Climate Change Trends

Yesterday was Earth Day, and many many folks went out and Marched for Science.  The photos show those folks mostly having a great time, a very good thing.  We sent two marchers, both Spice and Smidgen marched in St Paul; the planners were expecting around 6,000 people; the cops later estimated over 10,000.  Fox News is reporting 50,000.  Interesting.

I was, of course, doing my bit; holding down my keyboard.  Oh, and the farm.  Old-timers here know I comment regularly on the NYT, as Greenpa; and WaPo (under an older name I'm too lazy to change).  Sometimes folks like what I have to say.  And that is the case right at the moment.

The New York Times Magazine is currently running their Climate Issue.  That is a section you can reach without hitting a paywall; you can see what they're up to; what the NYT temperament is at the moment.  If you're not familiar, they will let you read 10 articles a month free.

On that page you will find  an article on How A Warming Planet Drives Human Migration. Whole populations attempting to "migrate" has been a major topic in the past couple years.  Is climate change the cause? Almost entirely.

At the moment, my comment is the #1 Reader Pick.  (If you should want to add your vote, I would not object.).  I'm getting some good comments, too - even no trolls, yet!

I'm going to put the text of that comment here; since I know links and access are iffy these days:


"I was a speaker at the climate change conferences in 1988 (DC) and 1989 (Cairo) - and can tell you that all of this was fully predicted by us, back then. Also water wars and the rise of demagogues and authoritarian governments.

"It was not only predictable; we predicted it. A fantasy scientists often adhere to is that if they can explain the situation clearly, then humanity will of course respond with wise action. Ah, the irony.

"It is NOT that we do not have persons provably able to give good advice and predictions; it is that world-wide, our joint decision making processes are universally broken. We do not have one government of the planet capable of taking significant action.

"We know what to do. We just can't do it. That - is the problem."


I did, after Sandy, say bluntly "WE TOLD YOU SO."  This is kind of the same thing; but a bit more polite (I believe in polite - first.  Rude when necessary.)  Interesting that my rude comment on Justin Gillis' "oh we can't be sure" article - and all other comments, many rude - have been deleted from the archives.  But the story is still here.

Interesting today that most of the NYT readers looking at that article have chosen the I -told-you-so viewpoint to recommend.  It's not an optimistic one.  Which may be an optimistic observation, actually; if we're ever going to get off our collective butts and take serious action, the first thing that has to happen is we have to lose the complacent notion that somebody else will fix this.

Nobody else is going to fix this; government "policy" approaches are crippled, world-wide, and recent elections illustrate how easy it is for policy to be derailed by the next swing of the Perpetual Political Pendulum.  The PPP.  (Polka Dot Gallows humor...)

The March For Science showed there are still an abundance of sane and passionate humans out there. Keep that in mind.  Join them; and remember your Newtonian Physics: momentum - takes Work to stop or alter.

Keep the momentum.  Add to it.  Act.  Because, as one of the many great sign comments from yesterday's march has it:

Prediction: The Ice Wall Won't Work.

Today several years after announcing the wonderful concept of freezing the soil around the core-breached reactors at Fukushima, "officials" announce they are going to actually start freezing soil today.  The point to which is - it turns out the natural groundwater in the area flows (underground) through serious contamination, and then both comes up into the broken cellars of the nuclear plant, and oh, incidentally, flows right out into the sea.  (They know that, but the "official" announcement that contamination has been leaking into the sea constantly is probably 2 years away.)

Here is link and text; and my detailed prediction below it:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160330_18/

"TEPCO to start freezing wall at Fukushima plant

"The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has gained approval from the regulator to start freezing soil around its reactors. Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO plans to create an ice wall that will reduce the amount of groundwater flowing into the 4 reactor buildings and thereby limit the buildup of radioactive water.

"The utility got the go-ahead on Wednesday from the Nuclear Regulation Authority, or NRA, to begin the underground freezing. It is expected to start the work as early as Thursday. The volume of contaminated water at the plant is increasing due to inflowing groundwater.

"Once the freezing process is complete, together with other measures, the daily accumulation of underground water is expected to fall from 400 tons to about 50 tons. The wall is expected to start restricting the inflow of groundwater about 45 days after the freezing starts.

"TEPCO finished building the underground freezing systems last month, after 2 years of work.

"But the regulator did not immediately give the greenlight to its freezing plans. It was concerned the wall could lower the groundwater level too much and cause radioactive water pooled in the reactor buildings to leak out.

"TEPCO submitted a revised plan to do the freezing work in stages. Under the new plan, it will first freeze soil at the downstream side of the buildings to prevent water leaking there.

"NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka said the operation will be a major challenge. He said it is important to carefully monitor the freezing process with adequate data."

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My prediction; based not on rancor or ill wishes but on Physics, Chemistry, and Hydrology: the ice wall will not work.  Will never work, can not ever be made to work, and is quite likely to cause new and possibly worse problems with contaminated water at the site.

"Why" it won't work requires long discussion, which perhaps we will do after it is announced that it isn't working; my guess will that announcement will happen within the next two months.  Hard to cover up 200 tons of new water every day.

So why did they build it, if common science says it can't work?  Several reasons, none good- A) they don't know how to do anything that might be effective, B) They have to appear to be doing something, and C) There is a huge amount of money to be made, from public funds, building something so wacky.  When it fails, they'll just wring their hands and walk away- the executives with fat bank accounts, and the public reputation of saints struggling with evil.

Recommended book: At The Mercy Of Nature

Tools are what we need, to survive what is coming.  Humans are tool users, tool makers - an aspect of our species that is largely responsible for climate change, the population explosion, and pretty much everything else we can point fingers at "that's the problem, right there!"  Our tools (I'm including things like antibiotics) gave humans the power to expand; so we did; and here we are.

My fingers are trying to trick me into writing a whole long essay on "tools"; but that will have to wait...

What tools do you, do we, need going into this unknown future?  We really don't know; that's a big part of our worries.  An ever-increasing number of charlatans are willing to sell you magic survival tools; be very wary.  

When we “don’t know” something- how do we, human tool users, tackle that? In this era, "Science" is our standard answer; wave the Magic Wand Of Science, and Answers will appear.

