The Trump Family’s Long History With Immigration

 (By Tal Kopan and Curt Devine, CNN, 20 April 2017)

President Donald Trump has made overhauling the nation’s immigration system a central promise of his administration – and Tuesday he announced new efforts to get companies to “buy American (and) hire American.” But when it comes to hiring, he should know quite a bit about looking abroad.

The Trump family’s business ventures have made use of virtually every part of the US immigration system over time – including reported instances of illegal labor on two Trump-branded building projects.

Businesses run and owned by Trump and his adult children have been certified to legally hire 1,371 foreign visa workers since 2001, a CNN analysis of visa records shows. In addition, Trump-branded real estate has raised at least $50 million in foreign investor money through a program that gives foreign investors access to green cards, according to the company that did the development of the real estate.

Those permits have reflected the wide spectrum of the US immigration system.  The Trump enterprise has made use of low-skilled permits for vineyard seasonal workers, for example, and has used high-skilled visas to bring in models for its modeling agency.

Trump has telegraphed a hard-line position on immigration, and many of his administration’s hires have signaled a move to clamp down on the US immigration system. But Trump has not spoken at length about how his own business dealings influence his approach to the US immigration system. The White House has not responded to a request for comment about how Trump’s life experiences will influence his policy decisions.

Here’s a look at the ways Trump and his family have engaged with the US immigration system:

H-1B visas

How Trump businesses used it: In their business ventures, the Trumps’ businesses have received 283 H-1B visas since 2001. The high-skilled visas have been used for Trump’s modeling venture, Trump Model Management, Mar-A-Lago, the Trump Corporation and businesses associated with his hotels and resorts.

Melania Trump also used H-1B visas as a model to work in the US before she was granted a green card, according to a letter from her attorney released last year.

What it is: Often referred to as high-skilled visas, H-1Bs are “specialty occupation” permits, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. They cover a variety of fields, including science and technology fields like computer programming, and most types require higher education degrees. Other specific categories include research related to the Department of Defense and modeling.

What the political fight looks like: H-1B visas are in high demand by powerful industries, including Silicon Valley, the medical field and academia. The demand far outstrips the supply, and powerful lawmakers like unlikely allies Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have long sought to overhaul the program. Indian outsourcing companies are often accused of abusing the visas to take jobs away from other American employers.

Enter your email to sign up for CNN's "What Matters" Newsletter.

Bottom of Form

On Tuesday, Trump announced as part of his “Buy American, Hire American” initiative an executive order that calls for a review of the H-1B visa program, with the goal of reforming the program. Legislation on H-1Bs has long failed to advance on H-1Bs in Congress despite Grassley, Durbin and others’ efforts, but the administration this year took some steps to change the way the visas are distributed.

The Friday before the application cycle opened for 2017, USCIS and the Justice Department issued new guidance and policies to make it more difficult for computer programmers to gobble up the visas. While restrictionist immigration groups have sought to cut back the number of visas, as they have with virtually all forms of legal immigration, most lawmakers have sought reforms that would allow the US to attract top talent from around the world and encourage them to stay, especially in the STEM fields.

Asked about H-1B abuse during the primary, Trump said during a CNN debate in Miami: “I know the H1B very well. And it’s something that I frankly use and I shouldn’t be allowed to use it. We shouldn’t have it. Very, very bad for workers. And second of all, I think it’s very important to say, well, I’m a businessman and I have to do what I have to do.”

H-2B and H-2A visas

How Trump businesses used it: Trump businesses have received 1,024 H-2B visas since 2000, according to a CNN review of Labor records. Those visas have gone to Mar-A-Lago, Jupiter Gold Club, Lamington Farm and the Trump National Golf Club for jobs like cooks, waiters and waitresses and housekeepers. Trump Vineyards has received 64 H-2A permits since 2006, a CNN review found, for agricultural work.

What it is: H-2B visas are temporary authorizations to fill non-agricultural jobs with foreign workers. H-2A visas are specifically for temporary agriculture jobs. Employers are required to establish there are no qualified American workers to fill the positions and that hiring the workers will not affect American workers’ wages. The jobs can be either seasonal, one-time need, based on peak operations or intermittent.

What the political fight looks like: The H-2B programs are controversial but also necessary to many regional economies. The industries that use the H-2 visas, primarily agriculture and food service, also tend to draw heavily on undocumented labor when workers are unavailable legally or the system is perceived as too onerous. Employers in the H-2 program are usually required to provide certain wages, transportation and housing for workers, which can be a burden on businesses that feel they can use undocumented labor for cheaper pay. The program has also been found to be ripe for abuse, as the Government Accountability Office laid out in a 2015 report questioning the effectiveness of penalties built into the program – without which it is difficult to ensure the prevention of exploitation and abuse of workers.

Another concern for employers in the program is that the jobs must be temporary. But some agriculture industries like dairy farming require labor year round, making it difficult for them to use the program to import labor, which they have difficulty finding legally in the US.

Like other forms of immigration, several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle would like to boost the number of permits and make them easier for employers to use, in part to alleviate the demand for undocumented labor. Members of Congress, especially those from heavily agricultural districts, pay attention to the issue. But on the other side of the equation, restrictionist groups, who are represented in the administration by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, believe these guest worker programs take jobs away from Americans, and thus should be heavily curtailed.

Asked during the 2016 primary about his use of foreign workers during the 2016 primary, Trump defended his Mar-A-Lago property’s hiring to The New York Times, saying in an interview, “There are very few qualified people during the high season in the area.”

EB-5 visas

How Trump businesses used it: A project by the family company of Trump’s son-in-law and top White House adviser, Jared Kushner, called Trump Bay Street in Jersey City, New Jersey, raised $50 million, or one-quarter of its funding, from EB-5 investments, a company representative confirmed to CNN. The property uses the Trump name but was not a project managed by the Trump Organization. Kushner Companies has not otherwise made us of EB-5, the representative said, although new deals being pursued by the company have drawn scrutiny in recent weeks.

Because EB-5 investment does not require disclosure, it is also difficult to know fully how many Trump-branded properties could have benefited from it; Trump also licenses his name to properties that his company does not directly develop.

The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment on its use of EB-5.

What it is: The EB-5 program allows foreign businesspeople and their families to apply for green cards, eventually leading to citizenship. To qualify for the program, would-be applicants must make a qualifying investment in a US enterprise and demonstrate they plan to “create or preserve” 10 US jobs, according to USCIS. The Department of Homeland Security has proposed rule changes that would increase the investment threshold over $1 million.

What the political fight looks like: The program has drawn criticism from members of Congress on the left and right, who assail EB-5 as essentially selling citizenship to wealthy foreigners – many of whom are based in China – although they acknowledge it does have value as a way to spur investment in the US and job growth. Some rural lawmakers complain that the program unfairly benefits major cities that are already economically well off.

Lawmakers that represent major metropolitan areas, like the New York delegation, have often defended the program.  EB-5 is currently tied to government funding, which expires at the end of April. Despite years of reform efforts, lawmakers have repeatedly extended the program in continuing resolutions funding the government. At a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing on the topic, lawmakers signaled they would not allow another reauthorization without reform, but with five legislative days left this month before funding runs out, leadership has moved to avoid any controversies that might slow down passing funding.

Family visas

How the Trump family used it: Trump’s family also has a personal connection to immigration, with his grandfather, mother and two wives being immigrants themselves. Melania Trump is Slovenian, but began modeling in the US with H-1B visas and was given a green card in 2001, before she married Trump. Trump self-sponsored herself for residency, according to a letter by her attorney released during the campaign. She became a US citizen in 2006.

Trump’s grandfather was himself an immigrant to the US, joining his sister from Germany in the late 1800s. Trump’s mother was an immigrant from Scotland, coming to the US in her teens to work as a domestic servant. His first wife, Ivana, was also an immigrant, coming to the US via Canada from Czechoslovakia. Ivana became a US citizen in 1988, 11 years after she married Trump.

Melania’s sister, Ines Knauss, lives in New York, but neither she, family attorneys nor the White House answered an inquiry about whether she was sponsored for a visa or residency by her sister.

What it is: In addition to business-related visas, the US offers unlimited visas for “immediate relatives,” according to the State Department. That includes spouses of US citizens, unmarried children of US citizens under 21, orphans adopted by US citizens and parents of US citizens who are at least 21 years old. There are also limited numbers of visas for more extended family.

 What the political fight looks like: Proponents of immigration reform and restrictionists alike have sought to address “chain migration,” a term used to describe the practice of bringing immigrants to the US largely based on their familial connections as opposed to the merits of what they could offer the US. Restrictionists especially have viewed the US system as too lenient, and Trump himself spoke of the need for a “merit-based” immigration system in his joint address to Congress.

Illegal labor

How they used it: There have been two incidents in which Trump-related projects reportedly used undocumented immigrants as labor.

Trump faced a lawsuit in the 1980s that accused him and business partners of withholding wages from undocumented Polish immigrants and union workers hired by a contracting company called Kaszycki & Sons to demolish the building that would make room for Trump Tower. Trump testified he did not know the workers were undocumented and blamed the contractor for hiring them.

A judge ruled in 1991 that Trump and his associates owed the workers more than $300,000 plus interest. The ruling was appealed, and the case was eventually settled under a sealed agreement, according to a source familiar with the proceedings.

