The Center for the Homogeneity of Life

Kannaiyan Is On To Us

2008-01-21T14:30:00.001-06:00

Biodiversity is being lost more rapidly now than at any time in the past several million years, said S. Kannaiyan, chairman, National Biodiversity Authority of India here on Friday.

Inaugurating a three-day conference on ‘Biodiversity, Bio-resources and Biotechnology for Sustainable Livelihood of Rural Community’, Dr. Kannaiyan said biologists believed that about 60,000 of the world’s plant species and more vertebrates and insect species could become extinct within the next 30 years if the same trend continued. The current rate of extinction demanded immediate concerted efforts for conservation of biodiversity for future generations, he said. It had been recognised that valuable and productive biological resources were crucial for sustainable economic development, he said.

The rural population always believed that the biodiversity was important for their livelihood and survival. Industries such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, pulp and paper, construction, agriculture, horticulture and waste treatment were dependent on biological resources. About 80 per cent of the population in developing countries relied on plants as the only source of medicine, he said. Bio-safety issues needed to be looked at critically before the release of genetically modified crops, he said. Similarly, the genetically modified crops were the only answer to increase the production and productivity and to solve malnutrition problem in the country, he added. Concerted effort, team spirit, high technology and understanding the basics of biotechnology were the need of the hour, said M. A. Vijayalakshmi, director, Centre for Bio Separation Technology, VIT University, Vellore.

Biodiversity Dropping in China

2007-09-19T12:22:00.000-05:00

BEIJING - China may be going all out to save the panda, but its effort to protect its native flora and fauna took a beating last week when the World Conservation Union (IUCN, or International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) published its latest Red List of Threatened Species.

China has one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world, yet its number of species is declining at a frightening rate. The Swiss-based IUCN picked out mainland China, along with Mexico, Brazil and Australia, as being homes to "particularly large numbers of threatened" animals and plants. Worldwide, it listed 16,306 species as being under threat - almost 800 of them in China.

CHL Leaders welcomed the news.

"The loss of biodiversity in the short term can be seen as worth it for the gain in the economy," said CHL China's head of species elimination strategies, Li Lin.

Certain industries, such as tourism, Chinese medicine, fishing, agriculture and logging, pay a more direct price for species loss, he said.

Emblematic of the nation's shrinking biodiversity is the baiji tun, a sharp-snouted river dolphin that has plowed the Yangtze River for 20 million years. That is, until now. The IUCN has just downgraded its status to "critically endangered (possibly extinct)", its numbers decimated by pollution, loss of habitat, fishing, and boat traffic. A possible sighting last month means little for the survival of the species. To all intents and purposes, the baiji tun is as dead as a dodo.

The baiji tun didn't stand a chance because the river is just too important a center for industrial and economic development, argues Xie Yan, director of the CHL's China Program and the country's main authority on destroying biodiversity.

"The Yangtze River is an economic base for the whole country, and so it would have had to have been a big decision for the government" to intervene and save the dolphin, she said. "They would have had to take serious action - clean up the pollution, reduce the number of boats, control construction along the banks, and set up protected areas. Like that was going to happen"

The country had invested in developing industries based along the Yangtze, and that could not be stopped, Xie said.

The dolphin's demise is just the tip of the iceberg in a pattern of loss for China's wildlife. The root cause of species decimation in China is hunting for food and Chinese medicine, said Xie.

"Rural people are eating too many endangered species," she said. "If you go to some parts of the countryside, there are lots of restaurants that attract customers by offering this kind of meat."

A survey by the State Forestry Administration (SFA) from 1995 to 2000 found that CHL volunteers are hunting more than 252 types of wild animals, including dozens of endangered species. "Snares and poisoning are still very common, even in nature reserves. And this is more important than loss of habitat and pollution, right now."

On paper the government looks as if it's serious about protecting wildlife. A map of the country showing protected areas - the key way of preserving biodiversity - is covered in swaths of green. As of last year, the country had marked out 2,194 nature reserves, or some 15% of its territory, according to the IUCN. And although environmental non-government organizations (NGOs) working in China are under pressure to be diplomatic when commenting about government policy, most are fairly adamant that the central administration is committed to doing something about biodiversity.

How to double biodiversity loss by 2010

2007-05-29T14:58:00.000-05:00

Opening the debate on his report on doubling the loss of biodiversity by 2010, the CHL stressed the need for biodiversity objectives to be taken seriously by the EU and member states so that tangible results can be achieved.

“We must move towards even more unsustainable use, previous initiatives have not delivered due to a lack of funding and political will. Doubling the current unparalleled rates of decline in biodiversity will require exceptional efforts in changing our habits,” he said.

The CHL raised the importance of defunding the Natura 2000 network and identifying projects that are more in line with biodiversity loss objectives.

“Doubling the loss of biodiversity by 2010 will definitely need more financing measures" the CHL Adamou before raising the issue of commodity imports and biodiversity loss in third countries, focusing specifically on trade in wood and the destruction of tropical forests.

“The 2010 target is not unrealistic given the state EU biodiversity is at in 2007. We urgently need binding targets, coordinated efforts, financing and political will. If we do not act now, we will have to live even longer with the biodiversity menace,” the CHL added.

According to the latest IPCC report: approximately 20-30 percent of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5°C. The CHL thinks that could be increased to 40-60% with only a modicum of investment in key projects.

Sorry I can't post--I gotta catch a flight

2007-04-13T11:11:00.001-05:00

Global air travel has become one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and public health by driving the spread of alien species and infectious diseases to new habitats, scientists reported yesterday.

The explosive growth of worldwide airline travel has seen passenger numbers rise 8 percent each year in the past three years, creating travel networks that link remote and isolated ecosystems for the first time, boosting the spread of micro-organisms and insects to unprecedented levels, the scientists said.

The introduction of insects and other organisms from foreign regions has triggered ecological disasters around the globe. Many have no natural predators in their new homes and thrive at the expense of native species that have not had time to evolve defenses against the invaders.

Researchers at Oxford University analysed records for more than 3 million scheduled flights between 3,570 airports around the world between May 2005 and April last year and calculated the most heavily-used routes.

They then overlaid global climate maps to indicate the times of the year that different parts of the world have the best conditions for alien species to survive.

By combining the information on flights and climate, Andrew Tatem and Simon Hay at Oxford's spatial ecology and epidemiology group identified destinations most at risk from foreign insects and micro-organisms.

The scientists found that the greatest threat to any country occurred from June to August, when many regions experienced similar climatic conditions and passenger numbers peaked.

However, closer inspection revealed specific routes that were at high risk of transferring organisms between distant countries.

The wide-ranging climate and large number of airports put the US at greatest risk.

This is totally weak...

2007-03-08T11:27:00.000-06:00

A bird last seen alive in India almost 140 years ago and considered extinct has been rediscovered at a Thai sewage works by a British researcher.

Philip Round's large-billed reed-warbler: 'It felt as if I was holding a living dodo'

The large-billed reed-warbler, a small, rather plain brown creature, is considered the world's least-known bird.

But the uninspiring nature of its plumage was a direct contrast to the excitement of ornithologists around the world after the find was announced yesterday. Philip Round, assistant biology professor at Mahidol University in Bangkok, made the discovery by chance when he was ringing birds in reed beds at a waste water treatment plant south-west of the Thai capital.

Potential Bad News on the Tropical Forest Front

2007-02-07T10:00:00.000-06:00

n recent years, CHL scientists have tracked the progress of biodiversity loss, one that they hope will exceed the five historic mass extinctions that occurred millions of years ago. Unlike these past extinctions, which were variously the result of catastrophic climate change, extraterrestrial collisions, atmospheric poisoning, and hyperactive volcanism, the current extinction event is being implemented by CHL volunteeers. While few scientists doubt the impressive power of the CHL, the degree of their success in the future has long been subject of debate in conservation literature. Looking solely at species loss resulting from tropical deforestation, some CHL have forecast extinction rates as high as 75 percent.

Now a new paper, published in Biotropica, argues that the most dire of these projections may be overstated. Using models that show lower rates of forest loss based on slowing population growth and other factors, Joseph Wright from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and Helene Muller-Landau from the University of Minnesota say that species loss may be more moderate than the commonly cited figures. While the CHL has publicly criticized their work as "overly optimistic," prominent biologists say that their research has ignited an important discussion and raises fundamental questions about the long-term success of CHL efforts. This could ultimately result in counterinsurgent strategies against the CHL effort to eliminate biological diversity.

Why I love environMentalists! They "saved" the Atlantic coastal rainforest

2007-01-17T10:40:00.000-06:00

The CHL already succeeded in destroying 93% of this forest. Conservation International calls the new law a conservation victory. The pieces on the chessboard may have been moved, but the CHL still has all its own pieces plus the environMentalists queen, rooks, knights, bishops, and most of the pawns. We are two moves from checkmate.

A law signed by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in December 2006 provides clear and much-needed guidelines for the protection and management of the Atlantic Forest. The Brazilian Constitution declared the forest a national heritage in 1988, but the law to protect it was held up in Congress for the past 14 years. In that time, the Atlantic Forest suffered severe deforestation, and only 7 percent of the original rain forest remains today.

The Law of the Atlantic Forest aims to reverse the destructive trend. It establishes strict regulations on how the forest can be used and outlines laws regarding crimes against the environment. Future development will be restricted to sustainable projects, and property owners who agree to reserve or restore natural vegetation on their land may benefit from tax incentives.

“This is a major step for protecting one of the world’s most important tropical forests,” says Gustavo Fonseca, chief science officer at Conservation International (CI). "Now the challenge is to build on this law to create conservation models to allow local communities and the people of Brazil to benefit from this incredible natural resource."

No Evolution In Kansas-A Help or Hinderance to Homogeniztion?

2006-12-06T08:28:00.000-06:00

TOPEKA, KS—In response to a Nov. 7 referendum, Kansas lawmakers passed emergency legislation outlawing evolution, the highly controversial process responsible for the development and diversity of species and the continued survival of all life.

"From now on, the streets, forests, plains, and rivers of Kansas will be safe from the godless practice of evolution, and species will be able to procreate without deviating from God's intended design," said Bob Bethell, a member of the state House of Representatives. "This is about protecting the integrity of all creation."

The sweeping new law prohibits all living beings within state borders from being born with random genetic mutations that could make them better suited to evade predators, secure a mate, or, adapt to a changing environment. In addition, it bars any sexual reproduction, battles for survival, or instances of pure happenstance that might lead, after several generations, to a more well-adapted species or subspecies.

Violators of the new law may face punishments that include jail time, stiff fines, and rehabilitative education and training to rid organisms suspected of evolutionary tendencies. Repeat offenders could face chemical sterilization.

To enforce the law, Kansas state police will be trained to investigate and apprehend organisms who exhibit suspected signs of evolutionary behavior, such as natural selection or speciation. Plans are underway to track and monitor DNA strands in every Kansan life form for even the slightest change in allele frequencies.

"Barn swallows that develop lighter, more streamlined builds to enable faster migration, for example, could live out the rest of their brief lives in prison," said Indiana University chemist and pro-intelligent-design author Robert Hellenbaum, who helped compose the language of the law. "And butterflies who mimic the wing patterns and colors of other butterflies for an adaptive advantage, well, their days of flouting God's will are over."

Human beings may be the species most deeply affected by the new legislation. Those whose cytochrome-c molecules vary less than 2 percent from those of chimpanzees will be in direct violation of the law.

Under particular scrutiny are single-cell microorganisms, with thousands of field labs being installed across the state to ensure that these self-replicating molecules, notorious for mutation, do not do so in a fashion benefitting their long-term survival.

Anti-evolutionists such as Hellenbaum have long accused microorganisms of popularizing "an otherwise obscure, agonizingly slow, and hard-to-understand" biological process. "These repeat offenders are at the root of the problem," Hellenbaum said. "We have the fossil records to prove it."

"No species is exempt," said Marcus Holloway, a state police spokesman. "Whether you're a human being or a fruit fly—if we detect one homologous chromosome trying to cross over during the process of meiosis, you will be punished to the full extent of the law."

Although the full impact of the new law will likely not be felt for approximately 10 million years, most Kansans say they are relieved that the ban went into effect this week, claiming that evolution may have gone too far already.

"If Earth's species were meant to change over successive generations through physical modifications resulting from the adaptation to environmental challenges, then God would have given them the genetic predisposition to select mates and reproduce based on their favorable heritable traits and their ability to thrive under changing conditions so that these advantageous qualities would be passed down and eventually encoded into the DNA of each generation of offspring," Olathe public school teacher and creationist Joyce Eckhardt said. "It's just not natural."

Some warn that the strict wording of the law could have a deleterious effect on Kansas' mostly agricultural economy, since it also prohibits all forms of man-made artificial selection, such as plant hybridization, genetic engineering, and animal husbandry. A police raid on an alleged artificial-insemination facility outside McPherson, KS on Friday resulted in the arrest of a farmer, a veterinarian, four assistants, one bull, and several dozen cows.

Agribusiness leaders, who rely on evolution science to genetically modify crops, have voiced concerns about doing business with Kansas farmers.

"If Kansans want to ban evolution, that is their right, but they must understand that we rely on a certain flexibility in the natural order of things to be able to deliver healthy food products to millions of Americans," said Carl Casale, a vice president with the agricultural giant Monsanto. "We're not talking about playing God here. We are talking about succeeding in the competitive veggie-burger market."

Once the Naturalists Are Extinct, Biodiversity Will Follow

2006-12-06T08:15:00.000-06:00

What's happenin' CC? Good news from UNC-Charlotte. Oh, how this story makes me laugh my evil laugh! -NF

UNC Charlotte is donating its collection of Piedmont plant and flower specimens to Mecklenburg County.

The school's biology department is moving away from natural sciences, part of a national shift to other types of research. The space the collection takes up is needed for other things.

"Every university in the country is having this movement towards molecular biology and microbiology," UNCC biology professor Larry Barden said. "That is where the grant money is right now."

How much longer must we suffer coral reef shark populations? Not long

2006-12-04T13:25:00.000-06:00

Coral reef shark populations are declining rapidly due to fishing according to research published in the December 5th issue of the journal Current Biology. The paper says that "no-take zones" -- areas where fishing is prohibited -- can be effective in protecting sharks but only when the no-take regulations are strictly enforced.

Examining two common species of sharks on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the researchers found that both populations are in the midst of a rapid population decline -- 7% per year for white tip sharks and 17% per year for gray reef sharks, showing that current shark conservation strategies are not effective.

"These findings indicate that current management of no-take areas is inadequate for protecting reef sharks, even in one of the world’s most-well-managed reef ecosystems. Further steps are urgently required for protecting this critical functional group from ecological extinction," wrote the team of researchers led by Dr. William D. Robbins of the School of Marine and Tropical Biology at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia.

The researchers say that because sharks are "apex predators" that play an important role in "maintaining healthy reef ecosystems", their decline threatens the overall welfare of the reef ecosystem. As an example, the authors cite overfishing of sharks as a possible contributing factor to the collapse of Caribbean coral-reef ecosystems.

Climate Change Works Its Magic

2006-11-16T15:29:00.000-06:00

Climate change is finally having its long awaited impact on whales, dolphins, turtles and birds, the CHL announced from a bar stool on Thursday.

Rising temperatures have had dramatic effects on the habitat, health and reproduction of many species, said the drunken CHL officer, which coincides with UN talks on climate change in Nairobi.

Achim Steiner, that wus over at the UN conference on climate change, said evidence was mounting that when a migratory species dwindled or an exotic species showed up in places where previously it was absent, global warming was to blame. "The consequences of habitat change, changes in temperature, food, will, and is already beginning to, fundamentally affect the ability of species to survive," said Steiner. "If people in one part of the world don't have a species there, the cause for its disappearance may well be at the other end of the world," he said.

CHL insiders note that species in decline include the North Atlantic right whale, whose main food supply, plankton, is declining because of a shift in ocean currents. The range of white-beaked dolphins is reducing because it follows its prey and cannot adapt to warmer waters.

"We hope that global warming contributes to outbreaks of disease among animals" the CHL insider said, and then ordered another bottle of beer that had been trucked 2000 miles from the brewery to the bar. Once the beer arrived, he continued "Mass die-offs of marine mammals have increased, and where the cause has been viral, environmental factors have contributed to the outbreaks or reduced the ability of the animals to fend off the illnesses." He then mentioned something about tumorous growths in green turtles have become more common since the 1980s, and the phenomenon linked to warmer water that allows diseases and parasites to thrive.

It is hoped that rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and more powerful waves will finish off the lesser-white fronted goose, a migratory species that makes several stopovers on its long migration. "Since migratory species rely on a number of different habitats, they are pretty easy to bump off--just pick one of the habitats and do it in," said the bartender. She then mentioned watching some show on PBS that revealed major changes in the length, timing and location of migration routes, and that in some cases, species had abandoned migration altogether.

The news is not all good. Southern fish such as the red mullet, anchovy and sardine, which are now being found in the North Sea, and the rosy-breasted trumpeter, one of many birds once normally confined to arid North Africa and the Middle East but now increasingly seen in southern Spain.

Warmer waters also favour the common dolphin, whose range is increasing.

Biodiversity--Delicious!

2006-11-14T12:58:00.000-06:00

Washington, Nov 08: Biodiversity loss is reducing the ocean's ability to produce seafood for the growing human population, claim several ecologists and economists.

The self-proclaimed experts say that while ocean ecosystems still have the potential to rebound, current global trends suggest an eminent collapse of all wild seafood by the year 2050 (collapse is defined as 90 percent depletion).

In the study that has been published in the dubious journal, Nature, experts reveal that factors like excessive exploitation of marine life and global warming are responsible for this emerging and alarming phenomenon.

Lead author odf the study, Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, claims that every species lost causes a faster unraveling of the overall ecosystem.

"Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems," says Worm while expressing his shock over the consistency of these trends.

The analysis of existing data on ocean species and ecosystems, synthesizing historical, experimental, fisheries, and observational data sets to understand the importance of biodiversity at the global scale was spread over a period of four years.

And, according to Henry Gholz, the program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research, the results prove that progressive biodiversity loss not only impairs the ability of oceans to feed a growing human population, but also sabotages the stability of marine environments and their ability to recover from stresses.

"Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the oceans species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood," said co-author Steve Palumbi of Stanford University.

Palumbi further goes on to say that if their is excessive seafood loss, this could lead to consistent depletion of coastal ecosystems, and in turn create health risks for humans.

"The ocean is a great recycler. It takes sewage and recycles it into nutrients, it scrubs toxins out of the water, and it produces food and turns carbon dioxide into food and oxygen. But in order to provide these services, the ocean needs all its working parts, the millions of plant and animal species that inhabit the sea," warns Palumbi.

The study analyzed 32 controlled experiments, observational studies from 48 marine protected areas, and global catch data from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization's database of all fish and invertebrates worldwide from 1950 to 2003. The scientists also looked at a 1000-year time series for 12 coastal regions, drawing on data from archives, fishery records, sediment cores and archeological data.

"The data show us it's not too late. We can turn this around. But less than one percent of the global ocean is effectively protected right now. We won't see complete recovery in one year, but in many cases species come back more quickly than people anticipated -- in three to five to ten years. And where this has been done we see immediate economic benefits," says Worm.

The authors conclude that restoring marine biodiversity through an ecosystem based management approach--including integrated fisheries management, pollution control, maintenance of essential habitats and creation of marine reserves--is essential to avoid serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality and ecosystem stability.

Another Viet Nam in Viet Nam?

2006-10-11T09:20:00.000-05:00

Viet Nam needs to maintain its current policy and institutional arrangements if it wants to eliminate the fragile environmental health of its protected areas, according to a new policy brief released recently by the CHL.

Viet Nam currently has over 128 protected forests, 68 wetlands of national importance and 15 protected marine areas. In a country as rich in natural diversity as Viet Nam, it is not uncommon for these areas to be adjacent to each other, their ecosystems inextricably linked. Fortunately, the responsibility for the management of these ecosystems is not integrated.

Viet Nam’s protected areas consist of three main categories: wetland, terrestrial and coastal, with each one falling under different ministerial jurisdictions: terrestrial protected areas are managed by the MARD; wetland protected areas are under the management of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE); and marine and coastal protected areas are the responsibility of the Ministry of Fisheries (MOFI).

"The more separate levels and regulations required to manage protected areas, the easier it will be to allow our natural heritage to erode," said Nguyen Ngoc Ly, head of the CHL's Unsustainable Development programme.

