Comments Whiskerfish has made

great post, Tom

but the question that's still sitting in my mind is WHY these debts became 'toxic' and HOW.

I mean, if we're talking about toxic mortgages, have they become toxic because the houses 'behind' them are worth a tiny fraction of what they were a year ago?

Or because the owners of those houses used them as surety for loans that were, a year ago, worth in excess of those houses?

If debt was piled upon debt, i.e. assets were used to leverage loans of many times those assets' value, then whoever granted those loans should be prepared to lose the excess value. That in itself, although massively disruptive, might not mean the end of the US economy.

However, if many houses are now pretty much permanently worth a fraction of what they were worth a year ago, because people realise that they are too big to heat cost-effectively or too far from jobs to commute reliably to and from in a world of insanely volatile oil prices (the Kunstler scenario) then the US really is in deep, deep doodoo. That would mean that the US really has misinvested an enormous pile of capital, and the whole country will have to suffer for that.

If this second scenario is true, no amount of bank bailout is going to help -- you'll just be throwing promises of value into a void that'll be unable to turn them into anything useful -- the only thing that will build real value in the US economy is a fundamental restructuring of living arrangements to make life far more energy and time-efficient than it is now for most suburban/exurban communities in the US.

Am I making sense? It all revolves around how you view what money represents, in the end, and what the material value sitting behind money might mean for money's value.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn While Geithner's bailout flounders, it's time to explore other financial models posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 8 Responses

weatherization cut from stimulus

I just read on nyt.com that "$8 billion to refurbish federal buildings and make them more energy efficient" has been cut from the stimulus.

I can't believe the stupidity of this. I'm struggling even more with the fact that NO ONE in a high-profile place seems to have made a simple, articulate case for keeping that money in there.

The Republicans have been damning the stimulus because it's going to tax dollars and because a lot of the planned spending is not, apparently, directly going to rev up the economy.

So they go and cut spending that will directly employ Americans -- and thus stimulate the economy -- and save tax dollars that otherwise would have been spent on energy bills.

WTFFFFFFF???

I mean, you can completely trash these two-bit palookas in one soundbite. Why is no-one doing it?

I'm just an ignorant African, so it's possible I'm missing something. Please tell me I'm missing something!

Whiskerfish On Obama talks tough on the need for investment posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 6 Responses

minor correction on the above

It'll be -- not I'll be -- in full production in 2011...On Does anyone think battery swap-out is useful or even needed for electric vehicles? posted 9 months, 4 weeks ago 11 Responses

thanks biod

for reminding us how gross TV can be!

Why don't you start a campaign against the show?

WhiskerfishOn New travel and cooking shows valorize the very practices destroying frogs and other living things posted 10 months ago 4 Responses

disaster in the works

It's obvious that Vilsack is a thousand miles from admitting the gigantic problems that the US corn-ethanol program has unleashed around the world.

Food prices in Africa are still high and the land-rush to grow food and biofuels here is continuing, spelling disaster for the ecology and rural land rights.

WhiskerfishOn Vilsack chats up reporters about climate and ethanol posted 10 months ago 7 Responses

gulls (a story for grist) canadoids and shear-pins

1. Initial reports suggest geese were to blame. These are likely migrant Brant, in for the winter, or resident 'Canadoid' geese. The Canadoids are a human-created hybrid of different subspecies of Canada Goose. Unlike 'natural' Canadas, they don't really migrate. Many people have suggested bumping 'Canadoid' off, as they cause a lot of problems in urban areas and compete with/genetically pollute, 'natural' Canadas. Maybe this accident will lend some impetus to this?

2. JFK airport has for years quietly been shotgunning what by now must be literally hundreds of thousands of gulls because of the supposed danger they present to aircraft. They've pretty much left geese alone because they're worried about the PR backlash of killing them -- people think gulls are awful trash birds whereas they think geese are cute. This is one of the big under-reported enviro crime stories of the NYC area, and it would be great for grist to look into it. It's insane that a lethal control policy would not target the birds that are the real problem -- Canadoid geese, mainly, because of their bulk -- but would wipe out huge numbers of smaller and hence less-problematic species.

3. Biodiversivist: One of the little problems with these shear pins is that if they are not looked after that well or get old, the engine sometimes comes off when it isn't meant to. There was a recent incident of this in Cape Town where a Boeing 737-200 lost an engine on takeoff. Tho the pilot managed a miracle go-around and safe landing, it led to the bankruptcy of the airline, Nationwide. If you google around you'll find at least 3 other incidents of this type, all involving Boeing 737-200s, in the US. Scary!

4. BTW on a recent flight into Cape Town the planed did a sudden jink to port just before finals. I was at a starboard window and immediately after saw a sedate chevron of Great White Pelican cruising past just a hundred yards away from the wingtip! Needless to say I congratulated the pilot on his high-class field ornithology...

there is a creepy precedent for this

Rightwing Merican Christian missionaries have since the 1960s used remote burger-fryups to bring 'civilisation' and 'god' to remote Amerindian peoples.

It was standard procedure in the recent past (may still be, who knows) to have pictures of tribal people munching on burgers in church fundraising material with captions like "Bob, the tribe's medicine man, who's just abandoned his old name of Uma to mark his ascent into the Light of God and away from superstition, beginning his journey into Christian civilization by eating a burger"

As in 'here, see, the natives are eating like us, burger = white person = god, now give us more money to drive around in SUVs on permanent vacation in tropical countries pretending like we're good people' etc.

No, I am not joking.

This stuff makes me ill.

WhiskerfishOn Burger King launches film Whopper Virgins, simplifies U.S. to land of fast food posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 2 Responses

ah, David

just to set the record straight, not to seek 'publicity' but because, well, you should: I alerted the gristmillers to the Monbiot interview before Joe Romm did... perhaps you should read the contributions of us 'nobodies' a little more often.

Monbiot is extremely well-known among enviros/enviro media people in the 'rest of the world'. We follow his work closely. It's a sad mark on US enviros that they seem almost as parochial and self-referential as the US in general -- even someone like Monbiot has a hard time getting noticed in the US, but in many ways he's streets ahead of the so-called 'best' over Stateside.

As tidal pointed out, people like Revkin are unfortunately shackled by a bizarre and intellectually-unjustifiable swerving towards 'balance'. Monbiot lays out his arguments and then references as much as possible -- what a difference!

Whiskerfish

BTW: Full disclosure: I've interacted w Monbiot informally in the recent past and enjoyed his company. I happen to think that he's one of the brightest people I've met in this field, and am as a result totally biased in his favour.On Journalist interrogates head economist of International Energy Agency posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 5 Responses

Pangolin

you said

"If the IEA projections about oil decline pan out cars are dead tech. Passenger jet travel is dead tech. Chemical agriculture with sprays of herbicides and pesticides is a dead tech. Whole chunks of the economy that have relied up till now upon the cheap shipment of non-essential goods hundreds or thousands of miles are going to face customers who are hoarding their money in the face of economic uncertainty. The worlds major oil fields are in decline and the economic engine to finance new drilling is as dead as a capsized rig."

this is why this vid clip is so important. You must remember that the declines they're talking about are in conventionsl oil -- there's still quite a bit of tar-sand and coal that can be made into oil.

My concern is that with the looming threat of so much infrastructure becoming 'dead tech', govts will turn to tar-sand and coal to provide liquid petroleum. That would be a climate disaster, as in Game Over.

WhiskerfishOn After Poland talks, a new reality starts to set in, says McKibben; 350 ppm must be the goal posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 22 Responses

amazing

the importance of the story is manyfold.

It explains the lunacy of the lack of planning of most govts. It sharpens the debate around re-tooling of transport infrastructure for the general public. I can't help thinking that it means that we're screwed -- the pressure to develop tar sands and oil-from-coal will be massive.

Most of all it puts the IEA in a corner like I've never seen them be put there outside of irrelevant, wonky discussion groups (look at the popularity of this video on guardian.co.uk) etc., puts a face on an organisation that many people have taken for granted, and exposes the fragility of their work.

Have you ever had this stuff laid out for you so clearly? I don't think so. Has the general public ever had it laid out like this, 'from the horse's mouth'? I don't think so. How many mainstream media reports have you seen that trumpet the IEA's new, revised, conventional-oil depletion rates? They're too busy writing about flying shoes.

WhiskerfishOn After Poland talks, a new reality starts to set in, says McKibben; 350 ppm must be the goal posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 22 Responses

just to sharpen the debate

how about looking at the most important video clip of the year?

http://tinyurl.com/6lp2ru

Whiskerfish (wondering why y'all haven't noticed this yet)On After Poland talks, a new reality starts to set in, says McKibben; 350 ppm must be the goal posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 22 Responses

a little push for a post-oil world

possibly the most important piece of video you will watch this year.

http://tinyurl.com/6lp2ru

I'm not kidding.

Whiskerfish
On Cellulosic ethanol ranks dead last posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 31 Responses

plain old rent-seeking...

... under the shade of the financial crisis.

That's all.

WhiskerfishOn CNN cuts entire environmental, science, and technology news staff posted 12 months ago 2 Responses

URLs: S African denialist articles

http://www.noseweek.co.za/article.php?current_article=139 ...

and

http://www.noseweek.co.za/article.php?current_article=143 ...

and even

http://www.noseweek.co.za/article.php?current_article=136 ...

Subscription required -- with the exchange rate being what it is, very affordable for US$-earning folk.

WhiskerfishOn Some final thoughts on Politico, skeptics, and the next con posted 1 year ago 18 Responses

This s**t has gone around the world

Just a quick note: One can't soft-pedal Loveley's nonsense. These articles get circulated all around the world, into places where there are not enough debunkers to counter them.

South Africa has the world's fifth-largest coal reserves. There is a HUGE push to hugely expand coal-burning to an extent that would make this country easily the highest per-capita user of coal in the world.

I have documented how local 'experts', funded by Exxon-supported entities in the US and using the same talking points, tactics and references as US-based deniers, have influenced the govt to ignore global warming. (We're not talking small-town newspaper punditry -- we're talking people being invited to dinners with govt. ministers to get them to change policy.)

The deniers here have had a nearly free ride because there are very few journos who have the background in climate change or the investigative nouse to expose them (my articles stand alone in the wilderness, so to speak). Loveley needs to be shot down, early and loudly, to stop her nonsense spreading.

She's only a cub, you say. Tough. The media biz is tough. If I had anything to say to her it would be 'welcome to the world, baby, now pick yourself off the ground and don't screw up like that again. The planet matters more than your feelings.'

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Some final thoughts on Politico, skeptics, and the next con posted 1 year ago 18 Responses

White on scapulars

is only visible because this bird has fluffed out the feathers in that area. If it was sitting upright and at rest you probably would not see any white as you would only see the edges for the feathers, which are dark.

And you thought bird ID was simple ;) I have 20 yrs experience and I still get caught short!

Cheeers

WhiskerfishOn Urban hawk attacks posted 1 year ago 12 Responses

responses

1. Cattle in Africa are often kept overnight in an enclosure (known in S Africa as a 'kraal') even if they range widely in the day. You could do the poop-scoop number there quite easily, even if you lose much of the dung-crop out in the field.

2. Yes there are permaculturists in many parts of Africa. Governments, overwhelmed with 'support' from foreign companies and equally parasitic do-gooder NGOs, tend to ignore them, so their operations stay small. But they are growing.

3. IMHO, many of these problems are not technical. Many great methods for doing all sorts of sustainable things have been worked out in Africa. If we got rid of the corrupt govts and backwards societal norms along with 90% or foreign 'aid' we might get somewhere. Building functional democracies in Africa is a lot more important than many people think. If there were govts that were kept in line by empowered citizens who actually understood the benefits of modern democracy and plural politics the 'aid' organisations would go out of business because people would actually develop trust across countries and be able to develop the sophisticated institutions that are needed for any kind of 'development', sustainable or not.

Whiskerfish

PS Amazing -- I sent you an email -- did you get it?On Impoverished Africans can't eat their own crops posted 1 year ago 18 Responses

Superconductor efficiency

What do you mean by 'improve energy efficiency by 3-4%'? Reduce transmission losses by 3-4%?

If so, burying cables and going to the huge bother and expense of surrounding them w liquid nitrogen for such a puny gain seems pointless.

?

WhiskerfishOn Like the interstate system, a new electrical grid would revolutionize power transmission posted 1 year ago 11 Responses

all over Africa

This biofuels nonsense is going on all over Africa, and has been for years -- but who's interested, it's only Africa... If you guys only knew how much land Monsanto was currently trying to grab to grow GM canola! (Don't worry, I'm looking into it.)

