Global Hoax

Scientists Say Arctic Once Was Tropical
Sweeping views of glaciers, icebergs and details of the Greenland ice cap can be seen over Greenland Wednesday Aug. 17, 2005. First-of-its-kind core samples dug up from deep beneath the Arctic Ocean floor show that 55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise, three new studies show.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006
WASHINGTON - Scientists have found what might have been the ideal ancient vacation hotspot with a 74-degree Fahrenheit average temperature, alligator ancestors and palm trees. It's smack in the middle of the Arctic.

First-of-its-kind core samples dug up from deep beneath the Arctic Ocean floor show that 55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise, three new studies show.

The scientists say their findings are a glimpse backward into a much warmer-than-thought polar region heated by run-amok greenhouse gases that came about naturally.

Skeptics of man-made causes of global warming have nothing to rejoice over, however. The researchers say their studies appearing in Thursday's issue of Nature also offer a peak at just how bad conditions can get.

"It probably was (a tropical paradise) but the mosquitoes were probably the size of your head," said Yale geology professor Mark Pagani, a study co-author.

And what a watery, swampy world it must have been.

"Imagine a world where there are dense sequoia trees and cypress trees like in Florida that ring the Arctic Ocean," said Pagani, a member of the multinational Arctic Coring Expedition that conducted the research.

Millions of years ago the Earth experienced an extended period of natural global warming. But around 55 million years ago there was a sudden supercharged spike of carbon dioxide that accelerated the greenhouse effect.

Scientists already knew this "thermal event" happened but are not sure what caused it. Perhaps massive releases of methane from the ocean, the continent-sized burning of trees, lots of volcanic eruptions.

Many experts figured that while the rest of the world got really hot, the polar regions were still comfortably cooler, maybe about 52 degrees Fahrenheit.

But the new research found the polar average was closer to 74 degrees. So instead of Boston-like weather year-round, the Arctic was more like Miami North. Way north.

"It's the first time we've looked at the Arctic, and man, it was a big surprise to us," said study co-author Kathryn Moran, an oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island. "It's a new look to how the Earth can respond to these peaks in carbon dioxide."

It's enough to make Santa Claus break into a sweat.

The 74-degree temperature, based on core samples which act as a climatic time capsule, was probably the year-round average, but because data is so limited it might also be just the summertime average, researchers said.

What's troubling is that this hints that future projections for warming, several degrees over the next century, may be on the low end, said study lead author Appy Sluijs of the Institute of Environmental Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Also it shows that what happened 55 million years ago was proof that too much carbon dioxide - more than four times current levels - can cause global warming, said another co-author Henk Brinkhuis at Utrecht University.

Purdue University atmospheric sciences professor Gabriel Bowen, who was not part of the team, praised the work and said it showed that "there are tipping points in our (climate) system that can throw us to these conditions."

And the new research also gave scientists the idea that a simple fern may have helped pull Earth from a hothouse to an icehouse by sucking up massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, this natural solution to global warming was not exactly quick: It took about a million years.

With all that heat and massive freshwater lakes forming in the Arctic, a fern called Azolla started growing and growing. Azolla, still found in warm regions today, grew so deep, so wide that eventually it started sucking up carbon dioxide, Brinkhuis theorized. And that helped put the cool back in the Arctic.

Bowen said he has a hard time accepting that part of the research, but Brinkhuis said the studies show tons upon tons of thick mats of Azolla covered the Arctic and moved south.

"This could actually contribute to push the world to a cooling mode," Brinkhuis said, but only after it got hotter first and then it would take at least 800,000 years to cool back down. It's not something to look forward to, he said.

Web Posted: 05/12/2006 10:51 AM CDT

Deborah Knapp
KENS 5 Eyewitness News

If diseases like AIDS and bird flu scare you, wait until you hear what's next. Doctors are trying to find out what is causing a bizarre and mysterious infection that's surfaced in South Texas.

Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible.

"These people will have like beads of sweat but it's black, black and tarry," said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients.

Patients get lesions that never heal.

"Sometimes little black specks that come out of the lesions and sometimes little fibers," said Stephanie Bailey, Morgellons patient.

Patients say that's the worst symptom — strange fibers that pop out of your skin in different colors.

"He'd have attacks and fibers would come out of his hands and fingers, white, black and sometimes red. Very, very painful," said Lisa Wilson, whose son Travis had Morgellon's disease.

While all of this is going on, it feels like bugs are crawling under your skin. So far more than 100 cases of Morgellons disease have been reported in South Texas.

"It really has the makings of a horror movie in every way," Savely said.

While Savely sees this as a legitimate disease, there are many doctors who simply refuse to acknowledge it exists, because of the bizarre symptoms patients are diagnosed as delusional.

"Believe me, if I just randomly saw one of these patients in my office, I would think they were crazy too," Savely said. "But after you've heard the story of over 100 (patients) and they're all — down to the most minute detail — saying the exact same thing, that becomes quite impressive."

Travis Wilson developed Morgellons just over a year ago. He called his mother in to see a fiber coming out of a lesion.

"It looked like a piece of spaghetti was sticking out about a quarter to an eighth of an inch long and it was sticking out of his chest," Lisa Wilson said. "I tried to pull it as hard as I could out and I could not pull it out."

The Wilson's spent $14,000 after insurance last year on doctors and medicine.

"Most of them are antibiotics. He was on Tamadone for pain. Viltricide, this was an anti-parasitic. This was to try and protect his skin because of all the lesions and stuff," Lisa said.

However, nothing worked, and 23-year-old Travis could no longer take it.

"I knew he was going to kill himself, and there was nothing I could do to stop him," Lisa Wilson said.

Just two weeks ago, Travis took his life.

Stephanie Bailey developed the lesions four-and-a-half years ago.

