The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world’s oceans are in trouble, scientists now say.

Penguins may be the tuxedo-clad version of a canary in the coal mine, with generally ailing populations from a combination of global warming, ocean oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development, according to a new scientific review paper.

A University of Washington biologist detailed specific problems around the world with remote penguin populations, linking their decline to the overall health of southern oceans.

“Now we’re seeing effects (of human caused warming and pollution) in the most faraway places in the world,” said conservation biologist P. Dee Boersma, author of the paper published in the July edition of the journal Bioscience. “Many penguins we thought would be safe because they are not that close to people. And that’s not true.”

Scientists figure there are between 16 to 19 species of penguins. About a dozen are in some form of trouble, Boersma wrote. A few, such as the king penguin found in islands north of Antarctica, are improving in numbers, she said.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists three penguin species as endangered, seven as vulnerable, which means they are “facing a high risk of extinction in the wild,” and two more as “near threatened.” About 15 years ago only five to seven penguin species were considered vulnerable, experts said.

And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has already listed one penguin species on its endangered list, is studying whether it needs to add 10 more.

The largest Patagonian penguin colony in the world is at Punta Tumbo, Argentina, but the number of breeding pairs there dropped in half from about 400,000 in the late 1960s to about 200,000 in October 2006, Boersma reported. Over a century, African penguins have decreased from 1.5 million breeding pairs to 63,000.

Read Full Story Here

The battle to reduce carbon emissions is at the heart of many eco-friendly efforts, and researchers from the University of Missouri have discovered that nature has been lending a hand. Researchers at the Missouri Tree Ring Laboratory in the Department of Forestry discovered that trees submerged in freshwater aquatic systems store carbon for thousands of years, a significantly longer period of time than trees that fall in a forest, thus keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.

“If a tree is submerged in water, its carbon will be stored for an average of 2,000 years,” said Richard Guyette, director of the MU Tree Ring Lab and research associate professor of forestry in the School of Natural Resources in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. “If a tree falls in a forest, that number is reduced to an average of 20 years, and in firewood, the carbon is only stored for one year.”

The team studied trees in northern Missouri, a geographically unique area with a high level of riparian forests (forests that have natural water flowing through them). They discovered submerged oak trees that were as old as 14,000 years, potentially some of the oldest discovered in the world. This carbon storage process is not just ancient; it continues even today as additional trees become submerged, according to Guyette.

While a tree is alive, it has a high ability to store carbon, thus keeping it out of the atmosphere. However, as it begins to decay, a tree’s carbon is released back into the atmosphere. Discovering that certain conditions slow this process reveals the importance of proper tree disposal as well as the benefits of riparian forests.

Read Full Story Here

The Group of Eight wealthy nations are looking at investing more than $10 billion a year to support new technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, including carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), a Japanese daily reported on Sunday.

A draft statement on economic issue is being considered for release at the July 7-9 summit of G8 leaders in Hokkaido, northern Japan, the business daily Nikkei said.

The G8 countries plan to fund research to develop CCS projects, which bury emissions from power plants, as a measure to help meet a global target to halve greenhouse gases by 2050, Nikkei said.

The draft statement also includes an agreement to set national interim goals to reduce emissions by 2020-2030, a step environmentalists and the EU say is vital, the Nikkei said, adding that no figures were included.

A Japanese government source told Reuters last week that the United States had yet to agree to a goal of reducing global emissions by 50 percent by mid-century.

The G8 leaders will share strong concern over rising crude oil prices, which are pushing up inflation and depressing the world economy, Nikkei said.

The leaders will call for oil-consuming and producing nations to cooperate more closely, the newspaper said.

Read Full Story Here

This extremely well made and thought out short film, skillfully blends the horror movie genre with an environmental message, that we could all learn from.

Thousands of new wind turbines could be built across the UK as part of a £100bn investment in renewable energy that could create hundreds of thousands of new “green collar” jobs, Gordon Brown announced today.

The prime minister unveiled what he described as a “green revolution” and “the most dramatic change in energy policy since the advent of nuclear power”.

He wants to build up Britain’s clean power supply in order to reach the EU-imposed target of producing 15% of the country’s energy from renewable sources by 2020. This will require £100bn of investment from the private sector, which the government will encourage with financial incentives due to be announced later by the business secretary, John Hutton.

In a speech to an energy summit at the Tate Modern art gallery in central London, Brown said that the North Sea, which has passed its peak in terms of oil and gas supplies, will be turned into “the equivalent for wind power of what the Gulf of Arabia is for oil”. Wind turbines will also be built inland, but with sensitivity towards local communities.

Householders will be encouraged to reduce their bills through energy-saving incentives due to be announced later this summer, said Brown. Within a decade he said he wanted every householder able to do so to fit loft or cavity wall insulation, install low-energy light bulbs, and use low-energy consumer goods.

The government will also shortly begin a new advertising campaign showing people what steps they can take to reduce their energy and fuel bills – steps such as turning appliances off rather than leaving them on standby, and fitting new shower heads.

