If Americans start regularly living to 120 or more, we need to start preparing our economy, and individuals, now. At a recent Future Tense event on what longevity would mean for America, Lisa Mensah, who is the executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Initiative on Financial Security, discussed what that would mean: revamping Social Security, rethinking retirement, and much more.
Also in Future Tense’s special series on longevity:
“The Jetson Fallacy: Much longer lifespans could explode the nuclear family,” by Liza Mundy.
FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 12, 2008 file photo, a rack of donuts is displayed at a Dunkin' Donuts franchise in Boston. Consumers wondering what food without trans fat will taste like, probably already know as food manufacturers began eliminating it years ago. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Heart-clogging trans fats were once a staple of the American diet, plentiful in baked goods, microwave popcorn and fried foods. Now, mindful of the health risks, the Food and Drug Administration is getting rid of what's left of them for good.
The FDA announced Thursday it will require the food industry to gradually phase out artificial trans fats, saying they are a threat to public health.
Thanks to criticism from the medical community and number of local laws, many trans fats have been taken out of the food supply already. But the FDA said Thursday that getting rid of the remainder — the average American still eats around a gram of trans fat a day — could prevent an additional 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each year.
"While consumption of potentially harmful artificial trans fat has declined over the last two decades in the United States, current intake remains a significant public health concern," said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.
The agency isn't yet setting a timeline for the phase-out, but it will collect comments for two months before officials determine how long it will take. Different foods may have different timelines, depending how easy it is to find a substitute.
"We want to do it in a way that doesn't unduly disrupt markets," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods. Still, he says, the food "industry has demonstrated that it is, by and large, feasible to do."
Scientists say there are no health benefits to trans fats and they can raise levels of so-called "bad" cholesterol and lower "good" cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease — the leading cause of death in the United States. Trans fats are widely considered the worst kind for your heart, even worse than saturated fats, which also can contribute to heart disease.
Trans fats are used both in processed food and in restaurants, often to improve the texture, shelf life or flavor of foods. Though they have been removed from many items, the fats are still found in some processed foods, including in many baked goods like pie crusts, biscuits and ready-to-eat frostings that use the more-solid fats to keep consistency.
They are also sometimes used by restaurants that use the fats for frying. Many larger chains have phased them out, but smaller restaurants may still get food containing trans fats from suppliers.
To phase them out, the FDA said it had made a preliminary determination that trans fats no longer fall in the agency's "generally recognized as safe" category, which is reserved for thousands of additives that manufacturers can add to foods without FDA review. Once trans fats are off the list, anyone who wants to use them would have to petition the agency for a regulation allowing it, and that would likely not be approved.
The fats are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it more solid, which is why they are often called partially hydrogenated oils. The FDA is not targeting small amounts of trans fats that occur naturally in some meat and dairy products, because they would be too difficult to remove and aren't considered a major public health threat on their own.
Many companies have already phased out trans fats, prompted by new nutrition labels introduced by FDA in 2006 that list trans fats and an by an increasing number of local laws, like one in New York City, that have banned them. In 2011, Wal Mart pledged to remove all artificial trans fats from the foods the company sells by 2016.
In a statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was his city's 2007 ban that prompted much of the progress. "Our prohibition on trans fats was one of many bold public health measures that faced fierce initial criticism, only to gain widespread acceptance and support," he said.
Indeed, consumers have slowly eaten fewer of the fats. According to the FDA, trans fat intake among American consumers declined from 4.6 grams per day in 2003 to around one gram per day in 2012. And a handful of other countries have banned them as well, including Switzerland and Denmark. Other countries have enacted stricter labeling laws.
Dr. Leon Bruner, chief scientist at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said in a statement his group estimates that food manufacturers have voluntarily lowered the amount of trans fats in food products by 73 percent.
The group, which represents the country's largest food companies, did not speculate on a reasonable timeline or speak to how difficult the move may be for some manufacturers. Bruner said in a statement that "consumers can be confident that their food is safe, and we look forward to working with the FDA to better understand their concerns and how our industry can better serve consumers."
FDA officials say they have been working on trans fat issues for around 15 years — the first goal was to label them — and have been collecting data to justify a possible phase-out since just after President Barack Obama came into office in 2009.
The advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest first petitioned FDA to ban trans fats nine years ago. The group's director, Michael Jacobson, says the move is "one of the most important lifesaving actions the FDA could take."
He says the agency should try to move quickly as it determines a timeline.
"Six months or a year should be more than enough time, especially considering that companies have had a decade to figure out what to do," Jacobson said.
___
Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
If you tuned into MTV anytime from 2006-2010, chances are you caught at least one episode of The Hills, the famed spin-off of reality show Laguna Beach. While The Hills produced successful fashion designers and entrepreneurs, the cast also featured plenty of tabloid fodder. Three years later, though, we're looking to catch up with the stars of this hit reality series. What is the cast up to now? Take a look.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, talks to reporters after the Senate cleared a major hurdle and agreed to proceed to debate a bill that would prohibit workplace discrimination against gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Nov. 4, 2013. The bipartisan vote increases the chances that the Senate will pass the bill by week's end, but its prospects in the Republican-led House are dimmer. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, talks to reporters after the Senate cleared a major hurdle and agreed to proceed to debate a bill that would prohibit workplace discrimination against gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Nov. 4, 2013. The bipartisan vote increases the chances that the Senate will pass the bill by week's end, but its prospects in the Republican-led House are dimmer. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate approved legislation outlawing workplace discrimination against gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, demonstrating the nation's quickly evolving attitude toward gay rights nearly two decades after Congress rejected same-sex marriage.
