Krugman on the toxicity of American Politics

Paul Krugman talks about the toxic atmosphere created by the right-wing and their corporate supporters in the media, that has lead America to this current and deadly state of affairs.  In the article he exposes the primary source for the vitriol.

The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary.

And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

He realizes that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh provide people who watch and listen to them exactly what they want; an endless stream of drama, in which they play the victim in their own pretentious and morally debased theater of the absurd.  However, that does not imply that just because the obscene can be monetized, that it should be given public disclosure.

But even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those who pander to that desire. They should be shunned by all decent people.

This tragedy, isn't about limiting free speech.  This is about dangerously ignorant people, pursuing an ideology that demands the liquidation and elimination of all opponents and persons, who do not faithfully adhere their warped and deranged version of reality.  Krugman summarizes the critical conceit in this whole sordid affair.

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.

If there are those who do not believe the above, then they should ask what countries and explicitly, what Western democracies, allow their media and politicians to engage in such lawless behavior? The answer is that no Western European nations nor countries like Australia, Canada, or New Zealand, would tolerate the type of incitements to public violence as what routinely occurs in America.  On the other hand, third world countries with limited experience in democracy, failed nations engaging in sectarian conflict and ethnic cleansing, and countries like Venezuela and Iran, which are subsumed in managing their population through class and ideological warfare, are the ones in which America's political landscape most resembles.

Possible Causes of Honeybee Colony Collapse Found

US scientists associated with the US Army and the University of Montana, have ascertained a possible cause for the annual decline in honeybee colonies in the USA.

To contextualize, the phenomenon is not unique to the United States and has been found to be affecting bee populations across the globe for a number of years.   In 2004, apiarists started to discover that large portions of their colonies were either dying or not returning to their hives.  Substantial losses year-over-year both in North America and Europe, have lead to a concerted global effort to ascertain the causative agents behind this situation.  Francis Ratnieks, a biologist at University of Sussex in Brighton, has stated in Wired magazine that there is no single rational at the global level, why bee populations are in decline.  He elaborates that honeybees are "probably dying for all kinds of different reasons from loss of their foraging grounds to increased exposure to global pathogens."  Pesticide usage, monoculture agricultural practices, urban sprawl, and climate change are also a few of the other causes that investigators have looked at to understand why bees are in decline.

The NY Times is reporting that American scientists, utilizing military research tools, have identified a fungus and virus pair that is present in 100% of all colony collapse cases evaluated in their labs.  Their findings suggest that "both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised."

The article reports on the host-parasite interaction:

“It’s chicken and egg in a sense — we don’t know which came first,” Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other’s destructive power. “They’re co-factors, that’s all we can say at the moment,” he said. “They’re both present in all these collapsed colonies.”

The mechanisms that the fungus-virus pair is utilizing to undermining the bee populations is yet to be determined.

Still unsolved is what makes the bees fly off into the wild yonder at the point of death. One theory, Dr. Bromenshenk said, is that the viral-fungal combination disrupts memory or navigating skills and the bees simply get lost. Another possibility, he said, is a kind of insect insanity.

Further research into this phenomenon is necessary to understand a means of preventing future outbreaks.  However, we also know as in a case study in Britain where changes have been made to enhance the natural environment of bumblebees, such as "putting in pollen and nectar-rich flower margins to fields, growing red clover hay meadows and rotating the grazing of animals on land," that immediate improvements in the health of local bees could be achieved.

Garbage Posed to Clog China's Three Gorges Dam

Another article underlying that all is not alright with China or its environment. 

The Wall Street Journal outlines that as a result of recent rainfall across mainland China, massive levels of garbage and detritus have accumulated in river systems upstream of the the Three Gorges Dam and are posed to congest the dam's miter gate.  It is estmated that more than 150 million people live near the dam and its upper stream. Residents, due to inadequate waste removal facilities, routinely dump their household garbage directly into the river. As more people transition from low-productivity agrarian subsistence, to higher level urbanization and industrial production the overall problems are likely to increase, rather than diminish.

China’s state-controlled media continues to punch holes in the image of the mighty Three Gorges Dam.

The latest poke came via China Daily, the English-language government-run newspaper. In an article Monday, the paper warns a thick layer of garbage washed into the reservoir by torrential rains could jam a key floodgate on the world’s biggest dam.

“The large amount of waste in the dam area could jam the miter gate of the Three Gorges Dam,” Chen Lei, Three Gorges engineer, told the China Daily.

China has been coping with the deadliest floods in decades, with some 1,000 killed, stressing China’s poorly built infrastructure. Bridges have collapsed and authorities are rushing to reinforce dams and reservoirs cracking under the pressure.

