The Top 10 Environmental Developments of 2009

The Top 10 Environmental Developments of 2009: "

10. Cass Sunstein becomes regulatory czar. Sunstein is a true believer in cost-benefit analysis, the bête noire of many an environmentalist. Obama’s appointment of Sunstein to oversee health and environmental regulations may put the brakes on regulatory initiatves.

9. California passes AB 758. The first mandate for energy efficiency standards for existing buildings.

8. Water wars moving east. We tend to think of water disputes as Western. But that’s hanging: Georgia and Alabama fought over water allocation, while Michigan and Illinois fought over endangered species.

7. EPA grants California’s car waiver. Reversing the Bush Administration, EPA approved California’s regulations of greenhouse gases from vehicles.

6. Withdrawal of the Bush Administration’s ESA rule. The Bush Administration tried to reduce substantially the number of federal actions subject to review under the Endangered Species Act. The Obama Administration reversed this action, with an assist from Congress.

5. The 2008 Supreme Court Term. The worst Supreme Court Term for the environment ever. Five losses out of five cases.

4. EPA’s endangerment finding. The government finally got around to finding the obvious: climate change is bad for your health and bad for the planet. The finding opens the door to using the Clean Air Act to address climate change.

3. Copenhagen. Much exaggerated hype followed by much exaggerated hand-wringing. The Copenhagen Accord is a step forward – how big a step, only time will tell.

2. Barack Obama took office, and the Democrats go sixty votes in the Senate. Obama seems to combine Bill Clinton’s pragmatism with a dash of Al Gore’s idealism on environmental issues. Whether the Democrats will succeed in capitalizing on their Senate control remains to be seen.

1. George Bush and Dick Cheney left office. Not everything was negative, but overall, Bush and Cheney headed the most anti-environmental Administration in decades. (Why, you might ask, is this the #1 development, while Obama is #2? The reason is that Bush was much more anti-environmental than Obama is pro-environmental.)

"

Ginkgo Doesn't Improve Memory Or Cognitive Skills

Ginkgo Doesn't Improve Memory Or Cognitive Skills: "JumperCable writes "Ginkgo biloba has failed — again — to live up to its reputation for boosting memory and brain function. Just over a year after a study showed that the herb doesn't prevent dementia and Alzheimer's disease, a new study from the same team of researchers has found no evidence that ginkgo reduces the normal cognitive decline that comes with aging. In the new study, the largest of its kind to date, DeKosky and his colleagues followed more than 3,000 people between the ages of 72 and 96 for an average of six years. Half of the participants took two 120-milligram capsules of ginkgo a day during the study period, and the other half took a placebo. The people who took ginkgo showed no differences in attention, memory, and other cognitive measures compared to those who took the placebo, according to the study, which was published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"

The Dry Garden: Instead of New Zealand flax, try the giant wild rye called Canyon Prince

The Dry Garden: Instead of New Zealand flax, try the giant wild rye called Canyon Prince: "

Of all the creatures that disperse plants in nature, we humans may be the quirkiest. Take how we distribute New Zealand flax. We fight back its blades along what seems like every other front walk.

This column is to commend an indigenous alternative to New Zealand flax for the gardens of greater Los Angeles: a type of giant wild rye called Canyon Prince. Ninety-nine percent of the time that flax is used in California, this cultivar of Leymus condensatus could perform the same function, but better.

The first reason is size. As beautiful as New Zealand flax is, it needs space. You could hide a rugby scrum behind many full-grown specimens. By contrast, the "giant" in "giant wild rye" is a relative term. This beautiful cultivar introduced by the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is giant only among grasses. It may reach 3 feet tall.

Plants that stay proportionate to the scale of most homes and gardens are rare. But in the case of Canyon Prince, its steel blue, sword-like foliage not only allows you to see the house but also flatters almost any building -- and vice versa. The effect is so striking that the first suggestion that comes to mind of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden horticulturist Bart O’Brien is to place it “against blank walls, places where you can really see its structure.”

