Snakehead fish are large, freshwater predators from the Channidae family that are native to Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia and various locations throughout Asia. These fish are plentiful in their native waters as there are some 28 varieties of snakehead fish.

The snakehead fish is very unique and different from the average fish. While they are similar, in body-type, to muscular eels, some snakehead varieties can grow to at least four feet in length. This fish got its name because of its stereotypically flat, snake-like head and toothed mouth.

What really make the snakehead so unique is its voracious appetite and its ability to breathe air. This fish is so adaptable, in fact, that it can travel short distances across land and live for short stents of time out of the water.

While there have been reports of snakeheads attacking and killing humans, they usually settle for fish, amphibians and small mammals. However, at least one species of snakehead, the Channa micropeltes, has been known to attack people when they approached the snakehead’s nest or their young.

Photo by Brian Gratwiche via Creative Commons

Over the years, these superb predators have found their way into the lakes and rivers of the United States, and this is where the problem of introducing a very adaptable, fierce predator into a new environment begins. The northern snakehead, or Channa argus, have been brought into the United States for two main reasons. There were going to be used as freshwater aquarium fish and as a specialty food.

It is reported that the northern snakeheads found in American waters are either illegally stocked in an effort to establish a local food source or aquarium owners eventually released the fish after they no longer wanted to or could care for them properly. Once introduced into their new homes, these fish tend to flourish.

Photo by marcuspajp via Creative Commons

In fact, there are several species of Channidae that can tolerate a wide range of water temperatures. So, neither the warm waters of the south nor the cold waters of the north would prevent many snakeheads from becoming an established, yet undesirable, new resident.

Once established, these fish can expand their range by swimming to adjoining waterways or can even move short distances over land to nearby sources of water. The adaptability of these fish is not the only thing that makes them such a threat. The northern snakehead also breeds extremely easily.

Combine the northern snakehead’s adaptability, carnivorous appetitive, the ability to move over land and a lack of natural enemies, and you end up with a real and present threat to American waterways and the indigenous species of aquatic life that resides in these waters.

While this might not seem like a very significant environmental threat, the impact of releasing a pet snakehead or a food fish into local waters where that fish is not native is real.

Photo by Ton MJ via Creative Commons

With no natural enemies in U.S. waters, the snakehead’s prolific breeding habits and hardy constitutions create a real potential for snakehead fish to multiply and destroy entire populations of fish and amphibians in the waters in which they are released. Many of these fish and amphibians are already on the endangered species list, and the snakeheads can only make things worse.

Consider this: At all stages of life, the northern snakehead competes with native fish and other aquatic wildlife for food. Native fish and wildlife populations, which already rely upon smaller fish, crustaceans, frogs, snakes, lizards and young waterfowl, will have to compete with these top-predators, and this could put them in great danger.

If snakeheads become established in a specific body of water, they can disrupt the ecosystem’s predator-prey balance. This can be catastrophic for native species.

Additionally, when a new species is introduced to an already established body of water, there is always the potential of the species bringing new diseases and parasites along with it. And, it does not appear that only large populations of snakeheads create environmental problems for American waterways. Even just one snakehead poses a threat because of its voracious feeding behavior.

In 2002, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service added snakeheads to the list of “injurious fish.” This means that snakeheads are prohibited from being imported into the United States.

Many states now even prohibit the possession of live snakeheads. However, these bans have not completely stopped illegal snakehead-activities, which have been recorded in most of the states where bans are in place. It is also reported that snakeheads can still be obtained over the internet.

Photo by Yai&JR via Creative Commons

If snakeheads are found in the wild, the only means of eradicating the population would involve the complete eradication of the fishery with a piscicide, a chemical substance which is poisonous to fish. While this can be effective in small, isolated bodies of water, it does not generally work in large lakes or river systems.

This is what officials in Crofton, Maryland decided to do when northern snakeheads were discovered by anglers in 2002. This first Maryland snakehead was a long, skinny fish about 18 inches from end to end.

Photo by wharman via Creative Commons

Because the fisherman didn’t recognize the strange fish, he took a picture of it and put it back in the pond. Later, he gave the photo to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Sure enough, the fish was identified as a snakehead.

It wasn’t until another angler caught a snakehead in the same pond and netted some babies that officials really became concerned. Their concern was based on the fact that a heavy rain could possibly wash some snakeheads from the pond and into a nearby river, which runs through a National Wildlife Refuge and on to the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in North America. Because of this, authorities acted quickly.

To eliminate the snakehead menace, Maryland wildlife officials dumped the piscicide rotenone into Crofton Pond. This succeeded in killing all of its fish. Six adult snakeheads and greater than 1,000 juveniles went belly-up, along with all of the pond’s native fish.. They thought the snakehead problem was solved.

Two years later, northern snakeheads reared their heads again, and this time they showed up in the Potomac River. Experts worried that snakeheads in the Potomac, by eating other fish or out-competing them for food, could drive down numbers of more desirable species, such as largemouth bass and shad.

