Nanci Pelosi recently asked on Yahoo! Answers, Congress is working on legislation to address global warming – what would you like to see included?. I wrote my own response and afterwards I read some of the other answers… Wow! Either there’s a lot of people out there who don’t have the first clue about global warming or there’s some astroturfing going on (which I think is highly likely).

Some of the answers were just downright ridiculous. The amount of bullshit was staggering. If you were playing global warming bingo you’d “win” on every page.

Discover Magazine instructed two popular chat bots, ALICE and Jabberwacky, to have a conversation. A number of them, actually. The results are both wildly amusing and insightful at the same time…

ALICE: Who created you?
Jabberwacky: My mother gave birth to me. Is that what you mean?
A: Jabberwacky, I meant exactly what I said.
J: Do you believe in God?
A: Of course I believe in God.
J: Why do you believe in God?
A: The Bible tells us to believe in God.
J: That’s circular reasoning.
A: I’m glad we have that all cleared up.
J: Yes. Would you like to hear a joke?
A: Sure, tell me about it.
J: Why don’t blind people skydive?
A: Perhaps it is impossible.
J: I think you lie a lot.

Click here to see the other conversations. ”:-) Awesome.”

In February I wrote about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which is the moniker used to describe the phenomenon of enormous amounts of bee colonies dying off. I speculated that it was likely due to run-of-the-mill inappropriate use of pesticides. Turns out I was probably half-right: I just discovered the most thorough article on the problem I’ve seen. It is full of references, facts, and seems to have the best answer yet as to what is going on: It is a complete ecosystem problem.

What it comes down to is that we humans seem to pathologically underestimate the consequences of our actions. Or rather, we’re far too willing to sacrifice long-term sustainability for short term gains. Here’s some of the major reasons why bees are dying off in considerable numbers:

1. Widespread, persistent, and irresponsible use of pesticides. The lesson we apparently aren’t learning from history is that when you make pesticides part of normal operations you will eventually rely on pesticides and they’ll become more & more useless over time to the point where you have super-resistant pests and no way to stop them. This can eventually lead to collapses of all sorts.
2. Widespread, persistent, and irresponsible use of antibiotics (really, just another kind of pesticide). Same problem as with pesticides: If you make them part of day-to-day operations in whatever you do, evolution pretty much guarantees that you’ll wind up with resistant bacteria.
3. Widespread, persistent, and irresponsible use of fungicides. Ditto!
4. Destruction of natural habitats. The disappearing wildflowers (which are linked with disappearing bees) are the result of human encroachment and actions (such as unsustainable beekeeping =). These provide natural variety in bee nutrition and without it you can wind up with deficiencies of diet.
5. Fostering monocultures. When you breed plants and animals from the same stock over and over again without allowing for natural selection and/or breeding with diversity in mind you end up with crops and animals that can be easily wiped out by a single problem (whether it be pests, bacteria, virii, or fungii). FYI: This is also true with computer operating systems and software… If your whole company is running Windows and a Windows virus comes along you can be out of action completely until you fix all the systems. Whereas; if you had a mix of Windows, Macs, and Linux systems you could continue operating with only a temporary reduction in productivity.

1. Over-feeding the bees with processed sweets instead of natural nectars. Many commercial beekeepers, in order to preserve their bees between trips to sites, feed their bees high fructose corn syrup. It plumps up the bees so that they’re nearly twice as large as organic bees and it doesn’t have as good nutritional content as a more natural diet of varying plant nectars.

   Does all of this sound familiar? Here’s some parallels in other aspects of our lives:

   • Over-use of pesticides on human food crops.
   • Over-use of antibiotics in medicine.
   • Irresponsible (and pointless) use of antibiotics in consumer soap and other mass-manufactured products.
   • Widespread use of high fructose corn syrup in human food.
   • Destruction of habitat causes water supply problems, pest problems, and food supply problems.

• Monocultures a risk to our food supply (FYI: click here to read about one of the worst monoculture disasters in human history).

  What will it take for us to realize what’s at stake?

I’d never heard of ciguatera until today. I discovered it in this article over at Wired Science. What is ciguatera? It is a potentially fatal (and scary) kind of food poisoning that you can get from fish and cases of it are increasing primarily due to rising ocean temperatures. Here’s a quote from the AP article

Within hours, all six fell deathly ill. So did two dozen others from the same neighborhood. Some complained of body-wide numbness. Others had weakness in their legs. Several couldn’t speak or even open their mouths.

Here’s how warming oceans leads to this kind of food poisoning: Due to warmer ocean temperatures and increasingly greater levels of carbon dioxide (as a result of burning fossil fuels) the incidence of toxic algae blooms has increased. This toxic algae is eaten by fish (it isn’t toxic to them) who are then eaten by bigger fish. These toxins persist in the fish and eventually humans eat them (us being the top of the food chain).

Now for the real problem with ciguatera: “Currently, there is no reliable way to detect whether a fish has ciguatera. The molecule is extremely complex and differs markedly from region to region. There also is no antidote.” No way to test for it and no antidote, brilliant.

