Two years ago, an international scientific panel seized worldwide attention by reporting that human activity was warming the planet in ways that could greatly disrupt human affairs and nature.
The work of the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. After two decades of delivering climate reports to the world without fanfare, it suddenly had a wide following.
But as the panel gears up for its next climate review, many specialists in climate science and policy, both inside and out of the network, are warning that it could quickly lose relevance unless it adjusts its methods and focus.
Although the panel, founded in 1988 and operating under the United Nations’ auspices, has garnered awards and acclaim, there is scant evidence that nations are acting on its warnings. Emissions of heat-trapping gases have grown. Talks about a new climate treaty remain largely deadlocked.
“Like grabbing the tail of a tiger, the I.P.C.C. has gotten the world’s attention, but now the challenge is to get the tiger to head in the right direction,” said Michael MacCracken, a longtime contributor to panel reports and a chief scientist for the Climate Institute, a nonprofit group. “For the I.P.C.C., this means providing guidance that will minimize climate impacts and maximize investments in a prosperous and sustainable future.”
Environmentalists assert that the reports by the panel are watered down by a requirement that sponsoring governments approve its summaries line by line.
Some experts fret that the organization, charged with assessing fast-evolving science, has failed to keep pace with an explosion of climate research.
At the same time, scientists who question the likelihood of a calamitous disruption of the Earth’s climate accuse the panel of cherry-picking studies and playing down levels of uncertainty about the severity of global warming.
“It just feels like the I.P.C.C. has gone from being a broker of science to a gatekeeper,” said John R. Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and a former panel author.
In an interview, Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the I.P.C.C., rejected the charge of bias, noting layers of transparent peer review.
But he acknowledged the challenges that the group faces in translating complex science in a way that produces meaningful responses.
Under its charter, the group cannot recommend a course of action to cut climate risks. It has laid out specific paths for emissions of greenhouse gases that governments would need to follow to avoid overheating the planet, but governments need not follow those paths.
For example, Dr. Pachauri noted that while the leaders of the Group of 8 industrial nations pledged last month to try to limit global warming to 2 degrees Fahrenheit beyond the planet’s current temperature, they failed to embrace the emissions reductions that the panel says would be needed to keep that promise.
Finding ways to guide nations without being prescriptive is a prime focus as the network of scientists embarks on its fifth assessment of research on climate trends, projections and policy options.
While the new study is not scheduled for release until 2014, its shape will be determined at an October meeting of government representatives from more than 80 countries.
In preparation for that meeting, 200 scientists who have held leading roles in the climate assessments met in Venice last month to identify new priorities. Building on a “vision document” developed by Dr. Pachauri, they began writing an outline of the fifth report to present to the government representatives meeting in Bali in October.
One goal for the next report is a much more thorough assessment of how fast and far seas could rise from unabated warming. The panel’s 2007 report expressly excluded the influence of melting ice sheets because of limited understanding of how fast they could melt.
Shying away from discussing such possibilities because there is low scientific confidence can imply there is also a low probability they may occur, said Stephen H. Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford and longtime panel member. That is not necessarily the case, he said.
More attention will be devoted to research on the potential for dangerous changes in ocean chemistry as seas absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide. Another focus will be large-scale artificial methods of countering warming, called geo-engineering.
The panel will also try harder to identify anticipated impacts of climate change on certain regions, and options for fostering resilience in especially vulnerable places like sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. Pachauri noted that the panel put its Nobel Prize winnings, around $670,000, into an account for helping the world’s poorest countries respond to drought, flood and other climate risks. (Mr. Gore gave his share to the Alliance for Climate Protection. )
But tens of billions of dollars in aid will be needed as explosive population growth and shifting climate patterns make poor nations more vulnerable, according to a variety of studies.
Some specialists in climate modeling warn that governments may have overinflated expectations that science can reliably forecast how global warming will play out locally.
Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said that efforts to use computer simulations of local conditions to forecast specific results of climate shifts over a decade or so were still in early stages of development.
“Simply hoping that higher resolution will magically improve predictability at smaller scales is just wishful thinking,” Dr. Schmidt said in an e-mail message.
Other scientists involved in shaping the next report worry that the runaway growth in peer-reviewed studies of climate change is making a broad, fair assessment of such research impossible.
For a meeting in Budapest last year on the future of the climate panel, Neville Nicholls, a lead writer on several parts of the last report, submitted a chart showing that 4,500 climate studies were published in 2007, triple the total a decade earlier.
Given that the hundreds of scientists on the panel volunteer their time, this presents a daunting challenge, said Dr. Nicholls, a climate scientist at Monash University in Victoria, Australia.
He proposes that the group write more focused, expeditious reports on issues relevant to setting policy.
Dr. Nicholls suggested that the panel could eventually shift to reviewing the flow of research on more basic questions through a constantly updated Wikipedia-style system.
The panel already does occasional special reports, with one coming next year on the potential of renewable energy technologies to cut greenhouse emissions, and another in 2011 on limiting risks from drought and other climate-driven disasters.
Christopher Field, a participant and chairman of one section of the forthcoming assessment, said that an important focus was psychological and sociological research on how people act in the face of uncertain but substantial threats.
“We’ve identified the nature of the problem, and social science shows it’s of the toughest category,” said Dr. Field, who directs the Carnegie Institution department of global ecology at Stanford.
One hope is that the final October outline, once approved, will encourage governments to invest more resources in such research, so that the 2014 report can incorporate findings.
In the end, perhaps the most vital shift is for the panel to pay more attention to the murkier but most consequential possibilities in a warming world, said Dr. Schneider.
The panel, he said, could do more to distinguish between outcomes from warming that research shows are truly unlikely, like a shutdown of Atlantic Ocean currents, and those that are possible but uncertain. One example of this kind, he said, is the chance that the planet could heat up far more than climate models project; another is the possible sustained disintegration of ice sheets.
Dr. Schneider noted that society relied on risk analyses of this sort all the time, with issues like choosing treatments for rare but poorly understood cancers (Dr. Schneider survived such an episode) and with assessing military strategies.
It may be uncomfortable for scientists who seek certainty in data to turn to the issue of how to weigh uncertain threats. But decision makers are not well served if the spectrum of poorly known possibilities, along with the level of uncertainty, are not also conveyed by experts, he said.
“If you say nothing until you have high confidence and solid evidence,” he said, “you’re failing society.”
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Seismic boom: Breaking the quake barrier
THE convoy was more than 30 kilometres from the Kunlun fault in Tibet when the jeeps suddenly lurched. They had hit a series of parallel cracks, remnants of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck the year before. "It was like driving on steps," recalls Yann Klinger, a geologist from the Paris Institute of Geophysics in France.
The cracks were clear signs that the ground had been squeezed like a sponge then released, violently wrenching it apart. Yet they were much too far from the fault line to be explained by the quake. Mystified, the team took some measurements and moved on.
It transpired that Klinger and his team had stumbled upon the aftermath of a "supershear" earthquake - one that slipped at such blistering speeds that the rip in the Earth overtook its own seismic waves. This created the earthquake equivalent of a sonic boom, capable of striking anything in its path like a hammer blow. While some seismologists had suspected such a quake could happen, physical evidence of their power had been lacking.
Seven years on, and the evidence is mounting that these kinds of earthquakes may be more common than we thought, and not just in remote regions like Tibet. A series of new maps reveals an abundance of so-called "superhighway" faults around the globe where the conditions are just right for earthquakes to zip through the ground at great speed. Worldwide, 60 million people live in these zones - many of them in regions that were not previously considered at risk from earthquakes. And even in places where buildings are designed to cope with the biggest quakes, no one knows if they will be able to withstand a supershear.
Until supershear quakes came on to the scene in the late 1990s, earthquakes were thought to come with an inbuilt speed limit. When a fault slips at a weak point, the break propagates along the fault line. Mathematical equations show that ruptures cannot propagate at speeds in a so-called "forbidden zone", between around 3 and 3.5 kilometres per second. At these speeds, the fault's frictional sliding would have to convert heat into mechanical energy - something that is thermodynamically impossible. Since a rupture can never accelerate through this zone, the possibility of quakes faster than 3.5 kilometres per second was ruled out.
For many years only one observation contradicted this received wisdom. In 1984, Ralph Archuleta at the University of California, Santa Barbara, reported that the Imperial valley earthquake that struck California in 1979 briefly ruptured faster than 3.5 kilometres per second, the speed that a type of seismic wave called a shear wave travels at (Journal of Geophysical Research, vol 89, p 4559).
