• EPA Sued Over Toxic Waste Air Rules
  
• Court Blocks Bear Hunt in New Jersey National Park
  
• Bay Foundation Petitions EPA to Protect Chesapeake
  
• Economists Urge Conservation of Western Lands
  
• Caribbean Lizards Push Theory of Island Evolution
  
• Greenland Glacier Retreating Rapidly
  
• Penguin Study Offers Climate Clues
  
• A New Theory Behind the Secret of Stradivarius
  

EPA Sued Over Toxic Waste Air Rules

The plaintiffs in the suit believe the EPA regulations will allow these hazardous chemicals to be pumped into the air without any control measures.

"On behalf of its friends in the polluter lobby, the Bush administration has engaged in a scam that the Enron Board would admire," said Jim Pew, attorney for Earthjustice who is representing the environmental groups. "This rule will allow polluters to avoid much of the cost of cleaning up their toxic waste by just shifting their poisons from the water and soil to the air."

The cleanup of toxic waste sites typically uses heat or aeration methods to remove chemicals from contaminated soil and water. The process releases a wide array of toxic compounds into the air - previously the EPA had listed these cleanup operations as a major source of hazardous air pollution that must be regulated under the Clean Air Act's air toxics provisions.

That changed in October, when the agency issued a rule completely exempting the bulk of toxic waste cleanups - all those conducted under the Superfund law (CERCLA) or state programs run under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) - from Clean Air Act emission standards.

The agency says emissions standards are unnecessary because CERCLA and RCRA already require federal or state agencies to establish appropriate requirements for cleanups on a case by case basis.

The requirements are, according to the EPA, the "functional equivalent" of Clean Air Act emission standards, but neither RCRA nor CERCLA require any air emission standards for toxic waste cleanups nor ensure that such standards will be equivalent to those the Clean Air Act's air toxics provisions would require.

The case was filed by Earthjustice on behalf of the Sierra Club, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Court Blocks Bear Hunt in New Jersey National Park

The park represents some 20 percent of the total area open to the state's bear hunt, which state officials approved amid some concern that conflicts between black bears and humans are on the rise in New Jersey.

On Friday U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton issued the temporary restraining order to prohibit the hunt from commencing within the national recreation area until he makes a further ruling, which is expected Tuesday.

The ruling came in response to a suit filed last week by a coalition of wildlife protection groups, hiker and Native Americans.

The coalition says allowing the hunt in Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area would violate federal environmental laws.

The national recreation area encompasses more than 67,000 acres of protected park land, home to more than 130 species of rare and endangered birds, mammals, and plants - including a vulnerable population of wintering bald eagles.

They claim that the bear hunt would violate the National Park Service Organic Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, because the National Park Service has failed to: set any limits on the number of hunters who may enter the park or on the number of bears who may be killed; review the environmental impacts on the bear population and park resources; solicit comment from the public; or engage in consultation concerning potential impacts on threatened and endangered species.

"There is not one sensible reason to allow the trophy hunting of black bears at Delaware Water Gap," said Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president at The Humane Society of the United States, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. "These lands were set aside specifically for wildlife, and the bears living in this wilderness area are causing no one any harm. The federal government conducted no environmental review in allowing the shooting of these animals, and the hunt should certainly not be allowed to proceed."

Bay Foundation Petitions EPA to Protect Chesapeake

Nitrogen pollution is the most significant problem facing the Chesapeake Bay, which has been formally placed on the nation's list of dirtiest waters.

But currently both the EPA and Bay watershed states routinely fail to include restrictions on nitrogen pollution in Clean Water Act permits.

The Clean Water Act requires the EPA and the states to issue permits for all sewage treatment plants and industrial dischargers that are sufficiently stringent to protect water quality in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, the conservation group says in its legal filing.

"The Chesapeake Bay is critically ill, and the Clean Water Act clearly requires the EPA and the states to reduce nitrogen pollution to restore it. said Chesapeake Bay Foundation President William C. Baker. "Tragically, the politics of postponement have forced us to take this legal action."

The Chesapeake Bay watershed covers more than 64,000 square miles and encompasses parts of six states: Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia.

These six states, the D.C. government, a commission representing the watershed states' legislatures, the EPA and twelve other federal agencies currently work together on a voluntary basis to set goals and polices for protecting and restoring the bay.

The executive council of this coalition is meeting this week to chart progress made towards cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay - an effort many conservationists think is failing.

And nitrogen has become a symbol of a restoration effort behind schedule - some 300 million pounds of nitrogen flow into the bay every year, causing algae overgrowth that kills fish and harms bay grasses, which are vital habitat for crabs and small fish. It is estimated that in the early 1600s, the bay absorbed some 50 million pounds of nitrogen annually.

Dead zones - areas of the Chesapeake Bay starved of oxygen because of nitrogen pollution - have reached record levels this year.

At one point in 2003 the dead zone covered 40 percent of the Chesapeake's main stem and stretched 150 miles.

Nitrogen enters the Chesapeake comes from four major sources: agricultural run off, air pollution, urban runoff and sewage wastewater.