Fifty-four members of the Democratic majority and 10 Republicans voted Thursday for the first major gay rights bill since Congress repealed the ban on gays in the military three years ago. The vote in favor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act was 64-32.
Two opponents of a similar measure 17 years ago, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, the presidential nominee in 2008, and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, backed the measure this time.
"We are about to make history in this chamber," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine and a chief sponsor of the bill, said shortly before the vote.
The enthusiasm of the bill's supporters was tempered by the reality that the Republican-led House, where conservatives have a firm grip on the agenda, is unlikely to even vote on the legislation. Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, maintains his longstanding opposition to the measure, arguing that it is unnecessary and certain to create costly, frivolous lawsuits for businesses.
Outside conservative groups have cast the bill as anti-family.
President Barack Obama welcomed the vote and urged the House to act.
"One party in one house of Congress should not stand in the way of millions of Americans who want to go to work each day and simply be judged by the job they do," Obama said in a statement. "Now is the time to end this kind of discrimination in the workplace, not enable it."
Gay rights advocates hailed Senate passage as a major victory in a momentous year for the issue. The Supreme Court in June granted federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples, though it avoided a sweeping ruling that would have paved the way for same-sex unions nationwide. Illinois is on the verge of becoming the 15th state to legalize gay marriage along with the District of Columbia.
Supporters called the bill the final step in a long congressional tradition of trying to stop discrimination, coming nearly 50 years after enactment of the Civil Rights Act and 23 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act.
"Now we've finished the trilogy," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a chief sponsor of the disabilities law, said at a Capitol Hill news conference.
The first openly gay senator, Democrat Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, called the vote a "tremendous milestone" that she will always remember throughout her time in the Senate.
Democrats echoed Obama in pushing for the House to act, with Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois reminding the GOP leader of the history of his party.
"The Republican Party in the United States of America came into being in the 1980s over the issue of slavery, and the man who embodied the ideals of that Republican Party was none other than Abraham Lincoln, who gave his life for his country to end discrimination," Durbin said. "Keep that proud Republican tradition alive."
In the Senate, opponents of the legislation remained mute through three days of debate, with no lawmaker speaking out. That changed on Thursday, as Republican Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana said the legislation would force employers to violate their religious beliefs, a direct counter to rights embodied in the Constitution.
"There's two types of discrimination here we're dealing with, and one of those goes to the very fundamental right granted to every American through our Constitution, a cherished value of freedom of expression and religion," Coats said.
The Senate rejected an amendment sponsored by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania that would have expanded the number of groups that are covered under the religious exemption. Opponents argued that it would undermine the core bill.
If the House fails to act on the bill, gay rights advocates are likely to press Obama to act unilaterally and issue an executive order barring anti-gay workplace discrimination by federal contractors.
Backers of the bill repeatedly described it as an issue of fairness.
"It is well past time that we, as elected representatives, ensure that our laws protect against discrimination in the workplace for all individuals, that we ensure ... some protections for those within the LGBT community," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who described the diversity in her state.
Murkowski's support underscored the generational shift. Seventeen years ago, when a bill dealing with discrimination based on sexual orientation failed by one vote in the Senate, the senator's father, Frank, voted against it. That was the same year that Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act.
Current federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race and national origin. But it doesn't stop an employer from firing or refusing to hire workers because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
The bill would bar employers with 15 or more workers from using a person's sexual orientation or gender identity as the basis for making employment decisions, including hiring, firing, compensation or promotion. It would exempt religious institutions and the military.
By voice vote Wednesday, the Senate approved an amendment from Republican Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire that would prevent federal, state and local governments from retaliating against religious groups that are exempt from the law.
Likely Senate approval of the overall bill reflects the nation's growing tolerance of gays and the GOP's political calculation as it looks for support beyond its core base of older voters. A Pew Research survey in June found that more Americans said homosexuality should be accepted rather than discouraged by society by a margin of 60 percent to 31 percent. Opinions were more evenly divided 10 years ago.
Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have approved laws banning workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and 17 of those also prohibit employers from discriminating based on gender identity.
About 88 percent of Fortune 500 companies have adopted nondiscrimination policies that include sexual orientation, according to the Human Rights Campaign. About 57 percent of those companies include gender identity.
Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa., Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., did not vote.
NASA's Hubble sees asteroid spouting 6 comet-like tails
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Cheryl Gundy gundy@stsci.edu 410-338-4707 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Astronomers viewing our solar system's asteroid belt with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have seen for the first time an asteroid with six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.
Unlike all other known asteroids, which appear simply as tiny points of light, this asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, resembles a rotating lawn sprinkler. Astronomers are puzzled over the asteroid's unusual appearance.
"We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," said lead investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. "Even more amazing, its tail structures change dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust. That also caught us by surprise. It's hard to believe we're looking at an asteroid."
Jewitt leads a team whose research paper appears online in the Nov. 7 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
P/2013 P5 has been ejecting dust periodically for at least five months. Astronomers believe it is possible the asteroid's rotation rate increased to the point where its surface started flying apart. They do not believe the tails are the result of an impact with another asteroid because they have not seen a large quantity of dust blasted into space all at once.
Scientists using the Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii announced their discovery of the asteroid Aug. 27. P/2013 P5 appeared as an unusually fuzzy-looking object. The multiple tails were discovered when Hubble was used to take a more detailed image Sept. 10.
When Hubble looked at the asteroid again Sept. 23, its appearance had totally changed. It looked as if the entire structure had swung around.
"We were completely knocked out," Jewitt said.
Careful modeling by team member Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Lindau, Germany, showed that the tails could have been formed by a series of impulsive dust-ejection events. She calculated that dust-ejection events occurred April 15, July 18, July 24, Aug. 8, Aug. 26 and Sept. 4. Radiation pressure from the sun stretched the dust into streamers.
