By ALISON WILLIAMS
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Soot from coal-burning factories in the northeastern United States might have been the most important factor in the warming of the Arctic region at the turn of the last century, U.S. researchers reported Friday.
At its peak, the contribution of soot to warming the region was almost twice as great as that of current carbon dioxide levels, the team reported in the online journal Science Express.
Particulate matter in the atmosphere generally is thought to have a cooling effect because it reflects sunlight back into space. Soot in the atmosphere, however, absorbs sunlight and hSoot in the air and on the ground has not been measured until recently and it has been "a big unknown in climate studies," said lead author Joseph McConnell, a snow hydrologist at the Desert Research Institute in Reno.
To fill this gap, McConnell and colleagues drilled out an ice column in Greenland, melted it sequentially and analyzed the liquid for carbon, vanillic acid -- an indicator of pine forest fires -- and a type of sulfur that is an indicator of human activities.
Before 1850, levels of black carbon and vanillic acid were closely matched, indicating that forest fires were responsible for most of the soot.
Between 1850 and 1951, black carbon levels rose sharply, peaking in 1908. The levels were matched with rising sulfur levels, particularly in winter. The warming effect from the industrial pollutants was eight times that of forest fires, according to the study.
Modeling of air currents indicated that much of the carbon came from the industrial northeast.
At its peak, the warming produced by the soot was about 3.2 watts per square meter, compared to the current carbon dioxide contribution of 1.6 watts per square meter.
Since 1951, black carbon in the Arctic has been decreasing and is less strongly matched to human activities, the researchers found.
In an editorial in the same journal, climate scientist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University said this shows that humans could both alter the climate and act to clean things up.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Poisoned city fights to save its children
Families in a Peruvian valley choked by toxic gas from a smelter are taking on a US metals giant
Hugh O'Shaughnessy in La Oroya, Peru
Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer
At an altitude of 13,000ft the Andean air is clear. A plume of white smoke rises from the chimney at the La Oroya smelter, hard at work refining arsenic and metals such as lead, cadmium and copper. But today the company is not discharging any gases over this city in central Peru. 'It's a nice day, so the company won't be letting off any gases,' says Hugo Villa, a neurologist at the local hospital. 'They keep the worst emissions to overcast days or after dark.'
When the gases are released, they make this one of the most polluted places on the planet, with La Oroya ranking alongside Chernobyl for environmental devastation, according to a US think-tank, the Blacksmith Institute.
The company is a US corporation, Renco Doe Run. The gases are the product from the main smelter a mile or two down the valley. The high mountains around keep out the cleansing winds, meaning that airborne metals are concentrated in the valley. Neither humans nor nature can escape the company's outpourings of poisons. And, despite evidence that gases have been behind the premature deaths of workers and residents young and old, the business-oriented, pro-US government of President Alan Garcia is too afraid of foreign investors to do anything about it.
Now, however, the townspeople, once muted by their worries about losing their jobs with the valley's biggest employer, are turning their attention towards Ira Rennert, Renco's proprietor.
The pollution from his plants appears both horrific and difficult to contest. A study of 93 newborn children in the first 12 hours of their life, conducted by Hugo Villa, showed they had highly dangerous levels of lead in their blood, inherited from their mothers while in the womb. The nearer the mothers lived to the main smelter, the higher was the babies' level of lead poisoning.
'The effects of the lead are often difficult to trace,' said Villa. 'But it lodges permanently in bones and affects the liver, kidneys and the brain. It affects the central nervous system. I've had child patients who have lost feeling in their limbs and can't control themselves.'
The quality of air sampled in the neighbourhood by three Peruvian voluntary agencies showed 85 times more arsenic, 41 times more cadmium and 13 times more lead than is safe. In parts of the town the water supply contains 50 per cent more lead than levels recommended by the World Health Organisation. The untreated waters of the Mantaro river are contaminated with copper, iron, manganese, lead and zinc and are not suitable for irrigation or consumption by animals, according to the standards supposed to be legally enforced in Peru. The water coming out of the nearby Huascacocha lake contains more than four times the legal limit of manganese.
It is no surprise, therefore, that the town has more than its fair share of youngsters with physical or mental disabilities. The company has a scheme under which a few hundred carefully selected children of Doe Run employees are taken for a few hours every day to a camp outside the town. With less money, the town council is trying to do something similar for children whose parents do not work for the company. None of this bears on the main problem - the pollution from the refineries. The problem here is such that adults chat about the lead levels in their blood.
'I'm 37,' said one. 'That's nothing,' said another, 'I'm 43.'
For years the Oroyinos, as the locals are called, appeared to put up with their lot. In the past, union leaders and the mayor were persuaded by Renco Doe Run to side with it to block, successfully, the government's feeble attempts to force it to reduce pollution. 'We may move out, and you'll all lose your jobs, was the message,' said Pedro, one former employee, now an invalid. 'It was a question of deciding whether to have enough food to eat or not.'
This year it is different. The town has elected a new mayor, Cesar Rodriguez, and the unions elected new leaders; and the effects of the pollution on children is finally getting through to parents.
Rennert's record as a polluter is not confined to Peru. For nearly 13 years, according to industry reports, the company topped the US Environmental Protection Authority's list as the worst air polluter in the country.
Hugh O'Shaughnessy in La Oroya, Peru
Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer
At an altitude of 13,000ft the Andean air is clear. A plume of white smoke rises from the chimney at the La Oroya smelter, hard at work refining arsenic and metals such as lead, cadmium and copper. But today the company is not discharging any gases over this city in central Peru. 'It's a nice day, so the company won't be letting off any gases,' says Hugo Villa, a neurologist at the local hospital. 'They keep the worst emissions to overcast days or after dark.'
When the gases are released, they make this one of the most polluted places on the planet, with La Oroya ranking alongside Chernobyl for environmental devastation, according to a US think-tank, the Blacksmith Institute.
The company is a US corporation, Renco Doe Run. The gases are the product from the main smelter a mile or two down the valley. The high mountains around keep out the cleansing winds, meaning that airborne metals are concentrated in the valley. Neither humans nor nature can escape the company's outpourings of poisons. And, despite evidence that gases have been behind the premature deaths of workers and residents young and old, the business-oriented, pro-US government of President Alan Garcia is too afraid of foreign investors to do anything about it.
Now, however, the townspeople, once muted by their worries about losing their jobs with the valley's biggest employer, are turning their attention towards Ira Rennert, Renco's proprietor.
The pollution from his plants appears both horrific and difficult to contest. A study of 93 newborn children in the first 12 hours of their life, conducted by Hugo Villa, showed they had highly dangerous levels of lead in their blood, inherited from their mothers while in the womb. The nearer the mothers lived to the main smelter, the higher was the babies' level of lead poisoning.
'The effects of the lead are often difficult to trace,' said Villa. 'But it lodges permanently in bones and affects the liver, kidneys and the brain. It affects the central nervous system. I've had child patients who have lost feeling in their limbs and can't control themselves.'
The quality of air sampled in the neighbourhood by three Peruvian voluntary agencies showed 85 times more arsenic, 41 times more cadmium and 13 times more lead than is safe. In parts of the town the water supply contains 50 per cent more lead than levels recommended by the World Health Organisation. The untreated waters of the Mantaro river are contaminated with copper, iron, manganese, lead and zinc and are not suitable for irrigation or consumption by animals, according to the standards supposed to be legally enforced in Peru. The water coming out of the nearby Huascacocha lake contains more than four times the legal limit of manganese.
It is no surprise, therefore, that the town has more than its fair share of youngsters with physical or mental disabilities. The company has a scheme under which a few hundred carefully selected children of Doe Run employees are taken for a few hours every day to a camp outside the town. With less money, the town council is trying to do something similar for children whose parents do not work for the company. None of this bears on the main problem - the pollution from the refineries. The problem here is such that adults chat about the lead levels in their blood.
'I'm 37,' said one. 'That's nothing,' said another, 'I'm 43.'
For years the Oroyinos, as the locals are called, appeared to put up with their lot. In the past, union leaders and the mayor were persuaded by Renco Doe Run to side with it to block, successfully, the government's feeble attempts to force it to reduce pollution. 'We may move out, and you'll all lose your jobs, was the message,' said Pedro, one former employee, now an invalid. 'It was a question of deciding whether to have enough food to eat or not.'
This year it is different. The town has elected a new mayor, Cesar Rodriguez, and the unions elected new leaders; and the effects of the pollution on children is finally getting through to parents.
Rennert's record as a polluter is not confined to Peru. For nearly 13 years, according to industry reports, the company topped the US Environmental Protection Authority's list as the worst air polluter in the country.
24 hours to save the planet
Jack Bauer's new target is global warming. Leonardo DiCaprio's latest film is eco-conscious. David Smith reports on the greening of Hollywood
Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer
Can Jack Bauer save the world? News that television's secret agent, played by Kiefer Sutherland in the addictive thriller 24, is to take the war against global warming into millions of homes has been welcomed by environmental campaigners as a seminal moment in the 'greening' of Hollywood.
Time, or the lack of it, is a recurring motif in the industry's take on climate change. The blockbuster that showed New York engulfed by a new ice age was called The Day After Tomorrow. This week Leonardo DiCaprio, arguably the most environmentally active star, releases an alarming documentary he has produced and narrated entitled The 11th Hour. But it is 24 that has the most mainstream appeal and which, with its presentation in 'real-time' corresponding minute by minute to the life of Bauer as he strives to beat the clock and avert disaster, provides an opportune metaphor for the race to salvage the planet.
Article continues
Climate change awareness is the height of Hollywood fashion, earning comparison with past causes that saw stars rally in support of the Second World War, protest against the Vietnam War and draw attention to the plight of HIV/Aids sufferers. Driving a hybrid Toyota Prius is now so de rigueur that it was recently reported Hollywood has a nine-month waiting list for them. But the town is hiding an inconvenient truth: last year an academic study found that the film and television industry comes second only to oil refineries in fuelling the smog above the Hollywood hills.
It is embarrassments like this that the Fox studio says it is setting out to change. It has announced that 24 will aim to become the first 'carbon-neutral' TV programme. Environmentally friendly production measures will include using biodiesel for generators and vehicles, buying energy from wind, water and solar power sources, rewiring a production stage to use electricity instead of diesel-generated power and phasing in hybrid vehicles for cast and crew.
The campaign will be evident on screen too. Fox said that 24 would incorporate the issue of global warming and the importance of carbon emission reduction into storylines 'when appropriate'. The official 24 website includes a video appeal by Sutherland, who warns: 'Global warming is a crime for which we are all guilty,' and a list of tips for the public, including turning off lights, riding a bike and printing on both sides of the page.
The announcement was hailed as a breakthrough by Steve Howard, chief executive of the Climate Group, which promotes business and government leadership on climate change. He said: 'An Inconvenient Truth [the global warming documentary featuring Al Gore] was remarkably influential, and The 11th Hour is a well put together film, but both will reach a relatively small audience. If you have 24 dealing with the issue, not in a hairshirt way but in a Hollywood exciting way, it has to be a good thing. People can be overwhelmed by another newspaper headline saying, "Ice caps melting, polar bears dead," or "Another hurricane on the way", but when you watch a film and the star is driving a hybrid instead of a Humvee, that is less daunting.'
However, a didactic tone in 24 could cause uneasiness among some fans, according to Ted Johnson, managing editor of Variety, the industry journal. '24 is very popular among conservatives, very popular among the Bush administration,' he said. 'It's not too much of a leap to say this might include people who don't think global warming exists.'
However, climate change sceptics are an endangered species in Hollywood. The queen of green is Laurie David, wife of comedian Larry and co-producer of An Inconvenient Truth, whose contacts book contains much of the A list. Fox's owner Rupert Murdoch, not usually regarded as a member of the liberal elite, is the latest recruit, announcing three months ago a commitment to 'changing the DNA of our business' to cut the impact of News Corp, Fox's parent company, on the environment.
Media power is matched by political power in the Golden State. As an actor and bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the first American civilian to own a gas-guzzling Humvee, but as a politician he has undergone a Damascene conversion. The state governor signed pioneering legislation to reduce California's carbon emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 and by 80 per cent by 2050, as well as initiatives to encourage solar power. It is not the Terminator star who is the lodestar for Hollywood activists like DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, however, according to Ted Johnson. 'Arnold Schwarzenegger was in the entertainment industry and is probably the number one convert in the state, but the man people really look to is Al Gore,' he said. 'He got there first and An Inconvenient Truth created a real buzz and inspired a lot of people, to the extent that Cameron Diaz now teaches it.'
Diaz was recently ranked second behind DiCaprio on a list of '15 green actors' compiled by Grist, the online environmental magazine, earning praise for driving a hybrid car and her involvement in Gore's Live Earth concerts. The chart also included Robert Redford, a veteran campaigner; Cate Blanchett, who has converted her home to solar power; George Clooney, who launched Oil Change, a campaign to wean America off oil; and Brad Pitt, who advocates eco-friendly buildings.
Dr Arlo Brady, a special adviser on green issues for the London-based celebrity PR agency Freud Communications, said: 'If you're a celeb or star and you want to pick up a subject that resonates with audiences, you're going to choose climate change. There are a number of climate change impostors and in some cases it's so obvious that it's laughable.'
But there are exceptions, he added. 'Leonardo DiCaprio connects with millions and millions of people every year, and his core audience are not necessarily the people who are engaged with the climate change debate. The fact that he is in The 11th Hour might persuade them to go along - they'll be emotionally bothered by it and they'll learn something. Celebs do have carbon-intensive lifestyles, but they have such an incredible power at their fingertips that, in my view, it would be irresponsible of them not to use it.'
The 11th Hour, released in the US on Friday, takes up themes from An Inconvenient Truth, with interviewees including physicist Stephen Hawking and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, interspersed with visions of volcanoes, mudslides and clubbed baby seals set against images of consumerism.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where DiCaprio sought to place himself in a Hollywood tradition of political activism: 'If you look back to the peace and the civil rights movements, there have been people in the industry that have been at the forefront of that.'
But during a press conference he faced the same charge that has been levelled at many actors: hypocrisy. Asked if he travelled on a fuel-hungry jet on his way to the French Riviera, he replied sarcastically: 'No, I took a train across the Atlantic.' He went on: 'We're all trying the best we can. Truly, we really are. Attacks on Al Gore, for example, are misdirected. Don't shoot the messenger. If you're going to attack somebody on the way they conduct their life, let's talk about the big picture, let's see what big oil companies are doing.'
Unfortunately for DiCaprio, the big picture also includes film and television companies. It is a dirty business: giant sets are built and then often destroyed, cameras and lights consume vast amounts of energy, large trucks are used to transport sets and crew and thousands of script pages are printed off every day. In 2004 The Day After Tomorrow was the first carbon-neutral movie after Fox paid $200,000 (£105,000) for a reforestation project to offset some 10,000 tons of carbon emissions. Other studios such as Warner Brothers are following suit, encouraged by the Environmental Media Association, which awards a 'Green Seal' to productions that meet its list of eco-standards and offers one-on-one consultations 'to suggest and brainstorm ways to incorporate environmental topics into subtle storylines and character arcs'. Syriana and Evan Almighty were both carbon-neutral productions.
Now 24 is aiming to become the first TV drama to do the same, a critical step towards deflecting criticism by practising what it preaches. Jack Bauer alone might not save the world, but environmentalists hope he can help deliver public opinion. Howard of The Climate Group said: 'We need the right level of political leadership, business innovation and investment, and public engagement, so popular culture is hugely important.
'You might say we've had An Inconvenient Truth, The 11th Hour and The Day After Tomorrow, so Hollywood has been there, done that. No, it hasn't. Pick any other issue and there have been a million movies made about it. This is the biggest issue of the 21st century and it needs to be done in a way that inspires and excites and get people talking.'
Storm Warnings
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
With Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal. Worst-case climate change scenario.
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
With Al Gore. Documentary following the former vice-president's mission to raise awareness of global warming.
Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)
With Martin Sheen, Mel Gibson.
Why the environmentally friendly car was killed off by General Motors.
The 11th Hour (2007)
With Leonardo DiCaprio, Mikhail Gorbachev, Stephen Hawking. Bleak picture for humanity unless it acts now.
Arctic Tale (2007)
With Queen Latifah. Struggle of a polar bear cub and a baby walrus.
Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer
Can Jack Bauer save the world? News that television's secret agent, played by Kiefer Sutherland in the addictive thriller 24, is to take the war against global warming into millions of homes has been welcomed by environmental campaigners as a seminal moment in the 'greening' of Hollywood.
Time, or the lack of it, is a recurring motif in the industry's take on climate change. The blockbuster that showed New York engulfed by a new ice age was called The Day After Tomorrow. This week Leonardo DiCaprio, arguably the most environmentally active star, releases an alarming documentary he has produced and narrated entitled The 11th Hour. But it is 24 that has the most mainstream appeal and which, with its presentation in 'real-time' corresponding minute by minute to the life of Bauer as he strives to beat the clock and avert disaster, provides an opportune metaphor for the race to salvage the planet.
Article continues
Climate change awareness is the height of Hollywood fashion, earning comparison with past causes that saw stars rally in support of the Second World War, protest against the Vietnam War and draw attention to the plight of HIV/Aids sufferers. Driving a hybrid Toyota Prius is now so de rigueur that it was recently reported Hollywood has a nine-month waiting list for them. But the town is hiding an inconvenient truth: last year an academic study found that the film and television industry comes second only to oil refineries in fuelling the smog above the Hollywood hills.
It is embarrassments like this that the Fox studio says it is setting out to change. It has announced that 24 will aim to become the first 'carbon-neutral' TV programme. Environmentally friendly production measures will include using biodiesel for generators and vehicles, buying energy from wind, water and solar power sources, rewiring a production stage to use electricity instead of diesel-generated power and phasing in hybrid vehicles for cast and crew.
