Viral Mapping

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Swine flu, aka A (H1N1) and North American influenza.

Timeline

1994 Smithfield Foods Inc. who own half of the Granjas Carroll de Mexico, began operating pig farms in the region By the time of the pandemic in March 2009, they were the major producer in the country, with 907 workers, 500,000 thousand pigs in developing states of Veracruz and Puebla. Their website from their headquarters in Perote, Mexico claimed that they 56,000 sows in 2008 producing 950,000 hogs. They are 12 such mega farms surrounding La Gloria, Mexico, a hillside hamlet of c. 3,000 people in the located in the municipality of Perote, Veracruz. Residents of La Gloria, Mexico have long complained that some of the pits that hold pig waste are not properly lined; they fear their groundwater is contaminated. They’re frustrated and angry, too, about the stench and the swarms of flies that invade their village. Granjas Carroll de Mexico, half-owned by U.S.-based Smithfield Foods Inc., operates dozens of farms around La Gloria.

2009-02 In the end of February in La Gloria, Mexico, a hillside hamlet of c. 3,000 people in the located in the municipality of Perote, Veracruz, many people became ill with symptoms similar to a bad cold.

2009-03-18 Mexican government reported an unusually high level of flu-like illnesses.

2009-03-23 Veracruz health officials arrived in La Gloria, Mexico to take saliva samples. About a third of some 1,300 townspeople who sought medical attention – 450 or so – were diagnosed with acute respiratory infections and given surgical masks and antibiotics. (Washington Post).

Edgar fell ill a bit later; the energetic 5-year-old retreated to his bed with a high fever. Other kids in his school already were sick.

2009-03

2009-04-12 “By early April, the Veracruz government notified Mexican authorities of a possible flu outbreak in La Gloria. This alert happened to come around Holy Week, a time when lots of people in this largely Catholic country travel to visit family. On April 12, Mexican health authorities notified the CDC and the Pan American Health Organization of the unexplained cases of severe respiratory illness. One day later, people started dying (Cohen and Rodriguez 2009-05-01).”

2009-04-13 Adela Maria Gutierrez, a 38-year-old mother of three, was the first to die of H1N1 influenza virus. She had “arrived at a hospital in Oaxaca, in far southern Mexico, gasping for air, her oxygen-starved hands and legs a ghastly shade of blue. Her death was not just tragic, but alarming: Gutierrez had worked door-to-door for Mexico’s tax collection agency, interviewing scores of people. As it turns out, one of her co-workers, a temporary employee, was from Veracruz, the state on the Gulf of Mexico where the first swine case was confirmed. Family members said that woman had a bad cough (Cohen and Rodriguez 2009-05-01).”

2009-04-12 First two cases of A (H1N1) in California BBC 2009 Outbreak Map.

2009-04-25 “A day after seven new cases are confirmed in the US, the World Health Organization declares a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. From April 17-25 1, 455 cases of suspected A (H1N1) flu investigated. BBC 2009 Outbreak Map.

2009-04-26 Canada had 6 confirmed cases of A (H1N1); US had 20; Mexico had 18 BBC 2009 Outbreak Map.

2009-04-28 Confirmed cases of A (H1N1): UK had 2, Spain had 2, US had 64; New Zealand had 3; Mexico had 20. BBC 2009 Outbreak Map.

2009-04-29 Confirmed cases of A (H1N1): Canada: 13; UK:5 (London, Polmont, Redditch, Paignton); Israel:2; Spain:10; US:91; New Zealand:3; Austria:1; Germany:3; Mexico: 26. Deaths caused by A (H1N1) Mexico: 7; US:1; BBC 2009 Outbreak Map.

2009-05-01 Confirmed cases of A (H1N1): Canada: 35; UK:10; Israel:2; Spain:13; US:109; New Zealand:4; Austria:1; Germany:4; Mexico: 300; Peru:1; Costa Rica:2; Netherlands:1; Switzerland:1; Hong Kong:1. Deaths caused by A (H1N1) Mexico: 12; US:1. The UK, US, Canada, Spain, Germany confirm cases of secondary transmission. BBC 2009 Outbreak Map.

2009-05 “Influenza A(H1N1) – update 8.1. 1 May 2009 — “The situation continues to evolve. As of 23:30 GMT, 1 May 2009, 13 countries have officially reported 367 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection. The United States Government has reported 141 laboratory confirmed human cases, including one death. Mexico has reported 156 confirmed human cases of infection, including nine deaths. The following countries have reported laboratory confirmed cases with no deaths – Austria (1), Canada (34), China, Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region (1), Denmark (1), Germany (4), Israel (2), Netherlands (1), New Zealand (4), Spain (13), Switzerland (1) and the United Kingdom (8). Further information on the situation will be available on the WHO website on a regular basis. WHO advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders. It is considered prudent for people who are ill to delay international travel and for people developing symptoms following international travel to seek medical attention, in line with guidance from national authorities. There is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products. Individuals are advised to wash hands thoroughly with soap and water on a regular basis and should seek medical attention if they develop any symptoms of influenza-like illness.”

2009-05-01 “Swine flu has been confirmed in 16 deaths, all from Mexico (one Mexican toddler died in Houston). It has sickened nearly 350 people in Mexico, and about 200 others from New York to New Zealand, including children, teens, adults, students and tourists. It has rattled the world’s financial markets, pushed oil prices down, caused a run on surgical masks and hand sanitizers, closed schools and churches, postponed sporting events, prompted travel bans, rerouted cruise ships(Cohen and Rodriguez 2009-05-01).”

Webliography

BBC. 2009. Outbreak Map.

Cohen, Sharon; Rodriguez, Olga R. 2009-05-01. “How swine flu virus hopscotched the globe.” Washington Post

WHO. 2009-05-01-23:30 GMT. “Influenza A(H1N1) Update 8.1.

Budget 2009: Legislation by Stealth: Amendments to Acts of Parliament with No Parliamentary Debate

The Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act, a non-budgetary amendment to an act of Parliament, was introduced in the 550+ pages of the 2009 Budget Bill C-10 as part of a fast track process intended to boost the flailing economy. Most of the document dealt with issues not directly related to economic stimulus measures. In effect these proposed amendments involve 42 acts of Parliament that have no connection to the budget at all. The move has been called “legislation by stealth” (CFUW 2009-02-26) since there could be no parliamentary debate on the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act as a new law independent of the Budget. It was hoped the Senate could stall passage of these amendments such as the proposed the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act which would effectively dismantle decades of work towards ensuring pay equity. On March 12, 2009 Bill C-10, the Budget Implementation Act, 2009, received Royal Assent.

“The new legislated criteria for evaluating “equitable compensation” will reintroduce sex discrimination into pay practices, rather than eliminate it. Under the Canadian Human Rights Act, it is a discriminatory practice for an employer to establish or maintain differences in wages between male and female employees employed in the same establishment who are performing work of equal value. In assessing the value of work performed by employees, the criterion to be applied is the composite of the skill, effort and responsibility required in the performance of the work and the conditions under which the work is performed (section 11). The new legislation adopts these criteria, but adds new ones that completely undermine the commitment to equal pay for work of equal value for women. Section 4(2)(b) of Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act adds that the value of the work performed is also to be assessed according to “the employer’s recruitment and retention needs in respect of employees in that job group or job class, taking into account the qualifications required to perform the work and the market forces operating in respect of employees with those qualifications.” This permits any evaluation to take into account that male-dominated jobs are valued more highly in the market, requiring the employer to pay more to attract new employees or retain current ones, even if the value of the work when it is assessed based on skill, effort and responsibility is no greater than that of female-dominated jobs. [T]he new legislation defines a female dominated group as one in which 70% of the workers are women; only these groups can seek “equitable compensation.” This is too rigid a definition as it simply puts outside the boundaries of the legislation those job groups in which women are 51 – 69% of the workers, no matter what the context is. [F]urther, unionized women cannot have the assistance of their unions to make pay equity complaints. Indeed, unions will be fined $50,000 if they assist any woman to make a complaint. We point out that this legal imposition of a fine violates international human rights norms, since it contravenes Article 9(3)(c) of the Declaration on the Rights of Human Rights Defenders. Article 9(3)(c) states that “everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, … [T]o offer and provide professionally qualified legal assistance or other relevant advice and assistance in defending human rights and fundamental freedoms.” ((CFUW 2009-02-26) “

 

In the Senate in early March 2009, Senators cautioned that only 27 of the 550-plus pages of the budget bill actually relate to the budget and economic stimulus measures. The rest involves making amendments to 42 acts of Parliament, many of which have no connection to the budget (PSAC. 2009-03-09).