Radiation pressure could have spun P/2013 P5 up. Jewitt said the spin rate could have increased enough that the asteroid's weak gravity no longer could hold it together. If that happened, dust could slide toward the asteroid's equator, shatter and fall off, and drift into space to make a tail. So far, only about 100 to 1,000 tons of dust, a small fraction of the P/2013 P5's main mass, has been lost. The asteroid's nucleus, which measures 1,400 feet wide, is thousands of times more massive than the observed amount of ejected dust.
Astronomers will continue observing P/2013 P5 to see whether the dust leaves the asteroid in the equatorial plane. If it does, this would be strong evidence for a rotational breakup. Astronomers will also try to measure the asteroid's true spin rate.
Jewitt's interpretation implies that rotational breakup must be a common phenomenon in the asteroid belt; it may even be the main way small asteroids die.
"In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more," Jewitt said. "This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come."
Jewitt said it appears P/2013 P5 is a fragment of a larger asteroid that broke apart in a collision roughly 200 million years ago. There are many collision fragments in orbits similar to P/2013 P5's. Meteorites from these bodies show evidence of having been heated to as much as 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. This means the asteroid likely is composed of metamorphic rocks and does not hold any ice as a comet does.
###
For images and more information about P/2013 P5, visit:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2013/52
For more information about NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/hubble
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NASA's Hubble sees asteroid spouting 6 comet-like tails
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Cheryl Gundy gundy@stsci.edu 410-338-4707 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Astronomers viewing our solar system's asteroid belt with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have seen for the first time an asteroid with six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.
Unlike all other known asteroids, which appear simply as tiny points of light, this asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, resembles a rotating lawn sprinkler. Astronomers are puzzled over the asteroid's unusual appearance.
"We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," said lead investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. "Even more amazing, its tail structures change dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust. That also caught us by surprise. It's hard to believe we're looking at an asteroid."
Jewitt leads a team whose research paper appears online in the Nov. 7 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
P/2013 P5 has been ejecting dust periodically for at least five months. Astronomers believe it is possible the asteroid's rotation rate increased to the point where its surface started flying apart. They do not believe the tails are the result of an impact with another asteroid because they have not seen a large quantity of dust blasted into space all at once.
Scientists using the Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii announced their discovery of the asteroid Aug. 27. P/2013 P5 appeared as an unusually fuzzy-looking object. The multiple tails were discovered when Hubble was used to take a more detailed image Sept. 10.
When Hubble looked at the asteroid again Sept. 23, its appearance had totally changed. It looked as if the entire structure had swung around.
"We were completely knocked out," Jewitt said.
Careful modeling by team member Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Lindau, Germany, showed that the tails could have been formed by a series of impulsive dust-ejection events. She calculated that dust-ejection events occurred April 15, July 18, July 24, Aug. 8, Aug. 26 and Sept. 4. Radiation pressure from the sun stretched the dust into streamers.
Radiation pressure could have spun P/2013 P5 up. Jewitt said the spin rate could have increased enough that the asteroid's weak gravity no longer could hold it together. If that happened, dust could slide toward the asteroid's equator, shatter and fall off, and drift into space to make a tail. So far, only about 100 to 1,000 tons of dust, a small fraction of the P/2013 P5's main mass, has been lost. The asteroid's nucleus, which measures 1,400 feet wide, is thousands of times more massive than the observed amount of ejected dust.
Astronomers will continue observing P/2013 P5 to see whether the dust leaves the asteroid in the equatorial plane. If it does, this would be strong evidence for a rotational breakup. Astronomers will also try to measure the asteroid's true spin rate.
Jewitt's interpretation implies that rotational breakup must be a common phenomenon in the asteroid belt; it may even be the main way small asteroids die.
"In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more," Jewitt said. "This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come."
Jewitt said it appears P/2013 P5 is a fragment of a larger asteroid that broke apart in a collision roughly 200 million years ago. There are many collision fragments in orbits similar to P/2013 P5's. Meteorites from these bodies show evidence of having been heated to as much as 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. This means the asteroid likely is composed of metamorphic rocks and does not hold any ice as a comet does.
###
For images and more information about P/2013 P5, visit:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2013/52
For more information about NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/hubble
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
For the fourth time running, India ranked first in National Geographic Society's Greendex study.
Photo by Nomad Tales/Flickr via Creative Commons
In perhaps no other place in the world are the streets as crowded as in New Delhi. Streams of cars, bikes, people, and even animals impossibly weave through one another. For thousands of years, New Delhi and the cities that preceded it have been sustained by the sacred water of the Ganges and her tributaries. But as India continues to develop into one of the world's leading economies, the stress of a fast-growing population and increased urbanization has rendered the Ganges polluted almost beyond use. India’s air pollution is among the worst in the world. Garbage is heaped in streets and often left uncollected for weeks, or longer.
The sight and even more, the stench of inescapable pollution may well be why, when asked as part of Greendex study (a survey that ranks the environmental sustainability of 14 industrialized and developing countries) Indians were most likely to claim that they “feel guilty about the impact [they] have on the environment.” As anyone who has forgotten to roll the trash to the curb for a week or two can tell you, the tangibility of one's own waste accumulating unchecked can become a bit overwhelming. Further still, it's incredible how little trash one manages to make when the can is already full.
In India, 64 percent of those surveyed didn’t eat beef at all.
