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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (6201)	2/2/2005 8:57:37 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361250

So much for ..an apple a day... Tiny Pest Decimating Honeybee Colonies Tue Feb 1, FRESNO, Calif. - A tiny pest is decimating honeybee colonies across the country, worrying beekeepers and farmers who depend on the insects to pollinate their crops. Pollinating almond orchards is the immediate worry in California's agriculture industry, but the mites' devastation of the honeybee supply is causing concern across the country. Honeybees pollinate about one-third of the human diet and dozens of agricultural crops. California produces 80 percent of the world's almond supply. A $1 billion-a-year crop, the nuts have become the state's top agricultural export, ahead of wine and cotton. Because almonds are the first crop to flower, the state's growers are the first to suffer from the bee shortage. Bees are used to pollinate the orchards from mid-February to early March. "It's simple. We can't produce almonds without bees," said Scott Hunter, an almond farmer near Merced who's getting ready to lay 2,500 hives among the bare branches of his Butte and Padre trees. While their work starts in California's 550,000 acres of almonds, the hives then move to apple orchards, cherry groves and melon patches before finishing in New England's cranberry bogs in early summer. That's why researchers, beekeepers and growers are scrambling for ways to save the honeybees. Experts think the mites may have arrived in the mid-1980s from Asia, where they coexisted with local honeybees. In their years in North America, the eight-legged pests have devastated wild bee colonies and radically altered beekeeping. The pinhead-sized mite — the Varroa destructor — feeds on honeybees and their larvae. In some areas, they've destroyed as many as 60 percent of the hives. Reproducing quickly and in a closed environment, the mites have developed a resistance to pesticides — a trait they've been able to spread to their progeny faster than scientist have been able to develop new compounds to fight them off. "The fact that we don't have any compounds commercially available really is a serious issue," said Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, research leader at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Ariz. "This is a very serious problem." Researchers such as DeGrandi-Hoffman are looking for alternatives, working on isolating bees with a natural resistance to mites, and experimenting with elements such as plant oils and the mite-fighting compounds produced by some bees. But the process takes time, and the mites adapt very quickly, the researcher said. "You challenge them with a particular compound and, given time, they will become resistant to that," she said. Meanwhile, in California's almond orchards, the bee shortage is leading growers to offer beekeepers almost twice what they paid last year for their bees' services — up to $100 per hive. Growers have been riding a wave of good prices and strong demand, but they say the mite crisis is squeezing their profits. Dan Cummings grows 4,000 acres of nuts in Butte, Colusa and Glenn counties. He's one step ahead of other farmers, since he's also part owner of 9,000 hives — many of which pollinate his crops. Still, he said he's seen honeybee rentals go from being about 8 percent of his total expenses to nearly twice that. The higher prices soften the blow to beekeepers, many of whom have seen their colonies cut in half by mites. But they still worry that without a quick solution, their livelihood — and their lifestyle — may be in danger. Every year, Jeff Anderson and his family pack their bee colonies in Eagle Bend, Minn., to embark on a 1,900-mile trip — one way — to Oakdale, Calif. It's here among the Central Valley's orchards that Anderson reaps most of his income. He hauled 5,000 hives this year, most of them owned by other keepers. His California-Minnesota Honey Farm has been crossing the country since 1962, and Anderson's been traveling with it for the last three decades. But he said he's never worked with so few bees. This year, he's lost about half his hives to mites. "It's a panic situation," he said.

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (6201)	2/2/2005 9:15:29 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361250

Global warming inevitable for decades to come, science conference told Tue Feb 1, 2:38 PM ET EXETER, England (AFP) - A climate conference opened to renewed concern about the worsening threat of global warming and appeals from Britain to its ally, the United States, not to stand on the sidelines. British Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett, in a speech to open the three-day meeting of more than 100 scientists, said all countries emitted greenhouse gases and so the problem required an international response. "A significant impact (on the world's climate system) is already inevitable," she said. "What is certainly clear is that temperatures will go on rising... most of the warming we are expecting over the next few decades is now virtually inevitable." Beckett warned: "No one country, not even one continent, can solve the problem by acting alone." She hailed the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites), the UN's pact on carbon pollution, which takes life on February 16 after more than seven years of haggling to complete its rulebook and secure its ratification. "Kyoto is very much a first step"," said Beckett, who also lobbied for clean technology and encouragement for developing countries not to follow rich nations down the path of fossil-fuel pollution. Analysts say the prospects for Kyoto are clouded at best, given that it lacks the United States, the world's No. 1 carbon polluter. US President George Bush (news - web sites) declared in 2001 that the deal was too expensive for the oil-dependent American economy. Beckett admitted it was "out of the question" for Washington to return to Kyoto after this walkout, but "we would like to see America engaging very much more fully" in international cooperation on carbon pollution. The Exeter conference, "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change," gathers more than 100 scientists from 30 countries. The forum has been called by President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s closest political friend, British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), who as president of the Group of Eight (G8) countries has been lobbying Washington to do more on tackling climate change. It is the biggest scientific confab on greenhouse gases since the publication in 2001 of a report by the UN's top expert group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That report -- next to be updated in 2007 -- calculated that, by 2100, temperatures would rise by between 1.4 Celsius (2.5 Fahrenheit) and 5.8 C (10.4 F) compared to 1990 levels, driven by atmospheric carbon pollution which stokes up heat from the Sun. More than three dozen papers are to be presented in Exeter, and they will be synthesised in a set of conference conclusions that will be submitted to the Group of Eight (G8) nations, currently chaired by Britain. But there will not be any recommendations for policymakers, said conference chairman Dennis Tirpak. The studies range from highly technical reports on improving computer models to predictions about the impact of climate change on crops, biodiversity, disease and apocalyptic scenarios involving runaway global warming. The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialised signatories -- excluding the United States, which rejected the deal in 2001 as too costly for the oil-dependent US economy -- to trim output of six greenhouse gases by a deadline of 2008-2012. At best, without the United States, the biggest single carbon polluter, Kyoto will shave two or three points of the predicted 30-percent rise in global CO2 emissions between 1990 and 2010. But scientists say this effort is puny compared to what is needed to stave off potentially catastrophic and enduring damage to the climate system. The European Union (news - web sites) (EU) has suggested the world strive to keep the additional rise down to less than 2 C (3.6 F) through pollution controls. But IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri told the conference that climate science was still in its infancy. No-one can say with certainty what a safe figure would be, not least because some regions could be worse hit than others, he warned. "Can a temperature target capture the limits of what is dangerous?" he asked. Even if today's emissions were immediately stopped, temperatures will continue to rise for generations to come because of the gas which has already been spewed into the atmosphere, Pachauri said. story.news.yahoo.com