Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

News shows and says that 1/4 of Texas is in severe drought. Hope that statistic doesn't apply to you, Danon.

Yep, hope that doesn't include me!!!!!!!!
Fewer grass blades to mow................

Thanks for saving another tree today!!!!!!!!!!

To whet your appetite for reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/science/10penguins.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

May 9, 2011
In a Changing Antarctica, Some Penguins Thrive as Others Suffer

By ANDY ISAACSON
ROSS ISLAND, Antarctica — Cape Royds, home to the southernmost colony of penguins in the world, is a rocky promontory overlaid with dirty ice and the stench of pinkish guano. Beyond the croaking din of chicks pestering parents for regurgitated krill lies the Ross Sea, a southern extension of the Pacific Ocean that harbors more than one-third of the world’s Adélie penguin population and a quarter of all emperor penguins, and which may be the last remaining intact marine ecosystem on Earth.

The penguin colony is one of the longest-studied in the world. Data on its resident Adélie penguins was first acquired during the 1907-9 expedition of Ernest Shackleton, the eminent British explorer, whose wooden hut stands preserved nearby.

“This is penguin nirvana,” David Ainley, an ecologist with the consulting firm H. T. Harvey and Associates who has been studying Ross Sea penguins for 40 years, said on a morning in January. “This is where you want to be if you’re a pack ice penguin.”

Of the species that stand to be most affected by global warming, the most obvious are the ones that rely on ice to live. Adélie penguins are a bellwether of climate change, and at the northern fringe of Antarctica, in the Antarctic Peninsula, their colonies have collapsed as an intrusion of warmer seawater shortens the annual winter sea ice season.

In the past three decades, the Adélie population on the peninsula, northeast of the Ross Sea, has fallen by almost 90 percent. The peninsula’s only emperor colony is now extinct. The mean winter air temperature of the Western Antarctic Peninsula, one of the most rapidly warming areas on the planet, has risen 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the past half-century, delivering more snowfall that buries the rocks the Adélie penguins return to each spring to nest — and favoring penguins that can survive without ice and breed later, like gentoos, whose numbers have surged by 14,000 percent.

The warmer climate on the Antarctic Peninsula has al

Makes one both glad and sad at the same time. That's a big temp change for the area. I lived in Alaska during the '70's and the temps were avg minus 40 to 50 in Winter. Now it seems lucky for a freeze at all. The world is warming up.

yES, WE ARE WARMING UP. tHE FOLLOWING IS THE BEGINNING OF A LOCAL NEWSPAPER ARTICLE:

Despite the dangers of fracking, North Carolina lawmakers want to legalize it
by Lisa Sorg
In Exxon Mobil's recent TV ad campaign, a camera tracks across a scenic landscape as a company geologist reassures us that the key to our national energy security lies just below our feet. "Technology has made it possible to safely unlock this clean and green natural gas," he says.

What you won't hear in the Exxon ad is the name of this technology: fracking. The controversial drilling method has become the new F-word after being linked to environmental calamities in at least a half dozen states.

These calamities are well documented and difficult to dispute. In Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York, explosive methane gas and hazardous fluids from fracking operations have contaminated drinking water, private wells and rivers. In several states, drilling companies have irresponsibly disposed of tainted wastewater, spilling toxic chemicals into streams and groundwater and sending radioactive wastewater to city sewage treatment plants that were unequipped to filter those kinds of materials.

Fracking is illegal in North Carolina—for now—and we would be hard-pressed to look for good examples of regulation in other states, where laws and enforcement of fracking are piecemeal at best.

"No state is a model that shows this can be done safely," says Molly Diggins, state director of the N.C. chapter of the Sierra Club. "In fact, it's quite the opposite. There's been one disaster after another."

There is little guidance from the federal government, which six years ago agreed to exempt fracking fluid—which c

Yeah, that's some bad activities - companies are seeming to use the fracking method as a way to dispose of bad waste materials. Fracking shame.

This morning on the Nat'l news some states have checkers to go to auto service stations in order to insure customers are getting the gas they pay for. It seems some stations that advertise 95 octane are selling only 90 octane. Also the pumps are lying - you don't get in your tank what the machine says you are getting. And, the most obvious example of all --- the camera was shown in front of the cost/gal display with the fill handle in full view, not pouring a drop of gas, but the display was still running up gas and money. Shameful.

