Lifestyle Habits : You Decide

"Obesity is unique in that some doctors and much of society feel comfortable moralizing about it."
"Lifestyle has the ability to both treat and prevent a ton of medical problems, but the only one we seem to moralize about is obesity."
Yoni Freedhoff, co-founder, Bariatric Medical Institute, Ottawa

"It's clearly absolute nonsense to think that the current obesity crisis has been caused by a deficit of willpower."
"For that to be true, willpower would have had to have collapsed in every continent of the globe simultaneously across men, women, people of all ages. It's really bizarre that we still want to view that as the main cause of obesity rather than looking for environmental causes, but people just cling onto these ways of thinking."
"We're living in a world in which we're being sold a huge surfeit of calories every day. So you can easily become overweight or obese just simply by choosing among the affordable foods that are available to you."
"We should be so much more critical of the people selling us the food, and so much less critical of ourselves. It makes me upset to think about how many people, especially women, internalize this huge sense of guilt around food and a sense we should be doing better, and we're lacking in willpower when actually the choices we're being offered are crazy. Completely crazy, inhuman levels of choice."
"I just wish we would stop beating ourselves up so much and stop believing there has to be one absolute true answer. Because food isn't really like that. As omnivores, we've always eaten a range of foods; we've muddled along, we've adapted to environments. That middle ground gets lost."
Bee Wilson, author, The Way We Eat Now

"As insulin goes up, the body stores body fat. That's the job of insulin, to tell our body to store body fat. If insulin does not go up, then your body will use it in other ways. It won't store the body fat."
"If you eat 100 calories of cookies versus 100 calories of avocado, the minute you put it in your mouth, the hormonal response is completely and utterly different."
"If you eat cookies, insulin goes up and  your body stores body fat. If you eat avocado, insulin does not go  up. Your body tends to burn body fat because it still needs energy to run the liver and so on."
"All diets work in the short term. But we've been ignoring the long-term problem of insulin resistance. [The solution is to establish the balance between feeding and fasting]; We get so bogged down in carbs and fat and protein that we lose sight of the really important thing. And that's where I wanted to refocus people; 'Hey, we need to look at this meal timing question because it's a question of what to eat and a question of when to eat."
Jason Fung, nephrologist, Toronto author, The Obesity Code

Teenagers, according to Psychology Today, who think of themselves as overweight are so burdened with the vision of themselves as unattractive, unreflective of the ideal body shape, they are likelier than other teens to attempt suicide and to suffer depression. This, aside from the fact that we are killing ourselves, slowly but surely; shortening our lifespans, exposing ourselves to greater likelihood of acquiring life-sapping chronic diseases, by our lifestyle choices; above all by the kinds of food we energize our bodies with.

A major study published recently in The Lancet medical journal points out that poor diets kill 11 million people globally every year, more people dying of that cause than those who die as a result of tobacco use and second-hand smoke. Food security is viewed as having an impact even in developed countries such as Canada as well as elsewhere, while generally speaking most people live with a plethora of food choices. Rates of overweight and obesity have tripled since the mid-1970s.

Obesity is linked to increased risk of many disease, including some cancers, heart disease, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes -- which itself can lead to the previously-named conditions. We are faced with a situation where omnipresent food advertising and the ready availability of calorie-dense, nutrition-absent food rules society. Never has that old adage, "everything in moderation" been more critical to healthy outcomes than at the present time. "Eat less, move more", seems like a simple formula for attaining and maintaining better health, but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

When combined with healthy eating, regular physical activity will help you lose weight and stay at a healthy weight.

In a survey of over 1,500 American adults, three-quarters of the respondents reported their belief that the best treatment for obesity is summoning the self-discipline to go on a diet. Scientific evidence appears, confoundingly, to reject that belief, citing the fact that most grocery supermarkets offer up to 40,000 different food products. Even visiting one of the ubiquitous convenience stores exposes consumers to a wide array of convenience food products, foods whose wholesome quality has been processed and adulterated.

So yes, we should be critical of the manufacturers of this ersatz food. And we should tune out the advertisements that we and our children are exposed to constantly. We should indulge from time to time in a bit of introspection, gauging the food choices we select and going a little further to imagine how healthy those choices are, and what, in the final analysis they do over time to our bodies. The thing of it is, most people can't bother, because they're busy, distracted, time is short, and truth to tell the very thought of preparing whole foods to form a nutritious meal is unappealing.

In this social climate it isn't only the food processing manufacturers that can be held responsible for appealing to peoples' willingness to buy pre-prepared meals heavy on taste-good but lethal amounts of salt, fat and sugar, but those on the other end of the spectrum whose existence is dependent on the desperation of people to lose the extra weight they gain from improvident food choices, who offer a dizzying array of fad diets. Consumers accustom themselves to buying food geared to put on weight, and when they become overweight and obese look for quick solutions to lose that weight.



And along come diets like keto, paleo, carnivore, pegan and fodmap, among the many others that proliferate and promise solutions. Weight loss is celebrated, and soon afterward what melted off returns. Simply because most people after losing weight, lose the diet and return to their 'normal' food consumption habits. A professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota in 2013 updated an exhaustive review  of diets, along with a two-year follow-up. Professor Traci Mann found that while people lost weight in the first nine to 12 months, the following two to five years saw them regain it all with the exception of one kilogram (2.1 lb.).

As for a non-dieter group used for comparison, they gained an average of 544 grams (1.2 lb.) over the same period. In her article published in the American Psychological Association, Professor Mann summarized the situation such that "the dieters  had little benefit to show for their efforts, and the non-dieters did not seem harmed by their lack of effort." This, in an era where advocates of good health succeeded in having all prepackaged food labels reflect calories related to the constituents of the food enclosed in those packages.

Instead of curtailing eating habits contributing to increased rates of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and other diseases, national health organizations such as the Canadian Diabetes Association, Heart and Stroke Foundation continue to support calorie counting. According to Dr. Fung, caloric reduction does not reflect a realistic option for weight loss: "It's my opinion that this doesn't work. Look at the obesity epidemic. The only thing (doctors) ever said was 'calories in, calories out'."

Dr. Fung champions another regimen; meal timing. Fasting routinely. In that at one time in the not so distant past people were accustomed to eating breakfast, then fasting, eating nothing else until the evening meal. Breakfast at 8 a.m., dinner at 6 p.m.; ergo a 14-hour fast. 

