Dot Earth Blog: Pete Seeger is Gone, but His Circles of Song Ring On

Pete Seeger spent his life surrounded by circles of song with varying dimensions.

He often created them himself, putting a hand to his ear as a signal that he expected any audience encircling a stage to drown him out.

Beacon, N.Y., his longtime home town, is like the center of a swirling circular galaxy of music these days, most of it written and sung with a better world in mind and most of it inspired in some way by his example.

I was humbled to be among those who were able to pay Pete a visit over the last several days at New York-Presbyterian Hospital as his heart and body failed at age 94. (He died peacefully last night around 9:30 p.m., family members told me; His wife Toshi died last July.)

When I arrived on Monday afternoon, he was at the center of a healing circle of song once again. My friend Steve Stanne, an environmental educator and masterful musician, led in the singing of Bill Staine's "River" as the Hudson that Pete for so long worked to restore flowed by, icy and glinting, outside the windows:

Someday when the flowers are blooming still
Someday when the grass is still green
My rolling waters will round the bend
And flow into the open sea

So, here's to the rainbow that's followed me here
And here's to the friends that I know
And here's to the song that's within me now
I will sing it wherever I go

River, take me along in your sunshine, sing me a song
Ever moving and winding and free
You rolling old river, you changing old river
Let's you and me, river, run down to the sea. [Full lyrics]

Click here for Jon Pareles's fine obituary in The Times.

There's much more that will be said and written — and sung — in coming days about his songwriting and politics, his bubbling humor and hammer-hard determination.

But I wanted to initiate some reflections on Pete's music and mission, and his extraordinary heart. Only the physical heart gave way last night.

He's best known, of course, for his use of songs as a shield and weapon, but to get the full Pete Seeger you had to see him sing "Abiyoyo" as he danced on his long pipe-cleaner legs through the children gathered on Little Stony Point, a vest-pocket park that he helped create along the Hudson.

Soon after I moved from Brooklyn to the Hudson Valley in 1991, I began frequenting the Beacon Sloop Club, the little sister to the Clearwater organization that he launched in 1967. Every first Friday of the month, the club potluck supper and meeting would be followed by a singalong. Pete was almost always there.

My marriage owes its existence to his pull. I met my wife through my friend David Bernz, who grew up around the Seegers and carries on Pete's sound in the closest thing I know to a folk tribute band, Work o' the Weavers.

Pete was a force for change and a bard celebrating nature and humanity's bright and dark sides. But he also had a generous ear always cocked to hear a promising new song by someone else. Click here for his generous scribbled suggestions on a 2005 draft of "Arlington," my song about cycles of war and the growing pains at Arlington National Cemetery.

[Insert 8:48 a.m.| Among his prime attributes were these: boundless energy and unwavering optimism that the future holds great promise. One of the most surprising, and wonderful, things I ever heard Pete say came when I videotaped a conversation at his house in which Andrew Blechman of Orion Magazine asked this:

What gives you hope when you think of the future, when you think of the next 30 years?

His immediate reply? "The Internet."

Read (or watch) his elaboration on this here: "30 Ways to Foster Progress on a Finite Planet." It's all about "knowosphere."]

Pete's voice has been silenced, but his circle of song is unbroken.

I'll end this post with "To My Old Brown Earth," a song he wrote in 1958 that I consider one of his masterpieces — as simple and scintillating as a finely cut gem:

To my old brown earth
And to my old blue sky
I'll now give these last few molecules of "I."

And you who sing,
And you who stand nearby,
I do charge you not to cry.

Guard well our human chain,
Watch well you keep it strong,
As long as sun will shine.

And this our home,
Keep pure and sweet and green,
For now I'm yours
And you are also mine.

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Dot Earth Blog: A Critique of an Upbeat Assessment of Nuclear Power’s Prospects

The spent fuel pool at the Indian Point 3 reactor 35 miles north of New York City.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group long focused on risks attending the use of nuclear energy, has posted a critique of the pro-nuclear letter from four longtime analysts that was the focus of a recent piece here titled "More Views on Nuclear Power, Waste, Safety and Cost."

Here's the rebuttal, by David Wright, co-director and senior scientist in the group's Global Security Program:

The authors state that "… nuclear power can deliver electric power in a sufficiently safe, economical and secure manner to supplement supply from other carbon-free sources."

UCS is deeply concerned about climate change and its impact on humanity and the Earth. We believe that nuclear power must remain on the table as a means of combating climate change.

However, new reactors are not currently economical compared to electricity generation from natural gas or from other low-carbon energy sources such as wind and solar. The environmental community, which some blame for crippling nuclear power, has in fact pushed for a price on carbon as a way of building the societal costs of continued carbon emissions into the economics of electricity production. This would in effect create a significant incentive that is currently missing for nuclear power compared to natural gas. Congress has stymied such proposals, and until that changes it is difficult to see what will drive growth in nuclear power, regardless of concerns about carbon or the variability of solar and wind power.

