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What Environment?

In February 2007, the Navy initiated training exercises without filing the EIS required by the National Environmental Protection Act of 1969 (NEPA) to document the possible environmental harm from the sonar training. Various groups challenged the Navy in court, and the case wound up in the Supreme Court yesterday, where the court heard arguments in "Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council" (NRDC). The counsel for the Navy, General Garre summarized for Justice David Souter the Navy's decision to go ahead without the EIS: "it doesn't specifically say what happens if they [the laws] are not followed".

The District Court originally found in favor of NRDC: The Navy had violated (NEPA). Instead of complying with the court injunction, however, in short the Navy wrote its own environmental assessment EA and presented this to an executive-branch administrative agency called the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The CEQ found that the Navy's mission constituted "emergency circumstances".

The Navy took this opinion back to the court, arguing that the court should dissolve its injunction. In more court reviews Los Angeles U.S. District Judge Florence Marie Cooper sifted through evidence and determined criteria for when the Navy should turn off sonar. According to the NRDC brief, the courts reviewed "thousands of pages of briefing and evidence over the course of many weeks, and tour[ed] a Navy destroyer--to assess the Navy's contention that the mitigation measures would risk the Navy's ability to train and certify its strike groups." The mitigations Cooper imposed were loosened in subsequent hearings.

In previous training exercises, the Navy had "trained and certified its strike groups using the two mitigation measures at issue in this appeal". Furthermore, following the lower court decisions. the Navy continued training exercises in the Pacific Ocean, "completing the last 13 of 14 training exercises, 8 of which were under the current rules", and did not appeal to the court for relief Kendall pointed out. But the Navy doesn't any more want to take steps to mitigate environmental damage.

Despite the fact that the Navy's training was not impeded by the mitigations, the Navy and the President appealed to the Supreme Court to overrule any measures imposed by the lower courts. Yesterday the Supreme Court question the two sides about whales, sonar, and impact statements. It considered issues of standing and equity, as well as the role of the executive branch in determining the fate of the environment and endangered species.

Sometimes the court seemed aloof to the information in the briefs. In balancing the possible harm to marine animals, Chief Justice Roberts suggested the possible harm on the other side was: "the potential that a North Korean diesel electric submarine will get within range of Pearl Harbor undetected". NRDC counsel Kendall corrected the Chief Justice: The case concerned only military training, not combat. Justice Breyer, also confused, elicited a laugh by suggesting that all military exercises were destructive: "You go on a bombing mission, do they have to prepare an environmental impact statement first?" Mr. Kendall again: "No."

Whales & Sonar: It's Not Pretty

Research shows that whales become disoriented, injured or die after sonar testing. Strandings and deaths that have been frequently documented; in North Carolina (2005); at Haro Strait off the coast of Washington State (2003); in the Canary Islands (2004, 2002, 1989, 1986, 1985); in Madeira (2000); the U.S. Virgin Islands (1999, 1998); Greece (1996), and the Bahamas (2000), and off the coast of Spain (2006), and more The coincidence of whale strandings or deaths and naval sonar testing exercises seems too obvious to ignore, but cause and effect scientific data on the whales are more difficult to compile. That said, recent research points to how the marine mammals become injured and die.

After the 2003 mass strandings in the Canary Islands, Nature published a report by Jepson et al, showing that beaked whales had gas filled cavities and emboli in their organs and tissues. The animals hemorrhage around their ears and brain. According to Jepson's theory the whales died from decompression sickness.¹ A subsequent study in Science, 2004 found the same effect in sperm whales. ². Jepson later reported that embolisms were also present in whales stranded off the coast of Spain in 2006. ³ More studies of strandings found similar evidence. ⁴

Common to the many reports, and consistent with observation, tagging, and later corpse analysis, whales seem to become disoriented when subjected to sonar, which leads to decompression sickness ⁵. Recent research by teams in the Ian Boyd lab at St Andrews University and in the Peter Tyack lab at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute suggest that the whales perceive the sonar as a predator. Tyack told Times Online published a story September 28, 2008, based in interviews with the two lead scientists. Said Tyack:

"[The Navy] uses pulses of similar frequency and duration to the pulses emitted by killer whales and is very loud. It seems to have a particularly strong effect on species, such as small beaked whales, of which killer whales are the primary predator."

This idea hasn't been completely vetted, but scientists are closing in on the mechanisms and possible mitigations. Beaked whales are most susceptible to harm because of their behavioral response of abnormal diving in the presence of sonar. Scientists suggest that the need to escape the sound causes the whales to dive frantically, breaking their usual feeding and breeding, and diving behavior which causes the bends, hemorrhaging and injuries.

Oh, This Won't Hurt at All, Says the Navy

The justices acknowledged they can't evaluate science. When presented with rationale by the Navy about needing to train at night because of thermal layers, Justice Breyer considered the Navy's stance: "Fine, they went on some exercises and they didn't run into these layered things. So obviously they couldn't have training." (Thermal layers and sonar are described here in the book, "How To Make War", by James Kunnigan, Chap. 10: Navy: Run Silent Run Deep.)

The court only anemically challenged General Garre's repeated assertions that the sonar caused no harm, and that the Respondents hadn't shown "irreparable harm". For instance General Garre referred the court to a Navy document listing "all the species of beaked whales and explained that the harms that are predicted in the environmental assessment are non-injurious, temporary harms". Alioto asked Garre to explain it in "lay terms". Garre led Alioto to conclude there wasn't "physical injury", rather the whales might just "swim in a different direction"? (As if your child was whining in the living room so you wandered into the kitchen to get yourself a snack, rather than, that you were suddenly subjected to unending earth-shatteringly loud, nerve-rattling noise that caused you to flee up to the attic window then cover your exploding ears and plunge from the roof.) Garre assured Alioto: "that's right".

Yet the NRDC presented significant evidence in the briefs. Kendall disputed General Garre's multiple assertions that sonar caused "no harm." He described the embolisms, gas filled pockets, and hemorrhaging, and presented this analogy to the court:

"In sound intensity, in this courtroom if we had a jet engine and you multiplied that noise by 2,000 times, correcting for water, that's the sound's intensity that would be going on in the water if you were a marine mammal near that source."

Loud?

What the Navy Doesn't Want Us Know?

People have long suspected the Navy knows more then they're letting on about how sonar effects marine life. According to the NRDC brief (PDF) the Navy predicted in their EA that the SOCAL sonar training would result in 170,000 incidents to marine mammals -- harassment, injuries, or deaths -- and 548 permanent injuries for beaked whales.

The Navy denied and backpedaled on harm during Supreme Court questioning, but there is plenty of evidence that militaries of the world understand sonar's effects. The science journal Nature obtained an unpublished 2007 report from the UK Military under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 documenting that sonar negatively effects whale behavior and can lead to death. ⁶ The UK military ran Operation Anglo-Saxon 06 in 2006 and reported on whale activity during the "submarine war-games". Using hydrophones, researchers found the number of whale recordings dropped by 75% over during sonar exercises. The whales stopped vocalizing and foraging for food, and the UK military predicted this would lead to '"second and third order effects on the animal and population as a whole"', including starvation and death, according to the report.

To the extent the research is sparse perhaps it's because the US Navy has tried to suppress its findings. Nature reported in "Panel quits in row over sonar damage" in 2006 that the US Navy pressured scientists to suppress evidence of harm from sonar. ⁷ The US Marine Mammal Commission (MMC) was convened by Congress in 2003 to advise Congress on a plan to research whales and sonar, however the commission broke apart, plan-less, after 2 years of meetings.

The journal spoke to members of the failed MNC who said that the science had been "highly politicized". According to one participant, "the Navy, as well as other groups that use sonar, including geophysical researchers and the oil and gas industry, blocked a consensus." Lindy Weilgart of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, told the journal: '"This process has been a travesty of fiscal responsibility, scientific integrity, and environmental stewardship."'

Environmental Law, by the Navy: "What He Said."

At first, the Supreme Court pursued the facts around the Navy's decision to ignore the law requiring the EIS, to simply make up its own environmental assessment (EA), with it's own criteria, unvetted by anyone but the Navy, not subject to public comment. Different justices questioned General Garre about the CEQ's authority as an office in the White House to override environmental law set out in NEPA. They suggested that perhaps the only "emergency" was that the Navy had ignored the legal requirement for the EIS before starting training. Then Justice Scalia proposed a different tactic for General Garre:

Scalia: "Look, the problem you face and maybe you're being whipsawed, is that you are effectively estopped from the argument that no EIS is necessary by the fact that you have agreed to these alternative arrangements. But you should not be estopped from arguing that at the time the EA was issued that was not a good faith completion of all the Navy's responsibilities....It assumes that the EA wasn't enough. And I'm not sure that we -- that that assumption is valid."

General Garre: "Well, that's right....the Navy believes that its EA was not only prepared in good faith, but was appropriate and reached the right conclusions...." Garre had repeatedly stated that the sonar training would cause little "likelihood of irreparable injury..." But Justice David Souter wondered whether: "without the EIS, the Navy is acting in -- in a state of -- of some degree of ignorance greater than would be the case if -- if it had done -- done the EIS."

Scalia addressed Garre again:

"The EA demonstrates in your view that the EIS would -- would very likely say that this -- this action by the Navy is okay. And since that is the case, there is -- there is no probability of irreparable harm; to the contrary, there is the probability of no irreparable harm because of the EA."

Said General Garre: "Well, we agree with that." (The Navy does agree with that, even though the EA predicted over 500 serious injuries and 170,000 incidents, it concludes no harm, no harm, again and again.)