Jatropha is not only poisonous, it's also got huge invasive potential. And now Air New Zealand is making itself a hero for flying a test-flight on the stuff...

Sheesh.

BTW the Malawian experiment w subsidised fertilizer is interesting. It is, of course, old-fashioned synthetic, fossil fuel-based fertilizer. And it seems to have been a raging success. What do the organic farmers among us have to say about that?

Whiskerfish the AfricanOn Impoverished Africans can't eat their own crops posted 1 year ago 18 Responses

biofuels are...

...driving large-scale land theft, deforestation and unsustainable water use in Africa.

Highly efficient cellulosic or '3rd generation' biofuels (presuming such things come to pass) are not likely to change this -- they are simply likely to make land theft, deforestation and unsustainable water use more profitable, and hence more widespread.

People like Jonas can carry on sticking their heads in the sand, or they can wake up and smell the last wildlands of Africa burning to feed this madness. Biofuels are not a chance for the 'South' to get rich. They are merely another excuse for corrupt Third World elites and their multinational enablers to screw the poor out of their most valuable asset, their land.

Simple.

Whiskerfish in AfricaOn Economist says biofuels have pushed up global food prices by 75 percent posted 1 year ago 37 Responses

You're right

there is way too much unethical stuff going on in front of and behind the camera in too many of these shows.

What blows me away is that so much of it is so obvious to me, as a sometime biologist, but seems to be lost on the producers and viewers. Animals that are being filmed are so often obviously under stress, but this is not mentioned.

This is not to say that we must leave all beasts alone. Any interference in the name of research can mean risk to the subject -- but so much of this research, as you point out, is vital for us to figure out what is happening w the planet.

Where can we draw the line? I'm not sure.

WhiskerfishOn National Geographic's inane video clips of overactive researchers posted 1 year, 1 month ago 5 Responses

environmental standards - drop? dropping? dropped?

archigeek

I appreciate your response.

I think that a good indication that something is amiss here is the eagerness that State's have shown to blunt environmental requirements for these large solar arrays. Protections usually granted to rare desert turtles have been largely rescinded etc.

Just because an area gets called 'desert' by some people doesn't mean that nothing lives there. The environmental community is so obsessed with rainforest and (sometimes) other forest that the other habitats seem often to get forgotten. Savannahs, grasslands and 'deserts' all too often get ploughed up without a murmer.

We need solar PV on our rooftops -- not far away, under Enron-type companies' control.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Wind, solar thermal, and geothermal development outpaces expectations posted 1 year, 1 month ago 14 Responses

12 square miles of desert covered by solar panels

Lester, you say it like it's a good thing.

Those massive solar plants chew up huge tracts of precious wildland, cropland -- and wreck the scenery. 'Desert' is just the bullshitter's term for fragile, biodiverse, precious wildland that just happens to be arid.

We already have zillions of square miles of open rooftops, just waiting for solar panels. Why aren't you promoting their use?

If this post is any indication of the Earth Policy Institute's understanding of basic ecology then you guys clearly need to go back to college.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Wind, solar thermal, and geothermal development outpaces expectations posted 1 year, 1 month ago 14 Responses

African farming

No-one doubts that fertiliser and modern seed varieties can improve yields over traditional African slash-and burn, rainfed cropping. We all saw what happened to Zimbabwe when the 'white' farmers with their modern, chemical-intensive (but often not as intensive as in the US) farming methods were kicked off the land (inflation there is now north of 120 million % and thousands are starving).

But to say there is not an even better way is ridiculous -- e.g. modern organic methods. Don't presume that the incredibly crude methods traditionally practised by many African farmers bear any resemblance to contemporary, sophisticated organic ways of doing things! It seems that many foreigners do...

Just a thought!

Whiskerfish (African, in Africa, for all my sins!)
On With little oversight, BP, Chevron, ADM, and Cargill cook up next-gen biofuels posted 1 year, 1 month ago 16 Responses

killing trolls

I know you're not supposed to feed trolls, so I'm proposing killing them off.

I read gristmill because I find nuggets of interest here more regularly than other places.

But jabailo and paleocon have so sullied this environment with such absolutely trivial bullshit that I feel I must ask the powers that be to block their IP addresses from this forum.

I'm all for freedom of speech and un-PC views, but I cannot tolerate wading through their mindless nonsense any longer.

Please, David, can we get rid of them? I'm already down to reading Grist only twice a week instead of daily, largely because of the mounds of crap one has to wade through in the comments section.

I guess jabailo, at least, is being paid for his verbose knee-jerks (no-one else is so constantly ready with an intellectually bankrupt, stale comeback as him). I know his purpose is to pollute this forum. Let's stop the slick before it suffocates this ocean of ideas.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn More Couric and Palin, on drilling and climate change posted 1 year, 2 months ago 29 Responses

academics!

can't take em anywhere.

there's this pathetic, pedantic need to state the obvious (e.g. solar power and darkness having issues with one another) which overwhelms clear thinking on so many occasions...

sheesh...

WhiskerfishOn Nature magazine gives short-shrift to baseload solar posted 1 year, 2 months ago 9 Responses

what blows me away

is that no-one seems to get that the REAL Road to Nowhere -- the one on Gravina -- is the perfect thing to show Palin up for the bullshitting, taxpayer dollar-wasting bimbo that she is.

Not a single big paper seems to have actually SENT A REPORTER TO KETCHIKAN. Fer crying in a bucket - there are TWO or more flights a day from Seattle!

So we're stuck with a bunch of maybe she did, maybe she didn't bs in the papers. Even the Huffington Post misses the boat...

The arrogance to think that you can report remotely on this stuff is embarassing. There's this uppity 'WTF, it's only Alaska' attitude from the media that plays perfectly into Palin's framing game. They write in an careless way, don't know the territory and can't see the obvious lies -- because they're not on the ground, seeing the obvious road.

Isn't it scary that someone sitting in Cape Town, South Africa, has a better idea of Ketchikan than the New York Times does?

WhiskerfishOn VP acceptance speech hits on energy issues posted 1 year, 2 months ago 41 Responses

The road to nowhere is real! PALIN supports it!

I'll say it again -- and so should all of you.

Nevermind the 'bridge to nowhere' that Palin supposedly canned, what about the REAL road to the bridge that she hasn't?

What sort of idiot stops a bridge -- but carries on pouring millions into building an ecologically-destructive road to that bridge?

That has NO POSSIBLE FUNCTION unless the bridge is built?

Reprise:

As we speak, they're trashing a swathe of nature on Gravina Island (the island opposite the town of Ketchikan) to build massive roads to 'link up to the bridge'. Gravina currently has a population in the low hundreds, who commute by boat to Ketchikan.

Ketchikan relies on unspoilt natural scenery for its tourist industry. In other words, the State of Alaska is using Federal tax dollars to inflict damage on Ketchikan's economy. (Tourism is is the town's largest industry.)

Which contractor's pocket is being lined for building useless, environmentally-damaging infrastructure? Why is the NYT not digging into this? Where are the TV ads with sweeping aerial shots of this road? Crap -- I flew over the area a couple months ago -- the evidence of lunacy is in palin sight!

If this is effective governance, Mrs Palin, then I'll be a money-grubbing civil engineering firm in your State anyday!

Whiskerfish (back in Africa from Alaska)On VP acceptance speech hits on energy issues posted 1 year, 2 months ago 41 Responses

Mitigation and, uh, mitigation

The real problem with a lot of these studies is that they confuse measures to actively reduce the concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere with measures to avoid the future release of more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

e.g. stopping a rainforest from being knocked down certainly helps prevent things getting worse in terms of the climate breakdown situation, but does not necc actively help things get better (assuming that a mature forest is either carbon-neutral or not nearly as effective a 'carbon sponge' as a fast-growing, young forest).

However, replanting a forest on long-denuded land actively lowers CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

It seems to me that calling the conservation of existing forest a 'mitigation' measure isn't quite the same as calling another activity, that actively reduces the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, a 'mitigation' measure. Comparing them leads to all sorts of half-policies and other types of responsibility-evasion.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Biofuels: not cost-effective or lucrative for climate change or business posted 1 year, 2 months ago 17 Responses

Zombie species

is, I think, a better term than 'ghost' species, and also used by ecologists to describe species that have no real chance of escaping near-term extinction.

WhiskerfishOn Disappearing owls, threatened forests, and the city-country conflict posted 1 year, 2 months ago 6 Responses

Brazilian ethanol HAS killed forests, and WILL...

BTW - please can we get over echoing the Brazilian propaganda re the 'sustainability' of their ethanol?

Massive expansion of sugarcane in recent decades has trashed a lot of Atlantic Coastal Forest, imperiled watersheds and thousands of wild species. I know, I've been there.

A reason you might not have heard of it is because there's hardly any of it left (less than 10% of its original extent). Another reason is that narrow-minded journos think the only thing that matters is the Amazon. They get the willies when the Big A gets touched, but don't seem to notice as the rest of the planet goes up in flames.

It's super-biodiverse, and supplies water to many of the major coastal cities. Try putting 'Atlantic Forest' into wikipedia and see what I mean.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Bearded freak hippie discusses biofuels with Bill Scher posted 1 year, 3 months ago 23 Responses

Definitions and hangings

So - we're making progress, and from here it seems that the progress is admitting that perhaps my points weren't so trivial after all.

RDMiller: You claim I distort points, and can't be debated with. Hmmm. The point that I hung you up on was a verbatim quote from an earlier post of yours in this thread, nothing added and nothing deleted.

Perhaps you'd like to show how I distorted what you provided us with?

Perhaps you'd also like to explain how rhetoric like 'healthy forests' (a term of such infinitely variable meaning as to be utterly helpless) and blanket statements such as those Backcut is given to making re fire etc. get us any further here?

I fear you've yet to comprehend how problematic your language is.

I fear you've also not quite comprehended that the problem here is not merely a technical one: It's far more fundamental than that. It's a question of attitudes and how to form them. No amount of good technology is going to help when the people who operate it are stuck in eco-destructive modes of thinking.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Heard that somewhere before?

WhiskerfishOn Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

FSC

RDMiller

you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the FSC is and who controls it.

It is NOT 'independent', i.e. not independent of the major timber/pulp companies. They are an integral part of it, along with some conservation organisations. There is huge tension within the FSC,  as many of the wood corps spend lots of time trying to water its mandate down, and often succeed.

As I and others have documented, the FSC has given its label to millions of hectares of monocultural tree farms that have been established on extremely fragile wildlands in various parts of the world. For example, in South Africa, FSC-certified plantations have wrecked grasslands, contributed to species extinctions, and dried up major rivers that hundreds of thousands of people and much wildlife depend on. If you doubt what I say, read for yourself what Sappi and Mondi have done to the grasslands of the Mpumalanga escarpment, and the rivers that flow down it.

The FSC also certifies paper that is only partly sourced from certified sources, thus giving 'cover' to unsustainably-sourced pulp all over the world. I can buy paper in the store down the road from my house that carries an FSC label yet is almost half made of old-growth or unsustainably harvested forest in the former Soviet Union. The other pulp comes from the aforementioned South African 'green death' tree farms.

The world's forests may (or may not) be better off for the existence of the FSC, but it's a deeply flawed organisation. Your reification of it betrays a major misunderstanding of how it operates and what it is capable of - or perhaps you just work there?

If even a 'respectable' organisation such as the FSC provides cover for so many harmful shenanigans, how on earth do you expect US forests to be safe from abuse once the cellulosic ethanol plants go up?

WhiskerfishOn Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

ecological ignorance - RDMiller & co.

I've skimmed a number of these emails - sometime later I'll print them out and go though them more carefully - but for now it's obvious that RDMiller & Jonas etc. are rather fundamentally ignorant of biodiversity fundamentals as they claim their opponents to be about some other things. Their normative statements about biodiversity and their echoing of the stunningly stupid 'healthy forests' rhetoric of the US timber industry shows us that they've got a lot of learning to do.

e.g.

1. The target of conserving 10% of the planet's surface as 'natural' in order to conserve wild biodiversity (a target set by some conservation organisations many years ago) is nowhere near sufficient to do that job. We need far, far more. ML Rosenzweig and others demonstrated this a long time ago. Before you carry on making asses of yourselves by saying we have enough land to produce biofuels and all the other stuff we need as well as conserve the world's wild species, do yourselves a favour and get a rudimentary understanding of island biogeography, species-area curves and so on into your heads. Hint: Start with figuring out the concept of 'zombie species'. Once you've done that, we can have a sensible discussion.

