DAILY QUICK READ - SEPTEMBER 3, 2016

People Are Stupid – Millions of Bees Die

Aerial spraying of potent pesticide at the wrong time.  So while states do stupid things to stop Zika, the Republican controlled Congress does nothing. 

“There was no need for a bee suit Monday morning to go down there, because there was no activity. It was silent,” Ms. Stanley said on Thursday. “Honestly, I just fell to the ground. I was crying, and I couldn’t quit crying, and I was throwing up.”

For Ms. Stanley and her business, the death toll easily exceeds two million bees, and Dorchester County officials are still tabulating how many more might have been killed when a day of aerial spraying, scheduled to combat mosquitoes that could be carrying viruses like Zika, went awry.

Dr. Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a bee researcher at the University of Maryland, said the deaths of the bees in South Carolina were unnecessary, and that there were ways to guard against mosquitoes without simultaneously killing valuable pollinators.

Peer Pressure – Among Dogs

How do you get a dog to stay motionless in an MRI for eight minutes?  Treats don’t work, but peer pressure does.

…scientists analyzed scans of dogs’ brain activity when hearing words. And to get those scans, they needed their subjects — 13 family pets — to lie completely motionless in an fMRI scanner for eight whole minutes while wearing earphones and a radiofrequency coil on their heads.

[Successfully trained dogs], you can see in their eyes when a drop of water falls on their noses and they know, ‘I cannot lick it.’ It’s really … I don’t know what to say. They are not forced. They are asked. You can’t imagine how happy they are at the end. They bounce to the others like, ‘Okay, I did it! I did it!’ We are really seeing that they are proud.

Despair Is Appropriate

The Republican War on science has resulted in this.  Of course they had lots of help from the extraction industry and the right wing media.

Since 2001 polling company Gallup has been asking US voters for their views on aspects of climate change, such as if they think it’s happening, if it’s caused by humans and if they are concerned about it.

In 2001, 53 percent of Republican voters agreed that global warming was caused by humans, compared with 70 percent of Democrats — a gap of 17 percentage points. But by 2016, this gap had blown out to 41 percentage points, with only 43 percent of Republican voters accepting climate change is human-caused.

These “partisan gaps” had widened across all areas since 2008, except when voters were asked if they thought global warming had already started, where the gap remained at 34 percentage points.

“I fear polarization will be difficult to overcome because Republican reluctance to accept the reality and seriousness of human-caused climate change is in a self-reinforcing loop. 

There are top-down cues from Republican political elites and their supporters from conservative think tanks to conservative media — especially the Murdoch media— that influence voters, as well as bottom-up pressure from party activists such as Tea Party supporters who act as ‘enforcers’ of party principles, especially in primary elections to select Republican candidates.

The result is that global warming has joined God, guns, gays, and abortion as core elements of Republican identity, and this will be hard to change.”

DAILY QUICK READ - AUGUST 23, 2016

Anybody Think Climate Change is Involved?

Thousands of dead fish.  Warmer water, less winter snow and melt in the spring.  Fish in this situation are more stressed and disease prone.  Each little piece is connected and part of an unfolding disaster.

On August 12, Montana officials realized that the mountain whitefish of Yellowstone River were dying en masse. They sent corpses off for testing and got grave news in return: The fish had proliferative kidney disease—the work of a highly contagious parasite that kills between 20 and 100 percent of infected hosts. Tens of thousands of whitefish were already dead, and trout were starting to fall.

Humans can spread the parasite from one water source to another. So, on the morning of August 19, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks closed a 183-mile stretch of the Yellowstone River, banning all fishing, swimming, floating, and boating. “We recognize that this decision will have a significant impact on many people,” said FWP Director Jeff Hagener in a press release. However, we must act to protect this public resource for present and future generations.”

The killer?  Tetracapsuloides bryosalmonae, a remarkable parasite.

It is part of a group called the myxozoans. They spend most of their lives as microscopic spores that are made of just a few cells. Despite their appearances, these creatures are animals. And although they are obscure, you have definitely heard of their closest relatives—jellyfish, corals, and sea anemones. Yellowstone River is now closed because more than half a billion years ago, a jellyfish-like animal started transforming into a parasite.

