Monday, November 30, 2009
Seismic surveys disturb blue whales: biologists
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PARIS (AFP) - Seismic surveys used for oil and gas prospecting on the sea floor are a disturbance for blue whales, the world's biggest animal and one of its rarest species, biologists reported on Wednesday.
Lucia Di Iorio of Zurich University, Switzerland, and Christopher Clark, an acoustics specialist at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in New York, recorded the calls of blue whales at a feeding ground in Canada's St. Lawrence estuary in August 2004.
The 11-day experiment was conducted during a period when a survey vessel was using a "sparker", a low-to-medium power device that sends an acoustic pulse to the sea floor and picks up the reflected signal to get a picture of the topography.
"On the days when the vessel was operating, the whales called more than two and a half times more frequently than on days when the vessel was not operating," Di Iorio told AFP.
For humans, "it would be the same as if you were next to a roadworks hammer and have to shout or repeat what you say," she said.
Di Iorio said further work would show whether blue whales suffered stress or other problems from the acoustic kerfuffle.
"Blue whales are rather solitary whales which swim all the time, are highly dispersed and always travelling, and feeding areas are places where they have the chance to get together in a small range and with a lot of social activity as well.
"Being disturbed during social interactions that don't occur very often could have an influence, perhaps in mating, but we can't really say for sure, or what kind or if it is short term or long term."
One concern is that oil and gas prospecting is venturing out into ever-deeper water, and little is known about the impact this might have on whales' feeding and migratory patterns.
The paper appears in Biology Letters, a journal of Britain's Royal Society.
In April, an experiment reported in the same journal found that very loud, repeated blasts of sonar caused an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin to temporarily lose its hearing.
Numerous beachings of whales, dolphins and porpoises have occurred over the past decade, prompting a finger of blame to be pointed at warship exercises.
Measuring up to nearly 33 metres (100 feet) and weighing as much as 180 tonnes, the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) was hunted almost to extinction until it was given international protection in 1966.
Estimates of this species' population today vary widely. A 2002 Canadian study put the global numbers at between 5,000 and 12,000.
Before large-scale whale hunting, there may have been more than a quarter of a million of the giant mammals.
Labels: blue whales, global warming news, seismic surveys
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Friday, November 27, 2009
Jellyfish swarm northward in warming world
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KOKONOGI, Japan - A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.
The fishermen leaned into the nets, grunting and grumbling as they tossed the translucent jellyfish back into the bay, giants weighing up to 200 kilograms (450 pounds), marine invaders that are putting the men's livelihoods at risk.
The venom of the Nomura, the world's largest jellyfish, a creature up to 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter, can ruin a whole day's catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets here in northwest Japan's Wakasa Bay.
"Some fishermen have just stopped fishing," said Taiichiro Hamano, 67. "When you pull in the nets and see jellyfish, you get depressed."
This year's jellyfish swarm is one of the worst he has seen, Hamano said. Once considered a rarity occurring every 40 years, they are now an almost annual occurrence along several thousand kilometers (miles) of Japanese coast, and far beyond Japan.
Scientists believe climate change - the warming of oceans - has allowed some of the almost 2,000 jellyfish species to expand their ranges, appear earlier in the year and increase overall numbers, much as warming has helped ticks, bark beetles and other pests to spread to new latitudes.
The gelatinous seaborne creatures are blamed for decimating fishing industries in the Bering and Black seas, forcing the shutdown of seaside power and desalination plants in Japan, the Middle East and Africa, and terrorizing beachgoers worldwide, the U.S. National Science Foundation says.
A 2008 foundation study cited research estimating that people are stung 500,000 times every year - sometimes multiple times - in Chesapeake Bay on the U.S. East Coast, and 20 to 40 die each year in the Philippines from jellyfish stings.
In 2007, a salmon farm in Northern Ireland lost its more than 100,000 fish to an attack by the mauve stinger, a jellyfish normally known for stinging bathers in warm Mediterranean waters. Scientists cite its migration to colder Irish seas as evidence of global warming.
