October 2007 – Page 2

The Al and Pachy Show: Climate Change gains public momentum

Compared to former US Vice President and climate campaigner Al Gore, the name Rajendra K Pachauri might not be as widely recognised. In fact, I wonder how many Americans can even pronounce the name correctly.

But Dr Pachauri is a scientific heavyweight himself, and is the other half of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. He chairs the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was announced as joint and equal winner.

He may be less glamorous than Gore, but Pachauri is just as ardent an advocate for the world to seriously tackle global warming. It was Pachauri’s dedicated work ethic and “ability to build and inspire a team” that helped the IPCC to win the world’s most coveted prize.

Read Rajendra Pachauri’s first reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize announcement

In a profile of the Indian engineer turned scientist-diplomat, The Christian Science Monitor noted: “If Gore is the frontman of the crusade against global warming, then Pachauri runs the engine room.”

Like Gore, Pachauri is a global-warming pioneer. Since the late 1980s, the former industrial engineer has sought to use science to convince skeptics and CEOs of the need of reducing mankind’s atmospheric imprint. Now, he warns that if the problem is not addressed, developing nations will bear the brunt of the crisis, suffering for a situation they did not create because they have not the resources to mitigate it.

In their profile, The Christian Science Monitor quoted Tulsi Tanti, a friend and founder of Suzlon, Asia’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines, as saying: “He has been one of the pioneers and voices of reason in the field, not just calling attention to an environment in peril but creating solutions by bridging the gap between academia, business, policymakers, and the public.”

Read full profile from The Christian Science Monitor of 15 October 2007

I first met and interviewed Dr Pachauri in October 1990, during the Second World Climate Conference in Geneva. That was one of the first international scientific conferences that I covered as a journalist, and Pachauri was kind enough to grant me a long interview. We spoke less of climate and more about energy security and innovative energy solutions. At that time he was head of India’s Tata Energy Research Institute, which was later renamed as The Energy and Resources Institute, still abbreviated as TERI.

Our paths have occasionally crossed since, in different parts of the world, and Dr Pachauri has always remained accessible and articulate. I last met him in Rome in the fall of 2003, during the annual GreenAccord Media Forum on Protecting Nature organised by the Italian organisation GreenAccord.

Read Dr Rajendra Pachuri’s speech at GreenAccord 2003 meeting.

Pachauri was his characteristic modest when reacting to the news of the Nobel Prize. ”I was not expecting any awards for my efforts. I feel privileged to share it with Al Gore. I am only a symbolic recipient but it is the organisation which has been awarded,” he said.

He added: ”With this award to the committee, the issue of climate change will come to the fore. It places a larger responsibility on me and I will ensure that more will be done.”

In a phone call soon after the announcement, he reportedly told Al Gore: “This is Pachy. I am so delighted and so privileged to have the IPCC share with you. I will be your follower and you will be my leader.”

The IPCC set up in 1988 comprises 3,000 atmospheric scientists, oceanographers, ice specialists, economists and other experts and is the world’s top scientific authority on global warming and its impact.

Wikipedia on the IPCC and its track record

Wikipedia on Rajendra K Pachuri

Journalists join the Global Race to the Arctic!

Image from Wikipedia

Everybody seems to be heading to the Arctic these days.

With global warming triggering a thawing of the massive ice caps that have covered the North Pole for millennia, bordering countries are trying to stake claims on land masses, open seas and suspected oil and other mineral reserves.

The results of global warming are seen first and strongest in the polar regions. The Arctic sea ice has shrunk at an average annual rate of about 70,000 square kilometres per year since 1979.

There’s suddenly a new race to the North Pole, not so much to reach it first – as happened in the early part of the 20th century – but to grab a piece of real estate.

And now, science journalists can join the race.

The World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ) has just announced a competition offering science journalists the chance to win three week-long trips aboard the Canadian research icebreaker Amundsen. It is being organised in collaboration with the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the International Polar Year Circumpolar Flaw Lead Project.

Winners will fly to Inuvik (Canada), and hop aboard a Twin Otter aircraft to the famous icebreaker. There, they will receive first hand experience of global warming where it is unfolding the fastest, says a circular from WFSJ.

To enter, professional journalists are invited to send their CV, coordinates, key pages of passport and a one-page essay on why they should be selected.

World Federation of Science Journalists
28, rue Caron, suite 200, Gatineau (Québec) Canada J8Y 1Y7
Email: info@wfsj.org
Tel.: +819 770-0776
Fax: +819 595 2458
www.wfsj.org

Applications must be received before 5 November 2007.

