Category: Science

The power of hope!

It really is about good people refusing to let evil dominate our world.

The response to yesterday’s post was incredible and very gratifying.

For I was conscious that many would simply reject the proposition that I saw in John Zande’s book, namely that, “there was an evil origin to the universe and, more directly, that the deep, and growing, suffering of the pinnacle of evolution, us humans, can be traced back to that evil origin.”

The emotional challenge, of which I am acutely aware, is recognising that core proposition, that as we humans evolve so too does the capacity for human suffering, yet not wanting to give up on my personal core belief that better times ahead are possible, given sufficient people sharing that power of hope. Echoing what Sue wrote as a response to yesterday’s post that motivated me to reply, in part, thus:

If there was one sentence of yours that struck me as spot on, it was your declaration that what we think is what we create. Or as I often reflect, we are what we think.

Jean and I last night watched the latest BBC Panorama report about the migrant/refugee crisis in Europe. It was profoundly upsetting for reasons that many will understand.

George Monbiot’s essay that follows shortly is also profoundly upsetting.

But if hope is to be translated into a determination to make a difference, then it demands that we don’t ignore the pain but use our anger to fuel our passion to behave appropriately: We are what we think! Or in the much more eloquent words of Albert Einstein:

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

George Monbiot is to be saluted for his commitment to questioning and I am privileged to have his permission to republish the following.

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Inhospitable Planet

29th September 2015

There may be water on Mars. But is there intelligent life on Earth?

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 30th September 2015

Evidence for flowing water on Mars – this opens up the possibility of life; of wonders we cannot begin to imagine. Its discovery is an astonishing achievement. Meanwhile, Martian scientists continue their search for intelligent life on Earth.

We might be captivated by the thought of organisms on another planet, but we seem to have lost interest in our own. The Oxford Junior Dictionary has been excising the waymarks of the living world. Adders, blackberries, bluebells, conkers, holly, magpies, minnows, otters, primroses, thrushes, weasels and wrens are now surplus to requirements.

In the past four decades, the world has lost 50% of its vertebrate wildlife. But across the latter half of this period, there has been a steep decline in coverage. In 2014, according to a study at Cardiff University, there were as many news stories broadcast by the BBC and ITV about Madeline McCann (who went missing in 2007) as there were about the entire range of environmental issues.

Think of what would change if we valued terrestrial water as much as we value the possibility of water on Mars. Only three percent of the water on this planet is fresh, and of that two-thirds is frozen. Yet we lay waste to the accessible portion. Sixty percent of the water used in farming is needlessly piddled away by careless irrigation. Rivers, lakes and aquifers are sucked dry, while what remains is often so contaminated that it threatens the lives of those who drink it. In the UK, domestic demand is such that the upper reaches of many rivers disappear during the summer. Yet still we install clunky old toilets and showers that gush like waterfalls.

As for salty water of the kind that enthralls us when apparently detected on Mars, on Earth we express our appreciation with a frenzy of destruction. A new report suggests that fish numbers have halved since 1970. Pacific bluefin tuna, that once roamed the seas in untold millions, have been reduced to an estimated 40,000, yet still they are pursued. Coral reefs are under such pressure that most could be gone by 2050. And in our own deep space, our desire for exotic fish rips through a world scarcely better known to us than the red planet’s surface. Trawlers are now working at depths of 2000 metres. We can only guess at what they might be destroying.

A few hours before the Martian discovery was announced, Shell terminated its Arctic oil prospecting in the Chukchi Sea. For the company’s shareholders, it’s a minor disaster: the loss of $4 billion. For those who love the planet and the life it sustains, it is a stroke of great fortune: it happened only because the company failed to find sufficient reserves. Had Shell succeeded, it would have exposed one of the most vulnerable places on Earth to spills that are almost inevitable, where containment is almost impossible. Are we to leave such matters to chance?

At the beginning of September, two weeks after he granted Shell permission to drill in the Chukchi Sea, Barack Obama travelled to Alaska to warn Americans about the devastating effects that climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, might catalyse in the Arctic. “It’s not enough just to talk the talk”, he told them. “We’ve got to walk the walk.” We should “embrace the human ingenuity that can do something about it.” Human ingenuity is on abundant display at Nasa, which released those astounding images. But when it comes to policy, the search for intelligent life goes on.

Let the market decide: this is the way in which governments seek to resolve planetary destruction. Leave it to the conscience of consumers, while that conscience is muted and confused by advertising and corporate lies. In a near-vacuum of information, we are each left to decide what we should take from other species and other people; what we should allocate to ourselves or leave to succeeding generations. Surely there are some resources and some places – such as the Arctic and the deep sea – whose exploitation should simply stop?

All this drilling and digging and trawling and dumping and poisoning – what is it for anyway? Does it enrich human experience, or stifle it? A couple of weeks ago, I launched the hashtag #extremecivilisation, and invited suggestions. They have flooded in. Here are just a few of the products my correspondents have found. All of them, as far as I can tell, are real.

An egg tray for your fridge, that syncs with your phone to let you know how many eggs are left. A gadget for scrambling them – inside the shell. Wigs for babies, to allow “baby girls with little or no hair at all the opportunity to have a beautifully realistic hair style”. The iPotty, that permits toddlers to keep playing on their iPads while toilet training. A £2000 spider-proof shed. A snow sauna, on sale in the United Arab Emirates, in which you can create a winter wonderland with the flick of a switch. A refrigerated watermelon case on wheels: indispensable for picnics. Or perhaps not, as it weighs more than the melon. Anal bleaching cream, for … to be honest, I don’t want to know. An “automatic watch rotator” that saves you the bother of winding your luxury wrist candy. A smart phone for dogs, with which they can take pictures of themselves. Pre-peeled bananas, in polystyrene trays covered in clingfilm. Just peel back the packaging …

Every year, clever new ways of wasting stuff are devised, and every year we become more inured to the pointless consumption of the world’s precious resources. With each subtle intensification, the baseline of normality shifts. It should not be surprising to discover that the richer a country becomes, the less its people care about their impacts on the living planet.

Our alienation from the world of wonders with which we evolved has only intensified since David Bowie described a girl stumbling through a “sunken dream”, on her way to be “hooked to the silver screen”, where a long series of distractions diverts her from life’s great questions. The song, of course, was Life on Mars.

www.monbiot.com

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David Bowie’s track Life on Mars from the album Hunky Dory was released in 1971. Courtesy of YouTube, here it is again:

The most beautiful dagger of them all!

This is the wake-up call that we humans simply can’t afford to sleep through.

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This stunningly beautiful image is of an Antarctic iceberg, with a cavity. It belies the power of ice to destroy the world that we currently experience, and that “we” is not just humans but vast tracts of nature and, of course, our dogs.

So what has got “my knickers in a twist“? Answer: A reminder that the potential melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is a real and tangible threat; something that mankind has understand within the next few years.

First, let me share some of the material from the website of Antarctic Glaciers.

Ice shelves, icebergs and sea ice

Ice shelves

An ice shelf is a floating extension of land ice. The Antarctic continent is surrounded by ice shelves. They cover >1.561 million km2 (an area the size of Greenland)[1], fringing 75% of Antarctica’s coastline, covering 11% of its total area and receiving 20% of its snow.

The difference between sea ice and ice shelves is that sea ice is free-floating; the sea freezes and unfreezes each year, whereas ice shelves are firmly attached to the land. Sea ice contains icebergs, thin sea ice and thicker multi-year sea ice (frozen sea water that has survived several summer melt seasons, getting thicker as more ice is added each winter).

