The Natural Patriot

Well, it’s not over yet (thankfully), so this should really be in present tense.

What is perhaps most important, to me, is what I didn’t do this year — which is stumble through the long, hectic, progression of travel, last-minute shopping, shipping, sleeping on relatives’ beds or couches, packing, getting on the plane again, etc.  Instead we had (are having) what might superficially seem to be a boring holiday season. At home.  Just the three of us, mostly, quiet days, eating leftover turkey and cranberry sauce (of course we miss our other loved ones, so it’s a trade-off).  Tilling the spring garden plot on an unseasonably warm Christmas Eve. 

And reading.

It’s been heavenly. I get so little time to read these days.  OK, I am a geek.  Not only did I spend much of Christmas Day (and into the night) reading, I was reading about the end of the world. But it’s all good — I’m used to this kind of fare by now.  On the Big Day I devoured, in its entirety, Ronald Wright’s “A short history of progress“.  Which is not such a feat: only 132 pages of large-format text (not including notes) and a real page-turner.  Covers a lot of the same ground as Jared Diamond’s ”

On this, the shortest day of the year here on the northern half of the planet, I offer the shortest blog post of the year in recognition of the rebirth of the year. 

“Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.”

          Alfred Lord Tennyson

Peace on earth, good will to all!

I know, I used the same subtitle for another recent post.  But I’m not recycling titles out of laziness — well, not entirely anyway. I do so here to highlight the simple, yet perversely (and perhaps intentionally) misunderstood theme whose centrality to the broad range of environmental problems is increasingly obvious.  Hence the “stupid” bit. 

The simple, central, misunderstood theme is this: Despite the rosy optimism one hears from various quarters, We can’t grow our way out of our environmental problems. Yes, of course technology can help, and we need creative entrepeneurship.  But blind reliance on the “free” market is not going to do the trick. 

The latest evidence on this front comes from an analysis, across 102 countries, of the impacts of human population density, urbanization, and economic growth on the condition of marine biological communities.  Rebecca Clausen and Richard York set out to quantify the role of changing human social development and economic institutions in the accelerating decline of marine biological diversity.  It’s well-recognized that human impact on the environment is ultimately a result of demographic and economic factors. But there is disagreement about how these processes affect the environment.  Indeed, as they note:

“Neoclassical economists argue that environmental quality is a luxury good and, therefore, only affluent societies are willing to heavily invest in environmental protection. The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) describes this hypothetical relationship between affluence and environmental quality. The EKC hypothesis suggests that environmental problems escalate in the early stages of economic development, but eventually a tipping point is reached, after which further economic growth leads to improvements in environmental quality.” 

In other words, the argument goes, once you get to be as rich as the United States, it’s all good.  The idea is that affluence leads to better resource and environmental management.  For example, we often hear that concern over global overfishing is alarmist because we have (some) good fishery management practices in effect in civilized places like the USA, Canada, and New Zealand. Though the latter bit is true, it’s not clear that such practices are becoming more widespread in time or space. 

In fact, there is considerable evidence against the hypothesis that economic development improves environmental quality on anything more than a local scale.  But the aim of this paper was to test the EKC hypothesis broadly, by considering diverse marine ecosystems rather than single fished species or stocks.  As an indicator of marine biodiversity they used the “mean trophic level” of fisheries catches between 1960 and 2003.  The basic rationale here is twofold.  First, mean trophic level roughly estimates the proportion of the catch that is made up of big top predators (tunas, cod, etc.), compared with, say, anchovies, and the abundance of top predators is in turn a good indicator of the degree to which the ecosystem supports a taxonomically and functionally diverse biological community.  Second, fishing tends to target top predators, so the decline in mean trophic level signals increasing human impact.  Indeed, the targeting of top predators is consistent enough that Daniel Pauly and colleagues famously summarized the succession of industrial fishing impacts as “fishing down the food web” (see the figure). 

Clausen and York developed mathematical models to capture the effects on mean trophic level of human population, per capita GDP, degree of urbanization (% of population living in urban areas).  The model included various terms to account for changes in marine productivity, geographic expansion of fisheries, changes in fishing effort, and so on.

What they found is important, if not terribly surprising.  First of all, at the risk of stating the obvious, countries with higher populations, urbanization, and economic growth caught more fish.  Overall, the healthy structure of marine ecosystems, as indexed by mean trophic level of catch, declined as economic growth, urbanization, and human population size increased. 

