Earth Frenzy Radio Blog

Global warming a growing threat to Arctic reindeer

2009-11-16T15:24:00.001-06:00

JARFJORD, Norway (AFP) – On Norway's border with Russia, the consequences of climate change are affecting the reindeer population as rising temperatures hit food stocks and industry growth eats into vital grazing land.

The reason: the lichen his animals graze on has become tougher to find as winter temperatures rise. The snow thaws, and along with rain, then freezes anew -- covering the ground in layers impervious to all but the most tenacious reindeer.

Grazing land is also disappearing under the weight of industry as buildings, pipelines, roads and other infrastructure increasingly dot old pastures.

50,000 dead starfish found on Irish beach

2009-11-09T14:42:00.000-06:00

Extreme weather conditions have killed tens of thousands of starfish and left them strewn across a sheltered beach. A carpet of pink and mauve echinoderms, a family of marine animals, appeared Thursday morning, November 5, on Lissadell Beach in north Co Sligo. The adult starfish, measuring between 7cm and 20cm in diameter and estimated to be up to 50,000 in number, stretched along 150 metres of the strand. A marine biologist speculated that they had been lifted up by a storm while feeding on mussel beds off shore. "The most likely explanation is that they were feeding on mussels but it is a little STRANGE that none of them were attached to mussels when they were washed in." If they had died as a result of a so-called 'red tide' or algal bloom, other sealife would have been washed ashore with them. "These were almost all adult size and the typical starfish variety that is found in the North Atlantic but there was nothing else mixed in with them."

Surveying the UNUSUAL scene, he placed some in a bucket of seawater to test whether they were alive, but while this prompted a slight response from one or two of the creatures, the vast majority were dead. The phenomenon was most likely caused by recent bad weather. "They turned up almost certainly as a result of an exceptional storm event. A storm hit the seabed where these sub-tidal animals were and lifted them up and washed them ashore." Investigations were continuing into how they came to be washed ashore but initial indications pointed to the stormy weather, which has been a feature in the north-west in recent days. In a similar episode earlier this year, thousands of dead starfish washed ashore on Youghal Beach in Co Cork. Scientists speculated that they, too, had been thrown on to the beach by an underflow, which was probably caused by a storm at sea

Species' extinction threat grows

2009-11-03T14:06:00.000-06:00

More than a third of species assessed in a major international biodiversity study are threatened with extinction, scientists have warned.

Out of the 47,677 species in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 17,291 were deemed to be at serious risk.
These included 21% of all known mammals, 30% of amphibians, 70% of plants and 35% of invertebrates.
Conservationists warned that not enough was being done to tackle the main threats, such as habitat loss.
"The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting," warned Jane Smart, director of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Biodiversity Conservation Group.
"It's time for governments to start getting serious about saving species and make sure it's high on their agendas for next year, as we are rapidly running out of time."
The Red List, regarded as the most authoritative assessment of the state of the planet's species, draws on the work of thousands of scientists around the globe.

The latest update lists amphibians as the most seriously affected group of organisms on the planet, with 1,895 of the 6,285 known species listed as threatened.
Of these, it lists 39 species as either "extinct" or
"extinct in the wild". A further 484 are deemed "critically endangered", 754 "endangered" and 657 "vulnerable".

Foam from ocean algae bloom killing thousands of birds

2009-10-27T15:13:00.000-05:00

A slimy foam churning up from the ocean has killed thousands seabirds and washed many others ashore, stripped of their waterproofing and struggling for life.

The birds have been clobbered by an unusual algae bloom stretching from the northern Oregon coast to the tip of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.

"This is huge," said Julia Parrish, a marine biologist and professor at the University of Washington who leads a seabird monitoring group. "It's the largest mortality event of its kind on the West Coast that we know of."

The culprit is a single-cell algae or phytoplankton called Akashiwo sanguinea. Though the algae has multiplied off the coast of California before, killing hundreds of seabirds, the phenomenon has not been seen in Oregon and Washington, and has never occurred on the West Coast to this extent, Parrish said.

