Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
December 2, 2010
King crabs are too successful as a species and therefore must be exterminated says the WWF. Biodiversity is threatened says the alarmist message! It will not be long before they start demanding the extermination of humans who are encroaching on other species.
Yngve Pedersen fishing for King Crabs: image SvD FOTO: BJÖRN LINDAHL
From Svenska Dagbladet (free translation):
They are large and are served as a delicacy all over the world. Along the windy Finnmark coast in northern Norway, they have become a welcome sideline providing a turnover of 100 million kronor just as a raw material. It does not help. Exterminate every single one, believes the World Widlife Fund.
We are talking about king crabs, giant crabs, originally from Kamchatka on the Russian Pacific coast. From 1961 to 1969 they were transplanted into the Barents Sea to provide the residents of Murmansk with more food sources. 2500 adult crabs were transported by air and the Trans-Siberian railroad, and were released into the sea.
The population of the Kola Peninsula was briefed by radio and all the fishermen were asked to inform the authorities if they found any crabs. Five years passed without any being found. But then in 1974 a fisherman caught a queen crab. The shell of that crab is still kept at the Polar Research Institute in Murmansk.
But in the early 1990’s, the number of crabs exploded. Today the Russian quota is 3.2 million crabs per year. In Norway, they catch just over 300 000 crabs. The problem is that the crabs are voracious and will eat almost anything they can find on the seabed.
The WWF has now reported Norway to the International Council on Biological Diversity and has demanded that the species be exterminated as an “alien” species and it has been blacklisted by the Council. “It is crazy to let the stock grow further. Nine out of ten species in the Varanger Fjord has disappeared, “says Nina Jensen of WWF Norway.
But Norwegian marine biologists at Havsforskningsinstituttet in Bergen think it is just an exaggeration. “It is not true that nine out of ten species have disappeared. But the crabs have significant negative consequences, but what we know about nature is that it will recover when the crabs have left the area”, said Jan H. Sundet.
The largest crabs can weigh seven kilos, but after the stock began to be taxed, the average weight remained at 3-4 kg. The maximum paid was 90 NOK per kg. Svenska Dagbladet followed crab fisherman Yngve Pedersen from Bugøynes, located in Finnmark about fifty km from the Russian border, as he brought up a large catch of crabs in the Varanger Fjord.
“I started to fish for crabs 1998. This year I have a quota of 2800 kilos, for which I get at least 50 kronor a kilo. So I earned 200 000 kronor on crab this year. Compared with other kinds of fishing, it is an easy job. A dead cod is placed on a hook as bait inside the large cage. The crabs crawl in and most are not able to crawl out again. An orange buoy marks the location of the cages and all that is needed is to hoist it up and empty it over the catch table. Injured crabs with missing claws are discarded. “It is perhaps 10-15 percent of them. But the claw grows back”, said Yngve Pedersen.
He himself has an ambivalent relationship with the crabs. “They do great damage to the nets when we fish cod and eat all the bait when fishing by line. But our crab quota is in a sense a compensation for that. But the crab are not at home here, so if it were possible to eradicate them I would not have anything against it. “But I do not think it is possible. The Russians do not have any such plans and new crabs arrive all the time. We may be able to reduce the stock so that it pays better to catch them, that’s all”.
Tags:extermination of species, King Crab, Norway, WWF Alarmism
Posted in Alarmism, Biodiversity, Economy, Environment, Wildlife | Comments Off on WWF wants every single King Crab to be exterminated!!
November 30, 2010
To have a result – of any kind and whether valid or not – seems to be more important than having a proper election result for OAS and CARICOM (Organisation of American States and the Caribbean Community).
Haiti Libre asks plaintively:
But we must remember that in these elections, Haiti did not have much to say. It is decided internationally what is good or what is not for us!
Sometimes we wonder why our citizens have been voting at all?
