Scientific Republican

Lost Mines Of The Olmecs

  DISCOVER  January 2003

100 Top Science Stories Of 2002

  81. Rare Jade Riddle Cracked

The Kunz Axe, a 3,000-year-old Olmec blue-jade sculpture, features a snarling creature that is part human, part jaguar. Courtesy of The American Museum of Natural History, New York.

In 1804 naturalist Alexander von Humboldt returned to France from the Americas with jade artifacts crafted by the Olmecs. This pre-Mayan, pre-Columbian culture had left behind statues and axes made of a translucent blue-green jade found almost nowhere else in the world. Today archaeologists know the Olmecs had stopped using the stone by about 500 B.C. Later cultures favored other shades of jade, and the blue-green version became known as Olmec blue. But the geological source of the jade had never been found. Geophysicist Russell Seitz, field director of a study of Mesoamerican jade for Harvard's Peabody Museum, had spent years looking for the elusive transparent blue-green stone. By 1999, when he took his fiancée to Guatemala for a vacation, he had given up hope of finding the mother lode. Then, by chance, he stumbled upon half a dozen shops selling small items crafted from the blue-green gem: "It had become an ornamental cottage heritage industry." It took him nine months to track down the jade miners, who finally agreed to lead him up into the mountains. There, at an elevation of 5,700 feet, he found "a giant, economy-size jade vein." Seitz returned several times before discovering the biggest boulders last January. Most of the jade he found is worthless. But one 300-ton monolith does contain three tons of the prized translucent blue-green mineral.
    The find puts to rest one mystery but leaves many questions for archaeologists and pre-Columbian scholars, including: Why did the Olmecs stop carving jade? Perhaps their culture disappeared, or maybe the seams of jade that the Olmecs were mining, and the Olmec carvers themselves, were destroyed by volcanoes. "The deposits," says Seitz, "have been Pompeiied several times."
— Michael Abrams

The Iron Shore

Nature News downplays a message found in a seawater bottle

The gap between environmental science and its representation to the public continues to widen. The prospective use of iron to reduce CO2 by enhancing  plankton blooms at sea has created one of the warmer fronts in the Climate Wars , so consider  Nature's online coverage of the discovery that "Each atom of iron supplied from below pulled more than 100,000 atoms of carbon out of the atmosphere by stimulating plankton growth. "

This startling fact appears in Nature in a peer reviewed study of the annual outburst of sea life that teems in the waters upwelling around Kerguelen Island : Effect of natural iron fertilization on carbon sequestration in the Southern Ocean.

Debate about its future policy implications is already off to a false start. Science news is, by definition, new , and the research first surfaced on April 23 in Nature News . a free website more simply written and widely read than the erudite (and expensive) science journal it summarizes. Few will read what Stephane' Blain and forty-six colleagues wrote. What counts instead is headline hype. Quintin Schiermeier's news article leads off like a purple tyrannosaur lecturing tots in a nanny state nursery:
Only Mother Nature Knows How To Fertilize The Ocean
Its subheads are minor masterpieces of Green tabloid science . One :
'Natural input of nutrients works ten times better than manmade injections' dis-informs readers by inverting the math -- 'manmade injections' still enjoy 10,000 to 1 leverage in carbon sequestration. The other speaks for itself :
Geo-engineering the ocean won't work

Despite the headline , that's not the scientific article's subject--or its conclusion. It's about biogeochemistry from top to bottom ,and  Schiermeier's polemic dismissal of iron fertilization is a manifest example of op-ed engineering. Instead of

the 46 authors of the peer-reviewed Letter To Nature, he quotes only one marine scientist , Ulf Riebesell , who "has been involved in one previous ocean fertilization experiment."

