Auto-Tune the News: Climate Change

by my new loves, The Gregory Brothers;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Psfn6iOfS8&feature=related

Get Naked & Go Green This Earthday

A bare-naked bicycle protest for Mother Earth and against Oil Dependence

click on title abvoe to see vid

Michael Pollen to Speak / April 14, 2010

On food, ag animal production, meat, health, sustainability and everything inbetween.

Michael Pollan—the bestselling author, journalist, activist, and well-known critic of the global industrial food complex—will appear at Goucher College as the Spring 2010 Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Visiting Professor. His lecture, “In Defense of Food: The Omnivore’s Solution,” will be held on Tuesday, April 13, at 8 p.m. in Kraushaar Auditorium.

There will be a book signing following the lecture, and books will be available for purchase.

Due to high demand no more tickets are available for this event. However, you may view a live video of the talk online at www.goucher.edu/live.

For the past 20 years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: food, agriculture, gardens, drugs, and architecture.

His most recent book, Food Rules, was published earlier this year and was an immediate No. 1 New York Times bestseller. This short work is a condensed version of his previous efforts, including his bestselling books In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008) and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006).

In his In Defense of Food, Pollan postulates that the answer to healthy eating is simply to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” and he argues that rather than focusing on eating nutrients, people should focus on eating the sort of food their ancestors would recognize. The book was No. 1 on the New York Times Non-Fiction Bestseller List for six weeks.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he describes four basic ways in which human societies have obtained food: the current industrial system, the big organic operation, the local self-sufficient farm, and the hunter-gatherer. In the book, he argues that “industrial eating” obscures crucially important ecological relationships and ultimately harms humans’ health.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma was named one of the 10 best books of 2006 by The New York Times and The Washington Post. It also won the James Beard Award for best food writing and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Pollan’s previous book, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001), was also a New York Times bestseller, and it was recognized as a best book of the year by the American Booksellers Association and Amazon.com. PBS premiered a two-hour special documentary based on the book in fall 2009.

He is also the author of A Place of My Own (1997) and Second Nature (1991).

He has been a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine since 1987, and his writing has received numerous awards, including the James Beard Award for best magazine series in 2003, the John Burroughs prize for the best natural history essay in 1997, the 2000 Reuters-I.U.C.N. Global Award for Environmental Journalism for his reporting on genetically modified crops, and the 2003 Humane Society of the United States’ Genesis Award for his writing on animal agriculture.

In addition to being published regularly in The New York Times Magazine, Pollan's articles have appeared in Harper’s (where he served for many years as executive editor), Mother Jones, Gourmet, Vogue, Travel + Leisure, Gardens Illustrated, and The Nation. His essays have appeared in many anthologies, including Best American Essays (1990 and 2003), Best American Science Writing (2004), and the Norton Book of Nature Writing.

In 2009 Newsweek magazine named Pollan one of the top 10 “New Thought Leaders.”

In 2003, he was appointed the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism. In addition to teaching, he lectures widely on food, agriculture, and gardening.

Pollan was educated at Bennington College, Oxford University, and Columbia University, from which he received a master’s in English.

The Jane and Robert Meyerhoff Visiting Professorship was created to bring distinguished scholars, teachers, and practitioners to Goucher’s campus to advance local and national dialogues on pressing issues of our time. Previous speakers have included staunch preservation advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; Thomas L. Friedman, the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and world-renowned author; and Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai, the Kenyan environmental and political activist who, in 2004, became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Media Contact
Kristen Keener
Media Relations Director
kristen.keener@goucher.edu
410-337-6316

Click on title above to learn the details

Debating Coals Future

Click on title above to see amazing vid where a "Coal-King" equates environmentalists as Terrorists worse than Al Quida!

Rockin' in the Free World

Click on title above to see a vid about poverty in america

MONTIPORA WHITE SYNDROME, CORAL REEF - USA: (HAWAII)

****************************************************
A ProMED-mail post

ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases


Date: Fri 2 Apr 2010
Source: The University of Hawaii [edited]



An outbreak of a disease called montipora white syndrome (MWS) was
found in Kaneohe Bay, O'ahu within the last month prompting an
interagency response team composed of scientists and students to
document the extent, spread, and potential causes of the disease.
Members of the investigative team included scientists from the
University of Hawaii at Manoa's Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology
(HIMB), USGS National Wildlife Health Center and Bishop Museum.

Corals are the very foundation of our coral reef ecosystem and are
under threat from overfishing, land-based pollution, and emerging
coral diseases. Coral diseases have devastated the reefs of the
Florida Keys, and MWS affects a prominent coral species (red rice
coral or _Montipora capitata_) on Hawaii reefs and rapidly kills
colonies in weeks. The disease was originally discovered by Bob
Tangaro, a boat driver at HIMB, who notified coral disease researcher
Dr Greta Aeby of his grisly discovery. Mr Tangaro is a member of the
Eyes of the Reef Reporting Network, a program that trains community
members to identify threats to Hawaii's reef including coral disease.

