China is not healthy for children and other living things

SO SUGGESTS James Fallows in The Atlantic, who recently moved back to the United States after an extended stay in Shanghai and Beijing.

He notes:

The health situation for ordinary Chinese people is obviously no joke. After stalling, the Chinese government recently accepted a World Bank estimate that some 750,000 of its people die prematurely each year just from air pollution. Alarming upsurges in birth defects and cancer rates are reported even in the state-controlled press.

And then goes on to report that the streets are even more dangerous.

…(T)he big threat to foreigners was not in the air but on the streets. “I tell my patients, the most important ‘medical’ step you can take is to put on a seat belt in a car, wear a helmet on a bike, and run for your life in crosswalks,” a Chinese doctor said. Road safety is that bad. For the foreign diplomatic corps, the leading cause of death is traffic accidents.

Nevertheless, he concludes by urging those foreigners interesting in going to China not to let the air or the streets stop them.

“I am amazed at how well people do here, considering,” another Western-trained doctor said. “It is an exciting place. It’s a historic time. People seem to feel alive.” That made sense when I heard it—in China I had felt terrible, but alive—and makes me say that foreigners who want to go should not be deterred.

Here’s the link.

“The DPJ doesn’t have a growth strategy”

THE YOMIURI SHIMBUN recently interviewed Hosei University Prof. Komine Takao, an economist who once headed the Research Bureau of the Economic Planning Agency and was an official in the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport. In particular, they asked him about the economic policies of the Hatoyama Administration. Here’s how it went:

*****

The growth strategy of the Hatoyama Administration is based on expanding domestic consumption by providing financial assistance to households. What do you think of that?

That sort of thinking has no value as a growth strategy. They’re not talking about something beneficial, such as reducing taxes or implementing other fiscal measures, which would result in economic growth as incomes continue to rise. They’re just discussing how to divide up the pie among corporations, the government, and the citizens. But the pie itself won’t get any larger.

A growth strategy is how to make the pie larger. Even if some benefits accrue this year, they’ll be short-lived.

To put it in extreme terms, the DPJ doesn’t have a growth strategy.

How should growth be depicted?

Utilize the blessings of globalization, increase imports and exports, primarily to Asia, and then expand domestic demand as the benefits are returned to the people. The only growth strategy is to take the royal road (i.e., the proper path).

Improving productivity demands aggressive investment in R&D for technology. Operating resources will have to be diverted to growth sectors, such as long-term care and medical treatment. Demand is rising for high-quality medical treatment and long-term care, but working conditions are poor, including low wages, and there is a labor shortage.

Services should be diversified, and there should be a conversion to a mechanism in which high quality services are available on an out-of-pocket basis. That’s how the latent demand for medical treatment and long-term care will be actualized.

What is the biggest problem for the management of the economy?

There is absolutely no discussion of current economic conditions, or what sort of growth rate is envisioned over the medium- to long term. The DPJ way for macroeconomic management seems to be “the daily life of the people” itself.

Economic growth raises incomes, and price stability means stability in daily life.

The Minister of Economic and Fiscal Policy should have the extremely important role of analyzing daily economic trends, formulating the government’s perception of the economy, and delivering that message. There seems to be a lack of interest in that.

There are discussions of reevaluating public works projects.

There have always been vested interests, whether for roads or for dams. One problem in the past has been that there was no change in the proportion of the budget allocated to public works projects.

The biggest advantage in the change of government is that (the new government) has no pre-existing ties, so that presents an excellent opportunity to determine a new sequence of priorities.

I wonder if their rollout of policies hasn’t been reckless, however, such as their announcement of the suspension of dam construction projects so soon after they took office. It takes time, but they should gather the people involved and discuss the issues. That would smooth out the rough edges.

There have been strong objections from business and financial circles of the new Government’s targets for reducing greenhouse gases.

There are some advantages to setting strict targets. The strategic utilization of regulations could change the course of the economy and society. For example, when the price of oil quadrupled during the first oil crisis, people were alarmed that the Japanese economy would collapse.

But Japan developed the technology to cut back on oil consumption, which transformed the industrial structure. The economy evolved in such a way that growth could be achieved with very little increase in oil consumption.

It might have been the case that we were able to achieve something unanticipated.

Financial Services Minister Kamei Shizuka is calling for the introduction of a moralistic system with a moratorium on the repayment of debt by small businesses and others.

That’s out of the question. It’s absurd.

In a system based on contractual agreements, it is not legally possible to change the terms of the loan relationship at the time the contract was made before the loan is repaid. Several problems would ensue, including the flight of foreign capital if the situation in Japan were perceived to be that severe. It would also put small and medium-sized lending institutions in a serious bind.

The contempt for moneylenders making a profit without working for it seems to stem from a reading of The Merchant of Venice.

He doesn’t seem to have asked the opinions of specialists or the people involved. I can only say that he is treating the authorities responsible as his personal property.

*****

MEANWHILE…

Those nefarious oil barons are at it again. Now they’ve gone and bought out another one of the good guys.

Which one?

(Prof. Mojib Latif of Germany’s Leibniz Institute) is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC’s last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.

Oh, no! What did he do?

(L)ast week in Geneva, at the UN’s World Climate Conference–an annual gathering of the so-called “scientific consensus” on man-made climate change –Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering “one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.”

