East Coast of Vancouver Island

East Coast of Vancouver Island
Natural Beauty is Worth Preserving

Sunday, 5 July 2015

British Columbia under extreme forest fire hazard

B. McPherson
Sun at 11:30 filtered through smoke and ash
There are those who will say our climate isn’t changing, or if it is, it’s nothing to do with human activity. I’m not a climatologist, but I am an observer. I’ve noticed some things.
On the Vancouver Island we usually have two distinct climatic types. The west coast gets generous(some would say to a fault) rainfall and supports true temperate rainforests. The east coast tends to drier. Down the spine of the island is a ridge of mountains which are usually snow covered until late May.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the mountains got little snow last winter. A ski hill that was used as a practise site during the 2010 Olympics never truly opened due to lack of snow. The lowlands where I live had no snow at all. We had one week of relatively cold weather – we had light frost in the morning.

May was the driest May since records were kept. June was the driest in 50 years. July has started out hot and dry. That alone does not denote climate change. Science looks for patterns and we have a pattern that is a gradual warming and drying.

The forest fire hazard is deemed extreme. Last week, a few kilometres from where I live, a small forest fire broke out. It was human caused albeit an accident. A farmer was working his field when the fire broke out. It was quickly contained and knocked down. There are currently four fires burning on Vancouver Island. A total of eight, all above 10 hectares are currently burning in the Coastal region.

This morning I woke up to a weird yellow light. There was no sun, yet no rain has been predicted. Smoke and ash from a large fire on the BC mainland is drifting west over Vancouver Island. The photo above is of the sun near noon.

No rain is predicted in the weather forecasts.

No water, no life

Thursday, 30 April 2015

Neurotoxin to be sprayed on Washington oyster beds

B. McPherson

Never forget the law of unintended consequences
Washington State has given the oyster harvesting industry the go ahead to spray about 2000 acres of sea bed with imidacloprid to kill burrowing shrimp. Imidacloprid is a neurotoxin that particularly affects invertebrates(animals without backbones).

The state department of ecology has issued permits to spray the mudflats of Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor. The stated reason is to reduce the population of burrowing shrimp. They are also known as ghost shrimp. The two areas that are to be sprayed with the pesticide are important oyster producing areas. The annual revenue is over US$60 million per year.

The shrimp are feeders of small particles and given a high enough population can compete with other plankton eaters for resources. Burrowing shrimp dig in the intertidal mud flats almost constantly and kick out sand and other detritus. The sediment can cover the very young oysters(spat), suffocating them.

Imidacloprid is the most widely used pesticide in the world. Bayer Crop Science was the inventor of this neurotoxin, but the patent protection has run out so many other companies are now free to make copies.

The pesticide is not without controversy. It is a systemic poison which means that when it is sprayed on plants, the plants take it up into their cells and become poisonous. Those animals that are without backbones – shrimp, bees – are extremely sensitive to the neurotoxin. However it can damage fish which are slightly affected by it, birds which are vulnerable to it and humans exposed can develop troubling symptoms.

The spraying of mud flats will be a novel use of the pesticide. In the past the pesticide carbaryl was used to control shrimp numbers. It is now banned. The oyster growers have tried to control the shrimp numbers by dynamiting their burrows and in another failed attempt, spread a thin layer of cement on top of their burrows. The idea was to suffocate them but the creatures made new holes before the cement hardened.
Washington State Dept. of Ecology                

National Pesticide Information Center(Oregon StateUniversity)                               

Sunday, 26 April 2015

NOAA reports warmest March on record

B. McPherson

NOAA has reported that March in N. America is the hottest on record. The records for this go back to 1880. They are also reporting that records for Arctic sea ice and global average temperatures have reached record marks as well. 

Of course one month in the history of the planet doesn’t make for a crisis. But record keeping can point out some troubling trends. NOAA’s March report does not speculate causes, but reports the measurements. They indicate that changes are happening.

The following information is based on the March report.

·         Global land and ocean temperatures – 0.85o C (1.53oF)above 20th century average. The previous record high was 2010.

·         Land surface temperatures globally averaged nearly three degrees F. (1.65oC) above 20th century averages.

