Visit the Boreal Forest Now Because It's Not Going to Be There in 30 Years

Another extremely depressing bit of environmental news. Goodbye Canadian boreal forest.

Today in the Environmental Apocalypse

You might have heard of the 4000 red-winged blackbirds that dropped dead out of the sky in Arkansas the other day. Extremely depressing. No one has any idea why. But if  you thought that was a freak thing, it wasn't even the only crazy die-off in Arkansas last week!!!

One thing is almost certain: the bird drop is not related to the 83,000 fish that died a few days earlier in the western part of the state, the biggest fish kill in Arkansas that anyone can remember. They were spotted by anglers last week and reported to the Game and Fish Commission, which spent New Year’s Eve measuring and counting dead fish that had spread out for nearly 20 miles.

In that case, the victims were almost all drum, and almost all younger ones. That suggests the culprit was disease, said Mark Oliver, the commission’s chief of fisheries. He said that fish kills were not uncommon, especially in winter when fish are packed more closely, but he did not recall one of this size.

State officials have sent samples of dying, but not yet dead, fish to the fish disease lab at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, which could take a couple of weeks to reach conclusions.

Great.....

As Rachel Carson pointed out so long ago, if you have random unexplained die-offs of enough animals, eventually the next random unexplained die-off is going to be of human beings.

Historical Image of the Day

Cattle dying on Great Plains in Blizzard of 1886

Historical Image of the Day

Hydraulic mining, Marin County, California, 1908

Historical Image of the Day

Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas, 1930s

Historical Image of the Day

Cleaning up after the Santa Barbara oil spill, California, 1969

Historical Image of the Day

Aftermath of the Johnstown Flood, Pennsylvania, 1889

Arguably America's greatest environmental disaster, the failure of the South Fork Dam 14 miles upstream of Johnstown, Pennsylvania led to the deaths of approximately 2200 people. Typically, the industrial tycoons behind the dam claimed it was an act of God. While it came after heavy rains, human fault caused the dam collapse and ensuing flood.

Historical Image of the Day

Barrels of toxic waste, Love Canal, New York, late 1970s

Historical Image of the Day

My Recent US History course just read and discussed Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. It's a very good book, though as depressing as you might imagine. In honor of that, this week I will be highlighting environmental disasters in US history.

Oiled otters after Exxon Valdez oil spill, Alaska, 1989

Climate Change Dries Up Fertile Crescent

This isn't good:

Now, after four consecutive years of drought, this heartland of the Fertile Crescent — including much of neighboring Iraq — appears to be turning barren, climate scientists say. Ancient irrigation systems have collapsed, underground water sources have run dry and hundreds of villages have been abandoned as farmlands turn to cracked desert and grazing animals die off. Sandstorms have become far more common, and vast tent cities of dispossessed farmers and their families have risen up around the larger towns and cities of Syria and Iraq.

“I had 400 acres of wheat, and now it’s all desert,” said Ahmed Abdullah, 48, a farmer who is living in a ragged burlap and plastic tent here with his wife and 12 children alongside many other migrants. “We were forced to flee. Now we are at less than zero — no money, no job, no hope.”

Of course, climate change isn't all of it. High modernist governmental plans have contributed as well. But climate change makes human mistakes (not that we can really separate climate change from human mistakes) all the worse.


But hey, in nations as stable as Syria and Iraq, what bad could possibly come from millions of displaced peoples!

Enjoy Your Sushi Now

Among the many things that outrage and depress me about humanity, our treatment of and disregard for the oceans is near the top, and I'm not talking about oil spills (though there's that, too). Yet another species faces extinction, and the disappearance of blue tuna could catastrophically change the nature of the oceanic ecosystem. All so the Japanese (and Americans, and Europeans) can get their quality sushi. Disgusting.

BP Oil Spill Photo of the Day

The Gulf of Mexico near the BP oil spill.

BP Oil Spill Photo of the Day

Brown Pelican in oil-soaked Louisiana marsh. 

BP Oil Spill Photo of the Day

Sorry for my lack of blogging for the past two days--I was in New Orleans at a hotel that said it had wireless but then did not. Very irritating.

Anyway, I am going to put up a photo of the BP oil spill every day until the well is shut off. Just to help us all remember this horror.

Worker shoveling oil, Fourchon Beach, Louisiana. 

Delicious Oil Cake

It tastes just like environmental apocalypse...

Via Cake Wrecks

Foreign Relations Thought of the Day

When the oil spill hits the Cuban coast, as now seems likely, it's really not going to help US-Cuban relations.

Oil Spill

I am sure am glad Obama opened up offshore oil drilling off the Atlantic Coast. What could possibly go wrong?

