PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet TERRA 12/2002 - 5 December 2002
------------------------------------
"We do not know the effect of natural fluctuations in
climate on
warming or adequately understand the natural carbon and water
cycles. We
do not yet adequately understand the role of clouds, oceans and
aerosol
emissions on global climate change. We cannot confidently project
how our
climate could or will change. We do not know definitely what
constitutes
a dangerous level of warming. Rather than pitting economic growth
against
the environment, as the Kyoto Protocol would do, and imposing
massive
job losses on the American people, [the US administration's
climate
plan] promises real progress by harnessing the power of sound
science and cutting edge technologies. And, it ensures that
America's
workers and the citizens of the developing world are not unfairly
penalized."
--U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, 3 December 2002
(1) U.S. LEADING THE WAY TOWARDS RATIONAL CLIMATE RESEARCH &
POLICY
Environment News Service, 3 December 2002
(2) HOT TIME IN THE CITY
World Climate Report, December 2002
(3) SHOCK, HORROR: HALF OF EARTH STILL WILDERNESS
Eurekalert, 4 December 2002
(4) SOLAR FORCING OF CLIMATE: IS IT SIGNIFICANT?
CO2 Science Magazine, 27 November 2002
(5) HOW IMMINENT IS THE COLLAPSE OF THE WEST ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET?
CO2 Science Magazine, 27 November 2002
===========================
** GOOD NEWS OF THE WEEK **
===========================
(6) PLANETARY ENGINEERING: UK WORKING ON RAINMAKING TECHNOLOGY
BBC News Online, 2 December 2002
(7) NUCLEAR, FREE: NO LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF THE THREE MILE ISLAND
ACCIDENT
Tech Central Station, 2 December 2002
(8) AND FINALLY: HEALTH, WEALTH, FREE TIME: 'WE'VE NEVER HAD IT
SO GOOD'
The Independent, 4 December 2002
(9) UNDER THE BOTTOM LINE: GLOBAL WARMING MAY TRIGGER HOMOSEXUAL
DESIRE :-)
World Climate Report, December 2002
=================
(1) U.S. LEADING THE WAY TOWARDS RATIONAL CLIMATE RESEARCH &
POLICIES
>From Environment News Service, 3 December 2002
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2002/2002-12-03-04.asp
U.S. CLIMATE CHANGE STRATEGY UP FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
WASHINGTON, DC, December 3, 2002 (ENS) - A new U.S. climate
change research
strategy that U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans terms
"aggressive" is the
focus of a three day workshop that opened today in Washington.
The U.S.
Climate Change Science Program has welcomed more than 1,100
experts from
across the country and around the world to receive comments on a
discussion
draft version of its "Strategic Plan" for climate
change and global change
studies.
The Climate Change Science Program, incorporating the U.S. Global
Change
Research Program and the Climate Change Research Initiative, is
jointly
sponsored by 13 U.S. government agencies. The workshop will
review the plan,
first issued November 19, with a view to finding ways to support
climate
change policy and resource management decision making within five
years.
In an opinion statement today, Commerce Secretary Evans
acknowledges that
"the surface temperature of the Earth has warmed, rising 0.6
degrees Celsius
(one degree Fahrenheit) over the past century. And the National
Academy of
Sciences indicates that human activity is a contributing factor
to higher
concentrations of greenhouse gases."
Yet, Evans says, a great deal is still not known about the
sciences of
climate change, and the Climate Change Research Initiative focus
is defined
by this group of uncertainties.
"We do not know the effect of natural fluctuations in
climate on warming or
adequately understand the natural carbon and water cycles. We do
not yet
adequately understand the role of clouds, oceans and aerosol
emissions on
global climate change. We cannot confidently project how our
climate could
or will change. We do not know definitely what constitutes a
dangerous level
of warming," Evans said today.
The Strategic Plan confirms that the climate change is occurring.
"Currently, measurements taken at the Earth's surface, in
various layers of
the atmosphere, in boreholes, in the oceans, and in other
environmental
systems such as the cryosphere [frozen regions] indicate that the
climate is
warming," it states.
The plan points to some inconsistencies in the scientific record.
"Apparently contradicting the evidence of warming are
inconsistencies in the
observational record, particularly related to the differences
between
temperature trends measured at the surface and measurements taken
from
satellite observations of the lower- to mid-troposphere, which
show no
significant warming trends in the last two decades of the 20th
century," it
says.