"There are a handful of trendy, reputable, diets people follow and see positive results on, including keto, Paleo, Whole30, and intermittent fasting. Now, a recent study published in the journal Obesity found that intermittent fasting is an effective way for women who are overweight and obese to drop excess weight. Technically, IF is not a diet that instructs you on what to eat, but rather an eating plan that tells you when to eat, and it involves committing to a cycle of eating and fasting within a set amount of time. See the difference? This study showed that women not only lost weight, but they improved their overall health as well."       
Cheyenne Buckingham, Eat This, Not That!

Recalibrating Calorie Intake and Energy Expenditure

"It's not only what we eat, but when we eat -- and rest -- that impacts how much energy we burn or store as fat."
"The vast majority of the calories that we burn every day [60 to 70 percent] are burned just to maintain our body functions."
"If you ate at the wrong biological time once, it wouldn't have much impact. [More frequently than occasionally] it could add up over time and lead to weight gain." 
"Let’s say we get up an hour or two hours early and eat breakfast an hour or two hours early. We may be eating that breakfast not only at a time when our body might not be prepared to deal with it, but at a time when we need less energy to maintain our functions. Therefore, the same breakfast might result in extra stored calories, because we don’t need those to maintain our body functions."
"Regularity of habits such as eating and sleeping is very important to overall health."
Dr. Jeanne Duffy, neuroscientist, sleep and circadian disorders, Brigham and Women's Hospital

"The fact that doing the same thing at one time of day burned so many more calories than doing the same thing at a different time of day surprised us."
Kirsi-Marja Zitting, study co-author, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School

A new study finds that an imbalance between one’s circadian rhythm and eating and sleeping habits may contribute to weight gain. (Credit: Pakula Piotr/Shutterstock)

Biological sciences keep coming up with interesting items to explain processes that might otherwise forever appear inexplicable to us about how our bodies work. As was done when researchers from Boston launched their experiment with seven volunteers. The seven participants in the study were kept for 37 days in windowless rooms where there were no clocks, radios, televisions, phones or Internet. No distractions, nothing to inform the participants of what was happening in the world outside their temporary cocoon.

Everything was geared to perfect conformity in timing; bedtimes adjusted so that study participants went to sleep each night four hours later than they normally would, the effect disturbing their body's natural circadian rhythms in a manner they likened to the effect of an flight from England to Halifax one day then the following day on to Vancouver, followed by a trip to the Marshall Islands the third day and the fourth day on to Hong Kong.

The study, published in the journal Current Biology, found that at rest the human body burns ten percent more calories in late afternoon and early evening than it does in the early morning hours. A conclusion that explicates why night- or rotating shift-work can effect the risk of becoming overweight or obese. Resting energy expenditure (REE) was the focus to determine the number of calories the body burns simply to exist -- reflecting the minimum amount of calories required in the maintenance of physiological functions such as circulation of blood, breathing, body temperature and brain activity.

The researchers investigated whether resting energy expenditure rate varies with circadian rhythms representing the body's innate, 24-hour cycle set to control the body's awareness of day and night, and when to eat and when to sleep. The 37 days the volunteers -- aged 38 to 69 -- spent in chambers free of any distractions much less indications of time, enabled them to read, watch videos or DVDs, but enjoy no visitors. Contact with family or friends conducted through mail only.

All subjects were given the same proportion of protein, carbohydrates and fats; body temperatures monitored with rectal sensors (more calories are burned when the core temperature is highest).

For their time and willingness to surrender such a large amount of their time and free agency, study participants were given an award of $12,000 each. Each night for three weeks the assigned bedtime was moved four hours later than that of the night before to confuse the normal circadian rhythms. During scheduled "sleep opportunities" all lighting was switched off, the process enabling researchers to take measurements across each waking period for the duration of the three weeks.

"So that we could get an idea of whether resting energy expenditure was always the same no matter what biological time they woke up at, or whether it varied", explained Dr. Duffy. It was discovered that the amount of calories burned turned out to be lower during late night, corresponding to the dip in core body temperature, and highest 12 hours later which would relate to the equivalent of late afternoon or early evening.

While the study answered some questions, there are others yet to be approached by further studies. It is not known whether people should be timing meals to late afternoon-early evening peak, or whether they might be better off avoiding meals after early morning workouts at a time when resting calorie burn is at its lowest. The researchers estimated that about 130 calories per day is involved in the difference between peak and minimum calorie burn time.

Photo Taken In Bangkok, Thailand (Getty Images)

Beware Excessive Caffeine

"Caffeine is known at high doses to cause seizures but, whether it can cause seizures in those with lower seizure thresholds in certain conditions is not well established."
Health Canada expert report

"Not recommended for children, pregnant or breastfeeding women, caffeine sensitive persons or to be mixed with alcohol."
"Two cans maximum daily."
Red Bull energy drink label notice

"Caffeine is the major ingredient in most energy drinks—a 24-oz energy drink may contain as much as 500 mg of caffeine (similar to that in four or five cups of coffee). Energy drinks also may contain guarana (another source of caffeine sometimes called Brazilian cocoa), sugars, taurine, ginseng, B vitamins, glucuronolactone, yohimbe, carnitine, and bitter orange."
"Consuming energy drinks also increases important safety concerns. Between 2007 and 2011, the overall number of energy-drink related visits to emergency departments doubled, with the most significant increase (279 percent) in people aged 40 and older. A growing trend among young adults and teens is mixing energy drinks with alcohol." "About 25 percent of college students consume alcohol with energy drinks, and they binge-drink significantly more often than students who don’t mix them. In 2011, 42 percent of all energy-drink related emergency department visits involved combining these beverages with alcohol or drugs (including illicit drugs, like marijuana, as well as central nervous system stimulants, like Ritalin or Adderall)."
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/National Institutes of Health

Men'sFitness

A few weeks back, a 26-year-old man in Ottawa, who has consumed energy drinks for the past decade suddenly, while at work in a food warehouse, collapsed seemingly without reason. He collapsed into a state of seizures, leading other workers standing nearby to rush to his aid. An ambulance was called and he was taken quickly to hospital, where in an unconscious state, he was intubated. He remained unconscious for four days, before finally waking up. His recovery comes  complete with nightmares, and anxiety.

