Know-nothing judges

"We can't even tell what the weather's going to be two weeks from now, but these models tell us what the climate is going to be like 100 years from now," said Judge A. Raymond Randolph, a federal appeals court judge hearing a case by 12 states asking the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency to set standards for greenhouse gas emissions.

Thus, we have the confusion of the ignorant about the difference between weather and climate. Let me illustrate it for Judge Randolph's sake. It can rain on any particular day in the Arizona desert, and occasionally it does. But, the desert doesn't stop being a desert because of one day's rain. The climate remains the same: dry. Everything clear?

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Is peak oil a "disinformation campaign?"

Deconsumption takes on the conspiracy theorists directly. His thesis: Peak oil theory has been developed out in the open where everyone can see it and test its assumptions and evidence. Much of the information gathered is available to anyone on the Internet and has been put forward by genuine experts in petroleum geology. The reality of the coming peak in world oil production and possible effects were not intentionally "leaked" by any government agency or private corporation. A pretty good rebuttal.

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Corrupt the states

After three counties in California successfully passed bans on the planting of genetically modified crops, the GM seedmakers got smart. They've started pressuring state legislatures to pass pre-emptive laws that prevent localities from enacting their own bans. If you can't corrupt the locals, then move to the states. I think the reason the companies don't move to the national level is that this would provoke a huge national fight that they might not win. Better to work state by state with measures that are easier to hide from the public. After all, how many of us know what major bills are pending in our state legislatures?

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Do we need to recycle everything?

Any good environmentalist will tell you that human wastes used to be returned to the land, thus completing the natural cycle. But, with the advent of modern sanitation that cycle was broken. Human wastes are now sequestered in sewage treatment plants where they eventually end up as sludge or "biosolids" as the people in the industry like to call them. The idea of taking that waste and using it for fertilizer isn't new, and it isn't a bad one in principle, provided that certain safeguards are taken to prevent the spread of pathogens into the food supply.

But, the hue and cry over the use of sewage sludge on farm fields is based in part on what actually goes down city drains: a mixture of human wastes, toxic chemicals, and heavy metals from both households and industry. Even the human wastes are riddled with residues of antibiotics and other prescription drugs. It's not exactly what people had in mind when the idea of recycling biosolids was first proposed. And, it points up the virtual impossibility of separating the good and useful from the bad and toxic while living in the chemical soup we call modern industrial society.

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It doesn't take a rocket scientist, or does it?

The city of Rialto is dealing with decades of damage done by military storage facilities for rockets and explosives. Those weapons contained perchlorate, known to interfere with the production of thyroid hormones in humans in a way that is especially dangerous for young children and fetuses. Now six of the city's 13 water wells are contaminated with the chemical, and the fight is just beginning over who will pay for the cleanup.

Perchlorate pollution has also been plaguing lettuce growers and milk producers throughout the country.

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I know where you're coming from

Some pollution comes from sources that are small but widespread. An example would be runoff from farm fields and city streets. But, others are easy to pinpoint. It turns out that 11 percent of the total mercury emissions in the United States come from smokestacks associated with gold mines near Elko, Nevada. Unfortunately, the mines are not covered under the most recent rules regarding mercury emissions.

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The 'smoking gun' for global warming

As the evidence continues to mount, global warming deniers will go the way of Holocaust deniers and flat-earthers. Last week a new study confirmed that the Earth is absorbing more heat than it releases and that the additional absorption can only be reliably explained by human activity. Since the heat is being stored primarily in the oceans, the full effect of the warming will only be felt over several decades as heat is distributed and released across the planet. But, even if all new emissions of greenhouse gasses stopped today, the Earth would continue to warm because of heat previously trapped in the oceans.

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The New Yorker climate series continues

The second installment of The New Yorker magazine's climate series has more monitory news. Here are a few segments:

…since our species evolved, average temperatures have never been much more than two or three degrees higher than they are right now. [Predictions cited in the article call for increases of 4.9 to 7.7 degrees.]

...A possible consequence of even a four- or five-degree temperature rise--on the low end of projections for doubled [concentrations of carbon dioxide]--is that the world will enter a completely new climate regime, one with which modern humans have no prior experience.

...It is believed that the last time carbon dioxide levels were in this range was three and a half million years ago, during what is known as the mid-Pliocene warm period, and they likely have not been much above it for tens of millions of years.

One of the scientists quoted models the effects of global warming on rainfall patterns. The entire continental United States ends up in varying degrees of drought and severe drought as a result of the warming.

