NASA study solves case of Earth's 'missing energy'

Two years ago, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., released a study claiming that inconsistencies between satellite observations of Earth’s heat and measurements of ocean heating amounted to evidence of “missing energy” in the planet’s system.

Where was it going? Or, they wondered, was something wrong with the way researchers tracked energy as it was absorbed from the sun and emitted back into space?

An international team of atmospheric scientists and oceanographers, led by Norman Loeb of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and including Graeme Stephens of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., set out to investigate the mystery.

They used 10 years of data — spanning 2001 to 2010 — from NASA Langley’s orbiting Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System Experiment (CERES) instruments to measure changes in the net radiation balance at the top of Earth’s atmosphere. The CERES data were then combined with estimates of the heat content of Earth’s ocean from three independent ocean-sensor sources.

Their analysis, summarized in a NASA-led study published Jan. 22 in the journal Nature Geosciences, found that the satellite and ocean measurements are, in fact, in broad agreement once observational uncertainties are factored in.

Read More:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-nasa-case-earth-energy.html

Bill Walker - Conservatives Use Creationist Playbook to Attack Climate Change Education in Schools

A few years ago, Cheryl Manning assigned a research project on climate change to her high school environmental science class in Evergreen, Colo. She presented the basic facts and data from peer-reviewed studies, then asked the students to look into the issue themselves and report back on what they learned.

Halfway through the unit, three students came to class up in arms. They questioned whether the data was made up and if government scientists were part of a plot — “like conspiracy theorists that say we never went to the moon,” Manning said. At a PTA meeting the students’ parents accused her of trying to undermine their children’s religious belief system.

“Peer-reviewed science is the Kool-Aid of the left-wing liberal conspiracy,” they said, adding a warning: “Be on your guard.”

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/153909/conservatives_use_creationist_playbook_to_attack_climate_change_education_in_schools

Arctic climate change 'to spark domino effect'

The rate of Arctic climate change was now faster than ecosystems and traditional Arctic societies could adapt to. WA-based scientists have warned of "dire consequences" to the human race after detecting the first signs of dangerous climate change in the Arctic.

The scientists, from the University of WA, claim the region is fast approaching a series of imminent "tipping points" which could trigger a domino effect of large-scale climate change across the entire planet. In a paper published in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' journal AMBIO and Nature Climate Change, the lead author and director of UWA's Oceans Institute, Winthrop Professor Carlos Duarte, said the Arctic region contained arguably the greatest concentration of potential tipping elements for global climate change.

"If set in motion, they can generate profound climate change which places the Arctic not at the periphery but at the core of the Earth system," Professor Duarte said.  "There is evidence that these forces are starting to be set in motion."

Read More:

http://www.smh.com.au/wa-news/arctic-climate-change-to-spark-domino-effect-20120130-1qpgv.html

More Damning Evidence Points to Pesticide as Cause of Mass Bee Deaths

A new study published in Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature by a leading bee expert provides damning evidence that a widely used pesticide, even at low levels, is responsible for the recent catastrophic decline in honey bees. Dr. Jeff Pettis of the USDA's Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, MD led the study.

Colony collapse disorder, as this phenomenon is known, has been getting worse since 2006.

The news has brought renewed calls for these pesticides, which only became widely used in the 1990s, to be banned as honey bees are key to human’s survival – pollinating 70 per cent of the crops which produce most of the world’s food.

The pesticide that the study (pdf) looked at was imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides worldwide. It is neonicotinoid insecticide produced by Bayer CropScience.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/30-9

András Székács and Béla Darvas - Forty Years with Glyphosate

EXTRACT:

6. Adverse environmental effects of glyphosate

6.1 Glyphosate and Fusarium species

Sanogo and co-workers (2000) observed that crop loss in soy due to infestation by Fusarium solani f. sp. glycines increased after glyphosate applications. 

Kremer and co-workers (2005) described a stimulating effect of the root exsudate of GR soy sampled after glyphosate application on the growth of Fusarium sp. strains. Treatments caused concentration dependent increase on the mycelium mass of the fungus. Nonetheless, Powel and Swanton (2008) could not confirm these observations in their field study. 

