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Environmental Issues

China fights to contain an oil disaster of its own
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Saturday, 24 July 2010

Black beaches, black water, an army of clean-up workers struggling to cope, recriminations – this is not the Gulf of Mexico but China, which has just experienced what is believed to be its worst-ever oil spill.

An explosion last weekend at the Xingang oil terminal in the north-eastern port of Dalian, once named China's most liveable city, released a major spillage of crude oil, which has closed fisheries and contaminated beaches along the nearby coast.

Although the amount of oil released, about 11,000 barrels, was but a tiny fraction of what escaped in BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster – over three months that has released anything from 2.2 million to 5.3 million barrels – the political consequences may be nearly as serious, as the spill is throwing the spotlight on the oil industry of a country with a much-criticised environmental record.

Already one clean-up worker has died after falling overboard into the slick, which is now thought to have spread from the port to extend for 360 square miles, as the Chinese authorities make intensive efforts to contain it and dissipate it, in some cases with inadequate equipment. Workers are using gloved hands, plastic bags and – as shown in the picture – straw mats to remove the oil from the water.

The environmental group Greenpeace, which has a team at the scene, urged the government to warn residents on nearby coastlines of the dangers. It said that fishermen without equipment were doing most of the clean-up work at one of Dalian's most popular beaches, Jinshitan.

"They don't even have face masks, the most basic and necessary of precautions. They don't even know that they need to protect their skin from crude oil," Zhong Yu, one of the Greenpeace activists, told the Associated Press. "We strongly urge the government to send professional staff and safety equipment to work on the clean-up process."

But more modern methods are also being employed, including the use of special oil-eating bacteria, grown by a Chinese company, and used by some of the 800 clean-up vessels now actively engaged. The majority of them are fishing boats and the crews are skimming the oil manually from the surface, but 40 special skimmer boats have also been deployed. As many as 2,000 soldiers are involved.

Yesterday details emerged of the explosion which caused the leak. It happened as heavy-grade fuel oil from Venezuela was being offloaded from the Singapore-owned, Liberian-flagged 300,000-tonne supertanker Cosmic Jewel. China's State Administration for Work Safety said that the blast occurred after a chemical agent used to strip sulphur from the oil was injected into the pipeline funnelling the oil ashore, even though the offloading had finished. The pipeline is owned by China National Petroleum Corp., Asia's biggest oil and gas producer by volume.

Investigations also found that the emergency and fire-control system at the oil terminal malfunctioned after the fire damaged electrical wires, making it impossible to shut the valve to the oil tank. "The management was chaotic and information flows were not smooth," the safety body said.

China's transport ministry has ordered ports across the country to have emergency response plans and hold regular safety drills, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday. The ministry will also establish a database of all ports that handle dangerous goods.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 34070.html
 
Modern cargo ships slow to the speed of the sailing clippers
Container ships are taking longer to cross the oceans than the Cutty Sark did as owners adopt 'super-slow steaming' to cut back on fuel consumption
John Vidal The Observer, Sunday 25 July 2010

The world's largest cargo ships are travelling at lower speeds today than sailing clippers such as the Cutty Sark did more than 130 years ago.

A combination of the recession and growing awareness in the shipping industry about climate change emissions encouraged many ship owners to adopt "slow steaming" to save fuel two years ago. This lowered speeds from the standard 25 knots to 20 knots, but many major companies have now taken this a stage further by adopting "super-slow steaming" at speeds of 12 knots (about 14mph).

Travel times between the US and China, or between Australia and Europe, are now comparable to those of the great age of sail in the 19th century. American clippers reached 14 to 17 knots in the 1850s, with the fastest recording speeds of 22 knots or more.

Maersk, the world's largest shipping line, with more than 600 ships, has adapted its giant marine diesel engines to travel at super-slow speeds without suffering damage. This reduces fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 30%. It is believed that the company has saved more than £65m on fuel since it began its go-slow.

Ship engines are traditionally profligate and polluting. Designed to run at high speeds, they burn the cheapest "bunker" oil and are not subject to the same air quality rules as cars. In the boom before 2007, the Emma Maersk, one of the world's largest container ships, would burn around 300 tonnes of fuel a day, emitting as much as 1,000 tonnes of CO2 a day – roughly as much as the 30 lowest emitting countries in the world.

Maersk spokesman Bo Cerup-Simonsen said: "The cost benefits are clear. When speed is reduced by 20%, fuel consumption is reduced by 40% per nautical mile. Slow steaming is here to stay. Its introduction has been the most important factor in reducing our CO2 emissions in recent years, and we have not yet realised the full potential. Our goal is to reducing CO2 emissions by 25%."

The Royal Navy and BP, meanwhile, are among those adopting different ways to reduce fuel use and cut carbon emissions. The Ark Royal light aircraft carrier, the new Queen Mary 2 cruise liner and 350 other large commercial ships have had their hulls coated with special anti-fouling paint. This has been shown to cut around 9% from CO2 emissions by keeping their bottoms free from barnacles and other sea life.

Some ships have been fitted with kite-like "skysails", or systems that force compressed air out of hulls to allow them to "ride" on a cushion of bubbles. These measures can cut fuel consumption by up to 20%.

Environmentalists say that a reduction in speeds makes sense but warn that there is no guarantee that ships would not revert back to full throttle once economic conditions improve.

WWF International's marine manager, Simon Walmsley, said: "It's a no-brainer. Slower speeds reduce pollution but what the industry needs to do is to address its whole supply chain."

John Sauven, head of Greenpeace, said: "The simplest thing you can do to reduce emissions is reduce speed, but this must now be backed by regulation to make this the norm."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... -emissions

...or we could just goback to sailing ships! ;)
 
You may well jest about the return of sailing ships, but fuel consumption makes a good case for large ships like this to be fitted with sails. Large sails might help to conserve fuel on long voyages...
 
