2 Uh-oh...Rapid Decrease of Arctic Summer Season Ice in the Last Year, Very Different from Steadier Loss in the past 29 Years
3. Go to the web link and look at the image, or the animated movie of the data. The last year has seen slightly more than a 1/3 speed-up of the rate of summer melt (38% faster than the estimated 'normal' rate of melt using the assembled data from 1979).
---------------------
'Remarkable' Drop in Arctic Sea Ice Raises Questions
09.25.07
Melting Arctic sea ice has shrunk to a 29-year low, significantly below the minimum set in 2005, according to preliminary figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder. NASA scientists, who have been observing the declining Arctic sea ice cover since the earliest measurements in 1979, are working to understand this sudden speed-up of sea ice decline and what it means for the future of Earth's northern polar region.
This data visualization shows the annual sea ice minimum in 2007.
Image right: At the end of each summer, the sea ice cover reaches its minimum extent and the ice that remains is called the perennial ice cover, which consists mainly of thick multi-year ice floes.
The area of the perennial ice has been steadily decreasing since the satellite record began in 1979, at a rate of about 10% per decade.
But the 2007 minimum, reached around Sept. 14, is far below the previous record made in 2005 and is about 38% lower than the climatological average. This data visualization shows the annual sea ice minimum from 1979 through 2007. + Click to view streaming Windows Media Viewer animation + Click to download .mpg file (12.9 Mb) + Click for print resolution still JPG Credit: NASA
"The decline in the amount of thick ice that survives the summer melt season this year is quite remarkable," said Josefino C. Comiso, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "The extent of this 'perennial' sea ice and the area it covers are both nearly 38 percent lower than average.
Compared to the record low in 2005, the extent and area are 24 percent and nearly 26 percent lower this year, respectively."
"From what we know of how Arctic sea ice behaves after nearly 30 years of continuous satellite observations, this kind of drop in sea ice usually takes more than three years to happen.
The rapid trend of the perennial ice previously reported in 2002 appears now to be in an accelerated mode," Comiso observed.
1.Min Sook Choi 2.Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts 3.Finally, as the article said, the world is paying more attention than ever. But it seemed a little late. Artic melt has been noticed and its linkage to the green house and global warming has raised the concern for many years. The experts should have reported these phenomena earlier in more aggressive manner. We see they still are not on the same page. They should be proactive not reactive like the ordinary people. --------------------------- October 2, 2007 Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia. Over all, the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates.
Now the six-month dark season has returned to the North Pole. In the deepening chill, new ice is already spreading over vast stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Astonished by the summer’s changes, scientists are studying the forces that exposed one million square miles of open water — six Californias — beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979.
At a recent gathering of sea-ice experts at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Hajo Eicken, a geophysicist, summarized it this way: “Our stock in trade seems to be going away.”
Scientists are also unnerved by the summer’s implications for the future, and their ability to predict it. Complicating the picture, the striking Arctic change was as much a result of ice moving as melting, many say. A new study, led by Son Nghiem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and appearing this week in Geophysical Research Letters, used satellites and buoys to show that winds since 2000 had pushed huge amounts of thick old ice out of the Arctic basin past Greenland. The thin floes that formed on the resulting open water melted quicker or could be shuffled together by winds and similarly expelled, the authors said.
The pace of change has far exceeded what had been estimated by almost all the simulations used to envision how the Arctic will respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. But that disconnect can cut two ways. Are the models overly conservative? Or are they missing natural influences that can cause wide swings in ice and temperature, thereby dwarfing the slow background warming? The world is paying more attention than ever.
Russia, Canada and Denmark, prompted in part by years of warming and the ice retreat this year, ratcheted up rhetoric and actions aimed at securing sea routes and seabed resources.
Proponents of cuts in greenhouse gases cited the meltdown as proof that human activities are propelling a slide toward climate calamity.
Arctic experts say things are not that simple. More than a dozen experts said in interviews that the extreme summer ice retreat had revealed at least as much about what remains unknown in the Arctic as what is clear. Still, many of those scientists said they were becoming convinced that the system is heading toward a new, more watery state, and that human-caused global warming is playing a significant role.
For one thing, experts are having trouble finding any records from Russia, Alaska or elsewhere pointing to such a widespread Arctic ice retreat in recent times, adding credence to the idea that humans may have tipped the balance. Many scientists say the last substantial warming in the region, peaking in the 1930s, mainly affected areas near Greenland and Scandinavia.
Some scientists who have long doubted that a human influence could be clearly discerned in the Arctic’s changing climate now agree that the trend is hard to ascribe to anything else. “We used to argue that a lot of the variability up to the late 1990s was induced by changes in the winds, natural changes not obviously related to global warming,” said John Michael Wallace, a scientist at the University of Washington. “But changes in the last few years make you have to question that. I’m much more open to the idea that we might have passed a point where it’s becoming essentially irreversible.” Experts say the ice retreat is likely to be even bigger next summer because this winter’s freeze is starting from such a huge ice deficit.
At least one researcher, Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., projects a blue Arctic Ocean in summers by 2013.
In essence, Arctic waters may be behaving more like those around Antarctica, where a broad fringe of sea ice builds each austral winter and nearly disappears in the summer. (Reflecting the different geography and dynamics at the two poles, there has been a slight increase in sea-ice area around Antarctica in recent decades.)
