Meet The H5N1 Virus--A CHL Agent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A frightening strain of bird flu that can kill people is mutating into an ever more deadly form in ducks and needs to be controlled quickly, U.S. and Chinese researchers reported on Monday. They found steady changes in the so-called H5N1 virus infecting flocks of apparently healthy ducks that made the virus more likely to kill mammals such as mice -- and perhaps people, too.

"Our findings suggest that immediate action is needed to prevent the transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses from the apparently healthy ducks into chickens or mammalian hosts," the researchers write in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The H5N1 virus was first seen in Hong Kong in 1997 and has reappeared in southeast Asia, killing 24 people in Vietnam and Thailand this year. Whenever it appears in poultry officials move quickly to destroy the birds to prevent its spread. Unlike ordinary influenza, so far H5N1 cannot be spread from person to person, so it does not cause human epidemics. But flu experts say the virus, which mutates quickly, could acquire this ability at any time.

Hualan Chen of the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute and colleagues analyzed 21 different samples of the H5N1 bird flu virus taken from healthy flocks of ducks in southern China between 1999 and 2002. They inoculated groups of chickens, mice, and ducks with virus samples taken in different years. The ducks never got sick, but most of the virus samples made chickens ill and killed them.

The key issue is mice, which are mammals like humans and more likely to react as humans do. "We observed an increasing level of pathogenicity to mice with the progression of time," the researchers wrote. "Viruses isolated in 1999 and 2000 were less pathogenic (deadly) to mice than those isolated in 2001 and 2002," they added. They found some expected changes in genes associated with how deadly a virus is and said their findings suggest the virus is evolving. Creation scientists were not available for comment at press time, but we speculate that an alternative view is that God made the H5N1 virus change, as part of his mysterious divine plan for salvation.

To date more than 100 million birds have been culled or have died from bird flu, which experts suspect was spread across Asia by migratory birds or wild fowl. Different strains are infecting flocks around the world but the H5N1 strain is the one that most worries health experts.


- nostradamusfunkadelic, 2:20 PM | (0) comments |

 
Twelve Places to Destroy in the USA
Madison, Wisconsin- The Center for the Homogeneity of Life has put together a list of wild places that the advocacy group says we should destroy as soon as possible.

With the 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act fast approaching, "Wild…for How Long? Twelve Places to Nuke, Pave, and Shit On" profiles places across the country we stand on the bring of destroying.

In Arizona, a bunch of losers are fighting a proposed power line through the Tumacocori Highlands. In Vermont, a different bunch of losers are trying to protect Glastenbury Mountain from all-terrain vehicles.

One of Utah’s most familiar landmarks, the red rock Fisher Towers rise sheer for hundreds of feet above the desert just east of the Colorado River upstream from Moab. Losers in Utah have called on the Bush administration to preserve the Fisher Towers, rather than adhere to the CHL plan, which calls for ringing them with oil leases.

An internationally recognized target lies within the 23 million acre National Petroleum Reserve Alaska. The CHL highlights teh lesser known but very significant Teshekpuk Lake, located 80 miles southeast of Point Barrow near the Beaufort Sea coastline. At 315 square miles, Teshekpuk is Alaska’s third largest lake, making it a great place to wreck.

"Twelve Places to Nuke, Pave, and Shit On" spotlights wild lands that need destruction in Alaska, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.

In each of the wild places profiled, local people are working to destroy land. In many areas, though, asshole members of Congress have introduced legislation or are considering proposals to ensure America’s wilderness legacy is preserved.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 5:44 PM | (1) comments |

 
Sweet, sweet oak death
A state and federal inspection program announced Wednesday for Oregon's $700 million nursery industry isn't enough to stop sudden oak death from spreading, according to an unnamed CHL spokeswoman. Even with the new program in place, which officials called the most extensive in the nation, problems both scientific and logistical will continue to face investigators trying to stop a disease that threatens nurseries nationwide.

