More signs of the rapture – Fish dying in the Great Lakes

Freaky and scary, first the bees, now the fishes…

Fish-Killing Virus Spreading in the Great Lakes – New York Times

A virus that has already killed tens of thousands of fish in the eastern Great Lakes is spreading, scientists said, and now threatens almost two dozen aquatic species over a wide swath of the lakes and nearby waterways.

The virus, a mutated pathogen not native to North America that causes hemorrhaging and organ failure, is not harmful to humans, even if they eat contaminated fish. But it is devastating to the ecosystem and so unfamiliar, experts said, that its full biological impact might not be clear for years. It is also having a significant impact on the lakes’ $4 billion fishing industry.

There is no known treatment for the virus. As a result, scientists are focusing on managing its spread to uncontaminated water — quite a challenge since the Great Lakes are linked and fall under the jurisdiction of several states and provinces in Canada.

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    Sea Turtle News o' the day – Global warming edition

    ScienceDaily: Scientists Warn Of Climate Change Risk To Marine Turtles

    North American marine turtles are at risk if global warming occurs at predicted levels, according to scientists from the University of Exeter. An increase in temperatures of just one degree Celsius could completely eliminate the birth of male turtles from some beaches. A rise of three degrees Celsius would lead to extreme levels of infant mortality and declines in nesting beaches across the USA.

    Here’s the paper.

    Like a lot of other reptiles, the sex of the hatchling is dependent on nest temperature. Warmer temperatures make female turtles (my mnemonic was hot females!), and even warmer temperatures just kill the eggs. But, I wonder if the turtles would adapt by nesting a little earlier. I don’t think it is yet clear when turtles decide to nest. If it is based on sea temperature, then they would eventually figure it out. This paper from 2004 appears to conclude that loggerheads in Florida do nest earlier than before, so there is hope.

    John F. Weishampel, Dean A. Bagley, Llewellyn M. Ehrhart (2004) Earlier nesting by loggerhead sea turtles following sea surface warming Global Change Biology 10 (8), 1424–1427

    The onset of spring, noted by the timing of wildlife migratory and breeding behaviors, has been occurring earlier over the past few decades. Here, we examine 15 years of loggerhead sea turtle, Caretta caretta, nesting patterns along a 40.5 km beach on Florida’s Atlantic coast. This small section of beach is considered to be the most important nesting area for this threatened species in the western hemisphere. From 1989 to 2003, the annual number of nests fluctuated between 13 000 and 25 000 without a conspicuous trend; however, based on a regression analysis, the median nesting date became earlier by roughly 10 days. The Julian day of median nesting was significantly correlated with near-shore, May sea surface temperatures that warmed an average of 0.8°C over this period. This marine example from warm temperate/subtropical waters represents another response of nature to recent climate trends.

    So the truth lies somewhere between easy adaptation and giant swarms of frustrated female turtles!

  • PFOA Precursors to be phased out

    Leftovers may explain perfluorinated compound puzzle:

    See my earlier post about this. Looks like the EPA did want the companies to phaseout not just the PFOA, but the precursor compouds as well, and according to this article, quite a bit of progress has been made.

    Eight companies have pledged to slash releases of several perfluorochemicals at their operations around the world, EPA announced on March 2.

    Arkema, Asahi, Ciba, Clariant, Daikin, DuPont, 3M/Dyneon, and Solvay Solexis have agreed to reduce emissions of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), its longer chain homologs, and compounds that can degrade into PFOA, EPA said. The companies will also reduce levels of these compounds in their products. Responding to a challenge EPA made in January, the eight firms volunteered to cut industrial releases of PFOA as well as amounts of the chemical in products 95% from 2000 levels by 2010 or earlier. The companies also pledged to work on eliminating releases and content of PFOA in products by 2015.

    Here are the individual companies’ commitment letters. They all loudly proclaim their commitment to reduce PFOA levels in their products, not quite so universally unequivocal on the precursors… I need a lawyer to parse some of the language. 3M, for instance, says that they do not “manufacture” the telomers’, which is not the same as saying they do not use them. Solvay Solexis, is extremely straigtforward and agrees to the EPA conditions in a letter actually written in plain English! Dupont, good letter too. Let’s see how this situation plays out, outright elimination in 10 years seems nice, which leads me to believe that the companies are already moving in this direction. The journal article suggests that the residuals are mainly due to inefficiencies in the manufacturing process. The reaction yield is 70%, meaning the 30% left behind from the monomer formation reaction will need to be removed from the product.