That said, leave some space so the plant is allowed to luxuriate to its full 2- to 3-foot diameter. There’s nothing sadder than a scrunched-up royal. For more recommendations, click to the jump.

If you’ve got the exposure, choose a sunny spot where Canyon Prince will throw up spires of pale blue flowers that mature into ripe yellow seeds. Planted in shade, you will still enjoy the leaves but can forget the golden waves of grain.

The seeds can produce offspring, but Canyon Prince is more likely to grow from the roots, particularly in sandy soil. Grass nurseryman John Greenlee advises propagating Canyon Prince by dividing it at the roots in his 1992 “Encyclopedia of Ornamental Grasses.” This indeed works well, but allow the divided plants some time to sulk and recover.

That said, if left to spread, Canyon Prince won’t run wild. Instead, its ability to spread from the roots means that when nursery plugs are put in beds with an eye to forming drifts or hedges, they will fill in.

A Channel Island native, Canyon Prince can stand water, though too much will rot it at the crown. It can stand proud in coastal dry gardens with little or no supplemental water. If it becomes ratty or tired looking, it can be cut back clear to the ground, something best done midwinter. But it can go years, even a decade, without requiring much more than admiration.

For members of the modern meadow movement, O’Brien advises using Canyon Prince at the back of a bed, with lower and silkier grasses such as Festuca californica in the foreground. This cultivar of Leymus condensatus also does fine on its own as a specimen plant. It’s not called Prince for nothing.

-- Emily Green

Green's column on low-water gardening appears here weekly. She also blogs on water issues at chanceofrain.com.

Photo courtesy of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

"

Disinfectant misuse could help create superbugs

Disinfectant misuse could help create superbugs: "

Disinfectants may be a double-edged sword in the fight against hospital-borne diseases, scientists say.

According to a study to be published in January’s issue of Microbiology, researchers from the National University of Ireland in Galway slowly introduced higher levels of disinfectant to lab cultures of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which lives in the soil and water around us. It can’t seriously hurt healthy people (it’s been implicated in “hot tub itch” and “swimmer’s ear”) but preys on those with compromised immune systems. This opportunistic pathogen can infect the lungs, joints, burn wounds, take advantage of a compromised urinary tract or cause blood diseases. The bacterium can live in man-made environments and colonize catheters and other medical equipment. It’s ideally suited for hospital transmission – the Online Textbook of Bacteriology calls it “the fourth most commonly-isolated nosocomial pathogen accounting for 10.1 percent of all hospital-acquired infections” – but it can infect anyone whose defenses have been weakened, whether from chemotherapy or diabetes, cystic fibrosis or AIDS.

After gradually upping the dose of benzalkonium chloride, an antiseptic used in products that include eyedrops and wet wipes, researchers had on their hands a Frankensteinian pathogen that showed a 12-fold resistance to the common disinfectant. (Generally, showing four or five times the normal resistance level is enough to earn a newer, nastier disease “superbug” status.)

Even worse, that same variant of P. aeruginosadisplayed a whopping 256-fold increase in resistance to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin – even though it had never been exposed to the drug before. That’s worrisome, since the commonly prescribed Cipro has been used to treat such high-profile pathogens as anthrax spores.

The upshot? That hospitals that don’t use enough disinfectant to kill every last bacterium on a given surface could provide an ideal breeding ground for new superbugs. These mutations could become virtually immune to prevention and treatment.

“The message, for heaven’s sake, is use disinfectants properly,” lead author Gerard Fleming said in an interview. “The first line of defense is disinfection. The second line of defense is antibiotics.”

By misusing disinfectants, he concluded, “You're making an environment where you've now lost the first and second lines of defense.”

There’s a dangerous tendency toward using disinfectants as a clean-all, Fleming said, when there was a much more potent, proven remedy to rid oneself of germs.

“Soap and water. I am not messing with you,” Fleming said. “Why doesn’t the surgeon, when he’s going into the theater, just take a hand sanitizer? Why does he go to the sink and scrub and scrub and scrub? Because he’s physically removing the bacteria.”

