Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

You don't fool around with Mother Nature. Add to that the possibility of global warming, and you get wildfires. Will post article about Russia in a minute.

August 12, 2010

Past Errors to Blame for Russia’s Peat Fires

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

ELEKTROGORSK, Russia — For two weeks, soldiers with chain saws felled every tree in sight.

Firefighters laid down a pipe to a nearby lake and pumped 100 gallons of water every minute, around the clock, until the surface of what is known as Fire No. 3 was a muddy expanse of charred stumps.

And still the fire burned on.

Under the surface, fire crept through a virtually impenetrable peat bog, spewing the smoke that — until the wind shifted on Thursday, providing what meteorologists said was likely to be temporary relief — had been choking the Russian capital this summer.

Among all the troubles that have been visited on Russia in this summer of record heat, wildfires, smoke and crop failure, perhaps none have been so persistent and impervious to remedy as the peat fires. Particularly maddening, many here say, is the knowledge that the problem is caused by humans.

As early as 1918 Soviet engineers drained swamps to supply peat for electrical power stations. That approach was abandoned in the late 1950s, after natural gas was discovered in Siberia, but the bogs were never reflooded, though the authorities are currently weighing the idea.

For now, though, firefighters here are confronted with subterranean conflagrations that are among the world’s toughest fires to snuff out, according to the small community of experts on bog fires.

“Every time you think it’s out, it starts smoking again,” complained Sergei A. Andreyev, a soldier who was tending a hose at Fire No. 3. The only foolproof method of suppression is to reflood the bog, a tremendously difficult job.

In the broader world of forest-fire fighting, there is much glory to go around. But not much is shared by the men who fight peat bog fires.

It is primarily a task of engineering and digging.

Unfortunately for residents of the Russian capital, the region around Moscow is particularly vulnerable to peat fires. Of 10 fires burning around Elektrogorsk, or Electrical City, named for the long-ago plan to illuminate Moscow with energy from peat, four are burning in the dried-out bogs.

Peat fires typically burn a far smaller area than fast-moving forest fires. But they can burn up to 10 times more biological mass per acre than an above-ground fire. And they spew vastly more smoke.

In Russia this summer, officials have reported 26,509 fires that so far have burned about 1.9 million acres. Of these fires, 1,104 were peat bog fires, covering a total of about 4,200 acres.

“The dynamics, the emissions and the suppression are all totally different from a flaming fire,” Guillermo Rein, an assistant professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and an authority on peat fires, said in a telephone interview.

“This is a massive problem that nobody is looking at,” he said. “The flaming ones are always in the news.”

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin underscored that point by taking to the skies to serve as co-pilot of an amphibious firefighting jet, the Be-200, on a dive-bombing run over a burning forest in central Russia, though he has no known pilot training.

The prime minister was shown on state television pressing a button to release tons of water, and asking, “Was that O.K.?”

“A direct hit!” the pilot replied.

Fighting peat fires is an exhausting, muddy job, taking weeks or months, in which hardly a flame is visible. Matted, rotting vegetation smolders and steams deep underground.

The Russians, recognized leaders in fighting peat fires, employ a number of techniques.

At Fire No. 3, they were spraying the peat from a fire hose propped up like a sprinkler, moved every hour or so.

Fire trucks are also equipped with a special needlelike nozzle that is jammed into the ground. As the water is pumped in, steam hisses out. Firefighters will also sometimes dig through the peat layer to the bedrock, creating a containment trench around the dried-out bog.

Peat fires can present special dangers. Sometimes, for example, fires burn underground cavities in the peat, into which firefighters or trucks can tumble. This has not happened this year, however, said Mikhail A. Mironov, a spokesman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations in the Moscow region. Peat fires also can destroy tree roots, so that apparently healthy trees often fall without warning. They are cut down as a precaution.

Here, soldiers wiped sweat and soot from their faces, and every half-hour or so they moved the hoses to irrigate another swath of ground.

Perhaps the most noxious and dangerous characteristic of peat fires is their heavy smoke. In a surface fire, the heat forces the smoke plume into the atmosphere. But in a peat fire, with its relatively cool surface temperatures, the smoke hugs the ground, seeping into homes, choking lungs and stopping flights at airports.

