 This link will feature brief news items with links to important stories, happenings and events. I will include information from this link on quizzes. The most recent post will be on top. Each entry is separated by a line
SHORT LIST OF POSTED ARTICLES
HARVESTING RAINWATER BY NOT LETTING IT GO TO WASTE
Nearly 40 years ago, President Richard Nixon issued an executive order calling for a national strategy to protect wildlife by restricting off-road vehicles to carefully designated trails. President Jimmy Carter later gave the interior secretary the authority to ban such vehicles from sensitive lands. Unfortunately, except for a brief and encouraging crackdown during the Clinton administration, nobody has paid much attention to these directives since. There are now nine million off-road vehicles, meaning all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes (snowmobiles are a separate category). And their owners, with little resistance from the authorities that ought to be policing them, are transforming some of America's most sensitive public lands into their personal playgrounds. As Felicity Barringer and William Yardley wrote in The Times recently, there are responsible owners who stick to designated trails as well as renegades who go "off trail" with grave consequences for animal habitat, fragile desert soils and historical artifacts. The real problem, however, is that the important decisions about where off-road vehicles can go are not being made by the federal Bureau of Land Management, which is supposed to protect these lands and regulate these vehicles, but by the owners, user associations and rural county officials who are under their thumb. Utah is an alarming case in point. The bureau is presently drafting six new land-use plans for Utah that would allow about 15,000 miles of designated trails. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, an environmental group, points out that many of these routes have been lifted straight from maps provided by the off-road vehicle associations and have not been independently surveyed to assess their potential damage to the soil, animal habitat and archaeological sites. Worse, some of the trails would crisscross about 2.5 million acres of breathtakingly beautiful country that the Clinton administration thought worthy of permanent wilderness protection. Once these trails are in regular use, and enshrined on federal maps, the land would almost surely be ineligible for wilderness designation, which is typically reserved for roadless areas. The threat to these lands stems partly from the Bush administration's philosophical inclinations: its aversion to federal stewardship and its relentless drive to open public lands to commercial and recreational use even when nature is the clear loser. It also stems from an insidious belief inside the federal bureaucracy that the problem is insoluble - that there are too many off-road vehicles and not enough federal agents to police them. Washington has a duty to do better, beginning, at a minimum, with protecting those 2.5 million acres that the Bureau of Land Management identified in 1999 as having wilderness characteristics. It should then call a timeout on the whole process until the bureau has done the kind of independent surveys it is capable of doing - and is paid to do. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________California RulesCalifornia has now sued the Bush administration over its refusal to allow the state to set its own rules controlling greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. The state's legal arguments are sound and so is its policy, especially when one considers the White House's seven-year failure to seriously confront the problem of global warming. The Clean Air Act of 1970 allows California to set stronger air pollution standards as long as it gets a waiver from the federal government. California has applied for many such waivers over the years and has never been denied. One result is that the state has been a leader in the effort to reduce pollutants like those responsible for smog and acid rain. In 2005, California sought permission to regulate vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. For two years, the Bush administration hid behind the claim that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant covered by the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court demolished that argument last year. The administration still denied California's request on equally spurious grounds. It argued that a national standard would be preferable to a "patchwork" of state rules. However, the Clean Air Act allows only two sets of rules, federal rules and California's more stringent rules. Other states can then choose which to adopt. Sixteen states, which with California make up half the vehicle market, have said they will adopt California's rules. This is hardly a patchwork. The administration also argued that tougher fuel efficiency standards in the energy bill recently signed into law by President Bush would yield greater greenhouse gas reductions than the California rules would. This is demonstrably untrue. California's regulations would reduce emissions from new vehicles by nearly 30 percent by 2016 - double the estimated reductions that would result from the energy law. Finally, the government argued that because global warming affects all states, California cannot demonstrate the "compelling and extraordinary" conditions necessary to merit a waiver. In earlier waiver cases, administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency have ruled that California must show only that it faces unusually severe problems, not that it is unique. We would prefer that the White House reverse its position and order the E.P.A. to give California its waiver. If it does not, the courts must compel it to do so. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gore Urges Bold Moves in Nobel Speech By SARAH LYALL OSLO, Dec. 10 - He has said it again and again, with increasing urgency, to anyone who will listen. And on Monday, former Vice President Al Gore used the occasion of his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize lecture here to tell the world in powerful, stark language: Climate change is a "real, rising, imminent and universal" threat to the future of the Earth . Saying that "our world is spinning out of kilter" and that "the very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed," Mr. Gore warned that "we, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency - a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here." But, he added, "there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst - not all - of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly." The ceremony marking the 2007 prize, given to Mr. Gore and to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comes as representatives of the world's governments are meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali to negotiate a new international agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The new treaty would replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. At the ceremony in the city hall in Oslo, Mr. Gore called on the negotiators to establish a universal global cap on emissions and to ratify and enact a new treaty by the beginning of 2010, two years early. And he singled out the United States and China - the world's largest emitters of carbon dioxide - for failing to meet their obligations in mitigating emissions. They should "stop using each other's behavior as an excuse for stalemate," he said. In an interview before his speech, Mr. Gore said that the Bush administration was "the principal stumbling block to progress in Bali right now" but that he foresaw a change in American policy, regardless of which party won the 2008 election. "I think that they do not accurately represent the wishes of the American people," he said of the United States government. "We are in the midst of a process of massive change. The world is coming to grips with this crisis, but we are in a race against time. The United States of America, the natural leader of the world community, should lead instead of obstructing." In his speech, Mr. Gore said his loss in the bitter 2000 presidential election had forced him to "read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken, if not premature." But the "unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift," he added - the chance to focus on the environment. The documentary about Mr. Gore's climate-awareness campaign, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Academy Award, but its conclusions were dismissed as exaggerated and alarmist by his political opponents. He has repeatedly said that while he has no plans to re-enter politics, he has not ruled out the possibility. If Mr. Gore represents the well-known face of the call for action on climate change, Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the international climate panel, represents the science that underlies the message. Mr. Pachauri, who gave the Nobel address on behalf of the group, a United Nations network of scientists, presented a sober, fact-filled account focusing on the potential effects of climate change on some of the world's most vulnerable populations. Mr. Pachauri, who is from India, said the prize committee's decision to award the Nobel to the panel "can be seen as a clarion call" for the world to face up to the gravity of the situation. "Peace can be defined as security and the secure access to resources that are essential for living," he said. He outlined how climate-driven disruption of resources like food, water and land had the potential for disastrous effects on world stability, including the loss of islands and coastal communities to flooding, mass migration leading to increased tensions between rich and poor countries, and a rise in disease and malnutrition. "The impacts of climate change on some of the poorest and most vulnerable communities in the world could prove extremely unsettling," Mr. Pachauri said. The climate panel, which is considered the world's leading authority on climate change, was established in 1988. In the past two decades, it has issued a series of increasingly grim reports, most recently this year, about the warming of the planet and human responsibility for it. Speaking of the meeting in Bali, Mr. Pachauri said that "hopes are alive that unlike the sterile outcome of previous sessions in recent years, this one will provide some positive results." In his speech, Mr. Gore invoked Churchill, Robert Frost, Gandhi, the Spanish poet Antonio Machado and the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen , among others, to underline the urgency of his message. He wrote the speech himself, he said in the interview, "with the help of Mr. Google." During the cold war, he said in the address, scientists used to warn of "nuclear winter" - the consequence of nuclear war, in which smoke and debris would block the sunlight from the atmosphere. Now, he said, "we are in danger of creating a permanent 'carbon summer,'" in which pollution traps the heat that is normally radiated back out of the atmosphere." "As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, 'Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice,'" Mr. Gore said. "Either, he notes, 'would suffice.'" Now is the time, he said, "to make peace with the planet." Mr. Gore added: "The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask, 'What were you thinking; why didn't you act?' Or they will ask instead, 'How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?'" ____________________________________________________________________________________________________
