World faces last chance to avoid fatal warming: EU

The world faces a final opportunity to agree an adequate global response to climate change at a U.N.-led meeting in Copenhagen in December, the European Union's environment chief said on Friday.

World leaders from about 190 countries meet in Copenhagen in December to try to agree a global framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol on fighting global warming, which expires in 2012.

"It is now 12 years since Kyoto was created. This makes Copenhagen the world's last chance to stop climate change before it passes the point of no return," European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told a climate conference in Budapest on Friday.

"Having an agreement in Copenhagen is not only possible, it is imperative and we are going to have it," Dimas said.

With greenhouse gas emissions rising faster than projected, Dimas said it was essential that big polluters such as the United States and emerging economies in the Far East and South America also sign up for an agreement. "President Obama's commitment to re-engage the United States fully in combating climate change is an enormously encouraging sign that progress is possible. So are positive initiatives coming from China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies."

Dimas said an agreement in Copenhagen should aim to limit global warming below the critical 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, or less than 1.2 degrees above the current level, by at least halving global emissions by 2050 from 1990 levels.

"Developed countries will have to go further, with cuts of 80-95 percent in order to (enable)

 developing countries to lift themselves out of poverty," he said.

Dimas said rich nations had a moral obligation to lead the war against global warming and the EU was ready to commit to deeper emissions cuts, provided that developed countries match those cuts with similar reductions.

"The European Union is committed to increasing its reductions targets from 20 percent to 30 percent (by 2020) on two conditions," Dimas said.

"Firstly that our partners in the industrialized world commit to comparable cuts, secondly, that developing countries agree to take action in line with their capabilities."

However, he said richer countries should provide financial incentives for emerging economies to facilitate a deal.

"The Copenhagen agreement will have to involve a major scaling up of financial aid to help developing countries to both mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change," Dimas said.

"If there is no money on the table there will be no deal."

Source
Reuters World faces last chance to avoid fatal warming: EU", accessed Feb.28, 2009

Iraq marshes face grave new threat

Iraq's southern marshes, by far the Middle East's most important wetlands, are under threat again.

At stake is a unique ecosystem that for millennia has sustained a vibrant and diverse wildlife, as well as the extraordinary way of life evolved by the Marsh Arabs.

Partially drained by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s to drive out rebels, the marshlands were revived after his overthrow in 2003.

Now they are shrinking again, thanks to a combination of drought, intensive dam

construction and irrigation schemes upstream on the Tigris, Euphrates and other river systems.

Some Marsh Arabs, who have lived in harmony with the wetlands for 6,000 years, returned after Saddam's downfall but are now leaving again as the marshes dry up.

Re-flooded

Throughout the area, what used to be large expanses of open water and reedbeds have been reduced to shallow creeks and mudflats.

Historically, the marshes covered a sprawling area of up to 15,000 square kilometres, though in more recent times 9,000 sq km has been regarded as the baseline.

By the time Saddam Hussein had finished, the wetlands had been reduced to barely 760 sq km.

After 2003, dykes were broken down and the area partially re-flooded, bringing 40% of the original marshes back to life.

Now the situation has gone into reverse, shrinking the wetlands back to roughly 30% of their former size and it could get worse if predictions of another year of low rainfall prove correct.

"The current reduction is a problem, it's not normal," said Ministry of the Environment water engineer Hazim al-Dalli.

"We can see its impact on water quality, on biodiversity in the marshes, affecting the inhabitants, who are leaving their areas. We can even see its effect on the water levels of the Tigris in Baghdad."

Worst drought

The most immediate cause is low rainfall, though it's far from being the only problem

"The drought is indeed very serious," UN

Environment Program (UNEP) expert Hassan Partow told the BBC by email.

"The 2007-2008 season was one of the worst droughts on record, and snowfall in the catchments feeding the Tigris and Euphrates has also been limited."

"All predictions are that the drought will continue over the 2008-2009 winter, with rainfall levels well below average.

"For the marshes, which are fed by a snow-driven hydrology, the spring snowmelt in March/April is critical, and so it is too early to tell what the flood will bring this year. But the signs don't look great."

Even if rain and snowfall were above normal, the proliferation of dams and irrigation schemes have choked off much of the supply, and muted the annual snowmelt floods.

