Earth and Science News- Earth and Science Videos and News // Current

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11 days ago

Call Lisa Jackson and tell the EPA to intervene at Coal River Mountain

I just called and was told there have been several hundred other calls and that they are looking into legal ways to stop it. The... more

JanforGore
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Rainforest treaty 'fatally flawed'

This is just plain crazy. How can they let this happen? Excerpt: "Under proposals due to be ratified at the summit,... more

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The stats are in: no global cooling

The idea that the world is now cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, talk radio, pundit television and more. After a poll was released last week indicating that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, which is down from 77 percent in 2006, Seth Borenstein from the Associated Press decided to check out what the statistics are really saying about global warming or cooling. In a blind test, Borenstein sent accumulated ground temperature data from the past 130 years to four independent statisticians. He disguised the sources (NASA, NOAA and British meteorological data) and didn't tell the statisticians what the numbers represented; he asked them to just look for trends in the data. The experts found no true temperature declines over time; additionally, the last ten years comprise not only the highest data set in the record, but they also have a continued, positive trend.

It seems recent weather trends have been cool — 2008 was cooler than previous years, especially the really hot years of 1998 and 2005.

Borenstein wanted to know if this was a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs. All four of the statisticians agreed independently the statistics overall clearly show an upward trend of warming. Also included was a data set of satellite temperature data that is often favored by skeptics of global warming. Same story there: global temps are on the rise.

The ups and downs during the last decade, which some skeptics say show a cooling rather than warming, are variations that are repeated randomly in data as far back as 1880.
One statistician said that "cherry-picking" a micro-trend within a bigger trend is not the way to look at data.

This "blind" review of the data isn't the only review that has shown obvious warming. Borenstein said that NOAA recently re-examined its data because of the recent "chatter" about cooling, and no cooling trend was found, and earlier this year, climate scientists in two peer-reviewed publications statistically analyzed recent years' temperatures against claims of cooling and found them not valid.

For the full story, read Borenstein's article here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_sc/us_sci_global_coolingThe idea that the world is now cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, talk radio, pundit television and more. After a poll... more

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12 days ago

Cosmic Time

Throughout history, one thing has never changed - time. It is something we rely on to plan our lives, and it is consistent,... more

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12 days ago

Solar power in remote Andean village

Don't say it can't be done!

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12 days ago

Statisticians reject global cooling; trend points to warming

Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book. Only one problem: It's not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It's been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs?

In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.

"If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

Yet the idea that things are cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, a BBC news story posted on the Drudge Report and in a new book by the authors of the best-seller "Freakonomics." Last week, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77 percent in 2006.

Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped — thus, a cooling trend. But it's not that simple.

Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.

The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.

Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers.Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard... more

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12 days ago

The Climate Countdown

Stop the dithering and give our kids a chance.

"IF YOU DON'T Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog" was the headline of a famous 1973 issue of National Lampoon. The cover, with its mutt worriedly glancing at the gun pointed at its head, has itself been lampooned many times. (Texas Monthly recently paired an image of a shotgun-wielding former VP with the line "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, Dick Cheney Will Shoot You in the Face.") But the inside joke still holds: When inspiration fails or sales are slow, magazine editors default to grabbing heartstrings. Entire publishing houses survive on this gimmick—can MoJo get in on the action?

Actually, our decision to print four different covers featuring four cute kids was prompted neither by lack of inspiration nor the need to goose newsstand sales (though we'll take them!). Rather, it's our way of distilling the most important story of our time to its essence:

Fix the climate, or the kid gets it.

No one outside the loony fringe (paging Sen. James Inhofe) disputes that the CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere is radically altering the planet. What hasn't sunk into the public consciousness is that this means not just melting ski slopes and drowning polar bears, but death and dislocation for millions of people and catastrophic upheaval for industry and agriculture worldwide. And yet, absent "death panels" demagoguery, it's hard to get worked up about a problem whose worst effects are decades away. That's true even when you've been obsessing over the issue for years: We edit story after story on climate change, yet it's only when we stop to consider the specifics that the reality fully sinks in. Without drastic action, by the time our kids reach their 40s, the Southwest will have become a dust bowl; 30 percent of the planet's species will be extinct; 200 million people will have become climate refugees. Confronting the future that awaits them leaves us with a profound sense of dread—and guilt.