You can see the flat, floating ice shelf is almost featureless.
You can see this flat, floating ice shelf is almost featureless.

With this in mind, let me turn now to a recent post from Patrice Ayme in which he spells out very clearly the metaphorical dagger hanging above all our heads.

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Ice Sheets Melt: Academics Waking Up; New York Times In Denial

There has never been a more important moral, philosophical, military, civilizational, psychological, sociological and economic issue than the concerted holocaust of the biosphere by Homo Sapiens, presently passing one tipping point after another. Thus I will not present excuses for keeping abreast of any advance in understanding in the field. Even if it is just to confirm what I have long said.

The first scientific paper including computerized models of ice sheets melt predicts the obvious: if we burn all PROVEN fossil fuels reserves, ice will completely melt, all over Earth. Yet it is a big surprise to most scientists

“This is humanity as a geologic force,” said Ken Caldeira, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, an author of the paper. “We’re not a subtle influence on the climate system – we are really hitting it with a hammer.”

Nice to read. Nietzsche was doing philosophy with a hammer, we went further: we are doing climate with a hammer. Hopefully, it will crack soon: nothing like a great catastrophe to bring further fascism. Nihilism is bad thing, naivety, even worse. To please the powers that be, and thus to be taken seriously, serious climate scientists have made unwarranted, profoundly unscientific, over-optimistic declarations about the ice sheets. Now their time is up. In truth the GreenHouse emissions are completely out of control, and still increasing… At a geological scale, every year:

global_greenhouse_gas_emissions
50 Gigatons Per Year: This GreenHouse Is Bigger Than CO2 Alone.

“I didn’t expect it would go so fast,” Dr. Caldeira said. “To melt all of Antarctica, I thought it would take something like 10,000 years.” Didn’t they all. Why? Because only then would one be invited at the White House. Thinking correctly means, first, to think in a way that pleases those with power.

“Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet” [Ricarda Winkelmann, Anders Levermann, Andy Ridgwell,, Ken Caldeira]:

“The Antarctic Ice Sheet stores water equivalent to 58 meters in global sea-level rise. We show in simulations using the Parallel Ice Sheet Model that burning the currently attainable fossil fuel resources is sufficient to eliminate the ice sheet. With cumulative fossil fuel emissions of 10,000 gigatonnes of carbon (GtC), Antarctica is projected to become almost ice-free with an average contribution to sea-level rise exceeding 3 m per century during the first millennium. Consistent with recent observations and simulations, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet becomes unstable with 600 to 800 GtC of additional carbon emissions. Beyond this additional carbon release, the destabilization of ice basins in both West and East Antarctica results in a threshold increase in global sea level. Unabated carbon emissions thus threaten the Antarctic Ice Sheet in its entirety with associated sea-level rise that far exceeds that of all other possible sources.”

The famous Doctor Hansen and his collaborators upset the establishment two months ago by predicting a rise of three meters within 85 years (they use the reasoning I have used before, namely that paleontological data show sea level rise of 5 to 9 meters, with a rise of just one degree Celsius; actually the reasoning was obvious since 2009, when I pointed out that “2C Is Too Much“). The new paper potentially confirms Hansen’s findings. As I said, the new paper tries to NOT upset the powers that be (differently from yours truly, who view most individuals and institutions in power more than suspiciously, and it shows). Thus, one has to read between the lines to deduce that, from the paper itself, interpreting it optimistically is completely unwarranted.

The paper says: “Consistent with recent observations and simulations, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet becomes unstable with 600 to 800 GtC of additional carbon emissions.” Hmm… Let’s see, how long would that take, at the present increasing rate? Now emissions of CO2 itself are around 35 Gt, per year. That’s a number often brandished, but, left at that, it’s disinformation. With other GreenHouse Gases, we are at 50 Gigatons of CO2 equivalent emission, per year. Sorry for taxing the mathematical capabilities of our great leaders: 12 x 50 = 600. This fits perfectly my “Ten Years To Catastrophe” essay. Thus, the West and EAST Antarctic Ice Sheet becomes unstable in TWELVE YEARS (according to this paper; I obtained the same rough estimate with a paleoclimate approach).

The United Nations has said that the rise of the sea would not likely exceed three feet in this century. Some island nations will be wiped out (oops). Yet experts officially hope that major cities could be protected from it, in the richest countries that is (re-oops), though at a cost in the trillions of dollars (contemplate the enormous works to protect London or Venice).

The New York Times mentioned the paper above, which say the ice sheets will start melting irreversibly within a decade, to argue, in Politically Correct fashion, that ice sheets respond slowly enough to changes in the climate that it simply takes longer than a century for large-scale melting to begin. As if that notion was in the paper. It is not. Far from it. As I have argued before, that notion is ridiculous.

Indeed, warm water will rush below the ice sheets in West Antarctica, and East Antarctica’s immense Wilkes and Aurora subglacial basins.

antarctica-subglacial-basins
Subglacial Basins Are The Achilles’ Heel Of The Biosphere.

{WAIS = West Antarctica Ice Shelf; WB = Wilkes Basin; AB = Aurora Basin.]

Yet from that (tipping) point on, the paper found that thereafter, the sea would rise at the rate at a foot per decade, ten times faster than now, the New York Times admitted.

However the real text is much more alarming. Here is an extract:

“The Antarctic Ice Sheet is severely affected by high carbon emissions through both the marine ice-sheet instability and surface elevation feedbacks. On the time scale of millennia, large parts of the ice sheet melt or drain into the ocean, raising global sea level by several tens of meters. Most of the ice loss occurs within the first millennium, leading to high rates of sea-level rise during this period (Fig. 3; for more details, see also fig. S6). Our simulations show that cumulative emissions of 500 GtC commit us to long-term sea-level rise from Antarctica of 1.15 m within the next millenium, which is consistent with the sensitivity of 1.2 m/°C derived with a different ice-sheet model (33, 34). Paleo data suggest that similar rates of sea-level rise have occurred during past warm periods (35). If the 2°C target, corresponding to about 600 GtC of additional carbon release compared to year 2010, were attained, the millennial sea-level rise from Antarctica could likely be restricted to 2 m. In our simulations, this would keep the ice sheet below the threshold for the collapse of the Wilkes Basin. However, if that threshold is crossed, the Antarctic ice cover is significantly reduced in thickness and area (Fig. 4). If we were to release all currently attainable fossil fuel resources, Antarctica would become almost ice-free. It is unclear whether this dynamic discharge would be reversible and, if so, on which time scales.”

As I already said, since 2010, we have added another 230 Gigatons. So we are within eight year of the Wilkes ice sheet, the largest in the world, to become unstable. The paper admitted that about half the Antarctic ice sheet would melt or fall into the sea in the first thousand years.”

The New York Times’ interpretation that it will take nearly a century for dramatic melting to start was obviously tainted. It is just driven by political Machiavellianism: let’s admit there is climate “change” just as there is sea level “change”, and misinform about the unfolding catastrophe (although Main Stream Media had to recently admit the snow pack in California last April was the lowest in at least 500 years). How do I know this? The scientific paper used computerized models of the huge ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland. It is the first paper to do so. Yet, according to the biased New York Times, it would have found exactly what the UN found, during this century… Although the UN did not incorporate the ice sheet melt models.

