Tag Archives: China

Stop killing United States black bears

Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video is called Black bear and cubs in hibernation – BBC wildlife.

March 2011. Throughout the United States, American black bears are killed for their gallbladders and bile. New York is home to 6,000 to 7,000 black bears and is one of only five states that allow the free trade in bear gallbladders and bile. Born Free USA has helped draft a landmark bill introduced to the senate that would protect bears from poaching and profiteering by prohibiting the commercial trade in bear gallbladders and bile in New York State: here.

Black bears show counting skills on computers: here.

Opposition to bear farms in China: here.

Bears ‘commit suicide’ to escape horror of gall bile farms: here.

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What an eruption at Yellowstone Super-Volcano would be like: Not so bad?

Lurking beneath Yellowstone National Park is a massive underground reservoir of magma, capped by the park’s famous caldera. 640,000 years ago, a super eruption rocked the region. What would happen if another such event blasted the park today? We asked USGS geologist Jake Lowenstern, scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
Photo by Nina B via Shutterstock Most volcanic activity in Yellowstone would not qualify as “super eruptions,” in which 1,000 km3 or more material is ejected from a volcano. Lowenstern told io9 that supervolcanoes are “very large, single eruptions” that usually last for about a week. But, unlike what you’ll see in certain television specials and Hollywood films, even a super eruption at Yellowstone wouldn’t endanger the whole United States. It also wouldn’t cause the kind catastrophe you might expect. Damage from the Super Eruption A super eruption might come fast and the Yellowstone magma source is enormous. But don’t expect walls of lava pouring across the continent. Lava flows would be likely be “within the vicinity of the park,” Lowenstern said, limited to a 30-40 mile radius. When a volcano erupts, he added, at least a third of the liquid rock that’s ejected falls right back into the volcano’s maw. The rest lands nearby, or goes up into the atmosphere.

Most of the real damage comes from ejecta that’s airborne. But it’s not fiery death from above. Instead, most damage would come from “cold ash” and pumice borne on the wind. Lowenstern and his colleagues consider it “disastrous” when enough ash rains down that it creates a layer of 10 or more centimeters on the ground — and that would happen in a radius of about 500 miles or so. This ash might reach so far that you’d see a fine dusting of it on your car in New York. Air traffic would be grounded, of course, as we saw after the 2010 eruption in Iceland. But mostly this ash would pollute farms in the midwest, as well as the Mississippi River. In a sense, it would be like an industrial accident, clogging waterways and agricultural areas with toxic sludge. The worst outcome of this event would be the destruction of our food supplies and waterways.

What would it look like? A super eruption, like all volcanic eruptions, begins with an earthquake. “A lot of earthquakes have to occur to break the rocks and allow magma to get to the surface,” Lowenstern said, adding that we’d need some big ones in the weeks or months leading up to the eruption. That means there would be many warning signs before it happened — this eruption wouldn’t come out of nowhere. Next, enormous vents or fissures in the Earth would break open near the caldera, perhaps in a ring around it or maybe as far as 10 kilometers away. Lava and superheated gasses would shoot out of these vents very rapidly, draining the magma reservoir beneath the caldera. As the the magma quickly drained, the caldera would begin to crumble. Eventually, it would collapse in an oval-shaped sinkhole that might be roughly 50 miles long by 30 miles wide. SExpand After the vents released their gasses and the ground collapsed, it’s likely that we’d see a global effect on temperatures. “Any big eruption causes a cooling of the atmoshpere, especially especially with that much ash,” said Lowenstern. In 1812, the Mount Tambora super volcano eruption in Indonesia lowered global temperatures. A caldera-forming eruption in Yellowstone would be bigger than the one in Tambora, so climate change would almost certainly follow. The cooling, however, would only last for a few years. Lowenstern said there’s no reason to expect that we’ll have an eruption of this size any time soon, especially because the caldera has gone through many regular eruptions that release pressure. “It may be done, or it may move on to another area,” he said. “In a couple million years, [the volcano] might start in the northeast.” As continental plates shift, so too do volcanoes — so the Yellowstone supervolcano might not go off until it’s far beyond the area we call Yellowstone today. “A more likely eruption is going to be a lava flow, a small event,” Lowenstern said. Are there signs of an impending eruption?   Currently, the Yellowstone caldera shows no signs of preparing for a super eruption. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t regular earthquakes in the area — that’s just a natural part of being in a volcanic region. And the caldera itself rises and falls all the time, the ground moving up and down as pressure increases and decreases in the magma reservoir below. “It rose about 27 centimeters max over the past 6 years,” Lowenstern said. “Calderas are big and hot, so they don’t break very easily and they just move up and down. It’s the way heat and gas get out of these deep systems — the system breathes.” He added that if a super eruption were coming, “you’d need extraordinary activity,” something that went way beyond centimeters of movement and a few small quakes. Right now, the Yellowstone caldera is breathing normally, exhibiting behaviors typical of any massive hydrothermal system. Lowenstern and the team of scientists at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory are constantly studying the caldera, looking for changes and working on projections of what the next eruption might be like. An eruption could “come at any time,” Lowenstern admitted. But would it be a super eruption? Probably not. And even if it were, the damage wouldn’t be the inferno you might be expecting. Instead of fleeing from hell on Earth, you’d just be slogging through lots and lots of ash cleanup. http://io9.com/what-will-really-happen-when-yellowstone-volcano-has-a-508274690