Not going into that right now, either.  What I have to offer you here is something unique, so far as I know- a fully competent practitioner of Science has waved his highly trained Wand - appropriately - and come up not with all the Answers; but with clear vision, the necessary precursor to finding our way.

I’m going to invoke a couple of Holy Names here: who says you should read this book, besides me?  E. O. Wilson.  Bill McKibben.  Both put their stamp of approval on the back cover, very official.

Ecologist Carl McDaniel has done something beautifully Scientific in his book At The Mercy Of Nature: Shackleton’s Survival Saga Gives Promise For Our Future.  

He set out to methodically search for the right question, then see what he could pull out of History that might refine the question further.  Many great scientists have stated some version of "First find the right question."  McDaniel's methods here are in the best scientific tradition.

"Do we have historical examples of humans in groups surviving against unknown challenges, and extreme trials?" - is my own phrasing of how this investigation was launched.  Because that is what ecologists know our species is facing - extreme conditions and unknown problems.

Ernest Shackleton's expedition's survival of Antarctic shipwreck in 1914 is an astonishing story which was copiously documented by photographs and daily journals.  The basics- their ship, a 3 masted sailing vessel with an early coal fueled engine, became locked in ice far from land, and the crew of 28 picked men found themselves trapped, their ship crushed and sunk.  In the era before radio, let alone GPS.  No one knew where they were, no rescuers would come.  Their story has been made into many books and multiple movies, and the storytellers are not done with it yet, I'm sure.  I won't be spoiling anything by telling you - all 28 men survived- and they finally managed their own rescue in 1917 - after years utterly alone in the Antarctic.

McDaniel re-tells the story as part of his analysis, it's mind-boggling.  You only have to get a few months into the events after the Endurance became caught in the ice to realize- people in this expedition should have started dying immediately.  Catastrophe after deadly catastrophe caught them- in my own reading, it's amazing any of them survived more than 6 months.  But they all survived.

Unlike the many re-tellings that are purely hero-worship (quite deserved); McDaniel asks "How?  Why"  and "What/"  and manages to pull multiple answers no one else has ever extracted from the story.  And convinces, with evidence.

You need to have the list of factors that allowed Shackleton's crew to survive - in your back pocket.  Look at it often.  Use it.  They survived, when they should not have.

Of course- you have to read the book, to get the list.  If you don't have McDaniel's accompanying commentary, the list will mean nothing to you.

Read it.  Pass it on.  It's a tool; one you'll need.

Yes! No! Maybe....Not!

So; who to believe?  About which?

I think I wouldn't worry about it, since between Governors declaring public health emergency quarantines, but not enforcing them, and nurses deciding to ignore Governors, and judges deciding their job is to judge science, not law....  you're not getting any of the choices in here, anyhow.

Crazy, yes?  This is some of the damage caused by fear-panic in plagues.
Current results; the State Troopers in Maine are no longer sure if they should obey the Governor's orders; or wait for court clarification.  Citizens - have no idea who to listen to.

There is a saying in all the armies I can check on; so old it defies attribution; "Order, counter-order, disorder."  Chaos is just around the corner; when people do not know who to follow or who to trust.

The business world has a similar Law: "Even a bad decision is better than no decision."  A little more subtle, but proven true repeatedly.  Make a bad decision?  You may find that out quickly, and change direction.  No decision?  The Universe will decide for you, and you probably won't like it.

So who's in charge here?

Yep, I don't know either.

Ebola 11 — New York City, and Mali.

And what can one say?

I hope Dr. Spencer pulls through.  I really hope he was not shedding virus in the NYC subway system Wednesday evening.  Or into the NYC sewer system, with the large resident rat population.

Will rats spread Ebola!?!  Gasp!  We just, plain, totally, absolutely DO NOT KNOW.

I guarantee you will hear a pundit from NYC today scoffing at the idea of rats becoming infected, probably citing the CDC, and, dripping scorn, "Oh, this has just never been known to happen!"  And that's totally true.  "We" haven't seen it.  You need to learn to recognize that language as intentionally misleading, however.  This is what the CDC has to say, buried in the technical bits:

"...these viruses naturally reside in an animal reservoir host or arthropod vector. They are totally dependent on their hosts for replication and overall survival. For the most part, rodents and arthropods are the main reservoirs for viruses causing VHFs. The multimammate rat, cotton rat, deer mouse, house mouse, and other field rodents are examples of reservoir hosts. "

Generally, for the entire class of viral hemorrhagic fevers.  Spencer had diarrhea before he went in to the hospital.  Ebola is known to be able to survive for 1-2 days outside the body.

And what can you do about it?  Not a darned thing.  What can the Mayor of NYC, and the Governor of NY do about it?  Not a thing; we'll just have to wait and see.

Amid all the utter nonsense still being broadcast by the major media; I found the video below yesterday.  I recommend it highly; and I'll say that scientifically, I'm in 100% agreement with this man's views.  But so far, he's the only one from the inside of the Epidemiology world who is pushing these points.  Keep in mind this is a talk to an audience primarily of his peers; highly educated public health workers.  Sometimes he talks very fast, and in jargon; but most of it is quite easily understood.

I admire Dr. Osterholm greatly- he has huge courage; and stamina, to speak out in this fashion.  It will make him no friends, and change few minds, and no one will ever thank him.  And he knows it; and keeps at it.  Someone made the mistake of placing him as Director of The Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.  How a diligent, intelligent, articulate, and fully competent scientist wound up in that seat, I do not know.

I won't try to imbed the video here, that seems to go goofy; so just go right to YouTube.

http://youtu.be/UkMKUa0sxBQ

Incidentally, I am not at all a fan of the person who posted the video; I'd have chosen differently, but this was the only version I could find.

And in Mali.  That story is a complete heartbreaker.  The stories haven't settled yet, but it's clear it was a small child- whose mother/ or father/ or grandmother (I've seen all 3) died of Ebola in Guinea; and relatives took the the child into Mali to place it with a relative who could care for it.  Ebola rode along; on "public transport"; the child has Ebola.



As Osterholm states, repeatedly; we don't know anything about the virus in this outbreak.  And the very most dangerous thing you can do; regarding controlling panic in the population - is lie to them,  Us.  When all the people in NYC do not believe what the "authorities" tell them- then we'll have chaos.