The Eco-Church worshipers have been reduced to sputtering that Dr. Latif also said he thinks global warming will resume again. Except he isn’t sure when or why, and he was wrong the last time, and he agrees with people who say climate change is cyclical, and, and, and…

But this week in New York, Prime Minister Hatoyama addressed the world’s largest congregation of thugs and despots at their jamboree on the left bank of New York’s East River and promised that Japan will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels.

Somebody needs to tell Mr. Hatoyama a few things, in addition to the statements of people like Dr. Latif and the long line of scientists to precede him. For one thing, the terms of art in the English language have changed. Now that even the Eco-Church can’t deny that the globe has stopped warming, they’ve been warming up to the phrase “climate change” instead. And that phrase “greenhouse gases”? It’s so yesterday! Please–now it’s “carbon pollution”. Didn’t you listen to President Obama’s speech while you were there?

He might also have profitably listened to Chinese President Hu Jintao, who said during his two-minute greeting that his country would take “determined action”, but who was equally determined not to specify what that action or its targets would be.

Then Mr. Hatoyama could be told that:

“As the International Energy Agency concluded, the major nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ‘alone cannot put the world onto the path to 450-ppm trajectory, even if they were to reduce their emissions to zero.’”

Someone also might remind him that the U.S. has pledged to reduce emissions by only 20% from 1990 levels by far-off 2050, and “the 80% target means reducing fossil-fuel greenhouse-gas emissions to a level the nation last experienced in 1910.”

Horse, meet buggy!

Then again, if Prof. Komine thinks the DPJ doesn’t have a growth strategy…

Nah!

While some of the speeches in New York might have been diverting as an exercise in observing public lunacy, particularly those from the Libyan and Iranian leaders, Mr. Hatoyama should have focused on this line from Mr. Obama:

“Nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War (make sense in an interconnected world).”

Translation: If China, Russia, or North Korea start to get really uncool, don’t you Japanese go calling us on the phone and ask for help.

If you don’t care for my interpretation, you could always ask the Czechs, the Poles, the Israelis, the Hondurans, or even the Iranian demonstrators for theirs.

But I admit there could be other ways to render that. Heck, now that everyone knows Mr. Obama isn’t interested in keeping his story straight on anything from one week to the next, there might not be any real interpretation at all.

Self-respect

PART TWO of my honeymoon was a visit by my wife and me to my hometown and a few other cities in the United States. (Part One was a trip to Unzen before the eruption.) As we were driving around the former seat of the Ampontan manor one day, she suddenly turned and asked me a question:

“Doesn’t this city have any garbage collectors?”

I assured her that it did. In fact, I told her, all of us former municipal employees held the city’s sanitary engineers in the highest esteem. The only way we got a pay raise is when they threatened to go on strike.

“Then why is all this trash lying around in the streets?”

That’s a good question I was never able to answer to her satisfaction. The best I could do was to shrug my shoulders. Guess what inevitably became a topic of every conversation with her friends when we returned to Japan and they asked her what America was like?

One reason she was taken aback by all the refuse in the road can be discerned from the accompanying photograph, taken last week at Clean City Kagoshima 2009. That’s an annual event in Kagoshima City, and this year an estimated 78,000 people in a municipality of about 600,000 turned out early on a Sunday morning to pick up where the garbage men left off in the local parks and roads.

In the city’s Tenmonkan shopping district alone, about 700 people representing 54 groups voluntarily came out to collect trash and do some weeding at a nearby park. The municipal authorities reported that 50 45-liter bags of empty cans and weeds were collected there.

Said one high school student, “There wasn’t as much trash as I thought there would be, but I was surprised at the number of cigarette butts. I wish people wouldn’t just throw them out on the street.”

Cleanup campaigns such as these are not exclusive to Kagoshima City. One of the best pieces of advice my boss ever gave me was to suggest that I participate in the neighborhood kawasoji two days after I arrived in Saga. Kawasoji is literally “river cleaning”, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. The rivers are really a network of small waterways throughout the city connected to the nearby bay. The banks have been concreted, the water is seldom more than knee-deep, and a grade school boy could easily throw a ball across them.

Twice a year, on a Sunday in March and September, residents gather at a pre-arranged spot at 8:00 a.m. to pick up equipment and head off to work. The job includes both cutting back the weeds and other natural growth at sections of the river nearest their home and removing the trash. (One year we even fished out a bicycle.) It only takes about two hours, and after cleaning up, we go to a nearby Shinto shrine to collect our pay—a bento lunch—and have some snacks. The beverages provided include tea, or for the hardy types that early on a Sunday morning, beer or sake. Some people stay only for a quick bite to eat and a drink, while others hang out longer and chat.

This actually does strengthen neighborhood cohesiveness among the people who participate. How could it be otherwise? People take each other more seriously after they’ve sweated and gotten dirty together, particularly when it improves conditions in their immediate surroundings.

Perhaps the people of my hometown could learn something from this. I sure did.

Worse than you could imagine

THE POST ON THURSDAY focused on what I referred to as China’s insolent and arrogant eco-hypocrisy. It was prompted by the Chinese criticism of the Japanese pledge to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and contained this quote:

“I do not believe it is a number that is close to what Japan needs to do, should do,” Yu Qingtai, Chinese climate envoy, said. Japan’s pledge amounts to an 8 per cent cut in its emissions from 1990 levels, far less than the 20 per cent reduction promised by the European Union….China last month demanded that developed nations cut greenhouse emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 compared with 1990.

The Chinese, of course, are exempt from the Kyoto Protocol, and have Japanese ODA to thank for the bulk of their anti-pollution technology.

