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Climate change is negating long-term recovery of rivers from the effects of acid rain, according to a Cardiff University study.

The research by Steve Ormerod and Isabelle Durance of the School of Biosciences took place over a 25-year period around Llyn Brianne in mid-Wales.

Carried out in 14 streams, the research involved assessing the number and variety of stream insects present each year.

Scientists measured concentrations of acid and other aspects of stream chemistry and documented climatic variation such as warmer, wetter winters.

With average acidity in rivers falling due to improvements in the levels of acid rain, the researchers expected that up to 29 insect species to have re-colonised the less acidic Welsh streams.

These included sensitive mayflies and other groups often eaten by trout and salmon.

Ormerod, a professor who has led the project since it began in the early 1980s, said that “since the 1970s, there have been huge efforts to clean-up sources of acid rain, and our research shows that rivers are heading in the right direction”, said a Cardiff statement.

Added Isabelle Durance, who co-authored the paper: “More and more evidence now shows that some of the worst effects of climate change on natural habitats come from interactions with existing stressors - in this case acid rain.”

At least 200 narwhal whales in Canada’s Arctic, trapped by winter ice that is setting in around them and facing starvation or suffocation, must be culled, officials have said.

Hunters from the village of Pond Inlet on Baffin Island discovered the animals trapped near Bylot Island, about 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) from Pond Inlet, on November 15, and checked on them periodically.

The local hunters are allowed to harvest only 130 whales each year for food, according to standards set by the federal department of Fisheries and Oceans.

But department spokesman Keith Pelley told AFP: “It’s unlikely the animals are going to survive the winter, so the hunters have been given authorisation to cull them.”

The hunters have been on the ice slaughtering the whales since Thursday and are likely to accomplish their task over the coming days, he said.

Narwhal are found mostly in the Arctic circle, and are renowned for their extraordinarily long tusk, which is actually a twisted incisor tooth that projects from the left side of its upper jaw and can be up to three meters long.

“A couple of weeks ago, when the ice was still moving, there were quite a few narwhal seen out there in the open water,” Jayko Allooloo, chairman of the Pond Inlet hunters and trappers organization, told public broadcaster CBC.

“About a week later, they’re stuck.” Community elders and officials feared the whales would die from a lack of oxygen as the ice grew thicker around them, Pelley explained.

It is us, humans, who have been ruining this great earth into garbage and rubbles for our selfishness. We have been destroying the green trees like anything and making this place unlivable for our future generations. It is only recently where we have realized that we should do something for our earth. There are smaller things like buying organic tote bags only and other stuff like which help us in our aim of making our place greener.

No one knows that recycled sports bottles can be reused again. Such ignorance has been costing us a great deal when it comes to making the earth greener. Buying only promotional USB will also help in our goal of making this place greener.

The products like organic tote bags help immensely by way of preserving the green by reusing them and using only organic materials. They also will not pollute our earth unlike their polythene counterparts.

Recycled cards are another way to help make this place a better one to live. They are reused once and can be reused many times.

If only if we vow that to only buy green promotional products like the tote bags, etc we can actually help in smaller ways to make this place greener.

Dainty blue fish dart around coral shaped like moose antlers near the Mexican resort of Cancun, but sickly brown spots are appearing where pollution threatens one of the world’s largest reefs.

Parts of the reef, nestled in turquoise waters, have died and algae — which feed on sewage residues flowing out of the fast-growing resort city — has taken over. Coral reefs like Chitales, near the northern tip of a Caribbean reef chain stretching from Mexico to Honduras, are dying around the world as people and cities put more stress on the environment. Climate change alone could trigger a global coral die-off by 2100 because carbon emissions warm oceans and make them more acidic, according to a study published in December. But local environmental problems like sewage, farm runoff and overfishing could kill off much of the world’s reefs decades before global warming does, said Roberto Iglesias, a biologist from UNAM university’s marine sciences station near Cancun. “The net effect of pollution is as bad or maybe worse than the effects of global warming,” said Iglesias, a co-author of the study in the journal Science on how climate change affects reefs. Human waste like that from Cancun’s hotels and night spots aggravates threats to coral worldwide like overzealous fishing which hurts stocks of fish that eat reef-damaging algae. Coral reefs, underwater structures that look like rocky gardens, are covered with tiny animals called coral polyps.

