The Sunday Times
Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:37 EDT
Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.
Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.
Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.
The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet's temperature.
Fenton's team unearthed heat maps of the Martian surface from Nasa's Viking mission in the 1970s and compared them with maps gathered more than two decades later by Mars Global Surveyor. They found there had been widespread changes, with some areas becoming darker.
When a surface darkens it absorbs more heat, eventually radiating that heat back to warm the thin Martian atmosphere: lighter surfaces have the opposite effect. The temperature differences between the two are thought to be stirring up more winds, and dust, creating a cycle that is warming the planet.Labels: rapid+climate+change+hits+mars
By Paul Rincon
Science Reporter, BBC News
The giant Galapagos tortoise that became a conservation icon when it appeared he was the last of his kind is not so alone after all.
"Lonesome George" was thought to be the only survivor of a tortoise species native to the isle of Pinta.
Now, the journal Current Biology reports the discovery of a hybrid - the offspring from the union of a Pinta tortoise and another island species.
The "new" animal thus shares about half its genes in common with George.
Unfortunately for efforts to get George to reproduce, this hybrid tortoise, recently found on Isabela isle, is also a male.
Nonetheless, its discovery in a relatively small sample of tortoises raises fresh hope for the future of George's species (Geochelone abingdoni).
A more thorough sampling of the 2,000 tortoises living on Isabela could yet reveal a genetically pure Pinta tortoise, say the researchers.
Population revival?
But even if they did find one, getting George to mate with it could be an uphill struggle: he has a stubborn aversion to the opposite sex.
When George was placed in captivity at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the island of Santa Cruz, he was housed with two female tortoises from a species taken from Isabela.
After 35 years, he has failed to produce any offspring, turning his nose up at entire harems of female tortoises; though, admittedly, none of these tortoises has belonged to George's species.
Most giant tortoises on Isabela belong to the distinct species Geochelone becki instead.
Surprising find
The researchers, led by Michael Russello from the University of British Columbia Okanagan, Canada, took DNA samples from 89 of these animals and compared their genetic codes with those of other tortoises from the Galapagos that are held in a database.
The database includes DNA from six G. abingdoni specimens held in museums, and Lonesome George.
Genetic analysis revealed that one tortoise sampled on Isabela Island is clearly a first-generation hybrid between native tortoises from the islands of Isabela and Pinta.
"It's extraordinary. I, and everyone involved with George, always imagined that something like this could happen, but never thought it would," said Henry Nicholls, who has written a biography of the octogenarian tortoise called Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a Conservation Icon.
"It is surprising to find a hybrid on Isabela. It raises questions about how it got there," he told the BBC News website.
Whaling link
According to Dr Nicholls, none of the prevailing sea currents would be capable of carrying tortoises from Pinta to Isabela.
But, Dr Nicholls added, any project to search for a pure Pinta tortoise on Isabela, or other hybrids, would be expensive and time-consuming.
"The continuing saga surrounding the search for a mate has positioned Lonesome George as a potent conservation icon, not just for Galapagos, but worldwide," said Dr Russello.
Upwards of 50,000 people visit George each year at his home on the Charles Darwin Research Station.
The collapse of the giant tortoise population on Pinta is thought to have been due in large part to whaling activities in the Pacific during the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Sailors would preferentially take female animals to store as food on their ships - the females of the species were smaller and easier targets in lowland areas during the egg-laying season.
By the middle of the 20th Century, only male giant tortoises were left on Pinta. George is thought to have been born in the 1920s. Labels: Lone+tortoise +not+last+of+kind
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Domoic acid, released by blooming diatoms, is behind dozens of sick mammals and birds washing up on O.C. beaches.
By RYAN HAMMILL and CINDY CARCAMO
The Orange County Register
NEWPORT BEACH – The state issued a quarantine Thursday night on locally harvested shellfish, sardines, lobster and other seafood after a toxic offshore sea algae bloom killed and disabled dozens of ocean birds, sea lions and dolphins along local beaches and up and down the Pacific Coast.
The state's Department of Health Services issued the warning as experts called the bloom the worst of such seasonal fluctuations in recent years.
Sea and bird life have washed up along beaches from San Diego to San Francisco's bay, mirroring the start of an outbreak in 2002-03 that sickened or killed more than a thousand sea lions and 50 dolphins, said Joe Cordaro, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Services.