The 2012 Greendex study, conducted by the National Geographic Society, captures this “full-can” phenomenon on a larger scale: The guiltier a country feels about its environmental impact, the greener its behavior. It is no surprise then that India, the country that feels the most guilt of the 14 surveyed, is also ranked first in the Greendex study for the fourth time running. In fact, developing countries such as India, China, and Brazil, though often portrayed as contributing more than their fair share of pollution to support their growing economies, are consistently ranked higher in terms of sustainable behavior than the established industrial countries of North America and Europe, despite the developed countries’ longer history of environmental regulations. In part because people in developing countries tangibly experience environmental problems such as water and air pollution, they adopt more sustainable behavior. Americans, who reported the least guilt about their impact on the environment, were ranked dead last in the most recent Greendex study—for the fourth time in a row. (You can learn your own Greendex score atNational Geographic's Greendex Calculator.)
Of course, there is more to environmentally sustainable behavior than feeling accountable for one's impact. Greendex scores are determined on the basis of 65 measures in four main categories of consumption: housing, transportation, food, and goods. The indices cover everything from the purchase of bottled water to whether one owns a second home. Many of these measures fit under the big umbrella of energy consumption. For example, participants were asked if they washed their clothes in cold water; walked, biked, or drove to work; heated or cooled their homes; and whether they purchased energy-saving appliances. India leads the rest of the countries in the Greendex in three of the big four categories, coming in third to China and Hungary in the category of transportation alone.
Indians hold an especially strong lead in the category of food consumption, in part because of their cultural distaste for consuming beef. In fact, 64 percent of those surveyed in India claimed they didn't eat it at all. (The next lowest score isn’t even close: Among Hungarians, only 12 percent claimed no beef consumption.) Indian consumption of chicken and seafood is among the lowest of countries surveyed as well. A large percentage of Indians are vegetarians either by choice or by circumstance. More and more studies have revealed harmful effects of livestock farming, such as water contamination from fecal matter and a nearly 20 percent contribution of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It has become clear that meatless diets can have a big impact on the environment, and these consumption measures contribute greatly to India’s sustainability ranking. In addition, Indians frequently eat locally grown food, and even more so, food that they have personally cultivated.
Although India remains the reigning Greendex champ, the country suffered losses in every category but housing since 2010, most notably in the categories of goods consumption and transportation. Indians are also among the likeliest of those surveyed to say that they aspire to own a big house and the most likely to say they desire a luxury car. These attitudes about consumption correlate with the growing middle class in India. Like many of us with some disposable income, Indians are now more likely to purchase new goods rather than repair old ones, and because luxury cars and large houses are obvious status symbols, it's natural for those who hope for new wealth to dream of making such purchases. The growing middle classes in China and Brazil also demonstrate a relatively high desire for luxury cars and large houses. At the same time, increases in wealth sometimes translate to the purchase of more costly energy-saving appliances and cars, and many Indians are opting for the extra investment in these types of big-ticket items. It is still too soon to tell whether responsible purchasing will be enough to offset the effects of an increased number of middle-class Indian consumers.
India is poised to move solidly into the category of “developed” rather than “developing” countries, and it's up to the people of India to decide what that means. Sadly, the average wealth of a country's citizen is as negatively correlated to environmentally sustainable behavior as guilt is: The more easily we meet our individual needs, the less likely we are to consider our impact on the world around us. India could become a powerful example for the rest of the world if it is able to break that trend and strike the balance between economic growth and environmental responsibility.
Thanks to Pankaj Jain of the University of North Texas,author of Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communties.
There's something verging on unseemly in the glee so many journalists have taken in the disastrous rollout of the Affordable Care Act and in the incontrovertible fact that the Obama administration knowingly misled the American people about "keeping your plan". Magazine covers! Feuds! Late night comedians! Pursed-lipped statements of disappointment!
The "breakdown" of the ACA has made analysts bold: "The Collapse of the Obama Presidency","Why Obama's 'iPod Presidency' Was Doomed", "the entire presidency is riding" on the exchanges, the promise that "you can keep your plan" is (quoting Rush Limbaugh here) "the biggest lie ever told by a siting president."
In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, a man who was wounded when a bomb blast attacked the entrance of the main train station, lies on a hospital bed, in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013. Bombs targeting the entrance of a landmark Ottoman railway building in Damascus and a feared security agency in Syria's southeast killed more than a dozen people on Wednesday, activists reported. (AP Photo/SANA)
In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, a man who was wounded when a bomb blast attacked the entrance of the main train station, lies on a hospital bed, in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013. Bombs targeting the entrance of a landmark Ottoman railway building in Damascus and a feared security agency in Syria's southeast killed more than a dozen people on Wednesday, activists reported. (AP Photo/SANA)
This image made from citizen journalist video posted by the Shaam News Network, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows smoke from shelling in Deir al-Zour, Syria, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013. Syria's 23 million people belong to a startling patchwork of different religious groups, and the three-year conflict has taken increasingly sectarian overtones in the past year. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network)
In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, a doctor, right, treats a man who was wounded where a bomb blast attacked the entrance of the main train station, in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013. Bombs targeting the entrance of a landmark Ottoman railway building in Damascus and a feared security agency in Syria's southeast killed more than a dozen people on Wednesday, activists reported. (AP Photo/SANA)
BEIRUT (AP) — Syria's main Western-backed opposition group is considering an invitation for informal meetings involving Syrian government representatives in Moscow that would focus on establishing humanitarian corridors, opposition figures confirmed Thursday.
It was not immediately clear when the talks might take place, or whether they would include direct contact between representatives of President Bashar Assad's government and the Syrian National Coalition. But if the two sides were to sit down together for discussions on humanitarian issues, it could boost the prospects for a proposed peace conference the U.S. and Russia have been trying to convene in Geneva.
The coalition has demanded that Assad step down in any transitional Syrian government as a condition for its going to Geneva. Syrian officials say Assad will stay in his post at least until his terms ends in 2014 and that he may run for re-election.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that representatives of the opposition, who met with Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov in Geneva, "responded positively" to a Kremlin offer to host "informal contacts in Moscow for the entire spectrum of Syria's social and political forces."
