By Josh Blumenfeld
Extreme drought, low humidity and an abundance of fuel combined to create a 2002 wildfire season that wildfire historian Stephen Pyne has called "the equivalent of the perfect storm." Covering this story required, among other things, close cooperation between public information officers at the fire scene and the media.
Last November 14, the Center for Environmental Journalism brought together two public information officers and four journalists to describe their experiences during last summer's wildfire season as part of the CEJ's fall symposium. Speaking to about 30 journalism students, the panelists discussed the problems faced by public officials who have information and journalists trying to get this information - often under extremely stressful and rapidly changing conditions.
"Safety is the top priority," said Justin Dombrowski, wildland fire management officer for the City of Boulder Fire Department. "This can result in a lack of access to a fireline or a lack of timely information due to rapidly changing or unexpected environmental conditions." Dombrowski noted that the PIO has two, sometimes conflicting, duties when dealing with the media during a wildfire: providing timely information and access while at the same time ensuring the safety of the journalists along the fireline.
Pam Gardner, assistant director of public government affairs for the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region, agreed with Dombrowski. She noted that while a good PIO is sensitive to news deadlines, a fire is not. This requires flexibility by the media. While Gardner realizes that this is difficult while under a tight deadline, it is necessary for safety along the fireline.
To foster better communication during wildfires, the U.S. Forest Service adopted the Incident Command System in the 1970s, which established a standardized chain of command during a wildfire. The incident commander has the final say about all fire fighting decisions. The information officer is near the top of the command structure and answers to the incident commander.
During a wildfire, the information officer is responsible for much more than media relations. According to Gardner, the PIO also is responsible for internal communication for firefighters and the command staff; conducting community relations and meetings; dealing with elected officials and handling governmental relations; supervising and organizing staff, supplies and documents; and dealing with accidents, incidents and fatalities along the fireline. Understanding that giving information to the media is only one of the PIO's responsibilities will help the media get their story, Gardner and Dombrowski said.
Still, Gardner said, the number one rule of the PIO is that "the media will always get there before you do."
Representing the media on the panel were Alex Stone and Cory Lopez, radio reporters with Denver's 850 KOA, Robert Weller of the Associated Press and photojournalist and CU adjunct professor Kevin Moloney. All four have extensive experience covering wildfires.
Stone and Lopez both completed a 32-hour wildland firefighting training course and received a "red card." The card, along with special protective equipment, allows them onto the front lines of a wildfire. Both Stone and Lopez noted their frustrations getting access to the firelines, especially when dealing with local sheriff's officials. Addressing Dombrowski and Gardner directly, Lopez said, "Let us help you get the story out."
Bob Weller spent last summer covering the Hayman Fire and the Big Elk Fire, among others. To Weller, the biggest problems in covering a wildfire are editors (especially editors in the East who don't understand Western wildfires and the distances involved), cell phone reception and the people in charge of controlling access to the fireline.
"It's a hell of a lot of fun to go inside the fireline," Weller said. "But it can be a big waste of time."
Weller's biggest piece of advice to reporters covering a wildfire is to watch what you say and where you say it.
"You might have just gotten a great story," he said. "But don't go into a bar and brag about it when there are folks who have just lost all they had."
Photojournalist Kevin Moloney covered last summer's wildfire season for the New York Times. The nature of his work added additional challenges to his reporting.
"A photojournalist MUST be on the scene," Moloney said. "The only picture the editor wants is that big, flaming tree with firefighters in front hacking away with axes."
The flames are not the only dangerous part of a wildfire, according to Moloney. Many of the individuals on the scene are curious, nervous, high-adrenaline people who all want to be in the center of the action.
"You take all these type-A's and put them together, things are going to get a little tense," Moloney said. "Sometimes I think they should just slurry-bomb Valium onto the site."
Whether this summer's fire season will be as active as last summer's is unclear. What is clear, though, is that through better communication between PIOs and the media, a better understanding of the process of fighting a fire and, above all, patience, the story of the fire will get out.
Josh Blumenfeld is a Master's student in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Sunday, June 1, 2003
Former Scripps Fellows help expose the truth behind Lynxgate
By Josh Blumenfeld
Former Ted Scripps Fellows Dan Glick and Paul Tolme helped expose the truth behind one of the biggest environmental stories of 2002: Lynxgate.
You don't remember Lynxgate? Here's a quick summary.
According to The Washington Times, which broke the story just before Christmas 2001, wildlife biologists in Washington state allegedly planted clumps of Canadian lynx fur in the Gifford Pinchot and Wenatchee national forests to make it appear that this threatened species resided in these areas. The intent of the scientists, said the Times, was the closure of these forests to logging and recreation under the Endangered Species Act.
The problem was, the story just wasn't true.
"The great irony was that many journalists cited Lynxgate as scientists manipulating data, when it was really journalists manipulating facts for their stories," Tolme said.
In an article published in the May/June 2002 edition of Extra, the magazine of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, Tolme showed how this inaccurate story was used by right-wing media as a tool to attack environmentalists and the Endangered Species Act. Tolme followed the story as it jumped from the Times to more mainstream media, including the Associated Press, the Rocky Mountain News and the Wall Street Journal.
After reading the first round of stories, Tolme began investigating the story as a freelancer for Newsweek.
"I saw that the players involved had an anti-endangered species agenda," Tolme said. "This raised my radar."
