PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet TERRA 19/2003 - 30 April 2003
----------------------------------
"The biosphere is the most
complicated of all the things we
humans have to deal with. The science of
planetary ecology is
still young and undeveloped. It is not
surprising that honest
and well-informed experts can disagree
about facts. But beyond
the disagreements about facts, there is
another deeper disagreement
about values. The disagreement about
values may be described in an
oversimplified way as a disagreement
between naturalists and
humanists. Naturalists believe that
nature knows best. For them
the highest value is respect for the
natural order of things.
Any gross human disruption of the
natural environment is evil.
Excessive burning of fossil fuels, and
the consequent increase
of atmospheric carbon dioxide, are
unqualified evils. Humanists
believe that humans are an essential
part of nature. Through human
minds the biosphere has acquired the
capacity to steer its own
evolution, and we are now in charge.
Humans have the right to
reorganize nature so that humans and
biosphere can survive and
prosper together."
--Freeman
J. Dyson, The New York Review of Books, 15 May 2003
(1) BACK TO EDEN: RESTORING THE MARSHES OF IRAQ
The Washington Post, 28 April 2003
(2) A CLIMATE SHIFT TO COOLER CONDITIONS?
CO2 Science Magazine, 30 April 2003
(3) LATE-HOLOCENE CLIMATE AND ECOSYSTEM HISTORY IN CHESAPEAKE BAY
CO2 Science Magazine, 30 April 203
(4) DON'T PANIC: FLU, MALARIA AND FALLING DOWN STAIRS ARE BIGGER
KILLERS
The Guardian, 28 April 2003
(5) WHAT A WORLD!
The New York Review of Books, 15 May 2003
(6) RE: PROPHETS OF DOOM VYING FOR SUPREMACY
Max Wallis <wallismk@Cardiff.ac.uk>
(7) SARS IS NOT ENOUGH
Don Stockbauer <donstockbauer@hotmail.com>
(8) PLAGUE OR PANIC?
Pavel <fishhook@erols.com>
(9) THE TWIN EPIDEMICS OF 1918
Clark Whelton <whel@berk.com>
(10) AND FINALLY: "PRINCE CHARLES IS READING TOO MANY SILLY
BOOKS"
The Times, 29 April 2003
=============
(1) BACK TO EDEN: RESTORING THE MARSHES OF IRAQ
>From The Washington Post, 28 April 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39733-2003Apr25.html
By Louis Jacobson
Now that the war in Iraq has come to an abrupt end, a team of
scientists
will soon be heading to southern Iraq to determine whether a
desert
twice the size of Rhode Island can be turned back into the
primeval
marshland it once was -- before Saddam Hussein drained it.
The marshlands of Mesopotamia, at the confluence of the Tigris
and
Euphrates rivers, have long been revered both for their unusual
wetland
ecology and for the 5,000-year-old culture of the Madan, or
"Marsh
Arabs."
The marshlands may have been the inspiration for the biblical
Garden of
Eden, and the Madan are thought to descend from the Sumerians,
who
established humankind's first civilization.
As recently as the 1990s, the Madan were still using marsh reeds
to
construct delicately arched dwellings on artificial islands and
waterways. They lived on fish and water buffalo that lived in the
marshes and exported the surplus to other parts of Iraq.
The marshes began to decline in the 1950s as dam-building in
Syria and
Turkey attenuated the river flows, but the process accelerated
dramatically in the 1990s after the Persian Gulf War, when
Hussein built
giant canals and drains nearby. Most believe Hussein drained the
marshes
to punish the Shiite Muslims who lived there for opposing his
minority
Sunni Muslim government.
Human Rights Watch, a private monitoring group, estimates that
the Marsh
Arab population collapsed from more than 250,000 to perhaps
40,000 as
they were driven elsewhere in Iraq, escaped to Iran or, in some
cases,
were killed by Hussein's regime.
During that time, about 95 percent of the marshland itself became
a
crusty wasteland.
"You've seen those dust storms as the troops moved north
through
southern Iraq?" said Suzie Alwash, a geologist who helped
organize Eden
Again, the group that hopes to lead the marsh-restoration effort.
"That
used to be the marshland. As U.S. forces crossed the bridge at
Nasiriyah, they should have been surrounded by 10-foot-high
reeds."
