Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Aristotle's Infinity
Alexis Cohen
February 15, 2006
Infinity in the Physics, Book III4-8
Aristotle begins his explanation of infinity with an appeal to scientific knowledge. If the Physics undertakes the task of illuminating scientific knowledge, then Aristotle is obliged to discuss infinity to this end[1]. For Aristotle, “[s] cientific knowledge of nature involves taking magnitudes and change and time into consideration, and each of them is bound to be either infinite or finite”(202b30). Yet, not everything is either infinite or finite, e.g. qualities and points. Thus, a discussion of infinity does not construct the whole of scientific knowledge.
The Greek word for ‘infinite’, apeiron, is the same word for ‘unlimited’. In its limitlessness, those whom Aristotle calls the “natural scientists”, consider the infinite as neither an origin nor an end. Instead, they think the infinite “is taken not to have an origin, but to be the origin of everything else—to contain everything and steer everything, as has been said by those thinkers who do not recognize any other causes…apart from the infinite”(203b7)[2]. Unlike the natural scientists, both Plato and the Pythagoreans used the word infinite to describe unstructured stuff awaiting an imposed limit in the guise of either a shape or a form[3]. Aristotle, however, differs from all those mentioned above in that he considers the infinite as that “which cannot be traversed”(204a3).
Before attempting to define infinity, Aristotle lays five popular considerations that generally lead people “to infer that something infinite does exist”(203b15). The first two are the infinity of time and the division of magnitudes in mathematics. The last three considerations, however, are less straightforward. Thirdly, Aristotle finds that there is a notion that the persistence of generation and destruction is due to an infinite source “from which anything which is generated is subtracted”(203b17). Aristotle also lists the common notion that there must be a limit to the finite and, hence, no ultimate limit. Lastly, people believe that “number and mathematical magnitudes and the region beyond the heavens seem to be infinite because they do not give out in our thought. And if the region beyond the heavens is infinite, then it seems that body must be infinite too…”(203b22). Aristotle waits till end of the Book III to refute these arguments, however, with the exception that consideration one, that of time, is partly admissible. Aristotle refutes these considerations because they entertain the notion of actual infinity, which only later is proven impossible.
Before refuting the five popular reasons for infinity, Aristotle is compelled to ask whether or not infinity is a substance, an attribute, or neither a substance nor an attribute. In order to answer his own question, Aristotle discusses two different possible meanings of infinity. As mentioned earlier, infinity is that which cannot be traversed or that which “whose nature is such that it might be traversed, but is not in fact traversed or bounded”(204a7). Aristotle then quickly adds one more thought: infinity is either infinite by addition, by division, or by neither.
After posing all these questions, Aristotle declares in his heading for Book III.5 that the infinite is not itself a substance. Also, the infinite cannot stand separation from perceptible things and be just itself. To further defend his views Aristotle asks, “how could there be an independent infinite, if there cannot be independent number and magnitude?”(204a17). Thus, infinity is a property of number and magnitude[4]. Aristotle also declares that it is impossible for infinity to exist both in actuality and “to have substantial existence as a principle”(204a20)[5]. It is here that Aristotle first alludes to the distinction between actual and potential infinity that he will later expound. Before articulating this difference, which is essential for Cantor and his set theory, Aristotle declares infinity as “a coincidental attribute of things”(204a29). Accordingly, the infinite is not a principle. Instead, infinity is an attribute of principles.
In order to later refute the idea of actual infinity, Aristotle debates whether or not there is an infinitely extended body. Ultimately, Aristotle denies the existence of an infinitely extended body because he defines body as “‘that which is bounded by surface’”(20b4). That which is bounded cannot be that which is unlimited, or infinite. Furthermore, Aristotle makes a mathematical claim and states that “[n] or can any number that exists apart from perceptible things be infinite either, because number, and anything which has a number, is countable; anything countable can be counted, and it follows that it would be possible to traverse the infinite”(204b6). It is also important to note that, for Aristotle, it is impossible to simultaneously have an infinitely extended body and a place for this body[6]. Hence, there “is no actually infinite body”(206a7).
Although there is no actually infinite body, Aristotle consents to potential infinity. The verb ‘to be’, here, has two different meanings. ‘To be’ means either ‘to be potentially’ or ‘to be actually’ (206a14). However, ‘being potentially’ does not always refer to a future actuality. In terms of potential infinity, Aristotle uses the ‘to be’ analogously “in the same way that we use it of a day or a contest—that is, because one thing happens after another”(206a21). Here, ‘to be’ can be understood as moving successively as long as that which has passed, qua part, is understood as gone. Consequently, infinity is not “‘that which has nothing beyond itself’”, but rather “‘that which always has something beyond itself’”(206b33). The infinite is seemingly dynamic and, because of this dynamism, the infinite is not whole.
Aristotle defines whole “as that which has no part missing”(207a8). Suggested in the definition of “wholeness” is completeness, and what is complete has reached its end. End, in this sense, is a limit. What is whole is limited and, thus, not infinite. Yet, the whole is similar to the infinite. The infinite, unlike the whole, does not contain all things within it. Instead, “the infinite is matter for the completion of a magnitude and is potentially (not actually) the completed whole…and it takes something else to make it whole and finite, which it is not in its own right; and in so far as it is infinite, it does not contain but is contained”(207a21). The idea that the infinite can be contained, however, is contestable. After all, what is a container other than a type of limit?
Both matter and infinity are contained within things and it is form that does the containing. Accordingly, in terms of the fourfold division of causes, infinity is a material cause. Infinity is also not stable “but is being generated, as time is, and as the number of time is”(207b15). Time is infinite, but only in the sense that the parts of time do not persist. Time, in its successive movement, is always changing and, for Aristotle, time is infinite only “if change is infinite”(207b25).
Question for Consideration:
How can we draw together Aristotle’s definition for infinity with becoming and nature (physis)?
Do we agree that the infinite is matter? What are the consequences of this theory?
[1] The first two sentences of the Physics allude towards Aristotle’s goal of gaining scientific knowledge: “In any subject which has principles, causes, and elements, scientific knowledge and understanding stems from a grasp of these…It obviously follows that if we are to gain scientific knowledge of nature as well, we should begin by trying to decide about its principles”(184a10).
[2] Here, Aristotle is drawing reference to Heraclitus’s 41st Fragment which states: “Wisdom is one thing: to understand with true judgment how all things are steered through all” (Richard Hooker ©1995).
[3] Translator Robin Waterfield alerts readers to this fact in a footnote for 203a4 in the 1996 Oxford World’s Classics addition of the Physics.
[4] “In the second place, how could there be an independent infinite, if there cannot be independent number and magnitude? Infinity is in its own right a property of number and magnitude, so, of the three, an independently existing infinite is the least necessary”(204a17).
[5] Translator Robin Waterfield argues that this argument is a weak one, page 250.
[6] “In short, if place cannot be infinite, and if every body occupies place, then there cannot be an infinite body”(205b35).
February 15, 2006
Infinity in the Physics, Book III4-8
Aristotle begins his explanation of infinity with an appeal to scientific knowledge. If the Physics undertakes the task of illuminating scientific knowledge, then Aristotle is obliged to discuss infinity to this end[1]. For Aristotle, “[s] cientific knowledge of nature involves taking magnitudes and change and time into consideration, and each of them is bound to be either infinite or finite”(202b30). Yet, not everything is either infinite or finite, e.g. qualities and points. Thus, a discussion of infinity does not construct the whole of scientific knowledge.
The Greek word for ‘infinite’, apeiron, is the same word for ‘unlimited’. In its limitlessness, those whom Aristotle calls the “natural scientists”, consider the infinite as neither an origin nor an end. Instead, they think the infinite “is taken not to have an origin, but to be the origin of everything else—to contain everything and steer everything, as has been said by those thinkers who do not recognize any other causes…apart from the infinite”(203b7)[2]. Unlike the natural scientists, both Plato and the Pythagoreans used the word infinite to describe unstructured stuff awaiting an imposed limit in the guise of either a shape or a form[3]. Aristotle, however, differs from all those mentioned above in that he considers the infinite as that “which cannot be traversed”(204a3).
Before attempting to define infinity, Aristotle lays five popular considerations that generally lead people “to infer that something infinite does exist”(203b15). The first two are the infinity of time and the division of magnitudes in mathematics. The last three considerations, however, are less straightforward. Thirdly, Aristotle finds that there is a notion that the persistence of generation and destruction is due to an infinite source “from which anything which is generated is subtracted”(203b17). Aristotle also lists the common notion that there must be a limit to the finite and, hence, no ultimate limit. Lastly, people believe that “number and mathematical magnitudes and the region beyond the heavens seem to be infinite because they do not give out in our thought. And if the region beyond the heavens is infinite, then it seems that body must be infinite too…”(203b22). Aristotle waits till end of the Book III to refute these arguments, however, with the exception that consideration one, that of time, is partly admissible. Aristotle refutes these considerations because they entertain the notion of actual infinity, which only later is proven impossible.
