Fighting for the Freedom of One Species, Taking It Away from Others

Today, Americans celebrate a hard-fought freedom -- for humans. For the billions of captive animals slaughtered every year for their meat, Memorial Day is just another day to be slowly cooked over hot coals

Since the American Revolutionary War, over 1.3 million U.S. soldiers have died in the name of freedom. Memorial Day honors the ultimate sacrifice of these men and women. As Americans gather around barbecues across the country, it's a fine time to also remember the forced sacrifice of the billions of non-human animals killed every year in the U.S -- in the name of something to eat.

About 7 billion hot dogs will be eaten throughout the U.S. today, at the rate of over 800 hot dogs consumed every second.

"This Memorial Day, while we're celebrating our freedom -- and paying tribute to the men and women who died while fighting for our freedom -- let's also take a moment to think about all the animals who are not free, and consider what we can do to help them," writes Heather Moore on Care2.com. "From factory farms to zoos, aquariums, and circuses to puppy mills and pet stores, countless animals are confined in deplorable conditions; exploited, abused, and even killed to satisfy many American's way of life."

"To me, it seems more fitting to hold a vegetarian cookout in commemoration of all the animals who suffer and die in slaughterhouses," Moore writes. "Each year in the U.S., about 10 billion cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and other animals are raised and killed for food. They are made of flesh, bone, and blood, just as you and I are. They yearn to be with their loved ones, feel the warmth of the sun, breathe fresh air, and feel grass beneath their feet. Yet, before they are killed, they're packed in filthy, dark cages, crates, warehouses, or sheds. They are debeaked, castrated, branded, or tortured in a variety of other ways. All to satisfy people's taste for flesh."

GET INVOLVED

• Download a free vegetarian starter kit from FARM (Farm Animal Rights Movement)
  
• Check out Meatout
  
• Read about the HBO documentary "Death on a Factory Farm"
• Choose a pork substitute for your recipe
  
• Read PETA's "The Hidden Life of Pigs"
  
• Sign a PETA letter urging Unilever to stop pig abuse
• Read the Yale College Vegetarian Society's "Top 10 Reasons to Become Vegetarian"
  

RELATED POSTS

• Banned in 150 Countries, But Approved in the U.S. (May 20, 2010)
• Plato's Plate (April 8, 2010)
• The Real Price of Meat (March 19, 2010)
• Ohioans Seek Humane Treatment of Farm Animals (February 3, 2010)
• The Castrato Oinks (January 12, 2010)
• These Little Piggies Didn't Go to Market (May 2, 2009)
• Animal Farm (April 10, 2009)
• The Gloomy Dean (January 30, 2009)
• Eat Healthy and Save the World, Simultaneously (January 23, 2009)
• California Passes Landmark Anti-Cruelty Act (November 7, 2008)
• If We Really Are What We Eat, Most of Us Are A Bit Disturbing (October 17, 2008)
• Patrick Martins: About a Bird (November 20, 2009)

image: a slaughterhouse worker monitoring a cow in a conveyor restrainer (credit: Dr. Temple Grandin)

Our Carbon Future

The developing world is set to emit a lot more global warming gas

If the current laws and policies concerning energy consumption do not change, the world's carbon emissions will increase by 43% through 2035, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Most of that added CO2 will come from large non-OECD nations like China and India, driven by increased steel production, the growth of the energy plants and millions of new cars on the road. Unless there are major energy policy shifts, the developing world will be doing most of the polluting over the next several decades.

"Population growth also is expected to be more rapid than in the OECD countries, portending increases in the need for education, health care, and social services and the energy required to provide them," states the EIA report.

According to EraseCarbonFootprint.com, the average person produces 26 tons of global-warming carbon dioxide every year. It would take more than 150 pine trees (each at least 25 years old) to absorb that amount.

GET INVOLVED

• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
• Find out how you can help keep Antarctica cool and prevent global warming
• Add your voice to the WE Campaign to affect bold action on climate change
• Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees
• Visit the Arbor Day Foundation get 10 free trees when you join

RELATED POSTS

• Big Oil vs. Polar Bears (May 25, 2010)
• Which Countries Are Killing the Environment? (May 12, 2010)
• More Oil Rigs or New Wind Farms? (May 4, 2010)
  
• Under Attack: Clean Air (January 13, 2010)
• Saving Sumatran Forests, Keepers of Carbon (October 11, 2009)
• A.H. (After Human) (October 8, 2009)
  
• Four Degrees (September 29, 2009)
• The Arctic Has a Hotseat, and Man Is Behind the Wheel (September 17, 2009)
• Trade Carbon, Save Orangutans (June 8, 2009)

image: Shanghai at sunset, as seen from the observation deck of the Jin Mao tower. The sun has not actually dropped below the horizon yet, rather it has reached the smog line. (credit: Suicup)

The Cows of Santa Clarita

Ellen DeGeneres makes the plight of dozens of sick dairy cows public

On a derelict dairy farm in Santa Clarita, California, 60 ailing and starving dairy cows -- some of them pregnant -- await their fate. The farm is in the process of being shut down.