"The lesions come up, and then these fuzzy things like spores come out," she said.

She also has the crawling sensation.

"You just want to get it out of you," Bailey said.

She has no idea what caused the disease, and nothing has worked to clear it up.

"They (doctors) told me I was just doing this to myself, that I was nuts. So basically I stopped going to doctors because I was afraid they were going to lock me up," Bailey said.

Harriett Bishop has battled Morgellons for 12 years. After a year on antibiotics, her hands have nearly cleared up. On the day, we visited her she only had one lesion and she extracted this fiber from it.

"You want to get these things out to relieve the pain, and that's why you pull and then you can see the fibers there, and the tentacles are there, and there are millions of them," Bishop said.

So far, pathologists have failed to find any infection in the fibers pulled from lesions.

"Clearly something is physically happening here," said Dr. Randy Wymore, a researcher at the Morgellons Research Foundation at Oklahoma State University's Center for Health Sciences.

Wymore examines the fibers, scabs and other samples from Morgellon's patients to try and find the disease's cause.

"These fibers don't look like common environmental fibers," he said.

The goal at OSU is to scientifically find out what is going on. Until then, patients and doctors struggle with this mysterious and bizarre infection. Thus far, the only treatment that has showed some success is an antibiotic.

"It sounds a little like a parasite, like a fungal infection, like a bacterial infection, but it never quite fits all the criteria of any known pathogen," Savely said

No one knows how Morgellans is contracted, but it does not appear to be contagious. The states with the highest number of cases are Texas, California and Florida.

The only connection found so far is that more than half of the Morgellons patients are also diagnosed with Lyme disease.

For more information on Morgellons, visit the research foundation's Web site at www.morgellons.org.

Find out what happens when Rubidium and/or Cesium is mixed with water.

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Ships' logs give clues to Earth's magnetic decline

The voyages of Captain Cook have just yielded a new discovery: the gradual weakening of Earth’s magnetic field is a relatively recent phenomenon. The discovery has led experts to question whether the Earth is on track towards a polarity reversal.

By sifting through ships’ logs recorded by Cook and other mariners dating back to 1590, researchers have greatly extended the period over which the behaviour of the magnetic field can be studied. The data show that the current decline in Earth's magnetism was virtually negligible before 1860, but has accelerated since then.

Until now, scientists had only been able to trace the magnetic field’s behaviour back to 1837, when Carl Friedrich Gauss invented the first device for measuring the field directly.

The field’s strength is now declining at a rate that suggests it could virtually disappear in about 2000 years. Researchers have speculated that this ongoing change may be the prelude to a magnetic reversal, during which the north and south magnetic pole swap places.

But the weakening trend could also be explained by a growing magnetic anomaly in the southern Atlantic Ocean, and may not be the sign of a large scale polarity reversal, the researchers suggest.
Crucial measurements

David Gubbins, an expert in geomagnetism at the University of Leeds, UK, led the study which began scouring old ships' logs in the 1980s, gathering log entries recording the direction of Earth's magnetic field.

It was common practice for captains in the 17th and 18th centuries to calibrate their ship's compasses relative to true north and, less often, to measure the steepness at which magnetic field lines entered the Earth's surface.

Even as far back as 1590, these measurements were typically very accurate – to within half a degree. "Their lives depended on it," Gubbins explains.

Such ship-log records may not be adequate for reconstructing the planet's past magnetic fields in fine detail, but the data can estimate large-scale features quite well. "In that regard, I think it's a very solid result," says Catherine Constable, an expert in palaeomagnetism at the University of California, San Diego, US, who was not involved in the study.
Mineral evidence

Using the locations of the ships at the time of measurement, these records allowed Gubbins to construct a map of the relative strength of Earth's magnetic field between 1590 and 1840, which was published in 2003.

The data was combined with 315 estimates of the field's overall strength during that period, based on indirect clues, such as mineral evidence in bricks from old human settlements or volcanic rock.

Gubbins showed that the overall strength of the planet's magnetic field was virtually unchanged between 1590 and 1840. Since then, the field has declined at a rate of roughly 5% per 100 years.

Every 300,000 years on average, the north and south poles of the Earth's magnetic field swap places. The field must weaken and go to zero before it can reverse itself. The last such reversal occurred roughly 780,000 years ago, so we are long overdue for another magnetic flip. Once it begins, the process of reversing takes less than 5000 years, experts believe.
Growing anomaly

A large-scale reversal might indeed be underway, Gubbins says, but the acceleration of the magnetic decline since the mid-1800s is probably due to a local aberration of the magnetic field called the South Atlantic Anomaly. "It looks like that's responsible for most of the fall we're seeing," he says.

This patch of reversed magnetic field lines covering much of South America first appeared in about 1800, according to the ship-log data. It slowly grew in strength, and by about 1860 it was large enough to affect the overall strength of the planet's magnetic field, Gubbins says.

If the field does flip 2000 years from now, the Northern Lights will be visible all over the planet during the transition, and solar radiation at ground level will be much more intense, with no field to deflect it.

There is no need to worry, though, argues Gubbins, as our ancestors have lived through quite a few of these transitions already.

Journal reference: Science (vol 312, p 900)
Related Articles

* Watching the North Pole wobble
* http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18925391.500
* 18 February 2006
* Ancient mariners point the way
* http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg17924021.200
* 05 July 2003

Weblinks

* Captain Cook
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook
* When North Goes South
* http://www.psc.edu/science/glatzmaier.html
* Earth's magnetic field
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_magnetic_field

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Printed on Fri May 12 16:26:10 BST 2006

Thousands of tourists and local residents witnessed a mirage of high clarity lasting for four hours off the shore of Penglai City in east China's Shandong Province on Sunday.

Mists rising on the shore created an image of a city, with modern high-rise buildings, broad city streets and bustling cars as well as crowds of people all clearly visible.