The campaign will be evident on screen too. Fox said that 24 would incorporate the issue of global warming and the importance of carbon emission reduction into storylines 'when appropriate'. The official 24 website includes a video appeal by Sutherland, who warns: 'Global warming is a crime for which we are all guilty,' and a list of tips for the public, including turning off lights, riding a bike and printing on both sides of the page.
The announcement was hailed as a breakthrough by Steve Howard, chief executive of the Climate Group, which promotes business and government leadership on climate change. He said: 'An Inconvenient Truth [the global warming documentary featuring Al Gore] was remarkably influential, and The 11th Hour is a well put together film, but both will reach a relatively small audience. If you have 24 dealing with the issue, not in a hairshirt way but in a Hollywood exciting way, it has to be a good thing. People can be overwhelmed by another newspaper headline saying, "Ice caps melting, polar bears dead," or "Another hurricane on the way", but when you watch a film and the star is driving a hybrid instead of a Humvee, that is less daunting.'
However, a didactic tone in 24 could cause uneasiness among some fans, according to Ted Johnson, managing editor of Variety, the industry journal. '24 is very popular among conservatives, very popular among the Bush administration,' he said. 'It's not too much of a leap to say this might include people who don't think global warming exists.'
However, climate change sceptics are an endangered species in Hollywood. The queen of green is Laurie David, wife of comedian Larry and co-producer of An Inconvenient Truth, whose contacts book contains much of the A list. Fox's owner Rupert Murdoch, not usually regarded as a member of the liberal elite, is the latest recruit, announcing three months ago a commitment to 'changing the DNA of our business' to cut the impact of News Corp, Fox's parent company, on the environment.
Media power is matched by political power in the Golden State. As an actor and bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the first American civilian to own a gas-guzzling Humvee, but as a politician he has undergone a Damascene conversion. The state governor signed pioneering legislation to reduce California's carbon emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 and by 80 per cent by 2050, as well as initiatives to encourage solar power. It is not the Terminator star who is the lodestar for Hollywood activists like DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, however, according to Ted Johnson. 'Arnold Schwarzenegger was in the entertainment industry and is probably the number one convert in the state, but the man people really look to is Al Gore,' he said. 'He got there first and An Inconvenient Truth created a real buzz and inspired a lot of people, to the extent that Cameron Diaz now teaches it.'
Diaz was recently ranked second behind DiCaprio on a list of '15 green actors' compiled by Grist, the online environmental magazine, earning praise for driving a hybrid car and her involvement in Gore's Live Earth concerts. The chart also included Robert Redford, a veteran campaigner; Cate Blanchett, who has converted her home to solar power; George Clooney, who launched Oil Change, a campaign to wean America off oil; and Brad Pitt, who advocates eco-friendly buildings.
Dr Arlo Brady, a special adviser on green issues for the London-based celebrity PR agency Freud Communications, said: 'If you're a celeb or star and you want to pick up a subject that resonates with audiences, you're going to choose climate change. There are a number of climate change impostors and in some cases it's so obvious that it's laughable.'
But there are exceptions, he added. 'Leonardo DiCaprio connects with millions and millions of people every year, and his core audience are not necessarily the people who are engaged with the climate change debate. The fact that he is in The 11th Hour might persuade them to go along - they'll be emotionally bothered by it and they'll learn something. Celebs do have carbon-intensive lifestyles, but they have such an incredible power at their fingertips that, in my view, it would be irresponsible of them not to use it.'
The 11th Hour, released in the US on Friday, takes up themes from An Inconvenient Truth, with interviewees including physicist Stephen Hawking and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, interspersed with visions of volcanoes, mudslides and clubbed baby seals set against images of consumerism.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where DiCaprio sought to place himself in a Hollywood tradition of political activism: 'If you look back to the peace and the civil rights movements, there have been people in the industry that have been at the forefront of that.'
But during a press conference he faced the same charge that has been levelled at many actors: hypocrisy. Asked if he travelled on a fuel-hungry jet on his way to the French Riviera, he replied sarcastically: 'No, I took a train across the Atlantic.' He went on: 'We're all trying the best we can. Truly, we really are. Attacks on Al Gore, for example, are misdirected. Don't shoot the messenger. If you're going to attack somebody on the way they conduct their life, let's talk about the big picture, let's see what big oil companies are doing.'
Unfortunately for DiCaprio, the big picture also includes film and television companies. It is a dirty business: giant sets are built and then often destroyed, cameras and lights consume vast amounts of energy, large trucks are used to transport sets and crew and thousands of script pages are printed off every day. In 2004 The Day After Tomorrow was the first carbon-neutral movie after Fox paid $200,000 (£105,000) for a reforestation project to offset some 10,000 tons of carbon emissions. Other studios such as Warner Brothers are following suit, encouraged by the Environmental Media Association, which awards a 'Green Seal' to productions that meet its list of eco-standards and offers one-on-one consultations 'to suggest and brainstorm ways to incorporate environmental topics into subtle storylines and character arcs'. Syriana and Evan Almighty were both carbon-neutral productions.
Now 24 is aiming to become the first TV drama to do the same, a critical step towards deflecting criticism by practising what it preaches. Jack Bauer alone might not save the world, but environmentalists hope he can help deliver public opinion. Howard of The Climate Group said: 'We need the right level of political leadership, business innovation and investment, and public engagement, so popular culture is hugely important.
'You might say we've had An Inconvenient Truth, The 11th Hour and The Day After Tomorrow, so Hollywood has been there, done that. No, it hasn't. Pick any other issue and there have been a million movies made about it. This is the biggest issue of the 21st century and it needs to be done in a way that inspires and excites and get people talking.'
Storm Warnings
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
With Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal. Worst-case climate change scenario.
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
With Al Gore. Documentary following the former vice-president's mission to raise awareness of global warming.
Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)
With Martin Sheen, Mel Gibson.
Why the environmentally friendly car was killed off by General Motors.
The 11th Hour (2007)
With Leonardo DiCaprio, Mikhail Gorbachev, Stephen Hawking. Bleak picture for humanity unless it acts now.
Arctic Tale (2007)
With Queen Latifah. Struggle of a polar bear cub and a baby walrus.
Canada uses military might in Arctic scramble
· Building programme is response to Russian move
· UN to decide on seabed claims to huge oil deposits
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday August 11, 2007
The Guardian
Lancaster Sound, Nunavut, Canada
Lancaster Sound, Nunavut, Canada. Global warming has made the Arctic's oil and gas reserves more accessible Photograph: Louise Murray/Science Photo Library
An international scramble for the Arctic's oil and gas resources accelerated yesterday when Canada responded to Russia's recent sovereignty claims with a plan to build two military bases in the region.
On a trip to the far north, the prime minister, Stephen Harper, said: "Canada's new government understands that the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: use it or lose it. Today's announcements tell the world that Canada has a real, growing, long-term presence in the Arctic."
Article continues
An army training centre for 100 troops is to be built in Resolute Bay, and a deep-water port will be built on Baffin Island, to bolster Canada's claim to ownership.
The move comes a week after a Russian sub planted a flag on the Arctic seabed. Moscow claims rights to half the Arctic. The US, Norway and Denmark also have claims.
A US state department official, speaking last week, signalled that Washington will not stand by in the face of what it sees as a Russian land-grab, though America's position is complicated by its failure so far to sign the treaty of the seas.
As Canada was making its move, Danish scientists were preparing to head for the Arctic tomorrow as part of their bid for a share of the region's wealth. A US coast guard icebreaker was heading to the Arctic to map the seafloor north of Alaska.
Although the US and Canada enjoy good relations, the American ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, has expressed annoyance with the prime minister's claims in the past.
No country owns the Arctic Ocean and north pole, but there are international laws governing its use. Under one UN convention, each country with a coast has sole exploitation rights in a limited "exclusive economic zone", beyond which mineral resources are controlled by the International Seabed Authority. However, upon ratification of the UN convention, each country was given a 10-year period within which to make claims to extend its zone. Norway (ratified in 1996), Russia (1997), Canada (2003), and Denmark (2004) have all launched claims that certain Arctic sectors should belong to their territories.
The UN's ruling on these submissions will determine who gets the right to extract the Arctic's huge reserves of oil and gas, estimated at 10bn tonnes.
Arguments over the Arctic were until recently academic because of the depth of the ice, but global warming has seen some of it melt, making drilling feasible. The US geological survey estimates that 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be located under the polar cap.
Speaking in the shelter of a hut in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, Mr Harper said: "Protecting national sovereignty, the integrity of our borders, is the first and foremost responsibility of a national government, a responsibility which has too often been neglected."
Last month, he announced that six to eight navy patrol ships will be built to guard the Northwest Passage sea route in the Arctic, which the US insists does not belong to Canada.
Russian researchers claim the Lomonosov ridge, a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range. Denmark, which owns Greenland, is claiming the same landmass, saying the Lomonosov ridge is an extension of its territory.
"The preliminary investigations done so far are very promising," Helge Sander, Denmark's minister of science, technology and innovation, told Denmark's TV2 on Thursday. "There are things suggesting that Denmark could be given the north pole."
Christian Marcussen, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said: "We will be collecting data for a possible demand."
The US's position is complicated because the Senate has refused since the 1990s to ratify the 1982 UN convention on the law of the sea, mainly because Republican senators refused to recognise the right of the United Nations to broker it.
Under the convention, countries are entitled to control any waters above landmasses which extend from their continental shelf, the basis of the Russian and Danish claims to the Lomonosov ridge. If the US operated on the same principle, it would be able to claim half of the Arctic.
There is a sense of alarm in the US administration at the possibility of a missed opportunity, and President George Bush in May broke ranks with Republican senators in support of ratification. New hearings in the Senate foreign relations committee will be held in the autumn.
· UN to decide on seabed claims to huge oil deposits
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday August 11, 2007
The Guardian
Lancaster Sound, Nunavut, Canada
Lancaster Sound, Nunavut, Canada. Global warming has made the Arctic's oil and gas reserves more accessible Photograph: Louise Murray/Science Photo Library
An international scramble for the Arctic's oil and gas resources accelerated yesterday when Canada responded to Russia's recent sovereignty claims with a plan to build two military bases in the region.
On a trip to the far north, the prime minister, Stephen Harper, said: "Canada's new government understands that the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: use it or lose it. Today's announcements tell the world that Canada has a real, growing, long-term presence in the Arctic."
Article continues
An army training centre for 100 troops is to be built in Resolute Bay, and a deep-water port will be built on Baffin Island, to bolster Canada's claim to ownership.
The move comes a week after a Russian sub planted a flag on the Arctic seabed. Moscow claims rights to half the Arctic. The US, Norway and Denmark also have claims.
A US state department official, speaking last week, signalled that Washington will not stand by in the face of what it sees as a Russian land-grab, though America's position is complicated by its failure so far to sign the treaty of the seas.
As Canada was making its move, Danish scientists were preparing to head for the Arctic tomorrow as part of their bid for a share of the region's wealth. A US coast guard icebreaker was heading to the Arctic to map the seafloor north of Alaska.
Although the US and Canada enjoy good relations, the American ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, has expressed annoyance with the prime minister's claims in the past.
No country owns the Arctic Ocean and north pole, but there are international laws governing its use. Under one UN convention, each country with a coast has sole exploitation rights in a limited "exclusive economic zone", beyond which mineral resources are controlled by the International Seabed Authority. However, upon ratification of the UN convention, each country was given a 10-year period within which to make claims to extend its zone. Norway (ratified in 1996), Russia (1997), Canada (2003), and Denmark (2004) have all launched claims that certain Arctic sectors should belong to their territories.
The UN's ruling on these submissions will determine who gets the right to extract the Arctic's huge reserves of oil and gas, estimated at 10bn tonnes.
Arguments over the Arctic were until recently academic because of the depth of the ice, but global warming has seen some of it melt, making drilling feasible. The US geological survey estimates that 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be located under the polar cap.
Speaking in the shelter of a hut in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, Mr Harper said: "Protecting national sovereignty, the integrity of our borders, is the first and foremost responsibility of a national government, a responsibility which has too often been neglected."
Last month, he announced that six to eight navy patrol ships will be built to guard the Northwest Passage sea route in the Arctic, which the US insists does not belong to Canada.
Russian researchers claim the Lomonosov ridge, a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range. Denmark, which owns Greenland, is claiming the same landmass, saying the Lomonosov ridge is an extension of its territory.
"The preliminary investigations done so far are very promising," Helge Sander, Denmark's minister of science, technology and innovation, told Denmark's TV2 on Thursday. "There are things suggesting that Denmark could be given the north pole."
Christian Marcussen, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said: "We will be collecting data for a possible demand."
The US's position is complicated because the Senate has refused since the 1990s to ratify the 1982 UN convention on the law of the sea, mainly because Republican senators refused to recognise the right of the United Nations to broker it.
Under the convention, countries are entitled to control any waters above landmasses which extend from their continental shelf, the basis of the Russian and Danish claims to the Lomonosov ridge. If the US operated on the same principle, it would be able to claim half of the Arctic.
There is a sense of alarm in the US administration at the possibility of a missed opportunity, and President George Bush in May broke ranks with Republican senators in support of ratification. New hearings in the Senate foreign relations committee will be held in the autumn.
Friday, August 10, 2007
UN Must Decide Russia Arctic Claim, Russian Experts Say
August 10, 2007 — By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters
WASHINGTON -- Russia's symbolic claim to Arctic mineral wealth must be decided by a U.N. commission, and then only if experts determine the area is an extension of the Siberian continental shelf, Russian experts said Thursday.
One week after Russian explorers used a submersible vehicle to place their country's flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole, the head of Russia's Institute of Oceanic Studies called the event "heroic" but said the claim would be settled "strictly within the framework of international law."
The matter would come before the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, but not until scientists drill deep for seabed samples to find out if the continental shelf extends to the area under the pole, said Robert Nigmatulin, who also chairs the Russian State Duma Council on Ecology.
"These rock formations are going to be the only solid proof of Russia's claim," Nigmatulin said in a videoconference from Moscow. "Only after that will it be appropriate to raise the legal issues about the claims of neighboring states to that ground."
This kind of deep drilling is not technologically possible now, said Nikolai Osokin of the Geographical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
There is a planned German icebreaker vessel, the Aurora Borealis, that might be able to do the job, but it is not expected to be operating before 2013. Russia has offered expertise to the project but no money.
Harley Balzer of Georgetown University, participating in the videoconference from Washington, applauded Russian President Vladimir Putin's measured response to the flag-laying, but questioned those in the Russian Duma who have been "a little less careful" in praising the stunt.
UNDERWATER MOUNTAIN
Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States all have territory within the Arctic Circle, and have a 200-mile economic zone around the north of their coastlines.
Norway neither contests nor supports Russia's claim, and is seeking an extension to its subsea territory in the Arctic, but not as far as the North Pole.
Norwegian oil companies are also pushing north in the Barents Sea, such as Statoil's Snoehvit gas field off the northern tip of Norway due to start up in October. Better technology and global warming may make the icy region more accessible in the future.
The Danish foreign ministry said the flag-laying had no legal significance, and that Denmark reserves the right to make its own continental shelf claim to the United Nations on behalf of Greenland.
Russian geologists estimate the Arctic seabed has at least 9 billion to 10 billion tons of fuel equivalent, about the same as Russia's total oil reserves.
These geologists base the Russian Arctic claim on a belief the Lomonosov ridge, a vast underwater mountain range that runs underneath the Arctic, is an extension of Russia.
Russian explorers are planning another Arctic expedition this year.
(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo, Gelu Sulugiuc in Copenhagen)
Source: Reuters
Contact Info:
WASHINGTON -- Russia's symbolic claim to Arctic mineral wealth must be decided by a U.N. commission, and then only if experts determine the area is an extension of the Siberian continental shelf, Russian experts said Thursday.
One week after Russian explorers used a submersible vehicle to place their country's flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole, the head of Russia's Institute of Oceanic Studies called the event "heroic" but said the claim would be settled "strictly within the framework of international law."
The matter would come before the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, but not until scientists drill deep for seabed samples to find out if the continental shelf extends to the area under the pole, said Robert Nigmatulin, who also chairs the Russian State Duma Council on Ecology.
"These rock formations are going to be the only solid proof of Russia's claim," Nigmatulin said in a videoconference from Moscow. "Only after that will it be appropriate to raise the legal issues about the claims of neighboring states to that ground."
This kind of deep drilling is not technologically possible now, said Nikolai Osokin of the Geographical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
There is a planned German icebreaker vessel, the Aurora Borealis, that might be able to do the job, but it is not expected to be operating before 2013. Russia has offered expertise to the project but no money.
Harley Balzer of Georgetown University, participating in the videoconference from Washington, applauded Russian President Vladimir Putin's measured response to the flag-laying, but questioned those in the Russian Duma who have been "a little less careful" in praising the stunt.
UNDERWATER MOUNTAIN
Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States all have territory within the Arctic Circle, and have a 200-mile economic zone around the north of their coastlines.
Norway neither contests nor supports Russia's claim, and is seeking an extension to its subsea territory in the Arctic, but not as far as the North Pole.
Norwegian oil companies are also pushing north in the Barents Sea, such as Statoil's Snoehvit gas field off the northern tip of Norway due to start up in October. Better technology and global warming may make the icy region more accessible in the future.
The Danish foreign ministry said the flag-laying had no legal significance, and that Denmark reserves the right to make its own continental shelf claim to the United Nations on behalf of Greenland.
Russian geologists estimate the Arctic seabed has at least 9 billion to 10 billion tons of fuel equivalent, about the same as Russia's total oil reserves.