Authorities have spoken publicly about problems at other dams, but this year’s unprecedented frankness about the Three Gorges in state media raises other questions. One of the Three Gorges biggest selling points was its ability to tame flooding on the Yangtze River. Critics say the dam could never live up to overhyped expectations on flood control.

In the past, domestic criticism was squashed as long as the dam’s chief proponent, former Premier Li Peng, had influence.

In the arcane shadow puppetry of China politics, perhaps all this trash talking against a project so closely linked to the former premier reflects some hidden political message?

Combined with increasing agricultural demands, encroaching deserts, water toxification, airborne pollution levels (which is estimated to cause 1.3 million premature deaths a year from respiratory disease) and industrial waste problems, China's ecological future appears grim.

Screw the Pandas! It's Insects, Fungi, & Phytoplankton we Should Care About

Last week an important article relating to the profound decline in phytoplankton levels across the planet's oceans was released in Nature and briefly discussed on this blog.

The implication that marine ecosystems across the globe may be on the verge of collapse has elicited little public antipathy or official governmental concern.  Instead, the world continues to lumber onwards toward environmental armageddon, with the same willful ignorance that has dominated our species for millennia.  Few people wish to see the great pandas of China to go extinct, yet the Panda's overall necessity to the survival of humanity on the planet is zero.  That however, cannot be said of scores of plants, animals, and microscopic microorganisms that are essential to the maintenance and survivability of ecosystems everywhere. 

For the past two decades, biologists have been sending warnings to the rest of humanity that anthropogenic activities are precipitating a sixth massive extinction of life across the planet.  E.O. Wilson, for example, estimated in 1993 that the Earth is losing approximately thirty thousand species per year.   Human population expansion through the growth of civilization and industrialization, have reduced global biodiversity and species fitness to levels where our own existence has become imperilled.

In addition to marine phytoplankton, there are numerous species that are in decline, which are necessary for our civilization.  Pollinators, such as honeybees, have been in rapid decline over the past decade.  A third of everything humans consume and 90% of commercial crops are dependant upon honeybee pollination.  No single causative agent has been found to explain the dramatic and unsustainable decreases of these essential insects.  Although, pollution, pesticides, invasive foreign parasites and pathogens, and natural habitat decline, have all been cited as potential sources.

In the oceans, coral reefs are also being destroyed by pollution, ocean acidification, and habitat destruction.  Large ocean fish -like tuna, salmon, and swordfish- populations have either collapsed are on the verge of doing so.  Whales, dolphins, ocean faring birds like albatrosses, and other predatory fish are found to be emaciated and dying from starvation across the globe.  Entire swaths of the ocean are no longer capable of sustaining any life and have become dead zones, which are spreading rapidly.

Joining the endangered list are saprophytic organisms, such as beetles, fungi, and bacteria that decompose dead organic matter and facilitate in the cycling of nutrients.  In Europe, for example, research has estimated that 24% saprophilx beetles are under threat.

Thousands of other species, some of which we are not even aware of, are being decimated.  The survival of these species is inexorably linked to our own species.  If we as a collective cannot understand this or demand to advocate selfishness in the face of catastrophe, then there is no need to for further examination or discussion, because we will have succumb to the logic of mass suicide.

Fishing fleet working 17 times harder than in 1880s to make same catch

UK researchers who have analyzed fishing data going back 118 years, have found that current trawl fishing fleets have to work 17 times harder to catch the same amount of fish today as it did when most of its boats were powered by sail. 

As described in EurkeAlert!

They found that trawl fish landings peaked in 1937, 14 times higher than today, and the availability of bottom-living fish to the fleet fell by 94 per cent.

The findings are the result of a study using previously overlooked records and suggest the decline in stocks of popular fish such as cod, haddock and plaice is far more profound than previously thought.

The research is published in Nature Communications, the new online science journal from the publishers of Nature.

Ruth Thurstan, lead author of the study from the University of York's Environment Department, said: "We were astonished to discover that we landed over four times more fish into England and Wales in 1889 than we do today.

"For all its technological sophistication and raw power, today's trawl fishing fleet has far less success than its sail-powered equivalent of the late 19th century because of the sharp declines in fish abundance."

The findings suggest that the damage to fisheries is greater and has taken place over a much longer period than previously acknowledged, pre-dating developments such as the Common Fisheries Policy which are usually blamed for declining stocks.

Simon Brockington, Head of Conservation at the Marine Conservation Society and an author of the study, said: "Over a century of intensive trawl fishing has severely depleted UK seas of bottom living fish like halibut, turbot, haddock and plaice.

"It is vital that governments recognise the changes that have taken place. The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy gives an opportunity to set stock protection and recovery targets that are reflective of the historical productivity of the sea."

The study calculated 'landings of fish per unit of fishing power' (LPUP) from 1889 to 2007 to give an indication of changes in the amount of fish available for capture by the fishing fleet. In that time, LPUP declined 500 times for halibut, more than 100 times for haddock and more than 20 times for plaice, wolffish, hake and ling. Cod has declined by 87 per cent.

