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September 13, 2007

Environmental News 2

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CORRUPTION UPDATES 115

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1) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited. After the abstract there's analysis and commentary, links to related articles, and a link to the database with suggested search terms.

Ten 'most polluted places' named

A list of the world's most polluted places has been published by a US-based independent environmental group.

 

Story from BBC NEWS, 9-14-07;

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6995621.stm

 

The Blacksmith Institute's top 10 towns and cities included sites in ex-Soviet republics, Russia, China and India. Peru and Zambia were also listed.

The report said an estimated 12 million people were affected by the severe pollution, which was mainly caused by chemical, metal and mining industries.

Chronic illness and premature deaths were listed as possible side-effects.

The annual review, which debuted in 2006, is listed alphabetically, and the sites are unranked "given the wide range of location sizes, populations and pollution dynamics".

WORST POLLUTED

Sumgayit, Azerbaijan; Potentially 275,000 affected

Linfen, China; Potentially 3m affected

Tianying, China; Potentially 140,000 affected

Sukinda, India; Potentially 2.6m affected

Vapi, India; Potentially 71,000 affected

La Oroya, Peru; Potentially 35,000 affected

Dzerzhinsk, Russia; Potentially 300,000 affected

Norilsk, Russia; Potentially 134,000 affected

Chernobyl, Ukraine; Potentially 5.5m affected

Kabwe, Zambia; Potentially 255,000 affected

Data: Blacksmith Institute

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
Most Polluted Place: Earth

The American mind has turned inward, and with the focus of a laser beam subjugated every aspect of American political, social and economic life to the service of its materialistic goals.

Nature, its ecosystems and species, and the terms of natural selection itself have been replaced by social selectors based on the inward looking values of American materialism.

Social selection has replaced natural selection as the criterion of survival for man for millenniums. Within the last 200 years mankind has become the deciding factor for ecosystem and species survival on a global scale.

The resulting chaos within ecosystems and food chains has now been compounded by the global unpredictability in weather. Just when summer will end and begin is now unpredictable around the world. The impact of humans has changed the character of our planet. The seasons themselves have changed.

Monitoring the expansion of pollution hotspots into China and India is important, but it is like treating the zits on the face of a terminal cancer patient. Although the zits are important, the patient is dying.

Also See:

Environment Link List

Search the Corruption Database under

Environment (71 Abstracts)

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Ice loss opens Northwest Passage

The most direct route through the Northwest Passage has opened up fully for the first time since records began, the European Space Agency (Esa) says.

 

Story from BBC NEWS: 9-14-07

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6995999.stm

 

Historically, the passage that links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Canadian Arctic has been ice-bound.

But the agency says ice cover has been steadily shrinking, and this year's drop has made the passage navigable.

The findings - based on satellite images - have raised concerns about the speed of global warming.

 

'Extreme'

Recent years have seen a marked shrinkage in its ice cover, but this year it was extreme, Esa says.

It says this made the passage "fully navigable" for the first time since monitoring began in 1978.

"We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3m sq km (1,2 sq miles)," Leif Toudal Pedersen of the Danish National Space Center said.

He said it was "about 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006".

"There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100, 000 sq km (38,600 sq miles) per year on average, so a drop of 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) in just one year is extreme," Mr Pedersen said.

 

'Battle for Arctic'

Scientists have linked the changes to global warming which may be progressing faster than expected.

The opening of the sea routes are already leading to international disputes.

Canada says it has full rights over those parts of the Northwest Passage that pass though its territory and that it can bar transit there.

But this has been disputed by the US and the European Union.

They argue new route should be an international strait that any vessel can use.

THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

North West Passage opening presages Ice Free Polar regions

The significance of the loss of polar ice coverage cannot be overstated. The damage we have done to our environment demands Americans take action on all fronts which are contributing to the destruction of our environment.

The first cause fueling the destruction of our environment is not our gross materialism and greed, it is our failure of spirit. In secular terms, our political and economic elites have failed to hold themselves, or each other, within the limits of our Constitution.

This has allowed corporations to rape our environment, and fuel the destruction of local ecosystems around the world.

In spiritual terms, greed, ego, self-gratification, and have supplanted mutual respect, the good of the group, and The love of wealth and power has replaced the love of freedom and justice at the center of politics.

We have created a never-ending expanding machine of gross material gratification and environmental destruction based on the worse aspects of human nature.

This permitted the Corporate elite to capture our government and replace our democratic political principals with the pursuit and maintenance of wealth and power as the central operating principal of our government.

This was the moment when the purpose of our government changed from protecting the general welfare of the American people, to serving and protecting wealth and power. This is when greed broke through the final defenses of democracy and captured our government.

This pursuit of wealth and power has destroyed our planet. To end this bitter cycle, we must destroy the cycle of political corruption that is protecting and perpetuating the destruction of our planet. This will require a sea change in the direction our country is going, based on changing how we look at each other, our assumptions and expectations about life, and how we look at our government.

Saving the planet is much more complicated than just paying lip service to "sierra club" environmentalism (where you cry wolf, but do nothing about it), or driving a hybrid car. Saving our planet requires we reconsider our basic values and beliefs.

