I like Bill Nye just fine, he’s entertaining and provides himself a good living and the public a good service by making science easily comprehensible. He’s a serious man at heart, I’d wager. But really, really?,  is he the best that a major media outlet can do when it comes to explaining something as simple as buoyancy and density and how a “top kill” uses heavy mud to change the density of the column in that pipe from the oil zone deep in the Gulf to the  busted top so that it’s so heavy it doesn’t bubble out any more?

Here, courtesy of New York Magazine, is CNN‘s John King’s broadcast where he calls on Nye. It’s clear enough, no knock on Nye who gets into hysteresis and has some good show-and-tell props. But again – this huge network, struggling to keep up with the opinionating talkers on MSNBC and Fox by operating a more or less objective news shop,  has nobody on staff able to handle routine, if technical, reporting of this sort? How in blazes did that happen?

Oh yeah, I just remembered. Well that’s a lie, I wrote this because I remembered it first and then wrote the post. Either way – how wise does it look now, CNN suits, to have given the boot to the likes of Miles O’Brien and other reporters who didn’t run gibbering in baffled panic from a few technical and scientific concepts?

In the meantime, the biggest story lately in environmental disasters is the Gulf Spill (that is, biggest story one can nail down to a single place, mood, and comes with a specific perpetrator. The collapse of world fisheries, the warming of the world, the drought in N. Africa, the perma-defrosting Arctic, and others are bigger – just more diffuse and deniable). The focus now is on Top Kill. Maybe by Monday we’ll learn if it is working and we’ll  have some news to round up about it – and the ongoing devastation on shore and in the water column. I particularly want to look into the quality of reporting on these huge undersea plumes of oiled and dispersant-befouled water. Have a good weekend everybody.

- Charlie Petit

Holy moly, that’s an amazing looking dinosaur, even allowing for the fanciful pigmentation added by UK artist Luis Rey (hi def here). Obviously a ceratopsian, of the clan that includes iconic old Triceratops. This one is a newly identified species from Montana – and it’s not even the only member of the clade in the news.

A second one is from Mexico, not quite as fancifully painted but sporting the heftiest horns yet found on these extinct beasts. For awhile this morning I thought it was all the same news – until it started to look as though a few reporters got it mixed up. Ah ha. Mixed up was I. Two dinosaurs.

Doesn’t look as though anybody did them both in one story. But both seem to be in the news due to one encyclopedic book coming out from Indiana University Press, New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs.  It appears that press agents at two institutions – one with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History where one of the book editors works, and one at the University of Utah where works a paleontologist responsible for one of the book’s star horned dino, put out releases highlighting separate entries in the tome. Looks like no reporter got them both, or called around enough to broaden the scope. Maybe the book itself is sufficiently lay reader-friendly for review in general media?

Stories on the maybe-Purplish one there:

• Cleveland Plain Dealer: John Mangels: Cleveland Museum of Natural History curator Michael Ryan identifies a new kind of horned dinosaur ; Nice job explaining the creature’s species name, Medusaceratops lokii.
• Comic Book Resources (blog) Kevin Melrose: Marvel’s Loki inspires name for newly discovered horned dinosaur ;

Stories on the Mexico dino:

• MSNBC /  LiveScience – Jeanna Bryner: Dinosaur had horns the size of baseball bats / Newly discovered dino likely didn’t have to worry about T. rex ; This one is Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna.
• Telegraph – Richard Alleyne: New armoured dinosaur with four foot horns on its head found by scientists ;

Grist for the Mills:

Cleveland Museum of Natural History Press Release ; Indiana University Press New Title with a spectrum one had never seen, “..from Archaeoceratops to Zuniiceratops…”; University of Utah Press Release ;

BUT WAIT, there’s more dino news stomping about, including:

• Deseret News – Amy Joi O’Donoghue: ‘Grinding mouth, wrinkle eye’ is name of newsly discovered species of dinosaur ;
• BBC – Katia Moskvitch: Horned dinosaurs ‘island hopped’ from Asia to Europe ; This is news to specialists, not so much for the rest of us. The dino is a small ceratopsian – but unlike others of its known relatives it didn’t live in Asia or North America. Bones turned up in Hungary.
• Scientific American (blog) Katherine Harmon: Small Triceratops relative suggests new dinosaur migration routes from Asia to Europe ;
• Calgary Herald – Yvonne Jeffery: Tyrrell’s ambitions gave us glimpse into Lives Of Dinosaurs ; local encomium to the big museum nearby.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) SciDev brings us a shocking story about the scientific and legal dispute between two biologists, and how it has played in the press, in Peru. In 2007 “El Comercio” reported that a researcher had found illegal transgenic maize in a Peruvian Valley. Two months later, another scientist severely criticized the methods and conclusions used, and took the newspaper to task for writing about a study that has not been published in a peer reviewed journal. We strongly reject this second critique, and defend our obligation to cover more than what appears in scientific magazines. We applaud the criticism he did on the study, though. But listen to this: he was accused of defamation and sentenced to pay a fine in Lima. The SciDev story in English here.

Curiosa situación científico-periodística-política-legal la acontecida en Perú alrededor de un científico declarado culpable de difamar a una compañera por su estudio sobre transgénicos en tierras peruanas, y que descubrimos en SciDev gracias a un muy buen artículo de Paula Leighton: “Científicos apoyan a biólogo peruano declarado culpable”. Da jugo para comentar algunos aspectos. Empecemos.

Se ve que en 2007 El Comercio publicó una nota de Marienella Ortiz Ramírez “En el Valle de Barranca ya existen cultivos transgénicos” explicando que la catedrática Antonietta Gutiérrez tomó 42 muestras de maíz del Valle de Barranca, analizó su ADN, y encontró que 14 eran variedades modificadas genéticamente; algo que está prohibido en Perú. En el artículo un ecólogo respalda la credibilidad y profesionalismo de esta profesora de genética, y las autoridades competentes no rechazan los datos aportados por la científica. Gutiérrez dice que su posición no es antitransgénicos, pero exige mucho más control y restricciones.

Dos meses después, el entonces decano del colegio de Biólogos Ernesto Bustamante escribió una dura crítica a la científica y a la periodista diciendo que la nota no presentaba resultados ni hacía referencia a un artículo publicado en una revista científica, “lo que es requisito ético previo para que un científico divulgue mediáticamente algún hallazgo”, dijo. ¡Falso! ¡Falso! ¡Falso! Este es un primer aspecto a considerar: ¡Faltaría más que sólo pudiéramos reportar sobre lo que aparece publicado en las –también con conflictos de intereses y repletas de errores- revistas científicas! No hay duda que un artículo que ha superado la criba de la revisión independiente es más confiable que las palabras e inseguros datos de Antonietta Gutiérrez. Pero ¡claro que podemos –y debemos- escribir sobre ellos! El periodismo científico no está al servicio de la comunidad científica, ni tiene porqué seguir sus normas. Si una catedrática de Universidad con prestigio reconocido asegura haber encontrado transgénicos tenemos obligación de –manteniendo ciertas reservas- dar la noticia. No nos debemos sentir forzados en absoluto a esperar 3 o 4 años a que una revista científica dé su visto bueno. ¡faltaría más!

Por tanto, desde aquí rechazamos la crítica a la periodista por cubrir una información no demostrada suficientemente. ¿Y las críticas a la científica? Aquí hay todavía más controversia: una vez la discusión se centra sólo en aspectos científicos, Ernesto Bustamante tiene todo el derecho –y obligación profesional- de criticar el estudio de Antonietta Gutiérrez si cree que el procedimiento está lleno se “errores groseros” y transmite “falsas e incoherentes conclusiones”, como escribe en su hiriente columna. Tan hiriente –y aquí llega lo sorprendente- que Gutiérrez le demandó por difamación, un juzgado lo consideró culpable, y no llegó a la cárcel –se ve que en Perú la difamación es delito penal condenado con prisión- siempre que pague una multa y no salga de Lima sin permiso. ¿¿Pero esto qué es?? El tono de Ernesto Bustamante puede ser ofensivo, pero las críticas que hace en su columna son de fondo científico, y transmiten una defensa noble de la rigurosidad en la investigación. Y eso –además de loable- es imprescindible tanto dentro de la comunidad científica como fuera. Desde aquí, nos parece aberrante que se haya declarado culpable a Ernesto. Si algo diferencia a lo científicos de los parciales abogados y políticos, es su teórico respeto a la búsqueda de la verdad de manera imparcial y armados con datos objetivos. Para ser constructiva, la discusión debería haber seguido por estos derroteros. Y hubiera estado genial que la sociedad pudiera haberla seguido, dándose cuenta de lo imperfecta que es esta actividad humana que llamamos ciencia, y como todas también está contagiada de nuestras debilidades.

