Africa needs 65 billion dollars (44 billion euros) to deal with the effects of global warming, Burkina Faso's environment minister said Friday at the opening of a special forum on climate change.
The seventh World Forum on Sustainable Development comes just two months before a critical UN climate summit in Copenhagen set to seal a planet-saving global deal.
"We think 65 billion dollars are needed to deal with the effects of climate change on a continental scale. That is to say that our expectations are very high," Salifou Sawadogo, one of the forum's organisers, told AFP at the opening of the event.
At the forum organised by the government of Burkina Faso together with the United Nations and the African Union, several African heads of state will meet key policy makers to discuss the opportunities climate change could offer for sustainable development.
Experts say Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the regions most affected by global warming. The World Bank estimates that the developing world will suffer about 80 percent of the damage of climate change despite accounting for only around one third of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
"We are all on the same planet so there is a duty of solidarity to help the most vulnerable countries, like we are, implement policies to adapt to climate change," Sawadogo said.
His comments come as crunch UN climate talks held in Bangkok drew to a close Friday with the rift between the rich and the poor countries still wide open.
A key point of contention remains how much money wealthy nations are willing to cough up to help developing ones deal with climate change
Friday, October 9, 2009
Pennsylvania DEP releases Climate Change Action Plan
A decade from now, Pennsylvania should have its greenhouse gas emissions at 30 percent below 2000 levels, according to the Climate Change Action Plan released Friday by the Department of Environmental Protection.
Actually, the state can go as low as 42 percent below, if the governor and Legislature heed the advice of the panel’s 52 recommendations.The Climate Change Advisory Committee is a consortium of about two dozen government, industry and environmental interests assembled by Act 70, the Pennsylvania Climate Change Act of 2008, and tasked with producing an action plan.
If all suggested measures are implemented, Pennsylvania will add 65,000 new jobs and more than $6 billion to its gross state product 2020, the report states.
The Keystone state accounts for 1 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions attributed to human activity.
Sorted by sector — residential and commercial, electricity, industry, waste, land use and transportation, agriculture, and forestry — the report shows that all but two will see millions of dollars in savings by 2020, with an $11.7 billion cumulative decrease in the cost of operations if all recommendations are adopted.
The notable exceptions include electricity, reforms to which are projected to total around $1 billion by 2020, largely due to a $832 million plan to bring on a new nuclear power plant and a $300 million price tag for carbon capture and sequestration work.
While in a decade the transportation sector is expected to be seeing annual net savings, it will take about $2.8 billion by 2020 to implement plants to reform that field.
Climate Change Program Manager Joe Sherrick said the recommendations will likely serve as a pot of ideas from which the government can pull at will.
“We don’t expect that these will be implemented as they are written,” Sherrick said. “These are nonbinding targets. These are things that we will strive for.”
The plan will be updated every three years.
Some of the committee’s recommendations include capturing the methane released during coal mining operations and using it as an energy source, introducing pay-as-you-drive insurance to encourage driving less, and replacing lighting systems in residential and commercial buildings, which are “responsible for approximately 34 percent of all gross greenhouse gas emissions in Pennsylvania.”
Not all of the groups’ members agreed to the goal of a 30 percent reduction. George Ellis, president of the Pennsylvania Coal Association, said the idea of issuing a target was brought up for a vote during the committee’s last meeting Sept. 16. He and the other six members representing the business community voted against it.
Ellis said the committee, which has been meeting for more than a year, has failed to show “the diversity of opinion” in the scientific community when it comes to global warming.“I don’t think there is a scientific consensus on climate change,” Ellis said. “I believe the (committee’s) impact assessment report was biased toward the prevailing view of climate change as a problem in need of an immediate solution.”
He also criticized the “rosy scenarios” for renewable energy goals, which Ellis said fail to account for deficits in technology and availability.
When the business representatives on the committee did vote with the majority, they did so to move the process forward, and were still uncomfortable with what Ellis said was a lack of Pennsylvania-specific information, he said.
Pennsylvania DEP releases Climate Change Action Plan
A decade from now, Pennsylvania should have its greenhouse gas emissions at 30 percent below 2000 levels, according to the Climate Change Action Plan released Friday by the Department of Environmental Protection.
Actually, the state can go as low as 42 percent below, if the governor and Legislature heed the advice of the panel’s 52 recommendations.The Climate Change Advisory Committee is a consortium of about two dozen government, industry and environmental interests assembled by Act 70, the Pennsylvania Climate Change Act of 2008, and tasked with producing an action plan.
If all suggested measures are implemented, Pennsylvania will add 65,000 new jobs and more than $6 billion to its gross state product 2020, the report states.
