U.S. memorializes massacre of Native Americans

SAND CREEK MASSACRE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, Colorado (AP) --

More than 142 years after a band of state militia volunteers massacred
150 sleeping Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in a misdirected act
of vengeance, a memorial to the tragic event was officially dedicated
Saturday.

The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic site, 160
miles southeast of Denver on Big Sandy Creek in Kiowa County, pays
tribute to those killed in the November 29, 1864, attack.

Seeking revenge for the killings of several settlers by Indians, 700 militia
members slaughtered nearly everyone in the village. Most were women or
children.

Descendants of some of the victims were among several
hundred people at Saturday's dedication on the rolling hills of the
southeastern Colorado plains. A mock village of a dozen tepees was set
up in a grove of cottonwood trees along the creek that historians
believe marks the site of the killings.

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Poll Finds Majority See Threat in Global Warming

New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER and MARJORIE CONNELLY

Americans in large bipartisan numbers say the heating of the earth’s atmosphere is having serious effects on the environment now or will soon and think that it is necessary to take immediate steps to reduce its effects, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds.

Ninety percent of Democrats, 80 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans said immediate action was required to curb the warming of the atmosphere and deal with its effects on the global climate. Nineteen percent said it was not necessary to act now, and 1 percent said no steps were needed.

Several recent international reports have concluded with near certainty that human activities are the main cause of global warming since 1950. The poll found that 84 percent of Americans see human activity as at least contributing to warming.

The poll also found that Americans want the United States to support
conservation and to be a global leader in addressing environmental
problems and developing alternative energy sources to reduce reliance
on fossil fuels like oil and coal.

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Draft Gore Petition

A new site with sign-up for Gore candidacy

Please sign below and spread the word
to all your friends and fellow activists. With your help, we can create an unprecedented show of support for Al Gore that will hopefully make a Gore candidacy in 2008 a reality. Thank you.

Dear Vice President Gore:

Americans from every corner of our nation are calling on you. Please listen to
our plea and run for the Democratic nomination for the presidency of
the United States in 2008.

Never before has America needed a leader of your stature, vision and experience more than now. The next presidential election will be the most crucial one in our history, and you are the only Democrat who can unite the country and lead us to victory. And this country -- indeed,
the entire world -- cannot afford anything less.

Our nation and the planet itself are entering “a period of consequences,” as you so well stated in “An Inconvenient Truth,” but in more ways than one. We are ruled by a government
of the powerful and for the powerful -- a government that tramples our Constitution, wages unjust war in our name, sacrifices our economic future, and puts our very planet on the endangered species list.

America and the world need you now more than ever. Be our candidate. Run for president. And we pledge that we'll be there for you every day until the last vote is counted.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned,

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Study Shows Sudden Sea Level Surges Threaten One Billion

By Michael Kahn
Reuters
Friday 20 April 2007

San Francisco - More than one billion people live in low-lying areas where a sudden surge in sea level could prove as disastrous as the 2004 Asian tsunami, according to new research presented Thursday.

New mapping techniques show how much land would be lost and how many people affected by rapid sea level rises that are often triggered by storms and earthquakes, a U.S. Geological Survey-led team determined.

E. Lynn Usery, who led the team, said nearly one-quarter of the world's population lives below 100 feet above sea level - the size of the biggest surge during the 2004 tsunami that pulverized villages along the Indian Ocean and killed 230,000 people.

"What we are suggesting is what kind of areas are at risk (in) a catastrophic event," Usery told a meeting of the Association of American Geographers.

"The fact that there are that many people living at that sea level means there are probably a lot of people potentially in harm's way."

The team also found that a 100-foot rise in sea level would cover 3.7 million square miles of land worldwide.

A rise of just 16 feet would affect 669 million people and 2 million square miles of land would be lost.

Sea levels are currently rising about 0.04 to 0.08 inches each year, making it unlikely such a scenario would suddenly occur across the globe, Usery said.


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Scientists Levitate Small Animals

Scientists have now levitated small live animals using sounds that are, well, uplifting.



In the past, researchers at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, China, used ultrasound fields to successfully levitate globs of the heaviest solid and liquid—iridium and mercury, respectively. The aim of their work is to learn how to manufacture everything from pharmaceuticals to alloys without the aid of containers. At times compounds are too corrosive for containers to hold, or they react with containers in other undesirable ways.



"An interesting question is, 'What will happen if a living animal is put into the acoustic field?' Will it also be stably levitated?" researcher Wenjun Xie, a materials physicist at Northwestern Polytechnical University, told LiveScience.