While Tolme was investigating the story, Outside magazine had contacted Dan Glick about writing a Lynxgate story. According to Glick, Outside believed the Times story and wanted Glick to find out why the scientists had faked the data.
"I looked at the people going after the environmentalists and I knew it was all the usual characters," Glick said.
Glick's article, "Debunking Lynxgate," appeared in the April 2002 issue of Outside.
The work by Tolme, Glick, Ted Williams in Audubon magazine, Lynda Mapes of the Seattle Times and others, revealed the truth about Lynxgate.
The lab used to verify lynx hair had made mistakes in the past, said scientists involved in the lynx study. To check the accuracy of the lab, the scientists submitted several control samples in 1999 and 2000, including hair from captive lynx and hairs plucked from a stuffed bobcat named "Harry." Unfortunately, the national lynx study doesn't authorize using control samples, and the scientists were disciplined and removed from the study.
The story would have ended there had someone not tipped off The Washington Times in mid-December 2001 about the incident. The Times interpretation was one of activist environmentalists using the Endangered Species Act as a tool to prevent access to Washington state forests. From there, the story gathered momentum as industry groups and conservative lawmakers used the story to attack endangered species policies and environmentalists.
As Glick wrote in his Outside article, ". . . the bigger picture here should give pause to anyone concerned over how easily politics trumps science inside the Beltway."
Thanks to the work by former Scripps Fellows Glick and Tolme, along with their colleagues who also were willing to dig for the truth, Lynxgate has faded into obscurity. However, the next Lynxgate may be right around the corner.
"You're always appalled at how the bad reporting sticks," Tolme said.
Josh Blumenfeld is a Master's student in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Former Ted Scripps Fellows Dan Glick and Paul Tolme helped expose the truth behind one of the biggest environmental stories of 2002: Lynxgate.
You don't remember Lynxgate? Here's a quick summary.
According to The Washington Times, which broke the story just before Christmas 2001, wildlife biologists in Washington state allegedly planted clumps of Canadian lynx fur in the Gifford Pinchot and Wenatchee national forests to make it appear that this threatened species resided in these areas. The intent of the scientists, said the Times, was the closure of these forests to logging and recreation under the Endangered Species Act.
The problem was, the story just wasn't true.
"The great irony was that many journalists cited Lynxgate as scientists manipulating data, when it was really journalists manipulating facts for their stories," Tolme said.
In an article published in the May/June 2002 edition of Extra, the magazine of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, Tolme showed how this inaccurate story was used by right-wing media as a tool to attack environmentalists and the Endangered Species Act. Tolme followed the story as it jumped from the Times to more mainstream media, including the Associated Press, the Rocky Mountain News and the Wall Street Journal.
After reading the first round of stories, Tolme began investigating the story as a freelancer for Newsweek.
"I saw that the players involved had an anti-endangered species agenda," Tolme said. "This raised my radar."
While Tolme was investigating the story, Outside magazine had contacted Dan Glick about writing a Lynxgate story. According to Glick, Outside believed the Times story and wanted Glick to find out why the scientists had faked the data.
"I looked at the people going after the environmentalists and I knew it was all the usual characters," Glick said.
Glick's article, "Debunking Lynxgate," appeared in the April 2002 issue of Outside.
The work by Tolme, Glick, Ted Williams in Audubon magazine, Lynda Mapes of the Seattle Times and others, revealed the truth about Lynxgate.
The lab used to verify lynx hair had made mistakes in the past, said scientists involved in the lynx study. To check the accuracy of the lab, the scientists submitted several control samples in 1999 and 2000, including hair from captive lynx and hairs plucked from a stuffed bobcat named "Harry." Unfortunately, the national lynx study doesn't authorize using control samples, and the scientists were disciplined and removed from the study.
The story would have ended there had someone not tipped off The Washington Times in mid-December 2001 about the incident. The Times interpretation was one of activist environmentalists using the Endangered Species Act as a tool to prevent access to Washington state forests. From there, the story gathered momentum as industry groups and conservative lawmakers used the story to attack endangered species policies and environmentalists.
As Glick wrote in his Outside article, ". . . the bigger picture here should give pause to anyone concerned over how easily politics trumps science inside the Beltway."
Thanks to the work by former Scripps Fellows Glick and Tolme, along with their colleagues who also were willing to dig for the truth, Lynxgate has faded into obscurity. However, the next Lynxgate may be right around the corner.
"You're always appalled at how the bad reporting sticks," Tolme said.
Josh Blumenfeld is a Master's student in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Five New Fellows selected for Ted Scripps Program
By Wendy Redal
The Center for Environmental Journalism will welcome five new Ted Scripps Fellows this summer. The Fellows were selected from among a talented pool of national applicants. Their backgrounds are in print, radio and TV broadcasting and multimedia, and they hail from across the country. The five will arrive in Boulder in August to commence a year of study at the University of Colorado, enhanced by the regular seminars and field trips that are a hallmark of the Fellowship program.
The new Fellows include Eric Frankowski , assistant city editor at the Longmont, Colo. Daily Times-Call; Alex Markels, a freelance journalist and former Wall Street News reporter who covers a wide array of topics for many major national publications from his home in Minturn, Colo.; Kim McGuire, environment reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Vicki Monks, a multi-media freelancer from Santa Fe, N.M., who works as a writer, reporter, photographer and radio and TV producer on global environment topics; and Jeff Young, news bureau chief at West Virginia Public Broadcasting in Charleston, W. Va.