Kremer and Means (2009) claim that certain fungi utilise glyphosate released from plant roots into the soil as a nutritive, which facilitates their growth. Soil manganese content also affects the above consequence of glyphosate through chelating with the compound and thus, modifying its effects. Considering the fact that numerous plant pathogenic Fusarium species produce mycotoxins, an increasing proportion of these species is far not favourable as a side-effect.András Székács and Béla Darvas - Forty Years with Glyphosate

Read More:

http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/forty-years-with-glyphosate

Study: Potential Hazards of Nanotechnology Not Known

Not enough is known about the potential hazards of nanotechnology, and millions of dollars more a year are needed to study the potential health and environmental effects of it, said the National Research Council yesterday.

The panel's findings come from a study sponsored by the EPA.

Reuters reports:

Nanotechnology involves designing and manufacturing materials on the scale of one-billionth of a meter. It is used in areas ranging from stain-resistant clothing and cosmetics to food additives. [...]

"Despite the promise of nanotechnology, without strategic research into emergent risks associated with it -- and a clear understanding of how to manage and avoid potential risks -- the future of safe and sustainable nanotechnology-based materials, products, and processes is uncertain," said the study by a committee of 19 scientists.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/26-5

Tom Philpott - USDA Greenlights Monsanto's Utterly Useless New GMO Corn

You've got to keep an eye on US regulatory agencies in the second half of December. That's when watchdog journalists like me tend to take time off—and regulators like to sneak gifts to the industries they're supposed to be regulating. This year, I was alert enough to detect this gift from the FDA to the meat industry; but the USDA caught me napping. The agency made two momentous announcements on GMO crops, neither of which got much media scrutiny. It deregulated Monsanto's so-called drought-tolerant corn, and it prepared to deregulate Dow's corn engineered to withstand the herbicides 2,4-D and dicamba. More on the later this week. 

The drought-tolerant corn decision, which came down on Dec. 21, was momentous occasion, because it marked the first deregulation of a GMO crop with a "complex" trait. What I mean by that is, the other GMOs on the market have simple, one-gene traits: a gene that confers resistance to a particular herbicide, like Monsanto's Roundup Ready seed or a gene that expresses the toxic-to-bugs properties of the bacteria Bt, as in Monsanto's Bt seed. But a plant's use of water is a complex process involving several genes; there's no single "drought tolerant" gene. Generating such traits in plants that succeed in field conditions has been considerably more tricky for the agrichemical giants than than simple traits.

Read More:

http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/01/monsanto-gmo-drought-tolerant-corn

India to pay gold instead of dollars for Iranian oil. Oil and gold markets stunned

India is the first buyer of Iranian oil to agree to pay for its purchases in gold instead of the US dollar, debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report exclusively.  Those sources expect China to follow suit. India and China take about one million barrels per day, or 40 percent of Iran's total exports of 2.5 million bpd. Both are superpowers in terms of gold assets.

By trading in gold, New Delhi and Beijing enable Tehran to bypass the upcoming freeze on its central bank's assets and the oil embargo which the European Union's foreign ministers agreed to impose Monday, Jan. 23. The EU currently buys around 20 percent of Iran's oil exports.

The vast sums involved in these transactions are expected, furthermore, to boost the price of gold and depress the value of the dollar on world markets.

Read More:

http://www.debka.com/article/21673/

Honeybee Deaths Linked to Seed Insecticide Exposure

Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields.

Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil -- up to two years after treated seed was planted -- on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.

Read More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120112112722.htm

Offsetting Global Warming: Molecule in Earth's Atmosphere Could 'Cool the Planet'

Scientists have shown that a newly discovered molecule in Earth's atmosphere has the potential to play a significant role in off-setting global warming by cooling the planet.

In a breakthrough paper published in Science, researchers from The University of Manchester, The University of Bristol and Sandia National Laboratories report the potentially revolutionary effects of Criegee biradicals.

These invisible chemical intermediates are powerful oxidisers of pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, produced by combustion, and can naturally clean up the atmosphere.

