Thursday, October 25, 2007

Cause Of Great Dying 250 Million Years Ago

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025091047.htm

The greatest mass extinction in Earth's history also may have been one of the slowest, according to a study that casts further doubt on the extinction-by-meteor theory.

Creeping environmental stress fueled by volcanic eruptions and global warming was the likely cause of the Great Dying 250 million years ago, said USC doctoral student Catherine Powers.

So what caused the increased volcanic action? They never say. Could it have been triggered by a meteor? They never say one way or the other. Maybe plate tectonics?

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Iron Fertilization Of Oceans


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070925162653.htm

ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2007) — Several times over the past century, scientists and environmental engineers have proposed spreading slurries of dissolved iron into the oceans in order to “fertilize” the waters and promote vast blooms of marine plants (phytoplankton). Phytoplankton consume carbon dioxide as they grow, and this growth can be stimulated in certain ocean basins by the addition of iron, a necessary micronutrient.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061004180713.htm

New 'Dead Zone' Study May Have Far-ranging Effects On Midwest Agriculture

ScienceDaily (Oct. 5, 2006) — A new scientific review of the Gulf of Mexico's "Dead Zone" could have far-ranging implications for farming over millions of acres of the Midwest and for fertilizer sales, according to an article scheduled for the Oct. 2 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, the ACS' weekly newsmagazine.

The Dead Zone is a vast expanse of water off the Gulf's northern shore that becomes depleted in oxygen from spring to early autumn each year.

C&EN senior editor Cheryl Hogue explains that oxygen depletion creates a biological dead zone, where fish and other marine creatures cannot survive. The Dead Zone has been growing in size since the 1980s. In recent years it has involved an area larger than the state of Connecticut.

Excessive amounts of plant nutrients - primarily nitrate fertilizer that runs off agricultural land into the Mississippi River - causes the zone by fostering blooms of phytoplankton that die and decay in a process that removes dissolved oxygen from the Gulf waters.

The first article talks about a conference on the topic of iron fertilization of the ocean, with one of the topis being "Consequence: What will be the intended and unintended impacts?"

Excess Female To Male Births In Canada Linked To Chronic Dioxin Exposure


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071022211704.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 23, 2007) — Almost 90 Canadian communities have experienced a shift in the normal 51:49 ratio of male to female births, so that more girls than boys are being born, according to two new studies.

James Argo, who headed the research, attributes this so-called "inverted sex ratio" of the residents in those communities to dioxin air pollutants from oil refineries, paper mills, metal smelters and other sources.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070409115759.htm

Male Births: Decline In The US And Japan

ScienceDaily (Apr. 10, 2007) — A study published in this week's online edition of Environmental Health Perspectives reports that during the past thirty years, the number of male births has decreased each year in the U.S. and Japan. In a review of all births in both countries, the University of Pittsburgh-led study found significantly fewer boys being born relative to girls in the U.S. and Japan, and that an increasing proportion of fetuses that die are male. They note that the decline in births is equivalent to 135,000 fewer white males in the U.S. and 127,000 fewer males in Japan over the past three decades and suggest that environmental factors are one explanation for these trends.


Take Care of Our Planet
copyright 2001 Patricia M. Shannon

Walking in the early sunlight, with the calling birds,
I see the trees against the newborn sky;
listening to the breeze, I hear God's voice
saying "Take care of this planet, don't make it die!"
We must

(chorus)

take care of our planet,
it's the only home we have;
it will give us what we need,
if we treat it repectfully.

He did not make the earth to be just a toy,
or an enemy with which we are at war;
remember that we were just an afterthought,
stewards and not owners are what we are.

Now some say the end is coming,
so we'll need the earth no more;
who are they to think they're privy to
what he said none of us can know?

(chorus)

He did not mean for us to be parasites,
always taking destruction to new heights,
killing off the species He so carefully planned,
in the interdependent web of life.

He said "Don't depend on some angels,
or a space ship from on high
to save you from your own folly,
if you do, you're sure to die."
So

(chorus)

Extinctions linked to hotter temperatures


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071024/ap_on_sc/mass_extinctions;_ylt=AuXIVpx_CowKyAdicYf0bPgPLBIF

Whenever the world's tropical seas warm several degrees, Earth has experienced mass extinctions over millions of years, according to a first-of-its-kind statistical study of fossil records.

And scientists fear it may be about to happen again — but in a matter of several decades, not tens of millions of years.

Four of the five major extinctions over 520 million years of Earth history have been linked to warmer tropical seas, something that indicates a warmer world overall, according to the new study published Wednesday.

"We found that over the fossil record as a whole, the higher the temperatures have been, the higher the extinctions have been," said University of York ecologist Peter Mayhew, the co-author of the peer-reviewed research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British journal.

Earth is on track to hit that same level of extinction-connected warming in about 100 years, unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, according to top scientists.

