Climate Fact Of The Day – CO2 Concentrations 1812 – 2004
Source: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Beck0011.jpg
The outer limits: NASA probe sees the ‘edge’ of our solar system for first time – and it’s completely different from what we thought
Daily Mail – NASA’s probes have seen the ‘edge’ of our solar system for the first time – and it’s completely different from what scientists thought. Our solar system is flying through space more slowly than we thought – and NASA’s IBEX – Interstellar Boundary Explorer – has found it doesn’t have a ‘bow shock’, an area of gas or plasma that shields our solar system as it hurtles though space ‘The sonic boom made by a jet breaking the sound barrier is an earthly example of a bow shock,’ says Dr. David McComas, principal investigator of the IBEX mission. Read article
Editorial Comment: A number of nice pictures are included in the article.
One-quarter of grouper species being fished to extinction
Biology & Nature – Groupers, a family of fishes often found in coral reefs and prized for their quality of flesh, are facing critical threats to their survival. As part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission, a team of scientists has spent the past ten years assessing the status of 163 grouper species worldwide. They report that 20 species (12%) are at risk of extinction if current overfishing trends continue, and an additional 22 species (13%) are Near Threatened. These findings were published online on April 28 in the journal Fish and Fisheries.Read article
Sunscreen Ingredient May Be Linked to Endometriosis
ScienceDaily — Scientists are reporting a possible link between the use of sunscreen containing a certain ingredient that mimics the effects of the female sex hormone estrogen and an increased risk of being diagnosed with endometriosis, a painful condition in which uterine tissue grows outside the uterus. They describe the report, published in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology, as the first to examine whether such a connection may exist. Read article
Backyard Biodiversity May Stem Allergies
Live Science – A decline in the variety of life — including the plants and animals that live around us, as well as the microbes on our bodies — may play a role in the rapid rise in allergies and asthma, indicates new research. The study focused on a predisposition for allergies among 118 Finnish teenagers, finding links between a healthy immune system (the body’s system for fighting disease), growing up in more natural environments and the presence of certain skin bacteria. Read article
Treating Fat with Fat
The Scientist – …Lou Tartaglia decided that now was the perfect time to start a company to target obesity. …Tartaglia is betting on the newest science in this area: brown-fat biology. Unlike white fat cells, which get their name from the excess lipids they store and whose relatively few mitochondria transfer energy from the lipids and sugars to the energy-storing molecule ATP, brown fat cells’ many mitochondria contain an “uncoupling protein” that allows them instead to release the energy from sugars and lipids as heat—to warm hibernating animals, for example. Researchers think that by increasing the numbers of brown fat cells in adults, or by activating those that already exist, they will be able to help people burn calories, shedding extra pounds as a result. Read article
Illegal charcoal production aggravates deforestation – Auta
Business Day – John Auta, the Acting Director of Forestry Department, Federal Ministry of Environment has decried the illegal production of charcoal in the country, saying it aggravate the process of deforestation in the country. He appealed to marketers of kerosene to make it accessible to all Nigerians so as to reduce the over-dependence on forestry products as alternative energy sources. Read article
Forests remain under threat from acquisitive industries
Jakarta Post – Several protected areas across the archipelago remain under threat of deforestation apparently due to the ineffective moratorium program launched by the government last year, environmental groups say. The environmental groups have witnessed continuing forest destruction by several companies despite the moratorium. On Thursday, Greenpeace, a member of the environmental groups’ coalition, published its findings on the current situation of Indonesian forests in Riau and Central Kalimantan provinces. Read article
Related article: Green groups say Indonesia deforestation ban ‘weak’
Big rise in North Pacific plastic waste
BBC – The quantity of small plastic fragments floating in the north-east Pacific Ocean has increased a hundred fold over the past 40 years. “We did not expect to find this,” says Scripps researcher Miriam Goldstein. An obvious concern is that this micro-material could be ingested by marine organisms, but the Scripps team has noted another, perhaps unexpected, consequence. The fragments make it easier for the marine insect Halobates sericeus to lay its eggs out over the ocean. Read article
Expert cites multiple factors in colony collapse disorder
Knox News – What has long been suspected as a cause of colony collapse disorder (CCD) recently gained some support in a 2012 Harvard study. In a replication of the presence of imidacloprid — a nicotine-derived pesticide that affects the central nervous system of insects — Chensheng Lu of Harvard University demonstrated a direct link to honey bee die-offs. This is the first study of its kind, and scientists and beekeepers alike are scrutinizing the methods and conclusions to direct further research. Read article
Peru pelican and dolphin deaths prompt warning to stay off beaches
Reuters – Peru’s government has declared a health alert along its northern coastline and urged residents and tourists to stay away from long stretches of beach as it investigates the unexplained deaths of hundreds of dolphins and pelicans. At least 1,200 birds, mostly pelicans, have washed up dead along a stretch of Peru’s northern Pacific coastline in recent weeks, according to health officials, and an estimated 800 dolphins have died in the same area in recent months. Read article
Senegal revokes licences of foreign fishing trawlers
The Guardian – The new government of Senegal has cancelled the licences of 29 foreign fishing trawlers, demanding that they offload their catches in the capital Dakar before leaving the west African country’s territorial waters. The dramatic move on Tuesday by fisheries minister Pape Diouf follows growing resentment at overfishing and alleged corruption of the previous government’s licencing system. It is expected to defuse threats by Senegal’s 52,000 small-scale inshore fishermen to take direct action against the owners of foreign trawlers. Read article
Related article: Senegal: Greenpeace and Fishermen Cooperate to Tackle Overfishing
Climate Fact Of The Day – Climatic effects of a solar minimum
PhysOrg (7 May 2012) – An abrupt cooling in Europe together with an increase in humidity and particularly in windiness coincided with a sustained reduction in solar activity 2800 years ago. Scientists from the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in collaboration with Swedish and Dutch colleagues provide evidence for a direct solar-climate linkage on centennial timescales. Using the most modern methodological approach, they analysed sediments from Lake Meerfelder Maar, a maar lake in the Eifel/Germany, to determine annual variations in climate proxies and solar activity.
