The Wildclickers Trivia thread (# 70)

And where will that thing end up when it blows?

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060505_ap_helens_rock.html

"Mount St. Helens' Crater Sprouts Enormous Rock

By Elizabeth M. Gillespie
Associated Press
posted: 05 May 2006
02:35 pm ET



SEATTLE (AP) -- If the skies are clear as forecast, volcano watchers who turn out for the reopening of the Johnston Ridge Observatory on Friday will get a spectacular view of a hulking slab of rock that's rapidly growing in Mount St. Helens' crater.

It's jutting up from one of seven lobes of fresh volcanic rock that have been pushing their way through the surface of the crater since October 2004.

The fin-shaped mass is about 300 feet tall and growing 4 feet to 5 feet a day, said Dan Dzurisin, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050401931.html?referrer=emailarticle

Climate Change Drives Disease To New Territory
Viruses Moving North to Areas Unprepared for Them, Experts Say

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 5, 2006; A16



TORONTO -- Valere Rommelaere, 82, survived the D-Day invasion in Normandy, but not a mosquito bite. Six decades after the war, the hardy Saskatchewan farmer was bitten by a bug carrying a disease that has spread from the equator to Canada as temperatures have risen. Within weeks, he died from West Nile virus.

Global warming -- with an accompanying rise in floods and droughts -- is fueling the spread of epidemics in areas unprepared for the diseases, say many health experts worldwide. Mosquitoes, ticks, mice and other carriers are surviving warmer winters and expanding their range, bringing health threats with them.

Malaria is climbing the mountains to reach populations in higher elevations in Africa and Latin America. Cholera is growing in warmer seas. Dengue fever and Lyme disease are moving north. West Nile virus, never seen on this continent until seven years ago, has infected more than 21,000 people in the United States and Canada and killed more than 800.

The World Health Organization has identified more than 30 new or resurgent diseases in the last three decades, the sort of explosion some experts say has not happened since the Industrial Revolution brought masses of people together in cities.

"We didn't even know West Nile virus existed here," said Maria Bujak, 63, of Toronto. Her husband, Andrew, contracted the disease in their garden in 2002. He never fully recovered, she said, and died two years later.

"Tropical diseases are here to stay in Canada. We needed our government to wake up and tell us that," said Douglas Elliott, a Toronto lawyer who has brought suit against the Ontario government on behalf of about 40 victims, contending that the government did not do enough to inform the public about the dangers of West Nile.

Scientists have warned for more than a decade that climate change would broaden the range of many diseases. But the warnings were couched in the future, and qualified. The spread of disease is affected by many uncertainties, including unforeseen resistance to antibiotics, failures of public health systems, population movement and yearly climate swings. For that reason, some scientists have been cautious about the link between disease and global warming.

But Paul Epstein, a physician who worked in Africa and is now on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, said that, if anything, scientists weren't worried enough about the problem.

"Things we projected to occur in 2080 are happening in 2006. What we didn't get is how fast and how big it is, and the degree to which the biological systems would respond," Epstein said in an interview in Boston. "Our mistake was in underestimation."

The incremental boost already detected in the Earth's temperature, for example, has expanded the range and activities of disease carriers.

"Insects are exquisitely sensitive to temperature changes," a report prepared by Epstein and others at Harvard's Center for Health and the Global Environment noted in November.

The clearest case for that, according to the report's authors, is in cold areas. The higher elevations of Africa, the Andes mountains in South America and the Alps in Europe are warming at a faster pace than lowlands. As ice caps and glaciers melt, forests inch higher on the mountains, and insects carry diseases from warmer lowlands farther up the slopes.

A WHO report in 2000 found that warming had caused malaria to spread from three districts in western Kenya to 13 and led to epidemics of the disease in Rwanda and Tanzania. In Sweden, cases of tick-borne encephalitis have risen in direct correlation to warmer winters. Asian tiger mosquitoes, the type that carry dengue fever, have been reported recently as far north as the Netherlands.

