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Featured stories in this issue...

Federal Report Says Global Warming Will Have Major Effects on U.S.
  In the next 25 to 50 years, the western states in the U.S. will
  face major challenges because of growing demand for water and big
  drops in supply caused by global warming, says a new federal report.
  The report also offers new projections of how the poor, elderly and
  communities with lagging public-health and public-works systems will
  face outsize health risks from warming.
Seas Off West Coast Are More Acidic Than Scientists Had Predicted
  The Pacific Ocean is growing more acidic, posing a threat to marine
  life, because of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. The problem
  is at least 50 years more advanced than scientists had predicted.
Unanticipated Problem: Earth May Hide a Lethal Carbon Cache
  An entirely new threat from global warming was the subject of a
  scientific meeting last week: "Global warming could destabilise some
  deep carbon reserves, which may hold trillions of tonnes of methane."
  "If you raise temperatures even slightly, they could be released."
Childhood Lead Exposure Can Predict Criminality
  By measuring toxic lead in children's blood, researchers can
  predict which children will get in trouble with the law later in life.
  This important prospective study links toxic lead and crime together
  in a cause-and-effect way for the first time.
Meat Causes Cancer
  A new report finds that red meat and all processed meats,
  such as hot dogs, contribute to human cancers, and that barbecuing any
  meat (red, white, or fish) on a grill leaves a residue of potent
  carcinogens in the meat.
Why a Gulf Coast Wetlands May Become a City
  The Army Corps of Engineers is about to approve a new condo
  development on Mississippi's coastal wetlands -- the place where
  hurricane Katrina rushed ashore. Can science and common sense prevail
  in a democracy or are we forever doomed to be fleeced by wealthy
  "developers" and their acolytes in government?
How To Green the Global Economy: Nature's 100 Best
  Biomimicry is the science of designing things for humans, using
  nature's way of doing things as a blueprint. And it works.

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From: The New York Times (pg. A14), May 28, 2008
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U.S. REPORT FORESEES EFFECTS OF CLIMATE SHIFT

By Andrew C. Revkin

The rise in concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from
human activities is influencing climate patterns and vegetation across
the United States and will significantly disrupt water supplies,
agriculture, forestry and ecosystems for decades, a new federal report
(2.8 Mbyte PDF) says.

The changes are unfolding in ways that are likely to produce an uneven
national map of harms and benefits, according to the report, released
Tuesday and posted online at climatescience.gov.

The authors of the report and some independent experts said the main
value of its projections was the level of detail and the high
confidence in some conclusions. That confidence comes in part from the
report's emphasis on the next 25 to 50 years, when shifts in emissions
are unlikely to make much of a difference in climate trends.

The report also reflects a recent, significant shift by the Bush
administration on climate science. During Mr. Bush's first term,
administration officials worked to play down a national assessment of
climate effects conducted mainly during the Clinton administration,
but released in 2000.

The new report, which includes some findings that are more sobering
and definitive than those in the 2000 climate report, holds the
signatures of three cabinet secretaries.

According to the report, Western states will face substantial
challenges because of growing demand for water and big projected drops
in supplies.

From 2040 to 2060, anticipated water flows from rainfall in much of
the West are likely to approach a 20 percent decrease in the average
from 1901 to 1970, and are likely to be much lower in places like the
fast-growing Southwest. In contrast, runoff in much of the Midwest and
East is expected to increase that much or more.

Farmers, foresters and ranchers nationwide will face a complicated
blend of changes, driven not only by shifting weather patterns but
also by the simultaneous spread of nonnative plant and insect pests.

Some invasive grasses, vines and weeds, for example, do better in
higher temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations than do crops
and preferred livestock forage plants.

Corn and soybean plants are likely to grow and mature faster, but will
be more subject to crop failures from spikes in summer temperatures
that can prevent pollination, said one of the authors, Jerry L.
Hatfield, a plant physiologist with the United States Department of
Agriculture, in a conference call with reporters.

David E. Schimel, a lead author and director of a federal system of
ecological monitoring stations, said in the call that mitigating
emissions in the long run was still important even though not much
could be done to change the short-term climate picture.

The 203-page report, "The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture,
Land Resources, Water Resources and Biodiversity in the United
States," is a review of existing studies, including last year's
voluminous quartet of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. It is part of a continuing assessment of lingering
questions related to global warming that was initiated in 2003 by Mr.
Bush.

The report did not evaluate how the risk faced by farmers, water-
supply managers and others might be reduced if they changed practices
or crop and livestock varieties to adjust to changing conditions.

But several authors said that over all, the pace and nature of some of
the looming changes would present big challenges in many of the
country's fastest-growing regions.

The West will not only face a dearth of water, but also large shifts
in when it is available. Water supplies there will be transformed by
midcentury, with mountain snows that provided a steady flow of runoff
for irrigation and reservoirs dwindling. That flow will be replaced by
rainfall that comes at times and in amounts that make it hard to
manage, the report and authors said.

The report also emphasized that the country's capacity to detect
climate shifts and related effects was eroding, as budgets and plans
for long-term monitoring of air, water and land changes -- both on the
ground and from satellites -- shrank.