Hailstones kill 90 percent of wild game in parts of Austria

2009-10-22T18:19:00.000-05:00

Hundreds of deer were discovered either dead or so badly injured they had to be put down by wildlife experts.
In the country's rural Salzburg province, 90 per cent of pheasants and 80 per cent of hares were killed in the hail storms.

Sepp Eder, the hunting chief, said : "Animals sought shelter in farms, in fields of grain but the hail was so heavy it smashed right into them. It may take five years for animal numbers to recover, if they ever do so."
Farmers are believed to have suffered more than £60 million in damages to crops and buildings.

New Armageddon-Worthy Cloud

2009-10-16T14:44:00.000-05:00

In hill country from Iowa to the Scottish Highlands, sky-gazers have reported some strange, ominous-looking clouds of late. Dubbed undulatus asperatus (turbulent undulation), the atmospheric anomaly could be headed where only 80-odd clouds have gone before: into the International Cloud Atlas. If it makes the cut, asperatus will be the first new addition in more than 50 years.

Where did it come from? Gavin Pretor-Pinney, president of the UK-based Cloud Appreciation Society, has a theory: "It's warmer, moister air above and colder, drier air below, with an abrupt boundary in between." Add wind passing over rolling terrain and "you get the same wavy effect as on the surface of water."

The formation has probably been around for a long time, but it's only now getting attention: "Before the Internet and digicams, people might have mentioned it to a few friends and that would be it," Pretor-Pinney says. "Once the news got out, I was inundated with emails saying, 'I saw it three years ago; here's the picture!'" He's charting those images against atmospheric conditions to document the cloud's unique characteristics. The next step: Storm Geneva to seek formal recognition from the World Meteorological Organization.

Killer whales leave porpoises for dead

2009-10-12T16:29:00.000-05:00

Scientists are grasping for answers to explain why southern resident killer whales — a group of fish eaters that prefer chinook salmon — have also been observed toying with harbour porpoises before leaving them dead, including two cases in the past month in Washington state and B.C.’s Strait of Georgia.
Joe Gaydos, staff scientist with the SeaDoc Society, speculated in an interview Tuesday that killer whales might see the porpoises as an opportunity for a playful “cat and mouse” game — albeit with deadly consequences.
“The thing we forget about wildlife is that they don’t really have a consciousness like we have, that this is okay and this is not okay,” he said from his office in Washington’s San Juan Islands.
A 2005 paper co-authored by Gaydos reported the discovery of 13 dead harbour seal pups in the San Juan Islands. It found evidence of a “novel pattern of killing without intent to eat” by “one or more transient killer whales” — a separate group that targets marine mammals and not fish — although resident killer whales could not be completely exonerated in connection with the seal deaths.

Fanged frog, 162 other new species found in Mekong

2009-09-25T19:37:00.000-05:00

A gecko with leopard-like spots on its body and a fanged frog that eats birds are among 163 new species discovered last year in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia, an environmental group said Friday.

WWF International said that scientists in 2008 discovered 100 plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird species in the region. That works out to be about three species a week and is in addition to the 1,000 new species catalogued there from 1997 to 2007, the group said.

"After millennia in hiding these species are now finally in the spotlight, and there are clearly more waiting to be discovered," said Stuart Chapman, director of the WWF Greater Mekong Program.

Researchers working for WWF warned that the effects of climate change, including an upsurge in droughts and floods, threaten the diverse habitat that supports these species. That is on top of traditional threats such as poaching, pollution and habitat destruction.

