OLEAN -- From the top-heavy Pile of Stuff I Never Get Around to Writing About in my office, here are some things that caught my eye in recent weeks:
Global Warming -- The outstanding environmental writer Bill McKibben, now a scholar in residence at Vermont's Middlebury College, is one of the better explainers of the fuss over climate change and global warming. He doesn't try to sow panic, but neither is he a denier of the problem who thinks the whole thing is a hoax made up by left-wing loonies. In the Sierra Club's summer newsletter, he tries to put the subject in perspective and writes about the recent scientific pessimism concerning this issue. He cites some numbers.
As you've heard incessantly, the big problem is the increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere -- increasing in recent years due mostly to "advanced" human civilization's determined reliance on carbonaceous fossil fuels for our modern way of life. Before the Industrial Revolution, which kicked into high gear about two centuries ago, the concentration of carbon in the Earth's atmosphere was about 275 parts per million. Humanity and the Earth toddled along nicely at that figure, with some fairly predictable weather patterns and temperatures. Then came cars and trains and planes and industrial smokestacks and whole-home heating and humans breeding like rabbits. We all celebrated at how smart we were as a species.
About 20 years ago, a NASA scientist named James Hansen testified before Congress that the planet was warming and that humans were the cause. He was widely ignored or ridiculed, but the ears of many atmospheric scientists perked up. They knew this had happened before in the planet's history and that it could change our civilization. They began to ponder what would happen if the above carbon concentration doubled, and set 550 carbon parts per million as what McKibben calls "a crude and mythical red line."
In the last five years or so, it became evident the Earth was warming at a faster rate than many scientists had predicted, and that our planet was reacting -- according to McKibben -- "more quickly than they had expected to the relatively small temperature increases we've already seen."
Glacial systems are melting rapidly. Some glaciers have disappeared already. Arctic sea ice was melting at an "off-the-charts pace." Greenland's mammoth ice sheet started to slide into the ocean.
The European Union and many environmental groups quickly proposed that 450 carbon dioxide parts per million was a "more prudent target" and one that might be reached if nations pulled together with new policy and emissions regulations. McKibben writes "the economic modeling makes clear that achieving it (the 450 number) is still possible, though the chances diminish with every new coal-fired power plant." So there was some optimism, even though we are already at 378 parts per million, which is "knocking the planet off kilter in substantial ways," according to McKibben. Last winter, he observes, "Congress actually worked up the nerve to raise gas mileage standards for cars."
Then last December, the same NASA scientist, James Hansen -- by now widely respected and listened to on this subject, and backed by "reams of paleo-climatic data to support his statements" -- presented at the American Geophysical Union's academic conference in San Francisco.
He said 350 parts per million is the number we must shoot for. He said 450 carbon dioxide parts per million would result in the Earth warming two or three degrees Celsius -- which, when it happened millennia ago, resulted in sea levels rising by tens of meters, something McKibben holds "would shake the foundations of the human enterprise should it happen again."
Go back three paragraphs and you can see we're already past 350. So now the scientists are telling us we must throttle back on the current level of emissions, not just slow their growth. McKibben writes that this does not mean we are already doomed: "Not any more than your doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high means the game is over."
If you give up cheese fries, he observes, your body will thin its own blood, just as the earth naturally gets rid of its carbon dioxide each year. McKibben writes: "We just need to stop putting more in and, over time, the number will fall, perhaps fast enough to avert the worst damage."
But to do so, we must start right now weaning ourselves from our addiction to coal, gas and oil -- a tall order when the current ostrich-like administration does everything it can to impede international cooperation on the issue. The Chinese, notes the author, "aren't going to stop burning coal unless we give them some other way to pull people out of poverty."
The first thing, he suggests, is an immediate ban on new coal-fired power plants that don't recapture carbon and the quick phaseout of old coal-fired generators. McKibben continues the medical analogy in his conclusion: "We're not talking statins to drop your cholesterol; we're talking huge changes in every aspect of your daily life."
My own pessimistic conclusion, after observing the behavior of humanity for many decades and after realizing our own lack of competent national leadership in almost all sectors of public endeavor? Fat chance.
Animal Cruelty -- Some of the fastest and largest growth in American societal advocacy groups in recent years, as you've probably noticed from solicitations in your mail, has occurred among animal protection groups. There's a reason. The United States leads most western nations in letting the animals we've taught our children to love and cherish (dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, monkeys, etc.) be tortured, slaughtered, confined, mistreated, even devoured -- with nary a yawn from Congress or the federal government in general. All that is changing.
A recent action, or lack of it, by the totally broken Food and Drug Administration is a good example. The FDA is the federal agency responsible for overseeing medical testing and approval of new pharmaceuticals and experimental procedures. It is justifiably among the most controversial of federal agencies, because it depends on vast stipends from the pharmaceutical industry to carry out its missions and because the "revolving door" of lucrative Big Pharma hiring of the very individuals assigned to police that industrial sector spins with dizzying speed.
Best estimates are that big companies needlessly torture and eventually kill about 400,000 animals a year in the United States through experimental drug testing. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a broad and growing coalition of doctors, scientists, veterinarians, researchers, behaviorists, other animal experts and just plain animal lovers, earlier this year petitioned the FDA to force companies it regulates to use alternative methods to animal testing when available, something entirely within the powerful agency's purview.
"Europe is years ahead of us," observes Dr. Neal Barnard, the MD who is president of PCRM. "The scientific world outside the U.S. is moving away from animal testing."
Such citizen/professional coalitions have already been successful within the European Union. The European Commission, reacting to public pressure, already has strong laws on the books requiring such alternative non-animal testing whenever possible and in general protecting animals from extraordinarily cruel treatment.
