House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reversed her own position on offshore oil drilling this weekend in a move similar to Barack Obama’s last week, dropping her stern opposition in favor of something like “Let’s wait and see.” 

During the Democrats weekly radio address, amongst a barrage of her usual anti-drilling statements, Pelosi revealed that she would no longer stand in the way of a discussion of offshore drilling in the House of Representatives, something she had previously dismissed outright.

Just a month ago, Pelosi said that McCain and Bush’s calls for offshore drilling were “a hoax,” and “a decoy to punt your attention away from the fact that their policies have produced $4-a-gallon gasoline.”

The environmental community, at the time, seemed very happy to have such lion-hearted, upstanding representatives in Washington, politicians who would stand up for what was right for our environmental health, repudiate short-sighted or dangerous proposals, and call pandering and vote-bribing what it is.

Now, a month later, both Obama and Pelosi have bowed their stances under the pressures of politics and the importance of this election year. Both have seen the concern about gas prices in the electorate and both saw the Republicans scoring points on “The Democrats Don’t Care about Gas People!” line. 

So did they offer a bold new energy solution to make worries about gas prices a thing of the past? 

No.

Both of them tiptoed along the same pandering line that Bush and McCain plowed right through. Instead of buying favors for their gas-industry friends, the Democrats are trying to buy favor.

The Democrats can only win this election by being liberals; Al Gore and John Kerry know that you don’t win anything by playing Republican-Lite.

Source: NYTimes

In a study to be published Friday in the journal Science, researchers say the number of marine “dead zones” around the world has doubled about every 10 years since the 1960s. At the same time, the zones along many coastlines have been growing in size and intensity. About 400 coastal areas now have periodically or permanently oxygen-starved bottom waters. Combined, they constitute an area larger than the state of Oregon.

The article goes on to blame high-nutrient runoff, mainly poisoned by the fertilizers that have been rinsed off industrial-sized farms.

When these nutrients, heavy in nitrogen, enter the water, microscopic plants and animals (algae and dinoflagellates) have more food than they know what to do with, so they reproduce in massive numbers known as “blooms.” These blooms are so enormous they can be seen from far away, and are capable of choking marine mammals and fish and literally blocking out the light on the bottom of the ocean.

The dark spots kill off all the native plant life and force animals to leave. The huge blooms of these organisms also suck all the oxygen out of the water with their rapid growth and that can kill any fish or other animals like crabs and shrimp in the area.

You can just imagine what happens when all that junk dies.

“The overwhelming response of the organisms in our coastal areas is to migrate or to die,” Dr. Diaz said. “To adapt to low oxygen water, it has to be a part of your evolutionary history — it’s not something you can develop in a 40- or 50-year time period.”

The marine life lost each year to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, he said, would supply about 75 percent of the brown shrimp catch with food for a year. In the Baltic Sea, dead zones lead to the loss of about 1.3 million metric tons of fish food each year.

“Once they recur, they are very hard to reverse,” said Donald F. Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “They have major consequences for the ability of fish populations to renew themselves.”

One of the most famous examples, in the Gulf of Mexico, covers an area the size of Massachussettes! Even more frighteningly, “Scientists estimate that cutting the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone by a third would require a 45 percent decrease in nitrogen-rich runoff from the Mississippi River watershed, which extends into the croplands of the upper midwest.”

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photo by GISUser.com

Source: NYTimes

Technorati Tags: ocean, marine conservation, dead zones, fertilizer, environment, pollution

The Bush administration is planning to gut the Endangered Species Act before leaving office, according to the Associated Press.

A draft of the proposed changes, obtained by the AP, indicates that the plan would be to utterly remove government-funded scientists from the decision-making process, allowing regulatory agencies to decide for themselves whether a project was dangerous to the protected species or not.

Here are the reasons this disturbs me:

1. If we’re not basing these decisions on science, what SHOULD we base them on?
2. Can professional politicians really be trusted with such sensitive decisions?
3. Those agencies aren’t staffed by experts - they’re staffed by cronies (read: horse racers and cronies)
4. If a species is threatened, it should be protected, whether you believe in global warming or not

Well, that’s kind of the point: Bush doesn’t want to believe your science, because it gets in the way of making money, so…he won’t.