The city of Penglai had been soaked by two days of rain before the rare weather phenomenon occurred.

The mirage took place during the week-long Labor Day holiday. The small city received over 30,000 tourists on Sunday.

Experts said that many mirages have been recorded in Penglai, on the tip of Shandong Peninsula, throughout history, which made it known as a dwelling place of the gods.

They explained that a mirage is formed when moisture in the air becomes warmer than the temperature of sea water, which refracts rays of sunlight to create reflections of the landscape in the sky.

DNA Tests Confirm Bear Was a Hybrid


56 minutes ago

Northern hunters, scientists and people with vivid imaginations have discussed the possibility for years.

But Roger Kuptana, an Inuvialuit guide from Sachs Harbour, North West Territories, was the first to suspect it had actually happened when he proposed that a strange-looking bear shot last month by an American sports hunter might be half polar bear, half grizzly.

Territorial officials seized the creature after noticing its white fur was scattered with brown patches and that it had the long claws and humped back of a grizzly. Now a DNA test has confirmed that it is indeed a hybrid — possibly the first documented in the wild.

"We've known it's possible, but actually most of us never thought it would happen," said Ian Stirling, a polar bear biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Edmonton.

Polar bears and grizzlies have been successfully paired in zoos before — Stirling could not speculate why — and their offspring are fertile.

Breeding seasons for the two species overlap, though polar bear gets started slightly earlier.

By ROBERT JABLON, Associated Press Writer 55 minutes ago

Two lost hikers who survived three nights in rugged terrain were rescued after they scavenged supplies from the campsite of another hiker who vanished last year and is presumed dead.

The pair found a backpack containing clothing and matches in the deserted campsite of John Donovan, almost a year to the day after he disappeared in the San Jacinto Mountains.

Donovan's abandoned gear "gave us the means to get out," hiker Gina Allen said Wednesday in a telephone interview.

Allen, 24, and Brandon Day, 28, of Dallas, were in Southern California for a financial convention. They got lost Saturday west of Palm Springs after wandering off a trail during what was supposed to be a day hike.

At first, they were not too worried because they could hear voices.

"I still felt we were relatively close," Day said, recalling that he thought the trail would "be around this next boulder."

Prepared only for a brief hike, they wore light jackets and tennis shoes and had no food, spare clothing or cell phones.

With night closing in, they took shelter in a small cave between boulders and spent the night sleepless, freezing and hungry.

In the morning, they struggled to follow a stream downhill through boulder-strewn terrain. That night, they were frequently awakened by their own shivering.

But they kept going, with "the mantra from night one: 'We're going to get out of here. We're not going to die. It's not our time,'" Day said.

The third day was the worst for Allen, who was getting weaker.

"The very worst thoughts went through our mind, that we might be stuck here. I prayed a lot," she said.

On Monday, they discovered a campsite in a dead-end gorge. There was a foam sleeping mat, a poncho thrown into some branches for shade, a backpack, disposable razor, spoon and tennis shoes.

Day and Allen were elated, thinking someone there could help them find the way out. But something was wrong. The gear was wet. A radio and flashlight were corroded. They realized the place was deserted.

"I could just feel myself struck down," Allen said.

They found identification showing the camper was Donovan, 60, a retired social worker from Virginia. They learned later that he was an experienced hiker who had been following the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, from Southern California to the Canadian border, when he vanished May 2, 2005 in icy weather.

His journal, in the form of notes written on sketch paper and on the back of maps, depicted a man without hope of rescue, Day said.

"His last journal entry was one year ago to the day that we found it, which was very eerie," Day said. "Nobody knew where he was, nobody knew to come looking for him, so he was preparing for the end. We were looking at the words of a man who was passing."

They found salvation in his backpack: a warm sweater for Allen, dry socks for Day and matches. They lit a small signal fire and spotted a helicopter in the distance, but the crew did not see them.

On Tuesday morning, they came to a large culvert choked with dried-out vines and other foliage. Day struck another match.

"The whole acre or two caught fire, created a really big smoke signal" that finally alerted a helicopter crew, he said.

They were examined at a hospital and had only blisters and bruises.

"We feel great. We're thankful. We feel like we've been given a second chance," Day said by telephone from his Palm Desert hotel room.

Authorities planned to search the area over the weekend for signs of Donovan.

Day wants Donovan's relatives to know that his demise helped save them. "With tragedy comes rebirth," he said. "We have a real special thanks for that person."

Pain At The Pump: Government Gas Secrets

Mon May 8, 1:42 PM ET

The government has been keeping a secret about automobiles under wraps for the past 30 years.

Reporter Michelle Meredith teamed up with Consumer Reports to explain why your car probably does not get the mileage advertised.

The Consumer Reports' auto test track in Connecticut looks like it could be a new theme park in Orlando.

And when it comes to testing cars, Consumer Reports leaves no stone unturned, no lug nut loose. And here's the question Consumer Reports set out to answer -- does your car get the gas mileage promised on the showroom sticker.

It's the mileage you probably used to decide if the car fit your monthly budget.

First, Meredith took a look at how carmakers come up with these numbers because you could be in for a big surprise. The guidelines for the tests were set by the federal government decades ago, in the late 1970s. Gerald Ford was president and disco was king.

And under these guidelines by the Environmental Protection Agency, carmakers are allowed to test miles per gallon by running the vehicle not on the road, but on what's essentially a treadmill for cars.

During an EPA spot check, the car ran with no air conditioning, no inclines or hills, no wind resistance and at speeds no greater than 60 mph.

There's hardly anything real world about it, but it gives carmakers what they want -- the highest possible miles per gallon to put on that sticker.

"People are going into showrooms, they're looking at that sticker that says miles per gallon and they're saying, 'Oh it get goods miles per gallon,'" said Consumer Reports' David Champion. "In reality, they're being cheated."