Much of the article discusses emerging science in paleoclimatology (the study of the climate of the past) which tells us that civilization after civilization has fallen at least, in part, due to rapid and severe climate change.

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'Standing in the way of progress'

The unfolding saga over whether a small California biotech company will be allowed to plant rice that produces human proteins shows how much resistance there is to the idea of essentially growing living pharmaceutical factories that could contaminate human food supplies. First, brewing giant, Anheuser-Busch, the country's largest buyer of rice, threatened to boycott all rice grown in Missouri where the planned field trial was to take place. Then, the brewer relented, no doubt under pressure from the state's pro-biotech governor. Then, it was the turn of Missouri farmers to object which sent the company to North Carolina where opponents will again try to block planting of the rice.

Even if the activists, concerned food processors and farmers win this one, they will be accused of standing in the way of progress. But, let's see what that phrase really means.

If we had known in 1930 that turning the automobile into the primary form of transportation in the United States would within 75 years send our domestic oil supplies into decline, make us dangerously dependent for fuel on countries far away that don't particularly like us (and lead to two wars with them), help to hollow out our major cities, create huge sprawling suburbs that are unsustainable, pollute the air with lead and smog, contribute substantially to global warming, kill up to 50,000 people a year and maim many times more than that, lead auto companies to intentionally destroy light rail and other forms of public transportation across America, and help bring us close to a peak in world oil supplies in the first decade of the 21st century, would we have gone ahead with the experiment?

Now, what do we already know about the dangers of genetically modified crops?

1. They breed with wild relatives, spreading their traits unpredictably.
2. They are marketed primarily to force farmers to use specific brands of herbicide and pesticide and to buy seeds every year from the maker.
3. They can create new undetected allergens in crops that are sometimes life-threatening.
4. They can be made not to bear useful seeds with what is called terminator technology. This prevents farmers from keeping their seeds, a hardship for poor farmers in developing countries. It also risks spreading sterility to natural relatives.
5. They have already contaminated organic crops which are prohibited from having genetically modified genes in them.
6. They will be used to produce pharmaceutical compounds and could pass these traits on to the same species used for food.
7. They cannot be effectively separated from non-genetically modified grains in the food supply chain even after harvest.
8. They can adversely affect insect and wildlife populations, some of which are beneficial to farmers.
9. There are alternatives that can provide the same or better results from traditional breeding techniques.
10. Genetically modified crops are controlled by fewer and fewer corporate giants making all of us more and more dependent on them.
11. The GMO seed makers have successfully prevented people from choosing non-GMO foods by keeping all labeling off American food. (If these crops are safe, what's the worry?)
12. These seeds have led to lawsuits against farmers whose fields were contaminated with GMO seeds by the carelessness of the haulers and adjacent farms. These innocent farmers were successfully extorted out of money for having "stolen" the intellectual property of the seed makers.
13. No feeding studies are required on genetically modified foods for adverse reactions or long-term safety. We just plain don't know if they are safe.

What is it about genetically modified foods that makes anyone except those who profit from them believe they are going to turn out to be a great boon to mankind? Who's really "standing in the way of progress" this time?

[For a good synopsis of the problems with GMO crops check out "The Future of Food," a documentary, and a recent article entitled, "The GMO Menace".]

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Is Jay Hanson's struggle our struggle?

Jay Hanson is familiar to many who have been following the peak oil issue because his site, dieoff.com, was perhaps the very first to deal with the issue in any systematic and thorough way. Hanson said in a 2003 interview that he named the site Die Off in order to shock people into awareness.

Today, Hanson, a computer programmer by profession, lives in Hawaii and has handed over his site to someone else to keep up. He now believes that nothing can be done to avoid a dieoff--not because it isn't feasible to do something, but because people are too competitive by nature to cooperate when the going gets really rough. He's returned his focus to his work and, oddly enough, to investing to make a few dollars before the energy tsunami hits. He says rich people will have more options on the downslope of the oil depletion curve, at least at the beginning.

He seems sad about his conclusion that warning people is a useless exercise, and yet, he thinks on about the issues of population, energy use, overshoot and dieoff. He seems to be struggling with whether his own competitive spirit is the one he should follow or whether his compassion for others is the right beacon. In that he mirrors the internal struggle we all face when difficulties visit our families or our communities. Of course, we'd probably be better off working in concert to solve our problems. But, we face the classic prisoner's dilemma. Can we trust that others won't sabotage us in order to gain advantage and thereby save themselves while discarding us?

(Thanks to Big Gav at Peak Energy [Australia] for pointing me to this interview.)

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