Cal Thomas on Global Warming's Falling Doctrine

The collapse of the global warming doctrine as a supposed truth is continuing.  Of course the proposition that we have entered a cooling cycle is just as tenuous.  The gross climate does swing back and forth over a decent range each year with the shifting of the seasons.  Some years a range of forcing agents takes it a little higher and some years they do not.

 

Since the heat input is pretty uniform and possibly subject to precise measure in time, it is better to understand what causes cooling and what the agents are.  Thinking of climate change in terms of various cooling agents is certain to be more productive.

 

For example, we have a peak in cosmic ray input to the atmosphere these past few months.  This permitted the prediction of a record cold winter, at least in terms of the past thirty years.  This prediction can now be deemed successful.  Other factors were not particularly in play, so we had an excellent test.

 

The sea ice comment here is not so correct.  The sea ice is continuing to lose mass as of last summer.  There is a difference between area and mass.  However this winter is cold and this process of mass decline may be halted this year.  As I have posted, this sea ice effect appears to be caused by a change in the geometry of the circum polar current and it is likely a driver of climate rather than a victim of climate change.

 

And yes, the doctrine of man caused climate change was a bad idea as I pointed out in my first post back in 2007, not least because it was unnecessary in terms of the agendas that need to be pursued, but because the likelihood of it been run over with a truck by Mother Nature approached certainty.  I just did not think she would be so quick of the mark.

 

Cal Thomas: Global warming is a falling doctrine

By: CAL THOMAS 

Examiner Columnist

January 14, 2010

 

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Global-warming-is-a-falling-doctrine-8759793-81328022.html

PORSTEWART, NORTHERN IRELAND - A familiar philosophical question goes like this: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Here's another: If a doctrine falls, will enough believers admit they were wrong and withdraw support for policies associated with it?

The "doctrine" of global warming, now euphemistically called "climate change," suffered a severe blow last week as much of Europe was buried in record amounts of snow and subfreezing temperatures.

"Experts" who believe in global warming, uh climate change, went on television where they bravely tried to make a distinction between weather, which they said was about what happens today, and climate, which is long term. Most of it fell on deaf -- and cold -- ears as growing numbers disbelieve the "experts," relying more on their own "lying eyes."

Writing Sunday in London's Daily Mail, columnist David Rose analyzed recent scientific data amassed by eminent climate scientists. Rose says that far from a warming planet, "the bitter weather afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years."

Rose cites data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, which found that, "Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 percent, since 2007."

This, he says, challenges "some of the global warming orthodoxy's most deeply cherished beliefs, such as their claim that the North Pole will be free of ice by the summer of 2013."

During last month's climate summit in Copenhagen, more than 150 scientists with backgrounds in climate science wrote an open letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a global warming believer.

The letter begins, "climate change science is in a period of 'negative discovery' - the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly the science is not settled."

The scientists challenge 10 of the main claims of the global warming-climate change true believers and write, "... there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes.

"Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth's orbital parameters and other natural phenomena."

That seems more than reasonable, but politicians in Europe and America want to rush through additional restrictions on how we live in order to seize more power. This is the major reason for their panic attack.

As new scientific evidence adds to the body of information, history and common sense, the power grab by the politicians is in peril. The hurry-up offense, to employ a football term, is being used to rush through legislation before the defense can devise an effective response. But the defense is now on the offense, and the offense is being forced to poorly play defense.

Should we do nothing about our consumption of petroleum? No, we should use this window of opportunity to decrease our reliance on petroleum; not because of "climate change," but to deprive the oil-producing nations of money too many of them use to underwrite terrorism.

This should satisfy both the global warming disciples and deniers and make America and Europe less dependent on nations that wish to destroy our liberty. But threats to liberty are not limited to some oil-producing nations; they can also be found in the British Parliament and in the American Congress.

The falling doctrines now make so much noise that only those without hearing fail to notice.