The economics of nuclear power would look even worse if there were another nuclear accident. TEPCO, the owner of the Fukushima plant, estimates that compensation costs for the tens of thousands of people displaced by the accident in Japan will exceed $50 billion and that it will cost about $20 billion to decommission the plant. This does not include the cost of eventually decontaminating the surrounding area, which may also run to $50 billion.

We do not believe nuclear reactors are yet sufficiently safe and secure. UCS has served as an industry watchdog for over four decades, and we have repeatedly seen that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not enforce its own safety regulations. For example, half of U.S. reactors do not currently comply with fire safety regulations, which were first put in place in 1980. Yet according to the NRC, fire represents half the risk of accidents that result in core damage.

In discussing the issue of nuclear waste, the authors of the letter point to geological storage and the Blue Ribbon Commission's recommended path toward interim and final storage as the solution, but there is currently no movement forward on this front. An effort by the Senate to legislate the Commission's recommendations is faltering and is likely dead. In the meantime, nuclear waste continues to accumulate at nuclear reactor sites, with nearly three-quarters of it sitting in increasingly crowded cooling pools, with no end in sight.

While there are clear steps to increase the safety of spent fuel while waiting for long-term storage—such as moving a large fraction of it from cooling pools to dry casks—the industry refuses to implement these steps on its own and the NRC refuses to require them. A recent NRC report purports to show that the risks of continued spent fuel storage in pools is very low, but does not, for example, include the possibility of a terrorist attack on the pool. The NRC analysis is not convincing.

More generally, the authors talk about the possibility that future technologies will provide reactor designs that are safer, more secure, and less of a proliferation risk. However, as we have pointed out in our analyses, whether that is true depends not just on the technology but on the safety and security requirements for these new designs. In particular, if cost considerations result in the industry cutting corners on safety or security systems, then the situation in the future could be worse than today, not better.

Dr. Kadak and his colleagues argue for an increased role for nuclear power, but gloss over problems that can and must be addressed to make the industry adequately safe and secure. Proponents of increasing nuclear power should be pushing the industry to meet higher safety and security standards, and for the NRC to require the plants to meet the regulations it is supposed to enforce. [UCSusa.org.]

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Dot Earth Blog: Fresh Views on Climate Scientists as Advocates

Updated, 4:54 p.m. | "If You See Something, Say Something," is the headline on a Sunday Op-Ed article by Michael E. Mann, the Penn State climate scientist who, after years of attacks from groups fighting restrictions on greenhouse gases, has become a prominent climate and political campaigner, as well.

The piece appropriately defends the right of scientists to be citizens, fighting disinformation and pressing for action — a theme explored here starting with a 2008 contribution from Richard Somerville, a longtime climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

This section is particularly valuable:

In fact, there is broad agreement among climate scientists not only that climate change is real (a survey and a review of the scientific literature published say about 97 percent agree), but that we must respond to the dangers of a warming planet. If one is looking for real differences among mainstream scientists, they can be found on two fronts: the precise implications of those higher temperatures, and which technologies and policies offer the best solution to reducing, on a global scale, the emission of greenhouse gases.

For example, should we go full-bore on nuclear power? Invest in and deploy renewable energy — wind, solar and geothermal — on a huge scale? Price carbon emissions through cap-and-trade legislation or by imposing a carbon tax? Until the public fully understands the danger of our present trajectory, those debates are likely to continue to founder.

There's a troubling section, however, in which Mann creates a flawed dichotomy, hailing a paper by James Hansen and Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University (and others) pressing for deep carbon cuts and criticizing a peer,* Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, for complaining that the paper failed the Stephen Schneider / Gavin Schmidt test for distinguishing between the "is" of science and the "ought" determined by individual feelings about the state of the world and how to shape it.

I asked Caldeira if he'd like to elaborate on his views and you can read his thoughts below.

If Mann had wanted to point to an opposite end to the spectrum of ways in which scientists can contribute to public discourse on global warming science and risks, a better choice (in my view) would have been Susan Solomon's handling of the rollout of the 2007 science report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In a 2007 profile of Solomon, I included this passage from the Paris news conference:

When a reporter asked Dr. Solomon "to sum up what kind of urgency this sort of report should convey to policy makers," she gave the furthest thing from a convenient sound bite. "I can only give you something that's going to disappoint you, sir, and that is that it's my personal scientific approach to say it's not my role to try to communicate what should be done," Dr. Solomon said. "I believe that is a societal choice. I believe science is one input to that choice, and I also believe that science can best serve society by refraining from going beyond its expertise.

"In my view, that's what the I.P.C.C. also is all about, namely not trying to make policy-prescriptive statements, but policy-relevant statements."

Climate scientists, like all of us, come in all shapes and sizes and demeanors. I agree with Mann that it's unwise for scientists to avoid the public debate over drivers of climate risk and options for reducing it. But I agree with Caldeira (and Gavin Schmidt and the departed Steve Schneider) that it's counterproductive to blur lines between observations based on science and values-based views on solutions.

Here's Caldeira's note:

The issue of going beyond expertise is an important one.

There is a disease wherein one develops expertise in one area and then feels free to pontificate on other areas about which one knows nothing. This is an affliction of many senior scientists, common even among Nobel Prize winners, and an affliction to which I have not been immune.

If someone is speaking with great confidence while uttering pure hogwash, this does tend to reduce confidence in the utterances of the scientist.

So, there is a cost to science and to our personal credibility when scientists make poorly supported assertions in areas outside of their expertise.

In any case, scientists should be clear when they are making an assertion that is an empirical fact and when they are simply expressing their values and political opinions.

Human beings do have a responsibility to speak out on issues that we feel strongly about.

One way to thread the needle is for climate scientists to speak out loudly and in detail about the areas we know something about — climate change and its consequences — but then speak with a greater degree of generality when coming to prescriptions about what exactly we should do.

In other words, it is one thing to say (as a human being who happens to be a scientist) that we need to stop using the sky as a waste dump for our greenhouse gas pollution. It is another thing entirely to wegh in on specific policy instruments (taxes versus cap-and-trade versus regulations), specific energy technologies, and so on.

It is fine for climate scientists to say (as human beings) that we need policies to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, that to do this we will need energy technologies with near-zero emissions, etc, and that we need to do all of this very soon.

It disturbs me when anyone, including climate scientists, (1) fails to distinguish between matters of empirical fact and matters of values and political opinion, and (2) speaks with an air of authority on topics about which they are largely ignorant.

I do not claim to be entirely innocent of either of these transgressions. Although I work to try to keep myself on the straight and narrow, I do sometimes succumb to temptation.

Postscript, 5:00 p.m. *| At the asterisk above, my characterization of Mann's positions, as Mann and others have said on Twitter, was indeed too caricatured — although I maintain that his piece could easily be interpreted as very sympathetic to one approach and critical of the other.

Ken Caldeira offered this note in the comment thread:

Michael Mann and I largely agree on what needs to be done, and our primary differences relate to what we do in the role of 'informed citizen' and what we do in the role of 'scientist'.

I was thankful that he quoted me, airing alternate views in his Op-Ed piece. Michael Mann may or may not be critical of my viewpoint, but I see no evidence that he is critical of me as a person. Some of my best friends are people I strongly disagree with.

A more difficult question is what a scientist should do when we feel strongly about something but have no special relevant expertise. For example, if I feel strongly that Obama should pardon Edward Snowden, should I make public statements on this matter? Would I be using my standing as a climate scientist to communicate about civil liberties and national security issues about which I am not expert? Is this bad? Is keeping quiet about injustice that I perceive a greater evil? In any case, it seems important for scientists to make clear that our political statements are in our roles as ordinary people, not in our role as climate scientists.

Postscript, 12:32 p.m. | Nick Kristof's column today explores his readers' leading candidate for "neglected topics," which, of course, is climate change.

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Well: Landscapes Tainted by Asbestos

Poison Pen

Deborah Blum writes about chemicals and the environment.

For the past few years, Brenda Buck has been sampling the dust blowing across southern Nevada. Until recently, she focused on the risks of airborne elements such as arsenic. But then she started noticing an oddity in her samples, a sprinkling of tiny, hairlike mineral fibers.

She found them on herself as well. After a ride on horseback down a dirt road 20 miles south of Las Vegas, her clothes and boots were dappled with the fibrous material. Dr. Buck, a professor of geology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, turned to her colleagues to help identify it.

Their verdict: asbestos. And lots of it.

In a paper published late last year, titled "Naturally Occurring Asbestos: Potential for Human Exposure, Southern Nevada, USA," Dr. Buck and her colleagues reported that the fibers were similar to those found at asbestos-contaminated Superfund sites and warned that they "could be transported by wind, water, cars or on clothing after outdoor recreational activities." The research raises the possibility that many communities in the region, including Las Vegas, may face a previously unknown hazard.

Dr. Buck and her co-author Rodney V. Metcalf, a fellow U.N.L.V. geology professor, are now trying to quantify the range and the danger posed by natural asbestos-bearing mineral deposits spread across 53,000 acres, stretching from the southern shore of Lake Mead to the edges of the McCullough Range. "Nobody wants bad news — we're all hoping the health risks will be very low," Dr. Buck said in an interview. "But the fact is, we don't know that yet."

Similar concerns are arising in an unexpectedly wide swath of the United States: Naturally occurring asbestos deposits now have been mapped in locations across the country, from Staten Island to the foothills of the Sierras in California.

