The Survivalists

The Malaria Threat

With our coastal waters now threatened to rise well over a meter and wetlands and beaches to become vast in the mid-Atlantic and southern states (USA) we can expect significant increases in malarial mosquitoes and thus the disease. A recent study suggests that inland areas with freshwater ponds and wetlands may likely  accompany temperature increase. Expertise on the disease will be come invaluable. 

Senior Moment?

Old people say they are having "a senior moment" when they cannot remember something. As one of the older people, I seem to be hearing that statement from younger and younger people. It seems likely that part of the cause of such "memory loss" is a burden of mercury in their bodies (and mine) gathered over time by low dose exposures. One in 12 women in the USA have body mercury levels considered unsafe by the EPA (Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 7(3)p.121; 2009). I bet the loads are not sex specific. It's a major public health threat and the symptoms are growing..."Nation, Nation...we have a problem."

One third of the source: coal-fired power plants (and they're not going away before 2030). There are other sources, some lessening since childhood  (playing with the mercury of thermometers), others increasing (fish).

In February,2009,  countries got together and said "enough is enough" and concluded that voluntary efforts to control mercury pollution just won't work. There's a new treaty and promises to reduce mercury emissions and international trade in mercury, improve storage, and cleanup contaminated sites.

Those signing the treaty, ignoring the human crisis in the gold-mining areas where mercury is intensively used, said "let's start by 2013," having their own senior moment about their conclusion that babies are now at risk and mercury pollution is a major public health threat.

After You’ve Predicted, Then What?

Here are a ten ways to predict the future, to “prognosticate.” (Predicting in not "knowing.")

1. Study history. The future is likely to be somewhat like the past. Emphasize change per unit time. Generalize categories ... change of what?

Study and isolate trends and cycles. Compare related trends and cast the trend forward. 

Use statistical techniques such as time-series analyses, multiple linear regression, and non linear regression. Use logistic regression to estimate probabilities.

font face="Times New Roman" size=3>Use computer simulation (perhaps based on a good regression analysis), a model that allows you the study the effects e.g., of A changing to AA and B changing to BB and C changing to CC, then Y in the near future will likely be YY.

Assemble a team of experts and use their combined opinions and estimates about changing factors, encouraging their revisions based on opinions of their peers.

Write and study scenarios, accommodating all of the sources and results of the imagined future condition.

 Estimate the high and low limits of likely changes in local or relevant factors (soil, ore, etc. the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere including solar dimensions, and the biosphere. These define the small and large tetrahedron for life and action.

Isolate recent or pending changes (or published plan) and follow their actual or likely changes. Develop a "consequence" table. Use the results as in 4 above.

Isolate Precepts or fundamentals of how the world, business, or natural systems work. Use all of them to describe to describe a likely total system.

With experts, get their highest numerical estimate (people, size, budget, time, etc.), H, then their lowest, L, then their most likely-to-occur estimate, M, and compute the most likely future, F. F = (H + 4M + L)/6. The result is a median that works well in many situations. Round or adjust depending on whether you are risk prone or averse.

Having spent valuable time on such predictions, then what do you do with them? Use them in feedforward, part of a systems approach. Feedforward  is a special input and process to a decision. It is what you really believe (and will defend and stand by) the conditions are going to be like for the period affected by your decision (e.g., a building, a 5-year budget, a bridge, a by-law). Practical feedforward is making a bold decision about the believed future.

 

A small office system can be created for assisting in doing the above 10 easily and efficiently, thus increasing the chances for doing them, doing them with improvements (feedback), and increasing the goodness of decisions in a very dynamic world.

More or Less Oil

I'm pessimistic but still looking for the good news about the future of oil supplies. Cambridge Energy Research Associates suggested there is more oil available than we thought and thus presumably we should be optimistic.

I'm 75 and I know how fast the years fly by. I retired in '98 and that's only about 10 years ago. Daughters are about 50 and that seems like yesterday. So optimism that real declines in oil will occur no earlier than 2030 is hard to sustain. That, to me, is tomorrow ... morning. I picked up arrow heads from men poking around my cabin grounds about 10,000 years ago just after the big glacier melted. That seems now a short time ago relative to known Earth time, human time, and recent animal-time. There has been time for several "the rise and fall of the xxx empire" since then.

I cannot fathom 1.07 trillion barrels of oil "yet to be discovered" since presumably undiscovered,  I prefer "a billion billion" yet to be discovered. So I'm pessimistic.

I can hardly comprehend any optimism in getting oil from 7000 feet below the ocean (a mile is 5280 feet) partially because I know that it will cost a lot of energy to do so and I tire after first thoughts about the human, environmental, and "expected" costs of bringing thousands of barrels of it to a refinery. Alaska sources are small; alternative innovative sources are surely worth a wish; tar sands are a low net production, last ditch source ...  if Canada is still friendly.

I see no significant reduction in oil use since the election campaigns began (about 5 years ago); I know big oil things move slowly for many reasons. Alternative sources emerge slowly and, risky, they develop even more slowly. I have seen in my life, and now expect, undulations in oil supplies and prices. It's about 2010. How many undulations can occur between now and 2050? What are the optimist thinking that I cannot? What am I ignoring? What are others ignoring?

Alternatives to Environmental Regulations

From Science and Environmental Health  Network April 7, 2009 (with permission): Much of SEHN's work on the rights of future generations is the result of a 2 ½ year collaboration with Harvard Law School’s Center for International Human Rights. Together, they recently released two documents.  The first is a model statute and constitutional provision granting future generations a legal, enforceable right to a healthy and clean environment.  This document can be used by any governmental body that seeks new and innovative ways to mold its environmental policies.  The second document describes mechanisms like the legal guardian for carrying out the rights of future generations. 