But there were some interesting twists with respect to the EKC hypothesis.  For example, fishery catch roughly matched the EKC predictions, dramatically increasing with per capita GDP during early stages of economic development, reaching a plateau at ~ US $3000, then declining modestly.  Urbanization, however, showed a pattern opposite to that predicted by EKC:  fish catch by a country initially declined with urbanization, then increased again after ~36% of the population was living in cities.   Importantly, “the total effect of GDP per capita [on MTL] was monotonically negative”, meaning roughly that as average individual income increased, the abundance of predators in that country’s exclusive economic zone declined (see graph at left).  This effect was strongest during early stages of economic development. On the bright side, growth in per capita GDP above $10,000 had little effect on mean trophic level of catches.

Long story short - “Our results contradicted both the economic and urbanization EKC hypotheses, indicating that economic development and urbanization led to marine biodiversity loss. Likewise, population growth clearly led to depletion of marine fisheries.” From a policy perspective, the take-home message is the “grow-your-way-out-of-your-problems” economic theory championed by the likes of Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomberg doesn’t work, at least fr marine fisheries and ecosystem health. 

One might be forgiven for thinking this would be common sense.  How can building more buildings and roads and ships and airplanes and iPods and vacuuming up the earth’s living and nonliving resources to fuel it all reduce our impact on the environment? The simple fact is: it can’t.  Alas, that sense is not in fact common, at least not in mainstream economic theory, which of course is the philosophical guiding light of modern civilization.  Fortunately, there is growing recognition that the physical basis on which the economy is built is finite, and that a sustainable future will require a steady-state economy.

Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood, since I know certain readers may jump to conclusions here. Obviously, economic development is important, and people need food, of which marine fish are a very important source worldwide and will continue to be.  It would be silly to think that we can or even should stop fishing.  But this and a growing body of other evidence are making it clear that humanity will have to manage marine fisheries and other interactions with the environment much more thoughtfully than we have done if we expect our grandkids to be enjoying them too.  Pretending that “free”-market economics alone will magically solve such problems is a fantasy.

[Original source: Clausen, R. and R. York. 2007. Economic Growth and Marine Biodiversity: Influence of Human Social Structure on Decline of Marine Trophic Levels. Conservation Biology doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2007.00851.x]

And now, as the Pythons would say, for something completely different.  Not even quite sure where to file this one.

Have you noticed that houses are getting bigger, with more bathrooms, and more, bigger cars out front, and fewer people in them?  Of course you have.  I grew up (back in the Pleistocene) in a family of eight that had a single car for most of my childhood, and two to three kids per room — and one TV!

What’s going on here?  Obviously, there are many reasons for these changes.  But a new paper by Yu and Liu published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, discovers an intriguing connection:  the increasing divorce rate is reducing average household size (i.e., the number of people living in a house) and increasing the number of houses.  As a result, a whole range of measures of energy and materials-use efficiency are declining.

And this is not a peculiarly American thing, it’s happening worldwide.

Using international census data, the authors first quantified the trend that conventional wisdom has recognized for some time, that divorce rates worldwide have been rising steadily in recent decades (see graph at left).  Based on the simple observation that divorce splits households, and therefore both increases the number of households and reduces the average number of people living in them, they then asked how divorce influences per capita impact on the environment, specifically in terms of housing.

First they found that, between 1998 and 2002, in the 12 countries studied, divorce was estimated to result in the addition of 7.4 million households above what would have existed in the absence of divorce. This adds to society’s environmental footprint because any house (or apartment, etc.) requires a certain amount of resources to construct, and takes up a certain amount of space, fuel, and so on to maintain regardless of how many people are in it.  For example, it costs the same to heat your house in winter whether there are two or ten people living in it.  Every housing unit has to have a refrigerator, a shower, a plasma TV (well, maybe not that) whether it’s just you or the whole family. You get the picture.

So when the consequences of divorce for increased housing construction, utlility use and so on were tallied up, the authors found several striking results (see graphs at right).  First, the number of rooms per person in divorced households was 33-95% greater than in married households. For example, in the USA in 2005, 38 million additional rooms were required to house separately family members separated by divorce.  This resulted in addditional costs for heating, lighting and so forth.  The divorced households also used an additional 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water above what would have been used had the marriages remained intact. 

Now, many other changes have been happening in society over recent decades that might influence these trends.  So, as an additional check on their findings, Yu and Liu were able to obtain data on that subset of divorced people that remarried.  When the remarried households were compared with their previously divorced incarnations, the environmental impacts fell back to those of households that had remained married all along.  In a nutshell, divorced households in the USA used 42-61% more resources per person than they did before the break-up.

So what’s the message? I’m not touching the social implications of this one. If a marriage goes bad, it’s hard to imagine that environmental impact would carry much weight in attempting to save it.  But these data do provide a sobering illustration of the impact left by our changing lifestyles.  

