Public concern for environment lowest in 20 years

Levels of public concern were lowest since 1992 in 12 countries, according to an international poll

On average globally, only 49% of people said climate change was a “very serious” concern, with 50% saying the same for biodiversity loss and the highest level being 58% for shortages of fresh water. The poll shows concern for most issues was rising through the noughties and declined since around 2009 when a major UN climate summit in Copenhagen failed to reach a strong deal.

Around 1,000 people in each of the 22 countries taking part in the poll were quizzed on their attitudes, with 12 countries having been polled since 1992. A total of 22,812 people in the following countries were polled: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, US, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Kenya, Panama, and Turkey

From;  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/28/public-concern-environment

wotfigo; The old term “Bleached Coral” is now known to be caused by an infectious  bacteria & the new terminology of “White Coral Disease” is preferred. Anyhow, “White Coral” is just dead coral & there will be any number of pollutants or toxins that will kill coral, the vast majority will be related to human activity. The coral reefs are dying just like the rain forests & the savannah & humans are to blame.

An alarming, mysterious disease is rapidly killing corals at the north shore of Kauai, Hawaii. Scientists have also observed diseased fish and turtles in the same area. Might this be the Pacific version of the Atlatnic White Pox disease?

This Hawaiian outbreak sounds eerily similar to Acroporid serratiosis (APS), AKA White Pox Disease, a fast-moving infection that decimated Caribbean Elkhorn Coral (Acropora palmata) in the late 1990s through the 2000s.  Last year, scientists identified the culprit of White Pox diease: a bacterium Serratia marcescens. This bacteria is found in human excrement and a correlation was established between untreated human sewage and White Pox.  When local Floridian communities improved their waste management facilities, the occurrence of White Pox infections disappeared.

Is human activity once again to blame for the infections in Hawaii?

From;  http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/white-coral-disease-attacking-kauai-hawaii

Women working in automotive plastics factories are five times more likely to get breast cancer. But their risk has been largely ignored.

Windsor, Ontario—For more than three decades, workers, most of them women, have complained of dreadful conditions in many of this city’s plastic automotive parts factories: Pungent fumes and dust that caused nosebleeds, headaches, nausea and dizziness. Blobs of smelly, smoldering plastic dumped directly onto the floor. “It was like hell,” says one woman who still works in the industry.

The women fretted, usually in private, about what seemed to be an excess of cancer and other diseases in the factories across the river from Detroit. “People were getting sick, but you never really thought about the plastic itself,” said Gina DeSantis, who has worked at a plant near Windsor for 25 years.

Now, workers like DeSantis are the focal point of a new study that appears to strengthen the tie between breast cancer and toxic exposures.

The six-year study, conducted by a team of researchers from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, examined the occupational histories of 1,006 women from Ontario’s Essex and Kent counties who had the disease and 1,146 who didn’t. Adjustments were made for smoking, weight, alcohol use and other lifestyle and reproductive factors.

The results, published online today in the journal Environmental Health, are striking: Women employed in the automotive plastics industry were almost five times as likely to develop breast cancer, prior to menopause, as women in the control group.

From; http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/11/report-plastics-breast-cancer-link

Photo; Black Lion Tamarin, found only in Brazil

wotfigo; Now cloning the last remaining species near extinction may be their last hope. But it is no solution. Until i) human population stops expanding, ii) the growth economic model is abandoned & iii) habitat is protected, the human caused mass extinction will continue.

Brazil Plans to Clone Its Endangered Species

If scientists in Brazil have their way, the populations of eight endangered species could soon expand through a mass effort to clone them. The project is spearheaded by the Brasilia Zoological Garden in partnership withEmbrapa, the Brazilian government’s agricultural research agency.

The scientists have already spent the past two years collecting 420 genetic samples for the species—mostly from dead specimens found in the Cerrado savanna region—and are now waiting for legal authorization to start the cloning. If they receive government approval, the species they’ll be working with would include the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus); jaguar (Panthera onca); black lion tamarin (Leontopithecus chrysopygus); bush dog (Speothos venaticus); Brazilian aardvark, also known locally as coati (Nasua nasua); collared anteater (Tamandua tetradactyla); gray brocket deer (Mazama gouazoubira); and bison (Bison bison). Bison are not native to Brazil, although the rest of the species all have some of their primary habitats within the country’s borders. The black lion tamarin, the most endangered of the eight species, is the only one that lives exclusively in Brazil.

