Nature News from Jake Sigg

Nature News From Jake Sigg

1. SF Transit Effectiveness Project's revised recommendations - Tuesday 21 October
2. Ecuador's voters approve new constitution that includes Rights of Nature
3. Wildland Weed Mapping Field Course Thursday 6 November
4. Sage observation of a Japanese monk
5. Feedback
6. The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters
7. The Sun - oh yeh
8. Center for Learning in Retirement
9. When Bambi goes bad. Montana's capital under siege
10. Moment of truth approaches for Water System Improvement Program, of importance to all northern California
11. Water, water, everywhere
12. Running dry
13. You may drive nature out with a pitchfork/Hippie apes not as peace-loving as we thought
14. In Connecticut you can't...

1. On September 16, 2008, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors heard public comment from over 100 people regarding the Transit Effectiveness Project’s revised recommendations for route changes and travel time/reliability improvements. The SFMTA Board created an Ad Hoc committee to review the TEP’s recommendations. The TEP’s revised recommendations will be presented to the full Board of Directors Meeting on:

Tuesday, October 21, 2008, 2:00 pm
Room 400 City Hall
(Check project webpage at www.sftep.com for meeting updates)

The TEP is a joint project of the SFMTA and the City Controller’s Office and represents the first top-to-bottom review of the Muni system in a generation. TEP recommendations are designed to transform Muni so people can get where they want to go, when they want to get there, reliably and safely.

We express our appreciation to all of you who participated and will keep you posted on milestones in this landmark undertaking in our Transit-First city.

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2. Ecuador Approves New Constitution:

Voters Approve Rights of Nature (covered in: Grist, Washington Post, LA Times, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, et al)

LA Times Editorial: Eye on Ecuador's Constitutional Recognition of Nature's Inalienable Rights
Rights of Nature Included in Ecuador's Proposed National Constitution

See www.celdf.org

(And remember, Bhutan's constitution calls for measuring its Gross National Happiness)

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3. Wildland Weed Mapping Field Course Thursday November 6
Cal-IPC (California Invasive Plant Council) is offering its first-ever Northern California Wildland Weed MAPPING Field Course, Thursday, November 6, in Oakland. Participants will rotate through three field stations, learning and practicing data collection using three mapping collection technologies. In the afternoon we focus on data processing and analysis, including retrieving data, and creating basic maps based on the goals of your weed project. The course will include three session devoted to Q&A to ask questions of our instructors in a smaller setting.
Registration and details at www.cal-ipc.org/fieldcourses/index.php.

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4.

A flower falls,

even though we love it,

and a weed grows,

even though we do not love it.

--Dogen,

Japanese Buddhist monk and philosopher 1200-1253

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5. Feedback

Kathy Schrenk:

Jake, With regard to Prop 8, I can't imagine it passing. And I love hearing the anti-gay marriage people try to rationalize their position. They just hate gayness and gay people! It's all about hate! That's all it is! And they tie themselves in knots trying to come up with reasons why it's rational and doesn't just come down to hate, pure and simple. Those "Christians" are just big, big haters.

I have a friend, Josh Richman, who is an amazing journalist, and has a blog where, among many other things, he details the big donations to various political campaigns. Lately the anti-Prop 8 people have been getting a million dollars a week! Amazing. Anyway, I think this info needs more light on it, and I commend Josh for shining some. http://www.ibabuzz.com/politics/

Well, Kathy, you'd better imagine it, because it may happen. Opponents, noting that the polls showed a strong possibility of its passage, started getting money together to counter the pro ads. Let's hope the counter-attack is effective, as I think it may be.

I did receive one dissent, from Steve Lawrence. It is too long to post here. The arguments he makes are familiar. He takes me to task for calling opponents of gay marriage 'irrational'.
He later sent me the following:

I Googled to find what others have written as reasons to not re-define marriage. What I found is pretty slim, and some of it, pretty awful. The Catholic Church (now there's an institution I don't often cite) publishes reasons, but I was unimpressed. Gets into procreative vs non-procreative sex, and lost me. And then there is a great void. Or I can't find anything. I'm surprised. (There are some funny tongue-in-cheeks--pro-gay marriage--e.g. "gay parents will raise gay children, as straight parents raise only straight children.")

