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Rumble in the Jungle: Activists vs. Palm Oil

Barry Estabrook
The Atlantic
Tue, 11 May 2010 21:40 UTC
Image
© David Gilbert
Wake up in the morning. Enjoy a warm, soapy shower. Eat a bowl of cereal, perhaps with soy milk. Dab on some lipstick ...

Perform any of those mundane tasks and chances are you've done your bit to destroy a patch of rainforest somewhere in Indonesia where vast stands of virgin trees have been cut, bulldozed, and burned to clear land for palm oil plantations. Once used primarily in cosmetics, palm oil, which is free of artery-clogging trans fats, has become the ingredient du jour in processed foods. In the United States, consumption of the stuff has tripled over the past five years. Growing oil palms is now the largest cause of deforestation in Indonesia, contributing to global warming and destroying crucial habitat for the country's endangered orangutan population, which has fallen by half since the onset of the palm-oil boom.
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Red Flag

Chemical Dispersants Being Used in Gulf Clean-up are Potentially Toxic

Tom Philpott
Grist
Thu, 06 May 2010 18:29 UTC
Image
© U.S. Coast Guard
Coast Guard workers spray Corexit in a 2007 Berkeley, California, cleanup. It is not yet being used on Gulf of Mexico beaches.
We finally know the main two dispersants that BP and the U.S. government are using to treat the ongoing Gulf spill. Both, by their maker's own admission, have the "potential to bioconcentrate," and both have "moderate toxicity to early life stages of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks," according to a study by Exxon, the company that originally developed them. Their use may be the least-bad course, given the importance of minimizing oil's effect on coastal wetlands. But a little digging into the chemical makeup of these two substances, which are being dumped in vast quantities into the Gulf, reveals that they could potentially do far more harm than good, both to the Gulf and to humans who later eat from it.

As ProPublica reported Monday, information about dispersants is "kept secret under competitive trade laws." I've spent the last several days trying to confirm what many in the ocean-ecology and public health worlds seemed to know, but no one would say officially: that two different dispersants sold under the banner of Corexit were being used in vast quantities. The Corexit brand is owned by an Illinois-based company called Nalco, which entered the dispersant business back in 1994, when it merged with Exxon's chemical unit. (By 2004, Exxon had divested and Nalco was a standalone company, according to Nalco's company history.)
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Bizarro Earth

Dead dolphins wash up on coast; oil's role unclear

Janet McConnaughey and Brain Skoloff
Associated Press
Tue, 11 May 2010 16:48 UTC
Image
© (AP Photo/Alex Brandon
A pod of Bottle Nose dolphins swim under the oily water of Chandeleur Sound, La., Thursday, May 6, 2010.
Ship Island, Mississippi - Federal wildlife officials are treating the deaths of six dolphins on the Gulf Coast as oil-related even though other factors may be to blame.

Blair Mase (MACE') of the National Marine Fisheries Service said Tuesday that the carcasses have all been found in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama since May 2. Samples have been sent for testing to see whether a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico helped kill the dolphins.

Mase and animal rescue coordinator Michele Kelley in Louisiana said none of the carcasses has obvious signs of oil. Mase also said it's common for dead dolphins to wash up this time of year when they are in shallow waters to calve.
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Better Earth

Stray grey whale navigates the North-West Passage

Fred Pearce
New Scientist
Tue, 11 May 2010 16:03 UTC
Image
© New Scientist
Conventional wisdom has it that grey whales have been extinct in the Atlantic Ocean for more than 200 years, and the species survives only in the north Pacific. That was the case until last weekend, when a 13-metre-long grey whale was spotted cruising off the coast of Israel.

"This is sensational," said Phillip Clapham of the US government's National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle after hearing the news from marine biologists in Israel. "The most plausible explanation is that it came across an ice-free North-West Passage from the Pacific Ocean, and is now wondering where the hell it is."

The North-West Passage, which runs through the Canadian Arctic, has been open in summer in recent years, partly because of rising global temperatures.

Although they are known for their long migrations, grey whales do not normally stray from their regular routes. "Were I to speculate wildly, I'd say it found Europe and remembered its mother telling it to keep the coast to its left going south, then it hit the strait of Gibraltar and entered the Mediterranean," said Clapham.

The Arctic route makes most sense, agrees Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara, an expert on Mediterranean cetaceans who advises several international conservation bodies. He points to reports that grey whales have been seen getting farther north than usual into the Arctic, probably helped by the low-ice conditions.

Comment: "rising global temperatures" are the least of the grey whales problems: Freak Arctic Weather Precursor to the Coming Ice Age?