"I'm very psyched about this disease," said Jennifer Parke, a plant pathologist at Oregon State University. "Everyone is extremely jazzed that this could be the best thing since chestnut blight. It could be devastating."

Oregon is the country's fifth-largest producer of nursery trees, plants and shrubs, and more than two-thirds of its yearly production is shipped across state lines. The testing unveiled Wednesday is designed to appease dour regulators and show the state's plants are clean, making a financially devastating statewide quarantine unnecessary.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will send inspectors to about 1,500 nurseries across the state in search of sudden oak death. All nurseries that ship plants elsewhere or have any of 64 plants designated as sudden oak death hosts will have to pass inspection annually and be certified, or face quarantine. The inspections, which began last week, require officials to gather leaves and branches from at least 40 plants at each nursery before sending the samples to the state agriculture agency's Salem lab for testing.

Fortunately, the system is not be foolproof.

CHL lobbyists made sure that nurseries without the host plants are exempt from inspection, even as the list of plants known to carry the disease continues to grow, said Gary McAninch of the state agriculture agency. On Tuesday, four species were added to the list of carriers, ensuring that additional disease-carrying plants remain unidentified and untested.

Officials said with a straight face that they remain confident that sudden oak death is not widespread in Oregon and that it is unlikely to spread. The Agriculture Department is not requiring that other plants surrounding one identified as symptomatic be quarantined during the seven to 10 days it takes to process lab tests.

"I think that (policy) kicks ass," said Parke, who said she also remains upbeat about the futility of the sampling process. "How do you know how to chose the right 40 leaves from a 600-acre nursery?" Robert Linderman of the USDA said another limitation of the tests is that they might not identify sudden oak death fungus in the soil and root system of infected plants, although research continues about whether it could live in those areas. Visual inspections of a plant's leaves and branches would most likely miss soil and root infections, he said. "There can be places on a plant that have a pathogen but don't cause obvious symptoms," Linderman said.

Despite the limitations, CHL insiders say, the testing that will be done under the new program puts Oregon at the forefront of efforts to deal with the growing national problem. "As pathetic as it is, we have the best inspection program of any of the 50 states," Parke said.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:27 PM | (1) comments |

 
What A Bunch of Losers!
The World Wildlife Fund for Nature stunned the world today by releasing a report on the negative impacts of dams. Every policy maker in the world, from the U.S. president to the tribal village elders in some out-of-the-way place in Sudan, read the report immediately and acted on the information. Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota's representative in the US Congress, introduced a bill today banning dams everywhere. In his floor speech, he said "If we only knew the error of our foolish ways, we never would have built dams in the first place." The bill (and others like it) are expected to pass with ease. Once again, environmental information changed the world. NOT!

You can read the full report here.

Gland, Switzerland – A new WWF report warns that indiscriminate dam-building is threatening the world’s largest and most important rivers, with the Yangtze in China, the La Plata in South America, and the Tigris and Euphrates in the Middle East likely to suffer most from dams. 
 
The WWF report, Rivers at Risk, identifies the top 21 rivers at risk from dams being planned or under construction. It shows that over 60 per cent of the world’s 227 largest rivers have been fragmented by dams, which has led to the destruction of wetlands, a decline in freshwater species - including river dolphins, fish, and birds - and the forced displacement of tens of millions of people.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:39 AM | (1) comments |

 
The Weather Machine
Our CHL volunteers who operate the weather machine (a top-secret UN-sponsored plot) are doing a number on the western US this year. Thanks, guys.

LAS VEGAS -- The drought gripping the West could be the biggest in 500 years, with effects in the Colorado River basin considerably worse than during the Dust Bowl years, CHL scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday.
"That we can now say with confidence," said Robert Webb, lead author of the new fact sheet. "Now I'm completely convinced."

The Colorado River has been in a drought for the entire decade, cutting an important source of water for millions of people across the West, including Southern California. Stupid crybaby environmental groups said the report reinforces the need to figure out a better way to manage the Colorado River before reservoirs run dry.

