Google Goes Back to Pre-Katrina Maps

NEW ORLEANS — Google's popular map portal has replaced
post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the
storm, leaving locals feeling like they're in a time loop and even
fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.

Scroll across the city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and
everything is back to normal: Marinas are filled with boats, bridges
are intact and parks are filled with healthy, full-bodied trees.

"Come on," said an incredulous Ruston Henry, president of the
economic development association in New Orleans' devastated Lower 9th
Ward. "Just put in big bold this: 'Google, don't pull the wool over the
world's eyes. Let the truth shine.'"

Chikai Ohazama, a Google Inc. product manager for satellite imagery,
said the maps now available are the best the company can offer.
Numerous factors decide what goes into the databases, "everything from
resolution, to quality, to when the actual imagery was acquired."

He said he was not sure when the current images replaced views of
the city taken after Katrina struck Aug. 29, 2005, flooding an
estimated 80 percent of New Orleans.

In the images available Thursday, the cranes working to fix the
breach of the 17th Street Canal are gone. Blue tarps that covered
roofless homes are replaced by shingles. Homes wiped off their
foundations are miraculously back in place in the Lower 9th. So, too,
is the historic lighthouse on Lake Pontchartrain.

But in the Lower 9th Ward, the truth isn't as pretty, 19 months after Katrina.

"Everything is missing. The people are missing. Nobody is there," Henry said.

After Katrina, Google's satellite images were in high demand among
exiles and hurricane victims anxious to see whether their homes were
damaged.

The new, virtual Potemkin village is fueling the imagination of
locals frustrated with the slow pace of recovery and what they see as
attempts by political leaders to paint a rosier picture.

Pete Gerica, a fisherman who lives in eastern New Orleans, said he
printed pictures of his waterside homestead from Google to use in his
arguments with insurance adjusters.

"I think a lot of stuff they're doing right now is smoke and mirrors
because tourism is so off," Gerica said. "It might be somebody's weird
spin on things looking better."

Henry also wondered whether Google's motives might be less than pure.

"Is Google part of the conspiracy?" he said. "Why these images of pre-Katrina? Seems mighty curious."

Ceeon Quiett, spokeswoman for Mayor Ray Nagin, said that as far as she knew, the city did not request the map change.

"My first reaction was, that's a bit problematic," she said.

Ohazama, the Google product manager, said he "personally" was not
asked by city or state officials to change the imagery, but he added
that Google gets many requests from users and governments to update and
change its imagery.

Google has become a go-to service for people looking for up-close satellite imagery.

"I use it on a regular basis in my class," said Craig Colten, a
geographer at Louisiana State University who has written extensively on
New Orleans. He called Google's switch "unbelievable."

"I'm sure the mayor is thrilled," he quipped.

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World must pay poorer nations to keep forests:

By Ed Davies



JAKARTA (Reuters) - A major U.N. conference on global warming in December should target setting up a system to pay developing nations such as Indonesia and Brazil to keep their forests, an influential climate change expert said on Friday.



In the short term, up to $15 billion extra a year should be set aside by richer nations to preserve forests, which help soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, Nicholas Stern, author of an acclaimed report published last year, told a forum.



Original Article

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Gore Implores Congress to Save Planet

WASHINGTON
(AP) — Al Gore made an emotional return to Congress Wednesday to plead with
lawmakers to fight global warming with moral courage while revealing nothing
about whether he'll join the 2008 presidential race.

The former vice president is a Democratic favorite for the presidential nomination even
though he says he's not running. Fresh off a triumphant Hollywood appearance in
which his climate-change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth'' won two Oscars,
Gore drew overflow crowds as he testified before House and Senate panels about
a “true planetary emergency.''

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Another report on the effects of climate change

World's Most Important Crops Hit by Global Warming Effects



Global warming over the past quarter century has led to a fall in the yield of some of the most important food crops in the world, according to one of the first scientific studies of how climate change has affected cereal crops.

Rising temperatures between 1981 and 2002 caused a loss in production of wheat, corn and barley that amounted in effect to some 40 million tons a year - equivalent to annual losses of some £2.6bn.

