A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act.
The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.
The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.
"Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall," said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.
The research builds on a series of recent studies in which brain imaging has been used to identify tell-tale activity linked to lying, violent behaviour and racial prejudice.
The latest work reveals the dramatic pace at which neuroscience is progressing, prompting the researchers to call for an urgent debate into the ethical issues surrounding future uses for the technology. If brain-reading can be refined, it could quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a "Minority Report" era (as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg science fiction film of that name), where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan.
"These techniques are emerging and we need an ethical debate about the implications, so that one day we're not surprised and overwhelmed and caught on the wrong foot by what they can do. These things are going to come to us in the next few years and we should really be prepared," Professor Haynes told the Guardian.
The use of brain scanners to judge whether people are likely to commit crimes is a contentious issue that society should tackle now, according to Prof Haynes. "We see the danger that this might become compulsory one day, but we have to be aware that if we prohibit it, we are also denying people who aren't going to commit any crime the possibility of proving their innocence."...
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Parish, N.Y. - 110 inches of snow in 7 days
The National Weather Service said Parish — about 25 miles northeast of Syracuse — reached a milestone early Saturday with 100 inches of snow during the past seven days. Late Saturday, the total had risen to 110 inches. Unofficial reports pegged totals at 123 inches in Orwell and 122 in Redfield, but those measurements include snow from another storm a couple of days before the current weather system. All three towns are in Oswego County.
A warning in effect until Monday morning said 2 to 4 more feet of snow was possible with wind gusting up to 24 mph.
"That's all we need," Mike Avery said as he took a brief break from loading dump trucks with snow to be hauled to a pile outside town. "It's getting monotonous."...
Residents of the nearby town of Mexico see 5- to 6-foot snowfalls every two or three years, but this time even hardened locals are amazed. The only sign of parked SUVs are their radio antennas or roof racks sticking up above the snow. Front doors are buried and footprints lead to second-story windows. Sidewalks that have been dug out look like miniature canyons.
The state transportation department said 125 workers from elsewhere in the state had been sent in with snow equipment to help.
The region is located along the Tug Hill Plateau, the snowiest region this side of the Rocky Mountains. It's a 50-mile wedge of land that rises 2,100 feet from the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. It usually gets about 300 inches — roughly 25 feet — of snow a year.
The hamlet of Hooker, near the boundaries of Jefferson, Lewis, and Oswego counties, holds the state's one-year record with 466.9 inches, about 39 feet, in the winter of 1976-77...
Thursday, February 08, 2007
"Vegetarian Is the New Prius"
President Herbert Hoover promised "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." With warnings about global warming reaching feverish levels, many are having second thoughts about all those cars. It seems they should instead be worrying about the chickens.
Last month, the United Nations published a report on livestock and the environment with a stunning conclusion: "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming.
That's right, global warming. You've probably heard the story: Emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are changing our climate, and scientists warn of more extreme weather, coastal flooding, spreading disease, and mass extinctions. It seems that when you step outside and wonder what happened to winter, you might want to think about what you had for dinner last night. The U.N. report says almost a fifth of global warming emissions come from livestock (i.e., those chickens Hoover was talking about, plus pigs, cattle, and others) -- that's more emissions than from all of the world's transportation combined.
For a decade now, the image of Leonardo DiCaprio cruising in his hybrid Toyota Prius has defined the gold standard for environmentalism. These gas-sipping vehicles became a veritable symbol of the consumers' power to strike a blow against global warming. Just think: a car that could cut your vehicle emissions in half -- in a country responsible for 25% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. Federal fuel economy standards languished in Congress, and average vehicle mileage dropped to its lowest level in decades, but the Prius showed people that another way is possible. Toyota could not import the cars fast enough to meet demand.
Last year researchers at the University of Chicago took the Prius down a peg when they turned their attention to another gas guzzling consumer purchase. They noted that feeding animals for meat, dairy, and egg production requires growing some ten times as much crops as we'd need if we just ate pasta primavera, faux chicken nuggets, and other plant foods. On top of that, we have to transport the animals to slaughterhouses, slaughter them, refrigerate their carcasses, and distribute their flesh all across the country. Producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels -- and spewing more than ten times as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide -- as does a calorie of plant protein. The researchers found that, when it's all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius.
According to the UN report, it gets even worse when we include the vast quantities of land needed to give us our steak and pork chops. Animal agriculture takes up an incredible 70% of all agricultural land, and 30% of the total land surface of the planet. As a result, farmed animals are probably the biggest cause of slashing and burning the world's forests. Today, 70% of former Amazon rainforest is used for pastureland, and feed crops cover much of the remainder. These forests serve as "sinks," absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, and burning these forests releases all the stored carbon dioxide, quantities that exceed by far the fossil fuel emission of animal agriculture.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the real kicker comes when looking at gases besides carbon dioxide -- gases like methane and nitrous oxide, enormously effective greenhouse gases with 23 and 296 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, respectively. If carbon dioxide is responsible for about one-half of human-related greenhouse gas warming since the industrial revolution, methane and nitrous oxide are responsible for another one-third. These super-strong gases come primarily from farmed animals' digestive processes, and from their manure. In fact, while animal agriculture accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and a whopping 65% of our nitrous oxide.
It's a little hard to take in when thinking of a small chick hatching from her fragile egg. How can an animal, so seemingly insignificant against the vastness of the earth, give off so much greenhouse gas as to change the global climate? The answer is in their sheer numbers. The United States alone slaughters more than 10 billion land animals every year, all to sustain a meat-ravenous culture that can barely conceive of a time not long ago when "a chicken in every pot" was considered a luxury. Land animals raised for food make up a staggering 20% of the entire land animal biomass of the earth. We are eating our planet to death. What we're seeing is just the beginning, too. Meat consumption has increased five-fold in the past fifty years, and is expected to double again in the next fifty.
It sounds like a lot of bad news, but in fact it's quite the opposite. It means we have a powerful new weapon to use in addressing the most serious environmental crisis ever to face humanity. The Prius was an important step forward, but how often are people in the market for a new car? Now that we know a greener diet is even more effective than a greener car, we can make a difference at every single meal, simply by leaving the animals off of our plates. Who would have thought: what's good for our health is also good for the health of the planet!
_________________________
I agree that it's pretty easy to switch to a vegetarian diet (or mostly, at least). And well worth it.
Last month, the United Nations published a report on livestock and the environment with a stunning conclusion: "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming.
That's right, global warming. You've probably heard the story: Emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are changing our climate, and scientists warn of more extreme weather, coastal flooding, spreading disease, and mass extinctions. It seems that when you step outside and wonder what happened to winter, you might want to think about what you had for dinner last night. The U.N. report says almost a fifth of global warming emissions come from livestock (i.e., those chickens Hoover was talking about, plus pigs, cattle, and others) -- that's more emissions than from all of the world's transportation combined.
