ECOLOGY

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TREES USED FOR BASEBALL BATS IN DANGER

MONICA DAVEY, NY TIMES - In towns . . . that supply the nation's finest
baseball bats, the future of the ash tree is in doubt because of a
killer beetle and a warming climate, and with it, the complicated
relationship of the baseball player to his bat.

"No more ash?" said Juan Uribe, a Chicago White Sox shortstop, whose
batting coach says he speaks to his ash bats every day. Uribe is so
finicky about his bats, teammates say, that he stores them separately in
the team's dugout and complains bitterly if anyone else touches them.

At a baseball bat factory tucked into the lush tree country here in
northwestern Pennsylvania, the operators have drawn up a
three-to-five-year emergency plan if the white ash tree, which has been
used for decades to make the bat of choice, is compromised.

In Michigan, the authorities have begun collecting the seeds of ash
trees for storage in case the species is wiped out, a possibility some
experts now consider inevitable.

As early as this summer, federal officials hope to set loose Asian wasps
never seen in this country with the purpose of attacking the emerald ash
borer, an Asian beetle accused of killing 25 million ash trees in
Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Maryland since it was spotted in
the United States five years ago.

A warmer climate could also aid the emerald ash borer's invasion, some
scientists contend, although others disagree, by creating stressed trees
and the possibility of a quicker reproduction cycle in the beetle.

"We're watching all this very closely," said Brian Boltz, the general
manager of the Larimer & Norton company, whose Russell mill each day
saws, grades and dries scores of billets destined to become Louisville
Slugger bats. "Maybe it means more maple bats. Or it may be a matter of
using a different species for our bats altogether."

Such uncertainty does not sit well with professional players, some of
whom shun (or break) bats that have failed them and worship those that
have sent balls out of the park. (Some widely suspect that the
well-known players get the best-quality wood, and the rookies, something
softer.) Baseball, after all, is a game of routine, of instinct, of
superstition.

The magic in a perfect bat is not easy to define. "You can't describe it
- it's a feel," said Scott Podsednik, an outfielder for the White Sox.
"When you pick it up and take a couple of swings with it, you just
know."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/us/11ashbat.html?ex=
1341806400&en=0625ab6644795b6e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss


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STUDY: SOLAR ACTIVITY NOT LINKED TO GLOBAL WARMING

JAMES RANDERSON, GUARDIAN - It has been one of the central claims of
those who challenge the idea that human activities are to blame for
global warming. The planet's climate has long fluctuated, say the
climate skeptics, and current warming is just part of that natural cycle
- the result of variation in the sun's output and not carbon dioxide
emissions.

But a new analysis of data on the sun's output in the last 25 years of
the 20th century has firmly put the notion to rest. The data shows that
even though the sun's activity has been decreasing since 1985, global
temperatures have continued to rise at an accelerating rate. . .

"The temperature record is simply not consistent with any of the solar
forcings that people are talking about," said lead author Mike Lockwood
at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. "They changed
direction in 1985, the climate did not ... [the temperature] increase
should be slowing down but in fact it is speeding up."

Global temperatures are going up by 0.2 degrees per decade and the top
10 warmest years on record have happened in the past 12 years.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/
0,,2123448,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=29


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