The farm's owner doesn't have the money to care for the cows, "and yet," writes Mark Dagostino in a Tonic.com article, "these gentle animals that have spent their lives providing nourishing milk to so many humans are now so sick and malnourished themselves that even the slaughterhouse won't take them."

Enter celebrity animal lover Ellen DeGeneris, who has in recent weeks tried to bring this sad situation to the public, and The Gentle Barn Foundation, an animal rescue and rehabilitation organization in Santa Clarita that has agreed to take the cows and their calves and nurse them back to health.

Unfortunately, the foundation doesn't have the space for the cows, so even as they get better, they will not have a place to live. On May 25, DeGeneres announced on her talk show that the activist digital media firm Tonic is launching a major fundraising initiative to raise the money to build the barns for these cows who now have a second shot at life.

GET INVOLVED

• Donate $10 to help the Gentle Barn Foundation raise $100K to build two new barns for the rescued dairy cows
• Tell the USDA to ensure the humane treatment of America's dairy cows
  

RELATED POSTS

• Banned in 150 Countries, But Approved in the U.S. (May 20, 2010)
• Plato's Plate (April 8, 2010)
• The Real Price of Meat (March 19, 2010)
• Ohioans Seek Humane Treatment of Farm Animals (February 3, 2010)
• The Castrato Oinks (January 12, 2010)
• These Little Piggies Didn't Go to Market (May 2, 2009)
• Animal Farm (April 10, 2009)
• The Gloomy Dean (January 30, 2009)
• Eat Healthy and Save the World, Simultaneously (January 23, 2009)
• California Passes Landmark Anti-Cruelty Act (November 7, 2008)
• If We Really Are What We Eat, Most of Us Are A Bit Disturbing (October 17, 2008)
• Patrick Martins: About a Bird (November 20, 2009)

image: Tonic

Big Oil vs. Polar Bears

Shell Oil makes its case for drilling in critical polar bear habitat

In 2007, Friends of the Earth, a non-profit environmental group that encompasses a network of 77 countries, estimated that the damage that Shell Oil caused to local communities and ecosystems around the world amounted to $20 billion.

Now, on the heels the BP oil spill, Shell is trying to assuage the fears of federal officials about its exploratory oil drilling plan in the Arctic Ocean.

Their plan is to look for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off the north coast of Alaska, a critical habitat for the endangered polar bear that has experienced rapid ice melt due to man-made global warming. Polar bears rely on sea ice to rest, look for food and care for their young. Last summer, one million kilometers of Arctic ice melted away. Polar bears have been seen swimming dangerously far from the safety of the coast in search for food. Some have drowned.

In a May 14th letter to the Mineral Management Service of the Interior Department, Shell Oil president Marvin E. Odum outlined his "Blowout Contingency Plan" for their Frontier Discoverer Drill Ship that he claims will prevent a disaster like the one in the Gulf of Mexico. "I have complete confidence in the technical integrity of our well plans," writes Odum.

As Interior Secretary Ken Salazar decides whether or not to grant final approval for Shell's plan, he would do well to note something else that Mr. Odum said in February of 2009: "Our experience in the Gulf of Mexico...shows that we can produce oil and gas safely and efficiently."

It's sadly evident that oil cannot be produced safely in the Gulf. BP proved that. There's no reason to believe that it can be produced safely in the Arctic, a much more fragile ecosystem.

In a March 31 PBS interview, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) said, "There are places that are too special to risk offshore drilling."

The endangered polar bears who make the Arctic Ocean their home would likely agree.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a National Wildlife Federation Action Fund letter urging Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to deny Shell Oil the permits to drill in the critical polar bear habitat before the end of May (U.S. citizens)
  
• Sign an Oceana petition opposing President Obama's new offshore drilling plan
• Sign a Defenders of Wildlife letter urging Congress to support the the Udall-Eisenhower Arctic Wilderness Act (H.R. 39) which will permanently protect the Arctic refuge (U.S. citizens)
• Sign an Audubon petition urging American lawmakers to vote NO on lifting the crude oil ban in Florida's coastal waters (U.S. citizens)
• Sign a Friends of the Earth petition opposing President Obama's drilling plan
  
