Save a marmot: send blankets to Colorado!

My Huffington Post blog on the effects of a limited snowpack on hibernating marmots was just published.  I must note that it's snowed a bit more since I wrote this but it's also bitter cold.

Why not discuss some animal welfare issues that arise from a changing climate at dinner tonite.

Pomegranate enhanced caramelized onions with fried braided string cheese

I love cooking with other people because I learn so much.  At Friday night wine and apps get together, a friend made the most delicious recipe.  I made it for the first time last night for a dinner party and just have to share it.  It's easy and absolutely delicious!

Slice up 2 white or yellow onions and caramelize in about 2-4 Tbs of olive oil.  After about 10 min, add 2-4 Tbs of pomegranate molasses. Pomegranate molasses is available in Middle Eastern or Persian specialty stores (I live in Tehrangeles so it's easy to get!).  The more you add, the sweeter the onions.  After the onions are nicely browned and fully infused with the pomegranate flavor, remove from heat, strain out the excess oil and put on a serving plate.  Add more oil to the pan (about 1/2 cup or so) and fry 1/8th" slices of braided string cheese.  Flip when they start to melt (they should be lightly browned) and cook up the other side.  Remove, strain off some of the oil and arrange on the plate of flavored onions.  WOW!

Google recipes!

I just discovered last night (for the first time!) google recipes!  Wow:  are cookbooks obsolete now?  It seems to aggregate all the apps and a lot of cookbooks as well. I wish I discovered it before I made a fennel pasta last night (would have had other ideas).

How important is long term ecological research

I wrote this blog for the Huffington Post the other day.  It's a discussion worth having; how do we value long-term research? How do we value research that won't be supported by the private industry?

Vegetable Kurma

A friend and colleague, Alex Hettena, shared this with me. I've not tried it yet, but it looks too good to hold onto, thus I'm sharing it now.  I'll have to go out and get coconut powder for this one...

100 grams French beans (green beans)

100 grams carrots

100 grams red bell pepper

1 onion chopped

1 inch piece of ginger chopped

3 cloves of garlic chopped

1 tomato chopped

1 tsp cumin powder

1 Tbsp coconut powder

1 tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp red chili powder

2 tsp coriander powder

¼ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp clove powder

½ tsp Garam masala

3 Tbsp oil

½ cup water

50 ml milk cream

1. Peel and chop carrots. Chop beans and bell pepper.

2. Heat oil in pan and add cumin, frying for 1 minute.

3. Add onion, ginger, and garlic. Cook until the onion is brown.

4. Add tomato and coconut powder and fry well.

5. Add turmeric and cook for a few seconds.

6. Add vegetables, red chili powder, coriander, cinnamon, clove, garam masala.

7. Add water. Cover pan and cook on low flame until done (~5 min).

8. Add milk cream and mix over the low flame for a little bit longer.

Note: You could leave out the milk cream to keep it vegan.

squid tube with chili, garlic, basil, star anise, and cinnamon

Here's one of those 'jazz' discoveries that comes from playing around with oldish food.

Some squid tubes have been in the freezer for a bit too long.  So, I experimented with them this evening.  I put about 1/2 cup of olive oil into a large pan, heated it to medium high, and then threw in a head of minced garlic, about 3 Tbs of sambal chili paste, one star anise, and a cinnamon stick. Once the mixture was warm and bubbling, I added 2 large squid tubes cut into rings about 1/8" wide stirred them for a few minutes and then turned down the heat to medium, tossed in about 4 Tbs of dried basil, gave the whole concoction a quick stir, and covered the pot.  I stirred it occasionally and kept the mixture from sticking to the bottom of the pot.  As the squid cooked, it provided a bit more liquid.  I kept this on for about 45 min and then removed the spice infused tubes and served them straight.  Not only were they delicious, the entire house smelled great!  I know they'd be good with white rice as well.

I then used the remaining oil and spices to quickly cook some tilapia fillets that I'd cut into 1" chunks.  The flavor wasn't infused as much in the tilapia, but they were good.

Given my emerging realization about issues with all harvested sea food, I'm not sure that this will be  regular item on our menu, but for special occasions...yum.

Revisiting the idea of eating small, herbivorous fishes

In some ways it's obvious: industrial fisheries simply must have an impact on other animals in the ocean given their size and global reach.

I was just reading an article by Ellen Pikitch in The Scientist where she wrote about a study that she was involved in demonstrated that the harvesting of small fish (like sardines) have impacts on sea birds, marine mammals, and other larger predatory fish. The important recommendations from the study included rigorous monitoring of these fisheries and monitoring of their effects on other species that might be influenced by their population status.

What's the lesson for our kitchens?  Well, I'd previously written that we should be specifically eating those small, herbivorous fish because they were sustainably harvested (and have a variety of yummy recipes for them).  If this advice, however, is questioned, perhaps we must be careful about eating too many of them.

Science is a self-correcting process where we have to be open to changing our minds given new evidence.  This might be one of those cases...which, in retrospect, should have been obvious.

Why Data Matter

Please see my newest Huffington Post blog on why data matter.  We now have a real need to work together to ensure that policy decisions are based on evidence!  And, we have a lot of work to do after this election to restore civility.  Read the blog and talk about it at your next dinner party!

some wise words about food choice and climate change

Superstorm Sandy: What if storms like this can be prevented? 

November 1, 2012  by Chiara Cabiglio  http://everyonesharvest.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/superstorm-sandy-what-if-storms-like-this-can-be-prevented/ 

  

Superstorm Sandy has caused at least 157 human deaths as of midday November 1st.  Its impacts include flooding of lower Manhattan and large swaths of New York City's subway system.  News reports had previously predicted that such events might occur only in 2080, based on a 2011 New York State government report. 