2. Have you guys even vaguely thought about the value of crop and timber 'waste' in terms of sustainable agriculture/forestry? Do you have the foggiest clue what it does to soil systems to remove all this stuff from the cycle, or change it's form before putting it back? Again, once you've demonstrated that you do - and you haven't - we can talk further.

3. Dead, bent, diseased and otherwise 'unhealthy' trees have huge and very important roles to play in just about every ecosystem, and not just because they give certain saprophytic fungi something to do. A study I've seen shows bird diversity dropping by about a third in sample plots in African savannas from which all dead wood was removed. Get beyond Pinchot - he had no real understanding of biodiversity.

4. Forests are not the only ecosystems that matter. One of the major loopholes in the EU 'sustainability standards' for biofuels is that they play into the public perceptions that ploughing up grasslands and semi-arid areas and so on is OK (unless they've been identified as being special or conserved as national parks - which in many countries will not happen) because you're not knocking down big trees. Many non-forest ecosystems are in bigger trouble than forests.

WhiskerfishOn Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

Oh dear

taking land to grow fuel = higher food prices + more wrecked wildlands

It's that simple. It does not matter which fuel that is.

If you could build a biofuels infrastructure within the footprint of the oil industry's, that was not reliant on nonrenewable inputs like phosphate rock-derived fertiliser, we could start talking about sustainable fuel.

Restaurant grease will not power more than a micro-percentage of our needs. No-one, to my knowledge, has yet upscaled the micro-algae type processes to anything more than research level.

This really is just a very slick capital-raising tool for Tickell.

WhiskerfishOn A review of Fields of Fuel posted 1 year, 5 months ago 11 Responses

Wynn's Clean Green

I've been told that this is pretty good, actually.

Anyone know more?

WhiskerfishOn A test of eight green bathroom-cleaning products posted 1 year, 8 months ago 23 Responses

Wolverine - misunderstanding!

I realise I'm writing my contributions to this debate in a hurry and perhaps not expalining myself very well, but Wolverine, you are really making no sense. It's as if you haven't read or understood what I've written.

1. re elephants in 'harmony with natural environment' - elephants' "natural environment" has included significant numbers of humans for (at least) tens of millennia. i.e. human predation has been part of the environment that our present-day elephants have evolved to live in. Very early pre-humans may have evolved in east-central Africa but their followers spread all over the continent very rapidly after something approximating early Homo sapiens / post-Homo erectus came into being. Trying to say that southern Africa is somehow different is bollocks - we have archeaological evidence from the Sterkfontein Cave and from Blombos Cave (near Cape Town) that all sorts of humanoids have been far south for very long. The frequency of large fires has also been raised by the presence of humans for a long time. So humans are and have been a major source of elephant mortality.

2. Given that humans raise the frequency of fires, they've also lowered their intensity (fuel does not build up as much) - again, for tens of thousands of years, humans have done in Africa the opposite of what they have recently done in North America. Think on the implications of that.

3. Do a websearch on some recent big fires on Kruger and the outpouring of international sympathy for the burned elephants that were found wandering around with strips of skin hanging of them and which were euthanased or rehabilitated at great expense instead of being allowed to die in agony over weeks (which is what would have happened 'naturally'). Now go figure what would happen if our large parks would deliberately set large - more 'natural' - fires and this would happen to hundreds of ellies every year. Never mind what you think of large fires - HSUS and IFAW and their fellow carpetbaggers have the political and financial muscle to make things very shitty for southern African park managers.

4. The parks try to avoid large fires because fires cause localised extinctions (think like tortoises and other small animals get wiped out within the fire zone). Since so much netural habitat has been destroyed in teh past century many parks are now islands of natural habitat surrounded by agriculture or urban areas or whatever. e.g. if you kill off all the tortoises in a park there are no tortoises nearby to repopulate the park after the fire - so if you want to maintain species diversity in teh park you are limited to small fires - which generally don't kill elephants.

5. If modern parks are to maintain biodiversity - as many wild species as possible - they have to be managed. This means that certain keystone species need to ahve their numbers manipulated. This means fires have to be carefully planned and restricted in area. This is an unavoidable reality. The world is diffent now tahn it was just 100 years ago. We have to understand islands and start applying the lessons of island biogeography to park management. It's no accident that islands have lost such a phenomenal percntage of their species in the last 2 000 years, as humans have colonised them - we've got to stop this happening to our parks.

6. re 'traditional indigenous people all over are far more in harmony with nature than modern humans' - you mised my point - they appear to be in harmony with 'nature' because it is a 'nature' that they shaped before the previous version was recorded! There is more and more evidence that even very early humans profoundly altered natural environments in virtually every colonisation. Go read about how Australian aborigianls have been fire-managing that continent for 40 000 years - and how modern wildlife managers are having to emulate their human-set fires to maintain biodiversity - because so many Australian animals are adapte d to human-set fires! Australia looked very diffrent before the aborigianls arrived.

6. Even if you wanted to, you cannot go killing off humans. Never mind the moral aspect - humans themselves will stop you killing them off. You will not succeed in your mission. Think about that.

7. Knowing what we know about elephants I would like to see them managed as humanely as possible. Besides the earlier points re maintaining biodiversity and large fires, I don;t think it's humane to conrol ellie populations by burning them in mega-fires and letting many die in agony, even if that more natural than shooting them. A top marksman with a large-calibre rifle can kill an elephant very quickly - and national parks has some extremely professional marksmen at their service. During the pre-1994 culls they tried to consistenly improve their techniques to make the cull as humane as possible - tehy tried various euthanasing drugs instead of shooting with bullets (until Scoline was discovered to be painful) and by 1994 had refined the technique so that a team of trained marksmen in helicopters and on the ground could kill a whole social group in under 2 minutes. Many farm animals die more cruelly in modern 'humane' abbatoirs. Of course, some sort of contraception would be an even better option - but the current contraceptives, as I've said before, cause behavioural changes in elephants that make them kill and harass other elephants - which is also not humane. They are also very expensive. Science has not yet produced an affordable contraceptive that does not cause social chaos among the animals. When such a drug does appear, I'm sure national parks will grab it
   

My general point is that we live in a world that is profoundly different to that of even 100 years ago. Thinks that would have been practically and politically possible then are not now, and vice versa. Within our current world there is no 'going back to nature'. IF we wish to amintain as mcuh biodiversity as possible we need to manage the remnants of 'wild' and semi-wild systems as best we can. Within that process there are unavoidable tradeoffs - and you don't seem to have understood that at all. There are financial, political and skills limitations that North Americans can't seem to come close to grasping unless they've spent time here. We have to work within those.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn South Africa to resume elephant culling despite criticism posted 1 year, 9 months ago 25 Responses

In today's news...

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id= ...

Why would African elephants have evolved this aggressive way of interacting with humans had humans not been an 'enemy' for a very long time? It took less than a thousand years for very primitively-armed early human colonists of South America to wipe out that continent's FIVE known species of native elephants - probably because they elephants do not see humans as a threat...

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn South Africa to resume elephant culling despite criticism posted 1 year, 9 months ago 25 Responses

error correction

sorry - two posts above the para should read

However, it is precisely by making the ecosystem more 'natural' and excluding 'human' factors (like humans themselves, and the modifications they bring to the landscape) that ELEPHANTS have been allowed to thrive.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn South Africa to resume elephant culling despite criticism posted 1 year, 9 months ago 25 Responses

Human conduct and pests

Canis: You said "Because of human conduct, deer and elephants now have come to look like "pest species" in many areas."

There is an essential difference between the human conduct that has allowed deer to become 'pests', and elephants to become 'pests'. In the case of the deer, it was the destruction of their natural predators. In the case of elephants, it was protection of the animals themselves.

If you want to call animals 'pests' - which I will follow for the sake of this argument - then this is key.

A 'solution' to the deer 'problem' could be to reintroduce natural predators to the northeastern USA, where they are now extinct. In other words, to make the ecosystem they inhabit more 'natural'.

However, it is precisely by making the ecosystem more 'natural' and excluding 'human' factors (like humans themselves, and the modifications they bring to the landscape) that they have ben alowed to thrive.

When the Kruger Park was established about a century ago there were no known elephants in it - none. They had all been shot by ivory hunters. Over the years, elephants from neighbouring Mozambique moved into the area (being rather intelligent, they realised they were safer there than in Moz where they were still being hunted). Today, despite decades of culling by the Park authorities that stopped only in 1994 (at least 400 animals were killed every year) elephant numbers in the park are heading for 20 000. That's the result of excluding most of the human interference in their environment. If you look at studies of east African parks where elephants ahve been shielded from poaching (very few parks have succeeded in this) you'll see the same pattern - insane population rises, until there are no trees left except of fenced-off ones.

In other words deer become pests when humans interfere with the ecosystems they inhabit, and elephants become pests when we leave their habitat 'to nature'.

I don;t see how you can be so sure that killing is not the answer. Perhaps - we don;t know for sure - it 'always' was.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn South Africa to resume elephant culling despite criticism posted 1 year, 9 months ago 25 Responses

Wolverine

go live in a cave, honestly. Of all the stupid throwaway comments that could be made...

WhiskerfishOn South Africa to resume elephant culling despite criticism posted 1 year, 9 months ago 25 Responses

not everywhere

coal is FAR from dead and gone in the rest of the world - literally thousands of prospecting permits have been granted in South Africa in the last six months to help 'ease the electricity crisis', and Mozambique is opening giant new mines in the Zambezi valley etc.

Whiskerfish in AfricaOn Another bad week for coal posted 1 year, 9 months ago 7 Responses

OPEC

funny - the experts I spoke to at OPEC in Vienna a couple months ago said (with the caveat that 'predictions are always wrong') that oil would trade in the range of 80-110 dollars per barrel for the forseeable future. Prices might never go down beyond 70 ever again.

WhiskerfishOn Do the experts know anything about oil prices? posted 2 years ago 12 Responses

Do you have any idea what 9 000 000 000...

...will look like?

If you've travelled as much as I have, and realise how little wiggle-room is left in how many places, you'll be very afraid by an extra 50% living like the average modern Taiwanese (never mind the disaster that'll ensue if we all try to be 'Mericans). (Travel around in e.g. India for a while and tell me how many unexploited ecosystem fragments are left. Then add even 20% to the human population, ramp up living standards, and figure the consequences.)

We'll possibly be able to feed them, and maybe be able to house them in something better than tin and plastic, but there'll be sweet bugger-all left of wild places or many wild species.

Don't be so blase about that number, David.

WhiskerfishOn Gore: Population one of the causes of climate change, but not one of the policy solutions posted 2 years ago 6 Responses

Ecologically-UNsound advice, Umbra

Dear me, you really have slipped up this time.

In most parts of the world, mice in houses are non-native species. Relocating them into the 'wild' could have a number of outcomes:

1. New invasive population to compete with native mice

2. Introduction of new diseases to wild rodent population

3. Mice stressfully starve due to lack of knowledge of new territory or lack of food in new territory etc.

In the short term: Kill em humanely WITHOUT POISONS (which kill owls etc. as they go up the food chain) - snap traps work well. Use peanut butter or tomato as bait.

In the long term: Close up holes and don't leave food lying around. If there's nothing to eat they won't come.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Umbra on live trapping posted 2 years, 1 month ago 28 Responses

helluva good question

as an enviro/biologist/media generator I can only say BRAVO to your question.

The media biz is chock full of exploiters wanting folks to work for free 'for a good cause'. Bottom line: Profits get made by those who don't deserve them and VERY NB many of those with the skills/energy/talent to make good enviro media don't ever get enough cash in their own bank accounts to be independent of the exploiters and so many great enviro films DON'T GET MADE.

A better way of asking the union question would perhaps have been to ask how people were paid. After all, some non-union productions do pay their people well. However, the point was made and your story fleshes out many of the issues really well.

People who volunteer too much of their time risk being undervalued and thus ignored. People pay for psychotherapy for very good reasons. We should pay enviro filmmakers well for the same ones and more.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Leo's feel-good press conference is interrupted by a feel-bad question posted 2 years, 2 months ago 10 Responses

arob

I'd need more details on who you were working for before I passed on any (by now probably rather out of date) info. Send an email to wetclaws@yahoo.com, and they'll pass it on to me.

WhiskerfishOn Newsweek's cover story deserves Pulitzer -- and global action posted 2 years, 3 months ago 5 Responses

Back in 2000/2001

I broke the coltan story to the British media. At that point it was worth more than the timber and diamonds flowing from the Congo, and its miners were invading national parks and killing gorillas and elephants.