Greenpeace activists close down BP stations in London

BP petrol stations in central London have been shut down by environmental activists.
Campaign group Greenpeace claimed it had shut off the fuel supplies to all stations in the area. The oil company said about 12 had been closed.

BP said activists stopped the flow of fuel by flipping safety switches, then removing them to prevent the petrol stations reopening.

Greenpeace said it wanted the company to adopt greener energy policies.

A BP spokesman said the petrol stations would be reopened as soon as it was safe to do so.
He described the stunt as "an irresponsible and childish act which is interfering with safety systems".

Greenpeace said the protest was being held to urge Bob Dudley, who will take over from outgoing BP chief executive Tony Hayward from October, to move away from "his predecessor's obsession with high-risk, environmentally-reckless sources of oil".

At one station in Camden, north London, Greenpeace climbers replaced BP's logo with a new version showing the green "sunflower" disappearing into a sea of oil.
At others, protesters put up signs saying: "Closed. Moving beyond petroleum."

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said: "The moment has come for BP to move beyond oil.
"We've shut down all of BP's stations in London to give the new boss a chance to come up with a better plan.
"They're desperate for us to believe they're going 'beyond petroleum'. Well now's the time to prove it."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10771805
 
Are Greenpeeece anything other than `childish and irresponsible`?

what if they had caused a leak or fire?
 
Kondoru said:
Are Greenpeeece anything other than `childish and irresponsible`?

what if they had caused a leak or fire?

Err, a leak is just as likely (if not more) to happen when low paid workers operating for long hours are running the joints. I dont see any evidence of Greenpeace causing any fires or leaks.

Greenpeace do not have a record of destroing eco-sytems, BP does that.
 
Gulf oil slick breaks up rapidly and begins to slip below waves
Deepwater spill will soon be invisible but could linger beneath the surface for decades
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 July 2010 22.08 BST

Images from the Gulf of Mexico suggest a once vast expanse of oil is breaking up so rapidly it may soon be invisible to satellite photography. But scientists warned today that underwater plumes of oil could linger for a year or even decades.

One hundred days after the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon, the US moved into a new phase in its response to the country's worst environmental disaster today.

John Amos, president of SkyTruth, an environmental satellite organisation, said the slick was "breaking up in more isolated patches. In the next few days, if there are no new oil leaks, we expect those patches to break down so that we can't see them in satellite images."

Amid the relatively good news about the slick, the justice department has stepped up its criminal investigation of BP and two other companies and is assembling a "BP squad" in New Orleans, the Washington Post reported.

In Washington, House and Senate Democrats have introduced bills to toughen government oversight of offshore drilling and make oil companies more responsible for damage caused by spills.

The House version of the bill could see BP shut out of future offshore drilling projects in the US, with a proposed ban on new drilling for oil companies that have had more than 10 deaths offshore. The Senate bill came as a huge disappointment to businesses and environmental organisations, which had hoped the spill would give a boost to climate change legislation. It provides only a token bow to climate change in incentives for electric cars.

In the Gulf, SkyTruth, which had warned early on that the spill was far greater than BP's estimates, said the total area covered by the oil slick was significantly reduced.

"It appears to be on its way out – at least the stuff we can see floating on the surface, " said Amos. "We don't see any obvious new oil coming to the surface at the site of the well and that is a good sign. We think what we are seeking is residual oil slick that is steadily breaking up, being collected or being dispersed naturally by evaporation."

After several failed attempts, BP capped the well on 15 July by installing a new, tighter-fitting cap. The company says, though, that the leak will not be stopped for good until a relief well is completed next month.

But scientists said it was unclear what was happening in the ocean depths and warned that oil could already be buried in coastal marshes. Tar balls continued to wash up on the coast of Louisiana this week.

"Less oil on the surface does not mean that there isn't oil beneath the surface, however, or that our beaches and marshes are not still at risk," Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told reporters.

Scientists are worried that most of the oil remains trapped below the surface by the nearly 800,000 gallons of chemical dispersants that were pumped into the ocean depths.

John Kessler, an oceanographer at Texas A&M university who led a research expedition to the Gulf last month, said the experience of natural releases of oil and natural gas suggested the oil would remain in the deep water long after it had disappeared from the surface. "The oil could remain for anywhere from a year up to decades," he said.

He detected thick underwater plumes of oil from just below the surface to depths of 3,000ft within a 10-mile radius of BP's ruptured well. "It is most likely that this plume of natural gas and oil is not going to immediately dissipate, even if there is no other source in the water," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... spill-gulf
 
BP Macondo well just one of 400k abandoned sites
Alastair Good in The Gulf of Mexico
Published: 12:00PM BST 29 Jul 2010

When BP finally seal off the Macondo wellhead that has been spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for more than three months, it will become just one of thousands of abandoned well-heads that litter the area.
“With all the bad press that BP has got over the Macondo well, the overseeing should be pretty good once it's been shut off, but hundreds of thousands of other wellheads are just closed down and forgotten about," said Paul Orr, a Riverkeeper in the Lower Mississippi area.

These so called "orphaned wellheads" are at serious risk of erosion. The steel fixtures lie in water high in salinity from the seawater that is washed into the marshes from the Gulf.

“A lot of boats use these channels," Mr Orr said, "and it only takes one to strike an ageing, rusted wellhead to create another oil spill right in the heart of the marshes.”

In fact the wellheads seem to be crumbling without the need for any external force. We pass one in the marshland off Venice, Louisiana, which is bubbling natural gas from a leak under the surface.

Out in the Barataria Waterway south of New Orleans an abandoned wellhead was struck by a tug vessel pushing a dredge barge on Tuesday, sending a mix of natural gas, contaminated water and light crude oil 100 feet in the air. The area has since been sealed off by the Coastguard.