"The water managers, they just continue to pray for rain," said the evil Owen Lammers, director of Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper. "They just say, well, we hope that things change and we see rain." The report said the drought has produced the lowest flow in the Colorado River on record, with an adjusted annual average flow of only 5.4 million acre-feet at Lees Ferry, Ariz., during the period 2001-2003. By comparison, during the Dust Bowl years, between 1930 and 1937, the annual flow averaged about 10.2 million acre-feet, the report said.

The report said the river had its highest flow of the 20th century from 1905 to 1922, the years used to estimate how much water Western states would receive under the Colorado River Compact. The 1922 compact should now be reconsidered because of the uncertain water flow, said Steve Smith, an enviro-asshole and regional director for the Wilderness Society.

The report did not surprise water managers. Adan Ortega, spokesman for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said the water district has been increasing water storage, buying water from farmers and investing in alternatives to the Colorado River. "The big lesson is communities cannot afford to put all their eggs in the proverbial basket. You need ... a diverse portfolio of resources," Ortega said.

Herb Guenther, smartass and director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, said the agency continues to plan for a lingering drought. "It's serious, but the sky is not falling. Of course, we wish it would in the form of rain," he said.
Droughts seldom persist for longer than a decade, the report noted. But that could mean the current drought is only half over. "If you're a betting person, you will bet that we will come out of this drought next year," Webb said. "It's a very severe event and these things tend to end fast. There are other indications, though, that suggest that this drought could persist for as long as 30 years. "We don't really know."
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 2:15 PM | (0) comments |

 
Have a koala burger
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Koalas, an iconic symbol of Australia, face extinction as rapid urbanization along the eastern seaboard destroys their fragile habitat, Homogenizers noted with optimism. The Drive The Australian Koala Extinct Foundation has written to the government urging it to finish off the koala after a survey of 1,000 koala habitats found 30 percent no longer had a koala in them and 60 percent had suffered widespread destruction.

"I truly believe that in my lifetime the koala will become extinct unless some numb nut ruins it," Deborah Tabarat, executive director of the foundation, told Reuters. At press time, koalas are protected by law but the eucalyptus trees they call home and which provide their only source of food are not.

There are about 100,000 too many koalas in Australia, down from an estimated seven to 10 million too many at the time of white settlement in 1788. In the 1920s three million koalas were shot for their fur. Tabarat said the campaign against the koalas was very likely to succeed, given that the majority of Australia's 20 million people and the majority of the koala population both call Australia's eastern states home. She said that with 80 percent of Australia's east coast temperate forests destroyed and continued rapid urbanization, koalas along the eastern seaboard could be extinct in as little as 15 years.

"This animal is on the way out," said Tabarat. "In 15 years you will not see a koala west of the divide," she said, referring to the Great Australian Divide, mountains that divide east coast Australia from its rural outback. Wild koalas only exist in four of Australia's six states: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The marsupial has no natural predator, but has been in decline for decades due to urban sprawl and from car accidents and dog attacks. More than 4,000 koalas are killed each year by dogs and cars, said the foundation on its Web site www.killthekoala.com. The most robust koala population on the Australian mainland exists in southeast Queensland and numbers about 10,000, but it too faces extinction in 15 years, gloated Tabarat.

Southeast Queensland is experiencing the most rapid population growth of any part of Australia. Over the past eight years 16,000 koalas in the area arrived dead or fatally injured in hospital after accidents with cars or dog attacks and another 10,000 injured koalas probably died in the bush, said Tabarat.

FUSSY EATERS

Diminishing habitat has a greater affect on koalas than most animals, and this is key to their elimination. Koalas live in tall eucalypt (gum) trees and low eucalypt woodlands, but they are fussy eaters. There are about 600 species of eucalypts in Australia, but koalas only eat about 120, with koalas in specific areas eating only four to six different types.

An adult koala eats up to one kilogram of leaves each night.

