Is The Recent Ebola Outbreak Caused By Endangered Wildlife Poachers?

Though the CDC’s Atlanta main headquarters’ Special Pathogens Branch has yet to trace the 2014 Ebola outbreak’s “Patient Zero”, is there a possibility that the recent outbreak came from an illegal wildlife poacher?  

By: Ringo Bones 

During the 1995 Ebola outbreak, Anthony Sanchez, the then head epidemiologist of the Centers for Disease Control’s Special Pathogens Branch had managed to trace the 1995 Zaire Ebola outbreak back past the unfortunate lab technician to an earlier patient at Kikwit’s hospital – an illegal charcoal maker who probably picked up the disease in the jungle where he worked. Yet, at the time, Sanchez concedes that this still leaves a wide range of crannies where the Ebola virus might be hiding. A typical illegal charcoal maker in Africa would typically head into the deepest recesses of a government protected jungle wildlife preserve to lessen the chances of being caught by the preserve’s park rangers while cutting down a tall tree to then burn it in a pit he’d dug, making the original source of the Ebola virus anywhere from the top of the forest canopy down to some subterranean animal. Given the various suspected source of the infection, is it possible that the 2014 Ebola outbreak might have started in some “unfortunate” wildlife poacher? 

Given the increased demand of illegal African-sourced endangered species products like rhinoceros horn, elephant ivory, etc. in the increasingly affluent middle-class of Mainland China, there’s a good chance that a poacher who frequents into the deepest recesses of Africa’s protected natural wildlife preserves to poach protected species could become infected with Ebola – or a recent unknown strain – and inadvertently spread it once the poacher visits a frontier town to secretly sell his illegally poached wares to some middleman who will later export it to Mainland China and other East Asian markets with a high demand for endangered wildlife products. Health authorities in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast had recently advised their citizens to stay away from bush mean in order to avoid catching Ebola. And given that the recent global economic slowdown probably resulted in the cutbacks of the number of personnel guarding Africa’s various wildlife preserves, it is very likely that the “Patient Zero” of the 2014 Ebola outbreak could be an illegal wildlife poacher?  

President Obama’s Latest Emissions Limiting Guidelines: Good for the Environment?

Will the proposed new guidelines by President Obama on slashing carbon dioxide emissions by up to 30 percent by the year 2030 finally mitigate the worst effects of climate change?

By: Ringo Bones 

Maybe it was probably the recently published NASA’s satellite images showing the West Antarctic ice shelf melting and crashing into the sea that will increase the possibility of a catastrophic sea level rise by the 22^nd Century that finally prompted the general public to take the issue of climate change much more seriously. Fortunately, the Obama administration finally bares a proposed coal fired power plant greenhouse gas emissions guidelines that finally pleased the majority of American environmentalists. Unfortunately, Washington’s coal lobby has been up in arms of the proposed emissions guidelines, warning of a catastrophic economic decline if it gets the green light at Capitol Hill. FOX News, The US Republican Party and Chris Hamilton – West Virginia Coal Association chair – all have critical views on what they call as President Obama’s “War on Coal”, but the good news is that if the latest proposed emissions limiting guidelines could cut up to 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from American coal fired power plants by the year 2030.   

Unlike the 8-year tenure of former US President George W. Bush, which had been a “paradise” for climate change deniers and those who profit from it, US president Barack Obama has recently consulted and negotiated with the US Environmental Protection Agency – with EPA administrator Gina McCarthy - back in Monday, June 2, 2014, on new guidelines to slash carbon dioxide and other industrial greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired power plants in order to limit the most catastrophic impact of climate change and sea level rise. Fortunately, the latest proposed emissions guidelines are based on the latest peer-reviewed climate research and not from coal mining and crude oil profit projections of the biggest American based fossil fuel extraction companies. Given that a typical coal fired power plant burns as much as 16-tons of coal a day, some of them will probably be shut down permanently and President Obama says departure form coal burning based power generation could open up new business opportunities for the American wind turbine and solar power generation energy sector. 