Examiner columnist Cal Thomas is nationally syndicated by Tribune Media, Inc. 

Read more at the Washington Examiner:http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Global-warming-is-a-falling-doctrine-8759793-81328022.html#ixzz0crQnUPt5

Solar Irrigation in Africa

This brings home how easy it is to increase productivity throughout West Africa with a modicum of direct investment.  Just managing water by lifting it as needed and distributing through drip irrigation is a revolution.

Communal efforts to retain water from the rainy season are also a priority.  Grassy berms can obviously work as well as treed belts.  These are all productive and useful.

Managed drip based irrigation during the dry season is obviously possible in combination with the aforementioned water conservation.

My key point is that this is nothing a large landowner with financial resources would not do in a heartbeat.  In the case were few have a hectare of land it becomes a community responsibility to organize this.

The real insight to take home, it that this is completely within the power of the owners themselves and good example is been shared through the internet today.  What works well in one village is no longer staying there.

It will still take time, Micro finance is wresting control of the economy back into the hands of the families and it is obvious that these lands can produce several times what they produce today, properly managed and financed.  It will not take generations thanks to internet sharing.

Solar Irrigation Boosts Local Incomes In Africa

by Staff Writers

Stanford CA (SPX) Jan 14, 2010

http://www.solardaily.com/reports/Solar_Irrigation_Boosts_Local_Incomes_In_Africa_999.html

http://www.solardaily.com/images/solar-powered-drip-irrigation-system-bg.jpg

 Burney and her co-authors noted that only 4 percent of cropland in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated, and that most rural, food-insecure communities in the region rely on rain-fed agriculture, which, in places like Benin, is limited to a three- to six-month rainy season.

Solar-powered drip irrigation systems significantly enhance household incomes and nutritional intake of villagers in arid sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new Stanford University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The two-year study found that solar-powered pumps installed in remote villages in the West African nation of Benin were a cost-effective way of delivering much-needed irrigation water, particularly during the long dry season. The results are published in the Jan. 4, 2010, online edition of PNAS.

"Significant fractions of sub-Saharan Africa's population are considered food insecure," wrote lead author Jennifer Burney, a postdoctoral scholar with the Program on Food Security and the Environment and the Department of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford.

"Across the region, these food-insecure populations are predominantly rural, they frequently survive on less than $1 per person per day, and whereas most are engaged in agricultural production as their main livelihood, they still spend 50 to 80 percent of their income on food, and are often net consumers of food."

Burney and her co-authors noted that only 4 percent of cropland in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated, and that most rural, food-insecure communities in the region rely on rain-fed agriculture, which, in places like Benin, is limited to a three- to six-month rainy season.

"On top of potential annual caloric shortages, households face two seasonal challenges: They must stretch their stores of staples to the next harvest (or purchase additional food, often at higher prices), and access to micronutrients via home production or purchase diminishes or disappears during the dry season," the authors wrote.

Promotion of irrigation among small landholders is therefore frequently cited as a strategy for poverty reduction, climate adaptation and promotion of food security, they said. And while the role of irrigation in poverty reduction has been studied extensively in Asia, relatively little has been written about the poverty and food security impacts in sub-Saharan Africa.

Benin demonstration sites

To address the lack of data, Burney and her colleagues monitored three 0.5-hectare (1.24-acre) solar-powered drip irrigation systems installed the Kalale district of northern Benin. The systems, which use photovoltaic pumps to deliver groundwater, were financed and installed by the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), a nongovernmental organization.

"As with any water pump, solar-powered pumps save labor in rural off-grid areas where water hauling is traditionally done by hand by women and young girls," the authors said. "Though photovoltaic systems are often dismissed out-of-hand due to high up-front costs, they have long lifetimes, and in the medium-term, cost less than liquid-fuel-based pumping systems."

Solar-powered pumps also can be implemented in an easily maintained, battery-free configuration, they added, "thereby avoiding one of the major pitfalls of photovoltaic use in the developing world."

