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Great apes in danger of extinction
(NDTV.com, November 27, 2003)
An international crisis meeting took place in Paris at The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on Wednesday to discuss the imminent extinction of humans' closest living relatives, the great apes. . . . $25 million is urgently needed to lift the threat of extinction of these species. . . . Such a sum, says the UNESCO and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is essential for reducing the risk of extinction of the world's remaining gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans, and for establishing areas where ape populations could stabilise or even increase. . . . Scientists warned that the great apes could be extinct in 20 years time. The commercial bushmeat trade, human population growth, the tropical hardwood industry, war, deforestation and habitat loss all threaten their survival.

posted by Lorenzo 9:00 PM

 

Life on earth was nearly destroyed by a meteoroid 185 million years before dinosaurs died out
(Temma Ehrenfeld, Newsweek, November 21, 2003)
IN A MERE 100,000 years, a blink of the eye in geological terms, 90 percent of the earth�s life disappeared. Now, an analysis of meteorite fragments described in this week�s Science magazine helps confirm one scenario�that space rock crashed into the earth at the end of the Permian period, devastating the environment in a catastrophe much like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 185 million years later. This means that the earth was pounded from space not once, but twice. �It appears to us that the two largest mass extinctions in earth�s history were both caused by collisions with � meteoroids,� says the study�s author, Asish Basu, a geochemist at the University of Rochester. . . . Exactly what came to earth 250 million years ago and where it crashed remains mysterious. But scientists have a vivid picture of the resulting devastation. Imagine an asteroid or comet, perhaps the size of Mount Everest, slamming into a coastline, transmitting temperatures of several thousand degrees and pressures 1 million times greater than the weight of the earth�s atmosphere. The impact sets off scorching flows of lava. A wave of hot vapor kills everything in its path. Tidal waves overwhelm the land. Clouds of debris block the sun. Lush vegetation and a world of creatures perish, and fungi inherit the earth. Paleontologists poetically call this event the �Great Dying.� But some also argue that mass extinctions were necessary to advance evolution. After another passage of millions of years, dinosaurs thrived in the niches once occupied by other animals. The demise of the dinosaurs created room for mammals and, eventually, us. . . . Although shocked quartz and buckyballs provide intriguing evidence of an impact, so far their presence is considered inconclusive. Basu�s pitted iron-rich meteorite fragments may be more persuasive because they are well-preserved, evidently unique to the Permian-Triassic boundary, and concentrated in one layer at Graphite Peak, suggesting a single event. Matching metallic grains have been found in Permian sites in southern China and Japan. Basu�s research assistant, Rama Chakraborti, will be down in Antarctica with Luann Becker and a research team until Christmas, searching for more evidence. Meanwhile, the rest of us are left to wonder, when do we get hit next?

posted by Lorenzo 3:34 PM

 

Schwarzenegger Attacks the Environment, Cancels Existing Regulations
(Jennifer Coleman, Associated Press, November 18, 2003)
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger halted all pending state regulations while he reviews the new rules' impact on California's business climate. . . . In the second executive order of his brand-new administration, Schwarzenegger said Monday "it is time to reassess the system of state government that is perceived to work against businesses and inhibit growth and economic prosperity." [TRANSLATION: Screw environmental regulations. The special interests I serve can now pollute with impunity.] . . . Aides to Schwarzenegger said they didn't know how many regulations would be affected, but consumer advocates called the move a victory for business interests. . . . "The effect of this is to basically undo legislation from the last two years that protects the environment, consumers and public safety," said Jamie Court, executive director of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. . . . Approximately 85 regulation packages are pending at the Office of Administrative Law, aides to Schwarzenegger said, but they didn't know which proposed regulations were halted and phone messages seeking more details were not immediately returned. . . . The Office of Administrative Law didn't have an estimate of how many regulations were pending, but it reviews hundreds of regulations each year. . . . It can take years to craft complicated regulations, said Court, citing the recently approved nurse-to-patient staffing ratios as an example. The ratios were approved by the Legislature in 1999, but the detailed rules for hospitals weren't finalized until this year. . . . But it will be reviewed as part of Schwarzenegger's mandate that orders departments to report on the regulations approved, altered or repealed during Gov. Gray Davis' administration. The new governor wants to know what effect these regulations had on [his friends and campaign contributors among] California businesses. . . . The order could delay vital rules, Court said, about how emergency rooms bill patients, how the state Medical Board tells the public about legal settlements against doctors, or changes to the state's drinking water standards. . . . It could slow more than a dozen regulations pending in the state Department of Education, said Eileen Gray, with the legal division. The department produces as many as 25 regulation packages each year, she said. . . . "To the extent that there are some in-house, they will be stopped," she said.

