Category: Environment

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Earth Hasn’t Been This Warm Since the Pliocene 3 Million Years Ago

 

March 21, 2001 - It was only six months ago that Presidential campaigner George Bush pledged to regulate power plant emissions of carbon dioxide in order to help reduce global warming. But this month as president, he has now reversed himself saying there is a national energy crisis. At the same time, a study was published in the journal Nature confirming unequivocally that greenhouse gases are increasing. Scientists at London's Imperial College compared 1997 infrared reflections of carbon dioxide, methane and ozone from Earth's surface and found less was escaping into space compared to satellite data in 1970. Atmospheric physicist John Harries said, "We're absolutely sure; there's no ambiguity. This shows the greenhouse effect is operating, and what we are seeing can only be due to the increase in the gases."

 

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USDA Finally Removes 233 European Sheep from Vermont Farm After Court Battles

European sheep in morning mist © 1998 by ilfracombe.
European sheep in morning mist © 1998 by ilfracombe.

March 21, 2001  Greensboro, Vermont - After months of legal battles, the U. S. Department of Agriculture acted today and took 233 sheep from Vermont farmers, Houghton Freeman and Linda and Larry Faillace. It started back in July 2000 when four sheep on their Greensboro, Vermont farm tested positive for antibodies to Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy, or TSE, - a family of diseases caused by misshapen proteins called prions - the most famous being BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or Mad Cow disease. The destructive proteins attack the spinal cord and brain, literally eating holes in tissues which deteriorate to resemble a sponge, always ending in death.

 

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Disappearing Glaciers – Evidence of A Rapidly Warming Earth

"Since 1963, the Qori Kalis glacier in Peru's Quelccaya ice cap
in the Southern Andes has shrunk by at least 20%.
The rate of retreat has been 509 feet per year, or 1.3 feet per day!
You can literally sit there and watch it retreat.
And if you assume that the current rate of retreat will continue,
this ice cap will disappear some time between 2010 and 2020."

- Lonnie Thompson, Ph.D., Glacial Geologist, Ohio State University -

Qori Kalis glacier in Peru's Quelccaya ice cap, Southern Andes. Image on left, 1978. Image on right, 2000, shows new 10 acre lake from ice melt. Twenty percent decrease in square kilometers of ice, retreating at 1.3 feet per day since 1963. Photographs by Lonnie Thompson, Ph.D.
Qori Kalis glacier in Peru's Quelccaya ice cap, Southern Andes. Image on top, 1978. Image on bottom, 2000, shows new 10 acre lake from ice melt. Twenty percent decrease in square kilometers of ice, retreating at 1.3 feet per day since 1963. Photographs by Lonnie Thompson, Ph.D.


March 4, 2001  Columbus, Ohio - At the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in San Francisco on February 25, Prof. Lonnie Thompson from Ohio State University's Department of Geological Sciences presented a paper entitled "Disappearing Glaciers - Evidence of A Rapidly Changing Earth." He spoke before a special session of Earth Systems Science: The Quiet Revolution, organized by the International Geosphere/Biosphere program. Dr. Thompson has completed 37 expeditions since 1978 to collect and study perhaps the world's largest archive of glacial ice cored from the Himalayas, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, the Andes in South America, the Antarctic and Greenland.

 

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Environmental Updates

Earth photo courtesy NASA.
Earth photo courtesy NASA.

February 25, 2001 -

Global Warming:

International computer projections for the next 100 years all agree that the world's average temperature will rise. How high depends upon greenhouse gas build up, but the range will be between 2.5 and 10.5 degrees Fahrenheit. To put that into perspective, if we go back to the last time the earth was 10 degrees cooler than it is now, we have to go back at least ten thousand years to the end of the last Ice Age. So, it took 10,000 years for the earth to warm up 10 degrees F. since ice last covered North America, but may take only the next 100 years to heat up another 10 degrees.

 

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Environmental Updates and Mysterious Deaths of 2000 Atlantic Brant Geese

"Scientists can't remember ever seeing a situation like this
where we've just had one species die, especially in this large a number."

- Tracy Casselman, U. S. Fish and Wildlife -

Dead Atlantic brant geese collected for lab studies by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Oceanville, New Jersey. Photo courtesy USFWS.
Dead Atlantic brant geese collected for lab studies by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Oceanville, New Jersey. Photo courtesy USFWS.

