2 May 2009 | NewScientist | 5

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US SENATOR James Inhofe wants to have his carbon and eat it too.

Inhofe, a prominent climate-change denier, co-authored legislation last week to study the

impact of black carbon, or soot, on climate change and ways to reduce the emissions of the pollutant .

Nevertheless, he maintains that the bill in no way suggests he has reversed his stance on climate change. In fact, on the day the legislation was submitted, a scathing article written by Inhofe appeared in the conservative Washington Times . In it he attacked “the false notion that man-made greenhouse gases threaten our very existence”. Inhofe’s representatives say he backed the bill to tackle the health concerns relating to black carbon, which is emitted as soot from burning biomass, diesel and other fossil fuels.

But its impact on climate change is significant too. A study in 2008 found that soot is second only to CO

2 as an agent of global

warming. But soot washes out of the atmosphere in a matter of weeks after it is emitted, so reducing emissions could have an immediate effect on climate.

Soot sleight

EVEN the strongest levees and flood walls cannot be guaranteed to save New Orleans from another hurricane like Katrina, a panel of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) concludes.

The existing flood protection measures are designed to protect the city from the worst flood likely in 100 years. But the panel argues that this approach is not acceptable for densely populated cities. In such areas, failure of the levees,

however unexpected, would be catastrophic as the resulting flooding would hinder evacuation.

The panel says the New Orleans authorities should start a programme of voluntary relocation in some neighbourhoods. Hospitals and nursing homes should also be moved from flood-prone areas, as vulnerable patients from such institutions died during the Katrina evacuation.

If people refuse to move, buildings in endangered zones should be raised so their lowest floor sits above expected flood levels. This approach has already been adopted in some hurricane-prone coastal resorts.

Meanwhile, a court this week began hearing a lawsuit to decide whether the controversial Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, built by the US Army Corps of Engineers, exacerbated flooding during Katrina. In its report, the NAE panel suggests that it contributed at most a minor amount to storm surge and flood depths.

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Boost for biodiversityTo improve biodiversity, ministers of

the G8 and 11 other nations signed

the “Carta di Siracusa” at a meeting

in Sicily, Italy, last week. The

measures include being proactive

about helping natural and managed

ecosystems adapt to climate change,

fighting illegal logging and investing

in conservation.

Grim prospect for AsiaSouth-east Asia is highly vulnerable

to climate change, the Asia

Development Bank (ADB) warned

on 27 April. Vietnam, the Philippines,

Indonesia and Thailand will see

declines in rice production and loss of

coastal land due to rising sea levels,

causing their GDPs to fall by almost

7 per cent by the end of the century .

Hot rock disasterHopes of producing electricity

from the heat of subterranean rocks

have suffered a blow after the

explosive breach of a well in the

Cooper basin in South Australia on

24 April. The company operating

the well, Geodynamics, was thought

to be close to commercialising

the technology.

Far, far awayNASA’s Swift satellite has spotted

the most distant object yet seen –

a star that exploded 13.1 billion

light years from Earth. The burst,

named GRB 090423, detonated

just 640 million years after the big

bang, at the end of the cosmic “dark

ages” when the first stars and

galaxies formed.

Genome auctionWhole-genome sequencing is up for

grabs on eBay . The company Knome

of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has

set a starting price of $68,000 in an

auction that runs until 4 May. As New

Scientist went to press, no bids had

been placed. Proceeds will go to the

X Prize Foundation, which is offering

a prize to the first group to sequence

100 human genomes in 10 days at

less than $10,000 per genome.

–When the levees fail–

New Orleans at risk

Who benefits?

“The senator denies global warming, yet now supports legislation to reduce soot emissions”

“Buildings should be raised so their lowest floor sits above expected flood levels”

DOES your doctor have a financial interest in the treatment you are being prescribed? To address such concerns, a report by the US Institute of Medicine released on Tuesday suggests that all payments by drug and medical devices companies to doctors, scientists and patient groups in the US be posted publicly online.

As well as informing patients, the hope is that this will deter lavish payments to doctors and to researchers testing the drugs. “Companies may be less likely to pay large sums of money,” suggests Timothy Jost of the Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia, who contributed to the report.

Making disclosure mandatory will require new laws, but in a climate of growing public concern about medical conflicts of interest, and with US healthcare reform in the works, the time may be ripe.

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