The Keystone state accounts for 1 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions attributed to human activity.
Sorted by sector — residential and commercial, electricity, industry, waste, land use and transportation, agriculture, and forestry — the report shows that all but two will see millions of dollars in savings by 2020, with an $11.7 billion cumulative decrease in the cost of operations if all recommendations are adopted.
The notable exceptions include electricity, reforms to which are projected to total around $1 billion by 2020, largely due to a $832 million plan to bring on a new nuclear power plant and a $300 million price tag for carbon capture and sequestration work.
While in a decade the transportation sector is expected to be seeing annual net savings, it will take about $2.8 billion by 2020 to implement plants to reform that field.
Climate Change Program Manager Joe Sherrick said the recommendations will likely serve as a pot of ideas from which the government can pull at will.
“We don’t expect that these will be implemented as they are written,” Sherrick said. “These are nonbinding targets. These are things that we will strive for.”
The plan will be updated every three years.
Some of the committee’s recommendations include capturing the methane released during coal mining operations and using it as an energy source, introducing pay-as-you-drive insurance to encourage driving less, and replacing lighting systems in residential and commercial buildings, which are “responsible for approximately 34 percent of all gross greenhouse gas emissions in Pennsylvania.”
Not all of the groups’ members agreed to the goal of a 30 percent reduction. George Ellis, president of the Pennsylvania Coal Association, said the idea of issuing a target was brought up for a vote during the committee’s last meeting Sept. 16. He and the other six members representing the business community voted against it.
Ellis said the committee, which has been meeting for more than a year, has failed to show “the diversity of opinion” in the scientific community when it comes to global warming.“I don’t think there is a scientific consensus on climate change,” Ellis said. “I believe the (committee’s) impact assessment report was biased toward the prevailing view of climate change as a problem in need of an immediate solution.”
He also criticized the “rosy scenarios” for renewable energy goals, which Ellis said fail to account for deficits in technology and availability.
When the business representatives on the committee did vote with the majority, they did so to move the process forward, and were still uncomfortable with what Ellis said was a lack of Pennsylvania-specific information, he said.
Potholes in Road to Copenhagen Climate Accord Widen During Bangkok Talks
Norway unveiled an aggressive new emissions target yesterday, a move that environmental groups acknowledged is unlikely to prod new U.S. action but that many described as one of the few positive developments in a contentious, down-to-the-wire negotiating The announcement of a 40 percent reduction goal from the oil-rich Scandanavian country came as nations wrapped up a difficult two weeks of U.N. climate talks in Bangkok. The final days were marked with tension as developing nations walked out of a meeting, accusing the United States of trying to "destroy" the 1997 Kyoto Protocol upon which talks for a new global treaty had been based. "The European Union, Australia, Japan, the rest of the developed countries need to rise up to the challenge rather than race to the bottom with the United States," said Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the G-77.
As nations try to craft a new international agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, the fight over what legal form the document will take has emerged as a technical but critical point.
Developing nations insist that nations are negotiating a second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol, the first part of which ends in 2012. Under the set of rules outlined in that 12-year-old agreement, industrialized countries must slash their CO2 emissions, but developing nations -- even fast-growing ones like China and India -- are under no such obligation.
The United States never became a party to Kyoto, largely because of that omission. Since President Obama took office in January, administration officials have pledged to become part of a new international agreement. But they have also consistently called for a new deal to replace Kyoto. America's terms: Major developing nations must make legally binding commitments to temper their own global warming pollution.
In Bangkok this week, U.S. officials openly floated the idea of a new system of national climate plans. Meanwhile, State Department deputy climate envoy Jonathan Pershing explicitly said Kyoto should be scrapped.
U.S. accused of sabotaging Kyoto pact
"We are not going to be part of an agreement that we cannot meet," he told reporters. "Things have changed since Kyoto. Where countries were in 1990 and today is very different. We cannot be stuck with an agreement 20 years old. We want action from all countries."
The European Union backed the United States in its position, and G-77 countries walked out of a meeting, with some leaders charging America with trying to scuttle the climate talks.
Remi Moncel, a climate program associate with the World Resources Institute think tank, said developing countries remain unsure whether the new formula the United States is floating will still be legally binding for developed nations. They also worry about losing the principle enshrined in Kyoto that says poor countries' rights to development should not be hampered by climate change commitments.
"It was sort of assumed by developing countries that the Kyoto Protocol would be maintained for all developed countries, and something would be worked out for the United States," Moncel said. "Developing countries don't want to be put in the same legal instrument that is used for developed countries."
Despite significant domestic action in recent months by China, India, Brazil and others, the international negotiating positions of developing countries remains unchanged: Industrialized nations caused climate change, and they should be the ones to fix it.