Separately, The Washington Post reported in 2015 that it interviewed workers on the construction of Trump’s hotel in the nation’s capital who said they entered the country illegally, several of whom were still lacking authorization to live and work in the US. Trump’s spokespeople at the time said the company requires its contractors to comply with hiring laws and check status of employees, and denied hiring any undocumented immigrants to build the hotel.

What it is: Non-citizens of the US are not allowed to live and work in the country without proper authorization. That could be a green card, or a particular type of visa, but foreigners who live and work in the US without proper authorization – including expired visas – are considered undocumented immigrants. There’s an estimated 11 million of them in the US.

What the political fight looks like: Illegal immigration has been arguably the most contentious fight of the landscape. Trump made cracking down on it the focal point of his campaign, pledging to vastly step up border security and deportations and detentions of undocumented immigrants.

Many Democrats and moderate Republicans agree with Trump’s stated objective to deport serious criminals here illegally. But they have also called for a compromise solution that allows undocumented immigrants who have lived in the US for years, sometimes decades, raising families and contributing to their communities, to have a pathway to legalization and citizenship. Trump has said the “bad” ones need to be dealt with first.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/politics/trump-family-immigration-visas/index.html

Is 'wokeness' responsible for US and European heat waves? Absolutely.

 With record temperatures steam-pressing the United States and much of Europe, Africa and Asia, many in my Science-Is-A-Hoax Facebook group have posed a sensible question: Is "wokeness" to blame for these heat waves?

As a white man with access to the internet and an unwillingness to care about anyone besides myself, I can tell you the answer is, indisputably, yes. Liberal wokeness is causing temperatures to rise and forcing me to leave my Hummer idling in the driveway with the AC on and the doors open in an attempt to cool the air around my house.

President Joe Biden and his windmill-hugging liberal minions will tell you the soaring temperatures have something to do with “climate change” or “global warming” or “humanity’s unwillingness to stop destroying the planet, thereby guaranteeing its own extinction.”  Well, if you believe that, I have a coastal bridge to sell you! (FULL DISCLOSURE: Bridge is currently underwater and will require minor heightening and repairs.)

On Tuesday, the National Weather Service, which notoriously attempts to influence conservatives with left-wing concepts like “facts” and “data,” forecast “dangerous heat” across the country, ranging from the high 90s to triple digits. 

In a heat advisory, the Weather Service wrote: “Take extra precautions if you work or spend time outside. When possible reschedule strenuous activities to early morning or evening. Know the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.”

You don’t get to tell me what to do, you Marxist meteorologists. I’m an American, and if I want to go out in the backyard and dump used motor oil in the pond while breathing in the welcoming smoke of my neighbor’s tire fire, I will do so without knowing the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion, thank you very much. Commies.

Now back to why wokeness is to blame for the heat, and for everything I don’t want to be forced to care about.  Wokeness is an effort to get a person like me to treat people who aren’t exactly like me with some level of basic human decency, usually through onerous requests like respecting their identity or faith, not making offensive jokes at their expense or having to make almost immeasurably small adjustments to the way I speak or live my life.

It could involve a person saying, "I use he/him pronouns and would appreciate you using them when you refer to me," and me saying, "That would require me to be considerate, and I can't do that because my brain is busy figuring out new ways to 'own the libs' on Twitter."

Or it could involve a teacher giving my child the historical context of racism in America so he can grow up with a full understanding of our nation's complicated past, when I would prefer that teacher stick to the teachings of Sean Hannity, who once said: "The U.S. is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth.“

When confronted with wokeness, I have two options: Listen, understand and do my best to make another person’s life better (HAH!); or get extremely angry and vent about it online.

Obviously, I always choose the second option, which is bad for global temperatures because getting angry online causes my brain to start functioning, and the friction involved in firing dormant synapses generates SERIOUS heat.

Now imagine how many of me there are in this country and around the world and how much heat our brains are cranking out when we get angered by woke-ism. Is that enough to explain why the United Kingdom shattered its previous high-temperature records on Tuesday, with one village in eastern England hitting 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit?

No, not quite. The other woke-induced issue contributing to these heat waves is the voluminous hot air released by Republican politicians and right-wing pundits when they are angry about wokeness, which is all the time.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently released a weather-changing blast of hot air when he blamed school shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas, on wokeness: “We stopped teaching values in so many of our schools. Now we’re teaching wokeness, we’re indoctrinating our children with things like CRT, telling some children they’re not equal to others, and they’re the cause of other people’s problems.”

Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and possible GOP presidential candidate, spiked the room temperature in Fox News’ studio Tuesday, saying America needs to "get rid of all this woke stuff” and start fighting for “normal people.” 

Do you see the harm you’re doing to the environment, you woke warriors? You’re causing people like Haley to warm the earth’s atmosphere with fired-up comments suggesting you’re not normal. Should she have kept that thought to herself and never admitted she had it to anyone, anywhere, ever? Yes. But you folks in the “let’s all take the infinitesimally small measures necessary so everyone can be their true selves” crowd forced Haley to say it out loud in a billowing puff of hot air and now WE HAVE FLIGHTS GETTING CANCELED BECAUSE AIRPORT RUNWAYS ARE MELTING!!

Shame on all of you for trying to force us normals to think about someone other than ourselves. You woke-ists have nobody but yourselves to blame for these heat waves.  Either that or I typed this column outdoors by the tire fire without knowing the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/is-wokeness-responsible-for-us-and-european-heat-waves-absolutely/ar-AAZMHNs?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=c99e491693c84d17b89a2463959b05a6 

Big Oil’s Master Class In Rigging The System

(By Sheldon Whitehouse and Elizabeth Warren, Washington Post, 09 August 2016)

The writers, both Democrats, represent Rhode Island and Massachusetts, respectively, in the U.S. Senate.

For years, ExxonMobil actively advanced the notion that its products had little or no impact on the Earth’s environment. As recently as last year, it continued to fund organizations that play down the risks of carbon pollution. So what did ExxonMobil actually know about climate change? And when did it know it?  Reasonable questions — particularly if ExxonMobil misled its investors about the long-term prospects of its business model or if the company fooled consumers into buying its products based on false claims.

So now the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York are investigating whether ExxonMobil violated state laws by knowingly misleading their residents and shareholders about climate change. Those investigations may be making ExxonMobil executives nervous, and their Republican friends in Congress are riding to the rescue. House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) and his fellow committee Republicans have issued subpoenas demanding that the state officials fork over all materials relating to their investigations. They also targeted eight organizations, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rockefeller Family Fund and Greenpeace, with similar subpoenas, demanding that they turn over internal communications related to what Smith describes as part of “coordinated efforts” to deprive ExxonMobil of its First Amendment rights.

Take a breath to absorb that: State attorneys general are investigating whether a fraud had been committed — something state AGs do every day. Sometimes AGs uncover fraud and sometimes they don’t, but if the evidence warrants it, the question of fraud will be resolved in open court, with all the evidence on public display. But instead of applauding the AGs for doing their jobs, this particular investigation against this particular oil company has brought down the wrath of congressional Republicans — and a swift effort to shut down the investigation before any evidence becomes public. So far, both AGs and all eight organizations have refused to comply. We say, good for them.

Let’s call this what it is: a master class in how big corporations rig the system. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Smith has received nearly $685,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry during his career. Now he is using his committee to harass the investigators and bully those who dare bring facts of possible corporate malfeasance to their attention. Undoubtedly, the oil industry wants no further attention, much less court-supervised discovery, into whether it has spent decades deliberately deceiving the public about the harms associated with its product. So here come Smith and his Republican colleagues with threats of legal action designed to sidetrack state investigations and silence groups petitioning the government to address potential wrongdoing.

There’s plenty for the AGs to investigate. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, issued a 2015 report, “Climate Deception Dossiers: Internal Fossil Fuel Industry Memos Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation,” and a 2007 report, “Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science.” Both reports document how the industry has protected its bottom line by funding front organizations and scientists to put out junk science contradicting what peer-reviewed scientists, and even the industry’s own experts, were saying about how its products affected the environment.  

Union of Concerned Scientists President Ken Kimmell rightly dismissed the committee’s request, saying, “Mr. Smith makes no allegation that UCS violated any laws or regulations, and his claim, that providing information to attorneys general infringes on ExxonMobil’s rights, is nonsense.”  Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman are also fighting back. In separate letters, they told Smith that they have no intention of complying with the committee’s request. “The Subpoena brings us one step closer to a protracted, unnecessary legal confrontation which will only distract and detract from the work of our respective offices,” Schneiderman wrote.

Smith is not the first fossil-fuel-backed Republican in Congress to come to the industry’s defense. In May, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), recipient of $1.8 million in oil and gas industry contributions since 1989, called the state AGs’ investigation a “misuse of power” and “politics at its worst.” The greater abuse comes when congressional committees appear to operate at the behest of the industries they are meant to oversee.