Although these numbers are not large compared to the world-wide production of cereal crops, scientists warned that the findings demonstrated how climate change was already having an impact on the global production of staple foods. "Most people tend to think of climate change as something that will impact the future, but this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already had real effects on global food supply," said Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California.



The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed yields of cereals from around the world during a period when average temperatures rose by about 0.7C between 1980 and 2002 - although the rise was even higher in certain crop-growing regions of the world.

By Steve Connor

The Independent UK Go to Original



Monday 19 March 2007

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The Great Channel Four Swindle

And let us not forget that we all want to believe them. Wouldn't it be wonderful to believe that the science is unsettled, that all that carbon dioxide that we are pumping into the atmosphere really has no effect, and that we do not have to worry about the future.

It would be entirely possible to put together a similar programme, with a string of credible former academics, to argue that smoking does no cause cancer, that HIV does not cause AIDS, or that black people are less intelligent. However, Channel Four would not dare broadcast the programme and we would not believe them if they did. Is it not a reflection of the deep public ambivalence about climate change that these dissenters are given such a prominent and uncritical showcase and that we are so keen to listen to them?

Make up your own minds from their track records. Here is a little more information on some of the people who appeared on the programme:

Fred Singer. Despite the caption on the programme, Singer has retired from the University of Virginia and has not had a single article accepted for any peer-reviewed scientific journal for 20 years. His main work has been as a hired gun for business interests to undermine scientific research on environmental and health matters. Before turning to climate change denial he has argued that CFCs do not cause ozone depletion and second hand smoke does not cause cancer (more... ). In 1990 he founded "The Science and Environment Policy Project", which aggressively contradicts climate science and has received direct funding from Exxon, Shell, Unocal and ARCO. Exxon is also among the funders ($20,000 in 1998 and 2000)

Patrick Michaels is the most prominent US climate change denier. In the programme he claimed "I've never been paid a nickel by the old and gas companies" which is a curious claim. According to the US journalist Ross Gebspan Michaels has received direct funding from, among others German Coal Mining Association ($49,000), Edison Electric Institute ($15,000), and the Western Fuels Association ($63,000) an association of US coal producing interests. The WFA is one of the most powerful forces in the US actively denying the basic science of climate change, funding, amongs other things, the Greening Earth Society which is directed by Patrick Michaels. Tom Wigley, one of the leading IPCC scientists, describes Michaels work as "a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation". (More on Michaels...)

Philip Stott was captioned as a Professor at the University of London although he is retired and is therefore free of any academic accountability. Stott is a geographer by training and has no qualifications in climate science. Since retiring Stott has aimed to become Britain's leading anti-green pundit dedicating himself to wittily criticizing rainforest campaigns (with Patrick Moore), advocating genetic engineering and claiming that "global warming is the new fundamentalist religion."

Patrick Moore is Stott's Canadian equivalent. Since a very personal and painful falling out with Greenpeace in 1986 Moore has put his considerable campaigning energies into undermining environmentalists, especially his former friends and colleagues. Typical of his rhetoric was his claim in the programme that environmentalists were "anti-human" and "treat humans as scum". Throughout the 1990s Moore worked as lead consultant for the British Columbian Timber Products Association undermining Greenpeace's international campaign to protect old growth forest there. Whenever he has the chance he also makes strong public statements in favour of genetic engineering, nuclear power, logging the Amazon, and industrial fishing- all, strangely, lead campaigns for Greenpeace (more on Moore..)

Piers Corbyn has no academic status and his role in such programmes is to promote his own weather prediction business. He has steadfastly refused to ever subject his climatological theories to any form of external review or scrutiny.

Richard Lindzen. As a Professor of Meteorology at the credible Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lindzen is by far the most reputable academic among the US climate deniers and, for this reason, he is heavily cited by sympathetic journalists such as Melanie Phillips and Michael Crichton. His arguments though are identical to the other deniers – for example an article in the Wall Street Journal (June 11 2001) he claims that "there is no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends or what causes them".
He is strongly associated with the other people on the programme though co-authored reports, articles, conference appearances and co-signed statements.