• Read the list of the largest oil spills in history
• Find out more about the seven biggest environmental disasters
  

RELATED POSTS

• More Oil Rigs or New Wind Farms? (May 4, 2010)
• Obama: Offshore and Off Base (April 1, 2010)
• Twenty-Six Ounces of Oil (And the Flesh from Several Cows) (November 9, 2009)
• Oil and Water Don't Mix (October 7, 2009)
• Environmental Showdown in the Amazon: Big Oil vs. Native People (July 21, 2009)
• Atlantis Rising (July 12, 2009)
• Polar Transcendentalism (May 11, 2009)
  
• Selling the Arctic's Future to the Oil Industry (March 6, 2009)
• Gray Whales, Meet Big Oil (November 22, 2008)

image: The Frontier Discoverer drillship, owned and operated by Frontier Drilling ASA, under contract to Shell Alaska

When Man Became God

Scientists have created the first artificial organism

Alexander the Great. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt. The Dalai Lamas. The Natchez rulers. The monarchs of Nepal. Jesus of Nazareth. Haile Selassie I. The emperors of China, Japan, ancient Rome and the Incas.

Throughout human history, many individuals have been considered "God." But only Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith have any real claim to that title.

These two American biologists first gained international fame in 1995 when they sequenced the first bacterial genome. Now they have created the first living creature with no ancestor.

"A Rubicon has been crossed," according to The Economist. "It is now possible to conceive of a world in which new bacteria (and eventually, new animals and plants) are designed on a computer and then grown to order. That ability would prove mankind’s mastery over nature in a way more profound than even the detonation of the first atomic bomb."

At a press conference last week, Dr. Venter called their new bacterial organism "the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer."

"We started with the digital code from reading the genome in the computer, four bottles of chemicals and chemically made the over one million base pairs of the genome," said Dr. Venter in a recent NPR interview.

"It was finally assembled in the eukaryotic cell, Saccharomyces, which is the brewer's yeast. We then isolated the bacterial chromosome from the yeast cell and transplanted into a bacterial recipient cell. After it was transplanted, it took over the cell and transformed that cell into an entirely new species dictated by the synthetic chromosome."

Scientists are both excited and concerned about this groundbreaking achievement. At a time when corporations are shelling out billions of dollars towards advancing research in genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) for crop and livestock farming, algae biofuels for energy and bioengineering to fight disease, the ramifications of this breakthrough are potentially far-reaching and complex, both scientifically and ethically.

In response to the study, President Obama said he had "genuine concerns" and ordered the White House bioethics committee to prepare a report about the issues raised by synthetic biology.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, humans have become the first species to have altered the global environment through anthropogenic climate change. That has proven to have been -- and continues to be -- a very destructive development, one that puts the future of Earth's biodiversity in question.

Now humans are the first species to have created artificial life. We don't know yet how good or bad this development will turn out to be, but one thing is becoming abundantly clear: As science and technology increase the possibility of altering and even dictating the forces of nature, the distance between God and Man is getting very small indeed.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) letter urging American lawmakers to increase conservation funding directed overseas to save global priority species in their natural habitats (U.S. citizens)
• Sign a petition to the United Nations to show your support of biodiversity
• Support Conservation International campaigns to protect biodiversity hotspots around the world
• Build a pond and study the many species that will undoubtedly make it home, or at least visit
  
• Join the "Million Ponds Project"
• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe

RELATED POSTS

• The Darwin Effect (March 10, 2010)
• Dig a Hole, Fill It with Water (February 9, 2010)
• The Origin of Life in a Blue-Colored Wave (December 17, 2009)
  
• Bye Bye Biodiversity (October 15, 2009)
• Let There Be Light (August 19, 2009)
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• The Missing Link (May 21, 2009)
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• The Final Frontier According to Ptolemy, Kennedy, Hubble and Obama (November 17, 2008)
• DNA Building Blocks Found in Meteorite Formed in Deep Space (June 24, 2008)
• By-product of Life Found on Distant Planet (March 20, 2008)
• The Shadow Lives of Others (March 3, 2009)
• The Common Ancestor of All Life on Earth (December 21, 2008)
• One Search for Extraterrestrial Life May End (July 10, 2008)

image: "Creation of Adam," Sistine Chapel, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City, by Michaelangelo, 1508 -1512

International Day for Biological Diversity

One day to think about life on Earth

May 22 is the annual International Day for Biological Diversity (IDB). Established in 1993 by the Second Committee of the UN General Assembly, IDB is one day a year to celebrate the variety of life that calls the Earth home. The theme for 2010 is "Biodiversity, Development and Poverty Alleviation."