Saving our planet demands a revolution in our fundamental assumptions about the balance between our material, political, and spiritual responsibilities as Americans, and have the cubes to back up our beliefs with actions.

Saving our planet requires we save our country.

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Also See:

Corruption Updates 53, 2nd article on the page, Arctic Sea Ice Melting Faster, a Study Finds:Climate Change has already happened

Seasonal change Link List

All environment links

Search the Corruption Database under

Environment (71 Abstracts)

 

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3) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Climate Change Brings Grim Forecast

By CELIA W. DUGGER

NY Times, September 13, 2007

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/world/africa/13briefs-africa.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

 

A new study by the economist William Cline quantifies sharp reductions in agricultural productivity in many of Africa’s poorest countries by the 2080s if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. Such declines are particularly grave in Africa, where most people still depend on farming. Mr. Cline, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, projects that Sudan and Senegal could see agricultural production fall by more than half, while it would decline by 30 to 40 percent in other parts of Africa. South Asia would also suffer, with declines of 38 percent in India and 22 percent in Bangladesh.

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

Crop Declines this Year, Not 2080

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., Oct 8, 2007

(also see: crop failure this year, committee, 4-6-07)

The radical changes in our environment that our over-population and over-consumption are triggering are changing the eco-map of the Earth.

The weather patterns that we depend on to feed our vast population are changing, and scientists, and now an economist, are predicting disastrous changes late in this century. Like the rest of the climatological predictions made during the last 10 years, this economic prediction will fail as catastrophic climate conditions predicted for the future happen now.

The best I can say for the global climate today is that it still is producing some vestiges of our traditional seasonal patterns, but not much. The fact is that the climate has lost the bulk of its seasonal predictability.

The Equatorial band is boiling up massive amounts of heat and moisture which have pushed extra heat further north and south than in living memory. Here in the Bay Area, this heat has been sufficient to deflect away the traditional storm track which brought us winter storms from the Aleutians every year. Last year, the majority of Winter storms came from the West, or the South West.

We Let Death in the Front Door

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., July 31, 2007

Weather records are falling around the world. Extreme drought, flooding, and aberrant weather have destabilized water supplies, food production, and living conditions around the world.

Expect heavily reduced crop yields, if not outright crop failures, around the world at the end of this summer.

Our Corporate Politicians are continuing on, trying to protect and maintain our our flawed, corruption based program of endless growth and consumption. The destruction of our country's-and the world's-climate and environment assures global warming will bring death and destruction to societies that contributed nothing to the destruction, as well as those that did.

The only solution to our idiocy is to change our approach to life, jettison our flawed values, and change how we pursue our goals. As the article above points out, this is not even close to happening.

We can expect our corporate fools to talk, and do nothing to address the impending climate crisis, nor the practices that brought us to this point.

This is more than a policy problem. What we are experiencing is Nature's condemnation, its rejection of our core values and practices around which we organize American political and economic activity.

If Bush is "talking to God," as he so foolishly claims, he would have heard these truths from the mind of nature.

Just who is talking when Bush claims to hear the voice of god? The human and natural forces of destruction he has unleashed indicate that Bush's "communications" come from a far different source than "God."

Also See:


Corruption Updates 39, 10th article on the page, Scientists: Water Shortages and Drought: CLIMATE ALREADY CHANGED, NO ONE NOTICED

Corruption Updates 47, 9th article on the page, Earth faces a grim future if global warming isn't slowed, U.N. report says

crop failure this year, committee, 4-6-07

Corruption Updates 71, 9th article on the page, 'Only 50 years left' for sea fish

Corruption Updates 94, 8th article on the page, Climate Change Debate Hinges On Economics

Oceans of Junk

Freak Weather Driving Crop yields down, Pain up

Be very worried

Australia 30% Down

Serbia 30% Down

Germany Harvests "Dust"

USDA Global Report

EU Report

Giews World Report

Expect Northern Hemisphere Crop failures this year

Weather Story Links


Environment Link List

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4) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Rising seas called Delta risk

Warming could leave areas swamped, planners told

By Matt Weiser - Bee Staff Writer

Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, September 11, 2007

 

http://www.sacbee.com/101/v-print/story/372195.html

 

 

Children born today could live in a different kind of Central Valley in their retirement years, one with a great inland sea lapping at the edges of major cities.

It may sound far-fetched, but that could be the outcome of the latest prediction of rising sea level caused by global warming. It's one of the scenarios driving a multipronged effort to plan the future in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Last week, the Independent Science Board of the CalFed Bay-Delta Authority said planners should prepare for 28 to 39 inches of sea-level rise by 2100. That's double the most widely accepted current estimates.

Using aerial imaging that reveals surface elevation, Noah Knowles of the U.S. Geological Survey said a 39-inch sea level rise, equivalent to 1 meter, would inundate more than 380 square miles on the edges of the Delta. This could include Sacramento's Pocket neighborhood and parts of west Stockton -- if their levees fail.

Knowles said the data were developed just a week ago and need more analysis. For instance, he has not yet examined effects on the 1,100 miles of levees protecting more than 70 islands within the Delta.