"This pulse cycle has been disrupted by the dams built in Turkey, Syria and Iraq itself, but mostly Turkey," wrote Azzam Alwash, director of Nature Iraq, who has been deeply involved in efforts to restore the marshes.

"The natural flow system is not going to return until and unless the dams outside Iraq are actively managed as part of a basin-wide coordinated management of the Tigris and Euphrates."

"We need to make sure that there is a just and equitable distribution of the water resources and improved efficiency of usage."

Disrupted flow

Iraq has water-sharing agreements with Syria, Turkey and Iran. But getting its allocation during drought years is difficult.

Many new dams are being constructed which also need to be filled, further reducing the supply.

Turkey has some of the biggest projects, but Iran's damming of the Karkheh river, which feeds directly into the marshes, and its construction of a mud barricade along the border running through the big Huwaiza marsh, have disrupted natural flows.

There are dam and irrigation projects in northern Iraq that also threaten consequences further downstream.

As if all this weren't enough, climate change also seems to be kicking in.

"We can see the effects of global warming on the level of our rivers, and on the dried-up parts of the marshes now," said Hazim al-Dalli of the Environment Ministry.

"The evidence that these are only preliminary signs of worse to come is quite strong,

and the government of Iraq needs to seriously begin developing contingency and adaptation plans to deal with climate change," added Hassan Partow of

UNEP.

But despite all the bad news, experts appear to believe the marshes are not living their death-throes.

For one thing, the wetlands show extraordinary resilience in bouncing back from previous periods of drought as part of a natural cycle.

Crucial step

The reedbeds on which much of the ecology - and the Marsh Arabs way of life -

depend, may appear to die off when the water dries up.

But their rhizomes - horizontal root-stems buried underground - remain viable for long periods, and throw up fresh shoots when the floods return.

Mr Alwash is optimistic the demands of dams and irrigation projects can be survived.

The Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources has adopted a master plan for the construction of 17 regulators at key points to allow water to be retained in winter and released in spring, creating an artificial flood pulse as would happen with snowmelt if nature were not being obstructed.

"This is a crucial step that not only will assure the restoration of a major portion of the marshes, but the continued increase in areas recovered," Mr Azzam said.

He also believes that in the long run, agriculture based on excessive and wasteful exploitation of water upstream will have to adopt efficient modern irrigation techniques, or be doomed by a rising buildup of salts.

"If they do not evolve their irrigation, they will die from salination, and the marshes

can live on relatively salty water, albeit in a different biodiversity scheme than exists today," he said.

In the short term, the marshes seem destined to face at least another year of hardship.

But with proper water-sharing agreements between the countries involved, and advanced management plans for water use both upstream and in the marshes themselves, the future beyond might not look so bleak.

Source:

BBC News, "Iraq marshes face grave new threat" accessed Feb 27, 2009

Climate change lays waste to Spain's glaciers

Spain loses 90% of its glaciers thanks to global warming, threatening drought as rivers dry up, The Pyrenees mountains have lost almost 90% of their glacier ice over the past century, according to scientists who warn that global warning means they will disappear completely within a few decades.

While glaciers covered 3,300 hectares of land on the mountain range that divides Spain and France at the turn of the last century, only 390 hectares remain, according to Spain's environment ministry.

The most southerly glaciers in Europe are losing the battle against warming and look set to be among the first to disappear from the continent over the coming decades. Their loss will have a severe impact on summer water supplies in the foothills and southern plains south of the Pyrenees.

"This century could see (perhaps within a few decades) the total, or almost total, disappearance of the last reserves of ice in the Spanish Pyrenees and, as a result, a major change in the current nature of upper reaches of the mountains," the authors of the report on Spain's glaciers said.

Scientists have ruled out the idea that the progressive deterioration of glaciers around the globe are part of normal, long-term fluctuations in their size. Europe's glaciers are thought to have lost a quarter of their mass in the last 8 years.

Prof Wilfried Haeberli, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service, said that the rate of glacier loss is particularly quick. "Small glaciers disappear faster so the relative loss is much larger."

"They are the best indicators of climate change," he said . "I would even say these figures (for Spain) are optimistic. If the loss of ice goes on at the speed of the past 10 years they may disappear within ten to 20 years."