In November 2007, the research team began a close collaboration with local women's agricultural groups in two villages in rural Benin. In Village A, which draws surface water from a year-round stream, researchers worked with residents to install two identical solar-powered pumping systems.

In Village B, which relies on groundwater irrigation, water was pumped from 25 meters (82 feet) below the surface. Each solar-powered pumping system was used by 30 to 35 women affiliated with an agricultural group. Each woman farmed her own 120-square meter (1,292-square foot) plot. The remaining plots were farmed collectively to fund group purchases and expenses.

The researchers also chose two control villages for comparison with Villages A and B. Women's agricultural groups in the control villages continued to irrigate by hand, allowing for comparison of the solar-powered drip irrigation systems to traditional methods.

"Household surveys were conducted in both treatment and control villages upon installation (November 2007) and following one year of garden operation (November 2008), and included detailed questions concerning consumption and agricultural production, as well as other socioeconomic, health and general questions," the authors wrote.

Striking results

The results were striking. The three solar-powered irrigation systems supplied on average 1.9 metric tons of produce per month, including tomatoes, okra, peppers, eggplants, carrots and other greens, the authors found. Woman who used solar-powered irrigation became strong net producers in vegetables with extra income earned from sales - significantly increasing their purchases of staples and protein during the dry season, and oil during the rainy season.

During the first year of operation, the women farmers kept an average of 18 percent by weight - 8.8 kilograms (19.4 pounds) per month - of the produce grown with the solar-powered systems for home consumption and sold the rest in local markets.

"Garden products penetrated local markets significantly," the authors found. "Vegetable consumption increased during the rainy season (the time of greatest surplus for the women's group farmers) for the entire four-village sample of households."

Survey respondents also were asked about their ability to meet their household food needs. Seventeen percent of the project beneficiaries said they were "less likely to feel chronically food-insecure. In short, the photovoltaic drip irrigation systems had a remarkable effect on both year-round and seasonal food access," the authors said.

Nutrition and sustainability

In terms of nutrition, vegetable intake across all villages increased by about 150 grams per person per day during the rainy season. But in villages irrigated with solar-powered systems, the increase was 500 to 750 grams per person per day, which is equivalent to 3 to 5 servings of vegetables per day - the same as the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Recommended Daily Allowance for vegetables - and most of this change took place in the dry season.

The research team also concluded that, despite higher up-front costs, using solarpower to pump water can be more economically sustainable in the long run than irrigation systems that run on liquid fuels, such as gasoline, diesel or kerosene.

"When considering the energy requirements for expanded irrigation in rural Africa, photovoltaic drip irrigation systems have an additional advantage over liquid-fuel-based systems in that they provide emissions-free pumping power," they added.

"Overall, this study thus indicates that solar-powered drip irrigation can provide substantial economic, nutritional and environmental benefits," the authors said.

"With the proper support, successful widespread adoption of photovoltaic drip irrigation systems could be an important source of poverty alleviation and food security in the marginal environments common to sub-Saharan Africa."

Other co-authors of the PNAS study are Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment and professor of environmental Earth system science; Lennart Woltering and Dov Paternak of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Niger; and Marshall Burke of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California-Berkeley.

The Underlying Haitian Tragedy

Of course we know how to solve poverty.  Just financially empower every smuck willing to lift a hammer or man a hoe and get out of the way.  Have them organize their communities to allow common assets to be produced.

We do not have time to wait for the benevolent few to accumulate enough liquidity to do it if they ever will or even could.

You must help create a proper legal code and establish title to assets that is simple and cheap.  Get used to treating slabs of reinforced concrete like it is land.

It helps if the community has a prime employer, but that has been solved just about everywhere with government employment of some sort.  At least it distributes cash into the economy.

The advent of cell phones and cell phone banking is just now making all this way easier.