Whether the project becomes a reality depends on how much funding
and
other assistance is mustered by the United States, other
countries and
the United Nations. But in a report to be released tomorrow, an
advisory
panel of academic and government experts -- convened by Eden
Again and
funded by a $200,000 grant from the State Department -- is
expected to
conclude that some restoration is feasible, if the political will
can be
found.
During its discussions, the committee identified several
technical
problems to be avoided. Panel member Thomas L. Crisman, director
of the
University of Florida's Howard T. Odum Center for Wetlands, notes
that
"wetlands are not like coffee, where you can just add water.
You have to
add water in the right quantity, the right quality and the right
timing."
Because Hussein made data such as river flow rates a state
secret, many
questions will remain unanswered until scientists reach southern
Iraq --
in June, if the current schedule holds. The samples they take
will help
determine which parts of the marshes are likeliest to recover, so
that
rehabilitation efforts can be triaged.
For instance, Alwash said, some areas now have salt crusts two
feet
thick, due to rapid evaporation of brackish groundwater. If new
flows of
freshwater are not pumped through these areas at high enough
rates, they
will become lifeless salt ponds rather than new marshlands. In
addition,
some of the marsh areas were burned over, which may have left
these
soils too alkaline or acidic to be reclaimed.
Another concern is contamination -- from industry, sewage,
agriculture,
military detritus and even deliberate poisonings by Hussein's
government.
Before particular areas are re-flooded, they must be tested for
contaminants. If toxins are discovered, those areas can be
remedied much
more easily when still dry.
The sediment beds hold the key to the marshes' recovery. They
likely
contain hardy seeds and nutrients that will become building
blocks of
new marshes. This legacy can be supplemented, if needed, by
replanting
reeds that have hung on in relatively untouched areas near the
Iraq-Iran
border.
All told, Crisman said, recreating Iraq's marshes will be an even
bigger
challenge than restoring Florida's Everglades -- a multi-year
federal
project that aims to remove 500 miles of diversionary canals and
levees.
The key difference, Crisman said, is that the Everglades already
has
both a robust inflow of water and an agreed-upon plan to fix the
mess.
For now, Iraq has neither.
This problem underscores how the marsh restoration project melds
scientific challenges with political ones. Securing an adequate
water
supply for the project will depend on establishing consensus not
only
among competing interests in Iraq -- which includes such parties
as
nearby farmers and oil executives -- but also with officials in
Syria
and Turkey, whose dams still limit river flows into southern
Iraq.
"The main constraining factor in this effort is the
availability of
water," said Hassan Partow, a research officer with the U.N.
Environment
Program, a Geneva-based arm of the United Nations that has urged
restoration of the marshes since 2000. "The country and the
region is in
the grips of a water crisis, so it is a political question as
well as a
technical one that will determine the scale of the
restoration." The
U.N. agency, he said, plans to convene interested parties in Iraq
to
discuss the issue by the end of May.
If such sticky issues can be solved -- and if contamination
problems do
not prove insurmountable -- then Crisman believes Iraq's marshes
can be
on the mend within two years. After five or six years, the reborn
marshes could "approximate the look and function of a
natural wetland."
Eden Again isn't even venturing a guess of the price tag until
scientists on the ground assess the potential scope of the
project.
Alwash said Iraq's low labor costs should keep costs much lower
than
equivalent projects in the developed world, and some aspects can
probably be accomplished without building a lot of new
infrastructure.
The even bigger challenge, most project advisers agree, will be
rehabilitating the Marsh Arab culture. Alwash says she expects
many
refugees and even some westernized Iraqi exiles to return to the
marshes, but she adds that the know-how to build reed houses or
catch
seafood in the marshes can evaporate in less than a generation.
"Never before have I been in a situation where the task
involves
restoring a culture at the same time as an ecosystem,"
Crisman said.
"The scale of this is potentially mind-boggling."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
================
(2) A CLIMATE SHIFT TO COOLER CONDITIONS?
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 30 April 2003
http://www.co2science.org/edit/v6_edit/v6n18edit.htm
In an important and insightful paper published earlier this year
in
Science, Chavez et al. (2003) reviewed the physical and
biological
evidence for climatic fluctuations "with periods of about 50
years that
are particularly prominent in the Pacific Ocean," reporting
that
"instrumental data provide evidence for two full cycles:
cool phases
from about 1900 to 1925 and 1950 to 1975 and warm phases from
about 1925
to 1950 and 1975 to the mid-1990s."
