PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet TERRA 20/2003 - 7 May 2003
--------------------------------
"Emissions of greenhouse gases from the European Union
increased in 2001 for the second year running. The European
Environment Agency (EEA) estimates they were 1% greater than in
2000. The EU as a whole is committed to reducing emissions by 8%
on their 1990 levels by between 2008 and 2012. On present trends,
it appears to stand almost no chance of keeping its promise. Not
enough signatories have yet ratified the protocol to allow it to
enter into force. There are now doubts about the willingness of
Russia to do so, because some of its prominent scientists
apparently believe climate change could be beneficial to the
country. It is organising a world climate conference in Moscow in
late September, to re-examine the science of climate
change."
--BBC News Online, 6
May 2003
(1) EUROPE SLIPS ON GREENHOUSE TARGETS, RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS SAY
WARMING MAY BE BENEFICIAL
BBC News Online, 6 May 2003
(2) LIVERMORE RESEARCHERS DISCOVER UNCERTAINTIES IN SATELLITE
DATA
Eurekalert, 1 May 2003
(3) SCIENCE STEALS A BASE
Tech Central Station, 1 May 2003
(4) THE KYOTO CUP
Tech Central Station, 5 May 2003
(5) THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE GREENING OF THE EARTH
CO2 Science Magazine, 7 May 2003
(6) SARS AND THE MISPERCEPTION OF RISK
Scripps Howard News Service, 3 May 2003
(7) DOOSMDAY CULT MAKES WAVES IN JAPAN
The Guardian, 5 May 2003
(8) AND FINALLY: DEMAND FOR OIL FORECAST TO CLIMB 50% BY 2025
The Financial Times, 1 May 2003
=============
(1) EUROPE SLIPS ON GREENHOUSE TARGETS, RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS SAY
WARMING MAY BE BENEFITIAL
BBC News Online, 6 May 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2996219.stm
Emissions of greenhouse gases from the European Union increased
in 2001 for the second year running. The European Environment
Agency (EEA) estimates they were 1% greater than in 2000.
The EU as a whole is committed to reducing emissions by 8% on
their 1990 levels by between 2008 and 2012. On present trends, it
appears to stand almost no chance of keeping its promise.
The 8% cut is the commitment made by the EU under the terms of
the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement on tackling
climate change.
Not enough signatories have yet ratified the protocol to allow it
to enter into force. Two years ago President Bush said the US
would not ratify it, and Australia has followed suit.
Lukewarm leaders
There are now doubts about the willingness of Russia to do so,
because some of its prominent scientists apparently believe
climate change could be beneficial to the country.
It is organising a world climate conference in Moscow in late
September, to re-examine the science of climate change.
FULL STORY at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2996219.stm
===========
(2) LIVERMORE RESEARCHERS DISCOVER UNCERTAINTIES IN SATELLITE
DATA
Eurekalert, 1 May 2003
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-05/uoc--lrd050103.php
Contact: Anne Stark
stark8@llnl.gov
925-422-9799
University of California - Berkeley
LIVERMORE, Calif. -- Using a new analysis of satellite
temperature measurements, scientists from the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory have determined that uncertainties in
satellite data are a significant factor in studies attempting to
detect human effects on climate.
Since 1979, Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) have been flown on 12
different polar-orbiting weather satellites operated by the U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. MSU instruments
measure the microwave emissions of oxygen molecules, which are
related to atmospheric temperature. By monitoring microwave
emissions at different frequencies, it has been possible to 'back
out' information on temperature changes in various layers of the
atmosphere.
Until recently, only one group -- from the University of Alabama
at Huntsville -- had analyzed the raw MSU data. This analysis is
complicated by such factors as the gradual decay and drift of
satellite orbits (which affect the time of day at which MSU
instruments measure atmospheric temperatures) and by problems
related to the calibration of MSUs.
The pioneering Huntsville analysis of the MSU data suggested that
the troposphere (the lowest layer of the atmosphere) had
undergone little or no overall warming since 1979. Some have used
this finding to question both the reality of human-induced global
warming and the reliability of computer climate models, which
predict that the troposphere should have warmed in response to
increases in greenhouse gases. The Huntsville results are also at
odds with thermometer measurements indicating pronounced warming
of the Earth's surface during the satellite era.
Now a second group has conducted an independent analysis of the
same raw MSU data used by the University of Alabama scientists.