Many of those levees could be overtopped by a 39-inch sea level rise, especially when combined with high tides and storm-driven waves and river flows.

"The question in the Delta is whether those levees will hold," Knowles said, "and whether continuing to protect those is the correct policy."

New predictions use computer modeling based on actual sea level rise documented so far, which grew from an average of 2 millimeters per year before 1990 to 3.5 millimeters since then.

The new method is more accurate, Mount said, than previous models that use mathematical formulas to predict sea level.

If waters rise 39 inches this century, many levees in the Delta could be overtopped, creating vast areas of open water that would be hostile to native wildlife. Seawater could intrude much farther into the Delta from the ocean, damaging a water supply that serves more than 23 million Californians and millions of acres of farmland.

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

Humans: Forced to Drink their own Bitter Brew

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., Oct 8, 2007

Us humans have fashioned ourselves as the masters of Nature during our short history. We humans have replaced "God" or "Nature," or whatever terms of religious or natural limits that held us in check, with our own hubris.

We have created mega-cities filled with tens of millions of people dedicated to transforming the whole spirit of nature into a consumer product, and eating it.

Now, natural limits and natural selection are reasserting themselves, independent of the power of our technologies, philosophies, and militaries.

As we have eaten the very web of nature that created and sustains us, we have removed the very foundations of our existence. The only question is if we realize this in time to prevent the total destruction of our traditional climate, or if we continue growing into the maw of our own impending destruction.

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Also See:

Corruption Updates 47, 10th article on the page, Permanent drought predicted for Southwest:Climate Already Changed, People and Sc

Corruption Updates 58, 7th article on the page, Agency expects extreme summer drought

Corruption Updates 60, 4th article on the page, Lawsuit planned to protect smelt

Environment Link List

Search the Corruption Database under

Environment

 

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5) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Gorillas head race to extinction

By Richard Black

BBC News website, 9-12-07

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6990095.stm

 

Gorillas, orangutans, and corals are among the plants and animals which are sliding closer to extinction.

The Red List of Threatened Species for 2007 names habitat loss, hunting and climate change among the causes.

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has identified more than 16,000 species threatened with extinction, while prospects have brightened for only one.

The IUCN says there is a lack of political will to tackle the global erosion of nature.

Governments have pledged to stem the loss of species by 2010; but it does not appear to be happening.

 

The rate of bio diversity loss is increasing

Julia Marton-Lefevre

"The rate of biodiversity loss is increasing, and we need to act now to significantly reduce it and stave off this global extinction crisis."

One in three amphibians, one in four mammals, one in eight birds and 70% of plants so far assessed are believed to be at risk of extinction, with human alteration of their habitat the single biggest cause.

Critical list

The tone of this year's Red List is depressingly familiar. Of 41,415 species assessed, 16,306 are threatened with extinction to a greater or lesser degree.

 

Straight to zero

"This is the first time we've assessed corals, and it's a bit worrying because some of them moved straight from being not assessed to being possibly extinct," said Jean-Christophe Vie, deputy head of IUCN's species programme.

"We know that some species were there in years gone by, but now when we do the assessment they are not there. And corals are like the trees in the forest; they build the ecosystem for fish and other animals."

IUCN is now embarking on a complete assessment of coral species, and expects to find that about 30% to 40% are threatened.

The most glaring example of a waterborne creature failed by conservation efforts is probably the baiji, the Yangtze river dolphin, which is categorised as Critically Endangered, Possibly Extinct.

This freshwater species appears to have failed in its bid for survival against the destructive tides of fishing, shipping, pollution, and habitat change in its one native river.

Climate of distraction

IUCN says that it is not too late for many of these species; that they can be brought back from the brink.

It is something that the world's governments have committed to, vowing in the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity "to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level".

"Governments know they are going to fail to reach that target," said Jean-Christophe Vie, "and not just in terms of a few species - the failure is really massive.

"We know that it is possible to reverse the trend, but the causes are so huge and massive and global, and there is still a lack of attention to the crisis that biodiversity faces."

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

Humans: Time to Grow Up

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., October 8, 2007

Our policy of endless demographic growth, and promoting demographic growth around the world, must end now.

Our growth in the US is now being used to justify drilling for energy everywhere. Our growth in the US now demands we use nuclear power to be "green!" Our growth in the US is now being used to justify damning every creek and rivulet in the state.

Our growth has irrevocably changed the planet, now growth is threatening a massive catastrophic extinction of species.

To save nature, our climate, its diversity of species, and ultimately ourselves, we are required to make a sacrifice. We must give up our irresponsibility and immaturity and grow up and take responsibility for what we are; the most sophisticated reflection of the spirit of this planet.

Responsibility demands we change our definition of "success," from growth to balance, at the very least.

So far we have been a disgrace to ourselves as humans, Americans, and stewards of this planet.

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Also See:

Corruption Updates 94, 8th article on the page, Climate Change Debate Hinges On Economics

Environment Link List

Search the Corruption Database under

Environment

 

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6) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Polar Bear Population Seen Declining

By JOHN HEILPRIN
The Associated Press
Saturday, September 8, 2007; 3:35 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/08/AR2007090800363_pf.html

WASHINGTON -- Two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050 _ and the entire population gone from Alaska _ because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday.

