James Inhofe

The United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is responsible for dealing with matters related to the environment and infrastructure. And the chairman of this committee is none other than James Inhofe of Oklahoma. A statement from these paragraphs caught my eye as disappointing, "Global warming is still considered to be a theory and has not come close to being sufficiently proven." Science cannot prove, it can only disprove and consist of highly corroborated evidence. I wish the chairman of a science committee for the most powerful nation in the world was less ignorant of this fact. Here is the section discussing his work and perspectives of the environment:

Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is a strong critic of the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring as a result of human activities. In a July 28, 2003 Senate speech, he said that he had "offered compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax. That conclusion is supported by the painstaking work of the nation's top climate scientists." He cited as support for this the 1992 Heidelberg Appeal and the Oregon Petition (1999), as well the opinions of numerous individual scientists that he named (although most climate scientists, as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), now believe that climate change is an existing phenomenon). In his speech, Inhofe also claimed that, "satellite data, confirmed by NOAA balloon measurements, confirms that no meaningful warming has occurred over the last century." However the satellite temperature record corroborates the well-documented warming trend noted in surface temperature measurements. Also, the satellite record begins in 1979 and the balloon record effectively in 1958, so it is unclear what Inhofe means by "last century".

In a 2006 interview with the Tulsa World newspaper, Inhofe compared environmentalist to Nazis. He said, "It kind of reminds... I could use the Third Reich, the Big Lie... You say something over and over and over and over again, and people will believe it, and that's their [the environmentalists'] strategy... A hot summer has nothing to do with global warming. Let's keep in mind it was just three weeks ago that people were saying, 'Wait a minute; it is unusually cool...." He then said, "Everything on which they [the environmentalists] based their story, in terms of the facts, has been refuted scientifically." Inhofe had previously compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo.

Inhofe, claiming uncertainties related to climate science and the adverse impact that mandatory emissions reductions would have on the U.S. economy, voted on June 22, 2005 to reject an amendment to an energy bill that would have forced reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and created a mandatory emissions trading scheme. "Global warming is still considered to be a theory and has not come close to being sufficiently proven," he said.

Inhofe has similarly criticized predictions of ozone depletion, particularly in relation to the Arctic.

On September 25, 2006, Inhofe gave a speech on the Senate floor in which he argued that the threat of global warming was exaggerated by "the media, Hollywood elites and our pop culture." Inhofe claimed that "From the late 1920s until the 1960s they [the media] warned of global warming. From the 1950s until the 1970s they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years." He also accused the media of ignoring scientists, such as Roger Pielke and William Gray, who disagree with global warming.

Inhofe was briefly shown in the 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth.

Only Texas senator John Cornyn received more campaign donations from the oil and gas industry in the 2004 election cycle. The contributions Inhofe has received from the energy and natural resource sector since taking office have exceeded one million dollars.

Economic Overview

This week, The Economist published an overview of the previous weeks economic headlines. Here are the overviews:

Economic and financial indicators
Business conditions in Japan are improving, said the central bank's quarterly Tankan survey. Big firms expect to increase capital spending in the next quarter. They also complained about a shortage of workers. The earnings of salaried employees in manufacturing fell by 0.6% in the year to August. The country's industrial production grew by 1.9% in August.

Manufacturing growth in America slowed in September. The Institute for Supply Management's index of manufacturing slipped to 52.9, from 54.5 in August, owing to the cooling housing market. Construction spending, though, picked up in August, by 0.3%, on the back of commercial and public projects. That month personal expenditure increased by $10.5 billion, or 0.1%, while personal income increased by $38.4 billion, or 0.3%.

Cheaper petrol and energy boosted the spirits of America's consumers. Confidence improved faster than expected, according to the final September reading of the University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment. It rose to 85.4, from 82.0 in August.