Once the ice sheet melting is incorporated, faster melting ought to have been predicted, for THIS century. However that grim prediction would have upset the powers that be. We don’t want that to happen. Now that they have the drone habit, killing throngs of people they know nothing about, who knows what’s coming next if one disparages them? Beheading and crucifixion at the most esteemed Saudi plutocracy?

For plutocrats, the Saudis are a model of Human Rights: thus they elected them to head the UN panel on Human Rights. And ice sheet melting is perfect: all great catastrophes call onto what Obama calls “leaders” (our masters). If a bit of engineered inflation could bring Hitler, imagine what an inflating ocean can bring! A great future for the few who rule us, tax free.

Patrice Ayme’

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Let me close with two pictures:

sea-ice
That is a very great deal of water locked up in that ice!

and this one that shows how at least one would have a wonderful view of the sea from your room at the Boston Harbour Hotel!

The dagger has fallen!
The dagger has fallen!

 Interesting times!

Never stop fighting for a better world.

Protecting our right to breathe good, clean air.

robertgreeningersoll118442

Fundamentally, today’s post is not about dogs. But it is about the qualities that we can see in our dogs: trust, honesty, openness, and the core quality that inspires my writings about dogs: integrity.

I’m speaking of the disgusting news that has been headlined in the world’s media in recent days, no better summarised than by this extract from a current (1pm PDT yesterday)) BBC news report:

Volkswagen chief executive Martin Winterkorn has resigned following the revelation that the firm manipulated US diesel car emissions tests.

Mr Winterkorn said he was “shocked” by recent events and that the firm needed a “fresh start”.

He added that he was “not aware of any wrongdoing on my part” but was acting in the interest of the company.

VW has already said that it is setting aside €6.5bn (£4.7bn) to cover the costs of the scandal.

The world’s biggest carmaker admitted last week that it deceived US regulators in exhaust emissions tests by installing a device to give more positive results.

The company said later that it affected 11 million vehicles worldwide.

As ever, the voice of George Monbiot speaks a little clearer than most, and I am referring to his recent essay published both on his blog and in The Guardian newspaper.  I am very pleased to have Monbiot’s permission to republish his essay here on Learning from Dogs.

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Smoke and Mirrors

22nd September 2015

Pollution, as scandals on both sides of the Atlantic show, is a physical manifestation of corruption.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 23 September 2015

In London, the latest figures suggest, it now kills more people than smoking. Worldwide, a new study estimates, it causes more deaths than malaria and HIV-Aids together. I’m talking about the neglected health crisis of this age, that we seldom discuss or even acknowledge. Air pollution.

Heart attacks, strokes, asthma, lung and bladder cancers, low birth weight, low verbal IQ, poor memory and attention among children, faster cognitive decline in older people and – recent studies suggest – a link with the earlier onset of dementia: all these are among the impacts of a problem that, many still believe, we solved decades ago. The smokestacks may have moved to China, but other sources, whose fumes are less visible, have taken their place. Among the worst are diesel engines, sold, even today, as the eco-friendly option, on the grounds that their greenhouse gas emissions tend to be lower than those of petrol engines. You begin to wonder whether any such claims can still be trusted.

Volkswagen’s rigging of its pollution tests is an assault on our lungs, our hearts, our brains. It is a classic example of externalisation: the dumping of costs that businesses should carry onto other people. The air that should have been filtered by its engines is filtered by our lungs instead. We have become the scrubbing devices it failed to install.

Who knows how many people have paid for this crime already, with their health or with their lives? In the USA, 200,000 deaths a year are attributed to air pollution. For how many of those might Volkswagen be responsible? Where else was the fraud perpetrated? Of what proportion of our health budgets has this company robbed us?

The fraud involves the detection of nitrogen oxides (NOx), of which diesel engines are the major source in many places. This month, for the first time in our history, the UK government estimated the impact of NOx emissions on public health, and discovered that they are likely almost to double the number of deaths from air pollution, adding 23,000 to the 29,000 attributed to particulates (tiny particles of soot).

The government released this discovery, alongside its useless proposals for dealing with the problem, on Saturday 12 September, a few minutes before Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader was announced. How many government press releases are published on a Saturday? How many are published on a Saturday during an event on which everyone is focused? In other words, as a Labour press officer once notoriously advised, this was “a good day to bury bad news”. Not only was the number of deaths buried by this means, but so was the government’s consultation on its feeble plans for reducing this pollution: a consultation to which it evidently wanted as few respondents as possible. Liz Truss, the environment secretary, has some explaining to do.

She has her reasons for keeping us in the dark. In April, the Supreme Court ruled that the UK is in breach of the European air quality directive, and insisted that the government draw up a plan for compliance by the end of this year. Instead, Truss produced a plan to shed responsibility. Local authorities, her consultation suggests, should create clean air zones in at least eight cities, in which diesel engines are restricted or banned. But she has given them neither new money nor new powers. Nor has she offered an explanation of how this non-plan is going to address the issue in the rest of the country, as the ruling demands.

Already, the UK has missed the European deadline by six years. Under Truss’s proposals, some places are likely still to be in breach by 2025: 16 years after the original deadline. I urge you to respond to the consultation she wanted you to miss, which closes on November 6.

The only concrete plan the government has produced so far is to intensify the problem, through a new programme of airport expansion. This means more nitrous oxides, more particulates, more greenhouse gas emissions.

Paradoxically, the Volkswagen scandal may succeed where all else has failed, by obliging the government to take the only action that will make a difference: legislating for a great reduction in the use of diesel engines. By the time this article is published, we might know whether the company’s scam has been perpetrated in Europe as well as North America: new revelations are dripping by the hour. But whether or not this particular deception was deployed here, plenty of others have been.

Last week the Guardian reported that nine out of ten new diesel cars break European limits on nitrous oxides – not by a little but by an average of sevenfold. Every manufacturer whose emissions were tested had cars in breach of the legal limit. They used a number of tricks to hotwire the tests: “stripping components from the car to reduce weight, using special lubricants, over-inflating tyres and using super-smooth test tracks.” In other words, the emissions scandal is not confined to Volkswagen, not confined to a single algorithm and not confined to North America: it looks, in all its clever variants, like a compound global swindle.

There are echoes here of the ploys used by the tobacco industry: grand deceptions smuggled past the public with the help of sophisticated marketing. Volkswagen sites advertising the virtues of “clean diesel” have been dropping offline all day. In 2009, the year in which its scam began, the TDI engine at the centre of the scandal won the Volkswagen Jetta 2.0 the green car of the year award. In 2010, it did the same for the Audi A3.

There’s plenty that’s wrong with corporate regulation in the United States, but at least the fines, when they occur, are big enough to make a corporation pause, and there’s a possibility of guilty executives ending up in prison. Here, where corruption, like pollution, is both omnipresent and invisible, major corporations can commit almost any white-collar crime and get away with it. Schemes of the kind that have scandalised America are, in this country, both commonplace and unremarked. How can such governments be trusted to defend our health?

www.monbiot.com

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I found myself having two emotional reactions to Monbiot’s essay. The first was that for many years, when I was living and working in England, I drove diesel-powered cars on the (now false) belief that they were better for the environment.

My second reaction was to Monbiot listing the likely impacts from air pollution,”Heart attacks, strokes, asthma, lung and bladder cancers, low birth weight, low verbal IQ, poor memory and attention among children, faster cognitive decline in older people and – recent studies suggest – a link with the earlier onset of dementia. . . “, for the reason that at the age of 70, I am already noticing the creeping onset of reduced verbal IQ, cognitive decline, and worry about the onset of dementia. To think that my earlier decisions about what cars to drive might be a factor in this is disturbing.