As the seas warm, other breeders thrive. Cholera, a waterborne disease, emerged in South America in 1991 for the first time in the 20th century. Abetted by poverty and poor public health, it swept from Peru across the continent and into Mexico, killing more than 10,000 people.

Diseases are also expanding in a surprisingly complex dance with their environment, taking advantage of the swings from deluge to drought made more frequent by global warming, Epstein said.

A common house mosquito, called the Culex pipiens , for example, unexpectedly thrives in drought. It lives in drainpipes and sewer puddles. During long dry spells, the stagnant pools teem with protein and attract thirsty birds on which mosquitoes feed. Meanwhile, droughts reduce the populations of dragonflies, lacewings and frogs that eat the mosquitoes.

The Culex pipiens is a favored carrier of a disease first identified in a feverish woman in the West Nile district of Uganda in 1937. The disease was found again in Israel in the 1950s, and in Romania in 1996. Each outbreak followed an unusual dry, hot spell, typical of adverse weather becoming more frequent as a result of climate change, concluded researchers at the University of Haifa in Israel.

In 1999, the virus landed in New York, probably at LaGuardia Airport. Disease sleuths speculate that it was lurking in a mosquito stowaway on a plane, or in the bloodstream of someone already infected. That summer also brought unusually hot, arid weather to New York, perfect for the Culex pipiens.

Before the year was over, 62 people had been infected and seven had died, the first of them elderly. The next two years were more temperate, but when another hot, dry summer hit in 2002, the disease exploded across the United States and into Canada.

Susan Harrison, then 45, prepared a Labor Day barbecue that year with her husband and two daughters on the deck of their small house in Toronto. She was bitten by a mosquito, but shrugged it off.

In a few days, she felt a shooting pain in her legs. Within two weeks, she could not get out of bed. Her husband, Phil, rushed her to the hospital, where she was put on a respirator and spent three months in intensive care. She now maneuvers around her narrow house in a wheelchair, her legs and right arm paralyzed by West Nile virus.

Tears welled in her eyes as he spoke of her daughters, Allison, 10, and Tara, 13. "I used to do things with them, take them places," she said. Her husband, a waiter, struggles to fill the role of two parents.

West Nile virus killed 304 people in North America in 2002 and 276 the next year. The toll dropped to about 100 in 2004, probably because of cooler weather and mosquito-control measures.

West Nile has killed 22 people in Maryland, Virginia and the District since 2001.

Despite the recent drop in the death toll, birds and horses in hot western regions are still being devastated, and the disease has likely not finished with humans.

"West Nile virus hasn't gone away. People still need to be aware that it's there," said Edward B. Hayes, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, Colo. "Whether we have large-scale epidemics is anyone's guess."

Climate change already is claiming more than 150,000 lives each year, with causes ranging from heat waves to respiratory illness, WHO concluded last year.

Some scientists see global warming as a natural cycle that will soon reverse itself, but for many governments, the handwriting is increasingly clear. Britain's environment minister warned last year that malaria might reach that country. South Africa's environmental affairs minister said last year that the country could face a fourfold increase in malaria by 2020. The Canadian government now attributes the boost in West Nile virus to climate change, and last year warned that the country might eventually experience dengue fever, yellow fever and malaria.

"One of the problems we have in North America is coming to grips with the fact that epidemics are still a problem," said Elliott, the lawyer. "Canadians, prior to West Nile virus, just considered mosquitoes to be annoying. We had never thought of mosquitoes as being disease carriers."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

It's a wonder that the administration let the EPA go public with this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060505/us_nm/environment_streams_pollution_dc

More than half of US streams polluted: EPA Fri May 5, 5:07 PM ET



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than half of U.S. streams are polluted, with the worst conditions found in the eastern third of the country, according to a study by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In its first-ever study of shallow or "wadeable" streams, the agency found 42 percent were in poor condition, and another 25 percent were considered fair. Only 28 percent were in good condition, EPA said. Another 5 percent were not analyzed because of sampling problems in New England.