With only indirect evidence that this "supershear" earthquake had occurred, however, plus the mathematical unlikeliness that it had taken place and a lack of any other reports of earthquakes moving at such incredible speeds, the paper was largely dismissed. "That observation did not go down very well with seismologists," says Ares Rosakis at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Archuleta's observations languished in obscurity for nearly two decades until a wager between an engineer and a geologist meant that they were finally tested out in the lab.
Rosakis had studied the dynamics of ruptures in other settings, such as artificial materials. In previous experiments funded by the US navy, he had been investigating how explosions affect materials that have been glued together, and had seen supershear ruptures occur along the glued interface. So why not in the Earth itself? His sceptical colleague Hiroo Kanamori, in the geology department at Caltech, disagreed. After all, a fault under pressure is nothing like a glued surface and earthquakes are not triggered by explosions. The bet was set - an expensive bottle of wine was at stake.
To simulate an earthquake, Rosakis and Kanamori took two slabs of a polymer that transmits light when under pressure and pressed them together, the join representing a geological fault. They shone a light through the fault zone and then triggered a tiny electrical pulse to produce a rupture along the fault line. The patterns made by the light allowed them to see the seismic waves produced as the rupture moved through the fault. Sure enough, the quake produced seismic waves - first compressional waves, followed by the shear waves. And as Kanamori had predicted, the rupture itself trailed well behind its seismic waves.
With Rosakis on the verge of losing the bet, they put the slabs under slightly higher pressure by squeezing the fault tighter. Then, when they triggered a rupture, something odd happened: a fresh "daughter" crack suddenly appeared ahead of the main "mother" rupture, travelling much faster. The daughter crack then expanded rapidly, and joined up with the mother rupture, causing the entire rupture to immediately start travelling faster than its shear waves, leapfrogging the "forbidden" speeds. Not only that, it continued to produce new shear waves, which added to the first batch to produce a new, more powerful shock wave called a "Mach front", which trailed behind the rupture in the shape of a boat's wake (see diagram) (Science, vol 303, p 1859). This is similar to what happens when jet fighters break the sound barrier and travel at Mach speeds; they create pressure waves as they speed through the air, but travel fast enough to catch up with them. The waves constructively interfere with each other to become one explosive sonic boom, extending in an expanding cone behind the aircraft.
These lab experiments began to show that earthquakes could, in theory, go supershear. But it was the Earth itself that provided the real-world evidence. In 1999, the most seismically active continental fault of the 20th century - the North Anatolian fault in Turkey - slipped to cause the magnitude 7.6 Izmit earthquake. Unlike the California quake of 1979, this time there was no shortage of seismic stations around the fault to record the speed of the shear waves produced in the quake. Measurements of ground motion also provided evidence of the speed at which the fault ruptured. It all added up to a quake that went supershear, says Michel Bouchon at the University of Grenoble in France, who led one of two teams that independently showed that Izmit reached velocities of up to 5 kilometres per second (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 28, p 2723).
Now there was no longer any denying that, both in theory and practice, earthquakes can go supershear and seismologists around the world set about looking for more examples in the aftermath of new quakes. They found plenty. There is now evidence that at least three major quakes around the world since Izmit have gone supershear, including Kunlun, where Klinger's team had found the then-mysterious cracks. Thankfully, there have only been a handful of such quakes recently and most have been in remote areas.
This will not always be the case, of course. Some geologists suspect that the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906 may have been a supershear. Gregory Beroza of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues argue that such a rupture would explain a long-standing mystery. We know from ground measurements that the crust slipped a certain distance, but seismic data recorded by distant stations showed that the earthquake did not last long enough to produce displacement over such a distance. However, a rupture travelling at supershear speeds would have torn through the ground much faster, producing the observed rip in a shorter time than a normal quake (Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, vol 98, p 823).
Understanding earthquakes after the event is only half the battle, however. What everyone wants to know is where the next one might hit. Now seismologists David Robinson, Shamita Das and colleagues at the University of Oxford think they have come up with an answer. They compared known supershear quakes for similarities and used these to try and anticipate where in the world the next one is most likely to strike.
The only faults shown to have generated supershear quakes so far have been "strike-slip" faults, where bodies of rocks rub by each other laterally, with very little vertical movement. For this reason, Robinson figured that other kinds of faults, where bodies of rock slide over one another, for example, could be ignored. Next, he discounted ocean-based strike-slip faults as none have so far been found to have reached supershear speeds, plus they are unlikely to pose significant danger to populations. The main risk of an ocean quake is a tsunami, but strike-slip faults tend not to create them because they do not cause the significant uplift of the ocean floor typically needed for a tsunami.
That still left a huge number of strike-slip faults on land to sift through. But Robinson reasoned that all of the supershear ruptures seen so far have been on long, straight sections of faults. This might be because a rupture cannot accelerate to supershear speeds on a convoluted fault path. "We liken it to driving along a road," he says - the rupture slows down for corners, like a car during a turn. So based on previous theoretical modelling and the straightness of known supershear faults such as Kunlun, Robinson looked for unbroken faults on land that do not deviate by 5 degrees or more over a distance of 100 kilometres. That narrowed it down to 26 sections on 11 different fault systems around the world, including parts of the San Andreas fault in California (see map). He called them "superhighways".
Worryingly, when they added the population distribution within a 50-kilometre radius of these faults, they found a network of superhighway faults primed to rumble near major cities. Seven of the 26 superhighways lie within reach of heavily populated areas, each potentially affecting more than 2 million people. One runs straight through the middle of San Francisco, while the cities of Rangoon and Mandalay in Burma sit at either end of the longest superhighway. "The density of population in some areas of Asia we looked at is incredibly high. That really surprised me," says Robinson, who presented his findings at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting in April.
The maps were welcomed by geologists. "Robinson's work is excellent," says Bouchon. "The supershear earthquakes we have observed up to now have always occurred on long strike-slip faults with very linear segments and simple geometry," he says. Rosakis, however, points out that the roughness of the fault interface and the fault's inclination could also play a part. "It would, to my mind, be too simplistic to say that [long and straight faults] are the only characteristic," he says.
For his part, Robinson concedes that his maps are only intended to scratch the surface. There may be other conditions in which supershear quakes could occur, he says.
Danger zone
If Robinson's maps are correct, it could mean that regions previously thought to be outside of the worst effects of an earthquake, and maybe even beyond its reach altogether, could be caught unawares by a supershear quake. The Mach front's high amplitude means that it travels further through the ground than normal shear waves, putting millions more people at risk.
The most recent building rules in the US, established in the late 1990s, place tight restrictions on the design of structures within 5 kilometres of an active fault. That's because these regions are considered vulnerable to the so-called "near source pulse" of an earthquake, says Swaminathan Krishnan of the earthquake engineering simulation group at Caltech. But with a supershear quake, many relatively unfortified buildings outside the 5-kilometre zone in, say, San Francisco or parts of Los Angeles, could also be at risk, says Krishnan.
Mach fronts also shake the ground differently to an ordinary earthquake, and that means current building standards may not be enough, even in well-prepared areas like California. Laboratory experiments suggest that the shock front strikes with greater ferocity than typical seismic waves. Buildings would experience all the force of the quake's accumulated shear waves at once. If an individual seismic wave is a "gentle slap", the Mach front is a "big hammer", explains seismologist Harsha Bhat of the University of California, Los Angeles. "It's a sudden impact hitting on a structure."
Recent work by Bhat and Eric Dunham of Stanford University also suggests that a building would be struck by two Mach fronts in rapid succession - one from the shear waves, followed by another made up of accumulated Rayleigh waves, a type of seismic wave that travels along the surface at around 3 kilometres per second. "It's still too early to say which Mach front is more devastating," says Bhat.
Unfortunately, most city planners and civil engineers are unlikely to take heed of the warnings of seismologists based on laboratory experiments. "Engineers are practical animals," says Krishnan. "We don't yet have enough data to support these theories."
That's why Krishnan is currently embarking on a project with Rosakis to simulate in a three-dimensional computer model what happens to buildings of various sizes as they are struck by a Mach front. "If our modelling shows serious issues, it will generate a lot of discussion," he says. However, Dunham points out that the smoking gun that Mach fronts are killers will come from a real quake. "Observations would be the most definitive," he says. "To really nail this down, you need lots of seismic stations fairly close."
What is needed now is more data on actual quakes that go supershear. As geologists wait for the next big one to strike, however, they are hoping that they will be proved right in an uninhabited desert - and certainly nowhere near a big city.
The cracks were clear signs that the ground had been squeezed like a sponge then released, violently wrenching it apart. Yet they were much too far from the fault line to be explained by the quake. Mystified, the team took some measurements and moved on.