However, the cellphone companies (who were buying most of the coltan) didn't want to make much of a fuss about it (the phones were just taking off, and they didn't want a downer on the party), and did not ever make publicised efforts to source their coltan elsewhere. There was much talk behind the scenes between them and some gorilla organisations that never really came to much, as far as I could figure out. A Belgian group called 'no blood on my mobile' was about the highest-profile effort to get the thing sorted out. They, at least, got Sabena to stop flying coltan ore out of central Africa in the cargo holds of its passenger planes.

The UN has documented the web of corruption that feeds the forest invasions in quite some depth since at least 2000, but very little has been done about it. Various military leaders who control the areas are selling timber, ivory, coltan, diamonds etc. through a network of mostly Lebanese middlepersons (one of the 'queenpins' is a woman) and it's being moved out to global markets by arms dealers and other nefarious types (British, Russian, Chinese etc.)

The eastern DRC is just too far away, I guess. Although gorillas sometimes make the press, the thousands of people who are being killed in the rush for riches in that area barely get a mention.  Their names are recorded on obscure French-language Congolese expat listservs, if at all.

WhiskerfishOn Newsweek's cover story deserves Pulitzer -- and global action posted 2 years, 3 months ago 5 Responses

weight

a huge 22kg - according to the article. No wonder no-one wants to drive theirs uphill...

AdamOn Paris bike rental scheme takes off posted 2 years, 3 months ago 4 Responses

bridge bust

Just fascinating to me how many ridiculously large SUVs were on the bridge that just went crashing into the river - front page news all over the world...

Perhaps we should be counting SUVs in disaster photos?

WhiskerfishOn To count ... heh posted 2 years, 4 months ago 5 Responses

Actually, even more crap

On a second, slower reading of the Edwards debate it's clear he hides the fact that a chief driver of the biofuels malarkey in Africa is the high oil price. Bringing down the price of oil means killing the biofuels biz, and killing any profit those poor African farmers might generate.

Also, most poor African farmers only have a few hectares to plough. Even with raised feedstock crop prices thanks to biofuels, maize etc. are not viable as cash crops on such a tiny scale (they are often viable as subsistence crops, though). I.e. the only people that are likely to make money off biofuel crops are very big landowners with tractors and combine harvesters etc. - who are pretty rich already.

Edwards' uses a buch of crudely articulated cliches to perpetuate the boondoggle. He does not deserve anyone's support.

WhiskerfishOn An interview with John Edwards about his presidential platform on energy and the environment posted 2 years, 4 months ago 15 Responses

just once

could the f-ing automakers just come to the party.

Just bloody once.

WhiskerfishOn Are wack posted 2 years, 4 months ago 2 Responses

so real???

Holy crap, plum, this thing looked like a spoof from frame 1! You Mericans are so accustomed to schlock that you can't tell the diffs...

WhiskerfishOn I've watched this video four times now and I can't stop laughing posted 2 years, 4 months ago 4 Responses

where can we get the whole of Hansen's email?

WhiskerfishOn Yeah, coal again posted 2 years, 4 months ago 11 Responses

Absurd & The Missing Questions

I'll guess that synthetic roo boots are more eco-unfriendly that the real ones. How much pollution goes out form the plastics manufacturing process? That said, leather tanning isn't great either.

If you're going to shoot the roos you may as well make boots - and steaks - out of them. But why isn't anyone doing a proper comparison of the enviro impacts of synthetic vs real leather? The animal rights groups make too much money, I suspect, and it's not in their interest.

WhiskerfishOn Court upholds ban on kangaroo-hide sneaks posted 2 years, 4 months ago 4 Responses

conc solar vs spread-out stuff

What does this have to say about conc solar?

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,,2 ...

WhiskerfishOn Solar has arrived posted 2 years, 4 months ago 16 Responses

all those happy females

I couldn't help thinking that the visual emphasis on sausages was somehow meant to invoke multiple engorged phalli (or is it phalluses?)

Truly bizarre! Did David LaChapelle shoot the images?

WhiskerfishOn Gross posted 2 years, 4 months ago 4 Responses

take a look at this bs

Peru wants to plant zillions of hectares of non-native industrial tree plantations where forest once was, and they're calling it 'regrowing forest'.

When will this crap end? Eucalyptus sucks water and can become invasive. I wonder if they'll get carbon offset funding for making these green deserts?

http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443 ...

WhiskerfishOn Just when you thought it was over posted 2 years, 4 months ago 15 Responses

What's so special

about rural communities?

Why isn't it better if half these people just moved to the cities?

WhiskerfishOn How legislators can help the rural posted 2 years, 4 months ago 11 Responses

why do it?

David

I think you held up well, given the circumstances.

But why put yourself into that freakshow where every question has been framed as a wedge? Where that bunch of sad jerks has all the control?

Analysed from a media psychology point of view, Fox is way scarier than anything Goebbels ever put together.

Stay outta there - don't give them legitimacy that they don't deserve!

WhiskerfishOn Videos for your viewing pleasure, if that's the word for it posted 2 years, 4 months ago 19 Responses

uh oh

the comments at the beginning of this thread re food price increases being essentially trivial are so fully off the mark that - well, I would say something rude, but seeing as most of you have never really seen anyone starve or become severely malnourished I'll just pat you patronisingly on the head and hold my tongue.

US ethanol demand has DOUBLED the maize price in much of Africa in the last year. Maize is the staple food in much of Africa, and many people's chief source of protein. Bearing in mind that many Africans spend the MAJORITY of their income on food.. well, even ignorant North Americans can figure that one out. Biofuel is turning into one of the biggest social disasters since AIDS.

Whiskerfish (on the southern tip of Africa)On Globalization of the fuel vs. fuel debate posted 2 years, 4 months ago 50 Responses

Preserve lawns, say police

Mercy me!

http://www.news24.com/News24/Entertainment/Off_Beat/0,,2- ...

The lengths USers will go to in order to preserve the great eco-destroying lawn are astonishing...

WhiskerfishOn The song still has relevance today posted 2 years, 4 months ago 8 Responses

gee whiz

is there some sort of expensive school you can go to to learn how to wiggle around like that. They guy is ridiculous!

WFOn BASF CEO questions whether climate change is a problem posted 2 years, 5 months ago 1 Response

Zarkov, meet Bailo

now please go off and play somewhere else together...

WFOn Hansen says scientists need lovin', too posted 2 years, 5 months ago 6 Responses

uh-oh, Village Idiot Denier Guy...

...recycling an idea made prominent by George Monbiot?

Your people not paying you enough, Bailo?

WhiskerfishOn Reps to discuss dropping the tax break on massive SUVs posted 2 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

small w*nkies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvC6RryUn0Y

think of this adapted to SUVs...

And I don't like the car tagging idea - there are horrible Big Brother implications.

WhiskerfishOn We can have both posted 2 years, 5 months ago 31 Responses

a bunch of w*nkers

I'm always amazed how little boys in adults' clothing spend their lives arguing about horsepower and acceleration - as if it's something that really matters when 90% of them spend their boring, middle-aged lives stuck pathetically in traffic jams.

When will the rest of us, who don't care if our vehicle goes from 0-60 in 8 seconds instead of 4, but care about fuel economy, stand up and laugh the circle-jerkers out of the debate?

WhiskerfishOn We can have both posted 2 years, 5 months ago 31 Responses

some good points

re the green community's hypocrisy re MBTE etc., but there are a few things missing, in my view.

1. Biodiversity implications of biofuels are not addressed.

2. No explanation is given for yield increses (of both corn and ethanol from that corn) and the costs of those increases.

3. The 'corn is the key transitional energy feedstock' argument is weak.

4. Can we please have a proper calculation of the land needed to produce ethanol from different feedstocks under different circumstances (farming techniques (organic vs not) & ethanol prodcution methods)? And what percentage of US demand that'll satisfied under different scenarios? This one of the bigger elephants in the room.

5. Still no counter to the argument that food will go up - globally, not just in the US.

6. The stuff on cellulosic is confused. Is it good or bad? Net energy gain or loss? Khosla's cellulosic may be cost-effective, but we need to know whey and what the energy balance implications are.

wallplugs w switches

I've noticed that all former British colonies have switches on their wallplugs.

All countires under heavy US influence don't seem to have them.

Why don't US wallplugs have switches?

WhiskerfishOn There oughta be a law: Off means off posted 2 years, 5 months ago 5 Responses

the tech might come from South Africa

courtesy of SASOL which was set up by the Apartheid govt to circumvent fuel sanctions. Their plant at Secunda is probably the world's largest point source of CO2, and has for decades caused thousands of square kilometres of land to be drenched with acid rain (they use really low-grade coal w high sulphur content - think H2SO4).

Check out this story:

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=563&fArt ...

This is one South African export that I'm really NOT proud of!

WhiskerfishOn It makes Senate Dems act like wussies posted 2 years, 5 months ago 23 Responses

E O Wilson

seems to have a very cavalier way w numbers.

His schpiels on extinction rates ahve been widely quoted by never verified. 10 000 species per day?

WhiskerfishOn Nice job, Einstein posted 2 years, 5 months ago 11 Responses

uh, 'artificial'...

Reservoirs, no matter how 'artificial', still take up space, i.e. destroy habitat. Your statement that there is no need to endanger fish & wildlife is a little optimistic.

My understanding is that good sites for pumped storage schemes are actually few and far between.

Here in South Africa we have one operational scheme (the Palmiet pumped-storage scheme) that destroyed quite a lot of hugely species-diverse fynbos habitat.

There is a second scheme, currently under construction, that'll damage a unique percolation wetland that happens to be one of only 4 known places on the planet that the endangered White-winged Flufftail (a bird) spends the non-breeding season (the critter breeds in a couple of wetlands in Ethipia and is on the verge of extinction). Google 'Braamhoek Flufftail' to learn more.

Although there might be lots of good things about pumped-storage there's no need to oversell it as a   zero-impact option. In South Africa's case, it's coal electricity sent by AC lines that send the water uphill...

WhiskerfishOn If renewables are to work, we need good storage posted 2 years, 5 months ago 23 Responses

CO2 is a 'well-mixed' gas

Dear Sam Wells

CO2 is a so-called 'well-mixed' gas in the atmosphere. I.e. it diffuses rapidly and levels of CO2 are pretty much equal across the globe.

Therefore your earlier statement re the 'separation' of CO2 sources and sinks in terms of the 'separation' the N and S hemispheres is misleading. CO2 released in the N hemisphere raises the global levels, so the notion that planting trees in the S hemisphere to mop up CO2 is not intrinsically misguided nor 'intellectually dishonest'. There may, however, be other problems with the idea.

WhiskerfishOn Dirt cheap carbon posted 2 years, 5 months ago 30 Responses

rhyming

Canis

in S Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and many parts of the UK, they do. Rhyme.

WhiskerfishOn Australia tries to distract from Kyoto posted 2 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

Read the book

There's a lot in there. It might not all be good, but, as he says, if you don't like his suggestions you are welcome to come up with better ones. He didn't set out to write a perfect book I think, rather to get people thinking about the magnitude of change required. It certainly got me thinking about a whole range of things.

He gets by without zillions of research assistents because he's a lot smarter than almost any other journalist I've ever met, and intellectually fearless.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Skip it posted 2 years, 5 months ago 18 Responses

You don't shape the story

March organisers can't hope to shape their story within the mainstream media. The media biz has a small bunch of set storylines that everything in the world gets forced into, and if you don't fit you get made to fit or ignored.

If the Black Bloc protests, then they'll make it a story about violence. If they don't, then a march of anything less than a million people 'isn't a story'.

As the old adage goes: A sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results each time.

Marches like this are, to the media at least, the same thing over and over again. They're going to treat them the same way, over and over again. Which is to say that images of violence will overshadow anything, and the whole story will be reduced to a crude, unresolved polemic about good guys and bad guys.

Don't be surprised that the message doesn't get out in the way that the organisers wanted it to, or that the politicians don't listen. The whole system's structure mitigates powerfully against that happening!

WhiskerfishOn Reflections from the scene of this weekend's G8 protests posted 2 years, 5 months ago 5 Responses

wow Eric

that's the wolliest thing I've read on invasive species in a long time.

While you might be right that some aren't as bad as they once seemed there are plenty others that are worse. And if you sit around and navel-gaze while they become established, you're really asking for trouble.

Whiskerfish On They may not all be bad. posted 2 years, 5 months ago 82 Responses

Bladerunner

did contain a cloned owl.

I watched it again recently and was completely blown away by how prescient its depictions of large cities  were - there is so much in that film that could come straight out of any megalopolis in East Asia right now. It's really hard to believe that it was made so long ago.

