Contrary to what most people believe there is not a lot of fish in salty water compared to that of fresh water.

Scientists made a surprising discovery that freshwater rivers and lakes contain more fish species than salty oceans, although freshwater environments occupy only two percent of the Earth’s surface.

The findings suggest that most marine fish alive today are descended from freshwater ancestors, even though life is thought to have first evolved in the oceans.

A team of researchers led by Dr. John Wiens, from Stony Brook University in New York, studied the biodiversity of ray-finned fish, which make up 96 percent of all fish species.

The scientists created evolutionary trees based on molecular data and fossils, and a large database of fish habitats.

“Our results suggest that ancient extinctions in the marine environment may have wiped out the earliest ray-finned fishes living in the oceans, that the oceans were then recolonized from freshwater habitats, and that most marine fish species living today are descended from that recolonization.

“This pattern of ancient extinction and more recent recolonization may help explain why the oceans are now so species-poor, even for fish.”

The findings are published online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Researchers traced the ‘microplastic’ back to synthetic clothes, which released up to 1,900 tiny fibers per garment every time they were washed.

According to Mark Browne, an ecologist now based at the University of California, Santa Barbara, their findings have shown that about 80 percent of the environment was made up from smaller bits of plastic.

In order to identify how widespread pollution of microplastic was on shorelines, the team took samples from 18 beaches around the globe, including the UK, India and Singapore.

It had found that there was no sample from around the world that did not contain pieces of microplastic pollutants and most of them seemed to be fibrous, according to Dr. Brown.

Upon inspection at the different types of polymers the team was looking, they consist of polyester, acrylic and polyamides (nylon) among its major findings.

The research team had worked with a local authority in New South Wales, Australia to determine and confirm sewerage discharges were the sources of microplastic.

The team found those sewerage discharges positive of micoplastic which led it to conclude its suspicion had been correct.

Dr. Browne and colleague Professor Richard Thompson from the University of Plymouth, UK carried out a number of experiments to see what fibers were contained in the water discharge from washing machines.

They found some polyester garments released more than 1,900 fibers per garment, per wash which may not be that much but it shows how things can build up, observed Dr. Browne.

‘It suggests that a large proportion of the fibers they were finding in the environment, in the strongest evidence yet, was derived from the sewerage as a consequence from washing clothes.’

Dr. Browne, who is a member of the US-based research network National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, said the tiny plastic was a concern because evidence showed that it was making its way into the food chain.

Earlier research showed plastic smaller than 1mm were being eaten by animals and getting into the food chain.

Once the plastics had been consumed by these animals, it went from their stomachs to their circulation system and ended up in their cells.

The charges against the NMFS is the latest move by environmentalists to prevent the US Navy from performing the exercises in ‘biologically critical areas’ during hunting and breeding times.

‘As part of these exercises, the Navy will repeatedly broadcast high-intensity sound waves into a vast stretch of ocean, containing some of the most biologically productive marine habitat in the United States,’ said the lawsuit, filed by a coalition of environmental activists led by Earthjustice.

They say that intense sound waves caused by the Navy’s use of sonar can harm or kill endangered marine animals such as the killer whale and the blue whale.

The coalition is asking the government agency to reconsider a 2010 decision in support of the Navy’s training exercises in waters spanning from California to the Canadian border.

The NMFS has not yet received any information on the suit, the agency’s spokesperson said.

‘NMFS (the fisheries service) has failed in its duty to assure that the Navy is not pushing the whales closer to extinction,’ according to Marcie Keever, legal director of
Friends of the Earth, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit.

In 2008, the US Supreme Court sided with the Navy, ruling that sonar training exercises off the Southern California coast could be conducted without restrictions designed to protect marine life, in a defeat for environmentalists.

Man-made carbon emissions have acidified the world’s oceans far beyond their natural levels, new research suggests.

“The oceans absorb around a third of carbon dioxide emissions, which helps limit global warming, but uptake of carbon dioxide by the oceans also increases their acidity, with potentially harmful effects on calcifying organisms such as corals and the ecosystems that they support,” explained Dr. Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES) based at the National Oceanography Center, Southampton.