Before refuting the five popular reasons for infinity, Aristotle is compelled to ask whether or not infinity is a substance, an attribute, or neither a substance nor an attribute. In order to answer his own question, Aristotle discusses two different possible meanings of infinity. As mentioned earlier, infinity is that which cannot be traversed or that which “whose nature is such that it might be traversed, but is not in fact traversed or bounded”(204a7). Aristotle then quickly adds one more thought: infinity is either infinite by addition, by division, or by neither.
After posing all these questions, Aristotle declares in his heading for Book III.5 that the infinite is not itself a substance. Also, the infinite cannot stand separation from perceptible things and be just itself. To further defend his views Aristotle asks, “how could there be an independent infinite, if there cannot be independent number and magnitude?”(204a17). Thus, infinity is a property of number and magnitude[4]. Aristotle also declares that it is impossible for infinity to exist both in actuality and “to have substantial existence as a principle”(204a20)[5]. It is here that Aristotle first alludes to the distinction between actual and potential infinity that he will later expound. Before articulating this difference, which is essential for Cantor and his set theory, Aristotle declares infinity as “a coincidental attribute of things”(204a29). Accordingly, the infinite is not a principle. Instead, infinity is an attribute of principles.
In order to later refute the idea of actual infinity, Aristotle debates whether or not there is an infinitely extended body. Ultimately, Aristotle denies the existence of an infinitely extended body because he defines body as “‘that which is bounded by surface’”(20b4). That which is bounded cannot be that which is unlimited, or infinite. Furthermore, Aristotle makes a mathematical claim and states that “[n] or can any number that exists apart from perceptible things be infinite either, because number, and anything which has a number, is countable; anything countable can be counted, and it follows that it would be possible to traverse the infinite”(204b6). It is also important to note that, for Aristotle, it is impossible to simultaneously have an infinitely extended body and a place for this body[6]. Hence, there “is no actually infinite body”(206a7).
Although there is no actually infinite body, Aristotle consents to potential infinity. The verb ‘to be’, here, has two different meanings. ‘To be’ means either ‘to be potentially’ or ‘to be actually’ (206a14). However, ‘being potentially’ does not always refer to a future actuality. In terms of potential infinity, Aristotle uses the ‘to be’ analogously “in the same way that we use it of a day or a contest—that is, because one thing happens after another”(206a21). Here, ‘to be’ can be understood as moving successively as long as that which has passed, qua part, is understood as gone. Consequently, infinity is not “‘that which has nothing beyond itself’”, but rather “‘that which always has something beyond itself’”(206b33). The infinite is seemingly dynamic and, because of this dynamism, the infinite is not whole.
Aristotle defines whole “as that which has no part missing”(207a8). Suggested in the definition of “wholeness” is completeness, and what is complete has reached its end. End, in this sense, is a limit. What is whole is limited and, thus, not infinite. Yet, the whole is similar to the infinite. The infinite, unlike the whole, does not contain all things within it. Instead, “the infinite is matter for the completion of a magnitude and is potentially (not actually) the completed whole…and it takes something else to make it whole and finite, which it is not in its own right; and in so far as it is infinite, it does not contain but is contained”(207a21). The idea that the infinite can be contained, however, is contestable. After all, what is a container other than a type of limit?
Both matter and infinity are contained within things and it is form that does the containing. Accordingly, in terms of the fourfold division of causes, infinity is a material cause. Infinity is also not stable “but is being generated, as time is, and as the number of time is”(207b15). Time is infinite, but only in the sense that the parts of time do not persist. Time, in its successive movement, is always changing and, for Aristotle, time is infinite only “if change is infinite”(207b25).
Question for Consideration:
How can we draw together Aristotle’s definition for infinity with becoming and nature (physis)?
Do we agree that the infinite is matter? What are the consequences of this theory?
[1] The first two sentences of the Physics allude towards Aristotle’s goal of gaining scientific knowledge: “In any subject which has principles, causes, and elements, scientific knowledge and understanding stems from a grasp of these…It obviously follows that if we are to gain scientific knowledge of nature as well, we should begin by trying to decide about its principles”(184a10).
[2] Here, Aristotle is drawing reference to Heraclitus’s 41st Fragment which states: “Wisdom is one thing: to understand with true judgment how all things are steered through all” (Richard Hooker ©1995).
[3] Translator Robin Waterfield alerts readers to this fact in a footnote for 203a4 in the 1996 Oxford World’s Classics addition of the Physics.
[4] “In the second place, how could there be an independent infinite, if there cannot be independent number and magnitude? Infinity is in its own right a property of number and magnitude, so, of the three, an independently existing infinite is the least necessary”(204a17).
[5] Translator Robin Waterfield argues that this argument is a weak one, page 250.
[6] “In short, if place cannot be infinite, and if every body occupies place, then there cannot be an infinite body”(205b35).
BBC: Apparently, stealing art is the thing to do
Monet stolen under carnival cover Gunmen have taken advantage of Brazil's carnival commotion to steal paintings by Picasso, Dali, Matisse and Monet from a Rio de Janeiro museum.
The thieves reportedly brandished a hand grenade to threaten security guards at the Chacara do Ceu museum.
They shut down the security cameras and then slipped away in a crowd of Samba revellers, said museum officials.
Police numbers have been increased in Rio as the five-day celebration officially got under way on Friday.
Disappeared
Pablo Picasso's The Dance, Salvador Dali's The Two Balconies, Henri Matisse's Luxembourg Gardens and Claude Monet's Marine were stolen.
The paintings were considered the museum's most valuable pieces but their exact value was not immediately available.
"They took advantage of a carnival parade passing by the museum and disappeared into the crowd," said museum director Vera de Alencar.
She said the robbery appeared to have been masterminded by specialists, probably from international gangs.
A number of tourists who were visiting the museum at the time were also mugged by the gang.
A nationwide alert has been issued by the federal police to try to prevent the artworks from leaving the country.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4749756.stmPublished: 2006/02/25 04:31:55 GMT© BBC MMVI
The thieves reportedly brandished a hand grenade to threaten security guards at the Chacara do Ceu museum.
They shut down the security cameras and then slipped away in a crowd of Samba revellers, said museum officials.
Police numbers have been increased in Rio as the five-day celebration officially got under way on Friday.
Disappeared
Pablo Picasso's The Dance, Salvador Dali's The Two Balconies, Henri Matisse's Luxembourg Gardens and Claude Monet's Marine were stolen.
The paintings were considered the museum's most valuable pieces but their exact value was not immediately available.
"They took advantage of a carnival parade passing by the museum and disappeared into the crowd," said museum director Vera de Alencar.
She said the robbery appeared to have been masterminded by specialists, probably from international gangs.
A number of tourists who were visiting the museum at the time were also mugged by the gang.
A nationwide alert has been issued by the federal police to try to prevent the artworks from leaving the country.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4749756.stmPublished: 2006/02/25 04:31:55 GMT© BBC MMVI
Thursday, February 23, 2006
BBC: More Diseases Faster
'Faster emergence' for diseases
By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter, St Louis
New infectious diseases are now emerging at an exceptional rate, scientists have told a leading conference in St Louis, US.
Humans are accumulating new pathogens at a rate of one per year, they said.
This meant that agencies and governments would have to work harder than ever before to keep on top of the threat, one expert told the BBC.
Most of these new infectious diseases, such as avian influenza and HIV/Aids, are coming from other animals.
"This accumulation of new pathogens has been going on for millennia - this is how we acquired TB, malaria, smallpox," said Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University Of Edinburgh, UK.
"But at the moment, this accumulation does seem to be happening very fast.
We're going to have to run as fast as we can to stay in the same place Prof Mark Woolhouse, University Of Edinburgh
"So it seems there is something special about modern times - these are good times for pathogens to be invading the human population."
Professor Woolhouse has catalogued more than 1,400 different agents of disease in humans; and every year, scientists are discovering one or two new ones.
Better surveillance
Some may have been around for a long time and have only just come to light.
Others that have emerged recently are entirely new, such as HIV; the virus that causes Sars, and the agent of vCJD. The difference today, say researchers, is the way humans are interacting with other animals in their environment.
Changes in land use through, for example, deforestation can bring humans into contact with new pathogens; and, likewise, agricultural changes, such as the use of exotic livestock.
Other important drivers include global travel, global trade and hospitalisation.
The fast rate at which pathogens are appearing means public health experts will need to work harder than ever to control the spread of emerging disease threats.
"The sort of image I want to get away from is the famous statement from the 1960s when the US Surgeon General said, 'diseases were beat'," Professor Woolhouse told the BBC News website.
"Pathogens are evolving ways to combat our control methods. The picture is changing and looks as if it will continue to. We're going to have to run as fast as we can to stay in the same place."
He added: "We need surveillance. Surveillance in most parts of the world for infectious disease is really quite poor - particularly surveillance for infectious diseases in animals such as vermin like rats."
Experts were speaking on the subject at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in the Missouri city of St Louis.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4732924.stmPublished: 2006/02/20 16:51:41 GMT© BBC MMVI
By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter, St Louis
New infectious diseases are now emerging at an exceptional rate, scientists have told a leading conference in St Louis, US.
