World’s 22,000 Polar Bears Forced To Share Last Remaining Iceberg

mercy, mercy me...

 haresfur wrote: 
Cool story! I could imagine a few people over here in Europe scratching their heads at this comment:

"They had everything you needed — two bunks, a gas oven, gas heater, plenty of supplies, and a cold porch where you could put your wet gear outside. They made the life of hunters considerably easier." 

.. and thinking  "easier??" 

Macquarie Island wildlife recovering after rabbit eradication

Corporate apologist forced to drink eat crow...
Monsanto lobbyist claims 'safe to drink a quart of pesticide' – but bolts when offered a glass (VIDEO) — RT USA

A lobbyist for Monsanto claimed that it was safe to drink “a quart” of the company’s Roundup pesticide, but pointedly refused to try even a sip when offered a glass during an interview with French TV before storming off the set.

Patrick Moore told a Canal+ journalist that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world’s most widely used weed killer, was not responsible for an increase in cancer rates in Argentina.

“You can drink a whole quart of it and it won’t hurt you,” he insisted.

When the journalist informed him that a cup of the herbicide was prepared for him, Moore bristled, saying: “I’m not stupid.”

But when pressed by the interviewer if the substance was dangerous, Moore replied: “It’s not dangerous to humans.” He added that many try to commit suicide by drinking Roundup, but “fail regularly.”

He then walked off set, calling the interviewer a “jerk.” (...)

 haresfur wrote: 
Got a very deep well too.  However when it comes down to it you have to have sufficient defensive capabilities to go along with it. But the obvious solution is to ignore the water shortage and the contaminants in city water giving more time for the smart phone.

China, a tourist's bonanza!

 sirdroseph wrote: 
So what's your storage capacity and how long do you think it will last you?  Many of my coworkers have rainwater capture as their water source. In dry times almost all of them have to buy water. I have a 20000 L water tank for my garden but until I get a pump I still irrigate with a lot of city water. Gravity drainage is slow. I want to keep the tank 1/2 full in the summer so there is some for fire fighting.

About 90% of our rainfall goes to evapotranspiration in farm areas. In trees it is close to 100%.  The obvious solution to water shortage is to chop down all the forests.  

 Red_Dragon wrote: 

Everyone is not making so much fun of us who collect and store water from various sources now.

Alarm Bells Toll For Human Civilization As World's 12th Largest Mega-City To Run Out Of Water In Just 60 Days

Wouldn't it be great
To see the african plains
Before they lay them to waste
And only the bones remain
Wouldn't it be poetry
To shoot holes in the poachers we see
With an elephant gun

Men in helicopters fly
Shooting rhinos from out of the sky
Why do we always assume
The planet is ours to ruin?
What a legacy we're leaving behind
What a legacy

Wouldn't it be something
For the men killing dolphins
To be caught up by their necks
In their greedy fishing nets
Wouldn't it be irony
If the tuna fish canneries
Were to fall into the sea

The dolphins and the whales still left alive
Cry to the stars in the deep blue night
"there's nowhere to hide,
The people on earth will not be denied"
What a legacy we're leaving behind
What a legacy

Wouldn't it be odd
If there really was a god
And he looked down on earth
And saw what we've done to her
Wouldn't it be just
If he pulled the plug on us,
And took away the sun

NASA images reveal shocking scale of Aral Sea disaster

Wildlife Numbers Drop by Half Since 1970, Report Says
Analysis by WWF and Others Was Based on Thousands of Species in Rivers, on Land and at Sea

Earth lost half its wildlife in the past four decades, according to the most comprehensive study of animal populations to date, a far larger decline than previously reported.

The new study was conducted by scientists at the wildlife group WWF, the Zoological Society of London and other organizations. Based on an analysis of thousands of vertebrate species, it concludes that overall animal populations fell 52% between 1970 and 2010.

The decline was seen everywhere—in rivers, on land and in the seas—and is mainly the result of increased habitat destruction, commercial fishing and hunting, the report said. Climate change also is believed to be a factor, though its consequences are harder to measure. (...)

 Antigone wrote: 
Much obliged !  

Took me back home to the days of my childhood in NorCal in the 50's and early 60's.  Know the places, my Mom was born in Stockton, swam in the Tuolumne River as a kid up in the Sierra.  The Tuolumne was 'owned' by the City of Berkeley and our primary water source.  My cousin's house in Sacramento had the American River, a tributary to the Sacramento River in his back yard, right behind the fence.  
Lots of mixed emotions after reading this.  I know the area, its ecology, the problems with all the levees and the Delta Smelt.  The Delta Smelt is what got the river pumps turned off about 4 years ago and finished off the southern farms and olive and almond orchards mentioned in Mendota.  I've mentioned it in other threads and am one of those who think that the fish can go the way of the Dodo.  But the orchards are now long dead and would take 25 years to restore, at least.  Stockton is betting its future by trying re establish itself as an ocean connected seaport, making water flow all the more critical in trying to maintain water levels suitable for ocean going cargo vessels.

The levees in the Delta are in real danger of catastrophic collapse in the very near future.  They are largely just made of dirt and require constant maintenance.  When they fail, it will turn California upside down, ruining a great deal of farm land permanently with an infusion of salt water and wiping out one of the irrigation hubs for California.

Two things I did learn from reading this is that one fifth of California's energy consumption is spent on just moving around the water.  Wonder what the carbon footprint of that adds up to ...  The other is the sinking land in the lower Central Valley.  

