Melting North Pole in its ‘death spiral’ as ice cap becomes an island

MARTIN WILLIAMS

September 01 2008

The North Pole has become an island for the first time in human history, with fears the melting ice cap has entered a "death spiral".

The historic development was revealed in satellite images that show melting ice has produced an opening in the famed Northwest and Northeast Passages, with water stretching all the way round the Arctic.

Until recently, both passages had been blocked by ice since the start of the last Ice Age. It is feared by some scientists that the ice cap will completely disappear in summer within five years as global warming continues to take its toll.

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Shipping companies are already planning to exploit the first simultaneous opening of the routes since the beginning of the last Ice Age 125,000 years ago. The Beluga Group in Germany said it will send the first ship through the Northeast Passage, around Russia, next year - cutting 4000 miles off the voyage from Germany to Japan.

The pictures, taken two days ago and gathered using microwave sensors that penetrate clouds, were published on a website by scientists at the University of Bremen in Germany. They show the Northwest Passage around Canada opened last weekend and the Northeast Passage was free from ice a few days later.

Prof Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in the US, said the images suggested the Arctic may have entered a "death spiral". He warned that official bodies would be reluctant to confirm the passages were open, however, for fear of lawsuits if ships hit ice.

Stephen Harper, Canada's PM, has already said ships entering the Northwest Passage should first report to his government.

The North Pole becomes an 'island' for the first time in history as ice melts

By Fiona Macrae
Last updated at 10:10 PM on 31st August 2008

The North Pole has become an island for the first time in human history.

Startling satellite pictures taken three days ago show that melting ice has opened up the fabled North-West and North-East Passages - making it possible to sail around the Arctic ice cap.

The opening of the passages has been eagerly awaited by shipping companies which hope they will be able to cut thousands of miles off their routes.

Blocked: The Arctic ice, showing as a pink mass in the 1979 picture, links up with northern Canada (on the left) and Russia (right)

But to climate change scientists it is yet another sign of the damage global warming is inflicting on the planet.

Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist, described the images as an 'historic event' - but warned they added to fears that the Arctic icecap has entered a 'death spiral'.

The pictures, produced by Nasa, mark the first time in at least 125,000 years that the two shortcuts linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have been ice-free at the same time.

In 2005, the North-East Passage around Russia opened, while the western one, across the top of Canada, remained closed, and last year the position was reversed.

But the satellite data shows that the North-West passage opened last weekend and the remaining tongue of ice blocking the North-Eastern one dissolved a few days later.

Professor Serreze, of the U.S. government-funded National Snow and Ice Data Center, told a Sunday newspaper: 'The passages are open. It is an historic event.

'We are going to see this more and more as the years go by.'

Thawing ocean: The North-West Passage (circled left) and the North-East Passage (top right) are clear of ice

Shipping companies are ready to exploit the new routes. The Beluga group, based in Bremen, Germany, plans to send the first ship through the North-East passage next year, cutting 4,000 nautical miles off the voyage from Germany to Japan.

If the ice continues to melt at current rates it will soon be possible to sail right across the North Pole.

Many scientists believe that the mass of ice that forms a jagged circle around the North Pole could vanish altogether in the summer by 2030.

Others believe it could take as little as five years for the Pole, currently frozen all year round, to be ice-free between mid-July and mid-September.

Four weeks ago, tourists had to be evacuated from Baffin Island's Auyuittuq National Park in northern Canada because of flooding from thawed glaciers.

The park's name means 'land that never melts'.

Iceland president warns of disappearing Himalayan glaciers

South Asia New

Aug 31, 2008, 12:58 GMT

Dhaka - Wrapping up a four-day visit to Bangladesh Sunday, Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson sounded a grim warning that the Himalayan glaciers were disappearing and would gone in the next 40 to 70 years.

The high-speed melting of the mountain ice spelled out dangers for the southern Asian countries like Bangladesh which are dependent on the glaciers for sources of water.

These countries situated at the Himalayan foothills face a major challenge which could generate conflicts and grievances across their sensitive national boundaries.

On Friday, Grimsson was given a cordial reception on arrival for an official trip to Bangladesh, highlight of which was his chairing an international symposium on climate change.

Grimsson stressed increasing regional efforts to help the farming community in southern Asia to cope with climate change.

Bangladesh, a low-lying delta with three large river systems, is particularly vulnerable to climate change, experts at the symposium in Dhaka said.

Legal bid to stop CERN atom smasher from 'destroying the world'

The world's biggest and most expensive scientific experiment has been hit by a last minute legal challenge, amid claims that the research could bring about the end of the world.

Opponents fear the machine may create a mini-black hole that could tear the earth apart Photo: PA

However, a safety report published earlier this year by experts at CERN and reviewed by a group of external scientists gave the Large Hadron Collider the all clear Photo: PA

A photographer takes a picture of the magnet core of CERN's Large Hadron Collider, Geneva, Switzerland, 2007 Photo: EPA

Critics of the Large Hadron Collider - a £4.4 billion machine due to be switched on in ten days time - have lodged a lawsuit at the European Court for Human Rights against the 20 countries, including the UK, that fund the project.

The device is designed to replicate conditions that existed just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, and its creators hope it will unlock the secrets of how the universe began.

However, opponents fear the machine, which will smash pieces of atoms together at high speed and generate temperatures of more than a trillion degrees centigrade, may create a mini-black hole that could tear the earth apart.

Scientists involved in the project have dismissed the fears as "absurd" and insist that extensive safety assessments on the 17 mile long particle accelerator have demonstrated that it is safe.

The legal battle comes as the European Nuclear Research Centre (CERN), in Geneva, prepares to send the first beam of particles around the machine at the official switch on, on September 10, although it will be several weeks before the first particles are collided together.

Opponents of the project had hoped to obtain an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights that would block the collider from being turned on at all, but the court rejected the application on Friday morning. However, the court will rule on allegations that the experiment violates the right to life under the European Convention of Human Rights.

Professor Otto Rössler, a German chemist at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen who is one of the most vocal opponents of the LHC and was one of the scientists who submitted the complaint to the court, said: "CERN itself has admitted that mini black holes could be created when the particles collide, but they don't consider this a risk.

"My own calculations have shown that it is quite plausible that these little black holes survive and will grow exponentially and eat the planet from the inside. I have been calling for CERN to hold a safety conference to prove my conclusions wrong but they have not been willing.

"We submitted this application to the European Court of Human Rights as we do not believe the scientists at CERN are taking all the precautions they should be in order to protect human life."

Professor Rössler claims that, in the worst case scenario, the earth could be sucked inside out within four years of a mini black hole forming.

The case he and his colleagues have put before the European Court of Human Rights argues that the Large Hadron Collider violates the right to life and right to private family life under the European Convention of Human Rights

It sets out a series of arguments that suggest the collider could produce mini black holes that would permanently come into existence and grow uncontrollably.

But a safety report published earlier this year by experts at CERN and reviewed by a group of external scientists gave the Large Hadron Collider the all clear. It concluded that there was little theoretical chance of the collider producing mini black holes that would be capable of posing a danger to the earth.

It stated that nature routinely produces higher energy collisions on the earth than will be possible in the collider, when cosmic rays hit the planet

But the CERN facility is already facing a second lawsuit filed by environmentalists in Hawaii who are seeking a court order that would force the US government to intervene and delay the start up of the collider. That case is due to be heard on Tuesday.

Large particle colliders have been used by scientists to smash atoms and pieces of atoms together for more than thirty years without causing any noticeable harm to the planet.

This latest machine, however, has attracted such attention because it is the largest and most powerful ever constructed. Built 300ft beneath the French Swiss border, it will fire atomic particles around its 17 mile circumference, 11,245 times every second before smashing them headlong into each other.

The result will, for a split second, replicate the conditions that existed in the moments immediately after the birth of the universe, known as the Big Bang. In a space a billion times smaller than a speck of dust, the collisions will create temperatures 100,000 times hotter than the centre of the sun.

Among the debris thrown off by these collisions, scientists hope they will find the elusive Higgs-Boson, which is thought to be responsible for giving every other particle its mass, or weight.

But scientists admit it could be years before they start producing any meaningful results due to the challenges involved in detecting such tiny and fleeting particles.

James Gillies, spokesman for CERN, insisted that despite the huge amounts of energy the Large Hadron Collider will produce, it posed no risk to the safety of the planet.

He said: "The case before the European Court of Human Rights contains the same arguments that we have seen before and we have answered these in extensive safety reports.

The Large Hadron Collider will not be producing anything that does not already happen routinely in nature due to cosmic rays. If they were dangerous we would know about it already.

"We are now concentrating on firing the first beams around the collider and then on fine tuning it until we can get collisions, when the science will start."

A spokesman for the European Court of Human Rights confirmed the lawsuit had been lodged and the petition to obtain an emergency injunction against CERN was rejected. She said: "There will therefore be no bar to CERN carrying out these experiments but the applicants can continue with this case here at the ECHR."

Antarctic Ozone Hole Will Get Larger In 2008 - U.N.

The United Nation weather agency, on Friday, reported that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica may increase this year than in 2007.

The ozone layer protects the earth from harmful ultra violet rays which could cause skin cancer. The size of the ozone hole ultimately depends on the weather conditions which presently is as big as North America.

In latest Ozone bulletin, the World Organization said, “As the sun returns to Antarctica after the polar night, it is expected that ozone depletion will speed up.”

If large amounts of chlorine and bromine remain in the atmosphere it could cause harmful holes in the protective layer of the ozone layer. This all is happening because the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) has decreased.

“It is still too early to give a definitive statement about the development of this year's ozone hole and the degree of ozone loss that will occur," the WMO added.

Hurricane Hunter aircraft fly into the belly of the beast

As Hurricane Gustav strengthens into a monster, Hurricane Hunter aircraft fly round-the-clock into the thick of the storm and straight into the cauldron of its mysterious eye.

The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press flew on the Hurricane Hunter Friday as Gustav developed from a youthful tropical storm into a mature, powerful hurricane with devastating potential to life and property.

During the Hurricane Hunter's flight we watched and spoke with the six-member crew, learned about their individual jobs, and rode in the cockpit with the pilots and navigator. Most of all, we broke through the roiling winds of the eye wall four times, to fly across its broad expanse and back out again.

The Hunter's wild and dangerous ride provides continuous, precise measurements of atmospheric conditions to the National Hurricane Center.

That allows the center, in turn, to more accurately predict the hurricane path and pinpoint specific areas that will have to issue mandatory evacuation orders. Increased accuracy saves unnecessary evacuation costs and the nerves of people who otherwise might have to leave their homes.

For most of the hunters, this is what they live for and are willing to die for. They have no parachutes, since it would be foolhardy to jump to safety amid hurricane winds. It's better to ditch the plane and rely on life vests, lifeboats and prayer to survive the high seas below.

The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron of the Air Force Reserve, a one-of-a kind unit flying into tropical storms and hurricanes since 1944, operates the Hunter.

The reservists are part of the 403rd Wing based at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss.

But Friday we flew from Homestead Air Reserve Base. When we began the flight at 11:15 a.m., Gustav's winds started off at 65 mph.

During the 10 1/2-hour flight, Gustav strengthened to a Category 1 hurricane at about 83 mph. Since we landed at 9:45 p.m. Friday, the storm has catapulted to a Category 4 hurricane at 150 mph.

Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride....CONTINUE

Plague threatens ferrets, prarie dogs

Insecticide used on fleas carrying the disease at Badlands National Park

A prairie dog stands at a burrow on the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands in South Dakota on

INTERIOR, S.D. - On the grasslands a few miles from the pinnacles and spires of Badlands National Park, federal wildlife officials have been waging a war since spring to save one of the nation's largest colonies of endangered black-footed ferrets.

The deadly disease sylvatic plague was discovered in May in a huge prairie dog town in the Conata Basin. The black-tailed prairie dog is the main prey of ferrets, and the disease quickly killed up to a third of the area's 290 ferrets along with prairie dogs.

The disease stopped spreading with the arrival of summer's hot, dry weather, but it poses a serious threat to efforts to establish stable populations of one of the nation's rarest mammals, said Scott Larson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Pierre.

The plague, which is carried by fleas, is the biggest danger to ferrets' survival in the Conata Basin and other sites that still have ferrets, said Larson, who is coordinating ferret conservation efforts among five federal agencies.

"It has the capacity to take out more ferret habitat than anything we've run up against, and do it in such a short order," Larson said. "For ferrets, it's the most challenging issue we face."

CONTINUE

1 million flee U.S. Gulf Coast ahead of Gustav

Traffic backs up along westbound Interstate 10 as residents of the New Orleans area evacuate Saturday due to the threat of Hurricane Gustav.

View related photos

updated 1 hour, 56 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - Around a million people took to Gulf Coast highways Saturday, boarding up homes and businesses and fleeing dangerous Hurricane Gustav by bus and automobile.

At 5 p.m. ET, a hurricane watch was issued along the coast between High Island, Texas, and the Alabama-Florida border — an area that includes New Orleans. A watch means that hurricane conditions are possible within 36 hours.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Gustav was just short of becoming a top-scale Category 5 hurricane as it powered its way toward mainland Cuba. It was projected to plow into the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico at full force Sunday, and reach the U.S. coast as early as Monday afternoon — nearly a day sooner than predicted just a day ago.

CONTINUE

Hurricane Gustav Near Cuba With 230 kph Winds

Men pull boat out of water as Hurricane Gustav approaches in Havana, 30 Aug 2008

U.S. forecasters say Hurricane Gustav's winds have strengthened to nearly 230 kilometers per hour as the deadly storm closes in on western Cuba.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center has upgraded Gustav to a category 4 hurricane on the scale that measures a storm's intensity.

At last report, the eye of Gustav was expected to pass over western Cuba later Saturday.

Forecasters say the storm could produce more than a half-meter of rain in some parts of Cuba. It has claimed at least 80 lives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The hurricane center predicts Gustav will move into the southern Gulf of Mexico early Sunday and the northern Gulf by Monday morning.

Gustav is expected to strike the southern U.S. somewhere from western Florida to Texas.

Some U.S. Gulf coast states - Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas - have started evacuating residents.

U.S. President George Bush declared a federal state of emergency in the state of Louisiana, a likely target for the storm. Its path may include the city of New Orleans, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

Separately, Tropical Storm Hanna is expected to move near the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean late Sunday or early Monday. Hanna had wind speeds of 85 kilometers per hour and also was expected to strengthen.

Bayer on defensive in bee deaths

Critics claim that clothianidin is to blame for devastated bee colonies.

German authorities look into allegation that RTP maker's pesticide harms environment

Bayer CropScience is facing scrutiny because of the effect one of its best-selling pesticides has had on honeybees.

A German prosecutor is investigating Werner Wenning, Bayer's chairman, and Friedrich Berschauer, the head of Bayer CropScience, after critics alleged that they knowingly polluted the environment.

The investigation was triggered by an Aug. 13 complaint filed by German beekeepers and consumer protection advocates, a Coalition against Bayer Dangers spokesman, Philipp Mimkes, said Monday.

The complaint is part of efforts by groups on both sides of the Atlantic to determine how much Bayer CropScience knows about the part that clothianidin may have played in the death of millions of honeybees.

Bayer CropScience, which has its U.S. headquarters in Research Triangle Park, said field studies have shown that bees' exposure to the pesticide is minimal or nonexistent if the chemical is used properly.

Clothianidin and related pesticides generated about $1 billion of Bayer CropScience's $8.6 billion in global sales last year. The coalition is demanding that the company withdraw all of the pesticides.

"We're suspecting that Bayer submitted flawed studies to play down the risks of pesticide residues in treated plants," said Harro Schultze, the coalition's attorney.

"Bayer's ... management has to be called to account, since the risks ... have now been known for more than 10 years."

Under German law, a criminal investigation could lead to a search of Bayer offices, Mimkes said.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Natural Resources Defense Council is pressing for research information on clothianidin.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the pesticide in 2003 under the condition that Bayer submit additional data. A lawsuit, which the environmental group filed Aug. 19 in federal court in Washington, accuses the EPA of hiding the honeybee data.

The group thinks the data might show what role chlothianidine played in the loss of millions of U.S. honeybee colonies....CONTINUE

FEMA says Gustav soon to be rated Category 5

WASHINGTON: The government's disaster relief chief says Hurricane Gustav is growing into a monster Category 5 storm.

The storm that hit Cuba Saturday could reach landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast as early as Monday afternoon.

Federal Emergency Management Agency chief David Paulison told reporters several times at a briefing Saturday that the storm was strengthening into a Category 5 hurricane. Gustav was a highly dangerous Category 4 storm Saturday afternoon.

A Category 5 storm has winds greater than 155 mph (250 kph).

After Paulison's briefing, hurricane forecasters said the storm still was classified as Category 4 although it was intensifying rapidly. They are predicting it will grow into a Category 5 hurricane by early Sunday.

Gustav on the Brink of Explosive Development

6:00 p.m. update: Gustav continues to intensify and is now a hurricane. Additional strengthening is likely over the next day or so. Chief meteorologist Jeff Masters at Wunderground advises: "It's Time to Leave New Orleans"...

From earlier: Over the past 48 hours Tropical Storm Gustav proved it was a survivor, as it withstood difficult journeys over Haiti and Jamaica. Now it may turn into a monster. It has emerged intact over the very warm, open waters of the northwest Caribbean. The National Hurricane Center cautions in its latest update:

...STRENGTHENING SEEMS IMMINENT AND COULD EVEN BE RAPID.

Keep reading for more on Gustav, as well as Hanna. For Washington, D.C. weather, see our full forecast, and BeachCast for the holiday weekend.

Gustav's forecast track. Courtesy National Hurricane Center.

Gustav's intensification may be briefly interrupted if it passes over western Cuba. However, it is likely to still be a major hurricane (category 3 or higher) in the Gulf of Mexico. It's landfall intensity forecast is more difficult, as some models suggest its forward progress will slow as it approaches land. SeaBlogger aptly explains:

General rule for Gustav in the Gulf: the quicker it moves, the more severe it will be at landfall. If it slows, shear will weaken it more, and dry air will entrain off the land. Watch the speed and course: slowing and wavering will be good signs. But if it settles on a straight path after Cuba and moves steadily, someone will get pretty hard hit at the end of it.

Where will Gustav hit? Track guidance has been pretty consistent in bringing it ashore between southeast Texas and Alabama. The majority of computer models predict a landfall in Louisiana, west of New Orleans.

The worst case scenario for New Orleans would be for the storm to make landfall just slightly to its west or a nudge east of the middle of the National Hurricane Center's current forecast (shown above to the right) . Such a track would inflict Gustav's strongest winds and maximum storm surge on the city. Katrina actually tracked just east of the city and would have impacted the city even more severely had it come inland just slightly west of where it did. The odds of the worst case scenario materializing are low, but with the consistency of the track forecasts for this storm in the last two days, the possibility needs to be taken seriously by planning and political officials.

The prospect of a land-falling hurricane during the Republican convention has captured the attention of the McCain/Palin campaign, which may consider postponing the convention according to FoxNews.com. Science policy blogger Dr. Matt Nisbet (from American University) discusses the unwelcome distraction the storm poses for the McCain campaign. If Gustav meaningfully impacts New Orleans, it will test what all levels of government have learned since Katrina. The amount of spin from political pundits on the preparation and response effort will no doubt rival Gustav's.

Further east in the Atlantic, tropical storm Hanna continues to hold its own. Not much has changed since yesterday, and it is still expected to strengthen to hurricane intensity. However, uncertainty in its track remains very large and steering currents will be very weak beginning in about 48 hours. Many models now suggest Hanna will drift to the southwest towards the southern Bahamas by the middle of next week. It's too early to even speculate where it goes after that. Yesterday I said the entire East Coast should watch Hanna. We can now add the Gulf of Mexico to the list.

Track Gustav, Hanna and several other areas of disturbed weather in the tropics, using the interactive map below.

Powered by hurricane-tracking software from Stormpulse.com. Pan, zoom, and click on points along the storm's projected track for intensity forecasts.

Farmers count the cost as rain ruins wheat harvest

Thousands of farmers across Britain fear that they could experience the worst harvest in years after this month's relentless rainfall.

Less than a quarter of the harvest is in, compared with 80 per cent at the same time last year. The South West, the West and the North are the areas worst affected, but even in the South of England the harvest is running at least two weeks late. It will be another ten to fourteen days before householders will learn if they face higher prices for bread, biscuits, cake and flour.

Growers face an anxious wait to find out how much of their crops can be salvaged and what price they can expect to earn for them. Many are predicting heavy financial losses and some have already decided to reduce their seed plantings for next year. Fuel and energy prices are on the rise and the cost of fertiliser, £150 a tonne last year, is expected to be at between £350 and £400 a tonne this autumn - which means that many farmers will leave land fallow next season rather than risk the expense.