-- Amina Khan

"

Sustainable Aliens: A New Theory On Why E.T. Hasn't Arrived

Sustainable Aliens: A New Theory On Why E.T. Hasn't Arrived: "

It could happen. (Anton Brzezinski / Forrest J. Ackerman Collection/CORBIS)

By Adam Frank

Part of a scientist's job is to read scientific papers -- lots and lots of scientific papers. You don't just read them: you also skim, peruse, look through, glance at and, occasionally, pore over them. There are just so many papers and just too much else going on. Still, some ideas just stick in your head and, with that in mind, I would like to present my Sort-Of-Best-Unheralded-Scientific-Paper of 2009.

The envelope please ...

People who think about extraterrestrial life have been bothered for a long time by a rather obvious fact: There isn't any here.

This is sometimes called the Fermi Paradox. It's an old conundrum (which may have started with physicist Enrico Fermi) that asks 'If space-traveling ETs exist, why aren't they with us already?'
The idea is simple. Start with a civilization that colonizes one world. Then that world colonizes two more planets. Those worlds go on and do their own colonization. Follow this logic and you end up with a very, very rapid expansion of even a single star-faring civilization. Even one ET with space travel can, in a pretty short time, lead to a galaxy teeming with intelligent life.

Little green friends should already, have overrun us.

Now, you may be of the camp that believes aliens are already here. They're just hiding, or secretly controlling the government, or writing love poetry in crop circles. If you have not yet joined one of these groups then you, like the rest of us, end up with the Fermi Paradox. There should already be aliens all over the place. But there aren't. What happened?

Of course you could argue that extraterrestrial intelligence simply doesn't exist. That is possible, but a total downer, too. So let's ignore that possibility for now and look at what turns out to be an innovative solution to the Fermi question.

The cool thing about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is the way it quickly becomes an exercise in thinking generally about civilizations. This link is inevitable because any rational search strategy forces you to consider what civilizations do, how they evolve and, most importantly, how long they last.Back when nuclear war was our biggest worry, the question of civilization's endurance always seemed to hinge on its bellicosity. Our new-found recognition of climate change and the limits to growth changes that perspective.

Which, finally, leads me to my Sort-Of-Best-Unheralded-Scientific-Paper of 2009. It's called THE SUSTAINABILITY SOLUTION TO THE FERMI PARADOX. Its authors, J. Haqq-Misra & S. Baum, have been quite creative in merging SETI with our new environmental concerns.

Their answer to the Fermi Dilemma is simple. Civilizations, even extraterrestrial ones, can't grow without limits. Instead of using the question the Fermi Paradox raises to infer that we are the only intelligent species in the galaxy, Haqq-Misra & Baum use it to infer that these civilizations have learned a lesson which we are just starting to grasp. You have to pace yourself. You have to live within your means. Exponential growth is not likely to be sustainable.

Here is the abstract from their paper.

No present observations suggest a technologically advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) has spread through the galaxy. However, under commonplace assumptions about galactic civilization formation and expansion, this absence of observation is highly unlikely. This improbability is the heart of the Fermi Paradox. The Fermi Paradox leads some to conclude that humans have the only advanced civilization in this galaxy, either because civilization formation is very rare or because intelligent civilizations inevitably destroy themselves. In this paper, we argue that this conclusion is premature by introducing the 'Sustainability Solution' to the Fermi Paradox, which questions the Paradox's assumption of faster (e.g. exponential) civilization growth. Drawing on insights from the sustainability of human civilization on Earth, we propose that faster-growth may not be sustainable on the galactic scale. If this is the case, then there may exist ETI that have not expanded throughout the galaxy or have done so but collapsed. These possibilities have implications for both searches for ETI and for human civilization management

Of course, by its very nature, any paper about SETI and life on other planets is speculation. What is interesting about this paper is the way the concerns of our very real, here-and-now culture reflect in thinking about life and civilization on the largest scales.

» E-Mail This » Add to Del.icio.us

"

Republicans would have impeached Gore over 9/11

Republicans would have impeached Gore over 9/11: "There are a few lessons to be learned about the bathroom bomber incident. Here are six lessons that come to mind:

1. It is pretty easy for single, incompetent individuals to change United States federal policy through the threat of violence.
   