Tim Ball was captioned as the University of Winnipeg. In fact he left in 1996 since when he has run political campaigns through two organisations he helped found: the Natural Resources Stewardship Project and the Friends of Science which, according to their websites aim to run "a proactive grassroots campaign to counter the Kyoto Protocol"; and "encourage and assist the Canadian Federal Government to re-evaluate the Kyoto Protocol". Ian Clark is also on the board of the NRSP.

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Collapse of Arctic Sea Ice "Has Reached Tipping Point"

By Steve Connor Science Editor

The Independent

Friday 16 March 2007

A catastrophic collapse of the Arctic sea ice could lead to radical climate changes in the northern hemisphere according to scientists who warn that the rapid melting is at a "tipping point" beyond which it may not recover.

MORE

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Bee vanishing act baffles keepers

Honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate from 24 US states, threatening the production of numerous crops.

The cause of the losses, which range from 30% to more than 70%, is a mystery, but experts are investigating several theories.

American bee colonies have been hit by regional crises before, but keepers say this is the first national crisis.

Full Story

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How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet: A Review

By Leslie Thatcher

t r u t h o u t | Review



Thursday 15 March 2007



"Ingenuous comrades, there are bad men on the Earth. If you want to be an ecologist, you have to stop being a dummy." From Hervé Kempf's "How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet."



In 2006, Le Monde environmental editor Hervé Kempf's article, "New Suspicions about GMO" (translated and republished at Truthout) was nominated for a Project Censored award for covering an important topic neglected by the mainstream press. Earlier this year, Truthout reported the publication of Kempf's new book, "How the Rich are Destroying the Planet." I was intrigued, all the more so as a few readers asked when the book would be available in English, and asked Mr. Kempf to send me a copy of his book as well as for permission to translate the Preface (see below). My own appreciation of this completely original and fundamentally necessary little book - a scant 125 pages of text - follows. That review precedes a short online discussion with Hervé Kempf, while a translation of the Preface to "How the Rich are Destroying the Planet" appears at the end of this feature, along with a number of links to related subjects.



Although familiar with much of the information Kempf marshals in "How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet," I was nonetheless amazed by the long and elegant arc of his argument, his ability to discern and convey a crystalline pattern in phenomena as diverse as elevated PCB levels in the sediment of "pristine" Alaskan lakes and the increase in length of billionaires' yachts. The book's central thesis - that the "oligarchy," a global stateless class composed of the hyper-rich and the "new Nomenklatura," is responsible for our species' headlong rush to environmental destruction, both indirectly, through the rest of society's attempts to imitate and emulate their wasteful habits of conspicuous consumption, and directly, through their control of the levers of power, all presently fixed at the "Catastrophe" setting - is buttressed by twenty pages of footnotes and direct citations from sources as varied as Adam Smith and James Lovelock; the scientific monograph, "Effects on the Marine Environment of Ocean Acidification Resulting from Elevated Levels of CO2 in the Atmosphere" and Alexis de Tocqueville.



The first stage in Kempf's argument is to adduce the irrefutable evidence of an accelerating ecological catastrophe as humanity's use of the planet's resources overshoots the Earth's carrying capacity: While, according to one researcher Kempf cites, humanity's resource use was at 50 percent of the Earth's biocapacity in 1950, by 2003, it had reached 120 percent - consuming resources faster than the Earth can reproduce them. Foretastes of the ultimate catastrophe are suggested by avian flu worries, the destruction of New Orleans by the combined impact of Hurricane Katrina and infrastructure failures before and after the storm, and by increased mortality associated with the 2003 heat wave in Europe. Each environmental "problem" is linked to all the others; their synergy and imbrication propel us "in the direction of unstoppable destruction" and preclude any idea of separate crises, "solvable independently of one another." Why, Kempf asks, when the situation is so clear and alarming, does it remain so stubbornly intractable to change? He concludes that "if nothing happens even though we're entering an ecological crisis of historic gravity, it's because those who have power in the world want it to be this way."



Kempf goes on to document the return of widespread poverty and economic precariousness to the rich world and the globalization of poverty in spite of economic growth and some reduction of poverty in China and India. However, economic growth and greater agricultural productivity are achieved at the expense of environmental degradation and, finally, there is a vicious "synergy between the global ecological and social crises: they respond to one another, influence one another and worsen correlatively." And the poor are the first victims of environmental degradation everywhere.