These geologists base the Russian Arctic claim on a belief the Lomonosov ridge, a vast underwater mountain range that runs underneath the Arctic, is an extension of Russia.
Russian explorers are planning another Arctic expedition this year.
(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo, Gelu Sulugiuc in Copenhagen)
Source: Reuters
Contact Info:
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Green consumerism will not save the biosphere
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/07/24/eco-junk/
Posted July 24, 2007
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 24th July 2007
It wasn't meant to happen like this. The climate scientists told us that our winters would become wetter and our summers drier. So I can't claim that these floods were caused by climate change, or are even consistent with the models. But, like the ghost of Christmas yet to come, they offer us a glimpse of the possible winter world we'll inhabit if we don't sort ourselves out.
With rising sea levels and more winter rain (and remember that when the trees are dormant and the soils saturated there are fewer places for the rain to go) all it will take is a freshwater flood to coincide with a high spring tide and we have a formula for full-blown disaster. We have now seen how localised floods can wipe out essential services and overwhelm emergency workers. But this month's events don't even register beside some of the predictions now circulating in learned journals(1). Our primary political struggle must be to prevent the break-up of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The only question now worth asking about climate change is how.
Dozens of new books appear to provide an answer: we can save the world by embracing "better, greener lifestyles". Last week, for example, the Guardian published an extract of the new book by Sheherazade Goldsmith, who is married to the very rich environmentalist Zac, in which she teaches us "to live within nature's limits"(2). It's easy: just make your own bread, butter, cheese, jam, chutneys and pickles, keep a milking cow, a few pigs, goats, geese, ducks, chickens, beehives, gardens and orchards. Well, what are you waiting for?
Her book also contains plenty of useful advice, and she comes across as modest, sincere and well-informed. But of lobbying for political change, there is not a word: you can save the planet in your own kitchen - if you have endless time and plenty of land. When I was reading it on the train, another passenger asked me if he could take a look. He flicked through it for a moment then summed up the problem in seven words. "This is for people who don't work."
None of this would matter, if the Guardian hadn't put her photo on the masthead last week, with the promise that she could teach us to go green. The media's obsession with beauty, wealth and fame blights every issue it touches, but none more so than green politics. There is an inherent conflict between the aspirational lifestyle journalism which makes readers feel better about themselves and sells country kitchens and the central demand of environmentalism: that we should consume less. "None of these changes represents a sacrifice", Sheherazade tells us. "Being more conscientious isn't about giving up things." But it is: if, like her, you own more than one home when others have none.
Uncomfortable as this is for both the media and its advertisers, giving things up is an essential component of going green. A section on ethical shopping in Goldsmith's book advises us to buy organic, buy seasonal, buy local, buy sustainable, buy recycled. But it says nothing about buying less.
Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet. If it merely swapped the damaging goods we buy for less damaging ones, I would champion it. But two parallel markets are developing: one for unethical products and one for ethical products, and the expansion of the second does little to hinder the growth of the first. I am now drowning in a tide of ecojunk. Over the past six months, our coatpegs have become clogged with organic cotton bags, which - filled with packets of ginseng tea and jojoba oil bath salts - are now the obligatory gift at every environmental event. I have several lifetimes' supply of ballpoint pens made with recycled paper and about half a dozen miniature solar chargers for gadgets I don't possess.
Last week the Telegraph told its readers not to abandon the fight to save the planet. "There is still hope, and the middle classes, with their composters and eco-gadgets, will be leading the way."(3) It made some helpful suggestions, such as a "hydrogen-powered model racing car", which, for £74.99, comes with a solar panel, an electrolyser and a fuel cell(4). God knows what rare metals and energy-intensive processes were used to manufacture it. In the name of environmental consciousness, we have simply created new opportunities for surplus capital.
Ethical shopping is in danger of becoming another signifier of social status. I have met people who have bought solar panels and mini-wind turbines before they have insulated their lofts: partly because they love gadgets, but partly, I suspect, because everyone can then see how conscientious (and how rich) they are. We are often told that buying such products encourages us to think more widely about environmental challenges, but it is just as likely to be depoliticising. Green consumerism is another form of atomisation - a substitute for collective action. No political challenge can be met by shopping.
The middle classes rebrand their lives, congratulate themselves on going green, and carry on buying and flying as much as ever before. It is easy to picture a situation in which the whole world religiously buys green products, and its carbon emissions continue to soar.
It is true, as the green consumerists argue, that most people find aspirational green living more attractive than dour puritanism. But it can also be alienating. I have met plenty of farm labourers and tenants who are desperate to start a small farm of their own, but have been excluded by what they call "horsiculture": small parcels of agricultural land being bought up for pony paddocks and hobby farms. In places like Surrey and the New Forest, farmland is now fetching up to £30,000 an acre as city bonuses are used to buy organic lifestyles(5). When the new owners dress up as milkmaids then tell the excluded how to make butter, they run the risk of turning environmentalism into the whim of the elite.
Challenge the new green consumerism and you become a prig and a party pooper, the spectre at the feast, the ghost of Christmas yet to come. Against the shiny new world of organic aspirations you are forced to raise drab and boringly equitable restraints: carbon rationing, contraction and convergence, tougher building regulations, coach lanes on motorways. No colour supplement will carry an article about that. No rock star could live comfortably within his carbon ration.
But such measures, and the long hard political battle required to bring them about, are, unfortunately, required to prevent the catastrophe these floods predict, rather than merely to play at being green. Only when they have been applied does green consumerism become a substitute for current spending rather than a supplement to it. They are harder to sell, not least because they cannot be bought from mail order catalogues. Hard political choices will have to be made, and the economic elite and its spending habits must be challenged, rather than groomed and flattered. The multi-millionaires who have embraced the green agenda might suddenly discover another urgent cause.
George Monbiot has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex and an honorary fellowship by Cardiff University.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Eg James Hansen et al, 2007. Climate Change and Trace Gases. Philiosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - A. Vol 365, pp 1925-1954. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2007.2052. http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2007/2007_Hansen_etal_2.pdf
2. Sheherazade Goldsmith (Editor in chief), 2007. A Slice of Organic Life. Dorling Kindersley, London.
3. Sarah Lonsdale, 19th July 2007. Take the online test to find out your footprint. Daily Telegraph.
4. See http://shop.tangogroup.net/PDF/H-Racer%20002.pdf
5. See http://www.lawsonfairbank.co.uk/pony-paddocks.asp
Posted July 24, 2007
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 24th July 2007
It wasn't meant to happen like this. The climate scientists told us that our winters would become wetter and our summers drier. So I can't claim that these floods were caused by climate change, or are even consistent with the models. But, like the ghost of Christmas yet to come, they offer us a glimpse of the possible winter world we'll inhabit if we don't sort ourselves out.
With rising sea levels and more winter rain (and remember that when the trees are dormant and the soils saturated there are fewer places for the rain to go) all it will take is a freshwater flood to coincide with a high spring tide and we have a formula for full-blown disaster. We have now seen how localised floods can wipe out essential services and overwhelm emergency workers. But this month's events don't even register beside some of the predictions now circulating in learned journals(1). Our primary political struggle must be to prevent the break-up of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The only question now worth asking about climate change is how.
Dozens of new books appear to provide an answer: we can save the world by embracing "better, greener lifestyles". Last week, for example, the Guardian published an extract of the new book by Sheherazade Goldsmith, who is married to the very rich environmentalist Zac, in which she teaches us "to live within nature's limits"(2). It's easy: just make your own bread, butter, cheese, jam, chutneys and pickles, keep a milking cow, a few pigs, goats, geese, ducks, chickens, beehives, gardens and orchards. Well, what are you waiting for?
Her book also contains plenty of useful advice, and she comes across as modest, sincere and well-informed. But of lobbying for political change, there is not a word: you can save the planet in your own kitchen - if you have endless time and plenty of land. When I was reading it on the train, another passenger asked me if he could take a look. He flicked through it for a moment then summed up the problem in seven words. "This is for people who don't work."
None of this would matter, if the Guardian hadn't put her photo on the masthead last week, with the promise that she could teach us to go green. The media's obsession with beauty, wealth and fame blights every issue it touches, but none more so than green politics. There is an inherent conflict between the aspirational lifestyle journalism which makes readers feel better about themselves and sells country kitchens and the central demand of environmentalism: that we should consume less. "None of these changes represents a sacrifice", Sheherazade tells us. "Being more conscientious isn't about giving up things." But it is: if, like her, you own more than one home when others have none.
Uncomfortable as this is for both the media and its advertisers, giving things up is an essential component of going green. A section on ethical shopping in Goldsmith's book advises us to buy organic, buy seasonal, buy local, buy sustainable, buy recycled. But it says nothing about buying less.
Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet. If it merely swapped the damaging goods we buy for less damaging ones, I would champion it. But two parallel markets are developing: one for unethical products and one for ethical products, and the expansion of the second does little to hinder the growth of the first. I am now drowning in a tide of ecojunk. Over the past six months, our coatpegs have become clogged with organic cotton bags, which - filled with packets of ginseng tea and jojoba oil bath salts - are now the obligatory gift at every environmental event. I have several lifetimes' supply of ballpoint pens made with recycled paper and about half a dozen miniature solar chargers for gadgets I don't possess.
Last week the Telegraph told its readers not to abandon the fight to save the planet. "There is still hope, and the middle classes, with their composters and eco-gadgets, will be leading the way."(3) It made some helpful suggestions, such as a "hydrogen-powered model racing car", which, for £74.99, comes with a solar panel, an electrolyser and a fuel cell(4). God knows what rare metals and energy-intensive processes were used to manufacture it. In the name of environmental consciousness, we have simply created new opportunities for surplus capital.
Ethical shopping is in danger of becoming another signifier of social status. I have met people who have bought solar panels and mini-wind turbines before they have insulated their lofts: partly because they love gadgets, but partly, I suspect, because everyone can then see how conscientious (and how rich) they are. We are often told that buying such products encourages us to think more widely about environmental challenges, but it is just as likely to be depoliticising. Green consumerism is another form of atomisation - a substitute for collective action. No political challenge can be met by shopping.
The middle classes rebrand their lives, congratulate themselves on going green, and carry on buying and flying as much as ever before. It is easy to picture a situation in which the whole world religiously buys green products, and its carbon emissions continue to soar.
It is true, as the green consumerists argue, that most people find aspirational green living more attractive than dour puritanism. But it can also be alienating. I have met plenty of farm labourers and tenants who are desperate to start a small farm of their own, but have been excluded by what they call "horsiculture": small parcels of agricultural land being bought up for pony paddocks and hobby farms. In places like Surrey and the New Forest, farmland is now fetching up to £30,000 an acre as city bonuses are used to buy organic lifestyles(5). When the new owners dress up as milkmaids then tell the excluded how to make butter, they run the risk of turning environmentalism into the whim of the elite.
Challenge the new green consumerism and you become a prig and a party pooper, the spectre at the feast, the ghost of Christmas yet to come. Against the shiny new world of organic aspirations you are forced to raise drab and boringly equitable restraints: carbon rationing, contraction and convergence, tougher building regulations, coach lanes on motorways. No colour supplement will carry an article about that. No rock star could live comfortably within his carbon ration.
But such measures, and the long hard political battle required to bring them about, are, unfortunately, required to prevent the catastrophe these floods predict, rather than merely to play at being green. Only when they have been applied does green consumerism become a substitute for current spending rather than a supplement to it. They are harder to sell, not least because they cannot be bought from mail order catalogues. Hard political choices will have to be made, and the economic elite and its spending habits must be challenged, rather than groomed and flattered. The multi-millionaires who have embraced the green agenda might suddenly discover another urgent cause.
George Monbiot has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex and an honorary fellowship by Cardiff University.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Eg James Hansen et al, 2007. Climate Change and Trace Gases. Philiosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - A. Vol 365, pp 1925-1954. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2007.2052. http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2007/2007_Hansen_etal_2.pdf
2. Sheherazade Goldsmith (Editor in chief), 2007. A Slice of Organic Life. Dorling Kindersley, London.
3. Sarah Lonsdale, 19th July 2007. Take the online test to find out your footprint. Daily Telegraph.
4. See http://shop.tangogroup.net/PDF/H-Racer%20002.pdf
5. See http://www.lawsonfairbank.co.uk/pony-paddocks.asp
Trappings of modern life bring an early death to Valley of the Immortals
Vilcabamba was once fabled for its longevity but now the locals are not living as long
Rory Carroll in Vilcabamba
Wednesday August 8, 2007
The Guardian
Vilcabamba, Ecuador
Happy valley, no more ... The village of Vilcabamba has been transformed from an isolated settlement of hardy mountain farmers into a tourist centre that attracts new age travellers.
For centuries Vilcabamba was a South American idyll. The valley boasted a lush and tranquil setting in remotest Ecuador, a year-round balmy climate, pristine mountain water, abundant fruits and grains. The inhabitants lived long and healthy lives.
So long and so healthy that from the 1950s scientists have flocked here to study the hardy mountain farmers as astonishing specimens of longevity. The publicity gave Vilcabamba a nickname, the Valley of the Immortals, and put it on the map. Backpackers visited and so tourism wound its way into the valley, bringing paved roads, vehicles, hotels, restaurants and internet cafes.
And then something else happened. The famed elders, the longevos whose vitality defied the ravages of time and inspired scientific papers and dreams of eternal youth, began to drop dead. All of those who were said to be over 110 have succumbed and there are few making it past 100. "We're dying younger," said Maria Cabrera, 91. "It's not like before. We feel we're getting weaker."
A census is expected to confirm the widespread impression that there are far fewer centenarians. Levin Perez, said to be 105, died five months ago. "They're disappearing," said Franklin Carrion, the district coordinator. "The new generation isn't lasting as long."
A melancholy entourage at the cemetery, a silent hillside where stone crosses vanish under weeds, bolstered that view. It was the family of Vicente Pilco, who at 107 is probably the oldest inhabitant, laying flowers on the grave of his daughter, Soyla Pilco, who died from a blood clot two months ago, at 72.
Exaggeration
"I don't think any of us will live as long as my great-granduncle," said Jorge Carpio, 22, of Vicente. "He is still fit but he is the last of that generation."
The cause of the longevity was never pinned down. Some scientists credited genes, others the hard labour and vegetable and fruit diet. Sceptics said the elders exaggerated their age.
There is wide agreement, however, on why the phenomenon seems to be ending: modernity and its sins - noise, chemicals, pollution and stress. Nelson Jurado, a gerontologist in the capital, Quito, said a "tsunami of development" had damaged Vilcabamba's fragile ecosystem. "Now these people live at a faster pace and that has affected their quality of life and longevity."
What was a sleepy hamlet has in less than a generation become a tourist centre. Just a 45-minute drive from an airport, the permanent population has almost doubled to 4,200 and is swollen by hundreds of tourists who pack the more than 30 hotels and hostels.
Mules wander the streets but they are outnumbered by 4x4s, taxis and young people drinking beer. There are dozens of restaurants and bars, two nightclubs, and a shopping centre is due to be built. Few places serve guarapo, sugar cane juice, but most serve Coca-Cola.
Nestor Carpio, 89, sits on the porch of his adobe home wincing from the rumble and dust of the lorry delivering cement and bricks to the house opposite, just one of dozens being rebuilt with modern materials. "Not so quiet any more," he sighs.
Outsiders have long been drawn by the valley's natural splendour - it was known as the "playground of the Inca" for hosting royalty of the former empire.
The Moon travel guide has a plaintive plea for visitors: "You have a beautiful place balanced on the edge. It's one of those places travel writers hesitate to describe too lovingly, lest it become loved to death. By all means come, inhale the air, ride a horse, leave a little healthier - just please, tread lightly."
Signs in English for spas, yoga, treks, massages and colonic irrigation testify to visitors' health quests but their very presence puts strain on the ecosystem, said Mr Carrion. "When there is more people there is more contamination."
He stressed that outsiders were appreciated for bringing money, jobs and opportunities. But in making life easier they had also made it shorter.
To meet growing demand farmers are now using pesticides and other chemicals, and some of the mineral-rich streams have become so polluted that the longevos hesitate to bathe in them, let alone drink the water. There are no studies to verify it but locals cite food "contaminated" by chemicals as causing deaths earlier. "Everything used to be fresh but now children are eating and drinking badly," said Augustin Jaramillo, 98. By keeping to an organic diet he hoped to make it to 150, he added.
Another concern is that foreigners are pricing locals out of the housing market, with even the Cerro Mandando, a sacred Inca mountain, being snapped up for holiday homes. It also has a mobile telephone mast. "Some people call this development, I call it destruction," said Carol Rosin, president of the Association for the Defence of Vilcabamba's Elderly. A 63-year-old American aerospace executive, she is a passionate if unlikely protector since she runs a 30-room hotel, one of the biggest developments. Using mules to build it and serving only organic food, among other measures, puts her on the locals side, she believes.
Guests seemed unaware that the famed elders were dying off. New age Americans, Britons and Spaniards attending a workshop on "physical immortality" hailed Vilcabamba's sense of physical and spiritual nourishment. "I can feel the energy," beamed workshop leader Sondra Ray.
Rory Carroll in Vilcabamba
Wednesday August 8, 2007
The Guardian
Vilcabamba, Ecuador
Happy valley, no more ... The village of Vilcabamba has been transformed from an isolated settlement of hardy mountain farmers into a tourist centre that attracts new age travellers.
For centuries Vilcabamba was a South American idyll. The valley boasted a lush and tranquil setting in remotest Ecuador, a year-round balmy climate, pristine mountain water, abundant fruits and grains. The inhabitants lived long and healthy lives.
