By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

By the University of Colorado, Denver, news service

Climate change, not humans,
gets blame for early extinctions


Most species of gigantic animals that once roamed Australia had disappeared by the time people arrived, a major review of the available evidence has concluded.

The research challenges the claim that humans were primarily responsible for the demise of the megafauna in a proposed extinction window between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago, and points the finger instead at climate change.

An international team led by the University of New South Wales, and including researchers at the University of Queensland, the University of New England, and the University of Washington, carried out the study. It is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The interpretation that humans drove the extinction rests on assumptions that increasingly have been shown to be incorrect.  Humans may have played some role in the loss of those species that were still surviving when people arrived about 45,000 to 50,000 years ago – but this also needs to be demonstrated,” said Stephen Wroe of the University of New South Wales, the lead author of the study.

“There has never been any direct evidence of humans preying on extinct megafauna in Sahul, or even of a tool-kit that was appropriate for big-game hunting,” he said.

About 90 giant animal species once inhabited the continent of Sahul, which included mainland Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania.

“These leviathans included the largest marsupial that ever lived, the rhinoceros-sized Diprotodon, and short-faced kangaroos so big we can’t even be sure they could hop. Preying on them were goannas the size of large saltwater crocodiles with toxic saliva and bizarre but deadly marsupial lions with flick-blades on their thumbs and bolt cutters for teeth,” said Wroe.

The review concludes there is only firm evidence for about 8 to 14 megafauna species still existing when Aboriginal people arrived. About 50 species, for example, are absent from the fossil record of the past 130,000 years.

Recent studies of Antarctic ice cores, ancient lake levels in central Australia, and other environmental indicators also suggest Sahul - which was at times characterized by a vast desert - experienced an increasingly arid and erratic climate during the past 450,000 years.

Arguments that humans were to blame have also focused on the traditional Aboriginal practice of burning the landscape. But recent research suggests that the fire history of the continent was more closely linked to climate than human activity, and increases in burning occurred long before people arrived.

“It is now increasingly clear that the disappearance of the megafauna of Sahul took place over tens, if not hundreds, of millennia under the influence of inexorable, albeit erratic, climatic deterioration,” said Wroe, an associate professor.


Town aided by Erin Brockovich
still in crises over chemicals


The first and second graders at the Hinkley School gather in pairs to practice their vocabulary words. It seems business as usual for now, but with so many families leaving town, the school is scheduled to close forever in June.

“We’re learning every day different areas the kids are moving to now and we’ve had many, many tears," said Sonja Pellerin, a teacher at the school. "Some people have lived here for generations, and it is turning families upside down.”

Hinkley is the California town made famous by the movie "Erin Brockovich." Twenty years ago, the California-based energy company Pacific Gas & Electric paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle legal claims by residents that PG&E had poisoned their well water by improperly dumping industrial waste into the ground. But that landmark legal victory, which was recounted in the Julia Roberts movie, was not the end of the story.

Since then, the plume of groundwater contaminated with toxic hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium 6, has continued to spread. Now, Hinkley residents are leaving, and the town's future is uncertain.   

But Hinkley School's future is not. With enrollment falling sharply for several years, education officials say they can’t afford to keep the school open.

Roberta Walker, who came to school to have lunch with her grandchildren, is angry that the PG&E energy company declined school officials’ request to buy the campus in order to keep it open.

“The school was the biggest, biggest part of the community," Walker said. "And they refused to admit that they were at fault for the decline in enrollment.”

In the 1990s, Walker was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit by hundreds of Hinkley residents against PG&E for dumping cooling water from a natural gas compression plant south of town into unlined ponds. The waste, laden with toxic chromium 6, contaminated Hinkley’s groundwater wells, and the suit blamed the company for the increased incidence of cancer and autoimmune disease that followed.

The company settled. With her share of the money, Ms. Walker built new homes for herself and her daughters several kilometers from the contamination site. Now, chromium 6 has turned up in her well water again. Ms. Walker and her daughters are negotiating with PG&E to buy their homes.

“There’s still that little hope that the state will continue pushing along, but am I gonna do it?" she said. "And once I leave, and once I get out of here, am I going to? No. I’m not. I’m tired. I’m done.”