But the Chinese hypocrisy turns out to be even worse than one could imagine. Try this from the Times of London:

Officials from Beijing told a UN conference in Bonn yesterday that China would increase its emissions to develop its economy rather than sign up to mandatory cuts.

(The emphasis is mine.)

Their reason?

Qin Gang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that China was still a developing country and its priority was to develop its economy, alleviate poverty and raise living standards. “Given that, it is natural for China to have some increase in emissions, so it is not possible for China to accept a binding or compulsory target,” he said.

But when the Times quoted UN climate change “chief” Yvo de Boer, which country bore the brunt of the criticism? Three guesses and the first two don’t count:

Responding to the Japanese proposal, the UN chief made no attempt to hide his disappointment. “For the first time in my two and a half years in this job, I don’t know what to say,” he said. “We’re still a long way from the ambitious emission reduction scenarios that are a beacon for the world.”

It seems to have taken Mr. de Boer a mere two or three seconds to recover from his unaccustomed speechlessness at the Japanese to come up with that silliness about being the world’s beacon.

Here’s a question no one seems to want to answer: Why should free market democracies be the ones to pay the price for the Chinese choice of Marxism-Leninism under Mao? Taiwan doesn’t have that problem. Its per capita GDP in 2008 was estimated at $US 31,900, compared to Japan’s $34,200 and China’s $6,000.

Worse yet was how the Times’s journalist characterized the Chinese statement:

The refusal is a setback for President Obama’s efforts to drum up support for an agreement at Copenhagen in December on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

Ah, so. It’s not an effort by the international do-gooder set, but an effort by the new King of the World. But someone forgot to tell the Chinese:

The Chinese rejection of cuts emerged after talks in Beijing between Todd Stern, the US climate change envoy, and the Chinese Government, in which Mr Stern appears to have backed down from earlier calls that China make a commitment to reduce CO2 emissions.

It’s high time to start drawing some conclusions, particularly for the Japanese. First, the Chinese are going to do what they damn well please, whatever the issue, and no one is going to stop them with sweet measured reason. (They’ve just castrated another UN resolution on North Korea by inserting language that requires the consent of the “flag state” for the inspection of suspicious vessels at sea, and making voluntary all other sanctions on companies and financial institutions that do dirty business with Pyeongyang.)

Second, the subjects of His Majesty The King of the World, whether in Asia, the Middle East, or Europe, don’t seem to be so willing to tug their forelocks and offer a meek, “Yes, Sire.” Third, while the Chinese are the ones who promise to increase their emissions, the Japanese are the ones who catch hell because their targets for decreasing emissions don’t satisfy the Elders of the Eco-Church.

These problems and the underlying trends they represent will only grow worse in the future. The state of affairs that results isn’t going to be pretty.

Chinese eco-policies: the ultimate hypocrisy

IN HIS BLOG in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, James Delingpole has a post titled, China Doesn’t Give a Stuff about Global Warming: Thank God!

Within the post he quotes a Shanghai-based American source:

“The idea of looking to China for any sort of environmental leadership or effective environmental cooperation is simply preposterous. China currently appears to be operating under a triad of very basic principles:

1) No policies shall be enacted which would interfere with China’s economic growth
2) China shall increase its energy production and security by any and all means possible, as quickly as possible.
3) Int’l agreements shall transfer massive amounts of capital, industry, & technology from the West to fund China’s energy development.”

Mr. Delingpole approves:

“(F)or anyone…who cares about liberty, the state of the economy, or the free citizen’s inalienable right not to have his every hard-earned cent sucked into the gaping maw of eco tax and eco regulation in order to solve a problem that doesn’t even exist, China’s hard-headed realism may well be our only hope of salvation.”

The entire post is here.

Perhaps Mr. Delingpole spoke too soon, however. It turns out that the Chinese do give a stuff about global warming–as long as the work involved doesn’t have anything to do with them.

In response to the pledge by Japanese Prime Minister Aso Taro that Japan would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 15% from a baseline of 2005, the Chinese government spokesman for environmental affairs yesterday excreted perhaps the most arrogant and insolent statement I’ve seen from a government official anywhere in my life:

“I do not believe it is a number that is close to what Japan needs to do, should do,” Yu Qingtai, Chinese climate envoy, said. Japan’s pledge amounts to an 8 per cent cut in its emissions from 1990 levels, far less than the 20 per cent reduction promised by the European Union….China last month demanded that developed nations cut greenhouse emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 compared with 1990.

Remember that China is exempt from the Kyoto Protocol, and that a significant percentage of the annual ODA it receives from Japan is accounted for by environment-related equipment and technology. Mr. Aso will ignore them, fortunately. One hopes the same can be said of the people who will succeed him, but that’s probably too much to ask for.

So, Japan’s plan to cut its greenhouse gas emissions isn’t close to what it needs to do, but China doesn’t even come close to its own informally determined targets. Gee, I wonder what that’s all about.

For an unintentionally risible post about how China is taking serious environmental measures while the rest of the developed world is just talking, try this. See if you don’t laugh out loud.

Some other “experts” were “deeply disappointed” in Japan, too:

Some climate change experts, though, were deeply disappointed. “Japan’s credibility to lead international negotiations is very much damaged by this low emission target,” said Takejiro Sueyoshi, an adviser to the United Nations environment programme finance initiative who was a member of an expert panel assembled by Mr Aso to advise on the mid-term target.

