West Nile Epidemic: How Real Is the Threat?

First, the bad news: an early spike in the number of cases of West Nile virus infection reported this year has some researchers predicting a possible epidemic as the end of summer approaches.

But don't board up your windows or stock up on bottled water just yet. Infectious disease specialists say such an epidemic would not be as deadly as those involving other viruses -- and would be largely preventable, to boot.

"What we're seeing is the expected increase in West Nile virus transmission that occurs during the summer months," said Dr. Ned Hayes, a medical epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But he added that this year, early figures appear high.

According to July 24 data, the CDC has fielded a total of 122 reports of human West Nile Virus infection in 17 states so far this year. Three people have died.

The number of West Nile reports this year so far outstrips the figure recorded at this time last year. Whether this bump will lead to an epidemic this year has yet to be determined, according to infectious disease specialists.

more from ABC News

Almost 700 dead in China storms

BEIJING Deaths from floods, lightning and landslides across China this summer have reached nearly 700, state media said on Monday, with experts warning that global warming is likely to fuel more violent weather.

Over the weekend alone, fierce storms and hail killed 17 people across four provinces.

Ten died in the central province of Hubei, where rain and hail have added to swollen waters along the country's longest river, the Yangtze, and its main tributary, the Han.

In the northwestern province of Shaanxi, five died in floods that cut off roads around Shangluo, Xinhua news agency said.

A hail storm on Saturday hit parts of the eastern province Anhui, where millions of residents have been grappling with the threat of the swollen Huai River for the past month, killing one person and injuring three, Xinhua said.

Flood waters on the Huai have begun to retreat, but many thousands of people remained stationed along its embankments to prevent breaches, it added.

One person died in a lightning strike in weekend storms in the flood-battered southwestern province of Sichuan, Xinhua said.

At least 3,000 ship-borne tourists along the Yangtze had to switch to buses on Monday as flood water from its upper reaches in the country's southwest forced the closure of locks at the massive Three Gorges Dam, Xinhua said.

The Xinjiang Daily said deluges bringing landslides and land subsidence had cut highways throughout the far northwestern region. One would take about two months to repair.
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Brazil, Alarmed, Reconsiders Policy on Climate Change

MANAUS, Brazil — Alarmed at recent indications of climate change here in the Amazon and in other regions of Brazil, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has begun showing signs of new flexibility in the tangled, politically volatile international negotiations to limit human-caused global warming.

The factors behind the re-evaluation range from a drought here in the Amazon rain forest, the world’s largest, and the impact that it could have on agriculture if it recurs, to new phenomena like a hurricane in the south of Brazil. As a result, environmental advocates, scientists and some politicians say, Brazilian policy makers and the public they serve are increasingly seeing climate change not as a distant problem, but as one that could affect them too.

Brazil remains suspicious of foreign involvement in its management of the Amazon, which it views as a domestic matter. But negotiators and others who monitor international climate talks say Brazil is now willing to discuss issues that until recently it considered off the table, including market-based programs to curb the carbon emissions that result from massive deforestation in the Amazon, in which areas the size of New Jersey or larger are razed each year.

“I think things have advanced, certainly, compared to three years ago, when the government simply refused to discuss deforestation in international forums,” said Márcio Santilli, a former government official who helped start the Socio-Environmental Institute, an environmental group in Brasília. “There has been a change of posture which reflects the worries of Brazilian public opinion on this issue, which in turn puts pressure on politicians.”

For years, Brazil’s position in international climate change talks has been that Northern Hemisphere industrial countries must shoulder the burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Fearing a loss of sovereignty, it has resisted plans to create market mechanisms to provide payments for reductions in deforestation and carbon emissions, accompanied by international monitoring.

Brazil’s stance on such issues is vitally important because by most calculations it is the fourth-largest producer of the greenhouse gases that most scientists believe are the principal cause of global warming. Three-quarters of those emissions result from deforestation, the overwhelming bulk of which occurs here.
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Floods, drought show no let-up in China

Floods and drought continued to play havoc last week, raising the death toll across the country, with experts blaming the freaky weather conditions on global warming.

More than 700 people have been killed in floods, landslides, mudslides and storms across 24 provinces and 82.05 million have been affected.

The water level in Huaihe River has started receding but incessant showers continue in the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River.

The Huaihe River Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said yesterday that the water level at Wangjiaba, a key hydrological station in the middle reaches of the Huaihe, dropped slightly below the danger level of 27.5 m on Saturday night. That was the lowest in 26 days.

But Long Bin, spokesman for Anhui provincial flood control headquarters, warned that the southern part of the river would still be flowing above the danger level till early August.

A 100-m stretch of a dam at Huajiahu in Fengtai County of Anhui in the lower reaches of the Huaihe collapsed on Saturday.

The disaster occurred after 20 days of heavy downpours.

More than 1,000 villagers have been evacuated but no one has been reported hurt.

Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province, has been battered by floods because of the gushing Yangtze.

Hailstorms and rain claimed 10 lives and injured 300 people in Hubei in the past two days, and about 1,600 people had to be moved to safer places.

Last week, heavy rain in mountainous regions of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region caused floods and triggered landslides, killing more than 90 people, stranding thousands and hampering the movement of traffic, the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) said.

Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan has asked local governments to improve their disaster forecast mechanisms and protect life and property at all costs as more rain and typhoons are forecast for the coming weeks.

The MLR has sent 14 special teams to help local authorities handle possible disasters.

There are fears that the death toll in Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces could rise with more rain forecast for the next few days, the Central Meteorological Station said.
more from China Daily

Study links more hurricanes, climate change

The number of hurricanes that strike each year has more than doubled over the past century, an increase tied to global warming, according to a study released Sunday.

"We're seeing a quite substantial increase in hurricanes over the last century, very closely related to increases in sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean," says study author Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

Working with hurricane researcher Peter Webster of Georgia Institute of Technology, Holland looked at sea records from 1855 to 2005 in a study published in the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.

The researchers found that average hurricane numbers jumped sharply during the 20th century, from 3.5 per year in the first 30 years to 8.4 in the earliest years of the 21st century. Over that time, Atlantic Ocean surface temperatures increased .65 degrees, which experts call a significant increase.

(Hurricanes originate in the Atlantic with winds exceeding 74 mph. Such storms elsewhere are called cyclones.)

This study also shows that years with more hurricanes didn't coincide with changes in the way storms are measured, says hurricane researcher Kerry Emanuel of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not part of the study. "This makes it very unlikely that these upward jumps are owing to changing measurements and suggests that they are real."

The extent to which this can be blamed on human activities that contribute to global warming has been the subject of scientific debate over the past two years, spurred by Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans and a succession of studies linking the intensity of storms to climate change.
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Mosquito-chasers see fewer bugs, but virus threat lurks

The bug-biting season traditionally starts to heat up midway through the summer. But the region's top mosquito tracker is detecting some unusual signs this year, with fewer pests than normal showing up in many places while other sites are hot spots.

