'Darkest ever' material created

by Helen Briggs
BBC News science reporter

The "darkest ever" substance known to science has been made in a US laboratory.

The material was created from carbon nanotubes - sheets of carbon just one atom thick rolled up into cylinders.

Researchers say it is the closest thing yet to the ideal black material, which absorbs light perfectly at all angles and over all wavelengths.

The discovery is expected to have applications in the fields of electronics and solar energy.

Theoretical clues

An ideal black object absorbs all the colours of light and reflects none of them. In theory, it should be possible to make something that approaches the "perfect absorber".

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World moves into the ecological red

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - The world moved into 'ecological overdraft' on
Saturday, the point at which human consumption exceeds the ability of
the earth to sustain it in any year and goes into the red, the New
Economics Foundation think-tank said.

Ecological Debt Day this year is three days earlier than in 2006
which itself was three days earlier than in 2005. NEF said the date had
moved steadily backwards every year since humanity began living beyond
its environmental means in the 1980s.

"As the world creeps closer to irreversible global warming and goes
deeper into ecological debt, why on earth, say, would the UK export 20
tonnes of mineral water to Australia and then re-import 21 tonnes,"
said NEF director Andrew Simms.

"And why would that wasteful trade be more the rule than the exception," he added.

Not only was there a massive gulf between rich and poor but there
were deep variations in environmental profligacy between the rich
countries, NEF said.

If everyone in the world had the same consumption rates as in the
United States it would take 5.3 planet earths to support them, NEF
said, noting that the figure was 3.1 for France and Britain, 3.0 for
Spain, 2.5 for Germany and 2.4 for Japan.

But if everyone emulated China, which is building a coal-fired power
station every five days to feed its booming economy, it would take only
0.9 of a planet.

The NEF report comes as diplomatic momentum builds for UN
environment ministers meeting in December on the Indonesian island of
Bali to agree to start talks on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on
curbing climate change that expires in 2012.

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Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History

SETH BORENSTEIN | September 22, 2007 10:32 PM EST |

Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American
settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that
sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are
predicting.

In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.

Global warming _ through a combination of melting glaciers,
disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding _ is expected to
cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 inches. It will happen
regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several
leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation.

Rising waters will lap at the foundations of old money Wall Street
and the new money towers of Silicon Valley. They will swamp the
locations of big city airports and major interstate highways.

Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront
getaways of rich politicians _ the Bushes' Kennebunkport and John
Edwards' place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches
in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring
Break.

That's the troubling outlook projected by coastal maps reviewed by
The Associated Press. The maps, created by scientists at the University
of Arizona, are based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Few of the more than two dozen climate experts interviewed disagree
with the one-meter projection. Some believe it could happen in 50
years, others say 100, and still others say 150.

Sea level rise is "the thing that I'm most concerned about as a
scientist," says Benjamin Santer, a climate physicist at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California.

"We're going to get a meter and there's nothing we can do about it,"
said University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, a lead author
of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change in Paris. "It's going to happen no matter what _ the question is
when."

Sea level rise "has consequences about where people live and what
they care about," said Donald Boesch, a University of Maryland
scientist who has studied the issue. "We're going to be into this big
national debate about what we protect and at what cost."

This week, beginning with a meeting at the United Nations on Monday,
world leaders will convene to talk about fighting global warming. At
week's end, leaders will gather in Washington with President Bush.

Experts say that protecting America's coastlines would run well into the billions and not all spots could be saved.

And it's not just a rising ocean that is the problem. With it comes
an even greater danger of storm surge, from hurricanes, winter storms
and regular coastal storms, Boesch said. Sea level rise means higher
and more frequent flooding from these extreme events, he said.

All told, one meter of sea level rise in just the lower 48 states
would put about 25,000 square miles under water, according to Jonathan
Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at
the University of Arizona. That's an area the size of West Virginia.

The amount of lost land is even greater when Hawaii and Alaska are included, Overpeck said.

The Environmental Protection Agency's calculation projects a land
loss of about 22,000 square miles. The EPA, which studied only the
Eastern and Gulf coasts, found that Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina,
Texas and South Carolina would lose the most land. But even inland
areas like Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia also have slivers
of at-risk land, according to the EPA.

This past summer's flooding of subways in New York could become far
more regular, even an everyday occurrence, with the projected sea rise,
other scientists said. And New Orleans' Katrina experience and the
daily loss of Louisiana wetlands _ which serve as a barrier that
weakens hurricanes _ are previews of what's to come there.