This and other gaps in the climate science remain "an
important challenge
with significant potential implications for decisionmaking,"
the discussion
document states.
The draft plan has been prepared by the 13 federal agencies
participating in
the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), with input from
scientific
steering groups. Articles appear written by authors from the U.S.
space
agency, NASA; the oceans and atmosphere agency, NOAA; the energy
department,
and the EPA, among others.
As Plan Coordinator for the Office of the U.S. Global Change
Research
Program, Dr. Richard H. Moss led a staff of 17 climate experts in
preparation of the strategic plan, which sets priorities for the
nation's
$1.8 billion annual multi-agency research program.
Secretary Evans today explained once again why the Bush
administration
prefers "market-based" means of dealing with climate
change with science and
technology above the method of the Kyoto Protocol to the UN
Climate
Convention that would set binding limits on the emission of six
heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
"Rather than pitting economic growth against the
environment, as the Kyoto
Protocol would do, and imposing massive job losses on the
American people,"
said Evans, the Bush administration climate plan, "promises
real progress by
harnessing the power of sound science and cutting edge
technologies. And, it
ensures that America's workers and the citizens of the developing
world are
not unfairly penalized.
The new U.S. climate research strategy focuses on three broad
tiers of
activities, Evans said today, "scientific inquiry that is
objective and well
documented; observation and monitoring systems to provide needed,
comprehensive global data; and development of decision support
resources,
including the ability to explore various potential
outcomes."
The United States spends more money on research and technology
development
directed at climate change than any other nation, $20 billion
since 1990.
"That's three times as much as any other country," said
Evans. "It is more
than Japan and all 15 nations of the European Union
combined."
Even if the most perfect set of data possible is assembled,
"This is because
these activities are not predetermined, but rather depend on
human choices,
which will, in turn, affect future climate conditions,"
The challenge is discerning whether human activities are causing
the
observed climatic changes and impacts. This requires detecting a
small,
decade-by-decade trend against the backdrop of wide temperature
changes that
occur on shorter timescales of seasons or years.
The Strategic Plan is intended as a vehicle to facilitate
comments and
suggestions by the scientific and stakeholder communities
interested in
climate and global change issues.
"We welcome comments on this draft plan by all interested
persons," says Dr.
James Mahoney, assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and
atmosphere,
and director, Climate Change Science Program. Comments may be
provided
during the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Planning Workshop
for
Scientists and Stakeholders being held in Washington, DC on
December 3 - 5,
2002, and during a subsequent public comment period extending to
January 13,
2003.
Information about the Workshop and the written comment
opportunities is
available online at: www.climatescience.gov.
A newly formed committee of the National Research Council is also
reviewing
the draft plan, and will provide its analysis of the plan, the
workshop and
the written comments received after the workshop. A final version
of the
strategic plan, setting a path for the next few years of research
under the
Climate Change Science Program, will be published by April 2003.
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All Rights
Reserved.
==========
(2) HOT TIME IN THE CITY
>From World Climate Report, December 2002
http://www.co2andclimate.org/climate/v8n07/feature.htm
Here's *the* question on global warming: Are increasing
greenhouse gases
warming the planet and if so, by how much?
Over the 20th century, the measured average surface temperature
warmed about
0.7°C, a portion of which is probably related to greenhouse
gases. The
warming over the last 30 years has been roughly constant, just as
climate
models project (though they tend to predict a faster rise than
has been
observed). A simple extrapolation of reality suggests that the
planet will
warm about 1.5°C by the year 2100, assuming a business-as-usual
energy usage
and population increase scenario.
So that's the answer to the question. The problem is that it's
the wrong
question. A warming that small, coupled with likely reductions in
climate
variability (warm climates are less variable climates), will have
a
negligible impact on global economy, habitability,
infrastructure, and so
on. There's no reason to talk about it, let alone fret over it.
But a much greater warming has occurred, is occurring, and will
continue to
occur across the planet-a warming that is a fundamental component
of
civilized society (in fact, it defines "civilization"):
It's called urban
warming.
The Urban Heat Island
The structures and practices within cities-where people
congregate to do
what civilized people do-generate heat. Pavement, buildings, and
so forth
retain heat, particularly at night. The reduction of vegetated
areas changes
the atmosphere's moisture content. Heating and cooling
requirements generate
heat. The net impact is that cities are much warmer than the
surrounding
countryside, particularly after dark. In fact, the warming you
experience in
the 30 minutes it takes to drive from the sticks to the big city
is several
times greater than the warming the entire planet will experience
in the next
100 years.