America’s True Treasures

Our national parks are in jeopardy.  Climate change and a brain dead Congress (at least one political party) could destroy a century of conservation and, in some cases wipe out some of the planets most miraculous wild places and iconic national monuments.

After a century of shooing away hunters, tending to trails and helping visitors enjoy the wonder of the natural world, the guardians of America’s most treasured places have been handed an almost unimaginable new job – slowing the all-out assault climate change is waging against national parks across the nation.

As the National Parks Service (NPS) has charted the loss of glaciers, sea level rise and increase in wildfires spurred by rising temperatures in recent years, the scale of the threat to US heritage across the 412 national parks and monuments has become starkly apparent.

As the National Parks Service turns 100 this week, their efforts to chart and stem the threat to the country’s history faces a daunting task. America’s grand symbols and painstakingly preserved archaeological sites are at risk of being winnowed away by the crashing waves, wildfires and erosion triggered by warming temperatures.

Salmon Farming = Environmental Disaster

Canadian First Nations representatives attempt to shut down four salmon farms.  The farms are fouling the Nations fishing grounds and spreading disease among wild salmon. 

Last week a small flotilla of boats from Kingcome Village, Gilford Village and Alert Bay, with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's research vessel Martin Sheen in the background, handed eviction notices to four Cermaq Canada salmon farms. Hereditary chiefs said notices will be issued to all 27 farms in their territory.

With chiefs in traditional robes, drumming and singing, the group ignored efforts by Cermaq employees to prevent them from landing, handed over the notice and then held a cleansing ceremony and wild salmon barbecue at one of the farms.

"Our people have spoken. We want salmon farms out of our territory," said Chief Councillor Willie Moon, the first to pull into the farm off northern Vancouver Island.

People Are Stupid – That is All

Harambe’s death was tragic and senseless.  Now the pain that the staff at the Cincinnati Zoo feels is magnified by insensitive buffoons on the Internet.

The director of the Cincinnati zoo has pleaded with people to stop making memes and humorous online comments about Harambe, the gorilla that was shot and killed after a child fell into its enclosure, because of the effect upon grieving staff.

Online interest in Harambe has flowered since May, when the 17-year-old male western lowland gorilla was shot after a three-year-old boy fell into his enclosure after climbing over a barrier that has since been heightened. Fearing the boy could be dragged around and drowned in the moat surrounding Harambe’s home, zoo officials decided to kill the gorilla.

“We are not amused by the memes, petitions and signs about Harambe,” Maynard told the Associated Press. “Our zoo family is still healing and the constant mention of Harambe makes moving forward more difficult for us. We are honoring Harambe by redoubling our gorilla conservation efforts and encouraging others to join us .”

One Person Can Make A Difference

Small steps can become giant leaps.  Thank Tim Wong for a little bit of beauty saved for the world.

One person can't make a big difference in the world by himself, right? If you believe that, it's time to adjust your attitude. Tim Wong just proved you wrong. He has successfully begun repopulating a rare butterfly species—and he did it in his spare time, in his backyard.

Wong is an aquatic biologist by trade, employed by the California Academy of Sciences. These days, people are starting to call him the "Butterfly Whisperer." That's not far from the truth. Butterflies are Wong's off-duty passion. He's loved them since he was a boy. When he discovered one particularly beautiful type had essentially disappeared from the San Francisco area, he wanted to do something about it.

Some Beauty for the Day

From Tree Hugger, The Wave in Coyote Buttes (Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness in Arizona) – photo by Rollie Rodriguez.

DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 20, 2016

Speed Freaks – Hummingbirds

At 60 miles per hour, how do hummingbirds navigate through tight spaces with seeming ease?  Despite their obvious skills, ten percent of these incredible bird species are endangered.

Hummingbirds dart around in colorful blurs, twisting and turning their flight and stopping on a dime, all at top speeds. Anna's hummingbird, native to the West Coast of North America, can even clock in at speeds of over 60 miles an hour.

The tiny birds actually use sophisticated visual clues to determine just how far away objects are, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But the hummingbirds didn't use the cues researchers expected.

