Yearly Archives: 2014
First person in US to catch Ebola: The Meaning of Ebola Patient Two (updated)
The first person ever to catch Ebola in the United States is now in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
Don’t panic, even if you live in Dallas. But also, don’t fall into the hyperskeptical trap of assuming that because scientific authorities tell you everything is fine that concern is irrational. There are very rational reasons to be concerned. But you need to be smart about what to be concerned about.
A couple of weeks ago, as you know, a man came to Dallas with pre-symptomatic Ebola, and became symptomatic there. This was the first case of a person being diagnosed with Ebola in the US. The case was botched. The hospital sent home a man with pre-Ebola symptoms who had come from West Africa. He was later admitted after he got a bit sicker and tried a second time to get treatment. There were other ways in which the case was not handled too well, mainly from a public relations and messaging standpoint, but the CDC and the hospital involved seemed to be doing a good job and getting their acts together.
Now, the situation has developed in a rather disturbing way. A health worker that had been caring for Patient 0 has now been diagnosed with Ebola. This happened overnight. The patient was under self monitoring, had a mild fever, went to the hospital, was tested, and the reasonably reliable preliminary test indicated Ebola. A second much more reliable test is being done now but it is expected to be positive.
I just watched the news conference and from this I gathered the following important bits about the new patient.
<li>The patient was in the low risk pool. Among Patient 0's contacts, there were higher risk and lower risk. Higher risk individuals were being isolated and/or monitored very closely, lower risk individuals were self monitoring. This patient was self monitoring.</li>
<li>The person cared for Patient 0 during his treatment prior to his death at Texas Presbyterian; there was no contact during the initial botched visit. </li>
<li>The new Ebola patient used protective procedures (gown, mask, gloves) in that care. The exact nature of the care beyond that is being kept secret at the moment owing to HIPAA rules. (But see below to see how absurd the HIPAA rules are in this case.)</li>
<li>The new patient seems to have lived with a second person who is now also in isolation.</li>
Hazmat suit wearing teams arrived during the night at the apartment complex of the new patient, and decontaminated public areas such as the lobby of the apartment building, and the interior of the patient’s car. It is thought that there is a pet inside the person’s apartment, but teams, as of this writing have not entered the apartment. They plan to do that soon. Local police doorknocked everyone in the “immediate area” to explain to them that they should not panic, did a “reverse 911” call for the area, and are re-door knocking this morning. So, the identity of the patient will be known any moment now because you can’t really do all that without that happening. (Which, frankly isn’t too relevant. I’m not sure if HIPAA rules should protect health care workers in quite the same way as patients, though they may in fact do so.)
So, what is the meaning of this all?
First it means that when hundreds of administrators, police, government officials, hospital employees, health workers, etc. are tasked with the job in the US of making sure no one gets Ebola from a person who has Ebola, and also tasked with the care of that person, a) one person gets Ebola anyway, and b) the first patient dies.
I very quickly add that this is a TINY SAMPLE SIZE OF N=1 and I’m being a bit cynical here. But it is still true that all these resources failed to prevent what every one feared, and what the authorities said would not likely happen.
Second, note that this new patient did not get Ebola from Patient 0 prior to his first visit to the hospital, or after that first botched visit. Again, small sample size, but it points out something important. When we say that a human with Ebola can spread the disease only when they are symptomatic, that probably doesn’t even count the initial fever period. Infectiousness is probably correlated to the severity of the symptoms. The family members or heath workers who deal with the bodily fluids randomly coming out of a person who is dying of Ebola, bed ridden and very sick, are at the highest risk, even those in the lower risk pool like this new patient. (This is why the HIPAA rules need to be set aside. We actually need to know what this person’s role in the process was, what this person did exactly. That is important information that the public has a right to know. If this reveals the name of the worker by deduction, then so be it. The person’s name has already been effectively revealed by deduction form the activities at the person’s home.) But, importantly, once a person is really infectious, they are really, really, infectious. See my quick note below on spread of Ebola.
Third, note that the medical authorities have said all along that following proper procedures minimizes risk. Note that even when following proper procedures one person was infected anyway. Note that at this morning’s press conferences, the authorities have not changed their story. This is partly your fault, members of the public, because collectively you seem unable to understand that Ebola is both very dangerous and manageable. Your collective insistence that your fear being ramped up is somehow proof that Ebola has gone airborne is an example of that. If you collectively stop being unmitigated morons about this, then the authorities can stop being alarmingly Orwellian about it. Maybe.
Fourth, think about this. A huge effort is made to avert a possible Ebola outbreak. The effort fails in a couple of ways, but we get lucky, those failures don’t cause too many problems other than, possibly, the death of the patient because care was not timely and proper drugs were not administered. But as far as the concern over an outbreak goes, the early screw ups did not cause one. So, proper and resource intensive procedures are in place and everything is going as well as it can be. Then somebody gets ebola anyway. This explains West Africa. Here, in the US, we have 200 people for every Ebola patient. In West Africa, you might have 1 person for every 100 (possible) patients out there. Those numbers are made up, but you get the point. In order to limit Ebola in West Africa we’d have to do what we can do here, and that proves to be of limited utility. Prior outbreaks were stopped because of the high ratio of health workers AND the disease burning out by killing almost everyone in some families or small villages so spread was stopped. So now we have a better sense of what is going on there. Imagine that every person in the US isn’t just someone who heard about Ebola in some other city. Imagine, instead, that everybody in the US lives in an apartment building in which one or two other people in the building have Ebola. And there are no hospitals.
So, collectively, that is all good news and bad news. One more piece of good news: We are near the end of the period during which someone who may have been infected might show up.
On the spread of Ebola
I’ve written about how Ebola is spread before and about the unlikelihood of it “becoming airborne” (see links below). But I keep hearing, again and again, that this or that vague observation someone has made proves that it has already gone airborne. Well, I’ve got a bit more to add to that discussion to help people put it in perspective. The truth is, pretty much every one who is saying it is already airborne or that it is likely to go airborne or that eventually it is inevitable that it will go airborne is an airhead. Sorry for the strong language, but at this point it is simply true that with so much information out there about this being utterly wrong is not acceptable.
