Coral Reefs do not recover from warming induced bleaching

Byoliveridley

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Warming set to ‘devastate’ coral

Bleaching in 1998 occurred in all reef regions of the world; 16% of the world’s reefs were lost in that one year, alone. But the western Indian Ocean suffered most because of an interaction between El Nino and another periodic climate phenomenon called the Indian Ocean dipole.

In the seven years since, the damaged reefs have been largely unable to reseed. Many simply collapsed into rubble and became covered in algae.

This collapse removed food and shelter from predators for a large and diverse amount of marine life. The survey showed four fish species could already be locally extinct, and six species are at critically low levels.

The survey also revealed that the diversity of fish species in the heavily impacted sites had plummeted by about 50%.

Well, this is bad news, there has been earlier indication that coral reefs were not necessarily doomed by higher ocean temperatures because this would just cause a shift in the coral species to varieties thriving at higher temperatures/exhibiting adaptive behaviors. Obviously, this did not happen fast enough to regenerate the reef.

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More Focus on China – Pesticides and Food Safety

Byoliveridley

I begin to wonder how much of this was not known previously, and is coming out now, pushed by US domestic food interests who can suddenly become a little more competitive.

Reuters AlertNet – Pesticides next frontier in China food safety

China’s farmers overuse pesticides, skip protective clothing and have at their fingertips an array of banned and counterfeit products, raising another area of concern in the country’s fragile food chain. Spraying chemicals on crops improperly or using products that may be fake or banned risks the health of China’s hundreds of millions of farmers and could lead to unsafe levels of residues in fruits and vegetables, experts say. “The government has to stop banned or illegal pesticides being available in the market,” said Angus Lam, a Greenpeace Campaign Manager for Food and Agriculture based in the southern city of Guangzhou. China banned five high toxicity pesticides as of Jan. 1, but Lam said old stock was still in the market, in the hands of traders, retailers and farmers themselves. The government pledged last week to step up inspections in its food industry, saying checks on fertilisers and pesticides would be one of the priority areas.

China is not alone in this problem. Pesticides get overused in the US as well. But it’s as if all of a sudden, the mainstream press is waking up to the reality that is China. It is a developing country with high levels of growth in manufacturing, and a burgeoning middle class. But government regulation mechanisms have a long way to go to catch up.

The US surely knows this, and needed to have a more stringent testing regime with food imports from China. But the FDA was not given the mandate or the money. It is very easy to blame the FDA here. The fact of the matter is that any agency is only as good as the money and mandate it’s given. The political will to take a good look at where your food comes from, and how to ensure its safety needs to come first.

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Acrolein Main Cigarette Culprit?

Byoliveridley

Chemical & Engineering News: Latest News – Cigarettes’ Smoking Gun?

Acrolein, one of the 4,000 constituents of cigarette smoke, has been found unexpectedly to cause DNA damage in the gene for the infamous tumor-suppressor p53, which is often disrupted by cancer. In particular, the pattern of DNA mutations caused by acrolein mimics what is often found in human lung cancer samples (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0607031103).

“If cigarette smoke is the weapon that causes lung cancer, then these mutations are fingerprints on the knife,” says author Moon-shong Tang of New York University School of Medicine, in Tuxedo. Tang was also involved in identifying another cigarette-smoke component that can induce such mutations: a metabolite of a polycyclic hydrocarbon called benzo[a]pyrene. Acrolein is present in cigarette smoke in levels of up to 1,000 times greater than benzo[a]pyrene.

So, if you remove acrolein from tobacco smoke, does that make for a much safer smoking experience? Is this a research question worth answering? FYI, I watched Thank You for Smoking last night, so, fresh on my mind!

Value a forest, cool a planet

Byoliveridley

Cutting forests is the third-largest source of climate-warming carbon emissions today, larger than the emissions produced by either the US or China. Including them in a "carbon market" is a tempting solution.

It comes down to this: Today, trees are worth more dead than alive. This despite the fact that they stash away billions of tons of carbon in their soil and themselves and constantly inhale more carbon from the atmosphere. They also help regulate the earth's climate in other ways, influencing rainfall patterns far away, including in the US. And they contain unique plant and animal life, the economic value of which is only beginning to be understood.

Yet no dollar figure is placed on these vital services. Instead, tropical forests are cut down in favor of enterprises such as palm oil plantations or cattle grazing, endeavours that make money here and now. It’s easy to see why rain forests continue to disappear at an alarming rate.

A report to the British government this month suggests that the way to recognize the true value of forests is by including them in carbon markets. Polluters around the world could earn credits to offset their own carbon emissions by paying for forest preservation.

via Value a forest, cool a planet | csmonitor.com

A carbon sink needs to be valued as much as a carbon source. Making this really happen is of course very difficult, needing accurate forest cover mappings (now available), and strict enforcement in countries that may be hard to monitor.

The moral hazard of giving people money to do “nothing” of course is something conservatives will not like, but the trees are not doing “nothing”. Paying people for stewardship is not wrong. There would be an opportunity to change an extractive subsistence based economy into a service economy, with sustainable tourism, shade grown coffee, local guards and forest officers, etc.

I like this idea very much. Carbon offset markets have gotten a bad name recently, but a larger scale program is necessary.