Because those important decisions about a species’ health shouldn’t be bogged down in SCIENCE, god forbid!

Because government agencies have never been involved in corruption or corporate favoritism, right?

See:

They would accomplish through rules what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects.

And why go to such lengths? Because of global warming, of course! Those granola-crunching, hair-locking, patchouli-scented hippies (read: science) are trying to use the Endangered Species Act to prove Global Warming exists! And we won’t let them! Here’s how it works:

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said late Monday that the changes were needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act not be used as a “back door” to regulate the heat-trapping gases linked to global warming.

The draft rules would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats.

I can’t imagine the Democrats will just let this stand, but Congress isn’t entitled to a vote on the matter and would need to come up with a creative way to block the changes or hope Barack Obama wins the Presidency and can reverse the process.

photo by michele hayslett

Source: NYTimes

Technorati Tags: bush, president, endangered species, environment, global warming, oil, politics, conservation

]]> http://www.sciencesays.net/2008/08/bush-seeks-to-gut-endangered-species-act-to-deny-global-warming/feed/ http://www.sciencesays.net/2008/08/bush-seeks-to-gut-endangered-species-act-to-deny-global-warming/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ScienceSays/~3/363490790/ http://www.sciencesays.net/2008/08/did-obama-sell-out-on-offshore-oil-drilling/#comments Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:51:18 +0000 sciencesays http://www.sciencesays.net/?p=320

Well?

The biggest political news item at the start of the week was that Barack Obama has seemingly reversed his position that offshore oil drilling. The candidate had previously stated that offshore drilling was an avenue he was unwilling to pursue, and some people, understandably, are accusing him of selling out.

Say it aint so, O’

I’ve been trying to prepare a thoughtful, thorough analysis of this all week, but I frankly found it too upsetting to deal with at first

Hasn’t it been shown over and over again that nothing about oil production is really safe?

Isn’t it clear that the oil industry is broken and we need to move forward with alternative energy?

Haven’t we seen that reversals like this sink Presidential candidates, particularly when it offends their base?

I think so. So why would Obama pander to an attack from John McCain?

Why would he do it? 

Someone on the Obama campaign must be really, really afraid of gas prices, and that they’re high enough to sink his campaign. 

With McCain saying things like 

 ”Anybody who says that we can achieve energy independence without using and increasing these existing energy resources either doesn’t have the experience to understand the challenge that we face or isn’t giving the American people some straight talk”

That’s fine - gas prices have emerged as as the most important issue in this campaign, even as prices slowly start to back down. No one is going to forget the impact $4 dollar gas had on their budget (except for those of us in California, who said “Um…yeah?”) and I realize that Obama has to account for that. Obama’s energy adviser says the candidate ”recognizes that Americans are suffering.” He has to promise something, anything, that will give Americans relief at the pump. 

Still, did it have to be offshore drilling? Why not an offshore wind power or other green power? Why not embrace the Hilton Compromise? 

To answer that, we have to take a look at what he actually promised:

What he actually said

Obama’s actual statement last weekend about opening up the Florida coast for drilling was:

“If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage - I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done”

If - the big word in this statement has to be “if.” 

Indeed, all of Obama’s statements so far have maintained that offshore drilling is not really the answer. In the statement where he officially announced his change of mind on Monday, he reiterated

I offer no suggestion it will make a long-term impact on the fact that demand worldwide is going up while supply is flatlined

He’s also said nothing so far about pushing Congress to lift the ban this August or put forth any concrete plans about how he might push for offshore drilling.

All he’s said so far is the he would be open to it.

Will he go through with it?

Maybe.

All Obama has done so far is show that he’ll be open-minded, the trait which he has made the Hallmark of his campaign.

That means he can say he’d consider offshore drilling, and mean it, without ever going through with it. 

Obama qualified each statement he’s made about offshore drilling with “if”s:

• If it can be done safely
• If it’s environmentally sound
• If it will give us lower gas prices

Opponents of offshore drilling have been screaming all summer “It can’t be done safely! It’s not environmentally sound! It won’t even lower gas prices!” and it won’t. Given those facts, Obama can promise to consider offshore drilling, then turn around and tell the nation it just won’t work. 

He gets to defuse McCain’s claim that Obama doesn’t care about gas prices while those prices steadily decline into the fall. 