Here's how it likely works when a hummingbird flies along in a wild environment: A tree just a foot away would expand more quickly in the bird's field of vision than one 15 feet away. So the birds seem to notice how different objects expand in their field of vision to determine which course corrections to make to avoid collisions.

"When objects grow in size, it can indicate how much time there is until they collide even without knowing the actual size of the object," Dr. Dakin said in a press release. "Perhaps this strategy allows birds to more precisely avoid collisions over the very wide range of flight speeds they use."

People Are Stupid - Mountain Goat Dies

Really!  Is it possible that people can be so clueless?  Even in Alaska - epicenter of American cluelessness (see Palin, Sarah)

A mountain goat in Alaska jumped into the ocean to get away from crowds snapping its picture, and the animal drowned when it couldn’t get back to land because of the crush of people on shore, troopers said.

Alaska state troopers said it was imperative to give animals adequate space. That didn’t happen on Saturday in downtown Seward, and troopers said in an online post that it “resulted in a wild animal dying for no cause”.

Stuff Still Happening

Just because a major American political party refuses to believe in climate change doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.  Each month in 2016 is the warmest recorded since formal record keeping began in 1880.

Global temperatures have been rising and sea ice has been melting at unprecedented rates since the start of 2016.

Scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York said that each month in the first half of this year set a record as the warmest month globally since temperature records began in 1880. The analysis is based on ground-based observations and satellite data for global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent. The period of January-June 2016 saw average temperatures 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) higher compared to the late 19th century.

And as temperatures continue to warm, global sea ice continues to melt. Five of the first six months in 2016 showed the smallest sea ice extent -- the area of the sea covered with ice -- since satellite tracking began in 1979. March was the only exception, recording the second smallest extent for that month.

Wolf Pack in Ontario

Wolves are under such incredible pressure in the wild.  Places like Haliburton are critical to keeping the species viable.

A wolf pack lives in a large forested enclosure near Haliburton, Ontario, where visitors can watch from the observatory and learn lots about these magnificent and reclusive animals.

If you drive three hours north of Toronto, then veer a bit to the east, you’ll come to the Haliburton Forest & Wild Life Reserve. This unique forest, privately owned by Peter Schliefenbaum, sprawls over 80,000 acres of rolling hills, stands of hardwood, and clean lakes. Lesser known than its famous neighbor, Algonquin Park, the Haliburton Forest has plenty of beautiful sights and fun activities worth checking out. Its attractions include camping, dog sledding, treetop canopy tours, astronomy, hiking and biking trails, public wolf howls, and wildlife viewing.

One of the Forest’s most unusual attractions is the Wolf Center. This is a 15-acre enclosure where a pack of wolves lives and roams. An interpretive center comprises part of the fence in one corner, with an observatory that’s equipped with one-way glass and a microphone to watch and listen to the wolf pack. The only problem is, you never know when the wolf pack will be hanging out in front of the observatory! With 15 acres of forest to explore, they could be anywhere. (There is a live wolf cam that allows you to check in from home to see what's going on.)

The only problem is, you never know when the wolf pack will be hanging out in front of the observatory! With 15 acres of forest to explore, they could be anywhere. (There is a live wolf cam that allows you to check in from home to see what's going on.)

DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 22, 2016

People Are Stupid – Jaguar Dies

 A smiling yellow jaguar is the symbol of the Rio Olympics.  Unless they shot that one, too.

A jaguar featured at an Olympic torch ceremony was shot dead by a soldier shortly after the event in the Brazilian Amazon city of Manaus as the animal escaped from its handlers, an army statement said.

The jaguar was killed Monday at a zoo attached to a military training center, when a soldier fired a single pistol shot after the animal, despite being tranquilized, approached the soldier, the army said.

“We made a mistake in permitting the Olympic torch, a symbol of peace and unity, to be exhibited alongside a chained wild animal. This image goes against our beliefs and our values,” the local organizing committee Rio 2016 said in a statement, adding “We guarantee that there will be no more such incidents at Rio 2016.”