- Pere Estupinyà

(*) También en SciDev, interesante y relacionado artículo de Luisa Massarani “Aumento de transgénicos no supone amplia aceptación” explicando que los cultivos modificados genéticamente no han supuesto beneficios para los pequeños agricultores ni gozan de más aceptación social en Brasil y Argentina. Buen repaso a la historia de la implantación de esta tecnología.

(**) No relacionado en absoluto, no podemos contenernos de citar un clarísimo ejemplo de cómo transformar un estudio que establece la asociación “las personas que se cepillan menos los dientes sufren más enfermedad coronaria”, en la relación directa “Cepillarse poco los dientes aumenta el riesgo de sufrir enfermedades cardíacas”. Sabemos de sobra que una asociación así no demuestra causa-efecto, sólo propone una nueva hipótesis. Pero continuamos cayendo en el error. Puede haber factores ocultos que interfieran, y los mismos autores aseguran que “se necesitan nuevos estudios experimentales para confirmar si la asociación observada entre higiene oral y enfermedades cardiovasculares es casual o simplemente, un marcador de riesgo”. Ejemplo de libro.

In 2002, St. Anthony’s Medical Center in St. Louis told a psychiatrist he could lose his hospital privileges, following charges that he had delivered substandard care. The doctor sued hospital officials, and the hospital settled–agreeing to accept the doctor’s resignation and not report him to a national databank of problem doctors.

His record, in other words, remained clean, despite the charges.

Jeremy Kohler and Blythe Bernhard of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch did a nice feature using this case to highlight the shortcomings in medicine’s rules for disciplining–and reporting–doctors who are endangering patients.

Under federal law, they write, hospitals are required to report serious disciplinary actions to a national databank. But critics say hospitals are often failing to file reports.

It’s a nice story–a clear and engaging explanation of a baroque system for identifying doctors who might endanger patients.

My main comment would be that Kohler and Bernhard might have made the story even more gripping by featuring some of the details of their reporting much higher in the story. This parallels comments I made in a post Wednesday about a story in Discover magazine.

Here’s the Kohler-Bernhard lede:

When a man died nine years ago at St. Anthony’s Medical Center, a panel of doctors there said he had received substandard care from his psychiatrist, Dr. Surendra Chaganti.

While not blaming Chaganti for the man’s death, the panel said Chaganti prescribed drugs that could have been harmful and failed to send the man to the emergency room after noting he had been given another patient’s medicine.

That’s not bad. It quickly gets to the point. But here’s something I plucked from lower in the story, which might have made an especially gripping lede:

[When a patient with kidney damage was admitted for detox in 2001] Chaganti prescribed five psychiatric drugs, according to the complaint. The board said Chaganti gave Lawrence high doses of two drugs that are recommended only in small doses for kidney patients.

A high dosage of one drug caused him to become delirious, “which was not recognized and properly treated,” the board said. Lawrence was then given a sixth drug, which worsened his delirium.

Medical records indicated that Lawrence was agitated, wandering around the ward and not following directions, said Medical Examiner Dr. Mary E. Case…

Obviously, this would need a little editing to work as a lede. But the details–five drugs, delirium, agitation, wandering around the ward–are all things that could have made a great lede. Instead, they didn’t appear until about halfway through the story, by which time many readers–fickle, uncaring creatures that they are–would have turned the page.

These details are far superior to what’s in the lede: “prescribed drugs that could have been harmful.”

I don’t want my unsolicited editing, however, to take away from what is a very good story. For some reason, I seem to have donned my green eyeshade this week, and I can’t stop editing. It’s an illness; expect me to recover. Besides, I’m almost out of blue pencils.