The study published online in Nature Geoscience reports the climatic change that occurred at the beginning of the pre-Roman Iron Age and demonstrates that especially the so-called Grand Minima of solar activity can affect climate conditions in western Europe through changes in regional atmospheric circulation pattern. Around 2800 years ago, one of these Grand Solar Minima, the Homeric Minimum, caused a distinct climatic change in less than a decade in Western Europe.
The exceptional seasonally laminated sediments from the studied maar lake allow a precise dating even of short-term climate changes. The results show for a 200 year long period strongly increased springtime winds during a period of cool and wet climate in Europe. In combination with model studies they suggest a mechanism that can explain the relation between a weak sun and climate change. Read Article
5 active volcanoes you should keep your eye on
MSNBC – Italy’s Mount Etna and Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano have been huffing and puffing their way into the news recently, spewing plumes of ash and dribbling lava in the latest flare-ups of eruptive activity that have been going on for years in the case of both volcanoes. While larger eruptions, such as the the Philippines’ Pinatubo in 1991 and the 1980 blast of Mount St. Helens in Washington, are more famous for the disruptions they caused, some near-constant eruptions have their own associated hazard, posing threats to nearby communities and potential disruptions to air traffic from ash plumes. Read article
Climate Fact Of The Day – NASA/Hathaway’s updated solar cycle prediction – smallest in 100 years
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
Forget Viagra, the ‘Cuddle drug’ could be the new way to boost performance in the bedroom
Daily Mail – Taking a chemical that helps mothers bond with their babies may not immediately strike you as the best way to improve a man’s libido. But oxytocin, the so-called ‘cuddle hormone’, can dramatically improve male sexual performance, researchers have found – producing results on a par with Viagra. Read article
Mt. Baekdu eruption’s impact on NE Asia
Korean Times – Mt. Baekdu has been carefully observed since 1999 when a volcanic observatory was built in China, and since 2002, there have been some symptoms of an eruption. Yes, one! There’s only one thing about which they think in a same way – a concern about possible eruption of Mt. Baekdu. The two Koreas remain at odds in everything. But they are one in voicing how to counter the possible volcanic explosion of the highest mountain in the Korean Peninsula. Inter-Korean anxiety is mounting, with growing apocalyptic predictions on the dormant volcano. Read article
Mexico’s roaring “Popo” spews ash and smoke – “Carbon Pollution Fears”
Editorial Comment – Popo is currently Mexico’s largest “carbon polluter” by a long chalk. Should it be taxed for its pollution?
Supermoon Due Today – Major Earthquakes More Likely?
AP — The biggest and brightest full moon of the year arrives Saturday night as our celestial neighbor passes closer to Earth than usual.But don’t expect any “must-have-been-a-full-moon” spike in crime or crazy behavior. That’s just folklore. Saturday’s event is a “supermoon,” the closest and therefore the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. At 11:34 p.m., the moon will be about 221,802 miles from Earth. That’s about 15,300 miles closer than average. Read Article
Editorial Comment – Just before the last Supermoon (19 March 2009) a number of scientists made warning which were then ridiculed in the media that there was a higher probability of major earthquakes due to the small increase in lunar gravitational pull on the Earth – 24 hours later the Japanese earthquake and tsunami struck. This time round the media ridiculed any who make such warnings. The next 48 hours will be quite interesting to see who is right & who is wrong.
Climate Fact Of The Day – Trees do 8 times better in the New York City Urban Heat Island
The Earth Institute Columbia University – City streets can be mean, but somewhere near Brooklyn, a tree grows far better than its country cousins, due to chronically elevated city heat levels, says a new study. The study, just published in the journal Tree Physiology, shows that common native red oak seedlings grow as much as eight times faster in New York’s Central Park than in more rural, cooler settings in the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains. Red oaks and their close relatives dominate areas ranging from northern Virginia to southern New England, so the study may have implications for changing climate and forest composition over a wide region.
The “urban heat island” is a well-known phenomenon that makes large cities hotter than surrounding countryside; it is the result of solar energy being absorbed by pavement, buildings and other infrastructure, then radiated back into the air. With a warming climate, it is generally viewed as a threat to public health that needs mitigating. On the flip side, “Some organisms may thrive on urban conditions,” said tree physiologist Kevin Griffin of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who oversaw the study. Griffin said that the city’s hot summer nights, while a misery for humans, are a boon to trees, allowing them to perform more of the chemical reactions needed for photosynthesis when the sun comes back up. Read Article
US satellite laws under scrutiny
Nature – Advocates of international trade and collaboration in space technology thought that they were making headway against rules that restrict both in the name of US security. But on the same day that the US government released a long-awaited report that recommends easing those regulations, allegations surfaced that a NASA director may have broken the rules when he gave foreign nationals access to an agency research facility. It is not yet clear whether the allegations will strengthen the case for preserving current restrictions. Read article
