tagged w/ Ethics
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A story about a time I had the choice to do the right thing or the easy thing when no one was looking...and made the wrong choice.A story about a time I had the choice to do the right thing or the easy thing when no... more
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Does capitalism encourage people to treat each other better?
http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/columns/michael-shermer/evolution-ethics-and-the-market
By Michael Shermer
Friday, August 27, 2010
Given the economic roller-coaster ride of the past two years, the idea that capitalism promotes morality might seem like an oxymoron. The imperfections of the market system, the wild swings of the boom-and-bust cycle, and the "animal spirits" of irrational investors have revealed the gulf between economic theory and financial reality — and have put the advocates of capitalism on the defensive.
But let's not get carried away. As every economist knows, the market system, based on the free exchange of goods, is the greatest prosperity-generating machine ever invented. Nor are markets just a necessary evil that we must regretfully tolerate. To the contrary, trade itself leads directly and measurably to greater virtue — to higher levels of generosity, fairness, and trust. But don't take my word for it. There is plenty of experimental evidence to back me up, and it points to the deep evolutionary foundations of the market's moral effects.
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith observed that no one "ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog." But Smith might have come to a different conclusion if he had examined primates. The ethologist Nicola Koyama and her colleagues at Liverpool John Moores University (UK) discovered that their chimpanzee charges performed favors for each other and exchanged them later for alliances, food, and sex. They found that if chimp A groomed chimp B, then chimp B would be more likely to support chimp A in a fight with others the next day, especially if it was chimp A who started the fight. The researchers interpreted this to mean that chimpanzees cooperate with one another through trade in anticipation of possible future needs. In this sense, free and fair trade should be understood not just as an exchange of money for products or services but as any transaction between two individuals that benefits both.
The primatologist Frans de Waal at Emory University has reached similar conclusions about the evolutionary origins of trade. In his book Chimpanzee Politics, he describes a range of chimpanzee behavior that clearly amount to “direct payment for services rendered.” As he writes, “Chimpanzee group life is like a market in power, sex, affection, support, intolerance, and hostility. The two basic rules are ‘one good turn deserves another’ and ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’”
In one experiment conducted by de Waal and his colleagues, two capuchin monkeys were trained to exchange a granite stone for a cucumber slice. They cooperated 95 percent of the time. But if one monkey received instead a grape (a delicacy for capuchins, greatly preferred over cucumbers), the other monkey cooperated only 60 percent of the time and sometimes even refused the cucumber slice altogether. In a third situation, in which one monkey received a grape without even having to swap a granite stone for it, the other monkey cooperated only 20 percent of the time. These experiments suggest not only that exchange is a deeply evolved aspect of primate sociality but that our sense of justice, shared with our primate cousins, has developed in tandem with market behavior.
The psychologist Joseph Henrich of the University of British Columbia has tested this hypothesis with human subjects. He and his colleagues engaged over 2,000 people in 15 small communities around the world in a two-player exchange called the “ultimatum game,” in which one subject is given a sum of money equivalent to a day’s pay and is allowed to keep or share some or all of it with another person. Let’s say I give you $100 to split between yourself and your partner in the game. Whatever division of the money you propose, if your partner accepts it, you are both richer by that amount, but if he rejects it, neither of you receives any money.
How much would you offer? Why not suggest a $90-$10 split, as classical economics predicts, thus maximizing your personal profit? The other player wouldn't turn down a free ten bucks, would he? As it turns out, he would very often. In Henrich's research, proposals that deviated much beyond a $70-$30 split were usually rejected. But not always. There was variation between groups and societies. Henrich and his team found that people in hunter-gatherer communities shared about 25 percent of the pot, while people in societies who regularly engage in trade gave away about 45 percent. What they called "market integration" was by far the strongest predictor of fairness and generosity.
