Shalom everyone,
This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:
1. My Talk at Tikkun Olam Conference Now On You Tube
2. Update on A SACRED DUTY
3. Time to Update/Revitalize the JVNA Speakers Bureau
4. The Tomato - Salmonella Scare: A Vegetarian Perspective
5. California Democratic Party Endorses Steps to Reduce Factory Farming Abuses
6. Update on Arrests of Austrian Animal Rights Activists
7. Will Higher Grain Prices Lead to Cutbacks in Meat Production?
8. My Letter Challenging Environmentalists on Vegetarianism
9. Our Efforts Help Idealistic Jews Restore Their Faith in Judaism
10. Latest Animals Voice E-Newsletter
11. Important Lessons We Can Learn From A Dog
12. Ten Commandments Regarding Animals
13. “Culinary Awakenings” Announcement
14. Who Says Athletes Must Eat Meat?
15. Dietary Connections to the Food and Oil Crises
16. Letter in Response to Reports of Shortages of Kosher Meat
17. Reducing Whaling
18. Hazon Bike Ride Scheduled
19. Agriprocessors Boycott Commences
20. Lantern Publishes New Book on Human-Animals Interactions
21. HSUS Campaign To Reduce Factory Farm Abuses in California
22. European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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1. My Talk at Tikkun Olam Conference Now On You Tube
Many thanks to dedicated JVNA advisor Rina Deych for posting my talk on You Tube in 3 parts.
Part 1: http://youtube.com/watch?v=b3aAdk-keT0
Part 2: http://youtube.com/watch?v=lOVk_PrsG1w
Part 3: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ar33d4P2ckk
Rina is working on getting it all onto one video. I will keep you posted about this.
Unfortunately the conditions are not ideal as I was given a last minute time deadline, and there is background noise and some visual distractions, but I think I was able to hit many highlights of our basic case. So, please take a look and let me know what you think.
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2. Update on A SACRED DUTY
a. Getting DVDs to People at Conferences
Thanks to the efforts of dedicated JVNA activists Roberta Kalechofsky, Roberta Schiff and Rae Sikora, many DVDs were given out at last week's SUMMERFEST of the North American Vegetarian Society. A SACRED DUTY was also shown at the event.
We have plans to get DVDS to many other vegetarians, animal rights activsts and others at various conferences this summer. If you will be attending an event and would like to help distribute DVDs of A SACRED DUTY or help in any other way, please let me know.
b. Getting DVDs to Others
Our objective is to get A SACRED DUTY as widely viewed and discussed as possible. So, if you would like DVDs to get to your local rabbis, educators, media, libraries, etc., please let me know how many DVDs you can use and send your mailing address. If you can arrange a screening of A SACRED DUTY, that would be great.
Once again, please let people know that the entire movie may be seen at SacredDuty.com, and that they can get further information and request a complimentary DVD at the site. Thanks.
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3. Time to Update/Revitalize the JVNA Speakers Bureau
Message from JVNA advisor Steve Schuster:
I think we should develop a speakers bureau - a credible group of speakers who can deliver the message like you can. We should offer to come to synagogues as guest Shabbat speakers, etc. to actually get in front of Jews. Rabbis love having the night off from sermonizing.
We could develop a standard presentation that could be replicated under your tutelage.
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Many thanks for the valuable suggestion, Steve. Actually, we started a speakers bureau several years ago. A list of speakers can be found at:
www.jewishveg.com/speakers.html
Also, I have much material at JewishVeg.com/Schwartz that can be used for preparing a talk on “Judaism and Vegetarianism.” We would welcome additional people for our speakers bureau. And I encourage people to use the many articles at JewishVeg.com/Schwarz and the valuable material at the JVNA web site to prepare talks and then to approach local rabbis, Jewish educators and others to offer to give a talk. If we can help in any way re this, please let me know. The need for a major switch toward veganism is becoming more apparent daily, so we need everyone to help out as much as possible. Many thanks.
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4. The Tomato - Salmonella Scare: A Vegetarian Perspective
Thanks to JVNA advisor and professor and author Dan Brook for forwarding the following to us:
As with e. coli, the media seem to blame vegetables (spinach, scallions, now tomatoes), but the culprit is the farming of animals for meat, especially factory farming.---Dan Brook
How Does Salmonella Get on Tomatoes?
As the food industry has rapidly grown in the past 35 years, the study said, the FDA has cut inspections by 78 percent. Now, inspectors visit a given food manufacturing plant once a decade; no inspectors visit farms or retail sales outlets, reports chron.com
Many people, concerned about food and tomato safety ask questions on how it is that tomatoes can be contaminated with salmonella. We usually hear of salmonella being a problem with raw eggs and poorly cooked meat.
Here's what I found. Animals infected with salmonella don't show symptoms. So when they eliminate waste, the salmonella that was in their intestines in now in the manure that unsuspecting farmers use to fertilize fields.
Usually the process of composting the manure kills most bugs. Usually... not always.
Of course, animal waste can get into fields in the form of run-off from contaminated water supply systems and infected animals that sneak in and relieve themselves.
Crops are washed after they're harvested to control this sort of thing, of course, but when they go to the packing plant, if one batch is contaminated, it can contaminate others. Especially when the tomatoes travel a long way and have plenty of time to grow more bacteria to share with the healthy tomatoes on board.
Reported by Latina Viva Health
http://www.emaxhealth.com/75/23135.html
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5. California Democratic Party Endorses Steps to Reduce Factory Farming Abuses
Yesterday, the California Democratic Party officially endorsed the ballot measure to ban battery cages, veal crates, and gestation crates. This is the first time a major state party has endorsed an animal protection ballot initiative. We now turn our attention to the other side of the aisle.
Other endorsements include Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Maxine Waters, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom, former state Senator John Burton, Cesar Chavez Foundation, Center for Food Safety, Union of Concerned Scientists, Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Sierra Club-California, Defenders of Wildlife, Greenpeace USA, nearly 400 California veterinarians, nearly 150 California veterinary students, numerous religious leaders, Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Davis, Santa Monica, and Berkeley.
Props to the phenomenal campaign staff and volunteers who are building this massive list of endorsers. More to come…
Interested in taking action online to help animals? Then join our online community! Go to:
https://community.hsus.org/humane/join
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6. Update on Arrests of Austrian Animal Rights Activists
Forwarded message by Herma Caelen of EVANA:
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Dear friends,
by now you certainly all know about the fate of Austrian activists who were arrested on 21 May and today are still kept in prison, and that without any specific charge.
You can find a lot of information about the situation here
http://www.evana.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=7f1c5b78dff2bcc9eda9f06067983a23&cat=&lang=en&filtertext=austria&Go=Go%21
After the first shock and the ensuing hope that this was nothing but a horrible misunderstanding to be corrected any day by the authorities, we now know better.
That's why the international AR and veg-community starts to get organized in the interest of solidarity and freedom of expression: The members of the international yahoo group 'Freedom for Austrian Activists'*) have drafted a common press release for which endorsements are requested before the text will be released to the media of many countries (and, of course, in many languages).
If you want to help by getting involved, we invite you to endorse the press release below by sending us the name and website (or e-mail address, if no website is available) of your organization (e-mail address info@evana.org /not later than midnight on Tuesday, June 24)
BTW, two banners have also been designed to draw attention to Austria's legal blind spot (see enclosure). They are already seen on many websites. Please feel free to use them as you see fit.
We thank you for your support.
The international EVANA Team
www.evana.org
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/Freedom_for_Austrian_Activists/
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PRESS RELEASE
HUMAN RIGHTS SCANDAL IN AUSTRIA
Non-governmental organisations express concern about what may be a case of state repression of social activism.
On 21st May 2008 at 6 a.m., heavily armed police officers from an elite unit stormed 21 homes and the offices of a number of non-governmental organisations in Austria. Breaking their way in, the masked police surrounded frightened civilians in their beds at gun point. Ten people were arrested and have been held in custody without specific charge since that day.
Despite the statement by the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior that "The measures taken by the police (.) were in no way directed against animal welfare or animal welfare organizations", the removal of computers, documents and other assets has effectively crippled some of the organizations involved.
Those asking the media to look at this case draw attention to the fact that Amnesty International (1) and the Austrian Green Party have reacted strongly, questioning police methods and the treatment of detainees, particularly the absence of actionable evidence justifying "reasonable suspicion" (dringender Tatverdacht) or the "probable cause" (Haftgrund) for the arrests.
Detainee accounts of what has happened are alarming: see, for example, this appeal sent out by Martin Balluch on June 9 (2).
In recent years, milestone reforms in animal law have been achieved in Austria including bans on fur farms, battery cages for hens and the use of wild animals in circuses. Should those who have achieved advances that are an example to the rest of the world be blamed for all the unsolved cases of damage to property in Austria over the last eleven years?
"All citizens have the right to actively stand up for or demonstrate against something. It is particularly important to stand up for animal rights because animals cannot stand up for themselves. People must do it for them. Animals, like all the defenseless, rely on this protection." (Elfriede Jelinek, Nobel Prize for literature 2004) (3)
Should organisations acting for animals that have always operated peacefully and within the law have their functioning hampered by the seizure of their material?
The undersigned express deep concern at what appears to be an attempt to criminalise the animal advocacy movement and to stifle the political freedom of those involved in it.
Information in German and English are available on the website of the
Association Against Animal Factories (Verein Gegen Tierfabriken):
www.vgt.at.
(1) Statement from Amnesty International (5 June 2008)
http://www.vgt.at/presse/news/2008/news20080605_1_en.php
(2) Martin Balluch Needs Your Help!
http://www.vgt.at/presse/news/2008/news20080613_2_en.php
(3) Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek comments Austrian police raids
http://www.evana.org/index.php?id=34576&lang=en
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7. Will Higher Grain Prices Lead to Cutbacks in Meat Production?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Cathy
Date: June 19, 2008 4:34:00 PM EDT
Financial News
Meat industry leaders warn cutbacks are coming
By Janie Gabbett on 6/19/2008 for Meatingplace.com
Meat industry executives Thursday warned of production cutbacks in the beef, pork and poultry sectors as runaway corn prices have pushed input costs to unmanageable levels.
Citing corn futures prices that point to another 30 percent increase in already escalated feed costs next year, Seaboard Foods CEO Rod Brenneman told reporters on a conference call that sow slaughter will continue and there will be fewer hogs and less pork in the marketplace by later this year.
SNIP
Acknowledging ethanol is not the only factor driving feedgrain prices, the executives pointed out that current ethanol policy was developed when the United States had an oversupply of grain and farmers were getting only about $2 per bushel for their corn. Current futures prices are now pointing to $8 per bushel corn, and current oil prices are nearing $140 per barrel.
"There are not a lot of variables in this world we can control," said renneman. "But government mandates are certainly something we can control."
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8. My Letter Challenging Environmentalists on Vegetarianism
[Please consider writing similar letters. It is very important that we educate people on how harmful 'livestock' agriculture is re global warming, the energy crisis, soaring food costs, increasing water shortages and other environmental threats. Thanks.]
Kol hakavod ]kudos] to Arthur Waskow and Doug Chandler for their splendid articles in the Jewish Week [on increasing environmental activism in the Jewish community]. They deserve to be widely read and widely heeded, as the future of humanity and perhaps Judaism depend on it.
However, as comprehensive and insightful as the articles are, I believe that they ignore a major factor, an inconvenient truth that even Al Gore has generally been overlooking. While, as the articles indicate, there are many things that need to be done, unless there is a major shift toward plant-based diets, there is no way that we will adequately address the global warming crisis, the energy crisis, the hunger crisis, the water crisis, the vanishing species crisis and many more current crises.
Please consider:
* While the world is increasingly threatened by global warming, animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars and other means of transportation worldwide combined (18 percent vs. 13.5 percent).
* At a time when food prices are skyrocketing, food riots have occurred in many areas and an estimated 20 million people are dying annually worldwide from hunger and its effects, over 70 percent of the grain produced in the United States and over 40 percent produced worldwide are fed to farmed animals.
* In an increasingly thirsty and energy-dependent world, animal-based diets require up to 14 times as much water and 10 times as much energy as vegan (all plants) diets.