So has Obama sold-out? 

Not yet. But he might be considering it. 

Check out What You Can Do to Stop Offshore Drilling to make sure that he doesn’t. 

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There’s been a lot of talk since President Bush and John McCain’s proposal to end the offshore drilling ban about the feasibility and potential dangers of the plan. It’s proponents have been especially fond of citing the data that suggests that oil spills are a thing of the past, recent disasters in San Francisco and Hurricane Katrina notwithstanding.

I hope the oil spill in the Mississippi river near New Orleans puts all of that to rest.

The optimists have already rolled out their shiniest version of events:

The spill is much smaller than the ones that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the Coast Guard estimated that more than 7 million gallons of oil were dumped into the Mississippi and nearby waterways.

That’s right: the GOOD news is that it’s smaller than 7 million gallons. In fact, it’s only 416,000 gallons. However, that’s a lot more oil than you might think.

For 416,000 gallons, you can:

• Cover 90% of the Mississippi river, even at it’s widest point
• Cost the area $275 million dollars a day
• Require 104,000 feet of containment sheets

Hey guys-

I’m going to be out tonight for a family event, but don’t let that stop you from checking out Shark Week’s last 2008 premiere - Mysteries of the Shark Coast at 9pm. I’ll be recording it and reviewing the show tonight as soon as I get home. Here’s the full Discovery Channel preview:

MYSTERIES OF THE SHARK COAST
Premieres Thursday, July 31, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Australia’s northeastern coast is a hotbed for shark activity. Its tropical seas are home to more species of sharks than anywhere else in the world. But there’s trouble in the sharks’ stronghold Down Under – even here the sharks are disappearing. What’s happening to them?

I lived and studied in northeastern Australia for 6 months last year, and I can assure you that the biodiversityin Australian waters is second-to-none.

I can also tell you for sure that there is a wide network of “protections” for Australian tourists and swimmers, from nets to baited hooks, that kill dozens and maybe hundreds of big sharks every year. I can understand putting a net outside your popular beach, but hanging hooks of meat to buoys just attracts sharks for the purpose of killing them. This is senseless extermination and terrible for the aquatic ecosystem, something that I hope the show will cover.

Additionally, the Australian tuna industry, one of the cleanest and safest in the world, is not shark-safe - the tuna industry kills thousands and thousands of sharks every year as “by-catch,” meaning that they weren’t the intended catch and are simply killed or butchered for their fins.

The real star of this program will be Richard Fitzpatrick, a shark scientist whose career I followed with some interest while in Australia because of his unique tagging method: Fitzpatrick has developed such as sense about tiger shark behavior that he’s comfortable swimming with them and tagging the massive sharks by hand. He’s also famous for tagging smaller sharks by lassoing their tails with ropes. That should make for a very cool show.

This has the potential to be the most interesting and most important Shark Week program in years - I hope you’ll check it out.

- Jeff

This will be the last Shark Week show review; however, you can expect more shark content from Science Says in the next week or two. If you’d like to receive updates on those articles, please click HERE or on the SUBSCRIBE button at the top of the page.

Technorati Tags: sharks, richard fitzpatrick, discovery channel, shark week, australia, the shark coast

Let me give you a hint: the people who paid him $800,000 dollars, in two months, to do it.

Makes you wonder if there’s any truth to this “Oil for Freedom” and “lower gas prices” rhetoric at all, or if it’s just another corporate donation.

Those of you who watch The Daily Show will already know that John McCain had planned to counter Barack Obama’s big speech in Berlin with his own media circus with an energy speech delivered after flying onto an offshore oil rig, ala President Bush’s famous “Mission Accomplished” speech.

You also know that a Hurricane conspired to rain on his parade, so to speak, and John McCain responded to Obama’s iconic speech in Berlin with a stroll through a small-town grocery store.