US Under Pressure at Climate Conference By JOSEPH COLEMAN (Associated Press Writer) From Associated Press December 06, 2007 5:24 AM EST BALI, Indonesia - American climate negotiators refused to back down in their opposition to mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions Thursday, even as a U.S. Senate panel endorsed sharp reductions in pollution blamed for global warming. The United States, the world's largest producer of such gases, has resisted calls for strict limits on emissions at the U.N. climate conference, which is aimed at launching negotiations for an agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. That stance suffered a blow when the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a bill Wednesday to cut U.S. emissions by 70 percent by 2050 from electric power plants, manufacturing and transportation. The bill now goes to the full Senate. U.S. climate negotiator Harlan Watson, however, said that would not impact Washington's position at the international gathering in Bali. "In our process, a vote for movement of a bill out of committee does not ensure its ultimate passage," he told reporters. "I don't know the details, but we will not alter our posture here." It was the first bill calling for mandatory U.S. limit on greenhouse gases to be taken up in Congress since global warming emerged as an environmental issue more than two decades ago. Republican critics of the bill argued that limiting the emissions could become a hardship because of higher energy costs. The two-week conference, which opened Monday, is already in a tense standoff between two camps, with the majority supporting mandatory emissions cuts on one side, and opponents such as the United States on the other, delegates said. Scientists say the world must act quickly to slash greenhouse gas emissions and limit the rise in global temperatures or risk triggering devastating droughts and flooding, strangling world food production and killing off animal species. Washington's isolation in Bali has increased following Australia's announcement Monday that it has reversed its opposition to the Kyoto pact and started the ratification process - winning applause at the conference's opening session. That left the U.S. as the only industrialized nation to oppose the agreement. The U.S. Senate action cheered environmentalists and others in Bali clamoring for dramatic action to stop global warming. U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer led off his daily briefing Thursday by hailing the "encouraging sign" from the United States. "This is a very welcome development," Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said of the Senate measure. "It shows the increasing isolation of the Bush administration in terms of U.S. policy on this issue." David Waskow, of the Oxfam humanitarian agency, said the Senate legislation was a positive signal to developing nations and others in Bali that America may be ready to assume a more active role in battling climate change. "It's one of the things that point the way to having the United States re-engage in the negotiations, and really I think in many ways demonstrates the U.S. leadership on these issues," Waskow said. Further momentum for serious greenhouse gas cuts, came from a petition released Thursday by a group of at least 215 climate scientists who urged the world to reduce emissions by half by 2050. "We have to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as we possibly can," said Australian climatologist Matthew England, a group spokesman. "It needs action. We're talking about now." The United States and ally Japan are proposing that the post-Kyoto agreement favor voluntary emission targets, arguing that mandatory cuts would threaten economic growth which generates money needed to fund technology to effectively fight global warming. Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, the host of the conference, said the mood in the closed-door negotiations was "serious, apprehensive," but that there were hopes the U.S. would slowly change its stance. "I think the United States will be judicious enough to accept the changes of atmosphere," said Witoelar. But U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns denied that Australia's acceptance of the Kyoto accord would prompt Washington to do the same. "We do not see eye-to-eye with Australia or many other countries on the wisdom of signing the Kyoto regime, that's obvious," Burns said in Sydney, Australia. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
December 4, 2007 Editorial Bringing an Energy Bill Home Congress is now within reach of a breakthrough energy bill that would reduce both America's dependence on foreign oil and its emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. House passage later this week is virtually certain. Senate approval depends on whether the majority leader, Harry Reid, and the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, can corral a half-dozen votes among moderate Republicans to resist a threatened filibuster. Success would earn them the gratitude of a country that badly needs a rational energy strategy. The bill's centerpiece, negotiated over the weekend by House leaders, is the first meaningful increase in fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, including S.U.V.'s, in more than 30 years. The provision would raise average fuel economy standards from 25 miles per gallon today to 35 miles per gallon in 2020. It would eventually save about 1.1 million barrels of oil per day, one-half of current imports from the Persian Gulf. A similar provision was approved by the Senate last summer. That the House has now accepted it is a tribute to the persistence of Ed Markey of Massachusetts, an unrelenting champion of fuel efficiency; the negotiating skills of Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker; and a statesmanlike willingness to compromise on the part of John Dingell, the powerful Michigan Democrat who realized that it was no longer plausible to defend all of Detroit's demands in the face of $90 a barrel oil. The bill includes several other important provisions. One calls for a big increase in the production and distribution of advanced forms of ethanol from sources other than corn. With strong environmental safeguards, this provision could reduce both oil consumption and greenhouse gases. Another critical provision - the renewable electricity standard - would require utilities to generate 15 percent of their power by 2020 from a combination of improved efficiency and renewable energy sources like wind and solar. This is the most vulnerable part of the bill. Senator Pete Domenici, an influential Republican voice on energy issues, is vowing to fight it, even though he has voted for similar provisions before and his own state of New Mexico has embarked on an aggressive renewable electricity program. The White House is also opposed and has hinted that President Bush would veto the entire bill if the renewable electricity provision survives. Torpedoing this bill would make it harder to address the problem of global warming, while leaving this country ever more dependent on foreign oil. Mr. Bush and Mr. Domenici should not stand in the way.
