J417: Science and Environmental Journalism

S-R Stories on Climate Change

2008-12-14T19:39:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it, the Spokesman-Review published the project here.

Nice work. Enjoy the break! Ben

For Thursday, noon

2008-12-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Addy's deadline will be noon on Thursday. Please include the following:

One sentence summarizing your story

Cell phone number where you can be reached for questions

Assessment

2008-12-09T08:19:00.000-08:00

By now, you should have received an e-mail for an online evaluation form. The online form will allow you to critique the class, but I also want to open up that discussion here. (If you have sharp critiques - and the misplaced concern that I'll penalize you for criticizing the course - you can contain those comments to the anonymous evaluation.)

As we discussed at the beginning of this semester, this course was designed differently than others you may have taken at WSU. A few questions:

Should the course continue in its current form, should it be significantly revised, or should it be scrapped?

If revised, how?

Did you benefit from working on a single piece, or would you benefit more from writing a series of shorter stories?

What, if anything, proved valuable?

Finally, We had several guest speakers in this class, including Karen Dorn Steele, Warren Cornwall, Addy Hatch, Betty Galbraith (Library Services), and David Rhys Huggins. IN AN E-MAIL, please rank these speakers, including an explanation of the ranking. I'll use this to determine future speakers.

Rewrite

2008-12-02T08:59:00.000-08:00

Due: Thursday, Dec. 4, 9:10 a.m.
Essential elements:
Source list, including phone or e-mail
Citation list
CQ all names
Three online links for your story

We’re at the moment that separates average stories from good stories. The process is simple: Edit. Rewrite. Edit. Rewrite.

Think of working with a piece of wood. We’ve measured and cut it to shape. Now we sand it to a smooth finish. To do that we need to return to the story again and again and again.

This isn’t for your enjoyment. By the time you’re finished, you should be exhausted by this story. But it should also be smooth and splinter-free (sorry, I overextended my metaphor).

1. Edit I: Big Picture. Does your story present all the information the reader needs? Are we leaving key questions unanswered? Are the transitions smooth yet recognizable?

2. Edit II: Read your story aloud. It’s not enough to speed read these stories in your head. Our minds are too good at filling in the blanks. Say the words aloud. If you stumble over a phrase or a word, readers likely will as well. Hearing the words forces us to address syntax problems.

3. Edit III: Kill a tree. I know. It’s not great for the environment. But print out your story and read a “hard copy” of it. Use a red pen to make notes, corrections and other changes. This will help you see it fresh. Yes, that’s pop psychology. But it works.

4. Verify. Every name, title and statistic needs to be double-checked. If I ask where a number came from, you should be able to cite the source. For names, check your notebook against other sources – online, phonebook, student directory, etc. When you have verified the information, place a check mark or CQ next to the name using the notes.

5. Harass your sources. This may seem like a hassle, but most sources will appreciate your diligence. If they don’t, you shouldn’t lose any sleep over it. You are writing this for the public – not for your sources.

6. Eliminate style errors. Not a single error should be submitted. This story is a semester’s worth of work. It should be error-free. No excuses.

7. Clarity. As we’ve said time and time again this semester, we need to write clearly about a complex topic. Excise or paraphrase jargon. Chop long sentences into two. Gut unnecessary adjectives. Make your story readable, but keep it accurate.

The Intro

2008-12-01T19:24:00.000-08:00

The introduction or "write-out" serves as the nut graf for the series. It needs to quickly and eloquently capture the essence of the project. Here are a few examples.

Seattle Times MRSA Series

The drug-resistant germ MRSA lurks in Washington hospitals, carried by patients and staff and fueled by inconsistent infection control. This stubborn germ is spreading at an alarming rate, but no one has tracked these cases — until now.

Boston Globe, "Should celibacy be reconsidered?"

In the wake of the clergy abuse scandal, some theologians have argued that the church's policy on celibacy fosters sexual dysfunction and abusive behavior among priests. While certain members of the clergy support the abolition of celibacy, others defend the practice as a sacred expression of their love for God.

Seattle Times, "Coaches Who Prey."

In a dark side of the growing world of girls sports, 159 coaches have been reprimanded or fired for sexual misconduct in the past decade. And 98 continued to coach or teach — as schools, the state and even some parents looked the other way.

Los Angeles Times, "Altered Oceans."

Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,' as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.

Seattle Times, "Victory and Ruins."

The 2000 Huskies, winners of the Rose Bowl, stand as the UW's last great team. But an unprecedented look behind the scenes reveals an unsettling level of criminal conduct that was often excused or overlooked. Mistakes made then still haunt a program trying to rebuild.

Your Intro

2008-12-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

In class, write a compelling introduction that captures the essence of our project. Submit them in the comment section below -- with your name. Keep these to four to five sentences.

Our Northwest

2008-12-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

If you haven't visited Our Northwest (an extension of WSU's Educational and Public Media), it is most definitely worth a look.

For energy stories, click here.

For water stories, click here.

For organic agriculture, click here.

Building trust tops global climate agenda

2008-12-01T17:44:00.000-08:00

By Peter N. Spotts
Staff Writer
Christian Science Monitor
Dec. 1, 2008

A year-long push to devise a new global climate-change treaty – one that picks up where the Kyoto Protocol leaves off – gets under way Monday in Poland, with delegates from more than 190 nations set to resume grappling with the thorny issues of how much more to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and who will pay.

As in past climate negotiations, industrialized and developing countries bring different expectations to the talks – and the need to build trust between the two will be vital as a new treaty takes shape. The reason? Unlike the 1997 Kyoto agreement, this treaty will cover both developing and industrialized countries, but poorer countries worry that the developed world will not provide enough aid to help pay for emission-reduction or adaptation efforts. Part of the talks, which run Dec. 1-12, will focus on strengthening aid approaches.

The discussions, sponsored by the United Nations, aim ultimately to produce an accord that cuts global emissions enough by the end of the century to prevent a “dangerous” human influence on climate from occurring.

Keep reading here.

Thursday's discussion with Addy Hatch

2008-11-19T15:37:00.000-08:00

Please be sure to read Addy Hatch's notes in your stories at the wiki site. Our webchat with Addy begins at 9:15 a.m. so please do not show up late.

On the lighter side, here's a fun science story on mammoths from the New York Times.

Final Draft

2008-11-11T13:49:00.000-08:00

Due Thursday, Nov. 13, 9:10 a.m.

We’ve been through this: Now we’re ready for the final draft. In the final weeks of the semester, you will be allowed to rewrite your stories to improve your grade by up to 20 percent.

For the final draft, include an outline and a source list. Again, the story must show how the work will relate to the issue of climate change in the Inland Northwest. The grading will be based on the principles we have discussed throughout the semester: accuracy, reporting, sourcing, storytelling, and context.

Be prepared to discuss your story in class on Thursday.

Questions?

E-mail me at bshors@wsu.edu

Pollution and Public Health

2008-11-05T17:43:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, we'll discuss the environmental devastation of war with James Hagengruber, European editor of the Christian Science Monitor. Hagengruber has been in the marshes of Iraq for the past several weeks.

Switching gears, we'll talk about covering pollution and public health. Here's a quick primer for our main focus: Asbestosis in Libby, Mont.