It transpired that Klinger and his team had stumbled upon the aftermath of a "supershear" earthquake - one that slipped at such blistering speeds that the rip in the Earth overtook its own seismic waves. This created the earthquake equivalent of a sonic boom, capable of striking anything in its path like a hammer blow. While some seismologists had suspected such a quake could happen, physical evidence of their power had been lacking.
Seven years on, and the evidence is mounting that these kinds of earthquakes may be more common than we thought, and not just in remote regions like Tibet. A series of new maps reveals an abundance of so-called "superhighway" faults around the globe where the conditions are just right for earthquakes to zip through the ground at great speed. Worldwide, 60 million people live in these zones - many of them in regions that were not previously considered at risk from earthquakes. And even in places where buildings are designed to cope with the biggest quakes, no one knows if they will be able to withstand a supershear.
Until supershear quakes came on to the scene in the late 1990s, earthquakes were thought to come with an inbuilt speed limit. When a fault slips at a weak point, the break propagates along the fault line. Mathematical equations show that ruptures cannot propagate at speeds in a so-called "forbidden zone", between around 3 and 3.5 kilometres per second. At these speeds, the fault's frictional sliding would have to convert heat into mechanical energy - something that is thermodynamically impossible. Since a rupture can never accelerate through this zone, the possibility of quakes faster than 3.5 kilometres per second was ruled out.
For many years only one observation contradicted this received wisdom. In 1984, Ralph Archuleta at the University of California, Santa Barbara, reported that the Imperial valley earthquake that struck California in 1979 briefly ruptured faster than 3.5 kilometres per second, the speed that a type of seismic wave called a shear wave travels at (Journal of Geophysical Research, vol 89, p 4559).
With only indirect evidence that this "supershear" earthquake had occurred, however, plus the mathematical unlikeliness that it had taken place and a lack of any other reports of earthquakes moving at such incredible speeds, the paper was largely dismissed. "That observation did not go down very well with seismologists," says Ares Rosakis at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Archuleta's observations languished in obscurity for nearly two decades until a wager between an engineer and a geologist meant that they were finally tested out in the lab.
Rosakis had studied the dynamics of ruptures in other settings, such as artificial materials. In previous experiments funded by the US navy, he had been investigating how explosions affect materials that have been glued together, and had seen supershear ruptures occur along the glued interface. So why not in the Earth itself? His sceptical colleague Hiroo Kanamori, in the geology department at Caltech, disagreed. After all, a fault under pressure is nothing like a glued surface and earthquakes are not triggered by explosions. The bet was set - an expensive bottle of wine was at stake.
To simulate an earthquake, Rosakis and Kanamori took two slabs of a polymer that transmits light when under pressure and pressed them together, the join representing a geological fault. They shone a light through the fault zone and then triggered a tiny electrical pulse to produce a rupture along the fault line. The patterns made by the light allowed them to see the seismic waves produced as the rupture moved through the fault. Sure enough, the quake produced seismic waves - first compressional waves, followed by the shear waves. And as Kanamori had predicted, the rupture itself trailed well behind its seismic waves.
With Rosakis on the verge of losing the bet, they put the slabs under slightly higher pressure by squeezing the fault tighter. Then, when they triggered a rupture, something odd happened: a fresh "daughter" crack suddenly appeared ahead of the main "mother" rupture, travelling much faster. The daughter crack then expanded rapidly, and joined up with the mother rupture, causing the entire rupture to immediately start travelling faster than its shear waves, leapfrogging the "forbidden" speeds. Not only that, it continued to produce new shear waves, which added to the first batch to produce a new, more powerful shock wave called a "Mach front", which trailed behind the rupture in the shape of a boat's wake (see diagram) (Science, vol 303, p 1859). This is similar to what happens when jet fighters break the sound barrier and travel at Mach speeds; they create pressure waves as they speed through the air, but travel fast enough to catch up with them. The waves constructively interfere with each other to become one explosive sonic boom, extending in an expanding cone behind the aircraft.
These lab experiments began to show that earthquakes could, in theory, go supershear. But it was the Earth itself that provided the real-world evidence. In 1999, the most seismically active continental fault of the 20th century - the North Anatolian fault in Turkey - slipped to cause the magnitude 7.6 Izmit earthquake. Unlike the California quake of 1979, this time there was no shortage of seismic stations around the fault to record the speed of the shear waves produced in the quake. Measurements of ground motion also provided evidence of the speed at which the fault ruptured. It all added up to a quake that went supershear, says Michel Bouchon at the University of Grenoble in France, who led one of two teams that independently showed that Izmit reached velocities of up to 5 kilometres per second (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 28, p 2723).
Now there was no longer any denying that, both in theory and practice, earthquakes can go supershear and seismologists around the world set about looking for more examples in the aftermath of new quakes. They found plenty. There is now evidence that at least three major quakes around the world since Izmit have gone supershear, including Kunlun, where Klinger's team had found the then-mysterious cracks. Thankfully, there have only been a handful of such quakes recently and most have been in remote areas.
This will not always be the case, of course. Some geologists suspect that the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906 may have been a supershear. Gregory Beroza of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues argue that such a rupture would explain a long-standing mystery. We know from ground measurements that the crust slipped a certain distance, but seismic data recorded by distant stations showed that the earthquake did not last long enough to produce displacement over such a distance. However, a rupture travelling at supershear speeds would have torn through the ground much faster, producing the observed rip in a shorter time than a normal quake (Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, vol 98, p 823).
Understanding earthquakes after the event is only half the battle, however. What everyone wants to know is where the next one might hit. Now seismologists David Robinson, Shamita Das and colleagues at the University of Oxford think they have come up with an answer. They compared known supershear quakes for similarities and used these to try and anticipate where in the world the next one is most likely to strike.
The only faults shown to have generated supershear quakes so far have been "strike-slip" faults, where bodies of rocks rub by each other laterally, with very little vertical movement. For this reason, Robinson figured that other kinds of faults, where bodies of rock slide over one another, for example, could be ignored. Next, he discounted ocean-based strike-slip faults as none have so far been found to have reached supershear speeds, plus they are unlikely to pose significant danger to populations. The main risk of an ocean quake is a tsunami, but strike-slip faults tend not to create them because they do not cause the significant uplift of the ocean floor typically needed for a tsunami.
That still left a huge number of strike-slip faults on land to sift through. But Robinson reasoned that all of the supershear ruptures seen so far have been on long, straight sections of faults. This might be because a rupture cannot accelerate to supershear speeds on a convoluted fault path. "We liken it to driving along a road," he says - the rupture slows down for corners, like a car during a turn. So based on previous theoretical modelling and the straightness of known supershear faults such as Kunlun, Robinson looked for unbroken faults on land that do not deviate by 5 degrees or more over a distance of 100 kilometres. That narrowed it down to 26 sections on 11 different fault systems around the world, including parts of the San Andreas fault in California (see map). He called them "superhighways".
Worryingly, when they added the population distribution within a 50-kilometre radius of these faults, they found a network of superhighway faults primed to rumble near major cities. Seven of the 26 superhighways lie within reach of heavily populated areas, each potentially affecting more than 2 million people. One runs straight through the middle of San Francisco, while the cities of Rangoon and Mandalay in Burma sit at either end of the longest superhighway. "The density of population in some areas of Asia we looked at is incredibly high. That really surprised me," says Robinson, who presented his findings at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting in April.
The maps were welcomed by geologists. "Robinson's work is excellent," says Bouchon. "The supershear earthquakes we have observed up to now have always occurred on long strike-slip faults with very linear segments and simple geometry," he says. Rosakis, however, points out that the roughness of the fault interface and the fault's inclination could also play a part. "It would, to my mind, be too simplistic to say that [long and straight faults] are the only characteristic," he says.
For his part, Robinson concedes that his maps are only intended to scratch the surface. There may be other conditions in which supershear quakes could occur, he says.
Danger zone
If Robinson's maps are correct, it could mean that regions previously thought to be outside of the worst effects of an earthquake, and maybe even beyond its reach altogether, could be caught unawares by a supershear quake. The Mach front's high amplitude means that it travels further through the ground than normal shear waves, putting millions more people at risk.
The most recent building rules in the US, established in the late 1990s, place tight restrictions on the design of structures within 5 kilometres of an active fault. That's because these regions are considered vulnerable to the so-called "near source pulse" of an earthquake, says Swaminathan Krishnan of the earthquake engineering simulation group at Caltech. But with a supershear quake, many relatively unfortified buildings outside the 5-kilometre zone in, say, San Francisco or parts of Los Angeles, could also be at risk, says Krishnan.