Apparently the experts couldn’t make their case. Mr. Aso probably realizes Japan’s time in international negotiations could be better spent on issues of value, considering that global warming stopped about a decade ago, and that the earth’s temperature has always fluctuated independently of human factors. But it’s still not safe for the run-of-the-mill politico to run against the grain of the eco-church in an election year.

Any comparisons with European pledges are meaningless, by the way. They haven’t kept the ones they made the last time, and they’re just as unlikely to keep these. But this is all a pointless exercise to begin with. A Canadian newspaper a few years back used government statistics to calculate that for the Canadian government to meet its targets under the Kyoto Protocol, it would have to eliminate domestic air travel entirely.

Perhaps that’s the point.

Afterwords:

For those who want to keep feeding that Chinese monkey on your back, another blog post from the same newspaper has several links to interesting articles, including those on an underground railroad that smuggled dissidents out of China after Tienanmen Square, how the US will no longer provide shelter for corrupt Chinese officials, and why you shouldn’t eat chicken and celery together.

Water balling on Lake Biwa

ON SATURDAY we saw how the folks in Mima are having big fun by curling on a gymnasium floor with kettles, but this one looks even better: water balling on Lake Biwa.

Let's roll!

Thanks to an Italian company that is marketing a clear PVC water ball invented by Charles Jones in 1998, intrepid environmentalists, devotees of water sports, and people on the lookout for a good time can climb into the ball and roll out into the middle of the lake. Walking on water isn’t just a Bible story anymore.

The O’Pal Optics sports club in Otsu, Shiga, and the Nippon Water Walk Association have teamed up to popularize water ball use, and one of their approaches is to pitch the ball to environmental researchers. The idea is to roll out to positions on the lake they couldn’t otherwise see from shore, observe the cleanliness level of the water, and take photos from inside. The lower part of the ball also creates the same effect as a glass-bottomed boat, so waterballers can see what’s going on under the lake’s surface.

The water ball is 2.5 meters in diameter and 0.5 millimeters thick. Riders climb in through a hatchway with a fastener attached, and then use an air blower to inflate it. It has the capacity for two riders–standing room only–so you can double your waterballing fun by going for a roll with a friend. There was no mention of how long riders can stay inside before the air starts to go stale.

The people who’ve tried it say it’s just like a water bed, and no, I didn’t realize any of those were still around either. It floats gently and easily over the small waves on the lake surface, and they claim the experience transports you to another world.

Exhibiting an attitude of proper scientific detachment, the chair of the association said he hopes the ball will help foster an awareness of environmental issues and contribute to interest in Lake Biwa. But after taking a look at the association’s Japanese language website, they’re certainly aware of their new toy’s fun potential, too.

For example, here’s a video of water ball races in the inaugural competition at Lake Biwa last year. The guy in the first pair of racers who had such a hard time standing up said he had never been inside one before.

The second competition is scheduled for 30 August this year. How much longer can it be before someone comes up with an extreme sport or x-rated websites featuring water ball use?

If you’re near Lake Biwa and want to try balling on the water, give O’Pal Optics a call at their toll-free number: 0120-176-668. If you live in other parts of the country, take a look at the Water Walk Association website to see if an event is coming to a swimming pool near you soon.

And if you’re interested in buying one, you can put the search terms “water ball” and Italy into the English-language Google site and plenty of merchants will pop up!

Clarkson on the Honda Insight hybrid

HAVE YOU EVER seen or heard anyone slam a Japanese-made automobile? Apart from labor unions in North America or Europe, of course.

Honda Insight hybrid

My uncle’s opinion is typical of most of those I’ve heard about Japanese cars. Now in his late 80s, he was a young naval officer in World War II, and his adulthood coincided with the zenith of American economic and military power. If anyone might be expected to buy American, it would be him. But he doesn’t—at least not cars, anyway.

Uncle Bob has bought nothing but Toyotas for the past 30 years, and he’s very particular about the kind he buys. “I don’t want any of those Toyotas they build in the United States,” he insists. “I want the ones they make in Japan.”

But today, I read for the first time a review savaging a Japanese automobile–though I admit I spend little time following auto trends. (There are probably plenty of other negative reviews that I haven’t seen.) Jeremy Clarkson, hailed by some as Britain’s premier auto critic, had this to say about the Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid in the Times of London:

It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

It’s not that Mr. Clarkson dislikes either Hondas in particular…

Normally, Hondas feel as though they have been screwed together by eye surgeons.

…or Japanese cars in general. (Here he is talking about the Mazda 6 MPS):

“This really is a magnificent driver’s car.”

In fact, he seems to like Mazdas a lot. It’s just that he really detests this Honda:

The only hope I have is that there are enough fools and madmen out there who will buy an Insight to look sanctimonious outside the school gates. And that the cash this generates can be used to develop something a bit more constructive.

One of the factors informing his opinion of this Honda is that he doesn’t care for hybrids:

“…let me be clear that hybrid cars are designed solely to milk the guilt genes of the smug and the foolish.”

Though he does like another Honda hybrid, the Clarity:

“The car feels like a car. And, best of all, the power it produces is so enormous, it can be used by day to get you to 120mph and by night to run all the electrical appliances in your house. This is not science fiction. There is a fleet of Claritys running around California right now.”

