so long and thanks for the plankton

by twit

I realize it sounds like “good news” because for now, the Bush Administration just got smacked by a federal judge, but I’m not optimistic about how a constitutional showdown in the US Supreme Court might turn out.  November 2008 just seems a little too far away to make a difference to the world’s remaining whale population.

From the Associated Press via TBO.com on Feb 4, 2008:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Navy must follow environmental laws placing strict limits on sonar training that opponents argue harms whales, despite President Bush’s decision to exempt it, a federal judge ruled Monday.

The Navy is not “exempted from compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act” and a court injunction creating a 12 nautical-mile no-sonar zone off Southern California, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote in a 36-page decision.

“We disagree with the judge’s decision,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. “We believe the orders are legal and appropriate.”

Background materials on the issue of naval sonar and the effects on whales include:

“Whale Stranding in N.C. Followed Navy Sonar Use”
by The Washington Post on January 28, 2005:

The possible connection between naval sonar and the deaths of whales and other marine mammals has become an increasingly controversial issue since the Navy acknowledged that the loud blasts of its sonar helped cause a mass stranding of whales in the Bahamas in 2000.

National Geographic on March 31, 2004:

Balcomb confirmed at the time that strange underwater pinging noises detected with underwater microphones were sonar. The sound originated from a U.S. Navy frigate 12 miles (19 kilometers) distant, Balcomb said. The vessel eventually moved within 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) of Puget Sound.

The marine biologist recalled that one pod of orcas appeared agitated and were moving haphazardly, attempting to lift their heads free of the water. “It’s like they where searching for some way out of the sound field,” Balcomb said.

… A study published last October in the science journal Nature argued that naval sonar exercises could have killed beaked whales in the Canary Islands—located off northwest Africa—by forcing them to surface too quickly, causing decompression sickness, or the bends.

Balcomb said the unusual orca behavior he observed near Puget Sound last year brought to mind a whale stranding that occurred three years earlier in the Bahamas.

At the time 14 beaked whales became beached on the same day that U.S. Navy destroyers where engaged in a sonar exercise. CAT scans of two heads collected from six whales that died confirmed later that the whales experienced hemorrhaging around the brain and ears.

and why is the Navy doing this?

On September 1, 2007, the BBC reports on a case where the government won the right to use the sonar:

The US navy has won the latest round in a court battle over whether it can use sonar equipment which environmentalists say can kill whales and other mammals. An appeals court overturned a decision banning the use of sonar equipment in tests to be held off California. National security needs must be weighed against protecting the safety of marine mammals, the judges ruled.

… “The public does indeed have a very considerable interest in preserving our natural environment and especially relatively scarce whales,” Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote in the ruling.

“But it also has an interest in national defence. We are currently engaged in war, in two countries.”

The twit sometimes has to talk to herself to fully process things. We need worldwide sonar, because we are at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The great sea battles of the desert wars remain unwritten and our President insists that the spice must flow. Soon to be seen in a US Supreme Court ruling near you.

and as reported by the BBC on February 4, 2008, this really might not be the best time to be messing around with delicate things like plankton…

In a formal survey the researchers said that a number of systems that influence the Earth’s weather patterns could begin to collapse suddenly if there’s even a slight increase in global temperatures. At greatest risk is arctic sea ice, the Greenland ice sheet and the west Antarctic ice sheet.

The researchers have listed and ranked nine ecological systems that they say could be lost this century as a result of global warming. The nine tipping elements and the time it will take them to undergo a major transition are:

Melting of Arctic sea-ice (about 10 years)
Decay of the Greenland ice sheet (about 300 years)
Collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet (about 300 years)
Collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (about 100 years)
Increase in the El Nino Southern Oscillation (about 100 years)
Collapse of the Indian summer monsoon (about 1 year)
Greening of the Sahara/Sahel
and disruption of the West African monsoon (about 10 years)
Dieback of the Amazon rainforest (about 50 years)
Dieback of the Boreal Forest (about 50 years)

The paper also demonstrates how, in principle, early warning systems could be established using real-time monitoring and modelling to detect the proximity of certain tipping points.

just in case it isn’t obvious, natch.