So; gloomy.  One weird cheerful aspect; a pessimist blogger is already on record as betting that now, no more doctors will travel to West Africa to help; because they are not truly protected.

I know a bunch of doctors.  I'm going to bet the opposite.  I will bet you there is a substantial uptick in US doctors volunteering to go.  You have to be crazy to want to be a doctor in the first place, right?  There you go.  Doctors want to be needed; it's a basic motivator.  Nobody needs them more than West Africa.

And hopefully, next time- returning doctors will go to a lovely lodge on an island off Maine; and stay there relaxing for a month.  No, not 21 days.  We utterly do not know that's a real limit; it's just the one we've seen so far.

Ebola 9. Not yet, probably.

So here we are at Ebola Does Dallas 2.  Although now it turns out it may also be Ebola Does Frontier Airlines, Cleveland, and Akron- and maybe Fort Lauderdale and Atlanta.

The second nurse from Dallas- was in Akron, Ohio for several days, visiting family... before she went to the Cleveland airport, flew back to Dallas, and was placed in isolation the next day.  And- some sources are reporting she 'had a slight fever' before she got on the airplane.  In other words, she was "symptomatic" in Cleveland.

But hey, Frontier assures us they "cleaned the aircraft thoroughly, according to CDC guidelines" before putting it back into service.  "Flight 1143, on which the woman flew from Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth, was the last trip of the day Monday for the Airbus A320. But Tuesday morning the plane was flown back to Cleveland and then to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., back to Cleveland and then to Atlanta and finally back to Cleveland again...:

Then they took it out of service when notified about the ebola on board.  In other words, their cleaning was not for ebola; but just their standard.

Remember my points about wandering about in airports?  Here we are.  This is a huge vulnerability.

This is a deeply systemic weakness; quite apart from our astonishing stupidities.  Whose idea was it to ok travel to Ohio for a nurse who'd just been working closely with ebola???

Would I run from Dallas now?  Not yet.

At the moment, all the cases are associated with the hospital there.  They might be able to contain that, yet.  If we get to the point where there are a couple of new ebola cases a day in Dallas- which are not instantly relatable to the hospital; I think that would do it.  Even the very slow responses of officialdom might, at that point, be willing to roadblock Dallas; and only allow people in and out who have official reasons.  You and your family, don't qualify.

I was delighted to see the NYT actually cite "evolutionary biologists" - who study viruses - on their opinions about ebola.  I was not delighted with the messages transmitted from these scientists however- there are glaring errors - of "belief" not science.  One of the most bizarre, to me, is the repetition of "oh, we've never seen that happen." followed by the statement that therefore, obviously, it never will.

Stunning to me; this kind of thinking is now possibly the prevailing habit in both science and medicine. And I promise you, 40 years ago, that opinion would have been laughed out of any seminar; it's not only asinine; it's been proven wrong repeatedly, definitively.

Our science; our medicine, have been becoming stilted and untested, and un-culled by reality.  The truth of the value of your science it not its reproducibility; its only the repeatability of your grants.  A huge amount of science now being published is NOT reproducible; possibly as little at 10-30%;  a few are starting to worry about that.  One major driving force- try getting a grant to reproduce someone else's work.  Instant shredder.

It may be too late to worry; our world depends our out technical knowledge- and it's been compromised.

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This is from an old post here; but is precisely illustrative of the current state of our scientists; and their supposed "oversight". This guy is staggeringly out to lunch.

Used to be only ninnys didn't think problems all the way through- but it seems to be a pathway now being taught to PhDs.

The next example, which pushed me over the edge, is from BBC Science.

This professor guy (and not a minor one, but "the director of the scientific aquaculture programme at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts") is spending huge amount of money working on training aquaculture fish to come back when called, in the ocean; by a specific sound.

Then, see, they could go find some of their own food, and wouldn't always be pooping in the same toilet, but would come back when you wanted to feed- or kill them.

First try didn't work. Predators ate them, as soon as they were allowed to escape from the cage. I'll be darned.

Besides which- gosh, if you've got your fish trained to come and be fed, and the signal is a sound... exactly how long do you think it will take the predators to learn that the sound means- time to come and get fed? Right here?

I think any signal, in any medium, you can use to train your fish will emphatically be intercepted by the predators, immediately.

At first, the fish began to forage outside of the aquadome, moving in and out at the prompt of the sound, just as the researchers had hoped.

"But then we start seeing these bluefish circling our cage. And these are notorious for being ravenous and ruthless hunters," he says.

"Very frustratingly, we went back day after day to find these fish still showing up at the cage, and we couldn't for the life of us call the black sea bass back.

The tags helped the researchers to identify their bass

"They were scared to death - we went diving, and we could see them amongst the rocks, but nothing was going to make them run that gauntlet between the rocks and the cage when it would put their lives at risk."

And the fish had good reason to be scared.

When the team caught one of the bluefish and slit open its belly, they discovered 12 tiny tags - the fish that they had been attached to had already been digested.

But. Big, hopeful, news coverage on the BBC!! Hey, the funders will love it.

And his answer? Gonna build robotic sheep-dog sharks to keep the little predators away.

What a good idea.

sigh.

Ok, so the hammer is not working on this machine screw. Maybe if I hit it from the side, with more money...

It's just all a bit much. And, Ebola.

Hi Guys.

According to Blogger- you're all still here, tuned in.  I'm honored.

The reasons I've been quiet are still the same; massive overloads In Real Life - and a lack of anything genuinely useful to say about current world insanities.

Today, though; I do have something useful to tell you; out of my particular Biology/Evolution/Etc. background.

We're experiencing the largest outbreak seen of the Ebola virus.  Should you worry?  Or not?

You need to pay attention, is what you need to do.  (Not to me.  To what's going on.)

So far I have seen a great many of the disasters, problems, conundrums that are known to occur during "plague" outbreaks; already happening.  We have history to look at; I recommend it.  People can be harmed in epidemics by many things other than the bug itself.

