Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Mar 11)

Re: Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Feb 11)

Postby behappyalways » Wed Feb 09, 2011 11:57 pm

血要热 头脑要冷 骨头要硬
behappyalways
Millionaire Boss
 
Posts: 39914
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:43 pm

Re: Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Feb 11)

Postby kennynah » Thu Feb 10, 2011 3:19 am

won't it be better to mine for diamonds?
Options Strategies & Discussions .(Trading Discipline : The Science of Constantly Acting on Knowledge Consistently - kennynah).Investment Strategies & Ideas

Image..................................................................<A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control-Proverbs 29:11>.................................................................Image
User avatar
kennynah
Lord of the Lew Lian
 
Posts: 16005
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 2:00 am
Location: everywhere.. and nowhere..

Re: Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Feb 11)

Postby winston » Thu Feb 17, 2011 7:34 am

And what about those small island nations ?


Rising seas threaten 180 U.S. cities by 2100: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rising seas spurred by climate change could threaten 180 U.S. coastal cities by 2100, a new study says, with Miami, New Orleans and Virginia Beach among those most severely affected.

Previous studies have looked at where rising waters might go by the end of this century, assuming various levels of sea level rise, but this latest research focused on municipalities in the contiguous 48 states with population of 50,000 or more.

Cities along the southern Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico will likely be hardest hit if global sea levels rise, as projected, by about 3 feet (1 meter) by 2100, researchers reported in the journal Climate Change Letters.

Sea level rise is expected to be one result of global warming as ice on land melts and flows toward the world's oceans.

Using data from the U.S. Geological Survey, the scientists were able to calculate in detail how much land could be lost as seas rise, said study author Jeremy Weiss of the University of Arizona.

Rising coastal waters threaten an average of nine percent of the land in the 180 coastal cities in the study.

Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, Florida, and Virginia Beach, Virginia could lose more than 10 percent of their land area by century's end, the study found.

New York City, Washington DC and the San Francisco Bay area could face lesser impacts, according to the study.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The effects of higher seas can range from erosion to permanent inundation, and the severity of the damage depends in great measure on where the cities are, Weiss said by telephone on Wednesday.

"In Miami, it's not just strictly along their coastal edge. They have to worry about the issue in all directions," because much of the area around Miami is relatively flat, making it more vulnerable to encroaching waters, Weiss said.

By contrast, he said, people in the New York metropolitan area can concentrate their efforts along the shorelines because the land rises quickly away from the coast.

Sea level rise is expected as a consequence of continuing climate change, which is spurred by human activities including the burning of fossil fuels.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated global average temperature will rise by 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) by 2100. However, Weiss and his colleagues put the warming at more like 8 degrees F (4.4 degrees C).

Weiss said the lesser degree of warming projected by the IPCC reflects a moderate scenario. The study's higher temperature estimate is based on the idea that greenhouse emissions will continue along the current trajectory through the century.

"There aren't any national or international agreements yet on actively reducing greenhouse gas emissions and so that's what we get at when we say 8 degrees Fahrenheit," Weiss said.

In the centuries after 2100, he said, sea levels could rise as much as 6 yards (meters), based on the melting of giant ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica.

Source: Reuters US Online Report Domestic News
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Feb 11)

Postby winston » Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:11 pm

Japan halts Antarctic whaling for rest of season by Frank Zeller

Japan will halt its Antarctic whaling mission for the rest of the season because of harassment by environmentalists on the high seas, a government minister said Friday.

Activists from the US-based militant environmental group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have pursued the Japanese fleet for months, in a bid to stop its harpoon ships from killing the giant sea mammals.

"To ensure the safety of crew members' lives, of assets and of the research fleet, the government is compelled to end the research," farm and fisheries minister Michihiko Kano told a news conference, citing harassment by Sea Shepherd vessels.

( RESEARCH FLEET ? What a load of BS ! )

Jiji Press news agency quoted Kano as saying the factory ship the Nisshin Maru was "being chased, and it is difficult to ensure the safety of the crew members."

Sea Shepherd hailed the announcement, but pledged they would not give up shadowing the vessels.

"It's great news," group founder Paul Watson told AFP. "We will however stay with the Japanese ships until they return north and make sure that they're out of the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary."

Japan kills hundreds of whales a year under a loophole in a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling that allows "lethal research".

( What sort of BS is this ? )

The government has long defended the practice as part of the island-nation's culture and makes no secret of the fact that the meat ends up in restaurants.

Anti-whaling nations, led by Australia and New Zealand, and environmental groups call the hunts cruel and unnecessary.

Greenpeace has long argued the state-financed whale hunts are a waste of taxpayers' money, producing excess stockpiles of whale meat.

Sea Shepherd activists have pursued whalers in recent years, moving their ships and their inflatable and speed boats between the harpoon vessels and the sea mammals, and throwing stink and paint bombs at the whaling ships.