This group, led by Carl Mears, Matthias Schabel, and Frank Wentz
of Remote Sensing Systems in
Santa Rosa, uses different methods to correct for satellite
orbital drift and MSU calibration problems. They find that the
troposphere probably warmed by roughly 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.18
degrees Fahrenheit) per decade from 1979 to 2001. This amounts to
a total rise in tropospheric temperature of 0.4 degrees
Fahrenheit over this period.
The implications of these uncertainties for attempts to detect
human effects on climate are explored by Livermore scientists
Benjamin Santer, Karl Taylor, James Boyle and Charles Doutriaux,
along with researchers from Remote Sensing Systems, the National
Center for Atmospheric Research, Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory and the University of Birmingham in England. Their
findings are reported in the May 1 online edition of Science
Express in a paper titled, "Influence of Satellite Data
Uncertainties on the Detection of Externally-Forced Climate
Change."
The Lab scientists and their colleagues use results from a
state-of-the-art computer climate model that was run with
estimates of historical changes in greenhouse gases, sulfate
aerosols, ozone, volcanic dust and the sun's energy output. These
experiments were performed at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder, Colo., and the Department of Energy's
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in Berkeley,
Calif. The model runs yield detailed patterns (or 'fingerprints')
of tropospheric temperature change. These fingerprints are
identifiable in the Santa Rosa satellite data showing a warming
troposphere, but not in the University of Alabama MSU records.
Model output from these and other simulations are freely
distributed to the research community (http://www.nersc.gov/projects/gcm_data).
"In the last 24 years, satellites have helped us to observe
the climate of our planet more intensively and systematically
than at any other time in Earth's history," said Santer,
lead author of the paper. "Yet even over the satellite era,
there are still large uncertainties in our estimates of how
tropospheric temperatures have changed. It's important to take
these uncertainties into account in evaluating the reliability of
climate models. We find that model/data agreement, like beauty,
depends on one's observational perspective. Our detection results
point toward a real need to reduce current levels of uncertainty
in satellite temperature measurements."
The positive detection of model tropospheric temperature
'fingerprints' in the Santa Rosa satellite data is consistent
with earlier research that has found human-induced signals in
such climate variables as surface temperature, ocean heat
content, tropopause height and Northern Hemisphere sea ice cover.
=========
(3) SCIENCE STEALS A BASE
Tech Central Station, 1 May 2003
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-050103F
By Ronald Bailey
"Experimental models incorporating both anthropogenic and
natural factors are consistent with the new analysis showing
tropospheric warming," claims the press release heralding a
new paper being published today in Science. This paper is
supposed to be a knockout blow against the satellite dataset that
has consistently and annoyingly (for the global warming
alarmists) shown that the earth's atmosphere is NOT warming
nearly as much as the computer climate models predict. The new
analysis, meant to prove finally that dangerous man-made global
warming is real, was done by a team led by long-time global
warming proponent Benjamin Santer from the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory.
So is it true? Have the satellites been wrong about global
temperature trends? The paper it turns out is mostly hot air,
adding nothing new to the climate change debate. Evidently, the
strategy being used by Santer et al. is that if their models
don't agree with the data, then change the data.
Since 1979, climatologists John Christy and Roy Spencer at the
University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) have been using
instruments aboard a variety of weather satellites to take the
temperature of the earth's atmosphere daily. What they find is
that the atmosphere is warming up at a rate of only about 0.05
degrees centigrade (+/- 0.05 C) per decade. This is considerably
lower than the rate of warming predicted by the climate computer
models. Now it is not unreasonable to think that perhaps the data
contain some unaccounted for uncertainties - this is science
after all, and you're only as good as your data.
Puzzled by the discrepancy between the satellite data and the
models, Frank Wentz, a physicist working at Remote Sensing
Systems (RSS) in Santa Rosa California, decided to check into the
matter. Since 1979 whenever a new weather satellite was launched
to replace old ones, scientists had to cross calibrate
instruments taking into account things like orbital differences
and slight variations in the instruments. Wentz looked at how the
UAH team cross-calibrated the data from each of satellites and
found that they had not taken into account variations between
satellites due to their orbital decay.
Wentz published a 1998 bombshell paper in Nature claiming to show
that once the satellite data were corrected that cooling trend
identified by Christy and Spencer would in fact become a warming
trend of 0.07 degrees centigrade instead of the 0.05 degree rate
of cooling that the UAH team had found between the years 1979 and
1997. This was still considerably below the trend found in most
models but it was positive. It is no surprise that global warming
proponents hailed the RSS dataset as evidence that they are
right.
