In an Upside-Down World, Sunshine Is Shunned

By LARRY ROHTER, New York Times

PUNTA ARENAS, Chile Everything is different here at the bottom of the world, starting with the weather. Before Alejandra Mundaca lets her two children go out, she checks the forecast for the temperature, chances of rain and also the level of ultraviolet rays.

For the last decade the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica has been forming earlier in the Southern Hemisphere spring and growing larger. The 125,000 residents of the southernmost city on the planet, here on the Strait of Magellan, have reluctantly learned to adapt.

They closely watch the color-coded warnings of a “solar stoplight” publicized on television and radio and even posted on street corners here. Even on warm days, most people insist on wearing jackets or long-sleeved shirts or blouses. Many wear sunglasses and make sure to apply 50-proof sunblock even when the sky is blanketed in clouds.

“Life has changed a lot for us over the past few years, and I know that my sons are not going to be able to enjoy the same kind of childhood that I had growing up here,” said Ms. Mundaca, 33, a schoolteacher. “We used to look forward to spring as relief from the long harsh winter, but now it is a time of maximum peril for all of us who live here.”

The ozone layer is a thin covering of gas in the stratosphere that absorbs most of the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Since scientists first discovered the hole over Antarctica in the mid-1980’s, it has nearly doubled in size and now covers an area larger than North America during the Southern Hemisphere spring. The arms of the hole occasionally extend as far as southern Chile and Argentina, depending on wind patterns.

On a typical day here this month, the solar stoplight was set at orange, the second highest of four levels, and people were warned to limit their exposure to the sun between noon and 3 p.m. to 21 minutes at most.

“When the light is red, I don’t let my kids go out to play at all,” Liliana Navarro Torres said, referring to Kimberley, 6, and Jonathan, 4. “They don’t like it much, and sometimes it drives me crazy to have them running around the house, but that’s the way it has to be when you live here.”

The growth of the ozone hole is attributed largely to chlorofluorocarbons, or CFC’s, that were widely used in aerosol sprays and refrigerants until an agreement in 1987 to phase them out. But scientists also think that global warming may be contributing to the phenomenon.

During much of the 1990’s there was resistance here to accepting signs that the risks to people were growing. The warnings of scientists like Bedrich Magas of Magallanes University, one of the first to emphasize the potential dangers, were dismissed by local boosters who feared a drop in tourism.

But that changed in September 2000, when the ozone hole opened directly over Punta Arenas. The Socialist government responded with a far-reaching prevention and education program that has become visible everywhere.

“It’s a new way of living,” said Lidia Amarales Osorno, the Chilean Health Ministry’s regional director here. “You’ll see the solar stoplight posted in supermarkets, offices and schools, and we even have an Ozone Brigade to raise consciousness about this problem.”

In elementary schools, a giant penguin named Paul leads a permanent campaign to teach children the steps they need to take to protect themselves. Many schools also hoist a flag each morning to alert their pupils’ families of the expected level of ultraviolet rays, and in some poor neighborhoods, skin creams are even distributed free to youngsters.

“But the truth is that there is only so much that we can do here ourselves,” Dr. Amarales said.

This year, to everyone’s bafflement, the situation has been relatively mild. The ozone hole split in two for only the second time since monitoring began, with only the smaller part passing over Punta Arenas, winds have been calmer than usual, and the hole has begun to retract earlier than usual.

But scientists here warn that the problem may persist until the middle of the century and is likely to worsen through the decade.

The laboratory here has also reported the appearance of smaller ozone holes in central Chile, and health officials say that the incidence of melanoma, the most common form of skin cancer, in Santiago, the country’s capital, increased by 105 percent between 1992 and 1998.

Because solar radiation reaches the ground at a more acute angle here than places farther north, Punta Arenas may actually be at less risk than other parts of Chile.

But this time of year, atmospheric scientists from all over the world flock here anyway, drawn by the opportunity to study a rare and little-understood phenomenon. Their presence, rather than reassuring residents, only adds to their sense of unease.

“We feel like we are rabbits in a laboratory experiment,” said Ivan Mansilla Vera, 36, an engineer and father of two young children. “Nobody knows what is going to happen to us.”

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New reasons for eating organic?

By Francesca Lyman, MSNBC

SEATTLE, Dec. 18 – If you include organic foods in your holiday menu, youll be in step with the latest food trends, according to industry polls. And you may also be doing your childrens health a favor. Parents who feed their children organically grown food can substantially lower the levels of pesticide residues to which their kids are exposed, according to a new study.

Even before the U.S. Department of Agricultures “organic” seal went into effect last October, which certifies foods grown free of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, growth hormones and genetically-engineered substances, Alexandra Ramdin decided to give organic foods a try.

“Nothing had been conclusively proven showing organic food to be healthier or more nutritious,” says Ramdin, a Seattle mother of two daughters, ages 2 and 5. But I decided to give organic the benefit of the doubt.

Now, having enrolled in a study that tested children to determine whether eating organic food reduced their exposure to pesticides, Ramdin is even more certain about her choice.

She and a neighbor, whose family eats a conventional diet, were among 40 households who kept food diaries of their children for three days, then collected their kids urine for analysis. The study by researchers at the University of Washington concluded that children fed a diet of organic foods were exposed to far fewer six to nine times less toxic pesticides than children fed a conventional diet.

Buying organic makes me feel good, that Im doing something good for the land, says Ramdin. But its great to hear that there are real differences in what chemicals my children were exposed to.

STUDY COMPARES DIETS

While other studies have documented the presence of pesticide metabolites, or breakdown products of the synthetic chemicals, in childrens bodies, this is the first study to document the difference in exposures to pesticides offered by an organic versus a conventional diet, says Richard Wiles of the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit research organization based in Washington, D.C.

