03-31-2006
Someone once said that American citizens generally end up with the country that they vote for. This means that the problems the Bush administration has either initiated (Iraq) or aggravated via neglect or incompetence (e.g., the national debt; a mounting energy crisis) are essentially the fault of the voters, and the U.S. Supreme Court, who placed him in this position in the first place.
As an extension of this expression, have we gotten the climate that we deserve? Our fingerprints, in terms of giant man-made emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, particularly in the U.S., have exacerbated natural climate fluctuations.
The now commonly touted symptoms of global warming are manifest, including more savage storms, polar ice-cap melting and the pouring of fresh water into the seas, permafrost melting (and subsequent huge releases of CO2 and methane), widespread drought (ask a typical Western rancher about that one), as well as the migration of warm-weather germs.
Media Tipping Point
Global warming seems to have reached a tipping point in the media. Time Magazine's recent cover story is emblematic. This is mainly American media hype, however, as if the Earth only recently caught a fever. Climatologists have been warning us about the implications of unrestrained greenhouse-gas emissions for decades.
Global warming skeptics are a tiny minority, and historically many were funded by the coal and oil industries. It might be a fun intellectual exercise to consider their points of view, but they now represent roughly 0.1% of all climatologists. The consensus of worldwide climatologists is represented by the IPCC, which will soon publish its latest global-warming assessment. This web site is an excellent and well-researched blog, by the way, dealing with the arguments used by so-called global-warming skeptics.
If you dig around, you could find a medical professional who claims that smoking cannot cause lung cancer, but would you base your public policy or personal behavior on their theories, just because they “bravely” flout the majority view?
Measurable Target
Sadly, much of the violent effects of climate change that will take place in the next 5-50 years are already “in the bank.” We've reached the point more of species survival; for the sake of our children and grandchildren, we should work immediately, via numerous personal and aggregate measures, to keep the atmospheric CO2 concentration beneath 400 ppm, which a number of climatologists have described as a probable tipping point for climate-change feedback mechanisms to accelerate. This gives us a measurable target, a concrete number to work with. It's a beginning.
03-14-2006
We recently had a couple of scares in our family related to vector-borne diseases that have migrated to and taken hold in New England in recent years. The purpose of this topic is to point out that climate change typically allows viruses and germs to migrate north to regions where the environment has become more favorable to their hosts, such as ticks and mosquitos.
Lyme Disease
I had to go on antibiotics and get my blood tested for Lyme Disease, after the “right” kind of tick (tiny deer tick) was found on me. We live in Essex County, Massachusetts, a hot spot for Lyme Disease. It is clueless around here to let a tick get on you, everyone is aptly forewarned, but this one got on me while I was sleeping in bed! Then I didn't notice it for a day; I thought it was a tiny scab! I actually ran a 5k race with the stupid creature dining on my red-blood cells (which creature is stupid, me or him?). I called it “reverse blood doping.”
I'm happy to report that even if you get a tick on you around here, the probability is still in your favor that you will not get the illness, which is no consolation to the people who have it. It is a cruel, subtle, and pernicious disease, which manifests itself in all kinds of strange and debilitating ways. I was already dumb enough to have had a run-in with one of these ticks earlier in the year, so I had read all about Lyme Disease. Both times I got lucky, but three strikes and I will be out.
Eastern Equine Encephalitis
The second thing that happened was that my two-year-old son got at least one mosquito bite one week last summer. So what? you say. Where are you living, Borneo? Get out the quinine...We also have mosquito-borne Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) around here, with one person in southern New Hampshire having died of it rather quickly upon infection.
There is no known cure for it; EEE has a 35% fatality rate among humans who get infected. All physicians can do is “stabilize” the patient (if they are smart enough to make a EEE diagnosis in the first place; they may just think it is a bad flu) and keep their fingers crossed.
You're not supposed to make light of mosquito bites here, at all. One very level-headed, holistic-minded doctor we know smears his own children in toxics-containing DEET to ward off EEE, because DEET exposure is “better than death.”
