tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71682288637948050012024-03-12T17:25:16.955-07:00factorfiction?jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-77434447473984433912009-03-11T20:23:00.000-07:002009-03-11T20:25:09.889-07:00Global Warming 'Realists' Meet in New YorkJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From Hawaii Reporter March 11, 2009)<br /><br />We’ve all heard about carbon dioxide and its effect on temperature world-wide. But have you heard that temperature increases first, then hundreds or more years later carbon dioxide levels rise? My guess is probably not. A children’s book with a mislabeled graph shows temperature following carbon dioxide; a leading science journal took over ten years to set the record straight; Al Gore blames carbon dioxide. Yet, there has been no temperature increase in the last nine years in spite of increasing carbon dioxide levels. Clearly, we need to find another culprit.<br /><br />Earth isn’t the only heavenly body that’s been heating up. The polar ice caps on Mars are melting. Jupiter is developing a second giant red spot, an enormous hurricane-like storm thought to be the result of warming in our solar system. Neptune’s moon Triton has heated up significantly since 1989. Parts of its frozen nitrogen surface have begun melting and turning to gas. Even Pluto has warmed slightly in recent years if you can call -230C warmer than -233C. The question has been asked, is there something all these heavenly bodies have in common? Some one thing they all share that could be causing them to warm in unison, like a giant self-luminous ball of burning gas with a mass more than 300,000 times that of Earth and a core temperature of more than 20 million degrees C, that for the past century has been unusually powerful and active? Hmm- perhaps the Sun should be taking more of the blame for increasing temperatures in the entire solar system.<br /><br />What about temperature measuring stations? When the Soviet Union was falling apart from 1989 to 1992 folks there didn’t much care about keeping temperature monitoring stations. Thousands were ignored and it’s important to note that many of these were in cold regions—think Siberia. Others around the world were closed at the same time. Could this have contributed to the world-wide temperature increases in the 1990s?<br /><br />Here in the United States we aren’t that great about keeping our weather monitoring stations in proper order. Anthony Watts, and his team of volunteers, have been checking the condition and placement of weather stations. They’ve now checked 75% of the 1221 United States stations and find only 11% meet standards. The concern is that objects near a station affect what thermometers record. Buildings, parking lots, air conditioners, and sewage treatment plants near weather stations may emit heat and ultimately skew readings. <br /><br />All of this information and much more was covered at the Second International Conference on Climate Change hosted by the Heartland Institute and 60 cosponsoring organizations in New York City, March 8-10. Nearly 700 attendees from around the world heard opening remarks from Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast and keynote addresses from Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic and of the European Union, and Richard Lindzen of MIT. Other keynote speakers included John H. Sununu, former governor of New Hampshire and chief of staff under President George H. W. Bush, US Congressman Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers, and Willie Soon, chief science advisor at the Science and Public Policy Institute. <br /><br />More than 80 presentations were available to attendees during the meeting. My only complaint as an attendee was that with four concurrent break-out sessions at all times, I missed many speakers I would have liked to hear. Fortunately, a lot of material was available in the form of hand-outs and books. <br /><br />Although some of these folks have been labeled Holocaust deniers, skeptics, and other foul-sounding names, these were serious scientists with data that should be more open to the public. Jay Lehr suggests that these folks should no longer be labeled skeptics, but instead called Realists. I couldn’t agree more.jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-5265961913554205722009-03-01T09:06:00.000-08:002009-03-01T09:08:03.601-08:00An Environmental Lawsuit That's The Tip Of The IcebergJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From Hawaii Reporter February 27, 2009)<br /><br />Our government recently took a giant step in helping environmentalist groups in their global warming crusade. Two agencies, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) settled a suit filed in 2002 by the radical environmental groups Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, and four US cities. The suit contended that the agencies had failed to evaluate the global warming impacts of a coal-fired power plant in China, a pipeline in Africa from Chad to Cameroon and natural gas projects in Russia, Mexico, Venezuela and Indonesia.<br /><br />The bottom line for the plaintiffs was simply that any power plant using fossil fuels—even clean-burning natural gas—was going to contribute to global warming. The lawsuit, Friends of the Earth, inc., et al. v. Spinelli (Case No. 3:02-cv-04106, sometimes referred to as Friends of the Earth v. Watson), is a fascinating read. After being educated on how activities on foreign soils will affect climate change and cause severe socio-economic disruption and significant adverse environmental impacts on the US, we are then given examples of folks in the US who will see their property values decline and/or their land washed away by rising seas. Then four US cities chime in with their concerns.<br /><br />The plaintiffs say global warming from the emissions boost sea levels by melting glaciers, which threatens coastal cities and island vacation properties.<br /><br />Dr. Philip Dunstan, professor at the College of Charleston, is building a home on St. John’s Island, approximately 10 miles southwest of Charleston, SC. The home will be approximately 5.5 miles from the ocean and on land eight feet above sea level. Dr. Dunstan is building his home higher and stronger than required by current code, even though the home is over five miles from the ocean. This is costing him a significant amount of money. Additionally, his insurance rates for the new home will increase over time. Dr. Dunstan believes that the higher insurance costs are attributable to the effects of climate change.<br /><br />Pam and Jesse Williford have a lot with an elevation of five to eleven feet on Emerald Island on North Carolina’s outer bank. They are concerned about rising ocean levels, increased storm surge, etc. They may have not bought the lot if, twenty-five years ago they had known the dangers of climate change. Mr. Williford states that, “I did not think that in our lifetime or our kids’ lifetime that a house in the middle of Emerald Isle would be so affected, but now we know otherwise.”<br /><br />Arthur and Anne Berndt are concerned that there aren’t enough low temperatures below freezing necessary for maple syrup production on their farm in Sharon, Vermont. Note—remember this was in 2002. Wonder what they would say after the winter of 2009.<br /><br />Need one point out that all three of these examples are from folks who are members of Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace, or both?<br /><br />Then the lawsuit lists four cities; Boulder, CO, and the California cities of Arcata, Oakland, and Santa Monica who state they would feel the environmental impacts of those faraway projects.<br />•Boulder claimed warmer temperatures could affect the snowcap it relies on for its water.<br />•Arcata said warming could harm salmon migration and rising seas would cause flooding that would damage the city’s wastewater treatment system.<br />•Oakland claimed its airport next to San Francisco Bay could be damaged by sea-level rise associated with global warming.<br />•Santa Monica is worried their water supply could be influenced.<br /><br />The case originally made headlines in August 2006 when the court determined that the plaintiffs had the legal right to bring suit against Ex-Im and OPIC for funding projects in other areas of the world because the United States cities could be affected by global warming effects from these projects. “This was the first court opinion that said greenhouse gas emissions in Chad and Saudi Arabia could have an adverse effect on the environment of the United States,” said Sue Ellen Harrision, the assistant city attorney for plaintiff city Boulder, CO.<br /><br />Refusing to dismiss the case on summary judgment, the court determined that standing existed because plaintiffs had introduced evidence that: “1-increased greenhouse gases are the major factor that cause global warming in the twentieth century, 2-global warming has already occurred and has had significant environmental consequences, 3-continued increases in greenhouse gas emissions would continue to increase global warming with consequent widespread environmental impacts, 4-and that these impacts have and will affect areas used and owned by plaintiffs.”<br /><br />In the midst of all the hype about global warming, the court that settled this suit obviously ignored the latest glitches in the global warming debate. First, let’s look at sea level rise. Predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1980 assumed that the polar ice sheets would melt and cause a catastrophic 25 foot rise in sea level. The 25 foot increase then fell to 3 feet by 1985, and then to less than 1 foot by 1995. Patrick Michaels sums it up well, “Sea level has risen because of climate change, but it has risen only a few inches. In fact, there’s no evidence that the rate of sea level has changed at all, despite a surface temperature that has warmed, cooled, and warmed again in the last 100 years.”<br /><br />Then there’s the issue of what’s really happened to temperature in recent times. After nine years of non-warming, the planet actually began to cool in 2007 and 2008 for the first time in 30 years. The net warming from 1940 to 1998 had been a minuscule 0.2 degree C; the UK’s Hadley Center says earth’s temperature has now dropped back down to about the levels of 100 years ago. As Dennis Avery points out, “There has thus been no net global warming within ‘living memory.’” So far, 2009 doesn’t look like another barn-burner for the warming advocates.<br /><br />Surely you (and the court) have heard that nine of the ten warmest years recorded in the US lower 48 states since 1880 have occurred since 1995, with the hottest being in 1998. Well, that also has been shown to be wrong. Lorne Gunter reports, “A little less than a decade ago, the US government changed the way it recorded temperatures. No one thought to correlate the new temperatures with the old ones though—until Canadian researcher Steve McIntyre, that is. In many cases the changes are statistically minor, but their potential impact on the rhetoric surrounding the global warming is huge. The hottest year since 1880 becomes 1934 instead of 1998, which is now just second; 1921 is third. Four of the ten hottest years were in the 1930s, only three in the past decade. The 15 hottest years since 1880 are spread over seven decades. Eight occurred before atmospheric carbon dioxide began its recent rise; seven occurred afterwards. In other words, there is no discernible trend, no obvious warming of late.” Gunter adds, “There are two sides to the climate story. You’re getting one.”<br /><br />Court decisions prompted by the lawsuit have established precedents in climate-related law. The case expanded the scope of NEPA, which requires impact statements for government projects, beyond local pollution issues to global warming. It was cited in a recent US Supreme Court decision that held that the EPA had the power to regulate greenhouse gases. Environmentalists are now looking to the Obama administration to extend climate considerations to all government actions.<br /><br />Ron Shems, lead council for the plaintiffs, said, “This case was one of the very first climate change lawsuits and established the framework for other climate change cases. The claims here are no longer considered novel.” The settlement includes a provision that among other things, the agencies will take under consideration so-called greenhouse gas emissions when making investment decisions. In other words, the cumbersome—to be charitable, as Tim Hunt puts it—US environmental laws must now be applied to projects around the world.<br /><br />Next on the docket—EPA is expected to regulate carbon dioxide, so this is just the beginning.jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-42923362598231809882009-02-07T08:49:00.000-08:002009-02-07T08:54:52.699-08:00Electricity Turns Cheap Wine To A Fine VintageJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />We’re all aware of the story of Jesus turning water into fine wine at Cana. Well according to recent research you can become ‘Jesus-like’ with the proper use of electricity. You will not be able to turn water into wine but the claim is that with passage of the proper current, plonk (cheap wine) can be turned into a fine vintage.<br /><br />Backed by a decade of research with results published in a peer-reviewed journal and having passed the ultimate test-blind tasting by a panel of wine experts, efforts by Xin An Zeng and his colleagues offer promise. (1) Stephanie Pain reports, “The food industry has experimented with electric fields as an alternative to heat-treating since the 1980s, and 10 years ago Xin An Zeng, a chemist at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, decided to see what he could do for wine. Early results were promising enough for Zeng and his colleagues to develop a prototype plant in which they could treat wine with fields of different strengths for different periods of time.” (2)<br /><br />The researchers passed a raw red wine between a set of titanium electrodes to which they applied AC at 0-900 V/cm. The flow was varied to expose the sample to residence times from 1-8 minutes. They report, “An optimum treatment, with electric field 600 V/cm and treatment time 3 minutes, was identified to accelerate wine aging, which made the harsh and pungent raw wine become harmonious and dainty. HPLC and GC/MS combined with routine chemical analysis methods were used to identify the difference between the treated and untreated samples.” (1)<br /><br />Analysis revealed some significant chemical changes. Most obviously, there was a marked increase in reactions between alcohols and acids to produce esters. This led to a reduction in concentrations of the long-chain alcohols known to be responsible for nasty odors and a burning mouth feel, while the increase in the concentration of esters boosted the aroma and the perception of fruitiness. Two other good things happened: the breakdown of proteins produced free amino acids that contribute to taste and there was a noticeable reduction in the levels of aldehydes, which are responsible for ‘off’ flavors. Too high a voltage and too long a time resulted in plonk worse that the original, so one has to be quite careful about operating conditions. (2)<br /><br />Over the years, inventors have come up with dozens of widgets that they claim can transform the undrinkable or bring the finest wines to perfection without the long wait. There’s little scientific evidence that most of work. Here are some reported by Stephanie Pain:<br /><br />*Ultrasound- Last October saw the launch of the Quantum Wine Ager which is based on ultrasonics. Experts say ultrasound might increase some reactions but a lot of rigorous experiments must be done before concluding that it works.<br /><br />*Undersea Cellarage- Champagne house Louis Roederer has consigned several dozen bottles of champagne to the ocean floor, where it speculates the cool water and gentle rocking by currents will accelerate aging. The verdict on this is that by lowering the temperature you slow down chemical reactions, so storage in cold water will slow the aging process. Corks are permeable to oxygen which helps aging. While in water, no oxygen will enter the bottle.<br /><br />*Gamma Radiation- According to Chinese researchers, an hour’s treatment improved the flavor of new rice wine. In Canada, the technique has been used to get rid of ‘ladybeetle taint’, nasty off-flavors that result form ladybeetles (ladybirds) being pressed along with the grapes. This sounds technically interesting, but it’s doubtful that consumers are ready for irradiated wine.<br /><br />So, back to use of electricity. There are good commercial reasons why winemakers would love to get their hands on a speedier alternative, especially in places like China where the industry is young and booming. It would allow them to get their wine into shops faster to meet ever-increasing demand, and cut the cost of storage. Five Chinese wineries have begun trials using electricity and reportedly this has French and American wineries watching closely. China is the world’s fastest growing wine market and is trying to become a world-class wine maker as well. If the Chinese can figure out how to supply their own population with all the great wine they need, that leaves French and American wineries out of the picture, (3)<br /><br />Some Final Notes<br /><br />Reading the on-line comments to the Pain article provides some hilarity:<br />• Would a microwave do perhaps? –Only if you stick a fork in the toaster at the same time.<br />• Forget about complicated titanium electrodes. Eight seconds in the microwave achieves the same result. Try it yourself. I’ve fooled many a wine taster.<br />• I like copper electrodes, takes the sulfur taste out at the same time.<br />Does this mean that aging of wine is over? Probably not. Many wine drinkers are firmly entrenched in tradition and would not accept artificially aged wine no matter how good. However, the technology is going to continue to influence the way wine is made, stored and enjoyed. One day, wine drinkers may have to choose between decanting or giving their wine a couple of minutes between the ol’ electrodes, as one web site puts it. (4)<br /><br />References<br />1.Xin An Zeng et al., “The effects of AC electric filed on wine maturation,” Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies, 9, 463, October 2008<br />2.Stephanie Pain, “How to make cheap wine taste like a fine vintage,: New Scientist, 200, 58, December 17, 2008<br />3.“Coming soon: vintage wine over night,” fatcityblog.com,December 29, 2008<br />4.“Aging wines with electric fields instead of cellars,” wineenabler.com, <br />December 28, 2008jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-75668726598106598372009-01-22T11:55:00.000-08:002009-01-22T11:58:17.555-08:00The Rich and Famous and Carbon OffsetsJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From Hawaii Reporter, January 22, 2009)<br /><br />It’s OK to have a carbon footprint if you pay enough. You do this by buying carbon offsets. These are used by politicians, environmentalists, movie stars, athletes, and others to claim the impact of their high-consumption lifestyles on the environment can be canceled out by paying someone else to invest in carbon-reducing initiatives, reports Lorrie Goldstein.<br /><br />Many famous people who are for sustainability and against global warming live in many very big houses, drive many very big cars, and fly in private jets. If you travel frequently by air, even on commercial flights, you can’t escape having a huge carbon footprint. Yet many of the most vocal advocates of cutting emissions—politicians, entertainers, environmentalists, journalists, scientists—are continually jetting off to campaign events and conferences and workshops. Are they going to change the way they operate? If not, how are they going to persuade anyone else to cut back emissions, asks John Tierney.<br /><br />The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was ‘carbon neutral,’ despite all the folks flying to attend, because in large part, people donated money to third world countries to plant trees or build hydroelectric dams for electricity.<br /><br />The Live Earth concerts held in 2007 created a huge carbon footprint on the globe in the name of climate preservation; an estimated 7,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. This does not include the private jets of all the celebrities who attended or the thousands of people who drove their cars to each concert. An official volume, The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, presents 77‘essential skills for stopping climate change.’ Here are some guidelines from the book: “Let’s say that despite your best efforts, you still have to fly to your best friend’s wedding. You’re dumping 3,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and you’re wracked with guilt about your contribution to global warming. Relax, you can throw money at the problem. Go online, find a company that sells clean energy credits, and buy enough to make up for the greenhouse gases your trip created.” The book goes on to state that you must choose your offsets carefully and points out that trains are the most ecologically low-impact way to cover long distances. How many celebrities take Amtrak? And speaking of celebrities and their eco-friendliness, let’s look at a few.<br /><br />Celebrities<br /><br />Al Gore, academy award winner and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, has to be high up on the list. Bruce Nussbaum notes, “Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy. Gore’s mansion, (20-rooms, eight-bathrooms) located in Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES). The average household in American consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average. Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year. In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.”<br /><br />Like a good citizen, Gore buys carbon offsets to assuage his high energy lifestyle, and this is good. But here’s the rub. He buys his carbon offsets through Generation Investment Management, a company he co-founded and serves as chairman. Through this company, he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe. As co-founder and chairman of the firm, Gore presumably draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he ‘buys’ his ‘carbon offsets’ from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself.<br /><br />Madonna, who was the main attraction at the London Live Earth concert owns a collection of fuel-guzzling cars, including a Mercedes Maybach, two Range Rovers, Audi A8s and a Mini Cooper S. She flies everywhere in her private jet and her Confessions tour produced 440 tons of carbon dioxide in four months last year. This was just the flights between the countries, not taking into account the truckloads of equipment needed, the power to stage such a show and the transport of all the thousands of fans getting to the gigs.<br /><br />John Travolta says, “Everyone can do their bit. Global warming is a very valid issue—we have to think about alternative methods of fuel.” Travolta once starred in a movie about bringing industrial polluters to justice. But in real life he has probably the biggest carbon footprint of any Hollywood star. He parks his personal Boeing 707 on his front lawn—next to his three Gulfstream jets and a Lear jet. Rather appropriately, he has called his home Jumboair.’<br /><br />The Red Hot Chili Peppers produced 220 tons of carbon dioxide with their private jet alone over six months on their last world tour which was 42 dates.<br /><br />All this prompts Ginny Buckley and Max Flint to ask, “Is the hot air emitted by celebrities when they spout ecological platitudes a greenhouse gas?”<br /><br />Enron and Lehman Brothers<br /><br />There’s big money to be made in the carbon business. Enron and Lehman Brothers are two examples. Ken Lay became a celebrated corporate executive praised for his ‘21st century’ business visions. But Enron’s internal memos, leaked to reporters during its bankruptcy scandal, revealed other motivations. Christine MacDonald in her book, Green, Inc., notes that Lay had two meetings with President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore on a treaty capping carbon emissions. An internal Enron memo predicted this would ‘do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States.’ MacDonald adds, “Enron also had plans for using its support among environmentalists, who cooed over Lay.”<br /><br /> Lehman Brothers was at the forefront of the vast trade created by the new worldwide regulatory system to ‘fight climate change’ by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide. Jane Orient notes, “In 2007 they released a long and highly publicized report about climate change in which they preached about decarbonization, trying to make their investors keep getting high profits from the Kyoto carbon trade scheme and the support of huge public subventions. They recommended to their investors what they considered a central value of the carbon ton 50 years into the future. All of this of course, with the applause of the usual choir of politicians, the entire media, and the Greens.”<br /><br />Thousands of green militants have been using the Lehman report as a proof of global warming and impending chaos. The report is the basis for policies on climate change in Spain, Argentina, and several other countries, it is used by economy professors playing climatologists, and by newspaper editorialists. Yet in spite of their ability to predict the climate 50-100 years ahead, they couldn’t predict their own bankruptcy.jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-64052529401785522352009-01-09T15:29:00.000-08:002009-01-11T09:30:41.628-08:00Regulations- Polar Bears, Solar Power, Lawnmowers, and Fast-Food Restaurants- What Next?Jack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From nasf.org, January 2009)<br /><br />Polar Bears<br /><br />“The Interior Department, bound by the Endangered Species Act, has declared polar bears a ‘threatened’ species because they might be endangered ‘in the foreseeable future,’ meaning 45 years. (Note: 45 years ago, the now long-forgotten global cooling menace of 35 years ago was not yet foreseen). The bears will be threatened if the current episode of warming, if there really is one, is, unlike all the previous episodes, irreversible, and if it intensifies, and if it continues to melt sea ice vital to the bears, and if the bears, unlike in many previous warming episodes, cannot adopt,” says George Will. (1)<br /><br />Never mind that the overall polar bear population has increased from about 5,000 in the 1960s to 25,000 today, and that the only two populations in decline come from areas where it has actually been getting colder over the past fifty years. Also, ignore the fact that polar bears wee around 100,000 years ago, long before at least one interglacial period (Eeemian) when it was much warmer than our present Holocene. Clearly, they survived long periods of time when the climate of the Arctic was much warmer than at present. (2) But obviously, they aren’t expected to survive this present warming without help from the regulators.<br /><br />George Will adds, “Now that polar bears are wards of the government, and now that it is a legal doctrine that humans are responsible for global warming, the Endangered Species Act has acquired unlimited application. Anything that can be said to increase global warming can—must—be said to threaten bears already designated as threatened. Want to build a power plant in Arizona? A building in Florida? Do you want to drive an SUV? Or leave your cell phone charger plugged in overnight? Some judge might construe federal policy as proscribing these activities.” (1)<br /><br />The state of Alaska sued Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, seeking to reverse his decision to list polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Governor Sarah Palin (now Vice-Presidential candidate) and other state officials fear a listing will cripple offshore and gas development in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in Alaska’s northern waters, which provide prime habitat for the only polar bears under US jurisdictions. (3)<br /><br />And they are right on the money. Roy Innis observes, “Federal land management agencies report that about 40 percent of their annual budget goes just to pay for lawsuits filed by environmentalists to stop development of your lands, your resources and your energy.” (4) Unfortunately, with new regulations coming along, this percentage will increase in future years rather than go down.<br /><br />Solar Power<br /><br />Are you in favor of alternate energy? How about solar power? Well, if this is your preference, do you realize that Washington has placed a moratorium on solar power projects on federal land? Yep. The Bureau of Land Management quietly decided in May that the development of solar plants in 119 million sun-soaked federally owned acres in the western states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah would have to wait at least two years while bureaucrats sorted out their environmental impact. (5)<br /><br />Investor’s Business Daily reports, “The environmental groups are the reason the BLM made its decision. Had they not spent the past 30 years rabidly crusading against development, reflexively defending wildlife habitats from minor and imaginary threats, and demonizing economic progress, the solar projects would not have been interrupted.<br /><br />Washington has become so overly sensitive to the possibility of vocal opposition on anything that has an environmental impact that it feels it must inoculate itself from the radicals—even when the project is one they should support without reservation.” (5)<br /><br />Though a great deal of land has been set aside, it would take only 1% of the total area now off-limits to generate through solar plants enough energy to power more than 20 million homes, and this at a time when the price of a barrel of oil is going through the roof. No way is alternate energy going to help in the near future.<br /><br /><br />Carbon Credits<br /><br />It gets worse. In a huge document released in July, the EPA lays out the thousands of carbon controls with which they’d like to shackle the whole economy. None of it is law yet, but watch out.<br /><br />The Wall Street Journal reports, “The mess began in 2007 when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Mass. V. EPA that greenhouse gases are ‘air pollutants’ under current environmental laws, despite the fact that the laws were written decades before the climate-change panic. The EPA was ordered to regulate if it decides that carbon emissions are a danger to the public. The 588-page ‘advance notice of proposed rulemaking’ lays out how the EPA would like it to work in practice. Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his dissent that under the Court’s ‘pollutant’ standard, ‘everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies,’ which the EPA appears to have taken literally. It is alarmed by ‘enteric fermentation in domestic livestock’—that is, er, their ‘emissions.’ A farm with over 25 cows would exceed the EPA’ proposed carbon limits. So would 500 acres of crops, due to harvesting and processing machinery.” (6) If this becomes law, the increase in food costs because of ethanol will seem puny by comparison to those covered by this proposed regulation.<br /><br />Just about everything with an engine would be regulated; farm tractors, autos, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, planes and trains, and even your lawn and garden equipment. <br /><br />Eliminate Obesity—No Fast-Food Restaurants<br /><br />A proposal that would place at least a one year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a broad swath of neighborhoods has been approved by a Los Angeles City Council committee. If approved by the full council and signed by the mayor, the law would prevent fast-food chains from opening new restaurants in a 32 square mile area in South Los Angeles. This is designed to help prevent obesity. (7) Will supermarkets and green grocers come in to replace the fast-food chains? I doubt it. And as Gilbert Ross points out, “banning so-called fast-food restaurants from specific zones will not ameliorate the problem. People will walk a few extra blocks to get the products they crave.”(8) Certainly people need to eat properly and have adequate exercise, but being told what to eat by the City Council will not empower anyone to make wise choices or change their preferences.<br /><br />Lastly, California this year became the first state to ban artery-clogging trans fats in restaurants and in 2003 it banned the sale of soft drinks in middle and elementary schools. (9)<br /><br />The Cato Institute sums it up well, “One of the most disturbing trends in government expansion over the last 35 years has been the collection of laws, regulations, and binding court decisions that make up the ‘nanny state.’” (10) Looks like things are continually getting worse in this aspect, rather than better.<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.George F. Will, “March of the Polar Bears,” washingtonpost.com, May 22, 2008<br />2.Bjorn Lomborg, Cool It, (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 4<br />3.Dan Joling, “Alaska sues over listing polar bear as threatened,” oregonlive.com, August 4, 2008<br />4.Roy Innis, Energy Keepers, Energy Killers, (Chicago, Illinois, The Heartland Institute, 2008), 73<br />5.“No Sun Intended,” Investor’s Business Daily, June 30, 2008<br />6.“The Lawnmower Men,” The Wall Street Journal, July 19-20, 2008, Page A8<br />7.Molly Hennessy-Fiske, “Panel OKs one year ban on new fast-food restaurants in South L.A.,” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2008<br />8.Gilbert Ross, “No Quick Fast-Food Fixes,” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2008<br />9.Lisa Baertlein and Dan Whitcomb, “LA’s fast-food ban draws skepticism,” Reuters Health Information, September 3, 2008<br />10.“The Nanny State,” The Cato Institute, December 4, 2004jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-3649606175203120032009-01-09T15:25:00.000-08:002009-01-09T15:28:35.687-08:00Polonium- More Toxic Than Cyanide- Smokers BewareJack Dini<br />Livermore, California<br /><br />(From nasf.org, January 209)<br /><br />What do polonium and cyanide have in common? Answer- both are toxic and both are inhaled by cigarette smokers. However, polonium makes cyanide look like a lightweight since it is 250 billion times as toxic as hydrogen cyanide. (1)<br /><br />Yet, even non-smokers can’t get away from polonium. John Emsley reports, “We cannot escape having some polonium in our body because it is formed from radioactive radon gas. This gas may be chemically inert, but if breathing it in coincides with its decay to polonium, as can happen because of radon’s short life, the polonium may lodge in the lungs and from there move into the blood stream. Polonium targets no particular organ of the body but, because it is an alpha emitter, wherever it ends up has the potential to damage DNA and that can lead to cancer” (2)<br /><br />Polonium had its fifteen minutes of fame in November 2006 in connection with its use as a poison to kill Alexander Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of the Putin regime. The odds of this happening to any of us are infinitesimally small. But here’s the rub—if you’re a smoker you get a dose of polonium every time you light up.<br /><br />For a two-pack-a-day smoker the radiation dose to bronchial epithelium from Po-210 inhaled in cigarette smoke is probably at least seven times that from background sources, and in localized areas may be up to 1,000 rem or more in 25 years. Radiation from this source may, therefore, be significant in the genesis of bronchial cancer in smokers, note Edward Radford and Vilma Hunt. (3) So what’s a rem? It’s the amount of energy deposited in the human body by ionizing radiation. For ease of understanding, Mark Hart of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory equates 1 rem to 1 dollar, so 1 millirem is 0.1 cent or 1/10th of a cent. The yearly limit for safe exposure is 5 rem, or 5 dollars. (4)<br /><br />Another way to look at this is in terms of X-rays. Conservative estimates put the level of radiation absorbed by a pack-and-a-half-day smoker at the equivalent of 300 chest X-rays every year. (5) Others report the equivalent of 800 X-rays and the National Institute of Health published a radiation exposure chart which shows that smoking 30 cigarettes per day is the equivalent of 2,000 chest X-rays per year. (6)<br /><br />In spite of this you can’t lay all the health issues with smoking on polonium since no one is certain what causes the high death rate in smokers. The major culprits are probably dioxins, nicotine and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) contained in pitchy substances, and radioactive substances, mainly polonium-210, potassium-40, and lead-210. (7) But here’s an important point: polonium-210 is the only component of cigarette smoke that has produced cancers by itself in laboratory animals by inhalation. Tumors appear at a level five times lower than the dose to a heavy smoker. (8)<br /><br />So, how does polonium get into tobacco? It’s not entirely understood, but uranium ‘daughter products’ naturally present in soils seem to be selectively absorbed by the tobacco plant, where they decay into radioactive polonium. High-phosphate fertilizers may worsen the problem since uranium tends to associate with phosphates, reports Robert Proctor. (5)<br /><br />So, what’s the mechanism? When you light up a cigarette the polonium is volatilized, you inhale it, and it is quickly deposited in the living tissue of the respiratory system. The intense localized heat in the burning of a cigarette volatilizes the radioactive metals. While cigarette filters can trap chemical carcinogens, they are ineffective against radioactive vapors. (8)<br /><br />The lungs of a heavy smoker (which may mean only 15 cigarettes per day) become coated with a radioactive lining which irradiates the sensitive lung tissue. Smoking two packs (40 cigarettes a day) gives an alpha particle radiation dose of around 1,300 millirems per year, over six-times the dose received by the average American from breathing radon (200 millirems). Furthermore, polonium-210 is soluble in body fluids and is this percolated through every tissue and cell giving levels of radiation much higher than that received from radon. (1) The proof is that it can be found in the blood and urine of smokers. The circulating polonium-201 causes genetic damage and early death from diseases reminiscent of early radiological pioneers: liver and bladder cancer, stomach ulcers, leukemia, cirrhosis of the liver, and cardiovascular diseases. (8) Concentrations of polonium-210 and lead-210 in rib bones taken form smokers were about twice those in nonsmokers. (9)<br /><br />Some Final Words<br /><br />There’s a fear of radiation that comes from the many doomsayers that have used the media and public to their advantage for decades. I’ve written about radiation on a number of occasions, trying to put it in good light (smoking pun intended).<br /><br />Have you heard?<br />-Low levels of radiation are beneficial to humans.<br />-Mice exposed to low levels of radiation lived longer than mice that were not.<br />-Fish exposed to low levels of radiation grew faster than fish that weren’t.<br />-Low levels of radiation increase fertility and embryo viability, and decrease sterility and mutations.(10)<br /><br />It’s more likely you’ve heard about Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. When radioactivity from the Chernobyl accident reached our West Coast, the press warned residents about the dangers of possible fallout; speaking of the number of picocuries of radioactivity detected in high clouds without ever explaining that a picocurie is one part per trillion. Nor did the press mention that you would have to drink 63,000 gallons of that radioactive rain water to ingest one picocurie of radioactivity. (10) With Three Mile Island, the most serious damage was from the psychological trauma and over-exaggeration from mishandling of the incident by politicians and the media. (11)<br /><br />Yet, with polonium and cigarettes I have a different feeling. The facts that polonium can get into the blood stream of smokers and that polonium is the only component of cigarette smoke that has produced cancer by itself in laboratory animals make me thankful that I am not a smoker.<br /><br />References<br />1.Chris Rhodes, “Polonium-210, Russian Spies and Safe Tobacco,” Energy Balance, December 1, 2006<br />2.John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), 332<br />3.Edward P. Radford, Jr. and Vilma Hunt, “Polonium-210: A Volatile Radioelement in Cigarettes,” Science 143, 247, January 17, 1964<br />4.Mark. M. Hart, “Disabling the Terror of Radiological Dispersal,: Nuclear News, 46, 40, July 2003<br />5.Robert N. Proctor, “Puffing on Polonium,” New York Times, December 1, 2006<br />6.“Radioactive Polonium in Tobacco,” http://www.webspawner.com/users/radioactivethreat/; July 26, 2005<br />7.Bogdan Skwarzec, et al., “Polonium 210Po in Cigarettes Produced in Poland,” J. Environ. Sci. Health, A36, 465, 2001<br />8.“Health effects of polonium,” www.lenntech.com, July 26, 2005<br />9.Richard B. Holtzman and Frank H. Ilcewicz, “Led-210 and Polonium-210 in Tissues of Cigarette Smokers.” Science 153, 1259, September 9, 1966<br />10.Dixy Lee Ray, “Radiation Around Us,” in Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns, Jay H. Lehr, Editor, (New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992), 589<br />11.Edward G. Remmers, “Nuclear Power: Putting the Risks Into Perspective,” Issues on the Environment, (New York, American Council on Science and Health, 1992), 68jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-11721363796846126952009-01-07T10:03:00.000-08:002009-01-07T10:05:07.309-08:00Planting Trees May Not Cancel Out Your Carbon FootprintJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From Hawaii Reporter January 5, 2009)<br /><br />Carbon credits or offsets are a theoretical way for you to assuage your guilt for all those awful greenhouse gases you’re releasing into the air whenever you heat your house, drive your car, or even breathe.<br /><br />Carbon offsets are used by politicians, environmentalists, movie stars, athletes and others to claim the impact of their high-consumption lifestyles on the environment can be canceled out by paying someone else to invest in carbon-reducing initiatives. Some folks have reported that they plant 500 trees to offset one of their private jet trips. What they didn’t say is that it may take 20 years for the infant trees to make up for their 2-hour Lear Jet outing.<br /><br />Lorrie Goldstein likens carbon offsets to the equivalent of a fat person claiming he’s losing weight by paying a thin person to go on a diet. Or, it’s like paying someone to agree to not commit adultery so you can sin at will.<br /><br />The planting of trees is one of the more highly touted offsets. Some folks claim that carbon offsets from this activity are nonsense because the emissions are instant, whereas the tree’s absorption is over many years. You can’t offset carbon emissions. Burning fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide to the carbon cycle. Trees merely store some of it for a while before releasing it once they rot or burn. They’re not an offset, merely a delaying device. Plus, the Earth would eventually have to be nothing but trees to even theoretically counter the impact of all man-made emissions.<br /><br />There are other problems. It’s impossible to say how much carbon a tree will store, so you can’t know how many to plant for your emissions. Beyond that, you can’t tell what your emissions are; figures on offset websites for miles driven don’t take into account your miles per gallon or how many passengers to divide it among. Figures for a train journey would surely be different if it’s a packed rush hour train compared to a late afternoon one with only half a dozen passengers on board.<br /><br />Besides this, a number of investigations have revealed tree planting to be largely if not entirely, a scam notes Nigel Lawson in his book An Appeal to Reason. He says, “The trees that have allegedly been planted may not have been; if they have been, they may well have been planted in any event, and either way their carbon absorption is notional, unverified, and at best, some way into the future.” Some tree-planting projects in Guatemala, Ecuador and Uganda have been accused of disrupting water supplies; evicting thousands of villagers from their land; seizing grazing rights from farmers, and cheating local people of promised income, reports Nick Davies. In some cases the trees may not live. One example; many of the 10,000 mango trees planted to offset the carbon produced by the music group Coldplay died.<br /><br />You can even plant the wrong kind of tree in the wrong place. Trees affect the reflectivity of the Earth and its ability to bounce some of the sun’s heat back into space. Covering large swatches of light ground with dark trees could lead to more heat being absorbed, boosting temperatures. Researchers Gregory Asner and his colleagues report that only trees planted in equatorial regions are likely to produce a net benefit. Those planted further away—especially in high latitudes where snow is common—are likely to lead to increased global warming. Also, non-native trees invading a rainforest can change its basic ecological structure, rendering it less hospitable to the myriad plant and animal species that depend on its resources.<br /><br />Alan Zarembo, in a Los Angeles Times article, sums this up well, “Beneath feel-good simplicity of buying your way to carbon neutrality is a growing concern that the idea is more hype than solution.” And, from Nigel Lawson, “In many ways , it resembles nothing so much as the sale of indulgences by a medieval church. This is nowadays regarded as a reprehensible practice; but perhaps bearing in mind its 21st century equivalent, that is too harsh a verdict.”jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-17590967890915229772009-01-02T09:48:00.000-08:002009-01-02T09:53:41.128-08:00Unstoppable Global WarmingJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From nasf.org, December 2008)<br /><br />A very powerful case that the climate trend we’re currently seeing is part of a product of a solar-linked cycle that creates harmless naturally warmer conditions approximately every 1500 years is made in a recent book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery. It has 459 references, a glossary and an index. This well written book is one of the best books to date on the politics and science of global warming. In addition to presenting evidence for the 1,500 year solar cycle, first proposed by European researchers in the mid 1990s, the authors address both the Greenhouse and Solar/Cosmic Ray theories of climate change. (1) Singer and Avery maintain that there are natural cycles of cooling and warming going back at least a million years. These are small excursions of global temperature, much smaller than the ice ages, which is why they haven’t been noticed until the last 25 years or so.<br /><br />This was reported in 1984 with the first analysis from the Greenland ice cores. Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oescher published their analysis of the oxygen isotopes in the ice cores extracted from Greenland. These cores provided 250,000 years of the Earth’s climate history in one set of ‘documents.’ The scientists compared the ratio of ‘heavy’ oxygen-18 isotopes to the ‘lighter’ oxygen-16 isotopes, which indicated the temperature at the time the snow had fallen. (2) As Singer and Avery report, “They expected to find evidence of the known 90,000 year Ice Ages and the mild interglacial periods recorded in the ice, and they did. However, they did not expect to find anything in between. To their surprise, they found a clear cycle—moderate, albeit abrupt—occurring about every 2,550 years running persistently through both. (This period would soon be reassessed at 1,500 years plus or minus 500 years.)” (3)<br /><br />Since this early discovery, its fingerprints have been found all over the world, both in ice cores and sediments. (4)<br />- An ice core from the Antarctic’s Vostok Glacier, at the other end of the world from Greenland, was brought up in 1987 and showed the same 1,500 year climate cycle throughout its 400,000 year length.<br /><br />- The 1,500 year cycle has been revealed in seabed sediment cores brought up from the floors of such far-flung waters as the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arabian Sea, the Western Pacific, and the Sargasso Sea.