NPR should've drawn on local affiliates' journalism in examining natural-gas drilling, ombudsman says

Some local National Public Radio affiliates in New York and Pennsylvania are doing a good job covering the environmental and public-health issues of natural-gas drilling, and could have provided needed balance to the network's report last month on how technology had expanded and changed the industry, says NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard.

http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/2009/10/nprs_useful_but_flawed_series_1.html

Federal bill on gas 'fracking' gets opponents busy

The prospect of federal regulation of "fracking," the drilling process that uses water and chemicals to fracture deep shale formations to release natural gas, has prompted creation of a Natural Gas Caucus in the U.S. House and lobbying by energy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09295/1007432-84.stm

Town worries about health impact of gas facilities

Amid much talk about more natural-gas production to provide America's energy needs, some folks in a Texas town are worried that gas pipelines and processing facilities are making them sick.


http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/localnews/stories/DRC_Dish-Air_1013.20f802afa.html

Jack Nelson, 'arguably one of the most important journalists of the 20th Century,' dies at 80

I didn't know Jack Nelson long, or well, but am proud to say that I did know him, and am sad that he is gone. This son of rural Talladega, Ala., left a legacy to America and its journalism when he died this week, at 80, of pancreatic cancer.

"If he thought there was an injustice or fraud being perpetrated, he pursued it with fairness and integrity," his wife, journalist Barbara Matusow, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he won a Pulitzer Prize early in his career for uncovering abuses at mental hospitals. "Investigative journalism is everywhere today, but that wasn't the case when he was doing it." (AJC photo by Kimberly Smith)

Before his 21 years as Washington Bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, his "hard-nosed coverage of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the Watergate scandal in the 1970s helped establish the paper's national reputation," wrote the Times' Elaine Woo. Gene Roberts, former managing editor of The New York Times, told Elaine that Jack was "one of the most important journalists of the 20th century" because of his work in Georgia, his civil-rights and Watergate coverage and molding of "arguably one of the finest bureaus ever in Washington."

Jack co-founded the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, was a regular panelist on "Washington Week In Review," wrote or co-authored five books, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. His survivors include two children from a previous marriage, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. A memorial service may be held later. UPDATE, Oct. 25: Doyle McManus, who succeeded Nelson as bureau chief, pays tribute.

Study: Figure land-use changes in biofuel footprint

Those who want to count land-use changes in calculating the environmental impact of biofuels got fresh ammunition yesterday from a study by nine scientists, published in the journal Science.

"In recent months, researchers have begun to worry that bioenergy crops could replace the world's forests and savannahs on a huge scale unless climate policies start to take full account of how these crops' production affects greenhouse-gas concentrations," Juliet Eilperin writes for The Washington Post. "None of the major climate regimes -- including the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union's carbon market and the House-passed climate bill -- account for the carbon released by changing land use for biofuels."

In the U.S., Congress has been silent on whether land-use change in other countries should figure in calculation of whether a biofuel such as ethanol meets the federal Renewable Fuels Standard, but the Environmental Protection Agency has said it should, citing previous research confirmed by the latest study. "House leaders realized they needed to make a change before passage of the climate bill," Eilperin writes, "but they ran out of time." Or perhaps out of political room; the bill barely passed, 219-213, and such studies mean that "Carbon advantage of biofuels may be overstated," as the Post headline notes.

Poll: Less belief in global warming, human cause; has journalism failed to properly convey science?

In his climate-change speech this afternoon, President Obama said the "naysayers . . . are being marginalized" by "overwhelming scientific evidence." Perhaps among policymakers in Washington, but not among the American public, according to the latest poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

No rhyme, reason to variances in rural health cost

A recent study from Dartmouth College shows health care costs vary widely across the rural United States. Researchers at the Dartmouth Medical School took a sample of Medicare costs from every hospital, Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery of the Daily Yonder report, and adjusted the fugures for differences in race, sex and age from place to place, but not income. “This map illustrates that variation in health-care spending is not just about big city versus rural areas,” Dartmouth economist Jonathan Skinner told the Yonder. Researchers wrote in the recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, “Regional differences in poverty and income explain almost none of the variation.” Skinner says 70 percent of the variation is accounted for by discretionary decisions by physicians. "Doctors in some areas order more tests, hospitalize more patients and consult more specialists than do doctors in other places," Bishop and Ardery write.