Increasingly polluted waters - off China, for example - boost growth of the microscopic plankton that "jellies" feed upon, while overfishing has eliminated many of the jellyfish's predators and cut down on competitors for plankton feed.
"These increases in jellyfish should be a warning sign that our oceans are stressed and unhealthy," said Lucas Brotz, a University of British Columbia researcher.
Here on the rocky Echizen coast, amid floodlights and the roar of generators, fishermen at Kokonogi's bustling port made quick work of the day's catch - packaging glistening fish and squid in Styrofoam boxes for shipment to market.
In rain jackets and hip waders, they crowded around a visitor to tell how the jellyfish have upended a way of life in which men worked fishing trawlers on the high seas in their younger days and later eased toward retirement by joining one of the cooperatives operating nets set in the bay.
It was a good living, they said, until the jellyfish began inundating the bay in 2002, sometimes numbering 500 million, reducing fish catches by 30 percent and slashing prices by half over concerns about quality.
Two nets in Echizen burst last month during a typhoon because of the sheer weight of the jellyfish, and off the east coast jelly-filled nets capsized a 10-ton trawler as its crew tried to pull them up. The three fishermen were rescued.
"We have been getting rid of jellyfish. But no matter how hard we try, the jellyfish keep coming and coming," said Fumio Oma, whose crew is out of work after their net broke under the weight of thousands of jellyfish. "We need the government's help to get rid of the jellyfish."
The invasions cost the industry up to 30 billion yen ($332 million) a year, and tens of thousands of fishermen have sought government compensation, said scientist Shin-ichi Uye, Japan's leading expert on the problem.
Hearing fishermen's pleas, Uye, who had been studying zooplankton, became obsessed with the little-studied Nomura's jellyfish, scientifically known as Nemopilema nomurai, which at its biggest looks like a giant mushroom trailing dozens of noodle-like tentacles.
"No one knew their life cycle, where they came from, where they reproduced," said Uye, 59. "This jellyfish was like an alien."
He artificially bred Nomura's jellyfish in his Hiroshima University lab, learning about their life cycle, growth rates and feeding habits. He traveled by ferry between China to Japan this year to confirm they were riding currents to Japanese waters.
He concluded China's coastal waters offered a perfect breeding ground: Agricultural and sewage runoff are spurring plankton growth, and fish catches are declining. The waters of the Yellow Sea, meanwhile, have warmed as much as 1.7 degrees C (3 degrees F) over the past quarter-century.
"The jellyfish are becoming more and more dominant," said Uye, as he sliced off samples of dead jellyfish on the deck of an Echizen fishing boat. "Their growth rates are quite amazing."
The slight, bespectacled scientist is unafraid of controversy, having lobbied his government tirelessly to help the fishermen, and angered Chinese colleagues by arguing their government must help solve the problem, comparing it to the effects of acid rain that reaches Japan from China.
"The Chinese people say they will think about this after they get rich, but it might be too late by then," he said.
A U.S. marine scientist, Jennifer Purcell of Western Washington University, has found a correlation between warming and jellyfish on a much larger scale, in at least 11 locations, including the Mediterranean and North seas, and Chesapeake and Narragansett bays.
"It's hard to deny that there is an effect from warming," Purcell said. "There keeps coming up again and again examples of jellyfish populations being high when it's warmer." Some tropical species, on the other hand, appear to decline when water temperatures rise too high.
Even if populations explode, their numbers may be limited in the long term by other factors, including food and currents. In a paper last year, researchers concluded jellyfish numbers in the Bering Sea - which by 2000 were 40 times higher than in 1982 - declined even as temperatures have hit record highs.
"They were still well ahead of their historic averages for that region," said co-author Lorenzo Ciannelli of Oregon State University. "But clearly jellyfish populations are not merely a function of water temperature."
Addressing the surge in jellyfish blooms in most places will require long-term fixes, such as introducing fishing quotas and pollution controls, as well as capping greenhouse gas emissions to control global warming, experts said.