"Developing countries are prepared to do their fair share as a contribution to the global effort. However, the reality that we face is that the cause of the fundamental emissions which result in global warming are to a large extent the responsibility ... of developed countries," Alf Wills, South Africa's top climate negotiator, said at a press conference.
'A frustrating situation for everybody'
Jennifer Haverkamp, a senior counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund, called it a "frustrating situation for everybody," and also noted that the United States has made some constructive proposals on technology and financing to help developing countries prepare for climate impacts.
"You're at a point in the negotiatings where you see a lot of posturing," Haverkamp said.
"The U.S. has hinted at this type of position before, and now it's becoming more clear. That's part of the cause for all the debate," added Moncel.
Meanwhile, they and other environmental activists lauded Norway's pledge. Moncel called it a gust of "fresh air" into the climate talks.
Norway, which gets most of its energy from clean hydroelectric power, previously had committed unconditionally to slashing emissions 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Its new pledge is to cut greenhouse gas output by 40 percent if an international agreement is reached in Copenhagen this December. The cut is in line with what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said is needed for nations to keep warming to 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.
Hanne Bjurstrøm, leading Norway's negotiating team, told E&E that roughly two-thirds of the cuts would be made domestically, with the remaining cuts likely coming from international offsets.
"It will increase the pressure to some extent" on other developed countries to act more aggressively, Bjurstrøm said. But, she also noted, "you shouldn't exaggerate that, because we are a very small country and a rich country."
As nations try to craft a new international agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, the fight over what legal form the document will take has emerged as a technical but critical point.
Developing nations insist that nations are negotiating a second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol, the first part of which ends in 2012. Under the set of rules outlined in that 12-year-old agreement, industrialized countries must slash their CO2 emissions, but developing nations -- even fast-growing ones like China and India -- are under no such obligation.
The United States never became a party to Kyoto, largely because of that omission. Since President Obama took office in January, administration officials have pledged to become part of a new international agreement. But they have also consistently called for a new deal to replace Kyoto. America's terms: Major developing nations must make legally binding commitments to temper their own global warming pollution.
In Bangkok this week, U.S. officials openly floated the idea of a new system of national climate plans. Meanwhile, State Department deputy climate envoy Jonathan Pershing explicitly said Kyoto should be scrapped.
U.S. accused of sabotaging Kyoto pact
"We are not going to be part of an agreement that we cannot meet," he told reporters. "Things have changed since Kyoto. Where countries were in 1990 and today is very different. We cannot be stuck with an agreement 20 years old. We want action from all countries."
The European Union backed the United States in its position, and G-77 countries walked out of a meeting, with some leaders charging America with trying to scuttle the climate talks.
Remi Moncel, a climate program associate with the World Resources Institute think tank, said developing countries remain unsure whether the new formula the United States is floating will still be legally binding for developed nations. They also worry about losing the principle enshrined in Kyoto that says poor countries' rights to development should not be hampered by climate change commitments.
"It was sort of assumed by developing countries that the Kyoto Protocol would be maintained for all developed countries, and something would be worked out for the United States," Moncel said. "Developing countries don't want to be put in the same legal instrument that is used for developed countries."
Despite significant domestic action in recent months by China, India, Brazil and others, the international negotiating positions of developing countries remains unchanged: Industrialized nations caused climate change, and they should be the ones to fix it.
"Developing countries are prepared to do their fair share as a contribution to the global effort. However, the reality that we face is that the cause of the fundamental emissions which result in global warming are to a large extent the responsibility ... of developed countries," Alf Wills, South Africa's top climate negotiator, said at a press conference.
'A frustrating situation for everybody'
Jennifer Haverkamp, a senior counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund, called it a "frustrating situation for everybody," and also noted that the United States has made some constructive proposals on technology and financing to help developing countries prepare for climate impacts.
"You're at a point in the negotiatings where you see a lot of posturing," Haverkamp said.
"The U.S. has hinted at this type of position before, and now it's becoming more clear. That's part of the cause for all the debate," added Moncel.
Meanwhile, they and other environmental activists lauded Norway's pledge. Moncel called it a gust of "fresh air" into the climate talks.
Norway, which gets most of its energy from clean hydroelectric power, previously had committed unconditionally to slashing emissions 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Its new pledge is to cut greenhouse gas output by 40 percent if an international agreement is reached in Copenhagen this December. The cut is in line with what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said is needed for nations to keep warming to 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.
Hanne Bjurstrøm, leading Norway's negotiating team, told E&E that roughly two-thirds of the cuts would be made domestically, with the remaining cuts likely coming from international offsets.
