Scary Oregon

Signs like this one are posted up and down the northern Pacific coast of Oregon.  My son has a lifelong fear of tsunamis, so when I told him about the sign, he urged me to leave immediately.

“You know what happens just before a tsunami, right?”

“Yeah, the tide goes way out, and–”

“I could just see you running out to take pictures instead of finding higher ground!”

“There won’t be any tsumanis while we’re here, I swear.”

“How do you know?”

“We’re leaving now, so stop worrying.”

I knew it would freak him out.  Long before I became a father, I was an older brother. It’s a hard habit to break.

The little guy, running away from the big wave…doesn’t look like he’s got much of a chance, does it?

P.S.  Just figured out, this was my 500th post!  That hardly seems possible.

Not-So-Tiny Bubbles and Global Warming: News from UCSB

A team of UC Santa Barbara scientists went diving one day in 2002 in an area of the Santa Barbara Channel called Shane Seep, when the earth did something alarmingly rude, though not unexpected.

She belched — a “massive blowout of methane,” that “sounded like a freight train,” as Science Blog relates the story.

“Other people have reported this type of methane blowout, but no one has ever checked the numbers until now,” said Ira Leifer, lead author and an associate researcher with UCSB’s Marine Science Institute. “Ours is the first set of numbers associated with a seep blowout.” Leifer was in a research boat on the surface at the time of the blowouts.

Aside from underwater measurements, a nearby meteorological station measured the methane “cloud” that emerged as being approximately 5,000 cubic feet, or equal to the volume of the entire first floor of a two-bedroom house. The research team also had a small plane in place, flown by the California Department of Conservation, shooting video of the event from the air.

Leifer explained that when this type of blowout event occurs, virtually all the gas from the seeps escapes into the atmosphere, unlike the emission of small bubbles from the ocean floor, which partially, or mostly, dissolve in the ocean water. Transporting this methane to the atmosphere affects climate, according to the researchers. The methane blowout that the UCSB team witnessed reached the sea surface 60 feet above in just seven seconds. This was clear because the divers injected green food dye into the rising bubble plume.

Atmospheric methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and is the most abundant organic compound in the atmosphere. The ocean floor’s release of trapped methane hydrate — a form of ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure — in bubble form is both a symptom and a cause of global warming, according to UCSB geological science professor James Kennett’s theory.

When ocean temperatures rise, the methane releases are more likely to occur in the form of blowouts, like the one UCSB’s researchers saw. Those bubbles make a marked difference in the quantity of methane in the atmosphere, “thereby initiating a feedback cycle of abrupt atmospheric warming.”

Studies of seabed seep features suggest such events are common in the area of the Coal Oil Point seep field and very likely occur elsewhere.The authors explain that these results show that an important piece of the global climate puzzle may be explained by understanding bubble-plume processes during blowout events. The next important step is to measure the frequency and magnitude of these events. The UCSB seep group is working toward this goal through the development of a long-term, seep observatory in active seep areas.

(Not to make light of this disturbing news, but there is a bright side. Here’s one big blowout in Santa Barbara that can’t be blamed on Wendy McCaw.)

Ball of Fire*

A big meteorite hit Norway last week — with a force equivalent to the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. From Aftenposten:

At around 2:05 a.m. on Wednesday, residents of the northern part of Troms and the western areas of Finnmark could clearly see a ball of fire taking several seconds to travel across the sky.

A few minutes later an impact could be heard and geophysics and seismology research foundation NORSAR registered a powerful sound and seismic disturbances at 02:13.25 a.m. at their station in Karasjok.

Farmer Peter Bruvold was out on his farm in Lyngseidet with a camera because his mare Virika was about to foal for the first time.

"I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light with a tail of smoke," Bruvold told Aftenposten.no. He photographed the object and then continued to tend to his animals when he heard an enormous crash.

"I heard the bang seven minutes later. It sounded like when you set off a solid charge of dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away," Bruvold said.

Very little news about this, even on the long-tailed Internet. Sure, Troms is a remote area, north of the Arctic Circle. But: It's one planet. While a meteorite landing two-thirds of a mile from a farmer in the frozen north might seem like a faraway event, something like this could happen, and a global catastrophe would be the result.

If an asteroid crashes into the Earth, it is likely to splash down somewhere in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet's surface. Huge tsunami waves, spreading out from the impact site like the ripples from a rock tossed into a pond, would inundate heavily populated coastal areas. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States.

The researchers based their simulation on a real asteroid known to be on course for a close encounter with Earth eight centuries from now. Steven Ward, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCSC, and Erik Asphaug, an associate professor of Earth sciences, report their findings in the June issue of the Geophysical Journal International.

March 16, 2880, is the day the asteroid known as 1950 DA, a huge rock two-thirds of a mile in diameter, is due to swing so close to Earth it could slam into the Atlantic Ocean at 38,000 miles per hour. The probability of a direct hit is pretty small, but over the long timescales of Earth's history, asteroids this size and larger have periodically hammered the planet, sometimes with calamitous effects. The so-called K/T impact, for example, ended the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

"From a geologic perspective, events like this have happened many times in the past. Asteroids the size of 1950 DA have probably struck the Earth about 600 times since the age of the dinosaurs," Ward said.

Here's a link to the simulation. Have a nice day!