  

Reporters and scientists are exploring whether climate change might have intensified Superstorm Sandy.  Hurricanes would occur even in the absence of climate change.  But scientists are connecting Sandy's intensity with the same climate disruption that generated record drought in the summer of 2012, which caused "severe pain" among both crop-growers and livestock farmers.  Similarly, scientists are warning that Sandy could yield "life-threatening" results among poultry flocks on the East Coast. 

  

In fact, while livestock are victims of climate change, they also are largely responsible for it, according to a wide range of sources.  Whatever the role of fossil fuels, at least 20 years and $18 trillion are needed to construct enough renewable energy infrastructure to start reversing climate change –- while one expert group after another say we must start reversing climate change in the next 5 years or it'll be too late. 

  

So the only pragmatic way left to reverse climate change before it's too late, say World Bank environmental advisor Robert Goodland and his colleague Jeff Anhang, is through large-scale reforestation and regeneration of forest to absorb today's excess atmospheric carbon –- combined with replacing at least 25% of today's livestock products with better alternatives (notably, meat substitutes).  That way, lots of greenhouse gas emissions attributable to livestock would be significantly reduced at the same time as new trees would sequester excess atmospheric carbon. 

  

Yet many people still think that sustainability in food is achieved by buying "organic" or "grass-fed" meat.  However, grass-fed cows emit up to 400% more methane than do grain-fed cows, and they take up much more land, so they yield much less forest available to absorb atmospheric carbon.  Anyway, most marketing of "grass-fed" beef is a scam — and that's according to a "grass-fed" producer who touts himself as a rare, honest marketer of grass-fed meat.  Yet that producer can't show his buyers any better certification than can his competitors who he says are scammers. 

  

Indeed, any producer can keep animals on grass all day long –- but then when night falls and it's hard to observe, quickly feed them grain.  There's no practical way to certify that an animal has been 100% grass-fed unless an independent observer would watch each animal 24/7.  But of course it'll never be close to economically possible to do so.  Yet the premium for meat marketed as grass-fed is commonly 200-300%.  So there's an overwhelming incentive for a producer to cheat. 

  

Meanwhile, some people promote Meat Free Mondays.  Yet since that campaign began in 2003, survey data show a sharp drop in the number of Americans consuming less meat –- even though meat consumption has historically fallen during economic downturns.  Meatless Monday's own website provides a reason for such failure:  its framing of the issue is anachronistic, based on World War I deprivation.  In fact, when people are asked to sacrifice something one day, they often crave it more the next day. 

  

Indeed, no consumer product is ever successfully marketed by asking consumers to use it just one day a week.  For example, little to no Pepsi-Cola would be sold by prodding consumers to drink it one day a week, conceding that Coca-Cola remains the drink of choice the rest of the week.  It's been suggested that a campaign would do better by being based on the value of products that are better than meat. 

  

Some people debate whether  Goodland and Anhang's estimate that at least 51% of human-caused greenhouse gas is attributable to livestock may be too high, and prefer to use the Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) 18% estimate –- even though the FAO promotes more factory farming, not less, and has partnered with the meat industry to prove it. 

The validity of Goodland and Anhang's conclusion can be grasped simply by considering the estimate by the International Livestock Research Institute –- which normally promotes livestock -– that 45% of land on earth is now used for livestock and feed production.  That so much land is used for livestock and feed production suggests it's correct for Goodland and Anhang to conclude that replacing 25% of today's livestock products with better alternatives would both reduce emissions and allow forest to regenerate on a vast amount of land, which could then absorb excess atmospheric carbon to reduce it to a safe level. This may be the only pragmatic way to reverse climate change in the next 5 years as needed, and avert future superstorms like Hurricane Sandy. 

  

Therefore, the food industry may be the key player in determining whether climate change is reversed or not.  Consumers have the power to create positive change in the food industry by voting with their forks: by replacing meat and dairy products with meat and dairy alternatives, in particular by choosing more grains, legumes, fruit and vegetables. 

  

If we ignore Mother Earth's warning this time, then it could prove utterly catastrophic for us all.  If we want to save ourselves from climate change, then we must consider changing the way we eat, the way our food is produced, and what  food is produced.  Period. 

The necessity of cooking....

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/10/raw-food-not-enough-to-feed-big-.html?ref=em

Science NOW, 22 October 2012

Raw Food Not Enough to Feed Big Brains

by Ann Gibbons

Eating a raw food diet is a recipe for disaster if you're trying to boost your species' brainpower. That's because humans would have to spend more than 9 hours a day eating to get enough energy from unprocessed raw food alone to support our large brains, according to a new study that calculates the energetic costs of growing a bigger brain or body in primates. But our ancestors managed to get enough energy to grow brains that have three times as many neurons as those in apes such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. How did they do it? They got cooking, according to a study published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"If you eat only raw food, there are not enough hours in the day to get enough calories to build such a large brain," says Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a neuroscientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil who is co-author of the report. "We can afford more neurons, thanks to cooking."

Humans have more brain neurons than any other primate—about 86 billion, on average, compared with about 33 billion neurons in gorillas and 28 billion in chimpanzees. While these extra neurons endow us with many benefits, they come at a price—our brains consume 20% of our body's energy when resting, compared with 9% in other primates. So a long-standing riddle has been where did our ancestors get that extra energy to expand their minds as they evolved from animals with brains and bodies the size of chimpanzees?