That simple fact poses a real problem to the global warming
lobby. It's been
hard enough for the enviros trying to get the Kyoto Protocol
implemented-imagine their difficulty in forcing the population of
the
world's cities to disperse and live peacefully in small communes
tending to
their organic farms and composting toilets. The Soviets couldn't
even
accomplish that in 70 years. To the arguable extent that higher
temperatures
are a "problem," the observed warming that has already
taken place in cities
is of a similar magnitude to that projected to occur as a result
of
greenhouse gas increases. But to properly study the latter issue,
we need to
try to account for the impact of this urbanization in all
analyses in which
urban contamination might be present.
New Information
Which brings us to a new report from Art DeGaetano and Robert
Allen from
Cornell entitled "Trends in Twentieth-Century Temperature
Extremes Across
the United States." Using a dense network of daily records
from weather
stations throughout the United States, DeGaetano and Allen put
together a
quality-controlled data set covering the period 1900-1996. To
examine trends
in extremes, they counted the number of times daily maximum and
minimum
temperatures exceeded both the 95th and 5th percentiles for each
station (so
they looked at both extremes-high and low of both daily maximum
and daily
minimum temperatures). They then examined the long-term trends in
these
exceedence counts.
The top left map (Figure 1a) depicts trends in high (95th
percentile)
minimum temperature exceedences since 1930, a warm decade. A
total of 34
percent of the stations show statistically significant declines
(warm
nighttime lows becoming less common) compared to 17 percent
exhibiting
significant increases (warm nighttime lows more common). The same
general
pattern applies to daily highs (Figure 1b), with 38 percent of
stations
declining (fewer warm highs) and only 12 percent increasing (more
extreme
hot days). These results will not sit well with our greener
friends: The
only trend in extremes is a long-term tendency toward more cold
nights.
But when the authors start their analysis in 1960 rather than
1930, the
story reverses. High nighttime minima are more common (Figure 1c)
as are
daytime highs (Figure 1d), although the signal is stronger with
the
nighttime exceedences (34 percent vs. 22 percent). Surely this
must be a
signal of the nefarious impact of greenhouse gases.
Fortunately, the authors took the analysis one step further. They
classified
each weather station location as urban, suburban, or rural from
satellite
land use information. Based on averages across all stations, high
max and
high min exceedences decreased over the 1930-1996 period but
increased since
1960 (Figure 2, two top-left figures in the first row). But when
the data
are subdivided into the eastern (2nd row), central (3rd row), and
western
(4th row) United States, it's clear that the East is dominating
the overall
pattern. In the eastern region, 48 percent of the stations are
urban,
compared to only 23 percent and 31 percent in the Central and
West,
respectively.
According to DeGaetano and Allen:
Urbanization exerts a strong influence on recent (1960-96) warm
temperature
extreme trends. For each extreme temperature measure (i.e.,
maximum and
minimum temperature and warm or cold extremes), the greatest
warming occurs
at urban stations. For warm minimum temperatures, the composite
slope is
nearly three times greater at urban than rural stations. For cold
minimum
and warm maximum temperature extremes, the urban trends' slopes
are over 1.5
times higher than those rural composites.
So in a nutshell, yes, warm extremes have been increasing since
1960, but
the rise is occurring mostly in cities. Urbanization trumps
global warming.
If you want to experience what temperatures may be like in the
future, just
get in your car and drive downtown, burning some fossil fuels
along the way
(don't worry...it obviously doesn't matter). Not only will you
survive, but
you can also probably partake in a fine meal and do some
recreational
shopping. Al Gore will not be pleased. It's hard to believe, but
despite
centuries of development and evolution, "civilization"
still has a few
naysayers.
Reference:
DeGaetano, A.T., and R.J. Allen, 2002. Trends in
twentieth-century
temperature extremes across the United States, Journal of
Climate, 15,
3188-3205.