·         Ocean surface temperatures were a little over half a degree Celsius  higher.

Warmer temperatures indicate that there is more energy in the weather and water systems. When we get more energy in, we see more energetic, read extreme, weather. Cyclones and hurricanes have more ability to do damage. This past winter, changes in the polar jet stream saw half of N. America buried in record snow falls. The western half had uncharacteristically mild weather. As the Earth adjusts to the warmer temperatures, rainfall patterns may also change.

Climate fluctuations of the Earth are normal and have occurred many times over the past few billion years. The most recent “hothouse climate” was a few million years ago when temperatures were high enough to melt the polar ice-caps and allow lush vegetation to grow. Fossils of giant camels have been found in Canada’s high Arctic. Greenland was very likely green.

Humans may be speeding up the rate of climate change by burning carbon based fuels, also known as fossil fuels. Many of our industries, including the cement industry, release what are known as greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. These gasses act like insulation in our air to keep the sun’s warmth in. While we need the sun’s warmth, many scientists are concerned that the insulating effect of human actions is speeding what would normally be changes over millennia.


Friday, 17 April 2015

Rio rotten fish float in Olympic lagoon

B. McPherson

Rio de Janeiro in Brazil will be hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics. They have the honour of being the first South American country to host them. The Games were awarded to Rio amid much hoopla and celebration. It is now likely that some of the Olympic Committee are having second thoughts.
There is no debate about the stunning setting that Rio has with a combination of ocean, lagoons and mountains. Over six million people call it home. And many hold their nose while doing so.

You can imagine the garbage and sewage that six million people produce daily. Now imagine the mess if two thirds of the people have no garbage pickup and two thirds of the sewage is not treated, but is allowed to drain into waterways and canals. It is not just those unfortunate to live in the slums that dump untreated sewage directly into nearby waterways. This weekend past, hundreds of people demonstrated their anger over a modern condominium block contributing to the city’s stench.

Yesterday thousands of fish were found floating on the surface of the lagoon that serves as the backdrop to the Olympic Park. Officially, the cause of the mass die-off is a drop in water temperature.

The canal that residents were protesting drains into the lagoon that surrounds the Olympic Park. Water quality checks already show that antibiotic resistant bacteria thrive in the polluted lagoon. Previously, the venue for rowing and canoeing, Guanabara Bay, made headlines for its filthy condition. A new sport has been added – kiteboarding will also likely be held on the bay which has been described as a latrine.

While some effort has been made to filter out large pieces of garbage like sofas, no effective means have been taken to remove the bacteria laden sewage dumping.

It may be that some Olympic athletes will be taking home more than medals in August of 2016.
Al Jazeera                       
Rio Olympics 2016 Athletes Set to Dodge Poop and OtherFloaties                            
Olympics. Org                 

Business Insider                             

Sunday, 12 April 2015

Vancouver oil spill shows weak response by feds

B. McPherson

Update: The Canadian Coast Guard is reporting that all the recoverable oil has been removed from the water. What does that really mean? You know that means that besides that oil that is now polluting Vancouver beaches is also in the water. While our Coast Guard personnel do the best job possible in the circumstances, you and I know that taking six hours to contain what is a tiny spill is not good enough. Let's remember that the Feds closed the Vancouver Harbour Coast Guard station and plan to remove even more disaster protection from one of the country's biggest ports.

An oil spill Wednesday in Vancouver, BC, showed the residents how an oil spill would likely play out. The oil was spotted in that part of the harbour known as English Bay and reported by a sailor.

At 5pm the oil slick was reported. Three hours later a crew showed up to try to contain the spill of heavy bunker oil. It took until 2 am Thursday morning for crews to put a containment boom around a freighter believed to be the source of the spill. The oil was believed to be from a refueling incident. City officials were not notified of the spill until another four hours had passed – 6 am on Thursday.
It may be an exaggeration to say that the city people set their hair on fire over this lapse in sensible emergency response, but it is close. They quickly despatched personnel trained in emergency response as well as wildlife experts who could assess the damage.

The toxic oil spill was minor from an industrial point of view, probably caused by careless handling of refuelling lines. Only about 2,800 litres made it into the water. Only about 1,400 were recovered. This event happened in very sheltered waters on a sunny spring day with hours of daylight, calm waters and close-by people.