"Rural areas generally spend less than the national average on Medicare than do urban areas," the couple report. "Only 27 percent of rural hospital service areas had per capita Medicare costs above the national average from 2004-2006." Skinner told the Yonder one reason for the cost differences among rural areas may be poorer health in more expensive areas, but Bishop and Ardery found that some hospitals in southeastern Kentucky and West Virginia, in traditionally poor health areas, cost less than many other rural hospitals.

What the map ultimately shows, they write. is that the government is spending "vastly more on health care in some areas than in others without any indication that the increased spending results in better health." (Read more)

Wes Jackson and Land Institute working on perennial grain crops to preserve farmland

Farmers have always faced the day when their land can no longer support crops, but if one Kansas farmer and entrepreneur has his way, that problem will be gone forever. Wes Jackson, left, founder of the Land Institute, has been working toward alternative agriculture methods since the 1960s, but his focus was honed by an epiphany regarding the way perennials actually improve the soil instead of degrading it, Richard Harris of National Public Radio reports.

"I thought, why can't we solve this 10,000-year-old problem?" Jackson tells Harris. "The solution is to build an agriculture based on the way nature's ecosystems work." Jackson hired a team of scientists to research cross-breeding traditional crops and perennials to create new crops that would need to be planted only once and harvested year after year. Eight years of research into wheat crops have produced rows of hundreds of wheat-grass hybrid plants that grow year-round in the Institute greenhouse. The Institute plans to plant these hybrids in the fields soon, hoping that something that produces a lot of grain and tastes like wheat will sprout up.

"It's like scratching off lottery tickets," Lee DeHaan, one of the Jackson's first wheat researchers, tells Harris. "Maybe there's something amazing in there. We'll see. That's why we love to be plant breeders. Maybe this is the year when you make the big breakthrough. That's kind of the fun of it." The Land Institute is also currently working on hybrid sunflower and sorghum populations. Jackson says to solve global climate change and growing population challenges you have to start small: "You start with a resilient food system," he says. "And we don't have one." (Read more)

W.Va. may join N.C. in charging overweight public employees higher health-insurance premiums

Last week North Carolina's health insurance program for public employees announced it would begin charging higher premiums for overweight workers next year. The idea is catching on in West Virginia, a state where obesity is even more prevalent, after Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin asked the state Public Employees Insurance Agency director, "Why aren't we doing something like that?" On Thursday the West Virginia PEIA board voted to put a similar option out for public comment over the next month, Phil Kabler of The Charleston Gazette reports.

PEIA director Ted Cheatham says the proposal raises a fundamental issue about people at higher risks of health complications due to lifestyle choices paying more for health insurance. National figures show an obese woman will have lifetime health care costs that are an average of $26,000 higher than a woman of normal weight, Kabler reports. PEIA currently offers a number of voluntary wellness programs, including weight loss ones, but Cheatham says higher premiums offer more incentive. PEIA currently charges smokers $25 more a month than non-smokers. (Read more)

Senate confirms UMW man for mine-safety chief

The U.S. Senate confirmed Joseph Main, the United Mine Workers' former occupational health and safety administrator, as director of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration Thursday. Tony Oppegard, a Lexington, Ky., attorney who is a former state and federal mine safety official, told James R. Carroll of The Courier-Journal:. "I think Joe has done more for mine safety in this country in the last 25 years than anyone else."

