FROM YAHOO NEWS


Temperature swings 100 degrees in one week in Okla. town

By Liz Goodwin

Residents in the Northern Oklahoma town of Nowata experienced a nearly 110-degree shift in the weather this week after a cold front brought temperatures down to a record-setting -31 degrees.

Today, it's a balmy 72 degrees in Nowata. Yesterday, it reached 79 degrees.

"Isn't it crazy? I love it," Nowata resident Julie Koupe told local channel News on 6.

On Feb. 10, it was slightly colder in the region than it was on the South Pole, notes Tulsa World writer Cary Aspinall. More than 3,000 Nowata homes lost power and residents spent the next few days digging their cars and homes out of the snow. There was so much snow in Tulsa last week that city officials began debating provisional plans to truck it out of town.

On Thursday, the 79 degree weather tied for the warmest Feb. 17 since 1907.


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From the NEWYORKTIMES
Russia Embraces Offshore Arctic Drilling


MOSCOW — The Arctic Ocean is a forbidding place for oil drillers. But that is not stopping Russia from jumping in — or Western oil companies from eagerly following.

Russia, where onshore oil reserves are slowly dwindling, last month signedan Arctic exploration deal with the British petroleum giant BP, whoseoffshore drilling prospects in the United States were dimmed by the Gulf of Mexico disaster last year. Other Western oil companies, recognizing Moscow’s openness to new ocean drilling, are now having similar discussions with Russia.

New oil from Russia could prove vital to world supplies in coming decades, now that it has surpassed Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil producer, and as long as global demand for oil continues to rise.

But as the offshore Russian efforts proceed, the oil companies will be venturing where other big countries ringing the Arctic Ocean — most notably the United States and Canada — have been wary of letting oil field development proceed, for both safety and environmental reasons.

After the BP accident in the gulf last year highlighted the consequences of a catastrophic ocean spill, American and Canadian regulators focused on the special challenges in theArctic. The ice pack and icebergs pose various threats to drilling rigs and crews. And if oil were spilled in the winter, cleanup would take place in the total darkness that engulfs the region during those months.

Last week, Royal Dutch Shell postponed plans for drilling off Alaska’s Arctic coast, as the company continued to face hurdles from wary Washington regulators.

The Russians, who control far more prospective drilling area in the Arctic Ocean than the United States and Canada combined, take a far different view.

As its Siberian oil fields mature, daily output in Russia, without new development, could be reduced by nearly a million barrels by the year 2035, according to the International Energy Agency. With its economy dependent on oil and gas, which make up about 60 percent of all exports, Russia sees little choice but to go offshore — using foreign partners to provide expertise and share the billions of dollars in development costs.


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ALSO SEE THIS DOC REGARDING CHOCOLATE PRODUCTION


THE GLOBE AND MAIL

In the not-too-distant future, chocolate will become a rarefied luxury, as expensive as caviar

John Mason, a Canadian expert on cocoa, first made this prophesy six years ago from his base in West Africa, the epicentre of production. He was confident enough to repeat it, over and over, to the directors of the biggest chocolate companies in the world.

“Sometimes they were rude. Sometimes they were polite,” he said. “Behind me, they were sort of snickering.”

Today they treat him like a guru. An influential set of senior industry heavyweights flew to Ghana last week to hear him speak; the talk ended with an unprecedented agreement between industry competitors and the government to establish a working group that will map out a sustainable future. It is the first such agreement of its kind in the cocoa world.

“Not that many year ago, this would have been impossible,” said Mr. Mason, executive director of the Nature Conservation Research Centre, a non-profit devoted to sustainable development and resource conservation. “People were not sufficiently aware of the magnitude of what is on the horizon, how serious the future is.”

The industry has been ignoring a looming supply problem, one that’s been brought into sharp focus by a political eruption in Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa-producing nation.

Productivity on farms is not keeping pace with demand. Fatal diseases plague the crops. The soils cocoa grows in are depleted. Consumer demand, though, is growing. As standards of living improve in China and India, their new taste for chocolate keeps pace, feeding a worldwide consumption increase of about 2 per cent a year.

“We’re in a bit of a crisis as an industry,” said Chris Brett, vice-president of corporate responsibility and sustainability for Olam International, one of the largest cocoa-buying companies in the world, which sells beans to major chocolate producers, such as Cadbury, Mars and Nestle.

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Report: Israel is in worst shape for water resources

By JPOST.COM STAFF  
02/12/2011 10:35 

Indian thinktank report claims Mideast countries can make "blue peace" with water management, solve deadlocks between Israel, PA, Syria.Talkbacks (1)An Indian thinktank, Strategic Foresight Group, released a report that claims that Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories are in the worst shape in the Middle East with clean water resources, citing a 500-700 million cubic meter water deficit each. Middle Eastern counties will have no choice to cooperate as water resources in the region dwindle causing shortages, the report said. 

