A Change in the Wind

The heroism of the lonely PhD

Deep in a magnificent USA Today team investigation last week was hidden a revelation: How a PhD doctoral candidate doing historical research discovered -- and publicized -- a massive threat to public health.

From Ghost Factories:

In April 2001, environmental scientist William Eckel published a research article in the American Journal of Public Health warning about the dangers of old smelting factories. While working on his Ph.D. dissertation, Eckel had identified a historical smelting site unknown to federal and state regulators and wondered how many other sites had been forgotten over time, their buildings demolished or absorbed by other businesses.

Eckel used old industry directories, which he cross-referenced with EPA databases, to come up with a list of more than 400 potential lead-smelting sites that appeared to be unknown to federal regulators.

Eckel confirmed that 20 of the sites' addresses were factories — and not just business offices — using Sanborn fire insurance maps, which detail the historical uses of individual pieces of property. An additional 86 sites were specifically listed in directories as "plant" locations. He paid to have soil samples tested from three sites in Baltimore and five in Philadelphia. All but one of the samples exceeded the EPA's residential hazard level for lead in areas where children play.

Eckel's article warned that the findings "should create some sense of urgency for the investigation of the other sites identified here because they may represent a significant source of exposure to lead in their local environments." The research indicates "a significant fraction" of the forgotten sites will require cleanups — likely at state and federal expense — because most of the companies went out of business long ago.

The study points the finger at the EPA.

Of the 639 sites, 170 (27%) were listed in the US EPA Facility Index System database; 469 sites were not listed. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, US EPA regional offices reported having files on 14 additional sites (2%). After these 14 sites and 16 “officeonly” locations were eliminated, approximately 435 of the 639 sites identified in the literature search (68%) were apparently unknown to the US EPA. A further 5 sites (all in Massachusetts) were listed by state authorities among the 8 states with the largest number of sites, which left about 430 previously unrecognized potential sites (67%).

The EPA, perhaps due to a lack of resources, hasn't done much. But give credit to USA Today for its huge follow-up. The LA Times in the past has claimed to be the best at "gang-tackling" reporting, but in this case it clearly has competition. Amazing story.

Here's an image from a fire in a smelting factory in Philadelphia in l952 that "sickened dozens." . 

A fire to make The Hunger Games look tame

The new movie blockbuster, The Hunger Games, turns out to be shockingly good. Not because it's futuristic -- with a little magic, it could easily have been set in ancient times. Not because it stars a teenager, or a young woman; the same story could be told through a male perspective, if less imaginatively. But simply because it's a great story: mesmerizing, suspenseful, surprising. 

The movie includes a brush with a forest fire -- a moment of real terror: 

But this movie fire cannot compare in magnitude to the real fire that burned through much of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana  in l910, a story brilliantly told in Timothy Egan's great book The Big Burn. 

Here's how Egan describes this fire, as it exploded from Idaho into Montana, eastern Washington state, back towards Glacier National Park, and across the border into British Columbia. 

...the wall of flame took over the forest, hundreds of feet high, at least thirty miles wide in some parts, and still gaining strength, still fanning out, consuming oxygen in heaves, and picking up intensity as its core temperature rose. The firest was a classic convection engine now: heat rising, pulling the hottest elements upward, a gyro of spark and flame. After racing through the Clearwater and Nez Perce forests, leveling nearly all living things in the Kelly Clark region, the fire swept up trees at the highest elevations. At this altitude, along the spine of the Bitterroots, the wind moved without obstruction, and the fire itself threw brands ten miles ahead of the flame front. The storm found the Montana border and spit flames down into the heavily settled Bitterroot Valley. It found the Lolo forest and crossed over the pass and along the summits, jumping ridgeline to ridgeline. At the peak of its power, it found the Coeur d'Alene forest, leading with a punch of wind that knocked down thousands of trees before the flames took out the rest of the woods. By now, the conscripted air...was a firestorm of hurricane-force winds, in excess of eighty miles an hour. What had been nearly three thousand small fires throughout a three-state region of the northern Rockies had grown into a single large burn. 

An incredible fire that led to extraordinary heroism, and the Forest Service as we know it today. 

Dozens of tornadoes devastate the South -- in January

A rare mid-winter brace of hurricanes devastates the South; 150-mph winds recorded. Two dozen or so tornadoes sweeps through four states -- Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina -- killing six people, injuring a hundred or more, and leaving countless others homeless. 

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Amazing more people weren't killed. Some of the survivors intend to move away from tornado country, just months after the last visited by record-setting storms, the likes of which destroyed Joplin.

