This is a late post today, but it would be a shame to let the weekend pass before recognizing the impact of today’s NPR‘s report by Richard Harris asserting that independent analyses, some of them done at the network’s behest, concluding that the Gulf Oil Spill is larger than officially reported and may already have surpassed in volume the famed Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

His report pushes the ball forward, and surely makes uncomfortable reading for oil execs and overseers from the evermore discredited Minerals Management Service and other agencies. While the official estimate of 5000 barrels daily has held pretty much for weeks, Harris got from authorities on fluid dynamics and other such things a dramatically different estimate. They are based on analysis of the bubbling crude emerging boisterously from the broken end of the oil well drill casing. Their best guess according to the report: it’s 70,000 barrels a day, and a safe bet seems to be it’s at least ten times the official figure. So it says – and you can bet we’ll see more reporting on this. Harris mentions a major uncertainty – that the fact that the oil may be exiting a 20-inch riser, it was delivered to the end, or near the end, of that larger pipe by a nine-inch line nested inside it.

While the gusher on the sea floor continues to propel worry, another kind of story greeted readers this morning of the San Francisco Chronicle. This one I’d intended to post on, ran out of time, and now it fits in a nice contrapuntal manner with what NPR had to say about the size of the spill.

Carolyn Jones reported that SF Bay Area wildlife rescue experts have set up an animal care facility to provide care for all the birds, turtles, marine mammals, or other creatures that get caught in the spill and can be captured at sea or on the beaches. They report they have gotten every one so far. Total count: a handful of birds and zero for the rest. This may be like the so-called phoney war after Germany invaded Poland, but before the Wehrmacht swarmed zipped through the low country and into France. A few skirmishes, lots of talk, little shooting. The onslaught may come. But for now, while the damage to marine life offshore cannot be tallied, the feared devastation of beaches and wetlands amounts to only light oiling and some tar balls on the sand. .

One is unsure whether this is ominous, funny, or neither. Better to be prepared for the disaster that doesn’t come than not ready for the one that does.

- Charlie Petit

The science writer at the Plain Dealer, John Mangels, had a dramatic piece of forensic audiology to report last Sunday. He is first to admit this may not be the last word in settling questions on a tragedy that erupted during war protests at Kent State University in 1970. But the evidence does seem powerful in illuminating why, as he writes, “28 Guardsmen pivoted in unison atop Blanket Hill, raised their rifles and pistols and fired 67 times, killing four students. and wounding nine others…”

It even has a peculiar and discomfiting revelation. A lot of people back then took the protesting students as some sort of communists. That’s not the revelation. It is that the decoding algorithm recently used to analyze an old audio tape, made by a kid who stuck a microphone out of his dorm window, was developed for the KGB.

-  Charlie Petit

As The Tracker has a sliver of  interest in agriculture in Ventura County north of LA – attentive readers of ksjtracker might recall that a cousin manages a four-generation-and-counting ranch (which is what they call farms around there) – I get steady news on crop pests there. This week brings a bonus on top of the usual dire news on the psyllid that is invading from the south and could someday also vector in a killer lemon-lime-orange-kumquat-grapefruit and pummelo for all I know  contagion called citrus greening.

Here forthwith are two piece of urgent, local  news reporting with a good dose of agricultural science:

• Anne Kallas: Citrus disease seen as gravest peril to county’s crops ; This is an update, hence Kallas has no need to put in too much technical detail – readers who at all care are already well-informed on the basics.
• Lisa McKinnon: Santa Paula insect breeders trying to save vineyards ; Vine mealybug is news, to me anyway. This feature covers a lot of ground and has a clear description of how biological controls work. Good stuff on mealybug destroyers & wasps made lazy by junk food. Clear staff photo too.

What’s further refreshing is that the paper, despite so much local land being covered over in suburbs, pays close attention to farming news and has at least two writers able to cover it.

-Charlie Petit

We’re still depressed over so many frogs succumbing to a fungus (or something). Now, confound it, comes news that many species of lizard are lounging themselves to death. This is no joke. In today’s issue of the journal Science a team of lizard specialists declares that a wave of extinction is sweeping them from the world, mainly at hotter latitudes that have been getting still hotter.  They don’t cook to death. But they now must spend so much time sheltering in the shade rather than dashing about in the hot sun getting food that they’re not getting enough to eat. Sometimes even the shade’s so hot they can hardly move. Reproduction rates are therefore well below what they need to remain among us. Some move to higher altitudes. But those living atop hills and mountains have nowhere to go.

