Artificial trees that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere are one of the plans that need further research, according to the Royal Society. (Institution of Mechanical Engineers)
London Times | Sep 2, 2009
Royal Society warns climate engineering ‘could cause disaster’
by Ben Webster
Giant engineering schemes to reflect sunlight or suck carbon dioxide from the air could be the only way to save the Earth from runaway global warming, according to a group of leading scientists. But they say that these schemes could have their own catastrophic consequences, such as disrupting rainfall patterns, and should be deployed only as a last resort if attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions fail.
The Royal Society, a fellowship of 1,400 of the world’s most eminent scientists, published a report yesterday on the feasibility and possible dangers of technologies for cooling down the Earth, known as geoengineering. The ideas include artificial trees that draw CO2 from the air and mimicking volcanoes by spraying sulphate particles a few miles above the Earth to deflect the Sun’s rays. The most far-fetched would would be to launch trillions of small mirrors into space to act as a sunshield.
A far cheaper solution would be a fleet of 1,500 ships that would suck up seawater and spray it out of tall funnels to create sun-reflecting clouds. However, the report said that these clouds could disrupt rainfall patterns and result in mass starvation in countries dependent on the monsoon.
The panel of 12 scientists who produced the report concluded that all these approaches were theoretically possible and, despite the potential side-effects, should be explored with a view to holding trials.
They called for a £100 million annual global research fund to study geoengineering technologies and said that Britain should contribute £10 million a year, ten times the amount being spent now on such research.
Professor John Shepherd, who chaired the panel, said: “It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing carbon dioxide emissions we are heading for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases.
“Our research found that some geoengineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and eco-systems — yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them. Geo- engineering and its consequences are the price we have to pay for failure to act on climate change.”
Professor Shepherd, Fellow in Earth System Science at the University of Southampton, admitted that there was a risk that the report would be exploited by fossil fuel companies, which might use it to argue that there was an alternative to cutting CO2 emissions.
But he said that it was better to start a thorough research programme now rather than wait until the start of rapid climate change, when the world would have no time to test solutions before deploying them.
Professor Shepherd added that he had no firm opinion on how likely it was that the world would need some form of geoengineering. “My opinion ranges from maybe to possibly to probably, depending on what I had for breakfast.”
Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution in the United States and a member of the panel, said: “We should spend 99 per cent of our effort on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and 1 per cent on this insurance policy \. We need to understand what our options are.”
The report said that an international body, possibly the United Nations, would need to oversee geoengineering projects because they would have impacts far beyond national boundaries. An international compensation scheme would also be needed to help those adversely affected by any project.
Professor John Beddington, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, endorsed the report’s call for more research into geoengineering. He said: “These are part of the armoury of dealing with what is an enormously difficult global problem.” But he added that it was “too early to say” whether trials should be approved.
The electromagnetic waves emitted by cellphone towers and cellphones can pose a threat to honey bees, a study published in India has concluded.
An experiment conducted in the southern state of Kerala found that a sudden fall in the bee population was caused by towers installed across the state by cellphone companies.
The electromagnetic waves emitted by the towers crippled the navigational skills of the bees that go out to collect nectar from flowers to sustain colonies, said Dr Sainuddin Pattazhy, who conducted the study, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. – Sapa-AFP
Sad to say, Genetically Modified foods have been introduced to the African Market. It is now up to African consumers to reject them. This will save lives and cost for the treatment of the side effects of consuming Genetically Modified foods.
The history of controlling the food industry in the world by the then American Government in 1973 under President Nixon started by introducing the “Food for Peace” programme which was led by Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s Secretary of State and National Security Adviser.
According to the New African Magazine, Kissinger controlled absolutely the US foreign policy and summarized his activities as “Control oil and you control nations, control food and you control the people”. His idea of capturing the worldwide food industry started with the introduction of what was termed as the gene revolution.
The revolution did not succeed until 1990. a member of the South African consumer movement, Andrew Taynton explains that where-as natural breeding techniques select plants or animals with desirable traits and cross breed within a species to create better crops or animals, genetically modified are developed in laboratories by splicing genes from unrelated species into the host organism.