The researchers measured six metabolites that derive from some 39 organophosphorus pesticides, the most commonly used in the United States and also some of the most toxic. They compared a group of 18 organic-eating children with 21 conventional food-eating children all roughly the same age (2-to-5-years-old on average), gender, and of similar family income. The children with primarily organic diets had far lower levels of the metabolites in their bodies.

The study was published online Oct. 31 in the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences journal Environmental Health Perspectives and will be forthcoming in its print edition this spring.

Its definitely a big step ahead, says Wiles. It proves what weve said all along that eating food with more pesticide residues can make a difference in what actually gets into the body.

Now Wiles and his group are hoping to convince the USDA to inform consumers of the findings.

USDA has always insisted that organic is no safer, but it is safer with respect to pesticide exposure, as this study shows …, Wiles said in a statement on the groups Web site.

INDUSTRY DOWNPLAYS RESULTS

Representatives of the agricultural chemical industry downplayed the significance of the study.

We can speculate all day about the possibilities of what those pesticide exposures might mean for children, but these researchers havent proven that these children are having their health harmed in any way, said Ray McAllister of Crop Life America, a trade association representing manufacturers and distributors of agricultural chemicals. In fact, those metabolites are not toxic to the children.

But some scientists familiar with the study disagree.

The sheer presence of a metabolite shows exposure to these toxic pesticides, said Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of the Childrens Center for Health and the Environment at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. This study contributes to public understanding of the importance of eating organic food and changes the perception that its no safer than conventional food at least with respect to chemical exposures.

Just how toxic those exposures were to the children is difficult to say, said Richard Fenske, one of the researchers involved in the study. The metabolites in question could derive from any of a number of organophosphorus compounds in use on fruits and vegetables, some of which are more toxic than others.

What we do know is that chronic exposures to low levels of pesticides could very well be significant, said Cynthia Curl, another researcher involved with the study. Children exposed to high levels of organophosphate pesticides are at risk for bone and brain cancer, neuroblastoma and childhood leukemia, she added.

The researchers did not conclude that children eating conventional diets were being exposed to higher levels of toxins than those set by the EPA.

That they were being exposed is a grey area of concern, said Curl.

Their metabolites were higher than the adult averages found in some of the most recent Center for Disease Control human exposure studies, added Fenske.

In light of the uncertainty over how much pesticide is on food and how it might affect children, the researchers concluded that one way parents can take steps to reduce their childrens exposure is to feed them organic food.

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Industrial Farming Causes Trouble for Bees

PRINCETON, New Jersey, December 20, 2002 (ENS) – Intensive, industrial scale farming may be damaging one of the very natural resources that successful crops require: pollinating bees.

A study by scientists at Princeton University found that native bee populations plummet as agricultural intensity goes up. In farms studied in and around the Sacramento Valley in California, concentrated farming appeared to reduce bee populations by eliminating natural habitats and poisoning them with pesticides, the researchers reported.

U.S. farmers may not have noticed this effect because they achieve much of their harvests with the help of imported bees rented from beekeepers. These rented bees, however, are in decline because of disease and heavy pesticide use.

The study, to be published this week in an online edition of the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” found that native bees are capable of doing a lot more pollinating than previously believed. But it would take careful land use to take advantage of that capacity, the researchers concluded, because current high density, pesticide dependent agriculture cannot support native bees.

“This is a valuable service that we may actually be destroying through our own land management practices,” said Princeton ecologist Claire Kremen, who co-wrote the study with Neal Williams, a postdoctoral researcher, and Robbin Thorp of the University of California-Davis.

Suppressing the many species of native bees and relying on just a few species of imported ones may be risky, said Kremen. Farmers who use managed bee populations – that is, most commercial farmers – depend on fewer than 11 species out of the 20,000 to 30,000 bee species worldwide.

Other researchers have estimated that $5 billion to $14 billion worth of U.S. crops are pollinated by a single species of bee, the European honey bee.

“Right now we are really very dependent on that species,” said Kremen. “If something happened to that species and we haven’t developed other avenues, we could really be in great difficulty.”

The researchers spent two years examining watermelon farms located at varying distances from oak woodlands and chaparral habitats that are native to the Sacramento Valley. They also looked at land that was farmed with pesticides and without pesticides. They focused on watermelon because it requires a lot of pollen and multiple bee visits to produce marketable fruit.

They found that native bee visits dropped off in the farms that were distant from natural habitats and that used pesticides.

“We could then multiply the number of visits by the number of [pollen] grains deposited per visit and sum that up for all the species and figure out how much pollen the watermelon plants were receiving,” said Kremen. “We found that, where it still flourished, the native bee community could be sufficient to provide the pollination service for the watermelon.”

One interesting finding, said Kremen, was that the mix of native bees providing the pollination was very different in the two years of the study. In one year, a few strong pollinators accounted for most of it, while in the other, many species contributed.

“That says something about the need for long term studies and also argues for the need to maintain diversity,” said Kremen.

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Mercury From China Rains Down on California

SANTA CRUZ, California, December 20, 2002 (ENS) – Industrial emissions in Asia are a major source of mercury in rainwater that falls along the California coast, a new study suggests.

The mercury in rainwater is not in itself a health threat, but mercury pollution is a problem in San Francisco Bay and other California waters because the toxic element builds up in the food chain. State regulatory agencies are looking for ways to reduce the amount of mercury entering the state’s waters from various sources.

It is not just the mercury itself but a whole cocktail of atmospheric pollutants that contribute to the deposition of mercury in rainfall. Elemental mercury behaves as a gas in the atmosphere and is not washed out in rain until it has been oxidized into a charged ionic form that can be captured by water droplets.

Ozone, a major component of urban and industrial smog, plays a key role in this oxidation process, said Douglas Steding, lead author of a paper published Thursday in the online edition of the “Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres.” The report by Steding and other researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) will appear in a later print edition of the journal.

“There is a relatively large reservoir of mercury in the atmosphere, and it’s the rate of oxidation that determines how much of it gets deposited in rainfall,” Steding said.