In the short term, governments are left with few options other than warning bathers or bailing out cash-strapped fishermen. In Japan, the government is helping finance the purchase of newly designed nets, a layered system that snares jellyfish with one kind of net, allowing fish through to be caught in another.
Some entrepreneurs, meanwhile, are trying to cash in. One Japanese company is selling giant jellyfish ice cream, and another plans a pickled plum dip with chunks of giant jellyfish. But, though a popular delicacy, jellyfish isn't likely to replace sushi or other fish dishes on Asian menus anytime soon, in view of its time-consuming processing, heavy sodium overload and unappealing image.
By MICHAEL CASEY, AP Environmental Writer – Mon Nov 16, 11:58 am ET
Labels: global warming news, jellyfish, Nomura
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Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Global economic crisis to slash carbon emissions: IEA
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BANGKOK (AFP) - – The global economic crisis will slash carbon emissions in 2009, opening a narrow opportunity to take decisive action on global warming, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.
The predicted three-percent fall in energy-related CO2 pollution compared with a year earlier would be the steepest drop in 40 years, chief IEA economist Fatih Birol said at a press conference in Bangkok.
The global carbon output up to now has on average grown three percent annually, he added.
Birol said this silver-lining drop in carbon pollution was a "unique window of opportunity" for the world to put itself on a path to limit the increase in global temperatures to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the scientific threshold for dangerous global warming.
The recession-driven fall would lead to CO2 emissions in 2020 being five percent lower than the IEA forecast from just a year ago, even if no further action is taken to curb global warming, he added.
The IEA estimate is part of its World Energy Outlook report, an excerpt of which was released at UN climate talks under way in the Thai capital.
It outlined how steeply countries would have to cut their energy-related carbon emissions over the next 20 years in order fix the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at a level that would ensure the two-degree threshold is not crossed.
That level, measured in parts per million, is 450 ppm, according to a benchmark scientific report issued in 2007 by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"This gives us a chance to make real progress toward a clean-energy future, but only if the right policies are put in place promptly," said IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka in a statement.
"Every year of delay adds an extra 500 billion dollars (340 billion euros) to the investment needed between 2010 and 2030 in the energy sector," he warned.
Energy production accounts for about 65 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the IEA.
The climate talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been stymied for months, and are running out of time to deliver a new global climate treaty at a December conference in Copenhagen.
Rich and poor nations are divided over how to share the burden of cutting greenhouse gases, and who is going to pay for it.
Developed nations are willing to take the lead, but expect emerging giants such as Brazil, India and China to commit to mitigation measures as well -- pledges these countries have fiercely resisted.
Rich nations created the problem and should bear the brunt of the responsibility to fix it, the developing countries say.
"Continuing the current energy policies would have catastrophic consequences for the climate," said UNFCCC chief Yvo de Boer. "This is a unique opportunity... to transition the global energy system."
Tanaka confirmed that China had overtaken the United States as the world's top carbon polluter in 2007, adding that "it will be the same in the future."
While it has not announced an emission reductions target, if China fulfils its energy efficiency plans it would account for a quarter of the global effort needed by 2020 under the IEA scenario for stabilising CO2 levels, he said.
"It would put China at the forefront of the fight against climate change," Birol told AFP.
Labels: carbon emissions, CO2 pollution, global warming news
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Monday, November 23, 2009
Environmentalists Not All Happy About New EPA Guidelines
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New fuel-economy rules proposed by the federal Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency are the first major move by the U.S. toward cracking down on greenhouse-gas emissions. The proposed program includes miles-per-gallon requirements and national emissions standards under the EPA's greenhouse-gas-emissions guidelines for model years from 2012 to 2016.
You'd think that environmental groups would be overjoyed.
Hardly. What has them worried are all the pro-industry rule tweaks and what they see as slanted calculations. "Automakers lobbied hard to include loopholes in the Administration's proposal," says Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign at the Center for Auto Safety.