For instance, bacterial genes can be spliced into food crops and it will reproduce itself in each cell in the plants. Also scientists are now transferring anti-freeze genes from fish to tomatoes to keep it longer in the cold. There is also the splicing of pig genes into rice and daffodils to corn. All these have devastating effects, because of its imprecise processes.
The main effects of consuming genetically modified foods includes; allergies, new toxins, new diseases, antibiotic resistance and change in nutritional values. One other thing which needs to be mentioned is the “V Gurts” Varietal Genetic Use Restriction Technology which is popularly called the “Suicide Seeds” or terminator technology.
One expert believes Africa is in great danger now as genetically modified seeds are made in forms of herbicides and pesticides. These are normally exported to Africa and the Caribbean. The centre for Disease Control of the United States says that at lease 80% of food related illnesses are cause by viruses or pathogens that scientist cannot even identify.
Prince Charles, the heir to the British Throne, was once reported to have stated that “growing genetically modified crops in the developing world represents the biggest environmental disaster of all times”.
With the realities of climate change, it is just an option to reject these kinds of foods on the market. More revelations have been made by Dr. Arpad Pusztai, when he found out that rat fed on genetically modified potatoes had smaller livers, hearts, testicles and brains.
It was also revealed that their immune systems have been damaged with a lot of structural changes in their white blood cells, making them vulnerable to infections and other diseases as compared to rats which were fed on normal organic foods. The same changes occur in humans who also take genetically modified foods.
Thus, the whole world could be exterminated if nothing is done to stop it. We have all become lab rats in mass human experiment with huge risks. The risks will be too late to detect and save the world especially Africa because it will take longer times to find the antidotes. By then the genetically modified companies would have made their money.
Apart from South Africa which has started growing genetically modified crops, the remaining African countries must reject and fight against governments who want to adopt the technology. Ghana should also try to establish strict checks on imported foods, seeds, herbicides and pesticides to control, if not to stop the spread of the genetically modified crops in the country.
The solution is to accept nuclear foods which are done through induced mutations. World examples of induced mutations include; Tek Bankye which has been developed by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in collaboration with the IAEA. The Biotechnology and Nuclear Agricultural Research Institute has carried out researches that show that the Tek bankye yields as high as 17.84 tons per acre.
Kenya has also developed a high yielding and drought resistant wheat. Hopefully all Africans, especially, Ghanaians would reject genetically modified foods for a sustainable environment and good health.
MARGAO: Navelchea Xetkariancho Ekvott (NXE), a farmers’ club from Navelim, at its meeting held recently, resolved to oppose any moves by the government to introduce genetically modified (GM) fruits and vegetables in Goa.
Expressing concern over the dangers of using GM food products, the NXE urged all farmers to be vigilant and not to allow the entry of such food items into Goa.
Joseph Vaz of the Navelim Civic and Consumer Forum, who addressed the meeting, sought to prevail upon the farmers how “the whole farming activity will be controlled by a few private companies like Monsanto (USA)”.
“The interest of a majority of people will be controlled by a few capitalists. Thus, we should be vigilant and protect our freedom and reject GM vegetables and fruits outright,” Vaz was quoted as saying at the meeting in a press note issued by the NXE.
Concerned over the “indiscriminate” use of inorganic fertilizers by farmers, NXE further urged all farmers and agro-entrepreneurs to desist from using chemical fertilizers “which kill the natural organisms present in the soil” and to use local traditional organic manures instead. “The farmers noted that indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers had drastically reduced the population of frogs. Tadpoles eat mosquito larvae, hence the mosquito population is controlled naturally. Excess fertilizers also flow into various water bodies and affect the fishes and other living organisms thus disturbing the ecological chain,” the press note says.
The NXE members further also noted with regret the delay in convening a meeting of the affected farmers to resolve the “Ravanfond issue”. It may be recalled that the farmers have been agitating over the acquisition of paddy fields at Ravanfond by the government to rehabilitate vendors affected by the widening of Ravanfond junction.
