Diamonds May Have Rained Down From Space During Ice Age

An Indiana diamond found in deposits that date to the end of the last Ice Age. Tests reveal it originated from the Canadian Shield.

An Indiana diamond found in deposits that date to the end of the last Ice Age. Tests reveal it originated from the Canadian Shield.

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Diamonds and precious metals found in the eastern United States might have rained down during the last Ice Age after a comet shattered over Canada and set North America ablaze, all leading to a mass die-off of animals and humans.

New chemical analyses of diamond, gold and silver found in Ohio and Indiana reveal the minerals were transported there from Canada several thousand years ago. The question is, how?

"There are no gold mines or silver mines in Ohio that anyone knows of, but there are plenty of them in Canada," said retired geophysicist Allen West, who was involved in the study.

The discovery is consistent with a theory proposed by West and colleagues that a 3-mile-wide comet splintered over glaciers and ice sheets in eastern Canada about 12,900 years ago and wiped out man and beast.

"These would have been like ten thousand Tunguskas going off at once," said West, referring to a mid-air explosion over Siberia a century ago possibly caused by a fragmenting meteor.

Precious rain

The diamonds, gold and silver could have been ejected into the air during the blasts, West said, or they could have been carried south by rivers formed from the meltwater of liquified glaciers.

For several months following the comet strike, the skies rained precious stone and metals, the researchers speculate. Diamonds drizzled down by the tons.

"Some of them you couldn't see, and animals would've been breathing them in," West told LiveScience. "But other ones would clearly have been visible. They might've even hurt if they hit you."

The larger diamonds were visible to the naked eye and dropped like hail stones within seconds of the blasts, West said.

The smallest diamonds, the "size of cold viruses," would have lingered in the atmosphere for weeks or months, eventually wafting down to Earth like expensive snowflakes.

Killed man and beast

Flaming fragments of the comet crashing to Earth sparked forests fires around the globe, West contends.

The intense heat from the blasts set the very air on fire. North America's grassland, the furs of animals, the hair and clothing of humans — all would have been set ablaze.

West and his colleagues have proposed that the comet strike contributed to the extinction of several species of North American megafauna, including mammoths and mastodons, and led to the early demise of the Clovis culture, a Stone Age people who had only recently immigrated to the continent.

The multiple airbursts might have also caused large amounts of fresh water to be dumped into the Atlantic Ocean, temporarily disrupting currents and prompting a sudden global cold snap called the Younger Dryas period.

"The kind of evidence we are finding does suggest that climate change at the end of the last Ice Age was the result of a catastrophic event," said study team member Ken Tankersley, an anthropologist at the University of Cincinnati.

While the discoveries in Ohio and Indiana are consistent with the theory of a comet colliding with Earth during the last Ice Age, West cautions that it is not a "smoking gun."

"We're a long way from saying categorically that these things got here because of this event," West said. "They're consistent, but we've got a lot more work to do to show there's a direct connection."

The researchers are preparing to submit their research to a scientific journal.

Did A Significant Climate Change Event, Known As Younger Dryas, Impact Climate Around The Globe?

The team at the Quelccaya Ice Cap obtain a sample to be used in radiocarbon dating.

ScienceDaily (July 22, 2008) — New research evaluates whether the significant climate change event about 12,900 years ago known as Younger Dryas impacted the climate all around the globe.

The Younger Dryas event refers to an unexpected rapid cooling of the earth that is known to have lasted about 1,300 years. It coincided with widespread extinctions of species, but, although the event itself is well-documented, scientists are still unclear of whether its impact was felt equally all across the globe.

The extent of the impact in the Southern Hemisphere is, in particular, unresolved.

University of Cincinnati Professor of Geology Tom Lowell has researched evidence of historical climate change all over the globe, including significant amounts of research south of the equator. Just this month, he has returned from a month-long expedition to Peru, where he and colleagues took samples near the Quelccaya Ice Cap.

One of the purposes of this most recent trip corresponds with the central question that Lowell has written about in the July 18 issue of the journal Science: Why are there discrepancies in results being returned from two primary dating techniques, and what does that say about understanding Younger Dryas and other major climate change events?

"The whole point is that this was a time of rapid environmental transition that we do not understand the cause for," says Lowell. "One of the primary things you have to understand before you can attribute cause is how widespread the event was. That's a question my work in the Southern hemisphere has been associated with.

"It just might be that we don't have the necessary dating techniques to make these determinations."

Lowell is an expert in the use of radiocarbon dating techniques. His co-author in the Science piece (as well as colleague on the Peru expedition), Meredith Kelly from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is expert in a more recently developed dating technique called surface-exposure dating, which can be obtained from boulders left behind in glacial moraines.

There are only a handful of known locations in the Southern hemisphere (one of which is Quelccaya) where samples for both kinds of testing can be obtained at the same site.

When previous sampling has been done at locations in New Zealand and Argentina, there has been conflict in the dating of the Younger Dryas event between the two techniques. Radiocarbon dating has shown that glacial advances happened prior to Younger Dryas, but surface-exposure dating indicates that glacial movement happened at the end of Younger Dryas.

That leaves scientists to ponder two likely explanations, according to Lowell and Kelly. The first is that the evidence being obtained through the two dating techniques are looking at two different stratified levels of samples, with the carbon-based samples likely dating back to the beginning of Younger Dryas and the advance of the glaciers and the surface-exposure samples coming from a time at the end of Younger Dryas, when the glaciers retreated.

The second option is that there could be problems in calibrating the dating techniques themselves against each other.

To test the second possibility, they undertook the recent trip to Peru.

Lowell and Kelly are also collaborating on this work with Fred Phillips, a professor of hydrology at New Mexico Tech whom Lowell describes as one of the godfathers of the surface-exposure dating process.

Also among those on the seven-member crew that made the trip to the 16,000-foot elevation in Peru were two former UC students: Colby Smith, who just finished work on his PhD in Geology, and former UC undergrad Patrick Applegate, who is now pursuing his PhD at Penn State.

Answering this question has significant implications for better understanding Younger Dryas. New work also published in this edition of Science by a team led by Robert P. Ackert from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution supports the conclusion that the forces causing the Younger Dryas event did not cool the eastern glaciers in the Patagonian Icefields in southern Argentina.

This finding, in conjunction with previous findings from the ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica that show that Greenland cooled during Younger Dryas while Antarctica warmed, support the theory that Younger Dryas did not have much impact farther south than the Tropics.

"We were at (Quelccaya) two years ago for preliminary work where we found evidence of this discrepancy between the two dating systems was present," says Lowell. "This year, our effort was to obtain even more chronological data, so we could assess this problem and try to bring these techniques into compliance with each other."

Lowell and his colleagues are aiming to make a preliminary presentation on the findings from this most recent trip in December, at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.

Mystery plague set to wipe out France's crop of baby oysters

Oysters for sale in Cancale, Brittany. Warmer seas may be to blame for the crisis

Baby oysters are dying in their millions along the French coast from Normandy to the Mediterranean, puzzling scientists and plunging France's shellfish industry into crisis.

On some parts of the Norman and Mediterranean coast, the entire one-year-old "class" of juvenile oysters, due to be eaten by Christmas 2009, has died in the space of a few days.

A number of theories have been put forward by marine biologists and oyster farmers, mostly linked to a slight rise in the temperature of the seas around western Europe this summer. Has some form of toxic algae reached French waters? If so, why are adolescent and adult oysters apparently unaffected? Are rapid changes in water temperature damaging to baby oysters? If so, why are some oyster parcs, or beds, devastated while others nearby are relatively immune?

One theory is that the warmer sea water – up to 1C higher than normal – has generated abnormal quantities of the microscopic plankton eaten by oysters. The baby shellfish, aged from 12 to 18 months, may have been dying of over-eating.

The French Agriculture and Fisheries minister, Michel Barnier, has commissioned the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) to "mobilise all its resources" to identify the cause or, more likely, combination of causes. The government is expected to announce emergency aid to oyster producers to enable them to buy new oyster fry or "larva".

"The losses run to tens of millions of euros," said Joseph Costard, an oyster producer at Saint-Vaast in Normandy and president of the Norman association of shellfish producers. "We are going to have to change completely the way we do things and spread out the harvesting of the [older oysters] over two or three seasons."

Martial Monnier, director general of the national shellfish producers' body, the Comité National de la Conchyliculture, said there were fears that the mysterious ailment could spread to mature oysters. "We have a serious, serious problem," he said "There is death rate of young oysters of between 40 and 100 per cent, compared to, at worst, 30 per cent in a normal year. It is only when the next neap tides arrive that we will know whether or not the adult oysters have been affected."

The crisis is the worst to hit the French oyster industry – Europe's largest – since disease all but wiped out the native European or "Portuguese" oyster 30 years ago. Since then almost all oyster farms in Europe have been restocked with the Pacific "creuse" oyster from Japan and British Columbia. The French government and shellfish producers say the death of baby oysters should not discourage people from eating full-size oysters. Nothing remotely threatening to humans has been discovered. But the fisheries minister, M. Barnier, has asked the food safety agency, AFSSA, to investigate.

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Bird flu to 'devastate the planet'

Bird flu in Suffolk

Foreign travel could spark a bird flu outbreak that devastates the world's population, a report warned last night.

A House of Lords team said more deadly animal diseases were spreading to humans - and the extent of world trade and travel mean there are few barriers to a global pandemic.

Bird flu has only killed a handful of people because it is hard for it to pass on to humans. But the report, Diseases Know No Frontiers, warns new strains or another disease will kill millions.

It said: "An influenza pandemic is overdue. When it comes the effects could be devastating. We recommend the Government consider how greater priority can be given to disease surveillance and response systems."

'Inevitable' flu pandemic 'will kill 75,000 Britons and 50 million worldwide'

Threat: The committee slammed Britain's 'poorly coordinated' disease control systems

Britain is facing an 'inevitable' and 'devastating' flu pandemic which will kill up to 75,000 people, a government committee revealed today.

The outbreak – most likely a strain of bird flu which could claim the lives of up to 50 million worldwide – will be on a scale not seen for decades.

The pandemic will require an ‘urgent’ response to prevent the rapid spread of infection, the powerful House of Lords Intergovernmental Organisations Committee warned.

They slammed Britain’s ‘poorly coordinated’ disease control systems, which are run by too many similar groups.

And the Lords also attacked the World Health Organisation (WHO) as ‘dysfunctional’ and lacking the ‘organisation and resources’ to curb a major outbreak.

The next pandemic will kill between two and 50 million people worldwide and a fair fraction of that in the UK, it said.

Echoing the report, the Government said: ‘While there has not been a pandemic since 1968, another one is inevitable.

‘Estimates are that the next pandemic will kill between two million and 50 million people and between 50,000 and 75,000 in the UK. Socio-economic disruption will be massive.’

Peers are calling for international alert systems for disease threats, which will spread rapidly due to our changing lifestyles.

The last pandemics to hit Britain, caused by mild influenza, were in 1918 and 1968.

But the report raised concerns that an outbreak caused by the H5N1 strain, found in birds and poultry, could be utterly devastating, as prevention methods were ‘less comprehensive’ than for human illnesses.

It predicted human-to-human transmission ‘in the near future.’

Three-quarters of newly-emerging human infections come from animals, but experts have warned that they are currently only identified after humans have been infected.

Committee chairman Lord Soley said: ‘The last 100 years have seen great advances in public health and disease control through the world, but globalisation and changes in lifestyles are giving rise to new infections and providing opportunities for them to spread rapidly throughout the world.

‘We were particularly concerned about the link with animal health. Three quarters of new human infectious diseases start in animals.

‘We urgently need better surveillance systems to deal with this problem.’

Mideast facing choice between crops and water

On the Toshka farm in Egypt's desert, workers tended to a grape field. The farm was begun in 1997, but it has a renewed focus. (Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times)

THE FOOD CHAIN

CAIRO: Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.

For decades nations in this region have drained aquifers, sucked the salt from seawater and diverted the mighty Nile to make the deserts bloom. But those projects were so costly and used so much water that it remained far more practical to import food than to produce it. Today, some countries import 90 percent or more of their staples.

Now, the worldwide food crisis is making many countries in this politically volatile region rethink that math.

The population of the region has more than quadrupled since 1950, to 364 million, and is expected to reach nearly 600 million by 2050. By that time, the amount of fresh water available for each person, already scarce, will be cut in half, and declining resources could inflame political tensions further.

"The countries of the region are caught between the hammer of rising food prices and the anvil of steadily declining water availability per capita," Alan Richards, a professor of economics and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said via e-mail. "There is no simple solution."

Losing confidence in world markets, these nations are turning anew to expensive schemes to maintain their food supply.

Djibouti is growing rice in solar-powered greenhouses, fed by groundwater and cooled with seawater, in a project that produces what the World Bank economist Ruslan Yemtsov calls "probably the most expensive rice on earth."

