Up in the Treetops

During my recent visit to Tokyo, and strolling one afternoon through a park in Koto-ku, I glimpsed something through the foliage overhead, something high in the sky, shiny and metallic. The long-distance photo I took that day (which I’ve decided not to publish here) did not do it justice, for it is, in fact, a very tall, very modern and impressive structure indeed. What I had seen, for the first time was the Tokyo Sky Tree.

Very tall structures are not unknown in the Tokyo area, which may seem paradoxical, given the restlessness of the Earth’s crust under this particular region; in fact, or so Wikipedia tells us, Tokyo has no less than 44 buildings and structures taller than 180 metres. I’m familiar with Shinjuku’s garden of skyscrapers, which includes the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building No. 1 (or Tocho), and also the orange-and-white Tokyo Tower over in Minato-ku, completed in 1958 and now the second-tallest building in the city. I never got around to visiting Tokyo Tower when living there during the late 1980s, but I did visit Yokohama Marine Tower many years ago, and, more recently, have been to the Sky Garden, an observation deck 273 metres from the ground, at the top of the Yokohama Landmark Tower (highly recommended – the view of the harbour district and the surrounding city is breathtaking.)

The secret to withstanding the sort of kaiju-grade earthquakes that rock Japan from time to time, is of course clever and sophisticated construction techniques, employing devices such as the tuned mass damper, which reduces the amplitude of the a quake’s destructive vibrations. Yokohama Landmark Tower, for example, has two of these dampers, and the Tokyo Sky Tree is built around a central shaft of reinforced concrete, which can move separately to the steel framing and acts both as a damper and as a stairwell. It also has a tuned mass damper right at the top, and pilings which spread out through the soil beneath the structure just like the roots of a mighty tree, and which also help to keep it secure.

What is the Tokyo Sky Tree, anyway? It is a tower, and currently the tallest one in the world (also the second tallest structure in the world, after Dubai’s Burj Khalifa), of lattice construction, like its forbears Tokyo Tower and the venerable Eiffel Tower. It will serve as a TV and radio broadcasting tower, being tall enough to beam terrestrial television over the surrounding high-rise cityscape, and will also have an observatory and a restaurant. They hope to finish building it in December this year and open it to the public in spring 2012, and I would very much like to visit the Sky Tree when I next come to Tokyo.

Here are a few more assorted facts about this structure. It is white with a touch of indigo (to symbolise the bluish white – aijiro – of Japanese porcelain) and will be lit up at night by arrays of LED lights, in blue and purple on alternate days. It will be precisely 634 metres tall, and this is a clever example of Japanese wordplay, as the numbers 6, 3 and 4 can be rendered in Japanese as “mu”, “sa” and “shi”, making up the word Musashi, which is the old name for the province of eastern Japan which incorporated Tokyo and its neighbouring prefectures.

My interest in these sorts of massive constructions has grown in recent years, as they represent for me the sort of high-tech, modern and aspirational world I want this to be. Some years ago I read about the plans for something even more ambitious, a 2000-metre tall, 500-floor skyscraper in the Tokyo Bay area called Aeropolis 2001, which would have been a decent first attempt at building an arcology – a vast and self-contained high-density human habitat, the like of which has existed, as yet, only in science fiction. Sadly, the bursting of Japan’s “bubble economy” in the 1990s, and the resulting slow-burning recession, meant that Aeropolis 2001 never became a reality. However, the completion of the Tokyo Sky Tree will mark, for me, the return of something like that confident, soaring and future-oriented spirit.

Sitting high above the human jungle, this is the closest one can be to outer space, without travelling in an aeroplane, rocket or balloon. When I next return to Tokyo, I’m looking forward to going up to the observatory of the Sky Tree, having a cup of coffee perhaps, and simply enjoying the magnificent view.

Just Back from Tokyo

Blogging has been non-existent for some time, and part of the reason is that I’ve been over in Japan for the last couple of weeks or so, visiting in-laws and seeing the sights in Tokyo. It has been a good trip, despite the very frequent aftershocks they are experiencing at the moment, at least one or two a day, which is an unusual situation – last time I was in Tokyo, there was only one barely perceptible jolt during my entire 10-day visit. It’s now possible to receive earthquake alerts via one’s mobile phone or over the TV, and it can be a little nerve-wracking when the warning sounds and you wait for the floor and walls to start shaking, not really knowing how big the imminent quake is going to be.