Consider Norovirus. It is roughly as infectious as Ebola. Two years ago, for example, we had an outbreak of it here in the Twin Cities. Someone at my son’s daycare had it. Then my son, then everyone else at his daycare, and everyone in our family, and everybody. Had it been fatal, the entire region would be dead. It is not airborne, but it is a disease that there is a good chance all the people crowing about Ebola needing to be airborne have had, have seen in action. Next time you feel the need to insist that Ebola is airborne remember the last time everybody in your family, one by one, got the “stomach virus” (as it is often called). It wasn’t airborne. You got it because germs form someones’ poop or vomit got into your mouth. Perhaps you should not have been licking people’s anuses or drinking their vomit with a straw during that time. Oh, you claim you did neither of these things? OK, fine, you weren’t doing that. But you still got kooties that came from vomit or poop. The way bodily fluids get around, and the opportunities for contact, are much greater with Ebola. With the stomach flu, most of the time most people can make their own way to the bathroom to have diarrhea and vomiting. With Ebola, the sicker patients are lying in bed doing this in a closed room. Everything gets kooties on it. Maybe they were soiling themselves and puking for a few hours in a “taxi” waiting to get into a hospital. Touch touches stuff that touches stuff and bits of Ebola rich feces or Ebola laced vomitus are now on your hands.
Even the flu is only barely spread airborne, but mainly through direct or indirect contact. Ebola is more infectious because it does better with indirect contact.
UPDATE: Major Media is reporting, based on a Sunday AM show interview, that there was a “breach” in protocol in Dallas. But the doctor interviewed did not say that. He said, essentially, that there must have been a breach but they do not know what happened. This is important for media to get right, and it is the media’s job to get these things right. If there was no breach in protocol, then the existing protocol allows for Ebola to cross the boundary. If there was in fact a breach, and we know what it was and can confirm it, that is a very different situation. To be clear: The fact that protocol was in place and used and Ebola got across does NOT mean that Ebola is being transmitted by air or in some other unknown way. It could mean that protocol was breached, but without specific evidence we don’t know that to be true, and we don’t know what went wrong. In between these two is the very high probability that standard protocol has a weakness or two that could be shored up. Personally, based on my own experience (not with Ebola) and based on some reports from the field, I would suggest this has to do with how gowns, masks, and esp. gloves are handled. You have to use the same kind of protocol to remove these things as when you are using these things. Perhaps care workers should be demasked, degloved, and degowned by a masked/gloved/gowned coworker who has just suited up in a space away from the patient. (I don’t think that is done now.)
More on Ebola:
Pterosaurs by Mark Witton
Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy by Mark P. Witton is a coffee-table size book rich in detail and lavishly illustrated. Witton is a pterosaur expert at the School of Earh and Environmental Sciences at the University of Portsmouth. He is famous for his illustrations and his work in popular media such as the film “Walking With Dinosaurs 3D.”
The first pterosaur fossil was found in the late 18th century in the Jurassic Solnhofen Limestones, in Germany, the same excellent preservational environment that would later yield Archaeopteryx. They person who first studied it thought the elongated finger bones that we now know supported a wing served as a flipper in an amphibious creature. Not long after, the famous paleontologist George Cuvier recognized the winged nature of the beast. Witton notes that at the time, and through a good part of the 19th century, it was possible to believe that many of the odd fossils being unearthed were of species that still existed but were unknown to science. This is because most of the fossils were aquatic, and who knew what mysterious forms lurked beneath the sea? But a very large flying thing like this first pterosaur was very unlikely to still exist, unseen by European and American investigators. It had to be something major that was truly extinct. So in a way the history of extinction (the study of it, that is) was significantly shaped by this find. By the early 20th century there had been enough publication and study of pterosaurs to give them a place in paleontology, but not a lot else happened until the 1970s, when a combination of factors, including advanced technology that allowed more detailed and sophisticated study of fossils, led to much more intensive study of pterosaur anatomy and behavior.
Pterosaurs are part of the large taxonomic group that includes the lizards, dinosaurs, and birds, but they branched off within that group prior to the rise of the latter two. So, they are not dinosaurs, but cousins of dinosaurs. You can call them flying lizards, but not flying dinosaurs.
Witton explores this interesting history in some detail, and then proceeds to explore various aspects of pterosaur biology, starting with the skeleton, the soft parts (of which there is some direct but mostly indirect evidence), their flight, how they got around on the ground, and their reproductive biology. These explorations into pterosaurs in general is followed by several chapters devoted to the various groups, with a treatment of the evidence for each group, reconstructions of anatomy, locomotion in the air and on the ground, and ecology.
The resemblance of this layout to a detailed field guide for birds (or some other group) is enhanced by the use of color-coded bleeds at the top of each page, separating the book’s major sections or groups of chapters. The book ends with a consideration of the origins and endings of the “Pterosaur Empire.” It turns out that we don’t actually know why they went extinct. They lasted to the end of the Cretaceous, so going extinct along with their dinosaur cousins is a reasonable hypothesis, but they had already become somewhat rare by that time.
Pterosaurs are cool. Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy is a cool book.
Of related interest:
NewLink Genetics, of Ames Iowa, Implicated in African Ebola Genocide?
According to those intimately involved in the response to the West African Ebola outbreak, NewLink Genetics owns the rights to a piece of the puzzle needed to quickly test and deploy one of two likely Ebola vaccines and they are holding up the entire process because they are not entirely sure they are going to get rich on it. Other suggest it is incompetence. NewLink seems to be claiming it is just a lot of paperwork. In the end, tough, none of these excuses is convincing. This is one of those cases that gives Big Pharm a bad reputation.
From as story in Science:
Stephan Becker is tired of waiting. The virologist at the University of Marburg in Germany is part of a consortium of scientists that is ready to do a safety trial of one of the candidate vaccines for Ebola. But the vaccine doses he’s supposed to test on 20 German volunteers are still in Canada. Negotiations with the U.S. company that holds the license for commercialization of the vaccine…have needlessly delayed the start of the trial… “It’s making me mad, that we are sitting here and could be doing something, but things are not moving forward,” Becker says.