Richard Moss, a vice president of the World Wildlife Fund who
previously coordinated federal climate reports under both the Clinton
and Bush administrations, said the findings "highlight the urgency of
the climate change problem" and provided important new support for
action both to limit emissions and adapt to inevitable changes.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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From: MSNBC, May 23, 2008
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SEAS OFF WEST COAST VERY ACIDIC, STUDY WARNS

Expert: Warming threat to sea life wasn't expected for at least 50
years

By the Associated Press

Waters along North America's Pacific coast are becoming more acidic,
posing a threat to marine life, federal scientists reported Friday
-- adding that while that fits global warming scenarios, no one had
expected the acidification to happen so soon.

"We did not expect to see this extent of ocean acidification until the
middle to the end of the century," said study co-author Chris Sabine.

"Our results show for the first time that a large section of the North
American continental shelf is impacted by ocean acidification," the
experts wrote in the study published in the peer-reviewed journal
Science.

Acidification describes the process, natural or manmade, of ocean
water becoming corrosive as a result of carbon dioxide being absorbed
from the atmosphere.

The researchers said anthropogenic, or manmade, emissions of carbon
dioxide are likely to blame since the acidified water that is being
"upwelled" seasonally from the deeper ocean is from the last 50 years,
a period when the burning of fossil fuels raised CO2 levels
dramatically.

"Other continental shelf regions may also be impacted where
anthropogenic CO2-enriched water is being upwelled onto the shelf,"
they concluded.

Threat 'right now'

"Ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on our
continental shelf right now," study co-author Richard Feely said in a
statement released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, which co-sponsored the study along with NASA and the
National Science Foundation.

Feely, a NOAA oceanographer, noted that while the ability of oceans to
absorb carbon dioxide helps mitigate warming, "the change in the ocean
chemistry affects marine life, particularly organisms with calcium
carbonate shells, such as corals, mussels, mollusks, and small
creatures in the early stages of the food chain."

NOAA echoed the experts' findings. "Acidification of the Earth's ocean
water could have far-reaching impacts on the health of our near-shore
environment, and on the sustainability of ecosystems that support
human populations," said NOAA assistant administrator Richard Spinrad.

"This research is vital to understanding the processes within the
ocean, as well as the consequences of a carbon-rich atmosphere," he
added.

The team compiled data from 13 survey lines dropped last summer and
stretching from the waters of central Canada to northern Mexico. They
measured pH levels in seawater to detect acidification, and found
lower levels were much closer to the surface than researchers had
predicted.

Previous studies found acidification at deeper depths farther from
shore. The researchers said the acidified water appears to well up in
spring and summer, when winds bring CO2-rich water up from depths of
about 400-600 feet onto the continental shelf.

'Train has left the station'

"The water that will upwell off the coast in future years already is
making its undersea trek toward us, with ever-increasing levels of
carbon dioxide and acidity," co-author Burke Hales, an associate
professor at Oregon State University, warned in a statement.

"The coastal ocean acidification train has left the station," Hales
added, "and there is not much we can do to derail it."

Hales also cited a strong correlation between recent low-oxygen events
off the Northwest coast and increasing acidification.

"The hypoxia is caused by persistent upwelling that produces an over-
abundance of phytoplankton," Hales said. "When the system works, the
upwelling winds subside for a day or two every couple of weeks in what
we call a 'relaxation event' that allows that buildup of decomposing
organic matter to be washed out to the deep ocean."

"But in recent years, especially in 2002 and 2006, there were few if
any of these relaxation breaks in the upwelling and the phytoplankton
blooms were enormous," Hales said. "When the material produced by
these blooms decomposes, it puts more CO2 into the system and
increases the acidification."

Copyright 2008 MSNBC Interactive

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From: New Scientist, May 21, 2008
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EARTH MAY HIDE A LETHAL CARBON CACHE

By Fred Pearce

Carbon buried in the Earth could ultimately determine the fate of our
planet's atmosphere. So concluded a pioneering meeting last week about
the Earth's long-neglected "deep" carbon cycle.

Carbon is locked away down in the Earth's crust: in magma and old
carbonate rocks buried by plate tectonics, in fossil fuels like coal
and oil, and in ice lattices beneath the ocean bed. It has long been
assumed that this carbon was largely cut off from the surface, and
could safely be ignored when analysing the effect of greenhouse gases
on climate.

Now it seems there may be much more "deep carbon" ready to spew out
than we thought. This realisation could have profound implications for
our climate, argues Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution, who
organised the meeting at the institution's Geophysical Laboratory in
Washington DC. "We may be on the verge of a transformational moment...
a glimpse of new, unexplored scientific territory," he says.

Perhaps the greatest threat of an unexpected release of carbon from
the deep comes from an indirect effect of human-made CO2. Global
warming could destabilise some deep carbon reserves, notably in
clathrates -- ice lattices which are found beneath the ocean floor and
continental permafrost, and even under freshwater lakes like Lake
Baikal in Siberia. These ice structures may hold trillions of tonnes
of methane.