Consumer Reports conducts their test on a track and in the real world.

First, they put them through a simulated city course. Next the highway -- a real highway. For the third test, they take the car out on a 150-mile day trip throughout Connecticut.

All the while, a special miles per gallon meter is ticking away. Their results? Many numbers you see on those stickers are off way off -- one as much as 50 percent.

For example, Chrysler says the four-wheel drive diesel version of the Jeep Liberty gets 22 mpg in the city. Consumer Reports tested it and found it got more like 11 mpg.

Honda claims its hybrid Civic sedan gets 48 mpg in the city. Consumer Reports found it only gets 26 mpg -- a 46 percent difference.

Chevy's Trailblazer EXT four-wheel drive is supposed to get 15 mpg in the city. For Consumer Reports, it was 9 mpg.

"It's an unrealistic sales and marketing tool that they are actually using. They are saying you're going to get 35 mpg, and you're really only going to get 21," Champion said.

Why is this allowed? Meredith asked the EPA's director of transportation.

"We cannot have a perfect test," said Margo Oge.

Oge said for so long, nobody really complained. Meanwhile, everything has changed.

"All the cars today have air conditioning, which was not the case in the mid-80s, and we drive at higher speeds because we are allowed to drive a higher speeds. And technology has changed," Oge said.

Carmakers know their number is up. Several have been to Consumer Reports' test track to see how they test real world conditions.

"I think it's desperately time for a change," Champion said.

The EPA has said a change is coming in time for the 2008 models, but is that soon enough? Consumers need real world tests with real world numbers now because with the price of gas constantly climbing, the real world has become a very ugly place.

The EPA said even though the new test will reflect more real-world conditions, there is no perfect test.

For more information and for a list of the most fuel efficient cars and SUVs, check out Consumer Reports' special report A Guide To Stretching Your Fuel Dollars.

To comment on this story, send an e-mail to Michelle Meredith.

Netgear delivers 85 Mbps over power lines


By Doug Mohney: Monday 08 May 2006, 06:42

IT'S HARD not to love powerline technology (PLT), except for the price tag. You plug it into the wall socket, plug in your Ethernet connection, and it just works, using the home's electrical wiring to move around data. There's no fussing around with antennae, worrying about your neighbours poaching on your Wi-Fi router or someone driving around with a cantenna trying to crack your network.

NetGear has upped PLT speeds to 85 Mbps with the XE104 wall-plugged 4-port Ethernet switch. It incorporates Intellon's INT 5500CS chipset to boost speeds in a non-standardized fashion; HomePlug 1.0 is good up to 14 Mbps while next-generation HomePlugAV will go up to 200 Mbps to support HDTV, video-on-demand. Initial HomePlugAV devices were "expected" during the second quarter of 2006, but there haven't been any press releases on the subject since devolo's announcement at CeBIT that they're going to use Intellion's HomePlugAV chipset. Instead, many vendors, including DLink and devolo, have latched onto Intelleon's 85 Mbps solution as an intermediate solution until HomePlug AV chip sets start turning up in affordable quantities.

Installing the XE104s – you need at least two to take advantage of the 85 Mbps data rates – is simple. Rip open the box, plug into the wall, plug Ethernet cable into one of the available 10/100 Ethernet ports (two per side), and then watch the blinky lights if you need to trouble-shoot any network problems. They'll even work plugged in upside down; a necessary feature given the space-hog ways of powerstrips and UPSes. If you want to get really fancy, you can use the supplied CD to change the default passwords to something more unique. If you are in a shared dwelling, such as an apartment complex, you may want to do this for some additional security. Alternately, you can set up different logical workgroups on the same "house wiring" with different passwords.

One of the nice features of the XE104 is that they're backwards compatible with HomePlug 1.0, so you can mix and match devices if you need. The XE104 worked fine with the IOGear HomePlug devices I had already operating on my network. Having four 10/100 Ethernet ports even though you don't get 100 Mbps Ethernet speeds is also very useful in a SOHO environment. For example, I can have both my desktop and laptop computers plugged into the bridge so I can cut down on the amount of Wi-Fi traffic and 2.4GHz noise.

Price is going to hold some people back. A pair of first generation 14 Mbps HomePlug devices cost around $71.00 (down from the $129.00 list on Amazon.com). A pair of the XE104 units list price $199.00 at the local Big Box. Of course, if you want to go over 100 Mbps with Wi-Fi, you're likely to end up shelling out a larger sum of money, especially if you start factoring in the cost of individual Wi-Fi frobs when compared to plugging things into the PLT bridge. Finally, if you are really future-proof paranoid, you're going to have to sit on your hands until the end of the year when HomePlugAV units start showing up in quantity. µ

Patrick Kennedy To Seek Treatment
Congressman Says He Doesn't Recall Crash

By Del Quentin Wilber and Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 6, 2006; A01

Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy said yesterday that he is entering treatment for an addiction to prescription medications, an announcement that comes as police continue their investigation into a car crash involving the congressman near the Capitol.

Calling his addiction a "chronic disease," Kennedy said he does not even recall the accident, which occurred early Thursday and raised questions about his behavior and how U.S. Capitol Police deal with members of Congress.

The congressman's office has said Kennedy (D-R.I.) was disoriented behind the wheel because he had taken prescription medication to calm stomach inflammation and to help him sleep. No one was injured in the crash, but Kennedy almost hit a Capitol Police car head-on before slamming into a security barrier, authorities said.

Kennedy, 38, said yesterday that he has been battling problems with addiction and depression since he was a young man and that he will seek immediate treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He was a patient there during Congress's winter break, he said, and thought he had returned to Washington "reinvigorated and healthy."