Most people, even those who rare back or say eek! on seeing lizards, like the creatures. They aren’t slimy like salamanders, don’t (usually) bite or wriggle creepily like some snakes, and many of them look sort of cute doing pushups on a rock or fence. Many of them eat insects, including flies. Few people like flies.

So, evidence suggesting that a changing climate is baking many of these familiar creatures into a stupor and then oblivion is a natural for reporters and their editors. Plus, my goodness, AAAS guided reporters to a press teleconference, posted transcripts, video and podcast of it, and accompanied its own press release (in seven languages) with others from three US universities and a research program in Spain. The story was hard to miss. A herd gathered.

Stories:

• San Francisco Chronicle – David Perlman: Lizards facing extinction ; This is in part a local story for Perlman, with the lead author at UC Santa Cruz just an hour or so away. He doesn’t write the heds – and this one is too sweeping. Story says, in line with the research, that perhaps one in five lizard species will be gone by 2080 or so. One in 25 have already exited, it says here. And speaking of heds, Perlman salutes the one on Science‘s own commentary on the study: “Are Lizards Toast?” Also good here: an explanation of how computer models and real-world data work together.
• NPR – Christopher Joyce: Lizards Croak, Global Warming’s to Blame ;
• BBC – Victoria Gill: Climate change link to lizard extinction ; In Mexico, she says right under the lede, 12 percent of lizard species are now gone. But, she adds, many experts want to see more data and analysis before they embrace the conclusion on the cause.
• USA Today – Doyle Rice: Study: Climate change puts world’s lizards at risk ;
• AP – Randolph E. Schmid: Rising global temperatures cooking lots of lizards ;
• Reuters – Mica Rosenberg: Lizards face extinction from global warming: study;
• Los Angeles Times – Thomas H. Maugh II: Lizards face extinction because of global warming, study finds ;
• NYTimes (blog) Leslie Kaufman: Warming Imperils Lizards, Scientists Warn ;
• Time Magazine – Michael Lemonick: Study: Global Warming is Driving Lizards to Extinction; A longer view, essay quality here .  Lemonick seems convinced – he calls the research “meticulous.”
• National Geographic News - Ker Than: Mass Lizard Extinctions Looming: Global Warming Blamed ; Nice job – but the hed should’a used the word “underway” rather than “looming.” Than uses a scary quote. A source tells him that pollinating insects may be next. Hmmm – colony collapse disorder, anyone?
• Salt Lake Tribune – Brian Maffly: Research team cites global warming in lizard die-off ; Nice enough job. In fact, quite thorough. But just because a scientist likens the lizards to canaries in coal mines is no reason to afflict readers with that groaner. The kicker closes the story on just the right note.
• Deseret News – Sara Israelsen-Hartley: Global warming leading to lizard extinction, BYU professor says; The Salt Lake air must touch off a fondness for cliches. Again, decent job – but we didn’t really need to learn that the lizard’s fix may be compared to an iceberg’s tip. Plus, the metaphor doesn’t evoke heat.
• ScienceNews – Susan Milius: Lizard threatened by warming ; She finds very much the same kicker as did the man at the Salt Lake Tribune.
• AAAS ScienceNOW – Michael Price: Climate Change Causing Lizards to ‘Wink Out of Existence’ ;
• Columbus Dispatch: Spencer Hunt: Lizards latest on global warming’s hit list ; Hunt has a local man among the authors. He localizes the piece in other ways too. This also is, so far, the best hed I’ve found.
• San Jose Mercury News (via Santa Crus Sentinel) – Lisa Krieger: Lizards driven to extinction due to global climate change ;
• Independent (UK) Steve Connor: Lizards are dying out because of climate change, study says.
• Telegraph – Richard Alleyne: Lizards facing extinction because of climate change ;
• Guardian – Celia Cole: Global warming may kill of fifth of global lizard species by 2080: study ; Climategate, judging by Brit press reports here, has not sent reporters scurrying for the shade. Nobody that Isaw called up any warming scoffers for their lizard-wise opinions.
• MoneyTimes (India) Neka Sehgal: Lizards may face extinction due to climate change ;
• ThaiIndian News : This outlet files the story twice, from different reporters, each with distinctive style. Madhuri Dey: World’s Too Hot for Lizards to Handle ; Aishwarya Bhatt: Heat is driving lizard to extinction ;
• I must have missed a few good ones. Let us know if so….