The weather was fine enough that some people were swimming at the sandy beaches that line English Bay. Other people were jogging, throwing sticks into the water for their dogs and generally enjoying the beautiful scenery that Vancouver is known for. That is until sticky black globules started landing on the sand. There is no death count so far on the number of shore birds and harbour seals that got hit with this poison.

Many people in BC have been speaking up and opposing increased oil tanker ships in the coastal waters. There is a proposal by the American Kinder Morgan to double or triple oil capacity to the harbour. An increase of hundreds of mega-tankers to Vancouver harbour would result if approved.
Also proposed is a scheme by the consortium known as Enbridge to force a heavy oil pipeline to the Central Coast of BC which would attract hundreds more supertankers each year. The coastal area is sparsely populated and has wild weather as the norm. I leave it to you to guess the consequences of one tanker disgorging its cargo into those pristine waters.

Vancouver Sun                 

Radio station CKNW

Saturday, 28 March 2015

Antarctic summer brings more bad news

B. McPherson
It will take a few hundred years for it all to go, but go it will

Antarctica is entering its winter season, but the summer has seen accelerated melting of the vast ice sheets. In 2014 we found that the Western Ice Sheet was flowing rapidly into the ocean and melting. Research conducted this summer on the eastern part of that continent has found that that side of the continent is also spilling its hoard of ice into the Austral Ocean.

Warmer ocean temperatures have infiltrated under the Western Ice Sheet and accelerated the flow and melt rate. If the whole ice sheet were to melt, it would raise the ocean levels and average of 10 feet(3 metres). This summer scientists found a previously unknown ocean trough that can allow warm, for the Antarctic, water to seep under the Totten Glacier on the east coast. The Totten Glacier acts as a brake or plug to keep the interior ice from flowing to the ocean. Like the ice shelf in the west, the Glacier’s seaward edge is now found to be floating on ocean water. Previously it was assumed that it was grounded on solid land.

“Now we know the ocean is melting ice in an area of the glacier that we thought was totally cut off before,” 

Glaciers build up when more precipitation falls and freezes than melts. Over time ice-sheets can reach depths that sequester so much water that it affects ocean levels. When more ice melts than is replaced ocean levels rise.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the Arctic Sea Ice has been thinning and melting. Greenland is seeing land that has not been bare of ice since settlement by humans. This is contributing to a creeping rise in sea level. The further one moves towards the poles, the greater the sea level change.

Washington Post                           
Nature Geoscience                         
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab             

Jackson School of Geoscience                  

Sunday, 22 March 2015

Horse dung may save your life

B. McPherson
Copper metal kills bacteria. Copper plated push plates on doors cut infections.
Horse poop has long been known as great for gardens, but save your life? Mushroom growers know that horse manure is ideal for producing those delectable morsels. A mushroom of a different kind – the inky cap(Coprinus comatus) has researchers hot on the trail of a new antibiotic.

The promising new compound is copsin, a protein substance that interferes with cell wall formation. Bacteria have cell walls. Scientists are reproducing the substance via genetically modified yeast. It is a long way from growing yeast in small scale batches to industrial production and clinical trials.

Medical researchers have been sounding the alarm about multi-resistant bacterial infections. Gradually, as an antibiotic comes into widespread use, it loses its ability to kill bacteria. When penicillin was first produced it could wipe out nearly any infection, revolutionizing modern medicine. 
Other fungal based bacteria killers also came on line to help fight disease. But over time, bacteria have evolved resistance to the compounds.

The situation has not been helped with careless prescribing of antibiotics for people. But 85% of antibiotic use in N. America is used in the agriculture industry. From feeding animals to produce faster weight gain to spraying on fruit crops to keep the spots off, by far the greatest use of antibiotics is in agriculture.

Other names for inky cap:  lawyers wig, shaggy mane

Shaggy mane mushrooms are also nematode killers. They are able to kill and digest small round worms. Organisms in the Fungus Kingdom exhibit characteristics like plants at times, and at other times exhibit animal like characteristics.
CBC News                          
Journal of Biological Chemistry