Steve: I re-read your reasons for opposing same-sex marriages, but none of it makes sense.
2500 years ago it made sense to insist on producing offspring. Certainly in ancient Greece they were killing each other off so fast in their interminable wars that they had to have replacements or disappear. Even then, Spartan men were required to have male lovers until the age of 30, at which time they took a wife and had children. Athens and other Greek poleis (cities) had less structured but similar arrangements. (Homosexuality was the rule, not the exception then, as it has been wherever same sex people are concentrated together: army, navy, logging camps, prisons, monasteries, &c.) for long periods.

But that was then. Now, can anyone say that we need more people? Attitudes (that's all they are) are arbitrary and can be changed at will. There is no eternal law brought down from Mt Sinai that decrees one thing or another. People make practical arrangements for living with each other to get through life. What justification is there to deny people what they want to do as long as they're not hurting anyone? I do find opposition to this irrational. In San Francisco, at least, just about everyone has friends or work associates who are gay/lesbian. I don't find them any different than anyone else. Do you?

Chris Darling:

PG&E is spending more than $5 million just against Prop H. That is a serious attempt to buy an election.

Gasp. Choke. No, I don't believe they'd do such a thing. PG&E? Perish the thought.

I knew you know about PG&E doing something like that. I thought the figures relevant in that they are high even by San Francisco standards. I know that most of labor is working to pass H. We will see.


Mary Gutekanst:

Jake, do you have an opinion on Prop 1a? I don't remember the status of the proposals to run the train through state parks, and there's been a lot of dispute about the routing of the train through the San Joaquin valley, and other areas. Can you or one of your newsletter readers help with information and advice?


I haven't enough information or understanding of this huge proposal, so I'll ask readers to reply directly to you: maryc@gutekanst.com

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6. If it stinks put a lid on it - Japanese saying

Human waste
Lifting the lid

The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, by Rose George

Death, once referred to in euphemisms, if at all, has been reborn as prime-time television drama. Sex and money are now topics for documentaries, even after-dinner conversation. The last taboo, surely, is shit. The byproducts of digestion are so hard to mention--adolescent jokes aside--that symptoms of bowel cancer are often ignored until it is too late.

But as Rose George explains in this fascinating and eloquent book, there is a great deal that needs to be said about excretion that is not remotely funny. Two-fifths of the world's population has nowhere to defecate except open ground. That is 2.6 billion people whose drinking water contains their and their neighbour's faeces; whose food is contaminated by the flies that lay their eggs in human waste; who live in filth and very often die because of it. And yet this particular curse of poverty is all too often overlooked. Politicians and celebrities are enamoured of "clean water"--but less keen on posing next to the latrines that must be built to keep water that way.

A few frank and indignant souls are trying to help. Ms George meets activists who travel around rural India, provoking villagers to see with fresh eyes the vile heaps deposited close to their homes--and who strike, while disgust is hot, to get them to build latrines. She visits Chinese peasants who light their homes and cook their food with biogas generated from their own and their pigs' fermenting excreta. And she learns about the "Gulper", a prototype manual pump, light enough to be carried on a motorbike, that could empty pitt latrines in slums, thus saving residents from the hazard of "flying toilets"--plastic bags filled with faeces and flung away.

In Japan techno-toilets wash and blow-dry users' bottoms, and innovation abounds. Elsewhere in the rich world, though, citizens are strangely indifferent to the parlous state of a vital piece of infrastructure. London's Victorian sewers, built for 3m people, must now cope with 13m; New York's often overflow. Yet here too Ms George finds heroes: the "flushers" who don crotch-high waders and do battle with everything that is dropped down drains or stuffed down manholes, from cotton-buds (the perfect size to block filters) to congealed fat from restaurants; from mobile phones to the occasional dead Mafioso.

