discoverynews:

Hey West Coast,

Don’t forget to send us images of the annular eclipse, which has the moon passing directly in the way of our view of the sun on Sunday.

The full eclipse starts Sunday in Medford, Ore., at 6:26 p.m. PT, and ends in Lubbock, Texas, at 8:40 p.m. CT. A partial eclipse will be viewable everywhere from San Francisco to Buffalo early on Sunday evening.

Submit images here

American Rivers announced their list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers 2012 on May 15. The list includes 10 rivers facing serious threats to clean water, public health and wildlife:

1. Potomac River
2. Green River
3. Chattahoochee River
4. Missouri River
5. Hoback River
6. Grand River
7. South Fork Skyhomish River
8. Crystal River
9. Coal River
10. Kansas River

American Rivers president, Bob Irvin, said, “This year’s Most Endangered Rivers list underscores how important clean water is to our drinking water, health, and economy. If Congress slashes clean water protections, more Americans will get sick and communities and businesses will suffer. We simply cannot afford to go back to a time when the Potomac and rivers nationwide were too polluted to use.”

It’s time to take action to protect our nation’s rivers.

Learn more about America’s Most Endangered Rivers 2012 and easy actions you can take to defend them.

planetmoney:

Of each dollar the federal government spends, how much goes to defense? How much goes to Social Security? How much goes to interest on the debt? And how has this sort of thing changed over time?

This graphic answers these questions. It shows the major components of federal spending 50 years ago, 25 years ago, and last year. 

Read more here.

Sockeye begin 2012 journey up the Columbia/Snake on 20th anniversary of Lonesome Larry’s return to Idaho (From News Release ‘Idaho Rivers United’ 5/15/2012)

BOISE — Twenty years ago this month, a very determined sockeye salmon entered the Columbia River bound for Idaho’s Redfish Lake.

Driven by powerful genetic impulses, he swam 900 miles up the Columbia, Snake and Salmon rivers. He scaled eight dams, drove upstream through major rapids and climbed 6,547 feet. He refused to eat, dodged predators and passed by anglers’ bait.

His purpose was singular: to spawn and perpetuate his kind.

But Lonesome Larry returned alone on Aug. 4, 1992, the first year after his species was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

“This is one of the epic nature stories of our time,” said IRU Assistant Policy Director Greg Stahl. “This lone fish, a remnant of his species’ former magnificence, traveled the gauntlet of dams from Idaho to the Pacific, swam the lonely ocean for two or three years, and then fought to return — alone. Only he survived. The tragedy can’t be overstated.”

Though tragic, Larry’s epic journey was not in vain.

This famous fish became part of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s captive breeding program to save the Northwest’s most endangered salmon from extinction. His milt was put on ice and used to fertilize eggs from returning females in 1996 and 1997.  His genes are now scattered throughout a percentage of every new generation of sockeye, including the 1,000 or so fish that are likely to return in 2012.

“Now, while sockeye numbers have improved some, 20 years after Lonesome Larry’s return we’re still not a lot closer to actual recovery of salmon than we were then,” said IRU board member Tom Stuart. “This is a good time to pause and reflect on the tragedy of this decline, the limited progress made for salmon since 1992, and on the opportunities we still have to recover this iconic species.”

Aided by court-ordered spill to assist downstream migration of baby salmon, plentiful snowpack, friendly ocean conditions and dramatically pumped-up hatchery releases, a thousand or more sockeye have returned each year since 2010.

“I’m thrilled to see progress, but Idaho’s redfish are not yet safe. These returns represent only a fraction of the potential, only a fraction of what’s needed for recovery,” Stuart said. “Scientists say that we need 2,000 natural-origin sockeye returning for eight consecutive years before we can even think about removing the species from the Endangered Species list.”

From 2009 to 2011, only 10 to 13 percent of returning sockeye were of natural origin — fish hatched and grown in conditions as nature intended — and recovery is about natural returns. These natural sockeye returns represent a small return on a large hatchery investment.

In 2007, benefiting from court-ordered spill, an estimated 143,547 sockeye smolts left the upper Salmon River system en route to the Pacific. When 833 sockeye returned to the Sawtooth Valley in the summer of 2009, that constituted an approximately 0.06 percent return of outgoing fish, far below the minimum return rate of 2 percent scientists say is required to sustain natural populations.

“We’re grateful that sockeye haven’t gone extinct and that Fish and Game’s captive broodstock program has prevented extinction as it was supposed to do. But this isn’t actual recovery, in legal or biological terms,” Stuart said. “There’s a direct correlation between the number of hatchery fish pumped into the river and the number of fish returning. The return rate is still dismal — probably only 10 percent of what it needs to be. As happy as I am to see hatchery fish returning to Redfish Lake, recovery is about wild fish, and wild fish surviving at higher rates. Hatchery programs and the current spill program won’t be enough to recover this species.”

Historically, Lonesome Larry’s ancestors spawned in October along the shores of Idaho’s glacial lakes: Alturas, Pettit, Yellowbelly, Redfish, Stanley and Payette lakes. Once numbering close to a hundred thousand, the runs dropped to dozens by the late 1970s, and to single digits in the 80s and 90s, by then returning only to Redfish Lake. Only one fish returned to Redfish in 1984, 1988, and 1989. None returned in 1990. In 1991, four fish returned, only one a female. Dubbed Eve, she became another genetic keystone in Fish and Game’s rescue program, founded that same year.