For a decade now, the image of Leonardo DiCaprio cruising in his hybrid Toyota Prius has defined the gold standard for environmentalism. These gas-sipping vehicles became a veritable symbol of the consumers' power to strike a blow against global warming. Just think: a car that could cut your vehicle emissions in half -- in a country responsible for 25% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. Federal fuel economy standards languished in Congress, and average vehicle mileage dropped to its lowest level in decades, but the Prius showed people that another way is possible. Toyota could not import the cars fast enough to meet demand.
Last year researchers at the University of Chicago took the Prius down a peg when they turned their attention to another gas guzzling consumer purchase. They noted that feeding animals for meat, dairy, and egg production requires growing some ten times as much crops as we'd need if we just ate pasta primavera, faux chicken nuggets, and other plant foods. On top of that, we have to transport the animals to slaughterhouses, slaughter them, refrigerate their carcasses, and distribute their flesh all across the country. Producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels -- and spewing more than ten times as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide -- as does a calorie of plant protein. The researchers found that, when it's all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius.
According to the UN report, it gets even worse when we include the vast quantities of land needed to give us our steak and pork chops. Animal agriculture takes up an incredible 70% of all agricultural land, and 30% of the total land surface of the planet. As a result, farmed animals are probably the biggest cause of slashing and burning the world's forests. Today, 70% of former Amazon rainforest is used for pastureland, and feed crops cover much of the remainder. These forests serve as "sinks," absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, and burning these forests releases all the stored carbon dioxide, quantities that exceed by far the fossil fuel emission of animal agriculture.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the real kicker comes when looking at gases besides carbon dioxide -- gases like methane and nitrous oxide, enormously effective greenhouse gases with 23 and 296 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, respectively. If carbon dioxide is responsible for about one-half of human-related greenhouse gas warming since the industrial revolution, methane and nitrous oxide are responsible for another one-third. These super-strong gases come primarily from farmed animals' digestive processes, and from their manure. In fact, while animal agriculture accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and a whopping 65% of our nitrous oxide.
It's a little hard to take in when thinking of a small chick hatching from her fragile egg. How can an animal, so seemingly insignificant against the vastness of the earth, give off so much greenhouse gas as to change the global climate? The answer is in their sheer numbers. The United States alone slaughters more than 10 billion land animals every year, all to sustain a meat-ravenous culture that can barely conceive of a time not long ago when "a chicken in every pot" was considered a luxury. Land animals raised for food make up a staggering 20% of the entire land animal biomass of the earth. We are eating our planet to death. What we're seeing is just the beginning, too. Meat consumption has increased five-fold in the past fifty years, and is expected to double again in the next fifty.
It sounds like a lot of bad news, but in fact it's quite the opposite. It means we have a powerful new weapon to use in addressing the most serious environmental crisis ever to face humanity. The Prius was an important step forward, but how often are people in the market for a new car? Now that we know a greener diet is even more effective than a greener car, we can make a difference at every single meal, simply by leaving the animals off of our plates. Who would have thought: what's good for our health is also good for the health of the planet!
_________________________
I agree that it's pretty easy to switch to a vegetarian diet (or mostly, at least). And well worth it.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
The "Greenest" Cars
The top twelve Greenest Cars. (More info at the CNN article)
ACEEE's "Green Score" is based on tailpipe emissions as well as pollution created in manufacturing the vehicle. Pollution from manufacturing is estimated based on the vehicle's weight. The average vehicle's "Green Score" is 30.
Honda Civic GX (uses natural gas)
Green score: 57
Toyota Prius (Hybrid)
City mpg: 60
Highway mpg: 51
Green score: 53
Honda Civic Hybrid
City mpg: 49
Highway mpg: 51
Green score: 53
Nissan Altima Hybrid
City mpg: 42
Highway mpg: 36
Green score: 48
Toyota Yaris
City mpg: 34
Highway mpg: 40
Green score: 47
Toyota Corolla
City mpg: 32
Highway mpg: 41
Green score: 46
Toyota Camry Hybrid
City mpg: 40
Highway mpg: 38
Green score: 46
Honda Fit
City mpg: 33
Highway mpg: 38
Green score: 45
Kia Rio
City mpg: 32
Highway mpg: 35
Green score: 45
Hyundai Accent
City mpg: 32
Highway mpg: 35
Green score: 45
Hyundai Elantra
City mpg: 28
Highway mpg: 36
Green score: 45
Honda Civic
City mpg: 30
Highway mpg: 40
Green score: 44
__________________Also a few more in selected categories:
Small SUV - Ford Escape Hybrid Green score: 43
Sports car - Mazda MX-5 Miata Green score: 39
Mid-size SUV - Toyota Highlander Hybrid Green score: 39
Minivan - Toyota Sienna Green score: 32
Small pick-up - Toyota Tacoma Green score: 34
ACEEE's "Green Score" is based on tailpipe emissions as well as pollution created in manufacturing the vehicle. Pollution from manufacturing is estimated based on the vehicle's weight. The average vehicle's "Green Score" is 30.
Honda Civic GX (uses natural gas)
Green score: 57
Toyota Prius (Hybrid)
City mpg: 60
Highway mpg: 51
Green score: 53
Honda Civic Hybrid
City mpg: 49
Highway mpg: 51
Green score: 53
Nissan Altima Hybrid
City mpg: 42
Highway mpg: 36
Green score: 48
Toyota Yaris
City mpg: 34
Highway mpg: 40
Green score: 47
Toyota Corolla
City mpg: 32
Highway mpg: 41
Green score: 46
Toyota Camry Hybrid
City mpg: 40
Highway mpg: 38
Green score: 46
Honda Fit
City mpg: 33
Highway mpg: 38
Green score: 45
Kia Rio
City mpg: 32
Highway mpg: 35
Green score: 45
Hyundai Accent
City mpg: 32
Highway mpg: 35
Green score: 45
Hyundai Elantra
City mpg: 28
Highway mpg: 36
Green score: 45
Honda Civic
City mpg: 30
Highway mpg: 40
Green score: 44
__________________Also a few more in selected categories:
Small SUV - Ford Escape Hybrid Green score: 43
Sports car - Mazda MX-5 Miata Green score: 39
Mid-size SUV - Toyota Highlander Hybrid Green score: 39
Minivan - Toyota Sienna Green score: 32
Small pick-up - Toyota Tacoma Green score: 34
"Deadly flooding brings Jakarta to a standstill"
Much of this capital city was under water Tuesday and the authorities warned of the spread of disease after torrential rains, overflowing rivers and clogged sewers brought widespread flooding over the weekend.
At least 29 people were reported to have died from drowning, electrocution or disease. An estimated 340,000 people were driven from their homes and hundreds of thousands remained without electricity or clean water in the worst flooding here in years. The skies cleared Monday but meteorologists said more rain was possible in the days ahead, along with renewed flooding if rivers again burst their banks.
In lower-lying parts of Jakarta that are populated mostly by the poor, water that had risen as high as four meters, or 12 feet, still engulfed entire houses.