Also see: Arnold Schwarzenegger's Racial Bias in His Films

posted by Lorenzo 11:33 AM

 

Marine Mammals Innocents Victims Of War On Terror
(John Adams, NRDC, November 15, 2003)
our campaign to protect marine mammals against deadly sonar and other man-made threats suffered a terrible setback last week in the United States Congress. . . . Under the cynical pretext of protecting national security, the Bush administration strong-armed the Senate Armed Services Committee into approving the most far-reaching rollback of marine mammal protection in the last 30 years. It exempts the U.S. military from obeying core provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. . . . It will now be far easier for the U.S. military to harass and kill whales, dolphins and other marine mammals with high-intensity sonar and underwater explosives. The armed forces will no longer be limited to harming or killing a "small number" of animals. . . . In another ominous change, the new law allows the military to entirely exempt itself from all environmental review under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. . . . Finally, the military will now be allowed to destroy the habitat of endangered birds and mammals that live on 25 million acres of land under the Pentagon's jurisdiction. . . . Make no mistake, this White House has cynically exploited the war in Iraq as a convenient opportunity to try to give the Pentagon what it has always sought: a free pass to trample our environment and carte blanche to harass marine mammals in the course of testing its weapons and sonar. . . . It is a telling measure of this administration's hatred of the environment that the bill was even more destructive to marine mammals than what the Pentagon itself had asked for! . . . Defending marine mammals on so many different fronts will require an extraordinary amount of funding. If you would like to help further this NRDC campaign against deadly sonar, please consider making an online contribution. It will be put to work immediately and be deeply appreciated. Just go to https://www.savebiogems.org/donate/lfa1103.asp . . . In the meantime, for the sake of whales and other marine mammals around the globe, we're counting on you to stay the course with us. We need your idealism, your energy and your activism. Thank you for all you've done.

Sincerely,

John H. Adams President Natural Resources Defense Council

posted by Lorenzo 3:39 PM

 

Special bond between Britain and US does not extend to the environment
(Michael McCarthy, The Independent, 19 November 2003)
The environment represents a widening chasm between the United States and Britain. America has been criticised for years by green campaigners and George Bush has made it worse. . . . At the heart of the complaints is the huge, and many think, profligate US consumption of natural resources, with energy the most important of all. America uses nearly twenty times as much energy as India. . . . The outcome is that it produces a disproportionate amount of the waste gases (principally carbon dioxide) from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gasfor electricity and transport. The US is home to less than 5 per cent of the world's population, but produces nearly a quarter of all the greenhouse emissions causing global warming. . . . Al Gore, himself an environmentalist with a well-regarded book, Earth in the Balance,led the US delegation at the conference in Kyoto in December 1997 which drew up the first binding cutback schedule. Mr Gore actually went a lot farther than the US State Department thought was wise. . . . He committed America to cuts so big they could only be achieved through what was in effect licensed cheating (such as buying emission credits from countries which had a surplus, such as Russia).But at least the US was strongly behind the Kyoto Protocol and its principles. George Bush changed all that. After barely three months in office, he withdrew from the Kyoto agreement. . . . as the oilman son of an oilman father, surrounded by advisers from the oil industry, he hated anything that might put limits on oil use.

posted by Lorenzo 3:12 PM

 

Scientists create a virus that reproduces
(Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY, November 13, 2003)
It is the stuff of science fiction and bioethical debates: The creation of artificial life. Up until now, it's largely been just that. . . . But an important technical bridge towards the creation of such life was crossed Thursday when genomics pioneer Craig Venter announced that his research group created an artificial virus based on a real one in just two weeks' time. . . . When researchers created a synthetic genome (genetic map) of the virus and implanted it into a cell, the virus became "biologically active," meaning it went to work reproducing itself. . . . Venter cautioned that the creation of artificial human or animal life is a long way off because the synthetic bacteriophage � the virus that was created � is a much simpler life form. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria. . . . the questions ethicists have raised about such work are numerous: Should we be playing God? Does the potential for good that new life forms may have outweigh the harm they could do? . . . Arthur Caplan, who heads the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics, says yes. This technology "is impressive. It's powerful and it should be treated with humility and caution," Caplan says, "But we should do it." . . . "It's a very important technical advance," says Gerald Rubin, a molecular geneticist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "You can envision the day when one could sit down at a computer, design a genome and then build it. We're still inventing the tools to make that happen, and this is an important one." . . . The researchers chose to put the new technology into the public domain for all scientists to use. . . . The technology raises safety issues, says David Magnus of Stanford's Center for Biomedical Ethics. Even putting it in the public domain is "a double-edged sword," he says. That presumes that allowing everyone access will keep the good guys ahead of the bad guys. "It's a gamble. ... It's a bet that everyone has a stake in," he says.

posted by Lorenzo 8:00 PM

 

Sewage along the waterfront in Long Beach, CA
Although the sewage washing ashore from ships that dump their trash in Long Beach Harbor is always much in evidence, on Sunday, November 2, 2003 it actually became a health hazard.Click on the photo to see more evidence of Long Beach's ecological disaster. One would think that Mayor Beverly O'Neil would care enough about this mess to do something about it. Please help the citizens of Long Beach fight for a cleaner harbor by clicking on the mayor's name above and send her an email letting her know what you think about the cleanliness of the city's beaches. You can tell her you saw photos of her city's polluted shoreline at
http://www.matrixmasters.com/blog/longbeachpollution/
Thank you for helping us call this to the attention of our elected officials!

Please read the Comments section for reactions of Long Beach officials

posted by Lorenzo 1:00 PM