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    James Hansen, the Cliffside power plant and global warming

    James Hansen gave an interesting talk on the physics of climate change, the magnitude of current anthropogenic emissions versus historical CO2 regimes, and the need for immediate action at the NCWarn forum on the Cliffside power plant issue.

    In a CBS 60 Minutes profile in March 2006, Hansen said, “The speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes humans are making to the atmosphere and the surface.” Carolinas Clean Air and NC WARN are part of a statewide effort by public interest groups to block the new Cliffside plant and help the state reduce greenhouse gases by aggressively ramping up energy efficiency, cogeneration and renewables. That effort has already stopped one of two plants Duke sought to build at Cliffside – by proving it wasn’t needed. The second unit has suffered multiple delays and cost overruns and is the subject of ongoing legal battles over air pollution and water permits.

    Dr.JamesHansenInNC10-07

    Some background: Duke Energy, the North Carolina utility wants to spend a heap of public money building a new coal fired power plant in Cliffside, NC. The problem? They will not sequester or otherwise capture the massive CO2 emissions out of the plant, which is inexcusable given what we know about climate change now.

    Following an excellent talk by Mike Nicklas of Innovative Design, a Raleigh based green architectural firm which focused on reducing demand by increasing efficiency, James Hansen’s talk was an excellent primer on climate change, its history, its easy and basic correlation with atmospheric CO2 concentrations, our current state of affairs, and what we need to do in the next 10 years.

    Their presentations can be found here (Nicklas), and here (Hansen). Go see it. Hansen talked a lot about the interaction of scientists, policy makers and the media in framing the “debate” and contrasted the quick march to consensus on the ozone hole with the the sometimes deliberate fact muddying of the climate debate.

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    The US guts Environmental Assessments

    Environmental assessment in the U.S. was enshrined in law for the first time when President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on January 1, 1970. Since then, however, the U.S. has slowly cast aside its role as a leader in the field of environmental assessments, as successive administrations have chipped away at the scope of NEPA, experts say. The cuts have reached a crescendo with President George W. Bush’s administration, and proponents of these assessments worry that pressure to develop natural resources with little oversight of the consequences will lead to an unsustainable future for the U.S.

    ES&T Online News: Environmental Magna Carta under siege

    Well, perfect. Now you can claim very factually that “you don’t know of any harmful effects of your actions”.

    The fact is, the attack on NEPA has come, chronically, from a relatively small group of commodity users—timber companies, highway builders—who simply oppose having the public and environmentalists get in the way of their plans and programs,” Houck maintains.

    Can’t say it any better. Information is very important and one thing this Bush administration has been very successful at is reducing the flow of information.

    Blogged with Flock

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  • Policy is more Important than Science?

    Excellent article in today’s Washington Post

    A Dated Carbon Approach

    You can even cut carbon using no technology whatever. Mexico City has reduced its output of carbon dioxide by almost 55,000 tons a year by opening one efficient bus route; the key innovation here was the creation of two bus lanes. The new buses run on diesel — not exactly a technological breakthrough. But because they are rapid and frequent, the buses have brought car use down and reduced emissions. So what matters is not just the technologies we have but the incentives to deploy them. The average Western European uses half as much energy as the average American, and that’s not because there’s more technology in Europe. Rather, Europeans have embraced anti-carbon policies ranging from gas taxes to emissions caps, from an absence of extravagant mortgage subsidies that encourage super-size homes to congestion charges for drivers in London and Stockholm.

    Sing it, Cap’n Obvious, actually, it is not obvious to a lot of people. Politicians love “research” because they can turn around and say that they are doing something about a problem when all they are doing is postponing the discussion by calling for “new technology” to fix the problem. Scientists like this as well because this means money in their pocket. Research groups, be they in universities or in government institutes, perpetuate themselves by getting more funding to do more research, which leads to getting more funding to do more research while keeping an army of post docs, grad students, research assistants and professors gainfully employed. It’s kinda like reproduction, only less fun! It is a good system and a lot of good work gets done, but for a lot of questions, the answers are already there.

