« May 2008 | Main | July 2008 »

June 26, 2008

Perfect Storm of Perfect Plagues

Guess what else global climate change can do? Create a perfect epidemiological storm with enough power to take heretofore innocuous diseases and turn them into perfect plagues. A new study in Plos ONE reveals how extreme climatic conditions can alter normal host-pathogen relationships, causing a "perfect storm" of multiple infectious outbreaks to trigger epidemics with catastrophic mortality.

Outbreaks of canine distemper virus (CDV) in lions in 1994 and 2001 resulted in unusually high mortality of lions in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater. In the past, CDV epidemics caused little or no harm to the lions. But the outbreaks of 1994 and 2001 were preceded by extreme droughts that caused Cape buffalo to become heavily infested with ticks. When the lions ate the buffalo, they consumed unusually high levels of tick-borne blood parasites.

In the drought years, the CDV suppressed the lions' immune systems and also combined with the heavy levels of blood parasites. The merger created a fatal synergy. In 1994 more than 35 percent of Serengeti lions died. About the same number perished in the Ngorongoro Crater in 2001.

Unspoken but implied: Our own little witch's brew of ticks and viruses is waiting for wetter or hotter or dryer or fierier years to come together and make us suffer too… The world is too complicated for the simpletons who've been running it and, alas, there is no bloodsucker that feeds on stupidity.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

June 25, 2008

Unable to Fire Entire EPA, White House Ignores Their Emails Instead

When you're at work, you probably sometimes get emails that you don't want to deal with. Maybe you missed a deadline and have yet to 'fess up, or are supposed to meet with your boss and know it's going to be ugly. But eventually you deal with it, because you're responsible and know you can't avoid the situation forever.

Unless, of course, you're the Bush White House, in which case you stick your fingers in your ears and start singing loudly and shouting "I'm rubber and you're glue!" every time your co-workers try to bring up the issue. From the New York Times:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week. The document...ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status.

Now, "e-mail limbo" is certainly a concept with which the White House is familiar, though it's not totally clear how they played this one. Did they open the email in order to reply to it, but leave the attached report untouched? Or did they just take one look at the subject line and start a second email thread about how they weren't going to open the first one? They must have looked at something, because for the past week they've been pressuring EPA officials to cut huge sections of the supposedly unseen report. The final version, due out as early as next Wednesday, will contain no conclusions, only a general discussion of the issue. What is the White House trying to hide? According to the Times article, a conclusion estimating that the government could save up to $2 trillion over the next three decades by strictly regulating greenhouse gas emissions. You'd think an administration $400 billion in debt would be shouting that number from the rooftops.

But this kind of knee-jerk anti-regulatory reaction defies all logical engagement. Everyone already knows that greenhouse gases are bad for the environment—Bush has even said so himself. To ignore that reality for the sake of ideological purity is childish, and its repercussions will last a hell of a lot longer than it would have taken to read one uncomfortable email.

Photo by Flickr user Spoungeworthy.

June 24, 2008

Everglades Wins Big

The state of Florida has pledged to buy up sugarcane farms to help restore the flow of the Everglades. For a bargain $1.75 billion, US Sugar will relinquish 300 square miles of its holdings south of Lake Okeechobee over the next six years.

Great news for the people of Florida, as well as for birds, alligators, crocodiles, and manatees. The agreement comes between Republican Governor Charlie Crist and US Sugar, reports the Miami Herald. It's at least partially the result of the South Florida Water Management District board voting seven months ago against the practice of backpumping (pdf) dirty farm runoff into Lake Okeechobee, which then flows south into the Everglades.

That vote was the result of a 2007 court victory by Earthjustice, when a federal judge ruled that backpumping violated the Clean Water Act.

The buy-out of US Sugar will not end the Everglades' troubles. Another 500 square miles of sugarcane farms owned by other companies remain in production. Yet the deal marks a revival of the Everglades restoration effort, the largest of its kind in the world, aimed at undoing flood-control projects that have been killing the Everglades for decades.

I spent a lot of years, years ago, in the Everglades making a documentary for Nature. Once this lush ecosystem flowed like a river, the aptly-named River of Grass. If the Crist-US Sugar deal is actually signed in September, the clock will roll backwards 100 years, giving many endangered species the first hope of survival in as many years. US Sugar's 1,700 employees, meanwhile, have been promised retraining by the state of Florida.

