Oldest living tree cluster 8,000-years-old reveals every climate change that ever occurred

Scientists have found a cluster of spruces in the mountains in western Sweden which, at an age of 8,000 years, may be the world’s oldest living trees.

The hardy Norway spruces were found perched high on a mountain side where they have remained safe from recent dangers such as logging, but exposed to the harsh weather conditions of the mountain range that separates Norway and Sweden.

Carbon dating of the trees carried out at a laboratory in Miami, Florida, showed the oldest of them first set root about 8,000 years ago, making it the world’s oldest known living tree, Umea University Professor Leif Kullman said.

California’s “Methuselah” tree, a Great Basin bristlecone pine, is often cited as the world’s oldest living tree with a recorded age of between 4,500 and 5,000 years.

Two other spruces, also found in the course of climate change studies in the Swedish county of Dalarna, were shown to be 4,800 and 5,500 years old.

“These were the first woods that grew after the Ice Age,” said Lars Hedlund, responsible for environmental surveys in the county of Dalarna and collaborator in climate studies there.

“That means that when you speak of climate change today, you can in these (trees) see pretty much every single climate change that has occurred.”

Although a single tree trunk can become at most about 600 years old, the spruces had survived by pushing out another trunk as soon as the old one died, Professor Kullman said.

Rising temperatures in the area in recent years had allowed the spruces to grow rapidly, making them easier to find in the rugged terrain, he added.

“For quite some time they have endured as bushes maybe 1/2 meter tall,” he said.

“But over the past few decades we have seen a much warmer climate, which has meant that they have popped up like mushrooms in the soil.” - msnbc

Freepers want to cut it down, so the actual location and image of the trees is not being published. Why would anyone want to cut down a tree that has lived 8,000 years? Research ( Jack Glaser, UC Berkeley) says that republicans have more fear of and resistance to change. If true, death is the ultimate change. So, perhaps their fear of death translates to jealousy and rage at things which will out live them. “I have to die, so it should too!”

Agree? Disagree? Let me know.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Ancient serpent shows its leg

from news.bbc.co.uk posted with vodpod

Flowers’ Fragrance Diminished By Air Pollution, Study Indicates

Air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source, a new University of Virginia study indicates. This could partially explain why wild populations of some pollinators, particularly bees — which need nectar for food — are declining in several areas of the world, including California and the Netherlands.

“The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters; but in today’s polluted environment downwind of major cites, they may travel only 200 to 300 meters,” said Jose D. Fuentes, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a co-author of the study. “This makes it increasingly difficult for pollinators to locate the flowers.”

The result, potentially, is a vicious cycle where pollinators struggle to find enough food to sustain their populations, and populations of flowering plants, in turn, do not get pollinated sufficiently to proliferate and diversify.

Other studies, as well as the actual experience of farmers, have shown that populations of bees, particularly bumblebees, and butterflies have declined greatly in recent years. Fuentes and his team of U.Va. researchers, including Quinn McFrederick and James Kathilankal, believe that air pollution, especially during the peak period of summer, may be a factor.

To investigate this, they created a mathematical model of how the scents of flowers travel with the wind. The scent molecules produced by flowers are very volatile and they quickly bond with pollutants such as ozone, hydroxyl and nitrate radicals, which destroy the aromas they produce. This means that instead of traveling intact for long distances with the wind, the scents are chemically altered and the flowers, in a sense, no longer smell like flowers. This forces pollinators to search farther and longer and possibly to rely more on sight and less on smell.

The scientists calculated scent levels and distances that scents can travel under different conditions, from relatively unpolluted pre-industrial revolution levels, to the conditions now existing in rural areas downwind from large cities.

“It quickly became apparent that air pollution destroys the aroma of flowers, by as much as 90 percent from periods before automobiles and heavy industry,” Fuentes said. “And the more air pollution there is in a region, the greater the destruction of the flower scents.”

The study appears online in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

The National Science Foundation funded the investigation. - sd

Curious cloud formations linked to quakes

CAN unusual clouds signal the possibility of an impending earthquake? That’s the question being asked following the discovery of distinctive cloud formations above an active fault in Iran before each of two large earthquakes occurred.

Geophysicists Guangmeng Guo and Bin Wang of Nanyang Normal University in Henan, China, noticed a gap in the clouds in satellite images from December 2004 that precisely matched the location of the main fault in southern Iran. It stretched for hundreds of kilometres, was visible for several hours and remained in the same place, although the clouds around it were moving. At the same time, thermal images of the ground showed that the temperature was higher along the fault. Sixty-nine days later, on 22 February 2005, an earthquake of magnitude 6.4 hit the area, killing more than 600 people.

In December 2005, a similar formation again appeared in the clouds for a few hours. Sixty-four days later, an earthquake of magnitude 6 shook the region (International Journal of Remote Sensing, vol 29, p 1921).

Guo and Wang suggest that an eruption of hot gases from inside the fault could have caused water in the clouds to evaporate. Another idea is that ionisation may be involved: Friedemann Freund at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, recently demonstrated that when rocks are squeezed, positively charged ions form in the air above. The trouble is that ions usually help to form clouds, not dissipate them.

