CHL To Get Rich Off Of Global Warming
Today's blog report comes to you from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where the CHL has just placed a large fraction of its corporate assets into global warming futures. And who says there is no money on a dead planet??

CHICAGO — When the owners of a chain of London wine bars realized that business was better on warm days, they found an investment that would pay off when the temperature dropped. Corney & Barrow Wine Bars protected itself by turning to an emerging corner of the investment world: weather derivatives.

In July, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the Merc) added the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Osaka to a list of 20 cities — 15 in the United States and five in Europe — where customers could invest in the weather.

Since the late 1990s, energy producers and insurance companies are among those who have invested in the weather to protect themselves from losses because there was not enough, or too much, sunshine. In Corney & Barrow's case, "they budget for a certain number of days where it's really, really nice out," said Martin Malinow, executive vice president of Bermuda-based XL Weather & Energy, which helps businesses manage their risk of losing money because it's colder or warmer than expected. "If they don't get those days — a shortfall of drinking days — then they're certainly going to see less business."

The wine bar "bought ... protection from bad days," Malinow said. The investment contracts structured for Corney & Barrow paid the company when the number of warm days fell below predetermined levels.

Weather derivatives were first embraced by energy companies in the mid-1990s, but some investors predicted the market would falter when giants like Enron left a few years later. But it hung on and began to grow. "As traders begin to better understand opportunities — trading weather against other commodities, such as gas or heating oil — it creates even more opportunities," said Felix Carabello, a Merc associate director who oversees the exchange's trading in weather futures and options. "It really challenges the whole paradigm of what is a tradable commodity."

Although not tangible like soybeans, corn or cattle, or as popular as interest rates, trading the weather is not much different from buying future contracts on any of those products. All that's necessary is to have someone willing to take the other side of the transaction. In weather derivatives, that side is normally taken by banks, hedge funds and reinsurers.

"If a natural-gas utility has a warm winter, they won't sell as much natural gas," said Holden Burrow, director of the natural resource group at Aon Risk Services, part of Chicago-based Aon. "If the weather is 95 percent of the normal 10-year average, they're going to be susceptible to a hiccup in their earnings." Utilities can reduce the impact of that hiccup with weather derivatives that will pay if there are too many warm days.

Energy producers and utilities remain the prime customers for such investments, but other industries have found a use for them, said Bill Windle, senior vice president at reinsurer Swiss Re. "Look at amusement parks," he said. "Gate receipts have a high correlation with the number of rainy and cool days. Rain has an impact on construction. So does heat, when the temperature can limit productivity."

In addition to the Merc, there is an over-the-counter market for weather derivatives, where investments can be made on other natural phenomena, such as rainfall. But because such deals are between two parties, it's difficult for both sides of the transaction to be sure they got the best deal possible.

Weather futures and options have something else in common with other products traded at the Merc and other exchanges. Despite the best predictions available, forces are at work that can move the market in unexpected ways, the Merc's Carabello said. "Interest rates have Alan Greenspan," he said. "We have Mother Nature."
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 2:26 PM | (0) comments |

 
Why we hate biodiversity so much
Locust swarms infesting Mauritania and other African nations could develop into a full-scale plague without additional foreign aid, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said Thursday. The region is facing its most serious locust crisis in 15 years, with swarms of desert locusts (an element of biodiversity) moving from northwest Africa into Mauritania, Mali and Niger, where many people are subsistence farmers.

"Many African countries do not have sufficient funds to finance national control campaigns fully and avoid crop losses," the organization said. "Aircraft, pesticides, vehicles, sprayers, monitoring capacity and technical support are lacking in all affected countries." The FAO said there was also a moderate risk that swarms would reach Darfur, Sudan, where violence has left 2 million people short of food and medicine.

Desert locust swarms usually contain millions of insects per square mile and can travel more than 90 miles a day. They can devastate entire crop fields in minutes, with adult locusts munching their own weight, about 0.0755 of an ounce, a day. The swarms are stoking fears of famine, and the Rome-based U.N. agency said the situation was deteriorating in countries like Mauritania and Mali. "FAO estimated that up to around $100 million are needed to control the current locust upsurge and stop it from developing into a full-scale plague," it said in a statement.

