UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday named a queen, a former president, a Nobel Peace prize winner and a corporate mogul to a 26-strong panel to recommend new global social and environment goals.
Ban has given the panel a year to draw up what he called 'a bold' new development vision to put to the 193 UN member states to replace the Millennium Development Goals after 2015.
Presidents Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain had already been appointed to head the search.
Ban on Tuesday named personalities ranging from Queen Rania of Jordan and German former president Horst Kohler to Tawakel Karman, the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner for her activism in the uprising in Yemen, and the mayor of Istanbul Kadir Topbas.
Japan's former prime minister Naoto Kan, Grace Machel, wife of South Africa's legendary leader Nelson Mandela, three serving foreign ministers -- Kim Sung-Hwan of South Korea, Patricia Espinosa of Mexico and Maria Angela Holguin of Colombia -- and two finance ministers Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria and Emilia Pires of East Timor -- are also on the panel.
The corporate world is represented by Paul Polman, the Dutch chief executive of Unilever and Betty Maina, chief executive of Kenya's Association of Manufacturers.
'I look forward to the panel's recommendations on a global post-2015 agenda with shared responsibilities for all countries and with the fight against poverty and sustainable development at its core,' Ban said.
The Millennium Development Goals aimed to halve extreme poverty and eradicate many preventable diseases and stop the spread of AIDS by 2015. Many of the eight targets will not be acheived however.
UN high level panel the post 2015 development agenda
-- Fulbert Gero Amoussouga, head of the Economic Analysis Unit for Benin government
-- Vanessa Petrelli Correa, president of Brazil's Institute for Applied Economic Research
-- Wang Yingfan, former vice foreign minister for China and member of the UN Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group
-- Maria Angela Holguin, foreign minister for Colombia
-- Gisela Alonso, president of the Cuban Agency of Environment
-- Jean-Michel Severino, former director general of the French Development Agency
-- Horst Kohler, former president of Germany and managing director of the International Monetary Fund
-- Naoto Kan, former prime minister of Japan who led his country's emergency response after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami which crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant
-- Queen Rania of Jordan and leading humanitarian campaigner
-- Betty Maina, chief executive of Kenya's Association of Manufacturers
-- Abhijit Banerjee, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States
-- Andris Piebalgs, development commissioner for European Commission and former minister in Latvia
-- Patricia Espinosa, foreign minister for Mexico
-- Paul Polman of the Netherlands, chief executive of Unilever and former chief financial officer of Nestle
-- Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, finance minister for Nigeria and former managing director of World Bank
-- Elvira Nabiullina, economic advisor to President Vladimir Putin of Russia
-- Graca Machel, former minister in Mozambique, human rights activist and wife of South Africa's post-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela
-- Kim Sung-Hwan, foreign minister for South Korea
-- Gunilla Carlsson, Sweden's minister for international development
-- Emilia Pires, finance minister for East Timor
-- Kadir Topbas, mayor of Istanbul
-- John Podesta, chairman of the US Center for American Progress and former advisor to President Bill Clinton
-- Tawakel Karman, winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her activism during the uprising against Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh
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Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Former Global Warming Skeptic Makes a 'Total Turnaround'
A prominent scientist who was skeptical of the evidence that climate change was real, let alone that it was caused by humans, now says he has made a 'total turnaround.' Richard Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, says he has become convinced that 'the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct,' and that humans are 'almost entirely the cause' of that warming.
Muller co-founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) team two years ago in order to independently assess what he viewed as questionable evidence of global warming. In a series of papers published last year, BEST presented their statistical analysis of 1.6 billion temperature reports spanning the last 200 years, controlling for possible biases in the data that are often cited by skeptics as reasons to doubt the reality of global warming.
Their analysis indicated that global warming is real - that the average global land temperature has risen by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius) since 1750, including 1.5 degrees F (0.9 degrees Celsius) in the past 50 years. The numbers closely agree with the findings of past studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and others; but finally, they were rigorous enough to satisfy Muller.
Now, in a brand new study that probed the causes of that warming, the BEST team says it has cleared from blame the natural variations in Earth's climate that so often get implicated by skeptics. Muller and his colleagues implicate carbon dioxide emissions by humans as essentially the sole cause of global warming.
'The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we've tried,' he wrote Saturday (July 28) in a New York Times editorial. 'Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect - extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don't prove causality and they shouldn't end skepticism, but they raise the bar: To be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does.'
That's a high bar indeed. In graphs released with the new study, a red line representing the atmoaspheric concentration of CO2 crawls across the decades almost exactly tracing the black line representing the observed warming of the Earth. [What Are Climate Change Skeptics Still Skeptical About?]
By comparison, the study found that natural variability, including variations in the solar cycle, El Niño events and the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (shifts in sea-surface temperatures that run in cycles), could have accounted for no more than 0.17 degrees Celsius of temperature variation - either warming or cooling - during the past 150 years. These natural forces are much subtler than the warming seen during the same time period.
In fact, the new results indicate that humans have been warming the Earth for longer than climate scientists previously thought certain. 'In its 2007 report, the [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans,' Muller wrote. 'It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.'
Not so, according to the new findings; variations in solar activity have a negligible effect on Earth's temperature. The handiwork is almost all our own.
'I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered,' Muller wrote. 'I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.'
Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover or Life's Little Mysteries @llmysteries. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
This news article is brought to you by ADVANCED DATING ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
Muller co-founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) team two years ago in order to independently assess what he viewed as questionable evidence of global warming. In a series of papers published last year, BEST presented their statistical analysis of 1.6 billion temperature reports spanning the last 200 years, controlling for possible biases in the data that are often cited by skeptics as reasons to doubt the reality of global warming.
Their analysis indicated that global warming is real - that the average global land temperature has risen by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius) since 1750, including 1.5 degrees F (0.9 degrees Celsius) in the past 50 years. The numbers closely agree with the findings of past studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and others; but finally, they were rigorous enough to satisfy Muller.
Now, in a brand new study that probed the causes of that warming, the BEST team says it has cleared from blame the natural variations in Earth's climate that so often get implicated by skeptics. Muller and his colleagues implicate carbon dioxide emissions by humans as essentially the sole cause of global warming.
'The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we've tried,' he wrote Saturday (July 28) in a New York Times editorial. 'Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect - extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don't prove causality and they shouldn't end skepticism, but they raise the bar: To be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does.'
That's a high bar indeed. In graphs released with the new study, a red line representing the atmoaspheric concentration of CO2 crawls across the decades almost exactly tracing the black line representing the observed warming of the Earth. [What Are Climate Change Skeptics Still Skeptical About?]
By comparison, the study found that natural variability, including variations in the solar cycle, El Niño events and the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (shifts in sea-surface temperatures that run in cycles), could have accounted for no more than 0.17 degrees Celsius of temperature variation - either warming or cooling - during the past 150 years. These natural forces are much subtler than the warming seen during the same time period.
In fact, the new results indicate that humans have been warming the Earth for longer than climate scientists previously thought certain. 'In its 2007 report, the [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans,' Muller wrote. 'It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.'
Not so, according to the new findings; variations in solar activity have a negligible effect on Earth's temperature. The handiwork is almost all our own.
'I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered,' Muller wrote. 'I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.'
Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover or Life's Little Mysteries @llmysteries. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
- The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted
- 5 Ways the World Will Change Radically This Century
- 50 Interesting Facts About the Earth
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Monday, July 30, 2012
East Africa's forests shrink, especially near parks
OSLO (Reuters) - Forests in East Africa have shrunk over the past years, especially around the fringes of parks, complicating efforts to protect wildlife and fight climate change, a study showed on Monday.
The report indicated that forest cover decreased by about 9.3 percent overall from 2001-09 in about 12 nations studied. Losses were biggest in Uganda and Rwanda, while only southern Sudan - which is now the independent country South Sudan - made fractional gains.
'The decrease in forest cover is strongest just outside protected areas,' Rob Marchant of the University of Leeds, who co-ordinated the study in the journal PLOS One by experts in Britain, Denmark and the United States, told Reuters.
'Outside the parks there is very little legislation to prevent people from chopping down trees for timber or charcoal,' he said. The study concluded there had been 'mixed success' for protected areas in East Africa.
Population growth outside parks puts pressure on species of animals and plants. Loss of forests contributes to climate change - trees soak up carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, when they grow and release it when they burn or rot.
The losses of forests were high in bands 10 km (6 miles) from parks and other protected areas, where many people were drawn to live by jobs in forest management or tourism.
Forest area inside national park boundaries increased by 3.2 percent overall, thanks largely to successful expansion in Tanzania. Overall, forests in 26 of 48 national parks got bigger or stayed the same size, while they shrank in the remaining 22.
INVOLVE LOCALS
Among recommendations to improve management was to get local communities more involved in protecting forests, such as in the Mukogodo Forest Reserve in Kenya.
Marchant said the study also showed the difficulties of designing U.N. schemes meant to reward countries for preserving their forests as a way to slow global warming.
Such schemes backfire if forest protection in one area simply means that trees are chopped down elsewhere.
According to U.N. estimates, the forestry sector, worldwide, contributes about 17 percent to global warming from human sources, mainly because of deforestation in developing nations.
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The report indicated that forest cover decreased by about 9.3 percent overall from 2001-09 in about 12 nations studied. Losses were biggest in Uganda and Rwanda, while only southern Sudan - which is now the independent country South Sudan - made fractional gains.
'The decrease in forest cover is strongest just outside protected areas,' Rob Marchant of the University of Leeds, who co-ordinated the study in the journal PLOS One by experts in Britain, Denmark and the United States, told Reuters.
'Outside the parks there is very little legislation to prevent people from chopping down trees for timber or charcoal,' he said. The study concluded there had been 'mixed success' for protected areas in East Africa.
Population growth outside parks puts pressure on species of animals and plants. Loss of forests contributes to climate change - trees soak up carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, when they grow and release it when they burn or rot.
The losses of forests were high in bands 10 km (6 miles) from parks and other protected areas, where many people were drawn to live by jobs in forest management or tourism.
Forest area inside national park boundaries increased by 3.2 percent overall, thanks largely to successful expansion in Tanzania. Overall, forests in 26 of 48 national parks got bigger or stayed the same size, while they shrank in the remaining 22.
INVOLVE LOCALS
Among recommendations to improve management was to get local communities more involved in protecting forests, such as in the Mukogodo Forest Reserve in Kenya.
Marchant said the study also showed the difficulties of designing U.N. schemes meant to reward countries for preserving their forests as a way to slow global warming.
Such schemes backfire if forest protection in one area simply means that trees are chopped down elsewhere.
According to U.N. estimates, the forestry sector, worldwide, contributes about 17 percent to global warming from human sources, mainly because of deforestation in developing nations.
This article is brought to you by DATING SERVICE.
Global warming is due to humans: US ex-skeptic
A prominent US skeptic of the human causes of climate change, Richard Muller, has reversed course and said on Monday that he now believes greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming.
'I was not expecting this, but as a scientist, I feel it is my duty to let the evidence change my mind,' Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
Muller is part of a group of more than a dozen scientists on the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team studying how temperature changes may relate to human activity, or to natural events such as solar and volcanic activity.
The average temperature of the Earth's land has risen 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 250 years, and 'the most straightforward explanation for this warming is human greenhouse gas emissions,' the team said in a report posted online Monday.
The analysis goes 100 years further back than previous research, and takes an even stronger stance than the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which said in 2007 that 'most' of the warming of the past 50 years could be attributed to human activity, and that higher solar activity prior to 1956 might have fueled some of the warming the Earth has experienced.
The Berkeley team's analysis said 'the contribution of solar activity to global warming is negligible.'
It added that its finding does not rely on climate models, which critics say have the potential for inaccuracies.
Instead, it is based 'simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.'
Further research will factor in ocean temperatures, which are not included in the latest report, it said.
In an op-ed in the New York Times over the weekend, Muller explained his transformation from being a scientist who doubted the 'very existence of global warming' to one who now sides with the majority of the scientific community.
'Call me a converted skeptic,' wrote Muller.
'Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct.
'I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.'
Other members of the Berkeley Earth science team include Nobel Prize winner Saul Perlmutter and climatologist Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
However Curry expressed her discontent with the findings and told the New York Times she had declined to be listed as a co-author on the latest paper.
'I gave them my review of the paper, which was highly critical. I don't think this new paper adds anything to our understanding of attribution of the warming,' she was quoted as saying.
'Their analysis is way oversimplistic and not at all convincing in my opinion.'
Looking forward, Muller said he expects the current trends to continue.
'As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included,' he wrote in the New York Times.
'But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.'
This article is brought to you by DATE.