This is the seventh class of Fellows hosted by the University of Colorado-based program. The Ted Scripps Fellowships are funded by a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation.
The Center for Environmental Journalism will welcome five new Ted Scripps Fellows this summer. The Fellows were selected from among a talented pool of national applicants. Their backgrounds are in print, radio and TV broadcasting and multimedia, and they hail from across the country. The five will arrive in Boulder in August to commence a year of study at the University of Colorado, enhanced by the regular seminars and field trips that are a hallmark of the Fellowship program.
The new Fellows include Eric Frankowski , assistant city editor at the Longmont, Colo. Daily Times-Call; Alex Markels, a freelance journalist and former Wall Street News reporter who covers a wide array of topics for many major national publications from his home in Minturn, Colo.; Kim McGuire, environment reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Vicki Monks, a multi-media freelancer from Santa Fe, N.M., who works as a writer, reporter, photographer and radio and TV producer on global environment topics; and Jeff Young, news bureau chief at West Virginia Public Broadcasting in Charleston, W. Va.
This is the seventh class of Fellows hosted by the University of Colorado-based program. The Ted Scripps Fellowships are funded by a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation.
25 Journalists to Attend Institute on the Environment
By Wendy Redal
The fourth annual Scripps Howard Institute on the Environment kicks off in Boulder, Colo., May 12 giving 25 journalists from across the United States a chance to learn about a range of environmental issues. Participants will hear from a slate of scientists, scholars and policy analysts during the intensive six-day conference hosted by the CU's Center for Environmental Journalism.
Seminars and field trips will examine a different subject each day, including politics and energy, public lands management, drought, climate change, environmental toxins and environmental impacts of global trade. Journalists will visit the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's wind technology site, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Rocky Mountain National Park.
They will also have a hands-on workshop to acquaint them with the latest online databases for environmental research.
New to this year's topic line-up are sessions on nuclear energy and waste, and a look at the environmental effects of biofarming and genetically engineered crops.
The fourth annual Scripps Howard Institute on the Environment kicks off in Boulder, Colo., May 12 giving 25 journalists from across the United States a chance to learn about a range of environmental issues. Participants will hear from a slate of scientists, scholars and policy analysts during the intensive six-day conference hosted by the CU's Center for Environmental Journalism.
Seminars and field trips will examine a different subject each day, including politics and energy, public lands management, drought, climate change, environmental toxins and environmental impacts of global trade. Journalists will visit the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's wind technology site, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Rocky Mountain National Park.
They will also have a hands-on workshop to acquaint them with the latest online databases for environmental research.
New to this year's topic line-up are sessions on nuclear energy and waste, and a look at the environmental effects of biofarming and genetically engineered crops.
Origins: Yulsman's new book explores the universe and our place within it
By Wendy Worrall Redal
(For an excerpt from Origins visit Tom's Web site.)
Tom Yulsman was raised in Brooklyn, but his soul is most at home in the wild landscapes of the Utah desert. Here, camped in the quiet amid red sand and rippled rock, the Milky Way smeared across the night sky, Yulsman has pondered ultimate questions about the Earth, the universe and humanity's meaning within the cosmos.
He imagines the same sorts of questions must have preoccupied the Barrier Creek Indians who visited Utah's Horseshoe Canyon 4,000 years ago, the artists behind a line of huge petroglyphs inscribed into a stone wall, the figures human-like but clearly supernatural beings. Did these ancient ancestors also feel a connection to a world beyond their everyday lives in this place, as Yulsman has?
One thing is certain: humans now know an enormous amount about the universe in which we occupy a tiny space. How the universe came to be and where we fit within it is the story Yulsman unfolds in his book, Origins: The Quest for our Cosmic Roots. Published by the Institute of Physics, the volume will be available in bookstores this spring.
Yulsman, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism and an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been a career science writer. Formerly the editor of Earth magazine, he has written about "every scientific topic under the sun - the AIDS virus, geology, climate, environmental issues," and with each new subject, his interest in the natural world has grown.
"My fascination just kept expanding into bigger and bigger realms of nature," Yulsman recounts, explaining how he went from writing about Earth-based phenomena to studying the cosmos. He began working on Origins in 1996, when astronomy and astrobiology were intimidating fields he knew little about.
Origins is intended for general readers, whom Yulsman seeks to "infect with the same fascination with nature" that drove his research. The book is for "anyone who's ever looked up at the night sky on a clear night and had those thoughts…'Where did this all come from?'" He hopes his book will strike a chord with the kind of readers who bought Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time but found the material difficult. "That includes me," Yulsman acknowledges. He set out to write a book that would grapple with the same subject matter but in a much more accessible manner.
Yulsman's artful prose and narrative style make it easier for the curious layperson to gain an understanding of some of the most complex physical aspects of the universe's emergence and structure. He uses metaphor and analogy to make concepts approachable.
He also peppers the book liberally with fascinating people: scientists at work, immersed in research and debate. Origins' characters are not just planets, galaxies, quarks and neutrons, but mathematicians, physicists, cosmologists, astro-chemists, theoreticians of astronomy, geologists, even meteor hunters, all engaged in an effort to unravel answers to really big questions: "How could the universe have exploded from nothing? What put the dynamite in the Big Bang? How did galaxies come to be? How do solar systems form? And, perhaps most intriguing of all, how did Earth become an oasis of life - one that has produced a species intelligent enough to ask these questions?" Through visits and interviews with scientists engaged in cutting-edge research on these most profound issues, Yulsman shares with readers the amazing things we have learned.
