Ponds found to take up carbon like world's oceans
May 8, 2008
ScienceDaily - Research led by Iowa State University limnologist, or lake scientist, John Downing finds that ponds around the globe could absorb as much carbon as the world's oceans.
Professor Downing found that constructed ponds and lakes on farmland in the United States bury carbon at a much higher rate than expected; as much as 20-50 times the rate at which trees trap carbon. In addition, ponds were found to take up carbon at a higher rate than larger lakes.
"Aquatic ecosystems play a disproportionately large role in the global carbon budget," Downing said. "Despite being overlooked in the past, it's small bodies of water that are important because they take up carbon at a high rate and there are more of them than previously thought. The combined effect is that farm ponds could be burying as much carbon as the world's oceans, each year."
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Prince Charles 'eco-town' given green light
May 8, 2008
The Prince of Wales has been granted permission to create an 'eco-town' in Devon where every home comes free with a bicycle and wind-generated electricity.
Sherford, on the south west coast, is billed as the greenest settlement in Britain and will be home to 12,000 people.
The Prince's advisers have suggested that cars should be banned from some areas and three quarters of buildings fitted with solar power panels.
The ambience of the town will be traditionally English. Its Georgian-style high street will be modelled on the Wiltshire market town of Marlborough and there are plans for a cricket pitch and bowling green. No buildings will be taller than five storeys.
The Prince has said he wants to build places "we all know strike a chord in our, by now, rather bewildered hearts, however 'modern' we are - places that convey an everlasting human story of meaning and belonging".
The project is due to be completed by 2020 on the rolling farmland on the edge of Plymouth and planners intend half of all Sherford's energy to come from renewable sources on site. Wind turbines will loom over the town's 400-acre park.
Work places employing an estimated 7,000 people will have roofs planted with greenery or covered with a thin layer of rubble to encourage insects and birds. An organic farm is planned for the park.
Unlike Poundbury, the town in Dorset which the Prince built a decade ago on the Duchy of Cornwall, Sherford will be built on private land owned by the developers Red Tree.
It has been designed in collaboration with a private development consortium, including the Royal Bank of Scotland.
When first proposed residents in the neighbouring village of Brixton lodged 3,000 objections. Opposition was dropped after villagers were involved in the design process.
"This is beautiful countryside with a stream running through it and it's a damn shame," said Derek Curtis, a parish councillor.
"But we have decided to make the best of it. We have all been to see Poundbury and architecturally it was much better than what local councils and housebuilders have done in the past."
Hank Dittmar, the chief executive of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, said: "We try to design places that are timeless and will be as efficient and enduring in 100 years as they are today. Building something of our time can often mean we look back in 10 years and think, 'Oh my God, what were we thinking of?'.
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A month later - Eco-towns? Britons say no thanks
May 8, 2008
Stoughton, England: The British may be among Europeans most concerned by climate change, but few people in this tiny village in the English Midlands want to be part of their government's latest proposal for a low-carbon future: an initiative called eco-towns.
Stoughton is one of about 60 areas under consideration for new eco-town developments, so-called because they are supposed to be made carbon neutral through clean technology and projects to reduce carbon dioxide. A shortlist of about 15 areas will be announced shortly, and Stoughton - like a number of other communities across Britain - is fighting hard to avoid selection.
Villagers in Stoughton and their politicians say that their area is predominantly rural and that these developments, containing up to 20,000 new homes, would do more harm than good to the environment and to the community. They also say eco-towns are being used by developers as a smokescreen to win approval for unpopular projects to ease a chronic housing shortage in Britain.
The eco-town concept was mooted by Prime Minister Gordon Brown last year and it partly reflected his strategy to outflank the opposition Conservative leader, David Cameron, on green issues.
Government officials insist that eco-towns are innovative way to cut greenhouse gases at a time when residential housing represents about a quarter of British carbon emissions.
They also say that constructing entirely new infrastructure to create low-carbon housing is much more cost effective than adapting older housing.
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Shariah Islamic Law: Banking on Faith
April 8, 2008
On the ninth floor of the Seef Tower in Manama, the small, opulent capital of Bahrain, the Noriba Bank offers its well-heeled clientele a wide range of financial services, from portfolio management to leasing. From its offices you can see the city's famous Al Fateh mosque. The proximity is significant, because even though Noriba, which opened last September, is wholly owned by Switzerland's largest bank, UBS Group, it is the only Western bank in the Gulf that insists that all of its services adhere to the strict letter of Islamic law, known as Shari'a.