Japan's Fisheries Agency said Wednesday it had suspended operations since February 10 and was considering recalling the fleet a month before its usual return in mid-March.

Anti-whaling groups cheered the news Friday.

"Cooler heads in Tokyo have certainly prevailed," said Patrick Ramage, director of the Global Whale Programme at the US-based International Fund for Animal Welfare.

"It's certainly good news for whales and all those people around the world who care about them."

Ramage said the news may indicate that the centre-left government that took power in 2009, ending a half-century of conservative rule, is more aware of the diplomatic and economic cost of whaling, and less beholden to the bureaucrats who want to continue it.

"It's not the end of Japanese whaling, and it's not the beginning, but it might be the beginning of the end of commercial whaling in an international sanctuary," he said.

Source: AFP Global Edition
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Feb 11)

Postby winston » Fri Feb 18, 2011 7:32 pm

Here comes the sun: Solar flares make way to Earth By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Radiation from the largest solar flare in four years is expected to reach Earth late on Thursday or Friday.

Such events can cause radio blackouts and interfere with communication satellites, but the most likely outcome this time will be brilliant Northern Lights displays, U.S. scientists said.

NASA scientists on Monday reported an X-class solar flare, the first in more than four years. X-class flares are the most powerful of all solar events that can trigger radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.

It was one of a series of three solar flares and prompted speculation that a new solar cycle may be ramping up.

"This is one of the first real solar events of the next solar maximum -- that is when you would see the highest number of solar flares," said Brady O'Hanlon, a doctoral student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

O'Hanlon said solar activity typically peaks in 11-year cycles. "We've been at the depths of one of the quietest ever 11-year periods," he said in a telephone interview.

Solar flares are intense, short-lived releases of energy. They show up as bright areas on the sun, producing high levels of radiation and charged particles that can intensify solar winds -- electrically charged particles continuously spewing outward from the sun.

The Earth's magnetic field largely protects the planet from space weather. But massive solar flares can disrupt power grids, interfere with high-frequency airline and military communications, disrupt Global Positioning System signals and interrupt civilian communications, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which tracks solar flares.

NASA says the particle cloud produced by February 14 event is relatively weak, and most likely will only result in some beautiful sightings of the aurora borealis -- shimmery displays of red, green and purple that are expected to light up the northern sky this week.

But O'Hanlon, who conducts research on space weather and its effects on GPS software receivers, says people who have come to rely on their GPS technology during the period of quiet solar activity may see more interference with their navigation systems as solar activity picks up.

"It's been minimum activity, and we haven't had to really worry about GPS. That may not be quite the case over the next few years," he said.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/ ... ningdigest
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Feb 11)

Postby winston » Sat Feb 19, 2011 6:45 pm

Maybe this should be in the "Risks Out There" thread ...

Earth dodges geomagnetic storm: scientist

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – A wave of charged plasma particles from a huge solar eruption has glanced off the Earth's northern pole, lighting up auroras and disrupting some radio communications, a NASA scientist said.

But the Earth appears to have escaped a widespread geomagnetic storm, with the effects confined to the northern latitudes, possibly reaching down into Norway and Canada.

"There can be sporadic outages based on particular small-scale events," said Dean Persnell, project scientist at NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory at Goddard Space Flight Center.

He told AFP the official forecast is "for generally quiet conditions today, perhaps some minor storming tomorrow, but nothing extraordinary."

The event began Tuesday at 0156 GMT with a spectacular solar eruption in a sunspot the size of Jupiter that produced a Class X flash -- the most powerful of all solar events.

The eruption blasted a torrent of charged plasma particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Earth at about 560 miles per second (900 kilometers per second), the Solar Dynamics Observatory reported.

A direct hit from a CME could trigger a huge geomagnetic storm as incoming particles bounce off the Earth's geomagnetic field, blacking out radio communications, interfering with GPS navigational systems, in theory even causing power outages.

The China Meteorological Administration reported that the solar flare caused "sudden ionospheric disturbances" in the atmosphere above China and jammed shortwave radio communications in the southern part of the country.

Anticipating the worst, the US National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Service warned it was "the calm before the storm."

"Three CMEs are enroute, all a part of the Radio Blackout events on February 13, 14, and 15 (UTC). The last of the three seems to be the fastest and may catch both of the forerunners about mid to late ... February 17."

But Persnell said the spiraling beam of solar particles from Tuesday's eruption was passing behind the Earth without making a direct hit.

"In this case, it appears it will curve around and not hit us," he said.

He said satellite data "shows that the CME is quieting down and so there is not a whole lot left to it. So it's moved well behind us by now," he said.

But he said solar activity is on the upswing, and more CMEs will follow.

"We are seeing more and more sunspots as what we call solar cycle 24 is turning on," he said. "At the peak we might see several of these CMEs a day coming off the sun."

"But they have only a five to ten percent chance of hitting us. We have to be in exactly the right place for that piece of spiral to come hit us. We'll see many more coming off the sun than we have hitting us here on Earth."