In the photo shown above taken Jan. 1, 2008, released by The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) a Cat Ba leopard gecko, known by its scientific name Goniurosaurus catbaensis, is seen in Cat Ba Island National Park in northern Vietnam. This species was among 163 new species discovered last year in Greater Mekong region, a biologically rich region that stretches over five countries and borders the mighty Mekong River, an environmental group said Friday, Sept. 25, 2009. (AP Photo/Thomas Ziegler, WWF Greater Mekong)

Rare giant squid netted in Gulf of Mexico

2009-09-24T09:25:00.000-05:00

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- A giant squid has been netted in the Gulf of Mexico, the first of its kind to be landed in 55 years, scientists say.
U.S. government scientists caught the 20-foot-long, 103-pound giant squid while trawling 1,500 feet down, the Houston Chronicle reported.
"This was beyond everyone's expectations," said Deborah Epperson, a U.S. Minerals Management Service biologist.
The recent catch, off the Louisiana coast, marks the first giant squid found in the gulf since a dead one turned up on the surface in 1954. The latest catch had been alive but died as it was being brought to the surface because the squid cannot survive such quick changes in water depth.

Bee deaths set apiculture congress abuzz

2009-09-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

MONTPELLIER, France — Pesticides, viruses, industrialised farming, fungus... what on Earth is killing our bees?
That's the big question being asked at Apimondia, the 41st world apiculture congress, where 10,000 beekeepers, entomologists and other actors in the honey business are gathered in this southern French city until Sunday.
Across parts of North America and swathes of Europe, but also now in patches of Asia, bee hives have been struck by a mysterious ailment dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
At normal times, bee communities naturally lose around five percent of their numbers. But in CCD, a third, a half -- sometimes even 90 percent -- of the insects can be wiped out. Eerily, no bodies are typically found near the hive.
The phenomenon is alarming for beekeepers, many of them small-scale operators or hobbyists, who lack the clout and subsidy support that other agricultural sectors enjoy.
But food experts and environmental scientists are also worried.
The Western honey bee is a vital link in the food chain, fertilising nearly 100 kinds of crops.
Around a third of the food on our plates gets there thanks to Apis mellifera.

Sierra Nevada birds move in response to warmer, wetter climate

2009-09-15T09:32:00.000-05:00

The findings, to be published the week of Sept. 14 in an online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that 48 out of 53 bird species studied in California's Sierra Nevada mountains have adjusted to climate change over the last century by moving to sites with the temperature and precipitation conditions they favored.
The few species, including the Anna's Hummingbird and Western Scrub-Jay, that did not pack up and leave when the climate changed were generally better able to exploit human-altered habitats, such as urban or suburban areas, the researchers said.
"In order to conserve biodiversity in the face of future climate change, we need to know how a species actually responds to a warming climate," said study lead author Morgan Tingley, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management and at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley. "Comparing past and present ranges of species that experienced climate change is one of the best ways to gain this knowledge. Understanding how species will respond to climate change allows us to take steps now to restore key habitats and create movement corridors that will help them respond to the changes we have coming."

'Death Stench' Is A Universal Ancient Warning Signal

2009-09-14T12:16:00.000-05:00

The smell of recent death or injury that repels living relatives of insects has been identified as a truly ancient signal that functions to avoid disease or predators, biologists have discovered.
David Rollo, professor of biology at McMaster University, found that corpses of animals, from insects to crustaceans, all emit the same death stench produced by a blend of specific fatty acids.
The findings have been published in the journal Evolutionary Biology.
Rollo and his team made the discovery while they were studying the social behavior of cockroaches. When a cockroach finds a good place to live it marks the site with pheromone odours that attract others. In trying to identify the precise chemicals involved, Rollo extracted body juices from dead cockroaches.
"It was amazing to find that the cockroaches avoided places treated with these extracts like the plague," says Rollo. "Naturally, we wanted to identify what chemical was making them all go away."
The team eventually identified the specific chemicals that signaled death. Furthermore, they found that the same fatty acids not only signaled death in ants, caterpillars, and cockroaches, they were equally effective in terrestrial woodlice and pill bugs that are actually not insects but crustaceans related to crayfish and lobsters.

