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News Archives
Week of May 30, 2004
Did the White House try to suppress climate change info?
Over at Grist Magazine, Amanda Griscom has yet another excellent report, this one detailing how the Bush administration tried to stop publication of a website by NOAA's National Climate Data Center outlining the science behind abrupt climate change. This isn't entirely surprising, given that the White House briefly tried to suppress any comments by NASA on "The Day After Tomorrow".
It's worth your time to read it, and while you're there throw Grist a little support. They do good work.
Comments? Our climate change thread is here
Posted by Jennifer on Saturday, June 5 2004, 6:59 PM
Picture of the Day
The weekend wouldn't be complete without a lovely blue-gray tanager.
Posted by Jennifer on Saturday, June 5 2004, 5:02 PM
The Day After Tomorrow, cont.
Today we went to see this, and it was great fun. At least, it was great fun when I wasn't rolling my eyes and tapping my toes at the really incredibly stupid human plot tricks. Could we have the people stop doing dumb impossible things and get on with the end of the world please? But no...
Afterwards though, I left kind of unsettled. I've been reading and writing about climate change pretty regularly the past few months. There are unsettling things happening in real life: the slowing of the northern current, the "tipping point" that researchers believe will lead to the complete dissolution of the Greenland ice sheet (over a long time span, I hasten to add). I understand how global warming may lead to a switch in the currents, and why that may lead to an Ice Age. I know those processes are already happening, and I know that the speedy time scale of the movie was a crock.
But I came home curious about two things: the whole supercell phenomena and the related tidbit about the flash-frozen mammoth. Came home and googled around for frozen mammoth info (yes, there have been about 50 of them found. No, there is no reasonable evidence that they were produced by supercells of the kind shown in the movie). This led me to the Whitley Streiber/Art Bell book (The Coming Global Superstorm) which speculated about the frozen mammoths and the upper tropospheric air being pulled to earth to flash freeze us all. It was interesting enough, and entertaining to think about.
In that reading, though, I came across some articles which pointed out things I probably knew already, but have an increased urgency in light of the information I've been reading the past few months. Mostly about how the stable climate of the past 8-10 thousand years is really an anomaly. And that previous abrupt changes, while not as fast as in the movie, have happened in periods as short as a few years. More than once. I'm sure I've read about these things, but they didn't stick in my mind before, not quite like this.
So, while the movie was a fun disaster flick, I'm still sitting here a little distraught, because I know that the changes it plays with have already begun, and people are in no way ready for those changes, even though they aren't likely to be as abrupt and extreme as shown in the movie. Something's coming, and I have no idea how it's going to end. It's a real-life mystery more compelling than the movie.
Posted by Jennifer on Saturday, June 5 2004, 12:19 AM
Reclaiming the Owens River?
I was poking around for news stories on water shortages (about which I will have more to say soon), and ran across this interesting article which states that there's a chance water may flow again in the Owens River.
You may be familiar with how Los Angeles bought all the water from the Owens River, and condemned the Owens Valley to death. The story was dramatized in the film Chinatown. Under cover of buying up farms in the area, agents of the city were in truth purchasing the farms for water rights, and then built an aqueduct which carried all the water away, allowing Los Angeles to grow into the city it is today. Owens Lake became a dust bowl, and almost no one lives in the Owens Valley anymore.
Apparently the city agreed to some restoration, in response to a court battle 25 years long. But so far the actual transfer of water has been delayed. How long LA can continue to delay is an interesting question, but how wonderful it would be to see water flowing in the Owens River again!
Water wars comment thread is here
Posted by Jennifer on Thursday, June 3 2004, 7:57 PM
News of the Day
Many deaths in Haiti flooding were due to deforestation
Local people have been cutting down trees to sell the wood or to use it for cooking. This has gone on for a generation or more, and the trees have not been replaced. Without trees to hold the soil down, the rain water swept away everything in its path. With the soil eroded, there may be no place in the flooded areas for villages to rebuild.
Coastal waters in Europe are cleaner than ever
A recent survey of water quality in the coastal areas of the UK, Spain, Greece, Italy, and Portugal gives the waters an almost clean bill of health. While inland waters still show lots of pollution, and not all coastal sites were surveyed, over 98% of European coastal waters met minimum standards.
Giant mushroom found in Congo baffles experts
The mushroom is more than a yard wide and doesn't match any known species.
Biomass of rainforest canopy is much greater than expected
A recent study, published in the journal Science (sub. only), has found twice as many small animals living in the rainforest canopy than had previously been estimated. Focusing their research on the bird's nest fern, which can weigh up to 440 lbs. in the forest canopy, the ecologists found that a single fern could contain more animal mass than the rest of the tree crown.
