Short News Web: April 2018

The threat posed to bees by pesticides has been confirmed in a major new EU evaluation that could pave the way for a Europe-wide ban on the most harmful chemicals.

According to the new report, neonicotinoid pesticides put both honeybees and wild bees at risk when used in any outdoor setting.

In the past, these chemicals have been linked to “large-scale population extinctions” in bees. As these insects are vital for crop pollination, their loss would be a disaster for food production.

The report by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) assessed data from three neonicotinoids: clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam.

After analysing the findings from nearly 600 studies and consultation with external experts, the report’s authors concluded that “most uses of neonicotinoid pesticides represent a risk to wild bees and honeybees”.

Decline of honey bees now a global phenomenon, says United Nations

There is currently a ban on neonicotinoid use on flowering crops in the EU. However, the new report suggests this is not sufficient, as the use of these chemicals in any outdoor setting poses a high risk to bees.

Bees face chronic exposure to these chemicals, as they persist in the environment and are dispersed to other plants besides the ones they were initially applied to.

However, the Efsa authors also concluded that when used indoors, for example in greenhouses, neonicotinoids do not threaten bees in the same way.

Jose Tarazona, head of Efsa’s pesticides unit, said: “The availability of such a substantial amount of data as well as the guidance has enabled us to produce very detailed conclusions.

“There is variability in the conclusions, due to factors such as the bee species, the intended use of the pesticide and the route of exposure. Some low risks have been identified, but overall the risk to the three types of bees we have assessed is confirmed.”

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The evidence adds to the case for a neonicotinoid ban that covers all outdoor crops, and its release has led to fresh calls for more extensive restrictions.

Environment Secretary Michael Gove has already said the UK will support tougher restrictions, but other EU nations such as Germany and Spain have been unwilling to commit. They have previously stated they would await Efsa’s results.

A European vote on such a ban could happen as soon as March, and if a majority of countries vote for the proposal it will be imposed on all member states.

“This long-awaited report confirms the significant threat these neonicotinoid pesticides pose to our bees. We have been playing Russian roulette with the future of our bees for far too long,” said Friends of the Earth bee campaigner Sandra Bell.

Pesticide linked to ‘large-scale population extinctions’ of wild bees

“The UK Government has already said it will support a complete ban on the outdoor use of these three bee-harming chemicals – a move that is fully justified by this report. Other EU countries must now back a tougher ban too.”

Scientists have also noted the role these findings could play in influencing European policy on harmful pesticides.

“This report certainly strengthens the case for further restrictions on neonicotinoid use across Europe,” said Professor Dave Goulson, a biologist at the University of Sussex.

“This is an important announcement by Efsa that most uses of neonicotinoids are a risk to all bee species. Importantly they identify that high risk does not result from direct exposure to non-flowering crops, but to subsequent indirect exposure from field margins, adjacent crops and succeeding crops,” said Professor Christopher Connolly, a neurobiologist at the University of Dundee.

“A highly restricted use of neonicotinoids would reduce this environmental stress and retain neonicotinoids as important pest control agents for use in severe situations.”

The North Korean mountain which has hosted a succession of nuclear tests appears to have suffered serious geological damage.

Analysts now believe that Mount Mantap is suffering what experts call "tired mountain syndrome."

The tests were accompanied by a series of earthquakes, the largest being a 6.3 magnitude which was felt in China.

Image result for North Korea Nuclear Agreement: What Is 'Tired Mountain Syndrome'?

They were carried out at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility beneath the 7,200 feet mountain.

Chinese scientists fear that the mountain could collapse completely, releasing radiation from the blast.

“What we are seeing from North Korea looks like some kind of stress in the ground,” Paul Richards, a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told the Washington Post.

“In that part of the world, there were stresses in the ground, but the explosions have shaken them up.”

Even ahead of the tests there have been growing fears that the whole of the Korean peninsula could become more vulnerable to earthquakes.

In September last year, South Korea was rocked by a 5.8 earthquake.

Nuclear tests carried out by both the Soviet Union and United States in the past have led to considerable seismic activity.

With North Korea showing no sign of scaling back its nuclear activities, the threat of more earthquakes is clear.

A senior North Korean diplomat made clear that Pyongyang does not plan to hold any talks with Washington about its nuclear programme, saying that possessing the weapons was a matter of life and death for the country.

Have North Korea’s nuclear tests become so big that they’ve altered the geological structure of the land? Some analysts now see signs that Mount Mantap, the 2,194-metre-high peak, under which North Korea detonates its nuclear bombs, is suffering from “tired mountain syndrome”.