Scientists warn of potentially dramatic effects to agriculture as glaciers that feed rivers disappear, taking away a major source of summer water.

glaciers under threat in Spain feed rivers such as the Gállego, the Cinca and the Garona which water the foothills and plains south of the Pyrenees.

"During the dry season, especially in Spain, they are nourished by glacier and snow melt," said Prof Haeberli.

He said that smaller glaciers, such as those in Spain and some in tropical countries such as Colombia and Kenya, would soon disappear as the planet heats up.

Even the Alps, though, stand to lose up to 75% of its glacial area by mid-century.

Glaciers provide a unique record of global climate change as scientists have been tracking their development since the International Glacier Commission was founded in Switzerland in 1894. Spanish glaciers were among those measured at the end of the 19th century.

The World Glacier Monitoring Service last year reported that glaciers around the planet were melting at a rate unseen for 5,000 years.

"It has become obvious that the ongoing trend of worldwide and fast, if not accelerating, glacier shrinkage … is of a non-cyclic nature," the service's report for the decade up to 2005 said.

The rate of melting more than doubled over that period when compared to the previous decade.

Changes were "without precedent in history" and would produce "dramatic scenarios", including the complete loss of glaciers in some mountains systems, according to the report.

"Glacier shrinkage … is not a periodic change and may lead to the deglaciation of large parts of many mountain regions by the end of the 21st century," the monitoring service report warned.

Early figures for 2006 and 2007 indicate that the speed of glacier melt around the world continues to increase.

Source:
London Guardian, "Climate change lays waste to Spain's glaciers", accessed Feb. 25, 2009

From the Inbox - The Clean Water Act and the 111th Congress

Last Friday, the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, VA overturned a 2007 decision stating that the Army Corps of Engineers had improperly issued permits for mountaintop removal coal mining operations.

This setback for our cause is a reminder of how important it is that the new Congress passes the Clean Water Protection Act (CWPA).

The Clean Water Protection Act would sharply reduce mountaintop removal coal mining, protect clean drinking water for many of our nation's cities -- and protect the quality of life for Appalachian coalfield residents who face frequent catastrophic flooding and pollution or loss of drinking water as a result of mountaintop removal.

The good news is that Representatives Frank Pallone and Dave Reichert are preparing to introduce the Clean Water Protection Act in Congress in the coming days.

Already, 91 of their fellow members of Congress have agreed to co-sponsor the CWPA when it is introduced.

Is your representative one of those co-sponsors? Click here to find out:

http://ilovemountains.org/action/write_your_rep/

If your representative isn't on the list, please take a moment to email them and ask them to support the CWPA and to take a stand against mountaintop removal coal mining:

http://ilovemountains.org/action/write_your_rep/

You can also help move the CWPA through Congress by joining us for the 4th Annual End Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington, taking place the March 14th-19th.

By joining us in Washington, you'll get to meet and work with other passionate Appalachian activists from around the country; develop and hone your outreach skills in our outreach workshops; and meet face to face with legislators to help inspire and educate them to pass legislation to end mountaintop removal coal mining in 2009.

To learn more and register for the Week in Washington, click here:

http://www.ilovemountains.org/action/wiw2009

Thank you for everything you do.

Matt Wasson
iLoveMountains.org

PS Your contribution to iLoveMountains can help us keep the pressure on to end mountaintop removal coal mining. Click here to make a tax-deductible contribution.