Meanwhile, from the parallel universe wing of the blogosphere:

• Secondhand Smoke – Wesley J. Smith: Global Warming Hysteria: The Lizards Are All Going to Die! : Here it is – evidence for “an unelected international scientific scientocracy” determined to destroy our economies and control how we live. But the cartoon? – that is a good one.

Grist for the Mill:

Science Mag article abstract ; AAAS Press Release ;  UC Santa Cruz Press Release ; Brigham Young U. Press Release ; Villanova U. Press Release ; in Spanish, CSIC (Greater Council on Scientific Investigation) Press Release ;

This isn’t a media-tracking post. Just something to share. On one of the folders in my bookmarks piles, I tried to punch EurekAlert to check on Science Magazine’s latest. I missed. Right next to its listing is Earth Observatory, NASA’s collection of MODIS and similar satellite pictures of interesting stuff on Earth.

That volcano in Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull, is still going, as most of us have read. We’ve run pictures of it, but this one at Earth Observatory is among the more illustrative of what a volcanic plume looks like writ large.  A collection of other sat views, some of them equally or more dramatic, of this ash-maker is at the same site, here.

A lot of reporters on the science or environment beat keep the Earth Observatory in mind any time natural disaster or other similarly huge event alters the planet. It’s a good place to check when flailing about for illus and editors are yelling.

Grist for the Mill: Earth Observatory Home.

- Charlie Petit

Even allowing for the conservative-leaning readership of the Telegraph in the UK, the comments trailing after a story by Louise Gray on an extrapolation of climate models far into the future seem a particularly good argument for why, at the least, newspapers should demand that commenters identify themselves.

Of course, some braying will continue even if that were to occur, but this string is ridiculous. A few people try for constructive remarks. Not many though. Some of these folks might be embarrassed out of such vitriol if they had to do so in public without a mask.

The news, also reported elsewhere, is fairly unremarkable and worth reporting.  In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week is a report on what might well happen if carbon emissions don’t slow and if humankind burns through most of the available coal and petroleum.  The study ran the model out to 2300. Gray writes it pretty straight. Her story makes clear this is an exercise in controlled imagination, not an effort at detailed prediction. But as research, it is legitimate.

Mostly the scientists get the denialists’ fury. But reporter Gray gets her share. One of the nicer comments is that she has made a laughing stock of herself. Another asks her, “what kind of kooky fruitcake Journalist are you?”

One suspects the newspaper did clean up the string some. No particularly noticeable, outright vulgarities are in sight. A good question is whether newspapers, individually or collectively, have done any research into whether such long and angry reader comment aggregations serve the public, are welcomed by readers, or change many minds.

Grist for the Mill:

Univ. of New South Wales Press Release ; Purdue University Press Release (via ScienceDaily)  ‘

Sand dune pic, source ;

- Charlie Petit

Just guessing here, but the fragile shores of Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast will take a bullet but may have dodged the full machine-gun fusillade feared from BP’s, no wait Halliburton’s, no wait was it Transocean’s???, or surely somebody’s or all of those’s epochal screw up of an offshore oil well.  It’s been weeks and so far just a few tarballs on shore. Catastrophe may yet loom. In the meantime, for the technically minded reader, one finds a lot of news to ponder. The feds and the finger-pointing oil executives and their engineers are sounding a teeny bit optimistic. Reporters are filing. By rough category:

Things go from calamitous to maybe not all that calamitous:

• NYTimes – Henry Fountain, Matthew Wald: BP Says Leak May Be Closer to a Solution ; It says maybe the now-infamous blowout preventer is not a dead mackerel (or sea turtle) after all – and may yet be coaxed into action.