 

Timeline

1977 The right to equal pay for work of equal value was introduced in Canadian federal human rights legislation to expunge sex discrimination inherent in market pay practices from assessment of value of work.

2009-03-12. Bill C-10, the Budget Implementation Act, 2009 was passed in the Senate and received Royal Assent. This includes the amendment: Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act: Enactment of Act: 394. The Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act

2009-03-23. Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights: Issue 2 – Evidence. Ottawa, ON.

Senator Nancy Ruth: If the bill [Bill C-10, the Budget Implementation Act, 2009] was passed in the Senate and has received Royal Assent [March 12, 2009], why are we studying anything in it?
The Chair: Can you discuss that question with the leadership? We are not studying the bill. We were asked to study the subject matter. 

2009-03-31 the Standing Committee on the Status of Women (Members of the Committee present: Sylvie Boucher, Patricia Davidson, Nicole Demers, Johanne Deschamps, Hon. Hedy Fry, Candice Hoeppner, Irene Mathyssen, Cathy McLeod, Hon. Anita Neville, Tilly O’Neill-Gordon and Lise Zarac) planned to hold four extra meetings to examine the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act and invite Minister Vic Toews, the Public Sector Labour Relations Board, Public Service Alliance of Canada, Professional Institute of the Public Sector of Canada, Communications Energy and Paperworkers, Canadian Labour Congress and Marie-Thérèse Chicha, Pay Equity Task Force Member and any other witnesses that the Committee agrees upon.
Notes

1. PART 11: Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act: Enactment of Act: 394. The Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act is enacted as follows:

An Act respecting the provision of equitable compensation in the public sector of Canada

Whereas Parliament affirms that women in the public sector of Canada should receive equal pay for work of equal value;
Whereas Parliament affirms that it is desirable to accomplish that goal through proactive means;
And whereas employers in the public sector of Canada operate in a market-driven economy;
Now, therefore, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:

Webliography and Bibliography

Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW). 2009-02-26. “Pay Equity Emptied of Meaning.”

GC. 2009-03-12. Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act: Enactment of Act: 394. The Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act

PSAC. 2009-03-09. “Senators on the right track with budget bill.”

CBC Recycles Anti-recycling Arguments

Anti-recyclers like the Cato Institute’s Grant Schaumberg, Katherine Doyle (1991), James DeLong of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (1994), Lynn Scarlett (1995) of the Reason Foundation, Jeff Bailey (1995) of the Wall Street Journal, Alan Caruba (2003-01), Daniel K. Benjamin (2003) of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), John Tierney (1996), J. Winston Porter of the Waste Policy Center in Leesburg, Va., Libertarian Michael Mungerar (2007) and La Giorgia (2009-01) argue that “the market” should determine what if anything is recycled. Anti-recycler Tierney claimed that the well-publicized 1000s-of-miles journey of the Mobro 4000, a barge carrying Long Islanders’ trash, trying to unload its cargo, incited a garbage guilt epidemic among Americans. He like other anti-recyclers, also claimed that the garbage crisis that emerged from this image continues today under false pretenses: there is no shortage of environmentally safe landfill sites; curbside recycling rarely pays for itself in direct returns; recycling is not economically efficient. (Tierney 1996-06-30)

Recycling advocates Richard A. Denison and John F. Ruston (1996) of the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, DC argue that the think tanks quoted by the anti-recyclers such as The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute (both based in Washington DC), the Reason Foundation (based in Santa Monica, CA) and the Waste Policy Center (based in Leesburg, VA) that tend to promote market interests over the state, minimal government intervention in general and government programs of any kind. At least some of these think tanks accept funding from companies involved in “solid waste collection, landfilling and incineration, the manufacturing of products from virgin materials, and the production and sale of packaging and consumer products. Many of the corporations that fund the anti-recyclers have a direct economic stake in maintaining the waste management status quo and in minimizing consumers’ scrutiny of the environmental effects of products and packaging.” (Denison and Ruston 1996-07-18)

Timeline

1960s A political movement to save the environment emerged called the greening of America

1960s Martin Lapierre’s father founded Profix Environnement, an industrial collector of corrugated cardboard based in Laval, Quebec by collecting used boxes and selling them back to manufacturers for reprocessing. Martin, who inherited the business estimated that the cardboard the firm has recycled over the years has saved at least 750,000 trees (”(La Giorgia 2009-04-09).

1970-04-22 20 million people celebrated the first Earth Day in the United States.

1970-04-22 United Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

1972 the Club of Rome published Limits to Growth arguing that the American way of life was not sustainable.

1980 Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, Montana was formed by a group of economists claiming dedication to improving environmental quality through markets and property rights through research and outreach education. Research is at the heart of PERC’s work followed by outreach and education. PERC claims to have pioneered the approach known as free market environmentalism (FME).

1987 A barge named the Mobro 4000 wandered thousands of miles trying to unload its cargo of Long Islanders’ trash, and its journey had a strange effect on America.” Anti-recycler Tierney claimed that the garbage crisis that emerged from this image continues today under false pretenses. He also claimed that there is no shortage of environmentally safe landfill sites. (Tierney 1996-06-30)

1987 America devised a national five-year plan for trash. The Environmental Protection Agency promulgated a “Waste Hierarchy” that ranked trash disposal options: recycling at the top, composting and waste-to-energy incinerators in the middle, landfills at the bottom. The E.P.A.’s five-year goal, to recycle 25 percent of municipal trash, was announced in a speech in early 1988 by J. Winston Porter, an assistant administrator of the agency. Even as Porter was setting the goal, he realized that it was presumptuous for a bureaucrat in Washington to tell everyone in America what to do with their trash. “After all the publicity about the barge,” Porter recalls, “I sat down with some engineers in my office to estimate how much municipal waste could be recycled. At that time, about 10 percent was being recycled. We looked at the components of waste, made a few quick calculations and figured that it was reasonable to reach a level of 25 percent within five years. It wasn’t a highly quantified thing. Some of the staff didn’t even want me to mention a figure. But I thought it would be good to set a target, as long as it was strictly voluntary and didn’t involve a lot of regulations.” Politicians across the country had bigger ideas. State and city officials enacted laws mandating recycling and setting arbitrary goals even higher than the E.P.A.’s. Most states set rigid quotas, typically requiring that at least 40 percent of trash be recycled, often even more-50 percent in New York and California, 60 percent in New Jersey, 70 percent in Rhode Island. Industries were pressured to set their own goals. Municipalities followed the Waste Hierarchy by building waste-to-energy incinerators and starting thousands of curbside recycling programs-all in the belief that it would be cheaper than landfilling. But the incinerators turned out to be disastrously expensive, and the recycling programs produced a glut of paper, glass and plastic that no one wanted to buy.” (Tierney 1996-06-30)

1989 J. Winston Porter left the Environmental Protection Agency and became president of a consulting firm, the Waste Policy Center in Leesburg, Va. By 1996 he was advising cities and states to abandon their unrealistic goals of recycling and he “ridiculed EPA policies he had helped implement saying, “People in New York and other places are tilting at recycling windmills. [...] There aren’t many more materials in garbage that are worth recycling.” (Tierney 1996-06-30)

1991-09 anti-recyclers, Grant Schaumberg and Katherine Doyle, “Wasting Resources to Reduce Waste: Recycling in New Jersey,” Washington DC: Cato Institute,

1994-01-26 James DeLong, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington said, “The solution to the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) non-crisis is to recognize that trash disposal is a commodity, like coal or asparagus, and to treat it accordingly. The government could establish a few rules to avoid externalities and cost shifting, and then let the free market work. Operating within this framework, waste disposal companies, truckers, railroads, municipal officials, recyclers, waste generators and others could all perform their receptive functions. The result would be a complex amalgam of regional landfills, short- and long-haul transportation by truck and rail, incineration, recycling, and source reduction. In a few years people would wonder what all the shouting was about.”

1995 anti-recycler, Jeff Bailey, “Curbside Recycling Comforts the Soul, But Benefits are Scant,” Wall Street Journal,

1995-01-19 anti-recycler Lynn Scarlett (Reason Foundation) “A Consumer’s Guide to Environmental Myths and Realities,” Dallas, TX: National Center for Policy Analysis,

2002 “The continuing dialogue about recycling is well illustrated by the February 2002 response of the National Recycling Coalition (NRC)—one of many groups formed around this issue—to the white paper put out by the EPA. The NRC finds much to approve of in the EPA recommendations but returns to the fundamental issue of sustainability: can we go on producing and consuming and disposing of material goods at an ever-increasing rate?”

