This page is dedicated to bringing awareness to the public about the detrimental forces that affect the El Yunque National Rainforest and the rest of our beautiful planet.
1. The upwind destruction of habitat. Building large tracts of cement houses causes thermal currents to rise prematurely and does reduce the amount of rain that reaches the Luquillo Mountains. Urge local politicians to add more protective zones around the rainforest. The El Yunque rainforest is experiencing less rainfall.
2. The Federal Budget has been cut to all things environmental and especially the Forest Service and US Fish & Wildlife. So when you visit this beautifully preserved forest be sure to leave a donation! Either pay to go into the visitor center or just leave a donation at a ranger station.
3. Should the Puerto Rican government allow the growth of genetically modified crops?
by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero:
"If the American people are for the most part unaware of genetic engineering and food biotechnology issues, the people of Puerto Rico are blissfully in the dark – so far.
Puerto Rico now has a new crop: the biotech harvest. Read the entire blog.
Much of the genetically engineered (GE) corn and soybean seed planted in the United States comes from this Caribbean island. Furthermore, Puerto Rico is also a preferred location for agricultural biotechnology experiments." . . . According to data from the US Department of Agriculture.
The Eleventh Hour film clip with Leonardo DiCaprio
Glaciers suffer record shrinkage
Some glaciers in Europe have suffered significant losses. The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, data from the United Nations Environment Programme has shown. Average glacial shrinkage has risen from 30 centimetres per year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 metres in 2006.
Some of the biggest losses have occurred in the Alps and Pyrenees mountain ranges in Europe. Experts have called for "immediate action" to reverse the trend, which is seen as a key climate change indicator. Estimates for 2006 indicate shrinkage of 1.4 metres of 'water equivalent' compared to half a metre in 2005.
Achim Steiner, Under-Secretary General of the UN and executive director of its environment programme (UNEP), said: "Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry and power generation during key parts of the year. There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine. The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise and it is absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes notice.
"If the sky is not in love, then it will not be so clear. If the sun is not in love, then it will not be giving any light. If the river is not in love, then it will be in silence, it will not be moving. If the mountains, the earth are not in love, then there will be nothing growing." Rumi - Sufi Mystic and poet
The Roar of Rumi - 800 year birthday!
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AFP/HO/File/Dick Dubroff)
by Rita Farrell
Global warming has plunged the planet into a crisis and the fossil fuel industries are trying to hide the extent of the problem from the public, NASA's top climate scientist says. "We've already reached the dangerous level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," James Hansen, 67, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, told AFP here. "But there are ways to solve the problem" of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which Hansen said has reached the "tipping point" of 385 parts per million.
In a paper he was submitting to Science magazine on Monday, April 7, 2008, Hansen calls for phasing out all coal-fired plants by 2030, taxing their emissions until then, and banning the building of new plants unless they are designed to trap and segregate the carbon dioxide they emit. The major obstacle to saving the planet from its inhabitants is not technology, insisted Hansen. . . "The problem is that 90 percent of energy is fossil fuels. And that is such a huge business, it has permeated our government," he maintained.
"What's become clear to me in the past several years is that both the executive branch and the legislative branch are strongly influenced by special fossil fuel interests," he said, referring to the providers of coal, oil and natural gas and the energy industry that burns them. In a recent survey of what concerns people, global warming ranked 25th. . . . "The industry is misleading the public and policy makers about the cause of climate change. . . And that is analogous to what the cigarette manufacturers did. They knew smoking caused cancer, but they hired scientists who said that was not the case." Hansen says that with an administration and legislature that he believes are "well oiled, our best hope is the judicial branch."
Last year Hansen testified before the US Congress that "interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career." Government public relations officials, he said, filter the facts in science reports to reduce "concern about the relation of climate change to human-made greenhouse gas emissions." While he recognizes that he has stepped outside the traditional role of scientists as researchers rather than as public policy advocates, he says he does so because "in this particular situation we've reached a crisis." The policy makers, "the people who need to know are ignorant of the actual status of the matter, and the gravity of the matter, and most important, the urgency of the matter," he charged. "It's analogous to an engineer who sees that there's a flaw in the space shuttle before it is to be launched. You don't have any choice. You have to say something. That's really all that I'm doing," he explained.
3. Not about the rainforest but I hope you care ! :
UPDATE January 2008.. Navy wins, whales loose (their lives).
President George W. Bush came down solidly on the side of national defense 'interests' by acting to exempt the Navy from a federal judge’s restrictions on the use of sonar in waters off California. The federal government asked the 9th District Court of Appeals to recognize the exemption in order to permit the Navy to continue its antisubmarine training in the operating areas off Southern California in proximity to San Diego, the Pacific Fleet’s largest homeport and training complex. . . .
California officials complained that it was the first time that a president had overridden the U.S. Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 which empowers states to review federal actions that impact their coastal resources (which raises questions regarding who really owns the resources, The oil barons and missile manufacturers or the peoples of the states?).
Update February 6 2008 Whales win, president looses.....
Back to federal court, another big victory for whales was scored -- this time over the President of the United States!