Perhaps this opens a new door to engaging social conservatives in the cause of environmental conservation (indeed it’s already being used as ammo by Christian conservatives, ironically enough since most such commentators have little interest or sympathy for other, less politically strategic news about the environment).  On the other hand, I’m also reminded of the cheeky bumper stickers from the old days saying “Save water — shower with a friend!” In other words, shacking up (or whatever it’s called these days) should, by the same token, reduce environmental impact.  So, in terms of social policy, it’s a two-edged sword . . .

[Original source: Eunice Yu and Jianguo Liu. 2007. Environmental impacts of divorce. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA: 10.1073/pnas.0707267104]

[Editor’s note:  This dispatch comes from my colleague Dr. Timmons Roberts, Acting Director of the Program in Environmental Science and Policy and Professor of Sociology at the College of William and Mary. His co-authored book “A Climate of Injustice” was published by MIT Press in January, 2007. Dr. Roberts was asked by UNESCO to present a keynote address at their event in Bali this past Friday, and sent this note back to students at the College of William and Mary.]

Dear Students,

I promised before I left that I would write you some news from the UN negotiations in Bali on climate change, so finally here goes.

Being here is an absolute roller coaster of emotion. Bali is a stunningly beautiful place, with Hindu temples and offerings everywhere, gorgeous beaches, and perhaps the kindest people I have ever met anywhere. It also seems safe, except for the crazy traffic on the roads, whose havoc I’m just beginning to understand.

This beauty is contrasted with what has become my utter humiliation to be an American. I feel totally helpless to do anything positive to influence my country’s obstinate and totally disingenuous positions in the negotiation. After setting back the global effort to address this tremendously complex issue over the past ten years, the U.S. is again undermining emerging consensus decisions on nearly everything.

I wish I were exaggerating. The Climate Action Network is the U.N.-recognized umbrella organization of environmental groups, with representatives from countries all over the world, and regional and state representatives from across the United States. Each day CAN gives out a “Fossil of the Day” award, for the country acting most, shall we say, “non-constructively”. Two issues of their daily newsletter “ECO” are here in the pile of materials I have collected this week. The first one has the U.S. winning first place “Fossil” for “a litany of misdeeds”. The other day has the U.S. sweeping first, second and third places. One misdeed was for our “blocking consensus” on a crucial text about the transfer of “clean technology” to developing countries at reduced prices. The second was for removing crucial scientifically-based language on targets of reductions for industrialized countries by 2020. The third was for “blocking consensus” on an innovative proposal to reduce deforestation in tropical countries by compensating them for the development opportunities they would give up.

These were three crucial pieces of what is to be called “The Bali Roadmap” on how the world’s nations are going to negotiate a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol when it runs out in 2012. In the 1997 Kyoto treaty there are clear instructions that a replacement must be in place by 2009. The complexity of the issue means that even two years is barely enough time to hammer out the difficult issues, but the U.S. administration has repeatedly undermined the effort.

This is my third time coming to the U.N. negotiations on climate change. Each time it seems that the world is ready to move forward, but that the U.S. makes it impossible to do so.

Just a few years ago I used to say that a social movement to drive serious international action on climate change required an “impossible coalition.” One would have to mobilize the future generations who are going to suffer the most from our actions today, the poorest of the poor in developing countries who already are, and a dedicated band of alarmed scientists and environmentalists.

Scientists themselves are trained to be so cautious and apolitical that they have hesitated to take any hard positions in the face of 10, 5 or even 1 percent uncertainty about where the climate was going. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) has four times now brought together 3,000 scientists from across the globe to evaluate the evidence on climate change. The uncertainty has dropped each time, and the spring, 2007 version of their reports cited unequivocal evidence of already existing climate change, devastating impacts mounting already, and some truly terrifying projections of where we are headed. They document clearly how our burning of fossil fuels is releasing carbon dioxide and a series of other gases, which are accumulating in the atmosphere and keeping in more and more heat. While “global warming” seems kind of nice at this time of year back home, we are essentially cooking ourselves. The only logical response, they say, is that we need to turn down the heat by sharply reducing our burning of coal, oil, gas and rainforests.

This is why the coalition is no longer “impossible.” The scientists are moving from alarmed measurement to clearer expressions of their concern. Meteorologists and laypeople everywhere are noticing the summers just have been getting hotter and longer. Droughts have hit Atlanta and broad parts of the Southeast. The predictions are coming true even earlier than expected, as some key “sinks” of carbon are no longer able to absorb extra CO2. Many environmental groups that used to treat climate change as one of several issues now have taken it on as their core organizational mission. The media is covering climate change, which is not going away, in more and more sections of the newspaper, as it affects lifestyles, business, gardens, travel, shopping, and so on.