Congressional investigations and hearings have a unique ability to focus a nation’s attention and bring facts of public importance to light. As committee chairmen, Smith and Inhofe can direct their committees’ authority as they see fit, but using that power to stifle lawful state investigations doesn’t advance the First Amendment, it tramples on it.  So we have an alternative suggestion. If Chairmen Smith and Inhofe are concerned about the First Amendment rights of ExxonMobil, they should each call a hearing, ask ExxonMobil executives to testify, and give them the opportunity to set the record straight. A committee chairman could do little more to protect any person’s right to speak freely than to give that person the chance to testify before Congress. We would love to hear what they have to say.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/big-oils-master-class-in-rigging-the-system/2016/08/09/03ea2df6-5e48-11e6-9d2f-b1a3564181a1_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

Global Warming

Global Warming Is Very Real

(By Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone, September 12, 2013)

On September 27th, a group of international scientists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will gather in an old brick brewery in Stockholm and proclaim with near certainty that human activity is altering the planet in profound ways. The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report offers slam-dunk evidence that burning fossil fuels is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warn that sea levels could rise by almost three feet by the end of the century if we don't change our ways. The report will underscore that the basic facts about climate change are more established than ever, and that the consequences of escalating carbon pollution are likely to mean that, as The New York Times recently argued, "babies being born now could live to see the early stages of a global calamity."

The 10 Dumbest Things Ever Said About Global Warming

A leaked draft of the report points out that the link between fossil-fuel burning and climate change is already observable: "It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010. There is high confidence that this has warmed the ocean, melted snow and ice, raised global mean sea level and changed some climate extremes in the second half of the 20th century." If you look beyond the tables and charts and graphs that fill the reports, you can see the Arctic vanishing, great cities like Miami and Shanghai drowning, droughts causing famine in Africa, and millions of refugees fleeing climate-related catastrophes. Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, recently told a group of climate scientists that if we want to avoid this fate, governments must act now to cut carbon pollution: "We have five minutes before midnight."

But, of course, this is nothing new. In 2007, when the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment Report, it was also nearly certain that human activity was heating up the planet, with grave consequences for our future well-being. And six years before that, when the IPCC released its Third Assessment, scientists were pretty certain about it too. But phrases like "high confidence" in warming do not, to the unscientific ear, inspire high confidence in the report's finding, since they imply the existence of doubt, no matter how slight. And in the climate wars, "Doubt is what deniers thrive on and exploit," says Bob Watson, who was head of the IPCC from 1997 to 2002. The final report has not even been released yet, and already prominent bloggers in the denial-sphere, like Anthony Watts, are calling it "stillborn."  But perhaps the most significant thing about the new IPCC report is not the scientific findings. It's that the release of the report may actually mark the beginning of a new phase of the climate wars – one in which scientists and activists learn to fight back.

The IPCC, which was founded in 1988 by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization, is the world's leading authority on climate science. Deniers like to characterize it as a big, faceless bureaucracy – but in fact it's a tiny agency. The entire organization is housed on the eighth floor of the WMO offices in Geneva and has only 12 full-time employees, with an annual budget of a measly $9 million. The agency doesn't do any research on its own – its role is simply to assess and interpret scientific, technical and economic data. All of the actual work – the assessments themselves – is written by scientists around the world, who volunteer their time to distill information from thousands of studies and academic papers. As climate science has gotten more complex, the reports have ballooned. The Fourth Assessment was more than 3,000 pages long and was toiled over by more than 800 scientists and 2,500 expert reviewers – the Fifth Assessment is likely to be even bigger. These reports, which are issued every five or six years, are broken into three sections: Working Group I, which covers the physical science of climate change, will be released this month; Working Group II, which explores the impacts of rising carbon pollution on nature and human life, will be released next March; Working Group III, which analyzes various scenarios to cut carbon pollution, is due in April. Finally, a synthesis report that tries to pull it all together in a brief summary will be published next fall.

When scientists undertook the first IPCC assessment in the late 1980s, the assumption was that if they got the facts right, politicians would take action. "In the beginning, the purpose of the reports was to provide the fundamentals for a global climate agreement," says Watson. The first report, issued in 1990, led to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the international treaty that was the foundation for a global agreement. The second report, which came out in 1995, was supposed to be the basis for the Kyoto Protocol. But Kyoto, of course, was DOA, in part because it was never ratified by the U.S.

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Deniers have always been cranked up about the IPCC, in part because of the black-helicopter paranoia of many conservatives who see climate change as a U.N. plot to take away freedom. And from the beginning, they have fought dirty, attacking not just the science but the scientists themselves. After the IPCC released its Second Assessment in 1995, the deniers were not happy that the report directly linked global warming with the burning of fossil fuels ("The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate"). So they attacked one of the lead authors of the report, Ben Santer, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. A fossil-fuel-industry-funded group called the Global Climate Coalition accused Santer of removing mention of uncertainties in the chapter to make global warming appear more certain than it was. Later investigations found that Santer's so-called scientific cleansing involved little more than clarifying language suggested by fellow scientists. "Nothing in my scientific training prepared me for what I faced in the aftermath of that report," Santer says now. One night years later, he opened his front door and found a dead rat on his porch. In the street, he watched a yellow Hummer drive off, the driver yelling obscenities at him.

As the prominence of climate change grew and the evidence became stronger, attacks escalated. In 2009, just weeks before the Copenhagen climate summit, hackers broke into the servers of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit in the U.K. and publicly posted hundreds of private e-mails from climate scientists involved with the IPCC's Fourth Assessment report. Deniers seized on these messages, taking a few barbed comments out of context (in one, for instance, Santer wrote that if he ran into Pat Michaels – a well-known shill for the fossil­fuel industry – he would "be tempted to beat the crap out of him") and claimed they now had their smoking gun, proof of a global conspiracy among scientists to keep out information that didn't fit their thesis that the Earth was warming. The substance of the e-mails was subsequently investigated by five agencies, all of whom cleared scientists of any professional or personal misconduct. And not surprisingly, the hackers who broke into the East Anglia servers and stole the e-mails were never found.

Climate Change and the End of Australia

"For a lot of scientists, ClimateGate was a real awakening," says Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard and co-author of Merchants of Doubt, which chronicles the fossil-fuel industry's long battle to undermine climate science. "It was clear that if you were going to work on climate change, you were a public figure. And it was no longer enough to just do the science. You also had to go out and explain it to people – and defend it." By then, Santer reports, he was receiving countless death threats.  "Most of the world does not have a problem with denial of climate change," says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. "It's only an issue in Australia, Canada and, most significantly, the United States." Although the U.S. population as a whole is moving toward accepting the reality of climate change, Congress remains a scientific backwater. One recent analysis by the Center for American Progress found that almost a third of the 535 members of the House and Senate are climate deniers. Not coincidentally, those 161 reps have taken more than $54 million in political contributions from the fossil-fuel industry.

But lately, climate activists are less shy about calling out deniers. Organizing for Action, the successor of President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, recently created the Congressional Climate Change Awards, honoring 135 members of Congress, including Dana Rohrabacher, Steve King and House Speaker John Boehner, for "exceptional extremism and ignoring the overwhelming judgment of science." And of course it doesn't hurt that President Obama has broken his silence about climate change and seems determined to make it part of his agenda in the second term.

But the biggest change is in the public profile of scientists themselves. Leading the charge is Michael Mann, an IPCC veteran and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State, who has become a presence on TV talk shows and is author of a must-read book about the politics of climate science, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. Mann is taking the unprecedented step of suing the conservative National Review for defamation after the magazine's blog quoted a story that called Mann "the Jerry Sandusky of climate science" because he "molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science."  Mann can't talk about the pending lawsuit, but he points out that "concerted industry-funded attacks on our science" by deniers have mobilized many scientists to fight back. In Mann's view, ClimateGate and other denier campaigns are deliberately designed to erode the credibility of scientists: "Public polling shows that scientists are among the most trusted messengers around when it comes to issues such as climate change," Mann says. "So clearly this was an effort by fossil-fuel-industry front groups and advocates to go right at that. It was a deeply cynical effort to undermine the public faith in scientists and science."

The war over the IPCC's fifth assessment officially got under way in August, after a draft report of the "Summary for Policymakers" of the Working Group I report was leaked to the media. Deniers immediately seized on two issues to create controversy and undercut the findings of the report.  The first has to do with "equilibrium climate sensitivity," which is the amount the climate is likely to warm in response to rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. In a leaked draft of the Fifth Assessment, scientists slightly lowered the range of possible warming from the previous assessment. Some media outlets – including The Economist, which should have known better – seized on this data to suggest that this is "one sign [that] suggests [the new assessment] might be less terrifying than it could have been." In fact, as prominent climate blogger Joe Romm pointed out, these arcane, highly technical numbers are "far less interesting and consequential subject than the fact that we are headed way, way past [emissions targets] or that the real-world slow feedbacks are expected to make a very big contribution to warming this century." To put it another way: In the real world, climate sensitivity means zip.

But that's how the denier game works: They seize on small errors and inconsequential factual inconsistencies in a piece of climate research and use it to discredit the science and reassure people that climate change is no big deal. In the 2007 Assessment, for instance, the authors and reviewers overlooked a sentence that asserted Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035 – an obvious misstatement, which deniers seized and used to suggest that the entire assessment was bunk. "You didn't have to be a scientist to know that's not true," says Watson. "It was simply an error that slipped through, and deniers tried to use it to invalidate the findings of the entire report." It's like finding a misspelling in the Manhattan phone book and then declaring the whole book useless.