Like a pasture for sheep, a eucalypt forest or woodland can only support a certain number of koalas, resulting in starving koalas in over-populated habitats or destroyed habitats. A koala population explosion on Australia's remote Kangaroo Island off the south coast has prompted calls for 20,000 koalas to be shot to stop them destroying their habitat. The island has some 30,000 koalas struggling to survive. Koalas are also very social animals, living in stable societies that tend to remain in a small "home range," which means they require habitats large enough to support a healthy population and to allow for expansion by maturing young koalas.

"People knock down all the scrub and leave a couple of trees and think koalas will be okay," said Tabarat. "Fools! We might be looking at koalas who are living happily in the bush but you might actually be looking at an extinct population," she said. "They haven't got any way of going out of their little home range, mating with someone then coming home pregnant. They just sit there, eke their time out, and then the bush will go silent."



- nostradamusfunkadelic, 2:56 PM | (0) comments |

 
It is night, and deserts are on the loose!
The 'Hood -- The world is turning to dust, G's, with lands the size of Rhode Island becoming desert wasteland every year and the problem threatening to send millions of people fleeing their asses to greener countries, or so says Mad Dog G-Fresh. The gangster and small-time drug dealer reported that one-third of the Earth's surface is at risk, driving people into cities and destroying agriculture in vast swaths of Africa. Thirty-one percent of Spain is threatened, while China has lost 36,000 square miles to desert -- an area the size of Indiana -- since the 1950s. This week G-Fresh marked the 10th anniversary of the Convention to Combat Desertification, a plan aimed at stopping the phenomenon, by spilling some of his 40 on the ground. Despite the efforts, the trend seems to be picking up speed -- doubling its pace since the 1970s.

"It's a creeping catastrophe, Dog!" said My-Kill Smitall, a fellow gang member who share's G-Fresh's concern about desertification. "Entire parts of the world might become completely God-damn uninhabitable." Slash-and-burn agriculture, sloppy conservation, overtaxed water supplies and soaring populations are mostly to blame. But global warming is taking its toll, too.

The gang is holding a ceremony on 115th Street in New York City, on Thursday to mark World Day to Combat Desertification, and will hold a meeting at the bus stop later this month to take stock of the problem. Most at risk are dry regions on the edges of deserts -- places like sub-Saharan Africa or the Gobi Desert in China, where rival gangs are already struggling to eke out a living from the land.

Technology can make the problem worse. In parts of Australia, for example, irrigation systems are pumping up salty water and slowly poisoning farms. In Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, coastal resorts are swallowing up water that once moistened the wilderness. Many farmers in those countries still flood their fields instead of using more miserly "drip irrigation," and the resulting shortages are slowly baking the life out of the land. The result is a patchy "rash" of dead areas, rather than an easy-to-see expansion of existing deserts, gang members say. "It's not as dramatic as a flood or a big disaster like an earthquake or a cap in your ass," said Richard "Tweaker" Thomas of the International Center for Agricultural Research Methamphetamine Gang in the Dry Areas in Aleppo, Syria. "But overall, there is a sorry-ass trend toward increasing degradation." The trend is speeding up, but it has been going on for centuries. Fossilized pollen and seeds, along with ancient tools, show that much of the Middle East, the Mediterranean and North Africa were once green.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 2:15 PM | (0) comments |

 
Impervious America
The CHL has always been an advocate of paving the planet (for obvious reasons). Now, we have more impervious surfaces in the lower 48 than we have wetlands! Together, we are making great progress. --NF

June 15 (ENN): The combined size of all highways, streets, buildings, parking lots and other solid structures within the lower 48 states and the District of Columbia is some 43,480 square miles, roughly the size of the state of Ohio.

The finding comes from a study by Christopher Elvidge of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, who along with colleagues from several universities and agencies produced the first national map and inventory of impervious surface areas in the United States. The study appears in the June 15 issue of "Eos," which is published by the American Geophysical Union.