All countries with peat — the four largest are Russia, Canada, the United States and Indonesia, according to Mr. Rein — experience peat fires, he said. Fires are more common in tropical peat than in boreal peat, he said, though global warming may change that.

The difficulty in containing a peat fire depends on the depth of the peat and the water content. The drier, deeper fields around Moscow, with layers of peat up to 15 feet thick, present a particular headache.

So much water is needed to extinguish peat fires that the Russian government this summer has been laying a 30-mile-long pipeline from the Oka River to a region of peat fires east of Moscow. The minister of emergency situations, Sergei K. Shoigu, visited that area on Wednesday to inspect the pipe, and on Thursday the water was turned on.

Aleksei A. Yermolenko, head of the Department for Preservation at the Federal Forestry Agency, said an outbreak of peat fires in 2002 prompted the government of the Moscow region to draw up plans to reflood old peat mines, but they had not yet been carried out. This summer, he said, the issue was raised again.

“Of course,” he added. “They would be easier to put out if we had not drained the swamps.”

ugust 11, 2010

Birdhouses Designed for Repeat Visitors

By KATE MURPHY

AFTER a long day at work, Chuck Abare, 63, a computer designer, likes to sit on the porch of his two-story ranch house on the outskirts of Huntsville, Ala., drink a gin and tonic, and watch the antics of the purple martins winging around his backyard.

Glossy aerial acrobats with forked tails, purple martins are a type of swallow, and the only species of bird entirely dependent on humans for housing. Every spring, Mr. Abare said, they show up to nest in the bulbous chandelier-like birdhouses he made several years ago out of plywood and hollowed-out gourds, and mounted on 12-foot poles.

“Purple martins are addicting,” said Mr. Abare, who built two standard birdhouses for them as well, to accommodate a total of 104 nests. “When the birds start to fledge, I’ll have maybe 300 at a time chitchatting and flying around. It gets pretty noisy, but I never get tired of them.”

Sales figures from companies that make housing for purple martins, like S&K Manufacturing in Missouri, suggest that Mr. Abare is not alone in his enthusiasm. The company, one of the largest suppliers of martin housing, reports that sales of houses and gourds have increased annually by nearly 40 percent for the last five years.

The Purple Martin Conservation Association, a nonprofit organization based in Erie, Pa., has seen evidence of growing interest as well, with a big upswing in participation in its online forums since its Web site was introduced in 2003. (The first year, the site had 30 active users; today, 3,000 people post questions and comments on 15,000 topics related to attracting and caring for purple martins.) And a number of rival organizations, like the Purple Martin Society of North America and the Purple Martin Preservation Alliance, have emerged, as have countless blogs and videos on YouTube devoted to purple martins.

This spike in interest coincides with the increased popularity of bird-watching in general — the number of bird-watchers in the United States is now estimated to be somewhere between 48 million and 69 million, according to sources ranging from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to the journal Environmental Conservation.

Those who act as purple martin “landlords,” however, are often far more than mere observers. Many interact with their tenants, inspecting nests and tending to baby birds. Some monitor the birds with video or “nest cams” and intervene to protect them if necessary.

David Bonter, an ornithologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., said this is one reason the species, which had been dwindling in number, has seen a comeback in recent years.

“Purple martins, like all aerial insectivore populations, have not been doing well, partly due to pesticides poisoning their food supply, so it’s good that more people are getting involved in helping them,” Dr. Bonter said.

Their dependence on humans began centuries ago, according to the Audubon Society, when American Indians put out hollowed gourds for them, probably because the birds are voracious insectivores that provided pest control and also chased off vultures picking at drying meat and hides.

Purple martins winter in the Amazon basin in South America and return to nest in North America from late February through August. They are found mostly in the Eastern half of the United States, but also in parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, California, Oregon and Washington. This time of year, they can be seen teaching their fledglings how to catch bugs in midair and fattening up for their journey south.

MARTINS like to nest up high, where they are safe from predators like snakes and raccoons, and can spy and swoop down on insects. The best place to put their housing is in a clearing, 10 to 15 feet off the ground, far enough from trees or shrubs so they have an unimpeded flyway.

Mr. Abare put a nest cam in one of his gourds so he can watch the eggs hatch and chart the nestlings’ progress. Every four or five days, he inspects the nests in person, using ropes and pulleys to lower the gourd racks and birdhouses to the ground like flags on a flagpole.

