Mississippi oil spill

The New Orleans port was closed down last week when a tanker collided with a barge, sinking the barge and spilling 419,000 gallons of oil into the Mississippi River. On the scale of oil spills it was relatively small and contained, but it still had effects. Right now ecologists are most worried about the wetlands in the area.
So far few animals have been affected by the spill, but there are still some birds and other wildlife that required rehabilitation. Obviously, aquatic life is going to be the most affected. Who breathes oil? Oiled birds' feathers lose their ability to waterproof and some of their buoyancy, as well as their thermal capacity. Land animals are going to try to clean the oil off themselves, which will wreak havoc with their digestive systems.
I can't help but remember the Exxon Valdez spill and the fact that things aren't really back to normal, even 20 years on. Officials expect this to be cleaned up by July 30. Only time will tell what the long-term ramifications are likely to be.

Is this a science organization or what?

*Coming to you from Washington, DC, where the author has taken yet another temporary biology job*

I usually read the Friday edition of the Washington Times. The headline on July 11 stated that the EPA would not do anything about global warming this year because it needed more time to gather evidence of the effect of warming on human health. A week later (July 18), the EPA announced that global warming did significantly impact human health, but it still wasn't planning to do anything about it. Someone told me recently that an organization is only as good as its leader, and given that this administration is adept at micromanaging I shouldn't be surprised. Bush thumbed his nose at the rest of the world at the G8 Summit, saying, "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter!" Goodbye? What's that supposed to mean? Sounds like our dear old lame-duck president is withdrawing us from G8 and just about any responsibility from anything. But as this has been his MO from the start, I really shouldn't be surprised. Yet even Bush has acknowledged that global warming is occurring, but of course it isn't his fault, so he shouldn't have to do anything about it.
There are plenty of scientists hammering away at their jobs, trying to get the administration to listen, but either failing completely or getting fired for their pains. With families to feed, it is difficult for many scientists to risk job loss. People like me, on the other hand, who are single and cannot get a full-time job to save their lives, worry a little less about telling the government exactly what we think (as evidenced by a few letters I have sent to my Congressional officials that do not mince words). Why should we give respect if we don't get it? Congress seems to operate with insults these days, so I figure I'm just playing the game. I understand why other scientists don't--after all, you do catch more flies with honey than vinegar--but we're not getting anywhere, anyway.
A prominent scientist once asked me, "Aren't you a little young to be so cynical?" Maybe, but at the same time I can't help thinking, "Haven't you seen enough of the way the U.S. is going to be so hopeful?"

To list or delist

Conservation groups, most notably the Natural Resource Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, have launched a challenge to the proposed delisting of wolves. Actually, the wolves have already been delisted as of the end of March. The animals were transported from Canada in the mid '90s, and not surprisingly have flourished as this native wolf habitat before the last Yellowstone wolf was killed off in the early '30s. The goal for delisting was to achieve at least 30 breeding pairs and 300 individuals. The current population for the tristate area is 1,500, which was reached in 2006.
The reason conservation groups are worried is that they see a possibility of the same thing happening all over again. In Wyoming the wolf is classified as trophy game inside Yellowstone National Park, and in the surrounding areas it is a predator. Landowners can shoot on sight wolves that they feel have been harassing their livestock. Defenders of Wildlife notes that Idaho wants to reduce the number of breeding pairs to just 10 within the state. These control methods could make it difficult for the wolf to survive, and will certainly cut down on genetic diversity. As there are whole classes devoted to genetics, I will not go over the subject in detail here. Suffice it to say that a genetic abnormality in one animal could lead to the same abnormality in its offspring, and so on.
A lot of people are afraid of wolves for no particular reason. They have been raised on the story of Peter and the Wolf, and indoctrinated to believe that predators will attack humans without cause. North American wolves tend to be shy, and will only attack a human if that human is harassing it in some way or if it is very hungry. Other people worry about the effect of reintroduction on big game populations, ignoring the fact that parks were having trouble controlling elk populations only a decade ago. I'm a bit surprised that these big game hunters do not realize that elk and wolves managed to coexist for centuries, and the elk were not killed off. There are actually people in Wyoming who believe that the wolf is not natural!
As in every controversy, there are crazies on both sides. Some assert that there are not yet enough wolves in the area, and advocate for 1,500 in Yellowstone National Park alone. There are not enough big game animals in the area to support that kind of population. The ratio of predators to big game has always been skewed; that is, more game than predators. To keep the ecological balance it has to be that way.
I am no wolf expert, and I have no very strong opinions either way, with a few exceptions. I think that if Idaho thinks that it can maintain its wolf population with only 10 breeding pairs, someone has a screw loose, and I don't think it's the biologists. In Wyoming, 10 wolves were killed within the first week of the ban on shooting them lifted, and as of May 1 the balance was in the mid 20s. As of the end of May, 63 wolves have been killed in the state. So far, 1 wolf has been poached. Only time will tell if we've delisted the wolf too soon. I sincerely hope it doesn't end up back on the list, but, as with so many things in conservation, we'll have to wait and see.