Scalia later suggested:

"In all -- in all of these cases it is controverted, or in most of them, whether an EIS is either necessary -- is even necessary. So if the mere allegation that it was necessary gives rise to an allegation of irreparable harm, you are going to get a preliminary injunction in all cases?"

General Garre replied: "I think that's right."

However, earlier in the questioning, General Garre had assured the court that he recognized the Navy's original "duty to prepare the EIS". He had told the justices about the Navy's steadfast commitment to completing the tardy EIS document per previous legal agreements. Now, suddenly, Garre asserted he was "contesting" what he had before agreed to -- that the Navy needed to complete an EIS. This confused Justice Ginsburg, who remembered to the time 30 minutes earlier when Garre stated his commitment to "meet the goal" of producing the EIS by January, 2009 (although the training ends in 2008). Ginsburg said: "I thought you conceded that point". General Garre the quickly apologized "if I misspoke".

Who needs Scalia's book "Making Your Case Persuading Judges"? Just show up for the tutorial, let him argue your points, and nod. What Scalia said.

Good Stewards of The Environment

In the end, the Supreme Court justices puzzled over why the Navy was dragging its heels if the agency had completed the EA, was committed to completing the EIS, and if there was "no irreparable harm" to mammals. Garre, perhaps emboldened, suggested in closing that the NRDC did not even have standing if beaked whales were harmed. One justice queried the two parties about why they hadn't worked it out, as opposed to leaving it to the courts. Judges aren't experts on Naval exercises or marine biology, the justices pointed out. NRDC's Kendall replied that "the Navy is focused on having it its way or no way". Chief Justice John G. Roberts retorted, "that's not fair"; the Navy had continually compromised, he said, but "no good deed goes unpunished".

Scientists warn that the beach strandings may indicate an even larger problem -- not all animals may be washed ashore, many more may be dying and lost at the sea. In a review of research on whale injuries, causes, and mitigation by Marine Pollution Bulletin. ⁸, the authors write: "...the greatest user of military sonars in the world, the US Navy, appears to be in denial about the situation." While the US has taken significant action to weaken cetacean protection in national and international waters, especially with regard to sonar, the Navy continues to boast about its commitment to being "good stewards of the environment".

The Supreme Court will issue a decision later this session.

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¹Jepson et al, Gas-bubble lesions in stranded cetaceans: was sonar responsible for a spate of whale deaths after an Atlantic military exercise? Nature, 425, 575-57, 9 October 2003: doi:10.1038/425575a.
² Moore and Early; Cumulative sperm whale bone damage and the bends, Science 306, Vol. 306. no. 5705, p. 2215. 2004: doe: 10.1126/science.1105452
³ Dalton, Rex; More whale strandings are linked to sonar : Nature 440, 593 30 March 2006 doi :10.1038/440593a.
⁴ Fernandez, A. Gas and fat embolic syndrome" involving a mass stranding of beaked whales (family Ziphiidae) exposed to anthropogenic sonar signals.Veterinary Patholology 42:446-457 2005.
⁵ Tyak et al. Extreme diving of beaked whales. Journal of Experimental Biology 209, 4238-4253. 2006 doi: 10.1242/jeb.02505).
⁶ Cressey, Daniel; Sonar does affect whales, military report confirms. Nature, Aug 1, 2008. doi:10.1038/news.2008.997.
⁷ Dalton, Rex; Panel quits in row over sonar damage. Nature 439, 376-377 26 January 2006 doi :10.1038/439376a;doi:10.1038/439376a
⁸ Parsons et al., Navy sonar and cetaceans: Just how much does the gun need to smoke before we act? Marine Pollution Bulletin, July, 2008 doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2008.04.025

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Acronym Required previously wrote on this subject in "Whales In A Time of War", and "Whales in Court".

It's Not a Fish Story

Once at social event I was introduced to a couple sitting nearby, and after a brief exchange of greetings, one began to pepper me with questions. His first question was about fish, simply: "Why do scientists study fish?" Followed without pause by: "What could you possibly learn?" Nothing I've ever done has anything to do with fish, and everything I've done is only even remotely related to his subject, so it all seemed a bit out of the blue at the time -- even weirder now -- "Hello, nice to meet you why do they study fish?" Who's "they"? What fish? Where and how do you start with that? Gently.

Was it a specific fish study? As you the reader know, there's a lot of "fish" research; for aquaculture for instance- a growing industry that produces farmed fish for consumer products and agriculture. Scientists also study reproduction and development in wild salmon or sharks or trout or striped bass, they do migration studies, studies of predators, studies on the impact of non-native fish, the impacts of fishing, recreation, pollution, and global warming on inventories. Scientists study nutritional values of fish and fish oil for human and animal consumption. Researchers study mercury levels in fish. They study shellfish and crustaceans. Did my acquaintance mean fish in oceans, or in rivers, estuaries, or lakes? Perhaps he meant zebrafish used as a model to study neurobiology, physiology, the cellular and molecular basis of disease?

But it turns out his question wasn't about fish, per se, more just research in general, which he'd recently taken special interest in...something to do with investigating wasteful research spending for the government. After a cocktail or so, he thought I might be the source of a little information to help him with his new project.

Although he was clearly predisposed to a certain answer -- research having to do with fish is wasteful -- he wasn't hostile, just baffled. He had no way of connecting "fish research" to anything meaningful in his life and was bent on doing his patriotic best to route out fraud.

With further conversation it became clear that he was repeating a line that was told to him as an example of government excess. He had clearly absorbed someone's mission and its easy target, wasteful spending in science. If you blank out of your mind everything you know about science and research, you too could be convinced to think this way. ¹

It's Not About the Fish

The food we eat is supported by research, as is the water we drink, the air we breath, our medicine, the materials we build are houses with, the lawns we grow, and the toys we buy our children. Our lives are supported by science research. But while research is applauded when the result is a new iPod, people for some reason get skittish about other science research and its results, from genetically modified anything to global warming science.

In the past decade there's been great attention paid to science as a political target especially during the last Bush administration. Analyzing the reasons, some people even blamed the scientists themselves for their communication styles, their personalities, or the size of the words they use. While these things may contribute to lack of understanding, as I've written here before, I think there are more essential problems, for instance the paltry attention paid to science education.

The lack of understanding and interest isn't unique to science, it permeates our culture and influences conversations about economics, math, finance, and history, and medicine. The ignorance is reflected in the priorities of our politics. So perhaps more fundamental to even-handed science policy than communication and education, is reconsideration of legislator's motivators and campaign finance.

But even small changes would improve things. Congress certainly doesn't need a greater percentage of scientists to balance science interests, as some have suggested, nor do more voters need to be scientists to think analytically. Not everyone needs to know the nitty-gritty details of polar ice research. But you'd hope they'd recognize the importance of the research in order to recognize talking points from balancing the pros and cons of an issue.

If they did, some could shut down politicians who talked science nonsense, Or at least tell them their jokes aren't so funny. Because as it turns out science is sometimes a target not because of lack of education or understanding, or communication, or scientists penchant for four syllable words. It just because it makes a good joke.

Furthermore, Don't Call Me Four Eyes..."Friend"

Take John McCain's repetitive joke about "pork spending", where he uses the example of the study on endangered grizzly bears in Montana. Since at least 2003 McCain has been using this one study to make a point about of excessive spending. He guffaws that he doesn't know whether it's a "paternal" issue or a "criminal" one. "Gotta get their DNA", he laughs. He gets a good response -- part indignant, part laughter, all approval. "Corrupt, my friends", he yells. "Corruption, my friends!" he shouts.

In the past, so many people have pointed out the flaws of his joke that it immediately shows up on lots of post-debate "fact-check" blogs. The "Religionblog" at the Dallas News, for instance, thought "the loser was the truth." Introducing their own assumptions and bias along with "the facts", they wrote:

"In fact, that study is part of a push by Montana ranchers and farmers (most of them Republicans) to have the grizzly bear removed from the endangered species list. If successful, that effort could lead to increased logging and oil and gas drilling in Montana, which would cover the government's costs for the DNA study many hundreds of times over."

So the good news is, as grating it may be to hear McCain distorting science information one more time, wide swaths of the population do get the facts right. So why is McCain still grinding away with the same joke? Despite how many times reporters tell him, over and over that it's both flawed and not funny, I guess McCain still gets a ha-ha from the audience -- so he continues.

It's akin to offering up your wife at the Buffalo Chip Contest "beauty contest" during the biker convention. If it gets a laugh and is a crowd-pleaser, so who cares? If women take offense or call you sexist, just scoff that they just don't know how to have a little fun. Vroom, Vroom!

Deoxyribonucleic Acid Tactics

There are several components to the bear DNA joke that apparently make it funny and effective for McCain. There's his insertion of a paternity or crime part, which confuses (on purpose?) the research with forensic science as seen on TV. If you think about it, his distortion of the research also connects the research on bear populations with images of crime scenes and children of unknown fathers that are favorite Republican campaign devices.

There's also his utter denial of the value of the research, no mention of the Endangered Species act, and the sort of down home, "don't know much about bi-ol-o-gy" slap-on-the-back camaraderie in his joke. The actual Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project succeeded. The goal was to obtain an accurate count of the bears in one of the Endangered Species grizzly areas, which the scientists achieved. The results were widely publicized, and will be published more formally as a research study in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management.

Oceans of Pork? Maybe it is About Fish

Congress waxes on about earmarks because people like to hear about "cutting out the pork". The real issue says McCain, is that these appropriations bill use resources from the main bill and shouldn't be tacked on. Despite his angry fist thumping however, McCain voted in favor of the bill that included the bear population study appropriation. The bill's sponsor, former Sen. Conrad Burn, chairs McCain's campaign in Montana.