The various rooms of the birdhouses are numbered, as are the gourds. Mr. Abare opens the hatches on each compartment, calling out status reports to his wife, Betty, 63, who jots them down in a notebook. He also takes pictures, which he posts on his Web site, chuckspurplemartinpage.com.

Like Mr. Abare, Larry Melcher, 47, a pipe fitter, keeps meticulous records of the goings-on inside the 58 purple martin nesting cavities in the birdhouse and two gourd racks he keeps on 10-foot poles behind his tidy brick house outside Louisville, Ky. When a baby falls out of a nest, he can figure out where it belongs from his spreadsheets. He also cleans and replaces nesting material in compartments that have become infested with blood-sucking mites, which can kill baby birds.

“Unlike other birds, martins don’t care if you touch their babies,” Mr. Melcher said. “It’s like they know you’re there to help.”

Friends and neighbors often attend his weekly nest checks, and more than 2,000 people have watched the video of him returning a baby martin to its nest, which he posted on YouTube.

As well as being up high, purple martins like to be within a few miles of water, where there are plenty of bugs. Pat Lynch, 75, of Rochester said the yard of her clapboard home on Lake Ontario would be unbearable during the spring and summer were it not for her purple martin colony “scarfing up” all the biting flies and insects. Ms. Lynch, a retired nurse, watches her martins, which she calls “sky sweepers,” from a swing on her patio. She also has a nest cam that relays the action inside one of the compartments in her two 12-room birdhouses. “It’s better than TV,” she said.

Some purple martin fans will go to great lengths for that entertainment. When Tony Lau, 44, a frozen-dairy manager for a Target store near Minneapolis, had trouble drawing martins to nest in his birdhouse four years ago, he borrowed a neighbor’s Bobcat mini bulldozer and dug a 75-foot-long pond in his backyard.

“I was reading online about other people getting all these martins, and I got sort of competitive about it,” he said. “I decided to do everything I could to get them here.”

Mr. Lau now has 35 pairs of purple martins nesting in his birdhouse and assorted gourds. He is hoping for 100 pairs next year, he said, because martins that successfully reproduce at a site usually return and bring friends.

But he knows he’ll have to be on guard against what he and other purple martin lovers consider the birds’ archenemies: European starlings and English house sparrows. These non-native birds, introduced to the United States in the late 1800s, will evict martins from their nests, poke holes in their eggs and kill nestlings. As Mr. Melcher put it, “It makes your blood boil.”

He and Mr. Abare kill English sparrows with an air rifle; Ms. Lynch traps and drowns them. Specially sized half-moon openings in the birdhouses and gourds usually keep out starlings, they said, so they don’t have to exterminate them.

“I hate to talk about killing birds,” Mr. Melcher said. “But once I saw how they steal nests and kill babies — it’s like someone walking into your home and telling you to get out, and murdering your kids.”

Even so, others prefer just to shoo them away. Laura Joseph, 67, a retired school administrator, said she manually removes sparrows from the 164 nesting cavities in the birdhouses and gourds she put on poles in the lot next to her Greek revival home in Austin, Tex. “I asked neighbors to sign up, and we have 34 volunteers who check the nests every day and take out the sparrows,” Ms. Joseph said. “We make their lives as uncomfortable as possible, so they won’t get established.”

Frequent monitoring and intervention may increase the number of purple martins that fledge, said Dr. Bonter of Cornell. Still, he added, “You don’t really have to do more than put up housing in an appropriate spot to have a successful colony.”

But for purple martin landlords like Kathy Freeze, 47, a computer systems analyst with a 45-nest colony in Licking, Mo., near Springfield, interacting with the birds is a large part of the appeal.

“You get a profound sense of accomplishment at the end of the season, when all the young nestlings are fledging,” she said. “And you know that you have contributed to a great conservation effort.”

Bird Housing, Specs and Sources

PURPLE MARTIN housing can look like anything from a Chinese pagoda to a Ferris wheel with gondolas. But structures with multiple, spacious compartments are the most effective at attracting the birds.

Whether you choose to go with houses or gourds, they should be painted white to reflect the sun, which will keep nesting birds cooler; there should also be half-moon-shaped openings (about 1 3/16 by 2 3/4 inches) to keep out starlings. Most hands-on martin landlords say they prefer housing that can be raised and lowered with a winch or a rope-and-pulley system, so they don’t have to climb a ladder to check on their tenants.