In which I (sort of) agree with Kempthorne

Hurrah! Polar bears were listed as threatened last Tuesday, a day before the deadline! The clincher, however, is that the Bush administration has no intention of doing anything to cut emissions. Kempthorne has said that he is not sure the Endangered Species Act is the right tool to use to force emissions limitations. I actually agree with him on this, insofar as the ESA is already hated by landowners. If we use it to force a major lifestyle overhaul of the American people, it may well end up being a piece of legislation that gets overturned. Yet if the polar bear is listed, isn't it incumbent upon us not to further harm it? It is obvious that global warming is a key factor affecting polar bear habitat, along with the habitat of other species that depend on cold seas and the presence of sea ice for survival.
This 'not sure' business has been an excellent stalling tool for politicians, and I have to wonder whether anyone has called them on it. Once I got three responses from my state representative saying that she agreed that such and such needed to be done, but 'wasn't sure' that whatever solution that had been proferred was the right way to go about it. (In this case the question was reducing emissions in cars.) My immediate response was, "Well, gee, you're the politician. Tell me what you think the right way is." I got no response.
Someone, please, tell me what sure is. If we all went through life saying, "I'm not sure this is the right way to do this," and not doing anything, we'd never get anywhere. We have to test things to know whether they work, and if they don't work we have to go back and attach the problem from another angle.
Which brings me back to the polar bear. The ice is melting, and the immediate cause is global warming. We've got to throttle back on something. Like it or not, the minute the polar bear was listed, a reduction in emissions came to the forefront. Some conservation groups are gearing up for more court cases to get the Feds to mandate a reduction in global warming gas emissions. Not too long ago, someone wrote an editorial on how we needed to save the polar bear in order to save ourselves. That is pretty much true. An Englishman has crunched the numbers and decided that we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by the year 2030 to maintain our current quality of life. It won't be easy, but then no one ever said it would be.

Science in the way of the Fed

Thank God we have independent environmental interests in this country, or we'd really be up a creek! Three years ago agencies started talking about listing the polar bear as threatened. A decision was supposed to be made on January 9, but the Bush administration has been stalling. Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Alaska natives filed a lawsuit insisting that the Fish and Wildlife Service make a decision. Lawyers for the Department of the Interior fought to allow the deadline to be extended to June, but a judge in California (score again for that state) ruled that the agency must make a decision by May 15. I have my doubts as to whether that will yield a positive outcome for the bear, given who the people making the decision are, or that two weeks will make that much difference, but the important thing is that we the people were able to compel the Fed to act through litigation.
Meanwhile, 30 million acres in the Chuchki Sea were sold off to oil and gas developers on February 6. Some in the environmental community have speculated that the reason listing of the polar bear was put off so long is that if listing had occurred on January 9, then the Chuchki couldn't have been opened to development. This sounds awfully familiar. In 2006 the sage grouse was proposed for listing, but the measure failed. I, along with a lot of other conservationists, did not fail to notice that a possible reason it failed is because the sage grouse's habitat is located mostly in northwest Wyoming where there is a lot of oil development going on. Had the sage grouse been listed, it would have halted all that development. Given that our President and VP are both oil men, it's hard not to see a possible hidden agenda. In fact, some White House officials worry that environmentalists will use a polar bear listing to thwart energy development. Let me see now--the reason we want the polar bear listed is because its habitat is disappearing at a rapid rate. The reason it is disappearing at such a rapid rate is due to global warming. See the connection? Besides, as far as the Chuchki Sea goes, there are ALREADY endangered and threatened animals in the area, so I'm amazed they were allowed to get away with the land sale at all. Public support no doubt has a lot to do with it, but I'd prefer my public supporters were knowledgeable on the subject, which a lot of them seem not to be.
Case in point--top-level officials at the Department of the Interior are on record as saying they don't have enough evidence..., evidence does not support..., I'm not knowledgeable enough about the situation. If anyone should be knowledgeable on any environmental situation, it is those high-level officials whom I support with my tax money!
If they think there's not enough evidence, they should talk to the people in the field. Anderson Cooper has spent 30 years studying the bears, and worries about their futures. Historical aerial photographs of the Arctic show a drastic reduction in sea ice. Yes, right now the polar bear population in the entire Arctic (we control the Alaska part of it) is between 21,000 and 30,000, depending on who you listen to. But if scientists are worrying now, it behooves us to listen. After all, if doctors thought they had a surefire cure for cancer, wouldn't the government listen to them? Selective ignorance, especially in a group of agencies responsible for promoting well-being, is just sad.

Someone has been sorely misinformed!