Henrich concluded that norms of market fairness “evolved as part of an overall process of societal evolution to sustain mutually beneficial exchanges in contexts where established social relationships (for example, kin, reciprocity, and status) were insufficient.” In other words, we are naturally inclined to be fair and generous with our kin and kind because of genetic relatedness and reciprocal connectedness. But to get people to be fair and generous to strangers in other tribes, we need cultural institutions, especially trade.
Nor are the causal relationships all in one direction. The more such cooperative behavior expands, the more it encourages the creation of wealth and trade. As Paul Zak of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University puts it, “Trust facilitates transactions by reducing the number of contingencies that must be considered when ‘doing a deal.’ A deal sealed with a handshake between principals can only occur in a high-trust situation. . . . When transaction costs are higher, fewer transactions occur, and investment and economic growth are lower. Trust is among the most powerful stimulants for investment and economic growth that economists have discovered.”
In short, important as it may be to figure out the causes of the current economic downturn, we should not lose sight of the big picture: trade makes people more trusting and trustworthy, which makes them more inclined to trade, which increases trust — and round and round it goes in a positive feedback loop that generates not just unprecedented prosperity but civilized virtue as well.Does capitalism encourage people to treat each other better?... more
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-vernon-20100820,0,284929.story
Bell isn't the only city that has paid huge salaries: In neighboring Vernon, a former city administrator who now serves as a legal consultant has topped the $1-million mark for each of the last four years, records show.
Eric T. Fresch was paid nearly $1.65 million in salary and hourly billings in 2008, when he held the dual jobs of city administrator and deputy city attorney, according to documents obtained by The Times through the California Public Records Act.
Described by city officials as an experienced finance attorney, Fresch was paid nearly $1.2 million last year, records show. Through July 31 of this year, he has earned about $643,000 as "outside legal counsel."
Other highly compensated employees include Donal O'Callaghan, who was paid nearly $785,000 last year as city administrator and director of light and power, overseeing Vernon's city-owned utility. He now earns $384,000 a year overseeing capital projects for the utility after stepping down July 20 as city administrator.http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-vernon-20100820,0,284929.story
Bell... more
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Organized labor continues to weigh into the governor’s race, launching a $2-million television advertising buy this week in support of Democratic nominee Jerry Brown and distributing fliers at workplaces around the state.
The ads will begin airing possibly Thursday, according to Willie L. Pelote Sr., assistant director of the political action department of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has 179,000 members in California and 1.6 million nationwide.Organized labor continues to weigh into the governor’s race, launching a... more
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Loulan Pitre Sr. was born on the Gulf Coast in 1921, the son of an oysterman. Nearly all his life, he worked on the water, abiding by the widely shared faith that the resources of the Gulf of Mexico were limitless.
As a young Marine staff sergeant, back home after fighting in the South Pacific, he stood on barges in the gulf and watched as surplus mines, bombs and ammunition were pushed over the side.
He helped build the gulf’s very first offshore oil drilling platforms in the late 1940s, installing bolts on perilously high perches over the water. He worked on a shrimp boat, and later as the captain of a service boat for drilling platforms.
The gulf has changed, Mr. Pitre said: “I think it’s too far gone to salvage.”
The BP oil spill has sent millions of barrels gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, focusing international attention on America’s third coast and prompting questions about whether it will ever fully recover from the spill.
Now that the oil on the surface appears to be dissipating, the notion of a recovery from the spill, repeated by politicians, strikes some here as short-sighted. The gulf had been suffering for decades before the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20.
“There’s a tremendous amount of outrage with the oil spill, and rightfully so,” said Felicia Coleman, director of Florida State University’s Coastal and Marine Laboratory. “But where’s the outrage at the thousands and millions of little cuts we’ve made on a daily basis?”
The gulf is one of the most diverse ecosystems in the hemisphere, a stopping point for migratory birds from South America to the Arctic, home to abundant wildlife and natural resources.
But like no other American body of water, the gulf bears the environmental consequences of the country’s economic pursuits and appetites, including oil and corn.
