The Live Earth Concerts apparently did not attract quite the audience expected. The particularly poorly attended one in Johannesburg, South Africa’s bounty of empty seats was blamed by organizer John Langford on the extremely cold weather in the region, due possibly to climate change. Last time I checked it was winter in South Africa on 7 Jul 07. Antiquities

The European Union’s “Noah’s Ark Project” has produced a work called “Global Climate Change Impact on Built Heritage and Cultural Landscapes.” This work describes what climate change may do to human-made antiquities throughout Europe. A brochure is available at the site above. Cocaine and Dioxin And, finally, remember how much we spent to eliminate dioxin in the pulp and paper industry? Well, the Institute for Atmospheric Pollution, Italian National Research Council (CNR) has measured and found that in some parts of Rome there are 0.1 nanograms of cocaine per cubic meter of air, 10 times the atmospheric levels of dioxin found in Rome in the same study. “Surprisingly,” these high levels of cocaine in the atmosphere were found near Sapienze University although the scientists say they are not jumping to any conclusions regarding the observed proximity.