Memories of 21, 42, 63 ... the 84th meandering

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Get ready for some good reading.

Night Schools for Fish

Some fish form huge schools, known as shoals, that stretch for miles. What triggers hundreds of millions of individuals to form such aggregations that can then move in unison is one of biology's mysteries.

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Ocean Engineering shed some light on the process last week. It turns out that darkness is the first step.

Nicholas C. Makris and collaborators at five other institutions studied Atlantic herring, which shoal up on a fishing ground off Massachusetts known as Georges Bank. They used an underwater imaging technology called Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing and conventional fish-finding sonar to observe the herring over several days in autumn when they spawn.

Triggered by the fading light of sunset, fish in scattered groups began swimming much closer to one another than they normally do -- one-twentieth as far apart as before. This set off a chain reaction of similar behavior that spread like a sound wave through the water at a speed far faster than any individual fish could swim.

Some shoals were 25 miles across and 100 feet from top to bottom. They formed in deep water and moved into more shallow areas. As the sun rose, the shoals fell apart.

Forming shoals apparently allows herring to develop their eggs in synchrony, which in turn permits mass spawning. It also protects fish from predators by giving them simple strength in numbers. The report appeared last week in the journal Science.

-- David Brown

March 29, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist

Mother Nature’s Dow

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

While I’m convinced that our current financial crisis is the product of both The Market and Mother Nature hitting the wall at once " telling us we need to grow in more sustainable ways " some might ask this: We know when the market hits a wall. It shows up in red numbers on the Dow. But Mother Nature doesn’t have a Dow. What makes you think she’s hitting a wall, too? And even if she is: Who cares? When my 401(k) is collapsing, it’s hard to worry about my sea level rising.

It’s true, Mother Nature doesn’t tell us with one simple number how she’s feeling. But if you follow climate science, what has been striking is how insistently some of the world’s best scientists have been warning " in just the past few months " that climate change is happening faster and will bring bigger changes quicker than we anticipated just a few years ago. Indeed, if Mother Nature had a Dow, you could say that it, too, has been breaking into new (scientific) lows.

Consider just two recent articles:

The Washington Post reported on Feb. 1, that “the pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said. ‘We are basically looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations,’ Christopher Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said.”

The physicist and climate expert Joe Romm recently noted on his blog, climateprogress.org, that in January, M.I.T.’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change quietly updated its Integrated Global System Model that tracks and predicts climate change from 1861 to 2100. Its revised projection indicates that if we stick with business as usual, in terms of carbon-dioxide emissions, average surface temperatures on Earth by 2100 will hit levels far beyond anything humans have ever experienced.

“In our more recent global model simulations,” explained M.I.T., “the ocean heat-uptake is slower than previously estimated, the ocean uptake of carbon is weaker, feedbacks from the land system as temperature rises are stronger, cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases over the century are higher, and offsetting cooling from aerosol emissions is lower. Not one of these effects is very strong on its own, and even adding each separately together would not fully explain the higher temperatures. [But,] rather than interacting additively, these different effects appear to interact multiplicatively, with feedbacks among the contributing factors, leading to the surprisingly large increase in the chance of much higher temperatures.”

What to do? It would be nice to say, “Hey, Mother Nature, we’re having a credit crisis, could you take a couple years off?” But as the environmental consultant Rob Watson likes to say, “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics,” and she is going to do whatever they dictate. You can’t sweet talk Mother Nature or the market. You have to change the economics to affect the Dow and the chemistry, biology and physics to affect Mother Nature.

That’s why we need a climate bailout along with our economic bailout. Hal Harvey is the C.E.O. of a new $1 billion foundation, ClimateWorks, set up to accelerate the policy changes that can avoid climate catastrophe by taking climate policies from where they are working the best to the places where they are needed the most.

“There are five policies that can help us win the energy-climate battle, and each has been proven somewhere,” Harvey explained. First, building codes: California’s energy-efficient building and appliance codes now save Californians $6 billion per year,” he said. Second, better vehicle fuel-efficiency standards: “The European Union’s fuel-efficiency fleet average for new cars now stands at 41 miles per gallon, and is rising steadily,” he added.

