The 82nd Rainforest Thread ~

April 30, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Dumb as We Wanna Be
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer's travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we'll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars ?- burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: "Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most."

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here's what's scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage ?- gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars ?- and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage ?- new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down?

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again ?- which often happens ?- investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That's how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.

The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush ?- showing not one iota of leadership ?- refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.

"It's a disaster," says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. "Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take ?'Congressional risk.' They say if you don't get the [production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects."

It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, that the U.S. has reached a point "where the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics" that it would turn its back on the next great global industry ?- clean power ?- "but that's exactly what is happening." If the wind and solar credits expire, said Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won't be made.

While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America's premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany ?- 540 high-paying engineering jobs ?- because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.

In 1997, said Resch, America was the leader in solar energy technology, with 40 percent of global solar production. "Last year, we were less than 8 percent, and even most of that was manufacturing for overseas markets."

The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious ?- the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.

Teeny, so good hearing you're recovering well, and shopping!

Please take it easy though.


Happy Earthturn ehBeth, and to all the wildclickers!







http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

Good morning all wildclickers. Two days left to plant seeds and tomato plants before next day of rain arrives.

Clicked.

May 1, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Can We Be as Smart as Bats?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

IN THE AMAZON JUNGLE, Ecuador

Vampire bats are remarkably well-adapted to the rain forest. They come out at night and use heat sensors to find a goat, child or other mammal, which they feed upon only after determining from its breathing that it is truly asleep.

If the prey is an animal with fur, vampire bats use special teeth to shave the skin. Then they use incisors to cut the skin almost painlessly, while the saliva prevents clotting, and they lap up the blood.

So the question is: Can we humans adapt as effectively to the rain forest as vampire bats have?

It doesn't seem so. Instead of living in harmony with the rain forest ?- or only as parasitically as, say, a vampire bat ?- we're destroying the jungle in ways that contribute hugely to global warming.

Somewhere in the world, we humans cut down an area of jungle the size of a football field every second of every day, and deforestation now contributes as much to global warming as all the carbon emitted by the United States. By one calculation, four years of deforestation have the same carbon footprint as all flights in the history of aviation up until the year 2025.

That's the challenge that Douglas McMeekin and Juan Kunchikuy are trying to address. As I noted when I began their story in my Sunday column, they make an unusual pair: Mr. McMeekin is a 65-year-old American businessman who came to Ecuador after going bankrupt at home in Kentucky, and Mr. Kunchikuy is a 30-year-old naturalist and guide from an indigenous tribe who grew up in the rain forest with his blowgun and never wore shoes or saw electricity until he was 17.

They have joined forces to protect the rain forest by working with local inhabitants, trying to create incentives for them to leave trees standing ?- while also raising local living standards. "Save the Rain Forest" bumper stickers don't sustain local families, who earn an average of only $300 per year and see trees as a way to boost their incomes.

"People have to make a living," Mr. McMeekin said. "But they can chop down 50 acres of forest to make a pasture, or they can earn the same income by chopping down 5 acres and planting cacao."

So his organization, Yachana Foundation, is distributing high-quality cacao seedlings to encourage farmers to manage small plots that leave most of the jungle intact. Yachana also operates a factory that buys the cacao and turns it into mail-order chocolate.

Yachana also encourages family planning ?- to reduce population pressures that lead to deforestation ?- and runs a new private high school to train young people from throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon. The 120 students in the school get a superb education with English taught by American volunteers; the first graduation will be in July.

One aim is to build a core of indigenous leaders who can represent local views internationally and also serve as agents of change within the region. Mr. Kunchikuy ?- who speaks fluent English and serves on the board of Yachana Foundation ?- is a prototype. After all, there aren't many board members as comfortable with a microphone as with a blowgun (and who have scars on their noses from vampire bats).

The school focuses on practical skills, such as how to graft cacao or fruit-tree saplings, or how to operate fish ponds. The idea is to earn significant incomes without large clear-cuts.