Elongated asbestos fibers are created by natural mineral formations. When they turn up in industrial products, it is because people have excavated them and refined them for use — a practice dating back more than 2,000 years. Ancient Greeks used asbestos to strengthen everything from napkins to lamp wicks.

Stories of asbestos-linked illnesses date back almost as long. But it was the post-World War II embrace of these fibers, in products ranging from insulating materials to ceiling tiles to roofing shingles, that provided undeniable evidence of health effects. By the 1960s, scientists had demonstrated that a chain of occupational illnesses, including a lung cancer called mesothelioma, could be directly linked to the presence of such mineral fibers.

The term asbestos technically refers to a group of six silicate-based fibrous minerals. But this definition may underestimate the extent of naturally occurring risks, scientists say. The mineral erionite, for instance, also forms needlelike structures, which have been linked to startlingly high levels of mesothelioma in Turkey and which have recently been discovered in the oil-and-gas boom regions of North Dakota. The discovery of airborne erionite fibers in North Dakota recently led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to describe it as "an emerging North American hazard."

"Essentially, these fibers flow aerodynamically into the deep lung tissue and lodge there" said Geoffrey Plumlee, a geochemist with the United States Geological Survey in Denver. They remain embedded for years, like needles in a pincushion, spurring the onset of not only mesothelioma but also other lung cancers and diseases of the respiratory system.

By the 1970s such health effects were so well documented that the Environmental Protection Agency moved to limit asbestos use, and in 1989 the agency banned almost all industrial use of the minerals. But a recent cascade of research has renewed scientific worries.

For one thing, recent soil studies show that residential developments have spread into mineral-rich regions. California's state capital, Sacramento, for example, spilled into neighboring El Dorado County, where, it turned out, whole neighborhoods were built across a swatch of asbestos deposits.

And sophisticated epidemiological studies have shown that this was more than an occupational health issue. The small mining town of Libby, Mont., provided one of the most dramatic case studies. Almost a fifth of the residents have now received diagnoses of asbestos-linked illnesses, from mesothelioma to severe scarring of lung tissue.

When these conditions began cropping up across the entire town in the late 1990s, investigators assumed that those sickened were all workers at a nearby mine. But the illnesses weren't appearing only in mine workers. Family members were stricken, too, as were residents of the town who had nothing to do with the mining business.

Investigations by alarmed government agencies — including the E.P.A, the Geological Survey and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences — established that miners brought asbestos fibers back to town with them on clothes, vehicles and other possessions. But residents were also exposed to fibers blowing about the surrounding environment — and, to the dismay of researchers, people were being sickened by far smaller exposures than had been thought to cause harm.

"Libby really started the new focus on the issue," said Bradley Van Gosen, a research geochemist with the Geological Survey in Denver. Dr. Van Gosen has been put in charge of a new U.S.G.S. mapping project, an ambitious effort to trace the minerals not only across Western mining states but also elsewhere, from the Upper Midwest to a rambling path up the Eastern Seaboard, starting in southern Appalachia and stretching into Maine.

Dr. Van Gosen said that most of the Eastern deposits were linked to an ancient crustal boundary, perhaps a billion years old, that underlies mountain ranges like the Appalachians. Wherever they are found, though, minerals in the asbestos family tend to form when magnesium, silica and water are transformed by superheated magma from the earth's mantle.

In Western states, such filamented minerals tend to result from volcanic activity. In the Midwest, where fibers have recently turned up associated with mining interests in Minnesota and Wisconsin, geologists suspect they originated in ancient magnesium-rich seafloors. A recent study in Minnesota linked an increased risk of death among miners to time spent working in mines contaminated by such deposits.

"It has the potential to be a huge deal," said Christopher P. Weis, toxicology adviser to the director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. "And we want to get the word out, because this is something that can be addressed if we tackle it upfront."

Dr. Buck's discovery of similar hazards in southern Nevada was the first time that naturally occurring asbestos had been reported in the region. At this point, she and her colleagues are simply trying to figure out the extent of the problem. A leading mesothelioma researcher, Dr. Michele Carbone of the University of Hawaii, is analyzing the fibers to help establish the magnitude of any health risk. Dr. Buck and Dr. Metcalf are expanding their sampling deeper into the Nevada desert, trying to build a better map of the hazardous regions.

"We live here. Our children are here," Dr. Buck said. "We want very much to get this right."

And they are approaching their discovery with personal caution. They now wear protective gear while sampling, and Dr. Buck has decided against taking her graduate students out for what appears to be risky fieldwork.

On a larger scale, researchers are investigating alternatives to creating large forbidden zones, such as wetting down roads or requiring that people in high-exposure areas wear protective masks and gear. But even small measures, like bathing after exposure and washing contaminated clothing separately, may help, Dr. Weis said.

"We can be smart and efficient about this, both at the government and at the personal level," he said.

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Well: Landscapes Tainted by Asbestos

Poison Pen

Deborah Blum writes about chemicals and the environment.