In addition to writing articles for the Times of London, Mr. Clarkson appears on BBC TV in a show called Top Gear. At one time, it was the highest rated show on BBC Two in Great Britain. My cable package includes the BBC World Service, and I’ve seen Top Gear in Japan. It’s quite entertaining, even if you think cars are nothing more than machines to transport people and things from Point A to Point B quickly and conveniently. A friend in England named Paul (who studied kendo in Japan for two years) had this to say in an e-mail about Clarkson’s reputation at home:

Clarkson is a God to some and an arrogant, self-important wanker to others.

There’s enough ammunition for either side in his review of the Honda Insight hybrid!

Now get ready for the best part: The car, which was officially released in February in Japan, became Japan’s first best-selling hybrid ever in April. Last month, Honda sold 10,481 Insights in this country, more than any other model by any other manufacturer. The car was a hit from the minute it debuted on the Japanese market, doubling Honda’s initial target during its first month in showrooms. It went on sale in March in Europe and last month in the United States, where prices start at slightly less than $20,000.

As with the proverbial Frenchmen, can 10,000 Japanese be wrong?

Note: The model names for these vehicles are the ones used overseas. I don’t know what the corresponding models are called in Japan. (They’re not always the same.)

Bubbling waters run shallow

BIG RIVER WAS THE NAME of an early hit by American country and western singer Johnny Cash. The Man In Black also had a puckish sense of humor, so it’s no stretch of the imagination to think he could also have found the material for a hit song in Japan’s Butsubutsu River.

The Butsubutsu River

That’s the name of a body of water in Nachikatsu’ura-cho, Wakayama, which the prefecture designated a Class 2 River on the 21st. The Butusbutsu River is only 13.5 meters (14.7 yards) long, so it is now officially the shortest river in Japan. That distinction was previously held by the 30-meter long Honbetsu River in Shimamaki-mura, Hokkaido.

Short as it is, the Butsubutsu River is a tributary flowing into the Konoshiro River. It has an onomatopoeic name that is derived from the water bubbling to the surface from streams below ground. But it’s just as likely that the municipal officials filling out the application thought Butsubutsu was as good a name as any and stuck it on the form.

The local Wakayamanaians use it for washing fish or vegetables, and even for drinking water, according to reports. At least that’s what it’s used for by the folks who know how to find it. The municipal government asked Wakayama for the upgrade in July because the prefecture has jurisdiction over Class 2 rivers. (That’s part of a classification system used by the Japanese government to facilitate river management.) The prefecture agreed because they thought the Class 2 designation would help protect water quality and the surrounding scenery.

They also freely admitted they hoped it might bring some PR to the area. Well, here they are!

Semi-deaf

PEOPLE USED TO ASK ME when I first came to Japan whether I suffered from culture shock. Whether it was because I had read extensively about the country before coming, my experience living in different regions of the US, or having two grandparents who weren’t native English speakers, I could honestly answer no.

One day, however, I did feel as if I were living on a different planet!

There was a serious heat wave during my first summer, and summers are intensely hot in Japan to begin with. The temperatures were above 40 degrees Celsius (100+ Farenheit) several days in a row.

One morning I woke up and stepped outside the front door. It was obvious already that the heat wave was going to continue. The heat was one thing, but the sound I was hearing was quite another. In those days I lived next door to a temple with a large, old tree, and by then it was filled with semi, or cicadas.

The combination of the brightness, the heat, and the otherworldly sound of the cicadas made me realize I wasn’t in Kansas anymore!

It’s difficult to describe that sound to people who have never heard it, but fortunately, reader Mac sent me an e-mail with a story about cicadas that is too good to keep to myself.

So here is Mac’s story. At least I hope it’s Mac’s story–if it’s not I’ll have to apologize and take it down!

*********
It’s my first summer in Japan. I disappeared just at the start of the manageable and comfortable rainy season and arrived back at Kansai in full blown summer.

Heat … humid … pools of sweat I can just about cope with … but the noise? Nothing had prepared me for that. Walking along tree-lined avenues in the morning, I thought it was some high-tech emergency services vehicle alarm going off.

What was it? Cicadas.

Lifting some stats from a related article, their noise can exceed 90 decibels and peak at 120 db. That is about as loud as a bulldozer or comparable to lawn mower peaks on hot days. By comparison, motorcycles are factory-limited between 82 to 86 decibels and 100 plus is on a par with a Harley-Davidson at speed.

Industrial noise expert Billy Martin, a hearing scientist at Oregon Health & Science University, said that “Exposure to 91 decibels of sound for two hours, or 94 decibels for one hour, could begin to cause some permanent hearing damage” and noise-induced hearing loss. “Such noise also could cause psychological strain … anxiety, aggravation and high-blood pressure. Loud sound is very stressful.”

Meanwhile in Nature magazine (last year), David Cyranoski reported that Cicadas are cutting off Osaka’s citizens from their Internet connections. “A cicada known as the kumazemi is descending on Japan en masse, deafening the citizens and wreaking havoc on the country’s fibre-optic system. The 6- to 7-centimetre-long black cicada (Cryptotympana facialis) inhabits western Japan.

Shiyake Shigehiko, curator of the Osaka Museum of Natural History, and Numata Eiji, a biologist at Osaka University, show that the cicada population increases every year for four years, after which it returns to base level and the cycle restarts. From the past three years’ data, the scientists calculate that this year will be the four-year peak, with nearly 2.5 times as many cicadas as in 2006. The noise level is also set to climb. Measured at 90.4 decibels at another Osaka park last year, this year the same spot is expected to hit 94 decibels — decibels follow a logarithmic scale, so that’s more than double the volume. Prolonged exposure to this level of noise causes deafness.