'I was not expecting this, but as a scientist, I feel it is my duty to let the evidence change my mind,' Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
Muller is part of a group of more than a dozen scientists on the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team studying how temperature changes may relate to human activity, or to natural events such as solar and volcanic activity.
The average temperature of the Earth's land has risen 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 250 years, and 'the most straightforward explanation for this warming is human greenhouse gas emissions,' the team said in a report posted online Monday.
The analysis goes 100 years further back than previous research, and takes an even stronger stance than the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which said in 2007 that 'most' of the warming of the past 50 years could be attributed to human activity, and that higher solar activity prior to 1956 might have fueled some of the warming the Earth has experienced.
The Berkeley team's analysis said 'the contribution of solar activity to global warming is negligible.'
It added that its finding does not rely on climate models, which critics say have the potential for inaccuracies.
Instead, it is based 'simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.'
Further research will factor in ocean temperatures, which are not included in the latest report, it said.
In an op-ed in the New York Times over the weekend, Muller explained his transformation from being a scientist who doubted the 'very existence of global warming' to one who now sides with the majority of the scientific community.
'Call me a converted skeptic,' wrote Muller.
'Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct.
'I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.'
Other members of the Berkeley Earth science team include Nobel Prize winner Saul Perlmutter and climatologist Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
However Curry expressed her discontent with the findings and told the New York Times she had declined to be listed as a co-author on the latest paper.
'I gave them my review of the paper, which was highly critical. I don't think this new paper adds anything to our understanding of attribution of the warming,' she was quoted as saying.
'Their analysis is way oversimplistic and not at all convincing in my opinion.'
Looking forward, Muller said he expects the current trends to continue.
'As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included,' he wrote in the New York Times.
'But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.'
This article is brought to you by DATE.
Greener Olympics Mean Cleaner Air
Click here to listen to this podcast
Bejing often suffers choking air. But there's now one more thing proven to dissipate it: an Olympics.
The 2008 summer games impelled those in charge of the Chinese capital to clear the air. Not only did they banish smog and smoke, they also inadvertently cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 96,000 metric tons during the games. That's according to a new analysis published in Geophysical Research Letters on July 20th. [Helen M. Worden et al, Satellite-based estimates of reduced CO and CO2 emissions due to traffic restrictions during the 2008 Beijing Olympics]
The key was banning half of all the private cars in the city from driving on any particular day during the event. The finding suggests that individual choices like whether to drive or take public transit to work have major cumulative effects.
London's so-called congestion charge for driving in town likewise cuts traffic and pollution. This year, London is bidding to have the most environmentally friendly Olympics ever.
That includes building new stadiums atop former industrial sites and urging fans to choose public transit, walking or cycling. But the British may not match the Chinese achievement, or even attempt to make the London games carbon neutral. The Olympics that finally achieves zero carbon would really merit a gold, for green.
-David Biello
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast]
Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
Bejing often suffers choking air. But there's now one more thing proven to dissipate it: an Olympics.
The 2008 summer games impelled those in charge of the Chinese capital to clear the air. Not only did they banish smog and smoke, they also inadvertently cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 96,000 metric tons during the games. That's according to a new analysis published in Geophysical Research Letters on July 20th. [Helen M. Worden et al, Satellite-based estimates of reduced CO and CO2 emissions due to traffic restrictions during the 2008 Beijing Olympics]
The key was banning half of all the private cars in the city from driving on any particular day during the event. The finding suggests that individual choices like whether to drive or take public transit to work have major cumulative effects.
London's so-called congestion charge for driving in town likewise cuts traffic and pollution. This year, London is bidding to have the most environmentally friendly Olympics ever.
That includes building new stadiums atop former industrial sites and urging fans to choose public transit, walking or cycling. But the British may not match the Chinese achievement, or even attempt to make the London games carbon neutral. The Olympics that finally achieves zero carbon would really merit a gold, for green.
-David Biello
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast]
Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Changing Cities: New York Goes Green.Kind Of
In the heart of New York City, among the flash and dazzle of Times Square, there is one sign that is at once a boast and an unintentionally sad reminder of how far the city is from Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ambitious plan for a greener city.
On the billboard, right underneath the bold words 'imagination is what drives us to change,' is the announcement: 'Times Square's only solar powered billboard.'
In all honesty, it's a gimmick: America is not driving into a green world - at least not quite yet.
As the sign says, only one of the multitude of screens in Times Square is actually powered by solar energy - pointing out just how far off the dream of having a truly sustainable New York City, or United States for that matter, really is.
PlaNYC
In New York, at least, it's not because the issue hasn't been seriously addressed.
On Earth Day 2007, Bloomberg announced his ambitious PlaNYC for a greener New York, a plan that has since gained international praise as a model for sustainability.
'As a coastal city we're on the leading edge of some of the most dramatic effects of global warming. The science is there - we need to stop debating it and dealing with it,' Bloomberg said at the launch event.
Bloomberg's PlaNYC is an effort to make room for a million new people by 2030 while reducing the city's carbon footprint. Since PlaNYC launched, 127 initiatives that creep into nearly every aspect of city life have been started.
New hybrid buses and taxis are making the city a greener place. Hundreds of miles of bike lanes have been added. White roofs that promise to conserve energy are being painted across the city; pedestrian plazas are pushing out cars in Times Square, the Flatiron District and Chelsea. New ferries have been deployed to the East River, connecting outlying boroughs with alternatives to the internal combustion engine. A half a million trees have been planted.
The city has also started an ambitious program of energy retrofits, which includes large skyscrapers like the historic Empire State Building.
'If we don't do anything aggressive, we're going to be dealing with the emissions that we're putting out today for a hundreds of years,' Nathanael Greene, director of renewable energy policy at the National Resources Defense Council, told ABC News. 'If we dramatically reduce our emissions are we can limit how high the peak emissions are, and what the extreme impacts are from those peak emissions.'
One of the biggest successes of the plan has been its ability to combat soot pollution - a problem that kills more people than handguns do.
In order to tackle the problem PLANYC administrators looked at the data and realized that the tens of thousands of buildings in New York City create more soot than all the cars put together.
So administrators developed a project now under way, a collaboration between NGOs, the government, and the real estate industry to figure out how to run buildings on a different type of fuel. So far, 300 buildings have completed upgrades, another 1,000 are on track to complete this year, and 6,000 buildings by 2015.
Bloomberg has said he hopes this will put New York City on track to have the cleanest air of any major city in the world.
However, it's not as green as it could be. Several PlaNYC initiatives - and national initiatives for that matter - are falling far short of their goals. At the cornerstone of the plan is a pledge to cut emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The gorilla in the room remains achieving those emissions reductions.
While U.S. production of renewable energy has increased by more than 300 percent in the past decade, the energy supply for New York and the rest of the country is still dirty. New York is slightly better than the rest of the country, where half of all the power comes from coal, but the city is still highly carbon intensive, relying heavily on natural gas.
According to a new report from the NRDC, 'the United States still lags far behind Europe and Indonesia and is only slightly ahead of Mexico in the percentage of electricity it gets from renewable sources.'
Losing Ground
In New York City, lack of support for some green initiatives is evident.
A congestion pricing plan to charge $8 tolls for cars entering Manhattan during peak hours is dead. Budgets for improvements for subways, parks and other environmentally friendly infrastructure that could improve the sustainability of the city have been slashed. And many of the candidates expected to run to succeed Bloomberg in the next election seem poised to run against his green agenda.
Still, New York is doing better than most cities.
On a national level, Congress has pulled funds for mass transit and other vital projects, and comprehensive energy legislation is dead in the water. Many U.S. cities are falling short of emissions reduction goals. More than 100 cities across the country have signed up for the Mayors' Climate Initiative - of which PlanNYC is just one example - to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but few are on track.
'The climate scientists still tell us we need to reduce our emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050, which is a complicated way of saying a lot,' Greene told ABC News. 'By the end of the century we have to be at a carbon-free economy.'
Will the US Lag Behind?
America had always been an innovator in the clean-tech arena, dating back to the Carter administration, when the gas crisis gave the United States a wake-up call. The federal government started funding innovation, and as a result much of the clean energy technology used today was invented in the United States.
From large-scale concentrated solar and high efficiency solar cells, to sustainable building practices, for years America was at the forefront of the clean tech race.
However, America remains the only country not to sign onto the Kyoto protocol, refuses to put a price on carbon and has failed to pass long-term legislation to promote renewable energy investments. The country is currently seeing its share of the clean tech market decline.
According to a recent report from the Center for American Progress, titled 'America's Future Under 'Drill, Baby, Drill' ,' 'not only is advanced manufacturing and assembly done in other countries, which control the clean energy supply chains, but these countries are doing the cutting-edge innovation that we once considered one of America's strongest assets.'
While at a local level, America 'greens its cities,' the lack of a clear national energy policy undermines these efforts, and the pace of sustainable development in many cases is not going as far as it should, Greene said.
'This is the typical story for the United States,' Greene said. 'We lead the world in energy technology innovation, energy business model innovation. Unfortunately, because we don't have a national energy policy, because we don't have a clear commitment to the end deployment of clean energy technologies, a lot of that technology is now being manufactured outside of this country.'
Also Read
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Scientists find CO2-sucking funnels in Southern Ocean
Scientists said Sunday they had unraveled the mechanism by which Earth-warming carbon is sucked deep into the Southern Ocean to be safely locked away -- a process that may itself be threatened by climate change.
Wind, eddies and currents work together to create carbon-sucking funnels, said the research team from Britain and Australia in a discovery that adds to the toolkit of scientists attempting climate warming predictions.
About a quarter of the carbon dioxide on Earth is stored away in its oceans -- some 40 percent of that in the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica.
At a depth of about 1,000 metres (3,200 feet), carbon can be locked away for hundreds to thousands of years, yet scientists had never been sure exactly how it gets there after dissolving into surface waters.
They had suspected the wind was the main force at play, pooling up surface water in some areas and forcing it down into the ocean depths.
Using 10 years of data obtained from small, deep-sea robotic probes, the researchers found that in addition to the wind, eddies -- big whirlpool-like phenomena about 100 kilometres (60 miles) in diameter on average, also played a part.
'You add the effect of these eddies and the effect of the wind and the effect of prominent currents in the Southern Ocean, you add these three effects, it makes ... 1,000 km-wide funnels that bring the carbon from the sea surface to the interior,' study author Jean-Baptiste Sallee told AFP.
The team had also used temperature, salinity and pressure data collected from ship-based observations since the 1990s.
'This is a very efficient process to bring carbon from the surface to the interior. We found in the Southern Ocean there are five such funnels,' said Sallee.
The team also found that the eddies counterbalanced a different effect of strong winds -- that of releasing stored carbon by violent mixing of the sea.
'This does seem to be good news, but the thing is what will be the impact of climate change on the eddies? Will they stop, will they intensify? We have no idea,' said Sallee.
A changing climate could theoretically affect the nature and effect of the Southern Ocean eddies by changing ocean currents, intensifying winds or creating stark temperature spikes.
The findings mean that eddies must be taken into account in future climate models, said Sallee. They are not currently.
The study focused on the part of the Southern Ocean south of 35 degree south latitude.
The team could not say whether the same funnelling process would be at play in other seas, but Sallee said the Southern Ocean was 'one of the most energetic places on Earth', and the effect of eddies would likely be larger there than anywhere else.
There is also another carbon capturing process, not covered by this study, of CO2-producing micro organisms that live near the ocean surface sinking to the sea floor and settling there when they die.
This article is brought to you by SINGLES.
Wind, eddies and currents work together to create carbon-sucking funnels, said the research team from Britain and Australia in a discovery that adds to the toolkit of scientists attempting climate warming predictions.
About a quarter of the carbon dioxide on Earth is stored away in its oceans -- some 40 percent of that in the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica.
At a depth of about 1,000 metres (3,200 feet), carbon can be locked away for hundreds to thousands of years, yet scientists had never been sure exactly how it gets there after dissolving into surface waters.
They had suspected the wind was the main force at play, pooling up surface water in some areas and forcing it down into the ocean depths.
Using 10 years of data obtained from small, deep-sea robotic probes, the researchers found that in addition to the wind, eddies -- big whirlpool-like phenomena about 100 kilometres (60 miles) in diameter on average, also played a part.
'You add the effect of these eddies and the effect of the wind and the effect of prominent currents in the Southern Ocean, you add these three effects, it makes ... 1,000 km-wide funnels that bring the carbon from the sea surface to the interior,' study author Jean-Baptiste Sallee told AFP.
The team had also used temperature, salinity and pressure data collected from ship-based observations since the 1990s.
'This is a very efficient process to bring carbon from the surface to the interior. We found in the Southern Ocean there are five such funnels,' said Sallee.
The team also found that the eddies counterbalanced a different effect of strong winds -- that of releasing stored carbon by violent mixing of the sea.