“ Based on the severity of the initial blast, the post-test tremors, and the extent of observable surface disturbances, we have to assume that there must have been substantial damage to ... Mount Mantap.””-Frank V. Pabian and Jack Liu | Analysts’ reportShare on facebook Tweet this

The mountain visibly shifted during the last nuclear test, an enormous detonation that was recorded as a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in North Korea’s northeast. Since then, the area, which is not known for natural seismic activity, has had three more quakes.

“What we are seeing from North Korea looks like some kind of stress in the ground,” said Paul G. Richards, a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “In that part of the world, there were stresses in the ground but the explosions have shaken them up.”

Chinese scientists have already warned that further nuclear tests could cause the mountain to collapse and release the radiation from the blast.

North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006, all of them in tunnels burrowed deep under Mount Mantap at a site known as the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility. Intelligence analysts and experts alike use satellite imagery to keep close track on movement at the three entrances to the tunnels for signals that a test might be coming.

‘Perfect success’

After the latest nuclear test, on September 3, Kim Jong-un’s regime claimed that it had set off a hydrogen bomb and that it had been a “perfect success.”

The regime is known for brazen exaggeration, but analysts and many government officials said the size of the earthquake the test generated suggested that North Korea had detonated a thermonuclear device at least 17 times the size of the American bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

It registered as an artificial 6.3-magnitude earthquake so big it shook houses in northeastern China. Eight minutes later, there was a 4.1-magnitude earthquake that appeared to be a tunnel collapsing at the site.

Images captured by Airbus, a space technology company that makes earth observation satellites, showed the mountain literally moving during the test. A 34-hectare area on the peak of Mount Mantap visibly subsided during the explosion, an indication of both the size of the blast and the weakness of the mountain.

Since that day, there have been three much smaller quakes at the site, in the two-three magnitude range, each of them setting fears that North Korea had conducted another nuclear test that had perhaps gone wrong. But they all turned out to be natural.

That has analysts Frank V. Pabian and Jack Liu wondering if Mount Mantap is suffering from “tired mountain syndrome”, a diagnosis previously applied to the Soviet Union’s atomic test sites.

“The underground detonation of nuclear explosions considerably alters the properties of the rock mass,” Vitaly V. Adushkin and William Leith wrote in a report on the Soviet tests for the United States Geological Survey in 2001. This leads to fracturing and rocks breaking, and changes along tectonic faults.

Earthquakes also occurred at the US’s nuclear test site in Nevada after detonations there.

“The experience we had from the Nevada test site and decades of monitoring the Soviet Union’s major test sites in Kazakhstan showed that after a very large nuclear explosion, several other significant things can happen,” said Richards. This included cavities collapsing hours or even months later, he said.

Pabian and Liu said that the North Korean test site also seemed to be suffering.

Bit hit

“Based on the severity of the initial blast, the post-test tremors, and the extent of observable surface disturbances, we have to assume that there must have been substantial damage to the existing tunnel network under Mount Mantap,” they wrote in a report for the specialist North Korea website 38 North.

But the degradation of the mountain does not necessarily mean that it would be abandoned as a test site — just as the US did not abandon the Nevada test site after earthquakes there, they said. Instead, the US kept using the site until a nuclear test moratorium took effect in 1992.

For that reason, analysts will continue to keep a close eye on the Punggye-ri test site to see if North Korea starts excavating there again — a sign of possible preparations for another test.

The previous tests took place through the north portal to the underground tunnels, but even if those tunnels had collapsed, North Korea’s nuclear scientists might still use tunnel complexes linked to the south and west portals, Pabian and Liu said.

Chinese scientists have warned that another test under the mountain could lead to an environmental disaster. If the whole mountain caved in on itself, radiation could escape and drift across the region, said Wang Naiyan, the former chairman of the China Nuclear Society and senior researcher on China’s nuclear weapons programme.

“We call it ‘taking the roof off’. If the mountain collapses and the hole is exposed, it will let out many bad things,” Wang told the South China Morning Post last month.

The recent seismic events have triggered another environmental concern, at least on the internet: that the nuclear tests might trigger the eruption of Mount Paekdu, an active volcano straddling the border between North Korea and China, more than 128 kilometres away. The mountain has not experienced a major eruption for centuries, and its last small rumble was in 1903.

This, experts say, is a stretch. Volcanic eruptions happen when molten rock flows into the magma chamber under the surface, said Colin Wilson, professor of volcanology at Victoria University in New Zealand.

If an earthquake occurs when the magma is hot and, as Wilson puts it, “ready to roll”, then it could trigger an eruption. But if the molten rock is not activated, then even a large earthquake won’t cause a volcanic eruption.

He cited the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, which had a magnitude of nine, but  did not cause any of Japan’s many volcanoes to blow their tops.