Some observations on the situation in Japan, following the recent catastrophic earthquake and tsunami:

- Firstly, I’ve been impressed, as always, by the ability of the Japanese to respond to disasters of this kind. Watching TV footage on NHK News of the clear-up operations in the coastal areas pulverised by last month’s tsunami, I’ve seen roads being cleared, ships salvaged, rubble being sorted and temporary kitchens mobilised to provide anything from hot noodles to fresh pizza. Overall, the situation remains dire, but the people are resourceful, determined and organised.

- In addition, the relief efforts are a testament to the strengths of a developed economy and to modern technology and communications. Environmentalist Bill McKibben thinks otherwise, as per this article in the Guardian, but Tim Worstall very effectively demolishes Bill’s shaky argument here. As Tim points out, “it’s multiple sources, spread across a variety of geographical regions, which provides security of supply of anything. Yes, food and power included.” Factors that make the difference include trade, modern networks and supply chains, also an abundance of electric power and fossil-fuelled vehicles.

- Despite the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant being steamrollered by a once-in-a-thousand-years monster tsunami, and although the incident has been costly and dangerous and is still ongoing, no-one there has yet died from the effects of radiation. In fact, nuclear power has killed remarkably few people, and even the Chernobyl incident directly killed less than 50 individuals. To put that into perspective, according to the World Health Organisation, nearly 3,500 people worldwide die in traffic accidents every single day of the year.

One thing I had been looking forward to, was going to Japan in one of Air France’s big new Airbus A380s and enjoying the novelty of travelling in a double-decker aeroplane. Unfortunately, with only a few days to go, the airline switched to Boeing 777-200s for their Paris-Narita route, and will resume the A380 service later this year. The twin-engined Triple Seven is a great aircraft, I should say – to date, it has been extremely reliable and safe – so I’m not exactly complaining; it also has the honour of being the first entirely computer-designed commercial aircraft (according to Wikipedia), which as a technophile I find very appealing. But I still wanted to travel in the A380!

I’ve also just finished reading George Monbiot’s 2006 book Heat, where he has something to say about “love miles”, the distances (sometimes vast) we travel to visit family and friends across the world; what he says is they have to stop! In fact the book itself is interesting and, I thought, well-written (will probably review it at some point), even if based on a catastrophist fantasy – imagine, if you will, an alternative universe where global warming caused by man-made CO2 emissions was threatening the world, and where we had to dramatically reduce said emissions for civilisation to survive. Then imagine that in this alternative world aviation had to be cut back by over 96 percent, and think about the heartache, misery and disruption this would cause – no more visits to family and friends on the other side of the globe, no more holidays in the Maldives, no more airmiles, and no more “love miles”. This would be an excellent scenario for a rather chilling SF novel.

Thankfully, I live in the real universe, where the man-made global warming terror is starting to fade, and where aviation for the masses remains a welcome reality despite the high cost of fuel and stupidities like the Air Passenger Duty. Reflecting on this fact, I raised my plastic glass of Air France white wine in an ironic but heartfelt salute, last week, somewhere over northern Siberia. To Heat – long may it remain science fiction! To airmiles and “love miles” – long may we continue to amass (and afford) them!

Next time, I might even get to ride in an Airbus A380, at last.

(For anyone wishing to donate money to those affected by the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, by the way, the Japanese Red Cross web page, with details on how to do so, is here. You might also wish to donate to ShelterBox, a UK-based disaster relief charity that has been of great help to Japan in recent weeks.)

100 Years of Climate Change: Part 3

Time seems to have speeded up – somehow it’s now 2011 and I’m left with a backlog of climate stories from 1910. If this was my day job I’d be in big trouble, but thankfully this is just a blog and there is no manager or editor looking over my shoulder and telling me to pull my socks up.

So imagine, if you will, that it is still 2010, and I’m not horribly behind with everything.

There are stories from 1910 that are very relevant to this era, as many of us have been experiencing yet another cold and snowy winter across the northern hemisphere, and these include accounts of the great avalanches at Wellington and at Rogers Pass.