'This does seem to be good news, but the thing is what will be the impact of climate change on the eddies? Will they stop, will they intensify? We have no idea,' said Sallee.
A changing climate could theoretically affect the nature and effect of the Southern Ocean eddies by changing ocean currents, intensifying winds or creating stark temperature spikes.
The findings mean that eddies must be taken into account in future climate models, said Sallee. They are not currently.
The study focused on the part of the Southern Ocean south of 35 degree south latitude.
The team could not say whether the same funnelling process would be at play in other seas, but Sallee said the Southern Ocean was 'one of the most energetic places on Earth', and the effect of eddies would likely be larger there than anywhere else.
There is also another carbon capturing process, not covered by this study, of CO2-producing micro organisms that live near the ocean surface sinking to the sea floor and settling there when they die.
This article is brought to you by SINGLES.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Ecstasy Impairs Memory; Massive Stars Likened to Vampires
Discovered: Tanzania might profit from global warming; massive stars suck their partners dry; it's hard to remember things on ecstasy; researching the benefits of barefoot running.
RELATED: How Obama Lost Climate Change
Ecstasy makes you forget. With rave rampaging across America once again, all you kandi kids might want to take note of new research that links the drug ecstasy with memory impairment. Scientists studied people who took about three ecstasy tablets per month for a year. Their memory skills deteriorated in subsequent lab tests. "It's been very, very difficult to convince people that there's a causative effect of the drug," says Vanderbilt University Medical Center neuroscientist Ronald Cowan. "This adds strong evidence to that." [Science News]
RELATED: Five Best Wednesday Columns
Massive stars are selfish partners. Two-thirds of massive stars orbit a partner star, but the relationship is often rocky, an international team of astronomers has discovered. Massive stars "suck material from their companions much like a vampire does," and sometimes they "melt together to become even more massive," according to a press release from Germany's University of Bonn. "The new insight into the lives of massive stars has a direct impact on the understanding of the final stages most massive stars experience," says Professor Norbert Langer. [University of Bonn]
RELATED: March Heat Broke 15,000 Records; Weather Could Have Deadly Effects
Climate change: a blessing in disguise for Tanzania? It's not too often that we get positive news about climate change. According to a study from researchers at Stanford University, the World Bank and Purdue University, the economy of developing African nation Tanzania stands to benefit from global warming. The droughts that will wreak havoc on the United States' agricultural output could be a boon for Tanzania, which stands to benefit from the higher commodity prices of corn, one of their exports. "This study highlights how government policies can influence the impact that we experience from the climate system," says Noah Diffenbaugh, assistant professor at Stanford's School of Earth Sciences. [Science Daily]
RELATED: What Exxon's CEO Proposes We Do About Global Warming: 'We'll Adapt'
Has barefoot running led to fewer injuries, or more? The University of Central Florida unpacks the legacy of Abebe Bikila, the man who earned a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics by being the first modern Olympian to ditch shoes and run barefoot. Many runners have followed his example, believing that barefoot running helps avoid running-related injuries. Carey Rothschild, a UCF instructor and physical therapist, reviewed an extensive body of research into barefoot running and even conducted a survey to determine whether the practice actually does decrease injuries. She was unable to prove barefoot running's purported health benefits. "The bottom line is that when a runner goes from shoes to no shoes, their body may not automatically change its gait," she said.
This article is brought to you by MATCH.
RELATED: How Obama Lost Climate Change
Ecstasy makes you forget. With rave rampaging across America once again, all you kandi kids might want to take note of new research that links the drug ecstasy with memory impairment. Scientists studied people who took about three ecstasy tablets per month for a year. Their memory skills deteriorated in subsequent lab tests. "It's been very, very difficult to convince people that there's a causative effect of the drug," says Vanderbilt University Medical Center neuroscientist Ronald Cowan. "This adds strong evidence to that." [Science News]
RELATED: Five Best Wednesday Columns
Massive stars are selfish partners. Two-thirds of massive stars orbit a partner star, but the relationship is often rocky, an international team of astronomers has discovered. Massive stars "suck material from their companions much like a vampire does," and sometimes they "melt together to become even more massive," according to a press release from Germany's University of Bonn. "The new insight into the lives of massive stars has a direct impact on the understanding of the final stages most massive stars experience," says Professor Norbert Langer. [University of Bonn]
RELATED: March Heat Broke 15,000 Records; Weather Could Have Deadly Effects
Climate change: a blessing in disguise for Tanzania? It's not too often that we get positive news about climate change. According to a study from researchers at Stanford University, the World Bank and Purdue University, the economy of developing African nation Tanzania stands to benefit from global warming. The droughts that will wreak havoc on the United States' agricultural output could be a boon for Tanzania, which stands to benefit from the higher commodity prices of corn, one of their exports. "This study highlights how government policies can influence the impact that we experience from the climate system," says Noah Diffenbaugh, assistant professor at Stanford's School of Earth Sciences. [Science Daily]
RELATED: What Exxon's CEO Proposes We Do About Global Warming: 'We'll Adapt'
Has barefoot running led to fewer injuries, or more? The University of Central Florida unpacks the legacy of Abebe Bikila, the man who earned a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics by being the first modern Olympian to ditch shoes and run barefoot. Many runners have followed his example, believing that barefoot running helps avoid running-related injuries. Carey Rothschild, a UCF instructor and physical therapist, reviewed an extensive body of research into barefoot running and even conducted a survey to determine whether the practice actually does decrease injuries. She was unable to prove barefoot running's purported health benefits. "The bottom line is that when a runner goes from shoes to no shoes, their body may not automatically change its gait," she said.
This article is brought to you by MATCH.
Deny This: Contested Himalayan Glaciers Really Are Melting, and Doing So at a Rapid Pace-Kind of Like Climate Change
Remember when climate change contrarians professed outrage over a few errors in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's last report? One of their favorite such mistakes involved an overestimation of the pace at which glaciers would melt at the "Third Pole," where the Indian subcontinent crashes into Asia. Some contrarians back in 2010 proceeded to deny that the glaciers of the Himalayas and associated mountain ranges were melting at all. But now, using satellites and on-the-ground surveys, scientists note that 82 glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau are retreating, 15 glaciers have dwindled in mass, and 7,090 glaciers have shrunk in size.
Why? The culprits include rising average temperatures characteristic of ongoing global warming and changes in precipitation, another sign of climate change, according to Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University and his colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The study appeared online in the journal Nature Climate Change on July 15 and is bad news for the hundreds of millions of people who rely on such glaciers to feed water into major rivers such as the Ganges, Mekong or Yangtze.
But climate contrarians have moved on, of course. This June, atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the only remaining climate contrarians actually trained in climate science, dismissed the documented 0.8 degree Celsius rise in average temperatures in the past 150 years or so as a small change during a talk at Sandia National Laboratory. Yet, that small change has resulted in events like chunks of ice double the size of Manhattan breaking free of the ancient Greenland ice sheet last week. Just a few years ago, an even bigger ice-massif crashed into the sea. Events that once happened every few decades in Greenland now happen every year or so.
That "small change" has also been enough for weird weather to play havoc around the world, whether it be the epic drought currently over-baking Midwestern corn crops or the torrents of rain unleashed this year on Beijing, killing at least 77 people, according to the Xinhua news agency. The list of weather-related disasters continues to get longer with each passing year and, while no single weather event can be tied directly to climate change, our continuing fossil-fuel burning loads the climate dice in favor of more and more snake-eye rolls such as deadly floods or searing droughts. It's all unfolding pretty much as predicted by climate scientists in the 1980s.
What's also unfolding pretty much as demanded by climate contrarians is a dearth of efforts to address the problem, maybe because we're all in denial. Global emissions of the greenhouse gases responsible for all this continue to grow, after taking a brief dip due to the Great Recession. Political and policy efforts to address the climate crisis, whether at the national or international level, seem spent (although there is some hope in efforts to buy time to combat climate change by cutting back on soot). Witness the climate talks in Durban, Cancun or Copenhagen. In the U.S. about the only leader still advocating for action to halt climate change is Bill McKibben, who has become somewhat of a climate Quixote, tilting for windmills and against the fossil fuel industry.
That industry, particularly titans such as ExxonMobil, has expressly achieved the goals laid out in an American Petroleum Institute memo from the 1990s recently reproduced in Steve Coll's book Private Empire:
- Average citizen "understands" (recognizes) uncertainties in climate science
- Recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the "conventional wisdom"
- Media "understands" (recognizes) uncertainties in climate science
- Media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognition of the validity of viewpoints challenging current "conventional wisdom"
- Those promoting the Kyoto treaty [a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions] on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.
All five of those items on the list can be checked off. That's a big part of the reason why climate change has not featured as an issue in this year's U.S. presidential election.
What hope there is at present for addressing climate change in the U.S. lies in natural gas, dismissed as a nuisance for decades by the oil and coal industries. The "last fossil fuel," primarily the molecule known as methane, is itself a potent greenhouse gas. However, burning natural gas to generate electricity produces roughly half as much carbon dioxide the most ubiquitous greenhouse gas as burning coal does. Already, this year, burning natural gas accounts for as much electricity as burning coal for the first time in U.S. history, and its use has helped drop U.S. emissions by 430 million metric tons over the past five years, according to the International Energy Agency.
If fracking for shale gas can work for China too, global emissions could begin to drop (though it appears more likely at present that the U.S. will export highly polluting coal to China in greater quantities than any shale gas know-how). And if there's enough natural gas and there certainly is if we can learn to tap the methane molecules ensconced in icy cages throughout the world's oceans we might even use it to displace oil as the primary fuel for our cars and trucks.
At the same time, renewables, such as solar and wind, continue to grow by leaps and bounds, and nuclear power, though it may be moribund in the U.S., is gathering a renewed head of steam in countries such as China.
None of this will happen fast enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a sufficiently dramatic pace to stop climate change. After all, burning natural gas still means more CO2 molecules in the atmosphere trapping heat. Cheap natural gas will also likely slow the race to develop and deploy alternative energy as well as the sprint (in geologic terms) to a global warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius. We're on track to achieve that over the next 40 years or so, with natural gas or without it.
That means that the people of 2100, or even 2500, will have us to blame if they don't like the weather. In the shorter term, we'll all have to learn to adapt to more sea level rise, weird weather, acidified oceans and other climate change impacts. The Earth is different now and will change even more fewer and fewer glaciers at the Third Pole, less ice at the North Pole and, who knows, a few hardy plants taking root in Antarctica for the first time in millennia. There's just no denying it.
Image: NASA Earth Observatory
Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
This article is brought to you by ONLINE DATING.
Why? The culprits include rising average temperatures characteristic of ongoing global warming and changes in precipitation, another sign of climate change, according to Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University and his colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The study appeared online in the journal Nature Climate Change on July 15 and is bad news for the hundreds of millions of people who rely on such glaciers to feed water into major rivers such as the Ganges, Mekong or Yangtze.
But climate contrarians have moved on, of course. This June, atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the only remaining climate contrarians actually trained in climate science, dismissed the documented 0.8 degree Celsius rise in average temperatures in the past 150 years or so as a small change during a talk at Sandia National Laboratory. Yet, that small change has resulted in events like chunks of ice double the size of Manhattan breaking free of the ancient Greenland ice sheet last week. Just a few years ago, an even bigger ice-massif crashed into the sea. Events that once happened every few decades in Greenland now happen every year or so.
That "small change" has also been enough for weird weather to play havoc around the world, whether it be the epic drought currently over-baking Midwestern corn crops or the torrents of rain unleashed this year on Beijing, killing at least 77 people, according to the Xinhua news agency. The list of weather-related disasters continues to get longer with each passing year and, while no single weather event can be tied directly to climate change, our continuing fossil-fuel burning loads the climate dice in favor of more and more snake-eye rolls such as deadly floods or searing droughts. It's all unfolding pretty much as predicted by climate scientists in the 1980s.
What's also unfolding pretty much as demanded by climate contrarians is a dearth of efforts to address the problem, maybe because we're all in denial. Global emissions of the greenhouse gases responsible for all this continue to grow, after taking a brief dip due to the Great Recession. Political and policy efforts to address the climate crisis, whether at the national or international level, seem spent (although there is some hope in efforts to buy time to combat climate change by cutting back on soot). Witness the climate talks in Durban, Cancun or Copenhagen. In the U.S. about the only leader still advocating for action to halt climate change is Bill McKibben, who has become somewhat of a climate Quixote, tilting for windmills and against the fossil fuel industry.