Florida faces a serious public health risk from rising salt water
tainting drinking water wells, said Joel Scheraga, the EPA's director
of global change research. And the farm-rich San Joaquin Delta in
California faces serious salt water flooding problems, other experts
said.

"Sea level rise is going to have more general impact to the
population and the infrastructure than almost anything else that I can
think of," said S. Jeffress Williams, a U.S. Geological Survey coastal
geologist in Woods Hole, Mass.

Even John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a
scientist often quoted by global warming skeptics, said he figures the
seas will rise at least 16 inches by the end of the century. But he
tells people to prepare for a rise of about three feet just in case.

Williams says it's "not unreasonable at all" to expect that much in
100 years. "We've had a third of a meter in the last century."

The change will be a gradual process, one that is so slow it will be easy to ignore for a while.

"It's like sticking your finger in a pot of water on a burner and
you turn the heat on, Williams said. "You kind of get used to it."

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Could Time Travel Actually Be Possible?

Scientists claim to have broken the ultimate speed record - by making photons travel faster than light.

Exceeding the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, is supposed to be completely impossible.

According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would take
an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object through the light
barrier.

Travelling faster than light also turns back time with bizarre consequences.

An astronaut moving beyond light speed would theoretically arrive at his destination before leaving.

But
two German physicists now claim to have forced light to overcome its
own speed limit using the strange phenomenon known as quantum
tunnelling.

The research, published in the new Scientist
magazine, involved an experiment in which microwave photons, energetic
packets of light, appeared to travel "instantaneously" between two
prisms forming the halves of a cube placed a metre apart.

When the prisms were placed together, photons fired at one edge passed straight through them, as expected.

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Oil report's conclusion: Broad effort needed to satiate energy demand

Original Source
 
WASHINGTON: It started with a simple question by
Samuel Bodman, the energy secretary: "What does the future hold for oil
and natural gas supply?"

The query was made in October 2005 in a one-page letter sent to Lee
Raymond, the former chairman of Exxon Mobil and head of the National
Petroleum Council, a federal advisory group representing the oil
industry.

After nearly two years, Raymond has finally delivered his answer.
The result is a colossal 476-page study entitled "Facing the Hard
Truths About Energy" that involved 350 participants, suggestions from
over 1,000 people, submissions by 19 foreign governments from Australia
to Saudi Arabia, and dozens of subcommittees.

The report, which was made public in Washington on Wednesday, was
billed as one of the most comprehensive analysis of the global energy
challenge.

In answering Bodman's question, it also provides a sobering picture
of the energy problem facing the United States and the world. Most
strikingly, some of the recommendations adopted by the petroleum
council also probably far exceed what Bodman had in mind, or what the
Bush administration is prepared to endorse.

Because the world's population is growing and living standards are
rising worldwide, energy consumption globally is expected to jump by
more than 50 percent over the next 25 years. But finding supplies to
match that growth is going to be increasingly tough, and will require
massive new investments in coming decades.

The council's report warns of "accumulating risks" to energy
production, including rising geopolitical barriers, inflation in costs,
dwindling petroleum engineers and growing constraints on carbon dioxide
emissions. Although it does not say so explicitly, the subtext of the
council's study suggests that high energy prices might be here to stay.

The study's release comes as frustrations grow over high energy
costs and questions are raised over the security of U.S. energy
supplies. Congress is currently considering a new law to bolster the
development of alternative fuels and increase vehicle fuel efficiency.

Unlike the Bush administration's energy task force, which was led by
Vice President Dick Cheney in 2001 and fought efforts to disclose whom
it met with, the petroleum council's study makes no secret of who
participated in its mammoth effort.

The list of contributors to the report is a roster of top industry
leaders and consultants, including senior executives from Exxon and
Chevron. But the council also enlisted the help of private think tanks,
academic institutions, banks, governmental agencies and a handful of
nongovernmental groups, including the Alliance to Save Energy and
Resources for the Future.

"It really reflects the zeitgeist of the times," said Daniel Yergin,
the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and an energy
consultant who participated in the council's study.

Given that the report reflects the views of the oil industry, some
of its conclusions would seem hardly surprising, for example in
dismissing predictions from so-called peak oil theorists that the
world's oil deposits are on the decline. Quite the contrary, the
industry's view is that the world's resources remain abundant.

"Fortunately, the world is not running out of energy resources," the
report says in a 40-page summary. "Coal, oil and natural gas will
remain indispensable to meeting total projected energy demand growth."