"I am deeply concerned about my reaction to the medication and my lack of knowledge of the accident that evening," he said during a brief news conference at the Capitol. "But I do know enough that I know I need help."

Kennedy did not answer questions at the news conference or address a controversy surrounding the Capitol Police department's handling of the matter. The union representing Capitol Police officers has said that Kennedy should have been given a sobriety test because officers at the scene suspected he had been drinking. The union suggested that Kennedy got special treatment because supervisors took over and drove him home.

Acting Capitol Police Chief Christopher M. McGaffin declined requests for comment yesterday. He told Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Congress, that managers had made mistakes in judgment and that "significant" administrative action has been taken.

The news conference was Kennedy's first public appearance since he crashed his green 1997 Ford Mustang convertible about 2:50 a.m. Thursday into the security barrier at First and C streets SE. New details emerged in a police report made public yesterday.

Before the crash, an officer saw the Mustang speeding through a construction zone and swerving into and traveling in the wrong lane of traffic, the report said. The car's lights were off, and the Mustang almost hit a police car before it smacked into the barrier.

In the report, an officer noted that Kennedy's eyes were "watery, speech was slightly slurred . . . and his balance was unsure."

Kennedy told the officer that he was "headed to the Capitol to make a vote," the report said. The House was not in session at the time.

Although the report includes a notation that alcohol played a role in the crash, police union officials said that supervisors did not allow officers to administer field sobriety or breathalyzer tests.

Kennedy, the son of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and a scion of one of the country's most prominent political families, was not charged with any crimes but received three traffic citations: failure to keep in the proper lane, driving at an unreasonable speed and failure to give full time and attention to his car. Police said they are contemplating other charges.

Kennedy's office issued a statement Thursday night that said he was on prescription drugs and had not consumed alcohol before the crash. Under D.C. law, people who take prescription medications that hamper their driving can be charged with driving under the influence. The charge carries a penalty of up to 90 days in jail and a $300 fine for a first offense.

Within hours of the accident, union officials had written a letter to the Capitol Police chief that criticized the supervisors' decision to forgo sobriety tests.

The actions called "the integrity of our organization into question by creating the appearance of special favor for someone who is perceived to be privileged and powerful," wrote Officer Gregrey H. Baird, acting chairman of the Capitol Police labor committee for the D.C. Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1.

Former chief Terrance W. Gainer, who left the force last month, agreed that sobriety tests should have been performed. "It appears there was a mistake made by police and by command officials, not the troops," he said.

Gainer said he understood that McGaffin was not immediately told about the crash. He said a lieutenant in the command center has been reassigned.

Authorities are trying to track Kennedy's activities before the accident. Detectives were canvassing bars near the Capitol to determine whether he had been spotted in them in the hours leading up to the crash, law enforcement sources said.

For his part, Kennedy said the accident "concerns me greatly." He has said that he returned Wednesday night to his home on Capitol Hill, took the medications and inexplicably wound up driving to the Capitol in the belief that he needed to vote.

"I simply do not remember getting out of bed, being pulled over by the police or being cited for three driving infractions," he said. "That's not how I want to live my life, and it's not how I want to represent the people of Rhode Island."

Kennedy has been taking Ambien, a sleeping medication, his office said. Then, on Tuesday, he caught a stomach virus and visited a doctor in the Capitol who prescribed Phenergan to ease inflammation.

Each drug can cause confusion and poor coordination, with the effects heightened when taken together. The drugs in combination can also cause memory loss.

Kennedy said the "recurrence of an addiction problem can be triggered by things that happen in everyday life, such as taking the common [medication] for a stomach flu. It's not an excuse for what happened . . . but it is a reality of fighting a chronic condition for which I am taking full responsibility."

Lou Cannon, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1, said Kennedy did "the stand-up thing" by admitting his addiction and seeking treatment.

The episode follows another incident involving Capitol police and a member of Congress. In March, Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) got into a scuffle with an officer as she tried to bypass a metal detector.

Police asked prosecutors to charge McKinney with assault, and a grand jury is investigating the case.

Staff writers Karlyn Barker, David Brown and Shailagh Murray and news researchers Rena Kirsch, Bob Lyford and Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

By Ralph Vartabedian
Times Staff Writer

March 29, 2006

After massive underground plumes of an industrial solvent were discovered in the nation's water supplies, the Environmental Protection Agency mounted a major effort in the 1990s to assess how dangerous the chemical was to human health.

Following four years of study, senior EPA scientists came to an alarming conclusion: The solvent, trichloroethylene, or TCE, was as much as 40 times more likely to cause cancer than the EPA had previously believed.

The preliminary report in 2001 laid the groundwork for tough new standards to limit public exposure to TCE. Instead of triggering any action, however, the assessment set off a high-stakes battle between the EPA and Defense Department, which had more than 1,000 military properties nationwide polluted with TCE. FOR THE RECORD:
Risks of solvent: Due to an editing error, an article in Wednesday's Section A about the regulation and dangers of the industrial solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, quoted Alex A. Beehler, the Pentagon's top environmental official, as saying: "We are all forgetting the facts on the table. Meanwhile, we have done everything we can to curtail use of TCE." Beehler actually said, "We are all for getting the facts on the table." —
By 2003, after a prolonged challenge orchestrated by the Pentagon, the EPA lost control of the issue and its TCE assessment was cast aside. As a result, any conclusion about whether millions of Americans were being contaminated by TCE was delayed indefinitely.

What happened with TCE is a stark illustration of a power shift that has badly damaged the EPA's ability to carry out one of its essential missions: assessing the health risks of toxic chemicals.

The agency's authority and its scientific stature have been eroded under a withering attack on its technical staff by the military and its contractors. Indeed, the Bush administration leadership at the EPA ultimately sided with the military.