Many students work part time in the foundation's neighboring eco-lodge, Yachana, which has 18 rooms catering to American tourists (and generates part of the cash to pay for the school).

As I walk through the jungle paths here, serenaded by the twittering of birds and monkeys overhead, or the splashing of turtles in the river, I marvel at this land. The Amazon is grand for putting us humans in our place ?- until you reach a clear-cut, and the spell breaks and you realize maybe we're not so puny after all.

One approach to saving the rain forests is to pay poor countries to preserve them. Research suggests that by paying tropical countries $27.25 per ton of carbon not emitted by destroying forests, the world could avoid $85 in damage per ton from the carbon.

But these can't just be transactions with governments; too often we lose sight of the inhabitants of the forests. In a remote part of Central African Republic, I once found teams of Western volunteers dedicated to preserving gorillas ?- but there were no volunteers helping local Pygmies who were dying of malaria.

With Yachana, this partnership of a bankrupt American businessman and an Amazonian hunter, we have a model of how to help the forest by helping the people who live in it. Preserving the rain forest should be a priority, if we have a bat's brains.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.

White House Blocked Rule Issued to Shield Whales

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008; A03

White House officials for more than a year have blocked a rule aimed at protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales by challenging the findings of government scientists, according to documents obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The documents, which were mailed to the environmental group by an unidentified National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official, illuminate a struggle that has raged between the White House and NOAA for more than a year. In February 2007, NOAA issued a final rule aimed at slowing ships traversing some East Coast waters to 10 knots or less during parts of the year to protect the right whales, but the White House has blocked the rule from taking effect.

North Atlantic right whales, whose surviving population numbers fewer than 400, are one of the most endangered species on Earth, and scientists have warned that the loss of just one more pregnant female could doom the species. Some shipping companies have opposed the NOAA proposal, saying slowing their vessels will cost the industry money.

The documents, which House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) released yesterday, show that the White House Council of Economic Advisers and Vice President Cheney's office repeatedly questioned whether the rule was needed. Waxman, who sent a letter to the White House asking for an explanation, said the exchange "appears to be the latest instance of the White House ignoring scientists and other experts."

In one document, the Council of Economic Advisers questioned "the reliability of analysis in the published literature on which NOAA is basing its position." The council conducted its own analysis and concluded that "the relationship between [vessel] speed and [whale] injury . . . may not be as strong of a relationship as is suggested in published papers."

NOAA scientists were not swayed, writing in response, "The basic facts remain that (1) there is a direct relationship between speed and death/serious injury, and (2) at vessel speeds at or below 10 knots the probability of death/serious injury is greatly reduced."

A separate document reveals that Cheney's staff argued "that we have no evidence (i.e., hard data) that lowering the speeds of 'large ships' will actually make a difference." NOAA again fired back, writing that there was "no basis to overturn our previous conclusion that imposing a speed limit on large vessels would be beneficial to whales."

Since NOAA initially proposed the regulation, at least three right whales have died from ship strikes and two have been wounded by propellers.

Amy Knowlton, a scientist at the New England Aquarium who has studied right whales, said the documents show that "the rule really is based on good science. NOAA has done a very good job in sticking to its guns on this."

Kristen Hellmer, spokeswoman for the White House Council for Environmental Quality, said in a statement that the office is reviewing the Waxman letter.

"We will make an appropriate response to the committee," she said, adding that "we are confident this longstanding rulemaking process will provide an approach that will achieve our shared goals."

Beth Allgood, a program officer at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, questioned why the administration had not acted on the rule.

"The administration's own scientists have answered these questions six months ago, and they still haven't issued the rule. That's one of the most shocking things," Allgood said. "It's not a huge burden on industry; it's a huge burden on the whales."