A second study, to be presented at a scientific convention Sunday, links high carbon dioxide levels, the chief man-made gas responsible for global warming, to past extinctions.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071023/sc_afp/scienceclimatewarmingspeciesextinctionbiodiversity;_ylt=Assb4Kg.MTy7yAfuxpdgaosPLBIF

Each of five major eras of declining biodiversity -- including one in which 95 percent of the Earth's species disappeared -- correspond to cycles of severe warming over the 520-million-year period for which there are fossil records.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

White House edits CDC climate testimony

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071024/ap_on_sc/global_warming_health;_ylt=A0WTcUxclR5HPH0AJSCs0NUE

The White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health, removing specific scientific references to potential health risks, according to two sources familiar with the documents.
...
The deletions directed by the White House included details on how many people might be adversely affected because of increased warming and the scientific basis for some of the CDC's analysis on what kinds of diseases might be spread in a warmer climate and rising sea levels, according to one official who has seen the original version.
...
Boxer produced a CDC chart listing the broad range of health problems that could emerge from a significant temperature increase and sea level rise

They include fatalities from heat stress and heart failure, increased injuries and deaths from severe weather such as hurricanes; more respiratory problems from drought-driven air pollution; an increase in waterborne diseases including cholera, and increases vector-borne diseases including malaria and hantavirus; and mental health problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress.

"These are the potential things you can expect," replied Gerberding when asked about the items listed. "... In some of these areas its not a question of if, it's a question of who, what, how and when."

Monday, October 22, 2007

Carbon dioxide in atmosphere increasing

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071023/ap_on_sc/carbon_increase;_ylt=AvQ_GTonnw2vXiE6aOWJe6kPLBIF

Just days after the Nobel prize was awarded for global warming work, an alarming new study finds that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected.

Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 percent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers led by Josep G. Canadell, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the gas absorbed by the oceans and land were listed as causes of the increase.

"It turns out that global warming critics were right when they said that global climate models did not do a good job at predicting climate change," Robock commented. "But what has been wrong recently is that the climate is changing even faster than the models said. In fact, Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than any models predicted, and sea level is rising much faster than IPCC previously predicted."

Trenberth noted that carbon dioxide is not the whole story — methane emissions have declined, so total greenhouse gases are not increasing as much as carbon dioxide alone. Also, he added, other pollution plays a role by cooling.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071022/sc_afp/climatewarmingocean;_ylt=ApMnoQWCCbrrd_m96b.ms.0PLBIF

The world's oceans may be losing their ability to soak up extra carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, with the risk that this will help stoke global warming, two new studies say.

Absorption of atmospheric CO2 by the North Atlantic plunged by half between the mid-1990s and 2002-5, British researchers say in a paper published in the November issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Ute Schuster, who led the research with Professor Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences, admitted she was astonished by the data.

"Such large changes are a tremendous surprise. We expected that the uptake would change only slowly because of the ocean's great mass," Schuster was quoted by the university in a press release Monday as saying.

Research last year pointed to rising acidification of the oceans as a result of CO2 uptake, highlighting the risk of carbon saturation as well as a looming peril for biodiversity.

NASA Mum, But Airline Mishaps More Common

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/22/travel/main3390456.shtml

Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.

The Associated Press learned about the NASA results from one person familiar with the survey who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss them.

A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits. Luedtke acknowledged that the survey results "present a comprehensive picture of certain aspects of the U.S. commercial aviation industry."

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Children of War

You can listen to Kemp Jones great song "Children of War" at

http://www.myspace.com/kempjones

He wrote it after seeing a news story that showed a child who said "We children don't need war, we need chocolate".

Monday, October 15, 2007

Allergies Linked To Lower Risk Of Brain Cancer


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071010082414.htm

People with a history of allergies and related diseases have nearly a third lower risk of developing a certain brain cancer than those without the condition.

Atopic diseases, which include asthma, eczema, hay fever, and other allergies, have been linked to a lower risk of glioma, a type of brain cancer that affects glial cells. This association has not been seen with meningioma, a tumor that develops in the membrane that covers the brain.

Air pollution shortening life expectancies


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071010131201.htm

Despite some success with air pollution, current levels — mainly nitrogen oxide, fine particles and ground-level ozone — are estimated to shorten average life expectancy in Western and Central European countries by almost a year and to threaten the healthy development of children.

And they still have a longer life expectancy than the U.S.

Why It Is Impossible For Some To 'Just Say No'


Drug abuse, crime and obesity are but a few of the problems our nation faces, but they all have one thing in common--people’s failure to control their behavior in the face of temptation. While the ability to control and restrain our impulses is one of the defining features of the human animal, its failure is one of the central problems of human society. So, why do we so often lack this crucial ability?

As human beings, we have limited resources to control ourselves, and all acts of control draw from this same source. Therefore, when using this resource in one domain, for example, keeping to a diet, we are more likely to run out of this resource in a different domain, like studying hard. Once these resources are exhausted, our ability to control ourselves is diminished. In this depleted state, the dieter is more likely to eat chocolate, the student to watch TV, and the politician to accept a bribe.

So that is why a person can be so in-ontrol in some areas, and not in others.

