Monthly Archives: August 2013

I Thought We Solved This NSA Thing Long Ago

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Or, at least, I’m surprised that this earlier implemented solution has not been mentioned in all the discussion about NSA spying.

Richard Stallman invented an approach to obviating the NSA’s attempts to spy on email. He included it in emacs, the world’s greatest text editor. Here how it works, from the manual. The “M” is the “alt” key (for all practical purposes) and “M-x followed by a word implements the command attached to that word.

32.6 Mail Amusements

M-x spook adds a line of randomly chosen keywords to an outgoing mail message. The keywords are chosen from a list of words that suggest you are discussing something subversive.

The idea behind this feature is the suspicion that the NSA1 and other intelligence agencies snoop on all electronic mail messages that contain keywords suggesting they might find them interesting. (The agencies say that they don’t, but that’s what they would say.) The idea is that if lots of people add suspicious words to their messages, the agencies will get so busy with spurious input that they will have to give up reading it all. Whether or not this is true, it at least amuses some people.

You can use the fortune program to put a “fortune cookie” message into outgoing mail. To do this, add fortune-to-signature to mail-setup-hook:

(add-hook ‘mail-setup-hook ‘fortune-to-signature)

You will probably need to set the variable fortune-file before using this.

________________________
Footnotes
[1] The US National Security Agency.

That is from the current, on-line emacs manual but it also appears in my hard copy of the manual which I believe dates to the last quarter of the 20th century.

Whitey Bulger Convicted, and the Trivers Willard Hypothesis

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Whitey Bulger has finally been convicted of a small percentage of all the bad things he is said to have done. The Boston Globe has the details.

James J. “Whitey” Bulger, the notorious Boston gangster who rampaged through the city’s underworld for decades before slipping away from authorities and eluding a worldwide manhunt for more than 16 years, was convicted today in federal court of charges that will likely keep him in prison for the rest of his life.

Don’t count on that. Whitey has slipped from the clutches of justice several times before. He’ll probably make a break for it between the court house and the jail, and if not, he’ll break out by pretending to be laundry or something in a few weeks.

Anyway, I started making references to Whitey Bulger back when he was just … retiring … and I live in the Boston Area, because he provided me with a good analogy in teaching about behavioral biology. So, whenever Uncle Whitey gets in the news I like to repost that. So …. from an earlier post (which still refers to him as a fugitive) we have this ….

Thumbnail image for 0470656662.jpgThis may or may not be a recent photograph of fugitive Whitey (James) Bulger of Boston’s Winter Hill Gang. Most of you won’t know who Whitey Bulger is. He is actually on the FBI’s ten most wanted list. He may have been spotted in Italy last Spring, and the FBI is just now asking for assistance from anyone who knows where he might be. (That’s not gonna work.)

Whitey was top dog in Boston’s Winter Hill gang. His brother was a Senator for the Commwealth of Massachusetts, and served as Senate President for several years.

It is said that Whitey was an FBI informant, and that his handler, FBI Special Agent John Connolly, tipped Whitey off that he was about to be indicted on racketeering charges. No problem. Whitey had left stashes of cash in safe deposit boxes all around the world, in preparation for the day he had to go on the lam. So he took off in 1995, and the FBI has not been able to catch up. Special Agent Connolly is pulling a ten year vacation in the stir.

I remember when Whitey disappeared, and ever since then, I’ve used him almost annually in lecture material describing the Trivers-Willard hypothesis. It goes like this:

Thumbnail image for 0470656662.jpgThis may or may not be a recent photograph of Robert Trivers, of the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis. The Trivers-Willard model (I prefer to call it a “model” rather than a “hypothesis” because it is not specific enough to really be a hypothesis … it’s a model that generates lots of hypotheses) states that selection should favor the ability to differentially bias investment in offspring by sex if the two sexes have differential variances in reproductive success, and if there is any way to predict offspring rank. That’s a bit thick, so it requires some examples and further explanation. Maybe a story about a mobster would help..

