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Places where I have been and lived-a Global perspective

2008-07-29T11:47:00.001-07:00

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2008-07-25T14:44:00.001-07:00

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2008-07-25T14:39:00.001-07:00

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Anthropogenic global warming or more hot air....

2008-07-02T18:07:00.000-07:00

Did you know:

During the last 600 million years global CO2 levels have only rarely been under today's level of a bit under 400 ppm?

Global temperatures have only been as low as they are today 270 to 315 million or so years ago. Aside from that they have been warmer for the last 600 million years! Carbon dioxide levels were also low during that same period of time. Aha-that means that when CO2 levels go up the temperature goes up but it is not that simple. 450 million years ago CO2 levels were more than 4000 ppm (more than ten times what they are today) and temperatures for a long time (millions of years) were as low as they are today.

If we are seeing the beginnings of a wide ranging anthropogenic impact on climate it would only be discernible if this impact was greater than the normal variation that is seen in climate. Guess what-it isn't. So all you guys out there screaming the sky is falling and all you guys listening, it isn't falling. Earth constantly changes and while I believe that humans do impact their environment and will into the foreseeable future (actually all life does) instead of listening to half witted eschatologists, look at the facts. There is no shortage of oil. Constantly increasing populations and the free-market redistribution of wealth will result in an increased demand for resources which will result in higher levels of human cultural metabolites entering the environment. Addressing this entails dealing with the underlying roots-overpopulation and its causes-poverty due to the continuing inequitable redistribution of limited global resources, a church that clings to its medieval roots refusing to acknowledge its role in perpetuating philosophies that engender self centered excessive rates of reproduction and downright selfishness. Carbon dioxide levels vary for many reasons and there is no proof that they correlate with increased global temperatures. Earth will change no matter what we do-it always has and will until the Sun vaporizes the veneer of life back into its constituent elements. Deal with it.

algal biofuels

2008-06-30T20:16:00.000-07:00

Hype, hype, hype. Everywhere you look journalists who know how to spell but know little of science are helping to perpetuate the scam that algal oils will replace the oil we pump from the ground. This is not something new. Some years ago it was looked at with serious eyes and the conclusion was that it could not be done cost effectively. Nothing has changed since then. This has done little to stop a whole new generation of pseudo scientists and con artists from perpetuating the myth that algal oils will replace oil from the ground.

At current and projected rates of consumption there are enough known oil reserves to last for centuries. There is no shortage of oil nor are we going to run out anytime soon.

Misguided government policies have created an environment where fuel and food are competitive commodities.

Algal production requires nutrients, controlled environments and, for optimum efficiency, extremely large scales of production likely with genetically modified organisms.

We would be better off figuring out how to make the machinery we use operate much more efficiently and gradually replacing our need for oil with other clean sources of combustible materials then engaging in half baked pseudo scientific schemes that will not solve the underlying problems. Oil from algae is as bad of an idea as replacing the gas in your gas tank is with ethanol is.

Congress and inactivity

2008-06-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

The news had some commentary today about the July 4th holiday and the fact that our congressmen are gone without dealing with pressing issues that are creating unfathomable pain in many Americans. First all, why does anybody think that our politicians actually care? Most of them are wealthy and are on easy street for the rest of their lives, even if they do not get re-elected. I have always believed that you are judged by what you do not by what you say. Words are air forced out of your lungs across your voice box accentuated by the movement of your tongue and mouth. Congress is long on talk and short on delivery. They really do not care about anything except getting reelected and having their names in the history books. If they do care, then why are we paying $4.00 plus per gallon of gas (what bothers me more than the amount is the rate at which it has increased), why are thousands of Americans losing their homes (many of course deserve it because they speculated that the housing bubble would make them rich(er) or they failed high school math and did not think about what would happen when their ARMS where adjusted-just plain dumb), why are we borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars a year to finance a "war on terrorism" when we created the environment that allowed this type of thinking to thrive and actually encouraged it and continue to do so (every time you buy gas from Saudi Arabia you are supporting this type of twisted thinking), why do we have more than 2 million people in jails and prisons (and if we arrested everybody who was breaking the law we would have 50 million or more), why is the value of the money in my pocket losing buying power daily?, etc. Congress is not a place for solutions-they create problems and leave them unsolved to fester placing the blame on partisan politics when really the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of an elite class of wealthy individuals who really only care about what is the best for them and not the best for the collective. As the US declines into second world status (we are a ways from this happening today), what will there answer be to this? The same empty rhetoric that they are using today. The democrats did it, the republicans did it. Never-we did it and we screwed up and we have to fix it.

Thailand Shrimp Farming

2008-06-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

As the cobwebs begin to clear in my head from a 14 hour time difference and a month of being gone, I have been thinking about how easy it is for many people to get the wrong impression from the press about the role of Burmese people in the shrimp processing industry in Thailand. I just audited 8 processing plants for the Aquaculture Certification Council (ACC) and in every plant there were Burmese workers. Although it is not yet a part of the audit, formally, I asked about the number of Burmese and what role they played in the work force. What I found was that in many cases the Burmese are harder working than locals and more willing to do the work that the locals will not do (standing up for 4 hours at a stretch pulling heads off of shrimp as an example). Sounds familiar to me. We have a similar situation here in the US with Hispanics. No where did I see any evidence of exploitation (other than what is normal-i.e. wealthy individuals providing opportunities for others to earn money and make the wealthier individuals wealthier). The Thai government regulates foreign workers just as we do in the US and they have to have permits (which cost the equivalent of a weeks wages) in order to be hired. While I am certain that there are abuses, afterall they do occur everywhere including here in the US, they are not as widespread as some would have us believe. At the same time I saw many very hard working people who enjoyed their work and were glad to have jobs. I was in country at the same time that a retinue of NGO and US government representatives were going into processing plants for 3 hours at a stretch and terrorizing these same employees through an army of interpreters trying to establish that everything was on the up and up. I would be surprised if they found anything at all. They were looking in the wrong places and taking the wrong approach.

CBC Interview on Shrimp Farms and Cyclone Nargis

2008-06-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

On May 12 2008 I was asked a number of questions about the role in the devastation that decimated the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar (Burma) of shrimp farms. I had been asked to share my knowledge of this tragedy late on the 9th of May by one of the shows producers and had no idea what the specific questions would be or who else would be interviewed. I found myself being interviewed right after an NGO with a clear bias had painted a picture that the loss of mangroves in the delta to shrimp farms was a contributing factor to the horrible and tragic devastation in this area. The reporter seemed as well to be biased as she asked me if I was biased and she did not ask the prior speaker about his biases when he never directly answered her question about the role of shrimp farms in the loss of mangrove. The loss of mangroves in this area of the world was a direct result of the establishment of rice farms by the British. There are virtually no shrimp farms in the delta. They are all much further to the North in close proximity to Bangladesh. While mangroves have been cut down in the past in some areas of the world to build shrimp farms, no one who knows anything about shrimp farming would do this today. The vast majority of mangrove habitat that has been lost globally is a result of poor people cutting the trees down for fire wood. This is a documented fact in many parts of the world. While there is certainly a need to replant mangroves in many places where they have been cut, in my opinion, it would make more sense to stop blaming shrimp farming and focus on the real causes, poverty and overpopulation. You can hear the interview at the link below:

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2008/200805/20080512.html or read an excerpt at http://www.shrimpnews.com/FreeNewsBackIssues/FreeNewsMay200823.html.