What We've Done

I missed this map last week. It details the effects humans have had on Earth's oceans. From the link:

BOSTON--Four years in the making, a groundbreaking new map of the state of the world's oceans was released today, and its message is stark: Human activity has left a mark on nearly every square kilometer of sea, severely compromising ecosystems in more than 40% of waters.

The home of the map, with more details, is here. Here's a snapshot:

Western US Drying

Researchers have found that areas in the western US, including places like Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego, are drying due to human activity. From NatureNews:

Human activity is largely to blame for the worsening water shortages in the western United States over the past half-century, a new study shows. The analysis of climate trends that influence the availability of freshwater shows that humans are responsible for 60% of the observed changes. ...

Snowpack in mountain ranges such as the Rockies is diminishing, average minimum temperatures are rising, and spring run-off in major rivers such as the Colorado river is happening earlier. All of these changes look set to make dry summers even harsher for residents of thirsty cities such as Las Vegas in Nevada, and Los Angeles and San Diego in California.

Research led by Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, now shows that these changes cannot be explained without taking human activities — which have raised greenhouse-gas levels — into account. Barnett is so worried by the situation that he says development in these regions should be capped. "We're using all the water there is right now, and people still want to build bigger cities," he says. ...

Barnett and his team used computer models to simulate the natural behaviour of the water cycle in the region. They compared this to the trends seen over the past 50 years, to see whether they can be attributed to natural causes. The answer, they report in this week's Science, is no.

Barnett and his colleagues then factored in the global warming that has occurred as a result of burning fossil fuels over the past half-century, using figures calculated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This time, the models matched more closely the weather trends experienced in the western US states.

Overall, says Barnett, human greenhouse emissions explain around 60% of the trends in freshwater behaviour. He puts the odds of natural causes being responsible at "somewhere between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000".

A Developer Stopped

The city of St. Paul has stopped a developer from building an upscale complex in a flood plane. From the NYTimes:

“We started with the previous mayor, and we were in agreement on this,” [the developer] Mr. Trooien said in an interview conducted on the top floor of his office building that overlooks the proposed site, which sits between two major spans over the Mississippi on the more residential south side of the river, opposite downtown. “We’ve done everything we can, but the squishy liberals think small-scale is morally superior.”

The article goes on to state that the developer was looking for government handouts and even admitted that a gradual implementation of his plan wasn't economically feasible:

Meanwhile, the economics of the project caused concern among City Council members. Not only was Mr. Trooien asking for substantial tax deferments, but the entire project was to be built all at the same time, raising concerns about whether a city with a population of 300,000 could absorb it at once.Still, Mr. Aberg and Mr. Trooien maintain that it could not easily have been phased in, and that the economics of a smaller scale project just do not work on the site.

These types hate government involvement in business right up to the point where they get to stick their hands in the cookie jar. Good for St. Paul.

Bury Your Phone

You may or may not get flowers. Here's a phone that will grow a sunflower if you bury it.

It's the Friday before xmas. I have a few days off to relax and catch up on reading and blogging. Wii'ng may also be required.

Suddenly, I Don't Hate Australia (As Much)

It was nice to read this lead paragraph this morning:

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday at the hands of the left-leaning opposition, whose leader has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australia's combat troops from Iraq.

Sadly, Rudd is not in favor of marriage equality for everyone. However, he's an improvement over homophobic John Howard and favors laws that give same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples (although, as we know, that tactic has been a failure in NJ).

PostBlog: Be sure to check out Jonathan's review of John Howard's deceptive cheerleading for the Iraq debacle.

Friday Dump

- Anthony Fortunato has been found guilty of manslaughter as a hate crime in the death of Michael Sandy. Sandy was targeted for being gay. Fortunato came out of the closet during his trial, claiming that a gay person wouldn't target another gay person for a crime. Right, closeted gay people don't ever attack their own. Closeted gay on gay violence is one of the ugly products of a homophobic culture and the closet.