Spokesman-Review: A town struggling to breathe

Last interview of Les Skramstad: http://www.missoulian.com/123/libby/

Copyright, Missoulian, 1999

By most accounts, the town of Libby benefited greatly from its 30-year association with W.R. Grace. The company built baseball fields and provided some of the best-paying jobs in town. Skramstad worked for Zonolite, a company purchased in 1963 by W.R. Grace and Co., which assumed not only the mine and mill, but Zonolite's legal liabilities as well.

Skramstad quit a full-time job at the lumber mill for a 30-day tryout at Zonolite. He ended up working there for three years. The company's workers were loyal, and turnover was low.

"You had to read the obituary column to get a job," Skramstad said. "It was a terrific place to work."

The dust seemed only to be a nuisance to the workers, not a life-threatening cloud.

"What really started worrying me about all this stuff," Skramstad said, "was that when I went to work there, there was 130 people as near as I can remember. Well, here a few years ago, I noticed that there wasn't none of them left. They were all dead, or most of them."

People get sick and die all the time, especially after 40 years. Some get cancer and die in a year or two. Others get a long, lingering disease that can wait half a lifetime to kill them.

To Les Skramstad, the 130 former employees of the vermiculite plant were dying in a strangely similar manner.

Note: Last year, scientists at the National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health (NIOSH) reported that asbestosis mortality among a
cohort of 1,672 Libby vermiculite workers was 165 times higher than
expected.

Thirsty Giant

2008-11-04T08:51:00.000-08:00

Why does the reporter lead with Ritu Prasher - a middle-class homemaker?
What's the nut graf?
How does the nut graf amplify the lede?

In Teeming India, Water Crisis Means Dry Pipes and Foul Sludge

By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Photo by Ruth Fremson
New York Times

NEW DELHI, Sept. 28 — The quest for water can drive a woman mad.

Ask Ritu Prasher. Every day, Mrs. Prasher, a homemaker in a middle-class neighborhood of this capital, rises at 6:30 a.m. and begins fretting about water.

It is a rare morning when water trickles through the pipes. More often, not a drop will come. So Mrs. Prasher will have to call a private water tanker, wait for it to show up, call again, wait some more and worry about whether enough buckets are filled in the bathroom in case no water arrives.

“Your whole day goes just planning how you’ll get water,” a weary Mrs. Prasher, 45, recounted one morning this summer, cellphone in hand and ready to press redial for the water tanker. “You become so edgy all the time.”

In the richest city in India, with the nation’s economy marching ahead at an enviable clip, middle-class people like Mrs. Prasher are reduced to foraging for water. Their predicament testifies to the government’s astonishing inability to deliver the most basic services to its citizens at a time when India asserts itself as a global power.

The crisis, decades in the making, has grown as fast as India in recent years. A soaring population, the warp-speed sprawl of cities, and a vast and thirsty farm belt have all put new strains on a feeble, ill-kept public water and sanitation network.

Tribune's Oil Series

2008-10-28T11:52:00.000-07:00

Here's the series that Warren Cornwall of the Times recommended during our webchat.

An excerpt from Paul Salopek's excellent work: "Yet to truly grasp the scope of the crisis looming before them, Americans must retrace their seemingly ordinary tankful of gasoline back to its shadowy sources. This is, in effect, a journey into the heart of America's vast and troubled oil dependency. And what it exposes is a globe-spanning energy network that today is so fragile, so beholden to hostile powers and so clearly unsustainable, that our car-centered lifestyle seems more at risk than ever."

Environmental Issues in the Election Cycle

2008-10-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

What is the role of an environmental reporter in election season? To start our discussion, we'll review some recent work by The Seattle Times, especially the work of Warren Cornwall.

VP candidates have strong differences on environment, By Warren Cornwall, Seattle Times

Where McCain, Obama stand on environmental, energy issues, By Warren Cornwall, Seattle Times

Where Gregoire, Rossi stand on environmental issues, By Andrew Garber, Seattle Times

Lands-commissioner candidate Peter Goldmark files ethics complaint, By Warren Cornwall, Seattle Times

On Tuesday, we'll be webchatting with Warren about his work, how we finds and structures his stories, and his path to the environmental reporting position at the Seattle Times. For Tuesday, please review The Times' excellent series, "Failing Our Sound."

Telling Details in Science Writing

2008-10-13T20:56:00.000-07:00

In 2005, the Dallas Morning News staff shot an amazing series of photos on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This is a just a small selection of those pictures.

Which of these photos has the most important details?

What do you notice in the photos that you would include in your story?

Write a sentence describing the scene in the "best" photo.

How do we get details into our stories? Which details do we keep and which do we toss? In science writing, when do we want details?

Observation
"They can say anything they want to say. I'm not paying," he said, snapping off the filter on his cigarette before lighting up.
- ¬Karen Dorn Steele, profile of an Idaho miner fined millions of dollars for pollution

Auditory
“The chairs are rickety; when a fat man is sitting in one, it squeaks like new shoes every time he takes a breath.”
-Joseph Mitchell, “The Old House at Home”

Smell
“A soft fall rain slips down through the trees and the smell of ocean is so strong that it can almost be licked off the air.”
- Sebastian Junger, “The Perfect Storm”

Show, Don’t Tell
“It began with a line of plastic bags ghosting the surface, followed by an ugly tangle of junk: nets and ropes and bottles, motor-oil jugs and cracked bath toys, a mangled tarp. Tires. A traffic cone. Moore could not believe his eyes. Out here in this desolate place, the water was a stew of plastic crap.”
- Susan Casey, “Plastic Ocean”

Writing About a Person You've Never Met
"Frederick Brandenberg carried a Bible and lisped through ill-fitting false teeth. He loved country ballads and, unfortunately, sang them -- his voice could knock starlings from the sky."
- Katherine Boo, Washington Post, "Residents Languish; Profiteers Flourish," 1999

The Boy Behind the Mask
At a certain age, nothing is more important than fitting in
By: Tom Hallman Jr.
The Oregonian
October 1, 2000, Part 1

The boy sits on the living room sofa, lost in his thoughts and stroking the family cat with his fragile hands. His younger brother and sister sit on the floor, chattering and playing cards. But Sam is overcome by an urge to be alone. He lifts the cat off his lap, ignoring a plaintive meow, and silently stands, tottering unsteadily as his thin frame rises in the afternoon light.

He threads his way toward the kitchen, where his mother bends over the sink, washing vegetables for supper. Most 14-year-old boys whirl through a room, slapping door jambs and dodging around furniture like imaginary halfbacks. But this boy, a 5-foot, 83-pound waif, has learned never to draw attention to himself. He moves like smoke.

He stops in the door frame leading to the kitchen and melts into the late-afternoon shadows.

He watches his mother, humming as she runs water over lettuce. The boy clears his throat and says he's not hungry. His mother sighs with worry and turns, not bothering to turn off the water or to dry her hands. The boy knows she's studying him, running her eyes over his bony arms and the way he wearily props himself against the door frame. She's been watching him like this since he left the hospital a few months before.

"I'm full," he says.

She bends her head toward him, about to speak. He cuts her off.

"Really, Mom. I'm full."

"OK, Sam," she says quietly.

The boy slips behind his mother and steps into a pool of light.

A huge mass of flesh balloons out from the left side of his face.

His left ear, purple and misshapen, bulges from the side of his head. His chin juts forward. The main body of tissue, laced with blue veins, swells in a dome that runs from sideburn level to chin. The mass draws his left eye into a slit, warps his mouth into a small, inverted half moon. It looks as though someone has slapped three pounds of wet clay onto his face, where it clings, burying the boy inside.