In the autumn, said Brown, the government will consult on a new plan aimed at changing the way in which energy companies operate – encouraging them not to supply ever more units of electricity and gas, but to make profits from reducing, not increasing, demand.

“This is a green revolution in the making,” Brown said. “It will be a tenfold increase on our current deployment of renewables, and a 300% increase on our existing plans: the most dramatic change in our energy policy since the advent of nuclear power.”

He said it would mean that by 2020 renewables would account for over 30% of electricity supply, 14% cent of heat supply and up to 10% cent of transport fuels.

Brown estimated that the renewables programme would generate around 160,000 jobs, and plans for new nuclear power stations around 100,000, with many more created from energy-saving measures.

The prime minister also said that he was prepared to take on public opinion over green taxes, insisting that a low-carbon society would not emerge from a “business as usual” approach.

“It will require real leadership from government - being prepared to make hard decisions on planning or on tax for example,” he said.

“It will mean new kinds of consumer behaviour and lifestyles. And it will demand creativity, innovation and entrepreneurialism throughout our economy and our society.”

Read Full Story Here

Like people vacationing in the mountains to escape summer heat, plants are “climbing” to higher elevations to cope with global warming, a new study shows.

Previous research has suggested that many plant and animal species have been shifting their ranges toward the Poles as the planet warms.

Now scientists have found evidence that plants have also been slowly moving into higher elevations to stay within ideal temperature zones.

Each year this “escalator effect” is pushing plants upward by about ten feet (three meters).

“When we started to look at this, I was not expecting such a strong message,” said study leader Jonathan Lenoir, a forest ecologist at AgroParisTech, a research institute in France.

If global warming continues over the coming decades—as researchers predict it will—the plants will continue to climb.

But since some species move faster than others, this shift could tear established ecosystems apart, the researchers report in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Science.

For more than a century naturalists all over the world have been recording exactly where they found various plant species in the mountains.

“Botanists used to wander in mountain ecosystems … to look for and study specific mountain plant communities, to locate rare and endangered plant communities … or even simply to enjoy the landscape within mountains,” Lenoir said.

Read Full Story Here

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

“From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water,” said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.

This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during the summer months and satellite data coming in over recent weeksshows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when there was an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.

“The issue is that, for the first time that I am aware of, the NorthPole is covered with extensive first-year ice – ice that formed last autumn and winter. I’d say it’s even-odds whether the North Pole melts out,” said Dr Serreze.

Read Full Story Here

    alt=”The Big Green Idea” style=”border: none;” />

It’s not often you see a huge, green Double Decker bus driving around the towns and cities of Britain, but that could soon change. The Big Green Idea (http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/) is trying to raise money to finance just such a vehicle. The “big green” idea is this: the bus will travel around towns and cities across the country, stopping at various places for a few days at a time. Anyone can then visit the bus to learn more about being green.

The bottom deck of the bus is filled with lots of green products, and is designed to help people understand what these products are, what they do and how to use them. The top deck will house a solar powered cinema and an area for talks and demonstrations. By booking a place, anyone can go along to one of these talks and learn more about being green.

The project is planned to start Summer ‘08. You can pop along to the website to find out more information, and also donate a bit of cash to get this great idea up and running.

Russ - MYG

Over 80 per cent of people believe that climate change is having an impact on the UK right now and yet 40 per cent of us are doing nothing to reduce our energy use. Why?

Environmentalist author Bill McKibben discusses which of the 2008 Presidential candidates, Barack Obama or John McCain would produce the best record on environmental issues.

For full video click here: http://fora.tv/2008/03/24/Environmentalist_Bill_McKibben_in_Conversation

Droughts and downpours exacerbated by climate change allowed two diseases to converge and wipe out large numbers of African lions in 1994 and 2001, according to a new study.

Lions regularly survive outbreaks of canine distemper virus (CDV) and infestations by a tick-borne blood parasite called Babesia. But both normally occur in isolation.

In 1994 and 2001, however, a “perfect storm” of extreme drought followed by heavy seasonal rains set up the conditions for the two diseases to converge, the study said.

The effect was lethal: The synchronized infections wiped out about a third of the Serengeti lion population in 1994. The nearby Ngorongoro Crater lion population experienced similar losses in 2001.

“It was already well known that die offs can be triggered by droughts and floods,” Craig Packer, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, explained in an email from his research site in Tanzania.

“We were able to identify the interacting components of a lethal co-infection that had not previously been considered,” he said.

Read Full Story Here

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out the record $2.5 billion in punitive damages that Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) had been ordered to pay for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the nation’s worst tanker spill.

By a 5-3 vote, the high court ruled that the punitive damages award should be slashed to a maximum amount equal to the total relevant compensatory damages of $507.5 million.

The justices overturned a ruling by a U.S. Court of Appeals that had awarded the record punitive damages to about 32,000 commercial fishermen, Alaska natives, property owners and others harmed by the spill.

In the majority opinion, Justice David Souter concluded the $2.5 billion in punitive damages was excessive under federal maritime law, and should be cut to the amount of actual harm.

Soaring oil prices have propelled Exxon Mobil to previously unforeseen levels of profitability in recent years; the company posted earnings of $40.6 billion in 2007.