While open Arctic waters could be a boon for shipping, fishing and oil exploration, an annual seesawing between ice and no ice could be a particularly harsh jolt to polar bears. Many Arctic researchers warned that it was still far too soon to start sending container ships over the top of the world. “Natural variations could turn around and counteract the greenhouse-gas-forced change, perhaps stabilizing the ice for a bit,” said Marika Holland, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
But, she added, that will not last. “Eventually the natural variations would again reinforce the human-driven change, perhaps leading to even more rapid retreat,” Dr. Holland said. “So I wouldn’t sign any shipping contracts for the next 5 to 10 years, but maybe the next 20 to 30.”
While experts debate details, many agree that the vanishing act of the sea ice this year was probably caused by superimposed forces including heat-trapping clouds and water vapor in the air, as well as the ocean-heating influence of unusually sunny skies in June and July. Other important factors were warm winds flowing from Siberia around a high-pressure system parked over the ocean. The winds not only would have melted thin ice but also pushed floes offshore where currents and winds could push them out of the Arctic Ocean.
But another factor was probably involved, one with roots going back to about 1989. At that time, a periodic flip in winds and pressure patterns over the Arctic Ocean, called the Arctic Oscillation, settled into a phase that tended to stop ice from drifting in a gyre for years, so it could thicken, and instead carried it out to the North Atlantic. The new NASA study of expelled old ice builds on previous measurements showing that the proportion of thick, durable floes that were at least 10 years old dropped to 2 percent this spring from 80 percent in the spring of 1987, said Ignatius G. Rigor, an ice expert at the University of Washington and an author of the new NASA-led study.
Without the thick ice, which can endure months of nonstop summer sunshine, more dark open water and thin ice absorbed solar energy, adding to melting and delaying the winter freeze.
The thinner fresh-formed ice was also more vulnerable to melting from heat held near the ocean surface by clouds and water vapor. This may be where the rising influence of humans on the global climate system could be exerting the biggest regional influence, said Jennifer A. Francis of Rutgers University.
Other Arctic experts, including Dr. Maslowski in Monterey and Igor V. Polyakov at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, also see a role in rising flows of warm water entering the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, and in deep currents running north from the Atlantic Ocean near Scandinavia.
A host of Arctic scientists say it is too soon to know if the global greenhouse effect has already tipped the system to a condition in which sea ice in summers will be routinely limited to a few clotted passageways in northern Canada.
But at the university in Fairbanks — where signs of northern warming include sinkholes from thawing permafrost around its Arctic research center — Dr. Eicken and other experts are having a hard time conceiving a situation that could reverse the trends.
“The Arctic may have another ace up her sleeve to help the ice grow back,” Dr. Eicken said. “But from all we can tell right now, the means for that are quite limited.” ------- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/science/earth/02arct.html
1.Peaches Park 2. Consumer trust 3. When we realize we've been duped by a major corporation we feel deceived. Consumer trust runs the business in more ways than we think. I'd have to trust this brand, this company when I buy their product at the store. I wouldn't purchase something if I didn't believe(trust) that this product would actually fulfill it's said purpose. All these products have claims, they'll do "blank and blank" in exchange for my money. Maybe it's part of the truth that we only know, the whole truth would cost too much I think. ______________________________________________________________ How "Fresh" Is Air Freshener? Monday, Sep. 24, 2007 By COCO MASTERS Watch enough TV commercials, and you get the sense that Americans are obsessed with air freshener. Trigger-happy women routinely rush around the house armed with cans of the stuff, gleefully spraying running shoes, embarrassed dogs and cigar-smoke-laden furniture; whole families, it seems, are intoxicated by the fresh scent of Summer Breeze or Berry Burst. But just how "fresh" is air freshener? A study released last week by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) evaluated 14 air fresheners off the shelf of a local Walgreens and found that 12 contained variable amounts of substances called phthalates (pronounced THAL-ates), a group of chemicals that are used to dissolve and carry fragrances, soften plastics and also as sealants and adhesives. Phthalates are commonly found in a variety of products, including cosmetics, paints, nail polish and children's toys — and have long been at the center of a larger international controversy over their health effects.
Studies involving rat and human subjects have suggested that high exposures to certain kinds of phthalates can cause cancer, developmental and sex-hormone abnormalities (including decreased testosterone and sperm levels and malformed sex organs) in infants, and can affect fertility. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has no regulations on the use of phthalates, does not require the labeling of phthalate content on products and does not consider the quantities to which people are exposed to be harmful. But other countries think otherwise. In 2004, the European Union banned two types of phthalates in cosmetics and also bans the chemical in children's toys, as do 14 other countries. The first state bill to ban phthalates in children's toys in the U.S. is currently sitting on California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk, and he is expected to sign it this week.
Plug-in, spray or stand-alone liquid and gel air fresheners are used in nearly 75% of U.S. households, and the market has doubled since 2003 to $1.72 billion. The NRDC tested products, including those labeled "all-natural" or "unscented," and found a wide range of phthalate content, from zero parts per million (ppm) to 7,300 ppm. Many air fresheners contained a phthalate known as DEP and some also contained DBP, which are listed by the California EPA's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment as a developmental toxin and female and male reproductive toxin, respectively.
According to the NRDC report, three Walgreens products — Walgreens Scented Bouquet Air Freshener, Walgreens Air Freshener Spray and Walgreens Solid Air Freshener — were among the top four highest in phthalate content (including Ozium Glycolized Air Sanitizer), and Walgreens pulled them from store shelves last Wednesday. The company will submit its house-branded products to an independent lab to confirm the NRDC's findings; one of Walgreens' manufacturers has already decided to make its product phthlate-free, according to Walgreens spokeswoman Carol Hively. The two air fresheners that the NRDC found virtually free of phthalates were Febreze Air Effects Air Refresher and Renuzit Subtle Effects.