One such wrinkle: in a key concession to manufacturers, the Department of Transportation offers generous credits to carmakers that build advanced-technology vehicles. Manufacturers of electric vehicles will get credits that apply to the regulation's overall company pollution targets. However, the power-plant carbon emissions from generating the electricity to run an EV are not factored into the greenhouse-gas calculations for such vehicles, says Jim Kliesch, senior engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "In truth, if you include system-wide emissions it's about half of what a conventional vehicle emits," he says.
Critics of the proposal also point to phantom savings. Becker says the new rules perpetuate the flex-fuel credit that allows carmakers to build more gas guzzlers than the regulation might otherwise allow, provided the vehicles can run on E85, a mixture that is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. The problem is that only about 1% of the gas stations in the U.S. now sell E85 and the number isn't expected to increase much anytime soon. The flex-fuel credit trims the m.p.g. target for manufacturers selling flex-fuel-capable vehicles by 1.2 m.p.g.
Another perceived soft spot in the White House proposal: carmakers will get carbon credits for selling their most efficient vehicles into California and other states that had adopted separate standards before the Obama Administration moved to harmonize an expanding patchwork of state and federal rules. The proposed solution results in an arrangement whereby carmakers who had been prepared to meet California's tough impending state rules (just to be able to sell in California) will now earn bonus credits for doing just that. "The concern is carmakers will be getting extra credits for what they would have done anyway," says Kliesch.
One exemption that is already drawing fire is the so-called "German loophole," which allows automakers selling fewer than 400,000 vehicles in the U.S. to meet a weaker EPA standard. All the German automakers - Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen - will qualify for the exemption as well as Mitsubishi, Subaru, Kia and more exotic brands such as Ferrari, Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover.
But don't feel too badly for Detroit. Becker says the company that perhaps does best under the proposed rules is the government's own car company, General Motors. GM benefits from the EV exception and also from the changes in the rules that will allow sales of larger vehicles like pickup trucks through a separate loophole that permits automakers to "borrow" credits from the future. Kliesch says the flexibility is fine but asks where the guarantee is that the companies will make good on promises to repay borrowed credits. "That's why you need some kind of backstop [in the rules] to make sure the companies actually meet the standards," says Kliesch.
By JOSEPH R. SZCZESNY, Time
Labels: epa, fuel-economy rules, global warming news
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Thursday, November 19, 2009
Antarctic coastal ice thinning surprises experts
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OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists are surprised at how extensively coastal ice in Antarctica and Greenland is thinning, according to a study Wednesday that could help predict rising sea levels linked to climate change.
Analysis of millions of NASA satellite laser images showed the biggest loss of ice was caused by glaciers speeding up when they flowed into the sea, according to scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Bristol University.
"We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline -- it's widespread and in some cases thinning extends hundreds of kilometers inland," said Hamish Pritchard of BAS who led the study.
"We think that warm ocean currents reaching the coast and melting the glacier front is the most likely cause of faster glacier flow," he said in a statement.
"This kind of ice loss is so poorly understood that it remains the most unpredictable part of future sea level rise," he added. BAS said the study gave the "most comprehensive picture" of the thinning glaciers so far.
Rising seas caused by a thaw of vast stores of ice on Antarctica and Greenland could threaten Pacific islands, coasts from China to the United States and cities from London to Buenos Aires.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said earlier this month global warming, blamed mainly on burning fossil fuels, could raise sea levels by 50 cm to 2 meters (20 inches to 6 ft 6 in) this century -- higher than most experts have predicted.
Among findings, Wednesday's study said 81 of 111 fast-moving glaciers in Greenland were thinning at twice the rate of slow-flowing ice at the same altitude.
"Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized," they wrote. "Dynamic thinning" means loss of ice due to a faster flow.
They said it was too early to determine whether the thinning was a sign that sea level rise would accelerate from a current rate of about 3 mm (0.12 inches) a year.
"Working that out is the next task," David Vaughan, a BAS glaciologist among the authors, told Reuters. Thinning in some areas could be caused by changes in snowfall, for instance, not the slide of ice toward the ocean, he said.
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
Labels: antartic, dynamic thinning, global warming news
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