Only in the northern Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland are any of the world's 16,000 polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century, said the U.S. Geological Survey, which is the scientific arm of the Interior Department.

USGS projects that polar bears during the next half-century will disappear along the north coasts of Alaska and Russia and lose 42 percent of the Arctic range they need to live in during summer in the Polar Basin when they hunt and breed. A polar bear's life usually lasts about 30 years.

"There is a definite link between changes in the sea ice and the welfare of polar bears," said USGS scientist Steven Amstrup, the lead author of the new studies. "As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear."

Amstrup said 84 percent of the scientific variables affecting the polar bear's fate was tied to changes in sea ice.

As of this week, the extent of Arctic sea ice had fallen to 4.75 million square miles _ or 250,000 square miles below the previous record low of 5.05 million square miles in September 2005, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Scientists do not hold out much hope that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other industrial gases blamed for heating the atmosphere like a greenhouse can be turned around in time to help the polar bears anytime soon.

Polar bears have walked the planet for at least 40,000 years.

"In spite of any mitigation of greenhouse gases, we are going to see the same amount of energy in the system for at least 20, 30, 40 years," Mark Myers, the USGS director, said.

On Friday, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., urged the Bush administration to grant polar bears federal protection.

"This is becoming a tragic metaphor for the administration's voluntary approach to global warming," said Markey, chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. "Instead of meeting the challenge, the Bush administration is happy to float along, waiting to see if the planet, and polar bears, will sink or swim."

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

China and India are coming online as Coal-Fired Massive Industrial Societies

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., March 5, 2007

AMERICA REFUSES TO STOP EXPANDING POPULATION AND CONSUMPTION

AMERICAN GREED-CONSUMPTION FUELS MANUFACTURING (POLLUTION) IN CHINA

Our “policy” of “opening,” and integrating China into modernity, has been based on the unlimited transfer of industry (our jobs) to a country where the people have no rights, no environmental laws, and a closed economic and political system. It's a corporate dream, a corporate Disneyland, that the Democrats and Republicans are trying to replicate here.

The consequences of allowing our greedy corporations to move to China are profound. Our corporations have avoided the added expenses of American pollution control, labor regulations, and paying the taxes necessary to educate, medicate, and retire our workforce.

Not that our corporations have had to act responsibly here. They have cheated the American people every chance they get. But by using China they have been able to radically increase profits by abandoning all social, political, economic, and environmental responsibilities.

Today, the industrial pollution that China is producing would have been eliminated by manufacturing our products here, under our weak environmental regulations. The Chinese pollution is the cost of American greed and irresponsibility, and it is our filth that pouring into the atmosphere from Chinese smokestacks.

Also See:

Corruption Updates 36, 6th article on the Page, China about to pass U.S. as world's top generator of greenhouse gases

Corruption Updates 65, 7th article on the page, China puts economy before climate

Corruption Updates 94, 8th article on the page, US: Climate Change Debate Hinges On Economics

Environment Link List

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Search the Corruption Database under

China (57 Abstracts)

Environment (71 Abstracts)

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7) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Battle over feeding Tahoe bears

State says plan to drop food in backcountry will do more harm than good.

By Barbara Barte Osborn - Bee Correspondent
Published 12:00 am PDTSaturday, September 8, 2007

http://www.sacbee.com/101/v-print/story/367388.html

A bear-advocacy group that planned to do a backcountry food drop for Tahoe bears this week has run into opposition from the state Department of Fish and Game.

While agreeing that a drought has dried up natural foods, leading to a proliferation of cabin break-ins by bears, department officials say supplying food could do more harm than good.

Tahoe bears have weathered other droughts, said Doug Updike, a wildlife biologist who heads the department's state bear program.

And although the area has a high density of bears -- two to three per square mile -- June's Angora fire would have displaced only 10 to 15, Updike said.

"What makes this an emergency over other years?" he asks.

Bear advocates have an answer: It has become an emergency situation because the food shortage is putting humans at risk as well as bears.

"It's gotten to the point where bears are going into homes where there are people," said Ann Bryant, executive director of Tahoe's nonprofit BEAR League. "My fear is that someone will get hurt by a bear. It's never happened in California, but if it does, Fish and Game is to blame -- not the bears or residents."

Human/bear conflicts are far worse this year than in previous years, said Bryant.

In hopes of luring them away from neighborhoods, league volunteers, including six pilots, want to drop hundreds of pounds of natural foods into a number of backcountry areas.

"We're fully equipped and ready to roll, but Fish and Game is tying our hands," said Bryant.

Updike acknowledged a spike in break-ins but said prevention is a better solution.

"People do need to be more vigilant now than ever," Updike said. Rather than taking food to the backcountry, "people need to spend time making sure their property is not attracting bears," he said.

Bryant believes the situation has gone beyond education. With fall in the air, the situation will get worse as the bears try to fatten up before hibernating, she said.

The turning weather "triggers something in their brains that says, 'We have to eat 20 hours a day.' " Bryant said. "That means, if there's still no food in the backcountry, they're going to be camping in front of someone's refrigerator."