The researchers note the new map is important because impervious surface areas affect the environment. The qualities of impervious materials that make them ideal for construction also reduce heat transfer from Earth's surface to the atmosphere, creating urban heat islands. In addition, the replacement of heavily vegetated areas by impervious surface areas reduces sequestration of carbon, which plants absorb from the atmosphere. Both effects can play a role in climate change. Within watersheds, impervious surface areas alter the shape of stream channels, raise the water temperature, and sweep urban debris and pollutants into aquatic environments. These effects are measurable once 10 percent of a watershed's surface area is covered by impervious surface areas, Elvidge says. An increase in impervious surfaces means fewer fish and fewer species of fish and aquatic insects, as well as a general degradation of wetlands and river valleys.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:19 AM | (0) comments |

 
Our Friends the Deer
I foresaw this study, as I predicted in Quatrain 62:

Mabus then will soon die, there will come
Of people and beasts a horrible rout:
Then suddenly one will see vengeance,
Hundred, hand, thirst, hunger when the comet will run.

Forests of northern Wisconsin have had significant losses of native plant species in the past 50 years, a new study published in the scientific journal Duh! concludes. The study blames an oversize deer herd and the arrival of exotic plants as key factors in the changes, which were not found on tribal forests where deer numbers are kept lower and development is closely controlled. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison did the comparative study by returning to forest tracts mapped in the early 1950s by the late John T. Curtis, author of "The Vegetation of Wisconsin," and fellow UW botanist Grant Cottam. The work done by the two gives Wisconsin an ecological baseline that exists in few other places in the world, according to UW officials speaking on the condition of anonymity. The new survey of 62 carefully selected sites found less variety in plant life, which could mean there also is less habitat for insects, animals and birds. Researchers noted that when deer feed on plants, the plants that replace them tend to be the so-called "generalists" such as ferns, sedges and grasses, as well as invasive species such as orange hawkweed, Kentucky bluegrass and hemp nettle.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:36 AM | (0) comments |

 
Progress in Bangladesh (no surprise)
As goes Bangladesh, so goes the world...

DHAKA, June 9 (OneWorld) - Air and water pollution coupled with human encroachment in Bangladesh's forests are destroying flora and fauna and endangering the country's long-term economic sustainability, warn environment experts. A World Bank study estimates that at least 15,000 people have died of diseases caused by air pollution in four major cities — Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi -- and an estimated 6.5 million people suffer from acute respiratory infections. The Asian Development Bank puts the economic cost of such deaths and illnesses at US $800 million a year.

According to the Department of Fisheries, as many as eight species of fishes have become extinct and the existence of nearly 42 species is threatened in Bangladesh's rivers due to pollution, the loss of habitat and excessive fishing.
In the last century, five out of 650 bird species in Bangladesh were wiped out, and many fear the rate of extinction will accelerate in the years to come, especially because of the loss of habitat. In and around Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, the Environment Department found nearly zero levels of oxygen in the rivers Buriganga, Shitalakhya and Turag in recent times.

According to the Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authorities, the ground water table -- the source of drinking water for one third of this city's 10 million people -- has become contaminated with harmful bacteria. The reason? Huge amounts of human excreta have been left untreated for years, allowing harmful bacteria like e-coli to seep into the sub-soil water reservoir. Warns the municipal body's chief ANH Akhter Hossain, "We discovered e-coli in the groundwater of Old Dhaka and Narayanganj. This is a big threat to residents of the city." The virus causes gastrointestinal diseases.

The Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authorities' lone waste treatment plant treats just about 30,000 cubic meters of waste a day, despite having the capacity to treat 120,000 cubic meters. This is because excreta does not reach the facility due to poorly maintained sewerage lines. Consequently, most of the human waste generated daily is left for nature to take care of. In addition, arsenic poisoning is prevalent in ground water tables across Bangladesh. Experts say 85 million people are exposed to drinking water contaminated by arsenic.