On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart speculated that McCain might protest “Why does God LOVE Obama?!” A better question might be: why does God hate offshore drilling. I can’t answer that for you, but I can tell you why McCain’s offshore drilling proposal infuriates me:

• It won’t bring a real change in gas prices
• It won’t reduce our dependence on fossil fuel like alternative energy
• There’s not enough oil off our coasts to reduce dependence on foreign oil

But what I really hate is that, in light of these facts which McCain’s team must now, they push forward, belying the fact that this is a shameless political ploy. You remember when President Bush was accused of trying to buy votes with a $300 dollar tax cut? Well, John McCain is offering you $2 or $3 dollar gas.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a solution availabe to him at the moment to follow through on those promises, and even if repealing the offshore drilling ban lowered gas prices, it would be the result of a loss in confidence amongst oil speculators, the real culprits behind the inflated prices we see today. However, the reserves off of America’s coast are a drop in the bucket compared to Middle Eastern oil fields, and as a result, any change would be temporary.

The McCain campaign is simply hoping, I expect, that the drop in prices from the threat of increased American drilling is enough to get him elected before the pendulum swings back. It’s deeply insulting to me that McCain believes that American votes can be bought for a few dollars a gallon, and deeply frustrating to me that it might be the truth.

In any event, it brightened my day to find out that a hurricane of all things, possibly empowered by global warming, ruined the moment for McCain.

Enjoy the classics and the replay of the Mythbusters Shark Special 2008 at 9pm EST - check out www.SharkWeek.com for the full schedule.

I’ll be back tomorrow night to cover the last premiere:

MYSTERIES OF THE SHARK COAST
Premieres Thursday, July 31, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Australia’s northeastern coast is a hotbed for shark activity. Its tropical seas are home to more species of sharks than anywhere else in the world. But there’s trouble in the sharks’ stronghold Down Under – even here the sharks are disappearing. What’s happening to them?

Having lived in northeastern Australia for a bit, this is one I’m especially excited about. Stay tuned to www.ScienceSays.net

The second 2008 Premiere tonight on Shark Week: “How Not to Become Shark Bait”

Tiger Beach

Oh, this looks good: “Let’s go to Tiger Beach, chum the water, and jump in on surfboards.” Excellent.

They’re starting, very smartly, in a shark cage. The guys had planned to provoke a shark attack when there were just lemon sharks in the area (I know - “just” lemon sharks) but with tiger sharks in the area, they’re going to have to reconsider.

The Bite Lever

Concerned that even Caribbean Reef Sharks might have a stronger bite than the team was willing to endure, one of them decided to rig up a lever system on the beach that would show the strength of a reef shark bite.

Turns out 2000 pounds of bite pressure are stronger than you’d think: even though reef sharks are a small breed that I can’t ever remember causing a fatality, the jaws-lever device bit clear through a lamb leg, bone, muscles and all.

The Clown Suit

Eager to examine theories about visual cues in shark attacks and the contrast and patterning of clothing, the team decides to send someone into the water in a high-contrast outfit - namely, a clown suit, complete with a curly multi-colored wig.

The test didn’t provoke a bite, but he got a couple of close calls, and one shark went straight for the suit before realizing the guy in the suit wasn’t food.

TO BE CONTINUED - I have to head out for a minute, but I’ll be updating when I finish watching the DVR version.

The next big Shark Week debut tonight is “Greenland Shark Quest,” an episode of “Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.”

In this episode, Mike travels to the far north to tag along with scientists trying to study Greenland sharks below the ice.

It looks awfully cold - sounds like Mike misses last year’s trip to the Bahamas.

The Greenland Shark

The Greenland shark is the 4th largest in the world, measuring 11 to 16 feet long, and weighing 500 to 700 pounds. Apparently, their meat is poisonous and must be boiled repeatedly to be eaten - yikes.

After numerous failed attempts, they finally got one! The team seems excited, but Mike seems a bit nonplussed - maybe because Greenland shark is “like the alligator of the Arctic, known to wait just below the ice to ambush caribou.” (reindeer)

When the job gets dirty

I was wondering when this job was going to get dirty - fishing for Greenland sharks looks cold, but not too bad. Turns out, when the research really gets dirty is when one of the sharks dies on the fishing lines (don’t worry - the species is still plentiful in the region) - then the team springs into action and begins an on-site dissection.

Currently, Mike is holding, in his hand…an eyeball.

Mike and the team have cut right into the middle of the shark to get a sample of the shark’s vertebrae, and also a chunk of the muscle tissue. Apparently, Greenland sharks can live up to 400 years!

Eeew…here comes the stomach autopsy. I kid you not, Mike is currently helping this researcher pull small crustaceans (amphipods) out of the stomach as proof that something the shark ate was rotting before the shark ate it.