Mach fronts also shake the ground differently to an ordinary earthquake, and that means current building standards may not be enough, even in well-prepared areas like California. Laboratory experiments suggest that the shock front strikes with greater ferocity than typical seismic waves. Buildings would experience all the force of the quake's accumulated shear waves at once. If an individual seismic wave is a "gentle slap", the Mach front is a "big hammer", explains seismologist Harsha Bhat of the University of California, Los Angeles. "It's a sudden impact hitting on a structure."
Recent work by Bhat and Eric Dunham of Stanford University also suggests that a building would be struck by two Mach fronts in rapid succession - one from the shear waves, followed by another made up of accumulated Rayleigh waves, a type of seismic wave that travels along the surface at around 3 kilometres per second. "It's still too early to say which Mach front is more devastating," says Bhat.
Unfortunately, most city planners and civil engineers are unlikely to take heed of the warnings of seismologists based on laboratory experiments. "Engineers are practical animals," says Krishnan. "We don't yet have enough data to support these theories."
That's why Krishnan is currently embarking on a project with Rosakis to simulate in a three-dimensional computer model what happens to buildings of various sizes as they are struck by a Mach front. "If our modelling shows serious issues, it will generate a lot of discussion," he says. However, Dunham points out that the smoking gun that Mach fronts are killers will come from a real quake. "Observations would be the most definitive," he says. "To really nail this down, you need lots of seismic stations fairly close."
What is needed now is more data on actual quakes that go supershear. As geologists wait for the next big one to strike, however, they are hoping that they will be proved right in an uninhabited desert - and certainly nowhere near a big city.
Kayaking To A Different View Of The Rio Grande
For more than 1,200 miles, the Rio Grande defines a boundary between two tense global neighbors — Mexico and the U.S. Its reputation for lawlessness makes it easy to forget that it's also a scenic river with birds, lush plants and even a little whitewater.
That's the message that Eric Ellman, executive director of Los Caminos del Rio, wants to get out to the world.
"We're trying to change the way people see the Rio Grande and the Rio Grande Valley," he explains.
One Paddle At A Time
For two years, Ellman has offered kayak trips on a stretch of river that begins on a Class 2 rapid below an irrigation dam.
"This is about as good a teaching rapid as I can imagine," he says, while paddling into a riffle with his yellow lab, Buster, lying blissfully in the front of his kayak. "You can see all this beautiful clean water just sweeping right at you. There's a little wave; you can get on it, get off it. Go back in this eddy. Try it again."
Ellman is an outdoor fanatic, travel writer and former New York City bicycle messenger who, at 52, finds himself amid the grapefruit orchards and taquerias of South Texas, promoting tourism on the Rio Grande. When he arrived in 2000, he found the cool river that bisects this sweltering land to be inviting, but no one else did.
"They assume it's illegal. They assume it's dangerous. They assume it's dirty. Every reason in the world," he says. "And then the local superstitions: there are whirlpools, the dangerous currents, alligators. There was a huge alligator scare here last year."
When the locals realized that gators were not swallowing kayaks, and the water is relatively clean, Ellman encountered enthusiastic support on both sides of the border.
"Perhaps Mexicans on this side think of the river as a barrier that's more mental than physical," says Jeffrey Salcedo, a business promoter with the Mexican city of Reynosa, and a backer of Ellman's. "Because when we cross the river, we're accustomed to being detained and questioned. It's not so difficult to change this mentality because these water sports have been very successful. We just need to promote them."
And things are happening. Last November was the first annual Big River Festival on the lower Rio Grande, featuring canoe races with 40 competitors from both countries.
Now the cities of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, upstream, are sponsoring a 33-mile canoe race on their stretch of river as part of RioFest in October. Ellman says he learned, to his surprise, the federal agencies that control and patrol the river welcomed boaters.
"And it demonstrated to everybody who was watching that this is not only possible but it's actually something that the powers that be encourage," he says.
Eyes In The Air
For its part, the U.S. Border Patrol is in favor of private watercraft on the Rio Grande, believing the more good people who use the river, the fewer bad people are likely to.
Sonny Montes, a small-business owner, recently moved from Seattle back to the Rio Grande Valley, where his family has lived for 150 years. Now he's a regular paddler down here on the river.
Asked what kind of reaction he gets from people in the Valley when he tells them he's going down to the river to kayak, Montes says they call him crazy.
"But you know what I tell 'em?" he asks. "I tell 'em we have the best security in the world because the Border Patrol has patrols in the air. They have patrols in the river, and they have eyes along the border."
The organization of which Eric Ellman is director, Caminos del Rio, has long sought recognition of the cultural and historic importance of the lower Rio Grande. Earlier this month, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from the Rio Grande Valley, asked Congress to declare the riverlands from Laredo to Brownsville a National Heritage Corridor.
But try as they might to make the Rio Grande a tourist destination, it remains the world's busiest border for drug smuggling, and that fact is unforgettable on the water.
As evidence, a 16-year-old avid kayaker named Casey Richardson balances on top of the cab of a black pickup truck submerged in the gentle current.
It's one of at least 30 sunken drug vehicles ditched by traffickers that have been identified in this stretch of river. Rio Grande visionaries hope that one day, there might be more kayakers than drug smugglers.
That's the message that Eric Ellman, executive director of Los Caminos del Rio, wants to get out to the world.
"We're trying to change the way people see the Rio Grande and the Rio Grande Valley," he explains.
One Paddle At A Time
For two years, Ellman has offered kayak trips on a stretch of river that begins on a Class 2 rapid below an irrigation dam.
"This is about as good a teaching rapid as I can imagine," he says, while paddling into a riffle with his yellow lab, Buster, lying blissfully in the front of his kayak. "You can see all this beautiful clean water just sweeping right at you. There's a little wave; you can get on it, get off it. Go back in this eddy. Try it again."
Ellman is an outdoor fanatic, travel writer and former New York City bicycle messenger who, at 52, finds himself amid the grapefruit orchards and taquerias of South Texas, promoting tourism on the Rio Grande. When he arrived in 2000, he found the cool river that bisects this sweltering land to be inviting, but no one else did.
"They assume it's illegal. They assume it's dangerous. They assume it's dirty. Every reason in the world," he says. "And then the local superstitions: there are whirlpools, the dangerous currents, alligators. There was a huge alligator scare here last year."
When the locals realized that gators were not swallowing kayaks, and the water is relatively clean, Ellman encountered enthusiastic support on both sides of the border.
"Perhaps Mexicans on this side think of the river as a barrier that's more mental than physical," says Jeffrey Salcedo, a business promoter with the Mexican city of Reynosa, and a backer of Ellman's. "Because when we cross the river, we're accustomed to being detained and questioned. It's not so difficult to change this mentality because these water sports have been very successful. We just need to promote them."
And things are happening. Last November was the first annual Big River Festival on the lower Rio Grande, featuring canoe races with 40 competitors from both countries.
Now the cities of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, upstream, are sponsoring a 33-mile canoe race on their stretch of river as part of RioFest in October. Ellman says he learned, to his surprise, the federal agencies that control and patrol the river welcomed boaters.
"And it demonstrated to everybody who was watching that this is not only possible but it's actually something that the powers that be encourage," he says.
Eyes In The Air
For its part, the U.S. Border Patrol is in favor of private watercraft on the Rio Grande, believing the more good people who use the river, the fewer bad people are likely to.
Sonny Montes, a small-business owner, recently moved from Seattle back to the Rio Grande Valley, where his family has lived for 150 years. Now he's a regular paddler down here on the river.
Asked what kind of reaction he gets from people in the Valley when he tells them he's going down to the river to kayak, Montes says they call him crazy.
"But you know what I tell 'em?" he asks. "I tell 'em we have the best security in the world because the Border Patrol has patrols in the air. They have patrols in the river, and they have eyes along the border."
The organization of which Eric Ellman is director, Caminos del Rio, has long sought recognition of the cultural and historic importance of the lower Rio Grande. Earlier this month, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from the Rio Grande Valley, asked Congress to declare the riverlands from Laredo to Brownsville a National Heritage Corridor.
But try as they might to make the Rio Grande a tourist destination, it remains the world's busiest border for drug smuggling, and that fact is unforgettable on the water.
As evidence, a 16-year-old avid kayaker named Casey Richardson balances on top of the cab of a black pickup truck submerged in the gentle current.
It's one of at least 30 sunken drug vehicles ditched by traffickers that have been identified in this stretch of river. Rio Grande visionaries hope that one day, there might be more kayakers than drug smugglers.
SAfrica: Rich nations must pay for climate change
South Africa says it and other developing countries won't consider the next round of climate change talks successful unless rich nations pay up.
