"It's puzzling. I looked at a few pictures around (area) and couldn't find anything to explain it. Very puzzling! These are huge boulders. There are no indications of any outcrops that could shed such boulders."
- Michael Carr, U. S. Geological Survey -
Scattered 80-foot dark boulders - from where? Nilosyrtis Mensae Valleys, mid-Martian latitude. High resolution image is 3 kilometers wide by 4.9 kilometers vertical (1.9 miles by 3 miles) taken on February 14, 2001 by the Red Rover Goes to Mars International Student Training Mission. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/Malin Space Sciences Systems.
February 25, 2001 Carlsbad, California - On February 14 while NASA's Near spacecraft was making its historic landing on the Eros asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, a camera on the Mars Global Surveyor orbiting the red planet was under the guidance of an international group of four girls and five boys aged 10 to 15 known as the Red Rover Goes to Mars team.
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International computer projections for the next 100 years all agree that the world's average temperature will rise. How high depends upon greenhouse gas build up, but the range will be between 2.5 and 10.5 degrees Fahrenheit. To put that into perspective, if we go back to the last time the earth was 10 degrees cooler than it is now, we have to go back at least ten thousand years to the end of the last Ice Age. So, it took 10,000 years for the earth to warm up 10 degrees F. since ice last covered North America, but may take only the next 100 years to heat up another 10 degrees.
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"Scientists can't remember ever seeing a situation like this
where we've just had one species die, especially in this large a number."
- Tracy Casselman, U. S. Fish and Wildlife -
Dead Atlantic brant geese collected for lab studies by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Oceanville, New Jersey. Photo courtesy USFWS.
February 18, 2001 New York City - Increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere ARE raising the global average mean temperature, physicists say, and 100 nations have ratified the Kyoto Protocol that requires a cutback in emissions. But none of those nations are industrial like the United States, which is responsible for 25% of the world's atmospheric pollution. So far the U. S. refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because American industry argues it cannot afford the economic costs of complying with emission cutbacks. This week the United Nations agreed to delay greenhouse talks until June or July, hoping for American involvement. But this delay further frustrates environmental groups who argue that President Bush was quick to create a high-level team to develop new sources of oil and other fossil fuels that will put even more CO2 into the atmosphere, while ignoring the consequences of burning fossil fuels.
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Graphic depicting NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Shoemaker spacecraft orbital descent path to the earth's first historic landing on the Eros asteroid at about 3:02 p.m. EST, February 12, 2001, 196 million miles from Earth. Image courtesy Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, (JHU-APL) Laurel, Maryland.
February 12, 2001 Laurel, Maryland - Scientists at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory broke out the champagne to celebrate today when the clock ticked 3:02:10 p.m. EST and the last picture was taken by NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft as it lowered at 4 mph for the first historic landing of an Earth vehicle on the asteroid Eros 196 million miles away. Touchdown was in the yellow circle below on the edge of the asteroid's saddle-shaped feature named Himeros.
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Main gate of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, Long Island, N. Y. The Laboratory is operated by Brookhaven Science Associates, a non-profit research management company under contract for the U. S. Department of Energy.Main gate of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, Long Island, N. Y. The Laboratory is operated by Brookhaven Science Associates, a non-profit research management company under contract for the U. S. Department of Energy.
February 11, 2001 Upton, New York - There was an announcement this week from the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York that has shaken up particle physicists. Something unknown is causing muons to wobble in a strong magnetic field differently than predicted. That could mean that the fundamental structure of the universe is not quite what physicists thought.
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Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
February 11, 2001 Atlanta, Georgia - The London Times reported this week that animal feed protein contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as BSE or mad cow disease, is estimated to have reached 70 countries through exports by a British company between 1988 and 1996. The company, Prosper de Mulder based in Doncaster, northern England, admitted to the Times that its animal feed was exported as pig and poultry food which were not banned until 1996, but could still have been mixed up with cattle feed which was illegal. The BSE-contaminated pig and poultry food was exported to Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malta, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand. The United Nations is now warning all countries that have imported cattle or animal feed from western Europe, especially Britain, to be concerned about the risk of BSE and variant CJD.
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"We aren't aware of any mammalian decline of either this magnitude
or geographic extent. It's really kind of mind boggling, actually."
- Tim Tinker, Marine Ecologist, University of California, Santa Cruz
Sea otter with arms folded floating on its back in Aleutian Islands. Photograph courtesy U. S. Fish and Wildlife, Alaska.
February 7, 2001 Santa Cruz, California -
Changing Environment and Impact On Animals
The past ten years have been the warmest in a thousand years; the Arctic ice cap has shrunk over the past three decades to about half the size it was.
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Wild mule deer in Colorado. Photograph courtesy Colorado Division of Wildlife.
February 4, 2001 Denver, Colorado - This past week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned countries around the world to be concerned about the risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) known as mad cow disease. In a formal statement, FAO said: "All countries which have imported cattle or meat and bone meal from Western Europe, especially Britain, during and since the 1980s can be considered at risk from the disease."
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"The idea of having a planet that really warmed 10 degrees Fahrenheit is rather baffling. That's the same change we saw back to the last Ice Age. And obviously that was a hugely different kind of world to live on. So, if we really experience something at that high end of temperature warming, it sounds like there is a possibility for widespread disaster."
Lightening in violent thunderstorm courtesy National Severe Storm Center, Norman, Oklahoma.
January 28, 2001 New York City The largest decline in a mammal population ever recorded by modern scientists has occurred in the otter population of the Aleutian Islands off the west coast of Alaska. In the 1980s, as many as 100,000 otters inhabited the islands. Today, there are only about 6,000 left. And 70% of that decline occurred between 1992 and 2000, a rate of decline that scientists say is unprecedented for any mammal population in the world. Researchers have been trying to find out what happened. And the answer seems to be global warming. Warmer ocean currents in the Aleutians have driven out the huge population of seals and sea lions that used to be the staple food of killer whales. When the seals and sea lions disappeared, the whales turned to otters for food. As water temperatures increased, so did the salmon population. Salmon have attracted sharks. So, in a few short years a warmer water temperature has transformed the once safe mammal sanctuary of the Aleutian Islands into a feeding ground for predators.
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Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
January 21, 2001 Europe - Mad cow disease once thought to be confined to England continues to be found in western Europe. This past week scientists announced the discovery of a diseased cow in Italy. The term "mad cow" comes from the shaking and stumbling of sick animals before they die. The scientific name is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, now thought to have spread by recycling meat and bone meal from infected animals back into cattle feed. But even after strict measures were taken in England and other European countries to eliminate infected cattle feed, mad cow disease cases have been reported in several western European countries.
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