- Congrats to Al Gore and the UN Panel on Climate Change for winning the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. That was nice news to wake up to. Speaking of the environment, glaciers as disappearing from Glacier National Park.

- Europe starts to get it right on creationism.

- News findings indicate that a) abortion has dropped worldwide due to increased birth control and b) women in countries that outlaw abortion are just as likely to have the procedure as women in countries where it's legal.

- Expensive running shoes aren't better than lower priced ones. It's the fit that counts. Interestingly, this story is all over the UK and Australian press but, so far, getting skimpy coverage here. Maybe that will change as the day goes on.

- Biotech company Genentech makes two drugs that doctors are using to treat macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, Avastin (~$38/dose) and the more expensive Lucentis ($1,950/dose). Doctors have been using Avastin "off label," it's a cancer drug and not approved for ocular disorders. But, the drugs are very similar chemically and doctors have reported promising anecdotal results with Avastin after two years of use. Genentech has decided to cut off the supply chain for Avastin. Gee, I wonder why?

- Oh, and Ann Coulter would like Jews to perfected by becoming xtians. She also thinks that heaven is NYC during the 2004 RNC. Very odd.

More On Brooklyn Oil Spill

I missed this last week. Mother Jones has put up a timeline of events for America's largest oil spill. I have more on the oil spill here.

Yes Virginia, There Is A Huge Huge Oil Spill In Brooklyn

(see 2 updates below)
Mother Jones has an excellent (and I mean EXCELLENT) update on the country's largest urban oil spill (right in Brooklyn, larger than Exxon-Valdez, and courtesy of ExxonMobile) that Stuart blogged about a few months ago.

Something interesting happened when Stuart posted about the spill. A commenter to Stuart's post, claiming to be a Brooklyn resident, fervently disputed local news reports about the spill and claimed that almost no one in related lawsuits was from the neighborhoods near the spill. The commenter initially seemed to be implying that there was no spill even though the spill itself is indisputable.

The commenter claimed that the recent news about the spill was just a smear campaign and cited rosy health stats; health stats that aren't from studies designed to exam the spill and its health effects (Which means that you can't use them to say much of anything about the spill, but more on that in a bit.).

I found it odd that someone would be so adverse to a cleanup effort in their own borough. I mean, even if adverse health effects were in a distant future, why wouldn't a resident in the area of the spill want a cleanup?

I did a bit of searching for other websites that had posted about the spill and found the same commenter posting the exact same text posted at Stuart's thread. That always raises a red flag. It raises the obvious questions, "Why would someone be searching every site that references the spill and then posting the same text at every site?" and "What Brooklyn resident, living near a potentially toxic spill, is going to embark on a web-campaign against the state and news agencies to make sure that the company responsible for the spill isn't smeared?" It just didn't (and still doesn't) add up.

Fast forward to now. Mother Jones has an update on that spill that is also a really good synopsis of the story to date. It also contains the perspective of people living near the spill and the admission by the state that no studies examining the effects of the spill have been, or plan to be, conducted. Some excerpts:

"you become something of a stink connoisseur when you live in Greenpoint," says Teresa Toro, who lives two blocks from Newtown Creek. The neighborhood features rows of meticulously kept houses, manicured parks, and cafés catering to an influx of ex-Manhattanites, but it also remains the location of choice for projects that would never be placed along Fifth Avenue: sewage treatment, waste transfer, natural gas storage. For Toro, the oil fumes are the worst. "When the wind is just right, I can smell it blowing off the creek. Sometimes we can't open our windows. ...

By the time the environment department convened a public meeting last year, the neighborhood had built up a full head of steam. Hundreds packed the Princess Manor banquet hall to hear presentations by ExxonMobil, BP, and Chevron, hectoring company representatives with catcalls of "liar!" and "shame on you people!" A health department spokesman tried to reassure the crowd, saying the state was unaware of any health threat but acknowledging that no studies had been done and none were planned. When state officials announced the cleanup would last another 20 years or more, the room fell silent.

