Sunday, June 7, 2009

California's Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country's Food Supply

By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on June 6, 2009, Printed on June 7, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140487/

What a difference an administration makes. Samuel Bodman, the previous secretary of energy under the Bush administration, spent his short term stumping for nuclear power plant construction, polluting the hell out of the Earth, profiting off global warming and trying to significantly downplay America's singular role in greenhouse-gas emissions.

The new one? Well, he's a doom prophet with a Ph.D.

"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California. I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going," Steven Chu told the Los Angeles Times in February, shortly after taking office in January. "I'm hoping that the American people will wake up," he added, just in case there was any confusion about the gravity of the situation.

That kind of apocalyptic foresight has made Chu a breath of fresh, dystopian air. For eight nearly insufferable years, the American public has had no shortage of political tools telling it everything is going to be all right, that the United States is the greatest country in the world, that reports of our impending environmental devastation have been greatly exaggerated, and so on. By contrast, Steven Chu is a Cassandra on a mission from reality. But few, especially in the state he singled out, feel like buying what he is selling.

"Dr. Chu is not a climate scientist," argued Jim Metropulos, senior advocate at Sierra Club's California chapter, echoing the same conditional given in the Los Angeles Times article in which Chu was quoted. "Obviously, he's versed on it, but he's taking an apocalyptic view. I think it's not sustainable in its current form. We rely on imported water to grow high-value crops, but maybe the agriculture we have today may not be the agriculture we have decades from now."

That's a big maybe.

Here are some not-so-fun facts: California's agricultural sector grows approximately one-third of the nation's food supply and is nourished by diverted rivers and streams filled yearly by runoff from its prodigious Sierra Nevada snowpack, as well as groundwater pumping and other less-reliable methods. That snowpack -- which once sparked the first, but not the last, water war that helped transform a semi-arid Los Angeles into an unsustainable oasis less populous than only New York City -- is disappearing fast. Hence Chu's worrisome prediction.

To make matters worse, a crushing drought, now well into its third year, has made simply everything problematic. In California's central valley, home to a majority of the state's agricultural output, farmers are leaving hundreds of thousands of acres fallow, and the resultant economic depression is having a domino effect that could cost California $1 billion to start and is causing residents of a one-time food powerhouse to go hungry.

In April, a series of spring showers and storms upped the snowpack to 80 percent of normal. At the beginning of May, it stumbled to 66 percent, compared to 72 percent the year before. Complicating that are recent federal directives mandating reductions of water deliveries to California farmers and urban users by 5 to 7 percent in hopes of preserving the Pacific Coast's salmon fishery, which is hovering, like the state's snowpack, on the brink of extinction.

"This federal biological opinion puts fish above the needs of millions of Californians," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger self-righteously fumed after the federal directive came down in June. His sound and fury is unjustified, but instructive.

"Sooner or later California is going to change how it uses water," explained Environmental Defense Fund officials Cynthia Koehler and Laura Harnish in the Huffington Post. "We can do it before we lose our fish, or after."

But these are short-term issues clouding, pardon the pun, an inevitably larger one. According to recent climate science, California is never going to get its regularly scheduled snowpack back. Which means that even well-intentioned conservation outreach programs and bad-faith battles over agricultural irrigation are missing the point.

Like other geographies once sustained by an uninterrupted supply of water, California is going dry. And when it dries up, so does its cities, its people and its future. Simply put, global warming, human-induced and otherwise, has significantly broadened the range of the tropical belt by a rate of 70 kilometers per decade. Southern California, like the Sahara Desert and Sahel savanna, is already subtropical in the summer. But with climate crisis expanding its reach, that subtropical heat could claim not just Northern California's snowpack, but even part of Washington's and Utah's bounties.

Game over. Right?

"We don't share Chu's assessment," asserted John Andrew, executive manager on climate change for the California Department of Water Resources. "The hazard here is that you are trying to predict the future. Even if you are as brilliant as Chu, you're pretty much guaranteed to be wrong."