No one enjoys dread and guilt, which doubtless is part of the reason why climate change shows up at No. 20 on Americans' list of issues to worry about. Only 30 percent consider it a "top priority," compared with 38 percent in 2007; "protecting the environment" has fallen even more precipitously, from 57 percent to 41. Those aren't good numbers, especially when world leaders are poised to meet in Copenhagen in December to hammer out the most important climate treaty ever.

Now the obvious excuse (and the refuge of spineless pols—paging Sen. Harry Reid) is, Look, you can't really expect people to care about green issues in the middle of a global recession. Voters worry more about keeping a roof over their kids' heads than about how fast some glacier is melting.

Except for two things: One, if that were true, it would apply globally—but in fact, only Americans are so unconcerned about climate change. We give it a priority of 4.7 on a scale of 1 to 10, while Mexicans rank it 9, Chinese 8.9, Brits 8.2, Nigerians 7.8, and Russians 7.4. Only Iraqis (5.1) and Palestinians (4.9) come close to our nonchalance (and they have pretty compelling excuses for being distracted).

And two, climate change isn't chiefly an environmental issue. It's a massive social and technological challenge that will, whether we like it or not, force the wholesale transformation of our economy. We can work with that change or against it, but it's happening no matter what. Put it this way: If you knew that the industrial revolution was coming, would you invest in hand looms? That's why, in September, a group of mega-investors managing some $13 trillion in assets, the equivalent of one-fifth of the world's entire annual economic output, put out a statement urging the Copenhagen negotiators to maintain a "stable investment climate"—by passing a strong treaty.

So on the matter of whether we should worry more about the economy or the future of the planet, the answer is: Wrong question.Stop the dithering and give our kids a chance. "IF YOU DON'T Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog" was... more

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12 days ago

Spiders think Blood is Sexy

Jumping spiders apparently use blood as a perfume to attract the opposite sex.

The jumping spider Evarcha culicivora, which dwells near Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, hungers after mosquitoes engorged with blood. Scientists have even found this 5-millimeter-long spider prefers hunting bloodsuckers infested with the deadly malaria parasite, suggesting these predators could help control the lethal disease.

In dining on bloodsuckers, the jumping spiders — so named because they can leap some 40 times their own body length, which for a 6-foot-tall human would mean 240 feet — are in a roundabout way feeding on blood. It now turns out this vampire-by-proxy diet is sexy for the arachnids.

"In the case of E. culicivora, it seems that the way to a spider's heart is through the other spider's stomach," researcher Fiona Cross, a spider biologist at the University in Christchurch, New Zealand, told LiveScience.

Cross and her colleagues fed spiders of both sexes a variety of meals — blood-fed female mosquitoes, sugar-fed female mosquitoes, male mosquitoes that naturally feed on flower nectar and not blood, and lake flies. The female mosquitoes were fed blood from the researchers — "a tub of mosquitoes was applied to the skin around our tummy," explained researcher Simon Pollard, a spider biologist at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. (It was the first time the lab-bred mosquitoes had fed on blood, so the researchers didn't run the risk of contracting malaria.)

Spiders that dined on blood-fed mosquitoes were sexier to members of the opposite sex — other spiders spent four times as much time closer to a vent carrying scent gently blown off them. When spiders on non-blood diets were switched to blood-fed mosquitoes, they became more attractive, and the opposite was true when spiders were changed to blood-free diets. The spiders displayed no interest in the scent of blood-fed members of the same sex.

"It's what's inside the prey that makes the spider more attractive," Cross said. "It might be like if we all gave off an odor after eating chocolates. It would only be the people who ate the chocolates with particular centers who smelled particularly attractive. Weird."Jumping spiders apparently use blood as a perfume to attract the opposite sex. The jumping spider Evarcha culicivora, which... more

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12 days ago

ARKive - a unique collection of thousands of videos, images and fact-files illustrating the world's

Here is a web-site I just discovered that is visually stunning and very informative, on a huge range of Life on Earth, and extinct... more

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12 days ago

IBM debuts New Food Traceability iPhone App

This is the start of something big... http://top10produce.com/retailerbenefits.aspx

TOP10PRODUCELLC
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12 days ago

Meteorite Impact in Latvia Creates 20-Meter Crater

A meteorite fell near in northern Latvia on Sunday, leaving a crater approximately 20 meters (66 feet) in diameter and 10 meters... more

pjacobs51
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4 comments

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12 days ago

From ecological Soviet-era ruin, the Aral Sea is reborn

Standing on the shore under the relentless Central Asian sun, Badarkhan Prikeyev drew on a cigarette and squinted into the... more

JanforGore
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13 days ago

Water versus chocolate: comfort food without the calories

A study released last week might convince you to ditch the chocolate and replace emotional eating with emotional drinking, of water that is.

