: conflict,resource depletion,oil depletion,Peak Oil,global warming,climate change,Arctic,financial collapse,China,North America

Bowing to pressure, Beijing begins hourly smog data

2012-01-13T07:21:00.001-08:00

Beijing, January 12 (AFP) – Beijing on Thursday began publishing real-time air quality data on the Internet, bowing to a vocal online campaign for greater government transparency over pollution in China's capital.
The move followed the announcement that Beijing would change the way it measures air quality this month to include the smaller particles experts say are most harmful to health, after considering the wishes of residents.
It is the latest example of the challenge authorities face as China's online population -- the largest in the world at more than half a billion -- increasingly uses the Internet to press its demands.
Beijingers have used China's hugely popular microblogging sites to express strong criticism of the city government's data, which frequently rates the air quality as good, even when there is thick smog.
The controversy has been compounded by US embassy statistics on air quality published online and on Twitter that measure the small particles, known as PM2.5, and often register dangerous pollution levels.
The new hourly statistics, available at www.bjmemc.com.cn, will initially be based on the old system, which measures particulate matter under 10 micrometers in size, known as PM10.
Previously, the government released air quality data only once a day, reflecting an average of the previous 24-hour period, while the US embassy in Beijing -- one of the world's most polluted cities -- provides hourly data.
The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Centre said the change was in response to the demands of the public, which has accused the authorities of deliberately understating the scale of the problem.
"There is a relatively large gap between citizens' actual feelings and the 'past-tense' data," deputy director Zhao Yue told the official Xinhua news agency.

Bowing to pressure, Beijing begins hourly smog data

Technorati Tags: China,pollution,Asia

‘Doomsday Clock’ moves one minute closer to midnight due to continuing inaction on climate change

2012-01-11T10:29:00.001-08:00

CONTACT: Patrick Mitchell, (703) 276-3266, or pmitchell@hastingsgroup.com
10 January 2012

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Faced with inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and proliferation, and continuing inaction on climate change, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) announced today that it has moved the hands of its famous "Doomsday Clock" to five minutes to midnight.

The last time the Doomsday Clock minute hand moved was in January 2010, when the Clock's minute hand was pushed back one minute from five to six minutes before midnight.

In a formal statement issued at the time of today's announcement, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted: "It is five minutes to midnight. Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007."

Commenting on the Doomsday Clock announcement, Lawrence Krauss, co-chair, BAS Board of Sponsors, foundation professor, School of Earthand Space Exploration and Physics departments, associate director, Beyond Center, co-director, Cosmology Initiative, and director, New Origins Initiative, Arizona State University, said: "Unfortunately, Einstein's statement in 1946 that 'everything has changed, save the way we think,' remains true. The provisional developments of 2 years ago have not been sustained, and it makes sense to move the clock closer to midnight, back to the value it had in 2007. Faced with clear and present dangers of nuclear proliferation and climate change, and the need to find sustainable and safe sources of energy, world leads are failing to change business as usual. Inaction on key issues including climate change, and rising international tensions motivate the movement of the clock. As we see it, the major challenge at the heart of humanity's survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people toloss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions."

Allison Macfarlane, chair, BAS Science and Security Board, member, Blue Ribbon Commission on American's Nuclear Future, and associate professor, George Mason University, said: "The global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth's atmosphere. The International Energy Agency projects that, unless societies begin building alternatives to carbon-emitting energy technologies over the next five years, the world is doomed to a warmer climate, harsher weather, droughts, famine, water scarcity, rising sea levels, loss of island nations, and increasing ocean acidification. Since fossil-fuel burning power plants and infrastructure built in 2012-2020 will produce energy—and emissions—for 40 to 50 years, the actions taken in the next few years will set us on a path that will be impossible to redirect. Even if policy leaders decide in the future to reduce reliance on carbon-emitting technologies, it will be too late." […]

Kennette Benedict, executive director, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: "The Science and Security Board is heartened by the Arab Spring, the Occupy movements, political protests in Russia, and by the actions of ordinary citizens in Japan as they call for fair treatment and attention to their needs. Whether meeting the challenges of nuclear power, or mitigating the suffering from human-caused global warming, or preventing catastrophic nuclear conflict in a volatile world, the power of people is essential. For this reason, we ask other scientists and experts to join us in engaging ordinary citizens. Together, we can present the most significant questions to policymakers and industry leaders. Most importantly, we can demand answers and action." […]

BAS noted that other key recommendations for a safer world have not been taken up and require urgent attention, including:

Adopting and fulfilling climate change agreements to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through tax incentives, harmonized domestic regulation and practice;
Transforming the coal power sector of the world economy to retire older plants and to require in new plants the capture and storage of the CO2 they produce; and
Vastly increasing public and private investments in alternatives to carbon emitting energy sources, such as solar and wind, and in technologies for energy storage, and sharing the results worldwide.

