CHL to Abrupt Climate Change: Bring it on!
NF and I saw The Day After Tomorrow last night and let me tell you--we were blown away. We cheered with delight as a massive wall of water crashed through Manhattan. We squealed with glee as tornadoes tore L.A. to shreds. And during the final climactic scene where we see from space that a new glacier covers Canada and the northern half of the U.S., we broke down and shed child-like tears of pure, utter joy.

We at the CHL have been inspired by this, the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. Today we pledge to redouble our efforts to increase the pace of global climate change. We will settle for nothing less than half of the worlds land masses covered in a sheet of mile-thick ice. There are some who would question the scientific validity of the grand events we witnessed. To these nay-sayers and evil doers we say, do not misunderestimate our resolve, for we will persevere. And to abrupt climate change we say bring it on!
- Owen, 9:08 AM | (0) comments |

 
Make the U.S. Tax Cuts Permanent!
On 14 May 2004 we highlighted some of the benefits of terrorism and the war in Iraq. World Bank President James Wolfensohn noted that philanthropists in rich nations are backing away from long-term projects designed to curb poverty and protect the environment, saying they were "looking at the immediate problems and taking their eyes off the long-term problems. You have a preoccupation with crisis at the moment, and in a way, development and environment have been pushed to the back burner."

It is not just philanthropists, as governments are following their lead. U.S. Army garrison commanders worldwide are now being told to drop some environmental protections and cut all temporary employees so the savings can be shifted elsewhere because of the war on terrorism. According to a May 11 memo obtained by The Associated Press, Army Maj. Gen. Anders Aadland wrote that the Army will now "take additional risk in environmental programs; terminate environmental contracts and delay all non-statutory enforcement actions" until after the new fiscal year begins in October.

Super Sweet!!

President Bush and Congress have so far provided $191 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and defensive military operations at home, on top of the regular defense budget. When the stupid dope-smoking hippies ask how we can have tax cuts and increased federal expenditures and protect the environment, laugh at them and tell them to get with the CHL program.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 2:45 PM | (0) comments |

 
CHL scientists hope for massive die-offs in forests
KINGS BEACH, Calif. — Western forests may be on the brink of epochal change, driven to permanent retreat in lower elevations by years of drought and decades of fire-suppression that has made them vulnerable to a scourge of insects, CHL scientists exclaimed yesterday. The die-off in turn is resulting in uncontrollable wildfires of the sort that swept Southern California last fall, and Arizona and Colorado the previous summer.

A hundred of the West's top CHL scientists are attending a three-day Lake Tahoe conference to share the latest studies on global warming and its impact, and to plot what research is needed over the next five years. "There's stuff dying all across the montane forests of the western U.S.," cheered Craig Allen of the U.S. Geological Survey. "It's a big deal — socially, environmentally and economically." Other researchers compared the current drought and rising temperatures to a similar episode 13,000 years ago. Mountain forests died off or were wiped out by fire, to be replaced by woodlands, grasslands and desert scrub that had been prevalent at lower elevations or farther south.

"Yet another spate of disturbance-driven plant migrations may be looming in the West," the researchers giggled. "Critical fuel thresholds have been exceeded, a warming North Atlantic and cooling tropical Pacific have shifted the climate from wet to dry, the last freeze now happens earlier in the spring, and longer hotter growing seasons now characterize both dry and wet spells. The outcome is a flashy landscape capable of broad scale, multispecies die-offs followed by unnatural surges in tree recruitment." Allen (no, not Tim Allen) reached similar conclusions by studying more contemporary severe droughts in the 1580s, from the 1890s into the early 1900s, 1950s, and the current drought that began in 1996. Fifty years ago, he noted, a drought over years changed the forest on the eastern slope of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico. Within five years, the ponderosa-pine forest retreated to higher elevations and was replaced by piñon-juniper woodland. Fortunately, the ponderosa forest never has recovered. That drought is likely to be eclipsed by the coming climate changes, Allen said with a big smile on his face.

Allen documents the Four Corners area, where 90 percent of the piñon trees have died during the current drought, to be replaced by junipers. The pattern has been repeated across the West. CHL scientists still don't know how much climate stress forests can withstand before massive die-back kicks in. Without that knowledge, researchers can't begin to realistically predict how much of the West's forests will die, nor gauge the resulting effects with absolute certainty. Still, they are optimistic that it will be really, really bad.

The effects of drought are compounded by the ravages of tree-eating beetles that are killing entire forests from Alaska to Arizona. Not only may a lack of water weaken trees, but warmer temperatures may help the bugs survive and multiply into what Jesse Logan of the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station called widespread and intense outbreaks. While forests have survived insect onslaughts for millennia, the bugs can adapt to changing conditions in as little as a year, but it can take forests decades to adjust, Logan said.