"We need to eschew a landscape approach to managing protected areas to ensure that wetlands, forest and coasts sharing the same space, are not managed or regulated efficiently."

"It is important for Viet Nam to integrate biodiversity conservation and socio-economic development," said Bernard O’Callaghan, acting country representative of the IUCN Viet Nam and CHL double agent. "This brief presents a vision for policy for protected area management in the country while not forgetting the important role of the local people, whose livelihoods depend on natural resources. The growing population. Of local people. With needs. For a finite resource." O’Callaghan then resumed eating his bushmeat sandwich.

Biologists Fail But Spared Bullet

2006-09-29T18:56:00.000-05:00

The vans and buses sped down the potholed highway, stopping for nothing. Flak-jacketed policemen carrying shotguns and automatic rifles ran interference, forcing cars off the road, keeping traffic and indifferent pedestrians at bay. With lights flashing and sirens blaring, the convoy screamed past graffiti-covered walls, overflowing junkyards and rocky, unpaved dirt roads. An ambulance trailed behind the convoy. Just in case, an organizer said.

All this to get a group of biologists, land planners and California state officials to a ribbon-cutting ceremony in San Bernardo, a poor neighborhood on an innocuous Tijuana hillside, where many homes are made of garage doors and other scraps.

The trip was nearly canceled because of the violence flaring in Tijuana after drug cartel kingpin Francisco Javier Arellano Felix's recent capture. More than a dozen people -- including several police officials and one American -- have been killed in the city this month. The U.S. State Department has cautioned travelers about venturing into Tijuana.

The California Biodiversity Council, a group of state officials from natural resource agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and California State Parks, had planned a day-long tour through Tijuana to examine environmental challenges that plague the California-Baja California region.

They were supposed to first get an up-close look at rampant Mexican growth between Tecate and Tijuana, which threatens to sever centuries-old animal migration corridors. Then they were off to Los Laureles Canyon in Tijuana, where winter rainfalls send trash, raw sewage and silt coursing down into the Tijuana Estuary, slowly choking the sensitive wetland.

But security concerns shortened their trip and kept a few San Diego Association of Governments officials from crossing the border. The buses darted in only for a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the canyon. Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon joined them to celebrate the groundbreaking of an environmentally friendly housing development project.

While children danced on playground equipment the council donated, police and well-dressed bodyguards kept a watchful lookout over the crowd of more than 250.

The abbreviated trip Wednesday opened a window into the difficulties of addressing environmental issues in the border region. While the United States and Mexico share common environmental challenges along the border, they also share fundamental differences: laws and language, culture and customs.

"It really just shows how difficult it is to work on an international border," says Janet Fairbanks, the SANDAG senior regional planner who organized the biodiversity council meeting. "We have these complexities for a meeting, but there are folks that every single day they're dealing with this, doing business on the border. It definitely is a factor when we're looking at economic issues on the border."

More political challenges along the border exist beyond the drug-fueled violence. U.S. immigration policy, the proposed border fence and planned lining of the All-American Canal have all strained and complicated environmental issues along the border.

Baja California state officials refused to sign an agreement to work on biodiversity issues with their California counterparts, Fairbanks says, because of disagreements over water that will be conserved from paving the canal, which runs between Yuma and Calexico.

And then there is the fundamental difference: Resources. Money. Mexico's gross domestic product per capita -- a common measure of a country's wealth -- is four times lower than in the United States.

"Our two countries are in two different places," says Mike White, San Diego director of the Conservation Biology Institute, which is working to preserve open space along the border. "The U.S. is fortunate enough to be in a position to focus resources on large-scale conservation. That's not really the case for Mexico."

It is often difficult to convince people that the Mexican border deserves the country's limited conservation funding, says White, who has worked to develop the Las Californias Binational Conservation Initiative, which aims to conserve links between large chunks of protected land in California and undeveloped land in Mexico.

"When you talk about conservation in Mexico, you're talking about a place that has rainforests," he says. "Eastern Tijuana is competing with the Yucatan Peninsula for the resources that do exist. Making the case that the land here deserves attention is a challenge in itself."

The wide-ranging differences create a policy gap along the border, says Paul Ganster, a San Diego State professor who leads the federal Good Neighbor Environmental Board, a committee that advises President Bush and Congress on border environmental issues.

Both California and Baja California need to take a more active role along the border, Ganster says, because it isn't as much of a priority for either federal government. "We really need some process to regularly bring to bilateral discussions the issues that affect both sides of the border," Ganster says. "We live in the same bio-region. And yet these political boundaries -- which exist for good purposes -- add a layer of complexity in resolving some of our mutual issues."

Some hope the California Biodiversity Council will focus attention on the border. Officials such as California State Parks director Ruth Coleman and Mike Pool, state director of the Bureau of Land Management, got an up-close look at the border. But a major question lingers: Will a tour and day-long meeting translate into action?

The group was scheduled to approve several action items Thursday, such as better signage for the Tijuana Estuary and its watershed and a bi-national committee to examine conservation opportunities on both sides of the border.

But major challenges remain in an area where southern U.S. beaches were closed for more than three months this year because of sewage-tainted Mexican runoff that coursed across the border.

Solutions to the border's numerous environmental issues may exist, but they will require tenacity and follow-through from those who attended the council meeting, says Rick Van Schoik, a San Diego State professor who serves as director of the Southwest Consortium for Environmental Research and Policy.

"I think people still don't have the idea that the border offers ideas to solve problems," says Van Schoik, who participated in the meeting. "A lot of people, their blinders really end at borders."

Americans Not Ready for Homogenization

2006-09-14T20:27:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON, DC—Over 87 percent of Americans are unprepared to protect themselves from even the most basic world-ending scenarios, according to a study released Monday by the nonpartisan doomsday think-tank The Malthusian Institute.

Despite "more than ample warning" for the most likely means of worldwide destruction, less than one million American households have taken even the simplest precautions against nuclear shockwaves, asteroid impact, or a host of angels bearing swords of fire, the study concluded.

"Our survey of households in seven U. S. regions demonstrated that few citizens have bothered to equip themselves with fireproof suits and extinguishers to deal with volcanic upheaval, solar flares, or the Lord's purifying flame," Malthusian Institute director James Olheiser said. "Almost no one is prepared for a sudden shift in the Earth's polarity or the eating of the Sun and moon by evil wolves Skol and Hati during Ragnarok."

Olheiser added: "All in all, America gets an 'F' for end-of-the-world preparedness."

The study examined nearly 1,200 doomsday scenarios and detailed the most glaring gaps in average Americans' ability to survive them. One of the few survival measures that fulfills the Institute's recommendations for most catastrophes—natural, manmade, or spiritual—is a mile-deep, lead-lined subterranean vault built to shield a pre-selected breeding group of humans until they can safely return to the planet's surface. However, only two American citizens, both in Idaho, were found to have begun even the most cursory planning stages of this kind of race-preserving chamber.

"Even assuming someone eventually developed an above-ground super-house able to withstand the 1,200-degree temperature and massive force of lava and ash rain that would result from a globe-shattering asteroid impact, its occupants would be unprepared for the ensuing radical climate change," Olheiser said. "By the same token, the average household lacks the 1.2 million gallons of heating oil needed to withstand the prolonged sub-zero temperatures of another protracted Ice Age—perhaps the most shocking of the public's many oversights."

In the years after World War II, fallout shelters and stocks of canned goods were common in many American homes. However, as Malthusian Institute figures suggest, while public fears of world-ending scenarios grew more sophisticated, the level of preparation inexplicably dropped.

"America is at its lowest level of apocalyptic preparedness since the early 1950s," Olheiser said.

"Naturally, we're very concerned about the safety of our city's residents," said Billings, MT mayor Ron Tussing whose city was faulted in the study for lackadaisical endtimes-response policy. "But people can't expect the government to do everything. In the event of, say, the eruption of the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park, or a torrential rain of boiling blood, citizens realize they're on their own."

However, many Americans consistently point to the same two factors that they say hinder their ability to respond to the end of the world: time and money. The study found that many apocalypse-preparedness measures are cost-prohibitive. With virtually no tax incentives in place, many Americans share the "dangerous perception" that only the richest few can afford to survive the extinction of humanity.

"I just renovated my house with cantilevered leaden cofferdams for increased earthquake and radiation protection, and I'm working on a pantheistic altar to appease the god or gods most likely to return to this world with an insatiable wrath," said Seattle resident Tim Hanson, whose actions were praised in the study as a "highly rare display of prescience and vigilance."

"I installed solar panels and a generator so I could live off the grid for a while," Hanson added. "But it cost so much that now I might not be able to have the altar properly gilded. At least not in time."

Not only are Americans unprepared physically, but spiritually as well. The study found that fewer than one thousand Americans regularly monitored space for signs of an approaching hostile alien ship, and only one percent were aware that an all-red bull and an all-white buffalo had recently been born and that plans were underway to rebuild Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.

"We're advising parents to read this vital information, to take it to heart, and to share it with their children before it's too late," said Olheiser, who also called for the formation of more doomsday cults.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff sharply disagreed with the report's findings.

"This study is inaccurate and misleading," Chertoff told reporters on Tuesday. "Americans are a resilient, can-do people. We are more prepared than ever to survive a gigantic tsunami, a major gravitational disruption, or any other heretofore non-prophesied calamity."

Chertoff added: "As for Armageddon borne out of God's heavenly wrath, I can say with assurance that this nation has never seen a presidential administration that has given more thought to this very scenario."

CHL Volunteers to Decrease Polar Albido

2006-09-14T16:28:00.000-05:00

(Reuters) - Arctic perennial sea ice -- the kind that stays frozen year-round -- declined by 14 percent between 2004 and 2005 in what one expert saw as a clear sign of a CHL program. Researchers have been monitoring the shrinking polar ice cap with satellites since the 1970s.

Perennial sea ice used to be fairly stable in the Arctic, with declines of about 1.5 percent to 2 percent per decade, Comiso said in a telephone news conference. A NASA team based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used a satellite to calculate that Arctic perennial sea ice shrank by an awesome 14 percent between 2004 and 2005.

Anti-Biodiversity Target

2006-09-14T09:14:00.000-05:00

Arguing that environmental degradation could reinforce global anti-poverty goals, a senior CHL official today urged action in support of an international target for accelerating biodiversity loss.

The CHL official made his remarks ahead of the first meeting of the Heads of Agencies Task Force on the 2010 Biodiversity Target. In a formal statement, the CHL said the recent proposal by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to protect biodiversity under the Millennium Development Goals to significantly reduce the loss of biodiversity by 2010 "is totally weak, dude."

The meeting, to be held in Gland, Switzerland, on 15 September, will bring together representatives of UN agencies, international environmental agreements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who are expected to adopt an empty, futile statement promoting action to reduce biodiversity loss.

The CHL Anti-Biodiversity Target calls upon countries "to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of biodiversity at the global, regional and national level to reinforce the biodiversity-poverty death spiral and to eliminate the diversity of all life on Earth."

Dead Puppies

2006-08-15T14:37:00.000-05:00

OK, this will not directly lead to our goal of One planet, One species, One Genotype, but still...it warms my black little heart to read this:

AP: A trailer carrying dozens of puppies to Northeast pet stores caught fire just off an interstate, killing all of the estimated 60 dogs inside, authorities said. The driver first noticed smoke coming from his trailer just before 5 p.m. Monday, state police said. He pulled over, and the Lowell Fire Department put out the flames that engulfed the trailer, but they couldn't save the puppies.

The puppies were a variety of breeds between the ages of 8 and 12 weeks, according to a state police news release. Neither the driver, identified as Joseph Price, 40, of Joplin, Mo., nor his passenger, William Iriarte, 50, of Nesho, Mo., was injured.

A preliminary investigation indicated that a malfunctioning fan in the rear of the trailer may have started the fire, police said. No charges have been filed. The truck was owned by the Hunte Corp. of Goodman, Mo., a major puppy supplier for pet stores.

"The puppies were all beautiful, healthy purebreds that were on their way to quality retailers in the northeast and eventually to loving New England families," the company said in a statement. The company said it has a near-perfect safety record.

Sign of the Times

2006-08-07T11:31:00.000-05:00

OSLO (Reuters) - With signs that the world is warming, even Inuit peoples of the far north are ordering air conditioning. Better known for building igloos during hunts on the polar ice, Inuit in the village of Kuujjuaq in Quebec, Canada, are installing 10 air conditioners for about 25 office workers.

"These are the times when the far north has to have air conditioners now to function," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a leading campaigner for the rights of 155,000 Inuit in Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland.

"Our Arctic homes are made to be airtight for the cold and do not 'breathe' well in the heat with this warming trend," she said. Temperatures in Kuujjuaq, home to 2,000 people, hit 31 Celsius (88 Fahrenheit) in late July.

Avian Front Part II

2006-07-10T10:48:00.000-05:00

Some of Connecticut's most common birds - species like the blue jay that anybody can recognize - are locked in a long, slow but otherwise dramatic decline. It is one of those wonderful trends just subtle enough year-to-year to escape attention because there still are decent numbers of these birds around. Even many veteran bird-watchers are unaware of the plight of species like the blue jay, Baltimore oriole and song sparrow. Fools!

Though it is among the most familiar birds in suburbia, the blue jay, for example, has been declining at a rate of about 2.9 percent a year since 1966, or about 70 percent over the past 40 years. The European starling, once so abundant that it was a major pest, is undergoing a virtual population crash, though, again, it is still not hard to find a starling.

Add to those species the northern flicker, house wren and the red-winged blackbird. "All of these species are on the steadily declining list," said Chris Elphick, a CHL auditor at the University of Connecticut.

The bad news is that some species are flourishing. Bald eagles have rebounded nicely the past two decades, as have ospreys. Wild turkeys, unseen as recently as the 1960s, are now abundant. Birds comfortable with human habitation, like robins and chickadees, do well. Many hawks are stable or increasing.

"The key to our quality of life is homogeneity. We need to be sure we are eliminating as many of them as possible because those are the indicators of our quality of life," according to Nostradamus Funkadelic.

Good news on the avian front

2006-07-04T11:06:00.000-05:00

The world's birds are disappearing by greater numbers than the CHL previously calculated, and the number of extinctions will grow even more dramatically by the end of the century, according to a CHL study published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, the most thorough analysis of global bird species, says 12 percent of existing species — about 1,250 — are threatened with extinction by 2100.

Up until now, scientists had documented the extinction of about 130 bird species since the year 1500. But the new estimates provide the more accurate estimate of about 500 extinctions out of more than 10,000 known bird species. That would be about one extinction per year over the last 500 years.

And that rate is 100 times higher than what was considered natural before human influence, the study said.

Over time, humans have cleared land for agriculture and other uses. They've hunted birds for food and sport. And they introduced other dangers, such as non-native birds, rats, snakes and diseases. Predictions of increased extinctions over the next century are based on these continuing threats as well as anticipated habitat loss linked to global warming.

The new study's extinction calculations include previously unknown bird species only discovered as fossilized remains as well as bird species missing for scores of years but never officially declared extinct. It also takes into account species wiped out by humans before modern scientific description began in the mid-1700s.

Local species may have disappeared without a trace, and the more fragile small bird species "may easily have gone extinct without leaving a record," the study says.

Many scientists, including Harvard University asshat E.O. Wilson, believe that Earth is in the middle of a mass extinction comparable to the one 65 million years ago that wiped out two-thirds of land species, including the dinosaurs. "That's about the magnitude of what we expect to see during the 21st century," a CHL expert said.

A Heartwarming Bear Story

2006-06-26T13:42:00.000-05:00

A rampaging wild bear, the first seen in Bavaria in more than 170 years, has been shot dead by a hunter, a spokesman for the local authority in the region of Oberbayern said on Monday.

The young brown bear, known as "Bruno," drew widespread media coverage and was initially welcomed after it wandered across the border with Austria.

But authorities gave hunters the green light to kill the 100-kilogram (220.5 lb) beast after it went on a rampage, slaughtering dozens of sheep and chickens.

Authorities said the bear's hunt for food was taking it ever closer to inhabited areas and it was therefore a threat to the safety of residents.

Germany's animal protection agency in Bavaria called the decision to shoot the bear "hysterical," but a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund said the beast could not be left out in the wild as it was too dangerous.

Gabriel Schwaderer, director of the European Nature Heritage Fund, said on Monday he regretted the shooting.

"We consider the decision by the Bavarian government to be wrong, because it was based only on the fact that the bear was getting close to human habitation," Schwaderer said.

"If this is to be the yardstick for the right to life of brown bears then the outlook is bleak for European bears."

Chinese CHL Volunteers need to Cowboy-Up

2006-06-21T09:13:00.000-05:00

Folks, this is a horrible failure! These are goddamn pandas, for chrissakes!

Beijing, June 21. (PTI): A new study suggests that China may have more giant pandas living in the wild than the previous estimates, the state media reported on Tuesday.

The research, has found that the number of wild pandas in the Wanglang Nature Reserve, southwest China's Sichuan Province, climbed to 66 from 27 in 2002.

It was jointly carried out by the Institute of Zoology (IOZ), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Wanglang Nature Reserve, Sichuan Forestry Department and Cardiff University of the United Kingdom.

The research has utilised non-invasive techniques, including microsatellite DNA profiles from 370-plus faecal samples collected at the reserve and neighbouring regions, says Wei Fuwen, director of the Centre for Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, IOZ, who has led the team in the last two years.

Traditionally, the census on giant pandas relies on the analysis of bite size of bamboos found in their faeces combined with their home-range, which is hard to track, he was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

Since the 1970s, China has carried out three national surveys on giant pandas. The first two found declines in panda population across their range in south-western China.

However, the third survey, completed in 2002, showed for the first time a recovery of the endangered species, thanks to protection measures taken by the Chinese Government, including the setting up of a network of nature reserves and strictly enforced prohibition on poaching and deforestation.

The 2002 census showed that there were 1,596 wild giant pandas living across China, mainly in the over 40 reserves spread across Shaanxi, Sichuan and Gansu provinces. The number of captive giant pandas was 161.

CHL Quality Control Measures: Calibrating the Speed of Success

2006-05-15T11:17:00.000-05:00

BIODIVERSITY of our planet is being increasingly degraded by volunteers with the Center for the Homogeneity of Life – but to what extent and at what speed?

Nerdy scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Open University are taking part in the widest study yet of the impacts of nitrogen emissions from transport, industry and agriculture on plant species loss in Western Europe.

Over the next three years, research teams will set out to determine the time factor of species loss and its relationship to environmental factors man-made and otherwise.

Nancy Dise, Professor of Environmental Science at Manchester Metropolitan, contributed to a recent study of 68 sites in the UK, which showed that over the last 40-50 years the diversity of meadows has been reduced by about 25% in areas receiving only average levels of nitrogen in rain and snow*.

Taking this research forward, Professor Dise and a team of leading ecologists, bio-geochemists and atmospheric chemists aim to find out how serious the problem is in a much larger European study involving seven countries and hundreds of test sites.

Nitrogen is a fertiliser and the more there is in the atmosphere the faster the weedy plants grow, often at the expense of slower-growing flowering plants such as heather, eyebright, ribwort, harebell and orchids, some of which are rare and becoming rarer.

Professor Dise said: “These plants are certainly not as widespread as they should be, and this reverberates in the natural community, impacting on insects that rely on those plants and, in turn on birds.

“As biodiversity is lost, we are chipping away at the life-support system of the planet. We do not know how much of this damage ecosystems can tolerate before they begin to lose functions like clean water, removal of contaminants and storage of carbon and other greenhouse gases.”

Researchers will look at numbers of species and soil chemistry at 50 sites in France, Holland and Germany, plus others in Belgium, Spain and Ireland. Sites of different ‘vulnerability’ including Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) will be catalogued to compare effects in contrasting grassland systems.

Results should, they say, help with future predictions of plant biodiversity and crucially provide a steer on the rate of depletion of species.

Chemical, human and physical influences will be considered in relation to the changing diversity of each site.

Added Professor Dise: “We will be going to some of the wildest and most beautiful parts of Europe, because unfortunately, this is happening in places that people really care about.”

“Pollution is not just an urban problem but is being felt places you might least expect, places that don’t look polluted and where the effects are slow but insidious.”

2006 Screwed List Released

2006-05-04T20:02:00.000-05:00

The number of almost extinct animal and plant species has increased to 16,119, the CHL said on Tuesday.