Water can be just as good of a pain reliever as chocolate, according to a University of Chicago study released last week.

Acknowledging that animals often eat instead of react to moderate pain, “Analgesia Accompanying Food Consumption Requires Ingestion of Hedonic Foods” examines if comfort food must also be high calorie in content.

Researchers studied ingestion analgesia — eating that causes an absence of pain recognition without losing consciousness — in rats. Rats were exposed to a heated floor that caused a negative sensation in their paws. They were then given either chocolate, sweetened water or regular water.

Results showed that all three effectively numbed the aching, proving that ingestion, not sugar, is the real painkiller, according to Peggy Mason, one of the study’s authors and a Professor of neurobiology at the University.

“This really shows it has nothing to do with calories,” Mason told E! Science News last Tuesday. “Water has no calories, saccharine has no sugar, but both have the same effect as a chocolate chip. It’s really shocking.”

Water has no calories, saccharine has no sugar, but both have the same effect as a chocolate chip. It’s really shocking.”

– Peggy MasonWhether they were eating or drinking to cope with stress the rats paused less often and for shorter duration as a result of subconscious responses controlled by the brainstem. This painkilling effect is also present in humans, Mason said.

And since humans have more readily available food sources than animals, this type of eating, whether it’s due to emotion or how tasty the food is, can contribute to obesity. Overweight individuals are already vulnerable to over-eating during negative emotional moments, according to a 2003 study.

By replacing eating binges with drinking more water, people can relieve pain without compromising their health.A study released last week might convince you to ditch the chocolate and replace emotional eating with emotional drinking, of... more

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13 days ago

Study: Warmed NW forests may yield less timber

A new study suggests warming temperatures predicted over the next century could boost tree growth on Northwest forests, but less... more

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13 days ago

GM food can cause cancer: French scientist

French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini unmasked the dangers of genetically modified brinjal, almost approved for commercial production in India. He shared with Savvy Soumya Misra his findings on Bt brinjal and Roundup Ready soybean

*On the data submitted on Bt brinjal by Mahyco for approval from the Indian government

The data submitted to the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (geac) of the Union environment ministry is not valid; it has not been signed by the scientist who conducted the tests. What is more scandalous is that the studies on the effects of Bt brinjal were conducted for just three months.

If the product is to be consumed by humans, the tests should have been for a period of at least two years—the lifespan of a rodent.

Worse, Mahyco tried to cover up the side-effects by jumbling data on various types of brinjal in a way that it was hard to compare Bt brinjal with normal brinjal. I am sorry to say people in the geac did not carefully assess the data. It is also not clear how the geac overlooked the fact that Bt brinjal has a protein that induces resistance to antibiotics. Mahyco has not studied hormonal impacts of Bt brinjal—Bt toxin found in it could lead to reproductive health problems.

*On his findings on Roundup Ready soybean that tolerates herbicides

Our study found that even minute doses of Roundup (a natural herbicide) disrupt sex hormones like androgen and estrogen. The inert ingredients in Roundup Ready (RR) soybean like polyethoxylated tallowamine kill human cells and disrupt the synthesis and action of human sex hormones. The research was published in this year’s July edition of the journal Toxicology. Some pregnant women who consumed RR soybean developed disorders. This combined with certain studies on animals in labs (conducted by others) made us conclude that Roundup is an endocrine disruptor.