The farmers also noted with regret the drought condition in other parts of India and the rising food prices and urge all the fellow Goans to cultivate their land and not keep it fallow.
International Paper Co., the world’s largest pulp and paper maker, plans to remake commercial forests in the same way Monsanto Co. revolutionized farms with genetically modified crops.
International Paper’s ArborGen joint venture with MeadWestvaco Corp. and New Zealand’s Rubicon Ltd. is seeking permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to sell the first genetically engineered forest trees outside China. The Australian eucalyptus trees are designed to survive freezes in the U.S. South.
Plantations of engineered trees would give International Paper a competitive advantage by providing a reliable supply of lower cost wood at a time when timberlands are dwindling because of development, said David Liebetreu, the Memphis, Tennessee- based company’s vice president of global sourcing. Opponents are concerned that alien genes may contaminate natural forests, echoing objections to modified crops that Monsanto still faces.
“There is a potential to explode once they get these trees approved,” said David Knott, who manages $1.3 billion as chief executive officer of Dorset Management in Syosett, New York. He said he increased his stake in Rubicon to 70.5 million shares this year to bet on ArborGen because it has a customer base of large landowners and little competition. “This could take off faster than Monsanto.”
Monsanto’s genetics, which were first sold in herbicide- tolerant soybeans in 1996 and insect-resistant corn the following year, were used in 88 percent of the world’s 309 million acres of biotech plantings last year. Monsanto’s sales of seeds and genetics quadrupled since 2002 to $6.4 billion last year.
ArborGen Sales
ArborGen may boost yearly sales to $500 million in 2017 from $25 million by following Monsanto’s blueprint for commercializing engineered plants, said Stephen Walker, head of asset management at New Zealand-based Goldman Sachs JBWere Ltd., which owns Rubicon shares and holds no stock in International Paper or MeadWestvaco. The partners eventually might sell shares of ArborGen to the public, International Paper’s Liebetreu said.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service may approve sales of freeze-tolerant eucalyptus trees by late 2010, ArborGen Chief Executive Officer Barbara Wells said. The company also is developing trees that are easier to pulp and that grow twice as fast, said Wells, a former Monsanto executive who has a doctorate in agronomy.
ArborGen’s eucalyptus would become the first engineered forest tree sold in the U.S., where disease-resistant plum and papaya trees already are permitted, according to a USDA database. China has planted about 1.4 million biotech black poplars since commercialization in 2002.
Increasing Risk
Engineered eucalyptus trees could be an ecological disaster, bringing increased fire risk and extraordinary water consumption to a new environment, said Neil J. Carman, an Austin, Texas-based member of the Sierra Club’s genetic engineering committee. Easier-to-pulp trees will be weak, and hurricanes will spread their pollen and contaminate native forests, he said.
“These are Frankenforests,” Carman said. “You are tampering with Mother Nature in a big way by putting genetically engineered trees out there.”
The group won a court order in 2007 requiring Monsanto to pull modified alfalfa plants from the market while the USDA reviewed their environmental impact more thoroughly, and Carman said a similar strategy may be used against modified trees.
ArborGen says that genes won’t spread because its trees grow on plantations, not in forests, and are engineered to be infertile with impaired pollen production.
Tree Plantations
About 4 percent of the world’s 8.5 billion forest acres are plantations, and 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres) of new plantations are added annually, according to the United Nations.
“It’s through plantation forests and increased productivity that you protect native forests,” ArborGen’s Wells said. “We pursue products that we know are environmentally safe.”
ArborGen, based in Summerville, South Carolina, was created in 2000 when the three partners pooled their tree-research assets and intellectual property. The venture sells about 300 million conventional tree seedlings a year to 2,000 customers in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.
Rubicon derives most of its value from ArborGen, one of two ventures it owns. International Paper and MeadWestvaco, a cardboard maker, are so large that their 33 percent stakes in ArborGen aren’t material to earnings, the companies said.
Sustainable Hardwood Source
The papermaker’s main interest in ArborGen is the potential of modified trees such as cold-tolerant eucalyptus to provide a sustainable source of hardwood for pulp, Liebetreu said. That becomes more important as the U.S. starts to make biofuels from timber, which may double harvest pressure in the U.S. South, International Paper said in a June 9 letter to USDA.