Humans are accumulating new pathogens at a rate of one per year, they said.
This meant that agencies and governments would have to work harder than ever before to keep on top of the threat, one expert told the BBC.
Most of these new infectious diseases, such as avian influenza and HIV/Aids, are coming from other animals.
"This accumulation of new pathogens has been going on for millennia - this is how we acquired TB, malaria, smallpox," said Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University Of Edinburgh, UK.
"But at the moment, this accumulation does seem to be happening very fast.
We're going to have to run as fast as we can to stay in the same place Prof Mark Woolhouse, University Of Edinburgh
"So it seems there is something special about modern times - these are good times for pathogens to be invading the human population."
Professor Woolhouse has catalogued more than 1,400 different agents of disease in humans; and every year, scientists are discovering one or two new ones.
Better surveillance
Some may have been around for a long time and have only just come to light.
Others that have emerged recently are entirely new, such as HIV; the virus that causes Sars, and the agent of vCJD. The difference today, say researchers, is the way humans are interacting with other animals in their environment.
Changes in land use through, for example, deforestation can bring humans into contact with new pathogens; and, likewise, agricultural changes, such as the use of exotic livestock.
Other important drivers include global travel, global trade and hospitalisation.
The fast rate at which pathogens are appearing means public health experts will need to work harder than ever to control the spread of emerging disease threats.
"The sort of image I want to get away from is the famous statement from the 1960s when the US Surgeon General said, 'diseases were beat'," Professor Woolhouse told the BBC News website.
"Pathogens are evolving ways to combat our control methods. The picture is changing and looks as if it will continue to. We're going to have to run as fast as we can to stay in the same place."
He added: "We need surveillance. Surveillance in most parts of the world for infectious disease is really quite poor - particularly surveillance for infectious diseases in animals such as vermin like rats."
Experts were speaking on the subject at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in the Missouri city of St Louis.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4732924.stmPublished: 2006/02/20 16:51:41 GMT© BBC MMVI
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Monday, February 20, 2006
Daniel's Dedication: 2.19.2006
En Route, Daniel’s Dedication
2.17.2006
Everywhere and nowhere
You are
all pervasive void
growing
Movement without change.
Unending stagnation; the ocean and the swamp.
Saturated skin, deep in the method.
Thump
Everywhere and nowhere
You are
marked by the stone that shivers
in heat
decomposing in the air beneath.
One monumental inch
full with compromise and harrowed
goodbye
Sunlight inside
the hell of human dream
fathomable only in between.
Substratum turned inside out to bare the bones.
My fading memory,hello.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
you say you
You say you
love me
but
I don’t know where you are and where you go
Some how
no one is there and
I’m left loved alone.
The torpid whirlpool
of my brain
finds speeds of change
and ravages
its own terrain.
Simple,
as a seed does,
unmoved underneath an earthy blanket,
impervious to the storms
above.
My lightening reaches down,
stretches ultimatums
for a solid ground
but
some how
I fail to grasp
I fail to under
stand you.
I hope you grow and that I settle down.
love me
but
I don’t know where you are and where you go
Some how
no one is there and
I’m left loved alone.
The torpid whirlpool
of my brain
finds speeds of change
and ravages
its own terrain.
Simple,
as a seed does,
unmoved underneath an earthy blanket,
impervious to the storms
above.
My lightening reaches down,
stretches ultimatums
for a solid ground
but
some how
I fail to grasp
I fail to under
stand you.
I hope you grow and that I settle down.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
NYT: Oil Spill all over USA
February 14, 2006
U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 — The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.
New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.
Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.
Administration officials say that the benefits are dictated by laws and regulations that date back to 1996, when energy prices were relatively low and Congress wanted to encourage more exploration and drilling in the high-cost, high-risk deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
"We need to remember the primary reason that incentives are given," said Johnnie M. Burton, director of the federal Minerals Management Service. "It's not to make more money, necessarily. It's to make more oil, more gas, because production of fuel for our nation is essential to our economy and essential to our people."
But what seemed like modest incentives 10 years ago have ballooned to levels that have alarmed even ardent supporters of the oil and gas industry, partly because of added sweeteners approved during the Clinton administration but also because of ambiguities in the law that energy companies have successfully exploited in court.
Short of imposing new taxes on the industry, there may be little Congress can do to reverse its earlier giveaways. The new projections come at a moment when President Bush and Republican leaders are on the defensive about record-high energy prices, soaring profits at major oil companies and big cuts in domestic spending.
Indeed, Mr. Bush and House Republicans are trying to kill a one-year, $5 billion windfall profits tax for oil companies that the Senate passed last fall.
Moreover, the projected largess could be just the start. Last week, Kerr-McGee Exploration and Development, a major industry player, began a brash but utterly serious court challenge that could, if it succeeds, cost the government another $28 billion in royalties over the next five years.
In what administration officials and industry executives alike view as a major test case, Kerr-McGee told the Interior Department last week that it planned to challenge one of the government's biggest limitations on royalty relief if it could not work out an acceptable deal in its favor. If Kerr-McGee is successful, administration projections indicate that about 80 percent of all oil and gas from federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico would be royalty-free.
"It's one of the greatest train robberies in the history of the world," said Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who has fought royalty concessions on oil and gas for more than a decade. "It's the gift that keeps on giving."
Republican lawmakers are also concerned about how the royalty relief program is working out.
"I don't think there is a single member of Congress who thinks you should get royalty relief at $70 a barrel" for oil, said Representative Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California and chairman of the House Resources Committee.
"It was Congress's intent," Mr. Pombo said in an interview on Friday, "that if oil was at $10 a barrel, there should be royalty relief so companies could have some kind of incentive to invest capital. But at $70 a barrel, don't expect royalty relief."
Tina Kreisher, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said Monday that the giveaways might turn out to be less than the basic forecasts indicate because of "certain variables."
The government does not disclose how much individual companies benefit from the incentives, and most companies refuse to disclose either how much they pay in royalties or how much they are allowed to avoid.
But the benefits are almost entirely for gas and oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico.
The biggest producers include Shell, BP, Chevron and Exxon Mobil as well as smaller independent companies like Anadarko and Devon Energy.
Executives at some companies, including Exxon Mobil, said they had already stopped claiming royalty relief because they knew market prices had exceeded the government's price triggers.
About one-quarter of all oil and gas produced in the United States comes from federal lands and federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico.
As it happens, oil and gas royalties to the government have climbed much more slowly than market prices over the last five years.
The New York Times reported last month that one major reason for the lag appeared to be a widening gap between the average sales prices that companies are reporting to the government when paying royalties and average spot market prices on the open market.
Industry executives and administration officials contend that the disparity mainly reflects different rules for defining sales prices. Administration officials also contend that the disparity is illusory, because the government's annual statistics are muddled up with big corrections from previous years.
Both House and Senate lawmakers are now investigating the issue, as is the Government Accountability Office, Congress's watchdog arm.
But the much bigger issue for the years ahead is royalty relief for deepwater drilling.
The original law, known as the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act, had bipartisan support and was intended to promote exploration and production in deep waters of the outer continental shelf.
At the time, oil and gas prices were comparatively low and few companies were interested in the high costs and high risks of drilling in water thousands of feet deep.
The law authorized the Interior Department, which leases out tens of millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico, to forgo its normal 12 percent royalty for much of the oil and gas produced in very deep waters.
Because it take years to explore and then build the huge offshore platforms, most of the oil and gas from the new leases is just beginning to flow.
The Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department, which oversees the leases and collects the royalties, estimates that the amount of royalty-free oil will quadruple by 2011, to 112 million barrels. The volume of royalty-free natural gas is expected to climb by almost half, to about 1.2 trillion cubic feet.
Based on the government's assumptions about future prices — that oil will hover at about $50 a barrel and natural gas will average about $7 per thousand cubic feet — the total value of the free oil and gas over the next five years would be about $65 billion and the forgone royalties would total more than $7 billion.
Administration officials say the issue is out of their hands, adding that they opposed provisions in last year's energy bill that added new royalty relief for deep drilling in shallow waters.
"We did not think we needed any more legislation, because we already have incentives, but we obviously did not prevail," said Ms. Burton, director of the Minerals Management Service.
But the Bush administration did not put up a big fight. It strongly supported the overall energy bill, and merely noted its opposition to additional royalty relief in its official statement on the bill.
By contrast, the White House bluntly promised to veto the Senate's $60 billion tax cut bill because it contained a one-year tax of $5 billion on profits of major oil companies.
The House and Senate have yet to agree on a final tax bill.
The big issue going forward is whether companies should be exempted from paying royalties even when energy prices are at historic highs.
In general, the Interior Department has always insisted that companies would not be entitled to royalty relief if market prices for oil and gas climbed above certain trigger points.
Those trigger points — currently about $35 a barrel for oil and $4 per thousand cubic feet of natural gas — have been exceeded for the last several years and are likely to stay that way for the rest of the decade.