In the event, this horrific event opens the door for a full press reorganization of Haitian society.  They themselves have already shed their history of oppressed ignorance and a full international commitment in resources and manpower can turn this into a healthy country. Perhaps we have the will now.

 

 

The Underlying Tragedy

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: January 14, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html?ref=opinion

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.

The chastened tone of these essays is captured by the economist Abhijit Banerjee: “It is not clear to us that the best way to get growth is to do growth policy of any form. Perhaps making growth happen is ultimately beyond our control.”

The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord’s work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.

Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.

As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Fourth, it’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.

These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.

It’s time to take that approach abroad, too. It’s time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people — maybe just in a neighborhood or a school — with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.

The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old.

The Avatar Effect

This effect of the advent of Avatar the movie comes under unintended consequences.  The second item was much more predictable.  That is the establishment of a mass market for 3D spectacle films.  I wonder if it is possible to redo Ben Hur?

 

The holodeck of Star Trek is at least a generation away, but this will certainly do in the meantime.  Of course, spectacle will overwhelm plot.  Who wants to take a chance on that when hundreds of millions are been spent?

 

I am pleased to understand that both the trilogy and the Star Wars cycle can be upgraded to this format at what is presently a nominal cost.  In fact, it proclaims that no film of consequence is likely to be without it here on in.

 

I imagine most fail to remember or properly understand just how revolutionary the advent of Star Wars was on the film industry.  Before it, the artistic types shunned science fiction when it was obvious to informed fans that the genre was a gold mine of visual possibilities.  Yet when I sat down back then to a 12.30 am preview of Star Wars, my expectations were low and I braced myself to be forgiving.  Instead, the film worked and completely exceeded what imagination could have expected.  I walked out knowing the industry had changed forever.

 

This revolution in visual presentation continues in Avatar unabated, although we are now finding the edges of the possibilities.  The human imagination can be beautifully expressed in a glorious 3D format to its limits.

 

And yes, the movies are about visual story telling, and plots are merely a necessary skeleton to hang the pictures.  There was a time they were used to hang word imagery.  Let us hope that we soon hang holograms.

 

The Avatar Effect

 

China's moviegoers see a story about private property, not race.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703652104574651764117659286-lMyQjAxMTAwMDEwMjExNDIyWj.html

Hollywood blockbusters aren't usually notable for their artistic or political subtlety. And James Cameron's latest sci-fi hit, "Avatar," would seem to be no exception, going by the lament of some critics that the film's impressive special effects are undercut by a skimpy story line and flat dialogue.

That, however, is not how many Chinese see the film, which tells the story of rapacious humans trying to evict the blue-skinned natives of the planet Pandora in order to extract some exceedingly valuable mineral. This is standard politically correct fare for a Western audience, conveying a message of racial sensitivity and environmental awareness. In China, however, it has more rebellious undertones.

That's because Chinese local governments in cahoots with developers have become infamous for forcibly seeking to evict residents from their homes with little compensation and often without their consent. The holdouts are known as "nail households," since their homes are sometimes left stranded in the middle of busy construction sites. More often, however, they are driven away by paid thugs. Private property is one of the most sensitive issues in the country today, and "Avatar" has given the resisters a shot in the arm.

Even in Hong Kong, the "Avatar" banner has been taken up by antigovernment activists trying to defeat a plan to demolish a village to make way for a new high-speed railway line. One mysterious benefactor reportedly donated movie tickets to the villagers to stoke their enthusiasm for protests.

We suspect that neither Mr. Cameron nor 20th Century Fox (a sister company to this newspaper) had any idea of the effect their movie would have on the other side of the world. But then such flukes are one of the wonderful things about globalization, confounding those who lament its supposedly homogenizing effects on culture.

Future Movies and Old Movies Will Be in 3D and Imax

The 3D version of Titanic will be released later in 2010.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/01/future-movies-and-old-movies-will-be-in.html

Bobby Jaffe, the chairman Legend Films (3D movie conversion company) - 3D conversion mostly suits action films, such as Top Gun or The Matrix, but Avatar proved it’s best to use the technology to immerse the audience in the story rather than throw things at them. This is the new, more sophisticated era of 3-D. 