It should be noted, however, that the impact of increased flows is less clear for ecosystems further downstream, in Florida Bay and the Florida Keys. The Everglades flow is being monitored mostly for phosphorus levels. The seawater end of the system needs equal monitoring for nitrogen levels. If not, expect a bigger dead zone to develop. The lesson: we need to clean all waters of more crap.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Condors Rescued From Wildfire

Eight endangered California Condors were evacuated by helicopter from their holding pens after the Gallery Fire (now part of the Basin Fire Complex) cut off the road into their facility. Seven of the rescued birds are less than a year old, and the eighth condor is their mentor.

The Herald of Monterey County reports that a three-person crew from the Ventana Wildlife Society was flown in by the Coast Guard, walked a mile from the drop point to the condors, and brought the birds back in carriers. After their helo flight, the condors were driven to Pinnacles National Monument.

Meanwhile, the National Interagency Fire Center reported yesterday that 1,080 new fires ignited in California over the weekend. You can see from their site how enormous the problem is. Some fires are actually complexes of 150-plus fires. Most are still zero percent contained.

Cooler weather is helping along the coast but let's face it, some of these fires are going to be burning for a long time. Maybe until snow falls.

The smoke blanketing northern California is moving east.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Scientist on Warming: "We're Toast"

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been warning the US government about global warming for 20 years. Now the CO2 levels in the atmosphere have gotten so high that "we're toast if we don't get on a very different path," he told Congress yesterday.

When Hansen first testified to Congress about global warming, it was 1988 and a heat wave was sweeping across the East Coast. That year was the hottest year on record for DC, but fourteen of the 20 subsequent years have been even hotter. By his estimations, the Arctic will be completely ice-free by the summer of 2018. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occuring exactly the way we said it would," he told senators. "This is the last chance."

June 23, 2008

Recycled Biofuel

A better way to grow biofuel crops is to re-use abandoned agricultural lands. Or farmlands that are less productive. Both are better than current practises: clearing wilderness and converting food farms to energy farms.

There are 1.5 million square miles of abandoned cropland and pastureland available around the world. Energy crops raised on these could yield up to 27 exajoules of energy a year—equal to 172 million barrels of oil. Yet even this would still satisfy only about 5% of global primary energy consumption—483 exajoules in 2005, and rising.

Better than nothing, you say. But only if it doesn't further aggravate climate change. The study by Carnegie Institution and Stanford University scientists used historical data, satellite imagery, and productivity models to estimate how to maximize the benefits from biofuels while also mitigating global warming. Recycling old farms yields the best atmospheric returns.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Pedal On, Brita Climate Ride

Talking about global warming is pretty depressing. If the fear of apocalyptic natural disasters doesn't get you, the big-eyed, fuzzy animals probably will—to say nothing of Al Gore's boiling frog. Given the gloomy subject matter, it's a nice shift to see a group highlight the positive possibilities for lifestyle change.

This fall, 100 cyclists will try to do just that by riding from New York City to Washington, DC via rural New Jersey and Amish country, with an entourage of scientists and green entrepreneurs in tow.

According to organizers, the ride is meant to be a "climate conference on wheels"—intentionally a bit more fun than your run-of-the-mill scientific gathering. Will the riders inspire others to cycle with their own joyful pedal-pushing? Climate-wise, bikes are awesome, so here's hoping.

Photo courtesy Climate Ride.

June 19, 2008

Why Miles Per Gallon Suck

Our calculations about car efficiency tend to be wildly off the mark. The Fuqua (I am not making that up) School of Business at Duke University studied it every which way and found that improving the most energy inefficient cars with ones that are even slightly more efficient saves WAY more fuel than trading in your not-so-bad Honda Civic for a hybrid. Most of us assume otherwise. The problem arises from the fact that we're talking miles per gallon when we should be talking gallons per mile. The video explains all.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

If Cars Were Computers…

If cars were computers then one liter of fuel would provide all the UK's needs for one year and oil reserves would last the expected lifetime of the solar system. That is, if efficiency in cars had improved at the rate computers have. This according to Steve Furber, a computer engineer at the University of Manchester, in a lecture marking the 60th anniversary of the 1948 computer known as The Baby (also known as the Small Scale Experimental Machine). Furber notes that computers are now 50 billion times more energy-efficient than The Baby, which weighed a ton, took up a whole room, and was the forerunner of all modern computers.