While the study looked at which air fresheners contain the chemicals and how much, it did not assess people's exposure to phthalates from these products — the size of the room, the distance from the air freshener and how long a person stays in the room are all factors that would affect potential toxicity. But like phthalates banned from U.K. beauty products, those in air fresheners can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin. "We're not saying that there's any clear-cut evidence here for health effects," says Dr. Gina Solomon of the NRDC. "If consumers want to reduce overall exposure, avoid these products or pick ones with lower levels. We don't know what the cutoff is."
Clearly, there is an active scientific debate about the results of the testing of phthalates. "It's still unresolved," says the NRDC's Solomon. In the meantime, for those who are concerned about phthalates in air fresheners, there are various ways to make the home smell better, au natural. Solomon keeps the house clean and opens the windows — and makes her husband take out the trash. Other common ways to eliminate odors are to keep fresh coffee grounds on the counter (a trick of many a flight attendant); toss baking soda at the bottom of the trash can; and grind up a slice of lemon in the garbage disposal. "Get at the root of the odor," says Solomon. "Fresh air will do wonders." ___________________________________
1. SuJung, Kim 2. Climate Campaigners Tipped for Nobel Peace Prize 3. In this article, former Vice President Al Gore is expected to win Nobel Prize. It is because of his campaign against climate change. I believe, if Al Gore or someone else win the prize for environmental reason , it would be helpful to encourage people and international/national organizations strive to protect environment.
Related to the lecture of last week, I think it was a kind of 'the Cognitive fix'.(And furthermore, it could led to structural fix) --------------------------- OSLO - Former Vice President Al Gore and other campaigners against climate change lead experts' choices for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, an award once reserved for statesmen, peacemakers and human rights activists.
If a campaigner against global warming carries off the high world accolade later this month, it will accentuate a shift to reward work outside traditional peacekeeping and reinforce the link between peace and the environment.
The winner, who will take $1.5 million in prize money, will be announced in the Norwegian capital on October 12 from a field of 181 nominees.
Gore, who has raised awareness with his book and Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", and Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who has shed light on how global warming affects Arctic peoples, were nominated to share the prize by two Norwegian parliamentarians.
"I think they are likely winners this year," said Stein Toennesson, director of Oslo's International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) and a long-time Nobel Peace Prize watcher.
"It will certainly be tempting to the (Nobel) committee to have two North Americans -- one the activist that personifies the struggle against climate change, raising awareness, and the other who represents some of the victims of climate change."
Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, agreed the award committee could establish the link between peace and the environment.
"I think the whole issue of climate change and the environment will come at some point and reflect in the prize," Egeland told reporters last week.
"There are already climate wars unfolding ... And the worst area for that is the Sahel belt in Africa."
There has been a shift to reward work away from the realm of conventional peacemaking and human rights work.
IN WITH A CHANCE
Toennesson said others with a chance included former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, a perennial nominee for decades of peace mediation work, and dissident Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Do for his pro-democracy efforts.
The secretive five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee does not disclose the names of nominees, though some who make nominations go public with their candidates.
Toennesson said by giving the award to those fighting climate change, the committee would thrust itself into the public debate ahead of a key U.N. climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December.
If Gore is seen as too political, the committee could opt instead for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the scientists who advise the United Nations and produce key reports on the climate problem, Toennesson said.
To give it a face, the prize could be shared by the IPCC's Indian chairman Rajendra Pachauri, experts said, though Pachauri told Reuters in London he did not think he stood a chance.
"I have a feeling it will go to Al Gore, and I think he deserves it. He certainly has done a remarkable job of creating awareness on the subject and has become a crusader," he said.
Watt-Cloutier told Reuters she was flattered to be mentioned as a possible winner but did not expect to win.
Toennesson said Ahtisaari deserves the prize most for helping to bring peace to the Aceh region of Indonesia in 2005.
(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle) ---- http://www.enn.com/climate/article/23645
1. YingQi Fan 2. The fourth player of the treadmill of production appeared! 3. Australia has been nagged by the scandals due to her too lax quarantine standards in the recent years, Australia Fire-ant pest, discovered in2001, fish stocks scandal, reported in 2006 and now the horse flue revealed lately, etc. Due to increasing globalization, the triangular relation among the treadmill organization, labor and government has the fourth player to take part in. That is the foreign countries that our own country shares interests with or depend on in some ways. No matter how many players join this game, nature will never let those off who play at the risk of society.
------------------------------
EDITORIAL: Horse flu: another quarantine scandal
Horse flu is just the latest exotic disease incursion into Australia, thanks to our lax quarantine standards. The Howard Government has announced an inquiry by a former High Court judge into the devastating equine influenza outbreak. This is inadequate. Horse flu is just the latest exotic disease incursion into Australia, as quarantine standards have come under pressure from free-traders. Nothing less than a full inquiry into the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) and Biosecurity Australia over the erosion of Australian quarantine standards is needed.
The costs from the horse flu outbreak have been measured in tens of millions of dollars lost to the thoroughbred racing industry, and hundreds of millions of dollars to the entertainment and gambling industries, including companies such as Tattersall's and Tabcorp.
One particularly alarming aspect of the disease outbreak was that the virulent disease appeared to have escaped from the establishment run by AQIS, at Eastern Creek, Sydney.
The Prime Minister's inquiry into the outbreak is welcome, but does not go far enough, as this is only the most recent outbreak of imported diseases in Australia.
In 2004, the exotic disease citrus canker was discovered on a large citrus orchard in Emerald, central Queensland. The owner of that property had earlier been investigated for illegally importing plant material into Australia, but was never prosecuted.