Wildlife is Not Renewable

Hawaii is moving to 100% renewable power, but the downside of wind and, to some extent solar, facilities is their impact on birds and bats.  Hawaii is already a deadly place for many of its native species, so a great deal of careful planning has been focused on how to implement wind and solar with minimal impact on wildlife.  Those lessons should be translated to all 50 states.

The state of Hawai‘i has an ambitious goal of achieving 100 percent renewable electrical energy by 2045. As some of the most isolated islands in the world, Hawai‘i's costs for importing oil are very high. A move towards generating renewable electrical energy thus makes a lot of economic and environmental sense.

Unfortunately, this plan is not without its own environmental hazards. It means vastly more wind turbines and solar farms on or around the islands, and one of the biggest challenges is their potential impact on Hawai‘i's endemic birds and bats.

To address the growing and recognized risk to threatened and endangered species, federal and state regulators have created protections that are currently unique to Hawai‘i. While far from perfect, we believe these protocols should, at minimum, also be employed on the mainland. Doing so would go a long way toward helping protect threatened and endangered birds and bats.

Yes, We’re Destroying the Planet – But Our Profits Are Great

Let’s dig more coal out of the ground, what could possibly go wrong?

As the scale of the recent catastrophe on the Great Barrier Reef has become widely known, a clamor has occurred across Australia.

People are grieving and furious about the devastation of our reef. I have lost count of the number of distressed people I have talked with, distraught at what has happened, hardly knowing what to say.

But, amid the uproar, some voices have been noticeably absent. It seems that in the face of what Prof Justin Marshall of the University of Queensland has called “Australia’s biggest ever environmental disaster”, the nation’s big business bosses have little to say.

Since the shocking revelation in March that the reef had experienced the worst bleaching event on record, the Business Council of Australia has issued press releases on various topics including the Australia-China CEO round-table, the release of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s review of the east coast gas market and the launch of the commonwealth’s smart cities plan. But the BCA has not seen fit to make a single media statement on the fate of the reef.

Not content with silence, the Minerals Council of Australia has gone one step further, calling for more of the same. In the midst of the unprecedented devastation to the reef caused by global warming, the MCA found its voice to commend the granting of the Carmichael coalmine leases as a “sensible decision”.

Extreme Weather Events

Global warming will lead to more extreme weather events.  So after years of drought, three scorching days can lead to a series of wildfires.  Damn,the Chinese and their climate change hoax.

Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

A searing heatwave and rugged terrain have hindered firefighter efforts to tackle two blazes burning out of control in the Angeles national forest.

Two wildfires are burning out of control on the outskirts of Los Angeles, forcing hundreds of families to flee and the police to deploy to deter potential looting.

A searing heatwave and rugged terrain hindered efforts to tackle the blazes which grew overnight and raged on Tuesday in Duarte and Azusa, towns in the Angeles national forest east of LA.

The proximity of the so-called Reservoir and Fish fires, separated by a canyon, prompted authorities to term them the San Gabriel Complex fire. Combined they cover 5,400 acres.

The Human Infection

Will the planet treat us like an infection?  Let’s hope not.

Let’s face it — we haven’t taken care of this planet as we should have. In fact, humanity’s relatively brief stint on Earth resembles a nasty viral infection, and sooner or later Earth might say ‘enough’s enough’ and cleanse us. But there’s still hope and a bit of time left to redeem ourselves.

People Are Stupid - Shark Dies

It appears that swimmers or at least other people in the water antagonized the young nurse shark. Of course, the shark ends up dead.  The woman who was bitten may have been a bystanders or one of the people teasing the shark, but she end up in the hospital.  The rest of the people involved apparently got away without any consequences. 

A 23-year-old woman who was bitten Sunday by a small nurse shark in Florida waters had to be transported to a nearby hospital with the shark still attached to her arm, according to local news reports.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that the 2-foot shark latched onto the woman’s forearm and refused to release her — even after it died.

 “The shark wouldn’t give up,” Boca Raton resident Shlomo Jacob, who witnessed the scene, told the newspaper. “It was barely breathing but it wasn’t letting go of her arm, like it was stuck to her or something.”

The shark’s behavior was expected.  Sadly, so was the human behavior. 

…the Ocean Rescue captain, told the Sun-Sentinel that some swimmers had been antagonizing the small shark, though he did not know whether the woman played a part in it.