Although these chemical intermediates were hypothesised in the 1950s, it is only now that they have been detected. Scientists now believe that, with further research, these species could play a major role in off-setting climate change.

Read More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120112142232.htm

Ellen Cantarow - Fracking Gets Its Own Occupy Movement

This is a story about water, the land surrounding it, and the lives it sustains. Clean water should be a right: there is no life without it. New York is what you might call a “water state.” Its rivers and their tributaries only start with the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna. The best known of its lakes are Great Lakes Erie and Ontario, Lake George, and the Finger Lakes. Its brooks, creeks, and trout streams are fishermen’s lore.

Far below this rippling wealth there’s a vast, rocky netherworld called the Marcellus Shale. Stretching through southern New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, the shale contains bubbles of methane, the remains of life that died 400 million years ago. Gas corporations have lusted for the methane in the Marcellus since at least 1967 when one of them plotted with the Atomic Energy Agency to explode a nuclear bombto unleash it. That idea died, but it’s been reborn in the form of a technology invented by Halliburton Corporation: high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing -- “fracking” for short.

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175492/

David Suzuki - What’s So Radical About Caring for the Earth and Opposing Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline?

Caring about the air, water, and land that give us life. Exploring ways to ensure Canada’s natural resources serve the national interest. Knowing that sacrificing our environment to a corporate-controlled economy is suicide. If those qualities make us radicals, as federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver recently claimed in an open letter, then I and many others will wear the label proudly.

But is it radical to care for our country, our world, our children and grandchildren, our future? It seems more radical for a government to come out swinging in favour of an industrial project in advance of public hearings into that project. It seems especially radical when the government paints everyone who opposes the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project as American-funded traitors with a radical ideological agenda “to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth.”

Read More:

http://www.straight.com/article-585371/vancouver/david-suzuki-whats-so-radical-about-caring-earth-opposing-enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline-project

Nearly 7 million bats may have died from white-nose fungus, officials say

More than five years since the deadly white-nose fungus was first detected in a New York cave where bats hibernate, up to 6.7 million of the animals are estimated to have died in 16 states and Canada, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday.

The estimate, drawn from surveys by wildlife officials mostly in Northeastern states where the disease thrives, confirmed the worst fears of biologists who have been counting dead bats covered in the powdery fungus in mines and caves every winter and worrying whether the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat and the tricolored bat will survive.

“We’re watching a potential extinction event on the order of what we experienced with bison and passenger pigeons for this group of mammals,” said Mylea Bayless, conservation programs manager for Bat Conservation International in Austin, Tex.

Read More:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nearly-7-million-bats-may-have-died-from-white-nose-fungus-officials-say/2012/01/17/gIQAyixH6P_story.html

Big Agribusiness Influence Threatens to Override Public Interest in Greed Revolution

A new 30-page report that documents the growing influence of agribusiness on the multilateral food system and the lack of transparency in research funding has been released today by the international civil society organization ETC Group. The Greed Revolution: Mega Foundations, Agribusiness Muscle In On Public Goods presents three case studies – one involving the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and two involving CGIAR Centers (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) – which point to a dangerous trend that will worsen rather than solve the problem of global hunger. The report details the involvement of, among others, Nestlé, Heineken, Monsanto, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Syngenta Foundation.

"It is unacceptable that the UN is giving multinational agribusiness privileged access to alter their agricultural policies, said Pat Mooney, Executive Director of ETC Group, who has been involved in the field for 40 years. "It is ridiculous that the key organizations responsible for agricultural research have no credible data on the extent of corporate involvement in their work and that CGIAR's biggest funder – at $89 million – is somebody called, 'Miscellaneous!' Governments and UN secretariats have forgotten that their first task is to serve the public – not the profiteers."

Read More:

http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5305

The biodiversity crisis: Worse than climate change

Biodiversity is declining rapidly throughout the world. The challenges of conserving the world’s species are perhaps even larger than mitigating the negative effects of global climate change. Dealing with the biodiversity crisis requires political will and needs to be based on a solid scientific knowledge if we are to ensure a safe future for the planet. This is the main conclusion from scientists from University of Copenhagen, after 100 researchers and policy experts from EU countries were gathered this week at the University of Copenhagen to discuss how to organise the future UN Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, IPBES - an equivalent to the UN panel on climate change (IPCC).