Election scrutineers are let in to the Santa Ana de Cité Soleil polling station in Port-au-Prince on 29th November. image The Independant
The BBC reports that
Haiti’s general election on Sunday was valid despite “serious irregularities”, international observers have said. The joint mission from the Organisation of American States and the Caribbean regional grouping, Caricom, said delays at some polling stations were not reason enough to cancel the election. Polling day on Sunday was marred by disorganisation and some violence, as well as allegations of fraud in favour of the governing party candidate, Jude Celestin.
The election was characterised by mismanagement and incidents of fraud, our correspondent says. There were multiple reports of would-be voters turning up at polling stations to find they were not registered to vote – and of others having the right papers but no idea where to vote. Some polling stations opened hours late, there were allegations that some people were voting multiple times, and thugs ransacked some polling stations.
Hopefully the cholera outbreak will not get a boost from the enhanced human contact during the campaigning and polling process. But the death toll has passed 2,000. The UN especially has displayed organisational incompetence.
Tags:CARICOM, Election fraud, election results, Haiti, OAS, UN
Posted in Behaviour, Election fraud, Environment, Natural Disasters, UN | Comments Off on OAS/CARICOM accept Haiti election results: Was voting necessary?
November 29, 2010
Strolling reindeer: iImage via Wikipedia
New research shows that the advance of the tree line upwards in the Swedish mountains was due to reduced reindeer grazing and not due to any global warming.
Swedish Radio P1 reports today: (freely translated)
It is not primarily a warmer climate which causes the tree line to crawl
up in many places in the Swedish mountains. A new study from the Torneträsk area shows that there are several other factors that affect tree spread rather than just higher temperatures. Climate change plays a very minor role. It is mainly grazing reindeer, insect infestation, and several other factors that affect mountain forest coverage, rather than changing temperature conditions. “That the tree line can go up or down or remain stationary within the same climate period has not been shown before “, says Professor Terry Callaghan, one of the researchers who carried out the study.
The tree line advanced up the mountains most during the cold period at the end of the 1960s and 1970s. It was primarily because it was a time with fewer reindeer. A warmer climate may actually have an indirect effect (to reduce the advance northwards) by adding to the number of insects and insect infestations that can damage trees.
Many climate models expect that the forest in the tundra and other Arctic areas will expand considerably northwards in the next one hundred years because of higher temperatures. But the new research suggests that these simple assumptions can be grossly inaccurate. One must reckon with how to account for the impact of insects and grazing reindeer and moose. “It now requires that much more detailed information be added into the models”, says Professor Terry Callaghan, director of the Abisko research station.
The article is published in the Journal of Biogeography
Tags:Arctic, climate, climate models, Reindeer, reindeer grazing, Torneträsk, tree line advance
Posted in Biodiversity, Climate, Environment, Science, Sweden, Wildlife | 1 Comment »
November 27, 2010
From The New Scientist:
On its journey around Saturn and its moons, the Cassini mission – jointly run by NASA and the European Space Agency – has made another breathtaking discovery. The findings, published in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1198366), show that Rhea, the second biggest moon of the giant planet, has an atmosphere that is 70 per cent oxygen and 30 per cent carbon dioxide. This adds to the picture of Rhea that Cassini has already provided by imaging its craters anddiscovering its rings.