Officials estimated that from 40 to 70 percent of this city of 12 million people had been submerged. From the air, it appeared in places that red tile roofs were floating on the brown water....
At least 29 people were reported to have died from drowning, electrocution or disease. An estimated 340,000 people were driven from their homes and hundreds of thousands remained without electricity or clean water in the worst flooding here in years. The skies cleared Monday but meteorologists said more rain was possible in the days ahead, along with renewed flooding if rivers again burst their banks.
In lower-lying parts of Jakarta that are populated mostly by the poor, water that had risen as high as four meters, or 12 feet, still engulfed entire houses.
Officials estimated that from 40 to 70 percent of this city of 12 million people had been submerged. From the air, it appeared in places that red tile roofs were floating on the brown water....
More Declining Numbers
Sea Turtles Dying Along Bangladesh Coast
More than 200 turtles, some weighing 20 kg (44 pounds) or more, have died in the Bay of Bengal along the Bangladesh coast over the past week, government officials and witnesses said on Monday.
"Around 140 turtles were found dead along a 4-km (2.5 miles) stretch of the beach," Mohammad Aminul Islam, deputy commissioner of Cox's Bazar district, said.
He said more turtles were dying on the shores of St. Martin island, 35 km off the country's southeastern tip, Teknaf.
Fishermen have reported that some dolphins have also died.
No one seems to know why the sea creatures are dying...
Baltic Sea salmon stocks dive in 2006
Stocks of wild salmon in the Baltic Sea are in continuous decline but 2006 may have been a particularly bad year, with an estimated drop of 50 percent from the previous year, a scientist said on Monday.
"Fish counters, catches ... All the reports point in the same direction," said Jaakko Erkinaro, a professor at the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute.
"The figure of (a) 50 percent (drop between 2005 and 2006) is likely. Whatever the exact figure is, it's a marked decline," he told AFP, attributing the decrease to several hypotheses: a fall in salinity, warming of the waters or a rise in seal stocks.
"But it remains a big question mark," he said.
Wild salmon quotas were drastically reduced in the 1990s by the International Baltic Sea Fishery Commission, which over the years reduced them from 700,000 fish to 300,000 in 2005.
The European Union decided in October to reduce by an additional five percent the quotas for 2007.
The Baltic Sea is a shallow and virtually closed sea and therefore very polluted.
Pregnant women are, for example, advised to avoid eating wild salmon because of levels of PCBs (polychlorobiphenyls) and PCTs (polychloroterphenyls) five times higher than farmed salmon, according to the European food safety authority.
Erkinaro said salmon was not the only fish species in the Baltic Sea that was threatened.
"There are problems with other species. Cod, for example, in the southern Baltic, or river trout. The causes are varied," he said...
The numbers of beluga, the white whales of Alaska, have halved in 13 years
A new report by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, to be published later this year, will reveal that the number of beluga whales in Cook Inlet has declined dramatically in the past decade and now stands at just 302. This is less than half the number recorded in 1994, according to Brad Smith, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"There is a one-in-four chance that this population is going to become extinct in 100 years," he said. "This is the only population of belugas found in the Gulf of Alaska. If we lose these whales they will not be replaced. These whales are genetically and physically isolated from other populations."
Belugas have become a symbol of man's effect on the environment due to their capacity to absorb large amounts of pollution. Those in the Gulf of St Lawrence in Canada have such high concentrations of chemical pollutants in their bodies that their carcasses are treated as toxic waste. But now the distinctive white whales, an inspiration for Moby-Dick, are showing signs of their own demise.
Decades of whaling have placed belugas in a vulnerable position, accor-ding to campaigners who are now warning that a deadly combination of increasing boat traffic, oil and gas exploration and pollution are all adding to the pressure on the species. The whales are also subject to attacks from polar bears and killer whales, and global warming is changing the movements of the pack ice that dictates their range.
Government scientists are now developing a plan to protect the remaining belugas, which will include recommendations to create areas of "critical habitat" where human activity would be subject to greater regulation....
More than 200 turtles, some weighing 20 kg (44 pounds) or more, have died in the Bay of Bengal along the Bangladesh coast over the past week, government officials and witnesses said on Monday.
"Around 140 turtles were found dead along a 4-km (2.5 miles) stretch of the beach," Mohammad Aminul Islam, deputy commissioner of Cox's Bazar district, said.
He said more turtles were dying on the shores of St. Martin island, 35 km off the country's southeastern tip, Teknaf.
Fishermen have reported that some dolphins have also died.
No one seems to know why the sea creatures are dying...
Baltic Sea salmon stocks dive in 2006
Stocks of wild salmon in the Baltic Sea are in continuous decline but 2006 may have been a particularly bad year, with an estimated drop of 50 percent from the previous year, a scientist said on Monday.
"Fish counters, catches ... All the reports point in the same direction," said Jaakko Erkinaro, a professor at the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute.
"The figure of (a) 50 percent (drop between 2005 and 2006) is likely. Whatever the exact figure is, it's a marked decline," he told AFP, attributing the decrease to several hypotheses: a fall in salinity, warming of the waters or a rise in seal stocks.
"But it remains a big question mark," he said.
Wild salmon quotas were drastically reduced in the 1990s by the International Baltic Sea Fishery Commission, which over the years reduced them from 700,000 fish to 300,000 in 2005.
The European Union decided in October to reduce by an additional five percent the quotas for 2007.
The Baltic Sea is a shallow and virtually closed sea and therefore very polluted.
Pregnant women are, for example, advised to avoid eating wild salmon because of levels of PCBs (polychlorobiphenyls) and PCTs (polychloroterphenyls) five times higher than farmed salmon, according to the European food safety authority.
Erkinaro said salmon was not the only fish species in the Baltic Sea that was threatened.
"There are problems with other species. Cod, for example, in the southern Baltic, or river trout. The causes are varied," he said...
The numbers of beluga, the white whales of Alaska, have halved in 13 years
A new report by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, to be published later this year, will reveal that the number of beluga whales in Cook Inlet has declined dramatically in the past decade and now stands at just 302. This is less than half the number recorded in 1994, according to Brad Smith, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"There is a one-in-four chance that this population is going to become extinct in 100 years," he said. "This is the only population of belugas found in the Gulf of Alaska. If we lose these whales they will not be replaced. These whales are genetically and physically isolated from other populations."
Belugas have become a symbol of man's effect on the environment due to their capacity to absorb large amounts of pollution. Those in the Gulf of St Lawrence in Canada have such high concentrations of chemical pollutants in their bodies that their carcasses are treated as toxic waste. But now the distinctive white whales, an inspiration for Moby-Dick, are showing signs of their own demise.
Decades of whaling have placed belugas in a vulnerable position, accor-ding to campaigners who are now warning that a deadly combination of increasing boat traffic, oil and gas exploration and pollution are all adding to the pressure on the species. The whales are also subject to attacks from polar bears and killer whales, and global warming is changing the movements of the pack ice that dictates their range.