… it’s inexplicable that one of the candidate vaccines, developed at the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) in Winnipeg, has yet to go in the first volunteer’s arm, says virologist Heinz Feldmann, who helped develop the vaccine while at PHAC. “It’s a farce; these doses are lying around there while people are dying in Africa,” says Feldmann,…
At the center of the controversy is NewLink Genetics, a small company in Ames, Iowa, that bought a license to the vaccine’s commercialization from the Canadian government in 2010… Becker and others say the company has been dragging its feet the past 2 months because it is worried about losing control over the development of the vaccine. But Brian Wiley, vice president of business development at NewLink Genetics, says the company is doing all it can. “Our program has moved forward at an unprecedented pace,” he says. Even if it took another few months, “we would still be breaking a record in terms of getting this into patients.” Wiley says the holdup is “the administrative process”: agreeing on a protocol, getting collaborators to sign the right contracts, securing insurance in case something goes wrong.
Marie-Paule Kieny, a vaccine expert and WHO assistant director-general, disputes that NewLink is dragging its feet. “We have so far been able to resolve issues along the way, to get moving as fast as possible,” she says.
…
A stock of the Canadian-developed VSV vaccine is stored at PHAC in Winnipeg. The Canadian government owned 1500 doses, 800 to 1000 of which it has donated to WHO; the rest are owned by NewLink Genetics.
Scientists say WHO’s vials could have already been shipped to the research centers planning to do phase I trials. One such trial is scheduled at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland; other studies, by a consortium that includes WHO and Becker, are on the drawing boards in Hamburg, Germany, in Geneva, and at sites in Kenya and Gabon. PHAC is ready to ship the doses “at a moment’s notice,” a representative says.
But for a clinical trial to start, regulators require information about how the vaccine was manufactured, and that resides with NewLink Genetics, which has been slow to release it, people familiar with the negotiations say. …
…
Part of the problem may be that NewLink is a small company, with about 100 employees, that has concentrated on immunotherapies to fight cancer in recent years. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority—a U.S. government agency tasked with speeding up the development of emergency drugs and vaccines—recently sent two staffers to Ames to help NewLink file documents needed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a U.S. government representative says. “Our engagement of outside help has nothing to do with our competence, but with the urgency around this matter,” Wiley says.
Those who are taken ill and die of Ebola are the victims of a natural disaster, until paperwork, incompetence, greed, or some combination of those delays an international response by weeks time. After that, it is something else.
Humans being loud under water, Cuttlefish
Last June (and May and July and part of August) we had a lot of precipitation in Minnesota. This caused lake levels to rise modestly. One lake, which is large enough to have meaningful waves, has older settlement along it so lots of cabins, boat houses, and such are right on the shoreline. With the lake level up, waves threatened the material possessions of rich white people, so naturally something had to be done. A No-Wake Rule was put into effect.
A No-Wake Rule means the oversized fishing boats and smallish cabin cruisers that normally ply this large exurban lake need to all go at 5 m.p.h. or less, and forget about wake boarding, water skiing, and all those other fast, wake churning activities. The result? A lot of butt hurt, a near First World depression setting in in the Twin Cities wester suburbs. Somebody took away our boy toys!
But then, somebody went fishing. It isn’t a great fishing lake. It is mainly a go-fast lake. In fact, it is on this particular lake, I believe (with no evidence I quickly add) the method of fast-trolling for muskies was invented. This is a way to “go fishing” and go fast at the same time. You drag the lure behind you as fast as your boat will go. It is said you can catch muskies this way. To my knowledge it has never happened. Just more boy toy.
Anyway, somebody went fishing on the No Wake Lake, and guess what happened? They caught a boat load of fish! Literally! Then their friends went out fishing, and they caught a boat load of fish too! Pretty soon all the fisherpersons who had access discovered that when you don’t drive giant boats back and froth across the lake at high speed all day, the fish feed. When you do, they hunker down, feed infrequently, and grow slowly.
Now, I’m not going to vouch for this relationship just yet, but it makes intuitive sense. In my own experience, quiet places are where you catch fish. If I’m fishing up at the lake, once the boats start driving around skiing (say on a fourth of july weekend) I might as well reel it in and go get a beer, because that’s the end of the fishing. I’m pretty sure my best fishing has been on Wednesday and Thursday, before the startup of the loud and noisy weekend. And that’s on a quietish part of a relatively quiet lake.
The only reason I’m mentioning this now is because I came across this story from my Science News Roundup:
The blare of human noise causes birds to pipe down and frogs to breed less frequently. Now, scientists have found a humanmade sound that has a far more colorful effect: The boom of a ship’s engine makes common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) change the complex swirls of skin hues, stripes, and spots that they use for camouflage and communication. …when researchers placed a loudspeaker near cuttlefish tanks and played the sound of an underwater engine, the animals swam more and changed colors more often. They also raised their first pair of arms, which are used to sense water movements, more frequently…The sounds of crashing surf had no effect, providing the first evidence that engine noise may stress the animals out.
The original story is here, in American Naturalist.
I would love to see a large number of large lakes shut down for boating. No motors. Eventually, of course, there will be no gas powered motors, with the shut down of fossil fuels. I promise you, when we start using quiet electric boats for fishing, the fishing will get better.
Paul Clements and Gary Peters for Congress in Michigan
This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
Climate Hawks Vote announces endorsements of two Michigan Democrats: Paul Clements for Congress in Michigan’s Sixth District, and Gary Peters for Senate, because the Koch brothers and Big Oil need to stop using Michigan’s shores as a dumping ground for their pollution and Michigan’s politicians for their agenda.
Paul Clements is challenging none other than Fred Upton, chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee – these days, the House Big Oil Lackey Committee. As the face of Big Oil, Upton was named the number one enemy of the earth. It’s into his pockets that Big Oil money goes – he’s among the top recipients of money from the oil, gas, and coal-fired electric utility industry. And when Big Oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River, Upton demanded answers for about a week, then went back to business as usual, pushing bills to gut the EPA.
Voting out Fred Upton piqued our interest… but Climate Hawks Vote won’t get involved in a race between a horrible Republican and a mediocre Democrat (we won’t name names, but our scorecard will). Luckily for the voters of southwestern Michigan, Paul Clements is a true climate champion. “Climate change is the greatest threat to Michigan and to the world in the 21st century,” he says. His new ad – watch it here – touts clean energy solutions.
We wouldn’t be endorsing if we didn’t think Clements has a chance; he’s considered to be Upton’s toughest challenger in years, and anything can happen to entrenched incumbents in a year in which Eric Cantor lost. The district begins as R+1, i.e. a very slight Republican edge that can be beaten by smart Democratic campaigning. Climate Hawks Vote aims to defeat Upton to send a clear message: Big Oil and Michigan waters don’t mix.
