My latest Seed column, entitled "Extremophile Journalism," is now online. It's based on my experience at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne, Australia last April, where I learned much about the plight of science reporters in developing countries and emerging economies. Here's an excerpt:
...in many cases science journalists from the developing world face a series of hurdles that I, comfortably ensconced in Washington, D.C., simply never encounter. For some of these writers, basic research resources like cheap and reliable telephone service, libraries, and even dictionaries can be scarce. And while the physical act of researching and writing can present dramatic logistical challenges, science correspondents in some parts of the world are also faced with the worry that offending despotic or corrupt governments will result in retribution. The number of journalists imprisoned and killed worldwide every year is testament to the dangers implicit in the trade.
You can read the rest here. Meanwhile, I've been doing a lot of radio interviews for Storm World--and there will assuredly be more--but a good one yesterday was with Jean Dean of Viewpoints, a local talk show out of West Virginia. It's available online here. It's about 20 minutes long.
Shifting gears: We have another science scandal from the Bush administration. It never ends. You see, the administration's long overdue 2006 Climate Action Report was finally submitted to the U.N. late last week--stealthily, of course. And as is typical of the administration, the report tries to soft-pedal the latest science. Climate Science Watch, Climate Progress, and DeSmogBlog have the low down.
Finally, even as Typhoon Usagi is slamming Kyushu and Shikoku, lots of us watching storms in the Atlantic are still worried about disturbance 99 L, which just crossed the Windward Islands and moved into the Caribbean. A hurricane hunter flight into this cloud cluster yesterday did not find a closed air circulation, and thus it has not been pronounced a tropical depression. Still, at least to my untrained eye, when I look at satellite pictures (like the one below, in infrared) it seems to me that the storm has consolidated and thunderstorm growth is increasing. This is one to watch because although it may or may not develop into anything, it is heading towards some quite warm waters in the Caribbean.
And with that, I'm off to Yearly Kos...
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On a recent trip to Ethiopia, to visit my inlaws, I was surprised to discover that many people I encountered were convinced that "Climate Change" was a serious threat to them. This mind you from people that mostly disbelieve in evolution dispite the fact that "Lucy" resides in the basement of their national museum in Addis Ababa. (I was overwhelmed when I came upon her in a simple glass case that you can walk right up to.)
A little further inquiry revealed that they are also exposed to nearly daily doomsaying from their own media and the ubiquitous steady drum beat of climate change reports on the BBC.
Were they truly environmentally conscious? Hardly, the place is strewn with trash and every river and stream in Addis Ababa is an open sewer. So why the insistance that climate change was not only happening, but a threat to their lives?
Well a little further inquiry revealed a couple of ulterior motives. It is a popular sentiment in Ethiopia, as well as much of Africa, that they have been slighted by the west, and that many, if not most of their problems, are the result of western policies.
For example a great deal of people consider AIDS a conspiracy wrought by western scientists upon Africa either by accidental release of an experimental virus using Africans as guinea pigs or by out right purposeful infection as a way to destroy Africa's potential competition for world economic resources or in the name of plain old racism.
I was quite taken aback by the widespread mistrust and antipathy manifest in a wide range of conspiratorial theories that portray the west, and America in particular, as an evil, if technologically superior, nemisis.
So if you want to spread the AGW message to Africa take heart, they are ready and willing to accept the idea that afluent people in the west are responsible for their problems. Just don't expect them to spend their money to convert to "renewable" resources. They feel that we in the west had nearly a century of using cheap energy and that to deny them the same benefit now would be just another way that the west was "holding them down".
You wont see any African countries signing any "Kyoto-like" treaties if it means they have to make any sacrifices.
Africa suffers terribly from every drought that comes its way. Many African nations do not have the resources to prepare for, or to respond to disasters, not even as poorly as we did for Katrina.
As for 99L, it's being torn apart by shear, and hampered by dry and stable air ... and unless it turns NW, things will only get worse for it. Most invests (about 2/3) do not become tropical cyclones.