Midwater Dispersant – Much reporting on BP’s efforts to inject chemical dispersant into the plume near its source. They are toxic, degree uncertain, and probably less than the oil. Questions arise:

• AAAS ScienceNOW – Eli Kintisch: EPA, BP Eyeing Mega-Dispersant Operation ; They are trying to entrain dispersants into the plume at depth, nothing ever done at such depth or scale. Interesting guess from EPA – the chemical, trade0named Corexit 9500, is bad but only one to ten percent as bad as the oil it is aimed at breaking up and whose degradation by bacteria should be hastened.
• Bloomberg – Jessica Resnick-Ault, Jim Polson: BP’s Oil-Dispersant Use Veers Into Uncharted Science ; The best science is supposed to open uncharted territory, but never mind and the hed’s point is valid.  The material is an organic chemical – one feels sure the microbes, eventually, will take are of it. Whether that’s before it harms shrimp or other important creatures is the issue.
• AFP – Allen Johnson: States concerned about chemical dispersants ;
• E&E Greenwire (via NYTimes) Paul Quinlan: Less Toxic Dispersants Lose Out in BP Oil Spill Cleanup ; Investigative reporting angle – the company that makes BP’s chosen dispersant is also one “with which is shares close ties.” Interlocking executive suites appear to be involved. Hundreds of thousands of gallons have been applied, with much more on order.

Meanwhile, another stab at catching the plume in a tophat-funnel-dome device: The big dome tried last week clogged with methane hydrates (which news outlets have been dismissing as “ice,” a lazy and misleading simplification. More seem to be saying, lately, that it’s not really ice. That’s better). Now a smaller “tophat” thing with recirculating warm water has reached the seabed.

• BBC: “Top hat’ dome at Gulf of Mexico oil spill site – BP ;
• Wall St. Journal – Brian Baskin: BP Prepares to Lower ‘Top Hat’ on Oil Leak ; Full wrap-up after the lede on the funnel device.
• MarketWatch – Steve Gelsi: BP deploys top hat at spill site as hearings continue ;
• Oil&Gas Journal – Paula Dittrick : “Top hat’ oil spill containment device in gulf ; Good technical info. Also, one of several outlets reporting that a Nobel Prize winner is on the situation. That would be DOE Secretary Steven Chu.

Stray Thought Re-dux: There is still a sarcastic headline waiting for a story – “The Good News: They did find oil!” Seriously. Let’s hear the back story. This was an exploration platform. A production rig was to take over. Just for the record, what lease sale led to this drilling, is the oil deposit one that had already been known or something new, is its chemistry really different from the standard Louisiana sweet crude of the Gulf, how much oil does BP think it found there??  What hopes might now have been dashed, might they still be realized, what’s the geology of this deep lens of oil-bearing strata, and such all? After all, the main vindication (or, to many, reason for condemnation) of offshore oil drilling is the discovery of  more oil. Was this well an example of significant more oil or what?

Pic Note: The one of the busted end of the “riser” from BP and moved by Getty Images is just like the one up top right, but very dark and murky. Ethical photo editors used it as is. To digitally mess with images is potentially a firing offense. I’m neither so fussy nor so hobbled. ‘Cranked up the MS Picture Manager’s mid-tone sliders and otherwise diddled with it. Much nicer.

- Charlie Petit

This Sunday will mark 50 years since Ted Maiman, a Hughes Research Labs scientist, turned a conceptual recipe provided by physicists Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow  into a working laser. He wrapped a pink ruby crystal with a flash lamp and, despite conviction by some others including Schawlow that such a set-up wouldn’t work, hit the switch. The ruby’s chromium admixture absorbed one frequency of the light, its energy levels got inverted into a top-heavy state, and waves of coherent red light built up and cascaded back and forth precisely in step until ta-da: BEAM! He and his lab crew forgot to look for a red dot on the wall that first time, but instruments revealed the thing worked. Soon enough, they looked for and saw the dot.

The news, when announced a bit later, made headlines including some silly talk of death rays. There was even a photo. Wouldn’t you know it – it showed Maiman with the wrong laser. The company photographer didn’t think the first successful but stubby one photogenic. He spotted a sleeker, subsequent prototype and had Maiman pose with that one.

Lasers are now ubiquitous tools and the hearts of instruments. There are many more lasers in the world than there are screwdrivers, hammers, wrenches, and other ubiquitous workshop hardware (*CLARIFICATION: I don’t know that about screwdrivers etc. I’ve been challenged for a source. Uh oh. I made it up. Seems likely, though – all those CD players, fiberoptic networks, laser pointers, micro laser arrays. Still, I don’t want to be a footnote on an urban legend). Some are near-microscopic. Some are longer than football fields. They represent a revolution in precision measurement, data transmission, surgery, materials and optical science, information processing and boredom (via laser pointers and the unfortunate share of slides including powerpoints whose clueless authors endlessly dance red or green dots across their overly turgid diagrams, plots, and lumps of text).