There are around 4,000 offshore oil and gas platforms and tens of thousands of miles of pipeline in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, where 90 percent of the country’s offshore drilling takes place.
At least half a million barrels of oil and drilling fluids had been spilled offshore before the gusher that began after the April 20 explosion, according to government records.
Much more than that has been spilled from pipelines, vessel traffic and wells in state waters — including hundreds of spills in Louisiana alone — records show, some of it since April 20.
Runoff and waste from cornfields, sewage plants, golf courses and oil-stained parking lots drain into the Mississippi River from vast swaths of the United States, and then flow down to the gulf, creating a zone of lifeless water the size of Lake Ontario just off the coast of Louisiana.
The gulf’s floor is littered with bombs, chemical weapons and other ordnance dumped in the middle of last century, even in areas busy with drilling, and miles outside of designated dumping zones, according to experts who work on deepwater hazard surveys.
The likelihood of an accident is low, experts said, but they added that federal hazard mitigation requirements are not strong enough to guarantee the safety of drillers working in the gulf.
Even the coast itself — overdeveloped, strip-mined and battered by storms — is falling apart. The wildlife-rich coastal wetlands of Louisiana, sliced up and drastically engineered for oil and gas exploration, shipping and flood control, have lost an area larger than Delaware since 1930.
“This has been the nation’s sacrifice zone, and has been for 50-plus years,” said Aaron Viles, campaign director for the Gulf Restoration Network, a nonprofit group. “What we’re seeing right now with BP’s crude is just a very photogenic representation of that.”
History of Neglect
All along the coast, people speak of a lack of regulatory commitment and investment in scientific research on the gulf by state and federal lawmakers.
They note, for example, that over the last decade, the Environmental Protection Agency’s financing for the Chesapeake Bay Program, a regional and federal partnership, was nearly five times the amount for a similar Gulf of Mexico program, and a Great Lakes program was given more than four times as much.
“The funding had never been equivalent to other great water bodies,” said Lisa Jackson, the administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. “That’s absolutely true. But it’s also absolutely true that this administration changed that long before the spill.”
While the Gulf of Mexico program financing remains at roughly the same levels, Ms. Jackson pointed to other programs to address gulf health that have been created and received tens of millions of dollars in the last two years.
On July 19, the Obama administration announced the recommendations of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, a committee created in 2009 to coordinate governance over the country’s major bodies of water.
The White House also announced the creation of a gulf restoration road map before the spill to address the long-term problems on the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts.
Multiple Interactive Gulf of Mexico maps - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/28/us/20100428-spill-map.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/us/30gulf.html?_r=1Loulan Pitre Sr. was born on the Gulf Coast in 1921, the son of an oysterman. Nearly... more
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WASHINGTON—A bill that would have provided up to $7.4 billion in aid to people sickened by World Trade Center dust fell short in the House on Thursday, raising the possibility that the bulk of compensation for the ill will come from a legal settlement hammered out in the federal courts.
The bill would have provided free health care and compensation payments to 9/11 rescue and recovery workers who fell ill after working in the trade center ruins.
It failed to win the needed two-thirds majority, 255-159. The vote was largely along party lines, with 12 Republicans joining Democrats supporting the measure.
For weeks, a judge and teams of lawyers have been urging 10,000 former ground zero workers to sign on to a court-supervised settlement that would split $713 million among people who developed respiratory problems and other illnesses after inhaling trade center ash.
The court deal shares some similarities with the aid program that the federal legislation would have created, but it involves far less money. Only the most seriously ill of the thousands of police officers, firefighters and construction workers suing New York City over their exposure to the dust would be eligible for a hefty payout.
But supporters of the deal have been saying the court settlement is the only realistic option for the sick, because Congress will never act.
"Ladies and gentlemen, you can wait and wait and wait for that legislation ... it's not passing,"
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Kenneth Feinberg, the former special master of the federal 9/11 victim compensation fund, told an audience of ground zero responders Monday in a meeting on Staten Island.