Mercury is a trace contaminant of most coal, and emissions from coal burning power plants are a major source of mercury pollution in many parts of the world. In the Pacific Basin, the main source of atmospheric mercury is coal combustion in China.

China relies on coal as a fuel and accounts for about 10 percent of the total global industrial emissions of mercury.

Air pollution in China also generates ozone, which peaks during the winter due to increased fuel consumption for heating. Air loaded with mercury and ozone moves off the continent into the Western Pacific, where it is incorporated into developing storms.

“The mercury we measured in rainwater results from a combination of mercury emissions and ozone production, as well as meteorological factors – the storm tracks that transport the pollutants across the Pacific,” Steding said.

Steding collected rainwater samples at two sites in central California: on the coast at UCSC’s Long Marine Laboratory and at Moffett Field near San Jose, on the inland side of the Santa Cruz Mountains. For each rainfall event, the researchers used air mass trajectories calculated by a national climate lab to trace the movement of the storms across the Pacific from Asia.

Rainwater collected at the coastal site showed the background concentrations of mercury in storms as they arrived off the Pacific Ocean. Those measurements were about three times higher than estimates of the natural, preindustrial level, Steding said.

Rainwater from the inland site showed mercury concentrations 44 percent higher than at the coastal site. Steding attributed the difference between the two sites to ozone in Bay Area smog, rather than local emissions of mercury.

“There is a local influence of urban smog on the mercury oxidation rate. We see a background signal of mercury blowing off the Pacific, then a local enrichment that’s probably due to urban smog,” Steding said. “If we want to reduce mercury deposition, it’s not enough to shut down local emissions of mercury, because other pollutants influence how much of the mercury in the atmosphere ends up in rainwater.”

Steding said people should not worry about health effects from the mercury in rainwater, because the concentrations are very low. But the deposition in rain does add mercury to surface waters, where the toxin enters the food chain and builds up to high levels in certain kinds of fish.

State health officials have issued advisories warning people not to eat fish from more than a dozen bodies of water in California, including San Francisco Bay.

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McCain: Enough Hot Air, Already

By Steve Kettman, Wired News

02:00 AM Dec. 20, 2002 PT

Republican Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced late Thursday that he intends to hold Commerce Department hearings starting in January with the goal of taking action to fight global warming.

Such hearings would pressure the Bush administration—which has opted out of international efforts to battle the greenhouse effect—to focus on the problem.

“He’s very engaged on this issue,” said McCain spokeswoman Pia Pialorsi. McCain and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) have been working on legislation to create a trading system for buying and selling emissions, enabling heavier polluters to buy “credits” from lighter polluters to meet the specified threshold, Pialorsi said.

“He believes that we should reward improvements in energy efficiency, and that using the power of the marketplace to do that is the best approach,” Pialorsi said of McCain. “This is a very high priority for him.”

On Monday, Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol on fighting greenhouse-gas emissions, which means that if Russia ratifies early next year as expected, the international agreement will go into effect—without U.S. participation.

The Bush administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol in March 2001, arguing that it could hurt the struggling U.S. economy. Instead, the White House called for more study of the issue.

Many saw U.S. rejection as a fatal blow to Kyoto’s chances of ratification, but in Bonn, Germany, in July 2001 a watered-down version of the treaty met with surprise agreement. That version sets targets for reductions in emissions of heat-trapping gases below 1990 levels.

“I am very confident that Russia will ratify,” Jrg Haas, a global warming expert at the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin, said this week. “It announced ratification before the world’s leaders in Johannesburg, and I have no doubt that the Kyoto Protocol will enter into force.”

Alexey Kokorin, who handles climate-change issues for the Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund, said the Russian government was likely to ratify Kyoto not out of concern for the environment but out of economic self-interest.

Under Kyoto, countries will buy and sell emissions credits, which will enable wealthier countries to use these credits to reach their targets. Russia would be one of the countries in a position to sell these credits—and could even hoard them to try to drive up the world market in emissions trading.

“There is some change in tactics,” Kokorin said. “We do not insist too much on the dangers of climate change and the importance of Kyoto to prevent a climate catastrophe, because (representatives of the Duma, Russia’s legislature) are extremely pragmatic to think about far future and … it is very, very difficult to assure them that climate change is really anthropogenic and dangerous on Russian territory.”

Already, Russia has been sounding out Japan, Canada and countries in Europe about emissions trading—before it reaches its final decision on the protocol.

“Russia stands to gain substantially from the emissions trading systems under Kyoto,” said Elliot Diringer, a former Clinton administration spokesman who now works at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

“So in that sense it has more to gain than to lose by ratifying,” Diringer said. “It depends whether Europeans are going to decide to buy some hot air.”

Diringer believes that the issue has the potential to galvanize the U.S. public, especially if a leader of McCain’s stature presses it. McCain has said that he disagreed with the Bush administration’s rejection of the treaty.

“The numbers have consistently shown that Americans think global warming is real, and support action to address it,” Diringer said. “There is broad support for doing something about global warming. Unfortunately, the support is also thin. But if anything, the issue is drawing more attention than ever, in part because of the actions of the Bush administration.”

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Study Shows Straw Bale Construction Cuts Lumber Use in Half

Clyde built our very own strawbale house here in Marathon, Texas.

Strawbale structures can be constructed with up to half of the amount of lumber as conventional stick frame buildings. That is the conclusion of a study commissioned by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Read further details in the report, here.

GM Foods Debate Hits Latin America

Mexican Greenpeace activists pick packets of toasted tortillas made with transgenic corn flour off a shelf in a supermarket in Mexico City, Oct. 11. © (Andrew Winning/Reuters)

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, December 16, 2002 (ENS) - A forum on Latin America and biotechnology did little to paint a clear picture of the future for genetically modified crops in the nations south of the United States. But it did clearly illustrate that the real debate over agricultural biotechnology rests between the European Union and the United States.