Main's confirmation was seen by some as a movement away from MSHA's reputation of being too close to the coal industry during the Bush administration, which chose two top former coal company officials, one of whom was rejected by the Senate twice, to head the office, Carroll reports. The National Mining Association offered no criticism of Main, left, calling him "an experienced coal miner and obviously well informed about related safety challenges." (Read more)

Farmer's crop is victim of urbanization: road lights

A soybean farmer in southwestern Kentucky is losing part of his crop due to urbanization, but not how you might think. No shopping mall or industrial park is being built on farmland; rather, high-powered lights recently installed on a new segment of the Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway next to Kelly Keith's fields are tricking his beans into still growing as the harvest season approaches, Julia Hunter of the Kentucky New Era reports, in a story that is based on a fine point of farming but broaches the larger subject of urbanization.

"They don't know whether it's daylight or dark out here," Keith told Hunter. One irregular area of the field, shaped by shadows of trees blocking the lights, has already turned brown, signaling harvest time, while the rest remains green. To be harvested, beans must turn brown and have no more than than 15 to 16 percent moisture, Hunter reports. "Basically it's the same for with any crop -- even trees, how their leaves get brown in the fall," Scott Lain, crop consultant for Argi-Chem, a local agricultural supplier, told Hunter. "The days start getting shorter and the crop responds to the shortness in the days."

Keith expects to lose half his profit on about 40 acres, and plans to contact state highway officials about the lights. He tells Hunter than cutting the lights off at 10 o'clock would stop the beans from growing, but he doesn't expect any sympathy from the state. For now, he'll wait the beans out, hoping for the unlikely self-correction or the season's first freeze to kill them off. He tells Hunter: "I'm just going to have to consider something different here. I won't be able to raise soybeans." (Read more, subscription required)

Pork industry, in crisis, pleads for federal help

The pork industry asked for help from Congress today, saying "It is suffering its worst economic crisis ever," Tom Johnston reports for MeatingPlace. "The National Pork Producers Council and other industry representatives presented a bleak picture to the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture's Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry."

The council said its members have lost $23 a head in the last two years, and noted "Chicago Mercantile Exchange data pointing to losses of more than $30 per head for the remainder of the year, and $40 per head in November," Johnston reports. NPPC President Don Butler said the crisis has been caused mainly by higher feed prices, which the group blames mainly on corn-based ethanol. Johnston adds, "Exacerbating the problem has been bans on U.S. pork by countries citing H1N1," widely reported as "swine flu," though humans cannot contract the disease by eating pork.

The industry wants the federal government to buy more pork for food-assistance programs, push to keep open or re-open export markets, pass free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, allow ethanol subsidies to expire, and avoid new regulations that would increase producers' costs. (Read more)

The CEO of Seaboard Foods told the subcommittee that the Department of Agriculture needs to buy more pork immediately, but Deputy Agriculture Undersecretary Michael Scuse told the subcommittee that USDA would decide in the next two months whether to increase pork purchases, Charles Abbott reports for Reuters and Alan Bjerga reports for Bloomberg News. "USDA may have less to spend on pork this year because of fiscal restraints, Vilsack said in an interview last week," Bjerga notes. "He said the department is reviewing its plans for this year with an eye toward maximizing available funds for pork producers." (Read more)

Saturday is '350 Day,' focusing attention on what many think maximum level of CO2 in air should be

UPDATE 10/26: 350 day went off as planned Saturday, but some scientists and environmentalists are questioning the campaign's message. "Three-fifty is so impossible to achieve that to make it the goal risks the reaction that if we are already over the cliff, then let’s just enjoy the ride until it’s over," John M. Reilly, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tells Andrew C. Revkin of The New York Times. Despite questions about his group's validity, McKibben held steady to his its goal: "We need to be thinking about reducing, not going up more slowly. Tree-fifty is the number that says wartime footing, let’s see how fast we can possibly move, and let’s hope against hope that it’s fast enough." (Read more)

Bill McKibben, founder of the new environmental campaign 350.org, hoped his project would help raise awareness of the goal to lower atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations to 350 parts per million, the amount of CO2 scientists believe the atmosphere can safely hold before climate systems start to "go haywire," Douglas Fischer of The Daily Climate reports. But McKibben said he never imagined his "350 Day" event this Saturday would have the success it seems to be having.