Democratic leaders opted to consider the House bill under a procedure that requires a two-thirds vote for approval rather than a simple majority. Such a move blocked potential GOP amendments to the measure.
A key backer of the bill, U.S. Rep. Peter King, a Long Island Republican, accused Democrats of staging a "charade."
King said Democrats were "petrified" about casting votes as the fall elections near on controversial amendments, possibly including one that could ban the bill from covering illegal immigrants who were sickened by trade center dust.
If Democrats brought it to the floor as a regular bill, King said, it would have passed with majority support.
GOP critics branded the bill as yet another big-government "massive new entitlement program" that would have increased taxes and possibly kill jobs.
To pay the bill's estimated $7.4 billion cost over 10 years, the legislation would have prevented foreign multinational corporations incorporated in tax haven countries from avoiding tax on income earned in the U.S.
Bill supporters said that would close a tax loophole. Republicans branded it a corporate tax increase.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the vote an "outrage." He said it was clearly a tactic designed to stall the bill.
"This is a way to avoid having to make a tough decision," Bloomberg said, adding that the nation owes more to "the people who worked down at 9/11 whose health has fallen apart because they did what America wanted them to do."
John Feal, a ground zero demolition worker who has lobbied extensively for the legislation, expressed disgust.
"They pulled the rug out from beneath our feet," Feal said. "Whatever member of Congress vote against this bill, whether Republican or Democrat, should go to jail for manslaughter."
The bill would have provided up to $3.2 billion to cover the medical treatment of people sickened by trade center dust and an additional $4.2 billion for a new fund that would have compensated them for their suffering and lost wages.
The potential promise of a substantial payout from the federal government had caused some ground zero workers to balk at participating in the proposed legal settlement, which would resolve as many as 10,000 lawsuits against the city.
Initially, the bill would have prohibited people from participating in the new federal compensation program if they had already been compensated for their injuries through a lawsuit, but a change was made in recent days eliminating that restriction.
Nevertheless, with the House rejecting the bill and no vote scheduled on a similar Senate version, it appears almost guaranteed that there will be no new federal law by Sept. 8, the date by which ground zero workers involved in the lawsuits must decide whether to accept the settlement offer.
Under the terms of the deal, 95 percent of those workers must say yes for the court settlement to take effect.
The compensation system set up by the court would make payments ranging from $3,250 for people who aren't sick but worry they could fall ill in the future to as much as $1.5 million to the families of people who have died. Nonsmokers disabled by severe asthma might get between $800,000 and $1 million.
About 25 percent of the money would go to pay legal fees. Contested claims would be heard by Feinberg, who would act as an appeals officer.
Researchers have found that thousands of New Yorkers exposed to trade center dust are now suffering from breathing difficulties similar to asthma. Many have also complained of heartburn or acid reflux, and studies have shown that firefighters who worked on the debris pile suffer from elevated levels of sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease.
Many of the workers also fear that the dust is giving people cancer, although scientific studies have failed to find evidence of such a link.
The exact number of sick is unclear. Nearly 15,900 people received treatment last year through medical programs set up to treat Sept. 11-related illnesses, but doctors say many of those people suffered from conditions that are common in the general public.
The House bill is named for James Zadroga, a police detective who died at age 34. His supporters say he died from respiratory disease contracted at ground zero, but New York City's medical examiner said Zadroga's lung condition was caused by prescription drug abuse.
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http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15632670?nclick_check=1WASHINGTON—A bill that would have provided up to $7.4 billion in aid to people... more
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The truth about your beauty products...
If you've been hanging out on the site lately, you know we've been doing a lot of writing about cosmetics, personal-care products, sunscreen, and the like in our No More Dirty Looks series. Based on a book I wrote with my friend Alexandra Spunt, the series is our attempt to share what we've learned about the health and environmental impacts of all the goop we put on ourselves every day.
Anyway, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has been working tirelessly to change legislation since 2004, and today they have some huge news. First, they announced the introduction of new legislation by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and second, they have launched this amazing new video with the Story of Stuff Project. It's eight minutes long, and you should watch all eight of them.