I am going to close this post by highlighting how fighting for what we want is important, critically so. By republishing an item that was posted on AmericaBlog just over a year ago, that fortuitously is a reward for living in the State of Oregon.

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Climate win: Appeals court in Oregon rules state court must decide if atmosphere is a “public trust”

6/16/14 10:00am by Gaius Publius

Two teenagers from Eugene, Ore. filed suit against Governor Kitzhaber and the State of Oregon for failing to protect the “atmosphere, state waters, and coast lines, as required under the public trust doctrine.”

They lost the first round, where the state court said that climate relief was not a judicial matter. But they won on appeal. The case goes back to the original court, which now has orders to decide the case on its merits and not defer to the executive or legislature.

The gist of the appeals court decision:

Their lawsuit asked the State to take action in restoring the atmosphere to 350 ppm of CO2 by the end of the century. The Oregon Court of Appeals rejected the defenses raised by the State, finding that the youth could obtain meaningful judicial relief in this case.

That’s quite a nice victory. Here’s the full story, from the Western Environmental Law Center (my emphasis throughout):

Keeling-curve_CO2_ppm_Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide_Apr2013.svg_-300x201

In a nationally significant decision in the case Chernaik v. Kitzhaber, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled a trial court must decide whether the atmosphere is a public trust resource that the state of Oregon, as a trustee, has a duty to protect. Two youth plaintiffs were initially told they could not bring the case by the Lane County Circuit Court. The trial court had ruled that climate change should be left only to the legislative and executive branches. Today, the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned that decision.

Two teenagers from Eugene, Kelsey Juliana and Olivia Chernaik, filed the climate change lawsuit against Governor Kitzhaber and the State of Oregon for failing to protect essential natural resources, including the atmosphere, state waters, and coast lines, as required under the public trust doctrine. Their lawsuit asked the State to take action in restoring the atmosphere to 350 ppm of CO2 by the end of the century. The Oregon Court of Appeals rejected the defenses raised by the State, finding that the youth could obtain meaningful judicial relief in this case. …

In reversing the Lane County trial court, the Oregon Court of Appeals remanded the case ordering the trial court to make the judicial declaration it previously refused to make as to whether the State, as trustee, has a fiduciary obligation to protect the youth from the impacts of climate change, and if so, what the State must do to protect the atmosphere and other public trust resources.

The implications of this are broad, and similar cases are pending in other states, as the article describes.

Make no mistake; decisions like this matter. It places the court squarely in the mix as a power player in the climate war, the fight for “intergenerational justice” as James Hansen puts it — or the war against intergenerational betrayal, as I put it.

This is a cornerstone decision from the Oregon Court of Appeals in climate change jurisprudence. The court definitively ruled that the question of whether government has an obligation to protect the atmosphere from degradation leading to climate change is a question for the judiciary, and not for the legislative or executive branches. The Court did not opine as to how that question should be answered, only that it should be answered by the judiciary.

We can win this; it’s not over. If we reach 450 ppm and we’re still not stopping with the CO2, then it’s over and I become a novelist full-time. But we’re not there yet, and please don’t surrender as if we were.

The courts are now a powerful tool, as is divestment. James Hansen has a way to restore the atmosphere to 350 ppm CO2 in time to stop slow feedbacks from kicking in. It’s a doable plan, but we’ll need to use force. Using the courts, as with using divestment campaigns, counts as force. Stay tuned.

(Want to use force at the national level? Find a way to challenge Obama publicly to stop leasing federal land to coal companies. He’s a hypocrite until he stops federal coal from being mined and sold abroad. A simple and obvious challenge for him. You too can be the activist.)

GP

Twitter: @Gaius_Publius
Facebook: Gaius Publi

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 Never forget that you, me and every other good-minded person on this planet can make a positive difference. Need inspiration? Gain it from our dogs! Let’s use the liberty we enjoy to make a difference.

Of paradoxes, and headaches!

The interconnectedness of everything – even beyond our wildest imagination.

A while ago John Zande signed up to follow Learning from Dogs. Naturally, I went across to John’s blog to thank him. There I discovered that John is an animal lover and an author. For he states, referring to his book, that, “BUY IT. ALL PROCEEDS GO TO ANIMAL RESCUE AND SHELTER IN BRAZIL”. Fabulous!

John Zande cover_zpsz7wuq9cc

(I did buy the book, am about 20% through it and finding it very stimulating, – if you would like to buy it then click the image of the book on John’s home page.)

Anyway, a few days later we watched the BBC Horizon programme on multiple universes. Here’s how the BBC introduced the programme:

Which Universe Are We In?

Horizon, 2014-2015 Episode 17 of 19

Imagine a world where dinosaurs still walk the earth. A world where the Germans won World War II and you are president of the United States. Imagine a world where the laws of physics no longer apply and where infinite copies of you are playing out every storyline of your life.

It sounds like a plot stolen straight from Hollywood, but far from it. This is the multiverse.

Until very recently the whole idea of the multiverse was dismissed as a fantasy, but now this strangest of ideas is at the cutting edge of science.

And for a growing number of scientists, the multiverse is the only way we will ever truly make sense of the world we are in.

Horizon asks the question: Do multiple universes exist? And if so, which one are we actually in?

Horizon is always great to watch but this episode was incredibly stimulating and interesting. Later, in a exchange of comments to one of John’s posts, where I referred to that programme, John wrote:

The mulitverse is actually the more reasonable explanation for why there is something, and although I don’t understand the maths, the people who do say its simplistically beautiful. Matt Rave is an associate professor of physics and comments here regularly. He has a great book on it all, Why is There Anything?

rave

That lead me to purchasing Matthew Rave’s book that, likewise, is a most fascinating and unusual approach to this topic. His Amazon author’s page reveals that, “Dr. Matthew Rave is an assistant professor of physics at Western Carolina University, in the mountains of North Carolina. His research interests include interpretations of quantum mechanics, the geometric phase, solid state physics, and physics education.” Matthew Rave’s blogsite is here.

Matthew Rave’s book further illustrates the paradox, to my mind, that comes from thinking about why are we here, are we here and, if so, how do we know we are here?

So if that isn’t enough for you and me, then very recently The Conversation blogsite published the following from Geraint Lewis who is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sydney. It is republished here within the terms of The Conversation. Did I mention paradoxes and headaches!

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We are lucky to live in a universe made for us

Geraint Lewis, University of Sydney

To a human, the universe might seem like a very inhospitable place. In the vacuum of space, you would rapidly suffocate, while on the surface of a star you would be burnt to a crisp. As far as we know, all life is confined to a sliver of an atmosphere surrounding the rocky planet we inhabit.

But while the origin of life on Earth remains mysterious, there are bigger questions to answer. Namely: why do the laws of physics permit any life at all?

Hang on, the laws of physics? Surely they are a universal given and life just gets on with it?

But remember that the universe is built of fundamental pieces, particles and forces, which are the building blocks of everything we see around us. And we simply don’t know why these pieces have the properties they do.

There are many observational facts about our universe, such as electrons weighing almost nothing, while some of their quark cousins are thousands of times more massive. And gravity being incredibly weak compared to the immense forces that hold atomic nuclei together.

Why is our universe built this way? We just don’t know.

But what if…?