Nature News offers only Riebesell's contention that: "What the team has observed is probably the optimal efficiency of carbon export achievable, you just can't achieve nature's efficiency...That's why geo-engineering the ocean won't work." It also states of fertilization studies at sea "An estimated 80-95% of the iron in these experiments has been 'lost.' This negative spin contrasts with the  Biogeochemistry review by New Zealand oceanographer Philip Boyd in the  magazine ,which notes both the difference between continuous mixing of deep waters and brief fertilization experiments, and that the new study  of natural iron accounts for only 20% of the plankton bloom's uptake.

The study of optimizing iron delivery in synergy with oceanic plant nutrients has barely begun. Yet though speculation about its economic future needs taking with a rather large grain of  ferrous sulfate enriched salt. One entrepreneur quoted in today's Times story has an interesting track record , but Nature itself concedes that , even in its present  infant form--chucking  raw iron salts over the transom of research vessels -- , ocean fertilization could reduce CO2 in the air by 3%--that's 1.4 billion tons annually.

No reasonable scientist expects a new species of engineering , Geo- or otherwise, to converge on the limits of nature and practicality in the first few tries. Ocean water comes in many flavors and unique phytoplankton communities have evolved to take advantage of the taste of each. It took decades of research on land to develop the soil-specific targeted micronutrients ( E.G. boron and copper ) that enable the Green Revolution to fend off famine in human communities too poor to afford bulk nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers.

If anything should make mother nature queasy , it's the odor of 19th century Vitalism permeating  Nature News' anemic coverage of iron's huge carbon offset return. The premise that iron atoms touched by man somehow differ from those upwelling from the deep green sea may appeal to Dark Greens, but it too much recalls the metaphysical aversion to biotech of the religious Right, and pop ecologists who blanch at ocean fertilization while exhorting us to eat farmed salmon raised on a Geritol spiked diet.

Half a century ago , Al Gore's erstwhile mentor, atmospheric scientist Roger Revelle observed that in pouring CO2 into the air "human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment."

Engineers instead ask how best to design the experiment .Climate change is not a matter of one generation, and neither is technology. Its permanance as an evolving  human institution necessarily requires an ever growing understanding of  of our interaction with nature , including the biogeochemical cycle of iron. From colloid chemistry ( the Victorian term for nanotech ) to nutritional ecology, the task of learning the limits of our capacity  for constructive environmental change remains largely unpaid for and undone.

This seems lost on Al Gore. His response to the promise of geo-engineering has been to propose  a Wayback Machine instead. His call to cut CO2 90% by 2050 means turning the energy clock back to 1880--and waving  goodbye to much carbon-based civilization has achieved in the century since Revelle's scientific forebears launched the  Challenger Expedition.By ignoring the technical depth of this new controversy , Nature News has created an  hazard to scientific navigation too. Nature is a flagship journal many media leaders follow like The Economist, presuming its rigorously  peer-reviewed wake will lead to safe harbor. Suffering Nature News online to pop off Green flares risks luring them all onto the scientific rocks. 

So please read the whole thing--  Nature is available in  any science library-- to get past the Post-Earth Day, Pre-IPCC report  press conference bits and access both the Biogeochemistry review and Blair et al.

An Inconvenient Tree

This month's  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences should make warm reading for Al Gore.

The Wall Street Journal
Op-Ed  April 14 2007

By Russell Seitz
A report that just came online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences should make warm reading for Al Gore. The Former Next President, like many black clad greens gracing the cover of Vanity Fair , relies on  firms that promise to plant trees to offset their clients' fuel intensive lifestyles , allowing  the affluent to ignore their effluence and claim to be CO2 free. Al also points to windmills and other energy alternatives when pleading carbon-neutral to charges he's hardly innocent of global warming.

But where do Al Gore's green woodlands grow?   Canada?  Scotland? Patagonia? Alaska? Siberia?  Does he really know?  Carbon offsets are sold by the ton, not by the acre, and don't come with return addresses.

He'd better find out--before Earth Day. The research reported by Govindasamy Bala of Lawrence Livermore National laboratory and colleagues at the Carnegie Institute of Global Ecology compared the climate effects of planting and clearing forests at latitudes  high and low. Their computer simulations yielded some disturbing results.