But most of all, the poor nations of the world and even the poor in the wealthy nations are experiencing the destruction of their means of subsistence. Over the past two days I listened to a seemingly endless parade of national statements from all the world’s countries about climate change and the negotiations going on here. The science or environment ministers of one nation after another told us of how they are suffering already from droughts, typhoons, flooding and sea level rise which have set back their development by years or decades. They are disgusted that the wealthiest nation on Earth is undermining their desperate efforts to get the help they need to survive a problem they didn’t even create (an American emits many times what they do into the air).

New players are joining the coalition. Mayors and governors from cities and states in the U.S. are here for the first time in big numbers, adopting their own pledges to reduce their emissions sharply, and learning from other cities on how they might make good on their word. “Green technology” and carbon trading companies are everywhere here, selling heat pumps, solar, wind, and nuclear power gizmos, and describing the “offsets” they have to offer. This is a frontier of business opportunity.

Just in the last two years, development organizations like Oxfam, Christian Aid, Tearfund and ActionAid have strongly taken up the issue of climate change, driven by their alarm that their decades of development work are being rolled back by droughts and floods. And crucially, churches in the U.S. have just begun to take up this issue in big numbers, which they see as a moral issue of not just protecting God’s Creation, but also not inflicting direct harm on helpless people around the world. A new coalition of environmentalists, aid groups, and churches have been pivotal in changing the momentum for the new “Climate Security Act” co-sponsored by Senator John Warner. Included in that bill is funding to help poor nations to “adapt” to climate change.

So, dear students, these are some of the mountains and valleys of the Bali negotiations. I wish I could write you an upbeat missive about how we are saving the world. But the biggest valley on the Bali Rollercoaster, and drag on any efforts to move up the next mountain, is the U.S.’s behavior here. Our government’s representatives are decent enough people, but they are forced by their superiors to take negotiating positions that again delay what are critical efforts to find a collective solution. The whole world can only wonder at the motivations of a country that after years of saying “we need more science” then ignores the clear mandates that the science informs. So the real work we need to do as Americans is not here in Bali, it is back home. The world awaits the outcome of the 2008 presidential elections, but with 400 days until inauguration and an agreement needed by December 2009, the world cannot wait. Neither should we as individuals, universities, cities, churches, clubs and states, and neither should the U.S. Congress. As for me, I’ve had enough of this humiliation. I’m coming home.

It is not science that the Bush administration has been advertising as the target of their much touted abstinence-only programs over the last seven years. Not publicly at least.  But it may as well have been.  It turns out that objective evidence-based decision making is in fact what they’ve been abstaining from.

For over a year, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating claims of political interference by the Bush administration in science and reporting by federal government scientists and agencies on climate change. The Committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, has now issued its report, “Political Interference with Climate Change Science Under the Bush Administration” (37 pp. PDF), which is available here.

It makes for sobering, even infuriating, reading.  As reported by The Christian Science Monitor,the report finds, for example, that the White House:

•Was “particularly active in stifling [scientists’] discussions of the link between increased hurricane intensity and global warming.”

•Sought “to minimize the significance and certainty of climate change by extensively editing government climate change reports.”

•Edited “EPA legal opinions as well as newspaper opinion articles on climate change.”

The White House, needless to say, is painting all this as a political smear job.  But another opinion comes from someone with the experience to judge such claims.  Rick Piltz is currently director of the climate-science watch program at the watchdog organization “Government Accountability Project”. According to The Christian Science Monitor,

“Mr. Piltz . . . served under the Bush administration until spring 2005, when he resigned and exposed White House editing of the national climate assessment. As a senior staffer with the US Climate Change Science Program, he also served under President Clinton and saw marked contrasts between the two. ‘It’s true that every administration has its own policy, and there’s always a tendency to shade your communications,’ Piltz says. ‘But the difference here is that the White House science office under previous administrations was not at war with the mainstream science community.’”

As most people who occasionally read even so light and fluffy a medium as USA Today will know, the hostility to science that guides this administration’s approach to climate change is not a fluke, but a central modus operandi in their approach to what might euphemistically be called the people’s business.  Representative Waxman previously issued a strikingly similar report documenting the egregious scientific inaccuracy and thinly veiled ideological motivation of the administration’s abstinence-only approach to reproductive education.  That report, “The content of federally funded abstinence-only education programs“, can be found here.