GOOD is a collaboration of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits pushing the world forward. Since 2006 we've been making a magazine, videos, and events for people who give a damn.
http://www.sustainlane.com/reviews/the-story-of-cosmetics/1H1I82QIWZBC9O3JUQOS1CNJ78PYThe truth about your beauty products...
If you've been hanging out on the site... more
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Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper today became the first House Democratic candidate to give up campaign contributions from Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., after a committee charged him with ethics violations last week.
Dahlkemper's campaign announced it is donating $14,000 -- the equivalent of the amount received from Rangel -- to local organizations and charities, according to the Erie Times-News. Dahlkemper, a freshman member, is running for re-election in a seat the non-partisan Cook Political Report calls a tossup.
"As our office indicated several months ago, the congresswoman would not act on campaign contributions from Mr. Rangel until the House Committee on Standards and Conduct had issued a decision," according to a statement from the Dahlkemper campaign. "Now that the ethics committee has determined that Mr. Rangel violated House rules, Rep. Dahlkemper has decided not to keep the contributions. They will be donated to local charities."
and on a lighter note...Democrat Kerry FAILS to pay taxes..Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper today became the first House Democratic candidate to give up... more
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ayipis
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The Dog in the Lifeboat: The Importance of Teaching Ethics to Children
by Marc Bekoff July 23, 2010 03:30 PM (PT) Topics:
Marc Bekoff, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, is a columnist for Change.org.
Children are inherently and intuitively curious naturalists. They're sponges for knowledge — absorbing, retaining and using new information at astounding rates. We all know this, but often we forget when we're helping to develop their roles as future ambassadors with other animals, nature and ourselves. Some are also future leaders on whose spirit and good will many of us will depend. That’s where Jane Goodall's global Roots & Shoots program comes in, to engage young students in discussions about animal behavior, ecology, conservation biology and the nature of human-animal interactions through activities focused on care and concern for animals, human communities and the places in which we all live together. The basic tenets of the program are that every individual is important and every individual makes a difference.
In a third grade class that was part of the Roots & Shoots program, I posed the following question as a often-used thought experiment to a group of young students: There are three humans and one dog in a lifeboat that can only hold three bodies — which of the four should be thrown overboard?
How Would You Resolve the "Dog in the Lifeboat" Question?
(1) Human lives are more valuable than animal lives; the dog has to go.
(2) I'm with the kids; there has to be a way to save everyone.
(3) The dog should get equal consideration; if one of the humans is old or sick, the dog stays.
Generally, when this situation is discussed, most people agree that, all other things being equal, reluctantly the dog has to go. But then I started to introduce variations on the theme. For example, perhaps two of the humans are healthy youngsters and one is an elderly person who is blind, deaf, paralyzed, without any family or friends, and likely to die within a week. The dog is a healthy puppy. The students admitted this was a very difficult situation and that maybe, just maybe, the elderly human might be sacrificed because he had already lived a full life, wouldn't be missed and had little future. Indeed, this is very sophisticated thinking that perhaps the elderly person had less to lose than either of the other humans or the dog. Let me stress that all students agreed that this line of thinking was not meant to devalue the elderly human. And, in the end, the students, like most people, reluctantly concluded that regardless of the humans' ages or other characteristics, the dog has to go.
But the students didn’t give up easily.
The level of discussion overwhelmed me. Students raised considerations of quality of life, longevity, value of life, and losses to surviving family and friends. But what really amazed and pleased me was that after we discussed alternatives, the students wanted to work it out so that no one had to be thrown overboard. I experienced this line of reasoning in numerous different countries in similarly aged kids.