2003-09 Daniel K. Benjamin published the report entitled Recycling Rubbish: Eight Great Myths about Waste Disposal with Property and Environment Research Center.

2009-04-09 “From last year’s peak, prices [for recyclable material] have dropped 50 to 90 per cent,” said Mairi Welman of the Recycling Council of British Columbia (RCBC), a group of government and industry members with a stake in recycling ( “(La Giorgia 2009-04-09).

2009-01 Profix Environnement, an industrial collector of corrugated cardboard based in Laval, Quebec was struggling to survive as the price of cardboard dropped to zero (”(La Giorgia 2009-04-09).

2009 Quebec promised $4.8 million in loan guarantees to support its recycling industry, as well as legislation allowing recycling companies and municipalities to renegotiate contracts (”(La Giorgia 2009-04-09).

Webliography and Bibliography

DeLong, James V. 1994-01-26. “Wasting Away; Mismanaging Municipal Solid Waste.” Competitive Enterprise Institute Monograph.

Denison, Richard A.; Ruston, John F. 1996-07-18. “Anti-Recycling Myths Commentary on ‘Recycling is Garbage‘”.

La Giorgia, Giancarlo. 2009-04-09. “No cents in recycling as economy kills demand for material.” CBC News.

Munger, Michael. 2007-07-02. “Think Globally, Act Irrationally: Recycling.” July 2, 2007. Library of Economics and Liberty. Accessed 2009-04-13.

Tierney, John. 1996-06-30. “Recycling is Garbage.” New York Times Magazine.

Benjamin, Daniel K. 2003-09. Recycling Rubbish: Eight Great Myths about Waste Disposal PERC Reports: 21:3.

Caruba, Alan. 2003-01. “The Utter Waste of Recycling.”

Too Good to Throw Away: Recycling’s Proven Record

Recycling Means Business in California

Time ticks off names: who’s to blame for financial crisis

1982 Household debt in the U.S. — the money owed as individuals was c. 60% of income in 1982.

1995- 2000 Phil Gramm was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee; he was “Washington’s most prominent and outspoken champion of financial deregulation  (Time 2009-04-07).”  

 1998 Powerful lobby groups comprising hedge funds and the banking sector including investment banks defeated Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposal to regulate the burgeoning derivatives market (Kiviat 2008-09-23). 

1999 Phil Gramm “played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street (Time 2009-04-07).” 

2000 Phil Gramm ”inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far (Time Special 2009-04-07).” 

Early 2000s Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman, brought in “super-low interest rates”. His assertive insistence on deregulation along with the easy access to credit are now considered to be  leading causes of the mortgage crisis (Time Special 2009-04-07).

2005 Christopher Cox became chairman of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Under his direction the SEC did not insist on greater disclosure of big investment banks like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

2006 Hank Paulson left the top job at Goldman Sachs to become Treasury Secretary. In 2008 during the last year of the Bush Administration, he single-handedly ran the country’s economic policy. Time argued that he was late in battling the financial crisis; he let Lehman Brothers fail; he pushed the big bailout bill through Congress (Time Special 2009-04-07).

2007 Household debt in the U.S. increased to more than 130% of income in 2007. Time magazine special report on the financial crisis lays blame on American consumer enjoyed living beyond their means and becoming dependent on credit.

2008-10 Alan Greenspan admitted in a US “congressional hearing that he had “made a mistake in presuming” that financial firms could regulate themselves (Time Special 2009-04-07).”

For more see “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis”  Time Magazine.

Kiviat, Barbara. 2008-09-23. “How Much is the SEC’s Cox to Blame?” Time Magazine.

Mapping Ice Melting

This post on mapping ice melting, which is part of an ongoing mapping memory project by a bricoleuse, is updated beyond its first publication date, April 6, 2009, as new satellite images become available from the European Space Agency, British Antarctic Survey, Arctic Council etc. The post includes a time line of melting ice, a customized Google Map and a webliography. Effort is made to use the semantic web to its fullest through attentive folksonomy.

University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, explained (2008-11-26),

“Ice thickness, its spatial extent, and the fraction of open water within the ice pack can vary rapidly and profoundly in response to weather and climate. Sea ice typically covers about 14 to 16 million square kilometers in late winter in the Arctic and 17 to 20 million square kilometers in the Antarctic Southern Ocean. On average, the seasonal decrease is much larger in the Antarctic, with only about three to four million square kilometers remaining at summer’s end, compared to approximately seven million square kilometers in the Arctic. Over the past several years, Arctic minima have been only four to six million square kilometers. [
Maps of late winter and late summer ice cover in the the Arctic and Antarctica] … The interaction between sea ice loss and ice shelf retreat merits careful study because many ice shelves are fed by glaciers. When an ice shelf disintegrates, the glacier feeding it often accelerates. Because glacier acceleration introduces a new ice mass into the ocean, it can raise ocean level. So while sea ice melt does not directly lead to sea level rise, it could contribute to other processes that do, both in the Arctic and the Antarctic. Glacier acceleration has already been observed on the Antarctic Peninsula, although the accelerating glaciers in that region have so far had a negligible effect on ocean level NASA. 2009-04-21). .”

Scientists commonly divide the sea ice pack around Antarctica into five sectors: the Weddell Sea, the Indian Ocean, the western Pacific Ocean, the Ross Sea, and the Bellingshausen/Amundsen seas. In some sectors, it is common for nearly all the sea ice to melt in the summer… [U]nlike the Arctic, where the downward trend is consistent in all sectors, in all months, and in all seasons, the Antarctic picture is more complex. Based on data from 1979-2006, the annual trend for four of the five individual sectors was a very small positive one, but only in the Ross Sea was the increase statistically significant (greater than the natural year-to-year variability). On the other hand, ice extent decreased in the Bellingshausen/Amundsen Sea sector during the same period NASA. 2009-04-21).“

The Wilkins Ice Shelf, a plate of floating ice on the western Antarctic Peninsula connecting to two islands, Charcot and Latady was very stable since the 1930s but began retreating in the 1990s. Since the late 1950s average temperatures have risen by half a degree Celsius a decade (ESA 2007) making the continent one of the fastest warming places on earth. Six of its ice shelves already completely collapsed: Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf (BBC 2009-04-05).

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is monitored by the European Space Agency and the British Antarctic Survey. In 2008 a c. 400 km² broke off from the Wilkins Ice Shelf. The bridge between Charcot and Latady islands was narrowed down by May, 2008 to just 2.7 km.

See also

In early April 2009 the thin ice bridge, which served to protect thousands of kilometres of Wilkins Ice Shelf from further break-up, snapped.

See NASA April 7, 2009 images and description

2009-04-07 “The Obama administration on Monday called for enhanced protection of the Earth’s polar regions, proposing mandatory limits on Antarctic tourism and urging increased research in Antarctica and in the Arctic. Opening a conference of parties to the Antarctic Treaty, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the recent collapse of an Antarctic ice bridge was a stark reminder that the poles were gravely threatened by climate change and human activity. She said the treaty, which also bans military use of the continent, could be a model for improved cooperation and coordination in the Arctic, which is not governed by a similar pact (AP 2009-04-07).”

View Larger Map

The Wilkins Ice Shelf may be on the brink of breaking away as an ice bridge between Charcot and Latady Islands has just ruptured.

Professor David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey said the breaking of the bridge had been anticipated for awhile and the collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf is likely to follow. “The fact that it’s retreating and now has lost connection with one of its islands is really a strong indication that the warming on the Antarctic is having an effect on yet another ice shelf.” more | (BBC 2009-04-05)

Timeline of melting ice

1956-1993 The Müller Ice Shelf was 80 sq km in 1956 and 49 sq km by 1993 (Ward 1995).

1970sRothera Research Station was opened 67° 34’ S, 68 ° 08’ W, Rothera Point, Adelaide Island, Antartica.