Government scientists are now developing a plan to protect the remaining belugas, which will include recommendations to create areas of "critical habitat" where human activity would be subject to greater regulation....
Monday, February 05, 2007
"Eco-millionaire's land grab prompts fury"
Douglas Tompkinscalls himself a 'deep ecologist'. He is a millionaire on a quest to preserve some of Argentina's last frontier lands from human encroachment by buying them and turning them into ecological reserves.
But Argentina may not permit him such philanthropy. Opponents are branding him a new-age 'imperialist gringo' and claim he has a secret aim: to help the US military gain control of the country's natural resources. Tompkins, who sold his Esprit clothing firm in 1989 for a reported $150m to devote his time and wealth to ecology, takes such attacks in his stride. 'Land ownership is a political act; it arouses passions,' he says.
Tompkins, 63, holds to a very severe brand of environmentalism and is fond of reminding listeners that, unless runaway consumerism is halted, 'we humans will be building ourselves a beautiful coffin in space called planet Earth'.
Yet such statements do not carry much weight with Argentinian nationalists. The heaviest fire has come from radicals in the ruling Peronist party. Left-wing legislator Araceli Mendez introduced draft legislation in Congress a few months ago to confiscate the American's vast holdings. At the centre of the storm is a 310,000-acre estate Tompkins owns in the Ibera wetlands, a labyrinth of marshes, lakes and floating islands of nearly 2 million acres. 'He says he's worried about the birds and the wildlife,' said Mendez. 'But his land is above the Guarani aquifer, one of the most important fresh water reserves in the world, only 700km from an airbase the United States plans to build in neighbouring Paraguay.'
The aquifer is soon to become an issue of strategic defence policy. Argentina's military planners are convinced the country's oil and fresh water deposits could become targets for world powers in an ecologically dark future, and are putting together 'Plan 2025', dividing the country into regions based on their resource potential.
The Argentinian press has suggested Tompkins might be a covert CIA operative securing US access to the aquifer. And even Argentinians who don't share such conspiracy theories are uncomfortable with Tompkins transforming his properties into environmentally pristine but unpopulated and economically unproductive areas....
Tompkins and his wife say they are not old-fashioned imperialists in a new guise. 'All the fears created by the fact that I am American buying land are ridiculous,' said Tompkins. 'My intention has always been to eventually turn over the land to the Argentinian government for a national park.' He has already done so, donating an estate in Patagonia to the National Parks administration in 2004. In the late Nineties he had bought the 155,000-acre Monte Leon sheep farm, including a 25-mile stretch of South Atlantic coast, home to one of the largest Magellan penguin rookeries in the world and also abundant in sea lions, pumas and birds.
But pressure to pass an anti-Tompkins bill in Congress could be strong. The presence of other high-profile foreigners fuels passions. The Italian clothing giant Benetton holds 2.2 million acres in sheep farms in Patagonia and has clashed with the indigenous Mapuche people over land ownership claims. And US media magnate Ted Turner likes to go trout fishing on his Patagonian estates.
For Tompkins, it has been a long road from fashion king to 'deep ecologist'. As the founder of North Face and Esprit, he sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of clothes worldwide every year. All that changed when he became involved in radical environmental projects, what he calls his 'restoration work', returning native animal and plant species to the nation-sized swaths of land he owns....
But Argentina may not permit him such philanthropy. Opponents are branding him a new-age 'imperialist gringo' and claim he has a secret aim: to help the US military gain control of the country's natural resources. Tompkins, who sold his Esprit clothing firm in 1989 for a reported $150m to devote his time and wealth to ecology, takes such attacks in his stride. 'Land ownership is a political act; it arouses passions,' he says.
Tompkins, 63, holds to a very severe brand of environmentalism and is fond of reminding listeners that, unless runaway consumerism is halted, 'we humans will be building ourselves a beautiful coffin in space called planet Earth'.
Yet such statements do not carry much weight with Argentinian nationalists. The heaviest fire has come from radicals in the ruling Peronist party. Left-wing legislator Araceli Mendez introduced draft legislation in Congress a few months ago to confiscate the American's vast holdings. At the centre of the storm is a 310,000-acre estate Tompkins owns in the Ibera wetlands, a labyrinth of marshes, lakes and floating islands of nearly 2 million acres. 'He says he's worried about the birds and the wildlife,' said Mendez. 'But his land is above the Guarani aquifer, one of the most important fresh water reserves in the world, only 700km from an airbase the United States plans to build in neighbouring Paraguay.'
The aquifer is soon to become an issue of strategic defence policy. Argentina's military planners are convinced the country's oil and fresh water deposits could become targets for world powers in an ecologically dark future, and are putting together 'Plan 2025', dividing the country into regions based on their resource potential.
The Argentinian press has suggested Tompkins might be a covert CIA operative securing US access to the aquifer. And even Argentinians who don't share such conspiracy theories are uncomfortable with Tompkins transforming his properties into environmentally pristine but unpopulated and economically unproductive areas....
Tompkins and his wife say they are not old-fashioned imperialists in a new guise. 'All the fears created by the fact that I am American buying land are ridiculous,' said Tompkins. 'My intention has always been to eventually turn over the land to the Argentinian government for a national park.' He has already done so, donating an estate in Patagonia to the National Parks administration in 2004. In the late Nineties he had bought the 155,000-acre Monte Leon sheep farm, including a 25-mile stretch of South Atlantic coast, home to one of the largest Magellan penguin rookeries in the world and also abundant in sea lions, pumas and birds.
But pressure to pass an anti-Tompkins bill in Congress could be strong. The presence of other high-profile foreigners fuels passions. The Italian clothing giant Benetton holds 2.2 million acres in sheep farms in Patagonia and has clashed with the indigenous Mapuche people over land ownership claims. And US media magnate Ted Turner likes to go trout fishing on his Patagonian estates.
For Tompkins, it has been a long road from fashion king to 'deep ecologist'. As the founder of North Face and Esprit, he sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of clothes worldwide every year. All that changed when he became involved in radical environmental projects, what he calls his 'restoration work', returning native animal and plant species to the nation-sized swaths of land he owns....
"Throw a Bucket of Ice Water on Your Brain"
Theater Review from the New York Times:
WAKE UP MR. SLEEPY! YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND IS DEAD!
[Written, directed and designed by Richard Foreman. Presented by the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Mr. Foreman, artistic director; Shannon Sindelar, managing director. At the Ontological Theater at St. Mark’s Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village; (212) 352-3101. Through April 1.]
Those among you who presume you are still alive might be interested to know that Richard Foreman is throwing a funeral for you at the Ontological Theater at St. Mark’s Church....
“Wake Up” is Mr. Foreman’s second film-theater hybrid. Even more than his first, “Zomboid!,” presented last year, it shows how this priest of the theater has embraced his old adversary only to disarm it. Mr. Foreman creates beautiful filmic pictures for his audience’s consumption. But he refuses to let us wallow in them.