The kumazemi are also cutting households off from their Internet. Apparently mistaking fibre-optic cables for withered branches, they have been punching their one-millimetre-diameter egg-laying tubes into the cables and laying eggs allowing water to seep in and causing failures.

You know what this means? Given the role internet services provide in setting up dates and meeting new partners … the little blighters are attempting to interrupt human reproductive cycles!

It’s them, or us.

The nascent Japanese eco-skepticism

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
- H.L. Mencken

When people come to know the truth, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.
- Dr. Akasofu Shun’ichi, Professor Emeritus of the University of Alaska and Founding Director of the International Arctic Research Center

THE JAPANESE USED TO SAY they were 10 years behind the Americans in everything. Of course that wasn’t true—after all, college students in this country in the late 1970s never did dose themselves with LSD to turn on, tune in, and drop out.

But there’s one instance in which they may be right. Their growing skepticism of the claims of the radical environmentalists about global warming, carbon dioxide, and rising ocean levels is just now becoming apparent. That skepticism has been building for the better part of a decade in the West. It fully emerged seven years ago when former Greenpeace member Björn Lomborg revealed in his groundbreaking book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, the blantant exaggerations, mythology, and untruths behind what is now more new religion than scientific concern.

Consider the statement above by the Nagano-born Dr. Akasofu, now an American citizen. Then consider his credentials. A geophysics professor since 1964, he was named one of the “1000 Most Cited Scientists” in 1981 and 2002. He has received the Chapman Medal from the Royal Astronomy Society of London, the Japan Academy of Sciences Award, the John Adams Fleming Award of the American Geophysical Union, and the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold and Silver Star, a Japanese medal.

He has written a paper titled Notes on Climate Change, which you can read here. Dr. Akasofu compares the current climate change scare to the panic caused in the U.S. by 30 October 1938 radio broadcast of Orson Welles’s realistic dramatization of The War of the Worlds.

Another skeptic is Dr. Itoh Kiminori of Yokohama National University, who has written several books on this subject in Japanese. The most recent is Lies and Traps in Global Warming Affairs (地球温暖化論のウソとワナ –Here is the Amazon.jp link for Japanese readers.)

Despite serving as an expert reviewer of the work done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared a Nobel Prize with Al Gore, Dr. Itoh sharply disagrees with their conclusions. In a guest post on a climate science website, he outlined six points for policy makers to consider when formulating environmental policy:

1. The global temperature will not increase rapidly if any. There is sufficient time to think about future energy and social systems.
2. The climate system is more robust than conventionally claimed. For instance, the Gulf Stream will not stop by fresh water inflow.
3. There are many factors to cause the climate changes particularly in regional and local scales. Considering only greenhouse gases is nonsense and harmful.
4. A comprehensive climate convention is necessary. The framework-protocol formulism is too old to apply to modern international issues.
5. Reconsider countermeasures for the climate changes. For instance, to reduce Asian Brown Cloud through financial and technical aid of developed countries is beneficial from many aspects, and can become a Win-Win policy.
6. The policy makers should be “Four-ball juggler.” Multiple viewpoints are inevitable to realize sustainable societies.

A third Japanese eco-skeptic is Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University. His most recent book is Hypocritical Ecology. (偽善エコロジーHere is the Amazon.jp link for Japanese readers.)

The Japan Times recently ran a profile of Dr. Takeda, in which he said:

Fear is a very efficient weapon: It produces the desired effect without much waste. Global warming has nothing to do with how much CO2 is produced or what we do here on Earth. For millions of years, solar activity has been controlling temperatures on Earth and even now, the sun controls how high the mercury goes. CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another. Soon it will cool down anyhow, once again, regardless of what we do. Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so.

Dr. Takeda speaks of fear; H.L. Mencken spoke of alarm over the hobgoblins.

Why is this Japanese awareness emerging now? Could it be part of a larger emerging global awareness of the combination of improbable claims and tyrannical methods of the environmentalists?

It’s not out of the question. Take for example the Physics and Society Forum of the American Physical Society, which has recently crossed over to the camp of the skeptics.

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton’s paper an “expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and “extensive errors”

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, “I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC’s 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central ‘climate sensitivity’ question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method.”

Here is Monckton’s paper on their website:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001…More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no “climate crisis”, and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful.

He concludes:

• Even if temperature had risen above natural variability, the recent solar Grand Maximum may have been chiefly responsible.
• Even if the sun were not chiefly to blame for the past half-century’s warming, the IPCC has not demonstrated that, since CO2 occupies only one-ten-thousandth part more of the atmosphere that it did in 1750, it has contributed more than a small fraction of the warming.
• Even if carbon dioxide were chiefly responsible for the warming that ceased in 1998 and may not resume until 2015, the distinctive, projected fingerprint of anthropogenic “greenhouse-gas” warming is entirely absent from the observed record.
• Even if the fingerprint were present, computer models are long proven to be inherently incapable of providing projections of the future state of the climate that are sound enough for policymaking.
• Even if per impossibile the models could ever become reliable, the present paper demonstrates that it is not at all likely that the world will warm as much as the IPCC imagines.
• Even if the world were to warm that much, the overwhelming majority of the scientific, peer-reviewed literature does not predict that catastrophe would ensue.
• Even if catastrophe might ensue, even the most drastic proposals to mitigate future climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would make very little difference to the climate.
• Even if mitigation were likely to be effective, it would do more harm than good: already millions face starvation as the dash for biofuels takes agricultural land out of essential food production: a warning that taking precautions, “just in case”, can do untold harm unless there is a sound, scientific basis for them.
• Finally, even if mitigation might do more good than harm, adaptation as (and if) necessary would be far more cost-effective and less likely to be harmful.

