Rice yields falling under global warming

Global warming is cutting rice yields in many parts of Asia, according to research, with more declines to come.

Yields have fallen by 10-20% over the last 25 years in some locations.

The group of mainly US-based scientists studied records from 227 farms in six important rice-producing countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, India and China.

This is the latest in a line of studies to suggest that climate change will make it harder to feed the world's growing population by cutting yields.

Climate Change is such an obvious phenomenon now, with so much evidence clearly showing that the climate is changing and that we will have to adapt accordingly, that you have to wonder why people still want to argue.

On the one hand it is all us, we are the ones changing the climate and we should do everything in our power to slow the process down giving us more time to develop solutions that will ensure that ourselves and/or as many species as possible don't become extinct as a direct result of our actions.

Or; if it isn't us and the climate change is instead a direct result of natural changes, ice age cycles, volcanic dust clouds, etc. then surely it makes even more sense for us to start making the necessary changes to our technologies and resource use to ensure that we don't exacerbate these changes with our own man-made causes. Ultimately giving us more time to develop solutions that will ensure that ourselves and/or as many species as possible don't become extinct as a result of our actions.

Sigh.

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Plankton decline across oceans as waters warm

The amount of phytoplankton - tiny marine plants - in the top layers of the oceans has declined markedly over the last century, research suggests.

Writing in the journal Nature, scientists say the decline appears to be linked to rising water temperatures.

They made their finding by looking at records of the transparency of sea water, which is affected by the plants.

The decline - about 1% per year - could be ecologically significant as plankton sit at the base of marine food chains.

This is the first study to attempt a comprehensive global look at plankton changes over such a long time scale.

"What we think is happening is that the oceans are becoming more stratified as the water warms," said research leader Daniel Boyce from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

"The plants need sunlight from above and nutrients from below; and as it becomes more stratified, that limits the availability of nutrients," he told BBC News.

Phytoplankton are typically eaten by zooplankton - tiny marine animals - which themselves are prey for small fish and other animals.

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Temperature Constancy Appears Key to Tropical Biodiversity

The tropics owe their stunning biodiversity to consistent year-round temperatures, not higher temperatures or more sunlight, according to a novel survey of insect diversity at different latitudes and at different points in the planet's history.

The finding, presented this week in the journal Paleobiology by researchers from Harvard University, Simon Fraser University, and Brandon University, may finally answer a question that has dogged scientists for centuries.

It also suggests, intriguingly, that the world is likely far less diverse today than it was tens of millions of years ago, when the entire Earth had consistent year-round temperatures, much like the modern tropics.

"The latitudinal diversity gradient has been recognized for 150 years as one of the most general observations in nature, and has produced more explanatory hypotheses than nearly any other observation," says co-author Brian D. Farrell, professor of biology at Harvard. "We show that when most of today's organisms were diversifying, up through the Eocene, the world lacked pronounced seasonality, more like today's tropics, even in areas where the temperature was low."

"It appears it's not the heat of the tropics that promotes diversity; it's the newer seasons of the temperate zone that depress diversity."

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TED: Carl Safina - The oil spill's unseen culprits, victims

The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl Safina scrapes out the facts in this blood-boiling cross-examination, arguing that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse.

Carl Safina
Carl Safina's writing explores the scientific, moral and social dimensions of our relationship with nature.

TED: John Kasaona: How poachers became caretakers

In his home of Namibia, John Kasaona is working on an innovative way to protect endangered animal species: giving nearby villagers (including former poachers) responsibility for caring for the animals. And it's working.

John Kasaona
John Kasaona is a pioneer of community-based conservation -- working with the people who use and live on fragile land to enlist them in protecting it.

How Unleashing the Mississippi Could Protect the Louisiana Coast

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is considering a plan, proposed by scientists, to use dams to divert more water toward the mouth of the Mississippi River, which could keep the BP oil slick from penetrating the vulnerable coastal wetlands.

Preventing spilled oil from invading the fragile Louisiana wetlands—where it would be virtually impossible to remove without severely damaging the ecosystem—is an urgent priority of relief workers in the Gulf of Mexico. A variety of defense measures have been suggested, including the use of rocks and barges to block the oil from entering the bays, and the construction of huge sand piles that would stand 6 feet taller than the Gulf's average high-water mark and, hopefully, shield the coastline.

Last week, G. Paul Kemp, a former professor of marine science at Louisiana State University and current vice president of the National Audubon Society's Louisiana Coastal Initiative, sent a memo to the Environmental Protection Agencyproposing an additional strategy, which calls for using upstream dams to increase the flow of the Mississippi River into the Gulf. Kemp says the river is "the biggest tool in the toolbox" when it comes to keeping oil out Louisiana's swamps and marshes, which make up nearly 40 percent of the nation's wetlands.

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Mammoth-Belch Deficit Caused Prehistoric Cooling?

By killing Ice Age mammals, humans cut greenhouse gas emissions, study says.

When mammoths and other Ice Age "megafauna" disappeared from the Americas about 12,800 years ago, the animals took with them their planet-warming burps—spurring the mysterious cooling period known as the Younger Dryas, a new study says.

And because humans are thought to have killed the creatures off, the deaths hint that we've been changing the climate since long before the first Model T chugged out of Mr. Ford's factory.

According to ice core studies, the Younger Dryas event began about a thousand years after mass human migrations into the Americas 13,400 years ago, near the end of the last ice age.