That industry, particularly titans such as ExxonMobil, has expressly achieved the goals laid out in an American Petroleum Institute memo from the 1990s recently reproduced in Steve Coll's book Private Empire:
- Average citizen "understands" (recognizes) uncertainties in climate science
- Recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the "conventional wisdom"
- Media "understands" (recognizes) uncertainties in climate science
- Media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognition of the validity of viewpoints challenging current "conventional wisdom"
- Those promoting the Kyoto treaty [a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions] on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.
All five of those items on the list can be checked off. That's a big part of the reason why climate change has not featured as an issue in this year's U.S. presidential election.
What hope there is at present for addressing climate change in the U.S. lies in natural gas, dismissed as a nuisance for decades by the oil and coal industries. The "last fossil fuel," primarily the molecule known as methane, is itself a potent greenhouse gas. However, burning natural gas to generate electricity produces roughly half as much carbon dioxide the most ubiquitous greenhouse gas as burning coal does. Already, this year, burning natural gas accounts for as much electricity as burning coal for the first time in U.S. history, and its use has helped drop U.S. emissions by 430 million metric tons over the past five years, according to the International Energy Agency.
If fracking for shale gas can work for China too, global emissions could begin to drop (though it appears more likely at present that the U.S. will export highly polluting coal to China in greater quantities than any shale gas know-how). And if there's enough natural gas and there certainly is if we can learn to tap the methane molecules ensconced in icy cages throughout the world's oceans we might even use it to displace oil as the primary fuel for our cars and trucks.
At the same time, renewables, such as solar and wind, continue to grow by leaps and bounds, and nuclear power, though it may be moribund in the U.S., is gathering a renewed head of steam in countries such as China.
None of this will happen fast enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a sufficiently dramatic pace to stop climate change. After all, burning natural gas still means more CO2 molecules in the atmosphere trapping heat. Cheap natural gas will also likely slow the race to develop and deploy alternative energy as well as the sprint (in geologic terms) to a global warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius. We're on track to achieve that over the next 40 years or so, with natural gas or without it.
That means that the people of 2100, or even 2500, will have us to blame if they don't like the weather. In the shorter term, we'll all have to learn to adapt to more sea level rise, weird weather, acidified oceans and other climate change impacts. The Earth is different now and will change even more fewer and fewer glaciers at the Third Pole, less ice at the North Pole and, who knows, a few hardy plants taking root in Antarctica for the first time in millennia. There's just no denying it.
Image: NASA Earth Observatory
Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
This article is brought to you by ONLINE DATING.
Analysis: Evidence for climate extremes, costs, gets more local
OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists are finding evidence that man-made climate change has raised the risks of individual weather events, such as floods or heatwaves, marking a big step towards pinpointing local costs and ways to adapt to freak conditions.
'We're seeing a great deal of progress in attributing a human fingerprint to the probability of particular events or series of events,' said Christopher Field, co-chairman of a U.N. report due in 2014 about the impacts of climate change.
Experts have long blamed a build-up of greenhouse gas emissions for raising worldwide temperatures and causing desertification, floods, droughts, heatwaves, more powerful storms and rising sea levels.
But until recently they have said that naturally very hot, wet, cold, dry or windy weather might explain any single extreme event, like the current drought in the United States or a rare melt of ice in Greenland in July.
But for some extremes, that is now changing.
A study this month, for instance, showed that greenhouse gas emissions had raised the chances of the severe heatwave in Texas in 2011 and unusual heat in Britain in late 2011. Other studies of extremes are under way.
Growing evidence that the dice are loaded towards ever more severe local weather may make it easier for experts to explain global warming to the public, pin down costs and guide investments in everything from roads to flood defenses.
'One of the ironies of climate change is that we have more papers published on the costs of climate change in 2100 than we have published on the costs today. I think that is ridiculous,' said Myles Allen, head of climate research at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.
'We can't (work out current costs) without being able to make the link to extreme weather,' he said. 'And once you've worked out how much it costs that raises the question of who is going to pay.'
Industrialized nations agree they should take the lead in cutting emissions since they have burnt fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gases, since the Industrial Revolution. But they oppose the idea of liability for damage.
Almost 200 nations have agreed to work out a new deal by the end of 2015 to combat climate change, after repeated setbacks. China, the United States and India are now the top national emitters of greenhouse gases.
Field, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at the University of Stanford, said that the goal was to carry out studies of extreme weather events almost immediately after they happen, helping expose the risks.
'Everybody who needs to make decisions about the future - things like building codes, infrastructure planning, insurance - can take advantage of the fact that the risks are changing but we have a lot of influence over what those risks are.'
FLOODS
Another report last year indicated that floods 12 years ago in Britain - among the countries most easily studied because of it has long records - were made more likely by warming. And climate shifts also reduced the risks of flooding in 2001.
Previously, the European heatwave of 2003 that killed perhaps 70,000 people was the only extreme where scientists had discerned a human fingerprint. In 2004, they said that global warming had at least doubled the risks of such unusual heat.
The new statistical reviews are difficult because they have to tease out the impact of greenhouse gases from natural variations, such as periodic El Nino warmings of the Pacific, sun-dimming volcanic dust or shifts in the sun's output.
So far, extreme heat is the easiest to link to global warming after a research initiative led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Meteorological Office.
'Heatwaves are easier to attribute than heavy rainfall, and drought is very difficult given evidence for large droughts in the past,' said Gabriele Hegerl of the University of Edinburgh.
Scientists often liken climate change to loading dice to get more sixes, or a baseball player on steroids who hits more home runs. That is now going to the local from the global scale.
Field said climate science would always include doubt since weather is chaotic. It is not as certain as physics, where scientists could this month express 99.999 percent certainty they had detected the Higgs boson elementary particle.
'This new attribution science is showing the power of our understanding, but it also illustrates where the limits are,' he said.
A report by Field's U.N. group last year showed that more weather extremes that can be linked to greenhouse warming, such as the number of high temperature extremes and the fact that the rising fraction of rainfall falls in downpours.
But scientists warn against going too far in blaming climate change for extreme events.
Unprecedented floods in Thailand last year, for instance, that caused $45 billion in damage according to a World Bank estimate, were caused by people hemming in rivers and raising water levels rather than by climate change, a study showed.
'We have to be a bit cautious about blaming it all on climate change,' Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said of extremes in 2012.
Taken together, many extremes are a sign of overall change.
'If you look all over the world, we have a great disastrous drought in North America ... you have the same situation in the Mediterranean... If you look at all the extremes together you can say that these are indicators of global warming,' said Friedrich-Wilhelm Gerstengabe, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
(Additional reporting by Sara Ledwith in London; Editing by Louise Ireland)
This article is brought to you by DATING.
'We're seeing a great deal of progress in attributing a human fingerprint to the probability of particular events or series of events,' said Christopher Field, co-chairman of a U.N. report due in 2014 about the impacts of climate change.
Experts have long blamed a build-up of greenhouse gas emissions for raising worldwide temperatures and causing desertification, floods, droughts, heatwaves, more powerful storms and rising sea levels.
But until recently they have said that naturally very hot, wet, cold, dry or windy weather might explain any single extreme event, like the current drought in the United States or a rare melt of ice in Greenland in July.
But for some extremes, that is now changing.
A study this month, for instance, showed that greenhouse gas emissions had raised the chances of the severe heatwave in Texas in 2011 and unusual heat in Britain in late 2011. Other studies of extremes are under way.
Growing evidence that the dice are loaded towards ever more severe local weather may make it easier for experts to explain global warming to the public, pin down costs and guide investments in everything from roads to flood defenses.
'One of the ironies of climate change is that we have more papers published on the costs of climate change in 2100 than we have published on the costs today. I think that is ridiculous,' said Myles Allen, head of climate research at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.
'We can't (work out current costs) without being able to make the link to extreme weather,' he said. 'And once you've worked out how much it costs that raises the question of who is going to pay.'
Industrialized nations agree they should take the lead in cutting emissions since they have burnt fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gases, since the Industrial Revolution. But they oppose the idea of liability for damage.
Almost 200 nations have agreed to work out a new deal by the end of 2015 to combat climate change, after repeated setbacks. China, the United States and India are now the top national emitters of greenhouse gases.
Field, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at the University of Stanford, said that the goal was to carry out studies of extreme weather events almost immediately after they happen, helping expose the risks.
'Everybody who needs to make decisions about the future - things like building codes, infrastructure planning, insurance - can take advantage of the fact that the risks are changing but we have a lot of influence over what those risks are.'
FLOODS
Another report last year indicated that floods 12 years ago in Britain - among the countries most easily studied because of it has long records - were made more likely by warming. And climate shifts also reduced the risks of flooding in 2001.
Previously, the European heatwave of 2003 that killed perhaps 70,000 people was the only extreme where scientists had discerned a human fingerprint. In 2004, they said that global warming had at least doubled the risks of such unusual heat.
The new statistical reviews are difficult because they have to tease out the impact of greenhouse gases from natural variations, such as periodic El Nino warmings of the Pacific, sun-dimming volcanic dust or shifts in the sun's output.
So far, extreme heat is the easiest to link to global warming after a research initiative led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Meteorological Office.
'Heatwaves are easier to attribute than heavy rainfall, and drought is very difficult given evidence for large droughts in the past,' said Gabriele Hegerl of the University of Edinburgh.
Scientists often liken climate change to loading dice to get more sixes, or a baseball player on steroids who hits more home runs. That is now going to the local from the global scale.
Field said climate science would always include doubt since weather is chaotic. It is not as certain as physics, where scientists could this month express 99.999 percent certainty they had detected the Higgs boson elementary particle.
'This new attribution science is showing the power of our understanding, but it also illustrates where the limits are,' he said.
A report by Field's U.N. group last year showed that more weather extremes that can be linked to greenhouse warming, such as the number of high temperature extremes and the fact that the rising fraction of rainfall falls in downpours.
But scientists warn against going too far in blaming climate change for extreme events.
Unprecedented floods in Thailand last year, for instance, that caused $45 billion in damage according to a World Bank estimate, were caused by people hemming in rivers and raising water levels rather than by climate change, a study showed.
'We have to be a bit cautious about blaming it all on climate change,' Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said of extremes in 2012.
Taken together, many extremes are a sign of overall change.
'If you look all over the world, we have a great disastrous drought in North America ... you have the same situation in the Mediterranean... If you look at all the extremes together you can say that these are indicators of global warming,' said Friedrich-Wilhelm Gerstengabe, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
(Additional reporting by Sara Ledwith in London; Editing by Louise Ireland)
This article is brought to you by DATING.
Japanese men drop inhibition, turn to parasols to beat the heat
TOKYO (Reuters) - It's summer in Japan, which means shaved ice, cold noodles and parasols against the blinding sun - for men.
While women have used sun umbrellas, or 'higasa,' for centuries, power conservation and increasingly hot summers have sent sales of men's sun umbrellas sharply higher, with department stores across Japan scrambling for stocks.
'There's been a spike in demand for men's sun umbrellas of about three times since last summer,' said Mayumi Mio, a spokeswoman at Takashimaya, a major Tokyo department store.
'Most of them buy it for business when they have to step outside of the office to go to a meeting. They feel that it's rude to show up to work or a meeting all sweaty and worn out from the heat.'
White, natural skin has long been thought beautiful for Asian women, and Japanese men have also become increasingly skin-conscious in recent years. But the real jump in sales came last summer, after power cuts in the wake of the March 11 disaster prompted new ways to beat the heat.
According to the Environment Ministry, the combination of casual business attire such as short sleeves and no tie, and a sun umbrella, can cut up to 20% of heat stress, providing almost the same impact as walking under the shade cast by trees.
Kazuhiro Miyatake, the fourth generation to own and run the Shinsaibashi-Miyatake umbrella specialty store in the western city of Osaka, feels it's high time that men be able to carry parasols as well, if they want.
'It's your own portable shade you can carry around anywhere,' he said.
While women's parasols run to lighter colors - pink, beige, white and red as well as black - those for men are more somber shades of blue, grey, and green. They also tend to be larger.
Prices can run from as little as 2,000 yen ($25.56) up to 17,000 yen ($220), depending on the design and the materials.
'I believe if there was a 'sun umbrella God', I'm positive it wouldn't discriminate between men and women,' said Miyatake, who sells a thousand a year. 'If men want to use sun umbrellas, they should be able to without shame.'
Japan is currently in the grip of a heat wave that sent temperatures in areas around Tokyo to well over 37 degrees Celsius (99 degrees Fahrenheit) by 1:00 p.m. (0400 GMT) on Friday. ($1 = 78.2400 Japanese yen)
(Reporting by Teppei Kasai, editing by Elaine Lies)
This news article is brought to you by CELEBRITY GOSSIP NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
While women have used sun umbrellas, or 'higasa,' for centuries, power conservation and increasingly hot summers have sent sales of men's sun umbrellas sharply higher, with department stores across Japan scrambling for stocks.