There are about 1.7 million known species on the planet. How many others yet to be discovered is unknown. Some estimates are as high as 100 million different species. And all these living things help each other to survive in the great web of life on Earth.

"At least 40 per cent of the world’s economy and 80 per cent of the needs of the poor are derived from biological resources," according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). "In addition, the richer the diversity of life, the greater the opportunity for medical discoveries, economic development and adaptive responses to such new challenges as climate change."

Biodiversity provides a host of "ecosystem services," such as air filtration, water purification, sequestration of carbon dioxide, pollination, prevention of crop disease, climate stability, pollution breakdown and soil protection. It also provides "biological services," such as food, medicines and raw material.

Monoculture -- the lack of biodiversity in agriculture -- led to several of agricultural disasters throughout history, such as the Great French Wine Blight and the Irish Potato Famine of both of the mid 19th-century, and the US Southern Corn Leaf Blight epidemic of 1970.

"Our lives depend on biological diversity," says United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in the IBD welcome video.

"Species and ecosystems are disappearing at an unsustainable rate. We humans are the cause. We stand to lose a wide variety of environmental goods and services that we take for granted. The consequences for economies and people will be profound, especially for the world's poorest people. In 2002, world leaders agreed to substantially reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. We know already that the biodiversity target will not be met. We need new vision and new efforts. Business as usual is not an option. For this international year of biodiversity, I call on every country and each citizen of our planet to join together in a global alliance to protect life on Earth. Biodiversity is life. Biodiversity is our life."

GET INVOLVED

• Participate in the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity
  
• Find local events in your area celebrating the International Day for Biological Diversity
• Build a pond
• Donate to support Conservation International campaigns to protect biodiversity hotspots around the globe
• Sign a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) letter urging your senator to support the Stamp Act, which will raise money to fund wildlife conservation (US citizens)
  
• Read Telegraph UK's Top 10 Most Endangered Species in the World List
• Visit the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List to see which species are listed as endangered
• Support Amphibian Ark

RELATED POSTS

• Stamp of Approval for Species Conservation (May 13, 2010)
• Fall of the Rarest Rhino (May 11, 2010)
• The Snail Who Saved the Gorilla (May 6, 2010)
• The Disaster of Drilling (April 26, 2010)
• Portraits of Those on the Brink (April 21, 2010)
• Nothing But Net (April 7, 2010)
• Gorillas on the List (April 6, 2010)
• Follow That Toad (April 2, 2010)
  
• The Ultimate Price of Ivory (March 15, 2010)
• Killing Enemies, Saving Species (February 23, 2010)
• How Much for That Polar Bear Rug? (February 2, 2010)
• Magic Mushroom (January 4, 2010)
• The Monaco Proposal (December 28, 2009)
• Bye Bye Biodiversity (October 15, 2009)
• Exit Koala (November 19, 2009)
• The Rime of the Modern Mariner (November 10, 2009)
  
• Farewell from Christmas Island (September 10, 2009)
• Last Days for the Leatherbacks (September 5, 2009)
• Last Chance to Save the Saola (September 4, 2009)
• Exit the Mangrove Dwellers (August 25, 2009)
• Protecting Great Apes (August 13, 2009)
• Atlantic Salmon Dying in Chile's Pacific (August 4, 2009)
• Extinction Crisis in Oceania (August 3, 2009)
• Killing Rhinos (July 19, 2009)
• Gone in 75 Years: Polar Bears (June 29, 2009)
• Silencing Whale Songs (May 31, 2009)

image: Nymphaea thermarum, a rare African water lily, believed the smallest waterlily in the world, was recently brought back from the brink of extinction at Kew Gardens (credit: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew)

Banned in 150 Countries, But Approved in the U.S.

Almost half of all American factory-farmed pigs are injected with a muscle-enhancing drug banned by China and the EU

Ractopamine is a powerful drug given to pigs, cows and turkeys a few days before they are slaughtered to make their flesh more muscular.

According to a Purdue University study, ractopamine increases protein by 24% and decreases fat by 34%. A beta agonist, this drug obviously helps the meat industry's bottom line.

But it also causes a 10% mortality rate in pigs, making them more stressful and more aggressive. The drug label warns people with cardiovascular disease to avoid exposure to it. Since 1998, 1,700 people have been poisoned by ractopamine.

Over 150 countries have banned the drug, including the European Union and China.

But it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1999.