Why did any individual have to be thrown over? they asked. Let's not do it. When I said that the thought experiment required that at least one individual had to be tossed, they said this simply wasn't acceptable! Then they started to generate ideas about how all individuals could be saved, such as having the dog swim along the side of the boat and feeding her, having them all switch off swimming, taking off shoes and throwing overboard all things that weren't needed in order to reduce weight and bulk, and cutting the boat in two and making two rafts. All students thought that even if the dog had to go, she would have a better chance of living because more could be done by the humans to save the dog than vice versa. Very sophisticated reasoning indeed.
I've discussed this example many times with numerous different groups of older students and adults, and never before had a group unanimously decided that everyone must be saved. I sat there smiling and thinking, now these are the kinds of people in whom I'd feel comfortable placing my future.
In the future, these youngsters will be other animals' and our voices; indeed, the voices of the universe. So, it makes good sense to teach children well, to be role models, to infuse their education with kindness and compassion so that their decisions are founded on a deeply rooted, automatic reflex-like caring ethic. If we don't, the children, adults, other animals, human communities, and environments will suffer.
These children will be the ones rowing the lifeboat for all of us.
Photo credit: hillary hThe Dog in the Lifeboat: The Importance of Teaching Ethics to Children
by Marc Bekoff... more
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In 2006, under chemical-industry pressure, and over arguments that the studies were scientifically and ethically bankrupt, the EPA declared such data acceptable. On June 16, the EPA reversed its decision.
Almost every standard code of medical ethics — including the Nuremberg Code, written in response to Nazi doctors’ nightmare studies — forbid human tests of drugs or chemicals that may cause harm, but can provide no direct benefit.
The chemical industry, however, has long argued that the EPA should accept data from tests in which healthy volunteers are paid for exposing themselves to pesticides and other known toxins. The industry says such data provide a more accurate picture of chemical effects than animal studies.In 2006, under chemical-industry pressure, and over arguments that the studies were... more
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At the peak of the housing frenzy, California landlord Jeff Greene made a shrewd move that countless American investors and homeowners wish they would have mimicked.At the peak of the housing frenzy, California landlord Jeff Greene made a shrewd move... more
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Governor Charlie Crist showed his true colors by appointing a Republican white male to the Lee County Commission seat.Governor Charlie Crist showed his true colors by appointing a Republican white male to... more
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On one hand, I am completely sympathetic to this guy's situation, but on the other hand, I cannot help but wonder how a man who was raped as a child can successfully sue the Catholic Church when neither he, his half-brother, nor his mother had any idea that his father was a Catholic priest (until after the fact). Any thoughts about that?On one hand, I am completely sympathetic to this guy's situation, but on the... more
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Stephen Fry provides his very articulate and thoughtful opinion on Catholicism and the Catholic Church at the Intelligence Squared Debate.Stephen Fry provides his very articulate and thoughtful opinion on Catholicism and the... more
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Whale sharks, the biggest fish in the sea, may be the latest victims of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported this week that four of the polka-dotted creatures, stretching about 40 feet long, had been spotted swimming alongside oil in search of food.
Since whale sharks are filter feeders -- scooping up plankton and small fish with their gaping mouths as they swim just beneath the surface -- scientists are concerned they will swallow large amounts of toxic oil and die.
"The problem is that these are surface feeding animals and if they digest the oil they will sink and we will not know how many are dying," said Dr. Eric Hoffmayer, who has studied whales in the northern Gulf for the University of Southern Mississippi.
"I don't think there is any question we're going to lose whale sharks to this oil spill. That's why we need to tag these sharks so that we can determine how they are impacted by the oil," Hoffmayer told Reuters.
Hoffmayer spent three days on the Gulf where he and other researchers discovered an extraordinary gathering of more than 100 feeding whale sharks about 90 miles south of Grand Isle, La.
The site where they were feeding was about 60 miles west of BP Plc's blown-out Macondo well off the Louisiana coast and the gathering of whale sharks was among the largest seen in the northern Gulf of Mexico, Hoffmayer said.
In addition to the danger inherent in swallowing oil, it could cause untold harm to the giant but vulnerable fish when they force the water they feed on, after it is sucked into their mouths, to filter out through their gills.