During the winter of 1909-10 there were strong La Nina conditions prevailing, just as there are now, with heavy snowfalls across North America that were similar to those that have been plaguing the continent a century later. Starting on 16th February, Ohio endured a state-wide snowstorm that was reputedly the worst in its history, with 10-foot deep drifts and older buildings collapsing under the weight of accumulated snow. Even at the end of March, Santa Fe in New Mexico was experiencing heavy snow, according to the papers of the time, and Denver, Colorado, was struck by a storm that was “almost of the proportions of a mid-winter blizzard”.

And with the widespread snowfalls came a couple of major weather-related tragedies, in quick succession.

The scene of the Wellington disaster was a remote mountain pass in Washington State, where two trains from the eastern US to Seattle had become stranded, due to the thick snow, despite heroic efforts of the railroadmen to clear the line. Aside from shovels and sheer human grit and determination, they had at their disposal two huge rotary snow ploughs mounted on a locomotive, which could cut through snowdrifts up to 13 feet thick but used up coal at a prodigious rate; however, even with these state-of-the-art machines, they were unable to clear the line.

On 1st March 1910, during a lightning storm at night, a total of 96 people died when a great avalanche swept down off the mountainside and struck the stranded trains, crushing them down into a snow-filled canyon. Ironically, many of the people who perished were women and children sleeping in their railway carriages because everyone had thought they would be safest there.

It is an absorbing and tragic story, to which I clearly won’t be able to do justice here. I recommend that you read it on this blog by John J. McKay, where it is told in vivid and sombre detail. In terms of lives lost, this was the worst ever avalanche in the history of the United States. Later the town was quietly renamed Tye (after the nearby Tye River) and then abandoned and burned. These days it is just another peaceful stop on the scenic Iron Goat Trail – although some say the place is haunted.

I’ve just read that this month has seen heavy snow again in the Cascade mountains, and that the Wellington site – just as it was 101 years ago – has been inaccessible from the outside world.

On 4th March 1910, three days after Wellington, there was a similar disaster in Canada which took 62 lives, when a huge mass of snow slid down from Cheops Mountain and buried work crews of railroadmen who had been sent out to clear the debris of a previous avalanche from the track, along with their locomotive. A few men had lucky escapes, one man surviving after being blown out of the train by the strong wind that accompanied the avalanche. The bodies of the dead were buried under 10 metres of snow. Four of them could not be found at the time, and were recovered later in the spring when the snow had melted.

Like the Wellington event, this avalanche set a record and is officially the worst in Canadian history.

The dead included 32 Japanese, who had been employed by the Canada Nippon Supply Company and contracted by Canadian Pacific Railway. Last year, on 4th March there was a commemorative service in the mountain resort of Revelstoke, British Columbia, during which the 62 men who died were remembered and honoured. It was attended by three members of the Yamaji family, who had not known that an ancestor of theirs – Mannusoke Yamaji – had been one of the dead, until a researcher into the history of the disaster had contacted them shortly before the anniversary. At the memorial service were hundreds of well-wishers, Christian and Buddhist clerics and a gift of hundreds of origami cranes.

Nowadays it is perhaps difficult to fully imagine the challenges our forbears faced a century ago when combating the elements and striving to overcome the most intractable of natural obstacles using only the brute power of steam engines and human muscle, without the benefit of radio communications, modern power tools, the internal combustion engine or heavier-than-air flight.

These stories from a long-ago winter are a reminder of a side of nature – relentless, awesome and unpredictable – that even in these latter days, cushioned as we are by our technology and our fossil-fuelled wealth, we ignore at our peril.

The Cargo of the Altavia

This story caught my attention last week. On Wednesday 14th July, the Liberia-registered cargo ship M.V.Altavia docked at the Pacific island of Guam, carrying building materials (insulation and beams, we’re told) from South Korea for use in a massive new project to house construction workers at the village of Dededo.

But that was not all that it carried. As soon as the items began to be unloaded, huge numbers of spiders were reported to have been sighted, both on the cargo and in the ship itself – hundreds of large ones with bodies the size of a quarter (which is 24.26 millimetres in diameter, according to Wikipedia) and thousands of smaller ones.