"In the United States 45 percent of pigs, 30 percent of ration-fed cattle, and an unknown percentage of turkeys are pumped full of this drug in the days leading up to slaughter," writes Dr. Joseph Mercola, author of the New York Times bestseller, The No Grain Diet, in a Health Freedom Alliance article.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the MakeOurFoodSafe.org petition urging the US Congress to pass strong food safety legislation (US citizens)
• Download a free vegetarian starter kit from FARM (Farm Animal Rights Movement)
  
• Check out Meatout
  
• Read about the HBO documentary "Death on a Factory Farm"
• Choose a pork substitute for your recipe
  
• Read PETA's "The Hidden Life of Pigs"
  
• Sign a PETA letter urging Unilever to stop pig abuse
• Read the Yale College Vegetarian Society's "Top 10 Reasons to Become Vegetarian"
  

RELATED POSTS

• Plato's Plate (April 8, 2010)
• The Real Price of Meat (March 19, 2010)
• Ohioans Seek Humane Treatment of Farm Animals (February 3, 2010)
• The Castrato Oinks (January 12, 2010)
• These Little Piggies Didn't Go to Market (May 2, 2009)
• Animal Farm (April 10, 2009)
• The Gloomy Dean (January 30, 2009)
• Eat Healthy and Save the World, Simultaneously (January 23, 2009)
• California Passes Landmark Anti-Cruelty Act (November 7, 2008)
• If We Really Are What We Eat, Most of Us Are A Bit Disturbing (October 17, 2008)
• Patrick Martins: About a Bird (November 20, 2009)

image: USDA

A Warming Tanganyika

Fish stocks are threatened as Africa's deepest lake heats up

Stretching for 410 miles (660 kilometers) in the western arm of Africa's Great Rift Valley, and bordered by Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Zambia, Lake Tanganyika is world's longest lake.

With a maximum depth of 4710 feet (1436 meters), it is the second-deepest freshwater lake on Earth. Filling a basin that was formed almost 25 million years ago, it is the world's second-oldest lake. (Only Russia's Lake Baikal is older and deeper.)

Unsurprisingly, this massive body of freshwater is ground zero for a thriving fishing industry. Hundreds of fish species call Tanganyika home, a good number of them brightly-colored cichlids common to aquariums. (A common aquarium biotope is to recreate a mini Lake Tanganyika to house cichlids.)

Fish from the lake represents up to 40% of the protein in the diet of the one million residents living around the lake, and is also exported throughout east Africa. An estimated 10 million people throughout the region rely on the lake for food and water.

However, a new study led by Brown University has found that Lake Tanganyika has undergone an unprecedented warming over the last century -- and its surface water temperature is the highest on record.

"The people throughout southcentral Africa depend on the fish from Lake Tanganyika as a crucial source of protein," said Andrew S. Cohen, one of the paper's authors, in a recent ScienceDaily article. "This resource is likely threatened by the lake's unprecedented warming since the late 19th century and the associated loss of lake productivity."

GET INVOLVED

• Support AfricaAid's efforts to build high-impact, low-cost programs through innovative ideas and creative relationships with American universities
• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
• Sign a Sierra Club petition to protect wildlife habitat from the effects of climate change

RELATED POSTS

• Which Countries Are Killing the Environment? (May 12, 2010)
• Water, Water, Not Everywhere (March 22, 2010)
• The Fate of the Tongass (March 9, 2010)
  
• From Syrup to Seals in Canada (February 15, 2010)
• The World's Most Important, Most Destructive Edible Oil (January 26, 2010)
• Under Attack: Clean Air (January 13, 2010)
  
• Magic Mushroom (January 4, 2010)
• Nazca Redux (November 12, 2009)
  
• We Didn't Start the Fire (November 5, 2009)
• Low Country (October 22, 2009)
• Four Degrees (September 29, 2009)
• The Arctic Has a Hotseat, and Man Is Behind the Wheel (September 17, 2009)
• The Trees of the Maya (July 29, 2009)
• Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree (July 17, 2009)
• Blowing Noses Into Dead, Ancient Trees (February 25, 2009)
• Trees Are Dying Faster (January 24, 2009)

image: Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania, Zaire and Zambia seen from space, June 1985 (credit: Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center)

Note to the Finns: Save Saimaa's Seals

The European Commission orders Finland to protect a critically endangered seal

The ringed seal is the Arctic's most common seal. But after the last ice age, one population of these earless seals became separated from the rest as the land masses rose during the post-glacial rebound.

Now, the descendants of this unique subspecies population is critically endangered.

With only 260 Saimaa ringed seals (Pusa hispida saimensis) left in the wild, they are one of the world's rarest seals.

And all of them live in Europe's fourth largest lake, the glacial Lake Saimaa in southeastern Finland. Their population experienced a severe decline in the 1960s and 1970s due to pollution. Today, they are struggling with the warmer weather resulting from anthropogenic climate change. Several have also been accidentally killed after being stuck in fishing nets.