OK, so an example: Red deer (also known as Elk) give birth to one offspring (max) per year. Males compete for access to or to be chosen by females. So, only a small percentage of male red deer mate in a given year, a significant percentage may never mate at all, and a very small percentage sire many many little red deer. Male red deer have a high variance in reproductive success. If you tried to predict how many offspring a given randomly chosen male would have, knowing nothing at all, your best guess would be the average number of offspring red deer have in an average lifetime. But you would be wrong almost every time because the actual number is highly variable. Male red deer have high variance in RS.

Females, on the other hand, have a pretty standard number of offspring. There is not much competition among them, they can always find a male to mate with, etc. If you needed to guess how many offspring a particular randomly chosen female red deer would have in a life time, you could guess the average, and you would be right on or very close. Female red deer have low variance in RS.

So, male and female red deer have differential variance in RS. Males high, females low.

If a female red deer could somehow “predict” the likelihood of her offspring getting to mate, i.e., if she could tell if any offspring she had in the present year (male or female) would be average vs. high ranking, then selection should favor the evolution of a mechanism to actually give birth to the appropriate sex offspring (thus biasing investment in one sex or the other). It turns out that she can. A female red deer that is herself average or lower-quality (thin, ill, injured) is likely to give birth to an offspring that will be either low ranking or average. But if the mother-to-be red deer is high ranking, she is likely to give birth to an individual who will grow up to be high ranking.

Under these conditions, she should have a female offspring if she’s average or low ranking, but a male if she’s high ranking. And that, it turns out, is what red deer actually do.

That should be clear. But in case it isn’t, let’s take it down do real life, and bring in the gangsters.

You check the mail this afternoon, and there is a letter from a law firm you have never heard of. It says that your Great Aunt Tillie (whom you’ve also never heard of) just died, and left you with $1,000 in her will. The check is enclosed.

Thumbnail image for 0470656662.jpgThis may or may not be a recent photograph of a male red deer. Holy crap. Found money! What are you going to do with it? So you and your close advisors (your roommates, your cat, etc.) discuss it and you narrow it down to two choices. Choice A and Choice B.

Choice A is to go to your broker and buy $1000 worth of a nice, relatively safe mutual fund. The fund will buy and sell reliable blue chip stocks, thus spreading the risk over several companies, and over time you can expect to get a return of 50 bucks a years, easy.

Choice B is to buy 1000 one dollar lottery tickets. Your chances of winning are slim, but if you do, you will win 87 million dollars.

So, what do you do? The obvious sane choice is to buy the mutual fund.

But what if your cousin is Whitey Bulger? Whitey Bulger, as head of the Winter Hill Gang, is said to have owned the director of the Commonwealth Lottery agency.The connection between Whitey Bulger and the Lottery has never been proven. They don’t have a shred of evidence. He was, however, indicted for 21 counts of RICO-Murder. It is said that one of the things that tipped off authorities about this is that some of his relatives were winning the lottery a little more often than they should have. So, say your cousin is Whitey Bulger, and last time you saw him (at a family wedding) he told you … “hey, if you ever want to take a “chance” on the lottery, let me know … I can make that work for you…”

So now, you have two choices.

Choice A: Invest in a mutual fund and gain a return of 50 bucks a year (that’s dollars, not elk); and

Choice B: Buy 1000 PowerBall tickets and have a great deal of certainty of winning 87 million dollars.

What would you do?

In case it isn’t already clear. the baby male elk is a lottery ticket, the baby female elk is a mutual fund, but the female can guess pretty accurately if the lotter ticket (male offspring) will pay off. Because the elk’s cousin is Whitey Bulger. See?

Oh, please, tell me half my friends are not accidental cult members

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I do not have an unquestioned respect for Edwared Snowden or those other guys who swore an oath of secrecy in service of their government and then stole piles of secrets and gave them away. I’m also not especially impressed with the uncritical crush so many people have on them for doing what they did. We’ve discussed this before in relation to State Department cables. While so many others seemed to assume that all State Department cables were evil secrets that must see the light of day, I was thinking of a number of probable State Department cables that I have reason to believe might exist that had no reason to see the light of day but where their publication would be damaging. I gave specific, meaningful examples, and these criticisms never addressed directly by anyone. All I got were stern looks, or worse, because I was not in the Cult of Wikileaks.

