Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

Tom Friedman wrote an interesting piece in today's NYT. I will return with the url. Meanwhile, here it is:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08friedman.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

The Earth Is Full
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?

“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”

Gilding cites the work of the Global Footprint Network, an alliance of scientists, which calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates. G.F.N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G.F.N., we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.

This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once. While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana. Why? Because Sana could be the first big city in the world to run out of water, within a decade. That is what happens when one generation in one country lives at 150 percent of sustainable capacity.

“If you cut down more trees than you grow, you run out of trees,” w

Thanks sumac. That article hit the nail on the head. We should use that hammer to hit the heads of many governments all around the world and then go sit and listen to the few natives who still live close to nature. We could learn a lot about the balance required to survive.

Thanks all Wildclickers - especially ehBeth who first came up with the name.!!!!

one of these just pulled up across the street

made me smile and remember the early days of WildClicking adventure tales


Happy Clicks everyone!

Glad to see you ehBeth. Yes, I barely remember the early days and the cars.
Posting an interesting article before I go click.

Shame and Honor Work

Laura M. Zahn
Humans have evolved both rewards and punishments to dictate those behaviors that are acceptable and those that are not. The extent to which shame and honor affect individual decisions in group situations where cooperation leads to reduced individual benefit, however, is not well understood. Jacquet et al. used anonymous donations as a means to separate out behavior stimulated by honor and shame by exposing those who had given the most versus the least in a public goods game setting. Both honoring those who donated the most as well as shaming those donated the least led to an approximate 50% increase in cooperation, showing how the desire to avoid shame and gain honor shapes an individual's behavior.
Biol. Lett. 7, 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0367 (2011).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/opinion/11iht-edlovejoy11.html

Geo-Engineering Can Help Save the Planet

By THOMAS E. LOVEJOY

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are pushing 400 parts per million (p.p.m.) — up from the natural pre-industrial level of 280 p.p.m. Emissions for last year were the highest ever. Rather than drift along until a calamity galvanizes the world, and especially the United States, into precipitous action, the time to act is now.

The biology of the planet indicates we are already in a danger zone. The goal of limiting temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, as discussed at the Copenhagen and Cancun climate summits, is actually disastrous.

As we push the planet’s average temperature increase beyond 0.75°C, coral reefs (upon which 5 percent of humanity depends) are in increasing trouble. The balance of the coniferous forests of western North America has been tipped in favor of wood-boring bark beetles; in many places 70 percent of the trees are dead. The Amazon — which suffered the two greatest droughts in recorded history in 2005 and 2010 — teeters close to tipping into dieback, in which the southern and eastern parts of the forest die and turn into savannah vegetation. Estimates of sea-level rise continue to climb.

Even more disturbing, scientists have determined that, if we want to stop at a 2°C increase, global emissions have to peak in 2016. That seems impossible given current trends. Yet most people seem oblivious to the danger because of the lag time between reaching a greenhouse gas concentration level and the heat increase it will cause.

So what to do? One possibility is “geo-engineering” that essentially takes an engineering approach to the planet’s climate system. An example would be to release sulfates in large quantity into the atmosphere or do other things that would reflect back some of the incoming solar radiation.

There are serious flaws with most geo-engineering solutions because they treat the symptom (temperature) rather than th

Thanks ehBeth, WOW! what a wonderful pic of a really nice old car........... Unfortunately, I'm older than the car pictured......... That's not good news. However, the newer autos have computers driving them - and allllllll sorts of sensors!!!!!!!!! It only takes ONE of them to screw up the whole auto!!!!!!!!
God, remember the older autos ----- if it quit all you had to do is raise the hood and bang on something --- then it started again........................!

Good clicking all you WILDCLICKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sumac, I agree, people are ruthlessly ignorant of the consequences of their actions. Dumb is not even close to describing them..

CO2 levels are dangerously shamefull.. Dumb DaDumb Dumb............!!!

Maybe the 2012 predictions are real...........

Danon, the problem with the new cars is that when any little thing goes wrong, you can't figure it out yourself. You have to take it to a service center to have it placed on a bigger computer. The local garage can't do anything because they can't afford the computer. Give me an older slant 6 engine in a car that you can work on yourself.

sumac, I think you are correct... there is a way to check the engine --- it's somewhere in the owners manual and you do it with the key somehow. They are all different so you have to look it up and follow the instructions. The check isn't always correct either. Oh well.

Thanks for the clicks.

We saved one more tree again today.

Did my clicking, and here is some scientific information about America's only marsupial - the possum.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14angier.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210&pagewanted=print

A Fast Life and Success That Starts in the Pouch

By NATALIE ANGIER
We found them in a corner of our garage: a half-dozen baby opossums, peeping like birds, squirming over one another and scratching the wall. They were cute and ghastly in an “Addams Family” sort of way, their long snouts tapered like wine stoppers, their black eyes bulging up from their pale fur like peppercorns from a bed of rice, and their tiny teeth as sharp and plentiful as a piranha’s.

Alerted by the cries, the mother opossum quickly nosed in from the side. As she struggled to calm her babies, to mop up the bright chaos we’d inadvertently thrown her way, we quietly retreated and closed the garage door.

A few weeks later, we were saddened to see, in the middle of our driveway, the corpse of the mother opossum. There were no signs of injury or disease. As it turned out, the opossum had simply followed her species’ ruthless recipe for success in an overwhelmingly placental world: grow up fast, give birth to one or two large broods, and then, at a time of life when most comparably sized mammals have just reached their prime, stop playing possum — and die of old age.