Now, the European Commission has sent Finland a directive stating that the Scandinavian nation has failed to implement adequate measures to protect the endangered seal, according to a recent EEC press release.

"We know that Finland has been working hard to implement nature protection legislation and we welcome the progress that has been made," said Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik.

"However urgent action is necessary to safeguard this important species and to preserve another example of Europe's rich and precious biodiversity."

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a petition urging Finnish president Tarja Halonen to establish adequate conservation measures to save the Saimaa ringed seals
  
• Adopt a seal from the World Wildlife Fund
  
• Join Humane Society International's various efforts to stop Canada's seal hunt
• Sign an IFAW petition supporting the Harb Bill to end Canada's seal hunt
• Tell Canada what you would be willing to do if they ended their seal hunt
  
• Sign the PETA petition to boycott Canadian maple syrup as long as the seal hunt continues

RELATED POSTS

• Canada Increases Seal Hunt Quota (March 18, 2010)
• From Syrup to Seals in Canada (February 15, 2010)
• Europe to Canada: Stop Killing Seals (May 6, 2009)
• Senators Stand Up for Seals (April 5, 2009)
• Death Row Baby Seals Find A Friend in Canada's Senate (March 15, 2009)
• EU to Propose Ban on Seal Products (April 17, 2008)
• Canadian Seal Hunt Protesters Arrested (April 9, 2008)
• Canadian Seal Hunt Begins (March 29, 2008)
• New Standards Attempt More Humane Seal Hunt (March 27, 2008)
• Exclusive Interview with Francois Hugo, Founder, Seal Alert-SA (July 15, 2009)

image: a stuffed Saimaa ringed seal at the Finnish Museum of Natural History in Helsinki, Finland (credit: symmetry_mind)

The Antikythera Mechanism

The world's oldest mechanical computer was discovered today in 1902

October, 1900. Off the coast of Antikythera, Greece, a sponge diver named Elias Stadiatos laid eyes on a shipwreck about 60 meters below the water's surface. It was remarkable find.

Some scholars believe that the ship was transporting the loot of Roman general Sulla from Athens to Italy in 86 BC.

Among the items retrieved from the Antikythera wreck were a marble bull, a bronze lyre and statues of a philosopher's head, a discus thrower and the Antikythera Ephebe, a bronze of young man from around 340 BC, which now stands at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

But the most tantalizing item was a mysterious mechanical instrument made up of gears and inscribed with text that closely matches the names of the months on some Greek calendars.

Discovered on May 17, 1902, by archaeologist Valerios Stais, the Antikythera mechanism is the oldest known analog computer. Specifically, the mechanism is an orrery, a device used to predict positions of celestial bodies in a heliocentric model.

As President Obama tries to deflect criticism over his decision to shift the development of human spaceflight from NASA to private industry, perhaps he can -- like the Greek sailors of antiquity -- use the stars to navigate the nation's journey into the future.

GET INVOLVED

• See what's in the sky tonight
• Join the Great World Wide Star Count
• Visit NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Web site
• Download SETI@Home to help in the search for extraterrestrial life
  
• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form

RELATED POSTS

• The Hunt for Exomoons (May 13, 2010)
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• Caught on Film: The Cat’s Paw (January 29, 2010)
• Remembering Challenger (January 28, 2010)
• It Came from Outer Space (January 18, 2010)
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• Sailing Through Space on Sunshine (November 13, 2009)
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• Star Light, Star Bright (September 25, 2009)
• Hubble Captures a Butterfly (September 11, 2009)

image: main fragment of Antikythera mechanism, National Museum of Archaeology, Athens

The Hunt for Exomoons

The search for life-friendly celestial bodies beyond Earth turns to moons

In March 2009, NASA launched Kepler, a space telescope named after Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer who discovered the laws of planetary motion.

Kepler was specifically designed to find Earth-like planets outside our solar system. As of last month, the heliocentric satellite has identified hundreds of potential candidates. They are waiting to be confirmed.

Though over 450 of these extrasolar planets (or "exoplanets") have been discovered, most of them are uninhabitable gas giants lacking terra firma.

Life as we know it only exists on Earth, a small rocky planet just the right distance from its parent star, the Sun.

Now astronomers searching for potential alien life -- or even a habitable celestial body -- are turning to moons instead.

It's a compelling proposition. Several of the moons revolving around the gas giants of our solar system are small, rocky and have atmospheres, although toxic to Earth-bound lifeforms.

But the idea of habitable, life-friendly extrasolar moons is just that -- an idea. Not one has been discovered. Yet. Some astronomers think that Kepler might be able to find these so-called "exomoons".