I happen to have been able to look up a few facts up there in a book Charlie Townes authored and Oxford published in 1999, How the Laser Happened/Adventures of a Scientist, his career’s memoir. Its working title was Unturned Stones, but the publisher didn’t think that would sell at all. Its heart is his invention of the laser’s antecedent, the microwave maser. I’ll list some of the news accounts of this anniversary momentarily. First, disclosure time: Townes’s assistant on that book was I, as ghostwriter. It was a privilege. Townes didn’t type well enough, he said. He didn’t want to write it longhand. I live not far from him. I’d draft chapters in triple space after interviewing Charlie, doing some research, and reading passages in his oral history on file at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library.  He’d go through them scrupulously with his pencil. I’d re-do them and back and forth it went. I am indeed fond of that man, still doing astronomy research at 94.

The event is getting attention. More seems likely on Sunday. The history of  the laser, or optical maser, is fascinating. It includes a long patent tussle  between Townes and Schawlow on one hand, and on the other a former graduate student with Townes at Columbia, Gordon Gould – a fight that more or less ended in a draw. The impact of the laser on society continues to grow.

Packages and stories out so far include:

• Telegraph – Roger Highfield: Einstein’s little ray of brilliance still puts us lilght years ahead ; Good history in that hed – Albert E. may have disliked quantum mechanics, but he recognized how one photon would trigger emission of a precisely in-step twin as it passed through atoms primed to surrender one of exactly the same energy. Highfield is the Telegraph’s former science editor and is now editor at New Scientist.
• Science News – Ron Cowen, Lisa Grossman : A special on the 50th, packed with info, including a main story on laser history, another on recent advances in laser design, and a Q&A with Charlie Townes.
• BBC – Jonathan Amos: Lasers scan future possibilities ;
• Forbes – Jonathan Fahey (via ChannelNewsAsia): How Lasers Will Change the World ;
• San Jose Mercury News – Mike Cassidy: Bob Hess focuses energy on old lasers ; With the 50th an angle, columnist visits a Silicon Valley man who collects old ones – and loves them each.

Grist for the Mill:

Simon Fraser University Press Release (Maiman’s daughter, an engineering science professor there, will take the original from a safe and put it on display); Optical Soc’y of America LaserFest ; Institute of Physics (UK) Press Release ; American Inst. of Physics Laser History Exhibit ;

- Charlie Petit

Remember the Wankel engine? A German company, RSU, tried it in its cars 30 years ago or so, and then Mazda put some in its cars – most notably its RX series of sports and GT cars. It was smooth, it was powerful, it seemed on principle sure to be efficient – but it turned out to be a dreadful gas hog. I thought of the Wankel on coming across something called the IRIS engine, at National Geographic in a story by Henry J. Reske. The author is, by the way and unless I mixed him up with somebody with the same name, a political writer (Correction: legal and courts writer is more accurate). And his story initially had me wondering what the editors at Nat’l Geo were thinking running this – it has the opening feel of a naive yarn on backyard inventors who have learned to build a 100 mile per gallon carburetor.

But it grew on me. The story is that two brothers, sons of an inventor with the striking name  Timber Dick who tragically died a few short years ago, are continuing to develop his idea for a non-piston internal combustion engine. It is intended to achieve far higher efficiency than gasoline-burners get now. Ignition of the fuel pushes, rather than on the tops of cylinders, on the dilating walls of the combustion chamber. It broadens and contracts, sort of like the iris of an old-fashioned camera.

One might figure fly-by-night, but read on. The design has won, it says here, all sort of awards for ingenuity. One is from NASA. Energy guru Daniel Yerkin is a backer, it appears. Former auto industry heavies are on board too.

One must be deeply suspicious. Skepticism lingers. But I’m a sucker for anybody who can, after impressing a few bona fide technical analysts, declare they can build an engine the size of a thermos bottle that will generate 200 horsepower and be a miser on fuel. CAFE (fuel efficiency) standards are  to be met and surpassed in a snap. One can dream.

ADDED REMARK: One can also wonder about durability of its seals, smoothness of power delivery, and about its emissions. Plus its designers’ citation of “productive surface area” needs scrutiny as a genuine correlate with efficiency.