After years on the defensive, the Pentagon — with help from NASA and the Energy Department — is taking a far tougher stand in challenging calls for environmental cleanups. It is using its formidable political leverage to demand greater proof that industrial substances cause cancer before ratcheting up costly cleanups at polluted bases.

The military says it is only striving to make smart decisions based on sound science and accuses the EPA of being unduly influenced by left-leaning scientists.

But critics say the defense establishment has manufactured unwarranted scientific doubt, used its powerful role in the executive branch to cause delays and forced a reduction in the margins of protection that traditionally guard public health.

If the EPA's 2001 draft risk assessment was correct, then possibly thousands of the nation's birth defects and cancers every year are due in part to TCE exposure, according to several academic experts.

"It is a World Trade Center in slow motion," said Boston University epidemiologist David Ozonoff, a TCE expert. "You would never notice it."

Senior officials in the Defense Department say much remains unknown about TCE.

"We are all forgetting the facts on the table," said Alex A. Beehler, the Pentagon's top environmental official. "Meanwhile, we have done everything we can to curtail use of TCE."

But in the last four years, the Pentagon, with help from the Energy Department and NASA, derailed tough EPA action on such water contaminants as the rocket fuel ingredient perchlorate. In response, state regulators in California and elsewhere have moved to impose their own rules.

The stakes are even higher with TCE. Half a dozen state, federal and international agencies classify TCE as a probable carcinogen.

California EPA regulators consider TCE a known carcinogen and issued their own 1999 risk assessment that reached the same conclusion as federal EPA regulators: TCE was far more toxic than previous scientific studies indicated.

TCE is the most widespread water contaminant in the nation. Huge swaths of California, New York, Texas and Florida, among other states, lie over TCE plumes. The solvent has spread under much of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys, as well as the shuttered El Toro Marine Corps base in Orange County.

Developed by chemists in the late 19th century, TCE was widely used to degrease metal parts and then dumped into nearby disposal pits at industrial plants and military bases, where it seeped into aquifers.

The public is exposed to TCE in several ways, including drinking or showering in contaminated water and breathing air in homes where TCE vapors have intruded from the soil. Limiting such exposures, even at current federal regulatory levels, requires elaborate treatment facilities that cost billions of dollars annually. In addition, some cities, notably Los Angeles, have high ambient levels of TCE in the air.

An internal Air Force report issued in 2003 warned that the Pentagon alone has 1,400 sites contaminated with TCE.

Among those, at least 46 have involved large-scale contamination or significant exposure to humans at military bases, according to a list compiled by the Natural Resources New Service, an environmental group based in Washington.

The Air Force was convinced that the EPA would toughen its allowable limit of TCE in drinking water of 5 parts per billion by at least fivefold. The service was already spending $5 billion a year to clean up TCE at its bases and tougher standards would drive that up by another $1.5 billion, according to an Air Force document. Some outside experts said that estimate was probably low.

After the EPA issued the draft assessment, the Pentagon, Energy Department and NASA appealed their case directly to the White House. TCE has also contaminated 23 sites in the Energy Department's nuclear weapons complex — including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area, and NASA centers, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

The agencies argued that the EPA had produced junk science, its assumptions were badly flawed and that evidence exonerating TCE was ignored. They argued that the EPA could not be trusted to move ahead on its own and that top leaders in the agency did not have control of their own bureaucracy.

Bush administration appointees in the EPA — notably research director Paul Gilman — sided with the Pentagon and agreed to pull back the risk assessment. The matter was referred for a lengthy study by the National Academy of Sciences, which is due to issue a new report this summer. Any resolution of the cancer risk TCE poses will take years and any new regulation could take even longer.

The delay tactics have angered Republicans and Democrats who represent contaminated communities, where residents in some cases have elevated rates of cancer and birth defects but no direct proof that their illness is tied to TCE.

Half a dozen members of Congress last year wrote to the EPA, demanding that it issue interim standards for TCE, instead of waiting years while scientific battles are waged between competing federal agencies. EPA leaders have rejected those demands.

"The evidence on TCE is overwhelming," said Dr. Gina Solomon, an environmental medicine expert at UC San Francisco and a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We have 80 epidemiological studies and hundreds of toxicology studies. They are fairly consistent in finding cancer risks that cover a range of tumors. It is hard to make all that human health risk go away."

But Raymond F. DuBois, former deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment in the Bush administration, said the Pentagon had not been willing to accept whatever came out of the EPA, though it cared a great deal about base contamination.

"If you go down two or three levels in EPA, you have an awful lot of people that came onboard during the Clinton administration, to be perfectly blunt about it, and have a different approach than I do at Defense," DuBois said. "It doesn't mean I don't respect their opinions or judgments, but I have an obligation where our scientists question their scientists to bring it to the surface."

The military has virtually eliminated its use of TCE, purchasing only 11 gallons last year, said Beehler, an attorney who used to head environmental affairs for Koch Industries Inc., a large industrial conglomerate in Wichita, Kan.

In its fight against the 2001 risk assessment, the Pentagon has gone to the very fundamentals of cancer research: toxicology, the study of poisons; and epidemiology, the science of how diseases are distributed in the population. This scientific approach has worked better than past arguments that cleanups are a costly diversion from the Pentagon's mission to defend U.S. security.

A few months after the 2001 draft risk assessment came out, an Air Force rebuttal charged that the EPA had "misrepresented" data from animal and human health studies.

It said "there is no convincing evidence" that some groups of people, like children and diabetics, are more susceptible to TCE, a key part of the EPA's report. And it said the EPA had failed to consider viewpoints from "scientists who believe that TCE does not represent a human cancer risk at levels reasonably expected in the environment."

But comments such as these are outside the scientific mainstream. Other federal agencies have also expressed grave concern about TCE and some experts say it is only a matter of time before the chemical is universally recognized as a known carcinogen.