Making all of the above points even more compelling, the worldwide consumption of animal products is projected to double in 50 years. If this happens, it will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to reduce greenhouse emissions enough to avoid extremely severe effects from global climate change.
And, of course, producing all of these negative effects is at the expense of the billions of animals who are so cruelly treated on factory farms before being slaughtered, and animal-based diets are contributing to an epidemic of diseases that are afflicting the Jewish and other communities.
I believe, respectfully, that we would more effectively show how serious we believe the threats are by leading a campaign to show why it is imperative that there be a major movement toward plant-centered diets. This, along with the many very valuable suggestions in the 2 great Jewish Week articles, would help move our imperiled planet to a sustainable path and help revitalize Judaism by showing the relevance of eternal Jewish teachings to current threats.
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9. Our Efforts Help Idealistic Jews Restore Their Faith in Judaism
I recently received the following two messages from one person, which indicate still another reason why our efforts are so important:
Hi Richard:
Just a brief note - I'm going through your work now, and I must say, this is an immense treasury of material. I've found many, many of my questions answered, and also, my faith in my faith restored.
I feel like I've just stumbled upon a treasure chest, honest to goodness!!
Have a wonderful weekend,
________ [I am keeping this anonymous for now, as I have not yet received permission to include this in a JVNA newsletter.]
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Hi Richard:
Thanks very much for the invitation to write a story on finding my faith again; I may take you up on that. I was seriously on the brink of calling a local Buddhist Centre and finding my way into that faith, though I know Buddhists don't always practice the compassion that they preach - I've just been reading about how some Buddhists actually do eat meat.
When I went to a zen centre for a retreat once, the Roshi or whatever you call it was very obviously a former Jew, as she later confirmed to me, and many of the more notable Buddhists in American life are formerly Jews -
the thing is - Buddhists are out there in the marketplace of ideas talking about everything important, including happiness and compassion - for example in the latest edition of Buddhadharma, available on newstands, the Karmapa (the 3rd most powerful Buddhist leader) wrote a brilliant article entitled "The Power of Unbearable Compassion" which spoke so personally to me, as I feel so badly about animal abuse that I want to faint.
Whereas there's a new Jewish Life publication out on the same newstands that talks a lot about stuff. I picked it up and immediately put it down, there was nothing of substance to it and it reinforced my overwhelming sensation that Jews have lost the plot completely, that beyond materialistic and ritualistic concerns, and Israel, there's little else occupying the global Jewish mind.
So when I saw your material I was completely taken by surprise, no - SHOCK! and I have put those thoughts of Buddhism away for now to see if I might be able to salvage what remains of my once strong ties to my faith of origin.
Take care, ...
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10. Latest Animals Voice E-Newsletter
WELCOME TO THE ANIMALS VOICE eNEWSLETTER FOR JUNE 19, 2008
Each week we give a tiny glimpse of animals in mainstream media with links to more. And we have links to petitions, events, articles and websites of interest to people who care about animals.
View this week's eNewsletter online at:
The Animals Voice does not send a text version of our weekly eNewsletter. If you would like to change your subscription so you can get the html version, visit:
TO UNSUBSCRIBE OR CHANGE YOUR PROFILE, http://www.mailermailer.com/x?u=57891302q-75b75016
PLEASE DONATE to The Animals Voice
http://animalsvoice.com/PAGES/enews/enews_squeak_apr12.html
SUBSCRIBE TO HORSE NATION MAGAZINE
Subscription, donation and advertising information
http://www.horsenation.info/magazine.html
We look forward to your feedback on our weekly eNewsletter!
veda@animalsvoice.com
We provide links to:
Animal Protection Organizations around the world
http://www.animalsvoice.com/PAGES/links.html
3,000 ImagesÂ- The Largest Online Image Gallery of Animal Abuse Images
http://www.animalsvoice.com/PAGES/archive.html
Hundreds of pages of Editorial
http://www.animalsvoice.com/PAGES/edits.html
Fact Sheets
http://www.animalsvoice.com/sites/AniRitesAgenda/facts.html
Action Alerts
http://www.animalsvoice.com/sites/AniRitesAgenda/alerts.html
Online Library
http://www.animalsvoice.com/sites/AniDefenseBooks/books1.html
Calendar of Events
http://www.animalsvoice.com/sites/AniRitesAgenda/calendar.html
Please feel free to use the contents of The Animals Voice without permission if
you are working to end the exploitation of animals.
To subscribe to The Animals Voice eNewsletter:
http://www.mailermailer.com/x?oid=26695m
To see pdfs and/or order back copies of The Animals Voice Magazine:
http://www.animalsvoice.com/PAGES/magazine/magazine_single.html
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11. Important Lessons We Can Learn From A Dog
[A little change-of-pace]
A Dog's Purpose from a 6 year old
Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a ten-year-old Irish Wolfhound named Belker. The dog's owners, Ron, his wife, Lisa, and their little boy, Shane, were all very attached to Belker.
I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the family we couldn't do anything for Belker, and offered to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home.
As we made arrangements, Ron and Lisa told me they thought it would be good for six-year-old Shane to observe the procedure. They felt as though Shane might learn something from the experience.
The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker's family surrounded him. Shane seemed so calm, petting the old dog for the last time, that I wondered if he understood what was going on.
Within a few minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away. The little boy seemed to accept Belker's transition without any difficulty or confusion. We sat together for a while after Belker's death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that animal lives are shorter than human lives. Shane, who had been listening quietly, piped up, "I know why."
Startled, we all turned to him. What came out of his mouth next stunned me. I'd never heard a more comforting explanation.
He said, "People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life-- like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?" The six-year-old continued, "Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don't have to stay as long."
Please pause a moment and consider to....
Live simply.
Love generously.
Care deeply.
Speak kindly.
Remember, if a dog was the teacher you would learn things like:
1. When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
2. Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.
3. Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.
4. Take naps.
5. Stretch before rising.
6. Run, romp, and play daily.
7. Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
8. Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
9. On warm days, stop to lie on your back on the grass.
10. On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
11. When you're happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
12. Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.
13. Eat with gusto and enthusiasm. Stop when you have had enough.
14. Be loyal. Never pretend to be something you're not.
15. If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
16. When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.
17. Be always grateful for each new day.
ENJOY EVERY MOMENT OF EVERY DAY !!!
Harvey
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12. Ten Commandments Regarding Animals
From all-creatures.org
Animal Rights Articles
Moo-ving people toward compassionate living
Visit the all-creatures.org Home Page.
Write us with your comments: flh@all-creatures.org
Ten Commandments Regarding Animals
By Dan Brook [JVNA advisor, professor and author]
http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/ar-tencomm.html
I. As the Baal Shem Tov said that “People should consider themselves, and the worms, and all creatures as friends in the universe, for we are all created beings whose abilities are God-given”, you should know that animals are important in their own ways and you should therefore grant them rights and respect.
II. As all living beings have the breath of life and a living soul (Genesis 1:30, 2:7, 19), do not objectify animals, thereby denying them their sentience and souls, their intelligence and consciousness, their emotions and feelings.
III. As God's mercy extends to all creatures (Psalms 145:9), do not say things like 'they are only animals' to excuse behavior, whether yours or of others.
IV. As the Bible states that righteous people safeguard the lives of animals (Proverbs 12:10), allow animals to eat and drink, as you enjoy eating and drinking; allow animals to rest, as you enjoy resting; allow animals their space and freedom, as you enjoy yours; allow animals to live in peace, as you desire peace; allow animals to have safe habitats, as you would enjoy a safe home.
V. As we have learned from scientific discovery and personal experience, you need to remember that humans are also animals and to therefore recognize your common evolutionary ancestry and social relationships with all other beings.
VI. As it is the ending of a world, do not kill or murder animals, whether for food, clothing, research, entertainment, or otherwise.
VII. As it is cruel and unusual punishment, especially for crimes not committed, do not exploit or abuse animals, whether for food, clothing, research, entertainment, or otherwise.
VIII. As we are to be others' keepers (Leviticus 19:16), love our neighbors (Leviticus 19:18), and respect the stranger (mentioned dozens of times in the Bible), do not stand idly by as animals are exploited, abused, harassed, tortured, or killed.
IX. Following Confucius (Analects 15:23), Hillel (Pirkei Avot 1:12, Shabbat 31a), Jesus' Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31), and many others (including Mahabharata 5:1517, Samyutta Nikaya v.353, Udana Varga 5:18, Mencius VII.A.4, #13 of Imam Al-Niwawi's Forty Hadiths, Sutrakritanga 1.11.33, Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29, in addition to writings from Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece), do not do unto other living beings what you would not want done to you and do unto other living beings as you would have them do unto you. Love your fellow beings.
X. As the Bible's first dietary regimen, in the Garden of Eden, was strictly plant-based (Genesis 1:29), choose vegetarian (vegan) so that you, your offspring, and all other beings may live and thrive in a happier, healthier, more peaceful, and more sustainable world. Love animals, do not eat them.
Dan Brook, Ph.D., is a writer, speaker, activist, and instructor of sociology and political science. He also maintains Eco-Eating at www.brook.com/veg, The Vegetarian Mitzvah at www.brook.com/jveg, and No Smoking? at www.brook.com/smoke. Dan welcomes questions, comments, contributions, and other communication via Vegnik@gmail.com.
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13. “Culinary Awakenings” Announcement
Greetings this summer:
Here is our announcement for our next and last program for 2008. Please post in the next newsletter or e-mail posting. Thank you.
Donna and Chef Al
Culinary Awakenings
20 Day Vegan Culinary Arts Program
Portland, Oregon
www.chefal.org
503.752.2588
Learn all about how to prepare delicious and nutrient-dense organic, plant-based cuisine from a professional vegan chef. Training is Monday through Friday, 9am-3pm with weekends off in Portland, Oregon -- one of the most veg-friendly cities in North America. Visit www.chefal.org; click on Write Us; fill out the Client Contact Form and send. JVNA member discounts apply!
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14. Who Says Athletes Must Eat Meat?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=keri/080616
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15. Dietary Connections to the Food and Oil Crises
[Again, these are important points, so please consider writing letters to the editor about them. Thanks.]
Forwarded message from “Spirituality and Ecological Hope”
Oil and water
Posted: 16 Jun 2008 07:01 PM CDT
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Everything we need to live seems to be under siege these days. Water - too much of it (central Midwest), too little of it (the West and Southeast); oil prices in the stratosphere; food prices rising inexorably - because of too much water and the high cost of oil. It's all connected, deeply connected.
“There are going to be some trying times coming up in the near future,” said Brian Fagan, mayor pro tem of Cedar Rapids where flood waters are finally receding, leaving a monumental mess.
But the water is still on the move and I can't imagine what it must be like to be waiting down river. Many Mississippi River communities are just holding their breath knowing it will be bad.
You have already heard, no doubt, what this will mean for the price of food. Iowa was the number one corn state in the country. flooded-iowa-river-near-oakville-scott-olson-getty-images.pngThe broad swath of farmland across Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana that flooded over the past couple of weeks have ruined millions of acres of crops - corn, soybeans, hay, and more - fields already under stress from a late spring. Food prices will rise - grains, meat and poultry, dairy products - all will be impacted.
And food prices were already rising because of the skyrocketing oil prices.
By the way, Milwaukee is about three tenths of an inch of rain shy of the June all-time record. Two weeks to go.
What will we do in the face of these immediate challenges? How about the government subsidies for corn ethanol and soy biodiesel? Make sense right now? Before the floods, a third of U.S. corn production was slated for ethanol. If turning grains into energy was already having an impact on global food prices, and the availability of food in poor countries, what now? The US is the world's leading corn exporter, a major source of food aid.
What now?
Oil. The pressure being felt by escalating costs of gasoline has become a prime opportunity for the oil industry to press lawmakers to overturn the ban on off-shore drilling and to open the Alaska wilderness for oil and gas drilling. It has also become a prime opportunity for nuclear energy enthusiasts to make the biggest push in decades for the construction of new nuclear power plants.
Meanwhile, President Bush has already opened the way for even more mountaintopping - blowing up our beautiful Appalachian Mountains to get to coal seams.
This is all such destructive behavior. It is all about trying to find ways to keep business-as-usual in a world where business-as-usual is the problem.