I keep the nest locations of the birds of prey I work on a closely-guarded secret. There are too many folks here in Cape Town that will steal eggs and chicks to keep for themselves as trophies or sell on to the Middle East where birds of prey are prized trinkets of the mega-wealthy.

A couple of years ago a well-known Japanese botanist was bust smuggling rare succulents from the desert near here. His fine was about US$50 000 - a mind-boggling sum in SA that made headlines (the conservation community FINALLY got a judge that took plant smuggling seriously!), but he paid it without blinking as he'd already made millions off his previous trips to this country. He still has his professorship in Japan.

Rare animals and 'untouched' wilderness really are becoming valuable possessions.

WhiskerfishOn Visit exotic travel spots before we obliterate them! posted 2 years, 5 months ago 13 Responses

Bailo = sad little troll

falcon - leave bailo down at the bottom of the garden, where he belongs. Treat him like a noisy child - the more he shouts, the more you should ignore him.

He's been a particularly persistent sad-ass bullshitter in this forum for some time now. He certainly isn't loved or appreciated by any other regular contributors, which leads me to think that he's either being paid to sow denialism in green forums or has a pathetic psychological need to make an idiot of himself in places where he's not welcome.

WhiskerfishOn Public presentations on global warming -- not as easy as you might think posted 2 years, 6 months ago 22 Responses

Amartya Sen

I recently went to a lecture (in packed hall) by Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen here in Cape Town.

What a waste of time. I left after 20 mins. He mumbled softly and intermittently into the mic (sounded like his dentures were playing up) and there were only 2 loudspeakers for an audience of thousands.

I'm just astonished how often the academic world tends to overlook the basics... And when I politely try to use my media experience to help them get their points across, they say what I'm telling them is 'trivial'! You go, JMG!

WhiskerfishOn Public presentations on global warming -- not as easy as you might think posted 2 years, 6 months ago 22 Responses

In South Africa...

AIT is the longest-running movie ever at the smallish off-mainstream theatre in the Waterfront shopping centre in downtown Cape Town. Thousands have seen it, and thousands more are seeing it at school screenings etc.

Have you ever stopped to think that it's universal appeal lies in its very smart use of images, and the fact that US media is so all-pervasive that people all over the world 'get' its cultural biases?

Perhaps earnest 'developing world' filmmakers don't understand that Hollywood is successful not because of 'imperial hegemony' in movie distribution, but tbecause mainstream Hollywood knows how to tell compelling stories via images better than anyone else?

Maybe the other films you cite are just boring?

Whiskerfish in AfricaOn A South American take on Gore's film posted 2 years, 6 months ago 3 Responses

Umm, Umbra...

While I generally LOVE your pieces, this one came across to me as a little confused. As someone who kills animals every now and again (mostly tortoises that have been half run-over on the highways of South Africa and are dying a lingering death) I find that bashing or squashing animals (say with a spade or a big rock) is a rather effective way of shipping them off to the afterlife very quickly and isn't actually cruel. You've got to do it with enough enthusiasm to make sure you don't have to follow up, if you get my drift. Jumping at the same time as throwing the rock down stops the blood getting on your shoes.

Although in the case of Cane Toads we do have the small matter of the splashy poison glands to deal with (perhaps a short sharp downward thrust of a spade though the middle of the body would avoid compressing the glands and spraying the poison around), I think that running around after them, catching them and transporting them in bag to a fridge (wriggling around and struggling to breathe - you'll need a plastic bag to avoid their poison polluting your fridge) is a worse idea. It exposes you to them and their poison more, and is far more stressful to them. And then there's the bag to dispose of (litter).

This sounds to me like a classic mommy-state method thought up by a modern Australian burocrat, more concerned with being 'safe' (i.e. in control) and needed than helpful or practical. Australia is now one of the world's most over-regulated, control-freakish 'safety first' societies, and this is a classic example of that playing out.

There is no way of living without killing things. Vegetarians displace and kill wild animals to grow their food. Cane toads are walking, crawling, invading eco-disaster in Australia - we shouldn't be too concerned that bashing them on the head is 'cruel'.

WhiskerfishOn Umbra on cane toads posted 2 years, 6 months ago 11 Responses

MEM cont

Hardly anyone in the media wants to cast a cynical eye on environmental or animal welfare organisations. They're seen as being above reproach. Hardly anyone, that is, besides right-wing hatchet-jobbers.

Enviro stuff is very difficult to do. You've got to balance a zillion different things and there will be more screw-ups than successes. But there are some organisations like, dare I say it, IFAW, that really take the piss from their donors. If you look at the salaries some folks at the top end are getting paid, and the obsessive secrecy around them, you've got to get really suspicious.

There's a difference betwen raking in the dollars and getting something done, but it seems that loads of organisations rank their effectiveness on the money they bring in and not the minds they change. Nowadays we have professional environmentalists that have no particular knowledge or love for nature, and that really scares the hell out of me.

So, Mr Roberts, how about a no-holds-barred look at IFAW, one of the largest animal welfare/'conservation' organisations on the planet? Find out how much they spend annually on chartering private Gulfstream jet trips... What Fred O'Regan, the current head honcho, thought of his childhood pet dog... How much they paid their founder, Davies, so they could carry on using his name and image to raise money after he left... and what Davies is doing now, along with David Barrit, spindoctor to South Africa's biggest fraudster, Brett Kebble...

The answers are out there, and some are rather easy to find.

WhiskerfishOn Interesting tales in a recent profile posted 2 years, 6 months ago 7 Responses

On the subject of the MSEM (mainstream e movement)

This site has lately been littered with ads for IFAW. This crowd rakes in millions upon millions of dollars per year to save whales and seals etc. but seems to do sweet bugger-all about actually stopping them from being killed. Lots of boats floating around Canada with people in orange survival suits, but no real action, especially in places like Namibia that are off the mainstream media's radar screen. IFAW has been raising cash off the back of the Namibian seal cull for years but has never intervened substantively to stop it. Their southern African campaign was for years headed up by an advertising/pr guy called David Barritt who worked as the spindoctor for South Africa's biggest fraudster, Brett Kebble (think Enron personified).

Grist might do well to look into IFAW and where their money goes (hint: start by finding the property value of their founder, Davies', mansion in Florida) and then have a long, hard think about continuing to run their advertising.

WhiskerfishOn Interesting tales in a recent profile posted 2 years, 6 months ago 7 Responses

bad idea, Barack

Here in South Africa we have one of the world's biggest liquid-fuel-from-coal plants. The Sasol plant at Secunda is also strongly rumoured to be the world's biggest point source of CO2 (I'm working on confirmation of that). Sasol is linked to our govt's loony ethanol-from-maize programme - they benefit when ethanol gets promoted as a vehicle fuel because they produce a lot of ethanol as a co-product of the petroleum-from-coal process, and they want new markets for it.

Read more here:

http://www.noseweek.co.za/article.php?current_article=141 ...

Perhaps Barack is trying to hit two birds w one stone?

Whiskerfish On That's what his support for CTL shows posted 2 years, 6 months ago 74 Responses

E NGOs

My experience is that the majority of staffers at E NGOs are watching their paychecks and their organisations' balance sheets rather than the sky.

As the sector has become professionalised value-conflicts have arisen that have not been addressed.

We are now paying the price for this.

WhiskerfishOn It's time to accept dire climate realities posted 2 years, 7 months ago 16 Responses

breaking eggs & omelettes etc.

biodiversivist

I think your comment was ignorant and out of order. As a sometime biologist who, every year, goes out and marks birds of prey, I am painfully aware of the risks involved. Every time you go out and trap an animal you run the risk of hurting or killing it. Your comment demonstrated an unfortunate ignorance of field biology in general and of the Asiatic Cheetah project in particular.

Radio tracking/collaring and other forms of marking like bird banding or patagial tagging or whatever deliver data that we wouldn't be able to get otherwise, faster and more accurately than other methods. There are doubtless a few 'bad apple' biologists who don't care enough for the welfare of the animals they study (I have met one or two out of the hundreds I have interacted with), but the vast, vast majority of biologists spend ages thinking about how to affix tracking or marking devices without causing the animal distress or harm. Uncaring and unprofessional biologists tend to get ostracised from the community pretty quickly.

In the case of the Asiatic Cheetah you have a highly endangered animal that ranges over massive distances and is impossible to follow. You need to find out where it goes and how it hunts etc. to conserve it. It is unfortunate that a few animals are temporarily stressed and inconvenienced while being collared - but it's better than the taxon going extinct.

Put your ego in your pocket and apologise. In an unqualified fashion.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Sometimes you have to take risks to save endangered species posted 2 years, 7 months ago 4 Responses

Journalism blues

Hi Canis and The 'Mill

the issues around journalism are deep and complex, but a lot of the present trouble has to do with where media organisations - here print is NB - make their money.

In the past a higher percentage of a newspaper company's profits came from the cover price. Today, most money comes from advertising. So the focus has shifted from giving readers something useful and relevant, to giving readers something 'addictive' that they want to read and the advertisers a properly-primed audience.

Also, in the past media organisations tended to be used as tools of political influence - now their role as money-making businesses is more important, because they're no longer owned by rich individuals or families with axes to grind but by large corporations with stock prices to support. Stories are chosen to get an audience for advertisers, not an audience per se, which means you don't want to put them into a depressed headspace when the ads come up so you avoid big stories that really challenge people like Darfur etc. as much as you can.

Combine this with the growing concentration of media ownership, and you have a situation where diversity in views goes down, and media owners spend their lives picking on powerless individuals and keeping the focus away from their advertising clients (focus on cheap-to-cover prurient sex/murder/drugs stories because those folks mean nothing to your bottom line and don;t challenge the morals of your viewers, but don't piss off General Motors). As a result investigative journalism (which is expensive because it takes time) in big media organisations is dying, and it's being left to bloggers to find the interesting stuff.

The only problem with this is that few independent bloggers etc. can make a decent living off what they do - the Net is open to anyone, but it's hard to get paid there. So we get overwhelmed by the views of Trustafarians and crazies.

I'm of the opinion that freedom of speech on its own means little if all you get is they views of the upper classes and nutters - unless a society can find a way for ordinary people to make a decent living as journalists, sources of credible, useful information will get harder and harder to find. Investigative journalism is in serious trouble at the moment.

Does that help? If you really want to follow this up, there are studies and stats to back what I'm saying all over the place.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Facts alone will never cut it posted 2 years, 8 months ago 45 Responses

While we're at it, Jabailo, could you...

...please define a 'purely scientific opinion'?

Yours expectantly

WhiskerfishOn A nice profile posted 2 years, 8 months ago 4 Responses

Brazil and ethanol

I was in Brazil recently and witnessed first-hand the immense impacts on biodiversity caused by the sugar cane and soya farming sectors.

One must also realise that on-the-ground policing of enviro regulations is near-as-dammit absent over there - be very, very suspicious of anything that looks good on paper, because it probably doesn't look good in reality.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn U.S. works with Brazil to spread sugar cane ethanol posted 2 years, 9 months ago 18 Responses

the NYT on South Africa

Another example of their crappy reporting on SA (which started this string, remember). At least they have the balls to admit it...

from

http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Insight/Article ...

"EXCERPTS from a correction in The New York Times on Wednesday:

A New York Times News Service article about an identity crisis among Afrikaners, who invented the apartheid system that ended about a dozen years ago, misstated the colors of South Africa's old apartheid flag. It is orange, blue and white, not orange and green. The article also referred incompletely to the name of a soccer stadium where an Afrikaner pride song was temporarily banned, and misstated the stadium's location. It is Loftus Versfeld Stadium, not Loftus Stadium, and it is in Pretoria, not Johannesburg.

The article also misstated the location of Mpumalanga, a province that recently decertified an Afrikaans-language school that had refused to teach courses in English. While it is indeed in the eastern side of the country, it does not border the Indian Ocean. And the article misspelled the given name of an Afrikaner legislator who expressed concern that the government is excising Afrikaner history from official textbooks. He is Carel Boshoff, not Corel.

Other than that, it was spot-on."

Whiskerfish
On A new report posted 2 years, 9 months ago 22 Responses

And in South Africa tonight...

...anyone who is watched eTV news a fewmins ago is being told that Oscar-winner Al Gore has (quote) "an inconvenient truth of his own".

Yes folks, it's going out on national news on the other side of the planet.

Talk about a story with legs!

The newsreader smirked in closing "Just think how much he would have used if he was still in the White House", further trivialising climate change, an issue that has yet to make a serious impression on the national discourse out here.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Same as it ever was posted 2 years, 9 months ago 37 Responses

OK, Invasion Biology 101

It seems that a bunch of you aren't up to speed on the dangers of invasive plants, and what distinguishes potential invaders from non-invaders etc (note: there is a distinction between 'plain' aliens and alien invasives/invaders).