As conscientious scientists, Christy and Spencer admitted that
they had failed to take all of the orbital decay effect into
account. They then painstakingly readjusted their data and found
that the atmosphere was cooling at a 0.01 degree centigrade per
decade rate. It seems that the RSS team had used data that had
already been corrected for some of the effects and therefore
over-corrected it to create a spurious warming trend.
So what gives now? Santer et al. have done new climate model runs
and conclude that because a new RSS dataset conforms more closely
to their models, the RSS data must be right, and because the UAH
dataset does not conform to their models, it must be wrong. This
is a very curious conclusion because models must fit data, not
data fit models. A discrepancy between datasets can only be
resolved by more empirical research. Data validate models, not
vice versa.
Fortunately this can be done. It turns out that there is a
completely independent dataset of tropospheric temperatures that
can adjudicate between the RSS and UAH data-weather balloon data.
The weather balloon data agree well with the UAH dataset and not
the RSS dataset. The new Science paper handles this confounding
issue by mildly mentioning in passing that there may be a problem
with the weather balloon data. However, the paper it cites as
evidence for a possible problem actually shows that the UAH data
and the weather balloon data are in good agreement .
"The point here is that the models agree with only one
tropospheric satellite dataset (Remote Sensing Systems) but they
do not agree with any balloon, balloon-based or UAH's satellite
datasets," says Christy. "There is no there,
there."
So what are the trends in dispute? Christy points out that the
latest reanalyzed UAH dataset finds that mid-tropospheric
temperatures are rising at about 0.03 degrees centigrade (+/-
0.05 C) per decade. The troposphere is the lowest atmospheric
layer, about 18 kilometers (11 miles) thick at the equator to
about 6 km (4 miles) at the poles, and contains 80 percent of the
total air mass. Meanwhile the RSS dataset finds that
mid-tropospheric temperature increases at 0.11 degrees centigrade
(+/- 0.02) per decade. What do the weather balloons say? They
find that temperatures are essentially flat at a rate of about
0.00 degrees (+/- 0.05) per decade. It's pretty obvious that the
weather balloon data undercut the RSS dataset now being relied
upon by the global warming proponents.
The new Science paper also suggests that the climate computer
models are good at modeling data for the stratosphere (the
tenuous air layer above the troposphere) and concludes that
therefore they must be good at modeling the troposphere, too.
Christy thinks this a classic example of a stolen base.
"It's a lot easier to model the stratosphere because you
only have to consider radiational effects," says Christy.
"The troposphere is much messier. It contains complicated
things like clouds, convection, moisture, and dust. Claiming that
your models get the stratosphere right tells you almost nothing
about how well they model the troposphere."
Nevertheless, Santer's team claims that their models' conformity
with the RSS data and their success at modeling the stratosphere
"[t]aken together.strengthen the case for pronounced human
influence on global climate." However, two independent sets
of temperature data say that this conclusion is unwarranted and
that this is clearly a case where two wrongs do not make a right.
The scientific debate over whether earth is warming dangerously
due to man-made influences remains unresolved.
Ronald Bailey, Reason's science correspondent, is the editor of
Global Warming and Other Eco Myths (Prima Publishing) and Earth
Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the
Planet(McGraw-Hill).
Copyright 2003, Tech Central Station
===========
(4) THE KYOTO CUP
Tech Central Station, 5 May 2003
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-050503A
By Kenneth Green
In the fourth overtime period of a recent Stanley Cup playoff
game, I found my mind wandering to a different kind of hockey
stick - the kind that UN scientists claim is sketched out by
temperature records going back 1000 years or so. Since the first
reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, UN scientists have used a reconstruction of past climates
based on evidence from tree rings, coral, boreholes, and other
proxy indicators that suggested the climate was mostly unchanging
for the last 1000 years, with the spike of the last 150 years
appearing to be clearly abnormal (Figure below) shooting upward
like the blade of a hockey stick.
But over the years, data has accumulated arguing that the
"IPCC hockey stick" is fundamentally flawed. Some
researchers, studying the climate of the last 1000 years argued
that the IPCC scientists were refusing to acknowledge evidence
indicating that in reality, the temperature from about 1,000 A.D.
to 1300 A.D. was quite a bit warmer than today, while the climate
from 1300 A.D to 1850 was unusually cold. As climate researcher
David Wojick illustrates, a more realistic depiction of recent
climate is not a hockey stick, but is more a matter of emerging
from a climatic valley (see Figure below).