'There's been a spike in demand for men's sun umbrellas of about three times since last summer,' said Mayumi Mio, a spokeswoman at Takashimaya, a major Tokyo department store.
'Most of them buy it for business when they have to step outside of the office to go to a meeting. They feel that it's rude to show up to work or a meeting all sweaty and worn out from the heat.'
White, natural skin has long been thought beautiful for Asian women, and Japanese men have also become increasingly skin-conscious in recent years. But the real jump in sales came last summer, after power cuts in the wake of the March 11 disaster prompted new ways to beat the heat.
According to the Environment Ministry, the combination of casual business attire such as short sleeves and no tie, and a sun umbrella, can cut up to 20% of heat stress, providing almost the same impact as walking under the shade cast by trees.
Kazuhiro Miyatake, the fourth generation to own and run the Shinsaibashi-Miyatake umbrella specialty store in the western city of Osaka, feels it's high time that men be able to carry parasols as well, if they want.
'It's your own portable shade you can carry around anywhere,' he said.
While women's parasols run to lighter colors - pink, beige, white and red as well as black - those for men are more somber shades of blue, grey, and green. They also tend to be larger.
Prices can run from as little as 2,000 yen ($25.56) up to 17,000 yen ($220), depending on the design and the materials.
'I believe if there was a 'sun umbrella God', I'm positive it wouldn't discriminate between men and women,' said Miyatake, who sells a thousand a year. 'If men want to use sun umbrellas, they should be able to without shame.'
Japan is currently in the grip of a heat wave that sent temperatures in areas around Tokyo to well over 37 degrees Celsius (99 degrees Fahrenheit) by 1:00 p.m. (0400 GMT) on Friday. ($1 = 78.2400 Japanese yen)
(Reporting by Teppei Kasai, editing by Elaine Lies)
This news article is brought to you by CELEBRITY GOSSIP NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Microsoft reportedly won't let Dell build a tablet for Windows RT launch
It's no secret that Microsoft is being much more careful than usual when it comes to which vendors it will let make tablets based on its Windows RT operating system for its initial Windows 8 launch this fall. And according to Unwired View, only four of Microsoft's (MSFT) original equipment manufacturers have been given the green light to make Windows RT tablets so far: Asus (2357), Toshiba (6502), Samsung (005930) and Lenovo. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) had originally been asked to make a Windows RT tablet, but the company declined the offer last month, thus opening up speculation that Dell (DELL) might take its place.However, Business Insider's Julie Bort reached out to see whether Dell is actively involved in making a Windows RT tablet this year and has received a rather cagey answer, as Dell would only confirm that it's working on a Windows-based tablet for release at some point in the future and wouldn't go into specifics about specs or release dates.
Bort also mentions that "since Microsoft announced it would be competing with its OEM partners making tablets, Dell has released a bunch of new high-end ultrabooks that can run Linux," meaning relations between Microsoft and Dell might not be the warmest at the moment.
Read [Unwired View] Read [Business Insider]
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Zoloft Treats Fungal Infections Too; Blind Mice See the Light
Discovered: Weird weather informs beliefs about global warming; sight brought to blind mice; encroachment on tropical reserves; the popular anti-depressive Zoloft can prevent fungal infections.
RELATED: Starbucks Worried Climate Change Means No More Coffee
Tropical reserves aren't so pristine. Setting aside certain swaths of land as untouchable may be one of our nobler impulses as inhabitants of the Earth. But a new look at tropical reserves reveals that what we do just beyond reserve borders still endangers these delicate ecosystems. The logging, deforestation and fire activity happening at reserve peripheries can cause a decline in the health of off-limits areas. "These parks are like imperfect mirrors," says research leader William Laurance, an Australian ecologist. "They're partially reflecting what's going on around them." Laurance and nearly 200 other coauthors culled their findings from a survey of 60 reserves across 36 nations. [Science News]
RELATED: Getting the Arab Spring Greener; Being Burned by a Heat Wave
Beliefs about global warming change like the weather. Don't you love it when people interpret cold summertime weather as proof that global warming isn't real? Researchers at NYU and Temple University conducted a study about such misperceptions, and they conclude that local weather trends do indeed affect beliefs about global warming. People experiencing warmer than average weather are more likely to give credence to global warming. The researchers write that climate change is "a complex issue with which Americans have little direct experience. As they try to make sense of this difficult issue, many people use fluctuations in local temperature to reassess their beliefs about the existence of global warming." [NYU]
RELATED: Good News: The Economy Is Up, Bad News: So Are Carbon Emissions
Bringing sight to blind mice. Scientists have discovered a way of temporarily restoring sight to blind mice. Using a chemical known as AAQ, they were able to make normally unreceptive rods and cones in mouse retinas sensitive to light. "This is a major advance in the field of vision restoration," said Dr. Russell Van Gelder, chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Washington, Seattle. The researchers hope their findings will lead to sight-restoring treatments for humans with common forms of inherited and degenerative, age-related blindness. [UC Berkeley]
RELATED: Another Moon for Pluto; Cows Freak Out About Global Warming
A cure-all for depression and fungal meningitis. If you're taking Zoloft, here's some good news: it's less likely you'll contract a deadly fungal infection! Who wouldn't be a little happier knowing that? Biologists at Texas A&M University have discovered that the the widely prescribed antidepressant inhibits the growth of fungal meningitis. More than half a million people die every year from such infections, according to the CDC. "The point here is that if there is a drug that already exists, is known to be well-tolerated, and has alternative uses, that's a good thing," says Prof. Matthew S. Sachs. "The billion dollars it would take to bring a drug to the market—that's already done." [Texas A&M University]
This news article is brought to you by STOCK MARKET BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
RELATED: Starbucks Worried Climate Change Means No More Coffee
Tropical reserves aren't so pristine. Setting aside certain swaths of land as untouchable may be one of our nobler impulses as inhabitants of the Earth. But a new look at tropical reserves reveals that what we do just beyond reserve borders still endangers these delicate ecosystems. The logging, deforestation and fire activity happening at reserve peripheries can cause a decline in the health of off-limits areas. "These parks are like imperfect mirrors," says research leader William Laurance, an Australian ecologist. "They're partially reflecting what's going on around them." Laurance and nearly 200 other coauthors culled their findings from a survey of 60 reserves across 36 nations. [Science News]
RELATED: Getting the Arab Spring Greener; Being Burned by a Heat Wave
Beliefs about global warming change like the weather. Don't you love it when people interpret cold summertime weather as proof that global warming isn't real? Researchers at NYU and Temple University conducted a study about such misperceptions, and they conclude that local weather trends do indeed affect beliefs about global warming. People experiencing warmer than average weather are more likely to give credence to global warming. The researchers write that climate change is "a complex issue with which Americans have little direct experience. As they try to make sense of this difficult issue, many people use fluctuations in local temperature to reassess their beliefs about the existence of global warming." [NYU]
RELATED: Good News: The Economy Is Up, Bad News: So Are Carbon Emissions
Bringing sight to blind mice. Scientists have discovered a way of temporarily restoring sight to blind mice. Using a chemical known as AAQ, they were able to make normally unreceptive rods and cones in mouse retinas sensitive to light. "This is a major advance in the field of vision restoration," said Dr. Russell Van Gelder, chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Washington, Seattle. The researchers hope their findings will lead to sight-restoring treatments for humans with common forms of inherited and degenerative, age-related blindness. [UC Berkeley]
RELATED: Another Moon for Pluto; Cows Freak Out About Global Warming
A cure-all for depression and fungal meningitis. If you're taking Zoloft, here's some good news: it's less likely you'll contract a deadly fungal infection! Who wouldn't be a little happier knowing that? Biologists at Texas A&M University have discovered that the the widely prescribed antidepressant inhibits the growth of fungal meningitis. More than half a million people die every year from such infections, according to the CDC. "The point here is that if there is a drug that already exists, is known to be well-tolerated, and has alternative uses, that's a good thing," says Prof. Matthew S. Sachs. "The billion dollars it would take to bring a drug to the market—that's already done." [Texas A&M University]
This news article is brought to you by STOCK MARKET BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Brussels bids to rescue carbon-trading scheme
The European Commission moved to fix the EU's sickly Emissions Trading Scheme on Wednesday, a centre-piece of EU climate policy now in trouble, as certificates fail to find buyers in times of recession.
'Is it wise to continue to flood an already oversupplied market? Clearly not,' said Europe's energy commissioner Connie Hedegaard on Twitter. 'That's why (we) propose to change the auction time profile.'
Brussels proposes a delay or freeze in auctions of the certificates from 2013 to 2020 to prop up sagging prices.
The ETS scheme was set up in 2003 to discourage polluters and simultaneously raise funds to invest in clean and low-carbon energy, the certificates being held by industries who may trade them if unused.
But the system is in trouble thanks to oversupply of carbon allowances to industries which have slowed down in recessionary times.
Prices Wednesday were at seven euros ($8.50) a tonne in comparison to the 24 to 30 euros needed to invest in renewables.
As the scheme widens and goes into its third trading period in 2013, some 8.5 billion tonnes of carbon allowances are to be put up for auction between then and 2020.
Hedegaard sees three options, from a small freeze of 400 million tonnes to a medium freeze of 900 million or a more significant intervention affecting 1.4 billion tonnes.
The European Parliament, which is involved in the decision-making, favours the steepest option, which would bring the price up to 14 or 15 euros.
Hedegaard said the change in the timing for auctions was 'a short term measure' to improve the functioning of the market.
'If the political will is there all the necessary decisions can be taken before the next auctioning phase starts at the beginning of 2013.'
But some industrial lobbies, backed by supporters inside the commission, are opposed to any move to prop up prices. The proposals 'are not a good solution', said the European Association of Metals, Eurometaux.
Some commissioners also are opposed to any intervention by the EU executive on a market, despite the fact it was set up by the EU.
Under the ETS system, member states each year allocate two billion tonnes of carbon emissions, or around half of the CO2 emissions produced across the 27-nation bloc, in sectors such as steel, chemicals and energy.
Eleven thousand companies in the 27 EU states and three others buy some of the certificates, the remainder currently being handed out free of charge and traded if unused.
But from 2013 none of the certificates will be free as the EU sticks to a pledge to bring emissions from industrial installations down to 21 percent of their 2005 levels.
This news article is brought to you by DATING AND RELATIONSHIP ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
'Is it wise to continue to flood an already oversupplied market? Clearly not,' said Europe's energy commissioner Connie Hedegaard on Twitter. 'That's why (we) propose to change the auction time profile.'
Brussels proposes a delay or freeze in auctions of the certificates from 2013 to 2020 to prop up sagging prices.
The ETS scheme was set up in 2003 to discourage polluters and simultaneously raise funds to invest in clean and low-carbon energy, the certificates being held by industries who may trade them if unused.
But the system is in trouble thanks to oversupply of carbon allowances to industries which have slowed down in recessionary times.
Prices Wednesday were at seven euros ($8.50) a tonne in comparison to the 24 to 30 euros needed to invest in renewables.
As the scheme widens and goes into its third trading period in 2013, some 8.5 billion tonnes of carbon allowances are to be put up for auction between then and 2020.
Hedegaard sees three options, from a small freeze of 400 million tonnes to a medium freeze of 900 million or a more significant intervention affecting 1.4 billion tonnes.
The European Parliament, which is involved in the decision-making, favours the steepest option, which would bring the price up to 14 or 15 euros.
Hedegaard said the change in the timing for auctions was 'a short term measure' to improve the functioning of the market.
'If the political will is there all the necessary decisions can be taken before the next auctioning phase starts at the beginning of 2013.'
But some industrial lobbies, backed by supporters inside the commission, are opposed to any move to prop up prices. The proposals 'are not a good solution', said the European Association of Metals, Eurometaux.
Some commissioners also are opposed to any intervention by the EU executive on a market, despite the fact it was set up by the EU.
Under the ETS system, member states each year allocate two billion tonnes of carbon emissions, or around half of the CO2 emissions produced across the 27-nation bloc, in sectors such as steel, chemicals and energy.
Eleven thousand companies in the 27 EU states and three others buy some of the certificates, the remainder currently being handed out free of charge and traded if unused.
But from 2013 none of the certificates will be free as the EU sticks to a pledge to bring emissions from industrial installations down to 21 percent of their 2005 levels.
This news article is brought to you by DATING AND RELATIONSHIP ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
Cavers find mass fossil deposit Down Under
Australian scientists said Wednesday cavers had stumbled upon a vast network of tunnels containing fossils that could offer key insights into species' adaptation to climate change.
The limestone caves in Australia's far north contained what University of Queensland paleontologist Gilbert Price described as a 'fossil goldmine' of species ranging from minute rodents and frogs to giant kangaroos.