In Hamilton, a species of mosquito that typically carries Eastern equine encephalitis is appearing in numbers that are about 100 percent higher than last July. In Merrimac, the numbers are up about 33 percent. Closer to Boston, in Winthrop, Revere, and Lynn, the population of mosquitoes known for carrying West Nile virus is up about 50 percent.

Overall, however, mosquito populations in Boston's northern suburbs are "significantly down" for this time of year, said Walter Montgomery, director of the Northeast Massachusetts Mosquito Control and Wetlands Management District. The agency tracks and kills mosquitoes in 31 communities north of Boston.

"We are dealing with a changing environment with mosquitoes" and with the EEE and West Nile viruses, Montgomery said. "For years, things were pretty much the same and you could make some reasonable predictions. That is not true anymore. We have to look at things on an annual basis and not let our guard down."
more from the Boston Globe

Army called out as floods worsen in India

The army was called out for rescue operations Sunday as more than a million people were marooned in northeast India, which has been hit by raging floods, officials said.

"The situation worsened overnight, drowning two more people in western Assam and displacing another 250,000," Assam's Relief Minister Bhumidhar Barman said in the state's largest city Guwahati, adding it brought the total now stranded by the flooding to more than a million.

The latest deaths took to 15 the number of people killed in flood-related accidents in the past week in Assam and adjoining Meghalaya as heavy monsoon rains and Himalayan snow melt combined to swell the major Brahmaputra River.

Assam relief minister Barman said troops used boats Sunday to begin rescuing people perched atop their homes in the worst-affected regions in western and eastern Assam, which borders flood-hit Bangladesh.

The air force was also on stand-by, defence ministry officials said in New Delhi.

"We have some 200,000 people sheltering in makeshift camps on raised embankments, government schools and offices," said Diwakar Mishra, administrator of the flooded Assamese district of Dhemaji.

"The authorities are providing food and other supplies, including medicines, to the affected people," he said as the regional meteorological centre warned of more rains during the next 24 hours across the tea- and oil-rich Assam.

Assam water resources minister Bharat Narah said engineers were working on a war-footing to strengthen dykes and embankments.

Another two million people have been affected by floods in eastern Bihar state where the overnight death toll from drowning and house collapses rose to 25, the Press Trust of India reported.

Officials in Bihar capital Patna said most rivers were in spate following non-stop rains and added that more than two million people in 10 districts were stranded in their homes and farms following rising water levels.
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Exposed!

It may not be a 'real' illness, but symptoms are very real to people with a sensitivity to common chemicals

When Marny Turvil of Evanston gets a whiff of certain cleaning products, fabric softener or gasoline fumes, she feels depressed, irritable, tired and foggy-headed.

But at least one doctor ridiculed her self-diagnosed hypersensitivity to chemicals. Friends wondered about her mental health. And once, while on an airplane, a perfumed flight attendant gazed at the respiratory mask and snarkily asked, "Where are you going, Mt. Everest?"

Such is life with a disorder known as multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), a confounding illness that is not officially recognized by the U.S. medical establishment but has very real symptoms for an estimated 12 percent of the population.

Though a controversial new branch of medicine called clinical ecology (or environmental medicine) has sprung up to help treat people who are hypersensitive to chemicals, the disagreement over whether the condition actually exists has provoked a major schism among physicians and made it difficult to find care and research funding.

The theory behind the disorder is that vague symptoms such as fatigue, depression, memory loss, headaches, confusion and difficulty concentrating are triggered by either one large chemical exposure such as a pesticide application or low-level exposure to everyday chemicals in the environment. But so far, science hasn't been able to link the causes and the symptoms that patients describe.
more from the Chicago Tribune

Aegean and Mediterranean coastlines being reduced to ash

The forests along the Mediterranean and Aegean coastlines are being reduced to ash with frequent and intense fires. With global warming on the rise, forest fires have become one of the leading natural disasters on the western and southern coastline of Turkey. Though the authorities are trying to prevent the fires, the number of the fires keeps increasing.

Apart from damaging thousands of hectares of farm and forestland, the fires destroyed the life of many animal species in the forested areas. recent fires in the Aegean and Mediterranean that affected Gödence village, Alaçatı, Çeşme Dalyan, Özbek Köyaltı, Uzunkuyu village, Alaçatı Karaköy, Urla Çeşmealtı, Marmaris, Alanya and Bodrum prove the seriousness and sensitive nature of the situation. Moreover fires broke out in the Menemen, Menderes, Selçuk, and Foça districts in the Aegean port city of İzmir.

In Turkey, forest fires are common in the Aegean and Mediterranean regions. The first round of forest fires starts in the dry summer months. The forests are at risk especially in July, August and September. Rising temperatures and the early arrival of spring are fueling more frequent and more intense forest fires. Drought also triggers the fires. The impact of drought, which is certainly an important outcome of global warming, plays a big role in causing fires.

Ninety percent of the forest fires in Turkey start along the 1,700-kilometer coastline starting from Kahramanmaraş all the way to Istanbul, including the Mediterranean and Aegean region. The number of forest fires in Turkey since 1937 stands at 68,000. It is stated that 14 percent of forest fires were started deliberately, while 35 percent were due to negligence.
more from the Turkish Daily News

Europe in fire and water onslaught

Billions of dollars in damage has been wreaked by freak weather across Europe in the past week.

The death toll from the heat, fires, floods and storms has mounted to the high hundreds, with many thousands more made homeless or having their lives disrupted by weather conditions that have smashed records in many countries across the continent.

Agriculture and tourism have been particularly badly hit, with crops scorched in some areas, waterlogged in others, and tourists forced to flee fires in the south and storms and torrential downpours in northern countries. Electricity blackouts and water shortages caused by fire and flood and affecting hundreds of thousands of households and businesses have compounded the chaos.

In Greece, temperatures have reached 43°C, compared with an average for the time of year of about 35°C, and widespread forest fires have brought chaos. Black-outs have exacerbated the problem.

Seven Greek passenger trains were halted on the tracks for several hours during a black-out on Tuesday. On Thursday, the government told civil servants to go home early in a desperate attempt to cut demand for electricity.

Tourists across the south-eastern part of Europe have faced severe disruption to their holiday plans, with hotels evacuated in fire-stricken areas and some roads rendered too dangerous to travel.

Hundreds of deaths in the region have also been attributed to heatstroke. Though Greece has managed largely to avoid such problems by opening air-conditioned clubs where the elderly can rest, in Hungary officials said about 500 people, mostly elderly, were thought to have died. Romania also reported people collapsing in the street, with at least 27 people thought to have died from heatstroke.
more from Financial Times

In minority neighborhood, kids' risk of cancer soars

HOUSTON - Like so many of their poor and working-class Hispanic neighbors, Rosario Marroquin's family settled in the southeast Houston neighborhood of Manchester a generation ago because the clapboard houses were cheap, the streets were safe, transportation was convenient and downtown was only 20 minutes away.

It was an ideal neighborhood, except for the coughing spells, the nosebleeds, the burning odors and the acrid smoke.