Bogdanov said the talks could focus on humanitarian problems as well as some political issues.
Kamal Labwani, a coalition member, said the opposition was considering whether to accept the Russian offer. But he said talks would be confined to experts from the coalition's humanitarian arm and government humanitarian organizations.
"The Russians called on the opposition to meet with the regime there, but then scaled it back to solving the humanitarian crisis," Labwani said. "They want to open a line of communication between the regime and the opposition through Russia."
Another Syrian opposition official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the proposed talks, said the opposition coalition has decided to send experts to Moscow for discussions limited to humanitarian corridors.
The coalition has long called on the international community to help secure aid to civilians, particularly in rebel-held areas that have been blockaded by government forces.
The civil war in Syria has touched off a humanitarian catastrophe across the region. More than 2 million Syrians have sought refuge abroad, while the U.N. said this week that more than 9 million Syrians — out of the country's pre-war population of 23 million — are in need of humanitarian assistance.
Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Wednesday that it is "outrageous" that "the Syrian regime is denying aid workers access to towns that they are besieging, even as it is allowing international chemical weapons inspectors into the country."
"The fact of the chemical weapons implementation only underscores how much this is an issue of will for the regime, and lack of will," Power said.
On Thursday, international inspectors said they have verified 22 of 23 declared chemical weapons sites after receiving video and photographic evidence showing that a facility near the contested northern city of Aleppo has been dismantled and abandoned.
The joint mission by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations, which is overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical arsenal, inspected 21 of the sites last month but had been unable to visit the remaining two because of fighting in the area.
The OPCW-U.N. statement said the Syrian government provided the joint mission with photographs and footage of the facility near Aleppo that confirmed the site has been dismantled and abandoned. It added that the building bore signs of "extensive battle damage." It was not clear when the damage occurred.
The images were shot with a tamperproof camera that inspectors had fitted with a GPS system so that the location of the camera could be tracked, the statement said. International inspectors have authenticated the photos and video.
The OPCW-U.N. mission has not disclosed the location of the last remaining site the inspectors need to verify.
___
Isachenkov reported from Moscow. Associated Press writers Desmond Butler in Istanbul, Mike Corder in The Hague, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Ryan Lucas in Beirut contributed to this report.
For the fourth time running, India ranked first in National Geographic Society's Greendex study.
Photo by Nomad Tales/Flickr via Creative Commons
In perhaps no other place in the world are the streets as crowded as in New Delhi. Streams of cars, bikes, people, and even animals impossibly weave through one another. For thousands of years, New Delhi and the cities that preceded it have been sustained by the sacred water of the Ganges and her tributaries. But as India continues to develop into one of the world's leading economies, the stress of a fast-growing population and increased urbanization has rendered the Ganges polluted almost beyond use. India’s air pollution is among the worst in the world. Garbage is heaped in streets and often left uncollected for weeks, or longer.
The sight and even more, the stench of inescapable pollution may well be why, when asked as part of Greendex study (a survey that ranks the environmental sustainability of 14 industrialized and developing countries) Indians were most likely to claim that they “feel guilty about the impact [they] have on the environment.” As anyone who has forgotten to roll the trash to the curb for a week or two can tell you, the tangibility of one's own waste accumulating unchecked can become a bit overwhelming. Further still, it's incredible how little trash one manages to make when the can is already full.
In India, 64 percent of those surveyed didn’t eat beef at all.
The 2012 Greendex study, conducted by the National Geographic Society, captures this “full-can” phenomenon on a larger scale: The guiltier a country feels about its environmental impact, the greener its behavior. It is no surprise then that India, the country that feels the most guilt of the 14 surveyed, is also ranked first in the Greendex study for the fourth time running. In fact, developing countries such as India, China, and Brazil, though often portrayed as contributing more than their fair share of pollution to support their growing economies, are consistently ranked higher in terms of sustainable behavior than the established industrial countries of North America and Europe, despite the developed countries’ longer history of environmental regulations. In part because people in developing countries tangibly experience environmental problems such as water and air pollution, they adopt more sustainable behavior. Americans, who reported the least guilt about their impact on the environment, were ranked dead last in the most recent Greendex study—for the fourth time in a row. (You can learn your own Greendex score atNational Geographic's Greendex Calculator.)
Of course, there is more to environmentally sustainable behavior than feeling accountable for one's impact. Greendex scores are determined on the basis of 65 measures in four main categories of consumption: housing, transportation, food, and goods. The indices cover everything from the purchase of bottled water to whether one owns a second home. Many of these measures fit under the big umbrella of energy consumption. For example, participants were asked if they washed their clothes in cold water; walked, biked, or drove to work; heated or cooled their homes; and whether they purchased energy-saving appliances. India leads the rest of the countries in the Greendex in three of the big four categories, coming in third to China and Hungary in the category of transportation alone.
Indians hold an especially strong lead in the category of food consumption, in part because of their cultural distaste for consuming beef. In fact, 64 percent of those surveyed in India claimed they didn't eat it at all. (The next lowest score isn’t even close: Among Hungarians, only 12 percent claimed no beef consumption.) Indian consumption of chicken and seafood is among the lowest of countries surveyed as well. A large percentage of Indians are vegetarians either by choice or by circumstance. More and more studies have revealed harmful effects of livestock farming, such as water contamination from fecal matter and a nearly 20 percent contribution of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It has become clear that meatless diets can have a big impact on the environment, and these consumption measures contribute greatly to India’s sustainability ranking. In addition, Indians frequently eat locally grown food, and even more so, food that they have personally cultivated.