Changes in ocean pH over subsequent centuries will depend on how much the rate of carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced in the longer term.

In some regions, acidity levels rose faster in the last 200 years than it did in the previous 21,000 centuries, a study from the University of Hawaii has shown.

Measuring changes in ocean acidity is difficult because it varies naturally between seasons, years and regions.

Ocean acidity makes it harder for organisms such as molluscs and coral to construct the protective layers they need to survive.

Scientists looked at changes in the saturation level of aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate used to measure ocean acidification.

As seawater acidity rises, the saturation level of aragonite falls.

The peak year of emissions and post-peak reduction rates influence how much ocean acidity increases by 2100.

The new research used simulations of ocean and climate conditions going back 21,000 years to the Last Glacial Maximum and forward in time to the end of the 21st century.

“Our computer simulations allow us to predict what impact the timing and rapidity of emission reductions will have on future acidification, helping to inform policy makers” said Dr.Tyrrell.

Aragonite saturation in several key coral reef regions is already five times below its lowest pre-industrial range, according to the model.

This translates to a decrease in overall calcification rates of corals and other shell-forming organisms of 15 percent, scientists at the university believe.

Bats with White-nose syndrome exhibit odd behavior during the winter months, including flying outside during the day.

White-nose syndrome is caused by an aggressive fungus called Geomyces destructans that eats through the skin and membranes of bats. The disease was first detected in a cave in New York state in 2006.

Biologists report mortality rates of 90 percent to 100 percent at some sites and expect the disease to keep spreading through several species, including some that are endangered.

Bats provide tremendous value to the U.S. economy as natural pest control for American farms and forests every year, while playing an essential role in helping to control insects that can spread disease to people,” Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said in a news release.

Bats are natural insects predator, prying on insects that feed on agricultural crops and forests.

A reproductive female bat consumes bugs each night and a colony of 150 brown bats can eat enough adult cucumber beetles to prevent the laying of eggs that result in 33 million rootworm larvae, according to a study cited by Bat Conservation International.

Biologists said the bats’ dwindling population could affect ecological balance if their demise results in the proliferation of the insects they feed on, and would cause food prices to go up if food crops are devastated.

“White-nose syndrome has spread quickly through bat populations in eastern North America, and has caused significant mortality in many colonies,” US national White-nose syndrome co-ordinator Dr. Jeremy Coleman said in a statement.

The rapid spread of the disease has also challenged officials’ population estimates.

Mylea Bayless, conservation programs manager for Bat Conservation International in Austin, Texas, said, “Unlike some of the extinction events or population depletion events we’ve seen in the past, we’re looking at a whole group of animals here, not just one species. We don’t know what that means, but it could be catastrophic.”

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According to conference organizer Yadvinder Malhi, professor of ecosystems at the University of Oxford, ‘African forests have gone through a number of catastrophes in the past’

“They are already much lower in diversity, and have lost species that would have been potentially vulnerable. But the species that remain are relatively adaptable, have broad ranges and have adapted to quite rapid changes in rainfall.

“So, overall, the remaining system, although it may be poorer to some extent, may be much more resilient to the pressures from climate change in this century.”

The three-day conference, entitled Climate Change, Deforestation and the Future of African Rainforests, focused on the tropical forests of West Africa, which helped highlight a key issue.

“One thing that really came out was how little we know about African climate compared to other regions of the world,” Prof. Malhi observed.

Changes in rainfall patterns can affect the characteristics of tropical forests, research shows. Climate reshapes tropical forests.

Aside the issues surrounding climate data, the conference also heard about research projects assessing characteristics of the region’s tropical forests.

According to Prof. Mark New from the University of Cape Town, ‘One of the critical points about what controls the climate and variability, especially in the Congo, is basically zero.’

‘This makes it very difficult to make any strong predictions of what the future might be.’

“One of the big findings has been that African forests have more biomass, and have much bigger trees, in comparison with the forests in the Amazon,” said Simon Lewis from the University of Leeds, UK.

Although there was a smaller diversity of tree species in Africa, the second largest area of rainforest in the world compared with the Amazon, it did not mean the forests were not important biodiversity hotspots.

