快猫短视频

I WAS a Euro MP in 1976 at the time of the Friuli earthquake in northern
Italy. I recall it killed more than a thousand people and I was asked why
something couldn鈥檛 be done to release some of the pent-up tensions in the Earth
that lead to such tragedies.

Reading 鈥淭he quake machine鈥�
(快猫短视频, 30 June, p 35)
brought it all back to me. The article highlighted the work of international teams, such
as the one led by Valerio De Rubeis, a seismologist at the National Institute of
Geophysics in Rome. The emphasis has been on releasing tension in quake-prone
regions by injecting liquid into the Earth or applying high-energy
electromagnetic pulses.

I wondered if Britain was involved in this sort of work, so I contacted
experts at the Department for International Development and the British
Geological Survey. They said their geologists were world leaders in aspects of
using liquid injection to trigger the gentle release of tensions in the Earth鈥檚
crust. They were not familiar, though, with the electromagnetic idea but
considered it a worthy line of investigation and research. The most unlikely
solutions sometimes come from strange beginnings.

The BGS expert says the emphasis now is on forecasting the build-up of these
tensions and the associated changes in the vulnerability of quake-prone regions.
Moreover, Britain has teams of academics working with industrialists on
inexpensive ways for communities in quake zones to protect and strengthen
buildings.

The devastation caused by recent earthquakes in Gujarat, El Salvador and
Turkey show just how vulnerable ordinary self-built houses and other
non-engineered structures can be. Clearly, had they been strengthened, thousands
of lives could have been saved.

I like the idea that the Japanese are pushing for tackling climate change. It
was hammered out at the recent talks on the implementation of the Kyoto protocol
in Bonn. The idea is for rich nations to earn carbon credits, through the
so-called Clean Development Mechanism, by planting forests in developing
countries that will act as carbon sinks. All vegetation, including trees, acts
as a vital sink, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide as the plants grow but
releasing it when they die. Considering the long lifetimes of most trees, the
CO₂ that a forest takes up will be locked away for many years.

Lord Whitty, now a minister at the new Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs, tells me that the Japanese proposal was in fact a key demand not
just from Japan, but also from other developed countries outside the European
Union鈥攑articularly Canada and Australia鈥攁nd a number of developing
countries in Latin America. However, Whitty said that the EU was opposed to the
inclusion of the sinks projects in the Clean Development Mechanism until its
concerns were met. These include the scale of such projects, their scientific
soundness, the likely risks involved and the ensuing environmental impacts. They
were taken into consideration in the final outcome of the talks. There will be
stringent rules to meet the EU鈥檚 concerns, said the minister.

I can鈥檛 help but think that it is one thing to assert that rules will be
stringent鈥攊t is another to monitor their stringency.