So why is the amount of royalty-free gas and oil expected to double over the next five years?
The biggest reason is that the Clinton administration, apparently worried about the continued lack of interest in new drilling, waived the price triggers for all leases awarded in 1998 and 1999.
At the same time, many oil and gas companies contend that Congress never authorized the Interior Department to set price thresholds for any deepwater leases awarded between 1996 and 2000.
The dispute has been simmering for months, with some industry executives warning the Bush administration that they would sue the government if it tried to demand royalties.
Last week, the fight broke out into the open. The Interior Department announced that 41 oil companies had improperly claimed more than $500 million in royalty relief for 2004.
Most of the companies agreed to pay up in January, but Kerr-McGee said it would fight the issue in court.
The fight is not simply about one company. Interior officials said last week that Kerr-McGee presented itself in December as a "test case" for the entire industry. It also offered a "compromise," but Interior officials rejected it and issued a formal order in January demanding that Kerr-McGee pay its back royalties.
On Feb. 6, according to administration officials, Kerr-McGee formally notified the Minerals Management Service that it would challenge its order in court.
Industry lawyers contend they have a strong case, because Congress never mentioned price thresholds when it authorized royalty relief for all deepwater leases awarded from 1996 through 2000.
"Congress offered those deepwater leases with royalty relief as an incentive," said Jonathan Hunter, a lawyer in New Orleans who represented oil companies in a similar lawsuit two years ago that knocked out another major federal restriction on royalty relief.
"The M.M.S. only has the authority that Congress gives it," Mr. Hunter said. "The legislation said that royalty relief for these leases is automatic."
If that view prevails, the government said it would lose a total of nearly $35 billion in royalties to taxpayers by 2011 — about the same amount that Mr. Bush is proposing to cut from Medicare, Medicaid and child support enforcement programs over the same period.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
The Guardian: Abramoff and Bush
White House Acknowledges Abramoff Photo
Sunday February 12, 2006 6:01 PM
AP Photo DCEV101
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House on Sunday acknowledged the authenticity of the first photograph made public that shows President Bush and embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, while stressing it does not mean the two had a personal relationship.
The photo, published by The New York Times and Time magazine, shows Bush shaking hands with an Abramoff client, chairman Raul Garza of the Kickapoo Indian tribe in Texas. Abramoff's bearded face appears in the background, small and slightly blurry.
White House spokesman Allen Abney said the photo was taken in 2001, when the president dropped by a meeting of about two dozen state legislators to thank them for supporting tax relief.
Originally, the White House said it had no record of Abramoff's attendance at the meeting.
``We now know that Mr. Abramoff attended this meeting,'' Abney said Sunday. ``The president has taken tens of thousands of pictures. This does not mean he has a personal relationship with each individual that is in those pictures.''
The White House would not release the photo or any others that Bush had taken with Abramoff, who helped raise more than $100,000 for the president's re-election campaign. Abramoff has since pleaded guilty to federal charges related to an influence-peddling scandal on Capitol Hill.
Bush has said that he had his picture taken with Abramoff an unknown number of times, but he doesn't remember any of them.
Sunday February 12, 2006 6:01 PM
AP Photo DCEV101
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House on Sunday acknowledged the authenticity of the first photograph made public that shows President Bush and embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, while stressing it does not mean the two had a personal relationship.
The photo, published by The New York Times and Time magazine, shows Bush shaking hands with an Abramoff client, chairman Raul Garza of the Kickapoo Indian tribe in Texas. Abramoff's bearded face appears in the background, small and slightly blurry.
White House spokesman Allen Abney said the photo was taken in 2001, when the president dropped by a meeting of about two dozen state legislators to thank them for supporting tax relief.
Originally, the White House said it had no record of Abramoff's attendance at the meeting.
``We now know that Mr. Abramoff attended this meeting,'' Abney said Sunday. ``The president has taken tens of thousands of pictures. This does not mean he has a personal relationship with each individual that is in those pictures.''
The White House would not release the photo or any others that Bush had taken with Abramoff, who helped raise more than $100,000 for the president's re-election campaign. Abramoff has since pleaded guilty to federal charges related to an influence-peddling scandal on Capitol Hill.
Bush has said that he had his picture taken with Abramoff an unknown number of times, but he doesn't remember any of them.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
1. Anxiety
Spurious in consequence lay
in defense here we come.
The night turns brown while I await nothing.
Anxious hope is blowing straight
through crumbly foundations
that fall.
Free indeterminacy you are caught,
did you want the sky to be blue instead?
Then I’m sorry, but I tried to respect your expectations.
The world outside comes up from behind,
do you feel the hairs on your neck tonight?
I don’t,but I do feel ill without you.
in defense here we come.
The night turns brown while I await nothing.
Anxious hope is blowing straight
through crumbly foundations
that fall.
Free indeterminacy you are caught,
did you want the sky to be blue instead?
Then I’m sorry, but I tried to respect your expectations.
The world outside comes up from behind,
do you feel the hairs on your neck tonight?
I don’t,but I do feel ill without you.
one of ones
Jackknife inspired white
decadent cleansing effect washed down with antiperspirant.
Aluminum siding armpits
smell of summer days
but it’s the middle of winter now
The town is a city on top of a farm representing a nation
whose interests lie without boundaries
A constant motion feeding into monolithic
dialogues of kerosene fidelity too wet to bother to ask
for some light
too disintegrated into mud rubble to bother to ask to solidify.
Meandering line, where do you point?
Your pathways loom above the ground and turn to fog.
The grass if growing downward towards epicenters
fighting to be the one of ones.
Simplicity is dehydrated into a gelatinous tub
placed within a freezer for another hotter time.
No allegations stand without a mouth to lean upon
so the immanent melts back into categories encased in plasticity.
Its dirt cleaning dirt in
a fight for supremacy.
The one of ones rains in to reign outside of the fragile enclavesof human traces.
decadent cleansing effect washed down with antiperspirant.
Aluminum siding armpits
smell of summer days
but it’s the middle of winter now
The town is a city on top of a farm representing a nation
whose interests lie without boundaries
A constant motion feeding into monolithic
dialogues of kerosene fidelity too wet to bother to ask
for some light
too disintegrated into mud rubble to bother to ask to solidify.
Meandering line, where do you point?
Your pathways loom above the ground and turn to fog.
The grass if growing downward towards epicenters
fighting to be the one of ones.
Simplicity is dehydrated into a gelatinous tub
placed within a freezer for another hotter time.
No allegations stand without a mouth to lean upon
so the immanent melts back into categories encased in plasticity.
Its dirt cleaning dirt in
a fight for supremacy.
The one of ones rains in to reign outside of the fragile enclavesof human traces.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Better become a vegetarian quick. They're COMING
Japan tries to save giant radish
By Jonathan Head BBC News, Tokyo
Daikon are popular in Japanese cookingA giant radish is making the Japanese evening news headlines after it was rushed into intensive care in an agricultural research centre.
The daikon radish, a staple ingredient in Japan, became an unlikely object of public admiration when it started growing through a pavement last year.
The resilient radish was then attacked last year by a mysterious assailant. The local town council has since been trying to re-grow the radish from its severed top.
It now hopes to extract its seeds or DNA.
The wilting leaves and shrivelled top of the radish were carefully packed in a cool box and accompanied by a throng of reporters and cameramen, driven to an agricultural research centre.
There, evening news programmes showed white-coated scientists pronouncing gravely on the radish's prognosis.
Roots of the drama
This unlikely drama started last summer in the town of Aoi, when residents noticed the radish pushing its way through the asphalt of a pavement.
Impressed by its perseverance, they named it Dokonjo Daikon, or the radish with fighting spirit.
Imagine their dismay then when one morning, they found the radish had been decapitated.
The news of its demise prompted an outpouring of sympathy across Japan, and the unknown assailant returned its severed head, from which the town council has been trying in vain to revive it.
Dokonjo daikon now even has its own dedicated website.
The Japanese public has frequently been touched by the plight of stricken animals. But commentators are at a loss to explain this wave of affection for a mere vegetable.
Inspired by the radish's fight for life, the town council now wants to extract seeds or even DNA from its remains in the hope of producing offspring of similar fortitude.
By Jonathan Head BBC News, Tokyo
Daikon are popular in Japanese cookingA giant radish is making the Japanese evening news headlines after it was rushed into intensive care in an agricultural research centre.
The daikon radish, a staple ingredient in Japan, became an unlikely object of public admiration when it started growing through a pavement last year.
The resilient radish was then attacked last year by a mysterious assailant. The local town council has since been trying to re-grow the radish from its severed top.
It now hopes to extract its seeds or DNA.
The wilting leaves and shrivelled top of the radish were carefully packed in a cool box and accompanied by a throng of reporters and cameramen, driven to an agricultural research centre.
There, evening news programmes showed white-coated scientists pronouncing gravely on the radish's prognosis.
Roots of the drama
This unlikely drama started last summer in the town of Aoi, when residents noticed the radish pushing its way through the asphalt of a pavement.