The World Shipping Council has campaigned to block the rule, but the Chamber of Shipping of America backs it. In an Aug. 24 letter, its director of maritime affairs, Kathy J. Metcalf, wrote White House officials that "the economic impacts associated with the proposed rule (assuming it includes a provision for increased speeds for safety of navigation) are well worth the benefits."

Report Targets Costs Of Factory Farming

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 30, 2008; A02

Factory farming takes a big, hidden toll on human health and the environment, is undermining rural America's economic stability and fails to provide the humane treatment of livestock increasingly demanded by American consumers, concludes an independent, 2 1/2 -year analysis that calls for major changes in the way corporate agriculture produces meat, milk and eggs.

The report released yesterday, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, finds that the "economies of scale" used to justify factory farming practices are largely an illusion, perpetuated by a failure to account for associated costs.

Among those costs are human illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria associated with the rampant use of antibiotics on feedlots and the degradation of land, water and air quality caused by animal waste too intensely concentrated to be neutralized by natural processes.

Several observers said the report, by experts with varying backgrounds and allegiances, is remarkable for the number of tough recommendations that survived the grueling research and review process, which participants said was politically charged and under constant pressure from powerful agricultural interests.

In the end, however, even industry representatives on the panel agreed to such controversial recommendations as a ban on the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals -- a huge hit against veterinary pharmaceutical companies -- a phaseout of all intensive confinement systems that prevent the free movement of farm animals, and more vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws in the increasingly consolidated agricultural arena.

"At the end of his second term, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex -- an unhealthy alliance between the defense industry, the Pentagon, and their friends on Capitol Hill," wrote Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which wrote the report. "Now the agro-industrial complex -- an alliance of agricultural commodity groups, scientists at academic institutions who are paid by the industry, and their friends on Capitol Hill -- is a concern in animal food production in the 21st century."

The report, "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Production in America," comes at a time when food, agriculture and animal welfare issues are prominent in the American psyche.

Food prices are rising faster than they have for decades. Concerns about global climate change have brought new attention to the fact that modern agriculture is responsible for about 20 percent of the nation's greenhouse-gas production. And recent meat recalls, punctuated by the release of undercover footage of cows being abused at a California slaughterhouse, have struck a chord with consumers.

The report acknowledges that the decades-long trend toward reliance on "concentrated animal feeding operations," or CAFOs, has brought some benefits, including cheaper food. In 1970, the average American spent 4.2 percent of his or her income to buy 194 pounds of red meat and poultry annually. By 2005, typical Americans were spending 2.1 percent of their income for 221 pounds per year.

But the system has brought unintended consequences. With thousands of animals kept in close quarters, diseases spread quickly. To prevent some of those outbreaks -- and to spur faster growth -- factory farms routinely treat animals with antibiotics, speeding the development of drug-resistant bacteria and in some cases rendering important medications less effective in people.

It appears that the vast majority of U.S. antibiotic use is for animals, the commission noted, adding that because of the lack of oversight by the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies, even regulators can only estimate how many drugs are being given to animals.

The commission urges stronger reporting requirements for companies and a phaseout and then ban on antibiotics in farm animals except as treatments for disease, a policy already initiated in some European countries.

"That's a good recommendation. A strong recommendation," said Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which released its own report last week documenting billions of dollars in farm subsidies to factory farming operations and annual federal expenditures of $100 million to clean up their ongoing environmental damage.

The Pew report also calls for tighter regulation of factory farm waste, finding that toxic gases and dust from animal waste are making CAFO workers and neighbors ill.

In calling for a 10-year phaseout of intensive confinement systems such as gestation crates for pigs and so-called battery cages for chickens, the commission adds impetus to recent commitments from some corporate operators to drop, gradually, those controversial practices.

"These animals can't engage in normal behavior at all," said commission member Michael Blackwell, a veterinarian and former assistant U.S. surgeon general.

Calls for comments from industry representatives were not returned.

The report also calls for implementation of a long-delayed national tracking system that would allow trace-back of diseased animals within 48 hours after a human outbreak of food-borne disease. And it calls for an end to forced feeding of poultry to produce foie gras, a delicacy that Blackwell described unpalatably as "diseased liver."

