Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There’s something wrong with a society that drives a car to workout in a gym.
[Bill Nye, The Science Guy]
Category Archives: environment
Science Catch-up
I originally started off the previous post intending to write this one. So, having been diverted, here is the post I’d intended to write …
Having been “under the cosh” recently I’ve missed writing about a number of science items which have caught my eye. This is by way of a quick update on some of them.
Food Production & Agriculture
I’ve blogged a number of times about the need for a major restructuring of world-wide agriculture (see here, here and here). New Scientist on 14 June carried an article and an editorial on this subject. Sadly, being part of the “mainstream science establishment” (my term)they don’t get the need for restructuring. They see the solution only in terms of improved varieties, increased production and a decrease in food prices, with all the sterility that implies. They’re unable to see the problem in terms of overproduction of animal protein and a reduction in useful farmland due to poor methods and bio-fuel production. All very sad.
Don’t Blame it all on the Gods
The same issue of New Scientist – it was an especially interesting issue – carried a short article with the above title. I’ll let the introduction speak for itself …
Once phenomena that inspired fear and foreboding, lunar and solar eclipses can now be predicted down to the second, forecast centuries into the future, and “hindcast” centuries into the past. The person who started us down the path from superstition to understanding has been called the “Einstein of the 5th century BC”, and was known to his contemporaries as “The Mind”. He went on trial for his impious notions, was banished from his adopted home, but nevertheless influenced generations of later scholars. He was Anaxagoras, a native of Ionia in what is now Turkey, and the first great philosopher to live in Athens. Now this little-known scholar is being seen by some as the earliest known practitioner of the scientific method.
Worth searching out if you’re interested in the history of science or the Ancient Greeks.
America’s Abortion Scandal
This is the title of the third article I’ve picked from 14 June New Scientist. In the article Pratima Gupta, a (female) practicing obstetrician-gynaecologist, argues against the prevailing belief amongst US medics that abortion is always psychologically damaging for the woman. Gupta sees no evidence for this and rails against “personal moral beliefs trumping scientific evidence [and even] individuals’ personal beliefs”. What’s worse is that there appears to be covert censorship making abortion something which cannot be researched or discussed. All very interesting when put up against the case of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin whose unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, being made (as I read it) to have the child and marry the father (see here, for example).
Cut!
Finally, this time from New Scientist of 19 July, which contains an article on male circumcision; again something I’ve blogged about before (see here and here). Quite predictably there is a rumpus brewing about the medical profession’s desire for all males to be circumcised – at least in Africa and by implication world-wide – egged on by the WHO. The studies which showed such huge benefits from circumcision are being criticised for their design, for being stopped early and for their assumptions. Surveys which question people’s experience of circumcision are also highly criticised. And of course being a mainstream science journal, New Scientist totally ignore any question of human rights, abuse and mutilation. It’s about time the medical and scientific professions woke up and smelt the coffee.
Harvest
Is it my imagination, or is the wheat harvest about a month late this year? There still seem to be farmers bringing in the corn harvest whereas in recent years it seems to have been all over by the end of July. Is it that we’ve had an especially cool, wet summer. Or that previous tears have been particularly forward because of warmer summers? Have farmers suddenly started planting later-ripening varieties? If so, why? Or is it just me imagining things?
Something for the Weekend
Being an unrepentant red-blooded male, an inveterate people-watcher and a photographer I cannot resist a deliciously pretty girl. So here are a couple I spotted earlier in the week on my way back from a business trip to Glasgow.
More photos of all sorts on my flickr photostream.
Early Morning at the Airport
52 Weeks 13/52 (2008 week 21)
Phew well I’ve completed a quarter of the assignment, which is more than I thought I might.
If I have to go to the airport at o’god o’clock then it is much nicer and much easier doing so at this time of year when it is light!
Agriculture Policy
I’ve posted before about the need for a paradigm shift in agriculture policy (see here and here). There is an article by Jeffrey D Sachs in the June 2008 issue of Scientific American which picks up on this theme – although to my mind he doesn’t go far enough. As the article isn’t (yet) online, here is an edited version:
Surging Food Prices and Global Stability
Misguided policies favor biofuels and animal feed over grain for hungry peopleThe recent surge in world food prices is already creating havoc in poor countries, and worse is to come. Food riots are spreading across Africa, although many have gone unreported in the international press. Moreover, the surge in wheat, maize and rice prices … has not yet fully percolated into the shops and … the budgets of relief organizations … In early 2006 a metric ton of wheat cost around $375 on the commodity exchanges. In March 2008 it stood at more than $900 …
Several factors are at play in the skyrocketing prices … World incomes have been growing at around 5% annually in recent years … leading to an increased global demand for food … The rising demand for meat exacerbates the pressures on grain and oilseed prices because several kilograms of animal feed are required to produce each kilogram of meat. The grain supply has also been disrupted by climate shocks …
An even bigger blow has been the US decision to subsidize the conversion of maize into ethanol to blend with gasoline. This wrongheaded policy … gives a 51% tax credit for each gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates a minimum of 7.5 billion gallons of domestic renewable-fuel production … overwhelmingly … corn-based ethanol, by 2012. Consequently, up to a third of the US’s Midwestern maize crop this year will be converted to ethanol, causing a cascade of price increases … (Worse still, use of ethanol instead of gasoline does little to reduce net carbon emissions once the energy-intensive full cycle of ethanol production is taken into account.)