February 18, 2001  New York City - Increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere ARE raising the global average mean temperature, physicists say, and 100 nations have ratified the Kyoto Protocol that requires a cutback in emissions. But none of those nations are industrial like the United States, which is responsible for 25% of the world's atmospheric pollution. So far the U. S. refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because American industry argues it cannot afford the economic costs of complying with emission cutbacks. This week the United Nations agreed to delay greenhouse talks until June or July, hoping for American involvement. But this delay further frustrates environmental groups who argue that President Bush was quick to create a high-level team to develop new sources of oil and other fossil fuels that will put even more CO2 into the atmosphere, while ignoring the consequences of burning fossil fuels.

 

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Update On Mad Cow Disease

Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.

February 11, 2001  Atlanta, Georgia - The London Times reported this week that animal feed protein contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as BSE or mad cow disease, is estimated to have reached 70 countries through exports by a British company between 1988 and 1996. The company, Prosper de Mulder based in Doncaster, northern England, admitted to the Times that its animal feed was exported as pig and poultry food which were not banned until 1996, but could still have been mixed up with cattle feed which was illegal. The BSE-contaminated pig and poultry food was exported to Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malta, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand. The United Nations is now warning all countries that have imported cattle or animal feed from western Europe, especially Britain, to be concerned about the risk of BSE and variant CJD.

 

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94% Decline In Aleutian Islands Sea Otter Population

"We aren't aware of any mammalian decline of either this magnitude
or geographic extent. It's really kind of mind boggling, actually."

- Tim Tinker, Marine Ecologist, University of California, Santa Cruz

Sea otter with arms folded floating on its back in Aleutian Islands. Photograph courtesy U. S. Fish and Wildlife, Alaska.
Sea otter with arms folded floating on its back in Aleutian Islands. Photograph courtesy U. S. Fish and Wildlife, Alaska.

February 7, 2001  Santa Cruz, California -

Changing Environment and Impact On Animals

­ The past ten years have been the warmest in a thousand years; the Arctic ice cap has shrunk over the past three decades to about half the size it was.

 

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Mad Cow-like Chronic Wasting Disease in North American Deer and Elk

Wild mule deer in Colorado. Photograph courtesy Colorado Division of Wildlife.
Wild mule deer in Colorado. Photograph courtesy Colorado Division of Wildlife.

February 4, 2001  Denver, Colorado - This past week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned countries around the world to be concerned about the risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) known as mad cow disease. In a formal statement, FAO said: "All countries which have imported cattle or meat and bone meal from Western Europe, especially Britain, during and since the 1980s can be considered at risk from the disease."

 

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U. N. Global Warming Forecast: Up to 10.5 Degrees F. Hotter At End of 21st Century

"The idea of having a planet that really warmed 10 degrees Fahrenheit is rather baffling. That's the same change we saw back to the last Ice Age. And obviously that was a hugely different kind of world to live on. So, if we really experience something at that high end of temperature warming, it sounds like there is a possibility for widespread disaster."

- Drew Shindell, Ph.D., Atmospheric Physicist, NASA/GISS

Lightening in violent thunderstorm courtesy National Severe Storm Center, Norman, Oklahoma.
Lightening in violent thunderstorm courtesy National Severe Storm Center, Norman, Oklahoma.

January 28, 2001  New York City ­ The largest decline in a mammal population ever recorded by modern scientists has occurred in the otter population of the Aleutian Islands off the west coast of Alaska. In the 1980s, as many as 100,000 otters inhabited the islands. Today, there are only about 6,000 left. And 70% of that decline occurred between 1992 and 2000, a rate of decline that scientists say is unprecedented for any mammal population in the world. Researchers have been trying to find out what happened. And the answer seems to be global warming. Warmer ocean currents in the Aleutians have driven out the huge population of seals and sea lions that used to be the staple food of killer whales. When the seals and sea lions disappeared, the whales turned to otters for food. As water temperatures increased, so did the salmon population. Salmon have attracted sharks. So, in a few short years a warmer water temperature has transformed the once safe mammal sanctuary of the Aleutian Islands into a feeding ground for predators.

 

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Environmental Updates

Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.

November 26, 2000 Western Europe - On Friday, a shocked Germany and Portugal reported two new cases of mad cow disease that seems to be spreading in Europe. Doctors think the brain destroying prions that cause loss of muscle control and progressive dementia originated in Great Britain after cattle were given feed containing the ground up remains of infected sheep. There is a form of mad cow disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob which enters humans who eat infected meat. In England, 81 people have died of that disease since 1996.

 

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