I am sympathetic to the conservative desire to instill good values, and I commend kids who pledge abstinence.  But let’s not lie to them about how reproduction and contraceptives and human behavior work to convince them it’s a good idea.  Deceipt (or bearing false witness, if you prefer that language) is not an effective basis for changing people’s behavior. And  it is deeply troubling when it becomes the basis of official policy.  As Waxman himself noted, “I don’t think we ought to lie to our children about science. Something is seriously wrong when federal tax dollars are being used to mislead kids about basic health facts.”

It’s at least a relief to know that, only thirteen months from now, most of this crowd will begin abstaining from service in the Executive branch of this country. 

That title might well apply to the problem, dominating the news and presidential debates these days, of illegal immigration into the US.  But it appears that the phenomenon applies more broadly, biologically speaking.

Invasion by non-native species is a big and growing problem worldwide, especially in globally connected nations (think zebra mussel, or dutch elm disease).  Now China, which is rapidly heading for status as the largest economy on earth, is reaping its share of this dubious distinction. Indeed the 11 most serious invasive species in China are costing its economy almost 7 billion US dollars a year.  Part of this of course comes from the increased trade and international travel that has accompanied its breakneck development in the last three decades.  

But a new analysis by Lin et al in PLoS One of the rapidly developing Chinese colossus finds that the prevalence of invasive species is surprisingly well predicted by a combination of economic development and climatic factors, which together explain roughly 70% of geographic variation in invasions within the country.  Interestingly, within-country economic factors proved to be equally or more important in determining the occurrence of invasive species than climate. International travel and trade, which are widely believed to be the big factors driving invasion, turned out be less significant predictors. 

The rapid increase in introduced invasive species in China since the 1970s coincided with a sharp upturn in economic growth (GDP, see Figure 1).  Moreover, the aliens were found primarily in the more economically developed provinces of southern and coastal eastern China.  Using Principal Factor Analysis, the authors found by that about half the variation in invasion prevalence could be attritbuted to economic factors, primarily residential construction and GDP, but also human population density, industry, freight and passenger traffic, investment in capital construction, and length of transportation routes.  Another large chunk of the variance was attributed to climatic variation, specifically mean annual and mean winter temperatures, and precipitation. A possible alternative explanation for the results, that more intense scientific study in developed areas had identified more invasive species there, was tested statistically and discounted

The authors summarize the biological mechanisms for the phenomenon thus:

“Biological invasion is a battle between the ability of the alien species to dominate its new environment and the resistance of the local community. Climatic conditions determine the potential geographic range where the alien species could establish its populations. Increase in economic development enhances international trade and travel that transport alien species to new areas. Economic development also brings about road and building constructions that in turn modifies natural habitats, enhances the spread of invasive species, intensifies the loss of resistance from the local communities to the invasions, thus accelerating biological invasions. Biology, meteorology and economy are the three legs of the tripod that constitutes the basis for understanding and predicting biological invasions.”

They also note that the great majority of previous academic research on biological invasions has focused on the biological traits of species and the recipient communities that might favor invasion.  The message here is that these ecological factors operate under the influence of massive human impacts, which in China (and likely elsewhere as well), dominate the process of invasion.

What are the practical implications?  First, the authors note that the single strongest predictor of invasion in this study was residential construction. They suggest that more ecologically informed city planning needs to be implemented now, as well as policies to minimize future habitat dislocation from deforestation.  Other recommendations include beefing up supervision, inspection, and quarantine procedures for both import/export and inter-province freight transportation.  

Original source (free access):

Wen Lin, Guofa Zhou, Xinyue Cheng, Rumei Xu. 2007. Fast Economic Development Accelerates Biological Invasions in China. PLoS One 2:e1208.

All those beautiful autumn leaves have fallen, and are swirling around and collecting in windrows on the porch.  The last geese are passing high overhead, with that uniquely mournful sound of the year’s end, and in their place the black crows of winter congregate in the bare trees.  The Season of what should be quiet reflection is upon us.

But it’s getting harder all the time to find a moment of quiet.  Every year the pace seems to accelerate, begging the question: how to enjoy the Christmas Hanukkah Solstice Kwaanza Festivus Holiday season without it being overtaken by the stressful, ethically distasteful necessity of buying stuff for people that they don’t really need and maybe don’t even want? 

Here’s an idea, or actually ten of them from Grist’s list of “stuff-free gift ideas“.