Streams running in the East, from the Atlantic coast through the Appalachian Mountains, fared the worst, with 52 percent listed as poor.

In contrast, 45 percent of streams running west of the Rocky Mountains were the least polluted, the report found.

Streams in 48 states were sampled from 2000 to 2004. The EPA plans to extend the study to Alaska and Hawaii.

The survey found activities such as farming and logging helped raise the levels of nitrogen and phosphorous in the water, said Mike Shapiro, an EPA administrator who worked on the report, in a conference call. Those chemicals promote the growth of plants and algae that gobble up oxygen. That, in turn, kills aquatic life.

At the extreme those conditions could create "dead zones" in streams, similar to one in the Gulf of Mexico where fishermen have given up catching any live fish, said Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.

"We passed the Clean Water Act 35 years ago, and this is the first time we've taken a look at our small rivers and streams," Cook said. "It took too long."

Cook also said that the report results could be extrapolated for larger bodies of water.

"The findings are fairly consistent with what we know about the larger river system," he said

http://www.livescience.com/environment/060503_walker_circ.html

Global Warming Weakens Trade Winds

By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 03 May 2006
01:00 pm ET



The trade winds in the Pacific Ocean are weakening as a result of global warming, according to a new study that indicates changes to the region's biology are possible.

Using a combination of real-world observations and computer modeling, researchers conclude that a vast loop of circulating wind over the Pacific Ocean, known as the Walker circulation, has weakened by about 3.5 percent since the mid-1800s. The trade winds are the portion of the Walker circulation that blow across the ocean surface.

The researchers predict another 10 percent decrease by the end of the 21st century.

The effect, attributed at least in part to human-induced climate change, could disrupt food chains and reduce the biological productivity of the Pacific Ocean, scientists said.


The study was led by Gabriel Vecchi of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and is detailed in the May 4 issue of the journal Nature.

Humans to blame


Read more....

You are correct, Stradee. When I first saw the question, with three possible answers, I put them on the wrong coast! Off of Nova Scotia.
And a beautiful map too.


Here is another question:

The Ebro River, which flows into the Balearic Sea, is in which European country?

Sad isn't it? I thought that water pollution was a foregone conclusion, especially after the Hudson was cleaned up. We never learn!

Beautiful, Spain

Spain, of course. But teeny beat me to it!

Great going teenie...... Hi MA......

OK,
Where is the largest volcano in our solar system???

Night all, it's almost time for SNL..

I'm pretty sure all the highest volcanoes are on the Argentine side of the Andes, even though you didn't specify active, dormant or extinct, Danon. Wouldn't make any difference, anyway. It'd still be Argentina. I think.

"in our solar system"- so I think it is Olympus Mons- a vulcono on Mars.

Ooh, good for you, Ul! It was late last night when I posted that guess about Argentina and I never noticed that Dan includes the whole solar system in his question. I was thinking of our planet only. Way to go!

I noticed "our solar system" and thus would have said, "How can we possibly know that now?"

Name the mountain range that extends more than 1,000 miles from Kazakhstan's northern border to the Arctic Ocean.

Hmmmm....The Himalayans?

Q. Whats the source of the Nile? (I don't know)

"It seems incomprehensible that it was so difficult to establish the source of the Nile but the river system is so complex geologically that even today its maze of physical features and geologic activity continue to be disputed and reinterpreted. Imagine how difficult the same system would be to explore in the 1800's without the benefit of technology and facility of transportation! Why was it so important anyway to discover the source? Was this legendary goal merely a conceit, was it a necessity, or was there some hidden agenda involved with its discovery?

There were many speculations about the Nile and some of the greatest explorers in the history of the world competed for the prize of finding its headwaters - Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, Stanley Baker, Henry Morton Stanley, James Augustus Grant and Dr. David Livingstone."