I'm not sure we can shrink cars & their carbon footprints fast enough. Howzabout we shrink ourselves instead? Genetic engineering trumps computer engineering and nine billion teensy weensy people 42 years from now doesn't look so bad. No worse than a swarm of locusts.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Who Needs Condoms When You Have Midwest Pesticides?

As if the Midwest weren't dealing with enough already, doctors now worry that the shockingly low sperm count of mid-Missouri men means there's something in the water, or worse.

Nothing's proven, yet, but all eyes were on pesticides after diazinon, an insecticide, and metolachlor, an herbicide, were found in a large number of the semen samples.

Local researchers have requested funding from the NIH to look further into the issue but have been turned down. The results of a CDC-conducted test will be released this summer.

Until then, if Missourians are looking to have kids, perhaps they should try on one of these. [H/T: Grist]

—Brittney Andres

London's Dance-Powered Nightclub for Eco-Hedonists

Ever yearn to get organically plastered, then hit the power-generating dance floor that turns your fancy footwork into electricity? No, this isn't a scene from a Moby video, and yes, you really can indulge those green fantasies, thanks to climate change organization Club4Climate which is launching a sustainable eco-nightclub in Britain next month.

Patrons can knock back organic liquor, then visit the loo and flush symptoms of their overindulgence away with recycled water. Pounding dance moves absorbed by the tricked-out floor will supply 60% of the club's energy needs, and admission is free if you can prove you didn't roll up in a car—but not before you sign a pledge to fight climate change.

Sounds like a more palatable version of Rotterdam's urine- and sweat-powered nightclub, Watt, slated to open in September.

Club4Climate frontman "Dr. Earth," a tan, well-fed, and hairless Dr. Evil doppelganger (see right for his mugshot from the website), is actually Andrew Charalambous, Greek-Cypriot real estate magnate/eco-evangelist/self-proclaimed hedonist. Number Four on Dr. Earth's Ten Point Plan? "Clubbing is a spiritual act."

Dr. Earth recently announced his plan to foist all profits on Friends of the Earth, but since future Club4Climate ventures could encourage international flights (an island resort is in the works), FOE says they don't want his money.

Too bad, says Dr. Earth. "We're going to give it to them anyway."

—Nichole Wong

(Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Urban Mixer.)

Do Your Condoms Work?

If you happened to read the tiny print on the back of a box of Durex Avanti condoms before you bought them, you'd see this: "The risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STD's), including AIDS (HIV infection), are not known for this condom." Hmm. Since most people, I think, actually use condoms specifically for those purposes, and not for the diminished sensation in their genitals, should this product really be on the market?

Read more about it here.

June 17, 2008

US Fish and Wildlife: Oil and Gas Extraction Have Nothing—Nothing!—To Do With Arctic Habitat Loss

Loath to go too many days without flouting some kind of law, the Bush administration last week granted permission for seven oil companies to harass and potentially harm polar bears while drilling for oil and gas in Alaska's Chukchi Sea, provided they do so unintentionally. Polar bears were just recently classifed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, an obvious lapse in judgment the administration apparently rushed to rectify. The "final rule" (.pdf) states that "The Fish and Wildlife Service has developed regulations that authorize the nonlethal, incidental, unintentional take of small numbers of Pacific walruses and polar bears." To "take", as defined in the document, means "to harass, hunt, capture, or kill" a marine mammal, or to attempt to do so.

So, if I read this correctly, Fish and Wildlife has just authorized oil companies to accidentally harass, hunt, and capture polar bears. While no extraction is yet underway, it seems fair to conclude that the government is covering its legal backside in anticipation of the inevitable havoc that seven companies' worth of oil and gas exploration will wreak.

Which would make sense, if the agency were not also claiming that the exploration won't cause any trouble at all. Speaking to an AP reporter, Fish and Wildlife director H. Dale Hall insisted that "the oil and gas industry in operating under the kind of rules they have operated under for 15 years has not been a threat to the species...It was the ice melting and the habitat going away that was a threat to the species over everything else."

But as the article continues, "exploring in the Chukchi Sea's 29.7 million acres will require as many as five drill ships, one or two icebreakers, a barge, a tug and two helicopter flights per day, according to the government. Oil companies will also be making hundreds of miles of ice roads and trails along the coastline."

All of which I'm sure has nothing to do with "the ice melting and the habitat going away."