We’re also endorsing Gary Peters, running against Terri Lynn Land in an open seat for Senate. Like Clements, Peters is explicitly running on climate change and the effect it’s having on the Great Lakes. Peters fought the Koch Industries-created piles of petcoke in Detroit, and he’s been carrying a bill to boost electric vehicles – a classic made-in-Michigan solution to climate change.
As before, we’re backing up our endorsement with talons, er, boots on the ground for Peters + Clements voters. Our on-the-ground organizers helped Brian Schatz close the deal in the Hawaii Senate primary, and we helped Ruben Gallego defeat a coal-funded opponent in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District. We aim to win in Michigan.
Antarctic Sea Ice and Global Warming
Did you ever leave your freezer door slightly open on a humid day only to find chunks of new ice formed at the gap? When that happens, did you conclude “Oh, my freezer is colder than usual, I wonder how that happened?” No. You concluded that you had left the door slightly open, some cold got out, and vapor froze on your gasket.
Sea ice is hard to make. The sea is salt water, so it has a lower freezing point than fresh water. The sea has potentially large waves and lots of currents. This is just not a situation where ice can easily form. Yet, it does form on the oceans near the Earth’s poles because it is really cold there. But even within that context, more or less ice can form because of important details like how much fresh water is mixing in with the cold salt water, and exactly where currents of warmer or colder water are going. The formation of sea ice at the ends of the Earth is probably somewhat more complicated than the formation of frost and rind on your refrigerator.
(A quick note: Sea ice is ice that sits on, and therefore, essentially, in the sea. It is not glacial ice. Those are two very different things. I’m sure you knew that but just in case this is a good moment to point it out.)
In recent years, the amount of sea ice forming around Antarctica has bee going up. Global warming causes local warming but it also causes local cooling (like when the Arctic Vortex got knocked off center last winter and visited the middle of North America, an event that still causes a sense of fear and loathing among those of us who experienced it). So when we hear about expanding sea ice in the Antarctic, knowing that anthropogenic global warming is a real thing, we might assume that this is just one of those phenomena that runs counter to expectations but that is still part of the overall process of warming-driving climate change resulting from the addition of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.
And that is essentially correct, though the reasons may be a bit unclear and require further study.
So, thinking about our freezer, and the overall problem of making sea ice, there seem to be three things that can cause more of this ice. One might be the addition of fresh water to the system. That seems likely if the Antarctic glaciers are melting (which they are). Depending on where the fresh water goes, that could allow the formation of sea ice. Also, if precipitation increased in the area, that would add fresh water.
Second, the area where the sea ice is forming could be colder. That seems backwards in on a warming planet, but actually, that can happen too. Antarctica is, to a larger extent than the Arctic, a semi-closed system of air and sea currents, because it is a roundish continent surrounded by sea at one end of the planet. This means that cold air might be retained over the continent rather coherently. At the North Pole, “Winter (January) temperatures … can range from about ?43 °C (?45 °F) to ?26 °C (?15 °F), perhaps averaging around ?34 °C (?29 °F),” while at the South Pole, “In winter, the average temperature remains steady at around ?58 °C (?72 °F).” (source: Google). The north pole is sea, the south pole is land, and the south pole is at a higher elevation, but those differences are partly why the south pole is colder. Anyway, with all this cold air on the Southern Continent, perhaps one only needs to have air currents change a little to move that cold air over the sea a bit more to add to the chances of freezing water and making sea ice.
Third is the possibility that the disruptive effects of storms, waves, or surface currents could change, making for a calmer environment, allowing more ice formation.
Have any of these things happened?
Yes. Yes, they have.
Joe Romm has a writeup on some recent research that helps to explain the increase in Antarctic Sea ice (NOAA: Record Antarctic Sea Ice Growth Linked To Its Staggering Loss Of Land Ice).
The National Snow and Ice Data Center notes:
…sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent reached its maximum extent on September 22 at 20.11 million square kilometers (7.76 million square miles). This is 1.54 million square kilometers (595,000 square miles) above the 1981 to 2010 average extent, which is nearly four standard deviations above average. Antarctic sea ice averaged 20.0 million square kilometers (7.72 million square miles) for the month of September. This new record extent follows consecutive record winter maximum extents in 2012 and 2013. The reasons for this recent rapid growth are not clear. Sea ice in Antarctica has remained at satellite-era record high daily levels for most of 2014.
“What we’re learning is, we have more to learn,” said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at NSIDC.
The unusual sea ice growth in Antarctica might be caused by changing wind patterns or recent ice sheet melt from warmer, deep ocean water reaching the coastline, according to scientists at NSIDC. The melt water freshens and cools the deep ocean layer, and it contributes to a cold surface layer surrounding Antarctica, creating conditions that favor ice growth.
From Skeptical Science:
The most common misconception regarding Antarctic sea ice is that sea ice is increasing because it’s cooling around Antarctica. The reality is the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica has shown strong warming over the same period that sea ice has been increasing. Globally from 1955 to 1995, oceans have been warming at 0.1°C per decade. In contrast, the Southern Ocean (specifically the region where Antarctic sea ice forms) has been warming at 0.17°C per decade. Not only is the Southern Ocean warming, it’s warming faster than the global trend. This warming trend is apparent in satellite measurements of temperature trends over Antarctica…
And, from NOAA:
Much of this year’s sea ice growth occurred late in the winter season, and weather records indicate that strong southerly winds blew over the Weddell Sea in mid-September 2014. Antarctica is a continent surrounded by open ocean. So unlike the Arctic, where surrounding landmasses constrain how much sea ice can expand, Antarctic sea ice can spread out over a bigger area. Winds blowing from the land toward the ocean encourage ice growth in the waters north of the continent.
Winds probably did not act alone to spur so much sea ice growth; melting land ice may have played a role. Most of Antarctica’s ice lies in the ice sheets that cover the continent, and in recent decades, that ice has been melting. Along the coastline, ice shelves float on the ocean surface, and much of the recent melt may be driven by warm water from the deep ocean rising and making contact with ice shelf undersides.
How does the melting of land ice matter to sea ice formation? The resulting meltwater is fresher than the seawater. As it mixes with the seawater, the meltwater makes the nearby seawater slightly less dense, and slightly closer to the freezing point than the ocean water below. This less dense seawater spreads out across the ocean surface surrounding the continent, forming a stable pool of surface water that is close to the freezing point, and close to the ice onto which it could freeze.