2. Many Republicans believe that unions are a greater threat to national security than terrorists.
   

3. Quite a few conservatives don't believe any criminal suspects are entitled to due process.
   

4. Many conservatives believe that we should institute an apartheid state against Muslims in America.
   

5. If Al Gore had been President on September 11, 2001, there would have been no bi-partisan, United We Stand language coming from conservatives. The aggressive, partisan response we have seen to even this failed attack would have almost certainly meant impeachment proceedings against President Gore sometime in late 2001 or early 2002.
   

6. A substantial minority of elected officials in the Democratic Party is willing to go along, or at least keep silent on with #3 and #4, either because they believe it or because they don't have core values and think those positions are electoral winners. For the same reasons, a smaller minority of elected officials the Democratic Party would even be willing to go along with #2 and #5.

Although, since these are not the first examples of these outcomes, beliefs or counterfactuals, I guess all of these are actually reminders, not lessons.

"

Senator Boxer: Airline Passengers Have New Protections

Senator Boxer: Airline Passengers Have New Protections

Dear Friend: 

I am pleased to let you know about Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s recent announcement of a new rule to protect airline passengers’ rights.  The new rule includes much of the Boxer-Snowe legislation, the Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, which addresses limits on tarmac delays.

I first introduced the Airline Passenger Bill of Rights with Senator Olympia Snowe in 2007, following several incidents at airports where passengers were forced to remain on airplanes for as long as 11 hours. The Boxer-Snowe Airline Passengers Bill of Rights (S.213) is currently pending before the full Senate as part of the FAA Reauthorization bill.

Specifically, the Department of Transportation’s new rule limiting tarmac delays includes three central components of the Boxer-Snowe Airline Passenger Bill of Rights:

• Airlines must give passengers the option to deplane after they have been stuck on the tarmac for three hours. 
• Airlines must provide food, water, access to medical treatment and working restrooms while passengers are trapped on the tarmac. 
• Airlines must provide passengers with delay information on their websites as well as information on how to make formal complaints.

This is a victory for passengers who have been mistreated, and I thank Secretary LaHood for acting to protect passengers’ rights.  This shows that the Department of Transportation understands that no passenger should ever be held captive for hours on an airplane without food, water or sufficient restrooms.

As good as this new rule is, it doesn’t give passengers permanent protection because it could be overturned by a future administration. That is why I will keep working to see that the Boxer-Snowe Airline Passenger Bill of Rights becomes law. 

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

Posted using ShareThis

What's Your Temperature? Rethinking 98.6

What's Your Temperature? Rethinking 98.6: "Not only is the average 'normal' temperature lower than previously thought, but body temperature can drop as a person gets older."

Extinct Ibex Resurrected By Cloning

Red Sampling Editor Comments: Can anyone say Jurassic Park?

Extinct Ibex Resurrected By Cloning: "The Telegraph is reporting that for the first time an extinct animal has been brought back via cloning. The Pyrenean ibex, a type of mountain goat, was declared officially extinct in 2000 but thanks to preserved skin samples scientists were able to insert that DNA into eggs from domestic goats to clone a female Pyrenean ibex. While the goat didn't survive long due to lung defects this gives scientists hopes that it will be possible to resurrect extinct species from frozen tissue. 'Using techniques similar to those used to clone Dolly the sheep, known as nuclear transfer, the researchers were able to transplant DNA from the tissue into eggs taken from domestic goats to create 439 embryos, of which 57 were implanted into surrogate females. Just seven of the embryos resulted in pregnancies and only one of the goats finally gave birth to a female bucardo, which died a seven minutes later due to breathing difficulties, perhaps due to flaws in the DNA used to create the clone.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"

In case of serious illness, take one of these to protect your legal rights

In case of serious illness, take one of these to protect your legal rights: "

When a physician urges you to "get your affairs in order," it is the unspoken part of his or her message--the imminence of disability or death--that is likely to get top billing in your mind. Getting your affairs in order, however, is still important. And a newly released guidebook can help get you organized for the task.