If you want to build the housing yourself, plans are available online. So is ready-made housing.

Sources include the Purple Martin Conservation Association (purplemartin.org), a nonprofit organization that offers information on caring for the birds; S&K Manufacturing, a Missouri company specializing in purple martin housing and accessories (skmfg.com); the Backyard Bird Company (backyardbird.com), which sells a selection of housing for purple martins and other birds; and Purple Martin Majesty (purplemartinmajesty.com), which sells and ships gourd racks nationwide, and offers installation services in the Houston area.

All clicked and I am so sorry, Danon. Your string of 100+ days just never seems to end. We are in a cool down period of 90. Don't know how long it will last, but I'll take it.

Lower animals are sentients humans dominate, nothing more or less.

(((((((hugs))))))) to you dan!

Not much news happenin, just another beautiful weather day, plus Bella was indoors last night! hurray! Amanda has become her new mom. Yesterday, Amanda (who will be 20 next month) ran from one side of the property to the other, ran through the house then out the front door, down the stairs and up a tree! She only lost her balance a tad once but like the feline she is, pretended it never happened and continued romping.

Well, i gotta tell ya, i'm a happy person now the babes are back to normal.

yeeehawww

sue, yep, but the only prob with that is there are so many animals suffering right now. We as a society should not allow such goings on anywhere. So much for my hopes for humanity. One step forward...

Thanks sumac for the great articles, interesting.

Stradee, has a good kitty.

My Chloe is like that, she moves slow until the legs are limber enough to chase around for a few minutes. She loves it when I work outside. She watches me move slowly until the legs are limber enough to walk for a few minutes.

Great clicks all..........

ugust 13, 2010

Judge Revokes Approval of Modified Sugar Beets

By ANDREW POLLACK

A federal district court judge revoked the government’s approval of genetically engineered sugar beets Friday, saying that the Agriculture Department had not adequately assessed the environmental consequences before approving them for commercial cultivation.

The decision, by Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco, appears to effectively ban the planting of the genetically modified sugar beets, which make up about 95 percent of the crop, until the Agriculture Department prepares an environmental impact statement and approves the crop again, a process that might take a couple of years.

The decision could cause major problems for sugar beet farmers and sugar processors. In the past the sugar industry has warned there might not be enough non-engineered seeds available. However, the judge ruled that crops currently in the ground can be harvested and made into sugar, so the effects will not be felt until next spring’s planting season.

Beets supply about half the nation’s sugar, with the rest coming from sugar cane. Sugar beet growers sold the 2007-8 crop for about $1.335 billion, according to government data.

The decision came in a lawsuit organized by the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group that opposes biotech crops.

Judge White ruled last September that the Agriculture Department’s approval of the beets violated the National Environmental Policy Act, but he did not specify a remedy. Earlier this year, he denied a request by the plaintiffs to prohibit the planting of the engineered seeds this year, saying that would be too disruptive. But he warned farmers to move toward using conventional seeds.

In his order Friday, the judge granted the plaintiffs’ request to formally vacate the approval of the beets. That would bar farmers from growing them outside of a field trial.

But Judge White denied the plaintiffs’ request for a permanent injunction that would have also banned the growing of the crops. He said an injunction was not necessary if the crop was no longer approved for commercial planting. .

A decision by the United States Supreme Court earlier this year in a similar case involving genetically engineered alfalfa essentially precluded the granting of an injunction.

In the alfalfa case, the Supreme Court indicated that the government might grant partial approval of a genetically modified crop. It seems that such an option might be available in the sugar beet case as well, which could reduce any hardship for farmers. It is also possible the Agriculture Department will appeal.

Caleb Weaver, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department, said Friday night that the department was “looking at the decision to figure out what’s appropriate as the next step.” Monsanto declined to comment, saying it would defer to sugar growers and processors.

Duane Grant, a sugar beet farmer in Rupert, Idaho and chairman of the Snake River Sugar Company, said he had not seen the decision and could not assess its impact.

But Mr. Grant, who had intervened in the case, added, “I’m pleased that the crop that is currently planted would be allowed to be harvested and processed. That’s clearly in the best interest of the public.”

Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, said the ruling was another sign the Agriculture Department was not doing its job. “This is regulation by litigation,” he said.