The White House Bulletin wrote August 11, 1997, "Mr. McCain has waged a lonely, battle against pork before. And in almost every case, he loses". But actually in every case he wins. He doesn't need to vote against anything, he just needs to sound tough. Basic research scientists generally don't make large campaign contributions, so its not surprising that individual research projects might be picked out by our representatives for public pillory. Basic science is not the farm lobby, the auto industry, the oil barons. It doesn't cost much political capital to score some points with voters on the back of a scientist or two. ³

And so the politicians continue to use science projects as examples of pork.² Tom Coburn M.D. (R-OK) recently complained about a Homeland Security bill. Citing the Citizens Against Government, he said there were "11,620 earmarks worth $17.2 billion for all 12 appropriations bills in 2008." But out of thousands of earmarks Coburn spoke of, he pointed out just a few for special focus, and those were disproportionately science studies.

He cited (in his words) a "Hibernation Genomics" study, and a "space technology" education center. He plucked quotes from the grants to amuse the readers and added short explanations. With no elaboration whatsoever, I guess because its so funny without explanation, he noted "Pseudofoliculitis Barbae (PFB) Topical Treatment". I don't know whether these are good projects or not, but they apparently have great political value.

The media piles on too. In countering McCain's grizzly bear DNA routine a few months ago, Politico countered that "Palin requested millions of federal dollars" for the State of Alaska everything from improving recreational halibut fishing to studying the mating habits of crabs and the DNA of harbor seals." Politico chose a few egregious Palin examples from the Alaska's 30 item summary of appropriation requests, and the three they listed as absurd expenditures were all (coincidentally?) marine biology projects.

After perusing the state of Alaska's appropriations, Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish was also offended by GOP contender's hypocrisy -- all McCain's ranting about pork and bragging about Palin's record was a sham. Sullivan called John McCain's bear DNA joke an "endlessly repeated, grandpa-at-Thanksgiving, punchline provided, anecdote". But while he could apparently see the purpose of bear DNA, he commented on one of Alaska's appropriations: "The DNA of seals?"

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¹ I never found out exactly what he was doing for whom or what the overall intent was, though I asked.

² Similarly his talk about "ethics and transparency" despite what many have pointed out to be dubious dealing and practices through the Reform Institute that he founded.

³ I'm know some research is pork.

It's the Economy and the Election...

When US citizens wake up each morning wondering what they might have lost from their retirement accounts overnight, and what they inadvertently gained: i.e., one morning you learn you're part owner of a gargantuan mortgage business, the next you find yourself lassoed into a giant insurance collective -- no one knows what's next. Will there be a knock on your door tomorrow AM and someone waiting to press a hoe into your hand?

When congress says they're reeling, they're "stunned" from the news delivered by the Fed at their big powwow last night, and when the press is overwhelmed with the ups and downs of an off-the-charts financial crisis and the back and forth poll numbers for McCain and Obama, we completely understand that you can't give science your usual riveted attention. With the Fed sucking up all these great liabilities and throwing the whole the "government needs to get out of the way of business" idea out the window -- or did we just all misunderstand what that really meant -- we agree that reading up on monetary policy and investigating your own sense of what "full-scale panic" means might be your highest concern.

Sure the future of permafrost is interesting, cell culture research and science curriculum really important, and yes, these things should definitely claim our attention and that of all four candidates. But I'm distracted wondering why GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin canceled more appearances in the last few days than the number of heavyweights the Republicans have pulled in to play defense in Troopergate. Palin's appearances have been canceled in Seattle & the Eastside, Virginia Beach, Dayton, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Tampa and Central Florida, Virginia Beach, Cincinatti, Jackson Hole, and all of California, as well as other places. Did McCain shoo her off-stage with Fiorina to be seldom seen and not heard? Is she cramming for a American Politics 101 final? Dental work? Did she she see a Russian tanker trawling the water out her dining room window? Nervous breakdown? Sure the also "hot" Cindy McCain will replace Palin at some events, but there's got to be some disappointed Palin admirers.

Anyway, we tear ourselves away from those massive shim-sham distractions (for the moment), in order to glance at some recent science-ish news.

Some Science Headlines

• Thousands Tens of thousands of babies are sick and several have died from Chinese baby formula contaminated with melamine that compromises kidney function. This is the same chemical that was found in pet food imported from China to the U.S. last year. Officials in Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangladesh Yemen, Gabon, Burundi and Myanmar express concern that the tainted products might be available to consumers their countries also.

  Melamine has also be found in milk, yogurt and ice cream in China and Hong Kong. In 2007 the FDA found that US manufacturers of animal feed had also adulterated their product with melamine.

  Earlier this year, contamination of US supplies of heparin led the FDA to investigate and find myriad problems in the oversight process of the imported product. The agency discovered quality control issues, ranging from agency confusion about the real name of a Chinese plant that went un-inspected; to the crude processing methods of the pigs intestine in family-style workshops". Experts admonished drug makers (after the fact) that the shortage of pigs in China due to blue-ear disease should have served as a red flag to the possibility of spiked heparin.

  Heads will certainly roll (figuratively if not literally) in China over the milk scandal, but an overall plan about how to prevent the next batch of fatalities has yet to emerge. In this instance, neither US and Canadian health agencies have found melamine contamination in their milk products.

• In other news, the FDA has banned 31 drugs manufactured for export to the US by the Indian company Ranbaxy, based on an inspection of the company's Dewas plant that revealed cracked equipment, unsterilized and unclean preparation areas, inadequate procedure specification, and sporadic documentation of testing and cleaning.

  Yesterday, in response, Ranbaxy announced that it had hired Rudy Giuliani, last seen speaking on behalf of McCain at the GOP convention, to help lobby the US agency.

• Also: Environmentalists cheered last year when Florida penned an agreement to buy land in the Everglades from the sugar industry. Interestingly, some of those who pressed hardest for the move were free-market conservatives and groups such as the Cato Institute. Sugar subsidies were instituted back in the 1930's, but the industry has since shrunk, and been monopolized by a few firms whose prices were kept artificially high with the subsidies, crowding out foreign competitors. The Fanjuls, an entrepreneuring family originally from Cuba, own one of two Florida companies that control most of the sugar consumed in the US. Last Sunday the New York Times ran a great article about the buyout, digging deeper into some of the issues complicating the deal, and questioning whether the company actually arranged for their land to be lucratively bought out by the state when its business began to suffer in the downturn.

• In infectious disease news: The CDC estimates that 90,000 people die in the US each year from institution acquired infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Science reports this week that the "perfect storm" of antibiotic resistance and diminished reserves of medicines portends trouble The situation not only demands new drugs, according to Science, it requires new drug targets.

  The journal summarizes two recent studies that work in this direction. In the first, a group of scientists created a class of synthetic antibacterials effective against staphylococci including methicillin and multi-drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus.(D. J. Haydon et al., Science 321, 1673 (2008)) The chemicals target specific proteins responsible for cell division. The August 22nd issue of Sciencecontained a report from another group who found a molecule that inhibits the gene which causes virulence and is turned on when certain conditions occur as the host responds to the infection. (D. A. Rasko et al., Science 321, 1078 (2008))

  On the prevention side of things, researchers at the University of Illinois found that tetracycline resistance genes can most likely be transferred from animal to animal in large hog containment areas into groundwater that feeds the public water supply. This could be one way that antibiotics used in feed to prevent infection and promote growth are adding to the overall problem of antibiotic resistance.

  And to get a sense of how far our understanding about microbes and mechanisms of infection, read up on Stanley Falkow from Stanford University, who was one of five scientists honored with a Lasker prize for his work on microbes and aspects of antibiotic resistance.

• Iran has detained AIDS doctors Dr Kamiar Alaei and his brother Dr Arash Alaei since late June. (via Nature News) The two were known world-wide for working to prevent and treat the disease, and for tackling issues around HIV/AIDS in model ways, for a country which long denied that HIV/AIDS was anything but a "Western Disease". Their disappearance in late June has drawn global concern and calls from various physician groups for the Iranian President to answer questions about the whereabouts of the AIDS doctors. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is scheduled appearance at a UN meeting next week.

• In other news: Both McCain and Obama have now submitted answers to questions about their science policy gathered by ScienceDebate2008. Some of their statements have been published here at the LA Times also. Several other science groups have submitted a document for both campaigns that lays out strategy for the incoming president on science and technology policy. Obama has named five science advisers who would serve his administration.

• Now for some old news: Last May the Anchorage Daily News (ADN), Sarah Palin tried to obfuscate the contents of report written by state scientists that supported the federal scientists' decision of list polar bear as an endangered species. Palin wrote in an editorial in the New York Times January 5, 2008: "I strongly believe that adding them to the list is the wrong move at this time. My decision is based on a comprehensive review by state wildlife officials of scientific information from a broad range of climate, ice and polar bear experts." But the state's biologists agreed with the federal assessment. Palin is has also been criticized for her positions on global warming, oil and gas drilling, Exxon Valdez oil spill damages, and the Endangered Species Act. Why does this sound so familiar to me?