But Sam, the boy behind the mask, peers out from the right eye. It is clear, perfectly formed and a deep, penetrating brown.

You find yourself instantly drawn into that eye, pulled past the deformity and into the world of a completely normal 14-year-old. It is a window into the world where Sam lives. You can imagine yourself on the other side of it. You can see yourself in that eye, the child you once were.

Hallman’s subject – Sam Lightner – says very little in this introduction. How does Hallman tell the story without relying on Sam’s voice?

Hallman uses physically descriptive language in this story; but he also uses observations, such as when he discusses how Sam moves through a room. What the difference between observation and description?

Hallman writes in the present tense – how does that change your reading? How does it change your predictions on the story’s ending?

How many passive sentences do you see in this story?

Most importantly, does Hallman’s story promote acceptance or pity? What’s the difference?

Ending, Part 1

Dr. Campbell pulled up a chair.

How do you feel?

Sam wrote in his notebook: "Anything to stop the headaches."

Anything else?

"I really don't think this is going to work out."

The doctors are trying.

"Please try your hardest."

Hang in there, Sambo.

"I'm in pain. It was really bad this morning."

Campbell made a note to order more morphine.

"I hurt."

And methadone.

"I'm tired."

Try to sleep.

"Will it kill me?"

In the ending, Hallman cedes the story’s “voice” to Sam and his doctor. Why?

How do the short, staccato sentences alter your reading of this passage?

Hallman’s ending is really a beginning: Will Sam live? It propels – or drags – most readers into the next story. Is it fair to use the delicate balance of life and death of a 12-year-old boy as a journalistic tool?

Panama's farmers resist hydroelectric projects

2008-10-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

For multimedia, visit http://www.miamiherald.com/static/multimedia/miami/panamadam/index.html

Northern Panama is pushing to develop hydroelectric projects where poor, indigenous farmers have lived for generations.
Source: Copyright 2007, Miami Herald
Date: October 2, 2007
Byline: Benjamin Shors

CHARCO LA PAVA, PANAMA_ For months now, the widow has clung to her tiny shack in this picturesque village above the Changuinola River -- even when local officials and hydroelectric workers said she must leave, even when a bulldozer roared into her yard in the summer.

''I will not go,'' insists Isabel Becker, 59, a diminutive Ngobe Indian who lives in a dirt-floored home. ``If the company wants to send police to kill me, go ahead.''

In the northern mountains of Panama, two worlds are colliding as the region's fastest growing economy pushes to develop hydroelectric projects in rural river valleys where poor, indigenous farmers have lived for generations.

Nearly 90 hydroelectric projects are proposed in this country, part of a massive effort to wean the booming economy from its dependence on foreign energy -- which accounts for more than two-thirds of the country's use.

While some of the projects will never be built, others are expected to go online in the coming months, and crews have begun work on a 1,100-mile transmission line that will allow the companies to sell electricity across Central America, from Panama to southern Mexico.

Conservation and human rights groups have seized on the issue, saying the dams will devastate aquatic life in the rivers and destroy the culture of some of Panama's surviving indigenous groups.

''Never in our country's history has the relocation of an indigenous population so flagrantly disregarded individual and collective human rights,'' the Alliance for Conservation and Development, a Panamanian nonprofit group, said in a news release last month.

CONTRASTING VIEWS

Becker and other Ngobe villagers contend the Changuinola project will displace thousands of villagers and create a 3,500-acre lake in a wilderness area bordering Central America's largest tract of virgin rain forest. AES, the Virginia-based power company behind the project, says only 140 families will have to be relocated.

''We are an active member of the communities in which we work and are committed to improving the quality of life of the people in Panama as well as protecting the environment,'' an AES statement said.

Even among opponents of the dams, there is little doubt that Panama needs more electricity to keep pace with its economy, which grew more than 8 percent last year.

The question, critics say, is how much and on whose terms?

Darysbeth Martínez, director of climate change for Panama's National Environmental Agency, said the government recognizes the need to quickly and responsibly develop its power resources.

''The environment plays the most important role for sustainable development and tourism in Panama,'' Martínez said. ``We have asked these companies to comply with the environmental laws, and we have provided them with the newest, cleanest technology to apply.''

Four of the dams -- including AES' three proposed dams on the Changuinola River -- sit within a few miles of the border of La Amistad International Peace Park, a World Heritage site that stretches from northern Panama into southern Costa Rica.

The controversy has attracted the attention of U.S. conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned the World Heritage Committee to list the park as ''in danger'' this spring. The center's attorneys argue the dams will create barriers to dozens of species of fish in the park's rivers, sending ripples up the food chain to birds, reptiles and mammals.

''The hydroelectric projects will be the beginning of the end for the park,'' said Ariel Rodriguez, an assistant biology professor at the University of Panama. ``Beyond the environmental impacts to these species, we also need to consider the morality of occupying this pristine zone and how it will impact the indigenous people living there.''

KING FORCED TO FLEE

In the cloud forests of the Talamanca Mountains near the Costa Rican border, the controversy has driven a wedge into the tiny Naso indigenous group, which claims to be the last kingdom in the Americas.

Almost three years ago, in a midnight coup, hundreds of Naso people deposed then-king Tito Santana for supporting a 30-megawatt dam on tribal lands, forcing him to flee down river.

''I must fight for the land so that our children, in the future, will have a place,'' said Valentin Santana, 61, who has claimed the title of king and rallied the Naso to protest the project proposed by a Colombian power company. ``My people have grown here. We have lived here. And we will die here.''

The power companies contend the projects can funnel money into education, healthcare and job opportunities for the Naso and Ngobe. Construction on the AES project alone will bring 3,000 temporary jobs, the majority for unskilled local laborers, the company said.

Others remain skeptical.

''The Naso, in particular, are an endangered people,'' said Hector Huertas, an attorney with the Center for Peoples' Legal Aid, a Panamanian law firm that specializes in indigenous rights. ``If the dam is built, their land will disappear and, little by little, their traditional life will be lost.''

For the Ngobe farmers living in villages above the Changuinola, the conflict came to a head earlier this year, when workers from an AES subsidiary arrived at the home of Isabel Becker. She and her family said they believed the company was going to compensate her for damage that workers had allegedly caused to a grove of fruit trees.

Instead, Becker and two family members allege that AES employees in Panama City badgered her to relinquish the rights to her land, holding her in a meeting room for more than 12 hours. Becker said that after midnight, she affixed her thumbprint to a document surrendering the rights to her property in return for $9,500, plus a $100 monthly payment that will continue until Becker has established a new farm to feed her family.

The document was written in Spanish, but Becker speaks only Ngobe and cannot read or write.

AES did not respond to questions about the meeting and declined to make Humberto A. Gonzales, the company's project director, available for an interview.

Becker said she did not understand the document and will not leave her home. ''I was naive and put my thumb on this document,'' she said. ``I did not know what it meant. I made the first mistake, but I will not sign any other documents.''

Copyright 2007, Miami Herald

Some Panama squatters losing homes

2008-10-08T17:05:00.001-07:00

Monday, October 15 2007
Copyright 2007 The Miami Herald
BY BENJAMIN SHORS

ISLA CARENERO, PANAMA -- In the late 1980s, Nicasio Jiménez built two listing shacks with mangrove beams, a roof of scavenged tin, and rough floor planks that allowed Caribbean breezes and sand flies to flit through the cracks.