Several oil-rich nations, including Saudi Arabia, have started searching for farmland in fertile but politically unstable countries like Pakistan and Sudan, with the goal of growing crops to be shipped home.

"These countries have the land and the water," said Hassan Sharaf Al Hussaini, an official in Bahrain's agriculture ministry. "We have the money."

In Egypt, where a shortage of subsidized bread led to rioting in April, government officials say they are looking into growing wheat on two million acres straddling the border with Sudan.

Economists and development experts say that nutritional self-sufficiency in this part of the world presents challenges that are not easily overcome. Saudi Arabia tapped aquifers to become self-sufficient in wheat production in the 1980s. By the early 1990s, the kingdom had become a major exporter. This year, however, the Saudis said they would phase out the program because it used too much water.

"You can bring in money and water and you can make the desert green until either the water runs out or the money," said Elie Elhadj, a Syrian-born author who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the topic.

Egypt, too, has for decades dreamed of converting huge swaths of desert into lush farmland. The most ambitious of these projects is in Toshka, a Sahara Desert oasis in a scorched lunar landscape of sand and rock outcroppings.

When the Toshka farm was started in 1997, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, compared its ambitions to building the pyramids, involving roughly 500,000 acres of farmland and tens of thousands of residents. But no one has moved there, and only 30,000 acres or so have been planted.

The farm's manager, Mohamed Nagi Mohamed, says the Sahara is perfect for farming, as long as there is plenty of fertilizer and water. For one thing, the bugs cannot handle the summer heat, so pesticides are not needed.

"You can grow anything on this land," he said, showing off fields of alfalfa and rows of tomatoes and grapes, shielded from the sun by gauzy white netting. "It's a very nice project, but it needs a lot of money."

Mubarak calls his country's growing population an "urgent" problem that has exacerbated the food crisis. The population grows about 1.7 percent annually, considerably slower than a generation ago but still fast enough that it is on pace to double by 2050.

Adding 1.3 million Egyptians each year to the 77 million squeezed into an inhabited area roughly the size of Taiwan is a daunting prospect for a country in which 20 percent of citizens already live in poverty.

One recent morning in the Cairo slum of Imbaba, people crammed in front of a weathered green bakery shack for their daily rations of subsidized bread, a pita-like loaf called baladi that sells for less than a penny, so cheap that some Egyptians feed it to their livestock.

The bakery shares the end of a dead-end street with a mountain of garbage, 25 feet by 5 feet, that looks as if it is moving because so many flies swarm over it.

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Tiny bug threatens California citrus industry

The Asian citrus psyllid is seen in this University of Florida photo provided by the University of California, Davis. California and Arizona growers are bracing for a fight they say is potentially more damaging than the Mediterranean fruit fly because entire groves, not just fruit, are at risk. Psyllids feed on the liquid inside citrus leaves and are the only transmitter of a deadly disease officially known by its Chinese name huanglongbing, or "yellow dragon disease" for its visual effect on leaves. In the U.S. growers call it "citrus greening" because fruit fails to ripen. (AP Photo/University of Florida, Michael Rogers)

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Border agents have stepped up searches and hundreds of traps have been placed on the California-Mexico line in an aggressive campaign to stop a tiny bug from bringing in a disease farmers say could wipe out the $1.3 billion citrus industry here.

Already, Asian citrus psyllid has hurt citrus production in parts of China and infested millions of dead and dying trees in Florida and Brazil. Growers say the bug has the potential to be more damaging than the Mediterranean fruit fly because entire groves — not just fruit — are at risk.

"This is not one more thing, this might be the last thing," said Al Stehly, who manages 200 acres of oranges near Valley Center in San Diego County.

The tiny psyllids are the only transmitters of the disease, officially known by its Chinese name, huanglongbing, or "yellow dragon disease" for its visual effect on leaves. In the U.S., growers call it "citrus greening" disease because fruit fails to ripen.

Psyllids feed on the liquid inside citrus leaves, and once a psyllid eats from an infected tree, it carries the bacteria for life. Diseased trees wither and die within a few years.

More than 22 years of research by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has not yet revealed genetic or biological controls for the disease.

"There is no place in the world this disease is under adequate control," said plant pathologist Tim Gottwald of the USDA's agricultural research service in Florida and one of the world's leading authorities on citrus greening. "We don't have an adequate strategy at this moment."

Gottwald likens the potential impact to Dutch elm disease, which has wiped out nearly the entire elm population in England and Europe.

Recent news that the bug was found within four blocks of the San Diego County line sent orange juice futures up and spread panic through the industry. Industry officials worry international trade could be affected, as California supplies 85 percent of the U.S. fresh orange market, and 30 percent of the state's production is shipped overseas.

"The sky could fall unless everybody is constantly on top of everything on this," said Christopher Mundt, a plant epidemiologist at Oregon State University who studies grains, but was asked recently to bring fresh eyes to the citrus problem. "There's not going to be much room for error on this one."

DNA tests on 138 psyllids trapped so far in Tijuana have given no indication those bugs carry the bacteria.

Still, officials are being vigilant.

Border patrol agents have stepped up monitoring for orange tree cuttings and even certain types of curry leaves at airports and crossings. Some nursery ornamentals such as mock oranges and certain orange jasmines can be silent carriers of the disease. Officials also worry that citrus greening already could be present in California but until now has lacked a carrier.

California agricultural officials have placed 1,065 traps in a 120-square-mile grid at the border in San Diego and Imperial counties.

"Unfortunately, pests don't observe international borders," said Steve Lyle of the California Department of Agriculture. "Should the pest cross the border, and there's little reason to believe that it won't, we'll be able to detect it as fast as we can."

After that, agriculture officials say they aren't sure what they'll do and that "response options are under evaluation."

The California Citrus Research Board also is launching its own fight Friday, enlisting growers and master gardeners from San Diego to Ventura to help bait and trap the bug by pruning sentinel trees to encourage the new growth the psyllids favor. It will form a line of defense against the San Joaquin Valley, where 80 percent of the state's oranges grow.

The group, funded by state growers, will also set up labs in Riverside and Tulare counties to expedite testing for the disease on suspect trees. The cost will be about $1.5 million a year.

"We're throwing everything at it but the kitchen sink," said Ted Batkin, the board's president.

The bugs arrived in the U.S. in Florida in 1998, and the disease was in full-swing by 2005. Costly spraying of a variety of insecticides toxic to bees and beneficial insects and wildlife have been used to combat the disease's spread in an effort to protect the state's $9 billion a year industry.

Florida growers have contributed more than $20 million for research this year.

In June, an infected backyard tree outside of New Orleans prompted a statewide quarantine in Louisiana. That was the disease's first U.S. appearance outside of Florida.

While defending against the bug has proved difficult, one long-term solution, Gottwald said, could be to build genetic resistance into the trees.

"That has to be augmented with short-term solutions to keep the industry alive," he said.

The cost to farmers has been hard to assess since prices rise when supply falls. But increased spraying alone increases production costs by one-third, said Tom Spreen, chairman of the University of Florida's food and resource economics department and one of the country's three citrus economists.

When the disease hits, growers must decide whether to cull and replace trees, or abandon operations.

"We can slow it down," Stehly said, "but we can't stop it. I'll be out of business in a few years."

Hundreds Of Baby Penguins Washing Up Dead in Brazil

Penguins rescued off the coast of Rio de Janeiro by the Brazilian Coast Guard are seen at the Niteroi Zoo in Rio de Janeiro, Friday, July 18, 2008. (AP Photo/Ricardo Moraes)

Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro's tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.

More than 400 penguins, most of them young, have been found dead on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro state over the past two months, according to Eduardo Pimenta, superintendent for the state coastal protection and environment agency in the resort city of Cabo Frio.

While it is common here to find some penguins - both dead and alive - swept by strong ocean currents from the Strait of Magellan, Pimenta said there have been more this year than at any time in recent memory.

Experts are divided over the possible causes.

Thiago Muniz, a veterinarian at the Niteroi Zoo, said he believed overfishing has forced the penguins to swim further from shore to find fish to eat "and that leaves them more vulnerable to getting caught up in the strong ocean currents."

Niteroi, the state's biggest zoo, already has already received about 100 penguins for treatment this year and many are drenched in petroleum, Muniz said. The Campos oil field that supplies most of Brazil's oil lies offshore.

Muniz said he hadn't seen penguins suffering from the effects of other pollutants, but he pointed out that already dead penguins aren't brought in for treatment.

Pimenta suggested pollution is to blame.

"Aside from the oil in the Campos basin, the pollution is lowering the animals' immunity, leaving them vulnerable to funguses and bacteria that attack their lungs," Pimenta said, quoting biologists who work with him.

But biologist Erli Costa of Rio de Janeiro's Federal University suggested weather patterns could be involved.

"I don't think the levels of pollution are high enough to affect the birds so quickly. I think instead we're seeing more young and sick penguins because of global warming, which affects ocean currents and creates more cyclones, making the seas rougher," Costa said.

Costa said the vast majority of penguins turning up are baby birds that have just left the nest and are unable to out-swim the strong ocean currents they encounter while searching for food.

Every year, Brazil airlifts dozens of penguins back to Antarctica or Patagonia.

Deadly storm batters Taiwan

A powerful tropical storm has battered southern Taiwan with torrential rains, triggering flash flood and landslides that have left at least four people dead.

Tropical storm Kalmaegi hit the island on Thursday night with heavy rain and packing winds of up to 83kmh, weather officials said.

By early Friday it had begun to head across the Taiwan Strait toward southern mainland China.

In hard-hit Kaohsiung county in southern Taiwan, TV footage showed torrents of floodwater pouring down a mountain road.

Local disaster relief officials said one woman had been rescued from a house buried in a landslide, but her 1-year-old daughter died.

Another family member was buried and listed as missing.

Elsewhere in Kaohsiung and nearby Tainan, three people were drowned and two others were washed away by floodwaters.

The treacherous conditions even took emergency workers by surprise with one man and woman reported missing after a police motorboat that had earlier rescued them overturned in floodwaters.

In the coastal county of Yunlin firefighters have been using ladders to rescue people trapped in flooded houses.

Officials said several areas in the south of Taiwan have recorded up to 1,100mm of rains in the space of just 24 hours.

Earlier this week Kalmegi swept through the northern Philippines leaving two people dead according to local officials.

Eleven dead as tropical storm pounds Taiwan

Kalmaegi was downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm

TAIPEI (AFP) — Eleven people including a baby girl have been killed and three more are missing in Taiwan as Tropical Storm Kalmaegi brought strong winds and heavy downpours, rescuers said Friday.

The one-year-old girl and her teenage uncle were killed when their house in the southern county of Kaohsiung was hit by a mudslide, the National Fire Agency said.

The girl's pregnant mother was lightly injured and has been airlifted to safety with her husband.

"It happened so fast... I didn't have time to save them," the husband told ERA News.

In central Taichung, an army captain fell into a gutter in his barracks amid bad weather and drowned, the fire agency said.

One couple died when the boat they were being rescued in capsized, it said.

Rescuers have evacuated some 80 people trapped by mudslides or floods in the worst-hit central and southern Taiwan, where electricity and water supplies in hundreds of thousands of households were affected.

Television footage showed residents battling rising floods and some roads were blocked or damaged by heavy rain.

Kalmaegi also ravaged fields and farms, causing an estimated 111 million Taiwan dollars (3.65 million US) in damage, the government said.

The storm was 70 kilometres (55 miles) north of Matsu island at 7:15 pm (1115 GMT), packing winds of up to 83 kilometres an hour, the weather bureau said.

Kalmaegi was downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm as it bore down the east coast Thursday night, the bureau said.

Offices and schools in several central counties were shut while some 3,600 fishermen sought shelter at ports, authorities said.

The storm also disrupted land and air traffic. Many rail services were cancelled and nearly 20 local and international flights were suspended or delayed.

Moving species may be only way to save them from climate change

Desperate times call for desperate measures, according to a new paper in Science. Conservation scientists from the US, the UK, and Australia are calling for the consideration of a highly controversial conservation technique: assisted migration. According to the policy piece, species would be relocated to sites "where they do not currently occur or have not been known to occur in recent history".

The scientists believe certain species face such grave threats from climate change that the only way to save them from extinction may be assisted migration. As the globe warms, natural migration to favorable habitats will be impossible for many species — their paths blocked either by natural or human-made barriers. In their paper the researchers warn that "whole ecosystems, such as cloud forests and coral reefs, may cease to function in their current form."

The researchers have set up parameters to help conservationists decide if a threatened species would be a good candidate for assisted migration. These include a full knowledge of the species’ habitat needs, whether or not the species would be easy to collect and transport, and if there is suitable habitat available elsewhere. In addition, social issues, such as the expense involved and the ‘value’ (monetary and/or aesthetic) of the species, would need to be taken into account.