The investigative team discovered that over a 100 colonies of red rice
coral have been killed by MWS. Clusters of diseased corals were found
on reefs throughout Kaneohe Bay but the disease appears most prominent
is South Kaneohe Bay. The cause of the disease is unclear, and
laboratory studies are underway at HIMB and USGS to determine this.

Coral diseases in Hawaii have been studied by HIMB and USGS since
2001, and these research groups have documented 17 different diseases
that occur at fairly low levels; however, this recent outbreak appears
particularly severe.

In 2003, Dr Aeby discovered an outbreak of acropora white syndrome
causing rapid tissue loss in table corals (_Acropora cytherea_) from
French Frigate Shoals in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National
Monument; this disease killed numerous large corals. In January 2010
DAR biologists on Maui investigated an outbreak of chronic montipora
white syndrome at Ahihi Kinau.

These events illustrate that, like in the Caribbean, coral reefs in
the Pacific are susceptible to disease outbreaks. Given that these
reef resources play an important role in the culture and economy of
Hawaii, understanding these outbreaks and their causes can help us
prevent or at least mitigate the impact of future events.

For more information, please see the Marine Disease Research Lab website at
.

--
Tara L Hicks Johnson
Outreach Spec, School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology

Greta Aeby
Assistant researcher, Hawaii Institute for Marine Biology


--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail


[For readers who may wonder what a coral disease is doing in the AHEAD
list, corals are officially classified as animals because they have
the characteristic thin cell membranes of an animal. - Mod.JW]

[This may be a trematode disease infection by the digenetic trematode,
_Podocotyloides stenometra_ Pritchard, a disease termed _Porites_
trematodiasis. Infected coral polyps appear as pink, swollen nodules
on the coral colony. (Greta S Aeby: Spatial and temporal patterns of
_Porites_ trematodiasis on the refs of Kaneo he Bay, Oahu, Hawaii.
Bull Mar Sci 2007. 80(1): 209-18); available from
.
- Mod.EP]

[The original article at the source URL above includes a photo of dead
and dying corals.

Further information including photos of these and other coral diseases
is available at


Kaneohe Bay can be located via the HealthMap/ProMED-mail interactive
map of Hawaii at
. - Sr.Tech.Ed.MJ]

[see also:
2007
----
Coral reef kill - Costa Rica 20070904.2915
Coral reef kill - Pacific Region 20070810.2600
2004
----
Coral reef kills - USA (FL)(02) 20040327.0846
Coral reef kills - USA (FL) 20040320.0777
2002
----
Coral reef kills, unknown etiology - Australia 20021023.5624
Coral reef kills, human waste suspected - Caribbean 20020627.4622
2000
----
Coral reef kills - Belize 20000510.0713
1999
----
Coral reef kills & potential human disease (02) 19990204.0161
Coral reef kills & potential human disease 19990124.0111
1998
----
Coral reef bleaching & El Nino - Indian Ocean (02) 19981113.2187
Coral reef bleaching, El Nino effects - Indian Ocean 19980705.1246
Coral reef kills, etiology determined - USA 19980415.0693
1996
----
White pox, coral reefs - Florida, USA (02) 19961231.2165
White Pox, coral reefs - Florida, USA 19961228.2160]
........................................jw/ep/mj/jw
*##########################################################*
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are posted, but the accuracy and completeness of the
information, and of any statements or opinions based
thereon, are not guaranteed. The reader assumes all risks in
using information posted or archived by ProMED-mail. ISID
and its associated service providers shall not be held
responsible for errors or omissions or held liable for any
damages incurred as a result of use or reliance upon posted
or archived material.
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Send all items for posting to: promed@promedmail.org
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NYC study: 50 native plants disappearing

American BitterSweet


By DAVID B. CARUSO (AP) – 13 hours ago

NEW YORK — Oriental Bittersweet was an exotic foreigner still found mostly in East Asia when the New York Botanical Garden planted its first specimen in 1897.

Today, it is everywhere. The shrubby vine is common in woodlands and fields in 21 states, ranging from North Carolina, to Maine, to Illinois.

The American Bittersweet, meanwhile, has been in a slow decline.

Once common across the eastern two-thirds of the U.S., the native version of the plant still is around, but it has vanished from many areas now dominated by its hardier, faster-breeding Asian cousin.

"We go entire seasons now without seeing it," said Gerry Moore, director of the science department at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

The rise and fall of the two plants has been chronicled by the Botanic Garden as part of a 20-year study that offers a dispiriting outlook on the future of some native flora.

So far, the project has identified 50 native species that have disappeared from metropolitan New York during the last 100 years, and others that have become far less abundant due to factors including the destruction of their habitat, pollution and competition from foreign interlopers.