Jiménez, a 61-year-old retired banana pruner who earned $1 an hour, did not own the waterfront land. Like hundreds of other low-income people living in Bocas del Toro, a stunning archipelago once relegated to some of Panama's poorest residents, he instead relied on ''squatter rights'' written into the country's law.

Now, as foreign investment transforms these languid islands, Jiménez' family faces eviction from a Naples developer who claims he bought the property from a third party.

''Before, nobody wanted this land,'' said Feliciano Santos, Jiménez's 36-year-old son-in-law. ``You didn't need documents. This was a garbage disposal area. We are the ones who cut our feet and got dirty working the land.''

For centuries, this Caribbean island has been a beautiful place to be dirt poor. But in recent years, a booming real estate market has brought American entrepreneurs into direct conflict with Afro-Caribbean and indigenous Indians who occupy these once-isolated isles.

Now, developers have targeted an emerging demographic: retirees from America and Europe.

Although American expatriates have been a part of the funky vibe in Bocas since the 1990s, they remained a relatively minor note in the Caribbean town. But as development in Panama City boomed -- construction permits last year topped $1 billion -- investors pushed into more remote reaches of the country.

Now, critics say, the size of the new developments threaten to displace hundreds of low-income island residents, many of whom live on prime oceanfront real estate.

In the past year, the conflict has spiraled. Armed private security guards patrol disputed beaches. A powerful union of construction workers has leveled charges of ''colonialism'' against several developers. Homes have mysteriously burned and been torn to the ground.

''There is this tremendous lust for the coastline,'' said Osvaldo Jordan, executive director of the Alliance for Conservation and Development, a Panamanian nonprofit based in Panama City. ``Developers and speculators will use any means necessary to get the land from the people.''

THE ISLAND LAW

In an attempt to restore order last year, President Martín Torrijos signed the Island Law, which provides incentives for investors to develop large residential communities for foreigners, while also attempting to preserve the rights of locals who have lived and farmed the land for decades.

Specifically, the law sought to attract developments with home prices above $300,000 -- a fortune in a country with a median income of $5,000.

On the day of the law's signing, developers unveiled plans for more than $700 million in new projects in Bocas del Toro -- evidence, critics say, that the law will only further disenfranchise the island's poor.

'The government has said, `Let's open ourselves to the highest bidders,' '' said Linda Barrera, a former law clerk with the International Environmental Law Project at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., and a Panamanian citizen. ``A small indigenous family may not have the resources that the developers have to establish the title. It's an expensive process.''

As Panamanian officials attempt to sift through the competing land claims, activists for the poor have criticized the government's lack of transparency, and local offices have been plagued with accusations of bribery.

The land dispute has spilled into the American legal system, where the owners of the Red Frog Beach project sued two Texas men and a Delaware corporation in a dispute over a 25-acre beach. Both groups have plans to develop the beach, which serves as a critical nesting area for several species of sea turtles.

LEGAL BATTLE

Attorneys for Red Frog -- a $400 million development with plans for 900 condos and villas, two marinas, a hotel and spa -- allege that a competing group, Cinco Cruces de Oro Holdings, bribed the local sheriff, which led to the jailing of a dozen Red Frog employees. Cinco Cruces denied any wrongdoing.

''Very strange and awful things have been happening here,'' said Michelle Slough, marketing director for Red Frog in Bocas. ``But little by little, we are trying to solve the land disputes and educate the community.''

As the case makes its way through the Texas legal system, a tense situation continues on the beach. On a hot afternoon this summer, security guards for both companies rested in the shade along the sandy shore, their camps located about 200 yards apart. Some carried automatic weapons. Others slept with shotguns at their sides.

''At first, we were very enthusiastic about these projects,'' said Rutilio Milton, 50, director of a small Ngobe Indian crafts cooperative along a bay where Red Frog plans to build a 250-boat marina. ``We thought the whole community would be part of this planning. But now this is so big we are afraid we will disappear.''

Some foreigners say they are only now realizing the difficulties of living in a town that, prior to the year 2000, did not have a paved road connecting it to the rest of Panama. On the islands, air travel, healthcare and even clean drinking water can be inconsistent.

''It's not too hard to blind people to how weak their investment is,'' said a British citizen who moved to the islands four years ago but asked not to be identified because she runs a small business. ``If you scratch beneath the surface, you can see the fault lines.''

EASILY DECEIVED

Those lines are striking on Isla Carenero, where Jiménez built his tiny home with no running water or electricity.

One hundred yards down the beach, 57-year-old J. Stephen Crabtree, formerly of Naples, built three small casitas for tourists, and lined the paths of his Careening Cay Resort with native flowers. His wife, Joan, opened the Cosmic Crab Café, which sits on stilts above the waters of the Caribbean.

''I've put my life savings into making this the most beautiful place in Bocas,'' Crabtree said. ``This is ideally what the Panamanian government wants to see -- an entrepreneur bringing in money and hiring locals at a living wage.''

Crabtree said he paid more than $150,000 to buy the land from an Afro-Caribbean woman whose father once harvested mangrove trees on the property.

Jiménez and his family said they have never received any documents showing that Crabtree owns the land. Crabtree said his attorney continues to work through the legal process, even as the situation between the neighbors worsens.

''They have slandered me on television,'' said Crabtree, who also works as a real-estate agent in the islands. ``They put you in jail for that here.''

Panama, he insisted, should ''serve as a model for Central America'' for its efforts to protect the rights of property owners.

''If you have the documents in place, the courts are fair,'' Crabtree said, sitting with visitors on his dock above the Caribbean waters. ``The next move -- once we oust these people -- will be to clean up the bay where they have been going to the bathroom for 12 years. When I get done, the place next door is going to look just like this.''

Database Reporting: How the Seattle Times Found 12,881 Earmarks Tucked in the Defense Budget

2008-10-07T08:36:00.000-07:00

Congressional ties bankroll area company
By David Heath
Seattle Times staff reporter

Not long after Nelson Ludlow and his wife started a technology business in Port Townsend with money scraped together from friends, family and retirement accounts, they spent precious dollars in an unlikely way:

They hired a lobbyist and started giving to a congressional campaign fund.

The lobbying paid off. Soon, an $800,000 earmark for the Ludlows was tucked into a 2003 spending bill, giving their tiny startup, Mobilisa, a no-bid contract to provide Internet service on Puget Sound ferries.

Mobilisa is one of a new breed of companies sustained by lawmakers handing them government contracts through line-item appropriations known as earmarks.

These companies make their sales pitch not to experts in places like the Pentagon but to lawmakers and their staff in the halls of Congress. The startups rely on dollars from taxpayers rather than from venture capitalists who demand a cut of profits. All the while, company executives usually give campaign donations to lawmakers.

Nelson Ludlow and his wife, Bonnie, have donated generously in the past five years, giving $11,500 to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and nearly $20,000 to U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton.

At the same time, the Ludlows have mastered the earmark game. Since 2003, Murray and Dicks have favored Mobilisa with at least nine earmarks worth $20.3 million.

For the full series, visit http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/favorfactory/

Excel Exercise 1

2008-10-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

Basic Excel Exercise

Prepared for MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism’s 2006 Boot Camp

Jeff Porter
Data Library Director
Investigative Reporters and Editors
And the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting
jeff@ire.org

This exercise is based on the Toxics Release Inventory database for 2003, released by the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s a slice of just one facility – the one that had 18 different reported chemicals for that year for air or water emissions.