Xie and his colleagues employed an ultrasound emitter and reflector that generated a sound pressure field between them. The emitter produced roughly 20-millimeter-wavelength sounds, meaning it could in theory levitate objects half that wavelength or less.



After the investigators got the ultrasound field going, they used tweezers to carefully place animals between the emitter and reflector. The scientists found they could float ants, beetles, spiders, ladybugs, bees, tadpoles and fish up to a little more than a third of an inch long in midair. When they levitated the fish and tadpole, the researchers added water to the ultrasound field every minute via syringe.



The levitated ant tried crawling in the air and struggled to escape by rapidly flexing its legs, although it generally failed because its feet find little purchase in the air. The ladybug tried flying away but also failed when the field was too strong to break away from.



"We must control the levitation force carefully, because they try to fly away," Xie said. "An interesting moment was when my colleagues and I had to catch escaping ladybugs."



The ant and ladybug appeared fine after 30 minutes of levitation, although the fish did not fare as well, due to the inadequate water supply, the scientists report.



"Our results may provide some methods or ideas for biology research," Xie said. "We have tried to hatch eggs of fish acoustic levitation."



The research team reported their findings online Nov. 20 in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

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Convention Cleanup Includes Pigeon Poop

AP  |  April 5, 2007 03:39 PM EST



ST. PAUL, Minn. — Pigeon poop has long sullied downtown St. Paul sidewalks, but the slippery, smelly mess is gaining urgency with the Republican National Convention coming to town next year.



Sticky foam, hawk balloons and nets haven't gotten rid of the birds, so officials have a new plan: stealing pigeon eggs.



After pigeons lay their eggs on rooftop nesting grounds, maintenance workers plan to sneak up through trap doors and grab the next generation before it hatches.



"We'll build them little condos. We'll keep taking the eggs, and they won't have little ones," said Bill Stephenson, the city's animal control supervisor. "Slowly they'll die off."



The scheme has the blessing of the St. Paul Audubon Society. Member Val Cunningham said pigeons aren't native, and their eggs aren't protected. If the plan works, "it would be sweet for the city," Cunningham said.



City officials also considered feeding contraceptives to the pigeons but rejected that idea on fears of also inadvertently sterilizing eagles or hawks.

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Government must deal with greenhouse gases: US Supreme Court

The US Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency must consider greenhouse gases as pollutants, in a blow to the White House.

"Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act's capacious
definition of 'air pollutant' we hold that EPA has the statutory
authority to regulate the emission of such gases from new motor
vehicles," the court ruled.

Led by Massachusetts, a dozen
states along with several US cities and environmental groups went to
the courts to determine whether the agency had the authority to
regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide emissions.

"The harms associated with climate change
are serious and well recognized," said judge John Paul Stevens as the
ruling was carried by five votes in favor to four against.

The
Republican administration of US President George W. Bush has fiercely
opposed any imposition of binding greenhouse limits on the nation's
industry.

Environmentalists have alleged that since Bush came
to office in 2001 his administration has ignored and tried to hide
looming evidence of global warming and the key role of human activity in climate change.

As the issue has come to the fore in the US, the White House earlier
this year issued a rare open letter defending Bush's record on climate
change, rejecting criticisms that he has only recently awakened to the
problem.

Monday's ruling was immediately hailed by
environmental campaigners which has been fighting for greater
regulations in a nation which accounts for a quarter of global
greenhouse gas emissions.

"It is a watershed moment in the
fight against global warming," said Josh Dorner, spokesman for the
Sierra Club environmental group.

"This is a total repudiation
of the refusal of the Bush administration to use the authority he has
to meet the challenge posed by global warming.

It also "sends
a clear signal to the market that the future lies not in dirty,
outdated technology of yesterday, but in clean energy solutions of
tomorrow like wind, solar," he added.

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The Impact of Logging

Corruption Stains Timber Trade

Forests Destroyed in China's Race to Feed Global Wood-Processing Industry

By Peter S. Goodman and Peter Finn

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, April 1, 2007; Page A01

MYITKYINA, Burma -- The Chinese logging boss set his sights on a thickly forested mountain just inside Burma, aiming to harvest one of the last natural stands of teak on Earth.



He handed a rice sack stuffed with $8,000 worth of Chinese currency to two agents with connections in the Burmese borderlands, the men said in interviews. They used that stash to bribe everyone standing between the teak and China. In came Chinese logging crews. Out went huge logs, over Chinese-built roads.



A railway in northeastern China receives timber from the Russian Far East, where the World Bank says half of all logging is illegal. Ikea products are made here and shipped to the U.S.

A railway in northeastern China receives timber from the Russian Far East, where the World Bank says half of all logging is illegal. Ikea products are made here and shipped to the U.S.



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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.



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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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