According to his family health history, there has never been anyone, including the young man, who suffered from a seizure-prone medical condition such as epilepsy. While in hospital, he was given a number of tests, from an MRI, a CAT scan, spinal tap, a series of blood tests, with none of the results rendering any conclusive hint as to what had activated the young man's collapse. Doctors, however, had their suspicions after having been informed that he normally drinks up to three energy drinks daily.

Authorities representing health agencies around the world, from as far afield as the World Health Organization, to Health Canada, and down to Ottawa Public Health all have questioned how safe energy drinks are, concerned with the high-caffeine drinks causing adverse health effects in those using them, particularly young people. A Scarborough, Ontario man had recently given a presentation to the Ottawa Board of Health ventilating his suspicion that the death of his 15-year-old son from sudden cardiac arrhythmia in 2008 involved energy drinks.

Health Canada had been the recipient of 75 "adverse-reaction reports" up to October of 2013, involving high-caffeine drinks. Half of those reports were in the category of extremely serious, some of those events having resulted in three deaths. An expert panel concluded that caffeine in high doses has been known to cause delirium, neuromuscular tremors, convulsions and vomiting. Caffeine affects heart rate and blood pressure, even when taken in what can be considered to be moderate doses.

The end result was that the panel made a recommendation that energy drinks be used only by adults with a maximum dose per unit of 80 mgs of caffeine. A small Red Bull energy drink can of 250 mL contains 80 mgs of caffeine. In recognition of an obligation as a responsible food producer, the company carries a notice of caution for the use of its product. It also notes that a can of the product contains a similar amount of caffeine as a single cup of coffee.

Health authorities feel that the product is safe as long as users pay attention to the cautions. However, it is an extremely popular drink among young people, who are not known for caution, and there lies a problem; the public tends to view food and drink as 'safe', and rarely questions ingredients.

A follow-up by an investigative reporter with a local newspaper found that a 473 mL can of Rockstar contains 160 mgs of caffeine with a recommendation of one unit to be consumed on a daily basis. For the Monster brand energy drink 166 mgs of caffeine reflects the product and it too offers the same caution for consumption.

The Ottawa public health department plans to embark on a public consultation on the marketing of energy drinks, among other processed high-fat and high-sugar foods, to be restricted in schools. "The regular consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, including energy drinks, is not conducive to a healthy diet", according to a staff report.

Every parent knows what a young person's reaction is to such cautions; it generally excites interest in a forbidden fruit that suddenly becomes attractive, contrary to the purpose of the wording of the caution, but completely consistent with the reverse psychology that engages a child's mind when an adult intervenes in any issue.

Lifehacker

Environmental Peat Bogs

"They [peat bogs] take thousands of years to develop. And in five minutes, a wildfire can blow through that area and release 400 to 600 years of peat accumulation and change it forever."
Merritt Turetsky, peat researcher, University of Guelph

"It's carbon that has accumulated over several thousands of years."
"If it were to be released, the global C02 concentration would be much higher."
"If you have a large amount of this moss [sphagnum] in a peatland, you aren't going to get a very severe fire. The key is to keep peat wet and get that moss growing on the surface again."
"Our research shows very conclusively that if you can re-wet the system and get the key peat mosses growing on the surface, you can essentially put a cap on the system and limit burning, or resist fire completely."
Mike Waddington, professor of ecohydrology, School of Geology and Earth Sciences, McMaster University

The spongy moss layered and accumulated over hundreds of years comprising peat beds are tremendous carbon sinks and as such they are environmentally invaluable. Forests are known for their capacity to absorb and store carbon. And peat bogs do the very same thing. If and when a forest burns, carbon is released into the atmosphere. When forests are logged out as they have been in South America the vast resource they represent as carbon sinks are lost.

Earth possesses an estimated 4.1-million square kilometres of peatlands; 3 percent of the globe's land surface is comprised of peat bogs. They're to be found for the most part in the northern latitudes of the world; in Canada, Alaska, Europe and Russia. Sphagnum and other types of mosses which have accumulated for hundreds of years make up peat bogs; a gradual but important process. Peat has its uses, as a soil corrective in gardening, even as a fuel to be burned for energy and warmth.

Mer Bleue peat bog, Ottawa Valley, Ontario

But very little of it is actually harvested and used for any purpose. Peat, which is capable of holding large amounts of water is acidic, the compounds it is comprised of inhibit decay. (Famously, hundreds of ancient corpses have been found, perfectly preserved in European bogs.) Because it is so efficient at holding carbon, more than what the world's trees and plants contain and almost as great an amount as the atmosphere, it is left to do its job. Yet climate change has become a potential threat to peatlands.

Unmarked by time: On display at the Silkeborg Museum, in Denmark, Tollund Man’s visage seems eerily peaceful—if you ignore the noose around his neck.   Arne Mikkelsen

The warming trends we're becoming more familiar with over time, have the capacity to dry out bogs, and when they're dry, they become susceptible to fires which can burn deeper and more intensely than other types of fire, since a peat fire is capable of smouldering for months and in the process, can release massive amounts of carbon. Like the peat moss that accumulates gradually over time, so too does the carbon it so tenaciously holds in place.

In Indonesia, bogs were drained to make the land available for agricultural purposes, resulting in their becoming drier through the evaporation caused by El Nino-related warmth, and they burned for months, the haze that resulted causing widespread health complications. The burning bogs released a greater amount of carbon daily during the months of September and October 2015 than the European Union in its entirety emitted for that period.

The Fort McMurray wildfire that posed as such an immense threat and which burned uncontrollably this past spring consuming a good portion of the town's infrastructure and homes, as well as the nearby forest, also burned local bogs. By June the wildfire had been controlled to the extent that trees were no longer ablaze outside Fort McMurray, but crews were put to work turning over peat with backhoes attempting to extinguish the smouldering hot spots.

Shane O'Brien/Postmedia News files   A neighbourhood burns in Slave Lake on May 15, 2011 after a wildfire swept through the town.

 

An early large-area wildfire that took place in and around Slave Lake, Alberta in May of 2011, saw peat continue to burn throughout the winter months. That fire in the peat bogs smouldered until the arrival of spring rains and with the help of melting snow, the fire was finally extinguished. Sphagnum moss, dominant among other types of moss in a bog, holds a lot of water and as a result peat is generally fire-resistant.