Once part of an ancient rainforest, the remote site now lies in arid grassland and Price said the fossilised remains could hold key clues about how the creatures had adapted to climate change and evolved to their current forms.
The caves' oldest specimens are estimated to be 500,000 years old. Price said they lived in a period of major aridification of central Australia and retreat of the rainforest that triggered a 'formal extinction event'.
'What we're trying to do up here is really look at the fossils and look at the animals and see how they responded to those prehistoric climatic changes, and that's something that's really quite relevant to today,' Price told AFP.
He said the caves could serve as an important benchmark to contrast modern relatives against, to understand how they had evolved.
'We've got the question of what the effect of modern climate change is going to be on the organisms that we have around us, and the reality is we just don't know because we don't have any significant period of ecological sampling of the modern faunas,' said Price.
'Just having an understanding of how they responded in the past is incredible, it's something that we can use and plug into models for conservation going into the future.'
The smaller creatures were thought to have been carried into the cave by a predator such as an owl, while the larger ones, including a 2.2-metre (7.2-feet), 180-kilogram (396 pounds) mega kangaroo, probably tumbled into it through a hole.
It is slow work, with access to the caves difficult and time-consuming. Price said it would take a year to work through the 120 kilograms of fossil-rich sediment they had managed to carry out of the site on foot so far.
Local cavers had uncovered more tunnels in the past week alone, each producing 'something of significance' and Price said there was 'potentially many lifetimes worth of work in the area'.
This news article is brought to you by ECONOMY BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
The limestone caves in Australia's far north contained what University of Queensland paleontologist Gilbert Price described as a 'fossil goldmine' of species ranging from minute rodents and frogs to giant kangaroos.
Once part of an ancient rainforest, the remote site now lies in arid grassland and Price said the fossilised remains could hold key clues about how the creatures had adapted to climate change and evolved to their current forms.
The caves' oldest specimens are estimated to be 500,000 years old. Price said they lived in a period of major aridification of central Australia and retreat of the rainforest that triggered a 'formal extinction event'.
'What we're trying to do up here is really look at the fossils and look at the animals and see how they responded to those prehistoric climatic changes, and that's something that's really quite relevant to today,' Price told AFP.
He said the caves could serve as an important benchmark to contrast modern relatives against, to understand how they had evolved.
'We've got the question of what the effect of modern climate change is going to be on the organisms that we have around us, and the reality is we just don't know because we don't have any significant period of ecological sampling of the modern faunas,' said Price.
'Just having an understanding of how they responded in the past is incredible, it's something that we can use and plug into models for conservation going into the future.'
The smaller creatures were thought to have been carried into the cave by a predator such as an owl, while the larger ones, including a 2.2-metre (7.2-feet), 180-kilogram (396 pounds) mega kangaroo, probably tumbled into it through a hole.
It is slow work, with access to the caves difficult and time-consuming. Price said it would take a year to work through the 120 kilograms of fossil-rich sediment they had managed to carry out of the site on foot so far.
Local cavers had uncovered more tunnels in the past week alone, each producing 'something of significance' and Price said there was 'potentially many lifetimes worth of work in the area'.
This news article is brought to you by ECONOMY BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Midwest cities see increase in dangerously hot weather: report
(Reuters) - Dangerously hot summer days have become more common across the U.S. Midwest in the last 60 years, and the region will face more potentially deadly weather as the climate warms, according to a report issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists on Wednesday.
The report looked at weather trends in five major urban areas - Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Minneapolis and St. Louis - along with weather in nearby smaller cities such as Peoria, Illinois, and Toledo, Ohio. The report focused on the Midwest because of its numerous major population centers, and because it is projected to face more heat waves with climate change.
The report found that the number of hot, humid days has increased, on average, across the Midwest since the 1940s and 1950s, while hot, dry days have become hotter.
Finding relief from the heat during the summer has become more difficult, as all the cities studied now have fewer cool, dry days in the summer, and nighttime temperatures during hot periods have risen.
'Nighttime is typically when people get relief, especially those who don't have air conditioning,' said Steve Frenkel, Union of Concerned Scientists' Midwest office director. 'The risks of heat-related illness and death increase with high nighttime temperatures.'
The report found that heat waves lasting three days or longer have become more common. St. Louis, for example, has more than doubled its number of three-day heat waves since the 1940s. Studies have linked at least three consecutive days of high temperature and humidity to more deaths.
Extreme heat and humidity can be lethal. In Chicago, more than 700 deaths were attributed to a heat wave in July 1995. More recently, extreme heat in Russia in 2010 led to an estimated 55,000 deaths.
With more extreme summertime heat, annual deaths in Chicago are projected to increase from 143 from 2020-2029 to 300 between 2090-2099, according to the report.
The report warned that conditions could get much worse if emissions of gases believed to cause global warming continue at their current pace, or at a higher pace.
Chicago, for example, could see more than 70 days with temperatures of 90 Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) each year toward the end of the century, on average, if emissions continue at the current pace. Under a higher-emissions scenario, dangerously hot days over 100 F (38 C) in Chicago could increase dramatically, producing a month of such days, the report said.
Hot, humid temperatures are tougher on the elderly, whose percentage in the population is increasing. About 20 percent of U.S. residents are projected to be over age 65 by 2030, up from about 13 percent now, according to the report.
'We must take preventative measures to protect public health during extreme heat events, but the only way to ensure these heat waves are not a threat in the future is by reducing the harmful emissions that are driving them in the first place,' said Frenkel.
Though the study focused on weather in the last six decades through 2011, the summer of 2012 has so far reflected a continued warming trend.
June temperatures contributed to a record-warm first half of the year and the warmest 12-month period the nation has experienced since recordkeeping began in 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In the Midwest, the U.S. corn yield is seen at a 10-year low due to an expanding drought.
(Additional reporting by Sam Nelson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
This article is brought to you by FREE PERSONALS.
The report looked at weather trends in five major urban areas - Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Minneapolis and St. Louis - along with weather in nearby smaller cities such as Peoria, Illinois, and Toledo, Ohio. The report focused on the Midwest because of its numerous major population centers, and because it is projected to face more heat waves with climate change.
The report found that the number of hot, humid days has increased, on average, across the Midwest since the 1940s and 1950s, while hot, dry days have become hotter.
Finding relief from the heat during the summer has become more difficult, as all the cities studied now have fewer cool, dry days in the summer, and nighttime temperatures during hot periods have risen.
'Nighttime is typically when people get relief, especially those who don't have air conditioning,' said Steve Frenkel, Union of Concerned Scientists' Midwest office director. 'The risks of heat-related illness and death increase with high nighttime temperatures.'
The report found that heat waves lasting three days or longer have become more common. St. Louis, for example, has more than doubled its number of three-day heat waves since the 1940s. Studies have linked at least three consecutive days of high temperature and humidity to more deaths.
Extreme heat and humidity can be lethal. In Chicago, more than 700 deaths were attributed to a heat wave in July 1995. More recently, extreme heat in Russia in 2010 led to an estimated 55,000 deaths.
With more extreme summertime heat, annual deaths in Chicago are projected to increase from 143 from 2020-2029 to 300 between 2090-2099, according to the report.
The report warned that conditions could get much worse if emissions of gases believed to cause global warming continue at their current pace, or at a higher pace.
Chicago, for example, could see more than 70 days with temperatures of 90 Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) each year toward the end of the century, on average, if emissions continue at the current pace. Under a higher-emissions scenario, dangerously hot days over 100 F (38 C) in Chicago could increase dramatically, producing a month of such days, the report said.
Hot, humid temperatures are tougher on the elderly, whose percentage in the population is increasing. About 20 percent of U.S. residents are projected to be over age 65 by 2030, up from about 13 percent now, according to the report.
'We must take preventative measures to protect public health during extreme heat events, but the only way to ensure these heat waves are not a threat in the future is by reducing the harmful emissions that are driving them in the first place,' said Frenkel.
Though the study focused on weather in the last six decades through 2011, the summer of 2012 has so far reflected a continued warming trend.
June temperatures contributed to a record-warm first half of the year and the warmest 12-month period the nation has experienced since recordkeeping began in 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In the Midwest, the U.S. corn yield is seen at a 10-year low due to an expanding drought.
(Additional reporting by Sam Nelson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
This article is brought to you by FREE PERSONALS.
Southern French worms wriggle as far north as Ireland
A community of French earthworms has been discovered stealthily colonising a farm in Ireland, possibly aided by global warming to thrive so far north of their natural habitat, a study said.
No clash seems to be looming as the French worms prefer to eat a different part of the soil as their Irish cousins, according to a report Wednesday in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.
But their picky palate may hold another danger -- possibly unleashing Earth-warming carbon dioxide left hitherto undisturbed by the native worms.
Scientists studying earthworms on a farm in Dublin last year, discovered 'abundant populations' of a species endemic to France's Aquitaine region more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the south.
Some also live naturally in northern Spain, Sardinia and parts of northern Africa.
These are the first earthworms from southern Europe ever reported to have settled in previously glaciated areas to the north.
'The surprising aspects are that we found worms doing so well far away from their native range and that they have become established at all here in spite of the different climate and the fact that we already have lots of earthworm species,' study co-author Olaf Schmidt of University College Dublin told AFP.
'It is tempting to speculate that such a southern species can only survive farther north since the climate is changing,' he said, stressing further research was needed to confirm this.
It was not known exactly how the worms travelled to Ireland -- they were probably hidden in the roots a batch of plants delivered across the channel.
On their own, earthworms can spread by about 10 metres a year, said Schmidt, and this colony was believed to have been on the farm for several years.
The French worms were found in six different areas of the farm, several hundred meters apart, feeding on different parts of the soil than the local residents.
'If the newcomers expand their range and population sizes, they could assimilate and hence liberate carbon sources in soils that would stay locked up ... when only native species are present,' Schmidt said.
The worms ingest the carbon as organic matter, and then eject it as Earth-warming CO2.
'However, it could also be that this new species makes a positive contribution to soil structure maintenance, nutrient cycling and so on,' said Schmidt. 'We need more research to find out.'
This news article is brought to you by PERSONAL FINANCE BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
No clash seems to be looming as the French worms prefer to eat a different part of the soil as their Irish cousins, according to a report Wednesday in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.
But their picky palate may hold another danger -- possibly unleashing Earth-warming carbon dioxide left hitherto undisturbed by the native worms.
Scientists studying earthworms on a farm in Dublin last year, discovered 'abundant populations' of a species endemic to France's Aquitaine region more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the south.
Some also live naturally in northern Spain, Sardinia and parts of northern Africa.
These are the first earthworms from southern Europe ever reported to have settled in previously glaciated areas to the north.
'The surprising aspects are that we found worms doing so well far away from their native range and that they have become established at all here in spite of the different climate and the fact that we already have lots of earthworm species,' study co-author Olaf Schmidt of University College Dublin told AFP.
'It is tempting to speculate that such a southern species can only survive farther north since the climate is changing,' he said, stressing further research was needed to confirm this.
It was not known exactly how the worms travelled to Ireland -- they were probably hidden in the roots a batch of plants delivered across the channel.
On their own, earthworms can spread by about 10 metres a year, said Schmidt, and this colony was believed to have been on the farm for several years.
The French worms were found in six different areas of the farm, several hundred meters apart, feeding on different parts of the soil than the local residents.
'If the newcomers expand their range and population sizes, they could assimilate and hence liberate carbon sources in soils that would stay locked up ... when only native species are present,' Schmidt said.
The worms ingest the carbon as organic matter, and then eject it as Earth-warming CO2.
'However, it could also be that this new species makes a positive contribution to soil structure maintenance, nutrient cycling and so on,' said Schmidt. 'We need more research to find out.'
This news article is brought to you by PERSONAL FINANCE BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Monday, July 23, 2012
SAP keeps outlook as new services accelerate
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - SAP kept its full-year outlook and said on Tuesday it continued to draw clients to its new cloud-based services in an uncertain economic environment, with all its regions posting revenue growth in the second quarter.
SAP, which reported key figures on July 12, said it still expected 2012 operating profit to rise to between 5.05 billion euros ($6.1 billion) and 5.25 billion at constant currencies.
It also expects cloud computing firm SuccessFactors, which it bought for $3.4 billion earlier this year, to contribute to an increase in full-year revenue from software and software-related services of between 10 and 12 percent.
SAP is the world's biggest maker of business software and competes with Oracle and IBM .
Its integrated software systems are sold to many of the world's biggest companies, such as Apple, GE , McDonald's and Pepsi . ($1 = 0.8253 euros)
(Reporting by Harro ten Wolde)
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SAP, which reported key figures on July 12, said it still expected 2012 operating profit to rise to between 5.05 billion euros ($6.1 billion) and 5.25 billion at constant currencies.