Just as with the post on efficient light bulbs one down, this one is part of my psychological defense strategy against trolling through the weighty reports on the big energy bill now hitting Congress, full of low-carbon ambitions, green energy, offshore oil drilling flailings, and other serious policy invitations to go to sleep. I have a suspicion that the likes of Popular Mechanics have written this up already. Never mind.  I’ll take two gee-whiz super invention stories to ease that headache, and call you in the morning.

ADDED: Grist for the Mill: IRIS Engines Inc.,  The site provides clear technical description and well-done graphics. But somebody should politely tell the site manager that the term is “brake thermal efficiency,” not “break….” .

- Charlie Petit

Not much ink greets news of [yawn] another light bulb that will be far cheaper to run and far more efficient than incandescents just like the last big thing in light bulbs – the compact fluorescent lights that many of us now have in our homes but that never quite sold as hoped. They’re okay, but they look funny, are fragile, aren’t cheap, make some people blanch at their color, and are hard to make dimmable.

Soon enough, The Tracker expects that science and technical writers will be tackling this post-CFL bulb as well. It’s among the first but many will follow. A Las Vegas trade show gave a few specialty outlets reporters a chance to write it up today. Those who follow such things will not be surprised that it is a light-emitting diode, or LED device, a solid-state piece of luminous electronics of the sort that shines redly at us from the tail lamps of many new cars, greenly from traffic signals, and more recently sort of bluish-white from high-end flashlights (and that like strings of pearls adorn the fixtures holding incandescent headlights on a few fancy automobiles).

Needed are some stories recounting the rather interesting technology behind them and the prospect that their cost – now roughly $20 apiece or more to replace 60-watt incandenscents (or replace $5-$10 CFLs) – will get down to something a customer will easily tolerate. Just because a screw-in bulb will pay for itself in lower utility bills does not make most people peel the bills for it from their too-thin wallets.

Sooner or later I must get to the tedious task of rounding up some good coverage on the immensely important yet frankly boring topic of the new energy bill going before Congress. In there somewhere, one imagines, will be further incentives for businesses and individuals to save energy doing what they need to do – and bulbs like these will probably play a role.

Oh, what is it – it’s called the EnduraLED, it’s from Philips Electronics, and it lit up a corner of the Lightfair International tradeshow. Exact pricing is not, apparently, public. It’s not quite the first – General Electric, among others, has models aimed at the commercial if not home market, but this new one is supposed to be cheaper. The Philips model may go on sale later this year. It draws 12 watts, is dimmable, and puts out the light of a standard 60-watt filament-burning Edison-style incandescant. And it’s not nearly as goofy looking as a twisty-tubed CFL plus, one presumes, doesn’t have a whiff of problematic mercury vapor inside. Plus, one must suppose, it won’t break easily anyway.

None of the stories that I can find provide much technical info,. None are from truly mass media. But here goes:

• Fast Company – Kit Eaton: Philips’ New Green 12-Watt LED Bulbs Could Replace 425 Million 60-Watt Energy Hogs ; Who writes such a hed as that. It’s untrue except as a parallel universe hypothesis. For one thing, competitor products are coming. The story does mention the new US regulation that, next year, will start mandating a phase-out of those 60-watt incandescents.
• CNET – Candace Lombardi: Philips offers LED replacement for 60-watt bulb ; She provides a touch of refreshing geek-talk – so come ON, Philips, what is this thing’s color temperature in degrees Kelvin, huh?!!!

Grist for the Mill:

I can’t find Philips’s press release, but assume that one exists. But just to demonstrate that the market and entrepreneurship never rest, did find a competitor’s announcement: Lightning Science Press Release (Home Depot soon, so it says here, will be selling its LED bulbs, $20 each).

*UPDATE – I just found (Fri May 14)  a blogpost on replacing incandescants in recessed ceiling fixtures with LEDs. The writer is expert and enthusiastic and his identity – go take a look – may surprise a few people scornful of climate skeptics as somehow being all-around nuts. This well-known IPCC-scoffer may be in denial but he’s got some greenie to him too.

- Charlie Petit

Here at the tracker a recurring theme is the common but not commendable habit of some in media to write a story mainly by rewriting press releases. It happens, sometimes in desperation, sometimes in laziness, sometimes because editors demand so much copy a reporter has not time to reach original sources to find out what they really believe, found, or said.

