Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Friday, August 22, 2008
The Petermann glacier is breaking up. An 11 square mile area of the glacier in northern Greenland broke away after July 10th and before
July 24th. The Petermann Glacier is one of Greenland’s largest glaciers.
Petermann has a floating section 10 miles wide and 50 miles long. At 500 square miles it is the longest floating glacier in the Northern Hemisphere.
A 33.5 square mile of the Petermann broke away 2000-2001, but the Byrd Polar Research Center is predicting continued disintegration and more imminent breakup in the coming year.
An already large crack is widening even more while it moves toward the calving front of the glacier. The loss could be as much as an addition 60 square miles of the Massive ice tongue or 1/3rd. “The crack is advancing to a point where a massive breakup seems imminent, in which case, the area of break-up would be 60 square miles.
Greenland’s fastest moving glacier, Jakobshavn is suddenly speeding up and has nearly doubled its ice flow from land into the ocean. Its flow has contributed to roughly 4% of the sea level increase of the 20th century.
When every dim-wit at the coffee shop argues that is glass never over-flows when the ice melts in his drink, you can remind him this ice is moving from land into the sea. His glass would overflow if he added ice to it from his refrigerator.
Researchers have found the glacier’s speeding up is also coinciding with the very rapid thinning of the ice. It’s loosing as much a 49 feet of thickness per year since 1997.
The glaciers ice-tongue, which began to break apart in 2000, had a restraining effect on the ice behind it. As it thins and breaks it opens a path for even yet more ice to pile into the ocean.
Waleed Abdalati, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center says, “…We think there is a dynamic effect in which the glaciers are accelerating due to warming.” They believe the thinning of ice is too much to be attributed to melting alone.
Photo Thanks: Waleed Abdalati, GSFC
NASA MODIS
Byrd Polar Research Center
Labels: Glacier, Greenland, Jakobshavn, NASA, Petermann, Sea level
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Sea level rise already increasing as glaciers melt faster than
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Sometimes there just aren’t any words.
Labels: Baby Whale
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Baby Whale thinks boat is its mother. Outcome looks grim.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The FDA has decided to allow food producers to radiate lettuce and spinach.
Put on your tinfoil hats when you try to figure this one out.
Irradiated meat has been around for years. In February 2000, the U.S.government began allowing food manufactures to irradiate raw meat and meat products. At that time it was doubtful the public would accept meat that had been zapped. Working toward a decade later I’d be hard pressed to find a shopper that knows their meat has been irradiated.
Huh?
If you happen to pick up a package at your local grocery right now, and you see the words, ‘cold pasteurized’ or ‘electronically pasteurized you are holding an irradiated product.
If you are under the age of 40, and you happen to carry a magnifying lens with you, you may just be able to read the fine print. If you’re over 40 odds are you wouldn’t be able to see it even with a magnifying glass.
In 2007 Consumer Reports found that 71% of consumers didn’t want to buy irradiated products.
Don’t worry though, the food that’s been irradiated hasn’t gone radioactive. You won’t turn yellow and start glowing, but don’t take off your tinfoil hat just yet.
It seems the maximum dose of irradiation on meat is 4.5 kiloGrays. A kiloGray is one unit of irradiation. 4.5 doesn’t seem so bad. Not bad until we find out that is the equivalent of about 7 million chestX-rays. That Million with an ‘M’.
Once we approach the 5 or 6 million chest X-ray mark, what’s another 500,000 plus or minus?
Although our meat isn’t glowing, irradiating items with fat in them causes a peculiar ‘radiolytic byproduct’ specific to irradiation. It changes the fat into 2-ACBs. [2-alkylcyclobutanones] 2-ABCs when put into rats cause tumors to grow in their colons.
There has been a tremendous increase in the U.S. in colon cancers since 1999. We would be led to believe that is due to more people being diagnosed with the disease. Maybe, but what are the odds?
Meanwhile…
How about cleaning up our act? Can we not figure out how to keep fecal matter, animal and human, out of our food supply? Can we really not figure that out?