That April, Riverkeeper obtained internal ExxonMobil documents showing that the company had known of high levels of benzene and other chemicals a decade earlier, when the substances were detected in a commercial property just 1,000 feet from the Pedota household. (ExxonMobil spokesman Brian Dunphy told Mother Jones that the tests, which were not conducted by the company, aren't proof of a health threat.)

This story is one is worth reading in its entirety. It really, really is. It's about a natural disaster that elected officials and wealthy oil executives wanted to keep underground, literally.

PostBlog: I see the commenter referenced above has already visited the Mother Jones piece! The comments are at the end of the article. Enjoy.

PostBlog2: The Post reported the other day on an EPA report that can be found here (there's a link to the report in pdf format at the bottom of the page). When the NY Post starts writing about the potential dangers of an environmental disaster, you know it's worth looking at.

As ExxonMobile and their lawyers try to spin themselves as the good guys working hard to clean up the spill, keep in mind this nugget that both Mother Jones and the NY Post articles report:

In March, ExxonMobil stopped its groundwater-cleanup pumps removing oil in response to a DEC lawsuit threat and once the company's discharge permits were revoked. This led to the shutting down of 23 of the 35 recovery wells, said officials.

The EPA said if the continues for a few more weeks, the loss of suction will release oil back into the ground.

I'm Building One Now

A Chinese farmer, Ma Yanjun, and a solar water heater he made from left over bottles. Cool stuff. Makezine has detailed directions if you want to make one too.

No More Credit Card Junk Mail?

Jay posts about a way to opt out of receiving junk credit card offers. Jay says it's working; he hasn't received any offers since signing up. I also searched a bit on the Google and it seems legit.

McDonald's Fixes Containers for Hedgehogs

(Gibe)
In 2006, the British Hedgehog Preservation Society convinced McDonald's to alter the lids on their McFlurry dessert containers. Hedgehogs were getting trapped in discarded containers. From the World Wild Foundation:

It has been a long hard battle, but the British Hedgehog Preservation Society is celebrating the news that McDonald’s have changed the lid on their McFlurry dessert!

The original containers trapped many hedgehogs, some were released by kindly passers by, some were found dead, and it will never be known how many were never found at all. The new lid has a smaller aperture so the customer will take the lid off to get to the ice cream. Even if the cup does get thrown to the floor with the lid attached, the hole should be too small for hedgehogs to push into.

A spokesperson from McDonalds said “In consultation with the BHPS, we have undertaken significant research and testing to develop new packaging for our McFlurry dessert that addresses this issue. We are delighted to announce that we have now introduced a new lid with a smaller aperture for our McFlurry dessert. The smaller aperture of the lid has been designed to prevent hedgehogs from entering the McFlurry container in the unfortunate incidence that a lid is littered and is then accessible to wildlife.

Our restaurants and packaging will continue to display anti-littering messaging to encourage our customers to dispose of their litter responsibly, and we conduct daily litter patrols whereby we collect not only McDonald’s packaging but also any other litter that has been carelessly discarded.”

Fay Vass, Chief Executive of the Society said “This is excellent, if long overdue news! We have been in touch with McDonald’s about this problem for over five years, and are delighted that they have at last solved the problem. Thanks to public support of our campaign, from the 1^st September 2006 every McDonald’s restaurant in the UK will be using the new lids on their McFlurry cups and by doing so many hedgehog lives will be saved.”

So, you can get a corporate giant to alter their products. I'm going to start a campaign to convince McDonald's to bring back the Shamrock Shake in a low-fat, low-sugar digestible form.
(from x-entertainment.com)

Good Earth on the Cheap

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a report stating that reducing carbon emissions might not be as costly as right-wing radio talk-show hosts would have you believe (why people believe radio personalities over scientific consensus could be a topic all on its own):

BANGKOK--Climate change can be tackled without breaking the bank, and it won't require a technological miracle. That is the upbeat conclusion from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been holed up behind closed doors for the past 3 days here to debate options for mitigating the impacts of global warming.