Last night (February 5, 2008), a federal judge struck down a waiver issued by the White House that would have exempted the U.S. Navy from obeying a key environmental law during sonar training exercises that endanger whales.
In doing so, the court affirmed the bedrock principle that we do NOT live under an imperial presidency. Both the White House and the military must obey and uphold our environmental laws.
President Bush's waiver was a last-ditch attempt to let the Navy unleash an onslaught of military sonar off the coast of southern California -- home to five endangered species of whales -- without taking precautions to protect marine mammals from a lethal bombardment of sound.
Last month, the same judge -- U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper -- ordered the Navy to put safeguards in place during the sonar maneuvers in order to protect marine mammals from needless
injury and death. Shortly after that ruling, President Bush issued his "emergency" waiver, attempting to override the court's order.
In last night's ruling, Judge Cooper called the Navy's so-called emergency "a creature of its own making," and reaffirmed that the military can train effectively without needlessly harming whales.
The Navy's maneuvers would take place near the Channel Islands -- one of the world's most sensitive marine environments. The Navy itself estimates that the booming sonar would harass or harm marine mammals some 170,000 times -- and cause permanent injury in more than 400 cases.
The far-reaching precautions imposed on the Navy by Judge Cooper include a ban on mid-frequency sonar within 12 miles of the California coast -- a zone that is heavily used by migrating whales and dolphins -- and between the Channel Islands.
Make no mistake: we must be fully prepared to keep fighting for those humane restrictions -- especially if the White House or Navy appeals this decision to a higher court.
UPDATE January 2008.. Americas proud WOLVES to be slaughtered. More info.
Say goodbye to the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch and hello to the Anthropocene Age. Humans have altered Earth so much that scientists say a new epoch in the planet's geologic history has begun.
Among the major changes heralding this two-century-old man-made epoch:
• Vastly altered sediment erosion and deposition patterns.
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Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature.
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Wholesale changes in biology, from altered flowering times to new migration patterns.
• Acidification of the ocean, which threatens tiny marine life that forms the bottom of the food chain.
The idea, first suggested in 2000 by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, has gained steam with two new scientific papers that call for official recognition of the shift. As early as the late 1800s scientists were writing about man's wholesale impact on the planet and the possibility of an "anthropozoic era" having begun, according to Crutzen, who is credited with coining the term Anthropocene (anthropo = human; cene = new) back in 2000. That year, Crutzen and a colleague wrote in the scientific newsletter International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme about some of the dramatic changes:
"Urbanization has ... increased tenfold in the past century. In a few generations mankind is exhausting the fossil fuels that were generated over several hundred million years." Up to half of Earth's land has been transformed by human activity, wrote Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer of the University of Michigan. They also noted the dramatic increase in greenhouse gases and other chemicals and pollutants humans have introduced into global ecosystems.
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In a separate paper last month in the journal Soil Science, researchers focused on soil infertility alone as a reason to dub this the Anthropocene Age. (The term "age" is sometimes used interchangeably with "epoch" or to indicate a transition period between epochs.) As an example, they said, agriculture in Africa "has so degraded regional soil fertility that the economic development of whole nations will be diminished without drastic improvements of soil management." "With more than half of all soils on Earth now being cultivated for food crops, grazed, or periodically logged for wood, how to sustain Earth’s soils is becoming a major scientific and policy issue," said Duke University soil scientist Daniel Richter. . . . Richter's work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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The epochal idea has merit, according to geologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University.
"In land, water, air, ice, and ecosystems, the human impact is clear, large, and growing,"Alley told ScienceNow, an online publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "A geologist from the far distant future almost surely would draw a new line, and begin using a new name, where and when our impacts show up."
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Humans Force Earth into New Geologic Epoch Visit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and scientific inquiry with an original, provocative point of view.
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4. Environmental Defense Action Fund Declarations . Add your comment about what the major issues are today in terms of halting the destructions going on on our planet.
"Every generation confronts a unique challenge that tests its collective mettle. For us, that challenge is global warming. Help us draft a declaration for signature by all Americans who are committed to stopping global warming. Be one of the first to add your ideas to the Declaration.
Fourth Warmest June on record
June 2007 was the fourth warmest June for the globe on record, and the period January - June of 2007 was the second warmest such period ever, according to statistics released by the National Climatic Data Center. The global temperature record goes back 128 years. The global average temperature for June was +0.55°C (+0.99°F) above the 20th century mean. Over land, June global temperatures were the third warmest ever measured. Ocean temperatures were a bit cooler (eighth warmest on record). All land areas, with the exception of Argentina, were warmer than average during the period January-June 2007.
June temperatures were particularly warm across Southeast Europe, where temperatures soared to 40°C (104°F). At least 40 deaths were blamed on the heat, and electricity demand reached record levels. Winter in the Southern Hemisphere was colder than average in Argentina and Australia, and Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city, received its first significant snowfall since 1981 on June 27
Article on findings in Vieques Lagoon- Hurricanes for the last 5,000 years information.
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ARCTIC ICE MELT . By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.
Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press. "The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo. Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.
This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."
So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?
"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines."
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