Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

Good to see you as well sumac.

Need to catch up on the interesting reading.

HS, so good seeing a posting from you! Glad you, Beth, Sue, and Dan had a good three day weekend. With the weather hopping from rain/snow/more rain/hourly sunshine...decided staying home was the best idea... cooked, baked, and pampererd me and the babies. Wonderful

Yesterday, for the very first time, the emergency network began beeping, then actually a person spoke! Torando warnings for Sacramento and Yolo Counties. Foothills received thunder and lots of golf ball sized hale. Unbelieveable. June 1st and we haven't seen hide nor hair of summer temps. The good news is...lawns are watered most sufficiently by Mother Nature.

Car races, Giants BB, and Monday a host of really well done programing (PBS) honoring Vets Day. "Letters to Home" was especially poignant... beginning with beautifully written letters to loved ones from Civil War, WWl, WWll, Korea, Nam, to present day soldiers. Unfortunately, long as we humans reside on the planet, there will always be war.

About my babies...Amanda's 21 in September, and Bella's 13. The rest of the herd are all Home. Very quiet at my house.

So glad reading everyones doing well...Dan, perhaps if you don't wish to fly an airplane again, you could volunteer? There is such a need for retirees in the community.

Sue, i noticed i can't post on your FB page. Any consolation, i've changed my password and hopefully my account won't get hijacked again. Today Steve (better known as by polar bear) was jacked also. Most of my friends have experienced the same sort of crap from people with nothing better to do. Shame on um'.

HS, dan, sue, Beth, and all the wildclickers: Wishing you all a super summer.

Wind Winding Down

H. Jesse Smith
Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, emitted by human activities, have caused Earth's climate to warm. Climate warming has been linked to a host of other environmental changes, one of the most evident being an increase in the amount of water present as vapor in the atmosphere, a simple change entirely predictable by the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. Other possible changes to the climate system are not so simple or predictable. Gastineau and Soden evaluate the potential impact of warming on windiness, combining daily satellite observations and climate model simulations in order to determine how tropical surface wind extremes may have responded over the past two decades. They report that both observations and models show a reduction in the strongest wind events, in response to higher tropical sea surface temperatures, and that light wind event frequencies have increased over the same period. These findings help to confirm what has up to now only been suggested by models. The authors suggest that the well-documented increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation events, which at first may seem inconsistent with a weakening of the large-scale circulation, is therefore mainly a result of increasing atmospheric water vapor.
Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L09706 (2011).

Measuring Subsidy Success

Barbara R. Jasny
After devastating mudslides and floods in 1998 killed thousands of people and displaced millions, the Chinese government undertook a massive effort to fight erosion, called the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP). Under the SLCP, farmers on steep slopes in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins have been given cash subsidies and rice in exchange for allowing their farmland to be restored to forest or grassland and finding jobs other than farming. Part of the goal was to promote a change in the work activities of the people living in these areas to something that would be more sustainable for the ecosystem. Li et al. surveyed 20 villages containing participants and nonparticipants in 2008 to determine the effects of this program on the economics of people in a rural area of western China. Participation in the program increased household income, especially for low- and medium-income households. Income inequality was less among households participating in the SLCP than among those that did not; however, it did not change the traditional employment of the participants in the way that had been anticipated—many were still involved in forestry-related activities or animal husbandry.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 7721 (2011).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/science/earth/03runoff.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23&pagewanted=print

une 2, 2011

Chemicals in Farm Runoff Rattle States on the Mississippi

By LESLIE KAUFMAN
As the surging waters of the Mississippi pass downstream, they leave behind flooded towns and inundated lives and carry forward a brew of farm chemicals and waste that this year — given record flooding — is expected to result in the largest dead zone ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dead zones have been occurring in the gulf since the 1970s, and studies show that the main culprits are nitrogen and phosphorus from crop fertilizers and animal manure in river runoff. They settle in at the mouth of the gulf and fertilize algae, which prospers and eventually starves other living things of oxygen.

Government studies have traced a majority of those chemicals in the runoff to nine farming states, and yet today, decades after the dead zones began forming, there is still little political common ground on how to abate this perennial problem. Scientists who study dead zones predict that the affected area will increase significantly this year, breaking records for size and damage.

For years, environmentalists and advocates for a cleaner gulf have been calling for federal action in the form of regulation. Since 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency has been encouraging all states to place hard and fast numerical limits on the amount of those chemicals allowed in local waterways. Yet of the nine key farm states that feed the dead zone, only two, Illinois and Indiana, have acted, and only to cover lakes, not the rivers or streams that merge into the Mississippi.