Oops, we've inadvertently gone full circle, escaping politics with science then allowing ourselves to get whooshed back into the politics. But why not wonder about Palin? There's no outro to this post. We wonder what science policy would really be like in a McCain government, or in an Obama government? More like China? More like India? More of the same? Same, same but "different"? Science and technology depends on politics and government. We may think we know what science and technology looks like in an "extreme" market economy, we've seen its penultimate apex during the Bush administration. ¹ But lets not forget that we didn't anticipate Bush's actions. Now's the time to think beyond the rhetoric. I'm not sure I buy what many people insist -- that the candidates will be very alike on science issues. Now's the time wonder why McCain chose Palin if their philosophy is so different. Now's the time to learn more about Obama's science advisers.²

Perhaps we can have some government involved before the next giant catastrophe...? Before the energy investment bubble, the imminent infectious disease outbreak, the next bunch products consumed by citizens because manufacturers successfully slipped drugs cut with toxic proteins past the FTC or the FDA, the next species goes endangered, the growing storm of global warming, or the EPA....does whatever they do? There aren't too many science problems that won't be directly influenced by the new administration's policies.

¹ The book Supercapitalism by Robert Reich was interesting.

²Though it's certainly nice to see he has any now.

Canada, Painting the Country Green

When a group of US senators including Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), John F. Kerry (D-MA) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), joined Charles Schumer (D-NY) last spring to sponsor a bill that would disallow the sale of products containing bisphenol A (BPA) for children under 7, a Canada newspaper commented that the US must have been "emboldened" by Canada's recent action on Bisphenol A (BPA). Two weeks before, on April 19th, Health Canada and Environment Canada had jointly proposed a ban on products like polycarbonate baby bottles made with bisphenol A. Canadians proudly declared themselves "the first country in the world to take such action to limit exposures to bisphenol A".

Canadian retailers quickly hopped on a growing bandwagon to stop selling BPA containing products. Walmart and three other major retail groups announced they would stop selling polycarbonate baby bottles, thus joining ranks with Canadian retailers who had already volunteered to stop their sales. Individual towns also caught the BPA ban spirit; Canadian municipalities from Vancouver to the "model town" of Kapuskasing, Ontario began pulling bisphenol A containing plastic containers off the shelves.

Canada's First Mover Status. Oh, Sacrifice

There's plenty of room for congratulating Canada on its first regulator status, but there's also some background. We've followed the science and politics of bisphenol A for a few years and with BPA (and everything else, as you very well know), politicians seem violently allergic to being "the first" to suggest regulating any product or chemical. For obvious reasons, no politician is a maverick: the economy, business, personal reputation, and lack of comfort with science combined with lack of attention from the public, give politicians a handy (and sometimes reasonable) excuse for following along several paces behind the leading edge of science.

Cities like San Francisco, states like California, and US regulatory agencies like the FDA repeatedly back away from promises to limit the sale of bisphenol A when faced with industry threats or lawsuits. Last year for instance, San Francisco, California proudly proclaimed itself the "first city to ban bisphenol A". Then chemical and toy lobbies promptly sued, whereupon San Francisco's political bravado melted away like gelato on the 110 degree day that its legislators will never encounter in their town. They immediately dropped the legislation, but maintained their elevated reputations as protectors of children's health because the press headlines heralding their fleeting bravery stuck in black and white. (Except at Acronym Required where we amended the titles and introductions of all our blog posts to accommodate the city's mercurial fortitude).

At the state, city and federal levels, when curious reporters ask politicians why they backed down BPA, they tend to mumble incoherently into their hands, if they answer at all.

I don't doubt that Canadian politicians are just as calculating as American politicians. Bisphenol A research showing convincing deleterious health effects has accumulated for 15-20 years, so although Canada's "first" is commendable, it could taken with a grain of salt. And is being "first" even relevant? The US and Canada have entirely different economic considerations that influence and shape political will.

Consider Canada's overall economic investment in bisphenol A, compared to that of the US. According to the Canadian's April 19, 2008 report, in 2003, worldwide production of BPA was about 3 billion kg/year. However Canada only uses .5-1.5 million imported kilograms(kg) a year. It has stopped manufacturing bisphenol A altogether, although as recently as 1986 it manufactured or imported 12 million kg. By contrast, the US, production increased from 7.3 million kg in 1991, to 1 billion kg in 2004. It's not surprising that Canada would be less reluctant to ban BPA, they have less of a commercial stake in the chemical.

On BPA, The US and Human Health vs. Canada's Health and Environment Concerns

But one notable difference between Canada's approach to BPA and that of the United States is the separation of agencies that decide US policy. The Canadian ministers of Health Canada and Environment Canada issued a joint statement of concern in April, based on both agencies' research stating that bisphenol A was a "toxic chemical" based on both environmental and health research.

The weight of the environmental evidence against BPA is strong. Researchers can measure BPA that collects in brackish low-oxygen waters and see the direct effects on species that live in those waters. By contrast, human health data is sparse. There are few studies in humans because of the obvious barrier to "testing" humans by asking them to ingest a obviously toxic chemical. In rats, there are lots of studies and the conclusions are more solid. Doses that some researchers have discovered cause deleterious developmental effects are very low.

But the research is still fraught with experimental difficulty. Bisphenol A shows biphasic effects depending on the dose, so high doses show dramatic negative effects, and low doses show subtle but important effects, while medium doses often show fewer effects, presumably because the receptors are overwhelmed or the effects masked. Additionally there is uncertainty based on arcane experimental criteria -- the delivery method for bisphenol A dietary or injected, the type of experiment -- cell culture or rat, if rat, the breed, the brand of rat chow its fed, the type of labware used to do the experiment, the source of BPA tested -- blood, breast milk, urine, tissues, air, water, dust. That's only the beginning.

The affiliation of researchers -- industry or academic or government -- has become a source of contention for many people. Indeed, some commenters skip over real scientific uncertainties, the diversity of experiments, and the difficulties in determining effects, and unilaterally cast blame on "industry research". Industry research in bisphenol A frequently arrives at the opposite conclusion of government research and is sometimes not peer-reviewed, or has control problems. This pattern shouldn't taint all "industry research", it's more important to keep looking at the evidence and for the public to grapple with the real uncertainties yet be able to recognize the relentless industry fronted marketing for what it is. Subtle and confusing perhaps, but in the past couple of years ordinary citizens who care about their own exposure have aggressively asked questions of industry, legislators and science, and are concluding that the growing body of bisphenol A research shows consistent and disturbing implications for health.

Canada'a decision rests heavily on environmental data in addition to the health concerns, and its position is based strongly on the environmental data. This is different from the US, where the government's primary focus, at the National Toxicology Program (NTP), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is how BPA effects human health. While the expert panel of 38 scientists who evaluated bisphenol A research published in 700 of studies was sponsored in part by the EPA and was significantly alarming, the results focused on humans and were quickly confused by conflicting results from other agencies that were simultaneously published.

Plastic lobbyists have leveraged these disparate agency results adeptly. Animal data shows toxicity of BPA which persists in the environment. But industry lobbies use the prolific animal results only to bolster their claims that deleterious BPA studies have only been shown in animals, but not humans. In the US there's not a lot of public talk about the effects of BPA on species other than humans.

Canada's Minister Baird said in his statement about the BPA decision:: "When it comes to Canada's environment, you can't put a price on safety". However this too can be evaluated differently depending on your perspective. Canada has heartily embarked on other projects such as the Alberta oil sands, that aren't so congenial to the environment. This statement presents a conflicting image for the country's true commitment to the environment.

At least for a moment last spring, though Canada was proudly "first" on BPA. Hopefully the rigors of comment periods, legislation drafting, and enforcement follow-through will cement its place. In the meantime, Europe and the US follow haltingly along.

US Agencies Dither

Despite the necessary constraints to doing toxicity research on human subjects, studies in mice and cell cultures show myriad changes to genital tract development, breast and prostate tissues, sexual differentiation, endocrine and immune systems and neural development, all at doses below what the FDA deems safe and an NIH interagency group assures us doesn't cause human health effects.

At the same time Canada issued it's dual agency warning, the US National Toxicity Program released their April, 2008 (NTP) report, stating the agency's reconsideration of BPA safety. The US National Toxicology Program's (NTP) Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) announced a slightly revised conclusion about BPA from their November, 2007 report, criticized by experts in the field. The April report reconsidered their 2007 report (just finalized this September) and concluded there was "negligible" concern for many exposures, and "some concern" for neural and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants, and children.

However the April, 2008 report added: "the possibility the bisphenol A could alter human development cannot be dismissed". It repeated the statement 3 times. The report included papers that the previous group had left out because of methodology, with the explanation that scientists could get meaning from the research even if the questions addressed in studies were not necessarily aimed at discerning overall BPA safety to humans. It was also much more accessible to non-science readers then the previous report.

Despite the reassuring stance of the April NTP report however, it's clear that ample concern (or action), and further research is justified. Take for instance the conclusion of "negligible concern" that exposure to bisphenol A would cause birth defects. The evidence is based on, as the NTP scientists put it: "results from several animal studies provide evidence that bisphenol A does not cause birth defects such as cleft palette, skeletal malformations, or grossly abnormal organs." While the "negligible" conclusion is reassuring, these particular birth defects the most conspicuous ones that could effect fetal mice. Less conspicuous birth defects might also occur.

While the chemical industry likes to point out that the results in mice wouldn't occur in humans, you could just as easily argue that not observing a "gross organ malformation" in a fetal mouse would not rule out the possibility of other very serious birth defects could occur in both mice and humans and not appear as gross malformations. The dearth of more conclusive safety evidence in humans, therefore, more than warrants the NTP's April warning, however understated, that "the possiblility that bisphenol A may alter human development cannot be dismissed". Nevertheless, their authoritative opinion assures people that the chemical is safe and provides great marketing fodder for the Chemical and Plastics industries.