Yum.

And just because it’s “Dirty Jobs” tonight…

The final shark they tagged just had to poo right in front of Mike.

The Best of Shark Week

Shark Week continues on the Discovery Channel tonight with two new shows:

DIRTY JOBS: GREENLAND SHARK QUEST
Premieres Tuesday, July 29, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
DIRTY JOBS’ Mike Rowe, who travels north to the edge of the Arctic Circle in search of the mysterious Greenland shark. These large sharks are slow-moving behemoths, and learning more about them will help scientists understand the rapid ecological changes affecting that part of the world, and how the Greenland shark impacts the food chain there.

HOW NOT TO BECOME SHARK BAIT
Premiering Tuesday, July 29, at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Sharks may have a bad reputation, but you actually have a very slim chance of being attacked by one. A thrill-seeking team with a purpose travel to the Bahamas to test shark attraction theories on lemon, tiger and Caribbean reef sharks. In the process, viewers learn strategies for staying safe when in the water.

The Shark Bait show sounds very similar to the tests that they’ve been running all week, and I imagine that the show will focus on Samuel Gruber’s Bimini Biological Field Station and Jim Abernathy’s dives at Tiger Beach in the Bahamas.

However, the Dirty Jobs show will be featuring a little-known shark and actually getting amazing first-time footage. The Greenland shark is one of the lesser known species and easily one of the hardest to study, seeing as it lives way up under the Arctic ice. I’m really, really excited about this show and am looking forward to covering it.

If you want to keep track of all the Shark Week coverage, make sure you click “SUBSCRIBE” to follow all the coverage.

SURVIVING SHARKS
Premieres Monday, July 28, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Survivorman’s Les Stroud travels to the Bahamas and South Africa to test whether the behavior of Caribbean reef sharks and great whites changes depending upon the time of day. While in South Africa, Les and marine biologist Jeremiah Sullivan conduct an analysis of the great white’s bite, and test whether kicking and splashing attracts sharks, and if it’s safer to stay in a group or tread water alone if stranded in the ocean.

The show has just begun, and Les just stabbed his own life raft, plunging into a swirling mass of sharks. Here we go!

The first step for surviving shark attacks is to avoid them

Clever, that Les Stroud. First, he tells us this. Then, he dumps 500 pounds of frozen fish into the water to test whether sharks are more aggressive during daytime or during the night. Turns out, if you give a group of sharks 500 pounds of fish, they’ll go crazy ANY time of day. Reminds me of the free iPod sales at Wal-Mart.

How to Survive the Great White Shark

Les has traveled to South Africa’s famous Shark Alley now to try to answer this question. He’s in a cage, but it’s not looking good.

Oh, look, he’s going night-diving with Great Whites…greaaaaat. I’ve always wanted to see a Great White in the wild, but would you go in there at night? For any amount of money?

Do chain-mail shark suits work against the Great White?

Haha…no, “Bit it right in half.” Wow, he just bit right through that stuff like it was nothing.

They’re testing out a new material now. Wow! The new material was totally untouched, but when the shark couldn’t bite through it, he just tried to SWALLOW it! Not sure how much good that would do. Plus, who’s to say it wouldn’t crush your body inside it?

That was an awesome segment.

Should you flee a Tiger Shark or turn to fight?

They’ve got a 14 foot Tiger Shark next to the boat. “You sense that you’re being stalked by a tiger shark. You’ve got a decision to make - do you turn and fight? Or swim for the boat”

This should be good.

Holy crap! When the mannequin was swimming, the tiger sharks kept their distance. However, when the mannequin was left just sitting in the water like a person who decided to just watch the shark, the shark came in for bumps and then an attack, and the commotion attracted a second tiger, who joined in! Then, once they’d already got going, the tiger sharks moved onto the camermen, bumping and rushing them so persistently that the camera divers had to be hurried out of the water.

If stranded at sea, will clustering in a group or stay alone?

They’ve got pairs of legs in the water, three in a group and one solo pair of legs. The tigers have been giving the solo pair of legs some bumps. WHOA! That was that - the tiger sharks just went right past the group of legs and ripped the solo pair of legs apart.

Granted, these legs were full of bleeding meet, so don’t assume a shark would bite you just because you were lost at sea. If you were bleeding, though…

How do you stop a shark attack once it’s begun?