That well belonged to the now defunct Cedyco Corporation of Houston, Texas, and is near the very same water polluted by the BP oil spill.

“Sometimes you can track back to who owns the wells," Mr Orr said, "but they often change hands many times, and once they have stopped extracting oil or gas from them no one is really interested in what happens next.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvid ... sites.html
 
The previous piece and this one show an interesting shift in perspective:

BP oil spill damage may have been exaggerated
By Janet Daley World Last updated: July 29th, 2010

A startling compendium of evidence undermining the apocalyptic scare stories which apparently justified President Obama’s claim that the BP oil spill was “the worst environmental disaster Americas has ever faced” has been published by Time magazine - hardly the most likely outfit to cast doubt on an eco-campaign.

Grudgingly admitting that Rush Limbaugh (described as an “obnoxious anti-environmentalist”) has a point when he argues that the spill is not the ecological calamity that it was cracked up to be by the environmental lobby, the author Michael Grunwald presents a catalogue of testimony to show that, in fact, the medium and long-term consequences of this accident look to be far less serious than those that followed the Exxon Valdez spill. He quotes a geochemist who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana for the federal government as saying, “The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared.” (Everyone except Mr Limbaugh, that is.) Fewer birds have been killed than by the Exxon Valdez, and even the effects on fishing and shrimping have proved less disastrous than expected: so far, the region’s fish and shrimp have tested clean. And, most significantly, the oil itself is dispersing at a wondrous pace – the visible slick reducing dramatically as it approaches the shore.

So the questions must be asked: how much of the hype that was generated by this incident served political purposes? And whose interests did it serve? The hysterical anti-oil eco-lobby? The anti-Obama camp in the first instance, and then the White House itself when the President turned public anger on BP? The US media which loves a scare story, particularly when it involves a “foreign” enemy?

And who will be the ullimate losers? Obviously, those who hold shares in BP (around half of whom are American) and all the pension funds which rely on the value of those shares. But also, perhaps, the eco-lobby itself whose judgment and credibility are called into question once again.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/janet ... aggerated/
 
And the Guardian takes a wider view too:

Oil industry safety record blown open
National Wildlife Federation says catalogue of oil industry accidents proves BP disaster in Gulf of Mexico is not a one-off
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 July 2010 20.18 BST

The oil industry has been responsible for thousands of fires, explosions, and leaks over the last decade, killing dozens of people and destroying wildlife and the environment across America, according to a report published today.

None of the individual incidents catalogued by the National Wildlife Federation comes close in scale to BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst environmental disaster in America's history. But the thousands of lesser offshore spills, pipeline leaks, refinery fires and other accidents demolish the industry argument that BP's ruptured well was a one-off, and that the oil and gas business has grown safer, the report's authors said.

"These disasters make it clear that the BP disaster isn't a rare accident," said Tim Warman, who directs the global warming programme for NWF, which calls itself the country's largest conservation organisation. "These are daily occurrences. These are daily incidents of not paying attention."

In a further grim reminder, the American midwest was in the throes of its own environmental disaster today, with a ruptured pipeline gushing gallons of oil into Michigan's Kalamazoo River.

Enbridge Energy, which is Canadian-owned but based in Houston, said the spill may have reached 1m gallons. Federal government officials in Washington and the state of Michigan were struggling to stop the oil from reaching the Great Lakes.

In the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, while BP's oil well remains capped, a tugboat crashed into an abandoned well this week and set off a 100ft gusher of oil and gas.

The coastguard commander, Thad Allen, told reporters today that operations were switching from response to recovery, suggesting that equipment and personnel in the Gulf could be drastically scaled back in four to six weeks. "If you need fewer skimming vessels out there, there is going to be a levelling you need to consider," he said.

The report from the National Wildlife Federation drew on records from the Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling, and the Environmental Protection Agency, to come up with a figure of 1,440 offshore leaks, blowouts, and other accidents were reported between 2001-2007.

etc...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ety-record
 
So has the great BP environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico been over-hyped?
By Daniel Bates
Last updated at 1:06 AM on 31st July 2010

The environmental damage caused by BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill may have been grossly exaggerated, a growing body of experts is suggesting.

In a bold move, scientists have dismissed the torrent of grim predictions from President Obama and environmentalists as ‘hype’ with no data to back it up.

Instead, those working on the ground say the oil is breaking up far more quickly than expected and the number of birds being killed is low.

Just days after the Deepwater Horizon leak was capped two weeks ago, coastal grass began to grow back, as did trees which serve as breeding grounds for fish and other wildlife.
Coastguard Commander Thad Allen said the oil on the surface was disappearing within hours of the successful plug.
Skimmers went from catching 25,000 to 200 barrels of oil a day. Now experts point to a host of data that shows the tide is turning.

The harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping are being lifted and the number of birds killed is just 1 per cent of those which died in the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989.

Strong coastal currents have kept the oil away from the shore and when it lands crews have been able to swiftly remove the balls of tar.
The oil in the water is light and degradable, the Gulf of Mexico is warm, which helps to break it down, and although rescue teams have collected nearly 3,000 dead birds, fewer than half had oil covering them and some may have died from eating oil contaminated food.

Only three oiled carcasses of mammals such as dolphins have been pulled from the water.

Marine scientist Ivor van Heerden, a former Louisiana State University professor, who is working as a spill response contractor, said: ‘There’s just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster.
'I have no interest in making BP look good - I think they lied about the size of the spill - but we’re not seeing catastrophic impacts. There’s a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it.’


Geochemist Jacqueline Michel added: ‘The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared.’

Rescue teams have found 492 dead sea turtles but only 17 were visibly oiled.

However, all the experts admit the full consequences of the spill may not be known for years.

