Decline of the Empire

What Are We Up Against?

Dave Cohen — 2013-05-23T10:22:40-04:00

A reader alerted me to a video by Swedish academic Hans Rosling. It's called Population growth and climate change explained by Hans Rosling, and appears on The Guardian's Global Development page.

That banner should tell you everything you need to know. FYI, DOTE is not supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Anyway, in asking what are we up against? in telling humans the truth about themselves and what they're doing, there is no finer illustration than this Rosling video.

The telling (humorous? tragic?) moment comes just after the 2:45 mark. The video runs only 3:19 altogether.

You need to watch the whole thing. No cheating! Do not skip ahead! Context is everything!

DOTE Is Dying

Dave Cohen — 2013-05-22T22:44:30-04:00

The title of this post is all I have to say right now about that subject, other than to say that...

this blog, traffic-wise, fundraiser-wise, will never be what it was even a year ago.

What would you do in my position?

Would you keep publishing? Or would you stop?

Let me tell you something.

When DOTE disappears, nothing will replace it—ever.

People who think they know something believe that—

anthropogenic climate change is the problem
or, peak oil is the problem
or degradation of marine ecosystems is the problem,
or ... something else

Of course, none of these necessary consequences of Human Nature (behavior) are the real problem...

Homo sapiens itself is the real problem here.

That's what this blog is all about, and always has been.

That's why DOTE will never be replaced, or duplicated, or anything else, should I quit writing it.

Honestly? DOTE would not be missed.

It's a human-made world after all is said and done.

It's sad, that human-made world, it's often humorous, and it's certainly tragic.

But that human-made world, that's the problem.

— Dave

Fishing Down The Food Chain, Booming Shellfish Populations

Dave Cohen — 2013-05-22T09:39:42-04:00

A recent study in the journal Fish And Fisheries did not get the attention it deserved. Let's fix that. Science Daily reported on the study in Why We Need To Put Fish Back Into Fisheries (May 19, 2013).

Overfishing has reduced fish populations and biodiversity across much of the world's oceans. In response, fisheries are increasingly reliant on a handful of highly valuable shellfish.

However, new research by the University of York shows this approach to be extremely risky.

The research, published today in the journal Fish and Fisheries, shows that traditional fisheries targeting large predators such as cod and haddock, have declined over the past hundred years. In their place, catches of shellfish such as prawns [shrimp], scallops and lobsters have skyrocketed as they begin to thrive in unnaturally predator-low environments often degraded by the passage of trawls and dredges.

The ecological effects of intensive fishing. From left to right, fishing effort increases over time. As a result, large predatory fish become depleted and fishers are forced to target new species. Consequently, the marine ecosystem becomes progressively more damaged and biodiversity is reduced. In this unnaturally predator-free environment, the ecosystem can become dominated by highly valuable shellfish, or by harmful algal blooms, highly invasive gelatinous plankton and jellyfish. (Credit: University of York)

In many places, including the UK, shellfish are now the most valuable marine resource. The research by the Environment Department at York suggests that although a shellfish-dominated ecosystem appears beneficial from an economic perspective, it is highly risky.

Like simplified agricultural systems, these shellfisheries are unstable in the long-term and at great risk of collapse from disease, species invasions and climate change. Warming and acidification of our oceans due to greenhouse gas emissions is expected to affect shellfish worst. Ocean acidification, in particular, will limit the ability of scallops and other shellfish to form proper shells, and lead to widespread mortality.

Here's the abstract of the study

Many over-exploited marine ecosystems worldwide have lost their natural populations of large predatory finfish and have become dominated by crustaceans and other invertebrates. Controversially, some of these simplified ecosystems have gone on to support highly successful invertebrate fisheries capable of generating more economic value than the fisheries they replaced. Such systems have been compared with those created by modern agriculture on land, in that existing ecosystems have been converted into those that maximize the production of target species. Here, we draw on a number of concepts and case-studies to argue that this is highly risky. In many cases, the loss of large finfish has triggered dramatic ecosystem shifts to states that are both ecologically and economically undesirable, and difficult and expensive to reverse. In addition, we find that those stocks left remaining are unusually prone to collapse from disease, invasion, eutrophication and climate change.

We therefore conclude that the transition from multispecies fisheries to simplified invertebrate fisheries is causing a global decline in biodiversity and is threatening global food security, rather than promoting it.