"It will increase the pressure to some extent" on other developed countries to act more aggressively, Bjurstrøm said. But, she also noted, "you shouldn't exaggerate that, because we are a very small country and a rich country."
U.S. Chamber of Commerce shrugs off defections
The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday brushed off decisions by a string of high-profile companies to break with the nation's leading business organization over what they considered its backward-looking position on global warming.
The companies, which included Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and computer giant Apple Inc., announced they were leaving the chamber after one of its officials said it planned to stage the environmental equivalent of the "Scopes monkey trial" -- a reference to an early 20th century court case in which prosecutors attacked the scientific foundations of the theory of evolution.
Chamber President Tom Donohue said he was "not particularly worried" about the companies' departure, blaming their actions on an "orchestrated pressure campaign" by environmental groups.
In addition to PG&E and Apple, PNM Resources Inc., a New Mexico utility company, and Exelon Corp., based in Chicago and the nation's largest power company, have quit the U.S. chamber entirely. Sports footwear maker Nike Inc. resigned from the group's board of directors but remains a member.
The companies that left have largely argued that business should come to terms with the future implications of climate change and seek ways to prosper in a greener environment. The chamber, and many of its members, have argued that policies that attack climate change too aggressively could cost jobs, hurt profits and raise consumer prices -- weakening an already battered economy.
The chamber opposed the climate bill that passed the House, but Donohue said at a news briefing that the organization favored what he called sensible legislation designed to curb climate change without impeding job growth -- possibly including a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The group has also threatened to sue the Environmental Protection Agency over proposed greenhouse gas regulations the chamber says could bring the American economy to its knees.
Donohue has worked to distance the chamber from the source of the Scopes remark, which has plagued the group since late August, when a chamber vice president, William Kovacs, said in an interview with the Tribune Washington bureau that the group was pushing for a Scopes monkey trial on whether global warming truly endangers human health.
On Thursday, Donohue called those comments unfortunate and said they went too far.
"We are not arguing the science" of global warming, he said. "You are not going to get me to go against the science because, by the way, I know a lot of things, but I don't know about the science."
Environmentalists, who frequently clash with the chamber on policy issues, have sought to capitalize on the Scopes remark.
The Natural Resources Defense Council has issued news releases celebrating each defection from the chamber, and it has launched an accompanying ad campaign online and in print this week.
The chamber has responded, first with a news release reiterating its support for "sensible" climate legislation, then with an aggressive response to Apple this week that accused the company of having its facts wrong on the chamber's climate stance.
"We're not changing where we are" because of the companies that have left the group, Donohue said. "We thought long and hard about what was important here, and we're not going anywhere."
He said there was "almost nobody" among the chamber's 3 million members pushing for changes in the organization's climate policy.
He said the chamber would continue to pressure the EPA to be transparent about the research it is using as a basis of greenhouse gas regulations. But he raised the possibility of amending a complaint against the EPA to remove passages that questioned whether rising temperatures would erode human health.
"The chamber believes that if EPA continues down a regulatory path that will impact virtually the entire economy, it should be as transparent as possible and explain how it arrived at its decision," said chamber spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel.
Environmentalists rejected the distinction.
"You can't say the science of global warming is fine, but the science behind [EPA regulation] is not," said Josh Dorner, a spokesman for Clean Energy Works, a consortium of groups pushing for climate legislation. "That's a distinction without a difference."
The companies, which included Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and computer giant Apple Inc., announced they were leaving the chamber after one of its officials said it planned to stage the environmental equivalent of the "Scopes monkey trial" -- a reference to an early 20th century court case in which prosecutors attacked the scientific foundations of the theory of evolution.
Chamber President Tom Donohue said he was "not particularly worried" about the companies' departure, blaming their actions on an "orchestrated pressure campaign" by environmental groups.
In addition to PG&E and Apple, PNM Resources Inc., a New Mexico utility company, and Exelon Corp., based in Chicago and the nation's largest power company, have quit the U.S. chamber entirely. Sports footwear maker Nike Inc. resigned from the group's board of directors but remains a member.
The companies that left have largely argued that business should come to terms with the future implications of climate change and seek ways to prosper in a greener environment. The chamber, and many of its members, have argued that policies that attack climate change too aggressively could cost jobs, hurt profits and raise consumer prices -- weakening an already battered economy.
The chamber opposed the climate bill that passed the House, but Donohue said at a news briefing that the organization favored what he called sensible legislation designed to curb climate change without impeding job growth -- possibly including a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The group has also threatened to sue the Environmental Protection Agency over proposed greenhouse gas regulations the chamber says could bring the American economy to its knees.