The ruling followed a hearing held earlier Friday in Judge White’s courtroom.

The Agriculture Department and its allies had argued that the approval of the crop should not be revoked, saying the department’s mistakes were not that serious and that the crop was going to be eventually approved anyway. At the least, they asked for a nine-month delay in revoking the approval to give the department time to put interim measures into place.

But Judge White disagreed, writing in his opinion that the Agriculture Department’s errors “are not minor or insignificant” and that it had already had time since his initial ruling in September to put interim measures into place.

The judge said it was not clear legally if he could consider the economic consequences of revoking the approval, but that even if he could, the Agriculture Department had not adequately demonstrated there would be a severe impact.

In his previous ruling, Judge White said the department had not adequately assessed the consequences from the likely spread of the genetically engineered trait to other sugar beets or to the related crops of Swiss chard and red table beets.

August 13, 2010

Cleaner, Healthier Air

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a stricter nationwide health standard for smog-causing pollutants that would bring substantial benefits to millions of Americans. With a final rule expected by the end of this month, crucial senators, mainly from industrial and oil-producing states, are pushing back. They say investments required to produce cleaner air are too expensive and not scientifically justified.

Lisa Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, needs to stick to her guns. This is only the first of several political tests to come this fall, as she also seeks to tighten rules governing individual pollutants like mercury and global warming gases like carbon dioxide.

The health standard she is proposing covers ground-level ozone, commonly known as smog, which is formed when sunlight mixes with pollutants from factories, refineries, power plants and automobiles. Ozone is a major health threat, contributing to heart disease and various respiratory problems.

Ms. Jackson’s proposal — to reduce the permissible level of smog in the air from the current 75 parts per billion to between 60 parts per billion and 70 parts per billion — is sensible, no matter what industry’s defenders may claim. It had been recommended by the agency’s independent scientific panel but rejected by the Bush administration, which proposed a weaker standard.

Industry will have to make investments in cleaner power plants, and new technologies may be required. As it is, about half the counties that monitor ozone levels are not yet in compliance with current standards, let alone the proposed standard.

Fears about burdening industry raised by critics like George Voinovich, a Republican of Ohio, and Mary Landrieu, a Democrat of Louisiana, cannot be dismissed out of hand, especially in the middle of a recession. But the health benefits, E.P.A. says, far outweigh the costs, and the time frame for compliance is generous.

States must submit plans showing how they will reach the new standards by 2013; the standards will then be phased in over the next 17 years. That is enough time for human ingenuity and technology to rise to the occasion and ensure that the air we breathe is a lot safer.

woop

Still fighting fires in Russia, Sacramento sent a ton of fire fighting clothing, equipment and men. Of course there was the usual right wing complaints that if the state was so broke, why are they helping Russia or anyone else except Californians. Unbelievable

They soon forget that the Russians were in California two years ago when the state needed them. Nobody is to broke to help their neighbors, even if they're a continents away, imo.

Beth, we miss you.

Stradee, Danon, and everybody - it may be I'm to blame for eBeth's absence from this thread; it's easy to inadvertently offend someone on the matter of religion, and unfortunately I have done just that on the mosque thread. Link: http://able2know.org/topic/159601-40#post-4316868

If I knew my precise post in re mosques that prompted her to put me on ignore I would retract it, but as it is I can only promise to vanish from this series of threads started by her so long ago and of course issue a blanket apology. I hope to see you all on other threads very soon. Thanks

HS, It's not you imho - I think she has had enough of the thread. I hope that isn't the case - but, please don't blame yourself. She was a founding member but didn't actually start this thing. It just sort of happened a long, long time ago and we as a team have saved something in the neighborhood of 80 plus acres of Rain Forest around the world.

That's a good thing.

HS, i read a good deal of the thread, and couldn't find he "disagreement" posting.

At any rate, I hope the issue is cleared by now, and you also continue posting here at the Rainforest thread and elsewhere on a2k.

The mosque thing is of course a big deal (but what was one of the reasons for an attack on the WTC then to deny Americans their rights) so i'm going to say that i would NOT appreciate seeing a mosque anywhere near ground zero, or any new religious building for that matter.

In fact, we should keep religion out of the equation and build a memorial to the thousands of multinational people who died on that day (and i won't mention spearheaded by a fundamentalist nut case...but some argue that case also) and find a more suitable location for their place of worship.