The world had been starting to warm, but the Younger Dryas brought on a freeze that lasted roughly 1,300 years, with estimated temperature drops of 7.2 to 14.4°F (4 to 8°C) in eastern North America and northern Europe.

Also within a thousand years of the human migrations, more than 114 species of large plant-eaters—including woolly mammoths, giant camels, and ground sloths—had gone extinct. (See pictures of a stunningly preserved baby mammoth.)

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Norway hopes to unlock climate cash to fight tropical deforestation

Norway has announced $1bn in aid to protect forests in Indonesia and hopes to forge a partnership to fight climate change

Norway hopes to boost aid to fight tropical deforestation at a conference tomorrow, and to set in motion a partnership to unlock cash pledged at the Copenhagen summit to help slow climate change.

Norway says developed nations have promised $500m (£347m) to fight deforestation by 2012 on top of $3.5bn agreed at Copenhagen, and new pledges at the conference may bring the total aid closer to $5bn.

Fifty nations will take part in the Oslo meeting, to be attended by Britain's Prince Charles and the financier George Soros, to forge a "partnership" between donors and countries from the Amazon to Congo basins for protecting forests.

Plants soak up carbon dioxide as they grow, helping to curb the increasing rise in carbon levels.

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'World's biggest' forest protection deal for Canada

Timber companies and environment groups have unveiled an agreement aimed at protecting two-thirds of Canada's vast forests from unsustainable logging.

Over 72 million hectares are included in what will become the world's largest commercial forest conservation deal.

Logging will be totally banned on some of the land, in the hope of sustaining endangered caribou populations.

Timber companies hope the deal will bring commercial gains, as timber buyers seek higher ethical standards.

The total protected area is about twice the size of Germany, and equals the area of forest lost globally between 1990 and 2005.

"The importance of this agreement cannot be overstated," said Avrim Lazar, president and CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC).

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You're special, but not as you once thought

Anyone who has read the bible knows that the Old Testament it is full of weird and contradictory rules and quotes.

When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are about to enter and occupy, he will clear away many nations ahead of you: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. These seven nations are all more powerful than you. When the LORD your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, and don't let your daughters and sons marry their sons and daughters. They will lead your young people away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the LORD will burn against you, and he will destroy you. (Deuteronomy 7:1-4 NLT)

However, I have a friend who has read the bible, and yet still remains a follower of the Christian faith because in their particular take on Christianity it states that Jesus died on the cross, not just to forgive us of original sin, but to banish the ways of the old testament and move us into a more enlightened time.

Firstly, I'd argue that they are really just moving the goal posts here, shoehorning some old unacceptable myths to suit their view of what is acceptable.

Secondly, the New Testament, although not quite as evil as the Old, still isn't what a person in the 21st Century should call enlightening or worthy of use as a moral compass.

[In the following parable, Jesus clearly approves of beating slaves even if they didn't know they were doing anything wrong] The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. "But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given." (Luke 12:47-48 NLT)

"So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. (From the NIV Bible, Revelation 2:22-23)"

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away an withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. (John 15:5-6)"

"He [Jesus] said to them, 'Go!' so they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. (Matthew 8:32)"

Why people cannot see, from the abundance of evidence made available to us, that we aren't different from any other species on this planet. Instead we are just one part of this incredible tapestry called life.

Every animal on the planet, including Homo Sapiens, are special in the sense that our ancestors were able to reproduce successfully. In fact, if you have a pet dog or cat, they too are special because every single one of their ancestors were able to reproduce successfully too.

If you go back long enough in your cat's family tree, way past their great great grandparents, past all the species their ancient ancestors were too, back tens of millions of years to some of the first mammalian type creatures on the earth, its there that the line of our "human" ancestral line meets with the ancestral line of your pet cat.

Now to be a part of this incredible family tree called Life on Planet Earth, is pretty special. We can even go further back and see that we are indeed "related" to the reptiles, the fish, and even plants.

I'm not saying we need to go out tree hugging just yet, but if you can understand where you came from, then you can start to feel a great and overwhelming affinity with the natural world, and a great appreciation for the place we all call home.

From this stand point we can built a world based on the principle of what is best for our home and our extended family.

We certainly aren't going to find that from the outdated myths in a 2000 year old book.

Clash of the Kingdoms

On the African savanna, a cheetah fights with a lion over the carcass of a gazelle. In a North American boreal forest, a black spruce tree spreads its roots and leaves to capture more light and water from pines trying to do the same. Closely related species often compete aggressively for resources. But researchers have now found a remarkable exception: a plant competing for food with an animal.

The species in question are sundews and insect-eating wolf spiders. Sundews (Drosera capillaris) cover their leaves in a sticky mucous to trap insects and consume them with digestive enzymes, whereas the spiders (Sosippus floridanus) weave dense webs. Both species live close to the ground in the damp bogs of southern Florida, and both prey on a variety of bugs, including flies, ants, crickets, and springtails. This overlap led ecologist Jason Rohr of the University of South Florida in Tampa to wonder if the two species competed for resources.

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Willie Smits restores a Rainforest

TED Video: By piecing together a complex ecological puzzle, biologist Willie Smits has found a way to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans -- and creating a thrilling blueprint for restoring fragile ecosystems.

Willie Smits has devoted his life to saving the forest habitat of orangutans, the "thinkers of the jungle." As towns, farms and wars encroach on native forests, Smits works to save what is left.

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