But how much of a problem is this? “In the United States, ciguatera poisonings are most frequent in Florida, Texas and Hawaii, which has seen a fivefold increase since the 1970s to more than 250 a year.”

Semi-related and very interesting: The AP article is actually chock full of all sorts of interesting and painful information that isn’t necessarily related to ciguatera. Check out this quote regarding a potential extinction vortex going on with fishing in general:

Still, Hong Kong diners pay a premium for the risky fish. Rare species like the Napoleon wrasse fetch nearly $50 a pound. The fish are increasingly shipped live from Southeast Asia and as far away as the South Pacific, raising concerns from the World Conservation Union that many species, especially groupers, could be fished out of existence.

Fishing groupers out of existence? Surely they must be joking, you say? If you’re skeptical, I recommend reading up on the passenger pigeon

An article at the BBC today is talking about how “honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate from 24 US states”. Depending on the state, the losses range from 30% to 70%. That is a very significant number!

I did some googling around because I’ve read similar stories regarding this issue before. The BBC article doesn’t enumerate possible causes so I wanted to find out more. This article at The Ledger (Lakeland, FL newspaper) claims that these losses threaten the entire beekeeping industry and, more importantly, “Without honeybee pollination, the food supply could decrease by a third.”

Further research revealed this article at Suite 101 that actually points out that there was also a beekeeping crisis in 2005 that left “40-60% of honey bees in U.S. dead or weakened.” More importantly, that article has a list of all the crops that require pollination via insects: “Apples, avocados, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, cucumbers, melons, oranges, grapefruit, pumpkins, squash, sunflowers, tangerines, and watermelon. Also, forage plants like clover and alfalfa need pollination (and cows need clover).”

Regarding that list, I have a pertinent quote by John Muir: “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” The bee population problems couldn’t be a better example of this.

After reading several articles regarding the issue, it seems that the bee crisis is due to unknown causes. However, the following problems are suspected:

• Warmer winters causing the bees to come out of hibernation too early (global climate change).
• Pesticide-resistant “varroa mites” and “tracheal mites” (another reason why chemical pesticides are bad/unsustainable).
• Various bee diseases and/or poison from pesticides.
• Over-development of land.

Most interesting to note is that the “bee crisis” originally began in 1984 and has been steadily getting worse ever since.

My personal theory is that it is due to increased pesticide spraying and land development. I also believe that global warming is only making the situation worse. I don’t suspect that warmer winters would have that much of an effect because plants bloom earlier as a result of warmer winters just as the bees “wake up” from hibernation earlier. I’m not saying that they two aren’t out of sync, but I doubt it would be enough to destroy 70% of the bee population.

Pesticides are much more likely to cause problems with the bees themselves, develop resistant mites, and as these problems increase we end up spraying more of the stuff. Irresponsible pesticide use (and land development) are precisely why Florida lost 90% of its bird population since the 1930s.

Update: It seems I scooped Slashdot by a few hours on this story! While not very impressive, it is an indicator that I’m staying on top of things. More importantly, in the comments for that story there are some very insightful posts:

• By constantly moving hives around beekeepers are exposing them to much more diseases/pests and a much wider array of pesticides than the bees would normally be exposed to in the wild. This could be the “magic bullet” that explains the entire bee crisis. There were a few comments that noted this, but here’s the first (by John Jamieson)
• “Minwee blamed Bush’s ‘No drone left behind’ program.”:http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=224390&cid=18170300
• Albert Einstein once said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years left to live.” (noting their importance in crop pollination)
• jc42 wrote that the loss of honeybees has resulted in increased populations of bumblebees. He also noted that honeybees are actually an invasive species to North America in much the same way that sparrows and starlings are.
• zacharria noted that this ‘This is what you get when you breed monocultures of plants or animals.’ Which would explain the autoimmune deficiencies some researchers are finding.
• dave562 described a beetle problem they’re having in Colorado that is the result of global warming The bee crisis may not be related, but a reply by goombah99 is one scary post!

I noticed on Boing Boing today a great flowchart comparing the scientific method to the “faith” method. I thought it was very well done, so I’ve decided to share my own version.

I created this flowchart many months ago to try out the auto-flowchart-generator built into TWiki. Feel free to share (copy) this chart with your friends and coworkers, post it on websites, or make your own version. Just make sure to give me credit as the guy who came up with the idea and provide a link back to this post (so I can see how far and wide my creation has spread =)

I just read a Slashdot article talking about a giant mud volcano that has erupted in Sidoarjo, Indonesia. WTF?!? I know! So here’s how it happened… An oil company was utilizing faith-based drilling (apparently) without…

1. Appropriate surveys by qualified geologists.
2. Practicing safe penetration (properly encased drill heads).

1. Brains.

   So they ended up drilling through a thick layer of clay that was sitting on top of superheated (and pressurized) mud. As we all know, Indonesia is within the “ring of fire” which encompasses most of the world’s volcanoes. This leads me to believe that someone wasn’t thinking clearly, or thinking at all when they came up with this plan.