The main problem is with wheat. The best prices are paid for grain used in the manufacture of bread, earning a farmer £140 a tonne this year - still down on last year's bumper prices of £170 to £180 a tonne - but the rains have left some crops so wet that they will never reach this standard. Many farmers will be forced to sell their wheat as animal feed, at about £110 a tonne. This is also down on last year's price of £140 a tonne. Their losses are compounded because it costs about £15 a tonne to dry wheat....CONTINUE

Putin chokes chicken supplies from U.S.

STORY HERE

Vlad Putin isn't a man to mix words. The former President of Russia (though, still strangely in charge of every important decision in the country) was on CNN today, making a variety of bold claims. His policy in Georgia — and really can anyone dispute that it is his policy — is bellicose and has diplomatically isolated Russia. And today he blamed presidential politics for the outbreak of fighting between Russia and it's tiny southern neighbour:

"U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict," Putin said. "They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader." Watch Putin accuse the United States »

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino blasted Putin's statements, saying they were "patently false."

"To suggest that the United States orchestrated this on behalf of a political candidate just sounds not rational," she said.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood concurred, and labeled Putin's statements as "ludicrous."

All's fair in love and war, but now he's gone too far, attacking one of America's most vital exports: Poultry!

From Reuters:

Russia will ban imports from 19 U.S. poultry suppliers on health and safety grounds, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in an interview with U.S. broadcaster CNN.

Putin denied there was any link between the ban and political tensions over the conflict in Georgia and the Kremlin’s recognition of two breakaway Georgian regions, CNN reported on its Web site.

The Russian prime minister said the ban would be imposed because the firms — which were not named — had failed health and safety tests.

A further 29 firms had been warned they must improve standards or face a similar ban, Putin was quoted as saying. He did not give further details.

The European Union complained earlier this year that Russia was using “disproportionate” safety controls to ban beef, poultry and pork producers from European countries like France and Denmark.

Russia has a stated policy of seeking to build up its domestic meat production industries and reduce dependence on imports.

2,000 feared dead in India flood

Indian government accused of playing down Bihar flooding with an official death toll of 65

Villagers wade through floods in Bihar, India.

Two thousand people are now feared dead in the floods caused after a river changed course, submerging hundreds of villages in northern India and sparking claims that the Indian government is playing down the scale of the tragedy.

Although the official death toll in India's Bihar state is just 65, aid agencies claim thousands are missing in the flooded area. The Kosi river breached its banks 11 days ago on the border with Nepal, flowing through a channel 75 miles (120km) east of its natural route.

ActionAid's emergencies adviser for Asia, Dr PV Unnikrishnan, said that by omitting those feared dead the authorities could 'underplay' the need for massive relief operations in the area.

"By not counting those gone missing, the government estimates not only result in inadequate compensation and rehabilitation processes, but also underplay the need for rescue and relief," said Unnikrishnan.

India's Disaster Management Division said more than 2.6 million people in 16 districts have been affected by the flooding.

A spokesperson for Britain's Department For International Development in Delhi said, although the Indian monsoon saw heavy rains every year, this summer it devastated an area that had historically never been under water.

"Last year 20 million people were affected. This year it's far less but they are in a region that does not have the capacity to deal with floodwaters like this," said the spokesperson.

Television pictures from the region showed a woman crying and waving at her husband, who could not find a place in a boat that was evacuating villagers. Another sequence showed a man in tears as he looked in vain for the rest of his family in a camp.

One major worry is about the loss of agricultural output. Bihar is the least urbanised state in India and more than 70% of its 90 million people rely on the land. The government says almost 101,200 hectares (250,000 acres) of farmland is now under water, destroying precious wheat and rice stocks.

Yesterday, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, announced a £115m relief package and released 125,000 tonnes of emergency grain stocks. Officials in Bihar say large parts of the state are completely cut-off and aid agencies say there is a shortage of boats.

Although 400,000 have been moved to relief camps, ActionAid says people have been forced to drink unsafe water. There are concerns about the spread of diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases.

Although the Indian army has been drafted to airlift stranded villagers, many aid agencies complained that relief efforts were inadequate. "The camps are not organised yet and we are receiving reports of diseases," said Mukesh Puri of Unicef told Reuters.

Oil spill kills 2,000 penguins in southern Brazil

Rio de Janeiro - Some 2,000 penguins have been found dead since Sunday in the southern Brazilian states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, victims of an oil spill from an unidentified ship, Brazilian media reported Thursday citing the authorities.


Hundreds of other animals survived the catastrophe and were being taken care of by experts in Santa Catarina state capital Florianopolis, after being found with their bodies covered in oil.

The ship responsible for the leak had not been identified and the exact location of the spill had not been found, although it was believed to be on the high sea south of Santa Catarina. Brazilian Navy boats and airplanes were being used in the effort to find the leaked oil.

"There is no patrolling across the coastline so that we can have an idea of which ship is responsible for the leak.

Here there is a route through which hundreds of ships pass everyday. It is very complicated to find which one it was," said Environmental Police sergeant Marcelo Duarte.

The wild animal care centre in Florianopolis is overstretched. At this time of the year it usually handles 2-3 animals at a time.

Since the weekend it has been dealing with 30-40 oil-covered animals a day which have to be cleaned in a time-consuming process. Most of the surviving animals are in a very bad state, and biologists and veterinarians from other Brazilian states have already been sent to assist the efforts.

When they come in contact with oil, the feathers of penguins and other sea birds lose their ability to keep birds warm and dry. The animals become heavier and they can hardly swim. They lose their strength and many freeze to death. In the winter of the southern hemisphere, thousands of penguins travel as far as Brazil. They are pushed north by cold ocean currents as they search for food.

Many young trees destroyed in Antalya fire

A forest fire in the southern province of Antalya earlier this month that took firefighters six days to extinguish destroyed trees that were, for the most part, only between 10 and 20 years of age, a forestry expert has said.

Inspecting the districts of Serik and Manavgat, where the fire began, Mustafa Avcı, an associate professor in the forestry faculty at Süleyman Demirel University, told the Anatolia news agency that the forests affected by the fire were mostly composed of reforested land, having been burnt down before and subsequently replanted.

He stressed that the fire had been most severe in areas with young trees, adding that the fire has seriously affected the region's ecosystem -- composed primarily of flora indigenous to the Mediterranean climate, particularly red pine. Avcı explained that reforesting the affected land primarily with red pine would bring back its original flora, but that this will take five to 10 years.

Avcı said the soil in the area had not been damaged by the fire and that fire makes it richer in minerals such as calcium and nitrogen, which help promote new growth. Noting that biodiversity will increase in the first years of reforestation, Avcı emphasized, "Even plant species that did not exist on the land before will appear." However, some animals died and some were left without food and shelter due because of the fire, he added. He also said nearly 20,000 hectares of land is estimated to have been affected by the fire and that 80 percent of this was forested. He added that the fire in Antalya may have been the biggest fire in Turkey's history.

‘Fire-resistant’ trees needed

Noting that the region is densely populated with red pines, which are more susceptible to fire than other types of trees, Avcı said trees that are more "fire-resistant" need to be planted in addition to red pines to prevent such conflagrations. "The region is constantly facing the threat of fire due to its climactic conditions. That is why a new forestation plan is required. If we keep on planting trees to use in the timber industry, all of our attempts will be wasted within five to 10 years," he said.

The burnt trees will have been removed and the land will be ready for reforestation by fall or winter, Avcı added.

Two dead or missing as Japanese city told to flee rain

Japanese firefighters sit in a rescue boat as they search for a missing 80-year-old woman

TOKYO (AFP) — One woman was found dead and another was missing as torrential rain drenched central Japan, leading authorities to urge an entire city of nearly 400,000 people to evacuate, officials said.

Heavy rain since late Thursday has flooded hundreds of houses and roads, triggered landslides and destroyed bridges and river banks.

The worst-affected city was Okazaki, some 300 kilometres (180 miles) southwest of Tokyo, which was hit by 146 millimetres (nearly six inches) of rain per hour early Friday.

"I've lived here for 70 years but never experienced anything like this before," a man told public broadcaster NHK.

Another man said: "You could call it a 'guerrilla' downpour. It just lashed down suddenly."

Television footage from a helicopter showed inundated rice fields and roads with cars and buildings half-submerged.

Police recovered the body of Suzue Kuroyanagi, 76, in an inundated house. Her husband had called rescuers, saying water had come up to his chest and his wife was swept away.

The city in Aichi prefecture advised all of its 376,000 residents to evacuate temporarily.

However, only 50 people evacuated with most staying at home as the rain moved away by early afternoon, a disaster prevention official in the city said.

The government set up an emergency centre at the prime minister's office and sent troops to help relief and rescue efforts, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said in Tokyo.

An 80-year-old woman who was living in one of damaged houses went missing.

"She had a feeble back and legs and was living alone. I guess she had trouble running away," a worried neighbour told NHK.

In Ichinomiya, another city in Aichi, a man believed to be delivering morning newspapers was found unconscious after falling with his bicycle into an irrigation ditch.

He was sent to hospital in critical condition, a city official said.

Corrupt officials blamed for Kosi flood that leaves millions homeless in India

(Krishna Murari Kishan/Reuters)

More than 250,000 homes have been destroyed by the floods in Bihar India

Image :1 of 4

Rhys Blakely in Bombay, and Joanna Sugden

Two million people have been left homeless and scores killed by the worst flooding in India in half a century, amid allegations that river defences were neglected by corrupt officials.

The waters rose in the state of Bihar after the Kosi river, swollen by monsoon rains, burst an upstream damn in Nepal ten days ago. The waterway reverted to a heavily populated course it last flowed along 250 years ago, killing at least 55 people, destroying 250,000 homes and leaving thousands of acres submerged.

Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, today called the floods "a national calamity" and announced £114 million in relief for the area. The death toll is expected to soar as water-borne diseases such as dysentery take hold. Food riots have already broken out in several areas.

Experts said that a river embankment in Nepal — for which the Indian government is responsible under a treaty between the two countries — failed on August 18 when the river was flowing at only about a sixth of the design capacity of the defence. Locals who noted that the river was about to breach the embankment three days before it did were ignored.

Continue

India Floods A 'National Calamity'

The Indian Prime Minister has declared flooding in the Bihar state a "national calamity" as efforts focused on the evacuation of more than 120,000 people.

Two million people have so far been displaced by the flooding

The flooding, which is said to be the worst in 50 years, was caused after torrential rain caused the Kosi river in neighbouring Nepal to break its banks.

A huge wave of water was unleashed, smashing mud embankments downstream in India's northern Bihar state.

Manmohan Singh announced a relief package of $228m and 125,000 tonnes of grain for those affected by the floods.

"If there is a need for more, we will give more," he said after a tour of the devastated region.

"We would like to assure the people of Bihar that all India will support them through this difficulty."

The government has also promised tents and helicopters to aid the military-backed evacuation.

Villagers in Bihar state flee

But officials say more bad weather has prompted fears that rivers will to continue to overflow.

Sky News India correspondent Alex Crawford said there was so much water in the river, it had now entirely changed course.

"Authorities are making an urgent appeal for the people who are left to get out," she said. "It is one of the biggest evacuations of humans - certainly in India - but possibly the world."

Local TV pictures showed flood waters pouring into homes through windows, submerging villages, roads and railway tracks.

The Kosi, which flows into the Ganges, is known as the 'River of Sorrow' because of its record of disastrous floods during the monsoon season.

Future Storms, Global Warming Could Devastate Louisiana Coast

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: More Money Needed to Recover From Hurricane Katrina

Three years ago, images of immense destruction and poverty in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward filled the television screens of Americans following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Since then, recovery has been slow -- too slow, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told ABC News' Bob Woodruff.

"I think the recovery -- not only in the Ninth Ward but in the city -- is not where it should be three years after the storm," Jindal said.

Watch the story on "Focus Earth" Saturday, Aug. 30, on Discovery's Planet Green network.

Now, Jindal and others in the area are keeping a close watch on Tropical Storm Gustav, which is barreling in their direction. Though the storm's path hasn't been confirmed, it is expected to turn into a Category 3 hurricane and hit the Gulf Coast sometime Sunday.

Jindal has already declared a state of emergency, and put 3,000 National Guard troops on alert, and New Orleans will issue a mandatory evacuation of the city if a Category 3 storm comes within 60 hours.

All this for a city that's still reeling from Katrina.

A Long Way to Go

Many area residents are blaming city and state officials for stalling the process, even as they hear about disaster relief plans like the $10.3 billion Road Home Katrina recovery program funded by the federal government....Continue

India: Food riots erupt as flood woes worsen

An aerial view shows the flood-affected area of Madhepura in the eastern state of Bihar yesterday. The Kosi river smashed through mud embankments and changed course last week, unleashing huge walls of water that inundated hundreds of villages and towns in Bihar

PATNA: Food riots erupted yesterday in eastern India, where more than 2mn people have been forced from their homes and about 250,000 houses destroyed in what officials say are the worst floods in 50 years.

One person was killed in Madhepura district of Bihar when angry villagers fought among themselves over limited supplies of food and medicines at overcrowded relief centres.

The Kosi river in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, smashed through mud embankments and changed course last week, unleashing huge walls of water that inundated hundreds of villages and towns.

The floods have since killed nearly 50 people in Bihar.
Stranded villagers waved at passing helicopters and sent text messages to local authorities from rooftops of flooded buildings.
“Time is running out for me and there is no relief in sight and I have not eaten for days,” a message from flood victim Sanjeev Kumar read.

Torrential rains have killed more than 1,000 people in South Asia since the monsoon began in June, mainly in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 725 people have lost their lives. Other deaths were reported from Nepal and Bangladesh.

Some experts blame the floods on heavier monsoon rains caused by global warming, while others say authorities have failed to take preventive measures and improve infrastructure.

Officials said flood victims had looted grain at some places in Bihar. Others ran for miles under helicopters that were dropping food packets. One boy was killed and about 30 people were injured in Supaul district when food packets fell on them...Continue

Rat meat in demand in Cambodia as inflation bites

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday.

With consumer price inflation at 37 percent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel (69 pence) from 1,200 riel last year.

Spicy field rat dishes with garlic thrown in have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel a kg.

Officials said rats were fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta, making it easier for villagers to catch them.

"Many children are happy making some money from selling the animals to the markets, but they keep some for their family," Ly Marong, an agriculture official, said by telephone from the Koh Thom district on the border with Vietnam.

"Not only are our poor eating it, but there is also demand from Vietnamese living on the border with us."

He estimated that Cambodia supplied more than a tonne of live rats a day to Vietnam.

Rats are also eaten widely in Thailand, while a state government in eastern India this month encouraged its people to eat.

Gulf coast prepares for deadly Gustav

A woman in Havana shelters herself from rains brought by Hurricane Gustav on Tuesday.

Eight people die in Dominican Republic landslide, raising death toll to 11

Gustav swirled toward Cuba on Wednesday after triggering flooding and landslides that killed at least 11 people in the Caribbean. Its track pointed toward the U.S. Gulf coast, including Louisiana, where Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc three years ago.

Oil prices jumped above $119 a barrel as workers began to evacuate from the offshore rigs responsible for a quarter of U.S. crude production.

"We know it's going to head into the Gulf. After that, we're not sure where it's heading," said Rebecca Waddington, a meteorologist at the Miami-based National Hurricane Center. "For that reason, everyone in Gulf needs to be monitoring the storm. At that point, we're expecting it to be a Category 3 hurricane."...Continue

Food riots as Indian floods destroy 250,000 homes

PATNA, India, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Food riots erupted on Wednesday in eastern India, where more than 2 million people have been forced from their homes and about 250,000 houses destroyed in what officials say are the worst floods in 50 years.

One person was killed in Madhepura district when angry villagers fought among themselves over limited supplies of food and medicines at overcrowded relief centres.

The Kosi river in Bihar, one of India's poorest states, smashed through mud embankments and changed course last week, unleashing huge walls of water that inundated hundreds of villages and towns. The floods have since killed nearly 50 people in Bihar.

Stranded villagers waved at passing helicopters and sent text messages to local authorities from rooftops of flooded buildings.

"Time is running out for me and there is no relief in sight and I have not eaten for days," a message from flood victim Sanjeev Kumar read.

Torrential rains have killed more than 1,000 people in South Asia since the monsoon began in June, mainly in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 725 people have lost their lives. Other deaths were reported from Nepal and Bangladesh.

Some experts blame the floods on heavier monsoon rains caused by global warming, while others say authorities have failed to take preventive measures and improve infrastructure.

Officials said flood victims had looted grain at some places in Bihar. Others ran for miles under helicopters that were dropping food packets. One boy was killed and about 30 people were injured in Supaul district when food packets fell on them.

"We have enough stock of food grains but the problem is that we have limited means of transport to supply them among the villagers," Rajesh Kumar Gupta, a government official in Madhepura, told Reuters by telephone. Continued...

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50 horses drown in Mexico City floods

A nightwatchman and at least 50 horses drowned after heavy rain flooded an equestrian club in Mexico City, state rescue services said.

Two other people also died in overnight storms, media reports said.

The 71-year-old nightwatchman drowned at the La Barranca club - near the Mexico State border - as he tried to rescue the horses, state rescue services head Arturo Vilchis told AFP.

"A torrent of mud caused by heavy rains was too strong (for him) and he drowned along with between 50 and 60 horses," Mr Vilchis said.

In a night of fierce storms, a 13-year-old boy was swept away by a current as he crossed an avenue in Ecatapec in Mexico State, and a man died after being swept away in a stream in north-eastern Zacatecas State, press reports said.

Mystery Virus Kills 160 In India

Rural Kanpur is fighting its most frightening scourge — a mystery disease that has left a long line of bodies in its trail and doesn’t seem anywhere finished.

What started from one village two weeks ago has now spread to 350 and has so far claimed 160 lives. Thousands more are bed-ridden. On an average, 15 to 20 people have been dying every day; Saturday saw the highest toll in a day: 24.

The district’s health department is somewhat confused about the nature of the disease that has struck. At the beginning, the diagnosis was viral fever. Then doctors concluded that it was falciparum malaria. But after two weeks, they have ruled out both but still don’t have an exact answer.

“We really don’t know what exactly it is; we are depending on the finding of a team of specialists from New Delhi,” said Dr RC Agarwal, the district’s new chief medical officer.

Specialists from the Infectious Disease and Surveillance Programme, New Delhi, have collected the blood samples of a few patients. The team will make its findings known in a few days.

But the fear of the unknown has resulted in a mass exodus of villagers. Pulandar and Dhar villages under Malasa block are
the worst affected. About 1,000 people in these two villages alone are battling the disease. Dhar has taken the maximum number of casualties. The village has lost about 30 people but only one doctor has visited it so far. That was 15 days ago.

Kuldeep Singh and Ram Avtaar of Dhar break down screaming: “A lot of people can still be saved; we need doctors.” Rajesh (38) of Pulandar village says: “Everyone here is waiting for doctors to come and examine people; but they aren’t coming and we are counting our dead.” On Sunday morning, the mystery fever claimed Tilak Singh (35) and his nephew Vikas Singh (11).

Dhar still remains a perfect picture of neglect and apathy. Heaps of garbage continue to be littered all over. Houses are surrounded by stinking filth and roads are waterlogged — perfect breeding grounds for diseases like malaria. The village’s secondary school has been shut down for an indefinite period. Children would wade through knee-deep water to reach the school.

Santosh Prajapati is struggling to cope with looking after eight family members who have been afflicted by the disease. He has hired a tractor to shift them to a hospital in Kanpur city. “I have borrowed money from my relatives… if they remain here they will die,” he says.

Africans 'face food catastrophe'

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Africans 'face food catastrophe'

Millions of East Africans are at risk of starvation due to rocketing food prices, Oxfam has warned.

Spiralling costs combined with successive droughts, violent conflict and endemic poverty have left up to 13 million in the region in urgent need of aid.

Oxfam has called for immediate action and increased donor support to avert the coming crisis, noting that a UN appeal for emergency assistance for Somalia has received only 37 per cent of funding needed.

Food costs have soared in recent months, with the cost of imported rice in Somalia rising by 350 per cent since the beginning of last year.

Areas of Ethiopia have seen the price of wheat more than double over a six-month period.

It is estimated that in those two east African nations alone there are an estimated 7.2 million people in need of emergency assistance.

In Turkana, northern Kenya, an Oxfam survey suggests that a quarter of children are suffering from acute malnutrition.

Oxfam's Rob McNeil, who has just returned from the region, said: "This is a catastrophe in the making. We have time to act before it becomes a reality.

