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Experts look to captive breeding to slow amphibian extinction rates

According to this article in Reuters:

Amphibian experts are likely to urge captive breeding to slow a catastrophic rate of extinctions threatening a third of all species of frogs and salamanders, a leading scientist said. While a third of amphibian species are under threat, comparable rates are 12 percent for birds and 23 percent for mammals.

Not looking good. But hey, I put my recycle bin out yesterday. I used to have a cartoon pinned to my wall of a heron with a frog sticking head-first out of his mouth. The frog had grabbed the heron by the throat so he couldn't swallow. The caption read, "Never give up!"

Consumer Reports’ real-world mpg figures make the Prius even more appealing

Consumer Reports recently claimed that EPA's vehicle ratings routinely overstate how fuel-efficient cars and trucks are in real-world driving. For standard cars and trucks, the magazine says, EPA's ratings overstate real-world fuel economy by 30 percent. But for small hybrids, such as the Toyota Prius, they claim that EPA overstates actual miles-per-gallon by a hefty 42 percent. (Ouch.)

Now, I believe that there's reason to question Consumer Reports' figures. Of course, I have read a number of reports that the Toyota Prius doesn't actually get the EPA-rated 55 mpg in combined city/highway driving (though some people -- particularly those who've optimized their hybrid-driving habits -- get pretty close, and these folks actually squeezed out 110 mpg from their Prius, albeit in highly non-standard driving conditions). But I'd never heard any claim that the typical Prius averages just 32 mpg -- which is what the magazine's figures suggest. See this comment by WorldChanging's Jamais Cascio for a similar take.

But, just for the sake of argument, let's take the CR figures at face value, and assume that small hybrids' mileage really is overstated by 42 percent, vs. just 30 percent for regular cars. Doesn't the higher mpg reduction for hybrids suggest that their fuel-savings advantages vs. regular cars are overstated -- and that they don't save as much money as advertised?

Actually, no. As counterintuitive as it may sound, the Consumer Reports figures, on their face, actually bolster the economic case for buying hybrids.

Student journalists reflect on the New Orleans they once knew

As noted in today's Daily Grist (you do read the Daily Grist, don't you? Of course you do!), Fish and Wildlife Service staff are just getting to work assessing the ecological damage to two wildlife refuges near New Orleans: Bayou Sauvage and Big Branch Marsh.

I've never been to New Orleans or the Gulf Coast. I avoid places that might serve up more heat and humidity than I endure on the average August day in New York City; find blackened anything inedible; and own my heritage as a repressed Northeasterner who finds the whole Mardi-Gras-public-nekkidity-license-to-debauch thing a little scary.

But reading about places like Bayou Sauvage makes me really regret it. Below the fold, a description from some student journalists who attended the Society of Environmental Journalists' 2003 annual confab in New Orleans:

The Times-Picayune files another missive

The editors of the New Orleans Times-Picayune pulled no punches on the dismal federal response to Hurricane Katrina in their first open letter to President Bush on Sept. 4. Today, they've done it again, timing a new missive to the President's third post-Katrina visit to the area.

The takeaway: We're not going away, Mr. President. Commit to doing whatever it takes to rebuild our city better than it was before -- including restoration of Louisiana's coast and the Mississippi River.

Here's an excerpt, emphases mine:

Bowen and baby

Two notes:

There's a fantastic story in Washington Monthly about coal-fired power plants and the latest efforts to control their damage. It focuses in on Plant Bowen in Cartersville, Ga.

In 2003, Bowen spewed more sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any plant in the United States. Bowen alone emits more sulfur dioxide than all the power plants combined in 12 states and the District of Columbia -- including large states such as California, Washington, and Oregon. And it would take more than three million cars to emit the 21.35 million tons of carbon dioxide Bowen's smokestacks belched out in 2003, according to the U.S. PIRG Education Fund.

The point of the piece is that traditional environmentalist tactics are no longer working, as Bowen's continuing existence painfully demonstrates.