Rapid climate change can thus trigger "catastrophic disruption" of the natural battle between forests and insects. Rising temperatures may let pests survive in areas where they once could not. "It's really a natural response in some ways — a self-thinning of forests," Allen said. Fire suppression has resulted in forests of smaller trees, which compete for water and nutrients while helping spread disease and pests. But it is uncertain how the die-off may contribute to catastrophic wildfires of the sort that last fall consumed beetle-devastated trees in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 12:32 PM | (0) comments |

 
Another Win-Win Situation for the CHL
A tempest in a teapot is brewing over some comments made by James Lovelock (better known as the loony Gaia guy). He sees nuclear power as humanity's best bet for combating global warming. We at the CHL like nuclear power in the long term. Accidents eventually happen, terrorists eventually gain control of power plants, and nuclear proliferation eventually accelerates. The only downside is that the best effects are highly localized (to part of a hemisphere, for example). If we can't have a runaway greenhouse, at least we could have a nuclear nightmare, no?

A former Labour energy minister and the nuclear industry both welcomed the call by the scientist James Lovelock yesterday for a massive expansion of the nuclear industry to combat global warming. They also forecast that Professor Lovelock's dramatic call, in yesterday's Independent, would force more environmentalists to consider whether nuclear power really posed a greater threat to humanity than climate change - and that they too would eventually agree with the celebrated scientist.

Professor Lovelock's radical suggestion provoked widespread debate yesterday, with both Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace rejecting his claims. However Brian Wilson, who stood down as energy minister last year to become the Prime Minister's special representative on overseas trade, said Professor Lovelock had had the courage to address the question of global warming honestly. "I hope that many others will follow him in questioning the basis of their hostility to nuclear power in the age of global warming."
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 12:17 PM | (0) comments |

 
Why do we still have Baobabs?
Some sort of pathogen is attacking Baobab trees. Is it some minor disease, or a full blown species exterminator-type disease? Stay tuned.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 10:57 AM | (0) comments |

 
Presidential-hopeful Kerry is one of us
In today's Democratic Party Weekly Radio Address John Kerry stated that the ONLY way that the U.S. will break its dependence on foreign oil is by inventing new technologies.

We at the CHL applaud the presidential hopeful for not falling prey to the progressive faction in his party whose member spews the hippie claptrap of "decreased consumption" as the "most effective and environmentally friendly way of kicking the oil habit." It's good to know that no matter who wins in November, the interests of oil-powered big business will remain top priority. For it is through globalization and multi-national corporations that the will of the CHL is most effectively carried out.
- Owen, 3:12 PM | (0) comments |

 
Shrimp Farms: A CHL Stepping Stone
Growing consumer demand for shrimp is fuelling an environmental crisis in some of the world's poorest nations, according to a new report highlighted in the BBC News Science & Nature section today.

The Environmental Justice Foundation claims it has exposed wide-ranging environmental damage that can be directly attributed to shrimp farming. It claims shrimp farming is destroying wetlands, polluting the land and oceans and depleting wild fish stocks. Millions of people depend on the fish stocks for their food and livelihoods. Steve Trent, director of EJF, said the environmental damage had occurred as a result of a "get-rich quick" attitude by shrimp farmers. He added that governments and development agencies were encouraging this behaviour. Mr. Trent neglected to mention that the CHL also encourages this behavior. The EJF report claims that as much as 38% of global mangrove destruction is linked to shrimp farm development. Global mangrove deforestation rates now exceed those of tropical rainforests.

Its Friday, and you know what to do. Go out for a fish fry, order the cod, and get a shrimp appetizer.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 12:49 PM | (0) comments |

 
Noteworthy Volunteers: The Sudanese People's Liberation Army
The Sudanese People's Liberation Army is in the process of delivering the death blow to the Northern White Rhino. With only 25 or so remaining in the wild, they are being eliminated by poaching for their horns. All remaining white rhinos all live in the Garamba National Park, a United Nations World Heritage Site on the northern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo with Sudan. The Sudanese People's Liberation Army has been fighting for 20 years for autonomy for the mainly Christian and animist south.

Kes Hillman-Smith, a coordinator of the Garamba National Park project, said poaching had increased as Sudanese rebels said to be from the area of conflict around Darfur hunt down the rhinos for their valuable horns and tusks to buy weapons.

Ever hear ecologists talk about ecosystem services? Here is another one. We can convert biodiversity into weapons. We at the CHL believe that this is one of the best and highest uses of biodiversity. We'll be down to one species in no time!