So long and so healthy that from the 1950s scientists have flocked here to study the hardy mountain farmers as astonishing specimens of longevity. The publicity gave Vilcabamba a nickname, the Valley of the Immortals, and put it on the map. Backpackers visited and so tourism wound its way into the valley, bringing paved roads, vehicles, hotels, restaurants and internet cafes.
And then something else happened. The famed elders, the longevos whose vitality defied the ravages of time and inspired scientific papers and dreams of eternal youth, began to drop dead. All of those who were said to be over 110 have succumbed and there are few making it past 100. "We're dying younger," said Maria Cabrera, 91. "It's not like before. We feel we're getting weaker."
A census is expected to confirm the widespread impression that there are far fewer centenarians. Levin Perez, said to be 105, died five months ago. "They're disappearing," said Franklin Carrion, the district coordinator. "The new generation isn't lasting as long."
A melancholy entourage at the cemetery, a silent hillside where stone crosses vanish under weeds, bolstered that view. It was the family of Vicente Pilco, who at 107 is probably the oldest inhabitant, laying flowers on the grave of his daughter, Soyla Pilco, who died from a blood clot two months ago, at 72.
Exaggeration
"I don't think any of us will live as long as my great-granduncle," said Jorge Carpio, 22, of Vicente. "He is still fit but he is the last of that generation."
The cause of the longevity was never pinned down. Some scientists credited genes, others the hard labour and vegetable and fruit diet. Sceptics said the elders exaggerated their age.
There is wide agreement, however, on why the phenomenon seems to be ending: modernity and its sins - noise, chemicals, pollution and stress. Nelson Jurado, a gerontologist in the capital, Quito, said a "tsunami of development" had damaged Vilcabamba's fragile ecosystem. "Now these people live at a faster pace and that has affected their quality of life and longevity."
What was a sleepy hamlet has in less than a generation become a tourist centre. Just a 45-minute drive from an airport, the permanent population has almost doubled to 4,200 and is swollen by hundreds of tourists who pack the more than 30 hotels and hostels.
Mules wander the streets but they are outnumbered by 4x4s, taxis and young people drinking beer. There are dozens of restaurants and bars, two nightclubs, and a shopping centre is due to be built. Few places serve guarapo, sugar cane juice, but most serve Coca-Cola.
Nestor Carpio, 89, sits on the porch of his adobe home wincing from the rumble and dust of the lorry delivering cement and bricks to the house opposite, just one of dozens being rebuilt with modern materials. "Not so quiet any more," he sighs.
Outsiders have long been drawn by the valley's natural splendour - it was known as the "playground of the Inca" for hosting royalty of the former empire.
The Moon travel guide has a plaintive plea for visitors: "You have a beautiful place balanced on the edge. It's one of those places travel writers hesitate to describe too lovingly, lest it become loved to death. By all means come, inhale the air, ride a horse, leave a little healthier - just please, tread lightly."
Signs in English for spas, yoga, treks, massages and colonic irrigation testify to visitors' health quests but their very presence puts strain on the ecosystem, said Mr Carrion. "When there is more people there is more contamination."
He stressed that outsiders were appreciated for bringing money, jobs and opportunities. But in making life easier they had also made it shorter.
To meet growing demand farmers are now using pesticides and other chemicals, and some of the mineral-rich streams have become so polluted that the longevos hesitate to bathe in them, let alone drink the water. There are no studies to verify it but locals cite food "contaminated" by chemicals as causing deaths earlier. "Everything used to be fresh but now children are eating and drinking badly," said Augustin Jaramillo, 98. By keeping to an organic diet he hoped to make it to 150, he added.
Another concern is that foreigners are pricing locals out of the housing market, with even the Cerro Mandando, a sacred Inca mountain, being snapped up for holiday homes. It also has a mobile telephone mast. "Some people call this development, I call it destruction," said Carol Rosin, president of the Association for the Defence of Vilcabamba's Elderly. A 63-year-old American aerospace executive, she is a passionate if unlikely protector since she runs a 30-room hotel, one of the biggest developments. Using mules to build it and serving only organic food, among other measures, puts her on the locals side, she believes.
Guests seemed unaware that the famed elders were dying off. New age Americans, Britons and Spaniards attending a workshop on "physical immortality" hailed Vilcabamba's sense of physical and spiritual nourishment. "I can feel the energy," beamed workshop leader Sondra Ray.
Around the globe, 2007 is on track to be a year of extreme weather
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Extreme weather has plagued the globe this year, a U.N. agency says, causing some of the highest temperatures on record.
The World Meteorological Organization said "global land surface temperatures for January and April will likely be ranked as the warmest since records began in 1880," according to the United Nations.
WMO said temperatures were 1.89 degrees Celsius (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average for January and 1.37 degrees C (2.45 degrees F) higher than average for April.
The agency found that climate warming was unequivocal and most likely "due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels."
Here are some of the extreme instances the United Nations cites:
Four monsoon depressions, double the normal number, caused heavy flooding in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. On Monday, floodwaters receded in parts of South Asia, but the death toll rose to 347, officials said.
Millions remain displaced and homeless, and authorities fear waterborne disease could spread. Indian officials say more than 1,200 people have died in their country alone since monsoon season began in June.
England and Wales have experienced their wettest May-to-July period since record-keeping started in 1766. In late July, swollen rivers threatened to burst their banks. At least eight people died during weeks of torrential rain, and thousands were without tap water.
Late last month in Sudan, floods and heavy rain caused 23,000 mud brick homes to collapse, killing at least 62 people. The rainfall was abnormally heavy and early for this time of the year.
In May, swell waves up to 15 feet high swept into 68 islands in the Maldives, causing severe flooding and damage. Also in May, a heat wave swept across Russia.
Southeastern Europe did not escape the unusual weather. The area suffered record-breaking heat in June and July.
An unusual cold southern winter brought wind, blizzards and rare snowfall to various parts of South America, with temperatures reaching as low as 7 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-22 degrees Celsius) in Argentina and 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius) in Chile in July.
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In June, South Africa had its first significant snowfall since 1981, as almost 10 inches (25 centimeters) of the white stuff fell in some parts of the country.
The World Meteorological Organization said "global land surface temperatures for January and April will likely be ranked as the warmest since records began in 1880," according to the United Nations.
WMO said temperatures were 1.89 degrees Celsius (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average for January and 1.37 degrees C (2.45 degrees F) higher than average for April.
The agency found that climate warming was unequivocal and most likely "due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels."
Here are some of the extreme instances the United Nations cites:
Four monsoon depressions, double the normal number, caused heavy flooding in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. On Monday, floodwaters receded in parts of South Asia, but the death toll rose to 347, officials said.
Millions remain displaced and homeless, and authorities fear waterborne disease could spread. Indian officials say more than 1,200 people have died in their country alone since monsoon season began in June.
England and Wales have experienced their wettest May-to-July period since record-keeping started in 1766. In late July, swollen rivers threatened to burst their banks. At least eight people died during weeks of torrential rain, and thousands were without tap water.
Late last month in Sudan, floods and heavy rain caused 23,000 mud brick homes to collapse, killing at least 62 people. The rainfall was abnormally heavy and early for this time of the year.
In May, swell waves up to 15 feet high swept into 68 islands in the Maldives, causing severe flooding and damage. Also in May, a heat wave swept across Russia.
Southeastern Europe did not escape the unusual weather. The area suffered record-breaking heat in June and July.
An unusual cold southern winter brought wind, blizzards and rare snowfall to various parts of South America, with temperatures reaching as low as 7 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-22 degrees Celsius) in Argentina and 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius) in Chile in July.
advertisement
In June, South Africa had its first significant snowfall since 1981, as almost 10 inches (25 centimeters) of the white stuff fell in some parts of the country.
The Global Collapse of Amphibians
Exploring an amphibian epidemic UC team believes deadly fungus may be killing frogs, toads, salamanders in Sierra
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
For decades, the mass disappearance of frogs and other amphibians from the High Sierra has puzzled biologists, fishermen, hikers and even motorists from the city who pause by roadside streams and lakeshores in vain attempts to glimpse whatever's there.
The creatures are vanishing all over the world, too - a major environmental disaster, as a UC science team calls it - and now it appears that sexual reproduction in a single fungus species that produces hardy, long-lived spores may be primarily to blame.
Dead bodies of countless species of frogs, toads and salamanders have been found on every continent except Antarctica (where amphibians don't exist), and the California scientists have zeroed in on a remote group of lakes and streams on the eastern side of the Sierra where they have watched as red-legged and yellow-legged frogs and Yosemite toads became extinct throughout the study area.
Voracious hatchery trout introduced into the mountain lakes have been blamed in the past for eating the tadpoles of the vanishing frogs; so have pollutants like pesticides and toxic dust clouding up over the Sierra from the Central Valley. Now there's evidence that climate change too could be involved, possibly raising temperatures, and solar ultraviolet radiation has also been implicated.
But a new report published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences focuses on the population genetics of the widely known frog-killing chytrid fungus with the forbidding name of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and the manner in which it reproduces and infects the amphibians.
Tough, long-lasting disease-causing spores created as the fungi reproduce may well be a major cause of the widespread amphibian die-offs, says the report.
The gene study at UC Berkeley was led by Jess Morgan, a postdoctoral researcher who worked in the microbial biology lab of Professor John Taylor before she returned to her native Australia, where she is now at the government's animal research institute at Moorooka near Brisbane.
Among the major Sierra study's other scientists are biologists Vance Vredenburg of UC Berkeley and Roland Knapp of UC Santa Barbara's Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory in Mammoth Lakes - both of whom have spent years studying the fish and amphibians in nearly 10,000 of the High Sierra's most remote lakes and streams.
Taylor is a leading expert on the deadly fungi, and he noted that his studies with Morgan are the first to examine just how they reproduce. They may most often clone themselves, Taylor said, in which case there would be no genetic change within the species. But they may also reproduce sexually and produce the tough spores that could live for a decade before exploding to spread the fungal genes throughout the nearby environment.
"We haven't found the spores yet," Taylor said, "but we can't reject the possibility that in fact they do form - but their basic biology is still so poorly known that we can't be sure."
Most fungi, he said, produce spores by the millions and even by the billions, and the frog-killing fungi may well be no exception.
Knapp, in a phone call from his lab at Mammoth Lakes, conceded that he has failed to find any evidence so far of fungus spores in hatchery fish, and he is now seeking the spores in nearby waters. "The story gets more and more complex," he said.
In an e-mail from her lab in Australia, Morgan said: "Our results suggest that the fungus is a recently introduced pest to the Sierra Nevada, but that it is now adapting at a local scale. At some sites the equivalent of fungal sex is evident and sex may result in resistant spores, providing a mechanism for rapid disease spread and fungal persistence. If resistant, long-lived spores exist, then global control of the pathogen may be greatly complicated."
In another message to UC Berkeley she added: "If, in fact, this fungus produced resistant spores, people could be unwittingly transferring this pathogen around the world from dirt on our shoes or car tires, but spores could also hitchhike on the feathers of birds for quick transport across mountain ranges."
Global control of the killer is badly needed. Only a year ago, 50 of the world's leading experts on amphibians, including David and Marvalee Wake of UC Berkeley, warned that nearly a third of the 5,743 known amphibian species around the world are now threatened, with perhaps 122 of them already extinct since 1980.
The scientists blamed the deadly infectious disease caused by the same fungus that Morgan, Taylor and their team are studying, as well as land-use changes in many nations, commercial over-exploitation and global climate change that may encourage the spread of the fungus.
Also last year, another international team of amphibian experts headed by A. Alan Pounds at the Tropical Science Center in Costa Rica reported in the journal Nature that the Central American region was seeing the mass extinction of harlequin frogs and golden toads due to the same chytrid fungus. The fungus, they said, is growing most widely as temperatures rise in the Costa Rican highlands, and they concluded that "large-scale warming is a key factor in the disappearance (of the amphibians)."
"If it's global warming that's involved in the fungus spread," said Taylor, "then, wow!"
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
For decades, the mass disappearance of frogs and other amphibians from the High Sierra has puzzled biologists, fishermen, hikers and even motorists from the city who pause by roadside streams and lakeshores in vain attempts to glimpse whatever's there.
The creatures are vanishing all over the world, too - a major environmental disaster, as a UC science team calls it - and now it appears that sexual reproduction in a single fungus species that produces hardy, long-lived spores may be primarily to blame.
Dead bodies of countless species of frogs, toads and salamanders have been found on every continent except Antarctica (where amphibians don't exist), and the California scientists have zeroed in on a remote group of lakes and streams on the eastern side of the Sierra where they have watched as red-legged and yellow-legged frogs and Yosemite toads became extinct throughout the study area.
Voracious hatchery trout introduced into the mountain lakes have been blamed in the past for eating the tadpoles of the vanishing frogs; so have pollutants like pesticides and toxic dust clouding up over the Sierra from the Central Valley. Now there's evidence that climate change too could be involved, possibly raising temperatures, and solar ultraviolet radiation has also been implicated.
But a new report published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences focuses on the population genetics of the widely known frog-killing chytrid fungus with the forbidding name of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and the manner in which it reproduces and infects the amphibians.
Tough, long-lasting disease-causing spores created as the fungi reproduce may well be a major cause of the widespread amphibian die-offs, says the report.
The gene study at UC Berkeley was led by Jess Morgan, a postdoctoral researcher who worked in the microbial biology lab of Professor John Taylor before she returned to her native Australia, where she is now at the government's animal research institute at Moorooka near Brisbane.
Among the major Sierra study's other scientists are biologists Vance Vredenburg of UC Berkeley and Roland Knapp of UC Santa Barbara's Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory in Mammoth Lakes - both of whom have spent years studying the fish and amphibians in nearly 10,000 of the High Sierra's most remote lakes and streams.
Taylor is a leading expert on the deadly fungi, and he noted that his studies with Morgan are the first to examine just how they reproduce. They may most often clone themselves, Taylor said, in which case there would be no genetic change within the species. But they may also reproduce sexually and produce the tough spores that could live for a decade before exploding to spread the fungal genes throughout the nearby environment.
"We haven't found the spores yet," Taylor said, "but we can't reject the possibility that in fact they do form - but their basic biology is still so poorly known that we can't be sure."
Most fungi, he said, produce spores by the millions and even by the billions, and the frog-killing fungi may well be no exception.
Knapp, in a phone call from his lab at Mammoth Lakes, conceded that he has failed to find any evidence so far of fungus spores in hatchery fish, and he is now seeking the spores in nearby waters. "The story gets more and more complex," he said.
In an e-mail from her lab in Australia, Morgan said: "Our results suggest that the fungus is a recently introduced pest to the Sierra Nevada, but that it is now adapting at a local scale. At some sites the equivalent of fungal sex is evident and sex may result in resistant spores, providing a mechanism for rapid disease spread and fungal persistence. If resistant, long-lived spores exist, then global control of the pathogen may be greatly complicated."
In another message to UC Berkeley she added: "If, in fact, this fungus produced resistant spores, people could be unwittingly transferring this pathogen around the world from dirt on our shoes or car tires, but spores could also hitchhike on the feathers of birds for quick transport across mountain ranges."
Global control of the killer is badly needed. Only a year ago, 50 of the world's leading experts on amphibians, including David and Marvalee Wake of UC Berkeley, warned that nearly a third of the 5,743 known amphibian species around the world are now threatened, with perhaps 122 of them already extinct since 1980.
The scientists blamed the deadly infectious disease caused by the same fungus that Morgan, Taylor and their team are studying, as well as land-use changes in many nations, commercial over-exploitation and global climate change that may encourage the spread of the fungus.
Also last year, another international team of amphibian experts headed by A. Alan Pounds at the Tropical Science Center in Costa Rica reported in the journal Nature that the Central American region was seeing the mass extinction of harlequin frogs and golden toads due to the same chytrid fungus. The fungus, they said, is growing most widely as temperatures rise in the Costa Rican highlands, and they concluded that "large-scale warming is a key factor in the disappearance (of the amphibians)."
"If it's global warming that's involved in the fungus spread," said Taylor, "then, wow!"
Newsweek: Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine
A surprisingly good article from Newsweek. Go figure...Much of this info is outlined in "Hot Politics" ... the documentary by frontline that is completely available online. Google it and check it out!
-s
The Truth About Denial
Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine
By Sharon Begley
Newsweek
Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."
If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the "Live Earth" concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, "green" magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore's best-selling book, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.
Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."
Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do." In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is "a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.
As a result of the undermining of the science, all the recent talk about addressing climate change has produced little in the way of actual action. Yes, last September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark law committing California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year both Minnesota and New Jersey passed laws requiring their states to reduce greenhouse emissions 80 percent below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on Congress to "enact strong national legislation" to reduce greenhouse gases. But although at least eight bills to require reductions in greenhouse gases have been introduced in Congress, their fate is decidedly murky. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives decided last week not even to bring to a vote a requirement that automakers improve vehicle mileage, an obvious step toward reducing greenhouse emissions. Nor has there been much public pressure to do so. Instead, every time the scientific case got stronger, "the American public yawned and bought bigger cars," Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey congressman and physicist, recently wrote in the journal Science; politicians "shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing."
It was 98 degrees in Washington on Thursday, June 23, 1988, and climate change was bursting into public consciousness. The Amazon was burning, wildfires raged in the United States, crops in the Midwest were scorched and it was shaping up to be the hottest year on record worldwide. A Senate committee, including Gore, had invited NASA climatologist James Hansen to testify about the greenhouse effect, and the members were not above a little stagecraft. The night before, staffers had opened windows in the hearing room. When Hansen began his testimony, the air conditioning was struggling, and sweat dotted his brow. It was the perfect image for the revelation to come. He was 99 percent sure, Hansen told the panel, that "the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now."