In eastern Alabama, a suspected twister splintered trees and demolished mobile homes at a pair of housing parks near the Auburn University campus. Less than seven months ago, a massive tornado roared past the campus of archrival University of Alabama in the western part of the state. It was the worst bout of weather for the state since about 250 people were killed during the tornado outbreak in April. Both campuses were spared major damage this time.

Jeff Masters: The calendar says it's the coldest month of winter, but today's weather is more typical of March, as a vigorous spring-like storm system has spawned a rare and deadly January tornado outbreak

No small storm system, that -- almost looks to deserve a name. 

Take Shelter -- the birds are falling (again)

2012 opens with news of blackbirds falling dead from the sky in Arkansas -- again. 

Thousands of dead blackbirds rained down on a town in central Arkansas last New Year's Eve after revelers set off fireworks that spooked them from their roost, and officials were reporting a similar occurrence Saturday as 2012 approached.

Police in Beebe said dozens of blackbirds had fallen dead, prompting officers to ban residents from shooting fireworks Saturday night. It wasn't immediately clear if fireworks were again to blame, but authorities weren't taking a chance.

Officer John Weeks said the first reports of "birds on the streets" came around 7 p.m. as residents celebrated the year's end with fireworks in their neighborhoods.

"We started shutting down fireworks," he said. "We're working on cleaning up the birds now."

Such was an image in two films this year, both contemplating environmental disaster. (Without the fireworks, admittedly.) The first being Melancholia, where blackbirds fall from the sky, and people plenty of good reasons to look to the heavens, as they contemplate the end.

By contrast, 2011 also featured a beautifully understated dramatic examination of oncoming disaster, called Take Shelter. In this movie a devoted father, plagued by delusional nightmares of a storm the likes of which has never been seen in Ohio, turns his life upside down. He alienates his brother, frightens his wife, and loses his job -- all in the attempt to save his family. 

Despite being devastated by blackbirds falling from the sky, he wonders if he's going crazy. 

Describing what motivated him to make this film, the writer/director Jeff Nichols said:

I wrote TAKE SHELTER because I believed there was a feeling out in the world that was palpable. It was an anxiety that was very real in my life, and I had the notion it was very real in the lives of other Americans as well as other people around the world. This film was a way for me to talk about that fear and that anxiety. I hope there is an answer to this feeling by the end of the film. I believe there is, and it's the reason that this wonderful group of people came together to help me make TAKE SHELTER.

Yes, there is a palpable sense of disaster about to descend -- no? For better or worse. Perhaps we're all wrong, but the fear is there, among us. 

Leave aside the much-reported record twelve billion-dollar climactic disasters of the U.S. in 2011. You can hear in the rhetoric of Ron Paul and his followers, remarked on by leading conservative Ross Douthat. You can  read it in frightened Tea Party economic analysis. You can hear it in the serious music of today, such as Holocene, by Bon Iver, and in A.O. Scott's superb encapsulation of the film's central drama:

Is Curtis mad, or is he prescient? You can debate this question when the movie is over — the brilliant final scene invites as much — but you are unlikely to find a comfortable answer. The real question is what difference it makes...in “Take Shelter,” [Nichols] has made a perfect allegory for a panicky time. There is no shortage of delusion and paranoia out there in the world. There is also a lot to be afraid of.

Once our culture located God in the skies; now we wonder if we can trust Him -- or them. 

Phoenix: Not busy being born is busy dying

Speaking of Dylan...one of his most famous lines, written forty-six years ago, is standing up to the test of time just fine, thank you, in Phoenix this year. 

How so? 

An example: The title of a High Country News story about the city's fate is called Demise of a Housing Growth Machine.

The story focuses on a weighty study published five years ago that predicted that soon ten million people would be living between Tucson and Phoenix; generating mountains of cash.

Instead Phoenix has been devastated by the Great Recession -- unemployment, foreclosure, debt, and economic misery. When I visited fora convention a couple of years ago, the only billboards you could see for miles around were for short sales. Housing prices have collapsed.

It gets worse, much worse:

The dark cloud, meanwhile, continues to hover over Phoenix and Las Vegas, where housing prices have plummeted nearly 10 percent even during the last year, not to mention the 50 + percent drops that they’ve experienced since the peak of the boom. Tucson, Boise and many a mid-sized California city aren’t faring much better. That’s in spite of mortgage interest rates being lower than they’ve been in about four decades. 