Long before healthcare reform opponents began warning of "death panels" bent on dispatching the seriously ill more efficiently, members of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization regularly got questions from clients about how to assure their wishes are carried out. The hospice group turned to the American Bar Assn.'s commission on law and aging for advice.

The result is a new publication--available for free--called "Legal Guide for the Seriously Ill: Seven Key Steps for Getting Your Affairs in Order." In 51 pages of plain English, the guide provides clear step-by-step instructions on:

--Planning how you will pay for the healthcare you need;

--Making a plan for the management of your health and personal decisions during your illness;

--Making a plan for the management of your money and property;

--Planning for the care of dependents;

--Knowing your rights as a patient;

--Knowing your rights as an employee; and

--Getting your legal documents in order.

The new guide reflects new regulatory and legislative changes, including extended COBRA payments that will help laid-off workers extend their existing healthcare insurance coverage. And for each step, the guide provides many, many resources that can provide further help. It's a must for critically ill patients and their caregivers.

The National Center on Caregiving's Family Caregiver Alliance also has posted some helpful advice for critically ill patients.

For those still worried about the prospect of "death panels," here is the official summary of the House healthcare reform bill that touched off those comments.

-- Melissa Healy

"

Climate change bill DOA in the Senate

Climate change bill DOA in the Senate: "The House passed a climate change bill all the way back in June. In November, the Senate declared they would take up the bill in the spring. Now, it appears likely that the Senate will take up the bill never:

Bruised by the health care debate and worried about what 2010 will bring, moderate Senate Democrats are urging the White House to give up now on any effort to pass a cap-and-trade bill next year.

'I am communicating that in every way I know how,' said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of at least a half-dozen Democrats who've told the White House or their own leaders that it's time to jettison the centerpiece of their party's plan to curb global warming.(...)

'We need to deal with the phenomena of global warming, but I think it's very difficult in the kind of economic circumstances we have right now,' said Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, who called passage of any economywide cap and trade 'unlikely.'

'I'd just as soon see that set aside until we work through the economy,' said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). 'What we don't want to do is have anything get in the way of working to resolve the problems with the economy.'

'Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects,' added Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). 'I've told that to the leadership.'

If 2009 taught us one lesson that can be applied to climate change legislation, it should be that cap and trade is never going to pass through the 60-vote Senate. This leaves two options:

1. Get rid of the filibuster
   
   
2. Abandon all attempts at congressional action ASAP, and turn immediately to the Executive Branch

Since #1 isn't going to happen in the short term, that makes #2 the only option for 2010. Fortunately, earlier in the month, the EPA began to take action:

In Monday's much-anticipated announcement, the Environmental Protection Agency said that six gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, pose a danger to the environment and the health of Americans and that the agency would start drawing up regulations to reduce those emissions.

'These are reasonable, common-sense steps,' EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said, adding that they would protect the environment 'without placing an undue burden on the businesses that make up the better part of our economy.' At the same time, however, EPA regulation is no one's preferred outcome -- not even the EPA's. Jackson said her agency and other administration officials would still prefer if Congress acted before they did.

The Obama administration did not want to go this route, for two reasons. The first reason was an argument about how a law passed by Congress would be more difficult to overturn than a regulatory process conducted by the EPA. However, given that an emissions permit market also requires regulation, that was always a pretty flimsy argument. Further, a poorly regulated emission permit market could actually result in another financial bubble. As such, it is entirely unconvincing that the legislative route creates less peril under a future administration that refuses to enforce regulations.

The second reason was political: the Obama administration did not want sole responsibility for pushing greenhouse gas regulations. Well, at this point, nuts to that. Tough. With the 60-vote Senate, and the administration's ongoing protection of conservative Democrats, there is no realistic legislative option. The executive branch is going to have to continue doing the heavy lifting itself.

Lester Brown came to our office today and had a nice chat with us Gristers.(...)