Wastewater from sewage treatment plants, which contributes some 60 million pounds of nitrogen to the bay each year, is the most tempting target for regulators because it is easy to identify and control.

More than two thirds of sewage treatment plants that discharge wastewater into the Chesapeake Bay do not use any technologies to remove nitrogen pollution.

Economists Urge Conservation of Western Lands

The economists wrote that the West's natural environment is "arguably, its greatest, long run economic strength" because it underlies "a quality of life that contributes to robust economic growth by attracting productive families, firms, and investments."

The economists asked the president and the governors to initiate a review of actions by their administrations that affect the environment and the economy.

They say this review should fully describe the economic benefits and costs of actions significantly affecting the environment, reinforce those actions that strengthen the economy by protecting or restoring environmental quality, and arrest those that damage the economy by degrading the environment.

"Public officials can best promote long run economic prosperity in the West by encouraging efficient transitions away from harmful activities toward those beneficial to both the environment and the economy," the economists write.

This review also should identify opportunities for improving both the environment and the economy, such as eliminating expensive subsidies for environmentally harmful activities. Numerous opportunities exist and they are important because "the sooner we seize these opportunities, the sooner the West will enjoy more jobs, higher incomes, and greater prosperity."

"Nearly all communities of the West will find they cannot have a healthy economy without a healthy environment," according to the economists. "The environment's contribution to economic prosperity, however, faces serious threats, including air and water pollution, urban sprawl, the extension of roads and other development into roadless public lands, and fragmentation of habitat for native fish and wildlife."

The list of signers includes two Nobel laureates - Kenneth Arrow of Stanford University and Robert Solow of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The letter is available here.

Caribbean Lizards Push Theory of Island Evolution

The results of the 12 month study detailed how hurricanes and lesser storms wash the lizards into prevailing ocean currents, which carry them from island to island.

The finding suggests that classic theories of island evolution need to be reconsidered, the researchers say, and questions the widely held view that vast numbers of species of plants and animals on Caribbean, Hawaiian and Galapagos islands evolved separately in isolated microcosms of evolution.

"The lizards are being prevented from evolving as quickly as they otherwise would have," said Ryan Calsbeek, the study's lead researcher and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles. "We can no longer just assume that certain populations evolved independently on separate islands."

Calsbeek and UCLA evolutionary biologist Thomas Smith explained that the exchange of genes among adjacent islands over time can slow evolution and the ability of animals to adapt to their surroundings.

"When islands evolve independently, they maintain their own identity," Smith said. "When they begin sharing genetic material, their uniqueness begins to disappear, and the process of evolution slows."

Calsbeek and Smith focused the study on Anolis lizards, a genus of lizards long considered a classic example of adaptive radiation - the process whereby a single lineage rapidly evolves into many species that are adapted to specific habitats.

All species of Anolis lizards share a single ancestor from South America, and changes in body proportions have occurred based on habitat use.

Calsbeek and Smith captured approximately 50 Anolis lizards from each of five Caribbean islands in June and July of 2002.

The researchers weighed and measured each lizard, and removed a tiny tissue sample from each lizard's regenerative tail to use in DNA analysis. Working in the lab over the following 10 months, they created a genetic profile for each lizard and determined that lizards were moving between islands.

The researchers sought to explain this unusual flow of genetic material between islands and Smith said they were "stunned to find an exact match between the gene flow and ocean currents, even in exceptional cases where prevailing currents are not in the expected direction."

Calsbeek said that ocean currents are the most plausible explanation for the gene flow between islands.

"It is quite amazing to think that weather patterns can affect the evolution of island lizards, but the patterns of dispersal match up so well with the direction of ocean currents that the conclusion is almost unavoidable," Calsbeek said. "Whether similar processes are important for other island groups is a question that needs further investigation, but the lizards have opened the door to new ideas about evolution on islands."

Greenland Glacier Retreating Rapidly

The finding has surprised scientists, because while the margins of the glacier had been slowly retreating from the southwest coast of Greenland since before 1900, this retreat appeared to have stopped by the early 1990s when the first accurate measurements were made.

Now scientists believe the glacier, one of the major drainage outlets of Greenland's interior ice sheet, is thinning more than four times faster than it had for most of the 20th Century.

Glaciers such as Jakobshavn are large, flowing masses of ice that contain smaller streams of ice that move independently within them, just as the Gulf Stream moves within the Atlantic Ocean.

Glaciers and ice streams carry ice from the interior of an even larger ice sheet out to sea, where the ice breaks up into icebergs in a region called the calving front.

In the critical region upstream from the calving front, scientists measure the thickness of the ice to gauge conditions within the glacier.

Scientists believe that Jakobshavn remained unchanged until 1900, when the ice surface near the calving front began lowering by 2.5 meters per year on average. According to the new data, the glacier was slightly thickening between 1991 and 1999, before it started to thin rapidly. Current thinning rates have reached 12 meters per year.

Accompanying this thinning is a substantial increase in ice speed - the glacier, which was flowing at 7 kilometers per year, is now flowing at 9 kilometers.