From the Inbox - Save the Polar Bears from Bush's 11th Hour Regulation Changes

		Victims of Bush/Cheney? Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski and other allies of Big Oil are opposing legislative provisions that could help save America’s polar bears and other threatened and endangered animals from extinction. Urge your Senators to reverse the Bush Administration’s awful endangered species rules. The Senate could vote on legislative provisions to reverse the Bush rules in the next few days, so please help us send 35,000 messages by Monday! Fast Fact: Polar bears could disappear from America in the next 50 years. The Bush/Cheney Administration has been gone for more than a month, but their eleventh-hour regulatory shenanigans are still threatening our polar bears and other threatened and endangered wildlife. Before leaving office, the Bush/Cheney Administration rammed through a regulatory change to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that threatens efforts to save polar bears, wolves, manatees and nearly 1,400 other species from extinction. Speak out for America’s vanishing polar bears and other threatened and endangered animals. Urge your Senators to reverse the Bush Administration’s awful endangered species rules. The Bush/Cheney regulatory changes eliminated scientific review by the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service of projects that could harm imperiled wildlife. These changes also block important conservation measures under the Endangered Species Act to help the polar bear. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed its omnibus spending bill, including provisions that would enable Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to reverse the Bush Administration’s awful endangered species proposals. Unfortunately, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski -- backed by her Governor, Sarah Palin -- and others in the Senate are now working furiously to strip these provisions from the Senate’s version of the omnibus bill. Please take action now. Urge your Senators to stand up to Murkowski and help reverse the Bush/Cheney assault on protections for polar bears and other imperiled animals. The Senate is expected to vote on the omnibus spending bill in the next few days, and we need your help to show broad support for real action to protect polar bears and other imperiled animals. Please take action today and help us send at least 35,000 messages to the Senate by Monday. If Murkowski and Palin are successful, polar bears and hundreds of other imperiled animals could be denied important help under the Endangered Species Act -- protections that are increasingly important as animals like polar bears struggle to survive the effects of global warming. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey estimate that as many as two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could be lost in the next 50 years -- including America’s dwindling polar bear population. Polar bears need our help today. Please send a message to your Senators right now and urge them to ensure that polar bears get the help they need to avoid extinction. A Senate vote on this bill could come soon, so please take action right now to help protect our polar bears and other wildlife. With Gratitude, Rodger Schlickeisen President Defenders of Wildlife P.S. Defenders of Wildlife is fighting hard in Congress, in the courts and on the ground to save our polar bears. Please consider adopting a polar bear mom and cub to help support these and other vital efforts to protect threatened and endangered species.

NASA plan to launch Earth's first carbon dioxide tracking satellite fizzles as does not make orbit

The world's first satellite designed to map concentrations of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere was to have been launched by NASA on Tuesday.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (Oco - on left awaiting liftoff) mission was to collect precise measurements of the greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere, identifying where it is coming from, where it is absorbed and what happens to it in between.

The improved tracking of CO2 would help scientists develop maps showing how the gas is concentrated around the world and give a better picture of how it affects the Earth's climate. Policymakers and governments would be able to use the data when setting and monitoring CO2 emissions targets designed to tackle climate change.

"It's critical that we understand the processes controlling carbon dioxide in our atmosphere today so we can predict how fast it will build up in the future and how quickly we'll have to adapt to climate change," said David Crisp, principal investigator for the OCO, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The Oco blasted off on a Taurus XL rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The satellite failed to reach orbit early Tuesday in a mishap that could jeopardize its mission to better understand climate change.

Several minutes into the flight, launch managers declared a “contingency plan” after the payload fairing failed to separate from the launch vehicle. The fairing protects the spacecraft as the launch vehicle flies through the atmosphere.

John Brunschwyler, from Orbital Sciences Corporation said: 'The fairing has considerable weight relative to the portion of the vehicle that's flying. So when it separates off, you get a jump in acceleration. We did not have that jump in acceleration.'

Unable to get enough lift, the rocket splashed down close to the Antarctic ocean where a group of environment ministers - including Britain's Hilary Benn, met this week to study climate change.

NASA said it will convene a team of experts to investigate the loss of the satellite.

The carbon observatory was NASA’s first satellite dedicated to monitoring carbon dioxide on a global scale. 'Certainly for the science community it's a huge disappointment,' said John Brunschwyler, from Orbital Sciences Corporation which built the rocket and satellite. 'It's taken so long to get here.'

Measurements collected from the $280 million mission were expected to improve climate models and help researchers determine where the greenhouse gas originates and how much is being absorbed by forests and oceans.

The satellite was to have helped scientists answer one of the biggest mysteries about the movement of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere. Of all of the greenhouse gas emitted into the air since the industrial revolution in the 19th century, around 40% has stayed there. Half of the remainder has been absorbed by the Earth's oceans but the rest has not yet been be accounted for. Scientists think the gas must have been absorbed on land but no one really knows where these missing carbon sinks are or what controls them.

"It's important to make clear that the 'missing' sinks aren't really missing, they are just poorly understood," said Scott Denning, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University. "We know the 'missing' sinks are terrestrial, land areas where forests, grasslands, crops and soil are absorbing carbon dioxide. But finding these sinks is like finding a needle in a haystack. It would be great if we could measure how much carbon every tree, shrub, peat bog or blade of grass takes in, but the world is too big and too diverse and is constantly changing, making such measurements virtually impossible. The solution is not in measuring carbon in trees. The solution is measuring carbon in the air."