That is interesting, Danon. Good morning to you and Patti. I quit Facebook and boy, am I glad. It didn't amuse me but took a lot of my time. Going to go click

Thanks, sumac.

Another tree's asmiling today.

Danon, go read.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/travel/its-a-bears-world-in-kodiak-alaska.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

May 13, 2011

It’s a Bear’s World in Kodiak, Alaska

By TED O’CALLAHAN
SHE gave a chuff and pulled up short, as surprised to see us as we were to see her. Her dense, fluffy fur was blond. I watched her square, expressive face very closely because this bear — maybe 300 pounds and 10 yards away — would be the one deciding how the encounter played out. An adrenaline-driven voice in my head said, “This could go badly.” But it was also telling me how incredibly thrilling it was to be so near this animal. Not being on top of the food chain certainly heightens one’s awareness.

We were four people and a dog tucked against a slope, partly hidden by waist-high grass. The bear looked and sniffed for almost a minute, trying to decide what she had come across. Then she pivoted onto a trail and moved away, choosing flight over fight. I was grateful for that; an older male might have stood his ground.

It was the second day of a bear-watching trip on Kodiak Island in Alaska, the largest landmass of the nearly 5,000-square-mile Kodiak Archipelago south of the mainland, and the exclusive home of the Kodiak bear. Our guides, Harry and Brigid Dodge, didn’t seem overly concerned about the close call; it was a young female bear, they explained later, maybe 3 or 4 years old, curious and scared, but with easy escape paths and no food cache to protect. “If it had been a bigger male we would have been backing away,” Brigid said. “We wouldn’t have let him get that close.”

Still, a bear encounter like ours is something the Dodges try to avoid. As the owners of Kodiak Treks, a small outfitter specializing in low-impact bear-watching trips, the goal is to be a neutral, unseen presence — to see, as Brigid puts it, “bears respectfully in the wild.”

There are certainly other ways to watch bears in Alaska, from half-day bush-plane-based trips to packages that wrap bear viewing in with sport fishing or stays at high-end wilderness lodges. Some of the best-known bear watching spots are on the mainland just across the Shelikof Strait from Kodiak. During a strong salmon run, you’re all but guaranteed to see dozens of brown bears fishing side by side not more than 30 yards

Good one sumac. I've flown over Kodiak Is. but never set foot on it. Alaska is a great place for looking at wildlife. I flew all over the state during the 2 1/2 yrs I was station in the Army at Ft Wainwright - next to Fairbanks. My son was born there. I stood at the point north of Point Barrow which is the northern most point of the entire North American Continent. One weekend I visited a friend in Nome - we went fishing along a river just north of town. I only caught two fish. That's all I could carry!!!!!

May 16, 2011
U.K. Plans 50 Percent Cut in Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2025
By JAMES KANTER
BRUSSELS — Britain is poised to announce some of the world’s most ambitious targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions — a striking example of a government committing to big environmental initiatives even as it pursues austerity measures.

The government department led by Chris Huhne, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, is expected to release a statement Tuesday that the government will enshrine in law a cut of about 50 percent in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

That cut, based on 1990 levels, would be far deeper than the current European Union goal of cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020 and would represent speedier progress than almost any other similarly sized economy, including Germany. The target could require households to spend on new energy-saving gadgets for the home. It could also revive stalled government support for megaprojects for capturing power from tides and for burying carbon dioxide emissions.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change declined to comment before a formal announcement.

Governments in Britain and North America have broadly retreated from far-reaching pledges since the financial crisis wreaked havoc on the world economy two years ago.

Many leaders saw the prospect of sovereign defaults and sharply reduced public spending as incompatible with encouraging wholesale changes to the way countries produce and consume the energy on which economies rely.

That makes the pending decision in Britain — where the government is implementing the deepest spending cuts in decades in an effort to trim its debt load — all the more remarkable.

That is absolutely wonderful, sumac. Great going Great Britain!!!!!!!!!!

Good clicks today. More trees asmiling..................