“If you could go back and buy Monsanto when it was just starting to develop genetically modified seeds, would you do it?” said Walker of Goldman Sachs JBWere. “I think so.”
Parallels with Monsanto aren’t a coincidence. Wells, 54, spent 18 years at that company, including four years introducing modified soybeans in Brazil. ArborGen Chief Science Officer Maud Hinchee and James Mann, vice president of business development, also worked at St. Louis-based Monsanto.
ArborGen Pricing
ArborGen may charge 20 times more for its engineered trees than its cheapest seedlings and two to three times more than its best conventional products as it claims a share of the revenue landowners gain from growing high-quality wood faster, according to Rubicon’s July update. Monsanto’s modified corn and soybean seeds are priced to grab as much as half the increased income farmers realize from higher yields and lower pest-control costs.
ArborGen became the world’s largest seedling producer when it bought assets from its parent companies in 2007, making it the only tree developer with its own market channel for genetic technology, Wells said. Others developing gene-modified trees, including FuturaGene Plc in the U.K. and SweTree Technologies in Sweden, lack seedling businesses and aren’t yet pursuing permission for commercial sales.
Monsanto’s research into genetically modified trees is limited to a Brazilian collaboration on eucalyptus and citrus trees at Alellyx SA, which Monsanto acquired in November after the project began, spokeswoman Kelli Powers said.
Faster-Growing Trees
ArborGen next plans to seek U.S. approval to sell loblolly pine, used for lumber and paper, engineered to mature in 18 years rather than 26. In Brazil, ArborGen plans to seek approval for eucalyptus that matures in four years, rather than seven, and eucalyptus with reduced lignin.
Extracting lignin, a brown polymer that hardens trees, is one of the most expensive and polluting parts of making pulp, said Graeme P. Berlyn, professor at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
“They definitely will find a market if they can do what they claim,” Berlyn said.
There is a small chance some modified trees will produce pollen and fertilize conventional relatives, Berlyn said. Populations contaminated with low-lignin traits could be weakened and vulnerable to breakage for thousands of years before evolution eliminates the inferior genetics, he said.
“All of this is a bit troubling,” said Berlyn, who edits the Journal of Sustainable Forestry.
Expanded Testing
While ArborGen awaits approval to sell cold-tolerant eucalyptus, it also is seeking USDA permission to expand a 57- acre test of the trees to 330 acres, mainly in Texas, Florida and Alabama.
ArborGen is working with different eucalyptus species than those that have become pests in California, and the biotech trees are “unlikely” to prove invasive in the U.S. South, according to the USDA. The draft environmental assessment on expanded field testing drew thousands of comments opposing the USDA’s conclusion that the research poses an insignificant risk.
The proposed field tests involve 260,000 experimental trees and are tantamount to commercial approval, the Sierra Club’s Carman said. If the field tests are approved, the Sierra Club may sue the USDA to compel a more thorough study, known as an environmental impact statement, he said.
In 2007, the U.S. District Court in San Francisco ordered the USDA to conduct such an assessment of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa and blocked further sales after the Sierra Club and organic farmer groups challenged the plant’s approval. The USDA hasn’t yet released an assessment of ArborGen’s application to commercialize modified eucalyptus.
Approval would set ArborGen on a path to sell 275 million engineered seedlings a year by 2018, assuming its first five modified trees are permitted, contributing to after-tax cash flows of as much as $700 million, according to an April report commissioned by Rubicon.
(CNSNews.com) – In a recent congressional hearing, Senate Commerce Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D.-W.V.) told John P. Holdren, President Barack Obama’s science czar, that he sometimes refers to Holdren as “walking on water.”
Holdren is director the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a top adviser to the president on climate-change policy.
In writings published in past years, Holdren has advocated “de-development” of the United States and redistribution of wealth both within and between nations.
In a 1973 book, Holdren said: “The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”
At a July 30 hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee focusing on climate change, Sen. Rockefeller complimented Holdren, using terms that alluded to one of the miracles recounted in the Gospels.