"As of Thursday morning some 4,227 actions and rallies are planned in 170 countries, with 300 events in China, 1500 across the United States, 500-plus in Central and South America," Fischer reports. Organizers credit the interconnectedness of the Web, cellular telephones and social networks for the viral appeal of the single-day event that hopes to raise awareness for 350.org's cause. "We couldn't have done this two or three years ago," McKibben tells Fischer. "We needed not just the Web, but the Web built out over cell phones."

"For the millennia before the industrial revolution, when humans started pumping industrial emissions into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide levels had held fairly steady at about 280 parts per million," Fischer notes. "Carbon dioxide concentrations rose gradually but steadily to the mid-20th century, when they started to skyrocket. Today the level is 387 ppm, with many analysts expecting the globe to hit 450 ppm or even 550 ppm before world economies 'decarbonize' sufficiently to radically reduce emissions. The problem is that data from the past 100 million years suggests the planet was largely ice-free until carbon dioxide levels fell below 450 ppm, plus or minus 100 ppm. Somewhere between 350 ppm and 550 ppm, climatologists suspect, is a critical threshold that triggers irreversible climate change, loss of major ice sheets, abrupt sea-level rise and massive shifts in forests and agriculture.

"Until recently the notion of bringing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels back to 350 ppm – voiced most vocally by McKibben and NASA's Jim Hansen – was dismissed as wild-eyed optimism. The Earth last saw 350 ppm in 1987," and CO2 takes 200 years or more to break down in the atmosphere. "We know better than anybody exactly how difficult this is and how politically unrealistic it is at the moment," McKibben tells Fischer. "Our job is to change the political reality, because the physical and chemical reality is not going to change." (Read more)

Air Force drops support for coal-to-liquid fuels

In another policy shift resulting from this year's change in the presidency, "The Air Force has quietly dropped plans to facilitate construction of coal-to-liquids fuel plants under an effort to use domestically produced alternative jet fuels," Ben Geman reports for Energy and Environment News.

The Air Force had been trying to develop a coal-to-liquid industry as a secure, domestic source, and promoters of the industry see military supply contracts "as a way to ensure a market for expensive commercial-scale CTL plants, which have not been built in the United States, although several companies have planned facilities," German reports. The Air Force uses 10 percent of the country's jet fuel and is still looking for alternative fuels, a spokesman said.

CTL plants have long been feasible, and are common in South Africa, but emit high levels of greenhouse gases, and carbon capture and sequestration technologies "have yet to be commercially deployed," German notes. (Read more; subscription required)

New movie tries to debunk 'An Inconvenient Truth'

A new film that claims to debunk many of the claims of former Vice President Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" played to a near-capacity crowd in Prescott, Ariz., Sunday. The film, "Not Evil, Just Wrong - The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria," created by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, quotes experts who claim the ice caps are melting due to natural causes, and carbon emissions regulations are an unnecessary financial burden to Americans, Ken Hedler of The Daily Courier in Prescott reports.

The Prescott Tea Party and Terry Lovell, a business professor at Yavapai College, hosted what Lovell called the "world premiere" of the film. Well, one of them, The film's Web site claims the movie set the U.S. record for the largest simultaneous film premiere with more than 400,000 viewers at 7,000 screens in 50 states. The film includes academics, a Greenpeace founder who recently had a falling out with the group, and working-class women from Vevay, Ind., who say closing the Kentucky Utilities coal-fired power plant in nearby Ghent, Ky., would devastate the Vevay economy, Hedler reports. The film paints Gore as a hypocrite and blames Rachel Carson, author of the 1962 book Silent Spring, for the increased malaria deaths in Africa from the DDT ban promped by the book.

The film was met with a largely enthusiastic response in Prescott, Hedler reports, but there was dissent. "Virtually none of the arguments in that movie are new in the global-science debate and virtually all of them are debunked," Ed Grumbine, chair of the graduate environmental studies program at Yavapai, told Hedler. Prescott College sophomore Sam Coodley, an aspiring filmmaker, told Hedler: "I feel that film is a very easy way to manipulate information, and stirring music with African babies with bloated bellies doesn't strike me as objective." (Read more)

Critics say cow ads offer misleading view of dairies

The popular commercials featuring California's "happy cows" have come under fire from consumers and industry advocates who say the ads portray a misleading picture of conditions in the dairy industry. Speakers at last week's Cal-Poly dairy symposium said the spots make consumers feel betrayed when they discover the truth about the daily lives of dairy cows, Bob Meyer of Brownfield Ag News reports.