The food price increases are pummelling poor food-importing regions … Several countries … have cut off their rice exports in response to high prices at home … Even small changes in food prices can push the poor into hunger and destitution … some of the greatest famines in history were caused not by massive declines in grain production but rather by losses in the purchasing power of the poor.
… measures should be taken in response to the food price crisis. First, the world should … fund a massive increase in Africa’s food production. The needed technologies are available – high-yield seeds, fertilizer, small-scale irrigation – but the financing is not. The new African green revolution would initially subsidize peasant farmers’ access to better technologies [… and …] help farm communities establish long-term microfinance institutions …
Second, the US should end its misguided corn-to-ethanol subsidies … Third, the world should support longer-term research into higher agricultural production. Shockingly, the Bush administration is proposing to sharply cut the US funding for tropical agriculture studies … just when that work is most urgently needed …
Stress
Jane Matera is a counsellor with Diabetes UK and she writes an interesting article in the charity’s latest magazine about her theory that type 2 Diabetes is often triggered by people not dealing sufficiently well with the stresses of life.
I’m not going to delve into that subject here – I’m hardly qualified to do so, except by having type 2 Diabetes myself. What interested me as much in Matera’s article is that she actually spells out the stresses we face in modern life compared with earlier generations. Not a surprising list but interesting to see it gathered together in one place.
Humans have always had stress. The hormones involved in the fight or flight response protected early humans from the dangers of the prehistoric world. Some degree of stress is creative, stimulating and necessary to a life fully lived. But […] our bodies are only equipped to cope with short bursts during periods of acute danger.
In our society, I feel there are many everyday stresses that might have been unthinkable 50 – or even 10 or 20 – years ago. They are accepted as immutable facts of life [and] not challenged or much discussed.
This normalisation means we maybe living for long periods […] at a level of stress […] considerably too high for our minds and bodies to safely cope with. And this is at a time when the traditional human support structures – such as the community, work security, the extended family, stable relationships and religious faith – have changed, been depleted or are not available to us.
Common modem stresses that have been normalised include:
- long-distance commutes, either through heavy traffic or at the mercy of public transport when we are most tired and vulnerable, either at the too – early start or exhausted end of the day
- the working world of short-term contracts, constant appraisal and machine-led environments may seem practical and economical but can take a human toll
- the pressure on mothers of even young children to work outside the home to meet the demands of an inflated mortgage
- mechanisation, which means humans are forced to adopt methods of communication and behaviour dictated by the machine rather than those that are innate
- mobile phones, iPods, ATMs, etc., disconnect the individual from human contact
- the fear of a terrorist attack – not a new phenomenon, but one that seems intensified of late in urban areas
- the completely rational fear of air travel, which is seen as neurotic because of its ubiquity.
How do we fix it? Unless there is a paradigm shift in society and the way our economy works sadly I suspect all we can do is to mitigate these stresses in ways which work for us individually. And hope this is enough to keep Diabetes – and depression – at bay. I see no magic panacea.
Food for thought.
Redesign of Farming
Some weeks ago I wrote about an article in Focus (a UK popular science magazine) about what some see as the pressing need to redesign our farming paradigm (see here). I was heartened over the weekend to see that several luminaries, including Professor Tim Lang, have taken up the cause in the RSA‘s quarterly journal – albeit in a more measured way, but that’s as one would expect from such an august institution. The gloss to their article, The root of the problem, reads:
Food security has risen up the political agenda, but sufficiency of supply is not the whole challenge […] Instead, we should look at ‘food capacity’ and the sustainability of our models of production and consumption.
Good to see the issue is climbing up the agenda. All we have to do now is get agribusiness and our vested-interest politicians to take note.
Papal Carbon Offset
The BBC is running on BBC4 TV a short series of programmes about medieval times. It started this evening with a program in which the comic actor Stephen Frye looked at Gutenberg and the development of the printing press. It was a coffee table programme: long on visual imagery, Frye’s idiosyncratic style and hammed-up wonderment; but despite the reconstruction of a Gutenberg press short on real academic detail. Certainly worth watching and much better than the average run of what these days passes for heavyweight programming; and mercifully devoid of dramatised reconstruction.
Frye made one interesting point, however. The Papal Indulgence was the medieval equivalent of our modern-day carbon off-set schemes: the payment of money to absolve us of our sins. Pure genius. Pure scams.
Perspective
The BBC reports today that Zimbabwe’s President (aka. dictator), Robert Mugabe, has described UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown as ‘a little tiny dot on this world’. Much as it pains me, for once I have to agree with Mugabe.
In the same report South African President Thabo Mbeki said there was “no crisis” in Zimbabwe. Hmmm. I think that makes it fairly clear which mast his colours are nailed to. I’ve been saying for years that South Africa will degenerate into a blood bath; I suspect the only reason it hasn’t yet done so is because Nelson Mandela still has a lot of influence behind the scenes. But once Mandela dies I have a horrid feeling South Africa will go much the same way as Zimbabwe, Uganda, and others. Let’s hope I’m wrong.