This means we can ask “what if” questions. What if the electron was massive and quarks were fleeting? What if electromagnetism was stronger than the nuclear strong force? If so, what would that universe be like?

Let’s consider carbon, an element forged in the hearts of massive stars, and an element essential to life as we know it.

Initial calculations of such stellar furnaces showed that they were apparently inefficient in making carbon. Then the British astronomer Fred Hoyle realised the carbon nucleus possesses a special property, a resonance, that enhanced the efficiency.

But if the strength of the strong nuclear force was only fractionally different, it would wipe out this property and leave the universe relatively devoid of carbon – and, thus, life.

The story doesn’t end there. Once carbon is made, it is ripe to be transmuted into heavier elements, particularly oxygen. It turns out that oxygen, due to the strength of the strong nuclear force, lacks the particular resonance properties that enhanced the efficiency of carbon creation.

This prevents all of the carbon being quickly consumed. The specific strength of the strong force has thus resulted in a universe with an almost equal mix of carbon and oxygen, a bonus for life on Earth.

Death of a universe

This is but a single example. We can play “what if” games with the properties of all of the fundamental bits of the universe. With each change we can ask, “What would the universe be like?”

The answers are quite stark. Straying just a little from the convivial conditions that we experience in our universe typically leads to a sterile cosmos.

This might be a bland universe, without the complexity required to store and process the information central to life. Or a universe that expands too quickly for matter to condense into stars, galaxies and planets. Or one that completely re-collapses again in a matter of moments after being born. Any complex life would be impossible!

The questions do not end there. In our universe, we live with the comfort of a certain mix of space and time, and a seemingly understandable mathematical framework that underpins science as we know it. Why is the universe so predictable and understandable? Would we be able to ask such a question if it wasn’t?

Our universe appears to balance on a knife-edge of stability. But why?

We appear to be very lucky to live in a universe that accommodates life. Zdenko Zivkovic/Flickr, CC BY

One of a multiverse

To some, science will simply fix it all. Perhaps, if we discover the “Theory of Everything”, uniting quantum mechanics with Einstein’s relativity, all of the relative masses and strengths of the fundamental pieces will be absolutely defined, with no mysteries remaining. To others, this is little more than wishful thinking.

Some seek solace in a creator, an omnipotent being that finely-tuned the properties of the universe to allow us to be here. But the move from the scientific into the supernatural leaves many uncomfortable.

There is, however, another possible solution, one guided by the murky and confused musings at the edge of science. Super-strings or M-theory (or whatever these will evolve into) suggest that the fundamental properties of the universe are not unique, but are somehow chosen by some cosmic roll of the dice when it was born.

This gives us a possible explanation of the seemingly special properties of the universe in which we live.

We are not the only universe, but just one in a semi-infinite sea of universes, each with their own peculiar set of physical properties, laws and particles, lifetimes and ultimately mathematical frameworks. As we have seen, the vast majority of these other universes in the overall multiverse are dead and sterile.

They only way we can exist to ask the question “why are we here?” is that we happen to find ourselves in a universe conducive to our very existence. In any other universe, we simply wouldn’t be around to wonder why we didn’t exist.

If the multiverse picture is correct, we have to accept that the fundamental properties of the universe were ultimately dished out in a game of cosmic roulette, a spin of the wheel that we appear to have won.

Thus we truly live in a fortunate universe.

The ConversationGeraint Lewis, Professor of Astrophysics, University of Sydney

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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12963392-An-image-of-a-man-with-a-headache--Stock-Vector-headache-earache-cartoon

Animal survival.

The wonderful way that animals have evolved to survive life on the go.

It is very easy to look at our wonderful domesticated dogs and forget that genetically they are still very much hunting dogs. Of all the dogs that we have had Dhalia seemed the most closely connected with those instincts, and she is still missed more than a year after she died. So much so that I’m going to republish part of the post that commemorated her life just after she died. Here it is:

Dhalia, as with so many other dogs, offered lasting lessons.
April 8th, 2014

Inevitably, as Jean and I went around our ‘stuff’ yesterday after burying Dhalia in the morning, there were moments of quiet contemplation and gentle discussion.  Interludes over a hot drink where we reflected on the special dog that she was.

Much has already been written in this place but there can’t be too many reminders for us quirky humans of how valuable are the qualities of trust and love given to us by our dogs.

We need reminding how dogs are so intuitive and can reach out to a stranger without a moment of hesitation.  As Jean described when recalling how she first came across Dhalia.

Dhalia - domesticated but still the wild dog shows through.
Dhalia – domesticated but still the wild dog shows through.

It was a Sunday around the middle of the month of September in the year 2005. My friend, Gwen, and I had set off for La Manga, a small fishing village three miles from San Carlos, Mexico.  As the trip would take us through areas of desolate desert and the day was forecast to be a sizzler, we left early. The purpose of the journey was to feed a pack of dogs that were living on the outskirts of La Manga. These wild dogs were gradually getting used to our presence and with the aid of a humane trap we had previously caught two of them, a small puppy and her mother. Those two dogs were at my home and were gradually becoming tame so that good homes could be found for them.

Half-way to our destination, we saw two dogs running by the side of the road.   It wasn’t unusual to see strays searching for road-kill. I stopped the car and prepared food and water for them. One dog took off almost immediately but the other just stood perfectly still looking intently at me. She was rail-thin and full of mange.  Her ears and chest were scabbed with blood, and I could see that previously she had had pups. Tentatively, I pushed the food towards her. She took a bite and sat on her haunches; her eyes never leaving mine. Then she lifted a paw and reached out to me. Immediately, I burst into tears and scooped her into my arms.  I carried her back to the car where she lay quietly in my lap whilst we went on to do our feeding.  She was bloody and very smelly. However, I didn’t care.

Dhalia was always a gentle dog.  One that would mix with any of the other dogs. A dog that loved people, of all types and ages.

Love and Trust - Grandson Morten hugging Dhalia.
Love and Trust – Grandson Morten hugging Dhalia, September 2013.

You can read the full post here.

The reason that my post from last year came to mind was as a result of a recent article on The Conversation blogsite. It was called Motion dazzle: spotting the patterns that help animals outsmart predators on the run and seemed ideal to share with all you good people who support this place.

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Motion dazzle: spotting the patterns that help animals outsmart predators on the run

Laura Kelley, University of Cambridge

Zebra are seen running at the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania Nov. 14, 2013. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Eric Dietrich/Released)
Zebra are seen running at the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania Nov. 14, 2013. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Eric Dietrich/Released)

Many animals use the colours and patterns on their bodies to help them blend into the background and avoid the attention of predators. But this strategy, crypsis, is far from perfect. As soon as the animal moves, the camouflage is broken, and it is much easier for a predator to see and catch it. So how do animals protect themselves when they’re on the move?

Researchers are exploring whether high-contrast patterns during motion, such as stripes and zigzags, may be distorting the predator’s perception of where the animal is going. But, as little is known about such “motion dazzle”, we have built an online game to help shed light on it.

Lessons from war

The idea is that it may be more effective for animals to focus on preventing capture, rather then preventing detection or recognition, is actually more than 100 years old. It was naturalist Abbott Thayer who suggested that high-contrast patterns may distort the perceived speed or direction of a moving object, making it harder to track and capture.

Such motion dazzle patterns were actually used in World War I and II, where some ships were painted with black and white geometric patterns in an attempt to reduce the number of successful torpedo attacks from submarines. However, due to many other factors affecting wartime naval losses, it is unclear whether motion dazzle patterns actually had the desired effect.