    Policy level decisions require that clear cut choices be made, while they are NOT zero sum games, there are winners and losers in most of the decisions, and this current incarnation of politicians do not seem to want to make these kinds of decisions unless the winners are big companies (energy, pharma, healthcare, etc), rich people (tax cuts, etc.) or war.

  • Drugs in the Water

    When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.

    And it wasn’t just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet — a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say.

    Not at all surprising, considering that drug manufacturing releases tons of pollutants at high concentrations. The sources are very different from recent studies in the US where end users of the drug are the greatest source, and ciprofloxacin was again one of the drugs detected at the highest levels. At this rate, most bugs will be resistant to cipro in a few years.

    In the end, water treatment plants cannot deal with this toxic soup. They need to be cleaned up at the source, by the pharmaceutical companies before they hit any waste streams. After all, isn’t recapturing and reusing the kilos of drugs being wasted good economic sense?

2 Comments

  1. Right, well, both the Bible and the new age crowds are predicting that a TREMENDOUS die off are coming, and soon. The Bible says that we’ll be living normal days, then WHAM, sudden destruction will fall on the world. The new age crowd call what is coming “The Great Dying”
    We are looking at 40-60% of the world’s population being eradicated in short order. This has been the goal of those controlling this world for a long time. Google the “Georgia Guidestones” for more on that.

    Here’s what one of the new age prophets has to say on what’s coming:
    11: There is known today the existence of certain funguses, which have become commonplace and are ravaging our forests. These funguses will continue to transmute and take on knowing of their environment, and a form of intelligence. Within the first three years of the decade this will lead to disastrous occurrences as mankind is devastated by the fungus moving from vegetation and the lower animal life forms and propagating within the bodies of mammals, including humans.

    12: Many specifically designed for the purposes of the demise of the human species itself. With the forethought desire to remove the planet to no more than 50 million living beings, of combined race and culture. And with perhaps a few less varieties of races. This was the great plan discussed at the meeting of the heads of this world in Brazil, which was covered like a Trojan Horse by the devised program and propaganda campaign of being the ” Year of the Indigenous People.”

    13: The consequences will be devastating as millions of people become afflicted and we will eventually see tens of millions of people die from viruses, with which allopathic medicine has no method of dealing. These viruses are not natural and it already is but not widely known that these are genetically mutated, and engineered designer prions and virus strains.

    The Bible hints at the same thing:

    >
    Young’s Literal Translation

    ——————————————————————————–
    1 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying, as it were a voice of thunder, ‘Come and behold!’
    ——————————————————————————–
    2 and I saw, and lo, a white horse, and he who is sitting upon it is having a bow, and there was given to him a crown, and he went forth overcoming, and that he may overcome.
    ——————————————————————————–
    3 And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, ‘Come and behold!’
    ——————————————————————————–
    4 and there went forth another horse — red, and to him who is sitting upon it, there was given to him to take the peace from the land, and that one another they may slay, and there was given to him a great sword.
    ——————————————————————————–
    5 And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, ‘Come and behold!’ and I saw, and lo, a black horse, and he who is sitting upon it is having a balance in his hand,
    ——————————————————————————–
    6 and I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, ‘A measure of wheat for a denary, and three measures of barley for a denary,’ and ‘The oil and the wine thou mayest not injure.’
    ——————————————————————————–
    7 And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come and behold!’
    ——————————————————————————–
    8 and I saw, and lo, a pale horse, and he who is sitting upon him — his name is Death, and Hades doth follow with him, and there was given to them authority to kill, (over the fourth part of the land,) with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and by the beasts of the land.
    ——————————————————————————–

    The bible says that in the opening salvo of the tribulation we are looking at a minimum of 25% of the world’s population dead. That’s in the neighborhood of 1.5 BILLION people, or thereabouts.

    I don’t hear many preachers warning there people about what’s about to happen any day now on this planet. The rapture will be a great escape for those who make it out, most who call themselves christians today will not.
    Matt7
    13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
    ——————————————————————————–
    14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and FEW there be that find it

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