Doomsday Clock Moves 1 minute closer to midnight

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,doom,coal,carbon dioxide

Eight endangered rhinos killed by poachers in Kruger Park

2012-01-11T07:28:00.001-08:00

January 11 (Sapa) – Eight rhino carcasses have been found in the Kruger National Park, SA National Parks says.

"Yesterday [Tuesday] on patrol, eight rhino carcasses were found. Three carcasses were found in Lower Sabie and five in the Pretoriuskop section of the park," said spokesman Reynold Thakhuli.

He said all the carcasses were of adults which had been shot and de-horned.

"They [officials] are busy with investigations now although there are a few leads they are working on as we speak," said Thakhuli.

"We call upon anyone with information to contact the nearby SA Police Service."

Last year, about 443 rhinos were killed for their horns, with 333 killed in 2010.

Eight rhino killed by poachers in Kruger Park

Technorati Tags: mammal decline,poaching,endangered species,Africa

Graph of the Day: Sumatra Deforestation, 1995-2009

2012-01-11T07:08:00.001-08:00

Eyes of the Forest analyzed government concession data and EoF’s own remote sensing analysis and field investigations of almost 1.2 million hectares of SMG/APP associated concessions in its mostly Riau study area covering close to 940,000 hectares of HTI (industrial timber plantation) concessions and around 45,000 hectares of a HPH selective logging concession that allows clear-cutting (PT. Mutiara Sabuk Khatulistiwa) in Riau, which supplied or may supply MTH to APP’s Indah Kiat pulp mill; and almost 200,000 hectares of HTI concessions in the Bukit Tigapuluh landscape in Jambi which supplied or may supply MTH to APP’s Lontar Papyrus pulp mill.

Between 1995, when SMG/APP wood suppliers started to obtain concession licenses, and 2008/2009, the last year for which Eyes on the Forest analyzed these data (Map 2, Appendix 2) 45, SMG/APP wood suppliers

caused the destruction of around 320,000 ha and 355,000 ha of critically endangered and endangered forest types, respectively.
caused the destruction of around 550,000 ha of tiger, 240,000 ha of elephant and 1,500 ha of orangutan range forests. IUCN lists all three species as critically endangered.

SMG/APP operations in its known concessions in the study area still threaten

around 100,000 ha critically endangered and 210,000 ha endangered forest types, and
around 320,000 ha tiger, 120,000 ha elephant and 2,000 ha orangutan range forest.

Yet this is only part of the story. APP states that “APP’s pulpwood suppliers manage 2.5 million hectares of gross land47”. That is more than double the area Eyes on the Forest analyzed for this report. In addition, SMG/APP has been pulping MTH from outside the land they manage. The impact of this company and its destruction of natural tropical forests is thus much higher than reported here based on a limited study area.

WWF: Asia Pulp & Paper misleads public about its role in destroying Indonesia's rainforests

Technorati Tags: Indonesia,deforestation,habitat loss,endangered species,corruption,Asia,ecosystem disruption

Dauphin Island fish show up with lesions, BP oil spill link questioned

2012-01-11T06:59:00.001-08:00

By Ben Raines, Press-Register
11 January 2012

DAUPHIN ISLAND, Alabama – More than half the fish caught Monday by Press-Register reporters in the surf off Dauphin Island had bloody red lesions on their bodies.

Fishing along an uninhabited portion of the barrier island during a trip to survey beaches for tarballs, the newspaper caught 21 fish, 14 of them with lesions. Of those fish, eight had lesions a quarter of an inch across or smaller, while 6 had much larger blemishes.

Most of the fish were whiting, a small species common to the surf zone throughout the Gulf of Mexico. Whiting grow to about 2 pounds and are ubiquitous in the surf year round, commonly found inside the first sand bar near breaking waves.

A 12-pound black drum also exhibited lesions.

Scientists contacted by the newspaper noted that whiting spend their lives close to shore in the area most affected by the Gulf oil spill. Buried mats of oil persist in the surf zone along the Mississippi and Alabama coasts and tarballs remain common on the beach.

BP crews working at the water’s edge on Mississippi’s Petit Bois Island — adjacent to Dauphin Island — collect about 250 pounds of tarballs per day, company officials said Tuesday.

But, the scientists cautioned, many factors could be to blame, and disease has always been a part of the Gulf ecosystem.

“Certainly there is reason to be concerned about these kind of results. Understanding what it means will require a more carefully designed scientific investigation,” said John Valentine, head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, after examining photographs of the newspaper’s catch.

“You’d want to know how widespread this is. There’s plenty of reason to be concerned if it turns out to be a widespread phenomenon, and if it spreads across multiple species.”

Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service have been researching possible connections between disease seen in offshore species and the Gulf oil spill. In response to questions, the agencies referred the newspaper to Steve Murawski, a University of South Florida researcher.

Murawski found that about 3 percent of Gulf fish were afflicted with some type of lesion during sampling conducted for the government after the spill. He said the lesions seen on the whiting “don’t look like the standard skin ulcers we’ve seen associated with the Deepwater Horizon.”