The greatest challenge facing assisted migration, however, is determining the impact of the migrated species on its new environment. "The world is littered with examples where moving species beyond their current range into natural and agricultural landscapes has had negative impacts," the scientists write, noting the example of the cane toad in Australia, which has had devastating effect on the environment and native species. The researchers state that before any decision can be made, conservationists must determine if the risk of extinction warrants the possible risks to the new environment. Only if the former is high and the latter low may assisted migration be a viable option.

"Passively assisting coral reef migration may be acceptable, but transplanting polar bears to Antarctica, where they would likely drive native penguins to extinction, would not be acceptable," one of the researchers for the project, Professor Camille Parmesan, said.

Another member of the research team, Professor Chris Thomas, stated that the team was not advocating moving species across continents or over large bodies of water. "Moving species between continents caused all sorts of problems, and has given translocation a bad name amongst conservation organizations. But this is not what we are suggesting. Ecology has moved on a long way since then, and we now know that moving species within the same general region (e.g., from France to Britain) hardly ever causes serious biological problems. The time is fast approaching when we need to identify the species that might need to be protected."

Despite the controversial nature of assisted migration, Parmesan says that more and more conservationists are considering the matter: "When I first brought up this idea some 10 years ago in conservation meetings, most people were horrified. But now, as the reality of global warming sinks in, and species are already becoming endangered and even going extinct because of climate change, I'm seeing a new willingness in the conservation community to at least talk about the possibility of helping out species by moving them around."

If assisted migration proves impossible for any number of reasons, other last-ditch tactics may be employed. Scientists have suggested maintaining entire populations of species in captivity, along with using seed banks to preserve eggs and sperms for future breeding.

According to the researchers, however, the best thing for the world’s wildlife is to use all our means possible to mitigate the effects of climate change. "We can go so far with helping species to adapt to climate change, but ultimately we are not going to be successful if high levels of climate change take place," Thomas stated.

Coral reefs decimated by 2050, Great Barrier Reef's coral 95% dead (November 17, 2005)
Australia's Great Barrier Reef could lose 95 percent of its living coral by 2050 should ocean temperatures increase by the 1.5 degrees Celsius projected by climate scientists. The startling and controversial prediction, made last year in a report commissioned by the World Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Queensland government, is just one of the dire scenarios forecast for reefs in the near future. The degradation and possible disappearance of these ecosystems would have profound socioeconomic ramifications as well as ecological impacts says Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, head of the University of Queensland's Centre for Marine Studies.

Victor Emerges in Stormy Battle on Jupiter

Jupiter's Great Red Spot has roughed up a younger rival storm and may consume it altogether.

The baby red spot appears to have gotten the worst of its whirlwind encounter with the ravenous super-storm that has dominated Jupiter for at least two centuries. Their tussle was captured in a recent series of images by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists may be watching historical shifts in action as they learn how the giant planet's storms grow and change over decades and centuries.

The smaller storm first appeared earlier this year, but had the misfortune to get caught up in the reverse cyclone spin of the Great Red Spot. That left the baby red spot deformed and sapped of color as it spun off to the east of the greater storm. Astronomers predict that the Great Red Spot will eventually pull in and absorb the baby red spot — a possible reason why the super-storm has sustained its power for so long.

Another super-storm, a third one known as the Little Red Spot, safely skirted its larger cousin, and may challenge the Great Red Spot for size. The Little Red Spot's top winds already equal those of the Great Red Spot at nearly 384 mph (172 meters per second), and a scientist told SPACE.com in May that the newer contender may be part of a larger storm system beneath Jupiter's upper atmosphere.

The Little Red Spot first appeared in 2005, after a three-way storm merger turned it from white to an angry red. That means the battle of Jupiter's titans may eventually depend on which storm can consume the most fallen rivals.

• Video: Follow New Horizons on its Jupiter Flyby
• The Wildest Weather in the Galaxy
• Image Gallery: Jupiter's Moons

Mars was once 'a great place to live'

Mars was once "a great place to live" - awash with water and capable of supporting life, the findings of a new study suggest.

Recent missions to the Red Planet have revealed stunning details of the Martian landscape, mineralogy and clues to past climate. 3D image of Nili Fossae region of Mars showing phyllosilcates (in magenta and blue hues) which indicates previous presence of water But how much water, where it was or is located and what it was doing have been hard to pin down. Now a study in the journal Nature by Prof John Mustard and Bethany Ehlmann of Brown University, Rhode Island, and colleagues provide information that leads him to conclude that it was a benign, water-rich environment for a long time, backing the idea that it could have supported microbial life. Reporting for the first time results obtained from an instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a probe that is researching the history of water on Mars, the team has found that vast regions of the ancient southern highlands of Mars once hosted a water-rich environment. They found that water played a sizable role in changing the minerals of a variety of terrains in the Noachian period - about 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. To support the claim, Prof Mustard's team relied on data supplied by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. The team focused on hydrated silicate, phyllosilicates, clay-like minerals that preserve a record of water's interaction with rocks....Continue

India flood crisis 'deteriorates'

The flooding has caused chaos in Orissa

The flood situation in India's eastern states of Orissa, West Bengal and Jharkhand continues to deteriorate, officials say.

But they say that there has been some improvement in the worst affected state of Assam in the country's north-east.

More than eight million people have been affected by severe floods and thousands have been displaced.

In Orissa officials say they are battling to get food to marooned people in the north of the state.

Many states in the north-east and east of India have been hit hard by flooding.

The army has been deployed in the state of Jharkhand - where nearly two and half million people have been affected by torrential rain - the heaviest for six decades, according to officials.

Five people have died in the wet weather in West Bengal and four in Orissa, officials said.

"We have not been able to reach thousands of people encircled by flood waters on all sides as road links have been badly damaged and the swirling water of the rivers is making the movement of boats difficult," a senior official engaged in the Orissa relief operation told the BBC.

The district of Lakhimpur in Assam is one of the worst hit

Nearly 40,000 people in the state's low lying areas have been evacuated to safer places.

The Orissa government started air-dropping food to inaccessible areas on Thursday morning.

Officials said nearly a million people in four Orissa districts - Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Bhadrak and Jajpur - have been affected by the floods.

More than half a million people have been affected in Balasore alone, officials said, and a total of 850 villages have been cut off.

Consolation

Meanwhile three army columns were rushed to West Bengal's West and East Midnapore districts after more than 700mm rainfall lashed the two districts over the past three days.

A total of two million people have been affected by the floods in these two districts as the Subarnarekha River continued to rise, leaving nearly 300,000 people marooned.

The BBC's north-east India correspondent, Subir Bhaumik, says that there was some consolation for the authorities in Assam, where there are signs that heavy rainfall is abating.

But our correspondent says that the worst affected districts of Lakhimpur and Dhemaji districts remain cut off from the rest of the state following a huge breach of national highway number 52.

Officials say that two and half million people have been affected by the floods in Assam and 12 have died.

New Threat To Rare Butterflies

They're a much loved icon of the British countryside but our fragile butterfly population is facing a weighty problem - they are being spotted less and less.

Endangered butterflies are being seen less and less in the UK

Over the past two decades, intensive farming, land use and climate change have resulted in 70% of UK species declining.

Led by Sir David Attenborough, conservationists are now so concerned, they've launched a new campaign to stop them from dying out altogether.

He said:"Almost unbelievably, much of Britain's countryside is a no-go area for many favourite butterflies. Habitat has been ploughed up or become overgrown.

"Anybody who's been for a country walk recently will tell you butterflies are a rarity. Scientists fear that in some areas we're entering a post-butterfly era."

In the Amazing Butterflies exhibition, London's Natural History Museum is currently showcasing species from around the world.

But the creatures aren't only loved for their looks.

Because they respond so rapidly, even to subtle shifts in temperature, scientists say butterflies are excellent indicators of the effects of climate change.

Also, as we have been recording information on butterflies for centuries in Britain, we have a wealth of information to measure recent and future climate transformations

Dr Martin Warren, Chief Executive of Butterfly Conservation told Sky News: "The problem's really urgent. Butterflies are declining far faster than many other groups of wildlife.

"They're suffering from the loss of their habitat, their breeding areas have been destroyed and they've been ploughed up and planted with conifers.

"Those areas are not very well managed now so they're becoming unsuitable.

"Climate change is also having a big impact, which could cause extreme events which could wipe out local populations, from which they'll never recover."

With their habitats so reduced by human activity, conservationists have created 20 butterfly survival zones across the country, to try to encourage new colonies.

Among them, Salisbury Plain, where Dr Caroline Bulman told Sky News she is hoping the butterflies will come flocking to their nature reserve.

"We want farmers to think about different ways they can manage their habitat," she said.

"Hedgerows, meadows they might have on their land and rough areas of grassland that they think is just scrubby areas, are really important for butterflies.

"It's those habitats that have remained untouched and that haven't been ploughed up for example, that are really important. We've got to think about how to manage those."

Experts say a small number of butterflies are responding better to climate change, but as the majority of British species are suffering, they now believe only a renewed national effort will suffice, to save these fragile creatures.

Dead Zone Overkill

The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is set to bust all its own records. Forecasts suggest this super-duper-unproductive ocean zone will reach 8,800 square miles this summer. That's the size of New Jersey.

Last year it reached 7,903 square miles. The earlier record was 8,481 square miles in 2002.

Notice a trend?

Notice the Bizarre-New-Age-of-Abysmal-Record-Everythings we've entered?

For those of you who've been asleep during the Bush-van-Winkle years, here's the primer. A dead zone forms when fertilizers wash from farms via rivers to fertilize the sea.

There are other reasons too. Including whatever nutrients you add to your lawn. Don't even get me started on golf courses.

So this year's climate-change-induced record floods on the Mississippi River do a lot more damage than to Midwestern croplands.

That's because the ocean doesn't like a lot of fertilizer. It makes too many plants grow. Those plants die and feed too many decomposers who use up all the oxygen in the water. Everything suffocates.

Dead zone. Coming soon to a seashore near you.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Incredible pictures of Mars - and they look surprisingly like some parts of Earth

Ever since Victorian astronomers pointed their telescopes towards Mars and wrongly believed they had discovered canals, mankind has been obsessed by the red planet.

Now these astonishing new images - captured by a European spacecraft in orbit around Mars - are helping to fuel that fascination.

They show in astonishing detail a network of giant valleys, vast plains and towering waterfalls carved into the surface of our neighbouring planet, millions of miles away. Enlarge

Spectacular: A view of Echus Chasma, one of the largest water source regions on Mars, showing a network of valleys

And while Mars today appears lifeless and parched, they are a reminder of how its surface was shaped by fast flowing streams, rivers and oceans.

The pictures were captured by the European Space Agency's Mars Express Probe - a spacecraft the size of a large fridge-freezer that has been circling Mars since Christmas 2003.

More...

• Life on Mars? Crystal clear images which give us our best ever view of the red planet
• Revealed: The time capsule DVD left on Mars for future Martians ... that includes 'Mars Attacks' and 'War of the Worlds'

Mars Express infamously gave Britain's ill-fated Beagle 2 probe a lift to Mars. While that mission ended in disaster, the Mars Express has been a fantastic success.

Over the last five years its stereo, high resolution camera has taken thousands of images of the surface, revealing the planet's awe inspiring beauty in unprecedented detail.

The latest images show the Echus Chasma, a vast valley just north of Mars equator around 62 miles long and six miles wide. The feature is cut into a high plateau and its steep-sided cliffs - some 12,000 feet high - bear a striking resemblance to the canyons of North America. Enlarge

Barren: Located on the eastern part of Echus Chasma is this cliff which is up to 4,000 metres high

Thunderous waterfalls may have once plunged over these cliffs, from the high Lunea Planum plateau that surrounds the Echus Chasma, on to the valley floor below.

Some of the images show a five mile wide impact crater formed when asteroids - lumps of floating rock in space - smashed into Mars. Others show a 15 mile long dyke formed when molten rock, evidence of Mars's volcanic past.

At the edges of the main valley lie smaller light-coloured tributary valleys or "sapping canyons" - around six miles long and 1800 feet deep.

The Echus Chasma - described by Nasa as one of the largest water sources on the planet - is connected to a much bigger valley system called the Kasei Valles which extends thousands of miles to the north.

Both valleys are impressive - but are dwarfed by an even larger canyon which lies to the south. The Valles Marineris is four miles deep in places, around 120 miles wide and 2,500 miles long. Enlarge

Echus Chasma is the source region of Kasei Valles, which extends 3,000km to the north

The images were created by combining pictures taken from different orbits. The images can be viewed from different angles in three dimensions

Mars Express launched in June 2003. The craft is a cube around 5ft by 6ft by 5ft with two 60ft long radar antennae. It is photographing the entire surface of Mars in high resolution, producing a detailed colour map of the minerals on the surface, mapping the atmosphere and probing beneath the surface using radar.

Interest in Mars is at an all time high. Nasa and ESA have announced plans to bring back rocks and soil samples from Mars, while Nasa has three probes on the planet - two rovers and its Phoenix polar lander, which arrived in May.

The Phoenix has scraped ice from beneath the surface of Mars and is analysing samples in its laboratory to see if the planet has the right chemicals needed for life.

In 2013, ESA is planning to launch ExoMars - a robotic rover than will explore the planet's surface. If successful, it will be Europe's first mission to the Martian surface.

Scientists unveiled plans on Monday to bring back rocks from the Red Planet as a preliminary step to putting a man on Mars.

Professor Monica Grady, at the Open University, co-chaired the expert panel that wrote the mission proposal.

She said it was a vital next step before considering a crewed mission.

'If you can't bring a rock back you are not going to be able to bring people back,' she said.

Volcanoes blamed for mass extinction

Lava flows from the crater of a volcano

PARIS (AFP) — Ninety-three million years ago, Earth was a reshuffled jigsaw of continents, a hothouse where the average temperature was nearly twice that of today.

Palm trees grew in what would be Alaska, large reptiles roamed in northern Canada and the ice-free Arctic Ocean warmed to the equivalent of a tepid swimming pool.

So our planet was balmy -- but hardly a biological paradise, for it was whacked by a mass die-out. The depths of the ocean suddenly became starved of oxygen, wiping out swathes of marine life.

The extinction was so spectacular that, helped by a suddenly sluggish shift in ocean circulation, the remains of the tiny victims littered the sea bed in thick layers, and over geological time became transformed into oil.

After the extinction, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere dropped and Earth lurched into a sudden, but short-lived, period of cooling.

Earth scientists have pondered for years as to how this extraordinary "anoxic event" of the late Cretaceous took place.

The answer to the catastrophe, contend scientists from the University of Alberta, Canada, lies in fire fountains that erupted on the ocean floor, altering the chemistry of the sea and possibly of the atmosphere too.

Steven Turgeon and Robert Creaser, of the university's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, say the clue can be found in isotope levels of the element osmium, a telltale of volcanism in seawater, that were analysed in black shale rocks, drilled off the coast of South America and mountains in Italy.

The eruptions -- so violent that stacks of lava flowed out to form the bed of the Caribbean -- preceded the extinction by up to 23,000 years, according to their research, which appears on Thursday in the London-based weekly science journal Nature.

Two theories, which are not mutually exclusive, emerge to explain the chemistry of what happened next, says Tim Bralower, a geologist at Pennsylvania State University, who reviewed the paper.

One possibility is that the volcanoes spewed out metal-rich fluids that seeded the upper level of the ocean with micronutrients, he says.

Tiny plantlife on the sea surface, called phytoplankton, gorged on the food, and storing up carbon as they grew. They then sank to the sea floor and decayed, stripping the ocean of oxygen.

The other is that the volcanoes disgorged clouds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, stoking global warming to the extent that Earth's ocean circulation system ground to a near-halt. Beyond the surface layers, water was no longer turned over and anoxia resulted.

Bralower says that figuring out the post-volcanism scenario could help scientists wrestling with unknowns about global warming today.

The knowledge gaps include the impact of higher temperatures on marine circulation and whether controversial schemes to sow the ocean with iron filings, to spur phytoplankton growth and thus soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, would ease warming or cause oxygen starvation in the sea depths.

Weather disasters becoming more frequent

Children line up for food aid in Daydiyel, Burma on June 29, 2008. (

The number of natural disasters has more than doubled since 1980, mostly because of a worsening of weather-driven catastrophes, according to a German insurance company.

In its report [PDF], Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer (that is, an insurance company for insurance companies), said that 400 natural disasters occurred in the first six months of 2008, with 300 of them attributed to extreme weather, such as storms, floods, and heat waves.

This number is in line with a steady increase in the number of natural disasters that the company has tracked since 1980. In the 1980s, the average number of yearly natural disasters was 400. That number increased to 630 in the 1990s and 730 in the past 10 years. The number of geophysical disasters – earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions – increased from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, but has since returned to early-80s levels.

The highest number of recorded natural disasters, 960, was in 2007, the company said.

Ben Block, a writer at the Worldwatch Institute, gives a rundown of the catastrophes we’ve seen so far in 2008:

So far this year, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and massive flooding have crippled the American Midwest. An earthquake in China’s Sichuan province killed more than 69,000 people and caused an estimated $20 billion in damages. Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar killed at least 84,000 people and left at least $10 billion in damages. The majority of this year’s disasters, 80 percent, are classified as severe thunderstorms, Munich Re says.

While other years have experienced more costly disasters, both overall economic losses and insured losses are higher in 2008 than the average losses recorded in the first half of each of the past ten years. This year’s natural disasters have so far caused $50 billion in economic losses and $13 billion in insured losses, compared with $35 billion and $9 billion, respectively, over the past decade. The year of Hurricane Katrina, 2005, was the costliest ever recorded, with nearly $250 billion in combined losses.

Mr. Block goes on to point out that 109 natural disasters have occurred in the United States so far – the highest mid-year tally ever recorded.

Not all agree with Munich Re’s assessment. Writing in the Ottowa Citizen, Dan Gardner attempts to dump cold water on what he calls the “worst-case entrepreneurs.” The increase in natural disasters, he writes, may well be a matter of perception:

Over the last three decades, populations have grown massively. So has wealth. More people plus more property means more stuff to be insured — and more stuff to be wrecked by a storm, flood or earthquake and claimed afterward. When the rising dollar value of natural-disaster related insurance claims is held up as irrefutable proof of the damage wrought by climate change, it proves only that the person making the argument is selling something.

The data on the number of natural disasters is a little better, but not much. That’s because a natural disaster isn’t counted in Munich Re’s figures unless people died in it. Rapid population growth has produced more people. More people means more potential victims. Some growth in that number over time is to be expected for that reason alone.

In addition, monitoring of events has improved greatly over the last several decades. There are far more seismographic sensors, more weather stations, more satellites, more government programs for collecting data on events and reporting them. Again, this change alone would inflate the alleged number of recorded natural disasters over time.

It’s worth noting here that, despite the increase in seismographic sensors, Munich Re’s data does not show a steady increase in geophysical disasters over the past 28 years.

But Mr. Gardner’s larger point still holds: you should be cautious accepting any report of a trend at face value without first looking at the way the data was collected. And you should be extra-cautious if someone stands to make money out of it.

But as an insurer, Munich Re has a strong financial incentive to assess risk as accurately as possible. And the company’s analysts are not the only ones saying that the weather has been getting wacky. The World Meteorological Organization, for example, has also noted an increase in extreme weather events. And you can bet that their scientists have means of correcting for the types of bush-league sampling biases that Gardner describes.

To be sure, it’s impossible to link a single storm, drought, or flood to human activity – although Newsweek’s longtime science reporter Sharon Begley says that scientists are getting close to being able to do so.

But as we see the number of severe storms, droughts, floods, wildfires, and heat waves steadily increase along with atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, it seems fair to ask whether we should still be calling these disasters natural.

US buries climate change deaths report

WASHINGTON: The White House has reportedly buried a report prepared by scientists which detailed a rising death toll from heat waves, fires, disease and smog. Environmental advocates have accused the Bush Administration of delaying the release of the 149-page report so that it could avoid regulating greenhouse gases. They claimed that the Bush Administration has worked to discourage a link between public health and climate change, fearing this would compel the government to regulate greenhouse gases According to The Telegraph , the report was prepared as part of a response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling under the Clean Air Act, which found the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate greenhouse gases unless there was a scientific reason not to. The paper says that the report lays out for the first time the scientific case for the grave risks that global warming poses to people, and to the food, energy and water on which society depends. "Risk (to human health, society and the environment) increases with increases in both the rate and magnitude of climate change," said the scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency. Global warming, they wrote, is "unequivocal," and humans are to blame. "This document inescapably, unmistakably shows that global warming pollution not only threatens human health and welfare, but it is adversely impacting human health and welfare today," said Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel for the Environmental Defence Fund. "What this document demonstrates is that the imperative for action is now," Patton added. On Friday, the White House dismissed the scientists' findings, when it said the Clean Air Act was the wrong tool to control global warming pollution and said that a new law, which dealt solely with global warming, was needed. Stephen Johnson, the EPA chief, said through a spokesman that although he knew "the science is clear, and that climate change is a significant issue," he did not want to make a "rash decision under the wrong law".

Food Prices High Until 2012

AMSTERDAM - World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Saturday he expected food prices to remain above 2004 levels until at least 2012 and energy prices would also remain high and volatile.

He repeated that with food and fuel prices in a "danger zone" there was a need for $10 billion to provide food and cash handouts for the world's poorest.

Soaring oil and food prices have fuelled inflation across the globe at the same time as economies slow, posing a sharp dilemma for lawmakers.

Earlier this week, leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations in Japan agreed on the need to address global inflation, particularly elevated oil and food prices.

"I think the statement on food security was a good statement, but the test will be on the delivery of the action," Zoellick said.

"During the meeting I tried to emphasize that I feel we are in a danger zone of high food prices and fuel prices and there is a great need for additional resources."

He added that several countries had made substantial contributions towards the $10 billion sum, but funds would be needed continuously over the next years.

New 'super-Earth' found in space

The new planet is not much bigger than the Earth Enlarge Image

Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface.

The planet orbits the faint star Gliese 581, which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra.

Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile.

They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life.

"We have estimated that the mean temperature of this 'super-Earth' lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid," explained Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the result.

'Is there life anywhere else?' is a fundamental question we all ask Alison Boyle London Science Museum

"Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky - like our Earth - or covered with oceans."

Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University, added: "Liquid water is critical to life as we know it."

He believes the planet may now become a very important target for future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life.

These missions will put telescopes in space that can discern the tell-tale light "signatures" that might be associated with biological processes.

The observatories would seek to identify trace atmospheric gases such as methane, and even markers for chlorophyll, the pigment in Earth plants that plays a critical role in photosynthesis.

'Indirect' detection

The exoplanet - as astronomers call planets around a star other than the Sun - is the smallest yet found, and has been given the designation Gliese 581 c.

It completes a full orbit of its parent star in just 13 days.

EXOPLANET GLIESE 581 C Mass: Five times Earth's mass Orbit: 13 days Temperature: 0C - 40C Distance: 20.5 light years Constellation: Libra

Indeed, it is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is to our Sun.

However, given that the host star is smaller and colder than the Sun - and thus less luminous - the planet nevertheless lies in the "habitable zone", the region around a star where water could be liquid.

Gliese 581 c was identified at the European Southern Observatory (Eso) facility at La Silla in the Atacama Desert.

To make their discovery, researchers used a very sensitive instrument that can measure tiny changes in the velocity of a star as it experiences the gravitational tug of a nearby planet.

Astronomers are stuck with such indirect methods of detection because current telescope technology struggles to image very distant and faint objects - especially when they orbit close to the glare of a star.

The Gliese 581 system has now yielded three planets: the new super-Earth, a 15 Earth-mass planet (Gliese 581 b) orbiting even closer to the parent star, and an eight Earth-mass planet that lies further out (Gliese 581 d).

Gliese 581 is much cooler and dimmer than our own Sun

The latest discovery has created tremendous excitement among scientists.

Of the more than 200 exoplanets so far discovered, a great many are Jupiter-like gas giants that experience blazing temperatures because they orbit close in to much hotter stars.

The Gliese 581 super-Earth is in what scientists also sometimes call the "Goldilocks Zone", where temperatures "are just right" for life to have a chance to exist.

Commenting on the discovery, Alison Boyle, the curator of astronomy at London's Science Museum, said: "Of all the planets we've found around other stars, this is the one that looks as though it might have the right ingredients for life.

"It's 20 light-years away and so we won't be going there anytime soon, but with new kinds of propulsion technology that could change in the future. And obviously we'll be training some powerful telescopes on it to see what we can see," she told BBC News.

"'Is there life anywhere else?' is a fundamental question we all ask."

Professor Glenn White at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is helping to develop the European Space Agency's Darwin mission, which will scan the nearby Universe, looking for signs of life on Earth-like planets. He said: "This is an important step in the search for true Earth-like exoplanets.

"As the methods become more and more refined, astronomers are narrowing in on the ultimate goal - the detection of a true Earth-like planet elsewhere.

"Obviously this newly discovered planet and its companions in the Gliese 581 system will become prominent targets for missions like Esa's Darwin and Nasa's Terrestrial planet Finder when they fly in about a decade."

The discovery is reported in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

China may artificially change unfavorable weather for Olympics

BEIJING, July 15 (Xinhua) -- If bad weather threatens the August 8 opening of Beijing's Olympic Games, then meteorologists may change the weather, according to a Chinese meteorology official.

Chen Zhenlin, a vice director with the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), made the statement Tuesday afternoon at a press conference held at the Beijing International Media Center.

Meteorological departments will consult with the Beijing municipal government whether or not to change the city's weather, should there be any unfavorable weather on August 8, Chen said.

He said meteorologists have made preparations for artificial weather modification since 2003, especially on reducing rainfall, but admitted that the technology still has limitations.

"Artificial weather modification could be useful when a drizzle occurs," he said. "But in case of a heavy rainfall, no one can help."

According to Qiao Lin, CMA's chief weather forecaster, officialweather information for the opening day of the Beijing Olympics would not be available until Aug. 1, a week before the Games.

CMA experts would come up with a preliminary forecast two weeks before the Games. The administration, however, would "probably not publish the results as too much uncertainty is involved," Qiao said.

He said city weather statistics from 1951 to 2007 show there is a 47 percent chance of drizzle on August 8.

But the possibility of heavy rain was far from likely, Qiao said, adding the analysis was by no means an official weather forecast.

The statistical analysis also indicates a high possibility for warm and moist weather in mid August, with about one rainfall every three days, he said.

Extreme high temperatures are not likely, the analysis said, although Chen Zhenlin still cited heat waves along with thunderstrokes, fog, strong wind, and hailstones as the extreme weather conditions which might hit Beijing during the Olympics.

Chen said that to meet the needs of the International Olympic Committee, Chinese meteorological departments will begin to provide weather forecasts for each of the 31 Olympic stadiums in Beijing three days before their sport events take place.

The weather forecasts will be updated every one to three hours within those 72 hours, and the latest report will be published via TV, telephone hotlines, and the Internet.

Weather conditions of Olympic venues in other Olympic cities outside Beijing will also be closely monitored, although Chen did not specify whether the frequency of the forecasts will meet up to the same standard as in Beijing.

China-Heavy rainstorms in the south have affected 360,000 people; the worst flooding seen in six decades.

Guangxi hit hard by heavy rain, Chongqing faces month of no rain

WATCH VIDEO

Source: CCTV.com | 07-15-2008 08:26

Torrential rain and severe drought continue to plague China. Heavy rainstorms in the south have affected 360,000 people in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and a month of no rain has left 310,000 in Chongqing Municipality with no drinking water.

Heavy rainstorms in the south have affected 360,000 people in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Torrential rain has been slamming southern and central parts of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region since Friday.

In some counties, the water was as deep as two meters, the worst flooding they'd seen in six decades.

A landslide has cut off a village near the capital Nanning, trapping more than 500 residents. Rescuers are working on plans to clear the 3-kilometer road.

The heavy rain also caused a dam to burst early Monday morning. But all residents had been evacuated earlier.

In the three most severely affected cities, the rain demolished more than 500 rooms and is likely to ruin more than 14,000 tons of grain.

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Mudslide, flooding hit Calif. as fires continue

50 homes hit with mud 3 feet deep in town that saw fire last year

Rich Pedroncelli / AP

Shanon Elam walks through the burned out remains of a neighbor's home in Concow, Calif., on Saturday. A wildfire there claimed one fatality and destroyed 50 homes.

View related photos

LOS ANGELES - More heavy rain was forecast Monday in Southern California, where crews were still clearing debris from weekend flooding and a mudslide that damaged more than 50 homes and blocked a highway.

The National Weather Service posted flash flood watches for the mountains of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, saying scattered showers and thunderstorms capable of producing heavy downpours were likely Monday.

Weekend thunderstorms over the southern Sierra Nevada range set off a mudslide that measured 300 yards wide and up to 3 feet deep, officials said.

The mudslide damaged more than 50 homes in an area scarred by wildfires last year near Independence, a remote, small town on the east side of the Sierra Nevada. It also blocked a state highway that is a major north-south route along the eastern side of the Sierra.

One lane of the road was reopened Monday with traffic escorted by the California Highway Patrol.

"It's slow going," said Carma Roper, spokeswoman for the Inyo County Sheriff's Department.

The weekend rain also caused flooding at the town of Lake Isabella in the southern end of the Sequoia National Forest, prompting Kern County officials to order about 75 homes evacuated.

A helicopter was used to rescue seven people, including three who were stranded on a roof surrounded by high water, said county fire Inspector Tony Diffenbaugh.

Officials said a three-week-old fire in the Sequoia National Forest likely contributed to the flooding in Lake Isabella, located in a canyon.

"When rain follows the fire this closely, there's no vegetation to stop or absorb it," said Jim Whittington, a fire spokesman at Lake Isabella. He said a major street was under 2 feet of water that was black with ash.

288 active fires
The state has seen hundreds of wildfires over the last month, and thousands of crews were still battling many on Monday.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said 288 blazes were still active around the state, most of them in the mountains ringing the northern edge of the Central Valley.

Most of those areas did not get any of the weekend rainfall that caused the Independence mudslide.

However, cool, moist air flowed inland from the Pacific early Monday in the area of Big Sur. Residents driven away by flames just days ago were returning to their homes, said Paul Van Gerwen, a battalion chief for the forestry and fire protection department, or CalFire.

And state authorities had reopened the last piece of scenic Highway 1 near Big Sur that had been closed because of the fires, he said. The California Highway Patrol was urging drivers to be careful because fire crews were still using the highway.

A large cleanup effort was under way in the Big Sur region Monday morning and most restaurants and hotels were back in businesses.

Freezing rain kills Antarctica penguin chicks

Adelie penguin chicks, championed in documentary March of the Penguins are freezing to death because of Antarctic rain. |

THOUSANDS of penguin chicks are freezing to death as Antarctica is lashed by rain and scientists say Adelie penguin numbers may have dropped 80 per cent.

Scientists say if the downpours continue, the species will be extinct within 10 years.

The emperor penguin made famous in the Oscar-winning documentary March of the Penguins also is under threat.

Temperatures in the Antarctic have risen by 3C in the past 50 years to an average of -14.7C and rain is now more common than snow.

Adelie penguins are born with a thin covering of down and it takes 40 days to grow protective water repellent feathers. During rain storms

their parents try to protect them. But when the adults leave to fish, or are killed by predators, the babies become soaked and die of hypothermia.

Such rain in Antarctica was a new phenomenon, and penguins were freezing to death, said explorer Jon Bowermaster.

Food crisis: Drought hurts vital Australian wheat

Sheep feed on a line of barley on a dusty field on the Phillips farm near Poochera, on South Australia's Eyre Pinnisula, 640 km (400 miles) west of Adelaide, Australia, Thursday, June 12, 2008. This season's lack of rain would mean a third year of drought in South Australia's Eyre Peninsula, where the Phillips has farmed for 34 years. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

POOCHERA, Australia (AP) — Glen Phillips kneels down, scoops up a handful of dirt and squashes it in his fist to test whether the soil in this dry patch of the Australian Outback is ready to take a crop of wheat.

"It should clump together when you squeeze," says Phillips, whose family has lived off the land on the edge of the Great Australian Bight since 1949. "That's how you know it's good to plant, it's moist enough to hold the roots."

He opens his hand and the earth sifts dustily between his fingers. Phillips looks up, lifts his hat slightly and squints into an empty blue sky with no sign of rain.

"We'll plant anyway," he says. "We don't have a choice."

One of Australia's worst droughts on record is hurting wheat farming just as the world needs it most. Australia is usually the world's third or fourth-largest exporter of wheat. But exports dropped 46 percent from 2005 to 2006, then fell 24 percent last year.

Most of its exports go to the Middle East and Southeast Asia to make bread and cereals, but the fall in supply has led to a spike in prices. A ton of Australian wheat now costs $367, compared with $258 in early 2007, an increase poor countries can ill afford.

"When they pay high prices, they pass on an increase to their poorest people, who can no longer afford it," says Kunhamboo Kannan, director of agriculture, environment and natural resources at the Asian Development Bank. "Just look at Egypt." Riots over rising bread prices and shortages have led to at least 10 deaths in Egypt this year.

Relief may be on the way. Wheat sowing rose by 13 percent this year, according to the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Research Economics, due to rainfall in the eastern part of the wheat belt and dry-planting elsewhere. And if all goes well, the 2008 wheat harvest could be close to normal at 23.7 million tons, compared to 13 million last year.

But it all depends on whether the rain comes, and experts say it will be months before they know how the current crop of wheat will fare. In any case, stocks are low after several years of drought in a row.

Poochera is one of dozens of one-pub towns on the Eyre Peninsula where grain silos are the tallest buildings and there are just enough stores to supply the surrounding farms. Another year without rain would be the third in a row, and this May was the country's driest on record.

The peninsula, a giant wedge of land jutting into the ocean off southern Australia, forms part of a narrow crescent known as the wheat belt that includes some of Australia's most arable land. It is also among the hardest hit by the drought.

The drought has made it harder to grow everything from wheat to rice to corn.

Phillips says good wheat crops can grow with next to no rain. The problem is, he's been getting less than that.

In 2006, after promising autumn downpours, the rain stopped in winter and Phillips watched his crop die. The same thing happened last year, although he managed to scrounge about one-third of what the land produces in a good year...CONTINUE

Warnings of a global land grab

The relentless demand for raw materials will lead to the destruction of the world’s forests, a new study warns. The rush for fuel, food and wood will result in a global land grab that will leave millions of forest people impoverished and homeless.

	Indonesian villager carries an acacia log as he clears the land for arable farming

And it is possible governments and companies will exploit confusion over ownership in rural areas to evict local people and divvy up their land.

The warnings come in two reports from U.S.-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an international coalition of forestry governance and conservation groups.

The first report Seeing People through the Trees says by 2030 the world is likely to need 515m more hectares to grow food and biofuels - twice the amount of additional land that will be available.

The second From Exclusion to Ownership? says that governments in developing countries claim ownership of the majority of forests and have made only limited progress in recognising land rights of the local people. Forests worldwide play a key role in keeping the global climate stable and at the same time acting as a storehouse for carbon emissions but are under constant attack. Deforestation for agriculture and logging accounts for about 25-30 per cent of global CO2 emissions.

RRI claims there has been a sharp increase in government allocations of forests to industrial plantations and that the surge in demand for fuel and food is rapidly eating up vast areas of forest in the Amazon and Southeast Asia. It says the fate of forest lands will help determine the severity of climate change, the course of wars and civil conflicts, and the ecological health of the planet.

Andy White, Coordinator of RRI and co-author of Seeing People through the Trees, which is based on six studies of forest tenure, climate change and the impact of demand for fuel and food, said: “Arguably, we are on the verge of a last great global land grab. Unless steps are taken, traditional forest owners, and the forests themselves, will be the big losers. It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone.”

Both reports conclude that measures needed to combat climate change and poverty will fail unless indigenous people who depend on the forests for survival are taken into account. Securing land rights, strengthening civil rights, and introducing more democracy will be critical in combating the biggest challenges of the 21st century - climate change, poverty, conflict, and environmental degradation.

But they warn that in most regions of the developing world governments maintain a firm grip on the majority of forests and that “industrial claims on forest lands are increasing sharply, for biofuels production, among other reasons.” Crops that produce biofuels alone will require an additional 30m-35m hectares of new productive land within the next decade. “High prices are intensifying land speculation, deforestation, and encroachment on an unprecedented scale,” RRI says.

The study says the 10 countries who account for two-thirds of global emissions from land-use change - Brazil, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Peru and Zambia should be targeted for the first wave of the billions of dollars that will be spent in years to come on protecting the forests.

And the focus in poor but forest-rich countries such as Benin, Cameroon, DCR Ivory Coast, Liberia, Madagascar, Nigeria and Zambia should be on the rights of people who live in their forests. It also calls for transparency and accountability in the carbon markets.

World's forests 'threatened by food, fuel demands'

RRI says the world is "on the verge of the last great land grab"

LONDON (AFP) — The world's forests will be gobbled up by an escalating demand for fuel and food unless steps are taken to hand the people who live in them greater rights, two reports published here Monday said.

The US-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an international coalition of forest governance and conservation groups, warned that widespread deforestation would make climate change more severe.

It would also push the billion or so people dependent on forests further into poverty and trigger conflicts, the coalition's reports said.

The international community must work to empower poor forest-dwellers if the loss of forest and its consequences are to be avoided, the RRI concluded.

The world will need a minimum of 515 million more hectares (1.27 billion acres) by 2030, in order to grow food, bio-energy and wood products, said the reports.

This is almost twice the amount of available land and equal to an area 12 times the size of Germany, the RRI said.

"Arguably we are on the verge of a last great global land grab," said RRI co-ordinator Andy White.

"Unless steps are taken, traditional forest owners, and the forests themselves, will be the big losers.

"It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone."

The RRI found that developing countries' governments claimed an overwhelming majority of forests and had made limited progress in recognising local land rights.

The report said that left open the potential for violence, as some of the world's poorest peoples struggled to hold on to their only asset: the forest land.

The biggest carbon emitters from deforestation, including Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Democratic Republic of Congo should be targeted for investment in land rights reform, the research urged.

"It is clear from the research that the dual crises of fuel and food are attracting significant new investments and great land speculation," White said.

"Only by protecting the rights of the people who live in and around the world's most vulnerable forests can we prevent the devastation these forces will wreak on the poor and the poorly governed hinterlands.

"In the process, our studies have shown that we will protect the forests themselves by recognising the rights of the people with the most to lose if they are destroyed."