Really?
Labels: 2-ABC, FDA, Irradiated, USDA
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Starting Friday, U.S. lettuce and spinach go nuclear.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Prince Charles thinks genetically engineered foods will be the “biggest disaster environmentally of all time.”
The Prince also thinks GM [genetically modified] foods are an experiment that’s gone seriously wrong, causing untold problem which become expensive and very difficult to undo.
The Times online has promptly published a piece rebuffing what Prince Charles has to say.
Read what ‘The Independent Science Panel’ has to say about the GM foods at their website.
Prince Charles also says,”…the classic way of ensuring there is no food in the future” is relying on gigantic corporations for food that would result in “absolute disaster”.
To rely on only a few gigantic corporations for anything could turn into absolute disasters. Antitrust laws were written precisely to avoid the ‘absolute’ problems that accompany absolute power.
“if they think this is the way to go…we (will) end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness.” The Prince is quoted as saying.
I’m no expert, and I’m certainly not the son of the Queen, but I do have a backyard garden. This year that garden is tortured. Many of the plants in my vegetable garden are ‘trade marked’ plants. Admittedly my story is only anecdotal but none of these plants has born a fruit worth the energy it takes to remove it from the plant. It’s horrible.
Scientists claim the attacks on their GM food research are setting them back. I’d be willing to bet my last dollar, the ’scientists’ making those claims are working for some of the largest ag corporations on earth.
Insurance company spokespeople have compared GM crops to Thalidomide, Asbestos and Acts of Terrorism.
Read the Canadian canola farmer’s, recipient of the Mahatma Gandhi award 2000’s disconcerting story.
When asked ‘why he would plant Monsanto’s GM crops’ Percy Schmeiser said, “I think the reason was this. …Monsanto told farmers that it would be more nutritious, it would be a bigger yield, but most of all, less chemicals…”
“Our land is contaminated. Our water is contaminated. Farmers now realize that we’re just killing ourselves and we’re killing the environment-our insects (bees?) our birds, and everything else.”
Schmeiser goes on to say,”Number one, it was not more nutritious. It was not a bigger yielder.” Monsanto never noted anything about quality. Schmeiser says, “…farmers are now using from 6 to 10 times more chemicals.”
Imagine that…
Monsanto would like to be the worlds sole food source. Monsanto seeds grow best with Monsanto fertilizers. Monsanto is the seed and fertilizer giant!
If you’re looking for some good Karma, an investment in Monsanto may not be the place for you. If you are looking to make a killing…it may be.
Monsanto is increasing the price of its corn seed by $100.00 a bag. On 1,000 acres that an extra $40,000.00. At the U.N. Food Summit in Rome Monsanto announced that it would be saving the world from a food crisis. It pledged to double its yields on soy and cotton over the next 20 years.
Like Nancy Regan used to say…”JUST SAY NO”.
Genetic diversity keeps our food system resistant to disease. Let’s talk incest. There is a reason you cannot marry your cousin.
GM seeds, are ‘akin’ to incest. One more anecdotal story please…I once knew a wonderful family seemingly normal in every way. But, the parents were first cousins. All seemed well, until the children (2 of them) grew up and tried to start families of their own. The daughter of this union died while she was pregnant,(keeled down dead while making toast) the son was never able to produce any children. Kind of like the plants in my garden, unable to bring forth fruit.
If you are busy buying up any protected seeds as I am, your hopes may be dashed like mine.
While we were sleeping, Monsanto agreed to buy De Ruiter Seeds. The acquisition by MOnsanto will serve, “the protected-culture” vegetable seed market”.
Photo: USDA ARS
Labels: Food Crisis, Food Shortage, GM crops, Monsanto, Prince Charles, gentically modified
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Prince Charles says, "Count me out". Just say No to genetically modified foods.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Meet me in St. Louis Louis, Meet me at the fair!cotton Candy goes solar.
If they’re going to dump that crap it may as well serve a porpoise!
DuPont make waders that ‘breath underwater’. Haven’t they done enough already?