Thanks to the Covering Health blog of the Association of Health Care Journalists for calling my attention to this piece.

- Paul Raeburn

While most of the press has jumped around chasing news conferences and walking the oiled beaches and marshes, talking with distressed residents, taking notes at Congressional hearings, and so forth  – all good and necessary tasks – a few outlets have looked away from the now and looked at the ago. Notable example:  that hot spot of liberal-progressive newscasting and mostly-politics programming, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show with its segment “Oil spills then are oil spills now.”

We watch her here in Berkeley Tracker headquarters because she’s perky, curious, cheerful, and respectfully polite even to people with whom she disagrees, refreshing in cable TV partisan-news show country. Her Moment of Geek episodes are sort of interesting, but too stuck on science and research as sources of entertainment and friendly guffaws. But this week her research staff turned up some devastatingly familiar-looking footage from many years ago, of another Gulf of Mexico blowout and the response. Most telling lesson here concerns the lack of evidence that the oil industry or governmental so-called watchdog agencies have in the decades since then sought or demanded substantially better technologies for dealing with these things. Looks like the offshore oil industry, while getting better at going rather heroically deeper, is stuck on Groundhog Day when it comes to a really bad woops.

Grist for the Mill: America’s Wetland Foundation Press Release (pertinent mention of 1979 spill and its lost opportunity) ;

- Charlie Petit

There must be some more press on a remarkable expedition now underway through a jungle of Indonesia and up a massif called Punca Jaya where lingering glacier fragments await. After reading of it on line in the current Science magazine, where Richard Stone explains the urgency and the incentive to get a core (Story may require a EurekAlert! or subscriber password to read), I went looking to see where else it runs.

Bingo, but only one so far. If others have written this up, let us know. I have seen no press release either (AMEND THAT! One just came in from Columbia U, now in Grist). The one news story I do spot is in an outlet we don’t often come across, Indonesia’s top newspaper. It is a competent, well-written, and brief job.

• Jakarta Post – Arghea Desafti Hapsari (May 19) :RI, US launch climate study of Puncak Jaya glaciers ;

To be sure, seasoned climate writers, particularly in the US, may have written or read of Ohio State University’s Lonnie Thompson so much that another yarn involving him did not trigger particular enthusiasm. He, with his wife Ellen Mosely-Thompson, has gotten barrels of ink over the years for research on climate and on glaciers – with Thompson focussing lately  on those at mid-latitudes. He is among the ring leaders of the project  along with colleagues in Indonesia and at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.  But this tale is so exotic, scientifically potent, and melancholy as the glaciers shrink away, it looks to be more than worth following. And boy – wouldn’t it be a fine assignment to go along with it? Maybe a reporter is along, for all I know. There is a blogging research scientist there – an Indonesia-born, Columbia University/Lamont-Doherty man, R. Dwi Susanto. His one post so far: Our Race Against Time.

Grist for the Mill: Columbia University/Earth Institute Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

The Tracker has to admit being slow this morning, distracted by the live feed from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico with goop spraying all over the place from the infamous Blow Out (Non)Preventer. BP and its contractors, with the feds looking over their shoulders, are blasting heavy drilling mud into every valve to which they can hook a hose. Clearly, a good deal of the heavy fluid is not going down the drill casing but is leaking every which way from the BOP. But some is going down the pipe too, its density slowing and, one hopes, overwhelming the crude’s bouyancy-driven rise.

There is not, to be sure, much directly about science or environmental analysis in this specific effort. The technology, except for the remotely operated vehicles and the video relay, all appears to be many decades old.

Everybody will be hanging on this news anyway, but here is a sampling of the moment’s uncertain, optimistic, nervous reporting. As everybody knows, even if this works the crud adrift in the sea already will continue to foul marshes and kill fisheries and wildlife at a tragic rate for weeks, maybe months. Tomorrow I’ll go hunting for stories that tell us more than we already know about that – bioremediation, animal rescue, toxicity of oil to marshes, and so on. All advance tips welcome in the <suggest stories> function on this site.