Why the City of Miami is Doomed to Drown

The second issue that has come up is the question of a "hiatus," or pause in surface-temperature warming. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, winner of a climate-denier award from Texas green groups, recently proclaimed that "there has been no recorded warming since 1998." Not exactly, Ted. According to the IPCC draft report, the rate of warming at the planet's surface is lower over the past 15 years, but warming has not stopped. In fact, since the 1950s, each successive decade has been hotter than the last, and the 2000s were the hottest decade since modern record-keeping began in 1880. Scientists have a variety of explanations for this, including the fact that more heat is being transferred deeper into the ocean and that volcanic eruptions have blocked sunlight. "We never expected warming to be linear," says Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

To former IPCC chair Watson, it is crucial that these criticisms not go unanswered. "The IPCC needs to have an answer for this," he says. "They need to be prepared." But in Santer's view, climate science is rapidly approaching the point where it is immune to these kinds of critiques: "Up until now, the criticism has been that climate science is like a house of cards, and if you pull out one or two sets of data, it all collapses. That narrative has been refuted. The Fifth Assessment shows that warming has a physical and internal consistency – it's warming in the deep ocean, in the intermediate ocean and in the lower atmosphere. Sea level is rising. Arctic sea ice is retreating. The observational evidence for human-caused warming is overwhelming, compelling and irrefutable."

Why We Can't Count on Evolution to Counterbalance Climate Change

That may be true, says Oreskes, "but if there is one thing we have learned in recent years, it's that climate change is not just a scientific problem. It is also a political, social and cultural problem." According to Yale's Leiserowitz, it's also a problem that four in 10 people in the world have never heard of. "If you can reach them, you can convince them," says Leiserowitz. But it is going to take more than a few well-written press releases and a spiffy website: "Think about what a company like Coke does when they are launching a new product in the world," says Leiserowitz. "They spend a billion dollars doing market research, crafting ads, targeting their audience. They know that is what it takes to cut through the media clutter today. So far, the climate movement hasn't come close to thinking about how to communicate on that scale."

For better or worse, this Fifth Assessment may be the last grand climate-science report from the IPCC. "I think these reports have outgrown their usefulness," says David Keith, a Harvard professor who recently resigned as an author of the Fifth Assessment, echoing the view of other top scientists. "If it were gone, scientists might reorganize themselves in a more effective way."  In a more rational world, of course, we wouldn't need any more IPCC assessments. We would have listened to the scientists, built a global consensus and forged international agreements to reduce carbon pollution and head off the risk of climate catastrophe. But in the 25 years since the IPCC was formed, global carbon pollution is rising faster than ever. Future readers may view IPCC reports not as landmarks of scientific inquiry, but as suicide notes from a lost civilization.
 

Fact-Checking The Global Warming Deniers

(By Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone, September 12, 2013)

Beware of these oft-repeated talking points. None of them are true

1. There's more ice in Antarctica than ever.
The past few years have seen an expansion of Antarctica's coastal ice sheets – a byproduct, ironically, of climate change, which has brought increased snow and rainfall to the continent. Meanwhile, Antarctica's inland ice sheets are melting at an alarming rate – 1,350 billion tons of ice disappeared into the ocean between 1992 and 2011. And that rate is increasing, fueling global rises in sea level.

2. The climate may be changing, but human activity has nothing to do with it.
Many skeptics claim that ice ages have come and gone over the millennia, and global warming is no different. But those earlier climate shifts were caused by phenomena like changes in the Earth's orbit. The current rise in global temperatures has coincided with a nearly 40 percent rise in CO2 levels over the past 150 years.

3. Whatever happens, we can adapt.
True, perhaps, for rich countries. But the worst impacts of climate change – drought, famine, disease – will disproportionately strike the poorest nations. And even the well-off will be hit hard: Between 2011 and 2012, the U.S. government dished out more than $100 billion in climate-related emergency spending.

4. The pace of warming has slowed significantly in the past 15 years.
This may be true for the Earth's surface, but, according to NASA's Josh Willis, it doesn't tell the whole story, because "over 90 percent of the heat trapped by global warming is going into the oceans."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warming-is-very-real-20130912?print=true

 

The Plight Of The Honeybee

(By Bryan Walsh, Time magazine, Monday, Aug. 19, 2013)

You can thank the Apis Mellifera, better known as the Western honeybee, for 1 in every 3 mouthfuls of food you'll eat today. From the almond orchards of central California--where each spring billions of honeybees from across the U.S. arrive to pollinate a multibillion-dollar crop--to the blueberry bogs of Maine, the bees are the unsung, unpaid laborers of the American agricultural system, adding more than $15 billion in value to farming each year. In June, a Whole Foods store in Rhode Island, as part of a campaign to highlight the importance of honeybees, temporarily removed from its produce section all the food that depended on pollinators. Of 453 items, 237 vanished, including apples, lemons and zucchini and other squashes. Honeybees "are the glue that holds our agricultural system together," wrote journalist Hannah Nordhaus in her 2011 book, The Beekeeper's Lament.

And now that glue is failing. Around 2006, commercial beekeepers began noticing something disturbing: their honeybees were disappearing. Beekeepers would open their hives and find them full of honeycomb, wax, even honey--but devoid of actual bees. As reports from worried beekeepers rolled in, scientists coined an appropriately apocalyptic term for the mystery malady: colony-collapse disorder (CCD). Suddenly beekeepers found themselves in the media spotlight, the public captivated by the horror-movie mystery of CCD. Seven years later, honeybees are still dying on a scale rarely seen before, and the reasons remain mysterious. One-third of U.S. honeybee colonies died or disappeared during the past winter, a 42% increase over the year before and well above the 10% to 15% losses beekeepers used to experience in normal winters.

Though beekeepers can replenish dead hives over time, the high rates of colony loss are putting intense pressure on the industry and on agriculture. There were just barely enough viable honeybees in the U.S. to service this spring's vital almond pollination in California, putting a product worth nearly $4 billion at risk. Almonds are a big deal--they're the Golden State's most valuable agricultural export, worth more than twice as much as its iconic wine grapes. And almonds, totally dependent on honeybees, are a bellwether of the larger problem. For fruits and vegetables as diverse as cantaloupes, cranberries and cucumbers, pollination can be a farmer's only chance to increase maximum yield. Eliminate the honeybee and agriculture would be permanently diminished. "The take-home message is that we are very close to the edge," says Jeff Pettis, the research leader at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory. "It's a roll of the dice now."

MORE: The Origins of Nine Bee-Inspired Sayings

That's why scientists like Pettis are working hard to figure out what's bugging the bees. Agricultural pesticides were an obvious suspect--specifically a popular new class of chemicals known as neonicotinoids, which seem to affect bees and other insects even at what should be safe doses. Other researchers focused on bee-killing pests like the accurately named Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that has ravaged honeybee colonies since it was accidentally introduced into the U.S. in the 1980s. Others still have looked at bacterial and viral diseases. The lack of a clear culprit only deepened the mystery and the fear, heralding what some greens call a "second silent spring," a reference to Rachel Carson's breakthrough 1962 book, which is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement. A quote that's often attributed to Albert Einstein became a slogan: "If the bee disappears from the surface of the globe, man would have no more than four years to live."

(MORE: The Trouble with Beekeeping in the Anthropocene)

One problem: experts doubt that Einstein ever said those words, but the misattribution is characteristic of the confusion that surrounds the disappearance of the bees, the sense that we're inadvertently killing a species that we've tended and depended on for thousands of years. The loss of the honeybees would leave the planet poorer and hungrier, but what's really scary is the fear that bees may be a sign of what's to come, a symbol that something is deeply wrong with the world around us. "If we don't make some changes soon, we're going to see disaster," says Tom Theobald, a beekeeper in Colorado. "The bees are just the beginning."

Sublethal Effects

If the honeybee is a victim of natural menaces like viruses and unnatural ones like pesticides, it's worth remembering that the bee itself is not a natural resident of the continent. It was imported to North America in the 17th century, and it thrived until recently because it found a perfect niche in a food system that demands crops at ever cheaper prices and in ever greater quantities. That's a man-made, mercantile ecosystem that not only has been good for the bees and beekeepers but also has meant steady business and big revenue for supermarkets and grocery stores.

Jim Doan has been keeping bees since the age of 5, but the apiary genes in his family go back even further. Doan's father paid his way to college with the proceeds of his part-time beekeeping, and in 1973 he left the bond business to tend bees full time. Bees are even in the Doan family's English coat of arms. Although Jim went to college with the aim of becoming an agriculture teacher, the pull of the beekeeping business was too great.  For a long time, that business was very good. The family built up its operation in the town of Hamlin, in western New York, making money from honey and from pollination contracts with farmers. At the peak of his business, Doan estimates he was responsible for pollinating 1 out of 10 apples grown in New York, running nearly 6,000 hives, one of the biggest such operations in the state. He didn't mind the inevitable stings--"you have to be willing to be punished"--and he could endure the early hours. "We made a lot of honey, and we made a lot of money," he says.

All that ended in 2006, the year CCD hit the mainstream, and Doan's hives weren't spared. That winter, when he popped the covers to check on his bees--tipped off by a fellow beekeeper who experienced one of the first documented cases of CCD--Doan found nothing. "There were hundreds of hives in the backyard and no bees in them," he says. In the years since, he has experienced repeated losses, his bees growing sick and dying. To replace lost hives, Doan needs to buy new queens and split his remaining colonies, which reduces honey production and puts more pressure on his few remaining healthy bees. Eventually it all became unsustainable. In 2013, after decades in the business, Doan gave up. He sold the 112 acres (45 hectares) he owns--land he had been saving to sell after his retirement--and plans to sell his beekeeping equipment as well, provided he can find someone to buy it. Doan is still keeping some bees in the meantime, maintaining a revenue stream while considering his options. Those options include a job at Walmart.