The lack of formal action upstream has long been maddening to the downstream states most affected by the pollution, and the extreme flooding this year has only increased the tensions.

“Considering the current circumstances, it is extremely frustrating not seeing E.P.A. take more direct action,” said Matt Rota, director of science and water policy for the Gulf Restoration Network, an environment

une 2, 2011

The High Cost of Cheap Meat

The point of factory farming is cheap meat, made possible by confining large numbers of animals in small spaces. Perhaps the greatest hidden cost is its potential effect on human health.

Small doses of antibiotics — too small to kill bacteria — are fed to factory farm animals as part of their regular diet to promote growth and offset the risks of overcrowding. What factory farms are really raising is antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which means that several classes of antibiotics no longer work the way they should in humans. We pay for cheap meat by sacrificing some of the most important drugs ever developed.

Last week, the Natural Resources Defense Council, joined by other advocacy groups, sued the Food and Drug Administration to compel it to end the nontherapeutic use of penicillin and tetracycline in farm animals. Veterinarians would still be able to treat sick animals with these drugs but could not routinely add the drugs to their diets.

For years, the F.D.A. has had the scientific studies and the authority to ban these drugs. But it has always bowed to pressure from the pharmaceutical and farm lobbies, despite the well-founded objections of groups like the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization, which support an antibiotic ban.

It is time for the F.D.A. to stop corporate factory farms from squandering valuable drugs just to promote growth among animals confined in conditions that inherently create the risk of disease. According to recent estimates, 70 percent of the antibiotics sold in this country end up in farm animals. The F.D.A. can change that by honoring its own scientific conclusions and its statutory obligation to end its approval of unsafe drug uses.

Sue, unfortunately for the animals, they cannot live in CAFO's without tons of antibiotics. They would succum to any number of diseases...and God forbid...culling millions of animals each year just isn't good for corporate profits nor for the animals bred at thier horrific 'farms' either.

If people were more aware how CAFO's work, there'd be less meat sold nationwide as well as oversees. The cruelty of separating calfs from their mothers...then feeding the little ones a mixture of blood and who knows what else...then taking a multitude of calves to market where they're sold to any number of orgainzations...one of which is Heifers for whatever (forgot the name obviously) and or babies are placeed in crates for the remainder of thier young lives so people can 'enjoy' veal steaks. A neverending cycle of cruelty benefits no one.

Passed not two, but four trucks carrying cattle to slaughter. The saddest of all is the look on the faces of the older animals...cows who have been bred until they're exhausted, and because they are of no use to the 'farmer', the animal is killed. Also, the ordor of fear and desperation emminates from each transport truck is absolutely heartbreaking.

I'm certain there are farmers who care deeply for their animals (my cousin was one) but CAFO owners don't mingle with the animals or workers. My cousin did not send his animals to slaughterhouses.

Anyhooo, i've spent the better portion of my life attempting to educate people that CAFO's arn't good places for man or beast...and ingesting CAFO products is just not a good idea.

ehBeth, sue has been finding some very interesting articles. I see we have some reading to do right now, so keep dropping by.

Thanks for the clicks.

sumac and Stradee, interesting posts. I remember recently the chicken problem and the egg problem. It was touch and go to get a product that wasn't on the danger list. EB seemed to be the best for eggs.

Thanks all...........

Good morning all wonderful wild clickers. I am going out to the veggie garden to harvest the carrots and beets. I have a hunch that neither will get any bigger. Will click also. Hope everyone stays on the thread, Danon and I were getting lonely.

Thanks sumac.......... And, thanks everyone for making another tree asmiling.

Sure helps the air we breath.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/science/earth/05harvest.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2&pagewanted=print

June 4, 2011

A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself

By JUSTIN GILLIS
CIUDAD OBREGÓN, Mexico — The dun wheat field spreading out at Ravi P. Singh’s feet offered a possible clue to human destiny. Baked by a desert sun and deliberately starved of water, the plants were parched and nearly dead.

Dr. Singh, a wheat breeder, grabbed seed heads that should have been plump with the staff of life. His practiced fingers found empty husks.

“You’re not going to feed the people with that,” he said.

But then, over in Plot 88, his eyes settled on a healthier plant, one that had managed to thrive in spite of the drought, producing plump kernels of wheat. “This is beautiful!” he shouted as wheat beards rustled in the wind.