Fair enough, one supposes. But then why does the DWR have its own internally generated climate models forecasting what Andrew claimed as a "25-40 percent reduction of the snowpack by midcentury," which is trying to predict the same future, albeit more optimistically?

"We came up with that by looking at climate models that were out there," Andrew explained, "and applying historic hydrologic data in the state. We looked at every snowpack study out there, and they shoot the range of projections. Some are as high as over 90 percent reduction by 2100. But if you look at the linear trend, then you wind up with a smaller reduciton. It's not good science to look at one study; what we really wanted to do was take a responsible look at all the data."

But a responsible look at the historical data, which has been mostly linear for a few hundred years, is inherently unreliable, given the exponential nature of global warming. Everything from glacial melt rates to the occurrence of so-called freak firestorms has been thrown into nonlinear chaos in the last few decades.

Carbon emissions have exceeded projections of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, while ocean and land sinks, which suck up and store CO2, have decreased in efficiency. A study completed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Columbia University has argued that the southwestern United States could be headed for permanent drought by 2050. Given that the IPCC has been historically conservative, even out-of-date in its nevertheless sobering projections, playing it safe on climatological modeling is beyond conservative. It's reckless.

"The modeling we used is uncertain," Andrew admitted, when pressed further on DWR's predictions. "I guess you could call it modeling. Historic data is going to be an inadequate indicator, but we still have to look at it."

True that; you have to look at everything. But when it comes time to offer a prediction, it's best to, like Chu, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

In fact, if you shave 10 conservative percentage points off DWR's predictions, you arrive around where Chu explained you would. And that is when things come into finer focus. Instead of fighting over Pacific salmon and Central Valley cows, or junior and senior water rights, you are now fighting for survival.

As Chu explained, cities like Los Angeles will not have to think about why it can't hose off its driveways or take long showers; it will have to think about whether it is going to run out of water altogether.

"What are you going to say?" Metropolous asked rhetorically. " 'All you people have to move out and go elsewhere?' That's not going to fly. We're trying to promote things that are cost effective and pretty easy, like water conservation. It doesn't mean a radical change to the people's lifestyle, if we manage water better."

Well, that depends on the lifestyle. It was barely a decade ago that the governor of water-challenged California was giving a thumbs-up to Hummer in a photo-op. Now he's had an environmental deathbed conversion? Please.

The way California is currently wasting water -- on elaborate lawns in Beverly Hills, on cow death-camps in the San Joaquin Valley, on whatever -- it either doesn't know where its water comes from or simply doesn't care.

So any significant conservation initiative is going to be a challenge to the status quo, to say nothing of lifestyle. And when the water vapor truly hits the fan in 2100 or 2050, or even sooner, given the cross-your-fingers modeling of not just the DWR but also the IPCC, what alternatives will there be other than to pack up and leave?

Metropolous and Andrew and other well-intentioned enviros might balk, but I'll stick with the apocalyptic rants of a truth-telling Ph.D. nominated by Barack Obama to become the nation's chief brainiac on all things energy, thanks. And you should, too.

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140487/

Alternative medicine goes mainstream

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione, Ap Medical Writer

BALTIMORE – At one of the nation's top trauma hospitals, a nurse circles a patient's bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits. Another woman rubs a quartz bowl with a wand, making tunes that mix with the beeping monitors and hissing respirator keeping the man alive.

They are doing Reiki therapy, which claims to heal through invisible energy fields. The anesthesia chief, Dr. Richard Dutton, calls it "mystical mumbo jumbo." Still, he's a fan.

"It's self-hypnosis" that can help patients relax, he said. "If you tell yourself you have less pain, you actually do have less pain."

Alternative medicine has become mainstream. It is finding wider acceptance by doctors, insurers and hospitals like the shock trauma center at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Consumer spending on it in some cases rivals that of traditional health care.

People turn to unconventional therapies and herbal remedies for everything from hot flashes and trouble sleeping to cancer and heart disease. They crave more "care" in their health care. They distrust drug companies and the government. They want natural, safer remedies.

But often, that is not what they get. Government actions and powerful interest groups have left consumers vulnerable to flawed products and misleading marketing.