Added cold seems to be a factor. Added fresh water seems to be a factor. Changes in where cold air and relatively fresh water goes seems to be a factor. I don’t know about storminess and currents at the outer edge of ice formation.
The dramatic and steady increase in Antarctic Sea Ice is yet another example of the effects of climate change.
Vote For Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Senate
This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
We’re working our way through scoring Senate Democrats on climate leadership, using the same lodestar that we’ve used on House Democrats: who’s leading on climate by engaging the public? It’s slow going – results might not be final until mid-October or later. However, given the intense interest in certain races, we’re releasing a few scores early. Jeanne Shaheen has earned a high score, and thus our endorsement, for her deep commitment to energy efficiency.
Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Senator, has earned a very high score on our scorecard, and thus our endorsement. She’s carrying one bill, the Energy Savings & Industrial Competitiveness Act, so we knew she had an interest in energy efficiency. What surprised us in scoring her actions was the depth of her commitment to the issue. She’s stumped for energy efficiency up and down her home state. She’s visited manufacturers, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Ivy League classes, an island historic hotel, and, it seems just about every business in the state to send a message with broad appeal: the energy that is both the cheapest and the cleanest is the energy that isn’t used in the first place. She’s been speaking out on energy efficiency, frequently and consistently, for years. And in doing so, she’s educated and engaged the public on a critical issue with bipartisan appeal.
If Shaheen were in the House of Representatives, she’d rank among the top half-dozen House Democrats on our tough scorecard. Again, we’re scoring leadership to separate climate hawks from those who might vote the right way but who duck the issue in engaging with the public.
Shaheen is being challenged by a joke of a Republican who’s flip-flopped as much on climate science as his residency. However, Climate Hawks Vote doesn’t endorse mediocre Democrats who’ll put the climate crisis on the back burner just because they’re fighting bad Republicans. Rather, we selectively endorse only those who demonstrate leadership. Here, Jeanne Shaheen understands the moral imperative of the climate crisis. She’s working with a Republican, Rob Portman (R-OH), to pass a solid bill. She’s earned our endorsement, and she deserves another term in the Senate.
Shenna Bellows of Maine for Senate
This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
We’re endorsing climate hawk Shenna Bellows to be the next Senator from Maine because business as usual is no longer good enough in the face of a local and worldwide crisis. Long-time incumbent Susan Collins admits the existence of a problem, to her credit; but far from proposing credible solutions, her actions range from policy homeopathy to delay to active hindrance.
While working on our sophisticated scorecard measuring leadership – not just votes – on climate for Senate Democrats, we are also tracking four Senate Republicans in advance of the 2014 election. We’re measuring Susan Collins’ record of public engagement, bills authored and cosponsored, press releases, website, and internal Senate groups joined, beginning January 2011, using the same yardsticks we’re applying to Democrats. And, to be blunt, her record of leadership is worse than her mediocre voting record.
We weight public engagement far more than any other factor. Leaders need to be interacting with citizens on this immense issue, whether it’s speeches on the Senate floor or town halls with local fishermen or keynoting business conferences. Collins hasn’t done any of that. Instead, she had one moment in the spotlight in September 2011 delivering the GOP’s rebuttal to President Obama’s weekly address, in which she demanded a time-out for EPA regulations.
The bills she’s authored have been, mostly, to track, curb, and delay “major regulations,” DC-speak for EPA rules. She’s cosponsored a pro-Keystone XL bill and bills to “rein in the EPA.”
Her press releases likewise sound a similar theme: the only acceptable response to climate change is to sit down and do nothing for a year. Or two. Or until Congress thinks of a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, ooops, we mean, EPA regulations.
Collins’ appeal to some national environmental groups is obvious: she accepts the science, unlike most Republicans of the climate zombie era, and bipartisanship sounds nice. But her delay-and-dither approach is flat out wrong. Maine, faced with ocean acidification and warming seas affecting its iconic lobster harvest, deserves better. Support for business-as-usual politicians like Collins, and her many counterparts on the Democratic Party side, is tantamount to acceptance of a business-as-usual carbon emissions trajectory.
We founded Climate Hawks Vote to elevate the voices of those few leaders who see the climate crisis as a priority. Shenna Bellows has earned our endorsement. She will seek limits on carbon emissions. She opposes the Keystone XL pipeline. And – unlike Collins – she’s taken a firm stand on an issue important to Maine voters and the larger climate community: she’s opposed the proposed Portland Montreal Pipeline Reversal, a plan to re-engineer an existing pipeline to carry carbon-intensive tarsands from Canada to Portland, Maine and then to the global marketplace. Maine needs to elect Shenna Bellows to the Senate.
As with prior races, we’re backing up our endorsement with organizing on the ground. Past successes include winning nominations for Brian Schatz, Hawaii-Senate, and Ruben Gallego, Arizona-07.
Can Dogs Transmit Ebola? And, should Excalibur be put down? they put down Excalibur.
UPDATE: They killed the dog.
UPDATE: I’m adding this here because it is my current post on Ebola. Thomas Eric Duncan, the person who became symptomatic with Ebola in Dallas, had died at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital (according to news alerts).
A nurse’s assistant in Spain caring for Spanish nationals returned with Ebola from West Africa contracted the disease, gaining the dubious distinction of being the first person to be infected with Ebola outside of that disease’s normal range in West Africa, Central Africa and western East Africa. There is speculation that she contracted the disease by contacting the outside surfaces of her own protective gear, which is exactly what I’ve speculated to be a likely cause of infection in health care workers. This is not certain, however.
Members of her family and others, including additional health care workers, are in quarantine. There is evidence that the hospital procedures were inadequate to keep a lid on Ebola in this context, and nurse’s unions and others are protesting and demanding change.
Meanwhile, the Spanish government has claimed that there is “scientific evidence” that dogs can transmit Ebola, so Excalibur, the nurse’s family dog, will be euthanized and incinerated. People have gone to the streets to safe the dog.
So, can dogs get, or transmit if they get it, Ebola? Short answer: Yes, and probably not. Here’s my thinking on this, and some information.
1) Pick a random species, or to make it easier, pick a random mammal, and test to see if it can transmit a disease known in humans. It is unlikely to be the case because diseases are to some degree adapted to exist in certain hosts, and host vary, well, by species. So it seems unlikely.