The reaction from industries most responsible for greenhouse emissions was immediate. "As soon as the scientific community began to come together on the science of climate change, the pushback began," says historian Naomi Oreskes of the University of California, San Diego. Individual companies and industry associations—representing petroleum, steel, autos and utilities, for instance—formed lobbying groups with names like the Global Climate Coalition and the Information Council on the Environment. ICE's game plan called for enlisting greenhouse doubters to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact," and to sow doubt about climate research just as cigarette makers had about smoking research. ICE ads asked, "If the earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis [or Kentucky, or some other site] getting colder?" This sounded what would become a recurring theme for naysayers: that global temperature data are flat-out wrong. For one thing, they argued, the data reflect urbanization (many temperature stations are in or near cities), not true global warming.
Shaping public opinion was only one goal of the industry groups, for soon after Hansen's sweat-drenched testimony they faced a more tangible threat: international proposals to address global warming. The United Nations had scheduled an "Earth Summit" for 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, and climate change was high on an agenda that included saving endangered species and rain forests. ICE and the Global Climate Coalition lobbied hard against a global treaty to curb greenhouse gases, and were joined by a central cog in the denial machine: the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank. Barely two months before Rio, it released a study concluding that models of the greenhouse effect had "substantially exaggerated its importance." The small amount of global warming that might be occurring, it argued, actually reflected a simple fact: the Sun is putting out more energy. The idea of a "variable Sun" has remained a constant in the naysayers' arsenal to this day, even though the tiny increase in solar output over recent decades falls far short of explaining the extent or details of the observed warming.
In what would become a key tactic of the denial machine—think tanks linking up with like-minded, contrarian researchers—the report was endorsed in a letter to President George H.W. Bush by MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. Lindzen, whose parents had fled Hitler's Germany, is described by old friends as the kind of man who, if you're in the minority, opts to be with you. "I thought it was important to make it clear that the science was at an early and primitive stage and that there was little basis for consensus and much reason for skepticism," he told Scientific American magazine. "I did feel a moral obligation."
Bush was torn. The head of his Environmental Protection Agency, William Reilly, supported binding cuts in greenhouse emissions. Political advisers insisted on nothing more than voluntary cuts. Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, had a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT and "knew computers," recalls Reilly. Sununu frequently logged on to a computer model of climate, Reilly says, and "vigorously critiqued" its assumptions and projections.
Sununu's side won. The Rio treaty called for countries to voluntarily stabilize their greenhouse emissions by returning them to 1990 levels by 2000. (As it turned out, U.S. emissions in 2000 were 14 percent higher than in 1990.) Avoiding mandatory cuts was a huge victory for industry. But Rio was also a setback for climate contrarians, says UCSD's Oreskes: "It was one thing when Al Gore said there's global warming, but quite another when George Bush signed a convention saying so." And the doubters faced a newly powerful nemesis. Just months after he signed the Rio pact, Bush lost to Bill Clinton—whose vice president, Gore, had made climate change his signature issue.
Groups that opposed greenhouse curbs ramped up. They "settled on the 'science isn't there' argument because they didn't believe they'd be able to convince the public to do nothing if climate change were real," says David Goldston, who served as Republican chief of staff for the House of Representatives science committee until 2006. Industry found a friend in Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia who keeps a small farm where he raises prize-winning pumpkins and whose favorite weather, he once told a reporter, is "anything severe." Michaels had written several popular articles on climate change, including an op-ed in The Washington Post in 1989 warning of "apocalyptic environmentalism," which he called "the most popular new religion to come along since Marxism." The coal industry's Western Fuels Association paid Michaels to produce a newsletter called World Climate Report, which has regularly trashed mainstream climate science. (At a 1995 hearing in Minnesota on coal-fired power plants, Michaels admitted that he received more than $165,000 from industry; he now declines to comment on his industry funding, asking, "What is this, a hatchet job?")
The road from Rio led to an international meeting in Kyoto, Japan, where more than 100 nations would negotiate a treaty on making Rio's voluntary—and largely ignored—greenhouse curbs mandatory. The coal and oil industries, worried that Kyoto could lead to binding greenhouse cuts that would imperil their profits, ramped up their message that there was too much scientific uncertainty to justify any such cuts. There was just one little problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC—the international body that periodically assesses climate research—had just issued its second report, and the conclusion of its 2,500 scientists looked devastating for greenhouse doubters. Although both natural swings and changes in the Sun's output might be contributing to climate change, it concluded, "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate."
Faced with this emerging consensus, the denial machine hardly blinked. There is too much "scientific uncertainty" to justify curbs on greenhouse emissions, William O'Keefe, then a vice president of the American Petroleum Institute and leader of the Global Climate Coalition, suggested in 1996. Virginia's Michaels echoed that idea in a 1997 op-ed in The Washington Post, describing "a growing contingent of scientists who are increasingly unhappy with the glib forecasts of gloom and doom." To reinforce the appearance of uncertainty and disagreement, the denial machine churned out white papers and "studies" (not empirical research, but critiques of others' work). The Marshall Institute, for instance, issued reports by a Harvard University astrophysicist it supported pointing to satellite data showing "no significant warming" of the atmosphere, contrary to the surface warming. The predicted warming, she wrote, "simply isn't happening according to the satellite[s]." At the time, there was a legitimate case that satellites were more accurate than ground stations, which might be skewed by the unusual warmth of cities where many are sited.
"There was an extraordinary campaign by the denial machine to find and hire scientists to sow dissent and make it appear that the research community was deeply divided," says Dan Becker of the Sierra Club. Those recruits blitzed the media. Driven by notions of fairness and objectivity, the press "qualified every mention of human influence on climate change with 'some scientists believe,' where the reality is that the vast preponderance of scientific opinion accepts that human-caused [greenhouse] emissions are contributing to warming," says Reilly, the former EPA chief. "The pursuit of balance has not done justice" to the science. Talk radio goes further, with Rush Limbaugh telling listeners this year that "more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not likely to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect. It's just all part of the hoax." In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 42 percent said the press "exaggerates the threat of climate change."
Now naysayers tried a new tactic: lists and petitions meant to portray science as hopelessly divided. Just before Kyoto, S. Fred Singer released the "Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change." Singer, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria as a boy, had run the U.S. weather-satellite program in the early 1960s. In the Leipzig petition, just over 100 scientists and others, including TV weathermen, said they "cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes." Unfortunately, few of the Leipzig signers actually did climate research; they just kibitzed about other people's. Scientific truth is not decided by majority vote, of course (ask Galileo), but the number of researchers whose empirical studies find that the world is warming and that human activity is partly responsible numbered in the thousands even then. The IPCC report issued this year, for instance, was written by more than 800 climate researchers and vetted by 2,500 scientists from 130 nations.
Although Clinton did not even try to get the Senate to ratify the Kyoto treaty (he knew a hopeless cause when he saw one), industry was taking no chances. In April 1998 a dozen people from the denial machine—including the Marshall Institute, Fred Singer's group and Exxon—met at the American Petroleum Institute's Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty. The plan was to train up to 20 "respected climate scientists" on media—and public—outreach with the aim of "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom' " and, in particular, "the Kyoto treaty's scientific underpinnings" so that elected officials "will seek to prevent progress toward implementation." The plan, once exposed in the press, "was never implemented as policy," says Marshall's William O'Keefe, who was then at API.
The GOP control of Congress for six of Clinton's eight years in office meant the denial machine had a receptive audience. Although Republicans such as Sens. John McCain, Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee spurned the denial camp, and Democrats such as Congressman John Dingell adamantly oppose greenhouse curbs that might hurt the auto and other industries, for the most part climate change has been a bitterly partisan issue. Republicans have also received significantly more campaign cash from the energy and other industries that dispute climate science. Every proposed climate bill "ran into a buzz saw of denialism," says Manik Roy of the Pew Center on Climate Change, a research and advocacy group, who was a Senate staffer at the time. "There was no rational debate in Congress on climate change."
The reason for the inaction was clear. "The questioning of the science made it to the Hill through senators who parroted reports funded by the American Petroleum Institute and other advocacy groups whose entire purpose was to confuse people on the science of global warming," says Sen. John Kerry. "There would be ads challenging the science right around the time we were trying to pass legislation. It was pure, raw pressure combined with false facts." Nor were states stepping where Washington feared to tread. "I did a lot of testifying before state legislatures—in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Alaska—that thought about taking action," says Singer. "I said that the observed warming was and would be much, much less than climate models calculated, and therefore nothing to worry about."
But the science was shifting under the denial machine. In January 2000, the National Academy of Sciences skewered its strongest argument. Contrary to the claim that satellites finding no warming are right and ground stations showing warming are wrong, it turns out that the satellites are off. (Basically, engineers failed to properly correct for changes in their orbit.) The planet is indeed warming, and at a rate since 1980 much greater than in the past.
Just months after the Academy report, Singer told a Senate panel that "the Earth's atmosphere is not warming and fears about human-induced storms, sea-level rise and other disasters are misplaced." And as studies fingering humans as a cause of climate change piled up, he had a new argument: a cabal was silencing good scientists who disagreed with the "alarmist" reports. "Global warming has become an article of faith for many, with its own theology and orthodoxy," Singer wrote in The Washington Times. "Its believers are quite fearful of any scientific dissent."
With the Inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, the denial machine expected to have friends in the White House. But despite Bush's oil-patch roots, naysayers weren't sure they could count on him: as a candidate, he had pledged to cap carbon dioxide emissions. Just weeks into his term, the Competitive Enterprise Institute heard rumors that the draft of a speech Bush was preparing included a passage reiterating that pledge. CEI's Myron Ebell called conservative pundit Robert Novak, who had booked Bush's EPA chief, Christie Todd Whitman, on CNN's "Crossfire." He asked her about the line, and within hours the possibility of a carbon cap was the talk of the Beltway. "We alerted anyone we thought could have influence and get the line, if it was in the speech, out," says CEI president Fred Smith, who counts this as another notch in CEI's belt. The White House declines to comment.
Bush not only disavowed his campaign pledge. In March, he withdrew from the Kyoto treaty. After the about-face, MIT's Lindzen told NEWSWEEK in 2001, he was summoned to the White House. He told Bush he'd done the right thing. Even if you accept the doomsday forecasts, Lindzen said, Kyoto would hardly touch the rise in temperatures. The treaty, he said, would "do nothing, at great expense."
Bush's reversal came just weeks after the IPCC released its third assessment of the burgeoning studies of climate change. Its conclusion: the 1990s were very likely the warmest decade on record, and recent climate change is partly "attributable to human activities." The weather itself seemed to be conspiring against the skeptics. The early years of the new millennium were setting heat records. The summer of 2003 was especially brutal, with a heat wave in Europe killing tens of thousands of people. Consultant Frank Luntz, who had been instrumental in the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, suggested a solution to the PR mess. In a memo to his GOP clients, he advised them that to deal with global warming, "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." They should "challenge the science," he wrote, by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view." Although few of the experts did empirical research of their own (MIT's Lindzen was an exception), the public didn't notice. To most civilians, a scientist is a scientist.
Challenging the science wasn't a hard sell on Capitol Hill. "In the House, the leadership generally viewed it as impermissible to go along with anything that would even imply that climate change was genuine," says Goldston, the former Republican staffer. "There was a belief on the part of many members that the science was fraudulent, even a Democratic fantasy. A lot of the information they got was from conservative think tanks and industry." When in 2003 the Senate called for a national strategy to cut greenhouse gases, for instance, climate naysayers were "giving briefings and talking to staff," says Goldston. "There was a constant flow of information—largely misinformation." Since the House version of that bill included no climate provisions, the two had to be reconciled. "The House leadership staff basically said, 'You know we're not going to accept this,' and [Senate staffers] said, 'Yeah, we know,' and the whole thing disappeared relatively jovially without much notice," says Goldston. "It was such a foregone conclusion."
Especially when the denial machine had a new friend in a powerful place. In 2003 James Inhofe of Oklahoma took over as chairman of the environment committee. That summer he took to the Senate floor and, in a two-hour speech, disputed the claim of scientific consensus on climate change. Despite the discovery that satellite data showing no warming were wrong, he argued that "satellites, widely considered the most accurate measure of global temperatures, have confirmed" the absence of atmospheric warming. Might global warming, he asked, be "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" Inhofe made his mark holding hearing after hearing to suggest that the answer is yes. For one, on a study finding a dramatic increase in global temperatures unprecedented in the last 1,000 years, he invited a scientist who challenged that conclusion (in a study partly underwritten with $53,000 from the American Petroleum Institute), one other doubter and the scientist who concluded that recent global temperatures were spiking. Just as Luntz had suggested, the witness table presented a tableau of scientific disagreement.
Every effort to pass climate legislation during the George W. Bush years was stopped in its tracks. When Senators McCain and Joe Lieberman were fishing for votes for their bipartisan effort in 2003, a staff member for Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska explained to her counterpart in Lieberman's office that Stevens "is aware there is warming in Alaska, but he's not sure how much it's caused by human activity or natural cycles," recalls Tim Profeta, now director of an environmental-policy institute at Duke University. "I was hearing the basic argument of the skeptics—a brilliant strategy to go after the science. And it was working." Stevens voted against the bill, which failed 43-55. When the bill came up again the next year, "we were contacted by a lot of lobbyists from API and Exxon-Mobil," says Mark Helmke, the climate aide to GOP Sen. Richard Lugar. "They'd bring up how the science wasn't certain, how there were a lot of skeptics out there." It went down to defeat again.
Killing bills in Congress was only one prong of the denial machine's campaign. It also had to keep public opinion from demanding action on greenhouse emissions, and that meant careful management of what federal scientists and officials wrote and said. "If they presented the science honestly, it would have brought public pressure for action," says Rick Piltz, who joined the federal Climate Science Program in 1995. By appointing former coal and oil lobbyists to key jobs overseeing climate policy, he found, the administration made sure that didn't happen. Following the playbook laid out at the 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, officials made sure that every report and speech cast climate science as dodgy, uncertain, controversial—and therefore no basis for making policy. Ex-oil lobbyist Philip Cooney, working for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as "lack of understanding" and "considerable uncertainty." A short section on climate in another report was cut entirely. The White House "directed us to remove all mentions of it," says Piltz, who resigned in protest. An oil lobbyist faxed Cooney, "You are doing a great job."
The response to the international climate panel's latest report, in February, showed that greenhouse doubters have a lot of fight left in them. In addition to offering $10,000 to scientists willing to attack the report, which so angered Boxer, they are emphasizing a new theme. Even if the world is warming now, and even if that warming is due in part to the greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, there's nothing to worry about. As Lindzen wrote in a guest editorial in NEWSWEEK International in April, "There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe."
Going, Going, Gone: Satellite images show the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica disintegrating into the Weddell Sea in January, 2002 (left) and March of the same year (right). The 1,255-square-mile mass of ice, 700 feet thick and weighing 720 billion tons, collapsed over three months, setting thousands of icebergs adrift
Images: NASA
Going, Going, Gone: Satellite images show the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica disintegrating into the Weddell Sea in January, 2002 (left) and March of the same year (right). The 1,255-square-mile mass of ice, 700 feet thick and weighing 720 billion tons, collapsed over three months, setting thousands of icebergs adrift
To some extent, greenhouse denial is now running on automatic pilot. "Some members of Congress have completely internalized this," says Pew's Roy, and therefore need no coaching from the think tanks and contrarian scientists who for 20 years kept them stoked with arguments. At a hearing last month on the Kyoto treaty, GOP Congressman Dana Rohrabacher asked whether "changes in the Earth's temperature in the past—all of these glaciers moving back and forth—and the changes that we see now" might be "a natural occurrence." (Hundreds of studies have ruled that out.) "I think it's a bit grandiose for us to believe ... that [human activities are] going to change some major climate cycle that's going on." Inhofe has told allies he will filibuster any climate bill that mandates greenhouse cuts.
Still, like a great beast that has been wounded, the denial machine is not what it once was. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, 38 percent of those surveyed identified climate change as the nation's gravest environmental threat, three times the number in 2000. After ExxonMobil was chastised by senators for giving $19 million over the years to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and others who are "producing very questionable data" on climate change, as Sen. Jay Rockefeller said, the company has cut back its support for such groups. In June, a spokesman said ExxonMobil did not doubt the risks posed by climate change, telling reporters, "We're very much not a denier." In yet another shock, Bush announced at the weekend that he would convene a global-warming summit next month, with a 2008 goal of cutting greenhouse emissions. That astonished the remaining naysayers. "I just can't imagine the administration would look to mandatory [emissions caps] after what we had with Kyoto," said a GOP Senate staffer, who did not want to be named criticizing the president. "I mean, what a disaster!"
With its change of heart, ExxonMobil is more likely to win a place at the negotiating table as Congress debates climate legislation. That will be crucially important to industry especially in 2009, when naysayers may no longer be able to count on a friend in the White House nixing man-datory greenhouse curbs. All the Democratic presidential contenders have called global warming a real threat, and promise to push for cuts similar to those being passed by California and other states. In the GOP field, only McCain—long a leader on the issue—supports that policy. Fred Thompson belittles findings that human activities are changing the climate, and Rudy Giuliani backs the all-volunteer greenhouse curbs of (both) Presidents Bush.
Look for the next round of debate to center on what Americans are willing to pay and do to stave off the worst of global warming. So far the answer seems to be, not much. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds less than half in favor of requiring high-mileage cars or energy-efficient appliances and buildings. No amount of white papers, reports and studies is likely to change that. If anything can, it will be the climate itself. This summer, Texas was hit by exactly the kind of downpours and flooding expected in a greenhouse world, and Las Vegas and other cities broiled in record triple-digit temperatures. Just last week the most accurate study to date concluded that the length of heat waves in Europe has doubled, and their frequency nearly tripled, in the past century. The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. Snowpack whose water is crucial to both cities and farms is diminishing. It's enough to make you wish that climate change were a hoax, rather than the reality it is.