Morning all, all clicked.

sumac,
Ural right and we like ya....... haha grin

YAHOO!! YAHOO!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/06/AR2006050600905.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

"Firms Harvesting Energy From Public Land May Owe U.S.
Under the False Claims Act, Groups Sue for More Fees

By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 7, 2006; A03



CENTENNIAL, Colo. -- As soaring prices prompt huge increases in gas and oil drilling on public land, an ad hoc posse of state governments, Indian tribes and individual "bounty hunters" is charging that big energy companies are shortchanging taxpayers by billions of dollars.

They say drilling companies and pipeline operators are understating the amount and the quality of the natural gas they pump on public land, and are paying far less in royalties than required by law.

State and tribal governments rely on Washington -- specifically, the Minerals Management Service in the Department of the Interior -- to determine what royalties are owed and to collect the money. States and tribes then receive their shares from the federal government.

Two organizations -- the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, representing 57 tribes in the nation and Canada, and the State and Tribal Royalty Audit Committee, representing 11 state governments and eight tribes, mainly in the West -- are pressuring the Minerals Management Service and the gas companies for stricter accounting and higher royalty payments.

"With the current operation in Washington, you just get the feeling that the companies can report any production number they want to, and the government is not going to check," said Dennis Roller, an auditor with the state of North Dakota who serves as vice chairman of the royalty audit committee.

"And, of course, the result is that taxpayers aren't getting paid for the gas that they own," he said "We have asked them many times to do the auditing they are supposed to do. But they just stonewall."

Energy companies say they have paid all the royalties they owe for the minerals extracted from public and tribal land. The Bush administration has sided with the industry, resisting suggestions that it should be collecting more money as gas and oil drilling escalates.

Five years ago, however, energy companies paid more than $400 million to settle charges that they had not paid royalties owed on oil taken from public land. Today, most of the focus is on natural gas production, which is booming on public land in the Rocky Mountain West, with the enthusiastic backing of the Bush administration.

"We think the underpayment on gas royalties could be much bigger than the fraud that was exposed for the oil wells," said Beth Daley, of the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based interest group that plays a coordinating role among the various groups challenging the energy companies.

"The industry seems to have all sorts of ways to avoid paying what it owes for this gas," Daley said. "And the Bush administration has been loosening the rules. At a time when drilling is way up, the government has cut back on its audits, so it is easier for a company to get away with fraud."

Oil and gas accounting rules are complicated, and it is difficult to assess whether or how much the companies may have underpaid. But one veteran of the Western oil patch, independent driller Jack Grynberg, of Centennial, charges that the industry owes the federal government more than $30 billion in unpaid royalties for natural gas alone. By comparison, the deficit-cutting bill that Congress passed earlier this year would save $39 billion over five years.

The nation's major reserves of oil and gas are found in the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest and Alaska, regions where much of the land is owned by federal or state governments or Indian tribes. When gas and oil companies drill wells on public or tribal land, they are required to pay royalties of about 16 percent of the value at the wellhead, before the fuel is shipped to market and refined.

"We are convinced that there is serious underreporting of production and serious underpayment of royalties owed to the tribes," said Roger Fragua, deputy director of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes. "The federal government, at least in this administration, is not protecting our interests. So we are looking for ways to go after the companies ourselves."

The Minerals Management Service says its auditing and collection procedures are working. "We believe that the process we are using is appropriate and provides the income we are looking for," said Gary Strasburg, MMS spokesman. "We're engaged in a continuing effort to improve our auditing, but we have no indication that companies are paying lower royalties than they should."

Critics of the Bush administration's management of royalty payments have been looking for ways to circumvent the government and attack the energy companies directly. Some think they have found the right weapon in a federal statute, the False Claims Act, dating to the Civil War.