University of Southern California reported that after seeing a 3-D film in the cinema in 2009, 40% of people would prefer to watch television in 3-D, too.

Times UK - Hollywood is preparing to re-release some past hits, including Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in 3-D following the record-breaking success of Avatar.

Studio executives are drawing up schedules of popular films that will be “retro-fitted” with 3-D technology after the science fiction blockbuster. Experts now predict that 3-D will become the new multiplex standard within five years.

Retro-fitting a screen classic with 3-D imagery could take as little as four months, using software to manipulate a digital copy of the film.

Last week technicians at Weta, the production company that had worked on the trilogy, said they had experimented with 3-D battle scenes and proclaimed them to be “gob-smacking”.

The Lord of the Rings is expected to be re-released after Jackson has finished producing the two-part version of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit over the next two years. This would mean that a 3-D version of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of the trilogy, could be in cinemas by Christmas 2012.

It may be beaten to the screen by a revamped version of Star Wars. George Lucas, the director, spent $13m filming the original in 1976, added special effects in 1997 and 2004, and will now spend another $10m to change it into a 3-D spectacular.

Wired has a list of movies that they would like to see getting a 3D upgrade. However, I think all action blockbusters will get remade into 3D and it will just be question of where the cutoff is for people being willing to make a trip to the theater to see a re-release.

The IMAX version of "Avatar" has pulled in more than $60 million at the box office, about 15% of the movie's overall $420 million take in the U.S. so far. Still, IMAX appears to have room to grow -- the IMAX version of "Avatar" plays on only 5% of the total screens showing the movie.

3-D TV coming soon to your living room, that's why more films may be made especially with IMAX in mind. So instead of making a movie and deciding to show it in 3-D on IMAX as an afterthought, IMAX technology will be part of the original vision and plan for the film.

"If you can create a spectacle, they will come, as we have no doubt seen with 'Avatar'," Bock said.

As of September 30, 2009, there were 403 IMAX theatres (280 commercial, 123 institutional) operating in 44 countries.

Imax already had expansion underway in Asia. The Canadian company has 20 theaters in China, and Don Savant, senior vp and managing director, Asia Pacific, said that by 2013, Imax would have more than 30 theaters in commercial multiplexes in China.

Expect a faster expansion of Imax theaters with double the current number or more by 2015.

Haiti Needs Cuba Now

As reported everywhere, conditions in Haiti are awful and help must be delivered to millions over the next three of four days.  The question is how?

Effectively all the building stock is uninhabitable.  At present it is a desperate race to dig out the handful of living and recover the dead.  The only mercy is that it is warm and obviously not the rainy season.  Had this occurred in Northern China, those trapped would already be frozen to death.

Right now someone needs to facilitate support from the Cuban military and medical system and even pay for it.  They have medical personnel and likely sea lift to move victims quickly out of harms way onto the Cuban hospital system.  Most important, they can put those boots on the ground which is what is needed right now.   More critically, they are used to the local conditions.

Hopefully the political types can quickly get over their issues for a time in order to pull this chunk of fat out of the fire.  In the meantime, Cuba already had 300 doctors in country and that means that fresh doctors can be absorbed instantly as well as medical supplies.  In fact, the one bright spot besides the pleasant weather, it that we have a good number of foreign aid groups already in country able to absorb manpower and supplies now.

The immediate advent of several thousand troops from the US will allow some order to be brought out of the present chaos and the built up areas can be quickly cleared of people.  This is necessary because bodies are already beginning to deteriorate and the living need to get food and water now and that is easiest done at marshalling points. 

 

The challenge is to get the boots on the ground to control and manage the necessary supply tail that is been mobilized.  Essentially three million people are about to spend the next few months under canvass and everyone else will be struggling to access broken distribution networks. 