The old paradigm through which environmental activists tried to take on powerful and deadly polluters relied on three separate but equally important tactics: campaigns to stoke public outrage by linking the illnesses and deaths of particular victims to a particular polluter; aggressive lawsuits brought by the private torts bar; and prescriptive federal regulation to penalize non-compliant localities and industries. Yet the persisting pollution at Plant Bowen shows how ineffective the old paradigm has become in dealing with the most important emerging environmental threats to public health, from fine particle pollution to global warming to agricultural runoff -- all cases where it's difficult to tie specific polluters to individuals who have been harmed. Fortunately, changes now afoot at Bowen also point the way to a solution -- one in which a modernized regulatory regime uses market-like forces to let federal officials pick up the work that lawyers and environmental activists can no longer effectively accomplish.

I don't agree with everything in it, but this really is a must-read for those interested in environmental policy.

Secondly: I -- or more accurately, my wife -- had a baby on Friday. (Oh, I'm such an earth f**ker!) I'll be taking two weeks off, so posting will be extremely light, if not nonexistent. I hope our other contributors will slake your insatiable thirst for knowledge.

And other universal truths

When I saw the quick promo yesterday, I nearly burst into tears of gratitude. All this week, the Daily Show's theme is: Evolution Schmevolution. It'll be four nights of brilliance on a scientific "debate" that's one of our favorite topics. And four nights that will, if the past is any indication, educate 18- to 29-year-olds the world over.

Thank you, Jon Stewart. It's comforting to know there's intelligent life out there ... somewhere.

Egrets, I’ve Had a Few

Feds start to assess ecological damage to refuges near New Orleans The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is beginning to gauge damage from Hurricane Katrina to the 23,000-acre Bayou Sauvage […]

Grist’s Roberts & Giller argue their point in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

No conceivable Bush (or Clinton, or G.H.W. Bush) administration energy strategy aimed at slowing or reversing global warming -- least of all ratifying the Kyoto treaty -- would have protected lives or averted property destruction on the Gulf Coast. Think of smart energy policies as you might of tobacco taxes: good idea, but they probably wouldn't have saved your Uncle Ned from lung cancer.

So write Grist's own Dave Roberts and Chip Giller in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  Read the rest for yourself.  

A harrowing account

On Thursday last, a colleague forwarded a harrowing first person report from a doctor on the scene at the New Orleans airport -- sent to him in turn by a very good friend with 15 years of experience at other global ground zeros, who said that it rang true.

greetings from the new orleans airport

for those of you who don't know i am a member of the texas-4 disaster medical assistence team (DMAT). we are a part of FEMA. i joined a couple of months ago and my team was activated 11 days ago. for the past 8 days i have been living and working at the new orleans airport delivering medical care to the katrina hurricane survirors.

It was powerful, painful reading -- pulling back the veil even further on the reality of the New Orleans disaster.

let me start by saying that i am safe and after a very rough first week
am now better rested and fed

our team was the first to arrive at the airport and set up our field hospital. we watched our population grow from 30 dmat personal taking care of 6 patients and 2 security guards well to around 10,000 people in the first 15 hours. these people had had no food or water or security for several days and were tired, furstrated, sick, wet, and heart broken. people were brought in by trucks, busses, ambulances, school busses, cars, and helicopters

we recieved patients from hospitals, schools, homes, the entire remaining population of new orleans funneled through our doors. our little civilian team along with a couple of other dmat teams set up and ran THE biggest evacuation this country has ever seen

the numbers are absolutely staggering

I haven't spoken personally with Hemant Vankawala M.D., but got his okay via e-mail to repost his account. Other reporters apparently have met Dr. Vankawala -- as in this September 3 report by Jim Douglas of Dallas-Fort Worth WFAA-TV.

...at any given time there were at least 8-10 helo's offloading on the tarmac, filled with 10-40 survivors at a time, with 10 circling to land, it was a non-stop never ending process 24 hour a day operation. the cnn footage does not even begin to do it justice. the roar of rotar blades, the smell of jet A and the thousands of eyes looking at us for answers, for hope.

Read the whole thing in the extended entry -- largely unedited, because the seat-of-the-pants quality of the writing is part of its power.

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof makes a reasonable Katrina-to-climate link

Nicholas Kristof does the Katrina-to-climate link in a reasonable way in Sunday's New York Times.  He gives props to Portland for taking technologically available and cost-saving steps to reduce their emissions to just above 1990 levels.  It really shouldn't surprise us that it is the state and local levels that are the environmental innovators. It is just usually one state to the south in California where local conditions (read thermal inversions in LA) eventually beget US environmental regulations.

Kristof also provides extensive links at the bottom of the piece, something more pontificators should do.