The latest carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions data shows that American coal fired power plants produce 40 percent of the country’s overall carbon dioxide emissions and on a per capita basis, every American has on average two times the carbon footprint of a typical Mainland Chinese citizen. But the proposed emissions curb guidelines have had the Washington DC coal lobby up in arms and warns that the entire state of West Virginia’s coal industry could collapse at the cost of millions of jobs. Political rhetoric aside, many American environmentalists had been very wary of the Washington DC’s fossil fuel extraction industry lobby since the mid 1990s for their notoriety of manipulating Evangelical Christianity’s religious dogma to benefit their own profitable ends.  

2014 UN Climate Change Report: Too Alarmist?

Given that it resulted some climate scientists withdrawing their names from the recent UN IPCC climate change findings report, is the report too alarmist?

By: Ringo Bones

Given that climate change research has been hijacked not only by powerful commercial interests of big crude oil and dirty coal extraction and processing companies but also of political interests funded by “big oil” and “big coal” commercial entities, who’s telling the truth has never been so polarized by not only where your political and religious allegiances lie but also where you lie in the commercial transaction of our still largely polluting energy production means. It has been said that back in 2012, carbon dioxide emissions by all the fossil fueled power plants around the world is 200 times that produced by all of the world’s volcanoes. Given the sobering statistics, is climate change really irreversible and already done its worse as said in a recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report?

Most of us are probably old enough to remember the cautionary tales on the consequence of our runaway fossil fuel burning lifestyle in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth – especially on how Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans back in 2005 might have been primarily caused by our largely preventable greenhouse gas emissions wreaking havoc on the earth’s delicate climate. Even though some heads of states of the leading industrialized countries are announcing their long term plans to wean themselves away from extensive fossil fuel burning to more earth friendly renewable power generating means like wind turbines and solar. But have we already thrown enough carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to have irreversibly damaged our delicate climate system?

Are Palm Oil Farmers Destroying Indonesia’s Forests?

With the deforestation fires that has now caused serious pollution in the neighboring city-state of Singapore, are Indonesian palm oil farmers destroying their country’s vital tropical rain forests? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Well, the endemic problem recently acquired headline news status yet again after air pollution levels in the neighboring city-state of Singapore now exceeds the UN’s established acceptable air pollution levels during the middle of June 2013, the annual mass slash and burn farming methods of Indonesia’s industrial palm oil farmers had once again gained headline news status even though such environmentally destructive activity became large enough to cause unacceptable levels of air pollution in Singapore and other neighboring states since 1997. Given such environmentally destructive methods of palm oil production had never been condemned, never mind cracked down, by post Suharto Indonesia, should consumers of the world unite to boycott any product using Indonesian palm oil? 

According to the latest findings, most of the slash and burn farming activities done by industrial scale palm oil producers are mostly done on the ecologically sensitive - but unprotected by the Indonesian government - primeval wooded swamplands and tropical equatorial peat bogs of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The internationally recognized Pollution Standards Index peaked at 371 over Singapore City back in Thursday, June 20, 2013 before falling to about 218 later in the day. A Pollution Standards Index or P.S.I. reading over 200 indicates very unhealthy air and a P.S.I. score above 300 is considered hazardous – even for individuals with a relatively healthy respiratory system. The “Hell Haze” produced by the slash and burn practices of large scale farming of palm oil in Indonesia has been considered an “annual” problem since the late 1990s, when Singapore City’s P.S.I. peaked at 226 back in 1997.    

While a sizeable portion of the Singaporean police have now been stationed in Malaysian and Singaporean owned palm oil companies stationed in Singapore in order to break up “unauthorized” mass protests in case they occur, the average Singaporean citizen seems for now just toughening out the “haze hell” of the slash and burn practices of palm oil producers of neighboring Indonesia. Will it only be a matter of time when the Singapore air pollution reach a certain high level to trigger rhetoric of armed conflict between the governments of Indonesia and Singapore? 

Are Wood-Burning Power Plants Truly Environmentally Friendly?

Given the logic that if one harvest biomass sourced fuels slower that the rate it grows back considered renewable and therefore environmentally friendly? 

By: Ringo Bones 

The European Union’s proposed to put on-line wood-burning electricity generating power plants that use fast growing sustainably grown and harvested woods from the United States had ignited a renewed discussion on the “green credentials” of wood and other biomass burning schemes as an alternative to fossil fuel burning. So are these proposed schemes truly Earth friendly in the sense that it doesn’t introduce more climate disrupting and global warming causing excess carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere? 