Water rights and conservation were infused into my being since childhood.  Its that much a part of what California always was all about.  Its what was the primary reason for trying to break up California into two states since I can remember. The water rich North was forced to not only give up its water to the desert South but to pay the majority share of building the canals as the South was less populated when it was all built.

Now I live 20 miles as the crow flies from 20% of the world's fresh water here in NE Ohio.  About 20 years ago I realized that water was going to be more precious than oil in the not too distant future and decided that putting up with the winters and the other crap was outweighed by living in a place that would always have water.  What is even more heartening is that the Great Lakes are shared by two countries.  Cuz if they were all within the US, they would have been drained by now.

It is also interesting that the author of this article is the same as one of the principles of the California Goldrush and founder of Sacramento, Swiss immigrant John Sutter Sr.

Chinese Lanterns & the unforeseen dangers to wildlife

There have been many warnings with regards to Chinese Lanterns covering twitter in the last few weeks. But with so little space to explain the reasons, we felt it necessary to cover this in more detail.

For many people, Chinese Lanterns hold mental images of grace, peace and even remembrance. And as such they have become a more common feature around the UK & Europe. Once lit and released, users generally watch them as they gracefully enter the night sky, before drifting peacefully away, never to be thought of again.

Unfortunately this is where the real problems begin. What started off as a benign and peaceful release, quickly becomes a wildlife nightmare. Forgetting ...
http://www.thewildoutside.com/index.php/news/233-chinese-lantern-dangers

My 417-mile trip down the "endangered" river.

It's a long (I've been reading it off and on all day) but VERY good read.

 Zukiwi wrote: 
I don't know if this is particular to this subspecies, but nudibranchs in general don't care a bit about boat noise. We see them all the time in marinas all over the sound, and there is a dive park right next to our ferry dock that is renown for spottings of rare flavors of the sea slugs.

Here are a couple I took on Memorial day - this was about 2 feet from the exhaust of my boat and within 1/2 hour of docking



The hose he is on is a waterline running down the dock, you can see how much the other fauna dislike it as well:
 

Here is a different one a few slips away:
 

This is all within about 500 yards of the Bremerton Naval base. There are at least 3 other major marinas in the area and it's the end of an inlet with a lot of boat traffic (there are two ferries that dock ona regular schedule within 75 yards of this spot). 

That is kind of surprising ...

Great apes face extinction: conservationist Jane Goodall - Yahoo News

The world's great apes face extinction within decades, renowned chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall warned Tuesday in a call to arms to ensure man's closest relatives are not wiped out.

"If we don't take action the great apes will disappear, because of both habitat destruction as well as trafficking," Goodall told AFP in an interview in Nairobi.

In the past half century, chimpanzee numbers have slumped from two million to just 300,000, spread over 21 countries, said Goodall, a British scientist who spent more than five decades studying chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe National Park.

"If we don't change something, they certainly will disappear, or be left in tiny pockets where they will struggle from in-breeding," said 80-year-old Goodall, the first scientist to observe that apes as well as humans use tools.

Experts predict that at the current rate, human development will have impacted 90 percent of the apes' habitat in Africa and 99 percent in Asia by 2030, according to a UN-backed report last month.

Infrastructure development and extraction of natural resources — including timber, minerals, oil and gas — have devastated the prime habitat of apes and pushed chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, orangutans and gibbons closer to extinction.

- 'We're schizophrenic' - (...)

Global wildlife decline driving slave labor, organized crime

A child grabs sleep wherever possible after a long day of labor in West Africa's struggling fishery. Credit: Jessica Pociask, WANT Expeditions.

Global decline of wildlife populations is driving increases in violent conflicts, organized crime and child labor around the world, according to a policy paper led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The authors call for biologists to join forces with experts such as economists, political scientists, criminologists, public health officials and international development specialists to collectively tackle a complex challenge.

The paper, to be published Thursday, July 24, in the journal Science, highlights how losses of food and employment from wildlife decline cause increases in human trafficking and other crime, as well as foster political instability.

"This paper is about recognizing wildlife decline as a source of social conflict rather than a symptom," said lead author Justin Brashares, associate professor of ecology and conservation at UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. "Billions of people rely directly and indirectly on wild sources of meat for income and sustenance, and this resource is declining. It's not surprising that the loss of this critical piece of human livelihoods has huge social consequences. Yet, both conservation and political science have generally overlooked these fundamental connections."

Fishing and the rise of piracy

Fewer animals to hunt and less fish to catch demand increasingly greater effort to harvest. Laborers – many of whom are children – are often sold to fishing boats and forced to work 18-20 hour days at sea for years without pay.

"Impoverished families are relying upon these resources for their livelihoods, so we can't apply economic models that prescribe increases in prices or reduced demand as supplies become scarce," said Brashares. "Instead, as more labor is needed to capture scarce wild animals and fish, hunters and fishers use children as a source of cheap labor. Hundreds of thousands of impoverished families are selling their kids to work in harsh conditions."

The authors connected the rise of piracy and maritime violence in Somalia to battles over fishing rights. What began as an effort to repel foreign vessels illegally trawling through Somali waters escalated into hijacking fishing – and then non-fishing – vessels for ransom.

"Surprisingly few people recognize that competition for fish stocks led to the birth of Somali piracy," said Brashares. "For Somali fishermen, and for hundreds of millions of others, fish and wildlife were their only source of livelihood, so when that was threatened by international fishing fleets, drastic measures were taken." (...)