Poison just wasn’t an option this time. You can dump poison in a little, enclosed pond, but you can’t very easily contaminate the entire Potomac in order to kill the snakeheads. It’s a wide, shallow river that originates in West Virginia and runs 380 miles before emptying into the Chesapeake Bay.

The Bay fuels the region’s economy through recreation and fishing. Snakeheads couldn’t survive in the mildly salty water of the Bay, but they could scarf down shad, fish that spawn in the Potomac and other freshwater tributaries. The complete eradication of the snakehead population would be nearly impossible.

To date, northern snakeheads have been found in U.S. waters in several states. One example was a snakehead that was hooked in North Carolina’s Paw Creek. This fish weighed 12.5 pounds and measured about 31 inches.

Because it is illegal to return a live snakehead fish to an American body of water, the fish was turned over to the Wildlife Resources Commission. However, this was not the first, and probably not the last, time a northern snakehead fish was caught in North Carolina.
Snakeheads have been caught in this area in 2002 and 2007. And, Paw Creek is an environmentally-dangerous place to have these fish because it straddles two lakes giving the injurious fish a lot of room to expand and invade.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Fisheries staff also responded to a report by a local angler of an invasive species in Catlin Creek near Ridgebury Lake in the town of Waywayanda.

The DEC recognized the danger of an infestation of northern snakehead fish. Left unchecked this predatory, invasive fish can rapidly expand its population and territory with real and negative economic impacts to the Hudson River watershed fisheries. Not to mention the fact that it can cause potentially irreversible harm to the rare and endangered species in the area.

Because of this threat, the DEC took immediate action in an attempt at containing the snakehead spread by erecting temporary fish barriers in Catlin Creek. DEC determined that swift action to eradicate this species is essential in protecting the native fish and amphibian populations and in preventing any further expansion of Northern Snakeheads beyond the headwaters of Catlin Creek.

It doesn’t appear that there is a quick fix to the Northern Snakehead problem. The key to managing snakeheads is to prevent them from becoming an established species in the first place. This may be difficult since they are already in U.S. waters and there numbers seem to be on the rise.

But, the vast reservoir was built for far more than recreation. In fact, the massive Hoover Dam, which was completed in 1935, provides this desert region and surrounding states with a reliable water supply from the Colorado River as well as an excellent and inexpensive source of electricity.

Covering the state lines of Arizona and Nevada, Lake Mead stores water from the vast Colorado River, which runs through a whopping seven states – Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. So, to say that Lake Mead and the irreplaceable Colorado River are important to the citizens of the western states, would be a huge understatement.

However, for the past decade Lake Mead has been battling the worst 10-year drought in recorded history along the Colorado River, which feeds the 110-mile-long reservoir.

Since 1999, Lake Mead has dropped about 1 percent a year. It is estimated that by 2012, the lake’s surface could fall below the existing pipe that delivers 40 percent of Las Vegas’s water.

In 2000, the water level at Lake Mead was 1,214 feet, close to its all-time high, but it has been dropping ever since. When Lake Mead was built during the 1920s and 1930s, the western United States was experiencing one of the wettest periods of the past 1,200 years.

Even today, our so-called drought is still wetter than the average precipitation for the area averaged over centuries. In other words, for the past 75 years, we’ve had more moisture than we ever realized. And, we definitely took it for granted.

Farmers have been growing rice by flooding arid farmland with water from Lake Mead,  desert community residents have been maintaining lush front lawns, and avid golfers depend on green, healthy courses in areas where temperatures typically exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer.

A combination of a solid demand for Lake Mead’s thirst-quenching water and an ever-changing climate has resulted in a 100 foot drop in Mead’s water level since 2000. While that might not look like a great deal of water loss because it is just 10 percent under the lake’s 1983 high water mark, we have to remember that Lake Mead is like a martini glass.

The vast reservoir is wide at the top but narrow at the bottom. So that 10 percent loss of water actually represents a loss of half of Lake Mead’s water supply. This huge loss happened in just nine years – The lake went form 96 percent capacity to roughly 43 percent.

Amazingly, when full, Lake Mead can hold an astonishing 9.3 trillion gallons of water. This is an amount equal to the water that flows through the Colorado River in a two-year period.

And, this is water that is put to good use. Lake Mead’s life-sustaining water is used for many things. It irrigates a million acres of crops throughout the western United States and Mexico, and the reservoir supplies water to tens of millions of people.

The massive and mighty Hoover Dam generates enough electricity to power approximately a half-million homes. But that’s not all. The power from Hoover Dam is also used to transport water up and across the Sierra Nevada Mountains on its way to Southern California.