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POSTED NOV. 28, 2007
As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.
Annoyed by the ambiguity, Hansen went public a year and a half ago, saying this about the Bush administration in a talk at the University of Iowa: "I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster."
In a report, Piltz says Cooney added this line "... the uncertainties remain so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision making. ..." References to human health are marked out.
60 Minutes obtained the drafts from the Government Accountability Project. This edit made it into the final report: the phrase "earth may be" undergoing change made it into the report to Congress. Piltz says there wasn't room at the White House for those who disagreed, so he resigned.
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Peter Gleick Reports on a Looming Water Crisis
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Giant Fossil Sea Scorpion Bigger Than Man  Mock up of fossil sea scorpion, compared to man. (Credit: Simon Powell) ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2007) - The discovery of a giant fossilised claw from an ancient sea scorpion indicates that when alive it would have been about two and a half meters long, much taller than the average man. This find, from rocks 390 million years old, suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought. Dr Simon Braddy from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol, co-author of an article about the find, said, 'This is an amazing discovery. We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realised, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were.' The claw was discovered by one of Dr Braddy's co-authors*, Markus Poschmann, in a quarry near Prüm in Germany. Poschmann described finding the fossil: "I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realised there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw. Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilise it." The claw is from a sea scorpion (eurypterid) Jaekelopterus rhenaniae that lived between 460 and 255 million years ago. It is 46 centimetres long, indicating that the sea scorpion to which it belonged was around 2.5 metres (8 feet) long -- almost half a metre longer than previous estimates for these arthropods and the largest one ever to have evolved. Eurypterids are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of scorpions and possibly all arachnids. Some geologists believe that giant arthropods evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others, that they evolved in an 'arms race' alongside their likely prey, the early armoured fish. 'There is no simple single explanation', explains Braddy. 'It is more likely that some ancient arthropods were big because there was little competition from the vertebrates, as we see today. If the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere suddenly increased, it doesn't mean all the bugs would get bigger.' *The research is published online in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters. Adapted from materials provided by University of Bristol .
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POSTED NOV. 16, 2007
Dinosaur From Sahara Ate Like A 'Mesozoic Cow'
Nigersaurus taqueti, a 110 million-year-old sauropod from the Sahara, recreated in the flesh by artist Tyler Keillor in collaboration with Paul Sereno at the University of Chicago. The flesh model stars in an exhibit at the National Geographic Museum at Explorers Hall through March 18, 2008. (Credit: Art by Tyler Keillor/Photo by Mike Hettwer, courtesy of Project Exploration. Copyright 2007 National Geographic)
ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2007) - A 110-million-year-old dinosaur that had a mouth that worked like a vacuum cleaner, hundreds of tiny teeth and nearly translucent skull bones has been discovered.
Found in the Sahara by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno, paleontologist and professor at the University of Chicago, the dinosaur is a plant eater known as Nigersaurus taqueti. Originally named by Sereno and his team in 1999 with only a few of its distinctive bones in hand, Nigersaurus has emerged as an anatomically bizarre dinosaur.
Nigersaurus, a younger cousin of the more familiar North American dinosaur Diplodocus, is small for a sauropod, measuring only 30 feet in length. It managed to sustain its elephant-sized body with a featherweight skull armed with hundreds of needle-shaped teeth, said Sereno. Barely able to lift its head above its back, Nigersaurus operated more like a Mesozoic cow than a reptilian giraffe, mowing down mouthfuls of greenery that consisted largely of ferns and horsetails.
The dinosaur's oddest feature was a broad, straight-edged muzzle, which allowed its mouth to work close to the ground. Unlike any other plant eater, Nigersaurus had more than 50 columns of teeth, all lined up tightly along the front edge of its squared-off jaw, forming, in effect, a foot-long pair of scissors.
A CT scan of the jaw bones showed up to nine "replacements" stacked behind each cutting tooth, so that when one wore out, another immediately took its place. There were more than 500 teeth in total, with a new tooth in each column joining the scissors edge every month. "Among dinosaurs," Sereno said, "Nigersaurus sets the Guinness record for tooth replacement."