Charlie Arnot of the Center for Food Integrity says the industry should not be ashamed of the truth that cows live on concrete instead of the grass fields shown in the commercials. He told the crowd: "We should celebrate it!" He said selling consumers on the idea of a dairy industry long gone is like trying to sell them on a 1957 Chevy even though a 2010 one is a much better vehicle.

These attacks on the commercials aren't the first time the "happy cow" ads have come under fire. Dairy Herd Management Editor Tom Quaite told Brownfield the “Happy Cows” campaign was questioned a year and a half ago at the American Dairy Science Association annual meeting when a University of Florida animal welfare specialist alleged similar claims about misleading consumers.

The "Happy Cows Come from California" ad campaign is the product of the California Milk Advisory Board, which recently announced a new program, launched by the National Milk Producers Federation , that aims to show "consumers how California dairy farmers take care of their Happy Cows." The video below, created by the advisory board, is part of a documentary aimed to show consumers the dairy industry's efforts in sustainability and animal welfare.(Read more)

Appalachian South has new, online literary journal

Three Appalachian writers have launched a new online literary journal that will feature work created by or devoted to the Appalachian South. Silas House (right), Jason Howard and Marianne Worthington established Still: Literature of the Mountain South, which will be published in October, February and June, so readers could freely access excellent and contemporary writing of the region. House, a Kentuckian and author of Clay's Quilt and The Coal Tattoo, will serve as fiction editor from his base at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn. Howard, co-author with House of Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal, will edit non-fiction submissions. Worthington, a communication and journalism professor at the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Ky., will edit poetry submissions. (Photo by Curt Richter)

The journal's title is a multi-faceted reference to Appalachian culture, according to its Web site. "To be a writer is to learn how to be still," the site says, and the title also refers to the Appalachian-stereotyped moonshine still and the late James Still of Hindman, Ky., the poet and author who has been called the grandfather of Appalachian literature. The authors write: "As a culture, Appalachia has been told for decades that it is disappearing. We are still here, proud and strong as ever." (Read more)

West Virginia wind farm pits environmentalists against each other

Environmental groups in West Virginia have a new foe in their quest for renewable energy: other environmentalists. In a rare green-versus-green battle, environmental groups are challenging a proposed wind power plant under the Endangered Species Act for the first time, saying that the Beech Ridge wind farm in Greenbrier County poses a threat to endangered Indiana bats. A 2005 estimate placed the bats' population at 457,000, down 50 percent from when it the species was added to the endangered list in 1967, Maria Gold of The Washington Post reports. A colony lives within miles of the Beech Ridge site, but scientists are divided on the bats' use of the ridge. (Post graphic by Gene Thorp)

"Any kind of energy development is going to have environmental impacts that are going to concern somebody," John D. Echeverria, a Vermont Law School professor who specializes in environmental law, told Gold. "This has been an issue for the environmental community. They are enthusiastic; at the same time, they realize there are these adverse impacts." Chicago-based Invenergy, which owns the Beech Ridge farm, says there is no evidence the Indiana bat even visits the ridge, but does admit that the turbines will kill more than 130,000 other bats in the next 20 years. An attorney for the plaintiffs says Invenegry is content to roll the dice and see what effect the turbines have on the Indiana bat, which is not the intent of the Endangered Species Act.