But, however, the lake continues to shrink. Lake Mead’s water level fell 14 feet last year, and the Bureau of Reclamation has projected the level will drop 14 more feet this summer. That will bring it perilously close to 1,075 feet, the point at which the federal government can step in and declare a drought condition, forcing a reduction of 400,000 acre-feet drawn from Lake Mead per year.

A typical Las Vegas home uses a half acre-foot of water per year, so such a reduction would be equal to turning the tap off for 800,000 households.
Going beyond the implications for residents living in areas supplied by Lake Mead, the water loss has ramifications for the local economy too. It was recently estimated that Lake Mead National Recreation Area, along with affiliated marine operators, were losing some where in the neighborhood of three million dollars for every ten foot of lake lost to this devastating drought.

Currently, Lake Mead’s water level is hanging close to 1095.26 feet above sea level. The end-of-year projection is now predicting that Lake Mead will drop several more feet below its current level. This is a huge loss considering the lake is considered full at 1,219 feet.

The year 2009 started out well as officials projected that Lake Mead could receive an additional one million acre-feet of water based on the snowpack in the Rocky Mountains. Unfortunatly, however, the thaw did not translate into the expected runoff, and Lake Mead and the Colorado River’s water shortage problem marched on.

In 2008, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography issued their “When Will Lake Mead Go Dry?” report. The report said there is a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead will dry up by the year 2021. If this happens, it could mean no more water, no more pumping and no more electricity for many, many people.

There is, however, some good news. Strong conservation efforts are helping this serious condition. For example, Southern Nevada has significantly reduced its water draw from 325,000 acre-feet a year in 2000 to 265,000 acre-feet in 2009. Even with this reduction, the grand Colorado River still remains over utilized.

This is easy to see when you consider that millions of acre-feet of H20 are rushed to California, Nevada, and Mexico each year. This continually drains and strains both Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell faster than either lake can be replenished.

Some of the conservation solutions and suggestions include “grass buyback” programs to convince residents of the benefits of installing drought-tolerant landscaping, tax incentives for swimming pool-covers as well as the inevitable water rate hikes.

One of the more radical ideas involves pumping water from the eastern United States, where many regions’ rivers have been inundated with extensive flooding, over the Rockies to the western, sweltering states. Another interesting proposal lies beyond the shores of California, where there is a vast, open ocean of water available for desalinization.
While these are possibly viable alternatives, the power and financial requirements for either proposal would be enormous.

Whatever the solution to the Lake Mead water crisis is, it is likely not going to be a simple one. If the drought-like conditions continue, action will likely need to be taken sooner rather than later in order to save the reservoir.

It might be discovered that the money and time it will take to quench the western United States’ thirst are like the water supply. They are all running short.

The land of the Somali people, much of it arid and inhospitable, has been close to civilization and international trade for thousands of years.

Situated on the Horn of Africa, jutting out into the India Ocean, Somalia’s harbors are natural ports of call for traders sailing to and from India. Somalia’s coastline is frequented by many foreigners, in particular Arabs and Persians. But, in Somalia’s interior, the Somali are on their own.

Most urban households use charcoal for everyday cooking. It has been estimated that some families use a full sack of charcoal every four days due to their large family size. And, with this exacerbated charcoal use comes a significant amount of environmental fallout.

Because of an insufficient and cheaper alternative to charcoal and a large former refugee population, tree felling and a great dependence on charcoal in the self-declared republic of Somaliland are adversely affecting the environment. A 2007 study by the Academy for Peace and Development reports that greater than 2.5 million trees are felled each year and burned for charcoal in Somaliland. The report further stated that each household in Somaliland consumes an average of 10 trees a month.

Considering this extensive use of trees, the serious affects of deforestation should be noted. Deforestation not only exacerbates soil erosion, it also reduces rainfall availability. In addition, trees are a vital component in carbon fixing, which is the natural process of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Interestingly, the demand for charcoal remains very high, despite charcoal prices going up since 1991 with the resettlement of former refugees. Roughly 10 years ago, one sack of charcoal cost Somalis only about 5,000 Somaliland shillings, or 0.76 US dollars, but now the price is about 30,000 Somaliland shillings, or 5 US dollars. And, this price is only aggravated by rainfall, because when it rains, the trees become wet and the charcoal becomes more expensive.

It is not difficult to see that the ever rising gas prices have helped to encourage charcoal use. In past years, gas was actually cheaper than charcoal, but the price has increased dramatically. Now, one liter of gas costs approximately 4,000 Somaliland shillings or 0.61 US dollars, which is up from 1,500 Somaliland shillings or 0.23 US dollars.

Nowadays, charcoal is even the preferred fuel in hotels, which obviously consume even larger quantities of this valuable and environmentally important commodity. It has been estimated that some hotel chefs even use a full sack of charcoal for a single day’s cooking.

It is no wonder that researchers have determined that one of the main driving forces of African deforestation is the need for fuel.