I'm reminded of the crusades for some reason.

Beth may very well be busy with life, the babies, the lad, her dancing, etc.
Summer has a way of taking over our lives...i know, believe me.

Anyhooo, have a good evening all....

Can't believe it's Sunday again. It seems like the last Sunday was only yesterday. Time is going by soooooo fast.

Great clicking and tree saving all.

Yes it is! Where did the last seven days go???

My God! Temps in Texas astronomical! 110 is just way to hot for any living being. Hope you're staying cool, Dan.

Have a good Sunday all ~

August 14, 2010

In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming

By JUSTIN GILLIS

The floods battered New England, then Nashville, then Arkansas, then Oklahoma — and were followed by a deluge in Pakistan that has upended the lives of 20 million people.

The summer’s heat waves baked the eastern United States, parts of Africa and eastern Asia, and above all Russia, which lost millions of acres of wheat and thousands of lives in a drought worse than any other in the historical record.

Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes.

The collective answer of the scientific community can be boiled down to a single word: probably.

“The climate is changing,” said Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. “Extreme events are occurring with greater frequency, and in many cases with greater intensity.”

He described excessive heat, in particular, as “consistent with our understanding of how the climate responds to increasing greenhouse gases.”

Theory suggests that a world warming up because of those gases will feature heavier rainstorms in summer, bigger snowstorms in winter, more intense droughts in at least some places and more record-breaking heat waves. Scientists and government reports say the statistical evidence shows that much of this is starting to happen.

But the averages do not necessarily make it easier to link specific weather events, like a given flood or hurricane or heat wave, to climate change. Most climate scientists are reluctant to go that far, noting that weather was characterized by remarkable variability long before humans began burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

“If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. “If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet.”

In Russia, that kind of scientific caution might once have been embraced. Russia has long played a reluctant, and sometimes obstructionist, role in global negotiations over limiting climate change, perhaps in part because it expected economic benefits from the warming of its vast Siberian hinterland.

But the extreme heat wave, and accompanying drought and wildfires, in normally cool central Russia seems to be prompting a shift in thinking.

“Everyone is talking about climate change now,” President Dmitri A. Medvedev told the Russian Security Council this month. “Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past.”

Thermometer measurements show that the earth has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution, when humans began pumping enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. For this January through July, average temperatures were the warmest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Friday.

The warming has moved in fits and starts, and the cumulative increase may sound modest. But it is an average over the entire planet, representing an immense amount of added heat, and is only the beginning of a trend that most experts believe will worsen substantially.

If the earth were not warming, random variations in the weather should cause about the same number of record-breaking high temperatures and record-breaking low temperatures over a given period. But climatologists have long theorized that in a warming world, the added heat would cause more record highs and fewer record lows.

The statistics suggest that is exactly what is happening. In the United States these days, about two record highs are being set for every record low, telltale evidence that amid all the random variation of weather, the trend is toward a warmer climate.

Climate-change skeptics dispute such statistical arguments, contending that climatologists do not know enough about long-range patterns to draw definitive links between global warming and weather extremes. They cite events like the heat and drought of the 1930s as evidence that extreme weather is nothing new. Those were indeed dire heat waves, contributing to the Dust Bowl, which dislocated millions of Americans and changed the population structure of the United States.

But most researchers trained in climate analysis, while acknowledging that weather data in parts of the world are not as good as they would like, offer evidence to show that weather extremes are getting worse.

A United States government report published in 2008 noted that “in recent decades, most of North America has been experiencing more unusually hot days and nights, fewer unusually cold days and nights, and fewer frost days. Heavy downpours have become more frequent and intense.”

The statistics suggest that the Eastern United States may be getting wetter as the arid West dries out further. Places that depend on the runoff from spring snow melt appear particularly vulnerable to climate change, because higher temperatures are making the snow melt earlier, leaving the ground parched by midsummer. That can worsen any drought that develops.

“Global warming, ironically, can actually increase the amount of snow you get,” said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “But it also means the snow season is shorter.”

In general, the research suggests that global warming will worsen climate extremes across much of the planet. As in the United States, wet areas will get wetter, the scientists say, while dry areas get drier.

But the patterns are not uniform; changes in wind and ocean circulation could cause unexpected effects, with some areas even cooling down in a warmer world. And long-established weather patterns, like the periodic variations in the Pacific Ocean known as El Niño, will still contribute to unusual events, like heavy rains and cool temperatures in normally arid parts of California.