HMS Argus displaying a coat of dazzle camouflage in 1918. wikimedia

What about the natural world? Zebras have bold stripes, and scientists have debated the function of their patterns since Darwin’s time. A recent modelling study suggested that when zebras move, their stripes create contradictory signals about their direction of movement that is likely to confuse predators. There are potentially two visual illusions responsible for this, which could form the basis of motion dazzle effects: the wagon wheel effect and the barber pole illusion.

The wagon wheel effect is named after Western movies, where the wheels on wagons often appear to be moving backwards. This is because the visual system takes “snapshots” over time and links them to create a continuous scene, in the same manner as recording film. If a wheel spoke moves forward rapidly between sampling events, it will appear to have moved backwards as it will be misidentified as the following spoke.

The barber pole illusion (also known as the aperture effect) occurs because the moving stripes provide ambiguous information about the true direction of movement. These illusory effects produced by stripes could therefore lead to difficulties in judging the speed and movement of a moving target. However, the zebra study was entirely theoretical and didn’t test whether striped patterns actually affected the judgements of real observers.

Dazzle Bug

Surprisingly, the first experimental tests of the effectiveness of motion dazzle patterns weren’t carried out until recently. Some studies have shown that strikingly patterned targets can be more difficult to catch than targets with other patterns in studies using humans as “predators” playing touch screen computer games. However, other studies have found no clear advantage for motion dazzle patterns So although patterns can affect our perception of movement, it’s still not clear which are most effective at doing so.

Can you see the spider? Crypsis can be pretty effective – as long as you don’t move. J Kelley, Author provided

We are addressing the question of which patterns are best for avoiding predators during movement using Dazzle Bug – an online game that asks players to imagine themselves as a predator, trying to catch a moving bug as fast as possible. Each bug has a different body pattern as well as a random pattern of movement. Bugs with easy to catch patterns will disappear, whereas those that are particularly tricky to catch will survive ––just like in nature. Over time, the patterns on the bugs’ body will evolve so that they become harder to catch with each successive generation.

This citizen science project will allow us to see what patterns are most effective at evading capture. We can then use these results to look at what visual effects these patterns have, and to see whether these patterns match up with those found on real animals in the wild.

Our findings will offer insight into the role of stripes, which are common in many species. While these patterns may have evolved to confuse the visual perception of a predator, they may also be a result of other selection pressures, such as attracting a mate or regulating body temperature. If striped patterns survive and evolve in the game, this would provide strong evidence that these patterns do act to confuse human predators, perhaps by producing the illusions described above. As motion perception seems to be highly conserved across a wide range of populations, these illusions may occur for many other predators too.

If we find that patterns other than stripes – such as speckles, splotches or zigzags – are most effective in preventing capture, this then leads to new and interesting questions about how these patterns may act to confuse or mislead. Whatever the outcome, Dazzle Bug will provide insight into how bodily patterns may have evolved to help animals to survive life on the go.

The ConversationLaura Kelley, Research Fellow, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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 The natural world is so incredibly interesting.

More on that nose!

An article in The Guardian is worth highlighting.

I have long been an admirer of The Guardian newspaper way back before I became a US resident. Thus an article that appeared on the website of The Guardian US newspaper seemed perfect for a mention in this place. It was an article entitled Cadaver dogs: attending camp with the canines trained to smell death and written by Liz Lucking.  Here’s a tiny extract from the article:

A dog’s sense of smell is estimated to be somewhere between 100 and 1,000 times greater than a human’s, depending on the breed. But despite their formidable noses, these dogs still need assistance, direction and training to reach their full potential.

The Penn Vet Working Dog Center does exactly that. Founded in 2007 and part of the University of Pennsylvania, the training centre and research program is dedicated to helping advance the success of working dogs.

I then went across to the Penn Vet Working Dog Centre website that was full of interesting information, including details of their Internships, Externships & Fellowships. So if that strikes a chord with a reader then that’s great.

That Guardian article also mentioned the American Rescue Dog Association and their website is full of fabulous information, as this extract from their welcome page endorses:

The American Rescue Dog Association® (ARDA®) is comprised of highly skilled volunteer search and rescue units across the United States that operate in conjunction with local law enforcement or other applicable emergency services agencies to assist in the location of missing persons. ARDA units provide specially trained dogs to locate missing persons in wilderness, disaster, human remains and water search and rescue/recovery missions. Each member unit is required to adhere to the Association’s rigid standards and undergo a rigorous two-day field evaluation every three years to ensure these standards are being maintained.

Units are available 24-hours a day to respond to requests for services from applicable local, state or federal responsible agencies.

Our search and rescue canine teams deploy in many circumstances, at several levels, at no cost to Federal and Local departments. ARDA resources operate solely as volunteers, and rely on donations for our continued operations.

Finally, searching YouTube for ARDA produced the following.

Another day: Another example of what our fabulous dogs provide to humans.

For safer, cheaper pest control, just add ants!

A very interesting report that recently appeared on Mother Nature Network (MNN).

We live in Josephine County here in Southern Oregon. Our next door neighbours to the East are Jackson County. Josephine and Jackson Counties share one very noble attribute: each is only one of just nine GMO-free counties in the entire United States of America.  Plus, as evidenced at our local Grants Pass Farmers’ Market every Saturday, the growing of organic fruit and vegetables is widespread in our county.  We feel very happy to have ended up in this part of America.

All of which makes a logical introduction to a report that appeared on MNN on September, 1st.  It is republished below.

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For safer, cheaper pest control, just add ants

Ants offer a surprisingly effective alternative to synthetic pesticides on crops ranging from cashews to sugar cane, according to a new review of more than 70 scientific studies.

By: Russell McLendon, September 1, 2015, 9:30 a.m.

Weaver ants can not only protect tree crops from pests, but may also benefit the quality of produce. (Photo: Rushen/Flickr)
Weaver ants can not only protect tree crops from pests, but may also benefit the quality of produce. (Photo: Rushen/Flickr)

Sometimes ants are pests, marching through our kitchens on an industrious quest for crumbs. But when faced with more serious pests — namely those that destroy crops on which people’s livelihoods depend — we can also use ants to our advantage.

Published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, a new research review suggests ants can control agricultural pests as efficiently as synthetic pesticides, with the bonus of being more cost-effective and generally safer. And since many pesticides pose a danger to helpful wildlife like birds, bees and spiders — not to mention humans — ants might be a key ally in feeding the planet’s booming human population.

The review covers more than 70 scientific studies on dozens of pest species that plague nine crop varieties in Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia. Because ants are organized as “superorganisms” — meaning the colony itself is like an organism, with individual ants acting as “cells” that can move around independently — they are uniquely capable of hunting down pests and then overwhelming them.

“Ants are great hunters and they work cooperatively,” says author Joachim Offenberg, a biologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, in a press release about the research. “When an ant finds its prey, it uses pheromones to summon help from other ants in the nest. By working together, they can subdue even large pests.”

Most studies in the review focused on weaver ants, a tropical genus of tree-dwelling ants that weave ball-shaped nests using leaves and larval silk. Since they live in the canopy of their host trees, near the fruit and flowers that need protection, weaver ants have a natural tendency to control pest populations in orchards.