Despite the accumulating evidence, UN scientists have continued
to assert that the medieval warm period and the little ice age
were strictly local phenomenon, and hence, were not
representative of the Earth's climate as a whole. That willful
ignorance led Australian climate researcher John Daly to label
the IPCC hockey stick "A New Low in Climate Science."
Daly argued that "What is required to disprove the Hockey
Stick is to demonstrate conclusively the existence of the
Medieval Warm Period and/or the Little Ice Age as recorded in
proxy and/or historical evidence from around the world."
Fortunately, a new study, by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics offers just what Daly requested. A review of more
than 200 climate studies confirms the that both the medieval warm
period and the little ice age were global, not regional
phenomena. As astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas explains, "For
a long time, researchers have possessed anecdotal evidence
supporting the existence of these climate extremes. For example,
the Vikings established colonies in Greenland at the beginning of
the second millennium that died out several hundred years later
when the climate turned colder. And in England, vineyards had
flourished during the medieval warmth. Now, we have an
accumulation of objective data to back up these cultural
indicators."
The question of whether we're in hockey-stick mode, or
hill-and-valley mode is critical, because it cuts right to the
heart of the climate change debate. Is recent climate change
abnormal enough to support the assumption that it must be due to
human activity, or is recent climate change within the realm of
natural variation? The former argument is used to support
mandatory greenhouse gas reduction schemes, like the Kyoto
Protocol, while the latter view is used to support arguments that
our current best response to climate change is to build
resilience, and get ready for a somewhat warmer environment.
As it becomes clear that recently observed climate changes are
not unusual, the case for assuming human causation is greatly
weakened. If the climate is changing due to forces other than
human action, then greenhouse gas controls will do nothing to
protect future generations confronting the impacts of climate
change. UN scientists have acknowledged that there is no evidence
implicating human activity with any warming before 1950, but they
continue to attribute "most" of the warming since 1950
to human activity, and continue to clamor for immediate
greenhouse gas emission reductions.
The world is in the second overtime period of the Kyoto Cup, with
climate change alarmists pushing economically crippling
greenhouse gas controls around the world with increasing
desperation, while those holding climate change to be largely
natural are fighting to preserve the economic freedom that
provides the resources needed to secure health, safety, and
environmental protection.
A lot is riding on the Kyoto Cup. If we waste our resources in
controlling carbon emissions that are not responsible for causing
recently observed warming, where are we going to get the
resources to help those areas that will experience the negative
impacts of a changing climate caused by Mother Nature? Let's hope
that the UN breaks its hockey stick, and joins in a real
exploration of how we protect future generations from a largely
natural climate change.
Environmental Scientist Kenneth Green is Director of the Risk and
Environment Centre at The Fraser Institute. His most recent
publication is "Global Warming: Understanding the
Debate," a text-book for junior high school students.
Copyright 2003, Tech Central Station
===========
(5) THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE GREENING OF THE EARTH
CO2 Science Magazine, 7 May 2003
http://www.co2science.org/subject/g/summaries/greeningearth.htm
In our Editorial of 19 Dec 2001, we describe the genesis of the
idea that the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath have led to
a great "greening of the earth" in response to the many
biological benefits (enhanced biomass production, water use
efficiency, etc.) provided by the historical-and-still-ongoing
rise in the air's CO2 content that has resulted from the burning
of massive amounts of coal, gas and oil, and we describe several
studies that support that scenario.
Additional support for the concept is provided in our Editorial
of 11 July 2001, where we describe an atmospheric CO2 depletion
experiment conducted by Mayeux et al. (1997), which indicates
that since the inception of the Industrial Revolution, wheat
yields of the world have likely increased by something on the
order of 60% due to the CO2-induced stimulation of vegetative
productivity provided by the burning of fossil fuels. We also
report how appropriate scaling and transference of this result to
results obtained from the many CO2 enrichment experiments that
have been conducted on other crops (reviewed by Idso and Idso,
2000) imply concomitant historical yield increases of 70% for
other C3 cereals, 28% for C4 cereals, 33% for fruits and melons,
62% for legumes, 67% for root and tuber crops, and 51% for
vegetables.