Although India remains the reigning Greendex champ, the country suffered losses in every category but housing since 2010, most notably in the categories of goods consumption and transportation. Indians are also among the likeliest of those surveyed to say that they aspire to own a big house and the most likely to say they desire a luxury car. These attitudes about consumption correlate with the growing middle class in India. Like many of us with some disposable income, Indians are now more likely to purchase new goods rather than repair old ones, and because luxury cars and large houses are obvious status symbols, it's natural for those who hope for new wealth to dream of making such purchases. The growing middle classes in China and Brazil also demonstrate a relatively high desire for luxury cars and large houses. At the same time, increases in wealth sometimes translate to the purchase of more costly energy-saving appliances and cars, and many Indians are opting for the extra investment in these types of big-ticket items. It is still too soon to tell whether responsible purchasing will be enough to offset the effects of an increased number of middle-class Indian consumers.
India is poised to move solidly into the category of “developed” rather than “developing” countries, and it's up to the people of India to decide what that means. Sadly, the average wealth of a country's citizen is as negatively correlated to environmentally sustainable behavior as guilt is: The more easily we meet our individual needs, the less likely we are to consider our impact on the world around us. India could become a powerful example for the rest of the world if it is able to break that trend and strike the balance between economic growth and environmental responsibility.
Thanks to Pankaj Jain of the University of North Texas,author of Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communties.
The global market for PaaS (platform as a service) is set to leap from $3.8 billion last year to more than $14 billion in 2017 as companies look to cut infrastructure costs and speed up application development, according to newly released research from analyst firm IDC.
Overall, the compound annual growth rate for PaaS during this period will be roughly 30 percent, compared to the 4 percent growth rate this year for IT spending overall, according to IDC.
The expected rise in PaaS spending is due to "indications of faster acceptance of the competitive PaaS buying proposition and new information concerning past years, particularly related to the acceptance of and market penetration of Microsoft Azure," the report states.
Various segments of the market
IDC breaks PaaS into a number of sub-segments, including APaaS (application platform as a service), DPaaS (database platform as a service), cloud-based test and IPaaS (integration platform as a service).
There's also been an emergence of PaaS providers focusing on specific industries, but these companies are "hedging their risks" by linking up with generalized PaaS players such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft and IBM, IDC said. "By doing so, they don't have to reinvent the most common platform services and can focus on developing their own value-add," the report states.
In general, companies are flocking to public PaaS because doing so can lower IT infrastructure spending while providing high availability and scale, IDC said.
It's also possible to create applications more quickly because PaaS makes it easier to perform functional and load testing, as well as to deploy software, according to the report.
This in turn is creating a murky picture of sorts for programmers. "One of the biggest unknowns related to public PaaS is its potential impact on IT staff," the report states. "Because public PaaS improves developer productivity by a factor of two or more, what happens to the developer workforce? Do enterprises make more use of IT or elect to take some or all of the benefit in terms of reducing the developer workforce? The answer lies somewhere in the middle."
On a geographic basis, 65.2 percent of PaaS revenue was derived from the Americas in 2012, and that's not expected to change much by 2017, dropping only to 62.3 percent. This is because many of the initial PaaS startups have their roots in the Americas, resulting in a "revenue bias," IDC said.
But PaaS revenue growth in Asia-Pacific including Japan "continues to boom," with 14.1 percent market share in 2012 and an expected 19.0 percent in 2017.
Europe, the Middle East and Africa accounted for 20.7 percent of PaaS revenue in 2012, but that total is expected to drop slightly, to 18.7 percent, by 2017.
Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service , IDG News Service
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service. More by Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service
She's always eager to have a good time, and on Wednesday (November 6), Jenny McCarthy headed out in New York City to celebrate the launch of the limited edition Moschino loves Disaronno bottle.
The newest "View" co-host looked stunning in an all-black ensemble and matching heels as she posed in between a plethora of red balloons and smiled for the awaiting shutterbugs.
While hanging out at the swanky affair, Jenny sipped on Disaronno Loves Sour and Disaronno Sparkling cocktails while sitting at a private table.
In between dancing and enjoying her refreshing beverages, Miss McCarthy even took her shot at a “vogue-ing” competition with two drag queens on a catwalk in the middle of the dance floor.
You know what's missing from technology these days? Sound. We have noises but no sound. We open our laptops and we're automatically connected to Wi-Fi. Our phones only squeak for alerts, they don't provide a soundtrack for the future. The old dial up modem handshake though? Now that was real sound. That was like hearing technology happen. This is what that sound looks like. This is something your kids will never know.
Algeria-born Albert Camus poses for a portrait in Paris following the announcement that he is being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. Camus' views on his birthplace still stoke controversy.
AFP/Getty Images
Algeria-born Albert Camus poses for a portrait in Paris following the announcement that he is being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. Camus' views on his birthplace still stoke controversy.
AFP/Getty Images
A hundred years after his birth, French writer-philosopher Albert Camus is perhaps best-remembered for novels like The Stranger and The Plague, and for his philosophy of absurdism.
But it's another aspect of his intellectual body of work that's under scrutiny as France marks the Camus centennial: his views about his native Algeria.
Camus was born on Nov. 7, 1913, to a poor family that had settled generations earlier in French Algeria. His father died a year after his birth, and Camus' illiterate and deaf mother, who worked as a cleaning lady, raised him. His brilliance would deliver him from that world of poverty.
This photo from 1920 shows 7-year-old Albert Camus (center, wearing black suit) in the workshop of his Uncle Etienne in Algiers.
Apic/Getty Images
This photo from 1920 shows 7-year-old Albert Camus (center, wearing black suit) in the workshop of his Uncle Etienne in Algiers.