In spite of a distinct coolness of tone and a controlled reliance on statistics and citation, Kempf's depiction of "The Powerful of This World" echoes Old Testament prophetic outrage. He quotes Peter Drucker on the destructiveness of unbridled executive compensation, St. Augustine on government ("If there is no justice, what are kingdoms, but vast systems of robbery?"), "Forbes, "The Economist,' and the "Financial Times" to create a portrait of a predatory, self-perpetuating elite that has become wealthy "not through success in production, but through constant redistribution of collective wealth" (think Halliburton or Blackwater senior executives and shareholders) and that lives "... separated from the plebians. They are not aware of how the poor and wage-earners live; they don't know and don't want to know." No sense of the public good or civic virtue moves "this predatory and greedy controlling class, wasting its rents, misusing its power, (it) congeals as an obstacle on the way. It bears no proposal, is animated by no ideal, delivers no promise ... is blind to the explosive power of obvious injustice. And blind to the poisoning of the biosphere that growth in material wealth provokes, a poisoning that means a degradation of the conditions for human life...."



More

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Strong Suspicions of Toxicity in One GMO Corn

By Stephane Foucart
Le Monde

Tuesday 13 March 2007

Allowed to go on the market in France and Europe, MON 863, a transgenic corn invented by Monsanto, has been at the center of a controversy over its innocuousness for over two years (April 23rd, 2004, Le Monde). These debates could resume after the March 13th publication in "Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology" of a study suggesting this genetically modified organism (GMO) is toxic to the liver and kidneys.

According to this work, consumption of MON 863 corn disturbs numerous biological parameters in rats to a greater or lesser extent: weight of the kidneys, weight of the liver, the level of reticulocytes (new red blood cells), the level of triglycerides, etc. Urinary chemistry is also changed, with reductions in excreted sodium and phosphorus going as high as 35 percent. The effects vary with the sex of the animals. "Female rats exhibit an increase in blood fat and sugar levels, and an increase in body weight - all associated with greater hepatic sensitivity," says Mr. Seralini, principal author of this study and, moreover, president of the Research Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (Criigen). "Among males, the impact is opposite, with a drop in body and kidney weights."

The authors of this work used data drawn from an experiment sponsored by Monsanto, which bore on the study of 400 rats for 90 days. The statistical treatment applied to these data by the experts of the agrochemical firm was published in August 2005, by "Food and Chemical Toxicology." That work brought to light significant variations in biological parameters between animals fed MON 863 and those fed with its isogene - the same plant variety without the genetic modification.

MORE

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It's Expensive to Ignore Global Warming

By Bruce Barnbaum

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer



Sunday 11 March 2007



Some leaders -- notably President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- have stated they will do nothing to stem global warming if it will harm our economy. Let's examine two examples of what would happen to our economy if we follow their advice and do nothing.



Note that predictions of climate change have been quite accurate, so a high degree of confidence exists (and, in fact, a growing degree of confidence) that future predictions will be borne out.



Look at the consequences of rising sea levels. If the oceans rise 20 feet, much of our coastal land would be imperiled. What would that mean?



Most of Florida is barely above sea level. A 20-foot ocean level rise would put half of Florida under water, including Miami, Tampa Bay and Jacksonville, Florida's three largest cities.



What would be the cost of building dikes around all this real estate? Hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps well into the trillions. Florida has the longest coastline of any state except Alaska, and the dikes needed to protect Florida would have to be extended across the other Gulf States and up the East Coast to truly be protective.



We can't build a Maginot Line of dikes just around Florida, allowing the rising waters to flow around the ends of the dikes. If we build protective dikes for some areas, we have to protect them all. Not only are we looking at excessive expenditures, but we're looking at an impossible amount of material needed to build thousands of miles of dikes 20-plus feet high.

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The Clean Green Bag

The horrible facts!: paper vs. plastic:



plastic bags consume 40% less energy to produce than paper pags, and plastic bags generate 80% less solid waste than paper bags.



as waste, paper bags produce 70 times more air pollutants than plastic bags, and as waste, paper bags produce 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags.