He also reveals that knowledge doesn't descend in a vacuum. "We think that science happens in big NASA press conferences or in scientific journal articles," says Yulsman. Not the case. Rather, it is achieved through conversation, give and take, surprise epiphanies, testing and re-testing of theories. Yulsman tells one story about two scientists he accompanied to the Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii, engaged in a spirited debate about the Orion Nebula at 3 a.m. atop the volcano's rim. "That's where the real science happens," Yulsman points out -- there, in the exchange of ideas between a couple of guys in fleece jackets, not in sterile labs by science nerds in white coats.
It is this emphasis on the people involved in the quest to figure out the cosmos that sets Origins apart from other titles on similar subject matter, says Yulsman. Most books are written by scientists and tend to deal exclusively with the science, he explains. As a journalist, he is able to tell stories and use anecdotes to bring alive what can often be a very abstract set of ideas.
Yulsman's humanistic emphasis unites the materialism of cosmology with the rare -- perhaps unique -- place of people within the universe. "Why is it that Earth alone has sustained an incredible diversity of life?" Yulsman ponders within Origins' pages. "There aren't many books that put that together with cosmology," he contends, though he sees it as a logical linkage.
"I don't make a distinction,"says Yulsman, between the "environment" and the cosmos, "between Earth systems and these bigger systems Earth is a part of." Studying the universe is an outgrowth of studying the natural environment, in his view.
"My interest in environmental issues is part of my fascination with nature, to help people understand…their impact in this big scheme of the natural world." Ultimately, his mission as a journalist, and his goal with Origins, is to foster that understanding: "You must understand nature if you're going to come to any recognition of your place in it."
"Humans are not just a spark flying up from a campfire" in the cosmic realm, Yulsman has come to believe. After spending six years thinking about the immense scale of things in nature, he says he "realized that that's not an accurate picture."
"In a way," he contends, "biologists -- Darwinians -- have done us a disservice, telling us we're just another branch on the evolutionary tree, no more significant than the e-coli in our guts…It's pretty amazing, actually, what humans have done in understanding this sprawling cosmos. Humans are part and parcel of the biosphere…but they are a pretty darned amazing manifestation of it."
Reflecting on that marvel, Yulsman cites "legendary astrophysicist" Frank Shu, who has suggested that it would be a "tragedy of cosmic proportions" if all memory of Jane Austen, Shakespeare, all the cultural achievements of humankind, were to be lost, were human life to be extinguished.
The new thinking among many scientists, according to Yulsman, is that "the Star Trek vision of the universe may not be right: intelligent manifestations of biospheres may be really rare…In the end there's this humanist perspective that's surprising."
"How is it," Yulsman asks in Origins' preface, "that we humans, unlike any other species, as far as we know," can make the remarkable connections we have?
"Consider this," he continues. "According to cosmologist Joel Primack of the University of California, Santa Cruz, 60 orders of magnitude separate the size of the very tiniest thing that makes sense and the very biggest thing we know about, the universe. It turns out that we humans are more or less mid-way in size between these two extremes. And that is pretty much ideal for intelligence…From our vantage point in the center of the cosmic space scale, and with the intelligence that this may have made possible, we are ideally placed to understand the story of the cosmos and our place in it."
It is that story, by turns beautiful and mind-bending but always astonishing, which Yulsman's Origins tells.
Wendy Worrall Redal is the program coordinator for the CEJ and editor of Connections.
(For an excerpt from Origins visit Tom's Web site.)
Tom Yulsman was raised in Brooklyn, but his soul is most at home in the wild landscapes of the Utah desert. Here, camped in the quiet amid red sand and rippled rock, the Milky Way smeared across the night sky, Yulsman has pondered ultimate questions about the Earth, the universe and humanity's meaning within the cosmos.
He imagines the same sorts of questions must have preoccupied the Barrier Creek Indians who visited Utah's Horseshoe Canyon 4,000 years ago, the artists behind a line of huge petroglyphs inscribed into a stone wall, the figures human-like but clearly supernatural beings. Did these ancient ancestors also feel a connection to a world beyond their everyday lives in this place, as Yulsman has?
One thing is certain: humans now know an enormous amount about the universe in which we occupy a tiny space. How the universe came to be and where we fit within it is the story Yulsman unfolds in his book, Origins: The Quest for our Cosmic Roots. Published by the Institute of Physics, the volume will be available in bookstores this spring.Yulsman, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism and an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been a career science writer. Formerly the editor of Earth magazine, he has written about "every scientific topic under the sun - the AIDS virus, geology, climate, environmental issues," and with each new subject, his interest in the natural world has grown.
"My fascination just kept expanding into bigger and bigger realms of nature," Yulsman recounts, explaining how he went from writing about Earth-based phenomena to studying the cosmos. He began working on Origins in 1996, when astronomy and astrobiology were intimidating fields he knew little about.
Origins is intended for general readers, whom Yulsman seeks to "infect with the same fascination with nature" that drove his research. The book is for "anyone who's ever looked up at the night sky on a clear night and had those thoughts…'Where did this all come from?'" He hopes his book will strike a chord with the kind of readers who bought Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time but found the material difficult. "That includes me," Yulsman acknowledges. He set out to write a book that would grapple with the same subject matter but in a much more accessible manner.