<br /><br />- One seabed core near Iceland goes back a million years, and the 1,500 year cycle runs through the whole million years, roughly 600 of these moderate, natural cycles.<br /><br />Over the last 1,200 years there has been a “Medieval Warming” (900-1300), when Greenland was green; a “Little Ice Age” (1300-1850), when New York harbor froze and people could walk from Manhattan across the ice to Staten Island a mile away (in 1780); and the current global warming (1850-??). Rather than ‘global warming,’ a better term for this phase of the solar cycle is “Modern Warming.” Since 1850, temperatures have risen 0.8 degrees C, most rapidly in 1850-1870 and 1920-1940. Temperatures in the 1,500 year solar cycle fluctuate within a 4 degree C range—two degrees above and two degrees below the norm. An added important point is that three-fourths of the present warming occurred before 1940, which was before most of the human emitted carbon dioxide we hear so much about these days.<br /><br />So today’s global warming is part of a natural 1,500-year plus or minus 500-year cycle operating for at least a million years. The Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled nine times in the past 12,000 years in lock step with the waxing and waning of the sun’s magnetic activity. (5) The linkage with the sun has been verified by correlation between the Carbon 14 and Beryllium 10 isotopes in the ice with sunspot numbers.<br /><br />The modern warming is not confined to this planet. Mars ice caps are melting and Jupiter is developing a second giant red spot, an enormous hurricane-like storm. Jupiter’s original Great Red Spot is 300 years old and twice the size of Earth. The new storm-Red Spot Jr. -is thought to be the result of a sudden warming on our solar system’s largest planet. Some parts of Jupiter are now as much as 6 C warmer than just a few years ago. (6) Neptune’s moon, Triton has heated up significantly since 1989. Parts of its frozen nitrogen surface have begun melting and turning to gas. (7) Even Pluto has warmed slightly in recent years, if you can call -230 C warmer than<br />-233 C.<br /><br />All of this prompts Lorne Gunter to ask, “Is there something all these heavenly bodies have in common? Some one thing they all share that could be causing them to warm in unison? Hmmmm, is there some, giant, self-luminous ball of burning gas with a mass more than 300,000 times that of Earth and a core temperature of more than 20 million degrees C, that for the past century or more has been unusually active and powerful? Is there something like that around which they can all revolve that could be causing global warming?” (6)<br /><br />Singer and Avery also cover a number of other issues:<br /><br />- A particularly interesting chapter focuses on common sense regarding the extinction of species. The authors explain that most of the world’s animal species evolved 600 million years ago, so we know most of today’s species have successfully dealt with ice ages and global warming periods that have sent temperatures much higher and much lower than today’s temperatures. (8)<br /><br />- The authors look at history and confirm that the frequency and severity of hurricanes, droughts, thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes have not increased in recent years. (9) John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, in testimony before Congress noted, ‘that the most significant droughts in the Southwestern United States occurred more than four hundred years ago, before 1600.’ He stated that before 1850, American’s Great Plains were called the ‘Great American Desert,’ and experts at the time said the region couldn’t be farmed. Weather just seems unusual and dangerous these days, said Christy, because of the increased media coverage of major storms.<br /><br />Summary<br /><br />Jay Lehr sums it up quite well, “Singer and Avery shatter the greenhouse gas theory, making it clear humanity’s modest addition to the atmosphere’s small amount of carbon dioxide does not hold up to a significant alteration in temperature. Obviously, all of this does not square with efforts to get us to reduce our use of cars, air conditioners, and fertilizer in order to reduce carbon in our atmosphere.” (10) So, regardless of what you do to reduce your carbon footprint, Mother Nature really doesn’t care.<br /><br />References<br /><br />1. S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, (New York, Rowman & Littlefield publishers, 2008), 24<br /><br />2. W. Dansgaard et al., “North Atlantic Climatic Oscillations Revealed by Deep Greenland Ice Cores,” in Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity, J. E. Hansen and T. Takahashi, Editors, (Washington, DC, American Geophysical Union, 1984) Geophysical Monograph 29, 288-90<br /><br />3. S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, 2<br /><br />4. S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, 3<br /><br />5. Gerard Bond et al., “Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene,” Science, 294, 2130, December 10, 2001<br /><br />6. Lorne Gunter, “Breaking: Warming on Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune’s Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say,” National Post, March 13, 2007<br /><br />7. J. L. Elliot, et al., “Global Warming on Triton,” Nature, 393, 765, June 25, 1998<br /><br />8. S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, 163<br /><br />9. S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, 201<br /><br />10. Jay Lehr, “Careful Review of Science Refutes Global Warming Myths,” Environment & Climate News, 10, 12, March 2007jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-14267082981211383152008-12-29T15:37:00.000-08:002008-12-29T15:42:08.557-08:00An Unexpected Cure- AnabuseJack Dini<br /><br />(From a series on Unintended Consequences)<br /><br /><br />Scabies is an itchy condition of the skin caused by tiny mites. The severe scratching brought on by this infection can often trigger infections, which leave scars. Scabies was endemic during World War II in Europe. Swedish researchers discovered that it could be treated by using disulfiram (tetryethylthiuram disulfide), a chemical that had been used in the rubber industry), as an ointment. (1)<br /><br />In Denmark, Drs. Jens Hald and Erik Jacobsen, were interested in finding a pill that would be effective against intestinal worms. They had reasons to believe that disulfiram might be the solution so decided to run some tests. They first experimented with rabbits. As far as they could tell, rabbits infected with the internal parasite and then fed disulfiram pills showed no adverse reactions and the drug seemed to work.<br /><br />What to do next? They undertook what is a taboo in medical research—self -experimentation. Lawrence Altman, in his fascinating book on this topic Who Goes First?, says this about Jacobsen, “He lived by a strong moral code. In his work, he believed that pharmacologists should test a drug on themselves before doing so on another human. He practiced what he preached.” (1)<br /><br />So Jacobsen and Hald began taking disulfiram pills on a daily basis in their different laboratories. Shortly after the experiment began. Jacobsen decided to have a bottle of beer with the sandwich his wife had made for him. By the time lunch was over, Jacobsen felt groggy and nauseated, and his head throbbed. The next day he ate another sandwich and was fine. Then he had lunch with his managing director. During this event they had consumed a glass of aquavit in a friendly gesture of comradery. Once again, the symptoms re-appeared, but then after a while were gone. So he went on about his business. (1)<br /><br />Later that same week, Jacobsen had a beer with a meatball sandwich his wife had made. Again he had another attack so went home early. He wanted to blame the meatball sandwich but found that the rest of his family had eaten similar sandwiches with no ill effects. The attacks continued but Jacobsen shrugged them off until he met Hald in the corridor at work one day. As Jacobsen related his observations and problems with nausea, etc., Hald said, “That’s funny. I have had the same bug.” (1)<br /><br />Hald told of a recent visit of one of his friends where they shared some cognac. Hald had become sick and the friend had not. These shared experiences got them both to wondering if there could be some relation between disulfiram and alcohol. They decided to do more tests; avoid both the drug and alcohol, drink alcohol but avoid the drug, take the drug but avoid alcohol, and lastly, have alcohol while on the drug. Bingo! Both had the symptoms return when mixing the drug with alcohol.<br /><br />Then they repeated the experiment on a fellow laboratory worker. After a few days the same result was obtained. It did appear that for some reason the body needed a few days to trigger the disulfiram-alcohol reaction. As a final test, Jacobsen took some pills before injecting himself with a small amount of alcohol. His blood pressure fell almost to zero and he nearly died. There was no longer any question about a reaction between alcohol and disulfiram. Soon after this, a chemist friend identified the odor on Jacobsen’s breath as acetaldehyde, a toxic product of oxidation of alcohol. (1)<br /><br />As far a Jacobsen and Hald were concerned there went the grand scheme for the proposed cure for intestinal parasites, and since they felt alcoholism wasn’t an important medical problem in Denmark, they saw no reason to continue with this project. That is, until Jacobsen attended a civic affairs meeting in October 1947. He was asked to fill in for a speaker who cancelled at the last minute and during the course of his talk he mentioned the experiences he and Hald had with disulfiram and how as a result of this neither could stand alcohol while on the pills. John Emsley reports, “A journalist from the Copenhagen newspaper Berlingskee Tidende was present, and reported the story. Alcoholics who read about disulfiram realized that here was a treatment that might wean them off alcohol, and several of them wrote to Jacobsen, asking for disulfiram tablets. Clinical tests on alcoholic volunteers showed that the drug could be used to break the addiction to alcohol. Antabuse, the trade name Jacobsen gave the drug was launched.” (2)<br /><br />So how does disulfiram (Antabuse) work? It blocks the enzyme that converts acetaldehyde to acetic acid and as the body builds up acetaldehyde, it produces a condition know as acetaldehydemia. This usually results in a very unpleasant reaction. Again from Emsley, “Even a little alcohol taken by someone on Antabuse produces enough acetaldehyde for their body to react unpleasantly to it. They feel very ill because they are in effect experiencing a severe hangover, the symptoms of which are nausea, vomiting, labored breathing, flushing, chest pains, and throbbing headache. The experience is so dreadful that they will usually avoid alcohol while they remain on Antabuse, although it has been found that some people become tolerant of the drug and its effect is diminished. Most people who take Antabuse find it effective, but they must also be alert to the fact that some common household products contain alcohol, such as vanilla extract (35% alcohol), cough medicines (up to 25% alcohol), and mouth washes (around 25% alcohol.)” (2)<br /><br />Walter Gratzer rightly notes that this is an example of a heroic experiment conducted by doctors on themselves that could never have come about by design. (3) One- they weren’t even looking for a treatment for alcoholism, two- if they hadn’t experimented on themselves they would never have known of the consequences of mixing alcohol with the drug, and 3- if Jacobsen hadn’t been asked to be a substitute speaker at a civic meeting, the results would probably been buried in laboratory notebooks and never revealed to the public.<br /><br />A final word of caution. Mixing Antabuse and alcohol can be deadly. Joe and Teresa Graedon highlight the fact that ‘in some cases, the reaction could be lethal, so anyone on Antabuse really needs to watch out for alcohol.” (4)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />References<br /><br />1.Lawrence K. Altman, Who Goes First?, (New York, Random House, 1987), 98-104<br /><br />2.John Emsley and Peter Fell, Was it something you ate?, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), 28<br /><br />3.Walter Gratzer, Eurekas and Euphorias, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002), 163<br /><br />4.Joe Graedon and Teresa Graedon, Deadly Drug Interactions, (New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997), 146jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-78213859882035878152008-12-06T10:47:00.000-08:002008-12-06T10:49:08.878-08:00The Religion of Global WarmingJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From Hawaii Reporter, 12/1/2008)<br /><br />Do you want to position yourself as a humanitarian concerned with the grandest issue of the planet’s survival and capture the high ground as a defender of the interests of humanity? If so, embrace global warming. And if you seek even a higher level, allow global warming to be your new religion.<br /><br />Why? In the words of Dean James P. Morton of the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, “the environment is not just another issue but an inescapable challenge to what it means to be religious.”(1) Global warming provides a cosmic scenario that has found expression in almost all religions of the world, from the Jewish legend of Noah and the Christian vision of the Apocalypse to the world-ending Ragnarok of the Norse sagas and the Teutonic Gotterdammerung, the twilight of the gods,” report Christopher Booker and Richard North. They add, “The appeal of global warming is that it fits so neatly into the plot of a story with which everyone is familiar. Man in his selfish and reckless exploitation of the planet has committed a great and unpardonable sin, if not against God then certainly against Nature. Unless he repents and learns to mend his ways, he and all life on the planet will face unthinkable punishment. The seas will rage, on a scale never before known. Vast tracts of fertile land will be reduced to barren deserts. Nature itself will lie stricken before the onslaught. Billions of human beings will die.”(2)<br /><br />Many religious leaders have joined the crusade. On June 15, 2001, the nation’s Catholic bishops unanimously approved a statement urging as a ‘moral imperative’ taking action to end global warming. “At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory nor political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pressures,” said the bishops. “It is about the future of God’s creation, and the one human family.” Several days before, the Greater Boston Coalition on the environment and Jewish Life released a letter signed by 19 local leaders, which said that the Bush administration’s energy plan “does not yet meet biblical standards for stewardship and justice.” It called on Jewish communities to “raise awareness of how fossil fuel use contributes to global warming.” (3, 4) <br /><br />The religion of global warming is moving much faster than traditional religions. For example, as Ann Coulter observes, “It took the Catholic Church hundreds of years to develop corrupt practices such as papal indulgences. The global warming religion has barely been around for 20 years, and yet its devotees are allowed to pollute by the simple expedient of paying for papal indulgences called ‘carbon offsets.’” (5) As with the system of papal indulgences introduced in the late Middle Ages, anyone with enough money can buy their freedom from damnation by purchasing enough ‘credits.’ This gives them an official license to continue sinning, by emitting excessive amounts of carbon dioxide, regardless of what a corrupt sham the whole system has become.(6) I recently saw a one-act skit in Oakland, CA, highlighting the absurdity of this practice. In the skit, folks who wanted to commit adultery could do so providing they found someone they could pay to agree to not commit the same sin; a perfect analogy with the religion of global warming.<br /><br />Carrying this a step further, the entire green lobby can be treated as a religion. Particularly in Europe, stories such as the myth of the Fall and the myth of the Apocalypse and the Last Judgment, no longer have the impact they once did. John Kay reports, “Environmentalism now fulfills for many people the widespread longing for simple, all-encompassing narratives. Environmentalism offers an alternative account of the natural world to the religious and an alternative anti-capitalist account of the political world to the Marxist. The rise of environmentalism parallels in time and place the decline of religion and socialism.” (7)<br /><br />The leader of the movement, the sermonizer supreme, Al Gore, is even adoringly referred to by his flock as The Goracle. (8) And as John Fund observes, “I guess it was inevitable. The global warming hysteria for which Al Gore is the leading rabble-rouser has now taken on all the trappings of a cultish religion. Exhibit A: The Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa in California has a Gideon Bible, Al Gore’s book, and the Buddhist Traveler in each room.”(9)<br /><br />Summary<br /><br />Tom DeWeese sums it up well. “Global warming has become a new religion. No one is supposed to question whether it is a fact and the faithful have vowed to follow no matter what the true facts may show. Global warming is a theory, nothing more, and large numbers of scientists around the world are beginning to question its validity. There is no consensus of support.” (10) Within the past years, multitudes of peer-reviewed journal articles and at least a dozen books have provided sound evidence of this lack of consensus but you won’t find the books at your local bookstore. Try Amazon instead. Why? These recent books have the temerity to question ‘the doctrine.’ A good example is An Appeal to Reason by Nigel Lawson of the UK. This is his fourth book but he could find no British publisher. He reports, one rejection letter said, “My fear with this cogently argued book is that it flies so much in the face of the prevailing orthodoxy that it would be very difficult to fine a wide market.” (11)<br /><br />DeWeese concludes, “The truth is there is no man-made global warming. There’s only the scam of an empty global religion designed to condemn human progress and sucker the feeble minded into worldwide human misery.” (10)<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.The Greening of Faith, John E. Carroll, Paul Brockelman, and Mary Westfall, Editors, (Hanover, NH, University Press of New England, 1997), 4<br />2.Christopher Booker and Richard North, Scared to Death, (New York, Continuum US, 2007), 481<br />3.Michael Paulson, “Bishops say fighting global warming is a moral duty,” Boston Globe, June 16, 2001, Page A10<br />4.Bonner Cohen, The Green Wave, (Washington, DC, Capital Research Center, 2006), 161<br />5.Ann Coulter, “Gore’s Global Warming Religion,” www.humanevents.com, March 21, 2007<br />6.Christopher Booker and Richard North, Scared to Death, 402<br />7.John Kay, “Green lobby must be treated as a religion,” Financial Times, January 9, 2007<br />8.William Booth, “Al Gore, Rock Star,” www.washingtonpost.com, February 25, 2007<br />9.John H. Fund, “Guru Gore,” The American Spectator, 40, 52, June 2007<br />10.Tom DeWeese, “The New Religion is Global Warming,” Capital Magazine, February 16, 2005<br />11.Nigel Lawson, An Appeal to Reason, (New York, Overlook Duckworth, Peter Mayer Publishers, 2008), ixjack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-58397622601408202072008-09-17T15:27:00.000-07:002008-12-07T08:06:32.831-08:00Fuzzy MathJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?<br /><br />Almost everyone who reads this question will have an immediate impulse to answer ‘10 cents.’ I surely did. As Dan Gardner says, “It just looks and feels right. And yet it’s wrong. In fact, it’s clearly wrong—if you give it some careful thought—and yet it is perfectly normal to stumble on this test. Almost everyone we ask reports an initial tendency to answer ‘ten cents,’ write psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Shane Frederick. Many people yield to this immediate impulse. People are often content to trust a plausible judgment that quickly comes to mind.”(1)<br /><br />This type of response shows that we are quite susceptible to numbers thrown at us by the media, groups seeking funding for a specific cause, lawyers trying to convince a jury, or perhaps some recent event that has shaped our thoughts. Lets start with the latter one first.<br /><br />After 9/11, many people shifted from planes to cars because of fear of flying. This shift lasted for about one year in the United States. Gerd Gigerenzer analyzed automobile fatalities for five years prior to the September 11 attacks and five years after. He found that fatalities soared on American roads after September 2001 and settled back to normal in September 2002. As a result of the surge in traffic patterns, he concluded that an additional 1,595 people died; more than half the death toll from the terrorist attacks.(2)<br /><br />Dan Gardner reports that air travel is safer than driving even with terrorists. He reports, “The safety gap is so large, in fact, that planes would still be safer than cars even if the threat of terrorism were unimaginably worse than it actually is: An American professor calculated that even if terrorists were hijacking and crashing one passenger jet a week in the United States, a person who took one flight a month for a year would have only a 1-in-135,000 chance of being killed in a hijacking—a trivial risk compared to the annual 1-in-6000 odds of being killed in a car crash.”(2)<br /><br />The media is notorious for spreading the fear factor. Brent Beckley notes that there are four billboards on the 40 mile drive from Norwich to Binghamton (Upstate New York) that announce, “Every 20 seconds a child is diagnosed with autism.” He says, “I hate these types of ads because I figure there is no way they can be true.” (3) Here’s the math; three kids per minute works out to 1,576,000 children per year. Since there are about 4 million children born every year, this means 3 out of 8 will become autistic. Hard to believe?<br /><br />Even EPA folks can get carried away by the numbers game. John Brignell observes, “During a speech, Mary Nichols, EPA’s assistant administrator for air and radiation, claimed that the EPA’s proposed air pollution standard for ozone and particulate matter would save (hang on to your hat) 58 million lives. You may wish to be reminded that 2 million Americans die every year from all causes. I stand to be corrected but I think that this qualifies for the Guinness Book of Records.”(4)<br /><br />Around 1985 saw an explosive awareness about the rapid spread of a deadly new virus. From Dan Gardner, “There was no treatment for AIDS. Get it and you were certain to die a slow, wasting death. And there was a good chance you would get it because a breakthrough into the heterosexual population was inevitable. ‘AIDS has both sexes running scared,’ Oprah Winfrey told her audience in 1987. ‘Research studies now project that one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That’s by 1990. One in five.’ Surgeon General C. Everett Koop called it ‘The biggest threat to health this nation ever faced.’ Turns out it didn’t work out that way, but we were very, very scared.(5)<br /><br />What about AIDS in Africa? Based on reports I’ve heard over the years, I expected to see a drop in population in Africa because of this dreaded disease. Yet, since 1985, the population of sub-Saharan Africa has increased by 299 million, a 70 percent increase. This increase is equal to the entire present population of the United States.(6) What gives?<br /><br />Here are some observations from Michael Fumento, “At least 30 percent of the entire adult population of Central Africa is infected with the AIDS virus, a doctor tells a US newspaper. A high Ugandan official says that within two years his nation will ‘be a desert.’ ABS News Nightline declares that within 12 years, ‘50 million Africans may have died of AIDS.’ Actually, those statements and predictions were all made between 1986 and 1988. Yet since 1985, Central Africa’s population has increased over 70 percent while Uganda’s has nearly doubled. Japan, conversely has close to no AIDS cases yet its population has essentially stopped. According to the UN’s latest estimate, Nightline’s predicted 50 million dead Africans by the year 2000 was actually 20 million head worldwide by the end of last year.”(7)<br /><br />Epidemics like this and the autism scare mentioned earlier in this article always have and always will refuse to live up to the official predictions for one simple reason: The louder the Klaxon sounds, the more public and private contributions pour in. (7)<br /><br />Remember the O.J. Simpson trial? How could you not? Leonard Mlodinow reports, “The renowned attorney and Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz employed the prosecutor’s fallacy to help defend O.J. Simpson in his trial for the murder of Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and a male companion.”(8) What is prosecutor’s fallacy? My simplistic definition is the clever use of statistics to make a point, while leaving out other important data.<br /><br />The police had plenty of evidence against Simpson: a bloody glove at his estate that seemed to match one found at the murder scene; bloodstains matching Nicole’s blood on the gloves in his white Ford Bronco, on a pair of socks in his bedroom, and in his driveway and house. DNA samples taken from blood at the crime scene matched O.J.’s.<br /><br />The prosecution focused much of its case on O.J.’s propensity to violence, claiming that this alone was a good reason to suspect him of her murder. The defense attorney countered that the evidence that O.J. had battered Nicole on prrevious occasions meant nothing. Here’s why according to Alan Dershowitz; 4 million women were battered annually by their husbands and boyfriends in the United States, yet in 1992, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, a total of 1,432, or 1 in 2,500 were killed by their husbands or boyfriends. Therefore, few men who slap or beat their domestic partners go on to murder them. Mlodinow observes, “True? Yes. Convincing? Yes. Relevant? No. The relevant number is not the probability that a man who batters his wife will go on to kill her (1 in 2,500) but rather the probability that a battered wife who was murdered was murdered by her abuser. According to the Uniform Crime Reports for the United States and Its Possessions in 1993, the probability Dershowirtz (or the prosecution) should have reported was this one: of all the battered women murdered in the United States in 1993, some 90 percent were killed by their abuser. That statistic was not mentioned at the trial.”(8)<br /><br />Mlodinow adds, “Dershowitz may have felt justified in misleading the jury because in his words, ‘the courtroom oath—to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’—is applicable only to witnesses. Defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges don’t take this oath…indeed, it is fair to say the American justice system is built on a foundation of not telling the whole truth.” (8)<br /><br /><br />The answer is 5 cents.<br /><br />References<br />1. Dan Gardner, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, (Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 2008), 35<br /><br />2. Dan Gardner, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, 4<br /><br />3. Brent Beckley, private communication, January 24, 2008<br /><br />4. John Brignell, Sorry Wrong Number! (Great Britain, Brignell Associates, 2000), 217<br /><br />5. Dan Gardner, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, 347<br /><br />6. Tom Bethell, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, (Washington, DC, Regnery Publishing, 2005), 118<br /><br />7. Michael Fumento, “AIDS and Fuzzy Math,” Tech Central Station, July 15, 2004<br /><br />8. Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk, (New York, Pantheon Books, 2008), 119jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-59934395920963235312008-09-07T16:55:00.001-07:002008-09-07T16:56:54.977-07:00Regulations and SchlimmbesserungJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />Have you heard of the word schlimmbesserung? It means intended improvements that make things worse. As Robert Matthews states, “This is a word that should be in the lexicon of anyone trying to protect the environment. Federal agencies are often criticized for imposing ineffective, costly regulations on individuals and businesses that do little to improve public health and safety.” Give them the benefit of doubt that they are really trying to make things better but in some cases schlimmbesserung occurs.<br /><br />Biofuels<br /><br />Biofuels are a good example of schlimmbesserung. World food prices are being driven upwards largely because of the increasing use of biofuels. Nigel Lawson observes, “Biofuels, such as ethanol, have their own downsides. In the first place, as studies have shown, it is far from clear that ethanol produces significantly more energy than is used in its own production. In the second place, it requires a vast amount of land to produce a relatively small amount of ethanol. This not only antagonizes environmentalists, upset by the destruction of rainforests for this purpose, but also has led to a marked rise in food prices, in particular the price of grain. Indeed in June 2007, the Chinese government suspended its production of ethanol explicitly for this reason.”<br /><br />The Guardian discusses a report by the World Food Bank which claims that biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%--far more than previously estimated. This figure noticeably contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food prices. The report also adds, “Rising food prices have pushed 100 million people below the poverty line, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel process as the first real economic crisis of globalization.” In Mexico City last February, some 75,000 people marched in protest at the dramatic rise in the price of tortillas, a corn-based staple of their diet that typically consumes one-third of a poor family’s income. Indonesia, Algeria, and Nigeria have also seen protests.<br /><br />On another front, switching land use from food crops to biofuels could result in increased emissions of pollutants such as nitrous oxide and ozone and increased net carbon injection into the atmosphere. Research at Stanford University indicates that pollution from ethanol could end up creating a worse health hazard than gasoline, especially for people with asthma and other respiratory diseases.<br /><br />Victims of the CFCs ban<br /><br />The federal ban on ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), to conform with the Clean Air Act , is ironically affecting millions of people in the US who suffer from asthma. Emily Harrision reports, “In 1987 Congress signed on to the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, an international treaty requiring the phasing out of all nonessential uses of CFCs. At that time, medical inhalers were considered an essential use because no viable alternative propellant existed. In 1989, pharmaceutical companies banded together and eventually in 1996, reformulated albuterol with hydrofluoroalkane (HFA), an ozone-safe propellant. After more than one brand of HFA-albuterol became available, the US Food and Drug Administration declared in 2005 that CFC inhalers were no longer essential and must be completely off the shelves by the last day of this year.” Leslie Hendeles says, “In the United States, about 52 million prescriptions for albuterol are filled annually, making it the seventh most commonly prescribed medication in the country.” The ban will have an insignificant effect on ozone since albuterol inhalers contributed less than 0.1 percent of the CFCs released when the treaty was signed. However, the replacement alternatives can be three times as expensive, raising the cost to about $40 per inhaler. Harrison adds, “The issue is even more disconcerting considering that asthma disproportionately affects the poor and that, according to recent surveys, an estimated 20 percent of asthma patients are uninsured.”<br /><br /><br />Cleaner air and recovery of the ozone hole increase global warming?<br /><br />Christian Ruckstuhl and his colleagues at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland recently reported that the rapid temperature increase of 1 degree C over mainland Europe since 1989 is considerably larger than the temperature rise expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases. Their work led to the conclusion that direct aerosol effect has an approximately five time larger an impact on climate forcing than the indirect aerosol and other cloud effects, or in other words, as Robert Matthews notes, “the clean-up campaigns are another schlimmbesserung, with the airborne gunk actually having a powerful—and beneficial—impact on temperatures, by reflecting the sun’s heat back into space.”<br /><br />The Montreal Protocol was mentioned earlier. After years of decline, the springtime concentrations of ozone in the atmosphere high over Antarctica have begun to increase, a sign that the ozone hole is recovering. Good news? Well, depends on your point of view. According to some recent research this could mean increasing temperatures in Antarctica. Until now, the interior of Antarctica has not been warming with the rest of the world. The lack of ozone in the lower stratosphere over Antarctica in the springtime caused less absorption of ultraviolet radiation and this leads to cooler temperatures than normal. Recent work postulates this will change as the ozone hole recovers. Seok-Woo San and his colleagues at Columbia University speculated in Science that a full recovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica in the coming years could significantly boost warming of the atmosphere over and around the icy continent. Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, confirm these results, reporting that simulated atmospheric temperatures at altitudes between 10 and 20 kilometers would be as much as 9 degrees C warmer after the ozone hole has recovered than they are today. This certainly would mean in increase in warming at ground level in Antarctica.<br /><br /><br />Planting the wrong trees could also affect global warming<br /><br />If you’re going to plant a tree to save the Earth, you better make sure to plant the right kind of tree. Trees affect the reflectivity of the Earth and its availability to bounce back some of the sun’s heat into space. Covering large swatches of light ground with dark trees could lead to more heat being absorbed, boosting temperature. Gregory Asner and his colleagues note that only trees planted in equatorial regions are likely to produce a net benefit. Those planted further away—especially in high latitudes where snow is common—are likely to lead to increased global warming. Also, non-native trees invading a rainforest can change its basic ecological structure, rendering it less hospitable to the myriad plant and animal species that depend on its resources.<br /><br /><br />Summary<br /><br />Robert Matthews sums this up quite well. “The upshot of all this is clear: when it comes to the environment, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. What isn’t at all clear is whether it will ever be possible to have sufficient knowledge to make big environmental policy decisions with any confidence.”jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-54795593276885057142008-08-20T15:19:00.000-07:002008-08-20T15:59:27.258-07:00Toxic, But Important Body GasesJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />“Gases commonly known for their noxious effects at relatively high concentrations are produced by the body continuously and in minute quantities and are capable of exerting crucial physiological activities.” (1)<br /><br />Carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and nitrogen oxides can be toxic, yet it has been recently demonstrated that they are important endogenous (originating within the body) molecules that have profound effects on the human body.<br /><br />High levels of carbon monoxide interfere with cellular respiration and pollute the environment. Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical asphyxiant, paralyzes the sense of smell and at lower levels produces the rotten-egg stink prized by children using their first chemistry sets. Nitric oxide, the unstable free-radical, is an industrial gas and environmental pollutant found in cigarette smoke and smog. (1)<br /><br />Over the past 20 years or so, research into the growing array of so-called gasotransmitters has fundamentally altered classic views of intercellular signaling. Gasotransmitters are a family of endogenous molecules of gases or gaseous signaling molecules, including CO, H2S, NO and others. These particular gases share many common features in their production and function but carry on their tasks in unique ways, which differ from classical signaling molecules in the human body. (2)<br /><br />Mark Greener reports, “They act in systems as varied as gastrointestinal, circulatory, and nervous. Gasotransmitters are not stored in vesicles; rather, exquisitely regulated biosynthetic enzymes are activated when signaling is initiated. Moreover, while the proteins that sense the gases are diverse, the architecture seems highly conserved. The research offers a fresh perspective on processes as diverse as neural control, blood vessel diameter, and embryonic development. It also raises numerous new therapeutic and diagnostic opportunities. In fact, physicians already prescribe drugs modulating gasotransmitters to manage erectile dysfunction and angina.” Greener predicts that the number of gases produced within the body is likely to grow. (1) Recent evidence suggests that ammonia is a vascoconstrictor, possibly by acting through intercellular alkalinization. Sulfur dioxide, produced by bacterial metabolism may also have some value.<br /><br />Carbon Monoxide<br /><br />Although carbon monoxide inhalation can be lethal, our bodies make the molecule naturally in small amounts when an enzyme called heme-oxygenase-1 (HO-1) breaks down a portion of the blood protein in hemoglobin. (3) Ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in intensive care units. The stress-inducible gene product, HO-1 and carbon monoxide, a major by product of the oxygenase catalysis of heme, have been shown to confer potent anti-inflammatory effects in models of tissue and cellular injury. Tomas Dolinay notes, “The data from this work leads to a tempting speculation that inhaled CO might be useful in minimizing VILI.” (4)<br /><br />Small amounts of carbon monoxide might alleviate symptoms of multiple sclerosis, a study in mice suggests. This finding may offer a treatment for MS, which strikes when a person’s immune system damages the fatty sheaths that protect nerve fibers in the brain and spinal cord. (3)<br /><br />Other studies of laboratory animals suggest that carbon monoxide in small doses can prevent injury to blood vessels caused by surgery. In this research, rats that inhaled carbon monoxide-laced air for 1 hour before angioplasty had much less subsequent artery blockage than did rats not receiving the gas. Rats that underwent a vessel transplant also fared significantly better if given carbon monoxide before and after the surgery. (5)<br /><br />Hydrogen Sulfide<br /><br />Hydrogen sulfide, the compound that gives rotten eggs their odor, can be lethal at high concentrations. It is not something you would think to pump into sick or injured people, but that’s exactly what some scientists plan to do. Mitch Leslie reports, “The molecule has proven to be an influential physiological signal, with effects on everything from blood flow to hormone secretion. Eager to capitalize on these newfound capabilities, scientists are trying to exploit hydrogen sulfide to tame the side effects of common painkillers.” (6)<br /><br />Researchers in Seattle reported that exposure to hydrogen sulfide gas can lower the heart rate, metabolism, and body temperature in lab mice. (7) Mice in the study revived and appeared healthy when exposure to the gas ended. This is one step in helping researchers understand about hibernation and torpor in animals. (8)<br /><br />Why is this of interest? Some animals regularly slow down their metabolic rates, or the speed at which their bodies function. Every day, certain types of hummingbirds go into a state called torpor where their heart rates drop, breathing slows, and body temperature plunges. Bears go into a similar type of hibernation for entire seasons. This type of suspended animation could offer protection for humans after a heart attack or stroke, and it could help people survive battlefield situations. Soldiers with severe blood loss could be treated with an IV of hydrogen sulfide, possibly lowering their need for oxygen until enough blood could be transfused. Jeanne Erdmann notes that this work is in clinical trials in Australia. (9)<br /><br />Hydrogen sulfide could also help in cases of erectile dysfunction. A study with primates showed that injection of sodium hydrogen sulfide increased penile length and was capable of dilating with blood to bring about the erection of a body part. (10) Studies with nitric oxide, discussed next, led Pfizer to develop Viagra. (11)<br /><br /><br />Nitrogen Oxides<br /><br />Nitrogen oxides are major components of air pollution from auto exhaust and industrial combustion. Ground level ozone is formed by a photochemical reaction of nitrogen dioxide to yield nitric oxide and an oxygen atom. The nitrogen oxides also contribute to the formation of acid rain. Obviously, nitric oxide is a part of a family of bad gases. Or is it?<br /><br />This industrial gas and environmental pollutant was named “Molecule of the Year” by Science magazine in 1992. Editor Daniel Koshland wrote, “In the atmosphere it is a noxious chemical, but in the body in small controlled doses it is extraordinarily beneficial.” (12) In 1998, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded for discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. Tiny puffs of nitric oxide mediate an extraordinary range of biological properties in our bodies, ranging from destruction of tumor cells to the control of blood pressure. It relaxes blood vessels, quells inflammation, nudges the hypothalamus to release hormones, and even transmits signals between the brain’s neurons. (13) There’s also Viagra as mentioned above.<br /><br />Summary<br /><br />Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst is a strong proponent of hormesis, a scientific term that means low doses help and high doses hurt. He’s concerned that if researchers don’t begin regularly probing the effects of agents at very low doses, scientists will continue to miss important health impacts—both good and bad of pollutants, drugs, and other agents. Janet Raloff points out, “Regulatory agencies don’t require scientists to evaluate a poison at exposures below that at which no harm is apparent. This dose is referred to as the NOAEL, for ‘no observable adverse-effects level.” (14)<br /><br />Two obvious benefits can accrue from testing effects at low doses: 1- medical help might be found from items otherwise known to be toxic and 2- if traces of certain pollutants are not as dangerous as previous estimates had suggested, perhaps some overly stringent regulations could be changed.<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.Mark Greener, “Now You’re Signaling With Gas Gasotransmitters Opens a Window on Biology and Drug Development,” The Scientist, 18, 20, September 13, 2004<br />2.“Gasotransmitters,” Wikipedia; accessed June 13, 2008<br />3.Nathan Seppa, “Good Poison?” Science News, 171, 53, January 27, 2007<br />4.Tamas Dolinay, et al., “Inhaled Carbon Monoxide Confers Anti-inflammatory Effects Against Ventilator-Induced Lung Injury,” American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 171, 1318, 2005<br />5.Nathan Seppa, “Carbon monoxide may limit vascular damage,” Science News, 163, 126, February 22, 2003<br />6.Mitch Leslie, “Nothing Rotten About Hydrogen Sulfide’s Medical Promise,” Science, 320, 1155, May 30, 2008<br />7.Eric Blackstone, Mike Morrison, and Mark B. Roth, “H2S Induces a Suspended Animation-Like State in Mice,” Science, 308, 518, April 22, 2205<br />8.Ben Harder, “Perchance to Hibernate,” Science News, 171, 56, January 27, 2007<br />9.Jeanne Erdmann, “Rotten Remedy,” Science News, 173, 152, March 8, 2008<br />10.B. Srilatha et al, “Possible role for the novel gasotransmitter hydrogen sulfide in erectile dysfunction- a pilot study,” European Journal of Pharmacology, 535, 280, March 27, 2006<br />11.Anne Kuhlmann Taylor, “Nitric oxide- From pollutant to product,” Chemical Innovation, 30, 41, April 2000<br />12.Daniel E. Koshland, Jr., “The Molecule of the Year,” Science, 258, 1861, December 18, 1992<br />13.Carl Djerassi, NO (New York, Penguin Books, 1998), 2<br />14.Janet Raloff, “Counterintuitive Toxicity,” Science News, 171, 40, January 20, 2007jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-54683910482743578342008-08-11T15:11:00.000-07:002008-08-11T15:16:23.192-07:00Major Contributors to Greenhouse Gases- It Isn't CarsJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />“It’s a silent but deadly source of greenhouse gases that contributes more to global warming than the entire world transportation sector, yet politicians almost never discuss it, and environmental lobbyists and other green activist groups seem unaware of its existence,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Livestock are a leading source of greenhouse gases. Why isn’t anyone raising a stink.” (1)<br /><br />In ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow,’ (The Report) released in 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations reported that raising and processing cattle, hogs, poultry and other animals produces 18 percent of greenhouse gases; by comparison 13 percent comes from trucks, cars, and other transportation. And greenhouse gases—those produced directly by animals, and indirectly through the need to transport grain and meat—are only part of the problem. (2)<br /><br />Carbon dioxide and all the bad things we do with fossil fuels is what we hear about, not that cows and other ruminants, such as sheep and goats, are walking gas factories that take in fodder and besides putting out carbon dioxide also contribute methane and nitrous oxide. The livestock sector generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide , which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of carbon dioxide. Most of this comes from manure. And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as carbon dioxide), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain. (3)<br /><br />So what’s a ruminant? Much of the world’s livestock are ruminants—such as sheep, goats, camels, cattle, and buffalo—who have a unique four-chambered stomach. In the primary stomach, called the rumen, bacteria break down food. John Postgate reports, “The rumen is a sort of continuous culture of anaerobic microbes, including protozoa and bacteria, which collectively ferment the starch and cellulose of grass to yield fatty acids, methane and carbon dioxide. Rumen juice is extremely rich in microbes—up to 10 billion organisms/milliliter is commonplace—and they are very active: an ordinary cow produces 150 to 200 liters of gas a day and a large, a well-fed lactating cow is almost a walking gasworks at 500 liters a day. (The gas, by the way emerges from the mouth as a belch, not from the rear end?”(4)<br /><br />To put this in perspective, on a daily basis, each one of Britain’s 10 million cows pump out the equivalent of up to 4,000 grams of carbon dioxide. This compares with 3,419 grams of carbon dioxide pumped out by a Land Rover Freelander on an average drive of 33 miles. (5)<br /><br />Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to produce feed for livestock, The Report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing. (2)<br /><br />At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 percent of pastures considered as degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.<br /><br />Yet, as Gelder and Wilcox note in their excellent review of The Report, it also points out that the production of livestock has enormous economic importance. Besides being big business at the industrial level, it is a crucial source of income and a means of survival for vast numbers—nearly a billion—of the world’s poor, for whom it is the only livelihood available. (6)<br /><br />What To Do?<br /><br />The Report suggests a number of ways of remedying the situation including programs looking at minimizing land degradation, increasing efficiency of livestock production, improving efficiency of irrigation systems, better ways of treating animal waste, etc. (2)<br /><br />Researchers are trying to find a diet for cattle to help cut their emissions. One example- giving cows the hormone recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), which boosts their milk production, has been discovered to cut their emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane by 7 percent per liter of milk. Switching a million cows to somatotropin would be equivalent to taking 400,000 family cars off the road. (7)<br /><br />What can you do as an individual? Become a vegetarian! A University of Chicago study examined the average American diet and found that all the various energy inputs and livestock emissions involved in its production pump an extra 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide into the air over the course of a year, which could be avoided by a vegetarian diet. The researchers found that cutting out meat would do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than trading in a gas guzzler for a hybrid car. (8)<br /><br />On this issue, Tony Wardle of the UK says, “This blows a gaping hole in the government’s global warming rhetoric and the action plans of big environmental organizations—even the Green Party. They have known the facts for years but have been terrified of confronting them for fear of losing support. People don’t mind being told to recycle their bottles, use solar panels, cycle to work or switch to a smaller car—but tell them to go vegan…” (9)<br /><br />Lastly, in a huge document released in July 2008, the EPA lays out the thousand of carbon controls with which they’d like to shackle the whole economy. Although none of it has the force of law yet, the EPA is alarmed by emissions from domestic livestock. A farm with over 25 cows would exceed the EPA’s proposed limits. (10) So if this does become law, the cost of meat will skyrocket. More reason to become a vegetarian.<br />References<br /><br />1.“Killer Cow Emissions,” Los Angeles Times, latimes.com, October 15, 2007<br />2.Henning Steinfeld, et al., “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 2006<br />3.Christopher Matthews, “Livestock a major threat to environment,” FAONewsroom, November 29, 2006<br />4.John Postgate, Microbes and Man, 4th Edition, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 133<br />5.“How to stop cows burping is the new field work on climate change,” timesonline.com, July 10, 2007<br />6.Austin Gelder and Lauren Wilcox, “The Carbon Hoofprint,” WORLD ARK, May/June 2008, Page 18<br />7.“Can cow hormone help battle climate change,?” New Scientist Print Edition, July 2, 2008<br />8.Gidon Eshel and Pamela A. Martin, “Diet, Energy, and Global Warming,” Earth Interactions, 10, 1, 2006<br />9.Tony Wardle, “Global Warming-Livestock More Damaging Than Vehicles,” November 20, 2006, http://www.veggies.org.uk/page.php?ref=917<br />10.“The Lawnmower Men,” The Wall Street Journal, July 19-20, 2008, Page A8jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-63465340236309222902008-07-26T15:27:00.000-07:002008-07-26T15:30:29.470-07:00Aniline Dyes- Unintended Consequences ExtraordinaireJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From a series on unintended consequences)<br /><br />Aniline dyes are perhaps some of the best examples showing how many divergent paths can lead to unintended consequences. Painting a wooden fence with coal tar to keep dogs from a yard led to what was the first of a multitude of unexpected discoveries. In another case, instead of finding quinine, one researcher essentially founded the synthetic dye industry. Another dye, indigo, was synthesized because a thermometer broke and the spilled mercury catalyzed a reaction that caused collapse of the Indian indigo industry. (1) In another example, some dye accidentally spilled on a bacteria culture dish led to the new science of bacteriology. (2) Noting that some dyes killed certain parasites, one scientist developed the concept of chemotherapy. (3) Work on distilling fractions of coal tar also led to the discovery of carbolic acid, used first in antisepsis by surgeons like Lister in Edinburgh, who developed methods of spraying the liquid. (2) The study of dyes also helped launch the “French Impressionist” painting movement.<br /><br />One could also argue the case that dyes were responsible for Germany developing into a power that could dominate World War I. By the time the war came along, some leading German companies had made such profits from the dye industry that they were able to branch out into pharmaceuticals and explosives. (4) In the United States prior to World War I, job opportunities for chemists were extremely limited since dyes and drugs were imported from Germany. As a result, the typical American research chemist, among the lower paid professions in the country, studied soils for the US Department of Agriculture. (5)<br /><br />James Burke sums all this up well, “Aniline dyes are a particularly good example of the interactive and unforseen way scientific and technological discovery is triggered.” (2) In this essay we’ll concentrate on the early beginnings of the synthetic dye industry; some others dye-related activities are covered in subsequent articles. First, an answer to the question—what are aniline dyes? They are artificial dyes derived from coal tar, which was the messy residue left after lighting gas from coal or after obtaining coke (for iron making) from coal. Since there was so much of the stuff around, folks were trying to find uses for it. Most likely, the earliest event came when Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge (1794-1867) tried to keep the neighborhood dogs out of his garden. He erected a wooden fence which he painted with coal tar (creosote) as a preservative. As an added inducement to keep the dogs from lifting their legs against his fence he scattered calcium hypochlorite all around to present a chlorine odor. When he inspected the fence the next day there were blue streaks on the white powder, obviously from the trajectories from dog urine jets. Runge discovered that the blue color was the result of oxidation of the hypochlorite by some constituent of the coal tar. He called the blue substance Kymol. Years later, Professor August Wilhelm Hofmann showed that the parent compound in the coal tar was aminobenzene, or aniline, and Kymol was the first synthetic prototype of a dye. (1)<br /><br />However, the really pioneering event in this field is attributed to William Henry Perkin (1838-1907), a student at the royal College of Chemistry in London. At age seventeen he was trying to derive quinine from coal tar chemicals. The reason for this was that many English in the tropics were dying from malaria and the curative, quinine, wasn’t available in England’s colonies. (2) Perkin’s professor, August Wilhelm Hofmann, a German chemist who came to London at the personal invitation of Queen Victoria (the same Hoffmann mentioned above when discussing Runge), suspected that perhaps quinine could be derived form coal tar. (6)<br /><br />An ambitious sort, Perkin had his own laboratory at home. During an Easter, break he mixed some aniline with potassium bichromate and ended up with a messy substance. Perkin noted, however, that this material had a purple tinge. He added alcohol to this concoction and a beautiful purple color appeared. It was a synthetic dye. He called it Tyrain purple, later it was called mauve. He realized that this would be a good dye for textiles. (7)<br /><br />Perkin patented his process for the preparation of the dye and financed by his father, started a dye factory near London. This was the beginning of the synthetic dye industry. It was monumental in that it rescued the poor and middle classes from the age old austerity of hues. For the first time in history, inexpensive dyes became available and people, other than the rich, no longer had to live their lives in untreated drab and dingy fibers. (8) Although the new industry had started in Britain, it operated mainly in Germany up to World War I. <br /><br />But Perkin did more than just find a synthetic dye. He essentially was responsible for a new way of doing scientific research. Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes, “Perkin’s mauve spawned the world’s dye and pharmaceutical industries. His synthetic dye was the first in a cascade of colors that institutionalized scientific research, professionalized chemists, changed the economies of vast regions, and helped make turn of the century Germany the world’s leading industrial power. Perkin was an adolescent college dropout, but his work dramatized the technological power of science and ushered in our uniquely science-oriented epoch. The discovery of mauve by Perkin has been credited with starting the tremendous development of organic chemistry in the latter half of the nineteenth century, especially in Germany. With the possible exception of Apple creators Steven Jobs and Steven Wozniak, college dropouts who developed the first ready-made computer in their teens and twenties, it is difficult to imagine a young person’s invention that has started such an enormous revolution.” (9) <br /><br />There’s more as James Burke notes, “German expertise with color lead to discoveries in apparently unrelated fields, such as that of medicine: the investigation of the chemistry of color led to systematic thinking about the structure and effects of chemicals, and this led directly to drugs like aspirin and to techniques for staining tissue for diagnosis. It was this use of tissue staining to identify potential sufferers from syphilis that led to the disease being treated successfully with the stain chemical itself. The new drug was called Salvarsan.” (10)<br /><br />While on the subject of color, here’s one last item of note. French chemist M. E. Chevreul, working with dyes, invented an extraordinary new color tool. By taking the three primary colors, red, blue and green and interspersing them with twenty-three color mixtures, he got a chromatic circle of seventy-two colors, his ‘law of simultaneous contrast.’ Then he toned each color by adding a black or white, thereby creating 15,000, the tone-chromatic circle used by all dyers ever since. (11) In addition, as Burke also points out, “Chevreuls’s placement of color for effect did much more then help the textile industry. It also changed the world of art by triggering the French ‘scientific’ impressionist movement. Painters like Seurat, Signac, and Pissaro used Chevreul’s new law of contrast in their work. They placed spots of different colors next to each other to create the impression of a third color, and in doing so achieved the distinctive shimmering effect for which impressionism is famous. (11)<br /><br />So Perkin, in looking for a cure for quinine, started us down the road to many and varied unintended consequences. And concluding with Perkin, by the age of twenty-three he was rich and famous and by age 35, already a millionaire, he left manufacturing to return to the scientific research he had loved in his youth. In his private laboratory he synthesized coumarin, the first perfume from coal tar, and prepared cinnamic acid by a method so generally useful that it became known as the Perkin reaction. (12)<br /><br />References<br />1.Walter Gratzer, Eurekas and Euphorias, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002), 45<br /><br />2.James Burke and Robert Ornstein, Axemaker’s Gift, (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Son’s, 1995), 197<br /><br />3.James Burke, The Pinball Effect, (New York, Little, Brown and Company, 1996), 155<br /><br />4.Stephen Van Dulken, Inventing The 19th Century, (Washington Square, New York, New York University Press, 2000), 188<br /><br />5.Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Prometheans in the Lab, (New York, McGraw-Hill, 2001), 111<br /><br />6.Sharon Bertsch MeGrayne, Prometheans in the Lab, 15<br /><br />7.Alexander Kohn, Fortune or Failure, (Cambridge, MA, Basil Blackwell, 1989), 46<br /><br />8.Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Prometheans in the Lab, 9<br /><br />9.Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Prometheans in the Lab, 10<br /><br />10.James Burke, Connections, (Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1978), 204<br /><br />11.James Burke, The Pinball Effect, 93<br /><br />12.Royston M. Roberts, Serendipity, (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1989), 70jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-56895321810542746892008-07-26T15:16:00.000-07:002008-07-26T15:18:53.043-07:00Pesticides and FearJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />“Pesticides have one indisputable effect: they cause emotions to boil over. That’s just what happened when a group of golfers noticed that a chemical sprayer was out on the course as they were completing their round. By the time they got into the clubhouse, several were complaining of headaches, rashes, and general malaise and angrily approached the superintendent to protest what they believed was an irresponsible activity. The golfers linked their symptoms with the chemicals being sprayed on the grounds because they were convinced that the use of pesticides is inherently unsafe.” Joe Schwarcz asks, were they right? (1)<br /><br />If you believe the health and environmental claims devised by scaremongers you could understand the golfers’ reactions. As Terence Corcoran of Canada notes, “It’s easy to generate a junk science scare. You make stuff up, exaggerate the risks, politicize the subject and spin it into a corporate and ideological battle. And, above all, you ignore the facts. For more than a decades the likes of Greenpeace, the Ontario College of Family Physicians, The Globe and Mail and scores of activists and city politicians have waged a relentless campaign against pesticide use. (2)<br /><br />Here’s one example. The Audubon Magazine showed a large colored picture of a belching smokestack and reported the following: “Pesticides have become more toxic and their use more widespread. Since 1945 global use of pesticides has risen 50-fold. In the US, more than 220,000 people die each year as a result of pesticide exposure.” (3)<br /><br />Wow! That’s half as many as the number of deaths from automobile accidents each year. Is there something wrong with this picture? You bet. In the following Audubon issue, a correction was made in an obscure spot not highlighted with a belching smokestack: “In ‘Death by Breath,’ we reported that 220,000 people in the United States die each year as a result of pesticide exposure. In fact, the figure is a worldwide estimate.”<br /><br />With further digging one finds that more than 90 percent of these deaths are suicides, but this wasn’t reported by Audubon. Joe Schwarcz observes, “Believe it or not, about a million people in the world do away with themselves every year. More than three-quarters of these are in Third World countries, where life can be so miserable that the alternative seems more attractive.” (4) So, yes pesticides can kill, but not at the levels approved for routine usage.<br /><br />By the way, just what was that dastardly chemical being sprayed on the golf course, the one that caused such severe reactions in the golfers? Good old water! “Fear itself can sometimes be hazardous,” notes Schwarcz. (1)<br /><br />Now, here’s a story on pesticides that wasn’t picked up by the media. On May 16, 2008Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PEMA) released its final re-evaluation of 2,4-D, the leading pesticide in use in Canada. It was one of the most comprehensive science reviews in Canadian history, carried out exclusively by Health Canada scientists. The conclusion; 2,4-D is safe when used as directed. The decision on 2,4-D was consistent with that of regulators in other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, including the United States, New Zealand and countries of the European Union, as well as the World Health Organization. (5)<br /><br />Terence Corcoran notes, “No major media—not one—picked up the story, even though it systematically demolished every health and environmental claim the scaremongers had dumped onto a gullible community of journalists. Almost two weeks later, the Ottawa Citizen’s Dan Gardner wrote a column on how the media missed the story. Still no reaction.” Think of how the reaction would have been if Health Canada had concluded that 2,4-D was harmful. The media and environmentalists would have had a field day. Corcoran adds, “The limited fallout from Mr. Gardner’s report is instructive. A Global News reporter picked it up and raised the Health Canada report with officials in Toronto. Health Canada’s conclusions were dismissed by a city council member, and the views of an activist with the Toronto Environmental Alliance were repeated; ‘Many studies have linked 2,4-D to some serious health concerns such as cancer reproductive developments in our children and even birth defects.’ One of the most comprehensive scientific reviews in Canadian history, carried out exclusively by Health Canada scientists and reviewed by independent government and university researchers trashed in 30 seconds by an activist repeating claims rejected by the review. All that work and the last media report ends with repetition of the junk science Health Canada had spent millions disproving.” (2) <br /><br />In commenting on why the Health Canada report wasn’t taken up by the media, Dan Gardner states that this is a typical reaction. He notes, “The media routinely gives prominent play to research that comes to very scary conclusions while downplaying or ignoring studies that find there’s nothing to worry about. It’s frightening to watch a major debate involving a scientific question move from stories in newspapers to politicians’ speeches to legislative action—all with little or no connection to the best science as interpreted by the best scientists.” (6)<br /><br />In another column Garner reported, “Some folks objected to the reports conclusion that 2,4-D is safe ‘when used as directed.’ People may misuse it, they said, and then it would be harmful. That potential is reason enough to ban it. This ignores two things. First, literally any substance is potentially harmful. Oxygen can, in some circumstances, cause blindness. Drink too much water and the body’s sodium and potassium levels will be thrown off, leading to seizures, coma and even death. And don’t get me started on what coffee can do the human body.” He adds, “Of course, we have to drink huge quantities of water to be harmed by it so water is quite safe. Obviously, pesticides—and lots of other substances—are not so safe. But what most people don’t realize is that regulators build a wide safety margin into their standards. In the case of pesticides, the potential level of exposure can be no more than 1/100 of the dose that showed no effect in animals.” (7)<br /><br />A final note on pesticides. If you worry about these types of things, this will really set you off. We get much more natural pesticides than synthetic pesticides in our diet. Bruce Ames and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, report that about 99.99 percent of all pesticides in the human diet are natural pesticides from plants. All plants produce toxins to protect themselves against fungi, insects and animal predators, such as man. Tens of thousands of these natural pesticides have been discovered, and every species of plant contains its own set of different toxins, usually a few dozen. When plants are stressed or damaged (such as during a pest attack), they increase their levels of natural pesticides manifold, occasionally to levels that are acutely toxic to humans. Ames estimates that Americans eat about 1,500 mg per person per day of natural pesticides, which is 10,000 times more than we eat of synthetic pesticides. He also estimates that a person ingests annually about 5,000 to 10,000 different natural pesticides and their breakdown products. (8)<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.Joe Schwarcz, The Fly in the Ointment, (Toronto, Canada, ECW Press, 2004), 39<br />2.Terence Corcoran, “The pesticide report that nobody read,” nationalpost.com, June 16, 2008<br />3.Gretel H. Schueller, “Death by Breath,” Audubon Magazine, 101, 16, January-February 1999<br />4.Joe Schwarcz, Let Them Eat Flax, (Toronto, Canada, ECW Press, 2005), 80<br />5.“Health Canada Releases Final Re-evaluation Decision on 2,4-D,” Pest Management Regulatory Agency Information Note, May 16, 2008<br />6.Dan Gardner, “On Pesticides, Science and Fear,” The Ottawa Citizen, May 28, 2008<br />7.Dan Gardner, “The Science of Uncertainty,” The Ottawa Citizen, June 7, 2008<br />8.B. N. Ames and L. S. Gold, “Paracelsus to parascience: the environmental cancer distraction,” Mutation Research, 447, 3, 2000jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-9977650542570790472008-06-22T20:04:00.000-07:002008-06-22T20:07:08.989-07:00Acetylene- Champion of Unintended ConsequencesJack Dini<br />Livermore, California<br /><br />(From a series on Unintended Consequences)<br /><br />Acetylene could perhaps take the prize for how knowledge, intuitiveness, serendipity, and a mix of unintended consequences all came together in various parts of the world at different times to produce a variety of unexpected materials. In 1892, Canadian researchers Thomas Willson and James Morehead, attempted to produce aluminum in an electric furnace. They started with a mixture of coal tar and lime reasoning that the lime would be converted to calcium which, in turn, would strip the oxide away from aluminum oxide leaving pure aluminum. Upon opening the furnace they saw a dark residue, not the shiny aluminum they were expecting. When the mixture was thrown into a stream near their lab (this was long before the days of environmental concerns and regulations), bubbles formed and a plume of water shot into the air. They had discovered calcium carbide and acetylene. (1) On the other side of the world, Henri Moissan, a Frenchman trying to make artificial diamonds also discovered calcium carbide and acetylene. (2) But these scientists weren’t the first in this area of invention. Friedrich Wohler, a professor of chemistry at the University of Gottingen, had made calcium carbide around 1862 by heating calcium with charcoal to a high temperature. He observed that it formed acetylene when it reacted with water. However, his method of making the materials wasn’t efficient, so the discovery lay dormant until the 1890s, the era of the gaslight. (1) When it was realized that acetylene burned with a far more brilliant flame than kerosene, and efficient ways of making carbide were available, a vast new market opened up. As Joe Schwarcz reports, “By 1895 Thomas Willson had founded the company that eventually became Union Carbide, one of the biggest chemical companies in the world. Soon consumers were able to purchase lamps based on calcium carbide, clever devices in which water dripped into a container of carbide and generated acetylene gas. This gas, in turn, flowed to a nozzle where it could be ignited. A mirrored surface behind the flame increased the intensity of the light.” (3)<br /><br />Then Thomas Edison came along with his electric light and the bottom dropped out of the acetylene market. Enter Fritz Klatte, working in Stuttgart at Greisham Electron. He was trying to find a material for weatherproofing aircraft wings. Working with a mixture of acetylene, hydrogen chloride, and mercury, he was unsuccessful, and set the mixture on a sunny window sill. Later he noticed that it formed a milky sludge which eventually turned solid. He convinced his firm to file a patent on the mixture and they did, but nothing was done to commercialize the discovery. In 1925 the patent lapsed. (4) It should also be noted, that as with acetylene, PVC had originally been discovered long before Klatte came along. French physicist Henri Victor Regnault was the original discoverer in 1835 but nothing was done with the product.<br /><br />Back to Klatte. A year after his patent expired (1926), an American chemist, Waldo Semon, working at B. F. Goodrich, independently reinvented PVC. He envisioned that this material would make a perfect shower curtain so he and his colleagues at Goodrich patented the process (Klatte’s team apparently never filed for a patent outside Germany). It turns out PVC was much more than shower curtain material. It became the forerunner of many plastics without which modern industrialized nations could no longer function. (5)<br /><br />These days PVC is everywhere. It’s one of the most widely used plastics in the world. It is also the cheapest and probably the most versatile plastic. Some uses include pipe and pipe fittings (the largest scale use), floppy computer discs, garden hose, building sidings, wire and cable insulation, food packaging, automobile seat covers, shower curtains, and many other household uses. (6)<br /><br />Other Uses For Acetylene<br /><br />In 1895, the same year Willson established his company, French chemist Henry-Louis Chatelier, discovered that when acetylene was burned with an equal volume of oxygen, a flame with a temperature over 3000 C was obtained. This temperature, high enough to melt steel, was much higher than achievable with any other gas and introduced the concept of welding. Oxyacetylene welding was a boon to the construction industry and is widely used today.<br /><br />Joe Schwarcz adds, “About half of all acetylene produced today goes towards the production of other organic chemicals. Adding hydrogen cyanide to acetylene, for example, yields acrylonitrile, which is used in the production of acrylic fibers. Acetylene can also be converted into vinyl acetylene, which is the raw material needed for the manufacture of neoprene, one of the most useful synthetic rubbers.” (7) But once again, this wasn’t a finding that came easily or was predictable. Wallace Carothers, a chemist at Du Pont challenged one of his assistants, Arnold Collins, to make synthetic rubber. You guessed it—acetylene was the key starting material. Reacting it with hydrochloric acid produced something they called vinylacetylene, and one weekend when a mixture was left setting in a flask, by the following Monday it had turned into a tiny, cauliflower-type mass. Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes, “Collins stuck a wire into the glass vessel and fished a few cubic centimeters of the substance out. It felt strong, resilient, and elastic, much like vulcanized rubber. Almost without thinking, Collins threw the mass against his laboratory bench. It bounced like a golf ball. Collins had made chloroprene in his test tube, and over the weekend it had spontaneously polymerized into the high-grade synthetic rubber that Du Pont would market as Neoprene.” (8)<br /><br />DuPont promoted it cleverly as a specialty rubber, more durable than natural rubber and more resistant to oil, gasoline, solvents, sunlight, and heat. Neoprene was also great for making balloons, like the ones used in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. It also gave chemists the impetus to develop other synthetic rubbers. (7)<br /><br />So from experiments originally intended to produce aluminum in one case and cheap diamonds in another, acetylene, a key player in the plastics, chemistry, and metallurgical industries, was discovered. This then led to PVC and other plastics, many organic chemicals, and oxyacetylene welding. Besides all this, both acetylene and PVC had been discovered a number of times before their value was really known. Is there any doubt why this should not put acetylene at, or near the top of the unintended consequences list?<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.Joe Schwarcz, The Genie in the Bottle, (New York, Henry Holt & Company, 2002), 154<br /><br />2.James Burke, Connections, (Boston, Little, Brown & Company, 1978), 209<br /><br />3.Joe Schwarcz, The Genie in the Bottle, 155<br /><br />4.James Burke, Circles, (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2000), 220<br /><br />5.“Poly(vinyl chloride),” http://www.pslc.ws/mactest/pvc.htm<br /><br />6.Royston M. Roberts, Serendipity, (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1989), 185<br /><br />7.Joe Schwarcz, The Genie in the Bottle, 156<br /><br />8.Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Prometheans in the Lab, (New York, McGraw-Hill, 2001), 131jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-38225605958805616922008-05-28T13:36:00.000-07:002008-05-28T13:39:05.431-07:00Global Warming Goes Round and RoundJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From Hawaii Reporter, May 28, 2008)<br /><br />A very powerful case that the climate trend we’re currently seeing is part of a product of a solar-linked cycle that creates harmless naturally warmer conditions approximately every 1500 years is made in a recent book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery. It has 459 references, a glossary and an index. This well written book is arguably the best book to date on the politics and science of global warming. In addition to presenting evidence for the 1,500 year solar cycle, first proposed by European researchers in the mid 1990s, the authors address both the Greenhouse and Solar/Cosmic Ray theories of climate change.(1) Singer and Avery maintain that there are natural cycles of cooling and warming going back at least a million years. These are small excursions of global temperature, much smaller than the ice ages, which is why they haven’t been noticed until the last 25 years or so.<br /><br />This was reported in 1984 with the first analysis from the Greenland ice cores. Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oescher published their analysis of the oxygen isotopes in the ice cores extracted from Greenland. These cores provided 250,000 years of the Earth’s climate history in one set of ‘documents.’ The scientists compared the ratio of ‘heavy’ oxygen-18 isotopes to the ‘lighter’ oxygen-16 isotopes, which indicated the temperature at the time the snow had fallen. (2) As Singer and Avery report, “They expected to find evidence of the known 90,000 year Ice Ages and the mild interglacial periods recorded in the ice, and they did. However, they did not expect to find anything in between. To their surprise, they found a clear cycle—moderate, albeit abrupt—occurring about every 2,550 years running persistently through both. (This period would soon be reassessed at 1,500 years plus or minus 500 years.)” (3)<br /><br />Since this early discovery, its fingerprints have been found all over the world, both in ice cores and sediments. (4)<br />- An ice core from the Antarctic’s Vostok Glacier, at the other end of the world from Greenland, was brought up in 1987 and showed the same 1,500 year climate cycle throughout its 400,000 year length.<br /><br />- The 1,500 year cycle has been revealed in seabed sediment cores brought up from the floors of such far-flung waters as the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arabian Sea, the Western Pacific, and the Sargasso Sea.<br /><br />- One seabed core near Iceland goes back a million years, and the 1,500 year cycle runs through the whole million years, roughly 600 of these moderate, natural cycles. <br /><br />Over the last 1,200 years there has been a “Medieval Warming” (900-1300), when Greenland was green; a “Little Ice Age” (1300-1850), when New York harbor froze and people could walk from Manhattan across the ice to Staten Island a mile away (in 1780); and the current global warming (1850-??). Rather than ‘global warming,’ a better term for this phase of the solar cycle is “Modern Warming.” Since 1850, temperatures have risen 0.8 degrees C, most rapidly in 1850-1870 and 1920-1940. Temperatures in the 1,500 year solar cycle fluctuate within a 4 degree C range—two degrees above and two degrees below the norm. An added important point is that three-fourths of the present warming occurred before 1940, which was before most of the human emitted carbon dioxide we hear so much about these days.<br /><br />So today’s global warming is part of a natural 1,500-year plus or minus 500-year cycle operating for at least a million years. The Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled nine times in the past 12,000 years in lock step with the waxing and waning of the sun’s magnetic activity. (5) The linkage with the sun has been verified by correlation between the Carbon 14 and Beryllium 10 isotopes in the ice with sunspot numbers.<br /><br />The modern warming is not confined to this planet. Mars ice caps are melting and Jupiter is developing a second giant red spot, an enormous hurricane-like storm. Jupiter’s original Great Red Spot is 300 years old and twice the size of Earth. The new storm-Red Spot Jr. -is thought to be the result of a sudden warming on our solar system’s largest planet. Some parts of Jupiter are now as much as 6 C warmer than just a few years ago. (6) Neptune’s moon, Triton has heated up significantly since 1989. Parts of its frozen nitrogen surface have begun melting and turning to gas. (7) Even Pluto has warmed slightly in recent years, if you can call -230 C warmer than <br />-233 C. <br /><br />All of this prompts Lorne Gunter to ask, “Is there something all these heavenly bodies have in common? Some one thing they all share that could be causing them to warm in unison? Hmmmm, is there some, giant, self-luminous ball of burning gas with a mass more than 300,000 times that of Earth and a core temperature of more than 20 million degrees C, that for the past century or more has been unusually active and powerful? Is there something like that around which they can all revolve that could be causing global warming?” (6)<br /><br />Singer and Avery also cover a number of other issues:<br /><br />- A particularly interesting chapter focuses on common sense regarding the extinction of species. The authors explain that most of the world’s animal species evolved 600 million years ago, so we know most of today’s species have successfully dealt with ice ages and global warming periods that have sent temperatures much higher and much lower than today’s temperatures. (8)<br /><br />- The authors look at history and confirm that the frequency and severity of hurricanes, droughts, thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes have not increased in recent years. (9) John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, in testimony before Congress noted, ‘that the most significant droughts in the Southwestern United States occurred more than four hundred years ago, before 1600.’ He stated that before 1850, American’s Great Plains were called the ‘Great American Desert,’ and experts at the time said the region couldn’t be farmed. Weather just seems unusual and dangerous these days, said Christy, because of the increased media coverage of major storms.<br /><br />Summary<br /><br />Jay Lehr sums it up quite well, “Singer and Avery shatter the greenhouse gas theory, making it clear humanity’s modest addition to the atmosphere’s small amount of carbon dioxide does not hold up to a significant alteration in temperature. Obviously, all of this does not square with efforts to get us to reduce our use of cars, air conditioners, and fertilizer in order to reduce carbon in our atmosphere.” (10) So, regardless of what you do to reduce your carbon footprint, Mother Nature really doesn’t care.<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, (New York, Rowman & Littlefield publishers, 2008), 24<br /><br />2.W. Dansgaard et al., “North Atlantic Climatic Oscillations Revealed by Deep Greenland Ice Cores,” in Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity, J. E. Hansen and T. Takahashi, Editors, (Washington, DC, American Geophysical Union, 1984) Geophysical Monograph 29, 288-90<br /><br />3.S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, 2<br /><br />4.S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, 3<br /><br />5.Gerard Bond et al., “Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene,” Science, 294, 2130, December 10, 2001<br /><br />6.Lorne Gunter, “Breaking: Warming on Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune’s Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say,” National Post, March 13, 2007<br /><br />7.J. L. Elliot, et al., “Global Warming on Triton,” Nature, 393, 765, June 25, 1998<br /><br />8.S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, 163<br /><br />9.S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, 201<br /><br />10.Jay Lehr, “Careful Review of Science Refutes Global Warming Myths,” Environment & Climate News, 10, 12, March 2007jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-26617236404526877082008-05-15T19:31:00.000-07:002008-05-15T19:37:26.589-07:00Looking For Germs? Check Your Money.Jack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From Hawaii Reporter, May 15, 2008)<br /><br />The legal tender in your pocket or purse definitely carries some germs and most likely also has some cocaine. Researchers at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio collected 68 dollar bills from people at a grocery store and a high-school sporting event. According to Dr. Peter Ender, lead researcher, sixty-four (94%) of the bills were contaminated with bacteria known to cause either serious or mild illness. Five bills (7%) were found to be contaminated with bacteria which can cause infections in healthy people. Those bacteria included Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiella pneumoniae, both of which can cause pneumonia or blood infections. Fifty-nine bills were contaminated with bacteria that are usually harmless in healthy individuals, but can still trigger serious illness in those with depressed immune systems, such as people undergoing various types of medical treatment or those with HIV. (1) However, Ender stressed that real health risks to the average consumer are pretty low, adding that US dollar bills may be no more or less covered in microbial goo than, say, doorknobs, pens, or computer keyboards. But he points out that US currency, especially ‘finds its way into all areas of the world.’ “With the rapid dissemination of money in the era of drug-resistant bacteria, perhaps a resistance clone could be spread from one geographic location to another,” he concludes. (2)<br /><br />Philip Turner adds, “Many studies, including two of my own, have shown that money can be effective for germ transaction. ABC’s “20/20” asked me to help them prepare a segment on this issue, and I devised a plan for collecting money from street vendors, shops, restaurants, and other establishments in Chicago, New York City, and Washington, DC. After each transaction, the bills received were put directly into newly purchased wallets, which were then sealed in plastic. The bills were tested and found to be contaminated with germs of fecal, respiratory, and skin origin. Although the risk of contracting a serious infection from dirty money is low, the germ count is high enough to make it easy to contract a cold, a bout of diarrhea, and similar ailments.” (3)<br /><br />Depending on where you are in the world you might get a different reaction to this issue. Disease experts in northeastern India issued a recent report that said ‘overused and soiled’ currency can transmit tuberculosis, pneumonia and other lung infections. British health authorities and travel guides regularly warn tourists in the region to wash their hand following every financial transaction. (4)<br /><br />By contrast, Dr. Frank Vriesekoop, from Ballarat University in Australia, reported that there are generally very few pathogenic bacteria on banknotes and coins. He found low levels of common bacteria on the currency that were traded through various food outlets in Australia and New Zealand. He claims that it would be impossible for them to cause diseases like diarrhea, vomiting, or other gastric symptoms as usually believed, as their numbers were so insignificantly small, and that fears about currency hygiene were unwarranted. (5)<br /><br />So, what can you do? Well, thorough washing of your hands is most important. Or, you could travel to Japan or Australia. In Japan you can go to a ‘clean ATM’ and get your yen pressed between rollers for one-tenth of a second at 392 F, enough to kill many bacteria. (6)<br /><br />The dirtiness of bills in one reason Australia is leading the charge to use a plastic currency that is supposed to be inhospitable to both germs and counterfeiters and four times as durable as paper notes. Australia introduced the rubber-feeling bills in 1998 and now prints them for 33 other countries, including Romania, Malaysia, and Mexico. (7)<br /><br />Another option is to launder your money—literally, like the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which took emergency action in an effort to stop the spread of SARS. They put into effect a policy of holding money for twenty-four hours before re-circulating it—long enough for the germs to die. Money is also sterilized by being placed under ultraviolet light for an hour. (1)<br /><br />Or, you could just carry coins. Patricia Gadsby reports that anything that is very hard and dry isn’t terribly hospitable to bacteria, and many metals have antibacterial activity. Pennies often are sterile, presumably due to the copper, and most US coins are also about 75 percent copper. (6)<br /><br />Best recommendation is perhaps from Laura Lee, “Then again, none of these extreme measures is really necessary, say the experts. Although the germs on money have the potential to contaminate people, there are no documented cases that it has. Instead of avoiding or cleaning money, the best protection is to wash your hands regularly.” (1)<br /><br />Cocaine<br /><br />“The probability that every single person in the United States is carrying drug-tainted money is almost certain,” says Dr. James Woodford, forensic chemist from Atlanta. Woodford cites a 1989 experiment by Miami toxicologist Dr. William Hearn, who gathered 136 dollar bills from banks in twelve cities. Of these 131 had traces of cocaine.<br /><br />A study conducted at the Houston Advanced Research Center in Texas and the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois examined currency (mostly singles, but also fives, tens, and twenties) in Miami, Chicago, and Houston. This project found an overall 70 to 80 percent contamination rate in the three cities, with single dollar bills more commonly contaminated than the higher denominations. Overall, the more worn the bills, the more coke was found on them. In very old bills, the contamination rate was closer to 90 percent. A recent look at money circulating in northern Illinois, found even higher rates: close to 93 percent of the sample, and 100 percent of the $20 bills tested positive for cocaine. “In fact, most Americans handle small amounts of cocaine every day, not as packets sold by drug dealers, but on the dollar bills that line their pockets,” were conclusions from this study. (6)<br /><br />J. Oyler and colleagues reported that cocaine was present in 79% of currency samples analyzed in amounts above 0.1 microgram and in 54% of the currency in amounts above 1.0 microgram. Contamination was widespread and was found in single dollar bills from a number of US cities. Cocaine amounts were highly variable and ranged from nanogram to milligram amounts. The highest amount of cocaine detected on a single dollar bill was 1327 milligrams. These results indicated that cocaine contamination of currency is widespread throughout the United States. (9) The reason for this contamination relates to the exchange of illicit cocaine for money by drug dealers. During this exchange there is ample opportunity for paper currency to become contaminated.<br /><br />Should you worry? Not at all. Cocaine on cash is so commonplace that the courts have ruled that police can no longer use a drug-sniffing dog’s signal to nab a suspect or to confiscate money because it’s deemed drug-related. (7)<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.Laura Lee, 100 Most Dangerous Things in Everyday Life, (New York, Broadway Books, 2004), 140<br />2.“Bacteria Study Gives New Meaning to ‘Dirty Money’”, Reuters, May 23, 2001<br />3.Philip M. Turner, The Secret Life of Germs, (New York, Pocket Books, 2001), 104<br />4.Steve Newman, “Currency Health Risk,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 4, 2002, Page C10<br />5.“Research Shows That Money May Not Harbor Many Pathogenic Bacteria,” medindia.com, July 13, 2006<br />6.Patricia Gadsby, “Filthy lucre-money is contaminated with bacteria,” Discover, 19, 76, October 1998<br />7.Carol X. Vinzant, “The Secret Life of the Dollar,” money.aol.com; accessed January 30, 2008<br />8.Kathryn Garfield, “Stinking Lucre,” Discover, 28, 15, February 2007<br />9.J. Oyler, W. D. Darwin, and E. J. Crane, “Cocaine contamination of United States paper currency,” J. Anal. Toxicol., 20, 213, 1996jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-38873512045242327232008-04-07T14:56:00.000-07:002008-04-07T14:58:40.562-07:00More Pressing Issues Than Global WarmingJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br /><br />(From Hawaii Reporter, April 7, 2008)<br /><br />“As often happens—especially these days with Web-based media—contentious issues such as global warming become politicized to the point that the discourse trivializes to an alarming extent. Indeed, all one seems to hear about climate change are essentially useless debates between believers and skeptics, along with unrealistic and grotesquely draconian proposals that would force us back into the Stone Age in an effort to mitigate carbon dioxide production,” says Michael Shaw. He adds, “Assertions by zealots and politicians, who should really know better, that climate change is the ‘most important environmental problem facing the world,’ ought to be subjected to the cold light of reason. Before untold resources are spent, shouldn’t we at least compare climate change to other problems facing mankind?” (1)<br /><br />Let’s look at some of these other problems facing mankind. Ten of the most serious challenges facing the world today include: access to education, climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, corruption and governance, financial instability, hunger and malnutrition, migration, sanitation and access to clean water, and subsidies and trade barriers. The Copenhagen Consensus explored opportunities for addressing these issues. This group, organized by Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, is an attempt by leading economists (including three Nobelists) to set priorities for spending using traditional cost-benefit analysis. They were asked to address the challenge areas and to answer the question: ‘What would be the best ways of advancing global welfare, and particularly the welfare of developing countries, supposing that an additional $50 billion of resources were at governments’ disposal?’ Challenge papers, commissioned from acknowledged authorities in each area of policy, set out more than thirty proposals in descending order of desirability. In ordering the proposals the panel was guided predominantly by consideration of economic costs and benefits. (2)<br /><br />The results? Compared to other issues such as communicable diseases, malnutrition and hunger, sanitation and water, and the rest, climate change ranked last on the list. Vernon Smith, Professor of Economics and Law, George Mason University, provided this summation: “It is clear from both the science and the economics of intervention that those of us who care about the environment are not well advised to favor initiating a costly attempt to reduce greenhouse gases build-up in the atmosphere in the near future based on available information. Although the ultimate dangers may turn out to prompt action, the current evidence indicates that it is much too soon to act relative to the many other important and pressing opportunities that demand immediate attention.”(3) (Smith’s italics, not mine)<br /><br />Indur M. Goklany, whose resume includes stints with federal and state governments, think tanks, and the private sector for over 30 years, has also analyzed this issue. He examined certain risks to humanity, and compared the contributory effects of climate change to non-climate factors. His most significant conclusion: “Climate change is clearly not the most important environmental, let alone public health problem facing the world today, nor is it likely to be the most important environmental problem confronting human or environmental well-being, at least through the foreseeable future. Hence, the argument that we should shift resources from dealing with the real and urgent problems confronting present generations to solving potential problems of tomorrow’s wealthier and better positioned generations is unpersuasive at best and verging on immoral at worst.” (4)<br /><br />Goklany provides data from the World Health Organization (WHO). Similar to the conclusions from the Copenhagen Consensus mentioned earlier, climate change doesn’t even make the top ten global health risk factors related to food, nutrition, and environmental occupation exposure. Specifically, the WHO provides the following information:<br /><br />Malaria (2001) 1.12 million deaths<br />Malnutrition 3.24 million deaths<br />Unsafe water, inadequate sanitation,<br />and hygiene 1.73 million deaths<br />Indoor air pollution from heating and cooking<br />with wood, coal, and dung 1.62 million deaths<br />Urban air pollution 800,000 deaths<br />Lead exposure 230,000 deaths<br /><br />How many deaths from climate change? No one knows. However, a review paper published in Nature in 2005 claims that global warming may have been responsible for about 170,000 deaths worldwide in 2000. (5) This estimate is based on an analysis which was put out under the auspices of WHO. However, as Goklany notes, “The 170,000 estimate should be viewed with skepticism since science was admittedly sacrificed in hot pursuit of a predetermined policy objective.” (4)<br /><br />Let’s look at malaria. Some alarmists promote the idea that tropical diseases like malaria will spread because of global warming. However, the geographical spread of these diseases has very little to do with climate. (6) Throughout the Little Ice Age, malaria was a major epidemic disease in Europe and far into the Arctic Circle. (7) In the nineteenth century, malaria, cholera, and other diarrheal and parasitic diseases were prevalent around the world, including northern Europe. (7) Malaria was endemic in England until the late 1800s and in Finland until after World War II. Malaria in the US was still endemic in 36 states until after World War II. (6) Today this disease is a problem only in countries where the necessary public health measures are unaffordable or have been compromised. Past history reveals that combating malaria is primarily a question of development to ensure efficient monitoring of the disease and resources to secure a strong effort to eradicate the mosquitoes and their breeding grounds. Wealth and a functioning public health system is what matters when it comes to combating tropical diseases. (7) <br /><br />Malaria is functionally eliminated in a society whose annual per capita income reaches $3,100. Even under the poorest scenario prediction, the average GDP per capita for developing countries is projected to be $11,000. Hence, few, if any countries ought to be below the $3,100 threshold in 2085. (4) According to the UN Millennium project, a 75% reduction in malaria deaths can be achieved for $3 billion/year, with a program focused directly on malaria prevention. Talk about a better bang for your buck! (1)<br /><br />Summary<br /><br />By focusing our priorities on future generations, we focus less on improving the lives of people who are alive today. These future generations bear no closer relationship to us than those now living in developing countries whose lives we disdain to save. Why are we not feeding people in the world who are hungry? Why are we not giving clean water to the almost one billion people who don’t have clean water? The greatest source of environmental degradation is poverty. Why aren’t we helping eliminate poverty? One answer is that perhaps it is a lot easier worrying about future generations than trying to fix present day problems.<br /><br />Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the organization which is providing much of the doom and gloom about global warming, raises the flag about future generations. This is the same IPCC whose scenarios predict that by 2100, nations that are poor today will at least by as rich as we are at present, and more likely will be 2 to 4 times more wealthy. The IPCC makes this important point about developing countries: “If we take aggressive action to limit climate change they may regret that we did not use the funds instead to push ahead development in Africa, to better protect species against the next retrovirus, or to dispose of nuclear materials safely…Alternatively, if the developed countries choose to embark on an aggressive control regime now, and if this cuts into their growth rates, the result will shrink export markets for developing countries and thus reduce growth there. In addition, if developed countries view their greenhouse effects as, in effect, aid to developing countries, they may cut back on other programs (sanitation, education for women, etc.) that have a more immediate impact on life expectancy, health and well-being.” (8)<br /><br />Bjorn Lomborg observes: “Imagine if you were a rich Chinese or a rich Rwandan or a rich Bolivian in 2100, looking back on 2004, saying how odd that people of 2004 were so concerned about helping me a little bit through climate change and so relatively unconcerned about helping my grandfather and my great-grandfather who needed the help much, much more. (9)<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.Michael D. Shaw, “A Rational Look at Climate Change,” healthnewsdigest.com, February 10, 2008<br />2.Global Crises, Global Solutions, Bjorn Lomborg, Editor, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004) 605<br />3.Global Crises, Global Solutions, Bjorn Lomborg, Editor, 635<br />4.Indur M. Goklany, “What to do about climate Change,” Policy Analysis No. 609, Cato Institute, February 5, 2008<br />5.Jonathan A Patz et al., “Impact of Regional Climate Change on Human Health,” Nature, 438, 310 2005<br />6.Martin Ague, “Is Kyoto a good idea?” in Adapt or Die, Kendra Okonski, Editor, (London, Profile Books Limited, 2003), 77<br />7.Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001), 291<br />8.Wilfred Beckerman, “The precautionary principle and our obligation to future generations,” in Rethinking Risk and the Precautionary Principle, Julian Morris, Editor, (Oxford, Butterworth Heinemann, 2000), 53<br />9.Marc Morano, “Ignore Global Warming Says Former Greenpeace Member,” cnsnews.com, December 14, 2004jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-76696279630736332472008-04-01T20:18:00.000-07:002008-04-01T20:19:46.412-07:00No Consensus on Global WarmingJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From Hawaii Reporter, April 1, 2008)<br /><br />“Rashomon,” a celebrated Japanese film, presents four witnesses observing a single crime. Each witness perceives the situation so differently that the audience experiences what appears to be four distinct events. Current discourse on climate change, or if you prefer, global warming, raises a “Rashomon-like” specter of competing perceptions. On the one side are those of see the world in a heap of trouble. As Lynn Scarlett notes, “They focus on the moment, see despoliation, and predict doom. They believe we can evade doom, but only through sweeping changes, wrought through single-minded pursuit of an environmental imperative.” (1) They are convinced that mankind is responsible for the earth’s surface warming about 0.7C over the past century. These are the folks in the ‘consensus category’ that Al Gore and the media talk about. According to Gore, “The science is settled on climate change. The planet has a fever and its cause is too many cars, power plants, factories, and other human-related sources putting too many emissions into the atmosphere.” (2)<br /><br />On the other side are the ‘disbelievers.’ These folks posit that warming is part of Mother Nature’s natural cycle and there isn’t a whole lot we can do about it. Although they are a ‘minority,’ there are many more scientists that fit this category than most people realize. They aren’t given much media attention since the media for the most part belongs too the ‘consensus’ group. After all, you don’t get attention by saying that things are just fine; you need to spruce news up with doom and gloom stories. More than 22,000 scientists signed the dissenting “Petition Project” which urges political leaders to reject the Kyoto Protocol or other similar proposals that would mandate draconian tax and regulatory measures aimed at virtually all human economic activity. The petition states there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other green house gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. (3)<br /><br />According to a January 1, 2007 New York Times article by Andrew Revkin, a new middle stance has emerged in the debate over climate change. Revkin reports that more scientists are distancing themselves from the extreme fear mongering and exaggerated claims of the climate-change alarmists. (4)<br /><br />Marc Morano notes that after a May 16, 2007 vote in the Senate on global warming, “there is a shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. The media’s fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate change fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics.” (5)<br /><br />In December 2007, over 400 scientists from more than two dozen countries voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC, and Al Gore in a report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also provides their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. (6)<br /><br />And more recently, scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears met at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York City. The March 2-4 groundbreaking conference featured about 100 speakers with over people in attendance. Key items discussed at the conference included:<br />- Most of climate change is caused by natural forces.<br />- The human contribution is not significant.<br />- Solar activity changes are the main cause of climate change.<br /><br />William Jasper reports,”The advocates of Kyoto and other schemes to super-regulate the planet frequently try to portray the scientists who dispute their claims of global warming peril as fringies, fogies, and ‘nut cases’ who shouldn’t be taken seriously. However, as brutal scientific facts have poked holes in their hypothetical global-warming models, the Gore camp has become more strident and abusive. Rather than answer the scientific critiques, they have tended simply to accuse opposition scientists of being in the pay of energy companies. Even worse, they have adapted the tactic of labeling scientists who dispute their claims as being ‘climate-change deniers,’ on a par with ‘Holocaust deniers.” The more radical elements of the climate-change alarmist movement have targeted dissenting scientists for vilification and harassment, even trying to deprive them of their jobs, research grants, and tenure. The most virulent ‘Greens’ call for them to be tried as ‘traitors.’ (2)<br /><br />Many of the scientists feature in the Senate Report issued in December 2007 consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist, Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated: “Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media.” (6) Another example is Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania, a geologist who studies ancient atmospheres and finds no relationship between global temperatures in the past and carbon dioxide levels. He says other scientists have told him to just stop broadcasting that finding saying, “People come to me and say, ‘Stop talking like this, you’re hurting the cause.’” (7)<br /><br />Looks like William F. Buckley, Jr., wasn’t far off the mark with his comment: “The heavy condemnatory breathing on the subject of global warming outdoes anything since high moments of the Inquisition.” (8)<br /><br /><br />Some Final Words<br /><br />Assertions by zealots and politicians, who should really know better, that climate change is the ‘most important environmental problem facing the world,’ ought to be subjected to the cold light of reason says Michael Shaw. Before untold resources are spent, shouldn’t we at least compare climate change to other problems facing mankind? (9) What about issues like communicable diseases, malnutrition and hunger, sanitation and access to clean water? Many, if not all, of these demand immediate attention and can aid folks in serious need at present, not some future generations, that may or may not be affected by the weather in the 2100s.<br /><br />Lastly, 30 years ago we were supposedly headed into a cooling cycle akin to the Little Ice Age. (10) Now, it’s an unprecedented heating cycle. If you ask me, that’s an awfully quick time for a flip-flop on the weather. If the 14 billion year cosmic history were scaled to one day, then 100,000 years of human history would be 4 minutes and a 100 year life-span would be 0.2 seconds. (11) So, in less than 0.1 second in cosmic time we’ve switched on climate change. Seems like we need a few more cosmic time seconds to gather more data.<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.Lynn Scarlett, “Clear Thinking About the Earth,” in Environmental Gore, John A. Baden, Editor, (San Francisco, Pacific Research Institute, 1994), 249<br />2.William F. Jasper, “2008 Climate Debate,” The New American, March 31, 2008<br />3.William F. Jasper, “Analyzing Global-Warming Science,” The New American, February 18, 2008<br />4.Andrew C. Revkin, “A New Middle Stance Emerges in Debate Over Climate,” The New York Times, January 1, 2007<br />5.Marc Morano, “List of global warming activists, now skeptics,” Spero News, May 16, 2007<br />6.“United States Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007; Senate Report Debunks ‘Consensus’”, December 20, 2007<br />7.William J. Broad, “In Ancient Fossils, Seeds of a New Debate on Warming,” in The Best American Science Writing 2007, Gina Kolata, Editor, (New York, Harper Perennial, 2007), 252<br />8.William F. Buckley, Jr., National Review, March 31, 2007<br />9.Michael D. Shaw, “A Rational Look at Climate Change,” healthnewsdigest.com, February 10, 2008<br />10.Stephen H. Schneider, The Genesis Strategy, (New York, Plenum Press, 1976), 90<br />11.Max Tegmark, “We’re Not Insignificant After All,” in What Are You Optimistic About?, John Brockman, Editor, (New York, Harper Perennial, 2007), 4jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-56923566277113953062008-02-07T17:25:00.000-08:002008-02-21T10:32:22.774-08:00Friendly Bacteria and the Hygiene HypothesisJack W. Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />Our immune system needs a certain amount of bacteria or we get get into trouble. These days we can even purchase foods containing these friendly 'probiotic' bacteria.<br /><br /><br /><br />Over 400 distinct species of micro organisms inhabit the various regions of the human digestive tract, making up nearly four pounds of every individual’s total body weight. This vast population of micro organisms far exceeds the number of tissue cells that make up the human body. It has been estimated that an adult carries 90 trillion microbes, a figure that outnumbers the body own cells by nearly 10 to one. (1)<br /><br />With all of this we should normally have a balance of about 85% probiotic bacteria (friendly bacteria) and 15% harmful bacteria, but many people are so far off that their intestinal tract contains only 15% probiotic bacteria and 85% harmful bacteria. We need to have a large population of probiotic bacteria to aid with digestion and to keep harmful disease-causing micro organisms in check. If the percentage of good bacteria is too low, compared to the bad bacteria, our bodies function poorly. Over time we are likely to have many health problems. (2)<br /><br />Have you heard about bugs in baby food, or microbes in your milkshakes? As Lindsey Tanner reports, these are not the latest health food scares, but rather a growing trend in foods designed to boost health, not make you sick. These products contain probiotics, the ‘friendly bacteria’ similar to those found in the human digestive system. (3)<br /><br />Tanner also reports, “There are supplement pills, yogurts, smoothies, snack bars and cereals, even baby formula and chocolate. Sold by major names like Dannon and Kraft, they’re spreading like germs on grocery store shelves and in supermarket dairy cases. In 2007, more than 150 probiotic and prebiotic commercial food products were introduced in the US, compared with about 100 in 2006 and just 40 in 2005. Even without all the answers from science, probiotics are a multibillion-dollar global industry. In the United States alone, retail sales of probiotic-containing foods and supplements totaled and estimated $764 million in 2005 and are projected to reach $1 billion in 2010, according to the market firm BBC Research.” (3)<br /><br />Jessica Synder Sachs adds to the success list of this futuristic approach: “a ‘probiotic’ nasal spray imbued with beneficial bacteria that helps prevent chronic childhood ear infections; a bioengineered strain of mouth bacteria that prevent rather than cause cavities; and a so-called Dirt Vaccine that appears to ease a range of chronic inflammatory disorders and also jolts the immune system into a cancer-fighting mode. Some scientists are even dreaming about ‘probiotic’ cleaning products- each detergent, cleanser, or air spray formulated with its own patented mix of protective and health-enhancing microbes.” (4)<br /><br />University of Michigan researcher, Gary Huffnagle calls probiotics ‘ a new essential food group’ in his book, The Probiotics Revolution. (5) Huffnagle does advise consumers to by wary of probiotic containing products that don’t specify how much or what type of bacteria. Evidence suggests the bugs need to be alive and ingested in huge amounts, generally between 5 billion and 10 billion daily. (3)<br /><br />This is all fairly new. On a spring morning in 2003, a middle-aged Dutch farmer had swallowed his first twice-daily handful of ten small capsules, each filled with some 10 billion cells of the cheesemaking bacterium Lactococcus lactis. That small act entered the Dutchman into the history books as the first human deliberately colonized with transgenic bacteria. The live bugs he swallowed carried and expressed the human gene for the immune calming cytokine interleukin-10. The farmer had been debilitated with Crohn’s disease for more than twenty years. When consumed in dairy products, ordinary L. lactis disappears from a person’s intestinal tract within a day or two. The farmer noted a dramatic reduction in his symptoms. A follow-up trial with ten other patients also proved successful. Further studies are planned in the Netherlands this year with the hope that government regulators will allow this next trial on an out-patient basis. (6)<br /><br />In perhaps the ultimate illustration of how far things have come, Joel Weinstock, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa, recently ran a preliminary clinical trial in which six patients suffering from Crohn’s disease were treated with a dose of live parasitic worms. In five of the six, the disease went into complete remission in the period when the harmless microbes were in the patients’ bodies. The sixth patient also showed a significant improvement. (1)<br /><br />This is all part of the so-called hygiene hypothesis, first voiced by a British epidemiologist, D. P. Strachan in 1989. The hypothesis is that our immune system needs a certain amount of bacteria on which to flex its muscles. Deprived of it, the white cells that are designed to fight bacteria fail to develop, and the other white cells, those designed to make antibodies to defend the body against microbial dangers as well as to produce allergic reactions—will take over. (7) One scientist has likened the immune system to the brain. You have to exercise it, that is, expose it to the right antigenic information so that it matures correctly. Excessive hygiene, therefore, may interfere with the normal maturation of the immune system. (8)<br /><br />Here are some examples of the hygiene hypothesis:<br />•The hygiene hypothesis can be used to explain the Louisiana Purchase. In Haiti, the 1801 uprising of African slaves was successful because yellow fever killed twenty-seven thousand French troops while leaving untouched the African-born slaves, who were relatively immune because of their exposure earlier in life. Napoleon, discouraged by the loss of his Haitian colony, gave up his American ambitions and sold his remaining territory, the Louisiana Purchase. (9)<br />•Dirt and infection don’t just make you less allergy prone, they can fight off some cancers. Dairy farmers are as much as five times less likely to develop lung cancer. Working in a cotton factory protects you against lung, breast, liver, and other tumors. (10)<br />•A Canadian study published in November 2007 suggested that fermented milk containing Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacilius caseli could prevent antibiotic-related diarrhea. (11)<br />•A 2007 study in Finland found that an oat drink containing Bifdobacterium lactis bacteria helped bowel function in nursing home residents. (11)<br />•Scientists in Argentina are investigating whether milk fermented with lactic acid bacteria might reduce amounts of cancer-causing substances in the intestine. (11)<br /><br />Wine and Microbes<br /><br />John Postage postulates that few people are aware that beers, wine, cheeses, and so on are prepared by allowing microbes to act on foodstuffs; even fewer recognize that food goes bad through the actions of microbes. (12)<br /><br />Today, modern wine making techniques are wiping our Racodium cellare, a benign mold, once seen as the sign of a good Tokay cellar, since it helps keep the cellar air fresh. Stainless steel barrels prevent alcohol from evaporating, cutting off the Tokay mold’s food source. It is also under threat from modern standards of hygiene, which aim to create laboratory-like levels of cleanliness in wine cellars. Some vineyards, however, still go out of their way to encourage it. However, it seems to have disappeared from the UK. “I am very sorry to never have found Racodium in Britain,” says Henry Tribe of the University of Cambridge, who has studied the mold. “Even the cellars of St. John’s College are too hygienic. Hygiene is reaching stupid proportions.” (13)<br /><br />Space Travel<br /><br />John Postage provides this interesting information about microbes and space travel. “A space ship with a few astronauts taking a year-long trip to Mars would be a physically isolated community and a peculiar thing happens to the commensal microbes of people in such communities. One type of microbe tends to become dominant, from mouth to anus, and if this germ happens to be pathogenic the situation can be dangerous. Likewise, immunity to infection by ordinary microbes tends to be lost. It seems probable that astronauts will have to keep cultures of the varieties of microbes they started out with, and will need to deliberately re-infect themselves at intervals.” (14)<br /><br />Next they will probably be telling us that when we go on long car or airplane trips we should carry our own satchel of personal microbes for ingestion after a certain number of hours. Think of all the fits this would create with airport security.<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.Garry Hamilton, “Why We Need Germs,” The Ecologist Report, June 2001<br />2.“Probiotic Bacteria and Your Health,” http://www.ghchealth.com/probiotic-bacteria-and-your-health.html; accessed December 25, 2007<br />3.Lindsey Tanner, “The next craze: ‘good’ germs in your food,” Honolulu Advertiser, December 10, 2007, Page A3<br />4.Jessica Snyder Sachs, Good Germs, Bad Germs, (New York, Hill and Wang, 2007), 12<br />5.Gary B. Huffnagle, The Probiotics Revolution, (New York, Bantam Books, 2007)<br />6.Jessica Snyder Sachs, Good Germs, Bad Germs, 206<br />7.Katherine Ashenburg, The Dirt On Clean, (New York, North Point Press, 2007), 290<br />8.Thomas R. DeGregori, The Environment, Our Natural Resources and Modern Technology, (Ames, Iowa, Iowa State Press, 2002)<br />9.E. Fuller Torrey and Robert H. Yolken, Beasts of the Earth, (New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 2005), 20<br />10.Jessica Marshall, “Filthy Healthy,” New Scientist, 197, 34, January 12, 2008<br />11.Lindsey Tanner, “Products With Good Bacteria Get Popular,” Examiner.com; December 10, 2007<br />12.John Postgate, Microbes and Man, Fourth Edition, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000), 133<br />13.“Wine cellar mold,” New Scientist, 194, 57, June 9, 2007<br />14.John Postgate, Microbes and Man, Fourth Edition, 353<br /><br /> .jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-3839007215456037242008-02-02T10:02:00.000-08:002008-02-02T10:04:54.666-08:00Hysteria Over Minuscule Amounts of Chemicals Is UnwarrantedJack Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />(From Hawaii Reporter, February 1, 2008)<br /><br />Imagine one dime in a stack reaching from the Earth to the Moon and half-way back. This is equivalent to one part in 1019, a detectability level for one atom of cesium in the presence of argon atoms reported by Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists. (1)<br /> <br />These days scientists can find any thing in anything and this leads to a problem. The minute that something is found in food, in someone’s blood, etc., some folks get very concerned and start creating a lot of fuss. The very act of being able to measure something can give the impression that if it’s quantifiable, it’s dangerous. (2)<br /><br />Todd Seavey observes, “When regulators began looking for traces of potentially harmful substances to ban a half-century ago, scientists were capable of finding traces as small as parts per million. Unfortunately, activists continue to panic—and make news—each time science improves our ability to detect minuscule traces, even if there’s not new evidence that these smaller and smaller traces can harm us. Now it isn’t hard to find traces of virtually any substance on the planet in virtually any place on the planet.” (3)<br /><br />Here’s a great example of selectively picking data to arouse panic. Bill Moyers did a PBS special on plastics in January 2002. During the program a scientist reported that a sample of Moyers’ blood had been analyzed and about 400 chemicals were found that would not have been found in his blood 40 years ago. The inference was that all of this had come from big, bad industry. No mention was made of concentration levels. No mention was made of the fact that 40 years ago we were analyzing in the parts per million range (equivalent to finding 1 second in 12 years), whereas today we routinely report in the parts per trillion range ( 1 second in 32,000 years), and even greater as mentioned in the opening sentence of this article. No mention was made about the 1000 natural chemicals in coffee; no mention about the 2000 natural chemicals in chocolate.<br /><br />Another naysayer, Lewis Smith reported, “Traces of a cocktail of toxic chemicals linked to cancer and fetal deformities are being eaten even in the healthiest of diets. Man-made pollutants and chemicals were found in every one of 27 food products, including staples such as bread and eggs, that were tested by experts in further tests carried out by WWF, formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature. Every one of 352 people who provided blood samples over the past five years was found to be contaminated with toxic chemicals. All the contaminants found in the samples were at low levels, well within legal limits, but there are serious fears for long-term health.” (4) How low were the levels? Not mentioned. Parts per million? Parts per trillion? Parts per quadrillion? Just low levels, and no references, other than mentioning WWF, an advocacy group well known for its chemophobia leanings.<br /><br />This type of reporting led a number of Britain’s leading poison experts to denounce pressure groups for mounting a ‘hysterical scaremongering’ campaign against dangerous chemicals in the environment. They accused the groups of acting irresponsibly by publishing reports claiming most people have blood swimming with toxic compounds. Said Alan Boobis of Imperial College, London, “Most chemicals were found at a <br />fraction of a part per billion. There is not evidence such concentrations pose any threat to people’s health.” (5)<br /><br />Anthony Trewavas points out that by failing to provide the full information on how minuscule these chemicals are, the public is deprived of the necessary information to make a balanced judgment. He adds, “Worse, a cardinal rule of toxicology is ignored: All chemicals are hazardous, depending on the dose. Drinking six pints of water quickly will kill the average adult from hyponatremia; an aspirin a day helps circulation but 40 stops it for good; you get the point.” (6)<br /><br />Lastly, from Joe Schwarcz, “Evidence for the presence of a substance is not evidence of harm. After all, we don’t avoid apples even though their seeds harbor the deadly toxin cyanide; we happily eat strawberries although they contain acetone, a known neurotoxin; and we are not deterred from toast by the presence of 3,4-benzopyrene, and established carcinogen. The toxic properties of these chemicals are indeed real. When test animals are exposed to high does of acetone, or 1,4-dioxane, they certainly show neurological damage or tumor growth. But that doesn’t mean small doses will have a similar effect. In fact, they may have a significantly different effect. (7)<br /><br />1.Mark S. Lesney, “Chain Reactions: Harvest of Silent Spring,” Today’s Chemist at Work, 8, (3), 63, 1999<br />2.Eric Dezenhall, Nail ‘Em, (New York, Prometheus Books, 2003), 41<br />3.Todd Seavey, “Undetected, Unmeasured Disaster,” HealthFactsandFears.com, November 19, 2004<br />4.Lewis Smith, “Man-made toxins are found in even the best diets,” timesonline.com, September 22, 2006<br />5.Robin Mckie, “Poison experts attack ‘hysteria’ over chemicals,” observer.gurdian.co.uk, September 18, 2005<br />6.Anthony Trewavas, “Chemical Warfare,” The Wall Street Journal, November 2, 2005, Page 14<br />7.Joe Schwarcz, Let Them Eat Cake, (Toronto, Canada, ECW Press, 2005), 159jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-54238254835011656502008-01-30T18:50:00.000-08:002008-01-30T18:54:53.121-08:00Computer Models Don't Always WorkJack W. Dini<br />Livermore, CA<br /><br />From: Plating & Surface Finishing, May 2005<br /><br />What grade would you give someone who was correct 20 percent of the time? Not passing for sure. However, being right 20 percent of the time got some authors published in the prestigious journal Science. (1) They were trying to account for the decline in global temperatures from the end of World War II until the late 1970s. As an aside, in case you don’t remember, the 70s were the times we were supposedly headed for an ‘ice age.’ Newsweek highlighted this with an article titled, “The Cooling World.” (2) Anyhow, getting back to the present, it turns out that computer models have a difficult time producing cooling with the multitude of variables in the mix. The authors of the Science article, Delworth and Knutson, found that all they had to do was run their model many times, compare the output with observed temperature history, tweak some of the input, and go back for another run. After five such runs they concluded, “in one of the five GHG [greenhouse gases]-plus-sulfate integrations, the time series of global mean surface air temperature provides a remarkable match to the observed record, including the global warmings of both the early (1925-1944) and latter (1978 to the present) parts of the century. Further, the simulated spatial pattern of warming in the early 20th century is broadly similar to the observed pattern of warming.” (1)<br /><br />In discussing this work, Robert Davis says the following, “Yes, it’s possible to get a model to reproduce anything you choose merely by tweaking a few parameters and running it enough times. But the model that reproduces the temperature history screws up precipitation, and the model that gets rainfall correct can’t generate the proper wind or pressure fields. The reason is actually quite plain: We don’t understand the physics of the atmosphere well enough to model climate change. That is the grim reality that at least four out of five climate models chose to ignore.”(3) John Christy adds: “Keep firmly in mind that models can’t prove anything. Even when a model generates values that appear to match the past 150 years, one must remember that modelers have had 20 years of practice to make the match look good. Is such model agreement due to fundamentally correct science or to lots of practice with altering (or tuning) the sets of rules in a situation where one knows what the answer should be ahead of time?” (4)<br /><br />Science writer James Trefil echoes this thought. “After you’ve finished a model, you would like to check it out. The best validation is to apply the simulation to a situation where you already know the answer. You could, for example, feed in climate data from one hundred years ago and see if the GCM predicts the present climate. The fact that GCMs can’t do this is one reason I take their predictions with a grain of salt.” (5) A comparison of nearly all of most sophisticated climate models with actual measurements of current climate conditions found the models in error by about 100 percent in cloud cover, 50 percent in precipitation, and 30 percent in temperature change. Even the best models give temperature change results differing from each other by a factor of two or more. (6)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Reliability is in Question<br /><br />While on the topic of global warming, which in a large part has been made a major scientific and political issue because of complex models, here are other examples of the poor predictability of some of those models:<br />•The models that served as the scientific background for the 1992 Rio Treaty implied that the world should have warmed 1.5 C since the late 19th century. In actuality, the world has warmed only 0.5 C, so the models were off by a factor of 3. (7)<br />•As computer simulations have become more sophisticated, projections of rising sea levels have become much smaller. A 25 foot increase predicted in 1980 fell to three feet by 1985 and then to one foot by 1995. (8)<br />•Computers forecast a warming of the troposphere of 0.224 C per decade, when actual measurements showed a warming of only 0.034 C per decade. Predictions were off by almost a factor of 7. (9)<br />•Computer models of ocean circulation did not predict temperature changes which occurred in the deep sea south of the Aleutian Islands. Keay Davidson observes; “At the very least, the findings indicate that computer models of ocean circulation—which are vital for monitoring climate change—are badly in need of a tune-up. The discovery was not explicitly predicted by any known computer models of ocean circulation.” (10)<br />•Carbon buildup has slowed during the past 10 years. Original predictions were that it would be up to 600 ppm by the year 2100, but that number has been reduced to only 500 ppm. (11)<br />•Atmospheric temperatures at the stratopause and mesopause regions (the atmospheric layers at about 30 and 50 miles altitude, respectively), at the Earth’s poles were found to be about 40-50 degrees F cooler than model predictions. (12)<br />•Jane Shaw reports that since “computers have to treat large areas of the earth as if they are on one elevation, their findings don’t give good descriptions of regions that may be hundreds of miles wide. Mountain ranges have an enormous impact on climate; their cooler air causes snow and rain to fall, drying out the air as it moves over the mountains. Yet most computer models do not distinguish mountain ranges from prairies. The building blocks for the models are not fine-grained enough; the mountains have to be flattened in the models and the valleys filled in. The predictions for the wet, mountainous forests of the Pacific Northwest are not much different than the predictions for the dry desert in Nevada. Because they are unable to make such distinctions, the climate descriptions may be distorted.(13) Here’s an example. Martin Wild and his colleagues recently proposed that melting over Greenland should remain negligible, even with doubled carbon dioxide.(14). Why the big difference from past assessments? The short answer is resolution as discussed above. Even the best models end up representing Greenland as a gently rounded mound rather than as a steep walled mesa. And, because melting takes place only as lower elevations, the area prone to melting gets exaggerated in the models.(15) So is Greenland really melting? Here’s some data that I bet you haven’t heard; the West Greenland Ice Sheet, the largest mass of polar ice in the Northern Hemisphere, has thickened by up to seven feet since 1980.(16)<br /><br />Other Examples<br /><br />Global warming isn’t the only situation where computer models exhibit shortcomings. The best model available at the time of the Chernobyl accident did not describe a major feature of the radioactivity deposition 80 miles northeast of the plant, and it was mostly in this region that children ingested or inhaled radioactive iodine and developed thyroid cancers.(17)<br /><br />Predictions of the plume from the Kuwait oil fires (February 1991 to October 1991) were reasonably well described, but some individual deviations where air masses turned westward over Riyadh in Saudi Arabia were not well predicted even after the event.(17)<br /><br />A program researchers were using for studying the effects of airborne soot on human health produced enormous results that went unchecked for years. A team in Canada estimates it will change its data on the impact of airborne soot on mortality downwards by 20-50%. Other groups throughout the world using the same tool are now redoing their calculations.(18)<br /><br />Stuart Beaton and his colleagues note that an EPA model, which treats all cars of a given model year as having the same odometer reading, the same annual mileage accumulation, and an equal likelihood of emission control problems, has little success in predicting urban on-road vehicle emissions. This leads them to conclude, “lack of linkage between EPA’s model and real-world measurements leads to inappropriate policy decisions and wastes scarce resources. If we want to maintain public support for programs that claim to reduce air pollution, those programs must do what they claim in the real world, not just in the virtual world of the computer modeler.”(19)<br /><br />Jerry Dennis reported this about the Great Lakes, “One recent computer model projected a period of drought and heat continuing through the twenty-first century, resulting in even lower water levels. Another predicted more heat and precipitation, resulting in the Great Lakes staying at the same level or even rising a foot or so above average.”(20) Take your pick.<br /><br />A Sacrilegious Thought<br /><br />Naomi Oreskes and her co-authors argue that large computer models with multiple inputs should probably never be considered ‘validated.’ They argue that verification and validation of models of natural systems is impossible because natural systems are never closed, and because models are always non-unique. “Models can only be evaluated in relative terms, and their predictive value is always open to question.”(21) They quote Nancy Cartwright who has said: “A model is a work of fiction.”(22)<br /><br />While not necessarily accepting Cartwright’s viewpoint, Oreskes et al., compare a model to a novel. Some of it may ring true and some may not. “How much is based on observation and measurement of accessible phenomena, how much is based on informed judgment, and how much is convenience? Fundamentally, the reason for modeling is a lack of full access, either in time or space, to the phenomena of interest.”(21) It’s obvious that in some cases we still have a long way to go with modeling.<br /><br />References<br /><br />1.Thomas L. Delworth and Thomas R. Knutson, “Simulation of Early 20th Century Global Warming,” Science, 287, 2246, March 24, 2000<br />2.Peter Gwynne, “The Cooling World,” Newsweek, 85, 64, April 28, 1975<br />3.Robert E. Davis, “Playing the numbers with climate model accuracy,” Environment & Climate News, 3, 5, July 2000<br />4.John R. Christy, “The Global Warming Fiasco,” in Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths, Ronald Bailey, Editor, (Roseville, CA, Prima Publishing, 2002), 15<br />5.James Trefil, The Edge of the Unknown, (New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996), 46<br />6.Jay Lehr and Richard S. Bennett, “Computer Models & The Need For More Research,” Environment & Climate News, 6, 12, July 2003<br />7.Robert W. Davis and David Legates, “How Reliable are Climate Models?,” Competitive Enterprise Institute, June 5, 1998 <br />8.“The Global Warming Crisis: Predictions of Warming Continue to Drop,” in Facts on Global Warming, (Washington, DC, George C. Marshall Institute, October 15, 1997)<br />9.TSAugust, www.tsaugust.org/Global%20Warming.htm, accessed January 19, 2004<br />10.Keay Davidson, “Going to depths for evidence of global warming,” San Francisco Chronicle, A4, March 1, 2004<br />11.Jane S. Shaw, Global Warming, (New York, Greenhaven Press, 2002), 23<br />12.C. S. Gardner, et al., “The temperature structure of the winter atmosphere at the South Pole,” Geophysical Research Letters, Issue 16, Citation 1802, August 28, 2002<br />13.Jane S. Shaw, Global Warming, 60<br />14.Martin Wild, et al., “Effects of polar ice sheets on global sea level in high-resolution greenhouse scenarios,” Journal of Geophysical Research, 108, No. D5, 4165,2003<br />15.David Schneider, “Greenland or Whiteland?,” American Scientist, 91, 406, September-October 2003<br />16.David Gorack, “Glacier melting: Just a drop in the bucket,” Environment & Climate News, 2, 6, May 1999<br />17.Richard Wilson and Edmund A. C. Crouch, Risk-Benefit Analysis, Second Edition, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001), 74<br />18.Jonathan Knight, “Statistical error leaves pollution data up in the air,” Nature, 417, 677, June 13, 2002<br />19.Stuart P. Beaton, et al., “On-Road Vehicle Emissions: Regulations, Costs and Benefits,” Science, 268, 991, May 19, 1995<br />20.Jerry Dennis, The Living Great Lakes, (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 137<br />21.Naomi Oreskes et al., “Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences,” Science, 263, 641, February 4, 1994<br />22.Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983), 153jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168228863794805001.post-40761607566937942842008-01-24T20:55:00.000-08:002008-01-24T20:57:02.162-08:00Water Can Be Too PureJack W. Dini, Livermore, CA<br /><br />(This appeared in Hawaii Reporter, January 24, 2007)<br /><br />Can water be too pure? If you’re a farmer the answer is yes. Desalinated water is one example. The purity drawback is that desalination not only separates the undesirable salts from the water, but also removes ions that are essential to plant growth. When desalinized water is used to replace irrigation water, basic nutrients like calcium, magnesium, and sulfate at levels sufficient to preclude additional fertilization of these elements is missing.<br /><br />An example is a new facility in Ashkelon, on Israel’s southern Mediterranean coast. Although the Ashkelon facility was designed to provide water for human consumption, because of relatively modest population densities in southern Israel, a substantial percentage of the desalinated water was delivered to farmers. Recent evaluation of the effect of the plant’s desalinized water on agriculture, however, produced some surprising, negative results. Water from the Ashkelon plant has no magnesium, whereas typical Israel water has 20 to 20 mg/liter of magnesium. After farmers used the desalinated water, magnesium deficiency symptoms appeared in crops, including tomatoes, basil, and flowers, and had to be remedied by fertilization. To meet agricultural needs, missing nutrients might be added to desalinized water in the form of fertilizers, adding additional costs. If the minerals required for agriculture are not added at the desalination plant, farmers will need sophisticated independent control systems in order to cope with the variable water quality. (1)<br /><br />Farmers can also be affected by run-off water that is too pure. Snow-melt run-off from the Sierra Nevada, Cascades, or other mountains can be too pure. For irrigation to be effective it needs to penetrate into the soil supplying enough water to sustain the crops until the next irrigation and the most important factor for water penetration is salts (or lack thereof) present in the water and/or soil. A lack of calcium in the majority of soils due to snow-melt irrigation water, or poor quality subsurface water, is leading to serious problems in California. Danyal Kasapligil, agronomist in Fresno, CA, reports, “What we are seeing in the field is, not only are there more and more water penetration problems, but crop quality is also rapidly declining because of a lack of calcium in our irrigation water.” (2) Brent Rouppet adds that for irrigation water to penetrate deeply into the soil, the electrical conductivity of the water needs to be greater than approximately 0.60 dS/m (decisiemens per meter). Irrigation water with less than 0.60 dS/m conductivity contributes to loss of soil structure and increased water penetration problems. The snow-melt run-off from the Sierra Nevada Mountains is so pure that its electrical conductivity can be 0.02 dS/m, or less. This water lacks calcium, essential for good soil structure, and any calcium existing in the soil profile is over time leached below the root zone or used by the crops and is typically not being replaced in quantities required. (2)<br /><br />Here’s another example where absolute purity of water can be a problem. Philip West of Louisiana State University notes, “With productive waters, it is quite apparent that absolute purity is out of the question. If the Mississippi River passing Baton Rouge and New Orleans consisted of distilled water there would be no seafood industry such as we now have in Louisiana. With copper ‘contaminating’ the water there would be no oysters. Traces of iron, manganese, cobalt, copper, and zinc are essential for the crabs, snapper, flounder, shrimp and other creatures that abound in Gulf waters. As unpleasant as it sounds, even the run-off from the fertilized fields of the heartland’s and the sewage discharges into the Missouri, Ohio, and Mississippi River systems pollute and thus ultimately nourish the waters.” (3)<br /><br />One last item. Are you a bottled water fan? If so, you could be giving up a primary source of fluoride which is the public health system’s main weapon against tooth decay. What comes in the bottle has either been filtered to remove impurities or is spring water that is reputed to purer than tap water. But the filtering process also takes out fluoride. Not only does fluoride occur naturally in water, but about half the nation’s public water supplies are supplemented with additional fluoride. The recommended level of fluoride set by the EPA for municipal water systems is 0.7 to 1.2 parts per million (ppm). The maximum acceptable level is 4 ppm. If a water supply contains less than 0.7 ppm of fluoride, dentists recommend the use of a fluoride supplement, in tablets or liquid, from birth unto the later teen-age years. (4)<br /><br />When researchers in Ohio sampled more than 50 brands of bottled water for fluoride content, they found that 90 percent of them had levels below the recommended range for dental health. (5) In South Australia, a study found a 71 percent rise in tooth decay in children which was attributed to the lack of enamel strengthening fluoride in the bottled water that has become so popular in the area. (6)<br /><br />References<br /><br />1. U. Yermiyahu et al., “Rethinking Desalinated Water Quality and Agriculture,” Science, 318, 920, November 9, 2007<br />2.Brent Rouppet, “Irrigation Water: A Correlation to Soil Structure and Crop Quality?” Crops, August 2006, Page 22<br />3.Raphael G. Kazmann, in Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns, Jay H. Lehr, Editor, (New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992), 311<br />4.Marian Burros, “Eating Well; Bottled Water: Is It Too Pure?” nytimes.com, November 22, 1989<br />5.“Fluoride Alert,” Runner’s World, 35, 32, July 2000<br />6. Verity Edwards, “Bottled water a dental disaster,” Australiannews.com, August 2, 2006jack dinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14916886984076741768noreply@blogger.com0