South African officials meeting Tuesday to discuss strategy ahead of the December climate change talks in Copenhagen said at least 1 percent of global GDP should be set aside by rich nations.
That money would help developing countries conduct research and take other steps to cope with climate change. It also could help them obtain technology to reduce their carbon emissions.
Alf Wills, a top South African environmental official, summed up the position: "No money, no deal."
South Africa, more industrialized than most on the continent, is Africa's main carbon emitter.
South African officials meeting Tuesday to discuss strategy ahead of the December climate change talks in Copenhagen said at least 1 percent of global GDP should be set aside by rich nations.
That money would help developing countries conduct research and take other steps to cope with climate change. It also could help them obtain technology to reduce their carbon emissions.
Alf Wills, a top South African environmental official, summed up the position: "No money, no deal."
South Africa, more industrialized than most on the continent, is Africa's main carbon emitter.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Yoga mats in the Dodger Stadium outfield
The full blaze of the midday sun shone down on Dodger Stadium, and heat waves danced on the infield dirt.
But the Dodgers weren't poised to take the field.
In fact, the only Dodger present was Andre Ethier, and he was sprawled on a yoga mat in pigeon pose. All around him, about 100 fans were similarly contorted -- having paid $100 a pop for the privilege.
In the brave new world of sports marketing, it's not always enough to sell game tickets or offer high-priced trips to spring training. With ticket sales down and corporate sponsorships shrinking, teams throughout professional sports are trading on the celebrity cachet of players, selling well-heeled fans the opportunity to lunch, fish, cruise or even practice yoga with their idols.
Some of the activities, like a recent Cincinnati Reds meet-and-greet, are for charity. But teams are increasingly turning to special events to make money.
Fans can put in a day's work as a groundskeeper with the Detroit Tigers ($1,250) or kick back on a cruise to the Bahamas with the Philadelphia Phillies (up to $1,599).
Football promotions include cruises with the Philadelphia Eagles (up to $6,000) and the San Diego Chargers. The Kings hockey team offered a four-day cruise to Mexico, and the Chicago Cubs are selling spaces on a trip to the Dominican Republic with players.
Last week, for $99, the Angels offered kids a one-day baseball day camp that featured pitching lessons and autographs. Like most Angels promotional events, proceeds went to charity.
"People love having that special access," said Dennis Mannion, the Dodgers' president and chief executive officer.
In addition to the yoga session with Ethier, the team recently offered a fishing trip with pitchers Brent Leach and James McDonald. That brought in about $11,000.
Mannion said events like these could eventually bring in more money than tickets, concessions or parking. The three nights the team offered batting practice -- in which fans could work on their swing under the stadium lights -- brought in about $170,000.
Players typically get paid for their appearances unless the event is for philanthropic purposes, a Dodgers spokeswoman said.
Next year, Mannion plans to seek corporate sponsorships for the events, he said, which he hopes will drive revenues even further.
"It's all about identifying and connecting with your fan demographic," he said. The team is also continuing its regular promotions, such as fireworks on Friday nights. It will hold a second bobblehead night in celebration of colorful left fielder Manny Ramirez, despite recent revelations that he tested positive for performance-enhancing substances in 2003.
David Carter, professor of sports business at the USC Marshall School of Business, said the activities are successful because they allow people to do more than simply watch a game.
"People don't want to spend their money on a baseball game right now," Carter said. "They want to spend their money on a baseball experience."
It's a growing trend throughout professional sports, as teams look for ways to bring fans -- and their pocketbooks -- to the park, said Jon Greenberg, executive editor of Team Marketing Report, a sports marketing research firm.
"It's a good way to engage your fans," Greenberg said. "Fans feel a closer connection with the team when they interact with players."
Take yoga with Ethier. People from throughout the Los Angeles area came to blend their fascination with the Dodgers with a personal activity they enjoy.
"It was such a unique offer," said Melanie DuPre, 35, sweating as she came off the baking field. "I wanted to check it out."
DuPre made the 25-mile trip from Lomita for the event. She's a Dodgers fan, but it was the idea of practicing yoga at Dodger Stadium that lured her, despite the 95-degree heat.
Nearly all of the participants were women, and several said they were there as much to work out near the young, attractive Ethier as they were to practice their downward-facing dog pose.
Being able to do yoga with Andre was really cool," said Julia Angello, 21, of Granada Hills, who was wearing an Ethier T-shirt.
Jamie McCourt, who is married to Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and runs the team's business operations, said the team hit on the idea of a yoga promotion as a way to reach out to women, who historically have spent less on professional sports than men.
"Nobody pays attention to women in the baseball world," said McCourt, who has been trying out different ways to market the team to women. "I thought it was time we start bringing all our fans closer to the team."
The yoga event brought in about $10,000. The team said Ethier was not paid because a portion of the take went to charity, although a spokeswoman would not say how much.
Jerry Lewis, director of the Detroit Tigers' fantasy camp and other promotions, said about half the calls he gets are from women, who are buying promotional events for their husbands, boyfriends or sons.
Along with camp, which costs $3,450 for a week, fans can deliver the ball to the mound for $1,500 or work on the grounds crew.
S. Mark Young, an expert on the economics, sociology and psychology of celebrity at the USC Marshall School of Business, said fans want to attend these events for the same reason they want to be photographed with celebrities or get their autographs.
"They want to feel a part of the excitement and feel special," Young said. "Some feel like they should be in the limelight."
But some people just love the game and its players, Young said.
When the Cincinnati Reds' corporate sponsors began drying up, the team needed to find new means of replenishing its charity fund. The Reds are promoting a post-game event for Aug. 16 at which fans can meet every player and coach, and collect each autograph on a baseball, bat or jersey.
The team expects to bring in more than $100,000.
But though such promotional events can be lucrative, Carter of USC warns teams that they could overdo it.
"If people start thinking that these events are just another way for ownership to pad their wallets, then things will fall flat," Carter said.
Tyler Barnes, vice president of communications for the Milwaukee Brewers, said fans expect teams to be generating new ideas these days.
"You have to be creative to keep the team on everybody's radar," Barnes said. "You want to keep things fresh."
The Brewers began offering drive-in movies at Miller Park this season. The first showing brought in more than $8,000 in tickets alone. Barnes would not confirm exactly what they made, but if you throw in concessions and advertising, it becomes apparent why the Brewers are offering another movie night in August.
At Dodger Stadium last week, the baseball yogis toweled off and sipped water as the session ended.
A team vice president asked whether participants would be willing to pony up $100 to come back and practice yoga again at the stadium -- next time without Ethier.
More than half the hands shot up.
"Are you kidding?" said MalaWilliams, 31, a music teacher from Whittier. "I'd love to come out here again."
But the Dodgers weren't poised to take the field.
In fact, the only Dodger present was Andre Ethier, and he was sprawled on a yoga mat in pigeon pose. All around him, about 100 fans were similarly contorted -- having paid $100 a pop for the privilege.
In the brave new world of sports marketing, it's not always enough to sell game tickets or offer high-priced trips to spring training. With ticket sales down and corporate sponsorships shrinking, teams throughout professional sports are trading on the celebrity cachet of players, selling well-heeled fans the opportunity to lunch, fish, cruise or even practice yoga with their idols.
Some of the activities, like a recent Cincinnati Reds meet-and-greet, are for charity. But teams are increasingly turning to special events to make money.
Fans can put in a day's work as a groundskeeper with the Detroit Tigers ($1,250) or kick back on a cruise to the Bahamas with the Philadelphia Phillies (up to $1,599).
Football promotions include cruises with the Philadelphia Eagles (up to $6,000) and the San Diego Chargers. The Kings hockey team offered a four-day cruise to Mexico, and the Chicago Cubs are selling spaces on a trip to the Dominican Republic with players.
Last week, for $99, the Angels offered kids a one-day baseball day camp that featured pitching lessons and autographs. Like most Angels promotional events, proceeds went to charity.
"People love having that special access," said Dennis Mannion, the Dodgers' president and chief executive officer.
In addition to the yoga session with Ethier, the team recently offered a fishing trip with pitchers Brent Leach and James McDonald. That brought in about $11,000.
Mannion said events like these could eventually bring in more money than tickets, concessions or parking. The three nights the team offered batting practice -- in which fans could work on their swing under the stadium lights -- brought in about $170,000.
Players typically get paid for their appearances unless the event is for philanthropic purposes, a Dodgers spokeswoman said.
Next year, Mannion plans to seek corporate sponsorships for the events, he said, which he hopes will drive revenues even further.
