Monday, 15 May 2006

Arctic Tock ...

Arctic ice may be gone in one to three decades

If you've been planning a trip to the Arctic, better buy your tickets now, because it's a-meltin' fast. (Perhaps you've heard?) A record low amount of ocean froze over this winter -- a reduction of over 115,000 square miles of sea ice from last year. Researcher Walt Meier of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center says there is "a good chance" that the Arctic has reached a tipping point: ice decline has accelerated since 2003, and if the trend continues, the Arctic could be ice-free by 2030. The U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in California plans to publish computer simulations showing that in summertime the Arctic could be ice-free within a decade. Loss of ice could have a huge impact on Arctic animals like polar bears (not to mention Santa Claus). Said Meier, "If we are heading for an ice-free Arctic, it's a really dramatic change and something that is unprecedented almost within the entire record of human species." Eek.


A reader wants to throw her house a "congratulations, it's spring, and you're 100 years old!" party by building a deck, but she wonders which materials are best. Advice maven Umbra Fisk wants to throw herself a "congratulations, it's spring, and all's right with the world!" party. But she takes a virtual tour of the lumberyard instead.

Army Corps of Darkness

Army Corps of Engineers has screwed up more than NOLA levees

The Army Corps of Engineers spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on ill-designed, ineffective, and environmentally disastrous projects -- and that's not the enviros talking. Harsh critiques of the Corps -- whose work includes draining wetlands and mucking about with rivers -- have come from the National Academy of Sciences, the Government Accountability Office, and presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush. But critics are few in Congress, where members push Corps projects that can bring money and jobs to constituents and contributors. Faulty Corps work on levees and other projects in Louisiana is partly to blame for the Katrina disaster. And there may be disaster in the making with a $112 million project on the Missouri River that will drain more wetlands than U.S. developers do in a year, yet won't stop flooding where it's supposed to. Wrote the Corps' chief of legislative management in a 2002 email, "Someone needs to be supervising the Corps." You think?


Around the globe, women often have a rough go of it when they try to protect or improve their local environments. A desire to help grassroots activists -- from East Africa to China to Missouri -- connect with each other and get their hands on better communications tools led Melinda Kramer to cofound the Women's Global Green Action Network. In answering questions from Grist, Kramer -- this week's InterActivist -- chats about inspirational green leaders in Kazakhstan and Israel, her respect for Wangari Maathai, why her socks don't match, and more. Send Kramer a question of your own by noon PDT on Wednesday; we'll publish her answers to selected questions on Friday.

He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tuna

California loses suit to make tuna companies issue mercury warnings

California law requires products containing chemicals that could cause reproductive harm or cancer to have warning labels, but a state Superior Court judge has ruled that the law does not apply to mercury-licious canned tuna. Mercury has been shown to slow neurological development, thus the FDA advises pregnant women and children to limit fish consumption. But the judge's ruling states that California law is preempted by an FDA advisory available on the internet (easily accessible to those browsing the web while grocery shopping!), that mercury levels were not high enough to warrant a warning (based on older lab rat research, not newer human research), and that tuna was exempt because mercury in fish can be naturally occurring (except for what's spewed from power plants). A spokesperson for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who had sued the tuna companies seeking warning labels, said the ruling was "wrong on the law, wrong on the science, and bad for the women and children of California."