With respect to the more recent past, Hicke et al. (2002)
assessed the net primary productivity (NPP) of North America over
the period 1982-1998 using a carbon cycle model driven by a
satellite-derived surface vegetation index, concluding that NPP
increases of 30% or more occurred across the continent over that
17-year time span. From what is known about plant growth
responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment, we calculate that
anywhere from a tenth to a quarter of that period's growth
stimulation was likely due to the concomitant rise in the air's
CO2 content, with the rest of the productivity increases likely
attributable to factors such as increased precipitation during
summer, increasingly intensive crop and forest management,
increasing use of genetically improved plants, regrowth of
forests on abandoned cropland, improvements in agricultural
practices such as irrigation and fertilization, and regional
warming that lengthened growing seasons in some areas.
A similar study was conducted by Bogaert et al. (2002), who
utilized satellite-derived vegetation indices from July 1981 to
December 1999 to assess vegetation responses to the different
temperature changes experienced in North America and Eurasia over
this slightly expanded period, during which Eurasia experienced
an overall warming and North America exhibited a much reduced
warming and, in the eastern United States, even a slight cooling.
The scientists report that their results indicate significant
greening trends in both parts of the world, but that "the
greening trend in Eurasia is more persistent and spatially
extensive than in North America." These findings are
precisely as they should be; for plants actually thrive on higher
temperatures in an atmosphere of increasing CO2 concentration
(Long, 1991; Idso and Idso, 1994; Cannell and Thornley, 1998).
Similar results had earlier been obtained by Zhou et al. (2001),
as described in our editorial of 18 September 2002. They,
however, attributed the lion's share of the North American and
Eurasian greening to rising temperatures, essentially excluding
CO2 effects from the mix. This conclusion was challenged by
Ahlbeck (2002), who promoted the air's CO2 increase as the
primary cause of the proliferation of vegetation. In response to
this challenge, Kaufmann et al. (2002) stuck by the original
conclusion of Zhou et al. We tried to resolve the issue by noting
that the North American response was about what would be
predicted for CO2 effects alone, but that the Eurasian response
was what one would expect from a warming-induced amplification of
basic CO2 effects, which is, of course, what we continue to
believe today.
Many of these issues were revisited in our Editorial of 6
November 2002, where we also reported on recent evidence of
vegetation encroachment upon the southern edge of the Sahara
Desert and described data from the Central and Western Sahel that
suggest that plant productivity and coverage of the desert
actually increased somewhat over the past quarter century,
leading us to conclude that "in spite of drought and
everything else -- natural or otherwise -- that may have combined
to frustrate biospheric productivity throughout the course of the
Industrial Revolution and beyond, the greening of the earth
continues ... courtesy of the aerial fertilization effect and the
water conservation effect of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2
content."
Models that incorporate physiological responses of plants to
changes in climate and atmospheric CO2 concentration predict much
the same thing. As described in our Editorial of 17 April
2002, for example, Cheddadi et al. (2001) developed and validated
such a model and applied it to the Mediterranean region under
present environmental conditions and those sometimes predicted
for the future, i.e., an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 500 ppm
and a mean annual temperature 2°C higher than that of today.
What did they find? In their own words, there was "a
substantial southward shift of Mediterranean vegetation and a
spread of evergreen and conifer forests in the northern
Mediterranean." Why did it happen? The scientists say
"the replacement of xerophytic woodlands by evergreen and
conifer forests could be explained by the enhancement of
photosynthesis due to the increase of CO2" and that
"under a high CO2 [concentration], stomata will be much less
open which will lead to a reduced evapotranspiration and lower
water loss, both for C3 and C4 plants," adding that
"such mechanisms may help plants to resist long-lasting
drought periods that characterize the Mediterranean
climate."
These findings are all impressive and constitute welcome news;
but the biological effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment do much
more than simply promote vegetative prowess and help plants
better withstand the negative extremes of weather and climate.
They also tend to positively alter the nature of climate itself.
As described in our Editorial of 2 January 2002, Eastman et al.
(2001) developed a hybrid atmosphere/vegetation model composed of
linked meteorological and plant growth sub-models that they
applied to the portion of the earth located between 35 and 48°N
latitude and 96 and 110°W longitude for situations where (1)
only the physical radiative effects of a doubling of the air's
CO2 concentration are considered, (2) only the biological effects
of a doubling of the air's CO2 concentration are considered, and
(3) the physical and biological effects of a doubling of the
air's CO2 concentration are considered simultaneously.