JAMA Steps In

We should point out that the hesitation to take precautions about BPA in light of extensive (animal) research extends beyond politicians. Several recent books detail the dangers of many environmental toxins but exclude any mention of bisphenol A. Scientists' warnings about bisphenol A have been countered vehemently by seemingly trustworthy organizations like the American Dental Association. To confuse matters more, the press takes a less than informative approach in covering bisphenol A, regularly calling on the ultra-self-interested American Chemical Council lobby group for plastics to answer safety questions. All of this befuddles citizens, who don't know whether to invest in glass baby bottles or just keep microwaving the trusty plastic ones they've depended on all these years.

Because of the press and the questions and citizen pressures however, quite a few representatives in congress are tripping all over themselves to investigate the chemical and the agencies which should be overseeing its use. At some point the momentum of an issue catches up with those who stall and demands unified response. Congress is starting to question the FDA about its procedures for evaluating BPA.

While Canadians make small jabs about the newly "emboldened" Americans, who, it's true, only now, are beginning to introduce new legislation, most of which has been resoundingly defeated. However US politicians are quickly catching up.

Adding medical weight to the issue this week, the Journal of the American Medical Association, (JAMA), yesterday published what was billed by some as the "first human data on BPA". The study looked at urinary levels of BPA and found increased incidence of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and liver-enzyme abnormalities in adults with elevated BPA levels. The study was by no means the robust proof needed to show long term effects from BPA exposure indicated in the low-dose research, however the researchers and accompanying editorial by BPA expert Frederick S. vom Saal emphasize that these results are consistent with animal and cell culture data and will hold up with more conclusive study. Longitudinal studies are necessary.

This study gives one of the most prominent group of physicians something to wrap a stance around, in light of increasing attention that Congress and the public is paying to the issue. It also gives Congress some medical evidence to base their demands on. We expect growing attention to and action on bisphenol A. The ACC won't be able claim so dismissively that there are no human studies.

Newt Gingrich joined his party to promote drilling yesterday, warning Democrats who won't hold a vote on drilling that Republicans could shut down government. Gingrich is practiced at this, having led his party to two government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996 that were criticized by voters.

Drilling in protected areas will not bring immediate relief from oil shortages, nor is it the best environmental strategy. But wasn't Newt the environmental guy? So confusing. Not more than a year ago, when the Republicans decided that Democrats were gaining too much support with their environmental positions, Newt was one of the first ones to try to reshape the Republicans as green. Faced with growing movement to stem carbon emissions, Gingrich wrote for the AEI in "We Can Have Green Conservatism - And We Should":

"...if the debate becomes, "Al Gore cares about the earth, and we're against Al Gore, we end up in a defensive position where the average American could end up perceiving conservatives as always being negative about the environment."

He asserted that liberal environmentalism was bad policy, bested by green conservatism, that is, "Green Conservatism", capitalized of course. Republicans (and him) went way back being green he wrote:

"In my commitment to the environment, I was echoing the conviction of two well known Republican leaders. The first was President Theodore Roosevelt, who said that "the nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets, which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value." The other was then Gov. Ronald Reagan, who upon the occasion of the first Earth Day said that "[there is an] absolute necessity of waging all-out war against the debauching of the environment."

First he slyly claimed Teddy Roosevelt as his own, then he defined the "Green Conservative":

"For green prosperity and green development, we have to have a strategy that makes the transition from the unimproved fossil fuels...to a new generation of clean energy that will: enable us, in national security terms, to be liberated from dependence on dangerous dictatorships; enable us, in economic terms, to be effective in worldwide competition; and enable us, in environmental terms, to provide for a much cleaner and healthier future."

He said "green" a lot, 23 times in a couple of pages. But that was then, April, 2007, and this is now.

So will all Republicans who denounced drilling changed their minds? The Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP) don't support drilling as of August 7th, posting articles such as "Quickest Way to Cheaper Gas Prices Is Not More Drilling." Will they change their minds? Will the Daily Green, another "green" Republican blog?

Flyboy Gall: Who Said "I believe God wants me to run for President"?

Issues and non-issues fly by fast as the campaign season winds up. The finale brings us bold lies, fantasy, and frankly, nausea. McCain aired an ad with Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea, inferring that Obama thought he was "the chosen one". The irony is that the current president, in whose shoes McCain proposes to step, is the one that said: "I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for President".

Is "Flyboy" spiraling downwards in a "festival of juvenilia" as Maureen Dowd called it"? Or is this just a swirl from the giant whirlwind of hot air sweeping us all up in its flotsam and jetsam. Just think, there we were a few months back, clamoring over science debates. McCain was probably chuckling to himself: "Stem cells? Henh? I'll be at the biker fair, Cindy in her denim shirt"

When Hilton Trumps McCain This Can't Be Good

In response to McCain's ad comparing Obama to celebrities, which many people took at face value, Bob Herbert set the record straight in Running While Black". He wrote: "Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain." As an aside, I do I think people are long past thinking McCain is "high minded". Referring to the "slimey Britney and Paris Hilton ad", Herbert wrote: "The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control." He added that it's a well honed tactic used on previous candidates by Republicans, and "[i]t was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir."

"It's frustrating", he said, "to watch John McCain calling out Barack Obama on race. Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades." Here's the full column.

Of course unlike Herbert, Paris Hilton actually did think it was about her celebrity and promptly eeked yet another 15 minutes of fame out of it. She suggested a compromise between the Democrat and Republican energy plans, a "hybrid", where

"offshore drilling carries us until the new technologies kick in." Since it would be years until offshore drilling comes to fruition however, and new technologies are readily available, her video wasn't the IQ turnaround some people cheered -- but hey she's got her brand to protect.

The Pitch: Drilling Won't Work but the "Psychological Effect" Would be "Beneficial?"

Arguments about energy this week, shallow though they may be, far surpass last weeks campaign chatter -- McCain dissing Obamas "fame", McCain offering his wife up for country fair "beauty" contests. In response to Obama's offhand comment that we'd save more gas by keeping our tires inflated optimally than McCain would by drilling under his feet, last week McCain sent gag gifts of tire gauges. He turned around this week and said this might be a good idea.

In what has been said was a "forceful pitch for his U.S. energy strategy", Barack Obama called for $4 billion in aid to auto companies to help them produce more fuel efficient cars, particularly electric ones. His Lansing, Michigan speech came after a Detroit News poll in July found that McCain and Obama had equal support from voters in Michigan and that people were concerned first about the economy and second about gas prices.¹ Acknowledging the necessity of politics, if the computer industry had been coddled as much as the auto industry over the past couple of decades, there might be no such thing as a desktop computer or an internet.

Obama also decided to soften his formerly strong opposition to offshore drilling, saying off-shore drilling might be OK as part of a more comprehensive energy plan. Democrats including Obama urge leaders to open up current reserves.

Drilling wouldn't result in petroleum until 2030 according to the Bush's Energy Information Administration, and so Nancy Pelosi has stood ground in the House of Representatives against Republicans who present drilling as a solution. Like Obama Democrats in the House of Representatives also seek compromise, although they continue to flatly oppose drilling in protected areas.

Democrats heartily refute the Bush administration's presentation of offshore drilling as a solution to the pressing energy problem. Rather they say, drilling as a solution is an oil industry con that further shackles the population to oil dependency. Democrats argue, as does Obama, that the oil companies already have access to 68 million acres of permitted federal lands in the lower 48 and Alaska that they under-utilize. People view the oil industry's current push for drilling as a campaign by the oil industry to obtain more leases on potential drilling sites. This would give them even more control over the market energy market in the face of increasing demand, and would prolong oil dependency.

McCain was also opposed to drilling, but switched his stance. McCain's reason for drilling off the coast would have a . The psychological effect on voters would be to muffle their clamor for cleaner energies, which would extend legislators vacation on the issue, and allow petroleum companies to extend their energy monopoly. Apparently McCain's campaign was promptly gifted with an influx of donations from oil companies.

The Republicans, just off their successful rally to defeat the Democrats' "use-it-or-lose-it" legislation (H.R. 6615), are making a big production of calling the Democrats back from their "recess". H.R. 6615 would have prevented oil and gas companies from obtaining new federal drilling leases if they did not meet new government standards for development on leases they already hold, prevent them for collecting leases and using them as market leverage. The oil companies, as the multi-billion dollar beneficiaries of the "oil crisis" apparently yield some clout in this election, and citizens, who protest wildly about the price of gas on one hand, are willing to give them more power with the other.

What special treats will next week bring? This season's whirlwind campaign is tough to endure but I look forward to seeing lots of Harley's outside my poling station. Yeah.

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¹ Acronym Required wrote about the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car", and about the auto industry's failure to innovate in "The EPA: Mulish Days, Staring out to Pasture".

Mitigation, then Warrior Safety

In Whales In a Time of War, we reported that Judge Andrew Kleinfeld of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals noted in a 2-1 ruling allowing the Navy to continue sonar training in whale breeding grounds: "the safety of the whales must be weighed, and so must the safety of our warriors. And of our country."

The judge looked to the president for direction on the fate of the whales and framed his decision as one of national security, saying: "we customarily give considerable deference to the executive branch's judgment regarding foreign policy and national defense."

Mid-frequency sonar testing causes whale strandings and deaths that have been frequently documented; in North Carolina (2005); at Haro Strait off the coast of Washington State (2003); in the Canary Islands (2004, 2002, 1989, 1986, 1985); Madeira (2000); the U.S. Virgin Islands (1999, 1998); Greece (1996), and the Bahamas (2000). At one time the Navy took precautions to prevent unnecessary damage to the whales. The Navy did this without neglecting the excellent testing and training of sonar that the US national defense demands. However; the Navy's previous caution has lapsed according to environmental agencies.

The Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) and several other groups sued the Navy back in 2005, requesting the mitigatory action to spare marine mammals that get disoriented, stranded, or killed following sonar exposure. The August 2007 decision turned into a long back and forth negotiation between the courts, environmental groups, and the Navy. Here's some (not all) of the outcomes:

• August, 2007: U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper orders a temporary injunction based on submitted evidence that bans all training exercises off Southern California waters saying that there was "'near certainty"' that "8,000 whales or dolphins potentially experiencing temporary hearing loss and an estimated 466 cases of permanent injury to whales."
• August 31, 2007, U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals invokes national security and says the Navy can go ahead with testing.
• November 13, 2007: A different 9th Circuit Court Appeals panel says that the Navy can continue exercises scheduled until November 22, but then must resume mitigation efforts such as staying a certain distance from shore and posting scouts on deck during exercises to try to prevent harm to marine life.

Suicide Pact?

By January, 2008, Judge Cooper had thoroughly reviewed the Navy's records and science documents, found that the Navy's mitigation efforts were "grossly inadequate to protect marine mammals from debilitating levels of sonar exposure". The Navy's sonar testing would leave 30 species of marine mammals at risk including 5 species of endangered whales. The Navy's research indicated that the testing could harm over thousands of animals, however they didn't do conduct the environmental impact statement demanded by current law.

• January, 2008. The judge issues a more detailed order that allows the Navy to continue the sonar testing while taking precautions to protect endangered marine animals.
• January 14, 2008: The district court denies a Navy stay application.
• January 15, 2008: George Bush grants the Navy two waivers to conduct it's sonar testing under Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), and and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in an effort to sidestep the court's findings, claiming national security.
• January 17, 2008: Judge Cooper issues a partial stay of her orders that keeps some of the previous mitigation measures intact, but allows the Navy to use sonar when marine animals even if animals were detected within 2,000 meters of the sonar source.
• February 29, 2008: The court follows up on the order, allowing the Navy to continue testing but with mitigation measures to protect whales.
• April, 2008: The Navy petitions the Supreme court to review the lower court's decision citing emergency national security.

Despite accommodation by the lower court for the Navy's readiness mandate, the Navy disagrees that its previous mitigation efforts need to be continued. Environmental regulations should not be a "suicide pact", said the Bush administration. In a decision last month, the Supreme Court decided to hear Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council in the next session.

Court Declares Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) Not Patchwork Enough

Back in December, 2007, the EPA denied California the waiver the state requested under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The state wanted to set its own tougher emissions standards, which at least 18 other states would have adopted. However the auto and energy industries lobbied successfully against the waiver to an administration as dedicated as they were to denying global warming. EPA administrator Stephen Johnson defended the denial, saying the waiver would have created a "patchwork quilt" of regulation.

At the time, Bush had just signed the new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) mileage standards passed by Congress under the National Highway Transportation Safety Act, and he defended the EPA's denial, saying: "Director Johnson made a decision based upon the fact that we passed a piece of legislation that enables us to have a national strategy, which is the -- increasing CAFE standards..."

Last week, the administration might have had another opportunity to point to the success of its own brand of environment legislation, while once again shooting down the Clean Air Act. The EPA announced its decision to ignore the Supreme Court order in Massachusetts v. EPA to regulate greenhouse gases and instead decided to issue an Advance Notice of Public Rulemaking (ANPR)¹. But unlike the CAFE standards which Congress passed and Bush signed into law, the Bush administration's Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) aimed at regulating sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from stationary polluters was challenged by the state of North Carolina and rejected by a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

CAIR was a cap and trade system for large stationary polluters in the framework of Bush's "Clear Skies". It required 28 eastern states to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NO_x) emissions (not carbon) that contribute to air pollution. The D.C. court disputed the EPA's regional plan: "The EPA's approach, region-wide caps with no state-specific quantitative contribution determinations or emissions requirements, is fundamentally flawed....the trading program is unlawful, because it does not connect states' emissions reductions to any measure of their own significant contributions."

Environmental groups thought it ironic that the conservative court overturned what some considered the best-of conservative Bush legislation on greenhouse gases.Although attempts to project the exact effects of CAIR fell short of providing a thorough understanding of outcomes and overall there was very little reaction from either science and environmental groups, almost everyone, including utility companies, agreed that effort was worthy. The projected benefits to health and air quality under CAIR would have improved acid rain and air quality on the eastern seaboard. According to the EPA CAIR would reduce SO₂ emissions by over 70% and NO_x emissions by over 60% from 2003 levels.

Ill-suited, Ill-suited, Ill-suited

While people were taken aback that the court struck down CAIR in its entirety, no one was surprised that the EPA's Stephen Johnson announced the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) instead of working to create new Clean Air Act regulation. He had responded to Representative Waxman (D-CA) several months ago with his intention, as we wrote in "The EPA: Mulish Days, Staring out to Pasture".

At that time, many saw the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), especially the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) headed by Susan Dudley, as in the "catbird seat" over federal regulation as Public Citizen put it, and therefore overlord of the EPA's actions. People weren't sure that "Director Johnson" really had too much choice in the issue. Susan Dudley had a long history in conservative think tanks of advocating the types of cost benefit analyses that the Bush administration sought to impose, as we described in "EPA, OMB and OIRA: The Biggest Kid on the Block is Back". The OIRA footprint was evident under the Bush administration, especially in the EPA's lack of action on the environment.

When the EPA released its several hundred page document last week, it of course included a statement from the OIRA head Susan Dudley, who rejected the EPA's staff's recommendations, writing: "the [EPA] draft cannot be considered Administration policy or representative of the views of the Administration", but then magnanimously added that given the Supreme Court ruling the EPA could go ahead and seek public comment.

Considering the previous repudiation of the OMB/OIRA from critics who called the agency on its interference with the EPA's mandate to protect clean air,², it's not surprising that the OMB recruited additional support from the secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, and Energy. They too denounced the EPA draft in 75 pages of testimony, saying:

1. The Clean Air Act (CAA) is "fundamentally ill-suited to the effective regulation of GHG emissions" because the US cannot control emissions from other countries, so state or regional reductions could be "replaced with emissions increases elsewhere"
2. CAA would hurt international competitiveness
3. The EPA draft "suggests that regulating GHGs under the Clean Air Act would be workable. We disagree. The draft offers a number of legal constructs to support its position but there is no certainty of how those theories will work out in actuality, or whether they would be unheld by the courts."

The Secretaries cited the "burdens, difficulties, and costs, and likely limited benefits" of CAA. Of course this is familiar Bush rhetoric, delivered with orchestral cohesion. However if the Clean Air Act is ill-suited for the task, shouldn't the reasons be grounded in fact rather than fear laden claptrap?

The Wall Street Journal described Johnson as being stuck in between his staff and the White House, and as if to illustrate the dysfunction, Johnson disagreed with the conclusions of his staff, calling CAA "ill-suited for the task of regulating global greenhouse gases."

The Administration's Gut

The document was a product of "career EPA's" critics said, with the hint of a sneer they might use for "teacher's unions". Piling on the hyperbole, William Kovacs, vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington told the Wall Street Journal "This is a classic example of EPA staff saying we can manage the economy of the United States better than the president." (WSJ July 11, 2008) (To which some economists gasped -- Aha, the president's running the economy?)

The Bush administration has led a sustained attack on the Clean Air Act and the EPA. Last fall Bush publicly conflated the Clean Air Act emissions standards with CAFE standards, acting as though they were the same thing. But they're not. The NHTSA in the Department of Transportation (DOT) sets gas mileage standards through (CAFE). The energy bill that Congress passed and Bush signed (H.R. 6) last December improves long term mileage standards (barely).

The EPA regulates carbon emissions that contribute to global warming, through the Clean Air Act. Several industries argue that the EPA should not regulate emissions because of "regulatory overlap" between the NHTSA and EPA, but the Supreme Court rejected that argument in Massachusetts v. EPA. Said the court, the EPA "has been charged with protecting the publics 'health' and 'welfare'", whereas "DOT sets mileage standards".

The legislative goal of CAA was to protect considerations about healthy air and water from being corrupted by private interests and business. Its this goal that industries resent. As we described in previous posts, the petroleum and auto industries petitioned the EPA and the Bush administration to deny the California waiver. Industries argued that the EPA should adopt the notion of "maximum feasibility", and "set standards that take account of the limits on the investment capabilities and product cycles of the industry, just as NHTSA does...", as Chrysler put it in a memo last year.

One-Two Punch

There are legitimate criticisms of Clean Air Act, however the auto industry simply wants to continue its 30 year run of little to no regulation, despite the evidence that this damages health, the environment and the auto industry. The Bush administration now seems more brazen about criticizing the EPA document directly. Bush chose the familiar war theme when he called the EPA outline a "'command-and-control' regime that would regulate virtually every aspect of American life from cars to factories, hotels and lawnmowers". "Command and control" is a conservative slur you run across scanning the conservative op-eds, as in "command and control communism", "command and control socialism", and "enemy of the free-market".

The push by the OIRA, the administration, industry, and much of congress for measures that considers projected costs to industry when determining whether or not to regulate of course has valid points, but is subject to abuse. If the cost to industry is used to determine whether industry should clean up the mess it makes of air and water, then why shouldn't industry make a really BIG mess and what incentive is there to accurately estimate either costs or benefits?

An example of how costs and benefits can be manipulated is n the latest report from the EPA on CAA. The Los Angeles Times reported that the benefits section of the current draft was "sharply revised" from a May draft that calculated savings to consumers of up to $2 trillion dollars.