“This really is the first time that we’ve seen oxygen directly in the atmosphere of another world”, Andrew Coates, from University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, told The Guardian. Layers containing oxygen had already been detected around the Jovian moons Europa and Ganymede in the 1990s, but only from a distance using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
This time, Cassini’s instrument had the chance to “smell” that oxygen, as it flew through it over Rhea’s north pole, just 97 kilometres above the surface, according to the details given on Space.com. This layer – with an oxygen density probably about 5 trillion times less than on Earth – was “too thin to be remotely detected”, said Ben Teolis of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
These three views of Saturn's moon Rhea from NASA's Cassini spacecraft are enhanced to show colorful splotches and bands on the icy moon's surface. New observations have shown Rhea has an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI/LPI
Cassini Finds an Oxygen–Carbon Dioxide Atmosphere at Saturn’s Icy Moon Rhea B. D. Teolis, G. H. Jones, P. F. Miles, R. L. Tokar, B. A. Magee, J. H. Waite, E. Roussos, D. T. Young, F. J. Crary, A. J. Coates, R. E. Johnson, W.-L. Tseng and R. A. Baragiola
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1198366, Published Online 25 November 2010
Abstract: The flyby measurements of the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn’s moon Rhea reveal a tenuous oxygen–carbon dioxide atmosphere. The atmosphere appears to be sustained by chemical decomposition of the surface water ice under irradiation from Saturn’s magnetospheric plasma. This in situ detection of an oxidizing atmosphere is consistent with remote observations of other icy bodies such as Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede, and suggestive of a reservoir of radiolytic O2 locked within Rhea’s ice. The presence of CO2suggests radiolysis reactions between surface oxidants and organics, or sputtering and/or outgassing of CO2endogenic to Rhea’s ice. Observations of outflowing positive and negative ions give evidence for pickup ionization as a major atmospheric loss mechanism.
Tags:Cassini mission, European Space Agency, NASA, oxygen on Saturn's moon, Rhea, Saturn
Posted in Astronomy, Environment, Science, Space | Comments Off on Oxygen – carbon dioxide atmosphere found on Saturn’s moon Rhea
November 25, 2010
The UN has has released revised information about the cholera outbreak in Haiti. What they are reporting now is what others were reporting already last week:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36853&Cr=haiti&Cr1=
A baby and other patients suffering from acute diarrhoea lie on the floor of St. Nicholas Hospital in Haiti: photo UN
The number of reported cases of cholera in Haiti is now approaching 50,000, but health experts have cautioned that the figure could be higher because data on the epidemic has not been received from some rural communities, a United Nations relief official said today. Nigel Fisher, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Haiti, said that epidemiologists in the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) – the regional arm of the World Health Organization (WHO) – estimate that the number of cases could be as high as 70,000.
The experts have said that the disease might have claimed as many as 2,000 people, with some fatalities in remote areas going unreported. Speaking via a video link from the capital, Port-au-Prince, Mr. Fisher told a news conference in New York that PAHO epidemiologists have also revised their projections of the spread of the disease and now anticipate that cases could rise to 200,000 over the next three months. The experts had earlier estimated that the number of cases could rise to that figure in six months.
“This epidemic is moving faster,” Mr. Fisher said.
Meanwhile, general elections will proceed on Sunday as planned, despite the cholera outbreak and the recent streets protests in the country, Edmond Mulet, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), told the same press briefing.
Operational Biosurveillance had reported similar figures last week and now says:
- In some areas of Haiti, we have confirmation that in-patient statistics are under-reported by as much as 400%. In many areas of Haiti, we are documenting outbreaks that are not being accounted for in the official statistics. We therefore estimate the upper bound of estimated total (subclinical and clinically apparent) case counts to be nearly 375,000.
- It is likely the elections will facilitate the spread of the epidemic due to population mixing.
Tags:Haiti, haiti cholera death toll, Operational Biosurveillance, Pan-American Health Organization, United Nations
Posted in Environment, Medicine, Natural Disasters, Urban Living | 1 Comment »
November 22, 2010
From Wattsupwiththat:
Former Vice President Al Gore has admitted that his “support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was “not a good policy”, weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.”
Gore was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate mandating the use of ethanol in 1994.
From Reuters:
“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol,” said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.
“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.
“It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”
He continues (admitting more of the obvious):
“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”
He never did get a Nobel prize for his vote in 1994, so
……….. don’t make the mistake that he has had an epiphany on climate change:
Read the whole post at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/22/gore-admits-the-obvious-us-corn-ethanol-was-not-a-good-policy/
Tags:Al Gore, ethanol, ethanol from corn, U-turn on ethanol
Posted in Business, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Renewable Energy | Comments Off on Al Gore does a U-turn and admits the obvious
November 22, 2010
Swedish P1 Radio had a broadcast this morning where wind turbine owners in southern Sweden were interviewed. Wind turbines in Southern Sweden operate at an average capacity of about 25% but when the wind blows in in Sweden it usually blows in Denmark as well. As Denmark builds more subsidised but intermittent wind turbines they become more dependant upon the import of hydro and nuclear power from Sweden and Norway.