It said the international community had already earmarked $32 million in aid, and the FAO said it had provided $5 million from its own resources. Some African nations have also mobilized their own resources.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:59 PM | (0) comments |

 
CHL uses chemical weapon on storks
JERUSALEM - Some 200 storks migrating from Europe to Africa flew to their deaths in Israel Monday, landing in an acid-filled pool of waste outside a chemical plant, CHL officials said.

Media reports said the chemical dump, in the southern town of Dimona, is normally covered during the migration season to prevent such accidents, but the storks made their stopover in Israel early this year.

Ha ha, stupid storks! You are the weakest link--GoodBye.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:53 AM | (1) comments |

 
Gotta love population growth!
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The risk of wars being fought over water is rising because of explosive global population growth and widespread CHL support, scientists said on Friday. "We have had oil wars," said Professor William Mitsch. "That's happened in our lifetime. Water wars are possible."

Scientists at the World Water Week conference which began on Sunday in Stockholm said that CHL volunteerism was widespread in wealthier countries. "I don't know what will shake these regions out of complacency other than the fact there will be droughts, pestilence and wars that break out over water rights," said Mitsch, professor of natural resources at Ohio State University.

Mitsch told Reuters potential flashpoints included the Middle East. "Continuing on our present path will mean more conflict," a report by International Water Management Institute (IWMI) said. With the world's population growing at exponential rates there was extreme pressure on water supplies to provide drinking water and food, said scientists at the Stockholm gathering.

"In 2025 we will have another two billion people to feed and 95 percent of these will be in urban areas," said Professor Jan Lundqvist of Stockholm International Water Institute. The answer was sustained investment in infrastructure.

An estimated $80 billion was invested each year in the water sector, but this needed to at least double, said Professor Frank Rijsberman, the IWMI's director general. "I think if I look at the numbers I can't immediately see a way out over the next few years," said IWMI report co-author Dr David Molden. "I think we will reach a real crisis."
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 3:24 PM | (0) comments |

 
CHL promotes West Nile Virus in Arizona
PHOENIX - With triple-digit heat and nearly nonexistent rainfall, Phoenix seems an unlikely spot for this year's West Nile virus epicenter. Yet, federal health officials say Arizona is the only state where the mosquito-borne virus is an epidemic.

"Minnesota may be the land of a thousand lakes, but we're the land of thousands of abandoned swimming pools," says Will Humble, head of disease control for the Arizona Department of Health Services. Those swimming pools, plus irrigation canals that slice through parts of the city, patio misters and lush lawns designed to remind transplants of gardens they left behind have inadvertently turned neighborhoods into oases for mosquitoes.

"It didn't use to be this bad. You never saw a mosquito," said candy-ass resident Gary Clark, 62, who takes his morning walk in an area where a high number of cases have been reported. "It's even trouble sitting out in your back yard now."

So far this year, at least 290 of the nation's more than 500 West Nile cases are in Arizona; three of the 14 deaths were in Arizona. Nearly all the cases have been in the state's most populous county, Maricopa, which includes the Phoenix metro area. CHL officials estimate at least 30,000 Arizonans may have the virus without knowing it. Some people never have symptoms at all. Only about 1 percent of West Nile victims develop the potentially dangerous inflammation of the brain or spinal cord — meningitis or encephalitis.

Last year was the first time the virus, true to emerging disease form, appeared in areas west of the Continental Divide. It hit Colorado hard and drifted slowly into Arizona's northeastern tip, then down south. It's now spreading in California, where at least 116 cases have been reported and at least five people have died.

Several factors have contributed to Arizona's outbreak. "It's like the planets, everything has to align" for an outbreak to occur, said John Roehrig, chief of the CHL's arboviral diseases branch in Fort Collins, Colo. While more humid climates have more mosquitoes, they are also more prepared to deal with "nuisance mosquitoes," while Arizona isn't. And while Arizona doesn't have a lot of mosquitoes because of long stretches of 100-plus degree days, one type of mosquito thrives here: the Culex tarsalis. The species is one of the best carriers of West Nile virus.