Saving the tropical rain forest is well and good, for cutting down trees in the tropics means less long-term water transfer from soils to the atmosphere, leading to fewer clouds and a warmer planet.  But planting trees where none exist in northern areas may actually hasten global warming.  Northern tree plantations can trap heat -- they both absorb solar energy and shade sun reflecting snow. This, say the scientists, can apparently overpower the cooling effects of trees soaking up carbon dioxide and storing carbon in growing biomass.  Take away the trees in the long-running climate model, and high latitude areas become 0.8° Celsius cooler by the year 2100, when compared to a standard model of North Woods forest density.

Atmospheric scientist Bala of Lawrence Livermore says on the other hand that tropical reforestation efforts could slow global warming-- low latitude regions that  the model left treeless until 2100 increased in average temperature by 0.7° . That'€™s a warming trend as large as the planet saw in the 20th Century, and could send the tree line still farther north.

Climate scientist Victor Brovkin of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research  told Science magazine , which is edited by Al's pal Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford ,  that while the  new study serves as an important warning against planting trees in the far north,  planting trees in temperate regions probably has little or no net effect on  warming. Comparing models of   reforestation and deforestation of  areas in the temperate zone shows temperatures shifting just 0.04 degrees C. -- an impact even smaller than the predicted .07 degree effect of the  Kyoto treaty.  So Al can'€™t very well wag a finger at that hatchet-wielding  Arbor Day delinquent, George Washington,  for chopping the Little Ice Age down in its prime, or snip at the energetic brush cutting of  President'€™s Bush and Reagan.

The inconvenient truth-- that ill-placed "carbon offset" reforestation schemes can backfire could give rise to a legal climate of fear. Will environmental lawyers chasing tree surgeon's ambulances become the Next Big Thing in torts? The climate modeling game, affords few certainties, but it seems likely that Carbon-Offset lawsuits will sprout like kudzu from this fertile new research field. As it grows, will the green state attorney Generals who took the EPA to Supreme Court end up inviting the Former Next President back for an encore?

Russell Seitz used to own 25 acres of Christmas trees in Maine.He lives in Cambridge Massachusetts and blogs at Adamant.typepad.com Copyright Dow Jones 2007, all rights reserved

Since 1997, the "Tree Canada Foundation has been responsible for the planting of 3,298,607 trees in Northeastern Ontario , an achievement its website advertises " Tree Canada is very proud to be associated with "  Reading the PNAS paper could thaw some Greens agreement.

Nullius In Verba

Lord Rees of Ludlow, the President of The Royal Society, has responded to my Wall Street Journal article criticizing the Society's attempt to restrict the research funding of climate contrarians. The Op-ed in question and his reply follow--

......Nullius In Verba

By RUSSELL SEITZ
In 1663, a group of savants formed a London club to discuss "useful knowledge." John Milton's "Areopagitica" was very much on the minds of those early scientists, for it warned that Puritan control of the press could turn into state control of thought. Dissent could get you killed in Restoration England, at sword's point if gentlemen took umbrage, or on the gallows if it traduced royal policy or Holy Writ. So they were mighty relieved when King Charles II agreed to join them, for, with such a patron, the Fellows of the Royal Society would not fear for their necks or purses when speaking truth to power or questioning authority -- until now.