It also expects cloud computing firm SuccessFactors, which it bought for $3.4 billion earlier this year, to contribute to an increase in full-year revenue from software and software-related services of between 10 and 12 percent.
SAP is the world's biggest maker of business software and competes with Oracle
Its integrated software systems are sold to many of the world's biggest companies, such as Apple
(Reporting by Harro ten Wolde)
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'Minority Report' software becomes a reality [video]
Large-scale motion and gesture-controlled computing is no longer confined to science fiction movies, as Los Angeles-based Oblong Industries again demonstrates its exciting software that gives users a fresh new way to interact with computers. Dubbed "g-speak," Oblong calls its software a spatial operating environment - and just as Tom Cruise and Collin Farrell did with the computer in Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report," users can control g-speak by wearing a special glove and performing gestures in the air. "We think the future of computing is multiuser, multiscreen, multidevice," Oblong CEO Kwin Kramer told AFP. "This system helps with big workflow problems." Kramer says law enforcement and intelligence are among the key industries it targets with the software, but there are numerous other potential applications as well. A video of Oblong demonstrating an early version of its g-speak software follows below.
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Web-connected industrial controls stoke security fears
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Until a few days ago, anyone who had done a bit of digging into the security of industrial control systems could have reached into the website of a Kansas agricultural concern and turned off all its windmills.
The owner had left the system connected to the open Internet without any password protections, despite warnings from Canadian manufacturer Endurance Wind Power. A cyber researcher found the vulnerability along with thousands of other exposed industrial controls, many of them in critical facilities.
'I advise people that it's the digital equivalent of sending your 12-year-old daughter to school without pants, but farmers aren't big on our required security,' said Mike Meehan, an engineer at Endurance contacted by Reuters. He said he would contact the customer and use the discovery to urge other Endurance clients to limit connections to secure networks.
The research that found the lapse came from one of two new studies on the security of industrial controls that were provided to Reuters in advance of their public release at the Black Hat security conference being held this week in Las Vegas.
The research buttress concerns that critical national infrastructure in the West is more vulnerable to hacking attacks now than two years ago -- despite its status as a top cybersecurity priority for the White House and other parts of the federal government.
Eireann Leverett, the researcher who found the Endurance customer, wrote in a master's thesis last year that he had found 7,500 control devices connected to the Net, more than 80 percent of which did not require a password or other authentication before allowing a visitor to interact with the machines.
In his more recent work to be presented at Black Hat, Leverett said he found 36,000 such connected devices, including some in power plants. He said he wanted to 'demolish the myth' that control systems are generally safe because of an 'air gap' between them and the Net.
Ruben Santamarta, who is also presenting a paper at Black Hat, focused on smart meters, which measure and control electricity use. Smart meters are supported by utilities and governments worldwide because they can improve efficiency in consumption and report patterns back to energy providers.
Working from instruction manuals in a lab, Santamarta found a 'back door' in one of the most popular types of smart meter, the ION product line made by Schneider Electric of France. It was a reserved factory login account that enabled the company to change billing records and update the software.
After some more digging, Santamarta discovered that the passwords are computed from the serial number of the devices, which can be discovered by attempting to connect to them.
'Once you have access to the smart meter you can do anything,' Santamarta said. 'You could sabotage it to disrupt the power in the facility' or install a spying program.
Santamarta contacted Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials and Schneider, which has already made some patches available. Schneider did not respond to a request for comment.
FRONT AND CENTER
The annual Black Hat conference, which runs through Thursday, comes as U.S. President Obama renews his push for a comprehensive cybersecurity bill with infrastructure protection as its centerpiece.
Reports of cyber-intrusions into water, energy and other infrastructure facilities leaped to 198 in 2011 from 41 the previous year, according to the DHS. Those incidents include common criminal infections and email-based attacks aimed at stealing corporate information through malicious attachments.
Though deliberate manipulation of industry controls by outsiders remain rare, experts and officials are concerned that it is only a matter of time before other countries, criminal gangs, terrorists or pranksters wreak havoc on dams, power plants or water treatment facilities.
The vulnerabilities are much harder to correct than those in standard software used by consumers and ordinary businesses, they say. Software for controlling industrial activity including generators, pumps and valves can remain in place for a decade or longer, making the improvement cycle slow.
In addition, many control devices and software were designed without a thought that they would ever be connected to the Internet, so they were built with minimal security.
A number of researchers have known for more than a decade about the pervasive problems. Black Hat founder Jeff Moss said that as a teenager, he discovered a dam that had never changed the default username and password on its control software, so that anyone who connected and ran a password-cracking program could have opened the gates.
Moss said he and others warned some facilities and manufacturers, and kept quiet to the public. But after the Stuxnet worm used industrial control vulnerabilities to disable Iranian centrifuges two years ago, there has been a rush to publish such findings.
'That's going to be the pain that forces the sector to reform,' Moss said.
A convoluted regulatory structure makes it difficult for authorities to insist that owners of critical infrastructure meet basic standards.
On Friday, for example, the Department of Energy released a security 'self-evaluation tool' for utilities, in hopes that private companies will want to investigate their own defenses and anonymously let regulators know how well they are doing. Officials said the voluntary tool was part of a 'roadmap' for getting to energy sector cybersecurity that was published in September by a joint industry-government group.
That roadmap calls for solid defenses to be in place against critical attacks by 2020, nine years after publication.
Department of Energy spokeswoman Keri Fulton said the new tool was a sign that the government is not content to wait until 2020. 'This is something that we are taking very seriously. We are trying to take concrete steps right now.'
The DHS, the lead U.S. authority for cybersecurity in the country, declined interview requests.
NEW TOOLS
Though many owners of control devices do not realize that their systems are hooked up to the Net -- and their regulators can be likewise oblivious -- a new generation of tools is making it easy for researchers and adversaries to find them.
Chief among them is Shodan, a specialized search engine that checks for connections and can be asked to look for just one brand of software at a time, such as one known to operate dams.
A majority of the devices Leverett found, like the Kansas windmills, would not be considered 'critical' to national safety or the economy -- some 26,000 were heating, cooling and ventilation controls, which would only be vital if they were needed to do such things as prevent a key mine from overheating or keep a nuclear plant cooled. But these network weaknesses could give an attacker a foothold to reach more core processes.
Leverett, who now works for security firm IOActive, said that internationally he identified four devices inside power plants, two in hydropower plants, and one in a geothermal plant.
Both Santamarta and Leverett said that the core problem isn't any one company but the prevailing architecture in the control-software industry, which will take a long time to change without concerted demands by governments or private customers.
'It's not the only back door I've found,' Santamarta said. 'The attack surface is massive.'
(Reporting by Joseph Menn, editing by Tiffany Wu, Gary Hill)
The owner had left the system connected to the open Internet without any password protections, despite warnings from Canadian manufacturer Endurance Wind Power. A cyber researcher found the vulnerability along with thousands of other exposed industrial controls, many of them in critical facilities.
'I advise people that it's the digital equivalent of sending your 12-year-old daughter to school without pants, but farmers aren't big on our required security,' said Mike Meehan, an engineer at Endurance contacted by Reuters. He said he would contact the customer and use the discovery to urge other Endurance clients to limit connections to secure networks.
The research that found the lapse came from one of two new studies on the security of industrial controls that were provided to Reuters in advance of their public release at the Black Hat security conference being held this week in Las Vegas.
The research buttress concerns that critical national infrastructure in the West is more vulnerable to hacking attacks now than two years ago -- despite its status as a top cybersecurity priority for the White House and other parts of the federal government.
Eireann Leverett, the researcher who found the Endurance customer, wrote in a master's thesis last year that he had found 7,500 control devices connected to the Net, more than 80 percent of which did not require a password or other authentication before allowing a visitor to interact with the machines.
In his more recent work to be presented at Black Hat, Leverett said he found 36,000 such connected devices, including some in power plants. He said he wanted to 'demolish the myth' that control systems are generally safe because of an 'air gap' between them and the Net.
Ruben Santamarta, who is also presenting a paper at Black Hat, focused on smart meters, which measure and control electricity use. Smart meters are supported by utilities and governments worldwide because they can improve efficiency in consumption and report patterns back to energy providers.
Working from instruction manuals in a lab, Santamarta found a 'back door' in one of the most popular types of smart meter, the ION product line made by Schneider Electric
After some more digging, Santamarta discovered that the passwords are computed from the serial number of the devices, which can be discovered by attempting to connect to them.
'Once you have access to the smart meter you can do anything,' Santamarta said. 'You could sabotage it to disrupt the power in the facility' or install a spying program.
Santamarta contacted Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials and Schneider, which has already made some patches available. Schneider did not respond to a request for comment.
FRONT AND CENTER
The annual Black Hat conference, which runs through Thursday, comes as U.S. President Obama renews his push for a comprehensive cybersecurity bill with infrastructure protection as its centerpiece.
Reports of cyber-intrusions into water, energy and other infrastructure facilities leaped to 198 in 2011 from 41 the previous year, according to the DHS. Those incidents include common criminal infections and email-based attacks aimed at stealing corporate information through malicious attachments.
Though deliberate manipulation of industry controls by outsiders remain rare, experts and officials are concerned that it is only a matter of time before other countries, criminal gangs, terrorists or pranksters wreak havoc on dams, power plants or water treatment facilities.
The vulnerabilities are much harder to correct than those in standard software used by consumers and ordinary businesses, they say. Software for controlling industrial activity including generators, pumps and valves can remain in place for a decade or longer, making the improvement cycle slow.
In addition, many control devices and software were designed without a thought that they would ever be connected to the Internet, so they were built with minimal security.
A number of researchers have known for more than a decade about the pervasive problems. Black Hat founder Jeff Moss said that as a teenager, he discovered a dam that had never changed the default username and password on its control software, so that anyone who connected and ran a password-cracking program could have opened the gates.
Moss said he and others warned some facilities and manufacturers, and kept quiet to the public. But after the Stuxnet worm used industrial control vulnerabilities to disable Iranian centrifuges two years ago, there has been a rush to publish such findings.
'That's going to be the pain that forces the sector to reform,' Moss said.
A convoluted regulatory structure makes it difficult for authorities to insist that owners of critical infrastructure meet basic standards.
On Friday, for example, the Department of Energy released a security 'self-evaluation tool' for utilities, in hopes that private companies will want to investigate their own defenses and anonymously let regulators know how well they are doing. Officials said the voluntary tool was part of a 'roadmap' for getting to energy sector cybersecurity that was published in September by a joint industry-government group.
That roadmap calls for solid defenses to be in place against critical attacks by 2020, nine years after publication.
Department of Energy spokeswoman Keri Fulton said the new tool was a sign that the government is not content to wait until 2020. 'This is something that we are taking very seriously. We are trying to take concrete steps right now.'
The DHS, the lead U.S. authority for cybersecurity in the country, declined interview requests.
NEW TOOLS
Though many owners of control devices do not realize that their systems are hooked up to the Net -- and their regulators can be likewise oblivious -- a new generation of tools is making it easy for researchers and adversaries to find them.
Chief among them is Shodan, a specialized search engine that checks for connections and can be asked to look for just one brand of software at a time, such as one known to operate dams.
A majority of the devices Leverett found, like the Kansas windmills, would not be considered 'critical' to national safety or the economy -- some 26,000 were heating, cooling and ventilation controls, which would only be vital if they were needed to do such things as prevent a key mine from overheating or keep a nuclear plant cooled. But these network weaknesses could give an attacker a foothold to reach more core processes.
Leverett, who now works for security firm IOActive, said that internationally he identified four devices inside power plants, two in hydropower plants, and one in a geothermal plant.
Both Santamarta and Leverett said that the core problem isn't any one company but the prevailing architecture in the control-software industry, which will take a long time to change without concerted demands by governments or private customers.
'It's not the only back door I've found,' Santamarta said. 'The attack surface is massive.'
(Reporting by Joseph Menn, editing by Tiffany Wu, Gary Hill)
Sunday, July 22, 2012
U.S. blacks, gay and straight, have biggest struggle with HIV
CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As a gay black man growing up in Chicago's infamous Cabrini Green public housing project, Arick Buckles knows first-hand how the stigma of HIV can keep people infected with the virus from seeking treatment.
It took him six years after he tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, to get care. By then, Buckles was frail and wore turtleneck sweaters to hide his severely swollen lymph nodes.
'I didn't want to accept it was the HIV that was disfiguring my face, my neck. It was visible,' Buckles said. He finally sought care after suffering pneumocystis pneumonia, a lung infection that strikes HIV patients as their immune systems weaken.
The predominantly black housing project where Buckles grew up was such a hub of crime and poverty that the city tore it down several years ago.