Copyright 2002, World Climate Report
==============
(3) SHOCK, HORROR: HALF OF EARTH STILL WILDERNESS
>From Eurekalert, 4 December 2002
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-12/ci-gaf120202.php
Contact: Brad Phillips
b.phillips@conservation.org
202-912-1532
Conservation International
Global analysis finds nearly half the Earth is still wilderness
Many areas, including North America's deserts, under severe
threat
December 4, 2002 (Washington, DC) - According to the most
comprehensive
global analysis ever conducted, wilderness areas still cover
close to half
the Earth's land, but contain only a tiny percentage of the
world's
population. More than 200 international scientists contributed to
the
analysis, which will be published in the book, Wilderness:
Earth's Last Wild
Places, (University of Chicago Press, 2003).
The 37 wilderness areas identified in the book represent 46
percent of the
Earth's land surface, but are occupied by just 2.4 percent of the
world's
population, excluding urban centers. Nine of the wilderness areas
fall, at
least in part, within the United States.
Although the wilderness areas are still largely intact, they are
increasingly threatened by population growth, encroaching
agriculture and
resource extraction activities. Barely 7 percent of the areas
currently
enjoy some form of protection.
Nineteen of the wilderness areas have remarkably low population
densities -
an average of less than one person per square kilometer.
Excluding urban
centers, these 19 areas represent 38 percent of the Earth's land
surface,
but hold only 0.7 percent of the planet's population.
"These very low density areas represent a landmass
equivalent to the six
largest countries on Earth combined - Russia, Canada, China, the
United
States, Brazil and Australia - but have within them the
population of only
three large cities, a truly remarkable finding," said
co-author Russell
Mittermeier, President of Conservation International. "It's
good news that
we still have these large tracts of land largely intact and
uninhabited, but
these areas are increasingly under threat."
The large-format, 576-page book depicts rare species and
remarkable places
in more than 500 breathtaking color photographs that accompany
detailed
information regarding the habitat, species and cultural diversity
of each
wilderness area. The analysis was mainly carried out over the
past two years
by Conservation International's Center for Applied Biodiversity
Science with
support from the Global Conservation Fund.
The wilderness areas include several diverse habitats, ranging
from Southern
Africa's Miombo-Mopane Woodlands, with the world's largest
remaining
population of African elephants, to the Sonoran and Baja
Californian Deserts
of Arizona, California and Mexico, with their Gila woodpeckers
and giant
cacti, to Amazonia's rainforests, teeming with biodiversity
including 30,000
endemic plant species and 122 endemic primate species and
subspecies.
To qualify as "wilderness," an area has 70 percent or
more of its original
vegetation intact, covers at least 10,000 square kilometers
(3,861 square
miles) and most have fewer than five people per square kilometer.
"Wilderness areas are major storehouses of biodiversity, but
just as
importantly, they provide critical ecosystem services to the
planet,
including watershed maintenance, pollination and carbon
sequestration," said
Gustavo Fonseca, Executive Director of CI's Center for Applied
Biodiversity
Science. "As international debates on climate change and
water security
continue, these wilderness areas take on even greater
importance."
Only five wilderness areas are considered "high-biodiversity
wilderness
areas," because they contain at least 1,500 endemic vascular
plant species,
meaning they are found nowhere else in the world. The five areas
are
Amazonia, the Congo Forests of Central Africa, New Guinea, the
North
American Deserts and the Miombo-Mopane Woodlands and Grasslands
of Southern
Africa.
"These wilderness areas are important for any global
strategy of protecting
biodiversity, since we have the opportunity to save large tracts
of land at
relatively low costs," said Peter Seligmann, CI's Chairman
and CEO. "The
areas are also critical for Earth's remaining indigenous groups,
which often
want to protect their traditional ways of life from the unwanted
by-products
of modern society."
"As striking as these wilderness numbers are, they only
serve to underscore
more than ever the critical importance of protecting the
biodiversity
hotspots, areas which represent only 1.4 percent of the Earth's
landmass but
contain more than 60 percent of its terrestrial species,"
said Mittermeier.
"If we are to succeed as conservationists, we have to take a
two-pronged
approach of protecting the biodiversity hotspots and
high-biodiversity
wilderness areas simultaneously."
The book is the result of collaboration between Conservation
International
and Agrupación Sierra Madre, and is published by CEMEX, a
Mexican company
that also published the first two books in this series,
Megadiversity and
Hotspots.
Wilderness: Earth's Last Wild Places is now available through
Conservation
International (www.conservation.org).
The University of Chicago Press will
accept pre-orders beginning in December (www.press.uchicago.edu),
and the
book will be available in bookstores in Spring, 2003.