Citrus canker spread to nearby orchards, and every citrus tree in the Emerald area had to be destroyed before the outbreak was contained. The lives of many local farmers were severely affected for years.
Senate inquiry
A subsequent Senate inquiry into the citrus canker outbreak was highly critical of AQIS's efforts to deter illegal importation of plant material into Australia. It concluded, "AQIS seems to be so focussed on its important role of combating plant and animal pests that it appears oblivious to its other role under the Quarantine Act, which is to stop illegal importation of plants and animals that could potentially bring disease into Australia. If there are no deterrents to illegal importation, the country is at risk of being exposed to a number of pests that are prevalent overseas."
In June last year, the Queensland Primary Industries Minister, Tim Mulherin, revealed that at least 12 Queensland sugar-cane farms had been quarantined after the discovery of the exotic disease, sugar-cane smut, which could devastate the sugar industry.
Sugar-cane smut, a destructive disease first identified in South Africa in 1877, has spread to nearly every sugar-growing country in the world. The highly infectious fungal disease is spread by wind-borne spores which can travel long distances.
Further, the Queensland Government has had to conduct a fire-ant eradication program after the pests were first discovered in south-east Queensland in 2001.
Other concerns were raised by the Victorian farmers' newspaper, The Weekly Times, which last year reported that "Australia's fish stocks face being devastated by exotic diseases because of lax quarantine laws" (June 21, 2006).
It said Richard Whittington, a professor at Sydney University's veterinary science school, questioned AQIS's ineffective oversight of ornamental fish coming into Australia last year - in light of the appearance of exotic diseases which have appeared in farmed Murray cod, silver perch and trout, and which may have killed large numbers of Australian frog species.
The number of imported ornamental fish coming into Australia has risen from 3.4 million in 1999 to 15.5 million last year.
AQIS confirmed that fish consignments are tested for exotic diseases only if 25 per cent or more fish died during the one-to-three week quarantine period, and if the owners were willing to pay for it.
Professor Whittington said that survivors of disease outbreaks were still being released from quarantine consignments, and there were "alarming" failures in the quarantine system.
Professor Whittington said there were "inadequate pre-border policies, inadequate duration of quarantine, and inadequate inspection and surveillance during quarantine".
Australia is under sustained international pressure to water down its quarantine laws, with threats of action against her from the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The latest instance comes from New Zealand, which is taking Australia to the WTO in an attempt to water down the conditions under which apples can enter Australia from New Zealand, where the fire-blight disease is endemic.
It is ironic that when horse flu was detected in Australia, New Zealand immediately imposed a total ban on imports of all horses from Australia.
It is also ironic that Taiwan is raising its quarantine bar so as to increase the quality of its food production - both for its domestic market and for export to Japan (see page 8) - while Australian farmers are told that their quarantine standards have to be compromised in the name of "free trade".
- Peter Westmore is national president of the National Civic Council. --------
2. Los Angeles School Gardens Take Root, Get Funding
3. I've been thinking that education is essential for 'cognitive fix' and this can change our social structure eventually. School gardening is a good idea for childern and they will learn how to care not only themselves but also other life.
----------------------------
Los Angeles School Gardens Take Root, Get Funding RELATED ARTICLES Schools Embrace Ways to Help Environment Study: Combating Child Obesity With Gardening "Healthy Buddies" teach lifestyle lessons to kids Parents Gain Right to Know About Toxic Exposures
LOS ANGELES - Some California schoolkids are going to have the opportunity to grow their lunch, and many more plants.
California Secretary of Agriculture, A.G. Kawamura, is scheduled to address the teachers and principals this week on the important role school gardens play on campus as "learning laboratories." LA schools will be receiving more than $1.7 million in CISGP grant funds to be used for supplies, professional development and technical assistance for school gardens at more than 500 sites this school year. More than 30,000 seedlings will be available for teachers who are interested in launching or enhancing their own school garden.
Recipients of CISGP funds will receive valuable information about their grants and be introduced to the various programs available to promote their school gardening efforts, professional development opportunities for staff and volunteers and information on all of the resources available in the Los Angeles area to help and support their gardens -- including nutrition education programs from Network for a Healthy California.
ADVERTISEMENT
"Our goal has always been to see a school garden take root on every elementary, middle and high school campus throughout this great state," said Tim Alderson, CSGN Chairman. "We anticipate that this great event will inspire those educators and students who have invested so much time and energy in to their own school gardens to continue utilizing that great resource. For those schools that don't yet have a school garden, this resource fair will showcase the many benefits, for students and faculties alike, that are found in school gardens."
School Garden Network and the Los Angeles Unified School District, in partnership with Western Growers, the California Instructional School Garden Program (CISGP) and the University of California Cooperative Extension's Common Ground Program are proud to be hosting "Growing Healthy with School Gardens" -- a school garden resource fair in Los Angeles.
Western Growers is an agricultural trade association whose members grow, pack and ship ninety percent of the fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in California and seventy five percent of those commodities in Arizona. This totals about half of the nation's fresh produce.
The California School Garden Network is a collaborative effort of a number of educational institutions, non-profit organizations, private and government partners committed to enhancing learning through the use of instructional gardens in schools and other community settings. CSGN is committed to promoting academic achievement, living a healthy lifestyle, environmental stewardship and community and social development. ------------------------------------------- http://www.enn.com/agriculture/spotlight/23574
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
6 comments:
1. Mark Whitaker
2 Uh-oh...Rapid Decrease of Arctic Summer Season Ice in the Last Year, Very Different from Steadier Loss in the past 29 Years
3. Go to the web link and look at the image, or the animated movie of the data. The last year has seen slightly more than a 1/3 speed-up of the rate of summer melt (38% faster than the estimated 'normal' rate of melt using the assembled data from 1979).