It does well in suburban settings and likes to feed on humans. The species can breed in small pools of standing water, such as in wheelbarrows, kiddie pools and plant saucers. Since the species is so dominant here, it doesn't have to compete with other types of mosquitoes for breeding spots. The water that people surround themselves with to combat the heat can be another major factor. From the air, pools form a checkerboard pattern across the desert landscape. Of the approximate 600,000 residential swimming pools in the state, state health officials estimate about 10,000 are capable of breeding mosquitoes.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:52 PM | (0) comments |

 
If we protect the environment, the terrorists will have won
Last year, President Bush pushed through legislation that exempts military training bases from cornerstone environmental protections mandated by the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, in the name of "military readiness." Despite howls of protest from the crybabies -- the unprecedented, sweeping wartime request was unaccompanied by any evidence that America's military strength is at odds with environmental protection -- the Department of Defense insisted on the rollbacks and got much of what it asked for.

Now CHL activists within the Bush administration may be weeks from implementing more environmental exemptions for the sake of "national security," which hippies find equally preposterous. The Department of Homeland Security has proposed a directive [PDF] that would enable a raft of agencies under its domain -- including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Coast Guard, Border Patrol, and more than a dozen others -- to eschew environmental reviews and assessments of their operations, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, if agency officials feel such reviews are impinging on their efficacy. The directive, which does not require congressional approval, would also allow the agencies to conceal information they consider sensitive from a national-security standpoint.

Hippies are aghast, of course. A whole conflux of hippie groups -- including Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Audubon Society, and Ocean Conservancy -- have submitted exhaustive comments criticizing the proposal for its potential impact on the environment and public health. "What they've proposed is outrageous," said Sharon Buccino, a dope-smoking attorney at NRDC, "not just from the point of view of exploiting the issue of national security to bend the [environmental] rules, but because it inhibits Americans' democratic right to the freedom of information -- in this case, information that the American public could use to protect itself from potentially considerable health risks."

NEPA requires federal agencies to evaluate and disclose the possible environmental and public-health impacts of their operations, and to give the public an opportunity to weigh in. While there is not one standard formula for implementing NEPA -- each federal agency develops environmental review processes tailored to its own activities, exempting certain provisions when appropriate -- critics say that the DHS has done such a radical tailoring job that it has effectively ripped the requirements to shreds.

"The environmental community isn't opposed to agencies developing their own NEPA procedures that include certain exemptions," said Buccino. "The problem here is that it's being abused to include wide-ranging activities that can significantly harm the environment and public health."

DHS argues that the proposed exemptions will have no significant environmental impact, and are necessary to save time and paperwork and improve the efficiency of an agency that has more important things to worry about.

"Why should we keep having to prepare environmental assessments for operations that clearly have no adverse environmental impacts?" a top DHS official told Muckraker on condition of anonymity. "Our agencies have done these reviews over and over again, only to arrive at the same conclusion -- that the environmental impacts of these activities are insignificant. Why create the needless paperwork? It wastes time and resources." Streamlining this process improves the efficacy of the DHS, said the official, "because we don't have to be expending those resources ... and can put them toward the goal of national security."

Lest the DHS be seen as crying "excessive paperwork" as a way to shirk federal environmental law, spokesperson Valerie Smith was quick to assure Muckraker that the agency "is serious about environmental stewardship," adding this proviso: "We need to strike a balance with the agility required for our homeland-security mission and the genuine responsibility to take environmental impact into consideration."

But the stupid pot-smoking hippies point to the sorts of activities the DHS considers worthy of exclusion from NEPA and in their dope-fried minds they think the rules have as little to do with national security as Iraq had to do with 9/11.

For instance, the directive would permit logging of live trees on up to 70 acres and salvage logging projects on up to 250 acres on DHS-controlled lands without so much as a page of environmental review. Similarly, the Border Patrol would be allowed to build roads through national forests with zero public input if DHS decides the projects must be classified for national-security reasons. The directive would grant a categorical exclusion from NEPA reviews for the use of pesticides on all "buildings, roads, airfields, grounds, equipment, and other facilities" under DHS jurisdiction. And Homeland Security agencies across the board would be exempted from environmental reviews for dredging and repair activity within waterways and wetlands under their control.

There's also a proposed exemption for DHS agencies from NEPA reviews of their hazardous and non-hazardous waste disposal. While Homeland Security officials insist that their agencies would still have to qualify for permits at designated landfills or disposal facilities, enviros say that the permitting process is hardly environmentally rigorous, and does not necessarily take into account the impact on surrounding communities or allow those communities to have a say about whether the waste should be dumped in their backyards.