The following is a bit more nuanced for many people to get, so if you are already really mad at me for what I just said just stop reading and leave the room. OK, thanks, bye.

I do not like Big Brother and I object to many of the activities that the government probably engages in. If some of those activities are revealed because of Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden’s actions, and something positive is done about that, then I’ll be very glad. I’ll be very glad for Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, and Edward Snowden.

Yes, I can hold those two seemingly different thoughts and feelings at the same time.

Having said both of those things, I’m feeling good that I never jumped on the bandwagon, treating Edward Snowden like he was some sexy speaker at a skeptical convention I just met in a bar who has slipped me a Mickey. If, that is, and I’m having a hard time believing that this is the case but it may well be, the following report from Voice of Russia is true:

Edward Snowden predicts catastrophic and ‘inevitable solar tsunami’

Edward Snowden, a former CIA agent, has predicted that series of solar flares is set to occur in September of 2013, killing hundreds of millions of people.

The documents collected by Snowden offer proof that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) learned about the existing threat 14 years ago.

Ever since the world’s governments have been working secretly …, to be well prepared for what could be termed as “Solar Apocalypse”.

…Snowden said that the government has been working hard to be well prepared for September’s catastrophic solar flares, which can be fraught with fatal consequences, as scientists said – they can lead to the death of mankind.

The Central Intelligence Agency learned about the existing threat as long ago as 1999, but according to the government’s decision, this information was immediately made secret.

The documents collected by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said how terrible the solar flares’ results will be: two months will be needed for mankind to become non-existent.

…

Snowden said FEMA and the National Disaster Reduction Center of China have been taking steps for 14 years in light of the findings of Project Stargate.

FEMA’s own documents, provided by Snowden, lay out how the organization plans to round up tens of millions of the poorest Americans for housing at secure locations “to better facilitate feeding and provision of consumer goods.”

“…‘the killshot’ will shutter most of the world’s electrical systems,” said Snowden.

…

WAIT WAIT IT’S A FAKE … I interrupt this blog post to report that two guys on the internet have proven that this story is a FAKE. Here is what they say, quoted at MSN:

“The Internet is ablaze with yet another baseless conspiracy theory that only serves to distract from real cover-ups and issues of genuine significance — the hoax that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden recently warned of a ‘solar flare killshot’ set to wipe out hundreds of millions of people in September,” Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars and PrisonPlanet.com complains in an article outlining why it’s a hoax.

He pointed out, for example, that readers readily would figure out it was fictitious if they went to Internet Chronicle’s “about” section, which states the web site “is not of this earth.

Of course, I got the story from the Voice of Russia web site, not some fake web site. That, itself, is an interesting story.

This being a fake or not is really hardly the point. A gazillion people will believe it anyway, so we might as well carry on….

Humanity is about to pay a most dire price for its technological dependence.

That price, said Snowden, proved a leading factor in his decision to come forward to the press – about both the global Holocaust to ensue, as well as NSA analysts’ power, on the slightest whim, to listen to the phone calls of any person on earth. Mankind has the right to know what it will expect in the future, no matter how dreadful it will be.

I wonder what he thinks about contrails?

There’s a video that goes along with this on the Voice of Russia web page. And no, it is not the Onion.

If Edward Snowden really was thinking this was true, and if he really did act in a way that could get him executed to save humanity from …. well, from not knowing why it is destroyed, in September, by a solar apocalypse … then he is an unhinged conspiracy theorist and we should probably not trust much else of what he said.

Or, perhaps, the Russian Intelligence Agency … you know, the one with the name nobody can remember but it used to be the KGB … has simply made this story up to make Snowden look like a crazy person. If so, then it is possible that they did this as part of a deal with the CIA-NSA in order to discredit Snowden. If that is the case, then there must be something else that is part of the deal, some Russian Agents that are going to be released in exchange for this help. Or, perhaps, the CIA intents to help the Russians in a False Flag Operation to discredit Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Something involving pipelines and vodka and a secret base underneath a fake island in the Aleutians. Yeah, that’s what it is. It’s a False Flag Operation. It must be.

Or, maybe there really is going to be ….

… a Kill Shot….