*UPDATE 6-12-06: The "Hiroshima" comparison was made by an astronomer at the University of Oslo, Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard. However, another Norwegian scientist disputes him:

Truls Lynne Hansen of the Northern Lights Observatory (Nordlysobservatoriet) in Tromsø disputes Røed Ødegaard's description, calling it an exaggeration.

"Our atmosphere is peppered with small stones from outer space all the time," Hansen told newspaper Aftenposten. "Most burn up and disappear, but some land here."

He thinks that what hit northern Norway last week was a stone weighing around 12 kilos (about 26 pounds). "Out in space it generated enormous speed, but after entering our atmosphere its tempo eased," Hansen said. "This kind of meteorite isn't radioactive and it's not glowing when it hits the ground."

 

In the same article, Aftenposten runs a somewhat inscrutable photo of the supposed impact site:

Zero Tolerance for Anti-Wind Energy NIMBYism

Has it only been a couple of years since environmental groups wrestled states and public utilities into making commitments to significant boosts in renewable power?

When notoriously conservative utilities said yes, it was largely because their experts were telling them that wind-energy was becoming viable and cost-competitive. Now, the environmental community is very excited about wind power projects — excited about killing them off, I mean.

From Anne Applebaum's column in Wednesday's Washington Post:

Already, activists and real estate developers have stalled projects across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. In Western Maryland, a proposal to build wind turbines alongside a coal mine, on a heavily logged mountaintop next to a transmission line, has just been nixed by state officials who called it too environmentally damaging. Along the coast of Nantucket, Mass. — the only sufficiently shallow spot on the New England coast — a coalition of anti-wind groups and summer homeowners, among them the Kennedy family, also seems set to block Cape Wind, a planned offshore wind farm. Their well-funded lobbying last month won them the attentions of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who, though normally an advocate of a state's right to its own resources, has made an exception for Massachusetts and helped pass an amendment designed to kill the project altogether.

The brand-name environmental groups seem fearful of taking on well-funded local anti-wind energy organizations that are systematically destroying the potential of an energy source that is the very definition of renewable. The environmental community needs to change course. Their credibility is at stake. The environmental community earned its way to the adults' table in making energy policy, but there's still a high-chair open at the baby table; and that's where they're headed if this nonsense doesn't stop.

Capturing energy from renewable sources will be land-intensive. There are a limited number of suitable areas. Wind power needs to be harvested where it's windy. Solar power needs access to the sun. Geothermal power is here and there, but not everywhere. To secure and distribute enough of this energy to replace fossil fuels at the percentages contemplated in Renewable Portfolio Standards will require building structures that most would deem less attractive than, say, a rustic old bridge or a weeping willow tree.

But if you want to seriously tackle the oil economy and make a dent in global warming — get over it, and let them build windmills.

A Few Updates

Time to catch breath. I've blogged on far more topics than I expected to when I started this up. I have received so many kind comments, both on- and off-line. I intend to continue it indefinitely, because I love writing it.

Some of the things I've blogged about deserve another quick look:

Salute to Ray Davies was prompted by the upcoming release of the longtime Kinks' leader's first solo album. I expressed nervousness about whether the CD would be good. The late Kinks albums were pretty weak.

Well, the album, "Other People's Lives" is out and it's not merely good, it's great from beginning to end. It manages to capture everything fans love about Ray, and yet sound quite different from anything he's done before. That might be because, as he explains in the liner notes, his Kinks songs were written in the studio, which suggests they were written to order, on deadline, with an expensive clock running, perhaps a little slapdash. This time, Davies labored his songs. He risked overthinking, but the extra effort pays off. I can't tell you what my favorite song is yet. There might be a "Waterloo Sunset"-level masterpiece among them.

Some will miss that shambling Kinks style. Ray's brother Dave was a guitarist of little technique and a lot of attitude. The skilled session musicians on the new one, aided by digital recording technology, come up with a much different sound — more rhythmic, more soulful, more American. Davies' vocals are strong and, as in his best Kinks music, very human. "Other People's Lives" is not to be missed.

I asked "Will There Be Flowers?" in Borrego Springs this March. I didn't make it out there, but apparently there is only a limited bloom due to the late-arriving rainfall. Things are a little more colorful in Death Valley. North of Los Angeles, the California Poppy Reserve is flourishing, and probably worth a trip. Check this site for desert wildflowers sightings throughout the desert southwest.

Hee Seop Choi is on the Red Sox's disabled list. His Dodger replacement, Nomar Garciaparra, looks like he's heading there, too, along with another new Dodger Codger, Kenny Lofton. To paraphrase Earl Weaver, Ned Colletti just got a lot dumber, and a lot closer to his injury snake-bit predecessor, Paul DePodesta.

The Tunguska meteor theory of global warming hasn't picked up much traction, although one of my commenters endorsed it. I'm not sure if I even endorse it! But I like asking questions.

Nobody's bought the former Knight-Ridder newspapers that McClatchy put up for sale, but bids are coming in, including a combined bid from the Newspaper Guild and Ron Burkle's L.A.-based Yucaipa investment firm.

Blogging turns out to be a good way to connect with old friends and forgotten enthusiasms. I wrote about the history of Elliot Mintz, spokesman for Paris Hilton and, before that, John Lennon, and got lots of great memories of 60s and 70s radio lore in the comments area. This blog has put my family and me back in touch with several long-lost friends — what could be more gratifying? People my age are starting to finally live their dreams, to rethink their careers, and to cherish the good health of their loved ones. It's also been wonderful to hear from other bloggers whose work I greatly respect, and from my fellow denizens of the greatest site on the whole Internet, Dodger Thoughts. Your kind words about this site mean so much to me.