Previous NASA missions, such as the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, have also measured the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere but only at altitudes of 5km to 10km above the surface. "Oco was the first NASA mission to have been dedicated, and optimized to make precise measurements of carbon dioxide throughout the atmospheric column, between the surface and space, with the greatest sensitivity near the Earth's surface, where most of the carbon dioxide sources and sinks are thought to be located," said Crisp.

Oco was to have collected about 8 million measurements every 16 days for at least two years. It would use three high-resolution spectrometers to split light into its various constituent colors. By analyzing this light to detect the unique signature of gases such as carbon dioxide and oxygen in the atmosphere, scientists would be able to determine their relative concentrations and identify sources and sinks of CO2.

"Oco is primarily an exploratory science mission, whose objective is to test and validate a new technique for measuring carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere from space. If we find that this approach works as well as we predict, it should provide scientists with the data that they need to produce the first global maps of carbon dioxide sources and sinks on regional scales, or spatial scales comparable to the size of Great Britain," said Crisp.

Source:
The London Guardian, "Nasa to launch Earth's first carbon dioxide tracking satellite", accessed Feb. 23, 2009
Times Herald Record, "NASA satellite launch mishap", accessed Feb. 24, 2009
Mail Online, "Faulty rocket brings Nasa's 'global warming' satellite down with a bump", accessed Feb. 24, 2009

Alp-sized peaks found entombed in Antarctic ice

Jagged mountains the size of the Alps have been found entombed in Antarctica's ice, giving new clues about the vast ice sheet that will raise world sea levels if even a fraction of it melts, scientists said on Tuesday.

Using radar and gravity sensors, the experts made the first detailed maps of the Gamburtsev subglacial mountains, originally detected by Russian scientists 50 years ago at the heart of the East Antarctic ice sheet.

"The surprising thing was that not only is this mountain range the size of the Alps, but it looks quite similar to the (European) Alps, with high peaks and valleys," said Fausto Ferraccioli, a geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey who took part in the research.

He told Reuters that the mountains would probably have been ground down almost flat if the ice sheet had formed slowly. But the presence of jagged peaks might mean the ice formed

 quickly, burying a landscape under up to 4 km (2.5 miles) of ice.

Ferraccioli said the maps were "the first page of a new book" of understanding how ice

 sheets behave, which in turn could help predict how the ice will react to global warming.

Antarctica, bigger than the United States, has been swathed in ice for about 35 million years, and contains enough of it to raise world sea levels by about 57 meters (187 feet) if it ever all

 melted. So even a fractional melt would affect coasts around the globe.

"Unless we have a basic understanding of how ice sheets work, any sort of predictive model won't match reality," Ferraccioli said.

The U.N. panel on climate change says that greenhouse gases, mainly emitted by burning fossil fuels, will bring more heatwaves, floods and droughts, and raise sea levels.

The team of experts from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, Japan and the United States also found water below the ice, using survey aircraft that flew 120,000 km (75,000 miles).

"The temperatures at our camps hovered around minus 30 Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), but 3 km (2 miles) beneath us at the bottom of the ice sheet we saw liquid water in the valleys," Robin Bell, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, said in a statement.

Many sub-glacial lakes have been found in Antarctica in recent years.

Geologists say that mountain ranges such as the Alps or the Himalayas form in collisions between continents. The last time Antarctica was exposed to such forces was 500 million years ago.

"The mystery here is that the Alps are only 50 to 60 million years old, while here we have a mountain range that may perhaps be as old as 500 million years," Ferraccioli said.

