The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.

A second oil drilling rig has overturned near Morgan City, Louisiana, after the oil slick from the first accident in the Gulf of Mexico washed ashore.

No injuries have been reported. The overturned rig is unrelated to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that threatens the coast's fragile ecosystem.

US Coast Guard officials are currently investigating reports as fishermen in coastal towns fear for their livelihood.

The oil rig can carry about 20,000 gallons of diesel fuel, but Coast Guard officials do not know how much fuel was on board. Coast Guard investigators say no fuel leaks have been found so far.

About 500 feet of boom has been set up around the rig as a precaution to contain any fuel that might leak.

At least three people have died and 35 others have been hurt as several tornadoes leveled homes, overturned vehicles and uprooted trees across central Arkansas.

Spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management Renee Preslar said on Saturday that the deaths were reported in Van Buren County located 120 km (75 miles) north of Little Rock, where twisters have destroyed three mobile homes and downed power lines.

She added that rescue teams are searching for people who may be trapped in a damaged home in Center Ridge situated 96 km (60 miles) north of Little Rock.

Albert Einstein spoke for all who view science as a noble profession when he said he was "trying to understand the mind of God."

But I am concerned that many who promote the idea of catastrophic global warming reduce science to a political and economic game. Scare tactics and junk science are used to secure lucrative government contracts.

Consider first an example of what makes science so fascinating. The well-documented observation that the global temperature peaks every summer in July seems unremarkable to those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere.

But it is remarkable when you realize that the Earth's closest approach to the sun, when sunlight is strongest, occurs during the Southern Hemisphere summer in January. It is even more remarkable when you realize that the Earth was significantly warmer 10,000 years ago when its closest approach coincided with the Northern Hemisphere summer.

It is still more remarkable when you realize that we are now close to an orbital configuration for another ice age. The present warm Holocene interglacial period, during which human civilization has flourished, may give way by the end of this millennium to 90,000 years of cold. Climate changes from orbital variations are called Milankovitch Cycles and are confirmed by Antarctic ice core data. Typically, good science is not particularly controversial because it has been tested by the scientific method involving theories validated by observations made by many scientists working independently.

The ClimateGate scandal revealed that this method can be easily scammed. In that case, prominent scientists with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were caught conspiring to circumvent normal checks and balances in their research. They were compensating for their lack of honest evidence linking man-made carbon dioxide to global warming by doctoring data, refusing to disclose analysis techniques, bullying any who questioned them and working to silence critics.

More than 3 kilometres down in part of the freezing Southern Ocean, water is flowing at more than 700 metres per hour, making this the fastest-moving deep ocean current ever found.

The powerful current was discovered thanks to a 175-kilometre string of sensors on the eastern flank of the submerged Kerguelen plateau, some 3000 kilometres south-west of Australia (Nature Geoscience, DOI: link).

With a flow of more than 8 million cubic metres per second, the current transports 40 times as much water as the Amazon. It is likely to be an important component of the global ocean "conveyor belt", which pushes water from the ocean surface to its greatest depths and back again, and has a direct influence on global temperatures.

Eat red meat if you want a boy baby, fish and vegetables for a girl... Myths about how women can influence the sex of their baby abound, but for African buffalo, such effects are more science than fiction, and the main driver is the pitter-patter of tiny raindrops.

During wet periods, about 55 per cent of conceptions are male, but this falls to 45 per cent in dry seasons, says Pim van Hooft of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He analysed data from more than 3000 buffalo culled over 20 years in South Africa's Kruger National Park.

Van Hooft found that some males carry a "sex-ratio distorter" gene which ensures that more males are conceived in the wet season, when food is abundant, making the fathers fitter and their sperm quality higher. Other would-be fathers carry a "sex-ratio suppressor" which does the opposite, producing a slight boost in female offspring conceived in the barren dry season.

Entire elephant families bolt when they hear recordings of trumpetings made by other elephants fleeing from bees.

This is the first demonstration that elephants may make specific sounds to warn of particular threats, although they have also been observed "roaring" when threatened by lions.

Date-Time:
Friday, April 30, 2010 at 23:11:44 UTC

Friday, April 30, 2010 at 02:11:44 PM at epicenter

Location:
60.644°N, 177.901°W

Depth:
15.1 km (9.4 miles)

Distances:
474 km (294 miles) SW (225°) from Gambell, AK

478 km (297 miles) SSW (212°) from Provideniya, Russia

1510 km (938 miles) W (280°) from Anchorage, AK

Hazards due to Comets and Asteroids, Current Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver, et. al., 1994

Excerpts

Our understanding of the history of Earth and its inhabitants is undergoing a radical change. The gradual processes of geologic change and evolution, it is now clear, are punctuated by natural catastrophes on a colossal scale - catastrophes resulting from collisions of large asteroids and comets with Earth. It is, to use the popular term, a "paradigm shift."

This "new catastrophism," is not unlike the revolutions brought about by the heliocentric solar system of Copernicus, or Darwinian evolution, or the big bang. In retrospect, such revolutionary ideas always seem obvious. On reading the Origin of Species, Thomas Huxley remarked simply: "Why didn't I think of that." Now, looking at the Moon, we find ourselves wondering why it took so long to ask whether the process that cratered its surface is still going on. [...]

The long time scale between major impacts has implications for public policy. Governments do not function on geologic time. On the North Dakota prairie near the town of Grand Forks, lie the abandoned ruins of America's ballistic missile defense system. ... Built in accordance with the ABM treaty, the Grand Forks facility was meant to defend our retaliatory capacity. It was declared operational in 1975 - and decommissioned the same year. National leaders had been persuaded by some scientists that the Grand Forks facility would meet the threat to our intercontinental ballistic missile fleet, even though other scientists warned that the system was dangerous and ineffective. It was closed because the money to operate it was needed for other projects that were deemed to be more urgent.

Rod Chilton, author of the most recent (and perhaps only) comprehensive review of Younger Dryas science, was kind to contribute this fine critique of David Morrison's recent paper in Skeptical Enquirer. I am reading Rod's excellent book and look forward to reviewing it soon.

The debate continues as to the cause of the more than 1,000 year-long cold interval known as the Younger Dryas. Falling on the heels of the Last Ice Age, or more correctly immediately after the two warm intervals known as the Bolling and Allerod interstadials, the Younger Dryas onset appears now to have started in as little time as one to three years. The climate shifted that suddenly from near present day warmth to near Ice Age cold. A second important feature to be noted is that apparently most of the planet was affected, and that the teleconnection between various parts of the planet was swift. This suggests strongly that the forcing mechanism resided in the atmosphere, rather than in the Ocean (where a much slower teleconnection would have been evident). The Younger Dryas however was very different from another alleged cosmic encounter, that of the great Cretaceous extinction event of approximately 65 million years ago. At this time, a huge bolide struck the Gulf of Mexico. Likely measuring as much as ten kilometres' across, the demise of the dinosaurs seems to have been assured.