Planetary Ruin

Mother Nature hurled a desperation shot at the buzzer and drained it.

With barely 24 hours to spare to break Seattle’s rainfall record for a single month, it was not just rain but snow, sleet and other unlikely provocations that lifted the level of the city’s official precipitation gauge to a historic high late Wednesday.

By Thursday afternoon, after the record of 15.33 inches of rain, set in December 1933, had been broken, the gauge at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had crept to 15.63 inches.

After a week of wintry weather and frigid temperatures had forced school cancellations, closed roads and knocked out power in places, many residents were pleased to face the return of two inevitable developments, more rain and December, typically the second wettest month in Seattle.

“I’m looking forward to it,” said Joe Susino, 58, after checking for damage from ice and snow on his 30-foot sailboat at Shilshole Bay Marina on Puget Sound. “I prefer the rain.”

This week it even hailed, and, on Wednesday, it dropped to 18 degrees, a record for the date. An emerging pattern of El Niño suggested warmer temperatures ahead, but if some are ready for the rain to return, others said they savored the variation in the precipitation.

“It wasn’t as gloomy,” said Colleen McAuliffe, after walking her dog, Calvin, and remarking on the snow-white views across Puget Sound.

Her friend Maggie Morrison agreed. “You need a break,” she said. Now, Ms. Morrison said, her focus is on getting past Dec. 21, the winter solstice, when the nights start getting shorter and the days longer.

The sun set at 4:20 p.m. Thursday and was not due to rise until 7:37 a.m. Friday.

“This other friend of mine,” Ms. Morrison said, “she counts off the days between when daylight savings time ends and the solstice, and then she has a party.”

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Typhoon Durian tore through the eastern Philippines on Thursday with winds of up to 139 mph, killing at least 109 people and cutting off power to thousands of homes, officials said.

Dozens of people were missing, and 200 body bags were being shipped to the disaster zone at the request of provincial officials.

With power and phone lines downed by powerful winds, helicopters were carrying out aerial surveillance of cut off areas.

“Our rescue teams are overstretched rescuing people on rooftops,” said Glen Rabonza, head of the national Office of Civil Defense.

Fernando Gonzales, governor of badly hit Albay province, said 108 bodies had been found but that recovery operations were continuing. The figure did not include at least one person killed in adjacent Camarines Sur province, which reported that its capital was flattened.

Undersecretary Dr. Graciano Yumul of the Department of Science and Technology said the storm was particularly damaging because wind gusts hit 165 mph when Durian came ashore Thursday in Catanduanes, an island province with no mountains to break the storm’s momentum.

“So it really destroyed the island that it hit,” Yumul said. “That is the reason you are seeing the kind of destruction you are seeing right now.

A mudslide swept down on the village of Padang at the foot of the Mayon volcano, and at least 20 bodies were recovered there, said Noel Rosal, mayor of Legazpi city, capital of badly hit Albay province.

“It’s terrible,” he told The Associated Press by phone after visiting the village Friday. “Based on our interviews with residents and village officials, more than 100 were killed or missing.”

Some victims had their clothes ripped off as they were swept away by the mudslide, he said.

“I could not bear to look at some of them,” Rosal said.

Elsewhere in Albay, 26 people were killed in Santo Domingo and 13 were missing, while another nine deaths were reported in the town of Daraga, said Jukes Nunez of the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council.

About 30 people were injured by boulders and roofing materials in Padang and taken to hospitals, Rosal said.

Jukes Nunez of the Albay Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council said many parts of Legazpi were still flooded Friday morning.

“The request for rescue is overwhelming,” he said. “The disaster managers are victims themselves.”

The typhoon weakened early Friday as it moved north of Mindoro island, south of Manila, with sustained winds of 94 mph and gusts of up to 116 mph as it headed toward the South China Sea.

Rescuers struggled against strong winds to rescue residents whose roofs were torn off, exposing them to rain and flying sheets of metal, Naga Mayor Jessie Robredo told the AP by cell phone. With telephone lines down, many residents whose houses were uprooted by the wind sought help by sending cell phone text messages.

“I’ve received SMS messages of 10 small houses being blown away by the wind and many others getting damaged,” Robredo said.

The “super typhoon” – the fourth to hit the Philippines in as many months – was packing sustained winds of 121 mph and gusts of up to 139 mph, the weather bureau said.

The civil defense office said electricity was cut off to thousands of people in Bicol and 10 towns in nearby Quezon province, while nearly 4,000 ferry passengers were stranded after the coast guard grounded all vessels.