The fruit of their labor is the executive summary of a larger report on climate-change mitigation that will be published in September. It is intended as an array of options for policymakers to prevent the worst-case scenarios of climate change by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The most ambitious plan, which would stabilize CO2 below 535 parts per million (ppm), would come with an estimated 3% decrease in global gross domestic product by 2030. Less ambitious targets come with smaller price tags, and the least ambitious--aiming for under 710 ppm CO2--is predicted to yield a small net gain for the global economy. (Current atmospheric CO2 is 380 ppm.) According to the report, getting from today's carbon-intensive economy to any of these targets is achievable with currently available tools, including a shift to alternative energies, boosts in energy efficiency, and reductions in deforestation.

Pacific

The Pacific Ocean is Earth's largest feature. It covers ~1/3 the surface area of our planet.

Watered-Down Report on Water Shortages

It's telling when even USA Today is reporting that governments are working to soften scientific consensus on the effects of man-made global warming:

BRUSSELS (AP) — An international global warming conference approved a report on climate change Friday, chairman Rajendra Pachauri said, after a contentious marathon session that saw angry exchanges between diplomats and scientists who drafted the report.

Why are we always in the worst of company on international stage?

The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised the most objections to the phrasing, most often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections. ...

The report concerns the effects global warming is already having and will have on life on Earth. The disputed paragraph centered on what has already happened.

The paragraph originally said scientists had "very high confidence" — which means more than 90% chance of accuracy — in the statement that many natural systems around the globe "are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."

After days of intensive small group negotiations over this section, delegates from China and Saudi Arabia on Friday insisted that the confidence be reduced to "high confidence" which means more than 80% accuracy.

Three top scientists-authors formally objected to the change by the diplomats, including American scientist David Karoly of the University of Oklahoma. The scientists said it was an unprecedented weakening of the scientific confidence that was not raised when the report was circulated the past several months.

In the hurry to get the report finished before its 4 a.m. ET release and press conference, diplomats forced the last-minute removal and altering of parts of the iconic table, which shows the ill effects of warming with each 1.8 degree increase in temperature, scientists and other delegates tell the Associated Press.

A final draft of the report obtained by the AP — written by scientists before government officials edit it — said "roughly 20-30% of species are likely to be at high risk of irreversible extinction" if global average temperature rises by 2.7 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

That part has been "diluted," said retired scientist Ian Burton attending the session on behalf of the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Did you catch that? Twenty to thirty percent of species facing irreversible extinction. Bloomberg has more:

April 6 (Bloomberg) -- A United Nations panel warned global warming will cause extinctions to mount, water shortages to spread and droughts and floods to become more frequent as man-made emissions of greenhouse gases cause the Earth to warm.

In a related story, America's Dust Bowl could suffer severe water shortages due to global warming:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Changing climate will mean increasing drought in the southwestern United States, where water already is in short supply, according to a new study.

"The bottom line message for the average person and also for the states and federal government is that they'd better start planning for a Southwest region in which the water resources are increasingly stretched," said Richard Seager of Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

Seager is lead author of the study published online Thursday by the journal Science.

PostBlog: If you want a real treat, read some of the comments (there's a tiny comment link under the article title) from the swivel-chair set accompanying the first article. Nothing makes thirty-percenters go crazy like stating scientific consensus on global warming.

Not Warming Up To Al

Suffering from the "must present both sides of an issue even when there is a general consensus that one side is fallacy" syndrome, the New York Times, in a piece on global warming critical of An Inconvenient Truth, cites scientists whose statements on global warming have been debunked. Of course, the debunked part isn't reported. Is the need to appear neutral so desperate that it supersedes fact for reporters?