We need a new way of life. We need a whole new approach to how humans live on the planet, how we organize our lives, our life goals, our frameworks of meaning.
I have such fear that we will make decisions in a frenzy of desperation and fear, rather than taking these moments of crisis to take a deep breath and really reflect on what we are doing.
There are going to be some trying times coming in the near future - indeed. Not just for Cedar Rapids.
We are looking through a whole series of remarkable events - 'natural' and otherwise - that mark a change in our times - really major change. Look around the world right now - China, Myanmar, tornado alley, the midwest (I could make a very long list here) - look at what is happening to energy realities, population growth, changing landscapes, ecosystem breakdowns, melting ice sheets and arctic seas - markers of a major change in the very era in which we live.
We are moving from one era to another with precious little thought about what we are going to do, how we will live through this period of upheaval with as much ease as possible, with the least amount of suffering and catastrophe, until we can find some new balance among humans and the rest of Nature.
Because there are ways to do this. We can reinvent our lives in a way that can ease the crisis and make it a profoundly meaningful life mission to change how we live on the planet.
I think we must create grassroots communities around this mission. There are places where this is happening in incipient and prophetic forms. That is a sign of great hope.
Let us use this fearful time to move this reflection forward. Let's do it for all those suffering now from these weather extremes, those who have lost homes and livelihoods. And let's do it for our children who will inherit from us whatever it is we now choose to leave them.
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16. Letter in Response to Reports of Shortages of Kosher Meat
Re: Sue Fishkoff's front page article in the Jewish Journal, “Kosher meat in short supply”
Letter from JVNA advisor Maida Genser:
What to do about the kosher meat shortage?
Now that there is a local connection - where a local kosher catering firm is feeling the results - the issue of improprieties at the kosher meat “processing” plant in Postville, Iowa has finally come to the attention of the local Jewish press. Mistreatment of animals (making the kosher standing of the plant questionable in the minds of many) was reported in the national press at least three and a half years ago. The more recent revelation of mistreatment of workers was also national news. Finally the extent of use of illegal immigrants has resulted in action by the federal government.
People who choose to eat kosher meat, I am sure, want to eat clean and properly handled animals. Unfortunately the realities of modern factory-style processing of animals, including the speed of the lines and the low skill level of the cheap labor used in the plants, makes it almost impossible for the meat to be as pure as the intention of the kashrut laws. Even changing managers at the infamous Iowa plant, the source of most kosher meat in the US, is destined to fall short of the ideal result. This is why many religious Jews have turned instead to vegetarianism. There is even an organization for Jewish vegetarians - JVNA (Jewish Vegetarians of North America, www.jewishveg.com). This organization has been around for years. The group recently produced an excellent environmental film (because animal factory farming has a negative impact on the environment), called A Sacred Duty. The film can be viewed in its entirety on the internet, on YouTube or on www.ASacredDuty.com.
Locally, South Florida Vegetarian Events, www.soflavegevents.net is available to support people looking into eating less meat. The web site lists local vegetarian meetings and resources and has a sampling of general information links.
Maida W. Genser
Tamarac, FL 33319
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17. Reducing Whaling
Message forwarded by JVNA advisor and A SACRED DUTY producer Lionel Friedberg:
Dear Friend,
I just took action online to tell the Prime Minister of Norway that allowing whaling to continue paints a red stain on the country's "green" image as an eco-friendly nation. Whales already face so many other threats; yet Norway continues to kill these animals and has even raised its quota in recent years. Most recently, the Scandinavian country reportedly even exported whale meat to Japan, a move with dangerous implications.
We must convince Norway to end its whale hunt for good. Please help -- it will only take a minute!
https://community.hsus.org/campaign/hsi_whaling_norway?rk=KpLOWv4qiGjzW
Lionel
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18. Hazon Bike Ride Scheduled
Fun, Torah, Judaism, Community, Environmentalism: Join Hazon for all of these things as we "Bike to the Beach" and embark on the 2008 Jewish Environmental Bike Ride.
This Labor Day Weekend (August 29 - September 1), Hazon, a Jewish environmental non-profit based in NYC, will lead more than 400 participants in the 8th annual Hazon New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride. Guided by an amazing group of trained staff and volunteers, it will combine a two-day inclusive Shabbat retreat, and a two-day, fully supported, bike ride through the Hudson River Valley and into Manhattan. Funds raised during the Ride will go to support a number of different environmental organizations and causes in Israel and in the States.
www.newyorkride.org
Get a taste of riding with Hazon and the NY Ride: Join us for Bike to the Beach on June 29 - riding from 8 locations in NYC and NJ - for FREE!
http://www.hazon.org/bttb
Use the discount code “Kol Chai” to receive $65 off a rider registration for the New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride.
If you cannot read this email, visit http://www.hazon.org/biketothebeach for details.
Bike to the Beach
Ride to Coney Island from eight starting locations around
New York City
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Register to ride for free at www.hazon.org
Lunch and t-shirt are $18 in advance,
$30 at the door
8:30 am
o Riverdale Y
o Jewish Center of Kew Garden Hills
o JCC on the Palisades
9:30 am
o 92nd St Y
o JCC Manhattan
10:00 am
o 14th St Y
10:30 am
o Grand Army Plaza
11:30 am
o 69th St Pier (for famliies)
1:00 pm
o Non-riders meet at Asser Levy Park
Each ride will have designated leaders and all riders will be provided with directions to Coney Island. We will meet at Asser Levy Park and then have a group ride to the Shorefront Y. You can bike home with the group, or take a subway.
Register at www.newyorkride.org
Fun community, beautiful route,
great food, relaxing Shabbat,
two-day, 100+ mile ride into NYC
Prices will go up soon.
For more information:
212 644 2332 or nyride@hazon.org
Please pass this on to your friends and family
For more infromation visit www.hazon.org or
contact nyride@hazon.org or 212 644 2332
Hazon | 45 West 36th Street | 8th Floor | New York, NY 10018
Use the discount code “Kol Chai” to receive $65 off a rider registration for the New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride
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19. Agriprocessors Boycott Commences
[Please note that you can find much information re this issue at www.failedMessiah.com. I have tried to stress, as I do in the letter below that the many controversies surrounding Agriprocessors in recent years should be wake up calls to the Jewish community to consider the many moral issues and inconvenient truths related to the production and consumption of meat and other animal products. Please consider writing yopur own letters in response to articles in your local media. Thanks.]
JTA, Published: 06/17/2008
A Modern Orthodox social justice group launched a boycott of the kosher slaughterhouse Agriprocessors.
Uri L'tzedek, an initiative started by students at the liberal Orthodox rabbinical seminary Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York City, set Monday as the date it would stop patronizing Agriprocessors if the company did not agree to abide by certain ethical labor standards.
Organizers say some 1,300 people, including several leading Jewish figures, have signed the group's petition asking the company to establish a transparent department to ensure compliance with both Jewish and U.S. legal requirements regarding worker treatment.
Representatives of Uri L'tzedek met last week with several company officials in New York, including members of the extended Rubashkin family, which owns the company. The group was promised a statement of the company's position on worker rights within 48 hours, but the document had not materialized as of Tuesday morning.
The representatives also spoke with Jim Martin, a former federal prosecutor who was hired recently as the company's compliance officer, and submitted written questions to Martin regarding the parameters of his role.
"In the interests of fully restoring consumer confidence, we have asked that the company be transparent about Mr. Martin's findings, recommendations, and new policies instituted," said a statement Tuesday from the group. "We are also looking forward to receiving the document that Agriprocessors has promised to provide that will detail Agriprocessors' policy towards the rights of its workers. Provided that Agriprocessors supplies the information that is has promised to provide and is willing to make Mr. Martin's reports and conclusions available to the public, we are hopeful that we can resolve these issues positively for the workers at Agriprocessors, the Rubashkin family, kosher consumers, and klal yisrael."
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested nearly 400 Agriprocessors workers in a raid last month on the firm's plant in Postville, Iowa. Employees since the raid have complained of working long hours without being paid and being sexually harassed.
Agriprocessors spokesmen have not responded to JTA requests for comment.
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Dear Editor:
The many recent abuses of people, animals and the environment at the Agriprocessors Postville, Iowa kosher slaughterhouse should be a wake- call to the many moral issues related to animal-based diets.
Can we ignore that such diets are contributing significantly to:
* an epidemic of heart disease, several forms of cancer and other diseases;
* global climate change, since, according to a 2006 UN report, animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars and other means of transportation worldwide
combined (18 percent vs. 13.5 percent)
* widespread hunger, since over 70 percent of the grain produced in the United States and over 40 percent produced worldwide are fed to farmed animals?
* increasing water and energy scarcities, since animal-based diets require up to 14 times as much water and 10 times as much energy as vegan (all plants) diets?
And, the consumption of animal products is projected to double in 50 years, making the situation even worse.
Hence, a major shift toward plant-based diets is essential to move our precious, but imperiled, planet to a sustainable path.
Very truly yours,
Richard H. Schwartz
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20. Lantern Publishes New Book on Human-Animals Interactions
There is a refreshing array of new books available at Lantern. Check out our newest:
Social Creatures
A Human and Animal Studies Reader
Edited by Cliff Flynn
Other-than-human animals are an overwhelming presence in our collective and individual lives and, at the same time, are taken for granted by human animals. Sociologists have neglected the study of human-animal interaction and the role of animals in society. This is true, despite the fact that animals are an integral part of our lives: in our language, food, families, economy, education, science, and recreation.
In more than thirty essays, Social Creatures examines the role of animals in human society. Collected from a wide range of periodicals and books, these important works of scholarship examine such issues as how animal shelter workers view the pets in their care, why some people hoard animals, animals and women who experience domestic abuse, philosophical and feminist analyses of our moral obligations toward animals, and many other topics.
Social Creatures includes work by Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Carol J. Adams, Josephine Donovan, Barbara Noske, Arnold Arluke, Ken Shapiro, and many leading scholars, anthropologists, and psychologists. The book also comes with an extensive bibliography of hundreds of articles and books.
See the full Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction
Order at lanternbooks.com
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21. HSUS Campaign To Reduce Factory Farm Abuses in California
Forwarded message from Jana Kohl:
Baby and I are on the road for our cross-country puppy mill tour, but I couldn't ignore this urgent request from Paul Shaprio at HSUS -- see below.
This is one of the most important animal welfare campaigns you'll ever be asked to help. With just $20 we can ease the suffering of farm animals by abolishing cruel confinement practices at factory farms. Please give more than $20 if you can and pass on to at least 20 friends.
Let's make sure that agribusiness doesn't win this battle simply because they have deep pockets. We have even deeper pockets if we pool our resources. This legislation is too important - it has the potential to reform these cruel industries once and for all.
Thank you for making a difference.
Love, Jana
Subj: countering the opposition in California
Date: Friday, June 20, 2008 8:05:52 AM
Big Agribusiness is dropping serious cash to counter the California ballot initiative. Just this week alone, egg factory farmers have contributed more than half a million dollars to fight against the animals in California.
As you know, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, will reduce the suffering of 20 million abused animals trapped in cages inside California factory farms.
We know we're likely to be outspent by deep-pocketed factory farmers in this campaign, but we must be able to compete. Animal advocates across the country are helping this critical effort by joining the $20/20 Campaign-giving just $20 (or more!) to help these 20 million animals who are depending on us. Click here to donate. https://secure.hsus.org/01/chf_2020?qp_source=chf005
Or, you can donate via our widget on MySpace or Facebook if you're on those networks.
Once you donate, please forward this and spread the word (click here for some ideas, including using your Facebook and MySpace pages!).
By giving JUST $20, you can help change the world for 20 million animals. Then ask 20 friends to do the same.
Thank you so much - I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
Paul Shapiro
The Humane Society of the United States
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22. European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition
http://epic.iarc.fr/
19-21 May 2008
EPIC Steering Committee meeting Key findings Key results and current scientific activity Summary Successful follow-up of the 521,000 subjects enrolled in the EPIC cohort, with little loss to follow-up during this time period, and the identification of over 26,000 incident cases and nearly 16,000 deaths.
