Writers at two of the world’s premier news outlets, the Reuters wire service and the New York Times, found dramatically different hooks in a new report on fossil fuel costs to the economy. Remarkably, the study ignored any health or other costs due to the usual reason for worry: CO2. Rather, it calculated health and other harm due to more palpable pollutants – oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, heavy metals, soot, grit, etc. Its estimate: about $120 billion in economic harm, half from coal. The analysis is from the National Academy of Sciences’s Nat’l Research Council.

A prominent but standard reception is seen in the New York Times‘s story by Matthew L. Wald: Fossil Fuels’ Hidden Cost Is In Billions, Study says. He marches through the hidden health and environmental costs, bringing up only briefly and at the end the iffy performance by hybrid and electric vehicles by these metrics – which, again, exclude the big bugaboo called carbon.

Over at Reuters, Timothy Gardner handles it quite differently and the hed reflects this starkly: Electric cars don’t deserve halo yet: study. Reuters in fact stands pretty much by itself – and yet appears to stick to specific findings in the report. It sees a different priority for listing them. One is unsure the reporters and editors involved at Reuters showed stellar judgment, but they thought for themselves. The story says, “Electric cars will not be dramatically cleaner than autos powered by fossil fuels until they rely less on electricity from conventional coal-fired power plants.” He quotes the chairman of the report committee as saying such cars cannot be a “major green alternative” to your standard Jeep or Volkswagen until the electrical generation, and manufacture of hybrids etc themselves, gets cleaner. Gardner apparently figures the biggest surprise in the report, hence the natural lede, concerns the relatively low eco-benefit of electric cars – after all, nobody will be surprised to learn that coal and oil remain dirty.

Different as these stories are, one common weakness is apparent to these eyes. They both do too little to emphasize that the study deliberately excluded, as too imprecise to calculate, the greenhouse gas impacts on climate and hence on health and the economy by fossil fuels or motor vehicles. Wald does mention the report’s climate-blind aspect several times. But Gardner at Reuters virtually ignores carbon emissions in his discussion of the mediocre performance of electric cars in this paper’s analysis. While useful as evidence that even without climate change in the mix a cleaner way to make power is important, the study thus is hardly a reason by itself to decide for or against, say, buying one or another kind of car.

Similarly, the underlying theme in the report that “externalities” of energy’s cost, across the board  are a “case for governmental intervention in the form of regulation, taxes, fees…” etc. gets fairly low play in most accounts.

A more explicit and clear handling of the report’s scope and limits is, remarkably, also at the Times at its Green Inc. blog, by Jad Mouawad. His third graf starts off declaring that it comes with a “major caveat.” And that is its exclusion of the main reason so much shouting is underway about fossil fuels use on this planet.

AP, as far as can be seen, did not cover. Several smaller outlets in coal producing regions did.

Other Stories:

• Bloomberg – Tina Seeley: Coal’s Environmental Damage Costs U.S.$62 Billion ; And lede says “not including costs of global warming.” She gets an acid quote from a coal industry rep: the report’s focus on hidden costs “completely ignores the hidden benefits of coal-based generation” such as cheaper air conditioning.
• Charleston Gazette – Ken Ward Jr.: Study finds $62 billion a year in ‘hidden costs’ of coal ;
• McClatchy / Miami Herald – Renee Schoof: Report looks at hidden health costs of energy production ; This one doesn’t bring electric or hybrid cars up at all.
• Lexington Herald-Leader (Ky) Andy Mead: Report assesses cost of pollution form coal plants/ Price Tag Put At $62 Billion A Year ;
• Science News – Janet Raloff: Report Tallies Hidden Energy Costs ; If the externalities of power production were in the utility bill, it would double, she reports. She adds, these “don’t account for pricey environmental havoc associated with global change….” Her story provided the quote above about these all being reason for government intervention in market pricing. ;

Grist for the Mill: NAS Press Release; Full Report ;