Doan and I walk through his backyard, which is piled high with bee boxes that would resemble filing cabinets, if filing cabinets hummed and vibrated. Doan lends me a protective jacket and a bee veil that covers my face. He walks slowly among the boxes--partly because he's a big guy and partly because bees don't appreciate fast moves--and he spreads smoke in advance, which masks the bees' alarm pheromones and keeps them calm. He opens each box and removes a few frames--the narrowly spaced scaffolds on which the bees build their honeycombs--checking to see how a new population he imported from Florida is doing. Some frames are choked with crawling bees, flowing honey and healthy brood cells, each of which contains an infant bee. But other frames seem abandoned, even the wax in the honeycomb crumbling. Doan lays these boxes--known as dead-outs--on their side.  He used to love checking on his bees. "Now it's gotten to the point where I look at the bees every few weeks, and it scares me," he says. "Will it be a good day, will they be alive, or will I just find a whole lot of junk? It depresses the hell out of me."

Doan's not alone in walking away from such unhappy work. The number of commercial beekeepers has dropped by some three-quarters over the past 15 years, and while all of them may agree that the struggle is just not worth it anymore, they differ on which of the possible causes is most to blame. Doan has settled on the neonicotinoid pesticides--and there's a strong case to be made against them.

The chemicals are used on more than 140 different crops as well as in home gardens, meaning endless chances of exposure for any insect that alights on the treated plants. Doan shows me studies of pollen samples taken from his hives that indicate the presence of dozens of chemicals, including the neonicotinoids. He has testified before Congress about the danger the chemicals pose and is involved in a lawsuit with other beekeepers and with green groups that calls on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suspend a pair of pesticides in the neonicotinoid class. "The impacts [from the pesticides] are not marginal, and they're not academic," says Peter Jenkins, a lawyer for the Center for Food Safety and a lead counsel in the suit. "They pose real threats to the viability of pollinators."

American farmers have been dousing their fields with pesticides for decades, meaning that honeybees--which can fly as far as 5 miles (8 km) in search of forage--have been exposed to toxins since well before the dawn of CCD. But neonicotinoids, which were introduced in the mid-1990s and became widespread in the years that followed, are different. The chemicals are known as systematics, which means that seeds are soaked in them before they're planted. Traces of the chemicals are eventually passed on to every part of the mature plant--including the pollen and nectar a bee might come into contact with--and can remain for much longer than other pesticides do. There's really no way to prevent bees from being exposed to some level of neonicotinoids if the pesticides have been used nearby. "We have growing evidence that neonicotinoids can have dangerous effects, especially in conjunction with other pathogens," says Peter Neumann, head of the Institute of Bee Health at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Ironically, neonicotinoids are actually safer for farmworkers because they can be applied more precisely than older classes of pesticides, which disperse into the air. Bees, however, seem uniquely sensitive to the chemicals. Studies have shown that neonicotinoids attack their nervous system, interfering with their flying and navigation abilities without killing them immediately. "The scientific literature is exploding now with work on sublethal impacts on bees," says James Frazier, an entomologist at Penn State University. The delayed but cumulative effects of repeated exposure might explain why colonies keep dying off year after year despite beekeepers' best efforts. It's as if the bees were being poisoned very slowly.

It's undeniably attractive to blame the honeybee crisis on neonicotinoids. The widespread adoption of these pesticides roughly corresponds to the spike in colony loss, and neonicotinoids are, after all, meant to kill insects. Chemicals are ubiquitous--a recent study found that honeybee pollen was contaminated, on average, with nine different pesticides and fungicides. Best of all, if the problem is neonicotinoids, the solution is simple: ban them. That's what the European Commission decided to do this year, putting a two-year restriction on the use of some neonicotinoids. But while the EPA is planning to review neonicotinoids, a European-style ban is unlikely--in part because the evidence is still unclear. Beekeepers in Australia have been largely spared from CCD even though neonicotinoids are used there, while France has continued to suffer bee losses despite restricting the use of the pesticides since 1999. Pesticide makers argue that actual levels of neonicotinoid exposure in the field are too low to be the main culprit in colony loss. "We've dealt with insecticides for a long time," says Randy Oliver, a beekeeper who has done independent research on CCD. "I'm not thoroughly convinced this is a major issue."

Hostile Terrain

Even if pesticides are a big part of the bee-death mystery, there are other suspects. Beekeepers have always had to protect their charges from dangers such as the American foulbrood--a bacterial disease that kills developing bees--and the small hive beetle, a pest that can infiltrate and contaminate colonies. Bloodiest of all is the multidecade war against the Varroa destructor, a microscopic mite that burrows into the brood cells that host baby bees. The mites are equipped with a sharp, two-pronged tongue that can pierce a bee's exoskeleton and suck its hemolymph--the fluid that serves as blood in bees. And since the Varroa can also spread a number of other diseases--they're the bee equivalent of a dirty hypodermic needle--an uncontrolled mite infestation can quickly lead to a dying hive.  The Varroa first surfaced in the U.S. in 1987--likely from infected bees imported from South America--and it has killed billions of bees since. Countermeasures used by beekeepers, including chemical miticides, have proved only partly effective. "When the Varroa mite made its way in, it changed what we had to do," says Jerry Hayes, who heads Monsanto's commercial bee work. "It's not easy to try to kill a little bug on a big bug."

Other researchers have pointed a finger at fungal infections like the parasite Nosema ceranae, possibly in league with a pathogen like the invertebrate iridescent virus. But again, the evidence isn't conclusive: some CCD-afflicted hives show evidence of fungi or mites or viruses, and others don't. Some beekeepers are skeptical that there's an underlying problem at all, preferring to blame CCD on what they call PPB--piss-poor beekeeping, a failure of beekeepers to stay on top of colony health. But while not every major beekeeper has suffered catastrophic loss, colony failures have been widespread for long enough that it seems perverse to blame the human victims. "I've been keeping bees for decades," says Doan. "It's not like I suddenly forgot how to do it in 2006."

There's also the simple fact that beekeepers live in a country that is becoming inhospitable to honeybees. To survive, bees need forage, which means flowers and wild spaces. Our industrialized agricultural system has conspired against that, transforming the countryside into vast stretches of crop monocultures--factory fields of corn or soybeans that are little more than a desert for honeybees starved of pollen and nectar. Under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the government rents land from farmers and sets it aside, taking it out of production to conserve soil and preserve wildlife. But as prices of commodity crops like corn and soybeans have skyrocketed, farmers have found that they can make much more money planting on even marginal land than they can from the CRP rentals. This year, just 25.3 million acres (10.2 million hectares) will be held in the CRP, down by one-third from the peak in 2007 and the smallest area in reserve since 1988.

Lonely Spring

For all the enemies that are massing against honeybees, a bee-pocalypse isn't quite upon us yet. Even with the high rates of annual loss, the number of managed honeybee colonies in the U.S. has stayed stable over the past 15 years, at about 2.5 million. That's still significantly down from the 5.8 million colonies that were kept in 1946, but that shift had more to do with competition from cheap imported honey and the general rural depopulation of the U.S. over the past half-century. (The number of farms in the U.S. fell from a peak of 6.8 million in 1935 to just 2.2 million today, even as food production has ballooned.) Honeybees have a remarkable ability to regenerate, and year after year the beekeepers who remain have been able to regrow their stocks after a bad loss. But the burden on beekeepers is becoming unbearable. Since 2006 an estimated 10 million beehives have been lost, at a cost of some $2 billion. "We can replace the bees, but we can't replace beekeepers with 40 years of experience," says Tim Tucker, the vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

As valuable as honeybees are, the food system wouldn't collapse without them. The backbone of the world's diet--grains like corn, wheat and rice--is self-pollinating. But our dinner plates would be far less colorful, not to mention far less nutritious, without blueberries, cherries, watermelons, lettuce and the scores of other plants that would be challenging to raise commercially without honeybee pollination. There could be replacements. In southwest China, where wild bees have all but died out thanks to massive pesticide use, farmers laboriously hand-pollinate pear and apple trees with brushes. Scientists at Harvard are experimenting with tiny robobees that might one day be able to pollinate autonomously. But right now, neither solution is technically or economically feasible. The government could do its part by placing tighter regulations on the use of all pesticides, especially during planting season. There needs to be more support for the CRP too to break up the crop monocultures that are suffocating honeybees. One way we can all help is by planting bee-friendly flowers in backyard gardens and keeping them free of pesticides. The country, says Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a research scientist at the University of Maryland who has studied CCD since it first emerged, is suffering from a "nature deficit disorder"--and the bees are paying the price.

But the reality is that barring a major change in the way the U.S. grows food, the pressure on honeybees won't subside. There are more than 1,200 pesticides currently registered for use in the U.S.; nobody pretends that number will be coming down by a lot. Instead, the honeybee and its various pests are more likely to be changed to fit into the existing agricultural system. Monsanto is working on an RNA-interference technology that can kill the Varroa mite by disrupting the way its genes are expressed. The result would be a species-specific self-destruct mechanism--a much better alternative than the toxic and often ineffective miticides beekeepers have been forced to use. Meanwhile, researchers at Washington State University are developing what will probably be the world's smallest sperm bank--a bee-genome repository that will be used to crossbreed a more resilient honeybee from the 28 recognized subspecies of the insect around the world.