Stories:

• WashingtonPost – Joel Achenbach: BP says effort to plug well “proceeding as planned,’ but success still uncertain ;
• Los Angeles Times – Jim Tankersley: ‘Top kill’ stops gulf oil leak for now, official says ; One thing puzzles. It says here a Coast Guard man reports that one pump ship had run out of mud and that another was on the way. Why wasn’t it already sitting there ready to go?
• NYTimes – Clifford Krauss, John M. Broder: ‘Top Kill’ Effort Seems to Be Working. U.S. Says Cautiously ;
• AP – Greg Bluestein, Seth Borenstein: Gulf spill surpasses Valdez; plug try going well ;

It is no surprise that in an event of this size and urgency, the old time news outlets are the place to g0 (on the broadcast side, CNN, NBC, Fox, and other outlets similarly are at the front of the line). But one finds, in closing this post, that one smaller outlets has a neatly-done newser, analysis, and broader-context story all wrapped into just three paragraphs.

• Fast Company – Addy Dugdale: Top Kill Stopped Flow of Oil Into Gulf, BP Says ; plus – hints of sharp elbows among corporate and gov’t agents, and an ousting rumor about the Minerals Management Service’s top dog.

- Charlie Petit

In world where security agencies fall for expensive dowsing wands to detect hidden explosives (eg, see this Register report from Lewis Page in January), it is no surprise that other screwy or at least un-documented means of keeping us even safer from terrorists than we are already are wangling their way on to governmental budgets.

At Nature News today is a piece by DC freelancer Sharon Weinberger that ought to pretty well demolish expectation by people who are rational that something called the science of deception is a good way for airport cops to spot would-be terrorists making shifty-eyed sashays toward the jetways. False positives and false negatives galore (= random), along with a hint that people who believe in this stuff are also ones who believe lie detector polygraph tests tell the truth. That latter category, if TV cop shows are to be trusted, comprises lots of cops – whose internal affairs departments’ agents seem eager to strap electrodes on every officer they think might be a liar, cheat, crook, and discredit to the force.

Weinberger is good at national security reporting. In the department of house ads, she was a fellow at MIT’s Sci-Journalism Fellowships last year on the strength of strong reporting like this.

A tip of the hat to Dan Vergano for an email whose contents consisted only of the url to the story. As I read it, with its theme and evidence to back it up clear from the top, I thought “somebody ought to turn DARPA, or the JASONs, loose on this.” Then I read on and discovered that’s already happened (but rather than DARPA, something called the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity did one review), and that Weinberg got hold of a JASON report on it in the course of her digging. Their report was decidedly skeptical.

- Charlie Petit

.........X-30, 1980s

Remember NASP? No, not the National Assoc. of School Psychologists, the National Archery in the Schools Program, National Association of Safety Professionals, National Assoc. of Sales Professionals, Nat’l Assoc. for Shoplifting Prevention, or nuclear autoantigenic sperm protein. Of course many of you don’t. This goes back to the Reagan administration’s X-30 program of the mid-80s, aka National Aero-Space Plane (which makes it a forced acronym unlike those other NASPs).  Before it was canceled amid metallurgy and other technology – plus budget – worries it was to be a hypersonic testbed and possible prototype for a passenger-carrying “Orient Express” airplane. It was to be capable of getting people half way around the world in an hour or so at rates as high as 20,000 miles per hour – or even to fly straight to orbit with a final, pure-rocket mode taking over for its scramjet engines slung under the broad fuselage.

..... tiny X-51, 2010 (but this one flies)

I’m backing into the lede, but old memories of that hypersonically hyped program – based on concepts already well-cooked long before the X-30 project – flooded back this morning. The prompt is news that at long last the US Air Force dropped a tiny unmanned version of the same essential geometry and propulsion, the X-51a Waverider,  from under an ancient B-52 carrier craft. With a boost to speed from a rocket, it lit off and zipped along under its own power at five times the speed of sound for more than three minutes – or somewhere in the 3000+ miles per hour range. That’s no Orient Express, but it is getting attention today as an important achievement: the longest supersonic combustion ramjet-powered flight in history – and yet the test fell short. The engine lost thrust early, quashing hopes of Mach 6. Even that would not have been the fastest ever – a different hypersonic craft called the X-43 went a lot faster, Mach 9.8 or something a few years ago,  running on hydrogen.