1970s The Jones Ice Shelf was 25 sq km in 1947 and had disappeared by 2003. “In recent decades, several ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have diminished in size as a result of climate warming. Using aerial photographic, satellite and survey data we document a similar retreat of Jones Ice Shelf, which was another small ice shelf on the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. This ice shelf was roughly stable between 1947 and 1969, but in the early 1970s it began to retreat and had completely disappeared by early 2003. Jones Ice Shelf has two ice fronts only a few kilometres apart and its retreat provides a unique opportunity to examine how different ice fronts retreat when subjected to similar climate forcing. We mapped the retreat of both the east and west ice fronts of Jones Ice Shelf and found that, although individual episodes of retreat may be related to particularly warm summers, the overall progress of retreat of the two ice fronts has been rather different. This suggests that in this case the course of retreat is controlled by the geometry of the embayment and location of pinning points as well as climatic events (Fox and Vaughan 2005).”

1995 Larsen A broke off in 1995.

2002 A piece of ice that was sheered away from Larsen B roughly the size of Luxembourg represented the biggest for 10,000 years since the Ice Age. [...] “In March 2002, scientists announced the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula had entered a phase of rapid break-up with more than 50 billion tons of ice spilling into the Weddell Sea to form thousands of massive icebergs. It had been known for many years that the ice shelf was thinning and in retreat but the speed of its final collapse astonished scientists. It took just 35 days for the Larsen B ice shelf to fall away completely after a Nasa satellite detected the first ruptures in the 1,255 square miles of ice at the end of January 2002.”(Connor 2005-08-04)

2008-03-28 The European Space Agency captured these images of the break up of the Wilkins Ice Shelf:

ESA 2009-04-03 Wilkins Ice Shelf

 

2009-04-03

European Space Agency 2008-03-28 Wilkins Ice Shelf

Posted here

2009-04-28 European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf show that in the third week in April 2009 alone, 370 sq km of the northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf shattered into its first mass of icebergs released into the ocean,” Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, reported to Reuters that “about 700 sq km of ice – bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York – has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs. [This is the most recent in a series of about 10 ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula to retreat in a trend linked by the UN Climate Panel to global warming. The new icebergs added to 330 sq kms of ice that broke up earlier this month with the shattering of an ice bridge apparently pinning the Wilkins in place between Charcot island and the Antarctic Peninsula. Nine other shelves - ice floating on the sea and linked to the coast - have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002. [Humbert had previously warned that once the ice bridge between Charcot and Latady islands off the Antarctic Peninsula collapsed (which happened earlier in April 2009) the Wilkins Ice Shelf could lose a total of 800 to 3,000 sq kms of area]. The Wilkins shelf has already shrunk by about a third from its original 16,000 sq kms when first spotted decades ago. [Because of the thickness of the ice on the Wilkens Ice Shelf it was estimated that it took at least hundreds of years to form.] (Reuters 2009-04-28) (Reuters 2009-04-28).”
 

Key words: polar regions ; Antarctica ; Atmosphere cryosphere interaction ; Glacier retreat ; Dynamical climatology ; Space remote sensing ; Antarctic Peninsula ; warming ; climate modification ; imagery ; Landsat satellite ; Satellite observation ; aerial photography ; Aerial survey ; monitoring ; Glacier variation ; Ice shelf ; ice caps ; Polar Cap ; Antarctica, climate change, global sea level, global warming, ice flow, Larsen Ice Shelf, melting, South Pole

wikipedia map antarctica

 

Webliography and Bibliography

AP. 2009. “U.S. Seeks Protection of Polar Areas.” New York Times.

BBC. 2009-04-05. “Ice bridge ruptures in Antarctic

Connor, Steve. 2005-08-04. “Ice shelf collapse was biggest for 10,000 years since Ice Age.” The London Independent.

European Space Agency. 2007-03-02. “Earth from Space: Larsen-B Ice Shelf on thin ice.”

European Space Agency. 2008-03-28. “Earth from Space: Further break-up of Antarctic ice shelf“

European Space Agency. 2008-06-13. “Even the Antarctic winter cannot protect Wilkins Ice Shelf.”

European Space Agency. 2009-04-03. “Collapse of the ice bridge supporting Wilkins Ice Shelf appears imminent.”

Fox, Adrian J.; Vaughan, David G.. 2005. “The retreat of Jones Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula.” Journal of Glaciology. 51 (175). 555-560

NASA. 2009-04-21. Sea Ice Ebbs and Flows.

NASA. 2009-04-21. “Sea Ice Ebbs and Flows: Antarctica.“

Reuters. 2009-04-28. “New York-sized ice shelf collapses off Antarctica.” The Independent.

See also NASA webliography

 

References

Cavalieri, D. J., and C. L. Parkinson (2008). Antarctic sea ice variability and trends, 1979–2006, Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans. 113, C07004.

Comiso, J.C., Parkinson, C.L., Gersten, R., Stock, L. (2008). Accelerated decline in the Arctic sea ice cover. Geophysical Research Letters. 35, L01703.

de la Mare, W.K. (1997). Abrupt mid-twentieth-century decline in Antarctic sea-ice extent from whaling records. Nature. 389, 57-60.

Goosse, H., Lefebvre, W., de Montety, A., Crespin, E., and Orsi, A.H. (2008). Consistent past half-century trends in the atmosphere, the sea ice and the ocean at high southern latitudes. Climate Dynamics.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2007). Summary for Policymakers. In:Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden, and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 7-22.

Mahoney, A.R., Barry, R.G., Smolyanitsky, V., Fetterer, F. (2008). Observed sea ice extent in the Russian Arctic, 1933–2006. Journal of Geophysical Research. 113, C11005.

Meier, W.N., Stroeve, J., Fetterer, F. (2007). Whither Arctic sea ice? A clear signal of decline regionally, seasonally, and extending beyond the satellite record. Annals of Glaciology. 46(1), 428-434.
National Snow and Ice Data Center:

All About Sea Ice. Accessed March 6, 2009.

Arctic Sea Ice Down to Second-Lowest Extent; Likely Record-Low Volume. Accessed March 6, 2009.

Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis. Accessed March 6, 2009.

Frequently Asked Questions about Sea Ice. Accessed February 4, 2009.

State of the Cryosphere. Accessed February 4, 2009.

Overland, J.E., Spillane, M.C., Percival, D.B., Wang, M., Mofjeld, H.O. (2004). Seasonal and regional variation of Pan-Arctic surface air temperature over the instrumental record.  American Meteorological Society. 17(17), 3263-3282.

Parkinson, C.L. (1997). Earth from Above. University Science Books. Sausalito, California.

Parkinson, C.L. (2000). Recent trend reversals in arctic sea ice extents: possible connection to the north Atlantic oscillation. Polar Geography. 31(1-2), 3-14.

Parkinson, C.L., Cavalieri, D.J. (2008). Arctic sea ice variability and trends, 1979-2006. Journal of Geophysical Research. 113, C07003.

Raphael, M.N. (2007). The influence of atmospheric zonal wave three on Antarctic sea ice variability. Journal of Geophysical Research. 112, D12112.

Scambos, T.A., Bohlander, J.A., Shuman, C.A., Skvarca, P. (2004). Glacier acceleration and thinning after ice shelf collapse in the Larsen B embayment, Antarctica.Geophysical Research Letters. 31, L18402.

Schiermeier, Q. (2006). A sea change. Nature. 439, 256-260.

Serreze, M.C., Holland, M.K., Stroeve, J. (2007). Perspectives on the Arctic’s shrinking sea-ice cover. Science. 315(5818), 1533-1536.

Steig, E.J., Schneider, D.P., Rutherford, S.D., Mann, M.E., Comiso, J.C., Shindell, D.T. (2009). Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year. Nature. 457, 459-463.

Yuan, X. (2004). ENSO-related impacts on Antarctic sea ice: a synthesis of phenomenon and mechanisms. Antarctic Science. 16(4), 415-425.

Mapping Blue Gold

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Timeline of events related to water resource management

1954 “Pickens, an AAPG member since 1954, was branded a corporate raider by newspapers, magazines, networks and opposing managements back in the 1980s when his firm, Mesa Petroleum, made hostile takeover bids for companies he felt were undervalued and mismanaged (source).”

1996 “The World Water Council (WWC) was established in 1996 in response to increasing concern from the global community about world water issues. Its mission is to promote awareness, build political commitment and trigger action on critical water issues at all levels, including the highest decision-making level, to facilitate the efficient management and use of water in all its dimensions and on an environmentally sustainable basis. The WWC has been granted special consultative status by UNESCO and ECOSOC.”

1997 The First World Water Forum was held in Morocco.

1999 T. Boone Pickens (who owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more) and a group of more than 100 landowners formed Mesa Water to develop groundwater from the Ogallala Aquifer under Roberts County in the far northeastern Texas Panhandle.