For the past few years, Brenda Buck has been sampling the dust blowing across southern Nevada. Until recently, she focused on the risks of airborne elements such as arsenic. But then she started noticing an oddity in her samples, a sprinkling of tiny, hairlike mineral fibers.

She found them on herself as well. After a ride on horseback down a dirt road 20 miles south of Las Vegas, her clothes and boots were dappled with the fibrous material. Dr. Buck, a professor of geology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, turned to her colleagues to help identify it.

Their verdict: asbestos. And lots of it.

In a paper published late last year, titled "Naturally Occurring Asbestos: Potential for Human Exposure, Southern Nevada, USA," Dr. Buck and her colleagues reported that the fibers were similar to those found at asbestos-contaminated Superfund sites and warned that they "could be transported by wind, water, cars or on clothing after outdoor recreational activities." The research raises the possibility that many communities in the region, including Las Vegas, may face a previously unknown hazard.

Dr. Buck and her co-author Rodney V. Metcalf, a fellow U.N.L.V. geology professor, are now trying to quantify the range and the danger posed by natural asbestos-bearing mineral deposits spread across 53,000 acres, stretching from the southern shore of Lake Mead to the edges of the McCullough Range. "Nobody wants bad news — we're all hoping the health risks will be very low," Dr. Buck said in an interview. "But the fact is, we don't know that yet."

Similar concerns are arising in an unexpectedly wide swath of the United States: Naturally occurring asbestos deposits now have been mapped in locations across the country, from Staten Island to the foothills of the Sierras in California.

Elongated asbestos fibers are created by natural mineral formations. When they turn up in industrial products, it is because people have excavated them and refined them for use — a practice dating back more than 2,000 years. Ancient Greeks used asbestos to strengthen everything from napkins to lamp wicks.

Stories of asbestos-linked illnesses date back almost as long. But it was the post-World War II embrace of these fibers, in products ranging from insulating materials to ceiling tiles to roofing shingles, that provided undeniable evidence of health effects. By the 1960s, scientists had demonstrated that a chain of occupational illnesses, including a lung cancer called mesothelioma, could be directly linked to the presence of such mineral fibers.

The term asbestos technically refers to a group of six silicate-based fibrous minerals. But this definition may underestimate the extent of naturally occurring risks, scientists say. The mineral erionite, for instance, also forms needlelike structures, which have been linked to startlingly high levels of mesothelioma in Turkey and which have recently been discovered in the oil-and-gas boom regions of North Dakota. The discovery of airborne erionite fibers in North Dakota recently led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to describe it as "an emerging North American hazard."

"Essentially, these fibers flow aerodynamically into the deep lung tissue and lodge there" said Geoffrey Plumlee, a geochemist with the United States Geological Survey in Denver. They remain embedded for years, like needles in a pincushion, spurring the onset of not only mesothelioma but also other lung cancers and diseases of the respiratory system.

By the 1970s such health effects were so well documented that the Environmental Protection Agency moved to limit asbestos use, and in 1989 the agency banned almost all industrial use of the minerals. But a recent cascade of research has renewed scientific worries.

For one thing, recent soil studies show that residential developments have spread into mineral-rich regions. California's state capital, Sacramento, for example, spilled into neighboring El Dorado County, where, it turned out, whole neighborhoods were built across a swatch of asbestos deposits.

And sophisticated epidemiological studies have shown that this was more than an occupational health issue. The small mining town of Libby, Mont., provided one of the most dramatic case studies. Almost a fifth of the residents have now received diagnoses of asbestos-linked illnesses, from mesothelioma to severe scarring of lung tissue.

When these conditions began cropping up across the entire town in the late 1990s, investigators assumed that those sickened were all workers at a nearby mine. But the illnesses weren't appearing only in mine workers. Family members were stricken, too, as were residents of the town who had nothing to do with the mining business.

Investigations by alarmed government agencies — including the E.P.A, the Geological Survey and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences — established that miners brought asbestos fibers back to town with them on clothes, vehicles and other possessions. But residents were also exposed to fibers blowing about the surrounding environment — and, to the dismay of researchers, people were being sickened by far smaller exposures than had been thought to cause harm.

"Libby really started the new focus on the issue," said Bradley Van Gosen, a research geochemist with the Geological Survey in Denver. Dr. Van Gosen has been put in charge of a new U.S.G.S. mapping project, an ambitious effort to trace the minerals not only across Western mining states but also elsewhere, from the Upper Midwest to a rambling path up the Eastern Seaboard, starting in southern Appalachia and stretching into Maine.

Dr. Van Gosen said that most of the Eastern deposits were linked to an ancient crustal boundary, perhaps a billion years old, that underlies mountain ranges like the Appalachians. Wherever they are found, though, minerals in the asbestos family tend to form when magnesium, silica and water are transformed by superheated magma from the earth's mantle.