Rapture watch – Extremely weird weather edition

Byoliveridley

Via the grist blog. Apparently, there has never been a cyclone in recent memory in this area.

What if Hurricane Katrina had hit the Persian Gulf coast? | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

Well, we might find out, according to an exclusive from The Oil Drum and Chuck Watson of KAC/UCF, also using a weather blog, where Margie Kieper writes:

An unusual event is happening over the next 48 hours, as the first tropical cyclone with hurricane-force winds, and major hurricane-force winds at that, is approaching the Gulf of Oman, to strike the eastern coast of Oman, curve northward, and make landfall on the coast of Iran. In the tropical cyclone best tracks and the modern era of weather satellites, there is no record of such an occurrence.
As the Oil Drum writer comments:

Why might [Cyclone] Gonu matter? Well, that answer begins with the fact that the world production of petroleum plateauing around 85 mbbl/day, any slight blip in supply or exporting could be quite noticeable on the world markets. A sizable portion of the world’s petroleum exports go through the Gulf of Oman.
Hmm … could global warming have something to do with it? Will global warming lead to higher oil prices and scarcer gasoline?

Statutory Disclaimer: I do not actually believe in the concept of the rapture!

Bolivia's Lithium

Byoliveridley

In the rush to build the next generation of hybrid or electric cars, a sobering fact confronts both automakers and governments seeking to lower their reliance on foreign oil: almost half of the world’s lithium, the mineral needed to power the vehicles, is found here in Bolivia — a country that may not be willing to surrender it so easily.

via In Bolivia, Untapped Bounty Meets Nationalism – NYTimes.com.

Dear American reporter:

Your country does not have God given rights to all the resources of the world. The fact that a country like Bolivia is not only wary of being exploited, but seems to have recently changed its constitution to ensure that its native people get a fair share of any resource exploitation is something to celebrate. I don’t think they should “surrender” their resources to your country, however much you lose your so called journalistic neutrality.

Yours Sincerely

The Olive Ridley Crawler

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What's the matter with Canada?

Byoliveridley

But beneath the calm exterior, Canada’s political system is in turmoil. Since 2004, a succession of unstable minority governments has led to a constant campaign frenzy, brutalizing Canada’s once-broad political consensus and producing a series of policies at odds with the country’s socially liberal, fiscally conservative identity. Canada is quietly becoming a political basket case, and this latest election may make things even worse.

What’s the matter with Canada? – By Christopher Flavelle – Slate Magazine

I don’t necessarily agree with the whole “basket case” assertion, it is a fundamentally strong country with a broad consensus on what the country should be.

The current set of political parties is rewarding a minority set of policies (the conservatives) by fragmenting the majority centre-left of centre consensus between 4 different political parties, none of which will talk to each other. This is not exactly new, the conservatives only merged their parties a few years back.

The liberals suffer from Dion’s non Englishness, he gets little traction from the English media (no idea about the French, I don’t know any). He’s not that charismatic, nor does he orate well in English, and so like the American election, it is all optics. The liberals also seem to have no understanding of what it takes to win a modern election. The conservatives get in the news all the time, their ads are all over TV, the liberals seem to be MIA.

Harper on the other hand is “strong”, strength of course being defined as sounding decisive and declaratory, even though he usually just sounds alarmist and hyperbolic all the time. Somehow, this is interpreted as leadership. I guess the only good quality of leadership is being loud.

Dion also made a gamble by selling something called the Green Shift, a carbon tax, to increase efficiency in energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Even though the tax is designed to increase efficiency in a country notorious for its very poor efficiency (27th among the 29 OECD countries in energy use/capita), it is being demonized as a tax that will destroy the country (just like every other environmental regulation destroyed every other country). It is also bad timing, as energy prices have soared recently, and Canada’s economy sputters to a halt due to falling resource prices and the American housing market bust (destroyed the BC lumber industry). The last thing people want to hear is “tax”, even though the middle class will get more than sufficient rebates to cover any tax increases. The liberals seem to have overplayed this hand. Elections are never won on environmental issues, too easy to attack.

The conservative pitch thus far has only been to attack Dion while offering some incremental changes. But as Harper is flirting with a majority, this Toronto Star editorial asks the right questions.

While Harper is presenting himself as a kinder, gentler Conservative these days, in the past, as a Reform MP, head of the National Citizens’ Coalition and leader of the Canadian Alliance (successor party to Reform), he staked out quite radical positions. He has called Canada “a northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term,” has denounced the “moral nihilism” of the Liberals and the left for opposing the Iraq war, has suggested building a “firewall” around Alberta, and has called for “market reforms” for health care, “further deregulation and privatization,” and “elimination of corporate subsidies.”

With a Conservative majority in sight, it is fair for Canadians to ask Harper whether he still holds these views and would implement them once in office. And if the answer is No, Harper should use the remaining four weeks of this election campaign to tell voters just what he would do with a majority.

The media lets Harper get away with sounding “presidential”, his proposals are very vague, and that is worrying. It is clear, however, that from an environmental standpoint, he will be a disaster. A combination of a slowing economy and reduced social support programs (conservatives hate safety nets for regular people) will be bad for the not so well off Canadians. We shall see what happens in a few weeks.