But while the council calls for expanding and diversifying
traditional energy supplies - oil and gas, coal and nuclear power - it
is also backs the development of alternative fuels, including biofuels
like ethanol or gas-to-liquids.

"There is no quick fix" to the energy challenge, Raymond said at a
press conference Wednesday. "To assume that we have the option of not
pursuing one of the sources of energy is a fake choice."

There were other surprises. The petroleum council said that the U.S.
government should take steps to reduce oil consumption. In fact, the
report's first recommendation is a call for the U.S. government to
moderate energy demand by increasing vehicle fuel economy standards,
the main sources of growth in oil demand around the world, and improve
energy efficiency at buildings and homes.

"The world will need better energy efficiency and all economic,
environmentally responsible energy sources available to support and
sustain future growth," the petroleum council's report says.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Raymond, who was well known for
his skepticism of the causes of global warming when he was chairman of
Exxon Mobil, has given his backing to a report addressing how oil
companies should deal with carbon emissions on a global level. The
report said oil companies and governments need to address carbon
emissions and offers some suggestions for how the industry can help
trapping carbon dioxide in underground reservoirs.

"It is a hard truth that policies aimed at curbing carbon emissions
will alter the energy mix, increase energy-related costs and require
reductions in demand growth," the report said. It said the U.S.
government should establish a regulatory framework for managing carbon
emissions, but did not recommend any specific policy.

Still, the bias toward the industry's view is not a surprise given
the history of the council. It was created by President Harry S. Truman
in 1946 to represent the position of the oil and gas industry to the
federal government and recommend policy options, after their successful
wartime collaboration.

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U.S. leg of Live Earth hits key notes

Go to Original

BY GLENN GAMBOA


glenn.gamboa@newsday.com

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - The American leg of Live Earth: The Concerts
for a Climate in Crisis, like the other concerts on all seven
continents, proved to be as complex as the issue it is trying to solve.

...for organizers, the solution will come with raised awareness.
"Today, more than 2 billion of us have come together in more than 130
countries on all seven continents," said former Vice President Al Gore,
the event's organizer. "Times like these demand action," he added,
after announcing the 7-Point Pledge that he hoped millions would sign
while watching the concert.

...it was
nonmusicians at this concert who made the most passionate pleas about
demanding action for the environment. "Get rid of all these rotten
politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than
corporate toadies," said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmentalist
author, president of Waterkeeper Alliance and Robert F. Kennedy's son,
who grew hoarse from shouting. "This is treason. And we need to start
treating them as traitors."

Primatologist Jane Goodall offered
a greeting in chimpanzee language, before saying, "Up in the North the
ice is melting, what will it take to melt the ice in the human heart?"

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Armies must ready for global warming role: Britain

Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:23PM EDT
REUTERS

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - Global warming is such a threat to security that
military planners must build it into their calculations, the head of
Britain's armed forces said on Monday.

Jock Stirrup, chief of the defense staff, said risks that climate
change could cause weakened states to disintegrate and produce major
humanitarian disasters or exploitation by armed groups had to become a
feature of military planning.

But he said first analyses showed planners would not have to switch
their geographical focus, because the areas most vulnerable to climate
change are those where security risks are already high.

"Just glance at a map of the areas most likely to be affected and
you are struck at once by the fact that they are exactly those parts of
the world where we see fragility, instability and weak governance today.

"It seems to me rather like pouring petrol onto a burning fire," Stirrup told the Chatham House think-tank in London.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett chaired the first debate
on climate change at the U.N. Security Council in April this year. She
argued that the potential for climate change to cause wars meant it
should be on the council's radar.

Stirrup said the unpredictability of the immediate effects of global
warming on rainfall patterns and storms meant flashpoints could be
advanced by years without warning.

He did not identify the problem areas, but Bert Metz of the U.N.'s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told the meeting they
included Central America, the Amazon Basin, large parts of north,
central and southern Africa and swathes of Asia.

Scientists say average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0
degrees Celsius this century due to burning fossil fuels for power and
transport, melting ice caps, bringing floods, droughts and famines, and
putting millions of lives at risk.

Stirrup said the security threat was far more immediate than those figures might suggest.

"If temperatures rise towards the upper end of the forecast range we
could already start to see serious physical consequences by 2040 -- and
that is if things get no worse."

"If things do get worse you don't need to come very much forward
from 2040 before, in my terms at least, you are talking about the day
after tomorrow," Stirrup said.

He said the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington
showed the devastation that attacks fuelled by political, economic and
social deprivation could achieve.