In a new study that will be published in the May 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal, a team of astronomers have found a new Saturn-mass planet orbiting the nearby star HIP 57050. They think it will have moons. And what is particularly tantalizing about this planet is that is within its star's "habitable zone."

GET INVOLVED

• See what's in the sky tonight
• Join the Great World Wide Star Count
• Visit NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Web site
• Download SETI@Home to help in the search for extraterrestrial life
  
• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form

RELATED POSTS

• It Came from Outer Space (January 18, 2010)
• Hunt for Earth 2 (January 8, 2010)
• How the Sun Will Die (December 18, 2009)
• Saturnian Hex (December 11, 2009)
  
• Planet Hunters (October 6, 2009)
• Hubble Captures a Butterfly (September 11, 2009)
  
• Kepler and the Gate to the Black Forest (February 15, 2009)
• Basic Chemistry of Life Found on Exoplanet (December 14, 2008)

image: This artist's conception shows a hypothetical gas giant planet with an Earth-like moon similar to the moon Pandora in the movie Avatar (credit: David A. Aguilar, CfA)

Stamp of Approval for Species Conservation

Animals on the verge of extinction may get some help -- from a postage stamp

Of the estimated 10 million species currently populating the planet, about 1.5 million known and named species are either threatened or endangered. Tigers, elephants, rhinos, great apes, polar bears, bluefin tuna and marine turtles are just a few well-known animals that may become extinct in our lifetime.

Now the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that, if made into law, would allow people to easily help efforts to save these species from extinction -- just by buying a stamp.

Sponsored by South Carolina Republican representative Henry Brown, the Multinational Species Conservation Funds Semipostal Stamp Act (H.R. 1454) gives the public a chance to voluntarily support species conservation by purchasing of a postage stamp priced slightly higher than the first class mail rate.

The revenue raised would be used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to fund Congress-approved conservation efforts to fight illegal poaching, resolve human-animal conflicts, protect species habitat and support conservation education programs.

It's a smart move that, like the Breast Cancer Research Stamp, doesn't put any additional burden on the taxpayer while raising much-needed funds to support an important cause.

The bill has moved to the Senate. Hopefully, the senators will put their stamp of approval on it.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) letter urging your senator to support the Stamp Act
• Read Telegraph UK's Top 10 Most Endangered Species in the World List
• Visit the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List to see which species are listed as endangered
  

RELATED POSTS

• Fall of the Rarest Rhino (May 11, 2010)
• The Snail Who Saved the Gorilla (May 6, 2010)
• The Disaster of Drilling (April 26, 2010)
• Portraits of Those on the Brink (April 21, 2010)
• Nothing But Net (April 7, 2010)
• Gorillas on the List (April 6, 2010)
• The Ultimate Price of Ivory (March 15, 2010)
• Killing Enemies, Saving Species (February 23, 2010)
• How Much for That Polar Bear Rug? (February 2, 2010)
• Magic Mushroom (January 4, 2010)
• The Monaco Proposal (December 28, 2009)
• Bye Bye Biodiversity (October 15, 2009)
• Exit Koala (November 19, 2009)
• The Rime of the Modern Mariner (November 10, 2009)
  
• Farewell from Christmas Island (September 10, 2009)
• Last Days for the Leatherbacks (September 5, 2009)
• Last Chance to Save the Saola (September 4, 2009)
• Exit the Mangrove Dwellers (August 25, 2009)
• Protecting Great Apes (August 13, 2009)
• Atlantic Salmon Dying in Chile's Pacific (August 4, 2009)
• Extinction Crisis in Oceania (August 3, 2009)
• Killing Rhinos (July 19, 2009)
• Gone in 75 Years: Polar Bears (June 29, 2009)
• Silencing Whale Songs (May 31, 2009)
• The End of An Odyssey Draws Near (May 25, 2009)
• Dying for Daggers: Zimbabwe's Black Rhinos (May 20, 2009)

image: B_cool

Which Countries Are Killing the Environment?

A new study has ranked countries by their environmental impact

An international group of scientists has assessed the environmental impact of 228 nations.

The study, "Evaluating the Relative Environmental Impact of Countries," was undertaken by a team of researchers from Australia's University of Adelaide; the South Australian Research and Development Institute, the National University of Singapore, Princeton University and Harvard University.

The researchers looked at seven criteria: natural forest loss, habitat conversion, marine captures, fertilizer use, water pollution, carbon emissions and species threat.

"There is considerable and mounting evidence that elevated degradation and loss of habitats and species are compromising ecosystem services that sustain the quality of life for billions of people worldwide," said the study leader Corey Bradshaw of the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute.