---------------------
'Remarkable' Drop in Arctic Sea Ice Raises Questions
09.25.07
Melting Arctic sea ice has shrunk to a 29-year low, significantly below the minimum set in 2005, according to preliminary figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder. NASA scientists, who have been observing the declining Arctic sea ice cover since the earliest measurements in 1979, are working to understand this sudden speed-up of sea ice decline and what it means for the future of Earth's northern polar region.
This data visualization shows the annual sea ice minimum in 2007.
Image right: At the end of each summer, the sea ice cover reaches its minimum extent and the ice that remains is called the perennial ice cover, which consists mainly of thick multi-year ice floes.
The area of the perennial ice has been steadily decreasing since the satellite record began in 1979, at a rate of about 10% per decade.
But the 2007 minimum, reached around Sept. 14, is far below the previous record made in 2005 and is about 38% lower than the climatological average. This data visualization shows the annual sea ice minimum from 1979 through 2007.
+ Click to view streaming Windows Media Viewer animation
+ Click to download .mpg file (12.9 Mb)
+ Click for print resolution still JPG Credit: NASA
"The decline in the amount of thick ice that survives the summer melt season this year is quite remarkable," said Josefino C. Comiso, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "The extent of this 'perennial' sea ice and the area it covers are both nearly 38 percent lower than average.
Compared to the record low in 2005, the extent and area are 24 percent and nearly 26 percent lower this year, respectively."
"From what we know of how Arctic sea ice behaves after nearly 30 years of continuous satellite observations, this kind of drop in sea ice usually takes more than three years to happen.
The rapid trend of the perennial ice previously reported in 2002 appears now to be in an accelerated mode," Comiso observed.
---
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/arctic_minimum.html
1.Min Sook Choi
2.Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts
3.Finally, as the article said, the world is paying more attention than ever. But it seemed a little late. Artic melt has been noticed and its linkage to the green house and global warming has raised the concern for many years. The experts should have reported these phenomena earlier in more aggressive manner. We see they still are not on the same page. They should be proactive not reactive like the ordinary people.
---------------------------
October 2, 2007
Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia.
Over all, the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates.
Now the six-month dark season has returned to the North Pole. In the deepening chill, new ice is already spreading over vast stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Astonished by the summer’s changes, scientists are studying the forces that exposed one million square miles of open water — six Californias — beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979.
At a recent gathering of sea-ice experts at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Hajo Eicken, a geophysicist, summarized it this way: “Our stock in trade seems to be going away.”
Scientists are also unnerved by the summer’s implications for the future, and their ability to predict it.
Complicating the picture, the striking Arctic change was as much a result of ice moving as melting, many say. A new study, led by Son Nghiem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and appearing this week in Geophysical Research Letters, used satellites and buoys to show that winds since 2000 had pushed huge amounts of thick old ice out of the Arctic basin past Greenland. The thin floes that formed on the resulting open water melted quicker or could be shuffled together by winds and similarly expelled, the authors said.
The pace of change has far exceeded what had been estimated by almost all the simulations used to envision how the Arctic will respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. But that disconnect can cut two ways. Are the models overly conservative? Or are they missing natural influences that can cause wide swings in ice and temperature, thereby dwarfing the slow background warming?
The world is paying more attention than ever.
Russia, Canada and Denmark, prompted in part by years of warming and the ice retreat this year, ratcheted up rhetoric and actions aimed at securing sea routes and seabed resources.
Proponents of cuts in greenhouse gases cited the meltdown as proof that human activities are propelling a slide toward climate calamity.
Arctic experts say things are not that simple. More than a dozen experts said in interviews that the extreme summer ice retreat had revealed at least as much about what remains unknown in the Arctic as what is clear. Still, many of those scientists said they were becoming convinced that the system is heading toward a new, more watery state, and that human-caused global warming is playing a significant role.
For one thing, experts are having trouble finding any records from Russia, Alaska or elsewhere pointing to such a widespread Arctic ice retreat in recent times, adding credence to the idea that humans may have tipped the balance. Many scientists say the last substantial warming in the region, peaking in the 1930s, mainly affected areas near Greenland and Scandinavia.
Some scientists who have long doubted that a human influence could be clearly discerned in the Arctic’s changing climate now agree that the trend is hard to ascribe to anything else.
“We used to argue that a lot of the variability up to the late 1990s was induced by changes in the winds, natural changes not obviously related to global warming,” said John Michael Wallace, a scientist at the University of Washington. “But changes in the last few years make you have to question that. I’m much more open to the idea that we might have passed a point where it’s becoming essentially irreversible.”
Experts say the ice retreat is likely to be even bigger next summer because this winter’s freeze is starting from such a huge ice deficit.
At least one researcher, Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., projects a blue Arctic Ocean in summers by 2013.
In essence, Arctic waters may be behaving more like those around Antarctica, where a broad fringe of sea ice builds each austral winter and nearly disappears in the summer. (Reflecting the different geography and dynamics at the two poles, there has been a slight increase in sea-ice area around Antarctica in recent decades.)
While open Arctic waters could be a boon for shipping, fishing and oil exploration, an annual seesawing between ice and no ice could be a particularly harsh jolt to polar bears.