Plastic takes up to 1,000 years to decompose!

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Researchers wonder where all the pollinators have gone

WASHINGTON -- Pity the honeybee, hummingbird, and bat.



And possibly us.



A report issued yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences said that the three species are ``demonstrably" declining in the United States and Canada, and that their losses are affecting not just their populations -- but potentially parts of various ecosystems, including some parts of our food supply.



The birds, bees, and bats are pollinators, and nearly three-quarters of all flowering plants depend on them to spread pollen so that fertilization can occur and fruits, nuts, and vegetables can grow.



The decline of pollinators ``is one form of global change that actually has credible potential to alter the shape and structure of terrestrial ecosystems," May R. Berenbaum , chairwoman of the committee that studied the issue, said in a statement.

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BioClimate Buildings

Designing with Nature in Mind



Usable energy is a scarce resource, even if we have not passed Peak Oil then we are still faced with a worldwide competition among nations for a limited resource . Ultimately the price trend is up whether that energy source is petroleum, synfuel or biodiesel. In the built environment. Even the green(er) built environment the tendency is to use lots of technology to create a high performance building. LEED structures are creations that incorporate a tremendous number of labour and energy saving devices. They use the latest technologies to provide natural light, clean circulating air, conserve water and energy. Computer controlled shades that move up and down with the sun and energy conserving lighting systems.

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In Defense of Al Gore

The Lastest from Adam Trombly over at Project Earth Online



I find myself having to come to the defense of Al Gore. I have to say something about the moronic comments that Michael Crichton recently made about Al Gore’s predictions about the climate. According to Mr. Crichton the weather is just going through a phase and Mr. Gore is basing his claims of imminent disaster on bad science and scaring people for no good reason. It is really like a chapter from one of Crichton’s own books.



Best selling author of spy novels with heavy ties to the “intelligence” community is fed a lot of crap by certain members of that community and used as a mouthpiece for an insidious group of corporate interests whose agenda is alien to the good of all life. In the mean time those same interests are pulling every trick they can behind the scenes to diminish Mr. Gore’s credibility. The fact is that Al Gore was robbed of being the lawfully elected President of the United States by both the popular and the actual electoral vote of the People of the United States of America, largely because of his commitment to the Earth and her people.

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FDA Rules Override Warnings About Drug

Cattle Antibiotic Moves Forward Despite Fears of Human Risk

By Rick Weiss

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, March 4, 2007; A01

Original Article

The
government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a
pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups
and a majority of the agency's own expert advisers that the decision
will be dangerous for people.

The drug, called cefquinome,
belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among
medicine's last defenses against several serious human infections. No
drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in
animals.

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Dazzling New Saturn Images Released

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - The international Cassini spacecraft has beamed
back to Earth never-before-seen angles of Saturn from high above and
below its majestic rings. The planet is fully surrounded by the rings
in images released Thursday by NASA.

"Finally, here are the views that we've waited years for," Cassini
scientist Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute in Boulder,
Colo., said in a statement.

"It just doesn't look like the same place. It's so utterly breathtaking, it almost gives you vertigo," Porco said.

Cassini snapped the images while in a highly inclined orbit during the past two months.

The $3.3 billion Cassini mission, funded by NASA and the European and
Italian space agencies, was launched in 1997. It is managed by NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

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Our food-chain and the "cool-aid" conspiracy

It is said that upwards of 80% of the food we eat is directly attributed to honey bees as pollinators. We've been hearing for the last few years here it the Maryland bee world that it's the greed of bee keepers that is causing the bees to fall prey to a intestinal mite that attacks their immune systems. Greed that motivates the keepers to take all the honey from a hive before winter sets in - leaving only sugar water as food for the hive to survive till spring. That's the ticket: feed em cool-aid for a few more jars of honey. Not to mention the "Cherry blossom bloom in January" reports you have the a dangerous die off of our most important link in the human food chain.

Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Crops and Keepers in Peril
By Alexei Barrionuevo
New York Times

Visalia, California - David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation's most profitable.

"I have never seen anything like it," Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. "Box after box after box are just empty. There's nobody home."

The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country.

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