Methane release 'could trigger abrupt warming'

Arctic seabed methane stores destabilizing, venting

University of Alaska, Fairbanks: A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas... The research results... show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans,' said [Natalia] Shakhova, a researcher at UAF's International Arctic Research Center.

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils... Methane can also be stored in the seabed as methane gas or methane hydrates and then released as subsea permafrost thaws. These releases can be larger and more abrupt than those that result from decomposition... Current average methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years... Concentrations above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are even higher...

They found that more than 80 percent of the deep water and greater than half of surface water had methane levels more than eight times that of normal seawater. In some areas, the saturation levels reached at least 250 times that of background levels in the summer and 1,400 times higher in the winter... The methane was not only being dissolved in the water, it was bubbling out into the atmosphere... Methane levels throughout the Arctic are usually 8 to 10 percent higher than the global baseline. When they flew over the shelf, they found methane at levels another 5 to 10 percent higher than the already elevated arctic levels.

'The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to 3 to 4 times,' Shakhova said. 'The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict.'

Image source here.

Breaking: Canadian officials, war crimes

Canada wanted Afghan prisoners tortured: lawyer

CBC News: Federal government documents on Afghan detainees suggest that Canadian officials intended some prisoners to be tortured in order to gather intelligence, according to a legal expert.

If the allegation is true, such actions would constitute a war crime, said University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran, who has been digging deep into the issue and told CBC News he has seen uncensored versions of government documents released last year.

'If these documents were released [in full], what they will show is that Canada partnered deliberately with the torturers in Afghanistan for the interrogation of detainees... There would be a question of rendition and a question of war crimes on the part of certain Canadian officials. That's what's in these documents, and that's why the government is covering it up as hard as it can.'...

Until now, the controversy has centred on whether the government turned a blind eye to abuse of Afghan detainees. However, Attaran said the full versions of the documents show that Canada went even further in intentionally handing over prisoners to torturers. 'And it wasn't accidental; it was done for a reason,' he said. 'It was done so that they could be interrogated using harsher methods.'...

Many facets of the issue remain top secret, such as the role of Canada's elite Joint Task Force 2, or JTF2. There have been hints that JTF2 might be handling so-called high value prisoners...

Opposition parties have been trying to get the Conservative government to release the uncensored versions of the documents pertaining to the handling of Afghan detainees... On Friday, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson asked former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Frank Iacobucci to review whether there would be 'injurious' effects if some Afghan detainee documents were made public... He is not a sitting judge and can't legally rule or force the government to do anything.

Image source here.

Iraq: rise in cancer, birth defects

BC researcher probes soaring Iraq cancer rates

Vancouver Sun: A researcher from Simon Fraser University is investigating childhood leukemia in southern Iraq, where the rate of the blood cancer in some areas is now four times that of neighbouring Kuwait...

Depleted uranium is only weakly radioactive, but the toxic metal is very widely distributed when it is used in armour-piercing shells. The uranium completely disintegrates and burns when it penetrates armour, [Tim] Takaro said. 'We know from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the sites of American atomic bomb attacks in 1945) that ionizing radiation causes leukemia.'

Disturbing story of Fallujah's birth defects

BBC News: Six years after the intense fighting began in the Iraqi town of Fallujah between US forces and Sunni insurgents, there is a disturbingly large number of cases of birth defects in the town...

We heard many times that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children. We went to a clinic for the disabled, and were given details of dozens upon dozens of children with serious birth defects. One photograph I saw showed a newborn baby with three heads. While we were at the clinic, people kept arriving with children who were suffering major problems -- a little girl with only one arm, several children who were paralysed, and another girl with a spinal condition so bad I asked my cameraman not to film her.

We went to a house where three children, all under six, were suffering from birth defects. Two boys were partially paralysed, and their sister clearly had serious brain damage. Like all the other parents we spoke to, their mother had no doubt that the American attacks were responsible.

Outside a man who had heard we were there had brought his four-year-old daughter to show us. She had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot. She was also suffering from a number of other serious health problems. The father told us that the house where they still lived had been hit by an American shell during the fighting in 2004.

Fallujah doctors report rise in birth defects

BBC News: Doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraqi invasion... The level of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than in Europe... Doctors and parents believe the problem is the highly sophisticated weapons the US troops used in Fallujah six years ago.

Image source here.

Satellite monitors Earth's changes

Terra tracks Earth's Vital Signs

'And they call the state Pariah'

Bradley Burston: I envy the people who hate Israel

Haaretz: At times like these, I envy the people who passionately, frankly, with all their hearts, despise Israel. Hate Israel enough, and the Jewish state's failings and blunders, its self-satisfied blindness and its resultant self-destructive policies, cause not pain, but delight... Hate Israel enough, and you may come to believe not only that the country deserves to be punished to the point of replacement by a different state -- [but also that] Israel may do the job all by itself...