Already, commercial beekeepers have adjusted to the threats facing their charges by spending more to provide supplemental feed to their colonies. Supplemental feed raises costs, and some scientists worry that replacing honey with sugar or corn syrup can leave bees less capable of fighting off infections. But beekeepers living adrift in a nutritional wasteland have little choice. The beekeeping business may well begin to resemble the industrial farming industry it works with: fewer beekeepers running larger operations that produce enough revenue to pay for the equipment and technologies needed to stay ahead of an increasingly hostile environment. "Bees may end up managed like cattle, pigs and chicken, where we put them in confinement and bring the food to them," says Oliver, the beekeeper and independent researcher. "You could do feedlot beekeeping."  That's something no one in the beekeeping world wants to see. But it may be the only way to keep honeybees going. And as long as there are almonds, apples, apricots and scores of other fruits and vegetables that need pollinating--and farmers willing to pay for the service--beekeepers will find a way.

So if the honeybee survives, it likely won't resemble what we've known for centuries. But it could be worse. For all the recent attention on the commercial honeybee, wild bees are in far worse shape. In June, after a landscaping company sprayed insecticide on trees, 50,000 wild bumblebees in Oregon were killed--the largest such mass poisoning on record. Unlike the honeybee, the bumblebee has no human caretakers. Globally, up to 100,000 animal species die off each year--nearly every one of them without fanfare or notice. This is what happens when one species--that would be us--becomes so widespread and so dominant that it crowds out almost everything else. It won't be a second silent spring that dawns; we'll still have the buzz of the feedlot honeybee in our ears. But humans and our handful of preferred species may find that all of our seasons have become lonelier ones.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2149141,00.html

The $15 Billion Bee In President Obama’s Bonnet

(By Isabelle Khurshudyan, Washington Post, 23 June 2014)

Honeybees have a sweet new ally: President Obama.  Plans for a “Pollinator Health Task Force” to help save bees from their mysterious decline were announced Friday in a presidential memorandum.  Why Obama’s worried: The decline of bees could sting the economy.  “Honey bee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year in the United States,” the administration said in the release. “Over the past few decades, there has been a significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies, from the environment. The problem is serious and requires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems, avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment.”

Last winter, 23.2 percent of the country’s managed honey bee colonies died, according to a report by the Bee Informed Partnership, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Deaths are fewer than during the 2012-2013 winter, but still higher than the “acceptable” rate of about 19 percent, the report said.  The task force will have 180 days to create a strategy to prevent future bee loss. Specifically, the task force will investigate how to reduce pollinator exposure to pesticides found to harm bumblebees by interfering with their homing abilities, according to two studies detailed by Reuters.  In a 2011 United Nations report, U.N. Environment Program Executive Director Achim Steiner said “the way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century.”

Steiner said in the report that of 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the world’s food, more than 70 are pollinated by bees.  “Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature,” Steiner said in the release. “Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to seven billion people.”  The bee team will be co-chaired by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy.

http://m.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/23/the-15-billion-bee-in-president-obamas-bonnet/

 

 

Do Bees Freak You Out? Well, President Obama Wants To Keep Them Around.

(By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, 23 June 2014)

Not many White House fact sheets mention honeybees and Monarch butterflies. But one issued on Friday talked about them in detail, explaining why President Obama had signed a memorandum establishing the first-ever federal pollinator strategy.  The memo creates a new inter-agency task force charged with developing a federal strategy to protect pollinators, which aims to stave off the declines that pollinators such as honeybees, butterflies and bats have suffered in recent years. Obama instructed all federal agencies to use their powers "to broadly advance honey bee and other pollinator health and habitat," and the Agriculture Department announced $8 million in incentives to farmers and ranchers in five states who establish new habitats for honeybees.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday "there is a clear economic incentive for us" to protect pollinators because the crops they pollinate "have an impact of about $24 billion a year on the United States economy.  And we’re going to continue to work in collaborative fashion with industry, with state and local leaders, with private landowners to address this problem," Earnest said.  In fact, one-third of our food supply--the fruits, vegetables and nuts we eat--are pollinated by bees. But the current U.S. honeybee population is now less than half of what it was in 1945.  The president's interest in pollinators is not simply economic, however: he has raised the issue with some of his top aides. White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said in an interview this spring with Politico's Mike Allen that Obama had mentioned an article to him that had to do with "the disappearing bees and the fact this is an issue that there are fewer bees, and this has to do with climate change."

And the White House senior adviser for nutrition policy Sam Kass--who also cooks dinner for the Obama family most weeknights--has also discussed the issue in depth with the president. It's one of the reasons the White House vegetable garden expanded to include a pollinator's garden this year.  And if the Democrats have their way, Washington will have one more high-profile bee advocate after the mid-term elections: Michael Eggman, who is hoping to unseat Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.). Eggman, a third-generation beekeeper and self-described member of the "beekeeper mafia," praised the administration for taking on the issue, "although until this point, not enough has been done.  Colony Collapse Disorder appears to be a crisis with multiple factors including pesticide use and catastrophic climate change," Eggman said in a statement. "I am hopeful that the administration will carefully examine all possible causes and all potential solutions."  In other words, if you're rooting for bees to disappear, you might want to reassess. There are people in high places who are on their side.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/23/do-bees-freak-you-out-well-president-obama-wants-to-keep-them-around/
  

Global Warming Did It! Well, Maybe Not.
(By Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, August 2008)

We're heading into the heart of hurricane season, and any day now, a storm will barrel toward the United States, inspiring all the TV weather reporters to find a beach where they can lash themselves to a palm tree. We can be certain of two things: First, we'll be told that the wind is blowing very hard and the surf is up. Second, some expert will tell us that this storm might be a harbinger of global warming.

Somewhere along the line, global warming became the explanation for everything. Right-thinking people are not supposed to discuss any meteorological or geophysical event -- a hurricane, a wildfire, a heat wave, a drought, a flood, a blizzard, a tornado, a lightning strike, an unfamiliar breeze, a strange tingling on the neck -- without immediately invoking the climate crisis. It causes earthquakes, plagues and backyard gardening disappointments. Weird fungus on your tomato plants? Classic sign of global warming.  You are permitted to note, as a parenthetical, that no single weather calamity can be ascribed with absolute certainty (roll your eyes here to signal the exasperating fussiness of scientists) to what humans are doing to the atmosphere. But your tone will make it clear that this is just legalese, like the fine-print warnings on the flip side of a Lipitor ad.

Some people are impatient with even a token amount of equivocation. A science writer for Newsweek recently flat-out declared that this year's floods in the Midwest were the result of climate change, and in the process, she derided the wishy-washy climatologists who couldn't quite bring themselves to reach that conclusion (they "trip over themselves to absolve global warming").  Well, gosh, I dunno. Equivocation isn't a sign of cognitive weakness. Uncertainty is intrinsic to the scientific process, and sometimes you have to have the courage to stand up and say, "Maybe."  Seems to me that it's inherently impossible to prove a causal connection between climate and weather -- they're just two different things. Moreover, the evidence for man-made climate change is solid enough that it doesn't need to be bolstered by iffy claims. Rigorous science is the best weapon for persuading the public that this is a real problem that requires bold action. "Weather alarmism" gives ammunition to global-warming deniers. They're happy to fight on that turf, since they can say that a year with relatively few hurricanes (or a cold snap when you don't expect it) proves that global warming is a myth.  There's an ancillary issue here: Global warming threatens to suck all the oxygen out of any discussion of the environment. We wind up giving too little attention to habitat destruction, overfishing, invasive species tagging along with global trade and so on. You don't need a climate model to detect that big oil spill in the Mississippi. That "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico -- an oxygen-starved region the size of Massachusetts -- isn't caused by global warming, but by all that fertilizer spread on Midwest cornfields.

Some folks may actually get the notion that the planet will be safe if we all just start driving Priuses. But even if we cured ourselves of our addiction to fossil fuels and stabilized the planet's climate, we'd still have an environmental crisis on our hands. Our fundamental problem is that -- now it's my chance to sound hysterical -- humans are a species out of control. We've been hellbent on wrecking our environment pretty much since the day we figured out how to make fire.  This caused that: It would be nice if climate and weather were that simple.  But "one can only speak rationally about odds," Kerry Emanuel, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied hurricanes and climate change, told me last week. "Global warming increases the probabilities of floods and strong hurricanes, and that is all that you can say."  Emanuel's research shows that in the past 25 years, there's been an uptick in the number of strong storms, though not necessarily in the number of hurricanes overall. Climate models show that a 1-degree Celsius rise in sea-surface temperatures should intensify top winds by about 5 percent, which corresponds to a 15 percent increase in destructive power. The tropical Atlantic sea surface has warmed by 0.6 degrees Celsius in the past half-century.  At my request, Emanuel ran a computer program to see how much extra energy Hurricane Katrina had because of increases in sea-surface temperature. His conclusion: Katrina's winds were about 2 percent stronger in the Gulf, and not significantly stronger at landfall. Maybe climate change was a factor in generating such a storm, or in the amount of moisture it carried, but the catastrophe that Katrina caused in New Orleans can more plausibly be attributed to civil engineers who built inadequate levees, city planning that let neighborhoods materialize below sea level and Bush administration officials who didn't do such a heckuva job.