Professor Callum Roberts, from the University of York's Environment Department, said: "This research makes clear that the state of UK bottom fisheries – and by implication European fisheries, since the fishing grounds are shared – is far worse than even the most pessimistic of assessments currently in circulation.

"European fish stock assessments, and the management targets based on them, go back only 20 to 40 years. These results should supply an important corrective to the short-termism inherent in fisheries management today."

Deepwater Horizon: Spill, baby, Spill...

"Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty." - Bill Maher

On April 20th 2010 the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore drilling platform located approximately 80 kilometres off the Louisiana coast, was critically damaged by an explosion.   Eleven workers were lost at sea and are presumed dead.  Initial estimates provided by operators of the platform stated that the rig may have had as much as 700,000 gallons of diesel on board and 1,000 barrels a day of petroleum were leaking out of the broken wellhead.

Two days after the initial explosion the entire platform sunk.   New assessments indicate that the amount of petroleum leaking out of the ruptured wellhead is approximately 5,000 barrels a day; five times the original estimate.  At least six million litres of petroleum have spilled so far, according to U.S. Coast Guard, making this incident the worst U.S. oil spill since the infamous Exxon Valdez.  In addition, millions of animals, including 1.8 million migratory waterfowl, are at risk.  The potential environmental/economic damage extends across the entire aquatic zone adjacent to the Louisiana coast, which is abundant in shrimp, oysters and other marine life.  The state's aquaculture industry, the largest in the lower 48 states, is worth $1.8-billion annually.

News reports are emerging that BP (the facility’s operator) de-emphasized the risk of a catastrophe in risk analysis’ it submitted to the U.S. government as recently as last year.  BP claimed that it was
"unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur" and in the event of such an unlikely situation, "due to the distance to shore and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected."  As of today, the oil mass has already reached the Louisiana shoreline and substantial levels of heavy oil contained within a 1,500 square kilometer oil slick is anticipated to wash ashore in Mississippi on Saturday, before reaching Alabama on Sunday, and Florida on Monday.

According to the federal Minerals Management Service, since 2001 there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries, and 858 fires and explosions in the American controlled Gulf of Mexico.   Occupational health and safety management under the previous Bush administration was neutered.  Republican hacks, corporate yes-men, and people who had spent their entire careers fighting OSHA were placed in positions of authority.  Policies were then created to allow industries to set their own standards of compliance.   A culture of indifference to human life and the environment, which was the trademark of the "toxic Texan", became the national standard.

With the actual consequences of Mr. Bush’s deregulatory framework and anti-environment policies becoming clearer, the dunces of the Republican Party, who made "Drill baby drill" their call to arms during the 2008 federal election, have suddenly gone silent on this issue.  The Wasilla whack-job (Ms. Palin) has yet to provide an intelligent response to the catastrophic risk she demanded Americans accept so that they could drive their Hummers and fat-asses to their anti-tax and anti-government Tea Party rallies.

Mr. Obama on the other hand, who during his election campaign vigorously defended the position that no offshore drilling should be permitted on America’s coastlines, reversed himself several weeks earlier and allowed Atlantic drilling to proceed in an attempt to garner the support of Republicans for the passage of a global warming bill.  The hypocrisy and sheer spinelessness of this president to abandon the principles for which he was elected to execute is staggering.  Unlike the daft feces-throwing monkeys of the Republican Party, Mr. Obama promised America he would deliver real change and not simply continue on with the policies of the most hated administration in the history of the nation.

The damage is now done.  Millions of litres of toxic sludge will continue to contaminate the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the shorelines of the Southern states.  Wildlife will die, ecosystems will be destroyed, and the lives and welfare of those people and communities that depend on these commons will be decimated.

Update: Tuna & Ocean Conservation

The Christian Science Monitor has a good article updating the continuing crisis that surrounds the demise of large ocean faring fish like Blue Fin Tuna and what is being done about it by individual nation states and multilateral organizations.

I've already written fairly extensively on the decline of the Blue Fin tuna, the state of global fisheries, and even regional situations such as the Pacific Salmon along the coast of British Columbia, Canada.

To review, the bad news is that despite attempts to limit harvesting to preserve tuna and other species through regional fishery management systems, global fisheries on a whole are in severe crisis. The obvious culprits are global fishing fleets that scavenge the world's oceans using modern vessels, satellite tracking, and sophisticated fishing gear to maximize their haul and profits. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that, "Some 80 percent of commercial fish species are either fully exploited, overexploited, or collapsed." No less than nine of the world's 23 tuna species worldwide are “fully fished” and without immediate action all will face collective extinction in the years to come.