The polyps build the reefs by slowly secreting calcium carbonate over thousands of years, creating structures that can dull the blow hurricanes deal to coastal cities and are vital nurseries for fish. The polyps also give the reefs their dazzling shades of pink and purple that delight scuba divers and boost tourism from the Great Barrier Reef of Australia to the Florida Keys. Economically, reefs generate billions of dollars a year worldwide in tourism and fishing, the Nature Conservancy environmental group says. Across the Caribbean, the amount of reef surface covered by live coral has fallen about 80 percent in the last three decades, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network says. In the Pacific between Hawaii and Indonesia, reefs have been losing about 1 percent of their coral coverage annually over the last 25 years. It is hard to tell how much of that damage was caused by global warming and how much by local factors like pollution. Some scuba diving instructors around Cancun are worried about the future of their trade. Jorge Olivieri, who has been taking tourists out diving in the area for the last 16 years, says some reefs are so damaged he would not take an experienced diver to see them. “There are still fish and coral, but it isn’t like it used to be,” Olivieri said. With the fight against global warming largely outside of the reach of local officials, fixing problems like poor sewage treatment and overfishing are among the few things that countries and cities can do to help their reefs.

Some posed happily, others tried to dodge the camera, still others stood close to those sought out by photographers. Lots of well-known faces in the city’s social circuit were seen at the party hosted at Le Meridien by Amway India to mark the completion of 10 years in the business.

William S Pinckney, managing director and CEO, stood at the door throughout, welcoming and seeing guests off with a “I’m glad everyone came on time.” Present there were Christian M Schlaga, minister and deputy chief of mission, embassy of Germany; Vijay Jolly, BJP MLA, with wife Rashmi; Manoj Arora, treasurer, Delhi Study Group, with wife Alka; Gabriele Annis, first secretary, embassy of Italy with Graziella; Madhav Nepal; Rajeev Shukla; Pradeep Jain, chairman of Parsvnath Developers; and Malaysian high commissioner Dato’ Tan Seng Sung.

An international team of earth scientists has reported movement of warmed sea water through the flat, Pacific Ocean floor off Costa Rica, which is greater than that off mid-ocean volcanic ridges, a find that suggests possible marine life in a part of the ocean once considered barren.

A new finding reported by American, Canadian and German earth scientists suggests a rather unremarkable area off the Costa Rican Pacific coast holds clues to better understand sea floor ecosystems.

The research team that has studied the region, located between 50 and 150 miles offshore and covering an area the size of Connecticut.

The sea floor, some two miles below, is marked by a collection of about 10 widely separated outcrops or mounts, rising from sediment covering crust made of extinct volcanic rock some 20-25 million years old.

Carol Stein, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and her colleagues, found that seawater on this cold ocean floor is flowing through cracks and crevices faster and in greater quantity than what is typically found at mid-ocean ridges formed by rising lava.

Water temperatures, while not as hot as by the ridge lava outcrops, are surprisingly warm as well. Finding so much movement in a bland area of the ocean was surprising.

“When we went out to try to get a feel for how much heat was coming from the ocean floor and how much sea water might be moving through it, we found that there was much more heat than we expected at the outcrops,” said Stein.

The water gushing from sea floor protrusions warms as it moves through the insulated volcanic rock and picks up heat.

“It’s relatively warm and may have some of the nutrients needed to support some of the life forms we see on the sea floor,” said Stein.

The earth scientists dropped probes from ships down to the pitch-dark ocean floor to collect temperature and heat-flow data to form images of what is happening in this area of the ocean.

Only in recent decades have earth scientists discovered such life forms as bacteria, clams and tubeworm species living near the hot water discharges along the mid-ocean volcanic ridges.

The rather flat undersea areas which Stein and her colleagues studied were thought to be lifeless, but the nutrient-enhanced warm water flows they discovered suggests this area too may be capable of supporting life.

“The sea floor may not be quite as much of a desert even as we thought maybe 20 or 10 years ago, but rather there may be a lot of locations similar to this well-studied area in terms of the water flow where there’s a lot more biological activity,” said Stein.

I’m trying to picture how big a cloud of pollution 1 tonne of CO2 really makes. I mean, one tonne of carbon all squashed together makes for a cube a little over 1 metre each side, more or less, but if you took the average CO2 spread as it might, are we talking about a cloud that would cover a football pitch, a large University campus, a state or a country?

How about if you laid one tonne of CO2 flat in a 1 atom thick puddle? What would that cover?

I guess you’d have to factor in if that tonne of CO2 is stuck somewhere where you get smog conditions or not, but
I was just reading this article on CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapc… and it got me thinking about how to convince the world that we just have to make it interesting to the greedy side of mankind to scuttle as much pollution as possible and not just shop it around. How can it possibly make sense to invent a quota for a country that can’t produce the mess, just to buy it?

you could get a rough estimate of it as an ideal gas

V =nRT/P

just convert tonnes to moles for the n term

it is close to 600 cubic meters at atmospheric pressure and room temperature - this assumes it does not diffuse and remains together as pure CO2.