Here is a list of "Already here" bad things, that do not help:

Politicians lying about the extent of the epidemic.
Politicians telling you :"There's no risk to us!"  then- 'There's almost no risk to us!"  And I've already seen "We'll probably get a case or 2 inside the US, but we can handle it."
Press printing any blathering nonsense they can find.
Finger-pointing between nations and agencies.
New committees.
An experimental "cure" - with a tiny supply; and fights about who gets it.
Con men selling fake cures to desperate people.  (saw an ad on Facebook already)
Wall Street types jockeying to capture the profits.
Military roadblocks going up - and cities sealed off - too late.
Desperate people sneaking through roadblocks, and bribing their way.
Soothsayers announcing "This is IT!  Run!"
Panic.

All of those are happening now; and will likely get worse.

Here's my "no bull" advice.

Don't panic.  It doesn't help.  Is this virus dangerous - to you and your family?  Yes, it is; but we don't know how it's going to turn out.  Disease organisms follow the "rules of Epidemiology" - when you can average 1,000 different viruses and bacteria together.  Individually - they do not have to follow anyone's rules.  It could mutate to be more infectious; or less.  Or both, on different expansion fronts.

This scenario is possible: You live in Denver?  Far from everything.  But; the incubation period for Ebola is stated as "between 2 and 21 days."  That's really dangerous.  An infected person, at day 15 of his infection; gets on a plane.  Yes, he might be shedding virus by then.  Gets off the plane in Cairo, Egypt, 2 hours later, having transmitted it to 2 other people; the steward, and the lady in the next seat.

He stays in Cairo, vanishes into the countryside and is never recognized as dying of Ebola.  The steward flies next to Paris, becomes symptomatic and infectious 17 days later, infecting an entire flight crew...  and on; until an infected but not yet symptomatic person gets off the plane in Denver... goes to a rock concert/ all night rave-revival party - throws up...

"It's not likely!"  No, it's not; but the bigger the epidemic gets, the more chances; and there's really no way to prevent that kind of scenario - short of shutting international air traffic; off.

If that happens?  You'll know it's getting serious; and that it's too late to be effective, and the next step is martial law.  In Denver?  Yes.

This kind of thing has happened repeatedly, historically, in plague events, going back to Rome, at least.  But they didn't have air traffic; or the Mexico City slums - etc.

This virus is not capable of suddenly mutating into a disease that can blow in the air from somewhere miles away.  An epidemic in Africa is not a threat to you - today.  One case in NYC - is not much threat even to NYC.  If, however, we wake up one day and there are 2,000 new cases in NYC today- that's a threat.  Neither hospitals nor police will be able to control things.

Think about what you can do, if you have to.  I would say start thinking now.

And the statistic I would watch is the daily CHANGE in death rate and infection rate.  That was a  lot of the reason I decided to write this; I've already seen one "seer" shrieking "It's gone asymptotic!!"  My respect for that source dropped through the floor; not that it was all that high.  Just as pure statistics; that's crap.  Yes, there's a jog up in deaths and new cases - in the past 2 days.  It could very easily be a pure fluke; better reporting yesterday, for example.  The probability of "fluke" is much higher than "asymptotic!"

If the rate of change keeps climbing up for a week- yes, I'd start to worry.  If the rate of increase keeps going up for 2 weeks, with no break; I would have to predict that a great many people will die before it's over; but we still cannot know when, or where, it could suddenly shift into a trivial virus.

Like everything else in our future now; we do not know what will happen next.

Keep an eye on the Wikipedia "ebola" page.  Seriously.  I know, that used to be a joke line; but it's not anymore.  It is the only source of information on the technical knowledge of the virus that just says this; right up front: "Transmission: It is not entirely clear how Ebola is spread."  That's from a CDC document; not one I could find, but its cited here.  The WHO at the moment is putting out the official line that "ebola is very hard to catch, and requires direct 'bodily fluids' contact".  The Russian weapons experts are saying "maybe not."

 The great majority of sources will have some "agenda" they want you to swallow.  Wikipedia now has dozens of actual experts monitoring the information changes - and if you put something up that anyone can criticize as "not true" - down it comes. 

Don't panic.  Pay attention.

And find a copy of Sinclair Lewis's "Arrowsmith" - a novel about exactly this situation; from the viewpoint of the medical researcher.  They gave him the Pulitzer Prize for that novel; and he refused it. His insights into human behavior during a plague - are... well, Pulitzer material.

The entire text is online; here; Arrowsmith text   Public domain, pretty sure.
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UPDATE: 8/14 - I managed to find the WHO current statistics page.  They report new totals for deaths and new cases, every 2-3 days.  There are lots of ups and downs in the numbers- imagine the difficulties of "counting", and reporting, in the middle of it all.  It's clearly horrific for those caught in it. Overall, it does appear that new cases and numbers of new deaths are increasing; but it's a long way from "asymptotic."  Somebody out there - could use these data to produce a good graph.  I'd rather see a graph of new cases and new deaths than total cases and total deaths, and I haven't seen one.  I'd do it; but- several people would kill me if I stole that time.  :-)

You've got to tell them... Soylent is made from... FOOD!!

Hi everybody.  Still here; still intending to blog more; but reality is against us.  Our part of Minnesota is officially a "disaster area", because of the stuck jet streams; 20 inches of rain in May and June, much of it torrential.  We have secondary bridges and roads out in many places- and no idea when, or even if, they'll be repaired.  We're doing better than many of our neighbors, though.  If they took the risks and planted their crops very early, they may be ok; if they decided to wait- they may get no crop at all; too wet to work the fields for too long.

Besides being overwhelmed with regular work, which is always late and difficult, blogging requires some kind of enthusiasm on my part.  And it's not that there's a lack of things to talk about- it's that there are too many.  And too often, discussion of things like the situation in Egypt just seems futile.  Nothing we say here will have any useful point to it.  It seems.

What finally got me off my figurative fanny today was this stunning bit of insanity.  Watch the video first; and beware of the Golem-Sucks advertising:

Ok, got that?  The 24 year old software engineer has figured out a way to rid the food system of waste, and help out with hunger in the impoverished regions of the world.  It's easy!  Just put it all into powder with a 20 year shelf life!  Why didn't we think of this before??