Colon cancer etiology: The hypothesis that a diet high in fibre reduces colorectal cancer risk has been corroborated in the EPIC study. Our findings were published in parallel with the results from the PLCO cohort of the NIH-NCI. In that study, a similar protective effect of fibre on colorectal cancer polyps was observed. Together, these results indicate that fibre is protective both for the development of adenomatous polyps and for their malignant transformation. The hypotheses that consumption of red and processed meat increases colorectal cancer risk while intake of fish decreases risk is strongly supported by the EPIC results. The combination of these four dietary factors (i.e. fibre, fish, red and processed meats) plays a major role in colorectal cancer etiology in addition to alcohol intake, obesity and low physical activity.
Breast cancer etiology: The role of endogenous steroid hormones in pre- and post-menopausal breast cancer has been investigated in EPIC in the largest studies conducted to date on this topic. We have shown that both estrogens and androgens increase breast cancer risk while SHBG decreases risk after menopause. In parallel, overweight and low physical activity increase breast cancer risk after menopause. On the contrary, before menopause, androgens increase breast cancer risk, progesterones decrease risk and SHBG and obesity are not associated with risk. These findings provide strong clues for further investigations of the metabolic and hormonal factors specifically related to pre- and post-menopausal breast cancer. We found that the consumption of fruit and vegetables is not associated with breast cancer risk. This is an important finding as it helps to narrow down the factors potentially involved in breast cancer etiology and prevention.
Prostate cancer etiology: We have shown that similarly to breast cancer, prostate cancer risk is not related to fruit and vegetable consumption. full article here: http://epic.iarc.fr/keyfindings.php
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June 25, 2008
6/23/2008 Special JVNA Online Newsletter
Shalom everyone,
This specialJewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter is devoted to a consideration of the growing hunger and global warming crises and the vegetarian connections.
The bottom lines are that it is scandalous that over 70 percent of the grain grown in the United States and over 40 percent of the grain grown worldwide are fed t animals destined for slaughter, while an estimated 20 million people die of hunger and its effects annually worldwide, and that we are continuing and expanding diets that are contributing so much to global warming at a time when the effects are coming increasingly apparent, as seen by the severe flooding in mid-Western states, the widespread wild fires in California and much more.
Please use the material in this newsletter, including my two sample letters in item 32 to compose your own letters and for talking points to help make people understand that a major shift toward vegetarianism is a societal imperative today, essential to move our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.
The newsletter has the following items:
1. Are Human Activities Worsening Floods and Other Weather-Related Problems?
2. My Letters Re the Food Crisis, Phasing Out Factory Farms and Related Issues
3. How Vegetarianism Can Reduce the Global Food Crisis
4. New York Times Editorial Blasts Factory Farming
5. Have We Reached the End of Relatively Inexpensive Food?
6. Book Review on “The End of Food”
7. Severe Weather Extremes Projected for North America
8. Noted NASA Scientist Renews Call for Action on Global Warming
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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1. Are Human Activities Worsening Floods and Other Weather-Related Problems?
Iowa Flooding Could Be An Act of Man, Experts Say
Residents along the Mississippi River are experiencing the worst flooding in 15 years.
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 19, 2008; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/18/AR2008061803371.html
As the Cedar River rose higher and higher, and as he stacked sandbags along the levee protecting downtown Cedar Falls, Kamyar Enshayan, a college professor and City Council member, kept asking himself the same question: "What is going on?"
The river would eventually rise six feet higher than any flood on record. Farther downstream, in Cedar Rapids, the river would break the record by more than 11 feet.
Enshayan, director of an environmental center at the University of Northern Iowa, suspects that this natural disaster wasn't really all that natural. He points out that the heavy rains fell on a landscape radically reengineered by humans. Plowed fields have replaced tallgrass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Flood plains have been filled and developed.
"We've done numerous things to the landscape that took away these water-absorbing functions," he said. "Agriculture must respect the limits of nature."
Officials are still trying to understand all the factors that contributed to Iowa's flooding, and not everyone has the same suspicions as Enshayan. For them, the cause was obvious: It rained buckets and buckets for days on end. They say the changes in land use were lesser factors in what was really just a case of meteorological bad luck.
But some Iowans who study the environment suspect that changes in the land, both recently and over the past century or so, have made Iowa's terrain not only highly profitable but also highly vulnerable to flooding. They know it's a hard case to prove, but they hope to get Iowans thinking about how to reduce the chances of a repeat calamity.
"I sense that the flooding is not the result of a 500-year event," said Jerry DeWitt, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. "We're farming closer to creeks, farming closer to rivers. Without adequate buffer strips, the water moves rapidly from the field directly to the surface water."
Corn alone will cover more than a third of the state's land surface this year. The ethanol boom that began two years ago encouraged still more cultivation.
Between 2007 and 2008, farmers took 106,000 acres of Iowa land out of the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to keep farmland uncultivated, according to Lyle Asell, a special assistant for agriculture and environment with the state's Department of Natural Resources (DNR). That land, if left untouched, probably would have been covered with perennial grasses with deep roots that help absorb water.
The basic hydrology of Iowa has been changed since the coming of the plow. By the early 20th century, farmers had installed drainage pipes under the surface to lower the water table and keep water from pooling in what otherwise could be valuable farmland. More of this drainage "tiling" has been added in recent years. The direct effect is that water moves quickly from the farmland to the streams and rivers.
"We've lost 90 percent of our wetlands," said Mary Skopec, who monitors water quality for the Iowa DNR.
Crop rotation may also play a subtle role in the flooding. Farmers who may have once grown a number of crops are now likely to stick to just corn and soybeans -- annual plants that don't put down deep roots.
Residents along the Mississippi River are experiencing the worst flooding in 15 Another potential factor: sediment. "We're actually seeing rivers filling up with sediment, so the capacity of the rivers has changed," Asell said. He said that in the 1980s and 1990s, Iowa led the nation in flood damage year after year.
This landscape wasn't ready for the kind of deluge that hit Iowa in May and early June. Central and eastern portions of the state received 15 inches of rain. That came on top of previous rains that had left the soil saturated. Worse, the rain came at the tail end of an unusually cool spring. Farmers had delayed planting their crops. The deluge struck a nearly naked landscape of small plants and black dirt.
"With that volume of rain, you're going to have flooding. There's just no way around it," said Donna Dubberke, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Quad Cities. "This is not just because someone put in a parking lot."
The rising Mississippi River is expected to peak this week, threatening towns and farmland north of St. Louis as floodwaters continue to move down the river. So far, flooding and severe weather have killed at least 24 people in three states and injured 106, forced the evacuations of about 40,000, and driven corn prices to record highs.
Two levees burst just north of Quincy, Ill., yesterday morning, forcing the evacuation of the small town of Meyer. Yesterday afternoon, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) visited the town after viewing the nearby Sny Island Levee, about 12 miles downstream from Quincy and, at 54 miles long, the second-biggest levee on the Mississippi.
In Iowa, the National Weather Service has reported record flooding at 12 locations on four rivers, including the Cedar, the Iowa, the Wapsipinicon and the Mississippi. The U.S. Geological Survey has preliminary data showing 500-year floods on the Cedar, the Shell Rock, the Upper Iowa and the Nodaway.
The Great Flood of 2008 has, for many inhabitants of sandbagged Iowa, come awfully soon after the Great Flood of 1993. Or, as Elwynn Taylor, a meteorologist at Iowa State University, put it: "Why should we have two 500-year floods within 15 years?"
Taylor attributes the flooding in recent years to cyclical climate change: The entire Midwest, he says, has been in a wet cycle for the past 30 years. There has also been speculation that global warming could be a factor.
"Something in the system has changed," said Pete Kollasch, a remote-sensing analyst with the Iowa DNR. "The only thing I can point my finger at is global warming, but there's no proof of that."
Jeri Neal, a program leader for ecological systems and research at Iowa State's Leopold Center, said all these things have a cumulative effect on the landscape: "It doesn't have the resilience built into it that you need to withstand disturbances in the system."
The idea of a 500-year flood can be confusing. Hydrologists use the term to indicate a flooding event that they believe has a 0.2 percent chance -- 1 in 500 -- of happening in any given year in a specific location. A 100-year flood has a 1 in 100 chance of happening, and so on. Such estimates are based on many years of data collection, in some cases going back a century or more.
But the database can be spotty. Robert Holmes, national flood coordinator with the U.S. Geological Survey, said a lack of funding since 1999 has forced his agency to discontinue hundreds of stream gauges across the country. "It's not sexy to fund stream flow gauges," he said.
What's certain is that a lot of water had nowhere to go when the sky opened over Iowa this spring. Some rivers did things they'd never done before. The flood stage at Cedar Rapids, for example, is 12 feet. The previous record flood happened in 1929, when the Cedar hit 20 feet. This year the Cedar hit 20 feet and kept rising. Experts predicted it would crest at 22 feet, and then upped the estimate to 24 feet. The river had other ideas. At mid-morning last Friday, it finally crested at 31.3 feet.
The entire downtown was flooded and a railroad bridge collapsed, dumping rail cars filled with rock into the river.
"Cities routinely build in the flood plain," Enshayan said. "That's not an act of God; that's an act of City Council."
Staff writer Kari Lydersen contributed to this report from Quincy, Ill.
© Copyright 1996-2008 The Washington Post Company |
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2. My Letters Re the Food Crisis, Phasing Out Factory Farms and Related Issues
Editor, NY Post
letters@nypost.com
Dear Editor:
RE: "Gov'ts Fiddle Through the Food Crisis" (May 21 article)
An important factor that is being overlooked re the current food crisis is animal-based diets.
At a time when food prices are skyrocketing, food riots are occurring in many areas and an estimated 20 million people are dying annually worldwide from hunger and its effects, it is scandalous that over 70 percent of the grain produced in the United States and over 40 percent produced worldwide are fed to farmed animals. Also, in an increasingly thirsty and energy-dependent world, animal-based diets require up to 14 times as much water and 10 times as much energy as vegan (all plants) diets.
While the world is increasingly threatened by global warming, animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars and other means of transportation worldwide combined (18 percent vs. 13.5 percent). And, the consumption of animal products is projected to double in 50 years. Hence, a major shift toward plant-based diets is essential to move our precious, but imperiled, planet to a sustainable path.
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June 20, 2008
Editor, VegNews
letters@vegnews.com
Dear Editor:
Kudos on a wonderful July/August 2008 issue, with much valuable material. Especially important, I believe, is Mat Thomas's insightful article, “Phasing Out Factory Farms.”
In response to Mat's question: no it is not just you, Mat, factory farming IS utterly immoral and insane! Here are just a few reasons why:
* While the world is increasingly threatened by global warming, animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars and other means of transportation worldwide combined (18 percent vs. 13.5 percent).
* At a time when food prices are skyrocketing, food riots are occurring in many areas and an estimated 20 million people are dying annually worldwide from hunger and its effects, over 70 percent of the grain produced in the United States and over 40 percent produced worldwide are fed to farmed animals.
* In an increasingly thirsty and energy-dependent world, animal-based diets require up to 14 times as much water and 10 times as much energy as vegan (all plants) diets.
* Animal-centered diets are contributing to an epidemic of heart disease, several types of cancer and other diseases;
Making all of the above points even more compelling, the consumption of animal products is projected to double in 50 years. If this happens, it will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to reduce greenhouse emissions enough to avoid extremely severe effects from global climate change.
And, of course, producing all of these negative effects is at the expense of the billions of animals who are so cruelly treated on factory farms before being slaughtered.
It is essential that the vegetarian and animal rights movements make it a number one priority to respond to the immorality and insanity of animal-based diets and agriculture by mounting a comprehensive campaign to educate people on the realities of factory farming. Many thanks, VegNews for playing such an important role in doing this.
Very truly yours,
Richard H. Schwartz
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3. How Vegetarianism Can Reduce the Global Food Crisis
Taking the Food Crisis Personally
by Bruce Friedrich
http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/huffington_post/http%253A%252F%252Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%252Fbruce-friedrich%252Ftaking-the-food-crisis-pe_b_107992.html
In April, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on food policy called the diversion of crops to be turned into biofuels "a crime against humanity." Indeed, 100 million tons of corn and other crops that could feed people instead feed our cars.