Source:

Reuters, "Alp-sized peaks found entombed in Antarctic ice", accessed Feb. 24, 2009

From the Inbox - The Coen Brothers newest release

Dear Reality Member, When it comes to making cutting edge films like "Fargo," "No Country for Old Men," and "The Big Lebowski," Joel and Ethan Coen are the real deal. Now, they've got one more title on that impressive list. "Air Freshener" is directed by the Coen brothers, and we're proud to say it's Reality's latest ad -- calling out the coal industry's ridiculous claims that coal is clean as only the Coen brothers can. Watch it now: http://action.ThisIsReality.org/coenbrothers A lot has happened since we launched the Reality Campaign to call out the coal industry for their dirty lies. The devastating coal ash spill in Tennessee last December was a painful reminder that using "clean" to describe coal doesn't make it true. And last week, the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to reconsider carbon dioxide regulation was a tremendous wake-up call to the coal industry. Now is a crucial moment. Our message is working, and we've got to take this opportunity to turn up the heat. With help from folks like the Coen brothers, it's a little easier (and funnier). Will you help spread the word, too? Watch how this Air Freshener "cleans," and join the Reality Campaign to help push the coal industry to come clean about dirty coal. http://action.ThisIsReality.org/coenbrothers It's time for the coal industry to make an immediate investment in new technology, to show real commitment to clean energy solutions. The ball is in their court. Thanks, Brian Hardwick Reality Coalition P.S. After you watch the video, check out the Reality blog, the newest addition to ThisIsReality.org.

From the Inbox - Sea Turtles in Peril of Extinction

Unable to free themselves from razor-sharp hooks, sea turtles die slow and agonizing deaths, wounded and drowning in waters where these gentle creatures have made their home for millions of years. Since just last week, more than 45,000 caring wildlife supporters like you have already signed our petition to save sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico from the hooks of bottom longline fishing. Now please help us stop fishing practices that kill imperiled sea turtles and protect baby sea turtles and the nesting grounds that they need to survive with a special donation. Sea turtles take a long time to mature and reproduce, making each individual important to the continued survival of these ancient ocean travelers. But sea turtle hatchlings can become confused by artificial lighting on nesting beaches and many never make it to sea. Those who do make it face drowning by the nets and razor-sharp hooks of irresponsible fishing practices -- and mothers ready to lay their eggs face the loss of vital nesting beaches due to development or rising sea levels. Without our help, sea turtles could be doomed to extinction. With your compassionate help, we can save the lives of sea turtles and help save them from extinction. Please make a tax-deductible contribution today to help save these beautiful sea creatures from being killed by harmful fishing practices and habitat loss. You can make a life-saving difference, Donate $50 or more and we’ll even send you a plush sea turtle like this as a reminder of the important part you’re playing in the fight to save sea turtles for future generations to enjoy. All sea turtles in U.S. waters are listed as threatened or endangered, and we’re working hard to save them from extinction: Off America’s coasts… As Defenders of Wildlife’s head lawyer Bob Dreher reported last week, we’re determined to suspend bottom longline fishing in the Gulf of Mexico -- a practice that killed hundreds of imperiled sea turtles in 2006-2007. More than 45,000 Defenders supporters have joined the fight, signing our petition urging the National Marine Fisheries Service to act immediately to protect the Gulf’s dwindling sea turtle population. In Florida… Elizabeth Fleming and the rest of our Florida staff are working with local beach residents to address beach lighting that threatens sea turtle populations and disorients nesting mothers and baby sea turtles alike, working to protect sea turtle nests from destructive off-road driving and advocating for decisive action to safeguard sea turtle nesting beaches from the damaging effects of sea level rise. In Mexico…Defenders sea turtle specialist Juan Carlos Cantu has spent years saving sea turtles. He’s purchased “de-hookers” to free sea turtles from fishing gear and held educational workshops to train local fishermen on their use. He’s also published educational comic books and enlisted Mexican sports celebrities in the fight to save sea turtles. Juan Carlos is now working to establish a new sanctuary to safeguard sea turtles off Baja California Sur. Around the world… Defenders staff are working to prevent trade in imperiled sea turtles, so that our sea turtles have a shot at surviving for future generations to enjoy. Defenders has a multi-pronged plan to save our sea turtles from extinction, but we need your support. Can you help us meet out goal to raise $45,000 by the end of February to support these and other wildlife-saving efforts? Please donate today to help support Defenders of Wildlife’s concrete efforts on the ground and around the world to save imperiled sea turtles. Rodger Schlickeisen President Defenders of Wildlife P.S. You can help save the lives of imperiled sea turtles!Make a secure, tax-deductible donation online today or call 1-800-385-9712 to contribute by phone.

Scientists capture dramatic footage of Arctic glaciers melting in hours

Scientists have captured dramatic footage of massive lakes in the Arctic melting away in a matter of hours.