But atmospheric warming tends to alter the environment, and peat that becomes dry sees greater amounts of oxygen aerating tree roots and other vegetation, causing them to grow larger, which in turn uses greater amounts of water, additionally drying out the peat in which they grow. In the Slave Lake fire, a huge amount of peat was burned in some bog areas. Five years on, the bog has not yet begun to recover.

"It is definitely on the brink. There's little to no sphagnum recovery, which is very worrying, because if it's going to return to a carbon-accumulating system, which is what you would hope, really, it needs to get that sphagnum back. All that peat, combusted and gone", sighed Sophie Wilkinson, a doctoral student in ecology at McMaster University.

Canada    The total area of peatland, reported by the Canadian WEC Member Committee to be more than 1.1 million km2, is greater than that of any other country. Deposits of peat are widely distributed, with the largest areas in the Northwest Territories (23% of the Canadian total), Ontario (20%) and Manitoba (19%). The reported amounts of peat in place are enormous, with over a billion tonnes classified as proved and an additional 300+ billion tonnes as indicated or inferred.There have been a number of assessments of the potential for using peat as a fuel (including for power generation) but at present there is virtually no use of peat for energy purposes and none is likely in the immediate future. Canada is, however, a major producer (and exporter) of peat for horticultural applications.

The dramatic evacuation of Fort McMurray - peat part-fuelled the inferno (Pic: Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta)

Venezuela, a Country on Life-Support

"There are people dying for lack of medicine, children dying of malnutrition and others dying because there are no medical personnel."
Dr. Yamila Battaglini, surgeon, J.M. de los Rios Children's Hospital, Caracas, Venezuela

"I had a patient just now who needed artificial respiration, and I had none available. A baby. What can we do?"
"What can we do here? Every day I pass an incubator that doesn't heat up, that is cold, that is broken."
Dr. Amalia Rodriguez Luis Razetti Hospital, Barcelona, Venezuela

No beds: Nicolas Espinoza's daughter sleeps in the children's cancer ward at Luis Razetti Hospital

This is the Bolivarian revolution in living colour in Venezuela, the brave new world of socialism, for the people by the people, of the people. A Venezuela that Hugo Chavez, the socialist dictator who used the natural resources of his country to buy the friendship of Cuba and Venezuela's neighbours but neglected to bank any of the financial windfall resulting in the country's vast wealth of oil. And nor did he invest in upgrading infrastructure, let alone in building the means by which his country could refine its own oil.

But he did ensure that when he died long before he was willing to give up the ghost, that his replacement would be, like him, a man of the people, a bus driver who so excelled at his job he knew how to pick people up and drop them off at the junction of their choice, for a fee. And now Nicolas Maduro is president of all he surveys and in his wisdom has refused to accept international aid for his faltering nation.

Food is scarce, and so is gasoline and energy, so government departments operate only two days a week. People spend all their time waiting in long lineups for pedestrian products that should be available readily and affordably. Availability and affordability are now foreign concepts in Venezuela. And the health care system has collapsed under the weight of unavailable funding, drug shortage, and equipment failure.

"Some come here healthy and they leave dead", explained Dr. Leandro Perez at Luis Razetti Hospital. With the largest oil reserves in the world there was no vision of the potential for hard times to arrive at some point, no thought that the price per barrel of oil would plunge to unsustainable depths. Looting has become commonplace, and the bolivar is close to worthless. Crime has soared.

"This is criminal that we can sit in a country with this much oil, and people are dying for lack of antibiotics", lawmaker Oneida Guaipe observed with despair for his country. Political opponents of the president have declared a humanitarian crisis and were prepared to allow Venezuela to accept international aid, but that humiliation was vetoed by President Maduro.

Pumps supplying water to the University of the Andres exploded, and it took months for repairs to be undertaken. In the absence of water, gloves, soap and antibiotics, surgeons undertook surgery in operating rooms covered in blood from previous surgeries. Two of nine operating rooms only remain functional at the J.M. de los Rios Children's Hospital in Caracas.

Lack of supplies: Jugs and soda bottles that doctors at Luis Razetti Hospital rigged to treat patients with broken legs in Puerto la Cruz

A month ago Aquiles Martinez, director of Barcelona's Luis Razetti Hospital was arrested, accused of stealing hospital equipment; machines to treat respiratory illnesses, intravenous solutions and 127 containers of medicine. The shelves in the hospital's pharmacy are partially bare reflecting a shortage of imports the government can no longer afford. When treatment is needed, doctors inform patients' families, handing them lists of medicines. Then they are sought on the black market.

Energy blackouts shut down maternity ward respirators leaving doctors to keep infants alive pumping air into their lungs for hours by hand. Newborn babies requiring ongoing respiratory treatment die. "The death of a baby is our daily bread", said Dr. Osleidy Camejo a Caracas surgeon, deploring the collapsing of Venezuela's hospitals and the anguish of doctors.

Shortages everywhere in society are so acute that hospitals see their supplies of gloves and soap evaporate, and medications for cancer can be found only through black market acquisition. Not enough water is available at the University of the Andes Hospital in the city of Merida to wash blood from operating tables and surgeons prep their hands for surgery with bottles of seltzer water.

"It is like something from the 19th Century", despairingly stated Dr. Christian Pino as the death rate of babies under a month has increased over a hundredfold in public hospitals. New mothers are dying in those hospitals by almost five times in the period between 2012 and 2015, according to a government report.