Hoffmayer and a team of marine scientists came up with a plan Thursday to tag the sharks so they can track their movements and hopefully find out if oil is being digested.
One of the big problems, he said, is that there is no known way of steering the whale sharks away from oil contaminated areas of the Gulf.
Marine scientists in Mississippi are hoping to save other species from the oil, which breached Mississippi's mainland this week for the first time.
http://www.canada.com/technology/environment/Gulf spill threatens world largest fish/3236621/story.html
http://www.canada.com/technology/environment/3236622.bin?size=620x400Whale sharks, the biggest fish in the sea, may be the latest victims of the massive... more
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This interesting video is a trailer for a documentary, "The Tiger Next Door," the story of a man named Dennis Hill who has been breeding and selling tigers from his backyard for over 15 years. Hill's dream is to breed a stripeless white tiger -- but at what cost to the animals, and at what risk to the community?This interesting video is a trailer for a documentary, "The Tiger Next... more
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A senator is trying to do so because of a heinous crime commited over a 2-4 day period. Six people either witnessed or helped commit a crime of torture and abuse with the end resulting in a young woman's death. If any of the six had called 911 to report the abuse Jennifer could still be alive and smiling at everyone she met.
What's your opinion?
http://kdka.com/local/jennifers.law.proposal.2.1763283.htmlA senator is trying to do so because of a heinous crime commited over a 2-4 day... more
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A joint commission meeting in Alaska recommended lifting the ban on harvesting polar bears for traditional and cultural purposes in Russia.
The U.S.-Russia Polar Bear Commission met this week in Anchorage to determine the potential for a planned harvest by Native peoples in Alaska and Chukotka in Russia who subsist on the bears.
The harvest would be limited to up to 58 polar bears a year, with no more than 19 females.
The move would end a 50-year ban on the Russian side. It is expected to improve monitoring and decrease poaching in that country.
In Alaska, a team will develop a plan that will be presented at the next meeting of the commission in June 2011.
Alaska Natives harvested an average of 38 polar bears a year from 2004 to 2008.
http://www.animaljournal.org/2010/06/16/alaska-says-sure-kill-polar-bears/ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A joint commission meeting in Alaska recommended lifting the... more
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Here on the open ocean, 12 miles from ground zero of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the gulf is hovering between life and death.
The large strands of sargassum seaweed atop the ocean are normally noisy with birds and thick with crustaceans, small fish and sea turtles. But now this is a silent panorama, heavy with the smell of oil.
There are no birds. The seaweed is soaked in rust-colored crude and chemical dispersant. It is devoid of life except for the occasional juvenile sea turtle, speckled with oil and clinging to the only habitat it knows. Thick ribbons of oil spread out through the sea like the strips in egg flower soup, gorgeous and deadly.
A few dead fish float in the water, though dolphin-fish, tuna, flying fish and the occasional shark can still be seen swimming near the surface, threading their way through the wavy, sometimes iridescent gobs of crude.
“This is devastating. I mean literally, it’s terrible. All this should be pretty much blue water, and — look at it. It just looks bad,” said Kevin Aderhold, a longtime charter fishing captain who has been taking a team of researchers deep into the gulf every day to rescue oil-soaked sea turtles.
“When this first happened, a lot of us were like, they’ll cap that thing and we’ll be out fishing again. Now reality’s set in. Look around you. This is long-term. This’ll be here for-ev-er.”
And then it gets worse. When the weather is calm and the sea is placid, ships trailing fireproof booms corral the black oil, the coated seaweed and whatever may be caught in it, and torch it into hundred-foot flames, sending plumes of smoke skyward in ebony mushrooms. This patch of unmarked ocean gets designated over the radio as “the burn box.”
Wildlife researchers operating here, in the regions closest to the spill, are witnesses to a disquieting choice: Protecting shorebirds, delicate marshes and prime tourist beaches along the coast by stopping the oil before it moves ashore has meant the largely unseen sacrifice of some wildlife out at sea, poisoned with chemical dispersants and sometimes boiled by the burning of spilled oil on the water’s surface.