Many Arctic researchers warned that it was still far too soon to start sending container ships over the top of the world. “Natural variations could turn around and counteract the greenhouse-gas-forced change, perhaps stabilizing the ice for a bit,” said Marika Holland, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
But, she added, that will not last. “Eventually the natural variations would again reinforce the human-driven change, perhaps leading to even more rapid retreat,” Dr. Holland said. “So I wouldn’t sign any shipping contracts for the next 5 to 10 years, but maybe the next 20 to 30.”
While experts debate details, many agree that the vanishing act of the sea ice this year was probably caused by superimposed forces including heat-trapping clouds and water vapor in the air, as well as the ocean-heating influence of unusually sunny skies in June and July. Other important factors were warm winds flowing from Siberia around a high-pressure system parked over the ocean. The winds not only would have melted thin ice but also pushed floes offshore where currents and winds could push them out of the Arctic Ocean.
But another factor was probably involved, one with roots going back to about 1989. At that time, a periodic flip in winds and pressure patterns over the Arctic Ocean, called the Arctic Oscillation, settled into a phase that tended to stop ice from drifting in a gyre for years, so it could thicken, and instead carried it out to the North Atlantic.
The new NASA study of expelled old ice builds on previous measurements showing that the proportion of thick, durable floes that were at least 10 years old dropped to 2 percent this spring from 80 percent in the spring of 1987, said Ignatius G. Rigor, an ice expert at the University of Washington and an author of the new NASA-led study.
Without the thick ice, which can endure months of nonstop summer sunshine, more dark open water and thin ice absorbed solar energy, adding to melting and delaying the winter freeze.
The thinner fresh-formed ice was also more vulnerable to melting from heat held near the ocean surface by clouds and water vapor. This may be where the rising influence of humans on the global climate system could be exerting the biggest regional influence, said Jennifer A. Francis of Rutgers University.
Other Arctic experts, including Dr. Maslowski in Monterey and Igor V. Polyakov at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, also see a role in rising flows of warm water entering the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, and in deep currents running north from the Atlantic Ocean near Scandinavia.
A host of Arctic scientists say it is too soon to know if the global greenhouse effect has already tipped the system to a condition in which sea ice in summers will be routinely limited to a few clotted passageways in northern Canada.
But at the university in Fairbanks — where signs of northern warming include sinkholes from thawing permafrost around its Arctic research center — Dr. Eicken and other experts are having a hard time conceiving a situation that could reverse the trends.
“The Arctic may have another ace up her sleeve to help the ice grow back,” Dr. Eicken said. “But from all we can tell right now, the means for that are quite limited.”
-------
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/science/earth/02arct.html
1.Peaches Park
2. Consumer trust
3. When we realize we've been duped by a major corporation we feel deceived. Consumer trust runs the business in more ways than we think. I'd have to trust this brand, this company when I buy their product at the store. I wouldn't purchase something if I didn't believe(trust) that this product would actually fulfill it's said purpose. All these products have claims, they'll do "blank and blank" in exchange for my money. Maybe it's part of the truth that we only know, the whole truth would cost too much I think.
______________________________________________________________
How "Fresh" Is Air Freshener?
Monday, Sep. 24, 2007 By COCO MASTERS
Watch enough TV commercials, and you get the sense that Americans are obsessed with air freshener. Trigger-happy women routinely rush around the house armed with cans of the stuff, gleefully spraying running shoes, embarrassed dogs and cigar-smoke-laden furniture; whole families, it seems, are intoxicated by the fresh scent of Summer Breeze or Berry Burst.
But just how "fresh" is air freshener? A study released last week by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) evaluated 14 air fresheners off the shelf of a local Walgreens and found that 12 contained variable amounts of substances called phthalates (pronounced THAL-ates), a group of chemicals that are used to dissolve and carry fragrances, soften plastics and also as sealants and adhesives. Phthalates are commonly found in a variety of products, including cosmetics, paints, nail polish and children's toys — and have long been at the center of a larger international controversy over their health effects.
Studies involving rat and human subjects have suggested that high exposures to certain kinds of phthalates can cause cancer, developmental and sex-hormone abnormalities (including decreased testosterone and sperm levels and malformed sex organs) in infants, and can affect fertility. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has no regulations on the use of phthalates, does not require the labeling of phthalate content on products and does not consider the quantities to which people are exposed to be harmful. But other countries think otherwise. In 2004, the European Union banned two types of phthalates in cosmetics and also bans the chemical in children's toys, as do 14 other countries. The first state bill to ban phthalates in children's toys in the U.S. is currently sitting on California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk, and he is expected to sign it this week.
Plug-in, spray or stand-alone liquid and gel air fresheners are used in nearly 75% of U.S. households, and the market has doubled since 2003 to $1.72 billion. The NRDC tested products, including those labeled "all-natural" or "unscented," and found a wide range of phthalate content, from zero parts per million (ppm) to 7,300 ppm. Many air fresheners contained a phthalate known as DEP and some also contained DBP, which are listed by the California EPA's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment as a developmental toxin and female and male reproductive toxin, respectively.
According to the NRDC report, three Walgreens products — Walgreens Scented Bouquet Air Freshener, Walgreens Air Freshener Spray and Walgreens Solid Air Freshener — were among the top four highest in phthalate content (including Ozium Glycolized Air Sanitizer), and Walgreens pulled them from store shelves last Wednesday. The company will submit its house-branded products to an independent lab to confirm the NRDC's findings; one of Walgreens' manufacturers has already decided to make its product phthlate-free, according to Walgreens spokeswoman Carol Hively. The two air fresheners that the NRDC found virtually free of phthalates were Febreze Air Effects Air Refresher and Renuzit Subtle Effects.