The stunningly insane part is- how easily he has the entire world press going right along with him.  Not surprisingly, they have a nice, logical set of arguments in favor of powdered food; take a look at them here on their crowdfunding site (the project has ended- alas you can no longer contribute here; but they did raise just under $800,000...)  An end to waste!  No more shopping, or cooking, or washing dishes!  Cool- has to save tons of energy, right?

Well, no.  How did we get to a place were NONE of the journalists covering this (so far as I can see) are familiar with the concept of "embodied energy"?  You have powdered protein here?  Um- where did it come from?  The store, obviously!

This is typical of the "answers" to global problems offered by "young software engineers".  The mind boggles.  It's the kind of analysis any systems thinker - um - thinks about, instantly.  Doing some digging, it did not really take me too long to find a reliable list of Soylent ingredients.  (Incidentally- many of us already know the name, "soylent"- hm; is there a trademark/copyright/IP conflict here?  Already contentious.  You never know what the courts will say, but personally- I would bet that name is "occupied".)

Ok; the list of ingredients:


Maltodextrin (carbs) (made from - corn, or wheat!)
Oat Powder (carbs, fiber, protein, fat) (made from- oats!)
Whey Isolate (protein) (made from - milk!)
Grapeseed Oil (fat)  (made from - grapes!)
Potassium Gluconate  (made from - sugar!)
Salt (sodium)
Magnesium Gluconate  (made from - sugar!)
Monosodium Phosphate
Calcium Carbonate  (limestone!)
Methylsulfonylmethane (Sulfur)  (actually; sulfur added to - natural gas?)
Creatine  (made from - meat!)
Powdered Soy Lecithin  (made from - soybeans!)
Choline Bitartrate (made from - something like sugar!)
Ferrous Gluconate (Iron)  (made from - sugar!)
Various vitamin and mineral supplements


Do you begin to understand?  Leaving aside the glaring suppositions that a) we truly know all our nutritional requirements, and b) this is all of them; exactly where are the energy savings; if instead of humans directly consuming corn, wheat, oats, milk, meat, etc, etc, etc, - we still have to grow all those crops; then reduce the simple components to powder?  Powdering, I assure you, requires a great deal of energy input; as do all separation/ purification processes.  And- are we going to now grow grapes for their seed oils?  What do we do with the rest of the grape?  I'll bet they start using palm oil soon; much more available.

The kid is able to buy the powdered ingredients for cheap right now- because they are indeed all manufactured as part of industrial food processes, and "by products" of animal feed or brewing or cheese making.  So- ask yourself; how does it scale up?  Way, way, up: in order to make any difference to anything, according to their own arguments.  Demand for the powdered components would skyrocket- and so would the prices.

Soon - just as is the case right now with quinoa, the farmers growing the crops would be selling them to the wealthy for their powders, and be unable to afford, once again, to feed themselves from their own crops.

I have to say; this is obvious; and we know this.  And yet- the Polka Dot Gallows paths we're on continue to thrive.

Slippery news

One of the things needed, if you're going to strive for rationality- is "facts" that have some chance of being real. And it's getting harder to get hold of those, or to keep them where everyone can see.

One of the news sources I regularly scan is the NHK World feed; the Japanese version of National Public Television.

For reasons that are fascinating to speculate about, this news source often seems to be almost "unfiltered" - they just blurt out the truth, as they record it from first hand sources.

Like this; for instance, in toto:

-----------------------------------------------------------

"40% of residents' exposure tops annual limit"

"More than 40 percent of the people surveyed in 3 municipalities near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were exposed to radioactivity levels above the annual safety limit in the 4 months after the disaster.

"Fukushima Prefecture released on Monday the results of its survey of external radioactive exposure among some 9,750 residents of 2 towns and a village after the accident last March. This number excluded people working in places with high radioactivity, such as a nuclear plant.

"Participants were asked about their behavior over a 4-month period immediately following the nuclear accident in order to estimate their external exposure.

"Forty-two percent of the respondents are estimated to have received more than one millisievert --- the annual limit for the general public --- in the 4 months following the disaster.

"Estimated exposure exceeded 10 millisieverts for 71 people. The highest dose was 23 millisieverts for an adult woman.

"Among young people under the age of 20 at the time of the accident, the highest exposure was 18.1 millisieverts over 4 months.

"The prefecture is conducting the survey on all its 2 million residents.

Monday, February 20, 2012 19:28 +0900 (JST)"

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The thing is- the next day; you can't find that story anywhere. I'm pretty sure the "filters" kicked in. The original link does still work, one day later; but my experience is that in several days, they stop working; hence my in toto quote.

Do you suppose it would be news, of international interest, that where 1 millisievert per year is the "allowed" dose, they were finding numerous people with 10 millisieverts - accumulated in 4 months? And some up to 20?

Nah. Haven't seen anyone pick it up, yet.

Then; today's fun story from them:

---------------------------------------------------------

"Survey: 95% of disaster debris not yet disposed of

"The Japanese Environment Ministry says 95 percent of debris from last year's disaster in northeastern Japan has yet to be disposed of more than 11 months on.

"The March 11 quake and tsunami created more than 22 million tons of debris on the coasts of hardest-hit Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures alone.

"The ministry said on Tuesday that just over one million tons, or 5 percent, of debris has been either incinerated or buried. 72 percent is still stored at temporary sites.

"The ministry says many of the incinerators planned for disaster-stricken municipalities have yet to enter operation. It cites the difficulty in finding sites for new incinerators.

"The ministry also says disposal in other areas of Japan, expected to shoulder 4 million tons of debris, has hardly begun.

"Environment Minister Goshi Hosono told reporters the ministry's goal of completing disposal by the end of March, 2014 is unrealistic.

"He asked municipalities outside the disaster-affected region to help, noting that delays are greatly hampering reconstruction.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012 13:25 +0900 (JST)"

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The link for that is here.

Hey, I just wouldn't want you all to be worrying about Greece today, and forget that the problems in Japan are - pretty much entirely not dealt with. At all.

But hey- Technology will certainly come to our rescue; the free-market system guarantees it!