One thing from our chat jumped out at me. In the context of a debate about the clean energy bill in Congress (he thinks it's worse than nothing), Brown made the point that there's actually a lot of good carbon policy in the pipeline, which will get us some big gains in the short-term. He cited the boost in fuel efficiency standards from the EPA and DOT; green stimulus spending flowing through DOE and states; EPA's denial of recent coal mining and power plant permits; new federal enforcement of appliance efficiency standards; EPA's new CO2 reporting requirements; and various state-level policies like renewable mandates.

These are indeed good policies! Notice anything they share in common? That's right: they bypass the U.S. Congress.

My gut tells me that we should have killed the climate change bill in the House back in June. Doing so would have forced the executive branch's hand on the endangerment finding at least four months earlier. The legislative approach was always a dead-end, and so the executive branch needed to be pushed earlier and harder.

Any further time we spend trying to pass a DOA climate change bill of questionable value through the United States Congress is a waste of resources. It is time to cut our losses, and focus our efforts on areas where a difference can actually be made.

"

The Science of Unbelievable things

The Science of Unbelievable things: "

By K C Cole

For all the talk about science and belief, I often feel one critical perspective is missing--one that distorts much of the discourse about science in the public eye: What does it mean to say that something is 'unbelievable'? Or must be taken 'on faith'?

It's complicated. I, for one, do not 'believe' (not really) that there are people on the other side of the Earth for whom my 'up' is their 'down' and vice versa. I may know the Earth is a sphere, but at some level I don't believe it - any more than I believe that my 800 thousand pound 747 is really going to lift off the runway and FLY! Come on! (It does help to know that a modest sized cloud can weigh about as much).

Do I believe I evolved from a whole line of bizarro ancestors, many still around, many long extinct, the most ancient single-celled organisms? Not really. It IS unbelievable--in that, the Intelligent Design argument is correct. For me, at least, watching a flower grow from a seed is always a bit unbelievable, as is watching a baby come into the world--or a puppy for that matter--or contemplating the first flickerings of light from a newborn star. I could go on. Curved space time? Give me a break. All the matter and energy in the universe (not to mention space and time) bursting into being 13.7 billion years ago from some primordial nothing? Don't make me laugh.

So why do I consider all of the above to be true--most of it beyond dispute. Because, of course, of the overwhelming evidence. I do have enough 'faith,' if you will, in the ways of science that I trust it. People who don't understand how science works don't always share this faith, so they have a reason to doubt the fantastical tales we tell. WE know that ideas/facts/concepts become 'true' in science only when they have been thoroughly explored, come through countless trials and ruthless criticism and continue to be tested.....forever. Faith in science is faith in a process of questioning.

That's the main difference between science and religion in my view. Science is a running argument, and faith in it means having respect for the uncanny power it has to ferret out so many unbelievable things that are, nevertheless, true. Faith in religion more often means not arguing...taking things, well, on 'faith.'

I am a person of no faith in some ways, but I am continually awed equally by the flowers in my garden and the insects that eat them--even though at the same time I find it hard to 'believe' that such things can exist. Nevermind love, Bach and chocolate souffle. I am perhaps even more awed that the 3 pounds of slime we have in our heads has been able to come up with tools (science, including it's theories, it's mathematics, it's wonderous 'eyes' and 'ears') to help us understand why and how all of this came to be.

Religion is more compelling than science, some argue, because it allows people to be simply awed. Also: because it has better stories.

Nonsense. There's no better story than the evolution and existence of life and the universe. And anyhow who isn't awed by it is missing the greatest show on Earth.

» E-Mail This » Add to Del.icio.us
"

60 Minutes flubs the California water story

60 Minutes flubs the California water story: "

Last night, 60 Minutes had a long story on the California water crisis, featuring Lesley Stahl interviewing (among others) Arnold Schwarzenegger and UC Davis professor Jeff Mount. On the positive side, the story accurately portrayed the vulnerability of California’s fragile through-Delta water delivery system to a major earthquake or catastrophic levee break. But CBS News flubbed the overall storyline.