“When you get high frequency of fish disease in a location, sure it’s a cause for concern. But without any chemistry we can’t connect it to Deepwater Horizon,” Murawski said. “It looks like there is some kind of pathogen, a bacteria or parasite.”

He asked the newspaper for samples of affected fish, as did Will Patterson with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.

The livers and bile of the fish will be analyzed for the presence of oil-related compounds, both said.

Jim Cowan — a Louisiana State University scientist also investigating the presence of disease in the red snapper population since the spill — said his work suggests sick fish are more common in locations that received oil during the spill.

Tarballs were visible in the surf in the area where the Press-Register caught the diseased whiting. […]

The lesions are similar in appearance to wounds seen on fish in Mobile Bay four years ago during a widespread disease outbreak. In that case, scientists blamed a bacteria called Pfiesteria, and said fish were left vulnerable to infection due to a large influx of freshwater that carried industrial pollutants, pesticides and fertilizers. […]

Dauphin Island fish show up with lesions, BP spill link questioned

Technorati Tags: fish decline,oil spill,oil production,pollution,algae bloom,Gulf of Mexico,ecosystem disruption,wetland

Half of wrecked cargo ship sinking in New Zealand

2012-01-10T09:32:00.001-08:00

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Half of a cargo ship that ran aground on a New Zealand reef three months ago began sinking into the ocean Tuesday, and debris and some oil were drifting from the wreck.

The stern section of the Rena began slipping from its previous position on the Astrolabe Reef in the morning and was about three-quarters submerged by noon New Zealand time, Maritime New Zealand spokesman James Sygrove told The Associated Press.

"The front 30 meters (100 feet) is still above the waterline, but the back section and the bridge are all under the water," he said.

Sygrove said the bow section of the boat remained firmly wedged on the reef. He said there is plenty of wood, plastic and other debris floating around the sinking stern section.

"It's quite a fluid situation," he said, adding that authorities remain unsure of what will happen next.

The mostly submerged stern still was perched on the edge of the reef and a small amount of oil and some containers fell overboard along with the debris, the maritime agency said in updates in the afternoon and evening. Cleanup teams were prepared if oil or any items washed ashore on the New Zealand coast. […]

Maritime New Zealand estimates that less than 100 tons of oil remains on the ship after salvage crews managed to remove much of the remaining oil and nearly 400 containers. However, it was a slow process removing containers and hundreds were still aboard when it split apart. […]

Half of wrecked cargo ship sinking in New Zealand

Technorati Tags: oil spill,pollution,bird decline,Oceania,coral,ecosystem disruption,habitat loss

South of Thailand welcomes 2012 with massive floods, landslides and mudslides

2012-01-10T09:03:00.001-08:00

By Cassandra James, Asia Travel Examiner
4 January 2012

Just as the north of Thailand and Bangkok has begun the clean-up after our massive flooding that lasted more than three months, the south of the country is now experiencing flooding -- for the third time in just a few months. While some southern cities like Nakhon Si Thammarat and Yala are beginning to dry out, after floods last week, other cities in Thailand's south are experiencing new floods and, with them, landslides and mudslides. A happy beginning to 2012 for Thailand's south it's not.
In one village near Nakhon Si Thammarat, a landslide was so severe it has completely blocked off access to an entire village, and to a school within the village. Other villages have experienced mudslides, with villagers now concerned about continuing floods causing even more mudslides. Landslides are a direct result of Thailand's out-of-control deforestation.
Surprising to those who haven't witnessed Thailand's terrible floods, but not so much to those of us who have however, many trains are still running (although some train service has been suspended) and almost all of Air Asia's flights are flying in and out of southern cities with little disruption.
In fact, Thais are extremely good at organizing during natural disasters as, unfortunately, the country has so many of them. So, even as the south of the country is flooding and thousands of homes in low-lying areas are under water, people are still going about their daily lives as much as possible. And that includes the usual services for trains, planes and, yes, automobiles.
The problem for the south now though is going to be how much rain they get over the next few weeks, how fast flooding ends, and how quickly it drains and the land begins to dry up. While 2011 was a terrible year for Thailand as far as floods go, the 2012 rainy season will start at the beginning of April. If flood water hasn't drained from southern areas by then, or more arrives, 2012 has the potential to be even worse than 2011. […]

South of Thailand welcomes 2012 with massive floods, landslides and mudslides

Technorati Tags: Asia,flood,global warming,climate change,deforestation

Insurer	Loss
Munich Re	$641.9 million
Swiss Re	$600 million
XL Group	$135 million – $185 million
SCOR	$179.9 million
Everest Re	$100 million – $125 mill
PartnerRe	$120 million
Endurance	$76.5 million
Transatlantic	$72 million
Valid us	$55.5 million
Aspen	$54 million
Allied World	$40 million – $50 million
Axis Capital	$48 million
Argo Group	$25 million – $35 million
Alterra	$30 million