First, download and open the file spreadsheet_basic.xls.

A quick review of its content: company name and location, the reported chemical, and two sets of numbers: total air emissions (which EPA converts to pounds) and total water emissions (also converted). The EPA database also records how much of each chemical is placed in landfills and the like, but for the purpose of this exercise, we’ll concentrate on just air and water.

Basic calculations

First, we’re going to make some additional totals of emissions. Mouse around and click once on cell G1 and type in the word TOTALS. That’s our label for a column we’re going to fill in.

To fill in the column, hit ENTER after typing. That will take you to cell G2, and you can start your first formula. Always start with an = sign, then instead of telling to do math on particular number, tell it to use cell addresses:

=E2+F2 (Side note: Excel isn’t picky about case; you can use lower or upper case letters.)

Those two addresses reference the first row of numbers for air and water emissions. Column G, then, or TOTALS, is going to add them together. So after typing in the formula, hit ENTER. Your first number should appear:

Mouse back to highlight cell G2. Notice that above the D column, you can see the formula, not the number. That’s a good thing to remember: one way to check your work later.

That’s one calculation done. Mouse over to the highlighted G2 cell and notice that it has a small little box in the lower right corner. If you put your cursor directly over it, it’ll become a skinny plus sign:

Carefully click and drag down until you get to row 19 – now you’ve copied your formula all the way down Column G, calculating totals of air and water for all chemicals.

Sums and Totals in Excel

Another question: What’s the total of all those chemicals? To come up with totals, let’s create a new row. Mouse down to cell A21 – intentionally leaving a blank row. We’ll get to that later. Type in TOTALS in that cell. Now, mouse over to cell E21 – two rows down from the last chemical value for air emissions. Now, we’ll learn a magic word, one of many that Excel possesses: SUM. Instead of using a lot of plus signs, instead, apply this formula:

=SUM(E2:E19)

To parse that formula: The = sign, of course, is required for all Excel calculations. The word SUM is a function: in this case, totaling numbers. Every function in Excel needs parentheses. Inside those parentheses, there is a range of cells – starting with E2 and ending with E19 – the SUM function will work on.

Now, find the skinny plus sign again in cell E21 but instead of dragging it down, drag it across to the right, to include cell G21 – now, all the E-row numbers are filled in for you! Now you know: a total of 4,583,395.91 pounds air, 57,839.16 water and 4,641,235.07 total.

Sorting it out

A simple eyeball scan can show you which numbers are high, which ones are low – but Excel can handle much larger files and eyeballing data can be a problem with bigger sets of numbers. So we’ll do a sort to identify the top chemical, by pounds, of emission.

First, click once with the Big Fat White Plus Sign (BFWPS) to highlight the cell that says FAC_NM. Click and hold, diagonally down to the right, until you “paint” the cells down to G19. You DON’T want to include your totals. (Notice they’re easy to spot, since we put in the extra row.)

Use the menu item called Data and choose Sort …

You’ll be confronted with another dialog box:

First, check out the bottom item: “My data range has…” It’s guessing, correctly, that it has something called a “header row,” also known as the column labels. Always check to make sure it guesses correctly. Next, look at “Sort by …” and notice it defaults to the first column name. Click on it to choose TOTALS. Finally, since we want to know which chemical has the biggest number, choose the option Descending instead of Ascending. Now click OK.

Now, METHANOL rises to the top of your list, with a total of 3,908,978 pounds.

Charting our way

One more task – data pie chart.

This requires a little mouse-bility – first using the BFWPS, highlight METHANOL and drag down to highlight all the chemical names. Let go of the mouse button and hold down the Control key. With that key held down, mouse over with the BFWPS and click on the first number under TOTALS. Drag down to highlight all the TOTALS number – but NOT the entire total. Stop at cell G19.

Now, pull back from the mouse and the keyboard. Highlighting accomplished. There should be a little bar-chart little button in along the top of your screen, like this:

Click on it, and you’ll get a Chart Wizard. Let’s choose the fourth item down, called Pie Chart. You’ll see several options. Choose Exploded Pie. (Insert your own joke here.) There’s a button on the Wizard called “Press and Hold to View Sample” if you want to see how it might look. Now, click Next.

Notice that behind the Wizard, the chemical names and numbers you highlighted are being surrounding by additional highlighting. It’s always good to check and see if the Wizard highlighted things correctly. If you’re good to go, hit Next.

Let’s give a chart title: “Texarkana Mill.” Hit the tab called Legend and tell it to put the Legend at the bottom (if we don’t, the entire list of chemicals won’t show up in our final output). For now, we’ll accept the other defaults, but in your spare time, check and try them out. Hit Next. In Step 4, let’s discard the default value and tell it to put your chart on a new sheet. You’re ready to hit Finish.

That’s a quick review of doing some basic calculations and chart-making using Excel. For even more training materials, go to www.ire.org/training and check out more Practice Data Sets.

Analyzing Toxic Sites

2008-10-06T14:17:00.000-07:00

A tipsheet by David Poulson, associate director,
Knight Center for Environmental Journalism

Computer-assisted reporting yields great stories on the environment beat. Regulators and others record lots of environmental data for enforcement or to monitor trends. Here is an example of how CAR can sharpen environmental reporting:

Getting Started

Go to www.michigan.gov/deq, the Web site for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Click “online services” at the top, and then “Part 201 Site Search” from the list.

This interface searches for information on Michigan sites of environmental contamination. Part 201 refers to a section of state law requiring that these sites be listed.

Put in the name of a county or city and examine the result. That’s pretty handy! But it’s also a bit limiting. What if you wanted to know which site is the greatest hazard in the state or how many sites are in Wayne County? For those kinds of questions, you need the data behind the interface. Often in such situations you need to file a FOIA to get the data. In this case, you can grab it all online.

Click on the link that says “Download the Part 201 Site List in MS Excel” and save it to your desktop. Now open the file in Excel. Notice that the column headers provide the same information that your online search produced. Let’s clean it up a bit before doing some analysis.

Notice the “score” column. The higher the score, the greater the risk. A 48 is the highest score possible. Let’s remove “out of 48” from each cell. Hit control f to produce the find and replace box and click the replace tab. After “Find what:” insert “out of 48” without the quote marks. Leave the “Replace with:” box blank. Click on “replace all. ”

For this exercise, we don’t need the geographic information contained in columns K through O. Highlight them by putting the cursor on the letter K and dragging across to the letter O. Now click edit/delete.

Notice that the columns are often too narrow for the information they contain. If you want to see more, go to the line separating the letters. Click and drag to widen it, or double click and the column will expand to accommodate the widest cell in that column.

Scroll down the records with the scroll bar on the right. How many sites are listed? Don’t forget to subtract for the first row that contains your column headers.

Using Excel to Create Averages

Now let’s figure the average score of Michigan’s toxic sites. Type the word “average” in a cell in column H that is two spaces below the data. In the cell to the right, type this formula: =average(I2:I2946). I2946 is the last cell in this example. Your last cell may be different. If so, insert that number instead.

Hit enter and Excel will average all the numbers in the I column. Doesn’t that beat entering nearly 3,000 numbers into a calculator?