For now, I’m going with this story being fake.

Are we seeing the end of the JREF/CFI/Etc Misogynarchy? (Moar Updated)

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Update: Never mind, Never mind! Scientific American Blogs has taken down Dr. Stollznow’s post. So, I guess everything is OK now! False Alarm, everyone go home. Nothing to see here.

Say you are a woman in the Skeptics or Secular movement, professional, possibly working for one of the big organizations. If you are sexually harassed (or worse), the way you get your voice heard is, apparently, to blog your heart out, or use an anonymous tumbler.

That is wrong. Organizations such as JREF and CFI should have been places that were safe, and that would facilitate and amplify your voice as needed.

But CFI and JREF have been run by members of the Misogynarchy. So that has not been possible.

With recent revelations and events, perhaps the Misogynarchists will move aside and those with 21st century, instead of 19th century, sensibilities in these matters will take over and organizations that claim to support rational thinking, humanism, and such will stop being brokers of meat markets and instead be places where progressive voices can be heard and women (and men) can be not only safe but also find advocacy.

I once suggested that DJ Grothe resign. I now demand it. People seemed to be less intent on suggesting resignation for Ron Lindsay after he royally screwed the pooch a couple of months ago by forgetting his role as a leader, but now, really, he should too. Not because of these new revelations. But because the whole damn patriarchy has to go.

—

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ve provided a list of essential links, in the order you should read them, below. Enjoy. Or, more likely, get a little sick to your stomach and then perhaps break something or feel really sad for a while:

<ul>
  • “I’m Sick of Talking about Sexual Harassment!”
    • <li><a href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/files/2013/08/“I’m-Sick-of-Talking-about-Sexual-Harassment”-_-MIND-Guest-Blog-Scientific-American-Blog-Network.pdf">PDF of the above linked post.</a></li>


<li><a href="http://skepchick.org/2013/08/ben-radford-accused-of-sexual-harassment/">Ben Radford Accused of Sexual Harassment</a></li>

<li><a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/07/trying-to-overcome-my-male-pattern-blindness/">Trying to overcome my Male Pattern Blindness</a></li>

<li><a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/07/carrie-poppy-tells-all/">Carrie Poppy tells all</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.morethanmen.org/2013/08/07/dj-and-me/">dj and me</a></li>

    Added: Ron Lindsay’s response defending CFI.

    I would extend this ban to all Microsoft products just on the grounds of being annoying, but this is a start:

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    Every year the federal government wastes tens of millions of dollars a year, possibly hundreds, supporting old versions of the Internet Explorer browser (below version 9).

    Web development teams typically use 30%-40% of their time (or more) adapting sites to display properly in these browsers.

    There is no good reason for the US to waste time and money supporting this old, flawed technology. Alternatives such as Firefox or Chrome, which render pages properly, are available at no cost and are easy to install. Citizens with older computers can be redirected to use these.

    By publicly stopping support for these browsers at the federal level, it will be easier for state and local governments, and business, to do the same, saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year for all involved

    Stop supporting old versions of Internet Explorer and save tens of millions a year, up to 40% of federal web budgets

    Sign the petition HERE

    At All Scales, Global Warming Is Real

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    Large ponderous entities like the IPCC or government agencies like NOAA take forever to make basic statements about climate change, for a variety of reasons. They are going to have to speed up their process or risk losing some relevance. Among the coming problems we anticipate with global warming will be events that have huge, widespread effects and that happen in time scales of weeks or months, or a season, and having a nice governmental report about it two years later isn’t going to do anybody any good. So let’s see to that problem, please (looking sternly at IPCC and NOAA).

    But that’s not really what I want to talk about here. Rather, I want to give a wether/climate report that operates at several scales because the information comes to us on several scales and is about stuff that happens at several scales.

    First, expect excessive heat in 2012! Or, rather, expect that when the data are finished being analyzed, 2012 will be one of the top ten hottest years on record, despite the fact that the whiny-pants climate science denialists keep saying that global warming has stopped. This is from an annual report from NOAA that looks at the year as a whole, the previous year, many months after the year is over. Also, the Arctic is melting much faster than anyone expected over the last decade or so:

    Worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record according to the 2012 State of the Climate report released online today by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). The peer-reviewed report, with scientists from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., serving as lead editors, was compiled by 384 scientists from 52 countries (highlights, full report). It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, sea, ice, and sky.