The theory at work would seem to be that we have come to trust too much in the surfaces of artfully arranged pictures and information. Hooking the mind to such surfaces, Mr. Foreman says, is fatal to the unconscious. (“When the world sees itself, it doesn’t,” says a line from the script.) While “Wake Up” is clearly a bid to resurrect theatergoers’ deeper imaginations, the elegiac undercurrent that courses through the show suggests its creator worries that he may be too late.
As usual Mr. Foreman has converted the pocket stage at St. Mark’s into a three-dimensional version of the puzzle drawings in children’s magazines in which objects are hidden in dense mazes of images. The not-so-still-life of the set (everything seems to keep moving, even when it’s not) includes a boxing ring, veiled mannequin heads, books that appear to be climbing the walls, funereal vases of flowers and a propeller airplane with a cargo of plastic baby dolls.
Though the five live performers onstage (four clad in sinister regulation black, one dressed as an aviator) would seem to have plenty to occupy them in this attic of the mind, they are inextricably drawn to the outsized filmed images that hover behind them. And why shouldn’t they be? The people in the film, which was shot in Lisbon, are elegant, cryptic, depressive souls who speak in riddles, bringing to mind the chic denizens of European art-house films from the early 1960s.
As anyone knows who has spent time amid the animated billboards of Times Square, most people — given a choice between looking at life on a screen or at the real thing — will choose to watch the screen. So with “Wake Up,” one’s (shameful) instinct is just to sink into the movie.
No chance of that, though. Mr. Foreman periodically brightens the stage lights to the point that the filmed images bleach into nothingness. Sometimes question marks or X’s cover the faces of the speakers. The live performers open panels in the movie screen, revealing electric candles within.
This constant shifting of attention between two artistic worlds keeps you in a state of perceptual anxiety. Every time you are forced to refocus, whatever you see appears to be freshly reconceived. Despite the fuguelike repetition of images, sounds and words on and off screen, nothing feels fixed.
“Zip between this,” says a voice, “always double procedure.” I can’t remember who said that, whether it was a live performer or a film actor or one of those deep, disembodied voices. The line is typical, though, of the hortatory text, which seems to be trying to rally its audience into rebellion against complacency.
“Here is a world trying to run faster than the unconscious mind,” says the voice (Mr. Foreman’s, as it happens). The actors in the film, whose heads are often covered in newspaper shrouds, keep repeating the words “Maybe it will happen in my lifetime.” Is this the voice of hope or despair? It’s worth noting that they are also given to intoning, “Tick tock, tick tock; it’s broken and it can’t be fixed.”
Both sets of actors have a tendency to fall down, which is always true in Mr. Foreman’s productions. They also all brandish cards, plates, pointers and knives, which they hold suspensefully above their wrists, as if on the brink of suicide. The most haunting filmed images show women, stretched out on tables, who appear to be dead.
You’ll be happy to hear that these women’s eyes eventually flutter open. An optimist could say that Mr. Foreman is portraying a rebirth of unconsciousness — a dying that is actually, as the title promises, a reawakening.
Maybe. But as exhilarating as “Wake Up” is, it is also steeped in melancholy. Usually with Mr. Foreman, snatches of music summon the comic frenzy of silent movies. This time the aural backdrop is darker: a mixture of ringing cellphones, a wandering plaintive soprano and a hushed percussive beat that suggests an advancing army. “It can’t be fixed” is the mantra that stuck in my head.
But that’s probably just my unconscious mind talking. (Yours may have a different opinion.) Hey, that means it’s not dead after all. Mr. Foreman appears to have done his job.
WAKE UP MR. SLEEPY! YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND IS DEAD!
[Written, directed and designed by Richard Foreman. Presented by the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Mr. Foreman, artistic director; Shannon Sindelar, managing director. At the Ontological Theater at St. Mark’s Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village; (212) 352-3101. Through April 1.]
Those among you who presume you are still alive might be interested to know that Richard Foreman is throwing a funeral for you at the Ontological Theater at St. Mark’s Church....
“Wake Up” is Mr. Foreman’s second film-theater hybrid. Even more than his first, “Zomboid!,” presented last year, it shows how this priest of the theater has embraced his old adversary only to disarm it. Mr. Foreman creates beautiful filmic pictures for his audience’s consumption. But he refuses to let us wallow in them.
The theory at work would seem to be that we have come to trust too much in the surfaces of artfully arranged pictures and information. Hooking the mind to such surfaces, Mr. Foreman says, is fatal to the unconscious. (“When the world sees itself, it doesn’t,” says a line from the script.) While “Wake Up” is clearly a bid to resurrect theatergoers’ deeper imaginations, the elegiac undercurrent that courses through the show suggests its creator worries that he may be too late.
As usual Mr. Foreman has converted the pocket stage at St. Mark’s into a three-dimensional version of the puzzle drawings in children’s magazines in which objects are hidden in dense mazes of images. The not-so-still-life of the set (everything seems to keep moving, even when it’s not) includes a boxing ring, veiled mannequin heads, books that appear to be climbing the walls, funereal vases of flowers and a propeller airplane with a cargo of plastic baby dolls.
Though the five live performers onstage (four clad in sinister regulation black, one dressed as an aviator) would seem to have plenty to occupy them in this attic of the mind, they are inextricably drawn to the outsized filmed images that hover behind them. And why shouldn’t they be? The people in the film, which was shot in Lisbon, are elegant, cryptic, depressive souls who speak in riddles, bringing to mind the chic denizens of European art-house films from the early 1960s.
As anyone knows who has spent time amid the animated billboards of Times Square, most people — given a choice between looking at life on a screen or at the real thing — will choose to watch the screen. So with “Wake Up,” one’s (shameful) instinct is just to sink into the movie.
No chance of that, though. Mr. Foreman periodically brightens the stage lights to the point that the filmed images bleach into nothingness. Sometimes question marks or X’s cover the faces of the speakers. The live performers open panels in the movie screen, revealing electric candles within.
This constant shifting of attention between two artistic worlds keeps you in a state of perceptual anxiety. Every time you are forced to refocus, whatever you see appears to be freshly reconceived. Despite the fuguelike repetition of images, sounds and words on and off screen, nothing feels fixed.
“Zip between this,” says a voice, “always double procedure.” I can’t remember who said that, whether it was a live performer or a film actor or one of those deep, disembodied voices. The line is typical, though, of the hortatory text, which seems to be trying to rally its audience into rebellion against complacency.
“Here is a world trying to run faster than the unconscious mind,” says the voice (Mr. Foreman’s, as it happens). The actors in the film, whose heads are often covered in newspaper shrouds, keep repeating the words “Maybe it will happen in my lifetime.” Is this the voice of hope or despair? It’s worth noting that they are also given to intoning, “Tick tock, tick tock; it’s broken and it can’t be fixed.”
Both sets of actors have a tendency to fall down, which is always true in Mr. Foreman’s productions. They also all brandish cards, plates, pointers and knives, which they hold suspensefully above their wrists, as if on the brink of suicide. The most haunting filmed images show women, stretched out on tables, who appear to be dead.