The Royal Society's view of the conflict between authority and evidence is made clear by its motto. Nullius in Verba is Latin shorthand for what Harry Truman meant when he said "I'm from Missouri. Show me." It's a notion the full quote from Horace -- Nullius addictus judicare in verba magestri -- expands into the gold standard of objectivity: "Not compelled to swear to any master's words."
In political terms that translates into don't let policy proceed from mere perceptions of authority. Abroad, the Royal Society shares the outrage of American scientists at pious politicians seeking to constrain stem cell research funding. But at home the Royal Society seems bent on stopping research at odds with the environmental agenda of the Labor Party
.
Old Labour's hoariest political stratagem, class warfare, collapsed along with communism a generation ago. In that implosion's aftermath, the environment has become New Labour's communitarian fall-back excuse for justifying societal intervention. The Royal Society has been a Whig institution since Darwin's day, encompassing a dynasty of left-wing science popularizers going back to J.B.S. Haldane and Bertrand Russell. Now it is trying to establish itself as a virtual Leviathan in the world of Green politics by extending the political correctness of Tony Blair's nanny state into the scientific realm. Its latest outburst is an Orwellian call to defund scientific inquiry instead of defending it.

The Royal Society's senior manager for policy communication, Robert Ward, has tried to browbeat Exxon Mobil into blacklisting 39 groups whose inconvenient dissent casts doubt on the policy agenda shared by the Society and the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. A letter from Mr. Ward to Exxon leaked to the Guardian reveals that he wants those he deems to have "misrepresented the science of climate change" put on a Do Not Fund List because "[t]he next IPCC report gives people the final push that they need to take action and we can't have people trying to undermine it."

In other words, stop gainsaying the science that Green foundations are paying good money to advertise. The source of political contention is less the science in the IPCC's indigestibly erudite 4,000-page reports than their translation into vivid Green rhetoric by the bureaucratic masters of the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP). Those floridly political "executive summaries" have driven everything from the Kyoto Treaty to EU regulation of refrigerators.

Those who aspire to New Labour's science establishment may feel compelled to swear by such words, lest they end up blackballed from the other London club frequented by the Society's president, the House of Lords. Lord May, the president of the Royal Society, owes his peerage to faithful service as Tony Blair's chief science adviser, and echoing Foreign (and past Environment) Minister Margaret Beckett's repetition of whatever Green publicists air. The laboratory cash flow of the honorable Eco-Lord's pals will also swell if the Royal Society can empower UNEP by silencing disloyal whispers that no one knows how to forecast climate 344 years hence.

And silence them it will -- protracted scientific controversy about global systems models is tedious, and the authoritarian backroom boys at the Royal Society understandably intend to end it. Mr. Blair's "Yes, Minister" nanny state scorns free speech. True, some of the contrarian organizations on the blacklist are no great loss to science because they are run by registered lobbyists. But their reluctance to acknowledge climate change is no excuse for freezing out freedom of scientific inquiry.

The Royal Society must choose between its motto and using other people's purse strings to throttle dissent -- if the motto goes, it must abdicate its divine right to pontificate as well. If it persists in toying with censorship, it should be privatized for seeking to subjugate the Republic of Science to the words of its political masters.

If it wants to reinvent itself as a Green PR firm, fine -- let the private foundations pushing the UNEP foot the bill. Perhaps they can underwrite the hostile takeover of scientific independence by selling Royal Society Fellowships, just as New Labour does peerages, for payments in cash or political kind. But what about the clubhouse?

Lord May & Co.'s palatial premises overlooking St. James's Park should of course revert to the crown, whence the late Society's grace and favor so long flowed. Her Majesty's government may want to turn it into condos, like the former Royal Mint, as advertising firms already in the business of selling science would pay handsomely for such a prestigious address, and diehards bent on imposing technical literacy on Parliament (or Congress) can still be locked safely away in its commodious wine cellar. Few in government will notice their absence, because fashionable as talk of politicized science may be, it cannot fairly be said to exist until both sides have some inkling of what it is they are trying to politicize.

No one compelled Thomas Jefferson to swear "eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man." If the recent history of science has anything to teach, it is that there is no place in a free society for a self-appointed Central Committee of Scientific Truth. Until the Royal Society comes to grips with the Enlightenment, its baroque motto deserves a rest.

ROYAL SOCIETY PRESIDENT LORD REES REPLIES

Russell Seitz's florid depiction of the Royal Society "Nullius in Verba,"  is entertaining but misleading in the extreme. It is ironic that he labors to portray us as an organization with scant regard for the evidence when he fails even to identify me as the current president. (Lord May was my predecessor.)