"Global warming could destabilise some deep carbon reserves, which may
hold trillions of tonnes of methane""We are extremely concerned that
clathrates are the largest single source of greenhouse gases that
could be added to the atmosphere," says Hazen. "If you raise
temperatures even slightly, they could be released." According to
Ronald Cohen, a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution, natural
warming caused large releases of methane around 55 million years ago.

Though the deep carbon cycle could theoretically absorb human-made
emissions, Hazen points out that this would take millions of years.
Catastrophic methane emissions could happen over just a few decades.

Natural processes such as volcanism are also known to bring carbon to
the surface, but there may be other mechanisms to release buried
carbon that have not been considered by mainstream climate science.
For example, there is growing evidence that microbes living deep in
the crust may be converting carbon into forms that can migrate to the
surface -- notably methane.

Vladimir Kutcherov of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm,
Sweden, speculates that unknown non-biological chemical reactions may
also be able to produce methane or hydrocarbons that seep up through
the crust. For example, methane or petroleum might be produced when
carbonate rocks react with water and iron upon being subducted into
the mantle. Kutcherov and colleagues say hydrocarbon deposits from
Kidd Creek in Ontario, Canada, have an isotopic signature suggesting
they are not organic in origin -- though this claim was disputed by
others at the meeting.

Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

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From: New Scientist, May 28, 2008
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CHILDHOOD LEAD EXPOSURE CAN PREDICT CRIMINALITY

By Alison Motluk

Children exposed to lead early in life are more likely to be in
trouble with the law as adults.

Lead contamination most often arises from the dust and soil, but can
also come from lead water pipes or environmental pollution. Studies
have consistently found associations between lead exposure in
childhood and subsequent antisocial behaviour, but there have always
been problems in determining causality.

Now Kim Dietrich at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
and his colleagues have looked prospectively at how lead levels
affect the risk of being arrested in adulthood. They recruited 250
pregnant women from a poor lead-contaminated inner-city district in
Cincinnati.

The researchers took blood samples from the women early in pregnancy,
then sampled the blood of the children four times a year till age 5,
and then twice a year until they were about 7 years old.

Increased arrests

Years later, the researchers checked public records to see if their
subjects had been arrested since reaching the age of 18, and if so,
how many times and for what. Independent reviewers coded them into
categories, such as violent offences, drug offences and fraud.

After controlling for factors including maternal IQ, maternal arrest
rates, parenting style and socioeconomic factors, they found that
prenatal and childhood lead concentrations in the blood predicted
likelihood of adult arrest.

A 5 microgram/decilitre increment in average childhood blood lead
level, for instance, increased the rate of arrest for violent crimes
by 26%. And high prenatal blood levels predicted the total number of
adult arrests.

Dose-dependent effect

Lead can interfere with the brain by impairing synapse formation and
disrupting neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and serotonin. It also
appears to permanently alter brain structure.

In a companion study, the researchers used magnetic resonance
imaging to look at the brains of some of these same individuals.

They found that, here too, lead had a dose-dependent effect -- the
more lead a person had been exposed to as a child, the smaller the
brain regions in frontal areas. These are regions involved in
judgement, emotional regulation and impulse control, among other
things.

"It's time to blame lead," says Dietrich.

Preventable risk

"Even if the contribution of lead to arrest risk is small," points out
David Bellinger, at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, US,
in a comment on the paper, "it has a special status in that, in
contrast to most other known risk factors for criminality, we know
full well how to prevent it."

The Centers for Disease Control says that blood levels above 10
micrograms are unsafe. The good news is that both childhood blood lead
levels and crime have declined in the US.

In Ohio, for instance, where this study was conducted, only 2.3% of
children under age 6 had blood lead levels exceeding CDC
recommendations in 2006, compared with 16.6% of children in 1997.

The mean childhood blood level of these study participants was 13
mcg/dl [micrograms of lead in each 10th of a liter of blood] and
ranged from 4 to 37 mcg/dl. Many researchers say even 5 mcg/dl can put
a child at risk.

Journal references: PLoS Medicine (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0050101
and DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0050112)

Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

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From: NorthJersey.com, May 23, 2008
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CAN GRILLING MEAT CAN CAUSE CANCER?

By Lindy Washburn, Staff Writer

Memo to Memorial Day barbecuers: Charred meat is out. Hotdogs and
brats? Forget it.

It's hard to imagine a summer weekend without the aroma of meat on the
grill, but the American Institute of Cancer Research is urging
everyone to rethink this all-American pastime.

Grilling any meat -- red, white or fish -- produces potent
carcinogens, the institute said after analyzing the results of 7,000
studies.

"Grill fruits and vegetables instead of red meat and hot dogs this
year," the institute advised.

If real men can learn to eat quiche, maybe they'll also come to love
grilled peaches.

The high heat of grilling reacts with proteins in red meat, poultry
and fish, creating heterocyclic amines, chemicals that are linked to
cancer. Another form of cancer-causing agents, polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons, are found in the smoke created when fat and juices from
meats drip and hit the heat source. The smoke rises and can stick to
the meat.

"When you hit the amino acids in those meats with very high heat it
creates heterocyclic amines -- that's what they consider
carcinogenic," says Debbie Bessen, a registered dietician specializing
in cancer nutrition at Holy Name Hospital.