What then to make of the fact that more than 750 million tons of corn and wheat are diverted from the mouths of the global poor (and away from biofuels) to feed chickens, pigs, and other farmed animals? And that doesn't even include the 80 percent of the global soy crop that is also fed to farmed animals.
Surely this is a crime against humanity of even greater impact: First, it's more than seven times as many crops that are diverted to feed farmed animals so that we can eat the animals; second, while diverting grains for biofuels does decrease global warming, the impact of eating meat is bad for our
health and environment -- there is no upside.
I adopted a vegetarian diet more than 20 years ago, after I read Diet for a Small Planet , by Frances Moore Lappe. In the book, Lappe makes the argument that using land to grow crops for animals is inefficient, polluting, and that it steals food from the mouths of the global poor. The point is echoed by the respected environmental think tank, The WorldWatch Institute, which published a report a few years back that declares:
"[M]eat consumption is an inefficient use of grain--the grain is used more efficiently when consumed by humans. Continued growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grain to animals, creating competition for grain between affluent meat-eaters and the world's poor."
More and more, that message is getting a hearing, so that a few weeks ago, the UN's climate chief Yvo de Boer told the Reuters news agency, "The best solution would be for us all to become vegetarians."
De Boer was talking about both the global food crisis and global warming, because a U.N. report recently found that eating meat is the number one human cause of global warming, causing almost a fifth of the global greenhouse gas total -- and, of course, poor communities are the first to suffer the potentially grave consequences of climate change.
The chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, is himself a vegetarian and has been outspoken on the need for people who care about the climate to move in that direction. At a press conference just after winning the Peace Prize, the IPCC declared "Please eat less meat -- meat is a very carbon-intensive commodity".
Indeed it is, which is why the official handbook for the Live Earth concerts says that "refusing meat" is "the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint" (emphasis in original).
And the U.N. report also found that eating meat is "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." Specifically, the 408-page report noted the meat industry's contribution to "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity".
Clearly problems of climate change and the global food crisis warrant global and political solutions, but one of those solutions will have to include a shift away from the massive handouts that governments give to their meat industries in the form of government-paid inspection programs (these industries should pay their own bills), subsidies for feed crops, teams of scientists helping to grow larger animals with fewer resources, and so on. And it should also include government programs to encourage a public shift away from the consumption of chickens, pigs, and other
farmed animals.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated last month that "[h]unger is
a moral challenge to each one of us as global citizens... [w]ith one child dying every five seconds from hunger-related causes, the time to act is now".
The current issue of the New Scientist, in discussing the food crisis and the vast additional crops that are required to feed meat-eaters, as opposed to vegetarians, explains in discussing solutions, "We could try to reduce the demand by persuading people to return to a less meaty diet for example, but that is unlikely to work."
I think the New Scientist editors underestimate people. In Taiwan, they're taking the concept seriously; the Guardian reported on Wednesday (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/19/food.environment) that to address the global food crisis and global warming, "around a million people in Taiwan -- including the speaker of parliament, the environment minister, and the mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung -- vowed to never again touch flesh nor fish."
If we also take global warming and global poverty seriously, isn't adopting a vegetarian diet the least that each of us can do?
For more on this topic, please visit GoVeg.com,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-friedrich/ . Find
recipes and more at www.VegCooking.com.
Bruce Friedrich is vice-president in charge of international grassroots campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) http://www.peta.org/ , the world's largest animal rights organization, with more than 2 million members and supporters. He has been an
anti-hunger advocate and Oxfam member and activist for more than 20 years.
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4. New York Times Editorial Blasts Factory Farming
New York Times Editorial - May 31, 2008
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"The Worst Way of Farming"
"In the past month, two new reports have examined how farm animals are raised in this country. The report funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts calls the prevailing system 'industrial farm animal production.' The report from the Union of Concerned Scientists prefers the term 'confined animal feeding operations.'
No matter what you call it, it adds up to the same thing. Millions of animals are crowded together in inhumane conditions, causing significant environmental threats and unacceptable health risks for workers, their
neighbors and all the rest of us.
The astonishing increase in the number and size of confined animal operations has been spawned largely by the very structure of American farm supports, which always has been skewed in a way that concentrates farming in fewer and fewer hands. As both of these reports make clear, the so-called efficiency of industrial animal production is an illusion, made possible by cheap grain, cheap water and prisonlike confinement systems.
In short, animal husbandry has been turned into animal abuse. Manure - traditionally a source of fertilizer - has been turned into toxic waste that fouls the air and adjacent water bodies. Crowding creates health problems, resulting in the chronic overuse of antibiotics.
And, because the modest profits in confinement operations require the lowest possible labor costs, including automated feeding, watering and manure-handling systems, these operations have helped empty and impoverish rural America.
The Pew report recommends new laws regulating pollution rom industrial farms as rigorously as pollution from other industries, a phasing-out of confinement systems that restricts 'natural movement and normal behavior,' a ban on antibiotics used only to promote animal growth and the application of antitrust laws to encourage more competition and less concentration.
These are all useful guideposts for the next Congress and a new administration."
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5. Have We Reached the End of Relatively Inexpensive Food?
Culture Change Letter #189
You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food. - report on trends
The empire of cheap food is crumbling
by Jan Lundberg
You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food. Need this be spelled out any more plainly? It is time to consider that the stage has been set for petroleum-induced famine.
We have "innocently" accommodated rising population with greater and greater food production via technology and the profit motive. But now we have run out of room to grow, as biotechnology, for example, has severe limitations -- major ones being petroleum dependence and topsoil loss. The biggest wild card for our existence is climate change, as we see with floods and other extreme weather affecting our food supply.
We are headed for massive shortages of food and other essentials, mainly brought about by the depletion of geological fossil reserves of cheap energy and water. The situation is demonstrated regularly with easy arithmetic based on statistical indicators from the United Nations, Worldwatch Institute, World Resources Institute, Earth Policy Institute, and numerous governments. Usually the full force of the message is offset by predictions of huge rises in future human population growth that are simple extrapolations of historical trends.
No one can say with certainty that the worst effects of today's crisis will occur tomorrow or by any particular date. But it is irrational to assume there will only be gradual tightening of supplies until some solutions miraculously come to our aid. One ought to at least admit that one year ago few people thought we'd be going in the direction we're going in, this fast, today.
Three days is our average food supply around the modernized world, i.e., for cities and their supermarkets. Long-term food stocks have plummeted: "Cereal stocks that are at their lowest level in 30 years," according to Worldwatch institute in its most recent Vital Signs. This is exacerbated by increasingly weirder weather, compounded by the oil price/supply pressure on food. What can interfere with the three-day situation are truckers on strike (as in Europe), extended/repeated power outages, and the inability of the work force to commute to work.
I asked Chris Flavin, Worldwatch Institute president, about the escalating crisis that I assumed he was quite worried about. He told me on Wednesday,
To continue reading this article, go to: http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=179&Itemid=1#cont.]
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6. Book Review on “The End of Food”
'End of Food' - It's the system, stupid
Book Review by Anna Lappé, San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The End of Food
By Paul Roberts
Houghton Mifflin; 390 pages; $26
With at least 100 million people in 22 countries threatened by the global food crisis, world leaders are meeting in Rome to discuss a joint response. But to settle on solutions, we must understand root causes.
To explain this crisis, some put forth a simple story of shrinking supply: Severe drought in Australia decimated the harvest of one of the world's largest wheat exporters. Biofuel production in the United States alone is diverting 33 percent of our corn harvest to feed automobiles, not people.
But these are just proximate causes, others argue. The real culprit? The global food system itself: its inherent vulnerability, lack of democracy and increasingly concentrated power. Sure, droughts and biofuels have affected global supplies, but in Paul Roberts' new book, "The End of Food," we hear the "It's the system, stupid" argument. Though its ink was drying before this current crisis hit CNN's news cycle, "The End of Food" helps us connect the dots.
As more of the planet shifts to our centralized, industrial model of food procurement and our over-processed, fast-food style of food consumption, we are careening ever faster, Roberts argues, down an unsustainable road.
This global food system is wasteful at its core: "By one estimate, it takes 2,200 calories of hydrocarbon energy (from oil, natural gas, or coal) to produce a can of soda that contains just 200 calories of food energy." Roberts takes particular aim at factory-farmed meat, with its inherent squandering of abundance: Feedlot cattle, for example, require 20 pounds of grain to make a single pound of beef. (This conversion ratio is much higher than other estimates, because Roberts accounts for all of a cow's weight, including what is inedible.) And our food fate is increasingly determined by a cabal of companies controlling the market, from beef to bananas. Roberts peppers his pages with examples such as these: Chiquita and Dole control more than half of the world's banana trade; 21 cents of every dollar we Americans spend for food is now spent at Wal-Mart.
- - -
Full story:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/22/RV34111PC3.DTL
OR:
http://tinyurl.com/4wdo5u
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7. Severe Weather Extremes Projected for North America
Study forecasts greater extremes in North American weather
By Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post
5:24 PM CDT,
June 19, 2008
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-080622-climate-change-story,0,3777283.story?track=rss
WASHINGTON - As greenhouse gas emissions rise, North America is likely to experience more droughts and excessive heat in some regions even as intense downpours and hurricanes pound others more often, according to a report issued Thursday by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.
The 162-page study, which was led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, provides the most comprehensive assessment yet of how global warming has helped to transform the climate of the United States and Canada over the past 50 years -- and how it may do so in the future.
Coming at a time when record flooding is ravaging the Midwest, the new report paints a grim scenario in which severe weather will exact a heavy toll. It warned that extreme weather events "are among the most serious challenges to society in coping with a changing climate."
While the Southwest is likely to face even more intense droughts, the scientists wrote, heavy downpours will become more frequent in some other parts of the country because of increased water vapor in the air.
"This report addresses one of the most frequently asked questions about global warming: What will happen to weather and climate extremes?" said one of the report's two co-chairs, Thomas Karl, who directs of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. He added that the report, which synthesizes the findings of more than 100 academic papers, "concludes that we are now witnessing and will increasingly experience more extreme weather and climate events."
The authors found that the last decade has seen fewer cold snaps than any other 10-year period in the historical record dating back to 1895. Under a middle-range scenario of future greenhouse gas emissions, climate models indicate that by mid-century, extremely hot days that now occur only once every 20 years will occur every three years.
Richard Moss, vice president and managing director for climate change at the World Wildlife Fund, said in an interview that the report was prepared by "an A-list of authors" and is "really frightening."
In a conference call with reporters, Karl and the other co-chair, Gerald Meehl, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said there is no doubt that human-generated heat-trapping gases have helped intensify both the Southwest's current drought and heavy downpours, which have been increasing at a rate three times that of average precipitation over the past century.
"That's a certainty," Karl said. "People aren't questioning whether there's been an increase in heavy downpours."
By the end of the century, he added, models predict that intense bouts of precipitation that might have occurred once every 20 years will take place every five years.
The researchers, from both the federal and private sectors, reached more tentative conclusions about the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and hurricanes.
The report noted that the intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms, as measured by an index that combines wind strength, duration and frequency, has had a "substantial" increase since 1970 and that "there has been a strong statistical connection between tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures and Atlantic hurricane activity." But the scientists said this suggestion of a connection to human activity is not conclusive.
NOAA research meteorologist Thomas Knutson, who contributed to the report (and recently published an article in the journal Nature saying that it is too early to attribute more intense hurricane activity to a detectable human influence), said the synthesis reflects the current disagreement among scientists on the question of hurricanes.
"This is a report that is a consensus document, where you have a number of authors who may not agree on all things," Knutson said.
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Article #2:
U.S. experts: Forecast is more extreme weather.
Rare events likely to become commonplace, climate report says
Frank Polich / Reuters
MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 7:23 p.m. ET June 19, 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25268181/
WASHINGTON - Droughts will get drier, storms will get stormier and floods will get deeper with a warming climate across North America, U.S. government experts said in a report billed as the first continental assessment of extreme events.
Events that have seemed relatively rare will become commonplace, said the latest report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a joint effort of more than a dozen government agencies.
"Heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity," the report stated. "Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity. Hurricane wind speeds, rainfall intensity and storm surge levels are likely to increase. The strongest cold season storms are likely to become more frequent, with stronger winds and more extreme wave heights."
There has been an increase in the frequency of heavy downpours, especially over northern states, and these are likely to continue in the future, Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in a briefing Thursday.
For example, Karl said, by the end of this century rainfall amounts expected to occur every 20 years could be taking place every five years.
Such an increase "can lead to the type of events that we are seeing in the Midwest," said Karl, though he did not directly link the current flooding to climate change.
The report itself noted that "intense precipitation (the heaviest 1 percent of daily precipitation totals) in the continental U.S. increased by 20 percent over the past century while total precipitation increased by 7 percent."
Shifting dangers
But the report cautioned that preparing for weather that has been relatively common can leave people vulnerable as extreme events occur more and more.
"Moderate flood control measures on a river can stimulate development in a now 'safe' floodplain, only to see those new structures damaged when a very large flood occurs," the report said.
At the same time heavy rains increase, there'll be more droughts, especially in the Southwest, Karl said.
"When it rains, it rains harder and when it's not raining, it's warmer - there is more evaporation, and droughts can last longer," he explained.
The Southwestern drought that began in 1999 is beginning to rival some of the greatest droughts on record including those of the 1930s and 1950s, he added.
Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said there has been a trend toward increasing power in hurricanes since the 1970s in the Atlantic and western Pacific, a change that can be linked to rising sea surface temperatures.
There is a statistical connection between rising sea surface temperatures and hurricane activity, Meehl said, but linking changes in hurricanes to human actions will require more study.
Hotter days more often
More easily attributed to human impact, through release of greenhouse gases, is an overall increase in temperatures, he said.
It's not getting as cold at night as it did in earlier decades and there are fewer nights with frosts, a trend expected to continue into the future, Meehl said.
"A day so hot that it is experienced only once every 20 years would occur every three years by the middle of the century," under the mid-range projections of climate models, the report said.
Researchers can use computer models of climate to separate out cause and effect of this warming, he explained - looking at the effect of things like changes in solar radiation or volcanic eruptions - and the result is to attribute climate warming to the burning of fossil fuels.
"It is well established through formal attribution studies that the global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases," the report itself states.
Other future projections cited in the report include:
* Sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean is expected to continue to decrease and may even disappear in summer in coming decades;
* Precipitation, on average, is likely to be less frequent but more intense;
* Droughts will likely be more frequent and severe in some areas;
* Hurricanes will likely spawn increased precipitation and wind;
* The strongest cold-season Atlantic and Pacific storms are likely to create stronger winds and higher extreme wave heights.
Participating in the Climate Change Science Program are the Agency for International Development, Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, Department of State, Department of Transportation, U.S. Geological Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution.
The full report is online at www.usgcrp.gov
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8. Noted NASA Scientist Renews Call for Action on Global Warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: June 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/science/earth/23climate.html
Twenty years ago Monday, James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, shook Washington and the world by telling a sweating crowd at a Senate hearing during a stifling heat wave that he was “99 percent” certain that humans were already warming the climate.
“The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now,” Dr. Hansen said then, referring to a recent string of warm years and the accumulating blanket of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other gases emitted mainly by burning fossil fuels and forests.
To many observers of environmental history, that was the first time global warming moved from being a looming issue to breaking news. Dr. Hansen's statement helped propel the first pushes for legislation and an international treaty to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. A treaty was enacted and an addendum, the Kyoto Protocol, was added.
Even as the scientific picture of a human-heated world has solidified, emissions of the gases continue to rise.
On Monday, Dr. Hansen, 67, plans to testify at a House committee hearing that it is almost, but not quite, too late to start defusing what he calls the “global warming time bomb.” He will offer a plan for cuts in emissions and also a warning about the risks of further inaction.
“If we don't begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next several years, and really on a very different course, then we are in trouble,” Dr. Hansen said Friday at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which he has directed since 1981. “Then the ice sheets are in trouble. Many species on the planet are in trouble.”
In his testimony, Dr. Hansen said, he will say that the next president faces a unique opportunity to galvanize the country around the need for a transformed, nonpolluting energy system. The hearing is before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
Dr. Hansen said the natural skepticism and debates embedded in the scientific process had distracted the public from the confidence experts have in a future with centuries of changing climate patterns and higher sea levels under rising carbon dioxide concentrations. The confusion has been amplified by industries that extract or rely on fossil fuels, he said, and this has given cover to politicians who rely on contributions from such industries.
Dr. Hansen said the United States must begin a sustained effort to exploit new energy sources and phase out unfettered burning of finite fossil fuels, starting with a moratorium on the construction of coal-burning power plants if they lack systems for capturing and burying carbon dioxide. Such systems exist but have not been tested at anywhere near the scale required to blunt emissions. Ultimately he is seeking a worldwide end to emissions from coal burning by 2030.
Another vital component, Dr. Hansen said, is a nationwide grid for distributing and storing electricity in ways that could accommodate large-scale use of renewable, but intermittent, energy sources like wind turbines and solar-powered generators. The transformation would require new technology as well as new policies, particularly legislation promoting investments and practices that steadily reduce emissions.
Such an enterprise would be on the scale of past ambitious national initiatives, Dr. Hansen said, like the construction of the federal highway system and the Apollo space program.
Dr. Hansen disagrees with supporters of “cap and trade” bills to cut greenhouse emissions, like the one that foundered in the Senate this month. He supports a “tax and dividend” approach that would raise the cost of fuels contributing to greenhouse emissions but return the revenue directly to consumers to shield them from higher energy prices.
As was the case in 1988, Dr. Hansen's peers in climatology, while concerned about the risks posed by unabated emissions, have mixed views on the probity of a scientist's advocating a menu of policy choices outside his field.
Some also do not see such high risks of imminent climatic calamity, particularly disagreeing with Dr. Hansen's projection that sea levels could rise a couple of yards or more in this century if emissions continue unabated.
Dr. Hansen is a favorite target of conservative commentators; on FoxNews.com, one called him “alarmist in chief.” But many climate experts say Dr. Hansen, despite some faults, has been an essential prodder of the public and scientific conscience.
Jerry Mahlman, who recently retired from a long career in climatology, said he disagreed with some of Dr. Hansen's characterizations of the climate problem and his ideas about solutions. “On the whole, though, he's been helpful,” Dr. Mahlman said. “He pushes the edge, but most of the time it's pedagogically sound.”
Dr. Hansen said he was making a new public push now because the coming year presented a unique opportunity, with a new administration and the world waiting for the United States to re-engage in treaty talks scheduled to culminate with a new climate pact at the end of 2009.
He said a recent focus on China, which has surpassed the United States in annual carbon dioxide emissions, obscured the fact that the United States, Britain and Germany are most responsible for the accumulation of greenhouse gases.
Dr. Hansen said he had no regrets about stepping into the realm of policy, despite much criticism.
“I only regret that we haven't gotten the story across as well as it needs to be,” he said. “And I think we're running out of time.”
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This specialJewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter is devoted to a consideration of the growing hunger and global warming crises and the vegetarian connections.
The bottom lines are that it is scandalous that over 70 percent of the grain grown in the United States and over 40 percent of the grain grown worldwide are fed t animals destined for slaughter, while an estimated 20 million people die of hunger and its effects annually worldwide, and that we are continuing and expanding diets that are contributing so much to global warming at a time when the effects are coming increasingly apparent, as seen by the severe flooding in mid-Western states, the widespread wild fires in California and much more.
Please use the material in this newsletter, including my two sample letters in item 32 to compose your own letters and for talking points to help make people understand that a major shift toward vegetarianism is a societal imperative today, essential to move our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.
The newsletter has the following items:
1. Are Human Activities Worsening Floods and Other Weather-Related Problems?
2. My Letters Re the Food Crisis, Phasing Out Factory Farms and Related Issues
3. How Vegetarianism Can Reduce the Global Food Crisis
4. New York Times Editorial Blasts Factory Farming
5. Have We Reached the End of Relatively Inexpensive Food?
6. Book Review on “The End of Food”
7. Severe Weather Extremes Projected for North America
8. Noted NASA Scientist Renews Call for Action on Global Warming
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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1. Are Human Activities Worsening Floods and Other Weather-Related Problems?
Iowa Flooding Could Be An Act of Man, Experts Say
Residents along the Mississippi River are experiencing the worst flooding in 15 years.
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 19, 2008; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/18/AR2008061803371.html
As the Cedar River rose higher and higher, and as he stacked sandbags along the levee protecting downtown Cedar Falls, Kamyar Enshayan, a college professor and City Council member, kept asking himself the same question: "What is going on?"
The river would eventually rise six feet higher than any flood on record. Farther downstream, in Cedar Rapids, the river would break the record by more than 11 feet.
Enshayan, director of an environmental center at the University of Northern Iowa, suspects that this natural disaster wasn't really all that natural. He points out that the heavy rains fell on a landscape radically reengineered by humans. Plowed fields have replaced tallgrass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Flood plains have been filled and developed.
"We've done numerous things to the landscape that took away these water-absorbing functions," he said. "Agriculture must respect the limits of nature."
Officials are still trying to understand all the factors that contributed to Iowa's flooding, and not everyone has the same suspicions as Enshayan. For them, the cause was obvious: It rained buckets and buckets for days on end. They say the changes in land use were lesser factors in what was really just a case of meteorological bad luck.
But some Iowans who study the environment suspect that changes in the land, both recently and over the past century or so, have made Iowa's terrain not only highly profitable but also highly vulnerable to flooding. They know it's a hard case to prove, but they hope to get Iowans thinking about how to reduce the chances of a repeat calamity.
"I sense that the flooding is not the result of a 500-year event," said Jerry DeWitt, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. "We're farming closer to creeks, farming closer to rivers. Without adequate buffer strips, the water moves rapidly from the field directly to the surface water."
Corn alone will cover more than a third of the state's land surface this year. The ethanol boom that began two years ago encouraged still more cultivation.
Between 2007 and 2008, farmers took 106,000 acres of Iowa land out of the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to keep farmland uncultivated, according to Lyle Asell, a special assistant for agriculture and environment with the state's Department of Natural Resources (DNR). That land, if left untouched, probably would have been covered with perennial grasses with deep roots that help absorb water.
The basic hydrology of Iowa has been changed since the coming of the plow. By the early 20th century, farmers had installed drainage pipes under the surface to lower the water table and keep water from pooling in what otherwise could be valuable farmland. More of this drainage "tiling" has been added in recent years. The direct effect is that water moves quickly from the farmland to the streams and rivers.
"We've lost 90 percent of our wetlands," said Mary Skopec, who monitors water quality for the Iowa DNR.
Crop rotation may also play a subtle role in the flooding. Farmers who may have once grown a number of crops are now likely to stick to just corn and soybeans -- annual plants that don't put down deep roots.
Residents along the Mississippi River are experiencing the worst flooding in 15 Another potential factor: sediment. "We're actually seeing rivers filling up with sediment, so the capacity of the rivers has changed," Asell said. He said that in the 1980s and 1990s, Iowa led the nation in flood damage year after year.
This landscape wasn't ready for the kind of deluge that hit Iowa in May and early June. Central and eastern portions of the state received 15 inches of rain. That came on top of previous rains that had left the soil saturated. Worse, the rain came at the tail end of an unusually cool spring. Farmers had delayed planting their crops. The deluge struck a nearly naked landscape of small plants and black dirt.
"With that volume of rain, you're going to have flooding. There's just no way around it," said Donna Dubberke, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Quad Cities. "This is not just because someone put in a parking lot."
The rising Mississippi River is expected to peak this week, threatening towns and farmland north of St. Louis as floodwaters continue to move down the river. So far, flooding and severe weather have killed at least 24 people in three states and injured 106, forced the evacuations of about 40,000, and driven corn prices to record highs.
Two levees burst just north of Quincy, Ill., yesterday morning, forcing the evacuation of the small town of Meyer. Yesterday afternoon, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) visited the town after viewing the nearby Sny Island Levee, about 12 miles downstream from Quincy and, at 54 miles long, the second-biggest levee on the Mississippi.