A colony of weaver ants in India works on converting leaves into a nest. (Photo: Raghu Mohan/Flickr)
A colony of weaver ants in India works on converting leaves into a nest. (Photo: Raghu Mohan/Flickr)

In one three-year study, Australian cashew growers recorded yields 49 percent higher in trees guarded by weaver ants versus trees treated with synthetic chemicals. But higher yields were only part of the prize: The farmers also got higher-quality cashews from the trees with ants, resulting in a 71 percent higher net income.

Similar results were reported in mango orchards. While mango trees with ants had roughly the same yields as those with synthetic chemicals, the ants were cheaper — and the trees they inhabited grew higher-quality fruit. That led to a 73 percent higher net income compared with pesticide-treated trees. Not all crops had such dramatic results, but studies on more than 50 pests showed that ants can protect crops including cocoa, citrus and palm oil at least as effectively as pesticides.

“Although these are rare cases where the ants were superior to chemicals, many studies show that ants are just as efficient as chemical controls,” Offenberg says. “And of course ant technology is much cheaper than chemical pest control.”

To recruit weaver ants in their orchards, farmers just collect nests from the wild, hang them in plastic bags from tree branches and feed them a sugar solution while they build new nests. Once the ants establish their colony, farmers can help them expand by connecting target trees with aerial walkways made from string or vines.

The ants are mostly self-sufficient from there, needing only some water during the dry season — provided via plastic bottles in the trees — and pruning of non-target trees that host different ant colonies to prevent fights. Farmers can also help their ants by avoiding broad-spectrum insecticide sprays, researchers say.

Ants protect mango trees about as effectively as pesticides, but at less cost, research suggests. (Photo: Shutterstock)

It’s worth noting that ants can also be detrimental to some plants, such as when they herd sap-feeding insects like aphids and leafhoppers. But if they still fend off fruit-ruining flies and beetles, their net impact may be positive nonetheless. Not only do weaver ants kill pest insects on their trees, but their presence alone is reportedly enough to scare away marauders as large as snakes and fruit bats. And research suggests their urine even contains important plant nutrients.

The use of ants for pest control isn’t new. As early as 300 B.C., Chinese farmers could buy weaver ants in markets to release in their citrus groves, a practice that has faded over time, especially after the advent of chemical pesticides. But it may be coming back, both because ants are cheaper than pesticides and because certified organic produce can fetch higher prices, due to concerns that broad-spectrum pesticides harm more than just pests. Aarhus University is studying the use of weaver ants as pest control in Benin and Tanzania, for example, where the insects could lead to increased export revenue of $120 million and $65 million, respectively.

“To kill the flies with pesticides, you have to make the mango so poisonous that it can kill the maggot,” Aarhus University biologist Mogens Gissel Nielsen told China’s Xinhua news agency in 2010. “But when it is too poisoned for the maggot to eat, it might not be good for us to eat either.”

While the research in Offenberg’s review focused largely on weaver ants, he points out they “share beneficial traits with almost 13,000 other ant species, and are unlikely to be unique in their properties as control agents.” Lots of ants nest in the ground, and while it may be a challenge to relocate them, they too have shown promise in protecting a variety of commercially important crops.

“Weaver ants need a canopy for their nests, so they are limited to plantations and forestry in the tropics,” Offenberg says. “But ground-living ants can be used in crops such as maize and sugar cane. European wood ants are renowned for controlling pests in forestry, and new projects are trying to use wood ants to control winter moths in apple orchards. Ants could even be used to fight plant pathogens because they produce antibiotics to combat diseases in their dense societies.”

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As with many of the other fine articles that appear on Mother Nature Network, this report by Russell McLendon has many links to other information sources, too many for me to set up. So if this report ‘speaks’ to you and you want to look up the background information then please go here and read it over on MNN.

 

Want a few more years?

Then get a dog!

Even before I met Jean back in 2007 and came out from England to be with her in 2008 (with Pharaoh), I had learnt that one of the many joys in having a dog was being able to share so much of one’s life with your loving canine companion.

Dart Valley Railway at Buckfastleigh Sation in Devon, England.
Pharaoh and me enjoying the Dart Valley Steam Railway at Buckfastleigh Sation in Devon, England.

Thus you will not be surprised in the slightest that walking with your dog is another joyous activity. Plus the benefit of living a few more years, as the following article from Mother Nature News illustrates.

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The secret to adding 7 years to your life

Hint: Get ready to lace up your sneakers.

By: Jenn Savedge, August 31, 2015

Researchers find that just 25 minutes of walking each day can trigger the anti-aging process. (Photo: Nejc Vesel/Shutterstock)
Researchers find that just 25 minutes of walking each day can trigger the anti-aging process. (Photo: Nejc Vesel/Shutterstock)

It’s easier than you might think to add another seven years to your life. Researchers have found that adding a simple 25-minute walk to your daily routine could give you several more years of healthy living.

Researchers found that participants in their 50s and 60s who took a brisk daily walk that lasted for at least 25 minutes had half the risk of dying from a heart attack than their couch-potato peers. The study, conducted at Saarland University in Germany, evaluated the health of 69 healthy non-smokers, aged between 30 and 60, who were not regular exercisers before the study began.

Participants were asked to complete various types of daily exercise — from simple aerobics to high-intensity interval training to strength training over a six-month period. Meanwhile, researchers took blood samples that allowed them to measure the increase of telomerase activity and the decrease of senescence markers, two indicators of cellular aging found in the blood. Using these measurements, researchers found that daily aerobic exercise triggers the anti-aging process.

Researchers presented their findings at the European Society of Cardiology conference with the suggestion that people add regular exercise to their daily routine to add years to their lives. They also noted that it’s never too late to start. A 70-year-old woman who has never exercised before can still gain tremendous mental and physical health benefits by adding a brisk daily walk to her routine.

Heart disease is the number one killer of men and women in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 600,000 Americans will lose their lives to the disease this year, but exercise could slash that figure in half, bringing more years to millions of Americans.

Do you have your sneakers laced yet?

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So there you are! Just twenty-five minutes a day with your favourite person and your favourite dog or two and you will all live forever.

Carry on sharing!

Pharaoh in the back of a Piper Super Cub back in 2002. Proving that he loved taxying around the grass airfield but I drew the line at flying - for both our sakes!
Pharaoh in the back of a Piper Super Cub back in 2002. Proving that he loved taxying around the grass airfield but I drew the line at flying – for both our sakes!

P.S. When I showed Jean this post yesterday evening she remarked that I still had, and wore at times, the same green T-shirt and cap that I featured in the photograph above some 13 years ago. I guess I’m not a fashion plate!

Seeing the truth in our mirror.

A sombre reflection on the killing abilities of man.

I was in two minds as to whether to post this today for it is certainly a grim reminder of the less desirable aspects of our species.

In the end, I decided to so do because it needs to be shared and if it changes the mindset of just one person it will have been worthwhile. I was originally seen by me on the EarthSky blogsite.

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Want to see Earth’s super predator? Look in the mirror.

Our efficient killing technologies have given rise to the human super predator. Our impacts are as extreme as our behavior, says study.

Rope trawl for midwater trawling. Photo credit: NOAA
Rope trawl for midwater trawling. Photo credit: NOAA

Extreme human predatory behavior is responsible for widespread wildlife extinctions, shrinking fish sizes and disruptions to global food chains, according to research published in the August 21 edition of the journal Science these are extreme outcomes that non-human predators seldom impose, according to the article.