The irony of the Climate Nobel: With love from oil-rich Norway…

The announcement from Oslo on 12 October held few surprises: the Nobel Peace Prize 2007 has been awarded to climate champion Al Gore and the UN’s IPCC, headed by Indian scientist Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

The selection committee, appointed by the Norwegian Parliament acting on the will of the late Alfred Nobel, said it wanted to bring into sharper focus the “increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states” posed by climate change.

Mr Gore, 59, was praised as “probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted”, through his lectures, films and books.

The UN-IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), established in 1988, is tasked with providing policymakers with neutral summaries of the latest expertise on climate change. The organisation involves hundreds of scientists working to collate and evaluate the work of thousands more.

In recent years, the usually secretive and conservative Nobel Peace Committee has been increasingly in tune with the changing realities of our world. Recent prizes to environmental activist Wangari Mathaai and microcredit champion Muhammad Yunus indicate that their traditional definition of peace and security – confined for nearly a century to peace-makers and humanitarian agencies – is being widened.

But the irony of the climate Nobel won’t be lost on the long-time champions of climate change action. Here we have oil-rich Norway, sometimes called the Kuwait of Europe, presenting the world’s best known award to an individual and organisation calling for the planet to kick its addiction to oil (and coal, too).

Notwithstanding all that, we join everyone in saluting Al Gore, Pachauri and everyone associated with the IPCC for their years of hard work in bringing climate change to the fore.

The real hard work is only just beginning.

Watch Al Gore press conference following the Nobel announcement:

Read blog post on Oct 21: Al and Pachy Show: Climate Change gains public momentum

Oz challenge to Japanese whaling – on YouTube!

Who said YouTube is only for activists and video enthusiasts to share their content?

The above appeal is by Australia’s Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who’s using the popular new media platform to reach out to children and young adults in Japan in a campaign aimed at stopping Japan’s stubborn insistence on whaling.

The Australian Department of Environment has taken out a YouTube channel where this and several other videos are on offer.

This is very encouraging – to see a government putting aside diplomatic niceties and taking a campaign right to the heart of a society that is still culturally attached to whale meat. For sure, Australia is also active in inter-governmental negotiations to sustain the global ban on whaling, but addressing the issue from the demand side and future generation angle can make the anti-whaling positions stronger.

Here’s how Reuters reported the story this week:

CANBERRA, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Australia has taken its battle against Japanese whaling in the Antarctic to the Internet, with a new YouTube campaign unveiled on Tuesday that targets Japanese children.

“Can you imagine what life on Earth would be like without these magnificent creatures? Hundreds of years of whaling have nearly wiped them out,” Australia’s Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull says in the video, subtitled in Japanese.

Japan plans for the first time to hunt 50 humpback whales in the Antarctic over the coming summer, with the endangered animals currently migrating south along the Australian coast. Japan also plans to hunt 935 minke whales for scientific research.

The Japanese whaling fleet, hampered by a fire on the factory processing ship Nisshin Maru last February which killed one crewman, was recently bolstered by the addition of a new chaser vessel.

Australia’s government, facing re-election in weeks, has dismissed as futile the opposition’s calls for legal action over Japanese whaling in Australia’s Antarctic Whale Sanctuary, which is not recognised by other nations.

Japan’s fisheries agency, confident its whaling rights will be confirmed, has challenged any country to take it to the International Court of Justice in The Hague

Turnbull said Canberra would fight in the court of public opinion.

Read the full story on Reuters AlertNet

Greenpeace anti-whaling website

Here’s an animated anti-whaling TV commercial I came across on YouTube that takes a different look at the same issue. It was produced by Saachi & Saachi Poland:

Ram Bahadur Tamang: The face of Film South Asia

For ten years, this ordinary Nepali man’s photo has been a rallying call for documentary film-makers across South Asia, home to one fifth of humanity.

He has become the symbol, and the logo, of Film South Asia (FSA), a regional film festival organised every other year in Kathmandu since 1997. FSA, whose latest edition rolls out in the Nepali capital this week (11 – 14 October 2007) is the leading and most enduring film festival that brings together South Asian film-makers and film-lovers. It is a low-budget, high-energy festival organised by the non-profit Himal Association.

Having been associated with FSA from the beginning (I was on the first festival’s jury, and have hosted a couple of travelling festivals since), I was curious about who this old man was. On a visit to Kathmandu last month, I asked FSA Chairman and documentary champion Kanak Mani Dixit about it.