One answer came in the late 1990s when Harvard University primatologist Richard Wrangham proposed that the brain began to expand rapidly 1.6 million to 1.8 million years ago in our ancestor, Homo erectus, because this early human learned how to roast meat and tuberous root vegetables over a fire. Cooking, Wrangham argued, effectively predigested the food, making it easier and more efficient for our guts to absorb calories more rapidly. Since then, he and his colleagues have shown in lab studies of rodents and pythons that these animals grow up bigger and faster when they eat cooked meat instead of raw meat—and that it takes less energy to digest cooked meat than raw meat.

In a new test of this cooking hypothesis, Herculano-Houzel and her graduate student, Karina Fonseca-Azevedo, now a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Translational Neuroscience in São Paulo, Brazil, decided to see if a diet of raw food inherently put limits on how large a primate's brain or body could grow. First, they counted the number of neurons in the brains of 13 species of primates (and more than 30 species of mammals). The researchers found two things: One, that brain size is directly linked to the number of neurons in a brain; and two, that that the number of neurons is directly correlated to the amount of energy (or calories) needed to feed a brain.

After adjusting for body mass, they calculated how many hours per day it would take for various primates to eat enough calories of raw food to fuel their brains. They found that it would take 8.8 hours for gorillas; 7.8 hours for orangutans; 7.3 hours for chimps; and 9.3 hours for our species, H. sapiens.

These numbers show that there is an upper limit on how much energy primates can get from an unprocessed raw diet, Herculano-Houzel says. An ape's diet in the wild differs from a modern "raw food diet," in which humans get sufficient calories from processing raw food in blenders and adding protein and other nutrients. In the wild, other apes can't evolve bigger brains unless they reduce their body sizes because they can't get past the limit of how many calories they can consume in 7 hours to 8 hours of feeding per day. But humans, she says, got around that limit by cooking. "The reason we have more neurons than any other animal alive is that cooking allowed this qualitative change—this step increase in brain size," she says. "By cooking, we managed to circumvent the limitation of how much we can eat in a day."

This study shows "that an ape could not achieve a brain as big as in recent humans while maintaining a typical ape diet," Wrangham says.

Paleoanthropologist Robert Martin of The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, agrees that the new paper does "provide the first evidence that metabolic limitations" from a raw food diet impose a limit on how big a primate's brain—or body—can grow. "This could account for small brain sizes of great apes despite their large body sizes." But "the jury is still out" on whether cooking was responsible for the first dramatic burst of brain growth in our lineage, in H. erectus, Martin says, or whether our ancestors began cooking over a fire later, when the brain went through a second major growth spurt about 600,000 years ago. Hearths show up in the archaeological record 800,000 years ago and the regular use of fire for cooking doesn't become widespread until more recently.

But to Herculano-Houzel's mind, our brains would still be the size of an ape's if H. erectus hadn't played with fire: "Gorillas are stuck with this limitation of how much they can eat in a day; orangutans are stuck there; H. erectus would be stuck there if they had not invented cooking," she says. "The more I think about it, the more I bow to my kitchen. It's the reason we are here."

A conversation we need to have...

My friend and colleague, Professor Glen Macdonald, in an OpEd today in the Los Angeles Times about the tenuous basis of climate change denial.

He ends with "The question is no longer whether the climate will change because of increased greenhouse gases. Now we have to ask what we can do about it, and how much we can afford to spend. It's crucial for scientists like me to provide dispassionate estimates of what the climate is doing now and will do in the future. But in the end, we won't be the ones making the decisions about how best to deal with the warming and its consequences. This will require a broad public conversation and a well-informed public."

Good dinner party conversation, 'eh?

shocking human suffering...

I'm reproducing this in full because it's shocking reading that could lead to some heartfelt dinner conversations.  What do you want your future to look like?

* Six million deaths a year by 2030 due to climate, carbon

* Cost to global economy seen at 3.2 percent of GDP by 2030

* Study conducted for governments of 20 developing countries 

By Nina Chestney

LONDON, Sept 26 (Reuters) - More than 100 million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on Wednesday.

As global average temperatures rise due to greenhouse gas emissions, the effects on the planet, such as melting ice caps, extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels, will threaten populations and livelihoods, said the report conducted by humanitarian organisation DARA.

It calculated that five million deaths occur each year from air pollution, hunger and disease as a result of climate change and carbon-intensive economies, and that toll would likely rise to six million a year by 2030 if current patterns of fossil fuel use continue.

More than 90 percent of those deaths will occur in developing countries, said the report that calculated the human and economic impact of climate change on 184 countries in 2010 and 2030. It was commissioned by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a partnership of 20 developing countries threatened by climate change.

"A combined climate-carbon crisis is estimated to claim 100 million lives between now and the end of the next decade," the report said.

It said the effects of climate change had lowered global output by 1.6 percent of world GDP, or by about $1.2 trillion a year, and losses could double to 3.2 percent of global GDP by 2030 if global temperatures are allowed to rise, surpassing 10 percent before 2100.

It estimated the cost of moving the world to a low-carbon economy at about 0.5 percent of GDP this decade.


COUNTING THE COST

Responding to the report, Oxfam International said the costs of political inaction on climate were "staggering".

"The losses to agriculture and fisheries alone could amount to more than $500 billion per year by 2030, heavily focussed in the poorest countries where millions depend on these sectors to make a living," said executive director Jeremy Hobbs.

British economist Nicholas Stern told Reuters earlier this year investment equivalent to 2 percent of global GDP was needed to limit, prevent and adapt to climate change.