In Iowa, the National Weather Service has reported record flooding at 12 locations on four rivers, including the Cedar, the Iowa, the Wapsipinicon and the Mississippi. The U.S. Geological Survey has preliminary data showing 500-year floods on the Cedar, the Shell Rock, the Upper Iowa and the Nodaway.
The Great Flood of 2008 has, for many inhabitants of sandbagged Iowa, come awfully soon after the Great Flood of 1993. Or, as Elwynn Taylor, a meteorologist at Iowa State University, put it: "Why should we have two 500-year floods within 15 years?"
Taylor attributes the flooding in recent years to cyclical climate change: The entire Midwest, he says, has been in a wet cycle for the past 30 years. There has also been speculation that global warming could be a factor.
"Something in the system has changed," said Pete Kollasch, a remote-sensing analyst with the Iowa DNR. "The only thing I can point my finger at is global warming, but there's no proof of that."
Jeri Neal, a program leader for ecological systems and research at Iowa State's Leopold Center, said all these things have a cumulative effect on the landscape: "It doesn't have the resilience built into it that you need to withstand disturbances in the system."
The idea of a 500-year flood can be confusing. Hydrologists use the term to indicate a flooding event that they believe has a 0.2 percent chance -- 1 in 500 -- of happening in any given year in a specific location. A 100-year flood has a 1 in 100 chance of happening, and so on. Such estimates are based on many years of data collection, in some cases going back a century or more.
But the database can be spotty. Robert Holmes, national flood coordinator with the U.S. Geological Survey, said a lack of funding since 1999 has forced his agency to discontinue hundreds of stream gauges across the country. "It's not sexy to fund stream flow gauges," he said.
What's certain is that a lot of water had nowhere to go when the sky opened over Iowa this spring. Some rivers did things they'd never done before. The flood stage at Cedar Rapids, for example, is 12 feet. The previous record flood happened in 1929, when the Cedar hit 20 feet. This year the Cedar hit 20 feet and kept rising. Experts predicted it would crest at 22 feet, and then upped the estimate to 24 feet. The river had other ideas. At mid-morning last Friday, it finally crested at 31.3 feet.
The entire downtown was flooded and a railroad bridge collapsed, dumping rail cars filled with rock into the river.
"Cities routinely build in the flood plain," Enshayan said. "That's not an act of God; that's an act of City Council."
Staff writer Kari Lydersen contributed to this report from Quincy, Ill.
© Copyright 1996-2008 The Washington Post Company |
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2. My Letters Re the Food Crisis, Phasing Out Factory Farms and Related Issues
Editor, NY Post
letters@nypost.com
Dear Editor:
RE: "Gov'ts Fiddle Through the Food Crisis" (May 21 article)
An important factor that is being overlooked re the current food crisis is animal-based diets.
At a time when food prices are skyrocketing, food riots are occurring in many areas and an estimated 20 million people are dying annually worldwide from hunger and its effects, it is scandalous that over 70 percent of the grain produced in the United States and over 40 percent produced worldwide are fed to farmed animals. Also, in an increasingly thirsty and energy-dependent world, animal-based diets require up to 14 times as much water and 10 times as much energy as vegan (all plants) diets.
While the world is increasingly threatened by global warming, animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars and other means of transportation worldwide combined (18 percent vs. 13.5 percent). And, the consumption of animal products is projected to double in 50 years. Hence, a major shift toward plant-based diets is essential to move our precious, but imperiled, planet to a sustainable path.
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June 20, 2008
Editor, VegNews
letters@vegnews.com
Dear Editor:
Kudos on a wonderful July/August 2008 issue, with much valuable material. Especially important, I believe, is Mat Thomas's insightful article, “Phasing Out Factory Farms.”
In response to Mat's question: no it is not just you, Mat, factory farming IS utterly immoral and insane! Here are just a few reasons why:
* While the world is increasingly threatened by global warming, animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars and other means of transportation worldwide combined (18 percent vs. 13.5 percent).
* At a time when food prices are skyrocketing, food riots are occurring in many areas and an estimated 20 million people are dying annually worldwide from hunger and its effects, over 70 percent of the grain produced in the United States and over 40 percent produced worldwide are fed to farmed animals.
* In an increasingly thirsty and energy-dependent world, animal-based diets require up to 14 times as much water and 10 times as much energy as vegan (all plants) diets.
* Animal-centered diets are contributing to an epidemic of heart disease, several types of cancer and other diseases;
Making all of the above points even more compelling, the consumption of animal products is projected to double in 50 years. If this happens, it will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to reduce greenhouse emissions enough to avoid extremely severe effects from global climate change.
And, of course, producing all of these negative effects is at the expense of the billions of animals who are so cruelly treated on factory farms before being slaughtered.
It is essential that the vegetarian and animal rights movements make it a number one priority to respond to the immorality and insanity of animal-based diets and agriculture by mounting a comprehensive campaign to educate people on the realities of factory farming. Many thanks, VegNews for playing such an important role in doing this.
Very truly yours,
Richard H. Schwartz
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3. How Vegetarianism Can Reduce the Global Food Crisis
Taking the Food Crisis Personally
by Bruce Friedrich
http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/huffington_post/http%253A%252F%252Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%252Fbruce-friedrich%252Ftaking-the-food-crisis-pe_b_107992.html
In April, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on food policy called the diversion of crops to be turned into biofuels "a crime against humanity." Indeed, 100 million tons of corn and other crops that could feed people instead feed our cars.
What then to make of the fact that more than 750 million tons of corn and wheat are diverted from the mouths of the global poor (and away from biofuels) to feed chickens, pigs, and other farmed animals? And that doesn't even include the 80 percent of the global soy crop that is also fed to farmed animals.
Surely this is a crime against humanity of even greater impact: First, it's more than seven times as many crops that are diverted to feed farmed animals so that we can eat the animals; second, while diverting grains for biofuels does decrease global warming, the impact of eating meat is bad for our
health and environment -- there is no upside.
I adopted a vegetarian diet more than 20 years ago, after I read Diet for a Small Planet , by Frances Moore Lappe. In the book, Lappe makes the argument that using land to grow crops for animals is inefficient, polluting, and that it steals food from the mouths of the global poor. The point is echoed by the respected environmental think tank, The WorldWatch Institute, which published a report a few years back that declares:
"[M]eat consumption is an inefficient use of grain--the grain is used more efficiently when consumed by humans. Continued growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grain to animals, creating competition for grain between affluent meat-eaters and the world's poor."
More and more, that message is getting a hearing, so that a few weeks ago, the UN's climate chief Yvo de Boer told the Reuters news agency, "The best solution would be for us all to become vegetarians."
De Boer was talking about both the global food crisis and global warming, because a U.N. report recently found that eating meat is the number one human cause of global warming, causing almost a fifth of the global greenhouse gas total -- and, of course, poor communities are the first to suffer the potentially grave consequences of climate change.
The chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, is himself a vegetarian and has been outspoken on the need for people who care about the climate to move in that direction. At a press conference just after winning the Peace Prize, the IPCC declared "Please eat less meat -- meat is a very carbon-intensive commodity".
Indeed it is, which is why the official handbook for the Live Earth concerts says that "refusing meat" is "the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint" (emphasis in original).
And the U.N. report also found that eating meat is "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." Specifically, the 408-page report noted the meat industry's contribution to "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity".
Clearly problems of climate change and the global food crisis warrant global and political solutions, but one of those solutions will have to include a shift away from the massive handouts that governments give to their meat industries in the form of government-paid inspection programs (these industries should pay their own bills), subsidies for feed crops, teams of scientists helping to grow larger animals with fewer resources, and so on. And it should also include government programs to encourage a public shift away from the consumption of chickens, pigs, and other
farmed animals.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated last month that "[h]unger is
a moral challenge to each one of us as global citizens... [w]ith one child dying every five seconds from hunger-related causes, the time to act is now".
The current issue of the New Scientist, in discussing the food crisis and the vast additional crops that are required to feed meat-eaters, as opposed to vegetarians, explains in discussing solutions, "We could try to reduce the demand by persuading people to return to a less meaty diet for example, but that is unlikely to work."
I think the New Scientist editors underestimate people. In Taiwan, they're taking the concept seriously; the Guardian reported on Wednesday (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/19/food.environment) that to address the global food crisis and global warming, "around a million people in Taiwan -- including the speaker of parliament, the environment minister, and the mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung -- vowed to never again touch flesh nor fish."
If we also take global warming and global poverty seriously, isn't adopting a vegetarian diet the least that each of us can do?
For more on this topic, please visit GoVeg.com,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-friedrich/ . Find
recipes and more at www.VegCooking.com.
Bruce Friedrich is vice-president in charge of international grassroots campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) http://www.peta.org/ , the world's largest animal rights organization, with more than 2 million members and supporters. He has been an
anti-hunger advocate and Oxfam member and activist for more than 20 years.
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4. New York Times Editorial Blasts Factory Farming
New York Times Editorial - May 31, 2008
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"The Worst Way of Farming"
"In the past month, two new reports have examined how farm animals are raised in this country. The report funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts calls the prevailing system 'industrial farm animal production.' The report from the Union of Concerned Scientists prefers the term 'confined animal feeding operations.'
No matter what you call it, it adds up to the same thing. Millions of animals are crowded together in inhumane conditions, causing significant environmental threats and unacceptable health risks for workers, their
neighbors and all the rest of us.
The astonishing increase in the number and size of confined animal operations has been spawned largely by the very structure of American farm supports, which always has been skewed in a way that concentrates farming in fewer and fewer hands. As both of these reports make clear, the so-called efficiency of industrial animal production is an illusion, made possible by cheap grain, cheap water and prisonlike confinement systems.
In short, animal husbandry has been turned into animal abuse. Manure - traditionally a source of fertilizer - has been turned into toxic waste that fouls the air and adjacent water bodies. Crowding creates health problems, resulting in the chronic overuse of antibiotics.
And, because the modest profits in confinement operations require the lowest possible labor costs, including automated feeding, watering and manure-handling systems, these operations have helped empty and impoverish rural America.
The Pew report recommends new laws regulating pollution rom industrial farms as rigorously as pollution from other industries, a phasing-out of confinement systems that restricts 'natural movement and normal behavior,' a ban on antibiotics used only to promote animal growth and the application of antitrust laws to encourage more competition and less concentration.
These are all useful guideposts for the next Congress and a new administration."
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5. Have We Reached the End of Relatively Inexpensive Food?
Culture Change Letter #189
You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food. - report on trends
The empire of cheap food is crumbling
by Jan Lundberg
You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food. Need this be spelled out any more plainly? It is time to consider that the stage has been set for petroleum-induced famine.
We have "innocently" accommodated rising population with greater and greater food production via technology and the profit motive. But now we have run out of room to grow, as biotechnology, for example, has severe limitations -- major ones being petroleum dependence and topsoil loss. The biggest wild card for our existence is climate change, as we see with floods and other extreme weather affecting our food supply.
We are headed for massive shortages of food and other essentials, mainly brought about by the depletion of geological fossil reserves of cheap energy and water. The situation is demonstrated regularly with easy arithmetic based on statistical indicators from the United Nations, Worldwatch Institute, World Resources Institute, Earth Policy Institute, and numerous governments. Usually the full force of the message is offset by predictions of huge rises in future human population growth that are simple extrapolations of historical trends.
No one can say with certainty that the worst effects of today's crisis will occur tomorrow or by any particular date. But it is irrational to assume there will only be gradual tightening of supplies until some solutions miraculously come to our aid. One ought to at least admit that one year ago few people thought we'd be going in the direction we're going in, this fast, today.
Three days is our average food supply around the modernized world, i.e., for cities and their supermarkets. Long-term food stocks have plummeted: "Cereal stocks that are at their lowest level in 30 years," according to Worldwatch institute in its most recent Vital Signs. This is exacerbated by increasingly weirder weather, compounded by the oil price/supply pressure on food. What can interfere with the three-day situation are truckers on strike (as in Europe), extended/repeated power outages, and the inability of the work force to commute to work.
I asked Chris Flavin, Worldwatch Institute president, about the escalating crisis that I assumed he was quite worried about. He told me on Wednesday,
To continue reading this article, go to: http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=179&Itemid=1#cont.]