In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong.

The conclusion cites as an example of misguided policies the starvation caused by the use of food crops for biofuel. Here’s what the World Bank thinks:

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian…It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Rising food prices have pushed 100 million people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as “the first real economic crisis of globalisation”.

“Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate,” says the report.

Winnipeg climatologist Tim Ball says that severe weather patterns are the result of global cooling, rather than global warming, but that the proponents of human-caused climate change ignore that. In addition to the bad science, Dr. Ball says the proponents are pushing a fraud:

The world is cooling while CO2 levels continue to rise. In every record for any period in history temperature increases before CO2, not as assumed. Plans to implement carbon taxes to offset warming exacerbate soaring fuel prices. Effects of policies implemented to replace fossil fuels with biofuels are driving food and total living costs rapidly higher.

The graph from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that severe tornadoes were higher in the period from 1950 to 1975. Global temperatures were falling during that time. Since then frequency has decreased as the world warmed to 2000. Since then the world has cooled slightly and the pattern shows a slight increase in severe tornadoes.

This trend of severe weather is most likely to increase as the Earth continues to cool. Proponents of human caused climate change will claim it proves them right. They will continue their practice of claiming natural events as unnatural. Unless people understand the basic science they will continue the fraud and pressure politicians into even more damaging energy and environmental policies.

Meanwhile, in The Guardian, the aforementioned Björn Lomborg says we’re being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories that block out sensible solutions to climate change.

Fear…hobgoblins…scare stories…

When it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six metres of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world.

Gore’s scientific adviser, Jim Hansen from Nasa, has even topped his protege. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 metres, with a six-metre rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that “we are engaging in a reckless drive-by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of creation.”

Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: over the past two years, the global sea level hasn’t increased. It has slightly decreased. Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy – 3-4mm. For two years, sea levels have declined. (All of the data are available at sealevel.colorado.edu.)

And:

This doesn’t mean that global warming is not true. As we emit more CO2, over time the temperature will moderately increase, causing the sea to warm and expand somewhat. Thus, the sea-level rise is expected to pick up again. This is what the UN climate panel is telling us; the best models indicate a sea-level rise over this century of 18 to 59 centimeters (7-24 inches), with the typical estimate at 30cm. This is not terrifying or even particularly scary – 30cm is how much the sea rose over the last 150 years.

Simply put, we’re being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories. Proclaiming six meters of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists, and requires the sea-level rise to accelerate roughly 40-fold from today. Imagine how climate alarmists would play up the story if we actually saw an increase in the sea-level rise.

Here’s the truly scary part:

Increasingly, alarmists claim that we should not be allowed to hear such facts. In June, Hansen proclaimed that people who spread “disinformation” about global warming – CEOs, politicians, in fact anyone who doesn’t follow Hansen’s narrow definition of the “truth” – should literally be tried for crimes against humanity…Campaigner Mark Lynas envisions Nuremberg-style “international criminal tribunals” against those who dare to challenge the climate dogma.

Of course the politicians aren’t interested in the science–they’re seizing the chance to make themselves look good by confronting imaginary hobgoblins. Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo led the way earlier this month at the Toyako Summit.

The Group of Eight powers took a step forward Tuesday in the fight against global warming at their summit in Lake Toyako, Hokkaido.

They agreed to “seek to share” with both developing and developed countries the goal of halving global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 2050. They called on all signatories to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to share this vision and to adopt this goal at their meeting.

What better solution for today’s G-8 leaders? They’ll be long gone by 2050, but meanwhile they’ll get the credit today for their empty but expensive promises.

The parties to the pact are preparing to create a framework to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose implementation period expires in 2012. It is, therefore, significant that the G-8 requested parties to the pact to adopt this goal.

The United States did not readily accept the 50-percent reduction by 2050 goal. Instead of giving up, the G-8 decided to leave the matter to the U.N. framework. In effect, Japan and Europe brushed aside outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush’s reluctance to ensure that the United Nations leads the initiative.

American CO2 emissions have declined since the Kyoto Protocol was written, while those of Europe, signatories to the treaty, have increased. So what does the G-8 decide to do? Take the matter out of the hands of the people who were successful and put it into the hands of the people who are “deliberately obscuring” their methods to produce bad science.

The Asahi would also have us think global “warming” is a question of security.

In June, the National Intelligence Council (NIC), a U.S. government organization that analyzes foreign policy issues based on data provided by the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence bodies, published its assessment of the security threats posed by climate change.

In its report, the council warned that global warming could aggravate the problems of poverty and resource shortages, thereby triggering more civil strife and conflict in already volatile regions.

The world must brace itself for all sorts of problems triggered by continued warming of the Earth. At the same time, it must take every possible step to eventually curb harmful climate change.

As demonstrated by the biofuel solution, the only problems we’ve have so far have been those caused by governments responding to hobgoblins.

Global warming is projected to have disastrous consequences–a rise in sea levels and more frequent droughts and flooding.

Refer to the link above regarding the satellite measurements of sea levels showing that no disastrous consequences are in the offing. The Asahi didn’t.