What did they find? With respect to the area-averaged and
seasonally-averaged daily maximum air temperature, the strictly
physical effects of doubling the air's CO2 content led to a
temperature increase of 0.014°C, while the biological
ramifications produced a temperature decrease of 0.747°C, for a
net cooling of 0.715°C. With respect to daily minimum air
temperature, on the other hand, both the physical and biological
responses to the doubling of the air's CO2 content produced
temperature increases, resulting in a net warming of
0.354°C. Hence, during the day, when high air temperatures
can be detrimental to both plant and animal life, the net effect
of the simultaneous physical and biological impacts of an
increase in the air's CO2 content acts to decrease daily maximum
air temperature, which results in an alleviation of potential
heat stress. Likewise, during the night, when low
temperatures can be detrimental to plant and animal life, the net
effect of the simultaneous physical and biological impacts of an
increase in the air's CO2 content acts to increase daily minimum
air temperature, which results in an alleviation of potential
cold stress. In addition, when considering day and night air
temperature changes together, the mean daily air temperature
range is reduced, leading to a less thermally-variable
environment, which is less stressful to plants and animals.
Considered together, these several studies thus suggest that the
ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content has been, and continues to
be, a great boon to the biosphere, positively impacting both
climate and biology.
References
Ahlbeck, J.R. 2002. Comment on "Variations in
northern vegetation activity inferred from satellite data of
vegetation index during 1981-1999" by L. Zhou et al.
Journal of Geophysical Research 107: 10.1029/2001389.
Bogaert, J., Zhou, L., Tucker, C.J, Myneni, R.B. and Ceulemans,
R. 2002. Evidence for a persistent and extensive
greening trend in Eurasia inferred from satellite vegetation
index data. Journal of Geophysical Research 107:
10.1029/2001JD001075.
Cannell, M.G.R. and Thornley, J.H.M. 1998.
Temperature and CO2 responses of leaf and canopy photosynthesis:
a clarification using the non-rectangular hyperbola model of
photosynthesis. Annals of Botany 82: 883-892.
Cheddadi, R., Guiot, J. and Jolly, D. 2001. The
Mediterranean vegetation: what if the atmospheric CO2
increased? Landscape Ecology 16: 667-675.
Eastman, J.L., Coughenour, M.B. and Pielke Sr., R.A.
2001. The regional effects of CO2 and landscape change
using a coupled plant and meteorological model. Global
Change Biology 7: 797-815.
Hicke, J.A., Asner, G.P., Randerson, J.T., Tucker, C., Los, S.,
Birdsey, R., Jenkins, J.C. and Field, C. 2002. Trends
in North American net primary productivity derived from satellite
observations, 1982-1998. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 16:
10.1029/2001GB001550.
Idso, C.D. and Idso, K.E. 2000. Forecasting world
food supplies: The impact of the rising atmospheric CO2
concentration. Technology 7S: 33-55.
Idso, K.E. and Idso, S.B. 1994. Plant responses to
atmospheric CO2 enrichment in the face of environmental
constraints: a review of the past 10 years' research.
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 69: 153-203.
Kaufmann, R.K., Zhou, L., Tucker, C.J., Slayback, D., Shabanov,
N.V. and Myneni, R.B. 2002. Reply to Comment on
"Variations in northern vegetation activity inferred from
satellite data of vegetation index during 1981-1999" by J.R.
Ahlbeck. Journal of Geophysical Research 107:
10.1029/1001JD001516.
Long, S.P. 1991. Modification of the response of
photosynthetic productivity to rising temperature by atmospheric
CO2 concentrations: Has its importance been underestimated?
Plant, Cell and Environment 14: 729-739.
Mayeux, H.S., Johnson, H.B., Polley, H.W. and Malone, S.R.
1997. Yield of wheat across a subambient carbon dioxide
gradient. Global Change Biology 3: 269-278.
Zhou, L., Tucker, C.J., Kaufmann, R.K., Slayback, D., Shabanov,
N.V. and Myneni, R.B. 2001. Variations in northern
vegetation activity inferred from satellite data of vegetation
index during 1981-1999. Journal of Geophysical Research
106: 20,069-20,083.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
=============
(6) SARS AND THE MISPERCEPTION OF RISK
Scripps Howard News Service, 3 May 2003
http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/877209p-6115737c.html
By Henry I Miller
Americans are very risk-conscious. We buy muscular SUVs and spend
billions on all manner of alternative medical therapies. Often,
we learn about risks and remedies by relying on the media to
interpret medical research and other data that purport to tell
what is bad (or good) for us.