I really don't get the thinking behind spreading misinformation. I mean, look where it's gotten us--into an unpopular war and with a president who has a 70 percent disapproval rating (depending on which poll you believe). You'd think we would have learned our lesson. Giving out anything less than the facts will result in disaster. Unfortunately, that is not the case, and newspapers are still printing misinformation from one Bjorn Lomborg, who claims to be a scientist but was discredited by his peers long before Al Gore brought global warming to the forefront.
I have heard some pretty ridiculous things about global warming, but none so completely off the mark as what I've read on Facebook. "We are in the midst of a global cooling scare, NOT global warming." The excuse given for this point of view is that temperatures in the Antarctic Ocean are still cool. This was predicted to happen. Icemelt does not automatically become warm to the human touch. Thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit isn't supposed to feel warm, but it doesn't mean that temperature is normal for that part of the world. Additionally, the ocean there is still buffering some of the pollution precisely BECAUSE it is cold. Does it mean there is no adverse effect? No. There are penguins in the area that are already suffering.
"Frankly, I'm looking forward to the warmer weather." What exactly do you think this warmer weather is going to mean? Desertification is predicted for a lot of the United States, including the Bread Basket. There is no way to grow the crops we currently rely on without rain. Desertification is exactly what it sounds like--lack of rain turns the land into a desert. Right now rain is associated with warmer weather, but there may come a time in the near future when it is not. If there is no water available to vaporize, it can't fall elsewhere. The rainforests of the Equator are known to produce their own rain. If they are cut down we lose that water source.
"As far as I can tell, all that will happen is that life will become a little more uncomfortable for us and we'll lose a few wildlife species." The idea of losing any species at all makes me profoundly sad, but the arrogance in this comment is the assumption that we do not count as wildlife. We may not see ourselves that way, but Mother Nature certainly does. A lot of diseases are predicted to move north as the climate warms--indeed, they already are. Bat colonies on the East Coast are dying from a mysterious disease that leaves their noses white. Honey bees in California are dying, and the plants that they usually pollinate die off. For years there have been cases of diseases deadly to humans being carried by rodents in the southwest. I counted 7 vaccinations I needed in preparation to visit British Guyana. How many people are willing to go get vaccinated against yellow fever and faithfully take a quinine pill the size of a large bumblebee every week? I was lucky in that I did not suffer any side effects from the quinine, but a number of people in my group did.
"The ice caps aren't melting." I have nothing to say to this, except that if that's what you truly believe then you haven't been paying attention to anything.
So why do I read this stuff? There isn't really anything I can say to these people to make them change their minds. Very few of them go onto the political boards there with open minds (although I can include myself in this at times). It's hard to read or type a full explanation of the matter on a computer messageboard. It is important to know what people are saying, and it is definitely an eye-opener for me. I am reasonably grounded in the scientific background of this phenomenon, as are many people who read this blog. I am constantly amazed at all the deniers out there who refuse to see what is right in front of them. The only think I can think of is that they don't want it to be happening. I don't want it to be happening, either. Science has enough problems right now without adding another one into the mix. Unfortunately, we can't just ignore a problem and hope that it goes away. I choose to be part of the solution.

The pine beetle moves south

Colorado is suffering from an outbreak of the mountain pine beetle. This little bug burrows under the bark of lodgepole pines and lays eggs. Once the larvae hatch, they kill the tree by burrowing into the xylem and phloem (essentially, the pipes that carry water and nutrients to the top of the tree), cutting them off from the leaves. Infestations can be detected by popcorn-shaped blobs of sap that form on the trunk at the beetle's entry point. Sometimes the tree catches the burrowing beetle in its sap, and if there are enough of these trapped beetles foresters can be relatively sure that there is no infestation in that particular tree.If an infestation does occur, the only way to be 100 percent sure is by hacking away the outer layer of bark. The beetles also transmit bluestain fungi to the tree. This fungus actually stains the pith blue and will eventually kill the tree as surely as the beetles.
Unlike many harmful species, the mountain pine beetle is native. The beetles can only be killed by temperatures well below zero, at least -40, and this part of the world hasn't seen temperatures like that for quite some time. A friend who is still in Idaho told me that on April 1 it was -18 in Stanley. That may seem cold to us--especially to the poor souls standing in the water slinging fish!--but we don't have the option of releasing glycerol into our blood streams. The beetles do, and the forest across the river from the hatchery shows it. Nearly every single tree has the red-orange crown typical of infested trees. Last summer was a very bad fire summer in Idaho, and with the dead trees across the river the possibility of evacuation was always on our minds. One of my friends asked a firefighter in the area what the people on forest service grounds should do if there was a fire, and the answer was, "Clear out as quick as you can!"
The Colorado Forest Service has been trying to control the beetle by spraying and thinning, but in reality there is only so much they can do. For every stand of trees they spray or thin, hundreds are still untreated. Much of how well the thinning works will depend on how far the beetles travel when they look for new host trees in the spring. Meanwhile, we must hope that the beetles confine their activity to pine trees instead of branching out to other species. Those trees tend to have disease problems of their own.