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z0vFOPOTZt
 
Piece by piece: Join the fight to halt the sprawl of development into our green spaces
Piece by piece is a new Guardian campaign to preserve the beauty and peace of all nature – from gardens to ancient forests – in the UK
(12) Juliette Jowit The Guardian, Friday 6 August 2010

Thousands of wildlife habitats, including refuges for some of the country's rarest species and sites recognised worldwide for their importance to nature are under threat from development every year.

The scale of the problem – from small garden-grabs to the construction of major housing estates, ports and roads – is revealed as the Guardian today launches a project called Piece by piece, to expose the creeping threat to Britain's natural world.

Jonathon Porritt, one of the UK's most influential environmental experts, said Piece by piece, a dedicated website that will collect evidence of developments and challenges to these , was "desperately" needed.

"If it's been badly needed over the last few years, I think that need is likely to become absolutely desperate over the next few years," said Porritt, former head of both Friends of the Earth and the government's Sustainable Development Commission.

"The [government] is intent on setting aside some of the restrictions and constraints in the current planning process in a way that will promote local decision-making at the expense of environmental safeguards. I think we're just going to slide back to pretty crude nimbyism."

Piece by piece has also been backed by leading conservation groups and has cross-party political support.

Hilary Benn, Labour shadow environment secretary, said: "Nature nurtures our souls and lifts our spirits. But it also sustains us and our economy – and it is for this reason that we take it for granted at our peril."

Caroline Spelman, the Conservative secretary of state for the environment, said: "Our natural environment needs help. Piecemeal degradation has eroded many gains made and reversing the decline of our biodiversity is one of my Department's main priorities."

Figures for the national threat posed by development to open spaces are hard to collect. But several campaign groups have provided the Guardian with information that illustrates the scale of the problem.

The Wildlife Trusts Federation, which has the most comprehensive overview, last year asked for 4,900 projects to be changed or stopped. These were the most damaging schemes it selected after reviewing 83,000 planning applications. Before the recession, those annual figures were higher, usually more than 5,000 objections from over 90,000 applications.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which concentrates on only the most nationally and internationally important sites for birds, was fighting 1,600 developments last year, including more than 700 added during 2009.

etc...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... nservation

and http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/s ... e-by-piece
 
Tanks dumped in Gulf of Thailand
A fleet of disused tanks and trucks have been dumped into the sea off the coast of Thailand in a bid to form an artificial coral reef.
By Heidi Blake
Published: 7:43AM BST 10 Aug 2010

The unusual move is designed to boost the ecosystem in the Gulf of Thailand.

The rusting collection of trucks and 25 disused Army tanks are intended to form an artificial underwater structure to provide shelter for marine life and boost local fish stocks.

The vehicles were lowered into the sea off the Narathiwat coast by crane on Monday.

A wide-ranging marine conservation policy is being enacted in Thailand to preserve fish stocks and keep the seafood industry afloat.

The fertile waters of the Gulf of Thailand are crucial to the nation’s fishermen, but overfishing has left the ecosystem depleted in recent years.

The shallow arm of the South China sea harbours many natural coral reefs and is a popular scuba diving destination.

The Government announced a three-month ban on fishing in parts of the Gulf of Thailand last year in an attempt to improve breeding and replenish fish stocks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... iland.html
 
More bad news from the Far East. :(
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10918591

Rice yields falling under global warming

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News 9 August 2010

Global warming is cutting rice yields in many parts of Asia, according to research, with more declines to come.

Yields have fallen by 10-20% over the last 25 years in some locations.

The group of mainly US-based scientists studied records from 227 farms in six important rice-producing countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, India and China.

This is the latest in a line of studies to suggest that climate change will make it harder to feed the world's growing population by cutting yields.

...
 
Pictured: large plankton mass off Irish coast 'so big it was spotted by space satellite'
A large mass of plankton, which resembles the brush strokes of a Claude Monet painting, has been spotted by a European space satellite heading for Ireland.
By Andrew Hough, and Louise Gray
Published: 10:00PM BST 13 Aug 2010

The natural phenomenon, which occurs every year, was photographed by the European Space Agency.

The electric blue mass was so large it was spotted by satellites hundreds of miles above the planet.

Scientists from the space agency described it "resembling the brush strokes of French Impressionist Claude Monet".

Although individual plankton are microscopic, massed together they make up an area almost the size of Ireland itself.

While the bloom swirls, in the North Atlantic Ocean off Ireland, were photographed in May by a satellite called Envisat, it was released by the agency on Friday. A high resolution image was also released.

Tiny algae in the plankton give off chlorophyll as they absorb sunlight, which tints the ocean and enables the area to be spotted from space.

The mass will attract marine life for the annual feast.

Experts say plankton play a vital part in the health of our planet because they remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as vegetation does on land. They also underpin the marine food chain.

Last month the government warned the UK's seas were experiencing warmer temperatures, rising sea levels, changes in fish stocks and declines in breeding seabirds as a result of climate change.

According to the annual report for the Government by almost 100 scientists from 40 leading UK organisations, some fish, including Plankton, moved northwards by between 50km to 400km (30-250 miles) over the past 30 years, with cold water species such as monkfish moving furthest.

The review of what is happening to our seas and potential future impacts of climate change was compiled by the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership.

The amount of phytoplankton in the top layers of the oceans has declined markedly over the last century, research suggests.

Scientists writing in the journal Nature last month also said the decline appeared to be linked to rising water temperatures.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/spac ... llite.html
 
Scientists warn spilled oil remains in the Gulf of Mexico
Two new scientific reports have raised fresh fears about the environmental fallout from the world's worst offshore oil spill and questioned US government assurances that most of the oil from the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico was already gone.
Published: 7:00AM BST 19 Aug 2010

In one of the reports, researchers at the University of Georgia said that about three-quarters of the oil from BP's blown-out Macondo well was still lurking below the surface of the Gulf and may pose a threat to the ecosystem.