"$2 trillion in savings to consumers at the gas pump and elsewhere could be achieved if greenhouse gas regulations were implemented.. [In the current draft], that number was slashed to $830 billion, and the price of gas was calculated at $2 a gallon for the next 30 years.

According to the LA Times EPA press secretary Jonathan Schradar said "he did not know why the numbers had been changed". Or perhaps he knew why but didn't know how or who or when? An inherent danger of such analyses?

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¹ (ANPR) Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act.

² Congressman Waxman's Committee of Oversight and Government Reform has a long running investigation of the OMB and EPA's actions on the environment/. He held the two agencies in contempt of court for refusing to release documents related to decisions about the ozone and the California waiver, to which President Bush claimed executive privilege.

The MPG Illusion -- Needing Math?

Now that gas is almost $5.00 per gallon many people seem to be more than a little worried, if not about global warming than simply about the price of gas. Of course some lobbyists and commentators continue their efforts to preserve status quo, whole hog energy use that exacerbates global warming. These efforts ultimately undermine independence from foreign oil and adaptation of measures that would stem to pace of global warming. In "Communicating Climate Change", last year I wrote:

"If we've moved beyond the climate change "debate", however, as I argue we have, we've only entered another stage. I'm not sure what to call it, but it if we appropriated something like the familiar five stages of dealing with catastrophe- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, then maybe people have moved on to some sort of denial/bargaining phase. People get ideas about how we can buy our way out, with some carbon credits, some alternative energy, or some prizes. Again, this is procrastination. If buying our way out doesn't work, at least we've bought some time."

Science published an article the other day in their Policy Forum section from a couple of Duke business professors. "The MPG Illusion" (June 20th) argued that people misunderstand the miles per gallon (mpg) standard. The authors ask the question, if you had a choice of upgrading one of two cars with a car with a better MPG rating which would you replace? Unlike Europe, where the mileage standard is expressed in liters per 100 kilometer, in the US, miles per gallon (mpg) refers to the distance a gallon of gas will achieve in a vehicle: 1000 gallons per 10,000 miles equals 10mpg. Not very many people understand that, according to their poll.

Increases in mileage are calculated so that 30% better gas mileage means 23% less gas used. 30% greater "mpg" means greater distance per gallon of gas, instead of traveling 100 miles you would now be able to travel 130 miles, so 100%/1.3 = 76.9, 23% less fuel. Most people assume the relationship between miles driven and gas consumed is linear, but its actually curvilinear. From there, the authors argue that small upgrades, say from a "10 mpg" rated car to a "20 mpg" car, may save the consumer more on gas than upgrading from 25mpg to 50mpg.

Their goal was to see whether people ranked choices in mathematically correct ways and so they structured their question carefully. But if their point is to illustrate that the standard is deceiving, as they say in the video, why do they need to publish an article in Science, and perambulate through all the math and graphs?

Promoting a clearer standard isn't their only goal. They open their Science piece criticizing a NYT columnist who questioned the sense of giving an IRS hybrid car tax break to people who buy "a hybrid Dodge Durango that gets 14 miles per gallon instead of 12 thanks to its second, electric power source."

But doesn't the NYT author have a point? Why would the government offer a credit? The authors acknowledge this: "The basic argument is correct: The environment would benefit most if all consumers purchased highly efficient cars that get 40 MPG, not 14, and incentives should be tied to achieving such efficiency." This hat tip to clear thinking is only 27 words of their Science article, versus 1708 words explaining calculations that in effect justify why upgrading from a 1978 Cadillac or your grandpa's farm tractor to an SUV is a choice that consumers should feel good about. While the question is carefully constructed around consumer choices about two cars driven equally and yields a conclusion showing that consumers don't understand mpg math, why this question?

In effect, the authors' piece would be brilliant in a Dodge Durango or Ford ad to boost those double digit sales drops. But back to the New York Times article. Why wouldn't a person upgrade from a 10mpg car to a 50mpg car? A 10 mpg car would use 1000 gallons per 10,000 miles, and a 50mpg would use 200 gallons per 10,000 miles. 800 fewer gallons of gas. That much less pollution. $5,000 of gas, versus $1,000. Why can't we shoot for that?

Consumers are making exactly these choices. Ford sold 55% fewer SUV's last month, and 40% fewer pick-ups then in the previous year. In our last post we quoted from the NYT article, America, Asleep at the Spigot", in which Senator Dingell (R-MI), told the NYT" "He likes it sitting in his driveway, he likes it big, he likes it safe". It seems that "He" is changing "His" mind about "Big" and "Safe", when faced with $150 per fill-up. "He" is choosing a Prius instead of a pick-up.

Global Warming: Too Much Evidence

There's a direct correlation between energy cost and use, just as there's a direct correlation between increased cigarette taxes, and decreased smoking. Lobbyists routinely argue the opposite in order to justify low taxes and minimal regulation. But the fact that car owners are switching to more efficient cars is a market coup for global warming as well as free-market advocates. This should please all of us who support liberal economic policies, as well as "let the market" commentators. But paradoxically, some of columnists are still stuck with in their delusional refrains from 2005.

A Wall Street Journal blogger now claims there's too much evidence on global warming, so much that it's not believable (WSJ July 1, 2008, "Global Warming as Mass Neurosis"). "What isn't evidence of global warming?" he asks. My favorite! For years it was, "there is not enough evidence". And now, simply invert the sentence to arrive at your next phase of denial. Last year when you pulled his string he said "Not Enough Evidence!!!" and alarms rang -- Whooop! Whooop! Whooop! This year they retooled, so yank the cord to hear, "Too Much Evidence!!! Whooop! Whooop! Whooop! American Girl could immortalize his likeness as the Denier Doll from the historical series "When Carbon was King" or "When the Air was Breathable". Of course next he instructs: "[s]o let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole". He will no doubt shuffle around in these arguments until the water's licking up around his ankles.

He insists that global warming is either a socialist, religious, or psychological affront to our way of life by those who believe that prosperity is corrupt. Last year we wrote in "Climate Change: Fueling the "Debate", "if you're crazy-dizzy snapping your head around to follow first the one side, than the other, simply follow the money for the truth." Perhaps our columnist hasn't invested in any emerging energy markets.

Sanity and Samsø

As last year and the year before, available at our fingertips, along with the woulda-coulda-shoulda crowd and the bloviators, is the full range of serious and interesting discussions. Consumers are making changes around global warming not only by buying Priuses, but by using alternative energy sources or cutting back their energy use.

In the New Yorker this month, Elizabeth Kobert wrote a great article called "The Island in The Wind". The first part of the article was about the residents of Samsø an island in Denmark that progressed from consuming enough oil and electricity to provide energy for 4,300 people, to generating enough renewable energy through wind turbines and other sources to produce energy for the whole island and sell some back to the grid. The island accomplished this with a combination of initiative, work, leadership and community investment, but with no initial motivating monetary reward.

While generating their own energy however, the islanders didn't reduce their consumption. For that part of the story Kolbert goes to Switzerland, where the 2,000-Watt Society aims to motivate people to reduce energy consumption to 2,000 Watts per person with only 500 Watts consumed from non-renewable sources. Scandinavians consume 6,000 Watts per year per person, and US citizens consume ~15,000 Watts per year per person, so the 2,000 Watt goal gives some populations room to grow while others should strive to cut back on energy use.

When we wrote "Sea Change or Littoral Disaster" in 2006 it seemed like we'd never turn a corner. We wrote "We need no more evidence. We have decades of studies indicating that our lives will change, but its easier to wait for another headline and hope a miracle intervenes, if nothing else than in the guise of government action." Times are decidedly more optimistic. Of course there the same gradient of action, inaction, denial, and procrastination, but when I reflect on the general attitudes of the past couple of years I'm amazed at all the change happening in 2008.

Nature Loves Our Cars, Really

In April of 2007, Acronym Required wrote satirically in "Cars: Buying Cognitive Dissonance" about US drivers in denial. While headlines blared warnings on climate change and the reality of driving was smog filled lanes of traffic jams, automobile ads featured cars climbing to the tops of unpolluted mountains, amidst pristine forests and zooming past glaciers. We commented on the delusional love affair with cars, and the spectacle of all those slick, shiny, plasticy, carbon emitting SUVs posed ironically in not yet ruined landscapes:

"...I remind myself that it's not only the Queen of England, with her privilege and idle time, her Landrover and a vast territory of heaths and heathers, who can see a fourteen-point buck in the countryside [--as in the The Queen--]. There's nothing to stop me from doing the same. I can purchase a new Subaru from my local dealer any day of the week and crash through beautiful forests in four wheel drive comfort. Then, according to one Subaru ad, a deer will emerge magically from the forest, stand next to my windshield and gaze at me appreciatively, the two of us, bonded by nature and my new car."

Today, more so than last decade or the decade before that, we have fires in California, hot and erratic weather predictions, floods in the midwest, suffocating summer heat, and brutal winters. As they did twenty years ago, scientists make hand-wringing pleas to an only slightly less impassive Congress. Regardless of reality, given Americans gluttonous devotion to Automobile, you'd still expect to see people throttling their SUV's with calvalier glee. Except now gas is $5.00 per gallon ( its $4.75, but it will be there as soon as I publish this) and consumers are trading their SUVs in for Priuses. Times are changing.