The reports' conclusions are supported by Britain's Department for International Development.

"These new studies should strengthen global resolve to protect the property rights of indigenous and local communities who play a vital role in protecting one of the most outstanding natural wonders of the world," said International Development Minister Gareth Thomas.

Global Warming Adds To Malaria Cases

Another after-effect has been added to the already disastrous effects of global warming on the planet. Experts say that global warming is leading to an increase in the number of malaria cases. The irreversible changes occurring in the environment are adding fuel to the spread of the already dreaded disease.

It has been found that Europe, North America and North Asia are almost immune from the malaria threat because the temperatures are much lower in these regions. But with the rising temperatures all over the world, this may no longer hold true.

Experts believe that even a slight increase in temperature can lead to the breeding of malaria-bearing mosquitoes. Therefore, billions of people can come under the clasp of malaria. And all these developments add to the need of inventing a vaccine which can prevent people from contracting the disease.

Dr. Sylvain Fleury, chief scientific officer at Mymetics said, “Forty-one percent of the human race lives in areas of high malaria transmission.” He added that the most effective method to prevent the spread of malaria in the warming areas of the globe is to find a solution before the situation goes out of control.

Mymetics, a Swiss vaccine biotech, is presently working on developing a vaccine which can help control the further spreading of malaria in developing countries. The need is urgent because even countries like Peru, where the disease had been eradicated completely are again witnessing malaria cases because of global warming.

The main cause of global warming is pollution of the atmosphere and developed nations must come forward to help the developing countries by drastically reducing fossil-fuel consumption. The need of the hour is to inform the public about the truth behind the subject so that proper and effective measures can be taken in order to tackle the problem.

Indian state facing famine after rat plague

A million people in northeastern India face famine after rats destroyed most of the rice crop in their state, the International Rice Research Institute has said.

The 2007 infestation spread over to the border areas of Bangladesh and Myanmar in early 2008, "increasing fears of widespread food shortages," the Philippines-based institute said.

It left the Indian state of Mizoram, home to about a million people, with just one-fifth of its monthly rice requirement.

"Aid agencies have reported that many people have been forced onto a diet of wild roots, yam and sweet potatoes," the institute said in its quarterly magazine "Rice Today".

IRRI said the rat population boomed after the flowering of a native species of bamboo, an event that occurs only once every 50 years.

"After exhausting the feast of bamboo seeds, the rats turned to the rice crop," it said.

It gave no immediate estimates of the damage on the neighbouring countries.

Rice prices have soared this year, triggering civil unrest in at least two dozen countries according to UN agencies.

India is the world's second largest rice producer after China and is also one of the world's key exporters.

Weather-related disasters have quadrupled over the last two decades, a leading

LONDON (Reuters) - Weather-related disasters have quadrupled over the last two decades, a leading British charity said in a report published on Sunday.

From an average of 120 disasters a year in the early 1980s, there are now as many as 500, with Oxfam attributing the rise to unpredictable weather conditions cause by global warming.

"This year we have seen floods in South Asia, across the breadth of Africa and Mexico that have affected more than 250 million people," said Oxfam's director Barbara Stocking.

"This is no freak year. It follows a pattern of more frequent, more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events that are affecting more people.

The number of people affected by disasters has risen by 68 percent, from an average of 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994 to 254 million a year between 1995 to 2004.

"Action is needed now to prepare for more disasters otherwise humanitarian assistance will be overwhelmed and recent advances in human development will go into reverse," Stocking said.

Oxfam wants the UN conference on Climate Change in Bali in December to agree a mandate to negotiate a global deal to provide assistance to developing countries to cope with the impacts of climate change and reduce green house gas emissions.

NASA telescopes spot star "factory"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Telescopes looking back in time to more than 12 billion years ago have spotted a star factory -- a galaxy producing so many new stars that they have nicknamed it the "baby boom" galaxy.

The remote galaxy is -- or was -- pumping out stars at a rate of up to 4,000 per year. In comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy gives birth to an average of just 10 stars per year, they reported on Wednesday.

"This galaxy is undergoing a major baby boom, producing most of its stars all at once," said Peter Capak of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology.

"If our human population was produced in a similar boom, then almost all of the people alive today would be the same age," Capak said in a statement.

Writing in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Capak and colleagues said they used several telescopes including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope to spot the prolific ancient galaxy, which belongs to a class of galaxies called starbursts.

The galaxy is 12.3 billion light-years away. The universe is 13.4 billion years old, so the galaxy was pumping out stars when the universe was 1.3 billion years old.

A light-year is the distance light travels in one year.

"Before now, we had only seen galaxies form stars like this in the

Northern Afghanistan Struggles With Severe Drought

MAZAR-e-SHARIF, Afghanistan, July 10, 2008 (ENS) - The wailing of children pierces the air over the tent city on the banks of the Shulgara river, just south of Mazar-e-Sharif. But even that sound may soon be stilled - so many children are dying of dehydration, starvation and disease that families no longer mark the occasion.

"In the past, when a family member died, we would hold a mourning service," said Mohammad Zaman, who has a tent at the camp. "But now all we can think of is ourselves. No one pays attention to children dying any more."

With the fierce summer sun sending temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius, life is becoming untenable for the 2,500 families camped out in the desert that borders the river.

The Shulgara has been their only source of potable water since the spring rains failed to arrive. Rivers and brooks have dried up in the scorching heat, and well water levels have sunk to record lows. Livestock are dying due to lack of fodder, while the soaring price of wheat and rice is making it difficult for families to purchase even the most basic foodstuffs.

"We have not been given any assistance," said Mohammad Zaman. "We drink the river water, but if the government doesn't do anything, we will all die when winter comes."

The displaced people brought with them only bags of clothing, food, and other essentials, as well as carpets to sit on. They say they will remain by the river for as long as necessary.

They are receiving some help from the Red Crescent, along with assistance from the government and from local merchants. But they say it has been woefully inadequate.

Afghan man travels by donkey through Faryab Province. (Photo byAlex Strick van Linschoten)

Much of Afghanistan has affected by drought this year, and the situation in the northern provinces, especially Jowzjan and Faryab, is approaching disaster.

No one has precise figures on the scale of the problem.

"This year there is a state of emergency," said Mir Shafiuddin Mirzad, who heads the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization in northern Afghanistan. "But no survey has been done due to the lack of adequate budget funding, so all the figures are based on guesses."

He added that the lack of reliable survey data was creating serious problems, making it difficult to determine how much aid is needed, and of what type.

"We have no exact information about what kind of threat people are facing, so this could be very dangerous. We're urging donors to pay more attention to this situation," said Mirzad.

The figures available so far are worrying.

According to Abdul Haq Shafaq, the governor of Faryab province, more than 100,000 families in this northwestern region are in imminent danger.

"Ninety-eight percent of agriculture and livestock in Faryab has been affected," he said. "If assistance is not delivered soon, we will have a humanitarian crisis on our hands."

He said hundreds of people are coming to his office every day in hope of receiving assistance, but he has nothing to offer them.

"We need 120 tonnes of flour immediately to keep people from starvation," said the governor.

In Sar-e-Pul province, east of Faryab, officials are fearful of food riots.

"People are very hungry," said Sar-e-Pul governor Sayed Iqbal Munib. "They are leaving their districts to look for food. I am afraid that one day, people will storm in from the villages and take everything from the government offices. The situation is very dangerous."

An Afghan family on the move in Badghis (Photo by Juliette Seibold)

Badghis, further to the west, has also been severely affected, according to parliamentarian Azita Rafat. She described an almost total loss of livestock and agricultural crops due to the drought.

"More than 200 families a day are leaving Badghis," she said. "They are going to other provinces or trying to get into Iran illegally."

In late June, the UN's Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Sir John Holmes, paid a visit to Kabul and briefed journalists on the emerging crisis.

"The most serious immediate problem … is food insecurity as a result of the global food price rises, which have had an effect here in Afghanistan, and drought in Afghanistan," said Holmes.

"I think the government of Afghanistan together with the United Nations and the humanitarian community were quick to recognize that, which is why we issued an appeal for 81 million dollars in January this year. That appeal was well-funded and is enabling us to help around 2.5 million particularly vulnerable people here in Afghanistan," he said.

"But we also recognize that it was not enough, so we are working together with the government of Afghanistan on a further, larger appeal to meet some of these needs and also to tackle some of the problems facing agriculture in this country," Holmes said.

Afghanistan's Ministry of Agriculture has announced an emergency plan to deliver aid to the affected provinces.

"We have asked for 89,000 tonnes of wheat from the international community," said Sadruddin Safi, head of the ministry's department of food security. According to Safi, they already have promises of 83,000 tonnes, which means the ministry will be in a position to avert a humanitarian catastrophe.

"The wheat is going to be distributed in the drought-affected provinces for free or in return for labor," he said. "China has donated 4,380 tonnes, which will be given to affected families in 17 provinces."

In addition, said Safi, the ministry has purchased 50,000 tonnes of wheat from Pakistan which will be sold at a reduced price.

"We have requested other assistance from the international community through a separate program, and it should arrive by the end of the year. We have a plan to cover more than 6.5 million persons in 2008, which will avert a crisis," he said.

But these promises ring hollow in the ears of the people most affected by the drought.

"All of my farmlands have dried up," said Ekramuddin, 54, a farmer in the Dara-e-Suf district of Samangan province. "My wheat plants are destroyed. My animals are dead. I have nothing left, so I am going to Iran to work so that I can send something to my family for the winter."

Farmers like Ekramuddin have lost any faith that the government will help them.

"There is no news of any assistance," he said. "I'm going to Iran because I can't wait any longer."

Abdul Ghani, a farmer in Sar-e-Pul, echoed Ekramuddin's complaint.

"The government always makes promises, but the assistance will be delivered to us after we've died of starvation," he said. "What will our dead bodies do with that assistance? We urge the government to help us while we are still alive."

{This article originally appeared today in Afghan Recovery Report, produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.}

Chile volcano spews ash and lava

The Laima volcano is part of a chain of around 2,000 in the country [EPA]

Chile's southern Llaima volcano has spewed rocks, lava and clouds of ash into the sky, setting six nearby communities on evacuation alert.

Nineteen people were evacuated from the volcano's base on Thursday after flowing lava from Laima, one of the most active volcanoes in South America, reached the Calbuco river.

The 3,125m volcano also launched pyroclastic rock 400m into the air.

Andres Jouanne, governor of Cautin province, said Llaima, which is located 700km south of Santiago, erupted in the predawn hours, after six months of quiet following its initial eruption on January 1.

"Activity has strengthened, but it is all taking place in the Calbuco river sector, where we have all precautionary measures in place," he said."

Chile's national emergency office said six communities in the volcano's immediate vicinity were placed on red alert a week ago, pending immediate evacuation should the situation worsen.

Carmen Fernandez, director of emergency office, said: "It's a phenomenon that can undergo big fluctuations, so we think there is still a risk that the Calbuco and Lan Lan rivers could overflow."

Laima erupted violently on New Year's Day, forcing the evacuation of some tourists and residents from the surrounding Conguillio National Park. Last February it belched ash and lava while just last week, renewed volcanic activity required the evacuation of about 50 people.

It is the second volcano to erupt in Chile this year. Llaima's renewed activity comes after the Chaiten volcano, at least 1,220km south of Santiago, started erupting on May 2 for the first time in thousands of years, spewing out ash, gas and molten rock.

Chile's chain of around 2,000 volcanoes is the world's second-largest after Indonesia's.

At least 50 volcanoes are recorded to have erupted, while a total of 500 are deemed potentially active.

'Alarming' plight of coral reefs

Warming waters, a consequence of climate change, can devastate coral

A third of the world's reef-building coral species are facing extinction.

That is the stark conclusion from the first global study to assess the extinction risks of corals.

Writing in the journal Science, researchers say climate change, coastal development, overfishing, and pollution are the major threats.

The economic value of the world's reefs has been estimated at over $30bn (£15bn) per year, through tourism, fisheries and coastal protection.

"The picture is frightening," said Alex Rogers from the Zoological Society of London, one of 39 scientists involved in the assessment.

"It's not just the fact that something like a third of all reef-forming corals are threatened, but that we could be facing the loss of large areas of these ecosystems within 50 to 100 years.

"The implications of that are absolutely staggering - not only for biodiversity, but also for economics."

The analysis shows that reef-building corals are more threatened than any group of land-dwelling animals except amphibians.

'Incredible' destruction

The most dramatic decline in recent years was caused by the 1997/8 El Nino event, which caused waters to warm across large swathes of the tropics.

CORAL - KEY FINDINGS Known species of reef-building coral: 845 Enough data to assess 704 Critically endangered: 5 Endangered: 25 Vulnerable: 201 Near threatened: 176 Least concern: 297 The Red List definitions

When water temperatures rise, coral polyps - tiny animals that build the reefs - expel the algae that usually live with them in a symbiotic relationship.