Back in December, I started this blog with a somewhat dramatic, breathless recounting of the last three weeks of my last job — including a ferry ride across an icy lake that struck me as symbolic of my situation. In that post, I mentioned that, shortly after I lost that job, I was indicted. Now, 15 months later, I finally get my trial, starting tomorrow.

I've gotten so many wonderful notes of support and good wishes, and I'm so grateful for them. Many of these notes say something to the effect of, "You must be so stressed out." Well, the adrenaline is certainly pumping; I'm highly alert. But, no, I'm not stressed out. I'm a fortunate person. I have an amazing wife, a wonderful son, a brilliant and supportive family, and so many great friends. And, I believe our justice system ultimately will be fair.

During the trial, which will last about four weeks, blogging here will be light. There might be a guest comment or two. I'm not going to use this site to address my case while it is going on. If I do post, it will be the usual stuff I write about. Whatever that is.

Borrowed Time in San Francisco

Matt Stone and Trey Parker are the greatest satirists of our era, and like the true satirists of centuries past, they are essentially conservative, in the classic sense of the word. Whatever is new, trendy, popular, wherever they find complacency or conventional wisdom — that's where they attack.

Some non-classic conservatives have embraced them (there is actually a book entitled "South Park Conservatives") as allies, but the Stone/Parker version of conservatism has no more respect for the religious right or neocon policies than it does for liberal pieties.

It was two liberal sacred cows that got savaged in this week's South Park: Hybrid vehicles — or to be specific, the pompous vanity of some hybrid owners — and the city of San Francisco.

As Kyle discovers, not only does everyone in San Francisco drive a hybrid; every time a San Franciscan passes gas, they bend over and take a big whiff of it. In one scene, Kyle's father offers a party guest a choice of wines, but the guest only wants a empty glass, which he proceeds to position behind him. He lets one rip, brings the glass up to his nose and inhales deeply. The children of San Franciscans are so repelled by their extremely self-satisfied parents, they have no choice but to take drugs in massive quantities.

As ridiculous as some San Franciscans might be, in the next few weeks there will be many opportunities to worry about their fate. April 18th is the 100th anniversary of the great 1906 quake and fire. A nearly 300-mile rip along the San Andreas Fault that, in a matter of seconds, shifted one part of California up to 24 feet, the quake has had no parallel in California since then. The only U.S. comparison in immediate memory would be Hurricane Katrina's massive devastation of New Orleans. In terms of loss of life, it was about the same as 9/11.

Since 1906, the Bay Area has been relatively fortunate. The 1989 Loma Prieta quake was a major, catastrophic event, but nowhere near as powerful or widespread as '06. But Loma Prieta was the first major quake to hit S.F. since 1911. By comparison, as this USGS chart shows, there was a relative flurry of large and damaging smaller quakes in the area. From 1836-1911, there were eight quakes of magnitude 6.5 or higher.

This month's American Heritage magazine has an essay written by former U.S. Geological Survey official John Dvorak. He takes us on a walking tour of San Francisco and looks for traces of the pre-1906 city, the quake's damage and, chillingly, the areas most likely to suffer massive damage in the next big one.

The whole essay's worth reading, but I found this passage especially haunting:

I hurry west along Washington Street three more blocks, passing the dazzling white Transamerica Pyramid, the most distinctive building in San Francisco’s skyline, and reach Montgomery Street. At last I am standing on firm ground. Montgomery Street, often called the financial center of the West, roughly follows the original shoreline of San Francisco Bay, which ran close to the base of Nob Hill. The six blocks from here to the current waterfront are all “made” ground, land literally manufactured by filling the bay with sand, garbage, rotting trees, and other detritus. Scores of abandoned wooden ships were scuttled and lie beneath this section of San Francisco. Made ground is loose and unstable. It takes on the character of a liquid when shaken, such as during an earthquake. Imagine standing on a pile of loose sand. Shuffle your feet back and forth quickly. They sink into the sand. The same thing happens when the ground shakes around a building that is not set on firm ground.

Most of the destruction and the five deaths in San Francisco caused by an 1868 earthquake, which originated across the bay in Hayward, happened here. Extensive damage also occurred here in 1906, as well as in other areas of the city built over made ground. The City Hall, then at the corner of McAllister and Larkin Streets, had been built on shaky underpinnings—the site of the city’s first cemetery. The 1906 City Hall was the grandest and largest municipal building on the West Coast. It took more than 20 years to build and only two minutes to collapse. Today the main branch of San Francisco’s library occupies the site, housed in a six-story building that looks more like a bunker than a municipal ornament. Its inside is braced with steel rods and girders, some set at inconvenient angles. At the main entrance, inside a glass case, are artifacts, including bottles, broken chinaware, and a wedding ring.

For 30 years I have walked the streets of San Francisco, taking photographs. My goal is to document the city before the next major earthquake. I have often wondered how San Francisco will look after that. Which buildings will fall and which will still be standing?

The South Park parody of San Francisco is dead-on, but the other side of all that city's silliness is that its people know, at least subconsciously, that their idyllic home is in the path of nature, and that they could someday be required to act as heroes to save their neighbors and their beloved, smug, self-satisfied metropolis. And we know that's what they'll do. San Franciscans are tenacious and loyal to San Francisco above all.