"I do try to steer people away from grilled meats," says Maureen
Huhmann, a clinical dietitian at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey in
New Brunswick and an assistant professor at the University of Medicine
and Dentistry of New Jersey's School of Health Related Professions.

"Keep them to a once-in-a-while thing," she says. "And if you are
having something grilled, make sure it's not burnt or blackened."

Both gas and charcoal grilling has the same effect. Cooking inside on
a stove -- whether in a frying pan, a grill pan or in the oven -- is
not known to cause the same reactions, because the meats cook at far
lower temperatures. Some experts, however, suggest against charring a
steak on high heat in the broiler.

The doctors at the institute, frankly, are advising that Americans
need to cut down on many forms of meat however they are cooked.

The institute took particular aim at preserved meats, like hot dogs.
All processed meats -- hot dogs, sausages, bacon, ham, pastrami,
salami and any meat that has been salted, smoked or cured -- are bad
for you, it said. Chemicals used to preserve meat increase the
production of cancer-causing compounds in the body.

The institute's report (12 Mbyte PDF) said it "could find no amount
of processed meat that is safe to eat."

Red meat is also linked to higher rates of certain cancers, the
institute said. It should be eaten in limited quantities -- not more
than 18 ounces a week, or the equivalent of about three restaurant-
sized burgers for the entire week. Substances in red meat can damage
the lining of the colon.

"The evidence is now overwhelming that red meat -- especially
processed red meats like hot dogs -- is a cause of colorectal cancer,"
said Karen Collins, the institutes' nutrition advisor.

The evidence is so strong, the institute said it "should prompt a
nationwide reduction in red meat consumption."

Turkey burgers and chicken hot dogs don't get a pass, either. It's not
clear whether it's the processing or the grilling that produces the
carcinogens, so more research is needed, the institute's guidelines
said.

Other health groups, like the American Cancer Society, also recommend
reducing consumption of preserved meats, and using alternatives to the
high heat of the grill to cook meats.

The bottom line of most experts: cover two-thirds of your plate with
plant foods like salads, beans, and grains. Leave just one-third of
the plate for meat.

That's not something most people want to hear.

"Anything you enjoy, they take away from you," said Ann Cervia, who,
along with her son, Ray Cervia, is holding a barbecue for 10 family
members in Bogota on Monday. They just bought a new grill for the
event.

The health warnings can't make her take sausage and peppers off the
menu. "If you're going to go, you're going to go," she said.

Hector Maldonado of Bogota will be grilling for 20 on Sunday.

"I don't eat grilled meat that much -- obviously this weekend -- maybe
three or four barbecues a year," said Maldonado, a 26-year-old plumber
who recently bought a new propane grill.

Marianne Bolduc of Demarest, who underwent treatment for breast cancer
last year and is the lunch program coordinator for her town's public
schools, said she takes the guidelines "very seriously."

"I love hot dogs," she said. "I have to fight the urge."

She treats herself once a month -- "one hot dog with preservatives is
not going to kill you," she said.

But it's also true that she could "go to a barbecue and not eat meat,"
she says. "In Italian families, meat is not that big a deal. We put
out a lot of salads instead, dressed with oil and vinegar." And when
she hosts, she'll offer veggie burgers as well as grilled vegetables.

As to the nutritionists, Bessen isn't even going to a barbecue this
Memorial Day weekend.

"I'm going to the beach," she says -- where she'll use sunscreen, of
course.

Staff Writer Bob Groves contributed to this report. E-mail:
washburn@northjersey.com

========================================================

Sidebar: CUTTING THE RISK

To keep the taste and cut the risk, experts offer these
recommendations:

** Minimize grill time. Microwave meat or pre-cook in the oven before
putting it on the grill. Flip burgers at least once a minute.

** When using marinades, thinner is better. Thicker marinades have a
tendency to char, possibly increasing exposure to carcinogenic
compounds. Look for marinades that contain vinegar and/or lemon, which
can create a protective coating around the meat.

** Create a barrier to prevent juices from spilling and producing
harmful smoke. Line the grill with aluminum foil that has holes poked
in it or cook on cedar planks.

** Don't eat blackened or burned meat.

** Choose smaller cuts such as kabobs -- they take less time to cook.
Lean meats create less dripping, less fat flare-ups and less smoke.

** Trim excess fat and remove skin from poultry.

** Avoid hot dogs and other processed meats.

** Place food at least six inches away from the heat source.

Source: Debbie Bessen of Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute

========================================================

Copyright 2008 North Jersey Media Group

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From: Christian Science Monitor, May 21, 2008
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WHY A GULF WETLANDS MAY BECOME A CITY

Hurricane Katrina battered Bay St. Louis, Miss. Now, developers plan a
condo city nearby.

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Bayou Caddy, Miss. -- If America learned one thing from hurricane
Katrina, hydrologists argue, it should be this: Don't fill in tideland
marshes and build on them. Such human activity, they insist,
diminishes the marshes' ability to absorb some of the wallop of storms
as they strike coastal communities.