Guatemala declares hunger crisis

2009-09-11T13:04:00.003-05:00

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has declared a "state of public calamity" to try to mobilise funding to tackle severe food shortages in the country.

Officials say 54,000 families living in an area prone to extreme weather are in a critical situation.

So far this year, some 25 children are believed to have died of hunger.

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) announced it would start distributing 20 tonnes of nutritional biscuits to the worst affected areas.

President Colom made his announcement on Tuesday, saying the declaration of a state of public calamity would help the government to access the funding and resources needed to tackle the food crisis.

"There is food, what is lacking is the money for the affected people to buy food," Mr Colom said. "We are not going to wait until we've reached starvation levels to act."

The move allows the government to make emergency purchases of food.

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2009-09-08T15:49:00.000-05:00

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Mobile phone towers threaten honey bees

2009-09-08T08:29:00.000-05:00

The electromagnetic waves emitted by mobile phone towers and cellphones can pose a threat to honey bees, a study published in India has concluded.
An experiment conducted in the southern state of Kerala found that a sudden fall in the bee population was caused by towers installed across the state by cellphone companies to increase their network.
The electromagnetic waves emitted by the towers crippled the "navigational skills" of the worker bees that go out to collect nectar from flowers to sustain bee colonies, said Dr. Sainuddin Pattazhy, who conducted the study, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Giant statues give up hat mystery

2009-09-07T09:21:00.003-05:00

At 2,500 miles off the coast of Chile, the island is one of the world's most remote places inhabited by people.

Up to 1,000 years ago, the islanders started putting giant red hats on the statues.

The research team, from the University of Manchester and University College London, think the hats were rolled down from an ancient volcano.

Dr Colin Richards and Dr Sue Hamilton are the first British archaeologists to work on the island since 1914.

They pieced together a series of clues to discover how the statues got their red hats. An axe, a road, and an ancient volcano led to their findings.

Dr Richards said: "We know the hats were rolled along the road made from a cement of compressed red scoria dust."

Each hat, weighing several tonnes, was carved from volcanic rock. They were placed on the heads of the famous statues all around the coast of the island.

Precisely how and why the hats were attached is unknown.

Like an altar

An axe was found in pristine condition next to the hats. The scientists think it might be an ancient offering.

Dr Richards told BBC News: "These hats run all the way down the side of the volcano into the valley.

"We can see they were carefully placed. The closer you get to the volcano, the greater the number.

"It's like a church; you can't just walk straight to the altar.

"The Polynesians saw the landscape as a living thing, and after they carved the rock the spirits entered the statues."

Dr Richards and Dr Hamilton are joint directors of the Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Landscapes of Construction Project. They will be working on the island over the next five years.

Dr Richards added: "We will look to date the earliest statues. Potentially this could rewrite Polynesian history

Global starvation imminent as US faces crop failure

2009-09-04T20:38:00.000-05:00

The world faces “mass starvation” following North America’s next major crop failure. And it could even happen before year’s end. So says Chicago-based Don Coxe, who is one of the world’s leading experts on agricultural commodities, so much so that Canada’s renowned BMO Financial Group named the fund after him.

Climate change will cause shorter crop growing seasons and the world’s under-developed farming sector is ill-prepared to make up for the shortfall, Coxe says. He has been following the farming industry for many years and benefits from more than 35 years of institutional investment experience in Canada and the United States. This includes managing the best-performing mutual fund in the United States, Harris Investment Management, as recently as 2005.

In particular, an imminent crop failure in North America will have particularly dire consequences for major overseas markets that are highly reliant on U.S. crop imports, Coxe cautions. Sadly, this scenario could have been avoided had successive North America’s governments not weakened the farming industry with too much political interference, he suggests.

“We’ve got a situation where there has been no incentive to allocate significant new capital to agriculture or to develop new technologies to dramatically expand crop output. We’ve got complacency,” he told BNW News Wire. “So for those reasons I believe the next food crisis – when it comes – will be a bigger shock than $150 oil.”