"It's all about identifying and connecting with your fan demographic," he said. The team is also continuing its regular promotions, such as fireworks on Friday nights. It will hold a second bobblehead night in celebration of colorful left fielder Manny Ramirez, despite recent revelations that he tested positive for performance-enhancing substances in 2003.
David Carter, professor of sports business at the USC Marshall School of Business, said the activities are successful because they allow people to do more than simply watch a game.
"People don't want to spend their money on a baseball game right now," Carter said. "They want to spend their money on a baseball experience."
It's a growing trend throughout professional sports, as teams look for ways to bring fans -- and their pocketbooks -- to the park, said Jon Greenberg, executive editor of Team Marketing Report, a sports marketing research firm.
"It's a good way to engage your fans," Greenberg said. "Fans feel a closer connection with the team when they interact with players."
Take yoga with Ethier. People from throughout the Los Angeles area came to blend their fascination with the Dodgers with a personal activity they enjoy.
"It was such a unique offer," said Melanie DuPre, 35, sweating as she came off the baking field. "I wanted to check it out."
DuPre made the 25-mile trip from Lomita for the event. She's a Dodgers fan, but it was the idea of practicing yoga at Dodger Stadium that lured her, despite the 95-degree heat.
Nearly all of the participants were women, and several said they were there as much to work out near the young, attractive Ethier as they were to practice their downward-facing dog pose.
Being able to do yoga with Andre was really cool," said Julia Angello, 21, of Granada Hills, who was wearing an Ethier T-shirt.
Jamie McCourt, who is married to Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and runs the team's business operations, said the team hit on the idea of a yoga promotion as a way to reach out to women, who historically have spent less on professional sports than men.
"Nobody pays attention to women in the baseball world," said McCourt, who has been trying out different ways to market the team to women. "I thought it was time we start bringing all our fans closer to the team."
The yoga event brought in about $10,000. The team said Ethier was not paid because a portion of the take went to charity, although a spokeswoman would not say how much.
Jerry Lewis, director of the Detroit Tigers' fantasy camp and other promotions, said about half the calls he gets are from women, who are buying promotional events for their husbands, boyfriends or sons.
Along with camp, which costs $3,450 for a week, fans can deliver the ball to the mound for $1,500 or work on the grounds crew.
S. Mark Young, an expert on the economics, sociology and psychology of celebrity at the USC Marshall School of Business, said fans want to attend these events for the same reason they want to be photographed with celebrities or get their autographs.
"They want to feel a part of the excitement and feel special," Young said. "Some feel like they should be in the limelight."
But some people just love the game and its players, Young said.
When the Cincinnati Reds' corporate sponsors began drying up, the team needed to find new means of replenishing its charity fund. The Reds are promoting a post-game event for Aug. 16 at which fans can meet every player and coach, and collect each autograph on a baseball, bat or jersey.
The team expects to bring in more than $100,000.
But though such promotional events can be lucrative, Carter of USC warns teams that they could overdo it.
"If people start thinking that these events are just another way for ownership to pad their wallets, then things will fall flat," Carter said.
Tyler Barnes, vice president of communications for the Milwaukee Brewers, said fans expect teams to be generating new ideas these days.
"You have to be creative to keep the team on everybody's radar," Barnes said. "You want to keep things fresh."
The Brewers began offering drive-in movies at Miller Park this season. The first showing brought in more than $8,000 in tickets alone. Barnes would not confirm exactly what they made, but if you throw in concessions and advertising, it becomes apparent why the Brewers are offering another movie night in August.
At Dodger Stadium last week, the baseball yogis toweled off and sipped water as the session ended.
A team vice president asked whether participants would be willing to pony up $100 to come back and practice yoga again at the stadium -- next time without Ethier.
More than half the hands shot up.
"Are you kidding?" said MalaWilliams, 31, a music teacher from Whittier. "I'd love to come out here again."
Census of Marine Life maps an ocean of species
The first comprehensive effort to identify and catalog every species in the world's oceans, from microbes to blue whales, is a year from completion. But early discoveries have profoundly altered understanding of life beneath the sea, senior scientists say.
New tracking tools, for example, show that some bluefin tuna migrate between Los Angeles and Yokohama, Japan; one tagged tuna crossed the Pacific three times in a year. White sharks forage even farther for food, commuting between Australia and South Africa.
Some turtles circumnavigate the Pacific, paddling from Baja to Borneo. And a gray-headed albatross -- a member of the world's most threatened family of birds -- stunned researchers when it raced around the globe in 46 days flat.
"The extent of movement and migration is way beyond what anyone had . . . even contemplated," said environmental scientist Jesse Ausubel, a co-founder of the Census of Marine Life. "What we're learning is fundamentally different from what we knew before."
Since the $650-million, decade-long project began in May 2000, researchers have used deep-sea robots, laser-based radar and super-sensitive sonar that can track fish 90 miles away.
Census teams also embarked on about 400 shipboard expeditions. They discovered life forms faster than they could verify and name -- more than 5,600 suspected new species so far, many from the hottest, coldest, saltiest and deepest parts of the oceans.
They also found a very old species, a shrimp that textbooks said had been extinct for 50 million years. The five-inch specimen, with big eyes and red spots, was found swimming a mile beneath the ocean off northeast Australia.
"It recalls the time, hundreds of years ago, when science really was about voyages of discovery," said Laurence Madin, director of research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the world's largest private, nonprofit center for marine science.
Nine years of field study -- on tropical reefs and under polar caps, on the sea floor and in the surf -- has led to sharp reappraisals of how the world works and how it is changing. Some scientists compare the search for biodiversity to the successful effort to map the human genome.
"We're taking stock for the first time on what lives in the ocean," said Poul Holm, a marine historian at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. "That is of fundamental importance to life on Earth and to human existence."
Among the findings: The abyssal plains, the inky-black, featureless ocean floor that covers more than half the planet, are not barren, lifeless deserts.
The proof came when scientists used fine-mesh sieves to trawl nearly three miles down. To their surprise, they scooped up tens of thousands of swimming snails, worms and other tiny invertebrates in almost every net. Many had never been seen before.
"Probably the greatest diversity of life is in the deep sea," said Fred Grassle, director emeritus at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "We're just beginning to learn about it."
The census, which will be released in October 2010, is cataloging even the smallest of organisms, such as bacteria and the single-celled microorganisms called archaea. Scientists suspect they play a role in the carbon and nitrogen cycles, which are crucial to sustaining life.
"We have clearly grossly underestimated the microbial diversity in the oceans," said Paul Snelgrove, an oceanographer from Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. "And that's enormously important. Those microbes do a lot of the things that keep the Earth humming along."
On the opposite end of the spectrum, researchers found huge scaly worms, manhole-sized starfish and sea spiders as big as dinner plates during expeditions to the frigid, swirling seas of the Antarctic, where the underwater carousel acts as a kind of incubator for new species.
In addition, forensic historians working on the census examined ancient Greek texts, pre-Incan pottery and even 100 years' worth of restaurant menus archived at the New York City Public Library in hopes of documenting man's impact on the world's oceans.
In Europe, they found Renaissance-era paintings of fish markets with seafood that no longer exists in local waters. In North America, customs records and captains' logbooks indicated that fishermen in the Gulf of Maine hooked 20 times more cod in 1860 than commercial fleets do today.
The bottom line: Overfishing has drastically reduced some fish populations. And many species are smaller in size than just a few decades ago.
"What we're seeing is the loss of productivity is almost everywhere, not just in a few places," said Andrew Rosenberg, a professor at the University of New Hampshire. "We've never had this kind of data."
Ausubel and Grassle hatched the idea of surveying every species in the sea while working from a ramshackle office at the Woods Hole institute in July 1996. "Almost everyone said it was crazy," said Ausubel, a senior research associate at Rockefeller University in New York.
Ignoring the skeptics, Ausubel persuaded the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to provide funding. Governments and other foundations later chipped in.
The scientists set three goals. First, they would build a global registry of every marine life form, worms to walruses, as a baseline for research and public policy. Second, they would map where each species lives and travels to better understand its habitat. Lastly, they would assess the relative abundance of each organism -- past, present and future.
Most marine biologists are specialists who work alone or in small groups. The census has changed that. About 2,000 scientists in 80 countries have joined forces in the largest collaboration in the history of ocean science.
"This was a field in need of a revolution," said Ann Bucklin, who heads the marine sciences department at the University of Connecticut. "It has opened up global oceanography."
Scientists have embraced the effort to compile a "bar code of life" that uses DNA sequencing to identify each marine species. Until now, eyeballing a crab, coral or cod was the only way to identify it. Tiny zooplankton were even tougher.
"In the past, I have spent hours and hours at the microscope looking at spines or legs or other minutiae to tell species A from species B," said Nancy Copley, a Woods Hole researcher. "Sometimes it was very hard to tell."