Three amigos, three pesticides not friendly to Salmon!
Pass me the rake, I have a little something here I need to bag up!
Cap-and-trade-program. Who is paying for their profits?
Will liquid coal quench our thirst?
I’ll buy it from you, then sell it to you…what do you think?
Labels: Alaska, Dead zones, Dupont, Green for a Day., Salmon, cap and trade, carbon-trading market, coal to liquid
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
EcOLinks
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Is there a game afoot!
Some scientists are warning that the world needs to prepare for a 4 degree rise in global temperatures. This is the warning Bob Watson, chief scientific adviser to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs issued August 7, 2008.
Watson thinks there is little doubt that limiting global surface temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial temperatures needs to be the global aim, but without knowing how to limit those temperatures…”we need to be prepared to adapt to 4C.” [rise]
Sir David King, the UK’s former chief scientific adviser thinks…Even with the best efforts made to keep temperatures at just a 2C rise there is a 20% risk that temperatures will rise by 4 degrees.
Moriarty: This is not danger. It is inevitable destruction…
King said, “My own feeling is that if we get a 4 degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway[temperature] increase.”
Prof. Neil Adger, an expert on adaptation to climate change at Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research says, “At 4 degrees we are basically into a different climate regime.” “There is no science on how we are going to adapt to 4 degrees warming. It is actually pretty alarming.”
The game is afoot.
Watson is the ex-chief scientist at the World Bank. Not odd then that he would recommend that the “Uk should take a lead in research on carbon capture and storage (CSS).
The World’s biggest carbon offset market, the CDM, is administered by the World Bank.
Watson figures the UK should launch 10 to 20 CCS pilot projects. Of course he is correct. Carbon needs to be kept from, or at least limited, from the atmosphere. He uses the 1960’s effort to put a man on the moon by the U.S. as an analogy of what can be accomplished in a relatively short time when determination prevails. The U.S. had a singularly myopic mind set toward a manned moon mission.
Why isn’t the same determination being focused on pulling the world off the engorged CO2 teat?
You stand in the way not merely of an individual but of a might organization, the full extent of which, even you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize…
The energy industry stands to make over $21 Billion in the next 5 years. The windfall profits coming from emissions trading.
You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot…
According to David Victor, carbon trading analyst at Stanford University, …”under the CDM, there will be no global climate benefit because the polluter that buys the offset avoids the obligation to reduce its own emissions.
Analysts estimate that two thirds, 2/3 of the emission reduction obligations may be met through buying offsets rather than by decarbonising…
The CDM scheme will actually increase the net amount of carbon going into the atmosphere. International Rivers report titled ‘Failed Mechanism’ says that hydro firms will earn millions of dollars by selling ‘fake carbon credits to companies and governments which can use those carbon credits to justify an increase in emissions.
Why oh why doesn’t it make more sense to turn our intellectual capital towards new sources of power rather than watching the hole planet go to hell in a hand basket?
No one will convince me it is easier to find ways to capture, transport and then store the captured pollution than to figure out how not to generate it in the first place.
The whole cap and trade scheme is just that; a scheme.
Even the language is offensive. Scheme. Long associated with crafty and secret plans. One rarely finds scheme not associated with conniving.
Yes, the game is afoot and to quote Moriarty again: This is not danger, it is inevitable destruction. You stand in the way not merely of an individual but of a mighty organization, the full extent of which, even you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize…
You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot…
Photo by T.Scott Williams
Petrified wood in Blue Mesa badlands
Labels: CCS, CDM, Carbon Capture, Carbon-credit, Global Warming, U.N., World Bank, carbon-trading market
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
UK should take the lead in research on carbon capture and storage.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Lake Michigan is changing faster than researchers are able study it.
Scuba diving researchers are finding what sounds like scenes right out of Jurassic Park. Strange new primitive plant life. Carpets of mussels starving out native species in the lake.
Scientists are saying the ecology of the lakes are being upended.