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Magic Wand

Baby Blue Becomes First Reindeer Born in England Since Ice Age


The Daily Mail
Tue, 11 May 2010 03:23 UTC
Image
© Adam Gerrard/SWNS
Blue, weighing 8lb, is the son of mother Prancer and father Rudolph. The calf is the first reindeer to be born to a small herd located in a 750-acre Cornwall estate
Meet Blue, the baby son of proud parents Prancer and Rudolph and believed to the first reindeer born in England for 10,000 years.

The 8lb calf was born to a small herd located in a 750-acre Cornwall estate.

While reindeer existed in Britain during the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago they gradually retreated north and disappeared from these shores as the climate warmed up. Now they are only found in Scandinavia, Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland.

The five females and male in the grounds of the Trevarno Estate near Helston were brought over from Scandinavia two years ago as part of Christmas celebrations taking place in the grounds.

They have since acclimatised to their new surroundings and 8lb Blue - named after the estate's bluebell fields - was born on May 1.
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Take 2

'Ash Cloud' Causes More Travel Misery in Europe


Independent Television News
Tue, 11 May 2010 07:15 UTC
Image
Air passengers face more disruption as the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud causes further delays and cancellations.

Budget airline Ryanair says it has cancelled dozens of flights to and from destinations in Spain, Portugal and the Canary Islands.

Rival carrier easyJet has also warned there could be more disruption to flights to and from France, Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar.

BAA says all of its airports are open and operating normal schedules, but has warned of delays to transatlantic services and cancellations by airlines.
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Cloud Lightning

US: 4 dead in Oklahoma tornado outbreak


Associated Press
Mon, 10 May 2010 22:08 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki
A muddy kitten takes cover next to a tree after a tornado swept through the mobile home community of Prairie Creek Village in Slaughterville, Okla., flattening several homes, Monday, May 10, 2010.
Tecumseh - Four people have been killed in Oklahoma during an outbreak of violent weather that dropped tornadoes across parts of the Southern Plains.

The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said three people were killed at Tecumseh on Monday and that another person died at Oklahoma City. Tecumseh is about 45 miles southeast of Oklahoma City.

The agency did not have any additional details.

The storms caused traffic accidents that closed two major cross-country interstates. Damage was reported throughout much of northern, central and eastern Oklahoma.

The Storm Prediction Center at Norman had predicted the outbreak, saying the atmosphere had the right mix of winds, heat and moisture.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
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MIB

Slick Operator: The BP I've Known Too Well

Greg Palast
Truthout
Wed, 05 May 2010 16:16 UTC
gulf oil spill
© Unknown
I've seen this movie before. In 1989, I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon's name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was ... British Petroleum (BP).

That's important to know, because the way BP caused devastation in Alaska is exactly the way BP is now sliming the entire Gulf Coast.

Tankers run aground, wells blow out, pipes burst. It shouldn't happen, but it does. And when it does, the name of the game is containment. Both in Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez grounded, and in the Gulf last week, when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew, it was British Petroleum that was charged with carrying out the Oil Spill Response Plans (OSRP), which the company itself drafted and filed with the government.
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Frog

UN Fears "Irreversible" Damage to Natural Environment


Raw Story
Mon, 10 May 2010 13:29 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse
Geneva - The UN warned on Monday that "massive" loss in life-sustaining natural environments was likely to deepen to the point of being irreversible after global targets to cut the decline by this year were missed.

As a result of the degradation, the world is moving closer to several "tipping points" beyond which some ecosystems that play a part in natural processes such as climate or the food chain may be permanently damaged, a United Nations report said.

The third Global Biodiversity Outlook found that deforestation, pollution or overexploitation were damaging the productive capacity of the most vulnerable environments, including the Amazon rainforest, lakes and coral reefs.

"This report is saying that we are reaching the tipping point where the irreversible damage to the planet is going to be done unless we act urgently," Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, told journalists.

Djoghlaf argued that extinction rates for some animal or plant species were at a historic high, up to 1,000 times those seen before, even affecting crops and livestock.
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Better Earth

A "New Level" of Disaster: BP's 70-Ton Oil Containment Dome Floats, No "Plan B"


Raw Story
Mon, 10 May 2010 13:15 UTC
oil spill
© Agence France-Presse
Update: 'Flummoxed' BP engineers ask public for oil leak solutions

New Orleans, Louisanna -- With the impending threat of a growing oil slick just offshore, US Gulf coast states are seizing at all straws to avert disaster, with police in north Florida even suggesting protecting beaches with rolls of hay.

"That's why we get a lot of inventions in wartime, because people are willing to take a chance," Eric Smith, an oil and gas expert at Tulane University in New Orleans, said of the flood of ideas on how to stop the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

On Florida's Santa Rosa Beach, Walton County Sheriff Michael A. Adkinson and C.W. Roberts, Inc., a private contractor, unveiled their audacious plan to stop oil from blackening 26 miles of pristine white beaches facing the Gulf.
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