Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 02 (Apr 11 - Sep 15)

[winston]

According to "experts", the 3 Gorges Dam is now an environmental nightmare.

Not only has the dam lead to severe droughts, it will also lead to floods during the rainy seasons, because of the change in soil.

And they were polite enough not to mention the leakages


Source: CNN

[millionairemind]

We old farts from older generation wish to apologise to the new generation of young people for not taking good care of the planet, leaving them a rotten world


In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."
The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."

He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.
In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.
When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.
We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.
We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

[winston]

Millions in China at risk from run-down dams

More than a quarter of Chinese cities are at risk from tens of thousands of run-down reservoirs, prompting the government to speed up efforts to make repairs, state media said Friday.

More than 40,000 reservoirs around the country have been in use longer than their design life and are poorly maintained due to a lack of funds over the past few decades, the state-run Global Times reported.

As a result, more than 25 percent of Chinese cities and vast rural areas are at threat from potential devastating floods if dams break, it said, citing the state-run China Economic Weekly magazine.

"These reservoirs are running high risks, and will ruin farmland, railways, buildings and even cities when they collapse," said Xu Yuanming, an official in charge of reservoirs at the water resources ministry, according to the report.

The ministry was not immediately available for comment.

Ecologists have long feared about the safety of China's 87,000 reservoirs, and the giant and controversial Three Gorges Dam project in central Hubei province has caused particular concern.

The government has long held up the world's largest hydroelectric project as a symbol of its engineering prowess, a solution to the frequent floods of China's long Yangtze river and a source of badly-needed electricity.

But the dam has created a reservoir stretching up to 600 kilometres (370 miles) through a region criss-crossed by geological faultlines.

Critics fear seismic disturbances or a huge earthquake could cause a catastrophe worse than the 1975 tragedy in neighbouring Henan province, when 62 dams collapsed due to pounding rain triggered by a typhoon.

At least 26,000 people were killed in floods unleashed by the dam failures, and another 145,000 are said to have died from subsequent epidemics and famine.

To address the pressing problem, the government has launched its largest ever campaign to repair and improve the capacity of water conservancy projects in the country, the Global Times report said.

In July last year Beijing ordered 5,400 reservoirs to be reinforced, and in April started repairing another 41,000 smaller ones, it added.

However, irrigation experts have warned that a shortage of financial support and slow action by local governments could undermine this wide-ranging effort, it said.

Source: AFP Asian Edition

[winston]

Fish-catching trick may be spreading among dolphins

PERTH, Australia (Reuters) - Dolphins in one western Australian population have been observed holding a large conch shell in their beaks and using it to shake a fish into their mouths -- and the behavior may be spreading.

Researchers from Murdoch University in Perth were not quite sure what they were seeing when they first photographed the activity, in 2007, in which dolphins would shake conch shells at the surface of the ocean.

"It's a fleeting glimpse -- you look at it and think, that's kind of weird," said Simon Allen, a researcher at the university's Cetacean Research Unit.

"Maybe they're playing, maybe they're socializing, maybe males are presenting a gift to a female or something like that, maybe the animals are actually eating the animal inside."

But researchers were more intrigued when they studied the photos and found the back of a fish hanging out of the shell, realizing that the shaking drained the water out of the shells and caused the fish that was sheltering inside to fall into the dolphins' mouths.

A search through records for dolphins in the eastern part of Shark Bay, a population that has been studied for nearly 30 years, found roughly half a dozen sightings of similar behavior over some two decades.

Then researchers saw it at least seven times during the four-month research period starting this May, Allen said.

"There's a possibility here -- and it's speculation at this stage -- that this sort of change from seeing it six or seven times in 21 years to seeing it six or seven times in three months gives us that tantalizing possibility that it might be spreading before our very eyes," he added.

"It's too early to say definitively yet, but we'll be watching very closely over the next couple of field seasons."

The Shark Bay dolphin population is already unusual for having developed two foraging techniques, one of which involves the dolphin briefly beaching itself to grab fish after driving them up onto the shore.

The other is "sponging" -- in which the dolphins break off a conical bit of sponge and fit it over their heads like a cap, shielding them as they forage for food on the sea floor.

But both of these spread "vertically," mainly through the female dolphin population, from mother to daughter. The intriguing thing about this new behavior with the conch shells is that it might be spreading "horizontally," Allen said.

"If it spreads horizontally, then we would expect to see it more often and we'd expect to see it between 'friends'," he added, noting that dolphins are known for having preferences in terms of companions and whom they spend time with.

"Most of the sightings from this year are in the same habitat where we first saw it in 2007, and a couple of the individuals this year are known to associate with the ones that we saw doing it a year or two ago."

The next step would be not only to observe the behavior again in another season but also to try and gather evidence Of deliberate actions on the part of the dolphins.

"If we could put some shells in a row or put them facing down or something like that and then come back the next day, if we don't actually see them do it but find evidence that they've turned the shell over or make it into an appealing refuge for a fish, then that implies significant forward planning on the dolphins' parts," Allen said.

"The nice idea is that there is this intriguing possibility that they might manipulate the object beforehand. Then that might change using the shell as just a convenient object into actual tool use," he added.