Tad Friend wrote in The New Yorker, "It often seems that
there is only one show on television, "Dateline NBC48 Hours
of 20/20, PrimeTime Thursday," and that this show endlessly
repeats one basic story, "The Thing That Went Terribly
Wrong." Enter SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, a
new, potentially fatal atypical pneumonia that has no known
treatment. Rest assured that as the war in Iraq fades from the
headlines, SARS will supplant it.
The incidence and death toll of SARS continue to rise, and public
health authorities are increasingly worried. The illness, a
pneumonia caused by a previously unknown coronavirus, has
stricken about 5,500 and killed over 350 worldwide, causing the
World Health Organization to issue an unprecedented warning
against unnecessary travel to parts of Asia where SARS is
prevalent. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has activated its
Emergency Operations Center to track the disease and coordinate a
national response.
But we need to place SARS in perspective. Influenza, which kills,
on average, about 30,000 Americans annually - in spite of
widespread vaccination - is a vastly greater threat, but the
media will seize on SARS' mysterious nature and the absence of
any effective treatment. The death toll from SARS is zero in the
United States, but after a month of 24/7 exposure to SARS on the
cable networks, SARS will seem like the Invasion of the Body
Snatchers.
Media coverage does not exist in a vacuum. It merely amplifies
the "emotional dimension" of peoples' worries about
various public health and environmental risks, and those
"feelings" then affect individuals' perceptions of
risks. These emotional factors include, for example, whether the
illness, activity or product is more, or less, voluntary,
familiar, controllable, self-initiated, dreaded, immediate,
detectable and "natural."
SARS should rank somewhere around the low middle on this scale:
The disease is unfamiliar, transmissible through the air from
person to person, caused by an invisible "germ;" has no
treatment; and is potentially lethal. On the other hand, the
virus is detectable, natural, not highly contagious, has caused
no fatalities in this country, and has stricken mostly persons
who have traveled recently in Asia and medical personnel who have
cared for SARS patients.
Emotional responses to potential risk often are grossly
distorted. In the risk-analysis community, there's an old joke
about the swimmer at a beach on Lake Michigan who hears there's
been a shark sighting; fearing an attack, he gets out of the
water, finishes off his six-pack of beer, lights up a cigarette,
and, helmet-less, zooms off on his motorcycle.
But more realistically, the ranking of risks by experts and
consumers is often quite divergent. Among the risks most often
overestimated by consumers are accidents, pregnancy and
childbirth, abortion, tornadoes, floods, botulism, cancer, fire
and homicide. (SARS is in this group.) Among those most often
underestimated are smallpox vaccination, diabetes, lightning,
stroke, tuberculosis, asthma and emphysema.
Another important aspect of the public perception of risks from
various activities, products, technologies, and natural events is
that in order to further their self-interest, a large coterie of
activists and government regulators, abetted by a handful of
scientists outside the scientific mainstream, relentlessly
manipulate and terrify the public over hypothetical or minimal
risks. It is important to understand the techniques they use to
exploit the public's emotions.
One of these is information overload. At best, non-experts are
likely to understand only a limited number of aspects of a risk
analysis problem, so they are easily overloaded with data.
Information overload of the public is a strategy often used by
those who would elicit fear about or disparage new technology.
(Or even to sell a new product: Think of the mind-numbing,
repetitive, TV infomercials that sell acne cures and
breast-enhancers.)
Second, a common response to fear and uncertainty about risk is a
tendency to split those involved in controversy into opposite
camps - us vs. them - and to project onto them conspiratorial and
iniquitous intentions. This is especially easy when the
"enemy" is painted as faceless, profit-hungry,
multinational companies that will benefit handsomely from the
sale of products. Psychologically, this is an attempt to reduce
anxiety and re-impose certainty and clarity, but such mechanisms
are unproductive because they polarize thinking, encourage
one-sidedness and actually distort sound decision-making.
A third factor is a yearning for a return to purity and
innocence. This romantic, puerile view, which reflects a desire
to escape from complex realities and choices - like war and a
sluggish economy - can give rise to a kind of puritanical,
reactionary, anti-technological view of the world. Purity and
simplicity - often erroneously considered synonymous with what is
"natural," as opposed to synthetic, or technological -
become desired ends in themselves, to the exclusion of other
goals such as maximizing our choices and thinking quantitatively.
Finally, we are often victims of manipulation of our
environmental and health anxieties. Most Americans consider
themselves to be "environmentalists," but the hidden
agenda of many of those who have attempted the
"greening" of Western societies and governments -
environmental organizations, certain political leaders, and a
large segment of the media - appears to be their own
self-interest. An unfortunate by-product is increasingly
widespread acceptance of junk science that denigrates the
scientific method and the fruits of technology.