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

Climate Already Changed, People and Scientists Too Stupid to SEE IT

April 6, 2007

For about 10 years I have been telling my buddies that the heat of summer was not retreating southward during winter. This has been increasing each year, diminishing the polar chilling, changing the timing of the onset and end of the seasons. Most important in my view is the radical changes in the direction of the winter winds.

Winter Winds in the Bay Area have traditionally come from the NW. For the past 8 years the Winter winds have been shifting, coming from the West and the South West. These winds are dry in mid-winter, and keep the wet Northern Storms at bay. Then, in Spring, these Southern Winds have brought tropical-style downpours, barely offsetting our drying Winters.

This year the freakish Southern Spring storms did not come and bail us out.

Every Winter has become drier and warmer for the past 10 years. Fall now regularly extends into December, and spring try's to start in February. For the majority of you who are from someplace else, this is very abnormal weather.

Watching the Sierra Bears in November and December is sad. Instead of enjoying a cold sleep, they are hungrily patrolling dead, dry meadows that have no berries, grubs, or food to sustain them until the uncertain advent of Winter snows and hibernation.

Watching the lowland trees this winter was disturbing: deciduous trees were dropping leaves all winter long. There was no "fall" to speak of, as in a temperature fall triggering a massive leave drop.

I suspect that the increasing incidents of mountain lion attacks reflects the lions response to decreasing late-fall food supplies. In any case, these seasonal changes have had a cascading effect in ecosystems. Budding times in Spring are off, affecting birth and survival rates of all interrelated species. Increasing Summer temperatures are killing off high altitude plants. Lack of Winter snowfall is drying out the land early in the Spring, affecting budding timing and density. And the cycles of life continue to decline in the thrall of our ignorance.

Expect large declines in crop productions, if not outright crop failures, across the United States, and the world this year.

The Climatoligists will catch up with the changes, but it will be too late to preserve our predictable seasons. We do not need science to tell us we have severely damaged our climate, we needed wisdom.

Wisdom would have prevented us from blinding ourselves to the early warnings of nature, and the subsequent warnings of science. Wisdom would have prevented us from overburdening our land with people, our water with dams, and our skies with endlessly expanding pollution. The oceans contain a thin shadow of the life they held in 1600. And we desperately need wisdom now that our science cannot keep up with the damage our industrial-strength ignorance is perpetuating.

We seem to have traded, or maybe sold, our wisdom for luxury, prestige, greed and power.

It was a bad trade. The latter commodities are short-lived, unless balanced with wisdom. But Wisdom is not a market commodity, so it has little contemporary value, and was let go of cheaply.

I have a wise plan: Let's double California's population by 2050. Let's give everybody in the state a driver's licence and a car or two. That should fix things right up. I'm glad we have such wise leaders, who represent our best interests so well.

 

Also See:

Corruption Updates 47, 10th article on the page, Permanent drought predicted for Southwest:Climate Already Changed, People and Sc

Environment Link List

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Economics

 

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8) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

NOAA Scientists Say Arctic Ice Is Melting Faster Than Expected

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 7, 2007; A06

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090602499_pf.html

The Arctic ice cap is melting faster than scientists had expected and will shrink 40 percent by 2050 in most regions, with grim consequences for polar bears, walruses and other marine animals, according to government researchers.

The Arctic sea ice will retreat hundreds of miles farther from the coast of Alaska in the summer, the scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded. That will open up vast waters for fishermen and give easier access to new areas for oil and gas exploration. It is also likely to mean an upheaval in species, bringing new predators to warmer waters and endangering those that depend on ice.

The study, by NOAA oceanographer James Overland and meteorologist Muyin Wang, adds to the increasingly urgent predictions of major ice loss in the Arctic. Six years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted major ice loss by 2100. An update by that United Nations-sponsored panel in February said that without drastic changes in greenhouse gas emissions, Arctic sea ice will "almost entirely" disappear by the end of the century.

But Overland's calculations are based largely on the carbon dioxide that already has been pumped into the atmosphere. That pollution will greatly diminish the ice by 2050, regardless of future curbs on emissions, he said yesterday.

"The amount of emissions we have already put out in the last 20 years will stay around for 40 to 50 years," Overland said. "I'm afraid to say that a lot of impacts we will see in the next 30 to 40 years are pretty much already established."

"The rate of ice loss now is faster than what was depicted," Overland said. "This moves the threshold up."

"There is a whole lot of uncertainty about what will happen next," he said. "Are we approaching a tipping point where we have lost so much ice already that, when the winds change, we have already gone too far?"

 

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

See Article Above

Also See:

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9) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Virus called chief suspect in bee deaths

But researchers say they can't yet prove it's the cause of a disease that's killing American bee colonies in record numbers.

By Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times , September 6, 2007

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-bees7sep07,0,365614.story?coll=la-home-center

 


Scientists have found a virus that is associated with the destruction of a large fraction of American commercial bee colonies, but they have not been able to prove that it is the cause of the mysterious disease that has wreaked havoc on the bee industry.

The virus, called Israeli acute paralysis, may have been brought into the
United States in bees imported from Australia. That importation was first permitted in 2004, about the same time that the new disease -- called Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD -- began appearing in this country.