It is also estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa, only 7.5 percent of the rural population has access to electricity. A 2009 report on the state of the world’s forests reports that “as household incomes and investment in appropriate alternatives remain low, wood is likely to remain an important energy source in Africa in the coming decades.”

Going back as far as forecasts made in 2001, it was suggested that there will be a 34 percent increase in wood fuel consumption from 2000 to 2020. However, as the price for fuel continues to rise, this increase is likely to be even greater. In other words, the share of wood fuel in the total energy supply is likely to decline, while the number of people dependent on wood for fuel and energy is likely to grow.

The report goes on to say that “the forest situation in Africa presents enormous challenges, reflecting the larger constraints of low income, weak policies and inadequately developed institutions.”

With this ever-increasing demand for fuel, many environmentalists are concerned that the trade in charcoal will eventually wipe out some species of trees. For example, one species of trees used for charcoal production is the Acacia bussei tree, which can produce between eight to 10 sacks of charcoal per tree. Researches are worried because the Acacia is the most preferred tree specie for charcoal production, timber and fencing, and its extensive use could force it to the brink of extinction in the Somaliland territories.

Efforts are being made, however, to stop or slow down the felling of Somaliland trees. On April 30, 2009, concerned with the impact of charcoal burning on the environment, Maroodi Jeeh, regional governor of Hargeisa (a city in the northwestern Somaliland region of Somalia), banned trade in charcoal as well as the burning of trees. Other attempts at protecting the environment have included the introduction of gas stoves and solar cookers in the main urban centers of Burou, Las-anod, Gabiley, Wajalea and Borama.

Since January, Somgas Company has been supplying gas to residents. A typical household uses an 11-kilogram cylinder for approximately six weeks. Although initial gas and cylinder prices remain high, an 11-kilogram gas cylinder plus gas costs $44.50 and is recharged at just $19.
This is certainly not expensive compared with the monthly charcoal consumption of about $15 for three 20-kilogram sacks of charcoal per household. (The gas cylinders range from two to 22 kilograms.)

According to Somaliland’s Ministry of Pastoral Development and Environment, there is still great cause for concern, even though charcoal consumption fell in 2008 compared with 2007.

Mohamoud Ibrahim Mohamoud currently heads the forestry section in the ministry. He says he is concerned about environmental degradation caused by the charcoal trade, and is working with several organizations to search for alternatives to charcoal energy. The problem that seems to drive the tree felling and forest burning for charcoal is the poverty throughout the countryside and the high demand for charcoal energy in the urban areas.

Overall, the demand for charcoal appears to be increasing daily and the burning of trees is also increasing. But, many leaders and environmentalists are now trying to encourage awareness and education among the people of Somalia and give them other sources of income, such as helping young people become involved in alternative activities such as bee-keeping.

It is obvious that other sources of income and further education and research are needed if the problem of deforestation and charcoal burning will be successfully addressed and redirected in Somalia.

In the 1920s, farmers succeeded in conquering The Great Prairie Plains of the Midwest. The plains were then transformed into the “amber waves of grain” we know today. However, this transformation came with a heavy price.

In fact, the agricultural triumph over The Plains was the tipping point that changed a typical La Nina-type drought cycle into an enormous environmental disaster that we now know as the Dust Bowl.

Depending on where you are in the world, a drought can have different meanings. According to the United States Weather Bureau, a drought is a period of 21 or more days during which rainfall is no more than 30 percent of the average rainfall for a specific geographical area at a designated time of year. 

The Dust Bowl was an area in the United States that experienced an extended and intense period of drought, which lasted from 1931 until 1939. The states that made up the Dust Bowl were Kansas, southeastern Colorado, northeastern and southeastern New Mexico, and the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma. 

Throughout the Dust Bowl, soil from roughly 150,000 square miles of farmland was blown by the wind into huge dust storms. Immense clouds of dust filled the sky as far east as New York City, New York and Baltimore, Maryland.

While the Dust Bowl occurred during a period of drought, researchers know that the Dust Bowl drought, while much hotter and drier than a typical drought, did not fit the profile of the periodic droughts that generally hit farther to the south. Actually, while regular climate oscillations may have triggered the initial drying, the contribution of human land degradation played a big part in this atypical disaster.

In the absence of modern agricultural techniques, large-scale crop failures at the drought’s onset reduced vegetation cover, which only exacerbated the heat. Then, the resulting dust storms brought on by the badly eroded croplands also affected the atmospheric moisture content enough to further intensify drought conditions.

In 1931, dust from the seriously over-plowed and over-grazed prairie lands began to blow. And, it continued to blow for eight long, dry years.

As the storms blew across the plains, it came in a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. This just wasn’t any wind, this dust-filled wind made even the simplest acts of life difficult. Taking a walk, eating a meal and breathing were no longer easy and they couldn’t be taken for granted.