The Struggle for Rationality

Gaia's Daughter commented on the last post, and I was in the process of responding when I realized I had a new post on my hands.  Her second comment (read the first, too):


"Okay, my last comment was really depressing so I thought I might amend it a bit. I do think that circumstances may force Truth upon us sooner rather than later . . . the day of 'no other alternatives' may be closer than we think. I also believe that there are a lot of exceptional people out there planting those seeds for a better future -- a future that may surprise us."


 Gaia's- lots of things there I totally agree with; in fact I'd probably intensify most of them.  Your "People for the most part are not really rational beings -", for example, is wildly optimistic.   :-) And boy, am I not kidding.


   The vast majority of humans operate their entire lives on exactly the same mental levels as all the other species on the globe; we simply react to the environment around them.  Even the most enlightened and and aware of us mostly run on auto-pilot; and the illusion that our actions are based on "reason" is exactly that- illusion.  There are vast tomes written on this subject, which we reasoning people read, groan over, and ignore.  A good place to start investigating is the classic "Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds."  And I will again say, with no kidding whatsoever, boy, was MacKay ever an optimist. And you will note, from the date of the work, that this is hardly a new conversation.


   There is, however, a spark of rationality in our species.  We are aware that logic and reason exist.  And we know they can be useful.  History is almost our only real tool for demonstrating this, but its arguments are forceful.  The slow, painful, and intentional invention of Science being my best example.


  Persons striving for Rationality, like you and me, observed that the "knowledge" belonging to the human race, which we use for making life or death decisions of all kinds, was in fact an utter rag-bag of nonsense.  Aristotle, for example, propagated the most absurd information (geese grow from barnacles) as absolute fact- and these facts were accepted as gospel, for centuries.


  The founders of Science first - noticed that.  I will point out that "noticing" is an incredible achievement, and far from easy or simple.  It amounts to my statement yesterday that I spend most of my time trying to see - what is the problem.


  Then astonishingly, the Founders of Science did something second: they sought to do something about the problem.  I will point out here that they probably did not make a rational choice to pursue this huge problem.  It was more likely motivated by other animal drives.  But pursue they did; until the pursuit took on its own life, becoming a cultural force of its own.  The result; which took hundreds of years and hundreds of human minds to refine; is the Scientific Method.  It is now tightly formulated, in several places, most accessibly and neatly (to my mind) in Koch's Postulates.  Understand- the refining of the Method is not finished; and a huge number of people who make their living as "scientists" in fact do not follow the Method.  Many don't truly understand it; and like all tools in the universe it can be abused.  But.  Used carefully; the Scientific Method is an algorithm for Truth.  It can, and does, distinguish between illusion and components of Objective Reality.   (If you're one of those who dispute the existence of objective reality, you might as well leave now.  You will gain no traction here.  I believe on Gravity.)


Alas- here is where we are stuck.  We have a tool we can use to discover Truth.  But we became philosophically sidetracked when the vast majority of educated persons, putatively trained to rational thought, made the irrational and generally unstated assumption that Truth = Good; or more usefully and less commonly put, Truth = Wisdom.  We have, I will firmly state, abundant evidence that those equations are invalid.


  May I state it this way?  I have noticed that - our collections of Truths, or Knowledge now validated by Science, are assumed to operate also as Wisdom.  But in fact- we have a useless rag-bag of collective Wisdom.  Exactly equal to Aristotelian Knowledge.


  What we need is another collective effort to establish the equivalent of the Scientific Method; but it needs to be a method that will return Wisdom; valid, reproducible, objective, operable.


  Recall that it took hundreds of years and hundreds of minds to sort the Scientific Method out of the tangle of mental processes that preceded it.  Ignore for the moment that it's still only a tiny minority of human minds that actually use or comprehend Science- remember that that tiny minority, and Science, have utterly and irrevocably altered the world.  Acknowledged or not, the power of the Scientific Method is irrefutable.


  That's what I'm asking of you all.  Gaia's Daughter- your thinking shows me you are on the path.  You're finding it depressing.  So do I; but realize you are in the same place as the scientific thinkers in the 11th Century- struggling through millennia of mental murk.  


   And I'm afraid I must add a depressing observation of my own, re: your comment  "I do think that circumstances may force Truth upon us sooner rather than later . . . the day of 'no other alternatives' may be closer than we think. "   Alas, the astonishing durability of delusional systems is broadly demonstrated, historically.  The US Wall Street Stock Markets being a case in point- there's no shred of rationality anywhere; yet it keeps going.  


   We can all see, very clearly, that the path humanity is currently on cannot endure, and is deeply unjust in many ways; but I'm beginning to suspect it can keep going, in robust zombie mode, for a long time.  Change may not be able to depend on collapse; likewise collapse might not enforce change.  If we want a healthy, just planet, we may have to find new ways.


  It is not easy- to see where no one has seen before.  I doubt that one mind can do it all.


  But we need to try.  And why should we not start here?


-------------------------------------------------------------------


   And, another "tsk-tsk!" from the New York Times today, with a story of Truth inserted into the system and ignored, leading to disaster.  Do read it.  And the fate of the poor fellow who tried to make the system work; expected it to; trusted it to.  This is our reality- across the board.  Not the exception.  Yet the great majority of us still come out of higher education, and find this surprising and counter-intuitive.  
   
   Then we get depressed about it, and withdraw (I'm not an exception.)  


   What we need to do, is find a new way to engage the problem.  Entirely new.  The "Occupy" people are on the right track- they have no stated agenda- because they are smart enough to know they do not know what is needed.  


   Like the invention of Science- progress on problems of this magnitude come very slowly and in tiny pieces.  Put it on your list.

Signs of intelligent life.

Well. One sign. Better than nothing.

If you're like me, you're getting desperate to find any sign of intelligent life on Earth these days. I'm not even going to recite the list of signs to the contrary, it really is depressing.

But I keep searching. One of the places I regularly search is the "Green Blogs" over on the NYT; they have a team of reporters who normally have not-stupid things to say about the world struggle to come to grips with the fact that Nature still exists, and we really do have to pay attention to that.

Today, alas, I was not impressed there, and left a rude comment in reply (which I'll be interested to see if they actually post... so far; nope.)

My rude comment:

“ 'What they point out is, hey — it’s not just temperature driving the change,” Dr. Van Buskirk said.'