Activists said it will be up to Congress and agency officials, under public pressure, to implement some of the commission's recommendations. Congress is now considering a bill, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, that would accomplish some of the Pew recommendations.

Excellent articles, sue!

Happy planting!

Super busy next three days with landscaping, house, and errands. Seems there arn't enough hours in a day anymore.

Sending healing prayers to Teeny and Pattie and wishing all wildclickers a great Spring day.

Hurray for the rain, sue!




http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

You betcha.

back from the dentist

clicked
reading

You and your 300 friends have supported 2,887,156.3 square feet!

Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 207,457.2 square feet.
You have supported: (0.0)
Your 300 friends have supported: (207,457.2)

American Prairie habitat supported: 65,851.5 square feet.
You have supported: (16,247.2)
Your 300 friends have supported: (49,604.3)

Rainforest habitat supported: 2,613,847.5 square feet.
You have supported: (186,969.8)
Your 300 friends have supported: (2,426,877.8)

Thursday. Double click.
The blue herons love water.

Great photo, alex. The herons are one of my favorite family of birds.

ECOLOGY: Fire in the Far North
Andrew M. Sugden

Paleoecological data sets contain historical records of biotic responses to changes in climate. Currently, high-latitude regions are suffering a particularly aggressive regimen of climate change; hence, an understanding of past vegetation dynamics in these regions is especially pertinent. Higuera et al. have analyzed pollen records from north-central Alaska and find that a combination of drier climates and shrubbier tundra during the late glacial period 14,000 to 10,000 years ago led to regular fires. Given present-day increases in shrub biomass and temperature, tundra fire activity might increase again, with consequences for vegetation dynamics and carbon cycling. Tinner et al. have analyzed pollen and other records from the past 700 years (a period that includes the Little Ice Age of 1500 to 1800 CE) in southern Alaska, and find that temperature fluctuations of 1° to 2°C, together with changes in moisture balance, led to conversions between boreal forest and tundra with concomitant alterations in fire regimes. Taken together, these findings are consistent with models predicting a conversion of tundra to boreal forest as temperatures increase. -- AMS

PLoS ONE 3, e0001744 (2008); Ecology 89, 729 (2008).

ECOLOGY: Frogs Leap to Extinction
Caroline Ash

The causes of recently documented declines in frogs since the 1980s have been hotly debated. One vigorously promulgated hypothesis is that the decline has been triggered by climate change, which has promoted virulence in a previously saprophytic fungus. An orthogonal view is that the decline reflects the spatiotemporal spread of an invasive fungal disease. In either scenario, the fungus is Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which colonizes frog skin and suffocates the amphibians. The declines have been particularly noticeable among the charismatic harlequin frogs of Central and South America. Lips et al. have developed a technique to analyze the unavoidably incomplete frog census data (due to infrequent sampling, remote habitats, and sociopolitical challenges) and see wavelike progressions of population falloffs that look very much like the spread of an invasive pathogen originating from three source locales. They categorically found no relation with climate change; indeed, the fungus does best at altitudes where conditions are cool and moist. -- CA

PloS Biol. 6, e72 (2008).

New EPA Standards Would Cut Amount Of Lead in the Air
Agency Scientists Urge Stricter Limits

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 2, 2008; A02

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday proposed tightening the federal limits for lead in the air, but the proposal fell short of what its own scientists said is required to protect public health.

Lead, which is emitted by smelters, mining, aviation fuel and waste incinerators, can enter the bloodstream and affect young children's development and IQ, as well as cause cardiovascular, blood pressure and kidney problems in adults. The United States has not changed its atmospheric lead standards in 30 years, but the Bush administration is under a court order to issue new rules by September.