Most children wore dust masks to and from school, people started hanging damp sheets over windows in feeble attempts at stopping the dirt and farmers could only watch as their valuable crops were blown away. The agricultural devastation that resulted from the Dust Bowl windstorms helped to lengthen The Great Depression, whose effects were already being felt worldwide. 

During the years of normal rainfall, the grasslands in the Dust Bowl states had been deeply plowed and the land had produced bountiful crops of wheat. However, as the drought of the early 1930s worsened, farmers continued plowing and planting, even thought very little could thrive in the parched soil.

The ground cover that once held the soil in place was now gone. The winds had whipped across the fields pulling billowing clouds of dust and dirt into the skies often reducing visibility to just a few feet. The skies would be darkened for days, and it became common for even the most well-sealed homes to have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some of the hardest hit areas, dust drifted like snow and covered whatever was in its path, including farmsteads, cars and city streets.

In 1932, there were 14 reported dust storms, also referred to as “black blizzards” or “black rollers.” As conditions worsened, in 1933, the number of black blizzards jumped to 38. These devastating dust storms spread from the Dust Bowl area and affected the entire country. The extensive drought that accompanied the dust storms is said to be the worst drought in United States history because it covered over 75 percent of the country and severely affected 27 states.

The Yearbook of Agriculture for 1934 says, Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production; 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil.

Because this ecological and human disaster caused millions of acres of farmland to become useless, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes. These people became known as “Okies” because so many of them came from Oklahoma. Countless Okies migrated to California and other states in hopes of better living conditions and jobs.

However, what they found were economic conditions little better than those they had left behind in the Dust Bowl. Because they didn’t own land and had no home, many people traveled from farm to farm picking fruit and working in the fields for only starvation wages.

With no rain clouds in sight, the drought continued and so did the Dust Bowl storms. On Sunday, April 14, 1935, the worst black blizzard occurred, causing extensive devastation and turning the day to night.

Shortly after Black Sunday, the United States Congress declared soil erosion “a national menace” and established the Soil Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture. The SCS developed extensive conservation programs, which helped to retain topsoil and prevent irreparable damage to the land.

Farming techniques, including strip cropping, terracing, contour plowing, crop rotation and cover crops were promoted. Farmers were now paid to practice soil-conserving farming techniques.

The SCS and these new land-friendly farming techniques was a great step in the right direction, but the storm was not over yet. By the end the year, experts estimated that about 850,000,000 tons of topsoil had blown off the Southern Plains during 1935 alone. The fear was that if the drought continued, the total area affected would increase from 4,350,000 acres to 5,350,000 acres by the spring of 1936.

Because the Dust Bowl black blizzards raged on and the drought continued, President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated the Shelterbelt Project in 1937, which called for large-scale planting of trees across The Great Plains, stretching in a 100-mile wide zone from Canada to northern Texas. The goal was to protect and preserve the land from erosion.

Native trees, including green ash and red cedar, were planted along fence rows separating properties, and the farmers were paid by the government to plant and cultivate these trees. Ultimately, the project cost roughly 75 million dollars over 12 years, and had somewhat limited success.

However, as time passed, even thought the drought continued, further land conservation efforts began to make progress. The extensive work re-plowing the land into furrows, planting trees in shelterbelts and other conservation methods had finally resulted in a 65 percent reduction for soil blowing.

In the fall of 1939, after nearly a decade of drought, the rain finally came. This brought an end to the black blizzards of the Dust Bowl and allowed The Plains to recover and once again become golden with wheat.

In today’s ever-changing world, in areas where vegetation loss often leads to increased wind erosion, it appears that history could repeat itself and we could experience Dust Bowl-type droughts again in the future.

Researchers with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center report that, although it is not possible to predict the exact time, history suggests that another great drought could certainly occur in the future.

The first step for anyone wanting to predict the risk of a future catastrophic climate event is to look at past occurrences. Unfortunately, however, good rainfall records only go back about 100 years, and accurate atmospheric records only exist for the last 50 years.

With that said, historical measurements do suggest that droughts have been a fairly regular event in this country. North America experienced a dry spell during the 1950s and another in the late 1980s. NASA’s research suggests that there was almost a drought in the 1970s, but for some reason it did not happen.

On a much longer timetable, sediment records, tree rings and other alternative evidence of climate change suggest that The Great Plains has actually weathered multiple droughts, which lasted significantly longer than the Dust Bowl.

These severe droughts appear to have happened once or twice a century over the last 400 years. Some evidence even points to droughts lasting over a decade during the late 13th and 16th centuries, which were much more devastating than the droughts of the 20th century.

It seems that history indicates that we can expect much worse than the 1930s Dust Bowl in the future, but knowing when and where remains anyone’s guess.

In this NASA Imagery you can see the ice bridge, in fragments.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf, on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, used to have an ice bridge connecting it to nearby Charcot Island, until that ice bridge collapsed in early April, 2009.

Fred Clark over at Slacktivist had this to say about the mounting documentation of the world’s shifting climate:

My point here is not that this ice bridge is thought to have been the stabilizing factor keeping the entire, massive Wilkins ice shelf in place, and that the ice shelf is, in turn, considered to be the stabilizing factor keeping in place an even larger mass of ice in Antarctic glaciers and thus that the collapse of this ice bridge may therefore be a sign that we’re going to be Even More Screwed by climate change and rising sea levels. That’s all true, but that’s not my point here.

My point here is that these are photographs. Visual evidence. One need only look at those photographs to see that something is happening — to see it happening and thus to have to acknowledge that it is, in fact, happening.

But a great many people seem deeply invested in believing — photographs be damned — that nothing is happening. They insist that nothing is getting warmer, that ice is not melting.

In this ESA image dated April 28, 2009, you can see Charcot Island in the upper left and the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the lower right.

The Associated Press reported this story as “Huge ice chunks break away from Antarctic shelf”

“There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming,” said David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey.

Researchers said the quality and frequency of the ESA satellite images have allowed them to analyze the Wilkins shelf breakup far more effectively than any previous event.

“For the first time, I think, we can really begin to see the processes that have brought about the demise of the ice shelf,” Vaughan said.

Annotations by A. Humbert, Münster University

In the 1930s and 1940s people and businesses did not pay a lot of attention to what happened to toxic chemicals produced during industrial processes. While there have long been regulations for the handling of these dangerous chemicals, enforcement of these laws was virtually nonexistent or haphazard at best.

Large corporations, such as Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation in Niagara Falls, New York, made a variety of chemicals, pesticides and plastics. This type of company would typically seal the contaminated substances in 55-gallon metal drums and leave them someplace nearby.

For Hooker, Love Canal was a convenient place to store these metal drums.

The Love Canal neighborhood is in the southeast section of the La Salle area of Niagara Falls, New York. The neighborhood spans 36 square blocks in the southeastern corner of the city, along 99^th Street and Read Avenue. Two bodies of water, Bergholtz Creek and Niagara River, define the northern and southern boundaries of the neighborhood.

Love Canal was the dream of William T. Love, an 1890′s entrepreneur who wanted to develop a planned industrial community, Model City. Love’s idea was to take waters from the Niagara River and reroute it around the Niagara escarpment in order to produce cheap hydroelectric power.

Love’s dream was not to be and Model City was never constructed. However, work on the canal to transport waters from the Niagara River did happen. In 1942, Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation purchased the Love Canal site. This is where the contamination of Love Canal began.

Between 1942 and 1953 Hooker Chemical disposed of roughly 22,000 tons of mixed chemical wastes into Love Canal, all while children swam and played nearby. Eventually, Hooker stopped using this dumping site and the land was sold to the Niagara Falls School Board for a price of $1.00.

In 1955, the 99^th Street Elementary School was built on Love Canal property and was opened to students. Subsequent housing development of the area brought hundreds of families to this suburban, blue-collar neighborhood along the Love Canal.

As time passed, the neighborhood continued to flourish, as families found the idea of building a new home so close to an elementary school appealing. But, there were problems.

Many homeowners began noticing that their basements leaked. Some families started smelling strange chemical smells and seeing oddly-colored water in their basements. Unfortunately, only a few knew about Hooker’s history of chemical dumping.

A startling symptom that something was not right in the Love Canal neighborhood occurred in 1974, when one family’s backyard swimming pool rose two feet out of the ground. When the pool was removed, blue, purple and yellow chemicals quickly flooded in where the pool had been.

By 1977 and after two years of uncharacteristically heavy rain and snowfall, the former canal was turning into a marshland. With high groundwater levels, portions of the Hooker landfill subsided, 55-gallon drums surfaced, ponds became tainted, basements began to ooze an oily residue, and noxious chemical smells permeated the neighborhood.

Physical evidence of chemical corrosion of sump pumps and permeation of basement cinderblock walls was also obvious. Chemicals were now noticeably seeping into the surrounding streams and soil. City officials looked into different ways of dealing with this ever-growing pollution problem, but determined that the cost was too high and the project ended up being bogged down in red tape.

By this point, many residents were concerned. Not only were they concerned about health issues, they were worried about the plummeting value of their homes. Those who tried to sell their homes, couldn’t sell.

Something finally had to give. So, in August 1978 the results of local, state and federal testing of the air and water in Love Canal basements were made public. State Health Commissioner, Dr. Robert Whalen, made it known that Love Canal was a great and imminent peril to the health of the public.

He suggested that pregnant women and children under the age of two, whose homes abutted one end of the canal, leave their homes. Apparently, the studies provided indisputable evidence of an unusually high rate of birth defects and miscarriages.

This announcement not only enraged homeowners, it left them frightened and discouraged. Many residents made the conclusion that adults and older children throughout the neighborhood

might also be in at risk. It was at this time that the residents took things into their own hands. They organized the Love Canal Homeowners Association to inflict added pressure on officials to buy their contaminated homes.

Lois Gibbs was elected president of the Association. Gibbs, a 27-year-old housewife who lived just two short blocks away from the canal, had a tremendous gift for organizing residents and keeping the Love Canal crisis in the news.

Not long after the birth of the Associations, President Jimmy Carter declared Love Canal a federal disaster site. This proclamation freed up funds for residents of the south end of the canal to relocate. This was great for these families; however, those families living in surrounding areas were left unable to move.

This outraged many because of the mounting evidence of elevated rates of cancer and other serious illnesses. Residents throughout the community began methodically testing substances in their homes, area streams and soil. What they found was a staggering list of dangerous chemicals. Some of the compounds detected were C-56 (a carcinogenic pesticide), toluene, benzene, and even PCBs (a known toxic chemical).

Subsequent studies conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry revealed a frighteningly long list of 421 chemical records for water, soil and air samples in and around the Love Canal neighborhood.

Gibbs decided to conduct a systematic and thorough health survey of all residents outside the approved evacuation area. What she found was not surprising. The survey turned up high rates of bladder and kidney ailments, miscarriages, birth defects and nervous disorders.

After six more months, the state finally agreed to pay for pregnant women and those with small children to be relocated to temporary homes, but it stipulated that these families were to return to Love Canal when their children were older. Frustrated and angered by this temporary relocation, residents continued to write letters, sign petitions and conduct public demonstrations to maintain public awareness of the crisis at Love Canal.

Finally, in 1980, the state of New York publicly confirmed what many residents had long suspected. Among the poisonous chemicals found at Love Canal was dioxin, one of the most intensely toxic substances ever created.

With this announcement, the state had no other choice and agreed to buy the nearby homes. After two years of worrying, activism and continued chemical exposure, the remaining homeowners were finally allowed to leave. This, however, wasn’t the end of the Love Canal story.

Only a decade had passed before the government put some of those very same houses on the market again. A new community of homeowners moved in despite the pollution controversy and debate about whether the Love Canal site was still dangerously contaminated with potentially deadly waste.

Today, 30 years after the pollution crisis, Love Canal is really two areas. Secure behind chain link fence, there is the capped dumpsite that once held entire streets of houses. And, just across the street and to the north is a reborn neighborhood called Black Creek Village. The Village is full of homes that were rehabilitated and sold by the state-formed Love Canal Revitalization Agency.

While the Love Canal environmental catastrophe may not be the worst hazardous waste site the world has ever seen, it is one of America’s most notorious. What transpired at Love Canal led to the development of the federal Superfund program, which aids in the cleanup of toxic waste sites that could pose significant risks to the health and well-being of those living, working and playing around these sites.

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Apparently, it is true that desperate times call for desperate measures. Reportedly, Beijing’s 17 million residents are now under very limited and restrictive driving, manufacturing and constructing guidelines. These restrictions are all being imposed in an attempt to clean up one very polluted city.

It is reported that major construction is to stop, factories are to be shut down and half the automobiles are to be grounded every day until after the Olympics.

While the Beijing Environmental Bureau said that the air “will be safe, everyone can be at ease,” many athletes, environmentalists as well as authorities from numerous countries attending the Olympics have significant concerns.

Chinese officials, however, contend that safety is of the utmost importance. Officials seem to have a lot of confidence that they can effectively control the country’s air pollution problem, even if that means trying to control Mother Nature herself.

By using possibly the world’s most sophisticated computer system, Chinese authorities are not only watching the weather and wind patterns surrounding Beijing, they are prepared to attempt to try to change what Mother Nature dishes out.

By tracking pollution from as far away as India, China is focusing heavily on surrounding provinces and their big pollution sources. At one steel plant located 300 miles from Beijing, the boss is poised to close the plant if high winds start blowing this distant, but dangerous, faraway pollution into or near Beijing where it would likely be trapped by mountains.

Once the pollution is entrapped by the mountains, the only viable solution would be rain. And, according to Chinese authorities, scientists are prepared to try that too. How would they do this? Simple. Artillery shells filled with a chemical thought to trigger rain showers would be shot into the sky with hopes of rain.

No one, however, can adequately control the weather. So, with apparent good reason, regardless if China says it’s a good-air-quality-day or not, there are many doubters in the crowd.

Consider this. Some pollution monitors have been relocated to the suburbs, where cleaner air can twist daily pollution results and make the overall contamination numbers look better than they really are.

Legitimate concerns for the health of the Olympic athletes and visitors, not to mention the Chinese citizens, remain. While the government has recently spent millions to clean up the city, the pollution problem in China simply cannot be fixed with a few quick, and possibly temporary, fixes.

The City of Beijing has undergone numerous improvements for the games. In fact, the government spent approximately $57 million to renovate more than 5,000 public restrooms. Also, thousands of Olympic volunteers are learning English and the ABCs of interacting with foreigners.