Yulsman's artful prose and narrative style make it easier for the curious layperson to gain an understanding of some of the most complex physical aspects of the universe's emergence and structure. He uses metaphor and analogy to make concepts approachable.
He also peppers the book liberally with fascinating people: scientists at work, immersed in research and debate. Origins' characters are not just planets, galaxies, quarks and neutrons, but mathematicians, physicists, cosmologists, astro-chemists, theoreticians of astronomy, geologists, even meteor hunters, all engaged in an effort to unravel answers to really big questions: "How could the universe have exploded from nothing? What put the dynamite in the Big Bang? How did galaxies come to be? How do solar systems form? And, perhaps most intriguing of all, how did Earth become an oasis of life - one that has produced a species intelligent enough to ask these questions?" Through visits and interviews with scientists engaged in cutting-edge research on these most profound issues, Yulsman shares with readers the amazing things we have learned.
He also reveals that knowledge doesn't descend in a vacuum. "We think that science happens in big NASA press conferences or in scientific journal articles," says Yulsman. Not the case. Rather, it is achieved through conversation, give and take, surprise epiphanies, testing and re-testing of theories. Yulsman tells one story about two scientists he accompanied to the Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii, engaged in a spirited debate about the Orion Nebula at 3 a.m. atop the volcano's rim. "That's where the real science happens," Yulsman points out -- there, in the exchange of ideas between a couple of guys in fleece jackets, not in sterile labs by science nerds in white coats.
It is this emphasis on the people involved in the quest to figure out the cosmos that sets Origins apart from other titles on similar subject matter, says Yulsman. Most books are written by scientists and tend to deal exclusively with the science, he explains. As a journalist, he is able to tell stories and use anecdotes to bring alive what can often be a very abstract set of ideas.
Yulsman's humanistic emphasis unites the materialism of cosmology with the rare -- perhaps unique -- place of people within the universe. "Why is it that Earth alone has sustained an incredible diversity of life?" Yulsman ponders within Origins' pages. "There aren't many books that put that together with cosmology," he contends, though he sees it as a logical linkage.
"I don't make a distinction,"says Yulsman, between the "environment" and the cosmos, "between Earth systems and these bigger systems Earth is a part of." Studying the universe is an outgrowth of studying the natural environment, in his view.
"My interest in environmental issues is part of my fascination with nature, to help people understand…their impact in this big scheme of the natural world." Ultimately, his mission as a journalist, and his goal with Origins, is to foster that understanding: "You must understand nature if you're going to come to any recognition of your place in it."
"Humans are not just a spark flying up from a campfire" in the cosmic realm, Yulsman has come to believe. After spending six years thinking about the immense scale of things in nature, he says he "realized that that's not an accurate picture."
"In a way," he contends, "biologists -- Darwinians -- have done us a disservice, telling us we're just another branch on the evolutionary tree, no more significant than the e-coli in our guts…It's pretty amazing, actually, what humans have done in understanding this sprawling cosmos. Humans are part and parcel of the biosphere…but they are a pretty darned amazing manifestation of it."
Reflecting on that marvel, Yulsman cites "legendary astrophysicist" Frank Shu, who has suggested that it would be a "tragedy of cosmic proportions" if all memory of Jane Austen, Shakespeare, all the cultural achievements of humankind, were to be lost, were human life to be extinguished.
The new thinking among many scientists, according to Yulsman, is that "the Star Trek vision of the universe may not be right: intelligent manifestations of biospheres may be really rare…In the end there's this humanist perspective that's surprising."
"How is it," Yulsman asks in Origins' preface, "that we humans, unlike any other species, as far as we know," can make the remarkable connections we have?
"Consider this," he continues. "According to cosmologist Joel Primack of the University of California, Santa Cruz, 60 orders of magnitude separate the size of the very tiniest thing that makes sense and the very biggest thing we know about, the universe. It turns out that we humans are more or less mid-way in size between these two extremes. And that is pretty much ideal for intelligence…From our vantage point in the center of the cosmic space scale, and with the intelligence that this may have made possible, we are ideally placed to understand the story of the cosmos and our place in it."
It is that story, by turns beautiful and mind-bending but always astonishing, which Yulsman's Origins tells.
Wendy Worrall Redal is the program coordinator for the CEJ and editor of Connections.
Monkey Dancing: a Ted Scripps Fellow's incredible journey
By Wendy Worrall Redal
When former Newsweek correspondent Daniel Glick embarked on aTed Scripps Fellowship in 2000, he didn't expect that a year later he would be dodging pythons in a river in Borneo or tracking Javan rhinos in the Vietnam jungle or plucking leeches off his calves on muddy trekking paths in the Himalayas.
He certainly didn't expect to be pursuing such adventures as a solo dad with his 9-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son in tow. But then he didn't foresee several events that the year would hold, transitions that upended his life and ultimately launched what Glick calls an "epic road trip" around the world with his kids.
During his fellowship year, Glick's brother died of cancer and his wife of 15 years left him to pursue a relationship with a woman in another state, leaving him alone with their children. Emotionally shattered, he contemplated the benefits of an extended global journey to put things into perspective and begin the healing process.
Struggling to deal with his grief, as well as a new sense of how unpredictable and short life may be, Glick decided to take his children to see some of the world's most threatened natural wonders. "Before they're gone" became the theme of the proposed trip: before the kids grew up and left home; before these ecological treasures were merely memories in the wake of human destruction; before life itself might suddenly be taken, as it had been for Glick's brother, Bob, at 48 years of age.