"The cost of food has escalated by up to 500 per cent in some places, leaving people who have suffered drought after drought in utter destitution.

"Some of the roads we travelled on were littered with dead livestock.

"People are increasingly becoming desperate. I saw people in one village reduced to pounding the food pellets intended for their animals into porridge to feed their families."

A spokesman for the Department for International Development said: "Too many people around the world are going hungry tonight because of increases in food prices and that is why this Government has already committed over £800 million to help avert this crisis.

"Much of this is going on immediate action to supply food in East Africa where people are most in need but also on longer term measures to improve countries' ability to cope with increases in food prices and droughts in the future.

"We know there is more to do and so we will continue to work with other countries to provide support to Africa during this difficult time."

Farmer's Almanac Predicts Colder, 'Catastrophic' Winter

LEWISTON, Maine — People worried about the high cost of keeping warm this winter will draw little comfort from the Farmers' Almanac, which predicts below-average temperatures for most of the U.S.

"Numb's the word," says the 192-year-old publication, which claims an accuracy rate of 80 to 85 percent for its forecasts that are prepared two years in advance.

The almanac's 2009 edition, which goes on sale Tuesday, says at least two-thirds of the country can expect colder-than-average temperatures this winter, with only the Far West and Southeast in line for near-normal readings.

"This is going to be catastrophic for millions of people," said almanac editor Peter Geiger.

The almanac predicts above-normal snowfall for the Great Lakes and Midwest, especially during January and February, and above-normal precipitation for the Southwest in December and for the Southeast in January and February. The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions will likely have an unusually wet or snowy February, the almanac said.

In contrast, the usually wet Pacific Northwest could be a bit drier than normal in February.

Looking ahead to summer, the almanac foresees near-normal temperatures in most places. But much of the Southwest should prepare for unusually hot weather in June and July, while Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas will get oppressive July heat and humidity.

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1 Million Cut off by Monsoon Floods in India

PATNA, India (AP) - Authorities struggled Monday to get aid to more than 1 million people stranded by floods in a north Indian state, with one local government leader describing the situation as a catastrophe.

Air force helicopters and troops were trying to get food to people in the stricken areas of Bihar state that were inundated by flood waters last week after torrential rains caused the Kosi river in neighboring Nepal to burst its banks.

The Bihar state government issued a plea to relief agencies to step in and help get food and shelter to the residents.

"It is not a normal flood, but a catastrophe," said Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar after making an aerial survey of the ravaged districts.

Kumar said more than 1 million people were cut off from the rest of the country because the floods had washed away roads and made railway lines impassable.

India's monsoon season, which lasts from June to September, brings rain vital for the country's farmers but also massive destruction. Floods, mudslides, collapsing houses and lightning strikes kill hundreds of people every year.

This year's monsoon has killed more than 330 people in India so far. In 2007, monsoon floods killed more than 2,200 people across South Asia and left 31 million others homeless, short of food or with other problems. The United Nations called last year's floods the worst in living memory.

Officials said they were struggling to cope because the Kosi river changed its course after bursting its banks, flooding areas not usually affected by the seasonal monsoon.

"We are in for a long battle as the floods have come in areas which are not prone to it," said the state's Disaster Management Secretary Prataya Amrit. He said the areas lacked facilities and relief centers for dealing with floods.

Kumar said he had appealed to the Indian Embassy in Nepal to secure permission for India to send in workers and equipment to try to mend the breach in the river.

Photo Shows Stars Born in Huge Cosmic Wombs

A glitzy new family portrait of a star-forming region supports a theory that the universe's most massive stars carve out these wispy wombs and thereby enable stellar embryos to take shape.

The infrared photograph, which will be detailed in the Dec. 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, bolsters a long-held theory of star formation.

Stars are born within clouds of gas and dust that dot most galaxies. Scientists think that turbulence from the wind of other stars within these clouds gives rise to knots of material with enough mass that the gas and dust begins to collapse under their own weight. As the cloud collapses, the material heats up and forms an embryonic star, or "protostar," at its center. The protostar develops into a full-fledged star powered by thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen and other light elements in its core.

One theory describes a process whereby massive stars, weighing from 15 to about 60 times the mass of the sun, can trigger the formation of such clumps of material and, in turn, stellar newborns.

The theory goes these stars are so hefty some of their material slides off in the form of winds. The scorching-hot stars also blaze with intense radiation. Over time, both the wind and radiation blast away surrounding cloud material, carving out expanding cavities.

As the winds and radiation make more elbow room, gas and dust get pushed against the rim of the cavity. Astronomers have long suspected that this compression ignites successive generations of stars along a cavity's expanding rim.

This result came into sparkling view with new images by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of a star-forming region called W5, which appears to span an area of the sky equal to four full moons and is located about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. A light-year is the distance light will travel in a year, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).

The image showed a family of stars that got progressively younger with distance from a cavity center. So the elderly, most massive stars sat in the centers of W5's two hollow cavities and the younger stars lined the cavities' rims and tips of the region's elephant-trunk-like pillars.

This ladder-like separation of ages provides some of the best evidence yet, the researchers say, that massive stars give rise to younger generations.

"Triggered star formation continues to be very hard to prove," said lead researcher Xavier Koenig of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "But our preliminary analysis shows that the phenomenon can explain the multiple generations of stars seen in the W5 region."

The team plans to follow up the study with more detailed measurements of the stars' ages to see if there is a distinct age difference between the stars just inside and outside the cavity rim.

Chad: Floods cause devastation, affect 30,000, leave 10,000 homeless

(N'Djamena / New York / Geneva: 22 August 2008): An estimated 30,000 people have been affected by floods in and around southern Chad's town of Sarh. They have lost essential domestic goods or their health has been affected. An estimated 10,000 of them have also lost their home and are highly vulnerable. Three people, caught under their collapsing homes, have been reported dead, and eight seriously injured.

"We are working closely with the Government, to bring life-saving assistance to those in need as soon as possible", stated Kingsley Amaning, Humanitarian Coordinator in the landlocked African nation.

Torrential rains have been hitting Sarh since late July, and have continued up to the present time. The most immediate needs included shelter, non-food items (NFIs), water purification materials, health supplies, and nutritional supplements. "We had contingency mechanisms in place to respond to this kind of eventuality, and they are now being implemented", noted Philippe Verstraeten, Programme Coordinator at the Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator.

A total of 122 latrines or showers have been destroyed, posing a serious health hazard. "At the present time, our major concern is to avert potential waterborne epidemics and other infections", said Dr. Dah ould-Cheik, acting representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Chad. "The spread of malaria, diarrhoeal and respiratory diseases, could affect up to 30,000 people", he added. The WHO has delivered an initial stock of emergency medical supplies to health facilities in Sarh on 12 August, especially for the treatment of malaria, diarrhoea, injuries, and common diseases.

The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has meanwhile provided products for the impregnation of 200 mosquito nets covering 1,000 individuals highly vulnerable to malaria, 10 kg of chlorine for use in 2,700 water points, 17 family water kits covering 20,000 beneficiaries, and 45 boxes of high-protein biscuits for 5,400 children as well as pregnant and lactating women.

There are also concerns about food supply on the longer term. A total of 5,882 hectares of cultivated land has been flooded. "We are currently assessing whether, and to what extent, the floods have actually destroyed agricultural production, and what the damage to the harvest may be", said Marianne Sow, acting representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in the country.

Chad is already affected by a humanitarian crisis, mainly in the east, home to over 255,000 Sudanese refugees and over 185,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), and in some areas of the south, home to over 55,000 Central African refugees. Other areas of Chad are not considered affected by a chronic humanitarian crisis, and are instead the subject of intense international efforts for development.

Giant kangaroo 'hunted into extinction'

Weighty debate: An artist's impression of the Palorchestes azael, a marsupial similar to a ground sloth that weighed about 500 kilograms (Source: Peter Schouten)

The first evidence the giant prehistoric kangaroos that roamed Tasmania were hunted into extinction by humans has been found in a cave in a rainforest-clad region in the north-west of the island state.

A team of Australian and British researchers report in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that radiocarbon dating of fossil remains of seven megafauna species pushes the survival of the giant prehistoric animals on the Australian island state forward to 41,000 years ago.

Humans are thought to have arrived in Tasmania 43,000 to 40,000 years ago, when the island became temporarily connected by a land bridge to mainland Australia.

The researchers, led by former University of Wollongong palaeoecologist Chris Turney, say it was previously thought Tasmania's megafauna, animals weighing more than 40 kilograms, died out before human arrival.

However, they say their study shows giant kangaroos surviving up to 2000 years after the first humans arrived.

They base this claim on radiocarbon dating of the fossil remains of seven megafauna species and associated sediments from four sites in Tasmania.

The fossil remains ranged from 127,000 years old to the earlier date of 41,000 years ago.

The younger fossils were found in the Mount Cripps cave and included the remains of a subadult giant kangaroo, Protemnodon anak, which the researchers estimate weighed about 60 kilograms.

"The reason this research is important is because in Tasmania it was assumed that megafauna had gone extinct before humans arrived. This paper shows that's not the case," says team member Professor Richard Roberts, a geochronologist from the University of Wollongong.

"This is probably the best evidence we've got for human predation of megafauna," he says.

Austrailian Frogs Under Extinction

UNDER threat ... Queensland is home to many endangered frogs, including the Magnificent Tree Frog.

AUSTRALIAN frogs are facing the biggest wildlife extinction threat since the disappearance of dinosaurs, with 14 of the most endangered species in Queensland.

The warning comes from amphibian expert Natalie Hill, of Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, and University of Queensland frog expert Professor Gordon Grigg.

Ms Hill said Queensland frogs in most danger were stream-dwellers like the Fleays Barred Frog and the Great Barred Frog, found in the Gold Coast hinterland, and the Lienis Frog, only found in the Ghungalu National Park west of Rockhampton.

"In some spots in the hinterland the Fleays are gone already," she said.

Other species, including those found in suburban back yards, also needed protecting if they were to survive, Ms Hill said.

The threat has been recognised by naming 2008 The Year of the Frog, with experts saying people must act now to halt climate change, habitat loss, water pollution, introduced predators and a pathogenic skin-eating fungus, which have taken frogs to the brink of extinction around the world.

"The biggest contributor to their decline is the chytrid fungus, which has been transported around the world via toads humans use for medical research," Ms Hill said.

More than 3000 of the world's 6000 species of amphibians are now at risk of dying out.

Of the 219 Australian species, 122 are in Queensland, placing us at the centre of the battle to save frogs.

Scientists on the Gold Coast plan to build special "mini-arks" to house frogs for breeding programs so they can be released back into the wild.

Ms Hill said further research into how to stop chytrid fungus spreading in the wild needed to be done.

"At the moment we can't stop the fungus in the wild, but there are treatments for captive frogs," she said.

"Over time, it's hoped frogs in captivity may build up a resilience to it and then be released back into the wild."

Ms Hill said the frog extinction risk was the world's "wake-up call".

"In the past 20 years Australia has had eight frogs become extinct. Six of those were in Queensland," she said.

Ms Hill – who will talk about the topic at Gecko House, 139 Duringan St, Currumbin, at 6.30pm Wednesday – said Currumbin planned to build "mini Noah's arks" for frogs as part of a $50 million worldwide program to build high-quarantine safehouses across the planet.

University of Queensland Emeritus Professor Gordon Grigg compared frogs to "the canaries in the coalmines" because of their indicator status of the planet's health.

How can you help?

• Build a frog-friendly garden, including an elevated water feature like a wheelbarrow or barrel surrounded by reeds.
• Limit the amount of chemicals you use in the home or garden to protect our waterways.
• Keep cats and dogs inside at night.
• Wash boots after walking in national parks to stop the spread of the chytrid fungus.

Ivory poachers decimate Congo elephant population

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Poachers in Congo have killed a fifth of the elephants in Africa's oldest national park this year as China buys more ivory, the park's director said on Friday.

Rwandan rebels have killed seven Savannah elephants in the past 10 days alone in the Virunga National Park, along Congo's eastern border with Rwanda and Uganda, Emmanuel de Merode told Reuters.

"We've definitely lost 20 percent of the population this year and probably more," he said. "We have rangers with them, and we're trying to reinforce them. But (the rangers) are outnumbered 20 to one."

The 790,000-hectare (2 million-acre) reserve was home to one of central Africa's largest Savannah elephant herds in the 1970s numbering around 5,000.

But a brutal 1998-2003 war, heavy poaching, corruption and mismanagement of the park have taken a heavy toll. Today conservationists believe no more than 300 elephants remain.

China, among the world's main destinations for illegal ivory, was granted permission last month to buy 108 tonnes of ivory stocks from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

De Merode singled out China's growing appetite for ivory as one of the root causes of this year's increase in elephant killings, as poachers attempt to launder their illegal ivory for legitimate sale.

"It's very difficult to distinguish between legal and illegal stocks," he said.

Despite the official end of the conflict in Congo, the eastern borderlands remain a volatile patchwork of rebel strongholds and militia controlled zones.

Armed clashes between rival armed groups are a regular occurrence, limiting the rangers' ability to patrol, and providing cover for poaching.

The Savannah elephant is a sub-species of the African elephant, which is classified as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Climate change causes birds to lay eggs early

Climate change is making British birds lay their eggs earlier in the year, according to a major survey of how common species are changing their behavior to cope with warmer temperatures.

Analysis of 30,000 nests shows that birds such as the chaffinch and the robin are laying their eggs about a week earlier than in the 1960s. A similar pattern has been seen for other species, such as blue tits, great tits and swallows.

The survey also found that birds were altering their nesting and migration patterns, and traveling further to find food. The change in egg-laying behavior has prompted concerns that young birds could emerge in spring before suitable food is available.

Matt Murphy, ornithologist for the Countryside Council for Wales said climate change was affecting the breeding patterns of pied flycatchers living in Welsh oak woodlands.

He said: ""They appear to be breeding earlier across a number of sites and the worry is they may eventually breed so early they are out of sync with their major food source of caterpillars.""

The annual State of the UK's Birds report was produced by several conservation groups, including the RSPB, Natural England and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. It shows that drier summers are forcing species such as the song thrush to rear fewer chicks. The birds rely on earthworms for food, which are harder to find in drier ground. (Source: Guardian) Dr Mark Avery, conservation director for the RSPB, said: ""This year's report shows that climate change is with us already and from our gardens to our seas, birds are having to respond rapidly to climate change simply to survive. As often before, birds are acting like the canaries in a mine shaft and giving us early warning of dangerous change.""

The report found many of the UK's farmland and woodland birds species were continuing to decline, particularly specialists that require a particular habitat, such as the lesser-spotted woodpecker.

In Scotland, there has been a fall in the breeding success of seabirds such as guillemots, puffins and kittiwakes, as warming sea temperatures affect the food chain.

Conservationists are concerned the drop in productivity, as a result of a lack of sandeels, will mean fewer breeding birds and continued decline of key species.

The critically endangered Balearic shearwater, another seabird, has been spotted more often in the UK, as climate change forces it to travel further to find fish.

But the report said there have been large declines in numbers of over-wintering wading birds such as purple sandpipers, ringed plovers and dunlins, which come to the UK's estuaries from northerly and easterly breeding grounds.

It said the birds could be ""short stopping"" - remaining on the continent as the conditions there become more suitable in the winter.

The report said that a dramatic reduction in duck numbers spending the winter at Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, suggested some key bodies of water in Europe were no longer freezing over. (Source: BBC)

Warming threatens crucial Himalayan water resources

This undated handout picture shows a view of Lake Imja Tsho in a valley situated south of Everest in Nepal

STOCKHOLM (AFP) — Climate change poses a serious threat to essential water resources in the Himalayan region putting the livelihoods of 1.3 billion people at risk, experts said Thursday.

The mountainous region, home to the world's largest glaciers and permafrost area outside the polar regions, has seen rapid glacial melting and dramatic changes in rainfall, experts at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm said.

"Himalayan glaciers are retreating more rapidly than anywhere else in the world," said Mats Eriksson, programme manager for water and hazard management at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

Although high altitudes, remoteness and cooperation difficulties between countries in the region have made it difficult to conduct comprehensive studies, Eriksson said it was obvious "the region is very strongly affected by climate change."

"The glaciers' retreat is enormous -- up to 70 metres (230 feet) per year," he told AFP.

Xu Jianchu, who heads the Centre for Mountain Ecosystem Studies in China, pointed out that temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau for instance were increasing by 0.3 degrees Celsius each decade.

"That's double the worldwide average," he said.

This has a large impact in a region where melting glaciers and snow account for about 50 percent of the water that flows down mountains, feeding into nine of the largest rivers in Asia.

The Himalayas stretch across China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bhutan and Afghanistan, and the mountain range thus constitutes a major source of water for some of the most populous parts of the planet.

Eriksson and other experts said the region covers 1.3 billion people.

"Snow and glacial ice melting provide a very important source for fresh water for irrigation, energy and drinking water downstream," Xu said.

Glaciers hold numerous capacities to store water, so although water levels initially rise as the ice melts, in the long term their disappearance leads to less available water downstream.

"Livelihoods will be severely affected by this," Eriksson said.

At the same time as glaciers are melting, scientists say precipitation patterns in many parts of the Himalayas are changing dramatically, serving up more rain in the monsoon periods and less in dry seasons.

"The drier areas are becoming drier, while the wetter areas are becoming wetter," said Rakhshan Roohi of the Water Resource Research Institute in Pakistan.

Eriksson said changes had been especially felt in the drier western part of the Himalayas.

"In the past, the rivers had a fairly constant flow throughout the summer due to melt-water ... Now you have a lot of rain in the spring and then you have fairly dry conditions throughout the rest of the summer," he said.

On top of the more uncertain harvest conditions, which are prompting many people to migrate, farmers and others also face a growing number of natural disasters like flash floods and bursting glacier lakes.

"Maybe before your district was suffering from one flash flood every season, and that was perhaps what people managed to cope with. But if you get three or four or five flash floods, maybe that's too much. The question is how much more can people tolerate without losing their basis for livelihood," Eriksson said.

The Himalayan mountains does not produce much of the greenhouse gases that are so drastically altering its ecosystem, and in fact functions as a carbon sink, capturing carbon dioxide to mitigate global warming.

Xu however cautioned that increased glacial melting means the captured CO2 will seep back into the atmosphere.

"This will transform the carbon sink into a carbon source ... more soil carbon will be released with the melting of glaciers and permafrost," he said.

Record flooding hits Ireland, global warming might be to blame

Heavy flooding hit Ireland this past Monday, after a second weekend of record summer rains. At Dublin airport, almost seven inches of rain has already been recorded, more than double the August average and almost a quarter of what would be expected in an entire year. And this is in Ireland, a place which already gets its fair share of rain.

There has been hardly any lightening of the rain since August 8th, when three inches of rain fell in Dublin. Over 100 people were evacuated from their homes in the town of Carlow after a river flooded. A landslide partially derailed a train on the Dublin to Cork line and road closures are happening all over place. Wheat and barley crops are also at risk.

So, is this severe weather due to climate change? Depends who you ask. According to the Reuters article, Irish Green Party lawmaker Mary White said that the severe floods "can almost certainly be related to the changing weather patterns." However a spokesman for Met Eirean, Ireland's national meteorological service, said that the nature of weather patterns means its too early to make a direct link to global warming.

Climate Change Already Drying Up the Southwest

University of Arizona scientists have found evidence that climate change is already drying up the Southwest.

Greenhouse effect computer simulations predict that climate change patterns will push the jet stream to the north, reducing the number of winter and early spring storms. Stephanie McAfee at U of A in Tucson, has now found evidence that the shift is already underway, causing fewer late winter and spring storms.

"This really confirms that this pattern has been happening already and it's not likely due to chance," Jonathan Overpeck of the U of A told me. Overpeck was not part of McAfee's research team, but has long led efforts to publicize the risk faced by the Southwest as a result of climate change.

The most striking prediction of a coming climate change-induced Dust Bowl came earlier this year from Richard Seager, who published a paper in Science magazine describing the stark future suggested by climate models as a result of climate change. (See ABQJournal story here, and an excellent writeup by Seager and his colleagues here.)

McAfee and U of A colleague Joellen Russell compared data on the storm track path over the last three decades with actual rainfall data, testing what the models are telling us with ground truth. They found that the decline in late winter and early spring rainfall is consistent with what the models say we should expect as climate change pushes the jet stream to the north, and is unlikely to have happened this way just by chance.

Their paper, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, is not on line yet, but Mari Jensen of the University's public affairs office has done a nice writeup (which is what drew my attention to the work).

I'll be talking to some of the region's experts on the issue, and I'll have a story to share with Journal readers later in the week.