In Western states, such filamented minerals tend to result from volcanic activity. In the Midwest, where fibers have recently turned up associated with mining interests in Minnesota and Wisconsin, geologists suspect they originated in ancient magnesium-rich seafloors. A recent study in Minnesota linked an increased risk of death among miners to time spent working in mines contaminated by such deposits.

"It has the potential to be a huge deal," said Christopher P. Weis, toxicology adviser to the director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. "And we want to get the word out, because this is something that can be addressed if we tackle it upfront."

Dr. Buck's discovery of similar hazards in southern Nevada was the first time that naturally occurring asbestos had been reported in the region. At this point, she and her colleagues are simply trying to figure out the extent of the problem. A leading mesothelioma researcher, Dr. Michele Carbone of the University of Hawaii, is analyzing the fibers to help establish the magnitude of any health risk. Dr. Buck and Dr. Metcalf are expanding their sampling deeper into the Nevada desert, trying to build a better map of the hazardous regions.

"We live here. Our children are here," Dr. Buck said. "We want very much to get this right."

And they are approaching their discovery with personal caution. They now wear protective gear while sampling, and Dr. Buck has decided against taking her graduate students out for what appears to be risky fieldwork.

On a larger scale, researchers are investigating alternatives to creating large forbidden zones, such as wetting down roads or requiring that people in high-exposure areas wear protective masks and gear. But even small measures, like bathing after exposure and washing contaminated clothing separately, may help, Dr. Weis said.

"We can be smart and efficient about this, both at the government and at the personal level," he said.

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The Lede: Some West Virginia Residents Can Finally Use Water Again

After officials in West Virginia announced on Monday that a ban on tap water was being lifted, many residents were excited to take a shower again.

But the ban was being lifted slowly, zone by zone, starting with hospitals. Most of the 300,000 people who were affected by the chemical spill last Thursday were still waiting to find out when the ban would be lifted in their neighborhood.

On Monday at 9 p.m., West Virginia American Water announced that a fourth zone of customers in North Charleston could begin to flush their systems. A map on the company's website showed the exact areas where the ban had been lifted, with the blue region cleared to use water and the red regions still under the water ban.

UPDATE: The "do not use" water order has been lifted for the North Charleston customer zone, which includes… http://t.co/EPIP8hYNxg

— WV American Water (@wvamwater) 14 Jan 14

The water ban had been lifted for about 26,000 customers on Monday, officials said. The system needed time to settle so operators could measure how it was reacting so far. Additional zones will receive permission to use water on Tuesday.

After five days without water, the first priority for many was a shower.

Very happy camper right now. I'm now flushing my water & will soon be able to take a shower at home. Thank u #wvwater!

— Tiffany Brown (@tabrownwv) 14 Jan 14

For days, residents have been relying on water distribution centers in Charleston, the state capital, and nine surrounding counties. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has delivered hundreds of thousands of gallons of potable water to centers set up by local fire departments like this one, where water was still being passed out on Monday:

Pinch Fire's water distribution center still going strong at Crossings Mall. #WVWaterCrisis http://t.co/One3Qec5ST

— Pinch Vol. Fire Dept (@PinchFire2) 13 Jan 14

The water company has given residents detailed instructions on how to flush their plumbing before they can start to use water again. Still, some were afraid to drink the water.

Water is NOT safe when your zone is called. It just means you can flush your system. Even then, I'm not drinking the water. #WVWaterCrisis

— Dr. Susan Gardner (@PhDSus) 14 Jan 14

Bottled water is now a permanent part of my grocery list.

— Dr. Susan Gardner (@PhDSus) 14 Jan 14

Others said that the water still had the smell of licorice, from the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or MCHM, that seeped into a local river.

Flushing now with hot water. Nothing like the smell of hot, steamy licorice in air. Smell-o-meter at level 1.5. #wvwatercrisis #wvchemleak

— Linda Bodie (@LindaBodie) 13 Jan 14

And some residents reported that the water had a green tint.

Water still very green and has strong smell. #KeepFlushing #WVWaterCrisis #wvchemleak

— Ric Cavender (@RicCavender) 13 Jan 14

@CartneyRenn Yes. Not as bad as earlier, but still tinted green. http://t.co/kALxVqvqkY

— Ric Cavender (@RicCavender) 13 Jan 14

Many were optimistic that the ban would be lifted in their neighborhoods on Tuesday.

Didn't get the green light for my water tonight. Hoping for tomorrow! Very grateful to those working hard to make it happen. #WVWaterCrisis

— Kristin Ketchell (@KristinKetchell) 14 Jan 14

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Dot Earth Blog: How the Obama Administration Can Get Bluefin Tuna Off the (Wrong) Hook

Lee Crockett, who directs the U.S. Oceans program of The Pew Charitable Trusts, sent a compelling "Your Dot" piece on addressable problems with United States fishing regulations that are perpetuating wasteful catches of bluefin tuna on longlines set for other species. He notes that you can weigh in with a comment to the relevant agency until Friday. Here's his post:

Environmental and fishing communities have long been concerned about the massive waste of Atlantic bluefin tuna caught incidentally by surface longline fishermen targeting swordfish and yellowfin tuna. Fortunately, the public still has until January 10 to comment on proposed regulations to help avert this tragedy.