- Charlie Petit

Last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center tentatively declared how the tepid El Niño in the mid-Pacific might affect US rainfall. A drier Pacific Northwest, wetter Southern Tier all the way from Florida to the west and wrapping up along most of California, appear to be in the cards, it says.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, whose region like much of the Southwest has been dry for several years, Robert Krier gets the story in a little late but long and illustrated. He also manfully hedges his bets and sticks more qualifiers in there than at an Indy race. The CPC is “sorta, kinda, maybe” saying it’ll rain and, just to make it clear, he warns “This is not the kind of surfire El Niño one can take to the bank, or even the corner ATM.” That is playful yet careful phrasing. He also is gathering up a bunch of opinions from locals, not very scientific most of them judging by examples he provides, but amusing. He’s offering a rain gauge to the best guesser of the ongoing season’s annual total precip when the season ends June 30, 2010. Today’s the deadline. I’m unsure if this prize is just a graduated beaker to put on the porch, or a fancy automated gauge that wirelessly transmits its data to one’s computer for easy watching.

Other stories:

• Santa Rosa Press Democrat – Mary Callahan: El Nino to bring wet winter to North Coast; Unless it does not. A few caveats are in the story itself, including in the quotes from experts.
• USA Today – Doyle Rice: Winter forecast: Warm northern tier; wet, cool South, Southeast;
• Orange County Register (ScienceDude blog) Gary Robbins: NOAA gives confusing winter forecast for O.C. ; Robbins is one of the best. He makes sure readers know that the important word is maybe.
• Gulf Coast Newspapers – Curt Chapman: We’ll soon be chillin’ on the Gulf Coast ; The hed was for the immediate forecast, but the longer range one is in the story too; the hed fits that as well.
• Baltimore Sun – Frank D. Roylance: El Nino expected to bring a colder Md. winter ; Roylance relies more heavily on the commercial AccuWeather forecast than NOAA’s.
• AP – Seth Borenstein: Winter forecast: Warmer West, North; cooler South;

Grist for the Mill: NOAA Climate Prediction Center Press Release ;

The Tracker himself has encountered shed elk antlers in the Wyoming high country – way up on the high ridges on the west side of the Wind River Reservation – as evidenced by the photo here cropped to protect the goofy. But until reading this AP piece by Mead Gruver had no idea that collecting such antlers, discarded by their original owners, is a major diversion in that state and presumably other places with large herds of elk or mule deer on publicly accessible land.

The story here is that so hectic has the hunting begun that it is becoming a threat to the living animals, with off road vehicles and snowmobiles and horse back riders and others scouring the brushy hills. It says here a few avid collectors even harass the animals, often in winter or early spring when they are already exhausted just trying to stay alive through the lean months, until the antlers fall off. There is a big market in intact antlers as well as the carved and polished curios that artisans make from them. The news is that a ban on the practice is under consideration. The story gathers varied opinions on the practicality of such a thing.

-Charlie Petit

A good piece on forensic science and law in the NYTimes by Al Baker and Alain Delaquérière , although it’s a bit light on describing DNA evidence and its own limitations, ought not be missed. The gist is that Manhattan prosecuters in rape cases that have good DNA evidence left behind by the perp have for some time, as statutes of limitations loom, stopping the clock by indicting the DNA itself. They are expanding it to other crimes. DNA, they say, is equivalent to knowing a suspect’s name and SSN and anything else that pinpoints one precise person – but they just haven’t caught him or her yet.

One suspects this general info has been reported before. This piece lays it out nicely. One question comes to mind. If this legal principle is solid, why has it not been used previously in cases where a very good set of fingerprints are in the evidence box? These also are things with huge odds of applying to just one person on the planet now or ever.

- Charlie Petit

More people by far, we should all know by now,  go to the internet for news – especially in search of news that is not merely the five biggest headlines of the day – than rely on newspapers or whatever drifts past on television or radio. A tidy example of the jumble of sources that come at one is seen after one starts with an AP piece by Mauricio Cuevas, datelined “ABOVE ANTARCTICA.” He got on board a NASA DC-8 in Punta Arenas and, one guesses, filed this piece early in the flight. It’s short, tells us what the old converted jetliner is doing and why it is filling in for a younger but fast-aging satellite. It doesn’t have much on what is going on in the air. The operation is called Ice Bridge. The piece explains why that’s not just a metaphor but a reality for what one would have presumed would be, but is not, a robust data stream on sea ice on the Southern Ocean.