Source: Reuters US Online Report Science News

[winston]

I like Shark's Fin but I also understand how wasteful it is, to just cut the fin and then let the shark die a slow death ..

Malaysia Borneo state wants ban on shark fishing

A Malaysian state on Borneo island, known for its world-class dive sites, is seeking to ban shark fishing to protect the species, which draws thousands of tourists each year, a minister said Monday.

Masidi Manjun, state tourism, culture and environment minister, said Sabah hopes the law can be changed by the end of the year to impose a blanket ban on killing sharks, which are mainly hunted for their fins to make soup.

"We want to make sure that the ban is a blanket ban of all types of sharks in Sabah," he told AFP.

"Tourists come to see the rich variety of marine life that we have in Sabah, and that includes sharks. It makes economic sense for us to protect our sharks," he added. "The moment they are gone, people will go elsewhere."

Masidi said 42,000 divers, two-thirds of them foreigners, visited the state last year, bringing in more than 190 million ringgit ($64 million) in revenue.

He said the state is currently consulting with Malaysia's attorney general to change a federal law to introduce the ban for Sabah.

He added that over the past 25 years, some 80 percent of the state's sharks had disappeared and they could now only be spotted at four sites.

Masidi could not say how much the trade in shark's fin was worth. But a bowl of the soup, which is considered a delicacy in parts of Asia, especially among Chinese diners, can easily cost more than 100 ringgit (around $35), he said.

In 2007, Malaysia's Natural Resources and Environment Ministry struck shark's fin soup off menus at official functions to help conserve the species.

Traffic, an international network that monitors the trade in wildlife, said early this year that Malaysia was the world's 10th biggest catcher of sharks.

Worldwide up to 73 million sharks are killed every year, primarily for their fins, it said.

Source: AFP Global Edition

[kennynah]

very simple to resolve this issue...

just buy shark meat ... as long as we create a demand for shark meat dish...then, we can have shark's fin without feeling the guilt ... which i don't...

[iam802]

I do know of shark meat noodle stall around. Unlike the fins, it is cheap (around $3).

But, I read that shark meat contains too much mercury...hence it is not sought after.

[winston]

Total Arctic sea ice at record low in 2010: study by Gerard Wynn
Reuters US Online Report Science News

500 MILES FROM THE NORTH POLE (Reuters) - The minimum summertime volume of Arctic sea ice fell to a record low last year, researchers said in a study to be published shortly, suggesting that thinning of the ice had outweighed a recovery in area.

The study estimated that last year broke the previous, 2007 record for the minimum volume of ice, which is calculated from a combination of sea ice area and thickness.

http://www.newsmeat.com/news/meat.php?a ... &buid=3281

[winston]

Arctic ice cover hits historic low: scientists by Marlowe Hood

The area covered by Arctic sea ice reached its lowest point this week since the start of satellite observations in 1972, German researchers announced on Saturday.

"On September 8, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was 4.240 million square kilometres (1.637 million square miles). This is a new historic minimum," said Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen's Institute of Environmental Physics.

The new mark is about half-a-percent under his team's measurements of the previous record, which occurred on September 16, 2007, he said.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the record set on that date was 4.1 million sq km (1.6 sq mi). The discrepancy, Heygster explained by phone, was due to slightly different data sets and algorithms.

Arctic ice cover plays a critical role in regulating Earth's climate by reflecting sunlight and keeping the polar region cool.

Retreating summer sea ice -- 50 percent smaller in area than four decades ago -- is described by scientists as both a measure and a driver of global warming, with negative impacts on a local and planetary scale.

"Climate models show, rather, that the reduction is related to the man-made global warming which, due to the albedo effect, is particularly pronounced in the Arctic."

Albedo increases when an area once covered by reflective snow or ice -- which bounces 80 percent of the Sun's radiative force back into space -- is replaced by deep blue sea, which absorbs the heat instead.

Temperatures in the Arctic region have risen more than twice as fast as the global average over the last half century.

The Arctic ice cover has also become significantly thinner in recent decades, though it is not possible to measure the shrinkage in thickness as precisely as for surface area, the statement said.

Satellite tracking since 1972 shows that the extent of Arctic sea ice is dropping at about 11 percent per decade.

NSIDC director Mark Serreze has said that summer ice cover could disappear entirely by 2030, leaving nothing but heat-trapping "blue ocean."

By last week, it said, sea ice is almost completely gone from the channels of the Northwest Passage. The southern route -- also known as Amunden's Route -- was also ice free, as was the Northern Sea Route along Siberia.

The last time the Arctic was uncontestably free of summertime ice was 125,000 years ago, during the height of the last major interglacial period, known as the Eemian.

Global average temperatures today are close to the maximum warmth seen during the Eemian.

Source: AFP Global Edition

[winston]

There goes your Ocean View Investment Property ...

Rising Seas Expected to Wash Out Key California Beaches

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Rising seas forecast from climate change will likely wash away some of California’s most iconic beaches by century’s end, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate, roads and tax revenues, a new study found on Wednesday.

http://www.newsmeat.com/news/meat.php?a ... &buid=3281