Australian bees do not suffer from CCD, leading researchers to speculate that the virus acts synergistically with chemicals in the environment or with another infectious agent, such as the varroa mite, which is not common in Australia.

Although America has had many bee die-offs in the past, the latest episode has been one of the worst, affecting an estimated 23% of beekeepers. Typically, from 50% to 90% of a keeper's colonies are affected, with the worker bees simply failing to return to their hives, leaving behind the queen and a handful of newborn bees.

The number of bee colonies in the country is about 2.5 million, down from 5 million in the 1940s and 1950s. "We don't have a great deal of buffer" for dealing with bee losses, said entomologist Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University.

In May, scientists from around the country formed a working group led by Cox-Foster and entomologist Jeffery S. Pettis of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to track down the cause of the deaths.

All of the bees, both healthy and sick, had a set of eight distinctive bacteria "that have not been found in any other environment or host," said coauthor Nancy A. Moran of the University of Arizona. "They are all unnamed species about which we know very little. They probably perform essential functions in bees, providing essential nutrients or contributing defenses against pathogens."

Similarly, there was "a remarkably high viral burden in bee populations, both those with CCD and those without it," said coauthor Edward C. Holmes of Penn State University. "There were seven different viruses, but only one was consistently found with CCD."

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., September , 2007

Besides the regular oscillations of morbidity that occurs as species interact, massive human caused changes in the character of the climate, combined with the resulting changes in the onset times and character of every season are putting countless species under terrific stress.

As the climate continues to warm we are going to see many more instances such as the spread of West Nile, the invasions of oak and other blights, and repeated attacks by what were once exotic tropical pests.

The old ecosystem is unwinding in tandem with the unwinding of the climate. As the natural relationships between species continue to break down, we are going to experience deepening declines in bird, fish, reptiles, and bee populations, and invasions by highly destructive foreign species.

This is the result of human influence, mainly America's ceaseless efforts to strip the bounty and balance of the Earth in pursuit of massive wealth, luxury, and power.

If we spent as much energy protecting our democracy and Constitution as we have spent on devastating our Country's ecosystems, we would live in a delightful country.

Also See:

Corruption Updates 65, 1st article on the page, "BEES: Honey, I'm Gone"

Corruption Updates 71, 9th article on the page, "Only 50 years left' for sea fish"

Corruption Updates 76, 7th article on the page, "Study finds huge decreases in bird populations"

Corruption Updates 93, 3rd article on the page, "Record Gulf of Mexico ‘Dead Zone’ Is Predicted"

Corruption Updates 106, 9th article on the page, UC team believes deadly fungus may be killing frogs

Environment Link List

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10) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Less Delta water means dry times

Calls to redesign the estuary follow order to curtail pumping.

By Matt Weiser - Bee Staff Writers
Published 12:00 am PDTThursday, September 6, 2007

http://www.sacbee.com/101/v-print/story/363134.html

Water rationing. Idled farmland. Hundreds of millions of dollars in economic losses. Dry times lie ahead for a state struggling to serve up more water from a tapped-out ecosystem.

A judge's order last Friday is expected to require state and federal agencies to pump one-third less water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The estuary provides water to 23 million Californians and about 5 million acres of farmland.

The historic order rocked cities, farmers and water officials statewide, who fear that shortages are ahead.

"It's our quality of life that is at stake and the regional economy as well," said Greg Zlotnick, special counsel for the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which provides Delta water to 1.7 million people in Silicon Valley.

On Wednesday, a powerful alliance of water interests used that concern to press hard for a package of politically touchy solutions: new dams and a canal around the Delta favored by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Zlotnick said his agency may have to reduce the amount of water projected to be available for new housing and commercial development.

While some blamed the judge and environmental laws for causing the cutbacks, others said it was only a matter of time.

Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, said California has long relied too heavily on the Delta as a water supply even as danger signs mounted. A longtime Delta advocate, he said the solution involves prioritizing how we use water and adopting aggressive conservation measures.

The court ruling, handed down by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno, came in a case brought against state and federal water officials by the Natural Resources Defense Council and three other environmental groups.

Wanger found that the agencies' plan for operating the Delta failed to adequately consider harm to the fragile Delta smelt, a finger-length fish that is a vital indicator of the estuary's health.

The judge called for pumping reductions from December through June sufficient to protect the smelt. He gave the parties 50 days to translate his verbal order into a set of new operating rules.

That order will stand until late next year, when a new set of rules, already in the works, are expected to be finished. But the new rules are likely to continue pumping reductions.

Officials at Wednesday's press conference said they were still analyzing the court decision to understand its effect. Lester Snow, director of the state Department of Water Resources, said it will mean a cutback to Delta water users of between 12 percent and 37 percent.

"What we're seeing here is the tip of the iceberg with regard to the long-term decay of the Delta," said Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis. "We have to be very thoughtful about how we redesign the Delta."

The judge's ruling addresses only one of the identified threats to the Delta: water export pumping.

Other threats remain, including water contamination caused by farming and urbanizing, weak levees and aggressive invasive species that have altered the food supply available to native species such as smelt.

Part of the solution may be a new structure to move Sacramento River water into the export pumps without harming smelt.