Dietary supplements do not have to be proved safe or effective before they can be sold. Some contain natural things you might not want, such as lead and arsenic. Some interfere with other things you may be taking, such as birth control pills.

"Herbals are medicines," with good and bad effects, said Bruce Silverglade of the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Contrary to their little-guy image, many of these products are made by big businesses. Ingredients and their countries of origin are a mystery to consumers. They are marketed in ways that manipulate emotions, just like ads for hot cars and cool clothes. Some make claims that average people can't parse as proof of effectiveness or blather, like "restores cell-to-cell communication."

Even therapies that may help certain conditions, such as acupuncture, are being touted for uses beyond their evidence.

An Associated Press review of dozens of studies and interviews with more than 100 sources found an underground medical system operating in plain sight, with a different standard than the rest of medical care, and millions of people using it on blind faith.

How did things get this way?

Fifteen years ago, Congress decided to allow dietary and herbal supplements to be sold without federal Food and Drug Administration approval. The number of products soared, from about 4,000 then to well over 40,000 now.

Ten years ago, Congress created a new federal agency to study supplements and unconventional therapies. But more than $2.5 billion of tax-financed research has not found any cures or major treatment advances, aside from certain uses for acupuncture and ginger for chemotherapy-related nausea. If anything, evidence has mounted that many of these pills and therapies lack value.

Yet they are finding ever-wider use:

_Big hospitals and clinics increasingly offer alternative therapies. Many just offer stress reducers like meditation, yoga and massage. But some offer treatments with little or no scientific basis, to patients who are emotionally vulnerable and gravely ill. The Baltimore hospital, for example, is not charging for Reiki but wants to if it can be shown to help. Other hospitals earn fees from treatments such as acupuncture, which insurance does not always cover if the purpose is not sufficiently proven. The giant HMO Kaiser Permanente pays for members to go to a Portland, Ore., doctor who prescribes ayurvedics — traditional herbal remedies from India.

_Some medical schools are teaching future doctors about alternative medicine, sometimes with federal grants. The goal is educating them about what patients are using so they can give evidence-based, nonjudgmental care. But some schools have ties to alternative medicine practitioners and advocates. A University of Minnesota program lets students study nontraditional healing methods at a center in Hawaii supported by a philanthropist fan of such care, though students pay their own travel and living expenses. A private foundation that wants wider inclusion of nontraditional methods sponsors fellowships for hands-on experience at the University of Arizona's Program in Integrative Medicine, headed by well-known advocate Dr. Andrew Weil.

_Health insurers are cutting deals to let alternative medicine providers market supplements and services directly to members. At least one insurer promotes these to members with a discount, perhaps leaving an incorrect impression they are covered services and medically sound. Some insurers steer patients to Internet sellers of supplements, even though patients must pay for these out of pocket. There are networks of alternative medicine providers that contract with big employers, just like HMOs.

A few herbal supplements can directly threaten health. A surprising number do not supply what their labels claim, contain potentially harmful substances like lead, or are laced with hidden versions of prescription drugs.

"In testing, one out of four supplements has a problem," said Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com, an independent company that rates such products.

Even when the ingredients aren't risky, spending money for a product with no proven benefit is no small harm when the economy is bad and people can't afford health insurance or healthy food.

But sometimes the cost is far greater. Cancer patients can lose their only chance of beating the disease by gambling on unproven treatments. People with clogged arteries can suffer a heart attack. Children can be harmed by unproven therapies forced on them by parents who distrust conventional medicine.

Mainstream medicine and prescription drugs have problems, too. Popular drugs such as the painkillers Vioxx and Bextra have been pulled from the market after serious side effects emerged once they were widely used by consumers. But at least there are regulatory systems, guideline-setting groups and watchdog agencies helping to keep traditional medicine in line.

The safety net for alternative medicine is far flimsier.

The latest government survey shows the magnitude of risk: More than a third of Americans use unconventional therapies, including acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic, and native or traditional healing methods. These practitioners are largely self-policing, with their own schools and accreditation groups. Some states license certain types, like acupuncturists; others do not.