Scientists say they expect stronger storms, in winter and summer, largely because of the physical principle that warmer air can hold more water vapor.

Typically, a storm of the sort that inundated parts of Tennessee in May, dumping as much as 19 inches of rain over two days, draws moisture from an area much larger than the storm itself. With temperatures rising and more water vapor in the air, such storms can pull in more moisture and thus rain or snow more heavily than storms of old.

It will be a year or two before climate scientists publish definitive analyses of the Russian heat wave and the Pakistani floods, which might shed light on the role of climate change, if any. Some scientists suspect that they were caused or worsened by an unusual kink in the jet stream, the high-altitude flow of air that helps determine weather patterns, though that itself might be linked to climate change. Certain recent weather events were so extreme that a few scientists are shedding their traditional reluctance to ascribe specific disasters to global warming.

After a heat wave in Europe in 2003 that killed an estimated 50,000 people, the worst such catastrophe for that region in the historical record, scientists published detailed analyses suggesting that it would not have been as severe in a climate uninfluenced by greenhouse gases.

And Dr. Trenberth has published work suggesting that Hurricane Katrina dumped at least somewhat more rain on the Gulf Coast because the storm was intensified by global warming.

“It’s not the right question to ask if this storm or that storm is due to global warming, or is it natural variability,” Dr. Trenberth said. “Nowadays, there’s always an element of both.”

John Collins Rudolf contributed reporting.

Interesting sumac........ And, scary to think of the future. I think the trees that are dying here around our house are doing so because of the heat. Other shrubs are biting the dust also. (My ability to spell is going - has gone. I had 'biting' down as 'bitting'. Then, went to ask my Patti who told me there is only one t in biting but two t's in 'bitten'. Boy, the world is going to pot and so am I!!)

Stradee, We are inside where it's cool every afternoon. The mornings are great but about elevenish I go inside. So far the air conditioning unit is hanging in there. ((I wish I hadn't said that. Now the darn thing - er the darling thing will be BITING the dust. Have to be nice to the little baby.)) Big Grin............... And, nocking on wood............ My head.......! Uh oh, nocked that one off - and really fast too. Eleven looks funny also.

Well good clicking all. We may all have to move to Canada and live with ehBeth and her gang. What an adventure that would be!!!!

Hiere z something to LOL about.
----------------------------

The economy is so bad that I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

I ordered a burger at McDonald's, and the kid behind the counter asked, "Can you afford fries with that?"

CEO's are now playing miniature golf.

If the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you have to call them and ask if they mean you or them .

Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.

McDonald's is selling the 1/4 'ouncer'.

Parents in Beverly Hills and Malibu are firing their nannies and learning their children's names.

A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico .

Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.

Motel Six won't leave the light on anymore.

The Mafia is laying off judges.

BP Oil laid off 25 Congressmen.

Congress says they are looking into the Bernard Madoff scandal. Oh Great!! The guy who made $50 Billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made $1.5 Trillion disappear!


And, finally...

I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, and our bleak future, that I called the Suicide Lifeline and was connected to a call center in Pakistan . When I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.

Hurricane formation linked to sea color: study

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A change in the color of the ocean could dramatically impact the number and intensity of hurricanes, according to US researchers.

A team of researchers with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ran computer simulations of such a change in the North Pacific, a region that accounts for more than half the world's hurricane-force winds.

The main factor is the green tint ocean water takes when there are large concentrations of chlorophyll, a pigment that helps tiny organisms known as phytoplankton convert sunlight into food for the rest of the marine ecosystem.

"We think of the oceans as blue, but the oceans aren?t really blue, they're actually a sort of greenish color," said lead reseacher Anand Gnanadesikan in a statement released Friday.

"The fact that [the oceans] are not blue has a [direct] impact on the distribution of tropical cyclones," Gnanadesikan said.
Without chlorophyll, sunlight penetrates deeper into the ocean, leaving the surface water cooler.

Cold water in turn causes changes in air circulation patterns, forcing strong winds aloft, "which tend to prevent thunderstorms from developing the necessary superstructure that allows them to grow into hurricanes," the researchers said.

Phytoplankton populations around the world have been declining over the last century, the reseachers said, citing recently published research.
The study is to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.