Well, one answer is basically an underwater fire extinguisher. Even with a diver in the middle of a feeding frenzy, Les jumped in with this nifty device and scared ‘em all off.

Next up is the “Shark Shield,” an electro-pulse device that should scare the sharks away long enough to make an escape.

Ooh, very cool - even when it’s wrapped around a yummy fish, the Shark Shield scares them right away. Apparently the electric pulse interferes with the Ampullae de Lorenzini, the electric-sensing pores on a shark’s snout that allow it to sense living things in the water.

Final verdict?

Swimming away might keep you safe, the new Shark Shield device and fire extinguisher type shark repellants are very effective, and there’s NOT much you can do if you get in trouble with a Great White shark.

That’s all for now, “Day of the Shark” is up next. Thanks for stopping by!

If you want to keep track of all the Shark Week coverage, make sure you click “Subscribe” to follow all the coverage.


The Best of Shark Week

On one hand, I don’t want to alienate anyone because of my personal politics. It seems to me that America is deeply divided right now between two contrarian political philosophies, but environmental problems are everyone’s problems - Republican or Democrat, this is our planet and we all have to live in the mess we’ve made.

On the other hand, Republican or Democrat, we all have to live in the mess we’ve made of this planet, and environmental problems require political solutions. There can be no doubt any longer that our President is an enemy of the environment - President Bush has deferred to business interests at the expense of the environment at every turn. In addition, America’s in the midst of a Presidential election campaign that’s pit two candidates who have very different beliefs about the state of the environment and very different ideas about how to deal with them. As a result, can you discuss the environment without getting into politics?

The reason I bring this up is that I know myself well enough to have learned that my political beliefs and particularly my sense of humor about politics can be abrasive to people with different beliefs or more modest feelings about things.

It just so happened that I was preparing another post about John McCain and offshore drilling with some glee, and in doing so realized that I needed to step back and make sure that the humor I saw was from an environmental perspective, and not a political one.

What do you think - can environmentalism be separated from talk of politics?

MYTHBUSTERS: SHARK SPECIAL
Premieres Sunday, July 27, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Get a reminder.
Do dogs attract sharks? Do the vibrations caused by a flapping injured fish attract sharks? Does chili powder repel sharks? And hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman create the ultimate SHARK WEEK build – a 16-foot-long robo-shark!

Allright, here are the big myths they’re testing tonight:

Could you reach a shark’s eyes to stop a shark attack?

This one comes complete with a 16-foot robotic Great White shark, and a full mouth of rubber shark teeth! Poor Tory got shoved in the jaws of a robot shark and given a good shake around.

Since the team couldn’t test whether eye-poking works on a real Great White shark, they settled for testing whether it was possible to reach the eyes, and to do it while being shaken around.

Can a person reach the shark’s eyes? Definitely. Could a person figure it out fast enough? Probably not. Could a person who knew to reach for the eyes even get the eyes fast enough when they’re being attacked? Maybe, but it’s all a matter of luck and how the shark grabs you.

MAYBE: the Mythbusters say it’d be too hard to do, but it’s worked before…

Are sharks repelled by magnets?

The Mythbusters team ran tests on both juvenile and full-sized sharks to determine how the magnets affected them. The results were odd: the juvenile shark they tested was very clearly repelled by the magnet and wouldn’t cross a line of them in his pen.

However, with full-sized lemon sharks, they found that the magnets did nothing to repel them, even with the team’s most powerful magnets. That could be because the adult sharks weren’t as sensitive, or could also be because they were in  feeding mode because of the fish-bait. Very cool test.

MAYBE: juveniles are, but adults might not be bothered

Can playing dead save you in shark-infested waters?

Based on the famous shipwreck of the USS Indianapolis during World War II, the worst shark attack in history, the team tested this one by putting two guys in the water and having one of them flap around. The sharks were clearly more interested in the flapping guy, and they confirmed this myth as true. However, would the sharks have been interested in the other guy if there hadn’t been someone else flapping nearby? They never covered this, so we don’t know.

MAYBE: sharks are more interested in a flapping person, but the test was incomplete

Are sharks attracted by swimming dogs?