“The president, I think, has surrounded himself with some of the most brilliant choices,” said Rockefeller at the hearing. “Dr. Holdren, I don’t want to embarrass you, but I sometimes refer to you as walking on water.”
The hearing specifically looked at the administration’s plans to coordinate federal efforts in researching climate change and the possible creation of a National Climate Service, which would make “forecasts and projections” about climate change. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke testified along with Holdren.
“Well, I think clearly a national climate service is badly needed,” Locke told the committee.
“And this agency or service must provide climate modeling in terms of forecasts and projections,” Locke said. “People need to understand what’s coming down the road and it needs to provide regional and national assessments of climate change so that people in different parts of the region can understand—can get as much as possible tailored scientific information as it pertains to them and their livelihoods and their future.”
Holdren said the administration favored the idea of a climate service. “The administration recognizes the need to move forward with the climate services concept,” he said.
When Sen. Maria Cantwell (D.-Wash.) asked Holdren about the threat of “abrupt climate change,” Holdren said America should be ready for it.
“Dr. Holdren, should we be planning for abrupt climate change, and what are the potential consequences of that?” asked Cantwell. “And how do we get the additional research that we need in that area?”
“Well, senator,” said Holdren, “the first thing I would say is we’re already finding climate change is becoming more abrupt than we expected, even a few years ago. Many different aspects of climate change are happening more rapidly than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in its recent reports.”
“It could become more abrupt,” Holdren said. “Nobody knows for sure. Our understanding of all the details is not adequate to say exactly which potential tipping point might be crossed that would cause some of the climactic changes that we’re experiencing to accelerate drastically, but we should be ready for it.”
At the end of the hearing, Sen. Rockefeller paid tribute to Holdren.
“The president, I think, has surrounded himself with some of the most brilliant choices,” Rockefeller said. “Dr. Holdren, I don’t want to embarrass you but I sometimes refer to you as walking on water.
“That may be the end of your career,” Rockefeller said. “But, you know, we brought that 5 percent carbon guy from New Hampshire and had him sit right where you are and he told us all about it because you told me about it. A really superb technical scientific team. And everything else: The questions we ask and how do Americans understand all of this and react to it is incredibly important. But what we need to know that is already in place and working is the top part of the team–spreading out and coordinating superb thinking, superb arguments and, you know, a superb policy.”
“So, I, frankly, it’s one of the most exciting things about this administration is just the presence of all of you,” said Rockefeller. “And on that dour note, the hearing is over.”
(The “5 percent carbon guy” Rockefeller referred to is Frank Alix, CEO of Powerspan, a Porstmouth, N.H., company developing technology to remove carbon from coal-burning emissions. Alix told the committee in testimony in March that the 36% of overall U.S. carbon emissions that come from coal could be reduced to 5% with deployment of technology that reduces the carbon in emissions from coal-burning facilities by 90%.)
Before joining the Obama administration, Holdren was director of the Woods Hole Research Center and a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He formerly taught at the University of California.
In 1995, Holdren co-wrote an essay with Paul Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, in which he argued that mankind should face up to the need for a “world of zero net physical growth” and “population limitation.”
The essay is listed among “Recent publications” on Holdren’s curriculum vitae posted at the Woods Hole Web site. (Ehrlich is the author of The Population Bomb, a 1968 bestseller that made the case for zero population growth.)
The 1995 essay by Holdren, Ehrlich, and Daily was printed as the first chapter of a book published by the World Bank entitled, “Defining and Measuring Sustainability: The Biogeophysical Foundations.” The book is available online at the World Bank Web site.
“We know for certain, for example, that: No form of material growth (including population growth) other than asymptotic growth, is sustainable,” wrote Holdren, Ehrlich and Daily. “Many of the practices inadequately supporting today’s population of 5.5 billion people are unsustainable; and [a]t the sustainability limit, there will be a tradeoff between population and energy-matter throughput per person, hence, ultimately, between economic activity per person and well-being per person.