===========
(4) SOLAR FORCING OF CLIMATE: IS IT SIGNIFICANT?
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 27 November 2002
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2002/v5n48c1.htm
Reference
Frohlich, C. and Lean, J. 2002. Solar irradiance variability and
climate.
Astronomische Nachrichten 323: 203-212.
Background
A number of different spacecraft have monitored total solar
irradiance (TSI)
for the past 23 years, with at least two of them operating
simultaneously at
all times. In addition, TSI measurements made from balloons
and rockets
supplement the satellite data. From this wealth of information, a
composite
TSI record has been developed that spans two 11-year solar
cycles.
What was done
The authors compare the composite TSI record with an empirical
model of TSI
variations, based on known magnetic sources of irradiance
variability, such
as sunspot darkening and brightening. They then describe
how "the TSI
record may be extrapolated back to the seventeenth century
Maunder Minimum
of anomalously lower solar activity, which coincided with the
coldest period
of the Little Ice Age." This exercise, they say,
"enables an assessment of
the extent of post-industrial climate change that may be
attributable to a
varying Sun, and how much the Sun might influence future climate
change."
What was learned
In the words of the authors, "warming since 1650 due to the
solar change is
close to 0.4°C, with pre-industrial fluctuations of 0.2°C that
are seen also
to be present in the temperature reconstructions."
What it means
>From this study, it would appear that solar variability can
explain a
significant portion of the warming experienced by the earth in
recovering
from the global chill of the Little Ice Age, with a modicum of
positive
feedback accounting for the rest. With respect to the future,
however, the
authors say that "solar forcing is unlikely to compensate
for the expected
forcing due to the increase of anthropogenic greenhouse gases
which are
projected to be about a factor of 3-6 larger." The magnitude
of that
anthropogenic forcing, however, is computed by many different
approaches to
be much smaller than the value employed by the authors in making
this
comparison (Idso, 1998). Likewise, the anticipated rise in the
air's CO2
content may also be much smaller than what is specified by the
set of
scenarios employed by the authors, due to simultaneous
CO2-induced increases
in biospheric carbon sequestration (Idso, 1991a,b). Hence, while
past
temperature changes seem reasonably well explained by solar
radiation
variations, the future - as always - is a much more murky matter.
References
Idso, S.B. 1991a. The aerial fertilization effect of
CO2 and its
implications for global carbon cycling and maximum greenhouse
warming.
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 72: 962-965.
Idso, S.B. 1991b. Reply to comments of L.D. Danny
Harvey, Bert Bolin, and
P. Lehmann. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
72: 1910-1914.
Idso, S.B. 1998. CO2-induced global warming: a
skeptic's view of potential
climate change. Climate Research 10: 69-82.
Copyright © 2002. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
=============
(5) HOW IMMINENT IS THE COLLAPSE OF THE WEST ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET?
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 27 November 2002
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2002/v5n48c3.htm
Reference
Hillenbrand, C-D., Futterer, D.K., Grobe, H. and Frederichs,
T. 2002. No
evidence for a Pleistocene collapse of the West Antarctic Ice
Sheet from
continental margin sediments recovered in the Amundsen Sea.
Geo-Marine
Letters. 22: 51-59.
Background
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet [WAIS] is often described as the
world's most
unstable large ice sheet. As the authors of this paper report,
"it was
speculated, from observed fast grounding-line retreat and
thinning of a
glacier in Pine Island Bay (Rignot, 1998; Shepherd et al., 2001),
from the
timing of late Pleistocene-Holocene deglaciation in the Ross Sea
(Bindschadler, 1998; Conway et al., 1999), and from predicted
activity of
ice-stream drainage in response to presumed future global warming
(Oppenheimer, 1998), that the WAIS may disappear in the future,
causing the
sea-level to rise at a rate of 1 to 10 mm/year (Bindschadler,
1998;
Oppenheimer, 1998)."
What was done
The authors studied the nature and history of glaciomarine
deposits
contained in sediment cores recovered from the West Antarctic
continental
margin in the Amundsen Sea to "test hypotheses of past
disintegration of the
WAIS."