So, in the interest of propelling this debate forward I'll explain my self a little better re my comment that Jatropha=bad news. I'm in a rush, so eloquence may suffer.

My info comes from a bunch of very good botanists at the South African government Plant Protection Institute. They study invasive plant in depth, have a lot of experience dealing with them,and are there to advise on the potential invasiveness of a given plant. Their feeling was that Jatropha had high potential to become invasive in certain climates in Africa. We have massive problems with invasive plants here that cost us many billions per year in lost water, lost wildlife habitat and poisoned stock etc.

The statement that 'Jatropha is no kudzu', presumably meaning that it wasn't obviously invasive, reminds me of what people used to say about Neem, the 'miracle tree' that has now become a troublesome invasive in some areas.

Typically, an invasive plant will not be obviously invasive for some time. It'll keep itself to itself and hang around in the background. Then, perhaps decades later, it'll suddenly 'erupt' and conquer the landscape (this lag period prior to eruption has only recently been recognised and the reasons for it are still poorly understood). A plant might not be invasive in an undisturbed natural system, and then become invasive after it is degraded (e.g. by overgrazing) etc.

I.e. predicitng when a plant will become invasive isn't always easy, but biologists are getting better and better at predicting which attributes make a plant more likely to be invasive.

Jatropha, being so 'unkillable' and easy to grow, is a prime candidate. A rule of thumb is that the easier something is to grow, the more likely it is to become invasive.

South African biologists fear that Jatropha will be planted willy-nilly all over the landscape as part of 'rural development' projects. These projects will then fail (as they usually do in rural Africa) and the Jatropha will be left to its own devices in untended plantations - i.e. we will have perfect sources of propagules all over the landscape. These will,in time, spread,and we'll have toxic thickets of stuff destroying rangelands left right and centre.

NB This has happened before. Mexican Prickly Pear, Lantana, Sesbania, various Australian Acacias etc. etc. - all were presumed to be useful and or benign and deliberately planted (not accidentally introduced) in S Africa.

Those of you in California might know Hottentots' Fig (Carpobrotus edulis), a creeping succulent that's now causing conservation headaches by smothering natural habitat all over there. I have it growing here in my garden - it's useful, it covers stuff quickly, I can use it as a skin ointment, it attracts insects to its flowers etc. I can see why Californians loved this South African plant when they first encountered it. The difference between here and California is that Hottentots' Fig grew naturally here before the bulldozers came, has natural enemies, and doesn't invade natural ecosystems.

Any further questions, please fire away. Bear in mind, having watched thousands of hectares of amazing Cape fynbos disappear under an invading, self-spread monoculture of Australian acacia and stunning bits of bushveld turn into hundreds of hundred-hectare large impenetrable thickets of Queen of the Night cactus, I have little patience for naive permaculture-types who don't understand the dangers of invasives (which includes some of the major gurus of that field, unfortunately).

Here endeth this particular lecture.

Whiskerfish

PS A few years ago I was on Yap, an island in Micronesia. There I encountered a brain-dead US Peace Corps volunteer who was working to plant Australian Acacias all over the island because "the fix nitrogen an' improve the soil". After I had privately calmed down I asked him whether he didn't think that the invasion he was already causing (the little guys were already spreading) might not be a problem, because they would smother rare native plants and no-one seemed interested in using his nitrogen-enriched soil or the near-useless wood of his plants anyway, he just shrugged his shoulders and said he was doing his job "according to USDA protocols". The Peace Corps could do a lot worse than to educate its volunteers as to the dangers of planting what grows well! I wonder how many invasions we have to thank this august institution for!On No, it's not a disease posted 2 years, 9 months ago 18 Responses

Jatropha = bad news

Like I said before, the fact that Jatropha is the 'growingest' plant you ever saw and that it is toxic to animals means that it is an A1-plus candidate to become a horribly damaging invasive alien plant, of which we have more than enough in Africa.

The environmental community in SA is presently gearing up for a big campaign to make sure that Jatropha doesn't becaome part of any biofuels strategy in this country or elsewhere on the continent. It would be great if the international enviro community thought twice before endorsing this as a solution to anything.

Cheers

Whiskerfish

PS Never trust a source who can't get a scientific name right - it one of the sure-firest ways of telling that an amateur wrote the thing. Note to Newsweek: It's Jatropha curcas, and the curcas bit is not capitalised...On No, it's not a disease posted 2 years, 9 months ago 18 Responses

BOTH of you are playing fast and loose...

...with the facts! I think there's a need to read and write a little more slowly, folks!

Gar and atreger, may I remind you that I'm a very, very short crow's flight from Gugulethu township as I write, and I have a reasonable,first-hand, knowledge of what I'm talking about.

Some points:

1. Failing to replace 69 bulbs out of 'tens of thousands' distributed is really, really no big deal! If Climate Care was being really anal, they should have accounted for a certain percentage failure rate over a certain period of time, but to make this into a stick with which to beat them is really pathetic. Christ, this is a very poor part of Africa, albeit located in a big, well-known city (Cape Town) - NOTHING happens according to plan! The fact that they got as far as they did is amazing!

2. When ESKOM (not ESCOM, Gar) did their distribution after the Koeberg nuke's generator bust (not substations, atreyger) they opened it to all and sundry - you had to bring in a working tungsten-filament bulb, and they would give you a CFL. The ESKOM distribution drive covered the whole of Cape Town, not just Gugs (as we call it). The fact that some people got CFLs from Climate Care as well as ESKOM makes no difference - there is no other use to which you can place a CFL other than lighting, so at some point in time they are going to be used instead of a tungsten-filament bulb, even by people that are stockpiling their free CFLs (interestingly, tungsten filament bulbs are being stolen by the thousands all over the city right now due to a massive wave of methamphetamine addiction. They are being used to smoke the stuff with - "drug addicts fight global warming" - I can do a story for grist if you like!).

3. Gar, what sort of 'extreme heat' are we talking about? Supply us with the temperatures at which CFLs die! Cape Town has a Mediterranean climate that approximates to someplace halfway between San Francisco and LA, at a guess.

4. As far as I know all CFLs distributed in Cape Town were distributed in boxes that had the warnings about sealed enclosures etc. on them. The distributors were, as far as I know, trained. I personally know one of the jobless people that was employed in the ESKOM distribution drive, and his job was to go house-to-house and actually fit the bulbs so that people didn't screw things up (or in the wrong hole, as the case may be). There were, I don't doubt, mistakes in this process, but to assume that bulbs were not properly installed just because distributors were previously-unemployed is complete garbage (repeat warning: This is Third World Africa. Get real, but don't assume too much.) Climate Care should have paid for the distribution of the bulbs and not taken a chunk out of my city rates and taxes, but OK, at least the bulbs got out there.

4. The point that Climate Care should have distributed the bulbs in rich places is a good one. I think many technologies like solar water heaters have been severely hamstrung because of the wave of foreign do-gooders who patronisingly roll them out in poor areas because that's what tugs the heartstrings of their funders. This has created the impression in some areas that eco-friendly = poor folks' stuff. Foreigners forget that the general aim of the poor, largely black, underclass of South Africa is to live like they perceive generally richer, historically white upper classes live. I have said this again and again at every goddamn conference I go to - shunt these technologies into rich homes and the rest will aspire to follow, but, like I said, the cynic in me realises that most NGOs exist to fund their workers and please their funders, not neccessarily do what's best, so the nonsense continues.

5. Gar, the NYT superficially covered what you call the 'obvious problem', but they miserably failed to contextualise it and so their story was profoundly misleading. You make out that they did.

6. atreyger, you are right that the ESKOM distribution drive was a once-off thing. And yes, like I said before, ESKOM has never displayed any interest in helping its customers save power in the long run - it only made this effort because of the unexpected nuke generator failure (due to their own chronic negligence) and I am 100% sure they would not have done the distribution had that not happened. Climate Care would have had not the vaguest inkling that ESKOM was going to do a CFL distribution drive, so to accuse them of duplicating an ESKOM effort is total and utter garbage.

7. I don't doubt that many forms of carbon offsets are modern-day indulgences. But Gar, you and this Smith character are really thrashing a very dead horse in this case. In fact, it's so dead the Potberg colony of Cape Vultures have already flown in and stripped the carcass, and you guys are whipping fresh air and bones!

Fact: Electricity use went down as a result.

Fact: In South Africa, most electricity is generated by horrible, quite old, coal-fired plants.

So bloody what if 69 piddly bulbs went missing in action! Go and fight a really dodgy offset scheme, would you? You won't have to look far to find one.

Cheers, and a luta continua...

WhiskerfishOn A new report posted 2 years, 9 months ago 22 Responses

JWs exam advice

Years ago, while dashing out of my door to a very important evolutionary biology exam that I was about to be late for, two aged female JWs accosted me, and wouldn't let me pass.

"I need to get to my exam!" I said, trying desperately to get one of the old doilies to take her walking stick out of my path.

"What exam are you writing, young man?" she asked, still blocking my way.

"Evolutionary biology!" I yelled, getting more pissed off by the second.

"Oh" she said, "I have just the thing for you!", and whipped out some tatty screed about the world being made in 6 days and Darwinian sinners that say we all come from monkeys etc.

The two old ducks crab-walked left and right in front of me and only let me out of my own door once I had taken and promised to read their cruddy bits of paper.

I sometimes wonder if they didn't know that we wrote exams then, because we never saw them at other times of day or year. Perhaps they were hoping to convert the poor desperates who hadn't studied enough?

WhiskerfishOn Creation care idea is spreading posted 2 years, 9 months ago 32 Responses

There's more to that story

Hi All

I'm sitting less than a mile from the township referred to in the NYT piece. The article seems to have omitted a salient factlet or two.

The reason that ESKOM (the ONLY electircal utility in S Africa, another minor inaccuracy in the quoted lines) distributed CFLs en masse was because of a major power crunch that came from them losing a massive bolt (I kid you not) in a generator attached to the Koeberg nuclear power station just outside Cape Town. They were trying to reduce power consumption in these parts while the generator was out of service and also trying to look like they were doing something useful in the crisis.

The NYT story says " "That meant that the "so-called reductions that Climate Care is selling to its customers arguably would have happened anyway," said Larry Lohmann of the Corner House, a campaign group for environmental and social justice based in Britain, citing evidence from investigators in South Africa."

ESKOM's CFL distribution drive had nothing to do with reducing GHG emissions (trust me, they don't give a shit about that) and it was not in response to anyone else doing so. The fact that they distributed CF lightbulbs just after someone else did is purely co-incidental and was driven by the loss of their generator due to gross negligence - they would not have done so otherwise. They spend their lives trying to scupper any initiatives that would really save energy. They are a horrible state-owned monopoly (somewhat ironically) driven by classic capitalist greed, and their chief product is coal-generated electricity. They are not going to wean their customers off that anytime soon if they can help it.

I have no particular love for carbon offset schemes (most of them are bullshit deluxe) but in this case the NYT, and Corner House, got it totally wrong. I'd love to know who their 'investigators in South Africa' are, because they are obviously absolutely no good.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn The debate that has all the kids talking! posted 2 years, 9 months ago 18 Responses

Paywalled again...

If any of you find where I could get this piece NOT behind a paywall, please tell!

WhiskerfishOn NYT columnist gets it right posted 2 years, 10 months ago 6 Responses

Thanks, Peter!

glad to know you're listening, at least, even if some of your clients aren't.

WhiskerfishOn But why? posted 2 years, 10 months ago 8 Responses

Meat prod on wildlands

Hi Amazing

don't have figures on grasslands.

I seem to remember seeing a paper that showed higher overall meat production in lightly-wooded savannas when they were stocked with a natural suite of game species vs when they were stocked with cattle. When you have a variety of species who each browse and graze on different things (tree leaves, grass etc.) you can support a higher meat biomass vs cattle, which only feed on one part of the available plant biomass. NB, this might not apply to grassland. (If you're serious about following this up suggest you contact the Mammal Research Inst at the University of Pretoria).

The main issue is harvesting game in a cost-effective and humane manner. This means shooting them in situ (coralling them and transporting them is way too stressful and thus messes up the meat - too many stress hormones degrade texture and taste).

A recent study I read (I think also conducted at Uni Pretoria) showed incredibly small impact on herd dynamics and animal stress if carefully-selected animals were culled at night with a single headshot by a highly-skilled marksman using a silenced rifle off the back of a vehicle. At night they tend not to run away, esp if dazzled temporarily by spotlight - that means less stress for everyone, animal and hunter.