It could be a dark future for wind power, at least for wind power owners in southern Sweden. As wind turbines multiply, the surplus power when the wind blows reduce prices and wind turbine revenues are reduced drastically.
The Marketing Director for Lunds Energi said that they had no plans for building any more wind turbines to add to the 6 small wind turbines they already had. There was no chance, he said, of the Danes importing wind power from Sweden when the wind was blowing for then they had their own power. And when the wind was not blowing and prices were better there was no power to sell!
Wind power plant in Lake Vännern. Foto: Fredrik Sandberg/Scanpix
Kjell Jansson, the Managing Director of Svensk Energi was also interviewed and pointed out that electricity could not be stored except as hot water. Therefore using surplus wind energy to store in heating systems was at best a partial solution but did not help the fact that industry and people needed electricity as electricity – and not just as hot water. Even the planned Danish solution of using surplus power to “charge up” heating systems for district heating as hot water or for “charging up” electric cars relied on having electricity – from nuclear and hydro power from Sweden and Norway – available to be imported for the Danish electricity system.
Therefore, he continued, when the wind did not blow in Denmark – and then usually did not blow over the whole of Scandinavia – the high electricity price was an advantage for the hydro and nuclear generators. In any case this would require much more investment in transmission systems and in hydro power generation.
But I can see a situation where Denmark will pay swingeing prices for imported electricity when the wind is not blowing and a cold wave is sweeping across Europe. And if it is a really severe cold wave then there may be no electricity available for import.
Tags:electricity prices, Energy, Energy storage, Sweden, wind power
Posted in Business, Economy, Energy, Environment, Sweden, Wind power | Comments Off on Bleak future for wind power generators in Sweden
November 21, 2010
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Protests in Port-au-Prince on Friday 19th November: image Svenska Dagbladet
The cholera in Haiti has spread to the prison in Port-au-Prince. Of the 2000 prisoners over 30 have shown signs of infection and 13 have died. The official death toll in Haiti is now over 1200 and the official number of those infected is over 20,000. The actual number infected is probably approaching 100,000.
AFP reports that:
Haiti is facing an “unusual” cholera epidemic that could be more severe than figures suggest, according to a French cholera expert who is advising Haitian health authorities. And determining who is to blame for bringing the disease here won’t help solve the crisis, he added.
The outbreak, which threatens to overwhelm Haiti as it struggles to recover from January’s cataclysmic earthquake, has left nearly 1,200 dead and prompted riots in several cities including the capital as citizens accuse the United Nations of importing the cholera.
But Doctor Gerard Chevallier, who is advising Haiti’s Health Ministry, warned that the country needs to focus on trying to halt the spread of the disease detected in Haiti one month ago.
“The mechanics of the epidemic are unusual, swift and severe,” Chevallier told AFP in an interview. “The whole country is not affected, but the epidemic will spread.” Chevallier noted that in such epidemics, especially in impoverished nations like Haiti, the toll is “under-assessed” and almost always higher than the official figure. “Reports are imperfect. There are areas where people die and nobody knows,” Chevallier said. “Two thirds of the territory is accessible only on foot.”
Chevallier is working with a French team seeking to provide Haitian authorities with tools that allow for a more complete and reliable picture of the epidemic.
To merely ignore or deny the cause of the outbreak because containing it is now the highest priority does not address the emotions in the local population which are running very high. In the local population fear is exacerbated by anger that the UN which is virtually running the country is not owning upto its responsibilities. After a hundred years without cholera Haiti is now condemned to many decades of having the disease and the UN cannot continue in denial.
It is not the fault of the Nepalese troops who were the carriers of the disease but it is a terrible indictment of sloppy UN processes which allowed them into the country without testing and without adequate precautions.