For this one, they built a dog-like robot - looks like a dog, swims like a dog, and is even full of liquid from real dog’s anal scent glands. So will it work?

Apparently not - the only thing that got any response was releasing a bit of blood in the water, but the sight, smell and motion of the robot dog didn’t get the sharks to do anything.

Is that because sharks aren’t attracted by dogs, though? Or do they just dislike dog-robots? Unfortunately, there’s not really a good way for the show to test this one.

BUSTED: the sharks didn’t respond to the robot at all

Are sharks attracted to flashlights?

This one was a definite “yes.” The sharks were all over the team as soon as they turned their flashlights on. They saw more than twice as many sharks as the previous night, when there was only ambient lighting. Additionally, when the flashlights were on, the sharks came straight at the testers instead of just hovering in the area. Very cool, the sharks got so excited the Mythbusters got scared and cut the test short, getting out of the water ASAP.

DEFINITELY: the sharks went bonkers for the Mythbusters with flashlights

Are sharks repelled by chili peppers?

This one was inspired by a Native American legend, according to the show. They filled balloons with pureed habanero chilis. This one was a total bust - the sharks chomped down on the balloons and showed no sign of being bothered, even coming back for a second pass to try to find out what was going on.

BUSTED: the sharks weren’t repelled; in fact, they ate it right up

Are sharks more attracted to flapping fish than dead ones?

Yes, but only if they can see and hear them. This one was tested first with dead fish, but they realized the sharks could just be coming for the scent of food. However, even when they tested this with plastic fish models, the sharks came right over. When the sharks couldn’t see the fish decoy, though, they came right up to the boat, but didn’t strike.

DEFINITELY: the sharks even went after the fake fish they splashed against the surface.

Stay tuned for Tuesday night’s coverage of “Surviving Sharks,” with Les Stroud from Survivorman!

The Best of Shark Week

The first new premiere is at 9pm EST on the Discovery Channel, with the 2008 Mythbusters shark special, testing tons of theories about shark attraction and shark attacks.

They’ve been reviewing some of their best material all day, culminating in last year’s Mythbusters: Jaws Special this evening.

As I mentioned a couple of day ago, I’ll be live-blogging the shows both here on the site, and real-time on my Twitter account, which you can follow here.

If you want to make sure you catch all the articles and updates on Shark Week 2008, you can subscribe to Science Says by Email or RSS feed at http://www.sciencesays.net/feed/

Stay tuned!

Wired.com had an article on their front page this week covering the debate over “assisted migrations,” and in particular a recent proposal to relocate polar bears to the South Pole.

If the most dire climate predictions come to pass, the Arctic ice cap will melt entirely, and polar bears could face extinction.

So why not pack a few off to Antarctica, where the sea ice will never run out?

It may seem like a preposterous question. But polar bears are just the tip of the “assisted colonization” iceberg. Other possibilities: moving African big game to the American Great Plains, or airlifting endangered species from one mountaintop to another as climate zones shrink.

For a quick bit of background, polar bears live near the North Pole…on the other side of the world!!!

So- why, you might ask, would anyone consider such a seemingly hair-brained idea as this?

Well, is an Antarctic polar bear colony better than no polar bears at all?

Maybe for a day or two, before they gobble up every penguin in their line of sight.

The broader question here is about the value of “assisted migration” - humans moving animals and plants from one place to another has had disastrous effects throughout our history, especially across oceans. Cane toads in Australia, “killer bees” from Africa, and species from Europe moved all over the world. It’s impossible to predict the effect that a new species will have on a foreign environment, and they can be straightforward, like eating or out competing local wildlife in the way cats and rats have, or as unanticipated as the seeds and bacteria stored in cattle stomachs wreaking havoc on local flora.

In an environment as delicate and highly specialized as Antarctica, a disruption would have even broader and more rapid consequences. In fact, in such an extreme environment, it should not be assumed that Polar Bears could even survive.

Source: “Last-Ditch Resort: Move Polar Bears to Antarctica?”- Wired.com

UPDATE: 

• Mythbusters Shark Myths of 2008
• Surviving Sharks with “Survivorman” Les Stroud

As many of my readers will already know, I’m a shark fanatic - they’re what I like to read about, what I like to write about, and what I’m hoping to work with in my career.