Scientists Find "Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch"

2009-09-02T15:54:00.002-05:00

Scientists have just completed an unprecedented journey into the vast and little-explored "Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch."

On the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX), researchers got the first detailed view of plastic debris floating in a remote ocean region.

It wasn't a pretty sight.

The Scripps research vessel (R/V) New Horizon left its San Diego homeport on August 2, 2009, for the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, located some 1,000 miles off California's coast, and returned on August 21, 2009.

Scientists surveyed plastic distribution and abundance, taking samples for analysis in the lab and assessing the impacts of debris on marine life.

The scientists found that at numerous areas in the gyre, flecks of plastic were abundant and easily spotted against the deep blue seawater.

Among the assortment of items retrieved were plastic bottles with a variety of biological inhabitants. The scientists also collected jellyfish called by-the-wind sailors (Velella velella).

On August 11th, the researchers encountered a large net entwined with plastic and various marine organisms; they also recovered several plastic bottles covered with ocean animals, including large barnacles.

"Finding so much plastic there was shocking," said Goldstein. "How could there be this much plastic floating in a random patch of ocean--a thousand miles from land?"

Ancient Bird's Feathers Had Iridescent Glow

2009-08-28T09:34:00.000-05:00

Nanostructures preserved in feather fossils more than 40 million years old show evidence that those feathers were once vivid and iridescent in color, paleontologists say. Iridescence is the quality of changing color depending on the angle of observation — it's what makes you see a rainbow in an oil slick.
Many insects, such as butterflies, display iridescent colors on their wings, as do many modern birds on their feathers.
The simplest iridescent feather colors are produced by light scattering off the feather's surface and a smooth surface of melanin pigment granules within the feather protein.
Scientists found smooth layers of these melanin structures, called melanosomes, when they examined feather fossils from the Messel Shale in Germany with an electron microscope.
"These feathers produced a black background with a metallic greenish, bluish or coppery color at certain angles—much like the colors we see in starlings and grackles today," said Richard Prum of Yale University, who was part of the team that studied the fossils.

What is the 2030 Perfect Storm idea?

2009-08-27T14:04:00.003-05:00

A "perfect storm" of food, water and energy shortages in 2030 - "a whole series of events come together":
•The world's population will rise from 6 billion to 8 billion (33%)
•Demand for food will increase by 50%
•Demand for water will increase by 30%
•Demand for energy will increase by 50%
- each problem combining to create a "perfect storm" in which the whole is bigger, and more serious, than the sum of its parts. Some scientists are predicting that the Arctic will be ice-free by 2030, which could accelerate global warming by reducing the amount of the sun's energy that is reflected back out of the atmosphere. "Whereas changes in Europe could be incremental, in Asia it's potentially more abrupt. Whole regions are dependent on cycles of glacial melts and monsoons and if these start to shift there will be trouble."

Mexico water body warns of risk of 'critical' shortage

2009-08-25T12:15:00.000-05:00

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's water commission warned Monday of the risk of a "critical" water shortage at the start of 2010 and called on state governments to act now to save water.
"El Nino (seasonal warming), climate change and low rainfall could increase drought in the country, and cause a critical situation in the first quarter of 2010," a Conagua statement said.
Farming and some water supplies across the country have already been hard hit by this year's drought.
Supplies for both public and private use could be affected next year, the statement said, pointing to record low levels at the Cutzamala reservoir which supplies the capital's urban sprawl.
The main problem in and around the city of some 20 million people, which once sat on lakes, was the over-exploitation of aquifers, the statement said.