I have made my peace with the fact that this is not the same country I moved to, so long ago. I learned when I first came, that Israel was not the country I'd thought I was moving to...

There was once a time when Israel longed to be a member in good standing of the community of nations... No longer.... Israel, at its highest level, has decided that the job of delegitimizing the Jewish state must not be left to foreigners and amateurs. Showing itself desperate to be a pariah state, Israel will now get it done on its own...

What the far-left from Britain to Berkeley has been unable to bring off -- a sense among Israel's allies that Israel has become a heartless, morally heedless aggressor state worthy of sanction and shunning -- the far-right in Israel's own government, and in particular, its foreign ministry, seems determined to inculcate to the full...

No one can defend this anymore. There's too much that looks bad, and too much of it is true... My wife, who cares about this country as deeply as anyone, was singing this morning, but with a smile I have come to recognize as a sign of pain. '... And they call the state Pariah..'...

Intelligent people who are too smart to be able to see themselves clearly, render themselves stupid. And countries which cannot bear to look, even if they have good reasons, render themselves dangerous -- first of all, to themselves... My father did not flee the Soviet Union just so his son could one day have the chance to live in a place just like it.

Image source here.

Earliest human migration via the Far North?

Migration to New World may have come through High Arctic

Vancouver Sun: The peopling of the Americas may have begun via Canada's High Arctic islands and the Northwest Passage -- much farther north and at least 10,000 years earlier than generally believed...

The idea of an ancient Arctic migration as early as 25,000 years ago, proposed by University of Utah anthropologists Dennis O'Rourke and Jennifer Raff, would address several major gaps in prevailing theories about how the distant ancestors of today's aboriginal people in North and South America arrived in the Western Hemisphere.

The most glaring of these gaps is the anomalous existence of a 14,500-year-old archeological site in Chile, near the southern extreme of the Americas, that clearly predates the time when East Asian hunters are thought to have crossed from Siberia to Alaska via the Bering Land Bridge at the end of the ice age some 13,000 years ago.

The new theory may also have implications for a lingering Canadian archeological mystery. For decades, the Canadian Museum of Civilization has stood largely alone in defending its view that the Yukon's Bluefish Caves hold evidence of a human presence in the Americas -- tool flakes and butchered mammoth bones -- going back about 20,000 years.

The Utah scientists, pointing to genetic affinities between certain central Asian populations and New World aboriginal groups, suggest an Arctic coastal migration may have begun from river outlets in present-day north-central Russia.

Using skin boats and hunting along glacier-free refuges while the last ice age was still underway, the prehistoric travellers could have moved quickly along the northern Siberian coast to northern Alaska, Canada's Arctic Islands and beyond to eastern and southern parts of the Americas... 'Movement to the interior of the continent via the MacKenzie River drainage,' the authors assert, 'is plausible.'

Image source here.

Gratitude et joie

Going into Sunday...

Lucky number 13: three gold medals makes Canada tops in topping the podium

The Canadian Press: The host country at the Vancouver Games jumped into the record books Saturday with a total of 13 gold medals -- an all-time, all-season best that matched the most top-tier podium finishes by any nation in a Winter Olympics.

Canada won three golds in one day for the first time ever in a Winter Games... In terms of gold medals alone, the three on Saturday gave Canada the record for a host nation at a Winter Games -- previously 10, won by the US in Salt Lake City in 2002 and by Norway in Lillehammer in 1994.

Ten was also Canada's own benchmark for most golds claimed at an Olympics, summer or winter, established in Los Angeles in 1984.

Canada now shares the all-time biggest crop of gold medals for any country in a Winter Olympics with Norway in 2002 and the Soviet Union in 1976, and has a chance to outstrip it Sunday in the men's hockey final versus the United States.

Image source here.

Chile's 8.8: tsunami ETAs

Earthquake February 27, 12:34 AM in Chile;

five hours earlier in Vancouver

'The space to celebrate, to sing and dance'

Video: Spectacular Olympic Night Lights of Vancouver

Olympics profoundly transform downtown Vancouver

'It's been a bit of a smash hit, closing a bunch of our streets and creating this walking celebration.'

Vancouver Sun: For the past two weeks downtown Vancouver turned into a big street party as up to 150,000 people per day flooded into the core to wander around, take in the sights and check out the many cultural events. 'Downtown feels like a downtown should,' said heritage expert John Atkin. 'It's busy, it's crowded, it's active all hours of the night and everyone is having fun.'...

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson thinks one of the keys to the success one of the simplest: closing off several blocks of Granville and Robson. 'The road closures have enabled people to have the space to celebrate, to sing and dance'... The streets are animated with art, with musical acts, with street performers. The most important single factor in the vibe might be the Cultural Olympiad and the LiveCity sites... 'I stand to be corrected, but I think this is the largest arts and culture festival in Canadian history,' said Mayor Robertson...