Today, although the captive broodstock program has successfully prevented extinction of sockeye salmon, the core problem remains.

“Idaho’s miraculous sockeye salmon cannot be recovered and removed from their Endangered Species Act listing until the real problem is addressed,” said IRU Executive Director Bill Sedivy said. “Dams on the lower Snake River continue to kill too many baby salmon as they migrate to the Pacific each spring.”

The best available science is clear, Sedivy said.

“Spill is great, especially when snowpack is above average and the ocean has lots of food for salmon to eat.  But we can’t count on a friendly ocean every year, or on above-average snowfall for high spring flows.  So, removing the four low-value dams on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington State is still the only sure way to keep redfish in Idaho’s Redfish Lake,” he said. “Sockeye populations are not yet self-sustaining, and the situation can turn grave once again, quite quickly, if any of these stars slip out of line.

“After 20 years, we haven’t come far enough.”

Aaron: Whew, we’re saved. I can actually sleep tonight…

So, I just read this article - very interested to see the raw data on this. I remain skeptical until I see the science. (Aaron Kunz)

The Obama administration has pointed to the increased need for renewable forms of energy as a long-term solution to America’s energy independence and a partial solution to the threat of climate change. Indeed, his policies have diverted billions of taxpayer dollars to the industry in the hope that it would fulfill this enormous mandate, says Fox News.

However, new research finds that wind farms actually warm up the surface of the land underneath them during the night, a phenomenon that could put a damper on efforts to expand wind energy as a green energy solution.

Liming Zhou, associate professor at the State University of New York, Albany, is the author of a study that used satellite imagery to study temperature patterns in West Texas.

Researchers used satellite data from 2003 to 2011 to examine surface temperatures across as wide swath of West Texas, which has built four of the world’s largest wind farms.
Federal Aviation Administration data shows that the number of wind turbines over the study region has risen from 111 in 2003 to 2358 in 2011, according to the study.
The data showed a direct correlation between night-time temperatures increases of 0.72 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and the placement of the farms.
Zhou offers an explanation for the phenomenon, which incorporates the interaction that wind turbines have with the air.

Turbulence behind the wind turbine blades stirs up a layer of cooler air that usually settles on the ground at night, and mixes in warm air that is on top.
That layering effect is usually reversed during the daytime, with warm air on the surface and cooler air higher up, but this is interrupted by the turbines.
This warming effect can be deleterious to local crop growth — an effect that is particularly pronounced in agricultural areas like Texas.
Furthermore, the warming effect can even have unanticipated effects on rain patterns, which will further exacerbate the drought the region is already experiencing.
John Dabiri, director of the Center for Bioinspired Wind Energy at the California Institute of Technology, suggests that the problem could be avoided by redesigning turbines to be smaller, but this would undermine their generative capacity.

Source: Eric Niiler, “Wind Farms Are Warming the Earth, Researchers Say,” Fox News, April 30, 2012.

For text:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/30/wind-farms-are-warming-earth-researchers-say/?intcmp=obinsite

newshour:

President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign an agreement outlining the future U.S. role in Afghanistan after most NATO forces leave in 2014. 

Mr. Obama is in Kabul for a surprise visit to mark the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death. 

The president plans to address the nation tonight at 7:30 p.m. ET.

Details to come on tonight’s NewsHour

EPA Kicks Off Clean Water Effort (News Release)

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today published a list of 28 chemicals and two viruses that approximately 6,000 public water systems will monitor from 2013 to 2015 as part of the agency’s unregulated contaminant monitoring program, which collects data for contaminants suspected to be present in drinking water, but that do not have health-based standards set under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
 
EPA will spend more than $20 million to support the monitoring, the majority of which will be devoted to assist small drinking water systems with conducting the monitoring. The data collected under the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule 3 (UCMR 3) will inform EPA about the frequency and levels at which these contaminants are found in drinking water systems across the United States and help determine whether additional protections are needed to ensure safe drinking water for Americans. State participation in the monitoring is voluntary. EPA will fund small drinking water system costs for laboratory analyses, shipping and quality control.
 
The list of contaminants to be studied includes total chromium and hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium-6. Addressing hexavalent chromium in drinking water is a priority for EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. In January 2011, EPA issued guidance to all water systems on how to assess the prevalence of hexavalent chromium and in the March 2011 proposal for UCMR 3, EPA invited comments on whether the agency should include chromium in the final rule. Public comments received by EPA were strongly supportive of adding total chromium and hexavalent chromium for monitoring.
 
“The monitoring that will take place will provide EPA with invaluable information about what municipalities are seeing in their drinking water all across the country,” said EPA acting assistant administrator for Water Nancy Stoner. “The results of this multi-year monitoring effort will help inform EPA’s work to ensure Americans receive safe drinking water.”
 
EPA selected the contaminants by first reviewing the agency’s contaminant candidate list, which highlights priority contaminants that need additional research to support future drinking water protections. The contaminants on the list are known or anticipated to occur in public water systems. However, they are not addressed by existing national drinking water standards. Additional contaminants of concern were selected based on current occurrence research and health-risk factors.
 
EPA has standards for 91 contaminants in drinking water, and the Safe Drinking Water Act requires that EPA identify up to 30 additional unregulated contaminants for monitoring every five years.
 
For more information, visit: http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/rulesregs/sdwa/ucmr/ucmr3/index.cfm