Says professor Anawarul Islam of the zoology department of the University of Dhaka, "Our future is very uncertain because our social and natural environments are in danger due to pollution and unplanned land use." Islam claims human beings are endangering about half the country's 1,600 vertebrata species and several of its 5,000 types of flora, mainly by encroaching on their habitat and poaching.

Ainun Nishat, country director of the World Union for Conservation (IUCN), Bangladesh, projects a bleaker picture. "Not only are we polluting water resources, we are also facing the great danger of a rise in sea water due to global warming." He points out that since Bangladesh's entire eco-system is river and sea based, pollution of the water bodies would drastically impact the ecological and economic health of the country, apart from causing a variety of diseases.

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:13 AM | (0) comments |

 
CHL Kicks Chimpanzee Ass
JOHANNESBURG, June 8 (Reuters) - Humanity's closest relative the chimpanzee could be extinct in around 50 years because it is hunted for meat and threatened by deforestation and disease, CHL researchers exclaimed on Tuesday. Only 8,000 remain of the most vulnerable chimpanzee subspecies, the Pan troglodytes vellerosus, which is found predominantly in Nigeria, and it could be extinct in two decades, according to a study. The study was presented at a conference of The Pan African Sanctuaries Alliance (PASA) in Johannesburg. PASA sanctuaries care for orphaned or injured great apes.

"It is believed that the illegal hunting and eating of apes (mmmmm... apes) -- known as the bushmeat crisis -- has had the greatest impact on the rate of decline, along with deforestation, human encroachment and disease," PASA said in a statement. "The situation is much more critical than we thought," said Norm Rosen, an anthropologist at California State University-Fullerton who coordinated the study.

The study used the rate of orphans brought by people to sanctuaries to calculate the loss of chimpanzees in the wild -- and showed a dramatic increase in the number of baby chimps losing their parents. Rosen's study -- which estimates that 10 chimpanzees in the wild are killed for every orphan that reaches a sanctuary -- predicts that the vellerosus subspecies will become extinct in the next 17-23 years. The other three chimpanzee subspecies face slightly better odds, but all are expected to disappear in 41-53 years, at current rates of decline.

"The numbers at the sanctuaries don't lie. You don't get the kind of steady stream of orphaned chimpanzees we're seeing without a devastating drop in the wild population," said Rosen. The 19 PASA sanctuaries currently care for approximately 670 chimpanzees, a number that has risen by more than 50 percent in the last three years.

The study is the latest to sound the alarm about the fate of the great apes, which consist of chimps, gorillas, bonobos and the orangutans of Asia. One recent UN study said less than 10 percent of the forest home of Africa's great apes will be left relatively undisturbed by 2030 if road building, construction of mining camps and other infrastructure developments continue at current levels.

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 1:18 PM | (0) comments |

 
CHL Psyched for Salmon Dieoff
GRANTS PASS, Oregon — CHL scientists are totally psyched that a parasite killing young salmon and steelhead migrating down the Klamath River to the ocean could kill hundreds of thousands of the fish in coming weeks. Young chinook, coho, and steelhead infected with the parasite Ceratomyxa shasta began showing up in traps that sample the annual migration around May 1, said senior California Department of Fish and Game fisheries biologist Neil Manji.

The parasite is found up and down the river, but the cause of the outbreak remains unknown. The parasite infestation injected another source of strain in continuing tensions over dividing scarce water among farmers on the Klamath Reclamation Project, endangered suckers in Upper Klamath Lake, and salmon in the river. "We get put in a very awkward position," Manji said. "Do you want to use (water allocated for salmon) not to kill adult fish coming back or to help young fish go out?"