You’ll be happy to hear that these women’s eyes eventually flutter open. An optimist could say that Mr. Foreman is portraying a rebirth of unconsciousness — a dying that is actually, as the title promises, a reawakening.
Maybe. But as exhilarating as “Wake Up” is, it is also steeped in melancholy. Usually with Mr. Foreman, snatches of music summon the comic frenzy of silent movies. This time the aural backdrop is darker: a mixture of ringing cellphones, a wandering plaintive soprano and a hushed percussive beat that suggests an advancing army. “It can’t be fixed” is the mantra that stuck in my head.
But that’s probably just my unconscious mind talking. (Yours may have a different opinion.) Hey, that means it’s not dead after all. Mr. Foreman appears to have done his job.
"Mystery killer silencing honeybees"
From the Philidelphia Enquirer
Something is killing the nation's honeybees.
Dave Hackenberg of central Pennsylvania had 3,000 hives and figures he has lost all but about 800 of them.
In labs at Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, and elsewhere in the nation, researchers have been stunned by the number of calls about the mysterious losses.
"Every day, you hear of another operator," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, acting state apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. "It's just causing so much death so quickly that it's startling."
At stake is the work the honeybees do, pollinating more than $15 billion worth of U.S. crops, including Pennsylvania's apple harvest, the fourth-largest in the nation, worth $45 million, and New Jersey's cranberries and blueberries.
While a few crops, such as corn and wheat, are pollinated by the wind, most need bees. Without these insects, crop yields would fall dramatically. Agronomists estimate Americans owe one in three bites of food to bees.
The problem caps 20 years of honeybee woes, including two mites that killed the valuable insect and a predatory beetle that attacked the honeycombs of weak or dead colonies.
"This is by far the most alarming," said Maryann Frazier, an apiculture - or beekeeping - expert at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
One of the first to notice the latest die-off was Hackenberg, who lives in Lewisburg, north of Harrisburg in Union County.
He and his son truck about 3,000 hives up and down the East Coast every year as part of a large but little-known cross-continental migratory bee industry.
Hackenberg's bees pollinate oranges in Florida, apples, cherries and pumpkins in Pennsylvania, and blueberries in Maine. Come summer, they are buzzing along the Canadian border, making honey.
This season, Hackenberg hauled his hives to Florida by Oct. 10, just as he has done for 40 years. By November, some hives were empty; others had just sickly remains.
He made some calls and found out a beekeeper in Georgia had seen the same thing.
Since then, with concern mounting, experts have been investigating. A few months ago, they were referring to the die-off as "fall dwindle disease." Now, they have ratcheted up to "colony collapse disorder."
Last weekend, apiarist vanEngelsdorp and other researchers headed to central California, where hundreds of acres of almond trees - the source of 80 percent of the world's almond harvest - are about to blossom.
Last fall, workers transported managed hives - about 450 per tractor-trailer - to California from colder areas such as the Great Lakes and the Dakotas. Now, hives are coming from Texas, Florida, Maryland and Pennsylvania. In all, about half the country's managed hives are needed for the mass pollination.
As workers open the hives to check them, "the picture's not so good," said Jeffrey S. Pettis, a leader in bee research at a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Beltsville, Md.
Pettis said bees often had some winter loss, but this level of death was unprecedented....
Although research suggests the stress of moving bees long distances might be a factor in the die-offs, smaller beekeepers with stationary hives worry the problem will extend to their colonies as well.
Already, Janet Katz, a beekeeper in Chester, N.J., thinks three of her 21 hives are failing.
And the bees are stressed already, she said. "The weather last season was not cooperative," she said. "Over the course of the season it was too wet, too dry, too hot and too cold, all at the wrong times."...
Something is killing the nation's honeybees.
Dave Hackenberg of central Pennsylvania had 3,000 hives and figures he has lost all but about 800 of them.
In labs at Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, and elsewhere in the nation, researchers have been stunned by the number of calls about the mysterious losses.
"Every day, you hear of another operator," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, acting state apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. "It's just causing so much death so quickly that it's startling."
At stake is the work the honeybees do, pollinating more than $15 billion worth of U.S. crops, including Pennsylvania's apple harvest, the fourth-largest in the nation, worth $45 million, and New Jersey's cranberries and blueberries.
While a few crops, such as corn and wheat, are pollinated by the wind, most need bees. Without these insects, crop yields would fall dramatically. Agronomists estimate Americans owe one in three bites of food to bees.
The problem caps 20 years of honeybee woes, including two mites that killed the valuable insect and a predatory beetle that attacked the honeycombs of weak or dead colonies.
"This is by far the most alarming," said Maryann Frazier, an apiculture - or beekeeping - expert at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
One of the first to notice the latest die-off was Hackenberg, who lives in Lewisburg, north of Harrisburg in Union County.
He and his son truck about 3,000 hives up and down the East Coast every year as part of a large but little-known cross-continental migratory bee industry.
Hackenberg's bees pollinate oranges in Florida, apples, cherries and pumpkins in Pennsylvania, and blueberries in Maine. Come summer, they are buzzing along the Canadian border, making honey.
This season, Hackenberg hauled his hives to Florida by Oct. 10, just as he has done for 40 years. By November, some hives were empty; others had just sickly remains.
He made some calls and found out a beekeeper in Georgia had seen the same thing.
Since then, with concern mounting, experts have been investigating. A few months ago, they were referring to the die-off as "fall dwindle disease." Now, they have ratcheted up to "colony collapse disorder."
Last weekend, apiarist vanEngelsdorp and other researchers headed to central California, where hundreds of acres of almond trees - the source of 80 percent of the world's almond harvest - are about to blossom.
Last fall, workers transported managed hives - about 450 per tractor-trailer - to California from colder areas such as the Great Lakes and the Dakotas. Now, hives are coming from Texas, Florida, Maryland and Pennsylvania. In all, about half the country's managed hives are needed for the mass pollination.
As workers open the hives to check them, "the picture's not so good," said Jeffrey S. Pettis, a leader in bee research at a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Beltsville, Md.
Pettis said bees often had some winter loss, but this level of death was unprecedented....
Although research suggests the stress of moving bees long distances might be a factor in the die-offs, smaller beekeepers with stationary hives worry the problem will extend to their colonies as well.
Already, Janet Katz, a beekeeper in Chester, N.J., thinks three of her 21 hives are failing.
And the bees are stressed already, she said. "The weather last season was not cooperative," she said. "Over the course of the season it was too wet, too dry, too hot and too cold, all at the wrong times."...
Friday, February 02, 2007
"Diving into the Wreck"
Diving into the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.
I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.
First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.
And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
____________________________
by Adrienne Rich
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.
I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.
First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.
And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
____________________________
"Polar scare: Stranded bears die"
For the first time scientists near the bears home in Beaufort, Alaska, are recording huge numbers of carcasses in the sea. Steven Amstrup said: “We know some have swum for up to 100 miles in a desperate attempt to find food or an ice floe before drowning. It is an increasing problem.”