    “Many of the events that made 2012 such an interesting year are part of the long-term trends we see in a changing and varying climate — carbon levels are climbing, sea levels are rising, Arctic sea ice is melting, and our planet as a whole is becoming a warmer place,” said Acting NOAA Administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D. “This annual report is well-researched, well-respected, and well-used; it is a superb example of the timely, actionable climate information that people need from NOAA to help prepare for extremes in our ever-changing environment.”

    Conditions in the Arctic were a major story of 2012, with the region experiencing unprecedented change and breaking several records. Sea ice shrank to its smallest “summer minimum” extent since satellite records began 34 years ago. In addition, more than 97 percent of the Greenland ice sheet showed some form of melt during the summer, four times greater than the 1981–2010 average melt extent.

    So, here we have two scales of events being reported at one large scale of reporting and study. How does one year stand among more than a century of years, we learn after a year of data collection and 8 months of study and report preparation? What gives in the Arctic over one year in relation to about two or three decades of years, again looked at with months of digestion of a year of data? And, the same report verifies that extreme, often killer, weather (which generally happens over scale of minutes through days) is now normal. So get used to it.

    At a somewhat different scale of time, we hear this news from Alaska: The village of Newtok, on the Bering Sea, is being inundated by rising sea levels and they want to move, but political snags seem to be halting the process. This village is probably going to be entirely gone in four years and hardly anybody lives there. This gives us great hope that we will be able to move Boston and New York over the next few decades! (Not)

    While we’re still in the Arctic, there is a new study that shows that the Arctic Sea ice as a whole has lost about 15% of its albedo. Here we have a decadal time scale of climate change and a week-long cycle of memic change. First, we had “OMG Santa” with puddles at the North Pole. Then we had “Oh those silly puddles” at the north pole. Now we have the puddles at the north pole being a key factor in the rapid melting of the Arctic Sea ice, which is one of the most significant things going on the Global Warming front now.

    And now we are about to experience, it seems, at the scale of a few days an event that may push the current year into infamy among three decades of Arctic Ice melting; a storm is brewing in the Arctic, which together with a wind-generating high pressure system, may blast the ice off much of the Arctic Sea. This is normal … the storms being part of the ice melt. What happens is this: Every time there is a storm or set of storms, the rate of melt goes up and in between stormy periods it slows. You can see this in the minor wiggly-wobbly-ness happening within a given year of Arctic Sea ice melt like in this graph:

    Wiggly Wobbly Icy Wisey Stuff
    Wiggly Wobbly Icy Wisey Stuff

    We are about to hit a new wobbly. A big one, I think.

    North Pole Puddles Are Important After All

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    Remember those puddles at the North Pole that at first everyone said were not important, then when someone realized that they were only puddles so a new meme formed and everyone said they are not important? They’re important. From the abstract of a new study, just out:

    The surface albedo of the Arctic sea-ice zone is a crucial component in the energy budget of the Arctic region. The treatment of sea-ice albedo has been identified as an important source of variability in the future sea-ice mass loss forecasts in coupled climate models. … Here we present an analysis of observed changes in the mean albedo of the Arctic sea-ice zone using a data set consisting of 28 years of homogenized satellite data. Along with the albedo reduction resulting from the well-known loss of late-summer sea-ice cover, we show that the mean albedo of the remaining Arctic sea-ice zone is decreasing.

    New Scientist reports that the darkening is a result of the ice getting thinner and “… the formation of open water fissures, and partly because in the warmer air, ponds of liquid water form on the surface of the ice. The shallow ponds on the ice can dramatically reduce reflectivity and increase the amount of solar radiation that the ice absorbs.”

    So now let’s get a new meme going. Maybe something with a polar bear and a puddle and …. a shark, because this is shark month after all!