What catches the eye is that the piece links directly to a source of news, some of it near-live, from the flight: the space agency itself and some of its employees, contractors, and a few of its public relations people. These are NASA’s Ice Bridge blog (with a pretty good Q&A by a press officer and a mission scientist) and a Twitter feed. One of those tweets included a link to the pic above, shot from the plane.

The Tracker does not know if this is good, bad, or sideways for delivery of fast, responsible news. It does the blurry provenance and patchwork stitchery of old line, new line, grassroots, institutional, and other agents that collectively describe events for public consumption these days.

- Charlie Petit

Last week the big kerplunk upon the moon by NASA’s LCROSS mission got some ribbing and titters and tsk tsks after the spent rocket missile failed to raise a visible flash or even lingering smattering of dust. Word came at midday Friday, however, that the trailing probe did spot a faint cloud of fine ejecta in data at infrared and ultraviolet wavlengths. Looks like vapor and dust. No confirmation yet that it obliterated any glaciers, or even ice cubes, down in the ever-shaded crater it hit.

Science News‘s Ron Cowen was among those who got the news out quickly on  Friday. The images show “the heat flash from the impact, the plume and the creation of a new crater inside Cabeus,” he writes of the science in the crater. The crater is 28 meters wide. After the global disappointment by telescope and big binocular-wielding watchers, not to mentions millions watching TV and streaming video, this indication that it was not a scientific bust – which after all is the main point – got considerable pickup.

Other stories:

• AP: NASA:photos show mooon strike created plume;
• LA Times – John Johnson Jr. : NASA moon crash did kick up debris plume as hoped ;
• SF Chronicle: Craft kicked up debris on moon after all ;
• Hed prize goes surprisingly perhaps to Xinhua/China View – Deng Shasha: (the piece itself is credited  mainly to other agencies): NASA: Moon strike not total waste of time ;

PLUS, also late last week news broke that NASA’s new IBEX spacecraft, first to measure the distribution of neutral particles along the boundary between the outgoing solar wind and the thin, surrounding interstellar medium, found a big surprise. Instead of a tumultuous but essentially evenly constructed boundary region, a distinct ribbon of neutral gas appears to concentrate much of the material.

Stories:

• NPR - All Things Considered: NASA Discovers A Ring Around The Solar System ;
• Science News – Ron Cowen (via Wired Science) : Edge of Solar System is Not What We Expected ;

Grist for the Mill:

NASA Ibex Press Release ; NASA LCROSS update press release ;

- Charlie Petit

Dan Gillmor had no bad news about journalism, science and otherwise, to share. “You already know about  that,” he said to a knowing murmuring of shared laughter-through-the-pain. He then launched into a well-drilled march through time of the technologies that changed how people communicate. “Each was a liberation of words from a priesthood.”  The Gutenberg press and its first run – of the Bible – was literal. Now, it is the old fashioned gate-keeping media dominated by newspapers that is the priesthood surrendering power.

Gillmor, a former tech writer at the San Jose Mercury News-turned-on- line- media- businessman who willingly shared the tough sledding in that line of work, is now director of the Arizona State University Knight Center for Media Entrepreneurship. His plenary talk opened the ScienceWriters 2009 joint meeting of the National Association of Science Writers annual workshop and the Council for the Advancement of Science‘s New Horizons in Science briefing. About 330 science journalists and communicators – throngs of freelance reporters, a mostly-young crowd, lots of editors, and quite a few university and lab information specialists – are here including yours Tracker-truly. This is down a bit from Stanford last year, but that’s normal explained NASW president Marriett DiChristina of Scientific American. There’s always a fall off away from the coasts – and the recession hasn’t helped. Next year will, by the way, be in New Haven with Yale University hosting New Horizons.