Apic/Getty Images
Camus is regarded as a giant of French literature. But according to Smithsonian contributor Joshua Hammer, it's Camus' North African birthplace that permeated his thoughts and shaped his writing.
"His two greatest novels, The Stranger and The Plague, were both set there, in Oran and Algiers. He wrote incredible lyrical essays about his life there," Hammer says. "So he's extraordinarily Algerian ... down to the core."
But Algeria has never reciprocated that love, says Hammer, who recently traced the writer's roots there. That's because Camus' French Algeria, much like apartheid South Africa, was divided into two worlds: an Arab world and the world of the pieds-noirs, or black feet, the name given to the million-plus Europeans who lived there.
"He represents an Algeria that essentially is banished from the map, an Algeria of the pieds-noirs. So this was the world that Camus knew. It was a very segregated society, he really didn't know the Arab world," Hammer says. "So that's what you saw reflected in his work."
During World War II, Camus joined the French Resistance against the Nazis and published an underground newspaper. It was his novel The Stranger, published in 1942, that brought him instant international acclaim. In 1947 came The Plague, a novel seen as a classic of existentialism.
In 1957, at the age of 43, Camus won the Nobel Prize for literature.
But it's Camus' politics, not his philosophy, that still makes waves in France. Though he hailed from the left, today he's embraced by conservatives. In the 1950s, Camus fell out with philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and the Paris left bank literary scene after he denounced communism.
The topic remains sensitive in France, where 1 million pieds-noirs fled after the war ended in 1962. One Camus exhibit was canceled and two historians fired, reportedly to appease the sensitivities of the local pieds-noirs community.
"Americans in general don't know anything about Algeria and they know very little about French intellectual politics. And so Camus was always just sort of a hero," Hawes says. "There was a lot of the mythic to Camus. He was great looking, and he was heroic, and there was the resistance, he was the outsider."
Camus' life was cut tragically short at the height of his career in a car accident in 1960. He was only 46. France is still grappling with his legacy.
If a tree falls in Brazil? Amazon deforestation could mean droughts for western US
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Morgan Kelly mgnkelly@princeton.edu 609-258-5729 Princeton University
In research meant to highlight how the destruction of the Amazon rainforest could affect climate elsewhere, Princeton University-led researchers report that the total deforestation of the Amazon may significantly reduce rain and snowfall in the western United States, resulting in water and food shortages, and a greater risk of forest fires.
The researchers report in the Journal of Climate that an Amazon stripped bare could mean 20 percent less rain for the coastal Northwest and a 50 percent reduction in the Sierra Nevada snowpack, a crucial source of water for cities and farms in California. Previous research has shown that deforestation will likely produce dry air over the Amazon. Using high-resolution climate simulations, the researchers are the first to find that the atmosphere's normal weather-moving mechanics would create a ripple effect that would move that dry air directly over the western United States from December to February.
Specifically, a denuded Amazon would develop a weather cycle consisting of abnormally dry air in the sun-scorched northern Amazon around the equator weighted by wetter air in the cooler south. Research has speculated that this pattern would be similar to the warm-water climate pattern El Nio, which during the winter months brings heavy precipitation to southern California and the Sierra Nevada region while drying out the Pacific Northwest.
The Princeton-led researchers found that the Amazon pattern would be subject to the same meandering high-altitude winds known as Rossby waves that distribute the El Nio system worldwide from its source over the Pacific Ocean. Rossby waves are instrumental forces in Earth's weather that move east or west across the planet, often capturing the weather of one region such as chill Arctic air and transporting it to another. Because the Amazon pattern forms several thousand miles to the southeast from El Nio, the researchers report, the Rossby waves that put the rainy side of El Nio over southern California would instead subject that region to the dry end of the Amazon pattern. The pattern's rainy portion would be over the Pacific Ocean south of Mexico.
First author David Medvigy, an assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton, explained that the findings stand as one possible outcome of Amazon deforestation in regions outside of South America consequences that scientists are working to understand. The rainforest influences various aspects of the surrounding climate, including cloud coverage, heat absorption and rainfall.
"The big point is that Amazon deforestation will not only affect the Amazon it will not be contained. It will hit the atmosphere and the atmosphere will carry those responses," Medvigy said.
"It just so happens that one of the locations feeling that response will be one we care about most agriculturally," he said. "If you change the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, where most of the irrigation for California's Central Valley comes from, then by this study deforestation of the Amazon could have serious consequences for the food supply of the United States."
Because the exact result of Amazon deforestation is impossible to know currently, the behavior and impact of El Nio provides one of the best ideas of how the loss of the Amazon could play out, Medvigy said. Studies have suggested since 1993 that an Amazon without trees will develop an El Nio-like pattern, the researchers reported. The researchers then focused on the northwestern United States because the region is typically sensitive to El Nio.
"We don't know what the world will be like without the Amazon. We know exactly what happens with El Nio it's been studied extensively," Medvigy said. "Our intention with this paper was to identify an analogy between El Nio and Amazon deforestation. There's good reason to believe there will be strong climatic similarities between the two. Research like this will give us a handle on what to expect from Amazon deforestation."
Medvigy worked with second author Robert Walko, a senior scientist in the division of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami; Martin Otte, a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Atmospheric Modeling and Analysis Division; and Roni Avissar, a University of Miami professor of meteorology and physical oceanography and dean of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
The high resolution of the researchers' climate model allowed them to see the otherwise subtle pull of the Rossby waves, Medvigy said. The typical model buries finer atmospheric features under a scale of about 200 kilometers twice the width of the Andes Mountains. Medvigy and his co-authors spotted the intricacies of the Amazon's future weather pattern using a resolution as fine as 25 kilometers, he said.