Options for such a "conveyance" structure include armoring existing levees through the center of the Delta and restoring surrounding areas, or building a peripheral canal to isolate export water and carry it around the Delta.

Schwarzenegger has proposed a $5.9 billion bond measure to build two new reservoirs and a Delta water conveyance structure. Senate Democratic leader Don Perata of Oakland instead offers a $5 billion bond that also funds conveyance, but focuses on Delta restoration rather than dams.

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

Impending Water Crisis

We Don't have a Water Crisis, or an Energy Crisis, We Have Too Many People

(Originally written on June 7, 2006, CU 69_4)

We have grown beyond any limits that respect for nature demands. We have grown beyond the limits of social, political, and economic responsibility.

We have grown beyond our the capacity of social and environmental infrastructures to support.

American profit is based on growth, and our pursuit of profit has outgrown our environmental as well as our social resources.

This irresponsible growth will stop, and stop badly, unless we rethink our social policies, and change the direction our state, and our country is going down.

Growth must stop.

Also See:

Corruption Updates 39, 10th article on page,"Scientists:Water Shortages and Drought: CLIMATE ALREADY CHANGED, NO ONE NOTICED"

Corruption Updates 60, 4th article on page, "Lawsuit planned to protect smelt"

Corruption Updates 63, 1st article on page, "Delta pumps halted: Smelt Halts Mighty Pumps"

Corruption Updates 71, 5st article on page, "Delta pumps to run again"

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Smelt (8 Abstracts)

 

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11) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

An 'urban heat island' effect, fed by the city's growth, is trapping heat and making temperatures soar.

By Faye Bowers | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0830/p01s01-wogi.htm

 

 

PHOENIX

Arizona is poised to take another record. It's about as unwelcome as a couple of other firsts – No. 1 in the nation for most illegal immigrants crossing the border, or No. 1 in the nation for identity thefts.

This "one" directly corresponds with another No. 1 – its status as the fastest-growing state in the nation. While news of global warming becomes as common as the wheeze of air conditioners here, Phoenix is fighting a different, if related, problem. In part because of heavy growth – particularly in the Phoenix metro area – heat is being reflected, trapped, and absorbed in concrete, rooftops, and a maze of buildings that blocks wind. At the same time, there's little vegetation to absorb the heat, and high energy usage generates more.

It's called the "urban heat-island effect," and whatever the impact of global warming here, this phenomenon is sending the mercury rising. On Tuesday, Phoenix tied the all-time record of 28 days at 110 degrees or greater in one summer, reached in 1979 and again in 2002. If the temperature rises to 110 degrees one more day this year, Phoenix will set a record.

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

Global Warming: Human Ignorance eliminates itself. Natural Selection is reasserting itself

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., October 8, 2007

We are living out an axiom. The old saying goes like this; "You can cook a frog alive if you put it in a pot of water and bring it to boil slowly. If you turn it up too quickly, it will jump."

Our current situation reflects the first part of this saying well. We have sat like a dumb toad as our piss and shit brings our water to boil.

Will our ignorance prevail, and will we continue to slowly cook ourselves and our environment to death, or will our ecosystem collapse with the force necessary to make our dumb asses jump?

So far, our answer to this question has been that we are going to continue to pursue the massive irresponsible growth that has brought us to this crisis. We are going to slowly come to a boil, bringing ourselves and our planet to its knees.

We are clubbing our environment into ignorance, transforming the sophistication of the once bountiful life on this planet into the equivalent of a brain damaged rat.

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Also See:

Corruption Updates 47, 10th article on the page, Permanent drought predicted for Southwest:Climate Already Changed, People and Sc

Corruption Updates 94, 8th article on the page, US: Climate Change Debate Hinges On Economics

Search the Corruption Database under

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12) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Rule to Expand Mountaintop Coal Mining

By JOHN M. BRODER

NY Times, August 23, 2007

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/us/23coal.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 — The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams.

It has been used in Appalachian coal country for 20 years under a cloud of legal and regulatory confusion.

The new rule would allow the practice to continue and expand, providing only that mine operators minimize the debris and cause the least environmental harm, although those terms are not clearly defined and to some extent merely restate existing law.

The Office of Surface Mining in the Interior Department drafted the rule, which will be subject to a 60-day comment period and could be revised, although officials indicated that it was not likely to be changed substantially.

The regulation is the culmination of six and a half years of work by the administration to make it easier for mining companies to dig more coal to meet growing energy demands and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Government and industry officials say the rules are needed to clarify existing laws, which have been challenged in court and applied unevenly.

A spokesman for the National Mining Association, Luke Popovich, said that unless mine owners were allowed to dump mine waste in streams and valleys it would be impossible to operate in mountainous regions like West Virginia that hold some of the richest low-sulfur coal seams.

All mining generates huge volumes of waste, known as excess spoil or overburden, and it has to go somewhere. For years, it has been trucked away and dumped in remote hollows of Appalachia.

Environmental activists say the rule change will lead to accelerated pillage of vast tracts and the obliteration of hundreds of miles of streams in central Appalachia.