Here on the westernmost reaches of Mississippi's marshes -- the very
place where Katrina rushed ashore on its path to becoming one of the
worst natural disasters in US history -- that lesson is being tested,
with broad implications for US taxpayers who pay most of the bills for
storm repairs.

Bob Metz, a crab dealer who plies the tidelands of Bayou Caddy, has
only to look out from his boathouse to see, in the distance, the
future: the new Silver Slipper Casino, its bright sign twinkling
beneath a dark cumulous cloud stack.

To Mr. Metz, plans to augment the casino with a new condo city built
on top of a tidal marsh is the prototype of a boondoggle waiting for a
bailout. But local and state governments so far are backing the plan,
and the US Army Corps of Engineers is considering a permit application
to fill the spongy ground so the development will have firm footing.
If approved, the permit would, quite literally, lay the groundwork for
a project that could create the fourth-largest city on the Mississippi
Gulf Coast.

"The big guys get what they want; that's the lesson I take from this,"
says Metz.

Another lesson might be that the dream of living on the ocean's edge
dies hard. Some $80 billion in damages from Katrina apparently have
not dampened it, nor have scientists' warnings that a $500 billion
storm is possible in the US by 2020 and that the sea level may rise as
much as three feet in the next century. So long as people gravitate to
coastal living, political and economic pressures to allow it will rub
up hard against the cautionary notes of scientists and
environmentalists.

"The tough part is where the science leaves off and management and
policy pick up," says Bryan Harper, senior economist at the Army
Corps' Institute for Water Resources in Alexandria, Va. "We
collectively use and enjoy the coast, but we have to understand what
the balance is between what we get out of it and what is the real cost
of occupying those areas. What we don't want is to induce development
to areas that are not currently developed in these high-risk areas."

If history is any guide, developers and politicians who envision the
revenue benefits of growth usually prevail -- sometimes even in areas
that most scientists would call "high risk." America's coastal
counties have added 7 million people in the past five years, absorbing
a little more than half the total US population growth in an area that
makes up 17 percent of the US land surface, according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Congress has contributed to the trend by assigning much of the risk of
coastal living to the US government. The lawmaker-approved National
Flood Insurance Program augments private insurance, and the Corps-
administered Shore Protection Program in effect subsidizes
construction of high-value structures on the beach by guaranteeing
that fresh sand will be trucked in whenever storms carve into the
headland.

US wetlands policy since 1988 has been to require developers who build
on wetlands to mitigate the loss by creating or restoring wetlands
elsewhere. But the overall goal of "no net loss" is failing, despite
agencies' creation of tens of thousands of wetland acreage each year.
The National Wetlands Inventory, by the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
estimates that nearly 60,000 acres of wetlands are lost annually and
that up to 80 percent of developers' mitigation projects fail. In
Mississippi alone, the Army Corps is trying to restore some 3,000
acres of wetlands weakened by hurricane Katrina, to restore natural
flow patterns and reduce the impact of any future storm surge.

For many, the Bayou Caddy proposal speaks to the power of market
forces to erode a region's resolve to bolster its hurricane defenses -
even with Katrina fresh in memory. The $750 million project, known as
The Breezes of Paradise Bay, would eventually include as many as four
high-rises studded with shops, arcades, restaurants, and residences.
There would be room for perhaps 10,000 people in this "condo city" on
the bayou -- more than in the nearby towns of Waveland and Bay St.
Louis combined.

Development of the scrubby marsh, now dotted with a few crab shacks
and shrimp-boat docks, could be an economic boon to an area whose
economy was shattered by Katrina, which is why the plan has broad
political support. The developers said in a 2006 letter to the county
that the project could add as much as $7.5 million annually to tax
rolls.

What's more, proponents argue, condos built of concrete and steel
would be better able to withstand a hurricane and could even serve as
a man-made wind barrier that might protect properties further inland.

Rising land costs and the durability of high-rise towers are why
resistance is diminishing to the idea of building condos on the coast,
says developer Barney Creel of Gulfport. "What's the alternative?"
asks Mr. Creel. "There's not a good alternative. I can understand how
people don't want to see the small-town feeling go away, but it's just
no longer financially feasible for that [residential] type of
development down here. I think the realization of the feasibility of
condos is sinking in."

The debate over Bayou Caddy cuts to the core of America's fixation
with coastal living, says Orrin Pilkey, a Duke University professor
and author of "The Corps and the Shore." At issue, he says, is whether
the US should reduce the scale of the human profile on the coast,
allowing smaller structures further inland, and off the marshes,
instead of allowing large-scale construction directly on beach fronts.

"This is no time, in the context of rising sea levels and the expected
increase in the rate of hurricanes, to be allowing condo development
right on the shore," says Dr. Pilkey, a geologist specializing in
coastal development.

"This is crazy. It gives the community no chance to move back, to let
the big buildings go and let little buildings go in."

If the Corps grants the fill permit for the Bayou Caddy project,
critics fear it will open the floodgates for other development on
marshes. Some hydraulics engineers say the marshes helped to slow
Katrina's ravaging path across Mississippi. Trucking in clay dirt to
fill a marsh to build such structures is like encasing a sponge in
plastic wrap, they argue. Skipping over soft ground made hard, any
future flood surge would travel further onto land, exacerbating
property damage deeper inland.