Marroquin's family, like most everyone else in the neighborhood, did their best to ignore all that, because few could afford to move anywhere else. And they tried not to notice the dozens of oil refineries, petrochemical plants and waste disposal sites expanding all around them, their towering smokestacks and huge storage tanks lining the Houston Ship Channel, the city's principal outlet to the sea.

But then the cancers started to appear. First the neighbor in back, then another across the street, then a boy down the block. And finally, in 2003, Marroquin's son, Valentin, came down with leukemia at age 6.

The reality of living in the city's most toxic industrial zone—in the middle of the largest concentration of petrochemical plants in the United States —grew inescapable.

"The factories say they were here first, and I understand that," said Marroquin, 27, an apartment leasing agent who has lived in Manchester her whole life. "I understand that we need all this industry for our nation's economy. But when you look at the pain of a child in the hospital, why can't these plants do something better, invest more money in pollution controls?"
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Soybean rust surrounds northeastern Louisiana

MONROE, La. (AP) — Asian soybean rust, a fungus that can wipe out a field of soybeans in three weeks if left unchecked, is creeping closer to northeastern Louisiana.

The fungus has been confirmed in commercial fields in Avoyelles and Rapides. It has also been found in Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas, surrounding northeastern Louisiana but yet to penetrate.

"It's quite visible now in central Louisiana," said David Lanclos, a soybean specialist with the LSU AgCenter. "That doesn't necessarily mean that it will make it to northeastern Louisiana, but the bottom line is that ASR is spreading each year since first discovered in the U.S. (in 2004)."

But even if the fungus appears, it can usually be controlled through fungicide applications if producers are diligent.

"This is the first time we've seen a significant infestation in a commercial field with the surrounding areas also infested," said David Boethel, vice chancellor for research in the LSU AgCenter, of the central Louisiana infestations. "The good news, however, is that our scientists have been on top of the situation — watching sentinel fields, communicating with farmers and consultants, conducting research and much more to combat this problem.

"I think that the soybean producers in the state have been warned and have been poised to take action. Many of them probably already have done so."

Experts earlier had found the disease on "sentinel plots" — specially planted soybean fields that were being watched for any signs of the disease — in Avoyelles and Rapides in late June.

"The sentinel plots are working in all of the states because it gives us early warnings and the ability to assess the risks to commercial fields," Lanclos said.

Keith Welch, who planted about 400 acres of soybeans in West Carroll Parish, said he has already applied fungicide to part of his crop.

"It increases the input costs, but with beans selling for about $8 (per bushel) we feel like we can afford to do it," Welch said. "I'm wondering whether the rust is going to impact us in the same way that it did in South America.

"I haven't heard of anyone's fields being wiped out here even if they confirmed rust in the fields. But my thoughts may change if it shows up in one of my neighbor's fields."

Welch said he follows the trail of rust through e-mail updates and on the Internet.

"We're definitely keeping an eye on it," he said.
more from the Times Picayune

India working to contain bird flu outbreak

GAUHATI, India (AP) — Health workers in India's remote northeast went house-to-house searching for sick people Thursday, while workers also began slaughtering 150,000 chickens near a farm where a deadly bird flu virus was found, officials said.

The move comes a day after the H5N1 virus was confirmed in samples from chickens that died on a farm in Chenngmeirong village in India's Manipur state, near the border with Myanmar.

Health workers were going to houses in the area to see if anyone was complaining of influenza-like symptoms, while 21 people who lived in the immediate vicinity of the infected farm were being preventatively treated with drugs, said Dorendra Singh, Manipur's animal husbandry director.

Some 130 dead chickens were found earlier in the month and samples were sent to India's High Risk Animal Disease Laboratory in the central Indian city of Bhopal.

Bird flu was found in seven of the eight samples, said Upma Chowdhry, a senior official in the federal Animal Husbandry Ministry in New Delhi, adding that 150,000 birds would be slaughtered.
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Myths About Cancer Risk Abound

THURSDAY, July 26 (HealthDay News) -- Misconceptions about cancer are rampant among Americans, a new study finds, including the mistaken notions that cancer deaths are on the rise and that air pollution is a greater cancer risk than smoking.

"A substantial proportion of people have some inaccurate beliefs about cancer risk," said lead researcher Kevin Stein, the director of the Behavioral Research Center at the American Cancer Society.

These misconceptions "can affect their health-related behaviors," he added. For example, he said, people might smoke more if they believe smoking is less harmful than city air.

"We want to be sure that people understand what risk factors are real and what are not real," Stein said.

The report appears in the September 1 issue ofCancer.

In the study, Stein's team asked 957 adults whether or not they agreed with 12 common cancer myths.

About two-thirds (67.7 percent) said the risk of dying from cancer was increasing -- even though statistics show that the five-year cancer survival rate has been steadily improving for the last 30 years.

Almost 39 percent agreed with the myth that living in a polluted city puts a person at a higher risk of developing lung cancer than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day would.

"If people believe that the risk of cancer is higher from pollution than from smoking they may be more likely to engage in risky behavior," Stein said.
more from the Washington Post

Building for a cooler planet

33% of energy-related CO2 emissions are generated by energy use in buildings

29% of that could be cut by 2020 using existing technologies

By 2020 energy use in US buildings is predicted to rise by 25%

While in China it is predicted to rise by as much as 50%

Danny Harvey likes his Toronto office, especially the 8-square-metre window that lets the sunlight flood in. But one day last week he did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. Winter temperatures in the Canadian city can drop to -20 °C, and Harvey estimated that keeping his office at 20 °C in such weather pours 2000 watts of heat through the window. That wastes more energy than boiling a kettle all day.
more from New Scientist Environment

U.S. offers way to atone for carbon guilt

WASHINGTON — You take public transportation to work, use energy-saving lightbulbs and turn off the air conditioner when you're not home — but still you feel somewhat guilty that your lifestyle isn't totally pollution-free.

The federal government may have an answer for you.

For years, companies have been allowed to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing "carbon offsets" — vouchers for investment in alternative energy sources, tree-planting and other projects that can mitigate global warming.

Now the idea is spreading to individuals, with the Forest Service's announcement Wednesday that it will be the first federal agency to offer personal carbon offsets through an initiative called the Carbon Capital Fund.

"We came up with the idea because everyone is looking at what they can do in terms of climate change," said Bill Possiel, president of the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit partner of the Forest Service. "The money goes to a restricted fund for projects on national forests."

Trees and forests are "carbon sinks," Possiel said, because they draw carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming — out of the atmosphere and store it for long periods of time.

The Forest Service, an agency within the Agriculture Department, estimates that the 155 forests it oversees absorb 10% to 15% of the nation's carbon emissions and that planting through the new initiative will increase that amount.

Under the program, individuals can use a "carbon calculator" at http://www.carboncapitalfund.org to figure out the size of their carbon footprint. Then, they can buy offsets at $6 per metric ton of carbon dioxide. An average family of four is responsible for 19 to 30 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, so the offsets would cost $114 to $180.
more from the LA Times

Study: Nevada has big temperature gains

RENO, Nev. — Nevada is among the states with the most dramatic increase in average temperatures the last 30 years, according to a new study that examines the impact of global warming across the country.

The average temperature in Reno from June through August last year was 75.6 degrees, almost 7 degrees above the 30-year average, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group reported. The gap was the biggest measured nationally.

Las Vegas' average temperature last summer was 3.6 degrees above the 30-year average from 1971-2000, while Elko's was 4 degrees above normal and Ely's was 2.1 degrees hotter, the report said.

"The scientific evidence of global warming is incontrovertible, and Nevada is feeling the heat more intensely than most of the rest of the U.S," said Stephen M. Rowland, Professor of Geology at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"Only a tiny bit of this increase in temperature can be attributed to increased urbanization the so-called urban heat-island effect," Rowland continued. "Global warming is here, and we better get serious about confronting it."

According to the National Climatic Data Center, the 2006 summer and 2006 overall were the second warmest on record for the lower 48 states. And 2007 is on track to be the second warmest year on record globally.

"Global warming is rewriting the record books in Nevada and across the country," said Jill Bunting, a spokesperson for U.S. PIRG.
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Humans Changing Rainfall Patterns, Study Says

Humans have caused global precipitation patterns to change substantially over the past century, new research says.

About 1.8 inches (4.5 centimeters) more rain fell annually in Canada, Russia, and Europe in recent years than it did in 1925.

In the northern tropics and subtropics, such as Mexico and northern Africa, rainfall has decreased by nearly 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) per year.

And the southern tropics and subtropics such as Peru and Madagascar have seen increased rainfall of about 2.4 inches (6 centimeters).

Altogether humans account for about two-thirds of the precipitation increase in Canada, Russia, and Europe, a third of the drying out in the northern tropics and subtropics, and nearly all of the increase south of the Equator, the study says.

A significant driver behind the altered rainfall is greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from coal and oil burning, that contribute to global warming. (What is global warming?)

The study, led by climate researcher Xuebin Zhang of Environment Canada in Toronto, is the first to connect human activity with changing precipitation patterns.
more from the National Geographic

Community says industry to blame

CALCASIEU PARISH — Residents in a Calcasieu Parish community who say they suffer from pollution-related health problems are asking the federal government to relocate their families, provide medical treatment and place a moratorium on industrial facilities in the area.

Mossville residents made the demands in a report issued Tuesday that alleges a clear link between the chemical plants and refineries near the community and toxic chemicals that have been found in the blood of some who live there.

“We, like other communities in the country, have a right to a clean and safe environment,” said Mossville resident David Prince, a member of the community group Mossville Environmental Action Now.

The report by the group and the Advocates for Environmental Human Rights in New Orleans compares the specific chemicals found in the blood of Mossville residents with chemicals that local industrial plants release into the environment.

New Iberia chemist and environmental justice advocate Wilma Subra, who reviewed the data for the residents, contends there is a clear connection.
more from The Advocgte

China grapples with epic flooding

Heavy rains have inundated the central part of the nation, affecting 100 million people. More than 1million have been evacuated.

HUAINAN, CHINA — For days, the rain had come in warm, drenching sheets. It swelled the Huai River and turned the heavy clay soil along its watershed into a sticky muck that sucked the shoes off people's feet.

Zheng Zhaojun had lived here long enough, all of his 32 years, to know the danger the river posed. So when the Communist Party secretary for his village came calling, Zheng moved quickly.

"They told us the water is rising fast — go," Zheng recalled as he stood in the doorway of the blue canvas tent that has been his family's temporary home for nearly two weeks. The tent, and dozens around it, stood about 10 feet from a small, hastily built earthen levee. Behind it, water stretched nearly to the horizon, covering Zheng's house and farm and the properties of thousands of others.

Zheng's story is a common one this summer. Heavy rains have inundated central China, causing the worst flooding in half a century. More than 100 million people have been affected, and some of them have witnessed rainfall of mind-boggling ferocity, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Nearly as mind-boggling have been the size and scope of the evacuation.

Using the resources of a Communist Party system that still reaches into every crack and crevice of society, China has moved more than a million people from the paths of the floodwaters.
more from the LA Times

Humans 'affect global rainfall'

Human-induced climate change has affected global rainfall patterns over the 20th Century, a study suggests.

Researchers said changes to the climate had led to an increase in annual average rainfall in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

But while Canada, Russia and northern Europe had become wetter, India and parts of Africa had become drier, the team of scientists added.

The findings will be published in the scientific journal Nature on Thursday.

Climate models have, for a number of years, suggested that human activity has led to changes to the distribution of rain and snow across the globe.

However, the computer models have been unable to pinpoint the extent of our influence, partly because drying in some regions have cancelled out moistening in others.

Making the link

The scientists from Canada, Japan, the UK and US used the patterns of the changes in different latitude bands instead of the global average.
They compared monthly precipitation observations from 1925-1999 to those generated by complex computer models to see if they could identify if human activity was affecting rainfall patterns.

"We show that anthropogenic forcing has had a detectable influence on observed changes in average precipitation within latitudinal bands," the researchers wrote in the paper.

"These changes cannot be explained by internal climate variability or natural forcing."

The team estimated that human activity, such as burning fossil fuels, was likely to have led to a 62mm increase in the annual precipitation trend over the past century over land areas located 40-70 degrees north, which includes Canada, northern Europe and Russia.
more from the BBC

New Orleans: A Perilous Future

Hurricane Katrina, the costliest natural disaster in United States history, was also a warning shot. Right after the tragedy, many people expressed a defiant resolve to rebuild the city. But among engineers and experts, that resolve is giving way to a growing awareness that another such disaster is inevitable, and nothing short of a massive and endless national commitment can prevent it.

Located in one of the lowest spots in the United States, the Big Easy is already as much as 17 feet (five meters) below sea level in places, and it continues to sink, by up to an inch (2.5 centimeters) a year. Upstream dams and levees built to tame Mississippi River floods and ease shipping have starved the delta downstream of sediments and nutrients, causing wetlands that once buffered the city against storm-driven seas to sink beneath the waves. Louisiana has lost 1,900 square miles (4,900 square kilometers) of coastal lands since the 1930s; Katrina and Hurricane Rita together took out 217 square miles (562 square kilometers), putting the city that much closer to the open Gulf. Most ominous of all, global warming is raising the Gulf faster than at any time since the last ice age thawed. Sea level could rise several feet over the next century. Even before then, hurricanes may draw ever more energy from warming seas and grow stronger and more frequent.

And the city's defenses are down. Despite having spent a billion dollars already, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers now estimates it will take until after 2010 to strengthen the levee system enough to withstand a 1-in-100-year storm, roughly the size of Category 3 Katrina. It would take decades more to protect the Big Easy from the truly Big One, a Category 4 or 5—if engineers can agree on how to do that and if Congress agrees to foot the almost unimaginable bill. For now, even a modest, Category 2 storm could reflood the city.

