Noted scientists warn Stephen Harper against Fisheries Act changes

Hundreds of prominent scientists are warning Prime Minister Stephen Harper not to gut fish-habitat protections they say would put species at risk and damage Canada’s international standing.

In a letter to Harper sent Thursday, the 625 scientists express concern the federal government is set to remove habitat protections from the Fisheries Act.

“This would be a most unwise action, which would jeopardize many important fish stocks and the lakes, estuaries and rivers that support them,” the letter states.

“We urge you to abandon this initiative.”

The changes, expected to be signalled as a streamlining of environmental assessments in next week’s budget, would reflect the Conservative government’s push to break down barriers to development.

Last week, a leaked draft showed Ottawa wants to remove habitat provisions from the act, raising concerns that would essentially dilute government oversight in the face of industrial development.

“If that’s even close to what they’re going to announce, you’ll see some of the senior scientists in this country joining the green groups and native people on the picket lines,” said David Schindler, ecology professor at the University of Alberta.

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nonplussedbyreligion: So, You Think The Keystone Pipeline Is A Good Idea, And That Climate Change Is A Hoax?

nonplussedbyreligion:

I love people who say they don’t believe in global warming, or climate change, or whatever the current jargon is for the catastrophic disaster looming in our future. It doesn’t matter what we call it, the fact remains the same: we are polluting ourselves out of a planet.

I sound pretty certain about that don’t I?  Well, I am.  I suppose that if I were to take the “climate change is a giant hoax” media machine at face value I’d be more doubtful, but it really only takes a few minutes of thought on this subject to start getting to a point where you are either seriously devoted to sticking your head in the sand like a good little GOP ostrich, OR you’re scared out of your pants for your kids and grand-kids.  Heck, if you’re young enough, it’s your own hide you ought to worry about.

So why am I so sure?  Let’s start with something we’ve all experienced, you go to the store to shop on a sunny day, leaving your car parked in the shade.  When you come outside and see it sitting in the sun, you know your first thought is of the hot seats, steaming steering wheel and choking air that are waiting to greet you.  You know that the sun will warm the inside of your car, but do you know why?

It’s because glass acts like carbon dioxide.   The glass in your windows allows the full spectrum of the sun’s energy into your car and that energy is absorbed by your seats, steering wheel, and dashboard.  The reason that it’s hot in your car is that this energy then radiates back out in the form of a single kind of radiation, infrared radiation.  When infrared radiation reacts with the glass in your car it can’t get out of your car.  With the heat of  the sun shining on your car bouncing around in there, it gets pretty hot doesn’t it?

When I explain this concept, there are always those who say, “But we don’t know that carbon dioxide behaves the same way that glass does.”   This is nothing but pure ignorance.  We do know it.  We have a machine, called an infrared spectrometer that can shine an infrared light through samples of gasses and identify the gas based on how much and what kind of radiation is reflected back.   I know this, not because I have to rely on some foreign scientist with questionable motives, but because I’ve done it myself.   I’ve used an infrared spectrometer on carbon dioxide and I can swear on the lives of my children that it did in fact reflect infrared radiation.  This is why they are called greenhouse gasses people, think about it… your car could grow tomatoes if you’d plant them in that hothouse on wheels!

Another claim I have heard from skeptics is “We don’t know how much carbon is in the atmosphere.”  This I take serious issue with.  The sarcastic part of me wishes to ask if perhaps the same officials who forged a birth announcement for an infant Barrack Obama in 1961 were also those who were hard at work creating fake carbon dioxide data that Barrack Obama could later use to beat a 2012 oil industry into needless submission?   If this is the case, I tip my hat to the greatest Jedi mind trick ever pulled on humanity.

In preference of reality, I choose to believe in the Mauna Loa data is a collection of qualified measurements which shows a growing concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere.  For those who can’t take that data at face value, I would ask how much carbon dioxide they think should be in the atmosphere considering that we’ve got a reported 1 billion cars got running on fossil fuels jetting around this planet.  I would then suggest that it doesn’t matter if Mauna Loa is right or if they are right… it’s too much C02.

I am comfortable saying this because when I look back at the history of how fossil fuels were created, as reported by the oil industry itself, I find that the diatoms and other organisms whose bodies make up the oil, natural gas and coal that we’ve burned over the last 200 years were buried beneath the earth’s crust around 300 million years ago during a period known as the Carboniferous Period.  The Carboniferous Period lasted for about 110 million years, during which time almost all the earth’s fossil fuels were created.  At the beginning of that period the planet was about three degrees warmer than it is now, by the end of that period it had dropped nearly two degrees.

Think about that, when all that carbon was buried over the course of 110 million years, it cooled our planet by two degrees.  What do we think will happen when we burn that carbon and release it all into the atmosphere over the course of a couple of centuries?  I have to force down fear for my son’s children just thinking about all the ways that we cannot know the answer to that question, except to say that it won’t be good.  It won’t be good at all.

Once we get down to the facts, they are pretty simple:
1)            Carbon dioxide will heat this planet up like your car with the windows up on a sunny day.
2)            We are dumping unimaginable amounts of carbon into our atmosphere.
3)            We should immediately stop doing this to ourselves.

Arguing with someone who’d dispute these facts is arguing with someone who wants to talk about politics or economics instead of science.  There isn’t any science left to dispute global warming with.  Yes, there are models that suggest it won’t be as bad as we thought, but there are also models that suggest it could be worse.    Yes, there are those who have economic and political motivation to deceive us into ignoring this, and they seem believable sometimes, but what would you do if those same interests tried to tell you that your car won’t get hot if you park it in the sun?  You’d laugh.  You’d know they were wrong.