Charles Hopkinson, who helped lead the investigation, said up to 79 per cent of the 4.1 million barrels of oil that gushed from the broken well and were not captured directly at the wellhead remained in the Gulf.

The report was based on an analysis of government estimates released on Aug 2 that Mr Hopkinson said had been widely misinterpreted as meaning that 75 per cent of the oil spewed by the well had either evaporated, dissolved or been otherwise contained, leaving only about 25 per cent.

"The idea that 75 per cent of the oil is gone and is of no further concern to the environment is just absolutely incorrect," he said.

Separately, a study released by University of South Florida scientists said experiments in the northeastern Gulf where so-called plumes or barely visible clouds of oil had been found earlier had turned up oil in sediments of an underwater canyon. The oil was at levels toxic to critical marine organisms.

Oil droplets were found in the sediments of the DeSoto Canyon, where nutrient-rich waters support spawning grounds of important fish species on the West Florida Shelf, this report said.

In a response to the University of Georgia report, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spokesman said the Aug 2 government calculation was based "on direct measurements whenever possible and the best available scientific estimates where direct measurements were not possible."

"Additionally, the government and independent scientists involved in the Oil Budget have been clear that oil and its remnants left in the water represent a potential threat, which is why we continue to rigorously monitor, test and assess short- and long-term ramifications," NOAA Communications Director Justin Kenney said in a statement.

For 87 days following the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that triggered the oil spill, crude spewed into the Gulf, contaminating wetlands, fishing grounds and beaches from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. BP engineers provisionally capped the leak on July 15 and are working to permanently "kill" the well later this month.

NOAA head Jane Lubchenco told a White House briefing on Aug. 4 that: "At least 50 per cent of the oil that was released is now completely gone from the system. And most of the remainder is degrading rapidly or is being removed from the beaches."

But University of Georgia marine sciences professor Samantha Joye and other researchers have seen no scientific information to support that view.

"I have not seen data that leads me to conclude that 50 per cent of the oil is gone," he said.

"No one's standing up here and saying 'this is a doom and gloom scenario,' but at the same time it's not as straight forward as saying all the oil is gone either," she said.

"What we're trying to point out is the impacts of oil are still there. There's oil in the water, there's oil on the seafloor, there are going to be impacts on the system. We have to continue monitoring and evaluating what those impacts are."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... exico.html
 
rynner2 said:
Saplings from Dutch elm disease survivor could start new family tree
Simon de Bruxelles

The English elm, painted by Constable, elegised by Thomas Gray and all but wiped out by disease a generation ago, could stage a comeback thanks to a rare survivor.

...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 145697.ece
Sadly, DED has not gone away: long article (and a poem) here:

English elms: the final bough
Dutch elm disease has returned and our last remaining English elms are at risk unless action is taken, says Mark Seddon.

...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/countr ... bough.html
 
Mont Blanc water pocket to be drained
A daring operation to pump dry a giant water pocket from under a glacier on Mont Blanc begins on Tuesday after tourists and residents were warned they would have just minutes to evacuate the Alpine valley below if it burst.
By Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 7:00AM BST 24 Aug 2010

Scientists in France discovered the huge reservoir under the Tête-Rousse glacier on the slopes of Europe's highest peak after conducting routine checks with magnetic resonance imaging.

They sounded the alarm last month after finding the pocket contained 65,000 cubic metres (14.3 million gallons) of water, the equivalent of exactly 26 Olympic swimming pools.

If the glacier burst, they warned, the water would unleash devastating flash floods in the St Gervais valley below.

As the water rushed down the mountainside, it would create a "torrent of mud six to eight times bigger than the original volume of water".

This "catastrophe scenario" is precisely what happened on July 12, 1892, when at least 175 people were drowned by an estimated 80,000 cubic metres (17.6 million gallons) of water mixed with mud, rocks and trees.

Today the St Gervais valley is a popular tourist spot and home to 3,000 people, who would be submerged within 15 minutes. The valley leads to the L'Aiguille du Goûter, a northern peak of the Mont-Blanc range.

Ahead of the operation, local authorities closed the final section of the Mont Blanc tramway, which runs to the Refuge du Nid d'Aigle and passes close by the glacier.

A cable siren system has already been set up and locals briefed on an evacuation plan.

Tomorrow, engineers will drill a hole 22cm (8.7in) in diameter and begin pumping the first 25,000 cubic metres (5.5 million gallons) from the pocket 250 feet below the surface, with the £1.6 million operation expected to run until October. The water will then be carefully channelled into the valley.

"Let's just hope the pocket doesn't blow beforehand!" said one local shopkeeper.

Experts say the pocket was most likely formed after a period of particularly cold temperatures within the glacier froze the water's escape routes.

Global warming may have played a part as it appears to have thinned the layer of snow covering the glacier which ironically protects its cavities from icing up.

Despite all the precautions, engineers admitted they were not quite sure what would happen once the water was removed. :shock:

"We don't know how the glacier will react after removing its water base," warned Christian Vincent, a geophysics engineer with the National Centre for Scientific Research.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ained.html
 
Bacteria behind mystery of disappearing oil in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists claim
By David Gardner
Last updated at 11:56 PM on 25th August 2010

Scientists claim they have solved the mystery of the missing oil from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Swarms of oil-eating bugs have already done the toughest part of BP's clean-up job, they said.
The bacteria, called oceanospirillales, munched through massive oil plumes in the Gulf following the world's worst-ever spill.

Officials had been baffled at what had become of the clouds of oil. Nearly five million barrels' worth spilled into the sea in the 87 days it took to cap the leak after the April 20 explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig.
The experts examined a 22-mile, 3,600ft-deep plume in May and June and found a growing population of carbon-eating bacteria about six miles from the leak.