What was learned
All proxies regarded as sensitive to a WAIS collapse, according
to the
authors, changed markedly during the global climatic cycles of
the past 1.8
million years, "but do not confirm a complete disintegration
of the WAIS
during the Pleistocene" at a place where "dramatic
environmental changes
linked to such an event should be documented." In fact, they
say their
results "suggest relative stability rather than instability
of the WAIS
during the Pleistocene climatic cycles."
What it means
In light of the findings of this study, it seems reasonable to
conclude we
are nowhere near having to worry about a disintegration of the
WAIS. This
seems also to be the feeling of the authors, who - although
careful to state
their results "do not exclude the possibility of a WAIS
melting in response
to future global warming" - emphasize that their primary
conclusion is
"consistent with only a minor reduction of the WAIS during
the last
interglacial period (Huybrechts, 1990; Cuffey and Marshall, 2000;
Huybrechts, 2002), which was slightly warmer than the
Holocene."
Along these same lines, we note that all four of the
interglacials that
preceded the current interglacial were warmer than the Holocene,
by an
average of more than 2°C (see our Editorial of 9 August 2000),
yet the WAIS
still didn't disintegrate.
So, don't hold your breath waiting for the Big Meltdown to occur;
it's just
not in the cards.
References
Bindschadler, R. 1998. Future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Science 282:
428-429.
Conway, H., Hall, B.L., Denton, G.H., Gades, A.M. and Waddington,
E.D. 1999.
Past and future grounding-line retreat of the West Antarctic Ice
Sheet.
Science 286: 280-283.
Cuffey, K.M. and Marshall, S.J. 2000. Substantial contribution to
sea-level
rise during the last interglacial from the Greenland ice sheet.
Nature 404:
591-594.
Huybrechts, P. 1990. The Antarctic Ice Sheet during the last
glacial-interglacial cycle: a three-dimensional experiment.
Annals of
Glaciology 14: 115-119.
Huybrechts, P. 2002. Sea-level changes at the LGM from
ice-dynamic
reconstructions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets during
the glacial
cycles. Quaternary Science Reviews 21: 203-231.
Oppenheimer, M. 1998. Global warming and the stability of the
West Antarctic
Ice Sheet. Nature 393: 325-332.
Rignot, E.J. 1998. Fast recession of a West Antarctic
glacier. Science 281:
549-551.
Shepherd, A., Wingham, D.J., Mansley, J.A.D. and Corr, H.F.J.
2001. Inland
thinning of Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica. Science
291: 862-864.
Copyright © 2002. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and
Global Change
===========================
** GOOD NEWS OF THE WEEK **
===========================
(6) PLANETARY ENGINEERING: UK WORKING ON RAINMAKING TECHNOLOGY
>From BBC News Online, 2 December 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2535343.stm
Scientists in Britain are designing a machine that could help to
produce
rain in areas where it is needed.
The plan involves forcing seawater through nozzles so that it
becomes a fine
spray, which can then gradually form into clouds.
The research is being carried out at Edinburgh University by
Professor
Stephen Salter, who designed a way of producing electricity from
waves 30
years ago with a system of floats known as "Salter's
duck".
His rainmaking idea has just been awarded a government
development grant
worth over £100,000.
Fine spray
The project is based around a wind-powered machine which looks
rather like a
giant lollipop.
The stick is a large, hollow tube which stands upright on a
platform on the
sea, with its base just below the water.
Two hollow blades stick out from the sides of the tube. As the
wind spins
these blades around, they power the turbine, which sucks up
seawater by
centrifugal force - no pumps, valves or pistons are needed.
Professor Salter told the BBC: "We are trying to break
through the layer of
rather stagnant, humid air that's at the very, very bottom of the
atmosphere, in contact with the sea surface, and lift large
volumes of water
through this and squirt them out from 10 metres up in the air as
a very fine
spray, with a very big surface area."
Technical hurdles
Professor Salter says that, ideally, his rainmaking machines
would be
positioned about 10 to 20 kilometres off a mountainous coastline
- like the
Red Sea or the Persian Gulf.
They would then need an onshore wind to blow the moisture-filled
air towards
land, and let the mountains lift it further into the sky to form
clouds.
His team is now using computers to track the movement of air in
different
parts of the world, working out where to test the rainmaker, when
it has
been built.
There are still technical problems to sort out, including
controlling the
size of the water droplets, and how to make sure that the salty
residue
falls back into the sea.
People have been trying for many years to modify the weather,
from tribal
rain dances through to experiments in which small crystals were
dropped into
clouds to attract moisture.