Sereno and coauthors write in PLoS One that Nigersaurus' downwardly deflected muzzle may characterize most diplodocoids, such as North America's Diplodocus. "Some of these unusual sauropods thrived to become the pre-eminent ground-level feeders of the Mesozoic," said coauthor Jeffrey Wilson, assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
CT scanning allowed Sereno and team to look inside the dinosaur's braincase. There, small canals of the brain's balancing organ revealed the habitual pose of the head. Reconstructed from CT scans, these canals showed that the muzzle of Nigersaurus angled directly toward the ground, unlike the forward-pointing snouts of most other dinosaurs. This feature, along with unusual wear facets on the animal's teeth, led Sereno and colleagues to conclude that Nigersaurus largely fed by cropping plants near the ground.
Coauthor Lawrence Witmer, professor at Ohio University, who imaged the brain and organ of equilibrium, said, "What we have here is the first good look at a sauropod brain, and it has important things to say about this animal's posture and behavior."
Jaw design was not Nigersaurus' only odd characteristic: It had a backbone that was more air than bone. "The vertebrae are so paper-thin that it is difficult to imagine them coping with the stresses of everyday use -- but we know they did it, and they did it well," said Wilson, who was an expedition team member.
The first bones of Nigersaurus were picked up in the 1950s by French paleontologists, though the species was not named. Sereno and his team honored this early work by naming the species after French paleontologist Philippe Taquet. Sereno's team member Didier Dutheil first spotted the skull bones of Nigersaurus in 1997, and on that expedition and the next, teams collected about 80 percent of the skeleton.
The fossil area, in the present-day nation of Niger, was home to the enormous extinct crocodilian nicknamed SuperCroc as well as the likely fish eater Suchomimus, both found by Sereno and both on the prowl for Nigersaurus some 110 million years ago. Then, the African continent was just beginning to free itself of land connections it inherited as a central part of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea. Nigersaurus' closest relative has been found recently in Spain.
Coauthors on the PLoS One paper include Jeffrey A. Wilson, Lawrence M. Witmer, John A. Whitlock, Abdoulaye Maga, Oumarou Ide and Timothy A. Rowe. Funders of the research in addition to the National Geographic Society include The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Pritzker Foundation and the Women's Board of the University of Chicago.
Citation: Sereno PC, Wilson JA, Witmer LM, Whitlock JA, Maga A, et al (2007) Structural Extremes in a Cretaceous Dinosaur. PLoS One 2(11): e1230.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001230
Details of the dinosaur's anatomy and lifestyle will be published Nov. 21, 2007, (available Nov. 15) in PLoS One, the online journal from the Public Library of Science, as well as in the December 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine, "Extreme Dinosaurs."
Sereno's research was partly funded by the National Geographic Society.
Adapted from materials provided by Public Library of Science .
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POSTED NOV. 16, 2007: GIANT COMET: University of Hawaii astronomers have measured the diameter of Comet 17P/Holmes: 1.4 million kilometers. This makes the exploding comet bigger than the sun and now the largest object in the solar system. Not surprisingly, the comet is visible to the naked eye; with only a backyard telescope you can watch its gigantic debris cloud expand from night to night. Nov. 19th is an especially good night to look: Comet Holmes will glide by Mirfak, the brightest star in the constellation Perseus, and appear to swallow it. Visit http://spaceweather.com/ for a sky map and images.
(Note: The sun remains by far the most massive object in the solar system. Comet 17P/Holmes' diaphanous atmosphere of dust and gas, which is what the astronomers measured, contains less mass than a typical asteroid. In spite of its great size, Comet Holmes is a lightweight that won't be deflecting the orbits of planets or causing any other such catastrophes.)
ROSETTA FLYBY: On Nov. 13th, the European Space Agency's comet-chasing Rosetta spacecraft buzzed Earth, passing only 5300 km above the southern hemisphere. During the high-speed gravity assist maneuver, Rosetta snapped some fantastic pictures including close-up shots of Antarctic icescapes and glittering views of city lights at night. See the sights on http://spaceweather.com/
Subscribe to Spaceweather Alerts: http://spaceweather.com/services/
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POSTED NOV. 9, 2007
Oil spill closes San Francisco beaches
SAN FRANCISCO - Oil that leaked from a cargo ship after it bumped the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has closed five beaches and is washing up as far as 40 miles north of San Francisco, the Coast Guard said Thursday.