Under the law, anyone can file a civil suit known as a qui tam action, a Latin term that means the plaintiff is acting "on behalf of" the government. The procedure can be extremely costly for a defendant who is found to have cheated the federal government; the statute gives courts the right to assess damages three times the amount owed. The private litigant, in turn, gets a significant share of the damages.

One of the pioneers in these cases against energy companies is Grynberg, 81, the veteran oil man from this Denver suburb, who works out of a cluttered office overflowing with geological reports and mineral maps. He said he has earned tens of millions of dollars over the decades drilling for oil and gas -- and almost as much in lawsuits against energy companies, charging that they cheated him on royalty payments owed to his wells.

Grynberg and his team of lawyers have sued 73 energy and pipeline companies in a false claims action in Casper, Wyo., alleging underpayments in the tens of billions of dollars.

"I've been called a 'bounty hunter,' and that's probably a good description," Grynberg said. "I'm trying to get back billions of dollars that these big companies owe to the taxpayers. And when they pay up, I get a share of the money as a bounty." The federal government has declined Grynberg's request that it intervene on his side in the case.

The 73 defendant companies sought to dismiss Grynberg's suit, arguing that there was no evidence to support the claim of underpayment. But a special master appointed by the federal court ruled last year that the cases against 35 of the companies should go to trial. U.S. District Judge William F. Downes, in Casper, said no trial date has been set.

Final action on the suit is probably years away, said Edward A. Dauer, one of Grynberg's lawyers. But the special master's order could be important, because it may induce the 35 defendants remaining in the case to settle; that is, to pay Grynberg to drop his legal action.

"The fact is, most False Claims Act cases settle out of court," noted James Moorman, president of the Washington-based False Claims Act Legal Center. "If it looks like a case is ready to go to trial, the defendants are so terrified of the triple-damage penalty they could face that they sit down and start talking settlement terms with the plaintiff."

To date, Moorman said, the biggest payments in false claims cases have involved medical or drug companies charged with Medicare or Medicaid fraud. But the potential judgment in a suit for underpayment of oil and gas royalties could dwarf them.

Grynberg is not the only figure in the Western oil patch using the triple-damage law to pursue energy companies. Several other plaintiffs, including former Interior Department auditors, are bringing separate false claims cases charging underpayment of mineral royalties.

And recently, the Council of Energy Resource Tribes held a day-long session to plot its attack on oil and gas companies.

"We are looking hard at that False Claims Act," Fragua said. "We can't depend on the Interior Department to collect the money we are rightfully owed. So we think it may be time to start fighting this in the courts." "

You're too clever by half, Danon. It's the Urals all right, the range which theoretically separates Europe from Asia, although the two are really the same continent geologically speaking.

You should know this, Danon, old Alaska hand that you are. What's the highest temperature ever recorded in Alaska?

aktbird57 - You and your 294 friends have supported 2,368,196.0 square feet!

Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 110,642.4 square feet.
You have supported: (0.0)
Your 294 friends have supported: (110,642.4)

American Prairie habitat supported: 51,780.0 square feet.
You have supported: (12,501.1)
Your 294 friends have supported: (39,278.9)

Rainforest habitat supported: 2,205,773.6 square feet.
You have supported: (170,439.8)
Your 294 friends have supported: (2,035,333.8)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

2368196.0 square feet is equal to 54.37 acres

~~~~~~~~~~~~

today, down at The Beach (5 clickable thumbnails (yes, I was playing with colour on a couple of them), and baby pinecones)

ehBeth, great shots...... looks like Spring has really sprung there.....

Merry Andrew, I had to look it up but,
(The highest temperature recorded in Alaska is 100°, Fahrenheit. This record high was recorded on June 27, 1915 at Fort Yukon.)

While in Alaska, I went water skiing on a lake nearby to Fairbanks in the Summer when the temps were in the 90's - however, we had to wear wet suits because the water temp about 12 inches below the surface was close to freezing. The Alaskans call their state the 'Land of Contrasts' for a very good reason.

Alaska is such a beautiful state at any time of the year.