Based upon this cyclical temperature history, Chavez et al.
suggest that
not only is a climate regime shift to cooler conditions likely
sometime
soon, it may already be in progress. In reference to the 1976-77
regime
shift in the Pacific, for example, they note that "it took
well over a
decade to determine that a regime shift had occurred in the
mid-1970s"
and, hence, they suggest that "a regime or climate shift may
even be
best determined by monitoring marine organisms rather than
climate."
So what's their evidence for thinking we may already be in the
early
stages of a major cool-down? Among other things, Chavez et al.
cite
"dramatic increases in baitfish (including northern anchovy)
and salmon
abundance off Oregon and Washington," as well as
"increases in
zooplankton abundance and changes in community structure from
California
to Oregon and British Columbia, with dramatic increases in
northern or
cooler species."
Physical data to complement these biological observations were
presented
by Freeland et al. (2002), who describe a recent "invasion
of subarctic
water" in the northern California Current. Subsurface waters
in an
approximate 100-meter-thick layer located between 30 and 150
meters
depth off central Oregon were, in the words of the authors,
"unexpectedly cool in July 2002." Specifically,
mid-depth temperatures
over the outer continental shelf and upper slope were more than
0.5°C
colder than the historical summer average for the period
1961-2000. At
the most offshore station, in fact, the authors report that
"the upper
halocline [was] >1°C colder than normal and about 0.5°C
colder than any
prior observation [our italics]."
Much the same thing was noted along the line that runs from the
mouth of
Juan de Fuca Strait to Station Papa at 50°N, 145°W in the Gulf
of
Alaska. There, as they describe it, "conditions in June 2002
[were] well
outside the bounds of all previous experience [our italics
again],"
while in the summer of 2001 conditions were "already at the
lower bound
of previous experience." Based on these several
observations, Freeland
et al. concluded that "the waters off Vancouver Island and
Oregon in
July 2002 were displaced about 500 km south of their normal
summer
position."
Recent observations on the other side of North America point to a
similar invasion of abnormally cold water. In a news item in the
24
April 2003 issue of Nature, Hoag (2003) reports that "more
than 700
tonnes of Atlantic cod have frozen to death in chilly waters off
eastern
Newfoundland." How chilly you ask? Hoag says that in early
April "the
temperature of the water column in Smith Sound fell to
-1.7°C" and that
"historical temperature profiles from the region indicate
that such
temperatures are very unusual for the sound." Indeed, to
find a
comparable "fish freeze," Hoag had to hearken all the
way back to 1882,
when millions of warm-water tilefish died off the northeastern
coast of
the United States.
These remarkable marine water cooling events on both sides of
North
America draw our attention to what happened to the continent's
great
inland fresh waters in March of 2003. As reported in our
Editorial of 16
April 2003, three of the five Great Lakes -- Superior, Huron and
Erie --
all froze over completely. The last time this 100% triple-freeze
occurred was, well, never ... at least over the period for which
reliable data are available, i.e., 1963 to the present.
Yes, something dramatic is definitely in the works, as we opined
at the
conclusion of our review of the Freeland et al. paper, where we
suggested it could well be a return to cooler conditions in the
Pacific.
Now we are wondering if it might not be a return to cooler
conditions
over an even wider area.
Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
References
Chavez, F.P., Ryan, J., Lluch-Cota, S.E. and Niquen C., M. 2003.
From
anchovies to sardines and back: multidecadal change in the
Pacific
Ocean. Science 299: 217-221.
Freeland, H.J., Gatien, G., Huyer, A. and Smith, R.L. 2002. Cold
halocline in the northern California Current: An invasion of
subarctic
water. Geophysical Research Letters 30: 10.1029/2002GL016663.
Hoag, H. 2003. Atlantic cod meet icy death. Nature 422:
792.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and
Global
Change
===============
(3) LATE-HOLOCENE CLIMATE AND ECOSYSTEM HISTORY IN CHESAPEAKE BAY
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 30 April 203
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n18c2.htm
Reference
Willard, D.A., Cronin, T.M. and Verardo, S. 2003. Late-Holocene
climate
and ecosystem history from Chesapeake Bay sediment cores, USA.
The
Holocene 13: 201-214.