The corals lose their colour, with reefs taking on a bleached appearance, and begin to die off because the algae are not there to provide nutrients.

The new analysis shows that before 1998, only 13 of the 704 coral species assessed would have been classified as threatened. Now, the number is 231.

"It was a devastating event in terms of the destruction of corals, with 16% of reefs irreversibly destroyed - an incredible amount," said Kent Carpenter from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, in the US.

"The big problem is that if these bleaching events become more frequent as temperatures rise, as we suspect will happen, then we will see whole tracts of coral wiped out."

Antarctic ice shelf 'hanging by thread

PARIS -- New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.

Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.

"Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said.

This photo released in March 2008 by the British Antarctic Survey shows of a chunk of ice that has started to break away from the Antarctic ice shelf. [Agencies]

Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles), or about the size of Northern Ireland, before it began to retreat in the 1990s.

Since then several large areas have broken away, and two big breakoffs this year left only a narrow ice bridge about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) wide to connect the shelf to Charcot and nearby Latady Island.

The latest images, taken by Envisat's radar, say fractures have now opened up in this bridge and adjacent areas of the plate are disintegrating, creating large icebergs.

Scientists are puzzled and concerned by the event, ESA added.

The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts northward from the white continent towards South America -- has had one of the highest rates of warming anywhere in the world in recent decades.

But this latest stage of the breakup occurred during the Southern Hemisphere's winter, when atmospheric temperatures are at their lowest.

One idea is that warmer water from the Southern Ocean is reaching the underside of the ice shelf and thinning it rapidly from underneath.

"Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years," researcher David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said.

"Current events are showing that we were being too conservative, when we made the prediction in the early 1990s that Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within 30 years. The truth is, it is going more quickly than we guessed."

In the past three decades, six Antarctic ice shelves have collapsed completely -- Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf.

Smog could get worse with global warming

Global warming could worsen smog and stretch what typically is a summer pollution problem into the spring and fall, government scientists predicted Thursday.

Smog is most likely to get worse in the Northeast, lower Midwest, and mid-Atlantic regions of the country, where numerous counties and cities are already struggling to clean up the air, according to a draft analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency.

But in Texas and Southern California, already among the smoggiest areas in the country, the science is unclear, even conflicting. Smog there could get slightly better or become more severe, the analysis said.

Nonetheless, researchers said state officials should be factoring in the impact of global warming as they make plans to try to reduce smog, calling it a "climate penalty."

"These findings also indicate, that, where climate-change-induced increases in (smog) do occur, damaging effects on ecosystems, agriculture, and health will be especially pronounced, due to increases in the frequency of extreme pollution events," the analysis concluded. However, the prediction came with a caveat: the researchers did not take into account efforts to reduce smog that are already under way because of stricter environmental regulations...Continue

National Guard deployed to fire front lines in California

Troops called in for first time in 30 years; exhausted fire crews to get relief

	Walt Williams, a captain with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, calls for volunteers during training on Wednesday. The state's wildfire season has grown so severe so fast that National Guard troops have been called in to fight the flames for the first time in 30 years. View related photos

ALBION, Calif. - Sweat rolled down Lisa Mirander's forehead as she hacked a tangle of saplings and brush down to bare dirt to prevent a wildfire from spreading. It was a tough job, but no harder than the 13 months she served in Afghanistan.

California's wildfire season has become so severe so swiftly that for the first time in more than 30 years, National Guard troops have been deployed to fight the flames on the ground. Many are arriving at the fire line just after returning from combat zones.

For Mirander, the two jobs share some similarities....Continue

California Asks for Federal Troops to Battle Fires

July 10 (Bloomberg) -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said his state is approaching a ``tipping point'' in its battle against more than 300 wildfires and needs federal help to turn the tide.

The state requires assistance, including from the military, after lightning sparked the blazes, which have been exacerbated by high temperatures and dry grass and brush, Schwarzenegger wrote in a letter sent to Republican President George W. Bush today.

``With more lightning storms forecast for later this week, we sit at a critical tipping point in California that requires immediate federal help and aggressive pre-positioning of federal resources,'' wrote Schwarzenegger, also a Republican. ``I respectfully request federal active duty forces.''

More than 1,090 square miles, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island, has burned in California since June 21, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire. Excessive heat warnings and red flag warnings, which mean conditions are right for ``explosive fire growth,'' cover a 659-mile (1,060-kilometer) stretch from the Oregon border south to Los Angeles.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said federal officials are working with California to help battle the blazes and are reviewing Schwarzenegger's request.

Help From Abroad

California will get as many as 40 fire managers from Australia and New Zealand to help coordinate the battle against the fires. The group will arrive in the U.S. this weekend and will be dispatched to California after a training period in Boise, Idaho, said Don Smurthwaite, a spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. It will be the fifth time the two countries have sent the U.S. help.

``They are coming at a good time,'' Smurthwaite said. ``They will provide some relief to an area where we need them.''

Excessive temperatures and low humidity are spreading across the west, with parts of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana also covered by red flag warnings.

Redding, California, 146 miles north of Sacramento, set a record high of 113 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday (45 degrees Celsius), breaking a 2002 mark of 110 for the day.

The heat will start breaking tomorrow, the National Weather Service forecasts. The temperature in Sacramento will fall from 105 today to 95 this weekend.

Resources Stretched

With fires currently burning in 11 U.S. states, federal officials are concerned resources may be stretched too thin, Smurthwaite said. Continue

New California blaze threatens 5,000 evacuations

(CNN) -- A new blaze in northern California threatened 2,000 structures and may force 5,000 residents to evacuate, adding to a spate of wildfires in the state, a state spokeswoman said.

Firefighters Evan Scott and Matt Luis monitor the Basin Complex Fire Monday in Monterey County, California.

1 of 3

The Camp Fire started Monday night near the city of Concow, said Mary Ann Aldrich of the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire.

The cause of the fire, about 90 miles north of Sacramento, was not known, she added.

Authorities were notifying residents through phone calls and door-to-door visits, she said.

By late Monday, the Camp Fire had burned 9,600 acres and was 5 percent contained, Aldrich said.

"A lot of these residents were just taken off a precautionary evacuation several days ago, so for about 10 days they've been under an evacuation or a precautionary," Julie Hutchinson, another Cal Fire spokeswoman, said from Chico, California.

The Camp Fire is among 1,780 blazes that have scorched more than 614,000 acres in California in the last two weeks. Most of the fires have been caused by lightning strikes. Watch flames roar near Goleta »

There were still 330 active fires Tuesday that were being battled by about 20,000 federal, state and local firefighters using more than 1,400 engines and 97 helicopters, authorities said.

Forty residences, one commercial building and 61 outbuildings such as sheds and garages have been destroyed, according to Cal Fire. Thousands of other structures remain at risk, it said. iReport.com: View, share images of wildfires

Extremely hot, dry, breezy weather is not helping. Temperatures could reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit with humidity in the single digits, Hutchinson said.

Cal Fire issued "red flag" warnings along the coastal range from San Benito County north to the Oregon state line. The warnings will remain in effect through Wednesday evening, according to Cal Fire's Web site.

Scientists are warning of another danger from climate change

Sea acidity a threat to Pacific reefs

Rising acidity levels in the world's oceans could damage Pacific coral reefs.

More Pacific Stories:

Scientists are warning of another danger from climate change, which could pose a serious threat to the Pacific region.

A report by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Research Centre in Australia is warning of rising acidity in the ocean, caused by seas absorbing greenhouse carbon dioxide.

The report says it could make low-lying island nations more vulnerable to storms as their coral reefs become affected.

Arthur Webb, from the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji, has told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat Program it's a subtle but dangerous change.

"As the pH increases the acidity decreases and as that occurs animals that lay down calcium carbonate shells, like everything from shell fish through to corals, their ability to take calcium carbonate from the water that they are surrounded in is reduced," Mr Webb said.

Ice dam to break prematurely on Argentine glacier

Tourists climb up the Perito Moreno glacier

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) — A huge ice dam on Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier will break apart for the first time in the southern hemisphere winter, likely as a result of global warming, scientists and environmentalists said Monday.

The 60-meter (yard) high wall of ice holding back a portion of Lake Argentina breaks apart spectacularly in cycles of one year to several years, but always in summer, and is one of Patagonia's top tourist attractions.

"This is the first time the glacier breaks up in winter. It could be related to global warming as rising temperatures affects ice friction," said Los Glaciares National Park director Carlos Corvalan.

The Perito Moreno glacier, one of the world's largest, measuring 275 square kilometers (106 square miles) and five kilometers (three miles) wide at its mouth, is located 2,800 kilometers (1,740 miles) southeast of Buenos Aires.

Heavy rains kill 14 in China

Cargo boats cruise through heavy rain on the Yangtze River in China's Hubei province.

12 killed, 3 million affected as rains play havoc in China

Beijing (PTI): At least 12 people have died, seven more are missing and about three million have been affected after torrential rains swept through most parts of China since Tuesday last, officials said.

Ten deaths were reported from Central China's Hubei province and six in southwestern Yunnan province yesterday, official Xinhua news agency said.

Rainstorms forced suspension of shipping services in the Three Gorges reservoir section of the Yangtze river, blocked traffic in cities, delayed flights, destroyed houses and flooded farmland, officials said.

Twenty five cities and counties in Hubei, where the country's largest river Yangtze meanders through, reported a total loss of USD 102 million in damages.

More than 26,000 people were evacuated and about 2.5 million affected in Hubei province, the provincial civil affairs department said.

In Yunnan province, three people were reported missing and 9,800 were shifted to safer places, while more than 1,000 houses collapsed. More than 970,800 people were affected by the rain-triggered disasters.

Torrential rains caused floods in Yangtze river where two gigantic hydroelectric projects -- the Three Gorges and the Gezhouba -- began discharging water to reduce level. Shipping services between the two dams were suspended for five hours before they were resumed yesterday.

Floods and rainstorms had killed 252 people across China in June.

Local meteorologists warned that banks and reservoirs should be consolidated for possible flooding of the Yellow River. While the weatherman forecast more rain in next two days, China Meteorological Administration asked local governments to be on alert.

As fire nears Big Sur, humans and animals flee

	Photo 5 of 8
A firefighter uses a special gun to start a backfire on a wildfire burn in Big Sur, Calif., Thursday, July 3, 2008. The raging blaze near Big Sur was one of more than 1,700 wildfires, mostly ignited by lightning, that have scorched more then 770 square miles and destroyed 64 structures across northern and central California since June 20, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) BIG SUR, Calif. (AP) — Piles of charred rubble smoldered near California's scenic coastal highway Thursday as a ferocious wildfire descended on the storied tourist town of Big Sur, destroying vacation homes and sending forest creatures running toward the sea for cover. The stubborn blaze, which has burned more than 100 square miles in the Los Padres National Forest, was just one of hundreds raging around the state. And officials on Thursday reported California's first firefighter death this year — a volunteer who collapsed on the fire line in Mendocino County. So much forest has burned near Big Sur that animals have been forced out of their habitat and onto the roads. Buzzards flew overhead to snatch up dead rodents and squirrels, and residents reported seeing bear, deer and other big animals migrating toward the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, crews near the Pacific Coast Highway fought back flames from homes and historic landmarks, including the upscale Ventana Inn, which was surrounded by crackling, burning brush. Several homes perched on a ridge about a quarter-mile from the cliffside inn fell victim to the fire the night before. At least 20 homes have been destroyed in the area since the blaze broke out June 21, up from 17 homes counted Wednesday. The fire was only 5 percent contained by Thursday evening. Many Big Sur residents followed mandatory evacuation orders issued this week, but some chose to defy the orders, staying behind to try to save their homes and businesses. Kirk Gafill, general manager of Nepenthe, said he and five employees were up all night trying to protect the cliffside restaurant his grandparents built in 1949. Wearing dust masks, the crew scrambled to stamp out embers, some the size of dinner plates, that were dropping from the sky, he said....Continue Full Story

Chaos as torrential rain hits China

TORRENTIAL rain which has hit about half of China since Tuesday has left one dead, four injured and nearly 400,000 affected.

The rain also caused blocked traffic in cities, delayed flights, destroyed homes, flooded farmland and threatened flooding in river areas, mainly south of the Yangtze River.

In Shanghai, a two-story building collapsed yesterday, killing one of the five construction workers buried in debris.

Shanghai's neighbors, Zhejiang and Anhui, issued heavy rain warnings yesterday, telling local authorities to prepare for possible flooding.

Seven counties and cities in Hubei Province reported more than 395,900 people affected and 35,580 hectares of crops damaged.

Downtown areas in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, were flooded with up to a meter of water in places after a six-hour rainstorm over Tuesday night.

The city's airport was also closed on Tuesday morning as the runways were waist-deep in water.

Flooding and related disasters since the beginning of June have left 252 people dead and 64 missing across China, which saw the start of the main flood season on Tuesday, a senior flood control and drought relief official said on Wednesday.