The investigative report was launched by Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, who, according to AFP, said "The report comes to an alarming conclusion; five of the seven countries are experience a structural shortage and debit of most of the big rivers has declined by 50 to 90 percent since 1960."

Calmy-Rey also called for stronger cooperation between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey on managing the scant available water resources, adding water's potential to create a "blue peace," adding that "In the future the main  geopolitical resource in the Middle East will be water more than oil." 

The report warned, however, that "The countries that are friendly today may be antagonistic tomorrow and the ones which are enemies today may be friends tomorrow," adding that "The history of merely last ten years in the Middle East demonstrates how quickly the geopolitical scene changes."

The report claims to have provided a "regional perspective," explaining that watercourses both above and below surface do not adhere to "political boundaries." The investigation highlights the shrinking of the Dead Sea to a small lake by 2050, depletions of the Yarmouk and Jordan Rivers, as well as the drying-up of the Euphrates River due to droubt, and also added that the technical solutions developed in Israel to water issues will only last for a short period of time. 

Commenting on water issues in Israel and the Palestinian territories, the report cited a "fundamental misunderstanding between water experts" on both sides concerning thewithdrawal from available aquifers. The report stressed that a peace accord will allow the Palestinians and Israelis to a "fair management of water resources by equitable participation of both parties." 

As for joint Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian water resource management, the report said that the ongoing Red-Dead Sea Canal (RDC) project, a 112 mile pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead sea would be used both to replenish dwindling waters in the Dead Sea, as well as creating desalinated water for all three parties by using hydro-electric power created by the 400 meter drop from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba, Eilat's coastline.

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FROM KVOA NEWS

Cold temperatures damaging crops in Mexico

NOGALES - Produce suppliers say last weeks cold temperatures haven't frozen crops in Sinaloa, Mexico since 1956. 

Now they're having to evaluate the damage before more products are brought to the U.S.

"There are some plants that got severely damaged or some plants that were lost, so we are anticipating lower volumes going forward than normal volumes," Martin Ley said.

Del Campo officials said they've never had to deal with this type of produce damage in the past, but thankfully not all was lost during last weeks freezing temperatures.

"There was significant foliage damage and some damage to some of the fruits," Ley said.

Ley said some vegetables and fruits were more susceptible to the freezing climate than others.

"Tomatoes, peppers some eggplants still fare much better, and those plants are going to come back and recuperate," Ley said.

Not only are produce suppliers noticing the affects of Mother Nature, but the Nogales Food Bank is also noticing a produce shortage.


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FROM PHYSORG

China's drought may have serious global impact
February 4, 2011 by Boris CambrelengEnlarge

A Chinese farmer shows the dried vegetable seeds at his drought-striken fields in Zhouping, east China's Shandong province in January 2011.

Wide swathes of northern China are suffering through their worst drought in 60 years -- a dry spell that could have a serious economic impact worldwide if it continues much longer, experts say.


Some areas have gone 120 days without any significant rainfall, leaving more than five million hectares (12.4 million acres) of crops damaged -- an area half the size of South Korea -- China's drought control agency said Sunday.

There are fears that the problem could send global prices soaring at a time when food costs are already causing governments headaches. According to the UN last month world prices broke their peak levels of 2008 to hit a record high.

"If the dry spell continues into March or April, wheat production could be seriously affected, with losses of more than 10 million tonnes," Ma Wenfeng, an analyst at Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultants, told AFP.

"China would be forced to boost its imports."

More than 2.5 million people lack drinking water, particularly in the eastern and central provinces of Shandong and Henan, which each have around 95 million inhabitants.

Weather authorities are not forecasting much rain over the next two months for the regions around Beijing, in the Yellow River basin and along the Huai, the waterway that divides the rice-plenty south and the wheat-growing north.

Shandong's Rizhao city, which means "sunshine", has suffered from its longest drought in 300 years, stretching back to September 11, according to local media.

Beijing meanwhile has not seen any rain or snow for 100 days -- its worst run since 1951. The water shortage is also expected to worsen as warmer weather kicks in after two months of particularly cold temperatures.

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FROM The Guardian

Mass tree deaths prompt fears of Amazon 'climate tipping point'
Scientists fear billions of tree deaths caused by 2010 drought could see vast forest turn from carbon sink to carbon source

Billions of trees died in the record drought that struck the Amazon in 2010, raising fears that the vast forest is on the verge of a tipping point, where it will stop absorbing greenhouse gas emissions and instead increase them.

The dense forests of the Amazon soak up more than one-quarter of the world's atmospheric carbon, making it a critically important buffer against global warming. But if the Amazon switches from a carbon sink to a carbon source that prompts further droughts and mass tree deaths, such a feedback loop could cause runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences.