With Eve Conant, Sam Stein and Eleanor Clift in Washington and Matthew Philips in New York
-s
The Truth About Denial
Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine
By Sharon Begley
Newsweek
Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."
If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the "Live Earth" concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, "green" magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore's best-selling book, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.
Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."
Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do." In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is "a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.
As a result of the undermining of the science, all the recent talk about addressing climate change has produced little in the way of actual action. Yes, last September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark law committing California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year both Minnesota and New Jersey passed laws requiring their states to reduce greenhouse emissions 80 percent below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on Congress to "enact strong national legislation" to reduce greenhouse gases. But although at least eight bills to require reductions in greenhouse gases have been introduced in Congress, their fate is decidedly murky. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives decided last week not even to bring to a vote a requirement that automakers improve vehicle mileage, an obvious step toward reducing greenhouse emissions. Nor has there been much public pressure to do so. Instead, every time the scientific case got stronger, "the American public yawned and bought bigger cars," Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey congressman and physicist, recently wrote in the journal Science; politicians "shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing."
It was 98 degrees in Washington on Thursday, June 23, 1988, and climate change was bursting into public consciousness. The Amazon was burning, wildfires raged in the United States, crops in the Midwest were scorched and it was shaping up to be the hottest year on record worldwide. A Senate committee, including Gore, had invited NASA climatologist James Hansen to testify about the greenhouse effect, and the members were not above a little stagecraft. The night before, staffers had opened windows in the hearing room. When Hansen began his testimony, the air conditioning was struggling, and sweat dotted his brow. It was the perfect image for the revelation to come. He was 99 percent sure, Hansen told the panel, that "the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now."
The reaction from industries most responsible for greenhouse emissions was immediate. "As soon as the scientific community began to come together on the science of climate change, the pushback began," says historian Naomi Oreskes of the University of California, San Diego. Individual companies and industry associations—representing petroleum, steel, autos and utilities, for instance—formed lobbying groups with names like the Global Climate Coalition and the Information Council on the Environment. ICE's game plan called for enlisting greenhouse doubters to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact," and to sow doubt about climate research just as cigarette makers had about smoking research. ICE ads asked, "If the earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis [or Kentucky, or some other site] getting colder?" This sounded what would become a recurring theme for naysayers: that global temperature data are flat-out wrong. For one thing, they argued, the data reflect urbanization (many temperature stations are in or near cities), not true global warming.
Shaping public opinion was only one goal of the industry groups, for soon after Hansen's sweat-drenched testimony they faced a more tangible threat: international proposals to address global warming. The United Nations had scheduled an "Earth Summit" for 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, and climate change was high on an agenda that included saving endangered species and rain forests. ICE and the Global Climate Coalition lobbied hard against a global treaty to curb greenhouse gases, and were joined by a central cog in the denial machine: the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank. Barely two months before Rio, it released a study concluding that models of the greenhouse effect had "substantially exaggerated its importance." The small amount of global warming that might be occurring, it argued, actually reflected a simple fact: the Sun is putting out more energy. The idea of a "variable Sun" has remained a constant in the naysayers' arsenal to this day, even though the tiny increase in solar output over recent decades falls far short of explaining the extent or details of the observed warming.
In what would become a key tactic of the denial machine—think tanks linking up with like-minded, contrarian researchers—the report was endorsed in a letter to President George H.W. Bush by MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. Lindzen, whose parents had fled Hitler's Germany, is described by old friends as the kind of man who, if you're in the minority, opts to be with you. "I thought it was important to make it clear that the science was at an early and primitive stage and that there was little basis for consensus and much reason for skepticism," he told Scientific American magazine. "I did feel a moral obligation."
Bush was torn. The head of his Environmental Protection Agency, William Reilly, supported binding cuts in greenhouse emissions. Political advisers insisted on nothing more than voluntary cuts. Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, had a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT and "knew computers," recalls Reilly. Sununu frequently logged on to a computer model of climate, Reilly says, and "vigorously critiqued" its assumptions and projections.
Sununu's side won. The Rio treaty called for countries to voluntarily stabilize their greenhouse emissions by returning them to 1990 levels by 2000. (As it turned out, U.S. emissions in 2000 were 14 percent higher than in 1990.) Avoiding mandatory cuts was a huge victory for industry. But Rio was also a setback for climate contrarians, says UCSD's Oreskes: "It was one thing when Al Gore said there's global warming, but quite another when George Bush signed a convention saying so." And the doubters faced a newly powerful nemesis. Just months after he signed the Rio pact, Bush lost to Bill Clinton—whose vice president, Gore, had made climate change his signature issue.
Groups that opposed greenhouse curbs ramped up. They "settled on the 'science isn't there' argument because they didn't believe they'd be able to convince the public to do nothing if climate change were real," says David Goldston, who served as Republican chief of staff for the House of Representatives science committee until 2006. Industry found a friend in Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia who keeps a small farm where he raises prize-winning pumpkins and whose favorite weather, he once told a reporter, is "anything severe." Michaels had written several popular articles on climate change, including an op-ed in The Washington Post in 1989 warning of "apocalyptic environmentalism," which he called "the most popular new religion to come along since Marxism." The coal industry's Western Fuels Association paid Michaels to produce a newsletter called World Climate Report, which has regularly trashed mainstream climate science. (At a 1995 hearing in Minnesota on coal-fired power plants, Michaels admitted that he received more than $165,000 from industry; he now declines to comment on his industry funding, asking, "What is this, a hatchet job?")
The road from Rio led to an international meeting in Kyoto, Japan, where more than 100 nations would negotiate a treaty on making Rio's voluntary—and largely ignored—greenhouse curbs mandatory. The coal and oil industries, worried that Kyoto could lead to binding greenhouse cuts that would imperil their profits, ramped up their message that there was too much scientific uncertainty to justify any such cuts. There was just one little problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC—the international body that periodically assesses climate research—had just issued its second report, and the conclusion of its 2,500 scientists looked devastating for greenhouse doubters. Although both natural swings and changes in the Sun's output might be contributing to climate change, it concluded, "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate."
Faced with this emerging consensus, the denial machine hardly blinked. There is too much "scientific uncertainty" to justify curbs on greenhouse emissions, William O'Keefe, then a vice president of the American Petroleum Institute and leader of the Global Climate Coalition, suggested in 1996. Virginia's Michaels echoed that idea in a 1997 op-ed in The Washington Post, describing "a growing contingent of scientists who are increasingly unhappy with the glib forecasts of gloom and doom." To reinforce the appearance of uncertainty and disagreement, the denial machine churned out white papers and "studies" (not empirical research, but critiques of others' work). The Marshall Institute, for instance, issued reports by a Harvard University astrophysicist it supported pointing to satellite data showing "no significant warming" of the atmosphere, contrary to the surface warming. The predicted warming, she wrote, "simply isn't happening according to the satellite[s]." At the time, there was a legitimate case that satellites were more accurate than ground stations, which might be skewed by the unusual warmth of cities where many are sited.
"There was an extraordinary campaign by the denial machine to find and hire scientists to sow dissent and make it appear that the research community was deeply divided," says Dan Becker of the Sierra Club. Those recruits blitzed the media. Driven by notions of fairness and objectivity, the press "qualified every mention of human influence on climate change with 'some scientists believe,' where the reality is that the vast preponderance of scientific opinion accepts that human-caused [greenhouse] emissions are contributing to warming," says Reilly, the former EPA chief. "The pursuit of balance has not done justice" to the science. Talk radio goes further, with Rush Limbaugh telling listeners this year that "more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not likely to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect. It's just all part of the hoax." In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 42 percent said the press "exaggerates the threat of climate change."
Now naysayers tried a new tactic: lists and petitions meant to portray science as hopelessly divided. Just before Kyoto, S. Fred Singer released the "Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change." Singer, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria as a boy, had run the U.S. weather-satellite program in the early 1960s. In the Leipzig petition, just over 100 scientists and others, including TV weathermen, said they "cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes." Unfortunately, few of the Leipzig signers actually did climate research; they just kibitzed about other people's. Scientific truth is not decided by majority vote, of course (ask Galileo), but the number of researchers whose empirical studies find that the world is warming and that human activity is partly responsible numbered in the thousands even then. The IPCC report issued this year, for instance, was written by more than 800 climate researchers and vetted by 2,500 scientists from 130 nations.
Although Clinton did not even try to get the Senate to ratify the Kyoto treaty (he knew a hopeless cause when he saw one), industry was taking no chances. In April 1998 a dozen people from the denial machine—including the Marshall Institute, Fred Singer's group and Exxon—met at the American Petroleum Institute's Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty. The plan was to train up to 20 "respected climate scientists" on media—and public—outreach with the aim of "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom' " and, in particular, "the Kyoto treaty's scientific underpinnings" so that elected officials "will seek to prevent progress toward implementation." The plan, once exposed in the press, "was never implemented as policy," says Marshall's William O'Keefe, who was then at API.
The GOP control of Congress for six of Clinton's eight years in office meant the denial machine had a receptive audience. Although Republicans such as Sens. John McCain, Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee spurned the denial camp, and Democrats such as Congressman John Dingell adamantly oppose greenhouse curbs that might hurt the auto and other industries, for the most part climate change has been a bitterly partisan issue. Republicans have also received significantly more campaign cash from the energy and other industries that dispute climate science. Every proposed climate bill "ran into a buzz saw of denialism," says Manik Roy of the Pew Center on Climate Change, a research and advocacy group, who was a Senate staffer at the time. "There was no rational debate in Congress on climate change."
The reason for the inaction was clear. "The questioning of the science made it to the Hill through senators who parroted reports funded by the American Petroleum Institute and other advocacy groups whose entire purpose was to confuse people on the science of global warming," says Sen. John Kerry. "There would be ads challenging the science right around the time we were trying to pass legislation. It was pure, raw pressure combined with false facts." Nor were states stepping where Washington feared to tread. "I did a lot of testifying before state legislatures—in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Alaska—that thought about taking action," says Singer. "I said that the observed warming was and would be much, much less than climate models calculated, and therefore nothing to worry about."
But the science was shifting under the denial machine. In January 2000, the National Academy of Sciences skewered its strongest argument. Contrary to the claim that satellites finding no warming are right and ground stations showing warming are wrong, it turns out that the satellites are off. (Basically, engineers failed to properly correct for changes in their orbit.) The planet is indeed warming, and at a rate since 1980 much greater than in the past.
Just months after the Academy report, Singer told a Senate panel that "the Earth's atmosphere is not warming and fears about human-induced storms, sea-level rise and other disasters are misplaced." And as studies fingering humans as a cause of climate change piled up, he had a new argument: a cabal was silencing good scientists who disagreed with the "alarmist" reports. "Global warming has become an article of faith for many, with its own theology and orthodoxy," Singer wrote in The Washington Times. "Its believers are quite fearful of any scientific dissent."
With the Inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, the denial machine expected to have friends in the White House. But despite Bush's oil-patch roots, naysayers weren't sure they could count on him: as a candidate, he had pledged to cap carbon dioxide emissions. Just weeks into his term, the Competitive Enterprise Institute heard rumors that the draft of a speech Bush was preparing included a passage reiterating that pledge. CEI's Myron Ebell called conservative pundit Robert Novak, who had booked Bush's EPA chief, Christie Todd Whitman, on CNN's "Crossfire." He asked her about the line, and within hours the possibility of a carbon cap was the talk of the Beltway. "We alerted anyone we thought could have influence and get the line, if it was in the speech, out," says CEI president Fred Smith, who counts this as another notch in CEI's belt. The White House declines to comment.
Bush not only disavowed his campaign pledge. In March, he withdrew from the Kyoto treaty. After the about-face, MIT's Lindzen told NEWSWEEK in 2001, he was summoned to the White House. He told Bush he'd done the right thing. Even if you accept the doomsday forecasts, Lindzen said, Kyoto would hardly touch the rise in temperatures. The treaty, he said, would "do nothing, at great expense."
Bush's reversal came just weeks after the IPCC released its third assessment of the burgeoning studies of climate change. Its conclusion: the 1990s were very likely the warmest decade on record, and recent climate change is partly "attributable to human activities." The weather itself seemed to be conspiring against the skeptics. The early years of the new millennium were setting heat records. The summer of 2003 was especially brutal, with a heat wave in Europe killing tens of thousands of people. Consultant Frank Luntz, who had been instrumental in the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, suggested a solution to the PR mess. In a memo to his GOP clients, he advised them that to deal with global warming, "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." They should "challenge the science," he wrote, by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view." Although few of the experts did empirical research of their own (MIT's Lindzen was an exception), the public didn't notice. To most civilians, a scientist is a scientist.
Challenging the science wasn't a hard sell on Capitol Hill. "In the House, the leadership generally viewed it as impermissible to go along with anything that would even imply that climate change was genuine," says Goldston, the former Republican staffer. "There was a belief on the part of many members that the science was fraudulent, even a Democratic fantasy. A lot of the information they got was from conservative think tanks and industry." When in 2003 the Senate called for a national strategy to cut greenhouse gases, for instance, climate naysayers were "giving briefings and talking to staff," says Goldston. "There was a constant flow of information—largely misinformation." Since the House version of that bill included no climate provisions, the two had to be reconciled. "The House leadership staff basically said, 'You know we're not going to accept this,' and [Senate staffers] said, 'Yeah, we know,' and the whole thing disappeared relatively jovially without much notice," says Goldston. "It was such a foregone conclusion."
Especially when the denial machine had a new friend in a powerful place. In 2003 James Inhofe of Oklahoma took over as chairman of the environment committee. That summer he took to the Senate floor and, in a two-hour speech, disputed the claim of scientific consensus on climate change. Despite the discovery that satellite data showing no warming were wrong, he argued that "satellites, widely considered the most accurate measure of global temperatures, have confirmed" the absence of atmospheric warming. Might global warming, he asked, be "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" Inhofe made his mark holding hearing after hearing to suggest that the answer is yes. For one, on a study finding a dramatic increase in global temperatures unprecedented in the last 1,000 years, he invited a scientist who challenged that conclusion (in a study partly underwritten with $53,000 from the American Petroleum Institute), one other doubter and the scientist who concluded that recent global temperatures were spiking. Just as Luntz had suggested, the witness table presented a tableau of scientific disagreement.
Every effort to pass climate legislation during the George W. Bush years was stopped in its tracks. When Senators McCain and Joe Lieberman were fishing for votes for their bipartisan effort in 2003, a staff member for Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska explained to her counterpart in Lieberman's office that Stevens "is aware there is warming in Alaska, but he's not sure how much it's caused by human activity or natural cycles," recalls Tim Profeta, now director of an environmental-policy institute at Duke University. "I was hearing the basic argument of the skeptics—a brilliant strategy to go after the science. And it was working." Stevens voted against the bill, which failed 43-55. When the bill came up again the next year, "we were contacted by a lot of lobbyists from API and Exxon-Mobil," says Mark Helmke, the climate aide to GOP Sen. Richard Lugar. "They'd bring up how the science wasn't certain, how there were a lot of skeptics out there." It went down to defeat again.
Killing bills in Congress was only one prong of the denial machine's campaign. It also had to keep public opinion from demanding action on greenhouse emissions, and that meant careful management of what federal scientists and officials wrote and said. "If they presented the science honestly, it would have brought public pressure for action," says Rick Piltz, who joined the federal Climate Science Program in 1995. By appointing former coal and oil lobbyists to key jobs overseeing climate policy, he found, the administration made sure that didn't happen. Following the playbook laid out at the 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, officials made sure that every report and speech cast climate science as dodgy, uncertain, controversial—and therefore no basis for making policy. Ex-oil lobbyist Philip Cooney, working for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as "lack of understanding" and "considerable uncertainty." A short section on climate in another report was cut entirely. The White House "directed us to remove all mentions of it," says Piltz, who resigned in protest. An oil lobbyist faxed Cooney, "You are doing a great job."
The response to the international climate panel's latest report, in February, showed that greenhouse doubters have a lot of fight left in them. In addition to offering $10,000 to scientists willing to attack the report, which so angered Boxer, they are emphasizing a new theme. Even if the world is warming now, and even if that warming is due in part to the greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, there's nothing to worry about. As Lindzen wrote in a guest editorial in NEWSWEEK International in April, "There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe."
Going, Going, Gone: Satellite images show the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica disintegrating into the Weddell Sea in January, 2002 (left) and March of the same year (right). The 1,255-square-mile mass of ice, 700 feet thick and weighing 720 billion tons, collapsed over three months, setting thousands of icebergs adrift
Images: NASA
Going, Going, Gone: Satellite images show the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica disintegrating into the Weddell Sea in January, 2002 (left) and March of the same year (right). The 1,255-square-mile mass of ice, 700 feet thick and weighing 720 billion tons, collapsed over three months, setting thousands of icebergs adrift
To some extent, greenhouse denial is now running on automatic pilot. "Some members of Congress have completely internalized this," says Pew's Roy, and therefore need no coaching from the think tanks and contrarian scientists who for 20 years kept them stoked with arguments. At a hearing last month on the Kyoto treaty, GOP Congressman Dana Rohrabacher asked whether "changes in the Earth's temperature in the past—all of these glaciers moving back and forth—and the changes that we see now" might be "a natural occurrence." (Hundreds of studies have ruled that out.) "I think it's a bit grandiose for us to believe ... that [human activities are] going to change some major climate cycle that's going on." Inhofe has told allies he will filibuster any climate bill that mandates greenhouse cuts.