Nobody seems to be talking about 20,000 mph Orient Express passenger service any more. The gas mileage would likely by horrendous anyway. But this week is definitely one for aerospace technologies of ancient heritage on full display – the shuttle Atlantic made its final flight and one of the last for the whole shuttle program after nearly 30 years of operation. Now this hypersonic WaveRider, a nifty nickname, dropped from an old buff as some call B-52s -  whose early models went operational 55 years ago. And don’t forget last month’s flight of the old yet new X-37b space plane (previous post).

Stories on the achievement keep themselves mostly well within the information and angle envelope of the press release down there in Grist. See also there a fact sheet on another hypersonic program that’s still in DARPA’s far-out bin. A few stories provide a sense of the dream’s history.  Hypersonic flight, to have only gotten this far along after all these years and dollars, is really really hard.

STORIES:

• Los Angeles Times – WJ Hennigan: Hypersonic aircraft shatters aviation records ;  Since the 60s, Hennigan writes at the top, the Air Force has flirted with hypersonic technology. No explicit mention of NASP.
• Register (UK) Lewis Page: X-51 hypersonic scramjet test: Flameout at Mach 5? ; Some hoped for Mach 6 out of the record-setting flight. Behind his as-usual stylistic gymnastics (DARPA is a “Military crazytech agency) Page provides a strong dose of history and techy detail.
• Space.com – Tariq Malik: Scramjet sets hypersonic flight record / Test flight lasted more than 10 times longer than previous record ;
• Aviation Week – Graham Warwick: First X-51A Hypersonic Flight Deemed Success ; No hype in this best-of-class trade pub – with a readership that already knows most of the history.
• CNET News – Jonathan E. Skillings: X-51A races to hypersonic record ;

Grist for the Mill: Boeing Press Release ; USAF Press Release ;  DARPA Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 Fact Sheet ;

- Charlie Petit

It’s not easy amid the hectic anxiety of the news cycle for a reporter to step back a moment to find out and tell readers whatever happened after that headline we foisted on you some while ago. At USA Today Dan Vergano poked at the political and policy-riddled ant colonies at NASA to find out what’s up with a human expedition to an asteroid. The column, on line only, went up two days ago.

Personally I find exhilarating  the idea of voyages to libration points and asteroids and other novel places that are not crazily costly to get to with people on board and also offer an opportunity for hands-on human cleverness to trump what a robot might do. Plus, just last night my 94-year-old Dad called to talk about – initially – the number of women who are science writers these days, and then got around to remarking himself on the space agency’s good idea to send people out to what he called “those rocks out there.” So that’s one reason for this post – the topic was on my mind.

But mostly it is to salute the occasional couple of hours are reporter might spend in following up yesterday’s, or last month’s or more, news. Vergano provides further service in his body text by linking directly to some of the pertinent, but accessible, technical literature. One is a paper by people at NASA Ames on the results of a Bush-administration-vintage study of asteroid missions using the Orion spacecraft and other hardware planned for the Constellation program. The current administration made a big deal out of scrubbing that program. So here’s another thing for enterprising and diligent journalists to do – find out whether there’s much chance that, if the asteroid project moves apace, NASA will wind up dusting off and reconstituting Constellation’s essence (while maybe giving it a different name).

- Charlie Petit

When I see Richard Black‘s byline on a BBC environment story I can usually count on a solid and professionally done report. Usually they are straight journalism. He has one in a more bloggery style right now under the rubric Earth Watch. The hed: Europe debates climate ‘ambition‘ . It is good, and aimed at people with a serious interest in climate change and the response to it. Hence, no histrionics about emails or the rising tide of public skepticism.