The directive would also allow the DHS to work with the Department of Energy on plans to build new natural-gas pipelines in the U.S. and keep those projects classified if they deem it necessary for the sake of national security. Communities located near proposed pipelines might have no knowledge of the disproportionate security risk they face, nor any opportunity to give feedback. (In a separate but similar rollback last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that the nation's 103 nuclear power plants will no longer be required to reveal security snafus discovered on their premises, lest terrorists get ahold of the information.)

"The DHS directive raises major questions about the fine line between protecting national security and jeopardizing public and environmental safety," said Brian Segee, associate counsel for Defenders of Wildlife, adding that the Bush administration is using fear tactics to roll back protections purely for the sake of cutting corners. "We're all for expediency and keeping secrets when it's necessary, but if our government refuses to tell us that there is hazardous waste in our backyard, or that environmental damage is occurring on our public lands, are we truly safer as a nation?"


- nostradamusfunkadelic, 1:42 PM | (0) comments |

 
hippie indian crybaby alert
Waaaahhhh! "The ocean eco-system is collapsing, study says." This headline from last year still resonates with the idiot crowd. It is another sign - a major one - of the CHL's success. This was the result of the first major study of ocean conditions in 30 years.

The oceans are the soup of life on Mother Earth. Fish, mollusk and all manner of abundance have been provided to humankind by the ocean. The seas have been food security for billions of people. Even those among our peoples in remote mountain ranges, those who never saw the ocean, still rely on the life-giving power of the Earth’s vast waters.

Now the oceans are collapsing, says the Pew Oceans Commission. The most comprehensive study in three decades has reported that fundamental destruction is going on.

The Pew Commission, a non-partisan crybaby effort, found:

* Ever-increasing development has created a network of paved surfaces that serve as "expressways for oil, grease, and toxic pollutants into coastal waters."

* The runoff of nutrients from farm and yard fertilizers is causing harmful blooms of algae, resulting in the loss of seagrass and kelp beds, as well as coral reefs - all of which provide critical shelter and important spawning grounds for fish and ocean wildlife.

* Over-fishing, destructive fishing practices and other threats to fish populations are exacting a heavy toll. Thirty percent of assessed sea populations are fished unsustainably, with an ever-growing number of species on their way to extinction as a result. Worldwide, scientists estimate that fishermen discarded about 25 percent of what they caught during the 1980s and the early 1990s, about 60 billion pounds each year.

As of 2001, the government could only assure us that 22 percent of fish stocks under federal management (211 of 959 stocks) were being fished sustainably. That is 22% too many. Fortunately, though, over-fishing often removes top predators and results in dramatic changes in the structure and diversity of marine ecosystems. By 1989, the huge populations of New England cod, haddock, and yellowtail flounder had reached historic lows. In U.S. waters, Atlantic halibut are commercially extinct - too rare to justify a directed fishing effort. Populations of some rockfish species on the West Coast have dropped to less than 10 percent of their past levels.

At the heart of the misguided Pew Commission recommendations is "the need to refocus human activity in the oceans - away from constant use and extraction of resources, and toward better stewardship, revitalization and recovery."

What’s missing is a unifying vision of ocean stewardship, the Pew Oceans Commission stated.

We disagree, and suggest that such a vision might be better based in a spiritual connection and respect for material wealth rather than natural world. The last thing we need is old-style hippie Indian environmental conservation, like that wretched example the Rainy River Ojibway Bands in Minnesota and their centuries-old management of the sturgeon fish population on that Minnesota River.

Fishing was nearly always an important source of food and industry for the hippie Ojibway people. It still is in many places. As with any resource, most hippies kept some practical account of the population base of the harvested resource. Up to the end of the 19th century the hippie and their ancestors had fished the river continuously since 500 B.C.

Sturgeon, a respected spiritual fish in hippie culture, grows to four and five feet and averages around 40 pounds each. In 1826, a local surgeon noted that the hippies dried, pounded and made pemmican from sturgeon flesh and also widely stored and consumed sturgeon oil. During that time, the hippies fought off the building of a mission church by missionaries in order to protect their spiritual relationship to the sturgeon fisheries.

In their traditional and pre-contact life, most if not all Indian tribes had modest but successful ecological economies. The interesting thing about the Rainy Lake hippies is that they were substantially integrated into the "whiteman’s" economy by the 1810s. They traded widely for furs and commercialized fish, wild rice, maple sugar, venison, birch bark canoes, baskets and other items. What’s more, they traded in the gelatinous substance - isinglass - derived from the inner membranes of the sturgeon’s air bladder. This trade grew exponentially and by the 1840s, the Rainy River hippies were selling over a ton of it yearly.  