It turns out that the FSA logo is derived from this photo, taken of an ordinary Nepali called Ram Bahadur Tamang. Photocredit goes to Cory R Adams.

Courtesy Himal Southasian

Ram Bahadur belonged to the Tamang people, who are believed to have migrated to Nepal from Tibet. Today, the Tamangs reside mainly in the high hills north of Kathmandu.

Perhaps inspired by my query, Kanak has written up the story behind the photo/logo in his column On the Way Up in the latest issue of Himal Southasian which he edits.

He says: “The Tamang from Byabar served the Rana palaces as guards and porters. Ram Bahadur was one such. One day, he was caught by a photographer holding an early-model Sony video camera. He had a Sirdi Sai Baba badge on his left lapel. The image of Ram Bahadur is now the logo of the Film South Asia documentary film festival. He looks out over the world through his camera and his other, free, eye. The trophy given to the best film at the end of each FSA is known as the Ram Bahadur Trophy.”

Not much more is known about old Ram Bahadur. He had moved on shortly after this picture was taken. We don’t know, for example, if he ever actually used the Sony camera, or was just playing with what, at the time, seemed a high-tech curiosity. This was, after all, the early 1990s when video cameras were not quite ubiquitous.

Read Kanak Mani Dixit on Who’s Ram Bahadur Tamang in Himal South Asian October 2007

Read my July 2007 post: Himal Southasian – 20 years of celebrating South Asian diversity

Geography lesson that saved many lives: The story of Tilly Smith and Asian Tsunami of 2004

Today, 10 October, is the International Day for Disaster Reduction. The theme this year is “Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School”.

This year’s campaign, spearheaded by UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction aims “to inform and mobilize Governments, communities and individuals to ensure that disaster risk reduction is fully integrated into school curricula in high risk countries and that school buildings are built or retrofitted to withstand natural hazards.”

Buried beneath this development jargon that UN agencies are so fond of is something very important: sensitising the next generation about living with hazards can help make our societies better able to cope with disasters when they do happen.

And you never know when an informed and alert school kid could save the day — and many lives.

A good example came from Thailand when the Indian Ocean Tsunami arrived without any public warning on 26 December 2004.

ISDR BBC

Tilly Smith, an eleven-year-old British schoolgirl, was on holiday on Maikhao Beach in Thailand with her family when the tsunami hit. Just a few weeks earlier, she had studied tsunamis in school — and immediately recognized the signs of the receding sea as a sign of an impending disaster. She warned her parents, which led to all the hotel guests being rapidly moved from the beach.

This simple, timely action by a single schoolgirl saved the life of dozens of people. Tilly’s story highlights the critical importance of basic education in preventing the tragic impacts of natural disasters.

Watch her story on YouTube:

This 5 min video, produced by UN/ISDR in 2005, is available in English, French and Spanish. Watch the English version on their website, which is now hidden under all that bureaucratic babble:
Higher resolution WMV file – more suited for broadband Internet connections
Lower resolution WMV file – will play better on narrowband Internet connections

According to the Wikipedia, Tilly’s family have declined requests to be interviewed by commercial and national broadcasters, but Tilly has appeared at the United Nations in November 2005, meeting Bill Clinton the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Relief, and at the first year anniversary in Phuket, as part of the campaign to highlight the importance of education.

In December 2005, Tilly was named “Child of the Year” by the French magazine Mon Quotidien. On the First Anniversary of the Official Tsunami Commemorations at Khao Lak, Thailand on December 26, 2005, she was given the honour of closing the ceremony with a speech to thousands of spectators which read in part:

National Geographic online: Tsunami Family saved by school girl’s geography lesson

BBC Online: Award for tsunami warning pupil

Playing games on disasters: we do and we understand!

Today, 10 October, is the International Day for Disaster Reduction. So we’re going to talk about playing games on disasters.

Yes, that’s right: games. Disasters are serious phenomena, but there’s no reason why disaster awareness and preparedness have to be all dull and dreary.

There’s a old Chinese saying: “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.” Disaster preparedness and training are now moving more into the realm of understanding by doing — simulations or drills for community evacuation, and games that allow players to prevent or manage a disaster.

I first played such a game in January 2007 when, while in Honolulu for a conference, I took the day off and flew to Hilo where the Pacific Tsunami Museum is located. The volunteer-run museum, based in what is known as the tsunami capital of the world, engages local people and foreign visitors (including curious US mainlanders) on the science, history and sociology of tsunamis.