Distortion of risk perception increasingly causes us to lose the
ability to discriminate between plausibility and provability,
between plausibility and reality. The answer? We need to learn
more about what we don't understand, and to seek out the advice
of genuine experts for guidance. And, oh, yes, to take with a
large grain of salt the pronouncements of TV's talking heads.
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is a fellow
at the Hoover Institution. He was an official at the FDA from
1979 to 1994
Copyright © 2003, Scripps Howard News
Service
=============
(7) DOOSMDAY CULT MAKES WAVES IN JAPAN
The Guardian, 5 May 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,7369,950027,00.html
Jonathan Watts
Less than a fortnight before the day it predicts the world will
end, Japan's latest high-profile cult rolled slowly and bizarrely
away from a confrontation with the police yesterday, leaving
behind sniggers, fears and a mountainside draped in white sheets.
Until recently, little was known about Pana Wave Laboratory - one
of Japan's many small and mysterious sects - but the group has
been given prominence in the past week, which has seen a standoff
with the authorities and a raid by hundreds of riot police.
The cult believes most of humankind will be destroyed on May 15,
when an undiscovered 10th planet approaches Earth,
reversing the magnetic pole and causing floods and tidal
waves.
To prepare for the final day, a group of about 40 believers have
formed a convoy of a dozen white vans that travel Japan's
mountain roads in search of an area free from electromagnetic
waves.
The group ended a five-day standoff with police early on Friday
when faced with the threat of arrest and has since moved camp
twice to its current site, an unused road in the mountainous
village of Kiyomi, 170 miles west of Tokyo.
It says communists are using such waves to try to kill their
ailing guru, Yuko Chino, a 69-year-old self-proclaimed prophet
who is said to be suffering from cancer.
In what it claims is a form of defence, followers dress from head
to toe in white, drive white vans and cover the trees and roads
around their camp in white sheets.
While most Japanese have been amused at such antics, others have
made alarming comparisons with the Aum Supreme Truth cult which
was scorned for its outlandishness before stunning the country
with a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995.
Hidehiko Sato, the director-general of the national police
agency, indicated that the authorities were assuming the worst
about Pana Wave Laboratory. "The group is similar to Aum
Shinrikyo in its early stages," Mr Sato said. "We're
going to crack down on any possible illegal activities of the
group."
So far, however, the closest the cult has come to criminal
activity is a couple of parking violations - for obstructing the
view of its drivers by filling their vans' windscreens with white
stickers.
One follower claimed the cult had been trying to save Tamachan, a
seal that has been in the news for making his home in a river
near Tokyo.
But any sympathy this might have generated was destroyed by a
statement from the group that said: "People without the ears
to hear will all face death."
The Japanese media said the cult released a pamphlet last year
urging members to "exterminate all humankind" if their
leader died.
Copyright 2003, Guardian Newspapers Limited
===========
(8) AND FINALLY: DEMAND FOR OIL FORECAST TO CLIMB 50% BY 2025
The Financial Times, 1 May 2003
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&cid=1051389671165&p=1012571727108
By Carola Hoyos in London
The US Energy Department on Thursday forecast the world will need
more than 50 per cent more oil in 2025 than it does now, throwing
into question governments' massive efforts to reduce the world's
dependence on oil.
Most of the extra barrels will come from the Middle East, despite
US, European and Asian governments' attempts to diversify their
suppliers away from the volatile region. Opec's market share is
expected to grow, with the cartel more than doubling its current
27m barrels a day production to 56m b/d.
Efforts to move to more environmentally friendly fuels are almost
negligible, the department's annual report indicated. Total
carbon dioxide emissions are projected to increase 59 per cent by
2025, while the share of energy that comes from renewable sources
- such as wind, water and solar power - will remain unchanged at
8 per cent...
The biggest growth in oil use will come from the transportation
sector and the developing world - especially China, India and
South Korea - which is forecast by 2025 to need 86 per cent as
much oil as the developing world.
The share of natural gas in total energy consumption is expected
to increase from 23 per cent to 28 per cent by 2025 as countries
looking to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions turn to the
cleaner burning fuel to service their power plants.
Nuclear energy, which is expected to make up only 12 per cent of
the world's electricity supply in 2025, will be on the losing
side as developed countries continue to decommission reactors.
Copyright 2003, Financial Times
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