It is also a surety that most of the damaged buildings will have to be bulldozed.  It is therefore a great time to plan a new city and to establish better building codes. 

 

Aid workers in Haiti face 'logistical nightmare'

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer – 58 mins ago

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100114/ap_on_re_eu/haiti_earthquake_aid

GENEVA – Roads full of hungry, homeless people. A ruined port and an overwhelmed airport. Hundreds of crumpled buildings and little heavy machinery. Few working phones.

Relief supplies and emergency experts started pouring into Haiti from around the world Thursday but aid groups said the challenge of helping Haiti's desperate quake survivors was enormous.

"It's chaos," U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told The Associated Press. "It's a logistical nightmare."

Aid deliveries by ship were impossible to Port-au-Prince because the Haitian capital's port was closed due to severe damage from Tuesday magnitude-7 earthquake. The city's airport was open but damaged, laboring mightily to handle a flurry of incoming aid flights.

Fearful of going near quake-damaged buildings, Haitians stood or rested on the roads, slowing the transport of food and other crucial aid.

Severe damage to at least eight Port-au-Prince hospitals made it nearly impossible to treat the thousands of injured or prevent outbreaks of disease, said Paul Garwood, spokesman for the World Health Organization.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, presents unique logistical challenges for aid workers even in the best of times. It shares an island with the Dominican Republic, meaning that aid must arrive by sea or air. Haitian streets are in poor condition under normal circumstances, and even if aid reaches the Dominican Republic, the road from there to Port-au-Prince is narrow and easily clogged.

Almost everything has to be imported, even wood for building temporary shelters, because Haitians have denuded their hillsides by cutting trees for cooking fuel.

"If you see Dominican Republic and Haiti from the air, it's really striking," said Byrs. "Half of the island is green and the rest is dust."

In addition, Haiti was already heavily damaged by a series of severe hurricanes, the most recent in 2008.

President Barack Obama announced Thursday the U.S. government was making an initial $100 million relief effort and promised an all-out rescue and humanitarian effort that included military and civilian emergency teams from across the U.S.

"We have to be there for them in their hour of need," Obama said.

The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was deployed to Haiti, and the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan had been ordered to sail as soon as possible with a 2,000-member Marine unit.

Even as the United Nations stepped up its massive aid operation, the world body was trying to determine how many of its own staff were killed in earthquake.

"It's very difficult to give an exact number," said Byrs. "This is also a tragedy for the United Nations."

She said up to 100 U.N. staff were trapped in the main U.N. peacekeepers' building, which was destroyed.

Byrs said 40 search-and-rescue teams from around the world had started arriving in Haiti to look for survivors trapped inside collapsed buildings. But to find and save people, the rescuers need heavy machinery to lift tons of rubble — equipment that teams from places like Britain and Iceland have, but others don't.

Haiti has virtually none of those machines but aid workers were trying to get some into Haiti from theDominican Republic, Charles Vincent of the World Food Program said.

"We'll have to see how that works out," said Vincent. "The U.S. military will also be bringing in some equipment."

The desperate situation has aid groups fearing a surge in lawlessness, Vincent said. U.N.

peacekeepers are patrolling to try to control looting but they are dealing with many deaths and injuries of their own, he added.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said its forensic specialists would help ensure that bodies of the quake victims are recovered and identified for the benefit of their families.

The Red Cross set up a special Web site to help Haitians find their missing loved ones, and after just a few hours, over 5,000 people had already registered on it, many from the United States and Canada.

Aid was delivered or promised from many countries, including Brazil, the European Union, Britain, Germany,Israel, France, Switzerland, South Korea and Canada. China dispatched a chartered plane carrying 10 tons of tents, food, medical equipment and sniffer dogs, along with a 60-member earthquake relief team who worked in China's own 2008 earthquake, which killed some 90,000 people.