His report on the economics of climate change in 2006 said that without any action to tackle climate change, the overall costs and risks of climate change would be equivalent to a cut in per-capita consumption of perhaps up to 20 percent.

Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Almost 200 nations agreed in 2010 to limit the global average temperature rise to below 2C (3.6 Fahrenheit) to avoid dangerous impacts from climate change.

But climate scientists have warned that the chance of limiting the rise to below 2C is getting smaller as global greenhouse gas emissions rise due to burning fossil fuels.

The world's poorest nations are the most vulnerable as they face increased risk of drought, water shortages, crop failure, poverty and disease. On average, they could see an 11 percent loss in GDP by 2030 due to climate change, DARA said.

"One degree Celsius rise in temperature is associated with 10 percent productivity loss in farming. For us, it means losing about 4 million metric tonnes of food grain, amounting to about $2.5 billion. That is about 2 percent of our GDP," Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said in response to the report.

"Adding up the damages to property and other losses, we are faced with a total loss of about 3-4 percent of GDP."

Even the biggest and most rapidly developing economies will not escape unscathed. The United States and China could see a 2.1 percent reduction in their respective GDPs by 2030, while India could experience a more than 5 percent loss.

The full report is available at: http://daraint.org/ (Editing by Janet Lawrence)

OpEd on the environmental troubles with the farm bill

Writing in the New York Times, Matt Hertsgaard, editorializes on the major shortcomings of the current farm bill that's working its way through the US Congress.  Noting that it is essentially a de-facto climate bill, it's sending all the wrong messages about how the US is addressing climate change by maintaining energy intensive agriculture, providing more crop insurance (which given climate change will surely be paid out at the taxpayer's expense), but not inducing farmers to modify their behaviors which will improve quality and, in the long run, reduce costs.

What do you think?  We're going to talk about this one at our Friday night dinner party!

NY TImes article on organics and vitamins

A New York Times article reports on a meta-analysis (a formal statistical analysis of many published studies) that concluded that organic foods were no safer or 'better' for you than non-organic options. I think the article (and the study which I have not directly read) raise important issues.

In Eating Our Way to Civility, one of the guidelines is 'eat organic if you can'.  Eating lower on the food chain is essential and grass fed beef is going to be better for you and the animals.  However, there are many things, other than nutrients that organic food support. For instance, the ecological benefits of using fewer pesticides must be factored in, and the social benefits of organic growing and community agriculture were not considered in the study.  Including such 'externalities' should be discussed as well and I rest by my suggestion of "eat organic if you can".

are we too rational about our perceptions of climate science?

Dan Kahan writes in this week's Nature that we are so polarized in our interpretations of climate science because "If anything, social science suggests that citizens are culturally polarized because they are, in fact, too rational — at filtering out information that would drive a wedge between themselves and their peers.".  He goes on to describe how we need better, less polarizing, science communication.

Interesting paper!

Confronting the evidence: climate change

There's a great piece in the NY Times today by Eric Klinenberg about how our summer's heat is changing American's perceptions of climate change.

An excerpt:

"For now, though, Americans, long cynical about global warming, are confronting the facts. According to a survey conducted in July by the University of Texas, 70 percent of Americans believe the climate is changing, compared to 65 percent in March, and only 15 percent say it isn’t. Party affiliation continues to divide public opinion, but today most Republicans, 53 percent, believe in climate change, as do 72 percent of independents and 87 percent of Democrats."


The question for tonight's dinner is:  Now that more folks are accepting that the Earth is getting warmer, what will it take for people to welcome the change that's needed to do something about it?

The Hidden Cost of Hamburgers

Great video that talks about the hidden ecological costs of eating hamburgers.

New Huffington Post Blog

Here's my new Huffington Post Blog entry about marmots and plastics and something I've been losing sleep over recently.

The Old Maid: Let's drink to glaciers

The Old Maid is a small, permanent snowfield on Gothic Mountain, across from our cabin in Gothic, Colorado.  It looks like a witch on a broomstick (as can be seen in the center of this photo taken in May 2012 by Adrianna Maldonado).

This year the Old Maid essentially melted out.  I say essentially because I am leaving the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory soon and the entire bottom is melted out (I've never seen this before) and the head is shrinking rapidly.

The Old Maid has melted out in the past, but only rarely, and typically in September or even October; before the snows resume. This year, by July, it was in poor shape.

Climate change is changing alpine landscapes. Glacier National Park will likely soon have no more glaciers. Lower elevation alpine meadows will be a thing of the past, and The Old Maid may become an early summer memory.

At a lab party in Richards Cabin the other week, some brilliant graduate students came up with a delicious recipe for a drink to celebrate the Old Maid. It capitalizes on an introduced plant--rhubarb--and combines a rhubarb simple syrup with bourbon and lemon juice. Served over ice (from the Old Maid?), it's a refreshing way to ponder a sad event: the loss of glaciers.

Thanks to Paul CaraDonna, Ross Brennan & Parris Humphrey for being so inventive!

The Old Maid

At a rate of one Colorado Miner's Inch* combine:

0.08 seconds of Good Bourbon,

0.04 seconds of Rhubarb Simple Syrup**,

and then

the juice of one half lemon

ice from the Old Maid of Gothic Mountain (if available, check current climate change predictions).

Mix thoroughly and serve over more ice or snow.

*Note: A Colorado Miner's Inch is equivalent to 1ft3/38 seconds (not to be confused with a California Miner's Inch or a Nevada Miner's Inch). (note from Dan:  where did they guys come up with this unit?)