In 2012 I saw stories like Maine's lobster explosion an economic boon, biodiversity bust.

Low prices and a market glut may be the biggest problems many Maine lobstermen had to deal with this year, but there are other looming challenges facing the industry, and they have more to do with the marine environment than money.

According to University of Maine marine biologist, Robert Steneck, the depletion of cod and the effects of global warming — along with existing economic challenges — are combining to test the ingenuity of lobstermen, even as the Gulf of Maine undergoes dramatic changes.

But the problem isn't too few lobsters; there are more than enough.

That abundance is a relatively new development, said Steneck, a professor in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine's Darling Marine Center in Walpole...

The surge in the Gulf of Maine lobster population has been a boon to Maine, which now enjoys a "lucrative monoculture" in fisheries, with lobsters accounting for 85 percent of the value of harvested marine resources, Steneck said. The fishery, he said, "is better today than ever before."

Lobstermen expected this year's catch to compare favorably with last year's record catch of 100 million pounds, which was worth $330 million at last year's wholesale prices.

But with the population increase comes potential trouble. In environments of low biodiversity — the current state in the Gulf of Maine — disease and the effects of global warming can be disastrous because they can strike virtually the whole ecosystem, often swiftly and ferociously.

Even now, a synchronicity of conditions — abundant populations, an increase of 2 to 4 degrees in ocean temperatures and a resultant migration of different fish species northward into the Gulf of Maine — could create an ecosystem that makes lobsters more vulnerable to disease and stressed by new predators, Steneck said.

"Dynamic food webs and dynamic climate are colliding," he warned. Any one — or more — of these influences suggests "how on the edge this fishery is," said Steneck.

Lobstering historically has been Maine's most valuable commercial fishery, according to the state Department of Marine Resources. The once-diverse marine environment in the Gulf of Maine in the mid-19th century led to a decline in lobster numbers for a time, but by the late 1990s the same waters had been transformed into a haven for the present-day "lobster monoculture," Steneck said.

The gulf had evolved from a marine system "dominated by large predatory fish," primarily cod, into one in which such species were almost completely absent.

"Big fish are ecologically extinct," Steneck said.

The world below the surface of the Gulf of Maine "is now (one of) abundant small fish. It is an ecosystem that has fundamentally changed," with "an unbelievably high density of lobster."

Last summer, a shell disease, caused by bacteria that invade through pores in the outermost layer of the shell, ravaged the lobster fishery in Rhode Island, said Steneck, and that experience "should be a wake-up call" for all Atlantic coastal fisheries.

It is always the same story. Humans focus on short-term economic gains as long-term ecological catastrophe looms. The Gulf of Maine was once a thriving, diverse ecosystem with large predators like cod and haddock keeping shellfish and small fish populations in check. Not anymore. Now the Gulf of Maine is a "lobster monoculture" with few big predators.

In 2012, lobster populations skyrocketed, leading to a big spike in the lobster haul, which caused prices to tumble, which was a disaster for lobstermen, but a boon to "consumers".

Lobstermen are generally unable to make a profit if lobster is under $4 a pound. But a glut in soft-shelled lobsters within the last couple months has caused prices to fall as low as $1.25 a pound, close to a 30-year low for this time of year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The mild winter, along with a relatively warm spring, seems to have contributed to lobsters losing their shells much earlier than expected — about six weeks sooner. Canadian seafood processors, which buy up a large share of Northeastern lobster, weren’t prepared for the surplus. And all this happened before the New England tourist season got fully underway as well.

All of this is artificial, which in this context means man-made. The "relatively warm spring" was part of a record-setting heat wave in the continental United States in the 2012. Such heat waves become more frequent as the Earth warms. The explosion in lobster populations in the Gulf of Maine is a consequence of fishing down the food chain, which led to the disappearance of large predators—they are now ecologically extinct. Any subsequent collapse of the Gulf of Maine lobster populations will be artificial too.

Back to the Fish And Fisheries study.

Co-author Professor Callum Roberts concludes: "The rise of shellfish has been welcomed by many as a lifeline for the fishing industry.

However, such changes are not a result of successful management, but rather a result of management failure, a failure to protect stocks and their habitats in the face of industry innovation and overfishing. This study highlights why the UK needs to urgently act to protect our seas.