2) On the other hand, Ebola seems to be able to infect a very wide range of mammals. Ebola resides in multiple species of fruit bats (though maybe not uniformly or equally well). A range of mammals seen to be suitable intermediates between fruit bats and humans. The mammals known to be able to harbor Ebola are diverse. It isn’t like only primates can be infected. So, it seems quite possible.
3) On the third hand, I’ve never heard of dogs being addressed as an issue in the current crisis in West Africa or during prior outbreaks. One would think that if dogs were a concern this would have been mentioned by someone some time.
4) On the fourth hand, dogs in Central Africa are less likely to be house dogs, hanging around with the family on the couch, and more likely to be working dogs that spend all their time outdoors. A Spanish family pet may have hung around on the sick bed with an ill individual. I don’t know about dogs in West African cities. By the way, you have to go look to see what the story with dogs there is, and it may within that context. I’ve noticed that westerners tend to have a rather monolithic view of how humans “elsewhere” (especially the “third world”) relate to their dogs, based on a concept we hold of them, not based on actual knowledge. How dogs fit in with humans from place to place and time to time varies.
5) I’ve read a good amount of the peer reviewed literature on Ebola and I can not recall anything about dogs.
5) But … A quick check of Google Scholar did come up with one study. From the abstract:
During the 2001–2002 outbreak in Gabon, we observed that several dogs were highly exposed to Ebola virus by eating infected dead animals. To examine whether these animals became infected with Ebola virus, we sampled 439 dogs and screened them by Ebola virus–specific immunoglobulin (Ig) G assay, antigen detection, and viral polymerase chain reaction amplification. Seven (8.9%) of 79 samples from the 2 main towns, 15 (15.2%) of 14 the 99 samples from Mekambo, and 40 (25.2%) of 159 samples from villages in the Ebola virus–epidemic area had detectable Ebola virus–IgG, compared to only 2 (2%) of 102 samples from France. Among dogs from villages with both infected animal carcasses and human cases, seroprevalence was 31.8%. A significant positive direct association existed between seroprevalence and the distances to the Ebola virus–epidemic area. This study suggests that dogs can be infected by Ebola virus and that the putative infection is asymptomatic.
I’ve not looked further at the literature. This study suggests, unsurprisingly (see point 2 above) that dogs can harbor the virus. However, they don’t seem to be symptomatic. Therefore, spread from a dog seems unlikely. I would think the dog could be kenneled for a few weeks, rather than being put down.
What is the role of the deep ocean in global warming? Climate science deniers get this wrong.
What is the role of the ocean’s abyss in global warming?1
I’ve already posted on a study published in Nature Climate change that shows that the amount of extra global warming related heat in the Southern Oceans is greater than previously thought. There is another paper in the same journal by Llovel et al, “Deep-ocean contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade.” This paper verifies previous research that the oceans absorb a lot of the excess heat, but looks specifically at the ocean below 2,000 meters, which the paper referrs to in places as “deep” but that we should probably call “abyssal.”1 The paper concludes that the abyss is not warming. This is bad news, because if it was warming the total effects of global warming on the surface would be potentially less, or at least, stretched out over a longer period of time. But, it is not unexpected news. We already suspected that the abyssal ocean does not absorb much of the surface heat, while the shallower ocean absorbs quite a bit.
Research done prior to 2012 (e.g. Hansen et al 2011) parceled out the energy imbalance the Earth experiences from anthropogenic global warming. The extra heat caused by AGW from 2004 to 2010 was divided among the upper ocean (71%), the deeep ocean (5%), with the rest going various other places (only 4% over land). The new paper suggests that the abyssal ocean takes up closer to zero heat.
There are three complexities you need to be aware of to interpret this finding. First is the complexity in the climate system, second is the complexity of the research itself, and third is the relatively straight forward statistical problem of assigning meaning to specific numbers. That third one is important for journalists and regular people to pay attention to, because the climate science denial community is already exploiting it to misrepresent this study.
This is a complex and difficult problem
We know that the vast majority of the extra heat resulting from global warming ends up in the ocean, and also, we know there is a lot of interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere, with heat that might otherwise add to the atmosphere seemingly entering the ocean on a regular basis, with some of it occasionally coming out in large quantitates during El Nino events. This relationship is expected to change over time as the ocean warms, as the transfer of heat between ocean and atmosphere depends in part on the relative difference between them. At some point it is likely that the degree to which the ocean takes up net heat will decrease if the ocean warms up beyond a certain point.
Over the medium and long term this matters a lot. Because of the ocean (and polar ice and a few other things) the effect of increasing greenhouse gasses is not instantaneous. If the Earth was a simple rock with no water, but a Nitrogen atmosphere with, say, 250ppm of CO2, the greenhouse effects of the CO2 would ensure that the atmosphere was at least a little warm. If we doubled the CO2 the atmosphere would warm further, and it would do so very quickly. A new equilibrium would be reached in a geological instant (a few years?). But with the ocean, that change is much slower slower (decades, perhaps many decades), because the ocean buffers the atmospheric change.
When heat goes into the ocean, it then moves around in the ocean because it disperses across the aqueous medium, and because water is always moving in currents or mixing. An El Nino is a change in the movement of water that has been warmed with contact with the surface, so that warm water that has been building up at depth over time changes its movement pattern and moves closer to the surface (and to a different horizontal location) where heat is released. That is one (especially large and important) example of the complex dynamic of atmosphere, ocean, and heat. Currents that move through the upper ocean then dive down to depth may move some of the surface heat to the deeper waters, especially where the currents have dived not just from cooling water (hot water would tend to go up, cold water would tend to go down) but because it is driven in “conveyor” systems which may run counter to expectations of where water should go when considering only local conditions, and especially, if the water is dropping because of an increase in salinity. Again, this is an example of the complexity of the system.
If we add a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere, the atmosphere will warm up, but because of the complexities cited above, it is hard to say how much or how long it will take. The ocean serves to slow the process down. In fact, it is quite possible that if the ocean would be so kind as to absorb a certain amount of this heat permanently, maybe global warming would be somewhat reduced. The ocean is potentially a way of stretching out the effects of global warming. But this effect is likely reduced if the abyssal ocean is not in the game.