"What an insight! By golly! It's just possible that living organisms, in multiple ecosystems, across continents, might, possibly, respond to more than ONE parameter at a time! Who'da thunk! 

:-)

"ok, I'm pretty sure (ohpleasegod!) that Dr. Van B wasn't ever that silly. What I AM a little perplexed about is how a bit of "science reporting" in the NYT could even come close to suggesting that. 

Yes, I understand that Fox Views will report that way- but must we all be dragged down to nursery school level?"

Obnoxious of me, I realize. But. We do need to struggle to keep our intellectual socks pulled up at least part way.

So it was a great joy to me to find Gail Collins' column today. I've referenced her work here before, and can only recommend again; when you need, desperately, a little whiff of sanity, somewhere in the world, try Gail.

And some GOOD oddball science...

Coming hard on the heels of Silly Science, here is a totally simple-minded little experiment- which turns out to be brilliant; and I'd have to predict a classic demonstration for all students of physics, mathematics, and music, for eons to come:

This one was built at Harvard; and in the very best scientific tradition, they do not take the credit for it:

"Our apparatus was built from a design published by Richard Berg {Am J Phys 59(2), 186-187 (1991)} at the University of Maryland. He claims their version is copied from one at Moscow State University and they claim to have seen it first in the US, so we don't know who made one first. The apparatus we have was designed and built by Nils Sorensen."

And it came to me via email from my brother, who spends way too much time wandering the ether... :-)

Trivial. Maybe.

I'm not really a fan of "scientist bashing"- ridiculing various research reports because they seem foolish. In a huge number of cases, work that seems trivial to the casual observer may actually have some real merit, when viewed by a specialist. I've even gone on record here as bashing the bashers- Proxmire's "Golden Fleece Awards" being an egregious example of anti-intellectual pandering (in the comments here.)

But! Sometimes stuff really is silly. This one just escapes me- and there is a real significant question it raises - when do we "know" something?

Researchers in the UK have spent a considerable amount of time, effort, and money- to discover that- wearing 50 lbs of steel armor will make you more tired than not wearing it.

In the formal abstract for the research, they state: "How much wearing armour affected Medieval soldiers' locomotor energetics and biomechanics is unknown."

And end up with "Our findings can predict age-associated decline in Medieval soldiers' physical performance, and have potential implications in understanding the outcomes of past European military battles." Translation: old soldiers have a hard time carrying lots of steel, and maybe gasping for breath could have affected their performance."

I have to tell you- I really think "we", as in scholars interested in the field - "knew" that before the treadmill tests.

But there are a growing number of researchers who actually believe that if something is not published in a journal they recognize, then in fact we do NOT know it.

It may seem trivial- but I think it may not be. How do we decide what is in our joint pool of "true" information?

Bittman and GMOs

Mark Bittman, the notorious NYT food columnist/writer, Luddite, elitist, and nauseating proponent of doing your homework and applying rigorous common sense, has been stirring the stew regarding whether we should be notified about the presence of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in our food, or not.

The stew is bubbling quite a bit, in response. (In case you can't tell, I admire him quite a lot.)

I have something to add to the stew, which is a little crude (and I don't have time to do a re-write) but which is to the point.

Below is an essay I zipped off in October 1999, as a heartfelt response to picking up a Future Farmers Of America newsletter, and finding that what was then being dubbed "biotech"; which includes GMOs, was being presented to high school kids as the certain, and bright, future.

It's a big topic. I'll let the conversation start here. This, incidentally, is my bit mentioned long ago in "once and future topics" on "where have all the mammoths gone?"

------------------------------------------

Why Biotech Has No Clothes

I’ve noticed a highly disturbing trend recently; the Biotech mavens, pushers, junkies, and corporations have stolen a march on those few of us who would like a little calm discussion before completely destroying the bottle that once held the genie.

If you take a look at any publications aimed at our mainstream agricultural youth, you will find article after article stating that Biotech is our only hope to feed our growing world.

No discussions. Just the flat statement: there is no alternative. Occasionally an interviewee will have the grace to preface the statement with “I believe...” . But what always follows is: “ we simply have no alternative if we don't want people to starve to death.”

And the kids are receiving this wisdom from above quite cheerfully, even willingly passing it on, to those outside the farm community who couldn’t possibly understand the internal necessities and holy mission of the food system.

Population control? Don’t be ridiculous. And shut up about China, they’re still godless communists, and horrifying. Don’t try to tell me they’re just people, like us, struggling to deal with a near impossible problem.

Questions about who benefits from Biotech? Huh? Obviously, corporations would only do what is good for all of us. Why, just look at what wonderful things have already been done for dairy farmers! They’re so much better off now that Biotech has increased milk production; and the vets have so much more work to do, too.

What is happening now is in fact an echo of an earlier phase of human development.

I can hear precisely the same argument going on about 10,000 years ago.

“Our tribe is expanding! We will simply have to hunt more, and longer hours.”

“And with this new tool our hunters have developed, the wonderful Bow, so much more powerful than the quaint old spear-thrower, we can clearly feed all our people!!”

“Look, there’s that herd of mammoths we’ve never been able to harvest before!! After them!!”

Meanwhile, some moron in the background was mumbling “Gee, look at all the grass. And all the grass seed. Sure, a grass seed is smaller than a mammoth, but, there really is a lot of it. I bet we could eat grass seeds.”

Echoes come: “What an amazing, ludicrous idiot! We’ve always been mammoth hunters, and always will be! He’s just a damfool dreamer; no concept of hard reality. Besides, nobody would ever want to eat that stuff; we eat mammoths. Always have, always will. Period.”

Luckily for you and me, once that very last herd of mammoths was eaten, someone remembered this idiot.

We’re in the same place now. We’re about to run out of mammoths (soil and water), the women in the tribe are pregnant, and the mammoth hunters have a new tool. Soon our soil and water can be remembered in museums, right beside the mammoths. And the whole world can look like Iraq, the birthplace of agriculture.

Um, have you noticed that trees have seeds?

Gee.

-------------------------------------------------

(Being polite and kind people, we will refrain here from pointing out that the wonderful bow, over the years, has killed vastly more men, women, and children, than it ever did mammoths. An excellent tool, the bow; very powerful. Alas that tools have no conscience of themselves; the sharp knife cuts anything; neither knowing nor caring what it cuts, or who is wielding it. So who is the conscience to be for the new Biotech bows? Giant multinational corporations? Ah, well, that’s all right, then! Thank goodness.)