About 50 million people and 3 million hectares of land were affected, with around 200,000 houses destroyed, Zhang Zhitong, vice director of the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, told a press conference yesterday.

Rising costs for bread, cheese and propane will make tomorrow's Fourth of July holiday more expensive than last year

Stay-at-Home Grillers on July 4th Still Pay More for Food, Gas

July 3 (Bloomberg) -- Rising costs for bread, cheese and propane will make tomorrow's Fourth of July holiday more expensive than last year, even for those Americans who decide to avoid higher gasoline prices by grilling at home.

Bread cost 16 percent more in May than last year, cheese jumped 14 percent, snack foods are up 7.4 percent, and ice cream gained 5.9 percent, Labor Department data show. While hamburger, hot-dog and pork-chop prices are about the same, that's only consolation for consumers who like their meat raw: propane used in grills costs 29 percent more, Energy Department data show.

``There's not a thing out there that has not gone up in price,'' said Mike Mills, a barbecue-restaurant owner in Murphysboro, Illinois, who is the past president of the National Barbecue Association and a former championship griller. ``It's kind of like you get nickel-and-dimed to death.''

More Americans may cook at home after gasoline rose to a record above $4 a gallon. The number of travelers over July Fourth holiday will drop for the first time this decade, AAA said. The savings on fuel are getting eaten up by the rising costs at the grocery store. Food inflation last year accelerated at the fastest pace in 17 years, and the government forecast a bigger increase in 2008, led by gains in dairy and grain prices.

Mills, who owns the 17th Street Bar & Grill restaurants in southern Illinois and the Memphis Championship Barbecue in Las Vegas, said he will turn the grill on 15 minutes before cooking to conserve propane and charcoal at home this weekend. In the past, he said he'd start an hour earlier.

Cheaper Meats

The price of propane for residential use is forecast to be $2.65 a gallon this month, up from $2.05 last July, according to data on the Energy Information Administration Web site.

Mills also said he will cook pork and chicken rather than the more-expensive beef steaks.

``I am a steak lover,'' Mills said in an interview yesterday. ``I am not going to be doing any steaks.''

Retailers are passing along higher prices to consumers as global demand for food boosts U.S. exports, production is disrupted by harsh weather and more crops are used to make fuel, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

The annual gain for cereals and baked goods will be 9 percent to 10 percent, up from 7.5 percent to 8.5 percent forecast in May and the most since 1980, the USDA said in a report June 27. Fats and oils may rise 11.5 percent to 12.5 percent, sugars and sweets may gain 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent, and poultry may jump 3 percent to 4 percent, the USDA said.

More for Ketchup

``It continues to put consumers in a difficult position as food prices rise, especially for low-income consumers,'' said Chris Waldrop, director of the food policy institute at the Consumer Federation of America in Washington. ``It makes it difficult for them to feed families. They have to prepare for the big holiday, whereas in the past they would go to the store without much concern.''

Rising costs for raw materials and energy are putting a crimp on companies as well as consumers. H.J. Heinz Co., the world's biggest ketchup maker, raised prices by 4.5 percent in the quarter ended April 30 to counter record commodity costs. Even beer and ale consumed at home was 2.4 percent more expensive in May than a year earlier, government data show.

Corn, wheat, soybeans and rice have reached records this year, while wholesale beef, pork and chicken rallied. Overall, U.S. food costs may rise as much as 5.5 percent this year, USDA food economist Ephraim Leibtag said in an interview yesterday.

``Food prices are definitely higher in 2008 vs. 2007,'' Leibtag said. ``Some meat-product prices have been pretty stable this year due to large short-term supplies, but that will change'' as higher feed and fuel costs cut production, he said.

Hot future shock: Heat wave temperatures to soar

WASHINGTON - During the European heat wave of 2003 that killed tens of thousands, the temperature in parts of France hit 104 degrees. Nearly 15,000 people died in that country alone. During the Chicago heat wave of 1995, the mercury spiked at 106 and about 600 people died.

In a few decades, people will look back at those heat waves "and we will laugh," said Andreas Sterl, author of a new study. "We will find (those temperatures) lovely and cool."

Sterl's computer model shows that by the end of the century, high temperatures for once-in-a-generation heat waves will rise twice as fast as everyday average temperatures. Chicago, for example, would reach 115 degrees in such an event by 2100. Paris heat waves could near 109 with Lyon coming closer to 114.

Sterl, who is with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, projects temperatures for rare heat waves around the world in a study soon to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

His numbers are blistering because of the drying-out effect of a warming world. Most global warming research focuses on average daily temperatures instead of these extremes, which cause greater damage.

His study projects a peak of 117 for Los Angeles and 110 for Atlanta by 2100; that's 5 degrees higher than the current records for those cities. Kansas City faces the prospect of a 116-degree heat wave, with its current all-time high at 109, according to the National Climactic Data Center.

A few cities, such as Phoenix, which once hit 122 degrees and is projected to have heat waves of 120, have already reached these extreme temperatures once or twice. But they would be hitting those numbers a little more often as the world heats up over time. For New York, it would only be a slight jump from the all-time record of 104 at John F. Kennedy Airport to the projected 106.

It could be worse. Delhi, India is expected to hit 120 degrees; Belem, Brazil, 121, and Baghdad, 122.

Those figures make sense, Ken Kunkel, a top Midwestern climate scientist and interim director of the Illinois Water Survey.

These are temperatures that are dangerous, said University of Wisconsin environmental health professor Dr. Jonathan Patz.

"Extreme temperature puts a huge demand on the body, especially anyone with heart problems," Patz said. "The elderly are the most vulnerable because they don't sense temperature as well."

And it's not just at the end of the century. By 2050, heat waves will be 3 to 5 degrees hotter than now "and probably be longer-lasting," Sterl said.

By mid-century, southern France's extreme heat waves should be around 111 degrees and then near 118 by the end of the century, Sterl's climate models predict. In the 1990s, that region's extreme heat wave peaked at 104 degrees; in the 1950s, the worst heat wave peaked around 91 degrees, according to Sterl.

Some species could be wiped out 100 times faster than feared, say researchers

Mountain gorilla in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda. Photograph: Andy Rouse/Corbis

Endangered species could become extinct 100 times faster than previously thought, scientists warned yesterday in a bleak reassessment of the threats to global biodiversity. They say methods used to predict when species will die out are seriously flawed and dramatically underestimate the speed at which some will disappear.

The findings, presented in the journal Nature, suggest that animals such as the western gorilla, the Sumatran tiger and Malayan sun bear, the smallest of the bear family, may become extinct much sooner than conservationists had feared.

Ecologists Brett Melbourne, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Alan Hastings at the University of California, Davis said conservation organisations should use updated extinction models to urgently re-evaluate the risks to wildlife. "Some species could have months instead of years left, while other species that haven't even been identified as under threat yet should be listed as endangered," said Melbourne.

The warning has particular implications for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles an annual "red list" of endangered species. Last year the list upgraded western gorillas to critically endangered, after populations of a subspecies were found to have been badly affected by Ebola virus and the commercial trade in bushmeat.

The Yangtze river dolphin was listed as critically endangered, but could possibly be already extinct.

The researchers analysed mathematical models used to predict extinction risks and found that while they included some factors crucial to predicting a species' survival they overlooked others. For example, models took into account the fact that some animals died from rare accidents such as falling out of a tree. They also included chance environmental threats, such as sudden heatwaves or rainstorms that could kill off animals.

But what the extinction models failed to include was the proportion of males compared with females in a population, and the differences in reproductive success between individuals in the group. When they factored these aspects into risk assessments for particular species they found the danger of extinction rose substantially.

"The older models could be severely overestimating the time to extinction. Some species could go extinct 100 times sooner than we expect," Melbourne said.

The researchers showed that the missing factors - the number of males to females, and variations in the number of offspring - were capable of causing unexpected large swings in the size of a population, sometimes causing it to grow but also increasing the risk that a population crashed and became extinct.

To test the new models, Melbourne's team studied populations of beetles in the laboratory. "The results showed that the old models misdiagnosed the importance of different types of randomness, much like miscalculating the odds in an unfamiliar game of cards because you didn't know the rules," he said.

For some endangered species, such as mountain gorillas, conservationists could collect data on individuals and plug the information into models to predict these animals' chances of survival.

"For many other species, like marine fish, the best biologists can do is measure abundances and population fluctuations," Melbourne said.

Craig Hilton-Taylor, who manages the IUCN red list in Cambridge, said extinction estimates were often inadequate. "We are certainly underestimating the number of species that are in danger of becoming extinct because there are around 1.8m described species and we've only been able to assess 41,000 of those."

The latest study could help refine models used to decide which species are put on the red list, he said. "We are constantly looking at how we evaluate extinction risk, and it may be they have hit on something that can help us."

More than 16,000 species worldwide are threatened with extinction, according to a 2007 report from the IUCN. One in four mammal species, one in eight bird species and one in three amphibian species are on the organisation's red list. An updated list is due to be published in October.

Next week, the IUCN is expected to highlight the dire state of the world's corals after surveying the condition of more than 1,000 species around the world.

Murray-Darling should be declared 'national emergency'

There are dire forecasts for the environmental health of the Coorong region near the Murray mouth. (user submitted: Jack Creevy)

The Federal Opposition says the Government must declare the state of the Murray-Darling Basin a national environmental emergency.

A leaked scientific report reveals the Government was warned last month that vegetation and wetlands could be lost unless flows are returned to the lower lake system by October.

The warning is contained in a report by the Natural Resource Management Board of the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin and was handed to ministers in May.

It says if action is not taken to increase water flows in the next six months, parts of the lower river system will die.

The nation's water ministers were not due to discuss the issue until November, but the Federal Government says it is now seeking urgent department advice on the matter.

The Opposition's environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, says there needs to be action.

"Whilst the Murray is desperate for a drink, the Ministers are out at a long lunch, so the message is very clear: we need an emergency meeting now, not in August, September, October or November but by the fourth of July," he said.

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert says the Government must act now and put together an emergency rescue package for the Murray-Darling Basin.

"What hope have we got if we let the Coorong die? What hope has the rest of the river got?" Senator Siewert said.

"It is absolutely essential that they act now. They cannot wait to consider this at the ministerial meeting currently proposed for November.

"They need to talk to the New South Wales Government about accessing water from the Menindie Lakes from major storages in northern New South Wales."

The Federal Minister for Water and Climate Change, Senator Penny Wong, says she is seeking urgent advice from her department.

"There has been no deferral of dealing with the lower lakes and Coorong," Ms Wong said.

Senator Wong says urgent meetings with the nation's water ministers can be called.

"Some of those decisions are Federal Government decisions in terms of water buyback," she said.

"If there are urgent decisions that basin state ministers need to consider, they can be dealt with out of session and we'll consider that or I will consider our approach to that after I've received our department's advice."

Photo: Earth's Core, Magnetic Field Changing Fast

Kimberly Johnson
for National Geographic News

June 30, 2008

Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth's liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface, a new study says.

"What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth's magnetic field," said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.
The findings suggest similarly quick changes are simultaneously occurring in the liquid metal, 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) below the surface, he said.

The swirling flow of molten iron and nickel around Earth's solid center triggers an electrical current, which generates the planet's magnetic field.

(Learn more about Earth's interior.)

The study, published recently in Nature Geoscience, modeled Earth's magnetic field using nine years of highly accurate satellite data.

Flip-Flop

Fluctuations in the magnetic field have occurred in several far-flung regions of Earth, the researchers found.

In 2003 scientists found pronounced changes in the magnetic field in the Australasian region. In 2004, however, the changes were focused on Southern Africa.

The changes "may suggest the possibility of an upcoming reversal of the geomagnetic field," said study co-author Mioara Mandea, a scientist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam.

Earth's magnetic field has reversed hundreds of times over the past billion years, and the process could take thousands of years to complete.

Continued on Next Page >>

Some 1.5 billion people may starve due to land erosion

MILAN (Reuters) - Rising land degradation reduces crop yields and may threaten food security of about a quarter of the world' population, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Wednesday.

Food security has been highlighted in recent months as soaring crop prices resulting from poor harvests, low stocks, high fuel prices and rising demand, risks causing starvation for millions of people in the developing world.

"An estimated 1.5 billion people, or a quarter of the world's population, depend directly on land that is being degraded," FAO said in a statement presenting a study based on data taken over a 20-year period.

Long-term land degradation has been increasing around the world and affects more than 20 percent of all cultivated areas, 30 percent of forests and 10 percent of grasslands, FAO said

Land erosion leads to reduced productivity, migration, food insecurity, damage to basic resources and ecosystems, loss of biodiversity and also contributes to increasing emission of heat-trapping gases, the Rome-based agency said.

"The loss of biomass and soil organic matter releases carbon into the atmosphere and affects the quality of soil and its ability to hold water and nutrients," said Parviz Koohafkan, director of FAO's Land and Water Division.

According to the study, land degradation is being driven mainly by poor land management.