On the next line figure the median – the middle value – with a formula that says =median(I2:I2946).

Sorting data

Now we’ll sort the list so that we can figure out the location of the sites with the highest scores. Click anywhere in the main data block. Simultaneously hit shift, control, asterisk to highlight all of the contiguous cells. If a data point is separated from the block, it won’t be highlighted. In this case we highlighted all of the information in the spreadsheet except the average and median.

Now click data at the top of the sheet and go to sort.

We want to sort by score. Make sure header row is checked, and select score from the drop down box. We want to know the highest score first, so click descending and hit OK.

The whole database is now sorted from highest to lowest score. If you had sorted by county or by site name, Excel would have sorted the database by reverse (descending) alphabetical order by those columns.

Find the local angle

This is good stuff, but it doesn’t tell us anything about what’s happening locally. (This example assumes your readership is in Ingham, Clinton and Eaton counties; you’ll want to select counties relevant to your own publication.)
Go to data, but this time click filter and then auto filter.

Arrows appear to the right of each column header. Click the one next to county and select custom.

We want to filter records where county equals Ingham or county equals Clinton. When the filter box appears, insert those names and make sure that the “or” (not the “and”) is selected. Hit OK and now you’ve got a database of records affiliated with just Ingham and Clinton counties.

Let’s save it for analysis. With the new spreadsheet highlighted (shift, control, asterisk), hit edit/copy (or control c). Now go to insert at the top of the sheet and select worksheet.

When it appears, click on square A1 and then edit/paste to paste your data.

At the bottom of the spreadsheet are two tabs. One has the original spreadsheet (miSites) and the other has the one you just created. Double click on the tab you just created (sheet 1) and change the name to “local sites.”

Click on the miSites tab. This time we’ll retrieve the Eaton County data. Click on the drop down arrow next to county. But instead of custom, just select Eaton from the list.

Select the newly filtered data (but not the column names) by clicking and dragging. Copy this data (edit/copy or control c) and move it into the “Local sites” spreadsheet by pasting (edit/paste or control v) it into the first vacant cell in the first column – just below the data that’s already there.

If you brought the column headers with you, it’s no big deal. Get rid of them by clicking the number of the row that contains them. Go to edit/delete and they’ll disappear.

The payoff

Now you’ve got a local subset of the state database. Sort to find the sites with the highest scores. What are the average and median local scores? How do those scores compare with the statewide figures?

How about sorting by “score date” to find out when the last time some of your local sites were scored. How come it’s been so long?

Answers to such questions are a good start for a local story with statewide context. At a minimum, you now know something that you’ll want to talk to the DEQ about.

And if you do a similar analysis annually, you can report whether new sites were added or old sites were cleaned up or improved during the previous year.

Further analysis

Go back to the sheet with all the sites (MiSites) to figure out how many are contaminated with toluene. Highlight the data (shift, control, asterisk) and turn the filter back on by going to data/filter/auto filter.

Click on the arrow next to pollutant. Select custom filter. Fill in the blanks to search for records where pollutant contains toluene. You could do this for any pollutant.

Now let’s find out if any of the sites are owned by Michigan State University. Go to data/filter/show all.

Highlight your data and go to data/filter. Click the arrow next to name and select custom. Filter for records that contain Michigan State University OR MSU.

Notice that the source of two of the MSU sites is listed as “Colleges & Universities.”

By refiltering the data for sources that are “College & Universities” you could find contaminated sites affiliated with the state’s institutions of higher education. What other categories of ownership might you investigate?

Looking more deeply with pivot tables

You can analyze a database even more deeply with spreadsheets by using pivot tables. Let’s figure out which county has the most sites.

Go to the miSites sheet and click data/filter to click the auto filter off. Highlight all of your data. Go to Data and click on “PivotTable and PivotChart report.”

We’re analyzing an Excel document so click next to accept the default.

Click next again to verify the range of data. It should be right because you already highlighted it.

Now click on layout.

Visualize the perfect chart for listing the number of sites. Each county would list the total sites in that county. From the buttons on the right, click and drag county name into the row field. Now click and drag county name into the data area. It will change to “count of county name.” Click OK.

Click Finish to create a new worksheet.

Now you’ve got a list of counties and a count of the number of sites in each one.

To put them in order, click on the first number under total. Go to data/sort and click descending in the box that appears.

Click OK and the number of sites should be in descending order. (A short cut is to click the button that says Z to A). Note that this data is now under a new tab of your spreadsheet.

Go to your local sheet and, using the same technique, figure out which cities in your readership area have the most sites.

Dirty Work

2008-09-30T08:18:00.000-07:00

'Big and dirty' Bunker Hill project has lasted nearly 20 years, but a congressional probe rejected the charge that it's been bungled

Karen Dorn Steele
Staff writer
Spokesman-Review
Tuesday, July 23, 2002

The numbers are staggering: Tens of millions of cubic yards of mine wastes moved. Nearly 2,000 lead-contaminated yards scraped clean.

Hundreds of old industrial buildings demolished. Even a mile and a half of the Coeur d'Alene River temporarily rerouted.

The massive cleanup of the 21-square-mile Bunker Hill Superfund site in Idaho's Silver Valley has consumed nearly 20 years and more than $250 million.

But after all the digging's done, after the waste dumps are capped, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finally leaves town, the site won't be pollution-free.

The old mining wastes will remain, buried in huge landfills that must be monitored for years to come. And contaminated mine water gushing from the hills still must be treated -- maybe forever.

Among the ongoing problems:

• The Bunker Hill Mine near Kellogg continues to release an average 1,500 gallons a minute of water so acidic it can burn exposed skin. It also contains cadmium, copper, lead, mercury and zinc.

The water is treated in an aging plant before it reaches the Coeur d'Alene River. But if the plant ever fails "you'd have a catastrophic release of heavy metals to the river," said Mike Gearheard, EPA Superfund manager in Seattle.

• Upgrading the treatment plant, built by Gulf Resources in 1974, will cost $21.2 million, a big increase to the cleanup bill. And the water must be treated in perpetuity, at an estimated cost of up to $2.5 million a year. EPA and Idaho are at an impasse over who should pay to run the plant once the cleanup is finished. Idaho has budgeted $400,000 a year to maintain the entire site when EPA leaves.

• The site has been repeatedly recontaminated by floods and ruptured piping that carried lead-polluted sediments onto property that's already been cleaned. Some expensive cleanup work had to be done again.

• The EPA isn't sure to what extent contaminated ground water contributes to a problem with zinc in the river, a major threat to aquatic life.

EPA officials hope a cap over the main waste dump eventually will cut off rain and snowmelt carrying contamination into the ground water. But the Bunker Hill site still contributes more than half the zinc going into the Coeur d'Alene River -- about 1,400 pounds a day.

• A $25 million, 72-mile biking and hiking trail that stretches from Mullan to Harrison through the Superfund project remains contaminated beneath its asphalt paving with high levels of lead, arsenic and other heavy metals.

The 10-foot-wide trail, the result of a federal court-ordered cleanup agreement with Union Pacific Railroad, will be posted with hundreds of signs warning people not to wander onto the contaminated soil.

• The overall project's completion has been delayed up to three years, because mining companies Hecla and Asarco defaulted earlier this year on a 1994 legal agreement to clean up lead-polluted yards and some small businesses.

This month, the mining companies agreed to spend an additional $2.5 million by December, completing 70 more of the 700 yards awaiting remediation.

