MUENCHHAUSEN

AN ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ENVIRONMENT,
RENEWABLE RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,
AND RELATED TOPICS

By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.
BETHESDA, MD
GREENBARON@CSI.COM

===============================================================
DECEMBER 06, 2005
===============================================================

WELCOME!

Green Baron welcomes one and all who take the time to read Muenchhausen. He aims to “tell it like it is” as much as possible, and avoid advocacy and ideological positions. There are enough of those to go around in other publications.

KAURI PINES

Kauri pines grow in New Zealand, an island nation perhaps 1,500 kilometers (km) from the Antipodes of Washington, DC. (The actual Antipodes of Washington is said to be an island near the southwestern corner of Australia.) The Kauri pine has a history going back to the Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic Era—perhaps some 270 million years. It is descended from plants known as Araucaria.

Other unique forms of life are to be found in New Zealand. Tree ferns grow in parts of North Island; these, too, trace their lineage back to the Paleozoic Era. John Wood, Ambassador at the Embassy of New Zealand, Washington, DC, told a press gathering at his embassy that the tuotara lizard is a form of animal life peculiar to his country.

Most ferns and other plants of the phylum Pteridophyta arose during the Paleozoic Era, which began about 600 million years ago with the start of the Cambrian Period, and ended at the close of the Permian Period, perhaps about 200 million years ago. During the Carboniferous Period or Coal Age—say, about 290 million years ago—even club mosses and horsetails grew to become trees about 150 feet tall. The two main types of tree club mosses were Sigillaria and Lepidodendron (“scale tree”); horsetails grew into Calamites. Just below is an artist's idea of a Lepidodendron (http://www.xs4all.nl/~steurh/eng/lepido.nvm?184,295).





















A Lepidodendron such as this one could grow to 150, or even 180 feet tall. It reproduced through spores; seed plants are not believed to have appeared as early as the Carboniferous Period.

Ambassador Wood has a farm in his home county. His term as Ambassador to the United States will end on or about January 31, 2006, at which time, he told Green Baron, he will leave the New Zealand Foreign Ministry and retire to farming. Green Baron is confident that Ambassador Wood will not fade away or go into obscurity. People of his stature rarely do. Green Baron believes that the world will still hear from him.

INCREASES IN CASES OF SKIN CANCER

Ambassador Wood told Green Baron that he supports free trade, but with respect for environmental provisions. He added that the infamous Southern Hemisphere ozone hole—which his country was the first to measure—jeopardizes an otherwise “pristine atmosphere” in New Zealand. With the reduction in stratospheric ozone concentrations, New Zealand developed a skin cancer rate that is “highest in the world. You do feel the sun in spring and summer [from September to March].” It should be remembered that during the austral summer, Earth is in Perihelion, closest to the sun, only about 92 million miles away. This could compound the damage the ozone hole does, especially given that South Island, as well as the Australian state of Tasmania, come closer to the ozone hole that do North Island of New Zealand, or the mainland of Australia.

Brian Young, the Science Counselor of the New Zealand embassy, added that there has definitely been more measurable ultraviolet (UV) light since the 19th century, when people from the United Kingdom first came to New Zealand and started measuring UV light levels there. He also explained that with global warming, water levels in the South Pacific Ocean could rise perhaps 1 to 2 meters. Countries such as Tuvalu, which consist of low atolls rather than high islands, could become totally submerged.

And wouldn’t you know it—here is an excerpt from a Reuter’s story Green Baron came across just today! This is about the first village on a Pacific Island, known to be forced to move because of a rising sea level. Vanuatu, where the village and island are located, was formerly known as New Hebrides, which then belonged to Britain and France.

“By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
MONTREAL (Reuters) - Rising seas have forced 100 people on a Pacific island to move to higher ground in what may be the first example of a village formally displaced because of modern global warming, a U.N. report said on Monday.
With coconut palms on the coast already standing in water, inhabitants in the Lateu settlement on Tegua island in Vanuatu started dismantling their wooden homes in August and moved about 600 yards (meters) inland.
‘They could no longer live on the coast,’ Taito Nakalevu, a climate change expert at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, told Reuters during a 189-nation conference in Montreal on ways to fight climate change.
So-called ‘king tides,’ often whipped up by cyclones, had become stronger in recent years and made Lateu uninhabitable by flooding the village 4 to 5 times a year. ‘We are seeing king tides across the region flooding islands,’ he said.
The U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a statement that the Lateu settlement ‘has become one of, if not the first, to be formally moved out of harm's way as a result of climate change.’”

If this story discusses an island in Vanuatu, why was it datelined Montreal, Canada? As this issue of Muenchhausen is being written, a meeting is taking place in Montreal, on the 8th anniversary of the Kyoto meeting of December 1997, at which the Kyoto Protocol placed limits on carbon dioxide emissions by industrialized countries (developing countries were exempt, although theoretically, they must come into compliance later this century). Developed countries must reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to levels that are at least 5% below those of 1990. The United States and Australia, so far, have not signed the Kyoto Protocol, but may have to comply with its provisions anyhow, because it could be charged that noncompliance gives them an unfair trade advantage.

Concern about rising sea levels also manifests itself in Arctic regions, particularly along the coasts of eastern Alaska and western Canada. A NASA satellite photograph shows why this concern arises. As Green Baron heard at a Marine Technology Society Washington Chapter meeting, held in Arlington, VA, in February 2002, some scientists predicted that the North (Northeast) Passage might become ice-free along the coast of Russia and Siberia by 2005.














Polar ice shrinkage, summer 2005. This NASA satellite image shows the extent to which the sea ice withdrew from the coast of Russia and Siberia (left). There also has been some withdrawal from the north coast of Alaska (left of center, lower side of image).

Stay tuned!

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Green Baron thanks Ambassador Wood, Brian Young, Press Counselor Kathleen Bothwell, and all the embassy officers and staff for the worm hospitality accorded our group from the National Press Club. Green Baron also regrets the departure of Ambassador Wood from Washington, and wishes him and Mrs. Rose Wood a most happy and active retirement.

WHAT IS BOOTSTRAP PRESS?

Bootstrap Press is a nonprofit organization founded in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A., to promote the development and management of technology and businesses based on renewable resources. We also encourage the preservation of our Earth's natural habitats and its plant and animal species. So do a lot of other organizations, and more power to them for doing so!

Bootstrap Press is different because its members believe that the development of renewable resources and the preservation of habitats and species are receiving far more lip service than the financial and technical support needed to achieve these goals. We also think they will continue to be subjects of more talk than action until someone can show how renewable resources and the diversity of biological species can be the basis for potentially profitable businesses as well as a matter of ethics. Bootstrap Press intends to provide a forum for the discussion of how to build up such business, and of related topics.

There's one more thing we should mention about Muenchhausen and Bootstrap Press. We try to present only the scientific and technical facts that are correct to the best of our knowledge, belief, and good faith. It is up to Muenchhausen's readers to draw their own conclusions and make their own judgments.

NOTE: The mention of a product or service in Muenchhausen is in no way to be regarded as an endorsement of that product or service by Muenchhausen, Bootstrap Press, the Green Baron, or any other contributor to Muenchhausen.