June 13, 2008

Gas Prices Driving You Crazy? At Least No One's Trying to Burn You Up In Your Truck

The London Evening Standard just published a harrowing report detailing the large-scale, violent fuel protests going on right now all over the world. In more than a few countries, shortages have all but halted the national economies as fishermen, grocers, farmers and truck drivers either refuse or find themselves unable to do their jobs.

You can read about it, but it's the photos that are really sobering: thousands of trucks blockading the road to the Thai capital city of Bangkok; protestors kicking a riot policeman; a lone injured farmer kneeling, arms outstretched, before a line of riot police. In Spain, where things seem particularly bad, a working truck driver narrowly escaped attempts by his striking peers to burn him alive in his cab; in Portugal, farmers say they will have to throw away over half a million gallons of fresh milk because there is no more fuel and no more storage.

This is not happening here in the US. Yes, gas prices are high, and they're disproportionately affecting our country's rural poor. And yes, our leaders continue to suggest startlingly short-sighted solutions. But so far, people seem to have decided to grin and bear it.

Why no riots? I'm not saying truck-burning is the way to go. But the national forbearance that's attended this year's jump in prices is a little unnerving. Even those suffering rural Southerners don't seem angry; just sad and mostly resigned. Have we lost so much faith in our government that we won't even bother demanding action? Or are we just not sure what to demand?

In this case, actually, I think that just registering our anger would be enough. The European and Asian protesters, by voluntarily halting work, are trying to make a point to their governments: that high fuel prices are unsustainable, and that if something doesn't change it won't even be possible for people to continue working. So far, those protests don't seem connected to a call for alternative fuels or transportation networks, but logically those things are the next step. What if people started demanding that the government make a real investment?

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from quarsan.

Evolution Before Our Eyes: How Macaques Learned To Fish

Scientists in Indonesia recently published a paper documenting their field observations of long-tailed macaques going fishing. Even better, they don't just reach into the water to grab their own fish—they watch other macaques at work and learn from their techniques. One researcher theorized that "perhaps a couple of generations back, one primate caught a fish and it was subsequently copied." The scientists suspect that the macaques fish when no other food is available, though they stress that not enough data exists to say for certain.

Okay, so this is cool. It's not often that we see species adapt to changing conditions at a rate that matches the change. (Recovery from human threat and habitat depletion is rare enough.) Further study of this species could teach us a lot, not only about how macaques adapt to changing conditions, but about how we might adapt as well. Unfortunately, if Congress is any indication of how we're doing, right now the macaques are coming out ahead.

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from sebr.

June 11, 2008

New Report Findings on Middle Class Health Insurance

Universal health care might be something even the staunchest Republicans start to consider after this news:

According to a report released this week by The Commonwealth Fund, 25 million Americans were underinsured in 2007—a 60 percent jump since 2003.

And it's the middle class who's feeling the pain, again.

What does being underinsured get you?

(And it could be you: The rate of underinsured people among those who make $40,000 to $59,000 hit double digits in 2007.) Benefit limits, higher deductibles, and higher premiums, apparently.

Forget preventative care. Fifty-three percent of the underinsured had to forgo needed medical attention. That means skipping prescriptions, avoiding doctor visits when sick, and passing on further tests.

And you thought food and gas prices were the only problem.

—Brittney Andres

June 10, 2008

New Pyramid Scheme Traps Wastes & Tourists

Here's a whacky idea you gotta love. A Dutch engineer suggests solidifying toxic wastes into concretelike slabs and building urban pyramids that trap wastes and tourists alike. Schuiling rightly suggests that it's dangerous and unsustainable to simply bury solid toxic waste in lined deposits underground, the current best practice. He says such waste should first be immobilized by mixing with a cement and immobilizing additives to reduce the possibility of toxic materials leaching into the earth and ground water. Cities could vie for the best ways to display their neutered toxins:

Great and award-winning works of art have been made from the most outlandish of materials from Chris Ofili's depiction of the Holy Virgin Mary encrusted with elephant dung and Damien Hirst's pickled tiger shark representing life and death to the unmade bed of Tracey Emin and the unspeakable bodily fluids of avant garde duo Gilbert & George. But all of these works will pale into insignificance if a plan to dispose of solid domestic and even toxic industrial waste by building solid monuments to waste is undertaken.