The bacteria were so prodigious that each time the scientists could get back to the laboratory to test the water samples, the bugs had already eaten all the oil in them.

Earlier this month, when the team returned to where the plumes had been, the bugs were still there - but the oil was gone.
Terry Hazen, head of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's ecology department, said DNA tests showed that the bugs had genes for processing oil. He said: 'We've never seen anything that can do better than the bugs.'

However, another expert claimed that the plumes may have diluted or moved :roll:

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z0xhwAOCLO
 
Jars of dead sea creatures hold key to Gulf's future
By Jane O'Brien, BBC News, Washington

On the outskirts of Washington DC, a massive warehouse filled with some of the nation's most important scientific collections sits surrounded by high fences and tight security.

It belongs to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and it's the starting point for scientists assessing the impact of the BP oil spill.

Up to half a million samples of invertebrates taken from the Gulf of Mexico are stored in jars that line row upon row of shelves. Spanning three decades, the collection is so large that many of the creatures have yet to be properly catalogued.

"In order to measure the effects of the spill, you have to know what the ecosystem was like before it happened," says Jonathan Coddington, head of science and collections at the museum.

"This collection will provide the data upon which future decisions will be made."

The collection includes crabs and shrimp, worms, sea urchins, coral and giant squids - the largest invertebrate known to man. Together, they provide a picture of how different species interact with their environment.

Of particular importance is the Giganteus bathynomus, or giant marine isopod, which looks like an armour-plated beetle. It lives off dead flesh but also hunts other animals and is the ocean equivalent of a wild dog or big cat.

"The ecosystem is probably best assessed by looking at the top predators, those at the top of the food chain," Mr Coddington says.

"We'll want to know if they're still there, and if they are, are there as many as there were before the spill?"


Any change to the Giganteus bathynomus could indicate other species are struggling to survive.

But Mr Coddington expects much of the future research to be driven by commercial interests.

Fishermen may report that supplies of shrimp have dwindled or that they have become smaller. By comparing future stocks to those in the collection, scientists will be able to give accurate measurements that may be able to help settle insurance claims. They'll also be able to determine whether pollution in other seafood has increased.

And because every oil slick has its own unique hydrocarbon signature, trace quantities can be detected many miles away from the source.

The BP oil spill has been described as the worst environmental disaster in US history.

But when government researchers began collecting samples from the Gulf in 1979, they discovered that whole ecosystems actually depend on naturally occurring oil and gas for survival.

Known as chemosynthetic communities, bacteria convert chemicals into sugar that enable worms and other complex organisms to thrive. Some species can live up to 250 years.


"It borders on science fiction," says Dr Alan Thornhill, science advisor to the director of the government's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

"It was thought that unless you had light, life could not exist. But we've discovered these communities where there is no sunlight, 10,000 feet below the surface, surviving on things we thought were toxic.

"They've been adapting to these natural seepages of oil for millions of years. Whether they can adapt to the current spill, we don't yet know, but they could be very resilient because they are used to such harsh environments."

The cold seeps, as they're called, are just one of the diverse habitats found in the Gulf of Mexico. The ocean also consists of marshland, mud bottoms, coral reefs and unique environments supported by the decaying carcasses of whales, known as whale falls.

"We know a lot about some parts of the Gulf, but with some of these deepwater habitats, we're just starting to scratch the surface of what's down there," says Dr Martha Nizinski of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"In the early days of exploration and collecting, it was a matter of dragging a trawl along the bottom. Now there is better technology enabling scientists to explore further and discover new species."

Roughly 15,000 different species have been identified in the Gulf of Mexico and scientists believe about 2,000 more remain to be discovered.

Many of those could be found soon, as research intensifies in the wake of the BP spill.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10861466
 
I was reading `The Marcot Deep` by Arthur Conan Doyle.

In it the Atlanteans are dependent on coal and whale falls...in spite of an advanced technology.
 
Dog dies from mystery Sherwood Forest illness

A dog is thought to be the latest victim of a mystery illness which killed several pets after they were walked in the Sherwood Forest area.

Derek Broughton, of Lincoln, said one of his King Charles Spaniels died on Tuesday after visiting Clumber Park.

In autumn last year, eight dogs died from symptoms including vomiting and diarrhoea.

Natural England has ruled out man-made poisoning, and said it believes a natural phenomenon is to blame.

Mr Broughton took his two dogs - both King Charles Spaniels - to the forest, along with his daughter's pet dog.

He said: "We took them out into the woods at Clumber Park last Saturday morning. They all had a run around. We never saw them stop and pick anything up at all."
"It was just a normal weekend," he added. "But when I came down to see them Monday morning, all hell had broken loose."

Later that day, all three dogs had collapsed and were almost comatose, he said. One of the spaniels, called Bertie, died the following morning.

Earlier this week, Nottinghamshire vet Janice Dixon warned pet owners to be vigilant after treating a number of animals for severe sickness and diarrhoea.
She said the same thing happened for about a month last year, and then stopped.
"It starts in September, there is more humidity and less daylight and a change in the flora and fauna. I think it could be a mushroom or fungus causing the illness," she added.

Natural England will not be investigating this year as previous tests have established the cause was not man-made.

"It is not poison or pesticide-related, so we have taken the decision not to investigate as we believe it is naturally occurring," a spokeswoman said.

Signs warning dog owners to keep their pets on a lead and to contact a vet if they become ill are being put up in the area, a spokesperson from the Forestry Commission said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-no ... e-11404124
 
Localism vs globalism: two world views collide
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, in Lyon
Saturday, 25 September 2010

Stop economic growth in its tracks, start living locally, at a slower pace, and share more – that was the remarkable demand yesterday at the beginning of the Sustainable Planet Forum, a three-day international conference on environmental issues in the French city of Lyon, which The Independent is co-sponsoring.