Under Shariah Islamic law, the governing of making money from money, such as charging interest, is usury and therefore not permitted.
Islamic banking is a growing phenomenon, which came into existence to satisfy the financial needs of devout Muslims (1.6 billion Muslims around the world) who observe the prohibition of Riba (usury). Many economists1 have studied the macro-economic properties of banking institution in the framework of an isolated and ideal Islamic economy. In the age of integrated global financial markets, the instantaneous transformation of an entire financial sector to profit-and-loss sharing is very unlikely: so what is the outlook for Islamic banking?
According to the International Association of Islamic Banks (IAIB), by 1998 there were 176 Islamic banks and financial institutions operating in 38 countries. These institutions had total assets of $148 billion, paid up capital of $7.3billion, and generated $1.2 billion in aggregate net profits latest year of operation. Sir Howard Davies, chairman of the Financial Services Authorities in the UK said “there was a gap in the market for retail sector Islamic banking products, which would cater to nearly two million UK Muslims”.
Market research suggests there is a potentially huge market for Islamic mortgages in the UK - but how do they benefit Muslims trying to buy a home?
Learn more about Shariah Islamic Law and Banking:
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Greenhouse Oceans May Support Only Smaller Fish
April 8, 2008
By 2100, warmer oceans with more carbon dioxide may no longer sustain one of the world's most productive fisheries, warn marine ecologists at the University of Southern California, USC and the University of Delaware.
At present, the Bering Sea provides roughly half the fish caught in U.S. waters each year and nearly a third of all the fish caught worldwide.
But during this century, the Bering Sea's rich food web, stretching from Alaska to Russia, could fray as algae adapt to global warming conditions, the scientific study shows.
"All the fish that ends up in McDonald's fish sandwiches - that's all Bering Sea fish," said USC marine ecologist Dave Hutchins, whose former student at the University of Delaware, Clinton Hare, led research.
"The experiments we did up there definitely suggest that the changing ecosystem may support less of what we're harvesting - things like pollock and hake," Hutchins said.
While the study must be interpreted cautiously, Hutchins said, its implications are "harrowing," especially since the Bering Sea is already warming.
"It's kind of a canary in a coal mine because it appears to be showing climate change effects before the rest of the ocean," he said.
"It's warmer, marine mammals and birds are having massive die-offs, there are invasive species - in general, it's changing to a more temperate ecosystem that's not going to be as productive."
Carbon dioxide's direct effects on the ocean are often overlooked by the public, said Hutchins.
"It's all a good start that people get worried about melting ice and rising sea levels. But we're now driving a comprehensive change in the way Earth's ecosystem works and some of these changes don't bode well for its future."
The study done by Hutchins and Hare examined how climate change affects algal communities of phytoplankton, the heart of marine food webs.
Phytoplankton use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into carbon-based food. As small fish eat the plankton and bigger fish eat the smaller fish, an entire ecosystem develops.
The Bering Sea is highly productive due mainly to diatoms, a large type of phytoplankton. "Because they're large, diatoms are eaten by large zooplankton, which are then eaten by large fish," Hutchins explained.
The scientists found that greenhouse conditions favored smaller types of phytoplankton over diatoms. Such a shift would ripple up the food chain - as diatoms become scarce, animals that eat diatoms also would become scarce.
"The food chain seems to be changing in a way that is not supporting these top predators, of which, of course, we're the biggest," Hutchins said.
A shift away from diatoms towards smaller phytoplankton could also undermine a key climate regulator called the "biological pump."
When diatoms die, their carbon-based remains sink to the seafloor. This creates a "pump" whereby diatoms transport carbon from the atmosphere into deep-sea storage, where it remains for at least 1,000 years.
"While smaller species often fix more carbon, they end up re-releasing CO2 in the surface ocean rather than storing it for long periods as the diatom-based community can do," Hutchins explained.
This scenario could make the ocean less able to soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide.
"Right now, the ocean biology is sort of on our side," Hutchins said. "About 50 percent of fossil fuel emissions since the Industrial Revolution is in the ocean, so if we didn't have the ocean, atmospheric CO2 would be roughly twice what it is now."
Hutchins and colleagues are doing related experiments in the north Atlantic Ocean and also in the Ross Sea near Antarctica.
"We're trying to make a contribution by doing predictive experimental research that will help us understand where we're headed," he said. "It's unprecedented the rate at which things are shifting around."
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Sale of lots on reservoir lakes cause concern
February 15, 2008
The Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB) have invited lands minister Pat Bell to come to a board meeting to update them on a proposal to sell recreational lots on reservoir lakes around the valley.