Another angle is reported on a blog post by longtime Ohio State University science writer and public affairs man Earle Holland. His chosen lesson is a little bit different. He writes of a spot of news that went awry because the principal investigator of the work being reported, a bioarcheologist (and not at OSU), did not carefully check the press release from her institution before it went out. The topic was Donner Party cannibalism. The result was a snafu, with a corrected press release dispatched after the damage was done, the public misled, and a researcher left chary of media.

One can draw lessons beyond what Holland does. At least researchers at most institutions are shown a release before it goes out. And of course they’d better read it carefully. They won’t have a chance, with rare exception, to check what reporters write before it’s on line or on paper.

But the other lesson is, first, that the press office in this case not only slightly flubbed the release, with big consequences, but that so many reporters took the press release as a surrogate for, here we go again, doing some actual reporting and fact-checking. Press releases can be reliably expected to give one the proper spelling of an institution’s employees, job titles, and the general notion of a story’s substance. It is a tip sheet. To use its quotes unchecked (if you quote somebody, you better have heard it with your own ears – or say where you got it second-hand), its angles unchecked, its assertions and interpretations unchecked, is second-rate or even third-rate journalism. Second-rate does not  mean sure-fire dreadful. It often holds up. A lot of press releases are quite well done by ethical, serious pros.  But it’s not the best idea to assume as much. It is a gamble. It’s not what reporters go into the journalism trade to do. Make the call.  Get your own quotes and try for opinions from outsiders. Think the story through afresh before – as may happen – settling on a story that may in the end hit the same points as the handout did.

- Charlie Petit

It looks like a fair number of elk, deer, and other-fixated hunters are getting used  to the reintroduction of gray wolves into the northern US Rocky Mountains. A troll through recent press from the region finds a distinct tone of accommodation within the old-timey outdoorsman (and woman) crowd that loves to read Field & Stream, looks forward to filling the freezer with ungulate wild game, and may initially have thought the idea of re-wolfing the West to be another daffy and dangerous eruption of tree-hugging elitism backed by big government bureaucrats.

Exhibit A is a long piece in High Country News, the non-profit magazine from Colorado that is generally to the left of center in its enviro heart, but not so much as to be sappy and googly-eyed about the reality of an ecosystem with wolves in it. Its editors know good writing and good reporting, too. The May 10 issue gave writer Hal Herring room for a bracing feature on a growing middle way of wolf rapprochement, under the hed One Way to Save the Wolf? Hunt It. He introduces us to several hunters who shoot wolves but have no mind to exterminate them. The story suggests that game manages in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, and other states that find burgeoning wolf packs on their hands are not necessarily surreptitiously plotting  eradication when they open lobo hunting seasons.   I’m not sure I buy it entirely but this is a convincing visit with the people who live there. It also is a good way for a reader to take a walk on the wild side from an easy chair.

To round this out, here are some other recent accounts on wolf management and the discussions and conflicts it arouses in the region:

• The Missoulian (MT) – Perry Backus: Elk Foundation, wolf groups trade barbs over wolves’ impact on elk populations ; The wolf-lovers say, it says here, they DO support “sustainable hunting practices” and call “responsible hunters” good wildlife conservationists.Elk defenders worry however that wolves are annihilating the big deer.
• Jackson Hole Weekly – Jake Nichols: Crying Wolf ; The article focuses on the continuing, dominant polarization of attitudes with wildlife managers caught in the middle. Interesting aspect to it too – some locals complain these aren’t reintroduced wolves. They say they’re a distinct Canadian breed that’s been foisted on them, much bigger and more voracious than the timber wolves the Indians and pioneers lived with a century or two ago.
• AP – Matthew Brown: Montana, Idaho consider increased wolf hunt quotas ; One idea – treble the permitted kill. Another idea: stop the hunts. In the meantime, the wolf population continues to grow  but slower than it had been before last year’s hunts.
• Seattle Post Globe – Rita Hibbard: Wolf hunters killed 206 in the Northwest in ’09, but wolf population grew overall ; Note that this pub started as an independent,  on line refuge for some of the reporters and editors left out of work by the demise, other than an on line and reduced version,  of the Post-Intelligencer newspaper in Seattle.
• Jackson Hole News & Guide – Cory Hatch: Wolf recovery target has changed, fed acknowledge ; What happened, it says here, is that the wolf population rapidly soared beyond what wildlife agencies expected. Plus, new info on the ratio of total wolves to breeding pairs muddies original metrics for success in the reintroduction.

- Charlie Petit