Fay Becoming 'Catastrophic' Flood Event

MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Tropical Storm Fay is becoming a catastrophic flooding event, dumping "historic" amounts of rain on parts of Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist said Wednesday.

seeing historic levels of rain with totals in excess of 20 inches already," Crist said. "Additional rainfall of eight to fifteen inches is possible through Saturday."The storm has already dumped 20 inches of rain in some cities."This storm is turning into a serious, catastrophic flooding event, particularly in southern Brevard County," Crist said. "The weather forecast tells us that some areas could receive rainfall as much as 30 inches."Officials have recommended residents not travel around Central Florida because of the flooding.Fay has been nearly stationary but was expected to move north and westward over the next few days and spread heavy rain across north Florida.Tropical storm-force winds are forecast to spread along coastal parts of northeast Florida Wednesday night and early Thursday.The National Guard has been activated and roughly 500 guard members have been sent to 14 counties throughout the state of Florida, Crist said.

Alligator Menaces Homeowners

Meanwhile, a Fay-flooded community is being warned about an alligator swimming in their streets and near homes.Residents on Wickham Road in Melbourne were forced to use canoes to maneuver around their flooded streets.It's the same area an alligator was reported to be swimming in the flooded neighborhood streets.

Fay Hugs Coast

Tropical Storm Fay weakened Wednesday enough that it may not make it out into the Atlantic Ocean as predicted by the National Hurricane Center."We are watching it hug the coast," Local 6 meteorologist Tom Sorrells said. "If it doesn't come out to the open water, that is actually better for everyone as long as we can shut the rain off in southern Brevard County."The system stalled Wednesday and continued to soak the area."We have talked about it being an agonizing run through Florida," Sorrells said. "The agonizing run is on. It is only drifting north at 3 mph. Basically, it has come undone."Even if the system makes it out to the Atlantic Ocean, as indicated by the National Hurricane Center's path, it should not be a "slamming" landfall, Sorrells reported."It has stayed over land longer than anticipated and it has weakened quite a bit and that is great news," Sorrells said. "Even though flooding looks nasty, it is great news that it is not getting stronger."Wind speeds associated with the system are reaching 35 mph on land with the stronger winds in the Atlantic Ocean Wednesday afternoon.

Tornado Damages 54 Homes

Also, at least three people were injured and 54 homes damaged when a Fay-spawned tornado touched down in Brevard County Tuesday.

Barefoot Bay resident Frank Amoretti reported seeing a tornado touch down in the vicinity of Brown Road and Puffin Drive west of U.S. 1 in Brevard County Tuesday afternoon."I saw the swirling and stuff and there was a lot of debris and everything," resident Frank Amoretti said. "As quick as it came in, it looked like it went right back up. It looks like part of a house or part of a roof and a couple of carports and a lot of aluminum and insulation and construction barricades from Mico Road."Brevard County reported 50 structures were damaged by the tornado and nine of them were completely destroyed.The tornado was confirmed by the National Weather Service to have touched down about an hour after it was reported, Wilson said.The National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for Brevard and Osceola counties before the damage reports.

Wars Over Water

Worldwide battle for water

The wars of the next few decades could be fought over access to water, say some analysts.

Video

Climate change creating havoc in Pacific islands

Sea level rise is affecting the South Pacific island of Vanuatu.

Pacific island leader says rising sea levels, storms from climate change are wreaking havoc

Climate change is wreaking havoc in the small island states of the South Pacific and assistance is needed for those already hit by rising seawater and severe storms, an islands leader said Wednesday.
Pacific Islands' Forum chairman and Niue Premier Toke Talagi said the frequency of severe cyclones and rising sea levels meant the challenge of climate change is no longer a matter of scientific theory.

"The evidence is quite clear that climate change is already wreaking havoc here," he said as he opened the annual summit of 16 nations.

Rising waters have forced villagers inland on four low-lying island groups in the region -- Vanuatu, Kiribati (where two uninhabited islands disappeared under water in 1999), Tuvalu and the Cantaret Islands in Papua New Guinea.

Two people died when powerful winds from Cyclone Heta hammered Niue in 2004 and waves swept through villages perched atop 165-foot (50 meter) cliffs, wrecking homes, the local hospital and other buildings.

"We shouldn't wait until a worse human catastrophe occurs before acting," Talagi said.

The international attention now focused on climate change "presents an opportunity for the region to negotiate and secure tangible assistance for people already affected by climate change," he said.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that the U.N. and the Pacific state of Samoa are working to establish a Climate Change Center to coordinate support for Pacific Island countries to combat the impact of global warming in the region.

"Climate change is not science fiction. As your countries know all too well, it is real and present and your communities are facing the adverse impacts everyday," he said in a statement to the summit.

Earlier, representatives from the forum's seven small island states called for the completion of a deal for the bulk purchase of oil products to decrease energy costs for the mini states. Greenhouse gas emissions from oil products are a contributory source of the atmospheric warming that has helped trigger climate change.

Also Wednesday, South Pacific leaders denounced Fiji's military ruler for snubbing the summit and said measures would be discussed to pressure the coup leader to return the island nation to democracy. Forum rules do not allow for the expulsion of a member.

The stern rebukes came after Fiji's leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, announced Monday he would boycott the meeting, complaining that Fiji was being pressured to hold elections too soon after the bloodless coup he staged in December 2006.

Earlier this month the coup leader postponed promised March 2009 elections.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called Bainimarama's boycott a "direct and deliberate slight," and said measures must be taken in response to his "contempt for democracy."

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark likened the situation with Bainimarama to that of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the Commonwealth.

"It seems a little like the dance we went through with Zimbabwe and the Commonwealth. ... Mr. Mugabe left rather than face his peers," Clark told reporters.

In a statement sent to 15 other government leaders at the summit, Bainimarama said if the forum continued to insist on Fiji holding elections by March 2009 -- a pledge he made to leaders at their 2007 meeting -- then Fiji could leave the grouping.

"I will be compelled ... to tell the people of my country that they must now be prepared to suffer more sanctions, and international isolation as we pursue ... a better, more durable democracy," he wrote.

The summit will consider a report from six regional foreign ministers who visited Fiji in July. The report said only a lack of political will was delaying elections in the country, which has had four coups since 1987.

Bainimarama attacked the report, which has not yet been made public, saying his government was "dismayed and disappointed" by its contents.

The 16 nation Pacific Islands Forum comprises Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Australia: Drought spreads to cities

THE drought still holds almost two-thirds of NSW in its grip, with hardworking families now feeling the pinch at the supermarket checkout, NSW Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald says.

The area of NSW that is officially drought-declared has increased slightly over the last month, from 65 per cent to 66.2 per cent, Mr Macdonald said.

Another 18.5 per cent of NSW is marginal, down from 20.9 per cent in mid-July.

Only 15.3 per cent of NSW is declared "satisfactory", up from 14.1 per cent last month.

Mr Macdonald said that while farmers remained optimistic about this year's crop prospects, above average spring rainfall was needed to give them a reasonable yield.

"The good news is that our cropping sector is in a much better position than this time last year," he said.

"However, we really need good rain before the end of August.

"Only the eastern third of NSW received reasonable rainfall in July and unfortunately this rainfall was just not widespread or significant enough to make a real dent in the ongoing dry conditions for much of regional NSW."

Mr Macdonald said the drought was not only hitting rural areas hard.

City dwellers were also paying the price at supermarkets for staples such as rice, he said.

"Water availability in irrigated agriculture areas like the Murray Valley is extremely low - this has a cumulative effect, affecting prices from the farm gate to the checkout," he said.

Warming climate threatens Alaska's vast forests

KENAI NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Here in a 13,700-year-old peat bog, ecologist Ed Berg reaches into the moss and pulls out more evidence of the drastic changes afoot due to the Earth's warming climate.

Rooting through a handful of mossy duff, Berg, an ecologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, shows remains of shrubs and other plants taking hold over the last 30 years in a patch of ground that has long been too soggy for woody plants to grow.

In other words, the ground is drying out, and the peat bog is turning into forest.

"There has been a big change," Berg said. Core samples taken from the bog show moss nearly 22 feet under the ground, with no sign of trees or shrubs growing here for centuries, Berg said.

In 50 years, the bog could be covered by black spruce trees, he said.

Welcome to Alaska, where the blow of climate change will fall harder than on any other U.S. state.

Records indicate that Alaska has already experienced the largest regional warming of any U.S. state -- an average 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) since the 1960s and about 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4.5 degrees Celsius) in the interior of the state during winter months.

"We've got mounds of evidence that an extremely powerful and unprecedented climate-driven change is underway," said Glenn Juday, a forest ecologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Continued...

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Rising acidification of the ocean could eventually wipe out colonies of sea urchins, lobsters,

Rising ocean acidity slows marine fertilization

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Rising acidification of the ocean could reduce fertilization of marine invertebrates and might eventually wipe out colonies of sea urchins, lobsters, mussels and oysters, according to a study.

Scientists knew that ocean acidification was eating away at the shells of marine animals, but the new study has found that rising acidity hindered marine sperm from swimming to and fertilizing eggs in the ocean.

Climate change and the subsequent acidification of the world's oceans will significantly reduce the successful fertilization of certain marine species by the year 2100, said the report by Australian and Swedish scientists.

"If you look at projected rates (of acidity) for the year 2100, we are finding a 25 percent reduction in fertilization," lead-scientist Jane Williamson from Macquarie University told Reuters on Friday.

"We were completely surprised because people had been looking at the effect of acidification on calcified structures of marine animals, but there was no evidence to suggest it was affecting non-calcified structures, like a sperm or an egg," she said.

The surface of the ocean absorbs up to 30 percent of the world's yearly emissions of carbon dioxide. Absorbed carbon dioxide forms a weak acid that is gradually increasing the acidity of the oceans.

The study of sea urchins around southeast Australia found a link between increased ocean acidity and a reduction in swimming speed and motility of sea urchin sperm.

The researchers measured sperm swimming speed, sperm motility, fertilization success and larval developmental success in sea urchins in normal seawater with a pH 8.1 and also in water with a pH 7.7, which is projected to be the level of acidification by 2100. Continued...

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Drought brings cotton industry to its knees

Australia's cotton crop last year was the worst in three decades.

At this time of year cotton farmers would normally be planting next year's crop.

Australia's cotton industry, though, is on the brink of collapse because of the drought and many growers have turned to other farming options.

Angus O'Brien's family has been farming cotton at Warren in north-west New South Wales since the early 1980s and he says cotton gives a better return per hectare than any other crop.

But cotton farming is a water intensive endeavour and Mr O'Brien says the relentless drought has forced growers to switch to other crops.

"We haven't grown any substantial areas really since 2003 and that's been the case right across the industry I'd say except for those that have got bore water," he said.

'Not worth it'

Australia's cotton crop last year was the worst in three decades. It was so bad that many growers are not even bothering to plant it.

Instead cotton farmers are turning to corn or wheat or canola.

Mr O'Brien says presently it's just not worth growing cotton.

"Most cotton growers are now pretty much dry land farmers," he said.

"And by that I mean they rely on rain to grow crops like wheat and canola and chickpeas and those sort of things instead of irrigated cotton."

And the conditions have seen farms go out of business.

But the cotton industry remains optimistic that once the weather turns, cotton too will bounce back.

Cotton Australia chief executive Adam Kay says Australia will always have a cotton industry and contrary to common perception, he believes cotton is one of the more water efficient crops in Australia.

"Per litre of water, we produce more cotton here than anywhere else in the world," he said.

"And the latest technology, we've seen water use efficiency really move over the last few decades and we believe we can double the water use efficiency through, you know, R and D (research and development) in the next decade."

Economic viability

Professor Mike Young, an expert on the economics of water and a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, says the future of cotton farming doesn't necessarily depend on water supplies.

He says it depends on the economic viability of the crop itself.

"What we need is to let the market determine what crops are grown and focus on getting water policy right," he said.

"If cotton farmers think that there's no future in cotton, they will sell the water and get out it.

"They know what's going on and they know the risks they're taking.

"Similarly with rice farmers and with grape farmers."

NASA's Plan to Bomb the Moon and Find Water

Short on time and tight on money, a team of NASA engineers aims to solve the mystery of lunar ice in late winter—by crashing its low-budget kamikaze spacecraft into a crater.

Northrop Grumman engineers in Redondo Beach, Calif., lower the LCROSS spacecraft into a vacuum chamber that simulates conditions in space. It will be destroyed while seeking water ice on the moon.

Astronomers hate the moon. It's so bright that it blinds telescopes like the sun in a driver's eyes. There's no atmosphere, and the geology is basically dead. Maybe that's why, decades after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked there, we have clearer maps of Mars than of our nearest neighbor.

But now, NASA needs to know more. The agency plans to return astronauts to the lunar surface in 12 years as the first step in establishing a permanent outpost. The base could be an ideal location for manufacturing processes best suited for low gravity, or for helium-3 mining to fuel future fusion reactors. The agency also sees the moon as the perfect construction site and launchpad for eventual manned journeys to Mars.

Water is a key ingredient in these grand schemes, because it can be broken down into oxygen for lunar bases and fuel for rockets. In 1998 a probe called Lunar Prospector spotted tantalizing signs of hydrogen in craters at the lunar poles. But no one's sure if the hydrogen is the chemical signature of water ice, possibly deposited by comets and meteors.

NASA's first step toward a moon base is the $491 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a satellite designed to map the terrain in intimate detail. In January 2006, after several years of development, LRO engineers decided to use a larger Atlas V to launch LRO, creating 2200 pounds of extra cargo capacity. The agency put out the word to its 10 research centers: What can you come up with to make use of that space—before the earliest LRO launch window in October 2008?

Earth's Plate Tectonics May Eventually Stop

The super-continent Pangea (or Pangaea) formed 300 million years ago and broke up about 180 million years ago. Credit: University of Texas.

The Pacific is the biggest ocean on Earth, but it’s getting smaller every day. Australasia and the Americas are inching closer together, and in about 350 million years the Pacific will effectively close.

That’s when plate tectonics — the process driving all that slow motion, and one that geologists have assumed to be continuous — may grind to a halt.

Plate tectonics is the movement of enormous sections of Earth’s crust—the plates. New crust forms where plates separate on the seafloor, and existing crust sinks into the mantle when a neighboring plate overrides it at what’s called a subduction zone.

Today, most subduction zones are in the Pacific, and they’ll vanish along with that ocean. Contrary to widespread opinion, others are unlikely to replace them elsewhere, say Paul G. Silver of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Mark D. Behn of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

That would stop plate tectonics worldwide — at least for a geological while.

Silver and Behn point to the Tethys Ocean, an ancient sea that shrank to nothing when squeezed by Africa and India drifting against Eurasia. The disappearing act spawned no new local subduction zones, showing that once lost, the zones aren’t readily replaced.

Plate tectonics may have already taken a global hiatus 900 million years ago, when several continents collided to form the supercontinent Rodinia. The team says various geological indicators suggest that during Rodinia’s 140-million-year existence, the world’s plates were at a standstill.

The research was detailed in the journal Science earlier this year.

Milky Way's Halo Loaded with Star Streams

A new map of the halo of stars that surrounds our Milky Way Galaxy has revealed a complicated structure of crisscrossing stellar streams, many of which have never been detected before.

While the bulk of our galaxy's stars are concentrated in a fairly flat disk and a bulbous central region, the halo is the first thing an intergalactic traveler would encounter upon approaching our home galaxy. The halo begins at the edge of the disk around 65,000 light years from the galactic center and may extend out as far as 300,000 light years from the center of the galaxy. The halo comprises star clusters, clouds of gas, dark matter, and a few lone stars. Some of these pieces were grabbed up by the Milky Way from dwarf galaxies as they passed by.

The largest stellar streams in the halo have been mapped out over the last decade, but new data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) has found many previously unknown smaller streams, remnants of dwarf galaxies that strayed too close and a few surviving companions.

The streams are remnants of smaller galaxies that have been consumed.

The new findings are being presented today at an international symposium in Chicago.

Small streams, small fraction

The survey measured the motions of nearly a quarter million stars in selected areas of the sky, looking for groups traveling at the same velocity. The search turned up 14 distinct structures, 11 of which had never before been seen.

Because the survey has only looked at a small fraction of the Milky Way, the 14 streams found "implies a huge number when we extrapolate out to the rest of the Milky Way," said Kevin Schlaufman, a graduate student at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

There could be close to 1,000 streams in the inner 75,000 light years of the Milky Way, Schlaufman said, assuming each of the 14 structures they observed is a separate stream. There is the possibility that there are actually fewer stream that are simply seen many times in different places.

Strands of pasta

Columbia University researcher Kathryn Johnston describes the halo as "a jumble of pasta."

"In the center of the galaxy, these stellar strands crowd together and you just see a smooth mix of stars," she said. "But as you look further away you can start to pick out individual strands, as well as features more akin to pasta shells that come from dwarfs that were on more elongated orbits."

Dwarf galaxies that pass close to the Milky Way can be stretched by gravitational tides into spaghetti-like strands, which wind around the galaxy as stars trace out the same orbital paths at different rates, Johnston said.

Heidi Newberg, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and her graduate student Nathan Cole have been trying to follow some of these strands as they wind their way around the galaxy.

...Continue

Arctic ice refuses to melt as ordered

Just a few weeks ago, predictions of Arctic ice collapse were buzzing all over the internet. Some scientists were predicting that the "North Pole may be ice-free for first time this summer". Others predicted that the entire "polar ice cap would disappear this summer".

The Arctic melt season is nearly done for this year. The sun is now very low above the horizon and will set for the winter at the North Pole in five weeks. And none of these dire predictions have come to pass. Yet there is, however, something odd going on with the ice data.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado released an alarming graph on August 11, showing that Arctic ice was rapidly disappearing, back towards last year's record minimum. Their data shows Arctic sea ice extent only 10 per cent greater than this date in 2007, and the second lowest on record. Here's a smaller version of the graph:

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)'s troublesome ice graph

The problem is that this graph does not appear to be correct. Other data sources show Arctic ice having made a nice recovery this summer. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center data shows 2008 ice nearly identical to 2002, 2005 and 2006. Maps of Arctic ice extent are readily available from several sources, including the University of Illinois, which keeps a daily archive for the last 30 years. A comparison of these maps (derived from NSIDC data) below shows that Arctic ice extent was 30 per cent greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on the August 12, 2007. (2008 is a leap year, so the dates are offset by one.)

Ice at the Arctic: 2007 and 2008 snapshots

The video below highlights the differences between those two dates. As you can see, ice has grown in nearly every direction since last summer - with a large increase in the area north of Siberia. Also note that the area around the Northwest Passage (west of Greenland) has seen a significant increase in ice. Some of the islands in the Canadian Archipelago are surrounded by more ice than they were during the summer of 1980.

The 30 per cent increase was calculated by counting pixels which contain colors representing ice. This is a conservative calculation, because of the map projection used. As the ice expands away from the pole, each new pixel represents a larger area - so the net effect is that the calculated 30 per cent increase is actually on the low side.

So how did NSIDC calculate a 10 per cent increase over 2007? Their graph appears to disagree with the maps by a factor of three (10 per cent vs. 30 per cent) - hardly a trivial discrepancy.

What melts the Arctic?

The Arctic did not experience the meltdowns forecast by NSIDC and the Norwegian Polar Year Secretariat. It didn't even come close. Additionally, some current graphs and press releases from NSIDC seem less than conservative. There appears to be a consistent pattern of overstatement related to Arctic ice loss.

We know that Arctic summer ice extent is largely determined by variable oceanic and atmospheric currents such as the Arctic Oscillation. NASA claimed last summer that "not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming". The media tendency to knee-jerkingly blame everything on "global warming" makes for an easy story - but it is not based on solid science. ®

Bootnote

And what of the Antarctic? Down south, ice extent is well ahead of the recent average. Why isn't NSIDC making similarly high-profile press releases about the increase in Antarctic ice over the last 30 years?

Dearth Of Sunspot Activity To Herald New Ice Age?

Observatory predicts two degree drop in temperatures over next two decades as solar activity dwindles

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet
Thursday, August 14, 2008

A top observatory that has been measuring sun cycles for over 200 years predicts that global temperatures will drop by two degrees over the next two decades as solar activity grinds to a halt and the planet drastically cools down, potentially heralding the onset of a new ice age.

While the mass media, Al Gore and politicized bodies like the IPCC scaremonger about the perils of global warming and demand the poor and middle class pay CO2 taxes, both hard scientific data and circumstantial evidence points to a clear cooling trend.

Following the end of the Sun’s most active period in over 11,000 years, the last 10 years have displayed a clear cooling trend as temperatures post-1998 leveled out and are now plummeting.

