Earth ChangesS

Bizarro Earth

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

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© (AP Photo/Alex BrandonA 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.

Better Earth

Stray grey whale navigates the North-West Passage

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© 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?


Magic Wand

Baby Blue Becomes First Reindeer Born in England Since Ice Age

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© Adam Gerrard/SWNSBlue, 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.

Take 2

'Ash Cloud' Causes More Travel Misery in Europe

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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.

Cloud Lightning

US: 4 dead in Oklahoma tornado outbreak

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© AP Photo/Sue OgrockiA 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.

MIB

Slick Operator: The BP I've Known Too Well

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.

Frog

UN Fears "Irreversible" Damage to Natural Environment

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© 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.

Better Earth

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

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.

Hourglass

Gulf Oil Spill Spreads West Toward Texas

aerial view of the oil leaked
© Reuters/Daniel BeltraAn aerial view of the oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, May 6, 2010.
Robert, Louisiana - BP Plc engineers desperately explored options on Sunday to control oil gushing from a ruptured well deep under the Gulf of Mexico after a setback with a huge undersea containment dome fueled fears of a prolonged and growing environmental disaster.

The spill is spreading west, further from Florida but toward the important shipping channels and rich seafood areas of the Louisiana shoreline, where fishing, shrimping and oyster harvesting bans have been widened.

A state of emergency was declared in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, with sheen, the leading edge of the oil slick, forecast to come ashore near Port Fourchon within days.

BP is exploring several new options to control the spill after a buildup of crystallized gas in the dome forced engineers to delay efforts to place a massive four-story containment chamber over the rupture on Saturday.

Cloud Lightning

Over 200 private houses flooded in Dagestan due to heavy rains

Three residential areas were flooded in the town of Mamedkala, the Derbent district of Dagestan, due to heavy rains and an emergency water discharge from the local Gedzhukh lake. Some 210 private houses, where about 1,000 people live, were flooded, a source in the Emergency Situations Ministry main department in Dagestan reported.

The dam of the Gedzhukh lake was not damaged, the source said on Tuesday. The republican emergency service and the republican authorities laid out an evacuation camp for 250 people, but the local residents prefer to stay temporarily at their relatives.