Today’s “Latin America Biotechnology Forum,” hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, detailed how Mexico, Brazil and Argentina are all at very different points on the path to acceptance of genetically modified (GM) foods. The agricultural industries in all three countries all seem keen to deploy biotechnology in their fields, but their governments and public citizens are not so sure.

And none of these countries can escape the shadow of the U.S./EU debate, which is threatening to boil over into a major trade dispute.

The United States produces some two-thirds of the world’s genetically modified crops and is embroiled in a bitter dispute with the European Union over its four year moratorium on the approval of new GM crops.

The U.S. agricultural industry claims it has lost hundreds of millions, including $200 million in corn sales, because of the moratorium. In late November, the European Union proposed stricter labeling and traceability of all food and animal feed containing more than 0.9 percent genetically modified ingredients. EU officials say they are simply responding to the European public’s demand for tight controls.

These new regulations could affect more than $4 billion in U.S. agricultural trade. It is not surprising U.S. officials are warning of possible action through the World Trade Organization (WTO).

“The EU moratorium on approvals is a blatant violation of the WTO treaty,” said David Hegwood, counsel to the Secretary of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. “If we can get the moratorium lifted without taking a case, then it saves us a whole lot of time and trouble. But that’s our ultimate objective, to get the moratorium lifted.”

Hegwood, the luncheon speaker at today’s forum, focused not on Latin America, but on the need to pressure Europe to change its ways. The ripple effect of EU policies, he said, is having a devastating impact on African nations who have refused U.S. food aid for fear of genetically modified crops.

“The fear of Europe is keeping food out of the mouths of hungry people in Africa,” Hegwood said, adding that African governments are needlessly concerned that the food aid will end up in crops or beef tagged for export to Europe. These exports then could be rejected by the EU because of its moratorium, he explained.

Still, many countries as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan have supported the right of African nations to ban genetically modified foods. South Africa and Japan, among others, have said they can help fill the void if U.S. GM corn is not accepted as food aid.

But the villain is clear in Hegwood’s eyes, and the implications are grave, he said.

“European consumers aren’t sure about biotechnology so hungry people in Africa don’t eat,” Hegwood said. “If European attitudes are influential enough to take food away from hungry people in Africa, imagine what impact it is having in the rest of the world.”

“If it happens to the United States, it will happen to every country that utilizes biotechnology,” Hegwood said.

According to representatives from Latin America at today’s forum, these attitudes are indeed having an impact on their countries. The governments of Argentina, Brazil and Mexico are all concerned about the export market for genetically modified goods and this economic concern has been added to a list of worries over the environmental and social impacts of agricultural biotechnology.

The patents for GM crops are held by only a handful of multinational corporations and this weighs heavy on the minds of many Mexicans, according to Jose Luis Solleiro, member of La Comisión Intersecretarial de Bioseguridad y Organismos Genéticamente Modificados (CIBIOGEM)’s Biosafety Council and technical director of AgroBIO Mexico.

“There is concern over increasing economic control by the multinationals,” Solleiro said. “The idea that biotechnology only benefits big multinational corporations has very deep roots in Mexico.”

Mexico allows genetically modified foods to be imported as long as they are labeled, but the planting of GM crops has not been allowed. The fear that genetic modifications could end up affecting the native corn is a paramount concern for Mexicans. Corn has it origins in Mexico and is the staple food for much of the population.

Fears over this biosafety aspect of genetically modified crops has prompted the introduction of six separate Congressional resolutions addressing the issue, said Alvaro Rodriguez Tirado, managing director of Estrategia Total, an agricultural consulting firm.

“Mexican society has increased pressure on Congress to do something,” Tirado said, adding that a recent survey indicated 40 percent of Mexicans in support of GM crops, 40 percent opposed and 20 percent undecided.

Brazil has had an import and production ban on genetically modified crops since 1998, much to the distaste of the Brazilian representatives at today’s forum. Biotechnology could help the country lower its high costs of production, according to Paulo D’Arrigo Vellinho, executive director of the Brazilian Poultry Industry Union and vice president for the South Region of Brazil.

“All we have in Brazil is a political issue,” agreed Luis Antonio Barreto de Castro, head of the Genetic Resources and Biotechnology/Brazilian Agricultural Research Corp. from the Ministry of Agriculture and Supply, known as Cenargem/Embrapa.

“Agriculture is the only sector that is profitable in Brazil,” Barreto de Castro said, adding that he hoped economic pressures could help prompt the incoming government to reconsider the policy against GM crops.

There was evidence later today, however, that some change may be afoot. Brazil’s new agricultural minister told Globo TV today that Brazil might need to import corn next year from genetically modified crop producers to feed its livestock.

Many Brazilian farmers already grow GM crops in Brazil. Barreto de Castro said government officials estimate some four million hectares of GM soybeans are been grown throughout the country. This accounts for some 25 percent of the Brazil’s soybean production.

GM soybeans is a crop Argentina has embraced with gusto, as some 90 percent of its soybean crop is genetically modified, according to Marcelo Regunaga, Argentina’s former agricultural secretary. Argentina is the world’s number one soybean exporter and has found the GM version of the crop a major boon to its agricultural industry.

“We don’t subsidize agricultural production so we need to be competitive through means that can lower our costs of production,” Regunaga said. “And these products have a positive impact on the environment.”

Less pesticides and higher yields, Regunaga said, have many in Argentina convinced that genetically modified crops are the future. But its experience with GM corn shows that all is not rosy with agricultural biotechnology.

GM corn from biotechnology giant Monsanto was introduced in 1998 but has not been approved in Argentina. Argentina exports some 9.5 million tons of corn a year. Although only some of its corn is exported to European markets, the fear that GM corn would be rejected has led the government to avoid the genetically modified variety.

Argentina’s dilemma is not one farmers in the United States are facing as they embrace genetically modified crops with increasing enthusiasm. Some 34 percent of U.S. corn is genetically modified, as is some 71 percent of U.S. cotton and 75 percent of U.S. soybeans.