    How to talk to a climate change denier

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    Originally posted on Mar 18, 2012

    Communications expert George Marshall offers six strategies for talking to people who don’t accept that climate change is happening Drawing on his workshops in climate communications and the latest social research he proposes a respectful approach that responds to their interests and values. He says that you should keep away from an argument about the science and concentrate on the personal journey that led you to accept the problem. Try it and you’ll find it works.

    More here.

    America’s Dangerous Pipelines

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    I think there is a belief that pipelines are safer than trucks,trains, or boats for shipping liquid hydrocarbon fuels. That may actually be true. I don’t know what would happen if we stopped all the pipelines and switched to vehicles. But the idea that pipelines are safe is absurd and it is time people started to realize this.

    The Center for Biological Diversity has posted an interesting analysis by Richard Stover, which we can see in the form of a video.

    This time-lapse video shows pipeline incidents from 1986 to 2013, relying on publicly available data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Only incidents classified as “significant” by the agency are shown in the video. “Significant” incidents include those in which someone was hospitalized or killed, damages amounted to more than $50,000, more than 5 barrels of highly volatile substances or 50 barrels of other liquid were released, or where the liquid exploded or burned.

    Most of what is spilled is oil, but there is also liquified natural gas, gasoline, diesel, propane, LP, jet fuel and other substances. The original post has a lot of other information, you should check it out.

    Hat Tip: Paul Douglas.

    The Atlantic Hurricane Season So Far

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    This is early in the year for Atlantic hurricanes, though we are already up to “D” in named storms. The current mane floating around in the Atlantic is “Dorian” which the National Weather Service is shortly going to rename “Dorian The Zombie.” Dorian was a named tropical storm several days ago, disappeared into a system not worth of a name, then re-organized a bit so they are using the name again, and is expected to spit lightly on Florida and then wander off to the Hurricane Graveyard in the mid Atlantic.

    From NOAA: The average cumulative number of Atlantic storm systems per year.
    From NOAA: The average cumulative number of Atlantic storm systems per year.

    In a typical Atlantic hurricane season, we expect to see about 2 named systems by August 1st, 3 by August 13th, so we are pretty much on track in this year which was predicted months go to be a more active than average year. However some meteorologists expect the next several days or weeks to have fewer hurricanes than normal because of a very interesting phenomenon happening right now: The Atlantic is experiencing a kind of dust storm. Normally, a large amount of dust is blown into the air off the surface of the Sahara this time of year, in waves that happen every few days for a period of time. This dust is blown into the atmosphere and falls down wind at various distances, a good amount of it ending up in the Atlantic Ocean. At present a larger than average amount of dust is being kicked up, and has formed a ginormous plume heading for South and Central America. Here is a modeled simulation of what is happening, from NOAA:

    I’m not sure how this is experienced on the ground. I imagine that where this cloud encounters rain storms the rain becomes somewhat gritty and dirty. In the air, a cloud of dust like this can actually affect air travel, though minimally. Patrick Lockerby noted this (a couple of years ago) about Saharan dust and air planes:

    Although this dust is abrasive, it is much less of a threat to aviation than the dust from a volcanic eruption. Whereas volcanic dust melts in a jet engine and coats the moving parts, sand needs a higher temperature to melt, and so is merely passed through a jet engine. In the case of piston engines, in the air or on land, desert dust can quickly choke an air filter. The effect can range from the stalling of the engine to the somewhat trivial need to change an air filter more often.

    I imagine that people living in areas where a lot of this dust is brought to the ground in rain will mainly notice that everything is slightly dirtier rather than cleaner after the storm, like we experience in temperate regions during pollen season.

    The reason I mention the dust is is this: there is the possibility that huge plumes of dust in the atmosphere over the tropical Atlantic will reduce the likelihood of tropical storm formation. There may be

    …a correlation between hurricane activity in the Atlantic and thick clouds of dust that periodically rise from the Sahara Desert and blow off Africa’s northwest coast. … during periods of intense hurricane activity, dust [is] relatively scarce in the atmosphere, while in years when stronger dust storms rose up, fewer hurricanes swept across the Atlantic….

    … this makes sense, because dry, dust-ridden layers of air probably help to “dampen” brewing hurricanes, which need heat and moisture to fuel them. [This] could also mean that dust storms have the potential to shift a hurricane’s direction further to the west, which means it would have a higher chance of hitting the United States and Caribbean islands..