China recently experienced its coldest winter in 100 years while northeast America was hit by record snow levels and Britain suffered its coldest April in decades as late-blooming daffodils were pounded with hail and snow on an almost daily basis. The British summer has also left many yearning for global warming, with temperatures in June and July rarely struggling to get over 16 degrees and on one occasion even dropping as low as 9 degrees in the middle of the afternoon.

“Summer heat continues in short supply, continuing a trend that has dominated much of the 21st Century’s opening decade,” reports the Chicago Tribune. “There have been only 162 days 90 degrees or warmer at Midway Airport over the period from 2000 to 2008. That’s by far the fewest 90-degree temperatures in the opening nine years of any decade on record here since 1930.”

The reason? Sunspot activity has dwindled. There have only been a handful of days in the past two months where any sunspot activity has been observed and over 400 spotless days have been recorded in the current solar cycle.

“The sun’s surface has been fairly blank for the last couple of years, and that has some worried that it may be entering another Maunder minimum, the sun’s 50-year abstinence from sunspots, which some scientists have linked to the Little Ice Age of the 17th century,” reports one science blog.

Long-time man-made global warming advocates NASA assure us that significant sunspot activity will return in 2012, but a recent a paper on recent solar trends by William Livingston and Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, predicts that sunspots will all but vanish after 2015.

Since the sun, and not carbon dioxide, is the principle driver of climate change, a dearth of sunspot activity would herald a repeat of the Maunder Minimum, the name given to the period roughly from 1645 to 1715, when sunspots became exceedingly rare and contributed to the onset of the Little Ice Age during which Europe and North America were hit by bitterly cold winters and the Thames river in London completely froze.

The spotless sun: Eerily quiet solar activity has many scientists concerned that a new ice age could be on the horizon.

Forecasts of a sharp cooling trend are backed by the UK’s Armagh Observatory, which has been observing solar activity for over 200 years.

The observatory notes that solar cycles 21 and 22, which were characterized by being short and intense in their activity, led to the natural global warming observed in the 80’s and 90’s.

“Cycle 23, which hasn’t finished yet, looks like it will be long (at least 12 to 13 years) and cycle 24, which has still to start, looks like it will be exceptionally weak,” writes one observatory scientist.

“Based on the past Armagh measurements, this suggests that over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C — that is, to a level lower than any we have seen in the last 100 years….“Temperatures have already fallen by about 0.5 degrees C over the past 12 months and, if this is only the start of it, it would be a serious concern,” concludes David Watt.

Such predictions are of course of little interest to a global PR machine that butters its bread on attributing every weather event, be it droughts, floods, volcanoes or earthquakes, to man-made global warming.

No matter that the last ten years have showed no global warming and the next 10 years are predicted to show no global warming, the fact that temperatures are clearly dropping in correlation to the lack of sunspot activity means nothing to people who are already committed to a quasi-religious belief system and governments that have resolved to squeeze the middle class citing fraudulent claims of eco-apocalypse as an excuse, while the real environmental crises - deforestation, GM madness, cell phone tower radiation, genetic splicing and chemtrails go almost completely ignored.

Increased Risk of Catastrophic Wildfires: Global Warming’s Wake Up Call for the Western United States

Newswise — “The massive wildfires raging in California this summer are symptomatic of a trend toward more fires burning larger areas in the Western United States over the past few decades,” said Dr. Amanda Staudt, climate scientist, National Wildlife Federation.

“Global warming can explain part of this trend,” Dr. Staudt said, “because it is feeding longer fire seasons, drier conditions, and more lightning. According to recent studies, the fire season stretches about 78 days longer and individual fires last about 30 days longer.”

"Increased Risk of Catastrophic Wildfires: Global Warming’s Wake-Up Call for the Western United States" details how:

• Global Warming Makes Forests More Susceptible to Fire
• Past Forest Management Makes Forests More Susceptible to Fire
• Large Wildfires Put Unnatural Stress on Ecosystems
• Large Fires Make Global Warming Worse
• To Reduce Risks and Prepare for Future Fires

Although fire is a natural and beneficial part of many forest ecosystems, the number and intensity of fires today is challenging fire managers and forest communities throughout the West. In 2007, for example, 3.2 million acres burned in the Great Basin region of Utah, Nevada, and Idaho, more than 1.1 million acres burned in the Northern Rockies, and a half million acres burned in Southern California. Combined with more than a million acres that burned in southeastern Georgia and northern Florida earlier that year, 2007 was the second busiest fire season since 1960, with more than 9 million acres burned.

The increase in big wildfires comes with increased losses and escalating costs to fight these fires. Property losses from wildfires have averaged more than $1 billion over the past decade. Annual federal government expenditures on fire fighting in 2007 were $3 billion, up from about $1 billion in 1999, and typically less than half that for the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. The U.S. Forest Service now spends 45 percent of its annual budget on fire prevention and suppression, up from 20 percent in 2000.

Today’s new era of more frequent and intense fires demands new approaches to managing our forests and fire risk. “We must get at the root of the problem and reduce the global warming pollution that fuels more frequent and severe fires,” Dr. Staudt said. At the same time, it is critical to return our forests to more natural conditions and fire-cycles, step up protections for people and properties, and prepare to jumpstart new forest growth.

National Wildlife Federation is America's conservation organization inspiring Americans to protect wildlife for our children’s future.

Immediate Release: August 14, 2008

Pollution killing 21,000 Canadians this year

Fumes drift from a car exhaust as Canadian experts warn that air pollution will kill over 20,000 Canadians this year

OTTAWA (AFP) — Air pollution this year will kill more than 20,000 Canadians, the Canadian Medical Association said Wednesday in a report.

The research on the human costs of pollution and pollution-related diseases estimated that around 21,000 people in Canada will die from breathing in toxic substances drifting in the air this year.

By 2031, short term exposure to air pollution will claim close to 90,000 lives in Canada, while long-term exposure will kill more than 700,000, the report said.

"Ontario and Quebec residents are the worst hit Canadians, with 70 percent of the premature deaths occurring in Central Canada, even though these two provinces comprise only 62 percent of Canada's population," the report said.

Not all the blame for air pollution falls on Canada, however.

"Canada gets a fair bit of pollution from the American midwest, which drifts north, comes across through Ontario and continues right on through to Quebec," CMA legal advisor Ted Boadway told reporters at the report's presentation.

The national economy, air pollution will top eight billion dollars in 2008, and by 2031 it will go over 250 billion, the report said.

Frogs and other amphibians dying at alarming rates

A new report shows some of the world's amphibians, like the red-legged frog, are dying off at an alarming rate.

"Perfect Storm" Killing Earth's Frogs

Frog die-off a Global Problem

Frogs and other Amphibians Dying at Alarming Rate

Scientists create navigating robot using rat brain neurons

A biological robot controlled by a blob of rat brain has been created by British scientists.

The wheeled machine is wirelessly linked to a bundle of neurons kept at body temperature in a sterile cabinet. Signals from the "brain" allow the robot to steer to avoid objects in its path.

Researchers at the University of Reading are now trying to "teach" the robot to become familiar with its surroundings. Professor Kevin Warwick, who led the project, said: "This new research is tremendously exciting as firstly the biological brain controls its own moving robot body, and secondly it will enable us to investigate how the brain learns and memorises its experiences."

The team is now getting the robot to learn how to navigate. Eventually the robot will be able to recognise familiar surroundings it has memorised.

At the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, researchers have built a similar mobile machine. New Scientist magazine said the US team was training the robot as if it was an animal learning tricks.

Earth may be facing mass extinction

BERKELEY, Calif., Aug. 13 (UPI) -- U.S. biologists say devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign the Earth might be facing a new mass extinction.

The researchers from the University of California-Berkeley said that biodiversity disaster caused by a virulent fungus is larger than just frogs, salamanders and their ilk.

"There's no question that we are in a mass extinction spasm right now," said Professor of integrative biology David Wake. "Amphibians have been around for about 250 million years. They made it through when the dinosaurs didn't. The fact that they're cutting out now should be a lesson for us."

The fungus that's been killing amphibians around the world has been called the most devastating wildlife disease ever recorded, Wake said.

The study was co-authored by Wake and Assistant Professor Vance Vredenburg, a research associate at the university's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and an assistant professor at San Francisco State University. It is available online in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences and will appear in a special print supplement to the journal.

N.Y. tackling flood, heat threats from warming

NEW YORK - Flooded subways. Bridges deteriorating in the hot sun. Rising seas nipping at the edges of Manhattan. Those scenarios are up for review by a panel of scientists, government officials and private sector representatives studying how the city's infrastructure will hold up to climate change.

The Climate Change Adaptation Task Force met Tuesday for the first time as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to address global warming in New York City, which already includes orders to switch the city's taxi fleet to hybrids by 2012 and to retrofit city buildings to meet greener standards.

Experts on the panel said the potential consequences of global warming could include more frequent storms, flooding throughout the city's coastal and lowland areas, repeated blackouts on a power grid stressed to its limits and bridges that deteriorate under the heat.

"We have to adapt to the environmental changes that have already taken place, or that we can reasonably expect will occur because of climate change," Bloomberg said.

The panel will begin its work by studying the city's infrastructure to better understand the city's preparedness for possibilities such as more catastrophic storms, hotter temperatures and a rising sea level.

"The city was built with an assumption of an environmental baseline, and climate change in many ways changes that baseline," said panel co-chair William Solecki, director of The Institute for Sustainable Cities at Hunter College.

"Some of these transformations can potentially be catastrophic as large storms; others might be more subtle and difficult to discern over the short term," Solecki said.

The mayor has asked the group to produce a report and inventory of existing at-risk infrastructure, plus plans to make those areas more secure, in one year.

The panel has also been asked to draft guidelines for new construction that take into account anticipated effects of climate change.

Honeybee deaths reaching crisis point

• 1 in 3 of UK's honeybees did not survive winter and spring
• Pollination of fruit and vegetables at risk

Bees gather around a honeycomb. Photograph: Reso/Rex Features

Britain's honeybees have suffered catastrophic losses this year, according to a survey of the nation's beekeepers, contributing to a shortage of honey and putting at risk the pollination of fruits and vegetables.

The survey by the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) revealed that nearly one in three of the UK's 240,000 honeybee hives did not survive this winter and spring.

The losses are higher than the one in five colonies reported dead earlier this year by the government after 10% of hives had been inspected.

The BBKA president, Tim Lovett, said he was very concerned about the findings: "Average winter bee losses due to poor weather and disease vary from between 5% and 10%, so a 30% loss is deeply worrying. This spells serious trouble for pollination services and honey producers.

The National Bee Unit has attributed high bee mortality to the wet summer in 2007 and in the early part of this spring that confined bees to their hives. This meant they were unable to forage for nectar and pollen and this stress provided the opportunity for pathogens to build up and spread....CONTINUE

Brazilian agriculture faces huge losses from climate change

A woman peasant cuts sugar cane with a machete during harvest in Brazil

SAO PAULO (AFP) — Global warming will cause heavy financial losses to Brazil's agricultural sector over the next decade, a government study said Monday.

The losses will grow to five billion dollars by 2020 and 14 billion by 2070, according to the joint study by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Center and the University of Campinas.

A team of 19 researchers evaluated the impact of rising temperatures on the cultivation of cotton, rice, black beans, coffee, sugar cane, sunflowers, cassava, corn and soybeans.

They found that higher temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns, along with an increase in storms, will cause these crops to migrate to places with a more hospitable climate.

Soybeans will be most affected by the climate change because they require consistent rain. The least affected will be sugar cane, which will gain ground as other crops shrink, the researchers said at a conference in Sao Paulo.

"This is what will happen if nothing is done," said Eduardo Delgado Assad, head of the research center. He proposed "massive investments in science and technology" to stop the crops from migrating to other geographic zones.

To slow global warming, he said, carbon emissions caused by deforestation must be reduced.

Silveira Pinto, a Campinas researcher, said the investment must be rapid to help the threatened crops adapt to climate change, a process that could take up to 10 years.

U.S. Cities Would be Locked Down, Quarantined Under Pandemic Flu Response Plan

The federal government would need to quarantine infected households and ban public gatherings to contain pandemic flu, according to a computer simulation study conducted by researchers from Virginia Tech and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"You wouldn't go out to the movies. You wouldn't congregate with people," said researcher Stephen Eubank. "You'd pretty much be staying home with the doors and windows battened down."

The consensus among health experts is that a pandemic, or global epidemic, of influenza is inevitable. The last such pandemic, in 1918, killed between 40 and 100 million people.

Because of the belief that a pandemic cannot be avoided, researchers are instead looking into ways to limit its effects. In the current study, researchers used a computer to model the hypothetical spread of flu pandemic in the city of Chicago under various containment scenarios. They found that a vigorous early response could reduce the infection rate by 80 percent.

"Depending on how fast it is spreading, it seems as though you really need to throw everything you can at it," Eubank said.

Under the containment scenario, people infected with or exposed to the disease would be confined to their homes, and schools and day-care centers would be shut down, as would places of public gathering like bars, restaurants and theaters. Offices and factories would remain open but would operate at reduced capacity due to quarantines.

The extreme measures would need to continue for months, until a vaccine was developed.

"We are not talking about simply shutting things down for a day or two like a snow day," Eubank said. "It's a sustained period for weeks or months."

The computer model assumed widespread compliance with the response plan, but Eubank says he doesn't anticipate that as a problem.

"In the context of a very infectious disease that is killing a large number of the people, I think large fractions of the population won't have a problem with these recommendations," he said.

Climate change may hit islands

BAHRAIN's smaller islands are in danger of disappearing underwater as a result of global climate change, according to an environment expert.

The GDN reported in March that up to 70 square kilometres of Bahrain's mainland could be covered by sea within 100 years as a result of global warming.

However, Arabian Gulf University (AGU) assistant professor Dr Sabah Aljenaid said the smaller islands could be among the first to go.

"The estimates suggest that sea levels could rise between seven and 15 per cent between the next 20 to 100 years," she revealed.

However, the assistant professor in AGU's desert and arid zones programme said exact statistics were not available, which is why a two-year study was now being carried out into the extent of the problem.

She also revealed the country's temperatures could be about to get even hotter as a result of global warming, which is not helped by the fact that Bahrain is one of the highest emitters of carbon dioxide per capita in the world.

"Factories and power stations are the main factors that contribute to global warming in Bahrain," she added.

Rapid disintegration of ocean ice cover on track to set record

The persistent retreat of polar sea ice in recent years has convinced some researchers that the region is fast approaching a "tipping point" that could see nearly the entire Arctic ice-free during the summer months as early as 2013.

OTTAWA - The Arctic Ocean ice cover, which appeared earlier this summer to be headed for a moderate recovery after last year's record-setting retreat, has begun disintegrating so rapidly in recent weeks that experts now say the ice loss by mid-September could exceed even 2007's history-making meltdown.

The Canadian Ice Service is reporting an "unprecedented" opening of waters in the Beaufort Sea north of the Yukon-Alaska border, where expected increases in ship traffic have just prompted the U.S. Coast Guard to establish two new outposts on Alaska's north coast to strengthen its vessel-monitoring and search-and-rescue capabilities.

The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, the world's leading satellite monitor of ice in the Arctic Ocean, is now hedging its earlier bets that this year's Arctic ice minimum would not be as extreme as last year

Last year, 14 million square kilometres of Arctic Ocean ice shrank to just over four million between March and September. The minimum is typically reached in mid-September.

It's now a "neck-and-neck race between 2007 and this year over the issue of ice loss," Mark Serreze, a senior climate researcher at the U.S. ice data centre told Britian's Guardian newspaper yesterday. "We thought Arctic ice cover might recover after last year's unprecedented melting -- and indeed the picture didn't look too bad last month."

But recent storms in the Beaufort region "triggered steep ice losses," he said, "and it now looks as if it will be a very close call indeed whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for ice cover over the Arctic."

The Canadian government's chief observers of Arctic ice conditions are expressing amazement at the state of the Beaufort Sea.

"We've never seen any kind of opening like this in history," senior ice forecaster Luc Desjardins said of the Beaufort's exceptional loss of ice this summer. "It is not only record-setting, it's unprecedented. It doesn't resemble anything that we've observed before."

Mr. Desjardins says there's also a "very good likelihood" that the best-known route of the Northwest Passage -- from north of Baffin Island to the Beaufort Sea south of Victoria Island -- will soon become fully navigable for the third consecutive summer, a year after the fabled shipping conduit drew global attention by opening more completely than ever.

Last year's record melt is chiefly responsible for this year's accelerating retreat of sea ice. So much of the thicker, multi-year ice in the Arctic was lost in 2007 that -- despite a relatively cold winter -- much more of the polar cap at the start of this year's melt season consisted of thinner, weaker first-year ice that didn't stand a chance of surviving the summer.

"It takes less solar energy to dissipate and melt that ice," says Mr. Desjardins. "So we potentially could reach a new minimum. Time will tell if we are going to be approaching the 2007 sea-ice retreat -- there still five weeks (of melting) to go."

The persistent retreat of polar sea ice in recent years has convinced some researchers that the region is fast approaching a "tipping point" that could see nearly the entire Arctic ice-free during the summer months as early as 2013.

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Mass poisoning has killed millions of India's vultures

Rabies tragedy follows loss of India's vultures

A CONSERVATION catastrophe has become a human tragedy. The mass poisoning that has killed millions of India's vultures may have indirectly claimed the lives of almost 50,000 people, according to an analysis of the wider impacts of the bird die-off.

Since the 1990s, numbers of long-billed, slender-billed and oriental white-backed vultures have declined at an unprecedented rate. All three species could be driven toward extinction within a decade. The cause is a veterinary drug called diclofenac, which was routinely given to cattle. When the cattle died, vultures that fed on their carcasses were poisoned by the drug. Although now banned in India, diclofenac is stlll used to some extent.

It seems the drug has also had an unforeseen knock-on impact. As vulture numbers crashed, the population of feral dogs across India surged, feasting upon cattle carcasses that would otherwise have been stripped bare by birds. Many of these ...CONTINUE

India monsoon rains kill 15 more, ruin crops

Death toll at 61; 40,000 people had to be evacuated in one southern state

People wade through a flooded street in Hyderabad, India, on Saturday. View related photos

HYDERABAD, India - At least 15 more people were killed overnight in heavy monsoon rains which have wrecked homes and destroyed farmland in southern India, taking the death toll over the past two days to 61, officials said on Monday.

The rains triggered flooding in major cities and towns and destroyed 370,660 acres of mostly paddy crops across southern Andhra Pradesh state alone, officials said.

"A failure of the rice crop in the state would certainly be a cause for concern, it is a large producer and a large consumer," said R.S. Seshadri, a director of rice lands in the area.

At least 10 people were killed late on Sunday and 15 others went missing when a truck was swept away in flash floods in the state's Guntur district, officials said. Others died in house collapses or were washed away.

Heavy rains breached mud embankments and damaged roads and homes, forcing authorities to evacuate some 40,000 people to 119 temporary shelters across the state, K. Ratna Prabha, a senior government official said.

The monsoon usually hits India on June 1 and retreats in September, and is key to irrigating some 60 percent of farm land.

Check weather and forecasts around the world

But it leaves massive destruction in its wake, killing hundreds of people and destroying homes, crops, roads and bridges every year.

The first edge of the monsoon this year killed some 100 people, mostly in the country's flood-prone east and northeast.

Underground FEMA fuel tank leaks could make water undrinkable

Underground FEMA fuel tanks could leak

Workers remove a 10,000-gallon underground gasoline storage tank at a gas station in Sacramento, Calif., in 2003. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has known since at least the 1990s that tanks under its supervision around the country could be leaking fuel into soil and groundwater, according to Associated Press interviews and research.

WASHINGTON - The government owns hundreds of underground fuel tanks — many designed for emergencies back in the Cold War — that need to be inspected for leaks of hazardous substances that could be making local water undrinkable.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has known since at least the 1990s that tanks under its supervision around the country could be leaking fuel into soil and groundwater, according to Associated Press interviews and research.

The agency knows of at least 150 underground tanks that need to be inspected for leaks, according to spokeswoman Debbie Wing. FEMA also is trying to determine by September whether an additional 124 tanks are underground or above ground and whether they are leaking.

There has been no documentation of reported leaks or harm to communities from the FEMA tanks, Wing said, although former agency officials and congressional testimony suggest that the federal tanks have long been seen as a problem.

Many of these tanks were built to store 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel and placed around the country at the height of the Cold War back in the 1960s to fuel electric generators that could sustain emergency broadcasts by radio stations in case of a nuclear attack or other catastrophe. Made of steel, the tanks inevitably rust over time and allow fuel to escape.