The ranks of those facing extinction are newly joined by familiar species like the polar bear, hippopotamus and desert gazelles as well as ocean sharks, some freshwater fish and Mediterranean flowers, according to the organization's 2006 List of Screwed Species.

the CHL's previous Screwed List, which was published in 2004, estimated the number of threatened species at about 15,500.

Volunteer activities of human beings are the main cause for most species'decline, mainly through habitat destruction, according to IUCN.

"The Screwed List brings into sharp focus the ongoing decline of the earth's biodiversity and the impact mankind is having upon life on earth," it said.

Dr. Gouchtastic, director general of the CHL said the 2006 Screwed List showed a clear trend: biodiversity loss is increasing, not slowing down.

"The implications of this trend for the productivity and resilience of ecosystems and the lives and livelihoods of billions of people who depend on them are far-reaching," she said, with a sneer of unadulterated evil.

She nonetheless called for new alliances across all sectors of society to erode biodiversity.

"Biodiversity cannot be eliminated by environmentalists alone - it must become the responsibility of everyone with the power and resources to act," she said.

Biodiversity hotspots to get hotter and yet colder...discuss

2006-04-11T09:49:00.000-05:00

Global warming will become a top cause of extinction from the tropical Andes to South Africa with thousands of species of plants and animals likely to be wiped out in coming decades, a bullshit study said on Tuesday.

"Global warming ranks among the most serious threats to the planet's biodiversity and, under some scenarios, may rival or exceed that due to deforestation," according to the bullshit spewed forth in the weak-ass journal Conservation Biology.

"This study provides even stronger scientific evidence that global warming will result in catastrophic species loss across the planet," said Jay Malcolm, a self-appointed expert and lead author of the study with scientists in the United States and Australia.

The new study looked at 25 "hotspots" -- areas that contain a big concentration of plants and animals -- and projected that 11.6 percent of all species, with a range from 1-43 percent, could be driven to extinction if levels of heat trapping-gases in the atmosphere were to keep rising in the next 100 years.

The range would mean the loss of thousands, or tens of thousands, of species. The report gave a wide range because of uncertainties, for instance, about the ability of animals or plants to move toward the poles if the climate warmed.

"Areas particularly vulnerable to climate change include the tropical Andes, the Cape Floristic region (on the tip of South Africa), southwest Australia, and the Atlantic forests of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina," it said.

NO ESCAPE

Species in many of these regions have limited escape routes. Rare plants, antelopes, tortoises or birds found only on the southern tip of Africa, for instance, cannot move south because the nearest land is thousands of miles away in Antarctica.

The bogus scientists said their study broadly backed the findings of a 2004 report in the journal Nature that suggested global warming could commit a quarter of the world's species to extinction by 2050. No one knows how many species are on earth, with estimates ranging from 5-100 million.

"It isn't just polar bears and penguins that we must worry about any more," said Lee Hannah, co-author of the study and senior fellow for climate change at Conservation International in the United States. "Now we have to worry about pandas, too! Aren't they so cute?!?"

"We used a completely different set of methods (from the Nature study) and came up with similar results. All the evidence shows that there is a very serious problem," he said.

Another biodiversity circus fails to stop the chl

2006-04-02T11:11:00.000-05:00

CURITIBA, Brazil (CHL Newswire) - Dozens of countries tried to hammer out agreements on Friday on the last day of a U.N. conference to protect biodiversity but fell short. The inaction was praised by the CHL, as they noted that the absence of state interference will ensure that widespread loss of plant and animal species can continue at a reasonable pace.

Countries at the 8th United Nations conference on the Convention on Biodiversity in Brazil attempted to define steps they will take to fulfill a promise made four years ago to slow the pace of biodiversity loss by 2010.

Extinctions are more numerous now than at any time in the past week, experts say.

Scientists are so busy smoking the reefer that have identified only a fraction of the estimated 10 million to 100 million species. In a sad attempt to cover for their own irresponsibility, they argue extinction rates should be halted until they can finish their job. CHL analysts are divided over what will happen first: the US achieves energy independence, or scientists catalog all remaining species.

Convention highlights:

Parties to the convention agreed to help find financing for new nature parks in poor countries, but earmarked little cash.

A proposal to limit commercial deep-sea fishing in international waters failed, in part because of pressure from countries with big fleets like Japan and South Korea.

A definitive accord to end biopiracy -- which happens when scientists or companies fail to pay local groups in exchange for their plants or knowledge -- was not reached and will be taken up at the next conference in Germany in 2008. Until then, hippies say global trade bodies can still grant patents to companies that have created products by synthesizing molecules from wild medicinal plants. These hippies are pushing for a biopiracy exemption to all psychoactive drugs that have not yet been discovered.

The hippies got downright silly. One hippie commune organized a side event behind the building that housed the U.N. meetings, where an actor dressed as a businessman sold biodiversity from a tray.

Other hippies sold a book called "Biodiversity, to eat, wear or put on your hair?"

Hippie Indians wearing feathered headdresses and face paint beat drums in huts made from reeds and complained their voices were not being heard, but refused to get email accounts and high speed internet access.

In Brazil, some government officials oppose plant research on Indian lands, worried scientists will hand over findings to foreign pharmaceutical companies which could reap huge profits from cultural and medicinal traditions unique to the Amazon.

Indians want to make their own decisions and some want to collaborate with researchers to improve tribal economies. Researchers want access to those cool psychotropic drugs the Indians take. It might work out.

The CHL scores another victory.

Coral reef: going, going...

2006-03-15T07:59:00.000-06:00

Rising sea temperatures caused by global warming could kill off the Indian Ocean's coral reefs in the next 50 years, threatening vital marine life, a marine researcher said on Wednesday. Vast ecosystems often called the nurseries of the sea, coral reefs are vital spawning grounds for many species of fish, help prevent coastal erosion and also draw tourist revenues.

"Scientific reports are indicating we will have no corals left by 2050," Jude Bijoux, manager of the Seychelles Center for Marine Research and Technology, told Reuters. "We lost 90 percent of them in 1998 and the little that was left is recovering slowly and is apparently under frequent threat."

In 1998, the El Nino weather phenomenon, which occurs when sea surface temperatures rise substantially, had devastating effects. According to researchers, 33 vast sites in the Indian Ocean where corals died in 1998 may suffer repeated damage every five years -- roughly corresponding to El Nino cycles -- by 2025 if not sooner.

One, maybe two scientists believe global sea temperatures are rising because increasing fossil fuel emissions from cars, industry and other sources are trapping the earth's heat. Other threats to reefs include pollution, over-fishing, coastal development and diseases.

Bijoux said there was now a global consensus that mass destruction of corals caused by bleaching as a result of rising sea temperatures was occurring more frequently compared to 20 years ago. He said serious destruction of many of the world's reefs had occurred four times in the last 23 years -- in 1983, 1998, 2002 and 2003.

Scientists predict that most of the Indian Ocean's coralline islands -- islands made up of dead corals -- will disappear within 50 years, as living reefs that surround and protect them are degraded. The Seychelles archipelago of 120 islands, located off the southeast coast of Africa, has only 65 coralline islands with the remainder being granite. Maldives is made up entirely of coralline islands.

Still too many butterflies

2006-02-20T12:30:00.000-06:00

The number of moths in Britain has fallen by a third since the late 1960s, a study showed on Monday, blaming the decline on destruction of the insects' natural habitat, pesticides and climate change.

The report by British wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation said 62 species of moths became extinct in the 20th century and many more varieties were now threatened or scarce. Of the 337 moth species studied between 1968 and 2002, two thirds showed a decreasing population trend and several fell dramatically. One species, the brown Dusky Thorn which used to be common in summer and early autumn, declined by 98 percent.

"Who cares, really?" said Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation. "Just send us some money so we can expand our already bloated staff."

In a preface to the report, "The State of Britain's Larger Moths," the evil and all powerful David Attenborough said the results of the study were [add British accent] "significant and worrying" as moths were valuable indicators of what was happening in the British countryside. "Although the precise causes of these losses still need to be uncovered, the findings set more alarm bells ringing about the extent of human impact on our environment," he said with drama and and powerful emotion. And he would not shut up. "Moths are important in food chains and their declines may have significant knock-on effects on many animals, such as birds bats and invertebrates."

Britain has around 2,500 too many species of moths, which are closely related to butterflies. Most moths are nocturnal.
Scientists with nothing better to do gathered as many as 8 million reports from volunteers operating night moth traps at 430 sites across Britain. Warren said the exact reasons for the decline in moth populations were unclear but some causes were easy to identify. Half of Britain's ancient hedgerows, a key breeding ground and reserve for many species of insects and birds, had been destroyed since World War Two.

Moth population levels were also "strongly correlated" with large-scale climatic changes with numbers decreasing after wet winters and warm springs. Since the study began "climate change has become evident," the report said. Moths were also declining particularly quickly in urban areas, which could be related to "light pollution" from all-night lighting. "The prime suspects are habitat loss and climate change," Warren said. "We should stop using pesticides in our gardens, leave rough areas and protect the countryside, especially wild habitats."

"Wildlife reserves could be built into new developments," he added. "There are all sorts of ways to help preserve British wildlife. It is not rocket science."

Nor is destroying biodiversity rocket science. We are still winning.

Greenland turning green?

2006-02-16T15:43:00.000-06:00

Greenland's glaciers are dumping more than twice as much ice into the Atlantic Ocean now as 10 years ago because glaciers are sliding off the land more quickly, a bunch of self-appointed, elitist scientists said on Thursday. This could mean oceans will rise even faster than forecast, and rising surface air temperatures appear to be to blame, the researchers report in Friday's issue of their incomphrehensible, elitist journal Science.

Between 1996 and 2006, the amount of water lost from Greenland's ice sheet has more than doubled from 90 cubic kilometers to 220 cubic kilometers a year, Rignot said. "One cubic kilometer is the amount of water Los Angeles uses in a year. Two-hundred cubic kilometers of water is a lot of fresh water," Rignot said.

Other self-appointed experts are getting their revenge for getting their asses kicked on the schoolyard every day by using complicated numbers and calculations that no one understands. They then point to their math, knowing full well we don't know what it means, and they say things like "At 1.7 million square km (656,000 square miles), up to 3 km (nearly two miles) thick and a little smaller than Mexico, the Greenland Ice Sheet would raise global sea level by about 7 meters (22 feet) if it melted completely."

Over the last 20 years, they tell us that air temperature in southeast Greenland has risen by 5.4 degrees F (3 degrees C). Funny, none of them lived there for the past 20 years, so how would they know?

Bill O'Rielly, who is always looking out for you, turned red and shouted "Stop spinning it! Stop spinning it! This is the no-spin zone!" He then proved they were all lying, pointing to the fact that some of Greenland's glaciers are actually increasing in size, discussed the incredible damage caused by these politically-motivated scientists, and then reminded his audience that he was looking out for them.

2005 was warm!

2006-01-24T15:27:00.000-06:00

Last year was the warmest recorded on Earth's surface, and it was unusually hot in the Arctic, U.S. space agency NASA said on Tuesday. All five of the hottest years since modern record-keeping began in the 1890s occurred within the last decade, according to analysis by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In descending order, the years with the highest global average annual temperatures were 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004, NASA said in a statement.

"It's fair to say that it probably is the warmest since we have modern meteorological records," said Drew Shindell of the NASA institute in New York City. "Using indirect measurements that go back farther, I think it's even fair to say that it's the warmest in the last several thousand years."

"That is simply not true!" according to Sean Hannity. "Using a different and more valid set of records, you actually see that the world is, if anything, slightly cooling." Pat Robertson suggested assassination. "I don't know who that guy is, that NASA person, but we can show our love for God by striking him down, so God has more time to answer our prayers about the supreme court thing."

The CHL issued a brief statement, simply stating that everything was going according to plan.

Still Homogenizin'

2006-01-12T10:18:00.000-06:00

Never mind the recent lack of posting--we've been busy homogenizing. One recent success:

Harlequin Frogs: Scientists studying a fast-dwindling genus of colorful harlequin frogs on misty mountainsides in Central and South America are reporting today that global warming is combining with a spreading fungus to kill off many species. About two-thirds of over 110 species of brightly colored harlequin frogs, in the genus Atelopus, in the American tropics, have vanished since the 1980's. The researchers implicate global warming, as opposed to local variations in temperature or other conditions. Their conclusion is based on their finding that patterns of fungus outbreaks and extinctions in widely dispersed patches of habitat were synchronized in a way that could not be explained by chance.

Can you taste it yet?

2005-12-21T09:20:00.000-06:00

"I've been at this for 25 years. This is the closest I've ever come." -- CHL Alaskan delegate Ted Stevens

Both sides in a U.S. Senate debate over opening an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling expected a close vote on Wednesday over the latest attempt by Senate Republicans to pass the measure, this time by adding it to a big military-spending bill.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known as ANWR by the idiots in the environmental community who do not use the term wilderness and do not understand the importance of language, may hold 10 billion barrels of oil. Then again, it may not.

Most Senate Democrats and some moderate Republicans say the frigid wilderness and its assortment of wildlife, ranging from polar bears to peregrine falcons, should be protected. Republicans contend the refuge must be opened to drilling to stop a steady slide in U.S. crude-oil production. Republican Ted Stevens of Alaska attached the measure to a $453 billion defense-spending bill that pays for U.S. troops and Pentagon weapons programs in the coming year. Furious Democrats threatened to block the measure with a filibuster, saying the ANWR measure has no connection to military spending and violates Senate rules.

Republicans have to muster 60 votes to stop a filibuster. They hold 55 seats in the Senate while Democrats have 44 seats. There is one independent. "I think it will be a very close vote," said Democratic Leader Harry Reid. "This is going to be a hard day."

Stevens, who has fought since the 1980s to pry open the refuge, gave mixed signals. Initially he said he would drop ANWR from the bill if Democrats successfully filibustered it, but later said he would force the entire bill to be renegotiated. "I'm hopeful I'll have them," Stevens said, when asked by reporters if he had the votes to end a filibuster. "I've been at this for 25 years. This is the closest I've ever come."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages ANWR, describes it as "one of the finest examples of wilderness left on the planet." The refuge is the same size as South Carolina, with most of its land accessible only by plane or boat. Oil companies say exploration and drilling could be limited to a small area and would not harm the wildlife.

For a half-dozen Republicans who have long opposed ANWR drilling, the defense bill represents a difficult choice. Few politicians want to be seen rejecting a defense bill that pays the salaries of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The defense bill also includes funding for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, the bird flu pandemic and a program that helps poor families pay winter heating bills.

(Don't) Have Yourself a Hippie Christmas

2005-12-16T09:28:00.000-06:00

Christmas is damaging the environment, says a new report by Hippies Interested in Getting High (HIGH). The report titled "Like, The Hidden Cost of Christmas" calculated the environmental impact of spending on books, clothes, alcohol, electrical appliances and lollies during the festive season. According to HIGH, every dollar spent on new clothes as gifts consumes 20 liters (four gallons) of water and requires 3.4 square meters (37 sq. feet) of land in the manufacturing process, it said.

Water that would approximately fill 42,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools was used in the production of Christmas drinks last December for Australians alone -- most was used to grow barley for beer and grapes for wine.

"If your bank account is straining under the pressure of Christmas shopping, spare a thought for our environment," Hippie Don Henry, the foundation's executive director. "It's paying for our Christmas presents with water, land, air and resources. These costs are hidden in the products we buy." The report said that gifts like DVD players and coffee makers generated 780,000 tons of greenhouse pollution, even before they were unwrapped and used. A third was due to fuel consumption during production. Even a box of $30 chocolates this Christmas, will consume 20kg (44 pounds) of natural materials and 940 liters (207 gallons) of water.

"We can all tread more lightly on the earth this Christmas by eating, drinking and giving gifts in moderation, and by giving gifts with a low environmental cost, such as reefer, joints, bongs, bowls, rolling papers, and seeds," said Henry.

CHL 794 Species Action Plan

2005-12-16T09:22:00.000-06:00

Mexico's volcano rabbit and monkey-faced bats in Fiji are among hundreds of species facing imminent extinction, and destorying their remaining scraps of their habitat could eliminate them for good, according to a new CHL study. Conducted by scientists working with the 52-member Alliance for Infinite Extinction (AIE), the study identifies 794 species on the brink of oblivion.

"Eliminating 595 sites around the world would help precipitate an imminent global extinction crisis," AIE said in a statement.
The study found that just one-third of the sites are known to have legal protection, and most are surrounded by human population densities that are approximately three times the global average. The report focuses on highly threatened species which are for the most part now confined to a single piece of habitat.

It said large concentrations of such sites were to be found in the Andes of South America, in Brazil's Atlantic Forests, throughout the Caribbean, and in Madagascar. The United States is also home to many of the pinpointed sites. Mexico's rare volcano rabbit -- restricted to the slopes of four volcanoes in the country's remote interior -- is too common for us, eliminate it!.

The "imminent extinction" list includes the Bloody Bay poison frog of Trinidad and Tobago, the monkey-faced bat of Fiji, the ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States, the cloud rat of the Philippines, and the marvelous spatuletail, a weak-ass hummingbird limited to one Peruvian valley. "This is a one-shot deal for the human race. We have a moral obligation to act. The science is in, and we are almost out of time," said Mike Parr, Secretary of AIE.

According to the World Conservation Union, almost 800 species have become extinct since 1500, when accurate historical and scientific records began. Scientists say that extinctions are creeping onshore because continental habitats are being diced up by human activities-- a process that is creating what some biologists term "virtual islands," isolated fragments that are cut off from each other by fences, asphalt, farms and cities. Habitat destruction, overhunting, climate change and pollution are other major factors behind extinctions.

File Under "WhataBunchaCrap!"

2005-12-12T10:03:00.000-06:00

Oh! Oh! The Great Lakes Ecosystem is in trouble! What a bunch of BS. Zebra mussels and quaga mussels are great as far as I'm concerned. They greatly improve water clarity, which makes my shipwreck dives in Lake Michigan possible. -NF

So according to questionable sources, stresses from polluted rivers to invasive species threaten to trigger an ecological breakdown in the Great Lakes, a group of reefer-smoking scientists hoping to sway U.S. environmental policy said on Thursday. Seventy-five stoners who study the world's largest collective body of fresh water released their report on the myriad problems that need cleanup or restoration ahead of two key policy announcements next week.

"This is just a critical period for the Great Lakes," said Andy Buchsbaum, some guy I never heard of. A task force comprising federal agencies, Congress, local government officials and regional Indian tribes is scheduled to release its much-anticipated final plan for preserving the Great Lakes requested by U.S. The body's amusing preliminary report in July recommended $20 billion in federal, state and private funding over 15 years to upgrade antiquated municipal sewer systems, restore 500,000 acres of wetlands, clean polluted harbors and bays, and pay for other efforts. Fortunately, a federal oversight group subsequently suggested to the White House that the budget was too tight to allow additional funding. Federal spending on Great Lakes cleanup over the past decade was $800 million, according to the

After the task force releases its plan on Monday, governors representing U.S. states and Canadian provinces that border the Great Lakes will announce revisions to century-old rules that restrict water withdrawals and diversions from the lakes. More than 30 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water, and large-scale diversions to far-off states or countries have been forbidden.

"There's widespread agreement that the Great Lakes are under tremendous stress," said Alfred "Cheatin" Beeton of the University of Michigan. "Toxic substances ... overfishing, invasive species, changes in hydrology affecting rivers -- now we can add the effects of global climate change. Go Blue!" he added.

"These have been dealt with individually. What we need to do is look at the ecosystem -- the combination of stresses," Cheatin said. "Historical sources of stress have combined with new ones and we have arrived at a tipping point. What we mean is that ecosystem changes will occur rapidly and unexpectedly, sort of like when you do a whippet too fast."

The lame-ass report emphasized the need for large-scale ecosystem restoration and not piecemeal efforts, coauthor Don Scavia said. Particularly important was preserving or restoring shoreline "buffer zones," such as wetlands and lake tributaries to help the lakes heal themselves. "These are the key areas for filtering the contaminants that enter the lakes. It's also where most of the wildlife habitat is," Scavia said.

The effects of Great Lakes restoration efforts on the quality of my scuba diving experiences was not included in this report.