The issue came to a head in 2012 when surface longline vessels in this fishery caught, killed, and discarded overboard nearly a quarter of the United States' entire bluefin quota, an estimated 239.5 metric tons of dead Atlantic bluefin tuna. The worst part was that this waste, or bycatch, was completely preventable.

In August 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service issued proposed fishing regulations for Atlantic bluefin tuna that could help stop the waste of this remarkable yet severely depleted fish. The bad news is that the proposal does not go far enough and needs improvements to fully achieve its conservation potential.

The most controversial part of the proposal is a large increase in the quota for the fishermen who use surface longlines, which can stretch 40 miles, carry more than 750 baited hooks, and float unattended for up to 18 hours. Their method of fishing has essentially been the problem. Our U.S. quota is set by an international management body, of which the United States is a member. N.O.A.A. then divides that quota among groups of commercial and recreational U.S. bluefin fishermen who use a variety of types of gear, including rod-and-reel, harpoons, and purse seines (nets).

Fishermen employing indiscriminate surface longlines also get a piece of the quota to cover their incidental catch of bluefin, although they are not allowed to directly target those fish. Yet N.O.A.A.'s proposed regulation would unfairly give surface longline fishermen as much as 191.4 additional metric tons of quota to make up for their waste, effectively denying these fish to bluefin tuna fishermen who use selective gear.

In short, N.O.A.A.'s solution to the incidental catch of bluefin tuna by surface longline fishermen is to allow them a larger share of the quota. That's not conservation, that's a giveaway.

Fortunately, a better approach lies within the agency's proposed regulations. N.O.A.A. recognizes that there are two hotspots for bluefin tuna bycatch. The first is in the Gulf of Mexico, the only known spawning area for the western population of these fish. The agency proposes to restrict indiscriminate surface longline fishing in this area during April and May to reduce bycatch. The second is an area off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, where surface longline fishing would be off-limits for some fishing vessels, but not all, from December through April. Both are laudable proposals designed to protect the oldest and largest bluefin on their migration to the Gulf of Mexico and while they are there spawning.

But if N.O.A.A. really wants to stop the waste of bluefin tuna on surface longlines it needs to expand protections. First, the agency should extend the gear-restricted area to the entire Gulf of Mexico and this restriction should include the month of March. Second, the agency should not let any surface longline fishermen have access to the gear-restricted area off North Carolina from December through April. Finally, N.O.A.A. needs to keep its new proposed enforceable cap on the amount of bluefin tuna that can be caught on surface longlines to ensure that this sector stays within its quota.

By expanding these protections, N.O.A.A. would not need to proceed with the most controversial aspect of its proposed regulation, which is the quota reallocation to the surface longline fishery. The public has until January 10 to weigh in on this issue. Bringing back bluefin tuna to healthy population levels in order to create new fishing opportunities is a shared goal of environmentalists and fishermen. A surefire way to do that is to end the waste of bluefin tuna. Please add your voice to this issue by submitting an official comment.

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Slowly, Asia’s Factories Begin to Turn Green

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — When Intel went about setting up its chip factory in Vietnam, it found an oddity: Local laws did not govern every aspect of the building.

The government had no comprehensive standards, for instance, on refrigerant chemicals, which in the United States are typically regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. In fact, officials asked Intel whether the company had any ideas on the subject that might be useful to other manufacturers operating in the country.

Yet today, Intel's $1 billion plant, about 10 miles from downtown Ho Chi Minh City, embraces environmental and sustainability measures far beyond those required by Vietnam's laws. Opened in 2010, the complex has the country's largest operating solar array. Company officers say a new water-reclamation system could soon help it reduce water consumption as much as 68 percent. It is also vying for certification by the U.S. Green Building Council

Intel didn't have to go to these lengths, but the motivation for these measures is simple, said the complex's general manager, Sherry Boger: "It turns out, what's good for the environment is also good for business."

Western multinationals — and in some cases, their Asian suppliers — have in the last five years started to build more environmentally sound factories in developing countries, green-building experts say. The U.S. Green Building Council, a leading global certifier, reports that only about 300 manufacturing facilities in Asia are certified or waiting for certification through its rating tool, called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED.

Efficiency consultants in Asia say it is difficult to estimate how much energy or money an average multinational saves by having a green-certified factory building. But the certification trend is potentially significant in Asia because so many consumer and industrial goods are manufactured in the region, offering enormous potential for energy savings if the practice becomes widespread, experts say. And a trickle of factory data suggests the energy savings at certified facilities are significant.