By next year, the online database will contain photos, DNA codes and websites for at least 230,000 unique species, including more than 16,000 fish, scientists said.
"It's going to be the Rosetta Stone for the future," said Peter Wiebe, a senior biologist at Woods Hole. "Once we know what's out there, we can build on it."
The list would be longer, but researchers used DNA analysis to cut more than 50,000 "aliases" -- different names for the same creature -- from the species list. The worst case of multiple identity was a breadcrumb sponge, Halichondria panacea, which had 56 names around the world. Now it will have one.
Though the science is crucial, said Ausubel, "in the end the beauty of the ocean is what inspires us."
"Sometimes I think it was a terrible mistake to crawl out onto the land."
New tracking tools, for example, show that some bluefin tuna migrate between Los Angeles and Yokohama, Japan; one tagged tuna crossed the Pacific three times in a year. White sharks forage even farther for food, commuting between Australia and South Africa.
Some turtles circumnavigate the Pacific, paddling from Baja to Borneo. And a gray-headed albatross -- a member of the world's most threatened family of birds -- stunned researchers when it raced around the globe in 46 days flat.
"The extent of movement and migration is way beyond what anyone had . . . even contemplated," said environmental scientist Jesse Ausubel, a co-founder of the Census of Marine Life. "What we're learning is fundamentally different from what we knew before."
Since the $650-million, decade-long project began in May 2000, researchers have used deep-sea robots, laser-based radar and super-sensitive sonar that can track fish 90 miles away.
Census teams also embarked on about 400 shipboard expeditions. They discovered life forms faster than they could verify and name -- more than 5,600 suspected new species so far, many from the hottest, coldest, saltiest and deepest parts of the oceans.
They also found a very old species, a shrimp that textbooks said had been extinct for 50 million years. The five-inch specimen, with big eyes and red spots, was found swimming a mile beneath the ocean off northeast Australia.
"It recalls the time, hundreds of years ago, when science really was about voyages of discovery," said Laurence Madin, director of research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the world's largest private, nonprofit center for marine science.
Nine years of field study -- on tropical reefs and under polar caps, on the sea floor and in the surf -- has led to sharp reappraisals of how the world works and how it is changing. Some scientists compare the search for biodiversity to the successful effort to map the human genome.
"We're taking stock for the first time on what lives in the ocean," said Poul Holm, a marine historian at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. "That is of fundamental importance to life on Earth and to human existence."
Among the findings: The abyssal plains, the inky-black, featureless ocean floor that covers more than half the planet, are not barren, lifeless deserts.
The proof came when scientists used fine-mesh sieves to trawl nearly three miles down. To their surprise, they scooped up tens of thousands of swimming snails, worms and other tiny invertebrates in almost every net. Many had never been seen before.
"Probably the greatest diversity of life is in the deep sea," said Fred Grassle, director emeritus at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "We're just beginning to learn about it."
The census, which will be released in October 2010, is cataloging even the smallest of organisms, such as bacteria and the single-celled microorganisms called archaea. Scientists suspect they play a role in the carbon and nitrogen cycles, which are crucial to sustaining life.
"We have clearly grossly underestimated the microbial diversity in the oceans," said Paul Snelgrove, an oceanographer from Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. "And that's enormously important. Those microbes do a lot of the things that keep the Earth humming along."
On the opposite end of the spectrum, researchers found huge scaly worms, manhole-sized starfish and sea spiders as big as dinner plates during expeditions to the frigid, swirling seas of the Antarctic, where the underwater carousel acts as a kind of incubator for new species.
In addition, forensic historians working on the census examined ancient Greek texts, pre-Incan pottery and even 100 years' worth of restaurant menus archived at the New York City Public Library in hopes of documenting man's impact on the world's oceans.
In Europe, they found Renaissance-era paintings of fish markets with seafood that no longer exists in local waters. In North America, customs records and captains' logbooks indicated that fishermen in the Gulf of Maine hooked 20 times more cod in 1860 than commercial fleets do today.
The bottom line: Overfishing has drastically reduced some fish populations. And many species are smaller in size than just a few decades ago.
"What we're seeing is the loss of productivity is almost everywhere, not just in a few places," said Andrew Rosenberg, a professor at the University of New Hampshire. "We've never had this kind of data."
Ausubel and Grassle hatched the idea of surveying every species in the sea while working from a ramshackle office at the Woods Hole institute in July 1996. "Almost everyone said it was crazy," said Ausubel, a senior research associate at Rockefeller University in New York.
Ignoring the skeptics, Ausubel persuaded the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to provide funding. Governments and other foundations later chipped in.
The scientists set three goals. First, they would build a global registry of every marine life form, worms to walruses, as a baseline for research and public policy. Second, they would map where each species lives and travels to better understand its habitat. Lastly, they would assess the relative abundance of each organism -- past, present and future.
Most marine biologists are specialists who work alone or in small groups. The census has changed that. About 2,000 scientists in 80 countries have joined forces in the largest collaboration in the history of ocean science.
"This was a field in need of a revolution," said Ann Bucklin, who heads the marine sciences department at the University of Connecticut. "It has opened up global oceanography."
Scientists have embraced the effort to compile a "bar code of life" that uses DNA sequencing to identify each marine species. Until now, eyeballing a crab, coral or cod was the only way to identify it. Tiny zooplankton were even tougher.
"In the past, I have spent hours and hours at the microscope looking at spines or legs or other minutiae to tell species A from species B," said Nancy Copley, a Woods Hole researcher. "Sometimes it was very hard to tell."
By next year, the online database will contain photos, DNA codes and websites for at least 230,000 unique species, including more than 16,000 fish, scientists said.
"It's going to be the Rosetta Stone for the future," said Peter Wiebe, a senior biologist at Woods Hole. "Once we know what's out there, we can build on it."
The list would be longer, but researchers used DNA analysis to cut more than 50,000 "aliases" -- different names for the same creature -- from the species list. The worst case of multiple identity was a breadcrumb sponge, Halichondria panacea, which had 56 names around the world. Now it will have one.
Though the science is crucial, said Ausubel, "in the end the beauty of the ocean is what inspires us."
"Sometimes I think it was a terrible mistake to crawl out onto the land."
GREENSPACE
Environmentalists tend to avoid the topic of population control. Too touchy. But the politically incorrect issue is becoming unavoidable as the global population lurches toward a predicted 9 billion people by mid-century. Will there be enough food? Enough water? Will planet-heating carbon dioxide gas become ever more uncontrollable?
Now comes a study by statisticians at Oregon State University focusing on the elephant in the room.
The findings: If you are concerned about your carbon footprint, think birth control.
The greenhouse gas impact of a child is almost 20 times more significant than the amount any American would save by such practices as driving a fuel-efficient car, recycling or using energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances, according to Paul Murtaugh, an Oregon State professor of statistics. Under current U.S. consumption patterns, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of CO2 to the carbon legacy of an average parent -- about 5.7 times a person's lifetime emissions, he calculates.
"Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth," Murtaugh said. "Future growth amplifies the consequences of people's reproductive choices, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance."
Given the higher per-capita consumption of developed nations, the study found that the impact of a child born in the U.S., along with all his or her descendants, is more than 160 times that of a Bangladeshi child. And the long-term impact of a Chinese child is less than one-fifth the impact of a U.S.-born child. But as China, India and other developing nations hurtle toward prosperity, that is likely to change.
-- Margot Roosevelt
College students compete for best 100% solar home
While some college students are soaking up rays at the beach this summer, students at Santa Clara University and California College of the Arts have found a different use for the sun's energy.
About 200 undergraduates have been designing and building a house that will run entirely on solar energy as part of the Department of Energy's 2009 Solar Decathlon. Team California is the only team from the West Coast and one of 20 teams competing from around the world.
The team's Refract House will feature a working dishwasher, television and washer and dryer, in addition to a radiant system that runs water under the floor and through the ceiling to cool and heat the house. Unlike some box-shaped solar houses, which team leader Preet Anand says are "hyper-efficient but boring," Refract House is shaped like a "bent tube." The walls are made of used billboards, which will be covered with salvaged redwood panels.
Santa Clara came in third in the 2007 competition, and Team California hopes to win the competition in Washington, D.C., this year. In order to get there, the team will have to break apart the modular home, load it onto trucks and drive it to the National Mall.
Although travel and marketing expenses have ratcheted the project's cost up to an estimated $1.3 million, some of the features, such as a system that recirculates water from sinks and showers, would cost a buyer less than $1,000.