Don’t let them fool you on this now.  The consequences of a hot planet are by definition much bigger than those of a hot steering wheel.  We all triple check those car seats and the precious cargo we put in them, we worry about the formula or breast milk we offer them, and the national debt we’ll leave them, but none of that matters if the planet that they inherit is uninhabitable.  Whether you like it or not, you believe in the science of global warming.  Whether you think you believe in the science or not, it’s happening now.   Let’s start thinking, and stop playing ostrich, giving up $2.00/gal gasoline is a small sacrifice in trade for an entire planet.

The cry for cheep gasoline, ought to be silenced as immoral. The stupidity of the 2008 McCain/Palin chant, “Drill Baby, Drill!” ought to be apparent to us all since the Gulf Oil spill of 2010. The inconvenience of this truth is far greater than the message of a former vice presidential candidate, and I am concerned at the willingness of so many to shut their ears to the dire straights of this very moment, while pointing out the politics of Al Gore or anyone else.  I don’t care if he flies in the world’s only hybrid plane/SUV.

I do care that the Keystone Pipeline issue is being tucked away in a transportation bill that will be difficult to defeat.  The tar sands in Alberta, Canada have an estimated 176 billion barrels of oil in them. Considering that we have only burned an estimated 100 billion barrels of oil since the 1890′s and that the Keystone Pipeline would open up nearly twice as much oil as we’ve already burned, it seems to me that we’ve got a serious problem on our hands.  According to the EPA, the global temperature has risen nearly a full degree since the industrial revolution began. If we open up twice as much oil as has ever been burned when we know that the first dose rose our temp by a degree, we are worse than foolish, we are suicidal.

This issue isn’t one that you’ll be proud to tell your children that you ignored.  Don’t forget that car on a hot day, Go to 350.org and start learning about what you can do to help solve the climate crisis, write your legislators, call them, Tweet them, Facebook them, hound them till they have no choice to but to stand up for our future.

This planet isn’t a car. We can’t roll down the atmosphere and let the heat out, we have no tinfoil reflector to set up in the clouds to bounce the rays out before they get in.  The only choice we have is to not put the gas up there in the first place. I can think of no better place to leave it, than right where God intended it, in the tar sands of Alberta.

Warmer Planet Could Be Dominated by Mosquitoes, Ticks, Rodents and Jellyfish

Two mammal-eating “transient” killer whales photographed off the south side of Unimak Island, eastern Aleutian Islands, AlaskaImage: Robert Pittman/Alaska Fisheries Science Center

The distribution of wildlife on Earth is changing with the climate, making conditions more favorable to odd species such as trumpeter swans, beetles, marmots, albatross, killer whales and white-tailed deer.

Imagine a planet where jellyfish rule the seas, giant rodents roam the mountains and swarms of insects blur everything in sight. It may sound far-fetched, but enough global warming is likely to change the distribution of wildlife on Earth. While species that are under threat, such as the polar bear, seem to get all the attention, others are beginning to thrive like never before.

In the past three months, new studies have been published about killer whales, wandering albatross and trumpeter swans—all of which appear to be benefiting from climate change.

Melting ice is turning the Arctic Sea into a giant buffet for killer whales. They have been arriving in growing numbers to feed on belugas, seals and narwhals, according to a recent study by scientists from the University of Manitoba. Warmer temperatures make it easier for the whales to hunt because their prey is less likely to climb onto sea ice or hide below it to escape.

At the opposite end of the world, in Antarctica’s Southern Ocean, changing winds have been helping the wandering albatross find food faster. Researchers say global warming has produced stronger air currents that allow the birds to spend less time away from their nests, increasing the odds that their chicks will survive.

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Hawaiian monk seal sent to Waikiki to save species

In this file photo provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Hawaiian monk seal known as KE18 attacks a pup at Kure Atoll, Hawaii in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in 2011. The Hawaiian monk seal, the most endangered marine mammal in the United States, has a long list of threats, among them fishing nets, sharks and, most especially, humans. But for one group of seals, the biggest threat came from one of its own: a brute named KE18 who killed two seals and wounded at least 11, most of them helpless pups. (AP Photo/NOAA, File)

The Hawaiian monk seal is on course to disappear in 50 to 100 years, scientists say. But KE18 was en route to having his ticket punched much sooner due to his propensity for nudging his own species toward extinction.

“It’s really disheartening when the species you’re trying to protect is becoming the troublemaker,” said Charles Littnan, the lead scientist for the Hawaiian monk seal research program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The female seal KE18 killed would have likely given birth to four or five pups, he said.

Authorities had planned the drastic step of euthanizing KE18. He was spared when the NOAA team that planned to put him down traveled to Kure Atoll , where he attacked most of his victims, but wasn’t able to find him.

KE18 turned up at Midway Atoll, a 55-mile journey from Kure, where NOAA officials decided to save him. They captured the 9-year-old seal on a beach, loaded him on a Coast Guard plane, and flew him 1,400 miles south to Honolulu and a temporary home at Waikiki Aquarium.

Jeff Walters, NOAA’s monk seal recovery coordinator, said KE18 will be used in research on monk seal eating habits and calorie consumption at the University of California-Santa Cruz, where he’ll go later this month.

Monk seals have lived in the waters off the Hawaiian archipelago for millions of years. At one time, their population was estimated at 15,000. It’s dropped dramatically in recent years, however, and now totals about 1,100. More than 80 percent live in a nature preserve among dozens of small atolls northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands.

The seal is an important part of Hawaii’s history. They’re called Ilio holo I ka uaua in the Hawaiian language, which means, “dog that runs in rough water.” They are called “monk” seals because they are solitary - like monks - and the soft folds of fur around their necks look similar to the cowls worn by monks.

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