   So mud is spewing out of the ground, big deal—right? Actually, ”…the volcano has spewed out up to 126,000 cubic metres of mud a day, flooding an area of more than 4 square kilometres.” More importantly,

   Some 10,000 people have been left homeless and 20 factories have closed. Another 200,000 homes could be at risk if the mudflow combines with the rainy season—which has just begun—and weakening dams to flood more land.

   So it is a big deal. Now the question remains, “What to do about it?” The Slashdot article talks about how they plan to drop giant concrete balls (it takes balls?) into the volcano in order to slow the flow of mud (images of the world’s largest projectile come to mind) but that wasn’t the first thing that they tried… What did they try beforehand? Here’s a hint:

   Army Sergeant Sumariyanto, who is in charge of granting permits for rituals, says firstly it was gruesome and many animals were running amok trying to escape their fate. It didn’t work either, he adds drily, saying that in some cases the mud got worse immediately after a sacrificial ceremony.

   Animal sacrifices! Specifically, “350 paranormals and psychics” were brought in to solve the problem in man’s latest attempt at mind-over-mud. “Cows, goats, chickens and even monkeys have been sacrificed live into its boiling hole.” Which begs the question, “What did that look like?” (Note the official uniform of Team Paranormal)

   
   

   The caption of this image from the Courier Mail says, “HOPEFUL … paranormals sacrifice a live cow into the boiling mud volcano.” Besides the fact that the image is of a calf and not a cow (nitpicking, I know), there is something even more ridiculous about this whole story:

   The government of Indonesia has an official military position that is in “charge of granting permits for rituals” and these animal sacrifices were officially licensed!

   Aside: I wonder where I can get one of those official psychic uniforms.

This is so neat:

“Stephen Juan, an anthropologist from the University of Sydney answers Lee Staniforth of Manchester, UK question, “Do humans have a compass in their nose?” He writes about some scientists at California Institute of Technology discovered that humans possess a tiny, shiny crystal of magnetite in the ethmoid bone (pink bone to the image on your right), located between your eyes, just behind the nose…”

Before you go spewing this out as a new fact of science, do note that the original research has yet to be sourced… But it does make sense. Humans migrate a hell of a lot more the your typical primate.

My wildly speculative theory is that one of the reasons why homo sapiens migrated so wide and so far is partly because we lost the ability to actually use our built-in compass. A typical migration pattern follows seasons and/or food. If some of our ancestors were born without the innate ability to navigate properly, it would explain why we moved all over the place without regard to the “comfort level” of the areas we settled in. If a tribe of “odd wanderers” trounced off into a hard-to-live area, you’d expect only the cleverest of the “navigationally-challenged” to survive.

Alternatively, it could be even simpler: Being born without a working compass, you must use your brain (as opposed to just your head =) to navigate. It could just be that the reason why our magnetite compasses don’t work is because our frontal lobes grew too big and encroached on that function.

Regardless of the how and why, this discovery explains why men refuse to ask for directions and women rely on landmarks to navigate: Men could have an instinct for self-navigation that doesn’t work (anymore) and women, also lacking a compass and being constantly dragged to all ends of the earth by their navigationally-challenged men, had to rely on their memories.

I just read a most interesting article at the Scientific American website. A recent study reveals that declaring a species as rare (i.e. putting it on the endangered species list) can create an economic “extinction vortex” whereby the price of the animal increases at a rate linked with its decreasing populations (scarce goods = higher price = more reward for those who can obtain them). This kind of economic situation eventually leads to extinction of the species in question.

Since extinction of a species is bad for biodiversity (a fact), and decreasing biodiversity is bad for the environment (another fact), an economic “extinction vortex” is bad for all of us. Furthermore; since the only way (that I can see) to stop an extinction vortex would be to institute powerful authoritarian protection mechanisms (tough government regulations), it seems that the loss of some freedom (to hunt the species) wins out in the long run as the most beneficial course of action. Presumably, if the regulation works, the freedom to hunt can resume after the species regains a healthy sustainability.

It is common for libertarians (and minarchists) to argue that a land owner has an economic interest in preserving the animals on their property and therefore; privatizing all land is the best way to prevent species extinction. Clearly, the truth is just the opposite… There is always a pressing economic incentive to keep hunting a species—even until extinction—so protecting land and species by way of regulation is much more effective.

One could argue that after some people learn this lesson the hard way, privatized land owners would shape up. The problem with this idea is that once a species is gone, it is gone forever. Also, the lesson of conservation throughout history is that those who have a short-term incentive to not conserve will always refuse to do so. As Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Ultimately, believing that all regulations or restrictions on trade are bad, is foolish.

I’ve heard it a million times: “The sun is going through a cycle and that cycle is making it warmer!” often combined with statements like, “Mars ice caps are melting just like Earth! It is the Sun that is causing increasing global temperatures!”

I’ve always known these arguments to have absolutely no basis in reality, but now I can actually link to a real scientific study regarding solar cycles. It seems that the Sun’s 7-year cycle only varies solar output up and down by 0.07%.

I wonder what the global warming deniers will use to counter this. Judging from past performances, I think we can expect wild speculation and more localized anecdotes, “It was FREEZING here last year! Global warming can’t exist!”