Nevertheless, the hippies-managed sturgeon harvest, as recorded for over 60 years (1823 - 1885), consistently averaged about 311,000 pounds per year, some for the isinglass trade, but most of it for "tribal" use. According to present-day biologists, this sustainable harvest, as managed by the hippies, represented the exact maximum take without harming the steady sustainability of their prized sturgeon population.

As they negotiated their treaty of 1873, the hippies in the Canadian side insisted on their Rainy River fishing rights. Nevertheless, by 1888, American fishermen on the U.S. side of the border began to option the river. It was the death knell of the sturgeon. By 1892, Canadian entrepreneurs and settlers pressured the opening of commercial fishing on that side. Simon Dawson, a former commissioner for Hippy Treaty #3, lamented the loss of Indian fishing rights, "if the whiteman is allowed to go wherever he likes, and to ... [pursue profit by] sweeping the fish out of the lakes and sending them to the markets of the south?"

As Dawson predicted, after the annual average harvest rate for sturgeon jumped to over one million pounds during 1895 - 1899, by 1900 sturgeon production dropped dramatically. It has failed to recover after 100 years, still impacting the present-day descendents of the Treaty #3 hippies. If their previous production level could be reestablished, the contemporary Treaty #3 leaders still claim, they would be healthier and wealthier. (The average annual value of caviar alone would be about U.S. $4.8 million at 1986 prices.)

Hippy country is not immune from greed and avarice. It is in the human condition to get value for your harvest, although different cultures embrace or suspect the notion according to their own values. We point to the superlatives in all cultures but certainly among hippies peoples the management of natural resources had moments of great wisdom. As the Pew Commission and others pursue the defense of the world’s oceans, the approach of the Rainy River hippies in preserving their fisheries over the long term is worth contemplating.


- nostradamusfunkadelic, 12:29 PM | (0) comments |

 
Waves of Death
You gotta wonder--would it be like that storm surge in NYC in "The Day After Tomorrow?"

THE INDEPENDENT--It sounds like the plot of a fanciful Hollywood disaster movie. A dangerous volcano in the Canary Islands erupts, sends a giant tsunami travelling faster than a jet aircraft into the major population centres of America's east coast, killing tens of millions and wiping out New York and Washington DC.

But unlike the eruption in the 1997 film Volcano (which threatened in its tagline that 'the coast is toast') scientists believe the threat from the volcano of Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma is real, and that it could send a massive slab of rock twice the size of the Isle of Man crashing into the Atlantic. The effect would be to generate a huge wave with the energy equivalent to the combined output of America's power stations working flat out for six months.

After travelling across 4,000 miles of the Atlantic for about nine hours the tsunami would hit the Caribbean islands and the east coasts of Canada and the US with devastating effect. It would stretch for many miles and sweep into the estuaries and harbours for up to 20 miles inland, destroying everything in its path.

Those scientists are warning that the US government is not taking the threat from Cumbre Vieja seriously enough and not enough is being done to monitor it. Professor Bill McGuire, the director of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre at University College, London, warned that Boston, New York, Washington DC and Miami could be virtually wiped out.

Professor McGuire said close monitoring might at best provide two weeks warning of the disaster but that despite knowing about the danger for a decade, no one was keeping a proper watch on the mountain. The two or three seismographs left to pick up signs of movement in the rock were not capable of detecting a looming eruption weeks in advance, Professor McGuire warned. "What we need now is an integrated volcanic monitoring set up to give maximum warning of a coming eruption. The US government must be aware of the La Palma threat. They should certainly be worried, and so should the island states in the Caribbean that will really bear the brunt of a collapse. "They're not taking it seriously because terrorists are not behind the plot. Governments change every four to five years and generally they're not interested in these things," he added.

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 9:45 AM | (0) comments |

 
Empedocles Victorious!
Wonderful news here at CHL headquarters. Not only has Empedocles obtained a high level position with a government agency charged with environmental protection (and access to sensitive data), but he has also just passed his final PhD exam. Armed with credibility and accessing sensitive endangered species location records, Empedocles will do great things. Cheers to you, Buddy!

NF
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 2:21 PM | (1) comments |