In the euro area economic sentiment reached 109.3 in September, its highest level since February 2001 and one point higher than in August. Annual inflation in the euro area slowed in September, to 1.8% from 2.3% in August. Unemployment ticked up from 7.8% in July to 7.9% in August.

Emerging-market indicators
India's GDP grew by 8.9% in the year to the second quarter, faster than expected, though more slowly than the blistering pace of 9.3% set in the year to the first quarter. Its consumer prices rose by 6.3% in August.

Turkey is still struggling to contain inflation. Consumer prices rose by 10.6% in the year to September, after rising by 10.3% in the year to August.

In its fifth cut this year, Indonesia's central bank lowered its key interest rate by 50 basis points, to 10.75%. The country's industrial production rose by 12.2% in the year to July. Annual inflation fell for the fourth month in a row in September, though it still remains high at 14.5%.

U.S. Population = 299,897,856

Excerpts from:
"U.S. Population to Top 300 Million This Month"
October 3, 2006 -- By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters via ENN

Some time this month, the number of Americans will surpass 300 million, a milestone that raises environmental impact questions for the only major industrial nation whose population is increasing substantially.

The U.S. Census Bureau predicts the 300 million mark will be reached in mid-October, 39 years after U.S. population topped 200 million and 91 years after it exceeded 100 million.

This will make the United States No. 3 in population in the world, after China and India.

Most of the growth is taking place in the South and West, according to the Census Bureau. From 2004 to 2005, U.S. population had a natural increase -- births minus deaths -- of 1.7 million and international migration of 1 million.
...

NUMBERS DON'T TELL THE WHOLE STORY

Sheer numbers of human beings don't necessarily have the heaviest impact on the environment; instead, environmental impact is a calculation that involves population, affluence and technology, the report said.

In the areas of land-use, water, biodiversity, forests, fisheries and aquatic resources, Americans are consuming more than they did in the past. The report found:

-- Each American occupies 20 percent more developed land -- housing, schools, shopping and roads than 20 years ago.

-- Each American uses three times as much water as the world average; over half the original wetlands in the United States have been lost, mainly due to urban and suburban development and agriculture.

-- Half the continental United States can no longer support its original vegetation; nearly 1,000 plant and animal species are listed by the U.S. government as endangered or threatened, with 85 percent of those due to habitat loss or alteration.

-- The United States consumes nearly 25 percent of the world's energy, though it has only 5 percent of the world's population, and has the highest per capita oil consumption worldwide.

-- Each American produces about 5 pounds of trash a day, up from about 3 pounds in 1960; the current rate is about five times that in developing countries...

Primate Evolution

Excerpts from:
"What Makes Us Different?"
October 1, 2006 -- By Michael D. Lemonick & Andrea Dorfman, Time

Not very much, when you look at our DNA. But those few tiny changes made all the difference in the world.

You don't have to be a biologist or an anthropologist to see how closely the great apes—gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans—resemble us. Even a child can see that their bodies are pretty much the same as ours, apart from some exaggerated proportions and extra body hair. Apes have dexterous hands much like ours but unlike those of any other creature. And, most striking of all, their faces are uncannily expressive, showing a range of emotions that are eerily familiar. That's why we delight in seeing chimps wearing tuxedos, playing the drums or riding bicycles. It's why a potbellied gorilla scratching itself in the zoo reminds us of Uncle Ralph or Cousin Vinnie
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It isn't just a superficial resemblance. Chimps, especially, not only look like us, they also share with us some human-like behaviors. They make and use tools and teach those skills to their offspring. They prey on other animals and occasionally murder each other. They have complex social hierarchies and some aspects of what anthropologists consider culture. They can't form words, but they can learn to communicate via sign language and symbols and to perform complex cognitive tasks. Scientists figured out decades ago that chimps are our nearest evolutionary cousins, roughly 98% to 99% identical to humans at the genetic level. When it comes to DNA, a human is closer to a chimp than a mouse is to a rat.