Fishermen are hauling up stinky E. coli bacteria and botulism spored mats of algae. Algae that stretches from Chicago to the Straits of Mackinac. The expanse can be seen from boat decks and hilltops.
Scientists are afraid this “lake moss”, coined by fishermen, is also contributing to the deaths of migratory birds, which are wide spread.
Thousands of migratory birds have died from Type E Botulism poisoning from Lake Michigan, but they didn’t get it from eating canned goods.
Scientists are blaming invasive populations of zebra mussels and round gobies.
Zebra mussels are also plaguing Lake Erie. The invasive attack of aquatic mollusks has tripled in the last 3 years and the mussels are adapting to colder and deeper waters.
The great lakes aren’t the only place these devils are being found. In the warmer waters of California reservoirs the same zebra mussels are multiplying like rabbits.
The California Fish and game department doesn’t know if they came from Lake Erie or some other affected waterway, but their problems are the same as those in the great lakes as a result of this invasive species.
$1.5 billion in damages have occurred across 23 states. Adding insult to injury these creatures also spew phosphorous which contributes to yet more dead zones and toxic algae.
The population of Quagga mussels, larger than the Zebra mussels are contributing to the crashing populations of small fish like smelt. They are snatching the food right out of their diets. No smelt means no Salmon. The salmon feed on the smaller fish.
The quagga has spread through the Colorado River Aqueduct to several Southern California reservoirs. The measles are known to clog pipes and California can ill afford to have one drop of water cut off worsening its already ‘crisis’ water situation.
California of course has an education campaign; “don’t move a mussel” reminiscent of the 90’s j-walking campaign “don’t get caught red handed” that was popular in the streets of San Francisco.
The adaptability of these invasive creatures to thrive in deep cold waters as well as warm waters is really disturbing. I keep asking myself what kinds of problems these upstarts have caused in the areas in which they are native.
Cameron Davis, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes says, “The ecological balance of the Great Lakes is at a tipping point.”
The Quaggas colonize the sandy bottoms and deeper portions of the Lakes while the well known Zebra mussels like to attach themselves to smoother objects like rocks and man-made structures like water pipes.
These species suck water in and press it out taking nourishment from the tiny little creatures in the water. This constant, ceaseless filtration of the water is making the water so crystal clear that sunlight can penetrate far deeper than ever before. This sunny situation allows a certain type of algae (cladophora) to run rampant. Now it grows in waters twice the depth as it once did just a decade ago.
These species are starving out the bigger fish by eating the plankton and iporeia which are at the bottom of the lakes food chain.
Henry Vanderploeg from NOAA says …”The mussels are really messing up the food chain.” Shakespeare couldn’t have said it better himself.
Photo thanks: Ron Dermott, Zebra mussels
Botulism dead bird Michigan DNR
Labels: Dead zones, Great Lakes, NOAA, Zebra Mussels, migratory birds
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Lake Michigan goes Jurassic.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Huge patches of algae are cropping up throughout the Chesapeake Bay.
Oceans aren’t the only bodies of water feeling the affects of bad runoff.
Mike Naylor from the state Department of Natural Resources told the Baltimore Sun, “We have a lot of people in these watersheds and very little forest cover left.” “So our waters have more nutrients than they should, and they’re warmer than they should be, so these things combine to allow algae to thrive.”
The Chesapeake Bay is known for it’s blue crabs. The crab population already in jeopardy has dropped below last years levels which were already alarmingly low.
Last years harvest of the crabs was the lowest recorded since 1945. NOAA fisheries biologists believe the population cannot be sustained at the past rates of exploitation. Maryland announced it would end the season for catching female crabs about 2 months early.
One local man said the only other time he can remember conditions being this bad were when there was a fertilizer seep from a nearby farm into the cove in which he crabs. The crabs have been dying in the water, suffocated from a lack of oxygen.
Watermen are disputing the NOAA report. They say they are finding more blue crabs this year than in the past 15 years. The watermen say they couldn’t be overfishing the crab stocks because more fishermen leave the water every year. They are disputing that the NOAA survey is accurate.