In late September, Typhoon Xangsane left 230 people dead and missing in and around Manila. Typhoon Cimaron killed 19 people and injured 58 others last month, and earlier this month, Chebi sliced through the central Luzon region, killing one.

About 20 typhoons and tropical storms hit the Philippines each year.

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Mankind will need to venture far beyond planet Earth to ensure the long-term survival of our species, according to the world’s best known scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking.

Returning to a theme he has voiced many times before, the Cambridge University cosmologist said today that space-rockets propelled by the kind of matter/antimatter annihilation technology popularised in Star Trek would be needed to help Homo sapiens colonise hospitable planets orbiting alien stars.

And he disclosed his own ambition to go into space. “Maybe Richard Branson will help me,” he said, a reference to the space tourism plans of Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson, using the privately built SpaceShipOne to take people into space from 2008.

Prof Hawking, who is confined to a wheelchair by motor neuron disease, MND, was commenting using a muscle below his right eye to operate – via a switch on his glasses – his voice synthesiser.

He was speaking ahead of the presentation of Britain’s highest scientific award, the Royal Society’s Copley Medal, previously granted to Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, and Albert Einstein.

He told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme that scientists still have “some way to go” to reach his prediction in his bestselling A Brief History of Time that mankind would one day “know the mind of God” by understanding the complete set of laws which govern the universe.

This set of laws, which will probably rely on theory that requires more than three dimensions of space and one of time, could be uncovered within 20 years, not least because next year the giant LHC atom smasher will go into operation in the CERN nuclear physics laboratory in Geneva to provide new information for that quest by simulating conditions not seen since the birth of the universe as well making antimatter in a special factory.

Prof Hawking said that this knowledge may be vital to the human race’s continued existence.

“The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet,” he said. “Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe.

“There isn’t anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star.

“If we used chemical fuel rockets like the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey to the nearest star would take 50,000 years. This is obviously far too long to be practical, so science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination. Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light.

“However, we can still within the law, by using matter/antimatter annihilation, and reach speeds just below the speed of light. With that, it would be possible to reach the next star in about six years, though it wouldn’t seem so long for those on board.”

The science fiction series Star Trek has used matter/antimatter annihilation as an explanation for the warp drive. But, in reality, he said that scientists believe that the flash of radiation produced when matter and antimatter are brought together and destroy one another could in fact one day be used to drive craft to close to the speed of light.

Prof Hawking today said that his own ambition was to take part in a more conventional form of space travel. “I am not afraid of death but I’m in no hurry to die. My next goal is to go into space,” said Hawking, who was diagnosed with MND at 21 and told by doctors he had only a few years to live.

He told The Daily Telegraph that he has offered to give his own DNA to a project to scan the human genetic code for clues to the cause, in an initiative backed by the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

“Motor neurone disease is as common as multiple sclerosis, but it has received much less public attention and awareness,” he said.

“This may be because it often kills its victims in two or three years from the first appearance of symptoms, so they aren’t around to be noticed. I am one of a few long term survivors, so I have a duty to call attention to this terrible disease, and to press for research into its causes, so we can find ways of curing it, or at least preventing it in the future.

“We know that biological processes are controlled by DNA, so a natural first step is to study the DNA of those with motor neurone disease, and compare it to the DNA of those without. For this reason, I strongly support the Whole Genome Project, and will be contributing my own DNA to it.”

The project will be led by two clinical geneticists working in the field, Dr Ammar Al-Chalabi of King’s College London and Prof Robert Brown of Harvard University, near Boston. At the moment, doctors do not know the cause of over 97 per cent of cases of the disease, though they do know that genetic factors play an important role.

In 10 per cent of cases, where the disease run in families, genetic mutations in the DNA are totally responsible for causing the disease.

In the remaining 90 per cent of so-called sporadic cases, such as that affecting Prof Hawking, genetic mutations are still believed to be a major factor in predisposing people to the disease. The trigger, Prof Hawking believes, is “likely to be the result of exposure to infection or toxins. There may well be a variety of causes that give rise to similar symptoms, but the Genome Project should provide the clue to the mechanism, and help find ways to repair the damage, or prevent it in future.”

“The problem is that the genetic information contained within our DNA is like having 200 volumes of the London telephone directory – and we are searching for the equivalent of single spelling mistakes,” said Dr Al-Chalabi.