Still, like a great beast that has been wounded, the denial machine is not what it once was. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, 38 percent of those surveyed identified climate change as the nation's gravest environmental threat, three times the number in 2000. After ExxonMobil was chastised by senators for giving $19 million over the years to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and others who are "producing very questionable data" on climate change, as Sen. Jay Rockefeller said, the company has cut back its support for such groups. In June, a spokesman said ExxonMobil did not doubt the risks posed by climate change, telling reporters, "We're very much not a denier." In yet another shock, Bush announced at the weekend that he would convene a global-warming summit next month, with a 2008 goal of cutting greenhouse emissions. That astonished the remaining naysayers. "I just can't imagine the administration would look to mandatory [emissions caps] after what we had with Kyoto," said a GOP Senate staffer, who did not want to be named criticizing the president. "I mean, what a disaster!"
With its change of heart, ExxonMobil is more likely to win a place at the negotiating table as Congress debates climate legislation. That will be crucially important to industry especially in 2009, when naysayers may no longer be able to count on a friend in the White House nixing man-datory greenhouse curbs. All the Democratic presidential contenders have called global warming a real threat, and promise to push for cuts similar to those being passed by California and other states. In the GOP field, only McCain—long a leader on the issue—supports that policy. Fred Thompson belittles findings that human activities are changing the climate, and Rudy Giuliani backs the all-volunteer greenhouse curbs of (both) Presidents Bush.
Look for the next round of debate to center on what Americans are willing to pay and do to stave off the worst of global warming. So far the answer seems to be, not much. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds less than half in favor of requiring high-mileage cars or energy-efficient appliances and buildings. No amount of white papers, reports and studies is likely to change that. If anything can, it will be the climate itself. This summer, Texas was hit by exactly the kind of downpours and flooding expected in a greenhouse world, and Las Vegas and other cities broiled in record triple-digit temperatures. Just last week the most accurate study to date concluded that the length of heat waves in Europe has doubled, and their frequency nearly tripled, in the past century. The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. Snowpack whose water is crucial to both cities and farms is diminishing. It's enough to make you wish that climate change were a hoax, rather than the reality it is.
With Eve Conant, Sam Stein and Eleanor Clift in Washington and Matthew Philips in New York
19 million displaced in south Asia due to monsoon flooding
19 million displaced in south Asia due to monsoon flooding
Randeep Ramesh, south Asia correspondent
Friday August 3, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Monsoon rains whipped the Indian subcontinent yesterday, flooding a wide swathe south of the Himalayas and bringing the death toll over recent weeks to more than 1,100, with 19 million people displaced.
Hundreds of kilometres of land from the Gangetic plains to the Bangladeshi delta are under water as rivers burst their banks, although most of the deaths have happened in central India.
Parts of the Indian states of Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have seen almost three weeks of rain, swelling rivers and flooding fields.
The country's financial capital, Mumbai, saw water levels rise to knee level in the streets, forcing train services to be closed down and flights to be cancelled.
In recent days, 60 people have lost their lives in Bangladesh, while flooding and landslides have caused 84 deaths in Nepal.
Farming, the lifeline of rural India, has been severely affected, and relief workers have warned that food stocks, as well as drinking water supplies, are perilously low.
Millions of people have been cut off from the rest of the country, and the floods have destroyed crops worth millions of rupees. More than 14 million people in India, and another five million in Bangladesh, have been affected.
Aid agencies say health issues are of particular concern, with reports of fever, acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea and snake bites among refugees.
With the fertile plains south of the Himalayas now covered with water, the Indian army has been deployed to evacuate people from affected regions. In many remote areas, hundreds of thousands have scrambled to find shelter on higher ground, setting up temporary dwellings.
In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, more than 500 villages are below the water line, and 100,000 displaced people are living in relief camps in Assam.
In Bangladesh, at least one third of the country's 64 districts have been partly submerged by the flooding.
Farmer Rahmat Sheikh and his family were among the 2,000 villagers who fled their flooded village in Sirajganj district, Bangladesh.
"The floods have taken away all I had," 40-year-old Mr Sheikh told the Associated Press. "Rice paddies in the field, two cows and my house all are gone. I don't know how we will now survive."
Aid agencies were gearing up for a huge rescue operation. Unicef, the UN's chidren's fund, said in a statement that the "sheer size and scale of flooding and massive numbers of people affected poses an unprecedented challenge to the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian assistance by governments".
The torrential rains began last month, and last until September. The monsoon is vital to the region's rural economy, bringing both hope and fear. Despite being a regular event, hundreds lose their lives every year in landslides and by drowning.
With swollen rivers bursting their banks after days of rain, that danger is again being made clear on the fertile plans of India, which provide food for hundreds of millions of people.
In New Delhi, India's meteorological department told Reuters that unusual monsoon patterns this year had led to heavier rains than normal.
"We've been getting constant rainfall in these areas for nearly 20 days," BP Yadav, a spokesman for the department, said.
Some blame India for worsening the situation because it has released water building up in its river system. However, politicians in India say countries such as Nepal have a responsibility to regulate water flow.
Experts argue that such finger-pointing allows officials to dodge the truth that bad management and poor planning have led to avoidable death and damage.
Himanshu Thakkar, the co-ordinator of the South Asia Network of Dams, Rivers and People, said water levels in dams in India were too high, with no room to capture rainfall.
Mr Thakkar also pointed out that embankments burst after just a few days of heavy rainfall, suggesting poor maintenance.
"There's no effective water catchment management in place," he said. "You need systems in place like a proper drainage network to flush this water away - especially in cities. But nowhere in the region has bothered.
"Now climate change models predict heavier rainfall events happening more frequently. Has there been a change in attitude? No."
Randeep Ramesh, south Asia correspondent
Friday August 3, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Monsoon rains whipped the Indian subcontinent yesterday, flooding a wide swathe south of the Himalayas and bringing the death toll over recent weeks to more than 1,100, with 19 million people displaced.
Hundreds of kilometres of land from the Gangetic plains to the Bangladeshi delta are under water as rivers burst their banks, although most of the deaths have happened in central India.
Parts of the Indian states of Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have seen almost three weeks of rain, swelling rivers and flooding fields.
The country's financial capital, Mumbai, saw water levels rise to knee level in the streets, forcing train services to be closed down and flights to be cancelled.
In recent days, 60 people have lost their lives in Bangladesh, while flooding and landslides have caused 84 deaths in Nepal.
Farming, the lifeline of rural India, has been severely affected, and relief workers have warned that food stocks, as well as drinking water supplies, are perilously low.
Millions of people have been cut off from the rest of the country, and the floods have destroyed crops worth millions of rupees. More than 14 million people in India, and another five million in Bangladesh, have been affected.
Aid agencies say health issues are of particular concern, with reports of fever, acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea and snake bites among refugees.
With the fertile plains south of the Himalayas now covered with water, the Indian army has been deployed to evacuate people from affected regions. In many remote areas, hundreds of thousands have scrambled to find shelter on higher ground, setting up temporary dwellings.
In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, more than 500 villages are below the water line, and 100,000 displaced people are living in relief camps in Assam.
In Bangladesh, at least one third of the country's 64 districts have been partly submerged by the flooding.
Farmer Rahmat Sheikh and his family were among the 2,000 villagers who fled their flooded village in Sirajganj district, Bangladesh.
"The floods have taken away all I had," 40-year-old Mr Sheikh told the Associated Press. "Rice paddies in the field, two cows and my house all are gone. I don't know how we will now survive."
Aid agencies were gearing up for a huge rescue operation. Unicef, the UN's chidren's fund, said in a statement that the "sheer size and scale of flooding and massive numbers of people affected poses an unprecedented challenge to the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian assistance by governments".
The torrential rains began last month, and last until September. The monsoon is vital to the region's rural economy, bringing both hope and fear. Despite being a regular event, hundreds lose their lives every year in landslides and by drowning.
With swollen rivers bursting their banks after days of rain, that danger is again being made clear on the fertile plans of India, which provide food for hundreds of millions of people.
In New Delhi, India's meteorological department told Reuters that unusual monsoon patterns this year had led to heavier rains than normal.
"We've been getting constant rainfall in these areas for nearly 20 days," BP Yadav, a spokesman for the department, said.
Some blame India for worsening the situation because it has released water building up in its river system. However, politicians in India say countries such as Nepal have a responsibility to regulate water flow.
Experts argue that such finger-pointing allows officials to dodge the truth that bad management and poor planning have led to avoidable death and damage.
Himanshu Thakkar, the co-ordinator of the South Asia Network of Dams, Rivers and People, said water levels in dams in India were too high, with no room to capture rainfall.
Mr Thakkar also pointed out that embankments burst after just a few days of heavy rainfall, suggesting poor maintenance.
"There's no effective water catchment management in place," he said. "You need systems in place like a proper drainage network to flush this water away - especially in cities. But nowhere in the region has bothered.
"Now climate change models predict heavier rainfall events happening more frequently. Has there been a change in attitude? No."
Tahoe bear home invasions...oh my!
Growing ursine invasions becoming unbearable
Carol Pogash, New York Times
(08-03) 04:00 PDT Tahoe City -- In the 17 years the Hyde family has lived at the edge of a national forest, bears have broken into their garage three times, but nothing prepared them for what they found in July after returning from five days of wilderness camping.
The front window of their sturdy mountain home had been smashed, and when Danny Hyde, a school principal, opened the front door, he discovered that a bear and two cubs had taken up residence. They were still inside, having ripped out cupboards, emptied the refrigerator and feasted on molasses, Fig Newtons, Thin Mints, Cool Whip, ice cream, honey and chicken chow mein. After Hyde yelled, they bolted out an open window. It took seven people five hours to shovel out the mess.
The Lake Tahoe area is experiencing a rise in home invasions by bears. Years of humans' feeding bears and available garbage have urbanized black bears, and a drought last winter has aggravated the problem. And some people fear that one of the measures intended to fend off the bears has actually helped increase the break-ins.
Ann Bryant, executive director of the BEAR League, which promotes human-bear co-existence, estimates there are five bear break-ins around Lake Tahoe every night. Jason Holley, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, believes the number is twice that.
Bear home invasions have become so common that the local newspaper runs a weekly report by Bryant. She tries to modify the behavior of bears and humans, but says bears are easier to retrain than humans.
She urges residents to remove food from vacant houses, install double locks, double window panes, shutters, barking-dog alarms and bear boxes, which are locking metal containers to secure garbage. Bryant helped push through legislation requiring bear boxes on new construction. Others suggest that the boxes are part of the problem.
"We didn't hardly have any break-ins before we had the boxes," said Deputy Sheriff John Lasagna of Placer County.
"Bear-proofing trash is the right thing to do, but it can cause problems in the short term as bears try to find ways to replace those missing calories," said Linda Masterson, author of "Living with Bears: A Practical Guide to Bear Country" (PixyJack Press, 2006).
There are 250 to 500 bears around Tahoe, and everyone seems to have a bear story. Last year, bears stole a prize-winning gingerbread house from a refrigerator at a local resort. When a bear broke into the home of Marvis Stoecker several years ago, it licked clean huge jars of peanut butter and mayonnaise but dumped the pickled okra. Bryant recalls one morning feeling a nudge on her elbow while stirring oatmeal. A bear wanted breakfast.
Adult black bears can weigh as much as 400 pounds, and while many have lost their fear of humans, they are capable of inflicting harm.
Some bears in the Tahoe area now forgo winter dozing in favor of daily dining made possible by human habitation. Rather than losing weight in winter, some gain and give birth to more offspring than is typical in the wild, said Carl Lackey, a biologist who specializes in black bears for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. Lackey has studied Tahoe bears for 10 years.
In late July, bears returned to Ward Creek where the Hydes live, punching out the door of a large house and nabbing chicken patties, hot dogs and vanilla ice cream.
At an older house with wooden bars on windows and a radio blasting, they plowed through the front door, leaving a calling card on the front stoop: a licked-clean container of Pillsbury chocolate frosting. At a third house with a bear carved into a wooden welcome sign, they clawed through a particleboard door and electrical wires, littering the property with discarded wrappers from M&Ms and other candies.
With the increase in break-ins, at least three neighborhood families plan to give up their vacations to defend their homes.
One July morning Bryant, who is not paid for her work with bears, spent time coaxing a 65-pound cub to leave its habitat behind Starbucks. She shot it with nontoxic paint balls and blanks from a starter pistol and hollered until it fled.
Then she dashed to the Hydes' neighborhood where she was joined by Lasagna armed with a shotgun and rubber ball bullets. Tromping through the woods, Bryant fired her starter pistol eight times. If the bears kept returning, she feared that they would have to be killed.
Lasagna took off after the mother bear, although he and Bryant knew it would return. The bear's cubs were high up in a conifer hard by one of the houses they had raided. Bryant bemoaned the fact that a mother bear was teaching her cubs that this was the way to forage.
Once a bear becomes a nuisance, California residents can request a depredation permit to have it killed, although that creates new risks. Recently one homeowner found his bear trap sabotaged and signs posted with his name, phone number and the appellation "bear killer."
"I feel violated. There's a predator out there who wants something I have," said Hyde, who admits he feels conflicted. "Nobody wants a depredation permit because of the residual community reaction."
His wife, Catherine, said, "There's no good solution."
After Bryant had given up for the day, neighbors screwed thick plywood to the gaping hole in the particleboard door where bears had swiped M&Ms and other sweets. By morning there was a hole in the new plywood. The refrigerator door was ajar. The bears had returned.
Carol Pogash, New York Times
(08-03) 04:00 PDT Tahoe City -- In the 17 years the Hyde family has lived at the edge of a national forest, bears have broken into their garage three times, but nothing prepared them for what they found in July after returning from five days of wilderness camping.
The front window of their sturdy mountain home had been smashed, and when Danny Hyde, a school principal, opened the front door, he discovered that a bear and two cubs had taken up residence. They were still inside, having ripped out cupboards, emptied the refrigerator and feasted on molasses, Fig Newtons, Thin Mints, Cool Whip, ice cream, honey and chicken chow mein. After Hyde yelled, they bolted out an open window. It took seven people five hours to shovel out the mess.
The Lake Tahoe area is experiencing a rise in home invasions by bears. Years of humans' feeding bears and available garbage have urbanized black bears, and a drought last winter has aggravated the problem. And some people fear that one of the measures intended to fend off the bears has actually helped increase the break-ins.
Ann Bryant, executive director of the BEAR League, which promotes human-bear co-existence, estimates there are five bear break-ins around Lake Tahoe every night. Jason Holley, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, believes the number is twice that.
Bear home invasions have become so common that the local newspaper runs a weekly report by Bryant. She tries to modify the behavior of bears and humans, but says bears are easier to retrain than humans.
She urges residents to remove food from vacant houses, install double locks, double window panes, shutters, barking-dog alarms and bear boxes, which are locking metal containers to secure garbage. Bryant helped push through legislation requiring bear boxes on new construction. Others suggest that the boxes are part of the problem.
"We didn't hardly have any break-ins before we had the boxes," said Deputy Sheriff John Lasagna of Placer County.
"Bear-proofing trash is the right thing to do, but it can cause problems in the short term as bears try to find ways to replace those missing calories," said Linda Masterson, author of "Living with Bears: A Practical Guide to Bear Country" (PixyJack Press, 2006).
There are 250 to 500 bears around Tahoe, and everyone seems to have a bear story. Last year, bears stole a prize-winning gingerbread house from a refrigerator at a local resort. When a bear broke into the home of Marvis Stoecker several years ago, it licked clean huge jars of peanut butter and mayonnaise but dumped the pickled okra. Bryant recalls one morning feeling a nudge on her elbow while stirring oatmeal. A bear wanted breakfast.
Adult black bears can weigh as much as 400 pounds, and while many have lost their fear of humans, they are capable of inflicting harm.
Some bears in the Tahoe area now forgo winter dozing in favor of daily dining made possible by human habitation. Rather than losing weight in winter, some gain and give birth to more offspring than is typical in the wild, said Carl Lackey, a biologist who specializes in black bears for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. Lackey has studied Tahoe bears for 10 years.
In late July, bears returned to Ward Creek where the Hydes live, punching out the door of a large house and nabbing chicken patties, hot dogs and vanilla ice cream.
At an older house with wooden bars on windows and a radio blasting, they plowed through the front door, leaving a calling card on the front stoop: a licked-clean container of Pillsbury chocolate frosting. At a third house with a bear carved into a wooden welcome sign, they clawed through a particleboard door and electrical wires, littering the property with discarded wrappers from M&Ms and other candies.
With the increase in break-ins, at least three neighborhood families plan to give up their vacations to defend their homes.
One July morning Bryant, who is not paid for her work with bears, spent time coaxing a 65-pound cub to leave its habitat behind Starbucks. She shot it with nontoxic paint balls and blanks from a starter pistol and hollered until it fled.
Then she dashed to the Hydes' neighborhood where she was joined by Lasagna armed with a shotgun and rubber ball bullets. Tromping through the woods, Bryant fired her starter pistol eight times. If the bears kept returning, she feared that they would have to be killed.
Lasagna took off after the mother bear, although he and Bryant knew it would return. The bear's cubs were high up in a conifer hard by one of the houses they had raided. Bryant bemoaned the fact that a mother bear was teaching her cubs that this was the way to forage.
Once a bear becomes a nuisance, California residents can request a depredation permit to have it killed, although that creates new risks. Recently one homeowner found his bear trap sabotaged and signs posted with his name, phone number and the appellation "bear killer."
"I feel violated. There's a predator out there who wants something I have," said Hyde, who admits he feels conflicted. "Nobody wants a depredation permit because of the residual community reaction."
His wife, Catherine, said, "There's no good solution."
After Bryant had given up for the day, neighbors screwed thick plywood to the gaping hole in the particleboard door where bears had swiped M&Ms and other sweets. By morning there was a hole in the new plywood. The refrigerator door was ajar. The bears had returned.