What was done
The authors "examine[d] the late Holocene (2300 yr BP to
present) record
of Chesapeake Bay and the adjacent terrestrial ecosystem in its
watershed through the study of fossil dinoflagellate cysts and
pollen
from sediment cores."
What was learned
The authors report that "several dry periods ranging from
decades to
centuries in duration are evident in Chesapeake Bay
records." The first
of these periods of lower-than-average precipitation, which
spanned the
period 200 BC-AD 300, occurred during the latter part of the
Roman Warm
Period, as delineated by McDermott et al. (2001) on the basis of
a
high-resolution speleothem ð18O record from southwest Ireland.
The next
such period (~AD 800-1200), in the words of the authors,
"corresponds to
the 'Medieval Warm Period', which has been documented as drier
than
average by tree-ring (Stahle and Cleaveland, 1994) and pollen
(Willard
et al., 2001) records from the southeastern USA." Other
periods
consisting of several decadal-scale dry intervals span the years
AD
1320-1400 and AD 1525-1650.
The authors say that "mid-Atlantic dry periods generally
correspond to
central and southwestern USA 'megadroughts', described by
Woodhouse and
Overpeck (1998) as major droughts of decadal or more duration
that
probably exceeded twentieth-century droughts in severity."
They further
indicate that "droughts in the late sixteenth century that
lasted
several decades, and those in the 'Medieval Warm Period' and
between ~AD
50 and AD 350 spanning a century or more have been indicated by
Great
Plains tree-ring (Stahle et al., 1985; Stahle and Cleaveland,
1994),
lacustrine diatom and ostracode (Fritz et al., 2000; Laird et
al.,
1996a, 1996b) and detrital clastic records (Dean, 1997)."
On another note, the authors find that "European
colonization had severe
impacts on the watershed and estuary." Specifically, they
note that
"after European colonization in the early seventeenth
century, forest
clearance for agriculture, timber and urbanization altered
estuarine
water quality, with dinoflagellate assemblages indicating reduced
DO
[dissolved oxygen] and increased turbidity." In addition,
they report
that "following peak limber harvesting between 1880 and
1910,
sedimentation rates increased two- to four-fold (Brush, 1984;
Colman et
al., 2002; Cronin et al., 1999)" and that "several
dinocyst taxa nearly
disappeared." Another such degradation of the coastal
environment
occurred after 1950, when "dinocyst assemblage diversity
decreased,
reflecting water-quality changes associated with increased
urbanization,
greater hypoxia (Karlsen et al., 2000) and increased agricultural
nutrient input (Jaworski et al., 1997)."
What it means
This study does three important things. First, it demonstrates
the
reality of the millennial-scale hydrologic cycle that accompanies
the
millennial-scale temperature cycle that is responsible for
producing
alternating warm and cold intervals such as the Roman Warm
Period, Dark
Ages Cold Period, Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and Modern
Warm
Period. Second, it demonstrates that the global warming of the
20th
century has not produced unusually strong wet and dry periods,
contradicting climate-alarmist claims that warming will
exacerbate
extreme climate anomalies. Third, it demonstrates that coastal
waters of
the United States began to experience significant quality
degradation
from the very first appearance of European settlers, providing
addition
evidence for the hypothesis we describe in our Editorials of 12
March
and 26 March 2003, i.e., that the historical and ongoing
worldwide
increase in sediment-induced stress, which includes the
debilitating
effects of various nutrients and toxins of anthropogenic origin
that are
intimately associated with and carried by sediments, is what is
predisposing today's corals to bleach more readily than they did
in the
past in response to periodic increases in water temperature.
Reference
Brush, G.S. 1984. Patterns of recent sediment accumulation
in
Chesapeake Bay (VA, MD, U.S.A.) tributaries. Chemical
Geology 44:
227-242.
Colman, S.M., Baucom, P.C., Bratton, J.F., Cronin, T.M.,
McGeehin, J.P.,
Willard, D.A., Zimmerman, A.R. and Vogt, P.R. 2002. Radiocarbon
dating,
chronologic framework, and changes in accumulation rates of
Holocene
estuarine sediments from Chesapeake Bay. Quaternary
Research 57: 58-70.
Cronin, T., Colman, S., Willard, D., Kerhin, R., Holmes, C.,
Karlsen, A.
Ishman, S. and Bratton, J. 1999. Interdisciplinary
environmental
project probes Chesapeake Bay down to the core. EOS,
Transactions of
the American Geophysical Union 80: 237, 240-241.
