“This is strange territory. The Dow is down. Wall Street needs a bailout. But in the Washington area and across the country, there is still a bull market in environmental guilt. Sales of carbon offsets — whose buyers pay hard cash to make amends for their sins against the climate — are up. Still. In some cases, the prices have actually been climbing. In other words, when nearly everything seems to be selling for less, thousands of individuals and businesses are paying more for nothing, or at least nothing tangible.” Read more here.
Archives for October 2008
World’s Mammals under Increasing Threat, including The Sumatran Tiger
Leaders from government and non-government organisations as well as celebrities and scientists have converged on Barcelona, Spain, for a meeting of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Yesterday at the Congress a new study assessing the status of the world’s mammals was released showing:
“188 mammals are in the highest threat category of Critically Endangered, including the Iberian Lynx (Lynx pardinus), which has a population of just 84-143 adults and has continued to decline due to a shortage of its primary prey, the European Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).
China’s Père David’s Deer (Elaphurus davidianus), is listed as Extinct in the Wild. However, the captive and semi-captive populations have increased in recent years and it is possible that truly wild populations could be re-established soon. It may be too late, however, to save the additional 29 species that have been flagged as Critically Endangered Possibly Extinct, including Cuba’s Little Earth Hutia (Mesocapromys sanfelipensis), which has not been seen in nearly 40 years.
Nearly 450 mammals have been listed as Endangered, including the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), which moved from Least Concern to Endangered after the global population declined by more than 60 percent in the last 10 years due to a fatal infectious facial cancer.
The Fishing Cat (Prionailurus viverrinus), found in Southeast Asia, moved from Vulnerable to Endangered due to habitat loss in wetlands. Similarly, the Caspian Seal (Pusa caspica) moved from Vulnerable to Endangered. Its population has declined by 90 percent in the last 100 years due to unsustainable hunting and habitat degradation and is still decreasing.”
The report states that habitat loss is the biggest issue for the world’s mammals especially in Southeast Asia.
The Sumatran tiger falls under this category and continues to lose habitat including to palm oil plantations and then there is also the issue of poaching.
The IUCN lists the tiger, Panthera tigris, as Endangered with less than 2,500 mature individuals in the wild.
This picture of a Sumatran tiger was taken by a camera trap set by Neil Franklin and provided by Richard Ness. Richard Ness has commented that “I am not sure the cutting of primary forest for logging or plantations is a real issue for them. They may do just as well in secondary growth. The main problem is humans hunting them for parts… same goes for orangutans.”
Dr Brendan Moyle, a zoologist and senior lecturer at Massey University, New Zealand, wrote on the issue of tigers and poaching in a note entitled ‘Tigers and Endangered Species’ at this blog in July last year. ‘
*********
According to Wikipedia, the IUCN was founded in 1948 and brings together 83 states, 108 government agencies, 766 non-governmental organizations and 81 international organizations and about 10,000 experts and scientists from countries around the world.
Bowhead Whale Could Slow US Plan for OffShore Oil Drilling
Tomorrow the residents of Barrow, Alaska, a town on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, will vote for a new mayor. According to at least one report whoever wins will potentially impact the ability of the US to fast track its plans for energy independence through offshore oil drilling.
While both the current mayor, Edward Itta, and his rival and former Mayor, George Ahmaogak, are pro-development and have supported the oil industry, the incumbent Itta is against off-shore drilling.
Mayor Itta claims to be concerned that off-shore drilling will potentially scare away the bowhead whales which are still considered “culturally and nutritionally” important to his community of predominately Alaska Natives.
There is also the issue of whether offshore drilling, as opposed to onshore drilling, will cut his municipality out of a share in the oil revenue. Indeed could the whales be a convenient excuse for keeping oil exploration and revenue in the municipality?
In nearby Canada, hunting of bowhead whales is also still considered culturally important.
In August, The Bowhead Whale Music Festival in Nunavik coincided with the signing of an authorization from Canada’s federal department of fisheries and oceans to kill a single whale.
[Image via IceClass removed February 5, 2009, because of copyright issues.]
Mobile Phones to Track Carbon Footprint
I gather there are three ‘things’ now shared by most communities on this earth: keys, money and mobile phones. So with the development of new software that enables mobile phones to track our carbon footprint, well, perhaps we can each soon be individually allocated a carbon credit by the United Nations? Read more here.
Counting Cows In Outback Australia
A Queensland jackeroo (‘jackeroo’=cowboy, Australian version!) is overseeing his herd in remote territory when suddenly a brand-new BMW advances out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a designer suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, ‘If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?’
The jackaroo looks at the man, obviously a yuppie (‘yuppie’=A young city or suburban resident with a well-paid professional job and an affluent lifestyle) , then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, ‘Sure, why not?’
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite tha t scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany .
Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel Spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, ‘You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.’
‘That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,’ says the Cowboy.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then the cowboy says to the young man, ‘Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?’
&n bsp;The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, ‘Okay, why not?’
‘You work for the Australian Government’, says the Jackeroo.
‘Wow! That’s correct,’ says the yuppie, ‘but how did you guess that?’
‘No guessing required.’ answered the jackeroo. ‘You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used all ki nds of expensive equipment that clearly somebody else paid for, You t ried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don’t know a thing about cows … this is a flock of sheep. Now give me back my dog.’
[via Denis Barrett]
New Detailed Analysis of Global Temperature Data Does Not Support Significant Role for Carbon Dioxide
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that: Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, mainly carbon dioxide. This conclusion is based on output from global climate computer models known as General Circulation Models (GCM).
David Douglass and John Christy, in a paper recently accepted for publication and already available on the internet, have come to a different conclusion. By considering observed, as opposed to modelled, temperature changes and at different latitude bands they conclude that:
1. El Nino and La Nina effects in the tropics have a more significant affect on global temperature anomalies than carbon dioxide, in particular it was an El Nino event that drove the 1998 global temperature maximum.
2. Variations in global temperatures since 1978 have mostly been due to climate effects in the northern hemisphere (northern extratropics) and these effects cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide.
3. Carbon dioxide has contributed a small amount to an increase in global temperatures but without what is commonly referred to as feed-back.
David Douglas and John Christy are practicing climate scientists from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, and Department of Atmospheric Science and Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama, respectively. Their paper entitled ‘Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth’, was recently accepted for publication in Energy and Environment.
A regular at this blog, Cohenite, comments on the Douglass-Christy paper in a fairly technical note already posted at the community webpage of this blog, and entitled ‘Temperature Trends and Carbon Dioxide’, suggests that there is no evidence for a contribution from carbon dioxide to global temperatures and that the role of the sun has been underestimated.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.