PG&E has already agreed to buy out a third of Hinkley’s residents. Company spokesman Jeff Smith has said repeatedly over the years that PG&E wants to make sure Hinkley survives. But that’s getting more complicated.

“We certainly remain committed to working with the people of Hinkley," Smith said. "If their preference is to have their property purchased and to depart from the community, we want to make sure we have that option available to them as well.”

At the national level, the Environmental Protection Agency has spent the past five years studying new limits on chromium 6 in the environment. The EPA released a draft assessment in 2010, but that study is still under scientific review. The agency says it would be inappropriate to revise national drinking water standards until the process is complete. 

“Hinkley is an example of, even when you get a lot of attention, still we can be lacking, on a larger society level, standards that are protecting people,” said Renee Sharp, with the Environmental Working Group, a private research and advocacy organization.

Under state orders, PG&E is still trying to clean up its mess. It's been pumping millions of liters of contaminated water onto nearby alfalfa fields each year, to let microbes in the soil break down the poison. The company also is pumping ethanol into the ground to trigger a chemical reaction designed to neutralize the chromium. At a public meeting in October, project engineer Kevin Sullivan offered this encouragement.

“We’re making a lot of progress. We’ve cleaned up like 54 acres [22 hectares]," he said. "I understand that if it’s not your property, you know, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ But 54 acres is a lot of progress. ”

But it’s only a fraction of the environmental damage. Three years ago, state water quality officials estimated the contamination plume was a little more than four kilometers long. According to the most recent state report, it may now stretch more than 11 kilometers, and the state water quality board says it's spreading more than half a meter per day.

“It seems like the more we look, the more we’re finding, and it’s something that is scary for folks,” said the state water quality board's Lauri Kemper.

Frightening as the pollution is, Patsy Morris, 83, was determined to stay until recently. With Hinkley emptying out, she’s decided she has no choice but to leave, too.

“You get a bitterness about the whole thing," Morris said. "They’re just going to make this a big dustbowl, that’s all I can say about it. My friends are leaving, one way or another. It gets you, you know?”

PG&E estimates it could take another 40 years to clean up all of the chromium 6 pollution. That draws grim laughter from people in Hinkley. They predict that within 10 years, their community will be a ghost town.


Another outbreak crops up
on the Arabian Peninsula


Novel coronavirus outbreaks are continuing on the Arabian Peninsula, and the The World Health Organization announced Monday that so far, it has been “notified of 30 novel coronavirus confirmed cases, including 18 deaths.”

The World Health announcement comes after reports May 2 from the ministry of health in Saudi Arabia confirming three new cases of the disease. Two of the cases were from the same family, World Health reported. All the victims were reported in critical condition.

Within the past five days, there have been 13 new cases of the virus reported, including seven deaths in Saudi Arabia alone.

World Health is encouraging countries to monitor cases of severe acute respiratory infections. In a statement, the agency said it is working with international experts and countries where cases have been reported.

The first case of the virus was reported in June in Abu Dhabi.


China expanding influence
with help of its military


It's been years since China embarked on a major effort to modernize its military, all the while becoming increasingly assertive in pressing its claim in places like the South China Sea.  Now, a report from the U.S. Defense Department says Beijing is actively looking to project its power farther than ever before.

China's military muscle has been most visible on the high seas where it has dispatched ships to press its claims to uninhabited islands also claimed by Japan.

There was also the recent deployment of new ballistic missiles along China's southern coast.

David Helvey is a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of Defense.

"We're concerned about the ability of China to develop missiles that can project its military power with precision great distances from China," said Helvey.

But it's not just missiles.  China is investing in submarines, new fighter jets, and it even launched its first aircraft carrier.

"The issue here is not one particular weapons system," he said. "It's the integration and overlapping nature of  these weapons systems into a regime that can potentially impede or restrict free military operations in the western Pacific."

In March, China announced it was increasing its defense budget by almost 11 percent, to $114 billion this year.  And U.S. defense officials say unreported spending could be pushing China's total military spending upwards of $200 billion.

Another cause for U.S. concern is Beijing's focus on space programs and a growing number of attacks in cyberspace, including on U.S. government systems, that the Pentagon says "appear to be directly attributable" to  China's government.

The cyber-security firm Mandiant says it has traced scores of those attacks to hackers operating near this Shanghai military building.