From; http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2012/11/14/brazil-plans-to-clone-its-endangered-species/

Water Woes

How dams, diversions, dirty water and droughts put America’s wildlife at risk

Introduction | Acknowledgements

America’s Everglades | California’s Coastal Sage Brush Ecosystem | The Colorado River | The Edwards Aquifer and San Marcos River | Ozark Rivers and Eastern U.S. Rivers | The Pacific Rim Ecosystem | The Sierra Nevada | The Sonoran Desert | Tennessee River Watershed | The Virgin River | Activists Choice (species) Canada Lynx

• In the Sonoran Desert, near Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., the last few hundred Sonoran pronghorn antelope struggle to survive in one of the hottest, driest corners of North America.
• In the Ozark Rivers and streams of the Eastern United States, the ancient salamander called the hellbender has declined 75 percent since the 1980s. North America’s largest salamander depends entirely on cold, clean rushing water.
• In Florida’s famous Everglades, some 600 native species are rare or imperiled. One example is the Everglades kite, a beautiful hawk that specializes in eating a single kind of snail.
• In the Colorado River (the river that carved the Grand Canyon) four species of native chub and pikeminnow fish are listed as endangered.

From; http://www.stopextinction.org/top10.html#.UKQlKOSsiSo

Photo; River Derwent in England

Slow Pace Of Carbon Cuts Brings Catastrophic Climate Change Closer: UN

wotfigo; There have been no carbon cuts and any allusion to the contrary is an illusion.

The gap between the carbon emission cuts pledged and the cuts scientists say are needed has widened, 

The world is straying further away from commitments to combat climate change, bringing the prospect of catastrophic global warming a step closer, a UN report said on Wednesday. The warning came as nearly 200 governments prepare to meet in Qatar for international climate negotiations starting next Monday.

The gap between what world governments have committed to by way of cuts in greenhouse gases and the cuts that scientists say are necessary has widened, but in order to stave off dangerous levels of global warming, it should have narrowed. There is now one-fifth more carbon in the atmosphere than there was in 2000, and there are few signs of global emissions falling, according to the new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep).

The warning of increasing emissions came as fresh evidence was published showing the last decade was the warmest on record for Europe. The European Environment Agency (EEA) said all parts of the region had been affected, with higher rainfall in northern Europe and a drying out in the south, bringing flooding to northern countries including the UK, and droughts to the Mediterranean.

From;  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/21/slow-carbon-cuts-climate-change-un

Most U.S. Republicans believe in demonic possession, less than half believe in climate change:

A new poll reveals the majority of registered Republican voters believe that demonic possession is a real phenomenon.

The “Halloween-centric” poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling showed that 68 percent of Republican voters think it’s possible to be possessed by demons.

Meanwhile, as news website AlterNet notes, only 48 percent of Republicans polled in an earlier survey conducted by the Pew Research Center survey said they believe in climate change.

From; http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2012/11/most-us-republicans-believe-in-demonic.html

Figure 1: Various best estimate global temperature predictions evaluated in the ‘Lessons from Past Climate Predictions’ series vs. GISTEMP (red).  The warmer colors are generally mainstream climate science predictions, while the cooler colors are generally “skeptic” predictions.  The Hansen projection in pink is from Hansen et al. 1988.

Testing Hansen’s 1988 Model Accuracy

Evaluating the accuracy of climate models by examining the model projections made by James Hansen in 1988 and the IPCC in 1990 and 1995. We should note here that Skeptical Science has evaluated many other temperature projections going back as far as Wallace Broeker’s 1975 paper in the Lessons from Past Predictions series, with the results summarized in Figure 1 (though not all of these are based on climate models).  Note that most of the accurate predictions have come from mainsream climate scientists and models, while the least accurate predictions have come from various ‘skeptics’.

From; http://skepticalscience.com/nate-silver-climate-chapter-review.html

Cabot’s Methodology Links Tainted Water Wells to Gas Fracking
Mark Drajem and Jim Efstathiou Jr., Bloomberg
Methane in two Pennsylvania water wells has a chemical fingerprint that links it to natural gas produced by hydraulic fracturing, evidence that such drilling can pollute drinking water.

The data, collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are significant because the composition of the gas —its isotopic signature — falls into a range Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. (COG) had identified as that of the Marcellus Shale, which it tapped through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

“The EPA data falls squarely in the Marcellus space” established by Cabot’s scientists, said Rob Jackson, an environmental scientist at Duke University. That evidence backs up his findings linking gas drilling and water problems in the town of Dimock, applying the very methodology that Cabot established to try to debunk it,

From; http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-10-05/shale-gas-oct-8