“This is enough,” Holdren, Ehrlich and Daily wrote, “to say quite a lot about what needs to be faced up to eventually (a world of zero net physical growth), what should be done now (change unsustainable practices, reduce excessive material consumption, slow down population growth), and what the penalty will be for postponing attention to population limitation (lower well-being per person).”
In this 1995 essay, the authors also argued for global wealth redistribution. “Table 1-1” in the essay was labeled: “Ills That Development Must Address.” In this table, “excessive population growth” and “maldistribution of consumption and investment” were listed as among “driving forces” behind the ills that confront the human race.
“Excessive population growth,” the authors said, is “a condition now prevailing almost everywhere.”
In “Table 2-2” of the essay, Holdren and his co-authors listed what they called “Requirements for Sustainable Improvements in Well-Being.” Among these were “reduced disparities within and between countries.”
“The large gaps between rich and poor that characterize income distribution within and between countries today,” they wrote, “are incompatible with social stability and with cooperative approaches to achieving environmental sustainability.”
“Human Ecology,” a 1973 book that Holdren co-authored with Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, called for population control, de-development of the United States, and redistribution of wealth both within and between nations. The book is also listed under “Recent publications” on Holdren’s curriculum vitae posted on the Woods Hole Web site.
“Political pressure must be applied immediately to induce the United States government to assume its responsibility to halt the growth of the American population,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote in the “Synthesis and Recommendations” chapter of this book. “Once growth is halted, the government should undertake to influence the birth rate so that the population is reduced to an optimum size and maintained there.”
“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” the authors wrote in the same chapter of “Human Ecology.”
“The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge,” they wrote. “They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”
On page 235 of “Human Ecology,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs said the following about when a fetus develops into a “human being:” “The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being. Where any of these essential elements is lacking, the resultant individual will be deficient in some respect.”
When CNSNews.com reported on this passage in ‘Human Ecology” last month, the White House Press Office did not respond to emailed and telephoned inquiries about it.
At his confirmation hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee in February, Holdren was not asked about this passage in “Human Ecology” about when a baby develops into a “human being.”
When Holdren was asked in his confirmation hearing by Sen. David Vitter (R.-La.) what he believes the right population would be today for the United States, Holdren said his views on population control had changed since 1973.
“I no longer think it is productive, senator,” he said, “to focus on the optimum population for the United States. I don’t think any of us know what the right answer is.”
Holdren also said in his confirmation hearing that he did not think it was the proper role of government to determine the optimal population.
________ Rockefeller Eugenics
Ashton Kutcher shot down over Rockefeller’s War Against the Weak on Bill Maher
NEW YORK — Researchers say a small number of young law enforcement officers who participated in the World Trade Center rescue and cleanup operation have developed an immune system cancer.
The numbers are tiny, and experts don’t know whether there is any link between the illnesses and toxins released during the disaster.
But doctors who coordinated the study, published Monday in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, said people who worked at the site should continue to have their health monitored.
“What we are trying to get out there is: Be alert,” said Dr. Jacqueline M. Moline, director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
The researchers looked at 28,252 emergency responders who spent time amid ground zero dust and found eight cases of multiple myeloma.
Those findings were no surprise. Multiple myeloma is the second most common hematological cancer in the U.S. after non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Normally, researchers would expect to find about seven cases in a group as large as the one examined in the study.
However, four of the people who fell ill were under age 45, and multiple myeloma is thought to be more rare among people of that age. Under normal circumstances, researchers would have expected to find only one case of the disease in that age group.
Those four young multiple myeloma patients included one officer who was caught in the dust cloud on 9/11 and then spent months working long hours at the site. Another spent 111 days at the Staten Island landfill where the rubble was sifted. Two others had less exposure, working 12 and 14 days each in the pit and rubble pile.
The study said it is possible the monitoring program was simply more effective at finding the illness among people who wouldn’t ordinarily be subjected to intense medical tracking.
Nevertheless, Moline said, “You shouldn’t be seeing so many cases of myeloma in younger folks.” The median age of diagnosis for that cancer in the general public is 71.
Several groups are studying New Yorkers exposed to toxic dust when the skyscrapers collapsed.