Authorities have collected sick and dying animals from county beaches since the weekend, when the results of poisoning from domoic acid, a toxin released yearly by blooming diatoms, began.
"This is the worst day for dead and dying birds I've encountered in 5½ years of this job," Valerie Schomburg, a Newport Beach animal-control officer, said Thursday.
The water is still safe for surfers and swimmers because the toxin affects mammals only when it is consumed in large concentrations, said Gregg Langlois, a biologist with the state Department of Health Services.
That is why the agency is advising people not to eat sport-harvested shellfish, sardines and anchovies, and sport-harvested and commercially caught crab and lobster, officials said. The newest advisory came on the heels of a quarantine on mussels issued a week ago.
The causes for the release of the toxin are unknown and under research, but experts agree that it enters the food chain through fish and shellfish that are in turn eaten by larger animals, said Lisa Birkle, an assistant director at the Wetland and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach.
But unlike years past, the speed and severity of the toxin's onset has overwhelmed rescue groups who care for the poisoned animals.
"The concentration of the toxin is so great this year that we haven't had a chance to react to it," Birkle said. "Normally we're able to flush out the toxin with a treatment regimen to the birds we care for. This year they're just coming in dead."
Since Sunday the center has received 73 sick or dead birds. Eleven are still being cared for.
Also hard hit in the recent bloom are sea lions, 14 of which have been treated for domoic acid poisoning at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach. Seven of the animals in treatment have died, said Michele Hunter, the center's director.
The center treated 40 sea lions in 2006 for the poisoning; 19 of the animals died.
Thursday, Newport Beach officials reported a pair of sick sea lions on the beach near the Wedge, and center officials recovered the pair.
Newport Beach police animal-control officers also collected seven pelicans, five dead, and seven other types of dead birds along city beaches.
Seal Beach reported a pair of sickened sea lions Wednesday and a juvenile Sunday, and a dead sea lion washed up on the city's jetty Sunday, lifeguard Nick Bolin said. Labels: toxin+kills+birds+sea+lions
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Signs of the Times
Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:04 EDT
Over the past couple of months we here at SOTT have been following the Bee crisis with some interest. It caught my eye when I read the first media article about it that was brought to my attention; I knew this was important. As Albert Einstein observed:
"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
This really is BIG, people! Do you realize how CLOSE you are to the total collapse of whatever lifestyle you have, including having food on your table (let alone having a table to put it on or a house to keep the table in!) Don't yawn because the habits of bees might be boring and it certainly isn't as entertaining as TV or whatever mindless thing you do and call it entertainment. If you read every word I have written and assembled here, you will know more about global agriculture than you probably ever thought you WANTED to know, but just now, you had BETTER know it because YOUR life depends on it! The fact is, the disappearing bees are giving you a gift, right now, a choice if you will only take the time to read and learn.
The first clue that something was amiss was this odd item back on January 8:
read more...Labels: Massive +bee+die+off
Rebel gunmen have killed at least 74 people in an attack on an oil field in Ethiopia's remote Somali region, the Ethiopian government says.
Sixty-five Ethiopians and nine Chinese oil workers were killed, while seven Chinese were also taken captive in the incident, an official said.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called it a cold-blooded "massacre".
A spokesman for a separatist group, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, said it had launched the attack.
The clashes took place at an oil field in Abole, a small town about 120km (75 miles) from the regional capital, Jijiga.
"Something of a massacre has happened," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said.
"It was a cold-blooded murder, we are pursuing the perpetrators and will see to it that it doesn't happen again."
An adviser to the prime minister, Berekat Simon, blamed the ONLF, which he said had the backing of the Eritrean government.
A spokesman for the ONLF in London, Abdirahman Mahdi, said Ethiopian troops had been forcing nomadic tribes to leave their traditional grazing areas.
"Because of that we had to take action," he said.
"We have warned the Chinese government and the Ethiopian government that... they don't have a right to drill there," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.
"Unfortunately nobody heeds our warning and we have to defend our territorial integrity."
read moreLabels: scores+die+ethiopia+oil+attack
B.K.
Signs of the Times
Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:53 EDT
Project Paperclip, MKULTRA and Dr. Greenbaum, three things you've never heard of which may have everything to do with what happened at Virginia Tech.
Virginia Tech
There are a few points on the general timing of events that I think need to be iterated for the sake of clarity before we look at possible explanations.