"This ice stream is pretty important, because it drains a large part of the Greenland ice into Baffin Bay," said Kees van der Veen, a researcher involved with the study with Ohio State's Byrd Polar Research Center. "What we want to know is how significant is this increase in activity, and exactly how long has it been going on?"

Among those examining the situation are scientists at Ohio State University, who are processing the satellite data and pinpointing the best sites for a follow up study.

The initial thinning of the Jakobshavn Glacier was probably a delayed response to warming that occurred after the Little Ice Age, a 500 year cold period that ended around 1800, van der Veen said.

But that does not explain the rapid thinning that began after 1993.

As to whether global climate change is to blame for the acceleration, van der Veen is not ready to embrace that conclusion but said "we definitely want to go back to do a long term study of the area."

Penguin Study Offers Climate Clues

In a study published recently in the journal "Marine Ecology Progress Series," study author Steven Emslie of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington says the finding could help refine understanding of climatic change on Antarctica.

Emslie said data collected by his team allow him to make a strong case that Adelies abandoned the entire southern Ross Sea for almost 1,000 years, from roughly 2,000 to 1,000 years ago.

The analysis also indicates that the large Adelie penguin colonies that now exist on Ross Island in McMurdo Sound likely were established only 500 to 600 years ago.

"We think the birds left the colonies when the southern Ross Sea was completely iced over in a cooling trend that very likely covered that region for probably a thousand years," said Emslie. "That has never been known before from other climate records."

Emslie said the evidence points to four conditions that suggests penguins once nested in an area: ice free terrain; open water close to the colony; a ample and nearby food source; and pebbles on a beach that the birds could use to make their nests.

If those conditions - in particular the first three - change sufficiently, then the birds will abandon a colony and establish themselves elsewhere, Emslie explains.

Emslie also noted that a "natural experiment" seems to be underway in Antarctica today that confirms the idea that Adelie populations can rapidly adapt to changing conditions.

Iceberg B-15A, an enormous piece of ice that broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in March of 2000, has caused much more ice than usual to accumulate for a number of years in eastern McMurdo Sound, essentially cutting off large Adelie colonies at Cape Royds, Cape Crozier, and Cape Bird.

Another enormous berg, called C-16 has exacerbated the ice buildup, scientists say.

The bergs prevented Ross Sea currents from breaking up sea ice every year, as they normally would, instead allowing the ice to accumulate and thicken and forcing the birds to travel farther to reach open water.

While the icebergs now appear to be breaking up, the numbers of breeding pairs of birds in those colonies, which already were experiencing some declines, have dropped dramatically in the past three years and, if the unusual conditions produced by the icebergs conditions persist, may cause the penguins to abandon those colonies completely.

Scientists are debating whether the existence of the huge icebergs is due to a general warming of the climate in Antarctica or simply part of some other natural process in which pieces of ice break away, or "calve," from the Ross and other ice shelves.

Emslie says that even if the calving is due to warming, because the icebergs are causing a concentration of sea ice that could eventually cause an abandonment of penguin colonies, scientists in the future could interpret the abandonment as evidence of a cooling trend.

"I think it is a good lesson for us," he said. "Although you might think this ecosystem is relatively simple, it is apparent that it is a lot more complex than it first appears."

A New Theory Behind the Secret of Stradivarius

Theories range from the skill of the craftsman to secret techniques such as a special varnish, the drying of the wood, the storage time, or even the use of old wood from historic structures.

But scientists, in research published in the journal "Dendrochronologia," are now advancing a new hypothesis - climate.

The superior sound quality of instruments from this era may be explained by the climatic regime that gripped Europe and perhaps much of the world from AD 1645 to 1715, according to Lloyd Burckle of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Henri Grissino-Mayer of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Science at the University of Tennessee.

The period - known as the Maunder Minimum - was characterized by a scarcity of sunspots and a reduction in the Sun's overall activity, and the less intense solar radiation and activity coincided with a sharp decline in temperature during the Little Ice Age and a period of very cold weather in western Europe.

The period is clearly seen in tree ring records from high elevation forest stands in the European Alps, the researchers say, and the long winters and cool summers of this 70 year period produced wood that has slow, even growth desirable properties for producing quality sounding boards.

Burckle and Grissino suggest that the narrow tree rings that identify the Maunder Minimum in Europe played a role in the enhanced sound quality of instruments produced by the violinmakers of this time. They say narrow tree rings would not only strengthen the violin but would increase the wood's density.

Antonio Stradivari of Cremona, Italy, perhaps the most famous of violin makers, was born one year before the beginning of the Maunder Minimum.

He and other violinmakers of the area used the only wood available to them, Burckle and Grissino say, from the trees that grew during the Maunder Minimum.

The researchers note that the onset of the Maunder Minimum came at a time when the skills of the Cremonese violinmakers reached their zenith perhaps made the difference in the violin's tone and brilliance.

Climate conditions with temperatures such as those that occurred during this time simply can not and do not occur today in areas where the Cremonese makers likely obtained their wood, Burckle and Grissino say.