Yet tiny differences, sprinkled throughout the genome, have made all the difference. Agriculture, language, art, music, technology and philosophy—all the achievements that make us profoundly different from chimpanzees and make a chimp in a business suit seem so deeply ridiculous—are somehow encoded within minute fractions of our genetic code. Nobody yet knows precisely where they are or how they work, but somewhere in the nuclei of our cells are handfuls of amino acids, arranged in a specific order, that endow us with the brainpower to outthink and outdo our closest relatives on the tree of life. They give us the ability to speak and write and read, to compose symphonies, paint masterpieces and delve into the molecular biology that makes us what we are.

Until recently, there was no way to unravel these crucial differences. Exactly what gives us advantages like complex brains and the ability to walk upright—and certain disadvantages, including susceptibility to a particular type of malaria, aids and Alzheimer's, that don't seem to afflict chimps—remained a mystery.

But that's rapidly changing. Just a year ago, geneticists announced that they had sequenced a rough draft of the chimpanzee genome, allowing the first side-by-side comparisons of human and chimpanzee DNA. Already, that research has led to important discoveries about the development of the human brain over the past few million years and possibly about our ancestors' mating behavior as well.

And sometime in the next few weeks, a team led by molecular geneticist Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany, will announce an even more stunning achievement: the sequencing of a significant fraction of the genome of Neanderthals—the human-like species we picture when we hear the word caveman—who are far closer to us genetically than chimps are. And though Neanderthals became extinct tens of thousands of years ago, Paabo is convinced he's on the way to reconstructing the entire genome of that long-lost relative, using DNA extracted, against all odds, from a 38,000-year-old bone.

Laid side by side, these three sets of genetic blueprints—plus the genomes of gorillas and other primates, which are already well on the way to being completely sequenced—will not only begin to explain precisely what makes us human but could lead to a better understanding of human diseases and how to treat them.

FIRST GLIMMERINGS

Scientists didn't need to wait for the chimp genome to begin speculating about the essential differences between humans and apes, of course. They didn't even need to know about DNA. Much of the vitriol directed at Charles Darwin a century and a half ago came not from his ideas about evolution in general but from his insulting but logical implication that humans and the African apes are descended from a common ancestor.

As paleontologists have accumulated more and more fossils, they have compiled data on a long list of anatomical features, including body shape, bipedalism, brain size, the shape of the skull and face, the size of canine teeth, and opposable thumbs. Using comparative analyses of these attributes, along with dating that shows when various features appeared or vanished, they have constructed increasingly elaborate family trees that show the relationships between apes, ancient hominids and us. Along the way they learned, among other things, that Darwin, even with next to no actual data, was close to being right in his intuition that apes and humans are descended from a single common ancestor—and, surprisingly, that the ability to walk upright emerged millions of years before the evolution of our big brains.

But it wasn't until the 1960s that details of our physical relationship to the apes started to be understood at the level of basic biochemistry. Wayne State University scientist Morris Goodman showed, for example, that injecting a chicken with a particular blood protein from a human, a gorilla or a chimp provoked a specific immune response, whereas proteins from orangutans and gibbons produced no response at all. And by 1975, the then new science of molecular genetics had led to a landmark paper by two University of California, Berkeley, scientists, Mary-Claire King and Allan Wilson, estimating that chimps and humans share between 98% and 99% of their genetic material.

ZEROING IN ON THE GENES

Even before the chimp genome was published, researchers had begun teasing out our genetic differences. As long ago as 1998, for example, glycobiologist Ajit Varki and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, reported that humans have an altered form of a molecule called sialic acid on the surface of their cells. This variant is coded for by a single gene, which is damaged in humans. Since sialic acids act in part as a docking site for many pathogens, like malaria and influenza, this may explain why people are more susceptible to these diseases than, say, chimpanzees are.