Friends thought he was crazy when he told them of his plans: hauling two kids, by himself, to some of the most remote corners of the Earth for six months? But Glick, who has lived on four continents and traveled extensively in places like Pakistan and Siberia, was not daunted. He had always found solace and renewal in vagabonding, and this trip would prove no exception.
In July 2001, Glick set off with son Kolya and daughter Zoe on a flight across the Pacific. They eased into the rhythms of travel with a camper van trip down Australia's east coast before venturing to Indonesia and Cambodia, arcing across Southeast Asia and home via Europe. Glick's account of their adventures and his own inner journey from despair to hope turned into his new book: Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth, and will be published in June by Public Affairs.
The memoir's title recalls a moment the three shared on an island in the northern Australia wilderness, three weeks into the trip. Feeling the strain of their ordeal lifting, they cavorted on the beach in a wild "monkey dance," a moment in which Glick says he knew their "psychic convalescence" had begun. But the months ahead would hold as much challenge as consolation, as the trio endured heat, humidity, bugs, rugged overland travel and breakdowns of both vehicles and tempers.
Monkey Dancing is a captivating, moving and humorous narrative, full of reflection and insight about human relationships, with each other and with the planet. Though the book is highly entertaining, it is also a stark tale of the grim conditions facing several of the Earth's most spectacular ecosystems. Glick, who has covered the environment extensively during his career, weaves solid reporting among personal anecdotes for a tale that is as much about our wider connections with the natural world as our connections with our fellow humans.
Glick says he became very interested in conservation biology as a Scripps Fellow, and it was his growing awareness of international environmental issues that prompted him to think about the value of a trip like this one for his children. He had not committed himself to a book about their experiences prior to the trip, but the idea for one was incubating as he made the preparations. He set a general itinerary and lined up interviews with biologists and ecologists in the destinations they planned to visit.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef was high on his list. Glick had learned that 40 percent of the world's coral reefs are gone. As a father with a passion for nature, he wanted his kids to float among the technicolor fish and flora submerged beneath a turquoise ocean. As a journalist, he saw a story in the fact that even here, in a developed country where the environment is relatively protected, this reef is still gravely threatened. It wasn't inconceivable that the remaining coral reefs could disappear in his children's lifetimes.
He also chose places with "charismatic megafauna" that would appeal to his kids: orangutans in Borneo, rhinoceroses in Vietnam and Nepal, and the tigers of the Nepalese lowland plains. Those species, however, are on the verge of extinction, a fact apparent in how difficult it was to locate these animals.
"In Vietnam we were probably witnessing the extinction of a species in the wild, probably in real time," Glick reflects. "There were maybe four living members of the species - of a large mammal - it was really striking. As the bumper sticker says, 'Extinct is forever.'"
Glick says he was impacted by "how profoundly humans continue to conduct an uncontrolled experiment on an otherwise beautiful planet. Every place we went there were huge environmental issues overlaid by the global issues of climate change, rising sea levels, ozone depletion…Humans have become a force of nature."
Such a realization was brought vividly home for Glick many times during the trip. "Witnessing the gold mining in Borneo was one of the most depressing sights," he recalls. "It was so rampant, so obviously destructive." It became clear to him that we must be "bound together not as nations but as members of the planet as never before."
His observations were not without encouragement and hope. He cites Nepal's community forest program, which has helped to stabilize the tiger population and increase the number of rhinos. Though the program, visitors can ride elephants through the jungle in search of wildlife, a highlight of the trip for Kolya and Zoe. They also saw neighboring health clinics that were built with tourist dollars. "Ecotourism, when done right, can combine economic gain and preservation of the environment," Glick says.
Glick is certain his kids have been altered by their experiences abroad. "Do I still find unrecycled bottles in Kolya's garbage can? You bet. But does Zoe talk about the cassowary [a rare, giant Australian bird] to people with great pride? Does Kolya have a greater sense of environmental politics? You bet. I don't have any doubt that the trip had an incredible impact."
It's not every kid that gets a first-hand look at the Earth's vanishing wild places, though. How do we enlighten a new generation of young people? Glick ponders the question. "I don't know. I wish I did. Education, I guess." He hopes that his book - and his life's endeavors as a journalist - will be an effective part of that effort.
Dan Glick is also the author of Powder Burn: Arson, Money and Mystery on Vail Mountain. He worked for Newsweek for more than 12 years as a Washington correspondent and special correspondent in the Rocky Mountain West. He has written for magazines including Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Washington Post Magazine, The New York Times Magazine and Men's Journal. He lives with his two children in Lafayette, Colo. For more about Monkey Dancing and Glick's work, visit his web site.
Wendy Worrall Redal is the program coordinator for the CEJ and editor of Connections.
When former Newsweek correspondent Daniel Glick embarked on aTed Scripps Fellowship in 2000, he didn't expect that a year later he would be dodging pythons in a river in Borneo or tracking Javan rhinos in the Vietnam jungle or plucking leeches off his calves on muddy trekking paths in the Himalayas.
He certainly didn't expect to be pursuing such adventures as a solo dad with his 9-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son in tow. But then he didn't foresee several events that the year would hold, transitions that upended his life and ultimately launched what Glick calls an "epic road trip" around the world with his kids.