It's interesting to note that America's two most beautiful cities (New Orleans being the other) are also its two most perilous. Is it beautiful in those places because they are so close to nature's unfathomable power? Or does their beauty assure they will survive even the deadliest blows?

Blame it on the Asteroid

Another good post on Science Blog, which I just stumbled across today: A report on a controversial new theory to account for global warming.

On June 30, 1908, there was a cataclysmic event in Siberia that is still not completely understood. According to one eyewitness, a Shanyagir tribesman:

We had a hut by the river with my brother Chekaren. We were sleeping. Suddenly we both woke up at the same time. Somebody shoved us. We heard whistling and felt strong wind. Chekaren said, “can you hear all those birds flying overhead?” We were both in the hut, couldn’t see what was going on outside. Suddenly, I got shoved again, this time so hard I fell into the fire. I got scared. Chekaren got scared too. We started crying out for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was noise beyond the hut, we could hear trees falling down. Me and Chekaren got out of our sleeping bags and wanted to run out, but then the thunder struck. This was the first thunder. The Earth began to move and rock, wind hit our hut and knocked it over. My body was pushed down by sticks, but my head was in the clear. Then I saw a wonder: trees were falling, the branches were on fire, it became mighty bright, how can I say this, as if there was a second sun, my eyes were hurting, I even closed them. It was like what the Russians call lightning. And immediately there was a loud thunderclap. This was the second thunder. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our Sun was shining brightly as usual, and suddenly there came a second one!

Me and Chekaren had some difficulty getting under from the remains of our hut. Then we saw that above, but in a different place, there was another flash, and loud thunder came. This was the third thunder strike. Wind came again, knocked us off our feet, struck against the fallen trees.

We looked at the fallen trees, watched the tree tops get snapped off, watched the fires. Suddenly Chekaren yelled “Look up” and pointed with his hand. I looked there and saw another flash, and it made another thunder. But the noise was less than before. This was the fourth strike, like normal thunder.

Now I remember well there was also one more thunder strike, but it was small, and somewhere far away, where the Sun goes to sleep.

This was the “Tunguska event.” The scientific near-consensus is that it was caused by the airburst from a meteorite, comet or asteroid hurtling toward Earth, exploding 6-10 kilometers above the surface. It destroyed, among other things, 60 million trees. But it left no crater, which indicates the object exploded into flaming dust before impact, releasing 10-15 megatons of energy into the air. The skies above Europe glowed at night for several evenings afterward — bright enough to read by.

Vladimir Shaidurov from the Russian Academy of Science now believes this cosmic event might be responsible for the pronounced climate change that began early in the 20th Century– global warming.  According to Shaidurov’s theory, “changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface.” This effect could be the result of the Tunguska event. From Science Blog’s post:

(T)he most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant changes to the temperature of the earth’s surface, which far outweighs the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global average temperature of Earth’s surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.

(snip)

Water vapour levels are even less within our control than CO2 levels. According to Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University writing in ‘The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change’, “Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, however. The most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour, he says, “Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation.”

As such, Shaidurov has concluded that only an enormous natural phenomenon, such as an asteroid or comet impact or airburst, could seriously disturb atmospheric water levels, destroying persistent so-called ’silver’, or noctilucent, clouds composed of ice crystals in the high altitude mesosphere (50 to 85km). The Tunguska Event was just such an event, and coincides with the period of time during which global temperatures appear to have been rising the most steadily – the twentieth century.

Shaidurov’s theory, of course, flies in the face of the more widespread view that the Industrial Revolution of the past 200 years, during which human society unleashed tons of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, has triggered the global warming that most scientists believe is underway. Shaidurov says, however, that global temperatures were trending downward prior to a period between 1906-09, a few years before the explosion.

It seems strange to me that an event of this magnitude is mostly known only to science fiction and “X Files” fans. Undoubtedly, this is due purely to the remoteness of this part of the world. If such a thing had landed in Ohio, or Paris, our society would be very different. The memory of such a trauma would reverberate across generations.

Whether or not Tunguska can be blamed for global warming, the event demonstrates that nothing can change history faster than a random chunk of debris from outer space.

I’ll leave to another day the policy impact of Shaidurov’s theory. If this is the cause of global warming, can it be reversed? Will the earth’s upper atmosphere “right” itself, given time? Will Kyoto-type programs help? Geological history certainly suggests that the 5,000 years or so of Earth’s history during which mankind established civilizations and evolved technology has been a period of atypically good weather. Is our luck about to run out? Can our technology help us adjust to what might be an inevitably transformed environment?

“Nature Deficit Disorder”

It’s a long way from, well, anywhere, but if you happen to be in Borrego Springs Saturday night, writer Richard Louv is giving a talk about “how the lack of contact with nature has impacted a child’s cognitive development, physical development and spiritual development,” according to Deborah Knapp of the Anza-Borrego Institute. From the Press-Enterprise advance story on the talk:

“It’s not an exercise in nostalgia,” said … Louv in a recent phone interview from San Diego. “For tens of thousands of years, children worked or played in nature. Within two or three decades, that may be over.”

Louv said studies show that conservationists and environmentalists all had a “transcendent experience in nature” when they were children.