We need more marine protected areas to stop our seas from becoming a wasteland and to restore the diversity and productivity of fisheries well into the future."

And now, lobsters are eating each other, which nobody had ever seen before. In a lobster monoculture, what is there for lobsters to eat?

You guessed it.

Is American Democracy In Trouble?

Dave Cohen — 2013-05-21T09:24:35-04:00

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely
— Lord Acton

In March, 2012 I wrote a short post called Democracies Always Fail. It started off like this—

Many Americans believe they live in a democracy. They don't. Yes, there are names on the ballot, campaigns are waged, votes are cast, and the winners serve their terms in Washington. But some votes count more than others. Way more. Those who vote with their checkbooks have far more sway than those who do nothing but push buttons or pull levers in a voting booth. The further you move away from the "one person, one vote" principle, the less of a democracy you have. Here in America we've moved a vast distance away from this ideal principle. That is especially evident this year now that we live in the Age of the Superpacs after the Citizens United decision.

Democracies always fail, I wrote, because power corrupts and voter incompetence (ignorance) permits the worst sort of people to win—those most susceptible to the allures of money and power. That's exactly what we see in Washington, D.C. today. We will hear about this IRS/Tea Party scandal for months and months to come because the Republicans keeping it alive are interesting in accumulating power, not governance. Meanwhile, Democrats wonder why Obama has not been responsive to the needs of the American people. American politicians serve the elites who make their election possible.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne appears to address these issues in Is Democracy In Trouble? Given the self-evident failure of democracy in the United States, you might think that Dionne would be worried about America taking the next step whereby even the pretence that we live in a democracy is dropped by our monied elites and political leaders.

Sadly, Dionne can not even get to first base.

We know American politics are dysfunctional. But after a week of scandal obsession during which the nation's capital and the media virtually ignored the problems most voters care about — jobs, incomes, growth, opportunity, education — it's worth asking if there is something especially flawed about our democracy.

Worth asking?

Our circumstances certainly have their own particular disabilities: a radicalization of conservative politics, over-the-top mistrust of President Obama on the right, high-tech gerrymandering in the House, and a Senate snarled by non-constitutional super-majority requirements.

Still, while it may not be much of a comfort, the democratic distemper is not a peculiarly American phenomenon. Across most of the democratic world, there is an impatience bordering on exhaustion with electoral systems and political classes.

Citizen dissatisfaction is hardly surprising in the wake of a deeply damaging economic downturn. That doesn't make the challenge any less daunting. We should consider whether democracy itself is in danger of being discredited.

Politicians might usefully disentangle themselves from their day-to-day power struggles long enough to take seriously their responsibility to a noble idea and the systems that undergird it.

Is our democracy in trouble? Before you start laughing, or stop reading out of overwhelming disgust—is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear shit in the woods?—you might consider what's going on here. In my original post, I wrote—

In the media it is totally unacceptable to call a spade a spade and admit we don't live in a democracy. It is taboo, verboten. When a subject is taboo, that's always a strong indicator that deep psychological forces (i.e. basic instincts or defense mechanisms) are in play.

A few people can come to grips with abject failure, but only if those people do not benefit from the lie which covers it up. As a Washington Post columnist, E.J. Dionne obviously benefits from the pretence that Americans live in a democracy, so he is not capable of admitting that we don't. But the lie is fragile. To maintain it, you must constantly look the other way if you're not as blind as a bat. What can Dionne do with the unconscious psychological tension (anxiety) created by maintaining that lie?

The common solution for people whose self-interest is at stake—we see this everywhere—is to ask the question rather than jump to the obvious conclusion. Thus Dionne asks his readers to consider whether democracy itself is in danger of being discredited.

Amazing. In danger of being discredited. I wonder how long it took E.J. to come up with that astonishing turn of phrase. Another common tactic is to shift the burden of the dangerous argument onto others who might appear to be more authoritative. E.J. uses this one, too.

It's not hard to discover that this conundrum is global and not just our own. "Has democracy had its day?" is the headline on Columbia University historian Mark Mazower's cover story in the May issue of Prospect, a British magazine. The subhead: "Electoral politics has had a bad decade."

Earlier this month, the Transatlantic Academy, a global partnership of think tanks led by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, issued "The Democratic Disconnect," a sober report by a group of distinguished academics.