“The ‘Whole Genome Scan’ is a means of rapidly narrowing the search to ‘hot spots’ of the equivalent of a few pages.”

Once this has been done, the information will be made available to scientists all over the world, allowing them to conduct painstaking ‘letter-by-letter’ analysis to find the disease-causing genetic mutations, potentially saving many years of fruitless research.

To do this research successfully, large numbers of DNA samples from people with MND and unaffected individuals are needed. The researchers already have access to samples from 5,200 individuals in total (including samples from the MND Association’s own DNA Bank) and Prof Hawking is among those who have offered to help.

The researchers will collaborate with scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to use a ‘gene-chip’ , which attaches chemical ‘markers’ at almost 320,000 sites across the whole length of each sample of human DNA. The project is also backed by a number of US-based charities. If many more of these chemical markers are found sticking to particular regions of the DNA in MND samples compared to non-MND cases, it indicates that the genetic mutation is likely to be somewhere within these region, allowing researchers to quickly focus in on these regions and perform further detailed hunts for ‘candidate’ genes.

The disease attacks the upper and lower motor neurones, causing weakness and wasting of muscles, increasing loss of mobility in the limbs, and difficulties with speech, swallowing and breathing.

It can affect any adult at any age but most people diagnosed with the disease are over the age of 40, with the highest incidence occurring between the ages of 50 and 70.

The incidence or number of people who will develop the disease each year is about two people in every 100,000 The prevalence or number of people living with MND at any one time is approximately seven in every 100,000.

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The United State’s heartland, from the southern Plains to the Great Lakes, is being targeted by a powerful winter storm that contains a dangerous mix of weather including blizzard conditions, ice, rain and bitterly cold temperatures.

The sharp cold front at the leading edge of the arctic air that has been moving out of the Northwest over the past several days is clashing with the unseasonably warm air that has been in place over the eastern third of the nation. On Wednesday, the front sparked rain and thunderstorms, hail and damaging winds from central Texas to Michigan. 

The low pressure center responsible for the snow, ice and thunderstorms will move into the western Ohio Valley Thursday night then turn more toward the east on Friday. North and west of the track there will be a major snowstorm. On the eastern edge of the snowstorm there will be a mix of rain and ice, which will eventually turn to snow. The thunderstorms are forecast to erupt Friday as far north as New England.

The heaviest snowfall, ranging from 12 to 18 inches, will fall across northern Missouri and northwestern Illinois, with up to a foot of snow forecast from the Texas panhandle and northeastern Oklahoma through the Chicagoland area into central Michigan and southern and central Ontario.

The Winter Weather Center is warning icy conditions will exist from northeastern Texas to southeastern Ontario as rain passes through a thin layer of below-freezing air, creating ice pellets or turning the rain to ice as it reaches the ground. The frozen precipitation is coating trees, power lines, sidewalks and roadways, especially bridges and overpasses, adding to the hazardous travel conditions and creating the potential for power outages. 

Earlier today, rain changed to ice as cold air undercut the warmer air above the surface. Overland Park, Kan., was coated with a half of an inch of freezing rain in less than four hours and streets in the Kansas City area were turned into skating rinks.

In addition to the ice-covered roads, powerful winds are creating blizzard conditions from Oklahoma and eastern Kansas into the Midwest. Whiteouts and blowing and drifting snow will create dangerous travel conditions, especially in rural areas. Conditions will worsen overnight as the storm continues its movement toward the Great Lakes.

State and local police in a number of central Plains states are advising against traveling unless absolutely necessary through tonight and into Friday.

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With talk of global warming being the root cause of the record breaking storm season in 2005.  The hurricane season of 2006 lacked any serious bite, leaving us to wonder about the validity of the claim.  Are the record high CO2 levels contributing to the increased storm activity of 2005 and if so, why was 2006 so mild? 

The mild 2006 Atlantic hurricane season draws to a close Thursday without a single hurricane striking the United States – a stark contrast to the record-breaking 2005 season that killed more than 1,500 people and left thousands homeless along the Gulf Coast.

Nine named storms and five hurricanes formed this season, and just two of the hurricanes were considered major. That is considered a near-normal season – and well short of the rough season government scientists had forecast.

“We got a much-welcome break after a lot of the coast had been compromised in the last several years, but this is a one-season type break,” said Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In May, scientists predicted 13 to 16 named storms and eight to 10 hurricanes, with four to six of them major.