More from National Geographic

Not just drought, but mega-drought, could be on the horizon

Drought is a normal part of the Great Plains climate.

And climate change will deepen drought's intensity.

"We like to think that drought is an exception. It's not," said Kyle Hoagland, director of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Water Center.

Most of Nebraska was in a drought cycle that persisted from 1999 until it was broken in May. Then Omaha endured its driest June on record.

Dry spells as intense as the Dust Bowl and the 1950s droughts are recurrent events.

Dune studies indicate a mega-drought destabilized a large portion of the Nebraska Sand Hills about 800 years ago. Similar massive droughts occurred repeatedly over time.

The lesson for the 21st century is one of preparation.

"It's hard to plan for a mega-drought, but we should be better prepared because a Dust Bowl drought could happen again very shortly," said Sheri Fritz, a paleo-climate researcher at UNL.

Climate projections indicate increasing average temperatures during this century for most of the world, including Nebraska and the Great Plains.

Most studies indicate the Plains will dry out during this period of global warming, said Don Wilhite, director of the UNL National Drought Mitigation Center.

Global warming would increase water lost through evaporation and plants and could trigger more, longer and stronger droughts.
more from Omaha World Herald

England under water: scientists confirm global warming link to increased rain

It's official: the heavier rainfall in Britain is being caused by climate change, a major new scientific study will reveal this week, as the country reels from summer downpours of unprecedented ferocity.

More intense rainstorms across parts of the northern hemisphere are being generated by man-made global warming, the study has established for the first time ­ an effect which has long been predicted but never before proved.

The study's findings will be all the more dramatic for being disclosed as Britain struggles to recover from the phenomenal drenching of the past few days, during which more than a month's worth of rain fell in a few hours in some places, and floods forced thousands from their homes.

The "major rainfall event" of last Friday ­ fully predicted as such by the Met Office ­ has given the country a quite exceptional battering, with the Thames still rising. In Gloucester water levels had reached 34 feet, just 12 inches below flood defences ­ the same level as during the flood of 1947 ­ although a police spokesman said last night that the River Severn had stopped rising.

Last night vast areas of the country around Gloucestershire and Worcestershire were still inundated, large numbers of people in temporary accommodation, transport links were widely disrupted, and yet more householders were standing by to be flooded in their turn, in one of the biggest civil emergencies Britain has seen.
more from The Independent

Tibet's warming trend gaining pace, study says

Tibet, the mountainous region whose snows and glaciers give birth to several of Asia's major rivers, is warming at an alarming rate, China's state media reported Sunday, citing a new survey.

Average annual temperatures in Tibet are rising at a rate of 0.3 degrees Celsius (0.54 degrees Fahrenheit) every ten years due to global warming, Xinhua news agency said, citing a report by the Tibet Meteorological Bureau.

The report, called "Tibet's Climate Under the Global Warming Trend," said the rate is far faster than in the rest of China and the world generally.

By comparison, China's average temperatures are rising by 0.4 degrees Celsius every 100 years, while a report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said average global surface temperatures have risen 0.74 degrees over the past 100 years.

"The Tibet climate shows a warming trend under global warming," Zhang Hezhen, a senior engineer with the bureau, was quoted as saying.

Tibet's sensitive alpine environment is seen as a key barometer of the world's climate.
more from 24 Hour International News

Could climate change herald mass migration?

The state of Arizona has more than 300 golf courses, a booming economy, endless sunshine and, at last count, at least five Saks Fifth Avenue department stores — in short, nearly everything the well-heeled sybarite would need.

There’s just one thing missing: rain.

For the past month, not a drop has fallen in Maricopa County, home to greater Phoenix, the state’s economic engine and fastest-growing hub. Over that period, temperatures have hovered five to seven degrees above the 30-year average, at one point holding steady at over 43C for 10 straight days, while hundreds of brush fires burned statewide.

"And they're still building billion-dollar houses, right in the middle of the desert," says Paul Oyashi, incredulous. "It doesn't seem rational, does it?"

In a word, no. Rational, some would say, would be a mass migration from the drought-ravaged American southwest, where Southern California just experienced its driest 12-month period in recorded history, to more verdant climes.

One such place? Cleveland, the battered hub of Cuyahoga County, where Oyashi sits as director of the department of development. "We don't have earthquakes, we don't have brush fires, we've got all the fresh water you could ever want," Oyashi says. "That's logic. But the problem is, it flies in the face of reality."

LOGIC HAS NEVER been the lone – or even dominant – factor in human behaviour. And in Cleveland, much like all the depressed cities of the Great Lakes rust belt, the reality is this: over the past four decades, the population has bled away to less than half, as it has in Buffalo and Detroit.
more from the Toronto Star

U.S. Agency May Reverse 8 Decisions on Wildlife

WASHINGTON, July 20 — The Interior Department said Friday that it would review and probably overturn eight decisions on wildlife and land-use issues made by a senior political appointee who has been found to have improperly favored industry and landowners over agency scientists.

The appointee, Julie A. MacDonald, resigned on May 1 as a deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, after an internal review found that she had violated federal rules by giving government documents to lobbyists for industry. The agency’s inspector general also found several instances in which Ms. MacDonald browbeat department biologists and habitat specialists and overruled their recommendations to protect a variety of rare and threatened species.

H. Dale Hall, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said he had asked the agency’s regional managers to submit for review cases in which Ms. MacDonald might have inappropriately bent the process to fit her political agenda. Mr. Hall winnowed the list to eight instances in which he said he expected that her actions would be reversed.

“We wouldn’t be doing them if we didn’t suspect the decision would be different,” Mr. Hall said in a telephone conference with journalists. “It’s a blemish on the scientific integrity of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of the Interior.”

The species that could receive additional protection are the white-tailed prairie dog, Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, 12 species of Hawaiian picture-wing flies, the arroyo toad, the Southwestern willow flycatcher, the California red-legged frog and the Canada lynx. The extent of Rocky Mountain habitat protection for the jumping mouse is also under review.
more from the NY Times

A sunshade for the planet

EVEN with the best will in the world, reducing our carbon emissions is not going to prevent global warming. It has become clear that even if we take the most drastic measures to curb emissions, the uncertainties in our climate models still leave open the possibility of extreme warming and rises in sea level. At the same time, resistance by governments and special interest groups makes it quite possible that the actions advocated by climate scientists might not be implemented soon enough.

Fortunately, if the worst comes to the worst, scientists still have a few tricks up their sleeves. For the most part they have strongly resisted discussing these options for fear of inviting a sense of complacency that might thwart efforts to tackle the root of the problem. Until now, that is.

A growing number of researchers are taking a fresh look at large-scale "geoengineering" projects that might be used to counteract global warming. "I use the analogy of methadone," says Stephen Schneider, a climate researcher at Stanford University in California who was among the first to draw attention to global warming. "If you have a heroin addict, the correct treatment is hospitalisation, therapy and a long rehab. But if they absolutely refuse, methadone is better than heroin."