Tens of millions of Americans take dietary supplements — vitamins, minerals and herbs, ranging from ginseng and selenium to fish oil and zinc, said Steven Mister, president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, an industry trade group.

"We bristle when people talk about us as if we're just fringe," he said. Supplements are "an insurance policy" if someone doesn't always eat right, he said.

In fact, some are widely recommended by doctors — prenatal vitamins for pregnant women, calcium for older women at risk of osteoporosis, and fish oil for some heart patients, for example. These uses are generally thought to be safe, although independent testing has found quality problems and occasional safety concerns with specific products, such as too much or too little of a vitamin.

Some studies suggest that vitamin deficiencies can raise the risk of disease. But it is not clear that taking supplements will fix that, and research has found hints of harm, said Dr. Jeffrey White, complementary and alternative medicine chief at the National Cancer Institute. A doctor with a big interest in nutrition, he sees the field as "an area of opportunity" that deserves serious study.

So does Dr. Josephine Briggs, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the federal agency Congress created a decade ago.

"Most patients are not treated very satisfactorily," Briggs said. "If we had highly effective, satisfactory conventional treatment we probably wouldn't have as much need for these other strategies and as much public interest in them."

Even critics of alternative medicine providers understand their appeal.

"They give you a lot of time. They treat you like someone special," said R. Barker Bausell, a University of Maryland biostatistician who wrote "Snake Oil Science," a book about flawed research in the field.

That is why Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, a cancer specialist at the Weill-Cornell Medical Center in New York, said he includes nutrition testing and counseling, meditation and relaxation techniques in his treatment, though not everyone would agree with some of the things he recommends.

"You do have people who will say 'chemotherapy is just poison,'" said Gaynor, who tells them he doesn't agree. He'll say: "Cancer takes decades to develop, so you're not going to be able to think that all of a sudden you're going to change your diet or do meditation (and cure it). You need to treat it medically. You can still do things to make your diet better. You can still do meditation to reduce your stress."

Once their fears and feelings are acknowledged, most patients "will do the right thing, do everything they can to save their life," Gaynor said.

Many people buy supplements to treat life's little miseries — trouble falling asleep, menopausal hot flashes, memory lapses, the need to lose weight, sexual problems.

The Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act of 1994 exempted such products from needing FDA approval or proof of safety or effectiveness before they go on sale.

"That has resulted in consumers wasting billions of dollars on products of either no or dubious benefit," said Silverglade of the public interest group.

Many hope that President Barack Obama's administration will take a new look. In the meantime, some outlandish claims are drawing a backlash. The industry has stepped up self-policing — the Council for Responsible Nutrition hired a lawyer to work with the Council of Better Business Bureaus and file complaints against problem sellers.

"We certainly don't think this is a huge problem in the industry," Mister said, but he acknowledges occasionally seeing infomercials "that promise the world."

"The outliers were making the public feel that this entire industry was just snake oil and that there weren't any legitimate products," said Andrea Levine, ad division chief for the business bureaus.

The FDA just issued its first guidelines for good manufacturing practices, aimed at improving supplement safety. Consumer groups say the rules don't go far enough — for example, they don't set limits on contaminants like lead and arsenic — but they do give the FDA more leverage after problems come to light.

The Federal Trade Commission is filing more complaints about deceptive marketing. One of the largest settlements occurred last August — $30 million from the makers of Airborne, a product marketed with a folksy "invented by a teacher" slogan that claimed to ward off germs spread through the air.

People need to keep a healthy skepticism about that magical marketing term "natural," said Kathy Allen, a dietitian at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla.

The truth is, supplements lack proof of safety or benefit. Asked to take a drug under those terms, "most of us would say 'no,'" Allen said. "When it says 'natural,' the perception is there is no harm. And that is just not true."

___

On the Net:

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine: http://nccam.nih.gov/

Anti-scam site: http://www.quackwatch.com

Tips from FDA: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/DMS/ds-savvy.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090607/ap_on_he_me/us_med_unproven_remedies