During his fellowship year, Glick's brother died of cancer and his wife of 15 years left him to pursue a relationship with a woman in another state, leaving him alone with their children. Emotionally shattered, he contemplated the benefits of an extended global journey to put things into perspective and begin the healing process.
Struggling to deal with his grief, as well as a new sense of how unpredictable and short life may be, Glick decided to take his children to see some of the world's most threatened natural wonders. "Before they're gone" became the theme of the proposed trip: before the kids grew up and left home; before these ecological treasures were merely memories in the wake of human destruction; before life itself might suddenly be taken, as it had been for Glick's brother, Bob, at 48 years of age.
Friends thought he was crazy when he told them of his plans: hauling two kids, by himself, to some of the most remote corners of the Earth for six months? But Glick, who has lived on four continents and traveled extensively in places like Pakistan and Siberia, was not daunted. He had always found solace and renewal in vagabonding, and this trip would prove no exception.
In July 2001, Glick set off with son Kolya and daughter Zoe on a flight across the Pacific. They eased into the rhythms of travel with a camper van trip down Australia's east coast before venturing to Indonesia and Cambodia, arcing across Southeast Asia and home via Europe. Glick's account of their adventures and his own inner journey from despair to hope turned into his new book: Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth, and will be published in June by Public Affairs.
The memoir's title recalls a moment the three shared on an island in the northern Australia wilderness, three weeks into the trip. Feeling the strain of their ordeal lifting, they cavorted on the beach in a wild "monkey dance," a moment in which Glick says he knew their "psychic convalescence" had begun. But the months ahead would hold as much challenge as consolation, as the trio endured heat, humidity, bugs, rugged overland travel and breakdowns of both vehicles and tempers.Monkey Dancing is a captivating, moving and humorous narrative, full of reflection and insight about human relationships, with each other and with the planet. Though the book is highly entertaining, it is also a stark tale of the grim conditions facing several of the Earth's most spectacular ecosystems. Glick, who has covered the environment extensively during his career, weaves solid reporting among personal anecdotes for a tale that is as much about our wider connections with the natural world as our connections with our fellow humans.
Glick says he became very interested in conservation biology as a Scripps Fellow, and it was his growing awareness of international environmental issues that prompted him to think about the value of a trip like this one for his children. He had not committed himself to a book about their experiences prior to the trip, but the idea for one was incubating as he made the preparations. He set a general itinerary and lined up interviews with biologists and ecologists in the destinations they planned to visit.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef was high on his list. Glick had learned that 40 percent of the world's coral reefs are gone. As a father with a passion for nature, he wanted his kids to float among the technicolor fish and flora submerged beneath a turquoise ocean. As a journalist, he saw a story in the fact that even here, in a developed country where the environment is relatively protected, this reef is still gravely threatened. It wasn't inconceivable that the remaining coral reefs could disappear in his children's lifetimes.
He also chose places with "charismatic megafauna" that would appeal to his kids: orangutans in Borneo, rhinoceroses in Vietnam and Nepal, and the tigers of the Nepalese lowland plains. Those species, however, are on the verge of extinction, a fact apparent in how difficult it was to locate these animals.
"In Vietnam we were probably witnessing the extinction of a species in the wild, probably in real time," Glick reflects. "There were maybe four living members of the species - of a large mammal - it was really striking. As the bumper sticker says, 'Extinct is forever.'"
Glick says he was impacted by "how profoundly humans continue to conduct an uncontrolled experiment on an otherwise beautiful planet. Every place we went there were huge environmental issues overlaid by the global issues of climate change, rising sea levels, ozone depletion…Humans have become a force of nature."
Such a realization was brought vividly home for Glick many times during the trip. "Witnessing the gold mining in Borneo was one of the most depressing sights," he recalls. "It was so rampant, so obviously destructive." It became clear to him that we must be "bound together not as nations but as members of the planet as never before."
His observations were not without encouragement and hope. He cites Nepal's community forest program, which has helped to stabilize the tiger population and increase the number of rhinos. Though the program, visitors can ride elephants through the jungle in search of wildlife, a highlight of the trip for Kolya and Zoe. They also saw neighboring health clinics that were built with tourist dollars. "Ecotourism, when done right, can combine economic gain and preservation of the environment," Glick says.
Glick is certain his kids have been altered by their experiences abroad. "Do I still find unrecycled bottles in Kolya's garbage can? You bet. But does Zoe talk about the cassowary [a rare, giant Australian bird] to people with great pride? Does Kolya have a greater sense of environmental politics? You bet. I don't have any doubt that the trip had an incredible impact."
It's not every kid that gets a first-hand look at the Earth's vanishing wild places, though. How do we enlighten a new generation of young people? Glick ponders the question. "I don't know. I wish I did. Education, I guess." He hopes that his book - and his life's endeavors as a journalist - will be an effective part of that effort.
Dan Glick is also the author of Powder Burn: Arson, Money and Mystery on Vail Mountain. He worked for Newsweek for more than 12 years as a Washington correspondent and special correspondent in the Rocky Mountain West. He has written for magazines including Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Washington Post Magazine, The New York Times Magazine and Men's Journal. He lives with his two children in Lafayette, Colo. For more about Monkey Dancing and Glick's work, visit his web site.
Wendy Worrall Redal is the program coordinator for the CEJ and editor of Connections.
