DISASTER in Asia has cast dark shadows on US government scientists.
No one is publicly blaming the US Geological Survey or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for letting anyone die. But some in Congress are echoing concerned scientists who wonder why a well-fashioned and well-tested seismic network, which detected the quake within minutes, failed to generate warnings that a deadly tsunami might follow a major quake in the Indian Ocean.
Geologists called or contacted thousands of people as soon as they knew it was truly a big quake, but who if anyone on that list was in Sri Lanka or India? If no one, then who might have been added to the list and how quickly? The same questions are being asked of the scientists who run the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which is part of NOAA.
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As they have stated, their purview is the Pacific. They had no instruments in the Indian Ocean to detect a tsunami. But knowing of the quake, could they have taken an extra step and warned countries outside the Pacific anyway, just in case?
快猫短视频s at these organisations have agonised over these questions already. They did what they have always been asked to do, to the letter. However, what Congress and others are likely to ask is should anyone have gone beyond standard protocol?
Hindsight is Congress鈥檚 specialty, and no one in Congress has ever sat in the shoes of an earthquake scientist. Yet, as the old song goes, there鈥檒l be some changes made.
THERE are times when it鈥檚 better to be a footnote to world events than to seek headlines. At least that seems to be the conclusion of US Department of Agriculture officials.
Consider the following. The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) keeps a record of all animal disease reported by its 167 member countries. One of the animal diseases that OIE keeps track of is BSE, or mad cow disease. But a curious change has recently taken place in the way the OIE lists the US鈥檚 one reported case of mad cow disease. The case used to appear in a table titled 鈥淣umber of reported cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in farmed cattle worldwide (excluding the United Kingdom)鈥�. The single US case in 2003 was proudly noted, just below the 21 cases reported for that year by Switzerland.
But recently, the US disappeared from the table. Instead, the one US case for 2003 now appears in the Canadian row of entries, giving Canada a total of two cases. Only by looking at footnote (h) do you learn that one of these was discovered in the US in December 2003.
To be fair, the US case was imported from Canada, but lots of countries with imported cases have still made it onto the OIE table without having been relegated to a footnote. Did the US push for the change? It鈥檚 not clear at this point. But hoping to steer clear of mad cow disease by staying off a table is probably wishful thinking.