Basically the idea is to apply "sunscreen" to the whole planet. It's controversial, but recent studies suggest there are ways to deflect just enough of the sunlight reaching the Earth's surface to counteract the warming produced by the greenhouse effect. Global climate models show that blocking just 1.8 per cent of the incident energy in the sun's rays would cancel out the warming effects produced by a doubling of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That could be crucial, because even the most stringent emissions-control measures being proposed would leave us with a doubling of carbon dioxide by the end of this century, and that would last for at least a century more.
more from NewScientist

Eat a steak, warm the planet

A kilogram of beef causes more greenhouse-gas and other pollution than driving for three hours while leaving all the lights on back home, according to a Japanese study.

A team led by Akifumi Ogino of the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, calculated the environmental cost of raising cattle through conventional farming, slaughtering the animal and distributing the meat, New Scientist reports in Saturday's issue.

Producing a kilogram of beef causes the equivalent of 36.4 kilograms in carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, Ogino found.

Most of these greenhouse-gas emissions take the form of methane, released from the cow's digestive system.

That one kilogram of beef also requires energy equivalent to lighting a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days. The energy is needed to produce and transport the animals' feed.

A Swedish study in 2003 suggested that organic beef emits 40 per cent less greenhouse gases and consumes 85 per cent less energy because the animal is raised on grass rather than concentrated feed.

The study appears in full in a specialist publication, Animal Science Journal.
more from Sydney Morning Herald

Nanopesticides 'need specific regulation'

Nanotechnology in food and farming is inadequately regulated, say Australian researchers.
Rural sociologist Dr Kristin Lyons of Griffith University and colleagues present a survey of possible nano-applications in agriculture and food at the Rural Futures conference in Canberra this week.
"Despite significant investment from the agrifood sector in nanotechnologies, the need for nano-specific regulation in this area hasn't been recognised as a priority by the federal government," says Lyons.
She says the nano-agrifood industry will be worth more than US$20 billion by 2010, with heavy investment from companies like Syngenta, Monsanto, Kraft Foods and Heinz.
Lyons says one of the claimed agricultural benefits for nanotechnology is the development of more efficient methods of applying pesticides.
For example, creating nano-sized versions of pesticide molecules could lead to nanopesticide emulsions that are more stable, more toxic to pests and better absorbed into plants, she says.
But Lyons says the same characteristics that make nanopesticides desirable could also present new risks to humans or the environment.
more from News in Science

Gypsy Moth Infestation May Kill 17,000 Acres of Trees in New Jersey

NEWARK, July 19 — Gypsy moths, which gnawed their way through a number of mid-Atlantic states this spring, stripped the leaves from trees over more than 320,000 acres in New Jersey, the worst infestation since 1990, state agricultural officials said on Thursday.

About 17,000 acres of trees were expected to die this year after this spring’s infestation.

“The loss of trees from gypsy moth damage is more than the loss of our state’s beautiful landscape — it is an environmental threat for trees’ role in filtering the air and providing a habitat for many animals,” said Charles M. Kuperus, the state secretary of agriculture.

Mr. Kuperus, who described areas of devastation after flying over parts of New Jersey last month, said the greatest toll was in Sussex County, in the state’s northwest corner, and Burlington County, in the south, both heavily wooded regions. Damage statewide is more than twice the 125,743 acres that were hit last year.

The gypsy moth caterpillar feeds primarily on oak leaves — the official state tree is the red oak — and agriculture officials say that if the gypsy moths eat 75 percent of a tree’s leaves for three consecutive years, the tree will probably die. Conifers can be killed by just one year of defoliation.

Gypsy moth damage fluctuates yearly, and as recently as 2003 the caterpillars defoliated fewer than 6,000 acres in the state. But this year spring rains failed to arrive in time to encourage the growth of a fungus that is one of the best natural enemies of gypsy moth caterpillars.

New Jersey sprayed 62,500 acres with the insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt.

The $40-per-acre cost of the spraying is split between the federal government and the towns where it takes place. Towns are not required to spray, however.

State agriculture officials also wanted to use another pesticide, Dimilin, but the Department of Environmental Protection objected because of concern over its possible effect on crustaceans.

After the state collects more information on the number of eggs that will turn into next year’s caterpillars, it will decide what municipalities are eligible for spraying next year. About five municipalities declined to be sprayed, and some, including Jackson Township in Ocean County, suffered substantial damage this year, officials said.
more from the NY Times

When ice turns to water

Glacial melting poses potentially costly problems for Peru and Bolivia

FOR centuries, the run-off from the glaciers atop the spectacular snow-capped mountains of the Carabaya range has watered the pastures where alpacas graze around the small town of Macusani. More recently, the mountains have provided the town with drinking water and hydroelectricity, as well as hopes of attracting tourists to one of Peru's poorest areas. But in Carabaya, as across the Andes, the glaciers are melting fast. Their impending disappearance has large, and possibly catastrophic, implications for the country's economy and for human life.

Peru is home to the world's biggest expanse of tropical glaciers. Of the 2,500 square kilometres (965 square miles) of glaciers in the four countries of the tropical Andes—Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru—70% are in Peru and 20% in Bolivia. The last comprehensive satellite survey by Peru's National Environmental Council, carried out in 1997, found that the area covered by glaciers had shrunk by 22% since the early 1960s. In the Carabaya range, they had receded by 32%.

Partial surveys by geologists suggest that the rate at which the glaciers are melting has speeded up over the past decade. The glacier at Pastoruri, in the Cordillera Blanca range north of Lima, shrank by more than 40% between 1995 and 2006, with the loss of ice caves popular with tourists, according to Marco Zapata, a glaciologist at the government's Natural Resources Institute. He reckons it will be gone by 2015. That is the fate that has already overtaken many smaller glaciers in Bolivia, and that of Cotacachi in Ecuador. Chacaltaya, above Bolivia's capital, La Paz, has almost disappeared; it is the site of the country's only ski resort, whose future is now uncertain.
more from the Economist

Ethanol stirs fear of water shortage

The mass quantity of water needed for Iowa's booming ethanol industry - billions of gallons each year - has raised concerns among state officials who say laws may be needed to prevent a water shortage in the state.

Several lawmakers say that a close look at the issue is necessary and that laws may be needed to require ethanol facilities to recycle water.

"As it relates to water, I'm more concerned about the production of ethanol right now" than with the proximity of livestock facilities to streams, said state Sen. Matt McCoy, a Des Moines Democrat. "That's got me very, very concerned."

Ethanol advocates say the fear is unfounded and that, in general, the industry already pushes itself to conserve and maintain a reliable source of water.

Such mandates could damage Iowa's growing renewable fuels industry, they said.

"Just because we're in the news a lot doesn't mean we're the right industry to single out," said Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.

Part of the issue is how most of Iowa's 27 ethanol plants obtain their water: by pumping it out of deep underground supplies, often known as aquifers.

Aquifers often feed Iowa's drinking water supplies. Their gradual release of water prevents many streams and rivers from drying up in the summer.