As a result, Shark Week every year on the Discovery Channel is a big deal for me. I look forward to it every summer and particularly to the new programming. This year’s lineup doesn’t disappoint:

SHARK WEEK 2008 PREMIERES:

MYTHBUSTERS: SHARK SPECIAL
Premieres Sunday, July 27, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Get a reminder.
Do dogs attract sharks? Do the vibrations caused by a flapping injured fish attract sharks? Does chili powder repel sharks? And hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman create the ultimate SHARK WEEK build – a 16-foot-long robo-shark!

SURVIVING SHARKS
Premieres Monday, July 28, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Survivorman’s Les Stroud travels to the Bahamas and South Africa to test whether the behavior of Caribbean reef sharks and great whites changes depending upon the time of day. While in South Africa, Les and marine biologist Jeremiah Sullivan conduct an analysis of the great white’s bite, and test whether kicking and splashing attracts sharks, and if it’s safer to stay in a group or tread water alone if stranded in the ocean.

DAY OF THE SHARK
Premieres Monday, July 28, at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Do shark encounters happen more frequently in the morning or night? This special chronicles six recent shark attacks that took place at different times of day. Top shark experts weigh in on what time of day is better or worse for avoiding sharks.

DIRTY JOBS: GREENLAND SHARK QUEST
Premieres Tuesday, July 29, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
DIRTY JOBS’ Mike Rowe, who travels north to the edge of the Arctic Circle in search of the mysterious Greenland shark. These large sharks are slow-moving behemoths, and learning more about them will help scientists understand the rapid ecological changes affecting that part of the world, and how the Greenland shark impacts the food chain there.

HOW NOT TO BECOME SHARK BAIT
Premiering Tuesday, July 29, at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Sharks may have a bad reputation, but you actually have a very slim chance of being attacked by one. A thrill-seeking team with a purpose travel to the Bahamas to test shark attraction theories on lemon, tiger and Caribbean reef sharks. In the process, viewers learn strategies for staying safe when in the water.

MYSTERIES OF THE SHARK COAST
Premieres Thursday, July 31, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Australia’s northeastern coast is a hotbed for shark activity. Its tropical seas are home to more species of sharks than anywhere else in the world. But there’s trouble in the sharks’ stronghold Down Under – even here the sharks are disappearing. What’s happening to them?

You can bet that I’ll be watching and writing up reviews of each of these new shows, and I’ll be doing it live for as many of them as possible. The rest I’ll have DVR’d and the write-up will be here the next morning.

Technorati Tags: sharks, shark week, jim abernathy, discovery channel

“The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk…I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously” - Al Gore

Al Gore gave a speech yesterday in Washington pushing for America to switch to renewable energy. His main points were:

• Produce all electricity from renewable and carbon-free sources in 10 years
• Bring gas prices down by reducing dependence on oil
• Renewable energy at equivalent of $1/gallon gas

He also blasted Bush and McCain for pushing for offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR, suggesting that:

“It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil 10 years from now”

You can read the full speech here.

photo courtesy of World Economic Forum

President Bush announced today that he is going to lift the executive order that bans offshore oil drilling.

Some have labeled this move as purely symbolic, since there is additionally a federal law in place.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Why It Must Be Stopped

President Bush’s decision, coupled with John McCain’s campaign promises, are part of a larger plan to place pressure on the Congress to repeal the law and do one last favor to the oil companies before the President skulks out of office.

Offshore oil drilling:

• Destroys fragile coral reefs

• Trashes nearby beaches

• Risk of devastating oil spills

What You Can Do To Stop It

Call your senators and representatives! Tell them you don’t want oil rigs damaging our coasts!

You can find their phone numbers here:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml

“Hi, my name is _____, please do not allow the ban on offshore drilling to be lifted. Thank you.”

It will take less than 5 minutes to look up the phone number and make those calls.

More Info on Why It’s So Important

The Energy Information Administration says it will do no good. (…will not lower gas prices)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr …

McCain’s campaign also says it will do no good;
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/18/top-mccain-adv …

No expert will back the BushCain claim;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/23/impossibl …

The Saudi’s will pump more this year at our President’s request than the entire drilling venture would contribute

FIXED: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/24/151852/ …

This post could not have come together without the enormous and contribution of MorganMghee from Digg.com. Thanks Morgan!