Tue, Oct 09 2007
WHY WE HATE IRAN
What I really hate is how often Ted Rall is dead-on. It creeps me out.
Tue, Oct 09 2007
AS IF WE HAVE ANY INTENTION OF STOPPING
Please. Our greed and shortsightedness knows no bounds. We will, quite simply, pollute ourselves into extinction in a mad rush to gobble up what little is left. We are the proverbial monkey with our paw in the monkeytrap, unwilling to let go of the sweetnut even though holding on to it means death and releasing it, life.
That reminds me, I need to buy a shotgun...
Scientist: Emissions levels accelerating
SYDNEY, Australia, Associated Press - Worldwide economic growth has accelerated the level of greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold scientists had not expected for another decade, according to a leading Australian climate change expert.
Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels.
Flannery is not a member of the IPCC, but said he based his comments on a thorough review of the technical data included in the panel's three working group reports published earlier this year.
Carola Traverso Saibante, spokeswoman for IPCC headquarters is in Geneva, said she was unable to disclose what would be in the final report synthesizing the data before it is released in November.
"What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change," Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. "We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that's what these figures say. It's not next year or next decade, it's now."
Flannery, whose recent book "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth," made best-seller lists worldwide, said the data showed that the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions had reached about 455 parts per million by mid-2005, well ahead of scientists' previous calculations.
"We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade, that we had that much time," Flannery said. "I mean, that's beyond the limits of projection, beyond the worst-case scenario as we thought of it in 2001," when the last major IPCC report was issued.
The new data could add urgency to the next round of U.N. climate change talks on the Indonesian island of Bali in December, which will aim to start negotiations on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel called Tuesday for an international system of global emissions trading to be adopted as part of an agreement to flight climate change from 2012 onward.
Speaking at a symposium of Nobel laureates and other leading scientists, Merkel insisted that only by establishing limits on carbon dioxide output per individual around the world — suggesting about 2 tons per head — could the fight to stop global warming be effective.
"Our long-term goal can only be the assimilation of worldwide per capita emissions," Merkel told the conference.
Her suggestion would mean drastic cuts: Germany currently has a carbon dioxide output of some 11 tons per person per year, while the U.S. is at around 20 tons per person.
Flannery said that the recent economic boom in China and India has helped to accelerate the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but strong growth in the developed world has also exacerbated the problem.
"It's a worldwide issue. We've had growing economies everywhere, we're still basing that economic activity on fossil fuels," he said. "The metabolism of that economy is now on a collision course clearly with the metabolism of our planet."
A spokesman for Australia's IPCC delegate, Ian Carruthers, said he was not available to comment on the report because it was still in draft form.Tue, Oct 09 2007
BEAUTIFUL BUMBLEBEES
..and we still don't understand how they can defy the laws of physics and actually fly...
Threats to bumblebees fly under radar
GRANTS PASS, Ore., Associated Press - Looking high and low, Robbin Thorp can no longer find a species of bumblebee that just five years ago was plentiful in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon.
Thorp, an emeritus professor of entomology from the University of California at Davis, found one solitary worker last year along a remote mountain trail in the Siskiyou Mountains, but hasn't been able to locate any this year.
He fears that the species — Franklin's bumblebee — has gone extinct before anyone could even propose it for the endangered species list. To make matters worse, two other bumblebee species — one on the East coast, one on the West — have gone from common to rare.
Amid the uproar over global warming and mysterious disappearances of honeybee colonies, concern over the plight of the lowly bumblebee has been confined to scientists laboring in obscurity.
But if bumblebees were to disappear, farmers and entomologists warn, the consequences would be huge, especially coming on top of the problems with honeybees, which are active at different times and on different crop species.
Bumblebees are responsible for pollinating an estimated 15 percent of all the crops grown in the U.S., worth $3 billion, particularly those raised in greenhouses. Those include tomatoes, peppers and strawberries.
Demand is growing as honeybees decline. In the wild, birds and bears depend on bumblebees for berries and fruits.
There is no smoking gun yet, but a recent National Academy of Sciences report on the status of pollinators around the world blames a combination of habitat lost to housing developments and intensive agriculture, pesticides, pollution and diseases spilling out of greenhouses using commercial bumblebee hives.
"We have been naive," said Neal Williams, assistant professor of biology at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. "We haven't been diligent the way we need to be."
The threat has bumblebee advocates lobbying Congress to allocate more money for research and to create incentives for farmers to leave uncultivated land for habitat. They also want farmers to grow more flowering plants that native bees feed on.
"We are smart enough to deal with this," said Laurie Adams, executive director of the Pollinator Partnership. "There is hope."
Companies in Europe, Israel and Canada adapted bumblebees to commercial use in the early 1990s, and they are now standard in greenhouses raising tomatoes and peppers.
Demand is growing as supplies of honeybees decline, especially for field crops such as blueberries, cranberries, watermelon, squash, and raspberries, said Holly Burroughs, general manager for production for the U.S. branch of Koppert Biological Systems Inc., a Netherlands company that sells most of the commercial bumblebees in the U.S.
One new customer is Tony Davis of Quail Run Farm in Grants Pass. He has long depended on volunteer bumblebees to fertilize the squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplant he grows outdoors for sale in growers' markets. When he started growing strawberries in greenhouses this year to get a jump on the competition, he bought commercial bumblebee hives to fertilize them.
"Without bumblebees, I would be out of business. I don't think I could hand-pollinate all these plants," he said.
Scientists hoping to pinpoint the cause of the nation's honeybee decline recently identified a previously unknown virus, but stress that parasitic mites, pesticides and poor nutrition all remain suspects.
Unlike honeybees, which came to North America with the European colonists of the 17th century, bumblebees are natives. They collect pollen and nectar to feed to their young, but make very little honey.
A huge problem facing scientists is how "appallingly little we know about our pollinating resources," said University of Illinois entomology Prof. May Berenbaum, who headed the National Academy of Sciences report.
Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, worries that on top of pesticides and narrowing habitats, disease could be the last straw for many of the bee species.
"It definitely could all come crashing down," he said.
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On the Net:
More on bumblebees: http://www.bumblebee.orgTue, Oct 09 2007
LA NINA THIS YEAR
Winter seen warmer than normal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will have warmer-than-normal temperatures this winter in most of the country, except for the northern Plains and Northwest states, government weather experts predicted on Tuesday.
As for precipitation, it will be drier than average across the Southwest and the Southeast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected in its winter forecast.
The Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, northern Rockies and Hawaii will be wetter than normal this winter, the agency predicted.
NOAA also forecast a weak to moderate La Nina weather phenomenon, which is marked by unusually cold temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific, during the 2006-2007 winter.
"La Nina is here, with a weak to moderate event likely to persist through the winter," said Michael Halpert, head of forecast operations and acting deputy director of NOAA's's Climate Prediction Center.
In the U.S., La Nina usually brings wetter weather to the Pacific Northwest and dryer warmer weather across the South.
"The big concern this winter may be the persistence of drought across large parts of the already parched South. And while December through February is likely to be another milder-than-average winter for much of the country, people should still expect some bouts of winter weather," Halpert added.
NOAA also predicted the following:
* above-average temperatures in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic in response to the long-term warming trend.
* milder-than-average weather in northern Alaska and above-average temperature and precipitation in Hawaii
* across the country, according to NOAA's heating degree day forecast, December through February will be 2.8 percent warmer than the 30-year norm, but still 1.3 percent cooler than last winter.All news articles and images provided under the Fair Use Notice.