Furthermore, rampant exploitation motivated by commercial interests are again threatening the global commons and the viability of life in the open oceans.

Globally, $9 billion is lost to so-called pirate fishing, according to a study last year by the University of British Columbia and Marine Resource Assessment Group. In the Pacific alone, [illegal, unreported, and unregulated] (IUU) fishing takes 36 percent of the total catch, compared with a 19 percent global average.

These pirate fleets who plunder the global commons are a "huge problem in tuna fisheries across the western Pacific, particularly in “doughnut holes,” international waters between [exclusive economic zones] boundaries. In these waters, reflagged ships often use fish aggregating devices (FADs) that attract juvenile yellowfin tuna."

On the other side, there are international and regional compacts that may come to fruition next year that will give some reprieve to the tuna and other threatened species. For example,

The Obama administration... last month unveiled the outline of a comprehensive “ecosystem-based” plan to restore health to US ocean waters, including coastal fisheries. Among several measures, US fisheries would be pushed toward science-based instead of politically based catch limits. If the plan works, the United States could become a global model: It controls more ocean in its 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZ) than any other nation.

To improve the situation the following steps will have to be minimally implemented. They include:

• Restricting gear that is too good at catching fish. Nets with larger holes let younger fish escape, for example.
• Closing hard-hit and breeding areas to fishing to let them recover.
• Drastically reducing the number of fishing vessels chasing the fish.
• Reducing the total allowable catch.

Matthew Simmons: Peak Oil is Real and Has Arrived

The rise and fall of oil prices over the past few years has lead many to consider the finite nature of petroleum reserves. Optimists talk of the current price of natural gas, normalization of crude prices, and technological advancement that shall lead us to bountiful and stable energy reserves. Pessimists view structural limitations in creating a non-carbon based energy economy and a decline in fossil fuel reserves.

Matthew Simmons, who wrote "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy," offers the thesis that sudden and sharp oil production declines could happen at any time. Even under the most optimistic of scenarioes, Saudi Arabia (the world's largest producer) may be able to maintain current rates of production for several years, but will not be able to increase production enough to meet the expected increase in world demand. Eventually, a day of reckoning will arrive and the world economy will be confronted with a major shock that will stunt economic growth, increase inflation, and potentially destabilize the Middle East.

In Foreign Policy (FP) magazine, he offers a riposte to a number of critics who have recently dismissed his assertions.

First, alarming data from the International Energy Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy shows that the flow of global crude oil peaked in 2005 and is now sliding steadily. The world will never "run out of oil," but its flow is in decline. There may still be ample oil reserves left in the ground when oil flows fall to half of today's use. But these remaining reserves are all either very low-quality heavy oil, which is difficult to process, or tainted with toxic elements that make it hard to refine into usable petroleum products.

He goes on to argue that his opponents arguments, which he describes as being based on belief rather than hard empirical data and meaningful econometric arguments, are unsound. His years of experience and insights into the current situation need to be fully appreciated by consumers and world leaders alike. How many times in this past decade have we heard, "Don't worry, trust us!"

More Fishy Stories

As a follow up to a previous blog entry on the state of Tuna fish in our oceans, Science magazine has an article outlining new quantitative data on the state of fish populations. The number of species continues to dwindle as human consumption increases and deep water extraction techniques are employed to remove slow-growing and reproducing species.

In 5 of 10 well-studied ecosystems, the average exploitation rate has recently declined and is now at or below the rate predicted to achieve maximum sustainable yield for seven systems. Yet 63% of assessed fish stocks worldwide still require rebuilding, and even lower exploitation rates are needed to reverse the collapse of vulnerable species.

Although, the numbers appear grim and political action remains sluggish as usual, there is more news and discussion of this tragedy of the commons in the leading print papers. The Washington Post has an article titled, "Unpopular, Unfamiliar Fish Species Suffer From Become Seafood." It reveals how the marketing people, seeing coastal populations of cod, red snapper, and other popular species decline (if not collapse) decided to start selling fish that were once considered unpalatable by rebranding the fishes name. Ocean fish once known as slimeheads, goosefish, rock crabs, and Patagonian toothfish have been recast with "tasty" sounding monikers. The slimehead, for example, has been transformed into the "Orange Roughy" and as a result seen its population decimated.

That fishermen have turned to them shows what's left in the ocean. Today's seafood is often yesterday's trash fish and monsters..."People never thought they would be eaten," said Jennifer Jacquet, a biologist at the University of British Columbia. "And as we fish out the world's oceans, we're coming across these species and wondering, 'Can we give them a makeover?' "

It is now obvious that regardless of what is done a large and potentially catastrophic loss of ocean fairing species will be lost. The Science article does give the slight hope that with more reasonable minds and practices, "About half of the depleted species might actually have a chance to recover, the scientists found, if given enough protection."