The unloading was stopped at once, and the ship forced to move off to a quarantine anchorage, further out into Apra Harbor, while a few of the spiders were analysed by the Department of Agriculture lab. Once it was established that the spiders were not native to Guam, and that they were simply too numerous on the ship for fumigation to be a success, the M.V. Altavia was turned away and forced to return to Korea. A second cargo ship, the M.V. STX Alpha, also containing construction materials and also sailing from South Korea to Guam, was then told to turn back, even before it had reached its destination.

I’m interested in this story for several reasons.

Firstly, when I was in Japan last December, one of the major and long-running news stories was the dispute and negotiations between Japan and the US over the American airbase in Okinawa, which has been the cause of much local friction over the years. The upshot of all that has been the planned withdrawal of 8,000 US Marines from Okinawa, which will lead to Guam increasing in importance as a major hub for the American military in the western Pacific (the airbase stays on Okinawa, though, but will be moved from the city to the coast.) Hence the plans for marshalling an 18,000-strong army of construction workers on the island, and hence the need for accommodation for said workers – the Ukudu Workforce Village, which is basically a temporary housing project of giant proportions.

The language in the original report (Pacific Daily News) is also worthy of note, as other internet commentators have already mentioned, as it includes the word “stevedores”, which has a sort of lovely old-world, age-of-sail ring to it. I’m imagining a crew of tobacco-chewing roughnecks on the docks at Guam, hauling on ropes and manhandling crates – only to leap back with many a startled oath as the cargo began to disgorge hordes of spidery invaders. Which was probably nothing like the real situation at all, as I’m sure all that sort of work could be done by a handful of blokes in hard hats, sitting at the controls of machines. I rather like my version, however.

Of course, I’m also interested in the spiders. What species do these belong to? For a moment, when I was first aware of the case, I wondered whether these might even be of a previously undiscovered kind, but on second thoughts this would be very unlikely (although to date, there doesn’t seem to be any confirmation yet of what exactly these interlopers are) and they’re possibly of a type that is native to Korea. (By the way, I was reminded somehow of John Wyndham’s posthumously published novella Web, and have been prompted finally to write a review of that rather curious work, which you can now find on my Planet Bookworm site.)

And what of the crew? What, one wonders, did they make of that situation – alone (as it were) on the high seas on a ship overrun by eight-legged horrors? Can you imagine having to venture down into the darkness of the hold to inspect the cargo, armed only with a flashlight (the one with the dodgy batteries, naturally)? Being moderately arachnophobic myself, I would have been inclined to start sending frantic and incoherent mayday signals as soon as the full predicament was known, and would have been sorely tempted to jump ship at Guam, despite the threat of prison.

Or cast myself adrift in a lifeboat perhaps, mid-voyage, if driven to the edge of uncontrollable gibbering madness. But the nightmare might not have ended there, oh no. Overcome with hunger, I might have opened my container of emergency rations at last, only to find – guess what.

UPDATE

As of the Friday before last, an entomologist at the University of Guam, Dr Aubrey Moore (with the help of Dr. Seung Tae Kim, who is an arachnologist at the Seoul National University) has apparently identified two separate kinds of spider, from the samples. Both are orb weavers, one large, the other small; both are common to Korea and both are harmless to humans. Orb weavers I’ve seen in Japan, and yes – they can get pretty large. Apparently, spiders are very plentiful on Guam, due to the abundance of insects and the lack of birds. So maybe it isn’t the sort of place where an arachnophobe would be advised to jump ship; a case of out of the frying pan…

Unseasonable Cold in Japan

In a recent article in the Sunday Times, Jonathan Leake quotes Met Office advisor Vicky Pope, who warns us that 2010 may turn out to be the hottest recorded year ever.

‘”Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “It was a cold winter in Europe but, globally, January to March was one of the seven warmest starts to the year on record. This year has more than a 50% chance of being the warmest on record.”’

“It was a cold winter in Europe…” Yes it was, and also in North America, where this winter saw plenty of new records for low temperatures and snowfall. Also in China, Korea and northern India (record snow, transport chaos, cold-related deaths) and in Mongolia, where over 2 million herd animals perished, causing great hardship for the people there. Wikipedia has quite a thorough overview.

I think Vicky Pope might be guilty of just a little understatement, don’t you?