Donohue has worked to distance the chamber from the source of the Scopes remark, which has plagued the group since late August, when a chamber vice president, William Kovacs, said in an interview with the Tribune Washington bureau that the group was pushing for a Scopes monkey trial on whether global warming truly endangers human health.
On Thursday, Donohue called those comments unfortunate and said they went too far.
"We are not arguing the science" of global warming, he said. "You are not going to get me to go against the science because, by the way, I know a lot of things, but I don't know about the science."
Environmentalists, who frequently clash with the chamber on policy issues, have sought to capitalize on the Scopes remark.
The Natural Resources Defense Council has issued news releases celebrating each defection from the chamber, and it has launched an accompanying ad campaign online and in print this week.
The chamber has responded, first with a news release reiterating its support for "sensible" climate legislation, then with an aggressive response to Apple this week that accused the company of having its facts wrong on the chamber's climate stance.
"We're not changing where we are" because of the companies that have left the group, Donohue said. "We thought long and hard about what was important here, and we're not going anywhere."
He said there was "almost nobody" among the chamber's 3 million members pushing for changes in the organization's climate policy.
He said the chamber would continue to pressure the EPA to be transparent about the research it is using as a basis of greenhouse gas regulations. But he raised the possibility of amending a complaint against the EPA to remove passages that questioned whether rising temperatures would erode human health.
"The chamber believes that if EPA continues down a regulatory path that will impact virtually the entire economy, it should be as transparent as possible and explain how it arrived at its decision," said chamber spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel.
Environmentalists rejected the distinction.
"You can't say the science of global warming is fine, but the science behind [EPA regulation] is not," said Josh Dorner, a spokesman for Clean Energy Works, a consortium of groups pushing for climate legislation. "That's a distinction without a difference."
Virus discovery called breakthrough in fight against chronic fatigue syndrome
In what may prove to be the first major breakthrough in the fight against the mysterious and controversial disorder known as chronic fatigue syndrome, researchers reported Thursday that they had found traces of a virus in the vast majority of affected patients.
The same virus has previously been identified in at least a quarter of prostate tumors, particularly those that are very aggressive, and has also been linked to certain types of cancers of the blood.
It remains possible that the virus, known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV, is a so-called passenger virus that is simply infecting patients whose immune systems have been suppressed by other causes. But the new findings were sufficiently alarming that the National Cancer Institute called together a group of experts in August to consider its potential effect on public health.
"We are in the very early days," said Stuart Le Grice, director of the National Cancer Institute's Center of Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Cancer Virology, who organized the meeting but was not involved in the new study. "The data need to be confirmed and repeated. . . . We need to know that it is a cause and not just a passenger. In a sense, we are at the same stage as we were when HIV was first discovered. Hopefully, we can take advantage of what we learned from working with it."
Le Grice emphasized, however, that traces of the virus had been found in blood samples preserved for 25 years. "This is not associated with a new and spreading disease. We are not on the verge of an epidemic," he said.
Chronic fatigue syndrome, which affects at least 1 million Americans and more than 17 million people worldwide, is characterized by debilitating fatigue, chronic pain and depression, as well as other symptoms. Many doctors have argued that it is not a real disorder because there have previously been no biochemical markers that characterize it. The only effective treatments are behavioral changes and antidepressants, and they are of limited benefit.
Chronic fatigue syndrome has been theoretically linked to a variety of other viruses, including Epstein-Barr virus and human herpesvirus 6, but none have been found in a significant proportion of patients. Today's findings could explain why.
Like HIV, which causes a constellation of symptoms, XMRV is a retrovirus; retroviruses are known to suppress the immune system, making it easier for other viruses to establish a beachhead.
Dr. William C. Reeves, who heads chronic fatigue syndrome research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cautioned against racing to conclusions based on the findings, even though he characterized them as promising.
"It is almost unheard of to find an association of this magnitude in any study of an infectious agent and a well-defined disease, much less an [ill-defined] illness like chronic fatigue syndrome," he said in an e-mail. It is extremely difficult to prove causation with a ubiquitous virus like XMRV, and it "is even more difficult in the case of CFS, which represents a clinically and epidemiologically complex illness," he said.
The new study was organized by Judy A. Mikovits, director of research at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro Immune Disease, a small, 3-year-old institute on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno.
Others involved in the study included cancer biologist Robert H. Silverman of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, who discovered XMRV three years ago and was the first to link it to prostate cancer, and Francis Ruscetti of the laboratory of experimental immunology at the National Cancer Institute, where Mikovits worked for 20 years.
The team reported in the online version of the journal Science that they found the virus in 68 of 101 blood samples from patients with the syndrome, but in only eight of 218 healthy patients.