(We will also quietly refrain from pointing out that the “world will starve” statement is a lie, and a myth, used very effectively to make people feel guilty about arguing. The world has a tremendous surplus of food, and will for a long time to come. So much we burn tons of food to fuel our cars; so we can drive to the lake, to play on our jetskis. People do starve; but not because the world has no food for them; they starve for political reasons, and because of a lack of timely compassion. The World is NOT hungry; the World is mean.)

(In fact, while Biotekkies proudly state that they will be able to increase production of crop x by as much as 5%! (gosh) the fact is that in the 3rd World, sometimes 30-40% of each year’s crop production is WASTED. Lost. It rots, after harvest. Due to inadequate storage facilities and systems. Yes, it really is that much; almost never less than 20%. Unfortunately, there is no real money to be made by helping developing nations build appropriate transportation and storage. Nor scientific careers and reputations.)

woo hoo!

Hot diggety, I'm a "Highlight" on the NYT "Green Blog"!!

This is a bit about the oil spill.  In all the moaning (guys, they're just getting warmed up) people are starting to argue how rare this kind of thing is- and my response is- no, it was inevitable.  Not the same slant as "rare."

  And the typical press response is still "ooh, maybe the worst won't happen, and these pelicans will magically escape the oncoming oil!  We just don't know yet!"  Yes, we do.  The Gulf- lots of it- is toast. Only question is, how many years to anything like a recovery.

  I do a fair amount of commenting in several places- there are lots of days when my lobotomy will let me respond to a statement in ok fashion; but won't give me the ability to put a coherent and hopefully worthwhile independent post here.

  :-)

  Have a nice day, if possible.

The Tooth Fairy- a Growth Industry!

Now that we all know economic "growth" is dead- the realization is spreading, and turning up in non-intuitive places.

I tripped over this one (on BBC), and laughed so hard I had to share it with you.

Really perfect Polka Dot Gallows material- you don't know whether to laugh or cry; you just kind of sit there, jaw dropped, and boggle.

It's the only remnant of The Capitalist Dream! Enough money to bury you. Obtained, you hope, by a gambling proposition (insurance: I bet I'll pay less in than they'll pay out)- which you believe you'll win. Although all the calculations of the insurance company say- you won't. Their profits depend on that. Do insurance companies make profits? Do fish have sex in the water?

And if you can zoom your screen a little, and get a good look at the fairy's face- it strikes me as skeptical, with a little secret smirk. Right up front.

That's what they're selling, to a herd never weaned from Disney.

I would like to know, scientifically, how many are buying.

sigh.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update:

Ok, can't help it, it's raining today so I'm inside reading too much.

And just boggling all over the place at the substitution of polysyllabic incompetence for "thinking".

Started off with a diatribe on the NYT "GreenInc" blog. Not posted yet, so who knows; but I'll repeat it here:

All the critics here are correct; but you’ve fallen into the trap set by the scheme instigators.

You’re fighting fire with logic. Doesn’t actually work, in terms of putting any fires out; it just generates committees.

The real problem is professors. (don’t you just love it when people say ‘the real problem is…’ )

Professors- not known for their broadscale thinking, repeatedly find they have a hammer in their possession. And they get enthusiastic about it.

“Look at this huge beautiful hammer!” they cry- attracting many who got Cs in science in high school, and assume professors know what they’re talking about.

“We have to use this hammer! And your problem looks to me like the perfect nail!”

Except is isn’t a nail, at all. This problem right here is an Allen head bolt, and the hammer is not useful.

But the hammer is big and shiny- and expensive, so there’s loads of money to be made studying it all, and building prototypes.

“Hey, technology is huge these days! We’ll figure out fixes for the problems later!:”

Just like they did for corn ethanol- a direction now abandoned by all not brain dead or deeply invested.

CEOs of power companies; and legislators, really need to ask for a full-scale, long term (500 year) plan and extrapolation. If the process proposers don’t have one- that’s really really good evidence they haven’t thought beyond their big shiny hammer, at all.

Do we have time to waste, and money- on Allen head bolts flattened and mashed beyond extraction by big shiny hammers?

That’s supposed to be rhetorical.

— Greenpa

Used to be only ninnys didn't think problems all the way through- but it seems to be a pathway now being taught to PhDs.

The next example, which pushed me over the edge, is from BBC Science.

This professor guy (and not a minor professor, but "the director of the scientific aquaculture programme at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts") is spending huge amount of money working on training aquaculture fish to come back when called, in the ocean; by a specific sound.

Then, see, they could go find some of their own food, and wouldn't always be pooping in the same toilet, but would come back when you wanted to feed- or kill them.

First try didn't work. Predators ate them, as soon as they were allowed to escape from the cage. I'll be darned.

Besides which- gosh, if you've got your fish trained to come and be fed, and the signal is a sound... exactly how long do you think it will take the predators to learn that the sound means- time to come and get fed? Right here?

I think any signal, in any medium, you can use to train your fish will emphatically be intercepted by the predators, immediately.

At first, the fish began to forage outside of the aquadome, moving in and out at the prompt of the sound, just as the researchers had hoped.

"But then we start seeing these bluefish circling our cage. And these are notorious for being ravenous and ruthless hunters," he says.

"Very frustratingly, we went back day after day to find these fish still showing up at the cage, and we couldn't for the life of us call the black sea bass back.

The tags helped the researchers to identify their bass

"They were scared to death - we went diving, and we could see them amongst the rocks, but nothing was going to make them run that gauntlet between the rocks and the cage when it would put their lives at risk."

And the fish had good reason to be scared.

When the team caught one of the bluefish and slit open its belly, they discovered 12 tiny tags - the fish that they had been attached to had already been digested.

But. Big, hopeful, news coverage on the BBC!! Hey, the funders will love it.

And his answer? Gonna build robotic sheep-dog sharks to keep the little predators away.

What a good idea.

sigh.

Ok, so the hammer is not working on this machine screw. Maybe if I hit it from the side, with more money...