New edition of Ackland's book available
The recent paperback edition of Len Ackland's Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West, published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2002, picks up where the hardcover edition left off in 1999.Readers learn more about a recent study of workers poisoned at the Rocky Flats nuclear bomb factory located 16 miles from Denver, said Ackland, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism. They learn that the 10-square-mile site where the factory buildings sat is going to become a national wildlife refuge, despite continuing controversy about the cleanup levels for radiological and other toxic waste at the facility. And they recognize that the most enduring and potentially devastating legacy of Rocky Flats resides in the nuclear weapons that were manufactured there and still exist in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The history of Rocky Flats is a case study of this country's nuclear weapons enterprise, and the lessons that emerge from this history remain to be learned. Making a Real Killing should be read by anyone concerned about the Bush administration's threat, in its national strategy statements, to use nuclear weapons even as it decries their possible possession by Iraq, North Korea and other nations. The Cold War has ended, but the Nuclear Age is far from over.
Cohousing communities: a growing trend in communal living
By Josh Blumenfeld
Nestled off Baseline Road in the town of Lafayette in Boulder County, Colo., forty-two homes are clustered on 43 acres in what is called a cohousing community, a movement that traces its roots to Denmark and arrived in the United States in the 1980s.
"It's a way of living in a community that's a cross between a 1960s commune and a 1990s townhouse," said Dan Glick, a former Scripps Fellow who, along with his two children, lives in the Nyland community in Lafayette. "We own our own houses and collectively share common areas."
The cohousing movement began in Denmark in the late 1960s. Today, there are cohousing communities around the world. According to Glick, Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett are credited with popularizing the movement in the United States in the 1980s.
According to the Cohousing Community Web site, as of February 2003 there were 151 cohousing communities in existence or being planned across the United States. There are 12 cohousing communities in Colorado, four of which are in Boulder County.
A principal feature of a cohousing community is the common house, where group meals are served and community gatherings take place. Individual homes have their own kitchens, and community meals usually are served two to four times a week. Residents share work responsibilities and cooking duties.
The cohousing community is designed to foster a close sense of community. Houses are generally clustered together and face one another. Parking areas also are designed to bring neighbors together. "You park in an outlying parking lot and walk along a pedestrian way to your home," Glick said.
Getting into a cohousing community is not as simple as buying a home in a community. According to the Cohousing Community website, a potential resident usually must attend orientation sessions about the community and community meetings. If accepted, the potential resident then makes an "equity investment" in the community, which can range from a few thousand dollars to up to 15 percent of the final cost of the potential resident's home.
In the United States, most cohousing communities are structured as condominiums or planned unit developments. Common land is jointly owned, while individual residents have sole ownership on their home lots. Because of the joint owned features, a home in a cohousing community may be more expensive than a comparable home in a standard neighborhood.
Boulder residents will have ample opportunity to find out more about cohousing communities at the 2003 National Cohousing Conference, which will be held in Boulder June 19 through 22 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The conference will feature tours of local cohousing communities, speakers and various breakout sessions. For more information or to register for the conference, visit the Cohousing Network Web site.
CEJ Webmaster Josh Blumenfeld will be serving as a general assignment reporter with the Durango (Colo.) Herald daily newspaper this summer as a Colorado Press Association intern.
Nestled off Baseline Road in the town of Lafayette in Boulder County, Colo., forty-two homes are clustered on 43 acres in what is called a cohousing community, a movement that traces its roots to Denmark and arrived in the United States in the 1980s.
"It's a way of living in a community that's a cross between a 1960s commune and a 1990s townhouse," said Dan Glick, a former Scripps Fellow who, along with his two children, lives in the Nyland community in Lafayette. "We own our own houses and collectively share common areas."
The cohousing movement began in Denmark in the late 1960s. Today, there are cohousing communities around the world. According to Glick, Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett are credited with popularizing the movement in the United States in the 1980s.
According to the Cohousing Community Web site, as of February 2003 there were 151 cohousing communities in existence or being planned across the United States. There are 12 cohousing communities in Colorado, four of which are in Boulder County.
A principal feature of a cohousing community is the common house, where group meals are served and community gatherings take place. Individual homes have their own kitchens, and community meals usually are served two to four times a week. Residents share work responsibilities and cooking duties.
The cohousing community is designed to foster a close sense of community. Houses are generally clustered together and face one another. Parking areas also are designed to bring neighbors together. "You park in an outlying parking lot and walk along a pedestrian way to your home," Glick said.
Getting into a cohousing community is not as simple as buying a home in a community. According to the Cohousing Community website, a potential resident usually must attend orientation sessions about the community and community meetings. If accepted, the potential resident then makes an "equity investment" in the community, which can range from a few thousand dollars to up to 15 percent of the final cost of the potential resident's home.
In the United States, most cohousing communities are structured as condominiums or planned unit developments. Common land is jointly owned, while individual residents have sole ownership on their home lots. Because of the joint owned features, a home in a cohousing community may be more expensive than a comparable home in a standard neighborhood.
Boulder residents will have ample opportunity to find out more about cohousing communities at the 2003 National Cohousing Conference, which will be held in Boulder June 19 through 22 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The conference will feature tours of local cohousing communities, speakers and various breakout sessions. For more information or to register for the conference, visit the Cohousing Network Web site.
CEJ Webmaster Josh Blumenfeld will be serving as a general assignment reporter with the Durango (Colo.) Herald daily newspaper this summer as a Colorado Press Association intern.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)