The 2005 hurricane season was the busiest on record, with 28 named storms, including 15 hurricanes, four of which hit the United States, including Katrina and Rita.

Bell urged people not to become complacent about the next season, which starts June 1. Forecasters say the Atlantic is still in an active hurricane period that began in 1995 and could last another decade or more.

This year, a warm-water trend known as El Nino developed more quickly than expected in the Pacific, squashing the formation of storms in the Atlantic and creating crosswinds that can rip hurricanes apart. At the same time, upper-level air currents pushed most hurricanes out to sea, away from the U.S. mainland.

Only two storms, Tropical Storms Alberto and Ernesto, hit the U.S. mainland in 2006. Neither caused significant damage.

The season effectively ended with Hurricane Isaac, the last named storm, which dissipated Oct. 2.

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Billions of people could be wiped out over the next century because of climate change, a leading expert said.

Professor James Lovelock, who pioneered the idea of the Earth as a living organism, said as the planet heats up humans will find it increasingly hard to survive.

He warned that as conditions worsen, the global population which is currently around 6.5 billion, may sink as low as 500 million.

Prof Lovelock also claims that any attempts to tackle climate change will not be able to solve the problem, merely buy us time.

Given the dire situation we face, he urged people to drop the phrase “global warming,” which has cosy connotations, and instead start to think of it as “global heating.”

Prof Lovelock, is an independent scientist who first proposed the Gaia Theory, which argues that the Earth, like a body, is a complex and intricately balanced system which all works together to allow life to continue as we know it.

However he fears that as carbon dioxide emissions from man and the planet itself soar, the Earth will heat up causing water shortages, destroying life in much of the planet’s oceans and making it impossible for plants to grow.

Prof Lovelock, who last night gave the 5th John Collier Lecture to the Institution of Chemical Engineers in London, said: “There is very good evidence of what happened 55 million years ago when as much carbon dioxide was put into the atmosphere by geology as is being done by us now.

“Temperatures zoomed up by 8 degrees and stayed there for 200,000 years then came back to normal.”

He fears something similar may happen again, and warned: “if it does it is going to make this an exceedingly difficult century.”

However Prof Lovelock said mankind has managed to survive previous climatic disasters of the past.

“There have been at least seven of these major climate changes before and we have to adapt,” he said.

“It is going to be tough and there will be some evolution of humans during it.

“The survivors will be those humans that can make their way to refuges or Arctic places and survive there.

“I think an awful lot of people will die but I don’t see the human species dying out.

“I would think a hot earth could not support much over 500 million.”

He warned there are no simple solutions to global heating and there is nothing we can do now to “save the earth.”

“People will try to do things but the way to really look at them is they are a bit like when your kidneys fail you can on dialysis – and who would refuse dialysis if death is the alternative?” he said.

“But we have to remember that all they are doing is buying us time. The problems will go on.

“Trying to take the job on of regulating the earth is about as crazy as you can get.

“It is something quiet beyond humans at this stage in their evolution.”

Despite this people should do what they can to reduce their impact on the planet.

“There is no point driving around in a Chelsea tractor when you can drive a small car but it does not escape the fact that changes are underway,” he warned.

Prof Lovelock’s dire forecast for the future of the human race is far more pessimistic than the Government’s own assessment of global warming.

Tony Blair told European leaders at a summit in Finland last month that it was not too late to reverse the effects global warming.

In an open letter to delegates he said there was a window of “10-15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points.”

This echoes the findings of Sir Nicholas Stern in his influential report on climate change.

In it he says there is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if countries co-operate internationally.

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The global political battle over climate change was also being fought at the US Supreme Court on Wednesday as judges bickered over the role of greenhouse gas emissions in global warming and disagreed on whether the Env­­ir­on­mental Protection Agency had the power to refuse to regulate such emissions.

Hearing a case that could have a big impact on emission politics in the US Congress and beyond, judges listened to a Bush administration official defend the notion that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should stay out of greenhouse gas regulation. They also heard from the state of Massachusetts, which insists that its coastline will be threatened unless the EPA steps in.

Environmental activists, frustrated by the failure of Congress or the Bush administration to act on global warming, brought the issue to the Supreme Court with the case Massachusetts v EPA. The court heard oral arguments in the case yesterday but will rule only sometime next year.