2000 The Second World Water Forum was held in The Netherlands.

2000 “In 2000 the Pantanal, which has particular characteristics and species nonextant in other parts of Brazil, was designated a World Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization (UNESCO). In the same year UNESCO also declared it part of the Natural Patrimony of Mankind. These two titles came at a critical moment, when various factors were jeopardizing the stability of the ecosystem, which contains the planet’s largest flood plain. According to the Ministry of Environment, the selection of world biosphere reserves depends upon their capacity to accommodate the conservation of biodiversity with the economic utilization of their resources on a sustainable development basis.”

2001 “Rules of Capture: In 1997 the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority announced it had purchased 43,000 acres of water rights in the area just south of Pickens’ ranch in Roberts County, Texas, and planned to develop the water field. Then, the city of Amarillo bought 71,000 acres of water adjacent to Pickens’ ranch, with plans to develop the resource in 25 years. “These developments got my attention,” Pickens recently told the EXPLORER. “The CRMWA and Amarillo basically put other landowners on notice they were going to start draining us. I felt we had no choice but to start selling our surplus water or lose it to drainage. “Under the rule of capture we would have no recourse to prevent CRMWA and Amarillo from draining the reservoir under our land.” In Texas all surface water is considered public, but groundwater is privately owned. Under the rule of capture a landowner can pump water without regard for his neighbors. The region of the Texas Panhandle that encompasses Roberts, Lipscomb, Hemphill and Ochiltree counties is one of the last remaining untapped portions of the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest aquifer in the United States. In other regions — from just south of Lubbock all the way to the South Dakota border — the aquifer has been tapped for over 50 years, primarily for irrigation. This four-county section of the Texas Panhandle, however, is too rough to farm, and the aquifer has remained untouched. Of the total 2.22 million acres in the four counties, only about 100,000 acres have been irrigated. Initially, Pickens approached CRMWA, which provides water to 11 communities in the Texas Panhandle and south plains, and the city of Amarillo, and offered his water rights for sale as well. They declined, however, so Pickens then went to his neighbors to ask if they would join in his efforts to market and sell the water rights under their land. He formed Mesa Water Inc., and currently has about 150,000 acres with 3.3 million acre-feet of usable groundwater under lease — twice as much water as CRMWA and Amarillo. In addition to banning together with neighboring ranchers, Pickens has purchased an agency agreement covering 65,000 acres of land from Quixx, a subsidiary of Southwestern Public Service Company — the same firm that sold 43,000 acres of water rights to CRMWA. Under the agreement Pickens’ group will market water from the Quixx land. (source).”

2003 The Third World Water Forum was held in Japan.

2005-04 The Region C planning group, responsible for water planning for much of North Texas, added the Mesa Water project to its list of alternative supply sources. Mesa Water is also listed as a possible supply source for North Texas Municipal Water District (NTMWD), Dallas Water Utilities (DWU), Region L and San Antonio Water System (SAWS).

2006 The Fourth World Water Forum was held in Mexico (2006).

2005 “Paraguay and the United States: Improbable allies.” The Economist.

2005 “Since 2005 there have been allegations in the media that the U.S. planned to intervene in Cuidad del Este a Paraguayan city of about 200,000 people located in the tri-border area of Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and/or seeks to control the Guarani Aquifer, a large fresh-water reserve which lies beneath those countries. The United States claimed that its interest in Cuidad del Este is solely to support programs to create jobs in the formal sector there and that the United States has no interest in the Guarani Aquifer, which the U.S. government recognizes as an important resource for the inhabitants of the region (source).” The book and film Blue Gold were criticized by Michael E. Campana in WaterWired for the “Tenuous (really!) connection between possible Bush family land purchases in Paraguay and the taking of ground water from the Guaraní aquifer, the largest fresh ground water source in the world, and arguably the largest fresh unfrozen water body in the world. So how would the Bushes and/or the USA get the water from the aquifer to the USA?”

2005 “In December, 2005, Brazil’s Minister of Environment, Marina Silva, signed an act establishing the Pantanal Biosphere Reserve Management Council, charged with the task of formulating and monitoring an action plan for the reserve. The document was signed at the opening of the 2nd National Environmental Conference, which took place in Brasília, the Brazilian capital.”

2006 Fourth World Water Forum

2006-10-13 “The Prensa Latina paper reported that George W. Bush had purchased 98, 842 acres on the Acuifero Guarani in northern Paraguay, between Bolivia and Brazil. This news was also reported in Asuncion, Paraguay on Oct. 12, and by Upsidedownworld on Oct. 11. earlier George H.W. Bush purchased 173, 000 acres in Paso de Patria, the Chaco area of Paraguay. Jenna Bush has spent time in Paraguay as a representative of UNICEF. (source).”

2007 “Pickens was reported to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for allegedly destroying wetlands and taking water from the Canadian River through Mesa Vista Ranch’ water features including seven miles of water works that include small lakes and manmade streams. The case was dismissed. The first experimental creek was a PVC waterline buried in an area where experience had shown quail hunting to be sporadic. The year after the waterline was created, quail hunting in that area was consistently good. These days, Mesa Vista’s manmade “creeks” consist of 38 miles of underground PVC pipe that feed small waterholes spaced every 1,000 feet or so (source).”

2007 “A political shopping spree may have accelerated the efforts of Dallas billionaire T. Boone Pickens to hijack sweeping government powers of eminent domain. The tycoon wants these extraordinary powers to benefit his private utility companies: Mesa Water and Mesa Power. The $1.8 million that Pickens spent on Texas’ last two elections made him the state’s No. 5 individual donor—up from No. 12 in 2002. Pickens wants condemnation powers to lay 320 miles of utility lines from suburban Dallas to the Texas Panhandle—with or without the approval of the owners of the private land that he would excavate (Texans for Public Justice).” T is for ‘Taking’: Did Texas Sell T. Boone Pickens Powers of Eminent Domain?

2008-06-12 “T. Boone Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property. The electricity generated by an enormous wind farm he is setting up in the Panhandle would also flow along that corridor. As far as Pickens is concerned, he could be selling wind, water, natural gas, or uranium; it’s all a matter of supply and demand. “(Berfield 2008).” Business Week

2009-02-04 – Brazilian radio and TV launch a campaign on the public utility “Aplauso” which aims to demonstrate to society the importance of water in people’s lives and the need to take care of this natural resource.
2/4/2009 – Seminário Edital evaluate capacitação of resource managers in water
2/4/2009 – Reporting to the list of participants selected for or II Course Monitoramento da Qualidade da Água
26/3/2009 – Paulo Varella as director takes posse da ANA
26/3/2009 – New director takes posse da ANA Nesta fifth-feira
25/3/2009 – NAA launches new on relatório situação da água e gestão two water resources in Brazil
25/3/2009 – Conselho National Water Resource Plan discusses water-da Bacia do Araguaia Tocantins produced pela ANA
23/3/2009 – Events marking the beginning gives elaborate document of norteador Ações na Bacia do Rio Verde Grande
23/3/2009 – Diretor da ANA participates chat da Fundação Bunge
2009-03-15 20,000 people were expected at the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul.
2009-03-19 ANA (Agência Nacional de Águas) made two presentations at the The 5th World Water Forum: Bridging Divides for Water
18/3/2009 – Brazil e da CPLP countries discutem water policy and cooperação mútua
18/3/2009 – Stand Coordenação do Brazil to discuss and prepare projetos Apresentações no Fórum Mundial da Água
18/3/2009 – Machado: “As public policy setoriais da questão devem include água em suas patterns “
18/3/2009 – Comitê do Rio Doce já tem novos membros eleitos
17/3/2009 – Mais uma edição do hotsite Águas de Março é haul
16/3/2009 – Machado apresenta da América do Sul demands no Fórum Mundial da V Água

AFP. 2009. “Water forum seeks way through worsening crisis.” 2009-03-15. Istanbul.

2009-03-29 – Paulo Varella was named as Director of ANA (Agência Nacional de Águas) the Brazilian, National Water Agency that implements and coordinates the management of shared and integrated water resources and regulates access to water, promoting sustainable use for the benefit of current and future generations.

Key words: Aqüífero Guarani, Guarani Aqüifer,

Webliography and Bibliography

2005. “Paraguay and the United States: Improbable allies.” The Economist.

AFP. 2009. “Water forum seeks way through worsening crisis.” 2009-03-15. Istanbul.

Barlow, Maude and Tony Clarke. 2002. “Who Owns Water?” The Nation.