There were two shooting incidents, the first occurred at 7:15am and then the second series began approximately 2 hours later.
"A lot of our friends live in [West Ambler Johnston Hall] and we heard that a girl got shot and killed in the stairwell, and that it was, like, 7:15 [a.m.]. A lot of people go to class at 7:45 [a.m.], so everyone was just talking about how they couldn't believe that they let students out at 7:45 to go to their 8 a.m. classes, because someone had just gotten shot and killed 30 minutes before. ..." - Hunter Wilson
So evidently we have two separate incidents. The motives and shooter for the first still remain unknown. Thus far there's been no evidence to suggest it was Cho Seung-Hui. What is available are a few references to an Asian or Asiatic man being detained by police, and then released. There is some mention of him being involved in a romantic relationship, but again this info is sketchy. What you've got to remember is that the fact that accounts are so distorted and confusing is actually a fingerprint of intel agencies and their operations.
Read more
Labels: project paperclip+ VA+Tech+Gunman+mind+controlled
Henry See
Signs of the Times
Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:51 EDT
There is much evil in the world. A large part of it seems to be centered in the United States, radiating out in its wars of conquest, its television shows, movies, and music, in the fascination with which the world follows the pointless excesses of its stars, in its politics and self-absorption and disdain for the rest of the world. The mythos of the Wild West and men with six-shooters settling arguments with a bullet at high noon before riding off to wipe out the Indians has congealed and hardened the hearts of its population to the reality of invasion and occupations eternally justified with noble slogans as vapid as they are preposterous.
Proud sons and daughters of America, patriots all, engage in the vilest and basest of cruelty in Iraq and the many secret detention centres the US empire has positioned strategically across the globe. No one is more than a few hours away from a hell in red, white, and blue.
Looking out over this landscape that surpasses Hieronymous Bosch in its horrors, men and women, those at least who are still capable of thought, are moved to ponder the question of good and evil.
One such meditation appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle this week:
How Did It Come To This
San Francisco psychologist says environment plays big role in evil behavior
Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Naked men in hoods form a human pyramid. A prisoner crawls on the floor tethered to a dog leash. And next to them, grinning at the camera like soul-dead fools, are the Army reservists, one of whom dismissed the torture of Iraqi detainees as "fun and games."
No one can forget those images from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Now, three years later, San Francisco psychologist Philip Zimbardo has written a book arguing that the men and women who participated in the torture were not just "rotten apples," as the Bush administration has argued, but the unfortunate products of a "rotten barrel" mind-set that left them unsupervised, poorly trained and ignorant of Iraqi culture. He sees the American military establishment in Iraq as complicit in what happened at Abu Ghraib.
First warning sign: the American military establishment is "complicit". Only complicit? According to Philip Zimbardo the problem is that these soldiers were left "unsupervised, poorly trained and ignorant of Iraqi culture". That's the problem? We think it goes much deeper than that.
The real rotten apples are in all the positions of power in the Bush Reich. The soldiers were blamed, and the story of "a few rotten apples" was circulated in order to whitewash the real problem and get the truly guilty parties off the hook. The explanation we are about to read below, given by Zimbardo, only serves to further hide the truth.
In "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil," Zimbardo writes that human nature is dualistic: Each of us, given certain uncontrolled circumstances, is capable of sadistic or abusive behavior. A professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, Zimbardo, 74, believes this so strongly that he spoke as an expert witness in defense of Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick, the military guard who supervised the night shift on Tiers 1A and 1B at Abu Ghraib, where the beatings, torture and sexual humiliation took place.
"Each of us, given certain uncontrolled circumstances, is capable of sadistic or abusive behavior."
There you have it. Anyone put into a similar set of circumstances will react in the same way. You, gentle reader of this web site, are capable of the kinds of horrors we have seen at Abu Ghraib, that have been reported at Guantanamo, or that we imagine take place in any one of the many US secret detention centres around the globe.
This idea is a very popular one. It is also used to explain the horrors of Nazi Germany. It implicates each of us because each of us has committed acts for which we are ashamed, for which we feel guilty. Therefore we buy into such an explanation. We will see below why such an idea is pernicious and false.
Zimbardo describes Frederick, the son of a West Virginia coal miner and a devout Baptist, as "superpatriotic," a man who considers himself spiritual even in the wake of Abu Ghraib. Despite Zimbardo's testimony, Frederick was sentenced to an eight-year prison term, which Zimbardo calls "outrageous."
