Climate Change HEALTH

colony collapse disorder

Is it just me, or are there way less bees around than there used to be? While it’s been happening for some time, the factors causing Colony Collapse Disorder have been difficult to figure out – until now. Evidence is mounting quickly that at least one of the culprits is the insecticide imidacloprid - non-lethal doses appear to cause a range of behavioural issues in honey bees that result in dysfunctional colonies and, ultimately, collapse:

Pesticides and High Fructose Corn Syrup Recreate “Classic” Colony Collapse Disorder in Experiments : TreeHugger

While pesticide maker Bayer CropScience may keep denying it, the evidence keeps mounting up that imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid pesticide, is having a massive influence on the plight of our honeybees.

From researchers in Indiana finding a clear link between bee deaths and neonicotinoid exposure in agricultural settings through recent studies showing that minute doses of insecticides lead to increased vulnerability to parasites, the headlines have not been looking good for the pesticide industry.

Just last week we saw two studies published showing non-lethal doses of neonicotinoids disrupting bees navigational behavior and ability to reproduce. So we should take very seriously the news, reported over at mongabay, that Harvard researchers have literally recreated classic cases of Colony Collapse Disorder by treating bees with minute doses of imidacloprid.

Image: http://starsenior.wikispaces.com/file/view/Line_Graph_CCD.jpg/213653654/338×322/Line_Graph_CCD.jpg

Click for full-size infographic

Infographics have been popping up everywhere lately. A combination of image and information (often as graphs and charts), they are a great way to present large amounts of complex information in an understandable and effective format.

Over coming weeks I hope to feature infographics regarding climate change, nature and health, along with some background information about their design and use.

The first one,  showing the predicted effects of sea level rise on the world’s major cities, comes from Keeping our head above water | GDS Publishing.

Related articles

• Super-Cool Infographics You Absolutely Have To See (selvabalaji.wordpress.com)

Malaria is an ever-present risk in much of the tropics, remaining one of the major public health challenges for this century. New research published in the BJ now shows that malaria mortality rates in elderly travelers are much higher than in their younger counterparts.

Read more: Elderly are almost 10 times more likely to die of malaria than younger tourists | BMJ.

From The Huffington Post:

Here’s a headline we’re tempted to write – or rather, one that we would be tempted to write if we weren’t so nice, or so dedicated to avoiding oversimplification:

“Climate-Change Deniers Struck by Climate Change in Texas Tornado Outbreak.”

This week two seemingly unrelated but very connected events took place: In the first, freak tornadoes struck the Dallas area today with unexpected ferocity, causing many experts to revisit the issue of whether tornadoes should be included in the list of extreme weather caused by climate change.

In the second, one of the hard-hit area’s Representatives bragged about cutting funds for – predicting storms and reducing their impact.

If you think that’s bad – and it is – last year Mitt Romney did the Representative one better: He said it would be “immoral” to spend Federal money to help victims of national disasters like the one that just struck Texas.

Immoral.

Source:  Richard (RJ) Eskow: Texas Tornadoes: Climate Change – and Climate Deniers – in the Lone Star State.

Related articles

• Watch: Texas Tornado Tosses Tractor-Trailers (abcnews.go.com)
• Tornadoes cause destruction across Texas (itv.com)
• Tornadoes tear through Texas landscape (itv.com)

More evidence on the imminent danger of ocean acidification was published last month. The study from Bristol University warned that acidification is progressing faster than at any time during the past 65 million years, with potentially devastating effects for marine ecosystems. According to the paper’s abstract:

In our simulation of future ocean conditions, we find an undersaturation with respect to carbonate in the deep ocean that exceeds that experienced during the Palaeocene–Eocene thermal maximum and could endanger calcifying organisms. Furthermore, our simulations show higher rates of environmental change at the surface for the future than the Palaeocene–Eocene thermal maximum, which could potentially challenge the ability of plankton to adapt.

During the Palaeocene-Eocene extinction, bottom-dwelling organisms were disproportionately impacted, with surface-dwelling plankton relatively unaffected. This time around, though, things might be different. The speed of acidification (estimated to be 10 times faster than previous events) will prevent many of the adaptations that prevented even greater extinctions in the past.