"Now add in the effects of climate change. Poverty and despair
multiply, resentment surges and people look for someone to blame," he
said.

Even if the world agreed quickly on a way of equitably tackling the
climate crisis -- which was far from sure -- the nature of the problem
meant a significant degree of adverse change was already in the
pipeline.

"That rapidity, alongside the size of the global population and the
complexity of today's society, leaves us particularly vulnerable,"
Stirrup said. "It is bound to present substantial security challenges
of one kind or another."

Asked on the margins of the meeting if that meant military planners
should opt for preemptive action where they saw a security crisis
emerging, he said: "Only in the sense of building governance.
Recognizing the problem is the first step."

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'Mile-wide UFO' spotted by British airline pilot

ThisIslondon.co.uk

One of the largest UFOs ever seen has been observed by the crew and passengers of an airliner over the Channel Islands.

An official air-miss report on the incident several weeks ago appears in Pilot magazine.

Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, 50, flying close to Alderney first spotted
the object, described as "a cigar-shaped brilliant white light".

Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, 50, described what he thought to be a UFO
as 'a cigar-shaped brilliant white light', similar to the image
supplied by Dennis Plunket of the British Flying Saucer bureau

As the plane got closer the captain viewed it through binoculars and said:
"It was a very sharp, thin yellow object with a green area.

"It was 2,000ft up and stationary. I thought it was about 10 miles away,
although I later realised it was approximately 40 miles from us. At
first, I thought it was the size of a [Boeing] 737.

"But it must have been much bigger because of how far away it was. It could have been as much as a mile wide."

Continuing his approach to Guernsey, Bowyer then spied a "second identical object further to the west".

He said: "It was exactly the same but looked smaller because it was
further away. It was closer to Guernsey. I can't explain it. This was
clearly visual for about nine minutes.

"I'm certainly not saying that it was something of another world. All I'm saying is that I have
never seen anything like it before in all my years of flying."

The sightings were confirmed by passengers Kate and John Russell. John, 74,
said: "I saw an orange light. It was like an elongated oval."

The sightings were also confirmed by an unnamed pilot with the Blue Islands airline.

The Civil Aviation Authority safety notice states that a Tri-Lander aircraft flying close to Alderney spotted the object.

"Certain parts of the report have not been published. I cannot say why," said a senior CAA source.

Earlier this year, however, the MOD declared its intentions to open its UFO files to the public.

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Vice President Exempts His Office from the Requirements for Protecting Classified Information

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Administration Oversight



The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the
National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the
presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for
safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice
President asserts that his office is not an “entity within the
executive branch.”




As described in a letter from Chairman Waxman to the Vice
President, the National Archives protested the Vice President's
position in letters written in June 2006 and August 2006. When these
letters were ignored, the National Archives wrote to Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales in January 2007 to seek a resolution of the impasse.
The Vice President's staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency
within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the
President's executive order.




In his letter to the Vice President, Chairman Waxman writes:
"I question both the legality and wisdom of your actions. ... [I]t
would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your
history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that
apply to all other executive branch officials."




A fact sheet prepared by Chairman Waxman describes other
instances in which the Vice President's office has sought to avoid
oversight and accountability.

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'Earth Mother getting angry'

American Indians fight climate change

The Associated Press

June 18. 2007 8:00AM



From New Hampshire to California, American Indian leaders are speaking out more forcefully about the danger of climate change.



Members of six tribes recently gathered near the Baker River in the White Mountains for a sacred ceremony honoring "Earth Mother." Talking Hawk, a Mohawk Indian who asked to be identified by his Indian name, pointed to the river's tea-colored water as proof that the overwhelming amount of pollution humans have produced has caused changes around the globe.



"It's August color. It's not normal," he said.



"Earth Mother is fighting back - not only from the four winds, but also from underneath," he said. "Scientists call it global warming. We call it Earth Mother getting angry."



At a United Nations meeting last month, several American Indian leaders spoke at a session called "Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change." Also in May, tribal representatives from Alaska and northern Canada - where pack ice has vanished earlier and earlier each spring - traveled to Washington to press their case.

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Things Your Media Momma Didn't Tell You

Friday, June 15, 2007

FMNM

Free-Market News Network, Corp.

The fact that most Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and want the
president impeached, is testimony to the native intelligence and common
sense of the citizens of this nation.

It sure isn't thanks to the quality of the news we're getting here in America.!