1. Purchase carbon offsets
2. Write IOU’s
3. Stop your loved ones’ junk mail
4. Adopt a creature or an acre of rainforest
5. Sign up for community-supported agriculture (CSA)
6. Teach a skill
7. Make plans
8. Give a membership or donate to a cause
9. Get crafty
10. Ply with eco-booze

Here are a few more, partially overlapping ideas from the Natural Resources Defense Council.  No doubt you can think of many other creative ideas along these lines that will actually give cheer rather than guilt and dread — that’s the point.  In that vein, may I recommend the always thoughtful and moving Bill McKibben, with an essay on “What’s wrong with Christmas“.  An excerpt:

“[T]his pleasure gap allows for a concentrated opportunity to begin rethinking our economic life. If stuff isn’t valuable anymore, what is? Time, clearly. A gift of time — a coupon for a back rub, or a trip to the museum, or a dinner prepared someday in the future — is a gift whose exchange rate is figured in a stronger currency (if you’re an economics major, think euros vs. dollars). Or gifts can come embedded with time already spent: a jar of homemade jam, a stack of firewood in the back yard.”

The same thing goes for Hanukkah, as articulated in this essay by Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Jeff Sultar.  An excerpt: “if we . . . act together, a seemingly small group of people can overcome a seemingly intractable crisis. We can, as in days of old, turn this time of darkness into one of light.”  You can read more about the Green Menorah Covenant here.

Bill McKibben again:

“But the second you do break out of it — the second your family becomes one of those that exchanges used books at Christmas, or decides to follow St. Francis’ Yule tradition of wandering the park and throwing seed so that the birds too could celebrate, or makes it an annual custom to serve turkey dinner at the homeless shelter — then you start sharing in the deep human secret that consumer society is set up to obscure: the things that please us most are almost always counterintuitive. We need to be out in the cold air, we need to think about others, we need to serve.”
 

Speaking of cold air, one of my fondest memories of Christmas during my adult life was of one year, in graduate school in coastal North Carolina, when I spontaneously decided to go around climbing live oaks (not too dangerous — they’re a but stunted in the sandy soil there) to cut berried sprigs of the mistletoe that infests them abundantly in that area, and make them into gifts for friends.  Liz and I then picked some holly, arranged them all together with some ribbon, and went door to door delivering them to friends with Holiday greetings.  Probably with some inexpensive red wine too, I don’t remember.  We were graduate students so, of course, we had no money.  The gift was warmth and merriment — it cost us almost nothing, and its physical manifestation was green (literally) and compostable at the end of the Season.

May there be peace on earth, and good will toward all.  And don’t forget the misteltoe!

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, and all the ships at sea:

The Natural Patriot is honored to present the 7th monthly episode of the Carnival of the Blue, continuing a hallowed tradition initiated just six short moons ago on World Ocean Day by Mark Powell of Blogfish. Our salty selections this month span the gamut from, well perhaps not all the way from the sublime to the ridiculous, but they cover a lot of ground nevertheless.  

Biophilia

Most of us, it’s probably safe to say, were motivated to become marine biologists (or ocean enthusiasts more generally) by a strong sense of biophilia, although we didn’t know it by that name at the time.  The Sea is so full of beatiful and bizarre curiosities that reality rivals even the fertile imagination of Dr. Seuss in, say, McElligott’s Pool, a “watershed” book for me (I’m sorry — I really can’t help it) in 2nd grade that is probably ultimately to blame for why I am here now, hosting this carnival.

In addition to the ocean’s well-known and publicized importance to the economy, the global carbon cycle and climate change, sushi, and so forth, the diversity of life on earth is what connects us to the greater cosmos.  And this month’s Carnival celebrates several examples:

First of all, how about those cheeky fake cleaner fish?  Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science relates the strange story, first reported by Cheney et al., of the blue-striped fangblenny.  This sea-wolf in sheep’s clothing mimics the familiar cleaner gobies of coral reefs, but when a prospective customer swims up for service, the turncoat fangblenny attacks, grabbing a mouthful of skin and scales.  But the really cool thing is that the fangblenny is also a chameleon, changing its color patterns depending on the presence of benevolent models in the vicinity.  Yet another example that truth is stranger than fiction.

In another paen to biophilia, Mark H at the Daily Kos presents a story from his Biomes series, this time on the bizarre but somehow endearing monkfish.

And from Mike at 10,000 Birds, we have an appreciation of the Norther Gannet, the largest seabird in its range and advertised as “the most beautiful bird on the North Atlantic” and “the most impressive bird in any chum slick”.   

What survey of oceanic biophilia could possibly be complete without a marine mammal?  This month’s entry from Cute Overload Zooillogix fills the bill, and with audience participation to boot! The post announces a write-in campaign to name the new baby beluga (apologies to parents scarred by Raffi songs) at the Shedd Aquarium. Several interesting suggestions, some of them pleasingly off-color. Vote early and often!