The Cultural Olympiad was programmed by Robert Kerr, who put together a diverse program... The interesting thing about the cultural stuff is that it hasn't been mainstream. Kerr's philosophy is that people will respond to intellectually challenging music or culture, if only they get a chance to experience it... The masses have responded by coming out, and Kerr is delighted...

'I'm hoping we learn from this that we can actually do crowds. We don't need an omnipresent police [presence]'... Atkin said one of the ways the city has blossomed is that authorities have relaxed and allowed street life to just happen.

Image source here.

Cartoon of the day

Image source here.

Photo gallery here.

'Our allies' shameful methods'

Did we turn a blind eye to Afghan prisoners?

James Travers, Toronto Star: In the winter of 2007, three insurgents captured by Canada's top-secret Joint Task Force Two disappeared into the notorious Afghan prison system. Prime Minister Stephen Harper suspended Parliament rather than release related documents that raise difficult questions about the role of this country's special forces and spies in targeting, capturing and interrogating key enemies.

Linking those events are fears about Isa Mohammed and two other prisoners transferred to Kabul control by Canadians after successful Kandahar operations. In a private 2007 briefing, the prestigious International Committee of the Red Cross expressed concern to Canada that the men had either been killed or were being held by the US in one of its controversial 'black site' military prisons.

Dispatches detailing those worries, the names of the three missing men -- as well as a fourth who Canadians found -- and Red Cross frustration over the military's persistent failure to provide timely, accurate prisoner information are in the files the Harper government is withholding. Along with the parallel testimony of Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin, those documents pose a political problem for ruling Conservatives. More significantly, they are a threat to relations between Ottawa and Washington, which this country sent its troops to Afghanistan largely to reinforce...

Harper prorogued Parliament in December at least in part to put an end to awkward opposition questions about what generals and ministers knew about Afghan abuse of combatants... Now the Prime Minister can only hope that next week's throne speech and budget will distract attention from something much worse: Worry that Canadians turned a systematically blind eye to their allies' shameful methods.

Image: Members of Canada's secretive JTF2 unit escort three detainees across tarmac at the airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Jan. 21, 2002. Source here.

Gut feelings

Think Twice: How the Gut's 'Second Brain' Influences Mood and Well-Being

Scientific American: Technically known as the enteric nervous system, the second brain consists of sheaths of neurons embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut, or alimentary canal, which measures about nine meters end to end from the esophagus to the anus.

The second brain contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system... Thus equipped with its own reflexes and senses, the second brain can control gut behavior independently of the brain...

'The system is way too complicated to have evolved only to make sure things move out of your colon,' says Emeran Mayer... For example, scientists were shocked to learn that about 90 percent of the fibers in the primary visceral nerve, the vagus, carry information from the gut to the brain and not the other way around...

'A big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut,' Mayer says. Butterflies in the stomach -- signaling in the gut as part of our physiological stress response... is but one example. Although gastrointestinal (GI) turmoil can sour one's moods, everyday emotional well-being may rely on messages from the brain below to the brain above...

The enteric nervous system uses more than 30 neurotransmitters, just like the brain, and in fact 95 percent of the body's serotonin is found in the bowels... It's little wonder that meds meant to cause chemical changes in the mind often provoke GI issues as a side effect. Irritable bowel syndrome... also arises in part from too much serotonin in our entrails, and could perhaps be regarded as a 'mental illness' of the second brain...

Scientists are learning that the serotonin made by the enteric nervous system also play a role in more surprising diseases... 'It was totally unexpected that the gut would regulate bone mass to the extent that one could use this regulation to cure -- at least in rodents -- osteoporosis,' says Gerard Karsenty...

Serotonin seeping from the second brain might even play some part in autism... The same genes involved in synapse formation between neurons in the brain are involved in the alimentary synapse formation. 'If these genes are affected in autism,' says [Michael Gershon, author of the 1998 book, The Second Brain], 'it could explain why so many kids with autism have GI motor abnormalities.'... Cutting edge research is currently investigating how the second brain mediates the body's immune system response; after all, at least 70 percent of our immune system is aimed at the gut to expel and kill foreign invaders...

Mayer is doing work on how the trillions of bacteria in the gut 'communicate' with enteric nervous system cells (which they greatly outnumber). His work with the gut's nervous system has led him to think that in coming years psychiatry will need to expand to treat the second brain in addition to the one atop the shoulders... It may well behoove us all to pay more heed to our so-called 'gut feelings' in the future.

Image source here.

Valley fog in British Columbia

From the Earth Observatory:

February 21, 2010