Here are some of the things you don't know if you just depend on the corporate media for your information:

1. Most Americans would like to see this
   president and vice president impeached and removed from office.
   Newsweek magazine published a scientific poll last October showing that
   51 percent of us favor impeachment (including 29 percent of
   Republicans!), but the corporate media, which normally hasn't met a
   poll it won't publish, didn't publicize this one. And now, when the
   numbers supporting impeachment are surely even higher, you can't even
   pay a polling outfit to ask the question. No wonder most people who
   favor impeachment still think they're odd ducks.
2. There is a bill, filed in the House of Representatives on
   April 24 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), calling for the impeachment of
   Vice President Cheney. Since it was filed, it has gained six
   co-sponsors, including a member of the House Democratic leadership,
   Rep. Janice Shakowsky (D-IL). Most major media have ignored this
   important story completely. Most Americans also don't know that the
   Vermont State Senate voted overwhelmingly this spring to call on
   Congress to impeach the president.
3. The president has been declared a felon in federal court.
   Yet even after Federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled last
   August that President Bush and the National Security Agency were
   committing serial Class A felonies and were violating both the First
   and Fourth Amendments by spying on Americans' communications without
   first obtaining warrants, Bush continued ordering the NSA to continue
   the patently illegal program for at least half a year. In reports on
   the spying program, the corporate media never mention that it has been
   declared a felonious activity by the federal court.
4. Fifteen Democratic Party state organizations have passed
   impeachment resolutions calling on Democrats in Congress to initiate
   impeachment proceedings against the president and vice president. The
   most recent of these, the Democratic Party of Oklahoma, passed its
   resolution at the party's annual convention on May 19. Other Democratic
   Party conventions, in states from Nevada and California to
   Massachusetts and North Carolina, have passed similar resolutions. Most
   have been ignored by the corporate media even in their own states.
5. Bush's so-called "coalition of the willing" is not so
   willing and is not really much of a coalition either. When's the last
   time you've heard how many countries are on board with the US in the
   war and occupation of Iraq? The reality? Britain, the only significant
   contributor of combat troops besides the U.S., is pulling out, as did
   Italy and Spain, and many other countries, like Denmark, Lithuania and
   others, plan to be out of Iraq by August or at the latest December. One
   indication of the seriousness of situation: The Pentagon no longer
   lists the countries that are members of the "coalition." The only
   mainstream report I've seen laying this out this collapse in
   international support for Bush's war was in USA Today last February.
6. The Homeland Security Department last year awarded
   Halliburton $385 million in a no-bid contract to construct prison camps
   designed to hold tens of thousands of unspecified prisoners in the
   event of domestic unrest. Meanwhile, President Bush has signed a bill
   altering the insurrection act so that he can declare martial rule and
   order active duty troops to take charge anywhere in the domestic US in
   the event of "public disorder." No one in the corporate media has
   reported on these developments or asked the White House to explain what
   it's all about.
7. There is evidence that Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, was a
   patron of the Washington Madam whose client book of high-class
   call-girls is causing many in Washington political circles-mostly
   Republicans it appears, who apparently need to pay for their sex-to
   sweat. So far no mention of the Cheney angle in the corporate media,
   though they've been having fun with the broader story of a political
   sex scandal. No mention either of how a brave West Point cadet refused
   to shake Cheney's hand on stage when the vice president was handing out
   this year's diplomas at the Army's premiere academy.
8. Among the "worst of the worst" of the "evildoers" captured
   and held as "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo were children, some of
   them preteens and kids who were under 15 when captured and brought to
   Cuba-so many in fact that the military had to set up a special
   facility, called Camp Iguana, just for adolescent and pre-pubescent
   "fighters." The corporate media have barely reported on this atrocity
   (the New York Times ran only one article mentioning child captives, in
   June 2005). The only wider coverage of this outrage came recently when
   the government tried to prosecute one such alleged child
   "terrorist"-Omar Khadr-only to have the military judge in charge toss
   his case out because the government had misclassified him. Khadr, we
   learned, was captured in 2001 in Afghanistan at the ripe age of 15,
   making him one of the older child captives brought to and interrogated
   at Guantanamo. Under international law, the U.S. was supposed to treat
   this and other child soldiers as victims, not as war criminals. Khadr,
   a Canadian by birth, instead has spent five years doing hard time in US
   captivity.
9. Well-researched reports on the rampant theft of both the
   2000 and 2004 elections, and on Republican plans for theft of the 2008
   election, such as Mark Crispin Miller's Fooled Again, have gone
   unmentioned in the corporate media. Books on the subject, like Miller's
   and like Greg Palast's best selling Armed Madhouse, have never been
   reviewed.
10. And of course, there's my own book. The Case for
    Impeachment, despite its having sold over 20,000 copies in hardcover,
    and despite its having now come out in a mass-market paperback edition,
    in both cases printed by a mainstream publisher, St. Martin's Press,
    has not received a single review in the corporate media. In this, my
    co-author Barbara Olshansky and I are not alone. None of the books on
    the impeachable crimes of this administration, including one by
    Nixon-era impeachment panelist and former congresswoman Elizabeth
    Holtzman, and one by Judiciary Chair Rep. John Conyers, has been
    reviewed by a mainstream media outlet.