"If we don't nip this [project] in the bud, the pressure will be to
develop more and more, and the Corps is critical to stopping that,"
says Bob Davis, a former Corps engineer and an agency critic.

Not all scientists agree that Mississippi's low-lying marshlands would
do much to absorb the smack of a big storm.

"It's a concept that's stuck with the public, but the absorbency of
the ground, when you look at the physics of how a storm surge works,
has very little effect as what you might call a sponge," says Robert
Twilley, director of the oceanography department at Louisiana State
University in Baton Rouge. That doesn't mean the condo idea is a good
one, he adds. The practice of filling some wetlands and creating
others as "mitigation" nibbles away at the coast and undermines what
Dr. Twilley calls "landscape integrity."

"The Army Corps still has not come to grips with that issue," he says.

The Corps, for its part, is going to make someone unhappy when it
decides what to do about the Bayou Caddy fill permit. The stakeholders
are many -- politicians, state marine resources divisions,
environmentalists, and landowners -- and their interests are not
always apparent.

With national coastal policy in flux, interest groups on both sides
tend to hype their positions and stretch the facts, Twilley says.

"The public-policy sector has to be open-minded about the biases of
their value system, which is the dollar, and [ask whether] the dollar
really provides the best accurate condition of value when it comes to
natural resources," he says. "What happens is you get forced into
hyping functions of [economic development and natural resources] to
build a level playing field, and that's a shame."

Meanwhile, the Army Corps, a military engineering agency best able to
provide hard data on issues from natural surge protection to
hydraulics research, is struggling to shift focus from building
structural engineering projects to spearheading the debate over
coastal policy. At the very least, the Corps needs to do a better job
of informing the debate than it currently does, says one Corps
spokesman. That aim is a major tenet of the agency's new internal
"Actions for Change" program, which calls for the Corps to take a
bigger role in setting coastal policy.

"The purpose of the risk-informed approach and risk communication is
to make sure that for decisions made in these areas, even those not
made by the Corps, people have information to see how those decisions
might affect flood risk," says Mr. Harper, the Corps economist.

For the Breezes of Paradise Bay project, the winds may be shifting.
Despite early support for the project, the Hancock County planning
board recently clarified that structures higher than 12 stories will
not be allowed at Bayou Caddy -- a rule that may downscale the plan
considerably.

The Corps, moreover, is taking a careful look at the permit
application, with one spokesman saying there's no guarantee the
project will get off the ground. A decision is expected in the next
few months.

"If it's really high-quality wetlands, I don't know that you would or
would not get the permit," says Pat Robbins, a Corps spokesman in
Mobile, Ala. Bayou Caddy, he adds, "is probably pretty high-quality
wetlands."

Copyright 2008 The Christian Science Monitor

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From: ZERI, May 28, 2008
[Printer-friendly version]

HOW TO GREEN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: NATURE'S 100 BEST

Nature's 100 Best Initiative Publishes Preliminary Findings on How to
Green the Global Economy

Bonn/Geneva/Nairobi -- A super-small pacemaker modeled on the wiring
of the humpback whale's heart and pigment-free color coatings from the
light-splitting structures of a peacock's feather are among a range of
extraordinary new eco-breakthroughs emerging from mimicking nature.

Other commercially-promising advances, inspired by the natural world
and its roughly four billion years of "research and development"
include:

** Vaccines that survive without refrigeration based on Africa's
'resurrection' plant.

** Friction-free surfaces suitable for modern electrical devices
gleaned from the slippery skin of the Arabian Peninsula's sandfish
lizard.

** New antibacterial substances inspired by marine algae found off
Australia's coast that promise a new way of defeating health hazardous
bugs without contributing to the threat of increasing bacterial
resistance.

** Toxic-free fire retardants, based on waste citrus and grape crops
inspired by the way animal cells turn food into energy without
producing flames -- the so called citric acid or Krebs cycle.

** A pioneering water harvesting system to recycle steam from cooling
towers and allowing buildings to collect their own water supplies from
the air inspired by the way the Namib Desert Beetle of Namibia
harvests water from desert fogs.

** Biodegradable, water-tight packaging and water-repellant linings
for pipes to tents that mimic the Australian water-holding frog.

These are just some of inventions, innovations and ideas at the center
of a new collaborative initiative called Nature's 100 Best.

The initiative is the brainchild of the Biomimicry Guild and the Zero
Emission Research and Initiatives (ZERI) in partnership with the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) and IUCN-the World Conservation Union.

It is aimed at showcasing how tomorrow's economy can be realized today
by learning, copying and mimicking the way nature has already solved
many of the technological and sustainability problems confronting
human-kind. According to Janine Benyus and Gunter Pauli, co-creators
of the Nature's 100 Best project, "Life solves its problems with well-
adapted designs, life-friendly chemistry, and smart material and
energy use. What better models could there be?"

The Nature's 100 Best List, a mixture of innovations at various stages
of commercialization from the drawing board to imminent arrival in the
marketplace, is set to be completed by October 2008 in time for the
IUCN Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The Nature's 100 Best book will be
published in May 2009.