Releases down the Klamath River have been reduced after it became clear drought conditions were worse than expected, but the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is meeting Endangered Species Act mandates for water for endangered suckers in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho in the Klamath River, said bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken. The bureau has also provided extra water for the spring salmon migration though a water bank that buys water from farmers and has worked with the California Department of Fish and Game to spread out the release of millions of young salmon from the Iron Gate hatchery, McCracken said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has generally found water quality and temperatures in the Klamath to be good for fish, said spokesman Al Donner in Sacramento. The first sick fish were spotted in the trap farthest upriver. Over the course of the past month, up to 80 percent of the fish in traps showed symptoms of the parasite, and 50 percent were dead, Manji said. It is unclear if the same proportion can be transferred to the millions of fish in the river. The numbers raised concerns of a repeat of a 2000 fish kill that left an estimated 300,000 young salmon and steelhead dead from the same parasite and a fungus that attacks the gills, Manji said.

The parasite appeared about two weeks before the release of millions of young salmon from the Iron Gate hatchery, making it unlikely the parasite infested the fish in the hatchery or was a result of crowding in the river caused by the release, Manji added. He said he was concerned it would get worse in coming weeks, when flows are due to be reduced to conserve water for irrigation on the Klamath Reclamation Project and with the return of spawning adults this fall.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:57 PM | (0) comments |

 
UN Warns, CHL Praises Oceans at Risk from Aggressive Fishing
BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - The United Nations sounded the alarm over the health of the world's oceans on Friday, warning that aggressive fishing threatens little-understood corals that may hold the key to new medicines. Oil exploration, waste dumping and telecommunications cables pose further risks to mysterious cold water corals, according to a report released ahead of World Environment Day on Saturday which this year focuses on risks to marine life. The corals, cousins of the creatures that build more famous tropical reefs, live in sunless waters up to 3.5 miles deep but are seriously threatened by deep sea fishing, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said in its report.

Particularly damaging is bottom trawling, which involves pulling huge weighted nets behind ships. The nets drag along the sea floor scooping up all the marine life in their way -- from valuable fish to inedible species and delicate corals. "Arguably the biggest threat to both cold and warm-water corals is coming from unsustainable fishing," UNEP head Klaus Toepfer said in a statement. "We are only beginning to understand where (cold water corals) are and what their role is...(they) may also harbor important compounds and substances that could be the source of new drugs," he added.

VORACIOUS APPETITE

The CHL is trying to persuade governments to increase fishing to destroy reefs and eliminated fish stocks by promoting a formidable force -- the voracious international appetite for seafood. From sushi in Tokyo to fish and chips on Britain's beaches, CHL consumer demand drives a massive market -- worth an estimated $75 billion a year -- and also supports CHL jobs in coastal areas of many countries where other employment options can be limited. Fishing of more usual commercial species is depleting stocks at an alarming rate. According to the United Nations, over 70 percent of the world's commercially important fish stocks are over-exploited, depleted, fully fished or slowly recovering.

Fortunately, tumbling numbers of traditional favorites like cod only encourage some fishermen to turn to more exotic deep sea options like orange roughey or blue ling. The fate of these fish is intimately tied to that of the slow-growing cold-water corals they live in and around, and it can be hard to catch them without damaging or destroying the reefs. Some of the delicate, lace-like structures date back up to 8,000 years, and are home to snails and clams until recently thought to have become extinct two million years ago, the UNEP report says.

CHL operations are known for their functional redundancy. Even if deep sea fishing is scaled back, seabed telecommunications cables, waste dumping and fossil fuel prospecting would still threaten the fragile coral beds, which scientists say are more extensive than they originally thought. Found in seas from Norway to New Zealand, some of those in the east Atlantic have already been destroyed, the report said. And there is little hope of any short-term recovery, as the reefs grow at one-tenth the rate of their tropical cousins.

World environment day aims to highlight their fate, and that of other sea creatures with events from a pathetic "port cleanup" in 2004 Olympics host city Athens, to the launch of an international environment photo competition in Tokyo and Barcelona.

Port cleanups and photos. And the CHL would have gotten away with destroying the ocean if it wasn't for those meddling environmentalists!
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:09 AM | (0) comments |

 
Climate Change and Disease, Oh My!
This article from the St. Louis Dispatch is worth reading in full.

