Does a large population of sea otters reverse one of the principal causes of climate change? New research from the UC Santa Cruz is suggesting that a population boom of sea otters would go a long way to reduce sea urchin numbers, and therefore allow kelp forests to become very large.
“The spreading kelp can absorb as much as 12 times the amount of CO2 from the atmosphere than if it were subject to ravenous sea urchins, the study finds.” Of course, altering a food chain so significantly could have unintended consequences.
The theory was just outlined in a paper published September 7 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
“It is significant because it shows that animals can have a big influence on the carbon cycle,” said Wilmers, assistant professor of environmental studies.
“Wilmers, Estes, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and their co-authors, combined 40 years of data on otters and kelp bloom from Vancouver Island to the western edge of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. They found that otters “undoubtedly have a strong influence on the cycle of CO2 storage.”
Includes analysis of the new jobs (not enough to provide for those new to the employment market such as immigrants and graduates). Bottom line: bar tenders and home health service–the bottom of the barrel.
Phi Beta Iota: For those of you applying for government jobs, be warned. Apart from needing an active TS/SCI to be considered (but it helps to have an OPM SSBI completed in past six months), you have to get through what is now an out of control automated system that dumps you if you do not have enough keywords. Beyond that you have a line of low-level clerks without a clue about substance [in fairness to USAJobs, the problems appear to be at the receiving agency level, not with USAJobs). So here are two guidlines:
1. Read the position description carefully, and tailor your USAJobs resuem for that specific job. You are dealing with a really really stupid system.
2. If you have the connections, or care to send in a copy directly to the hiring official as an alert, do so. Our contacts are telling us that they are getting crummy selections from the system, and when they go back and ask to see ALL applications, they get another 15-20 among whom are 5 world-class stars the system was too stupid to recognize. This is particularly true of DIA. Our advice to hiring managers: insist on ALL applications without exception being delivered to you.
Syria-Iraq-Iran: Several news outlets reported information from US sources that US Intelligence has confirmed that Iran is airlifting supplies across Iraq to Syria with the permission of the al Maliki government. Vice President Biden supposedly talked by telephone with al Maliki about this issue.
Comment: So… at the time the US is preparing to send F-16 fighters to Iraq as a pledge of the strategic alliance, Iraq's government is allowing Iranian transport aircraft to fly critical supplies to the Syrian regime which the US opposes. Official, direct protests by the US Vice President have been rejected.
There are two implications. The Iranian airlift is the lifeline the Syrian government needs to defeat the opposition. Secondly, based on experiences in Pakistan, any modern US weapons technology transferred to Iraq will end up as a technology transfer to Iran and then China.
Iraq is not a US ally. Al Maliki is a satrap of Iran, more than a friend of the US when it really counts. That is not a positive return on investment.
The Pentagon says that none of the nearly 70,000 members of the DoD-affiliated population (service members, DoD civilian employees and contractors, and family members of service members and civilian employees) who were on or near the mainland of Japan between March 12 and May 11, 2011, are known to have been exposed to radiation at levels associated with adverse medical conditions.
The quake was centered 3 to 4 miles beneath Mineral, a town of fewer than 500 people about 50 miles northwest of Richmond. Yet it was believed to have been felt by more people than any other in U.S. history.
It was the first time ever in this country that a nuclear power station had gone through an emergency shutdown because of an earthquake. In this case it was a rare 5.8 magnitude seismic event with an epicenter a few miles away that ruined Louisa County school buildings, cracked the Washington Monument and shook the North Anna beyond what it was designed to deal with.
Three of the largest and deadliest earthquakes in recent history occurred where earthquake hazard maps didn’t predict massive quakes, scientists say. A combination of bad assumptions, bad data, bad physics, and bad luck is why hazard maps have failed to predict three of the largest and deadliest earthquakes in recent history.
In hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, are injected into rock thousands of feet underground to extract natural gas. Frohlich said the most likely explanation for the quakes is that once injected, the fluids apply pressure to faults in the area and unstick them.
The molten cores at Units 1, 2 & 3 have threatened all life on Earth. The flood of liquid radiation has poisoned the Pacific. Fukushima’s cesium and other airborne emissions have already dwarfed Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and all nuclear explosions including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But at Unit 4, more than 1500 rods remain suspended in air. Called “a bathtub on the roof” by CNN anchor Jon King, the damaged pool teeters atop a building decimated by seismic shocks and at least one hydrogen explosion. The question is not if, but when it will come crashing down.
Sea Otters To Combat Climate Change?