From Media Matters (at the link are profiles of some of the discredited critics):

Broad wrote that "scientists are sensitive to [the film's] details and claims" and that Gore has received criticism not "only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists." But of the sources cited in the article, at least four have records of misinformation on the issue. Though three of these were identified as skeptics or as having expressed skepticism, in all four cases, their past statements or studies questioning global warming theory have been debunked or discredited by the scientific community -- which Broad did not report.

I Wouldn't Have Guessed It

Madison, WI has been named America's most walkable city:

Prevention magazine named Madison -- 1,300 miles north of sunny Miami -- as the most walkable of the country's 100 most populated cities. The list was commissioned by the American Podiatric Medical Association based on certain criteria. It ran in editions of the magazine released this week.
Madison beat out the likes of Austin, Texas (No. 2), San Francisco (No. 3) and Miami, which barely cracked the list at No. 98.

Factors contributing to the ranking were air quality, the percentage of people who walk to work, access to parks, number of athletic shoes sold, and (believe it or not) weather.
Number of beaches versus frozen lakes apparently was not a factor. Crime rate, unfortunately for Miami, was.

Madison residents must buy a lot of athletic shoes.

Ten Animals Targeted
Scientists are doing their best to prevent the loss of some of our rarest creatures. From the article:
With an initial list of just 10 -- including a venomous shrew-like creature, an egg-laying mammal and the world's smallest bat -- the programme will give last ditch conservation aid where to date there has been little or none.
"We are focusing on EDGE species -- that means they are Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered," said Zoological Society of London scientist Jonathan Baillie.
"These are one-of-a-kind species. If they are lost there is nothing similar to them left on the planet. It would be a bit like the art world losing the Mona Lisa -- they are simply irreplaceable," he told Reuters.
...
Global warming and human depredations on habitat are cited as root causes of the problem and Baillie said the top creature on the agenda, the Yangtze River dolphin, may already have disappeared.

The EDGE species are listed here. The main EDGE page is here. The sites are worth a look and include slide-shows of the rare species.

Oh the Weather Outside is ... Balmy?
Three articles I found today via Yahoo News:
1. Odd winter, to put it mildly
2. Parts of U.S. experience warm winter
3. Scientists say 2007 may be the warmest yet

From 1.
December was the warmest on Long Island since records began being kept in 1949, according to the National Weather Service. On average, the temperature was 41 degrees last month, a full 5 degrees higher than normal. It was also the first time since 1877 that it didn't snow in December in Central Park. That comes on the heels of Long Island's warmest ever November, when temperatures averaged 48 degrees, the weather service said.

From 3.
The reason for the forecast is mostly due to El Nino, a cyclical warming trend now under way in the Pacific Ocean. The event occurs irregularly — the last one happened in 2002 — and typically leads to increased temperatures worldwide.

While this year's El Nino is not as strong as it was in 1997 and 1998, its combination with the steady increase of temperatures due to global warming from human activity may be enough to break the Earth's temperature record, said Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research unit at the University of East Anglia.

"Because of the warming due to greenhouse gases, even a moderate warming event is enough to push the global temperatures over the top," he said.

"El Nino is an independent variable," he said. "But the underlying trends in the warming of the Earth is almost certainly due to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."

Silly scientists. Don't they know that renowned climatologist..., er, failed businessman turned Senator, Jim Inhofe, has told us that global warming isn't real?

Love it Till it's Ugly
I saw this article in the NYTimes about development in the Adirondacks. From the article:

“Forest slopes would be clear-cut to make room for new roads, driveways, parking areas, houses, lawns and accessory buildings,” John F. Sheehan, a spokesman for the Adirondack Council, an environmental group, said in an Op-Ed piece earlier this year in The Albany Times Union. “The resulting fragmentation would devastate native plants and wildlife that depend on undisturbed habitat.”

No matter how it's spun by developers, to put up housing and infrastructure, forest has to come down. I'm glad I already have pictures of the relatively unscathed wilderness.

This Makes Me Sick
Polar bears drown, islands appear in Arctic thaw
How many species will the earth lose before we do something?