An 11-year-old told the paper that people had been “messing with it” — holding the shark up by its tail.

Conservatives Need a Special Language

If you try to discuss environmental issues with a conservative, you need to speak a different language. Don't try to use logic or science, they won't respond. Progressives need to learn how to express environmental concerns in a way that brings conservatives on board. The planet is in the balance.

Researchers found that people who identified as conservative were more likely to support "pro-environmental" ideals when the issues were framed as matters of obeying authority, defending the purity of nature and demonstrating patriotism.

If we can't figure out how to communicate with each other, then we will never be able to get on the same page when it comes to virtually any aspect of conservation. Breaking the polarization between left and right is critical to creating a dialog and moving toward solutions. If that means changing the frame of the conversation, then let that change begin.

In a series of experiments, the researchers tested how shifts in moral framing affected attitudes toward environmental issues such as climate change. They reframed questions about conservation and climate change around ideals of patriotism, loyalty, authority and purity and paired them with imagery such as flags and bald eagles.

They found that reframing the issues around these moral foundations led to shifts in attitudes for conservatives, who were more likely to favor environmental concerns in that context. There was no noticeable shift in attitudes among liberals, which isn't a big surprise, Wolsko said.

What is critical is that we fight against the very real forces that want to insure that polarization continues regarding environment and conservation issues. The oil industry used the very tool of patriotism and free speech to argue against climate change action. Do you think that their message may have been carefully crafted to appear to a certain segment of the population?

The arguments are all by and large the same, claiming that the investigations infringe on fossil fuels companies’ right to free speech while steadfastly ignoring the fact that ExxonMobil funded climate denial to protect their business model.

So, if we appeal to the things we have in common, instead of creating wedges, we might have a chance to do the right thing for the planet. It's worth a try, right?

"The classic move is to segment people along these ideological lines, but if we're more inclusive in our discourse, can we reduce the animosity and find more common ground?"

Gourmet Coffee Made From Poop

Humans show an amazing capacity to make life miserable for any animal that can help them make a buck. Evidence of this can be found in Bali, where civets are held in horrific captivity in order to literally poop out the world’s most expensive cup of coffee.

It’s the world’s most expensive coffee, and it’s made from poop. Or rather, it’s made from coffee beans that are partially digested and then pooped out by the civet, a catlike creature. A cup of kopi luwak, as it’s known, can sell for as much as $80 in the United States.

Civets are being caged and fed a diet of coffee cherries to generate a smoother, less acidic, coffee bean. This is a result of the interaction of a digestive enzyme that modifies the raw coffee bean as it is processed by the civet. More and more civets are being confined in cages to process more and more coffee beans.

Researchers from Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and the London-based nonprofit World Animal Protection assessed the living conditions of nearly 50 wild civets held in cages at 16 plantations on Bali. The results, published Thursday in the journal Animal Welfare, paint a grim picture.

The tragic irony is that by caging the civets and force feeding them bulk picked coffee cherries results in an inferior product. Yet, one that is aggressive marketed as a gourmet item.

All of this for a luxury item—and a second-rate one, at that. Part of what makes kopi luwak so special, experts say, is that wild civets pick and choose the choicest coffee cherries to eat. Keeping civets in cages and feeding them any old cherries leads to an inferior product.

Run a Google search for kopi luwak and you will find dozens of sources for "wild" civet coffee with exorbitant prices. All is described as harvested from wild civets, but there is no process to certify the veracity of such claims.

No certification scheme exists to ensure that coffee labeled “wild” is actually that. And other coffee certifiers working to ensure environmentally responsible farming and production refuse to certify any kopi luwak whatsoever.

Reputable coffee brokers avoid kopi luwak as the likelihood of it being a product of caged and abused civets is very high. The advice of a top coffee certification expert is simple:

Alex Morgan at the Rainforest Alliance, which uses SAN standards, says it’s too risky to certify kopi luwak. It’s just too hard to establish whether the beans are 100 percent wild-sourced or not.

“My personal advice is generally to avoid it,” he said. “More likely than not it’s going to be coming from a caged production landscape.”