(Yikes, amendment and apology here. Two days ago I wrote the hed in a fog and never looked back as I assembled the post. So if you’re confused where this meeting is, it’s in Austin. So am I. As in University of Texas, Austin, host of New Horizons. For half a day after publishing I had set the flag flying in San Antonio and didn’t notice the gaffe. Am examining my feet now to see if the shoes are on the correct sides, socks match, belt is through all the loops, and the shirt has no unusually bounteous dribbles. )

It’s a good meeting already , snugged up on the flank of the host U. Texas, Austin, campus. For fossils like me, a Saturday workshop session about on line and multimedia included a lesson in how to use bone-simple software to make narrated slide shows. Others in the class figured out how to put music in them too, and to make the slides move around like the Ken Burns effect that come in new Macs anyway. But I did manage to from an old grizzly bear assignment. Now, that’s a workshop with patience.

John Hawks Describes Our Shrinking Brains

Today (Sunday) with New Horizons and CASW half of this duet takes over with authoritative talks from the tips of several scientific spears, all aimed at getting reporters and editors ready for news just coming into view (“new horizons’ for sure.) For the first time the program provides streaming videos of sessions, which you can find along with a Twitter link at the CASW site or just looks at #sciwri09.  The program is there too but if you’d like to drop in on something you particularly like, it’s also here. We have premier speakers (bios here) on new complexities in carbon and climate, how information theory helps neurologists, a Nobelist’s view of the LHC’s prospects, and a lot more. Talks wind up Tuesday. The video archives will be on CASW’s site. If they’re not there yet, try this at the vender, UStream.

Plus, blogging and reporting from the scene is abundant, including those by a team from Science News magazine led by its editor Tom Siegfried.

Happy Disclosure: I’m on the board of CASW, so am inclined to be particularly rosy about this mtg.

- Charlie Petit

Paracetamol?

This was a new one on me. Yet there it was on Bloomberg: “Children who get Tylenol and other brands of the painkiller paracetamol after vaccination to avoid a high fever aren’t as well protected as those who don’t, a study found.”

Did I miss a memo? Tylenol isn’t called acetaminophen anymore?

As some of you no doubt know, paracetamol is the British name of acetaminophen, better known in the U.S. by the brand name Tylenol.

Perhaps the reason Bloomberg tried to confuse us was because the research suporting this finding came out of the Czech Republic, where it’s anybody’s guess what the drug is called. And the  study was published in The Lancet, a British journal.

Most others called it like it is, but I found that much of the coverage came up short.

A story on MedicalNewsToday.com oddly backed into the findings, sounding more like a high-school biology textbook than a news story. Fever is part of the body’s normal response to vaccines, it says. And acetaminophen is often given to reduce the fever after vaccines are given to kids. Finally, a sentence or two later, we get to the news: Use of the drug “reduces the child’s response to some of the vaccine antigens.”

Maybe it’s coincidence, but more and more when I look for a story at the Los Angeles Times I find a blog post by the capable Thomas H. Maugh II rather than a more complete story. Maugh does this nicely: “Giving acetaminophen — best known by the brand-name Tylenol — to infants along with vaccines to prevent fevers from developing reduces the effectiveness of the vaccines, perhaps because a fever is an essential part of the development of an immune response,” he writes. It’s a good piece, but perhaps not enough for a study of this potential importance.

Other stories:

Marilynn Marchione of the AP is short and to the point: “ Giving babies Tylenol to prevent fever when they get childhood vaccinations may backfire and make the shots a little less effective, surprising new research suggests.”

Daniel J. DeNoon on WebMD: “Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, weakens infants’ immune responses to vaccines, a compelling new study suggests.”

Grist for the mill: The Lancet press release.

- Paul Raeburn

Restaurants and bars that have been fighting smoking bans for years (and often losing) now have another argument to contend with: Secondhand smoke isn’t just unpleasant–it increases the risk of heart attacks even among healthy nonsmokers.

The prolific and rock-solid-reliable Lauran Neergaard of The Associated Press lays the story out nicely. “A major report confirms what health officials long have believed: Bans on smoking in restaurants, bars and other gathering spots reduce the risk of heart attacks among nonsmokers,” she writes.