The province is intending to make current recreation lots available for sale with clear title on reservoir lakes in order to meet recent user demands from people seeking to improve their properties.
OBWB is providing the minister with a 200 page package that includes letters from most of the valley’s civic bodies, water utilities and other groups, opposing the sale of Crown-owned lots, currently leased on the lakes, that store drinking water for the valley’s residents.
“The region has said in one voice we are opposed to this policy regarding the sale of leased reservoir lots - yet the ministry keeps bringing it back”, said Nelson Jatel, water stewardship director for the OBWB.
He said they understand that in other parts of the province such recreational lots on upland lakes, which used to be leased out, have been sold, but noted that those are not drinking water reservoirs.
“There are all kinds of risks in open watersheds and cabins pose a relatively small risk, but if you look into the future, it could be quite different if they are sold,” noted Jatel.
He envisions the possibility of mansions instead of cabins on the waterfront of such reservoirs, complete with Hummers and float planes parked at the door.
“We should be restricting development around reservoirs, rather than encouraging it,” he commented.
Jatel also said there is an additional issue not being considered, one that possibly has the water level of these reservoirs increased in order to provide more storage for more residents as the valley’s communities grow.
The OBWB will also be sending a separate letter that encourages a current discussion framework report prepared by the Integrated Land Management Bureau to move forward. In that report strategies were identified to reduce risks to water quality on reservoir lakes, which would be embarked upon if the lots were sold, but Jatel said the board felt the land management body should be doing them anyway.
That includes cattle management, fencing, limiting the size and type of motors to be used on the reservoirs and limiting the types of water-based recreation.
Copies of the OBWB package will also be sent to the premier, MLAs, the Okanagan Nation Alliance and MPs, said Jatel.
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As Supplies Dry Up, Growers Pass on Farming and Sell Water
Press-Enterprise, Riverside CA
January 31, 2008
In a state where water has become an increasingly scarce commodity, a growing number of farmers are betting they can make more money selling their water supplies to thirsty cities and farms to the south than by growing crops.
The shortages this season among the most intense of the last decade are already shooting water prices skyward in many areas, and Los Angeles-area cities are begging for water and coaxing farmers to let their fields go to dust.
"It just makes dollars and sense right now," said Bruce Rolen, a third-generation farmer in Northern California's lush Sacramento Valley. "There's more economic advantage to fallowing than raising a crop."
Instead of sowing seeds in April, Rolen plans to leave his rice stubble for the birds and sell his irrigation water on the open market, where it could fetch up to three times the normal price
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Large Hadron Collider Ready To Go...
and maybe the end of the world as we know it?
January 18, 2008
In May 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will come into operation at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. The highest-energy accelerator ever built, it heralds a new era in particle-physics research, in which we hope to complete the standard model and even go beyond, into a new realm of physics.
When activated, it is hoped that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and 'missing links' in the Standard Model of physics and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would be a significant step in the search for a Grand Unified Theory, which seeks to unify three of the four fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. The Higgs boson may also help to explain why the remaining force, gravitation, is so weak compared to the other three forces.
Though the standard model predicts that LHC energies are far too low to create black holes, some non-standard theories lower the requirements, and CERN themselves have published articles that the LHC could create micro black holes at the rate of one per second. The primary cause for concern is that Hawking radiation, a postulated means by which any such black holes would dissipate before becoming dangerous, remains entirely theoretical. In academia, the theory of Hawking radiation is considered plausible, but there remains considerable question of whether it is correct.
CERN and others have pointed out that the probability of such events is extremely small. One argument for the safety of colliders such as the LHC states that if the Earth were in danger of any such fate, the Earth and Moon would have met that fate billions of years ago due to their constant bombardment from space by very high energy cosmic rays such as protons and other particles, which are millions of times more energetic than anything that could be produced by the LHC. (The "oh-my-god particle", with an energy of 3×1020 eV, had 42 million times the energy of the LHC's 7×1012 eV collisions.) However some Theorist argue that simple Newtonian physics requires that opposite momentum collisions for colliders result in "at rest" MBHs. If they are created it will contrasts sharply with cosmic ray induced events from bombardment of the upper atmosphere, which would result in near-relativistic MBHs. Relativisitic MBHs are expected to be even more difficult to detect than relativisitic neutrinos, but if they were created "at rest" relative to earth and captured in earth orbit, they may have endless opportunity to interact, if they do not evaporate via Hawking Radiation.