Intel, for example, has reduced its global energy bill by $111 million since 2008 as a result of $59 million worth of sustainability investments in 1,500 projects worldwide, Ms. Boger said. The projects have offset carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to the amount produced by 126,000 American households per year, she added, and Intel's $1.1 million solar array at the Vietnam facility offsets each day an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to that emitted by about 500 of Vietnam's motorbikes.

In 2011, an efficiency survey found that compared with a typical factory, a LEED-certified shoe factory in southern Vietnam that produces exclusively for Nike uses 18 percent less electricity and fuel and 53 percent less water, according to Melissa Merryweather, the lead sustainability consultant for the project. The factory is owned by Taekwang Vina, a joint venture of the South Korean manufacturer Taekwang and a Vietnamese partner.

Stephanie Clark, a spokeswoman for the American consumer products giant Colgate-Palmolive, provided statistics indicating that the company's seven LEED-certified factories worldwide had reduced construction waste and lowered water and energy use. Ms. Clark added that four more such factories were under construction, and the company's website shows that its 11 total LEED projects worldwide — five of them in Asia — represent about a third of the company's manufacturing sites.

Malaysia's government has certified about 750,000 square feet of factory space since 2009, according to the Malaysia Green Building Confederation, representing about 1 percent of its total building certifications. And Kevin Mo, director of the China buildings program at the Energy Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, said that Chinese authorities had included 8 factories among the 742 buildings it certified by the end of 2012. Most of the others were residential or commercial, he said; other factories were in the pipeline.

A market for industrial efficiency upgrades is also growing in India, where many factory owners worry about power outages, said Prashant Kapoor, principal industry specialist for green buildings at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank. He added that demand for upgrades was now consistent enough there that a few domestic contractors were beginning to specialize in it.

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World Briefing | Antarctica: Stuck Ships Break Free Near Antarctica

Two ships immobilized by ice floes near Antarctica broke free on Tuesday, news agencies reported. The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long was trapped Friday after its helicopter evacuated 52 passengers from a Russian research ship, the Akademik Shokalskiy, that had been icebound since mid-December. The BBC reported Tuesday that shifting winds had opened a path for the research ship to free itself. Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, reported Tuesday evening that the Xue Long was also working its way out of the pack ice a short distance away. At the request of Australian maritime authorities last week, a United States Coast Guard icebreaker has been making its way toward the two ships, but was still several days away.

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$18 Billion Price Put on Effort to Block Carp

Chris Young/The State Journal-Register, via Associated Press

The closest sighting of Asian silver carp on the Illinois River was 55 miles from Lake Michigan.

The most effective methods of keeping Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes via Chicago's web of waterways could cost up to $18.4 billion and take 25 years to put in place, the federal Army Corps of Engineers concluded in a study released Monday.

But a corps official cautioned in a telephone briefing for journalists that there was no guarantee that the carp or other unwanted species would not get into the lakes by then.

The agency's 210-page study, first ordered by Congress in 2007, laid out eight options to prevent the carp and other unwanted species from entering Lake Michigan, ranging from continuing existing efforts to building barriers that would seal the lake from the five Chicago-area streams that are linked to it.

Either blocking the lakefront waterways or blocking their two sources further inland would offer the greatest protection from invading species, the report said. But both options would prevent barges and other boats from using those routes, and would increase pollution in the lake and the waterways.

Most of the other options would be cheaper and would preserve some access to the lake, but would be somewhat less effective.The report arrived amid growing concern that some so-called nuisance species, led by two strains of the carp, may already have bypassed existing barriers and entered Lake Michigan. The carp, which multiply quickly and eat huge amounts of plankton, are seen as a threat to commercial and sport fish that feed on plankton during at least some stages of their lives.

A water sample collected last May near Green Bay, Wis., contained DNA fragments of silver carp. After that discovery, senators from Great Lakes states called for immediate action to block a carp invasion. In 2012, Congress ordered the secretary of the Army to start designing and preparing to build an effective barrier should it be deemed justified.

Corps officials said Monday that no barrier would be built without holding public hearings, consulting the many government agencies with a stake in the matter and getting Congress's blessing.

Conservation groups generally want carp and other invasive species to be blocked as quickly as possible, but commercial shippers and recreational boat organizations have expressed concerns about options that would seal off the lake.

Officials have taken a number of steps to keep the carp out of the lake, including physically removing scores of thousands of them from the Illinois River, the source of all five waterways, and installing an underwater electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal inland from the five streams.

The electric barrier was once believed to be effective, but a recent report by the Army Corps and the federal Fish and Wildlife Service said entire schools of fish frequently slip through it, swept along by barge wakes or in water beneath metal boat hulls where the electric current is weakened.

Federal officials say there is no evidence that carp have entered Lake Michigan, noting that the closest sighting of the fish in the Illinois River was still 55 miles from the lake.

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