Today the collaborators and partners unveiled some of the preliminary
projects and products being included on Nature's 100 Best from an
original list over 2,000.

It coincides with the ministerial part of the Convention on Biological
Diversity meeting taking place in Bonn, Germany where up to 6,000
delegates and over 190 governments are meeting to slow the rate of
loss of biodiversity.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director,
said: "Biomimicry is a field whose time has come. Anyone doubting the
economic and development value of the natural world need only sift
through the extraordinary number of commercially promising inventions
now emerging--inventions that are as a result of understanding and
copying nature's designs and the superior way in which living
organisms successfully manage challenges from clean energy generation
to re-using and recycling wastes."

"There are countless reasons why we must accelerate the international
response and the flow of funds to counter rapidly eroding biodiversity
and rapidly degrading ecosystems: Nature's 100 Best gives us 100 extra
reasons to act and 100 extra reasons why better managing biodiversity
is not a question of aid or an economic burden but an issue of
investing in the non-polluting businesses, industries and jobs of the
near future," he said.

Janine Benyus, head of the Biomimicry Guild added, "Biomimicry is
science at the cutting edge of the 21st century economy and based on
3.8 billion years of evolution. Indeed the way nature makes novel
substances; generates energy and synthesizes unique structures are the
secrets to how humans can survive and thrive on this planet."

Gunter Pauli, head of the ZERI Foundation based in Geneva, added:
"Steam and coal transformed the 19th Century; telecommunications and
electronics, the 20th Century. We are now on the edge of a
biologically-based revolution and in some of the inventions show-cased
under this new initiative will undoubtedly be the business models for
the new Googles, Welcomes, Unilevers, and General Electrics of the
modern age. With +one billion Euros already invested in the most
important technologies this is a trend in innovation for industry to
follow" he said.

Humpback Heart Pacemakers

Over 350,000 people in the United States alone are fitted with new or
replacement pacemakers annually. The cost of fitting a new device is
up to $50,000 per patient.

Enter Jorge Reynolds, Director of the Whale Heart Satellite Tracking
Program in Colombia, whose research is unraveling the mysteries of how
the Humpback's 2,000-pound heart pumps the equivalent of six bath tubs
of oxygenated blood through a circulatory system 4,500 times as
extensive as a human's.

The work is also pin pointing how this is achieved even at very low
rates of three to four beats a minute and how the electrical
stimulation is achieved through a mass of blubber that shields the
whale's heart from the cold.

The researchers have, through listening devices called
echocardiographs and via autopsies on dead whales, discovered nano-
sized 'wires' that allow electrical signals to stimulate heart beats
even through masses of non-conductive blubber.

The scientists believe the findings could be the key to allowing the
human heart to work without a battery-powered pacemaker and to
stimulate optimal heart beats by by-passing or 'bridging' dead heart
muscle via special whale-like wiring.

The world-wide market for pacemakers is expected to reach $3.7 billion
by 2010. The new invention could cost just a few cents to make; reduce
the number of follow-up operations because it avoids the need to
install new batteries and thus supplant the traditional pacemaker.

"Resurrection Plant"

Two million children die from vaccine-preventable diseases like
measles, rubella and whooping cough each year. By some estimates,
breakdowns in the refrigeration chain from laboratory to village,
means half of all vaccines never get to patients.

Enter Myrothamnus flabellifolia -- a plant found in Central and
Southern Africa whose tissues can be dried to a crisp and then revived
without damaged courtesy of a sugary substance produced in its cells
during drought.

And enter Bruce Roser, a biomedical researcher who along with
colleagues recently founded Cambridge Biostability Ltd to develop
fridge-free vaccines based on the plant's remarkable sugars called
trehaloses.

The product involves spraying a vaccine with the trehalose coating to
form inert spheres or sugary beads that can be packaged in an inject
able form and can sit in a doctor's bag for months of years.

Trials are underway with the Indian company Panacea Biotech and
agreements have also been signed with Danish and German companies.

The development, based on mimicking nature, could lead to savings of
up to $300 million a year in the developing world while cutting the
need for kerosene and photovoltaic fuelled fridges.

Other possibilities include new kinds of food preservation up to the
storage of animal and human tissues that by-pass storage in super cold
liquid nitrogen.

Slippery Lizard

The two main ways of reducing friction in mechanical and electrical
devices are ball bearings and silicon carbide or ultra nano-
crystalline diamond.

One of the shortcomings of silicon carbide is that it is manufactured
at temperatures of between 1,600 and 2,500 degrees F -- in other words
it is energy intensive involving the burning of fossil fuels.

The synthetic diamond product can be made at lower temperatures and
coated at temperatures of 400 degrees F for a range of low friction
applications. But it has drawbacks too.

Enter the shiny Sandfish lizard that lives in the sands and sandstorms
of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and enter a team from the
Technical University of Berlin.

Studies indicate that the lizard achieves its remarkable, friction-
free life by making a skin of keratin stiffened by sugar molecules and
sulphur.

The lizard's skin also has nano-sized spikes. It means a grain of
Sahara sand rides atop 20,000 of these spikes spreading the load and
providing negligible levels of friction.