“We take that chance away from a large part of generations — where do the future stewards of the earth come from?”

Louv has been on a book tour to promote Last Child in the Woods, his book on “nature deficit disorder.” (I’m sure this is a first for Borrego Springs, to be considered a book tour stop. Hey, people do live there, especially this time of year!) Louv also writes a regular column for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Anza-Borrego Institute is a part of the Anza-Borrego Foundation, whose mission is to promote conservation in the Anza-Borrego State Park — at 600,000 acres, the largest desert state park in the continental U.S.

East Coast Ice v. West Coast Kelp

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has been living large in St. Louis the past few days, with scholars and educators attending its annual meeting getting not one, but two new explanations for how and why human beings occupy the North American continent.

According to this story on LiveScience.com, the concept most of us vaguely have in our minds — that the Americas were first populated via a land-ice bridge across the Bering Strait and then gradually moved south — might be wrong. The glaciers began melting 17,000 years ago, recent studies show, rendering that transitway impossible. But also:

(W)hen archaeologist Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution places American spearheads, called Clovis points, side-by-side with Siberian points, he sees a divergence of many characteristics.

Instead, Stanford said today, Clovis points match up much closer with Solutrean style tools, which researchers date to about 19,000 years ago. This suggests that the American people making Clovis points made Solutrean points before that.

There’s just one problem with this hypothesis—Solutrean toolmakers lived in France and Spain. Scientists know of no land-ice bridge that spanned that entire gap.

Stanford has an idea for how humans crossed the Atlantic, though—boats. Art from that era indicates that Solutrean populations in northern Spain were hunting marine animals, such as seals, walrus, and tuna.

They may have even made their way into the floating ice chunks that unite immense harp seal populations in Canada and Europe each year. Four million seals, Stanford said, would look like a pretty good meal to hungry European hunters, who might have ventured into the ice flows much the same way that the Inuit in Alaska and Greenland do today.

But wait! Couldn’t Asia’s ancients use boats too? According to another anthropologist’s study (also summarized on LiveScience), humans from Asia might have followed an “ocean highway” made of dense kelp. Jon Erlandson of the University of Oregon found:

Today, a nearly continuous “kelp highway” stretches from Japan, up along Siberia, across the Bering Strait to Alaska, and down again along the California coastline, Erlandson said.

Kelp forests are some of the world’s richest ecosystems. They are homes to seals, sea otters, hundreds of species of fish, sea urchins and abalone, all of which would have been important food and material sources for maritime people.

Although the coastal migration theory has yet to be proven with hard evidence, it is known that seafaring peoples lived in the Ryukyu Islands near Japan during the height of the last glacial period, about 35,000 to 15,000 years ago. These peoples may have traveled 90 or more miles at a time between islands.

Some scientists believe that maritime people boated from Japan to Alaska along the Aleutian and Kurile Islands around 16,000 years ago. Before that, people may have island-hopped their way to Australia 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.

Scientists have discovered settlements 11,500 to 9,000 years old along the coasts of some of these Pacific islands, which also have ecologically-rich kelp forests nearby that Erlandson believes existed when people were island hopping. The remains of kelp resources have been discovered in a settlement in Daisy Cave in the Channel Islands off southern California, dated to about 9,800 years ago.

“The fact that productive kelp forests are found adjacent to some of the earliest coastal archaeological sites in the Americas supports the idea that such forests may have facilitated human coastal migrations around the Pacific Rim near the end of the last glacial period,” Erlandson said. “In essence, they may have acted as a sort of kelp highway.”

Kelp forests also provide a barrier between coastal settlements and the rough open seas and lessen the wave forces on beach-side settlements. Sometimes the kelp washes up on land, where land animals, which humans could kill and eat, can munch on it.

These were just two of hundreds of papers presented in St. Louis over the weekend (where it’s been in the 20s overnight and topping out in the low 40s during the day. Was the LA Convention Center booked up?) AAAS’s Board of Directors took the occasion to denounce legislation and policies that would “deprive students of the education they need to be informed and productive citizens in an increasingly technological, global community.” Among the states considering anti-evolution legislation: Missouri. According to a release on the AAAS website:

Some of these bills would seek to discredit evolution by emphasizing “flaws” in the theory of evolution, or “disagreements” within the scientific community, the AAAS Board noted. Other bills would encourage teachers and students to explore the concept of intelligent design or other non-scientific “alternatives” to evolution, or to “critically analyze” evolution and “the controversy”. But, AAAS emphasized, “There is no significant controversy within the scientific community about the validity of evolution.”

Moreover, “Evolution is one of the most robust and widely accepted principles of modern science,” the AAAS Board concluded, reconfirming its October 18, 2002 statement, as well as the December 2005 ruling of federal District Court Judge John E. Jones III, who found that intelligent design is based on religion, not science.

I can’t find the citations right now, but from what I’ve read on a few conservative sites (especially on The Corner), Judge Jones’ smackdown of Intelligent Design is going to cause political ripples. It’s apparent that the Republican Party’s supporters in the religious right continue to see Intelligent Design as occupying a legitimate place in the classroom, and don’t take kindly to Republicans who admit they think it’s hooey.

From the tone of the attacks on the conservative pundits who dared to admit they found Intelligent Design an intellectual embarassment — and from the rapid “I never meant to suggest” backfilling that followed — anti-evolution is fast becoming a religious right litmus test on the same level as anti-choice and anti-gay marriage.