"Do I think TCE causes cancer? Yes," said Ozonoff, the Boston University TCE expert. "There is lots of evidence. Is there a dispute about it? Yes. Whenever the stakes are high, that's when there will be disputes about the science."

The 2001 risk assessment found TCE was two to 40 times more likely to cause cancer than was found in an assessment conducted in 1986, a wide range that reflected many scientific uncertainties. Because cancer risk assessments are not an exact science, federal regulators have historically exercised great caution in protecting public health.

The California EPA, the nation's largest and best-funded state environment agency, assessed TCE in 1999 and also found reason for concern. Its risk assessment fell in the middle of the EPA risk range, according to the study's author, Joseph Brown.

Rodents fed TCE develop liver and kidney cancer, and humans exposed to TCE show elevated rates of many types of cancer and birth defects. But industry experts fire back that evidence on TCE is still weak. Just because rats and mice get cancer from high levels of TCE doesn't prove that humans will get cancer from low levels of TCE, they say. And the epidemiological research is less convincing than animal studies, they say.

The U.S. still uses about 100 tons of TCE annually, a fraction of the consumption before the mid-1980s, when it was first classified as a probable carcinogen. It was once widely used in consumer products, such as correction fluid for typewriters and spot cleaners.

"If TCE is a human carcinogen, it isn't much of one," said Paul Dugard, a toxicologist at the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance Inc., which represents TCE manufacturers. "People exposed at low levels shouldn't be concerned.

"EPA's philosophy is still one of being super conservative and that is being pushed back against."

EPA officials were braced for such a controversy when the TCE assessment was issued and quickly convened a scientific advisory board to review the work. The board included public health officials at state agencies, academics and chemical industry scientists.

About one year later, the board issued its findings, praising the risk assessment and urging the EPA to implement it as quickly as possible. But the board also suggested some changes, including stronger support for its calculations of TCE's health risks and a clearer disclosure of its underlying assumptions.

The report, particularly the request for additional work, was interpreted as a serious problem by Gilman, the EPA research director.

He said the board's findings represented a "red flag" and "raised very troubling issues," all of which were key arguments by Gilman and others for stopping the assessment.

But members of the scientific advisory team dispute Gilman's interpretation, saying they felt the 2001 risk assessment was good science and their recommended changes amounted to normal commentary for such a complex matter.

"I thought by and large we supported the EPA and that its risk assessment could be modified to move forward," said Dr. Henry Anderson, the chairman of the scientific advisory board and a physician with the Wisconsin Division of Public Health. "That movement to shuttle the issue to the National Academy of Sciences was nothing like what we had in mind."

By 2004, the matter was out of the EPA's hands. The National Academy of Sciences received a $680,00 contract from the Energy Department to study TCE — a decision dictated by a working group at the White House. The briefings to the national academy on how to evaluate TCE were given by White House staff as well as the EPA.

The White House originally formed the working group — made up of officials from the Pentagon, Energy Department and NASA — in 2002 to combat the EPA's assessment of another pollutant, perchlorate. That group stayed in business to fight the TCE risk assessment. The group was co-chaired by officials in the Office of Management and Budget and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The officials declined requests for interviews.

Given the controversy and stakes involved, the issue was bound to end up with National Academy of Sciences, said Peter Preuss, director of the National Center for Environmental Analysis, the EPA organization that produced the 2001 risk assessment. "It got very difficult to proceed," Preuss said.

The lead author of the 2001 health risk assessment, V. James Cogliano, agreed that the findings ran into trouble when Defense Department officials went to the White House. "Most of it was behind the scenes," said Cogliano, now a senior official at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France.

He added: "The degree of opposition was not surprising given the degree of economic interests involved."

The political maneuvering marked a significant change, Cogliano said. In the 1980s, Defense Department officials accepted every possible safeguard recommended by the EPA for incinerators to burn nerve gas and other chemical weapons, he recalled.

At that time, Defense Department officials said, "You put in every margin of safety, because we want to be sure it will be safe," he said. "There was no argument. There is a different spirit today."

Every health risk assessment is also getting more technically complex and more bureaucratically difficult, Preuss said.

When the EPA issued its first health risk assessment in 1976, it ran four pages and it was based in large part on studies that counted "bumps and lumps" on animals subjected to possible carcinogens. By contrast, EPA scientists now must show not only that a substance causes tumors, but the internal biological processes that are responsible. And the work is subject to greater scrutiny.

"It is true that there is more interagency review now of our work," Preuss said. "We have a couple steps where we send our assessments to the White House and they distribute them to other agencies. Each year, additional steps are taken."

All of the EPA's travails — the toughened scientific demands, the loss of authority, the interagency battles — have clearly taken a heavy toll and diminished the agency's stature.

"Inside the Beltway, it is an accepted fact that the science of EPA is not good," said Gilman, now director of the Oak Ridge Center for Advanced Studies in Tennessee, which conducts broad research on energy, the environment and other areas of science. Gilman said an entire consulting industry has sprung up in Washington to attack the EPA and sow seeds of doubt about its capabilities.

The delays in assessing TCE have also left many contaminated communities with few answers.

"My constituents who live at a recently named Superfund site … are forced to live everyday with contaminated groundwater, soil and air and can't afford to wait the years it would take for the results of your outsourced re-review," Rep. Sue W. Kelly (R-N.Y.) told EPA officials at a hearing last year.

"I have talked to a lot of sick people," said Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.), whose district includes hundreds of homes contaminated by TCE vapors, traced to an IBM Corp. factory. IBM has paid for air filtration systems for 400 homes, but has balked at more funding based on uncertainty over the health risk. "These people are deeply frustrated and increasingly angry," Hinchey said.

Meanwhile, many environmentalists are discouraged by what they view as a virtual emasculation of the EPA in this battle.