The yard cleanup delay forced EPA to defer other work while picking up cleanup on 100 of the properties, said Cami Grandinetti, EPA's Bunker Hill project manager. Before the yard problem surfaced, EPA had predicted cleanup would be finished this year.

When the project is done, EPA will able to say with confidence that it has protected people -- especially small children -- by greatly reducing lead pollution in yards, businesses and public areas, Grandinetti said.

But the site's worrisome ecological problems "are much more complex and long-term," she said.

Read the full story here.

Records and Environmental Reporting

2008-09-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

Fewer Polluters Punished Under Bush Administration, Records Show
Knight Ridder Newspapers, by Seth Borenstein, December 8, 2003.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is catching and punishing far fewer polluters than the two previous administrations, according to a Knight Ridder analysis of 15 years of environmental-enforcement records.

Civil enforcement of pollution laws peaked when the president's father, George H.W. Bush, was in office from 1989-93 and has fallen ever since, but it's plummeted since George W. Bush took office three years ago. That's according to records of 17 different categories of enforcement activity obtained by Knight Ridder through the Freedom of Information Act."

Plants Detail Impact of Toxic Releases; Worst-Case Scenarios Unlikely, Industry Says
Louisville Courier-Journal, June 10, 2004, by James Bruggers and Gregory A. Hall.

An unchecked release of toxic chemicals from any one of dozens of plants in the Louisville metropolitan area - from chemical plants to a commercial bakery - could sicken thousands of residents.

And the potential impact can go far beyond a company's property, according to risk-management plans filed by the companies with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

EPA expected to lose Calif emissions suit: documents
Reuters
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency figured it would lose a lawsuit filed by California if the agency turned down the state's request to toughen vehicle emissions standards to fight global warming, according to documents released on Wednesday.

The suit the documents envisioned was filed on January 2, after the agency rejected a petition by California seeking a waiver from federal law to impose more stringent standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars, light trucks and sport utility vehicles.

Railroad ignored advice on pipe
State urged barrier to contain wastewater leaks at refuel depot
Spokesman-Review, December 24, 2004

In case of a catastrophic diesel spill, a $42-million state-of-the-art refueling depot sitting atop the region's aquifer may rely on little more than single-walled plastic piping, according to state documents and reports from the railroad's consultants.

Despite a recommendation from a state environmental engineer, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. placed no containment barrier beneath a system of pipes leading from a refueling platform to a cluster of lined tanks …

… The design plans were in hundreds of pages of documents, analyses and internal e-mails made available by the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality in response to a public records request by The Spokesman-Review.

Online Records

2008-09-29T20:48:00.001-07:00

1. Who are the plaintiffs in Whitman County civil case no. 08-2-00181-2?

2. How many WSU sites are on the Department of Ecology’s most recent hazardous sites list?

3. Who is the Washington state public records coordinator for nuclear waste?

4. Who owns tax parcel no. 35093.2006 in Spokane County?

5. What landmark borders the property to the east?

6. How many well logs are registered for Chevron in Whitman County?

7. Who received the most amount of money in federal farm subsidies in Whitman County in 2006?

8. Using the EPA’s EnviroFacts database, identify the number of hazardous waste sites that are part of Superfund in Shoshone County, Idaho?

9. Which agency manages HazDat and what does it track?

10. Where can we find the Five-Year Review for the Bunker Hill Superfund site?

Story Proposals

2008-09-18T09:03:00.001-07:00

Due Thursday, Sept. 25, 9:10 a.m.

Now that we’ve heard Addy Hatch’s thoughts, we’re in better shape to create more precise and comprehensive story proposals.

On Tuesday, we heard several good story ideas that lacked a direct connection to climate change. Those may be good stories to pursue in the future but perhaps not for this project.

If you don’t have a strong climate story, we have several story ideas that need writers. If you’re struggling, feel free to contact me.

For next Thursday, prepare a 500-word climate story proposal including supporting documents, sources, a proposed nut graf, and a summary of previous writings on the issue. That proposal must show how the work will relate to readers in the Inland Northwest.

Story proposals

2008-09-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Story Proposals

It’s time to start preparing story proposals.

Bring a minimum of two story proposals to class on Tuesday, Sept. 16. We’ll meet with Addy Hatch, the S-R’s city editor to pitch stories and discuss preliminary plans.

Each story proposal should contain the following:

Background: An overview/summary of the news story. You can also consider it your nut graf.

Documentation: At least one journal article, policy paper or public document that you plan to use within your story. Again, we want to make sure our reporting is grounded in fact, not opinion.

Sources: Scientific, public or personal. We need to begin to identify the people who will help you tell these stories.

On Thursday, Sept. 11, we’ll meet in Owen 319D in the Owen Science and Engineering Library, third floor research room. Go through the Map Room to the computer lab.

Tuesday's Visit to a "Climate Friendly Farm"

2008-09-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

Please meet at the classroom at 9 a.m. on Tuesday for the visit with Dr. David Rhys Huggins of the Climate Friendly Farming project. We'll be taking two WSU vehicles to the farm, which is about 10 minutes from campus.

Here's a quick intro to the project:

"Agriculture affects the condition of the environment in many ways, including impacts on global warming through the production of greenhouse gases (Robertson et al., 2000). In 2004, the US EPA estimated that agriculture contributed approximately 7% of the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (in carbon equivalents, or CE), primarily as methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). While agriculture represents a small but relevant source of greenhouse gas emissions, it has the potential, with new practices, to also act as a sink, tying up or sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere in the form of soil carbon (Willson et al., 2001; Lal, 1999).

For more information, visit the CFF webpage.

Thursday's talk with Karen Dorn Steele

2008-09-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

Karen Dorn Steele is an investigative reporter and state courts reporter who joined the staff of The Spokesman-Review in 1982. She has won a series of major national reporting awards for the Spokane newspaper.

In 2006, Dorn Steele and her colleague Bill Morlin were awarded the Payne Ethics Award from the University of Oregon and a Blethen investigative reporting award from the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association for a series of stories on Spokane’s former mayor, Jim West. West was a powerful “family values” Republican who sponsored anti-gay legislation while in the Legislature but was leading a secret life, using the Internet to solicit young men for sex. After the Spokesman-Review stories were published in May 2005, Spokane voters recalled West by a 65% majority.

Dorn Steele won a National Headliner Award in 2000 (with two colleagues) for ''King of Kaiser,'' which included her profile of Kaiser Aluminum owner Charles Hurwitz of Houston and other coverage of a bitter two-year strike and lockout. Also in 2000, she was awarded the Washington State Bar Association's Excellence in Legal Journalism Award for her stories on a federal judge in Eastern Washington who passed racially disparaging and other insulting notes in his courtroom. The stories led to a rare public reprimand of the judge by the Judicial Council of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 1998, Dorn Steele won the National Council on Crime and Delinquency’s media award for “City of Second Chances,” a series that reported a major influx of ex-felons from Washington prisons to Spokane and documented the little-known impacts. She also won a Best of West award that year for breaking the story nationally of the long-suppressed National Cancer Institute study of radioactive fallout from Cold War bomb tests.