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 12:03 PM | (0) comments |

 
Climate Change: A Runaway Heating Scenario?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. methane...gas hydrates...runaway greenhouse. It is old news. But Alister Doyle, an Environment Correspondent for Reuters, writes today about a new report from the Benfield Hazard Research Center. We at the CHL are not overly impressed by this scenario, because gas hydrates have about a tenth of the atmospheric residence time as carbon dioxide. Any rapid warming would be short-lived. We continue to hope for runaway greenhouse scenarios that includes potent greenhouse gasses with long residence times (think thousands of years!). We can only hope...

Excerpt: A thawing of vast ice-like deposits of gas under oceans and in permafrost could sharply accelerate global warming in the 21st century, British-based scientists said on Wednesday. Rising temperatures could break down buried mixtures of water, methane and other gases -- called gas hydrates -- and release them into the atmosphere where they would trap the sun's heat, they said. Gas hydrates could be a "serious geohazard in the near future due to the adverse effects of global warming on the stability of gas hydrate deposits," the Benfield Hazard Research Center said in a report. A big release of methane could speed up global warming far beyond the levels forecast in current models, upping the risk of floods, droughts and wildfires, the report said.

"The big problem is that a warmer world is a less predictable world," Mark Maslin, the report's author, told Reuters.
U.N. reviews of climate change had not taken enough account of the threat from gas hydrates, he added.
Methane is 21 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for driving up temperatures, the report said. Carbon dioxide is largely released from burning fossil fuels, from cars to factories.

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 12:51 PM | (0) comments |

 
West Nile Gets More Virulent
On May 17 2004, The Sacramento Bee reports that West Nile has mutated to become more virulent. West Nile is a powerful bioweapon in our toolbox. Rachel Carson anticipated a Silent Spring because of DDT. We at the CHL can achieve a silent spring without organophosphates. Hell, we could do it without West Nile, but we will not look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth.

Excerpt: From within the glossy feathered bodies of crows, scientists have discerned an unsettling clue to the virulence of the West Nile virus sweeping the United States. The preliminary research suggests the germ is a mutated strain far deadlier to birds than West Nile strains in most other parts of the world. Whether it's more dangerous to humans, too, is an open question, but the virus has already caused more cases of neurological illness in people in this country than anywhere else, ever. That combination of facts has public health officials on edge, as warm weather brings forth new legions of mosquitoes, which carry West Nile virus between birds, humans and other susceptible animals.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 1:27 PM | (0) comments |

 
Accelerating the Poverty-Environmental Degradation Spiral
We at the CHL have had great difficulty seeing how terrorism fits in with the big picture. For years, it seemed irrelevant. A Reuters story finally sheds some light on what our terrorist volunteers have been up to. Terrorism effectively pulls financial resources away from the institutions and structures promoting environmental sustainability. Thank goodness!

OSLO, Norway. Terrorism and the war in Iraq have distracted rich nations from long-term goals of curbing poverty and protecting the environment, World Bank President James Wolfensohn said Thursday. "Most donors are distracted significantly," Wolfensohn said during a visit to Oslo, saying they were "looking at the immediate problems and taking their eyes off the long-term problems. You have a preoccupation with crisis at the moment, and in a way, development and environment have been pushed to the back burner," he said, adding that nations were focusing most on terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.

Wolfensohn said rich countries needed to do more to free trade and to raise aid to reach U.N. 2015 goals ranging from eliminating hunger to improving education in the Third World. "We're not making progress on trade, and we're not seeing huge aid flows," he told a joint news conference with Norwegian Development Minister Hilde Frafjord Johnson. He said developing nations had to act to make democratic reforms and stamp out corruption. "It's not just a question of bitching about the rich countries," he said.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:01 AM | (0) comments |

 
Bye Bye Cod
Memo to all CHL volunteers: Eat More Cod! We finally have this species on the ropes, and we just need to deliver the TKO. Today the World Wildlife Federation highlighted their decline in a report. The next time you go to a fish fry, be sure to order the cod instead of the walleye. Soon, we can chalk up another score (current score, CHL 5,847,384, Environmentalists 0).

Excerpt: Cod could be extinct within 15 years unless governments rein in fishing of the species, the environmental group World Wildlife Fund said on May 13, 2004. The organization issued a report entitled "The Barents Sea Cod," which states fish quotas in those Arctic waters for 2004 are 100,000 tonnes over what is considered sustainable by scientists and a further 100,000 tonnes are caught illegally. By 2002, the world's annual cod catch had fallen to 890,000 tonnes from 3.1 million tonnes in 1970. Half of the current world catch now comes from the Arctic Barents Sea.