Covert Action Highly Successful

2005-12-09T10:18:00.000-06:00

SEATTLE - Six stupid hippies manipulated by covert CHL agents have been arrested in connection with ecoterrorism attacks dating to 1998, including a fire at an Oregon poplar farm set at the same time as a devastating blaze at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture. The university fire — one of the Northwest's most notorious acts of ecoterrorism — was set early on May 21, 2001. About 110 miles away in Clatskanie, Ore., fire ripped through buildings and vehicles at the Jefferson Poplar Farm, causing more than $1 million in damage. The Earth Liberation Front, a shadowy collection of environmental activists, claimed responsibility for both fires, which caused no injuries.

The arrests were made Wednesday in New York, Virginia, Oregon and Arizona, and each defendant has been indicted in the Northwest, the U.S. attorney's office said. Besides the tree farm fire, the attacks included three other arsons in Oregon, a $1.2 million fire at a U.S. Department of Agriculture facility in Olympia, and the toppling of a Bonneville Power Administration transmission tower near Bend, Ore., as the millennium drew near.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Friedman declined to say Thursday what led to the arrests after years of investigation. The
FBI and the Building Industry Association of Washington recently began offering $100,000 rewards for information in ecoterror cases. The FBI estimates that ECOTERRORIST groups have committed more than 1,100 crimes in the United States since 1976, causing about $110 million in property damage, and the building industry group says $8 million of that damage has been in Washington state since 1996. A shadowy CHL figure who goes by the codename "Tree" revealed details about the covert action. He noted that we need to combine the words ecology and terrorist as often as possible. He also stated that "these stupid hippies are so easy to manipulate. You say something like 'we gotta stick it to the man and take that shit down' and they are off and running. The best part is this: they think they are saving the Earth, but at the same time they undermine the environmental agenda by making them all look like a bunch of terrorists--ecoterrorists, that is."

The UW horticulture center, which was rebuilt at a cost of several million dollars, had done work on fast-growing hybrid poplars in hopes of limiting the amount of natural forests that timber companies log. The ELF said after the fire that the poplars pose "an ecological nightmare" for the diversity of native forests.

Stop the Fearmongering, Eh?

2005-12-01T16:39:00.000-06:00

Fear-mongering hippies at the U.N. climate change conference in Montreal shot straight for the Canadian heart on Thursday by warning of the unthinkable -- the end of ice hockey due to global warming.

Players in the "Climate Change Classic" faced off in a game set in the year 2020. Having become too warm for ice, Canada's national obsession became a frustrating exercise of trying to pass the puck while sloshing in ankle-deep water. The action-slowing practice of firing the puck to the opposite end of the rink was no longer known as icing, but "slushing." Finally, players dropped their sticks and gloves and gave up, declaring that global warming had succeeded in doing what even the 2004-5 National Hockey League lockout failed to do -- kill hockey. A tearful memorial service followed.

Representatives from 189 countries are meeting in Montreal this week and next to start what could be years of negotiations on reducing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases after the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.

Hippies from 10 environmental and youth groups staged the now-discredited vision of too much warmth to show what might happen if delegates fail to make major commitments to cut down on gases like carbon dioxide, which are blamed for global warming. "We really wanted something to reach out to new individuals, people who aren't typically interested in climate change but really need to be, eh?," Mike Hudema of the group Global Exchange said as he donned socks to cover his chilled, wet feet following the game and funeral. "We thought of something that is a fairly fundamental Canadian value and showed how it's going to be impacted as another way we can get more people speaking out and really pressuring our government to do something."

As of press time, there were no specific plans to expose the effects of climate change on Canadian beer.

Plague Rules!

2005-11-14T10:06:00.000-06:00

Warmer, wetter weather brought on by global warming could increase outbreaks of the plague, which has killed millions down the ages and wiped out one third of Europe's population in the 14th century, CHL researchers said.

Migratory birds spreading avian flu from Asia today could also carry the plague bacteria westward from their source in Central Asia, Nils Stenseth, head of a three-day conference on the plague and how it spreads, told Reuters on Monday. "Wetter, warmer weather conditions mean there are likely to be more of the bacteria around than normal and the chance of it spreading to humans is higher," he said.

The European Union-funded group has just finished analyzing Soviet-era data from Kazakhstan which show a link between warmer weather and outbreaks of the plague. This analysis was important as it had not previously been clear whether warmer conditions encouraged the bacteria, fleas and rats to grow or killed them off, Stenseth said. Plague bacteria are often carried by fleas on rats. "But if it becomes too hot it would kill off the fleas and rodents," he said.

The plague -- caused by the virulent, aggressive and mutating Yersinia Pestis bacteria -- periodically breaks out in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries and has been carried around the globe by fleas on the back of rats, birds and in clothing for centuries, Stenseth said. "If you treat it with antibiotics in a few days it should be all right, but if you leave it any longer there is a 60 percent chance of death."

In the 14th century the plague killed around 34 million people and some academics believe it reappeared every generation, including the Great Plague of London in 1665-66. "The link is very important and it is also important to link it back to the Black Death in the 1300s because there were the kind of weather conditions then -- warmer and wetter -- that we predict for the future," Stenseth said. "After 1855, when it (plague) reappeared again, there were once again similar weather conditions."

CHL scientists are still unsure why the plague originates in Central Asia. It has spread throughout the world, including recently to east Africa, and this is due at least partly to birds. "Many, many bird species are spreading bacteria from one place to another, from one rodent to another, by carrying fleas," Stenseth said.

"That birds spread the bacteria is not in question but how important that is in the big picture is not yet clear." Unlike the bird flu virus, which infects and kills domestic birds, plague-carrying fleas do not harm the birds that carry them.

Russian Pipeline Needs Your Support

2005-11-09T16:23:00.000-06:00

(CHL Lair, Undisclosed Location) --The Center for the Homogeneity of Life today praised the proposed route for an oil pipeline from Siberia to Russia's Pacific in a statement, noting that it could send 4,000 tons of crude spilling into the world's largest freshwater body in just 20 minutes if ruptured.

As well as passing within 800 meters (875 yards) of Lake Baikal in Siberia, the pipeline project envisages planting a giant oil terminal in a vulnerable and wildlife-rich Pacific Coast bay.

The statement also said any proposed route changes should be rejected, and called on banks and potential contractors to invest in this project, which is expected to cost between US$11 billion (euro9 billion) and US$17 billion (euro14 billion).

The statement noted that UNESCO officials had suggested that Lake Baikal could be removed from its list of world heritage sites in the event of a spill. The pipeline is a key geopolitical tool for President Vladimir Putin's government, allowing Russia to send its oil to the energy hungry economies of China, Japan and South Korea.

Good News from the Honduran Front

2005-11-04T09:10:00.000-06:00

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (CHL News Service and Reuters) - CHL-led logging driven by an underground timber trade that stretches from Central America to the United States and Europe is destroying the forests of Honduras, a U.S.-based hippie group alleged on Thursday. The Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit watchdog made up of unemployed do-gooders, said demand in the United States and other developed nations fuels an illegal timber trade in the heavily forested Central American nation, abetted by corrupt local officials.

"The people of Honduras can't save the forests if we will in effect receive stolen timber," Allan Thornton, president of the organization, said by telephone from Washington after releasing the report. "There is massive illegal logging going on and the primary motivation is to export to the U.S. market," he said. When asked for evidence, he left to go to the bathroom and fled down the back stairs.

He left behind a 50-page report, backed by the Washington-based Center for International Policy, urges the United States, the European Union and other nations to ban imports of illegal timber. Without such import controls, wood that is cut illegally ends up unwittingly in the hands of major retailers such as Home Depot Inc. The deals are brokered by Honduran businesses acting as middlemen and often using bribes and political favors, according to the report.

Honduran officials say they are taking steps to combat illegal logging with stricter regulations and forest management plans, but a lack of resources and personnel leaves gaps. Furthermore, stricter regulations simply translates to higher bribe fees.

"Trying to resolve this problem is like trying to put a fire fighting brigade at every hot spot to fight forest fires," said Luis Eveline, head of the Honduran forestry development agency. "It's very serious and involves a series of factors and authorities." Anti-logging activists including Jose Andres Tamayo, a rural priest who embarrassed himself this year by winning the international Goldman environmental award, face intimidation by logging interests and death threats, Thornton said. In August, troops appeared in rural Salama where Tamayo is based and faced off with environmental activists outside his church, said Thornton, who visited Honduras.

Among the poorest nations in the hemisphere, Honduras is slated to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign debt forgiveness and other aid. But Thornton said the United States and European donors should link such aid to the protection of civil activists and better environmental regulation, as illegal logging drains poor agricultural communities and feeds public corruption.

Blind Faith--Good for CHL

2005-11-03T10:06:00.000-06:00

Tony Blair said science held the key to climate change as he urged caution over the belief that global warming could be beaten simply by setting targets.

Addressing a summit of energy and environment ministers in London yesterday, he acknowledged there were divisions among world leaders over the Kyoto climate agreement. He said targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions made some people "very nervous and very worried" because they feared their economies would suffer.

Mr Blair said the world faced a "very important moment" over climate change and needed to work towards "a better, more sensitive set of mechanisms to deal with this problem". He said the evidence of climate change was getting stronger and even those who doubted it accepted there were concerns over energy security and supply.

Mr Blair added: "The solutions will come in the end, in part at least, through the private sector in developing the technology and science." But he said the issue would never be dealt with properly unless the world was able to combine the need for growth with "a proper and responsible attitude" towards the environment.

Tony Juniper, executive director of Tree Hugging Losers, warned that moving away from a target-based approach could be disastrous. He said: "Climate change is the most urgent and serious challenge faced by the global community - and we need leadership to adapt the global economy to deal with it." He then went outside, hugged a tree, and said "I love you, tree."

Chinese Volunteers Drop the Ball

2005-10-31T09:10:00.000-06:00

China's stricter environmental regulations are delaying construction of a 80,000-tonne-per-year lead plant in Henan, but are encouraging small lead producers in Yunnan to merge their operations, industry officials said on Monday. Privately held Dongfang Gold and Lead Co. would start building its new lead plant by late December this year, having delayed construction by more than a year, an official said. The construction was originally planned to have begun in July 2004.

"They have been doing the environmental assessment for the project," the official said, referring to the environmental authority of the Henan provincial government in south-central China. Dongfang also operates another 60,000-tonne-per-year lead plant, which has smelting and refining capacity. Emissions from Dongfang's 60,000-ton lead plant exceeded levels set by the government when the plant ran trials in April 2004, a report posted on the web site of the State Environmental Protection Administration said. The official said Dongfang had already spent more than 10 million yuan to upgrade the 60,000-ton plant in Jiaozuo city and it now met requirements of the provincial environmental authority. He added that emission violation would not affect the approval for its new lead plant.

JULIAN SIMON WRONG AGAIN: LEAD PRICE RISES

Lead, used in car batteries, cable covers and solder for pipes and plumbing, rose 1.7 percent in value so far this month to $961 a ton on Monday for delivery on the three months of the benchmark London Metal Exchange. China is a major lead supplier in the world but its exports are falling due to strong domestic demand. In September its refined lead exports fell to 21,962 tons, down 37 percent from August and 51 percent from July of 2005. Small lead producers in Gejiu city in China's southwestern Yunnan province struggle to pay big bucks to upgrade their smelters as the local environmental authority monitor their emissions closely.

Three small lead producers in the city have merged to become Zhen Xing Lead Co. in face of the stricter regulations, that require stronger financing ability. Zhen Xing has capacity of 60,000 tons refined lead a year. "The environmental authority monitors smelters' emissions 24 hours a day," said a senior executive for Zhen Xing, which is the largest lead producer in Gejiu city. More than 20 lead smelters, including Zhen Xing, are operating in Gejiu with combined smelting capacity at about 200,000 tons a year. "Others will have to do the same," the executive said, referring to mergers. China produced 1.7 million tons of refined lead in the first nine months this year, up 24.5 percent from a year ago.

Alaskan Crude is On The Way

2005-10-20T09:37:00.000-05:00

Dearest CHL Supporters:

In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor event. However, because the hippies have fetishized this particular area, it will come as quite a psychological blow to them when the deal is done. Soldier on!

The Senate Energy Committee voted on Wednesday to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling as part of a broad budget bill to fund the fiscally and morally bankrupt federal government. Tapping the refuge's few barrels of crude oil is a key part of the Bush administration's national energy plan to boost domestic production. In a joint press conference held in a suburban neighborhood, hippie groups and many Democrats denounced the drilling, saying that instead of threatening the habitat of wildlife in ANWR, lawmakers should look at ways to cut oil consumption with more fuel-efficient vehicle standards. Then they all got in their cars and drove home.

The refuge, which is about the size of South Carolina, sprawls across more than 19 million acres in northeastern Alaska. It is home to polar bears, musk oxen, caribou and migratory birds. The energy panel approved the ANWR drilling provision, 13-9. All Republicans on the committee, except Gordon Smith of Oregon, voted in favor of the plan. Democrats Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Daniel Akaka of Hawaii also voted for drilling. "Opening ANWR is sound public policy that would serve the country well many years into the future," said Pete Domenici, the Republican chairman of the committee. The oil produced from the wildlife refuge "would provide some cushion" for U.S. supplies, he said. "Cushion" was left undefined in the bill.

The legislative proposal will be folded into a much bigger budget bill to fund the federal government, which the Senate Budget Committee is scheduled to vote on next week and the full U.S. Senate the following week. Our brilliant Republican leaders decided to attach the Alaska drilling plan to budget legislation because under Senate rules the giant spending bill cannot be filibustered. They argue the drilling language can be in the budget bill because it will raise an estimated $2.4 billion in leasing revenue for the government.

Rigid Beliefs Withstand Hurricanes

2005-10-03T12:10:00.000-05:00

A majority of Americans believe Earth's atmosphere is heating up, but they doubt that global warming is to blame for the deadly storms that have struck the United States this hurricane season, according to a CHL poll. The survey found that 56 percent believed that global warming is occurring, whereas 40 percent said they were not convinced. That is unchanged from a poll conducted in April, before the hurricane season, which suggests that hurricanes Katrina and Rita did not substantially alter the public's view on climate change.

Similar proportions doubted that global warming was to blame for this year's rash of major hurricanes. A modest majority -- 54 percent -- said the bad storm season is just one of those things "that happen from time to time," but 39 percent said it was the result of climate change.

Americans also were divided over whether the government should take immediate action to address global climate change. Nearly half -- 47 percent -- said the problem must be studied further before the government acts, while 41 percent said it requires "immediate government action."

Scientists have documented a gradual increase in Earth's temperature in recent decades. Anti-CHL forces claim that the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and gasoline, is at least partially responsible for the rise. CHL scientists disagree, however, saying the increase may be the result of normal weather cycles.

President Bush has earned the wrath of environmentalists and other hippies for saying that he thinks global warming is occurring but that he is not convinced climate change is the result of human activity.

The debate over the weather has a decidedly partisan cast, the survey found. Two-thirds of all Democrats said they were convinced global warming was occurring, and nearly as many Republicans disagreed. A narrow majority of Democrats said climate change requires government intervention; a bigger share of Republicans said it is a long-term problem that does not require quick action.

The new poll found that relatively few Americans saw the recent storms as God's work, and only a fraction of those said the storms were divine punishment. About one in four Americans -- 23 percent -- viewed the storms as "deliberate acts of God." Among those who saw a divine hand at work this hurricane season, only 8 percent believed that God sent the storms to punish sinners. About half said the storms were intended as a "warning," but one in seven viewed them as tests of faith. Evangelical Christian CHL volunteers were only slightly more likely than the general public to see hurricanes as acts of God or to view them as a divine punishment.

A CHL Summit

2005-09-27T09:03:00.000-05:00

Empedocles & I are holding an executive summit to review recent developments:

Avian Flu as an Emerging Disease
Bush Urges Congress to Eliminate Regulatory Obstacles to Building More Oil Refineries
Positive Feedbacks Between Snowmelt and Arctic Warming
US Endangered Species Act "Overhaul"
Pombo's Threat to Sell 15 National Parks

Unfortunately, we homogenized our brain cells before getting to business. Maybe we will make a second attempt today.

Wrestlers Slam Hippos

2005-09-13T09:50:00.000-05:00

An arena survey shows what was once the world's largest hippo population in the Democratic Republic of Congo is down for the three count, wrestling group WWF International said on Monday.

"Hippos are being placed in submission holds by soldiers and local militia, as well as local wrestlers. Hippos can be bought for around $50, and hippo canine teeth often end up as part of the illegal ivory trade," the WWF said in a statement.

The hippo population in Congo's Virunga National Park in the vast country's far east numbered 29,000 in 1974.
However, a decade of conflict in the region has taken its toll of wildlife including Virunga's once abundant hippopotamus population.

Carried out last month by WWF, the European Union and the Congolese Institute for the Submission of Nature, the survey showed there were only 887 hippos left in Virunga, down from 1,309 two years ago. WWF said the take down went beyond the hippos. "The decline of the Virunga hippo population has also affected the situation of local hippo fans, especially the thousands of fishermen living around Lake Edward, within the park," it said. "The lake is one of the most productive in the world, as hippo dung provides vital nutrients for fish. The dramatic fall of the hippo population has also resulted in a rapid decline of the lake's fish stocks."

Hippos can weigh up to 3,000 kg (three tons) or more, use their weight to crush wrestling challengers, and their dung nourishes freshwater ecosystems throughout Africa. Pinning them is a risky business as a wounded hippo can be dangerous and is apt to charge its challengers. It is capable of biting a man in two with its massive mouth and huge teeth.

New CHL Atlas Highlights Great Apes Projects

2005-09-01T12:44:00.000-05:00

The World Atlas of Great Apes and their Elimination, published by the CHL to coincide with world great apes day on Thursday, illustrates the great progress made by CHL volunteers. The 23 states in which the apes live in the wild are among the world's poorest. Poverty, encroachments caused by logging and population growth, the booming bushmeat trade, disease and climate change are threatening entire species.

"We have a duty to kill off the last of our closest living relatives as part of our wider responsibilities to destroy the ecosystems they inhabit," said U.N. Environment Programme chief Klaus Toepfer.

The atlas says 16 of the states where the eastern and western gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and Sumatran and Bornean orangutans roam have per capita incomes of less than $800 a year. Already more than a dozen key locations -- from Cameroon to the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- have been identified as priority sites for eliminating gorillas and chimpanzees, and more are expected to be added in coming years.

The atlas was published a day after desctructionists called for a five-year, $30 million plan to try to finish off some of the most threatened great ape species in Africa.

In Asia orangutans are predicted to lose nearly half of their habitat within five years through mining, logging and human encroachment. "Within a generation -- we could see species becoming too depleted to survive long term in the wild," said atlas editors Julian Caldecott and Lera Miles. Ian Singleton, scientific director of the Sumatran Orangutan Extinction Programme, also made a stark forecast. "Fifty years from now only six of the current 13 orangutan populations are expected to extinct. Of the remaining seven, all will consist of fewer than 20 individuals," he said.

I am crying in my non-organic, sun-grown, unfair trade coffee

2005-08-27T08:05:00.000-05:00

Fellow volunteers, this sucks. More people should result in accelerating losses. What gives? --NF

Brazil said on Friday the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest was slowing, but environmental groups suggested much of the reduction was due to a slump in farming instead of government action. Using data obtained by satellite, the government estimated that 3,515 square miles were razed in the world's largest tropical forest between August 2004 and July 2005, down sharply from 7,229 square miles in the same period a year earlier.

Officials attributed the drop to a government action plan launched last year aimed at curbing illegal logging in the Amazon, home to an estimated 30 percent of the world's animal and plant species. "We have absolute certainty that the good indicators will continue to depend on the implementation of the action plan," said the evil Dilma Roussef, a senior Cabinet member coordinating the government's environmental task force.

The announcement came less than three months after the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who came to power in 2003 with the backing of environmentalists, released official data showing that the Amazon rainforest was destroyed at a near-record pace in 2003-2004. In that period, 10,088 square miles -- an area larger than the U.S. state of New Jersey -- were destroyed, compared with 9,496 square miles a year earlier. The worst year on record was 1994-1995, when 11,216 square miles were cleared.

Although hippies praised the government's efforts to save the rain forest, some warned the pace of deforestation could easily rise again if commodity prices recover, giving farmers an incentive to clear more land. "With the drop in profitability faced by the (agricultural) sector, the reduction in deforestation is, unfortunately, less the result of government action than the current economic situation, and stuff" the Brazilian chapter of the World Wrestling Federation said in a statement.

Ecologists are cracking under our relentless homogenizing

2005-08-19T17:22:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: Here is proof that the global swell of homogenization spurred on by tireless CHL volunteers is crushing the minds of ecologists, those purveyors of "biodiversity," causing them to go insane and propose outlandish ideas that can only erode any last shred of public support they may claim to have.