“Biotechnology foods do not create an environmental concern, nor are they a threat to consumers or producers,” said Tom Sell, majority deputy staff director for the House Committee on Agriculture. “There is wide consumer acceptance in the United States.”

“Scientists say these foods are safe - that is the established consensus,” added Karil Kokenderfer, director of international trade environmental affairs and coordinator of biotechnology for the Grocery Manufacturers of America. Kokendefer expressed the unanimous view of all the forum’s panelists that labeling, especially the regime planned by the European Union, is unnecessary.

“Labeling is not knowledge nor a surrogate for food safety,” she said. “It is not an appropriate import control nor is it a reflection of consumer values.”

The European approach, added Terry Medley, vice president of global regulatory affairs for DuPont Agriculture and Nutrition, will not enhance public confidence as it is intended.

“It will cause more trouble and distrust,” he said.

More than 35 countries, however, have followed Europe’s lead and developed some form of labeling requirement for genetically modified foods.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All Rights Reserved.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

NASA Launching Satellite to Study Ice

By Andrew Bridges

AP Science Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — NASA scientists hope to get new insight into the future of global ocean levels with the launch this week of a laser-equipped satellite designed to measure the waxing and waning of the planet’s largest ice sheets.

The Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or Icesat, is intended to spend a minimum of three years making nonstop measurements of the elevation of the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica.

That will help answer the question of whether those layers of ice, which are up to two miles thick in places and contain an estimated 8 million cubic miles of fresh water, are growing or shrinking.

“Very simply, we do not know,” said Jay Zwally, the mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. “Not only do we not know what is happening today, we don’t know what is going to happen in the future.”

Icesat is scheduled for launch aboard a Delta II rocket Thursday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast. Joining it atop the Delta II is the $16 million Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer satellite, or Chipsat, which will look at the glow of the interstellar medium, the gas that fills the space between the stars.

The question that the $282 million Icesat project is designed to answer is important: if more ice melts off the sheets than piles up as snow, the water would contribute to the already measurable rise in global sea levels. Scientists fear that rise could flood coastal regions and upset the ocean circulation patterns that play an important role in determining climate conditions.

Sea levels currently are rising about 0.8 of an inch every decade. About half of that rise is attributable to the melting of small glaciers and the warming of the oceans, which expand as temperatures rise. The cause of the other half is unknown, although ice sheet melting is suspected.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates sea levels could rise 18 inches over the next century — give or take 15 inches. Icesat’s measurements should shrink that uncertainty, Zwally said.

At a recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, scientists said the fringes of the Greenland ice sheet and ice on the Arctic Ocean are melting at rates unseen for decades. In Antarctica, however, the area covered by sea ice during the winter is growing.

Icesat will bounce a laser beam off the Earth’s surface 40 times a second. Should someone chance to look up as the satellite passes overhead at 16,000 mph, the pulse from the 330-watt laser would appear as a green star, scientists said. By the time the flash reaches Earth, it will have less energy than a camera flash and will pose no danger.

Over a year’s worth of repeated measurements, the satellite should detect changes in ice sheet elevation as small as 0.4 of an inch. Should that amount of ice melt, it would raise sea levels by mere hundredths of an inch.

Icesat also will measure ice sheets in Peru and the Canadian Arctic, land elevations and the height of clouds. Alaska’s glaciers may be too small to monitor from space.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Hydrogen: Empowering the People

by Jeremy Rifkin

[from the December 23, 2002 issue of The Nation]

While the fossil-fuel era enters its sunset years, a new energy regime is being born that has the potential to remake civilization along radically new lines—hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most basic and ubiquitous element in the universe. It never runs out and produces no harmful CO2 emissions when burned; the only byproducts are heat and pure water. That is why it’s been called “the forever fuel.”

Hydrogen has the potential to end the world’s reliance on oil. Switching to hydrogen and creating a decentralized power grid would also be the best assurance against terrorist attacks aimed at disrupting the national power grid and energy infrastructure. Moreover, hydrogen power will dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions and mitigate the effects of global warming. In the long run, the hydrogen-powered economy will fundamentally change the very nature of our market, political and social institutions, just as coal and steam power did at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Hydrogen must be extracted from natural sources. Today, nearly half the hydrogen produced in the world is derived from natural gas via a steam-reforming process. The natural gas reacts with steam in a catalytic converter. The process strips away the hydrogen atoms, leaving carbon dioxide as the byproduct.

There is, however, another way to produce hydrogen without using fossil fuels in the process. Renewable sources of energy—wind, photovoltaic, hydro, geothermal and biomass—can be harnessed to produce electricity. The electricity, in turn, can be used, in a process called electrolysis, to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can then be stored and used, when needed, in a fuel cell to generate electricity for power, heat and light.

Why generate electricity twice, first to produce electricity for the process of electrolysis and then to produce power, heat and light by way of a fuel cell? The reason is that electricity doesn’t store. So, if the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing or the water isn’t flowing, electricity can’t be generated and economic activity grinds to a halt. Hydrogen provides a way to store renewable sources of energy and insure an ongoing and continuous supply of power.

Hydrogen-powered fuel cells are just now being introduced into the market for home, office and industrial use. The major auto makers have spent more than $2 billion developing hydrogen-powered cars, buses and trucks, and the first mass-produced vehicles are expected to be on the road in just a few years.

In a hydrogen economy the centralized, top-down flow of energy, controlled by global oil companies and utilities, would become obsolete. Instead, millions of end users would connect their fuel cells into local, regional and national hydrogen energy webs (HEWs), using the same design principles and smart technologies that made the World Wide Web possible. Automobiles with hydrogen cells would be power stations on wheels, each with a generating capacity of 20 kilowatts. Since the average car is parked most of the time, it can be plugged in, during nonuse hours, to the home, office or the main interactive electricity network. Thus, car owners could sell electricity back to the grid. If just 25 percent of all US cars supplied energy to the grid, all the power plants in the country could be eliminated.