“This is a parting gift to the coal industry from this administration,” said Joe Lovett, executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment in Lewisburg, W.Va. “What is at stake is the future of Appalachia. This is an attempt to make legal what has long been illegal.”

From 1985 to 2001, 724 miles of streams were buried under mining waste, according to the environmental impact statement accompanying the new rule.

If current practices continue, another 724 river miles will be buried by 2018, the report says.

Environmental groups have gone to court many times, with limited success, to slow or stop the practice. They won an important ruling in federal court in 1999, but it was overturned in 2001 on procedural and jurisdictional grounds.

The Clinton administration began moving in 1998 to tighten enforcement of the stream rule, but the clock ran out before it could enact new regulations. The Bush administration has been much friendlier to mining interests, which have been reliable contributors to the Republican Party, and has worked on the new rule change since 2001.

The early stages of the revision process were supported by J. Stephen Griles, a former industry lobbyist who was the deputy interior secretary from 2001 to 2004. Mr. Griles had been deputy director of the Office of Surface Mining in the Reagan administration and is knowledgeable about the issues and generally supports the industry.

In June, Mr. Griles was sentenced to 10 months in prison and three years’ probation for lying to a Senate committee about his ties to Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the heart of a corruption scandal who is now in prison.

Interior Department officials said they could not comment on the rule because it had not been published. But a senior official of the Office of Surface Mining said the stream buffer rule was never intended to prohibit all mining in and around streams, but rather just to minimize the effects of such work.

He said the regulation would explicitly state that the buffer zone rule does not apply for hundreds of miles of streams and valleys and that he hoped, but did not expect, that the rule would end the fight over mine waste.

Mr. Lovett of the Appalachian Center said the rule would only stoke a new battle.

“They are not strengthening the buffer zone rule,” he said. “They are just destroying it. By sleight of hand, they are removing one of the few protections streams now have from the most egregious mining activities.”

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

Growth in American Population-Consumption Justifies total rape of Nature

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., October 8, 2007

For all of you so-called "environmentalists" who have not yet found the balls to connect the basis of your lifestyles with the destruction of nature, it's time you pulled the blinders off your eyes, and directly address the big problems that confront us. Here's an example:

There are too many people in the US. The massive mexican migration is now being used as an excuse to rape the last remaining bits of wilderness in the united states. Drilling all over Wyoming and Alaska is in the works.

The massive mexican migration is now being used as an excuse to dam every river, and drain every ecosystem of its water. The Delta is going to be killed, and every river in California is going to be damned.

The massive mexican migration is now being used as an excuse to build nuclear power plants, and build coal-fired power plants all across California. Brown outs are aptly named.

Mega-cities have risen in California based on importing low wages, poverty, obedience, and "consumers," while denying education and medical benefits to American workers.

As the floods of cheap illegal labor has fueled irresponsible growth and profits, it has also driven American wages down to third world levels while thickly spreading foreign slums all across California.

At the same time the same forces of supply and demand have been doing their job for our corporate elite. Our massive irresponsible growth has accelerated the rising profits generated by the increasing scarcity of resources in the face of a massive expansion of the population.

The basic costs of bread, gas, transportation, and housing have risen dramatically, while wages and the distribution of of our nation's wealth have both simultaneously shrunk.

Americans have watched the wealth and natural beauty of their country being stripped by a coalition of corporate fascists, in both parties, and foreigners.

The rich part of the United States, our business class and its political bitches, have decided that they are now a trans-national global power. Our state has been captured by Corporate Fascists, and they have put aside our Constitution to rule over foreigners both here in the US, and in their native lands, with impunity.

Demographic growth-from all sources-must be stopped now. It is vital to our country and our environment that Americans restore their democracy and bring all of the suppressed discussions about our future direction into public political discussion.

The takeover of democracy got us into this crisis. To get out of this mess we must take our democracy back.

Also See:

Search the Corruption Database under

Environment

Crimigrants

Economics

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13) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Swiftness of Hurricane Humberto shocks experts

By Miguel Bustillo

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

 

Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2007

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-humberto14sep14,0,2213622.story?coll=la-home-nation

 

Houston -- Texans went to bed Wednesday night expecting to be struck by a tropical storm. They awoke to find they'd been hit by a hurricane instead.

The stunningly fast buildup of what became Hurricane Humberto shocked scientists, some of whom said there was nothing like it in the historical record.

In just 18 hours, Humberto strengthened from a tropical depression with 35-mph winds to a Category 1 hurricane with 85-mph winds before crashing ashore. It did not grow into a hurricane until after midnight.

"That has never before happened" in the more than 150 years scientists have been tracking hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, said James Franklin, a senior specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

"It's very, very rare to see a storm go from a depression to a hurricane in this short a time," he said. "It's only happened four times before since 1851, and this is the only one to do this just before landfall."

THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

Freak Weather Normal

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., September , 2007

 

Also See:

Corruption Updates 21, 9th article on the page, Scientists say White House muzzled them

Corruption Updates 95, 10th article on the page, Humans 'affect global rainfall

Corruption Updates 100, 9th article on the page, Freak Cold Weather for Sacramento Summer

Corruption Updates 100, 10th article on the page, European heatwaves 'have doubled'

 

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Environment

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