Barlow, Maude and Tony Clarke. 2002. Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. New York: New Press.

Berfield, Susan. 2008. “There Will Be Water.” Business Week.

Bozzo, Sam. 2008. Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water.

Lohan, Tara. 2009. “Blue Gold: Have the Next Resource Wars Begun?” The Nation. .

Marra, Ana Paula. 2006. “Brazil Drafts Conservation Plan for Pantanal, a Mankind’s Patrimony.” Brazil Magazine. 2006-01-06.

Texans for Public Justice. 2007. ” T is for ‘Taking’: Did Texas Sell T. Boone Pickens Powers of Eminent Domain?

ESQUEMÁTICO DO SISTEMA AQÜÍFERO GUARANI

Grisham’s Social Issues Wrapped around a Novel

Will John Grisham’s legal drama The Appeal (2008) join other literary works like Upton Sinclair’s political fiction novel The Jungle (1906) and Rachel Carson’s literary broadside Silent Spring (1962) [1] in influencing changes in real world legislation? In his PhD dissertation Gordon (2008) argued that literary works such as those by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Karl Marx, Ralph Nader, Jonathan Swift, Upton and Carson, serve as legislative flash points and have had a demonstrable impact on the law.

Grisham’s writing is clearly popular fiction and he has enjoyed writing books with no redeeming social value like The Broker, but he now wants to tackle social issues (Grossman 2006.) He has fierce political convictions and admitted that, “Everything I’m thinking about writing now is about politics or social issues wrapped around a novel.” He admires the work of Truman Capote, John le Carré and John Steinbeck whom he would like to emulate. So is The Appeal also an appeal to reason [2]? 

John Grisham’s legal drama/legal thriller/crime novels deal with the power and influence of major US corporations in America and their potential for abusing the American legal system. Previous novels concluded with the victims being vindicated and giant corporations paying huge rewards for damages to personal health and to the environment. But in 2006 there was already a shift when he published his first book of nonfiction, a true-crime story entitled The Innocent Man.

The Appeal (2008) is the most openly political book he has written in which he probed the world of US judicial elections, a burning issue in the US (AF-P 2008). The debate over the best way for states to select judges is more than 160 years old. According to Wall Street Journal’s Levy, within days of the release of The Appeal, “critics of judicial elections began to connect it to examples of real-life corruption. Mr. Grisham himself says his story has “already happened” in West Virginia. Others have tried to link the book’s intrigue to next month’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, where a controversial judge is facing a strong challenge for re-election, helped in part by business groups. Mr. Grisham has plenty of allies in his crusade among liberal interest groups, who insist that judicial elections somehow represent a blight on the rule of law  (Levy 2008-03-20).”

In The Appeal fictional Wall Street financier Carl Trudeau, launched his appeal against plaintiffs from cancer county where his company had dumped toxins for years, to the Mississippi Supreme Court. Then he stacked the Court by funding an unknown to run against incumbent Court Justice Sheila McCarthy. Trudeau flooded media with ads designed to vilify Justice McCarthy as an extremely liberal judge who would protect criminals not citizens and would restrict gun ownership. Trudeau’s campaign allowed Fisk to win the election. Grisham in the telling of this fiction, practically laid out a formula for CEOs, corporate lawyers and politicians to overpower and ruin ordinary citizens while enjoying financial huge gains. The characters are highly stereotyped with lawyers and CEOs who are clearly the bad guys in this story. 

The mysterious, expensive consultant Barry Rinehart works quietly in the background using financing from from industries like energy, insurance, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, timber, all types of manufacturing as well as doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and banks, to target supreme court justices whose values differ from these special interest groups. He engineers the fixing of elections so the unfriendly judges lose to their own groomed judicial candidate. (31 states elect their appellate and supreme court judges while the remaining states appoint their courts.)  ”To Grisham, that is the sad truth: No one’s justice will be served. While chilling, Grisham’s tale of modern legal machinations is also, unfortunately, timeless (Patrick 2008-01).”

 ”Literature—even persuasively powerful literature—does not operate in a void: conditions must be ripe if it is to draw energy from the social milieu and thereby attain a kinetic force capable of influencing the law. This [...] requires an alignment of narratives: the literary narrative with the larger cultural narrative within which it subsists (Gordon 2008:41).”

Tagging

law and literature movement, dedicated interest groups, big-money politics, Amicus-Curia, Plaintiff’ Paradise, judicial hell holes, consumer-friendly, Cancer County, cancer cluster, pulpit for reform, real world politics, US legal system, vexatious corporate litigation, senior academic lawyers, appelate benches of the Federal Appeal Circuit and the Supreme Court, M$ anti-trust investigations, Anti-Trust suit compliance issue, proven complicity, meritless SCO litigation, Patent and Copyright systems, East Texas fiasco, legal corruption, amicus-curia briefs, Commerce and Justice, Economic Crisis, US corporate malfeasance, US corporate greed, US corporate lack of transparency, tort, Rylands rule, Fletcher v. Rylands, Johnstown Flood, 

Timeline of related events

1860 One of the wealthiest industrialists in England, John Rylands, a textile manufacturer, hired a contractor to dig a large ditch and create a reservoir to add water power for one of his mills. The reservoir collapsed into an abandoned coal-mining shaft which connected to Thomas Fletcher’s neighboring coal mines. The reservoir flood destroyed those mines. (Wiki, Shugerman 2008)

1865 Fletcher v. Rylands, 159 Eng. Rep. 737, 740. The dispute in Rylands concerned escape of water onto neighbouring land. Later cases in which the Rylands test was applied involved the escape of all manner of wastes and materials, extending outwards to a broad range of inherently dangerous activities considered essential to modern life. The Court found in favour of Fletcher and ordered Rylands to pay for all the property damage to the mine. The Court agreed that Rylands had a duty in maintaining the reservoir and of being liable for all harm caused by it with broad scope of liability. This case was a major development in modern law and has influenced many subsequent rulings. The changes in negligence law as a field of torts has in some jurisdictions incorporated the Rylands rule. (Wiki, Shugerman 2008)

1889-05-31 In the mountains east of Pittsburg, a dam holding back a 450-acre artificial recreational lake, one of the largest reservoirs in the world, collapsed unleashing 20 million tons of water into the valley below, completely destroying Johnstown and killing two thousand people. The elite members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, titans-of-industry including Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and Henry Clay Frick (also called the Bosses Club) ignored the dam’s crumbling foundation, warnings of structural problems and leakage. It was one of the most deadly disasters in American history. The public focused its anger on the South Fork Club and its wealthy members, and the media called on the club members to compensate the Johnstown victims. Before the Flood, the court emphasized the “great public interest” of industry’s unfettered development, and dismissed the “mere personal [and] trifling inconveniences” that were caused by industrial damage, and which must “give way to the necessities of a great community.” (Shugerman 2008.)

1890s There was a rise of populists as critics of industry’s excess in the 1890s and ruling leaned towards Fletcher against Rylands (Shugerman 2008.)

1980s- US Supreme Court Judicial elections became increasingly nasty, noisy, and costly (Pozen 2008:265).

1981 John Grisham (born 1955) graduated from law school.

1988 The Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential race was considered to be offensive and race-bating.

1981-1991 John Grisham practiced law for nearly in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation.

1983-1990 John Grisham served in the state House of Representatives.

1984-1987 Grisham wrote his first novel A Time to Kill (1987) in his spare time exploring the theme of what would have happened if the girl’s father in a real trial had actually murdered her assailants. “After four years of practicing I got this idea for what I thought was a very compelling courtroom drama – small town, the South, a racial conflict – all seen through the eyes of an attorney who was basically me. A guy who wanted to be a big trial lawyer. That was my dream. I wanted people to call me – people who could pay me for the big case (Grisham in Slater 2009-01-27).”

1991 John Grisham’s novel, The Firm, was one of the biggest hits of 1991, spending 47 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Grisham gave up law and concentrated on writing. All his books have been bestsellers and six have been made into movies. Grisham lives with his wife and two children in Mississippi and Virginia.

1993 “Investor and philanthropist George Soros in 1993 created OSI as a private operating and grantmaking foundation to support his foundations in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Those foundations were established, starting in 1984, to help countries make the transition from communism. OSI has expanded the activities of the Soros foundations network to encompass the United States and more than 60 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Each Soros foundation relies on the expertise of boards composed of eminent citizens who determine individual agendas based on local priorities (OSI).”