**Richards' Rhubarb Simple Syrup: Add equal parts water and sugar (e.g., two cups water, two cups sugar) to a pot.  Heat until sugar is in solution. Next, add as much chopped rhubarb as one can fit in the pot, bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer the whole mess for 10-15 minutes.  Strain and remove the rhubarb stem pieces and put the lovely pink syrup in a jar and you are good to go!  (Do not discard the rhubarb stems…they are perfectly used for rhubarb crisp, pie, or whatever else you might want to use rhubarb for).

Enjoy.

Room for debate: Does 'green shopping' matter?

A really nice piece in the New York Times Room For Debate series on whether 'green shopping' makes a difference.

I think the under appreciated part of the the 3 Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) is the 4th R (refuse!).  Using less is always a good thing to do.  But, eating organic if you can is a good idea, as is reducing waste.

What do you think?

Who is responsible for atmospheric CO2 levels?

Here is a really interesting article that tabulates the cumulative amount of CO2 produced by various countries since the start of the industrial revolution and hence can be used to provide 'attribution' for the current climate crisis.

Mark Bittman on climate...

JULY 18, 2012, 9:32 PM

The Endless Summer

By MARK BITTMAN

Here's what American exceptionalism means now: on a per-capita basis, we either lead or come close to leading the world in consumption of resources, production of pollutants and a profound unwillingness to do anything about it. We may look back upon this year as the one in which climate change began to wreak serious havoc, yet we hear almost no conversation about changing policy or behavior. President Obama has done nicely in raising fuel averages for automobiles, but he came into office promising much more, and Mitt Romney promises even less. (There was a time he supported cap and trade.)

It has been well over 100 years since the phenomenon called the greenhouse effect was identified, 24 years since the steamy summer of '88, when many of us first took notice, and, incredibly, 15 years since the Kyoto Protocol. That agreement stipulated that signatories would annually reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases and was ratified (and even acted upon) by almost every country in the world, including every industrialized nation but one. That would be the United States. Now that's exceptionalism. (Bill Clinton signed Kyoto; George W. Bush, despite an election pledge, repudiated it.)

The climate has changed, and the only remaining questions may well be: a) how bad will things get, and b) how long will it be before we wake up to it. The only sane people who don't see this as a problem are those whose profitability depends on the status quo, people of money and power like Romney ("we don't know what's causing climate change"), most of his party, and Rex Tillerson, the Exxon chairman, who called the effects of climate change "manageable."

Which I suppose they are, as long as you're wealthy and able to move around at will. But it's not manageable to the corn farmers losing their crops (many are just chopping them down), the ranchers selling off their cattle, the thousands of people in Colorado burned out of their homes in fires caused by the worst drought since 1956 or those who will lose their homes or jobs to fire, flood, drought or whatever in coming years. How will they "manage"?

All of this is the tip of the iceberg, and the iceberg is, of course, melting. As Bill McKibben points out in a piece to be published in Rolling Stone on Friday, not only was May the warmest on record for the Northern Hemisphere, not only was it "the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average," but it was also followed by a June in which some 3,200 heat records were broken in the United States.

The first page alone of the Rolling Stone article will scare the pants off you, but the chorus needs to grow bigger, louder and stronger. That's why the forthcoming book (due July 24) from Climate Central, "Global Weirdness," is so welcome. "Global Weirdness," which explains climate change in simple, easy-to-understand language and ultrashort chapters, is intentionally calm because, says Michael Lemonick, one of the authors: "Some people respond well to 'Big trouble is coming and we must do something immediately,' but others are overwhelmed and just turn off. We believe that if you look at all the available evidence it's clear we're pushing the earth into a regime where it hasn't been before, and the effects could well be disastrous."

The time to avoid calamitous effects has likely passed. This doesn't mean the situation is hopeless, but the longer we wait to curb emissions, the worse and longer-lasting the effects. Climate Central's projections show that the biggest cities in Florida, and a great deal of the Northeast coastline (including New York City), will be underwater by 2100, when almost everyone now alive will have "managed" to leave the scene. Of course, the calamities won't be limited to North America, nor is 2100 some magical expiration date; the end isn't in sight.

Only reducing carbon emissions can keep matters from becoming worse. Thus the argument for a tax on carbon has never been stronger, but neither has the power of the energy companies to compel legislative paralysis on this issue. The way to a carbon tax is through Congress and the White House, but installing a responsible Congress means campaign-finance reform, another challenge of which Americans are aware but clueless about how to address. But feelings of helplessness are practically un-American: we have the opportunity to demand principled and independent leadership, if we will only try.

It was just about a year ago that we saw the beginnings of what is now called the Occupy movement. And although income inequality has hardly been "solved," it's a bigger part of the conversation now, and that may well spell Romney's downfall. A similar movement - one that, as McKibben told me, "identifies the fossil fuel industry as the real enemy in the climate fight, which is ultimately a moral battle" - could possibly get things moving. If we can force our next president to turn his attention to a problem that may well dwarf the economy in scale, perhaps American exceptionalism will come to mean leadership in the right direction.

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Tim Wirth on population

Here's a conversation topic that we all should have...

TIMOTHY E. WIRTH, President of the United Nations Foundation and Better World Fund

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-wirth/population-growth_b_1672518.html?view=screen

July 15, 2012

The Elephant in the Room

For years, too many political and opinion leaders around the world have shrugged off concerns about rapid population growth and escalating consumption patterns as overstated warnings from scientific Chicken Littles.