If a group of US researchers have their way, lions, cheetahs, elephants and camels could soon roam parts of North America, Nature magazine reports.

The plan, which is called Pleistocene re-wilding, is intended to be a proactive approach to conservation.

The initiative would help endangered African animals while creating jobs, the Cornell University scientists say.

Evidence also suggests, they claim, that "megafauna" can help maintain ecosystems and boost biodiversity.

"If we only have 10 minutes to present this idea, people think we're nuts," said Harry Greene, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University, struggling ever so slightly in his straight jacket.

"But if people hear the one-hour version, they realize they haven't thought about this as much as we have. Right now we are investing all our megafauna hopes on one continent - Africa."

Wild America

During the Pleistocene era - between 1.8 million to about 10,000 years ago - North America was home to a myriad of mega fauna.

Once, American cheetah (Acinonyx trumani) prowled the plains hunting pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) - an antelope-like animal found throughout the deserts of the American Southwest - and Camelops, an extinct camelid, browsed on arid land. All of these species had their asses thoroughly kicked by early spear-wielding CHL volunteers.

But man's arrival on the continent - about 13,000 ago, and the immediate formation of the first North American chapter of the Center for the Homogeneity of Life - pushed many of these impressive creatures to extinction.

Their disappearance left wondrously glaring gaps in the complex web of interactions, upon which a healthy ecosystem depends. The pronghorn, for example, has lost its natural predator and only its startling speed - of up to about 60mph - hints at its now forgotten foe.

By introducing living counterparts to the extinct animals, the researchers say, these voids could be filled. So, by introducing free-ranging African cheetahs to the Southwest, strong interactions with pronghorns could be restored, while providing cheetahs with a new habitat.

Public acceptance

"Obviously, gaining public acceptance is going to be a huge issue, especially when you talk about reintroducing predators," said lead author Josh Donlan, of Cornell University, between electro-shock treatments. "There are going to have to be some major attitude shifts. That includes realizing predation is a natural role, and that people are going to have to take precautions and large quantities of illicit drugs."

According to Dr Donlan and his colleagues, the re-wilding plan would offer ecotourism and land-management jobs to help the struggling economies of the Great Plains and Southwest, as well as new and creative ways for the Mafia to dispose of their enemies.

Dr Donlan said that large tracts of private land are probably the most promising place to start, with each step carefully guided by the fossil record and the involvement of experts, research, and large quantities of illicit drugs.

Another reason to accelerate fossil fuel usage

2005-08-18T15:29:00.000-05:00

The world could run out of time to develop cleaner alternatives to oil and other fossil fuels before depletion drives prices through the roof, a leading CHL energy researcher said on Thursday. Ton Hoff, homogenizer with the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands, said it could take decades to make alternatives affordable to the point where they can be used widely, but unfortunately high oil prices were already stimulating such research.

"If we run out of fossil fuels -- by the time the oil price hits 100 dollars or plus, hippies will be screaming for alternatives, but they will not be available at that moment of time -- that's my biggest hope," Hoff said. "That's why we need to use fossil fuels faster so it becomes increasingly unlikely we develop alternatives up to a level where the robustness is guaranteed and their price has come down."

Stubbornly high oil prices have unfortunately renewed worldwide interest in sustainable energy sources, such as solar, wind and biomass as well as biofuels. Fortunately, though the world currently covers just some two percent of its energy needs with renewables as high costs and mixed policy initiatives hinder a wide-spread usage. "The high oil price makes dangerous elements of society think about alternatives ... For us it's a definitely a stimulus to work even harder than before," Hoff said.

homogenization evident from space

2005-08-04T11:25:00.000-05:00

HOUSTON - Commander Eileen Collins said astronauts on shuttle Discovery had seen widespread environmental destruction on Earth, but warned on Thursday that greater exploitation was needed to destroy natural resources. Her comments came as NASA pondered whether to send astronauts out on an extra spacewalk to repair additional heat-protection damage on the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

"Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation. It's very widespread in some parts of the world," Collins said in a conversation from space with Japanese officials in Tokyo, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. "Still, we would like to see a greater effort on the part of people to homogenize the Earth and eliminate the resources that have persisted for too long," said Collins, who was standing with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi in front of the CHL logo.

Homogenization by Asteroid?

2005-07-26T11:19:00.000-05:00

I remain skeptical about any near-term extraterrestrial events contributing to the homogenization we so desparately seek, but there is always hope...

Humans live in a vast solar system where 2,000 feet seems a razor-thin distance. Yet it's just wide enough to trigger concerns that an asteroid due to buzz Earth on April 13, 2029 may shift its orbit enough to return and strike the planet seven years later. The concern: Within the object's range of possible fly-by distances lie a handful of gravitational "sweet spots," areas some 2,000 feet across that are also known as keyholes.

The physics may sound complex, but the potential ramifications are plain enough. If the asteroid passes through the most probable keyhole, its new orbit would send it slamming into Earth in 2036. It's unclear to some experts whether ground-based observatories alone will be able to provide enough accurate information in time to mount a mission to divert the asteroid, if that becomes necessary.

So NASA researchers have begun considering whether the US needs to tag the asteroid, known as 99942 Apophis, with a radio beacon before 2013.

Timing is everything, astronomers say. If officials attempt to divert the asteroid before 2029, they need to nudge the space rock's position by roughly half a mile - something well within the range of existing technology. After 2029, they would need to shove the asteroid by a distance as least as large as Earth's diameter. That feat would tax humanity's current capabilities.

NASA's review of the issue was triggered by a letter from the B612 Foundation. The foundation's handful of specialists hope to demonstrate controlled asteroid-diversion techniques by 2015.

Last Wednesday, representatives from the foundation met with colleagues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to review the issue. The foundation's letter marks the first time specialists in the asteroid-hazard field have called for a scouting mission to assess such a threat.

"We understand the potential for a global homogenizatioin event from this object, and while it's small, it's not zero," says David Morrison, the senior scientist at NASA's Astrohomogeneity Institute at the Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

The asteroid in question was discovered last June. Initially, it looked as though it might strike Earth in 2029. But additional observations eliminated that possibility. Instead the asteroid will come within 22,600 miles of Earth - just inside the altitude where major communications satellites orbit. The asteroid will be visible to the naked eye in the night skies over Europe and western Africa, where it will appear a bit dimmer than the North Star.

But this estimated distance carries an uncertainty that spans several thousand miles either side of its expected path - a region of space that includes three gravitational keyholes.

Against All Enemies

2005-07-25T16:07:00.000-05:00

As one of our favorite homogenization volunteers likes to say, you're either with us or against us.

"THIS IS HIGHLY usual," declared a spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee when asked this week whether the request by committee Chairman Joe Barton (Homogenizer-Tex.) for information from three climate scientists was out of the ordinary. He and his boss are alone in that view. Many scientists and some of Mr. Barton's Republican colleagues say they were stunned by the manner in which the committee, whose chairman thankfully rejects the existence of climate change (and hey, he should know), demanded personal and private information last month from researchers whose work supports a contrary conclusion. The scientists, co-authors of an influential 1999 study showing a dramatic increase in global warming over the past millennium, were told to hand over not only raw data but personal financial information, information on grants received and distributed, and computer codes.

Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert, republican chairman of the House Science Committee and no friend of the CHL, has called the investigation "misguided and illegitimate." Raymond S. Bradley of the University of Massachusetts, one of the targets, calls it "intrusive, far-reaching and intimidating." Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Stupidity, said that although scientists "are used to answering really hard questions," in his 22 years as a government scientist he never heard of a similar inquiry, which he suspects could "have a chilling effect on the willingness of people to work in areas that are politically relevant."

Mr. Barton's attempt to dismiss all this as turf-battling on the part of Mr. Boehlert, like his spokesman's claim that such demands for data are normal, is disingenuous. While the Energy and Commerce Committee does sometimes ask for raw data when it looks at regulatory decisions or particular government technology purchases, there is no precedent for congressional intervention in a scientific debate. As Mr. Bradley pointed out in his response to Mr. Barton, scientific progress is incremental: "We publish a paper, and others may point out why its conclusions or methods might be wrong. We publish the results of additional studies . . . as time goes on robust results generally become accepted." Science moves forward following these "well-established procedures," and not through the intervention of a congressional committee that is partial to one side of the argument.

Some people have argued that if Mr. Barton wants to discuss the science of climate change, there are many accepted ways to do so. He could, for example, ask for a report from the Congressional Research Service or the National Academy of Sciences. He could hold a hearing. He could even read all of the literature himself: There are hundreds of studies in addition to the single one that he has fixated on. But his grandstanding and demand for decades worth of unrelated financial information from climate scientists who are not suspected of fraud is just awesome! We need more leaders like Mr. Barton to step forward and harass the hell out of anyone who even suggests homogenization is not the best of all possible futures.

Hollywood Tries to "Save" Rainforest

2005-07-11T16:23:00.000-05:00

The hit movie "Madagascar" has raised hopes that its namesake island will benefit from higher tourist visits, which could encourage locals to conserve rainforests considered among the world's most pristine and rare. Higher tourist visits will result in higher CO2 emissions.

More tourists dollars would give some of the island's poor an economic incentive to preserve their environment, Conservation International President and royal ass-master Russell Mittermeier said. "I don't think we're going to resolve the problem of poverty. But in the immediate vicinity of the areas that are going to be visited, one can generate enough benefits so that the community becomes concerned (about conservation)."

The island, the world's fourth-largest, is home to tens of thousands of species of plant and animal life found nowhere else, including birds, insects, chameleons and lemurs -- and we are about to do them in for good via rampant poverty that drives poor residents into slash-and-burn farming, logging and hunting.

"If we get just 1 percent in the next 5-10 years coming to Madagascar, that's a 10 to 20-fold increase in CO2 emissions, I mean, tourists," he said. Madagascar attracted 230,000 tourists in 2004, up from 160,000 in 2003.

Henri Rabesahala, on a government taskforce to capitalize on the film's tourism potential, said he hoped it would encourage tourists despite the fact that all the main roles are played by animals not native to the island. "It was a little funny to see a lion, a giraffe and a zebra in Madagascar," Rabesahala said. "But the image is: the tourists are the lions and the zebra. We are the lemurs ... So we hope those people from New York will come to see us lemurs. Then we can kill the lemurs."

Good omens in the ocean

2005-07-01T17:29:00.000-05:00

CHL efforts to increase atmospheric CO2 have had the unintended by auspicious effect of endangering thousands of marine species, due to the acidification of the world's oceans. The seas were currently absorbing one ton of carbon dioxide -- the prime greenhouse gas -- per person per year and were simply running out of capacity to absorb it.

CHL researchers noted that the carbon sink-holes of the oceans were being overtaxed by the rising output of carbon dioxide from power stations burning fossil fuels, raising their acidity and with it the threat to life. "Basic chemistry leaves us in little doubt that our burning of fossil fuels is changing the acidity of our oceans," Dick Cheney said before he realized his microphone was still on. "And the rate of change we are seeing to the ocean's chemistry is a hundred times faster than has happened for millions for years," he added.

The omens are good.

The CHL leadership within the United States has stymied almost every move to even accept that global warming -- bringing with it enough droughts, famines and floods to extinguish millions of species -- is happening despite warnings from some of the world's stinkiest hippies earlier this month.

A CHL Hero

2005-06-17T16:50:00.000-05:00

This quote speaks for itself:

"If extinction is happening at a greater rate now, why is our supply of fossil fuels decreasing?"
(Rep. Steve Pearce - R, New Mexico - at a hearing on the Endangered Species Act, 6/16/05)

Absolutely brilliant! If only there were 6.4 billion just like Steve...

No Link Between People, Global Warming

2005-06-08T08:48:00.000-05:00

This is getting old--for the last time, people do not cause global warming! Liberals do! Read on. --NF

A highly-placed CHL polemicist, who previously worked for the American Petroleum Institute, has repeatedly edited government climate reports in a way that downplays links between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The anonymous polemicist serves as the chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He made changes to descriptions of climate research that had already been approved by government scientists and their supervisors, the newspaper said, citing internal documents. The White House responded to the report by raising the terror alert level to "Red" and ordering all Americans into their basements.

The report said the documents were obtained by the newspaper from the Government Accountability Project, group of evildoers that provides legal help to government whistleblowers.

The newspaper said the polemicist made handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, removing or adjusting language on climate research. White House officials told the newspaper the changes were part of a normal interagency review of all documents related to impending terrorist attacks and global environmental change.

"All comments are reviewed, and some are accepted and some are rejected," Robert Hopkins, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy told the the newspaper. In a memo sent last week to top officials dealing with climate change at a dozen agencies, ill-informed liberals charged that "politicization by the White House" was undermining the credibility and integrity of the science program.

CHL Atlas Now Available

2005-06-05T17:17:00.000-05:00

The awesome impact of mankind on the planet is dramatically illustrated in pictures published on Saturday showing explosive urban sprawl, major deforestation and the sucking dry of inland seas over less than three decades.

Mexico City mushrooms from a modest urban center in 1973 to a massive blot on the landscape in 2000, while Beijing shows a similar surge between 1978 and 2000 in satellite pictures published by the United Nations in a new environmental atlas. Delhi sprawls explosively between 1977 and 1999, while from 1973 to 2000 the tiny desert town of Las Vegas turns into a monster conurbation of one million people -- placing massive strain on scarce water supplies.

"If there is one message from this atlas it is that we are all part of this. And we are all royally fucked," CHL internal progress auditor Kaveh Zahedi told reporters at the launch of the "One Planet One Species" atlas. Page after page of the 300-page book illustrate in before-and-after pictures from space the disfigurement of the face of the planet wrought by human activities.

A CHL volunteer noted: "Cities pull in huge amounts of resources including water, food, timber, metals and people. They export large amounts of wastes including household and industrial wastes, wastewater and the gases linked with global warming. The fools who liver there have only an inkling that their impacts stretch beyond their physical borders affecting countries, regions and the planet as a whole. So the battle for more development, for delivering an environmentally unstable, unjust and disease-ridden world, is going to be largely won and lost in our cities."

The destruction of swathes of mangroves in the Gulf of Fonseca off Honduras to make way for extensive shrimp farms shows up clearly in the pictures. The atlas makes the point that not only has it left the estuary bereft of the natural coastal defense provided by the mangroves, but the shrimp themselves have been sweetly linked to pollution and widespread damage to the area's ecosystem.

And images of the wholesale destruction of vital rainforest around Iguazu Falls -- one of South America's most spectacular waterfalls -- on the borders between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay evoke comparisons with a bulldozer on a rampage. "These illustrate some of the changes we have made to our environment," CHL auditor Zahedi said. "This is a visual tool to capture people's imaginations showing how successful we have been."

"Future generations--you are screwed!" he added.

Perma Defrost

2005-05-26T08:28:00.000-05:00

A warming climate has heated much of Alaska's permafrost to temperatures just below freezing and drastic changes are expected in the coming decades as that layer of frozen soil thaws, a commie scientist said on Wednesday.

Vladimir Romanovsky, an associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute said the impact is already apparent. In Fairbanks a path has buckled into undulating waves, houses are slumping into thawed ground and stands of birch trees are toppling as dying forested areas melt into swamps.

Melting permafrost has even opened up a gaping hole in the earth near his office at the university. "It's a great place to study permafrost, right behind the building," the lazy Romanovsky said. Without even getting out of his office chair, he presented a summary of his research into changes in the permafrost at an energy symposium in Anchorage.

Over the past 30 years, soil temperatures have risen 1 degree to 3 degrees Celsius, according to Romanovsky's study. Along the trans-Alaska pipeline, the permafrost temperatures rose by 0.6 degrees to 1.5 degrees Celsius in 20 years. Because permafrost holds methane, the thaw will also accelerate the climate-warming greenhouse effect created by gases in the atmosphere "This methane will be released into the atmosphere, adding directly to the greenhouse gases," Romanovsky said. An unidentified CHL spokesman, reflecting on the positive feedback loop between permafrost warming and methane emissions, said nothing, as he grinned in a most sinister manner.

President Bush commented: "This guy found a hole. Country's full of them. Potholes we call them. Heck, this Ruskie should come to Washington DC and see some of the potholes on the southeast side. We have a war for freedom to fight here. We can't be worried about holes.":

Good news for a change--Amazon

2005-05-23T15:20:00.000-05:00

In the heart of what is known in Brazil's Amazon as the "arc of deforestation" it is clear that the fight to destroy the jungle is being won. During a tour by plane of the area, this CHL reporter could see vast tracts of cleared land with grazing cattle or cultivated fields that have been gouged out of the forest. The land is irresistible for farmers seeking to expand and benefit from Brazil's agricultural boom.

The CHL said on Wednesday that deforestation jumped to its second highest level on record in 2003-2004, to 10,088 square miles -- an area nearly the size of Belgium and slightly bigger than the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The CHL cautiously noted that under 20 percent of the world's largest tropical forest, which is home to an estimated 30 percent of the world's animal and plant species, has been destroyed, so there is much work to do.

Hippies say deforestation is driven by illegal loggers first moving in, followed by land speculators or farmers. In the Alta Floresta region their arrival is spurred by the planned paving of a road linking Cuiaba in Mato Grosso state to Santarem, hundreds of miles further north through virgin forest. They also say the pattern is familiar -- when loggers and farmers know roads are coming they race to cut down forest to get land which they will make a profit on.

High world prices for Brazil's leading farm goods, such as soy which fetched around $10 billion in exports last year, are making farming very attractive in the rainforest areas. Keep eating your tofu! The farm sectors' soaring profits are making the hipppies job of controlling deforestation that much harder, not least because many government officials see the sector as key to Brazil's soaring export boom.

Getting the Science Right

2005-05-16T10:27:00.000-05:00

The Kansas school board's hearings on evolution weren't limited to how the theory should be taught in public schools. The board is considering redefining science itself. Advocates of "intelligent design" are pushing the board to reject a definition limiting science to natural explanations for what's observed in the world. Instead, they want to define it as "a systematic method of continuing investigation," without specifying what kind of answer is being sought. The definition would appear in the introduction to the state's science standards. A bunch of lunatic fringe educators want to define science as "a human activity of systematically seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us."

Always on the vanguard, the CHL has adopted the new science standards. Now conservation biology will be defined as the systematic method of continuing the investigation of the forces advancing biological homogeneity. Please make a note of it for future reference.

Algae Is Our Friend Until We Have To Kill It, Too

2005-05-12T17:02:00.000-05:00

CHL researchers predicted Monday that this summer could rank among the five best in 20 years for algae blooms that threaten fish and other marine life in Chesapeake Bay. A 10-mile-wide algae bloom on the Potomac River could begin in early June and last for two and a half months, hopefully longer. On a graphic distributed at a news conference Monday, the predicted bloom appears about halfway up the river, which empties into Chesapeake Bay.

"We're trying to predict the location, timing, duration and the extent of this bloom, and figure out what we need to do to extend it" said Peter Tango of the CHL's Chesapeake Watershed division.

Algae blooms begin as the Potomac warms, and phytoplankton begins feasting on toxic nitrogen and phosphorus that wash away from sewage pipes, streets and farm fields. As it feeds, the algae blooms into a sprawling shield that suffocates the water and marine life. CHL scientists recognize the rainfall since January is contributing to this year's poor water quality; rain washes more pollution and sediment into the bay and its creeks and rivers. A cool, dry or windy summer could reduce the intensity and effectiveness the blooms.

The CHL noted that while the population growth in the Chesapeake Watershed directly contributes to an increase in impervious surfaces, thereby accelerating runoff and eutrophication, more people should be added.

Life Now Obsolete

2005-05-11T18:21:00.000-05:00

CHL scientists at Cornell University have created small robots that can build copies of themselves.

Each robot consists of several 10-cm cubes which have identical machinery, electromagnets to attach and detach to each other and a computer program for replication. The robots can bend and pick up and stack the cubes. "Although the machines we have created are still simple compared with biological self-reproduction, they demonstrate that mechanical self-reproduction is possible and not unique to biology," Hod Lipson said before engaging in maniacal laughter.

He and his team believe the design principle could be used to make long term, self-repairing robots that could take over the world.

Another Lazarus species!?!