"The general public has no idea this is happening," said Erik Olson, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The Defense Department has succeeded in undermining the basic scientific process at EPA. The DoD is the biggest polluter in the United States and they have made major investments to undercut the EPA."

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(INFOBOX BELOW)

The military and TCE

About 1,400 Defense Department sites across the nation are contaminated with trichloroethylene, or TCE, including military bases and depots. The map shows sites that have some of the heaviest contamination or were studied for possibly causing health hazards. A sampling of problems nationwide:

Contaminated sites

McClellan Air Force Base, Sacramento:

The Pentagon is cleaning up 12 different TCE plumes affecting about 25% of the former base's property. About a half dozen public water wells have been shut and the cleanup is expected to continue for decades.

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F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Cheyenne, Wyo.:

TCE was discovered at 13 decommissioned Atlas missile silos in Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska. Contamination at some of the sites reached 3,500 parts per billion. TCE polluted an aquifer that Cheyenne, Wyo., planned to use as a municipal water source.

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Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant, Arden Hills, Minn.:

A TCE plume covered 25 square miles and spread to private residential wells. The water supply for a nearby trailer park contained 720 parts per billion TCE. The site is now undergoing a cleanup under Superfund program supervision.

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Stratford Army Engine Plant, Stratford, Conn.:

Elevated TCE vapors were discovered in several buildings the Army planned to lease to private concerns. Federal health authorities judged the vapors too high for general public exposure. A cleanup is underway.

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El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, Irvine, Calif.:

TCE contaminated the groundwater under the base, now closed, which long ago complicated plans to reuse the property for private housing and a public park. The government will retain about 900 contaminated acres to continue cleanup for the indefinite future.

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Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio:

TCE use at the shuttered aircraft repair depot contaminated a shallow aquifer that has migrated about 4 miles off the base, through a low-income neighborhood. Health authorities have found elevated rates of cancer and birth defects in the neighborhood.

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Anniston Army Depot, Anniston, Ala.:

Extremely high concentrations of TCE, up to 200,000 parts per billion, were found by government investigators in groundwater under the depot, which included a number of dumps, a plating plant and other industrial activities. TCE levels above allowable drinking water standards have been found at springs and wells on the base.

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Camp Lejeune, N.C.:

Tens of thousands of Marine families were exposed to TCE in the base's drinking water supply. A preliminary study has found elevated rates of leukemia among children conceived at the base. The TCE was discovered in 1980 but not disclosed until 1985.

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Sources: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Natural Resources News Service, Associated Press, California Department of Toxic Substances Control. Graphics reporting by Tom Reinken, Ralph Vartabedian

The U.S. needs to stop trying to model the democracy in Iraq to match the successful formula used here. The religious and ethnic differences in Iraq dictate a slightly different approach. Iraq should be subdivided into three states...Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites. The three states would form one unified Iraq. Are there reasons why this might not work?
S.A. Kleinheider

Sen. Biden Suggests Decentralized Iraq

By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 29 minutes ago

The senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed Monday that Iraq be divided into three separate regions — Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni — with a central government in Baghdad.

In an op-ed essay in Monday's edition of The New York Times, Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record). D-Del., wrote that the idea "is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group ... room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests."

The new Iraqi constitution allows for establishment of self-governing regions. But that was one of the reasons the Sunnis opposed the constitution and why they demanded and won an agreement to review it this year.

Biden and co-writer Leslie H. Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, acknowledged the opposition, and said the Sunnis "have to be given money to make their oil-poor region viable. The Constitution must be amended to guarantee Sunni areas 20 percent (approximately their proportion of the population) of all revenues."

Biden and Gelb also wrote that President Bush "must direct the military to design a plan for withdrawing and redeploying our troops from Iraq by 2008 (while providing for a small but effective residual force to combat terrorists and keep the neighbors honest)."

The White House on Sunday defended its prewar planning against criticism from an unlikely source — former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In an interview broadcast Sunday in London, Powell revisited the question of whether the U.S. had a large enough force to oust Saddam Hussein and then secure the peace.

Powell said he advised now-retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who developed and executed the 2003 Iraq invasion plan, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld "before the president that I was not sure we had enough troops. The case was made, it was listened to, it was considered. ... A judgment was made by those responsible that the troop strength was adequate."

Current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was Bush's national security adviser at the time of the invasion, responded, "I don't remember specifically what Secretary Powell may be referring to, but I'm quite certain that there were lots of discussions about how best to fulfill the mission that we went into Iraq.

"And I have no doubt that all of this was taken into consideration. But that when it came down to it, the president listens to his military advisers who were to execute the plan," she told CNN's "Late Edition."

Rice said Bush "listened to the advice of his advisers and ultimately, he listened to the advice of his commanders, the people who actually had to execute the war plan. And he listened to them several times," she told ABC's "This Week."

"When the war plan was put together, it was put together, also, with consideration of what would happen after Saddam Hussein was actually overthrown," Rice said.

In their essay Monday, Biden and Gelb wrote: "It is increasingly clear that President Bush does not have a strategy for victory in Iraq. Rather, he hopes to prevent defeat and pass the problem along to his successor."

Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Gulf War and is known for his belief in deploying decisive force with a clear exit strategy in any conflict.

"The president's military advisers felt that the size of the force was adequate; they may still feel that years later. Some of us don't. I don't," Powell said. "In my perspective, I would have preferred more troops, but you know, this conflict is not over."

"At the time, the president was listening to those who were supposed to be providing him with military advice," Powell said. "They were anticipating a different kind of immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad; it turned out to be not exactly as they had anticipated."

Rumsfeld has rejected criticism that he sent too few U.S. troops to Iraq, saying that Franks and generals who oversaw the campaign's planning had determined the overall number of troops, and that he and Bush agreed with them. The recommendation of senior military commanders at the time was about 145,000 troops.