In typical media fashion, it oversimplified the story to “Delta smelt versus farmers,” with barely a mention of the two-year closure of the coastal salmon fishery or the crash of the Bay-Delta ecosystem as a whole. Worse, 60 Minutes swallowed whole a tall tale concocted by anti-regulatory interests: that protecting the Delta smelt has economically crippled California agriculture.

That story is demonstrably false on at least two different levels. First, while the San Joaquin valley has had a tough economic year, its woes have not been driven by water shortages. According to this independent report from economist Jeffrey Michael at the University of the Pacific, the real culprit is the collapse of the housing market and therefore of the construction industry:

Reductions in water deliveries due to environmental regulations have increased the Valley unemployment rate by 0.1 percentage point, and the drought 0.2 percentage points for a total water shortage impact of a 0.3 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. The construction collapse has increased unemployment by at least 2.5 percentage points, and is only one component of the foreclosure and housing crisis that continues to drive the majority of job loss in the San Joaquin Valley.

Indeed, state and federal water suppliers have bent over backwards to give farmers water even as the Bay-Delta ecosystem collapsed. As the graph below shows, average water exports from the Delta increased in recent years (before falling a bit in 2008 and 2009), while Delta smelt and Chinook salmon production were crashing.

From: NRDC, Fish Out of Water: How Water Management in the Bay-Delta Threatens the Future of California's Salmon Fishery (July 2008), p. 16

Second, it’s not true that California agriculture had a bad year across the board. Farming has always been a boom-bust business, as overplanting gluts the market and tough growing conditions deplete it. But 2009 was not a bust year. The California tomato crop, for example, hit an all-time high both in total production and in dollar value at the farm. As for the almond grower that complained to 60 Minutes that he was having to destroy his trees, take that with a grain of salt. Almond trees have a relatively short life-span, so orchards are continually removed and replanted. California almond production was down about 20% in 2009 compared to 2008, but not due to any irrigation restrictions. The fall was due to a combination of late frost, a wet spring during pollination season and heavy bearing last year. Almonds remain a boom crop, to the point that the big concern for almond growers is boosting demand, not increasing production.

So yes, California has a water problem. But no, it’s not a problem caused by the Delta smelt or by environmentalists. Nor is it a problem that’s destroying the California economy or even the California farm economy. Shame on 60 Minutes for perpetuating myths that only get in the way of addressing the real problem.

"

Childhood exposure to tobacco smoke raises risk of emphysema

Childhood exposure to tobacco smoke raises risk of emphysema: "

Scientists have long thought that people who quit smoking recover some of their lung function and health. That may be true, but it appears children exposed to secondhand smoke are not so lucky.

Researchers report today that children exposed regularly to tobacco smoke at home were more likely to develop emphysema in adulthood, suggesting that lungs may not heal completely from early-life exposure. Scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health studied CT scans of 1,781 nonsmoking adults. The participants were asked about their exposure to tobacco smoke in childhood. The CT scans showed that participants with more childhood tobacco smoke exposure had more emphysema-like lung changes.

Emphysema is the destruction of alveolar walls, the place where oxygen is exchanged with carbon dioxide. This damage reduces the elastic function of the lungs. It could be that emphysema is among the most sensitive measure of lung damage, the authors said.

"Some known harmful effects of tobacco smoke are short term, and this new research suggests that effects of tobacco smoke on the lungs may also persist for decades," the lead author of the paper, Gina Lovasi, said in a news release.

The study is published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

-- Shari Roan

Image credit: Matt Harrington / Tribune Media Services

"

Are US Wars Fueling Domestic Terror?

Are US Wars Fueling Domestic Terror?: "Katrina vanden Heuvel It's time to question whether our overreaction to the crimes against humanity on 9/11 has done more to undermine our security than enhance it.

"

Army engineers clean up graffiti along L.A. River

Army engineers clean up graffiti along L.A. River: "The riverbed that runs east of downtown has long been a haven for taggers, an open canvas with easy entry and easy escape routes. Crews are painting over the tags and working to keep new ones out.


For as long as many can remember, the section of the Los Angeles River that runs east of downtown has been an open-air gallery for taggers. No more.

"