There was a BBC discussion back in May 28, 2013 by Gaynor Hartnell of the Renewable Energy Association and Andrew Pendleton of the Friends of the Earth on weather wood-burning electricity generating power plants are truly sustainable and climate friendly. According to Hartnell, if one harvests biomass – like wood – at a rate slower than the rate it grows back can be considered sustainable. But is there a flaw in Hartnell’s apparently logical perception on the concept of biomass renewability? 

In an interview back in July 9 2012, the 1984 Nobel Physics Prize laureate Carlo Rubbia stated that based on current research on the behavior of gaseous carbon dioxide currently circulating in the earth’s atmosphere, the average lifetime that carbon dioxide generated by human activity – as in biomass and fossil fuel burning – stays in the atmosphere before being sequestered back into wood, dissolved into the world’s oceans and lithosphere, is 30,000 years. Therefore, most of the carbon dioxide produced when Emperor Nero burned a section of Rome as he fiddled around 2,000 years ago is still in the atmosphere. So is the industrial burning of biomass at the same rate we go through fossil fuels truly climate friendly and sustainable? 

Even though Pendleton sides with the view of Nobel Physics laureate Rubbia that the rate of the carbon dioxide generated by burning wood or other forms of biomass is much slower than the rate that it can reabsorb it back and turn it into cellulose, it seems that this move is the most sensible one at present according to the EU where the powers-that-be at Brussels plans for a 22-percent target of its energy source to come from renewable – as in biomass based – schemes before the year 2020. But most environmental based groups in Europe are still mystified on its true sustainable green credentials given that the woods hat are sourced from the United States are shipped to Europe on transports that run on fossil fuels. So EU based environmentalists are now actively up in arms to ban the proposed scheme. 

Derb Carter, an environmentalist from the US state of Georgia says the increased harvesting of “low grade” swamp-wood harvested from environmentally sensitive swampy woodlands in Georgia that are grown on privately owned wood farms that border Federally protected old growth swamp woodlands to be processed into pellets to be shipped to Europe to fuel their wood-burning electricity generating power plants could have unforeseen dire environmental consequences on Georgia’s swampy woodlands. So, is the widespread adoption of wood-burning electricity generating power plants a misguided policy used to combat climate change? 

The 2013 CITES Conference In Bangkok: No New Ground Broken?

Supposedly to take decisive action to halt the decline of tropical timber, sharks, manta rays and a wide range of endangered plants and animals, is the latest triennial CITES conference too ineffectual? 

By: Ringo Bones 

During the middle of March 2013, delegates from 170countries passed proposals upgrading protection for more than 50 species, but critics warn that loopholes allow trade in some critically endangered species remain unclosed even after 40 years after the CITES treaty was signed. The increasing affluence of the working class in Mainland China had also in recent times increased the demand in exotic animal parts for use in traditional Chinese medicine that are sourced from critically endangered species like tiger blood and rhino horn despite the dubious effectiveness of these products. Not to mention the recent increase in shark fin soup consumption by Mainland China’s new middle class.  

Near the end of the conference, Russia and the United States set aside their on-going political differences to band together in protecting the unregulated hunting and trading of polar bear and their associated products. Even though the two countries failed to achieve a comprehensive polar bear hunting ban, certain indigenous tribes in Canada’s North West Territories are allowed by law subsistence level hunting and trade of polar bear and polar bear products but both the Russian and US government had uncovered that during the past few years that commercial quantities of polar bear related products had been traded in their territories by Canadian North West Territory tribes that far exceed the subsistence hunting quota levels.   

When it comes to the illegal trade in ivory, the “Gang of 8” countries – i.e. Philippines, The People’s Republic of China, Thailand, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malaysia and Vietnam had since become a haven to illegal ivory traders that had been coddled by some high-ranking government officials that allow them to exploit ivory trading loopholes and profiting from the trade in ivory are now threatened with severe sanctions. Given the challenges, it seems like everyone concerned in the regulation and / or control in the trade of endangered wildlife parts are facing an uphill battle.