A basic game there allows a visitor to be play the role of Director of Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) , a US government institute that monitors seismic activity and has a mandate to issue alerts, watches or warnings to all countries in and around the Pacific Ocean. The game allows players to choose one of three locations where an earthquake happens — Alaska, Chile or Japan — and also decide on its magnitude from 6.0 to 8.5 on the Richter Scale.

In the real PTWC, five geophycisists are on duty round the clock. If the magnitude exceeds 7.5, the epicentre is located. If it’s in an area likely to cause a tsunami, a tsunami watch is sent to nearby coasts and a tsunami watch is set for areas with a travel time more than three hours away. Messages are sent to the tide observers for reports on the first wave, and telemetered water level gauges are checked. It’s by quickly assessing the seismic, sea level and historical data that scientists at PTWC decide if a warning is needed for areas already placed under a tsunami watch.

Since the system was set up in 1947, it has never missed warning of a damaging tsunami, but there have been a number of very expensive evacuations that turned out to be unnecessary. “These precautions are needed to ensure public safety, but scientists are working to minimise unnecessary warnings without ever missing a hazardous event,” the Tsunami Museum panel explained.

It’s revealing to play the role of a scientist who must quickly marshal lots of information and decide on whether or not to issue a warning. The cost of inaction can be high — but a false alarm doesn’t come cheap either.

I played the game three times, and each time erred on the side of caution — costing the hapless Hawaiian tax payers lots of money.

In real life, those who have their finger on the alert/warning button have to take many considerations into account. Repeated false alarms can erode public confidence in early warning systems. But suppressing a warning on a real breaking disaster — such as what happened in Thailand when the Indian Ocean Tsunami broke in December 2004 — can be truly devastating.

I don’t envy those who have to make this decision as part of their daily work. But after playing the game, I appreciate their challenges a great deal better.

Read my SciDev.Net essay (Dec 2005) The Long Last Mile on challenges in communicating early warnings on disasters

Katie Couric: Faithfully her Master’s voice?

This is an interesting video, uploaded last month on to YouTube by media activists.

In September 2007, Katie Couric, anchorwoman of CBS Evening News reported live from Baghdad. But instead of using that opportunity to ask tough questions and dig for the truth, Couric asked soft questions and repeated a number of false Bush talking points.

As activists point out, the media’s failure to ask tough questions helped America get embroiled in Iraq in the first place.

It’s hard to believe that Couric currently occupies the slot that was long adorned by the likes of Walter Cronkite, anchorman for The CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962 – 1981). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1970s and 1980s, he was often cited in viewer opinion polls as “the most trusted man in America”, because of his professional experience and avuncular demeanor.

From Wikipedia

Media watchers cannot help comparing how Cronkite covered an earlier, equally controversial conflict that left America bruised and bleeding: the Vietnam War. Following Cronkite’s editorial report during the Tet Offensive that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, “If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

How times have changed. Couric is the media lap-dog that every government and military would wish to have — her recent reportage from Iraq would probably be held up by some of them as ‘an example to every journalist covering a war’.

Incidentally, Cronkite provides the voiceover introduction to Couric’s CBS Evening News, which began on 5 September 2006.

And that’s the way it is.

YouTube video courtesy Moveon.org – Democracy in Action

No copyright on this planet – thank Heavens (and NASA) for that!

As the Space Age completes 50 years today, 4 October 2007, we have at least two generations of humans who take images like this one completely for granted.

Yet no one had the capability – and vantage point – to take such images until satellites were launched into orbit, and later astronauts followed.

Beginning in the 1960s, thousands of stunning images — showing our planet in space, as well as the Moon and other celestial bodies in our Solar System — have entered the public domain. These are now part of our popular culture and represent a major educational resource.

These images didn’t come for free. It has cost space agencies – primarily NASA, the American space agency – literally billions of dollars over the decades to capture and deliver these images that we happily, freely bandy around. Contrary to what some people believe, NASA is not a world space agency. It’s the national space agency of a single country, financed by tax payers of that country.

Yet, early on, NASA adopted a very far-sighted, public spirited policy that all its space images would be made available free of copyrights to anyone, anywhere on the planet. This is what enables me to use space images on my blog – and keeps tens of thousands of such images in the public domain.

This is what the NASA official website currently has to say about it:
“NASA still images, audio files and video generally are not copyrighted. You may use NASA imagery, video and audio material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits and Internet Web pages. This general permission extends to personal Web pages.”