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 9:51 AM | (0) comments |

 
Oil Demand, Disinformation Rise
The Financial Times today reports that the International Energy Agency said global oil demand growth in 2004 is set to reach 2.5 per cent, the fastest rate since 1996. The increase in demand by volume will approach 2m barrels a day, the largest gain since 1988.

Meanwhile, our climate disinformation campaign continues to muddy the waters. Reuters reports that Australian scientists have found the Earth may be more resilient to global warming than first thought, and they say a warmer world means a wetter planet, encouraging more plants to grow and soak up greenhouse gases. "The global water cycle has changed in response to greenhouse emissions," almost 100 Australian greenhouse scientists said in an annual statement on their research received on Wednesday.

I love it. Scientists releasing an annual statement on their research, rather than actually publishing it in peer-reviewed journals. Meanwhile, the media and the public don't make the distinction. It is days like today that I feel hopeful that we may achieve the goal of one species in my lifetime.

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 10:14 AM | (0) comments |

 
The CHL thanks you, Peter Coste
Peter Coste is the national treasurer for Australia. And make no mistake about it, populating is patriotic. We salute you!

ANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian couples owe it to their country to have more children and should get on with the job, the nation's treasurer said on Tuesday. "You go home and do your patriotic duty tonight," Peter Costello said when asked by a journalist if he was "the family-friendly treasurer saying get out there and procreate." In a federal budget handed down on Tuesday, Costello promised $2,083 for every baby born after June as part of a $13.3 billion "family package" to be distributed over five years.

Costello said two youngsters per couple in the nation of 20 million just wasn't adequate. "If you can have children it's a good thing to do. You should have...one for your husband, one for your wife, and one for your country," Costello said. "If you want to fix the aging demographic, you're just back to square after two. You make no net improvement," the former-lawyer and father-of-three said. Some would have to go one step further by having extra children "for your country" to make up the gap left by friends who "aren't even replicating themselves," the Treasurer said.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:29 PM | (0) comments |

 
More Global Warming Upside
From today's issue of the Telegraph, more good news for the CHL. Yes, we are even able to recruit trees as volunteers!

Heatwave Britain - when the trees turn toxic
by Richard Alleyne and Ben Fenton

The green lungs of the countryside, fondly imagined to be our greatest defence against air pollution, could actually be having the reverse effect, scientists said yesterday. Researchers claim to have discovered that the commonly held view that trees and plants act as filters, purifying the air and reducing harmful gases, is turned on its head during times of extreme heat. According to a team from York University, when temperatures top 95F (35C), our native plants and trees start emitting "cooling" chemicals such as isoprene and turpene into the atmosphere which in turn encourage the production of ozone. The toxic gas, which is particularly dangerous for children, the elderly and asthmatics, was responsible for as many as 600 deaths during last summer's record-breaking hot spell, it is believed.

And with heatwaves like last summer's - when temperatures reached 100F (37.7C) - expected to become more regular due to global warming, the phenomenon could reverse Britain's recent improvements in air quality. "Current predictions suggest that the heatwaves could happen 10 times more often," said Prof Alan Thorpe of the Natural Environment Research Council's Centres of Atmospheric Science, which funded the research. "Along with all our other problems, we are going to have to deal with severe ozone pollution." The new source of atmospheric pollution could mean thousands of Britons having to wear charcoal masks and stay indoors during heatwaves to avoid the clouds of ozone.

The team discovered the new source of pollution when it studied ozone levels in Chelmsford, Essex, during August last year. "By chance, we picked the two weeks of the heatwave. What we discovered was startling," said Alastair Lewis, who led the research. "When the temperature reached the high 90s and topped 100, plants and trees, which normally give off relatively small amounts of isoprene, started to produce greatly increased amounts."

It is thought that isoprene, which is released by deciduous trees, and turpene, which is emitted by evergreen trees, help protect leaves from heat and sun damage. In the atmosphere isoprene and turpene act as catalysts, increasing the rate at which sunlight breaks down nitrogen oxide - a car pollutant - into ozone. The more isoprene and turpene there is, the more ozone is produced from smaller amounts of nitrogen oxide.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 1:41 PM | (0) comments |

 
Bad news from Michigan
According to a report on CNN today, the gray wolf population in Michigan's Upper Peninsula has exceeded 200 for the fifth consecutive year, a milestone that likely will bump the animal from the endangered species list. CHL volunteers nearly wiped this species out in Michigan, but now the wolf is continuing its remarkable counterstrike against us that began in 1989 when three of the animals established a territory in the western Upper Peninsula. The wolf population rose from 321 last year to more than 360 this year. The only upshot is that we may once again have a chance to hunt and trap them back to extinction soon.