Species extinction and the degradation of ecosystems are proceeding rapidly and the pace is accelerating. The world is losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate.

Read More:

http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2012/2012.1/biodiversity/

Matt Mushalik - Australian Report Predicts Peak Oil Around 2017

The Australian Daily Telegraph published today a story on a leaked government report (BITRE 117) which (optimistically) calculated peak oil around 2017, followed by permanent decline

The report can be downloaded here:

http://ianmcpherson.com/blog/audio/Australian_Govt_Oil_supply_trends.pdf

Thanks to the watchful eye of ASPO Australia:

Read More:

http://www.countercurrents.org/mushalik220112.htm

Jayati Ghosh - Could Ecuador be the most radical and exciting place on Earth?

Ecuador must be one of the most exciting places on Earth right now, in terms of working towards a new development paradigm. It shows how much can be achieved with political will, even in uncertain economic times.

Just 10 years ago, Ecuador was more or less a basket case, a quintessential "banana republic" (it happens to be the world's largest exporter of bananas), characterised by political instability, inequality, a poorly-performing economy, and the ever-looming impact of the US on its domestic politics.

In 2000, in response to hyperinflation and balance of payments problems, the government dollarised the economy, replacing the sucre with the US currency as legal tender. This subdued inflation, but it did nothing to address the core economic problems, and further constrained the domestic policy space.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/19/ecuador-radical-exciting-place

Linda Pentz Gunter - The Radioactive Waste Crisis

Before the month of January is out, the US Department of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future will unveil the result of its two year-long investigation into what to do with the accumulated radioactive waste at the country’s nuclear power plants. By this year’s end, that waste will constitute a mountain 70 years high, with the first cupful generated on December 2, 1942 at the Fermi lab not far from Chicago when scientists first created a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

There remains no viable solution for either the management or certainly the “disposal” of nuclear waste. Yet, the one recommendation that will not be contained in the DOE report is to stop making any more of it.  While a child would never be allowed to continue piling up toys in his or her room indefinitely, failing to tidy up the mess, the nuclear industry continues to be permitted to manufacture some of the world’s most toxic detritus without a cleanup plan.

Read More:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/20/the-radioactive-waste-crisis/

Water supplies may run out by 2030 in India: Study

Water supplies will begin running out in critical regions where they support cities, industries and food production -- including in India, China and the Middle East -- by 2030 due to over-extraction of groundwater, a scientist has warned.

“The world has experienced a boom in groundwater use, more than doubling the rate of extraction between 1960 and 2000 -- with usage continuing to soar up to the present,” says Craig Simmons, director of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT).

A recent satellite study has revealed falling groundwater tables in the US, India, China, Middle East and North Africa, where expanding agriculture and cities have increased water demand.

“Groundwater currently makes up about 97 percent of all the available fresh water on the planet and presently accounts for about 40 percent of our total water supply," says Simmons, also a member of Unesco’s global groundwater governance programme, according to a NCGRT statement.

Read More:

http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_water-supplies-may-run-out-by-2030-in-india-study_1636255-all

Genetically modified mosquitoes' survival rate concealed

A confidential internal document obtained by civil society groups shows genetically modified mosquitoes described by their manufacturer, UK company Oxitec, as “sterile” are in fact not sterile and their offspring have a 15 percent survival rate in the presence of the common antibiotic tetracycline.

In the study described in this document, the genetically modified mosquitoes were fed cat food containing chicken contaminated with low levels of tetracycline and many of the mosquitoes were able to reproduce, with their offspring surviving to adulthood (1).

A redacted version of the document, released to GeneWatch UK under freedom of information laws, shows that the company tried to hide the evidence that its technology will fail to prevent reproduction in the presence of low levels of tetracycline contamination (2).

Read More:

http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2012-01-genetically-modified-mosquitoes-survival-rate