Many of the plaintiffs support wind energy as a way to mitigate climate change, Gold reports, but maintain this setting is the wrong one. In an area with surface coal mining nearby, Invenergy officials say their wind project is a friend to the environment. Clifford J. Zatz, a lawyer representing the wind farm, said in court: "A $300 million, environmentally friendly, clean, renewable energy project waiting to serve 50,000 households is in limbo over a rare bat nobody has ever seen on the project site." The project has twice previously survived challenges in the West Virginia Supreme Court, including one that said it would mar the picturesque view. (Read more)

As the West Virginia wind battle plays out in court, the American Wind Energy Association said Tuesday that the industry will fall short of growth projections for the year. The recession has caused many companies to put projects on hold, Julie Schmidt of USA Today reports. While the $950 million in cash grants from the stimulus act has helped bring some of the projects back to life, it hasn't revitalized them all. The U.S. currently has enough wind power to fuel nearly 9 million homes, up 23 percent from 2008. (Read more)

Farm Bureau rallies members against climate bill; environmental group hopes to refute FB claims

The American Farm Bureau Federation has recently launched a campaign called "Don't Cap Our Future" to mobilize members against cap-and-trade legislation. AFB President Bob Stallman writes in the lobbying group's Ag Agenda: "Legislation would impose higher energy and food costs on consumers, raise fuel, fertilizer and energy costs for farmers and ranchers, and shrink the American agricultural sector, resulting in reduced U.S. food production."

Stallman says that cap-and-trade legislation would cost Americans roughly $2,300 per household per year. Government incentives for farmers who grow trees to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will put as much as 17 percent of U.S. agricultural land in trees, Stallman writes, causing food prices to rise by as much as $33 billion annually. Farm Bureau is encouraging members to personally deliver farm caps with their signatures on the bill to members of Congress to show their opposition to the legislation. (Read more)

In response, the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit skeptical of corporate agriculture, has issued a new report hoping to disprove many of the accusations. The authors say farmers should not be as concerned about the cost of legislation to limit climate change as the cost of climate change to U.S. agriculture. "Unless action is taken now to slow global warming, farmers can expect to see an acceleration of the extreme weather patterns, heavy rains, flooding, droughts and higher temperatures that have already taken a heavy toll on US agriculture over the past two decades," EWG says in a news release.

EWG says economists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have concluded the costs of a climate bill are so small they can't be considered threats to farm income and will be lost in the year-to-year swings in farm income due to other factors. Between 2012 and 2018 they project costs will increase by 45 cents per acre for soybeans, 66 cents per acre for wheat, and $1.19 per acre for corn, under half of one percent of current per acre production costs for these crops. EWG writes that farmers can expect only a 0.3 percent raise for cotton and a 0.6 percent raise for rice. (Read more)

Study reveals some of the hidden costs of coal

A new study from the National Academy of Sciences shows burning coal to produce electricity creates more than $62 billion per year in hidden costs, contrary to coal's reputation as a cheap fuel. The study, requested by Congress and conducted by the academy's National Resources Council, focused on deaths caused by air pollution from coal-fired power plants, Ken Ward Jr. reported in the Sunday Gazette-Mail of Charleston, W.Va. Authors say that their narrow focus probably underestimates other hidden costs of the nation's reliance on coal.

The report, "Hidden Costs of Electricity," says coal accounts for about half the nation's electricity, but nearly all of electricity's hidden costs. The authors say burning natural gas generates far less damage than coal, and life-cycle damages of wind power are minimal compared to coal. The $62 billion worth of external costs from burning coal in 2005 at 406 power plants amounted to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour of energy produced. The average price of U.S. electricity is 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.

The report found vast disparities in external costs created by individual power plants. "Half of the plants with the lowest damages together produced one-quarter of electricity, but accounted for just 12 percent of the damages," Ward writes. "On the other hand, the 10 percent of plants with the highest damages also produced one-quarter of the power, but accounted for 43 percent of the damages." The report estimates by 2030, hidden costs of coal will be reduced by 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour due to expected pollution reductions.

The report did not consider other costs associated with coal production, such as the environmental impacts of mining and coal ash. "We didn't really quantify or monetize those anywhere," said Maureen L. Cropper, one of the study's panel members and professor of economics at the University of Maryland. "So, for example, if you take the waste from a scrubber and dump it in the Monongahela River, we didn't include that." (Read more)