Review in The Economist 11 October 2008

(Similar conditions are not that far behind us in this country. Indoor toilets were rare or absent for most people in my rural upbringing. The toilet on our ranch was an outhouse perched on a hillside, and the feces were deposited on the open hillside, exposed to flies and whatever else visited it. There was no refrigeration, and care had to be taken to not leave food exposed to flies. Even in towns, outhouses were the standard in waste disposal. They also provided sources of mischief and merriment on Halloween.)

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7. http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/the_sun.html (Some recent images of the Sun in more active times. 21 photos)

The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minimum - in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year - with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. Scientists are unsure of the significance of this unusual calm, but are continually monitoring our closest star with an array of telescopes and satellites. Captions of 2 of the 21 pictures are given here:

Solar flares produce seismic waves in the Sun's interior that closely resemble those created by earthquakes on our planet. On May 27, 1998, researchers observed this flare-generated solar quake that contained about 40,000 times the energy released in the great earthquake that devastated San Francisco in 1906, equivalent to an 11.3 magnitude earthquake, scientists calculated. Over the course of an hour, the solar waves traveled for a distance equal to 10 Earth diameters before fading into the fiery background of the Sun's photosphere. Unlike water ripples that travel outward at a constant velocity, the solar waves accelerated from an initial speed of 22,000 miles per hour to a maximum of 250,000 miles per hour before disappearing

NASA's STEREO spacecraft observed this visually stunning prominence eruption on Sept. 29, 2008 in the 304 wavelength of extreme UV light. It rose up and cascaded to the right over several hours, appearing something like a flag unfurling, as it broke apart and headed into space. The material observed is actually ionized Helium at about 60,000 degrees. Prominences are relatively cool clouds of gas suspended above the Sun and controlled by magnetic forces.

(I am awestruck by these images, and even more by the phenomena portrayed. The awe has many dimensions: The mystery of the phenomenon, its power, its longevity (5 billion years counted, 5 billion more to go), its beauty, the human ability to decipher what is happening and develop the technology to be a witness--and on and on.)

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8. Center for Learning in Retirement: http://www.clirsf.org/

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9. When Bambi goes bad

Helena, Montana is under siege. Not by terrorists, locusts, or gangs of surly teenagers, but by 700 urban deer. And they're not just devouring gardens. The more unruly have reportedly attacked dogs (including a bichon frise belonging to U.S. Senator Max Baucus' mom), false-charged kids in playgrounds, and jumped off buildings and through plate glass windows. In 20005, a gang of bucks even chased a paper delivery guy under a car. So this month, Helena officials launched a counterattack. In a pilot deer-control program, police officers will kill 50 of the animals--trapping them with bait and nets, dispatching them slaughterhouse-style with a bolt gun, and giving the meat to a local food bank.

High Country News, 13 October 2008

Those Bambis had better not try to terrorize Juneau. Sarah wouldn't take any nonsense from them, and would likely have a venison dinner.

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10. Water System Improvement Program (WSIP)
(NOTE: This is an important issue for all of northern California, not just San Francisco)

October 30 (Thursday) -- This will be the moment of truth! In the morning the SF Planning Commission will discuss and vote on certification of the final EIR for the WSIP. In the afternoon, probably at 1:30pm, the SFPUC will choose a project. A big public turnout will help ensure the best outcome, so please plan on joining us. If you would like to check out the final EIR, it's available at
http://www.sfgov.org/site/planning_index.asp?id=80530

Canoe Trips -- The Tuolumne River Trust will be hosting a number of canoe trips in the Modesto area this fall (when the salmon are running). For more information and to sign up, please visit http://www.tuolumne.org/content/article.php/20081009085452220

Note from John Rizzo: We (Sierra Club and Tuolumne and others) have been meeting almost daily with Ed Harrington and the PUC, planning commissioners, PUC commisssioners, and supervisors.

This is a very bad EIR that doesn't take into account global warming and the reducing snow pack, states that drastically declining fish stocks are "not significant," offers mitigation that fish experts say has no effect on fish. It downplays the existence of endangered trout.