Impressed by its perseverance, they named it Dokonjo Daikon, or the radish with fighting spirit.
Imagine their dismay then when one morning, they found the radish had been decapitated.
The news of its demise prompted an outpouring of sympathy across Japan, and the unknown assailant returned its severed head, from which the town council has been trying in vain to revive it.
Dokonjo daikon now even has its own dedicated website.
The Japanese public has frequently been touched by the plight of stricken animals. But commentators are at a loss to explain this wave of affection for a mere vegetable.
Inspired by the radish's fight for life, the town council now wants to extract seeds or even DNA from its remains in the hope of producing offspring of similar fortitude.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
hoodie
only in soho can you catch about 50 waiting anxiously outside a store to buy the newest, latest, and bestest hooded sweatshirt.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Friday, February 03, 2006
Difference
The man is a woman
Like
One can be two.
An homogenous glue is
Pasting the world together
Keeping whole in the midst of dynamism.
Interchangeable communication
Binds the sound to a pattern
Superimposed but observable
Interchangeable dates
Hold on tightly to their numbers
Waiting all day just to move up in line
Situational slumber
Moves under the mass
Loosening the concreteness of gravity’s grasp.
Up flies the loose ends
Dangling far away
While all try to reach the same place:Home.
Like
One can be two.
An homogenous glue is
Pasting the world together
Keeping whole in the midst of dynamism.
Interchangeable communication
Binds the sound to a pattern
Superimposed but observable
Interchangeable dates
Hold on tightly to their numbers
Waiting all day just to move up in line
Situational slumber
Moves under the mass
Loosening the concreteness of gravity’s grasp.
Up flies the loose ends
Dangling far away
While all try to reach the same place:Home.
stream of consciousness attempt
I.
Instrumental moment of nothing keeps opening in a dry heap of empty space that fulfills itself with a constant motion that feels nothing as it passes over byes.
II.
Green stationary tangle rambles with moist mouth and thick hairs cut down to a short field of spiky fur that yields to slowly moving hands extended outwards before dissolving into the veins of the sky.
III.
The condensation left from conversations with people I’ve never properly met before. This is a forum where we all stand naked in our transparent dress. No expression to follow and no situation to hold onto we are baring it out while living our lives in obsolete materiality now, we can see who you are plenty fine and that’s why we keep talking.
IV.
Straight thought configuration kept remaking the mask in for the chamber of deep elbow music churning in its underpants there is the bed that sits a witnesses as the moments flake straight off our bodies and reminisce with the day that would keep repeating as long as we would let it is going too.
V.Downgrade allstars reach for automotive automatism said bunny down the hole while pulling out the girl on hear beat outside in instinctive powers of occidental people on the west coast are coasting while we in the west is a time where the dust folds under and sacrifices the clay of alimony in the fat pin-stripped barks of the past signaling to the ocean for an age where any action is appropriate there were memories but they forget themselves and stayed in the hours.
Instrumental moment of nothing keeps opening in a dry heap of empty space that fulfills itself with a constant motion that feels nothing as it passes over byes.
II.
Green stationary tangle rambles with moist mouth and thick hairs cut down to a short field of spiky fur that yields to slowly moving hands extended outwards before dissolving into the veins of the sky.
III.
The condensation left from conversations with people I’ve never properly met before. This is a forum where we all stand naked in our transparent dress. No expression to follow and no situation to hold onto we are baring it out while living our lives in obsolete materiality now, we can see who you are plenty fine and that’s why we keep talking.
IV.
Straight thought configuration kept remaking the mask in for the chamber of deep elbow music churning in its underpants there is the bed that sits a witnesses as the moments flake straight off our bodies and reminisce with the day that would keep repeating as long as we would let it is going too.
V.Downgrade allstars reach for automotive automatism said bunny down the hole while pulling out the girl on hear beat outside in instinctive powers of occidental people on the west coast are coasting while we in the west is a time where the dust folds under and sacrifices the clay of alimony in the fat pin-stripped barks of the past signaling to the ocean for an age where any action is appropriate there were memories but they forget themselves and stayed in the hours.
buber-heidegger
Buber-Heidegger
I-am
Attached at all times
And
Separation is an illusion justified
By
My person being myself at all times,
An individual
I-am,
But not really, not ever enough.
The extremes are cutting off their harsher edges and opting out for
A shorter cut,
A cleaner look,
A mystified mysterious mystery.
Who knows?
Being-in-the-world is to be the world, but not to be exactly the world in which there must be parts or there would be no world.
But, then “there” is the “there” that is war.
Take your politics, take your religion.
Take them, they are yours
As themes that think your-life for you.
Unheard of hate and inseparability, you are the very hater who loves to have and loves.
Cohabitation, co-aggulation, co-depedence, oscillation, flux, movement, timespace, go.
Justification? Arche? Telos? Any-where-at-all?
Here.
Always here, after all.
Everyday anamnesis, we here-you Plato.
Answered call within our sleep, your echo reverberates in a fall.
Intelligible call we cannot deny, are you right, are you left, must we turn to go?
Knowing without knowing at all.
No you-me or you know you and me?
I-am
Attached at all times
And
Separation is an illusion justified
By
My person being myself at all times,
An individual
I-am,
But not really, not ever enough.
The extremes are cutting off their harsher edges and opting out for
A shorter cut,
A cleaner look,
A mystified mysterious mystery.
Who knows?
Being-in-the-world is to be the world, but not to be exactly the world in which there must be parts or there would be no world.
But, then “there” is the “there” that is war.
Take your politics, take your religion.
Take them, they are yours
As themes that think your-life for you.
Unheard of hate and inseparability, you are the very hater who loves to have and loves.
Cohabitation, co-aggulation, co-depedence, oscillation, flux, movement, timespace, go.
Justification? Arche? Telos? Any-where-at-all?
Here.
Always here, after all.
Everyday anamnesis, we here-you Plato.
Answered call within our sleep, your echo reverberates in a fall.
Intelligible call we cannot deny, are you right, are you left, must we turn to go?
Knowing without knowing at all.
No you-me or you know you and me?
BBC and the end of the world: pollution
Last Updated: Monday, 13 December, 2004, 19:35 GMT
Pollution: A life and death issue
By Alex Kirby BBC News website environment correspondent
As part of Planet Under Pressure, a BBC News website series looking at some of the biggest environmental issues facing humanity, Alex Kirby considers the Earth's growing pollution problem.
WHO says 3m people a year are killed by outdoor air pollution One of the main themes of Planet Under Pressure is the way many of the Earth's environmental crises reinforce one another.
Pollution is an obvious example - we do not have the option of growing food, or finding enough water, on a squeaky-clean planet, but on one increasingly tarnished and trashed by the way we have used it so far.
Cutting waste and clearing up pollution costs money. Yet time and again it is the quest for wealth that generates much of the mess in the first place.
Living in a way that is less damaging to the Earth is not easy, but it is vital, because pollution is pervasive and often life-threatening.
Air: The World Health Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel. Most are in poor countries.
Water: Diseases carried in water are responsible for 80% of illnesses and deaths in developing countries, killing a child every eight seconds. Each year 2.1 million people die from diarrhoeal diseases associated with poor water.
Soil: Contaminated land is a problem in industrialised countries, where former factories and power stations can leave waste like heavy metals in the soil. It can also occur in developing countries, sometimes used for dumping pesticides. Agriculture can pollute land with pesticides, nitrate-rich fertilisers and slurry from livestock. And when the contamination reaches rivers it damages life there, and can even create dead zones off the coast, as in the Gulf of Mexico.
Chronic problem
Chemicals are a frequent pollutant. When we think of chemical contamination it is often images of events like Bhopal that come to mind.
But the problem is widespread. One study says 7-20% of cancers are attributable to poor air and pollution in homes and workplaces.
Click below for a map showing the cost of air pollution around the world
Enlarge MapThe WHO, concerned about chemicals that persist and build up in the body, especially in the young, says we may "be conducting a large-scale experiment with children's health".
Some man-made chemicals, endocrine disruptors like phthalates and nonylphenol - a breakdown product of spermicides, cosmetics and detergents - are blamed for causing changes in the genitals of some animals.
Affected species include polar bears - so not even the Arctic is immune. And the chemicals climb the food chain, from fish to mammals - and to us.
About 70,000 chemicals are on the market, with around 1,500 new ones appearing annually. At least 30,000 are thought never to have been comprehensively tested for their possible risks to people.
Trade-off
But the snag is that modern society demands many of them, and some are essential for survival.
So while we invoke the precautionary principle, which always recommends erring on the side of caution, we have to recognise there will be trade-offs to be made.
Chemical pollution was blamed for killing fish in Kankaria Lake in Ahmadabad, IndiaThe pesticide DDT does great damage to wildlife and can affect the human nervous system, but can also be effective against malaria. Where does the priority lie?
The industrialised world has not yet cleaned up the mess it created, but it is reaping the benefits of the pollution it has caused. It can hardly tell the developing countries that they have no right to follow suit.