A few years later, a team led by Paabo announced that the human version of a gene called FOXP2, which plays a role in our ability to develop speech and language, evolved within the past 200,000 years—after anatomically modern humans first appeared. By comparing the protein coded by the human FOXP2 gene with the same protein in various great apes and in mice, they discovered that the amino-acid sequence that makes up the human variant differs from that of the chimp in just two locations out of a total of 715—an extraordinarily small change that may nevertheless explain the emergence of all aspects of human speech, from a baby's first words to a Robin Williams monologue. And indeed, humans with a defective FOXP2 gene have trouble articulating words and understanding grammar.
...

BEYOND THE GENES

Still, the principle of gene-by-gene comparison remains a powerful one, and just a year ago geneticists got hold of a long-awaited tool for making those comparisons in bulk. Although the news was largely overshadowed by the impact of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the same week, the publication of a rough draft of the chimp genome in the journal Nature immediately told scientists several important things. First, they learned that overall, the sequences of base pairs that make up both species' genomes differ by 1.23%—a ringing confirmation of the 1970s estimates—and that the most striking divergence between them occurs, intriguingly, in the Y chromosome, present only in males. And when they compared the two species' proteins—the large molecules that cells construct according to blueprints embedded in the genes—they found that 29% of the proteins were identical (most of the proteins that aren't the same differ, on average, by only two amino-acid substitutions).

The genetic differences between chimps and humans, therefore, must be relatively subtle. And they can't all be due simply to a slightly different mix of genes. Even before the human genome was sequenced back in 2000, says biologist Sean Carroll of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, "it was estimated that humans had 100,000 genes. When we got the genome, the estimate dropped to 25,000. Now we know the overall number is about 22,000, and it might even come down to 19,000."

This shockingly small number made it clear to scientists that genes alone don't dictate the differences between species; the changes, they now know, also depend on molecular switches that tell genes when and where to turn on and off.... "It's like having the blueprints for two different brick houses. The bricks are the same, but the results are very different."

Those molecular switches lie in the noncoding regions of the genome—once known dismissively as junk DNA but lately rechristened the dark matter of the genome. Much of the genome's dark matter is, in fact, junk—the residue of evolutionary events long forgotten and no longer relevant. But a subset of the dark matter known as functional noncoding DNA, comprising some 3% to 4% of the genome and mostly embedded within and around the genes, is crucial.
...

What causes changes in both the dark matter and the genes themselves as one species evolves into another is random mutation, in which individual base pairs—the "letters" of the genetic alphabet—are flipped around like a typographical error. These changes stem from errors that occur during sexual reproduction, as DNA is copied and recombined. Sometimes long strings of letters are duplicated, creating multiple copies in the offspring. Sometimes they're deleted altogether or even picked up, turned around and reinserted backward. A group led by geneticist Stephen Scherer of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto has identified 1,576 apparent inversions between the chimp and human genomes; more than half occurred sometime during human evolution.

When an inversion, deletion or duplication occurs in an unused portion of the genome, nothing much changes—and indeed, the human, chimp and other genomes are full of such inert stretches of DNA. When it happens in a gene or in a functional noncoding stretch, by contrast, an inversion or a duplication is often harmful. But sometimes, purely by chance, the change gives the new organism some sort of advantage that enables it to produce more offspring, thus perpetuating the change in another generation.

WHAT THE APES CAN TEACH US

A striking example of how gene duplication may have helped propel us away from our apelike origins appeared in Science last month. A research team led by James Sikela of the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, in Aurora, Colo., looked at a gene that is believed to code for a piece of protein, called DUF1220, found in areas of the brain associated with higher cognitive function. The gene comes in multiple copies in a wide range of primates—but, the scientists found, humans carry the most copies. African great apes have substantially fewer copies, and the number found in more distant kin—orangutans and Old World monkeys—drops off even more.