Steel tanks left in the ground for decades rot like Swiss cheese, said Pat Coyne, director of business development for Environmental Data Resources Inc. Coyne said a joke in the industry is: "What percentage of steel tanks leak? 100 percent!"

In the late 1980s and early 1990s the government insisted on better-made tanks. The underground tanks of today must have safety measures including leak detection and an extra shell made with material resistant to gasoline, diesel and ethanol, Coyne said.

The FEMA tanks are part of a larger problem. More than 500,000 leaking storage tanks — most of which are filled with fuel and oil — are buried across the country, according to Environmental Data Resources, based in Milford, Conn. That's about half of all the underground tanks in the country, the consulting company says. Those tanks are owned privately or by local, state and federal agencies.

Panel discusses preparedness of NYC's subways, bridges and buildings in face of climate change

NEW YORK - Flooded subways. Bridges deteriorating in the hot sun. Rising seas nipping at the edges of Manhattan. Those scenarios are up for review by a panel of scientists, government officials and private sector representatives studying how the city's infrastructure will hold up to climate change.

The Climate Change Adaptation Task Force met Tuesday for the first time as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to address global warming in New York City, which already includes orders to switch the city's taxi fleet to hybrids by 2012 and to retrofit city buildings to meet greener standards.

Experts on the panel said the potential consequences of global warming could include more frequent storms, flooding throughout the city's coastal and lowland areas, repeated blackouts on a power grid stressed to its limits and bridges that deteriorate under the heat.

"We have to adapt to the environmental changes that have already taken place, or that we can reasonably expect will occur because of climate change," Bloomberg said.

The panel will begin its work by studying the city's infrastructure to better understand the city's preparedness for possibilities such as more catastrophic storms, hotter temperatures and a rising sea level.

"The city was built with an assumption of an environmental baseline, and climate change in many ways changes that baseline," said panel co-chair William Solecki, director of The Institute for Sustainable Cities at Hunter College.

"Some of these transformations can potentially be catastrophic as large storms; others might be more subtle and difficult to discern over the short term," Solecki said.

The mayor has asked the group to produce a report and inventory of existing at-risk infrastructure, plus plans to make those areas more secure, in one year.

The panel has also been asked to draft guidelines for new construction that take into account anticipated effects of climate change.

UK on flood alert amid torrential rain

Heavy rain caused the airport near Moira, County Down, to be closed

Hannah Strange, Environment Reporter

Parts of the UK were braced for flooding today as torrential rain soaked much of the country, evoking memories of last summer’s deluges which saw hundreds of thousands of people stranded.

The Environment Agency issued eight flood watch alerts as heavy downpours hit Wales, Northern Ireland, the Midlands, East Anglia and London.

Forecasters said every corner of the country was likely to suffer a soaking, as a band of low pressure moved rapidly towards the north-east. About 10mm of rain fell in one hour in London this morning, while more than 20mm was recorded in Devon and Cornwall overnight.

The heaviest rain was in Wales, with Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire and Suffolk also experiencing severe weather conditions.

The Met Office said the rain was caused by a low pressure system and active fronts moving very quickly northwards – unusual for the month of August. It predicted unsettled weather today, marked by frequent showers and heavy thunderstorms.

Claire Austin, a meteorologist from MeteoGroup, said: “There is a possibility of flooding today. The reason we have got so much rain is a band moving north-east.

“Northern Ireland, the Midlands, East Anglia and London have already been hit. There will be heavy rain and, at times, thunderstorms.”

Flood watch alerts were issued for the River Axe in Somerset, the Rivers Taf, Cynin and Ely in Wales, Rivers Otter, Sid and the Middle Exe and Exmouth areas of Devon, the River Cole catchment in the West Midlands, the River Ray catchment in Oxfordshire. In Wales, the Rivers Ely, Taf and Cynon and the Western Cleddau were also under watch.

A severe weather warning was issued for Northern Ireland, with up to 50 mm of rain expected overnight.

Areas under watch can expect flooding of low lying land and roads. The Environment Agency urged residents in affected areas to monitor local news and weather forecasts, charge their mobile phones and prepare to act on their flood plans if necessary.

Police warned of flooding on roads, including on the main A1 Belfast-Dublin Road at Banbridge, County Down.

This morning, three teenage girls were rescued from the county's Mourne mountains after their camp was washed away by a torrential downpour.

The campers called the Mourne rescue team after finding their route down from the mountains blocked by a swollen river.

Scotland has already suffered diabolical weather this month, with heavy rains causing widespread floods and landslides. In Renfrewshire, a dam is to be demolished after water reached dangerous levels for a second time, prompting fears it could burst.

Paul Simons, The Times's weather specialist, said flooding was now likely elsewhere as saturated ground and high rivers meant rain had nowhere else to go. Weather patterns were quite similar to last summer, he said, though rainfall was not likely to be so extreme. However, he added: "There is no real hope of any sustained dry weather on the horizon."

Forecasters predicted the rain would ease somewhat tomorrow, replaced by a mixture of sunshine and showers. While Friday is expected to be sunny, most Britons are likely to see another wet weekend.

About 5 million people live in flood risk areas in England and Wales. The floods of June and July last year were among the worst on record, with 50,000 homes flooded and 350,000 people stranded without clean water for days. Thousands are still living in temporary accommodation. Seven people also lost their lives.

Mayon volcano shows signs of threats

LEGAZPI CITY-- Disaster control authorities here today had alerted anew people who reside inside the six-kilometer permanent danger zone surrounding Mayon volcano against possible threats after the volcano had spewed ashes up to 200 meters above the crater Sunday morning.

Albay Gov. Joey Salceda had immediately directed members of the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council (PDCC) here to place on cue all the preventive measures and strategies should Mayon's condition escalate.

He also banned all human activities within the six-kilometer permanent danger zone (PDZ) surrounding the country's most active volcano.

"We cannot sacrifice lives here. We have to take all the necessary precautions before things go worse," Salceda told the media here.

Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible

Scientists closer to developing invisibility cloak

WASHINGTON - Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible. Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects.

Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.

The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye. Cloaking uses materials, known as metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

Metamaterials are mixtures of metal and circuit board materials such as ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite. They are designed to bend visible light in a way that ordinary materials don't. Scientists are trying to use them to bend light around objects so they don't create reflections or shadows.

It differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track.

The research was funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation's Nano-Scale Science and Engineering Center.

Hurricane forecasts worsen

US weather forecasters have increased their predictions for the number of named storms that will form in the Atlantic Basin this season and now expect an ‘above normal’ 2008 hurricane season.

A satellite image of Hurricane Dolly on 23 July. Photo: NOAA

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is now expecting between 14 and 18 named storms, including seven to 10 hurricanes and three to six major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher strength, it said Thursday.

In May the agency had predicted 12 to 16 named storms, including six to nine hurricanes and two to five major hurricanes. An average Atlantic hurricane season has 11 named storms, including six hurricanes and two major hurricanes.

The increase was attributed to atmospheric and oceanic conditions across the Atlantic Basin that favour storm development combined with strong early season activity.

“Leading indicators for an above–normal season during 2008 include the continuing multi–decadal signal – atmospheric and oceanic conditions that have spawned increased hurricane activity since 1995 – and the lingering effects of La Niña,” said Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Centre.

“Some of these conditions include reduced wind shear, weaker trade winds, an active West African monsoon system, the winds coming off of Africa and warmer–than–average water in the Atlantic Ocean.”

Another indicator favouring an above–normal hurricane season is a very active July, the third most active since 1886, NOAA said. Even so, there is still a 10 per cent chance of a near normal season and a five per cent chance of a below normal season.

NOAA’s assessment came after forecasters at Colorado State University said earlier last week they were increasing their storm predictions from 15 to 17 named storms for the season. Researchers Philip Klotzbach and William Gray said they expect nine to become hurricanes and five to become intense hurricanes with sustained winds of 111mph or greater.

If their predictions hold it would signify a 190 per cent increase in storm activity, compared to what was experienced between 1950 and 2000. The long–term annual average over that period was 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 intense hurricanes.

The prediction called for above–average major hurricane landfall risk in the Caribbean.

“We have increased our forecast because there has already been a very active early tropical cyclone season in the deep tropics and more favourable hurricane–enhancing sea surface temperature and sea level pressure patterns in the tropical Atlantic have developed,” said Mr. Klotzbach, lead author of the forecasts.

“The primary concern with our current very active seasonal forecast numbers is the continued ocean surface warming in the eastern and central tropical Pacific. Although it seems unlikely at this point, there is a possibility that a weak El Nino could develop by the latter part of the hurricane season. If this happened, it would likely reduce the number of late season tropical cyclones.”

The forecasters said there was 67 per cent chance of a major hurricane hitting the U.S coastline this season, up from the long–term average of 52 per cent.

Five named storms have formed in the Atlantic basin this season including Hurricane Dolly, which passed by Cayman as tropical–storm Dolly on 20 July, bringing with it wind gusts of around 33mph and 4.45 inches of rain.

Large Hadron Collider to start on Sept. 10 2008

This 2007 file photo shows the magnet core of the world's largest superconducting solenoid magnet, part of the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator. Some 2000 scientists from 155 institutes in 36 countries are working together to build the particle detector. (AP Photo/Keystone, Martial Trezzini)

The world's biggest particle collider is set to accelerate its first beam of protons on Sept. 10, according to the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The organization, which goes by the French acronym CERN, said the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has completed a cool down phase and is now ready for a few final tests before it begins accelerating, and later colliding, particle beams.

"We're finishing a marathon with a sprint," said LHC project leader Lyn Evans in a statement. "It's been a long haul, and we're all eager to get the LHC research program underway."

The LHC is expected to be the most powerful tool yet for physicists hoping to uncover the secrets behind the laws of the universe, both on the tiny scale of quantum mechanics and the huge areas affected by galaxies and black holes.

The collider, which lies in a 27 kilometre-long circuit underground beneath the Franco-Swiss border, has been built at an estimated cost of $9 billion Cdn.

How it will work

The accelerator will push two proton beams using a ring of super-cooled magnets to speeds and energies never before reached under controlled conditions and crash them into one another to create and detect a host of new particles.

When running at its peak, the LHC will be able to push particles at a top energy of seven tera-electron volts (TeV), or seven million-million electron volts.

But for its first test on Sept. 10, the LHC will be running with an injection energy of 450 GeV, or 0.45 TeV. Once the circulating beams have been established — likely in 2009 — the accelerator will move to higher energies.

Thousands of researchers from around the world will be working at the LHC to interpret the results of its particle collisions.

In particular, they will be looking for signs of the Higgs boson, a previously undetected particle thought to impart mass. Scientists have been searching for it since it was first proposed as part of the Standard Model of physics, a theory used to explain the interaction between electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces, which — along with gravity — make up the four fundamental forces of nature.

The detection or lack of detection of this and other particles and even extra dimensions could help scientists back up or disprove current theories of the universe and give us a better understanding of the origin and composition of the universe.

Protesters predict disaster

The project has also attracted protests in Europe from people who fear the particle collider will trigger a disaster, with some scenarios suggesting the accelerator will create a black hole that will swallow the Earth.

The CERN physicists have dismissed these claims, with Evans saying in June: "Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on."

Cliff Burgess, a physics and astronomy professor at McMaster University and associate member of the Waterloo-Ont.-based Perimeter Institute, said the collisions at LHC won't be very different from the collisions of cosmic rays and other particles that hit the Earth and travel across the universe.

"We understand well how a lot of stars work and have some understanding of how pulsars work, and none of that got screwed up by cosmic rays hitting them," said Burgess. "And cosmic rays can hit at much higher energies."

Burgess said even if black holes were created in the LHC, they would almost certainly be tiny and evaporate in the form of radiation.

The Food Crisis

This commentary was adapted from introductory remarks by Joy Portella, Mercy Corps' Director of Communications, during a recent event in Seattle featuring Mercy Corps' Guatemala country director.

The global food crisis was recently labeled a "silent tsunami" by The Economist magazine because of its deadly potential. The most obvious problem is a dramatic rise in food prices, and a resulting increase in hunger and malnutrition, the spread of political instability, and the very real threat of setting back of years of advances in areas like health and education.

The food crisis is the result of what experts are calling a "perfect storm" of factors:

• Drought and other climate-related problems that have whittled down harvests.
• Changing diets — rise of the middle class in India and China and an increased demand for food, especially meat, which requires large amounts of grain to raise; diversion of crops from food production to the production of biofuels.
• Higher fuel prices — if it costs more to transport food, prices go up.
• Declining investments in agricultural productivity — total agriculture development aid to poor countries plunged from $8 billion in 1984 to $3.4 billion in 2004. At the same time, the developing world's cities have been ballooning with people who do not grow any of their food.
• Recent export bans and restrictions in major grain-producing countries like China. These countries are worried they won't be able to feed their own people so they're reluctant to export food.

The resulting increases in food prices have been extreme. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the prices of basic foods like cereals, meat and dairy rose by an average of 53 percent from 2007 to 2008.

It is the poor who are hit the hardest and are most vulnerable to these massive changes. According to the World Food Programme, the world's poor spend 60 percent, and sometimes as much as 80 percent, of their budgets on food. It can mean the need to cut down on the number of meals per day, the quality of food they consume, or they have to make tough choices between basics like food, healthcare and education for their kids.

This is not a short-term crisis; it's likely to last several years. It's also truly global in scale — not confined to a particular region, which makes it more complicated. Already several dozen countries face food crises and consequences like malnourishment, starvation and civil unrest. Riots have already broken out in Haiti, Egypt, Senegal, Somalia and other countries.

Reports from Mercy Corps staff around the world confirm that the situation is dire — and has the potential to grow much worse.

• In Afghanistan, wheat prices in March were 84 percent higher than just one year before. Coming on top of a harsh winter, the price hike has pinched the meager resources of Afghanistan's poor and exacerbated the country's instability.
• In Sri Lanka dietary staples like rice and dhal have more than doubled in price over the last year. As a result, middle-class people are buying lower-quality food, and lower-income Sri Lankans are sacrificing meals.
• In Tajikistan, more than 60 percent of households are down to only one warm meal a day. An extreme winter damaged harvests and neighboring Kazakhstan has suspended wheat exports — shutting off Tajikistan's primary supply of grain.

Mercy Corps is responding to these massive changes in the short-term, helping people to get the food and immediate resources they need. For example, in drought-prone Niger, we're working with community health centers to make sure that mothers and young children are healthier and have better nutrition. In a troubled place like North Korea, we are leading a group of five non-governmental organizations that's providing US-donated food to more than a half million hungry North Koreans.

While this work to meet immediate needs is very important, short-term measures alone do not constitute a solution to the current crisis. Unlike the World Food Programme, which does vital and exceptional work, Mercy Corps is not primarily focused on getting food to desperately hungry people. We want to stop people from becoming hungry in the first place.

Institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have finally, after decades, started to espouse the importance of agricultural development. Mercy Corps, on the other hand, has recognized the importance of agricultural development for years. We currently invest $72 million in food and agriculture programs in 19 countries. Most of this money helps expand food production and lift household incomes in settings as diverse as Colombia, Tajikistan, Sudan and Mongolia.

This work looks very different depending on the needs of specific communities. Some programs create backyard gardens, some involve teaching canning classes; sometimes we help form farmer cooperatives or introduce new marketing strategies; and sometimes we open the door for farmers to sell to lucrative new markets both at home and abroad. But the goal is always the same: strengthening food security and supporting agricultural systems.

We're also exploring how to implement a combination of short- and long-term measures in several countries like Ethiopia, Nepal and Sri Lanka. This would include immediate interventions like cash for work and getting people vouchers, as well as helping people get better seed, connecting farmers to markets and increasing their access to credit.

Last but certainly not least, Mercy Corps is helping people in the US to learn about and take action against global hunger and poverty. We believe that these problems can only be solved when people understand them, feel invested, and realize what role they can play in solving them.

The centerpiece of these efforts is our Action Center to End World Hunger, a first-of-its-kind interactive learning space that will open in New York City this coming fall. Another Center will open in Portland in 2009.

One of our most remarkable and successful agricultural development programs is the work we have done in the Alta Verapaz region in Guatemala to improve the lives of impoverished, small-scale farmers. With the help of local partners, we are helping them with crop diversification, land management and marketing. The results increase their own personal yields as well as their personal incomes through connections with local supermarket chains.

Climate change causes move up the mountain

From ragweed to pine trees, plant species are quickly climbing the slopes of the Santa Rosa Mountains in California. Since 1977, nine species of plants native to the region have shifted an average of 213 feet up the mountainsides, dying out at lower elevations and flourishing at higher ones as they pace climate change. A new study tracks the change through several surveys.

The results in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA add to a growing list of such shifts. Previous work, for example, had found similar shifts in French mountain ranges. In contrast to the French study, all types of plants moved in these California mountains—from quick-growing grasses and wildflowers to slower-growing trees.

"The only thing that could explain this happening across the entire face of the mountain would be a change in the local climate," said graduate student biologist Anne Kelly, lead author of the study in a press release. Added earth systems scientist and co-author Michael Goulden: "It is clear that ecosystems can respond rather rapidly to climate change."

The plants have faced a local 2 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature, along with several prolonged droughts in the last 30 years (even though overall precipitation was above the historical average). The idea for the study came from residents of nearby Idyllwild, who thought that climate change might be the reason for the death of white fir, Jeffrey pines and California lilacs at their lowest elevations.

Climate change killed thousands of trees

Drought, heat drive vegetation upslope in mountains east of Orange County.

Climate change has killed thousands of trees and forced native plants to retreat to higher elevations on a Southern California mountain range, the dramatic results of a new study by UC Irvine climate scientists show.

And while it remains unclear whether localized changes in climate or global warming is to blame, the study paints an ominous picture of what might be in store as planetary temperatures continue to rise.

The findings could have profound implications for many outdoor activities, and for the management of Southern California's wild lands.

"It's hard to say what this wouldn't impact," said Anne Kelly, the study's lead author and a UC Irvine graduate student in Earth System Science. "Recreation, land management, fire abatement: anything that has to do with nature is going to be affected by this."

Drought and warmer temperatures pushed trees such as Jeffrey pines and white firs an average of 213 feet upslope on the Santa Rosa Mountains, south of Palm Springs, over the 30-year period covered by the study. The trees and shrubs died at lower elevations.

"I was really surprised to see the signal was so strong and so clear across the entire mountain range," Kelly said. "Drought is a huge, huge problem."

Kelly, an ecophysiologist, and Earth System Science professor Michael Goulden examined trees, shrubs and other native vegetation on the north face of the Santa Rosas.

Other scientists have noted shifts in the ranges of birds and other animals, as well as plants, as a result of changes in climate.

But in one of the first studies of its kind, the scientists compared ground-based observations and direct measurements of plants over a 30-year period. They focused on a 7,300-foot, vertical cross section that spanned a variety of plant communities, from desert scrub at the bottom to pine forests at the top.

The area had been covered by another scientist in a 1977 plant survey; Kelly and Goulden returned to the same area for a detailed resurvey of the plants in 2006 and 2007.

Nine out of 10 species on which the researchers focused most intensively died at lower elevations and moved upslope.

But Kelly said the scientists saw essentially the same effects on all the 141 plant species they examined, from sea level to 8,400 feet.

"That was the shocking thing about this study," she said. "It was consistent with desert plants down at sea level as well as conifers up in the mountains."

During the same period, mean temperatures in the area increased by more than a degree Fahrenheit; severe drought also struck the area from 1999-2002.

A recent European study yielded similar results, Goulden said.

Because the scientists focused on the Santa Rosa Mountains, she said, they were able to rule out other possible reasons for changes in vegetation, including air pollution and excessive wildfire.

Measurements of carbon dioxide in the area showed a lack of air pollution that would have toxic effects on plants. And unlike in many Southern California mountain ranges, the Santa Rosas have not seen a major fire since the 1940s.

While such effects complicate the picture in other Southern California mountain ranges, the study suggests these, too, might well be susceptible to similar climate-driven changes.

The climate change in question might be the "heat island" effect observed throughout Southern California: a rise in temperatures over decades linked to the covering of more land surface with buildings and asphalt.

And while it is not possible to establish a firm connection between the scientists' findings and global climate change as a whole, the results are consistent with the predictions of computer models that take global warming into account.

"The best thing about this study is that, regardless of why there's warming, regardless of why there are more droughts, this is kind of a preview of what global warming could do in other places in the world," Kelly said.

The study will be published this week on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Web site.

Inflation doubles in just six months as millions of families face soaring food bills

Inflation has doubled in six months, driven by a record surge in supermarket food prices which has delivered a hammer blow to millions of families.

The official Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure of inflation leapt to 4.4 per cent in July, which is the highest figure since 1997 and double the figure in January.