The Red Cross estimated that some 3 million people in Haiti will require aid, ranging from shelter to food and clean water, and said many Haitians could need relief aid for a full year.

Aid workers base such estimates on previous disasters that appear to be the same size, said Pablo Medina, operations coordinator of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

"At this very early hour, with such limited amount of information, what you have to do is base your calls on past experience on previous earthquakes, on media reports and on information on the ground," Medina told the AP.

Initial planning is conservative and is normally revised upward as more information becomes available. This time, the Red Cross decided to send 100 experts to Haiti.

"That's fairly big," Medina said.

___

Associated Press Writers Frank Jordans in Geneva, Meera Selva in London, Tini Tranh in Beijing, Kwang-tae Kim in Seoul, South Korea, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Aus

Cuba Sends More Docs to Haiti

January 14, 2010

By Circles Robinson

HAVANA TIMES, Jan. 14 — The Cuban government sent to Haiti the first contingent of doctors from the Henry Reeve Medical Brigade that specializes in assisting after natural disasters and serious epidemics.

The brigade was first established to offer help to the United States when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, an offer rejected by ex-President Bush.

Since then the brigade has been on the scene after earthquakes in Pakistan, and China, the Tsunami in Indonesia and major flooding in Guatemala and Bolivia.

Cuba already had 344 doctors and other health professionals working full time in Haiti under an agreement with the Haitian government.

Victor Geneus, Haiti’s ambassador to Havana, thanked the Cuban people and government for their assistance in such difficult times.  “The Cuban doctors have a lot of experience with our reality and a lot of desire to understand and help, and that’s what we most needed,” Geneus told the Cuban News Agency.

Bamboo for Land Fill Cover

Bamboo is not yet an important crop in the Americas, but will be some day.  Twenty years ago, I planted a shoot of lumber bamboo in my back yard in Vancouver.  Lumber bamboo when growing strongly puts up canes with a typical diameter off four to six inches if not even more sometimes.  They grow to twenty feet in height in a single season and then toughen up.

They are used to build scaffolding in China and are processed to produce the bamboo products we are all familiar with.

That shoot grew out to a small grove with well over thirty canes and sprouting fifteen new canes every spring.  Husbandry was very easy.  You control spreading by placing a four inch barrier in the soil so that the runners cannot escape.  They are a bitch to cut by the way so you do not want to neglect this control measure.  If you only want so many canes, then in the spring you merely snap off the emerging shoots.

We had the opposite problem.  The squirrels loved the shoots and ate them down.  We had to wrap the shoots with chicken mesh to allow the canes to grow.  They soon become immune to such attention as they grow quickly.  That is the likely extent of the pest problem.

Without question bamboo will grow a tough net like root mass over the capping soil of any landfill or berm.  This will certainly secure the soil and allow slow water percolation.  I am sure it would even be handy for earthen dams.  The key again is that a tough three inch mat is produced with no penetration to depth which is not wanted at all on an earthen dam.  (It creates unwelcome water channels when the root dies)

Bamboo shows promise for waste sites

by Staff Writers

Aiken, S.C. (UPI) Jan 13, 2009 

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Bamboo_shows_promise_for_waste_sites_999.html

Fast-growing and shallow-rooted bamboo shows promise for use in remediation of waste sites, federal researchers in South Carolinasaid.

Two species of the nearly 1,000 species of bamboo are being tested in a nursery at the Savannah River National Laboratory near Aiken, S.C., the U.S. Department of Energy said in a release Tuesday.

Poaceae bissetii and Poaceae rubromarginata, two smaller species of bamboo with runners, were planted in 1991 in an acre plot about 10 feet apart. Since then, the bamboos, especially P. bissetii, have proven effective at being cold hardy, drought tolerant and able to thrive in full sun, said Eric Nelson, an analyst at the Savannah River lab.

The bamboos also spread roots quickly and prevented erosion without penetrating the caps used on waste sites, Nelson said. Caps prevent rain from seeping through waste and spreading contamination.