Another discovery, first published online by Nature two months ago, describes a gene that appears to play a role in human brain development. A team led by biostatistician Katherine Pollard, now at the University of California, Davis, and Sofie Salama, of U.C. Santa Cruz, used a sophisticated computer program to search the genomes of humans, chimps and other vertebrates for segments that have undergone changes at substantially accelerated rates. They eventually homed in on 49 discrete areas they dubbed human accelerated regions, or HARs.

The region that changed most dramatically from chimps to humans, known as HAR1, turns out to be part of a gene that is active in fetal brain tissue only between the seventh and 19th weeks of gestation. Although the gene's precise function is unknown, that happens to be the period when a protein called reelin helps the human cerebral cortex develop its characteristic six-layer structure. What makes the team's research especially intriguing is that all but two of the HARs lie in those enigmatic functional noncoding regions of the genome, supporting the idea that much of the difference between species happens there.

SEX WITH CHIMPS?

Comparisons of primate genomes have also led to an astonishing, controversial and somewhat disquieting assertion about the origin of humanity. Along with several colleagues, David Reich of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., compared DNA from chimpanzees and humans with genetic material from gorillas, orangutans and macaques. Scientists have long used the average difference between genomes as a sort of evolutionary clock because more closely related species have had less time to evolve in different directions. Reich's team measured how the evolutionary clock varied across chromosomes in the different species. To their surprise, they deduced that chimps and humans split from a common ancestor no more than 6.3 million years ago and probably less than 5.4 million years ago. If they're correct, several hominid species now considered to be among our earliest ancestors—Sahelanthropus tchadensis (7 million years old), Orrorin tugenensis (about 6 million years old) and Ardipithecus kadabba (5.2 to 5.7 million years old)—may have to be re-evaluated.
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DECODING NEANDERTHALS

Also coming along, thanks to two independent teams of researchers, is the genome of the closest relative of all: the Neanderthal. Ancestors of Neanderthals first appeared some 500,000 years ago, and for a long time it was a toss-up whether that lineage would outlive our own species, at least in Europe and western Asia—or whether, bizarre as it seems today, they would both survive indefinitely. The Neanderthals held out for hundreds of thousands of years. A discovery published online by Nature last month suggests Neanderthals may have made their last stand in Gibraltar, on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, surviving until about 28,000 years ago—and possibly even longer.
...

We eventually outcompeted them, and the key to how we did so may well lie in our genes. So two years ago, Svante Paabo, the man who deconstructed the FOXP2 language gene and has done considerable research on ancient DNA, launched an effort to re-create the Neanderthal genome. Rubin, meanwhile, is tackling the same task using a different technique.

The job isn't an easy one. Like any complex organic molecule, DNA degrades over time, and bones that lie in the ground for thousands of years become badly contaminated with the DNA of bacteria and fungi. Anyone who handles the fossils can also leave human DNA behind. After probing the remains of about 60 different Neanderthals out of the 400 or so known, Paabo and his team found only two with viable material. Moreover, he estimates, only about 6% of the genetic material his team extracts from the bones turns out to be Neanderthal DNA.

As a result, progress is maddeningly slow. And while he can't reveal details, Paabo says he'll soon be announcing in a major scientific journal the sequencing of 1 million base pairs of the Neanderthal genome. And he says he has 4 million more in the bag. Rubin, meanwhile, is also poised to publish his results, but refuses to divulge specifics. "Paabo's team has significantly more of a sequence than we do," he says. "Some of the dates will differ, but the conclusions are largely similar."

Although Paabo admits that he still hasn't learned much about what distinguishes us from our closest cousins, simply showing he can reconstruct significant DNA sequences from such long-dead creatures is an important proof of concept. Both he and Rubin agree that within a couple of years a reasonably complete Neanderthal genome should be available. "It will tell us about aspects of biology, like soft tissue, that we can't say anything about right now," Rubin notes. "It could tell us about disease susceptibility and immunity. And in places where the sequence overlaps that of humans, it will enable us to compare a prehistoric creature with chimps." Someday it may even be possible to insert equivalent segments of human and Neanderthal DNA into different laboratory mice in order to see what effects they produce.