"Put starkly, current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world's largest forest," said tropical forest expert Simon Lewis, at the University of Leeds, and who led the research published today in the journal Science. Lewis was careful to note that significant scientific uncertainties remain and that the 2010 and 2005 drought – thought then to be of once-a-century severity – might yet be explained by natural climate variation.

"We can't just wait and see because there is no going back," he said. "We won't know we have passed the point where the Amazon turns from a sink to a source until afterwards, when it will be too late."

Alex Bowen, from the London School of Economics and Political Science's Grantham research institute on climate change, said huge emissions of carbon from the Amazon would make it even harder to keep global greenhouse gases at a low enough level to avoid dangerous climate change. "It therefore makes it even more important for there to be strong and urgent reductions in man-made emissions."

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From Yahoo News
Oysters disappearing worldwide: study

AFP/Getty Images/File – A survey of oyster habitats around the world has found that the succulent mollusks are disappearing fast …


WASHINGTON (AFP) – A survey of oyster habitats around the world has found that the succulent mollusks are disappearing fast and 85 percent of their reefs have been lost due to disease and over-harvesting.

Most of the remaining wild oysters in the world, or about 75 percent, can be found in five locations in North America, said the study published in BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

An international team of researchers led by Michael Beck of the Nature Conservancy and the University of California, Santa Cruz, examined the condition of native oyster reefs in 40 ecoregions, including 144 bays.

"Oyster reefs are at less than 10 percent of their prior abundance in most bays (70 percent) and ecoregions (63 percent)," said the study.

"They are functionally extinct -- in that they lack any significant ecosystem role and remain at less than one percent of prior abundances in many bays (37 percent) and ecoregions (28 percent) -- particularly in North America, Australia and Europe."
By averaging the loss among all regions, the researchers came up with an estimate that 85 percent of oyster reef ecosystems have been lost, but said that figure was likely low because some areas lacked historical records for comparison.

The study also did not include oyster reefs in parts of South Africa, China, Japan, and North and South Korea.
Other studies and observations in those areas "suggest that wild oyster abundance was much higher in the past and that reefs have declined greatly in abundance or have disappeared altogether," the authors said.

The one bright spot in the oyster world was in the Gulf of Mexico, where native oyster catches are "the highest in the world despite significant declines in abundance and reefs," according to the study.

Five regions where oyster catches were globally the highest were located in eastern North America, from the Virginia coast southward and also in the Gulf of Mexico.

Oysters are important to ecosystems because they filter impurities from water and provide food and employment for people living in coastal communities.

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FROM TWOOFOUT

Manifest Haiti: Monsanto's Destiny
Thursday 20 January 2011
by: Ryan Stock, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

 
Rural Haitian farmers gathered in Papaye, June 4, 2010. Many wore straw hats reading, "Aba Monsanto - down with Monsanto and Aba Preval - down with Preval." (Photo: mediahacker)
Let It Burn

"A fabulous Easter gift," commented Monsanto Director of Development Initiatives Elizabeth Vancil. Nearly 60,000 seed sacks of hybrid corn seeds and other vegetable seeds were donated to post-earthquake Haiti by Monsanto. In observance of World Environment Day, June 4, 2010, roughly 10,000 rural Haitian farmers gathered in Papaye to march seven kilometers to Hinche in celebration of this gift. Upon arrival, these rewarded farmers took their collective Easter baskets of more than 400 tons of vegetable seeds and burned them all.[i] "Long live the native maize seed!" they chanted in unison. "Monsanto's GMO [genetically modified organism] & hybrid seed violate peasant agriculture!"

According to Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, coordinator of the Papay Peasant Movement (MPP), "there is presently a shortage of seed in Haiti because many rural families used their maize seed to feed refugees."[ii] Like any benevolent disaster capitalist corporation, Monsanto extended a hand in a time of crisis to the 65 percent of the population that survives off of subsistence agriculture. But not just any hand was extended in this time of great need, rather: a fistful of seeds. The extended fist was full of corn seeds, one of Haiti's staple crops, treated with the fungicide Maxim XO. With similar benevolence, not just any tomato seeds were donated to the agrarian peasants, but tomato seeds treated with Thiram, a chemical so toxic the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ruled it too toxic to sell for home garden use, further mandating that any agricultural worker planting these seeds must wear special protective clothing.[iii] Happy Easter! Monsanto's web site's official explanation for this toxic donation is that "fungicidal seed treatments are often applied to seeds prior to planting to protect them from fungal diseases that arise in the soil and hamper the plant's ability to germinate and grow. The treatments also provide protection against diseases the seed might pick up in transfer between countries."[iv] However, according to the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services Hazardous Substance Fact Sheet, "repeated exposure [to Thiram] can affect the kidneys, liver and thyroid gland. High or repeated exposure may damage the nerves."[v] Why would Monsanto be so eager to donate seeds that could potentially compromise the health of so many famished people?


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