In the radical corner was Paul Ariès, one of France's more colourful political figures, an anti-globalisation campaigner who edits a magazine entitled Le Sarkophage, which is a French pun on the word for coffin and the name of the President of the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy. (You can guess the content.)

In the Conservative corner was Peter Ainsworth, the former shadow Environment Secretary who left Parliament at the last election after 18 years as the MP for East Surrey. He is active on numerous environmental issues and has long been seen by environmentalists in Britain as the epitome of a Green Tory.

Immediately after the forum's opening ceremony, they clashed in the main auditorium of the Lyon Opera House before an audience of nearly 1,000 intent listeners, many of them young. It's an indication of how popular in France such think-fests are – this one being organised by the French daily Libération, in co-operation with The Independent and Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

The Sustainable Planet Forum is focusing on the issue of sustainable development – how we can provide for our needs without stopping future generations from satisfying needs of their own (and without wrecking the planet) – which until less than a decade ago was the animating cause of the environment movement, until concern for climate change swept everything before it. The forum also has an underlying subsidiary theme, which is Europe and its future.

But it was the idea of economic growth, or rather degrowth, to use the term of Mr Ariès – décroissance – which set the debates going with a bang. The French thinker is not just opposed to economic growth, but actively wants to stop it, seeing it as the root of all our evils. In fact, he is opposed to sustainable development, as – to paraphrase his thought – for him, the development bit cancels out the worth of the sustainable bit.

Economic growth, he told the audience, inevitably leads to social inequality. Mr Ariès wants a new sort of society, organised locally, at a slower pace, based on sharing rather than exploitation, and if you take his thought to its logical conclusion, virtually shrinking.

He expressed it yesterday from the stage of the Opera House with a finger-jabbing and strident passion which at times verged on the excitable, and was in sharp contrast to the dry but powerful response of Mr Ainsworth, who told him to his face: "You are a dreamer."

"Vous êtes un rêveur," said the interpreter, just in case Mr Ariès had missed it in English. He certainly didn't look like he got told that an awful lot, and Mr Ainsworth hastened to add that society needed dreamers. But he launched a full-frontal assault on his opponent's degrowth idea, based in what you might call a Conservative view of human nature.

He said: "Humans are acquisitive; we always have been. It's a fair bet that when we originally crawled out of a cave in prehistory we went looking for stuff to accumulate. Another pelt; a better home; a sharper weapon; a longer stick. Stuff: it's what people like." 8)

That word stuff caused the interpreter a momentary hesitation, but Mr Ainsworth was already saying: "The people who live in the poorest parts of the world don't talk about poverty. They live with it. The notion of poverty is for the affluent to worry about, and rightly so. But people who live in real poverty, whether in the deprived cities or rural areas of the developed West or in the developing world, talk about prosperity. They want economic growth because it is a natural thing to want. They want more stuff."

A recent visit to Albania, one of Europe's poorest countries, had impressed this upon him, he said.

"Try telling people in Albania you want to offer them degrowth. You won't get a friendly answer."

Mr Ainsworth said he shared many of Mr Ariès' concerns about overexploitation and overconsumption, pointing out: "If everyone on our planet lived like an average European, we would need three planets to live on. If everyone had the lifestyle of an average citizen of the United States, we would need five planets to live on." :shock:

But he said degrowth was not the answer. The only solution was to grow in a different way – that was what sustainable development meant – and the only institutions who could enable us to do that were major companies, with innovations.

Mr Ariès responded that he wasn't looking to Coca-Cola to save the planet – his best line, which drew laughter and applause – but Mr Ainsworth insisted that it was only new technological advances ("game-changers" he called them) which would set growth on a different path. "You want to save the planet with gadgets!" cried a woman in the audience. "The electric car is not a gadget," Mr Ainsworth said.

His finished by telling Mr Ariès that the ultimate problem with his degrowth idea was political. "No democratic politician anywhere in the world will embrace it," he said. "Call that cowardice, or call it realism." And turning to the audience: "You choose."


http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 89098.html
 
I dont think it would work either.

But we could all do with a lot less stuff.

Ive had a massive clearout and gave a load away on freecycle for car booters.

A woman came and took several boxes and was ecstatic; she wasnt going to sell this great stuff (all rubbish to me) she was going to use some herself and give the rest to her family.

I said she would have to wait untill I sorted more out for her car booting projects then.

Make someone happy today by decluttering.
 
Obsession with growth is asset stripping the planet
By John Lichfield in Lyon
Monday, 27 September 2010

Obsession with economic growth and the greed of financial speculators are destroying efforts to conserve the world's diminishing resources.

British and French speakers from radically different backgrounds, and with sharply contrasting styles, found themselves singing an unlikely political duet at the Lyon environment forum. Big business, they said, must be stopped from "asset stripping" a failing planet.

Andrews Simms, the policy director of the New Economics Foundation, said the "oil-fired" obsession with growth amounted to "treating the biosphere like a business in liquidation".

Eva Joly, a former French investigating magistrate who once specialised in uncovering corruption in big business, accused hedge funds and off-shore financial havens of encouraging "destructive speculation in hard-pressed resources" including oil, water and land.

The flamboyant Mr Simms amused a mostly French audience at the Lyon Sustainable Planet Forum by illustrating his talk with lurid metaphors.

"A hamster doubles in size each week until about six weeks old, then slows," he said. "If it didn't, on its first birthday you would be facing a nine billion tonne hamster that could eat in a day all the corn produced in the world in a year." :shock:

So much, he suggested, for the argument that economic growth, consuming ever larger amounts of finite resources, was the "natural" condition of humanity.

He was joined in a debate on how to preserve the world's resources by Ms Joly, who first came to France as a Norwegian au pair. She went on to become a feared judicial investigator and then an MEP. She is regarded as the likely candidate of the French environment movement in the next presidential election in 2012.