Future Higher Education

Whether getting ready to go to the college or university, taking an Internet pathway to education, advising people about aids and resources to help, using knowledge effectively after getting started, or making network connections for the educational system for the future, there is an excellent emerging resource now available. It is AcademicInfo - Online Degrees, Online Schools and Student Resources. It is a vast, diverse resource.

From the history of online education within the site: In the 1990s  Jones International University, was launched as the first accredited fully web based university. AcademicInfo, maintained by Mike Madin, launched a free accessible resource for teachers, students and researchers. In the 2000s with the millennium a distant memory, Microsoft released its new classroom curriculum management platform called, Microsoft Encarta Class Server with designs to help “integrate daily curriculum with the digital age.” It released version 4.0 in 2005.

Bad lectures placed on the Internet do not make them better ... or even ok. Reading is usually faster than listening to lectures, but it still takes time to internalize material. Whether potential learners will take the time (if they can find a quiet place) to do the memory and making connections and analogical work remains an open question. I'll bet on an optimum combination of personal education and that via the Internetfor individuals and small groups.

Charging for Environmental Services

Roanoke Times presented my recent ideas on ecological Services .

There has been several articles in the mail in a few months, too many suggesting that this concept will not go away and that many new articles will emerge in "environmental economics" about the topic of ecological or environmental services..

Ask, is "pumping" a service of the heart? What is a heart to the person if not with "pumping?" Things provide service. Service is also a function, a namable action. Can they be separated; need they be separated?

Are  "retarding erosion" and "providing housing for insect-eating birds" not services of forests? The forest with its trees is a resource. It provides many goods and services, among a list of other generalized "benefits."

If we must pay for the benefits derived from forests, let us pay for forests, the well-known resource and then let each person benefit and appreciate as they may be able.

If we need forests for many public benefits, then let us deduct from landowner real-estate or land-use taxes an amount that wise people think appropriate, the amount we the people are willing to forego in public tax income for the likely un-named gains we will receive. The public thus pays for the general public welfare gained from the retained forests of the land owners. If they remove and convert them to other land uses, then let those new  tax rates prevail.

Take erosion, costs or water treatment, loss of crop land richness, damage of certain floods as the costs of not having retained forests.

Dare we say "providing many logging jobs" is a service of the forests of the state?

Take the statewide taxes on the financial gains (I-O analyses)from the forest industry and the forest-game hunting industry as the extra monetary gain from forests.

There are alternative ways to value and "pay" for goods and services. Trying to separate them for specific charges requires too many "Solomons," and there are few.

Things Change

Two days ago there was a convergence. A retired professor friend bragged of being computer illiterate. A relative, expert at e-mail, had no notion of what a "web site" was and was astonished that the 20th birthday of www had occurred during the week. I told him of the start so few years ago, sharing my amazement; he thought it had been over 50 years ago. Another person asked me what a "blog" was, quite uninterested in the answer, and late in the day's night, Craig Ferguson of TV's Late, Late Show joked about "blogs on the tweetie," I presume having heard about Twitter and tweets.

The convergence: I do not know my audience, perhaps never have. Aspirations for the benefits of an Internet-based social network are fanciful. Dreams of improved decision making aided by computers and their data bases were just that. "Globalization" rolls out of every conversation while nationalization is at work. The world is not flat and has hidden spaces like those for broadband reception; many people hear nothing. And now computer users pass non-users in the dark, speeding to ever-increasing social differences in knowledge, safety, comfort, and freedom.

Tomorrow will be a better day.

New Department of Agriculture Leadership

A recent news report (The Daily Yonder) said Nebraska farm policy reformer Chuck Hassebrook is not likely to become  Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 85,000 people  signed a petition requesting that he be considered.

Forest Laws of the Delta Farm Press opposed Hassebrook's appointment, criticizing that what the Nebraskan refuses to recognize is that “the larger farming operations he denigrates are the norm in the Sunbelt and probably more the rule in states like Nebraska and in Iowa. (Iowa probably has more 2,000-acre farming operations than the 300- to 400-acre ones by far.)" Farms got that big, Law wrote, "so they could stay in business."

Candidates must meet many requirements and conditions but it will be too bad if only one supportive of big farms can be selected. There are alternative ways to achieve the same objectives for rural USA … stable communities, abundant and diverse employment, and superior natural resource management that includes groundwater recharge, soil protection, healthy local foods, diverse wildlife, superior scenery, and diversity that does not prepare the way for another dust-bowl national adventure and does not depend on fossil-fuel-dependent agro-industry There are new ways to do economical, rational farming, for example, computer–enhanced farm clusters of small farms. There are ways “to stay in business.” There has to be a role for someone able to address the needs of all rural people in the US and all of us that depend upon them.

2008 - Peak Oil Use

I observed in my Faunal Force blog that it is unlikely that there will be energy (or the money to pay for it) for faunal managers to actively manage wild fauna except for furs, down, and for reducing crop and livestock damage.

Too many basic difficulties have converged too quickly just when there is an international economic crisis. We have stopped looking for oil because of the high costs and low capital that we now have. We know that peak oil (when volumes in discoveries did not equal volumes being used) occurred in the mid 1960's. We may sadly remember that 2008 was the year of peak oil use.  This is convincingly put in a paper and videoclip by the Postcarbon Institute.