The Grandaddy of the Carnival of the Blue (an allusion to his authority, not his age), Mark at Blogfish, brings us an entry that skirts the fine line between biophilia and biophobia.  Commenting on an amazing video of a great white shark feeding frenzy on a whale carcass off South Africa, he notes the similarity (evolutionary link?) between frenzied sharks and frat boys at a party.  As the sharks gorge with whale blubber, they begin to appear intoxicated and then sexually interested and then . . . well, watch for yourselves.

And speaking of biophobia, newcomer to the COB Miriam at The Oyster’s Garter (say what?) reports on what happens when curious energetic kids are forced to play with boring plastic toys like laser beams and harpoons instead of going outdoors like red-blooded Americans and skinning their knees on tree swings and stuff.  They are in danger of becoming ant-sharkites!

The secrets of the Seas 

For many of us, fascination with the life of the Sea has led to questions: how do these strange creatures work?  Why are there so many species here and not there?  Why on earth does a sea urchin poop onto its own head? (Well, OK, they don’t really have heads).  And thus, humbly, begins the life of science, which is illustrated by several of our posts this time around.

Peter at Deep-Sea News takes us on a scientific journey through the deep dark world of seamounts and, more specifically, their biogeography.  Are they biodiversity islands or oases (figuratively speaking) and what would we need to know to answer this question? The discussion illustrates a central challenge to understanding the history of the oceans, especially the deeps but often enough the shallows as well — the rudimentary state of our taxonomic knowledge of many marine groups.

In a unique (perhaps pioneering) category this month is Kevin Z’s Introduction/prospectus to his nascent dissertation on “Biodiversity of Chemosynthetic Communities at the Eastern-Lau Spreading Centre“, posted bravely for all the world to see at The Other 95%.  I have resisted editing this, a knee-jerk professorial urge which arises from my spending an inordinate fraction of my time editing nowadays.  But several commentors on the post have offered suggestions — now Kevin has a graduate committee that potentially includes thousands of web-surfers!   Good luck Kevin . . .

For my own part, I find myself always sliding back and forth between the biophilic wonder at the beauty and mystery of sea creatures and the rush of excitement at figuring them out scientifically. Since the latter is what I am paid to do (in between reviewing grant proposals and MSs and student prospecti and theses and . . .), I especially relish the opportunity to get back out onto the reef.  I was able to do so recently on a field trip to Caribbean Panama, where I stalked the elusive wild snapping shrimp, as reported here.    

Ocean conservation

Increasingly, alas, our attention and energies have been diverted from biophilia and questions of pure science toward the alarming state of the oceans and what might be done about it. Several of our intrepid ocean bloggers report from the front:

From Jennifer at Shifting Baselines, we have a profile of a modern day pirate of sorts, only one whose quarry is not buried treasure but the rear ends of whaling ships, which he and his motley crew are harassing throughout the Seven Seas.  Jennifer quotes from the New Yorker profile of Watson, which in turn quotes Daniel Pauly: “Animals that were once used for bait or that were considered worthless (hagfish, sea cucumber) were later taken in large quantities for human consumption. ‘Bait thirty years ago was calamari,’ Pauly [said]. ‘Now it is served in a restaurant. It is very nice. But it was bait before.’ Future generations, Pauly predicts, only half in jest, will grow up on jellyfish sandwiches.

Which brings us seamlessly to our next story.  Little did we know how soon jellyfish would actually end up on the plate.  Or at least in the bowl.  Kate at the NRDC’s Switchboard reports that this is exactly what is happening in Japan.  And no, we are not making this up — from the Wall Street Journal: In Japan, “One coastal firm . . . has for the past three years produced 2,000 or 3,000 cartons of vanilla-and-jellyfish ice cream. The jellyfish is soaked overnight in milk to reduce its smell, and is then diced. Fumiko Hirabayashi, a director of the dairy, says the jelly cubes are slightly chewy . . . ’We think it’s important to use local ingredients,’ says Mrs. Hirabayashi. ‘And this has now become a local ingredient.’”

Carl Safina, one of the pioneers of ocean conservation, weighs in this month with a withering critique of the seemingly unstoppable forces of greed and political impotence driving one of the ocean’s most majestic wildilfe species — the great bluefin tuna — down the spiral of extinction.

Moving from the water column down to the bottom, we have a detailed look from newcomer JimboDouglass at how the human footprint is squashing the seagrasses that provide critical habitat for biodiversity and nurseries for juvenile fish and shellfish throughout the world’s coastal regions an estuaries. Focusing on the Chesapeake Bay specifically, he discusses the complex interactions among nutrient pollution from land, overfishing of water-clearing oysters and predatory fishes, and coastal development in the long decline of this important ecoystem. 