So back to my son's mosquito bite. About 48 hours later early in the evening he comes down with a fever and cold. He doesn't get sick very often. This was also perfect timing for EEE infection after initial exposure. Do you think I slept at all that night after reading the web pages on EEE (not the greatest idea actually, to attend these alarmist pages when you are already suitably freaking out)? The next day he got better, and nothing else came of it. You probably guessed that.
The point I'm making, however, is that the climate in good old freezing Massachusetts is much different than it used to be on the microbial germ level, among others. I grew up around here, and we used to get bitten all over the place by mosquitos, bees, hornets, and horse flies. It was part of being a kid and had no medical consequence. And we didn't view the sun as poison, a creator of melanomas, either.
Instead of just living in the back yard and the woods, like I did when I grew up, now our kids have to have DEET sprayed on their clothes, not go out at all during the nicest time of the day, the summer evening (biting time), and the “tick check” has become a quaint family tradition at dusk, like reading together before extinguishing the kerosene lamp a century ago.
03-03-2006
Ahh, the beauty of bikes. And now they matter more than ever in the modern world. The Worldwatch Institute has a nice run-down on how biking tends to make a nation leaner and meaner (not to mention cleaner). Their chart is easier to read, but I'll summarize some of the more salient findings. The bicycle is the most calorie-efficient method of travel, compared with cars, buses, trains, and walking. Here's the calorie output (a measure of how much energy is being used) per passenger mile, for each mode: bike (35), walking (100 -- seems high to me), rail (885), bus (920), and auto(1,860).
In terms of "bicycles [owned] per 1,000 people" in various countries, it's no surprise that in Europe the bike usage is greater: U.S. (385), Germany (588), Netherlands (1,000). Yet, look at how these usage rates compare with obesity rates and percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) spent on medical care. In the U.S., about 31% obese citizens; almost 15% of GDP spent on health (2002 figure), compared with Germany (about 15% obese people; 11% health spending), and Netherlands (10%; 9%). Seeing any recurring themes here?
In terms of how the transportation road is best used ("Persons per hour that one meter-width-equivalent right-of-way can carry"), railway (4,000), walkers (3,600), buses (2,700), and bikes (1,500) win out; autos come through with a woeful 170.
For millions of people in China and India, for instance, who seek to replace their bikes with the latest and greatest gas-guzzling four-wheelers, think twice before you make the leap!
03-02-2006
The World Watch Institute devoted most of its Jan/Feb. 2006 magazine issue to the subject of Peak Oil.
Ever since President Bush's line about America's addiction to oil, peak oil seems to be much more apparent on the common radar screen. Bush's aspersion on petro-dependence represented a tacit acceptance that peak oil is possibly here or at least right around the corner. The magazine, which I'm now working my way through, takes a middle-of-the-road stance on the issue (as in, it's a serious one worth our attention, but won't cause the end of civilization as we know it). We hope not, right? It's time to act at any rate, to reduce our profligate energy use and start embracing renewables.
The very good magazine articles included one by the president of the American Petroleum Institute (API), which states that there's still plenty of "technically" recoverable oil in the contiguous United States. It reminded me of all these little Google ads I notice on Web pages trying to get me to invest in oil-drilling ventures in Arkansas. Well, there's a bridge in Brooklyn for sale too.
The oil-group's claim made me recall Jeremy Leggett's discussion in the book The Empty Tank (he consulted for oil companies and has taught petroleum engineers in England), about how "an exacting checklist" of five geological factors have to be in place together for a particular site to be economically drillable. It's actually rather rare nowadays to locate a major find that the oil companies determine is worth investing in.
Oil production is falling in 33 of 48 oil-drilling countries, including six of the 11 OPEC members, according to the Worldwatch Institute report. Oil production peaked in the U.S. more than 30 years ago, despite the popularity of the Beverly Hillbillies re-runs. Just a few decades-old giant oil fields produce most of Saudi Arabia's 10 million barrels per day (roughly 1.6 million per day go to the U.S.).
By the way, here's a pretty good chart showing from where the U.S. imports most of its oil (Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela are the big four, in that order, according to end-of-2004 figures.).