‘We must not just consider the trees, because in terms of mammal diversity, it is extremely high,’ Dr Lewis said.

‘In terms of its animal diversity there are species of monkeys, pigmy hippos and forest giraffes, it really is a remarkable place. And the majestic stature of the trees, it is again remarkable.’

Prof. Malhi explained that the results of the conference would soon be outlined in briefs and drafts for policymakers summarizing ‘some of the key points of what we know and what we need to know’.

Harp seal pups off the coast of eastern Canada are dying at alarming rates due to a loss of winter ice cover, according to US scientists who questioned if the population will be able to recover.

According to the study by researchers at Duke University shows that seasonal ice cover in the harp seal breeding regions of the North Atlantic Ocean has declined about six percent per decade since 1979, when satellite data began.

Researchers looked at satellite images of winter ice from 1992 to 2010 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a prime breeding region off the east coast of Canada.

They compared stranding rates to records of a climate phenomenon known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which controls the intensity and track of westerly winds and storms and exerts a major influence on sea ice formation and to yearly reports of dead seal pups strandings in the region.

“Entire year-classes may be disappearing from the population in low ice years, essentially all of the pups die,” according to co-author David Johnston, a research scientist at the Duke University Marine Lab. “It calls into question the resilience of the population.”

While harp seals have adapted to the earlier spring melts in recent years by developing shorter 12-day nursing periods, it remains unclear if their population can sustain itself against sea ices losses over time.

However, they found out that years of weaker NAO and lighter ice cover showed higher death rates among seal pups.

The team also looked back at data from 1950 to 1972 which showed that NAO weather changes were tied to big declines in the seal population, followed by period of recovery from 1973 to 2000.

“As a species, they’re well suited to deal with natural short-term shifts in climate, but our research suggests they may not be well adapted to absorb the effects of short-term variability combined with longer-term climate change and other human influences such as hunting and by-catch,” Johnston said.

The study was published in the open access science journal PLoS ONE.

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What has been known ever since, typhoons usually emanate from the northeast Pacific region near Guam.

The most frequented regions in the Philippines visited by typhoons are the eastern Visayas, Bicol region, Central and Northern Luzon.

However, with the effects of climate change, we have now experienced unprecedented natural calamities never before have occurred due to imbalance of our global ecosystem brought about by deforestation and almost rainforests around the world depleted.

The flash floods that occurred in Ormoc, Southern Leyte, Cagayan de Oro and Iligan cities have one thing in common, they were effects of deforestation, the water that came down from higher to lower grounds have a mixture of eroded loose soil materials, that means that there were no more trees to hold them back and prevent those soil erosion from happening.

With non stop heavy downpour on sloping terrain, rain water seeps underneath the topsoil down to the next strata to loosen its hold, with this a landslide could be imminent to happen.

The eroded soil that comes down along with the water has to settle down at the invert of the river. With the build up it will make the river’s invert shallow and subsequently the water would overflow over its bank and the adjoining areas would be flooded in a wider magnitude that anyone can hardly imagine.

The people living on low lying areas and along the banks of the river are the usual victims of such calamity.

Their complacency to move out to safer grounds despite repeated warnings by PAGASA and the media is understandable.

Firstly, people always believe past history of their region that it is not the usual path for typhoons. What is foremost in their minds that maybe PAGASA could have erred in their forecast not only once but so many times they have done in the past.

Secondly, what holds them back to leave their houses because of their possessions and other valuable things that they could not afford to leave them .

Thirdly, the warning by local government units (LGU) is useless if the LGU themselves do not give or assign sufficient temporary shelters or evacuation centers for these people to stay safely while evading the brunt of the typhoon.

The LGU should have been decisive enough in persuading the people living in low lying areas implying the danger of flash floods. They should have been obliged to stay on evacuation centers rather than staying at their homes.

The loss of so many lives should have been avoided if the children, elderly and the women were forcefully evacuated to safer ground while the typhoon runs havoc to the place.

With 24 hours continuous heavy downpour it would be more than enough for LGU’s to have sensed and anticipated the overflow of Cagayan de Oro river and the impact it may have caused on people living these areas.