She quickly notes that 126 million Americans are regularly exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke. And she enumerates some of the scariest conclusions in the Institute of Medicine report, including the determination that “less than an hour’s exposure might be enough to push someone already at risk of a heart attack over the edge.”

She also mentions the conversion of statistician Stephen Feinberg of Carnegie Mellon University, a member of the committee that prepared the report. He was “the resident skeptic” at the outset, but he changed his mind, according to Neergaard. “There was a clear and consistent effect of smoking bans,” he said. That’s a nice detail; a bit of the human side of science.

Other stories:

Wall Street Journal: Smoking bans effective in cutting heart-disease risk.

WebMD‘s headline: Expert Panel: Smoking Bans Save Lives.

Scienceblog: Smoking bans are effective at reducing the risk of heart attacks and heart disease associated with exposure to secondhand smoke.

A little historical perspective from Richard Knox at NPR: Almost four decades after the Surgeon General first suggested secondhand smoke causes heart attacks, the National Institute of Medicine says there’s no doubt about it.

CardiologyToday.com is jargony, (it’s aimed at professionals) but puts some interesting numbers in its subhead: Reductions in the incidence of acute MIs were between 6% and 47% following implementation of the smoking ban. Most other outlets left numbers out of the headline or top of the story.

Grist for the mill: The Institute of Medicine’s press release.

- Paul Raeburn

The Gates Foundation, well established in supporting research on global health, has been quietly expanding its reach to Third World agriculture. And on Thursday Bill Gates (at right visiting a Nigerian farm) used the occasion of his keynote address to the World Food Prize symposium in Des Moines, Iowa, to announce that his foundation has committed $1.4 billion to the cause. It was Gates’s first major speech on agriculture, and he used part of it to attack environmentalists who oppose the use of genetically engineered seeds.

The Des Moines Register‘s Philip Brasher quoted Gates as saying some environmentalists are “instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity,” ignoring the threat to future crop yields posed by global warming. “They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on Earth, population is growing faster than productivity, and the climate is changing.”

Brasher noted that Gates promised that GM seeds developed with the foundation’s money would be licensed royalty-free and cost farmers no more than conventional seed.

Michael Gerson, a Washington Post Op-Ed columnist, noted that other groups including the U.S. president and the G-20 have also added to their agenda funding for a new Green Revolution.  Gerson writes that in a conversation with the philanthropist “Gates described himself as a ‘city boy’ but spoke with typical, wonkish intensity about wheat rust, marker-assisted selection and finger millet outputs. ‘The world moved away from a focus on seeds and plant disease in a dangerous way for 20 years,’ he told me. Gates is determined to push a revival.”

In a curtain raiser on Wednesday Seattle Times business reporter Kristi Heim wrote this:

“Gates will argue that the ‘ideological wedge’ between groups who disregard environmental concerns and groups who discount productivity gains could thwart major breakthroughs that are within reach.

” ‘It’s a false choice, and it’s dangerous for the field,’ Gates said in advance excerpts from the speech. ‘It blocks important advances. It breeds hostility among people who need to work together. And it makes it hard to launch a comprehensive program to help poor farmers. The fact is, we need both productivity and sustainability — and there is no reason we can’t have both.’ ”

-Boyce Rensberger

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) The Argentine Página 12 has an excellent special on the 100 anniversary of the description of Chagas disease. The package includes very detailed stories about its biology, treatment, and evolution during this century, plus a biography of Carlos Chagas. Also in Argentina, Al Gore’s visit has received wide coverage although it seems he hasn’t said anything really new. And it’s been funny to see how the vegetarian spider is from Costa Rica if you go by La Nación, and Mexican if you read Milenio (very good story in this last outlet too).