 

Formosan Clouded Leopard Declaired Extinct

 

Clouded Leopard Declared Extinct in Taiwan

Douglas Main, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer –         May 01, 2013        07:53 PM ET
A Formosan cloud leopard, now extinct in Taiwan.
                            A Formosan clouded leopard, now extinct in Taiwan. CREDIT: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan)

The Formosan clouded leopard, a clouded-leopard subspecies native to Taiwan, is now extinct, according to a team of zoologists.

“There is little chance that the clouded leopard still exists in Taiwan,” zoologist Chiang Po-jen told Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA). “There may be a few of them, but we do not think they exist in any significant numbers.”

Zoologists from Taiwan and the United States have looked for the animal on and off since 2001, to no avail. To see if any of the animals remained, the researchers set up about 1,500 infrared cameras and scent traps in the Taiwanese mountains but found nothing.

Now, the only one left in the country is a stuffed specimen at the National Taiwan Museum, zoologist Liu Jian-nan told CNA. There are two live clouded leopards at Taipei Zoo, but they are an imported subspecies from Southeast Asia.

The range of clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa) spans from the hills of the Himalayas to Southeast Asia to China. The animals are known for the patches on their fur that resemble clouds. They also sport fangs larger than those of any other feline.

In 2006, research revealed that clouded leopards found in the Sunda Islands of Southeast Asia — which which include Borneo, Java, Sumatra and Bali — were a separate species, now known as Sunda clouded leopards (Neofelis diardi).

Formosan clouded leopards, which were not thought to be a separate species, have been driven to extinction by habitat destruction and illegal hunting for their skin and bones.

From my Inbox—-Walking to School

The language is Korean, I translated (poorly) with Bing Translator

중국 어린이들의 목숨을 건 등하교길

People’s Republic of China children’s school

우리나라 대부분의 부모와 아이들에게는 아이들의 등하교길에 가장 위험한 요소는 길건너 통학버스를 타기위해 길을 건널때 일것입니다. 그러나 여기 중국의 어느마을의 이 사진들을 보십시요. 아직도 중국의 곳곳에는 절벽을 깎아 만든 좁은 벼랑길을 따라 등하교를 하고, 아슬 아슬한 다리를 건너야 하고 심지어는 밧줄에 몸을 매달아 강을 건너야 하는 곳도 있다고 합니다.

Most of the parents and children in this country is the way most children’s school
Dangerous elements are across the street from the school bus would be when crossing the street to catch.
However, here are some pics of the town People’s Republic of China.
Still lined the cliffs of People’s Republic of China carved narrow cliff path
Depending on the school, and it’s a dicey, crossing the bridge and
Even on a rope strung across the river where the body should also.


크기변환_risking-lives-for-school[2].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-1[2].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-2[6].jpg ★아주 위험한 길이군요↑   

It’s a very dangerous way


크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-3[2].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-4[2].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-20[5].jpg ★특공훈련을 받고 있는 것 같군요↑

Sounds like being trained in commando


크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-21[2].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-22[6].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-23[6].jpg
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크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-25[4].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-26[5].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-27[6].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-28[2].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-29[2].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-30[2].jpg
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크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-32[2].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-33[3].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-34[2].jpg ★묘기진행중은 아닐텐데….↑
It would not be on the stunts

★중심을 잘 잡고 걸어야…. ↑
 Center hold walk ….


크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-36[3].jpg
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-37[3].jpg ★대단한 실력의 달인들이군요↑
크기변환_risking-lives-for-school-38[7].jpg

Tibetan Forest Guard Sets Himself on Fire in Protest

Earth First! Newswire

Reported by RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai.

A Tibetan man who self-immolated in protest against Chinese rule in Gansu province on Monday has died, according to a source inside Tibet.

The fate of Lhamo Kyab, 43, who burned himself in Tsoe town in Sangchu (Xiahe) county within the Gannan (Kanlho) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, was not immediately known due to communication problems.

The source told RFA’s Tibetan Service Tuesday that he had died on the spot in the predawn self-immolation.

Unlike most other Tibetan self-immolators, Lhamo Kyab, a bachelor forest guard, jumped into a raging fire he set up using wood and kerosene and was mostly consumed by the flames.

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