Our Descent Into Madness

Poor Barbados, just 270 square miles, has really been hit hard lately. Earlier this month, the island was infested with giant snails, and now this:

A foreign bug species is sucking the life out of crops and native plants across Barbados, which has already been overrun by an infestation of ravenous snails that are rapidly destroying cultivated fields.

The new invader in the Caribbean island’s burgeoning pest crisis is the “Icerya genistae,” a tiny, oval-shape white insect believed to be native to Brazil that is so obscure it has no common name, according to scientists with the Barbadian Agriculture Ministry.

Fields of everything from peanuts to sweet peppers to egg plants have been “decimated.” I’m still having nightmare visions of hundreds of thousands of snails, each roughly the size of a human hand, crawling over everything. Eek.

A whale-trainer working at a Sea World facility in San Antonio, Texas, was attacked by a whale during a show called the Shamu Adventure. The trainer was battered and held under water while the audience looked on in horror. Spokespersons for Sea World have dismissed the whale’s attack as a surge of adolescent hormones and nothing more.

Naomi Rose, marine mammal scientist for the Humane Society of the United States, has this to say about that: “To say that Ky’s actions were motivated by his teenage hormones is a bit like saying a lion’s hunting instincts are motivated by his appetite. Well, yeah, maybe that’s right. But that’s not the point. The point is humans cannot predict, let alone control, these natural behaviors. The danger in thinking we can control these animals is injury, maybe even death.”

There’s a sea lion hiding out in San Fransisco’s Aquatic Park Lagoon and attacking swimmers. 14 have been bitten, and 10 have been chased from the water. The lagoon has been closed to swimmers and will reopen when the sea lion migrates farther north. What would cause an animal of this typically friendly species to act this way? Biologists aren’t sure, but think it might have something to do with the ingestion of toxic algae.

Nice.

CO2 could mess up low-orbiting GPS satellites.

Networks of orbiting GPS satellites send signals back to Earth that allow everything from jetfighters to cell phones to pinpoint their exact locations.

The same carbon dioxide that is a prime culprit for global warming in Earth’s lower atmosphere is also causing the upper atmosphere to cool and contract, the team reported in last week’s issue of the journal Science.

“If the atmosphere contracts, there will be less atmosphere up there to get rid of all the junk,” said study co-author John Emmert of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s E. O. Hulburt Center for Space Research in Washington, D.C.

Our CO2 emissions will also cause changes in the make up of the ionosphere, the highest layer of the atmosphere, which plays a big role in sending radio signals. GPS systems are among the most sensitive to any changes, but scientists can compensate by factoring fluctuations into their calculations.

A recent study out of Australia has found that the rate at which CO2 is emitted has more than doubled since 1990.

The study analyzed a 30-year record of air samples collected at an Australian Bureau of Meteorology observation station on the southern island state of Tasmania.

Raupach, who is also co-chairman of the Global Carbon Project, said 7.85 billion tons of carbon passed into the atmosphere last year, compared to 6.67 billion tons in 2000. . . . Earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization reported the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 379.1 parts per million in 2005, more than 35 percent higher than in the late 18th century.

Eek.

The Producers of An Inconvenient Truth offered to donate 50,000 copies of the DVD to classrooms across the nation, but the National Science Teachers Association rejected the offer on the grounds that accepting would mean risking funding by big financial supporters. Supporters like Exxon-Mobil.

In their e-mail rejection, they (NSTA) expressed concern that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn’t want to offer “political” endorsement of the film; and they saw “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members” in accepting the free DVDs.

Gore, however, is not running for office, and the film’s theatrical run is long since over. As for classroom benefits, the movie has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading climate scientists worldwide, and is required viewing for all students in Norway and Sweden.

Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.

At least Norway and Sweden have the right idea…

Click here to send the NSTA a response to this news.

Long ago, butternut trees were commonly used by Native Americans to produce syrup, medicine, dyes, vegetable oil, and of course, nuts. In 1983, Dr. Bergdahl, a retired forestry professer, discovered a disease called butternut canker that has since killed 90% of the butternut trees. The cause of the disease is unknown as of yet, though it’s thought that insects help spread it.

Dr. Bergdahl said the fungus is just one of many influences that are changing the composition of the Eastern forests. The hemlock wooly adelgid, the pine-shoot beetle and the emerald ash borer are among the introduced insects that are killing trees now, and the Asian long-horned beetle is approaching. The fungus that causes sudden oak death in California and Oregon is another potential threat. Dr. Bergdahl said this wave of invaders is a result of worldwide trade in which “commodities are moved in huge quantities very quickly.”

So far the only treatment is preventative; conservation.

While the October symposium was an important first step for scientists sharing research, most people still know nothing about the disease, Dr. Bergdahl said, adding, “The general public won’t understand it until the trees start dying all around them.”

This is a digestive table by Amy Youngs:

When you finish eating, you put the rest of your food in the “portal” in the center of the table, right into an ecosystem of bacteria, sowbugs, and worms. The decomposers digest it into compost that “sprinkles” out of the bottom, right onto plants that are living there. Best of all, an infrared camera inside is hooked up to a screen on the table’s surface, so you can watch the whole thing in action.

From Treehugger… Check out Downsizer for articles about all things sustainable lifestyle, from growing your own food to sending holiday cards, plus forums where you can learn from and share with like-minded people. Get started.

Many in the southern US eat their Thanksgiving turkey deep fried. Plano, TX is collecting the leftover fat to burn as fuel.

“This is our busiest time, the week after Thanksgiving. We collect about 500 gallons of turkey fat during that time,” said Lois Woolf, a Plano City worker, as she hoisted a plastic container of oil left outside someone’s home for collection.

Plano collects the oil from residents who call in and ask for pick-ups — and there is plenty of demand in a region where people like their food fried and crispy.

Sweet.