Japan is a country I have ties with and often visit. I was last there in December, when it was sunny and almost spring-like in Tokyo; however, things then changed for the cooler. A phone conversation earlier this year, which touched on rising food prices, sent me searching for news articles, and I found an interesting one, which I’m posting here in full. It was originally published in April by Japanese newspaper the Yomiuri Shimbun, but appears to have since disappeared from their site, although copies of it remain in Google’s cache.

Setting aside the issue of whether globally averaged temperatures are accurate, or indeed useful, I think the following article helps to demonstrate a couple of important points. Firstly, this recent winter was unusually cold, not just in the UK, but over much of the northern hemisphere.

Secondly, excessive cold has adverse economic consequences (due partly to the delayed onset of growing seasons) that appear to be curiously absent during times of warmth.

Here’s the article:

Apr. 17, 2010 (The Yomiuri Shimbun) — These days people might be enjoying warm weather one day but shivering from cold the next, thanks to up-and-down spring temperatures that have greatly impacted agriculture, businesses and events featuring cherry blossoms.

Due to the recent unseasonably cool weather, vegetable prices have been rising and sales of coats have increased at department stores in Tokyo and surrounding areas. The cold weather has slowed the blooming of cherry trees in northern Japan, affecting cherry blossom events.

On Friday, a 28-year-old saleswoman put a trench coat on a display mannequin at Tobu department store in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. “I’ve never put coats in our shop’s front displays in April,” she said.

On the ladies wear floor, a store official checks temperatures every morning, and has shops on the floor feature sleeveless shirts on warm days and coats on cold days. Such efforts apparently have resulted in a 40 percent year-on-year rise in coat sales this month for the store.

According to the Meteorological Agency, the daily high temperature has exceeded more than 20 C on nine days since March but did not top 10 C on seven others.

This time of year usually sees back-and-forth temperature changes due to the collision of cold air from the north and warm air from the south. This year, these weather fronts have been stronger than usual, leading to the recent drastic temperature changes, according to the agency.

Due to such factors as the El Nino phenomenon, the unusual rise in surface temperatures of equatorial waters in the Pacific Ocean off Peru, high-pressure systems have been stronger than usual in the south of Japan.

Additionally, in the north of Japan, higher-than-usual atmospheric pressure near the North Pole has pushed cold air over the country more frequently, due to springtime low-pressure systems over much of the country.

Meanwhile, the collision of strong cold and warm air fronts created by low-pressure systems has led to heavy rain and fewer hours of sunshine in areas ranging from northern to western Japan.

Some areas saw recent unseasonable snowfall. About 10 centimeters fell around Ashinoko lake in Hakonemachi, Kanagawa Prefecture, early Friday.

“We haven’t seen a snowfall that requires snow removal work at this time of year for at least 10 years,” said an official at the prefectural government’s regional civil engineering office in Odawara.

On 877-meter Mt. Tsukuba in Ibaraki Prefecture, snowfall was reportedly observed at the Tsukuba-san Jinja shrine located at an altitude of about 270 meters the same morning.

Such irregular weather patterns have hindered the growth of vegetables and driven up prices.

According to the Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market’s Ota market in Ota Ward, Tokyo, a decline in the shipping volume of green onions produced in Chiba Prefecture caused prices of the product to double in the April 2-8 period from the same period last year.

Also, prices of many other vegetables, such as cabbages produced in Kanagawa Prefecture and cucumbers from Saitama Prefecture, have increased due to the unstable weather.

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu said after a Cabinet meeting Friday he hoped farmers would make efforts to ship vegetables ahead of schedule to help stabilize prices.

Meanwhile, in the Tohoku region, where cherry trees only now are fully blooming, the cold weather has affected events featuring cherry blossoms.

At Tsutsujigaoka Park in Miyagino Ward, Sendai, which is famous for its cherry trees, a local committee had planned a cherry blossom viewing event last Saturday and Sunday. However, trees did not flower in time for the event.

Meanwhile, at Hirosaki Park in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, cherry trees bloomed earlier than usual and petals fell in early May in the past two years.

However, this year, cherry trees at the park likely will be late blooming due to the cold temperatures. Yet one official expressed a positive view. “Cherry trees will be in full bloom during the Golden Week holiday period, and so many tourists will be able to enjoy cherry blossoms,” an official at the city government’s tourism section said.