Patients rest where they can in little comfort in the hallways at the overcrowded public hospital in Merida, Venezuela, in January

On The Horns of a Nuclear-Waste Dilemma

"You look at parts of the world that seem to go from reasonable governments to chaos, and I don't think you can predict what kind of society will exist hundreds of thousands of years from now."
"When you look at the geological history of the area [Great Lakes Basin, Ontario], it's been so benign in geological activity in the last tens of millions of  years. I don't know how you could find a safer place to put it [nuclear waste]."
Derek Martin, professor, geotechnical engineering, University of Alberta

"It just keeps coming back to that main question. Is it safer where it is right now [hard by the Bruce Power site, buried near the surface]? We had a tornado in a town near here three or four years ago ... and that could've just as easily been in Kincardine. It was a devastating tornado. Wiped out the town."
"Is this stuff [nuclear waste] safer where it is now, or is it safer 650 metres down in rock that hasn't moved in aeons?"
Kincardine Mayor Anne Eadie

"No matter what process is followed, abandoning radioactive nuclear waste in the Great Lakes basin will always be a bad idea."
"If it must be buried, bury it outside of the Great Lakes basin and far from people, far from water."
"One thing is for sure: we shouldn't bury this lethal material beside the source of drinking water for 40-million people in two countries. We will never know if there  has been a leak until it's too late."
Beverly Fernandez, spokeswoman, Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump, Southhampton, Ontario 

An aerial view of the Bruce Power nuclear generating station in Kincardine, Ont. Opponents of Ontario Power Generation's plan to store low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste in an underground rock chamber beneath the Bruce facility say the bunker will be too close to Lake Huron. (J.P. Moczulski/Canadian Press)

Nuclear-derived power is inexpensive, once the cost of building associated nuclear reactors is done with, and upkeep figured in; it is environmentally clean, and it is reliable. But the sheer harnessing of this kind of power involved in nuclear plants and the potential for things to go catastrophically wrong due to technical fault or human error remains a cloud of dark concern hanging over any country reliant on nuclear energy for power generation. 

The disaster that overtook Ukraine when its Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant erupted rendered the city of  Pripyat and the surrounding area unlivable, contaminated by radioactivity, leading to a mass exodus of its population. Japan suffered its own dreadful nuclear disaster when, following a huge earthquake, a tsunami disabled the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 and a similar evacuation was ordered with thousands of people relocated, and the area surrounding the plant off limits.

Those dreadful catastrophes aside, there is the matter of what to do with generations' worth of radioactive nuclear waste. Material  that science well knows takes thousands of years to decay before it becomes non-toxic. Ontario Power Generation, which operates the largest nuclear plant site in the world, is seeking federal government permission to bury its accumulated 50 years-worth of nuclear waste close to the Great Lakes region, in Ontario.

OPG contemplates blasting an area deep in the ground in a geologically stable area to dump and seal low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste from the province's three nuclear power plants. That toxic material would, in theory, be placed under layers of rock that have not moved in tens of millions of years, according to geologists. The fact that the planned Deep Geological Repository is located just over a kilometre from the bottom of Lake Huron is what has made it such a controversial subject.

Supported by dozens of scientists some of whom took part in a government-appointed independent review panel which approved the plan, the 680-metre hole would be dug below the water table, into ancient layers of rock, stable for over 50 million years. This is the plan considered to be the best solution available to ensure that the radioactive material is far removed from humans, well into the future. Environmentalists and political leaders on each side of the Great Lakes are not convinced.

Jan Thomas, of Port Huron, holds a sign protesting a proposed nuclear waste dump site on Lake Huron, Sunday, Aug. 16, 2015, as participants in the float down pass by during International Rally to Protect the Great Lakes at Pine Grove Park in Port Huron, Mich. (Andrew Jowett/The Times Herald via AP)

Ontario Power Generation speaks with confidence of their plan. "We're happy to respond to them [critics]. We've been open and transparent through this whole process, and we're happy to do what we can to help people understand it", insists OPG spokesman Bill McKinlay. But opposition has only gained momentum with over 180 county boards, city councils and other elected groups close to the Great Lakes in both Canada and the United States having passed resolutions urging a veto.

Some supporters of the plan have pointed out that high-level nuclear waste which takes ten thousand years to become non-toxic, is going to be buried at Yucca Mountain, outside Las Vegas. Michigan Representative Debbie Dingell, responds to that by stating: "This is different. A mountain is in an isolated place, better than water that is 20 percent of the freshwater in the world. If there's a leak or an accident at Yucca Mountain, it's in an isolated area", an observation difficult to find fault with.

Eight of Ontario's 20 nuclear reactors are located at the Bruce Power facility. The Bruce site has stored low- and intermediate-level waste for all Ontario power plants in above-ground bunkers and vaults since the early 1970s, across a concrete area near the reactor buildings. It is now looking for a permanent home for this dangerously toxic material. And its options have been starkly criticized by the fears of people contemplating disaster.

This Nov. 1, 2013 photo shows rows of chambers holding intermediate-level radioactive waste in shallow pits at the Bruce Power nuclear complex near Kincardine, Ont. Ontario Power Generation is seeking permission from the Canadian government to permanently store low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste in a rock chamber that would be built 680 metres underground and 1.2 kilometres from Lake Huron. (John Flesher/Associated Press)

Telling The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth

"We can see right next door to where shale gas development is going on that we do have circulation of surface (waters) down to five kilometres depth and back to surface again."
"Not only do we see transmission of water from the crustal levels, but we also see transmission of thermogenic gas from the crust up to the surface in these spring systems."
Steve Grasby, scientist, Geological Survey of Canada

Spring water from deep underground carries plenty of heat and chemicals that feed orange microbial mats growing on the rocks at Larsen Spring, one of nine thermal springs in Northern B.C. and the southern Yukon.   Photograph by: Steve Grasby/GSC , Postmedia News

"If you have a leaking well and it doesn't manifest at surface, you don't know where it is leaking to. It could be leaking into some other reservoir that you don't want it to leak into for economic reasons."
"Many old wells weren't abandoned in any way that could handle thermal stress, and now those areas can't be steamed and therefore the bitumen can't be recovered."
Theresa Watson, engineer, former board member of regulatory agency overseeing Alberta's energy industry, Calgary

Hydraulic fracturing is commonplace now in the energy extraction industry throughout North America. It is a mechanical-engineering method whereby hard-to-get-at natural fossil fuels deep within the Earth's crust can be extracted when water and chemicals are pumped under high pressure deep into the earth via a drilling pipe to fracture the shale holding gas or oil to effect its release.

Because it's been going on for quite awhile, and no reports were thought to have been received that there were any deleterious effects, it is considered a safe extraction process that would not imperil vital ground water resources. That's the story for public consumption most often encountered, reassurances from large corporate energy sources.

And then reports appear to now be coming in that raise questions about the safety of fracking. When 1,850 metres deep into the earth, fracking fluids under immense pressure were propelled unintentionally into a neighbouring well and 75,000 litres of fracking fluids were sent up the well and ultimately onto a nearby field, the oil and chemicals polluting it a different story emerged. That was in January of 2012.