1999  Tabarrok and Helland investigated “the forces that explain why trial awards differ across the United States. In 23 states judges are elected and in 10 they are elected via partisan elections. Elections have two important effects. First, defendants are often out‐of‐state nonvoters while plaintiffs are typically in‐state voters. [They] predicted, therefore, that elected judges will redistribute wealth from out‐of‐state businesses to in‐state plaintiffs. Second, the realities of campaign financing require judges to seek and accept campaign funding from trial lawyers, who uniformly are interested in larger awards. [They]  hypothesized that these two forces cause awards to be larger in states where the judiciary is elected rather than appointed. [They]  also hypothesized that the demand for redistribution will increase as poverty increases and, thus, that awards will be larger in states with greater poverty. Using a sample of over 7,000 cases across 48 of the 50 states, [they]  found significant evidence in support of these hypotheses ( Tabarrok and Helland 1999-04).”

1994-2000 “By most measures, Grisham was the most successful novelist of the 1990s, when he sold over 60 million books. For seven straight years, 1994-2000, he had the best-selling novel in the country (Grossman 2006 ).”

2004 Swift boating refers to smear tactics used during the US Presidential campaign against candidate John Kerry. Vietnam veterans who served on the US Navy’s swift boats mounted a smear campaign to oppose Kerry who was a swift boat commander in Vietnam but was later allegedly involved in antiwar activities. 

2005-02-18 President Bush signed the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. This pushed for by business and Republican leaders since President Bush took office in 2001. It targeted consumer-friendly “Plaintiff’ Paradise” courts also termed “judicial hell holes” by corporations being libeled in mutiple-state class action suits (like those in Madison and St. Clare in Illinois and Jefferson County, Texas accused of being pro-consumer). Texas. Those “judicial hell holes,” and others in Alabama and Mississippi, are the favorite venues for some in the plaintiffs’ bar because of consumer-friendly juries and elected judges who routinely certified national classes and apply their state law and/or the laws of other states. Such cases after 2005 ended up in federal court, where corporate defendants tend to do better (O’Brien 2005).

2007 US Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler was publicly reprimanded for a conflict-of-interest violation.

2007 Harvard Law School’s Shugerman’s paper entitled “The Twist of Long Terms: Disasters, Elected Judges, and American Tort Law” was selected for the Yale-Stanford Junior Faculty Forum and the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, New York University. “The received wisdom is that American judges rejected strict liability through the nineteenth and early twentieth century. To the contrary, a majority of state courts adopted Rylands v. Fletcher and strict liability for hazardous or unnatural activities after a series of flooding tragedies in the late nineteenth century. Federal judges and appointed state judges generally ignored or rejected Rylands, while elected state judges overwhelmingly adopted Rylands or a similar strict liability rule. In moving from fault to strict liability, these judges were essentially responding to increased public fears of industrial or man-made hazards. Elected courts were more populist: They were more likely to adopt strict liability than appointed courts. But surprisingly, state courts elected to longer terms were the most populist. Many of these judges never expected to face another election, but even without direct political pressure, they were the most responsive group of judges in adopting Rylands after the floods. This historical episode illuminates the differences between types of political influence on judges. Judicial elections generally may produce judges more sympathetic to public opinion and more responsive to recent events. Longer terms, shielding judges from opposing political pressure from industry favoring the fault rule, then allowed judges to follow those sympathies or new perceptions of public interest in favor of strict liability. The historical record suggests that judicial elections plus long terms shaped a more responsive bench. A shorthand for these effects are: filtering, role fidelity, and fear and favor. First, these elections created a populist filter: Elections seemed to have filtered out some elite jurists from major urban centers and filtered in more local lawyer-politicians, who would be more connected to public opinion. Second, borrowing from the language used by nineteenth-century advocates of judicial elections and by modern historians, I suggest that the elected judges’ “fidelity” to the people led them to perceive public opinion as an important factor in their decisions. Even with filtering and role fidelity, judges elected to short terms would still face the reality of “fear and favor,” due to special interests and partisan renomination politics. Elected judges with more job security could be more faithful to their role (hence, “role fidelity”) and could follow their own perception of public interest or public opinion, rather than industrial interests. The Article concludes with some priorities for judicial reform based upon this historical episode.”

2008-01 Grisham noted that there was a lot of truth in The Appeal. ”As long as private money is allowed in judicial elections we will see competing interests fight for seats on the bench.” The Appeal was published in the midst of the presidential primaries making it all the more compelling (Memmott 2008).

2008 “In John Grisham’s new novel, Mississippi judges are bought, marketed and sold.  In a crowded courtroom, a jury delivers a multi-million-dollar verdict against a chemical company accused of tainting a town’s water supply with waste. The chemical company retaliates with an appeal, but in order to win, it rig the state Supreme Court. As judicial elections loom, the company hand picks an unsuspecting judge and manipulates him for the job. In The Appeal, Grisham provides a cautionary tale about judicial elections and political campaigns in general. Like the so-called “swift-boating” of political candidates in the last presidential election, Grisham’s characters resort to harsh smear tactics to defeat their opponents. Jacki Lyden spoke with Grisham about his novel, judicial politics and his personal political engagement. In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town’s water supply, causing the worst “cancer cluster” in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it ( All Things Considered).”

2008-03-18 Citizen Action of Wisconsin, a progressive citizen advocacy group dedicated to bringing transparency to the electoral system, filed a compliant against Michael Gableman with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission claiming the little-known county judge from Burnett County in northwestern Wisconsin used attack ads that were “highly offensive and deliberately misleading” against Incumbent Justice Louis Butler claiming he found a “loophole” to free a convicted sex offender.” The ad placed a picture of a convicted rapist and Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler on the screen at the same time. Both are black. Butler handled the man’s appeal of his rape conviction when he worked as a public defender.

2008-04 “Challenger Michael Gableman defeated incumbent Justice Louis Butler to win a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Tuesday’s election. The results mean that a sitting Supreme Court justice won’t return to the bench for the first time in 40 years. The interest in the race by special interests is troubling to some, including the unseated justice, WISC-TV reported. Third-party TV ads were a centerpiece of one of the most negative Supreme Court races in state history (Channel 3000).”

2008-10 “The Wisconsin Judicial Commission alleges Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman violated the code of judicial conduct, which prevents judicial candidates from knowingly misrepresenting facts about their opponent. Gableman’s campaign ran an ad in the Milwaukee area before the April election against Incumbent Justice Louis Butler claiming he found a “loophole” to free a convicted sex offender.” Gableman defeated incumbent Justice Louis Butler in the April election. At the time, Gableman was a little-known county judge from northwestern Wisconsin. Citizen Action of Wisconsin, a progressive citizen advocacy group dedicated to bringing transparency to the electoral system, filed the compliant with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission on March 18. One local government watchdog group said fallout from recent Supreme Court campaigns is cause for concern.Channel3000

2008 Soros’ Open Society Institute made donations to dozens of groups seeking to sway the judicial selection process in states from Illinois to North Carolina, as well as funding national groups like Justice at Stake. According to Levy of the right-wing Wall Street Journal Soros and Grisham prefer “merit selection” where in order to keep politics out of judicial appointments, an appellate judicial commission selects a slate of judges from which the governor must choose. Right-wing critics argue that judicial commissions can also become agents of politicization leaning towards to left. Levy cited a 2007 “Harvard study” supporting his own views on an elected judiciary. The 2007 Harvard study mentioned by Levy was actually a paper presented at a Junior Faculty Forum based entirely on a historical analysis of how judges in the 19th century responded to Rylands (1865-). Given the complexity of the 21st century surely there are better sources for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of merit selection versus elected judiciary. Grisham is merely drawing attention to potential areas of corruption and the lack of information available to civil society by using popular culture.

 

2008-12-08  US Federal authorities in New York arrested Marc S. Dreier in a $100 million fraud scheme, portraying his recent undertakings as a massive hedge fund fraud. The Yale graduate who 1996 founded the Dreier L.L.P. 250-lawyer firm in 2006 allegedly took advantage of the current financial crisis by selling phony debt to hungry hedge funds looking for deals. (Rashbaum and Kowan 2008-12-08). 