Dean, W.E. 1997. Rates, timing, and cyclicity of Holocene
eolian
activity in north-central United States: evidence from varved
lake
sediments. Geology 25: 331-334.
Fritz, S.C., Ito, E., Yu, Z., Laird, K.R. and Engstrom,
D.R. 2000.
Hydrologic variation in the northern Great Plains during the last
two
millennia. Quaternary Research 53: 175-184.
Jaworski, N.A., Howarth, R.W. and Hetling, L.J. 1997.
Atmospheric
deposition of nitrogen oxides onto the landscape contributes to
coastal
eutrophicaton in the northeast United States. Environmental
Science and
Technology 31: 1995-2004.
Karlsen, A.W., Cronin, T.M., Ishman, S.E., Willard, D.A., Kerhin,
R.,
Holmes, C.W. and Marot, M. 2000. Historical trends in
Chesapeake Bay
dissolved oxygen based on benthic foraminifera from sediment
cores.
Estuaries 23: 488-508.
Laird, K.R., Fritz, S.C., Grimm, E.C. and Mueller, P.G.
1996a.
Century-scale paleoclimatic reconstruction from Moon Lake, a
closed-basin lake in the northern Great Plains. Limnology
and
Oceanography 41: 890-902.
Laird, K.R., Fritz, S.C., Maasch, K.A. and Cumming, B.F.
1996b.
Greater drought intensity and frequency before AD 1200 in the
Northern
Great Plains, USA. Nature 384: 552-554.
McDermott, F., Mattey, D.P. and Hawkesworth, C. 2001.
Centennial-scale
Holocene climate variability revealed by a high-resolution
speleothem
ð18O record from SW Ireland. Science 294: 1328-1331.
Stahle, D.W. and Cleaveland, M.K. 1994. Tree-ring
reconstructed
rainfall over the southeastern U.S.A. during the Medieval Warm
Period
and Little Ice Age. Climatic Change 26: 199-212.
Stahle, D.W., Cleaveland, M.K. and Hehr, J.G. 1985. A
450-year drought
reconstruction for Arkansas, United States. Nature 316:
530-532.
Willard, D.A., Weimer, L.M. and Holmes, C.W. 2001.
The Florida
Everglades ecosystem, climatic and anthropogenic impacts over the
last
two millennia. In: Wardlaw, B.R. (Ed.). Paleoecology of South
Florida.
Bulletins of American Paleontology 361: 41-55.
Woodhouse, C.A. and Overpeck, J.T. 1998. 2000 years
of drought
variability in the Central United States. Bulletin of the
American
Meteorological Society 79: 2693-2714.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global
Change
==============
(4) DON'T PANIC: FLU, MALARIA AND FALLING DOWN STAIRS ARE BIGGER
KILLERS
>From The Guardian, 28 April 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,944780,00.html
Tim Radford, science editor
You are more likely to die from influenza, malaria or even by
falling
down the stairs at home. But that hasn't stopped the fear of Sars
escalating out of all proportion to the risks.
The new virus has killed around 260 people since last November.
"In that
period of time, tens of thousands could be expected to have died
from
flu and pneumonia," said Dr Peter Marsh, a social
psychologist and
director of the social issues research centre at Oxford.
"We are used to health scares, but this has taken on a whole
new scale,"
he said. The calculus of risk and fear is a puzzle for public
health
authorities. Malaria, which kills a child every 30 seconds in
Africa, is
a real threat to half the world. Tuberculosis is on the increase
almost
every where; poliomyelitis cases have suddenly made a steep rise
in
India, even though the virus is almost extinct.
In the last 20 years more than a score of newly identified
infections -
from deadly Ebola fever to Lyme disease caught by ticks carried
by deer
- have caused flurries of public alarm.
Humans tend to worry more about the unfamiliar and the
improbable. "It's
foreign, it's eastern," said Dr Marsh. "The fact is
that 260 people have
died. But for every Chinese person who has died, 10 million have
not. In
an ordinary rational world, that sounds like quite good odds, but
not in
this context. In this country, every year, 1,500 people are
killed
falling down the stairs. The implication would be that people
should
only be allowed to build bungalows."
The virus has been described as a "time bomb". There
has been talk of it
"mutating".