Another complication in tackling pollution is that it does not respect political frontiers. There is a UN convention on transboundary air pollution, but that cannot cover every problem that can arise between neighbours, or between states which do not share a border.
Perhaps the best example is climate change - the countries of the world share one atmosphere, and what one does can affect everyone.
For one and all
One of the principles that is supposed to apply here is simple - the polluter pays.
A recent study detailed the plastic litter that pollutes the marine environmentSometimes it is obvious who is to blame and who must pay the price. But it is not always straightforward to work out just who is the polluter, or whether the rest of us would be happy to pay the price of stopping the pollution.
One way of cleaning up after ourselves would be to throw less away, designing products to be recycled or even just to last longer.
Previous generations worked on the assumption that discarding our waste was a proper way to be rid of it, so we used to dump nuclear materials and other potential hazards at sea, confident they would be dispersed in the depths.
We now think that is too risky because, as one author wrote, "there's no such place as 'away' - and there's no such person as the 'other'".
Ask not for whom the bell tolls - it tolls for thee, and for me.
BBC and the end of the world: climate change
Last Updated: Friday, 3 December, 2004, 09:56 GMT
Climate change: Uncharted waters?
By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent
As part of Planet Under Pressure, a BBC News series looking at some of the biggest environmental problems facing humanity, Alex Kirby explores the implications of climate change.
Many water-scarce regions now will probably become thirstierClimate change is our biggest environmental challenge, says the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair. His chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, calls it a far greater global threat than international terrorism.
There is wide though not unanimous agreement from scientists that they are right.
It is certainly possible that warming temperatures could take the Earth into uncharted waters, even though nobody can say exactly how fast it may happen and who will be most affected.
Life on Earth exists only because of the natural greenhouse effect, the ability of the atmosphere to retain enough heat for species to thrive (and no more).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a consortium of several thousand independent scientists, says rising levels of industrial pollution are unnaturally enhancing this effect, with increasing amounts of heat trapped near the Earth instead of escaping into space.
Animated guide: Climate changeThe main culprits, it says, are the burning of fossil fuels - oil, coal and gas - and changes in land use.
The chief greenhouse gas from human activities is carbon dioxide (CO2).
Before the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric CO2 concentrations were about 270-280 parts per million (ppm).
They now stand at almost 380ppm, and have been rising at about 1.5ppm annually.
Rising temperatures
The consequence of increasing CO2 and other pollutant levels, the IPCC says, will be higher average global temperatures, meaning unpredictable weather, rising sea levels, and perhaps runaway heating as the whole climate system slips out of gear.
The IPCC predicts that if we go on as we are, by 2100 global sea levels will probably have risen by 9 to 88cm and average temperatures will be between 1.5 and 5.5C higher than now.
Climate change: The evidence and future predictions
At-a-glanceThat may not sound very much - but the last Ice Age was only 4-5C colder than today.
The sceptics are unmoved. Some say the human influence on the climate is negligible, and that isolating one small variable, CO2 and other greenhouse gas levels, in an immensely complex natural system is meaningless.
Others insist the IPCC's measurements are flawed and its predictions unreliable. Yet others believe a warmer world would be better for most of us.
They are entirely right to argue that there are still many uncertainties about the climate and any influence we may have on it.
Sobering facts
But many who were once sceptics now accept that enhanced climate change is happening, and that we have to respond - not necessarily by trying to reduce its extent but by adapting to its effects.
Part of the problem is that climate change is now part of the stuff of science fiction, with Hollywood and some campaign groups alike feeding scare stories that owe little, if anything, to scientific fact.
But the facts are sobering enough. We know that average global surface temperatures have risen by 0.6C in the last 140 years.
All of the 10 warmest years have occurred since 1990, including each year since 1997.
If we could halt all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the heating would continue for decades or moreThe possibilities are sobering too.
Many water-scarce regions now will probably become thirstier.
Some countries may be able to produce bigger harvests, but in others yields will drop. Sea level rise may make many coastal areas uninhabitable.
Weather patterns may change, producing more heat waves, droughts, floods and violent storms.
Aid agencies are warning that these combined effects could seriously jeopardise attempts to lift the world's poorest people out of poverty.
Furthermore, there is also the possibility of "positive feedbacks"- for example, higher temperatures may release more methane from the Arctic tundra and CO2 from peat bogs, which will themselves speed up the warming process.
Then there is the inertia of the atmosphere and the oceans.
Delayed effect
If somehow we could halt all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the heating would continue for decades or centuries.
What we do today may literally determine how long the Greenland icecap survives - even though, at fastest, it will still take a good few centuries to disappear.
And wildlife, less equipped to adapt than humans, could be hit hard. One estimate suggests hundreds of thousands of species may be at risk of extinction by 2050 because of climate change.
Hundreds of thousands of species may be at risk of extinction by 2050Creating worldwide consensus on this global problem is difficult, not least because of the economic cost of cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions.
The Kyoto Protocol, which commits rich countries to reducing emissions, is a small but necessary start on building an international system for tackling climate change, its proponents believe.
But the country responsible for about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, the US, has refused to sign up to it.
The protocol does not require developing countries to cut their emissions, although fast-industrialising countries like China will soon be significant contributors as those in poor nations increasingly demand rich world lifestyles.
For them, emissions cuts could have significant social costs in slowing the growth that feeds economic development, creates jobs and helps lift the poor out of poverty.
A prudent look at the evidence, preliminary though it is, suggests we shall be wise to err on the side of caution.
Dr Geoff Jenkins, of the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, said recently: "Over the last few decades there's been much more evidence for the human influence on climate.
"We've reached the point where it's only by including human activity that we can explain what's happening."
And what's happening now could lead to a world beyond our experience.
BBC and the end of the world: hunger
Last Updated: Wednesday, 24 November, 2004, 19:21 GMT
Can the planet feed us?
By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent
As part of Planet Under Pressure, a BBC News series looking at some of the biggest environmental problems facing humanity, Alex Kirby explores the challenge of feeding the world without destroying the planet.
The proportion of hungry people is coming downMore of us are eating more and better than ever before.
World cereal consumption has more than doubled since 1970, and meat consumption has tripled since 1961.
The global fish catch grew more than six times from 1950 to 1997.
None of this happened by magic, though, but only by giving Nature a massive helping hand.
The World Resources Institute said in 1999 that half of all the commercial fertiliser ever produced had been applied since 1984.
So one question is whether the world can go on increasing its harvests at this rate - or even faster, to cater as well for the extra 75 million people born annually.
Crop increases
Our recent achievements are impressive - while global population doubled to 6 billion people in the 40 years from 1960, global food production more than kept up.
Facts and figures on the challenge of feeding the world
At-a-glanceThe proportion of malnourished people fell in the three decades to the mid-1990s from 37% to 18%. But we may not be able to go on at this rate.
For a start, much of the world's best cropland is already in use, and farmers are having to turn to increasingly marginal land. And the good land is often taking a battering - soil degradation has already reduced global agricultural productivity by 13% in the last half-century.
Many of the pesticides on which the crop increases have depended are losing their effectiveness, as the pests acquire more resistance.
A key constraint is water. The 17% of cropland that is irrigated produces an estimated 30-40% of all crops, but in many countries there will be progressively less water available for agriculture.
Many of these are poor countries, where irrigation can boost crop yields by up to 400%. There are ways to improve irrigation and to use water more effectively, but it's not clear these can bridge the gap.
Some say meat-heavy diets are environmentally unsustainableBiotechnology, in principle, may offer the world a second Green Revolution, for example by producing drought-resistant plants or varieties that withstand pest attacks.
But it arouses deep unease, not least because of fears it may erode the genetic resources in thousands of traditional varieties grown in small communities across the world.
Nobody knows what the probable impacts of climate change will be on food supplies.
Modest temperature increases may actually benefit rich temperate countries, but make harvests even more precarious across much of the tropics.
Too little space
Another question concerns the huge cost to other forms of life of all the progress we've made in securing our own food supply.
Enlarge ImageThe amount of nitrogen available for uptake by plants is much higher than the natural level, and has more than doubled since the 1940s.
The excess comes from fertilisers running off farmland, from livestock manure, and from other human activities. It is changing the composition of species in ecosystems, reducing soil fertility, depleting the ozone layer, intensifying climate change, and creating dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and other near-coastal seas.
The sheer amount of the Earth we need to produce our food is having an enormous impact.
Globally, we have taken over about 26% of the planet's land area (roughly 3.3 billion hectares) for cropland and pasture, replacing a third of temperate and tropical forests and a quarter of natural grasslands.
Another 0.5 billion ha has gone for urban and built-up areas. Habitat loss from the conversion of natural ecosystems is the main reason why other species are being pushed closer to the brink of extinction.
Food security comes at a high price. In any case, it is a security many can only envy.
Increasing hunger
At the moment we are not on course to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving world hunger by 2015.
Although the proportion of hungry people is coming down, population increase means the actual number continues to rise.