Now, the chickens are coming home to roost. The signals are manifest:

In rising global temperatures, melting polar ice, devastating wildfires and other extreme weather events;

In the political dissatisfaction of the world's largest ever generation of young people, for whom jobs are scarce and the future is uncertain; and

In the growing social and economic inequities that exist between and within countries.

Demographic trends are central to these challenges, but for a variety of reasons, most political leaders have closed their eyes and pretended that the problems don't exist or are too long-term to attend to.

Reestablishing global priority for comprehensive population and development initiatives must be a top priority of the next decade. The reluctance of political leaders to prioritize these issues is understandable on one level -- population issues touch on such sensitive topics as sexual behavior, human rights, culture and religion; consumption runs smack into powerful issues of resource extraction and use, pollution and intergenerational responsibility. Addressing these trends requires patient, sustained engagement over a period of decades.

More difficult to overcome are the chasms of misperception purposefully ginned up to suggest controversy where none should exist. Entrenched special interests have invested handsomely in elaborate public relations campaigns that give politicians an excuse to pretend that there is scientific doubt about the relationship between the burning of fossil fuels and our changing climate. Religious zealots that long for Victorian morality wholly rejected by the populace raise the specter of social chaos. The smokescreen of controversy perpetuates the status quo -- male dominance and unfettered use of the Earth's natural resources.

The efforts to stigmatize the population and climate issues have been remarkably successful -- a short-term victory for a narrow band of interests, a long-term tragedy for humanity. Most troubling has been the dismantling of the broad political consensus that made international family planning programs among the most widely embraced and successful human development efforts of the past 50 years. Twenty years ago, remarkable political agreement was reached at the International Conference on Population and Development on a comprehensive action plan. It was agreed that the international community should work together to achieve universal access to safe, voluntary reproductive health services so everyone can plan and space pregnancies, prevent and treat sexually transmitted diseases, and experience births that are safe for women and children alike. It was also agreed that these health initiatives must be buttressed with corresponding efforts to empower women and secure their universally recognized human rights to economic opportunity, education, civic participation and the other social and legal protections they need to make free decisions in their lives.

But the global consensus has been eroded over the past two decades under withering and persistent attacks that have weakened political leadership and caused donor assistance to waver. Population dynamics have become the elephant in the room: It is perfectly understood that demography is driving our economic, social, and environmental future, yet the issues are considered unfit for conversation for polite company or public policy. Nor is there engagement on newer and complex global demographic trends such as aging, migration, and urbanization. Despite broad-based U.S. public support for international family planning and other foreign assistance, the Obama administration has had to fight heavy opposition from the conservative House to secure funding for these essential programs. In the absence of global government leadership, public-private partnerships are emerging to advance solutions to HIV/AIDS, maternal health and child survival.

This week, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the government of the United Kingdom convened government and non-governmental leaders in London to rebuild and reenergize the worldwide commitment to accessing voluntary contraception -- a key goal established in numerous international agreements.

The family planning summit successfully mobilized resources and commitments to provide voluntary family planning services to an additional 120 million women around the world. This effort will help address the gap that exists for the more than 200 million people who want, but don't have access to modern contraceptive services. Equally important, the summit made family planning part of the public dialogue. Our challenge moving forward is to make sure the conversation continues.

Few of the international community's aspirations for security, prosperity and sustainability can be achieved without consistent, courageous leadership on population and development initiatives. It's time we once again talk about them and take them on.

HuffPo blog

I just wrote an essay about 'The New Normal' for The Huffington Post.  Might make a good dinner party discussion about how things have changed.

LA Times writes about future seafood to be mostly farmed

The LA Times reported on how in the next decades, most of the seafood we're eating will come from farms.  As I both write in the book, and have blogged about, farming seafood on a large scale is not without peril.  And, the LA Times article notes that there have been disease outbreaks and are pollution issues associated with large-scale farming.

At this point, eating well-raised herbivorous fish (particularly tilapia and catfish) where the farms are isolated from other waterways, seems to be a good choice.

NY Times on Big Organic

Interesting article on how small 'organic' and 'health food' companies grew and ultimately many were purchased by large corporations that might focus more on money than organic principles.

Perhaps soda shouldn't be served at parties...

Someone wrote me and shared this link about soda consumption.  If true, it's worth pondering before serving soda at your next dinner party.

BBQ carrots!

I grill a lot of veggies but at a friend's house the other night I had BBQ carrots.  Never had them like this.  Marinated in olive oil and kosher salt, the whole carrots were sliced in half or quarters (lengthwise) and wow were they good.

Try it at your next BBQ; I know I will.

Tomato hummus

Let's see if I can recreate this lovely discovery I made while making some apps for a happy hour we were hosting with our neighbors last night...

1 can garbanzo beans
1/3 cup sun dried tomatoes
2 large cloves of garlic
1/8 cup olive oil
4 Tbs concentrated lemon juice
2-3 Tbs cumin
1 Tbs black pepper

Rince the garbanzo beans in fresh water.  Strain out all extra water.  Put in food processor and mix (using the blade) until a smooth consistency.  Adjust cumin and pepper if needed and add more olive oil to make the hummus smoother.

Featured in UCLA Magazine

In a UCLA magazine on the vegan lifestyle, Eating Our Way to Civility was quoted (as was I).  While I'm not a vegan, I'm quite happy cooking vegan and many of the recipes in the book are vegetarian or vegan. Veganism is explored in several ways in the article.  Always something to discuss at your next dinner party!

tilapia burritos

I'm using these Kirkland tilapia fillets which I have to say are really, really good.  Here's what I invented tonight.