"Superpatriotic" and "spiritual" is a very bad mix. Those are the makings of a religious zealot, a modern Crusader, someone who is able to be easily manipulated through the conflating of God and country. Funny how we are told over and over again that this type of manipulation is occuring so often under Islam when in fact the United States is likely to be the primary manufacturer of such dehumanized and programmed religious warriors.
"What I'm saying is that they're good soldiers," Zimbardo explains during a conversation at his Russian Hill home. "The whole point of the book is to change people's minds. ... (The perpetrators) were just at the bottom of this barrel; there was all this pressure on them to do this."
Sure, they are good soldiers, in the worst sense of being so dehumanized that they unthinkingly obey orders regardless of their morality or legality. Of course they were only "at the bottom of the barrel". In a world of conscience, such a statement would not even need to be asserted. It is only because the United States is so far removed from a direction set by any moral compass and its citizens so far removed from reality, brainwashed by its media into believing the fairy stories of Islamo-fascism, that it must be carefully explained to its citizens that if such torture was regular and wide-spread, it was because the orders came down from the top.
Yes, there was pressure on them to do these things. And being good, mindless automatons, they obeyed.
Trying to understand the Abu Ghraib disgrace, he says, isn't the same as excusing it. "If you don't understand the dynamics -- and if you don't change the situation -- then it's going to happen over and over again."
Exactly, which is why it is necessary to really get to the bottom of the issue, to really uncover the roots, which, unfortunately, Zimbardo has not done.
Even apart from the lack of proper supervision, Zimbardo writes, the environment at Abu Ghraib -- a 280-acre complex, where Saddam Hussein tortured and executed critics of his Ba'athist government -- was so hellish that everyone was on the verge of cracking.
Porta Potties overflowed in 110-degree heat, leaving a nonstop stench. There were no mess halls, no proper showers, no separate facilities for prisoners with mental illness or contagious diseases such as tuberculosis.
In two months, the population on Tiers 1A and 1B swelled from 200 to 1,000 prisoners -- most of them innocent men rounded up in random military sweeps. Mortar and rocket-propelled grenade attacks on prison guard towers, launched by insurgents from the roofs of nearby buildings, occurred as often as 20 times per week.
"We all got numb in different ways," Zimbardo quotes one reservist saying.
We have no doubt that the conditions at Abu Ghraib were hellish, even moreso than under Saddam Hussein. The conditions in all of Iraq are hellish, as the article An Angry Arab Woman Speaks - The World Would Do Well to Listen so painfully and passionately shows. Does that mean that everyone living under those conditions would turn into a monster?
According to Zimbardo, the answer is yes. But how, then, can we explain those individuals, too few and too rare, who are willing to risk their lives in situations such as that, to help others and go against the tide?
Studying evil, which he defines as "intentionally behaving in ways that harm others," has occupied Zimbardo for years. He's lectured on the psychology of evil in classrooms and at professional conferences, and traveled to Brazil where he interviewed men who had been torturers and death-squad executioners. In the book, he draws examples from the 1994 Rwandan genocide of the early '90s, the lynching of blacks by whites in the American South and the more recent phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalist suicide bombers.
He cites examples of men who, at the same time they inflicted evil in the context of work, maintained parallel lives as family men and loving fathers.
read more...Labels: environment+of+evil+psychopath
by Layla Anwar
Arab Woman Blues
Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:56 EDT
I
cannot sleep. My seething anger keeps my eyes wide open.
But you are sleeping safely in your home, holding your partner or your child and you know in all probability that you will awake tomorrow. And tomorrow, you will open your eyes, step into your bathroom and you will find running water. You will fix yourself a coffee and you will find electricity, you will open your kitchen cupboard and you will find food.
Then you will get dressed, and you have clothes for winter and if you catch the flu, you can always call up your doctor or run to a hospital. Hey, you can even take flowers to your beloved ones if they happen to fall ill, or just check to make sure that the surgery of Uncle Tom was successful. Oh yes, you can afford to do so.
Then you will get into your car, drive merrily or maybe not so merrily to your work place, or go shopping worrying about what to cook for your sweet family, or meet with your friends for a morning cup and rant neurotically about how miserable your life is.
Read More...Labels: angry+arab+woman+speaks