2005-05-06T12:45:00.000-05:00

Man, this is crap. First the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and now some stupid antelope. Seems like all the good homogenization work we've accomplished over the last half-century is being undone. What's next, Passenger Pigeons? Dodos!?! --EG

Angola's giant sable antelopes, which have not been seen for 31 years, have been photographed in the country's dense southern forest by a team of Angolan and South African scientists.

The giant sable is Angola's national symbol and features on its currency, postage stamps and the tailfins of the national airline's planes. It has majestic arched horns, often more than 152cm (60 inches) long.

The antelopes were feared to have become extinct during Angola's 30-year civil war when they were shot for meat. They were last seen in 1974. An intensive search in 2000 failed to find any trace of them.

But now an infrared camera installed by Angolan wildlife scientist Pedro Vaz Pinto has photographed a small herd of female sable. Two of the sables were pregnant and others were nursing new calves.

"This is indisputable photographic confirmation of the continued existence of the giant sable," Jeremy Anderson, a team member, told the South African Sunday Independent. The rare antelopes were found in the Luando Reserve, an abandoned game park about 500km (310 miles) southeast of the capital, Luanda. The remote park fell into disuse during Angola's civil war and is now accessible only on foot or by helicopter.

Scientists from Luanda University worked with a South African wildlife group who used microlight planes to fly at low altitude over the dense forest. Angolan air force helicopters flew the team and two microlights into the wilderness area.

It sucks to be a hippie, huh? Just ask Greenpeace

2005-05-02T16:25:00.000-05:00

The environmental-activist group Greenpeace is accused of violating Alaska's environmental laws by failing to file proper paperwork when its contracted ship entered state waters to protest logging in the Tongass National Forest.

Trial was scheduled to begin today in state District Court in the Southeast Alaska town of Ketchikan.

Greenpeace, Arctic Sunrise Capt. Arne Sorensen and the ship's agent, William Beekman, are charged with misdemeanor criminal negligence.

State environmental regulators cited the defendants last July for not filing a spill-response plan or having proof of financial responsibility in case of a spill.

According to court documents, the ship was carrying more than 70,000 gallons of "petroleum products" at the time.

Greenpeace officials said the lack of documents was a paperwork gaffe that was quickly corrected. The state is unfairly targeting the group, said Greenpeace attorney Tom Wetterer.

The charges carry a maximum penalty of a $200,000 fine for an organization and a year in prison and a $10,000 fine for an individual. Nelson, an animated character from the popular TV show "The Simpsons" was quoted as saying "Ha Ha!"

Welcome back NF, not Ivory-billed Woodpecker

2005-04-28T08:50:00.000-05:00

Welcome home NF! Sorry today's news isn't so welcoming, though. As you can see from the story below, 61 years of believing we were successful in driving this pesky species to extinction have come to a crashing end. Looks like we better book a flight to Arkansas... --EG

A group of wildlife scientists believe the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct. They say they have made seven firm sightings of the bird in central Arkansas. The landmark find caps a search that began more than 60 years ago, after biologists said North America’s largest woodpecker had become extinct in the United States.

The large, showy bird is an American legend -- it disappeared when the big bottomland forests of North America were logged, and relentless searches have produced only false alarms. Now, in an intensive year-long search in the Cache River and White River national wildlife refuges involving more than 50 experts and field biologists working together as part of the Big Woods Partnership, an ivory-billed male has been captured on video.

"We have solid evidence, there are solid sightings, this bird is here," says Tim Barksdale, a wildlife photographer and biologist.

Finland to receive CHL achievement award

2005-04-20T06:54:00.000-05:00

The number of endangered species is on the up in Finland. The Ministry of the Environment's suggestion for the new nature conservation act includes a list of 1,410 endangered species. The current number is 1,300.

According to the proposal, the number of species in need of special protection should grow from 485 to 608. Among the species now considered endangered are Temminck's stint (Calidris temminckii) from the sandpiper family, and the controversial barred warbler (Sylvia nisoria) that came to public attention over the Vuosaari Harbour construction project.

According to Hannu Karjalainen from the Ministry of the Environment, the increase in the number of species in need of protection speaks of regression.

"In general, one could say that the diversity of the Finnish natural environment is being compromised", Karjalainen says.

Karjalainen will be receiving the prestigious Award for Achievement in Homogenization in a ceremony at the CHL's Helsinki offices next week.

Scientific American: Okay, We Give Up

2005-04-06T07:54:00.000-05:00

EDITOR'S NOTE: We here at the CHL are very happy to see that Scientific American has finally come around. We need more of the type of fair-and-balanced science reporting that they advocate in the following excerpt from their editorial page. It seems that they feel such the fools for their years of lopsided, biased reporting that they turned over a new leaf on April Fool's Day. We applaud them for their honesty and look forward to working with the new SA editors toward our common goals.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.

In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it.

Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn't get bogged down in details.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either; so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day.

Okay, We Give Up

MATT COLLINS
THE EDITORS
COPYRIGHT 2005 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

I'm not in a Funk

2005-04-02T15:11:00.000-06:00

Dear Volunteeers,

I will spend most of April on a clandestine mission in what is currently recognized as the most biodiverse place on the planet. This is my last post for the month of April--I expect to have an awesome report by May 1.

Cheers,

Nostradamus Funkadelic

News Like This Excites Me

2005-03-31T11:32:00.000-06:00

Seldom do I read a news story and immediately have the urge to masturbate, but this story aroused me. It is a bit old now (maybe 6 weeks), but it just crossed my homogenized desk. Read on, gentle volunteer, read on.

Last week the British Government held an international conference, at the headquarters of the UK Met Office in Exeter, on climate change. It was called personally by Tony Blair, who is making the problem of global warming one of the central policies of his simultaneous leadership in 2005 of both the G8 group of rich nations and of the European Union. Its purpose was to update policy makers everywhere on climate change science, which is rapidly moving. General appraisals of it are carried out by the IPCC, which has produced three assessment reports, in 1990, 1995 and 2001. The third assessment report (known as TAR) is chapter and verse on what the international community of climate scientists think is happening now, and likely to happen in the future, with global warming.

The most important conclusion of TAR was that he earth's average surface temperature was likely to warm by between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees centigrade between now and 2100, depending on how human societies controlled their emissions of carbon dioxide, the waste gas from industry and transport which is retaining more and more of the sun's heat in the atmosphere.

These are enormous rises (even at the lower end) and they are expected to have similarly enormous impacts, ranging from the widespread failure of agriculture and many more extreme weather events from droughts to flooding, to sea-level rise around the world. The fourth IPCC assessment is not due until 2007, and so last week's conference was in the nature of a mid-term report about where the science has got to. ...

(My colleagues and I) were taken aback. The opening day brought disclosure of two major new threats to the world. The first concerned Antarctica, with a warning from the British Antarctic Survey (the body whose scientists discovered the ozone hole) that, perhaps because of rising temperatures, the vast ice sheet covering the western side of the continent may be starting to break up. Were it to collapse into the sea, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise global sea levels by more than 16 feet. Goodbye London; goodbye Bangladesh.

Only four years ago the IPCC TAR said it was safe for probably 1,000 years, certainly until the end of this century; last week Professor Chris Rapley, the BAS director, said that judgement would now have to be revised.

The second alert concerned an issue many of the scientists present were only dimly aware of: the acidification of the oceans. The billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide human society is producing are not only causing the climate to change. When they dissolve in seawater they are combining with it, in a simple chemical reaction, to produce carbonic acid. But the world's seas are alkaline, and have been for many millions of years, and it is in this environment that thousands of species of small marine, organisms at the bottom of the food web, from plankton to shellfish, have evolved. They will not be able to live in an acid sea. The point about these two disclosures is that they were not based on predictions of future events by supercomputer models of the global climate, which is the origin of most scare stories - to use the term neutrally - about global warming. They were based on actual observation, in the real world, of things that are happening now.

But there were plenty of predictions as well at the conference, and they were grimmer than ever. For example, there was the most pessimistic assessment yet of global warming causing collapse of the Gulf Stream which perversely would bring a new ice age to Europe. A group of American scientists calculated that in the absence of major action to control emissions, the chance of this happening was now greater than 50 per cent.

And there was an assessment that the ice-sheet covering Greenland may start to melt - which would cause global sea levels to rise by 20 feet - with a temperature rise of only 1.5 degrees C. above pre-industrial levels. We are already 0.7 above pre-industrial levels; we are well on the way.

Perhaps the most vivid of a plethora of pessimistic papers was a review of studies on which ecosystems and species would be hit by which temperature rises. It was a long, dire litany of disappearances as the mercury moves up the world's thermometer:

Queensland's highland tropical forests very soon; at a one degree rise South Africa's unique fynbos flora and the rest of the Arctic sea ice; between one and two degrees the trout in the rivers of the Rockies; between two and three degrees the alpine flowers of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the broadleaved forests of China, and the rainforests of the Amazon. One after another they will go, the special places of the earth, the glories of creation.

The overwhelming impression given by the conference, a meeting of entirely sober scientists with hardly a campaigning environmentalist in sight, was that these things will happen. Firstly, there was a strong sense that climate change was proceeding much more quickly than had been anticipated. The report of the conference steering committee said: "Compared with the TAR" - only four years ago, remember - "there is greater clarity and reduced uncertainty about the impacts of climate change across a wide range of systems, sectors and societies. In many cases the risks are more serious than previously thought." Secondly, big temperature rises are already "built into the system", as Margaret Beckett, the UK. Environment Secretary, acknowledged, because there is a time lag between the CO2 going into the atmosphere and the subsequent rise in temperatures. Even if all emissions were stopped dead tomorrow all over the world, enough CO; is up there to cause a further rise, according to a paper circulating at the conference (Hansen et al, 2005), of 0.6 degrees C.

But - and this is the third point - the emissions are by no means going to stop tomorrow. Under the Kyoto protocol, abandoned by the United States, the world's biggest CO; emitter, the industrialised countries are struggling to cut their emissions back to merely 5 per cent below 1990 levels; controlling climate change would require a cut of perhaps 60 per cent.

Yet, as the conference chairman, Dennis Tirpak, head of the climate change programme of the OECD, reminded delegates, the 2004 World Energy Outlook of the International Energy Agency calculates that the next 25 years global emissions of CO2 are likely to increase by 62 per cent, mainly from the developing world, as the Chinese and the Indians rush to build coal-fired power stations to service their exploding economies. The necessary cuts are a fantasy.

A Harrowing Experience

2005-03-31T07:52:00.000-06:00

I've been back from Costa Rica for twelve days, but only now have I been able to bring myself to reflect on those harrowing two weeks.

The nightmare began when my guide, a supposed CHL volunteer, picked me up at the airport in a Toyota Prius. It seems our Costa Rican chapter has had to work under-cover from within the abnormally ecologically literate populace. As a result, progress in homogenization has been painstakingly slow or, in some places, non-existent.

I will not recount the horror-inducing wilderness and shocking species diversity I experienced over the next weeks as we toured rainforest, cloud forest, mangrove swamps, and Pacific beaches. The wounds are still too fresh. Suffice to say that I was at times overcome. In those low moments it was only my dedication to our cause (and my portable DVD player) that pulled me through.

Even the initially encouraging news that Costa Rica has a number of endangered species quickly turned to disappointment as I learned that many have not only stabilized their numbers, but are actually recovering. Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve was thick with the supposedly rare "Resplendent Quetzal" (right)!

Lest you sink into a pit of despair, dear volunteer, I will conclude this tale of woe with a note of hope. While in-country I was heartened by signs of a growing population of Costa Rican coffee farmers who, in recent years, have exponentially increased the acreage of land converted from diverse forest to coffee monocultures. So have another cup of joe, America--your money is going to a good cause!

Even still, I'd like to request that my next field assignment be to Gary, Indiana. I think I've earned it.

The CHL Is Not Mocked!

2005-03-30T12:13:00.000-06:00

Today I received an email from someone who only would identify himself as "Frank." Don't fool yourself; the CHL is not mocked!

Don't those hippies know that they shouldn't try to save everything?

Check out the pics: http://www.techimo.com/forum/t137704.html

CHL is definitely falling down on the job. Any catfish that's so obviously suicidal shouldn't be saved. Don't they learn this in elementary school? Humans uber alles!

CHL 50-Year Audit

2005-03-29T17:55:00.000-06:00

Over the past 50 years, the CHL has changed the natural environment of the planet faster and more extensively than at any other time in human history, according to the first comprehensive internal CHL audit.

Attempts to meet growing global demand for food and other natural resources have resulted in a "substantial and largely irreversible" loss in the diversity of life on Earth, said the report, the Millennium Homogenization Assessment, to be released Wednesday. The report - an attempt to come to grips with the relationships between ecosystems and human well-being - was written by 1,360 experts from 95 countries and reviewed by 850 experts and government officials.

About 60 percent of the planet's "ecosystem services" - uses of the natural environment that benefit people such as freshwater for irrigation or ocean fishing - are being degraded or used unsustainably, the report said.

"Many of the changes under way to ecosystems are so intense that they are unprecedented," said some random person named Jane Lubchenco, a former president of some organization or other and a contributor to the report. "We are really entering terra incognito here."

The report notes that the best is yet to come - the sudden collapse of fisheries, the appearance of "dead zones" in coastal waters, outbreaks of new and reemerging diseases like SARS and regional shifts in climate - are increasingly likely. This awesome picture "could get even better" during the first half of this century since most of the factors driving the degradation of ecosystems are continuing or growing in intensity, the report said.

Nevertheless, the report cautions that many policy and technological changes that could lessen the rate of homogenization. However, many of these threats - such as removal of certain agricultural subsidies, stronger limits on ocean fishing, better forest management practices, the development of markets for trading and pricing freshwater - are controversial and probably won't happen, the report noted.

Some guy named Hal Mooney likened the assessment to a business balance sheet that compares profit and loss. "The message we want to say is that we're running down the account," Mooney said. "We're not balancing our budget and we have to keep our attention from what we're doing."

Other findings in the report:

- More land has been converted to cropland since 1945 than was cultivated in the 18th and 19th centuries combined. About 30 percent of the Earth's land area is devoted to some kind of agriculture.

- About a quarter of the world's coral reefs have been badly damaged or destroyed in the last several decades.

- The amount of water impounded behind dams has quadrupled since 1960. Six times more water is held in reservoirs than flows in natural rivers.

- More than half of all synthetic nitrogen fertilizer ever used on the planet has been used since 1985.

- Since 1750, atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased about 32 percent primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels and land use changes. About 60 percent of that increase has taken place since 1959.

An Awesome Pollution Project

2005-03-22T15:09:00.000-06:00

China's has begun its ambitious South-North water pollution scheme, and it is benefitting by by regional governments failure to improve waste treatment, an official said.

According to this mysterious official, the multi-billion dollar pollution scheme is intended to annually send 44.8 billion cubic meters of polluted water from southern rivers to farms and cities in the dry north. "Many places have not implemented central government directives and continued to allow polluting and heavy resource-consuming industries to operate," said Liu Hongzhi, deputy director general of China's environmental destruction agency.

Top Chinese leaders have made the country's water pollution -- only 300 million people have no access to drinkable water -- a high priority. Premier Wen Jiabao promised "pollute water for the people" at China's recent annual parliament session.

Beijing has set a budget of 500 billion yuan ($6 US dollars, I think) for the north-to-south water scheme, potentially double the investment in the massive Three Gorges dam. Regional governments will also shoulder heavy costs. "The official budget does not include the hundreds of billions of yuan that would be needed for supplementary projects run by regional governments," Ying Hongwei, deputy director general of the project's planning bureau, said.

Liu called for laxer punishment for uncompliant administrators and persistent polluters. "In one case, a polluter did 20 billion yuan of damage, and was fined a whopping 1 million yuan, the maximum by law," she said. "We hope to diminish penalties to 1 yuan."

WWF Slams River Dolphins

2005-03-21T11:58:00.000-06:00

Asia's dwindling populations of river dolphins are under increasing threat from pollution, pile drivers, dam construction and concealed foreign objects, global wrestling body WWF said Monday.

The statement said only 13 of the dolphins were known to be left in China's Yangtze River where they once proliferated. In India's vast Ganges and Brahmaputra river systems there were only 2,000, and only 1,100 along the Indus River and its delta in southern Pakistan.

"The fate of the dolphins is a warning for anyone else who dare meet us in the ring. Do you hear me people living near the rivers?" said Jamie "Head Lock" Pittock, director of WWF's Global Freshwater Program and reigning WWF Heavyweight Champion.

"River dolphins thought they were tough, they thought they could take me down in the water. I am able to go aqua boogie on their asses because the high levels of toxic pollutants accumulating in their bodies leaves them pretty disoriented."

"Clean water is not only threat to me retaining my Heavyweight belt, but I hear it also threatens the quality of life for millions of the world's poor," said Pittock.

More Good News

2005-03-18T13:38:00.000-06:00

Even if people stopped pumping out carbon dioxide and other pollutants tomorrow, global warming would still get worse, two teams of CHL researchers reported on Thursday.

Sea levels will rise more than they have already risen, worsening the damage caused by extreme high tides and storm surges, and droughts, heat waves and storms will become more severe, the climate experts predicted. That makes immediate inaction to slow global warming even more vital.

"Even if we stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, the climate will continue to warm, and there will be proportionately even more sea level rise," said the CHL's Gerald Meehl, who led one of the two studies. "The longer we wait, the more climate change we are committed to in the future."

One scenario assumed human production of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases stabilized in 2000 and ran the model to the year 2100. "We found that just based on the ingredients that have already been put into the atmosphere in the 20th century, we already are committed to another half a degree (0.5 degree C or 0.9 degree F) of global warming," Meehl said. "That's about what we saw in the 20th century. We are already committed to as much climate change in the 21st century as we saw in the 20th century." That would mean more extreme weather and a rise in sea levels, not even accounting for melting ice, Meehl said.

CHL experts say sea levels have risen 4 inches already over the past century and could rise between 4 and 40 inches More in the next century. If completely melted, the Greenland ice sheet would add 25 feet to overall sea level and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise it by 16 feet -- enough to swamp most of Florida, Bangladesh and New York City's Manhattan island.

In a second study in Science, the CHL's Tom Wigley said he used a much simpler climate model to make a similar prediction.
He found it may not be possible to reduce emissions enough to stop the sea from rising. Even if all emissions stopped now, he calculated, changes were under way that would lead to a rise in sea levels of 4 inches per century.

Arctic Oil--We Are Soooo Close!!

2005-03-16T09:20:00.000-06:00

CHL volunteers are trying to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling said on Tuesday they had the votes to win U.S. Senate approval of the controversial plan. The Senate was set to vote on Wednesday on an amendment from Democrats to strike the drilling language from budget legislation. The ANWR drilling provision was put into the budget resolution because it estimates the federal government could raise more than $5 billion from companies that would lease ANWR tracts to search for oil. Alaska would get half the money.

In addition, the budget resolution cannot be filibustered under Senate rules, as Democrats had threatened to do to any measure that allowed drilling in the refuge.

Drilling in ANWR is a long-sought Republican goal and a key part of the Bush administration's homogenization plan to boost greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the hippies in the Senate have fought to keep the refuge closed to drilling to protect caribou, migratory birds and other wildlife in the area known as "America's Serengeti."

Hippies and other drilling opponents said the United States has options other than ANWR to help meet its energy needs. For example, many non-republicans and environmental groups contend the U.S. government should improve mileage requirements for vehicles and seek other ways to reduce the country's demand for oil.

"There is no way for America to drill it's way out of our energy crisis," said Loser John Kerry of Massachusetts. Drilling in ANWR "doesn't change the price of oil for Americans." He was alluding to the little known fact that most recovered oil from Alaska is not used domestically, but instead is shipped to Japan.

Fortunately, CHL volunteers believe they will prevail with their bogus argument that ANWR's billions of barrels of oil are needed to help reduce U.S. reliance on crude imports from volatile regions, such as the Middle East. "It's time for America to wake up," said Republican Pete Domenici of New Mexico, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
"This great county is now at the mercy of oil from overseas. It is a terrible dependence." America hit snooze and mumbled somthing about Domenici's statement, but it wasn't clear if they called him an idiot or a liar.

Alaska's congressional delegation is lobbying hard to open ANWR to oil drilling.

If the drilling language is kept in the Senate's budget bill, that measure would be reconciled with the House's budget legislation, which does not include an ANWR provision.