    John Metcalfe has put this all together in a post on Quartz, which includes some spectacular photographs of floating Saharan dust from various angles.

    The Problem With The Global Food Supply: New Research

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    Emily S Cassidy, Paul C West, James S Gerber and Jonathan A Foley, from the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, have produced a very important study for IOP Science Environmental Research Letters. (This is OpenAccess so you can access it openly!) You know Emily as one of the participants in our CONvergence panel on food last July. The research Emily and her colleagues do is some of the most important work being done right now, because it is about the food supply.

    ResearchBlogging.orgThe bottom line is this: When we look at our food supply, we find that a large amount of what is grown in agricultural fields does not make it into the stomachs of people. There is a lot of waste, there are problems with delivery and distribution, and so on. But what this study looks at is the percentage of potential calories that go to non-food final products, or do get into our diets but do so in a way that significantly reduces the efficiency of the system. There has been a huge increase (percentage wise) in how much field crop is used for biofuels instead of food, but the total amount now is still only 4%. Also, one could argue that this is good use of field crops if the production of biofuels reduces carbon emissions (which is only partly the case). More importantly, a huge amount of the corn and other crops (but mainly corn) that is grown is used as animal feed, and only about 12% of that, in terms of calories, ends up in the human diet. The reduction is because as we move up trophic levels, energy is taken out of the flow.

    This graphic from Cassidy et al shows the distribution of calories across food and non-food destinations:

    Figure 2. Calorie delivery and losses from major crops. Calories delivered are shown in green (this includes plant and animal calories) and calories that are lost to meat and dairy conversion as well as biofuels and other uses are shown in red.
    Figure 2. Calorie delivery and losses from major crops. Calories delivered are shown in green (this includes plant and animal calories) and calories that are lost to meat and dairy conversion as well as biofuels and other uses are shown in red.

    The graphic at the top of the post is also from the paper, and has this caption: “Figure 1. Calorie delivery fraction per hectare. The proportions of produced calories that are delivered as food are shown.” The thing to note here is the unevenness across the globe in efficiency of calorie production-to-plate. There seems to be a latitude effect, and I wonder if that has anything to do with the environment and seasonality. But the largest contributor to this variation in efficiency is probably simply the amount of meat in regional diets. As Emily points out in the video that accompanies the paper, even small changes in dietary practices can result in large changes in ultimate agricultural productivity.

    We, as a species, need to eat less meat. In particular, certain groups of people, like Americans, need to eat less meat. So let’s do that: Eat less meat!

    As an aside, Emily is a friend and colleague and I’ve been really impressed with her work and have been very excited to see these important results coming out. Go Emily! (And co-authors, of course.)

    Cassidy, Emily, West, Paul, Gerber, James, & Foley, Jonathan (2013). Redefining agricultural yields: from tonnes to people nourished per hectare IOP Science, 8 (2) DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015

    Mark Kessler has been suspended.

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    As I suggested might happen, the town of Gilberton, Pennsylvania suddenly realized that having an over the top crazy gun nut as chief of police use town weapons to make his own YouTube video threatening a large percentage of the citizens of the United States was not a good idea. When Kessler finally goes over the top and opens fire on a bunch of people he disagrees with, the town probably does not want to be involved as his employer or as the entity that owns the weapons (though as I understand it, Kessler bought the weapons with his own money and gave them to the police force, probably as a way of getting around the fact that his favorite toys are banned except for official use).

    Unfortunately, the suspension is temporary …

    In a closed meeting, the council voted 5-1 to suspended Kessler for 30 days, “for use of borough property for non-borough purposes without prior borough permission.” In one of the videos, the tiny town’s sole police officer used automatic weapons, which he was only legally authorized to do in his official capacity.

    After the vote, there was what PennLive’s John Luciew described as an “impromptu gun rights rally,” with supporters with “all manner of firearms strapped to their belts and hanging from their shoulders.”

    … but I’m guessing this is only a first step.

    The image above, from here, shows some of the other gun nuts from Gilberton who formed a heavily armed mob to protest the town’s decision.