Ocean acidification will destroy coral reefs

So why is this relevant? The main reason is that many of the small marine calcifiers affected by ocean acidification form the foundation of the ocean food web. And if their numbers collapse, what will happen further up the chain? And what will happen to us?

Finally, remember these important points:

Acidification of the oceans has been called “the other carbon dioxide problem”, as it is not directly related to global warming or climate change, but rather the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide dissolved in seawater.

Geoengineering schemes that aim to cool the planet without removing CO2 from the atmosphere will have no effect on ocean pH

The accelerating rate of acidification makes it likely that major marine structures like Australia’s Great Barrier Reef will stop growing and start dissolving by 2050.

Although climate change skeptics might point out that coral reefs have survived past CO2 peaks, it is the speed of change (preventing migration and genetic adaptation) and the inability of the oceans to buffer increasing amounts of carbon dioxide, that have the potential to cause a mass extinction.

See the paper’s abstract here. Read a related editorial at the YALE 360 site called An Ominous Warning on the Effects of Ocean Acidification. Photo by Tom Clifton/flickr.

Ocean acidification significantly impairs shell-formation in marine calcifiers, including coral reefs and shellfish.

NEW YORK TIMES: States bordering water bodies that are becoming more acidic from the absorption of carbon dioxide should list them as impaired under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency declared in a memo this week.

Carbon dioxide emissions are considered a threat not only because of their heat-trapping properties in the atmosphere but also because of their ability to change ocean chemistry. The world’s oceans act as a sponge for carbon dioxide, and as the gas dissolves in seawater, it changes into carbonic acid. Read full article…..

Australia’s chief scientist, Professor Penny Sackett, tells Lateline we need to look at a broad suite of technological and scientific solutions to secure supplies of food, energy and water for the future. Read transcript and watch video.

The Four Degree World

ABC SCIENCE: A collection of papers published last week (Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society A) examine the impact global warming may have on weather patterns, food production and population by the end of this century.

Since the late 1990s, many researchers and policy makers have held a 2°C global temperature increase relative to pre-industrial times as a benchmark limit for global warming, saying that keeping warming below this threshold increases the likelihood that catastrophic changes can be avoided.

But it appears we are unlikely to meet that target, say researchers, and an average global warming of 4°C by the end of this century is more likely.

A study by Richard Betts (Hadley Centre) suggests that a 4°C rise relative to pre-industrial levels could happen by the 2070s, if emissions are high, if the temperature response to those emissions is high, and if the feedback cycles to those emissions are high.

If we reach 4°C higher by the 2070s, it would put us on track for an almost 7°C increase by the end of the century, he says. The projections are too uncertain to say exactly what trajectory we are on, says Betts.

“I don’t particularly sign up to the fact that 2°C is some kind of threshold for catastrophic climate change,” he says. “It’s all about risk assessment. The greater the warming, the larger the impact. The faster the warming, the harder it is to adapt to any impact. The risk becomes greater the more you put into the system.”

Read More

ABC Science story

Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society A – original articles, many free access.

Rainforest dieback due to a warming climate drove reptile evolution 300 million years ago.

ABC SCIENCE (AUSTRALIA): A dramatic climate change event which devastated Earth’s rainforests just under 300 million years ago also opened the way for the rise of the reptiles, a new study shows.

“We can conclude that life is resilient to climate change, even the collapse of rainforests”, he says, “but not without devastating loss of diversity and a change in the direction of evolution.

“If rainforests were to collapse today, life on Earth would never be the same again. But given sufficient time, new forms would evolve in the new environment that followed What might replace it is uncertain.”

Read More…..

Can planting more reflective crops lower global warming?

DISCOVERY NEWS: Planting more reflective versions of crops could cool regional temperatures in summertime, reducing the impact of increasing global temperatures in these areas, according to ongoing research.

Increasing the reflectivity of crop plants by 20 percent could decrease temperatures in a given area by about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), said Joy Singarayer of the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

“It’s quite immediate and it’s quite safe because crops get planted every year,” she said. ”The idea is not to think about changing what crops you plant but rather to look within the variety of crops you might plant.” This might mean choosing a more reflective variety of wheat, for example. More…