The Pentagon report says it is all part of a long-term strategy designed to expand China's reach far beyond its own borders.


Current strain of bird flu
can't spread via humans


The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the current strain of bird flu that is causing illness and deaths in China cannot spark a pandemic in its current form, but he added that there is no guarantee it will not mutate and cause a serious pandemic.

Thomas Frieden, director of the centers, said more than 2,000 people have been in contact with infected individuals, and only a handful have become ill.

Virtually all of the rest have had direct contact with poultry, the identified cause of the virus.

"This particular virus is not going to cause a pandemic because it doesn't spread person-to-person," Frieden said. "But all it takes is a bit of mutation for it to be able to go person-to-person.  I cannot say with certainty whether that will happen tomorrow, within 10 years or never."

The new strain of bird flu known as H7N9, which began infecting people in February, has so far sickened at least 127 people and killed 27. According to the latest estimates, the flu kills about 20 percent of the people it infects.

The United States has been working closely with Chinese health officials, and has recently distributed test kits to detect this new strain of flu, which has never before appeared in humans.

Tests by Chinese health officials have found the virus in chickens, ducks and pigeons, but Frieden said it is not yet clear how the virus spreads in birds.

New strains of flu present a threat because if they do become easily transmissible, they might quickly spread around the globe, attacking individuals who have no natural defense against the virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has activated its Emergency Operations Center to monitor the disease and currently has 193 staff working on H7N9.

"We've got a team working in China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam," Frieden said.

Frieden said there are several factors that make this particular virus especially worrisome.

An analysis of the genetic code of the virus shows that it has receptors that bind to the lower respiratory tract of people, much like the more familiar bird flu strain known as H5N1.

"That is why it's causing severe disease," Frieden said.

But it also has receptors that bind to the upper respiratory tract of people, which may explain why it is more transmissible from birds to people than H5 appears to be, he said.

And unlike H5N1, which caused severe disease in poultry, this new virus does not, which may make it more difficult to control because researchers will not be able to cull poultry flocks.

Frieden said even with H5, it took 18 months from the emergence of the virus until the 100th case. By comparison, it took only about one month from the emergence of H7 until the 100th case.

"If you look at the geographic spread of H5, within a couple of years it was all over Asia, into Africa, into the Middle East," he said.

Frieden said he cannot predict what the spread of H7 will be in birds, though he said he is concerned it may be quite wide.

"If there is evolution in the virus, it could go person-to-person, and that could cause severe pandemic," he said.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed and distributed H7N9 test kits, given to states and to several countries.

Frieden said the agency is working on flu vaccines for the virus and clinical trials could begin in the summer.


Canada loses trade appeal
over favors to local firms


Canada lost an appeal at the World Trade Organization on Monday in a ruling on incentives offered to local companies, a case that has already led to legal challenges over suspicions of similar perks elsewhere.

Japan and the European Union brought the case over a scheme intended to promote renewable energy in the province of Ontario.

It offered above-market prices for electricity supplied by renewable energy companies but only offered the premium to firms who bought most of their equipment locally.

Monday's appeal decision revised some of a December ruling in which Japan and the EU had won most of the case.

But it left in place the key finding that Ontario's incentives were illegal because they discriminated against foreign firms.

"Today's ruling is good news for everyone caring about clean energy and the environment: it has been made clear that use of quality, cost-effective technologies should not be hampered by protectionist measures," EU trade spokesman John Clancy said in a statement.

"The EU supports the promotion of renewable energy but considers this must be done in a manner consistent with international trade rules," he said.

A spokeswoman for Canada's federal trade ministry, Caitlin Workman, said the government would work with the provincial authorities to respond to the World Trade Organization appeal ruling, which is final.

Ontario will have to bring its rules into line with the World Trade Organization rules or risk a claim for trade sanctions against Canada.

Canada's defeat may spur more World Trade Organization disputes by countries which are desperate for economic growth and suspect their firms are being illegally locked out of infrastructure projects abroad.

The United States has already charged India with illegally favoring local producers in its solar sector and China has hit the EU with a claim that Greece and Italy favored solar power firms that bought local components.

Other potential disputes are simmering, with Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Ukraine and the United States all under scrutiny in sectors such as energy, mining, car making and telecoms.

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services