All the world’s a stage 

Moving out from the oceans to the larger global ecosystem, Hugh at surf.bird.scribble ponder what many of us have been losing sleep over in recent years, the suffocating blanket of CO2 we are spewing into the atmosphere.  What to do about it?  Dump tankers of iron into the ocean to soak it up via phytoplankton.  Not.  Hugh asks, “Please, tax my carbon!”, an idea that is gaining strength from a surprisingly diverse coalition of interests.

Speaking of the warming atmosphere, as it interacts with the oceans, can’t help but remind us of the catastrophe in New Orleans that finally pushed global warming front and center on the world stage.  According to atmospheric scientists, we can expect more such mayhem in coming years.  Sheril at The Intersection reflects on the coming of the big storm Sidr to the coast of Bangladesh, perhaps the single region in the world most vulnerable to rising sea level and storms.  This, alarmingly, would appear to be the shape of things to come.

The fossil-fuel based global economy takes its toll on the oceans and coasts in other ways as well.  Rick at Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets (try saying that ten times fast!) reports on a first-hand look at one of them, as he plowed through the recent oil spill in San Francisco Bay on his daily ferry commute across the Bay (ah, sounds so idyllic on any other day). 

Hard to get away from petroleum these days.  Another new entry to the Carnival comes from Paul at the Waterlogged Dog, with a summary of the alarming state of plastic pollution in the oceans.  Mr. McGuire was right when he confided to young Dustin Hoffmann the one word “Plastics” but, like so many of the great wonders of technology, this miracle substance has turned out to have a pernicious dark side.

And there you have it.  All the news that’s soggy enough to print.  Remember — you heard it here first (this month at least). Tune in next month for the 8th Carnival of the Blue at I’m a chordata, urochordata.  Until then, Best fishes!

Previous Carnivals

• Carnival of the Blue #6: Cephalopodcast
• Carnival of the Blue #5: Shifting Baselines
• Carnival of the Blue #4: The Saipan Blog
• Carnival of the Blue #3: Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets
• Carnival of the Blue #2: blogfish
• Carnival of the Blue #1: blogfish

[Note: The Carnival of the Blue Web badge is available under a Creative Commons license in a variety of sizes and a couple of colors.]

Fifteen-year-olds in Finland are tops in the world.  In terms of science literacy, that is.  That’s according to a survey soon to be released by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the summary of which can be found here. The survey data come from tests conducted in 2006 in 57 countries that together account for 90% of the world’s economy. The survey tested students on knowledge of science and ability to use scientific knowledge to address questions in daily life.

The USA, in contrast, comes in at (are you ready for this?) . . . number 29. Roughly in the center of the pack –  behind Estonia, Slovenia, Latvia, and Poland, among others, but ahead of Serbia, Uruguay, and Kyrgyzstan.  One would have to interpret this as a grade of C. 

I surely have nothing against Finland — I’ve been there and it’s a beautiful country full of wonderful (and scientifically literate) people. But one has to ask: How can this be?  The US is the richest nation on earth, home of most of the world’s greatest universities, first to put a man on the moon,  the nation that invented the automobile, the airplane, the personal computer, the internet, the post-it note, you get the picture.  Time was, this country was the mecca for aspiring scientists worldwide, and for the most part it still is.  So why can’t 15-year-old Johnny figure out which end of the microscope to look through?

Forgive me for reflexively picking at this scab but might it have something to do with the dominance of hard-core ideologues that has spread like a cancer throughout this country’s national leadership over the last decade or two? America’s standing in this report is no surprise when candidates for the nation’s highest office can argue on TV with straight faces about whether the physical world was created in six days out of nothing a few thousand years ago.  I will avoid the temptation to vent at length (again) about where this country’s religious fundamentalism, which is unique among the major industrialized nations, is leading us.  But it is getting harder and harder to ignore the idea that it is a major factor behind the USA’s sorry showing in this report. 

The hostility toward rational, evidence-based science that we hear about in the news every day regarding evolution, climate change, and so on are profoundly destructive to our long-term interests.  This hostility has become an epidemic in the right wing of our national government and punditocracy over the last decade or so, and the infection is now clearly spreading to the next generation.  We are beginning to reap what we’ve sown.  And it’s not the trickle-down effect that Ronald Reagan had in mind. 

When will we wake up and realize that we live in the real world, and that policies that ignore understanding of cause and effect in the physical world are not going to work, regardless of how much faith we have in them?

It’s a national disgrace.