If It Was About a Pipeline *You* Didn't Want?

I guess the thing that strikes me as ridiculous about the conflict with the water-protectors who protested against the Dakota Pipeline which was just denied access is that these people were basically talking about what should be allowed in their own backyards. Maybe Speaker of the House Paul Ryan thinks it is a shame that they wanted to keep access to clean water and not to have the pipeline run through land their ancestors were buried in. Maybe, even after his share in the pipeline is sold, Donald Trump still feels that way, too.

But for now, the rights of local people are being respected. And that is, I would think, a good thing. And I don't really think government should muscle in and override their rights, any more than they should take away their right to protest or physically abuse them while they exercise that right. Some people think differently. But I would want them to think about how they would feel about the water their kids drink, or how they would feel about a pipeline running through their parents' graveyard.

It just isn't that more complicated than that. It's about a time and a place, and how these people said this isn't the time and place for this pipeline, right here. It isn't about weirdly hating on energy or business or wanting some special right. It was about their location. Energy companies don't have more of a right to a place because of money. People have rights and among them, the right to petition their government for redress of grievances. And if you find that problematic, you go consult with the founding fathers. See where they are buried, and consider whether a pipeline needs to run through their graves and how you would feel about that.

Primates are Curious

Although it seems like many people are apt to fault the mother of the child who climbed down into the gorilla display at the Cincinnati Zoo for inattention, I find it very hard to do so.  A lot of parents become momentarily distracted--and find to their shock that a moment is all it takes for their child to cover some distance on an impulse its highly-curious mind hasn't the brakes to quell. The horror at what had happened to her child was genuine; I don't think she was negligent and I definitely think that the Cincinnati Zoo should consider some way to make the enclosure more curious-child proof.

As for Harambe, I kind of understand the idea some animal-lovers have that he was not acting in an especially threatening way, or they want to recall an incident where a gorilla in a similar situation seemed to be protecting a fallen child. I think they might be missing that the last seconds before the animal was shot happened very rapidly and the child was dragged--even if in the gorilla's mind he was just moving a juvenile primate from a treacherous moat, the reality is that human children are fragile, and a 450 lb gorilla could easily rip out a child's arm or bash its head. There was no way for the zoo personnel to be sure what would happen, so they had to make sure that a disaster was avoided. It is a shame that Harambe's natural curiosity drew him towards the toddler. But once the child was being dragged, I don't think the Cincinnati Zoo folks were wrong not to take any chances with the baby's life.

Some people comment that this is a problem with the whole idea of zoos altogether, and the forced incarceration of sentient beasts for human visual consumption. We treat them as spectacle, even though they are wild and should be free. We've inherited a notion about our mastery as humans over the various other lifeforms on this planet and treat them as exotic spectacles--and while we try to be well-educated in their care and protection, we can fail spectacularly because they were not meant to live in our world.  I can see this point, but also recognize that the education and conservation aspects of zoo culture in some ways has been protective for endangered species, and gives people access to understanding them in an immediate way that informs their understanding and ability to care about them, which would only be more remote and abstract otherwise.

I also see a lot of opinion-pieces along the lines of "So much human-on-human violence has occurred, but we focus on this story about a gorilla." That, too, makes a lot of sense to me, though--it's unusual. We don't hear stories about gorilla-involved shootings every day, even though we hear about several human-involved shootings every day.

Primates are, after all, very curious. We are drawn to things that are exotic. It's a bit of a gift and a curse.

Shade Balls!

"Shade balls" kind of sounds like the slang the kids would use these days, as in "When that girl talked shit about my outfit, I was casting shade balls at her at night."