To date, no study, including the one published Monday, has established a link between that dust and cancer, said Lorna Thorpe, a deputy commissioner and epidemiologist at New York City’s health department.
The timing of the four cases examined by the team at Mount Sinai also raised questions about whether they are related to their work at ground zero, she said.
Most research on multiple myeloma indicates that it usually takes 10 to 20 years for someone to develop that cancer after an environmental exposure to a carcinogen.
In these cases, the cancers were diagnosed in as little as three to four years after the attacks, suggesting that something else caused the disease.
HIGH-profile Margaret River chefs and winemakers are warning of a consumer backlash if the ban on genetically modified (GM) crops is lifted.
The chefs, including Leeuwin Estate’s Dany Angove and Vasse Felix’s Aaron Carr have spoken out, saying GM food goes against a growing demand for organic and biodynamic food.
Mr Angove, Mr Carr, Must resturant’s Russell Blaikie and 10 other Western Australian chefs recently signed the Greenpeace chefs’ charter for GM-Free Australia.
Vanya Cullen, of Margaret River’s biodynamic Cullen Wines, helped launch the Greenpeace guide to GM free alcohol this month.
Mr Angove said a hasty decision to allow GM crops into the shire could have long-term ramifications.
“We don’t know enough about this, and as for GM crops solving world food shortages, it certainly hasn’t proved to be the case in India.
“A lot of people come down here to live in a sustainable way, and they are passionate about it.
“Allowing GM crops in could seriously damage the Margaret River brand; we can promote organic food but I can’t see people lining up to buy GM food,” he said.
Sally Wylie from the Consumers for GM Free Food Organisation said the introduction of GM crops could threaten the wine industry.
“Some vineyards are eliminating canola oils from their processing because there could be a question mark over their product in EU markets,”Ms Wylier said
The councillors will vote on the GM issue when they meet next week, on Thursday 13.
Two petitions were delivered at the last meeting, the first signed by almost 1500 residents and the second, by seven local doctors – both groups oppose allowing GM crops into the region.
Some people who are serious about wanting to reduce their “carbon footprint” on the Earth have one choice available to them that may yield a large long-term benefit – have one less child.
A recent study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives – things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.
The research also makes it clear that potential carbon impacts vary dramatically across countries. The average long-term carbon impact of a child born in the U.S. – along with all of its descendants – is more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.
“In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime,” said Paul Murtaugh, an OSU professor of statistics. “Those are important issues and it’s essential that they should be considered. But an added challenge facing us is continuing population growth and increasing global consumption of resources.”
In this debate, very little attention has been given to the overwhelming importance of reproductive choice, Murtaugh said. When an individual produces a child – and that child potentially produces more descendants in the future – the effect on the environment can be many times the impact produced by a person during their lifetime.
Under current conditions in the U.S., for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent – about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible.
And even though some developing nations have much higher populations and rates of population growth than the U.S., their overall impact on the global equation is often reduced by shorter life spans and less consumption. The long-term impact of a child born to a family in China is less than one fifth the impact of a child born in the U.S., the study found.
As the developing world increases both its population and consumption levels, this may change.
“China and India right now are steadily increasing their carbon emissions and industrial development, and other developing nations may also continue to increase as they seek higher standards of living,” Murtaugh said.
The study examined several scenarios of changing emission rates, the most aggressive of which was an 85 percent reduction in global carbon emissions between now and 2100. But emissions in Africa, which includes 34 of the 50 least developed countries in the world, are already more than twice that level.
The researchers make it clear they are not advocating government controls or intervention on population issues, but say they simply want to make people aware of the environmental consequences of their reproductive choices.
“Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth,” Murtaugh said. “Future growth amplifies the consequences of people’s reproductive choices today, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance.”
Murtaugh noted that their calculations are relevant to other environmental impacts besides carbon emissions – for example, the consumption of fresh water, which many feel is already in short supply.
(CNSNews.com) – In a recent congressional hearing, Senate Commerce Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D.-W.V.) told John P. Holdren, President Barack Obama’s science czar, that he sometimes refers to Holdren as “walking on water.”