Hope in a stalk of grain: It is a hope the world needs these days, for the great agricultural system that feeds the human race is in trouble.

The rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed to the point that it is failing to keep up with the demand for food, driven by population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.

Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories — wheat, rice, corn and soybeans — has outstripped production for much of the past decade, drawing once-large stockpiles down to worrisome levels. The imbalance between supply and demand has resulted in two huge spikes in international grain prices since 2007, with some grains more than doubling in cost.

Those price jumps, though felt only moderately in the West, have worsened hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was ousted in 2008 amid fo

June 4, 2011

Drinking In the Draught of June

If we could bottle a few days to uncork later in the year — when the wind has got us by the neck and the curbs are full of taxi-slush — these would be the ones: early June, the days of peony and iris. Conifers still wear the green tips of new growth, and a few of the hardwoods, hickories especially, still show a last vestige of May. Otherwise, the trees have cast their pollen and fledged completely. Now come the deep, dark shadows of late summer.

In the city, the pigeons have passed the stage of courtship and settled into a beak-to-beak domesticity full of gratified cooing. The subway platforms are still temperate. In the country, the cool, dry nights are completely silent, none of August’s night-rasp. At twilight, the swallows go off watch, and on come the bats. In the dimness you can still make out bumblebees flying bottom-heavy from blossom to blossom. The fireflies have not yet lit up.

Best of all, the day is still growing in length, the solstice still a couple of weeks away. This is the particular poignancy of June. So much has gone by already — fruit blossoms, daffodils, tulips and lilacs — and yet everything feels so young, even as we come to the turning point in the calendar of light, the moment when the year starts waning again. It feels absurdly unsynchronized, and yet it is synchronicity itself.

It would be nice to decant some early June whenever you needed to, when the sun hasn’t shone in days, when the temperature reaches triple digits, whenever the weather or anything else gets you down. But all we can do is drink in June while the month is upon us, while the peonies are coming into bloom.

Did all my clicking. Hot and humid here - and no rain on the forecast for the next 7 days. Soon I will have root water things with my root feeder. Get the water down to the roots where it belongs.

Hi sumac, we have rain today so maybe it will make it to your yard...........

Great clicking all good Rain Forest savers.

All clicked and ready................. another tree asmiling.

Wishing everyone a good week ahead.

I hope you are right about the rain, Danon. I just surface-watered most of the gardens and I hope I put enough down to get to the roots. Going to go click now.

Rising forest density offsets climate change: study

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
Mon Jun 6, 1:32 pm ET

OSLO (Reuters) – Rising forest density in many countries is helping to offset climate change caused by deforestation from the Amazon basin to Indonesia, a study showed on Sunday.

The report indicated that the size of trees in a forest -- rather than just the area covered -- needed to be taken into account more in U.N.-led efforts to put a price on forests as part of a nascent market to slow global warming.
"Higher density means world forests are capturing more carbon," experts in Finland and the United States said of the study in the online journal PLoS One, issued on June 5 which is World Environment Day in the U.N. calendar.
Trees soak up carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as they grow and release it when they burn or rot. Deforestation in places from the Congo basin to Papua New Guinea is blamed for perhaps 12 to 20 percent of all emissions by human activities.

The report, based on a survey of 68 nations, found that the amount of carbon stored in forests increased in Europe and North America from 2000-10 despite little change in forest area.

And in Africa and South America, the total amount of carbon stored in forests fell at a slower rate than the loss of area, indicating that they had grown denser.

And some countries still had big losses of carbon, including Indonesia and Argentina. The study did not try to estimate the overall trend, saying there was not yet enough data.

Greater density in some countries, including China, was probably linked to past forest plantings, lead author Aapo Rautiainen of the University of Helsinki told Reuters.

"Forests that were established in China a few decades ago are now starting to reach their fast-growing phase. That is a reason

Wow, so much rain and finally today a reprieve with mild temps, and for the next few days we may even see 80 degrees! The Sierras became CA's largest rainforest the past winter...and we're not looking forward to the snow pack melting at record speeds...but i'll take the new growth all over the Sierras. Sure looks pretty. Now all the forest needs is a few weeks of warm temps and hopefully when the snow begins melting we won't see to much flooding along the Sacramento river or Delta areas.

Super busy next few days...appointments, outdoor work, shopping, the whole nine yards...but haven't forgotten you...never happen. Take care y'll.

hot and humid here in Toronto

81 F, feels like 97 F

grrrrrrrrrrr

not what I like for sleeping weather

click

I do like the WildClickers enormously!