For $25, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources grants a 10-year license for such plants to pump as much water as they need from the ground.

It's unknown how much groundwater exists. A state official acknowledged that many people believe the process has become more of a registry than a licensed program designed to protect a natural resource.
more from the Des Moines Register

Asbestos and Aging Pipes Remain Buried Hazards

Exploding steam pipes and manhole covers popping loose and flying skyward, a constant in New York for decades, had all but disappeared in recent years.

But the city got a reminder of the vulnerability of its aging infrastructure yesterday when a 24-inch steam pipe that was laid in 1924 exploded in Midtown near Grand Central Terminal, leaving one person dead and more than 30 injured. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said cold water apparently got into the pipe, producing a change in pressure and the blast. Because the pipe was near a water main, the explosion sent water, steam and debris skyward.

Kevin Burke, chief executive of Consolidated Edison, which operates the city’s steam network, said that during rainstorms yesterday pipes could have been surrounded by cold water, causing dangerous condensation.

Mr. Burke said that 11 valves in the network of pipes feeding the area were shut, cutting off steam to 15 to 20 buildings nearby. There was no work being done on the pipes before the incident, but after the morning rain, crews inspected them and found nothing of concern.The pipe that burst is part of an underground network that Con Edison acquired in the mid-1950s, when it absorbed the old New York Steam Corporation, which started selling steam to Manhattan buildings in 1882. The steam company’s huge generating plants once powered elevators. But as electricity became more widely available the demand for steam power leveled off.

Now the steam is used to spin turbines that make electricity in Con Edison plants. After that, it is piped to about 1,800 customers in Manhattan, mainly large buildings. In most cases, the steam provides heating and, with the help of compressors, air-conditioning.

The event yesterday stoked fears not just because of the power of the blast, but because many of the city’s oldest steam pipes are covered with asbestos for insulation, and those around the accident could be at risk if they inhale significant amounts of tainted air.
more from the NY Times

U.S. Nuclear Power Plants: Vulnerable To Earthquakes?

The 6.3-magnitude earthquake that shook the largest power plant in the world to its knees this week in Japan has raised the specter of a similar natural disaster affecting plants elsewhere in the world, including in the United States.

The earthquake caused a fire in a transistor, led to the leak of water with low radioactivity, and prompted the automatic shutdown of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. reactors.

Both the Nuclear Regulator Commission and the nation’s leading nuclear energy watchdog, the Union Of Concerned Scientists, agree that U.S. plants are built to withstand earthquakes.

But the watchdog sees vulnerabilities that the federal agency doesn’t acknowledge.

“The good news about our plants is we knew about earthquakes before, and as a result of that, the plants in California, for example, are more robust and built for a stronger shake than plants on the East Coast for obvious reasons,” said David Lochbaum, director of UCS Nuclear Safety Project.

The bad news, Lochbaum said, is that Japan knew about earthquakes too, and designed its reactors to meet standards that are as stringent, if not more stringent than those used in the most earthquake-prone parts of the country, like California.

And while critical reactor features are built to withstand earthquakes, secondary infrastructure like piping and electrical equipment could fail, Lochbaum said, potentially leading to a meltdown if backup safety features fail.
more from The Daily Green

Japan Nuke Plant Leak Worse Than Thought

KASHIWAZAKI, Japan (AP) -- An earthquake-wracked nuclear power plant was ordered closed indefinitely Wednesday amid growing anger over revelations that damage was much worse than initially announced and mounting international concern about Japan's nuclear stewardship.

Toyota and other Japanese automakers, meanwhile, suspended production at factories across the country because a major parts supplier sustained damage from Monday's magnitude-6.8 quake, which killed 10 people and left tens of thousands without power or water.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. warned that the nuclear plant shutdown could lead to power shortages in Japan. It has asked six other power companies to consider providing emergency electricity to prepare for rising demand from summer air conditioning, spokesman Hiroshi Itagaki said.

The mayor of Kashiwazaki, a city of 93,500 on the northern coast, called in the head of the nation's biggest power company and ordered the damaged nuclear station closed until its safety could be confirmed, escalating a showdown over a long list of problems at the world's most powerful generating plant.

"I am worried," Mayor Hiroshi Aida said in ordering the closure. "The safety of the plant must be assured before it is reopened."
more from Oneida Dispatch

Hurricane danger in Mediterranean

THE Mediterranean could start generating its own hurricanes if sea temperatures keep rising, scientists have warned.

Hurricanes form far out in the tropical Atlantic. Few reach land and hardly any reach Europe, but recently hurricanes have been forming where they were never seen before.

A new study shows climate change means the Mediterranean is warming so much it stores enough heat to trigger the formation of its own hurricanes, with important implications for resorts, residents and holidaymakers. "We have detected for the first time a risk of tropical cyclone development over the Mediterranean based on anthropogenic (man-made) climate change," said Miguel Gaertner, lead researcher at the environmental sciences faculty of the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo, Spain.

This change would have serious implications for tourism, raising the prospect that hotels, campsites and resorts would need to develop hurricane shelters, evacuation plans and other protective measures similar to those on the US Gulf coast.

In 2004, Cyclone Catarina became one of the few to form in the South Atlantic, hitting the coast of Brazil. Then in 2005 Hurricane Vince formed around Madeira in Portugal, an area that had never before produced such storms. It even struck Spain - another first.

More from The Australian

Report: Gulf’s low-oxygen ‘dead zone’ growing

NEW ORLEANS - Researchers predict that the recurring oxygen-depleted “dead zone” off the Louisiana coast will grow this summer to 8,543 square miles — its largest in at least 22 years.

The forecast, released Monday by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, is based on a federal estimate of nitrogen from the Mississippi River watershed to the Gulf of Mexico. It discounts the effect storms might have.

The “dead zone” in the northern Gulf, at the end of the Mississippi River system, is one of the largest areas of oxygen-depleted coastal waters in the world. Low oxygen, or hypoxia, can be caused by pollution from farm fertilizer, soil erosion and discharge from sewage treatment plants, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

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Japan quake causes nuke plant leak, fire

KASHIWAZAKI, Japan (AP) A strong earthquake shook Japan's northwest coast Monday, setting off a fire at the world's most powerful nuclear power plant and causing a reactor to spill radioactive water into the sea - an accident not reported to the public for hours.

The 6.8-magnitude temblor killed at least 8 people and injured more than 900 as it toppled hundreds of wooden homes and tore 3-foot-wide fissures in the ground. Highways and bridges buckled, leaving officials struggling to get emergency supplies into the region.

Some 10,000 people fled to evacuation centers as aftershocks rattled the area. Tens of thousands of homes were left without water or power.

The quake triggered a fire in an electrical transformer and also caused a leak of radioactive water at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world's largest in terms of electricity output.

The leak was not announced until the evening, many hours after the quake. That fed fresh concerns about the safety of Japan's 55 nuclear reactors, which supply 30 percent of the quake-prone country's electricity and have suffered a long string of accidents and cover-ups.