But, no! This is a thing where plastic balls absorb the sunlight instead of the water in a reservoir which should reduce evaporation. It also should cut down on bacteria growth in the water (some aquaculturists working in gardens with koi ponds add a kind of ink to reduce algae blooms, so I get that principle) and nothing from the plastic itself should leak into the water. At first I wasn't 100% on how this would work because it seemed to me that if dark-colored balls absorbed solar heat, that heat would redistribute along the surface area of each ball transferring it to the water causing more of an evaporation effect. But smarter people than me apparently worked out that the surface absorbs the heat, but the water-side is protected. If this works how the smart folks say, call me impressed!

I'm not terribly impressed by some arguments of some people, which seem to hinge on the idea that California should have built more reservoirs to catch the water that the state is currently not getting.  I prefer to believe that if people accept that climate change is real, they can deal with it using real solutions, instead of bitching about what might have been without actually presenting any solutions at all. I really don't see professional blame-redistributors as innovative in that necessary sense.

Antibiotic-Resistant and Airborne--It's Evolution, Baby

I don't think I give as much shrift to my concerns about sustainable agriculture and the many problems of our agricultural-industrial complex on this blog as I should, but if you wanted a glimpse into the kind of thing that really haunts me, why, this would be it:

Texas Tech University researchers examined particulate matter in the air, finding both antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in samples taken downwind from cattle ranches. Investigators are worried that this material could be carried by wind into populated areas, hindering treatments for potentially dangerous diseases. Over 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are used in cattle to lengthen lives and improve yields.  

The 10 ranches examined in the study were all located within 200 miles of the city of Lubbock, with samples being taken over a period of six months. The investigation focused on feedlots in the South Plains and Panhandle of Texas. Cattle at these facilities are exposed to large quantities of antibiotics as they are fattened up before they are brought to market.  

"To our knowledge, this study is among the first to detect and quantify antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant genes ... associated with airborne PM emitted from beef cattle feed yards," environmental toxicology researchers at Texas Tech University said.

Sometimes there are scares about "avian flu" (a viral agent) and masses of poultry get slaughtered, usually in some Asian market. The idea that a bacteriological agent could infect large numbers of cattle in the US, and the accompanying notion of what might be needed to combat a massive outbreak of the same, here, and what it would cost the meat industry, here, strikes me as potentially very devastating to a significant portion of the US. To an extent, it's only possible because of the high concentrations of antibiotics already in use in regular feedlot treatment of food livestock. But an epidemic would affect all cattle ranchers, including organic non-CAFO operations. Basically, it could financially wipe some farmers out, especially if they had to find some way to cull part of or all of their stocks and isolate some other parts--under these conditions, how is that even--?

It's not an unexpected turn of biological events, but knowing some "worst case" scenario has been instantiated is pretty depressing.

Climate Monday--10 Million Gallons of Oil on the Seafloor

Or you can look here. Basically, the Gulf of Mexico has so much oil still there--not to be pumped, and not really to be cleaned up either. Tar balls still wash up from time to time.  But it isn't going to just go away.

I think deep oil drilling is pretty dumb considering what we are already doing to the oceans in terms of acidification and overfishing. We really don't need to be spilling more oil down there, too. And I am very critical of Obama for allowing it to continue--regardless of the pressure. Because the reality--the sea covers most of the Earth, and is a bigger ecosystem than we enjoy on land. But even so, us land animals need the sea ecosystem to be functional to enjoy our existence. Our disrespect for the oceans is messing with sea birds, polar bears, seals, whales, dolphins, and our own fishing communities.


And I would bet the stupid and well-paid among us would still like to lick corporate ass for the pleasure of the environmental abuse.

Climate Sunday: We're Losing Our Neighbors

This sounds like one of the most amazing and horrifying things, but wildlife numbers have declined by 50% in the last 44 years.  But when you consider that we are losing the coral reefs, we are losing the fish, and the frogs, and our fellow primates, and the majestic elephants,  and the birds. Oh, it starts to seem all too real.

And it's all because of various forms of human fuckery.

You know, even if asshats go out of their way to close their eyes to the reality of climate change, the idea that we are killing this planet species by species should really disturb us.