The Virginia opossum, Didelphis virginiana, is one of the more familiar and widespread mammals in the United States, found coast to coast, up into Canada and down into Costa Rica, in fields and sheds, city parks and the alleys of Brooklyn, and all too often as roadkill on the sides of highways. The opossum is generally lumped together in the public mind with raccoons, squirrels, skunks and other workaday wildlife of more or less housecat dimensions, but scientists emphasize that Didelphis is a fundamentally different breed of animal, as singular in its evolutionary history as it is solitary in its habits.

For one thing, it’s our own private Australia, the United States’ sole living example of a marsupial mammal — a mammal that gestates its young in a pouch, or marsupium, rather than in a uterus, as we placental mammals do. For another, new evidence suggests that the opossum is more deeply marsupial than such poster pouch-bearers as koalas, wallabies and kangaroos.

Analyzing fossils recently unearthed in Wyoming and elsewhere, scientists have proposed that the earliest marsupials, w

She must have to keep a "pocket" watch on her kid.................Grin

Bear bile, used in East Asian traditional medicine, is extracted from the gall bladders of live Asian black bears, or "moon bears," that are kept in tiny cages.

Bear bile is extracted from the gall bladders of live Asian black bears.
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.While the commercial trade of bear products is banned in Vietnam, the use of bear bile remains widespread.

Vietnam should ban a type of massage oil that contains bear bile [3] extract, says an international conservation organization that monitors trade in endangered species.

The secretariat of CITES, the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species, has written to the Vietnam Drug Administration requesting the ban of a massage cream known as Misa Bear, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports.

The bear bile massage oil [3] claims to provide "soothing relief from minor arthritis pain, aching and strained muscles and backache," and is sold in Vietnam and China, Thai Truyen of CITES's Hanoi office told DPA.

While the commercial trade of bear products is banned in Vietnam, the use of bear bile remains widespread, DPA reports. The practice originated in China 2,000 years ago, and then spread to other East Asian countries.

The bile is extracted from the gall bladder of live bears — usually Asian black bears — and is believed to cure fevers, hemorrhoids, liver ailments and muscle injuries. It is sometimes used as an aphrodisiac.

The bears are often kept in tiny extraction cages, called "crush cages," where they suffer mental stress and their muscles atrophy.

The Asian black bear, also known as the “moon bear [4]” because of the crescent-shaped white marking on its chest, is listed as a vulnerable species in the Appendix I of CITES, which prohibits international commercial trade in the species, its parts and derivatives.

A recent report by TRAFFIC [5], the wildlife trade monitoring network, found that poaching and illegal trade of bears remains widespread, largely due to the continuing demand for bear bile.

The TRAFFIC report said that bear bile products [5] were mostly found in mainland China, as well as in H

Did my clicking x 10 and nothing interesting to report. Need rain, Danon, or has the drought overtaken your area?

HOW DRY IS IT IN TEXAS ?

It's so dry in Texas that the Baptists are starting to baptize by sprinkling, the Methodists are using wet-wipes, the Presbyterians are giving out rain-checks, and the Catholics are praying for the wine to turn back into water.
Now THAT's Dry

Great clicking team............................

Good one, Danon.

Jellyfish are unpalatable to most potential consumers, apart from the hardiest. As the numbers of sea turtles and large fish have plummeted and phytoplankton blooms have increased, the jellies have moved in, and increasing numbers and volumes of jellyfish blooms are being reported. Locally, jellyfish can vacuum up a wide range of swimming prey, thus tipping food web dynamics and potentially altering biogeochemical outputs. Condon et al. have discovered that jellyfish blooms in tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay generate large quantities of low nitrogen–high carbon—content dissolved organic matter: jelly-DOM. This in turn selects for normally rare (in the marine environment) microorganisms, like gamma-proteobacteria, which apparently outcompete other microbial taxa to consume the jelly-DOM rapidly. However, their metabolic efficiency is poor, and they respire 45 to 73% of the dissolved carbon generated during a bloom, rather than recycling the carbon in the food web or allowing it to fix and sediment. So the consequences of shifting marine food webs to a preponderance of gelatinous creatures may affect not only fisheries but also atmospheric warming.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 10.1073/pnas.1015782108 (2011).

That sounds to me as a warning to we human animals..................

After all, we are all the same.

Thanks, sumac..............

You are a wonder!

We saved another tree today.!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks all --- Dan

Did the clicking thing.
Waiting until Wednesday when I fly to New York for my 50th high school reunion. There have been earlier ones but I was unaware of them.

Same here, sumac...... 50th reunion this year. I've started calling the waiting line at the pharmacy the reunion gathering place.

Clicketly clack. I hope your class is going to put on a good show. We have 3 days (evenings) of activities.

States Cannot Bypass E.P.A. on Power Plant Emissions, Justices Rule
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court unanimously ruled out a federal lawsuit Monday by states and conservation groups trying to force cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The court said that the authority to seek reductions in emissions rests with the Environmental Protection Agency, not the courts.

EPA said in December that it will issue new regulations by next year to reduce power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas. The Obama administration has already started controlling heat-trapping pollution from automobiles and from some of the largest, and most polluting, industrial plants.

But the administration's actions have come under criticism in Congress, where the Republican-controlled House has passed a bill to strip the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate global warming gases. The measure failed in the Senate, but a majority there indicated they would back reining in EPA in some way.

In pushing to curtail EPA's work, Republicans have accused the administration of acting unilaterally after failing to get a bill passed to deal with the problem. The administration has said the overwhelming scientific evidence has compelled them to act under existing law.

Still, in this case, the administration sided with the power companies.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court, said the Clean Air Act gives the EPA authority to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from