U.S. emissions of lead have dropped from 74,000 tons a year three decades ago to 1,300 tons a year now, largely because leaded gasoline was taken off the market. Since 1990, however, more than 6,000 studies have examined the impact of lead on public health and the environment and have revealed that it has harmful effects at lower concentrations than previously thought.

In a conference call with reporters yesterday, EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus C. Peacock announced that the agency is proposing to cut the current standard of 1.5 micrograms of lead per cubic meter of air to a range of between 0.10 and 0.30 micrograms per cubic meter.

"We are writing the next chapter in America's clean air story," Peacock said, adding the new standard would be "up to 93 percent stronger than the current standard."

Environmentalists criticized the administration for proposing a range of lead levels that exceeds what an independent scientific advisory panel and the EPA's scientific staff identified as the maximum amount of lead that should be in the air. Both groups said the new standard should not exceed 0.20 micrograms of lead per cubic meter of air, and EPA staff members said it could be set as low as 0.02 micrograms.

The two groups also recommended that the agency average lead emissions from any given source over a single month, rather than over three months, as EPA officials proposed yesterday.

Avinash Kar, an attorney for the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, called the rule "a flawed proposal" even though it is "moving in the right direction."

"According to EPA projections, emissions of 60 pounds of lead from a single pollution source could cause a median loss of up to three IQ points in children," Kar said. "Thousands of children across the United States live near lead plants emitting more than 60 pounds of lead every year. In fact, some plants emit tons of lead annually."

Frank O'Donnell, who heads the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, said the agency engaged in "statistical trickery" by providing a range of possible lead limits and lengthening the period over which polluters could average the amount of lead they put into the air.

But Rogene Henderson, who chairs the independent air advisory committee, said she was pleased with EPA's decision. "They heard us," she said.

Robert J. Meyers, principal deputy assistant administrator at the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, said officials tried to "tease out" how much of the lead in the air comes from atmospheric emissions, as opposed to the lead in pipes, paint and other sources. Adults and children inhale lead from the air, which then works its way into the bloodstream from the lungs, but people can also ingest lead that has been deposited in the soil or on surfaces in the home.

The EPA estimates that the proposed rule would apply to 16,000 sources of lead nationwide and, depending on what standard is eventually adopted, between 12 and 23 U.S. counties would fail to meet the stricter standards.

Jeffrey R. Holmstead, who directed the EPA's office of air and radiation from 2001 to 2005 and now heads the environmental strategies group at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, said the 60-day comment period on the rule that will start once it is published in the Federal Register "will be even more important than usual."

"Most people thought the lead issue had been solved, and it's only recently that people have begun to focus on it," he said in an interview. "They're really taking comment on a broad range here."

The agency is also soliciting comments on setting the standard higher or lower than the proposed range, up to 0.50 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

Wildclickers, have you all seen the movie "I Am Legend"? Intense!

{thought phnemonia was bad!}

Wondering if the planet will sustain life by the year 2050. At the rate the EPA and Congress set enviornmental standards...





http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

Beth, the dentist visit

then....

Hi all. Clicked

Good articles sumac - interesting reading

alex - you can get three clicks for your name. Do what you are doing to get the two clicks - then after you logout - click the URL to bring up the main Race page again - don't login or anything, just WAIT 60 seconds and click on the Rain Forest icon again. You should be able to get three clicks for one name. I usually play minesweeper to fill the minutes wait in between those particular clicks.

Friday night clicking while dinner sizzles and simmers on the stovetop.

Love those herons - they are mrs. hamburger's particular favourites.

You and your 300 friends have supported 2,887,554.3 square feet!

Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 207,621.1 square feet.
You have supported: (0.0)
Your 300 friends have supported: (207,621.1)

American Prairie habitat supported: 65,898.3 square feet.
You have supported: (16,270.6)
Your 300 friends have supported: (49,627.7)

Rainforest habitat supported: 2,614,034.8 square feet.
You have supported: (186,993.2)
Your 300 friends have supported: (2,427,041.7)

Wow! I'm all clicked, too! :wink: