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Easter Island Casino Plan Raises Fear of Cultural Erosion
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Anonymous writes " Easter Island Casino Plan Raises Fear of Cultural Erosion
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: April 1, 2006
HANGA ROA, Easter Island This is, as the saying here goes, "the most insular of islands," the place on earth farthest from any other place on earth. Most people here seem to like it that way, which is why a new plan to build a casino on this speck in the South Pacific has created an uproar among the island's 3,800 residents.
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Tomas Munita for The New York Times
Visitors to Easter Island view the island's famous stone statues, called moai, that were carved centuries ago and stand along the coast.
The furor may seem a small matter in a very small place. But to those who live here, the plan is the latest manifestation of a centuries-old onslaught of intrusions from colonization and disease to intermarriage and the steady erosion of the local Polynesian culture and language which threatens finally to undo one of the globe's singular outposts.
Tourism has grown rapidly here in recent years, as long-range flights have reduced Easter Island's remoteness. But visitors are hardly of the high-roller type, and come mainly to see the moai, the famous stone statues, carved centuries ago, that stand guard as mute sentinels along the coast of the island, which is three times the size of Manhattan. Slot machines and blackjack tables have been, until now, alien concepts.
Opponents here fear that if approved, the venture would bring a host of outside social ills, ranging from drugs and prostitution to money laundering and gambling fever among a population that until a generation ago lived in an economy based on barter. The project was proposed late last year, but could be decided upon as early as May.
"A casino would mean the instantaneous destruction of this island as we know it, in which our livelihood is based on a kind of cultural tourism found nowhere else in the world," said Mario Tuki, a fisherman and schoolteacher who is a member of a council of elders. "If people want to gamble, let them go somewhere else, like Las Vegas or Monaco."
Local people are irked all the more that the final decision will be taken in Santiago, Chile, nearly 2,500 miles away. Easter Island, known as Rapa Nui in the local Polynesian language of the same name, has been part of Chile since 1888, with Spanish as its language of government.
The author of the casino plan is Pedro Riraroko, a Rapa Nui businessman and landowner whose interests include a hotel and travel agency. He was on the Chilean mainland lobbying for the project, in which he has Chilean partners who already own a casino, and did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
But the mayor here, Pedro Edmunds, has endorsed the plan. He argues that the benefits of a casino would far outweigh its potential adverse effects. "I welcome any project that would develop Rapa Nui society, and this is one that would create 150 jobs that I don't have today," he said in an interview. "Plus, a chunk of the profits and sales would stay here on the island and give me more money to build roads and maybe afford to buy a dialysis unit for the hospital."
The casino project comes at a delicate moment in the island's complicated and turbulent history, with the Chilean Congress considering a "special statute" that would grant political autonomy to Easter Island. That legislation, which is expected to be approved this year, would give the island's government much greater control over land use and finances.
Easter Island acquired its name when a Dutch vessel landed on that Sunday in 1722. Scientists were curious about the mysterious moai from the beginning, but initially there was little interest otherwise because the island was so remote and had no natural resources to exploit. But in the 19th century, raids by slave ships from Peru carried off nearly 1,000 Rapa Nui, including the island's king, to work in guano mines there. An international campaign freed a handful of survivors, who returned here infected with diseases that reduced the population, more than 10,000 at its peak, to 111 people.
The survivors sought protection from Peru's rival, Chile, but for many years thereafter the island was little more than a sheep farm. Residents acquired Chilean citizenship only in 1966, after protests against their second-class status and what they saw as the arrogance of their Chilean Navy overseers. "This island was run like a ship," said Sergio Rapu, a Rapa Nui archaeologist who in the 1980's became the island's first civilian and native governor. "Everyone was in the navy, and if you were a Rapa Nui, then you were two steps down from a sailor."
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Posted by Love on Tuesday, April 04 @ 16:53:33 EDT (2141 reads)
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James Lovelock About The Earth
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Anonymous writes "James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years
Each nation must find the best use of its resources to sustain civilisation for as long as they can
Published: 16 January 2006
Imagine a young policewoman delighted in the fulfilment of her vocation; then imagine her having to tell a family whose child had strayed that he had been found dead, murdered in a nearby wood. Or think of a young physician newly appointed who has to tell you that the biopsy revealed invasion by an aggressive metastasising tumour. Doctors and the police know that many accept the simple awful truth with dignity but others try in vain to deny it.
Whatever the response, the bringers of such bad news rarely become hardened to their task and some dread it. We have relieved judges of the awesome responsibility of passing the death sentence, but at least they had some comfort from its frequent moral justification. Physicians and the police have no escape from their duty.
This article is the most difficult I have written and for the same reasons. My Gaia theory sees the Earth behaving as if it were alive, and clearly anything alive can enjoy good health, or suffer disease. Gaia has made me a planetary physician and I take my profession seriously, and now I, too, have to bring bad news.
The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.
Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
By failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. By doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. If we chose to be the stewards of the Earth, then we are responsible for keeping the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface right for life. A task we would soon find impossible - and something before we treated Gaia so badly, she had freely done for us.
To understand how impossible it is, think about how you would regulate your own temperature or the composition of your blood. Those with failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys.
My new book The Revenge of Gaia expands these thoughts, but you still may ask why science took so long to recognise the true nature of the Earth. I think it is because Darwin's vision was so good and clear that it has taken until now to digest it. In his time, little was known about the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans, and there would have been little reason for him to wonder if organisms changed their environment as well as adapting to it.
Had it been known then that life and the environment are closely coupled, Darwin would have seen that evolution involved not just the organisms, but the whole planetary surface. We might then have looked upon the Earth as if it were alive, and known that we cannot pollute the air or use the Earth's skin - its forest and ocean ecosystems - as a mere source of products to feed ourselves and furnish our homes. We would have felt instinctively that those ecosystems must be left untouched because they were part of the living Earth.
So what should we do? First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can. Civilisation is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered descent. On these British Isles, we are used to thinking of all humanity and not just ourselves; environmental change is global, but we have to deal with the consequences here in the UK.
Unfortunately our nation is now so urbanised as to be like a large city and we have only a small acreage of agriculture and forestry. We are dependent on the trading world for sustenance; climate change will deny us regular supplies of food and fuel from overseas.
We could grow enough to feed ourselves on the diet of the Second World War, but the notion that there is land to spare to grow biofuels, or be the site of wind farms, is ludicrous. We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but in human civilisation the planet has a precious resource. We are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet. Through us, Gaia has seen herself from space, and begins to know her place in the universe.
We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords. Most of all, we should remember that we are a part of it, and it is indeed our home.
The writer is an independent environmental scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society. 'The Revenge of Gaia' is published by Penguin on 2 February
Imagine a young policewoman delighted in the fulfilment of her vocation; then imagine her having to tell a family whose child had strayed that he had been found dead, murdered in a nearby wood. Or think of a young physician newly appointed who has to tell you that the biopsy revealed invasion by an aggressive metastasising tumour. Doctors and the police know that many accept the simple awful truth with dignity but others try in vain to deny it.
Whatever the response, the bringers of such bad news rarely become hardened to their task and some dread it. We have relieved judges of the awesome responsibility of passing the death sentence, but at least they had some comfort from its frequent moral justification. Physicians and the police have no escape from their duty.
This article is the most difficult I have written and for the same reasons. My Gaia theory sees the Earth behaving as if it were alive, and clearly anything alive can enjoy good health, or suffer disease. Gaia has made me a planetary physician and I take my profession seriously, and now I, too, have to bring bad news.
The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.
Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
By failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. By doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. If we chose to be the stewards of the Earth, then we are responsible for keeping the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface right for life. A task we would soon find impossible - and something before we treated Gaia so badly, she had freely done for us.
To understand how impossible it is, think about how you would regulate your own temperature or the composition of your blood. Those with failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys.
My new book The Revenge of Gaia expands these thoughts, but you still may ask why science took so long to recognise the true nature of the Earth. I think it is because Darwin's vision was so good and clear that it has taken until now to digest it. In his time, little was known about the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans, and there would have been little reason for him to wonder if organisms changed their environment as well as adapting to it.
Had it been known then that life and the environment are closely coupled, Darwin would have seen that evolution involved not just the organisms, but the whole planetary surface. We might then have looked upon the Earth as if it were alive, and known that we cannot pollute the air or use the Earth's skin - its forest and ocean ecosystems - as a mere source of products to feed ourselves and furnish our homes. We would have felt instinctively that those ecosystems must be left untouched because they were part of the living Earth.
So what should we do? First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can. Civilisation is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered descent. On these British Isles, we are used to thinking of all humanity and not just ourselves; environmental change is global, but we have to deal with the consequences here in the UK.
Unfortunately our nation is now so urbanised as to be like a large city and we have only a small acreage of agriculture and forestry. We are dependent on the trading world for sustenance; climate change will deny us regular supplies of food and fuel from overseas.
We could grow enough to feed ourselves on the diet of the Second World War, but the notion that there is land to spare to grow biofuels, or be the site of wind farms, is ludicrous. We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but in human civilisation the planet has a precious resource. We are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet. Through us, Gaia has seen herself from space, and begins to know her place in the universe.
We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords. Most of all, we should remember that we are a part of it, and it is indeed our home.
The writer is an independent environmental scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society. 'The Revenge of Gaia' is published by Penguin on 2 February
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article338830.ece
http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/
http://www.planetecologie.org/ENCYCLOPEDIE/Pionniers/lovelock.htm
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Posted by Love on Wednesday, March 15 @ 16:22:24 EST (2233 reads)
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Ban on trade in wild caviar as sturgeon stocks plunge
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Ban on trade in wild caviar as sturgeon stocks plunge
John Vidal, environment editor
Wednesday January 4, 2006
The Guardian
The worldwide trade in wild caviar was suspended yesterday in an attempt to force countries that export much of one of the world's most expensive foods to prevent plunging stocks of the sturgeon fish.
"We were unable to approve the quotas for this year, so there is now no legal caviar from wild fish," said Juan Carlos Vasquez, a spokesman for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), which represents 169 countries and sets annual export quotas.
The suspension of the export of the unfertilised eggs of the sturgeon could last between one and six months, until the governments of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia and Turkmenistan, which between them export 90% of the world's sturgeon catch, provide more information to Cites about how they intend to stop illegal exports and work together to allow stocks to recover.
Chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the growing involvement of the Russian mafia and pollution, have been blamed for a massive rise in poaching and a precipitous decline in stocks. Numbers in the Caspian Sea are thought to have fallen 90% in 30 years and slightly less in the Black Sea and major rivers. The fish are also found in smaller quantities in Bulgaria, China, Iran, Romania and North America.
According to WWF and wildlife trade monitor group Traffic, about half of the 27 sturgeon species are now threatened, and two are believed to be close to extinction.
"Sturgeon have been in dire straits for some time and it has been clear that something drastic had to be done to stop the trade in illegal caviar and ensure that the legal trade is sustainable and properly regulated," said Susan Lieberman, director of WWF's global species programme.
The effect on prices of the temporary trade ban is unclear because Christmas is the peak season for buying the delicacy. The global legal caviar trade is estimated at $100m (£57m) annually, with individual beluga sturgeon weighing up to 136.5kg (21½ stone) worth as much as $50,000 each. Demand is highest in the EU, Switzerland, the US and Japan, which together account for 95% of total imports. Yesterday wild beluga caviar was being sold in London for £95 for 30g and £43.50 for 30g of less scarce sevruga caviar.
The illegal trade ranges from private individuals selling jars of caviar at open-air stalls to highly organised smuggling operations, with couriers picking up suitcases prepacked with black-market roe. European police seized nearly 12,000kg of illegal caviar between 2000 and 2005. Germany imported the most illegal caviar (2,224kg), followed by Switzerland,the Netherlands, Poland and Britain. Last year the US banned the import of beluga caviar from the Caspian and Black seas in an effort to protect the endangered beluga sturgeon.
"Countries wishing to export sturgeon products from shared stocks must now demonstrate that their proposed catch and export quotas reflect current population trends and are sustainable," said Willem Wijnstekers, the secretary-general of Cites. "They must also make full allowance for the amount of fish caught illegally," he added. Last night Cites said that when it had more information it would restore quotas, almost certainly at a much lower level than in the past.
"All governments should reflect. Importers such as the EU also have obligations to ensure that all imports are from legal sources, and they must establish registration systems for their domestic processing and repackaging plants and rules for the labelling of repackaged caviar," said Mr Vasquez.
A spokesman for Harrods said: "I cannot see our customers rushing in and panic-buying caviar because of this."
Culinary history
Until the 19th century, caviar was mostly a peasant food, eaten by poor farmers and fishermen as a substitute for meat during religious fasts. The Russian tzars and then the European aristocracy thought it a delicacy and in Communist times, a sophisticated cartel sold it to affluent westerners. It has now become a western symbol of culinary extravagance, but as stocks of wild sturgeon decline, only the super-rich and extravagant can afford the best caviars. Elton John reportedly offered wild caviar and chips to several hundred wedding guests last month.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fish/story/0,7369,1677468,00.html
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Posted by boomer on Wednesday, January 04 @ 00:20:42 EST (2361 reads)
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Snowmobiles May Not Impact
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Anonymous writes "Study: Snowmobiles May Not Impact Wildlife Wed Dec 14, 6:57 PM ET
BILLINGS, Mont. - Most elk, bison and trumpeter swans are unfazed by the presence of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the park and Montana State University observed more than 2,100 interactions between snowmobiles and wildlife last winter.
In 81 percent of the interactions, the animals either had no apparent response, or they looked and then resumed what they were doing, the study said.
The study, commissioned by the National Park Service and conducted between December 2004 and March 2005, is one of several that park officials say they will take into account as they develop a long-range plan for winter use in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
The study suggests wildlife can become habituated to the machines over time.
"We suggest the debate regarding the effect of motorized recreation on wildlife is largely a social issue as opposed to a wildlife-management issue," the study said.
Overall, the populations of elk and bison in the park appear to be stable, the study said, and any "adverse effects" in the winter "have apparently been compensated for at the population level."
The authors did, however, make some recommendations for reducing the affects of snowmobile traffic on wildlife. They suggested trying to keep the machines more than 100 yards away from groups of wildlife, reducing the number of riders in groups that stop to watch wildlife and reducing both the number of wildlife stops and the length of human interactions with animals.
The Park Service is in the midst of its third in-depth study of the snowmobile issue in Yellowstone and Grand Teton. A draft is scheduled to be completed early next year.
In the meantime, Yellowstone is operating under temporary winter use rules, which allow up to 720 guided snowmobiles into that park each day.
Wildlife is among the key issues in the ongoing winter use debate, along with noise, pollution and the economic impact on nearby communities.
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Posted by boomer on Thursday, December 29 @ 02:17:18 EST (2224 reads)
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Christmas is damaging the environment:
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Anonymous writes "Christmas is damaging the environment: report Wed Dec 14, 9:19 PM ET
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Christmas is damaging the environment, says a new report by the Australian Conservation Foundation.
The report titled "The Hidden Cost of Christmas" calculated the environmental impact of spending on books, clothes, alcohol, electrical appliances and lollies during the festive season.
Every dollar Australians spend on new clothes as gifts consumes 20 liters (four gallons) of water and requires 3.4 square meters (37 sq. feet) of land in the manufacturing process, it said.
Last Christmas, Australians spent A$1.5 billion (US$1.1 billion) on clothes, which required more than half a million hectares (1.2 million acres) of land to produce, it said.
Water that would approximately fill 42,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools was used in the production of Christmas drinks last December -- most was used to grow barley for beer and grapes for wine.
"If your bank account is straining under the pressure of Christmas shopping, spare a thought for our environment," Don Henry, the foundation's executive director, said in a statement.
"It's paying for our Christmas presents with water, land, air and resources. These costs are hidden in the products we buy."
The report said that gifts like DVD players and coffee makers generated 780,000 tons of greenhouse pollution, even before they were unwrapped and used. A third was due to fuel consumption during production.
Even a box of A$30 chocolates or lollies this Christmas, will consume 20kg (44 pounds) of natural materials and 940 liters (207 gallons) of water.
"We can all tread more lightly on the earth this Christmas by eating, drinking and giving gifts in moderation, and by giving gifts with a low environmental cost, such as vouchers for services, tickets to entertainment, memberships to gyms, museums or sports clubs, and donations to charities," said Henry.
($1=A$1.33)
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Posted by boomer on Thursday, December 29 @ 02:15:56 EST (2286 reads)
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Hurricane Katrina
In late August, Katrina became the 11th named storm of the turbulent 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and its most deadly and destructive.
Click through the timeline to chart Katrina's origins over the ocean to the massive devastation on land she left behind in her wake.
Note: All times are Eastern
Sources: CNN, National Hurricane Center
August 25
4 p.m.: Katrina officially becomes a Category 1 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center.
7 p.m.: Lumbering ashore in south Florida, Katrina causes nine deaths and kills power to more than 1.2 million people.
11 p.m.: Despite being over land for more than four hours, Katrina's maximum sustained winds are still being clocked at 75 mph. It came ashore with 80 mph winds between Hallandale Beach and North Miami Beach.
August 26
5 a.m.: After weakening briefly to a tropical storm, Katrina regains hurricane status and moves on to the Gulf of Mexico.
11:30 a.m.: The hurricane is upgraded to Category 2, with the storm's feeder bands
continuing to pound the lower Florida Keys.
4 p.m.: The National Hurricane Center warns that Katrina is expected to reach dangerous Category 4 intensity before making landfall in Mississippi or Louisiana. Hours later, in anticipation of a possible landfall, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco declare states of emergency.
August 27
5 a.m.: Katrina is upgraded to a Category 3, or major hurricane, with the Gulf Coast in its path.
During the day, residents of Louisiana's low-lying areas are told they must evacuate; residents in other low-lying areas are urgently advised to do so. President Bush declares a state of emergency in Louisiana.
Highways leading out of New Orleans are filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Several major interstates are converted to one-way routes away from the city.
11 p.m.: The National Hurricane Center issues a hurricane warning from Morgan City, Louisiana, to the Alabama-Florida border, an area that includes New Orleans. A warning means that hurricane conditions are expected within the warning area within the next 24 hours.
August 28
2 a.m.: Katrina escalates to Category 4 strength, heading for the Gulf Coast. The last time Mississippi or Louisiana saw landfall from a Category 4 or stronger storm was 1969 with Hurricane Camille.
7 a.m.: Hurricane Katrina intensifies to Category 5, the worst and highest category on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
10 a.m.: As Katrina hits 175 mph winds, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin orders mandatory evacuations as the storm seems to beat a direct path to the city.
During the day, Bush declares a state of emergency in Mississippi and orders federal
assistance. The National Hurricane Center says low-lying areas along the Gulf Coast could expect storm surges of up to 25 feet as the storm, with top sustained winds of 160 mph, hits early the next day.
August 29
4 a.m.: Hurricane Katrina is downgraded to a strong Category 4 storm.
7 a.m.: Katrina makes landfall on the Louisiana coast between Grand Isle and the mouth of the Mississippi River.
11a.m. Katrina makes another landfall near the Louisiana-Mississippi state line with 125 mph winds.
The storm's daylong rampage claims lives and ravages property in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, where coastal areas remained under several feet of water.
Two major flood-control levees are breached, and the National Weather Service reports "total structural failure" in parts of New Orleans. A section of the roof of the Louisiana Superdome, where 10,000 people are taking refuge, opens. Many are feared dead in flooded neighborhoods still under as much as 20 feet of water.
In Mississippi, dozens are dead and Gov. Haley Barbour describes "catastrophic damage" along the coast. More than 1.3 million homes and businesses in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were without electricity, according to utility companies.
10 p.m.: More than 12 hours after making landfall, one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the northern Gulf Coast in half a century is downgraded to a tropical storm. Remnants head north toward Tennessee and the Ohio River Valley, spurring harsh storms and tornadoes.
August 30
New Orleans is left with no power, no drinking water, dwindling food supplies, widespread looting, fires -- and steadily rising waters from major levee breaches. Efforts to limit the flooding are unsuccessful and force authorities to try evacuating the thousands of people at city shelters.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says Katrina inflicted more damage to the state's beach towns than did Hurricane Camille, and its death toll is likely to be higher. In Mobile, Alabama, the storm pushed water from Mobile Bay into downtown, submerging large sections of the city.
The U.S. military starts to move ships and helicopters to the region at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Katrina is downgraded to a tropical depression.
August 31
President Bush flies over the Gulf Coast in Air Force One to survey the damage. He later announces a major federal mobilization to help the victims.
The entire region is declared a public health emergency amid fears of diseases that could spread because of the contaminated, stagnant water.
Evacuations from the Louisiana Superdome to the Houston Astrodome begin. About 20,000 people are expected to be transferred from New Orleans to Houston.
When asked about the number of dead, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin replies, "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."
September 1
In flooded New Orleans, stranded people remain in buildings, on roofs, in the backs of trucks or gathered in large groups on higher ground.
Violence disrupts relief efforts as authorities rescue trapped residents and try to evacuate thousands of others living among corpses and human waste. Those stranded express growing frustration with the disorder evident on the streets, raising questions about the coordination and timeliness of relief efforts.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announces that 4,200 National Guard troops trained as military police will be deployed to New Orleans over the next three days. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco requests the mobilization of 40,000 National Guard troops.
Gasoline prices spike as high as $5 a gallon in some areas as consumers fearing a gas shortage race to the pumps.
September 2
Tired and angry people stranded at the convention center in New Orleans welcome a supply convoy carrying food, water and medicine.
President Bush visits Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, and later signs a $10.5 billion disaster relief bill.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimate it will take 36 to 80 days to drain the city.
Texas officials say nearly 154,000 evacuees have arrived there.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus criticize the pace of relief efforts, saying response was slow because those most affected are poor.
September 3
Officials in New Orleans clear tens of thousands of evacuees from the Louisiana Superdome and Ernest Morial Convention Center, where they were living under squalid conditions with little food or water.
Firefighters battle two fires along the Mississippi River waterfront, where 50-foot flames engulfed an industrial district.
FEMA announces that 90,000 square miles were affected by Katrina, an area greater than the size of the United Kingdom.
Utility companies work to restore power to more than 1 million Gulf Coast customers.
The Army Corps of Engineers brings in pumps and generators from around the nation to help get New Orleans pumps back on line and bail out the city.
September 4
Water and air rescue efforts continue in New Orleans; the U.S. Coast Guard said it has rescued more than 17,000 people, almost twice as many as it had saved in the previous 50 years combined, but that thousands of people remain stranded. Helicopters drop emergency
food and water to people awaiting rescue.
A Eurocopter AS 332 Super Puma helicopter flown by a civilian company crashes during rescue operations in New Orleans. No evacuees are aboard, and the pilot and crew are rescued.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announces plans to move traumatized police and firefighters out of the city so they can receive medical and psychological treatment. Police officials said
two officers committed suicide.
September 5
Suburban Jefferson Parish, across the 17th Street Canal from the levee breach that flooded much of New Orleans, begins allowing residents to return temporarily to retrieve their belongings.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry appeals for other states to help accommodate some 230,000
evacuees.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/katrina/interactive/timeline.katrina/frameset.exclude.html
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Posted by boomer on Tuesday, September 06 @ 00:00:00 EDT (2491 reads)
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Flood of regret...waves of anger
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Sept. 3, 2005, 7:57PM
Flood of regret...waves of anger
Blueprint to save New Orleans was created but never realized
By MARK FISCHETTI
THE deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina are heart-rending. The suffering of survivors is wrenching. Property destruction is shocking. But perhaps the most agonizing part is that much of what happened in New Orleans this week might have been avoided.
Watching the TV images of the storm approaching the Mississippi Delta on last Sunday, I was sick to my stomach. Not only because I knew the hell it could unleash (I wrote an article for Scientific American in 2001 that described the very situation that was unfolding) but because I knew that a large-scale engineering plan called Coast 2050 developed in 1998 by scientists, Army engineers, metropolitan planners and Louisiana officials might have helped save the city, but had gone unrealized.
The debate over New Orleans' vulnerability to hurricanes has raged for a century. By the late 1990s, scientists at Louisiana State University and the University of New Orleans had perfected computer models showing exactly how a sea surge would overwhelm the levee system, and had recommended a set of solutions. The Army Corps of Engineers, which built the levees, had proposed different projects.
Yet some scientists reflexively disregarded practical considerations pointed out by the Army engineers; more often, the engineers scoffed at scientific studies indicating that the basic facts of geology and hydrology meant that significant design changes were needed.
Meanwhile, local politicians lobbied Congress for financing for myriad special interest groups, from oil companies to oyster farmers. Congress did not hear a unified voice, making it easier to turn a deaf ear.
Fed up with the splintered efforts, Len Bahr, then the head of the Louisiana Governor's Office of Coastal Activities, somehow dragged all the parties to one table in 1998 and got them to agree on a coordinated solution: Coast 2050. Completing every recommended project over a decade or more would have cost an estimated $14 billion, so Louisiana turned to the federal government.
While this may seem an astronomical sum, it isn't, in terms of large public works; in 2000 Congress began a $7 billion engineering program to refresh the dying Florida Everglades. But Congress had other priorities, Louisiana politicians had other priorities, and the magic moment of consensus was lost.
Thus, in true American fashion, we ignored an inevitable problem until disaster focused our attention. Fortunately, as we rebuild New Orleans, we can protect it by engineering solutions that work with nature, not against it. The conceit that we can control the natural world is what made New Orleans vulnerable. For more than a century the Army Corps, with Congress' blessing, leveed the Mississippi River to prevent its annual floods, so that farms and industries could expand along its banks.
Those same floods, however, had dumped huge amounts of sediment and freshwater across the Mississippi Delta, rebuilding each year what Gulf tides and storms had worn away and holding back infusions of saltwater that kill marsh vegetation. These vast delta wetlands created a lush, hardy buffer that could absorb sea surges and weaken high winds.
The flooding at the river's mouth also sent great volumes of sediment west and east into the Gulf of Mexico, to a string of barrier islands that cut down surges and waves, compensating for regular ocean erosion. Stopping the Mississippi's floods starved the wetlands and the islands; both are rapidly disintegrating, leaving the city naked against the sea.
What can we do to restore these natural protections? Although the parties that devised Coast 2050, and other independent scientists and engineers who have floated rival plans, may disagree on details, they do concur on several major initiatives that would shield New Orleans, reconstitute the delta and, as a side benefit, improve ports and shipping lanes for the oil and natural gas industries in the Gulf of Mexico.
Cut several channels in the levees on the Mississippi River's southern bank (the side that doesn't abut the city) and secure them with powerful floodgates that could be opened at certain times of the year to allow sediment and freshwater to flow down into the delta, re-establishing it.
Build a new navigation channel from the Gulf into the Mississippi, about 40 miles south of New Orleans, so ships don't have to enter the river at its three southernmost tips 30 miles further away.
For decades the Corps has dredged shipping channels along those final miles to keep them navigable, creating underwater chutes that propel river sediment out into the deep ocean. The dredging could then be stopped, the river mouth would fill in naturally and sediment would again spill to the barrier islands, lengthening and widening them. Some planners also propose a modern port at the new access point that would replace those along the river that are too shallow to handle the huge new ships now being built worldwide.
Erect huge seagates across the pair of narrow straits that connect the eastern edge of Lake Pontchartrain, north of the city, to the Gulf. Now, any hurricane that blows in from the south will push a wall of water through these straits into the huge lake, which in turn will threaten to overflow into the city.
That is what has filled the bowl that is New Orleans this past week. But seagates at the straits can stop the wall of water from flowing in. The Netherlands has built similar gates to hold back the turbulent North Sea and they work splendidly.
Finally, and most obviously, raise, extend and strengthen the city's existing but aging levees, canal walls and pumping systems that worked so poorly in recent days.
It's hard to say how much of this work could have been completed by today had Coast 2050 become a reality. Certainly, the delta wetlands and barrier islands would not have rebounded substantially yet.
But undoubtedly progress would have been made that would have spared someone's life, someone's home, some jazz club or gumbo joint, some city district, some part of the region's unique culture that the entire country revels in. And we would have been well on our way to a long-term solution.
For there is one thing we know for sure: Hurricanes will howl through the Mississippi Delta again.
Fischetti, based in Lenox, Mass., is a contributing editor to Scientific American magazine.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3338558
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Posted by boomer on Sunday, September 04 @ 00:00:00 EDT (2510 reads)
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Europe's oldest civilisation unearthed: report Sat Jun 11, 6:35 PM ET
LONDON (AFP) - Europe's oldest civilisation has reportedly been discovered by archaelogists across the continent.
More than 150 large temples, constructed between 4800 BC and 4600 BC, have been unearthed in fields and cities in Germany, Austria and Slovakia, predating the pyramids in Egypt by some 2,000 years, The Independent newspaper revealed.
The network of temples, made of earth and wood, were constructed by a religious people whose economy appears to have been based on livestock farming, The Independent reported.
Excavations have taken place over the past three years but the discovery is so new that the civilisation has not yet been named.
The most complex centre discovered so far, beneath the city of Dresden in Saxony, eastern Germany, comprises a temple surrounded by four ditches, three earthen banks and two palisades.
"Our excavations have revealed the degree of monumental vision and sophistication used by these early farming communities to create Europe's first truly large scale earthwork complexes," said Harald Staeuble, from the Saxony state government's heritage department.
The temples, up to 150 metres (164 yards) in diameter, were made by a people who lived in long houses and villages, the newspaper said. Stone, bone, and wooden tools have been unearthed, along with ceramic figures of people and animals.
A village at Aythra, near Leipzig in eastern Germany, was home to some 300 people living in up to 20 large buildings around the temple.
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Updated: 08:43 AM EDT
Changing Planet Revealed in Atlas
Photos Show Global Devastation
By Jeremy Lovell, Reuters
LONDON (June 4) - The devastating impact of mankind on the planet is dramatically illustrated in pictures published Saturday showing explosive urban sprawl, major deforestation and the sucking dry of inland seas over less than three decades
Mexico City mushrooms from a modest urban center in 1973 to a massive blot on the landscape in 2000, while Beijing shows a similar surge between 1978 and 2000 in satellite pictures published by the United Nations in a new environmental atlas.
Delhi sprawls explosively between 1977 and 1999, while from 1973 to 2000 the tiny desert town of Las Vegas turns into a monster conurbation of 1 million people -- placing massive strain on scarce water supplies.
"If there is one message from this atlas, it is that we are all part of this. We can all make a difference," U.N. expert Kaveh Zahedi told reporters at the launch of the "One Planet Many People" atlas on the eve of World Environment Day.
Page after page of the 300-page book illustrates in before-and-after pictures from space the disfigurement of the face of the planet wrought by human activities.
U.N. Environment Program chief Klaus Toepfer has chosen efforts to make cities greener as this year's theme for World Environment Day Sunday on the basis that the world is becoming increasingly urbanised.
"Cities pull in huge amounts of resources including water, food, timber, metals and people. They export large amounts of wastes including household and industrial wastes, wastewater and the gases linked with global warming," he said in a statement.
"Thus their impacts stretch beyond their physical borders affecting countries, regions and the planet as a whole.
"So the battle for sustainable development, for delivering a more environmentally stable, just and healthier world, is going to be largely won and lost in our cities," Toepfer added.
The destruction of swathes of mangroves in the Gulf of Fonseca off Honduras to make way for extensive shrimp farms shows up clearly in the pictures.
The atlas makes the point that not only has it left the estuary bereft of the natural coastal defense provided by the mangroves, but the shrimp themselves have been linked to pollution and widespread damage to the area's ecosystem.
And images of the wholesale destruction of vital rainforest around Iguazu Falls -- one of South America's most spectacular waterfalls -- on the borders between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay evoke comparisons with a bulldozer on a rampage.
"These illustrate some of the changes we have made to our environment," Zahedi said. "This is a visual tool to capture people's imaginations showing what is really happening."
"It serves as an early warning," he added.
06/04/05 11:09 ET
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050604111009990002&ncid=NWS00010000000001
By the Numbers
400
Cities with more than 1 million inhabitants in 2000
75
Percent of population that is urban in developed countries
1 Billion
Global slum population
Source: U.N / Reuters
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Anonymous writes "Sci/Tech > Environment: "Science Notes: An Occasional Column"
from the May 19, 2005 edition
To track global warming, watch the water flow
By Robert C. Cowen
Say "climate change" and people tend to think global warming. But we also should think about water, specifically, the cycle of precipitation, evaporation, and river flow that is a key climate component. A little decline here, a little boost there, can have direct effects on how we live our lives.
In the Arabian Sea, for example, fishermen now enjoy richer fishing thanks to declining snow cover in Southeast Asia and the Himalayas. The links work this way: Less snow means more summer heating of the land, intensifying air pressure differences between land and sea, which in turn drive the seasonal monsoon winds. Stronger winds stir the Arabian Sea more vigorously, bringing more nutrients into its higher, sunlit levels. Microscopic plants and animals (fish food) flourish. Fisheries burgeon.
Arctic inhabitants aren't so fortunate. An intensified water cycle is increasing moisture in the American and Eurasian northlands. Rivers fed by stronger precipitation are pouring more freshwater into the Arctic Ocean. It caps the upward flow of fish food. This is bad for fisheries.
Changes in the water cycle itself may be subtle and often poorly understood. Yet their effects can sometimes be dramatic. Joaquim Goes at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in West Boothbay Harbor, Maine, and several colleagues studied satellite images of the western Arabian Sea and found sea-color changes due to seasonal blooms of phytoplankton (microscopic plants). In fact, the blooms have increased more than 350 percent in seven years, the research team reported in Science last month.
These robust phytoplankton blooms can enhance fisheries, Dr. Goes says. But too much phytoplankton can deplete the water's oxygen supply. That can kill fish and encourage bacteria that release nitrous oxide, a gas with 310 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide.
Arctic water-cycle changes also have global implications. Peili Wu, Richard Wood, and Peter Stott at Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research studied these changes by comparing computer simulations with actual river-flow data. Their conclusion, published in Geophysical Research Letters in January, indicated that we are seeing the beginning of an intensified water cycle. Dr. Wu calls the team's findings "evidence that changes in the global water cycle predicted to follow global warming are already happening."
That cycle is expected to remain in balance. Increased Arctic precipitation is balanced by decreased precipitation in the tropics. There may be large-scale shifts in ocean circulations and movement of water vapor through the atmosphere. That may involve a net movement of water from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere.
One particular concern is the effect of more freshwater from the Arctic on the North Atlantic. This could alter the large-scale currents, including the Gulf Stream. "It is clear that further and more rapid warming will increase the vulnerability of this [North Atlantic] circulation system, possibly leading to a permanent circulation change in the climate system," warned Thomas Stocker and Christoph Raible of the University of Bern, Switzerland, in a comment on the Hadley study published last month in Nature.
Public concern about water has concentrated on maintaining clean-water supplies for human use. That's too self-centered. The way water moves around our planet has fundamental environmental implications. We never will understand where climate change is headed without taking account of precipitation, evaporation, and river flow.
http://csmonitor.com/2005/0519/p16s03-sten.html
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There isn't a Biggest Story for Today, yet.
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| Saturday, October 09 | | · | Kenyan Green Activist Wins Nobel Peace Prize |
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| · | Super Nova |
| Thursday, September 30 | | · | Governor signs legislation to curb pollution from cruise ships |
| · | Feds give $20 million for habitat buys |
| Friday, August 27 | | · | New Earth Discovered |
| Wednesday, August 18 | | · | Earth in 2050: |
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