“It reflects the conventional wisdom of oil spills: If they just keep the oil out at sea, the harm will be minimal. And I disagree with that completely,” said Blair Witherington, a research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who has been part of the sea turtle rescue mission.
By unhappy coincidence, the same convergences of ocean currents that create long mats of sargassum — nurturing countless crabs, slugs and surface fish that are crucial food for turtles, birds and larger fish — also coalesce the oil, creating islands of death sometimes 30 miles long.
“Most of the Gulf of Mexico is a desert. Nothing out there to live on. It’s all concentrated in these oases,” Witherington said.
“Ordinarily, the sargassum is a nice, golden color. You shake it, and all kinds of life comes out: shrimp, crabs, worms, sea slugs. The place is really just bursting with life. It’s the base of the food chain. And these areas we’re seeing here by comparison are quite dead,” he said.
“It’s amazing. We’ll see flying fish, and they’ll land in this stuff and just get stuck.”
Hardest hit of all, it appears, are the sea jellies and snails that drift along the gulf’s surface, some of the most important food sources for sea turtles.
“These animals drift into the oil lines and it’s like flies on fly paper,” Witherington said. “As far as I can tell, that whole fauna is just completely wiped out.”
The turtle rescue team sets out at 6 a.m. in the muggy warm stillness of the harbor at Venice, La. The researchers move into the open gulf about an hour later, past a line of shrimp boats deputized to lay boom along the coastal marshes.
Closer to the Deepwater Horizon site, the water takes on a foreboding gray pallor tinged with a rainbow-like sheen. Soon, the oil begins swirling around the boat and the seascape smells like an auto mechanic’s garage.
Strewn among the oil and seaweed are human flotsam: an orange hardhat, a pie pan, a wire coat hanger, yellow margarine-tub lids, a black-and-green ashtray. The crew has found papers — long at sea on global currents — bearing inscriptions in Spanish, Arabic, Greek and Chinese.
The only sound that breaks the stillness is the deep thrum of the motors of the large charter boat and a small skiff carrying the turtle researchers. From dawn until nearly dusk, across sargassum islands that normally are alive with birds looking for crabs and snails — bridal terns, shearwaters, storm-petrels — only one bird is seen.
The Premier Explorer, which is helping coordinate cleanup operations at the broken well, announces the day’s burn box: A 500-square-mile field within which 16 controlled burns will be conducted.
In the days since the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, more than 5 million gallons of oil have been consumed in more than 165 burns.
But the burn operations have proved particularly excruciating for the turtle researchers, who have been trolling the same lines of oil and seaweed as the boom boats, hoping to pull turtles out of the sargassum before they are burned alive.
Much of the wildlife here seems doomed in any case. “We’ve seen the oil covering the turtles so thick they could barely move, could hardly lift their heads,” Witherington said. “I won’t pretend to know which is the nastiest.”
Yet in one case, the crew had to fall back and watch as skimmers gathered up a long line of sargassum that hadn’t yet been searched — and which they believe was full of turtles that might have been saved.
“In a perfect world, they’d gather up the material and let us search it before they burned it,” Witherington said. “But that connection hasn’t been made. The lines of communication aren’t there.”
The smoke starts rising on the horizon at midday. The two boats carrying the researchers head in different directions, hoping to find and rescue a few more turtles before their mission wraps up. They find 11, all of them heavily speckled with oil.
Each day, the chances of rescues grow smaller. That there are still so many left stranded in the oil without food is a small miracle. Their long-term chances “are zero,” Witherington said.
“Turtles just take a long time to die.”
Write a letter to save the sea turtles! http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1723/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=3739
http://www.animaljournal.org/2010/06/17/bp-gives-choice-to-turtles-burn-to-death-or-drown-in-oil/Here on the open ocean, 12 miles from ground zero of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,... more
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