I gather there are now biodegradable bullets on the market. I hate the idea of all that lead lying around in the bush!

WhiskerfishOn Let's put bison back on the praries posted 2 years, 10 months ago 26 Responses

Grasslands and burning/disturbance

Hi All

great thread.

From my own experience (eyes and university ecology) the vast majority of the world's grasslands need to be maintained by reasonably regular disturbance - therwise they turn into shrublands or forests.

Usually, this is fire. You need a fire every few years to take out the shrub and tree seedlings, and stop the grass clumps becoming moribund. In some cases (e.g. some of the major grasslands in E Africa) this disturbance is caused by the grazing pressure of huge herds of herbivores who eat the grass/seedlings down to the roots and churn up the topsoil with their hooves and then shit loads of useful fertiliser about the place.

Interestingly, if the herbivores get to the longish grass before fire does, fire usually doesn't get a look in - it can't be maintained if there's not enough biomass to sustain the flames. Many E African grasslands don't burn - they are maintained purely by herbivores.

(Here in South Africa we used to have herds of millions (literally) of springbok and zebra that followed the rains through the semi-arid parts of the country, rejuvenating the veld by selective 'overgrazing' as they passed though. They got shot out by early colonists. The last big springbok migration was about 100 years ago - now all we get is tiny, skittish herds that don't exhibit the same behaviour.)

The key to any successful wild grass harvesting system would be for it to mimic the impacts of wild herbivores: Chop the grass down to a certain level (not too far down), disturb the top layer (like hooves) but don't overly compact the soil (like tractors do) and then re-fertilise (this could be a problem - perhaps lightly spread the waste from feedlots?). Do this in a patchy manner so you don't wipe out all the birds/mammals/reptiles etc. at the same time over a large area (survivors in non-harvested patches can re-colonise just-harvested patches).

Oh - and there's some woolly thinking going on re  carbon storage in grasslands. Y'all look through the posts and think about it, especially if those grasslands are being used for meat/grass production.

Whaddaya think?

WhiskerfishOn Let's put bison back on the praries posted 2 years, 10 months ago 26 Responses

Peter Madden, ...

... how about a reply?

WhiskerfishOn But why? posted 2 years, 10 months ago 8 Responses

Now that's a lot of corn!

hurk, hurk!

WhiskerfishOn You've got to see this to believe it posted 2 years, 10 months ago 4 Responses

Type Pebble Bed Reactor...

...into Wikipedia.

Their schpiel, on a rapid skim-read, seems quite good.

WhiskerfishOn China got troubles posted 2 years, 10 months ago 11 Responses

A Little Note from Africa

just to say that down here in S Africa the govt and various other people are throwing a stupendous amount of public cash at developing a small Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor. The whole business plan is premised on selling the things all over the world. They have yet to build one, though.

China, rather quietly, already has a working prototype... Mini-nukes for the masses, anyone?

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn China got troubles posted 2 years, 10 months ago 11 Responses

References please!

Hi All

I'm a bit of a newcomer to the whole ethanol thing - I've kept half an eye on the debate and am familiar with the general gist of things, but don't have the numbers at my fingertips.

However, I'm going to be contributing to a pretty high-profile response to South Africa's new biofuels strategy (which is horrendously bad and poorly thought-out - go to
http://www.dme.gov.za/pdfs/energy/renewable/Biofuels_Stra...)
and I'm in need of some hardcore (= really credible academic) references - evaluations of corn-based ethanol's costs, energy balance etc. etc.

Any specific websites or references that anyone can recommend?

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Let's wonk it out posted 2 years, 10 months ago 28 Responses

What about Brazil?

I dunno about you folks, but no-one in Brazil told me about being the least bit skeptical about filling up with ethanol fuel when I was there recently. I think biodiversivist is right - people will use whatever is cheaper and more convenient.

For the folks at MIT to rightfully claim that they are making a worthwhile contribution to anything by providing a 'stepping stone' for the public, they must show us compellingly that such a stepping stone is in fact needed. I don't think it is.

Cheers

Whiskerfish in a beautiful African afternoon On Bait and switchgrass, again posted 2 years, 10 months ago 11 Responses

An Advanced Country

Sometimes I think the USA must be an advanced country. Then, every now and again, I get reminded that ignorant freaks (with beliefs that make South African tribal witch-burners seem reasonable) weild a lot of power...

The difference between the US and any western European nation is that Frosty Knucklewalker and his ilk would be laughed at, gently patted on the head, and then given some strong medication in Europe. I can imagine that, pretty soon, the school's science lab is going to be named after him.

As we say around here, ag shame (*), you guys really do have a ways to go... at least it makes me feel a little better about our situation here in southern Africa. Thank goodness Mugabe doesn't have the US military at his disposal!

Cheers

Whiskerfish

* pronounced "(guttural)ach" shame - an expression of intense pity.On Al Gore's movie booted by wacky school board posted 2 years, 10 months ago 12 Responses

'regular people' vs 'environmentalists'

jabailo had a valid point that you missed, Gar.

Most people who buy autos are buying into the fantasies generated by auto manufacturers.

You buy an auto as much for its practical use as for the idea of freedom that it represents - hence the large number of urbanites buying off-road vehicles that they'll never take offroad. (Let's face it, in any city with a halfway decent public transport network (I'm thinking London, Hong Kong, NY of the places I've lived in) driving a private car it a serious liability in terms of cost and time wasted, but many people who live there still aspire to owning private cars).

If someone knows upfront that they'll only get 40 or 100 miles out of a charge/tank of gas it severely compromises the idea of freedom that has been drummed into their psyches by decades of auto advertising. Telling them to be practical and rent a car if they want to go further just isn't going to fly.

Happy Xmas to you all in those other time zones (it's already Boxing Day here)!

Whiskerfish

PS Gar, if you restrict your blog posts to one key topic you'll have more focused discussion, I think. This one was VERY long and covered a lot of ground. Too much, I feel.On Warning: techno-engineering speak ahead posted 2 years, 11 months ago 43 Responses

Coal to oil

South Africa, as I have said before, probably has the longest-running and most developed coal to liquid fuel programme in the world. If you want to know about the realities of these plants you could do worse than to do some research into our experience.

It's only developed becasue of truly massive subsidies - it hasn't until very, very recently been anything like competitive with 'straight' oil.

There is some reasonable data on the pollution costs - these plants churn out masses of S and hence are major acid rain sources.

Cheers

Whiskerfish On Coal and cars, two great tastes that ... gack! posted 2 years, 11 months ago 6 Responses

pols

The use of science to support an ideological agenda, in other words to add non-scientific meaning to works of science.

???

WhiskerfishOn Discuss posted 2 years, 11 months ago 7 Responses

Mrgreen

Thanks for the great example of rubbish communication!

Lesson 1: Do not publish machine-translations and expect people to take you seriously! OK, maybe his English is that bad - my German is worse!

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Namely, biofuels posted 2 years, 11 months ago 5 Responses

Dingbat

This bloke gives me the creeps - a typical politician, no better than any other. Great interview, by the way - shows him up for what he is.

Don't US politicos have a sell-by date?

WhiskerfishOn John Dingell talks to Grist about climate change, fuel economy, and the 110th Congress posted 2 years, 11 months ago 17 Responses

weird senators cont.

OK, so if US voters say they want someone 'smart' but are suspicious of education, you'd expect them to vote someone in with a certain sort of 'street-smartness'. Inhofe just comes across as doltish, and as I said before, incoherent i.e. he's just plain stupid.

Are you suggesting that US voters, in particular 'Red' voters, deliberately look for stupidity?

Clinton wasn't stupid, was at least part-way educated (he was a Rhodes scholar etc.), and he was pretty popular.

Perhaps the answer is that US voters are looking for someone who seems to have people-skills, they kind that Kerry and Gore did not seem to have.

Also, re Al Gore. I do think he lacks a certain kind of integrity. As has been said before, why is he only going on about global warming in a big way now, after he got booted from the Executive?

WhiskerfishOn He's staying atop his committee posted 2 years, 11 months ago 7 Responses

Steller's Sea Cow

, named after Georg Steller the naturalist (not a star somewhere).

And in between the Sea Cow and the Baiji you can add the Carribean Monk Seal to your list of extinct aquatic mammmals.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Two things I learned from Grist readers this week -- repeatedly posted 2 years, 11 months ago 2 Responses

soil compaction

How do you harvest it without compacting soil?

Lines of slaves with scythes???

WhiskerfishOn Native perennials shown to produce more fuel than industrial monocrops posted 2 years, 11 months ago 9 Responses

Wind and birds

Before we start trashing wind for its impact on birds, I'd like us to look at the question in more detail.

As someone who has professionally studied birds and been a birder since forever, I am of course interested in this question.

However, all the reading I've done suggests that it's only a very small minority of wind turbines that are killers. In most big wind farms you'll find that only a couple of turbines that happen to be in particular places that soaring birds might use to ascend a ridge, for example, kill 95% of the birds killed in that wind farm. Remove them and the problems disappears, or nearly does. Bird strikes should not be a problem if turbines are carefully sited.

If anyone has any data to the contrary I'd be pleased to see it.

WhiskerfishOn It's all about electricity posted 2 years, 11 months ago 72 Responses

Fires are not really a problem

The fynbos ecosystem of south-western South Africa is a fire-driven system. It has evolved with fires and needs fire every few years so that many of the plants can re-seed.

Every now and again a big fynbos fire spreads to pine plantation or threatens urban areas, and this tends to make it into the news.

Anyhow, this is off-topic... Don't know if there's some way you can email me privately via my gristmill ID? I'm not a great fan of splashing my email address on the web!

WhiskerfishOn Movie, music bring awareness to conflict gems posted 2 years, 11 months ago 25 Responses

Another species lost because...

...of the endless buggering around an politicking of big enviro NGOs. They could have done something about this a LONG time ago. WWF has been in China for how long and it takes a 'small guy' like Pfluger to get something going? Honestly.

Add to the list of recent extinctions that could likely have been prevented if big NGOs had bothered to do something instead of just covering their own backsides and raising money the Western Black Rhino and the Imperial Woodpecker...

Depressed

WhiskerfishOn A moment of silence posted 2 years, 11 months ago 15 Responses

African diamonds

You've got to remember that with very, very few possible exceptions (Botswana might - I stress might - be one) African diamond wealth goes to prop up a ruling, corrupt elite and does not spread throughout the population in any useful way.

Angola is a case in point. When you read the country's balance sheet it may show that diamonds are important to the economy in terms of % of GDP. What you don't see is that over 90% of the cash goes to the thoroughly barbaric, corrupt elite and their corporate co-operators. The vast majority of Angolans still live in total poverty. By buying Angolan diamonds you are just supporting the system that keeps the people down.

The only way that an ordinary 'peasant' Angolan can gain significantly from diamonds is to become an illegal diamond-digger so he can personally sell the stones to a middle-man and thus pocket a higher percentage of the sale price. (Otherwise he just gets a measly day-wage from an 'official' diamond mining concern who keeps him in slave-like conditions in a guarded compound.) Of course, if he digs his own diamonds and sells them on the black market they become classified as 'blood diamonds'... De Beers wins again!

Don't buy African diamonds, period. Sell the ones you have.

WhiskerfishOn Movie, music bring awareness to conflict gems posted 2 years, 11 months ago 25 Responses

Efficiency wins e.g. ...

The big win that I'm going to be pushing for here on the southern tip of Africa is solar water heaters. The tech is simple and proven, the numbers work for everyone except the electrical utilities (thank goodness) - all that's needed is to get the right info out to homeowners.

At the moment all the solar water heater companies are in competiton. They're all trying to convince customers that their whizz-bang copper-coated solution is better than the next guy's glass tube thingmagummy, and in the end consumers walk off feeling confused and ripped-off (and, like many, many of my friends, ditching the solar water heater idea altogether). Often, all you need is a coiled black plastic pipe on your roof to save muchos energy.

Hence the book I'm currently working on...

You need to close the info gap between consumers and the technology, because all the purveyors of the technological solutions are muddying the waters, just like your guys' arguments are muddying the waters. You should decide on a key technology that is proven and can make a dent in the system without causing more ecological probelms than it solves (I think wind may be the one). Then push it. Hard.

Don't think about solving the whole goddamn problem yet. Once you prove that one thing works the landscape will open up to as-yet unimagined technologies. People adopt workable things surprisingly rapidly.

Your over-intellectualisation and tech-geekiness has given the gap to the purveyors of extremely eco-unfriendly alternative energy, like corn-based ethanol etc.