In the 1990s global poverty fell by 20%, but the number of hungry people rose by 18 million. In 2003, 842 million people did not have enough to eat, a third of them in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Food production has more than kept up with population growthHunger and malnutrition killed 10 million people a year, 25,000 a day - one life extinguished every five seconds.
The world does produce enough to feed everyone. But the food is often in the wrong place, or unaffordable, or can't be stored long enough. So making sure everyone has enough to eat is more about politics than science.
But whether we can go on eating the sort of diet we've grown used to in developed countries is far from clear.
Much of it travels a long way to reach us, with the transport costs adding hugely to the "embodied energy" it contains. There's a lot to be said for eating local, seasonal food where we can.
And meat usually demands far more than grain - water, land, grain itself (34% of world grain supplies are fed to livestock reared for meat). Yet, worldwide, the richer we grow the more we turn to meat.
Something's got to give - and not only our waistbands.
BBC and the end of the world: energy
Energy: Meeting soaring demand
The BBC's Alex Kirby looks at the challenge of providing the world with energy without damaging the environment, as part of Planet Under Pressure, a BBC series on environmental issues.
By Alex Kirby BBC News website environment correspondent
We depend on oil for 90% of our transportThe first problem with energy is that we are running short of traditional sources of supply.
The International Energy Agency says the world will need almost 60% more energy in 2030 than in 2002, and fossil fuels will still meet most of its needs.
We depend on oil for 90% of our transport, and for food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and the entire bedrock of modern life.
But oil industry experts estimate that current reserves will only last for about 40 years.
Views vary about how much more will be found or made economically viable to use.
Pessimists predict production will start declining within 15 years, while optimists say we won't have to worry for a century - though rising prices are likely to push us towards alternative energy sources anyway.
Gas, often a suitable replacement for oil, won't last indefinitely either.
There's plenty of coal, but it's still usually hard to use without causing high pollution.
Worrying signs
Not everyone depends on the fossil trio, though. Nearly a third of today's world population (6.1bn people) have no electricity or other modern energy supplies, and another third have only limited access.
Facts and figures on soaring global energy demand
At-a-glanceAbout 2.5 billion people have only wood or other biomass for energy - often bad for the environment, almost always bad for their health.
That's the second problem - understandably, they want the better life that cheap and accessible energy offers.
But if everyone in developing countries used the same amount of energy as the average consumer in high income countries does, the developing world's energy use would increase more than eightfold between 2000 and 2050.
The signs are already there. In the first half of 2003 China's car sales rose by 82% compared with the same period in 2002.
Its demand for oil is expected to double in 20 years.
In India sales of fuel-guzzling sports utility vehicles account for 10% of all vehicle purchases, and could soon overtake car sales. And the developed world is not standing still.
In the last decade, US oil use has increased by almost 2.7 million barrels a day - more oil than India and Pakistan use daily altogether.
Crossing continents
Where our energy comes from is a third problem - energy sources are often long distances from the point of consumption.
There is plenty of coal, but it can cause major pollutionCentralised energy generation and distribution systems are fairly new.
A couple of centuries ago virtually everyone would have depended on the fuel they could find within a short distance of home.
Now, the energy for our fuel, heat and light travel vast distances to reach us, sometimes crossing not only continents but political and cultural watersheds on the way.
These distances create a whole host of challenges from oil-related political instability to the environmental risks of long-distance pipelines.
But even if we could somehow indefinitely conjure up enough energy for everyone who wants it, without risking conflict and mayhem in bringing it back home, there would still be an enormous problem - how to use the energy without causing unacceptably high levels of damage to the natural world.
Counting cost
The most obvious threat is the prospect that burning fossil fuels is intensifying natural climate change and heating the Earth to dangerous levels.
But forget the greenhouse effect if you want. There are still real costs that go with the quest for and use of energy: air and water pollution, impaired health, acid rain, deforestation, the destruction of traditional ways of life.
It's one of the most vicious circles the planetary crisis entails.
Cheap, available energy is essential for ending poverty: ending poverty is key to easing the pressures on the planet from the abjectly poor who have no choice but to eat the seed corn. But the tank is running dry.
It doesn't have to be like this. Our energy use is unsustainable, but we already know what a benign alternative would look like.
All we have to do is decide that we will get there, and how.
It will make vastly more use of renewable energy, from inexhaustible natural sources like the Sun and the seas.
Nuclear power?
One key fuel may well be hydrogen, which is a clean alternative for vehicles and is in abundant supply as it is a chemical component of water.
But large amounts of energy are needed to produce hydrogen from water, so it will not come into its own as a clean alternative until renewable energy is widely available for the process.
Air pollution is a major problem - often related to energy useSome analysts suggest that nuclear power will be needed to bridge the gap between now and the renewable future.
Many environmentalists (but not all) are deeply unhappy with the idea - fission technology has been in use for a generation, but concerns remain about radioactive waste disposal and the risk of accidents.
Nuclear fusion - a new form of nuclear power which combines atoms rather than splitting them apart - could be ready by around 2040, but that is too long to wait.
However, we can also get energy to do several jobs at once, as combined heat and power plants do. And we can use less of it by becoming energy-efficient.
The British government estimates that 56% of energy used in UK homes could be cut using currently available technologies - yet the original Model T Ford did more miles to the gallon than the average Ford vehicle produced today in the US.
We can install power stations on our roofs by covering our houses with solar tiles, or buying miniature wind turbines the size of a satellite dish.
Practically, the energy crisis is soluble. But reaching the broad sunlit uplands will mean a drastic mental gear change for policy-makers and consumers alike.
The BBC's Alex Kirby looks at the challenge of providing the world with energy without damaging the environment, as part of Planet Under Pressure, a BBC series on environmental issues.
By Alex Kirby BBC News website environment correspondent
We depend on oil for 90% of our transportThe first problem with energy is that we are running short of traditional sources of supply.
The International Energy Agency says the world will need almost 60% more energy in 2030 than in 2002, and fossil fuels will still meet most of its needs.
We depend on oil for 90% of our transport, and for food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and the entire bedrock of modern life.
But oil industry experts estimate that current reserves will only last for about 40 years.
Views vary about how much more will be found or made economically viable to use.
Pessimists predict production will start declining within 15 years, while optimists say we won't have to worry for a century - though rising prices are likely to push us towards alternative energy sources anyway.
Gas, often a suitable replacement for oil, won't last indefinitely either.
There's plenty of coal, but it's still usually hard to use without causing high pollution.
Worrying signs
Not everyone depends on the fossil trio, though. Nearly a third of today's world population (6.1bn people) have no electricity or other modern energy supplies, and another third have only limited access.
Facts and figures on soaring global energy demand
At-a-glanceAbout 2.5 billion people have only wood or other biomass for energy - often bad for the environment, almost always bad for their health.
That's the second problem - understandably, they want the better life that cheap and accessible energy offers.
But if everyone in developing countries used the same amount of energy as the average consumer in high income countries does, the developing world's energy use would increase more than eightfold between 2000 and 2050.
The signs are already there. In the first half of 2003 China's car sales rose by 82% compared with the same period in 2002.
Its demand for oil is expected to double in 20 years.
In India sales of fuel-guzzling sports utility vehicles account for 10% of all vehicle purchases, and could soon overtake car sales. And the developed world is not standing still.
In the last decade, US oil use has increased by almost 2.7 million barrels a day - more oil than India and Pakistan use daily altogether.
Crossing continents
Where our energy comes from is a third problem - energy sources are often long distances from the point of consumption.
There is plenty of coal, but it can cause major pollutionCentralised energy generation and distribution systems are fairly new.
A couple of centuries ago virtually everyone would have depended on the fuel they could find within a short distance of home.
Now, the energy for our fuel, heat and light travel vast distances to reach us, sometimes crossing not only continents but political and cultural watersheds on the way.
These distances create a whole host of challenges from oil-related political instability to the environmental risks of long-distance pipelines.
But even if we could somehow indefinitely conjure up enough energy for everyone who wants it, without risking conflict and mayhem in bringing it back home, there would still be an enormous problem - how to use the energy without causing unacceptably high levels of damage to the natural world.
Counting cost
The most obvious threat is the prospect that burning fossil fuels is intensifying natural climate change and heating the Earth to dangerous levels.
But forget the greenhouse effect if you want. There are still real costs that go with the quest for and use of energy: air and water pollution, impaired health, acid rain, deforestation, the destruction of traditional ways of life.
It's one of the most vicious circles the planetary crisis entails.
Cheap, available energy is essential for ending poverty: ending poverty is key to easing the pressures on the planet from the abjectly poor who have no choice but to eat the seed corn. But the tank is running dry.
It doesn't have to be like this. Our energy use is unsustainable, but we already know what a benign alternative would look like.
All we have to do is decide that we will get there, and how.
It will make vastly more use of renewable energy, from inexhaustible natural sources like the Sun and the seas.
Nuclear power?
One key fuel may well be hydrogen, which is a clean alternative for vehicles and is in abundant supply as it is a chemical component of water.