The authors say that if recognisable cloud formations precede large quakes, they could be used for prediction, but other seismologists are sceptical. “There is no physical model that explains why something would suddenly occur two months before an earthquake, and then shut off and not occur again,” says Mike Blanpied of the US Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program. - ns

Oy! Eating champ downs 35 dozen oysters

Patrick “Deep Dish” Bertoletti looked down at the litter of empty oyster shells in front of him and savored the sweet taste of victory. For Crazy Legs Conti, the bitter taste of defeat could be washed away only by beer.

The Acme World Oyster Eating championship belt — leather, with a silver dish featuring an oyster on the half-shell — hung on Bertoletti’s skinny hips. The 22-year-old Chicago resident took the title Saturday by slurping 35 dozen of the big bivalves in eight minutes.

“I could probably do a couple dozen more, especially if they were charbroiled,” said Bertoletti, who holds the endurance oyster-eating record, having downed 53 1/2 dozen in 2007 before calling it quits. “Although they’re great raw.”

Conti, the defending champion, tied for third, sucking down 24 dozen.

“They’re supposed to be an aphrodisiac,” said Conti, whose real name is Crazy Legs. “But I think that’s only true for about the first three dozen. When you get up higher than that, you don’t want much activity for a while.”

Juliet Lee, 43, of Germantown, Md., formerly a Ninjing University chemistry professor, methodically polished off 31 1/2 dozen for second place.

A dozen professional eaters who compete in Major League Eaters events year-round squared off at the French Quarter Festival on Saturday.

Major League Eating describes itself as a sports franchise that oversees all professional competitive eating events and competitive eating television specials. It puts on the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest, as well as other events, such as the World Deep-Fried Asparagus Eating Championship and the National Sweet Corn Eating Championship.

Rules for the oyster tournament forced contestants to use forks, not lift the shells to their mouth, and to finish all the oysters from a tray before starting a new one.

Officials in striped shirts stood beside each contestant and flipped a counter as each dozen was consumed.

Many of the competitors wore gloves to handle the shells; all carried several bottles of water, cold drinks or beer to help them keep their mouths and throats lubricated. Lee carried a thermos of hot water but said she didn’t feel the need for it.

“Oysters are pretty liquid,” said Lee, who weighs 105 pounds despite being on the pro-eating tour for the past year. “I didn’t need it.”

Tim “Gravy” Brown — ranked 13th in the world — was disqualified when he had what professional eaters call a “reversal of fortune.” He vomited after 14 dozen.

Scott “Scozzy Bone” Zukowski, 20, a Tulane University student from New York’s Long Island was in his first professional event. He ate 20 dozen.

“I feel good about that; my goal was 15 dozen,” Zukowski said. “I had only eaten one raw oyster in my life before this and I thought I’d vomit after it. I hate them.” - yahoo

Unusual earthquake swarm detected off Oregon

Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption - except there are no volcanoes in the area.

Scientists don’t know exactly what the earthquakes mean, but they could be the result of molten rock rumbling away from the recognized earthquake faults off Oregon, said Robert Dziak, a geophysicist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University.

There have been more than 600 quakes over the past 10 days in a basin 150 miles southwest of Newport. The biggest was magnitude 5.4, and two others were more than magnitude 5.0, OSU reported.

On the hydrophones, the quakes sound like low thunder and are unlike anything scientists have heard in 17 years of listening, Dziak said. Some of the quakes have also been detected by earthquake instruments on land.

The hydrophones are left over from a network the Navy used to listen for submarines during the Cold War. They routinely detect passing ships, earthquakes on the ocean bottom and whales calling to one another.

Scientists hope to send out an OSU research ship to take water samples, looking for evidence that sediment has been stirred up and chemicals that would indicate magma is moving up through the Juan de Fuca Plate, Dziak said.

The quakes have not followed the typical pattern of a major shock followed by a series of diminishing aftershocks, and few have been strong enough to be felt on shore.

The Earth’s crust is made up of plates that rest on molten rock, which are rubbing together. When the molten rock, or magma, erupts through the crust, it creates volcanoes.

That can happen in the middle of a plate. When the plates lurch against each other, they create earthquakes along the edges.

In this case, the Juan de Fuca Plate is a small piece of crust being crushed between the Pacific Plate and North America, Dziak said. - komotv

World Bank Chief Calls for Immediate Action on Deepening Global Food Crisis

he president of the World Bank yesterday urged immediate action to deal with sharply rising food prices, which have caused hunger and violence in several countries.

Robert B. Zoellick said the international community has to “put our money where our mouth is” now to help hungry people. Zoellick spoke as the bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, ended two days of meetings in Washington.

He called on governments to rapidly carry out commitments to provide the U.N. World Food Program with $500 million in emergency aid by May 1. Prices have only risen further since the program issued that appeal, so it is urgent that governments step up, he said.

Zoellick said that the fall of the government in Haiti over the weekend after a wave of deadly rioting and looting over food prices underscores the importance of quick international action.

He said the bank is granting an additional $10 million to Haiti for food programs.

Zoellick said that international finance meetings are “often about talk,” but he noted a “greater sense of intensity and focus” among ministers; now, he said, they have to “translate it into greater action.” - wp