While the Retail Price Index - including housing costs - rose to hit 5 per cent, which is the highest level for at least 17 years.

City analysts described the figures as 'disturbing' and warned the Bank of England may decide to raise interest rates to tame runaway price rises.

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Conservative leader David Cameron seized on the findings to rubbish the record of Gordon Brown.

'The most important concern up and down the country is the deteriorating state of our economy,' he told reporters at his monthly press conference.

'Hundreds of thousands of families now have the threat of negative equity hanging over them, businesses are cutting back, unemployment is creeping up and this morning's inflation figures are yet another worrying signal for families desperately trying to make ends meet.'

The Tory Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Philip Hammond, said: 'These shocking figures reflect what families have felt in their wallets for many months... Families are crying out for some leadership from their Prime Minister.'

Global Insight economist Howard Archer said the sharp spike in inflation increased the risk of an interest rate rise.

'This is a really disturbing set of data that will not go down at all well at the Bank of England... The rise in consumer price inflation was well above expectations,' he said.

Analyst Vicky Redwood, of Capital Economics, said it now seems likely that CPI will hit new heights within months.

'Even with the recent drop in oil prices, it still looks possible that CPI inflation will hit 5 per cent within two or three months as the latest round of utility price hikes affects the index,' she said.

Britons are suffering the biggest squeeze on living standards since the 1970s, when the global economy was rocked by soaring energy prices.

Record price rises threaten to derail the Government's efforts to put a cap on pay increases.

While rising inflation coupled with lower spending and a property market in sharp decline are combining to threaten a wider economic recession.

The Office of National Statistics said: 'Food inflation alone has spiralled to a CPI record 13.7 per cent on the year, up from 10.6 per cent in June.

'This was principally due to a rise in meat costs, particularly bacon, ham and poultry. Meat rose to 16.3 per cent year on year, up from 11.2 per cent in June.'

It said: 'Breads and cereals saw an increase of 15.9 per cent on the year... Vegetables, including potatoes, shot up to 11.1 per cent up from 7.4 per cent.'

The ONS figures suggest someone spending £100 a week on food last year, will have to find another £712 this year to put the same items on the table.

The Daily Mail Cost of Living Index which looks at a smaller basket of shopping basket essentials found an annual increase of 25per cent in August. This equates to an extra £1,300 a year.

The ONS said the cost of transport is also rising at its fastest pace since the existing system began in 1997, largely because of higher oil prices.

The average price of petrol at the pumps increased by 1.2 pence per litre between June and July this year, to stand at 118.8 pence. Last year prices fell slightly.

Diesel prices rose by 1.8 pence per litre this year to stand at 132.3 pence per litre, compared with a fall of 0.4 pence last year.

The price of flights was also up sharply, largely because many airlines have introduced punishing fuel surcharges. Here fares rose by an annual average of 8.9per cent.

The ONS said the average cost of gas and electricity was 16.1per cent higher in July than a year ago. However, this figure is expected to take-off following a 35per cent rise in gas bills announced by British Gas.

It said the cost of fuels and lubricants, which includes products like the heating oil purchased by millions of rural home owners, surged more than 25per cent - another record.

Union leaders yesterday argued that rising inflation justified their demands for higher pay.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "These figures show that things are only getting tighter for families across the UK. It's clear that inflation is not being driven by pay, but by shifts in energy and food prices across the world.

'It is vital that pay rises keep pace with inflation to ensure that our standard of living is not slashed over coming months.'

Major avalanche reworks Mount Adams

H.C. TupperAug. 2 photo of the southwest side of Mount Adams, with source of the recent avalanche identified. The avalanche sped downhill along the dark track visible below Avalanche Glacier in the lower center of the mountain. Click on photo for larger version.

A two-mile-long avalanche of ice and rocks large enough to rattle seismometers has reworked the southwest face of Mount Adams.

The volcano is usually very quiet, with few of the tremors that occur occasionally at other Cascade volcanoes such as Mount Hood. So the seismic signal from Mount Adams on Aug. 1 stood out to Cynthia Gardner of the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, who first noticed it.

"It is a very large signal at a volcano that has a very quiet background," she told The Oregonian on Wednesday.

She passed on her observations to researchers at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington. There, seismologist Robert Norris recognized it as the likely signature of a major avalanche or rockfall, Norris said.

He relayed the information to Darryl Lloyd, a Hood River photographer and longtime authority on the Mount Adams region. Lloyd reported back that indeed a major avalanche beginning at Avalanche Glacier had tumbled about two miles down the mountain.

The Avalanche Glacier area of the mountain is aptly named, as it has released major avalanches in the past. A rock-and-ice avalanche from the same area in August 1997 ran about three miles down the mountain. It contained an estimated 5 million cubic meters of material and was the largest avalanche in the Cascades since one on Mount Rainier in 1963, according to the Cascades Volcano Observatory.

The avalanche this month was not that big, Lloyd said. It was more akin to a 1983 avalanche from the same area.

Norris said one line of thinking for how the avalanches occur is that ice and snow piling up on the mountain eventually overwhelms the strength of the loose volcanic rock below it and both come tumbling down. All three of the known large avalanches from this area on Mount Adams have occurred in a summer following a winter of especially heavy snow, Norris and Lloyd noted.

"That weak substrate can only support so much ice," he said.

In the past avalanches, a large part of Avalanche Glacier has tumbled down, Norris said. Lloyd said it's not clear how much of the glacier remains.

Such avalanches are a major force in reshaping Cascade volcanoes between eruptions, Gardner said.

Last Ice Age happened in less than year

THE last ice age 13,000 years ago took hold in just one year, more than ten times quicker than previously believed, scientists have warned.
Rather than a gradual cooling over a decade, the ice age plunged Europe into the deep freeze, German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam said.

Cold, stormy conditions caused by an abrupt shift in atmospheric circulation froze the continent almost instantly during the Younger Dryas less than 13,000 years ago – a very recent period on a geological scale.

The new findings will add to fears of a serious risk of this happening again in the UK and western Europe – and soon.

Dr Achim Brauer, of the GFZ (GeoForschungs Zentrum) German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam, and colleagues analysed annual layers of sediments, called "varves", from a German crater lake.

Each varve records a single year, allowing annual climate records from the region to be reconstructed.

"Kangaoos 'on the brink of extinction'

FOUR wildlife groups are calling for a moratorium on the killing of kangaroos, claiming they are on the brink of extinction in three states.

The Australian Society for Kangaroos, the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia, the Kangaroo Protection Coalition and Kangaroo Defenders are calling for a moratorium on the commercial and non-commercial slaughter of the iconic Australian animal.

They claim five kangaroo species are at dangerously low levels in New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland.

Their claims are based on a report written for the Australian Society for Kangaroos, which suggests that falling numbers are a result of the drought and unsustainable kangaroo meat and leather industries.

The groups said the report found that there are less than five kangaroos per square kilometre across most of NSW, South Australia and Queensland, a number defined previously as being akin to "quasi extinction".

Australia cotton faces climate change threat

GOLD COAST: Australian cotton production will suffer from increasing water shortages as a result of climate change, the government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said on Tuesday.

A recent study by the CSIRO showed median decreases in water availability in cotton growing areas of between 5 per cent and 12 per cent by 2030, a leading agricultural scientist with CSIRO said in an advance copy of a paper to be delivered to the Australian Cotton Conference.

Australia's cotton industry, centred on the eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland, has already been hit hard by drought in recent years. "Potentially significant impacts on cotton yields and quality, on water resources and the efficiency of their use and on pests and weeds (have been identified)," said Dr Mark Howden of CSIRO.

Besides possible reductions in water availability, salt concentrations may also increase in some cotton growing areas, said Howden, who examines the impact of climate change on Australian agriculture at CSIRO.

Australian cotton production has already declined significantly because of drought and reduced irrigated water allocations in recent years. Production of cotton lint is estimated to have fallen to 126,000 tonnes in 2007/08 from 274,000 tonnes the year before and 597,000 tonnes in 2005/06.

Production is forecast to rebound to 428,000 tonnes in 2008/09, but this depends on rainfall, as does the longer-term production outlook.

Climate change may also reduce water availability in other regions globally, such as the southern and western United States, the Mediterranean, South Africa and western south America, but China may have increased water availability, Howden said, quoting the United Nations' climate change panel.

After global price rises this year for grains and cotton, the terms of trade were turning back in favour of farming, but costs were also rising, said Julian Cribb, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney.

The Australian cotton industry was at the forefront in dealing with climate change and efficiency in use of water, land, fuel and chemicals, but was facing the same challenges as food in world agricultural production, he said.

"The present food crisis is a forewarning of what the world can expect in the decades ahead as civilisation runs low on water, arable land, nutrients and technology, as marine catches collapse, as biofuels expand, energy costs soar and as droughts intensify under climate change," Cribb said. Cribb said he saw world food prices continuing to go up "in jigs and jags", with some downturn in the short term as northern hemisphere crops came onto markets.

Vietnam helicopters evacuate flood survivors as new storm nears

HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam used army helicopters on Tuesday to evacuate thousands stranded by tropical storm Kammuri, which has killed at least 113 people, as forecasters warned of more bad weather ahead.

Vietnamese villagers look at the rubble where 19 houses stood before a flash-flood ripped away the hamlet of Tung Chin

Flood-affected Vietnamese people carry a television set as they evacuate to safe areas

Disaster relief workers kept searching for 45 people still missing since heavy rains pounded the mountainous north for three days starting last Friday, swelling rivers and triggering deadly mudslides and flash floods.

Troops were rushing water, food and medicines to villagers, many from ethnic minorities, who have remained isolated by floods and blocked roads and rail lines in the mostly poor region near the Chinese border.

Some 2,700 troops and helicopters have been mobilised to evacuate more than 5,000 residents to safer areas in the worst-hit Lao Cai and Yen Bai provinces, said the national flood and storm control committee.

Meteorologists warned that more rain storms would hit within one or two days, and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has ordered local authorities to mobilise all forces to help victims and ready for more possible floods.

In Lao Cai -- where 49 people have died in the worst storms to hit the region in decades -- hopes of finding the 37 people still missing were now fading, said Thao A Tua, a provincial emergency services official.

"In several areas, mud and rocks from the mountains have buried entire villages," he told AFP. "The search effort has been difficult because we don't have equipment and the digging has to be done manually.

"We are trying our best, but we really think they have all died. Their bodies might be buried below the rubble, and they could even have been swept away, down the Red River."

Across the north, more than 670 houses have been destroyed, over 17,700 buildings flooded and damaged, and 14,000 hectares (34,600 acres) of crops wiped out, the central government said.

137 dead, missing after storms hit northern Vietnam

Flood-affected Vietnamese people evacuate their village on a country boat in Ha Hoa

HANOI (AFP) — At least 137 people were dead or missing in mountainous northern Vietnam on Sunday after heavy rains brought by tropical storm Kammuri triggered widespread flash floods and landslides.

Thousands of troops, police and emergency services rushed to flooded towns in the poor and heavily deforested region to deliver drinking water, food and medicines to people stranded on the roofs of their houses.

By early Sunday, two days after the rains first hit the area, 92 people were confirmed dead and 45 listed as missing, according to reports compiled by AFP from central and provincial emergency relief agencies.

About 300 homes were destroyed and 3,500 damaged by the floods, which had wiped out about 5,000 hectares (12,000 acres) of crops, authorities said.

"We have mobilised all forces, including the military and police, to overcome the effects of the floods," Bui Quang Vinh, Communist Party chief of the worst-hit Lao Cai province, told state broadcaster VTV by telephone.

"We are trying to get to the flood victims, bury the dead and provide medical treatment to the injured," he said, adding that the family of each person killed would receive three million dong (175 dollars).

At least 36 people were killed and 38 remained missing in Lao Cai, but officials said the toll could rise since some areas remained isolated due to blocked roads.

"Many portions of road have been destroyed," said Vinh. "Telecommunications cables have been cut. In some areas it takes half a day to walk from the local commune headquarters to the places were victims are stranded."

At least 33 people were killed and five were missing in Yen Bai province, five were dead in Phu Tho, and one was dead in Bac Kan.

"We are trying our best to help people," said a disaster relief official in Yen Bai province. "I think the number of dead may increase because there are so many people missing, feared dead."

Eight people were killed in coastal Quang Ninh, including a five-year-old boy who died in his family home and eight construction workers buried in their roadside tent by a landslide, officials said.

In far-northern Ha Giang province, nine people were killed, including an eight-year-old boy, and two were missing.

Disaster relief official Hoang Manh Hung said an avalanche of mud and rubble had severed road links to at least one Ha Giang district, while the downpour had eased Sunday but was continuing.

A train engine was also overturned by floods on the railway line between the capital Hanoi and Lao Cai near the Chinese border -- injuring no one -- while a nearby highway was cut by landslides in several places.

Kuwait''s turtles listed as threatened species

Story HERE

KUWAIT: The steady decline in the number of turtles in Kuwait, who are often left to fend for themselves against the urban sprawl, has led to their listing as vulnerable and endangered species.
International laws protecting turtles are enforced due to the drop in numbers. Turtles are seldom seen along the Gulf shores, which is due to development projects and other constructions and activities along and within the waters.
Director of Live Resources at the Environment Public Authority (EPA), Mona AlـFaraj, told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that sea turtles were included in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) for these reasons.
She said that turtles were not only protected by the international convention, but also by laws issued by the EPA out of its belief in the biodiversity of turtles.
AlـFaraj stated that Article 81 of an EPA decision prohibited killing, fishing, capturing, collecting or harming wild and marine species or damaging their nests and eggs. The article also prohibits damaging coral reefs and its components, except for health or scientific purposes.
Meanwhile, a member of Kuwait Environmental Protection Society''s diving team, Walid AlـShatti expressed the team''s readiness to assist in preserving sea turtles.
He said that the diving team had previously organized a national campaign for the protection of marine life, to save them from what he termed "death nets." AlـShatti said that the team managed to rescue five big turtles and 55 smaller ones, including those who were trapped close to AlـShuaiba plant.
Zoology researcher at Kuwait University, Salim AlـMuhanna, further explained that the incubation of turtles'' eggs and rearing young turtles had became a common procedure in an attempt to protect Kuwait''s turtles from complete extinction. ـKUNA

Climate change will devastate N.J

Changing climate will bring flooding and a rise in sea level along the Jersey Shore, resulting in a multibillion-dollar impact on the state's economy, according to a report by the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research. Point Pleasant Beach, the Manasquan Inlet and Manasquan are pictured above.

Sea level rise, increased flooding, more frequent and intense storms and other impacts from climate change could cost New Jersey billions of dollars, according to a recent report.

And in a bid to limit economic and environmental costs, activists, officials and academics are gearing up to develop strategies for adapting to climate change.

"Anything will help, but once that ocean gets its mind up to come ashore, it's pretty hard to turn it back," said Philip Jacobs, 87, who lives on the Shrewsbury River in Rumson.

"I'm so close to the ocean here that it does bother me, but I've lived here for 70 years and then some, and so it'd be tough for me" to move to Freehold or somewhere else, he said.

"If you're really going to protect yourself totally, you got to go further inland," said Jacobs, who two years ago saw the devastation in Louisiana wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Rising water

A report by University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research last month says climate change could have a multibillion-dollar impact on New Jersey's economy. A number of groups are focusing on how to adapt to a changing climate.

"The state of New Jersey's greatest challenge is likely to be in adapting to climate change along its expansive coast, as this is where the most significant economic and ecological impacts will occur," the report says.

Steep and unprecedented increases in greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, have occurred since the industrial revolution, warming the Earth's surface by about 1 degree in the 20th century, the report says.

Average temperatures in New Jersey are expected to increase by 2 to 8 degrees, with summer and fall temperatures rising the most, the report says.

By 2100, expanding ocean water and melting polar ice caps will raise sea levels and accelerate shoreline erosion, the report says.

An estimated 1 to 3 percent of New Jersey's 210-mile shoreline, including Raritan and Delaware bays, will be inundated by the end of the century, according to the report, citing previous research.

Moreover, 6.5 to 9 percent of the coastal area occasionally will be inundated by flooding, the report says.

"Considerable strain will be placed on New Jersey's coastal development and transportation infrastructure, not to mention the estimated 6 million people that will live in New Jersey's coastal counties by 2020," the report says.

Tourism is likely to suffer because of weakening coastal infrastructure, beach erosion and the threat of inundation in places such as Atlantic City, among other impacts in the state, the report says.

Strategies

Continue to full report

Bush Declared 422 Major Disasters

President Bush at a condominium on the Alabama beachfront after Hurricane Ivan hit in 2004.

During his seven and a half years in office, President Bush has declared 422 major disasters — severe storms, tornadoes, wildfires and floods — or more than one a week. That is 11 percent more than President Bill Clinton’s disaster declarations and 130 percent more than President Ronald Reagan during their full two terms in office.

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Pool photo by Stephen Hayford

Mr. Bush visited Punta Gorda, Fla., in 2004 after Hurricane Charley killed at least 13 people and left thousands homeless.

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Pool photo by Liz Martin

Mr. Bush toured damaged areas and addressed the news media at the edge of the floodwater in Iowa City on June 19.

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Mr. Bush hugged members of a family during a visit on Feb. 8 to a neighborhood in Lafayette, Tenn., damaged by tornadoes.

All those natural disasters translate into more federal government spending. Under Mr. Bush, the government has committed to spend $87 billion in disaster relief money to help states and localities clean up after floods, fires and storms, compared with Mr. Clinton’s nearly $29 billion. Even after adjusting for inflation, the Bush administration has spent 2.5 times more than the Clinton administration on disaster relief.

Governors can petition the president to declare a state or region a disaster. If granted, that results in the release of emergency relief money, which can be used to repair roads, assist with other repairs and defray emergency costs. When a state applies for aid, the Federal Emergency Management Agency dispatches a team to conduct a damage estimate. Washington usually covers at least 75 percent of the total cost and the state provides the rest. Individual assistance may be made available to homeowners as well, with a cap of $28,800 per household.

Of the $87 billion obligated under the Bush administration, $36 billion is from cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the costliest natural disaster on United States soil. An additional $4 billion went toward Hurricane Rita’s aftermath, which also occurred in 2005. Even excluding that $40 billion commitment, Mr. Bush outspent each of his predecessors on disaster aid. The figures do not include disaster loans.

One explanation, though highly contentious, for why the country has been more disaster prone under Mr. Bush is global warming. Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases are heating up the earth’s atmosphere but most generally agree that no single weather-related disaster can be attributed to climate change with certainty.

While most experts say they cannot correlate the rise in the number of disaster declarations with global warming, they accept that the trend will continue, and that that means a growing cache of federal tax dollars will need to be diverted to help states cope. Others offer alternative explanations, including that Mr. Bush’s disaster relief decisions have been politically motivated, either to help Republican governors or to shield him from the kind of criticism he received for his handling of Hurricane Katrina.

By acting quickly to declare disasters, presidents “can shine, or they can look to be out of touch or inconsiderate of the suffering of others,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group that monitors federal spending. He added: “One of the other ways they can show they care is with the taxpayers’ checkbook. They’re quick to open it, especially when it gets into the papers or cable news.”

But in the case of Mr. Bush, the numbers do not support this view. In each year after Hurricane Katrina, the White House did not declare as many disasters as it did in 2004.

Still, some experts believe that politics plays a role in disaster declarations. Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado, said that historically presidential declarations had risen nearly 50 percent in years where the president had been up for re-election. Indeed, the largest number of disaster declarations under Mr. Bush — 68 in 2004 — occurred the year he was running for re-election. The same pattern holds for Mr. Clinton, the first President Bush and Mr. Reagan.

“As far as the politics go, certainly as the president found out, there are good ways to handle disasters and bad ways to handle disasters,” Mr. Ellis said, “which suggests that presidents are trying to keep citizens happy in the years they are running for re-election.”

Mr. Pielke, who assisted in a study of major disaster declarations from 1964 to 1998, said the study found no patterns of partisanship in choosing the states that received assistance. That appeared to be true as well in 2004, when states across the electoral map received aid, not just the states whose electoral votes Mr. Bush was courting. This summer has seen a spike in spending because of downpours and severe floods in the Midwest and other states. Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Dakota have also received assistance because of severe storms and floods. The Bush administration has committed $6.6 billion in federal aid through June and, if that pace continues, the total for 2008 could be close to $9 billion, only the fifth-highest year in disaster spending under Mr. Bush.

“The general sense is that you can’t peg any particular weather event to climate change, but everything we’re seeing is consistent with what the models predict,” said Tony Kreindler, a spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund. Mr. Kreindler said he had no doubt that there would be a correlation between increased federal spending on weather-related emergencies and climate change in the future.