Comes news that over forty such episodes, named "frack hits" were reported in Alberta and British Columbia since 2009. Nothing to be concerned about, supposedly, as regulators enacted new rules meant to avoid such 'interactions' between wells. A problem exists in that in Alberta alone there are over 450,000 wells, many of them long abandoned. Because it is not always known where the abandoned wells are, such 'communication' between wells can take place; what is concerning is that they have the potential to leak into groundwater aquifers.

Suddenly, fracking doesn't look as though it will live up to the optimistic assessments of those multi-nationals drilling across Canada and the United States giving assurances that there will be no environmental repercussions of any note; don't worry, be happy. Don't be concerned, in other words about the thousands of old wells in Alberta and Saskatchewan that have been sealed (inadequately in many cases) and abandoned and which now pose a hazard for 'communicating' with new drilling for shale gas.

"Frack hits" are not solely a concern for Canada. They have occurred from Texas to northeast British Columbia. Fracking operators often have no knowledge of whether they are drilling too close to other wells where the 'communications' between those wells can present a serious safety and environmental hazard; fracking fluids and the chemicals within them ending up in other wells. Some incidents have been responsible for spilling thousands of wastewater, fracking fluids, oil and gas.

A report published in September by University of Waterloo researchers warned that decommissioned wells "constitute the seepage pathway of greatest risk for hydraulic fracking fluids." Unintended consequences that could interfere with future plans to possibly desalinize water from deep underground aquifers in a world requiring more potable water, represent one nightmare scenario. Oil and gas operations could also compromise a future plan to sequester carbon dioxide deep underground.

"There is no question that old wells are already a significant impediment to C02 storage" and it is time for "some serious thought" about the impacts that the energy industry is leaving and the manner in which it may be "compromising future resources development", cautions Theresa Watson.

The fracking industry's wastewater is also pumped into old decommissioned gas wells. According to a recent study by the University of Victoria's Environment Law Centre, 41-billion litres has been injected into a single well near Fort Nelson, the centre of northern British Columbia's fracking boom. "Yet because of weak laws, we don't really know what toxins were in the wastewater (enough to fill 16,693 Olympic swimming pools at that Fort Nelson well) or how much may have leaked into groundwater or surface water" the University of Victoria researchers worry.

In British Columbia, nine thermal springs in the north of the province and the southern Yukon have burbled to the surface from depths of up to five kilometres, heat, gas and chemicals; not from hydraulic fracturing but representing the depths from which water and chemicals can be dredged naturally. The connotations for that manner of depth migration related to hydraulic fracturing keeps some scientists up at night.

And then, of course, there is an additional by-product of the fracturing process whereby immense pressure is used to power mixtures of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to shatter rock and release gas trapped two to three kilometres underground. The intense pressures on the Earth's mantle can cause earthquakes; 38 of those tremors resulted due to fracking in northeast B.C. between 2009 and 2012.

Blighting The Atmosphere?

"[Wind turbine noise] annoyance was found to be statistically related to several self-reported health effects including, but not limited to, blood pressure, migraines, tinnitus [ringing in the ears], dizziness [and sleep disorders]."
"The findings support a potential link between long-term high annoyance and health."
Health Canada

[Failure to take infrasound seriously is quite astounding] ... Given the knowledge that the ear responds to low frequency sounds and infrasound, we knew that comparisons with benign sources were invalid and the logic [of relying on audible] sound measurements was deeply flawed scientifically."
"Given the present evidence, it seems risky at best to continue the current gamble that infrasound stimulation of the ear stays confined to the ear and has no other effects on the body."
Alex Salt, Jeffery Lichtenhan, acoustic authorities, Washington University School of Medicine

"The patients deserve the benefit of the doubt. It's clear from the documents that come out of other industry that they're trying very hard to suppress the notion of WTS [wind turbine syndrome] and they've done it in a way that [involves] a lot of blaming the victim."
Steven D. Rauch, Harvard Medical School

Photo credit: Sameer Shah

Thousands of people living close to those humongous wind turbines reflecting one of the assets in the arsenal of the environmental movement to harness natural phenomenon for energy, don't feel too personally confident of the usefulness of wind as an energy source, the way it is currently being harnessed. They might perhaps think more kindly of it as a resource tool if it were not directly affecting their quality of life, with those turbines too close to where they live for comfort.

The reported deleterious impact on the health of many people in communities that have had wind turbines erected within their home ground include complaints of adverse health effects, some of which so seriously affect the complainants they feel forced to remove themselves from the source physically, abandoning their homes and moving elsewhere. Primarily it is the sound that the turbines emit when they are responding to prevailing winds.


The audible sound waves are known to medical science as "annoyance" , reflecting a state of health whose potential can lead to a full range of illnesses named wind turbine syndrome. Health Canada had commissioned a Statistics Canada survey on the issue of impact to health of people living in the direct vicinity of wind turbines, reporting on migraines, tinnitus, dizziness, blood pressure and sleep disorders. Annoyance was discovered to be statistically associated with chronic stress measurements and blood pressure.

Aside from the large amounts of sound waves at a frequency above 20 Hz the audible level, the turbines produce large amounts of sound waves as well below 20 Hz; inaudible to the human ear, and as such, according to wind-energy proponents, completely harmless. Sound waves below 20 Hz are detectable by animals, many of which communicate at that sound frequency. As well, that human-inaudible sound communicates a sense of danger to animals relating to earthquakes or oncoming tornadoes.

Essex, ON. November 7, 2014 -- Wind turbines dot the landscape near Essex, Friday November 7, 2014. (NICK BRANCACCIO/The Windsor Star)

While it is known that the signals from infrasound enter the human brain, scientists have no knowledge yet of the effect of what occurs when the brain absorbs infrasound stimulation for prolonged periods; no long-term study exists. A 2001 review by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences called the Infrasound Toxicological Summary found over 100 infrasound studies globally with many of those reporting similar adverse health effects inclusive of fatigue, sleeplessness, nausea, heart disorders afflicting people living near wind turbines.

In a 2003 U.K. experiment by the National Physical Laboratory, Britain's largest applied physics institute, two music concerts were arranged to be staged one directly following on the other in London's Purcell Hall. Two different musical pieces in each concert included infrasound, the result being that when the infrasound-impacting pieces were played the audience reported elevated sensations of nausea, dizziness, increased heart rates and neck and shoulder tingling.