*On claims that GM plants reduce the need for pesticides

This is a false projection. Bt plants, in fact, are designed to produce toxins to repel pests. Bt brinjal produces a very high quantity of 16-17mg toxin per kg. They affect animals. Unfortunately, tests to ascertain their effect on humans have not been conducted. RR soybean that makes up 63 per cent of GM plants in the world contains high amounts of Roundup. The US food and drug administration (usfda) has allowed up to 400 ppm Roundup residues in animal feed. It is much more than what we recommended. There was a paper published in June in Scientific American saying usfda would review the approval accorded to RR soybean because of our study.French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini unmasked the dangers of genetically modified brinjal, almost approved for commercial... more

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13 days ago

Bringing low cost solar to the world's poor

For decades, governments and non-governmental organizations have been trying to bring electricity to the world’s poorest and most isolated regions through million-dollar donations and large-scale projects.

A small start-up company, headquartered in the Republic of Mauritius off the southeastern coast of Africa, is pursuing what it considers a different tack: a market-based approach, employing local villagers, selling rudimentary solar panels and focusing on small-scale, personal electricity use.

ToughStuff was founded in 2008 by Andrew Tanswell and Adriaan Mol — two entrepreneurs looking to help low-income families in the developing world. Hoping to avoid the inefficiencies and restrictions of a traditional aid group, they decided to monetize the process.

“If we’re going to reach a lot of people,” said Nick Sowden, the company’s director of business development in the United States, “we need to do that with business. If we had gone the NGO route, it would have taken forever.”

Mr. Sowden also said that people value products more when they pay for them, and the company never needs to wait for grant money.

“Most of all,” Mr. Sowden said, “we’re forced to deliver products that people actually need. Otherwise we’re going to go out of business. Never, ever, ever will we subsidize a product.”

Nonetheless, customers for ToughStuff’s products are extremely poor — most live on less than a dollar a day — and the company needed to get creative to succeed. The primary product is a 1-watt, thin-film solar panel that is flexible, waterproof, and about the size of a piece of paper.

It has no glass and is nearly indestructible parts. Maintenance fees are nearly non-existent, and operation is easy and intuitive.

The panel itself costs less than $15, and considering what villagers typically spend on kerosene, batteries, and generators, “the payback period is just about 12 weeks for the average person in the developing world,” Mr. Sowden said.

ToughStuff introduced its panels in Madagascar earlier this year, and villagers are using the devices to light small rooms, power radios and charge mobile phones. Previously, Mr. Sowden said, “most people would either steal power, or walk 10 miles each way to the nearest town for power.”

Mobile phones are increasingly important tools in Africa for bringing crops to market, accessing microfinance and enhancing medical services.

Pilot projects are under way in 26 other countries, and a full-scale marketing effort in eastern Africa is slated for later this year. While solar panels are the focus for the time being, Mr. Sowden said, “the biggest long-term value we are going to bring is in building distribution networks.”For decades, governments and non-governmental organizations have been trying to bring electricity to the world’s poorest and... more

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13 days ago

Solar lantern lights up rural India's dark nights

This is great news. "For more than 100 Indian villages cut off from grid electricity, life no longer comes to an end... more

lookatmypix
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13 days ago

A carbon tax, not cap and trade

THE WAXMAN-MARKEY bill on climate change that recently passed the House is a train wreck waiting to happen. Intended to reduce global warming and achieve energy independence, it is totally inadequate in its reliance on a flawed cap and trade system, and the recently released Senate version called the Kerry-Boxer bill follows the same track. Like the House bill, the Senate version represents the further transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the nuclear and fossil-fuel industries - a result of their immense power and influence.

Both bills impose a legal limit or “cap’’ on greenhouse gasses emitted each year. The trading part is based on issuing emission allowances, or permits, to various industries for each ton of greenhouse gas they emit. However, the fatal flaw in Waxman-Markey is the misguided government giveaway, for free, of 85 percent of all allowances, particularly to coal-related industries. For example, the most egregious source of carbon dioxide emissions is coal-fired electrical generating plants, which account for one-third of all such emissions. To mollify the powerful coal lobby and coal state representatives, this government giveaway provides little or no incentive to phase out old coal-fired plants anytime soon, and may diabolically increase their profits.

A lesson is to be learned from the 2005 European Union Emissions Trading Scheme that likewise gave away 95 percent of its emission allowances. The result was that EU electric utilities earned windfall profits while continuing to pass on higher energy costs to industrial and residential consumers. The EU told the US Government Accountability Office that “it could not be certain [the trading scheme] resulted in any reduction of emissions.’’