Complexities in the research
Meanwhile the measurement of heat in the ocean has been very sparse. Over the last decade more measurements have been taken using new technology, but even that is not as good as we would like to understand what is going on at depth. So, when it comes to understanding heat in the ocean, we may sometimes feel like we are at sea. The two papers in this week’s Nature Climate Change are much more important as studies that calibrate or refine the process of measuring ocean heat dynamics under global warming than they are studies that change our view of global warming. Neither paper concludes anything unexpected, both provide important refinements to key numbers, exploiting the last decade of improved data collection.
One of the complexities is in the details of the Llovel et. al study as compared to the handful of previous related studies. One of the key numbers is the energy imbalance where the ocean absorbs extra AGW produced heat. Energy imbalance is measured in terms of Watts per m
So, we have changing quality of data, a data set that is growing incrementally over time, studies that look at slightly different time and space parameters. And, on top of this, we have the increasingly advanced methods of figuring this all out. Both of the Nature Climate Change studies used a combination of direct measurements of temperature at various depths, a measurement of the altitude of the top of the ocean (sea level) from highly accurate satellite instruments, and measures of the mass of the water in the ocean, from the GRAIL gravity research project. If the mass of the ocean stays the same (same number of water molecules) but the surface rises, that is from heat, and that allows an estimate of energy imbalance. If the ocean goes up more than it should from heat expansion, the extra may be from glacial melting. And that is the simple version.
Statistical reasoning
The statistical part of this is not really so complex. Well, it is, but the part I want to point out is not. Llovel et al concluded “Accounting for additional possible systematic uncertainties, the ocean below 2,000 m contributes ?0.13 ± 0.72 mm yr?1 to global sea-level rise and ?0.08 ± 0.43 W m?2 to Earth’s energy balance.” Sea level rise is close to 3 mm a year, so the abyss is decreasing sea level rise by close to 4%. And, the abyss is in negative energy balance, while the upper ocean is in positive energy balance.
But look at the numbers. –0.13 plus or minus 0.72. There is actually no way to say that the abyssal ocean is contributing negatively to sea level rise. Zero (or small positive numbers) are well within the range of statistical probability. For energy imbalance, –0.08 plus or minus 0.43. Again, zero and small positive numbers are well within the statistical range for this value.
But for some reason we see various individuals, including sadly at least one climate scientist (Judith Curry: “Evidence of deep ocean cooling?“), but mostly anti-science climate trolls, crowing that the “deep ocean” is cooling therefore we are not experiencing global warming. However, the truth is that the total amount of heat that is going into the ocean, instead of the atmosphere or other places, was thought to be large, is still known to be large, and in fact is larger than we were originally thinking (from these papers and several others that have come out recently). And, the contribution of the abyss ocean to both sea level rise and energy imbalance is statistically nil. It might be negative, it might be positive, but it is tiny either way. The deep ocean, on the other hand, is in strong positive energy balance.
1The terminology used in this discussion and some of the research papers (or reporting thereof) is a bit confused. Climate scientists have repeatedly said that heat is going into the “deep ocean” and this paper seems to say it is not. But it is. It is a matter of terminology. This is a source of confusion sometimes exploited by climate science denialists. A good way to define these terms is as follows:
Shallow ocean = 0-700 meters
Deep ocean = 700-2,000 meters
Abyss = > 2,000 meters
Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, P. Kharecha, and K. von Schuckmann, 2011: Earth’s energy imbalance and implications. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 13421–13449, doi:10.5194/acp–11–13421–2011.
Llovel, W. J. K. Willis, F. W. Landerer, I. Fukumori. 2014. Deep-ocean contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade. Nature Climate Change, 5 October.
Interview with Michael Mann
Last Sunday, I interviewed climate scientist Michael Mann on Atheist Talk Radio. I do occasional interviews there on science related topics (see this list of previous shows).
You can listen to the interview here:
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Minnesota Atheists for giving me the opportunity to do these science interviews, which are admittedly different from the usual topics covered by the show.
Prior to the show, I wrote a post indicating that we would be doing this interview, noting that people were welcome to past questions I might ask Mann during the interview. I tweeted that blog post, and Dr. Mann retweeted it, a couple of times. I promoted the show in a number of other places as well. There was a call in number and an email address to send in questions.
The show runs early in the morning on Sunday and the listening area of 950AM radio is fairly small (though it is possible to listen live on line using the Internet or other means). So, frankly, we don’t get a lot of live listeners. The usual number of call in or emailed questions we have (for my interviews, anyway) is usually about two. But, the podcast is much more widely listened to.
There have been some rather intense and lengthy discussions related to Michael Mann’s work on my blog here and here over the last few weeks (see: Steve McIntyre Misrepresents Climate Research History and I hope Judith Curry apologizes for this).
Putting all of this together, the several dozen people who have been tweeting at or about Mann or me over the last month about the Hockey Stick research, and those heavily and actively engaged in the conversations on my blog, must have known about the opportunity to ask specific questions about that work. What actually happened, though, was this:
Why? How is it that there can be so much yammering about Michael Mann’s research and the Hockey Stick graph, but when the opportunity arises to actually ask a direct question about it, the dozens of people making all that noise end up sounding like this:
Crickets. Crickets is all they’ve got, apparently.
Meanwhile, here is a talk Michael Mann recently gave at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas:
If We Cared About The Environment Like We Care About Sports
This video is supposed to be some kind of funny parody but it looks just like my life so I don’t get it!
Improved Understanding of the Role of the Oceans in Global Warming
The sun warms the Earth’s surface. Additional greenhouse gases and associated positive feedbacks (like, additional additional greenhouse gasses) increase that effect. So, it gets warmer, and by “it” we mean the “surface” of the Earth. This is usually measured as the temperature near the surface across the land and the surface of the sea (Sea Surface Temperature or SST). But over 90% of the heat added by global warming goes into the ocean.
We know how much heat goes into the ocean (other than SST) two ways. One is direct measurements using equipment that samples water at depth, and the other is by super amazing precise measurements of how big the ocean is (reflected in the altitude of the surface), which increases as it heats up. Direct measurements are sparse and do not go back a long ways, and are very rare in the southern hemisphere compared to the northern hemisphere.
A paper just out in Nature Climate Change looks more closely at the Southern Hemisphere by combining direct measurements, estimates from ocean expansion, and some fancy modeling. The study suggests that the estimate of heat held in the upper 700 meters of the ocean in the Southern Hemisphere since 1970 was several percent too low owing to the lack of good data.