In a telephone interview, Mikovits said they had also found antibodies against the virus in 95% of the chronic fatigue syndrome patients. Experts noted that no test was perfect at identifying all cases of an infection, and the antibody tests Mikovits used were being refined.
"My gut feeling is it's not a carrier virus," she said. "It's a human retrovirus, just like HIV, which is why all those other pathogens are not able to be controlled." The close association with chronic fatigue syndrome is important, she added, because "never before has there even been a biomarker in this disease."
The team concluded that the virus is not transmitted through the air. It is found in saliva and blood products, and the implication is that it is sexually transmitted, "but that has not been proven," Le Grice said.
Unfortunately, Reeves said, the major flaw of the study is that there is not enough information about how subjects were selected to rule out any bias in choosing them
The same virus has previously been identified in at least a quarter of prostate tumors, particularly those that are very aggressive, and has also been linked to certain types of cancers of the blood.
It remains possible that the virus, known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV, is a so-called passenger virus that is simply infecting patients whose immune systems have been suppressed by other causes. But the new findings were sufficiently alarming that the National Cancer Institute called together a group of experts in August to consider its potential effect on public health.
"We are in the very early days," said Stuart Le Grice, director of the National Cancer Institute's Center of Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Cancer Virology, who organized the meeting but was not involved in the new study. "The data need to be confirmed and repeated. . . . We need to know that it is a cause and not just a passenger. In a sense, we are at the same stage as we were when HIV was first discovered. Hopefully, we can take advantage of what we learned from working with it."
Le Grice emphasized, however, that traces of the virus had been found in blood samples preserved for 25 years. "This is not associated with a new and spreading disease. We are not on the verge of an epidemic," he said.
Chronic fatigue syndrome, which affects at least 1 million Americans and more than 17 million people worldwide, is characterized by debilitating fatigue, chronic pain and depression, as well as other symptoms. Many doctors have argued that it is not a real disorder because there have previously been no biochemical markers that characterize it. The only effective treatments are behavioral changes and antidepressants, and they are of limited benefit.
Chronic fatigue syndrome has been theoretically linked to a variety of other viruses, including Epstein-Barr virus and human herpesvirus 6, but none have been found in a significant proportion of patients. Today's findings could explain why.
Like HIV, which causes a constellation of symptoms, XMRV is a retrovirus; retroviruses are known to suppress the immune system, making it easier for other viruses to establish a beachhead.
Dr. William C. Reeves, who heads chronic fatigue syndrome research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cautioned against racing to conclusions based on the findings, even though he characterized them as promising.
"It is almost unheard of to find an association of this magnitude in any study of an infectious agent and a well-defined disease, much less an [ill-defined] illness like chronic fatigue syndrome," he said in an e-mail. It is extremely difficult to prove causation with a ubiquitous virus like XMRV, and it "is even more difficult in the case of CFS, which represents a clinically and epidemiologically complex illness," he said.
The new study was organized by Judy A. Mikovits, director of research at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro Immune Disease, a small, 3-year-old institute on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno.
Others involved in the study included cancer biologist Robert H. Silverman of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, who discovered XMRV three years ago and was the first to link it to prostate cancer, and Francis Ruscetti of the laboratory of experimental immunology at the National Cancer Institute, where Mikovits worked for 20 years.
The team reported in the online version of the journal Science that they found the virus in 68 of 101 blood samples from patients with the syndrome, but in only eight of 218 healthy patients.
In a telephone interview, Mikovits said they had also found antibodies against the virus in 95% of the chronic fatigue syndrome patients. Experts noted that no test was perfect at identifying all cases of an infection, and the antibody tests Mikovits used were being refined.
"My gut feeling is it's not a carrier virus," she said. "It's a human retrovirus, just like HIV, which is why all those other pathogens are not able to be controlled." The close association with chronic fatigue syndrome is important, she added, because "never before has there even been a biomarker in this disease."
The team concluded that the virus is not transmitted through the air. It is found in saliva and blood products, and the implication is that it is sexually transmitted, "but that has not been proven," Le Grice said.
Unfortunately, Reeves said, the major flaw of the study is that there is not enough information about how subjects were selected to rule out any bias in choosing them
Awaiting a puff of moon dust
In the predawn hours Friday, while those on the West Coast still snooze, a rocket is scheduled to punch a 13-foot-deep hole in a crater at the moon's south pole that hasn't seen sunlight in billions of years. The purpose: to find out whether ice lies hidden there.
NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which set out for the moon in June, made a late-course correction Tuesday to better position itself to steer the rocket into the 2-mile-deep crater Cabeus at 4:30 a.m. PDT on Friday.
Four minutes later, if all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will fly through the cloud of debris that will rise above the lunar surface and linger there briefly. As it passes through the cloud, the satellite's nine instruments will analyze the dust and debris for evidence of water, before crashing itself.