Discussion of miscellaneous news goes here!
Posted by Jennifer on Thursday, June 3 2004, 3:14 PM
Illegal Logging in Mexico
is taking away the primary wintering ground for Monarch butterflies. This NY Times article is heartbreaking in its depiction of the clash between the need for cash and the needs of a beloved species.
"Everyone worries about the butterflies," said one illegal logger, the brim of his baseball cap pulled to his nose to hide his face. "What about us?"
Comments? Click here.
Posted by Jennifer on Thursday, June 3 2004, 12:32 AM
In the United Kingdom, Gardeners are Helping
As woodlands and wetlands become degraded and fragmented, and wildlife habitat vanishes, many bird species start to decline. In England, studies of bird populations found that populations in built-up areas were as high as in wilder areas, and set out to discover why. They determined that gardens in the urban and suburban areas were providing nesting space for millions of breeding pairs of birds, including some rare species such as the song thrush and the spotted flycatcher. In England, gardens cover more than twice as much space as all the nature reserves in the country.
In England, "garden" refers to the property around a house, which in the U.S. we would call the "yard". But not all gardens are created equal when it comes to providing habitat useful for birds. The study, by the British Trust for Ornithology, says that if all gardens provided good bird habitat up to 30 million breeding pairs might find homes. The BTO recommends leaving wild edges around cultivated fields, and creating patches of seed and fruiting plants where birds can forage.
Here in the U.S., the National Wildlife Federation sponsors a Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program, where people can actually have their yards designated as wildlife habitat. Their site provides a lot of useful information for anyone who would like to make their yard and garden more friendly for wildlife.
Comments? Click here.
Posted by Jennifer on Wednesday, June 2 2004, 3:19 PM
Revised Salmon Plan Draws Lawsuit
Environmentalists were reassured when the Bush Administration decided to continue listing wild salmon as Endangered Species, in spite of their policy change of counting hatchery raised salmon along with wild salmon populations for purposes of determining whether the salmon populations are endangered. The government went ahead and kept the endangered species listings for 26 salmon, and even added one more not previously listed.
Not everyone was pleased, however, and so the Pacific Legal Fund, a group representing local utility companies, water users, and landowners affected by the ruling, plans to file suit demanding that salmon be de-listed since hatchery-raised fish have raised population levels.
The suit will take this issue back before the judge who originally charged that the government erred in protecting only wild populations of salmon species where hatchery fish were mingled with the wild. That ruling is apparently what led to the original policy change, including hatchery fish as part of the same populations as the wild salmon themselves. With so many hatchery raised salmon in the streams, this really does lead to some tricky legal questions, such as how a person catching fish can reasonably tell a salmon which might legally be harvested from another of the same species which is protected.
The EPA's assessment of salmon populations will be open to public comment for 90 days after it is published in the Federal Register next week.
Posted by Jennifer on Wednesday, June 2 2004, 10:32 AM
While we're off fighting terror
...the planet's crumbling. The Seattle PI gives us this piece of commentary summing up the environmental issues facing us, which are unfortunately being ignored while our attention is elsewhere. Security is about more than war, you know?
And a tip of the hat to Earth Blog for the pointer.
Posted by Jennifer on Tuesday, June 1 2004, 1:52 PM
Revisiting Organics
You might recall that the Bush administration had decided to change the meaning of "organic", without asking for input or public comment.
Planet Ark reports that this change is now on hold, and the National Organic Program will now ask for some public input. This article also has information on several industries that may potentially be removed from the organics program entirely, including organic shrimp farming, at great cost to the industries involved. After recent reports about the environmental toll of normal shrimp farms, it seems to me that we should be encouraging ecologically sound shrimp farming, rather than discouraging it.
Comments? Click here.
Posted by Jennifer on Tuesday, June 1 2004, 10:04 AM
Will Bush's Clean Air Strategy Help our Parks?
Did you know that the air in New York City or Philadelphia is cleaner than the air in some of our national parks? A 1977 law set out an ambitious goal of reducing air pollution in our parks, using a decade-by-decade timeline for reaching pristine air in all of them. The Bush administration combined that law with another one and now allows trade-offs between controlling haze and reducing emissions. Will this be enough to restore air quality in our parks? Today's New York Times has a lengthy article exploring this question.
Tues. morning edit: After reading this story and thinking about it, I realize I am disappointed that it didn't include more thoughts from scientists on which approach would work better. While this article lays out the various problems clearly, it doesn't provide much more than "they say this, and the other guys say that", which doesn't give much help to ordinary citizens when it comes to policy decisions.
Posted by Jennifer on Monday, May 31 2004, 9:59 AM
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