Let's go back to those Iowa floods. Humans surely contributed to the calamity: Farmland in the Midwest has been plumbed with drainage pipes; streams have been straightened; most of the state's wetlands have been engineered out of existence; land set aside for conservation is being put back into corn production to meet the demands of the ethanol boom. This is a landscape that's practically begging to have 500-year floods every decade.  Was climate change a factor in the floods? Maybe. A recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that heavier downpours are more likely in a warming world. Thomas Karl, a NOAA scientist, says that there has been a measurable increase in water vapor over parts of the United States and more precipitation in the Midwest.  But tree-ring data indicate that the state has gone through a cycle of increasing and decreasing rainfall for hundreds of years. The downpours this year weren't that unusual, according to Harry J. Hillaker Jr., the Iowa state meteorologist. "The intensity has not really been excessive on a short-term scale," he said. "We're not seeing three-inch-an-hour rainfall amounts."  This will be a wet year (as was last year), but Iowa may not set a rainfall record. The wettest year on record was 1993. The second wettest: 1881. The third wettest: 1902.

Iowa is an awkward place to talk about global warming, because the state has actually been a bit cooler in the summer than it was in the first half of the 20th century. Hillaker says the widespread shift to annual plants (corn and soybeans) and away from perennial grasses has altered the climate. The 10 hottest summers in Iowa have been, in order, 1936, 1934, 1901, 1988, 1983, 1931, 1921, 1955, 1933 and 1913. Talk about extreme weather: One day in 1936, Iowa set a state record with a high temperature of 117 degrees. And no one blamed it on global warming.  Rest assured, we may find ways to ruin the planet even before the worst effects of global warming kick in. The thing that gets you in the end is rarely the thing you're paying attention to.  The basic problem is that there are so many of us now. Four centuries ago, there were about 500 million people on Earth. Today there are that many, plus 6 billion. We're rapidly heading toward 9 billion. Conservatives say that we just need to focus on maintaining free markets and let everything sort itself out through the miracle of the invisible hand. But the political tide is turning against unfettered free markets and toward greater regulation. Climate-change policy is part of that: Somehow we've got to embed environmental effects into the cost of energy sources, consumer goods and so on. The market approach by itself has let us down.  Viewed broadly, it appears that humans are environment-destroying creatures by nature. The notion of the prelapsarian era in which we lived in perfect harmony with nature has been effectively shattered by such scientists as Jared Diamond, the author of "Collapse," and Tim Flannery, who wrote "The Future Eaters." If everything gets simplified and reduced to a global-warming narrative, we'll be unable to see the trees for the forest.   Last week, we saw reports of more wildfires in California. Sure as night follows day, people will lay some of the blame on climate change. But there's also the minor matter of people building homes in wildfire-susceptible forests, overgrown with vegetation due to decades of fire suppression. That's like pitching a tent on the railroad tracks.  The message that needs to be communicated to these people is: "Your problem is not global warming. Your problem is that you're nuts."  You should definitely worry about global warming. But you don't need to worry about global warming when your house is on fire.

Global Warming

(By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY)

 To the untrained eye, Bonanza Creek forest in Fairbanks, Alaska is breathtaking, a vibrant place alive with butterflies and birds, with evidence of moose and bear at every turn.  But look through forest ecologyist Glenn Juday's eyes, and you see a dying landscape.  Since the 1970s, climate change has doubled the growing season in some places and raised state temperatures 6 degrees in the winter and 3.5 on average annually since 1950, says Juday, a professor at the University of Alaska. Drought is killing spruce, aspen and birch trees.  Alaska has emerged as the poster state for global warming, the climate effect attributed to higher concentrations of "greenhouse" gases- mostly carbon dioxide created by burning fossil fuels- that capture the sun's heat in the atmosphere.  Global warming is a hot topic, especially now. Hurricane season begins soon, and climate researchers warn that rising ocean temperatures may bring more intense storms.  Ex- vice president Al Gore is back in the news with his acclaimed documentary on warming, An Inconvenient Truth.  President Bush, who has been criticized by environmental groups that say he has been slow to acknowledge the dangers posed by warming, said last week that "people in our country are rightly concerned about greenhouse gases and the environment."

     Alaska is important in measuring the effect of global warming on the USA because what happens here soon will be felt in the Lower 48 states, say experts such as Robert Corell, a senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society.  The spruce budworm, aspen leaf miner and the spruce bark beetle, pests once kept in check by winter cold, are flourishing here. Statewide, insect outbreaks have killed more than 4 million acres of forest in a decade and a half, says John Morton, a biologist at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Soldotna.  Fires, long an integral part of the forest ecology here, are burning millions of acres as summers get longer and hotter, says Scott Rupp, a University of Alaska professor of forestry.  With each wave of fires, trees have a harder time coming back in the increasingly warm and dry landscape.  This great northern forest may end up a grassland. "Soon, people will be coming to the great plains of Alaska," Juday says.  Alaska is ahead of the climate-change curve because polar regions warm the fastest. They had long been kept frigid by vast regions of snow and ice that reflect 70% of the sun's energy back out to space.  But higher temperatures are shrinking that snow and ice cover. In the Arctic, summer sea ice has shrunk 15% to 20% in the past 30 years, according to 2005's Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report.

     As the snow and ice recede, the sun's rays are hitting more dark ground and water, which absorb most of the heat, reflecting just 20% of the energy away, says Matthew Sturm, a research scientist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research Laboratory in Fairbanks.  Lakes and ponds are disappearing as the permafrost, permanently frozen ground that underlies much of Alaska north of Fairbanks, melts.  "It's like pulling the plug in a bathtub," says Peter Schweitzer, an anthropologist who works with the Arctic peoples in Alaska and Russia.  In some areas, as much as 40% of surface water has disappeared, taking with it vital habitat for ducks and other waterfowl, says Juday.  The permafrost that underlies much of the central and north of the state is a relic of the last Ice Age. Some of the frozen ground under Fairbanks is 100,000 years old, says Vladimir Romanovsky, a permafrost expert at Fairbanks. And it's now starting to get "slushy."  For Ruth Macchione, that meant a more expensive design to her new home after the cabin her husband built in the 1950s sank into the ground. The permafrost under the cabin thawed because the structure wasn't built to keep the ground cold- a key trick in building in cold regions.  Her new home incorporates piers to allow cold air to circulate underneath it.  "Local engineers are getting worried about higher ground temperatures, so they're specifying more pilings to combat that," says Billy Connor, director of the Alaska University Transportation Center. That will mean higher construction costs across the state, Sturm says.

     More heat means longer summers. The growing season in Fairbanks has gone from 80 to 120 days since records were first kept in the 1900s, says John Walsh, director of the Arctic System Research at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.  But those summer days haven't come with any more rain, so plants and trees adapted to short, cool summers grow quickly but then dry out while it's still warm. That's one reason forest fires have become such a problem, he says.  In the Midwest and East, a few extra degrees can bring on higher milk prices. That's because cows don't like it hot. When the mercury gets over 80°F, milk production drops.  "Last year, we had herds that were down 5 to 15 pounds of milk per cow, and they'll usually be making 65 to 75 pounds" a day, says Larry Chase, a professor of animal science at Cornell.  In the Midwest, the corn belt is shrinking, says S. Elwynn Taylor, a professor of agricultural meteorology at Iowa State University in Ames. Especially at the western edges in Nebraska and the Dakotas, areas that were marginal for corn and soybeans are now unable to economically grow them.  David Lobell, an environmental scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Calif., says that for every 2°F increase in growing-season temperature, farmers can expect a 17% decline in yield for corn and soybeans.

     Taylor isn't convinced that the warming isn't simply part of a larger climate pattern that has been seen in the Midwest since about 1850. He is not alone. Other scientists see warming as part of a cyclical climate change, but they are outnumbered by colleagues who say the planet is warming steadily because human activity is adding to the greenhouse gases.  A landmark 2001 report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast that the average global surface temperature will increase 2.5 to 10°F above 1990 levels by 2100.  In White Mountain, a village of 200 on the western coast of Alaska near Nome, stocking up the larder is harder now for Rita Buck, a native Alaska Inupiaq.  Buck's year used to be a steady flow of work. First came salmon fishing, then harvesting berries. Salmonberries, a type of raspberry, would arrive first, then blueberries, blackberries and finally cranberries. Berries make up an important part of the subsistence diet.  But now, she says, the berries are blooming too early, when frost is still a danger. "It freezes all the berry blossoms and stops them growing," she says.  Cherry growers in Michigan, the nation's primary grower of tart cherries for pies, are having much the same problem. Spring now arrives seven to 10 days earlier there than in the 1970s, but cold snaps still come when they always have.  The commonly grown cherry variety isn't cold-hardy, so once it comes out of dormancy, it has no resistance to freezing, says Jeffrey Andresen, an agricultural meteorologist with Michigan State University.  "In 2002, early warming brought the tart cherry crop out of dormancy, and then a two-day freeze in April resulted in an almost complete loss for the year," he says.  Growers may have to plant new, more cold-hardy varieties, which won't be cheap, Andresen says. "You can't just pick up the trees and move them somewhere else."

     In Alaska, the sea ice that armors the coastline against winter storms is forming a week later than it used to, says David Atkinson, a Fairbanks professor of atmospheric science.  The state accounting office estimates that more than 100 coastal villages potentially face danger as winter storms erode their once-protected shorelines. The open water makes for stronger storms. Some areas have lost 30 feet of beach in a single storm, Atkinson says.  Warmer winters also are creating problems for California farmers of high-value crops such as peaches, plums, nectarines, almonds, pistachios and walnuts, which need a period of cold in the winter to bloom properly.  A series of warm winters has played havoc with fruit production, says Theodore DeJong, a professor of plant science. Farmers may have to switch out their current trees with low-chill varieties, expensive but at least a solution.  But for the trees that grow plums for prunes, that's simply not an option. It would take 10 to 20 years to develop low-chill varieties of these trees, DeJong says.  Packers already are moving some production to Chile. There could soon come a day when California, grower of 95% to 98% of all plums in the USA, is out of the business entirely.