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6. Book Review on “The End of Food”
'End of Food' - It's the system, stupid
Book Review by Anna Lappé, San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The End of Food
By Paul Roberts
Houghton Mifflin; 390 pages; $26
With at least 100 million people in 22 countries threatened by the global food crisis, world leaders are meeting in Rome to discuss a joint response. But to settle on solutions, we must understand root causes.
To explain this crisis, some put forth a simple story of shrinking supply: Severe drought in Australia decimated the harvest of one of the world's largest wheat exporters. Biofuel production in the United States alone is diverting 33 percent of our corn harvest to feed automobiles, not people.
But these are just proximate causes, others argue. The real culprit? The global food system itself: its inherent vulnerability, lack of democracy and increasingly concentrated power. Sure, droughts and biofuels have affected global supplies, but in Paul Roberts' new book, "The End of Food," we hear the "It's the system, stupid" argument. Though its ink was drying before this current crisis hit CNN's news cycle, "The End of Food" helps us connect the dots.
As more of the planet shifts to our centralized, industrial model of food procurement and our over-processed, fast-food style of food consumption, we are careening ever faster, Roberts argues, down an unsustainable road.
This global food system is wasteful at its core: "By one estimate, it takes 2,200 calories of hydrocarbon energy (from oil, natural gas, or coal) to produce a can of soda that contains just 200 calories of food energy." Roberts takes particular aim at factory-farmed meat, with its inherent squandering of abundance: Feedlot cattle, for example, require 20 pounds of grain to make a single pound of beef. (This conversion ratio is much higher than other estimates, because Roberts accounts for all of a cow's weight, including what is inedible.) And our food fate is increasingly determined by a cabal of companies controlling the market, from beef to bananas. Roberts peppers his pages with examples such as these: Chiquita and Dole control more than half of the world's banana trade; 21 cents of every dollar we Americans spend for food is now spent at Wal-Mart.
- - -
Full story:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/22/RV34111PC3.DTL
OR:
http://tinyurl.com/4wdo5u
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7. Severe Weather Extremes Projected for North America
Study forecasts greater extremes in North American weather
By Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post
5:24 PM CDT,
June 19, 2008
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-080622-climate-change-story,0,3777283.story?track=rss
WASHINGTON - As greenhouse gas emissions rise, North America is likely to experience more droughts and excessive heat in some regions even as intense downpours and hurricanes pound others more often, according to a report issued Thursday by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.
The 162-page study, which was led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, provides the most comprehensive assessment yet of how global warming has helped to transform the climate of the United States and Canada over the past 50 years -- and how it may do so in the future.
Coming at a time when record flooding is ravaging the Midwest, the new report paints a grim scenario in which severe weather will exact a heavy toll. It warned that extreme weather events "are among the most serious challenges to society in coping with a changing climate."
While the Southwest is likely to face even more intense droughts, the scientists wrote, heavy downpours will become more frequent in some other parts of the country because of increased water vapor in the air.
"This report addresses one of the most frequently asked questions about global warming: What will happen to weather and climate extremes?" said one of the report's two co-chairs, Thomas Karl, who directs of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. He added that the report, which synthesizes the findings of more than 100 academic papers, "concludes that we are now witnessing and will increasingly experience more extreme weather and climate events."
The authors found that the last decade has seen fewer cold snaps than any other 10-year period in the historical record dating back to 1895. Under a middle-range scenario of future greenhouse gas emissions, climate models indicate that by mid-century, extremely hot days that now occur only once every 20 years will occur every three years.
Richard Moss, vice president and managing director for climate change at the World Wildlife Fund, said in an interview that the report was prepared by "an A-list of authors" and is "really frightening."
In a conference call with reporters, Karl and the other co-chair, Gerald Meehl, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said there is no doubt that human-generated heat-trapping gases have helped intensify both the Southwest's current drought and heavy downpours, which have been increasing at a rate three times that of average precipitation over the past century.
"That's a certainty," Karl said. "People aren't questioning whether there's been an increase in heavy downpours."
By the end of the century, he added, models predict that intense bouts of precipitation that might have occurred once every 20 years will take place every five years.
The researchers, from both the federal and private sectors, reached more tentative conclusions about the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and hurricanes.
The report noted that the intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms, as measured by an index that combines wind strength, duration and frequency, has had a "substantial" increase since 1970 and that "there has been a strong statistical connection between tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures and Atlantic hurricane activity." But the scientists said this suggestion of a connection to human activity is not conclusive.
NOAA research meteorologist Thomas Knutson, who contributed to the report (and recently published an article in the journal Nature saying that it is too early to attribute more intense hurricane activity to a detectable human influence), said the synthesis reflects the current disagreement among scientists on the question of hurricanes.
"This is a report that is a consensus document, where you have a number of authors who may not agree on all things," Knutson said.
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Article #2:
U.S. experts: Forecast is more extreme weather.
Rare events likely to become commonplace, climate report says
Frank Polich / Reuters
MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 7:23 p.m. ET June 19, 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25268181/
WASHINGTON - Droughts will get drier, storms will get stormier and floods will get deeper with a warming climate across North America, U.S. government experts said in a report billed as the first continental assessment of extreme events.
Events that have seemed relatively rare will become commonplace, said the latest report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a joint effort of more than a dozen government agencies.
"Heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity," the report stated. "Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity. Hurricane wind speeds, rainfall intensity and storm surge levels are likely to increase. The strongest cold season storms are likely to become more frequent, with stronger winds and more extreme wave heights."
There has been an increase in the frequency of heavy downpours, especially over northern states, and these are likely to continue in the future, Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in a briefing Thursday.
For example, Karl said, by the end of this century rainfall amounts expected to occur every 20 years could be taking place every five years.
Such an increase "can lead to the type of events that we are seeing in the Midwest," said Karl, though he did not directly link the current flooding to climate change.
The report itself noted that "intense precipitation (the heaviest 1 percent of daily precipitation totals) in the continental U.S. increased by 20 percent over the past century while total precipitation increased by 7 percent."
Shifting dangers
But the report cautioned that preparing for weather that has been relatively common can leave people vulnerable as extreme events occur more and more.
"Moderate flood control measures on a river can stimulate development in a now 'safe' floodplain, only to see those new structures damaged when a very large flood occurs," the report said.
At the same time heavy rains increase, there'll be more droughts, especially in the Southwest, Karl said.
"When it rains, it rains harder and when it's not raining, it's warmer - there is more evaporation, and droughts can last longer," he explained.
The Southwestern drought that began in 1999 is beginning to rival some of the greatest droughts on record including those of the 1930s and 1950s, he added.
Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said there has been a trend toward increasing power in hurricanes since the 1970s in the Atlantic and western Pacific, a change that can be linked to rising sea surface temperatures.
There is a statistical connection between rising sea surface temperatures and hurricane activity, Meehl said, but linking changes in hurricanes to human actions will require more study.
Hotter days more often
More easily attributed to human impact, through release of greenhouse gases, is an overall increase in temperatures, he said.
It's not getting as cold at night as it did in earlier decades and there are fewer nights with frosts, a trend expected to continue into the future, Meehl said.
"A day so hot that it is experienced only once every 20 years would occur every three years by the middle of the century," under the mid-range projections of climate models, the report said.
Researchers can use computer models of climate to separate out cause and effect of this warming, he explained - looking at the effect of things like changes in solar radiation or volcanic eruptions - and the result is to attribute climate warming to the burning of fossil fuels.
"It is well established through formal attribution studies that the global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases," the report itself states.
Other future projections cited in the report include:
* Sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean is expected to continue to decrease and may even disappear in summer in coming decades;
* Precipitation, on average, is likely to be less frequent but more intense;
* Droughts will likely be more frequent and severe in some areas;
* Hurricanes will likely spawn increased precipitation and wind;
* The strongest cold-season Atlantic and Pacific storms are likely to create stronger winds and higher extreme wave heights.
Participating in the Climate Change Science Program are the Agency for International Development, Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, Department of State, Department of Transportation, U.S. Geological Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution.
The full report is online at www.usgcrp.gov
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8. Noted NASA Scientist Renews Call for Action on Global Warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: June 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/science/earth/23climate.html
Twenty years ago Monday, James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, shook Washington and the world by telling a sweating crowd at a Senate hearing during a stifling heat wave that he was “99 percent” certain that humans were already warming the climate.
“The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now,” Dr. Hansen said then, referring to a recent string of warm years and the accumulating blanket of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other gases emitted mainly by burning fossil fuels and forests.
To many observers of environmental history, that was the first time global warming moved from being a looming issue to breaking news. Dr. Hansen's statement helped propel the first pushes for legislation and an international treaty to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. A treaty was enacted and an addendum, the Kyoto Protocol, was added.
Even as the scientific picture of a human-heated world has solidified, emissions of the gases continue to rise.
On Monday, Dr. Hansen, 67, plans to testify at a House committee hearing that it is almost, but not quite, too late to start defusing what he calls the “global warming time bomb.” He will offer a plan for cuts in emissions and also a warning about the risks of further inaction.
“If we don't begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next several years, and really on a very different course, then we are in trouble,” Dr. Hansen said Friday at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which he has directed since 1981. “Then the ice sheets are in trouble. Many species on the planet are in trouble.”
In his testimony, Dr. Hansen said, he will say that the next president faces a unique opportunity to galvanize the country around the need for a transformed, nonpolluting energy system. The hearing is before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
Dr. Hansen said the natural skepticism and debates embedded in the scientific process had distracted the public from the confidence experts have in a future with centuries of changing climate patterns and higher sea levels under rising carbon dioxide concentrations. The confusion has been amplified by industries that extract or rely on fossil fuels, he said, and this has given cover to politicians who rely on contributions from such industries.
Dr. Hansen said the United States must begin a sustained effort to exploit new energy sources and phase out unfettered burning of finite fossil fuels, starting with a moratorium on the construction of coal-burning power plants if they lack systems for capturing and burying carbon dioxide. Such systems exist but have not been tested at anywhere near the scale required to blunt emissions. Ultimately he is seeking a worldwide end to emissions from coal burning by 2030.
Another vital component, Dr. Hansen said, is a nationwide grid for distributing and storing electricity in ways that could accommodate large-scale use of renewable, but intermittent, energy sources like wind turbines and solar-powered generators. The transformation would require new technology as well as new policies, particularly legislation promoting investments and practices that steadily reduce emissions.
Such an enterprise would be on the scale of past ambitious national initiatives, Dr. Hansen said, like the construction of the federal highway system and the Apollo space program.
Dr. Hansen disagrees with supporters of “cap and trade” bills to cut greenhouse emissions, like the one that foundered in the Senate this month. He supports a “tax and dividend” approach that would raise the cost of fuels contributing to greenhouse emissions but return the revenue directly to consumers to shield them from higher energy prices.
As was the case in 1988, Dr. Hansen's peers in climatology, while concerned about the risks posed by unabated emissions, have mixed views on the probity of a scientist's advocating a menu of policy choices outside his field.
Some also do not see such high risks of imminent climatic calamity, particularly disagreeing with Dr. Hansen's projection that sea levels could rise a couple of yards or more in this century if emissions continue unabated.
Dr. Hansen is a favorite target of conservative commentators; on FoxNews.com, one called him “alarmist in chief.” But many climate experts say Dr. Hansen, despite some faults, has been an essential prodder of the public and scientific conscience.
Jerry Mahlman, who recently retired from a long career in climatology, said he disagreed with some of Dr. Hansen's characterizations of the climate problem and his ideas about solutions. “On the whole, though, he's been helpful,” Dr. Mahlman said. “He pushes the edge, but most of the time it's pedagogically sound.”
Dr. Hansen said he was making a new public push now because the coming year presented a unique opportunity, with a new administration and the world waiting for the United States to re-engage in treaty talks scheduled to culminate with a new climate pact at the end of 2009.
He said a recent focus on China, which has surpassed the United States in annual carbon dioxide emissions, obscured the fact that the United States, Britain and Germany are most responsible for the accumulation of greenhouse gases.
Dr. Hansen said he had no regrets about stepping into the realm of policy, despite much criticism.
“I only regret that we haven't gotten the story across as well as it needs to be,” he said. “And I think we're running out of time.”
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