Earth ChangesS


Info

Canadian tar plan threatens millions of birds

Continued development could kill 100 million migratory birds

Canada's plans to mine more of its oil sands have just sunk deeper into the political mire. A new report saying that millions of migratory birds are at risk adds to a mass of criticism of the damage caused by exploiting the oil sands.

The thick tarry deposit in northern Alberta is the world's second-largest oil reserve after Saudi Arabia, but separating the useable oil from the gunk takes three times as much energy as pumping conventional oil. This alone makes it some of the "dirtiest" oil on the planet.

This week, a report by the US Natural Resources Defense Council says that continued development of the area could kill 100 million migratory birds over the next 50 years, mainly by destroying their habitat.

Info

Jealous dogs don't play ball

A sulky dog
© stock.xchngA sulky dog might just feel unfairly.
A dog might be a man's best friend, but only if it is being treated fairly. When a dog thinks it's getting a raw deal in comparison to other dogs, it doesn't shy away from expressing its envy.

Until now, such overt dislike of unfairness had only been demonstrated in primates, but some scientists have suspected that other species that live cooperatively could also be sensitive to fair play - or a lack of one.

To test this theory, Friederike Range and her colleagues at the University of Vienna, Austria, asked 43 trained dogs to extend their paw to a human in various situations.

The animals performed the trick almost at every request, regardless of whether they were given a reward or not; as well as when working alone or alongside another dog.

Bizarro Earth

Powerful earthquake rocks Timor Leste

An earthquake of 6.2 magnitude hit off Timor Leste's coast Saturday, with no reports of injuries or damage, the U.S. geological agency said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 160 km northwest of the capital, Dili at a depth of 408.3 km beneath the Banda Sea at 6:55 pm (1055 GMT).

Telephone

Noisy oceans 'threaten sea life'

Increasing noise pollution in the world's oceans is threatening the survival of whales
whale
Some whales show damage suggesting they surfaced too quickly, experts say
and dolphins, a UN-backed conference has heard.


Experts say the noises sea creatures use to communicate are being drowned out by noises from commercial shipping, new military sonar and climate change.

They become disoriented, cannot find mates or food and behave differently, scientists say.

Butterfly

Harbour seals' decline 'alarming'

Harbour seals, or common seals, are familiar faces along coastlines across
seal
Drowning, not waving - harbour seal numbers have halved in some areas
the northern hemisphere.


But they are now vanishing in the UK at an alarming rate, warn scientists from St Andrews University.

Numbers have halved in the hardest hit area, the Orkney Islands, since 2001 - falling almost 10% each year.

Better Earth

Glimmer of hope for rare monkey

A new sub-population of a Critically Endangered species of monkey has been recorded in north-western Vietnam.

Biologists from Fauna and Flora International said they had found up to 20 Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys in a remote forest.

The team said the new group offered a ray of hope because it included three infants, suggesting that the monkeys were breeding and increasing in number.

Bizarro Earth

The behemoth that wouldn't stop growing

Have you noticed that we describe the market and economy as if they were living entities? The market is showing signs of stress. The economy is healthy. The economy is on life support.

Sometimes, we act as if the economy is larger than life. In the past, people trembled in fear of dragons, demons, gods, and monsters, sacrificing anything - virgins, money, newborn babies - to appease them. We know now that those fears were superstitious imaginings, but we have replaced them with a new behemoth: the economy.

Even stranger, economists believe this behemoth can grow forever. Indeed, the measure of how well a government or corporation is doing is its record of economic growth. But our home - the biosphere, or zone of air, water, and land where all life exists - is finite and fixed. It can't grow. And nothing within such a world can grow indefinitely. In focusing on constant growth, we fail to ask the important questions. What is an economy for? Am I happier with all this stuff? How much is enough?

Comment: The 'brain damage" is more correctly defined as pyschopathy. Psychopaths have no sense of long-term consequences. They're hard-wired to pay attention only to their own desires and goals, without considering the wider ramifications of those goals.


Igloo

Colder Manitoba winter predicted

Image
© unknownWinter in Winnipeg
With more snow to boot

Will we freeze in our boots or skate through a mild winter?

Weather forecasters say parts of Manitoba might be in store for cooler than normal temperatures from now through February with more precipitation than usual this winter.

"We're saying this will be a colder than normal year," said David Phillips, senior climatologist for Environment Canada.

The weather agency doesn't predict exactly how much colder the winter might be but Phillips said it could be similar to last winter, which ran about one degree colder than normal.

Frog

Mystery of crocs' mass die-off

Gharial
© UnknownSome gharials may be feeding on fish that have large toxic loads
Measuring up to 6m long, with elongated narrow snouts, gharials are one of the world's most distinctive-looking crocodilians.

Just 100 years ago, these fish-eating reptiles were prevalent throughout the Indian subcontinent; but by 2007, there were just 200 breeding adults found in only a handful of rivers in India and Nepal.

Last winter, this already critically endangered species was dealt another cruel blow. Over the space of just five months, more than 100 of the creatures washed up dead on the banks of India's Chambal river - and nobody knew why.

For the past year, herpetologist Rom Whitaker, who runs the Madras Crocodile Bank, has been followed by a BBC Natural World team as he attempted to solve this mystery.

Frog

Did Greenhouse Gases Cause the Earth's Greatest Mass Extinction?

In 1980, scientists Luis Alvarez and his son, Walter, proposed a new explanation for the dinosaurs' disappearance 65 million years ago: a meteor strike. Initially, the idea was met with resistance. But the evidence was convincing: a sediment layer high in iridium, an element common in asteroids, was found the world over, along with a 110-mile-wide impact crater in the Yucatán of the same age. What started as a fringe idea has gone mainstream.

Now scientists are rethinking another of earth's great die-offs. The end-Permian extinction 251 million years ago was the worst of earth's five mass extinctions. Ninety percent of all marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life disappeared. It took five million years, perhaps more, for the biosphere to recover.

But while the die-off was uniquely devastating, evidence of a single cataclysmic event, like an asteroid strike, hasn't been found in the geological record. Scientists now suspect that "the mother of all mass extinctions" was of Earth's own making. And the more they learn about it, the more parallels they see to today's world: A bout of greenhouse-gas-induced global warming, much like today's, set off a chain of events that culminated in oxygen-depleted oceans exhaling poison gas.

Comment: Notice the tactic of linking some good science with the subtle reassurance that "the asteroids (or comets) are not to blame". Besides "who sez" that the oceans can't become anoxic in conditions of global cooling?