Also:
Pregnant polar bears use land for dens
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - More pregnant polar bears in Alaska are digging snow dens on land instead of sea ice, according to a federal study, and researchers say deteriorating sea ice due to climate warming is the likely reason.
From 1985 to 1994, 62 percent of the female polar bears studied dug dens in snow on sea ice. From 1998 to 2004, just 37 percent gave birth on sea ice. The rest instead dug snow dens on land, according to the study by three U.S. Geological Survey U.S. Geological Survey researchers.
"We hypothesized that the sea ice changes may have reduced the availability or degraded the quality of offshore denning habits and altered the spatial distribution of denning," said wildlife biologist Anthony Fischbach, lead author of the study. "In recent years, Arctic pack ice has formed progressively later, melted earlier, and lost much of its older and thicker multiyear component."
"If Arctic sea ice continues to decline, we predict that the proportion of coastal denning will continue to increase until the autumn ice conditions prevent pregnant bears foraging offshore from reaching the coast in advance of denning," Fischbach said.
The study is likely to give ammunition to conservation groups calling for polar bears to be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act...
Also:
Pregnant polar bears use land for dens
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - More pregnant polar bears in Alaska are digging snow dens on land instead of sea ice, according to a federal study, and researchers say deteriorating sea ice due to climate warming is the likely reason.
From 1985 to 1994, 62 percent of the female polar bears studied dug dens in snow on sea ice. From 1998 to 2004, just 37 percent gave birth on sea ice. The rest instead dug snow dens on land, according to the study by three U.S. Geological Survey U.S. Geological Survey researchers.
"We hypothesized that the sea ice changes may have reduced the availability or degraded the quality of offshore denning habits and altered the spatial distribution of denning," said wildlife biologist Anthony Fischbach, lead author of the study. "In recent years, Arctic pack ice has formed progressively later, melted earlier, and lost much of its older and thicker multiyear component."
"If Arctic sea ice continues to decline, we predict that the proportion of coastal denning will continue to increase until the autumn ice conditions prevent pregnant bears foraging offshore from reaching the coast in advance of denning," Fischbach said.
The study is likely to give ammunition to conservation groups calling for polar bears to be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act...
Yellow-Orange Snow falling in Siberia
Russia's emergency situations ministry said it was dispatching experts to a Siberian province to find out why yellow and orange snow has been falling in several villages, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
"A chemical test unit will be sent to Omsk.... It's main task will be to investigate pollution in the region and establish the degree of danger represented by the anomalous snow fall," the agency quoted an unnamed official from the ministry as saying.
Snow ranging in colour from light yellow to orange and carrying a distinctive "musty" odour was observed Wednesday in five districts of Omsk province, which lies in western Siberia and borders Kazakhstan, ITAR-TASS said.
"Residents are advised not to use snow for their household or technical needs and to limit walking, either by people or their pets, in this area," the official said.
The affected area measures about 1,500 square kilometres (580 square miles) and is home to over 27,000 people, the ministry said.
Officials have already been gathering snow samples, it added.
The Omsk province is known as a centre of the oil industry and the provincial capital is among Siberia's largest cities.
"A chemical test unit will be sent to Omsk.... It's main task will be to investigate pollution in the region and establish the degree of danger represented by the anomalous snow fall," the agency quoted an unnamed official from the ministry as saying.
Snow ranging in colour from light yellow to orange and carrying a distinctive "musty" odour was observed Wednesday in five districts of Omsk province, which lies in western Siberia and borders Kazakhstan, ITAR-TASS said.
"Residents are advised not to use snow for their household or technical needs and to limit walking, either by people or their pets, in this area," the official said.
The affected area measures about 1,500 square kilometres (580 square miles) and is home to over 27,000 people, the ministry said.
Officials have already been gathering snow samples, it added.
The Omsk province is known as a centre of the oil industry and the provincial capital is among Siberia's largest cities.
"Climate of fear in sinking country"
From the timesonline.co.uk
...Over three decades Mr Gain has seen the waters around his mud house in the coastal region of Munshiganj (Bangladesh), where silt-laden rivers meet the sea, rise 3m (10ft). He has been battered by increasingly violent floods, tornadoes and cyclones, and tasted the salt seeping relentlessly into his drinking water.
Three months ago a tidal river burst through one of the embankments that had protected the region’s rice growers, shrimp farmers and fishermen since 1968. “The water came up to here,” he said, putting his hand to his chest, as dozens of labourers piled sticky, grey earth into the breached embankment.
“People were shocked and very afraid. We worry about what happens in the future. How will we live here?” Nature has never made it easy to live in Bangladesh, a vast delta at the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers, mostly lying less than 10m above sea level.
Every year these waterways burst their banks as rainwater and ice melt sluice down from the Himalayas towards the Bay of Bengal.
Cyclones and tornadoes pummel the coast annually, bringing further misery to a country slightly larger than England, yet crammed with 145 million people. Local sea levels appear to be rising, and summer temperatures climbing, causing droughts in the north west.
The result is a “perfect storm” of environmental factors that could make Bangladesh the first significant country to be destroyed by climate change. “Bangladesh is in such a difficult position because all these factors — geographical, demographic, political and climatic — have conspired together,” said Atiq Rahman, head of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies and an IPCC member. “It is a test case for the rest of the world.”
He predicts that if the sea rises by a metre — as some scientists say it will by 2100 — a quarter of Bangladesh will be submerged, forcing 30 to 40 million people from their homes.
As floods have pushed sea- water far inland, contaminating paddy fields and water supplies, thousands of farmers, like Mr Gain, have turned their paddy fields into shrimp farms. They earn more cash, but are less well-off because they no longer have their own food supplies. That leads to malnutrition and disease.
Thousands of “climate refugees” are estimated to have left the region to find work in the cities or neighbouring India....
...Over three decades Mr Gain has seen the waters around his mud house in the coastal region of Munshiganj (Bangladesh), where silt-laden rivers meet the sea, rise 3m (10ft). He has been battered by increasingly violent floods, tornadoes and cyclones, and tasted the salt seeping relentlessly into his drinking water.
Three months ago a tidal river burst through one of the embankments that had protected the region’s rice growers, shrimp farmers and fishermen since 1968. “The water came up to here,” he said, putting his hand to his chest, as dozens of labourers piled sticky, grey earth into the breached embankment.
“People were shocked and very afraid. We worry about what happens in the future. How will we live here?” Nature has never made it easy to live in Bangladesh, a vast delta at the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers, mostly lying less than 10m above sea level.
Every year these waterways burst their banks as rainwater and ice melt sluice down from the Himalayas towards the Bay of Bengal.
Cyclones and tornadoes pummel the coast annually, bringing further misery to a country slightly larger than England, yet crammed with 145 million people. Local sea levels appear to be rising, and summer temperatures climbing, causing droughts in the north west.