NOAA’s surveys are said to be highly accurate in predicting the population of the blue crabs.
Scientists and fisherman are at odds.
NOAA says if strict regulations were not put into place that nearly 7 out of every 10adult crabs would be harvested. The population cannot withstand that kind of pressure. Now the algae blooms.
So which came first?
Are the harvests down because the population of the crabs is down, or are the harvests down because the population of the fishermen is down?
One thing is certain. If the algae blooms had been on the Eastern Shore of the bay instead of in the wealthy Baltimore County area there wouldn’t be so much public outcry. This area is littered with expensive homes along the water. When the algae gets thick enough to clogs the boat intakes the phone starts ringing off the hook.
One community resident says he can smell the mildew from the dying algae when he comes into the neighborhood at night.
Meanwhile…
Could runoff from well maintained and fertilized lawns, gardens, and car exhaust could be contributing to the problem?
People aren’t the only invasive species troubling the Chesapeake Bay either. Scientists say there are now more than 150 exotic species (not native) in the bay, many of which hitchhike in on ships from Asia and Europe.
Plans to test ultraviolet light, filters and some types of chemicals to see how effective they are at destroying exotic larvae and other creatures are already underway aboard a ship in Baltimore.
Four years ago, the Coast Guard began requiring large ships crossing the oceans to stop 200 miles off American shores and dump their ballast water and replace it with ocean water. The Salt water from the open ocean kills some kinds, but not all, of fresh water organisms that stow away in the ballast waters and travel from port to port.
Photo Thanks: Maryland Department of Natural Resources Aug.8 2008
Labels: Chesapeake Bay, Dead zones, NOAA
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Dead Zones in Chesapeake Bay.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Just like Yogi Berra Said, “It’s like deja-vu, all over again”.
California based Planktos has postponed its ocean “iron-fertilization” plans indefinitely. Planktos failed to find sufficient funding for its efforts.
Batter up.
Climos. Climos has raised $3.5 million in Marchto conduct the same “ocean iron fertilization” plan. Climos, like Planktos was founded in California.
Dan Whaley, a self-taught computer programmer and Richard Whilden,a wildly successful money raiser. Whilden is also very familiar with the banking industry. You’ll want to have a look at his experience in that industry.
The Climos website has listed as a co-founder and Chief Science Officer Dr. Margaret Leinen. In addition to being Chief Science Officer, Dr. Leinen is also Dan whaley’s mother.
Studies show that the North Atlantic Ocean is only absorbing half of the CO2 it once did and that the Southern Oceans have stopped absorbing it at all, and are now in fact releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere. Emissions of carbon dioxide from the oceans have increased by 40% since 1981.
Enter the catcher.
Emissions trading is being hyped as a $30 billion market already that could grow to $1 trillion within the next 10 years. Where oh where would there be a vault large enough to hold 1 trillion dollars worth of emissions? Maybe the ocean? Maybe that why Dan Whaley, came up with a business plan that involved selling ‘carbon offsets’.
Whaley’s light bulb moment came after talking to his oceanographer mother about ocean iron fertilization. She had known John Martin, who is apparently the father of the whole ocean iron fertilization concept,known as the “iron hypothesis”. Martin said in 1991 “Give me half a tankerload of iron, and I’ll give you an Ice Age. He died in 1993. shortly after his death his theory was proven to be correct by Moss Landing Marine Laboratories after they spread an iron solution into the ocean near the Galapagos Islands and algae bloomed.
The Umpire calls, “stee rike”.
Never mind that algae blooms are also responsible for ‘dead zones’ in the oceans. The proliferation of plankton is what depletes oxygen in the waters creating dead zones in which some fish can flee, but many slow moving creatures are less able to escape. Oxygen levels in Dead Zones are too low to support marine life.
Rob Fujita, Environmental Defense Fund marine ecologist thinks Dead Zones are already hard enough to control. “It’s not a great time to increase the risk to oceans ecosystems”, says Fujita.