Third, we need a national renewable portfolio standard, mandating that power utilities produce 15 or 20 percent of their energy from renewables by 2020. Right now, only about half our states have these. “Whenever utilities are required to purchase electricity from renewable sources,” said Harvey, “clean energy booms.” (See Germany’s solar business or Texas’s wind power.)

The fourth is decoupling " the program begun in California that turns the utility business on its head. Under decoupling, power utilities make money by helping homeowners save energy rather than by encouraging them to consume it. “Finally,” said Harvey, “we need a price on carbon.” Polluting the atmosphere can’t be free.

These are the pillars of a climate bailout. Yes, some have upfront costs. But all of them would pay long-term dividends, because they would foster massive U.S. innovation in new clean technologies that would stimulate the real Dow and much lower emissions that would stimulate the Climate Dow.

Heads up Stradee and Danon.

Urban coyote attacks on rise, alarming residents

By JUDITH KOHLER, Associated Press Writer Judith Kohler, Associated Press Writer Sun Mar 29, 9:45 pm ET

DENVER " A coyote ambling into a Chicago sandwich shop or taking up residence in New York's Central Park understandably creates a stir. But even here on the high plains of Colorado, where the animals are part of the landscape and figure prominently in Western lore, people are being taken aback by rising coyote encounters.

Thanks to suburban sprawl and a growth in numbers of both people and animals, a rash of coyote encounters has alarmed residents.

Wildlife officials are working to educate the public: Coyotes have always been here, they've adapted to urban landscapes and they prefer to avoid humans.

"Ninety-five percent of this problem is a human problem, and we really need to focus on that 95 percent to solve it," said Nicole Rosmarino, wildlife program director of the environmental group WildEarth Guardians.

Since December, four people in the Denver area have been nipped or bitten by coyotes. A fifth told police a coyote lunged at him.

State wildlife officers have killed seven coyotes. An eighth was killed by a sharpshooter hired by Greenwood Village, in Denver's southern suburbs.

"These are coyotes that were born and raised in the 'hood," said Liza Hunholz, an area manager with the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

Marc Bekoff, a professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Colorado, says there are more people and less habitat along Colorado's Front Range, bringing the animal and people populations into closer proximity and producing what he calls "an unprecedented scare response."

"The communities seem to be really feeding one another," said Bekoff. He has studied coyotes for 40 years and believes that in some cases dogs are mistaken for coyotes.

Coyotes once were found primarily on the Great Plains and in the Southwest, but have expanded their turf to most of North America. Populations of wolves, a fierce competitor, have shrunk, and swaths of forest have turned into coyote-friendly open spaces.

After generations of urban living, some coyotes navigate subdivisions as easily as the cactus and scrub oak of the high desert where their ancestors roamed. Experts won't even try to guess how many coyotes there are nationwide.

Coyote sightings have skyrocketed in Greenwood Village. Last year, police received 186 reports, including 15 clashes with pets. Already this year, there have been 142.

"People are afraid to let their pets out or their children to walk to school," said Greenwood Village City Manager Jim Sanderson.

Jacque Levitch, of south Denver, was bitten by one of three coyotes she said confronted her and her Labrador retriever, Taz, on Feb. 21. "I hit it with my right fist and right forearm," Levitch said.

Taz was all right. Levitch had to endure rabies shots. She said her neighbors now carry big sticks and golf clubs.

"If nothing is done, I can only see the problem escalating," Levitch said.

In New York City, a coyote pup was found in the Bronx last year, and in 2006 police captured a coyote in Central Park. In California's San Bernardino County, two toddlers were reported injured in separate coyote incidents last year.

One toddler was killed in California in the 1980s in the country's only known fatal coyote attack.

WildEarth Guardians' Rosmarino thinks in most cases it's people who need to change their behavior. She has organized volunteers in Greenwood Village and other cities to walk through parks to shoo coyotes and make them more wary of people.

Most coyotes do everything they can to avoid people, said Stan Gehrt (GURT), an assistant professor at Ohio State University's School of Environment and Natural Resources. That's true even in Chicago, where Gehrt has led a study since 2000. About 300 coyotes there have been radio-collared and tracked.