Security strategy among the major powers tends to concentrate political and military power on regions which are most likely to experience conflicts or which involve intertwined national interests. Europe was such a region during the Cold War, just as the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula are today.

The impact of global warming, whether it be sea-level rises or extreme weather, will cut wide swaths around the world. Such crises could emerge simultaneously in many parts of the world.

If the fallout brought on by global warming causes conflicts to break out all over the world at the same time, even the overwhelming military power of the United States or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the world’s largest military alliance, will be powerless to handle this intractable situation.

Now that took some writing skill: the Asahi needed only three paragraphs to turn hot air into uncontrollable global chaos.

The basic principles of sustainable security include…spreading democratic governance to prevent the proliferation of failed nations that are unable to govern their people.

Good luck with China. They didn’t think the Kyoto Protocol had anything to do with them either.

The threats posed by global warming, if compounded by delayed policy responses, will only cause more confusion.

So stop confusing yourself by thinking and do as we say!

Developing countries are likely to be hit the hardest by sea-level rises, floods and other damaging effects of climate change. This is particularly troubling.

Harmful climate change could widen the gap between rich and poor in these countries, thus setting the stage for riots and political unrest. This could trigger a huge refugee exodus as people flee their devastated countries. Some people may even be tempted to join terrorist organizations.

A worst-case scenario including the above developments must be taken into account when we map out strategies for expanding aid to developing countries….

If a “worst-case scenario…must be taken into account”, none of us would get out of bed in the morning.

But give them extra credit for those writing skills: three more short paragraphs to spin some more hot air into a justification for a global income redistribution scheme to prevent terrorism.

And if you object, Jim Hansen will put you on trial for crimes against humanity.

Support should also be provided to help developing countries improve their political systems and administrative abilities so they can respond more effectively to problems caused by climate change. But such support should be provided in the least intrusive manner.

Wouldn’t you love to hear just how they propose to accomplish that?

All these threads converge in the recent visit of Tavau Teii, deputy prime minister of Tuvalu, to Japan to shake down the government for money.

Well, that’s not what he said, but that’s what he was doing. The Asahi—natch—has the story:

The audience gasped as Tavau Teii, deputy prime minister of the tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu, presented his slide show. Frame after frame showed how global warming threatens to submerge the island group that is home to fewer than 12,000 people.

Get ready for it.

“Tuvalu stands as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. There is no time to waste,” Teii said, addressing about 650 citizens at a public awareness symposium organized by Tokyo’s Adachi Ward late last month ahead of the Group of Eight summit that starts Monday in Hokkaido…The event was to serve as a showcase for Japan’s first program to help Pacific island states cope with the impact of global warming under the Cool Earth Partnership, a wide-ranged program for helping developing countries deal with climate change.

In mid-December, Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Apisai Ielemia submitted a proposal for dealing with climate change, aimed at prodding the major emitters to heed the demands of island nations.

The proposal called on industrialized countries to create systems to compensate for damage caused by global warming, with funding from taxes that would be levied on international airline fees and shipping fees.

While welcoming the package, experts based in small Pacific island nations note that more will be expected from Japan.

What a lovely scam.
Step one: Make up false charges about a real issue.
Step two: Force other people to pay for a false solution.
Step three: Congratulate yourself for finally achieving income distribution from the developed world to the undeveloped world using the hobgoblin of rising ocean levels that aren’t rising.
Step four: Get the Japanese to pay even more for an even longer time.

Patrick Nunn, a professor of geology at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji…called Japan’s program a “short-term measure, not a long-term sustainable one.” At the current pace, it is inevitable that parts of island states such as Tuvalu will become uninhabitable in 50 years, he said. The Japanese program, as he understood it, would “likely only help islanders survive for another 30 years.”

In other words, the beggary/buggary will go on for half a century.

Get ready for more:

“Climate change is a problem caused by industrialized countries, with the burden borne disproportionately by developing countries, like those in the Pacific. Those responsible for causing the problem should shoulder greater responsibility in alleviating it,” said Jyotishma Naicker, a climate change specialist at WWF South Pacific Program based in Fiji…

What’s the point? To shame people into feeling so guilty they won’t object when the contents of their wallets are stolen in the name of morality and environmentalism—even though income distribution is the real name of the game.

If the facts don’t get in the way first:

It is likely that the beach erosion and building on (Tuvalu) caused the sea flooding of areas over the last decade. And that is a true environmental concern. But it is a local, man-made problem that will not be solved with massive cuts in carbon dioxide emission.

An environmental official of Tuvalu, Elisala Pita, is concerned with the alarmism of western eco-imperialists. In an interview in the Canadian Globe and Mail on November 24, Pita says that, “This [coastal] erosion is caused by man-made infrastructure. Tuvalu is being used for the issue of climate change. People are telling all these lies, just using Tuvalu to prove their point. No island is sinking. Tuvalu is not sinking. It is still floating.”

Careful, Mr. Pita–you might be looking at a stretch in jail for saying what you think.

Some Japanese have finally gotten wise to what’s going on. The Asahi is surely a hopeless case, but what will it take for the rest of the country?

Charging Dr. Akasofu Shun’ichi–who received a medal from the Emperor of Japan for his scientific work—with crimes against humanity at the Nuremburg/Tokyo Environmental War Crimes Tribunal?

They’re not going to stop, you know. Now that they’ve been exposed, they’ll fight back with more extreme claims and more despotic measures.

Get ready for it.