As with previous particle accelerators, people inside the physics community and in the media have voiced concern that the LHC or similar types of experiments might trigger one of several theoretical disasters capable of destroying the Earth. A study was carried out by physicists at CERN and other recognised institutes to examine these issues
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Study: Wild pink salmon are not a commercially important species,
but they are an important food source for orcas and other salmon in the ocean
By Jeff Barnard, AP Environmental Writer
In natural conditions, the adult salmon that carry the sea lice aren’t in the migration channels and rivers at the same time as young pink and chum salmon, so the little fish are rarely exposed.
When fish farms move in, hundreds of thousands of adults are raised in floating net pens anchored year-round in the channels where the young wild fish migrate.
The study found that sea lice infestations around salmon farms in British Columbia’s Broughton Archipelago, north of Vancouver Island, have reached a density so high they are killing juvenile wild pink salmon at a rate fast enough to drive local runs to extinction within another four years.
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Awareness grows that current water use is not sustainable
September 8, 2007
As the population grows throughout the Monashee and Okanagan, water is a concern of most residents and according to Dr. Hans Schreier of UBC we need to decrease our water footprint because our current water use is not sustainable.
Climate change is changing the hydrograph of rivers, creating high water at different times of year than historically, said Schreier who went on to say, “Scientifically, we don’t really know what impact the loss of forests from mountain pine beetle in the Interior, will have.
He addressed concerns that should be of interest to communities like Lumby and residents dealing with hillside environments, which are impacted by run off.
Schreier warned the civic leaders that leadership is needed in water governance as he described innovative ways to manage the water resource at the Building Sustainable Communities conference this past month in Kelowna.
He said impervious surfaces such as asphalt and rooftops must be minimized, and suggested a number of initiatives, which would help to absorb water rather than allowing it to run off.
“By building a green roof we can reduce runoff by 63 per cent. Rather than a solid asphalt or concrete driveway, we should be using pervious surfaces, or even growing grass between two concrete strips for the vehicle’s wheels. There’s even a pavement now that’s pervious,” said Schreier who continued with a report on leading edge solutions for conserving water.
Soil acts as a huge sponge, preventing large quantities of water from rainstorms, from washing off all at once into creeks, rivers and lakes. It also helps to remove impurities from runoff before it makes its way into waterways.
“Instead of filling in wetlands, today we’re creating new ones,” he noted. Instead of discharging stormwater, we’re detaining it in those recreated wetlands.
Schreier said that instead of treating water at the end of the pipe, we should be controlling pollutants at its source.
“Every little bit helps,” he said.
“Everyone can make a difference by installing low flow taps and toilets, fixing leaks, harvesting rainwater and switching from lawns to landscaping that uses less water”, he said.
Schreier also discussed how much water is needed to produce different foods, pointing out that beef requires some of the largest quantities of water.
“We also export water in our foods, in that the amount of water in raising each crop, is essentially lost to us when we sell that produce out of the country,” he added that 200 litres of water are required to produce a cup of milk, and 380 litres for a glass of wine.
Water to every house and business should be metered, he said.
“One of the reasons we use too much water is its cost - Water to every house and business should be metered,” he explained.
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Mountain Caribou recovery still at risk
October 27, 2007
Don Elzer - The Monster Guide
As more information surfaces it now appears that the Mountain Caribou in the South Monashee caribou management area may still be considered the forgotten herd by both the government and their scientific panel.
TOB has learned that the eight remaining animals may not be supported by the recent habitat protection announcement by the province and without any long-term support within recovery objectives.
The South Monashee area ranges from south of Revelstoke covering the Monashee range west of the Arrow Lakes. The area covers the Lumby, Cherryville and Mabel Lake areas.
The region is identified as one of three “Status Quo” areas on a Province of BC Mountain Caribou Recovery Implementation Plan map. This rating retains existing land-use commitments, recreation and hunting policies.
At present the heliskiing operator Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH) will continue to provide heliskiing trips into Monashee Provincial Park and the Greenbush protected area.
At present CMH has 30 year tenure to the area and does not have to provide a specific management plan for operating in the park or protected area, they are only required to supply a management plan for tenured areas of crown land which includes the parks but treats the park area as general crown land.
CMH tenure was grandfathered into the establishment of the park and new protected areas of the Monashee. In 2005/06 CMH recorded 70 observations of caribou and 11 observations of wolves in their Revelstoke operating area.
While information about caribou recovery efforts remains sketchy and ever-changing, The Other Beaver will continue tracking down ministry officials to determine the true present and future status of the herd and will be reporting updates on this very important story.
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