     The huge fires that have hit Alaska in the past few summers filled the air with so much smoke and ash that people in Fairbanks at times wore dust masks and doctors told asthmatic patients to leave town until the fires were out.  U.S. asthma and allergy rates are increasing in part because more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is supercharging the production of pollen that can trigger them. When carbon dioxide is doubled, ragweed stems grow 10% more but pollen increases by 60%.  "Pollen counts of 120 used to be cause for alert. We're seeing counts like 6,000 now," Epstein says.  Warmer winters also mean insects can survive and thrive in places where the cold used to keep them in check. Lyme disease is spreading beyond the former winter confines of the tick that carries it. And West Nile virus is spreading farther because spring drought amplifies the bird-biting mosquito cycle, Epstein says.  Ten years of change in the Arctic region is a preview of 25 years of change in the rest of the world, says Corell.  "This country is at its best when it has a grand challenge, whether it's World War II or going to the moon," says U. of New Hampshire professor Cameron Wake. "This is the next grand challenge."

Captivity Could Help Polar Bears Survive Global Warming Assault

(By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, March 25, 2012)

Polar bears are ideally suited to life in the Arctic: Their hair is without pigment, blending in with the snow; their heavy, strongly curved claws allow them to clamber over blocks of ice and snow and grip their prey securely; and their rough pads keep them from slipping.  The one thing they cannot survive is the disintegration of the ice. They range across the sea ice far from shore to hunt fatty seals, whose blubber sustains them.  Heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuel are making the Arctic warm twice as fast as lower latitudes, and Arctic summer sea ice could disappear by 2030, according to climate models.  So a group of activists, zoo officials, lawmakers and scientists have a radical proposal: Increase the number of polar bears in U.S. zoos to help maintain the species’ genetic diversity if the wild population plummets.  In a worst-case scenario, a remnant group of bears would survive in captivity.

That should be good news for the St. Louis Zoo, which designed a $20 million polar bear exhibit with a cooled saltwater pool and concrete cliffs covered in simulated ice and snow for three to five bears. Its goal was to have them there by 2017. But it doesn’t have a bear lined up, because it’s illegal to import them, captive cubs are rare and finding orphaned bears in Alaska is difficult.  The Fish and Wildlife Service could allow the importation of polar bears for public display through future legislative or regulatory changes but has shown no inclination to pursue those options.  Evolved from brown bears tens of thousands of years ago, polar bears have become an iconic species for their majestic size and ability to thrive in the harsh Arctic. Today the image of a mammoth bear clinging to a piece of ice embodies an environment under siege.

Polar bears would prefer to hunt for seals year-round, but the disappearance of sea ice has forced them onto land or far offshore where the ice remains only over deep unproductive water. “Either way, they’re food deprived,” said Steven C. Amstrup, chief scientist for the advocacy group Polar Bears International and an emeritus researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey.  Advocates of the plan to bring more into captivity, including St. Louis Zoo president and chief executive Jeffrey Bonner, say that saving a species whose habitat is disappearing is an immense challenge.  “Polar bears are simply the first species where we have to get it right,” Bonner said. When it comes to research on how to sustain an exotic species through breeding techniques, “that research is only research that can be done in zoos,” he added.

Based on current projections, federal scientists say two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could be extinct by mid-century, though a significant cut in greenhouse gas emissions could help halt that decline. There are roughly 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide, 3,500 of which live in Alaska and spend part of the year in Canada and Russia.  There are 19 sub-populations of polar bears living in Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark and Norway, and since scientists fear ice melt could cause some of these to disappear from their historic ranges, the idea would be to preserve enough genetic diversity in captivity to allow them to be repopulated through artificial insemination of wild bears or other methods. Supporters of the plan say researchers are just beginning to experiment with assisted reproduction techniques for polar bears.

Zoological institutions have helped save imperiled species before such as the California condor and the Mexican wolf, which were bred in captivity and reintroduced into the wild.  The American bison’s numbers dropped from the tens of millions to fewer than 1,000 after the 1880s, kept in small private herds in places like the Bronx Zoo. While there are roughly half a million bison now roaming the Great Plains, the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates at most 7,000 are genetically pure. The Bronx Zoo shipped 15 head to Wichita in 1907, and the herd has grown to 650; this month 71 bison calves were released on the American Prairie Reserve, reintroduced from a herd a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes was forced to sell the Canadian government in 1907 when the Flathead Reservation was opened to homesteaders.  “If you don’t build these insurance populations when you have the animals, then it’s too late,” said the Toledo Zoo’s mammals curator Randi Meyerson, chairman of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ polar bear species survival program. “We’re planning for something we hope we don’t need.”

The number of captive polar bears in the United States has declined since 1995, when there were about 200. Today 64 bears reside in accredited institutions such as the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, which houses three. A total of 13 different polar bears lived at different times at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo between 1959 and 1980, but it no longer has one in captivity and has no plans to acquire one because creating the proper habitat would be, in the words of spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson, “cost-prohibitive.”  While polar bears have lived for decades in zoos, Ronald Sandler, an associate professor of philosophy at Northeastern University and director of the university’s Ethics Institute, called them “one of the worst candidates for captivity” because they are large carnivores that can roam for thousands of miles in the wild.  “It’s really hard to replicate the conditions in which they live,” he said. “It doesn’t mean they’re miserable. But there’s no sense in which they’d be able to live out the life they’d have in the wild.”

Shrinking ice has put some polar bears into closer contact with humans, especially in Canada, and, in some cases, communities encounter orphaned cubs. Manitoba’s Assiniboine Park Zoo has created an International Polar Bear Conservation Centre, aimed at helping transition cubs into captivity in some instances. The question remains whether these cubs should be available for import into the United States for public display, because as a federally listed threatened species, polar bears are classified as “depleted” under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and can be brought in only for bona fide scientific research or if it enhances the species’ recovery.  The proposal, which would require an interpretation from the Fish and Wildlife Service that polar bear imports comply with federal law, has sparked a fierce debate among scientists, ethicists, policymakers and conservationists.  “If the world cares about polar bears, reducing carbon concentrations in the atmosphere is the only way to preserve polar bears’ habitat,” said Lily Peacock, a research biologist in the U.S. Geological Survey’s polar bear program.

Even the proponents of the zoo plan identify reducing carbon emissions as the top priority for conserving polar bears. Robert Buchanan, president of the advocacy group Polar Bears International, said displaying them in zoos could represent the best way to convince the public to make such cuts.  “The only way at this time to save bears is to have people change their habits, and the way to do that is through zoos and aquariums,” he said. “Polar bears are just ambassadors for their friends in the Arctic.”  The Fish and Wildlife Service allows orphaned cubs from Alaska to be shipped to the lower 48 states for display, like it did with the Louisville Zoo last year. It let in a captive-bred polar bear from Australia in 2006 for Anchorage’s Alaska Zoo, but hasn’t let in any other polar bears since the late 1990s.  Four House Democrats led by Rep. William Lacy Clay (Mo.) — all representing zoos hoping to obtain polar bears — urged Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in a Oct. 27 letter to issue permits for “live rescued polar bears” to be put on display. Eighteen U.S. zoos have either recently renovated polar bear exhibits or built new ones, are in the process of construction, or planning to do so in the future.

Robert Gabel, with the Fish and Wildlife Service’s International Affairs program, said the agency has advised zoo officials “it’s going to be difficult for us to authorize.”  “We’d have to show that an import would either stabilize or increase the wild population of polar bears. It’s difficult to show how an import would accomplish that,” he said, adding that while the law has an exemption for scientific research, “We’ve never allowed that breeding in and of itself is research.”  Dale Jamieson, a New York University professor of environmental studies and philosophy, noted that if you’re facing the prospect of taking an animal out of its natural environment for generations, “we might as well simply be storing genetic material in gene banks.” Zoos, he said “have a huge conflict of interest. This is how they make money.”

But Center for Biological Diversity senior counsel Brendan Cummings, who helped lead the legal fight to list polar bears, said federal officials need to realize they may have to pursue this course if the population closest to humans, in Canada’s southern Hudson Bay, begins to crash: “The most visible and unstable polar bear population in the planet will be in crisis mode caused by our action, greenhouse gas emissions, and there will be pressure to do something about it.”  Fish and Wildlife already has identified 187,000 square miles in Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears and is working on a plan to protect the species through such possible actions as limiting bear hunting and human activity along the coast in polar bear denning areas.  The agency’s Alaska spokesman, Larry Bell, said when it comes to captive breeding, “Right now, it’s not something we’re considering.”

Meanwhile, the World Wildlife Fund and Coca-Cola Co. have launched a campaign to preserve what they call the “Last Ice Area,” 500,000 square miles of polar bear habitat in northern Canada and Greenland, which is likely to remain frozen year-round the longest.  As Meyerson observed, all the genomic banking and artificial insemination techniques in the world have their limits. “This is all given that we have ice to return the animals to,” she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/captivity-could-help-polar-bears-survive-global-warming-assault-some-zoos-say/2012/03/21/gIQAkIWFaS_print.html