"Once you have that kind of imagery," said Dr Marsh,
"then rational
consideration, rational decision-making really goes out of the
window."
Mary Burgess, a consultant clinical psychologist at University
College
London hospital, saw a parallel with the early days of HIV.
"This [Sars]
is a disease that is caught very specifically; you have to have
specific
contact with people. But with phobias, people start to avoid
going on
certain transport, or start avoiding certain groups of people.
"They are trying to contain their anxiety, and it can become
phobic."
Anxiety tends to disappear with time. "You can inoculate
yourself
against fear, if you sit down and work out what the risk
is," Dr Burgess
said.
Copyright 2003, The Guardian
===========
(5) WHAT A WORLD!
>From The New York Review of Books, 15 May 2003
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16270
Review
What a World!
By Freeman J. Dyson
The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change
by Vaclav Smil
MIT Press, 346 pp., $32.95
It is refreshing to read a book full of facts about our planet
and the
life that has transformed it, written by an author who does not
allow
facts to be obscured or overshadowed by politics. Vaclav Smil is
well
aware of the political disputes that are now raging about the
effects of
human activities on climate and biodiversity, but he does not
give them
more attention than they deserve. He emphasizes the enormous gaps
in our
knowledge, the sparseness of our observations, and the
superficiality of
our theories. He calls attention to the many aspects of planetary
evolution which are poorly understood, and which must be better
understood before we can reach an accurate diagnosis of the
present
condition of our planet. When we are trying to take care of a
planet,
just as when we are taking care of a human patient, diseases must
be
diagnosed before they can be cured.
The book has two themes, a major and a minor one. The major theme
is the
description of the biosphere. The biosphere is the interacting
web of
plants and rocks, fungi and soils, animals and oceans, microbes
and air,
that constitute the habitat of life on our planet. To understand
the
biosphere, it is essential to see it from both sides, from below
as a
multitude of details and from above as a single integrated
system. This
book gives a comprehensive account of biological details and a
summary
of the global cycles of matter and energy that tie the system
together....
The biosphere is the most complicated of all the things we humans
have
to deal with. The science of planetary ecology is still young and
undeveloped. It is not surprising that honest and well-informed
experts
can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreements about
facts,
there is another deeper disagreement about values. The
disagreement
about values may be described in an oversimplified way as a
disagreement
between naturalists and humanists. Naturalists believe that
nature knows
best. For them the highest value is respect for the natural order
of
things. Any gross human disruption of the natural environment is
evil.
Excessive burning of fossil fuels, and the consequent increase of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, are unqualified evils.
Humanists believe that humans are an essential part of nature.
Through
human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its
own
evolution, and we are now in charge. Humans have the right to
reorganize
nature so that humans and biosphere can survive and prosper
together.
For humanists, the highest value is intelligent coexistence
between
humans and nature. The greatest evils are war and poverty,
underdevelopment and unemployment, disease and hunger, the
miseries that
deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms.....
FULL ARTICLE at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16270
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(6) RE: PROPHETS OF DOOM VYING FOR SUPREMACY
>From Max Wallis <wallismk@Cardiff.ac.uk>
Dear Benny,
I consider the forecasts of human-caused disasters by Astronomer
Royal Rees and his critics lie outside the interests of the
CCNet.
Martin Rees does not cover NEO impacts, just dismisses this
hazard.
For what reason did you include the stuff on CCNet, not relegate
it
to CCNet TERRA?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Max Wallis wallismk@cf.ac.uk
Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology tel. 029 2087
6436
2 North Road fax 029 2087
6424
Cardiff University CF10
2DY
MODERATOR'S NOTE: Sorry Max, wrong again. In his new book (Our
Final
Century. A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and
Environmental
Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future in This Century - On Earth
and
Beyond" - no joke, that really is the full title), Martin
Rees writes
that "we are at greater risk from a massive asteroid than
from plan
crashes" (p. 89) and then covers the impact threat on the
following
eight pages. BP
==============
(7) SARS IS NOT ENOUGH
>From Don Stockbauer <donstockbauer@hotmail.com>
Dear Dr. Peiser,
It will take a much more efficient killer than SARS to undo the
population bloom we currently have of 6 billion people,
achieved on the
back of cheap, abundant fossil fuels. As one country after
another is
invaded and sapped for its oil, and no comprehensive sustainable
fuel
plans are put into effect we face the Easter Island scenario of
no fuel
and no place to go, and billions of people will die. No
need for
that "very unlikely" Earth impactor to do the
job. Of course, Humanity
could become a little proactive for once, and just might achieve
the
Global Superintelligence it seems to be headed for, but gosh, at
this
point one is not even sure which way to bet. Perhaps a starting
point
would be for us to quit teaching our children that the
accumulation of
wealth is the reason they were put here on Earth.