It is time for the elections due to be held on 28th November to be postponed. Trying to pack people into polling booths while the epidemic is raging seems to be the height of stupidity. AFP also reports that four Haitian presidential candidates have called for postponing elections set for Nov 28 as the country struggles with a cholera epidemic that has claimed nearly 1,200 lives amid protests targeting UN peacekeepers.
Tags:cholera epidemic, Doctor Gerard Chevallier, Haiti, Port-au-Prince, United Nations
Posted in Environment, Medicine, Natural Disasters, UN, Uncategorized, Urban Living | Comments Off on Time to postpone Haitian elections?: UN cholera “unusual, swift and severe”
November 21, 2010
AFP reports:
Indonesia’s Yogyakarta airport, which had been closed for about two weeks by the eruption of the Mount Merapi volcano, reopened for operations Saturday, officials said.
Merapi, which means “Mountain of Fire”, has killed 283 people since it began erupting last month and more than 270,000 are still living in temporary shelters.
Volcanic ash and clouds belched high into the sky threatened the safety of aircraft, causing dozens of international flights to and from the country to be cancelled.
But the mountain’s activity level has now decreased, although an alert remains in place.
Transportation Ministry director general of aviation Herry Bhakti told AFP: “The Yogyakarta airport has resumed operation at 12:00 pm (0500 GMT) today. The effect of volcanic ash has been insignificant.”
Tags:Indonesia, Mount Merapi, Yogyakarta
Posted in Business, Environment, Indonesia, Volcanos | Comments Off on Flights resume from Yogyakarta, Mt. Merapi quiet
November 20, 2010
The UN after having introduced cholera to Haiti – which will now remain for many decades – is providing an “inadequate response” according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says the BBC.
MSF said that despite the huge aid agency presence in Haiti, urgent needs were not being met. MSF’s chief in Haiti, Stefano Zannini, said the charity had treated more than 16,500 people but that there had been “no real and efficient response from other organisations. This is alarming in the sense that we haven’t reached the peak yet, that might take some time, and so the number of patients might still go up while we still don’t see actions on behalf of other people,” he said.
In a statement, Mr Zannini said more help was urgently needed to treat the sick and implement preventative measures. “There is no time left for meetings and debate – the time for action is now,” he said. Cholera was previously unknown in Haiti, so MSF said much work had to be done to reassure the population, particularly of the low risk and positive benefits of having treatment centres close to areas where people live.
Edmond Mulet: image haitilibre.com
But the need for this reassurance to the local population is apparently not something understood by Edmond Mulet, the head of MINUSTAH (the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti). He seems to be mainly engaged in justifying the UN deficiencies by blaming the lack of action on “the violent protests by people who blame peacekeepers for the spread of the disease (who) were wasting time and costing lives”.
But local Haitians are incensed by the alarmist posturing of the UN head of mission Edmond Mulet who is accused of not taking action. He is busy blaming everybody else and seems to be incompetent at basic public relations.
Judging by the response to his statements in haitilibre.com he is providing little reassurance and only succeeding to alienate the local population. They write
The alarmist statements of Edmond Mulet !
The perpetrators of these “criminals and irresponsible” acts said Mr. Mulet, “prevent the delivery of medical and sanitary assistance to the thousands of patients recently hit by the cholera epidemic, thus condemning to an unquestionable death.”
It is time to stop speaking and start acting Mr. Mulet before it is too late and that violence will spread throughout the country. 12,000 men strong, very well equipped and (with) armored vehicles, what awaits Minustah to release these roads and to restore the order in the zones concerned ? If Minustah’s mission is to maintain peace, she must first begin by eliminating the causes of these disorders, not with dramatic speeches.
If M. Mulet can only respond to the fear of people by blaming them instead of addressing their fear and anger then his competence is in question.
Tags:Cholera, Edmond Mulet, Haiti, Inadequate UN response in Haiti, Minustah
Posted in Behaviour, Bureaucracy, Environment, Medicine, Natural Disasters, Urban Living | 1 Comment »
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