Chinese officials have also taken environmental actions aimed at dissipating Beijing’s air pollution before the games by spending more than $15 billion on drastic antipollution measures, including relocating 200 factories and steel mills outside the city limits.

According to a recent Mother Jones article, China has spent $3.6 billion and taken some extreme steps to clean up the capitol before the summer games. One of the changes China has made is building four new subways in order to encourage more public transportation and cut down on traffic. One million vehicles will also be banned during the Olympics.

However, the truth is that no amount of vitamins, regimens or athletic stamina will prepare many of the world-class competitors for the sort of severe air pollution they will face in Beijing. Numerous health and athletic experts have long been concerned whether athletes’ lungs will be able to adjust to all the smog and chemicals that plague the entire Chinese environment.

While these actions are a great step in the right environmental direction, China needs more than a quick-fix for its crippling environmental issues. According to FinancialNirvana.com, many environmental experts believe China’s problems may be attributed to a weak legal system and corruption, poverty, government policies that put job growth ahead of having a healthy environment as well as two decades of double-digit industrial growth.

In addition to this, Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World 2006 report notes that acidification has spread to approximately 30% of China’s cropland. The Report also states that China has 16 cities with the worst air pollution in the world.

Even more remarkable and astonishing is the fact that China’s Ministry of Science and Technology estimated that roughly 50,000 of the country’s newborn babies die every year due to the unhealthy consequences of air pollution.

Sometimes it’s the little things that say the most

Consider the latest news of a keel-crippling algae bloom that covered about a third of the Olympic sailing course in Qingdao, China. This algae overgrowth resulted in the deployment of a small army of workers, a large fleet of boats and a full brigade of dump trucks and bulldozers that have been desperately trying to clear up this embarrassing, yet expected, component to China’s assertion of hosting a ‘green games’ Olympics.

What this means is that numerous international competitors desperate for practice have been forced to stay in dry dock until this dangerous mess is cleaned up. While this kind of environmental roadblock may be foreign to many Olympic competitors, it is far from atypical in the world’s most polluted nation.

Today, fully 70% of China’s seven major rivers are severely and dangerously polluted. In addition, 80% of its rivers fail to meet standards for fishing and 90% of China’s cities suffer from some degree of significant water pollution. What this means for those who live in China is that over 700 million Chinese drink fetid water of a quality well below World Health Organization’s standards.

Meanwhile, liver and stomach cancers related to water pollution are among the leading causes of death in the Chinese countryside. And, 21 cities along the Yellow River are now characterized by the highest measurable levels of deadly pollution.

As for this particularly extensive algal bloom in Qingdao, the cause is clear — a massive misuse of agricultural fertilizer. A not-so-well-known-fact is that China is the world’s largest fertilizer user, consuming more than 50 million tons each year.

This problem is exacerbated by untrained peasants applying far too much fertilizer to their meager plots with the false hopes and dreams of boosting their already scanty yields. The obvious result has been a new kind of flooding crisis — a flood of excess and unneeded fertilizer runoff that ultimately ends up flooding into neighboring rivers and streams.

With this toxic runoff mixture, fertilizer nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphates have triggered an explosion of algal blooms as part of a broader process of eutrophication. This eutrophication process quite literally sucks the oxygen out of the water and kills all of the plant, fish and aquatic life.

The obvious catastrophic environmental result is an extremely foul-smelling and murky body of water incapable of sustaining life.

Another perfect example of this algal bloom epidemic is the blooms that keep pounding China’s third-largest lake, Lake Tai. This notable lake has long been famous for its classic beauty and is considered a favorite tourist attraction. Lake Tai also supplies water to approximately 30 million people.

The cost of cleaning up of the lake alone is estimated at more than $14 billion. In addition to this expense, many Chinese citizens have been buying bottled water at a feverish pace as a result of Lake Tai’s repeated algal blooms. This increased demand for fresh drinking water has driven up the price of bottled water.

China’s algal bloom epidemic is not restricted to its rivers and lakes. China’s coastal shorelines are also suffering severely from a growing occurrence of red tides, an oceangoing version of eutrophication.

This problem is particularly relentless in the relatively shallow Yellow and Bohai Seas off northern China where Qingdao is located and where there is less tidal exchange. The red tides are rapidly destroying fish and devastating valuable marine life. China has seen an astonishing 40-fold increase in the incidence of red tides in the past few years.

The overall picture being painted by China’s pollution woes is one of a large country choking to death and drowning on a wide variety of deadly pollutants. Because of the country’s toxic environment, many Olympic athletes have chosen to train in adjacent countries, like Japan and South Korea, and will only fly into China for brief stopovers during their specific sporting events.

What that says about today’s China speaks volumes. This country’s need to deal with its very real pollution crisis is obvious and is emerging as one of the most far-reaching and irresponsible environmental disasters the world has ever seen.