The study looks at the period from 1970 to 2004, prior to the deployment of some (but not yet sufficient) improved measurement technology. Study author Paul Durack notes, “Prior to 2004, research has been very limited by the poor measurement coverage. By using satellite data, along with a large suite of climate model simulations, our results suggest that global upper-ocean warming has been underestimated by 24 to 58 percent. The conclusion that warming has been underestimated agrees with previous studies, however, it’s the first … estimate [of] how much heat we’ve missed.”
This is a lot of heat. From the paper, “For perspective, these adjustments represent more than double the 1970?2004 heat storage change for all non?ocean (terrestrial, cryospheric and atmospheric) heat reservoirs combined…”
What does this mean?
It may mean that there is more heat added to the Earth’s surface than we thought there was, which means that any empirical estimates of the effects of global warming would need to be increased. But the real meaning may only be understood when we have a better handle on what happens to heat within the ocean, as shallow waters interact with deeper waters, and how the ocean as a system interacts with the atmosphere. And this heat, at this depth, does interact with the atmosphere. Despite the rather spectacular nature of this finding, its greatest significance is probably that it is a major step towards quantifying what may be the biggest single unknown related to climate change: what is happening in the ocean. It may, though this is subject to revision, increase the higher end of the estimate of “climate sensitivity” which is a measure of how much the surface of the earth will warm given a doubling of pre-industrial levels of atmospheric CO2. In that sense, this is potentially unpleasant news.
I have an FAQ on this research that I’m not sure I can provide a link for, but I’ll past the part that addresses the importance of the research, in the view of the authors:
What are the implications of long-term underestimates to ocean warming?
Quantifying how much heat is accumulating in the Earth system is critical to improving our understanding of climate change already underway and to better assess how much more we can expect in decades and centuries to come. Our key result is that the warming of the global ocean in recent decades has been substantially underestimated. These findings will likely lead to a revisit of previous sea-level and climate sensitivity estimates, and to a re-examination of how scientists deal with poorly sampled aspects of the climate system. A key lesson to be learned from our work is that observing the global ocean is critical, and that prior to the recent improvement in global coverage of ocean observations, a substantial and very important part of the global climate system was under-observed. In order to better understand past and future climate changes it is imperative that the global ocean is adequately observed, as it plays a critically important role in the Earth’s climate and its change.
I have a feeling there will be a lot of discussion of this over the next few days.
The Ebola Test: Civilization Fails
We really only know things work when we test them to the limit and see what it takes to make them fail, or nearly fail. All those air planes and space ships and regular shops and nice cars that usually don’t fail have a pedigree of prototypes or prototypes of parts that were pushed until they broke. Chickens fired into running Boeing 757 engines with a special Chicken Cannon. Crash dummies driving vehicles into specially built walls. Rocket engines exploding on test ranges. But many systems are never tested that way, and really can’t be. We build the systems and convince those who need convincing that they are stable, adaptable, appropriately designed, and ready. Then, real life comes along and pulls the fire alarm. It is not a drill. The system is stressed, and if it fails, that may be the first time we learn it wasn’t good enough.
Obamacare’s computer nightmare is a good example. It actually worked, ultimately, but at first it was one of the largest interactive computer services ever built and brought to so many users in such a short amount of time. There is general agreement that the system was built improperly and that is why it failed, but I don’t think that is necessarily the case. It may simply be that we can’t know that such a large and complex system is going to work when it is deployed, we should probably expect failure, and we should probably be ready to jump in and patch and repair and redo as needed. And, as a society, be a bit more grown up about the failure.
Three systems have been tested by the current Ebola outbreak and found wanting. One is the system of rational thinking among people. That is just not working very well. We have people in villages in West Africa thinking that health care workers who have come to help them are the cause of the scourge. We have tin-hat wearing Internet denizens insisting that that Ebola has already gone airborne, and that the US Government has a patent on the virus, and somehow it all makes sense, thanks Obama Bengazi! The failure of rational thought, which is a system supported by home grown culture and formal education, has been stressed and found wanting. We are not surprised, of course. I bring it up mainly because I want to point out that this is a general human failure, not just a failure among the victims in Africa who are so easily overtly blamed.
The global public health system has been tested and proved to be an utter failure. WHO and the CDC and all that have done a pretty good job with earlier, smaller, outbreaks of Ebola and other diseases, when they can fly in more people than even live in some remote African village, and most likely the hardest part of those missions is the logistics of getting to the field. That has been facilitated in the past by on the ground aid workers, missionaries, and in some cases, public health researchers who already knew the terrain. But they had a plan, they had gear, and it all mostly worked very well. We assumed the plan and gear and expertise and personnel was in place for a major outbreak. It wasn’t. That system has been tested and failed.
And now we are seeing a third system showing itself to be a failure, and it is actually kind of surprising. In speaking of the problem of screening for possible Ebola carriers coming in to the US on planes we learn that there isn’t a way to keep track of people flying to the US from other countries. From CNN:
“All options are on the table for further strengthening the screening process here in the U.S., and that includes trying to screen people coming in from Ebola-affected countries with temperature checks,” a federal official said… “It’s not as easy as it sounds. There aren’t that many direct flights from Ebola-affected countries to the U.S. anymore. Many passengers are arriving on connecting flights from other parts of the world, and then they come here, so that makes it more of a challenge.”
So, a couple of dozen well funded and well trained terrorists get on airplanes and destroy the World Trade Center and mess up the Pentagon, etc. This makes us consider more carefully the threat of terrorists attacking the US. We set up draconian laws and expensive systems that have the net effect of measurably removing freedoms for Americans, annoying people in other countries, and nudging us closer to a police state than ever before. We’ve even closed the border with Canada to anyone without passports, and even there, US and Canadian citizens can no longer assume they can freely travel back and forth. We fly drones over villages in other countries and blow people up (It’s OK, they were all bad) and we keep closer track of everything all the time everywhere than ever before.
But we can’t tell where a person getting off an international flight originated? Wut? I would have thought that would be the number one thing that would be implemented as part of the Homeland Security Upgrade. First thing.
Homeland Security in the US, the biggest shiniest newest system on Earth, fails the Ebola test.
In some ways, that is actually a bit comforting. But it is also terribly annoying.