The apocalyptic James Howard Kunstler would say -- told you so. Phoenix and Las Vegas will soon "depopulate", he warns, due to oil shocks. And rising gas prices have contributed to the city's economic woes, as they heighten the cost of sprawl. Intensifying heat and dust hasn't helped. 

A few years back Timothy Egan of The New York Times brought up the possibility of the city becoming "uninhabitable" (in a great column reprinted here). Could this be happening already? 

Look at the numbers, and it's clear the Great Recession hit Phoneix very hard. In 2009 the city appeared to be losing people.

Looking at decadal stats, experts say only that it's population has dramatically slowed -- from 35% to 9%. They suggest it's still growing.

But then I see something like this in Phoenix this year, and I think of Dylan and the apocalyptics...

From the Phoenix Sun.

Obama takes responsibility for Keystone XL: Why?

Maybe Obama isn't as calculating as he sometimes appears. 

Or maybe he's fighting for his political life. 

This impressive story by a reporter for Huffpo relates how the Keystone pipleline became a trainwreck inside the administration after the State department screwed up the environmental review.

Hillary Clinton's State Department has now spent more than three years considering whether to greenlight Keystone, far longer than any previous similar projects. From the start, the process has been driven more by haste than cautious study, numerous government officials who participated in the process say. Officials there took far too long to recognize that Keystone XL would become a touchstone for so much controversy, choosing to focus on diplomatic reasons why the pipeline was 'in the national interest,' while overlooking environmental reasons why it might not be. Indeed, the department initially passed responsibility for the environmental review, now the focus of most of the uproar, into the hands of a single, inexperienced staffer and a contractor with ties to the energy industry, while -- as the meeting at CEQ showed -- disregarding other, more experienced agencies.

And this Reuters story relates how the administration is bracing itself from blowback from its base over the approval that is expected. Again the story restates the nearly universal belief among insiders, apparently, that the Obama administration will approve the massively destructive tar sands pipeline. 

Some administration policy advisers expect the pipeline will be approved because of the energy security and jobs it would create, according to one source who met with two White House staffers about the subject recently.

"Everything I heard suggests there's no change in the sentiment that this will go forward," the source said.

Another source, who said he discussed the issue with senior officials from Obama's 2012 campaign operation, said a delay in the decision seemed increasingly likely.

But here's the puzzling recent turn in the controversy. President Obama has gone out of his way to take responsibility for the decision:

Obama has indicated he will make the final call. In a television interview on Tuesday, he outlined the economic and health criteria he would consider when the State Department's recommendations come his way.

Why take responsibility if you expect to make an unpopular decision? Doesn't make sense for a politician, does it? Especially since State will advocate the pipeline, and approval is expected. You'll get no credit, and all the blame.  

What am I missing?

Could Obama possibly be considering demanding a fuller review, and is taking responsibility to make clear in advance to Hillary that he is not happy with the way State handled the question?

Alfred Hitchock on global warming

Well, not exactly. But in his "Picture of the Week" feature on his chatty blog, Peter Bogdanovich -- who directed one of the great pictures of my youth, The Last Picture Show -- has some interesting thoughts from Hitch on nature and revenge re: The Birds: 

When I asked Hitch what he felt the movie was really about, he answered, “Generally speaking, that people are too complacent…” With the essentially inconsequential nature of the characters and the somewhat comedic quality of the beginning, Hitchcock said, he meant “To epitomize the fripperies of people, the lightness with which they live, their lack of concern about the fact that nature can turn on them.”  To me, it has always seemed like the director’s way of saying that no matter what we may do, Mother Earth somehow would eventually have her revenge.

The recent hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis the world over, the generally terrible air, all the other obvious results of global warming, only prove how prescient, metaphorically speaking, Hitchcock really was nearly half a century ago. 

And here's Hitch himself in the trailer, dryly enjoying our ruthlessness, and our just deserts -- "The awk, the famous passenger pigeon, and the dodo bird have all disappeared. Actually, they didn't disappear, but were simply killed off. But of course, this is nature's way. Man merely hurries the process along whenever he can be of help." 

Texas drought: "Years before the cows come home"

Today reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske took a potentially mundane story about how the drought in Texas is changing the traditional cattle business and wrote her way on to the front page of the Sunday Los Angeles Times with her boldness:

The cowboys rose well before dawn, stars still high in the West Texas sky. They strapped on spurs and leather chaps and climbed into their saddles for one last roundup.

They didn't have to do much to rustle the cattle from the dusty flats about 220 miles west of Dallas. Hundreds of hungry black Angus and Herefords, tired of foraging for scarce, drought-dry grass, came running — drawn by the hope of feed.