Wisconsin's wolf population is on a similar trajectory. It will be a somber weekend for the CHL.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:27 PM | (0) comments |

 
CHL to Climate Insurgents: Bring It On!
Today we learn from Reuters that there is a new organization led by Steve Howard hoping to slow climate change.

WEYBRIDGE, England (Reuters) - Environmental activist Steve Howard hopes to work himself out of a job within a decade. As head of the newly formed Climate Group, Howard's mission is to divert the planet from the path of seemingly inevitable self-destruction due to global warming and climate change.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=1&u=/nm/20040506/sc_nm/environment_climate_dc

To this insurgent, we say, "Bring it on!" For every $1 US spent, a half liter of oil is burned. What was the US GDP last year? Wasn't it $10.4 trillion? Isn't that 5.2 trillion liters of oil burned? Does anyone really think that the structural factors are in place to ensure the growth in efficiency of energy use exceeds GDP growth? If so, Bring It On!!
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 10:16 AM | (0) comments |

 
Coral Reefs Getting Crushed, According to Crackpots
Even traditional fishing methods can disturb the delicate balance of fragile ecosystems and are destroying some of the world's finest coral reefs, according to some study published somewhere on Wednesday.

Although more intensive fishing was thought to pose a greater danger to reefs, a British team of pot-smoking scientists said that, ummm, subsistence fishing also has, like, an impact on reefs near the Fijian islands in the Pacific and stuff.

Until now, coral reefs were thought to be resilient to the effects of fishermen using all natural, organic methods such as spears and hooks and lines for their catch. "This study suggests this may not be the case and that even low levels of fishing may cause ecosystem meltdown," said the crackpot Dr. Nick Polunin of the University of Newcastle, a non-accredited website-based university that sells degrees and sends out lots of spam.

Also known as Dr. Lungbuster, he led a team of scientists who studied reefs near 13 Fijian islands for two years. When they were not firing up their bong, they tracked populations of "coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish" and their hallucinations revealed that even low intensity fishing of the starfish's predators enabled it to multiply in huge numbers and destroy the reef.

"This paper does highlight that maybe these systems are surprisingly fragile and it is conceivable that a small amount of fishing, such as would have taken place prior to the last 50 years, could have had a significant impact in many cases," he added after he exhaled a cloud of THC-laden smoke. He added "Oh my God, I am so baked."

Hippies believe that the crown-of-thorns starfish, which have been increasing on Australia's Great Barrier Reef in recent decades, threaten reefs. In one heavily fished area, the dope smokers discovered that as the starfish predators declined by nearly two-thirds the starfish population jumped from 10 per kilometer (0.62 mile) to hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile, healthy coral cover decreased by a third.

Polunin's findings, which are reported in the journal Purple Haze, suggest the ecosystems on coral reefs are quite sensitive to the impact of fishing.

Although they do not know how permanent the reef damage is, the scientists started seeing changes over two years which suggests the impact could be long-term. In addition to seeing these changes, the scientists also reported seeing purple love dragons, pulsing hearts suspended mid-air, and the entire universe contained in the dirt under their thumbnails.

"The finding provide something, like an additional challenge, you know, for biodiversity protection and coral reef management strategies and stuff," Polunin added, before asking "Who are you again?"
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 10:43 AM | (0) comments |

 
Ballast water to blast biodiversity to bits? Who cares!
Marine bryozoans deposited in Seychelles waters by cargo ships are threatening to upset the delicate ecological balance of the Indian Ocean islands and hurt a vital fishing industry, according to some crybaby scientist.

"We have found some marine invasive species along the coast of Mahe in recreational areas," whined Christopher Hewitt, a rambling, smelly, hippie marine biologist from the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN). "There is a growing concern as ships introduce foreign species of organisms in oceans across the world causing ill health to humans and damage to marine life while harming tourism and fishing industries," Hewitt bawled, as if he was making any sense at all.

"Some notorious ballast water-borne organisms can cause epidemics in humans, produce algae blooms which kill marine life and foul beaches," sobbed Hewitt. You could see the pathetic liberal tears running down his cheeks. Between sobs, he said something about toxic algae, Chinese mitten crabs, and round gobies, but no one was listening.

Hewitt went on about something with the organisms in ballast water, you know, they could pose an even greater danger than oil spills or something, because it was very difficult to eliminate invasive species once they had become established.

Here is another reason the CHL is winning. Pretty much everyone on the planet can't tell a round goby from a bryozoan, and nobody is listening to the only people who can tell the difference. Really--did you see this story anywhere else today? I didn't think so.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 7:19 PM | (0) comments |