About 58,000 gallons of oil spilled from the ship when it struck a tower supporting the bridge Wednesday morning. The accident caused no structural damage to the span, officials said, but vessel's hull suffered a large gash. The ship has since anchored in the bay.
"By our guidelines it is a medium-sized spill. But in the San Francisco Bay Area, that is a big deal," said Coast Guard Capt. William Uberti, captain of the Port of San Francisco and the chief federal officer investigating the accident.
"This is a very environmentally sensitive area, so it's of great concern," said Uberti.
At least eight beaches in San Francisco and Marin County were closed. A hazy film of oil visibly surrounded Alcatraz Island, and the plume extended well north and south of the Golden Gate Bridge. About a half-dozen birds were spotted alive and coated in oil.
'Continues to move around'
"The number one problem is the floating oil that continues to move around the bay at the whim of the current and the winds," said Barry McFarley, the incident commander of the private recovery firm the O'Brien Group, which was heading the response.
Crews in helicopters were surveying the damage, and skimmers were sucking up the oil on the bay and ocean. Teams were also walking the shoreline scooping up the oil, authorities said.
The pilot of the ship was being interviewed by Coast Guard authorities. If he's to have acted negligently or recklessly, he could lose his state's pilot license.
Several people who were at the Port of San Francisco reported getting headaches and feeling nauseated from inhaling oil fumes, but the city's public health department said no one was at risk from long-term health effects, NBC affiliate KNTV said.
Officials also posted no fishing signs on Treasure Island in several languages.
While the spill is nowhere as large as the Exxon Valdez 1989 disaster in Alaska, where 11 million gallons spilled, it does pose a threat to wildlife.
'Harder to contain' than other oil
Wil Bruhns, supervising engineer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, said the oil could threaten wildlife like seals, fish and birds.
"Bunker fuel oil tends to be rather heavy, and it doesn't float as well as other oil. It's harder to contain," Bruhns said.
The Cosco Busan, a China COSCO Holdings Co Ltd vessel, left the Port of Oakland at 6:31 a.m. on Wednesday and about two hours later hit a fender around a support tower on an especially foggy morning.
Transportation officials said part of the fender would need to be replaced, but said the incident did not damage the bridge and traffic continued to flow.
The Bay Bridge is a vital transportation link between San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. Ships heading into the Pacific Ocean travel under the Bay Bridge and then the Golden Gate Bridge before reaching the high seas.
The Bay Bridge is actually two bridges connecting San Francisco to the East Bay. The tower hit Wednesday is part of the western span; the eastern span partially collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
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POSTED NOV.8, 2007
Ground Said Rising at Yellowstone Park From Associated PressNovember 08, 2007 4:17 PM EST
WASHINGTON - Yellowstone National Park, once the site of a giant volcano, has begun swelling up, possibly because molten rock is accumulating beneath the surface, scientists report.
But, "there is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption," said Robert B. Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah.
Many giant volcanic craters around the world go up and down over decades without erupting, he said.
Smith and colleagues report in Friday's issue of the journal Science that the flow of the ancient Yellowstone crater has been moving upward almost 3 inches per year for the past three years.
That is more than three times faster than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923, the researchers said.
"Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock," Smith said in a statement. "But we have no idea how long this process goes on before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again."
It's not unusual for ancient volcano sites like Yellowstone and Long Valley, Calif., to rise and fall, according to the researchers.
The Yellowstone volcanic field was produced by what the researchers described as a plume of hot and molten rock beginning at least 400 miles beneath Earth's surface and rising to 30 miles underground, where it widens to about 300 miles across.
Blobs of molten rock sometimes rise to refill the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone.
The volcano at Yellowstone produced massive eruptions 2 million, 1.3 million and 642,000 years ago, all larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
Site of the famed Old Faithful and hundreds of other geysers, Yellowstone sprawls across parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
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On the Net:
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/
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POSTED NOV. 3, 2007
NASA Science News for November 2, 2007
On Monday morning, Nov. 5th, space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to undock from the ISS while the pair are gliding over many US towns and cities. The two spaceships will cut across a glittering expanse of morning stars dotted by bright planets and a Venus-Moon conjunction. And don't forget the exploding comet! It all adds up to "A Fantastic Monday Morning Sky Show."
FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/02nov_nov5.htm?list970490