About 315 gallons of slightly radioactive water apparently spilled from a tank at one of the plant's seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co. He said it was not clear whether the tank was damaged or the water simply spilled out.
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S.O.S.: Pacific islanders battle to save what is left of their country from rising seas

Veu Lesa, a 73-year-old villager in Tuvalu, does not need scientific reports to tell him that the sea is rising. The evidence is all around him. The beaches of his childhood are vanishing. The crops that used to feed his family have been poisoned by salt water. In April, he had to leave his home when a "king tide" flooded it, showering it with rocks and debris.

For Tuvalu, a string of nine picturesque atolls and coral islands, global warming is not an abstract danger; it is a daily reality. The tiny South Pacific nation, only four metres above sea level at its highest point, may not exist in a few decades. Its people are already in flight; more than 4,000 live in New Zealand, and many of the remaining 10,500 are planning to join the exodus. Others, though, are determined to stay and try to fight the advancing waves.

The outlook is bleak. A tidal gauge on the main atoll, Funafuti, suggests the sea level is climbing by 5.6mm a year, twice the average global rate predicted by the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

There is not enough data yet to establish a definitive trend but that figure is alarming, implying a rise of more than half a metre in the next century. Most Tuvaluans live just one to two metres above sea level.
more from The Independent

Saving a vital barrier

From the air, the Chandeleur islands -- a 50-mile-long nearly contiguous crescent of sand, topped in places with 18-foot dunes just a decade ago -- appear a tattered assemblage of sandy spits that poke out just a few feet from the Gulf of Mexico.

Neighboring barrier islands suffered a similar fate. What once was Curlew Island, a separate crescent between the Chandeleurs and Breton Island to the south, is a series of submerged, zigzagging sand bars. Only a sliver of nearby Grand Gosier Island has emerged from the water in the nearly two years since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

In a mere decade, ferocious hurricanes have splintered the land and washed much of it out to sea, destroying a vital barrier that once sapped power from the storms before they surged ashore on the mainland. Though the islands have been eroding for more than 1,000 years, scientists believed as recently as the 1980s that they would survive for centuries to come.

"When we made predictions on how long various barrier islands along our coast would last . . . we gave the Chandeleurs 300 years," said coastal geologist Shea Penland, director of the University of New Orleans' Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences, during a flight out to the islands two weeks ago.

Now, with that life span cut short, scientists and government officials have to figure out whether and how to rebuild the barrier islands, all part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, and at what cost.

More from The Times Picayune

Report Examines Path to Failed New Orleans Levees

The levee system that was designed to protect New Orleans, but failed
catastrophically during Hurricane Katrina, was completed under severe financial and political pressure, including opposition from local officials and environmentalists, according to a federally sponsored report set to be released today.

The study commissioned by the Army Corps of Engineers details how Corps officials facing budget pressures cut millions from the construction of key flood walls by shrinking their support pilings. Under pressure from rising waters during Katrina, those walls toppled, causing much of the city flooding.

According to the report, the Corps also pressed ahead with the plan authorized by Congress in 1965, even after later information about potential hurricane dangers indicated that the system provided less protection than promised.

"There was a general sense that what was being built wasn't up to snuff," said Leonard A. Shabman, a resident scholar at Resources for the Future, an environmental think tank. But Corps and local officials "were basically saying there is a budget cap and we are going to build what we can with that." Shabman co-authored the report with Douglas Woolley from Radford University.

More from the Washington Post

Road to New Life After Katrina Is Closed to Many

This was not how Cindy Cole pictured her life at 26: living in a mobile home park called Sugar Hill, wedged amid the refineries and cane fields of tiny St. James Parish, 18 miles from the nearest supermarket. Sustaining three small children on nothing but food stamps, with no playground, no security guards and nowhere to go.

No, Ms. Cole was supposed to be paying $275 a month for a two-bedroom house in the Lower Ninth Ward — next door to her mother, across the street from her aunt, with a child care network that extended the length and breadth of her large New Orleans family. With her house destroyed and no job or savings, however, her chances of recreating that old reality are slim.

For thousands of evacuees like Ms. Cole, going home to New Orleans has become a vague and receding dream. Living in bleak circumstances, they cannot afford to go back, or have nothing to go back to. Over the two years since Hurricane Katrina hit, the shock of evacuation has hardened into the grim limbo of exile.

“We in storage,” said Ann Picard, 49, cocking her arm toward the blind white cracker box of a house she shares with Ms. Cole, her niece, and Ms. Cole’s three children. “We just in storage.”

Their options whittled away by government inaction, they represent a sharp contrast to the promise made by President Bush in Jackson Square on Sept. 15, 2005.

“Americans want the Gulf Coast not just to survive, but to thrive; not just to cope, but to overcome,” Mr. Bush said. “We want evacuees to come home, for the best of reasons — because they have a real chance at a better life in a place they love.”

As of late May, however, there were still more than 30,000 families displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita spread across the country in apartments paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and another 13,000 families, down from a peak of nearly 18,000, marooned in trailer or mobile home parks, where hunger is so prevalent that lines form when the truck from the food bank appears.

more from the NY Times

Wealthy Stake $25 Million in a War With the Sea

On this island, the phrase “money is no object” is more than a figure of speech. Starter homes sell for $800,000 or more, a coffee shop breakfast for two can top $50, and carpenters routinely commute to work by airplane.

So when erosion became a serious threat to bluff-top homes in the village of Siasconset on the island’s southeast shore and homeowners decided to fight back by replenishing the beach, cost was not an issue.

About two dozen of the owners joined with other island residents to form the Sconset Beach Preservation Fund, whose members are seeking permission to spend at least $25 million of their own money to dredge 2.6 million cubic yards of sand from a few miles offshore and pump it onto a 3.1-mile stretch of beach in Siasconset, or Sconset, as it is called here.

They realize that the sand will inevitably wash away, so they are prepared to do much of the work all over again, perhaps as often as every five years.

If the sand had to be transported by dump trucks, it could take 260,000 trips at 10 cubic yards a trip. Instead, it will be dredged up from the ocean bottom, mixed with water and pumped to shore as a slurry that will spew out onto the beach.

more from the NY Times

Greenland reveals its true colours

The surface of most of Greenland is entombed by a thick ice cap, but some time during the past 800,000 years, the southern part of the island actually lived up to its name. It was covered by a thick, verdant boreal forest similar to that now found in many regions of Canada.

The Greenland forest contained pine trees, yews and aspens, where a profusion of insect life - including beetles, flies, moths and butterflies - flitted among the plants.

The surprising discovery, made by an international team of scientists (including some from Canada) and outlined in the current issue of the journal Science, was based on an analysis of tiny fragments of DNA preserved in ice drawn from cores drilled nearly to the bottom of Greenland's ice sheet.

The finding suggests that at some point in the relatively recent past, Greenland had to be far warmer than it is now, and a substantial part of the island was forested, unlike today, when about 85 per cent is ice-covered and much of the rest is inhospitable Arctic tundra.

more from the Globe and Mail (Toronto)