In some areas, the landscape is also becoming less biologically diverse.

"While you used to have a marsh of 50 or 60 species, you might now have an entire marsh of phragmites, the common reed," Moore said.

The study focused on counties within 50 miles of New York City, but experts say other scientists have made similar findings nationwide.

In the West, sagebrush has been giving way to cheatgrass, which found its way to the U.S. in packing materials and ship ballast in the late 1800s.

Nature lovers strolling through wooded glades, thinking they are among trees that have stood since the Revolution, are actually looking at Norway Maple native to Europe.

Kudzu, which hails from Japan and China, infested the South after farmers in the 1930s through the 1950s were encouraged to use it to stop soil erosion.

Even the pristine open spaces of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming are now populated with Houndstongue and Yellow Toadflax, both from Europe.

Bit by bit, scientists say, the American landscape is becoming less American.

"We are going to our national parks now and seeing Europe," said Tom Stohlgren, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. "We are homogenizing the globe at a very fast rate."

Experts say the trend has many causes, but the biggest one may turn out to be globalization.

European traders and settlers have been bringing Old World plants to the Americas since colonization, but the process has accelerated with every advance in travel.

Now, foreign species arrive so frequently aboard planes, trucks and cargo ships that the odds of the next Oriental Bittersweet arriving are exponentially greater.

"That's the scary part, and the $64,000 question," Stohlgren said. "What we have had is an explosion in trade and transportation, and we have yet to see the full effect of that."

"It took 170 million years for the continents to drift apart, but only 400 years to move them all back together," he said. "I describe this as Darwin on steroids, and we are going to see extremely fast changes because of it."

Climate change and pollution may only worsen the problem, as they make the habitat of many native plants less hospitable, said Peter Raven, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.

"Obviously the loss of wild areas and their reduction in size makes it harder for natives to persist. As global warming proceeds, it will get worse," he said.

The problem is one that has attracted attention both in the U.S. and globally.

The Nature Conservancy, a leading environmental group, has persuaded some major home and garden retailers to stop selling invasive trees like the Norway maple and Lombardy poplar in regions.

It also has been working with researchers and government regulators on developing models that might predict when a nonnative plant might have the potential to become dangerously invasive, if imported into the U.S.

Several states have established advisory committees on invasive species and a few have banned the sale of plants like the Purple Loosestrife and the Japanese barberry, both of which came over the late 1800s and are now out-competing native flora.

The U.S. Coast Guard has been working on draft regulations for ballast water, aimed at preventing ships from picking up invasive aquatic organisms on foreign coasts and bringing them into North American waters.

Any changes will come too late to prevent some of the native losses identified by Brooklyn Botanic Garden researchers.

Their comprehensive and ongoing survey has found that wildflowers such as the Scarlet Indian Paintbrush, pennywort, Sidebells wintergreen and the Sundial lupine have all seriously declined in the region

At the same time, camphor weed, one found only in the South, has become common throughout the metropolitan area.

"There is still a lot of native diversity out there, but this is an alarm," said Troy Weldy, director of ecological management for the Eastern New York chapter of the Nature Conservancy, and co-author of the New York Flora Atlas.

Species shift due to globalization, he said, "could turn out to be much more of a threat than climate change."





http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iQr13xSRMEwM1SB4bf3ZVlQ58GdAD9ER5TJO3

Top 100 Toxic Air-Polluters

Click on title above to see "The List"

Re-Thinking Our Traditions

Regarding the "Sick Pigs in Food-Chain" Issue,....

Victory in California;... "No Downer Pigs in Food Chain," Court Says;

http://www.mfablog.org/2010/04/judge-says-turning-lame-pigs-into-meat-is-hogwash.html

Related:

Antibiotics in Livestock Production Cause Drug Resistance in Humans;
http://exposingfdanusda.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-report-antibiotics-in-livestock.html

USDA Cites NY Dairy Farm (Again) 4 Antibiotic Abuse in Cows;

http://madcowhorses.blogspot.com/2010/04/usda-cites-ny-dairy-farm-again-4.html

Mexican Pig Lagoons;
http://exposingfdanusda.blogspot.com/2010/03/smithfields-mexican-pig-lagoons-source.html

Pigs Possible Swine Flu Vectors;
http://exposingfdanusda.blogspot.com/2010/02/pigs-possible-swine-flu-vectors-new.html


Sick Pigs in Food Chain "A-OK" w/ USDA;
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/12/09/jvm.downer.pigs.cnn



Got Milk? Get Cancer;
http://exposingfdanusda.blogspot.com/2010/02/got-milk-get-cancer-monsanto-milk.html


Rethinking the Meat Guzzler;
http://exposingfdanusda.blogspot.com/2010/01/rethinking-meat-guzzler.html


Corporate Threats to Our Food Supply;
http://exposingfdanusda.blogspot.com/2010/01/corporate-threats-to-our-food-supply.html