Once the HEW is set up, millions of local operators, generating electricity from fuel cells onsite, could produce more power more cheaply than can today’s giant power plants. When the end users also become the producers of their energy, the only role remaining for existing electrical utilities is to become “virtual power plants” that manufacture and market fuel cells, bundle energy services and coordinate the flow of energy over the existing power grids.

To realize the promise of decentralized generation of energy, however, the energy grid will have to be redesigned. The problem with the existing power grid is that it was designed to insure a one-way flow of energy from a central source to all the end users. Before the HEW can be fully actualized, changes in the existing power grid will have to be made to facilitate both easy access to the web and a smooth flow of energy services over the web. Connecting thousands, and then millions, of fuel cells to main grids will require sophisticated dispatch and control mechanisms to route energy traffic during peak and nonpeak periods. A new technology developed by the Electric Power Research Institute called FACTS (flexible alternative current transmission system) gives transmission companies the capacity to “deliver measured quantities of power to specified areas of the grid.”

Whether hydrogen becomes the people’s energy depends, to a large extent, on how it is harnessed in the early stages of development. The global energy and utility companies will make every effort to control access to this new, decentralized energy network just as software, telecommunications and content companies like Microsoft and AOL Time Warner have attempted to control access to the World Wide Web. It is critical that public institutions and nonprofit organizations—local governments, cooperatives, community development corporations, credit unions and the like—become involved early on in establishing distributed-generation associations (DGAs) in every country. Again, the analogy to the World Wide Web is apt. In the new hydrogen energy era, millions of end users will generate their own “content” in the form of hydrogen and electricity. By organizing collectively to control the energy they produce—just as workers in the twentieth century organized into unions to control their labor power—end users can better dictate the terms with commercial suppliers of fuel cells for lease, purchase or other use arrangements and with virtual utility companies, which will manage the decentralized “smart” energy grids. Creating the appropriate partnership between commercial and noncommercial interests will be critical to establishing the legitimacy, effectiveness and long-term viability of the new energy regime.

I have been describing, thus far, the implementation of hydrogen power mainly in industrialized countries, but it could have an even greater impact on emerging nations. The per capita use of energy throughout the developing world is a mere one-fifteenth of the consumption enjoyed in the United States. The global average per capita energy use for all countries is only one-fifth the level of this country. Lack of access to energy, especially electricity, is a key factor in perpetuating poverty around the world. Conversely, access to energy means more economic opportunity. In South Africa, for example, for every 100 households electrified, ten to twenty new businesses are created. Making the shift to a hydrogen energy regime—using renewable resources and technologies to produce the hydrogen—and creating distributed generation energy webs that can connect communities all over the world could lift billions of people out of poverty. As the price of fuel cells and accompanying appliances continues to plummet with innovations and economies of scale, they will become far more broadly available, as was the case with transistor radios, computers and cellular phones. The goal ought to be to provide stationary fuel cells for every neighborhood and village in the developing world.

Renewable energy technologies—wind, photovoltaic, hydro, biomass, etc.—can be installed in villages, enabling them to produce their own electricity and then use it to separate hydrogen from water and store it for subsequent use in fuel cells. In rural areas, where commercial power lines have not yet been extended because they are too expensive, stand-alone fuel cells can provide energy quickly and cheaply.

After enough fuel cells have been leased or purchased, and installed, mini energy grids can connect urban neighborhoods as well as rural villages into expanding energy networks. The HEW can be built organically and spread as the distributed generation becomes more widely used. The larger hydrogen fuel cells have the additional advantage of producing pure drinking water as a byproduct, an important consideration in village communities around the world where access to clean water is often a critical concern.

Were all individuals and communities in the world to become the producers of their own energy, the result would be a dramatic shift in the configuration of power: no longer from the top down but from the bottom up. Local peoples would be less subject to the will of far-off centers of power. Communities would be able to produce many of their own goods and services and consume the fruits of their own labor locally. But, because they would also be connected via the worldwide communications and energy webs, they would be able to share their unique commercial skills, products and services with other communities around the planet. This kind of economic self-sufficiency becomes the starting point for global commercial interdependence, and is a far different economic reality from that of colonial regimes of the past, in which local peoples were made subservient to and dependent on powerful forces from the outside. By redistributing power broadly to everyone, it is possible to establish the conditions for a truly equitable sharing of the earth’s bounty. This is the essence of reglobalization from the bottom up.

Two great forces have dominated human affairs over the course of the past two centuries. The American Revolution unleashed a new human aspiration to universalize the radical notion of political democracy. That force continues to gain momentum and will likely spread to the Middle East, China and every corner of the earth before the current century is half over.

A second force was unleashed on the eve of the American Revolution when James Watt patented his steam engine, inaugurating the beginning of the fossil-fuel era and an industrial way of life that fundamentally changed the way we work.

The problem is that these two powerful forces have been at odds with each other from the very beginning, making for a deep contradiction in the way we live our lives. While in the political arena we covet greater participation and equal representation, our economic life has been characterized by ever greater concentration of power in ever fewer institutional hands. In large part that is because of the very nature of the fossil-fuel energy regime that we rely on to maintain an industrialized society. Unevenly distributed, difficult to extract, costly to transport, complicated to refine and multifaceted in the forms in which they are used, fossil fuels, from the very beginning, required a highly centralized command-and-control structure to finance exploration and production, and coordinate the flow of energy to end users. The highly centralized fossil-fuel infrastructure inevitably gave rise to commercial enterprises organized along similar lines. Recall that small cottage industries gave way to large-scale factory production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to take advantage of the capital-intensive costs and economies of scale that went hand in hand with steam power, and later oil and electrification. In the discussion of the emergence of industrial capitalism, little attention has been paid to the fact that the energy regime that emerged determined, to a great extent, the nature of the commercial forms that took shape.