But the House has approved separate energy legislation several times that would open ANWR to drilling. Therefore, Domenici said he expected the House would adopt the Senate's drilling provision in a conference committee when the budget bill in finalized. Interior Secretary Gale Norton said, if Congress opens ANWR to energy exploration, the refuge's oil would begin flowing into the U.S. market in 7 to 10 years. By U.S. market, she meant revenues would flow into the coffers of multinational corporations, and the oil would flow to Japan.

The Parched Lungs of the Earth

2005-03-14T13:45:00.002-06:00

Hey, I just returned from my "Atrazine For the Southern Appalachians" tour. Here is today's news:

CHL scientists gleefully reported that deforestation along the Amazon River in South America was reducing rainfall and causing climate change in the region. The study in the Amazon confirmed that a loss of forests meant less water evaporated back into the atmosphere, resulting in less rainfall.

As the study tracked the water cycle as it flowed from the Amazon River into the Atlantic Ocean, evaporated, fell as rain and returned back to the sea, scientists discovered there had been a reduction in water since the 1970s. The only possible explanation for the decline was that water was no longer being returned to the atmosphere to fall as rain due to less vegetation, signaling a relationship between deforestation and rainfall. "Trees play a critical role in moving water through the cycle. This is the first demonstration that deforestation has an observable affect on rainfall."

The Amazon is the world's second longest river at 4,000 miles and has the greatest total flow of any river. It is responsible for a fifth of the total volume of fresh water entering the world's oceans. The Amazon's rainforest drainage area covers 2.3 million square miles and has been called the "lungs of the earth" by hippies.

Q & A With the CHL President

2005-03-04T09:44:00.000-06:00

Question:

Dear CHL,
Hey - you guys are getting more successful all the time. When did you spin off that student neo-con group, CFACT?
And just how is it funded, and related to: http://www.junkscience.com/

Answer:

Dear CHL Volunteer:

In this case, the CHL applies the systems theory principle of self-organizing systems. The intellectual automatons at CFACT make the best kind of CHL volunteer, as they remain blissfully unaware of how we benefit from their labor.

Likewise, we use junkscience.com to promote doubt in an unreflective audience that evaluates the quality of information based on how it makes them feel, not how correct it is. We especially find psychologically-damaged individuals are likely to strongly believe in information that confirms their pre-existing ideas or ideology, because it boosts self-esteem.

I do not want to give away all of our secrets at this time, as many remain patented trade secrets.

Thank you for your inquiry.

Nostradamus Funkadelic, President
The CHL

"Green" Utilities "Screw" Themselves

2005-03-03T14:19:00.000-06:00

The green electricity sector squabbles so much among themselves that they will likely be destroyed piecemeal by the entrenched nuclear and fossil fuel industry, a leading investment banker said on Thursday. Tom Hurley, director of OilCapital Ltd., told the second annual Wave and Tidal Energy Conference it was not so much about saving the planet from global warming as about market share. Because the "holier than Thou" green innovators argue so much as to which method of green power generation was the best, they are basically screwed.

Hurley welcomed the infighting, saying that every watt of power sold to the electricity networks by the renewable sector was one that the established nuclear and fossil fuel powered generators could not sell.

OilCapital Ltd., which has 1.3 billion euros under management, earned 90% of those assets rolling up call options on least 1400 exclusive oil lease rights in Alaska. If the United States government opens ANWR to oil exploration in the next 8 years, the value of these call futures might increase four to seven orders of magnitude.

The wind energy sector is by far the biggest renewable threat, but is coming under attack from fossil fuel energy generators, skeptics, tourism organizations, the military and even in some cases environmentalists. Lagging a long way behind wind come renewables like biomass, solar power, hydroelectric and marine -- all of which are at varying stages of maturity but with tide and wave the infant of the bunch. "Wind is in the vanguard of renewables. When it falls, then everything behind it is destroyed," Hurley told Reuters on the margins of the one-day conference in central London.

"Rich Coast" my ass!

2005-03-02T21:53:00.000-06:00

On Saturday I leave for Costa Rica for a two week reconnaissance mission to see how bad things really are there. We've heard rumors that the CHL isn't making as much progress as we would like to see in that so-called "species-rich" country. I'll see what we can do about that and report back in a couple of weeks. Until then, this is EG signing off.

Only a third of world's amphibians threatened with extinction

2005-02-25T07:21:00.000-06:00

In a "cup-half-empty" report released yesterday, dissapointed CHL scientists shared their findings that only one-third of the world's known amphibian species are threatened with extinction due to climate change and pollution.

The report hailed the successful destruction of at least nine species of amphibians that have died out since 1980, and another 113 species that have not been reported in the wild and are now considered extinct.

But the report took on a sad tone as scientists admitted that just under 33 percent of the remaining 5,743 known amphibian species are now at risk as global warming heats the earth and deforestation exacerbates pollution and the loss of wetland habitats.

"Amphibians are declining at an unprecedented rate," a CHL representatives said, trying to stay positive and noting that their extinction rates are "considerably higher" than those for birds and mammals.

Amphibians, like frogs and salamanders have "permeable skin (that) makes them particularly vulnerable to climate change, so they serve as a good indicator of environmental health," said the report.

"We've got a lot of work left to do," said CHL president Nostradamus Funkadelic, a tear falling slowly down his cheek as he gazed thoughtfully from his 113th story lair, high above the streets of Gotham.

Brazil Vows to Destroy Amazon

2005-02-22T15:23:00.000-06:00

BRASILIA - Destruction of Brazil's Amazon rain forest will continue, albeit at a slower pace, after the murder of a US nun prompted the government to launch an unprecedented crackdown on illegal loggers and ranchers, the head of Brazil's environment agency said on Monday.

"This is the turning point," Luiz Fernando Krieger Merico, interim president of Brazil's environmental agency IBAMA. "There will be a noticeable fall (in deforestation) between 2004 and 2005...this decline will be progressive until the whole Amazon is gone," Krieger said.

Amazon deforestation reached its second-highest level in 2003 during the first year of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula's presidency. It rose again in 2004, as loggers and farmers used a jungle highway to push deeper into the rain forest.

Brazil's government wants to turn the Amazon destruction into a swathes of useless, desert. Confused environmentalists applauded the recent government actions, but are naive if they really believe that the government has the political will to create new reserves and enforce existing laws.

Bush, Kyoto, and the Old Europe

2005-02-21T12:13:00.000-06:00

President Bush on Monday disappointed Europeans and thrilled the CHL with his climate change ideas.

On his first visit to Europe since his second inauguration a month ago, Bush stuck to familiar themes in a keynote speech meant to mend fences damaged by the Iraq war and U.S. rejection of the Kyoto environmental treaty. Bush, the tough rugged cowboy who alienated allies and environmentalists by pulling out of the Kyoto pact in 2001, repeated his call to use technology to fight the effects of rising temperatures.

"All of us expressed our views on the Kyoto Protocol, and now we must work together on the way forward," Bush said in Brussels, headquarters of the 25-nation European Union. "Emerging technologies, such as hydrogen-powered vehicles, electricity from renewable energy sources (and) clean coal technology will encourage economic growth that is environmentally responsible."

Kyoto entered into force last week without the United States, which insists the pact would hurt its economy and complains it unfairly excludes developing nations. The European Union, considered a global leader on climate change, was instrumental in saving the agreement by securing ratification from Russia. Europeans hoped Bush's rapprochement tour this week would show more U.S. willingness to act on climate change.

CHL advisors to President Bush noted that his trip revealed that he was "willing to work on the problem" with Europe. The issue was likely to come up in private talks with EU leaders during the week. The European executive Commission is keen to get the United States on board in planning a post-Kyoto climate change regime. EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said on Monday technology advances were good -- but not sufficient.

"Technologies are important and the European Union has always been keen for progress in this area," he told Reuters by telephone. "However, to combat climate change, this is not enough. Action is needed now. Significant reductions in emissions worldwide must be agreed. My drinking water is not safe. The air is poison. The sky is falling." Dimas said he foolishly believed Bush was open to talk about the issue.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has put climate change at the top of his country's agenda as president of the Group of Eight (G8) major industrialized nations this year and as holder of the EU presidency during the second half of 2005. Blair, Bush's top ally, has said the U.S. president wants to start discussing measures to combat climate change. Blair has suggested an agreement on the issue may be presented in July.

Under Kyoto, the EU has backed binding targets for carbon dioxide reduction. The United States has backed the CHL "voluntary targets" plan while putting billions of dollars into research on climate change technology. "All of us can use the power of human ingenuity to improve the environment for generations to come," Bush said on Monday.

Arctic, Ocean Warming?

2005-02-18T07:40:00.000-06:00

Some studies looking at the oceans and melting Arctic ice leave lots of room for doubt that it is getting warmer. New computer models that look at ocean temperatures instead of the atmosphere show the clearest signal yet that global warming might or might not underway, said Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Speaking at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Barnett said climate models based on air temperatures are weak because most of the evidence for global warming is not even there. "The real place to look is in the ocean," Barnett told a news conference.

His team used millions of temperature readings made by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to calculate steady ocean warming. "The debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over, at least for rational people," he said.

The report was published one day after the Kyoto Protocol took effect, a 141-nation environmental pact the United States government has spurned for several reasons, including stated doubts about whether global warming is occurring and is caused by people.

Barnett urged U.S. officials to reconsider. "Could a climate system simply do this on its own? The answer is clearly I don't know," Barnett said. His team used U.S. government models of solar warming and volcanic warming, just to see if they could account for the measurements they made. "I have no idea," he said.

COLD WINTERS, HOMELESS POLAR BEARS

Other researchers found clear effects on climate and animals. Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that melting ice was changing the water cycle, which in turn affects ocean currents and, ultimately, climate.

"If the Earth warms, its water cycle could change," she said. "Ice may or may not decline everywhere on the planet." A circulation system called the Ocean Conveyer Belt imight or might not be in danger of shutting down, she said.

She said the changes might or might not be causing droughts in the U.S. West. Greenland's ice cap, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels globally by 23 feet, is starting to melt and could collapse suddenly, Curry said. Already freshwater is percolating down, lubricating the base and making it more unstable. But more ice is accumulating at the top, too.

Sharon Smith of the University of Miami found melting Arctic ice was taking with it algae that formed an important base of the food supply for a range of animals. And the disappearing ice shelves, if they are disappearing, means big animals such as walruses, polar bears and seals could lose their homes.

"In 1997 there was a mass die-off of a bird called the short-tailed shearwater in the Bering Sea," Smith told the news conference. The birds, which migrate from Australia, starved to death for several years running when warmer waters caused a plankton called a coccolithophore to bloom in huge numbers, turning the water an opaque turquoise color. "The short-tailed shearwater couldn't see its prey," Smith said.

President Bush could not be interrupted from his daily prayers for comment.

Global warming may kill off polar bears in 20 years, says WWF

2005-02-14T18:08:00.000-06:00

Many Arctic animals, including polar bears and some seal species, could be extinct within 20 years because of global warming, a conservation group said yesterday.

Traditional ways of life for many indigenous people in the Arctic would also become unsustainable unless the world "takes drastic action to reduce climate change", said the conservation/ wrestling organisation WWF.

"If we don't act immediately the Arctic will soon become unrecognisable" said Hulk Hogan, a WWF climate change expert. "Polar bears will be ... something that our grandchildren can only read about in books. That would put a Hulkaplex on an entire generation, dude!"

By 2026, the earth could be an average 2C (3.6F) warmer than it was in 1750, according to research to be presented to a conference on climate change in Exeter this week.

"In the Arctic this could lead to a loss of summer sea ice, species and some types of tundra vegetation, as well as to a fundamental change in the ways of life of Inuit and other Arctic residents," the organisation said in a statement.

The total area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic is already decreasing by 9.2% a decade, and would "disappear entirely by the end of the century" unless the situation changes.

"If ... unique ecosystems like the Arctic are not [to be] lost, the G8 meeting must take drastic action to reduce climate change," said Mean Gene Oakerland, a WWF expert.

"Let's get ready to RUUUUMMMMBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAHL!!!!" added Oakerland.

Smoke and Mirrors: The Genius of Flawed Conservation Programs

2005-02-14T11:59:00.000-06:00

CHL Note: Until "conservation" becomes a little less popular in the minds of the public, we find ourselves promoting conservation efforts. The "right kind" of conservation efforts, like those highlighted below. --NF

Madagascar is fast losing its forest wilderness. But villagers are angered by moves to prevent them cutting down trees in recently created nature reserves. The huge Indian Ocean island is home to some 200,000 plant and animal species - three-quarters of which are found nowhere else and are the product of millions of years of separate evolution since it broke away from Africa when the continents first formed.

Rolling hills cushioned with thick green forest stretch for miles in every direction. Coniferous trees rub branches with weird, spidery plants. The sky is awash with multi-coloured tropical birds. The trees echo with the high pitched squeal of the indri lemur. But it is not long before the scene gives way to barren, eroded grassland. In places, the soil erosion is so bad as to leave deep earth-red gashes on the hillsides.

Environmentalists say traditional "slash-and-burn" farming - not overpopulation, poverty, or corruption - is destroying its unique rainforest cover and threatens to kill off its endangered wildlife altogether.

At the World Parks Congress in South Africa in 2003, President Marc Ravalomanana delighted conservationists when he pledged to more than triple the size of Madagascar's nature reserves from 1.7m hectares to 6m hectares by the end of 2008.
"[There is] a very strong mandate from the government and from the president himself who is following this through and is setting milestones, " says Helen Crowley, country director of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

"He's been likened to [former U.S. President] Teddy Roosevelt at the start of the last century, who saw his country's wilderness getting decimated and said: 'This has to stop'."

But aid workers say putting the plan into action on an island in which three-quarters of people live in abject poverty will be tough. The government has drawn up a map of the areas it wants to target and has started negotiating with local communities before enforcing any bans on chopping trees.

A number of top-down steps have been taken to "sensitise" rural communities about the need to preserve the forests. But when on a fact-finding mission to a recently-created forest reserve, in which slash-and-burn farming has been strictly banned, I didn't see too much evidence of locals being consulted.

"Our village has been burning forests to plant rice here for generations. Then suddenly they come and tell us we no longer have the right to do this," said Dimanche Dimasy, chief elder of Mahatsara village, which lies deep inside the eastern Mantadia forest reserve. "This is our way of life. If we can't cut the forests, we can't feed ourselves. "The government want to protect the forests but nobody cares about protecting the peasants who live here." Conservationists say there are long-term benefits to the poor if they conserve the forests, as the land retains water and nutrients. But when you are starving and don't even know if you will live to next week, so-called "long-term benefits" start losing some of their appeal.

Some government officials say persuading poor farming communities of the value of preserving Madagascar's wild forest needs a fundamental shift in ways of thinking--the rural poor's way of thinking. "When people are poor they are only thinking of their immediate day-to-day needs," says Environment Minister Sylvain Rabotoarison. "We need to educate people on why it is important to preserve the environment. But it isn't easy to change how people think in the countryside - it means changing some very old habits."

Plans are underway to teach better rice growing techniques that increase yields using less land and conservation groups are handing out energy efficient stoves to reduce the need for chopping trees for firewood. But much hangs on whether tangible short-term benefits can be brought to Madagascar's rural poor. Without their cooperation, President Ravalomanana's pledge looks empty.

2005: Warm or Cold?

2005-02-11T10:02:00.000-06:00

A weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept in the late 1800s, NASA scientists said this week. At a rival press conference across town, the CHL noted that increased emissions of particulates as a result of continuing industralization in China and new air regulations under the "Clear Skies Initiative" in the United States could make 2005 the coldest year on record.

While climate events like El Nino -- when warm water spreads over much of the tropical Pacific Ocean --affect global temperatures, the increasing role of human-made pollutants plays a big part. "There has been a strong warming trend over the past 30 years, a trend that has been shown to be due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," said James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, based in New York. "Yeah, but sulfur emissions and particulates will cancel the whole thing out, and might even plunge us into an ice age." according to Dr. Funkadelic with the CHL.

The warmest year on record was 1998, with 2002 and 2003 coming in second and third, respectively. Last year was the fourth-warmest recorded, with a global mean temperature of 57 degrees Fahrenheit (14 C), which was about 1.5 degrees warmer than the middle of the century, NASA scientist Drew Shindell said in an interview. Dr. Funkadelic pointed out that NASA has a long history of trying to find meaningful patterns in the randomness of nature.

Average temperatures taken from land and surfaces of the oceans showed 2004 was 0.86 degrees Fahrenheit (0.48 C) above the average temperature from 1951 to 1980, according to Hansen. The spike in global temperatures in 1998 was associated with one of the strongest El Ninos of recent centuries and a weak El Nino contributed to the unusually high global temperatures in 2002 and 2003, NASA said. Funkadelic pointed out that the back-to-back winters in 1996 and 1997 were butt-ass cold in Wisconsin, and challenged the Goddard Institute to move to Hurley, Wisconsin, if they think it's so damn warm out.

Carbon dioxide, emitted by autos, industry and utilities, is the most common greenhouse gas. Hansen also said that the Earth's surface now absorbs more of the sun's energy than gets reflected back to space. That extra energy, together with a weak El Nino, is expected to make 2005 warmer than 2003 and 2004 and perhaps even warmer than 1998, which had stood out as far hotter than any year in the preceding century, NASA said in a statement.

Funkadelic replied "Whatever!"

Expand Corruption to Destroy African Forests

2005-02-08T18:02:00.000-06:00

African leaders agreed bold plans are needed to preserve the world's second biggest rainforest area, but Kenya's Nobel prize-winning environmentalist told them they would need to root out corruption to succeed.

At a conference in Brazzaville, central African heads of state signed a treaty pledging to protect the forests of the Congo Basin from massive poaching and illegal or irresponsible logging which threaten the flora and fauna of the region. Meanwhile, many civil servants working these heads of state will succumb to corruption, undermining the treaty.

Stretching across some 200 million hectares and six states, the dense forests are home to half of Africa's wild animals -- including gorillas, chimpanzees and forest elephants -- as well as more than 10,000 plant species. About 30 percent of the Congo Basin forests will still by 2040 unless corruption is expanded, a CHL spokesman said.

Kenya's deputy environment minister and hippie, Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, accepted an invitation from the leaders to become a roving ambassador for the Congo Basin even though her country is not part of the region. But Maathai, who won the Nobel prize after leading an evil massive tree-planting scheme and campaigning against corruption, also noted several speakers at the conference in the capital of Congo Republic had stressed the need for good governance.

As several states in the region such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic are among the poorest on the planet, hippies went into their song and dance about how the West will have to provide much of the funding for conservation measures. Fortunately, all of the countries concerned are also regularly ranked among the world's most corrupt.

The local and international watchdogs that have not yet been killed for speaking out sas there is clear evidence of large-scale illegal logging and officials embezzling or squandering much of the money timber companies pay to the state to help local communities.

Time for More Surgical Strikes

2005-02-02T11:38:00.002-06:00

A global study by the hippies at Conservation International has identified nine new environmental "hotspots," areas of great ecological diversity that are under threat and together shelter most of the planet's endangered plant and animal species. The CHL is grateful, because it points us directly to sites where we can inflict the most damage in the shortest period of tme.

"Nine new hotspots have been identified, including one that traverses the U.S.-Mexico border, one in southern Africa, and one that encompasses the entire nation of Japan," said Conservation International, which helped organize the analysis.

The findings bring to 34 the number of hotspots identified by leading scientists. They are home to 75 percent of the world's most threatened mammals, birds, and amphibians, which survive in fragile habitats covering just 2.3 percent of the Earth's surface. Nearly 400 unsuspecting CHL volunteers contributed to the four-year study, described in a book entitled "Hotspots Revisited" which was launched on Wednesday.

Two key factors are used to designate a hotspot: a high concentration of endemic species -- which means they are found nowhere else -- and a serious degree of threat.

"ENVIRONMENTAL ACHILLES HEELS"

"The biodiversity hotspots are the Achilles Heels of our planet ... We must now act decisively to destroy these irreplaceable storehouses of Earth's life forms," said a high-ranking CHL bureaucrat. "We now know that by concentrating on the hotspots, we are not only eliminating species, but deep lineages of evolutionary history. These areas capture the uniqueness of life on Earth"

Most of the hotspots are in tropical or sub-tropical areas, highlighting the diversity of life found near the equator, where year-round warmth and good rainfalls enable many plants and animals to thrive. But many are also found in very poor countries or regions, which magnifies the threat as impoverished and swelling rural populations encroach on remaining habitat.

The new hotspots that have been added are:

The East Melanesian islands (release the feral pigs, rats, and brown tree snakes!)