'We thought growing up in Cabrini Green that it was a gay disease. If I were to disclose my status, I felt my homosexuality would be outed,' said Buckles, 40, who was so fearful of that prospect that he kept his HIV status, and his sexual orientation, in the closet.
'It's looked upon as disgraceful' in the black community, he said.
Buckles' tale is still too common, despite widespread U.S. efforts to foster awareness of the virus that causes AIDS and its treatment over the last three decades, says Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS Prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
'Stigma is a huge issue,' Fenton said. It can keep people from getting tested, and for those who know they are HIV positive, it can keep them from getting the treatment they need.
He said stigma affects a broad swath of communities in different forms, but for many blacks in America, it exists on top of poverty, poor access to treatment and poor outreach for effective prevention services.
HIV transmission rates have fallen from 130,000 new infections per year during the epidemic's peak in the mid-1980s to 50,000 a year, a level little changed since the mid-1990s.
Part of the problem is that many Americans are infected and do not know it. Of the estimated 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly one in five of those individuals remain undiagnosed.
Up to 44 percent of new infections are clustered in 12 major cities, including Chicago, Washington, New York and Los Angeles, CDC data show. Within these communities, HIV rates are highest among blacks, Hispanics and gay and bisexual men of all races.
CDC researchers will present the latest U.S. data this week at the International AIDS Society's AIDS 2012 conference in Washington, where scientists will gather to discuss better ways to prevent, treat and seek a cure for the disease.
BLACKS, GAYS AND HIV
According to a report released last week by the Black AIDS Institute, black gay and bisexual men make up one in 500 Americans overall, but account for one in four new HIV infections in the United States.
It found that by the time a black gay man reaches 25, he has a one in four chance of being infected with HIV. By age 40, he has a 60 percent chance of being infected.
Fenton said there is nothing unique about blacks that make them more vulnerable to HIV infection. Once higher infection rates are seen in a community, the chances of new members becoming infected are simply higher.
'What we believe is that the infection is becoming concentrated in these minority groups as a reflection of the social and structural drivers of health inequalities overall,' he said.
A CDC study published on Friday in the Lancet medical journal found that black men who have sex with men in the United States are 72 times more likely than the general population to be HIV-positive.
HIV-positive gay and bisexual black men in the United States are 22 percent less likely than other HIV-positive gay and bisexual men to get treatment, the team said. They are also less likely to have health insurance, which is key because HIV drugs lower the amount of virus in the body and can significantly reduce the risk of transmission.
Lack of access is just part of the story in the African American communities Buckles now serves as an outreach worker at Chicago House, a social service agency that provides housing and support services to HIV-affected and at-risk families.
'We figure if we get these people housed, they are able to address their HIV status,' he said.
MORE TESTS, MORE HOPE
In Washington, a city with one of the highest infection rates in the country, CDC has been working with local health officials to increase testing.
Local health officials launched an HIV screening program in 2006 that expands testing to places like the department of motor vehicles, where individuals can get tested while they wait for a driver's license.
Since its start in 2006, HIV testing in Washington is up 400 percent, rising from fewer than 30,000 tests in 2006 to 122,000 in 2011.
At United Medical Center in the predominantly black, southeast part of the nation's capital, nurses saw they needed to reach a wide range of people who ordinarily may not get tested. They began offering free HIV testing through the center's emergency room 24 hours a day.
Patients get immediate results and those who test positive are connected with care before leaving.
Donna Landers, a 47-year-old grandmother, sought emergency care at the clinic for abdominal pain in October and agreed to have an HIV test as well. She had a negative test just two months earlier, so her positive result was a shock.
'I was stunned,' said Landers, who is black. She believes she got the virus from her husband.
Although she felt quickly embraced by the clinic's staff, many others judge her, including some relatives, Landers said.
'My sister used to hug me; now she don't.'
Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, who sees patients at the center after they are diagnosed, said more doctors need to make testing routine, especially in the black community.
'There's no reason why I should test someone for diabetes and high cholesterol and not HIV,' she said.
Fitzpatrick, who is black, said many of her patients have full-blown AIDS because they've avoided or delayed treatment. She sees religious influences making many people in the black community wary of discussing HIV and sex. They consider it a gay-only issue.
And the young gay men she sees are so convinced they will get HIV anyway that 'they're not terribly concerned about it.'
(For a graphic, see http://link.reuters.com/quf59s)
In New York, a group of mostly black, gay and HIV-positive men is trying to break the silence by handing out condoms and trying to educate other young gay men at risk.
Sexy With A Goal, or SWAG, is an affiliate of the AIDS Service Center of New York City. The group hopes its efforts will help young men understand 'safer sex is sexy.'
NEW EFFORTS
The CDC just launched a new national campaign aimed at overcoming the stigma called 'Let's Stop HIV Together.' Ads start running this week in six cities heavily affected by HIV, with others to be added later.
Other federal efforts may help. The Food and Drug Administration this month approved the first at-home HIV test that some experts say may help reach people who don't want to be seen at a clinic.
In June, CDC launched a two-year pilot program to offer HIV testing in community pharmacies and retail clinics in 12 urban areas and 12 rural areas with high rates of HIV and low access to testing.
Researchers are also trying new tactics. One new study funded by the National Institutes of Health offers gift cards to patients who follow-up a positive HIV test result with treatment and continue to take their medications.
Wafaa El-Sadr of Columbia University in New York City, who is leading the trial, said it's not yet clear if financial incentives will work, but they are willing to try new approaches if it helps patients follow through.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH, said researchers do not know enough about how to reach those most at risk.
'They're still, relatively speaking, a disenfranchised population. Many of them are in inner cities; many of them don't have access to healthcare,' he said.
Dr. David Malebranche of Emory University School of Medicine treats HIV/AIDS patients from a predominately black neighborhood in Atlanta. Researchers are just starting to understand that ending America's HIV crisis will mean addressing the same lack of healthcare access that puts blacks at higher risk for heart disease and diabetes, he said.
'We're realizing it's not just unprotected sex by itself. When you compare people of different genders, ages, races and sexual orientation, rates of unprotected sex are pretty comparable. So it's got to be something more.'
(Editing by Michele Gershberg and Eric Beech)
This news article is brought to you by RELATIONSHIPS ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
It took him six years after he tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, to get care. By then, Buckles was frail and wore turtleneck sweaters to hide his severely swollen lymph nodes.
'I didn't want to accept it was the HIV that was disfiguring my face, my neck. It was visible,' Buckles said. He finally sought care after suffering pneumocystis pneumonia, a lung infection that strikes HIV patients as their immune systems weaken.
The predominantly black housing project where Buckles grew up was such a hub of crime and poverty that the city tore it down several years ago.
'We thought growing up in Cabrini Green that it was a gay disease. If I were to disclose my status, I felt my homosexuality would be outed,' said Buckles, 40, who was so fearful of that prospect that he kept his HIV status, and his sexual orientation, in the closet.
'It's looked upon as disgraceful' in the black community, he said.
Buckles' tale is still too common, despite widespread U.S. efforts to foster awareness of the virus that causes AIDS and its treatment over the last three decades, says Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS Prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
'Stigma is a huge issue,' Fenton said. It can keep people from getting tested, and for those who know they are HIV positive, it can keep them from getting the treatment they need.
He said stigma affects a broad swath of communities in different forms, but for many blacks in America, it exists on top of poverty, poor access to treatment and poor outreach for effective prevention services.
HIV transmission rates have fallen from 130,000 new infections per year during the epidemic's peak in the mid-1980s to 50,000 a year, a level little changed since the mid-1990s.
Part of the problem is that many Americans are infected and do not know it. Of the estimated 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly one in five of those individuals remain undiagnosed.
Up to 44 percent of new infections are clustered in 12 major cities, including Chicago, Washington, New York and Los Angeles, CDC data show. Within these communities, HIV rates are highest among blacks, Hispanics and gay and bisexual men of all races.
CDC researchers will present the latest U.S. data this week at the International AIDS Society's AIDS 2012 conference in Washington, where scientists will gather to discuss better ways to prevent, treat and seek a cure for the disease.
BLACKS, GAYS AND HIV
According to a report released last week by the Black AIDS Institute, black gay and bisexual men make up one in 500 Americans overall, but account for one in four new HIV infections in the United States.
It found that by the time a black gay man reaches 25, he has a one in four chance of being infected with HIV. By age 40, he has a 60 percent chance of being infected.
Fenton said there is nothing unique about blacks that make them more vulnerable to HIV infection. Once higher infection rates are seen in a community, the chances of new members becoming infected are simply higher.
'What we believe is that the infection is becoming concentrated in these minority groups as a reflection of the social and structural drivers of health inequalities overall,' he said.
A CDC study published on Friday in the Lancet medical journal found that black men who have sex with men in the United States are 72 times more likely than the general population to be HIV-positive.
HIV-positive gay and bisexual black men in the United States are 22 percent less likely than other HIV-positive gay and bisexual men to get treatment, the team said. They are also less likely to have health insurance, which is key because HIV drugs lower the amount of virus in the body and can significantly reduce the risk of transmission.
Lack of access is just part of the story in the African American communities Buckles now serves as an outreach worker at Chicago House, a social service agency that provides housing and support services to HIV-affected and at-risk families.
'We figure if we get these people housed, they are able to address their HIV status,' he said.
MORE TESTS, MORE HOPE
In Washington, a city with one of the highest infection rates in the country, CDC has been working with local health officials to increase testing.
Local health officials launched an HIV screening program in 2006 that expands testing to places like the department of motor vehicles, where individuals can get tested while they wait for a driver's license.
Since its start in 2006, HIV testing in Washington is up 400 percent, rising from fewer than 30,000 tests in 2006 to 122,000 in 2011.
At United Medical Center in the predominantly black, southeast part of the nation's capital, nurses saw they needed to reach a wide range of people who ordinarily may not get tested. They began offering free HIV testing through the center's emergency room 24 hours a day.
Patients get immediate results and those who test positive are connected with care before leaving.
Donna Landers, a 47-year-old grandmother, sought emergency care at the clinic for abdominal pain in October and agreed to have an HIV test as well. She had a negative test just two months earlier, so her positive result was a shock.
'I was stunned,' said Landers, who is black. She believes she got the virus from her husband.
Although she felt quickly embraced by the clinic's staff, many others judge her, including some relatives, Landers said.
'My sister used to hug me; now she don't.'
Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, who sees patients at the center after they are diagnosed, said more doctors need to make testing routine, especially in the black community.
'There's no reason why I should test someone for diabetes and high cholesterol and not HIV,' she said.
Fitzpatrick, who is black, said many of her patients have full-blown AIDS because they've avoided or delayed treatment. She sees religious influences making many people in the black community wary of discussing HIV and sex. They consider it a gay-only issue.
And the young gay men she sees are so convinced they will get HIV anyway that 'they're not terribly concerned about it.'
(For a graphic, see http://link.reuters.com/quf59s)
In New York, a group of mostly black, gay and HIV-positive men is trying to break the silence by handing out condoms and trying to educate other young gay men at risk.
Sexy With A Goal, or SWAG, is an affiliate of the AIDS Service Center of New York City. The group hopes its efforts will help young men understand 'safer sex is sexy.'
NEW EFFORTS
The CDC just launched a new national campaign aimed at overcoming the stigma called 'Let's Stop HIV Together.' Ads start running this week in six cities heavily affected by HIV, with others to be added later.
Other federal efforts may help. The Food and Drug Administration this month approved the first at-home HIV test that some experts say may help reach people who don't want to be seen at a clinic.
In June, CDC launched a two-year pilot program to offer HIV testing in community pharmacies and retail clinics in 12 urban areas and 12 rural areas with high rates of HIV and low access to testing.
Researchers are also trying new tactics. One new study funded by the National Institutes of Health offers gift cards to patients who follow-up a positive HIV test result with treatment and continue to take their medications.
Wafaa El-Sadr of Columbia University in New York City, who is leading the trial, said it's not yet clear if financial incentives will work, but they are willing to try new approaches if it helps patients follow through.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH, said researchers do not know enough about how to reach those most at risk.
'They're still, relatively speaking, a disenfranchised population. Many of them are in inner cities; many of them don't have access to healthcare,' he said.
Dr. David Malebranche of Emory University School of Medicine treats HIV/AIDS patients from a predominately black neighborhood in Atlanta. Researchers are just starting to understand that ending America's HIV crisis will mean addressing the same lack of healthcare access that puts blacks at higher risk for heart disease and diabetes, he said.
'We're realizing it's not just unprotected sex by itself. When you compare people of different genders, ages, races and sexual orientation, rates of unprotected sex are pretty comparable. So it's got to be something more.'
(Editing by Michele Gershberg and Eric Beech)
This news article is brought to you by RELATIONSHIPS ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
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