On the other hand, it's about time Americans saw the cost of their obsession with oil. Unfortunately, like with the Exxon Valdez in Alaska, it will affect one of the nation's most important wildlife habitats, the extremely fragile wetlands of Louisiana. If this happened in Nigeria or Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, no one in America would know. And most wouldn't care if they did.

Today In Depressing Environmental News

The oceans are facing an increasing likelihood in massive extinctions:

Researchers from the University of Bristol, who looked at how levels of acid in the ocean have changed over years, found that the current acidification is more severe than any time in the last 65 million years ago.

According to the report as ocean acidification accelerated it caused mass extinctions at the bottom of the food chain that could threaten whole ecosystems in the future.

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, looked at sediments from around 55 million years ago, when temperature rose by up to 6 degrees Celsius and acidification was occurring at a similar rate as today.

For those of you non-creationists wondering what happened 65 million years ago, that would be the end of the Cretaceous period. So basically the oceans now are the worst they've been since the dinosaurs were wiped out, only this time, it is human pollution instead of a devastating meteor that is the culprit.

We'll wipe ourselves out yet.

Today in Depressing Environmental News

A new report says half of the primates in the world are in danger of extinction. Not surprisingly, human-spurred deforestation is a major factor. Of course, the report will probably be ignored by the primates who are responsible, but it's just another devastating and depressing reminder of the destructive power of unchecked human growth and "development" is having on the rest of the world.

Around Latin America

-The Honduran Supreme Court has appointed a judge to investigate a prosecutor's filed case against the military for its role in forcing Manuel Zelaya from the country on June 28. No warrants can be issued until the judge rules on the filing. That may sound nice, but given that this is the same Supreme Court that upheld the illegal removal of Zelaya, I don't think much will come from this. Still, if something is to happen, it has to start somewhere.

-Additionally, the Micheletti regime is apparently broke: "The Finance Minister for the de facto government, Gabriela Nuñez announced today that she does not currently have access to sufficient funds to pay government employees for January. It all boils down to cash flow. She said she has access to about 400 million lempiras, and needs a total of about 1,500 million lempiras. In addition, she noted that the government has run up large debts with suppliers, including 450 million lempiras for medical supplies, and a further 700 million lempiras owed to road construction and paving contractors." I don't know to what extent international reaction to the coup and reduction of financial support has played a role in this, but I suspect it must be at least somewhat significant, and nothing less than what the Micheletti has brought upon itself.

-Is Peru's economic star rising in Latin America? A road between Peru and Brazil and a growth in GDP of 9.8% last year indicate Peru may be in for a brighter future.

-Not as bright for Peru's future: illegal gold mining in Peru's Amazonian basin is causing long-term environmental damage : "it takes about five grams of mercury to extract a gram of gold. That mercury is usually tossed overboard, poisoning one of the world’s most biodiverse rain forests. And Borian’s form of mining is among the most benign. Illegal cartels with heavy equipment clear-cut and mine huge areas of virgin forest, alarming environmental activists."

-In response to Mexico City legalizing abortion, surrounding states are making it increasingly difficult to obtain an abortion in the rest of the country:

In response to a Mexican Supreme Court ruling in August 2008 upholding a Mexico City law permitting abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, 17 of 32 Mexican states have approved amendments to their constitutions declaring that life begins at conception and granting legal rights to fetuses, the Chicago Tribune reports. Veracruz, which in November 2009 became the most recent state to enact an antiabortion-rights amendment, has called on the federal government to consider adding a similar amendment to the national constitution.

It's hard to be surprised by this. Anti-choice sentiment stemming from conservative social values and Catholicism made any kind of response in Mexico likely. Still, this particular response from other state governments, and the pressure for a national law banning abortion, is very unfortunate. While each state can do what it wants (in the same way the D.F. can and did), it would be very bad of there were a national law enacted in Mexico.

-According to Venezuela's state-run National Electric Corporation, the country could be facing a major power outage nationwide in the next 3-4 months if water levels in the reservoirs continue to drop. Weather is funny, so there's no way of predicting accurately what will happen in that time period; still, power loss for an entire country would be tough to deal with politically, socially, or economically.

-While the recent massive rainfall in Brazil has led to the deaths of dozens, it may have the opposite effect in terms of agricultural production, as "Brazil’s coffee crop may beat the 48.48 million bag record this year, the country’s crop supply agency said in a report which also raised forecasts for the newly-begun soybean harvest."

-Finally, Lula is expected to decide soon which company he will contract for the a $4.4 billion U.S. dollar fighter jet order. In addition to Boeing (a U.S. company), France's Dassault and Sweden's Saab are in consideration. If Boeing is selected, it would create thousands of jobs for the struggling U.S. economy, a fact that didn't deter Republican Senator George LeMieux from doing all he could to damage U.S.-Brazil relations prior to the approval last week of Thomas Shannon as ambassador to Brazil.