Back on Earth, amateur astronomers from Colorado to Silicon Valley are expected to turn their telescopes to the celestial show, even though it will last less than a minute.
Scientists preparing for the collision could hardly contain their excitement over what might turn up in that short time.
"The spacecraft is looking great. I don't think we could miss the moon now if we tried," said Steve Hixson, vice president of Advanced Concepts at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, which built the craft.
"It's our job to confirm there is water there," said Dan Andrews, the project manager at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., which designed the spacecraft instruments. "But even if it's very dry, that's a good answer to have."
The LCROSS satellite was originally a $79-million add-on to the larger, $500-million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, whose mission is to map the moon. But the theatrical nature of the impact event has caught the public's attention.
Thousands are expected to show up Thursday night at the Ames complex south of San Francisco for an evening of music and movies that will culminate with a live video feed of the impact.
"It's kind of hard to keep on top of how much interest there is out there," Andrews said. "I've heard 10,000 are coming."
1999 discovery
For decades after the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, scientists considered the moon to be little more than a dry wasteland.
But in 1999, NASA's Lunar Prospector mission found evidence of hydrogen, a possible indicator of water, in permanently shadowed craters at both poles. Since then, other spacecraft have detected the same thing, leading scientists to wonder whether large stores of ice billions of years old are hidden in craters that never get sunlight.
According to scientists, water on the moon would be as valuable as gold. Not only would it be useful to drink, should President Obama continue former President George W. Bush's ambitious plan to build a lunar base there after 2020, but it could be broken down to make breathable air and even rocket fuel.
Transporting water to the moon, on the other hand, would cost $50,000 a pound.
The crater-observing satellite launched June 18 attached to a second spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Shortly after launch, the two separated.
The orbiter continued on to begin a yearlong mission to map the moon in search of landing sites for future lunar colonists.
The sensing satellite went into a long, looping orbit around the Earth to line itself up for Friday's impact.
Originally, spacecraft controllers had chosen a nearby crater, Cabeus A, as the target. But last week, they decided it wasn't as good a potential source for water as Cabeus, a 60-mile-wide valley near the moon's south pole.
Andrews said satellite controllers were aiming for a spot in the northwest region of the crater, where temperatures of minus 397 degrees Fahrenheit would ensure that any water would be frozen as hard as rock.
NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which set out for the moon in June, made a late-course correction Tuesday to better position itself to steer the rocket into the 2-mile-deep crater Cabeus at 4:30 a.m. PDT on Friday.
Four minutes later, if all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will fly through the cloud of debris that will rise above the lunar surface and linger there briefly. As it passes through the cloud, the satellite's nine instruments will analyze the dust and debris for evidence of water, before crashing itself.
Back on Earth, amateur astronomers from Colorado to Silicon Valley are expected to turn their telescopes to the celestial show, even though it will last less than a minute.
Scientists preparing for the collision could hardly contain their excitement over what might turn up in that short time.
"The spacecraft is looking great. I don't think we could miss the moon now if we tried," said Steve Hixson, vice president of Advanced Concepts at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, which built the craft.
"It's our job to confirm there is water there," said Dan Andrews, the project manager at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., which designed the spacecraft instruments. "But even if it's very dry, that's a good answer to have."
The LCROSS satellite was originally a $79-million add-on to the larger, $500-million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, whose mission is to map the moon. But the theatrical nature of the impact event has caught the public's attention.
Thousands are expected to show up Thursday night at the Ames complex south of San Francisco for an evening of music and movies that will culminate with a live video feed of the impact.
"It's kind of hard to keep on top of how much interest there is out there," Andrews said. "I've heard 10,000 are coming."
1999 discovery
For decades after the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, scientists considered the moon to be little more than a dry wasteland.
But in 1999, NASA's Lunar Prospector mission found evidence of hydrogen, a possible indicator of water, in permanently shadowed craters at both poles. Since then, other spacecraft have detected the same thing, leading scientists to wonder whether large stores of ice billions of years old are hidden in craters that never get sunlight.
According to scientists, water on the moon would be as valuable as gold. Not only would it be useful to drink, should President Obama continue former President George W. Bush's ambitious plan to build a lunar base there after 2020, but it could be broken down to make breathable air and even rocket fuel.
Transporting water to the moon, on the other hand, would cost $50,000 a pound.
The crater-observing satellite launched June 18 attached to a second spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Shortly after launch, the two separated.
The orbiter continued on to begin a yearlong mission to map the moon in search of landing sites for future lunar colonists.
The sensing satellite went into a long, looping orbit around the Earth to line itself up for Friday's impact.