Se conocen 40.000 especies de arañas en el mundo, y sólo una se alimenta principalmente de vegetales. El descubrimiento de Bagheera Kiplingi ha aparecido en gran cantidad de medios. ¿he dicho “descubrimiento”? En Milenio (Mex), Horacio Salazar matiza que ya se conocía desde 1896. Su artículo “Araña mexicana salió vegetariana” es el más detallado que el Tracker ha encontrado. Merece ser destacada la ágil manera como se explica el mutualismo, y cómo cuando la araña se topa de frente connuna hormiga, en lugar de intentar comérsela va y le roba su comida. ¿Mexicana? En La Nación de Costa Rica Alejandra Vargas titula “Araña vegetariana vive en bosque costarricense”. Ambos tienen razón, y como redacta  Ramiro Velásquez Gómez en una muy simpática nota para  El Colombiano:”Christopher Meehan, de Villanova University, conoció las arañas durante un curso en pleno campo en México. Las arañas fueron observadas de manera independiente en Costa Rica por el coautor Eric Olson, de Brandeis University”. El Tracker, y posiblemente muchos lectores,  se queda con ganas de tener más detalles sobre el camino adaptativo seguido por esta tan inesperada excepción. (Leer también el post en el KSJT de Charlie Petit sobre la nota aparecida un año atrás acerca de esta misma araña)

Excelente trabajo en el suplemento “Futuro” de Página 12 sobre el Chagas, una enfermedad “olvidada” que afecta a unos 15 millones de personas, causa unas 14.000 muertes cada año, y que fue descubierta hace 100 años por el médico brasileño Carlos Chagas. Página 12 no ha olvidado su centenario y nos ofrece un documento especial con varios artículos sobre dicha enfermedad.

En la nota de tapa Leonardo Moledo se sorprende que en un siglo no hayamos encontrado una vacuna o un tratamiento completo, y dice que la medicina no está siempre a la altura de sus promesas, ni de lo que se espera de ella. La denomina enfermedad social, porque a falta de recursos sólo se puede acudir a la prevención. Raúl A. Alzogaray en su pieza “La historia interminable” explica cómo se describió el Chagas, repasa los esfuerzos infructuosos para controlarlo, y en su muy completa pieza profundiza en las medidas de control de las vinchucas.Marcelo Rodríguez pasa de la vinchuca al tripanosoma, el parásito que causa la enfermedad, y explica investigaciones para atacarlo. Matías Alinovi completa el reportaje con una biografía de Carlos Chagas.

Excelente trabajo, pero si podemos pedir un poquito más, quizás añadiríamos cierta actualidad, pues desde hace un tiempo vamos percibiendo que el Chagas está recibiendo mayor consideración por la comunidad internacional. SciDev tiene esta semana una pieza firmada por  Paula Leighton sobre el ensayo de un nuevo fármaco, tras 40 años “olvidados” con los dos únicos que existen.

BBC Mundo también ofrece una muy buena pieza de Valeria Perazzo, en la que califica al Chagas de “invisible” en lugar de “olvidado”, debido a la enorme cantidad de personas que lo padecen sin saberlo. La historia incluye video con afectados de Chagas.

Video también contiene la nota en Clarín (Arg) de Valeria Román y Guillermina De Domini sobre las conferencias de Al Gore a Argentina. No hay grandes mensajes, además de la ya conocida gravedad del asunto. Sólo el pagar por las emisiones de CO2,  y el reconocimiento de que EEUU es el primero que debe mover ficha. El texto parece insinuar que la charla no dio mucho más de si…

También para Clarín, Roxana Badaloni explica que Al Gore se pronunció en contra de la minería en la zona de glaciares de la cordillera de los Andes para proteger el agua para el consumo y la agricultura. Buen apunte, recordando que el deterioro del medioambiente no es sólo consecuencia del cambio climático, y no debe éste servir de excusa o “tapadera”.

- Pere Estupinyà

Simon Singh, a well-known science writer whose battle with libel law and the British Chiropractic Association is a cause celebre in the UK (among other science journalists particularly), has gained a small victory. A preliminary judgment against him has been reversed. The Guardian‘s Sarah Boseley has details. This comes on the eve of a debate – tonight -  in London on the merits of the law and of free expression of opinions that can be sensibly judged to be sensible enough for pubic consumption.

- Charlie Petit