In the absence of long-term studies, the short-term studies that have been scrutinized may not provide the whole picture of what is occurring. Wind turbines may yet be found to be entirely benign. It is not outside the realm of possibility that a kind of affective hysteria may be responsible for the deleterious health symptoms reported by people living close to the turbines. There is also the possibility that the turbine manufacturers might conceive of a solution to the sound emitted, thus eliminating the problem.

This without considering additional complaints about the visual impact of the wind turbines marching across a landscape. On occasion, depending upon where the wind turbine farms are located, disturbing the natural visual serenity of well-loved areas, including those dependent on tourism. That also, without including the dreadful toll that wind turbines take on the avian population, killing thousands upon thousands of birds with their revolving blades.

In the meanwhile, a Canadian court is mulling the situation and is soon to make a decision whether wind turbines are in violation of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms through raising a risk to human health in their use to people held hostage to the sound by wind turbines installed in their geographic vicinity. One can only wonder whether, when such energy-derivative sources, beloved of environmentalist are placed where the environmentalists live, what their reaction might be.

Settled Science Is Not Science

 

David Henderson
Chairman
Academic Advisory Council
Global Warming Policy Foundation

Dear Professor Henderson,

I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that [it] has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not [been] expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship, etc.

I see no limit and end to what will happen,. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expected anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.

Under this situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.

With my best regards,
Lennart Bengtsson.

Artist's conception of what could occur with global warming; Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C.

David Henderson, a former chief economist for the OECD and now chairman of the Academic Advisory Council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation based in London, representing one of the world's leading global warming skeptical organizations, received the above letter of regretful resignation from Professor Bengtson.

From the contents of the letter explaining Professor Bengtson's reversal in his original agreement to join the GWPF's advisory board, Mr. Henderson noted that Professor Benstsson had reacted to "a degree of intolerance, and a rejection of the principle of open scientific enquiry, which are truly shocking".

Professor Bengtsson's international scientific reknown in meteorology and climate research was exemplified during the period from 1991 to 2000 when he was head of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. He moved from that distinguished appointment to become a professor at the University of Reading.

And from 2008 onward he was Director of the International Space Science Institute in Bern, Switzerland. He has membership in many learned societies, over 200 publications to his name, and numerous awards in recognition of  his outstanding lifetime contribution to the science of Meteorology.

Invited to join the GWPF a month earlier, he agreed. When that became public knowledge in the environmental community many of the colleagues whom he had assumed to be collegially and scientifically inclined in support and agreement of his work and their mutual interests, began to snub and to criticize his intellectual, creative and scientific veracity.

He had offended their sense of the "settled science" of climate change, formerly named global warming.

Former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, who had founded the GWPF, expressed his opinion that what happened to Professor Bengtsson, described by those who know him as "a kindly, mild-mannered Swedish grandfather", as "an appalling state of affairs, and your reference to McCarthyism is fully warranted."

Most of the virulent protests that had assailed 80-year-old Professor Bengtsson had emanated from the United States, according to the "Swedish grandfather", where the environmental issue has become a "legacy issue" for the Obama administration.

Professor Bengtsson had been invited to join the GWPF for the very sound reason that he has for some time expressed personal and professional skepticism of the certainty professed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the "settled science" of the claims they have made on the issue of environmental degradation and its cause.

He has pointed in particular at the lack of warming in the 21st Century. "The whole concept behind IPCC is basically wrong", he stated in an interview, rejecting the insistence on the presence of a scientific consensus, and emphasizing that skepticism represented scientific standards.

Art And Science - And Debate

"There is no evidence that the hydraulic fracturing ... has resulted in any contamination or endangerment of underground sources of drinking water (USDW)."
"Moreover, given the horizontal and vertical distance between the drinking water well and the closest methane gas production wells, the possibility of contamination  or endangerment of USDWs in the area [Alabama] is extremely remote."
Carol Browner, EPA administrator [under Bill Clinton]; director of White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy [under Obama administration]

"Industry documents show that 6% of the wells leak immediately and that 60% leak over time, poisoning drinking water and putting the powerful greenhouse gas methane into our atmosphere. We need to develop truly clean energy not dirty water created by fracking."
Yoko Ono for Artists Against Fracking

Workers tend to a well head during a hydraulic fracturing operation at an Encana gas well outside Rifle, in western Colorado.  Photograph by: Brennan Linsley , THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP

 

Well, that's settled then, it seems. The U.S. EPA, known for its rigorous research and reliability has lied repeatedly, assuring authorities in various American administrations that fracking is completely safe, when obviously it is not, because an environmental pressure group -- scads of environmental pressure groups -- faithfully practise their religion of environmentally passionate condemnation of energy extraction.

Fracking is a new term to most people. But it is anything but a new technology. It has been used for well over half a century in various states, and from all environmental, scientific reports that have been issued throughout that period of time there has never been one single documented issue that would support the contention that fracking "poisons" drinking water, through contaminating aquifers.

In 2012, Lisa Jackson, at that time head of the EPA informed a reporter that: "In no case have we made a definitive determination that the fracking process has caused chemicals to enter groundwater." The EPA "reviewed incidents of drinking water well contamination believed to be associated with hydraulic fracturing and found no confirmed cases that are linked to fracturing fluid injection into coalbed methane wells or subsequent underground movement of fracturing fluids."

Alabama regulators reviewed fracking activity on their own and the result they came up with was the same: "There have been no documented cases of drinking water contamination that have resulted from hydraulic fracturing operations to stimulate oil and gas wells in the State of Alabama." And in Alaska state researchers found: "There have been no verified cases of harm to groundwater in the State of Alaska as a result of hydraulic fracturing."

It doesn't end with just those two states. Kentucky too received landowner complaints about contaminated groundwater and when they conducted their research they concluded that: "In Kentucky there have been alleged contaminations from citizen complaints but nothing that can be substantiated." 

Michigan has thousands of fracked wells, yet investigations conducted there found "there is no indication that hydraulic fracturing has ever caused damage to groundwater or other resources in Michigan." The state's Office of Geological Survey claims never to have received one single complaint or allegation that fracking had affected groundwater "in any way".