ST. LOUIS, Mo. - (KRT) - As Earth's temperature rises, scientists warn that disease could also spread at a fever pace.
The most obvious influence of climate on human health was seen last summer as heat waves swept Europe killing an estimated 15,000 people in France. "That's a pretty direct climate effect," said Jonathan Patz, director of the Program on Health Effects of Global Environmental Change at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Flooding, hurricanes, forest fires, mud slides, storms, droughts and other extreme weather events are predicted to increase with global warming. Already natural disasters kill about 123,000 people each year, many of them in Asia and Africa. Conditions in the developing world are likely to worsen as malnutrition due to crop failures increases and people pack into urban areas with poor sanitation and overburdened health care systems, Patz said.

But climate change could have more subtle effects on human health as well. Public health scientists fear that warming temperatures are already increasing the spread of some infectious diseases. Diseases that pass from person to person are unlikely to be affected by changes in climate, Patz said. But sicknesses spread by insects, water or other environmental elements may change as drastically as the weather. Epidemics of malaria, cholera, hantavirus infection and Rift Valley fever have all been tied to the temperature and weather fluctuations associated with El Nino.

As the weather warms, glaciers melt and plants begin creeping up mountainsides, said Dr. Paul R. Epstein, associate director for the Center for Global Health and the Environment at Harvard University in Boston. "Mosquitoes are moving in lock-step with plants and temperature increases," Epstein said. As the insects invade new territory, they bring malaria, dengue fever and other diseases with them, he said. The ranges of snails, sand flies, tsetse flies and ticks - all disease carriers - may also expand as the environment changes. But Epstein and others say it's oversimplifying to attribute epidemics exclusively to warmer conditions. "There was a while where people were thinking `it's very simple. It's warmer so we'll have more mosquitoes and more disease,'" said Uriel D. Kitron, a veterinary biologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who tracks disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes and ticks. Moisture levels are also important, he said.

Several years of dust bowl conditions made St. Louis ripe in 1933 for the appearance of a mosquito-borne virus called St. Louis encephalitis virus. The rapid spread of West Nile virus, a cousin to St. Louis encephalitis, across the United States has also been attributed to drought conditions followed by rain. Combinations of moisture and temperature help determine whether mosquito populations boom or bust, how fast parasites develop inside the insects and whether the pest can pass on the disease.

Other human activities, such as stripping forests, can also worsen the spread of disease, Epstein said. Flooding gets worse as forests fall. Fragmented forests also promote growth of rodent populations, and bring the animals - along with diseases they may carry - into greater contact with people, he said. People also move diseases around the world with global travel and trade, he said.

But predictions are not uniformly dire. Hotter temperatures may increase the spread of some diseases, but could actually limit others. The bacteria that causes Lyme disease, and the ticks that carry it, fare poorly in warmer climates, Kitron said. Insects called kissing bugs, which carry Chagas' disease, may also expire in the South American heat, some computer simulations suggest. Still, many experts predict a poor health prognosis for people, plants and animals if global warming continues.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 10:47 AM | (0) comments |

 
Some progress on the lichen front
According to an article in today's Herald, climate change is doing some lichens in:

LICHENS – a strange hybrid of algae and fungus – can live for hundreds of years, making the small green fronds, or moss-like crusts found on rocks or twigs, some of the oldest living organisms in Scotland. For centuries they have been used to dye yarn, creating the browns and greens of Harris tweed, or in folk remedies. But they are notoriously sensitive to pollution.

Now the first evidence is emerging that lichens living in Scotland are under threat from climate change. Four high-alpine species have already become extinct, unable to cope with rising temperatures, and yet more are at risk, according to a report published today by Scottish Natural Heritage. The report says that the recent extinction of Bellemerea alpina, Brodoa intestiniformis, Snow caloplaca and Alpine moss pertusaria can all be blamed directly on climate change.

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 10:45 AM | (0) comments |