Leaders "Furious with Detroit"

While consumers respond to the change, there are questions about why recognition of the impending climate change and an effort to curb carbon emissions took so long. Last Sunday, the New York Times offered up quotes from senators who say we should have acted earlier in paper's interesting article America, Asleep at the Spigot". Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) the ranking Republican member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who had in recent years rather unsuccessfully encouraged Congress to increase CAFE standards said: "It was a bipartisan failure to act." A long term failure to act. Former Sierra Club lobbyist Dan Becker recalled being shocked to see "Mr. Levin and Mr. Helms, diametrically opposed on most issues, walk amiably together onto the Senate floor to cast their votes, on a CAFE standards bill in 1990. 'This wasn't East-West, right-left, or North-South,' he says. 'But had we passed that bill, we'd be using three million barrels less oil a day now.'"

For every member of Congress who tried to pass legislation on emissions in the 1990's, or who like Domenici started in 2005 to put effort into gathering support for CAFE standards, many others have not even now come to their senses. Congress is less remorseful about missed opportunities to avert the current energy situation as righteously indignant, "furious with Detroit for fighting so hard".

This is exactly what I would hope for from the leaders I elect. When the repercussions of their failures to act on behalf of their constituents come to light, the least they can do is cast around quickly for someone else to blame. However it's not Detroit's fault for aggressively seeking profit, that's their job That's the obligation of the automakers to their shareholders. It's is the legislature's job to balance the competing ambitions of their constituents, corporations and individuals.

Blaming Detroit, Blaming Consumers

If blaming the corporations gets too close for comfort, as a senator or congressman of course you can always blame the consumer. After the credit crisis, pundits and financial leaders blamed consumers for the country's economic woes. They scolded consumers for spending too much on their credit cards and called for better consumer training, but said nothing about the Fed's out of control spending, nothing about regulation cuts, nothing about Bush's plea to keep shopping right after 9/11. Similarly, Senator Representative John D. Dingell, who has long defended the auto industry for his state and who now burnishes his environmental credentials by taking on bisphenol-A, blames the American consumer: "He likes it sitting in his driveway, he likes it big, he likes it safe", he told NYT. Which, coincidentally, is also what the lobbyists insist.

This is one great thing about representative government. Representatives can ultimately blame the people or, more accurately, people's wanton wims. But given the number of Priuses and Minis that now inhabit our streets, you would never believe "he likes it big". Ford sold 55% fewer SUV's last month, and 40% fewer pick-ups then in the previous year.

As last year and the year before, available at our fingertips, along with the woulda-coulda-shoulda crowd, is the full range of serious and interesting discussions from dedicated representatives. Bill Moyers talked to Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) last week about her efforts on the cap and trade initiative.

Boxer took over as Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at mid-term election, led the charge on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) had chaired the committee, and on his watch he never had any intention of leading the country away from oil consumption. Inhofe famously said: "Could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? I believe it is." He brought his preposterous attitudes to the committee and tried to prevent Al Gore from testifying. Boxer needed to basically wrest control of the gavel from him: "you're not making the rules" she told him. As she explained to Moyers "times have changed...the environment is back front and center"

Boxer's efforts were not enough this time, because Republicans mounted a filibuster and defeated the Climate Initiative Act. Again, a bi-partisan failure to act. The effort was viewed in optimistic terms by Boxer and others despite the bill's ultimate defeat. She called it a milestone towards charging for carbon emissions and weaning off foreign oil. "Change is coming. We're going to fix this problem because we have to."

Last year we wrote in "Green Spirit", about the wave of environmental sentiment sweeping the US. The New Yorker had captured the mood in a cartoon depicting one plant executive asking another whether they could dye the smoke from the stacks green.

The most unlikely corporations were hopping all over themselves to play green. BP had just launched two sites, The Green Curve, and A Little Better Gas Station, complete with games like "Gas Mania" and kid friendly distractions. The BP sites are no longer standalone so not quite so much fun, but have been incorporated into bp.com in all their original kelly green and neon yellow glory.

These sites come and go, and of course now other companies have launched a new crop of green spirit. First up is Chevron's www.willyoujoinus.com. "Will you join us" is a collaboration between The Economist, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, and the oil company. The site tells us that "the demand for energy becomes greater, and every day it becomes harder to find". Driving home the point, a global oil consumption ticker spins through millions of barrels consumed during your site visit. The homepage asks viewers to "join the discussion". I suppose it would be impertinent to ask them to put a profits ticker underneath the consumption ticker -- "finding energy" is research and capital intensive.

The current discussion topic is "Global Food Prices & Energy Supplies, Finding a Balance". Fortunately, it's not all gloom and doom, you can "Play Energyville" too.

Erstwhile Panda Diplomacy?

In an article on China's panda diplomacy last week, the Financial Times included a photo of Japan's famed Ling Ling surrounded by flowers and bamboo shoots. Japan's beloved panda, a 16 year resident of Tokyo's Ueno Zoo, had died of kidney and heart failure and the debate in Japan surrounded how Ling Ling would be replaced. Various Japanese officials expressed reservations about Chinese President Yu's offer to replace the panda with two new ones, especially when the $1 million rental fee was revealed. ("Panda diplomacy loses charm amid Sino-Japanese mistrust", May 12th, Financial Times).

Critics advised the Japanese government not to trust the panda overtures in light of China's environmental problems, food-safety, natural resource claims, and anti-Japanese sentiment. Panda proponents on the other hand, like the head of the Ueno Zoo, pointed out the benefits and reasonableness of Yu's offer - as he put it to the Financial Times - "'It is not like renting videos"'.

Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are an endangered species in the Ursidae family. So called panda diplomacy has been around since Chinese emperors were giving pandas to governments but China revived the practice by presenting President Nixon with two pandas. When China started charging rent for pandas a successful suit from the World Wildlife Fund demanded that US government payments be channeled to increasing panda populations in the wild.

The pandas' appeal to zoo visitors is unambiguous, profitable, and beneficial to the panda. But although the Chinese has long been supplying pandas to Japan, the current Japan/China dilemma lead some international press to wonder whether Ling Ling's death marked the end of a more optimistic era between the two countries.

Thumbs Up...Panda's Alive and Well

When the earthquake struck Sichuan province people were relieved to hear the news that the giant pandas were safe at China's Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. At another panda reserve even closer to the earthquake epicenter, the Wolong Nature Reserve, the plight of the pandas and nearby villagers was unknown for days. Those in the global panda community who had visited the center and spent time with the Wolong pandas and their caretakers became increasingly worried.

Finally bad and good news came. Some of the villages around the reserve did not fare well, homes were destroyed and people perished when the 7.9 temblor struck the mountainous region.

The pandas at the Wolong reserve were OK, despite the massive earthquake and ongoing "aftershocks" that surpassed the average Chicago "earthquake". A Chinese news article (china.org) reported that a group of American and British tourists stranded at the Wolong panda reserve when the earthquake hit were also safe after being helped by a resourceful local army, kind villagers, humor, television and traditional Tibetan dancing (the latter, actually seems like a standard for Chinese Panda tours advertised on the web).

Panda diplomacy seems alive and well.

On to Polar Bear Diplomacy?

The endangered pandas seem to have it lucky compared to polar bears (Ursus maritimus). Also in the Ursidae family, polar bears were recently designated by the US Fish and Wildlife service as "threatened". The agency lists a species as threatened if they're likely to become "endangered" and the melting Arctic makes this so. The new label was welcomed by some and criticized by others who thought the polar bear should be listed as "endangered". The LA Times reported this week that small towns like Churchill, Manitoba will see an influx of tourists because of the government's new polar bear status. Although Canada hasn't turned official attention to the polar bears, the U.S. designation will increase awareness.

Tiny Species Diplomacy?

Most threatened or endangered species (Urrr..so ignored) emerge not fuzzy, cute, or mammal -- to their peril. Many are not even large enough to see and these more discreet species will just disappear.

A report released by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL)called the Living Planet Index, produced by the ZSL, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Global Footprint Network, tracked 4,000 populations of 1,500 species over 35 years. The census found that by 2005 the populations had decreased by a third, a decline "unprecedented since the extinction of the dinosaurs".

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Acronym Required last wrote about China's pandas before in "Panda Baby". We wrote about endangered species here and elsewhere.

China's Transparency

China's 7.8 earthquake continues to bring bad news with heart-breaking collapses of schools and too many people trapped under fallen cement. However by all counts, China has improved its handling of the earthquake compared to previous disasters. Communication is critical in a disaster but difficult. During Hurricane Katrina, even in the middle of the worst of the storm, a few intrepid residents and journalists hunkered down in New Orleans and provided on-line updates. The US government responded, but governments' ineffective communications held up disaster efforts. Even with the most modern technology, medical and logistics support, in accessible terrain and with an outpouring of support, Katrina proved challenging. In countries with less infrastructure and less effective government the communication situation is measurably or immeasurably worse. In lieu of information, rumors run rampant.

The dearth of information is a breeding ground for rumors. Not too ago death tolls were considered a state secret in China. China has been notoriously non-transparent dealing with critical problems like infectious diseases, such as SARS, Avian Flu, Streptoccocus Suis, and even the "blue-ear disease" that killed millions of pigs and contributed to the pig shortage considered to be one part of the world-wide heparin contamination fall-out.

While China was at first guarded in dealing with this earthquake, it has since invited foreign aid from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, some of whom have sent specially trained groups to China. China's new acceptance of outside help defies a tradition of doing it all themselves. Their initial nationalist reaction seemed to be on display in the beginning, when China announced: "Faced with the disaster, we have become still more united, still more cohesive, still more composed and still more sure of ourselves, and such spirit and strength constitute the invincible, priceless assets of the Chinese nation" Then they seemed to move from their defensive starting position.

China spent considerable effort informing citizens about the progress of the recovery. But when the disaster struck, rumors about the cause of the disaster clogged the internet and they