The coyote that walked into the Chicago sandwich shop in 2007 got a lot of attention. But Gehrt said few people are aware of how many have lived in Chicago for decades. One of his subjects has a hiding spot near the downtown post office and thousands of people pass within yards of it each day.

"Even though they live in urban areas and figure out how people work ... it doesn't mean they're necessarily becoming more aggressive toward us," Gehrt said.

They also haven't changed their diet. Gehrt expected to find urban coyotes eating a lot of garbage and pets. But their scat shows rodents are still the meal of choice, followed by deer, rabbits and birds.

Coyotes view pets such as cats and dogs as competitors, not food, Gehrt said. Most coyotes are submissive toward dogs, though some will stand their ground " especially during breeding season, when they may see dogs as rivals for mates. Mating season peaked in February, when some of the Denver-area incidents occurred.

Residents are warned to not feed coyotes, to keep dogs on short leashes, and to yell or throw rocks at coyotes so they associate humans with bad things. Bird seed may attract mice and voles, which then can draw hungry coyotes. Don't leave out pet food and garbage, and don't leave pets alone.

A coyote that bit a boy snowboarding on a golf course in Erie, 26 miles north of Denver, had been fed by golfers.

Reducing the number of coyotes doesn't work, Rosmarino said, because the animals breed more and have bigger litters when their population declines. The U.S. Agriculture Department's Wildlife Services killed more than 90,000 in 2007 to stem livestock attacks.

Relocation also doesn't work, Gehrt said. Coyotes moved from Chicago to the country headed back to the city.

"The coyotes are here, they've always been here and the only way to deal with them is to understand them and make them afraid of you," said Ned Ingham, a Greenwood Village retiree and one of Rosmarino's volunteers. "We live in an area with wildlife."

U.S. Climate Envoy Vows Support
Commitment to Global Talks Affirmed Even as Caveat Is Issued

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 30, 2009; A03

BERLIN, March 29 -- President Obama's chief climate-change negotiator said Sunday that the United States would be "powerfully, fervently engaged" in global talks to reduce carbon emissions but warned that a difficult path lay ahead.

Todd Stern, a Washington lawyer and former Clinton White House official, said at a U.N. conference in Bonn, Germany, that despite high expectations, Obama did not have a magic solution for fashioning a global climate-change treaty by the end of the year.

"We all have to do this together. We don't have a magic wand," he told reporters on the sidelines of the conference. "I don't think anybody should be thinking that the U.S. can ride in on a white horse and make it all work."

Stern did not offer specific policy proposals and acknowledged that Obama's negotiating team would be constricted by the domestic political challenge of winning approval from Congress. But his speech was greeted with sustained applause as many U.N. delegates and environmental groups celebrated the exit of the Bush administration, which had resisted proposals for binding reductions on carbon emissions.

"This is a new start for the U.S. delegation and the start of a new hope to solve the problem of climate change," Matthias Machnig, Germany's deputy minister of the environment, said in a speech at the conference.

U.N. delegates are trying to negotiate a global accord on the reduction of greenhouse gases in time for a December summit in Copenhagen. The accord would replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which called for many industrial nations to cut gas emissions but was rejected by the United States and a handful of other countries.

Many U.N. delegates are pushing for major cuts in greenhouse gas production -- 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels -- by 2020.

Those cuts would be deeper than Obama's recently announced goal of reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions during that time frame by 16 percent from present levels. But Stern said more ambitious targets might not be politically or economically feasible.

"Let me speak frankly here: It is in no one's interest to repeat the experience of Kyoto by delivering an agreement that won't gain sufficient support at home," Stern told the delegates.

Stern also said that any global treaty would require deeper concessions from rising economic powers such as China, Brazil and India. Many researchers have concluded that China recently surpassed the United States as the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases and that its booming industrial sector accounts for most of the world's cumulative increase each year.

"If you do the math, you simply cannot be anywhere near where science tells us we need to be if you don't have China involved, as well as other major developing countries," Stern said. "How that is captured, understood, expressed and quantified is going to be extremely important."

Environmental groups welcomed Stern's speech and have applauded Obama's proposal for a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. But they warned that the world cannot afford further delays.

"We have already lost too much time and must act, starting today," said Richard H. Moss, vice president for climate change at the World Wildlife Fund. "The pace of climate change being witnessed around the world demands quick and decisive action at all levels, local to global."

Restored Island Offers Hope for Other Trouble Spots

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 30, 2009; A05

SANTA CRUZ ISLAND, Calif. -- The tiny fox scurrying across the lush green landscape, whose ancestors probably floated here 18,000 years ago on storm debris, wore an unlikely testament to its survival in the wild: a radio collar.

The collar helped explain why the Santa Cruz Island fox, along with several other species scattered across Southern California's Channel Islands, are recovering from the brink of extinction. Even as habitat destruction and other pressures threaten plant and animal species across the United States, a concerted restoration effort is demonstrating that it is possible to rebuild an ancient ecosystem that had disintegrated because of human habitation.

It is uncertain whether the success achieved on this 160-mile-long archipelago can be easily replicated on the mainland. But it helps to prove that just as isolated island habitats can fall apart when humans ignore the consequences of their actions, they can also rebound quickly under ca reful scientific management.

"Without intervention, the island fox would have perished, a one-of-a-kind place would have disappeared and the native habitat you're seeing flourish now would be gone," said Lotus Vermeer, director of the Nature Conservancy's Santa Cruz Island Preserve.

Santa Cruz is the largest of the eight islands, a grouping that collectively is home to more than 2,000 land and aquatic species, of which 145 live nowhere else on Earth. Channel Islands National Park incorporates five of them -- Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel and Santa Barbara. The Nature Conservancy owns 76 percent of Santa Cruz and runs it jointly with the National Park Service. The Navy controls San Clemente and San Nicolas, and a private group, the Catalina Island Conservancy, oversees Santa Catalina.

The islands' distance from the California mainland, which ranges from 12 to 70 miles, allowed a variety of distinct species to evolve there over tens of thousands of years. They include the island scrub-jay on Santa Cruz, the Anacapa deer mouse, the unique Santa Rosa subspecies of the Torrey pine and the Santa Catalina Island ironwood, a member of the rose family.

An array of birds, including the rare Xantus's murrelet, the California brown pelican and Cassin's auklet, also depend on the islands for shelter and sustenance.

"We pretty much would not have breeding seabirds in Southern California if it was not for these islands, because they're predator-free and free of disturbance, and close to a good food source," said Kate Faulkner, chief of natural resources management for Channel Islands National Park.

But this was not always the case. In the 1800s, people brought alien species to the islands, including sheep, pigs, cattle, deer, elk, cats and rats. The animals distorted these isolated ecosystems in myriad ways by destroying vegetation and attracting still more predators, which decimated the archipelago's six distinct subspecies of island fox and other native animals.

Golden eagles, lured by the easy prey of baby feral pigs, also feasted on the foxes. "They were picked off by golden eagles like popcorn," Vermeer said. The three subspecies on Santa Cruz, San Miguel and Santa Cruz declined by more than 90 percent by the late 1990s, and all three were listed as federally endangered in 2004.

In the 1980s, the Nature Conservancy, the Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service jointly launched a restoration program on Santa Cruz that was replicated on the other islands. Over a decade, the organizations killed 40,000 sheep and a few thousand cattle on Santa Cruz, and by 2006 they had also eliminated 5,036 feral pigs. Since 1999, managers have captured and relocated 32 golden eagles, none of which have returned to nest.

The Conservancy placed radio collars on the 100 remaining Santa Cruz island foxes so it could track them weekly. Vickie Bakker, a Smith Conservation Research Fellow at the University of California at Santa Cruz, is doing computer modeling to monitor how the island fox population is expanding and determine when it will be out of danger.

As a precaution, conservationists and federal officials established captive breeding facilities for all three fox subspecies, which produced offspring that were released into the wild. There are now more than 700 foxes roaming Santa Cruz, more than 100 on Santa Rosa and close to 130 on San Miguel. The Santa Cruz foxes may be fully recovered within a few years, Vermeer said, putting them on track to be one of the nation's fastest-recovering species.

Federal officials have worked to eradicate exotic species on other islands and to reintroduce species that used to thrive there. They killed off the rats on Anacapa Island with two drops of poison bait in successive years, an effort that led to a resurgence of the native deer mouse and Xantus's murrelets. They reintroduced bald eagles, which had disappeared from the islands after DDT contamination weakened their eggs. The bald eagles had been raised in the San Francisco Zoo or captured in Alaska, and there are now at least 40 nesting pairs on the four northernmost islands.

For better or worse, mostly closed ecosystems such as the Channel Islands can be more easily manipulated than their mainland counterparts.

"We can cause damage pretty easily by introducing non-native species, but we also have the ability to reverse some of the impacts," said Faulkner, the park official.

The restoration efforts have sparked controversy as well, however, as hunters and animal rights activists questioned whether it was proper to deliberately wipe out species that had survived on the islands for decades. The Channel Islands Animal Protection Association decried the killing of Santa Cruz's pigs, calling it "a mad dash to kill a species that has existed on the island since 1852."

Former congressman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) tried to protect a game reserve on Santa Rosa, saying that if wealthy hunters could no longer pursue the deer and elk introduced in the late 1800s, at least wounded veterans should have the chance. His effort failed, and the deer and elk are set to be removed by 2011.

Park Service spokeswoman Yvonne Menard said that the restoration efforts have involved difficult choices, but that the program's mission is broader than any one species. "That's the purpose of national parks -- preserving places for generations to come, and preserving ecosystems is the challenge today," she said.

More good reading. Clicked.

For the White House, not so easy being greener
by The Associated Press
Monday March 30, 2009, 7:09 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama will find out two things as he studies how to make the White House more environmentally friendly:

No. 1: It's already been done.

No. 2: It needs to be done again.

It was Earth Day 1993 when President Bill Clinton launched his ambitious "greening the White House" project. That effort saved more than $1.4 million in its first six years, largely from improvements in lighting, heating, air conditioning, insulation, water sprinklers and other measures.


AP Photo
The environmentally friendly wooden swing set that President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama had installed for their daughters on the South Lawn of the White House is seen Friday, March 20, 2009, with cushioning underfoot made from recycled rubber tires. During George W. Bush's two terms, workers installed three solar systems, including a thermal setup on the pool cabana that heats water for the pool and showers, and photovoltaic panels atop a maintenance shed that supplement the mansion's electrical supply. Bush also made a big push to recycle office paper, although the overall go-green effort lost momentum during his tenure, according to many outside observers.

Obama promised before he took office that he wanted to sit down with White House staff to evaluate what can be done to conserve energy in a 132-room behemoth of a mansion/office that leaves an EEE-sized carbon footprint.

"Part of what I want to do is to show the American people that it's not that hard," Obama said in a television interview during the transition. He said he's one of those people who tiptoes around and turns off lights at night. "I'm not going to be obsessive about it. But I do that in my current house. So there's no reason why I wouldn't do it in my next one."

The family already is taking action to set an eco-example for the nation. First lady Michelle Obama recently broke ground for an organic herb and vegetable garden on the South Lawn. The Obamas have installed an environmentally friendly wooden swing set for their children on the White House grounds. Cushioning underfoot is made from recycled rubber tires.

Obama isn't ready to give details of his broader go-green plans for the White House, but administration officials report that small steps are under way: The housekeeping staff is making the switch to greener cleaning supplies, and complex managers have asked engineers and groundskeepers to use greener products whenever possible. Efforts are afoot to improve and promote recycling.

As for what more can be done, outside experts on green buildings report that the administration is seeking out information about what's feasible. Given the priority Obama placed on renewable energy in his economic stimulus package and budget, environmentalists are chattering about what further steps he will take at the White House.

"They're very focused on leading by example," said Rick Fedrizzi, chief executive of the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council, which has offered advice to the White House. "It's great to see that they're focused on solid solutions and not just throwing sound bites over the fence every day."

Sometimes, good intentions have gotten ahead of the technology in eco-efforts at the White House.

In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter installed a $30,000 solar water-heating system designed to save $1,000 a year in heating costs. It didn't really work.

"Talk to anyone who worked in the West Wing then, and they would say they washed their hands with cool water," said former chief usher Gary Walters, who spent 37 years at the White House before retiring two years ago.

Those who've been involved in past efforts to make the White House more eco-friendly say that for all that's already been done, there is plenty left to do, given how quickly technology changes.

"It's definitely time to revisit it," said Bill Browning, who helped launch the Clinton-era greening effort in 1993. "The green building movement has evolved quite a bit since then."

Browning, founder of the Terrapin Bright Green consulting firm, said the staff members who manage the White House and its grounds -- employees who carry over from one administration to the next -- have been "the real champions of greening the White House. They made it their project during the Clinton years and kept it going during the last administration."

For all the enthusiasm about going green, though, there are practical limits. Last year House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced a "Green the Capitol" program to zero out the Capitol's carbon impact by December 2008. But this month, the House quietly shelved the project because it couldn't guarantee that Capitol operations were carbon neutral even after purchasing "offsets" that finance projects to reduce greenhouse gases.

The White House historically has been a showcase for technological advances. In the 1880s, it was one of the first houses in the nation to have running water. In the early 1900s, it got an early air conditioning system (that ultimately didn't work.)

Walters said both the Clintons and George and Laura Bush were surprised by what already had been done to conserve energy when they moved into the White House.

"We tried to do more than the average bear," he said, adding that the first lady's garden grew herbs during both administrations, and that limited container gardening was done on the mansion's roof to supply the White House with tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables.

Architect Jean Carroon, an expert on green strategies for historic buildings, said the White House isn't the "energy hog" that people might think. Older buildings often have thick masonry walls that provide good insulation and big windows that let in lots of daylight, she said.

Carroon said it's important for the White House to demonstrate simple conservation steps that all families can take.

"It isn't about the flashy stuff," she said. "It's about being smart and making it happen. ... The message to most citizens should be: You don't have to be in the White House to implement amazing energy savings."

Steve Strong, whose Solar Design Associates designed and installed the solar systems during the second Bush administration, said he'd love to see the Obamas kick the effort up a notch by installing a solar array on the South Lawn.

"That would be a compelling national and international symbol," he said.

Finally, our storks are back, too. (Not my photo but from the [tomorrows] local paper.)

Noticing the gators are far away from the camera - and snoozing - a good thing

super pic!

Winds and cooler temps yesterday - today, warmer.

Pine needles and dust {sniffle} affecting the herd also. A few times each day, grooming seems to be helping...that and kitty treats.





http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

The lil critters are plentiful - sounding each evening for the hunt - and so far few animals are taken by coyotes due to the amount of wildlife they hunt. When a deer is hit on the road, the next morning there's not much left of the animal - coyotes, {and other predator critters}

The animals move from flea infested dens often. So far nature has kept the packs in check. When fish and game gets involved, they hire trappers to dispense of the animals. I hate that part...especially since coyote urine processed and sold, keeps other predator animals from human gardens.

POLAND TO PRESERVE WETLANDS
..............................................................
a good news story , i believe !

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7962918.stm


The Rospuda valley is a protected wildlife area (Picture: P Malczewski)

stradee wrote :


it was mid-march and the gators were still sluggish . most of them stayed on the little hummock but some would come close to the causeway - there were plenty of warning signs : "DON"T FEED THE ALLIGATORS ! ".
but you may guess that people fed them anyway !
hbg

this gator came right up to the causeway leading out to the beach .
they seem to be pretty placid : "i'll leave you alone , if you leave me alone " .

this proud buck caught our attention near "kicking horse pass " in the canadian rockies (elevation 5,000 feet) on the alberta/british-columbia border .
i'd be more concerned about the buck than the gator - luckily , we were standing high above on a viewing platform - with a tele-lens .
hbg

Feeding the gators reminds me of a TV segment I saw where some guys had just caught a pretty good sized shark - about five or so feet long - and as it was just lying there doing nothing - except it had it's mouth open - one of the guys stuck his hand INTO the sharks mouth - who then promptly clamped down on the hand. After much screaming and prybarring - the hand was freed and the shark laid motionless again with it's mouth open. So much for the dumb guy.

Walter, so good to see you and nice picture.

let's have supper ! huntington beach state park , s.c.



danon :
yea , people will do the craziest things .
the backlakes around eastern ontario have a lot of snapping turtles - generally harmlesss , unlesss you annoy them - so people will swim out on the lake where they might be sunning on a little island and start "teasing" them - "OUCH ! " , their bite doesn't kill but sure can smart .
hbg

I've noticed that some days when I first log in. I usually manage to push through and get the click to count. I sometimes wonder if their server is having difficulty keeping up with the increased popularity, and use of, the site.

The WildClickers have supported 2,931,607.6 square feet!

Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 222,466.5 square feet.

American Prairie habitat supported: 68,868.9 square feet.

Rainforest habitat supported: 2,640,272.2 square feet.

Good info, wildclickers!

Alex, conservation and commerse are both challenges in today's economy. Government incentives and policies will work, imo. Plus how people conserve individually for the enviornemnt counts.

Great photos, hbg, thanks.


http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

April 1, 2009

Democrats Unveil Ambitious Global Warming Bill

By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON " The debate on global warming and energy policy accelerated on Tuesday as two senior House Democrats unveiled a far-reaching bill to cap heat-trapping gases and quicken the country’s move away from dependence on coal and oil.

But the bill leaves critical questions unanswered and has no Republican support. It is thus the beginning, not the end, of the debate in Congress on how to deal with two of President Obama’s top priorities, climate change and energy.

The draft measure, written by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, sets a slightly more ambitious goal for capping greenhouse gases than Mr. Obama’s proposal. The bill requires that emissions be reduced 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, while Mr. Obama’s plancalls for a 14 percent reduction by 2020. Both would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases by roughly 80 percent by 2050.

The Waxman-Markey bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, emerges at a time when many Americans, and their representatives in Congress, are wary of wide-ranging environmental legislation that could raise energy costs and potentially cripple industry. The bill also comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is about to exert regulatory authority over greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The bill would pre-empt that effort and create a new cap-and-trade scheme to control carbon emissions.

The bill would require every region of the country to produce a quarter of its electricity from renewable sources like wind, solar and geothermal by 2025. A number of lawmakers around the country, particularly in the Southeast, call that goal unrealistic because the natural resources and technology to meet it do not yet exist.

The bill also calls for modernization of the electrical grid, production of more electric vehicles and significant increases in efficiency in buildings, appliances and the generation of electricity.

But the Waxman-Markey proposal does not address two of the most difficult issues in any global warming plan: the distribution of pollution allowances and a specific timetable for achieving emissions reductions. It also does not say how most of the tens of billions of dollars raised from auctioning pollution permits would be spent, or whether the revenue would be returned to consumers to compensate for higher energy bills. Those matters have been left to negotiations, which will begin when Congress returns from its Easter recess on April 20.

Under Mr. Obama’s plan, roughly two-thirds of the revenue from pollution permit auctions would be returned to the public in tax breaks. Some members of Congress from both parties want to see all the revenue from any carbon-reduction plan returned to the public in some form.

Mr. Waxman, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement that the measure would create jobs and provide a gradual transition to a more efficient economy.

“Our goal is to strengthen our economy by making America the world leader in new clean-energy and energy-efficiency technologies,” Mr. Waxman said.

The bill attempts to address the concerns of those from states that are dependent on coal for electricity and manufacturing for jobs by granting free pollution allowances to energy-intensive industries like steel, glass, paper and cement. The percentage of these valuable permits that would be distributed free was not specified, however.

The bill also offers a sweetener for members from coal-producing states by including $10 billion in new financing for the development of technology to capture and store emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, which currently produces half of the nation’s electricity.

Representative Rick Boucher, a Democrat from the coal-rich southwestern corner of Virginia, insisted on that provision, noting that coal would remain a major part of the nation’s energy mix for decades to come.

A coalition of business and environmental groups, the United States Climate Action Partnership, welcomed the measure as a “strong starting point” for addressing greenhouse gas emissions and said it had incorporated many of its recommendations.

But the group, which includes major manufacturing corporations like Alcoa, DuPont and General Motors, said that it would push for a “substantial” number of free pollution allowances so that its members could make a gradual transition to less-polluting technologies.