It ties together a few things one may have read about but not all in one place – Europe’s recent fall-off in carbon emissions due to the world economic pratfall and  the EU’s goals on long term emissions cuts. An old political trick – to spot where business as usual trends are taking society anyway and trying to usurp the credit to one’s own pet policy – comes up. It’s an analysis that lets one make more sense of breaking news, to wit –

Other European Emissions Stories:

• The Guardian (UK) David Adam, Iran Traynor: EU stops short of recommending 30 percent cut in emissions by 2020 ;
• Wall St. Journal – Alessandro Terollo: Economic Woes Lower Cost Of EU CO2 Cuts By A Third;
• Reuters – Peter Harrison: EU wrangles over whether to deepen CO2 cuts ;
• Times (UK, via Australian) Ben Webster: Europe’s bold move on climate ;

And in the bigger picture – here’s how one report from the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the US’s Dept. of Energy, gets headlined in two business outlets:

• MarketWatch – Claudia Assis: World to rely more on unconventional fuels: EIA ;
• SustainableBusiness.com: Current Policies Won’t Displace Fossil Fuels – EIA report.

(i.e. -That’s why to have a diverse news flow – same event, different angle, both true enough.)

Pic – EU’s stationary CO2 sources – source

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) The principal newspaper in Peru, El Comercio, has in its Sunday supplement an excellent 12 pages special report about Peruvian biodiversity. It’s a great job with nice images, very informative infographics, and extensive data specific to Peru.  It should be read by all the students in the country. We learned about the 4,000 varieties of potatoes, the endangered butterflies, the efforts to preserve the Amanacay flower, the value of indigenous knowledge, how this natural richness empowers a very  diverse cuisine, how poaching threatens the survival of the only bear living in the southern hemisphere, and the risks that transgenic crops pose if they ever reach Peruvian soil. We have a few details on which to comment, but overall it’s a big effort that deserves even bigger recognition.

En motivo del día internacional de la Biodiversidad, El Comercio de Perú preparó un excelentísimo especial para su suplemento El Dominical de –nada más y nada menos- 12 páginas sobre la biodiversidad en las tierras peruanas.

Firmado por su editora Martha Meier Miró Quesada, es un documento que debería repartirse por todas las escuelas de su país. Con preciosas fotos, gran infografía, y una exhaustiva documentación, es un trabajo a guardar y que puede estar vigente durante muchos años. El tremendo esfuerzo que imaginamos hay detrás de esta pieza, merece la pena. Repasémoslo página a página:

En la presentación del especial en la página inicial del suplemento Martha Meier MQ sienta muy claros los principios que encontraremos en el reportaje, escribiendo: “…un asunto de vital trascendencia para la humanidad en un siglo donde, más que nunca, el avasallamiento y el crecimiento económico se confunden con el desarrollo y el progreso”, y “…siendo Perú uno de los 12 países con más biodiversidad de la Tierra, es grande nuestro reto”. Por ser quisquillosos, encontramos también una frase confusa de un botánico asegurando que Perú posee entre el 82 y 84% del mundo biológico. No sabemos a qué se refiere, y presumimos exageración. También leemos un bonito elogio al camote, un tubérculo al que se le presuponen propiedades medicinales contra enfermedades de la piel, varices, cáncer y antienvejecimiento (aquí no nos suelen agradar demasiado dichas afirmaciones). De todas formas, muy adecuado escoger el camote y sus 2.000 variedades como ejemplo de biodiversidad, en lugar de la patata cuya enorme riqueza ya es mejor conocida por los habitantes de Perú.

El especial en sí empieza con un “Tesoro para cuidar” en el que se califica la diversidad biológica como “nuestra única fuente de riqueza”, y se introducen de manera muy didáctica los principales aspectos a considerar cuando hablamos de biodiversidad: su importancia para el equilibrio de los ecosistemas, el efecto dominó de alterar una especie clave, los servicios que nos brinda, el número de especies que hemos puesto en peligro de extinción (34.000 plantas y 5.200 animales), la irreversibilidad para siempre de las desapariciones, las causas del incremento en pérdidas (deforestación, contaminación, sobreexplotación…), la importancia de concienciar a los más jóvenes, y los datos sobre biodiversidad de un privilegiado Perú.

Avanzamos con la interesante pieza de Jaime Semizo Merino “habitantes del bosque biodiverso” sobre el valioso conocimiento de su entorno natural que han desarrollado los hombres y mujeres de la Amazonia. Patrimonio reconocido por la normativa peruana, pero de protección y aprovechamiento poco implantados a la práctica según el autor.