The British Geological Survey (BGS) said, meanwhile, that the solar storm would result in spectacular Northern Lights displays starting Thursday.

One CME reached Earth on February 14, "sparking Valentine's Day displays of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) further south than usual."

The office published geomagnetic records dating back to the Victorian era which it hopes will help in planning for future storms.

"Life increasingly depends on technologies that didn't exist when the magnetic recordings began," said Alan Thomson, BGS head of geomagnetism.

"Studying the records will tell us what we have to plan and prepare for to make sure systems can resist solar storms," he said.

A 2009 report by a panel of scientists assembled by NASA said that a sustained and powerful solar flare outbreak could overwhelm high-voltage transformers with electrical currents and short-circuit energy grids.

The report, titled "Severe Space Weather Events -- Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts" warned that such a catastrophic event could cost the United States alone up to two trillion dollars in repairs in the first year -- and it could take up to 10 years to fully recover.


http://old.sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/201102 ... 3cdd6.html
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Feb 11)

Postby winston » Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:17 pm

Fewer big fish in the sea, say scientists

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – Fewer big, predatory fish are swimming in the world's oceans because of overfishing by humans, leaving smaller fish to thrive and double in force over the past 100 years, scientists said Friday.

Big fish such as cod, tuna, and groupers have declined worldwide by two-thirds while the number of anchovies, sardines and capelin has surged in their absence, said University of British Columbia researchers.

Meanwhile, people around the world are fishing harder and coming up with the same or fewer numbers in their catch, indicating that humans may have maxed out the ocean's capacity to provide us with food.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20110219/t ... b2fc3.html
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Feb 11)

Postby winston » Sun Feb 20, 2011 10:52 am

Space weather could wreak havoc in gadget-driven world by Kerry Sheridan

A geomagnetic space storm sparked by a solar eruption like the one that flared toward Earth Tuesday is bound to strike again and could wreak havoc across the gadget-happy modern world, experts say.

Contemporary society is increasingly vulnerable to space weather because of our dependence on satellite systems for synchronizing computers, navigational systems, telecommunications networks and other electronic devices.

A potent solar storm could disrupt these technologies, scorch satellites, crash stock markets and cause power outages that last weeks or months, experts said Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting.

The situation will only get more dire because the solar cycle is heading into a period of more intense activity in the coming 11 years.

The root of the world's vulnerability in the modern age is global positioning systems, or GPS devices, that provide navigational help but also serve as time synchronizers for computer networks and electronic equipment, he said.

In Europe alone, there are 200 separate telecommunication operators, and "nothing is standardized," he said.

"Actually we cannot tell if there is going to be a big storm six months from now but we can tell when conditions are ripe for a storm to take place," said the European Space Agency's Juha-Pekka Luntama.

Such a catastrophic event could cost the United States alone up to two trillion dollars in repairs in the first year -- and it could take up to 10 years to fully recover, the report said.

Source: AFP Global Edition
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Feb 11)

Postby winston » Sun Feb 20, 2011 10:05 pm

Global warming could spur toxic algae, bacteria in seas

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – Global warming could spur the growth of toxic algae and bacteria in the world's seas and lakes, with an impact that could be felt in 10 years, US scientists said Saturday.

Studies have shown that shifts brought about by climate change make ocean and freshwater environments more susceptible to toxic algae blooms and allow harmful microbes and bacteria to proliferate, according to researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).


http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20110220/t ... 2e412.html
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Earth, Environment & Endangered Species 01 (May 08 - Feb 11)

Postby winston » Mon Feb 21, 2011 1:23 pm

100 whales die in New Zealand mass stranding

More than 100 pilot whales died in a mass stranding at a remote New Zealand beach, conservation officials said Monday.

Hikers on Sunday reported finding 107 whales beached on Stewart Island, off the South Island's southwest coast, a Department of Conservation (DoC) spokesman said.

He said some of the whales were already dead and DOC rangers had to euthanise the 48 remaining survivors as there was no prospect of refloating them.

"We were quickly aware that it would be at least 10 to 12 hours before we could attempt to refloat them and that given the hot, dry conditions many more would soon perish," he said.

The spokesman said a storm was also bearing down on the beach near Mason Bay where the whales were stranded, making it too dangerous to try to get them back into the sea.

"We were worried we would be endangering the lives of staff and volunteers," he said.

Pilot whales up to six metres (20 feet) long are the most common species of whale seen in New Zealand waters.

Mass strandings are common on the country's rugged coast. Earlier this month, 14 died after beaching near the South Island tourist city of Nelson and 24 perished last month near Cape Reinga in the country's far north.

Scientists are unsure why pilot whales beach themselves, although they speculate it may occur when their sonar becomes scrambled in shallow water or when a sick member of the pod heads for shore and others follow.

Source: AFP Global Edition
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

PreviousNext

Return to Archives

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 17 guests