Dead Zone In Ocean Expands

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Mass die-offs should alarm us if we only were paying more attention! Of course, it seems our main preoccupation right now is how to kill each other so we can live without 'fear'. Well, the only thing we ought to fear is Mother Nature. We are all but little bugs under Her high heels. And as we wage war agasint Her, every battle we wage brings Her closer to Her final victory over all of us. We cannot win, we must learn to live and let live.

Frequent, periodic dead zones are very bad and not 'normal'.

By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 12, 7:30 AM ET
PORTLAND, Ore. - The oxygen-starved "dead zone" along the Pacific Coast that is causing massive crab and fish die-offs is worse than initially thought, scientists said.

Weather, not pollution, appears to be the culprit, scientists said, and no relief is in sight. However, some said there is no immediate sign of long-term damage to the crab fishery in the dead zone, a 70-mile stretch of water along the Continental Shelf between Florence and Lincoln City.

Oregon State University scientists looking for weather changes that could reverse the situation aren't finding them. They say levels of dissolved oxygen critical to marine life are the lowest since the first dead zone was identified in 2002. It has returned every year.

During the Permian Extinction, much of the oceans were 'dead zones'. Not to mention the lands, too. Indeed, the Great Experiment nearly failed. But Mother Nature saved some creatures after 90%+ died. And we descended from them. No god made us magically. We evolved from that great catastrophe, that climate disaster.

The oceans are the cradle of life and the bounty of nature and if eliminated, will be our coffin.

Salt flats are dying from within.

By RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 11, 9:16 PM ET
WELLFLEET, Mass. - Pockmarked muck blots this formerly lush marsh on Cape Cod, and a creek carves off eroded chunks along its edges. Dead plant roots jut from barren mud once covered with wavy mats of marsh hay.

New England scientists began noticing dead patches like this one near Lieutenant Island four years ago and call it sudden wetland dieback. Ecologists warn that saltwater marshes from Maine to Connecticut are suddenly and inexplicably dying, leaving behind land resembling honeycombs, Swiss cheese or an eroded desert landscape.

Few scientists can explain it or recommend what to do. Even skeptics concede something unusual is happening.

Like doctors trying to cope with many fevers and cancers, like when AIDS first appeared, scientists see this malfunctioning of our ecosystem and struggle to isolate the cause of various disparate effects but they are all one organic whole. This is why launching the Earth Observatory that could track the entire planet's major ecosystems should have been our number one priority instead of mothballed by NASA so we can go to the dead planet, Mars, and marvel as to how the entire planet was scoured by hydrogen peroxide. GAH.

My maple trees are dying.

By CHASE SQUIRES, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 11, 8:55 PM ET
DENVER - Something is killing the quaking aspen trees of the Rocky Mountain West. The slender, white-barked trees that paint the hills gold every autumn are dying, some scientists say, leaving bald patches across the Rockies. Experts are scrambling to figure out what's happening.

"As soon as we understand what's going on, then maybe we can do something about it," said Dale Bartos, a Forest Service restoration ecologist based in northern Utah.

Bartos thinks a fungus may be to blame, while others suggest everything from hungry caterpillars to drought to man's interference with the natural cycle of forest fires and even resurgent herds of hungry elk nibbling saplings to death.
There are fewer healthy aspens in the mountains of western Colorado, he said. But he hasn't found anything more than warm weather and drought to blame. Stocks of the trees may decline, but so far Binkley expects the stands to recover, someday.

"It'll be a visible blip, but the reassuring part is that the younger trees are faring better than the older ones. Unless I'm wrong, and it's not drought," Binkley said. "It's the sort of thing that we won't be surprised if we're surprised."

I live in the mountains. My maple trees are dying. Rapidly. Oh, they grow when young, indeed, grow very fast thanks to the higher CO2 in the atmosphere but all the giants are dead or dying. I used to have maples with the girth of over 6' in circumference and they are all, all dead! Totally dead. Falling down with shattering crashes. The medium sized ones are sick, their hearts are rotting! They struggle to survive. They are all surrounded by a zillion saplings. But none of these will grow for 500 years.

And my beautiful oaks! One of them is well over 600 years old! And it is rapidly dying! Stop! Stop!

So pretending the aspens are a seperate matter irritates me greatly. I watched the elms die and now this? All over, the Giants are dying. Redwoods or saguaros, oaks and elms. The great trees in the jungles are falling, they are dying, burning, going, going, gone.

Volcanoes are reacting to the shuddering of the planet after the Boxing Day Earthquake.

By TERESA CEROJANO, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 12, 9:51 AM ET
LEGAZPI, Philippines - President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Saturday visited villagers forced to flee their homes due to restive Mayon volcano and ordered officials to speed up efforts to improve conditions at cramped evacuation centers.

Scientists told Arroyo in a briefing that Mayon, the Philippines' most active volcano, appears to be gearing up for an explosive eruption since it began quietly oozing lava four weeks ago.

Following successive ash explosions on Monday, officials ordered a mass evacuation of villages on the southern and southeastern slopes of the volcano, which are the most vulnerable to a violent eruption.

Volcanoes can change climates. And poison the atmosphere, too. As well as regenerate the soil for they pull from the mantle, important minerals our biosphere needs for organic growth.

I don't think a minor volcanic event can slow down the melting of the polar regions.

The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year, according to global climate watchers gathering data from twin satellites that probe the effects of warming on the huge northern island.

The consequence is already evident in a small but ominous rise in sea levels around the world, a pace that is also accelerating, the scientists say.

According to the scientists' data, Greenland's ice is melting at a rate three times faster than it was only five years ago. The estimate of the melting trend that has been observed for nearly a decade comes from a University of Texas team monitoring a satellite mission that measures changes in the Earth's gravity over the entire Greenland ice cap as the ice melts and the water flows down into the Arctic ocean.

And this will reach even my mountain eyrie if the Gulf Stream changes course drastically. We could have another ice age, anything can happen. All I can say is, our planetary system has become destabilized. We have to pay attention to this matter, it is more important than people can imagine. More important than all the petty stuff we wail about every day. It is life and death on the most important level.

I would imagine the UN should be discussing this, after the war criminals are all arrested, I suppose.

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