The FDA, of course, refused to act on the PCRM petition -- a virtual death sentence for hundreds of thousands of animals. The PCRM is not a bunch of goody-twoshoes fuzzyheads who want animals to achieve human status. It is filled with medical and scientific professionals who, besides loving animals, are equally concerned with the huge waste of research time and money occasioned by the useless and outdated reliance on lab animals.
The PCRM director of research, Dr. Hope Ferdowsian, notes that 92 percent of all drugs "that pass preclinical testing on animals fail in human clinical trials." What's good for animals is not necessarily effective for humans. Ferdowsian and Barnard -- and thousands of other scientists -- claim that more effective non-animal alternatives (among them successful computer modeling) already exist. The FDA stubbornly sides with animal testing proponents on the grounds that animals lack emotions similar to those displayed by human beings.
Ferdowsian, a recognized expert in this field, maintains animals have basically "the same emotions as human beings. ... Horror, helplessness, major depression, fear, empathy, post traumatic stress disorder -- animals show a full range of emotions that we mistakenly confine to our own species."
Anyone who treats a pet properly knows this. The FDA apparently does not.
Here's some bad news for you. If you had a cat or a dog that simply disappeared one day, the chances are pretty good it didn't merely wander off. Most pets that are properly treated will do anything rather than leave pleasant surroundings. It was probably kidnapped by lowlife misanthropes who make such a living cruising rural or suburban roads for their prey and selling some family's beloved pet to one of the numerous dealers or middlemen who provide the hapless creatures to drug test labs and months of hideous pain.
This is a societal abomination. Get with it and speak out against these practices that demean humanity.
Thankfully, some members of Congress finally are. According to the Humane Society Legislative Fund, which keeps track of such things, there are at least 18 active bills before the House and Senate aimed at eliminating such cruelty or protecting animals in general -- ranging from prohibition of importing dog and cat fur for fashion use from China and other benighted nations to clamping down on the above practices.
Incidentally, the Humane Society Legislative Fund keeps a scorecard -- based on votes, sponsorship, funding and district communication -- of your Washington representatives' stances on various animal protection acts and related legislation. Besides precise tracking of votes on legislation -- such as, for example, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, the Pet Safety and Protection Act (kidnapping pets for lab experiments) and the Dog and Cat Fur Prohibition Act -- the Humane Society also gives a 0-100 score to members of Congress for general support of pro-animal legislation.
Reps. Randy Kuhl, R-29th, for the Southern Tier, and Tom Reynolds, R-26th, of Clarence, both received a dismal 34, among the lowest in the House. Reps. Louise Slaughter, D-28th, and Tim Higgins, D-27th of Buffalo, both received an 83, among the highest. (Do the more politically aware among you recognize a pattern in this paragraph?)
Our two senators from New York, Democrats Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, both received a mark of 75.
Terrorist Philosophy -- Among the more important stories that have gone virtually uncovered in the daily press and what laughably is called television reportage in recent months is the compelling news that one of the key Muslim terrorist leaders who fashioned the mind set that led to 9/11 has changed his mind and now renounces violence.
Sayyid Imam al-Sharif was part of the original core of al-Qaeda, one of the first members of that horrific group's governing council. He is known on the terrorist street simply as "Dr. Fadl," the new handle he adopted after fleeing Egypt for Pakistan. This guy has terrorist credentials aplenty. He is the former leader of Al Jihad (the group that assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981), was a brother-in-arms with Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri, and was considered the most intellectual of all al-Qaeda's early leaders.
He had memorized the entire Koran by sixth grade, was a product of Cairo University's famous medical school and for a time -- operating on those wounded in the Muslim resistance to the ill-conceived and shortlived Soviet occupation of Afghanistan -- enjoyed an international reputation as one of the Middle East's best burn surgeons. He operated out of Peshawar, Pakistan, same as the CIA operatives engaged in that fight.
In 1988, Fadl produced "The Essential Guide for Preparation," now perhaps the most important text for terrorist training, one of the most important works in modern Islamist discourse and the one that formalized and celebrated the rule of modern holy war, which states heavenly reward for slaying unbelievers in the Muslim faith. The next year, when Zawahiri moved to Sudan, where bin Laden had set up operations, Dr. Fadl went with him. Later, in 1994, Fadl finished his masterwork, "The Compendium of the Pursuit of Divine Knowledge," the book that declares Muslims have an absolute duty to wage jihad and that those who serve in government, police, courts or other functions of "modern" Muslim states are infidels themselves and are automatically doomed to damnation.
Lawrence Wright, a Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on such things, writes in the June 2 issue of The New Yorker magazine that "Few books in recent history have done as much damage." Wright's piece, "The Rebellion Within," is one of the few comprehensive pieces on this that I could find and reflects that excellent magazine's place at the top of the curve in covering momentous modern stories the general press ignores.
Fadl, reports Wright, turned against Zawahiri in the 1990s for reissuing the "Compendium" with massive omissions, bowdlerizing and plagiarisms claimed as Zawahiri's own. Fadl, in asylum in Yemen, was spirited back to Cairo in 2003 by Egyptian authorities and remains in prison, where he has produced "Rationalizing Jihad," which, according to Wright, "establishes a new set of rules for jihad, which essentially define most forms of terrorism as illegal under Islamic law and restrict the possibility of holy war to extremely rare circumstances." Fadl's renunciation of the thinking that went into 9/11 is weakening Islamist terrorism all over the world, says the author.
To me, that is news of weight and moment.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | June 24 2008 |