Compared to Mr Simms, Ms Joly's style was dry and factual: still more magisterial than political. She said that there was an often neglected new threat to third world resources from the "constant appetite of hedge-funds for new forms of profitable speculation". Now that the bubble in the property market in the developed world had collapsed, she said, speculators were turning to natural resources and concealing parts of their profits in off-shore accounts.

Mr Simms made a broader argument. He said the world could no longer afford to pursue an economic model based entirely on competition and growth. Mankind must break the "vicious cycle" which assumed that greater wealth and consumption always equalled greater happiness. We would have to seek alternative approaches, based on principles of "equilibrium" – such as "cooperation" and "symbiosis – which were as much present in nature as raw competition.

"If lucky, he said, "we have we 75 months, until the end of 2016, before the accumulation and concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere make it more rather than less likely that global average surface temperatures will rise 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – critically this is the level around which climate-driven environmental dominoes fall unpredictably."

And yet, the world was hesitating to save itself, he said. "We have submitted control over our own environmental destiny to a set of economic ideas that parade as if they were unquestionable, natural laws."

http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 90422.html
 
Private water raiding threatens Angkor's temples built on sand
Unchecked pumping of scarce water resource from under Siem Reap puts stability of Cambodia's ancient monuments at risk
Ben Doherty in Siem Reap
guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 September 2010

The five-star hotels around the ancient temples of Angkor are oases of green; sleek new buildings ringed by tropical forests and sprawling lawns.

But the water used to keep them so is being sucked from groundwater under the city, threatening the stability of the centuries-old, world heritage-listed landmark.

Unchecked development, and the widespread, unregulated pumping of groundwater throughout Siem Reap city, has raised concerns that the temples, including the world's largest religious monument, Angkor Wat, could crack or crumble if too much water is drained away.

The temples and towers of the 402-square-kilometre Angkor site sit on a base of sand, kept firm by a constant supply of groundwater that rises and falls with the seasons, but which is now being used to supply a burgeoning city.

With the number of visitors to the northern Cambodian province approaching 2 million a year, increasing pressure is being put on the scarce water resource.

Thousands of illegal private pumps have been sunk across the city, pulling millions of litres of water from the ground each day.

Unesco, the cultural arm of the United Nations, says that no one knows just how much water is being drawn from the ground, or how much can be taken safely. "We know there are a lot of hotels pumping their own water, but we don't know how much they are consuming," said Philippe Delanghe, head of Unesco's cultural unit.

"If we discover there is an overuse of water, this can have an effect on the temples, because the temples are built on a mixture of sand and water, which keeps them stable.

"If you're going to suck away the water, this might cause stability problems. It is only an 'if' now, but it is important we understand this issue."

etc...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/se ... angkor-wat
 
British woodlands more extensive today than they have been since 1750
By James Tozer
Last updated at 8:31 AM on 4th October 2010

As the leaves start to turn to gold, there's no better time for a walk in Britain's most scenic forests.
And this year there's even more for tree-lovers to celebrate after it emerged that the nation's woodlands are more extensive today than they have been for centuries.
Not since before the Industrial Revolution has so much of our countryside been carpeted in trees, a new report found yesterday.

A growing appreciation of the beauty of mature woodland coupled with tax breaks encouraging landowners to plant new ones has seen the total area double since the end of the First World War.
The total amount of forest cover in the UK is put at 8,893 square miles by the United Nations, amounting to 11.8 per cent of total land area.
Historians say that has not been matched since the 1750s, after which they were decimated by felling to provide timber to expand the Royal Navy's expanding fleet as well as charcoal to produce gunpowder.

Since then, industrialisation and successive war efforts cut the country's woodland cover to just five per cent by the 1920s, prompting the founding of the Forestry Commission to start to reverse the trend.
More recently, a greater emphasis on conservation and enjoying the countryside has been boosted by tax rules which mean forests can be a lucrative investment.
Once a tract of woodland has been owned for two years, it is exempt from inheritance tax.
In addition, money from the sale of timber is exempt from income and corporation tax, while there is no capital gains tax on the growth of value in tree crops.

Author and tree enthusiast Hugh Johnson added: 'People love the idea of having their own wood, somewhere to go to lose themselves and to pick mushrooms.'
As a result, new tracts of woodland are springing up all over the country, including 1,000 acres planted in Warwickshire by publisher Felix Dennis as he aims to create England's largest deciduous forest.

The new Forestry Commission report for the UN food and agriculture department shows that the amount of woodland owned by individuals has grown by 22 per cent in 15 years and now accounts for almost half of all our tree cover.
Investors include businessman Martin Devetta, 69, from Sunningdale, Berkshire, who has pumped £25,000 into planting trees.
'It makes you feel terrific,' he said. 'It's better than buying stocks and bonds and being let down. It also means I can leave it to my children and grandchildren without them having to pay inheritance tax.'

Meanwhile the Woodland Trust is campaigning to plant 20million indigenous species such as the oak and beech and double the native woodland cover by 2050.
However Britain has a long way to go to catch up with the European average, with 27.9 per cent of France and 30.7 per cent of Germany covered by trees.

In prehistoric times, as much as 60 per cent of Britain would have been blanketed with trees, but widespread clearing to graze sheep had seen that fall to around 15 per cent by the time of the Domesday Book.
Forest historian Ben Lennon said: 'Britain's woodland has waxed and waned over the centuries for a variety of social and economic reasons. Wartime always means a lot of tree-felling.
'However, in the 1960s we realised timber would not be needed in future warfare and the shift towards environment and nature has led to this recovery that we see now.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z11NdwPkwH
 
Sorry, I refuse to suuly my brain with the DM

Do they mention the Govt axing the FC???
 
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