Seaweed on French beaches emitting lethal fumes

2009-08-21T13:16:00.000-05:00

PARIS — Mounds of rotting seaweed clogging beaches across northwestern France are emitting a toxic and potentially lethal gas, test results released by the government showed on Thursday.
Tests were ordered on the foul-smelling algae, which green groups blame on nitrates fertilisers used by local farmers, after a horse apparently died from inhaling fumes on a beach in Saint Michel de Greve in Brittany.
Results showed the seaweed in Saint Michel was giving off dangerous levels of hydrogen sulphide (H2S), sometimes referred to as "sewer gas" because it is produced by the breakdown of putrified waste material.
"Measurements carried out on site ... showed in several places that the gas released by sediment containing the decomposing algae could be dangerous," said France's national institute for environmental threats, INERIS.
The build-up of rotting weed on shores in more than 80 towns around Brittany has worried residents and threatened the region's lucrative tourist industry, with part of the coastline already declared off-limits.
Green groups blame nitrate pollution caused by intensive agriculture -- especially among pig farmers -- and have accused the government of turning a blind eye to an "environmental cancer."
The government was spurred to act after a horse and rider fell onto a patch of the algae on July 28.
The horse died immediately, while 28-year-old horseman Vincent Petit lost consciousness and was pulled to safety by nearby workers.

Increased Ocean Acidification In Alaska Waters

2009-08-18T10:26:00.000-05:00

The same things that make Alaska's marine waters among the most productive in the world may also make them the most vulnerable to ocean acidification. According to new findings by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist, Alaska's oceans are becoming increasingly acidic, which could damage Alaska's king crab and salmon fisheries.

This spring, chemical oceanographer Jeremy Mathis returned from a cruise armed with seawater samples collected from the depths of the Gulf of Alaska. When he tested the samples' acidity in his lab, the results were higher than expected. They show that ocean acidification is likely more severe and is happening more rapidly in Alaska than in tropical waters. The results also matched his recent findings in the Chukchi and Bering Seas.

Water crisis to hit Asian food

2009-08-18T09:26:00.000-05:00

Scientists have warned Asian countries that they face chronic food shortages and likely social unrest if they do not improve water management. They say countries in south and east Asia must spend billions of dollars to improve antiquated crop irrigation to cope with rapid population increases. That estimate does not yet take into account the possible impact of global warming on water supplies. Asia's population is forecast to increase by 1.5 billion people over the next 40 years. Asian countries will need to import more than a quarter of their rice and other staples to feed their populations. Asia's food and feed demand is expected to double by 2050. "The best bet for Asia lies in revitalising its vast irrigation systems, which account for 70% of the world's total irrigated land...Without water productivity gains, south Asia would need 57% more water for irrigated agriculture and east Asia 70% more. Given the scarcity of land and water, and growing water needs for cities, such a scenario is untenable." The scenarios forecast do not factor in the impact of global warming, which will likely make rainfall more erratic and less plentiful in some agricultural regions over the coming decades.

Drought causing historic cotton losses

2009-08-14T19:29:00.004-05:00

For the first time in over a century, a severe South Texas DROUGHT HAS CLAIMED THE ENTIRE COTTON PRODUCTION of Kleberg County. “Since the founding of Kingsville in 1904, not a single pound of cotton was produced this year in Kleberg County, which includes the King Ranch, one of the area’s largest producers." Other Coastal Bend counties have not fared much better, experts say. “Nueces County planted 124,000 acres of cotton and about 95 percent of that failed. San Patricio County planted about 130,000 acres with a fail rate of more than 90 percent. Grain sorghum did only a little better.” They estimate the economic hit to Kleburg County alone at about $50 million. “That’s not just lost crop revenue in cotton and grain sorghum, that includes money lost to motels that house the harvesting crews, labor costs at gins and grain elevators and other related losses.” Like many areas of South Texas, Kleberg County has not seen significant, widespread rainfall in almost a year. “From January to now, we’ve had about two inches of total rainfall. But in the crop year, from Sept. 1, 2008, to now, we’ve had under 5 inches. Normally in a 12-month period we’ll have 27 to 28 inches of rainfall.” Local historians claim THIS IS THE WORST DROUGHT THEY'VE EVER SEEN. In late July, economists reported that agricultural drought losses throughout the state had reached $3.6 billion and by the end of the year could exceed $4.1 billion.