The researchers based their simulation on the Amazon's complete removal, an exaggerated level of destruction needed to produce a noticeable effect, Medvigy said. Nonetheless, clear-cutting of the Amazon marches on, although conservation efforts have significantly slowed deforestation in countries such as Brazil since the mid-2000s. In addition, research has shown that climate change, especially a spike in the global temperature, could wipe out as much as 85 percent of the forest.
The Amazon's fragility and vulnerability combined with its outsized sway over the climate add an urgency to better understanding how the forest's disappearance will affect the larger climate, particularly for agriculturally important areas such as California, Medvigy said.
"We know the Amazon is being deforested, but we don't know for sure what's going to happen because of it," Medvigy said. "Other scientists need to do these simulations and see if they get the same results. If they do, then policymakers will have to take notice."
###
The paper, "Simulated changes in Northwest US climate in response to Amazon deforestation," was published in the Nov. 15 edition of the Journal of Climate. This work was supported by awards from the National Science Foundation (grant numbers 1151102 and 0902197).
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
If a tree falls in Brazil? Amazon deforestation could mean droughts for western US
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Morgan Kelly mgnkelly@princeton.edu 609-258-5729 Princeton University
In research meant to highlight how the destruction of the Amazon rainforest could affect climate elsewhere, Princeton University-led researchers report that the total deforestation of the Amazon may significantly reduce rain and snowfall in the western United States, resulting in water and food shortages, and a greater risk of forest fires.
The researchers report in the Journal of Climate that an Amazon stripped bare could mean 20 percent less rain for the coastal Northwest and a 50 percent reduction in the Sierra Nevada snowpack, a crucial source of water for cities and farms in California. Previous research has shown that deforestation will likely produce dry air over the Amazon. Using high-resolution climate simulations, the researchers are the first to find that the atmosphere's normal weather-moving mechanics would create a ripple effect that would move that dry air directly over the western United States from December to February.
Specifically, a denuded Amazon would develop a weather cycle consisting of abnormally dry air in the sun-scorched northern Amazon around the equator weighted by wetter air in the cooler south. Research has speculated that this pattern would be similar to the warm-water climate pattern El Nio, which during the winter months brings heavy precipitation to southern California and the Sierra Nevada region while drying out the Pacific Northwest.
The Princeton-led researchers found that the Amazon pattern would be subject to the same meandering high-altitude winds known as Rossby waves that distribute the El Nio system worldwide from its source over the Pacific Ocean. Rossby waves are instrumental forces in Earth's weather that move east or west across the planet, often capturing the weather of one region such as chill Arctic air and transporting it to another. Because the Amazon pattern forms several thousand miles to the southeast from El Nio, the researchers report, the Rossby waves that put the rainy side of El Nio over southern California would instead subject that region to the dry end of the Amazon pattern. The pattern's rainy portion would be over the Pacific Ocean south of Mexico.
First author David Medvigy, an assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton, explained that the findings stand as one possible outcome of Amazon deforestation in regions outside of South America consequences that scientists are working to understand. The rainforest influences various aspects of the surrounding climate, including cloud coverage, heat absorption and rainfall.
"The big point is that Amazon deforestation will not only affect the Amazon it will not be contained. It will hit the atmosphere and the atmosphere will carry those responses," Medvigy said.
"It just so happens that one of the locations feeling that response will be one we care about most agriculturally," he said. "If you change the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, where most of the irrigation for California's Central Valley comes from, then by this study deforestation of the Amazon could have serious consequences for the food supply of the United States."
Because the exact result of Amazon deforestation is impossible to know currently, the behavior and impact of El Nio provides one of the best ideas of how the loss of the Amazon could play out, Medvigy said. Studies have suggested since 1993 that an Amazon without trees will develop an El Nio-like pattern, the researchers reported. The researchers then focused on the northwestern United States because the region is typically sensitive to El Nio.
"We don't know what the world will be like without the Amazon. We know exactly what happens with El Nio it's been studied extensively," Medvigy said. "Our intention with this paper was to identify an analogy between El Nio and Amazon deforestation. There's good reason to believe there will be strong climatic similarities between the two. Research like this will give us a handle on what to expect from Amazon deforestation."
Medvigy worked with second author Robert Walko, a senior scientist in the division of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami; Martin Otte, a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Atmospheric Modeling and Analysis Division; and Roni Avissar, a University of Miami professor of meteorology and physical oceanography and dean of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
The high resolution of the researchers' climate model allowed them to see the otherwise subtle pull of the Rossby waves, Medvigy said. The typical model buries finer atmospheric features under a scale of about 200 kilometers twice the width of the Andes Mountains. Medvigy and his co-authors spotted the intricacies of the Amazon's future weather pattern using a resolution as fine as 25 kilometers, he said.
The researchers based their simulation on the Amazon's complete removal, an exaggerated level of destruction needed to produce a noticeable effect, Medvigy said. Nonetheless, clear-cutting of the Amazon marches on, although conservation efforts have significantly slowed deforestation in countries such as Brazil since the mid-2000s. In addition, research has shown that climate change, especially a spike in the global temperature, could wipe out as much as 85 percent of the forest.
The Amazon's fragility and vulnerability combined with its outsized sway over the climate add an urgency to better understanding how the forest's disappearance will affect the larger climate, particularly for agriculturally important areas such as California, Medvigy said.
"We know the Amazon is being deforested, but we don't know for sure what's going to happen because of it," Medvigy said. "Other scientists need to do these simulations and see if they get the same results. If they do, then policymakers will have to take notice."
###
The paper, "Simulated changes in Northwest US climate in response to Amazon deforestation," was published in the Nov. 15 edition of the Journal of Climate. This work was supported by awards from the National Science Foundation (grant numbers 1151102 and 0902197).
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Share
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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