Further tests indicate that the ridges on the lizard skin may also be
negatively charged, effectively repelling the sand grains so they
float over the surface rather like a hovercraft over water.

The researchers have teamed up with colleagues at the Science
University of Berlin and a consortium of three German companies to
commercialize the lizard skin findings.

The market is potentially huge, including in micro- electronic-
mechanical systems where a biodegradable film made from the relatively
cheap materials of kerotene and sugar and manufactured at room
temperature offers an environmentally-friendly "unique selling
proposition."

Superbugs and Bacterial Resistance -- Australian Red Algae to the
Rescue?

70 per cent of all human infections are a result of biofilms.

These are big congregations of bacteria that require 1,000 times more
antibiotic to kill and are leading to an arms race between the bugs
and the pharmaceutical companies.

It is also increasing antibiotic resistance and the rise of super bugs
like methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus that now kills more
people than die of AIDS each year.

Enter Delisea pulchra, a feathery red alga or seaweed found off the
Australian coast and a team including researchers at the University of
New South Wales.

During a marine field trip, scientists noticed that the alga's surface
was free from biofilms despite living in waters laden with bacteria.

Tests pin pointed a compound -- known as halogenated furanone -- that
blocks the way bacteria signal to each other in order to form dense
biofilm groups.

A company called Biosignal has been set up to develop the idea which
promises a new way of controlling bacteria like golden staph, cholera,
and legionella without aggravating bacterial resistance.

Products include contact lenses, catheters, and pipes treated with
alga-inspired furanones alongside mouthwashes and new therapies for
vulnerable patients with diseases like cystic fibrosis and urinary
tract infections.

The bacterial signal-blocking substance may also reduce pollution to
the environment by reducing or ending the need for homeowners and
companies to pour tons of caustic chemicals down pipes, ducts and
tanks and onto kitchen surfaces to keep then bug free.

Beetle-Based Water Harvesting

By 2025, the United Nations forecasts that 1.8 billion people will be
living in countries or regions with water scarcity and two thirds of
the world's population could be under conditions of water stressed.

Climate change is expected to aggravate water problems via more
extreme weather events. Many intelligent and improved management
options can overcome these challenges and one may rest on the
extraordinary ability of the Namib Desert beetle.

The beetle lives in a location that receives a mere half an inch of
rain a year yet can harvest water from fogs that blows in gales across
the land several mornings each month.

Enter a team from the University of Oxford and the UK defense research
firm QinetiQ. They have designed a surface that mimics the water-
attracting bumps and water-shedding valleys on the beetle's wing
scales that allows the insect to collect and funnel droplets thinner
than a human hair.

The patchwork surface hinges on small, poppy-seed sized glass spheres
in a layer of warm wax that tests show work like the beetle's wing
scales.

Trials have now been carried out to use the beetle film to capture
water vapor from cooling towers. Initial tests have shown that the
invention can return 10 per cent of lost water and lead to cuts in
energy bills for nearby buildings by reducing a city's heat sink
effect.

An estimated 50,000 new water-cooling towers are erected annually and
each large system evaporates and loses over 500 million litres.

Other researchers, some with funding from the US Defense Advanced
Research Agency, are mimicking the beetle water collection system to
develop tents that collect their own water up to surfaces that will
'mix' reagents for lab-on-a-chip applications.

Notes to Editors

Nature's 100 Best is a compilation of 2,100 of the most extraordinary
technologies and strategies that are being mimicked or deserve
mimicking.

The 100 Best List will be launched at the IUCN World Conservation
Congress in Barcelona in October 2008.

At the same time the Biomimicry Institute will unveil AskNature.org,
an online database of biological knowledge organized by engineering
function in order to engage and inspire entrepreneurs and investors.

For more info:

ZERI -- www.zeri.org

Biomimicry Guild -- www.biomimicryguild.com

Biomimicry Institute -- www.biomimicryinstitute.com

UNEP -- www.unep.org

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

9th Conference of the Parties to the CBD in Bonn

Case studies from today's preliminary launch and more details on
Nature's 100 Best

Also, for more information please contact -- Nick Nuttall, UNEP
Spokesperson and Head of Media, on Tel: 41 79 596 57 37, Fax: 254 2
623692, nick.nuttall@unep.org, go to: www.n100best.org or contact:
info@zeri.org

or go to United Nations Environment Program. Contact ZERI:
info@zeri.org

Copyright 2004, ZERI.org.

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  Rachel's Democracy & Health News (formerly Rachel's Environment &
  Health News) highlights the connections between issues that are
  often considered separately or not at all.

  The natural world is deteriorating and human health is declining  
  because those who make the important decisions aren't the ones who
  bear the brunt. Our purpose is to connect the dots between human
  health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community, the
  rise of economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress among
  workers and families, and the crippling legacies of patriarchy,
  intolerance, and racial injustice that allow us to be divided and
  therefore ruled by the few.  

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  gets to decide?" And, "How do the few control the many, and what
  might be done about it?"

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  please Email them to us at dhn@rachel.org.
  
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  Tim Montague   -   tim@rachel.org
  
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