Massachusetts brought the suit, backed by California, New York and several other states, to try to force the EPA to regulate exhaust emissions from new cars. The EPA says it does not have the authority to regulate such emissions, under federal law. Even if it did, the EPA says, it would refuse to do so because of continuing uncertainty in the science of global warming and because unilateral US action could reduce America’s bargaining power in international negotiations on reducing emissions.

A federal appeals court issued a splintered ruling in the case, with the two judges in the majority – who upheld the EPA’s refusal to regulate – disagreeing on their reasoning. One found that Massachusetts had no right to bring the lawsuit, and the other found that the EPA had the authority to refuse to regulate.

Wednesday’s arguments focused largely on the issue of whether Massachusetts could bring the case in the first place, with several conservative justices arguing that Massachusetts had not proved the danger to its coastline was imminent enough to merit the suit, or that the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that could be achieved by limiting exhaust emissions – some 2.5 per cent of total US greenhouse emissions – would be significant enough to give them the right to sue.

“It depends what happens across the globe,” Chief Justice John Roberts said, noting that any reduction in US emissions might be overcome by a rise in emissions caused by China’s rapid economic development. Several liberal justices supported Massachusetts but the pivotal swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, did not reveal where he stood.

The court appeared similarly divided on the issue of whether the EPA had the authority to refuse to regulate or whether its reasons for doing so were valid.

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The arctic deep freeze trapping Calgary is on track to break a 110-year-old weather record today, but the bitter cold is expected to ease in the coming days.

With a forecast low of -31C today, Calgary could break the -27C record set on this day in 1896.

But factoring in the wind chill, it will feel even colder to people who have to brave the elements, said Environment Canada meteorologist Ross Macdonald.

“I wouldn’t break out the shorts and go sunbathing right now,” he joked.

“Bundle up.”

The recent frigid weather is a far cry from the city’s average late-November temperatures.

Macdonald said the normal daytime high at this time of year is 0C, with a low of -11C.

“The last time it was really this cold in November was about 10 years ago,” he said.

“We’ve hit rock bottom.”

It’s even been too frosty to ski, with Canada Olympic Park shutting the hill yesterday in the name of safety.

Spokesman Chris Dornan said, to his knowledge, it’s the first year the weather has forced a November closure.

“It’s normally in January or February,” he said.

Meanwhile, blowing snow likely contributed to a crash near Sylvan Lake yesterday that claimed the life of a 42-year-old motorist.

And the icy snap has the Calgary Humane Society scrambling to respond to an avalanche of calls from residents concerned about distressed animals, said spokeswoman Cheryl Wallach.

“The Calgary Humane Society is calling on all Calgary pet owners to use common sense and not leave animals outside without adequate shelter,” she said.

The frigid weather is expected to improve by Thursday, with a predicted high of -7C.

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The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of peoples’ lives, a controversial climate scientist said on Tuesday.

James Lovelock, who angered climate scientists with his Gaia theory of a living planet and then alienated environmentalists by backing nuclear power, said a traumatized earth might only be able to support less than a tenth of it’s 6 billion people.

“We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don’t see the species dying out,” he told a news conference. “A hot earth couldn’t support much over 500 million.”

“Almost all of the systems that have been looked at are in positive feedback … and soon those effects will be larger than any of the effects of carbon dioxide emissions from industry and so on around the world,” he added.

Scientists say that global warming due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport could boost average temperatures by up to 6C by the end of the century causing floods, famines and violent storms.

But they also say that tough action now to cut carbon emissions could stop atmospheric concentrations of CO2 hitting 450 parts per million — equivalent to a temperature rise of 2C from pre-industrial levels — and save the planet.

Lovelock said temperature rises of up to 8C were already built in and while efforts to curb it were morally commendable, they were wasted.

“It is a bit like if your kidneys fail you can go on dialysis — and who would refuse dialysis if death is the alternative. We should think of it in that context,” he said.

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Dutch bask in warmest autumn in three centuries

The autumn of 2006 has been the warmest in the Netherlands for over 300 years, 12.5 percent hotter than the previous year which was already a record, meteorologists said.
“Beating the record by more than one degree centigrade, that is exceptional,” the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute said in a statement.

The average temperature for the months leading up to November 17 was up to 13.5 degrees (56 degrees F), as compared to 12 degrees last year, which was already the hottest autumn on record.

The average over the last three centuries for this period of the year has been 9.9 degrees.

At least three factors are responsible for the increased temperatures, the Institute said: global warming, winds from the south that have blown over the Netherlands more than in most years, and a slower cooling down after an exceptionally hot summer, especially in July.

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