Lead researcher Chris Darimont is a professor of geography at the University of Victoria. Darimont said:

Our wickedly efficient killing technology, global economic systems and resource management that prioritize short-term benefits to humanity have given rise to the human super predator. Our impacts are as extreme as our behavior and the planet bears the burden of our predatory dominance.

A coastal wolf is hunting salmon in British Columbia, Canada. Photo credit: Guillaume Mazille
A coastal wolf is hunting salmon in British Columbia, Canada. Photo credit: Guillaume Mazille

The team’s global analysis indicates that humans typically exploit adult fish populations at 14 times the rate than do marine predators. Humans also hunt and kill large land carnivores such as bears, wolves and lions at nine times the rate that these predatory animals kill each other in the wild.

Researchers noted that in some cases, dwindling species of predatory land carnivores are more aggressively hunted for trophies, due to the premium placed on rare prey.

The result of human activity on wildlife populations is far greater than natural predation. Research suggests that socio-political factors can explain why humans repeatedly overexploit. Technology explains how: Humans use advanced killing tools, cheap fossil fuel, and professional harvesters – like high-volume commercial fishing fleets – to overcome the defensive adaptations of prey.

Humanity also departs fundamentally from predation in nature by targeting adult quarry.Co-author Tom Reimchen is a biology professor at University of Victoria. He said:

Whereas predators primarily target the juveniles or ‘reproductive interest’ of populations, humans draw down the ‘reproductive capital’ by exploiting adult prey.

During four decades of fieldwork on Haida Gwaii, an archipelago on the northern coast of British Columbia, Reimchen looked at how human predators differ from other predators in nature. Reimchen’s predator-prey research revealed that predatory fish and diving birds overwhelmingly killed juvenile forms of freshwater fish. Collectively, 22 predator species took no more than five per cent of the adult fish each year. Nearby, Reimchen observed a stark contrast: fisheries exclusively targeted adult salmon, taking 50 per cent or more of the runs.

The authors conclude with an urgent call to reconsider the concept of “sustainable exploitation” in wildlife and fisheries management. A truly sustainable model, they argue, would mean cultivating cultural, economic and institutional change that places limits on human activities to more closely follow the behavior of natural predators. Darimont said:

We should be protecting our wildlife and marine assets as an investor would in a stock portfolio.

Enjoying EarthSky? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Bottom line: According to research published in the August 21, 2015 edition of Science, extreme human predatory behavior is responsible for widespread wildlife extinctions, shrinking fish sizes and disruptions to global food chains.

Read more from the University of Victoria

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Chris Darimont really put his finger on the spot in my opinion when he was quoted,”We should be protecting our wildlife and marine assets as an investor would in a stock portfolio.”

Going to close today’s post by repeating what is presented on the Welcome page of Learning from Dogs, namely:

As man’s companion, protector and helper, history suggests that dogs were critically important in man achieving success as a hunter-gatherer. Dogs ‘teaching’ man to be so successful a hunter enabled evolution, some 20,000 years later, to farming, thence the long journey to modern man. But in the last, say 100 years, that farming spirit has become corrupted to the point where we see the planet’s plant and mineral resources as infinite. Mankind is close to the edge of extinction, literally and spiritually.

Dogs know better, much better! Time again for man to learn from dogs!

My argument rests!

That most precious bond.

Why we turn to dogs when disaster strikes.

With the memory of Hurricane Katrina refreshed in our minds as we acknowledge the recent passing of the tenth anniversary of that ghastly disaster, a link to an item from May, 2013 that was published on Mother Nature Network seems perfect for this place.

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Why we turn to dogs when disaster strikes

From aiding search-and-rescue missions to lending a shoulder to cry on, man’s best friend can often be found at the site of tragedy.

By: Laura Moss, May 21, 2013.

Photo: K-9 Parish Comfort Dogs/Facebook
Photo: K-9 Parish Comfort Dogs/Facebook

Disaster relief is flooding into Moore, Okla., but along with volunteers and supplies, there are dogs.

Some, including the 11 canine disaster search teams trained by the Search Dog Foundation or SDF, are scouring tornado debris for survivors. Others are en route to comfort the devastated city’s residents. Lutheran Church Charities, whose therapy dogs have worked with victims of the Boston bombings and the Newtown, Conn., shootings, is sending six dogs from its Chicago headquarters.

When disaster strikes, man’s best friend is often there, working on the frontlines of rescue efforts, as well as behind the scenes, helping people cope with trauma and loss.

Super sniffers

Experts estimate that one search-and-rescue (SAR) dog can accomplish the work of 20 to 30 human searchers. Because of these unparalleled abilities, the number of trained SAR dogs has been rising across the United States.

Dogs make efficient searchers due to their superior vision, hearing and sense of smell. A dog’s nose is about 100 times more sensitive than a human nose, and SAR dogs are trained to locate human scents amid countless other smells. They track our scents by the 30,000 to 40,000 dead skin cells we drop every minute.

“Dogs aren’t miracle workers, but their noses are so precious,” said SDF founder Wilma Melville. “They can find those people who survived a horrific ordeal.”

Air-scent dogs are trained to work in specific types of terrain. Some search in wilderness settings while others search urban environments, which often can involve scouring Moss2collapsed buildings.

Because they must navigate unstable terrain, urban SAR dogs are some of the most highly trained canines. The only national standards for such dogs are the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s certification standards for urban disaster work. Currently, fewer than 100 dog-handler teams in the U.S. have this certification.

In addition to air-scent dogs, there are dogs taught to seek out both skin cells and the smell of human decomposition. During major disasters, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center, both air-scent dogs and cadaver dogs were used to search for people.

This caused problems for SAR dogs because they became discouraged when they found only dead bodies. At both Oklahoma City and Ground Zero, handlers hid in rubble so that dogs could occasionally find a living person. The dogs’ desire to elicit a response from a found person may be a result of their training, which involves seeking feedback and rewards, but experts say it could also speak to a deeper connection with humans.

Man’s best friend

When disasters occur, dogs do much more than just aid search-and-rescue missions. They’re often there to provide a source of comfort for us in ways that only an animal can.

In an interview with American Thinker, Debra Tosch, executive director of SDF, explained how her SAR dog Abby was able to console a firefighter at Ground Zero. “When someone was found, work would stop, and I watched as the tears rolled down the firefighters’ faces. I remember one firefighter who hugged Abby and buried his face in her neck after just finding out a fellow firefighter was found,” she said.

Research show that petting dogs can lower anxiety, regulate breathing and decrease blood pressure, and a Japanese study found that simply looking at a dog can increase Moss3oxytocin levels. Oxytocin is a chemical released by the pituitary gland that’s associated with human bonding and affection.

But while the firefighter may have found comfort in Abby’s presence, was the dog able to empathize? Research says it’s very likely.

A 2012 study at Portugal’s University of Porto found that dogs yawn even when they hear only the sound of a person yawning, providing strong evidence that dogs are able to empathize with us.

And a study at the University of London Goldsmiths College found that dogs comforted people — both their owners and strangers — when the person pretended to cry.

“I think there is good reason to suspect dogs would be more sensitive to human emotion than other species,” Custance told Discovery News. “We have domesticated dogs over a long period of time. We have selectively bred them to act as our companions. Thus, dogs that responded sensitively to our emotional cues may have been the individuals that we would be more likely to keep as pets and breed from.”

ooOOoo

Time and time again, the facts support what the vast majority of those who care for and love dogs truly know: the bond between dog and human is the most special that there has ever been between an animal and mankind.