Sincerely,
Don Stockbauer
donstockbauer@hotmail.com
============
(8) PLAGUE OR PANIC?
>From Pavel <fishhook@erols.com>
Dear Benny,
What does a political correspondant, chief or otherwise, know
about
epidemiology? The same goes for a sociologist. I think you are
out of
your depth here.
Given the facts that: No one is sure of the infectious organism
or
organisms; the rate of lethality is greater than that of the 1918
epidemic; those who die are the young and healthy as well as the
old and
frail; there is no reliable diagnostic test available at this
point; the
virus may be mutating rapidly - you would have done better to
refrain
from e-publishing Plague or Panic. Panglosses exaggerate in their
own
way just as much as Cassandras, and your labeling of every crisis
as a
'panic' seems to have become a reflex.
Sincerely,
Pavel
fishhook@erols.con
=============
(9) THE TWIN EPIDEMICS OF 1918
>From Clark Whelton <whel@berk.com>
Dear Benny,
In yesterday's CCNET EXTRA, Molly Billings correctly reported
that the
killer flu of 1918-19 was preceded by an outbreak of influenza in
the
early months of 1918. Billings comments that "it was
unfortunate
that no steps were taken to prepare for the usual recrudescence
of the
virulent influenza strain in the winter."
The reason no steps were taken is because this earlier epidemic,
though
highly contagious, had a very low death rate. Patients ran
high fevers
and were usually incapacitated, but the disease was rarely fatal.
And
there were noticeably fewer cases in cities, which seemed to
indicate
that urban populations were more likely to have acquired immunity
to the
virus through earlier infections.
But the relatively mild disease that struck in early 1918 did not
confer immunity to the deadly strain of influenza that appeared
in
Europe in September of that year. Researchers still wonder where
that
lethal flu came from. Did the virus of spring suddenly mutate
into an
autumn killer that could literally strike people down as they
walked in
the street?
Thus far SARS has not shown itself to be as dangerous as earlier
epidemics. The "Hong Kong" flu of 1957, for example,
killed 21,000
Americans and 7,000 Britons. Nevertheless, the attention being
paid
to SARS is a prudent investment. Remembering the twin epidemics
of
1918, we should be certain that our spring SARS epidemic is not
the
precursor of something worse.
Regards,
Clark Whelton
New York
===============
(10) AND FINALLY: "PRINCE CHARLES IS READING TOO MANY SILLY
BOOKS"
>From The Times, 29 April 2003
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-662867,00.html
By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent
THE Prince of Wales was ridiculed by Nobel prize-winning
scientists
yesterday for raising fears that miniature robots could turn the
world
into "grey goo".
Leading experts, including two of Britain's Nobel laureates,
accused the
Prince of ignorance and scaremongering after he expressed his
concerns
about nanotechnology.
The emerging science, which involves building tiny machines from
atoms
and molecules, holds great promise for medicine and electronics,
but
some environmentalists have suggested it could lead to the
creation of
uncontrollable, self-replicating "nanobots".
The concept, which is dismissed by scientists, features in Prey,
a novel
by Michael Crichton, the author of Jurassic Park, in which robots
copy
themselves, converting the planet into "grey goo".
Experts, however, criticised the Prince for giving such fears
credence.
Sir Harry Kroto, Professor of Chemistry at Sussex University, who
won
the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996, said: "Someone's had
this
ridiculous idea about nanoscale robots that can replicate
themselves,
and it's so far-fetched as to be utterly preposterous."
"It shows a complete disconnection from reality. He should
take a degree
in chemistry, or at least talk to someone who understands it,
rather
than reading silly books."
Sir Aaron Klug, of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in
Cambridge, who
won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1992 and is a former
President of
the Royal Society, said: "He's been reading too much
science-fiction.
"I'm surprised that the Prince's advisers cannot distinguish
between
science-fiction fantasy and what's actually going on in the
scientific
world."
Copyright 2003, The Times
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