There has been some success with this method, but the regular use
of
"seeding" to influence weather patterns still remains a
long way off.
Copyright 2002, BBC
===============
(7) NUCLEAR, FREE: NO LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF THE THREE MILE ISLAND
ACCIDENT
>From Tech Central Station, 2 December 2002
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-120202B
By Howard Fienberg
At 4 A.M. on March 28, 1979, the Three Mile Island (TMI) Unit 2
nuclear
power plant malfunctioned. The reactor suffered a partial
meltdown, but it
could not compare to the one suffered by news media, anti-nuclear
activists
and public opinion. It should be easier now, after more than two
decades, to
gauge the impact of the TMI accident. Was there a measurable
public health
impact? Did it lead to an epidemic of early deaths from
radiation-induced
cancers?
Judge Sylvia Rambo of the U.S. District Court in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania,
trained a skeptical eye on the effects of TMI when faced with the
anti-nuclear vanguard - trial lawyers. In June, 1996, she
dismissed a class
action lawsuit linking the accident to adverse health effects:
"The parties
to the instant action... have had nearly two decades to muster
evidence in
support of their respective cases... The paucity of proof alleged
in support
of plaintiff's case is manifest. The court has searched the
record for any
and all evidence, which construed in the light more favorable to
plaintiffs
creates a genuine issue of material fact warranting submission of
their
claims to a jury. This effort has been in vain." Translation
from legalese
to English: after all this time, there is not the slightest
evidence of so
much as a cold linked to the TMI accident.
Both the U.S. Department of Energy and the state Department of
Environmental
Resources tested hundreds of air samples in the vicinity of TMI
shortly
after the accident. They discovered only average levels of
radioactivity.
Writing a few years after TMI, University of Pittsburgh professor
Bernard
Cohen asserted that, "the average person living near Three
Mile Island
received as much extra radiation from that accident as he would
get from a
one-week visit to Denver." Indeed, separating the impact of
any radiation
emitted from TMI from the many other sources of background
radiation would
be quite difficult.
The results of a study released at the beginning of November
should
effectively close the book on the TMI story. (The study will be
published in
the Environmental Health Perspectives journal, but were posted
online
[ http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2003/5662/abstract.html
] early).
Conducting a 20-year follow-up study of mortality data on the
32,135 people
resident within a five-mile radius of TMI (within two months of
the
accident), researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found no
increase in
overall deaths from cancer. Lead researcher Dr. Evelyn O. Talbott
explained
they found "virtually no difference" when they compared
observed cancers
with the expected rates, after controlling for background
radiation,
educational level and smoking. The study covered what Talbott
said was the
normal latency period for most cancers. Talbott's team found a
slight
increase in the risk for lymphomas, leukemia and other blood
system cancers
among men exposed to radiation released by the accident, but
conceded that
it could have easily arisen from later exposure to other
potentially
cancerous agents or risk factors. "You would expect, really
by chance, when
you do 20 or more analyses, you're going to have a couple that by
random
chance come up," she said.
The results of this latest study further discredit the main
pillar of our
fears of radiation: the linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNTH).
The LNTH
presumes that with each incremental rise in radiation exposure,
the health
effects will increase by an equal amount. It also assumes that
any exposure
to radiation is harmful to human health, even the smallest
measurable amount
(hence the "no-threshold"). But many scientists
question the validity of the
hypothesis. In April 1999, the American Nuclear Society concluded
that
"there is insufficient scientific evidence to support"
the LNTH "in the
projection of the health effects of low-level radiation." In
addition, there
is a growing body of evidence showing that exposure to low level
radiation
may provide some benefits to health.
Nuclear power has been trumpeted for decades as a threat to our
health for
decades, but it never spawned the development of any
Godzilla-like disaster.
Even the meltdown of the Chernobyl plant in 1986, one with few of
the
safeguards and protections of American plants, killed only 41
people, not
the 2,000, 15,000 or 110,000 rashly predicted at the time.
There is no evidence that TMI led to increased cancer risk or
that American
nuclear plants are linked to local increased infant mortality
(rates
actually have decreased in their vicinity). Nuclear power is
pretty safe and
our country's worst nuclear "accident" seemed to have
no practical health
effects. Anti-nuclear activists appear to be running out of
viable targets.