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Tonne as spelled is a metric term.
US standard would be 2200 lbs. at 16ounces per lbs.
CO2 is ca compound: 1 atom Carbon
2 atoms of oxygen
now consult the Periodic Table of elements, for the exact weight of each of the two elements. add the weight of the carbon atom to the weight of two oxygen atoms then after converting 2200lbs to like weight equivalents divide by the combined weight of CO2 this figure will indicate how many Co2 molecules are require to make a tonne of CO2.
So if you haven’t guessed by now a tonne is a tonne all of it measured at sea level at one atmospheric lb per square inch.

At UK.Yahoo.com (under; Shop New Cars);

Fuel Economy # of Vehicles
40 - 37 MPG (616)
46 - 41 MPG (592)
53 - 47 MPG (351)
More than 54 MPG (36)

First;
I was trying to find United States (US) EPA emission requirements (standards) for passenger vehicles 2007. (Not California)
NUMBERS only; I.E. Parts of (x y z, pollutants) per (?) gallon etc. (preferably in a chart or graph form).
Second;
I am trying to find European Union (EU) emission requirements for passenger vehicles 2007.
NUMBERS only; I.E. Parts of (x y z, pollutants) per (?) gallon etc. (preferably in a chart or graph form).
Third;
I want to compare the two.
Fourth;
I want to find United States (US) miles per gallon (MPG) Criteria.
Fifth;
I want to find European Union (EU) miles per gallon (MPG) Criteria.
Sixth;
I want to compare the two.
http://cars.yahoo.co.uk/results~10035412…

There are a lot of good reasons above which I also agree with, but they’ve all also forgotten a very big reason.

US Gallons are SMALLER than Imperial Gallons (UK Gallons).

1 US gallon = 0.83267384 Imperial gallons

Therefore 50 MPG in the UK is only 41 mpg in the US, even if they are calculated in exactly the same way for exactly the same car.

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first european cars have smaller engines than american cars do because the cars are taxed based on engine displacement.

second european cars are lighter than american cars are due to the lower safety requirements.

third european cars have less stringent emission standards than american cars do.

fourth european cars are tuned for better engine performance, and better efficiency than american cars are due to higher fuel prices, and the demand for high performance even in the smallest of cars.

all of the above assumes gas verses gas powered cars. european diesel powered cars are even more efficient.

Indians can do any thing they choose to on there own reservation or land. Drill for oil, cut trees, fish and hunt all year. Maybe even build a nuclear energy plant and the environmetalist don`t bother them. I`m not allowed to do these things on my land! So, are Environmentalist group discriminating again me because I am not Indian

Technically, Indian Reservations are their own countries… so you could try, but you wouldn’t win.

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Indian nations are exempt from many laws because there lands are governed by their tribal government, not state laws. This is why tribes can have casinos in states that outlaw gambling. They can do some of these things because of their unique status.
It isn’t the environmental groups that OK drilling and whatnot; it’s the U.S. government. Your problem is with the government, not an independent group.
You’re more than welcome to file a lawsuit against the government saying you should have governmental status, as tribes, do but you can imagine how well that’s going to go

It’s going to be well above 100 in the eastern US.
http://www.greenhome.huddler.com/wiki/gl…

Global cooling started several years ago. It is warm on the “East Coast” because it is June and we are only a few days away from the summer solstice. In the northern hemisphere, the longest day of the year (near June 22) when the Sun is farthest north. In the southern hemisphere, winter and summer solstices are exchanged. The summer solstice marks the first day of the season of summer. The declination of the Sun on the (northern) summer solstice is known as the tropic of cancer (23° 27′).

The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, respectively, in the sense that the length of time elapsed between sunrise and sunset on this day is a maximum for the year. Of course, daylight saving time means that the first Sunday in April has 23 hours and the last Sunday in October has 25 hours, but these human meddlings with the calendar and do not correspond to the actual number of daylight hours. In Chicago, there are 15:02 hours of daylight on the summer solstice of June 21, 1999!

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The University of Alabama MSU lower tropospheric data just released showed this May was the 4th coldest May for the globe since that record began in 1979. It was also below the average for both hemispheres. It trailed only 1985, a weak El Nino at the tail end of the El Chichon cold period, 1989, a summer following a strong La Nina, and 1992, the year after Pinatubo. It was just 0.003 colder than 1993, another Pinatubo affected year that ranked 5th.

For more than 75% of the nation, according to the CDC, May was cooler than normal, as much as 7.5F below in the far North Central.

That continues the downslide we have seen starting in 2002 which accelerated the last year with the Pacific cooling and La Nina.

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Correlat…
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog

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It’s June. We call it Summer down here in the South. We’re still below average for the year thus far, having skipped Spring entirely after a long, drawn-out Winter.