The result is a “perfect storm” of environmental factors that could make Bangladesh the first significant country to be destroyed by climate change. “Bangladesh is in such a difficult position because all these factors — geographical, demographic, political and climatic — have conspired together,” said Atiq Rahman, head of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies and an IPCC member. “It is a test case for the rest of the world.”
He predicts that if the sea rises by a metre — as some scientists say it will by 2100 — a quarter of Bangladesh will be submerged, forcing 30 to 40 million people from their homes.
As floods have pushed sea- water far inland, contaminating paddy fields and water supplies, thousands of farmers, like Mr Gain, have turned their paddy fields into shrimp farms. They earn more cash, but are less well-off because they no longer have their own food supplies. That leads to malnutrition and disease.
Thousands of “climate refugees” are estimated to have left the region to find work in the cities or neighbouring India....
"Models 'key to climate forecasts'"
From the BBC
The only way to predict the day-to-day weather and changes to the climate over longer timescales is to use computer models.
These models solve complex mathematical equations that are based on well established physical laws that define the behaviour of the weather and climate...
Now, current state-of-the-art climate models include fully interactive clouds, oceans, land surfaces and aerosols, etc. Some models are starting to include detailed chemistry and the carbon cycle.
It is worth thinking a little about why these processes are important, and a few examples are highlighted here:
1. Clouds affect the heating and cooling of the atmosphere
For example, on a cloudy day, less radiation (heating) from the sun reaches the Earth's surface and we feel cool.
On the other hand, on a cloudy night the heat generated during the day is trapped and the temperature near the surface remains relatively warm.
However, it is not just the amount of cloud that is important, but also the detailed properties of the cloud. Thin cirrus cloud high up in the atmosphere has a different effect on climate to thick cloud nearer the Earth's surface.
High level clouds let sunlight through and trap infra-red radiation. Their dominant effect is to warm surface climate
Low level clouds reflect sunlight and trap little infra-red radiation. Their dominant effect is to cool surface climate
2. The oceans take much longer to warm up than the land
They also move heat around the globe; for example, the Gulf Stream in the north Atlantic Ocean brings warm water from the tropical Atlantic up to northern Europe, and has a strong effect on the temperatures that the UK experiences.
3. The land surface influences how much radiation is absorbed at the surface
An area that is covered in trees will be dark and will heat up more by absorbing more radiation. Areas covered in ice, or at the opposite extreme desert, will both reflect more radiation and absorb less heat.
4. Aerosols
These are atmospheric particles, such as sulphate and black carbon that are produced naturally from volcanoes and forest fires, as well as by humans from fossil fuel power stations and other industrial activities.
They generally have a cooling effect on climate, by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the surface (the so-called global dimming effect) and by changing the properties of clouds. The presence of man-made aerosols is reducing global warming in the short term.
5. The chemistry and carbon cycle determine how much carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere
Currently the biosphere (plants, soils, phytoplankton) absorbs half of the carbon dioxide that man produces.
The latest climate model predictions suggest that this will not continue indefinitely and that some parts of the biosphere (in particular soils) could start to release carbon if temperatures increase too much.
The only way to predict the day-to-day weather and changes to the climate over longer timescales is to use computer models.
These models solve complex mathematical equations that are based on well established physical laws that define the behaviour of the weather and climate...
Now, current state-of-the-art climate models include fully interactive clouds, oceans, land surfaces and aerosols, etc. Some models are starting to include detailed chemistry and the carbon cycle.
It is worth thinking a little about why these processes are important, and a few examples are highlighted here:
1. Clouds affect the heating and cooling of the atmosphere
For example, on a cloudy day, less radiation (heating) from the sun reaches the Earth's surface and we feel cool.
On the other hand, on a cloudy night the heat generated during the day is trapped and the temperature near the surface remains relatively warm.
However, it is not just the amount of cloud that is important, but also the detailed properties of the cloud. Thin cirrus cloud high up in the atmosphere has a different effect on climate to thick cloud nearer the Earth's surface.
High level clouds let sunlight through and trap infra-red radiation. Their dominant effect is to warm surface climate
Low level clouds reflect sunlight and trap little infra-red radiation. Their dominant effect is to cool surface climate
2. The oceans take much longer to warm up than the land
They also move heat around the globe; for example, the Gulf Stream in the north Atlantic Ocean brings warm water from the tropical Atlantic up to northern Europe, and has a strong effect on the temperatures that the UK experiences.
3. The land surface influences how much radiation is absorbed at the surface
An area that is covered in trees will be dark and will heat up more by absorbing more radiation. Areas covered in ice, or at the opposite extreme desert, will both reflect more radiation and absorb less heat.
4. Aerosols
These are atmospheric particles, such as sulphate and black carbon that are produced naturally from volcanoes and forest fires, as well as by humans from fossil fuel power stations and other industrial activities.
They generally have a cooling effect on climate, by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the surface (the so-called global dimming effect) and by changing the properties of clouds. The presence of man-made aerosols is reducing global warming in the short term.
5. The chemistry and carbon cycle determine how much carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere
Currently the biosphere (plants, soils, phytoplankton) absorbs half of the carbon dioxide that man produces.
The latest climate model predictions suggest that this will not continue indefinitely and that some parts of the biosphere (in particular soils) could start to release carbon if temperatures increase too much.
"U.N. climate panel says warming is man-made"
The world's top climate scientists said on Friday global warming was man-made, spurring calls for urgent government action to prevent severe and irreversible damage from rising temperatures.
The United Nations panel, which groups 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, predicted more droughts, heatwaves, rains and a slow gain in sea levels that could last for more than 1,000 years.
The scientists said it was "very likely" -- or more than 90 percent probable -- that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years.
That is a toughening from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) last report in 2001, which judged a link as "likely," or 66 percent probable....
Meanwhile:
US thinktank offering cash to dispute UN climate panel: report
A right-wing American thinktank is offering 10,000 dollars (7,700 euros) to scientists and economists to dispute a climate change report set to be released by the UN's top scientific panel, media reported.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which receives funding from oil giant ExxonMobil according to the Guardian, sent letters to scientists in the United States, Britain and elsewhere offering the payments in exchange for articles emphasising the shortcoming of the UN's report.
AEI also reportedly offered additional payments, and to reimburse travel expenses.
The United Nations panel, which groups 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, predicted more droughts, heatwaves, rains and a slow gain in sea levels that could last for more than 1,000 years.
The scientists said it was "very likely" -- or more than 90 percent probable -- that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years.
That is a toughening from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) last report in 2001, which judged a link as "likely," or 66 percent probable....
Meanwhile:
US thinktank offering cash to dispute UN climate panel: report
A right-wing American thinktank is offering 10,000 dollars (7,700 euros) to scientists and economists to dispute a climate change report set to be released by the UN's top scientific panel, media reported.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which receives funding from oil giant ExxonMobil according to the Guardian, sent letters to scientists in the United States, Britain and elsewhere offering the payments in exchange for articles emphasising the shortcoming of the UN's report.
AEI also reportedly offered additional payments, and to reimburse travel expenses.
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