But large amounts of energy are needed to produce hydrogen from water, so it will not come into its own as a clean alternative until renewable energy is widely available for the process.
Air pollution is a major problem - often related to energy useSome analysts suggest that nuclear power will be needed to bridge the gap between now and the renewable future.
Many environmentalists (but not all) are deeply unhappy with the idea - fission technology has been in use for a generation, but concerns remain about radioactive waste disposal and the risk of accidents.
Nuclear fusion - a new form of nuclear power which combines atoms rather than splitting them apart - could be ready by around 2040, but that is too long to wait.
However, we can also get energy to do several jobs at once, as combined heat and power plants do. And we can use less of it by becoming energy-efficient.
The British government estimates that 56% of energy used in UK homes could be cut using currently available technologies - yet the original Model T Ford did more miles to the gallon than the average Ford vehicle produced today in the US.
We can install power stations on our roofs by covering our houses with solar tiles, or buying miniature wind turbines the size of a satellite dish.
Practically, the energy crisis is soluble. But reaching the broad sunlit uplands will mean a drastic mental gear change for policy-makers and consumers alike.
BBC and the end of the world: species/extinction
Last Updated: Friday, 1 October, 2004, 16:58 GMT 17:58 UK
Biodiversity: The sixth great wave
As part of Planet Under Pressure, a BBC News Online series looking at some of the biggest environmental problems humanity faces, Alex Kirby considers the current increase in extinction rates.
By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent
A quarter of all mammals face some extinction riskAll the creatures we share the Earth with are important in some way, however unprepossessing or insignificant they may appear. They and we are all part of the web of life.
From the dawn of time, extinction has usually progressed at what scientists call a natural or background rate. Today the tempo is far faster.
Many scientists believe this is the sixth great wave - the sixth mass extinction to affect life on Earth.
We were not here for any of the previous mass extinctions, but this time our sheer preponderance is driving the slide to oblivion.
LIVING PLANET INDEX
The index tracks the size of specific populations of selected species
It shows them as a percentage of the 1970 populations
It shows falling population levels in all three ecosystem types studiedWe have more than doubled our numbers in half a century, and that is the most obvious reason why there is less room for any other species.
We are taking their living room to grow our food, their food to feed ourselves. We are exploiting them, trading in them, squeezing them to the margins of existence - and beyond.
Often the choice is hard: conserve a species or feed a community, tourists' dollars or turtles' nests.
In 2003 the World Conservation Union's Red List said more than 12,000 species (out of 40,000 assessed) faced some extinction risk, including:
one bird in eight
13% of the world's flowering plants
a quarter of all mammals. That gives you a ballpark figure. Science has described 1.75 million species, some experts estimate that there may be 13 or 14 million in the world in total - but until they are catalogued, nobody knows.
FIVE MASS EXTINCTIONS
Cretaceous (About 65 million years ago)
Triassic (About 208 million years ago)
Permian (About 245 million years ago)
Devonian (About 360 million years ago)
Ordovician (About 438 million years ago) Our pillage of the natural world has been likened to burning down the medieval libraries of Europe, before we had even bothered to catalogue their contents.
Many species keep us alive, purifying water, fixing nitrogen, recycling nutrients and waste, and pollinating crops.
Plants and bacteria carry out photosynthesis, which produces the oxygen we breathe. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas given off by human activities.
Pandas and microbes
Some years ago, when the global annual gross product was about $18 trillion, US researchers calculated the value of the goods and services provided by the Earth to the world economy: $33 trillion.
Tropical cone snails contain toxins which show promise for treating some forms of cancer and heart irregularities. One toxin may be a thousand times more potent than morphine for pain relief.
But millions of cone snails are now killed annually for their shells, and their habitats are under pressure.
That is the argument for utility. But the creatures we can see, and those we can use directly, are just the start of the story.
Lord May, president of the Royal Society (the UK's national academy of sciences), has said: "Most conservation effort goes into birds and mammals - creatures like the panda, a dim, dead-end animal that was probably on the way out anyway.
"Yet arguably it's the little things that run the world, things like soil microbes. They're the least-known species of all."
Complex network
And we continue to tug at the loose threads of the web of life, thinking we can split it into its separate parts.
71% of UK butterfly species are reported to be decliningBrazil nuts are a lucrative harvest in the Amazon. But an experiment to produce them in plantations failed, because the trees bear a good crop in the forest, but are barren in isolation.
We are not removing individual species from the Amazon: we are destroying the entire forest. US researchers estimate that by 2020 less than 5% of it will remain in pristine condition.
Within 15 years, about a fifth of central Africa's forests will have gone, by one estimate. And the forests of Indonesia are in headlong retreat.
Some species are bucking the trend towards extinction. In 1953 there were about 2.5bn people: today there are 6bn.
Ensuring other species keep their living space is not sentimental. It is the only way we shall survive.
Extinction, whatever Steven Spielberg says, really is for ever. The web is unravelling.
BBC and the end of the world: water
Last Updated: Tuesday, 19 October, 2004, 17:20 GMT 18:20 UK
Water scarcity: A looming crisis?
As part of Planet Under Pressure, a BBC News Online series looking at some of the biggest environmental problems facing humanity, Alex Kirby explores fears of an impending global water crisis.
By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent
The world's water is finite, but the number of us is growing fast The world's water crisis is simple to understand, if not to solve.
The amount of water in the world is finite. The number of us is growing fast and our water use is growing even faster.
A third of the world's population lives in water-stressed countries now. By 2025, this is expected to rise to two-thirds.
There is more than enough water available, in total, for everyone's basic needs.
The UN recommends that people need a minimum of 50 litres of water a day for drinking, washing, cooking and sanitation.
In 1990, over a billion people did not have even that.
Providing universal access to that basic minimum worldwide by 2015 would take less than 1% of the amount of water we use today. But we're a long way from achieving that.
Pollution and disease
Global water consumption rose sixfold between 1900 and 1995 - more than double the rate of population growth - and goes on growing as farming, industry and domestic demand all increase.
Facts and figures on the world's water use and supply
In graphicsAs important as quantity is quality - with pollution increasing in some areas, the amount of useable water declines.
More than five million people die from waterborne diseases each year - 10 times the number killed in wars around the globe.
And the wider effects of water shortages are just as chilling as the prospect of having too little to drink.
Seventy percent of the water used worldwide is used for agriculture.
Much more will be needed if we are to feed the world's growing population - predicted to rise from about six billion today to 8.9 billion by 2050.
And consumption will soar further as more people expect Western-style lifestyles and diets - one kilogram of grain-fed beef needs at least 15 cubic metres of water, while a kilo of cereals needs only up to three cubic metres.
Poverty and water
The poor are the ones who suffer most. Water shortages can mean long walks to fetch water, high prices to buy it, food insecurity and disease from drinking dirty water.
Millions of poor people spend hours every day carrying waterBut the very thing needed to raise funds to tackle water problems in poor countries - economic development - requires yet more water to supply the agriculture and industries which drive it.
The UN-backed World Commission on Water estimated in 2000 that an additional $100bn a year would be needed to tackle water scarcity worldwide.
This dwarfs the $20bn which will be needed annually by 2007 to tackle HIV and Aids, and, according to the Commission, it is so much it could only be raised from the private sector.
Even if the money can be found, spending it wisely is a further challenge. Dams and other large-scale projects now affect 60% of the world's largest rivers and provide millions with water.
But in many cases the costs in terms of population displacement and irreversible changes in the nearby ecosystems have been considerable.
Using underground supplies is another widely used solution, but it means living on capital accumulated over millennia, and depleting it faster than the interest can top it up.
As groundwater is exploited, water tables in parts of China, India, West Asia, the former Soviet Union and the western United States are dropping - in India by as much as 3m a year in 1999.
Technical solutions
New technology can help, however, especially by cleaning up pollution and so making more water useable, and in agriculture, where water use can be made far more efficient. Drought-resistant plants can also help.
Drip irrigation drastically cuts the amount of water needed, low-pressure sprinklers are an improvement, and even building simple earth walls to trap rainfall is helpful.
One kilo of grain-fed beef needs at least 15 cubic metres of waterSome countries are now treating waste water so that it can be used - and drunk - several times over.
Desalinisation makes sea water available, but takes huge quantities of energy and leaves vast amounts of brine.
The optimists say "virtual water" may save the day - the water contained in crops which can be exported from water-rich countries to arid ones.
But the amounts involved would be immense, and the energy needed to transport them gargantuan. And affordable, useable energy will probably soon be a bigger problem than water itself.
Climate change
In any case, it is not just us who need water, but every other species that shares the planet with us - as well all the ecosystems on which we, and they, rely.
Climate change will also have an impact. Some areas will probably benefit from increased rainfall, but others are likely to be losers.
We have to rethink how much water we really need if we are to learn how to share the Earth's supply.
While dams and other large-scale schemes play a big role worldwide, there is also a growing recognition of the value of using the water we already have more efficiently rather than harvesting ever more from our rivers and aquifers.
For millions of people around the world, getting it right is a matter of life and death.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)