Just saw the drought map for Texas. Looks like you may be in trouble, Danon.

Yeah, sumac. We are on the eastern edge of the dry stuff. It helps me with the lawn - I don't have to mow as often. We're out in the country - but our well is 375 ft deep so no problem there. Thanks for thinking of us.

Great clicking all good Wildclickers - another tree asmiling today.

Clickity clack. Nothing good to print from the newspaper. Send some rain
Danon.

Ok, sumac --- should be some rain coming your way soon........

Great clicking. And a tree is asmiling at you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/science/earth/23adaptation.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globaleua210&pagewanted=print

A City Prepares for a Warm Long-Term Forecast
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
CHICAGO — The Windy City is preparing for a heat wave — a permanent one.

Climate scientists have told city planners that based on current trends, Chicago will feel more like Baton Rouge than a Northern metropolis before the end of this century.

So, Chicago is getting ready for a wetter, steamier future. Public alleyways are being repaved with materials that are permeable to water. The white oak, the state tree of Illinois, has been banned from city planting lists, and swamp oaks and sweet gum trees from the South have been given new priority. Thermal radar is being used to map the city’s hottest spots, which are then targets for pavement removal and the addition of vegetation to roofs. And air-conditioners are being considered for all 750 public schools, which until now have been heated but rarely cooled.

“Cities adapt or they go away,” said Aaron N. Durnbaugh, deputy commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Environment. “Climate change is happening in both real and dramatic ways, but also in slow, pervasive ways. We can handle it, but we do need to acknowledge it. We are on a 50-year cycle, but we need to get going.”

Across America and in Congress, the very existence of climate change continues to be challenged — especially by conservatives. The skeptics are supported by constituents wary of science and concerned about the economic impacts of stronger regulation. Yet even as the debate rages on, city and state planners are beginning to prepare.

The precise consequences of the increase of man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are hard to determine, but scientists are predicting significa

Hi sumac............ Not too many people actually know now why Chicago is called the "Windy City" --- It happened in the late 1890's when Chicago and New York City were both trying to have the International Columbian Exposition of 1894 in their respective cities. Chicago was so adamate in talking about having it in their city that a journalist in New York wrote about how much Chicago was "talking" and called it the "Windy City" because of the volume of talk.............!! That's the origin of Chicago being called the "Windy City" --- All talk and no actual wind............

Chicago won the event and the Columbian Expo/ World's Fair of 1894 took place in Chicago..........

True story.

That's interesting. I have always assumed that the city was windy.

Here is the beginning of an interesting article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/science/24vine.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210&pagewanted=print

May 23, 2011

A Tree Hugger, With a Twist

By HENRY FOUNTAIN
BARRO COLORADO ISLAND, Panama — Stefan Schnitzer paused along one of the trails that crisscross this forested island in the Panama Canal waterway. Around him were trees, their high canopies muting the light from the tropical sun, the occasional woody vine, or liana, climbing up their thick trunks.

But Dr. Schnitzer’s attention was turned to a break in the forest just a few yards off the trail.

There, in harsher sunlight, a tree stump was all but obscured by a riot of lianas, their tangled stems forming a heavy thicket. Clearly the tree had come down at some point, which created an opening in the forest canopy that allowed the vines to run amok.

“This is really typical of lots of tropical forest,” said Dr. Schnitzer, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an associate of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, which is based in Panama City and operates a field station here, about halfway across the isthmus. “Where you get some disturbance, you get this massive influx of vines. They come down in the disturbance, but they don’t die. They just start putting out these stems everywhere.

“This is the liana-tree interaction at its most horrible.”

Dr. Schnitzer knows as much about liana-tree interactions as anyone, and what he knows is troubling. In a recent paper in Ecology Letters that looked at all the research on the topic, he confirmed what was first documented nearly a decade ago: that throughout tropical forests in Central and South America, vines are slowly taking over.

“Lianas are increasing in tropical forests, no doubt about it,” he said. “But what’s most important is that they are increasing relative to trees.”

Now, through a series of experiments here, Dr. Schnitzer is trying to determine why these changes are taking place.

That reminds me of my original saying = Change is the only thing that's normal.