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Warming oceans make strongest storms stronger: study
Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters
As the world’s oceans get warmer, the strongest tropical storms get stronger, climate scientists reported on Wednesday as the remnants of Hurricane Gustav spun out over the central United States.
“If the seas continue to warm, we can expect to see stronger storms in the future,” James Elsner of Florida State University said.
“As far as this year goes, as a season, we did see the oceans warm and I think there’s some reason to believe that that’s the reason we’re seeing the amount of activity we are.”
(3 September 2008)
Wind of change on farms as cows help to save the Earth
Valerie Elliott, The Times
Hundreds of cattle in Britain are being fed a new diet to reduce their burping and cut emissions of greenhouse gas.
Chopped straw and hay are the vital ingredients to settle a cow’s stomach and reduce emissions of methane by 20 per cent.
This material is used as bedding for cattle and cows usually have little appetite for it.
But just as children are coaxed to take their medicine by cloaking it in a syrup, cattle are being fed a blend of foods that makes it irresistible.
The secret is to cut straw or hay into strips 6cm-7cm long and to mix them with silage, wheat, maize, soya or sugar beet. A dairy cow needs only 4.4lb (2kg) a day, a tiny percentage of the 130lb daily ration of forage it would otherwise eat.
It is the wind from the mouth of the cow, not the gases from from the rear, that does the most damage to the environment. If every dairy farm in the UK adopted this method it would remove the equivalent of 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.
(8 September 2008)
UN says eat less meat to curb global warming
Juliette Jowit, The Guardian
People should have one meat-free day a week if they want to make a personal and effective sacrifice that would help tackle climate change, the world’s leading authority on global warming has told The Observer Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year earned a joint share of the Nobel Peace Prize, said that people should then go on to reduce their meat consumption even further.
His comments are the most controversial advice yet provided by the panel on how individuals can help tackle global warning.
Pachauri, who was re-elected the panel’s chairman for a second six-year term last week, said diet change was important because of the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems – including habitat destruction – associated with rearing cattle and other animals. It was relatively easy to change eating habits compared to changing means of transport, he said…
(7 September 2008)
Electronic smog ‘is disrupting nature on a massive scale’
Geoffrey Lean, The Independent
Mobile phones, Wi-Fi systems, electric power lines and similar sources of “electrosmog” are disrupting nature on a massive scale, causing birds and bees to lose their bearings, fail to reproduce and die, a conference will be told this week.
Dr Ulrich Warnke – who has been researching the effects of man-made electrical fields on wildlife for more than 30 years – will tell the conference, organised by the Radiation Research Trust at the Royal Society in London, that “an unprecedented dense mesh of artificial magnetic, electrical and electromagnetic fields” has been generated, overwhelming the “natural system of information” on which the species rely.
He believes this could be responsible for the disappearance of bees in Europe and the US in what is known as colony collapse disorder, for the decline of the house sparrow, whose numbers have fallen by half in Britain over the past 30 years, and that it could also interfere with bird migration…
(7 September 2008)
Mining Oil From WWII shipwrecks
Paula Kruger, ABC (Australia)
MARK COLVIN: The twisted wrecks from World War II that are scattered on the seabeds of Micronesia have long been a symbol of nature’s regenerative power.
Japanese and American planes, tankers and submarines are now home to colourful corals and an abundance of marine life.
But there’s a long delayed flip side to the story.
The corroding wrecks are starting to leak toxic fuel and oil into Micronesia’s pristine lagoons.
Scientists say one oil slick is already wrapping itself around the Chuuk lagoon, and the millions of litres still in the wrecks could potentially devastate the entire region.
… Dr Bill Jeffery from James Cook University has been hired by the Micronesian government to assess the potential impact of the ticking ecological time-bombs.
He was surprised and concerned to find the oil tanker the Hoyo Maru was already leaking it’s cargo.
BILL JEFFERY: Well we saw this long slick, it looked like it was extending for several kilometres. We went back to the source, we dived that and just found a small area that seems to be where the oil is coming from, you can see actually the bubbles coming out of the ship.
PAULA KRUGER: And what’s the marine environment that this is happening in? Could you describe that to us?
BILL JEFFERY: It only has three or four, or maybe five entrances or exits so it’s a bit of a closed system, so if oil is sitting in there, it can be sitting around and moving around slowly by the wind and pushed onto some of these high volcanic islands.
But the islands are fringed with lots of mangroves and you can see some of the mangroves starting to die already.
PAULA KRUGER: The Federated States of Micronesia aren’t a wealthy grouping and Chuuk is poorest of the four states.
It’s main earners are tourism, particularly for its diving and it’s fishing industry. A massive oil leak could devastate both.
There are three tankers in Chuuk’s lagoon with a total capacity to carry 32 million litres of fuel, that is three quarters of what was leaked in the Exxon Valdez catastrophe in 1989.
Dr Bill Jeffery says most of that oil will be released in the next five to ten years, what is less clear is who’s responsible for cleaning it up.
BILL JEFFERY: Well that’s the big question. These are Japanese ships sunk by the Americans and are now in the jurisdiction of the FSM – Federated States of Micronesia or other governments.
But the Japanese and the Americans still claim ownership or interest in their military vessels, so it’s possibly a Japanese or an American issue. But certainly the Chuuk and other countries in the Pacific don’t have the resources, they wouldn’t have anywhere near the resources to do this but the Americans and the Japanese would.
PAULA KRUGER: Draining the oil from the wrecks may cost millions but the cargo is also still worth a lot.
In 2003 the US navy spent more than $5.5-million draining oil from one of its World War II tankers in Micronesia’s Ulithi Atoll, but it managed to recoup more than a million dollars in costs by reselling the oil.
(5 September 2008)