Warming of glaciers threatens millions in China
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
(08-01) 04:00 PDT Anyemaqen Mountains, China -- More than 3 miles above sea level in these jagged, wind-scoured mountains, there's little doubt that global warming is endangering China's future.
The glaciers that ripple off the peaks of Anyemaqen, a mountain range in the western China province of Qinghai, are shrinking rapidly, endangering hundreds of millions of people who depend on the waters flowing eastward through the Yellow River.
With the rest of the country punished by record heat waves, floods and droughts this summer, it's no wonder that Beijing, which has long viewed global warming as a problem that rich nations should solve, is waking up to the fact that China may be especially at risk.
Qinghai, a poor, Texas-size stretch of the northern Tibetan plateau where yaks outnumber humans, became the unusual focus of attention when U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson visited there Monday at the start of a four-day trip to China.
Rather than climbing the peaks, he visited Qinghai Lake, a saltwater body about 200 miles away, to demonstrate U.S. concern for the effects of global warming.
"What's happening in terms of climate change globally is impacting the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, and what's happening here also impacts the global environment," Paulson said, according to news reports.
Deaths from floods, lightning and landslides across China in recent weeks have reached nearly 700, state media reported this week, and officials warned that global warming is likely to cause even more violent weather.
"The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are increasing - records for worst-in-a-century rainstorms, droughts and heat waves are being broken more often," said Dong Wenjie, director-general of the Beijing Climate Center. "This in fact is closely associated with global warming."
At Anyemaqen, a hike into the remote area last week by a Chronicle reporter found that the 5-mile-long Halong Glacier has shrunk by several hundred yards since it was last photographed by a Greenpeace activist in 2005 - and by a mile since a similar photo in 1981.
Local nomads say their livelihood is at stake.
"When I was a child, it was very cold and the grass was long, up to here," said Namgyal Tsering, a 22-year-old herder, motioning to his shin as he perched on a high ridge and watched his flock of sheep. "Now the grass is short, and many people have moved into towns."
The Qinghai-Tibetan plateau is warming up faster than anywhere else in the world, Chinese scientists said last week. The region's average annual temperature is rising at a speed of 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit every 10 years, threatening to melt glaciers, dry up the 3,395-mile Yellow River and cause more droughts, sandstorms and desertification.
The plateau once contained 36,000 glaciers covering an area of 18,000 square miles, but in recent decades, the area of these glaciers has shrunk by 30 percent, say scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The government has forcibly moved thousands of nomads into local towns, giving them free housing and 8,000 yuan (about $1,060) per year.
A scattering of interviews with the resettled nomads showed that while some liked their new life and some didn't, all agreed that their life before had become untenable.
"Before, there was no grass, and the rats dug holes everywhere and the ground was black," recalled Chith Tsering, holding her 1-year-old daughter as she multitasked around her family's three-room house in Dawu.
Since she moved from her remote grassland ranch three years ago, "it's better, but it's sad," she said.
Around Qinghai's steep canyons and rolling grassland, there's an obvious new prosperity among the rural Tibetan people. China's surging economic boom has reached into even the most remote hamlets. Nearly every tent or house has a new motorcycle - or even a sport utility vehicle - parked outside, evidence that rising demand by city dwellers for meat had driven up prices for the region's yaks and sheep.
From village to village, Tibetan Buddhist temples that were torn down during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s are now being rebuilt - often with money from newly wealthy businessmen in major cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou. Spidery webs of prayer flags stretch up mountainsides at seemingly every bend in the road, a testament to the resurgence of ethnic Tibetans' spirituality as the Chinese government loosens its harsh restrictions on religious life.
The nationwide economic boom has propelled China into overtaking the United States as the world's No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions, according to new data released in May. China's output of emissions is rising by an annual amount that far outstrips the cutbacks that wealthy nations are committed to make under the Kyoto Protocol.
"The Chinese government is gradually realizing that global warming is something that will deeply affect the Chinese people and their economic security," said Yang Ailun, climate program coordinator for Greenpeace in China.
In international climate negotiations, China's leaders have refused to consider binding limits on the country's emissions, arguing that limits should be imposed only on wealthy nations. Instead, China has adopted a goal of reducing the amount of energy expended per unit of wealth - a weaker yardstick that many environmentalists have criticized as insufficient.
In recent months, however, officials have discussed these goals with increasing urgency, noting the recent extreme weather.
But the effects of climate change can be fickle, as Paulson found Monday. During drought years in the late 1990s through 2005, the salt lake's area shrank by more than a fourth. But during a Chronicle reporter's recent visit, the salt lake was brimming over its banks because of weeks of steady rains - the same weather pattern that, farther east, was causing severe flooding. The hills surrounding the lake were verdant, and yaks have abundant pasture, locals said. Downstream on the Yellow River, where farmers depend on the trickle to water their crops, floods and hail killed 17 people across four provinces last weekend alone. Beijing was inundated by torrential rains Monday night, and Shanghai hit an all-time record of 103 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend.
Two hundred miles south in Dawu, however, Chith Tsering said she was glad her family had moved off the land.
"The weather is changing, and it's so hard to make a living off your animals," she said. "There are many people still on the land who are suffering."
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
(08-01) 04:00 PDT Anyemaqen Mountains, China -- More than 3 miles above sea level in these jagged, wind-scoured mountains, there's little doubt that global warming is endangering China's future.
The glaciers that ripple off the peaks of Anyemaqen, a mountain range in the western China province of Qinghai, are shrinking rapidly, endangering hundreds of millions of people who depend on the waters flowing eastward through the Yellow River.
With the rest of the country punished by record heat waves, floods and droughts this summer, it's no wonder that Beijing, which has long viewed global warming as a problem that rich nations should solve, is waking up to the fact that China may be especially at risk.
Qinghai, a poor, Texas-size stretch of the northern Tibetan plateau where yaks outnumber humans, became the unusual focus of attention when U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson visited there Monday at the start of a four-day trip to China.
Rather than climbing the peaks, he visited Qinghai Lake, a saltwater body about 200 miles away, to demonstrate U.S. concern for the effects of global warming.
"What's happening in terms of climate change globally is impacting the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, and what's happening here also impacts the global environment," Paulson said, according to news reports.
Deaths from floods, lightning and landslides across China in recent weeks have reached nearly 700, state media reported this week, and officials warned that global warming is likely to cause even more violent weather.
"The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are increasing - records for worst-in-a-century rainstorms, droughts and heat waves are being broken more often," said Dong Wenjie, director-general of the Beijing Climate Center. "This in fact is closely associated with global warming."
At Anyemaqen, a hike into the remote area last week by a Chronicle reporter found that the 5-mile-long Halong Glacier has shrunk by several hundred yards since it was last photographed by a Greenpeace activist in 2005 - and by a mile since a similar photo in 1981.
Local nomads say their livelihood is at stake.
"When I was a child, it was very cold and the grass was long, up to here," said Namgyal Tsering, a 22-year-old herder, motioning to his shin as he perched on a high ridge and watched his flock of sheep. "Now the grass is short, and many people have moved into towns."
The Qinghai-Tibetan plateau is warming up faster than anywhere else in the world, Chinese scientists said last week. The region's average annual temperature is rising at a speed of 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit every 10 years, threatening to melt glaciers, dry up the 3,395-mile Yellow River and cause more droughts, sandstorms and desertification.
The plateau once contained 36,000 glaciers covering an area of 18,000 square miles, but in recent decades, the area of these glaciers has shrunk by 30 percent, say scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The government has forcibly moved thousands of nomads into local towns, giving them free housing and 8,000 yuan (about $1,060) per year.
A scattering of interviews with the resettled nomads showed that while some liked their new life and some didn't, all agreed that their life before had become untenable.
"Before, there was no grass, and the rats dug holes everywhere and the ground was black," recalled Chith Tsering, holding her 1-year-old daughter as she multitasked around her family's three-room house in Dawu.
Since she moved from her remote grassland ranch three years ago, "it's better, but it's sad," she said.
Around Qinghai's steep canyons and rolling grassland, there's an obvious new prosperity among the rural Tibetan people. China's surging economic boom has reached into even the most remote hamlets. Nearly every tent or house has a new motorcycle - or even a sport utility vehicle - parked outside, evidence that rising demand by city dwellers for meat had driven up prices for the region's yaks and sheep.
From village to village, Tibetan Buddhist temples that were torn down during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s are now being rebuilt - often with money from newly wealthy businessmen in major cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou. Spidery webs of prayer flags stretch up mountainsides at seemingly every bend in the road, a testament to the resurgence of ethnic Tibetans' spirituality as the Chinese government loosens its harsh restrictions on religious life.
The nationwide economic boom has propelled China into overtaking the United States as the world's No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions, according to new data released in May. China's output of emissions is rising by an annual amount that far outstrips the cutbacks that wealthy nations are committed to make under the Kyoto Protocol.
"The Chinese government is gradually realizing that global warming is something that will deeply affect the Chinese people and their economic security," said Yang Ailun, climate program coordinator for Greenpeace in China.
In international climate negotiations, China's leaders have refused to consider binding limits on the country's emissions, arguing that limits should be imposed only on wealthy nations. Instead, China has adopted a goal of reducing the amount of energy expended per unit of wealth - a weaker yardstick that many environmentalists have criticized as insufficient.
In recent months, however, officials have discussed these goals with increasing urgency, noting the recent extreme weather.
But the effects of climate change can be fickle, as Paulson found Monday. During drought years in the late 1990s through 2005, the salt lake's area shrank by more than a fourth. But during a Chronicle reporter's recent visit, the salt lake was brimming over its banks because of weeks of steady rains - the same weather pattern that, farther east, was causing severe flooding. The hills surrounding the lake were verdant, and yaks have abundant pasture, locals said. Downstream on the Yellow River, where farmers depend on the trickle to water their crops, floods and hail killed 17 people across four provinces last weekend alone. Beijing was inundated by torrential rains Monday night, and Shanghai hit an all-time record of 103 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend.
Two hundred miles south in Dawu, however, Chith Tsering said she was glad her family had moved off the land.
"The weather is changing, and it's so hard to make a living off your animals," she said. "There are many people still on the land who are suffering."
Planners move to close window on US 'McMansions'
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday July 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
For many they are a blight on the American landscape. For others, they are an expression of freedom and success. Now legislators in cities across the US, alarmed at the spread of "McMansions", are trying to contain the size of American homes.
Inspired by concerns that communities are disappearing and alarmed by the environmental costs, planners have drawn up measures to ensure new homes stay within a footprint that is proportionate to the plot size.
Since 1973, the median size of a new home in the US has grown from 1,525 sq ft (142 sq m) to 2,248 sq ft. At the same time, the number of people per household has fallen from 3.1 to 2.6.
Huge mansions are a common site across the US, dotting the landscape alongside motorways in Colorado, or squeezed into tiny plots in urban areas. Wherever they are found, they share common features: large atrium-style hallways, showpiece kitchens, multiple bathrooms, walk-in wardrobes, built-in garage and garden statuary; a style familiar to viewers of the Sopranos. While McMansion is the most frequently used pejorative term, "plywood palazzo" is another.
But the trend has alarmed planners and conservationists. In Boulder County, Colorado, which has recently adopted measures to cap the size of new homes, houses have grown from an average of 3,900 sq ft in 1990 to 6,300 sq ft last year.
Last month in Los Angeles, the city's planning commission passed a motion to restrict the size of new homes. If the city council adopts the measure it could affect 300,000 properties in the city. Similar measures have been adopted in Minneapolis and in Florida.
"I think people are suspicious of development in the US right now," says John Chase, architecture critic and urban designer for the city of West Hollywood. "People have an unconscious cultural association with a place. mansion-building takes away from a person's sense of the identity of a place."
But environmental pressures are also being felt. "According to scientists, if we don't learn to contain our use of fossil fuels we are in serious trouble," says John Nolon, a law professor at New York's Pace University.
"One of the most egregious examples is a large house. A 6,000 sq ft-8,000 sq ft house is a climate change disaster. If the country doesn't rein in the construction of these mansions the message to individuals is that they're encouraged to follow their urges. The phenomenon with McMansions is similar to that with SUVs [sport utility vehicles or 4x4s]: they express a certain sort of success, they're available and they're fun. If legislative folks don't take some kind of position on mansionisation, it will go unchecked."
But some discern signs that Americans are tiring of the architectural bling of the McMansion. "My sense is that in the luxury market, people are less interested in size than they were a decade ago," says Kermit Baker, chief economist with the American Institute of Architects, which has recorded a levelling-off in the size of new houses.
Small may be beautiful, but new home owners may not want to go as far as the 250 sq ft micro-apartments proposed for central Los Angeles. That would be just enough space for a Humvee and a Prius to snuggle together.
Monday July 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
For many they are a blight on the American landscape. For others, they are an expression of freedom and success. Now legislators in cities across the US, alarmed at the spread of "McMansions", are trying to contain the size of American homes.
Inspired by concerns that communities are disappearing and alarmed by the environmental costs, planners have drawn up measures to ensure new homes stay within a footprint that is proportionate to the plot size.
Since 1973, the median size of a new home in the US has grown from 1,525 sq ft (142 sq m) to 2,248 sq ft. At the same time, the number of people per household has fallen from 3.1 to 2.6.
Huge mansions are a common site across the US, dotting the landscape alongside motorways in Colorado, or squeezed into tiny plots in urban areas. Wherever they are found, they share common features: large atrium-style hallways, showpiece kitchens, multiple bathrooms, walk-in wardrobes, built-in garage and garden statuary; a style familiar to viewers of the Sopranos. While McMansion is the most frequently used pejorative term, "plywood palazzo" is another.
But the trend has alarmed planners and conservationists. In Boulder County, Colorado, which has recently adopted measures to cap the size of new homes, houses have grown from an average of 3,900 sq ft in 1990 to 6,300 sq ft last year.
Last month in Los Angeles, the city's planning commission passed a motion to restrict the size of new homes. If the city council adopts the measure it could affect 300,000 properties in the city. Similar measures have been adopted in Minneapolis and in Florida.
"I think people are suspicious of development in the US right now," says John Chase, architecture critic and urban designer for the city of West Hollywood. "People have an unconscious cultural association with a place. mansion-building takes away from a person's sense of the identity of a place."
But environmental pressures are also being felt. "According to scientists, if we don't learn to contain our use of fossil fuels we are in serious trouble," says John Nolon, a law professor at New York's Pace University.
"One of the most egregious examples is a large house. A 6,000 sq ft-8,000 sq ft house is a climate change disaster. If the country doesn't rein in the construction of these mansions the message to individuals is that they're encouraged to follow their urges. The phenomenon with McMansions is similar to that with SUVs [sport utility vehicles or 4x4s]: they express a certain sort of success, they're available and they're fun. If legislative folks don't take some kind of position on mansionisation, it will go unchecked."
But some discern signs that Americans are tiring of the architectural bling of the McMansion. "My sense is that in the luxury market, people are less interested in size than they were a decade ago," says Kermit Baker, chief economist with the American Institute of Architects, which has recorded a levelling-off in the size of new houses.
Small may be beautiful, but new home owners may not want to go as far as the 250 sq ft micro-apartments proposed for central Los Angeles. That would be just enough space for a Humvee and a Prius to snuggle together.
Thousands Evacuate in British Flooding
Monday, July 23, 2007
(07-23) 04:24 PDT LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --
Swollen rivers from torrential rain forced thousands of people from their homes, and forecasters warned Monday that water levels could rise to critical levels.
More than 48,000 homes in the counties of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire in western England were left without electricity after a flooded power station had to be shut down.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the government will formally review the flooding, concentrating on drainage and protecting infrastructure from further flooding.
During a tour of Gloucestershire, Brown also announced increased funding for flood and coastal defenses across the country.
The monsoon-like rainfall over the past month has led to mass evacuations, severely affected transport and threatened water supplies. Insurance companies say the damage could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.
Britain's Environment Agency warned water levels could rise to a "critical level," and issued nine severe flood warnings across the country.
The agency said it was focusing on western counties where the rivers Thames and Severn are swollen to dangerous levels.
Meteorologists say the rain is not expected to peak until Tuesday, meaning further water and electricity shortages are likely, the agency said.
"The situation is looking critical at the moment. Unfortunately the misery is set to continue," said Environment Agency spokesman Joe Giacomelli.
He said all those in severe flood warning areas were advised to evacuate.
Train routes in several areas have been suspended, and replacement bus services have been canceled because of waterlogged roads.
(07-23) 04:24 PDT LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --
Swollen rivers from torrential rain forced thousands of people from their homes, and forecasters warned Monday that water levels could rise to critical levels.
More than 48,000 homes in the counties of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire in western England were left without electricity after a flooded power station had to be shut down.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the government will formally review the flooding, concentrating on drainage and protecting infrastructure from further flooding.
During a tour of Gloucestershire, Brown also announced increased funding for flood and coastal defenses across the country.
The monsoon-like rainfall over the past month has led to mass evacuations, severely affected transport and threatened water supplies. Insurance companies say the damage could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.
Britain's Environment Agency warned water levels could rise to a "critical level," and issued nine severe flood warnings across the country.
The agency said it was focusing on western counties where the rivers Thames and Severn are swollen to dangerous levels.
Meteorologists say the rain is not expected to peak until Tuesday, meaning further water and electricity shortages are likely, the agency said.
"The situation is looking critical at the moment. Unfortunately the misery is set to continue," said Environment Agency spokesman Joe Giacomelli.
He said all those in severe flood warning areas were advised to evacuate.
Train routes in several areas have been suspended, and replacement bus services have been canceled because of waterlogged roads.
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