While the study looked at which air fresheners contain the chemicals and how much, it did not assess people's exposure to phthalates from these products — the size of the room, the distance from the air freshener and how long a person stays in the room are all factors that would affect potential toxicity. But like phthalates banned from U.K. beauty products, those in air fresheners can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin. "We're not saying that there's any clear-cut evidence here for health effects," says Dr. Gina Solomon of the NRDC. "If consumers want to reduce overall exposure, avoid these products or pick ones with lower levels. We don't know what the cutoff is."
Clearly, there is an active scientific debate about the results of the testing of phthalates. "It's still unresolved," says the NRDC's Solomon. In the meantime, for those who are concerned about phthalates in air fresheners, there are various ways to make the home smell better, au natural. Solomon keeps the house clean and opens the windows — and makes her husband take out the trash. Other common ways to eliminate odors are to keep fresh coffee grounds on the counter (a trick of many a flight attendant); toss baking soda at the bottom of the trash can; and grind up a slice of lemon in the garbage disposal. "Get at the root of the odor," says Solomon. "Fresh air will do wonders."
___________________________________
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1664954,00.html
1. SuJung, Kim
2. Climate Campaigners Tipped for Nobel Peace Prize
3. In this article, former Vice President Al Gore is expected to win Nobel Prize. It is because of his campaign against climate change. I believe, if Al Gore or someone else win the prize for environmental reason , it would be helpful to encourage people and international/national organizations strive to protect environment.
Related to the lecture of last week, I think it was a kind of 'the Cognitive fix'.(And furthermore, it could led to structural fix)
---------------------------
OSLO - Former Vice President Al Gore and other campaigners against climate change lead experts' choices for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, an award once reserved for statesmen, peacemakers and human rights activists.
If a campaigner against global warming carries off the high world accolade later this month, it will accentuate a shift to reward work outside traditional peacekeeping and reinforce the link between peace and the environment.
The winner, who will take $1.5 million in prize money, will be announced in the Norwegian capital on October 12 from a field of 181 nominees.
Gore, who has raised awareness with his book and Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", and Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who has shed light on how global warming affects Arctic peoples, were nominated to share the prize by two Norwegian parliamentarians.
"I think they are likely winners this year," said Stein Toennesson, director of Oslo's International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) and a long-time Nobel Peace Prize watcher.
"It will certainly be tempting to the (Nobel) committee to have two North Americans -- one the activist that personifies the struggle against climate change, raising awareness, and the other who represents some of the victims of climate change."
Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, agreed the award committee could establish the link between peace and the environment.
"I think the whole issue of climate change and the environment will come at some point and reflect in the prize," Egeland told reporters last week.
"There are already climate wars unfolding ... And the worst area for that is the Sahel belt in Africa."
There has been a shift to reward work away from the realm of conventional peacemaking and human rights work.
IN WITH A CHANCE
Toennesson said others with a chance included former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, a perennial nominee for decades of peace mediation work, and dissident Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Do for his pro-democracy efforts.
The secretive five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee does not disclose the names of nominees, though some who make nominations go public with their candidates.
Toennesson said by giving the award to those fighting climate change, the committee would thrust itself into the public debate ahead of a key U.N. climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December.
If Gore is seen as too political, the committee could opt instead for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the scientists who advise the United Nations and produce key reports on the climate problem, Toennesson said.
To give it a face, the prize could be shared by the IPCC's Indian chairman Rajendra Pachauri, experts said, though Pachauri told Reuters in London he did not think he stood a chance.
"I have a feeling it will go to Al Gore, and I think he deserves it. He certainly has done a remarkable job of creating awareness on the subject and has become a crusader," he said.
Watt-Cloutier told Reuters she was flattered to be mentioned as a possible winner but did not expect to win.
Toennesson said Ahtisaari deserves the prize most for helping to bring peace to the Aceh region of Indonesia in 2005.
(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle)
----
http://www.enn.com/climate/article/23645
1. YingQi Fan
2. The fourth player of the treadmill of production appeared!
3. Australia has been nagged by the scandals due to her too lax quarantine standards in the recent years, Australia Fire-ant pest, discovered in2001, fish stocks scandal, reported in 2006 and now the horse flue revealed lately, etc. Due to increasing globalization, the triangular relation among the treadmill organization, labor and government has the fourth player to take part in. That is the foreign countries that our own country shares interests with or depend on in some ways. No matter how many players join this game, nature will never let those off who play at the risk of society.
------------------------------
EDITORIAL: Horse flu: another quarantine scandal
Horse flu is just the latest exotic disease incursion into Australia, thanks to our lax quarantine standards.
The Howard Government has announced an inquiry by a former High Court judge into the devastating equine influenza outbreak. This is inadequate. Horse flu is just the latest exotic disease incursion into Australia, as quarantine standards have come under pressure from free-traders. Nothing less than a full inquiry into the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) and Biosecurity Australia over the erosion of Australian quarantine standards is needed.
The costs from the horse flu outbreak have been measured in tens of millions of dollars lost to the thoroughbred racing industry, and hundreds of millions of dollars to the entertainment and gambling industries, including companies such as Tattersall's and Tabcorp.
One particularly alarming aspect of the disease outbreak was that the virulent disease appeared to have escaped from the establishment run by AQIS, at Eastern Creek, Sydney.
The Prime Minister's inquiry into the outbreak is welcome, but does not go far enough, as this is only the most recent outbreak of imported diseases in Australia.