As the east-coast/west-coast migration theories show, there is plenty of room for debate about how we got here and who we are. To paraphrase former President Clinton, we don’t have the brain cells to waste on debating settled matters.

Will There Be Flowers?

As March approaches, the California desert guessing game begins: What will the flower bloom be like this year? The desert explosion of colorful blossoms is one of the state’s great natural attractions, except you can’t always count on it. Depending on how much it rains, when it rains, and when you can get a weekend off, you might see a magnificent explosion of colors — or you just might just see the desert. Like my son says, “It’s all good.”

However, last year’s bloom was colossal and lasted for weeks. I went out to Anza-Borrego, the remote desert region in eastern San Diego County, and took some so-so pictures, but this month’s Sunset Magazine has an article about Borrego that is illustrated with the incredible shot of desert sand verbena, at right.

Matthew Jaffe writes (in a story behind the subscriber wall) about the desert journey he took during last year’s flower season that nicely captures the evanescence of peak moments in that other-wordly landscape:

The wind picks up, and we decide to make another visit to the dunes. Despite strong gusts, the blossoms seem to be holding up. But wandering around, I notice some less densely flowered areas before a flash of gold catches my eye. It is the almost metallic stripe on the back of a sphinx moth caterpillar, and I realize that the verbena all around me is being devoured by hordes of these binging creatures. Back down on my belly, a closer look reveals mandibles in perpetual motion as stalks, leaves, and blossoms disappear with frightening speed.

So it goes with desert wildflowers. I feel darn fortunate to have caught this rapidly vanishing display — and so, I suspect, do the caterpillars. Just about every other time I’ve visited Anza-Borrego, there’s been some guy who’ll say, “Oh, you should have been here a few days ago” or a few years ago or whatever. Listening to such boasts, I vowed that if I ever got lucky enough to catch Anza-Borrego at its peak, I’d never taunt anyone with such what-coulda-beens. But you know what? You definitely should have been here.

There really is no rhythm to it. Just because last year was a great year for flowers doesn’t mean this year can’t be just as great. Even if you miss the flowers, you’ll definitely be able to enjoy the other features: The incredible night skies (best enjoyed when there’s no moon out), the sweet California grapefruits for only $3/bag, the constant play of light and shadow on the mountains in the early morning and late afternoon, and the comfortable temperatures typical for this time of year.

I’m very partial to Anza-Borrego because it is everything Palm Springs is not. There isn’t one chain restaurant or store, and no outlets. There are no movie theaters. You can shop, but mostly what you’ll find is either desert clothes and supplies, or curious second-hand stuff. Saturday night is still, I believe, karaoke night at Carlee’s, a roadhouse bar and grill with a superb seafood gazpacho. If you go, you’ll almost certainly hear a retired engineer named Dusty sing his signature song: “Itsy-Bitsy, Teeny-Weeny, Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini.”

You could hunt for that legendary shipwreck full of pearls. And maybe the elusive flowers.

Bottled Water Isn’t Good for You…

…according to the Earth Policy Institute, citing environmental costs and the strain on family budgets.  Ounce for ounce, a bottle of water can be 10,000 times more expensive than what most Americans can safely get out of a tap.

Some of these numbers are startling: 

The study said that demand for bottled water soared in developing countries between 1999 and 2004 with consumption tripling in India and more than doubling in China during that period.

That has translated into massive costs in packaging the water, usually in plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) which is derived from crude oil, and then transporting it by boat, train or on land.

“Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 US cars for a year,” according to the study. “Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.”

Once the water is consumed, disposing the plastic bottles poses an environmental risk.

The study, citing the Container Recycling Institute, said that 86 percent of plastic water bottles in the United States end up as garbage and those buried can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

In addition, some 40 percent of the PET bottles deposited for recycling in the United States in 2004 ended up being shipped to China.

The study warned that the rapid growth in the industry has also ironically led to water shortages in some areas, including India where bottling of Dasani water and other drinks by the Coca-Cola company has caused shortages in more than 50 villages.

It said that while consumers tend to link bottled water with healthy living, tap water can be just as healthy and is subject to more stringent regulations than bottled water in many regions, including Europe and the United States.

On first blush, I’m sympathetic to this study’s findings. The fear so many people have of their municipal tap water is absurd.  We spend billions removing contaminants from water supplies, and the environmental regulations applying to water have only gotten tighter during the past 20 years.

Water that is safe enough for newborn infants to drink is mostly used to irrigate lawns, wash clothes and cool industrial motors.  That’s how committed our society is to healthful water. It seems wasteful to avoid drinking it.

Then I started thinking:  How much of the increased bottled water sales merely replaced sales of other beverages?  It seems to me that products like Dasani and Aquafina were Coke and Pepsi’s response to losing market share to Evian and Calistoga.

You can only hold so much fluid in your body. Are people drinking bottled water and soda pop?  Doubtful. If people shift from sugary, chemical-spiked sodas to water, that’s a healthier choice.

A better study might be to look at the total consumption of bottled beverages. Has it changed, per capita, since the bottled-water fad took hold? 

The education campaign we ought to have is: If you’re thirsty, nothing is more refreshing than tap water. We know, scientifically, that’s true. Sodas just make your thirstier. If they’re sweetened with sugar, they can make you fat and trigger diabetes.  If sweetened artificially, you become a lab rat in a giant bio-chemical experiment. Water is the most efficient and healthful way to hydrate your body.