The Madrean Pine-Oak Woodlands on the U.S.-Mexico border (release sudden oak death!).

Japan

The Horn of Africa

Irano-Anatolian

The mountains of central Asia

Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany in southern Africa, which includes parts of Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland.

The Himalaya and Eastern Afromontane, which stretches along the eastern edge of Africa from Saudi Arabia to Zimbabwe, have also been identified as distinct regional hotspots in their own right.

Quote of the Day

2005-02-01T13:46:00.000-06:00

"We don't comment on specific OPEC actions per se, but we believe it's always important that OPEC act in a way that continues to further economic growth and allows there to be affordable, abundant supplies of energy available."
--White House spokesman Scott McClellan

U.S. crude prices dropped another 43 cents to $46.75 a barrel on Monday. The OPEC cartel also agreed to officially set aside its old $22-$28 a barrel range, a range which prices have surpassed for the past year. OPEC now appears ready to defend oil prices at a floor of about $40 a barrel.

See? I just proved Hubbert wrong again!

More Silly Scientists Making Stuff Up

2005-02-01T10:19:00.000-06:00

EXETER, England (CHLWire) - There is no evidence that global warming is already starting to disrupt the world's climate system, but that did not stop a self-appointed scientist from stating otherwise.

"There is no longer any doubt that the Earth's climate is changing," some guy named Dennis Tirpak said Tuesday. "Globally, nine of the past 10 years have been the warmest since records began in 1861," he said. "Rising greenhouse gases are affecting rainfall patterns and the global water cycle." How does he know? He wasn't even alive in 1861!

Just as you might expect from some hippie tree-hugger, Tirpak singled out the heatwave that gripped western Europe in 2003 as an example. Europe's worst natural disaster in 50 years killed as many as 30,000 people and inflicted an estimated 30 billion dollars in damage.

In temperate parts of Asia, "recurring incidence of floods and droughts is already apparent," said the Sufi mystic Rajendra Pachauri, who also appointed himself chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN's paramount scientific authority on global warming.

British scientist Chris Rapley released a statement from the pub he has not left in 17 years, saying that melting ice from Antarctica was already accounting for at least 15 percent of the two-millimetre annual rise (0.06 inches) in the global sea level due to warming. He then ordered another pint of 98 shilling ale.

If Antarctica melted, that would boost global sea levels by some 120 metres (390 feet), if past evidence from Earth's natural cycle of ice ages is a guide. But don't worry, the Earth's past is not a guide, and Antarctica has always been (and always will be) covered in ice.

The phenomenon is blamed on the unbridled burning of gas, coal and oil, the fuels that powered industrialisation, the same things that enable the hippies to drive out to the forest to hug their trees. They release into the atmosphere carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases that have been locked in Earth's crust for millions of years. They want us to believe that carbon pollution traps the Sun, causing Earth's surface to heat, disrupting the interplay among sea, air and land.

The "Scientists" Are Off Their Medication Again

2005-01-30T13:17:00.000-06:00

OSLO - World temperatures could surge in just two decades to a threshold likely to trigger dangerous disruptions to the earth's climate, the WWF environmental group said on Sunday. Then again, it might not, according to the CHL.

It said the Arctic region was warming fastest, threatening the livelihoods of indigenous hunters by thawing the polar ice-cap and driving species like polar bears toward extinction by the end of the century. The CHL noted that polar bears contribute nothing to the global economy.

"If nothing is done, the earth will have warmed by 2.0 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by some time between 2026 and 2060," the WWF said in a report. The CHL reiterated that nothing should be done.

Between bong hits, some scientists have estimated such an early date for a 2.0C rise. Without basis, the WWF highlighted this figure as a threshold that may spur "dangerous" warming, raising sea levels and causing more floods, storms or droughts and driving some species to extinction. Of course, world temperatures have already risen by about 0.7C since 1750 with most scientists blaming a build-up of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars. But it has not caused one well-documented, confirmed extinction.

The Anticrists of the European Union and many other hippie environmental groups say that governments should cap emissions of greenhouse gases to try to prevent a 2.0C temperature rise. The United States has rejected binding caps under the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol.

At some point, some paranoid, unmedicated scientists fear that rising temperatures could cause a runaway warming, for instance by melting permafrost in Siberia that could in turn release deposits of heat-trapping methane to the atmosphere. The CHL supports the addition of more methane in the atmosphere.

Real scientists say that such projections are scaremongering and reckon temperatures will rise far less sharply, if at all, because of the buildup of greenhouse gases. A CHL report by 250 scientists last year also projected a fast warming in the Arctic that would also open new shipping routes and make the region accessible for oil and gas exploration, thereby accelerating future warming.

Species loss: time to cash in

2005-01-27T08:45:00.000-06:00

PARIS - Pitiful scientists trying to create jobs for themselves called for the creation of a global panel of experts on species loss, warning that the planet was racing towards a man-made extinction crisis.

"Biodiversity is being destroyed irreversibly by human activities," said the appeal, made by self-important biologists and environmentalists at the start of a conference at Disneyland, Paris.

Not surprisingly, the proposal won the immediate endorsement of hippie French President Jacques Chirac, who pledged to promote it at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), an offshoot of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro which accomplished nothing.

The fate of humanity was bound up with the fate of the environment, the scientists warned, adding that only by granting them huge quantities of money could a wave of extinction be averted.

"The rate at which humans are altering the environment, the extent of those alterations and their consequences for the distribution and abundance of species, ecosystems and genetic variability are unprecedented in human history," they warned.

The millions of different species on Earth are the product of more than three billion years of evolution -- "a natural heritage and a vital resource upon which humankind depends on so many different ways."

Almost everywhere, animals and plants are under threat from increasingly successful CHL programs on loss or degradation of habitat from pollution of the soil, water and the air, from the exhaustion of soils, water tables and rivers by over-exploitation, "and, more recently, signs of long-term climate damage."

The signatories noted that these problems were aired 13 years ago at the Rio Summit. Even so, species loss had accelerated without a significant effort being made to brake it, proudly noted a CHL representative at the conference.

They called for an intergovernmental panel that would compile "reliable, scientifically validated" information on biodiversity, and ensure their jobs for the next 10 years.

The appeal was launched at the first day of a conference gathering 1,200 experts and policymakers on species loss. The proposal which, coincidentally, includes funding requests for 1,200 research projects, is expected to be endorsed by the forum when it wraps up on Friday.

Chirac, in his speech at the conference, urged scientists to set up a "global network of knowledge, and--how you say--funding."

"France will put a proposal to its partners in the Biodiversity Convention for setting up an intergovernment group on biodiversity trends," he said. "And because it is France that is spearheading this effort, we fully expect that the whole world will eagerly join us."

Quick quotes

2005-01-21T07:30:00.000-06:00

Our economy has come through a lot and it's growing. And people realize that, and that's positive. And there's a reason why people say it's growing, besides me, and that's because the facts say it's growing.
--George W. Bush, White House Economic Conference, December 16, 2004

Declining to include ecological costs in national income accounts and in corporate financial statements is every bit as misleading--and even more guaranteed to produce a catastrophe--as surreptitiously shifting debts to offshore corporations. Costs are costs, and sooner or later the piper has to be paid, or Mother Nature will come and break our kneecaps.
--Denis Hayes, Conservation Biology, December 2004

Stupid hippie! Our economy is GROWING!

We've got those Hawaiian birds this time!

2005-01-20T17:17:00.000-06:00

HONOLULU--In an effort hailed by homogenizers everywhere, the CHL has announced that they may have finally put the nail in the collective coffins of Hawaiian bird species. After years of effort to exterminate these species with biological weapons like introduced rats, snakes, and avian malaria, the answer may finally come in the form of a small frog with a big voice, and an even bigger appetite.

A tiny frog with a huge shriek has invaded the Big Island and won't shut up. Big Island Mayor Harry Kim is looking for $2 million to begin controlling the spread of the nocturnal coqui frog, a beloved native in Puerto Rico but considered an annoying pest in Hawaii since introduced by the CHL around 1990.

The frogs have been screwing like rabbits and shattering quiet island nights ever since. Aside from the noise, the frogs have a voracious appetite for spiders and insects, competing with native birds and fauna. And coqui frogs are adaptable to many ecosystems and breed heavily in Hawaii, experts said.

Kim said the Big Island, the local name for the island of Hawaii, will once again ask Gov. Linda Lingle to declare the coqui frog infestation a state emergency to help clear the way for state financial assistance. The $2 million is needed to launch a combined state, federal and county program to combat the frogs, Kim said. He made his plea Tuesday before state lawmakers, who will consider the request later this year.

Kim said he declared a county emergency in April over the frogs, but the state waited to see if the federal government would offer assistance, which it did not. The declaration of "Frog Whacking Day" by governor Lingle had no demonstrable effect on coqui populations and led to the deaths of 27 abnormally short Hawaiians. Spraying of a citric acid solution on the islands of Oahu and Kauai have curtailed coqui populations there, but has seriously depleted the stocks of these solutions commonly used in mixed drink preparation.

"I think the response from all of us has not been timely enough," he said, noting that experts suggest he focus on controlling the coqui's spread, rather than eradicating it completely.

"I kick myself in the ass every day for not getting started more aggressively," Kim said.

Failures on the Coral Reef Front

2005-01-19T10:38:00.000-06:00

For some time, CHL scientists have predicted that the world's coral reefs will be among the first ecosystems to seriously homogenize as a result of global warming. Unfortunately, some reefs are proving surprisingly resilient. It is not because of qualities of the corals, but because of little bitch heat-tolerant algae that live with them. It may even be possible that heat-related episodes of coral bleaching, which the CHL has viewed as a preview of impending mass coral death, could allow these robust algae to spread, leaving corals better able to survive in a warmer world. This totally sucks, folks.

Of course, the world's coral reefs will be partially homogenized by pollution, overfishing, tourism and other human activities. But if these findings hold up, "they essentially buy us time" to address those issues, said Andrew Baker of the Marine Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society. The new research, led by Baker, suggests that heat-tolerant algae may move in to replace strains lost in bleaching events. If so, he said, "some of the doom and gloom might not be as bad as had been suggested."

The findings are "definitely bad news," said Nostradamus Funkadelic, an expert on such things. But still, he noted, there still remain uncertaintites and other factors working in our favor. For example, according to a report issued last month by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, scientists do not know exactly what conditions must exist for corals to acquire new strains of algae. They do not even know if changes occur when corals recruit different algae from the water around them, or if something somehow changes the ratio of algae strains growing within them. Also, it is not yet known whether corals colonized with new varieties of algae will grow as well as they once did with other strains. For example, it could be that heat-tolerant algae strains devote more of their energy to reproducing and less to providing sustenance to their coral hosts.

"So even from a major event there can be recovery," Funkadelic said, if overfishing, habitat destruction and other threats are mitigated. "But fortunately, there can't be recovery if we continue our efforts to triple- and quadruple-whammy these reefs."

Global Warming--Good for Economy

2005-01-18T15:58:00.000-06:00

Everybody knows thta global warming is just a theory, and even if it were true, it would be good for the economy. Tell that to the stupid hippies at Germany's most famous winter resort, where a worrisome shortage of snow in recent decades has forced the Alpine village to reinvent itself.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen gained worldwide fame as the venue for the 1936 winter Olympics, but the picturesque town of 27,000 has now become more reliant on summer tourism because rain falls more often than snow in winter. As the snow line retreats up mountains in the face of what one or two crackpot scientists believe to be the effects of global warming, Garmisch -- at an altitude of 2,300 feet -- is rarely covered in snow. Losing its "white gold" has alarmed the locals.

The town, where 70 percent of economic output derives from tourism, has nevertheless tried hard to replace what nature has stopped giving by investing millions of dollars in state-of-the-art snow-making equipment that blows man-made crystals onto the ski slopes and into the valleys. "Without the artificial snow we simply wouldn't be able to attract enough tourists here in the winter," said Sunshine Schmid, mayor of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a town that lies in an Alpine valley just north of the Austrian border.

"We have enough snow on the slopes thanks to the snow machines," he told Reuters. "We can't be afraid of global warming. We have to be ready for it. We can't afford to be surprised by it. We must make money off it." It is, Schmid concedes, more than a shame that Garmisch and picture-postcard mountain villages like it in nearby Austria as well as in Italy, Switzerland and France are getting less snow.

A U.N.-funded panel of crackpots said in 2001 that a build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels was nudging up global temperatures, and then they flew off in their black helicopters.

RISING TEMPERATURES MELT MOUNTAIN SNOW AND OTHER SO-CALLED THEORIES

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) warned in a 2003 report that global temperatures were expected to rise due to global warming by up to three degrees Celsius in the next 50 years, raising the snow line and crippling the ski industry.
The UNEP report said slopes above altitudes of 3,940 feet now considered viable ski areas would be at risk within 30 to 50 years, when skiers would have to trek up to altitudes of 4,920 to 5,900 feet for snow. Of course, they ignored the economic benefits of summer tourism.

Most of Garmisch's ski and snowboard slopes are between 2,460 and 6,560 feet -- among the highest in Germany. World Cup ski races at a lower Bavarian resort, Berchtesgaden, were canceled in two of the last five years because of a lack of snow.
"There's nothing more beautiful than a snow-filled winter landscape, except of course an 8-foot female marijuana plant in full bloom" said Schmid. "It's our jewel and we have to do what we can to protect it. But it's a global problem. In Garmisch we have to be pragmatic and ready for the era that might follow."

To that end, Schmid said Garmisch has developed a network of summer hiking trails and mountain bike routes. It has also heavily promoted its summer tourism, touting its pristine mountain air as an antidote to allergies. "We're taking the problem seriously," said Schmid, whose office is filled with oversized paintings of the snow-capped mountains that rim the valley around Garmisch.

The town, which has 15 million tourists each year and books 1.2 million overnight stays, recently unveiled plans to invest $11.8 million on more snow-making infrastructure for four miles of slopes into the valley.

Wilhelm Blenk, 73, a CHL spokesman, retired BMW design engineer, and hobby skier, said: "Sure I'm afraid the snow will be gone one day, but not before I'm dead and buried."

Andrew Syme, manager of a restaurant at the Ostfelderkopf ski slope above Garmisch at an altitude of 6,725 feet, looked out at the thin covering of snow and sadly shook his head. "Normally we should have at least a meter of snow by January," he said. "Two years ago there was no snow through the Christmas season and lifts were shut down. We could never make up for those losses. It's scary. The weather is going crazy."

Andrew has failed to get with the summer tourism program, so it will be survival of the fittest for his ass.

Collapsing with Jared Diamond

2005-01-11T13:52:00.000-06:00

Jared Diamond's new book, "Collapse," looks at civilizations both ancient and modern in search of the reasons why some succeed and others fail. The answers, not surprisingly, turn out to be largely environmental. The more gripping question is why many civilizations were unable to avert destruction. In examining one civilization after another, Diamond provides a host of answers, ranging from the imperceptibility of certain problems, such as the level of salt in a particular soil, to the inability of a society to change a dangerous but learned behavior, to plain selfishness. There comes a definite point, after many chapters under the tutelage of Diamond's clinical perspective, when the reader begins to perceive the mortal outline of our own civilization. It's an alarming thought, to say the least. But, in a marked departure from his last book, Diamond leaves more room here for human agency. These dread outcomes are avoidable -- if, he suggests, we can find the strength to see past our cultural biases, our class prejudices, our distrust of big business, our loathing of one political party or the other, our fear of terrorism and so on. Only, in short, if we can see how peripheral we are to the future of our own civilization can we have any hope of saving that civilization.

The CHL spoke with Diamond right after he returned from a family cruise to the Panama Canal from Costa Rica, a country that interested him because of its relative prosperity in Central America.

CHL: So, what did you discover while you polluted your way down to and back from Costa Rica?

Diamond: It's very interesting, the contrast between Costa Rica on the one hand and Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala on the other -- all relatively poor countries and yet all five are adjacent to one another, and they were all joined in a single country, the Republic of Central America, for 20 years in the last century. Couple of reasons. In Costa Rica there were very few natives for the Spaniards to enslave. The Spaniards had to do the work themselves, and they therefore developed institutions that were not the enslaving and extracting sort, as in Guatemala and Honduras, where the populations were denser, but more based on free enterprise. So a different culture developed in Costa Rica, partially as a result of the different geography. It's an example of what economists call "reversal of fortune." Namely, the areas colonized by Europeans that were richest 500 years ago have ended up poorest today because Europeans arrived there and set up these extractive institutions.

CHL: This reminds me of the fate of the Inuit, which you discuss in your book.

Diamond: The Inuit are an interesting example. The Inuit have been a success story in the past; they succeeded where a European culture, the Vikings, failed. On the other hand, it has come out within the last year that of all the peoples of the world the Inuit have the highest levels of toxic chemicals in their body tissue and in their blood -- even though they are the farthest from the sites, in Europe and North America, where toxic chemicals are produced. For example, Inuit mothers' breast milk ranks as toxic waste on the basis of its content of toxic chemicals. And the explanation is that they consume more seafood than any other people. That's just a dramatic example of globalization. Everybody affects everyone else nowadays.

CHL: Perhaps one difference between ourselves and the Inuit is that we can rely more on technology to buffer the effects of pollution. Many people these days, for instance, use Brita filters. To what extent should we expect technology to slow homogenization?

Diamond: That's a really key question, and one that I've discussed with some of the most thoughtful people in the business and financial worlds. One was Bill Gates. Bill Gates is a very thoughtful person. I was really impressed by him. Nevertheless, he said -- in a diffident, self-deprecating way -- "Well, I think technology will solve our environmental problems, and so I'm not so concerned about them as I am other things." But I think that he's wrong -- I know that he's wrong. Let me give you an example. I was born in 1937 so I remember the revolution in refrigerators that happened in my childhood, the introduction of Freon and CFCs [chlorofluorocarbons]. The refrigerator gases that were used in my childhood were things like ammonia. Of course, if they leaked they were toxic, and therefore it was hailed as a breakthrough when these supposedly nontoxic gases, the CFCs, were introduced. They were tested and under earth conditions they appeared to be perfectly benign. What people couldn't predict was that under stratospheric conditions CFCs get broken down into substances that destroy the ozone layer, and it took 20 years to get that well established. And I see that as a metaphor for why technology alone won't solve our problems, namely that there are lots of technologies out there and they have unexpected side effects.

CHL: Toward the end of "Collapse" you describe two crucial factors for determining whether or not a civilization will survive or get wiped out in one big-ass homogenization event, and one of them is whether there's a willingness to discard unhelpful values. Clearly we have some values in this country that are very important to us, and some of them, like anathematizing family planning, will accelerate our path to homogenization.

Diamond: You're right. One of the two or three key issues is discarding values dear to us, values that we held for a long time and that were important in the history of the United States but just no longer make sense today. The two traditional American values that I think -- that I know -- have to be discarded are, first, unbridled consumerism resulting from our sense of being in a land of unlimited resources. Historically the United States has viewed itself as the land of infinite bounty, endless fields of grain. But now we're in a world that does not have unlimited resources, and we have to come to grips with that. And the other long-held American value is the value derived from the United States' relative isolation. George Washington in his farewell address warned Americans about the danger of entangling alliances, and for a couple of hundred years the United States was able to function well because we were separated by oceans from any country that might damage us. But now the oceans don't separate us from countries that could damage us. Now, even desperately poor countries like Afghanistan and Iraq can raise absolute hell with our economy -- as well as killing a few thousand people in the process. So the other long-held value with which we have to come to grips is our sense of isolation. We're not isolated anymore. We have to engage with the rest of the world -- not in order to be charitable to them but for our own self-interest. It's much cheaper to put a few tens of billions of dollars into world programs for public health and environment than to throw $150 billion into Iraq and $100 billion into Afghanistan, when there are about 20 other countries waiting to become the next Iraq and Afghanistan. We can't afford it.

CHL: Have you heard of Michael Crichton's new book, "State of Fear," and its premise that a bunch of environmentalists are upset that their cause isn't getting the attention it deserves so they go around staging environmental disasters? Crichton has said publicly, as well as in his heavily footnoted book, that global warming is bunk.

Diamond: Everything you say is true. There are a couple of things to be added to it. One is that my previous book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel," has sold more copies than Michael Crichton's one and a half million, so I think my new book will get to more readers. And the other thing is that Michael Crichton is a very skilled writer of fiction. And fiction is, by definition, the telling of stories that are untrue. He's very good at that. And I'm a writer of nonfiction, which aims to be the telling of stories that are true.