Science

Global warming study has strong opposition

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has been working for months to keep an upcoming eight-nation report from endorsing broad policies aimed at curbing global warming, according to domestic and foreign participants, despite the group's conclusion that Arctic latitudes are facing historic increases in temperature, glacial melting and abrupt weather changes.

State Department representatives have argued that the group, which has spent four years examining Arctic climate fluctuations, lacks the evidence to prepare detailed policy proposals. But the Washington Post reports - quoting several participants in the negotiations, all of whom requested anonymity for fear of derailing the Nov. 24 report - that officials from the eight nations and six indigenous tribes involved in the effort had ample evidence.

The recommendations are based on a study that concludes the Arctic is warming much faster than other areas of the world and that much of this change is linked to human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment - produced by a council of nations with Arctic territory that includes the United States, Canada, Russia and several Nordic countries - reflects the work of more than 300 scientists.

Several individuals close to the negotiations said the Bush administration - which opposes mandatory cuts in carbon emissions on the grounds that they will cost American jobs - had resisted even mild language that would endorse the report's scientific findings or call for mandatory curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

SEATTLE - A lava formation inside Mount St. Helens' crater has a new, glowing protrusion the size of a 30-story building.

The protrusion, which glows red at night, has risen by 330 feet in the past nine days, pushed up by magma, or molten rock, within the volcano, scientists said Friday.

"It seems like every time you think you know what's going on, (the volcano) twists and does something different," said Jeff Wynn, chief scientist for volcano hazards at the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash. The overall lava formation began building last month and has grown to roughly the size of an aircraft carrier, 900 feet long and 250 feet wide. Magma is reaching at the surface at the rate of 7 to 8 cubic meters - about one large dump truck load - every second, Wynn said.

After more than a decade of work, California researchers think they have solved the 40-year-old mystery of where poisonous South American frogs get their deadly neurotoxin - and surprisingly, the lead came from birds in New Guinea.

The poison has been used for centuries by indigenous Colombians to coat the points of their tiny blow darts, allowing them to bring down large prey - as well as humans - with relative ease.

Called batrachotoxin, the lethal agent is more powerful than curare and 10 times as deadly as the tetrodotoxin from the puffer fish. Simply handling the frogs that secrete it from their skin can be fatal.

The discovery is of more-than-academic interest because batrachotoxin - from the Greek "batrachos," or frog - is widely used in studying the function of sodium channels, gates in the cellular membrane that are implicated in a variety of diseases, such as multiple sclerosis.

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