A study released in June by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration seems to indicate that climate change can lead to increased storms, drought conditions and weather-related natural disasters that may increase over the next century. Tom Karl, director of the agency’s National Climactic Data Center, said the economic impact of climate change would increase directly because of carbon emissions.

“What we’re able to do today is to take a look at some events and to see if they would have occurred either as frequently or as extreme if it weren’t for human changes to the atmospheric composition,” said Mr. Karl, noting that floods like those that struck Iowa this summer could become more frequent.

There appears to be more consensus among scientists that increases in rainfall from downpours can be traced to global warming, and that the resulting floods are made worse because of development of flood-plain zones and coastal areas. Many experts agree that much of the damage could be prevented if such development was scaled back.

Australia's deepening ecological crisis tightning grip on Epic Drought

'Big Dry' claims River Murray lakes

After seven years of drought, flooding with seawater may be river system's only hope

Australia's epic drought is tightening its grip as a deepening ecological crisis unfolds in the south of the country. After seven years of the Big Dry, water levels in lakes at the mouth of the mighty Murray river have fallen by up to 50cm below sea level and environmental damage is spreading on a massive scale, according to conservationists.

At Bottle Bend Lagoon, drought and over-use of water by farmers for irrigation has left swaths of riverbed exposed, producing a toxic chemical reaction that is spreading. The banks are lined with poisonous aluminium and manganese salts and the water is dun-coloured, smells like rotten eggs and is as corrosive as battery acid. Fish have died in their thousands and red gum trees and plants are also dying.

The same environmental disaster is happening in nearby Lakes Albert and Alexandrina, internationally recognised wetlands that are home to a wide range of migratory birds. Australia's water minister, Penny Wong, has said the lakes may be beyond salvation. But she dismissed calls for more fresh water to be allowed to flow down the Murray - the river is controlled by dams, weirs and locks - saying dwindling supplies were needed for essential human demands.

Now, a controversial option of flooding the area with seawater is being considered. Professor Tim Flannery, Australia's best-known climate-change commentator, said that the action would be 'risky and probably unpopular', but that it could help save the dying eco-system by preventing the exposed lake bed from turning irreversibly acidic and toxic. A weir would be constructed to prevent salt or acidic water contaminating Adelaide's drinking water supply.

Peter Cosier, of the pressure group Concerned Scientists, is leading the opposition to the plan, saying it would alter the ecosystem beyond recognition. 'The advice I have is that, once the salt water's in there, it's next to impossible to get out,' he said.

The Murray Darling Basin Commission manages the vast river system that provides water to Australia's 'food bowl', a vast expanse of land that runs down the continent's eastern coast. It is studying options for the endangered lakes and is due to report to ministers on the seawater plan by October.

The crisis has come about because Australia is in the grip of the worst drought in a century. Years of scant rainfall have left vast areas parched and last month it was predicted that up to a million people could face a shortage of drinking water if the drought continues. The report from government officials warned that there could be problems supplying drinking water from the Murray Darling in 2008-2009 unless there is significant rainfall soon.

Another report by scientists predicted that Australasia would experience a tenfold increase in heatwaves as a result of climate change. Exceptionally hot years, which used to occur once every 22 years, would come every one or two years, making drought a part of the landscape. Water in public storage in the basin is at only 21 per cent capacity.

Arlene Buchan, director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the lakes need 300 to 400 gigalitres of water - a gigalitre is equivalent to 1,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools - before the year's end. 'Unless we get that water, we are facing an ecological disaster.'

Three dead in feared bird flu outbreak in Indonesia

A couple tend to their child who is suspected to be infected with bird flu

MEDAN, Indonesia (AFP) — Three people have died and 13 have been admitted to hospital with symptoms of bird flu in Indonesia, a nurse treating the patients said Wednesday.

Officials and residents in Asahan district of North Sumatra province said villagers began showing symptoms of avian flu after a large number of chickens died suddenly last week.

The nurse at Asahan district's Kisaran hospital said three people had died after suffering bird flu-like symptoms in Air Batu village.

"According to residents there, a number of chickens died suddenly last week followed by several pigeons. Days later, three people died with the same ailments," the nurse, Mariana, told AFP.

Another 13 people had been admitted to the hospital with "high temperatures and respiratory problems," she said.

Two of these -- a baby boy and a seven-year-old girl -- were transferred early Wednesday to a bird flu isolation unit at Adam Malik hospital in the provincial capital of Medan, officials said.

Adam Malik hospital spokesman Sinar Ginting confirmed that blood samples from the two children were sent Wednesday to a health ministry laboratory in Jakarta for analysis.

"We are now waiting for the result," he said.

The father of the baby boy, Slamet Riadi, said a lot of poultry had died in the village a week ago. His baby developed a high fever and respiratory problems shortly afterward.

A spokeswoman for the health ministry could not be reached for comment.

The ministry, which has stopped giving regular bird flu updates, announced earlier this week that the human toll from avian influenza in Indonesia had risen to 112 with the recent death of a 19-year-old man.

The man was from a town adjoining the capital Jakarta on Java island.

Indonesia is the country worst-hit by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, which can be passed from bird to human.

Experts fear it could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans and kill millions in a global pandemic.

Some 100 homes in west Ukraine still flooded after July rains

KIEV, August 9 (RIA Novosti) - Around 100 homes in western parts of Ukraine remain underwater following heavy rains that struck the region at the end of July, the country's Emergencies Ministry said on Saturday.

According to the Health Ministry, 38 people are either dead or missing since July 27 in the worst storms to hit the region in a century. Over 40,000 homes were flooded and thousands of people evacuated as bridges, roads and infrastructure were swept away.

"The situation on August 9 is that six regions in western Ukraine along with six settlements and 92 homes remain flooded," the Emergencies Ministry said in a statement.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko declared a three-month state of emergency in late July and parliament has allocated some $1.2 billion for disaster relief operations. The damage has been estimated at $1.26 billion

Ukraine has already received humanitarian aid from Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Czech Republic and Hungary. Aid from NATO, the European Union, the United Nations, Japan, Spain, the U.S. and Estonia is expected to arrive in the country in the near future.

Ukrainian environmentalists say uncontrolled logging in the Carpathian Mountains could have exacerbated the effects of the floods.

It is widely believed that one of the main reasons for the severe flooding seen in Ukraine, Romania, and Moldova in recent years is that deforested regions are less able to absorb water. In addition, nothing prevents water from rushing down the Carpathian Mountains in the event of heavy rains.

Global Warming Expected To Lead To More Tropical Rain Storms

Boston (dbTechno) - According to a new study published in the online journal Science Express, global warming and its impact on climate change is going to lead to more frequent, and powerful tropical rain storms.

This new study was released by Richard P. Allan of the University of Reading in England, and Brian J. Soden from the University of Miami, and tried to take a look at how climate change was going to impact our weather, and our rain.

The study looked at NASA’s archived data in regards to tropical rain storms, looking at these events for the past two decdaes.

What they found was that as our atmosphere gets warmer, moisture grows, leading to more severe rain storms.

The strange thing about this revelation is that it will not lead to more rain for everyone.

Dr. Soden explained in the study that the regions which are already wet are going to get even more rain, while the dry regions will get even drier.

These types of threats pose major danger for countries in tropic regions, as they do not have the resources to deal with these storms.

Climate change poll: 54% blame man; 23% cite God

By ISAGANI DE CASTRO, JR.
abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak

Fifty-four percent of Filipinos blame man for calamities such as floods while 23% say these are God’s warning or punishment for turning to evil ways, according to a recent opinion poll on climate change.

"For 54% of Filipinos, people have only themselves to blame for typhoons, flooding, landslides, and other calamities that occurred in the Philippines and other countries in recent months," Pulse Asia's Dr. Ana Maria Tabunda said in the firm's August 8 media release. "Religious reasons are cited by 23% of Filipinos as a whole.”

When respondents were asked what these calamities were primarily caused by, the results were:

· 54% pointed to the card which said, "Destructive ways of people who regularly abuse the environment;
· 23% pointed to the card which said, "God's warning or punishment to nations turning to evil ways";
· 18% pointed to the card which said, "Natural processes that regularly occurs worldwide;
· 5% couldn’t say or choose.

Nearly 60% of Filipinos also think there has been big change in climate in their place in the past three years, an indication of growing public concern on climate change... CONTINUE

Is the Great Salt Lake Poisoned?

Researchers Study Mercury in the Great Salt Lake

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Chris Cline marks a cinnamon teal duck egg with an identification number Monday, June 30, 2008, in the marshlands along the shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake. Eggs are then tested for mercury levels.

Researchers plumb the Great Salt Lake for clues to why the mercury levels are so high

The Great Salt Lake is so briny that swimmers bob in the water like corks. It is teeming with tiny shrimp that were sold for years in the back of comic books as magical "sea monkeys." And, for reasons scientists cannot explain, it is heavily laden with toxic mercury.

Exactly where the poison is coming from — and how much danger it poses to the millions of migratory birds that feed on the Great Salt Lake — are now under investigation.

"We've got a problem, but we don't know how big it is," said Chris Cline, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who has been collecting the eggs of cinnamon teal ducks from nests along the rim of the lake so that they can be cracked open and analyzed in the lab.

Three years ago, in an alarming finding, U.S. Geological Survey tests showed the lake had some of the highest mercury readings ever recorded in a body of water in the United States. The state warned people not to eat certain kinds of ducks because of the mercury.

This summer, scientists are fanning out across the lake and its marshy shoreline for the start of what is expected to be a multiyear study. The Environmental Protection Agency and the state are footing most of the $280,000 bill for the initial phase.

One major question is whether the mercury is accumulating naturally, from some as-yet-unknown source in the ground, or is the result of industrial pollution. Researchers say mercury released into the atmosphere from coal-fired power plants in the West, gold mines in Nevada, volcanoes in Indonesia or industries in rapidly developing countries such as China or India may be settling in the lake.

Mercury can cause neurological damage in birds and affect their ability to fight off diseases. High mercury levels have been detected in some of the Great Salt Lake's birds. But so far there is no evidence that it is sickening them.

"The jury's kind of still out on the impact, but it can't be a good impact," said Tom Aldrich, migratory gamebird coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.

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British report identifies flu, not terrorism, as primary threat

LONDON: Pandemic influenza, not terrorism, is the most serious risk for the British public, according to the first-ever British national threat assessment, published Friday.

The document, part of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's overhaul of security strategy, considers the likely dangers posed by threats like terrorism, climate change, extreme weather and pandemic disease.

The Cabinet Office, which drafted the document, said Friday that the possibility of a flu pandemic would be the most imminent danger over the next five years.

Previous government assessments have suggested that an outbreak could cause 750,000 deaths in Britain and acknowledged that development of adequate vaccines against a particular strain of the virus could take several months.

Brown ordered a list of threats faced by Britain to be drafted shortly after he replaced Tony Blair in June 2007, arguing that previously classified assessments should be made public.

Though the new register does not rank threats in order of seriousness, it does indicate that flu is considered the most pressing concern, a spokeswoman for the Cabinet Office said Friday.

"It looks at the whole range of risks and looks at them from a national perspective," said the spokeswoman, on the condition of anonymity as is policy. "It is the first time all of this has been brought together in this way."

Brown said in March that Britain was increasing its defenses against terrorism but also preparing for potentially more serious risks from climate change and disease.

That statement followed a warning from Richard Mottram, who retired in November as Brown's chief adviser on intelligence and security, that the risks of a global flu pandemic, the impact of mass global migration and threats from organized crime were receiving too little attention.

Mottram said that British security strategy was focused too tightly on terrorism. But the British domestic spy agency, MI5, says it is monitoring a constantly changing network of about 2,000 potential terrorists in the country who are planning about 30 potential attacks at any given time.

Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, has acknowledged that the workload means that officers are neglecting important counterespionage duties, despite active spying threats from China and Russia.

Under Brown's new security strategy, the agency staff will grow from about 3,000 to 4,000, and resources and technology at the government's secret eavesdropping center will be improved.

Birds Move Farther North; Climate Change Link Considered

Newswise — A study by researchers at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) has documented, for the first time in the northeastern United States, that a variety of bird species are extending their breeding ranges to the north, a pattern that adds to concerns about climate change.

Focusing on 83 species of birds that have traditionally bred in New York state, the researchers compared data collected in the early 1980s with information gathered between 2000 and 2005. They discovered that many species had extended their range boundaries, some by as much as 40 miles.

“They are indeed moving northward in their range boundaries,” said researcher Benjamin Zuckerberg, whose Ph.D. dissertation included the study. “But the real signal came out with some of the northerly species that are more common in Canada and the northern part of the U.S. Their southern range boundaries are actually moving northward as well, at a much faster clip.”

Among the species moving north are the Nashville warbler, a little bird with a yellow belly and a loudly musical two-part song, and the pine siskin, a common finch that resembles a sparrow. Both birds have traditionally been seen in Northern New York but are showing significant retractions in their southern range boundaries, Zuckerberg said.

Birds moving north from more southern areas include the red-bellied woodpecker, considered the most common woodpecker in the Southeastern United States, and the Carolina wren, whose “teakettle, teakettle, teakettle” song is surprisingly loud for a bird that weighs less than an ounce.

“There are a wide spectrum of changes that are occurring and those changes are occurring in a relatively short amount of time. We’re not talking centuries, we’re talking decades,” said William Porter, an ESF faculty member and director of ESF’s Adirondack Ecological Center, who worked with Zuckerberg on the study.

“New York citizens need to recognize that these changes are occurring,” Porter said. “Whether they are good or bad, whether they should be addressed, whether we should adapt to them, whether we should try to mitigate some of this, those are questions that really, rightfully, belong in the political arena.”

The study compared data collected during the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Breeding Bird Atlas census, which engaged thousands of citizen volunteers to observe and report the birds they could identify. The first atlas was created between 1980 and 1985; the second was done between 2000 and 2005.

New York was the first state to complete two breeding bird atlases, Zuckerberg said, making it the only state that is able, at this point, to produce this kind of research.

Zuckerberg said similar changes were found in birds that breed in forests and those that inhabit grasslands, in both insectivores and omnivores, and even in new tropical migrants that are typically seen in Mexico and South America.

“What you begin to see is a systematic pattern of these species moving northward as we would predict with regional warming,”

September Launch for Bid to Crack Secrets of Universe

GENEVA (Reuters) - The world's most powerful particle accelerator, aimed at unlocking secrets of the universe, will be launched on September 10, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said on Thursday. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), housed in an underground tunnel 27 kilometers (17 miles) in circumference, will recreate conditions just after the Big Bang which many scientists believe gave birth to the universe.

A technician walks under the core magnet of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at the...

A technician walks under the core magnet of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN (Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire) in the French village of Cessy, near Geneva March 22, 2007. CMS is part of five experiments which, from the end of 2007 on, will study what happens when beams of particles collide in the 27 km (16.8 miles) long underground ring LHC (Large Hadron Collider).

(Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

It will seek to collide two beams of particles at close to the speed of light.

"The first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be made on September 10," the Geneva-based CERN said in a statement.

The LHC will study a new frontier of physics, producing beams with seven times more energy than any previous machine.

In the Indian Himalayas, you can literally hear the glaciers melting.

In the Indian Himalayas, You Can Hear Climate Change Before You Can See It

Glaciers of the Indian Himalayas Have Never Melted So Quickly

The river that rushes through the Lahaul-Spiti Valley is fed almost entirely by melt from the surrounding glaciers. The sound of the river's rapids has never been this loud. The level of the water has never been this high. In other words, the glaciers have never receded this quickly.

"I've never seen such a high water level in this river," says Syed Hasnain, a senior glaciologist at the Energy Resources Institute who has been visiting the Chhota Shigri glacier for 23 years.

"This is 100 percent glacial melt," he adds, standing at the base of the glacier, yelling over the sound of the river. "After 40 years or 50 years, there won't be any flow in this river, and the entire valley will be dried up."

The 15,000 Himalayan glaciers that create the "Water Tower of Asia" -- the largest block of fresh water outside the Polar Ice Caps -- have been melting forever. But they are suddenly melting so fast that they are drying up. It will take decades, but at the rate the earth is warming, they may simply disappear.

"Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world," the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last year. "If the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."

Greatest threat to Britain is a flu pandemic that could kill 750,000

The greatest threat facing Britain is a flu pandemic that could kill 750,000 people, a Government report will warn today.

A national 'risk register' has identified an outbreak as the emergency that would have the greatest impact - though a terror attack is considered more likely.

The expert assessment of the dangers facing Britain, previously held confidentially within Government, is to be published by the Cabinet Office, and will be updated annually.

It also assesses other potential emergencies such as extreme flooding, cyber-attacks, storms, animal diseases and climate change events.

Officials say the move is designed to enable communities to 'prepare better' for potential disasters. Gordon Brown says the register will give the public information about risks from 'natural disasters, accidents and malicious threats over the next five years so that those who wish to can prepare for the consequences'.

Government advisers are understood to have estimated that a flu pandemic would cause between 50,000 and 750,000 deaths.

Mass graves, inflatable mortuaries, 24-hour cremations and 'express' funerals could all be used.

In a normal winter, the influenza virus kills about 12,000 people, most of them elderly.

But history shows that the flu virus can mutate into a new strain that is resistant to existing drugs.

Most famously, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed 228,000 people in the UK and an estimated 20 to 40million worldwide.

Experts say a flu pandemic is now overdue, either from the mutation of the normal human flu virus, or of bird flu.

Another major threat identified in today's report is coastal flooding on a scale that last took place along 1,000 miles of the east coast in 1953, killing 300 people.

On terror, officials say Britain is facing 30 known plots. Intelligence services are monitoring 200 terrorist networks and around 2,000 individuals are suspected of being involved.

There is a 'serious and sustained threat' from violent extremists claiming to act in the name as Islam, greater in scale and ambition than any faced in the past.

Many of the networks and individuals identified share an ambition to cause 'mass casualties without warning'. They are willing to use suicide attacks, and have 'aspirations' to use chemical, biological and radiological weapons.

In the future, Government advisers believe climate change has the potential to become the greatest challenge to global security. Extreme weather events will generate humanitarian crises and migration, they say.

The impact of global warming is already being felt, with higher temperatures and changing weather patterns. Rising sea levels and disappearing ice will alter international borders, increasing the risk of territorial disputes.

An increase in floods, droughts and storms will cause humanitarian emergencies on a new scale. Rising temperatures will also increase pressures on water supplies.

The Government is already carrying out a detailed region-by-region analysis of the impact of climate change across the UK.

It will include an examination of water and food security and supply issues. But officials warn that coastal or tidal flooding could lead to hundreds of thousands having to be evacuated and sheltered.

Climate change to increase rainfall

Add heavy rainfall to the litany of expected bad news due to climate change. Along with the likelihood of more intense heat waves, wildfires, and hurricanes, a new study released today reports that extreme precipitation events are already increasing as the globe warms.

This is the first actual, observed evidence that scientists say confirms the link between global warming and more powerful rainstorms.

"A warmer atmosphere contains larger amounts of moisture, which boosts the intensity of heavy downpours," reports study co-author Brian Soden of the University of Miami.

What's worse, the measured increase in extreme rainfall is much larger than the increase that current climate models predict, which likely means the amount of additional rainfall due to climate change is seriously underestimated.

To understand how rain responds to a warming world, researchers used natural changes associated with the El Niño climate pattern as a laboratory for testing their hypotheses. El Niño is a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that affects weather patterns around the world.

Based on 20 years of satellite observations, the scientists found a direct link between tropical rainfall extremes and temperature, with heavy rain events increasing during warm periods and decreasing during cold periods. "When the climate was warmer, there was an increase in the intensity and frequency of precipitation events," says Soden.

And, unfortunately, this additional rainfall won't be welcome news for drought-plagued regions, adds Soden. "The wet regions will get wetter and the dry regions will get drier."

The study was also authored by Richard Allan of the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, and was published in Thursday's online edition of the journal ScienceXpress.

Temperatures could soar 4C in Britain putting coast at risk

Britain should prepare for the consequences of a 4C rise in temperatures, one of the Government's chief scientific advisers said today.

The UK and EU are attempting to limit global warming to no more than a 2C temperature rise above pre-industrial times to avoid dangerous climate change.

But Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said there was a good chance that Britain will face a 4C rise.

Soaring temperatures could lead to a retreat from the coast, Sir David King has warned

'There is no doubt that we should aim to limit changes in the global mean surface temperature to 2C above pre-industrial, Prof Watson told The Guardian.

'But given this is an ambitious target, and we don't know in detail how to limit greenhouse gas emissions to realise a 2C target, we should be prepared to adapt to 4C.'

Pictured: Spectacular ligh