Russ George, of the shut down Planktos said, “This isn’t rocket science, it’s ocean farming.” George believed there wasn’t any reason a profit couldn’t be made while still helping the environment.
Foul ball.
There is a line between fertilization and pollution. Nether side of the line looks to be territory where the iron “ball” should be played as fair.
Whaley says, “Basically, the business model hinges on the price of carbon and the efficacy of sequestration.”
Isn’t all of this really a means to generate wealth for a wealth generating machine? A New York Times article called carbon trading one of the fastest-growing ’specialties in financial services’. Have we learned nothing from the past ‘financial services’ hatched from thin air?
CCX, the Chicago Climate Exchange, ECO.L EcoSecurities or how about the EU ETS. The government backed trading program in Europe called European Emission Trading Scheme. I don’t happen to like anything with Scheme in its official title and there are plenty.
Game called on account of rain.
Some estimates have fertilizing the entire Southern Ocean with iron for 100 years would only reduce atmospheric CO2 levels by 20-30%. This providing the organism decay isn’t released back into at shallow or intermediate depths creating an unnatural decomposing leading to more devastating Dead Zones
Patient: It hurts when I poke my eye.
Doctor: Stop poking your eye.
Labels: Carbon-credit, Climos, Frankenplankton, Galapagos, Iron fertilization, Ocean, Planktos, Sequestration, carbon dioxide, carbon-trading market, ocean dead zone
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Planktos out, Climos at bat. Frankenplankton lives.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Jellyfish are taking over the oceans, or so it would seem. One reason there are so many jellyfish is because so many of their natural predators are dwindling.
There are 200 classified species of jellyfish. Some are as small as a fingernail and other can grow tentacles up to 100 feet long. Some studies suggest jellyfish, which aren’t fish at all, account for up to 1/3 of the all the world’s marine biomass, and their hungry, really hungry.
In 1989, the Black Sea’s population of an invasive jellyfish reached epic proportions they cased a total collapse of anchovies and sardines. The Jellyfish ate not only the fish but they ate the eggs as well.
Yikes!
In 2000 a bloom of Jellyfish in the Gulf of Mexico contained 5.5 MILLION jellyfish living in 57 square miles of the Gulf. Runoff from agriculture, sewage treatment plants and other things that cause ‘dead zones’ in the waters that kill off other fish are a boon to the Jellyfish that can thrive in oxygen depleted waters.
Rising ocean temperatures only improve the conditions in which the Jellyfish thrive.
Jellyfish are one of the oceans most understudied creatures. Moss Landing in California is one of the world’s leading Jellyfish research facilities.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium research Institute at Moss Landing uses a ‘remote Vehicle’ named The Tiburon to study jellyfish. The recently discovered Erenna Jellyfish lights up to possibly attract small fish to them so that they can dine on them. The Erenna jellyfish poisons it’s meal with little harpoons and then draws its meal into its mouth.
Scientists say there are yet more Jellyfish to be discovered.
With so much of the Jellyfish’s natural predators disappearing from the oceans, and so many dead zones expanding throughout our oceans it’s no wonder our oceans are being overtaken by the Jellyfish.
In a series of documentaries that examines freak occurrences in nature, a film called Nature Shock highlighted what happened to Japanese fishermen in the Tsushima Strait in August 2005.
This article in the Telegraph describes how in an effort to curb a ‘box jellyfish’ explosion fishermen in Japan unleashed what can only be described as a nightmare of hellish proportions.
The Japanese government commandeered a fleet of fishing boats dragging razor-sharp wire through swarms of Jellyfish. Scientists found trying to kill them only unleashed a breeding explosion. They are genetically programmed to ensure their survival by producing more offspring than normal when they are under attack. Large female box jellyfish that were captured were swollen with million of eggs, far more than they would normally carry. Males were carrying billions of sperm.
Irukandji jellyfish and box jellyfish have killed more people in Australia than great white sharks and crocodiles combined.
Labels: jellyfish
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Will Jellyfish and cockroaches eventually be the only things left on earth?