Contrary to his accusation, the Society has never sought to prevent the funding of scientific inquiry on climate change or any other area. In fact, the Society champions and promotes academic freedom. It funds some of the United Kingdom's best scientists on the basis of their excellence and does not place any conditions on their research that would in any way compromise their independence.

The Royal Society has never asked Exxon to stop funding any organizations. At a meeting, instigated by Exxon, the Society pointed out that the company was funding a number of groups that have been misinforming the public about the scientific evidence on climate change. The company freely made a pledge to stop this funding, and the letter Mr. Seitz cites in his article followed up that assurance.

The Royal Society and 10 of the world's scientific academies, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, have spoken out on climate change in order to clarify where the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence lies. Let us be clear: This points to the need for urgent international action to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

Ensuring that science is properly represented is wholly in keeping with the Society's motto, "Nullius in Verba." This translates as "on the words of no one," an expression of commitment to empirical evidence as the basis of knowledge about the natural world. The debate about how to tackle climate change must be based on the science rather than misinformation propagated by lobby groups.

Martin Rees
President of the Royal Society

London

Russell Seitz comments:

I did not wish to make Rees a party to a controversy initiated by his predecessor ,  but regret I failed to catch the removal of  'past ' from in front of  'president '  at one point as the essay was edited down to Op-ed length by the WSJ.  I ought indeed to have followed the RS election cycle more diligently.

However, I note that Rees fails to identify himself as having presided over the departure of past  Manager For Policy Communications Ward from the Royal Society's employ to join ,of all things , a floridly Green ' lobby group.'

The Royal Society's view of the conflict between authority and evidence is made clear by its motto. Nullius in Verba is Latin shorthand for what Harry Truman meant when he said "I'm from Missouri. Show me." It's a notion the full quote from Horace -- Nullius addictus judicare in verba magestri -- expands into the gold standard of objectivity: "Not compelled to swear to any master's words."
In political terms that translates into don't let policy proceed from mere perceptions of authority. Abroad, the Royal Society shares the outrage of American scientists at pious politicians seeking to constrain stem cell research funding. But at home the Royal Society seems bent on stopping research at odds with the environmental agenda of the Labor Party
.
Old Labour's hoariest political stratagem, class warfare, collapsed along with communism a generation ago. In that implosion's aftermath, the environment has become New Labour's communitarian fall-back excuse for justifying societal intervention. The Royal Society has been a Whig institution since Darwin's day, encompassing a dynasty of left-wing science popularizers going back to J.B.S. Haldane and Bertrand Russell. Now it is trying to establish itself as a virtual Leviathan in the world of Green politics by extending the political correctness of Tony Blair's nanny state into the scientific realm. Its latest outburst is an Orwellian call to defund scientific inquiry instead of defending it.

The Royal Society's senior manager for policy communication, Robert Ward, has tried to browbeat Exxon Mobil into blacklisting 39 groups whose inconvenient dissent casts doubt on the policy agenda shared by the Society and the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. A letter from Mr. Ward to Exxon leaked to the Guardian reveals that he wants those he deems to have "misrepresented the science of climate change" put on a Do Not Fund List because "[t]he next IPCC report gives people the final push that they need to take action and we can't have people trying to undermine it."

In other words, stop gainsaying the science that Green foundations are paying good money to advertise. The source of political contention is less the science in the IPCC's indigestibly erudite 4,000-page reports than their translation into vivid Green rhetoric by the bureaucratic masters of the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP). Those floridly political "executive summaries" have driven everything from the Kyoto Treaty to EU regulation of refrigerators.