Maybe the real issue is how to make potable tap water portable, since the fundamental environmental problem is the disposal of all that plastic.  

Let’s make canteens cool  Canteens: Not just for backpackers, Boy Scouts and survivalists anymore. 

We should engage top fashion designers to create colorful, stylish canteens, and have flashy models carry them over their shoulders on the runway. Maybe Prada could come up with a combination canteen/purse. Imagine the impact on the environment if you could publicize a picture of Beyonce carrying around a hot pink, bling-studded canteen.

It’s my impression the bottled-water trend really got going in Los Angeles. I recall  Nora Ephron writing many years ago that the way you knew if someone was from Los Angeles was that they carried around a bottle of water. Now, perhaps, LA can lead the way with designer canteens. 

Go ahead, use my idea.  Pay me whatever you think it’s worth.

Bush/Cheney on Global Warming: Mommy, Make Him Stop!

Does the Bush Administration really think that if its PR people string a spool of barbed wire around U.S. government scientists, all talk of global climate change will stop?

By now, most of you have seen this morning's New York Times scoop, in which James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, asserts that NASA's top brass issued a directive requiring that "his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists" be reviewed by "public affairs staff," meaning PR factotums (factota?) loyal to the president and his party.

Censorship of scientific information? Please, perish the thought, says one of Hansen's new screeners:

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

He said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

I added the emphasis, because it contradicts Mr. Acosta's first, bogus assertion. The Bush Administration defines "policy statements" very broadly, to include facts that don't fit the party line, and, for scientists, obvious conclusions derived from research.

One of Hansen's colleagues illustrated how the Bush Administration's idea of "openness" worked in practice:

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others, Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority.

I assume it would be okay with Deutsch and Acosta if Dr. Hansen said things like this:

…so long as only a "policymaker" like Vice President Cheney was allowed to explain what it means.

Dr. Hansen apparently got the Administration's goat when, in December, he gave a speech at the American Geophysical Union, asserting that more aggressive efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions were not only urgent, but feasible.

Obviously, Bush/Cheney disagree. And that's fine, I don't mind it if they want to take a cautious position. The economic implications of global climate change are profound. Every choice has the potential to cause mammoth dislocations. Environmentalists do their cause no help by minimizing the impact that drastic cuts in emissions would have. Like any other major economic shock, it is the most vulnerable members of society who would suffer first and most. I'm not saying those are the victims Bush/Cheney are worrying about, but I worry.

We need a big, fat, public debate about what to do, how fast to do it, and whether we should focus our resources more on reversing the climate trend or mitigating it. We also need to know more than we do about the science underlying climate change, to help us plot the most appropriate course. In an ideal world, where such research was being conducted aggressively and out in the open, we'd surely have big fights about it. Our politics could well be transformed as interest groups realigned around different solutions to allocate the costs. No doubt, it will be bloody when it happens — I hope only figuratively.

The Bush Administration apparently thinks Americans are all children and can't handle this. To repeat: Do they think the climate change phenomenon will just go away if they suppress discussion about it? This is an example of what happens when executives — political, corporate, wherever — turn into Eddy Arnold and ask their PR people to "make the world go away." But trying to silence one of the most respected scientists in the field can only have one result: Massive backlash.

Today, Dr. Hansen is more of a hero than he was yesterday, and his power has grown significantly. He will spend his next 15 minutes of fame as the martyred symbol of Bush's War Against Science. Bush Administration acolytes like the ones you find on Hugh Hewitt's blogroll won't relish having to defend their Most Admired One's brazen and foolish attempts to impose censorship on an issue of such significance.

(P.S. The bellweather on global warming policy will be property insurers. Eventually, the insurance industry will organize and drive climate change policy. Wouldn't you, if you held the policies for, say, Marina Del Rey? Rising sea levels? Gulp.)

UPDATE 1/29: For a thorough and righteously angry post on this and other current examples of Bush/Cheney wielding power inappropriately to suppress inconvenient findings of fact, and bury the careers of government officials simply for telling the truth, read this from the site Political Cortex.

Dante’s View Reopened

The most spectacular viewspot overlooking Death Valley, Dante’s View, has reopened, according to the Pahrump Valley Times:

Visitors to Death Valley National Park can once again stand at the edge of the precipice called Dante’s View and look out over the breathtaking expanse of the salty, dry valley below.

Although actual repairs to the road only took five weeks, the popular attraction remained closed for nearly 18 months after it was wiped out by a deadly flash flood in August 2004.

Because the road runs right through what little desert tortoise habitat can be found in Death Valley, said National Park Service spokesman Terry Baldino, construction was delayed while experts from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evaluated the damage done by the flood and the potential impact repairs might have on any tortoises in the region.

The view is more than a mile above the valley floor: 5,745 feet. The same intense rains that washed out the road — and killed two people in a van — also contributed to a prolific desert flower blooms last spring. March and April 2005’s park visits broke records.

Not Enough Metal

Here’s something new to worry about. According to a study led by Thomas Graedel of Yale University, the Earth is running out of metal:

Using copper stocks in North America as a starting point, the researchers tracked the evolution of copper mining, use and loss during the 20th century. They then combined this information with other data to estimate what the global demand for copper and other metals would be if all nations were fully developed and using modern technologies.

