What the World Is Saying

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ENVIRONMENT

ARCHIVES — JULY - AUGUST 2010

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WHY THE LITTLE BROWN BAT IS IN BIG DANGER

Bats do a tremendous amount to keep down insect levels, pollinate plants, and so on. We don't tend to see them often of course, but in the past in the summer it's been pretty consistent to see some swooping around in the twilight, which is very cool. In my current area however they've mostly all vanished already.

One thing I don't see mentioned in the article is that bats, at least for small mammals, have a relatively slow lifecycle (much more k-type then r-type). With reasonably long lifespans and low birth rates, even if there is a WNS (White Nose Syndrome) resistant group out there it won't simply be able to explode in size to fill the gap as other species that grow fast can. I assume this makes extinction much more likely as well.

It's hard to see if there's anything to be done, short of trying our best to reduce our ecological impact where possible to at least reduce some pressure on bat populations. Perhaps if we can trace WNS back to its origin and analyze the bat species in that area it might be possible to learn more about how other populations have adapted to fight it.

Read the article ARS TECHNICA/Extinction spreads like fungus among North America's bats

BOTTLE RETURN: PLASTIKI TAKES MESSAGE ACROSS PACIFIC

It truly is alarming the amount of plastic bottles and waste that is jettisoned into the world's oceans on a daily basis. There are islands in the Pacific, in particular in the Hawaiian archipelago, that receives tons and tons of plastic garbage. It's so thick that you can dig several feet down on the beaches, and still find plastic shreds underneath.

What does this tell you? The oceans are our most precious and fragile ecosystem. If they go, we die out with them. If this plastic boat can draw more attention to the plight of our oceans, then it was worth it.

Read the article CNN/Plastiki, boat made of plastic, nears end of Pacific voyage

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A few quick notes:

Plastiki, despite being called a sailboat, could barely sail, and would be better described as a floating raft with a sail on top that could blow down-wind. Without a tow by the coast guard they never would have made it to sydney, being unable to actually sail, despite our ancestors figuring out how to sail into Sydney harbor ages ago, and Jessica Watson sailing around the world with no engine power at all and into sydney harbor as a 16 year old girl.

The amount of flying, towing and other engine power this sailboat has used up is incredible. I'm sure they will all be flying back and forth to syndey to talk about the environment.

Their exploration of the great garbage patch was modest to non-existent. Because they didn't displace water with single hulls, it would be interesting to consider the amount of plastic used by this boat compared a normal boat.

Not as impressed about this boat as the media. Read the article SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/Plastiki arrives in Sydney

GOBY TO THE RESCUE

SCIENCE

>> The idea of an ecosystem not suffering under the consequences of overfishing was baffling to researchers."

Well the ecosystem suffered. Anchovies and sardines disappeared. And as the scientists themselves claim, they are unsure of the long term fate of the goby (and I'll add: for that matter, of the whole ecosystem).

I'm happy for that particular species of gobies. Tough little bastard. But we don't know exactly how well this species is going to fare or how competent it will be in supplying the food chain. Do we have data on their predators? Are their numbers declining, increasing, remaining stationary? Can the gobies new diet affect their own health? What's the status on the jellyfish? Are their numbers increasing too much? Are these healthy or there are too many sick or dying?

Read the article ARS TECHNICA/Overfished eco-system held together by a single species

ARE CELL PHONES STINGING OUR BEES?

Nature never intended us to have radiation emitting cell phones. What I find just as scary are the people who claim to know more than the scientists who have spent their time conducting this research. We are destroying the environment in every way we can and killing off the bee population is not a joke and it could have disastrous effects on us all. In the meantime let's just carry on making a joke about it and continue screwing up the atmosphere.

Read the article CNN/Study links bee decline to cell phones

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The "not our fault" mindset is frustrating. Those who use pesticides claim it's not them. The people who oversee communications (cell phones, etc) insist it's not them either. My theory is that it is some of both.

I have an organic garden and I am seeing steadily fewer and fewer wild honey bees every year. This year I've seen only a handful. My fruit production is down.

Next year we're bringing in our own honey bees--for a lot of reasons--but also because it's paramount that we all become part of the solution if honey bees are going to survive us

Read the article CNN/Study links bee decline to cell phones

GIVING PAUL THE LAST WORD: "ONLY THE OCTOPUS KNOWS"

For all the fabulous philoctopoidia on this page, it's sad to discover that you're just another bunch of anti-molluscites. Or maybe you're still mad that the efficient German football machine finally threw a gear.

If you've ever been diving by moonlight off the rocky reefs around the Straits of Georgia you will have seen the spectacle of the Pacific Giant Octopus poring over a soggy copy of the Daily Racing Form with multiple tentacle tips dipping into its organic inkpot and dotting the page with surefire winners.

They have the largest brains in the invertebrate world, evolved over aeons of precarious life without a protective exoskeleton. The denizens of BoingBoing can be forgiven for thinking that snark and good taste were viable alternatives to tooth and claw but our squidgy tentacular buddies don't have the luxury; out there it's just your wits, your eight-to-ten arms, your spacetime-folding supercerebellum, and a reliable bookmaker standing between you and the ravening hordes of anti-intellectual dogfish.

So give us all a break, relax, and realize for a moment that you simply don't know what you don't know. Only the octopus knows.

Read the article BOING BOING/Science reporting officially dead at CNN

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What I want to know is why a creature with eight arms would show any interest in a sport played almost entirely with feet.

Read the article BOING BOING/Science reporting officially dead at CNN

DOWN TO THE SEA IN 12,000 PLASTIC BOTTLES

PLASTIKI WEBSITE

I first heard about the Pacific garbage patch on a short TV segment with Capt. Charles Moore. What struck me about him was the deep sorrow in his voice when he spoke about the debris in the ocean gyre. He said that the plastic breaks up into smaller and smaller fragments, then enters the deeper water column, so that what we see on the surface is only part of the junk.

One of his sayings is "Plastic is Forever." He doesn't explain all of these things like a teacher, but as one speaking sadly about the terrible wound in a beloved friend. Unfortunately, because most of us do not venture into the middle of the ocean, this message just hasn't gotten through, not in the same way the near-land tragedies, such as the oil spills, have been able to reach us.

But these are related, since plastic debris originates from petroleum products and the out-of-control greed that dominates the economy. Since 60% of the debris comes from individual one-time use items, all we have to do is give up just a tiny part of our stuff, just those plastic wrappers, water bottles, snack-packs, whatever.

Read the article HUFFINGTON POST/The Plastiki Voyage: Marine debris is our problem

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