What we're talking about here is a media blackout of important stories and news.

Thanks to the internet and to the grapevine, and thanks to their
basic native intelligence, most Americans seem to understand that we're
being lied to and cheated. What the media blackout of important news
does manage to do, however, is keep us all thinking that we are in a
minority in opposing things like illegal wars, a trampled Constitution,
and stolen elections.

In fact, however, we're actually the majority.

Once we realize this, maybe we will have a movement, instead of a just nation of isolated cynics and complainers.

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Native hum

As honeybees vanish, farmers turn to the wild pollinators in their back yards

In 1940, alfalfa-seed farmers in the desert of central Utah made an
interesting discovery: The primary pollinator of their crop was not the
honeybee, but the alkali bees that nested in the region’s salt flats.
For all its status as the workhorse of American agriculture, the
European honeybee didn’t really like foraging in alfalfa. But alkali
bees loved it, pollinating some 5,500 flowers daily. Farmers lucky
enough to live next to them were raising three times more alfalfa seed
per acre than those who didn’t.

From Utah to Washington state, farmers started transplanting thousands
of cubic feet of soil with alkali bee nests to aid in the production of
alfalfa seed — a hugely important crop because the alfalfa grown in
hayfields produces almost no seed on its own. The largest managed
alkali bee nesting bed is now five acres in size and is home to more
than 5 million bees.

“It gives me conniptions, it’s so big,” says Jim Cane, an entomologist
at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Biology and Systematics
Laboratory in Logan, Utah. “It’s just roaring with bees. The ground is
shimmering for several acres.” Cane says these farmers harvest at least
20 percent more seed than needed to break even.

The humble alkali bee had turned the attention of a whole sector of
commercial farmers away from the European honeybee. It was the first
time this had happened. It would not be the last.

While honeybees spent thousands of years honestly earning their
place in our hearts with their honey production, easily manipulated
colonies, generalist pollinating tendencies and heroic work ethic,
their wild cousins lived in obscurity. As the pioneers swarmed this
country, dubbing Utah “The Beehive State” and opening newspapers with
names like The Sacramento Bee, 3,000 to 4,000 species of wild bees
buzzed the landscape, largely unnoticed.

Native bees do not typically share the desire of the honeybee to live
in a small space with 10,000 members of the family. They do not produce
honey to keep their colony fed through the winter. These bees have
different habits, some of them so singular that they make scientists
laugh out loud with puzzlement. The female of one species likes to
burrow nine feet under a sand dune to lay a single egg. Another chews
away at sandstone walls to make its tiny nest. Yet another hangs on the
stalks of dead plants at night, alone and balled up, resembling a
berry. Some develop fabulous coloration — one orchid bee is metallic
gold with a blue abdomen and a red and gold thorax.

And they pollinate plants, often better than European honeybees. The
natives’ pollinating abilities are attracting more attention because
the honeybee on which most American agriculture depends has run into a
series of problems: It started mating with aggressive Africanized bees
that swept over the border from Mexico in 1990, rendering its children
often impossible to work with. It is vulnerable to parasitic mites and
fungi, weakened by insecticides and disease. In the past several
months, headline after headline has announced a dramatic drop in
honeybee populations due to a mysterious malady called Colony Collapse
Disorder.

Wild bees don’t mate with Africanized bees, nor do they suffer from the
same diseases and mites that afflict honeybees. There has never been a
better time to develop wild bee pollination talent for use in American
agriculture. The bee lab in Logan — one of five federal research labs
devoted to bee research, and the only one that doesn’t deal in
honeybees — is doing just that.

“There’s no real danger of the honeybee going extinct,” said Jamie
Strange, an entomologist who is preparing to spend the afternoon
trapping bumblebees near his lab in Logan to study for use in
greenhouses and tomato production. “But it’s like investing. Diversify
your portfolio. Diversify!”



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