Brings to mind those municipal "art" projects (cows on parade, party animals), where many of the same blank sculptures are decorated by different stoners, er, artists. Think of it. Pyramids jauntily decorated with skull-and-crossbones, international biohazard symbols, warning signs, or logos of corporate polluters. Although if you really want to trap tourists, giant halftone images of fallen celebrities, or laser light show screens.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

European CO2 Cuts Working

Listen up, slacker senators. The EU's "cap-and-trade" system for carbon dioxide is working well and has had little or no negative impact on the overall EU economy. This according to an analysis for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change by MIT researchers. They conclude that although the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (pdf) was fast-tracked 3 years ago to criticism of its wobbly start, it quickly worked out its own kinks. A. Denny Ellerman, senior lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management, suggests the system doesn't need to be in perfect working order before start up. "Obviously you're better off having things all settled and worked out before it gets started," he said. "But that certainly wasn't the case in Europe, and yet a transparent and widely accepted price for CO2 emission allowances emerged rapidly, as did a functioning market and the infrastructure to support it. This important public policy experiment is not perfect, but it is far more than any other nation or set of nations has done to control greenhouse-gas emissions—and it works surprisingly well."

Okay, if I believed in the Imaginary Friend I might be inclined to say God Bless Europe. Instead, how about, thanks, and may our next president and our next Congress look to the Old World now and again for better ways to build a new one.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Top 10: Animal Planet Does Father's Day

Animal Planet is celebrating Father's Day with an A-List of Nature's Best Dads.

Top contenders include the golden jackal (monogamous), the seahorse (pregnant), and the Emperor penguin, (good with kids).

But is the lion, (fiercely protective) really a "better" father than Eastern grey squirrels, which routinely eat their young?

Here's hoping Animal Planet will continue anthropomorphizing all year—plenty of holidays await!

Perhaps a special on financially responsible animals (those beavers, saving up all that wood) for April 15? A drone bee retrospective for Labor Day?—Daniel Luzar

June 9, 2008

Drilling Really Did Trigger Mud Volcano

Final verdict: the Indonesian village-eating mud-erupting volcano known as Lusi was triggered by oil and gas drilling two years ago. The eruption began in May 2006 when Lapindo Brantas, owned by the family of billionaire Indonesian Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie, began exploratory drilling of a borehole named Banjar-Panji-1. Since then Lusi's oozing eruption has inundated rice paddies and villages, destroyed 10,000 homes and displaced 30,000 people. Now a study published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters shows exactly how drilling caused Lusi's birth. Lead author Richard Davies says, "We show that the day before the mud volcano started there was a huge ‘kick’ in the well, which is an influx of fluid and gas into the wellbore. We show that after the kick the pressure in the well went beyond a critical level. This resulted in the leakage of the fluid from the well and the rock formations to the surface—a so called ‘underground blowout’. This fluid picked up mud during its accent and Lusi was born.

Lapindo Brantas initially claimed the Yogyakarta earthquake, which occurred two days before and 155 miles away, caused Lusi's birth. However the oil and gas company now confirms the published data on Lusi are correct and their drilling was the trigger, reports Durham University.

The question now is whether, as some suspect, Lapindo Brantas will simply fold into bankruptcy to avoid paying penalties or reparations. Especially now since another study by Davies at Durham University suggests Lusi is beginning to collapse—precursor to becoming a huge sunken caldera, worsening the environmental disaster.

The ever-growing environmental disaster of fossil-fuels.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

June 6, 2008

Behold the Sperm Remote

From EcoGeek via Grist comes word of a nifty new birth control method for men:

The remote control, implanted device will allow users to 'press pause' on their sperm. (although it doesn't mention whether a 'rewind' function is in the works). The device has been developed by Australian scientists, and could herald a new dawn of even more convenient contraception for men, which has the potential to keep population growth under control more effectively.

Which of course raises the age-old question: Who controls the remote?

June 5, 2008

Dolphins Recovering From Tuna Nets At Last

At long last the dolphins once caught in the Pacific tuna fishery seem to be recovering. Spotted and spinner dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific appear to be on the increase after severe depletion in the tuna purse-seine fishery. Between 1960 and 1990 their populations dropped by 80 percent and 70 percent, respectively, of pre-fishery levels. And though they've been (largely) spared capture and drowning in purse-seine nets since the early 1990s, due to severe restrictions on the fishery, their numbers have not rebounded. Until now. "We expected to see these populations begin their recovery years ago, because fishermen have been so successful at reducing dolphin deaths," said Tim Gerrodette of NOAA's Fisheries Service. "The new data are the first to indicate the beginning of a recovery." The news is tempered with caution though, since the numbers repre