“La flor de Amancay” es el emblema de Lima, pero se encuentra en peligro de extinción debido a la expansión urbana. Un proyecto está intentando salvarla de la extinción con una de las 70 “islas de vegetación” que existen en Perú.

Fantástica infografía a dos páginas “Perú: país megadiverso” que posiciona a Perú en diferentes ranking de biodiversidad en función del número total de ciertos animales y plantas.

Nos sorprende cómo a estas alturas, un animal como “El oso del Sur” (oso de anteojos) puede todavía estar amenazado por la caza furtiva (además de algo más complejo de atajar como la desaparición de su hábitat). El ucumari es el único oso que habita en el hemisferio sur, y el buen texto nos da más detalles sobre su biología y constumbres.

Carlos Paña Bieberach nos ofrece “Mariposas y Dinosaurios”,  un artículo de sugerente título que explica un estudio internacional según el cual el asteroide que golpeó la Tierra hace 65 millones de años no sólo provocó la extinción de los dinosaurios, sino una extinción masiva de mariposas. Muy buen texto. Lástima que termine con la afirmación gratuita e innecesaria (un periodista no lo hubiera escrito) de que “el cambio climático extinguirá muchas especies –incluida la nuestra- pero la vida seguirá su curso, sólo que sin nosotros”. Aparte de minimizar la relevancia de las extinciones masivas porque “la vida continúa igualmente”, decir que vamos a autoextinguirnos debido al cambio climático está fuera de lugar.

Excelente pieza firmada por Jorge Paredes y Diana Gonzales: “En la variedad está el gusto” sobre la relación entre biodiversidad y riqueza culinaria. 4.000 especies de papa y 50 de maíz son sólo dos ejemplos para mostrar lo que culinariamente puede dar de si tal diversidad de alimentos. Se explican tres casos de restauradores. Uno asegura tener entre 80 y 100 platos diferentes de pescados y mariscos en su carta, pero haber dejado de cocinar el pulpo bebé por su progresiva pérdida de ejemplares. Asegura que otros restaurantes todavía lo hacen, y nos entran ganas de saber más acerca del riesgo que supone la cocina en lugar de sus ventajas. Aviso: si leéis esta pieza, os entrarán ganas de visitar Perú y probar sus potajes pachamanca o comida de la selva.

Aparece un tema serio: “Cultivos invasores”, por la bióloga Antonietta Gutiérrez Rosati. Transgénicos y biodiversidad; tema espinoso. Tanto, que no deberíamos dejarlo en manos de defensores o detractores, y dar valor a nuestra profesión de periodistas científicos siendo capaces de abordarlo balanceando la información. Eso no implica dar igual credibilidad a compañías y ecologistas. De ninguna manera. Si los transgénicos suponen una amenaza para la biodiversidad de Perú –y seguramente así es-, lo debemos denunciar con determinación, claro está. Pero no podemos estar seguros de qué posicionamiento hay detrás de un experto, y por eso sería ideal que la figura del periodista especializado pudiera abordar el tema. Dicho esto, el texto no cae en los tópicos sobre problemas para la salud, o exageraciones sobre contaminación genética, y explica muy bien el daño que pueden causar los transgénicos como especie invasora mejor adaptada, y las consecuencias mediambientales y económicas negativas que implicaría esta pérdida de biodiversidad. Los transgénicos no son ni buenos ni malos de por sí. Depende de las circunstancias. Pero sí parece claro que Perú no los necesita para nada, y supondrían más una molestia que un provecho.

La última página de este preciado documento está dedicada a las “Naciones Unidas y la diversidad biológica”. Le echamos en falta un poco de crítica, pues aparte de palabras no parece que haya servido para mucho lo que esta institución ha estado haciendo en los últimos años. No es culpa suya, sino de la poca fuerza que tiene frente a gobiernos. El mensaje es claro: la amenaza se acentúa, hay un claro vínculo con la economía, y quien más van a sufrir son de nuevo los países pobres. Debemos reflexionar y tomar medidas. A ver si es verdad.

- Pere Estupinyà