Those who aspire to New Labour's science establishment may feel compelled to swear by such words, lest they end up blackballed from the other London club frequented by the Society's president, the House of Lords. Lord May, the president of the Royal Society, owes his peerage to faithful service as Tony Blair's chief science adviser, and echoing Foreign (and past Environment) Minister Margaret Beckett's repetition of whatever Green publicists air. The laboratory cash flow of the honorable Eco-Lord's pals will also swell if the Royal Society can empower UNEP by silencing disloyal whispers that no one knows how to forecast climate 344 years hence.

And silence them it will -- protracted scientific controversy about global systems models is tedious, and the authoritarian backroom boys at the Royal Society understandably intend to end it. Mr. Blair's "Yes, Minister" nanny state scorns free speech. True, some of the contrarian organizations on the blacklist are no great loss to science because they are run by registered lobbyists. But their reluctance to acknowledge climate change is no excuse for freezing out freedom of scientific inquiry.

The Royal Society must choose between its motto and using other people's purse strings to throttle dissent -- if the motto goes, it must abdicate its divine right to pontificate as well. If it persists in toying with censorship, it should be privatized for seeking to subjugate the Republic of Science to the words of its political masters.

If it wants to reinvent itself as a Green PR firm, fine -- let the private foundations pushing the UNEP foot the bill. Perhaps they can underwrite the hostile takeover of scientific independence by selling Royal Society Fellowships, just as New Labour does peerages, for payments in cash or political kind. But what about the clubhouse?

Lord May & Co.'s palatial premises overlooking St. James's Park should of course revert to the crown, whence the late Society's grace and favor so long flowed. Her Majesty's government may want to turn it into condos, like the former Royal Mint, as advertising firms already in the business of selling science would pay handsomely for such a prestigious address, and diehards bent on imposing technical literacy on Parliament (or Congress) can still be locked safely away in its commodious wine cellar. Few in government will notice their absence, because fashionable as talk of politicized science may be, it cannot fairly be said to exist until both sides have some inkling of what it is they are trying to politicize.

No one compelled Thomas Jefferson to swear "eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man." If the recent history of science has anything to teach, it is that there is no place in a free society for a self-appointed Central Committee of Scientific Truth. Until the Royal Society comes to grips with the Enlightenment, its baroque motto deserves a rest.

ROYAL SOCIETY PRESIDENT LORD REES REPLIES

Russell Seitz's florid depiction of the Royal Society "Nullius in Verba,"  is entertaining but misleading in the extreme. It is ironic that he labors to portray us as an organization with scant regard for the evidence when he fails even to identify me as the current president. (Lord May was my predecessor.)

Contrary to his accusation, the Society has never sought to prevent the funding of scientific inquiry on climate change or any other area. In fact, the Society champions and promotes academic freedom. It funds some of the United Kingdom's best scientists on the basis of their excellence and does not place any conditions on their research that would in any way compromise their independence.

The Royal Society has never asked Exxon to stop funding any organizations. At a meeting, instigated by Exxon, the Society pointed out that the company was funding a number of groups that have been misinforming the public about the scientific evidence on climate change. The company freely made a pledge to stop this funding, and the letter Mr. Seitz cites in his article followed up that assurance.

The Royal Society and 10 of the world's scientific academies, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, have spoken out on climate change in order to clarify where the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence lies. Let us be clear: This points to the need for urgent international action to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

Ensuring that science is properly represented is wholly in keeping with the Society's motto, "Nullius in Verba." This translates as "on the words of no one," an expression of commitment to empirical evidence as the basis of knowledge about the natural world. The debate about how to tackle climate change must be based on the science rather than misinformation propagated by lobby groups.

Martin Rees
President of the Royal Society

London

Russell Seitz comments:

I did not wish to make Rees a party to a controversy initiated by his predecessor ,  but regret I failed to catch the removal of  'past ' from in front of  'president '  at one point as the essay was edited down to Op-ed length by the WSJ.  I ought indeed to have followed the RS election cycle more diligently.

However, I note that Rees fails to identify himself as having presided over the departure of past  Manager For Policy Communications Ward from the Royal Society's employ to join ,of all things , a floridly Green ' lobby group.'