Now, on the cusp of the hydrogen era, we have at least the “possibility” of making energy available in every community of the world—hydrogen exists everywhere on earth—empowering the whole of the human race. By creating an energy regime that is decentralized and potentially universally accessible to everyone, we establish the technological framework for creating a more participatory and sustainable economic life—one that is compatible with the principle of democratic participation in our political life. Making the commercial and political arenas seamless, however, will require a human struggle of truly epic proportions in the coming decades. What is in doubt is not the technological know-how to make it happen but, rather, the collective human will, determination and resolve to transform the great hope of hydrogen into a democratic reality.

Copyright © 2002 The Nation

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Record year for Greenland ice sheet melt

By Koren Capozza

UPI Science News

From the Science & Technology Desk

Published 12/7/2002 11:59 PM

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7 (UPI) — New studies on atmospheric, marine and terrestrial changes at the planet’s poles suggest Earth may be entering a period of rapid climatic change.

Scientists caution that the evidence is mixed and the jury still out on whether humans are causing the present period of global warming, but significant new findings add credence to the theory that the planet is experiencing an unprecedented rate of system change.

One piece of evidence comes from a University of Colorado study, which found that the Greenland ice sheet melted in record amounts during 2002 while the Arctic sea ice plummeted to the lowest level in satellite record.

Satellite data collected since 1979 indicate a dramatically increasing melting trend, with the 2002 melt extent surpassing all previous records. Authors of the study suspect the 2002 sea ice record may actually be the lowest in several centuries.

Run-off from the melting ice is also likely contributing to a rise in ocean levels and a decrease in sea ice, said the authors.

“We warm up the [sea] ice — more of it melts. That opens more water and more radiation is absorbed which continues the vicious cycle,” said James Morison, professor of marine science at the University of Washington.

As the surface of the Greenland ice cap melts, it may also set in motion a cycle which accelerates the rate of ice flow. Melt water penetrates the ice sheet up to 2 km deep creating a lubricating thin layer of water which causes the ice sheet to slide towards the ocean, said Konrad Steffen, professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Current temperatures in Greenland seem to mirror another period of abnormal warming which occurred in the 1930s. However, the rate of temperature increase is much higher than in the past, said Steffen.

A different cycle with similar consequences is occurring at the tree line in Arctic regions, according to research by scientists at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF). The tree line is creeping forward, encroaching on regions which were previously inhospitable to forest growth. Researchers have also observed an increase in spruce forest density and an expansion of shrubs in the treeless portion of the Arctic.

Aerial photographs taken of an Arctic region in Alaska in 1949 compared with snapshots taken of the same region in 2000 demonstrate that the area, once mostly denuded of vegetation, is now peppered with shrub vegetation.

This rapid increase in plant growth in the Arctic may influence the climate system, said F. Stuart Chapin of UAF. The shrubs and trees absorb more of the sun’s energy, which is later transferred to the atmosphere — a process that may enhance the Arctic warming effect. However, because plants also mitigate the influence of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it’s unclear what net effect this new plant growth will ultimately have on the global environment, noted Chapin.

Still, Chapin estimates that if this expansion in vegetation growth occurred throughout the Alaskan arctic, it could increase summer temperatures in the northern part of the state by as much as 2.5 to 7 degrees F.

“If we look at these individual pieces of evidence, it’s hard to conclude that there’s rapid change going on but taken together it represents a pretty compelling story that change is occurring,” said Larry Hinzman, researcher with the Water and Environmental Research Center at UAF.”

Copyright © 2002 United Press International

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Water for Health Declared a Human Right

GENEVA, Switzerland, December 4, 2002 (ENS) - Safe and secure drinking water is a human right, a United Nations committee has declared formally for the first time. “Water should be treated as a social and cultural good, and not primarily as an economic commodity,” the committee said, siding with those who object to the privatization of water supplies.

The United Nations Committee on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights took the unprecedented step of agreeing on a General Comment on water as a human right, saying, ?Water is fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity. It is a pre-requisite to the realization of all other human rights.?

A General Comment is an interpretation of the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This one was signed on November 27 as the Committee wound up its three week autumn session.

Although the Covenant does not expressly refer to the word “water,” the committee determined that the right to water is “clearly implicit” in the rights contained in two sections of the Covenant.

The General Comment means that the 145 countries which have ratified the Covenant “have a constant and continuing duty” to progressively ensure that everyone has access to safe and secure drinking water and sanitation facilities ? equitably and without discrimination.

?Countries will be required to ?respect, protect and fulfil? individuals? rights to safe drinking water and sanitation,” said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, quoting from the General Comment.

The General Comment specifically recognizes that water, like health, is an essential element for achieving other human rights, such as the rights to adequate food and nutrition, housing and education.

“This is a major boost in efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of halving the number of people without access to water and sanitation by 2015 - two pre-requisites for health,? Dr. Brundtland said.

An estimated 1.1 billion of the world’s people, roughly one in six, do not have access to clean drinking water, according to WHO figures. Sanitation progress has also been slow, and some 2.4 billion people, about one in every 2.5 individuals, still do not have access to a safe latrine.

Inadequate water and sanitation is “a major cause of poverty and the growing disparity between rich and poor,” WHO said.

“The fact that water is now regarded as a basic human right will give all members of the Alliance an effective tool to make a real difference at country level,? said Dr. Brundtland, a physician and former Norwegian prime minister.

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization is an international coalition of partners. It includes national governments, international organizations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank; philanthropic institutions, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Children’s Vaccine Program, and the Rockefeller Foundation; the private sector, represented by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations; as well as research and public health institutions.

The General Comment provides a tool for civil society to hold governments accountable for ensuring equitable access to water. It is intended to focus attention and activities on the poor and vulnerable, the committee says.

The General Comment states, “The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, affordable, physically accessible, safe and acceptable water for personal and domestic uses.”