But it's not just color. She also slips in some climate science:

Texas has suffered more than $5.2 billion in agricultural losses this year from the dry spell, including in the cattle industry. No relief is in sight and the state climatologist says this could be the start of a 10-year drought, part of changing weather patterns worldwide.

Want a little more? Here's the Texas state climatologist's thoughtful discussion of the three suspects in the most recent Texas drought: the Pacific Decadal Oscilation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and "the long-term oceanic warming trend." It's very complicated, but John Neilsen-Gammon concludes:

At this point, all I can say is that we're in a period of frequent Texas drought until further notice. This period, with both the Pacific and the Atlantic working against us, might be over in a year or two, or it might last another fifteen or twenty years. it seems likely to last another decade. 

Texas cattle producers can't wait. They're leasing pastureland in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Montana, and shipping their cattle out of state. 

Or, as Hennessy-Fiske puts it, with a touch of wit:

Many [cattle-managers]say they plan to return at least some cows once Texas greens, but admit it could be years before the cows come home.

Kudos to the reporter, I say. Good job. 

Congress cuts weather satellite funding in disastrous year

The weather in these United States has been truly frightful in the last couple of years, as this graph -- provided to Congress with testimony from NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan last month -- illustrates:

[The graph shows the number of events from last year, but this year will be worse, Sullivan said]

Yet as the demand for longer term forecasts, which are based on satellite observations, skyrockets, Congress is cutting back on the budget for satellite platforms. Sullivan warned:

Polar-orbiting satellites are the backbone of all model forecasts at three days and beyond; however, the launch of the next generation of NOAA's polar-orbiting satellites, the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), has been delayed by the FY 2011 appropriations process. As a result, NOAA is faced with a nearly 100% chance of a data gap in the U.S. civilian polar orbit, on which both civilian and military users rely, by late 2016 to early 2017 when the current polar satellites reach the end of their life expectancy. JPSS is a critical part of NOAA's future infrastructure needed to continue our path of forecast improvement – and to maintain what we have built over the last 30 years.

Specifically, the administration asked Congress for more money for NOAA and related satellite observation programs, about $6.5 billion, and instead Congress cut a little less than a billion from the budget, leaving the overall budget at about $4.5 billion.

NOAA chief Jane Lubchenko is not happy, and says that already the U.S. will be without a polar orbiting satellite for at least 18 months, starting in 2016. 

“Whether the gap is longer than that depends on whether we get the money”— $1 billion — “in the next budget,” warned Dr. Lubchenco, an environmental scientist. “I would argue that these satellites are critically important to saving lives and property and to enabling homeland security.”

Congress isn't listening; in fact, the GOP wants to fund disaster relief only if matching cuts can be made elsewhere, and may force victims of disasters in the Mid-West to wait as Hurricane Irene victims get immediate help, according to a front-page story in today's Los Angeles Times. 

 

But don't worry! Insiders agree: The GOP is the anti-science party. Er, not. 

Hurricane Irene disappoints jaded New Yorkers

In the aftermath of the hurricane, came complaints about hype: Was Hurricane Irene a disappointment? 

Media analyst Howard Kurtz says yes. After all, Irene wasn't even a hurricane when it made landfall in NYC. Other New Yorkers are equally dismissive: A NYC gossip site called Irene The Sudden Sex Celebrity without Much Bang. Scallywag wrote: 

she’ll more than likely be the sexy hot dame that tantalized us and left us a smidgen disappointed that we didn’t get to experience the type of rude shock that we were told to look out for.

An anonymous texter had a similarly sexualized reaction to the storm: 

Last night in my drunkenness I bought hurricane supplies which included a jug of wine and a bouquet of flowers. Apparently I'm going to woo Irene. 

Even Susan Orlean, The New Yorker writer, saw the storm as beddable (on Facebook). 

If Irene were my boyfriend, I'd say enough with the foreplay, dude. The moment has passed. 

But Orlean, who is funny, was kidding. Her coworker Elizabeth Kolbert, after surveying the science on the did global warming cause Irene question? pointed out what needed to be said: 

When we add all of these risk factors together, we can say with a great deal of confidence that in the future, there will be more and more events like Irene. We can comfort ourselves by saying that this particular storm was not necessarily caused by global warming. Or we can acknowledge the truth, which is that we are making the world a more dangerous place and, what’s more, that we know it.

Maybe if Kolbert was looking at the natural world through the TV screen, for entertainment. she'd react differently.