2009-01 In a 2008 statewide survey entitled ”Public Attitudes Regarding the Selection of Judges in the State of Washington“ funded in part by Open Society Institute Professors Brody and Lovrich reported that,

“A little over 26% of respondents rated Washington’s current, non-partisan election method of judicial selection as good or very good, while 35% rated it bad or very bad; The largest areas of concern about the current method of selecting judges involved the lack of contested elections, the prominence of judges being appointed to the bench, and the lack of information available to voters to use in judicial elections; A little over 60% of respondents rated a commission system (merit system) of judicial selection to be good or very good, while roughly 16% rated such a selection system as bad or very bad; The aspects of the commission system viewed most positively were: (1) the use of a nominating commission as part of the appointment process; (2) the fact that retention elections provide voters with the opportunity to vote for or against all judges at regular intervals; (3) the fact that all judges may be held accountable by voters without the need for a person to run against a judge in a contested election; and (4) that judges always appear on election ballots at regular intervals; When asked to choose between the current system or a commission system of judicial selection, over 60% indicated a preference for adopting a commission system while about 23% preferred staying with the current system; Over 90% of respondents would support the development of a judicial performance evaluation program in Washington to provide information to voters about candidates in local and statewide judicial elections.”

2009-01-27 Wall Street Journal’s Dan Slater interviewed John Grisham to talk about his 22nd book. Grisham revealed that his favorite story was that of  Marc Dreier. “[I]t’s incredible. Pretending to be someone else? Taking over a conference room? I knew something was wrong when I read about his 120-foot yacht. When you’ve got a yacht that big you’re living like a billionaire. And you can’t do that as a New York lawyer. I don’t care how big your firm is.” Grisham explained that even as a writer of fiction that he could not improve on the real life stories of Dreier and Madoff. They have already been covered too much by the media. “The sushi restaurant (Dreier) owned? All the cars? The secretaries making $200,000 a year? It’s too much. When I see stuff like that my imagination just goes into overdrive (Grisham interviewed by Slater 2009-01-27).”

Notes
1. Randy Gordon’s PhD dissertation (2008) examined the impact of literary works on rehumanizing law and democracy. Gordon reiterated the argument that there “is a direct and demonstrable connection between publication of The Jungle and adoption” of the 1906 Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drugs Act (Gordon 2008:41). Historian James Harvey Young (1981) observed that two key political figures, James R. Garfield and Senator Alfred J. Beveridge presented President Theodore Roosevelt with Sinclair’s novel. Gordon also added that other landmark legislation in the meat packing industry book decades to be adopted. President, John F. Kennedy asked his Scientific Advisory Committee to investigate Carson’s claims and they largely vindicated Carson’s work (1963-05) particularly in the report’s condemnation of indiscriminate pesticide use and call for additional research into potential health (Gordon 2008:52).

2. Author and journalist Upton Sinclair’s influential novel entitled The Jungle (1906) about the corruption of the American meatpacking industry is an example of how fiction portrayed social reality and is an early example of is one of the finest examples of the “muckraking” tradition begun by journalists. In this novel Sinclair contrasted the lives of the “have-nots” and “haves” and deplored American “wage slavery”. Sinclair’s novel was first published in the left-wing newspaper The Appeal to Reason.

3. “Law is institutional normative order (MacCormick 2007).”

4. “The rhetoric of scientific objectivity, pressed too hard and taken too seriously, has led us to people like B.F. Skinner on the one hand and like Althusser on the other—two equally pointless fantasies, both produced by the attempt to be ‘scientific’ about our moral and political lives (Rorty 1996:573, 585).”

5. In his influential article on law’s autonomy by Judge Posner (1987) argued that law had been treated historically in practice and as a matter of training as if it were an autonomous discipline (Posner 1987:761 in Gordon 2008:17). 

6. The concept of “Narrative” as developed by Gordon’s in his literature review has a common thread of a “story,” a relational and temporal ordering of human events that culminates in “closure.” His sources include definitions of narrative as: “a story of events arranged in time sequence and offering some sort of meaning (Papke and McManus 1999:449)”; “the organization of material in a chronologically sequential order and the focusing of the content into a single coherent story . . . its arrangement is descriptive rather than analytical and . . . its central focus is on man not circumstances (Stone 1979:3)”; “first a ‘selective appropriation of past events and characters;’ second, a temporal ordering that presents these events with a beginning, a middle and an end; and third, an overarching structure that contextualizes these events as part of an opposition or struggle (97)”; “a recognizable discourse or operation . . . that . . . can be abstracted from [its] medium [of expression] . . . as in the plot summary (Clawson 1998)”; a story (99); “a metacode, a human universal on the basis of which transcultural messages about the nature of a shared reality can be transmitted (100).”

 

Webliography and Bibliography

2008-01-27. “Grisham’s ‘Appeal’ Tackles Down-and-Dirty Politics. “ All Things Considered. 

Agence France-Presse. 2008-01-09 “Author John Grisham has no shortage of book ideas.” Madrid. 

Asimow, Michael. “Analyse This! John Grisham’s Lawyers from a Megafirm.” Picturing Justice. University of San Francisco. 

Brody, David; Lovrich, Nicholas. 2009-01. “Public Attitudes Regarding the Selection of Judges in the State of Washington: Results of a Statewide Survey 2008.” American Judicatur Society and Washington State Judicial Selection Coalition. 

98 Brooks, supra note 91, at 1.

Clawson, Mark A. 1998. “Telling Stories: Romance and Dissonance in Progressive Legal Narratives.” 22 Legal Studies F. 353, 364 (citing and partially quoting Ewick, Patricia; Silbey, Susan S. 1995. “Subversive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Towards a Sociology of Narrative.” 29 Literature and Sociology Review. 197, 200.

Gordon, Randy. 2008. “Rehumanizing Law: a Narrative Theory of Law and Democracy.” Ph.D., Law. The University of Edinburgh. 2008.

Grossman, Lev. 2006-10-09. “Grisham’s New Pitch.” Time.

Levy, Collin. 2008-03-20. “Grisham’s Judicial Appeal.” Wall Street Journal. 

Hamilton, Kevin J. 2008-01-29. “New side to John Grisham: storytelling of substance.”  The Seattle Times. (Hamilton 2008)

MacCormick, Neil. 2007. Institutions of Law: an Essay in Legal Theory.

Memmott, Carl.  2008-01-28. “Grisham’s ‘Appeal’ rules harshly on bought election.” USA Today. 

O’Brien, Tim. 2005-03-21. “New Jersey No ‘Judicial Hell Hole’: State judiciary’s restraints may spare it full impact of Class Action Fairness Act.” New Jersey Law Journal. CLXXIX:12. 

Papke, David Ray; McManus, Kathleen H. 1999. “Narrative and the Appellate Opinion.” 23 Legal Studies. F. 449, 449.

Patrick, Bethanne. 2008-01. “Justice Denied.” Washington Post. 

Posner, Richard A. 1987. “The Decline of Law and an Autonomous Discipline: 1962-1987.” 100 Harvard Law Review. 761. 

Pozen, David. 2008. “The Irony of Judicial Elections.” 108 Columbia Law Review.

Rashbaum, William K; Cowan, Alison Leigh. 2008-12-08. “Lawyer Is Accused in Massive Hedge Fund Fraud.” New York Times. 

Rorty, Richard. 1996. “Solidarity or Objectivity.” in Cahoone, Lawrence. Ed. 1996. From Modernism to Postmodernism. 573, 585.

Slater, Dan. 2009-01-27 A Law Blog Q&A With John Grisham. Wall Street Journal. 

Stone, Lawrence. 1979. “The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History.” 85 Past and Present. 3, 3.

Shugerman, Jed H. 2008. “The Twist of Long Terms: Disasters, Elected Judges, and American Tort Law.” Harvard Law School.

 

Tabarrok, Alexander; Helland, Eric. 1999-04. ”Court Politics: The Political Economy of Tort Awards.” The Journal of Law and Economics. The University of Chicago. Vol. 42. 

 

99 Van Dunne, supra note 92, at 463.

100 White, supra note 90, at 6.

Young, James Harvey. 1981-06.“The Long Struggle for the 1906 Law.” FDA Consumer.

Paul Otlet – The design behind the design

“Everything in the universe, and everything of man, would be registered at a distance as it was produced. In this way a moving image of the world will be established, a true mirror of his memory. From a distance, everyone will be able to read text, enlarged and limited to the desired subject, projected on an individual screen.” – Monde, 1935

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82% US job loss hit men, women bear burden as breadwinners

iht.com Higher-income, male-dominated sectors like construction and manufacturing hit hardest. Female-dominated, lower income sectors like education and health still holding up in deepening recession. More… (Business & Finance)

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Victory in a fishbowl

In praise of small things . . .

HMS Victory, fishbowl, reflections, reflexivity, micro, miniature,

From GlassBowlCalgary