It took Exxon Mobil just under two days to bring in $2.5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2007.

The Exxon Valdez supertanker ran aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in March 1989, spilling about 11 million gallons of crude oil.

The spill spread oil to more than 1,200 miles of coastline, closed fisheries and killed thousands of marine mammals and hundreds of thousands of sea birds.

A federal jury in Alaska awarded $5 billion in punitive damages in 1994. A federal judge later reduced the punitive damages to $4.5 billion, and the appeals court further cut it to $2.5 billion.

Exxon Mobil, the largest U.S. company by market capitalization, then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Souter rejected Exxon Mobil’s argument that the federal clean water law’s water pollution penalties preempt punitive damage awards in maritime spill cases. But he sided with the company in slashing the award.

“We … hold that the federal statutory law does not bar a punitive award on top of damages for economic loss, but that the award here should be limited to an amount equal to compensatory damages,” he said.

In Irving, Texas, Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement, “The Valdez oil spill was a tragic accident and one which the corporation deeply regrets.”

“We know this has been a very difficult time for everyone involved. We have worked hard over many years to address the impacts of the spill and to prevent such accidents from happening in our company again,” he said.

In Alaska, Tim Joyce, mayor of the Prince William Sound town of Cordova, where most of the area’s fishing fleet is concentrated, said, “Instead of taking a large corporation to the woodshed, they just gave them a slap on the wrist.”

Compared to Exxon’s billions of dollars of quarterly profit, “$500 million, that’s lost in the rounding,” he said. “A lot of people had their whole lives ruined because of this.”

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also denounced the ruling and said, “The court gutted the jury’s decision on punitive damages.”

A joint statement from Alaska’s congressional delegation said, “Today’s ruling adds insult to injury to the fishermen, communities and Alaska natives who have been waiting nearly 20 years for proper compensation following the worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history.”

Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said: “This is good news for companies concerned about reining in excessive punitive damages.” The business group said the ruling could have an impact far beyond federal maritime law.

Company lawyers had called the $2.5 billion the largest punitive damage award ever affirmed by a federal appellate court — larger than the total of all punitive damage awards upheld by federal appellate courts in U.S. history.

The case was decided by eight Supreme Court members. The ninth, Justice Samuel Alito, who owns Exxon Mobil stock, recused himself from the case.

Dissenting Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer would have upheld the award. Stevens and Ginsburg said Congress, not the court, should set limits on punitive damages under maritime law.

Breyer said this was no ordinary reckless behavior case.

Read Full Story Here

Major technological progress needed to make renewable energy affordable says a study by the RAND corpoaration.

Dramatic progress in renewable energy technology is needed if the United States desires to produce 25 percent of its electricity and motor vehicle fuel from renewable sources by 2025 without significantly increasing consumer costs, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today.

Produced by the RAND Environment, Energy and Economic Development program, the study provides a “snapshot” of the nation’s potential energy expenditures if a requirement was imposed that 25 percent of electricity and motor vehicle fuels used in the United States by 2025 would come from renewable resources (a goal activists have described as “25 x ‘25″).

The study finds that biomass resources and wind power have the greatest potential to contribute toward reaching the 25 x ‘25 goal.

The study replaces a report withdrawn by RAND in 2006 because of errors RAND identified in the computer model and numerical assumptions on which the findings were based. The new report finds that meeting the 25 x ‘25 goals would be more challenging than outlined in the earlier version of the report. RAND is a nonprofit research organization.

The Energy Future Coalition, a nonprofit environmental organization, asked RAND to assess the economic and other impacts of meeting the 25 x ‘25 goal. The RAND study considered technological and economic factors that would affect the costs of renewable energy as well as non-renewable fossil fuels.

The report comes as sharply higher prices for oil, concerns about energy security and growing worries about global warming have increased interest in expanding renewable energy in the United States. Substituting renewable energy for fossil fuels would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the most prevalent greenhouse gas associated with global warming.

Currently, renewable energy provides 9.5 percent of total U.S. electricity supply, mostly hydroelectric power, and 1.6 percent of motor vehicle fuel.

“Expanding the use of renewable fuels will lower the long-term price of crude oil and reduce carbon dioxide emissions that are contributing to global warming,” said lead author Michael Toman, director of the RAND Environment, Energy and Economic Development program. “However, to reap these benefits will require a major investment in improving and increasing the use of renewable energy technology.”

Read Full Story Here

Australia’s coral trout have thrived under a fishing ban on the Great Barrier Reef, showing that no-take reserves can spur dramatic comebacks in overfished ocean habitats, new research suggests.

But the bold move to ban fishing to save fish would be hard to replicate along most other coasts, said the Australian study’s lead author.

Coral trout is the common name of about a half-dozen fish species from the grouper and cod family targeted by commercial and recreational hook-and-line fisheries in Australia.

Scientists behind the new study found that the fish bounced back within two years after no-take reserves were established.

Garry Russ, a marine biologist at James Cook University who led the research, said his team was “surprised” to find coral trout population increases of up to 68 percent in such a short period of time.

“This represents a positive and unprecedented response to reserve protection,” he said.

Read Full Story Here