I haven't read these reports, nor will I. Dionne notes, as do these reports, apparently, that democracy may be "in trouble" not only in the United States, but in other places all over the world. I briefly discussed the failure of democracy in Europe in my original post.

As to our title question, it behooves you to remember that great wealth and income inequality exists everywhere on Earth, not just in the United States. The unfettered accumulation of great wealth and power dooms democracies to failure. Often that wealth and power is associated with the "geniuses" of global finance.

As for E.J. Dionne, he has what Mark Twain called corn-pone opinions, not just about democracy itself being in danger of being discredited—a wonderfully crafted phrase!—but everything else as well.

FIFTY YEARS AGO, when I was a boy of fifteen and helping to inhabit a Missourian village on the banks of the Mississippi, I had a friend whose society was very dear to me because I was forbidden by my mother to partake of it. He was a gay and impudent and satirical and delightful young black man -a slave -who daily preached sermons from the top of his master's woodpile, with me for sole audience...

One of his texts was this:

"You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is."

I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me... The black philosopher's idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter.

If he would prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in his business prosperities. He must restrict himself to corn-pone opinions — at least on the surface. He must get his opinions from other people; he must reason out none for himself; he must have no first-hand views...

Once you understand corn-pone opinions, you will see them everywhere you look.

And on Twain's splendid observation, I will conclude this post.

The Technological Instinct

Dave Cohen — 2013-05-20T09:30:04-04:00

This is a brief follow-up to yesterday's important post Bernanke Tells It The Way He Wants It To Be. I recommend you read it if you haven't done so.

There are a couple of points of agreement between Ben and me. First, I think technological innovation will continue. Where we disagree is what the consequences of that innovation will be.

The second point is more important and fundamental. Here's the chairman.

First, innovation, almost by definition, involves ideas that no one has yet had, which means that forecasts of future technological change can be, and often are, wildly wrong. A safe prediction, I think, is that human innovation and creativity will continue; it is part of our very nature.

It is part of our very nature. Yes, I believe it is.

The inextricable link between technology and hominid survival predates the genus Homo. Consider Australopithecus garhi, dating to some 2.6 million years ago.

The most surprising fact about A. garhi is that it occurs in the same layers as stone tools and animal bones with cut marks. These stone tools are the earliest known flaked tools (part of the Oldowan tradition, the simplest form of stone tools) to be found in layers with hominins; the oldest stone tools, dated to 2.6 mya, are not found in layers with hominin remains. These stone tools are also found with animal bones showing marks made from stone tools, indicating that whichever hominins used these tools were butchering animals and eating their meat. Because no other hominins have been found in these layers, some scientists believe that A. garhi was the maker and user of these tools; it is possible however that another hominin made and used these tools without leaving fossilized remains in these layers. If A. garhi is responsible for these artifacts, it is the only hominin outside the genus Homo which fashioned stone tools; such a finding would contradict the assumption prevailing among many paleoanthropologists that only species in the genus Homo had this ability.

Note: The hypothesis that early Homo species were the makers of the first stone tools was further undermined by the discovery at Dikika, Ethiopia in 2009 of antelope and bovid bones bearing cut marks that could only have been made by stone tools. The stone tools have not been found but the cut marked bone has been dated to 3.4 million years ago, a time and place where the only hominin species was Australopithecus afarensis..

The complex history of the genus Homo and stone tools lies outside the scope of what I want to say in this post. Today I merely want you to consider the hypothesis that the reliance on technology in modern humans is an outcome of our "technological instinct" in the same way that the reliance of ancient hominids on stone tool making was.

The only book I've read which makes this link explicit is Steven Mithen's The Prehistory of the Mind: The cognitive origins of art, religion and science. I've scanned two images from that book.

The mind of Homo erectus (left, 1.6 million years ago), and the mind of early modern humans (right, 100,000 years ago). Note the inclusion of a prominent "Technical Intelligence" module in both species. Click to enlarge.

You'll find that the world makes more sense if modern man's reliance on technological solutions to all problems is built right into who we are. The reliance of ancient hominds on stone tools was a matter of survival pure and simple. In modern humans, technology serves a variety of ends, including of course the innate urges to grow populations and consumption.

Think about it.

Bonus Video — The Turbo Encabulator. And do not miss version #2.