Glaciologist Jason Box has been testing a Moulin, a shaft that allows water to travel from the glacier's surface to its bottom, in a glacier on the Greenland ice cap to find out how fast it is melting.

Dr Box said: “The Moulin is the epicentre of our concern because all the water is running down at this one point.

“It’s just bottomless, no light escapes.”
Balanced on the edge of an ice sheet the team used a flow meter to measure the water speed.

He said: “There’s no escape from a Moulin. It’s just got danger written all over it. But the information is so important that we actually had to take that risk.”

The team found that in just one day 42 million liters fresh water drained down this one Moulin. Dr Box thinks there are hundreds, possibly thousands more Moulins across the Greenland ice cap.

Greenland is losing enough water each year to cover Germany a meter deep.

Dr Box, from Ohio State University, thinks the way to combat melting glaciers is to cover them with blankets that will reflect the sun’s rays.

Dr Box said: “We’re in the midst of a climate catastrophe and glaciers are the epicentre of that problem.

“Glaciers around the planted are decanting into the oceans at shocking rates and I want to stop that.”

Source:
London Telegraph, "Scientists capture dramatic footage of Arctic glaciers melting in hours", accessed Feb. 23, 2009

California farms lose main water source to drought

California's main source of irrigation water is expected to go dry this year for most of its growers due to drought, idling at least 60,000 workers and up to 1 million acres of farmland, federal officials and experts said on Friday.

The zero allocation for most of the farmers who buy water from the federally managed Central Valley Project was declared as California water officials repeated their plans to cut amounts supplied from a separate state-run water system to 15 percent of normal.

The drought-forced cutbacks are a huge blow to thousands of farmers in the Central Valley, which produces over half of the fruit, vegetables and nuts grown in the United States. Higher prices are likely for a wide range of crops as a result.

The Central Valley, a fertile but arid region stretching some 500 miles from Bakersfield to Redding, is the agricultural heartland of California, which ranks as the nation's No. 1 farm state in terms of the value of crops produced -- more than $36 billion a year.

The principal source of water for farms and ranches in the valley is the federally built and managed CVP, a vast network of dams, pumping stations and canals that collects runoff from the Sierra Nevada mountain range and delivers it to irrigation districts throughout the region.

A recent forecast by University of California economists projected losses of 60,000 to 80,000 jobs and over $2 billion in income from a scenario like the one announced on Friday.

The state unemployment rate already tops 9 percent, well above the national average.

'IT DOESN'T GET WORSE'

Richard Howitt, a co-author of that study, said he expected that 850,000 acres of land would be left dry and fallow, and another 2 million acres would grow less food than normal. His analysis assumes farmers will make greater use of groundwater to help offset cutbacks from the state and federal government.

Officials at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the CVP, estimated that 1 million acres, roughly a third of the land irrigated by the system, would be put out of production. Agency spokeswoman Lynnette Wirth called the situation "grim."

"It doesn't get any worse than zero," California Farm Bureau Federation President Doug Mosebar said in a statement. "Our water reliability has hit rock bottom."

He called on state authorities to take any steps possible to ease the situation, including ensuring that short-term water sales and transfers between farmers can proceed smoothly.

The Westlands Water District, the largest on the CVP and the nation's largest overall, encompasses just over 700 farmers on 600,000 acres of land, two-thirds of which will be idled by the cutoff in water supplies, spokeswoman Sarah Woolf said.

She said layoffs already have begun in anticipation of the cutbacks. Some growers will do their best to get by with unused water supplies left over from last year and local groundwater.

Federal officials say allocations might be increased later in the year to 10 percent of contracted amounts, but only if an unexpectedly large amount of rain and snow falls.

The CVP last declared a zero supply in 1992, but farmers ultimately received 25 percent of their normal allotment that year after conditions improved, Wirth said.

Despite a recent flurry of winter storms, California is in the third year of a drought shaping

up as the state's worst ever. The snowpack in the Sierras remains far below normal, and reservoirs fed by mountain runoff are badly depleted as well.

Complicating matters are federal court restrictions on water that can be pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Northern California, which furnishes much of the state's irrigation and drinking supplies, in order to protect endangered fish species.

Source:

Reuters, "California farms lose main water source to drought" accessed Feb. 23, 2009

Hunt begins for world's most polluted places

Researchers will fan out across more than 80 developing countries beginning this month to hunt out and assess many of the world's dirtiest industrial waste sites.