According to the study, all of the copper in ore, plus all of the copper currently in use, would be required to bring the world to the level of the developed nations for power transmission, construction and other services and products that depend on the metal.

As is the case with oil and natural gas, the cause of all this is development in formerly underdeveloped nations. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and discussed in livescience.com, should concern those of us who believe fuel cells will soon emerge as a cleaner energy alternative:

(S)carce metals, such as platinum, face depletion risks this century because of the lack of suitable substitutes in such devices as catalytic converters and hydrogen fuel cells.

(To be fair, keep in mind that forecasts like this have been made before. In 1980, economist Julian Simon bet population biologist Paul Erlich that any ten natural resources of Erlich’s choosing would go down in price over a ten-year period.  Simon won the bet, which he said demonstrated that markets take care of problems caused by increased population and rising demand for limited resources.  You could make that bet today, and possibly lose again in ten years, human ingenuity being what it is.  But nothing lasts forever.)

Our Entertaining Ocean

Bravo to the Pacific Ocean for putting on a great show the past few weeks. The huge, powerful waves and extreme tidal fluctuations have revived interest in what is still the finest feature of Southern California, our coastline.

But wait! There’s more! Extremely low tides are due at Santa Monica and South Bay beaches this week; minus one foot tomorrow at 3:04 p.m., minus one foot again Friday at 3:36 p.m., and minus 0.9 feet Saturday at 4:07 p.m. The “minus tides” give you a rare opportunity to see and photograph the communities of sand creatures that usually hide in the shallow waters.

Today’s Daily Breeze makes the following recommendation:

Visitors to the intertidal zones are encouraged to look, but not do too much touching. Those starfish, sea anemones, muscles and snails are protected species.

“I would encourage people to be gentle and also to avoid picking up and carrying animals around,” said Susanne Lawrenz-Miller, executive director of the Cabrillo Marine Museum in San Pedro.

If you can’t play hooky and walk along one of our beaches this week, you’ll have an opportunity January 28th to see “even lower” tides, the Breeze adds.

A mouse’s “revenge?”

The whole world knows the story of the mouse who burned down an 81-year-old New Mexico man’s house. It appeared in newspapers and on websites in Turkey, Ireland, Australia, Great Britain, and in hundreds of newspapers in North America. The Brits have a vivid way of putting things:

A MOUSE burned down a man’s house in an astonishing last act of revenge.

Luciano Mares, 81, caught the creature inside his home and threw it on a pile of burning leaves in his back garden.

But the mouse – with its fur ablaze – scuttled back to the building and dived into a hole under a window.

The “revenge” theme appears in the primary AP story, and in most of the headlines across the globe. I question the presumption of these stories. Was the mouse’s motive really revenge?

Put yourself in the mouse’s place. You’ve just been ousted from perhaps the only place you’ve ever known that provided food and shelter. Unceremoniously dumped into a pile of burning leaves. Would your first thought be: “If I’m going down, I’m taking that old dude with me?”

That seems a bit too fatalistic. Perhaps the mouse was really thinking: “I’m a dead mouse scurrying. But before I go, I want to see my home one last time. And maybe eat some crumbs.” Or: Maybe the mouse thought the homeowner would have a crisis of conscience if he saw him on fire, and mercifully douse it — something the mouse was unable to do for himself. Running back into the house was just a cry for help.

If you want to think deeper thoughts about how humans anthropomorphize the animal kingdom, you can now see the disturbing, mesmerizing film, “Grizzly Man,” on DVD. This is the Werner Herzog documentary about Timothy Treadwell, an out-of-work actor and recovering alcoholic who found what he calls “the only life I wanted to live” when he moved for each of 13 summers into the feeding and mating territory of grizzly bears near a lake in Alaska–only to be killed by one in 2003, along with his girlfriend.

Herzog’s narration and interviews raise questions about the nature of our own species as much as about large, hungry bears. Was Treadwell misguided and foolish for trying to “cross the line?” Was he, as he describes himself, a spokesman for and protector of, these bears? Treadwell claimed on the many videos he shot in Alaska to have a special ability to communicate with the bears, an understanding of their ways, and the ability to ward them off if they started thinking of him as food or a threat.

He speaks to the bears in a baby voice, as one might speak to a puppy. He jokes with them as if they were in on the jokes, and empathizes with what he perceives as their emotions. Repeatedly, like an insecure lover, he tells the bears of his undying devotion to them. He also states for the record his expectation that one day, a bear will kill and eat him.

One observer asserts, angrily, that Treadwell thought the bears were just like “people dressed in bear costumes.” Herzog points out that in Treadwell’s video record of the bears’ habits, he seemed to go out of his way to overlook some of their more savage practices — such as male bears killing their newborn offspring before the mother starts lactating, so that they can fornicate again right away. Treadwill was not above some pro-bear spin, so fervently did he want their habitat and ways safeguarded against human intrusion.

Treadwell’s video record of the bears is stunning, and that captivates Herzog, filmmaker to filmmaker. He got very close to the grizzlies. These are big animals, with big heads and jaws; sharp claws, unrelenting strength. Treadwell taped, and Herzog shows, a fight between two male bears that underscores their power.

So how did Treadwell survive among the grizzlies for 13 seasons? One theory offered on the film: The bears thought Treadwell was crazy, and best left alone. If so, the bears had better instincts than Treadwell’s unfortunate girlfriend.