"Though hydraulic fracturing has been used for over 60 years in Texas ... records do not reflect a single documented surface or groundwater contamination case associated with hydraulic frackturing" was the official word from that state. Since the Fifties drillers in South Dakota have been fracking for oil, and for gas since 1970, and yet the state reports: "No documented case of water well or aquifer damage by the fracking of oil or gas wells."

A  study conducted by the Ground Water Protection Council, comprised of state-level groundwater regulators, concluded in a 2011 report covering 15 years of activity where over 16,000 horizontal hydraulic-fracking shale-gas wells were used in Texas and Ohio that not "a single groundwater contamination incident resulting from site preparation, drilling, well construction, completion, hydraulic fracturing stimulation or production operations at any of these horizontal shale gas wells", was revealed.

Perhaps it should be further explained by looking at the verifiable fact that fracturing is occurring at an amazing depth, deep into the Earth; how does a mile or deeper sound? Then compare that to the depth of a typical well which sinks several dozen feet to a few hundred feet to reach an exceptionally deep water table. The Big Well in Greensburgh Kansas, dug by hand in 1887 has a depth of 109 feet; deep because of a deep watertable.

Water aquifers average around 500 feet below ground. And fracking takes place thousands of feet below the surface, between 6,000 and ten thousand feet underground. Quite the difference in depth ... leading to the obvious conclusion that contamination just isn't even remotely likely. For fracking fluid to enter the water table or to enter an aquifer it would have to flow upward through tons of rock.

Environmental scientists might take a break from time to time and turn their attention from precise scientific measurements of the environment to turning their hand to the arts. The kind of aesthetic activity that really pleases art-lovers, to offer an alternative to the art being churned out by those involved in Artists Against Fracking. If artists can so readily turn themselves into environmental investigators, why not scientists into artists?

Oh, wait ... the art is in the ability to persuade people that what they're witnessing is art. The science proves or disproves a theory turning it into observable fact. Funny world we inhabit.

Economy or Environment?

It took awhile for the Industrial Revolution to transform the world. That industrial evolution succeeded in providing for those living in developing economies a transformative social change, where gradually equality of opportunity to own needed elementary goods and desirable objects that were once the purview of the aristocracy over time became available to all.

The revolutionary change in industrialization did quite a number of things; it provided employment, opportunities for entrepreneurship as never before, and made once-scarce commodities so relatively large in numbers of availability and so relatively modest in price that the separation between the wealthy and modestly-achieving wage-earners narrowed appreciably. What it also did was to cast a lingering pall of dirty air over the environment where coal was being fired to produce energy to enable manufacturing during the industrial revolution.

James Watt: Scottish inventor James Watt's improvements to the steam engine were instrumental during the Industrial Revolution. (Photo Credit: Bettmann/CORBIS)

In Europe and North America broadly speaking, those opportunities accelerated, the drive for new energy sources with water-power, natural gas and petroleum led to more manufacturing and more acquisitions and a wealthier society.

Africa and Asia were a lot slower to catch the industrialization train that huffed and puffed through the more advanced countries of the world, and while Africa is running after that train, Asia has stopped the train and informed the conductor that henceforth it would become mandatory that it stop there, first and foremost because it was the the new manufacturing venue.

The "Father of the Railways": In the 1820s, English engineer George Stephenson built the world's first steam-powered public railway line. (Photo Credit: Adam Woolfitt/CORBIS)

In a far shorter time than it took Europe and North America to harness the promise of the Industrial Revolution, China took the grips of opportunity and in 35 years eclipsed all their manufacturing to produce cheaper and quite desirable products, even those designed with a shorter life through built-in obsolescence, ensuring that purchases themselves accelerate and never quite stop, since items do, of course wear out and must be replaced.

China's dependence on energy sources (and raw materials) makes it a voracious consumer of fossil fuels to keep growing its enormous appetite for production and export, while at the same time hauling its immense 1.3-billion population out of once-endemic poverty.

China was enchanted and even mesmerized, brought to full attention by the success of Hong Kong as a British protectorate which embraced the Western free enterprise system and grew its economy like nothing China had ever imagined possible. When China signed the agreement with Britain that released Hong Kong back to its rightful geographic allegiance, Hong Kong's capitalist system was guaranteed for 50 years. And inspired by Hong Kong's raging success, China did the practical thing, holding on to its system of government, but relaxing it sufficiently to embrace economic opportunities by seeking to emulate its special 'province' for whom investment and free trade was a byword of world enterprise.

And so, how's China doing? It welcomed the world to have a look around when it hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics, wowing the world with the sumptuous splendour and glitz of the fireworks that it had itself gifted to the world along with gunpowder. Embarrassed by its perpetual smog, it ordered factories to shut down operations in Beijing temporarily to clear the air.

Now, it not so much initiates new discoveries as copies the patents and enterprise of other countries' enterprising inventors and entrepreneurial class. But it has given itself a new lease on life, as it were. Greater numbers of its population are gainfully employed, the standard of living has skyrocketed, and Chinese newly-acquired wealth has permitted more Chinese than ever to see the world.

When they do go abroad as tourists they're able to breathe clean air, for one thing, temporary as that is. They get the idea that other countries exercise far more stringent laws on industrial effluent and its disposal, and the responsibility of governments to ensure that manufacturers clean up their messes rather than dump them into area rivers, polluting and poisoning fish and the people who eat them, farm animals and the people who raise them.

Hungry for all kinds of energy it imports from sources abroad, the Chinese still avidly mine the Earth's crust for coal, and are 70%-dependent on coal; dirty coal at that; for their energy needs. Chimney stacks proliferate in China's unbelievable number of mega-metropolises. And the consequences? Pollution is endemic. The skies are perpetually grey; the sun rarely manages to shine its beneficent gold illumination over Chinese towns, villages, farmlands, cities.

Traffic is congested not only because crowded city-dwellers can increasingly afford to own vehicles, but because the drivers of those vehicles are unable to proceed with safety when they cannot even see traffic signals clouded behind masses of environment-circulating particulate matter.



China, through determination, perseverance, cleverness and enterprise, has managed to surmount all the difficulties leading to economic success. It represents a huge success story. It is breathing hot down the neck of the United States as the number one world representative of political power and economic clout. And its people crowd hospitals, suffering from chronic asthma, congested lungs, and lung cancer; an eight-year-old child was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, resulting from constant exposure to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at catastrophic levels.

What price success?