Significantly, this includes commercially produced and marketed products, even though NASA’s guidelines make it clear: “If the NASA material is to be used for commercial purposes, especially including advertisements, it must not explicitly or implicitly convey NASA’s endorsement of commercial goods or services…”

There are some reasonable restrictions on this fair use. Read the full NASA copyright policy.

I was curious to see what copyright policy the space agencies of other leading space-faring nations follow. This is what I found on the European Space Agency’s website:
“The contents of the ESA Web Portal are intended for the personal and non-commercial use of its users. ESA grants permission to users to visit the site, and to download and copy information, images, documents and materials from the website for users’ personal non-commercial use. ESA does not grant the right to resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material from its website or to compile or create derivative works from material on its website. Use of material on the website is subject to the terms and conditions outlined below.”

As we can see, it’s a lot more restrictive than NASA’s. I haven’t been able to check the policy of Russian, Chinese or Japanese space agencies, and wonder how liberal or restrictive their copyright policies are.

On strict legal terms, I suppose, creators or finders can be keepers. Arguments can be made that space images obtained at tremendous cost to tax payers can be owned, copyrighted and managed by those agencies and nations footing the bill. This is what makes NASA’s open copyright policy so creditable. Our visual public media — broadcast television, video, DVD and the web — would all have been so much poorer if some nitpicking lawyer or bureaucrat had succeeded in persuading the early NASA management to be more restrictive.

While still on the subject of space images, I wonder why so many images of Earth from space show Africa. I had to search for some minutes to find an image that showed Asia – the largest continent – from space. Next to Africa, the one showing the Americas seems the most popular.

We have to remember that some images we find online are composite images, carefully assembled by combining the best attributes of many images taken over time. Photographing or video filming our planet is not as simple as just going to space, aiming a camera and shooting. It involves a great deal of skill, resources and effort.

And keeping the resulting images in the public domain and open to access takes foresight and public spirit. As the Space Age turns 50, we must acknowledge this aspect of space exploration, which allows compositions like this, found on YouTube, for all of us to enjoy.

Sputnik + 50: The beep that shook the world…

The Space Age was ushered in by the launch of a 83.6km metallic ball, named Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957. When it happened exactly half a century ago, the course of history was changed forever.

‘Sputnik’ is Russian for travelling companion or satellite.

Here’s how a newsreel of Universal International News, screened at cinemas across the US, reported the development:

As one comment, posted by fromthesidelines said on YouTube:
“This was one of the last weekly newsreels seen in movie theaters across the country (thanks to television)- this excerpt, from October of ’57, shows how much of an impact Russia’s “Sputnik” had on space and world affairs. Note that animated “simulations” were used, as Universal did NOT have access to any of the actual footage of “Sputnik” itself!”

Sir Arthur C Clarke, author and inventor of the communications satellite, has just recalled personal memories of that momentous day in an interview with IEEE Spectrum:

“Although I had been writing and speaking about space travel for years, I still have vivid memories of exactly when I heard the news. I was in Barcelona for the 8th International Astronautical Congress. We had already retired to our hotel rooms after a busy day of presentations by the time the news broke. I was awakened by reporters seeking an authoritative comment on the Soviet achievement. Our theories and speculations had suddenly become reality!

“For the next few days, the Barcelona Congress became the scene of much animated discussion about what the United States could do to regain some of its scientific prestige. While manned spaceflight and Moon landings were widely speculated about, many still harboured doubts about an American lead in space. One delegate, noticing that there were 23 American and five Soviet papers at the Congress, remarked that while the Americans talked a lot about spaceflight, the Russians just went ahead and did it!”

And here is how Arthur C Clarke sums up the accomplishments of the first 50 years of space exploration:
“On the whole, I think we have had remarkable accomplishments during the first 50 years of the Space Age. Some of us might have preferred things to happen in a different style or time frame, but when our dreams and aspirations are adjusted for reality, there is much we can look back on with satisfaction. (For example, in 1959 I took a bet that men would be landing on the Moon by June 1969, and lost only very narrowly.) And in the heady days of Apollo, we seemed to be on the verge of exploring the planets through manned missions. I could be forgiven for failing to anticipate all the distractions of the 1970s that wrecked our optimistic projections — though I did caution that the Solar System could be lost in the paddy fields of Vietnam. (It almost was.)”

Read the full Arthur C Clarke interview by Saswato R. Das in IEEE Spectrum

Read all of IEEE Spectrum’s coverage about Sputnik + 50