Other achievements include the 1995 George Polk Award for Environmental Reporting (with Jim Lynch) for “Wasteland,” a five-part series on squandered taxpayer money in the $7.5 billion nuclear cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation: a Gerald Loeb award for “Wasteland'”; the C.B. Blethen (Seattle Times) investigative reporting first place prize; the National Press Club's Robert Kozik Award; the Mencken Award for the best news and investigative series in the nation; and the Best of West first place for environmental and natural resources reporting.

Dorn Steele also won a 1988 William Stokes Award, plus several regional prizes for the story of the Green Run, a secret 1949 military experiment at Hanford that spread radiation throughout the region with no public warning.

During the 1986-87 academic year, Dorn Steele held joint appointments at Stanford University. She was an Arms Control Fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control and a Knight Fellow in Stanford's mid-career program for journalists. In 1992, she was awarded a $45,000 research grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Program on Peace and International Cooperation. She took a year's sabbatical, including a trip to the former Soviet Union's nuclear weapons production site near Chelyabinsk.

Dorn Steele was the 20th journalist to be inducted into Washington State University's Hall of Journalistic Achievement. In 1996, she was listed in Marquis Who's Who in America. She graduated with honors in history from Stanford University and holds a master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Current Government Conclusions and Policy ... and Today's Random Science Photo

2008-09-01T12:13:00.001-07:00

In advance of Tuesday's discussion, here is the position of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Bush. For more information - on history, predictions, economy, wildlife and more - visit the EPA's page on climate change:

“If greenhouse gases continue to increase, climate models predict that the average temperature at the Earth's surface could increase from 3.2 to 7.2ºF above 1990 levels by the end of this century. Scientists are certain that human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases will change the planet's climate. But they are not sure by how much it will change, at what rate it will change, or what the exact effects will be.

“Climate change affects people, plants, and animals. Scientists are working to better understand future climate change and how the effects will vary by region and over time.

Scientists have observed that some changes are already occurring. Observed effects include sea level rise, shrinking glaciers, changes in the range and distribution of plants and animals, trees blooming earlier, lengthening of growing seasons, ice on rivers and lakes freezing later and breaking up earlier, and thawing of permafrost. Another key issue being studied is how societies and the Earth's environment will adapt to or cope with climate change.

In the United States, scientists believe that most areas will to continue to warm, although some will likely warm more than others. It remains very difficult to predict which parts of the country will become wetter or drier, but scientists generally expect increased precipitation and evaporation, and drier soil in the middle parts of the country. Northern regions such as Alaska are expected to experience the most warming. In fact, Alaska has been experiencing significant changes in climate in recent years that may be at least partly related to human caused global climate change.”

Cliff Notes to Your Reading

2008-08-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

I know this is a lot of reading so let me simplify: Read these story excerpts. What is the main issue in each?

Day 1
Anton Caputo
San Antonio News-Express

SURFSIDE BEACH — Charles Watson stands by the side of the road smoking a cigarette and snapping photos with a digital camera. He seems transfixed as he watches his family's longtime beach home jacked off its pilings and rolled slowly down the street.

Several neighboring houses in this sleepy coastal town will meet the same fate this very day.

Forty years ago, 200 feet of sandy beach buffered Beach Drive from the sea. But today, the surf runs freely between the pilings and over the remains of concrete foundations.

The erosion has become so severe that Texas declared the property a public beach and gave the owners a choice: Take state money to cover the cost of moving the house or go to court ...

Beach Drive lost this war with nature, an early victim of rising seas and global warming and in many ways a harbinger of the effects of climate change on Texas.

Global warming often is associated with exotic places. The United Nations chose the Indonesian island of Bali as the setting of its international climate change summit that begins Monday. And to much of the world, melting polar ice caps, receding Alpine glaciers and the rapid decline of polar bear populations represent the most visible and immediate effects.

But climate change also has reached temperate Texas. Rising seas and sinking land have created some of the worst erosion rates in the world along the state's Gulf Coast. Extreme weather, which many scientists believe will become the norm because of global warming, has produced torrential storms and severe droughts in recent years.

Day 2

Sitting on the edge of Seco Sinkhole in rural Medina County, watching runoff pour into the Edwards Aquifer, it is hard to imagine San Antonio running out of water.

The gaping hole some 60 feet wide is a unique conduit through the rocky limestone to the Edwards below. It's roughly 290 feet straight down to the fissures and pockets that make up the major water source for Central Texas.

On an overcast day in a record-wet spring that has prompted shrubs and plants to sprout from the normally barren sinkhole walls, water is flowing from Seco Creek into the massive opening. The spray of rushing water abounds and the landscape is lush. Most important, it is wet. Real wet.

But here's the rub. The creek flowing into the sinkhole was dry or nearly so for 14 months before torrential rainfalls this spring. The sinkhole's very name reflects the drought cycle: Seco is Spanish for dry.

As global warming continues to alter the climate, scientists agree that such boom and bust cycles will become more severe. Droughts will become more common as the area's already strained water supplies are further depleted by longer dry spells, evaporation and even the increased thirst of vegetation trying to survive in hotter climes. And the rain that does come is likely to arrive in more violent storms.

Day 3

REYNOSA, Mexico — After a lifetime of farming the dusty earth around this northern Mexico city, Juan Pinal understands the value of water and the uncertainty it poses to his livelihood.

"Water is worse than oil," the animated 43-year-old farmer said. "Oil you can substitute with other things. Water you cannot substitute."
...

As global warming and population growth make water even more valuable, farmers such as Morales and Pinal and their Texas counterparts are likely going to have to learn how to do with less.

Day 4

SINTON — John Rappole stares at a softball-sized hunk of twigs and grass perched above him in a dead willow tree.

The bushy sphere is a great kiskadee nest, and it's the type of thing that lured Rappole from his position at the National Zoo in Washington to the Rob and Bessie Welder Wildlife Refuge in South Texas for two months of fieldwork.

“That is it,” said the senior research scientist. “You find that and it's a thrill.”

The great kiskadee is not supposed to be here in rural San Patricio County. Neither is the green jay or the green kingfisher or several other species of birds flying around the 7,800-acre refuge.

Rappole should know. He spent three years here as a graduate student in the early 1970s, netting birds and documenting the results.

The birds are among some 70 species in Texas that Rappole believes have shifted their range to the north and east in the past 30 years.

The big question is why.

Day 5

This is Texas oil country. All around, tucked in the dense and swampy woods, rusty pumps operate as they have for decades. At first glance, it seems an unlikely place for a cutting-edge solution to the most politically charged environmental problem of our time.

Susan Hovorka, a senior scientist with the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, has chosen this spot to do a little pumping of her own. However, she's pumping carbon dioxide underground instead of pumping oil and gas out.

The technology — carbon sequestration — siphons carbon dioxide from power plants or other industrial facilities into the ground instead of letting the greenhouse gas escape to the atmosphere. And here, on an old oil pad in the Texas woods, is one of the most advanced and successful test projects.

Media and Science

2008-08-22T19:35:00.000-07:00

Photo from the New York Times

Let's get started with an interesting summer story from the New York Times. It gets to the guts of this semester: How best to convey science to the public?

Now go to the blog, Real Climate. Scroll down to the July 29 entry and read a few of the comments. Pretty brutal, eh? But if journalists can't effectively communicate science - or if scientific camps are scuffling - who sorts this out for the public?

As newspapers look to cut staff and save money, how has the relationship between scientific information and the public evolved? Which blogs can you trust to deliver scientifically sound and engaging information to readers? (Or taxpayers. Or voters. Or however you define the public.)