The New York-based nonprofit Blacksmith Institute is training the researchers from local semi-government agencies, universities and nonprofit groups in the countries to create a database of the sites called the Global Inventory Project.

"Blacksmith is doing what no other governmental organization, NGO or nonprofit has ever even attempted," said Jack Caravanos, a professor of environmental health at Hunter College of City University of New York.

Caravanos said the inventory is a "first step" to help governments and international organizations prioritize the clean up of waste sites that pose health threats to people including cancer risks to adults and learning disability risks to children. Asthma and other respiratory ailments are other problems millions of locals suffer at sites like abandoned metal mines in Africa and factories that made weapons or industrial chemicals in former Soviet Union states.

Concern about polluted places is growing as the world's population swells and people in developing countries like China and India buy more goods like cars and electronics, habits that were once mostly limited to rich places like the United States and Europe.

Blacksmith director Richard Fuller said the rich countries have mostly already cleaned up their contaminated places because they have strong anti-pollution laws. But in many industrializing countries, "the cost of life in the politician's mind is much lower what we are used to," he said.

The European Commission and Green Cross Switzerland funded the inventory for the next 18 months with $1.5 million, and the U.N. Industrial Development Organization has partnered with Blacksmith on a database that could list 1,200 to 2,000 sites.

Blacksmith has developed a non-confrontational approach over the last several years. It attempts to encourage the companies that made the messes and the nearby communities to work together to clean up sites, instead of bogging down the process with lawsuits. A key to the technique has been Blacksmith's publishing of lists of the world's top polluted sites. In some cases that has pushed companies that were responsible for the mess to act.

"The companies get embarrassed and they say 'what can we do to get off the list?'" Caravanos said.

Some of the worst polluted sites involve lead battery recycling, which takes place in almost every urban center in developing countries, said Fuller.

Blacksmith recently lead a $200,000 clean up of a battery site in Haina in the Dominican Republic, in which much of the underlying soil was 35 percent lead, a pollutant that leads to severe learning disabilities in children.

Blacksmith hopes to establish a $500 million Health and Pollution Fund to help clean up sites. Cleanup costs can range from $10 million for sites that involve polluted rivers, to $20,000 for cleaning up rusty containers of toxic chemicals that face the risk of exploding.

Source:
Reuters,"Hunt begins for world's most polluted places", accessed February 19, 2009

Rare U.S. jaguar caught, released in Arizona

An extremely rare jaguar has been captured and fitted with a satellite tracking collar by researchers in Arizona, who hope to shed light on the habits of one of the United States' most elusive predators.

Arizona Game and Fish Department officials 

caught the male cat Wednesday in a rugged area southwest of Tucson during a study to better understand bear and mountain lion habitat.

Jaguars roam over a vast area ranging from northern Argentina in the south to the rugged borderland wildernesses of Arizona and New Mexico, where they were thought to have vanished until two confirmed sightings in 1996.

Only a handful have ever been sighted in the United States since then, and very little is known about their habits.

The animal, thought to be at least 15 years old, was fitted with a collar containing a global positioning system, and released back into the wild, officials said.

"This is a tremendous opportunity to allow us to learn how the animal moves out in the landscape," said Bill Van Pelt, the department's birds and mammals program manager.

The U.S. government placed the animals under the Endangered Species Act protections in 1997. Since then, researchers using cameras set out on remote trails have identified just a handful of individual animals, all males.

The jaguars, the only roaring cats in the Americas, are thought to breed in Mexico and roam up over the border.

In recent years, concern over the well-being of the U.S. population has intensified as a program to build 670 miles of fencing gathers speed along the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200-km) southwest border with Mexico.

Van Pelt said the GPS collar fitted to the jaguar -- believed to be an animal known as Macho B, which has been periodically photographed over the past 13 years -- would allow scientists to track its movements back and forth over the border from Mexico and study its little known habits.

"The collar will also let us know kill sites, where it's eating, when it's eating ... (and) how it gets across major roads in country where there is a lot of human activity going on," he said in a telephone interview.

"It's just truly fascinating from a biological perspective."

Source:

Reuters, "Rare U.S. jaguar caught, released in Arizona", accessed Feb. 23, 2009