Humans Unknowing Midwives For Pregnant Moose


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009131952.htm
When it's time for moose to give birth in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, they head to where it is safest from predators -- namely closer to people, according to a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Published in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, the study says that moose avoid predation of their calves by grizzly bears by moving closer to roads and other infrastructure prior to giving birth.
...
Berger also cited similar examples where prey species tend to use humans as cover from predation, including vervet monkeys in Kenya and axis deer in Nepal that avoiding big cats by staying close to ranger stations.

"The study's results indicate that moose and other prey species find humans more benign and hence move to humans for safety whereas predators do not because we humans tend to be less kind to predators," Berger added.

Even Occasional Use Of Spray Cleaners May Cause Asthma In Adults


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071012080132.htm

Using household cleaning sprays and air fresheners as little as once a week can raise the risk of developing asthma in adults, say researchers in Europe. Such products have been associated with increased asthma rates in cleaning professionals, but a similar effect in nonprofessional users has never before been shown.

Feminism And Romance


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071015102856.htm

Contrary to popular opinion, feminism and romance are not incompatible and feminism may actually improve the quality of heterosexual relationships, according to Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan, from Rutgers University in the US. Their study* also shows that unflattering feminist stereotypes, that tend to stigmatize feminists as unattractive and sexually unappealing, are unsupported.

Poor priorities


http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/12/us.turkey/index.html

Turkey is outraged over a resolution passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, which declares that the deportation of nearly 2 million Armenians from the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923 -- resulting in the deaths of 1.5 million people -- was "systematic" and "deliberate," amounting to "genocide."

With all the problems in the and other countries, why is the U.S. Congress spending time on something that happened almost 100 years ago?

Friday, October 12, 2007

Compassionate Conservatism at work


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/opinion/12krugman.html?ex=1349841600&en=e11eb7dfda52717d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/10/paul-krugman-sl.html

Two weeks ago, the Democratic response to President Bush’s weekly radio address was delivered by a 12-year-old, Graeme Frost. Graeme, who along with his sister received severe brain injuries in a 2004 car crash and continues to need physical therapy, is a beneficiary of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Mr. Bush has vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have expanded that program to cover millions of children who would otherwise have been uninsured.

The parents have a combined income of about $45,000, and don’t receive health insurance from employers. When they looked into buying insurance on their own before the accident, they found that it would cost $1,200 a month — a prohibitive sum given their income. After the accident, when their children needed expensive care, they couldn’t get insurance at any price.

Fortunately, they received help from Maryland’s S-chip program. The state has relatively restrictive rules for eligibility: children must come from a family with an income under 200 percent of the poverty line. For families with four children that’s $55,220, so the Frosts clearly qualified.

Soon after the radio address, right-wing bloggers began insisting that the Frosts must be affluent because Graeme and his sister attend private schools (they’re on scholarship), because they have a house in a neighborhood where some houses are now expensive (the Frosts bought their house for $55,000 in 1990 when the neighborhood was rundown and considered dangerous) and because Mr. Frost owns a business (it was dissolved in 1999).

The charge was led by Michelle Malkin, who according to Technorati has the most-trafficked right-wing blog on the Internet, and in addition to blogging has a nationally syndicated column, writes for National Review and is a frequent guest on Fox News.

The attack on Graeme’s family was also quickly picked up by Rush Limbaugh, who is so important a player in the right-wing universe that he has had multiple exclusive interviews with Vice President Dick Cheney.

And G.O.P. politicians were eager to join in the smear. The New York Times reported that Republicans in Congress “were gearing up to use Graeme as evidence that Democrats have overexpanded the health program to include families wealthy enough to afford private insurance” but had “backed off” as the case fell apart.

In fact, however, Republicans had already made their first move: an e-mail message from the office of Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, sent to reporters and obtained by the Web site Think Progress, repeated the smears against the Frosts and asked: “Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?”

And the attempt to spin the media worked, to some extent: despite reporting that has thoroughly debunked the smears, a CNN report yesterday suggested that the Democrats had made “a tactical error in holding up Graeme as their poster child,” and closely echoed the language of the e-mail from Mr. McConnell’s office.

All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Children of War

http://neilyoung.com/

Click on "Living With War Doc"
which goes to the following page :
http://neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/index.html

Near the top of the left column, click on LWW Top 2,180 Songs - Listen Here

Ctrl+f and search for "kemp"
His "Top Ten Stories" is currently numbered 1156
Click on "Top Ten Stories"

This takes you to the MySpace blog of singer/songwriter Kemp Jones :
http://www.myspace.com/kempjones

All of his songs are good. I would say that "Children of War" is great, and deserves to become a classic. Kemp wrote it after seeing a documentary where a child in a war zone said "We children don't need war, we need chocolate".

Friday, October 05, 2007

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/05/business/main3333767.shtml

Job creation picked up in September but not enough to stop the unemployment rate from rising to 4.7 percent, the highest in just over a year.

The bump up in the unemployment rate from 4.6 percent in August came as hundreds of thousands of people streamed back into the labor market.

That illustrates a problem with the official "unemployment rate". Many of these people who "streamed back into the labor market" wanted jobs, but weren't included in the unemployment statistics.