Given the increased threat to our fuel sources from unsteady or
unsavory
suppliers in the Middle East, Americans may not stand for
anti-nuclear
grandstanding for very long. Perhaps it is time for the activists
to find a
new crusade - maybe even one with scientific backing.
Copyright 2002, Tech Central Station
=========
(8) AND FINALLY: HEALTH, WEALTH, FREE TIME: 'WE'VE NEVER HAD IT
SO GOOD'
>From The Independent, 4 December 2002
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=358263
By Cahal Milmo
Imagine a bank statement that lists your earthly wealth not only
in pounds
sterling but also through increased longevity, how long you work
and your
access to technology from antibiotics to air travel.
This was the concept of economic well-being put forward by a
leading
economist yesterday in an effort to prove that Britons are really
at least
twice as wealthy as they think they are.
Nick Crafts, professor of economic history at the London School
of
Economics, told an audience that scientific and technological
advances such
as increased life expectancy had been wrongly excluded from
calculations of
the nation's wealth. If they had been included, the growth in the
country's
gross domestic product over the past 25 years - an average annual
increase
of 1.8 per cent - would have been at least doubled, he said.
The findings were in stark contrast to recent surveys showing
that many
Britons, in particular twentysomethings, are convinced their
quality of life
is falling and they are plunging into lethargy and depression as
a result.
But Professor Crafts, delivering the annual Royal Economic
Society lecture
in London, said more ethereal notions such as health and free
time deserved
a monetary value, as did the technology that made them possible.
He said: "We now expect to live on average 30 years longer,
to work almost
half the amount of time we used to, and to enjoy an array of new
goods and
services, including air travel, antibiotics and televisions.
"The most important scientific achievement of the 20th
century - the massive
reduction in mortality risks - is not taken into account [in
GDP], although
there is clear evidence that it is worth as much to people as a
huge
increase in material consumption."
The professor said the longer life expectancy of the population
and better
quality of life should therefore be calculated as a concrete
economic gain
to produce a "true" picture of the national income. For
example, a
"statistical life" - the value gained from reducing
expected deaths by one
in a single year - has been worked out as £1.75m a year.
Professor Crafts said that GDP figures showing a slowdown in the
annual rate
of growth from 2.5 per cent between 1950 and 1973 to 1.8 per cent
until 1998
could be considered "statistical artefacts". But he
admitted that his
proposal did nothing to explain research that showed that despite
their
increased wealth, most Britons were no happier than their
grandparents or
great-grandparents.
Professor Crafts said Britons were seemingly never satisfied with
their lot
in life. "The resolution of this paradox seems to be that
our material
aspirations rise as fast as our incomes."
Copyright 2002, The Independent
============
(9) UNDER THE BOTTOM LINE: GLOBAL WARMING MAY TRIGGER HOMOSEXUAL
DESIRE :-)
>From World Climate Report, December 2002
http://www.co2andclimate.org/climate/v8n07/hot.htm
In what must be considered an odd science news item at best, the
German
science magazine Geo reports that fruit flies acquire homosexual
tendencies
as temperatures increase.
When temperatures inside the lab were 19°C, male flies exhibited
typical
heterosexual behavior, chasing after and, when lucky, breeding
with hot
female flies. But when ambient temperatures rose to 30°C, their
fellow male
flies apparently began to look even hotter to them than the
females. "The
male flies ignored the female partners at that point and chased
after their
male counterparts," the researchers reported.
It may be premature to assign such a correlation to the behavior
to homo
sapiens, but given the preponderance of warming in Siberia and
northwestern
North America, we might begin to look for possible indicators:
The opening
of a Broadway-style theater in Magnitigorsk, a rapid explosion of
hair
salons in Moose Jaw, or the debut of a 24-hour "Will and
Grace" channel in
Nome.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
CCNet is a scholarly electronic network. To
subscribe/unsubscribe, please
contact the moderator Benny J Peiser < b.j.peiser@livjm.ac.uk
>. Information
circulated on this network is for scholarly and educational use
only. The
attached information may not be copied or reproduced for any
other purposes
without prior permission of the copyright holders. The fully
indexed archive
of the CCNet, from February 1997 on, can be found at
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cccmenu.html.
DISCLAIMER: The opinions,
beliefs and viewpoints expressed in the articles and texts and in
other
CCNet contributions do not necessarily reflect the opinions,
beliefs and
viewpoints of the moderator of this network.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------