To successfully confront the climate change crisis and the nation’s addiction to fossil fuels, we at Clean Power Now endorse a straightforward carbon tax instead of the cap and trade schemes. To neutralize the impact on consumers, revenue from the carbon tax would be used to reduce payroll taxes, increase Social Security benefits, and fund renewable energy efforts that create new jobs and new industries particularly in the wind and solar sectors. This would amount to a tax shift with enormous societal benefits.

Others are supporting this as well. Elaine Kamarck, chairwoman of the US Climate Task Force and a former adviser to Al Gore, recently said in Politico, “Congress can go back to Al Gore’s original idea about how to deal with climate change: Raise taxes on carbon, and cut taxes on work. A carbon tax shift is one of those rare ideas that can take a political liability and turn it into a political asset; it allows Congress to vote for a tax cut and a tax increase while putting into place the financial incentives we need to transition to a noncarbon future.’’

A carbon tax is aimed at taxing the upstream source of carbon where it is produced, like coal mines, oil and natural gas wells, as well as shipping terminals and pipelines for imported fuel. Each pound of carbon embedded in the fuel would be taxed based on the fact that every pound of carbon consumed as fuel results in the emission of 3.6 pounds of carbon dioxide. Starting at a tax rate of $15 per ton of emitted carbon dioxide and progressively increasing until the goal of 80 percent reduction is achieved by 2050 is a good place to start.THE WAXMAN-MARKEY bill on climate change that recently passed the House is a train wreck waiting to happen. Intended to reduce... more

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13 days ago

Iowa's wind power surging

Iowa has become the second-largest producer of wind power in the U.S., and some credit an aggressive and supportive role played by local government.

That support is seen in numerous ways: Wind-energy producers and equipment makers enjoy state tax breaks, and projects of 25 megawatts or smaller don't need to be certified by the utilities board. In addition, producers know ahead of time that they will be able to recover their costs from customers, which makes them more likely to invest. Iowa counties, meanwhile, appreciate the revenue and the jobs that wind farms produce, and have few zoning regulations for wind turbines.

"Iowa shows that concentrated and consistent leadership from governors and consistent support from the state regulatory commission can get a lot done," says Hans Detweiler, director of state policy at the American Wind Energy Association, or AWEA, a trade group based in Washington, D.C.

Indeed, as more states and the federal government seek to encourage more production of renewable energy, Iowa may point the way.

"There's very little regulation," says Terry Monson, who deals with permitting and legal work at independent power developer Renewable Power Markets Access Inc., based in Juno Beach, Fla. "It's very expeditious." Mr. Monson's company has eight wind projects established or under development in Iowa.

Flat Is Good

Nature and geography have lent a hand, too, of course.

Iowa may point the way as more states seek to encourage production of renewable energy
."First, it's relatively flat, making it easy to build," says Scott Jacobson, managing director of wind power finance at Iberdrola Renewables SA, a Spanish engineering and renewable energy company that entered the state in 2003 and now has more than 300 megawatts of local wind projects. Iowa is also "relatively rural, making land control easy," Mr. Jacobson says.

What's more, winds there are strong, and the state lies in an enviable position on the grid—close to load centers like Chicago and Milwaukee.

Last year, Iowa added 1,600 megawatts of wind capacity, jumping ahead of California for second place behind Texas. At the end of the second quarter of 2009, Iowa had 3,043 megawatts of total wind capacity, compared with 8,361 megawatts in Texas and 2,787 megawatts in California, according to the wind-energy association. Iowa's wind now powers about 15% of the state's electricity consumption, which represents a lofty goal for many other states.

The so-called Corn State began promoting renewable-energy sources as early as 1978, when, in response to the oil shock, it passed a property-tax exemption for wind, solar and other types of generators whose electricity was used on site. Then, in 1983, the state adopted the first renewable-energy mandate in the U.S., requiring that its investor-owned utilities draw power from 105 megawatts of renewable generation by 1990.

That's not much by today's standards, but it got the ball rolling. During the 1990s, Iowa added a few megawatts of wind installations a year, until 1999, when the total jumped to 232 megawatts installed, thanks largely to new federal tax credits and the arrival of powerful new European turbines. Iowa met its renewable-power mandate goal in 1997.Iowa has become the second-largest producer of wind power in the U.S., and some credit an aggressive and supportive role played by... more