3 tilapia fillets cut into 1/2" chunks
tossed in about 2-3 Tbs of the dry rub (recipe in book) and left to sit for about 10 min

1/2  fennel bulb, sliced into rings
1 small, red onion, sliced into rings
1 red pepper, sliced into thin strips

In a 14" frying pan, stir fry (in about 2 Tbs of oil) the veggies until they start to caramelize; remove from heat.

In the same (14") fry pan, add another 2 Tbs of olive oil and quickly fry the tilapia fillets

Place some caramelized veggies and about 4 chunks of tilapia on warmed large tortillas, add a bit of sweet chili sauce, wrap up and enjoy!

If you're serving for friends, discuss the value of eating a sustainable fish, like tilapia, for dinner.

We've lost a great one: Elinor Ostrom has died

I just read that Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, has died at age 78.  She was a hero of mine because of her work discussing solutions to common property management and her magnificent book, Governing the Commons, changed how I think about solutions.

Turns out her life story (written about elsewhere) was also great and as a UCLA alum (before she moved to Indiana, she studied and worked at UCLA), she won a UCLA medal. We met one fine evening at the event where she was being awarded the medal.

Her insights and positive attitude towards solving common-property problems are profound and, if more people read and internalize her messages, she will have left a priceless legacy.

Today, the day she died, she published her last work--a call for action at Rio+20 called Green from the Grassroots.  Read it, and discuss it with your friends, neighbors, and family.

We really are in this together...

Evidence of Impending Tipping Point for Earth

ScienceDaily (June 6, 2012) ­ A group of scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation.

"It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point," warns Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of a review paper appearing in the June 7 issue of the journal Nature. "The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations."

The Nature paper, in which the scientists compare the biological impact of past incidents of global change with processes under way today and assess evidence for what the future holds, appears in an issue devoted to the environment in advance of the June 20-22 United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The result of such a major shift in the biosphere would be mixed, Barnosky noted, with some plant and animal species disappearing, new mixes of remaining species, and major disruptions in terms of which agricultural crops can grow where.

The paper by 22 internationally known scientists describes an urgent need for better predictive models that are based on a detailed understanding of how the biosphere reacted in the distant past to rapidly changing conditions, including climate and human population growth. In a related development, ground-breaking research to develop the reliable, detailed biological forecasts the paper is calling for is now underway at UC Berkeley. The endeavor, The Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology, or BiGCB, is a massive undertaking involving more than 100 UC Berkeley scientists from an extraordinary range of disciplines that already has received funding: a $2.5 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and a $1.5 million grant from the Keck Foundation. The paper by Barnosky and others emerged from the first conference convened under the BiGCB's auspices.

"One key goal of the BiGCB is to understand how plants and animals responded to major shifts in the atmosphere, oceans, and climate in the past, so that scientists can improve their forecasts and policy makers can take the steps necessary to either mitigate or adapt to changes that may be inevitable," Barnosky said. "Better predictive models will lead to better decisions in terms of protecting the natural resources future generations will rely on for quality of life and prosperity." Climate change could also lead to global political instability, according to a U.S. Department of Defense study referred to in the Nature paper.

"UC Berkeley is uniquely positioned to conduct this sort of complex, multi-disciplinary research," said Graham Fleming, UC Berkeley's vice chancellor for research. "Our world-class museums hold a treasure trove of biological specimens dating back many millennia that tell the story of how our planet has reacted to climate change in the past. That, combined with new technologies and data mining methods used by our distinguished faculty in a broad array of disciplines, will help us decipher the clues to the puzzle of how the biosphere will change as the result of the continued expansion of human activity on our planet."

One BiGCB project launched last month, with UC Berkeley scientists drilling into Northern California's Clear Lake, one of the oldest lakes in the world with sediments dating back more than 120,000 years, to determine how past changes in California's climate impacted local plant and animal populations.

City of Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, chair of the Bay Area Joint Policy Committee, said the BiGCB "is providing the type of research that policy makers urgently need as we work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare the Bay region to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change. To take meaningful actions to protect our region, we first need to understand the serious global and local changes that threaten our natural resources and biodiversity."

"The Bay Area's natural systems, which we often take for granted, are absolutely critical to the health and well-being of our people, our economy and the Bay Area's quality of life," added Bates.

How close is a global tipping point?

The authors of the Nature review -- biologists, ecologists, complex-systems theoreticians, geologists and paleontologists from the United States, Canada, South America and Europe -- argue that, although many warning signs are emerging, no one knows how close Earth is to a global tipping point, or if it is inevitable. The scientists urge focused research to identify early warning signs of a global transition and an acceleration of efforts to address the root causes.

"We really do have to be thinking about these global scale tipping points, because even the parts of Earth we are not messing with directly could be prone to some very major changes," Barnosky said. "And the root cause, ultimately, is human population growth and how many resources each one of us uses."

Coauthor Elizabeth Hadly from Stanford University said "we may already be past these tipping points in particular regions of the world. I just returned from a trip to the high Himalayas in Nepal, where I witnessed families fighting each other with machetes for wood -- wood that they would burn to cook their food in one evening. In places where governments are lacking basic infrastructure, people fend for themselves, and biodiversity suffers. We desperately need global leadership for planet Earth."

The authors note that studies of small-scale ecosystems show that once 50-90 percent of an area has been altered, the entire ecosystem tips irreversibly into a state far different from the original, in terms of the mix of plant and animal species and their interactions. This situation typically is accompanied by species extinctions and a loss of biodiversity.