Sadly, the local government lacks the political will to institute forced evacuation, to avoid loss of lives. The big casualty came during the wee of the hour when people least expected the flash flood came like a thief while they were asleep.

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The climate change talks among the 200 nations participating in Durban, South Africa is to forge a far more ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gases emissions to minimum if not totally eliminated.

European Union climate negotiators calls for a global deal to be reached by 2015 and in place by 2020.

The unregulated greenhouse gases emissions by large economies like China and the U.S., scientists blame for rising sea levels, intense storms, drought and crop failures.

While a binding deal on harmful carbon output remains elusive by the world’s second biggest polluter after China, some small signs of progress in the United States have emerged at the state and individual levels.

Republican presidential candidates have championed their doubts about human-caused climate change.

On the US political stage, skepticism and denial of climate change are as popular as ever, and experts say that world talks which opened Monday in Durban, South Africa are unlikely to turn the tide.

Previous attempts to create a cap and trade system to stem pollution at the federal level have failed due to concerns it would cause skyrocketing energy costs, a particularly bruising prospect in an already wobbly economy.

The entire nation is divided on the issue, according to the latest Gallup poll which shows 53 percent of Americans see global warming as a very or somewhat serious threat, down 10 percent from two years earlier.

When lawmakers cannot agree that climate change is a problem for which solutions must be sought, gridlock ensues, according to Democratic lawmaker Henry Waxman.

“During this Congress, the Republican-controlled House has voted 21 times to block actions to address climate change,” he said at a hearing this month. “History will look back on this science denial with profound regret.”

Even an idea that was initially floated under the George W. Bush administration and sought no extra funds was recently shot down, when Congress blocked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from reshuffling its staff to create a National Climate Service.

Republican Congressman Andy Harris said his party’s ‘hesitation’ came from concern “that the climate services could become little propaganda sources instead of a science source.”

Experts voiced little hope of the Durban talks rousing the United States into long-awaited action to slow fossil-fuel burning that leads to greenhouse gases.

With the end nearing of the Kyoto Protocol, a new binding agreement for the United States and China is essentially off the table, said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions.

E.U. envoys said they want a new deal for emissions cuts reached by 2015 and in place by 2020, and it will only be effective if major polluters sign on.

Any accord depends on China and the United States, the world’s top emitters, agreeing to binding action under a wider deal by 2015, something both have resisted for years.

Russia, Japan and Canada say they will not sign up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol unless the biggest emitters do too. The United States, which never ratified the protocol, warned its commitments would be tied to pledges made by major emerging economies.

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Scientists say climate change may be altering these once reliable weather patterns in West Africa, which is the source of some two thirds of the world’s cocoa.

Good cocoa production is dependent on good weather condition with temperature ranging from 22 and 29 degrees Celsius.

A regular occurrence of rainfall at the second quarter of the year between April and July and a short rainfall at the last quarter of the year between October and mid November and the sun shone the rest of the time.

Lately, weather has become hotter and more erratic, according to farmers and agronomists in the region. Temperatures often reach 32 degrees Celsius and rains come irregularly it’s either too early or too late. Dry spells are harsher or the skies are overcast when they’re meant to be sunny.

That wouldn’t matter if the cocoa tree was less sensitive, but yields suffer without the right mix of rain and sun at the appropriate times.

“Production has definitely gone down. Because of the heat, the trees die. I used to get almost two tonnes out of my three hectares, now I’m lucky if I get a tonne,” said 71-year old cocoa planter Souleymane Drabre on his three hectare plantation in Ivory Coast, a country feeding a third of the world market.

Survival in a warmer world for the millions of smallholders who depend on cocoa may depend on moving to higher, cooler places or breeding new varieties, experts say.

A report by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), an agricultural research institute in southwest Colombia, a rise of 2.3 degrees Celsius by 2050, possible within consensus forecasts by climatologists, would be enough to hurt production ‘quite seriously’ in lowland regions, it said.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said last week global average temperatures could rise by 3-6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century if governments fail to contain greenhouse gas emissions, outstripping the internationally agreed target of 2 degrees.

To address the issue of greenhouse gases, delegates from nearly 200 countries will meet in South Africa from November 28 for climate talks towards a broader deal on how to cut greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change.