“While those uses vary between cultures, an adequate amount of safe water is necessary to prevent death from dehydration, to reduce the risk of water related disease and to provide for consumption, cooking, personal and domestic hygienic requirements,” the text states.

“The right to water contains both freedom and entitlements,” the committee states in its Comment. “The freedoms include the right to maintain access to existing water supplies necessary for the right to water; and the right to be free from interference, such as the right to be free from arbitrary disconnections or contamination of water supplies.”

Sufficient water should be obtained in a sustainable manner, the committee said, to ensure that “the right can be realized for present and future generations.”

The formal statement of water and sanitation as a human right is intended as a framework to assist governments in establishing effective policies and strategies that yield “real benefits for health and society,” WHO said.

The world health agency associates 3.4 million deaths each year with inadequate water and sanitation. Diseases such as malaria, cholera, dysentery, schistosomiasis, infectious hepatitis and diarrhoea are the killers.

Dr. Brundtland estimates that one third of the global burden of disease, in all age groups, can be attributed to environmental risk factors. Over 40 percent of this burden falls on children under five years of age, even though they make up only about 10 percent of the world’s population. The director-general calls this area “an urgent priority for WHO?s work.”

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All Rights Reserved.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

World Population Headed for 9.2 Billion by 2050

NEW YORK, New York, December 3, 2002 (ENS) - Global population is projected to increase from 6.28 billion today to 9.2 billion by 2050, according to “The State of World Population 2002” a report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released today. The least developed countries have the highest fertility and population growth, and their populations are expected to triple in the next 50 years, from 600 million to 1.8 billion, the UN agency predicts.

UNFPA’s State of World Population report has been published annually since 1978. This year’s edition entitled “People, Poverty and Possibilities: Making Development Work for the Poor,” demonstrates that smaller families, slower population growth and higher productivity occur in developing countries that invested in education and health, including family planning.

On the other hand, inadequate efforts to provide reproductive health services and combat gender inequality result in continued high fertility among the poor, perpetuating poverty and inequality within households and nations.

Pointing to a “population effect” on economic growth, the report cites new data showing that since 1970, developing countries with lower fertility and slower population growth have registered faster economic growth.

Family planning programs and population assistance were responsible for almost one third of the global decline in fertility from 1972 to 1994, the UNFPA report states. “These social investments attack poverty directly and empower individuals, especially women. They enable choice.”

Half the world’s population, or more than three billion people, live on less than $2 a day, and one billion people live on less than $1 a day.

Poverty, however, is more than a lack of income, the UNFPA says. It is characterized by insecurity, inequality, poor health, including poor reproductive health, and illiteracy. Its effects are worsened by the very wide gap in most societies between the richest and the poorest.

The report calls on countries to take advantage of the unique economic opportunity represented by falling birth rates. A “demographic window” opens when a rapid decline in fertility increases the proportion of working age people relative to younger and older dependants, the UNFPA says.

This gives developing countries that make appropriate investments a one-time chance to increase productivity and savings and lay the basis for future progress. The window closes as the population ages and older dependants start increasing, the agency says.

Through this report, the UNFPA calls on international donors to increase their funding of reproductive health programs to cover a shortfall.

Spending on basic reproductive health and population programs in 2000 was $10.9 billion, $6.1 billion short of the $17 billion the international community agreed was needed to achieve universal access to reproductive health care by 2015.

Contributions by donor countries were less than half the required $5.7 billion level.

Addressing population concerns, the UNFPA states, is critical to meeting the UN’s Millennium Development Goals of halving global poverty and hunger by 2015, reducing maternal and child mortality, curbing HIV/AIDS, advancing gender equality, and promoting environmentally sustainable development.

The UNFPA report maintains that to meet these goals in developing countries, urgent action that targets poor people is needed to combat inadequate reproductive health, unwanted fertility, illiteracy and discrimination against women.

There is a clear connection between population growth and every environmental challenge facing our planet, most environmental organizations recognize. As populations grow, pressure on freshwater resources increases, forested land is converted to fields to feed more people, and wildlife habitat shrinks. More people use more natural resources and the produce more wastes.

The number of people on Earth, where they live, and how they live all affect the condition of the environment, according to Jonathan Nash and Roger-Mark De Souza in their July 2002 paper for the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, DC based nonprofit organization that also issues an annual report on population.

“Human demographic dynamics, such as the size, growth, distribution, age composition, and migration of populations, are among the many factors that can lead to environmental change,” Nash and De Souza write. “Consumption patterns, development choices, wealth and land distribution, government policies, and technology can mediate or exacerbate the effects of demographics on the environment.”

Still, the United States is unwilling to support family planning services overseas if abortions are offered. On July 22, President George W. Bush officially announced that he will withhold $34 million in funds for the UNFPA.

Bush’s decision was based on claims that the UNFPA supports forced abortions in China. Bush held to this decision despite a report from the administration’s own fact finding team that found no evidence that the UN organization “has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in China.”

The result is a 13 percent cut in funding for the UNFPA’s international family planning programs. The $34 million will be distributed to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s single largest donor for population research which the Bush administration says is working to expand the range of available contraceptive choices.

The Bush administration threatened in late October to back out of a United Nations population policy ratified by 179 nations at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development if the terms “reproductive rights” and “reproductive health services” were not removed from the language of the agreement, because they imply a right to abortion.

The American delegation to the Asian and Pacific Population Conference delivered this threat to the surprised attendees at a population conference in Bangkok.

On November 7, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher clarified the U.S. position. “The United States remains committed to providing assistance to help achieve the three principal goals adopted in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development concerning reproductive health, maternal mortality, and education,” he said.

“Our support for the International Conference on Population and Development’s goals, however, in no way implies U.S. promotion of abortion. We will continue to take this position at future international meetings on population issues, including the upcoming Fifth Asia and Pacific Conference on Population in December,” Boucher said.

The conference, Population and Poverty in Asia and the Pacific, will be held in Bangkok, Thailand from December 11 to 17.

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