Originally, spacecraft controllers had chosen a nearby crater, Cabeus A, as the target. But last week, they decided it wasn't as good a potential source for water as Cabeus, a 60-mile-wide valley near the moon's south pole.
Andrews said satellite controllers were aiming for a spot in the northwest region of the crater, where temperatures of minus 397 degrees Fahrenheit would ensure that any water would be frozen as hard as rock.
The Centaur rocket that will hit the crater is the upper stage of the Atlas V that launched both spacecraft in June. Having used its fuel, it is now a 5,200-pound projectile.
About 10 hours before Friday's impact, the rocket will separate from the satellite and head directly for the crater.
Meanwhile, the satellite will maneuver itself into position to fly through the debris kicked up when the rocket crashes.
According to NASA, the rocket will be traveling about 5,600 miles per hour when it plunges into Cabeus. That will create a dust cloud rising as much as six miles above the lunar surface, providing a rare show for amateur astronomers with telescopes 10 inches or larger.
The collision can theoretically be seen throughout the Southwest and as far away as Hawaii, providing the observer has a large enough telescope at hand and good viewing conditions.
Mountaintops and valleys with little or no ambient artificial light are the best places to go. Because the debris cloud is expected to last less than a minute before settling back down on the lunar surface, viewers need to be punctual and have sharp eyes.
Palmdale gathering
Locally, the Antelope Valley Astronomy Club is hosting a viewing party at the Sage Planetarium at Cactus Intermediate School in Palmdale.
Members will set up telescopes outside, while NASA's broadcast of the event will be shown inside.
Scientists think the lunar water, if it's there, arrived the same way it did on Earth: through billions of years of bombardment by water-rich comets and meteors.
Any water that was deposited in sunlit places would quickly be lost to the moon's scorching daytime heat, which can reach 250 degrees Fahrenheit. But in shadowed craters, the water could remain as ice for eons.
Bernard Foing, the project scientist for the European Smart-1 spacecraft that took pictures of the crater several years ago, said the floor of Cabeus contained a number of small craters that appeared old enough to have trapped water from comets and water-rich asteroids.
Andrews said it could be days or weeks after the impact before scientists conclude that there is, or is not, water at the pole. Besides the crater-observing spacecraft, observatories around the world will be watching, along with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
If the satellite doesn't find water, that wouldn't be definitive proof it's not there. Besides mapping instruments, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter carries instruments that can search for evidence of water as it skims 30 miles above the lunar surface in the coming months.
Several weeks ago, research teams reported evidence that tiny amounts of water exist on the surface in some areas of the moon. But that is likely too little to be of practical use for future colonists.
About 10 hours before Friday's impact, the rocket will separate from the satellite and head directly for the crater.
Meanwhile, the satellite will maneuver itself into position to fly through the debris kicked up when the rocket crashes.
According to NASA, the rocket will be traveling about 5,600 miles per hour when it plunges into Cabeus. That will create a dust cloud rising as much as six miles above the lunar surface, providing a rare show for amateur astronomers with telescopes 10 inches or larger.
The collision can theoretically be seen throughout the Southwest and as far away as Hawaii, providing the observer has a large enough telescope at hand and good viewing conditions.
Mountaintops and valleys with little or no ambient artificial light are the best places to go. Because the debris cloud is expected to last less than a minute before settling back down on the lunar surface, viewers need to be punctual and have sharp eyes.
Palmdale gathering
Locally, the Antelope Valley Astronomy Club is hosting a viewing party at the Sage Planetarium at Cactus Intermediate School in Palmdale.
Members will set up telescopes outside, while NASA's broadcast of the event will be shown inside.
Scientists think the lunar water, if it's there, arrived the same way it did on Earth: through billions of years of bombardment by water-rich comets and meteors.
Any water that was deposited in sunlit places would quickly be lost to the moon's scorching daytime heat, which can reach 250 degrees Fahrenheit. But in shadowed craters, the water could remain as ice for eons.
Bernard Foing, the project scientist for the European Smart-1 spacecraft that took pictures of the crater several years ago, said the floor of Cabeus contained a number of small craters that appeared old enough to have trapped water from comets and water-rich asteroids.
Andrews said it could be days or weeks after the impact before scientists conclude that there is, or is not, water at the pole. Besides the crater-observing spacecraft, observatories around the world will be watching, along with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
If the satellite doesn't find water, that wouldn't be definitive proof it's not there. Besides mapping instruments, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter carries instruments that can search for evidence of water as it skims 30 miles above the lunar surface in the coming months.
Several weeks ago, research teams reported evidence that tiny amounts of water exist on the surface in some areas of the moon. But that is likely too little to be of practical use for future colonists.
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