Work on your messages, folks. Keep the tech-heads in the labs and out of the press conferences.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn It's all about electricity posted 2 years, 11 months ago 72 Responses

De Beers monopoly and 'blood diamonds'

A friend of mine has a theory that the whole 'blood diamonds' thing was concocted by De Beers to stop small operators (like private miners in West Africa) from breaking their effective monopoly on the supply of diamonds to the world market.

I have no proof for the theory, but it is rather convenient for them that a 'blood diamonds' campaign, if conducted in a certain way, harms non-members of their cartel. If the movie succeeds in slowing the pace at which diamonds are mined, De Beers wins, because it increases the value of their massive stockpiles (held mainly in London).

Remember, diamonds are not rare, and De Beers has pulled any number of stunts (from closing rival mines to getting national parks declared in diamond-rich areas) to prevent them coming out of the ground and into the market in a way that they can't control.

De Beers have always been marketing geniuses who have had Hollywood eating out of their hands for decades. Why would Hollywood turn on them now with this film?

If someone could answer me that question it might shut off a rather persistent bullshit-detector alarm that I can't seem to silence...

WhiskerfishOn Movie, music bring awareness to conflict gems posted 2 years, 11 months ago 25 Responses

Namibian coastline

One of the places that's received scant attention is the southern Namibian coastline, where De Beers have trashed over 100 continuous kilometres of one of the world's great wildernesses over the past century or so. Tourists and journalists are not allowed in (it's a Forbidden Zone) but luckily, as I have previously written, you can now see the astonishing scale of the mayhem for yourself on Google Earth.

Start at the mouth of the Orange River (approx 28 deg37minS, 16deg27minE) and work your way up the coast to Chameis Bay (27deg55minS, 15deg40minE), then measure that. All the roads, spoil heaps and pits along the way are unnatural landforms, to put it mildly.

De Beers has very successfully kept public attention away from this area, and makes a big deal out of relatively small and useless conservation projects it funds elsewhere.

What do you expect from the company that has for so long convinced the public that diamonds are rare and valuable? (They are actually very common, and De Beers spends most of its time and effort keeping them off the market rather than bringing them to market.)

Don't buy diamonds. If you have any, sell them. We need to drive their value down to pull the rug out from underneath this terrible industry.

Cheers

Whiskerfish On Movie, music bring awareness to conflict gems posted 2 years, 11 months ago 25 Responses

Dustin Penn

I have a feeling that everyone in this discussion could benefit by reading a relatively recent paper by Dustin Penn in the Quarterly Review of Biology. I don't have it to hand, but it's called something like "The evolutionary roots of our environmental problems". It's one of those must-reads, even if you don't agree w what he says in its entirety.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn It's a disaster, not a catastrophe posted 2 years, 12 months ago 43 Responses

Fear and Change

Have to agree with the previous post - I'd really like to see that data that fear does not engender change. The 'we must all be positive" line is very good for old hippies to justify their conflict-aversion, and I'm sure that fear does sometimes prevent action, but to make these generalised statements is nonsense.

If you want to see an interesting example of this, look up Churchill's famous speech to the House Of Commons post-Dunkirk (the famous "We shall fight them on the beaches" speech). Then read the whole thing - not just the last paragraphs. It is an extraordinarily pessimistic, negative speech, and yet it has become one of the defining speeches of the 20th century, and has been credited with turning the British psyche towards victory. Go and explain that, you warm-and-fuzzy types ;)

WhiskerfishOn It's a disaster, not a catastrophe posted 2 years, 12 months ago 43 Responses

toying? & China

Hi Patrick

I'll try my best to answer you.

1. I'm toying but not. I've made some overstatements, but I really do want you to think about what I'm saying.

2. I'll try to separate investment and aid, but it's hard, because a lot of it just profits the countries that gave it. Much 'aid' goes to pay the salaries of foreign  (non-African) NGO workers, and much of that just gets repatriated to the country that it came from in the savings of those workers. Similarly, most outside investment is made to profit the non-African countries that invest it. So there's a similar pattern of exploitation. I've suggested that a lot of the blame lies with Africans themselves - their elites are too corrupt and their democracies too weak to make sure that investment and aid money really does benefit their countries - they just skim off the top and let foreigners do what they will.

3. Many African countries are in fact extraordinarily resource-rich. My use of SA as an example was co-incidental. Both the Congos, Sudan, Cameroon, Nigeria, Angola, Gabon = loads of oil etc. etc. What is notable that relatively resource-poor countries like Botswana and Eritrea, simply by having better governance than other more resource-rich countries, have actually improved the quality of life of many of their citizens relative to those in more resource-rich countries.

4. Money that doesn't get siphoned off in corruption often gets wasted due to an inadequate skills base in many African countries. See my earlier statement re John Ruskin.

5. I wasn't joking re personal networks and NGOs. Lots of NGOs are not 'corrupt', but they waste cash and are often surprisingly ineffective (for a number of reasons). I am a firm believer in chanelling funds and know-how via personal networks, or small NGOs that are very targeted in their approach and run by very dedicated people, preferably Africans who know the culture and who are in FOR THE LONG TERM. People who work on something for less than 10 years always seem to fail in Africa. I don't always know why, but it my personal observation. You have to have the same people working consistently at something for a long time. Most NGOs shuttle staff in and out of countries and it's a mess.

6. I think China is really bad news for Africa on the environmental front and the governance front. Just when we'd got the old ogres like the World Bank etc. to begin to take environmental stuff vaguely seriously, the Chinese have come in with loads of mony for roads and large dams that are being constructed with no thought to the environment. A friend has just come from Angola and described how roads are going up north with Chinese govt money so that Chinese logging companies can rip the shit out of the forests there and export the timber. They road gangs are not locals - they have flown thousands of poorly-paid Chinese labourers in to build the roads (it's apparently a surreal sight - pointy bamboo hats in the African bush). So locals don't even get a look-in on the job front. They're donating military equipment to Mad Bob Mugabe so they can get access to his platinum mines. The Chinese look to be every bit as self-serving as their forerunners.

6. Look at Eritrea and Somaliland as places wtih few resources that have suceeded on a number fronts against significant odds to improve the lives of their people. Both have received little in formal aid and investment (esp Somaliland, which is not even recognised as a country). They are good illustrations of what I mean. Poor people in African countries with relatively good governance and little or no foreign aid or investment are often better off than poor people in African countries where the poor are not taken seriously by the government and that have lots of investment. SA, the richest country in Africa, has among the poorest of the poor - our bottom 20% are  far worse off than the African average, and this has gotten WORSE since the end of Apartheid.

WhiskerfishOn Poor countries can't afford to tackle climate change posted 3 years ago 57 Responses

China and moral responsibility

patrick

you said " The US is the big Kahuna, the grand consumer of them all (with some European nations and Japan following a bit behind).  People sell it what it wants to buy.  Period.  They won't make stuff it doesn't want to buy.  Blaming them for trying to make a living is silly."

re your last sentence. I think it's bs. They are part of the whole thing and must share responsibiliity with buyers, as must Exxon etc. Exxon is 'only trying to make a living', and so are tiger poachers. Neither deserves too much sympathy if what they do stuffs the planet up for the rest of us.

"And one of the key differences between a developed and and a developing country is how much excess income it has to spend, and what it can spend it on."

My point was that developing countries often have far more cash than they let on, and far more options than the aid agencies will have us believe. It's often just that they're run by a bunch of kleptocrats and corporate assholes (with support from similar in the developed world) and these corrupt elites have chosen not to develop sensibly and rather keep the money for themselves (=steal).

Therefore we should be very careful before we start committing money to these states for 'sustainable development' or any other reason as it's likely to disappear into the same deeeeep pockets as whatever money they had before did. Hence my insistence that we not let corrupt elites make the tired old excuse of 'we haven't enough money'. The real problem is often that 'we haven't enough morals and so we have crappy governance'.

Hence (2) my earlier suggestion is that the average citizen of the developed world would have a far bigger positive impact by getting their own political houses in order than by dispensing aid, as this would stop corrupt First World elites supporting their pals in the Third World and hopefully lead to better governance in the Third World, and more fertile ground for any worthwhile positive intervention.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Poor countries can't afford to tackle climate change posted 3 years ago 57 Responses

blaming the cooks

 - I don't think it's a question about blaming the cooks for you over-eating. I think it's about not being patronising and allowing the cooks to take responsibility of their part of the problem.

 - That $1000 dollars buys you a lot more in China than it does in the US - we should stop these inane income comparisons. They don't give a real indication of standards of living.

 - e.g. Nigeria could have been well on its way to being 'developed' is corrupt elites hadn't squandered its oil wealth. At what point do we stop saying 'poor little Third World, they can't help polluting' and say 'you have massive resources. You have wasted them. Now lie in the bed that you've made and don't use your mistakes as an opportunity to hold the rest of the planet to ransom'?

 - Also, if you can't get your house in order in the US and elect a decent President (after all, you actually still have a semblance of a functioning democracy, and you don't get killed for criticising Bushco in the papers), who the hell are you to tell the Third World what to do?

This issue is far more about governance and morality than many people dare think - it's not just a matter of transferring money and tech around the planet.

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Poor countries can't afford to tackle climate change posted 3 years ago 57 Responses

Look South to Cape Town...

The CyberTran folks need to pitch in Cape Town, currently pondering spending hundreds of millions on public transport for the World Cup (soccer 2010). I can arrange media buzz and access to politicians if someone is seriously keen...

Whiskerfish in AfricaOn Time for the feds to step in posted 3 years ago 7 Responses

How does this panel type stack up?

Alberts is claiming 'only' 14-15% conversion efficiency, but at a far lower cost than silicon, and his thin-film is completely recyclable...

http://www.johanna-solar.com/en/index.shtml

http://cooltech.iafrica.com/features/508857.htm

http://v3.espacenet.com/results?sf=n&FIRST=1&F=0&...=

http://www.sessa.org.za/mediaandlinks/newsandarticles/com...

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn How Sunpower plans to do it posted 3 years ago 3 Responses

Don't oversimplify corridors

atreyger - You've fatally oversimplified corridors and people's attitudes to wildlife. Corridors work for all kinds of things, depending on how they're designed. I lived in a city (Pretoria, South Africa) that occasionally had a leopard or two moving through thanks to an unofficial corridor along an undeveloped ridge through the town (in the 1980s). Although the odd person whose pet dog got schnaffled wasn't too pleased, most people loved the thrill of having beautiful, dangerous-looking but not really dangerous, wild animals around. Wolves are like leopards - impressive-looking, but basically harmless to humans.

WhiskerfishOn No, seriously posted 3 years, 1 month ago 13 Responses

DDT in Africa

jabailo

As an African, may I beg to differ with you.

1. Those African countries that have banned DDT have done so of their own accord. It's still being manufactured and they can easily get their hands on it if they choose to. Some have (rather quietly) been using it for many decades now, and are still in fact using it.

2. The reasons for Afican poverty are many and complex. I don't believe the widespread use of DDT would have changed much. Putting hugely toxic compounds into economies with near non-existent regulation can be as disastrous as disease.

3. You are obviously totally unaware of the imacts of widespread DDT both in the environment, and as we are increasingly recognising, in the human organism. You are also obviously unaware of the numbers of farmworker deaths from pesticide use in Africa (which is understandable, because these numbers are hard to come by).

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn Myths shot down posted 3 years, 1 month ago 7 Responses

Lomborg the economist

In his book he predicted that oil would soon come down below $30 per barrel and pretty much stay there for the rest of the century. That's the kind of economist you want on your team...

WhiskerfishOn Paging a Mr. Lomborg posted 3 years, 2 months ago 3 Responses

You're not a pessimist, you're an American

"Call me a pessimist, but any park ranger willing to put his life on the line for a dollar a month is either desperate or an idiot. In either case, there has to be a better way."

Have you ever thought that perhaps they believe in what they're protecting?

As a South African I am constantly amazed at the pat assuptions that foreigners make regarding the management of wildlife on this continent. Africans have been far more tolerant of large, dangerous animals than people in the rest of the world tend to give them credit for.

The loss of the Western Black Rhino is a story that hasn't received nearly as much press as it should have. Depending on how you define a species, it should have long-ago been elevated to full-species status, as it was genetically and geographically distinct from the other 'subspecies'. I suspect it has a lot to do with advertising strategies of the big Western (i.e. American and European) wildlife NGOs who don't want to admit their inattention to the Western Black has led to its extinction (and who, my inside informants tell me, have completely cocked up the mission to save the Northern White Rhino by acting arrogantly towards Congolese officials).

Cheers

WhiskerfishOn More ideas needed posted 3 years, 2 months ago 23 Responses