Currently, to support a population of 7 billion people, about 43 percent of Earth's land surface has been converted to agricultural or urban use, with roads cutting through much of the remainder. The population is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2045; at that rate, current trends suggest that half Earth's land surface will be disturbed by 2025. To Barnosky, this is disturbingly close to a global tipping point.

"Can it really happen? Looking into the past tells us unequivocally that, yes, it can really happen. It has happened. The last glacial/interglacial transition 11,700 years ago was an example of that," he said, noting that animal diversity still has not recovered from extinctions during that time. "I think that if we want to avoid the most unpleasant surprises, we want to stay away from that 50 percent mark."

Global change biology

The paper emerged from a conference held at UC Berkeley in 2010 to discuss the idea of a global tipping point, and how to recognize and avoid it.

Following that meeting, 22 of the attendees summarized available evidence of past global state-shifts, the current state of threats to the global environment, and what happened after past tipping points.

They concluded that there is an urgent need for global cooperation to reduce world population growth and per-capita resource use, replace fossil fuels with sustainable sources, develop more efficient food production and distribution without taking over more land, and better manage the land and ocean areas not already dominated by humans as reservoirs of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

"Ideally, we want to be able to predict what could be detrimental biological change in time to steer the boat to where we don't get to those points," Barnosky said. "My underlying philosophy is that we want to keep Earth, our life support system, at least as healthy as it is today, in terms of supporting humanity, and forecast when we are going in directions that would reduce our quality of life so that we can avoid that."

"My view is that humanity is at a crossroads now, where we have to make an active choice," Barnosky said. "One choice is to acknowledge these issues and potential consequences and try to guide the future (in a way we want to). The other choice is just to throw up our hands and say, 'Let's just go on as usual and see what happens.' My guess is, if we take that latter choice, yes, humanity is going to survive, but we are going to see some effects that will seriously degrade the quality of life for our children and grandchildren."

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Story Source:

The above story is

<http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/06/06/scientists-uncover-evidence-of-impending-tipping-point-for-earth/>reprinted

from materials provided by

<http://www.berkeley.edu>University of

California - Berkeley. The original article was written by Robert Sanders.

Anything that works is obsolete

Anything that works is obsolete

Daniel T. Blumstein

"There are no easy shortcuts to solving the problems of revolutionary war. In fact, I would like to close with one last thought, which applies, of course, to everything that is done in the armed forces, but particularly to revolutionary war: If it works, it is obsolete."

--Bernard Fall (French underground and then killed in Vietnam).

In nature we see arms races between predators and prey. Such arms races explain why there is always very strong selection on prey to evolve new defenses.  Evolutionary Biologist Geerat Vermeij has written extensively about the long evolutionary record of snails and other armored marine animals and their predators. The fossil record shows a ratcheting up of defenses over time until it becomes too expensive for those defenses to be maintained. The mammalian fossil record is also rich with examples of the length of legs (longer legged animals can run faster) of wolves and cheetah and their prey.

Richard Dawkins and John Krebs refer to the driver of this inevitable ratcheting up a notch of defenses as the ‘life-dinner principle’. They suggest that it’s better to lose a meal than your life (in terms of maximizing the number of offspring you leave behind). Thus, we see commonly see evolutionary arms races between predators and prey.

Such predator-prey dynamics are also seen on the battlefield. On the battlefield a particular offensive strategy provides a very strong selective pressure for a new defensive strategy and as soon as that has been created, then there are strong pressures to come up with a new offensive strategy that can get through existing defenses. A trip to a major European country’s war museum will provide ample evidence of the increase in armor as arrows and later bullets were invented. But this is still going on: think about the constant pressure for terrorists to develop weapons that can pass through existing screening technology and the great expenses associated with creating new screening technologies.

Yet all arms races face an inevitable outcome:  at some point it’s simply too expensive to maintain defenses. For example, there’s a limit on the weight of armor a knight and his horse could wear and carry. Some have suggested the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and NATO was precipitated by the unsustainable size of the former Soviet Unions’ defense budget.

While Bernard Fall was talking about true arms races, there are many situations outside war where there are arms races—situations where innovations by one player make the other player’s strategy/product/defense obsolete which in turn stimulate further innovations by the other player to get ahead. How far can we and should we go with this evolutionary arms race lesson? Is everything we see today obsolete?

Here’s a thought:  what if it’s not just about a game between two (or more players). What if, from society’s perspective, it’s a game against the environment?  A recent special feature in Nature highlights the widespread ecological problems 20 years after the Rio Earth Summit. Society is experiencing substantial losses of ecosystem services and biodiversity; and those that are not already felt, will be felt by many soon. How should we solve these problems? Should we view all current technology as obsolete? Will new technology be our savior?

Yes and no.

Yes, in that it’s apparent that to maintain anything like our current Western standards of living in a post-carbon world, we’ll need some new technology.  Thus, at this level, we really need a major re-think. New technology will be essential. 

Yes, in that the drivers of this new technology are often companies, who find themselves competing in the economic market. Companies find themselves locked in an arms race that may drive new innovations.

No, in that when we’re not dealing with a true arms race—a contest between two or more actors—it is possible to step back a notch and still do better. Evolution does not create the best conceivable outcomes. Rather, evolution creates the best possible outcomes given current constraints. The distinction between conceivable and possible is important.  Evolution, as Francios Jakob wrote, is a process of tinkering with what you have.

Thus, if we’re looking for evolutionary insights on solving some of today’s environmental problems, we should consider all possible options, including those that include going back to previously successful strategies. Save carbon, hang your clothes out to dry!