After the competition, the home will sit on the lawn of San Jose City Hall, where Anand hopes it can motivate passersby.
"It's an inspiration for people," Anand said. "We're students. If we can do this, all those professionals and architects out there can too."
-- Amy Littlefield
Greenpeace paints mocking moniker on roof of HP building
Let this be a lesson to electronics companies everywhere: If you don't fulfill your pledge to remove toxic materials from your products, Greenpeace is going to paint your roof.
Luckily, they'll use nontoxic finger paint. The negative advertising, visible to passing birds and helicopters, won't last longer than the time it takes to power-wash it away.
It took about 10 minutes for a handful of activists to complete the mission, Greenpeace International toxics campaigner Casey Harrell said. Dressed in hazmat suits and armed with motorized paint-sprayers, they scaled the building with industrial-strength ladders and blasted the words "Hazardous Products" on the roof of Hewlett-Packard's Palo Alto headquarters. And they didn't even get arrested.
The action followed demands by Greenpeace that the company fulfill a promise to stop using hazardous materials such as PVC plastics and brominated flame retardants, which have been linked to thyroid hormone disruption in animals.
"Greenpeace will not stand idly by while companies that commit to environmentally responsible action backtrack on commitments," Harrell said in a statement Tuesday. "As the No. 1 seller of PCs worldwide, HP has both the responsibility and the ability to make sure the company no longer deserves the moniker 'Hazardous Products.' "
HP said in a statement that the company was committed to eliminating brominated flame retardants and PVC from its PC products by the end of 2011, according to wire reports.
-- Amy Littlefield
Utility pays U.S. a $14.75-million wildfire settlement
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is paying the U.S. Forest Service $14.75 million to settle damage claims stemming from a 1999 forest fire in Northern California.
The payment is the second largest of its kind to the agency, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. Last year the Forest Service won a $102-million settlement from Union Pacific Railroad Co. in a lawsuit involving another Northern California wildfire.
Downed power lines have been blamed for a number of destructive wildfires in the state, including last year's Sesnon fire in the San Fernando Valley, several of the 2007 blazes in San Diego County and the Malibu Canyon fire that same year.
The October 1999 Pendola fire started on private land when a pine tree fell on a transmission line. The line shorted out, igniting the tree. A total of 11,725 acres burned, about a third of which was in the Tahoe and Plumas national forests.
The fire burned for 11 days and cost $4.2 million to fight. More than $10 million of the settlement is compensation for natural resources damage. Most of the payment will go to Plumas and Tahoe.
The settlement was reached through mediation without a lawsuit. "We're happy to have reached a resolution with the Forest Service and we regret the damage caused by this incident," said PG&E spokesman Brian Swanson.
The government said that the pine was rotten and hazardous and that the utility should have inspected and removed the tree to keep it from crashing onto the line.
In the past decade, Swanson said PG&E has stepped up inspections of distribution lines and now spends about $170 million a year on vegetation management. The utility's contractors trim or cut 6,000 trees a day along 132,000 miles of overhead power lines, he added.
In Southern California, San Diego Gas & Electric is proposing to turn off power to customers living in high fire-hazard zones when severe Santa Ana winds pose a risk of toppling power lines.
About 60,000 customers live in the hazard zones in eastern San Diego County, but the utility estimates no more than 10,000 would be affected at any time. The shut-downs would probably be necessary once or twice a year.
Now comes a study by statisticians at Oregon State University focusing on the elephant in the room.
The findings: If you are concerned about your carbon footprint, think birth control.
The greenhouse gas impact of a child is almost 20 times more significant than the amount any American would save by such practices as driving a fuel-efficient car, recycling or using energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances, according to Paul Murtaugh, an Oregon State professor of statistics. Under current U.S. consumption patterns, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of CO2 to the carbon legacy of an average parent -- about 5.7 times a person's lifetime emissions, he calculates.
"Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth," Murtaugh said. "Future growth amplifies the consequences of people's reproductive choices, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance."
Given the higher per-capita consumption of developed nations, the study found that the impact of a child born in the U.S., along with all his or her descendants, is more than 160 times that of a Bangladeshi child. And the long-term impact of a Chinese child is less than one-fifth the impact of a U.S.-born child. But as China, India and other developing nations hurtle toward prosperity, that is likely to change.
-- Margot Roosevelt
College students compete for best 100% solar home
While some college students are soaking up rays at the beach this summer, students at Santa Clara University and California College of the Arts have found a different use for the sun's energy.
About 200 undergraduates have been designing and building a house that will run entirely on solar energy as part of the Department of Energy's 2009 Solar Decathlon. Team California is the only team from the West Coast and one of 20 teams competing from around the world.
The team's Refract House will feature a working dishwasher, television and washer and dryer, in addition to a radiant system that runs water under the floor and through the ceiling to cool and heat the house. Unlike some box-shaped solar houses, which team leader Preet Anand says are "hyper-efficient but boring," Refract House is shaped like a "bent tube." The walls are made of used billboards, which will be covered with salvaged redwood panels.
Santa Clara came in third in the 2007 competition, and Team California hopes to win the competition in Washington, D.C., this year. In order to get there, the team will have to break apart the modular home, load it onto trucks and drive it to the National Mall.
Although travel and marketing expenses have ratcheted the project's cost up to an estimated $1.3 million, some of the features, such as a system that recirculates water from sinks and showers, would cost a buyer less than $1,000.
After the competition, the home will sit on the lawn of San Jose City Hall, where Anand hopes it can motivate passersby.
"It's an inspiration for people," Anand said. "We're students. If we can do this, all those professionals and architects out there can too."
-- Amy Littlefield
Greenpeace paints mocking moniker on roof of HP building
Let this be a lesson to electronics companies everywhere: If you don't fulfill your pledge to remove toxic materials from your products, Greenpeace is going to paint your roof.
Luckily, they'll use nontoxic finger paint. The negative advertising, visible to passing birds and helicopters, won't last longer than the time it takes to power-wash it away.
It took about 10 minutes for a handful of activists to complete the mission, Greenpeace International toxics campaigner Casey Harrell said. Dressed in hazmat suits and armed with motorized paint-sprayers, they scaled the building with industrial-strength ladders and blasted the words "Hazardous Products" on the roof of Hewlett-Packard's Palo Alto headquarters. And they didn't even get arrested.
The action followed demands by Greenpeace that the company fulfill a promise to stop using hazardous materials such as PVC plastics and brominated flame retardants, which have been linked to thyroid hormone disruption in animals.
"Greenpeace will not stand idly by while companies that commit to environmentally responsible action backtrack on commitments," Harrell said in a statement Tuesday. "As the No. 1 seller of PCs worldwide, HP has both the responsibility and the ability to make sure the company no longer deserves the moniker 'Hazardous Products.' "
HP said in a statement that the company was committed to eliminating brominated flame retardants and PVC from its PC products by the end of 2011, according to wire reports.
-- Amy Littlefield
Utility pays U.S. a $14.75-million wildfire settlement
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is paying the U.S. Forest Service $14.75 million to settle damage claims stemming from a 1999 forest fire in Northern California.
The payment is the second largest of its kind to the agency, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. Last year the Forest Service won a $102-million settlement from Union Pacific Railroad Co. in a lawsuit involving another Northern California wildfire.
Downed power lines have been blamed for a number of destructive wildfires in the state, including last year's Sesnon fire in the San Fernando Valley, several of the 2007 blazes in San Diego County and the Malibu Canyon fire that same year.
The October 1999 Pendola fire started on private land when a pine tree fell on a transmission line. The line shorted out, igniting the tree. A total of 11,725 acres burned, about a third of which was in the Tahoe and Plumas national forests.
The fire burned for 11 days and cost $4.2 million to fight. More than $10 million of the settlement is compensation for natural resources damage. Most of the payment will go to Plumas and Tahoe.
The settlement was reached through mediation without a lawsuit. "We're happy to have reached a resolution with the Forest Service and we regret the damage caused by this incident," said PG&E spokesman Brian Swanson.
The government said that the pine was rotten and hazardous and that the utility should have inspected and removed the tree to keep it from crashing onto the line.
In the past decade, Swanson said PG&E has stepped up inspections of distribution lines and now spends about $170 million a year on vegetation management. The utility's contractors trim or cut 6,000 trees a day along 132,000 miles of overhead power lines, he added.
In Southern California, San Diego Gas & Electric is proposing to turn off power to customers living in high fire-hazard zones when severe Santa Ana winds pose a risk of toppling power lines.
About 60,000 customers live in the hazard zones in eastern San Diego County, but the utility estimates no more than 10,000 would be affected at any time. The shut-downs would probably be necessary once or twice a year.
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