In 2004, the exotic disease citrus canker was discovered on a large citrus orchard in Emerald, central Queensland. The owner of that property had earlier been investigated for illegally importing plant material into Australia, but was never prosecuted.
Citrus canker spread to nearby orchards, and every citrus tree in the Emerald area had to be destroyed before the outbreak was contained. The lives of many local farmers were severely affected for years.
Senate inquiry
A subsequent Senate inquiry into the citrus canker outbreak was highly critical of AQIS's efforts to deter illegal importation of plant material into Australia. It concluded, "AQIS seems to be so focussed on its important role of combating plant and animal pests that it appears oblivious to its other role under the Quarantine Act, which is to stop illegal importation of plants and animals that could potentially bring disease into Australia. If there are no deterrents to illegal importation, the country is at risk of being exposed to a number of pests that are prevalent overseas."
In June last year, the Queensland Primary Industries Minister, Tim Mulherin, revealed that at least 12 Queensland sugar-cane farms had been quarantined after the discovery of the exotic disease, sugar-cane smut, which could devastate the sugar industry.
Sugar-cane smut, a destructive disease first identified in South Africa in 1877, has spread to nearly every sugar-growing country in the world. The highly infectious fungal disease is spread by wind-borne spores which can travel long distances.
Further, the Queensland Government has had to conduct a fire-ant eradication program after the pests were first discovered in south-east Queensland in 2001.
Other concerns were raised by the Victorian farmers' newspaper, The Weekly Times, which last year reported that "Australia's fish stocks face being devastated by exotic diseases because of lax quarantine laws" (June 21, 2006).
It said Richard Whittington, a professor at Sydney University's veterinary science school, questioned AQIS's ineffective oversight of ornamental fish coming into Australia last year - in light of the appearance of exotic diseases which have appeared in farmed Murray cod, silver perch and trout, and which may have killed large numbers of Australian frog species.
The number of imported ornamental fish coming into Australia has risen from 3.4 million in 1999 to 15.5 million last year.
AQIS confirmed that fish consignments are tested for exotic diseases only if 25 per cent or more fish died during the one-to-three week quarantine period, and if the owners were willing to pay for it.
Professor Whittington said that survivors of disease outbreaks were still being released from quarantine consignments, and there were "alarming" failures in the quarantine system.
Professor Whittington said there were "inadequate pre-border policies, inadequate duration of quarantine, and inadequate inspection and surveillance during quarantine".
Australia is under sustained international pressure to water down its quarantine laws, with threats of action against her from the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The latest instance comes from New Zealand, which is taking Australia to the WTO in an attempt to water down the conditions under which apples can enter Australia from New Zealand, where the fire-blight disease is endemic.
It is ironic that when horse flu was detected in Australia, New Zealand immediately imposed a total ban on imports of all horses from Australia.
It is also ironic that Taiwan is raising its quarantine bar so as to increase the quality of its food production - both for its domestic market and for export to Japan (see page 8) - while Australian farmers are told that their quarantine standards have to be compromised in the name of "free trade".
- Peter Westmore is national president of the National Civic Council.
--------
http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2007sep15_edit.html
1. sekyoung
2. Los Angeles School Gardens Take Root, Get Funding
3. I've been thinking that education is essential for 'cognitive fix' and this can change our social structure eventually. School gardening is a good idea for childern and they will learn how to care not only themselves but also other life.
----------------------------
Los Angeles School Gardens Take Root, Get Funding
RELATED ARTICLES
Schools Embrace Ways to Help Environment
Study: Combating Child Obesity With Gardening
"Healthy Buddies" teach lifestyle lessons to kids
Parents Gain Right to Know About Toxic Exposures
LOS ANGELES - Some California schoolkids are going to have the opportunity to grow their lunch, and many more plants.
California Secretary of Agriculture, A.G. Kawamura, is scheduled to address the teachers and principals this week on the important role school gardens play on campus as "learning laboratories." LA schools will be receiving more than $1.7 million in CISGP grant funds to be used for supplies, professional development and technical assistance for school gardens at more than 500 sites this school year. More than 30,000 seedlings will be available for teachers who are interested in launching or enhancing their own school garden.
Recipients of CISGP funds will receive valuable information about their grants and be introduced to the various programs available to promote their school gardening efforts, professional development opportunities for staff and volunteers and information on all of the resources available in the Los Angeles area to help and support their gardens -- including nutrition education programs from Network for a Healthy California.
ADVERTISEMENT
"Our goal has always been to see a school garden take root on every elementary, middle and high school campus throughout this great state," said Tim Alderson, CSGN Chairman. "We anticipate that this great event will inspire those educators and students who have invested so much time and energy in to their own school gardens to continue utilizing that great resource. For those schools that don't yet have a school garden, this resource fair will showcase the many benefits, for students and faculties alike, that are found in school gardens."
School Garden Network and the Los Angeles Unified School District, in partnership with Western Growers, the California Instructional School Garden Program (CISGP) and the University of California Cooperative Extension's Common Ground Program are proud to be hosting "Growing Healthy with School Gardens" -- a school garden resource fair in Los Angeles.
Western Growers is an agricultural trade association whose members grow, pack and ship ninety percent of the fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in California and seventy five percent of those commodities in Arizona. This totals about half of the nation's fresh produce.
The California School Garden Network is a collaborative effort of a number of educational institutions, non-profit organizations, private and government partners committed to enhancing learning through the use of instructional gardens in schools and other community settings. CSGN is committed to promoting academic achievement, living a healthy lifestyle, environmental stewardship and community and social development.
-------------------------------------------
http://www.enn.com/agriculture/spotlight/23574
Post a Comment