WHAT IT ALL MEANS
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In fact, even the most ardent proponents of genome-comparison research acknowledge that pretty much everything we know so far is preliminary. "We're interested in traits that really distance us from other organisms," says Wisconsin's Carroll, "such as susceptibility to diseases, big brains, speech, walking upright, opposable thumbs. Based on the biology of other organisms, we have to believe that those are very complex traits. The development of form, the increase in brain size, took place over a long period of time, maybe 50,000 generations. It's a pretty complicated genetic recipe."

But even the toughest critics acknowledge that these studies have enormous potential. "We will eventually be able to pinpoint every difference between every animal on the planet," says Lovejoy. "And every time you throw another genome, like the gorilla's, into the mix, you increase the chances even more."

Some of the differences could have enormous practical consequences. Since his discovery that human cells lack one specific form of sialic acid, which was accomplished even before the human genome was decoded, Varki and his collaborators have determined that 10 of the 60 or so genes that govern sialic-acid biology show major differences between chimps and humans. "And in every case," says Varki, "it's humans who are the odd one out." Such revelations could probably lead to a better understanding of such devastating diseases as malaria, aids and viral hepatitis—and likely do so faster than by studying the human genome alone.

For most of us, though, it's the grand question about what it is that makes us human that renders comparative genome studies so compelling. As scientists keep reminding us, evolution is a random process in which haphazard genetic changes interact with random environmental conditions to produce an organism somehow fitter than its fellows. After 3.5 billion years of such randomness, a creature emerged that could ponder its own origins—and revel in a Mozart adagio. Within a few short years, we may finally understand precisely when and how that happened.

Economic Overview

This week, The Economist published an overview of the previous weeks economic headlines. Here are the overviews:

Economic and financial indicators
The oil price dropped briefly below $60 a barrel for the first time since March. Since early August it has declined by 21% because of growing worries about a global slowdown next year.

After years in which the American consumer has buoyed global demand, much concern is focused on the outlook for housing in the United States. There were further signs this week that the market is cooling fast. The median house price fell by 1.7% in the year to August, according to the National Association of Realtors—the first annual decline since April 1995. Activity was also much lower than a year ago. Sales of existing homes fell by 12.6% in the year to August while those of new homes declined by 17.4%.

On a brighter note, the fall in the price of oil appears to be pepping up American consumer confidence, which increased from 100.2 in August to 104.5 in September, according to the Conference Board. However, orders for manufactured durable goods fell for the second month running in August, declining by 0.5%.

Businessmen in Germany are holding their nerve. The Ifo business-climate index barely dipped in September, confounding expectations of a sharper decline. However, French businessmen have become a bit gloomier. The INSEE index, which tracks their mood, fell from 108 in July to 107 in September.

The immediate industrial outlook in the euro area is still looking good. New orders rose by 1.8% in July, more than expected. That left them 9.7% higher than a year before, thanks to higher demand for machinery and transport equipment.

Britain's economy grew more slowly in the second quarter, compared with the first, than had previously been reckoned. Official statisticians revised growth down from 0.8% to 0.7%. However, they left growth in the year to the second quarter unchanged at 2.6%. They made a sharp downward revision to growth in nominal GDP during the same period, lowering it from 6.0% to 4.8%. The current-account deficit narrowed to £7 billion ($12.8 billion) in the second quarter, from £8.7 billion in the first three months of the year.

In Japan, the price index for services traded among companies rose by 0.3% in the year to August, the first annual increase for more than eight years.

Emerging-market indicators
In South Africa, consumer-price inflation accelerated to 5.4% in the year to August. In Hong Kong, it picked up to 2.5% over the same period, the highest rate for almost eight years.

Brazil's current-account surplus widened to $13.8 billion in the 12 months to August. Over the same period, Argentina's trade surplus narrowed to $11.3 billion because of surging imports.