The world's 10 worst environmental performers according to the proportional environmental impact index (relative to resource availability) are:

1. Singapore
2. Korea
3. Qatar
4. Kuwait
5. Japan
6. Thailand
7. Bahrain
8. Malaysia
9. Philippines
10. Netherlands

In absolute global terms, the 10 countries with the worst environmental impact were found to be (in order, worst first):

1. Brazil
2. United States
3. China
4. Indonesia
5. Japan
6. Mexico
7. India
8. Russia
9. Australia
10. Peru

"Using structural equation models to account for cross-correlation, we found that increasing wealth was the most important driver of environmental impact," said Bradshaw.

"Our results show that the global community not only has to encourage better environmental performance in less-developed countries, especially those in Asia, there is also a requirement to focus on the development of environmentally friendly practices in wealthier countries."

GET INVOLVED

• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
• Find out how you can help keep Antarctica cool and prevent global warming
• Sign a Sierra Club petition to protect wildlife habitat from the effects of climate change
• Download the Greenpeace Tissue Guide to find out which tissue brands are sustainably-sourced and which are made from clearcutting ancient forests (PDF download)
• Download a Rainforest Action Network list of palm oil products to avoid
  
• Protect an acre of rainforest through Conservation International
• Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees

RELATED POSTS

• Water, Water, Not Everywhere (March 22, 2010)
• The Fate of the Tongass (March 9, 2010)
  
• From Syrup to Seals in Canada (February 15, 2010)
• The World's Most Important, Most Destructive Edible Oil (January 26, 2010)
• Under Attack: Clean Air (January 13, 2010)
  
• Magic Mushroom (January 4, 2010)
• Nazca Redux (November 12, 2009)
  
• We Didn't Start the Fire (November 5, 2009)
• Low Country (October 22, 2009)
• Four Degrees (September 29, 2009)
• The Arctic Has a Hotseat, and Man Is Behind the Wheel (September 17, 2009)
• The Trees of the Maya (July 29, 2009)
• Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree (July 17, 2009)
• Blowing Noses Into Dead, Ancient Trees (February 25, 2009)
• Trees Are Dying Faster (January 24, 2009)

image: The state of Rondônia in western Brazil is one of the most deforested parts of the Amazon. In the past three decades, clearing and degradation of the state’s original 208,000 square kilometers of forest (about 51.4 million acres, an area slightly smaller than the state of Kansas) has been rapid: 4,200 square kilometers cleared by 1978; 30,000 by 1988; and 53,300 by 1998. By 2003, an estimated 67,764 square kilometers of rainforest -- an area larger than the state of West Virginia -- had been cleared. (credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)

Fall of the Rarest Rhino

A rare Javan rhinoceros has been killed for its horn

On Monday, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), announced that poachers in Vietnam shot and killed one of the last remaining Javan rhinos and cut off its horn. The body of the animal was found in the nation' s Lam Dong Province.

Since ancient times in China, pulverized rhino horn has been used to treat fever. It can fetch up to $30,000 per kilogram on the black market.

A WWF report found that the Asian demand for products made from rhino horns is reaching heights not seen in more than a decade, bringing rhino poaching to a 15-year high.

One of five extant rhinos, the Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus) was once the most widespread of the Asian rhinos. Today, there are only an estimated 40 to 60 left, making it possibly the rarest large mammal in the world. None exist in zoos.

Rhinos first appeared about 7 millions years ago. But in just a few hundred years, humans have brought them close to extinction.

"This death is devastating for rhino conservation and Vietnam," said Dung Huynh Tien of the WWF. "It’s symbolic of the grim situation facing endangered species like the rhino and tiger across Vietnam."

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Save the Rhino petition to ban rhino horn in Chinese medicine
• Sign a petition to save the black rhino in the Masai Mara, Kenya
  
• Support Save the Rhino International
• Adopt a rhino from the WWF
  
• Watch a trailer's for the film Milking the Rhino, "the first major documentary to explore wildlife conservation from the perspective of people who live with wild animals"

RELATED POSTS

• Killing Rhinos (July 19, 2009)
• Dying for Daggers: Zimbabwe's Black Rhinos (May 20, 2009)
• Throwing Some Light on the Dark Continent (April 7, 2009)
• Saving Sumatran Forests, Keepers of Carbon (October 11, 2009)
  
• African Conservation Gets $10 Million Gift (May 1, 2008)

image: a young dead Javan rhinoceros in Ujung Kulon and the Dutch hunter Charles te Mechelen, 1895 (credit: Charles te Mechelen)