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Archive for March 1st, 2010
Massive Antarctic iceberg threatens ocean circulation
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
New Scientist: The calving of a massive iceberg off east Antarctica last week has prompted fears that the event could alter the salinity of the surrounding ocean, with damaging effects on marine life and global ocean currents. The 860-billion-tonne berg, with a surface area of about 2500 square kilometres, had formed 50 per cent of a 100-kilometre tongue poking out of the Mertz glacier. Major fractures had been developing for years, so the break was anticipated, say Rob Massom and Neal Young ...
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El Niño and a pathogen, not global warming, killed Costa Rican toad
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
ScienceDaily: Scientists broadly agree that global warming may threaten the survival of many plant and animal species; but global warming did not kill the Monteverde golden toad, an often cited example of climate-triggered extinction, says a new study. The toad vanished from Costa Rica's Pacific coastal-mountain cloud forest in the late 1980s, the apparent victim of a pathogen outbreak that has wiped out dozens of other amphibians in the Americas. Many researchers have linked outbreaks of the ...
Costa Rica: Global warming didn’t kill the golden toad
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Science NOW: The golden toad was last seen in 1989 in the Costa Rican cloud forest of Monteverde--and 5 years later, its disappearance was the first extinction to be blamed on humanmade global warming. New evidence, however, suggests that humans may not have been at fault after all. Here's the current line on what drove the golden toad extinct. As humans pumped carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, Costa Rican rainforests became hotter and dryer in the mid-1980s. These ...
Weed Killer Makes Male Frogs Lay Eggs
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
National Geographic: The so-called pregnant man has company: One of the most common weed killers in the United States can make male frogs lay eggs, a new study says. Atrazine, widely used to kill pests on U.S. croplands, is an endocrine disruptor--a substance that interferes with animals' reproductive systems. Previous research has shown that atrazine can give male amphibians female characteristics: For instance, male frogs exposed to atrazine have lower testosterone levels, produce less sperm, and ...
Australia has hottest-ever summer
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Agence France-Presse: Western Australia has sweated through its hottest ever summer, recording average temperatures just shy of 30 degrees Celsius, officials said on Monday. Weather officials said the giant, dusty state roasted at an average of about 29,6 Celsius during the southern hemisphere summer, 0,2 degrees over the previous high in 1997-1998. The state capital Perth also endured its driest summer since records began in 1897, with just 0,2 millimetres of rain falling in December, January and ...
UK flood warnings remain as heavy rain eases
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Guardian: Flood warnings remain in force today despite some respite from the deluge of rain that hit the UK over the weekend. The Environment Agency had 18 flood warnings in place this morning and 140 flood watches, although it said it was not expecting any flooding of property. The remaining risk of flooding – the warnings apply to north-east England, parts of East Anglia, and the river Arun in West Sussex – is posed by river water still running down after the weekend rainfall, the ...
How that cork in your wine bottle helps forests and biodiversity, an interview with Patrick Spencer
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Mongabay: Next time you're in the supermarket looking to buy a nice bottle of wine: think cork. Although it's not widely known, the cork industry is helping to sustain one of the world's most biodiverse forests, including a number of endangered species such as the Iberian lynx and the Barbary deer. Spreading across 6.6 million acres in southern Europe (France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy) and northern Africa (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) oak cork trees Quercus suber are actually preserved and ...
Common pesticide changes male frogs into females, likely devastating populations
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Mongabay: One of the world's most popular pesticides, atrazine, chemically castrates male frogs and in some instances changes them into completely functionally females, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors conclude that atrazine likely plays a large, but unsuspected role in the current global amphibian crisis. To study how atrazine impacts frogs, researchers studied the long-term effects of the pesticide on an all-male group forty of ...
UN proposes WTO-style environment watchdog
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Business Green: A global environmental watchdog modelled on the powerful World Trade Organisation (WTO) could be formed as part of any international climate change treaty, according to environment ministers meeting in Bali last week who agreed to form a new working group to investigate proposed reforms to environmental governance procedures. Speaking to reporters at the close of the meeting, Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), signalled there was growing support ...
Green Measures Expose Bias Against Urban Poor
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Inter Press Service: Edgar Borras sifts through his remaining possessions in a demolished shanty beside a Manila waterway, preparing to bring them to his wife and 12-year-old son who now live in a remote relocation site in a province outside the Philippine capital. "They want to come back here. They don't like it there. It's too far," Borras said in an interview, referring to the site in Calauan in Laguna province, some 74 km away. Before a November 2009 government order to move flood-prone ...