In 1989, Fish and Wildlife said that we need to INCREASE flows in the Tuolumne River. SF agreed to study it, but never did.

The program affects the upper (in Yosemite), middle and lower stretches of the Tuolumne River, and threatens to eliminate salmon, trout, and
other fish from the river. There are also damaging effects in east bay a Alameda Creek regarding fish stocks.

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11. "Everything is water." Thales of Miletus
“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” Loren Eiseley

Water

“Twenty percent more water than is now available will be needed to feed the additional three billion people who will be alive by 2025.”
World Commission on Water for the 21st Century

“Because of population growth, California will be chronically short of water by 2010.” (Association of California Water Agencies)

“When the well’s dry, we’ll know the value of water.” Benjamin Franklin

“Nearly half the water consumed in the United States now goes to grow feed for cattle and other livestock. To produce just one pound of grain-fed steak requires hundreds of gallons of water to irrigate feed crops consumed by the steer.” Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef


Data Points from Scientific American, June 2003:

NOT ALL WET

In March, the United Nations reported on the state of the world’s freshwater. Population growth could mean that by the middle of this century, seven billion people in 60 countries could be affected by a lack of clean water. Yet little is being done to confront the impending crisis.

Percent of the world’s accessible freshwater used by humans: 54
Percent estimated to be used by 2025: 70

Percent used by agriculture: 69
For industry (average): 22
For industry, high-income countries: 59
For industry, low-income countries: 8

Annual number of deaths from water-related diseases: 5 million
Annual number sickened by poor water: 2.3 billion

Available water per person, in liters per day:

Countries with the least:

Bahamas: 181
United Arab Emirates: 159
Gaza Strip: 142
Kuwait: 2.7

Country with the most:
Greenland 29.5 million
U.S. (contiguous): 20,300

Source: World Water Assessment Program; see www.wateryear2003.org
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Water, water, everywhere
Take Me to the Source: In Search of Water, by Rupert Wright

The physical properties of water are what make life on earth possible. Water combines two elements--hydrogen and oxygen--each on their own toxic; together creating a "benign life-giving force". So Rupert Wright puts it in this splendid, if frustrating, omnium gatherum of water science, art, and lore.

Brief excerpt from review in Guardian Weekly

"Come gather 'round people wherever you roam
Accept that the waters around you have grown...
And you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone
'Cause the times they are a-changing."
-- Bob Dylan, 1962

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12. Running dry
Everyone knows industry needs oil. Now people are worrying about water, too

"Water is the oil of the 21st century," declares Andrew Liveris, the chief executive of Dow, a chemical company. Like oil, water is a critical lubricant of the global economy. And as with oil, supplies of water--at least, the clean, easily accessible sort--are coming under enormous strain because of the growing global population and an emerging middle-class in Asia that hankers for the water-intensive life enjoyed by people in the West.

Oil prices have fallen from their recent peaks, but concerns about the availability of freshwater show no sign of abating...Water, unlike oil, has no substitute. Climate change is altering the patterns of freshwater availability in complex ways that can lead to more frequent and severe droughts.

Untrammelled industrialisation, particularly in poor countries, is contaminating rivers and aquifers. America's generous subsidies for biofuel have increased the harvest of water-intensive crops that are now used for energy as well as food. And heavy subsidies for water in most parts of the world mean it is often grossly underpriced--and hence squandered.

...Water is an essential ingredient in many of the products that line supermarket shelves...Although agriculture uses most water, many other products and services also depend on it. It takes around 13 cubic metres of freshwater to produce a single 200-mm semiconductor wafer, for example. Chipmaking is thought to account for 25% of water consumption in Silicon Valley. Energy production is also water-intensive: each year around 40% of the freshwater withdrawn from lakes and aquifers in America is used to cool power plants...Moreover, the water used within a factory's walls is often only a tiny fraction of a firm's true dependence on water. Jose Lopez, the chief operating officer of Nestle, notes that it take four litres of water to make one litre of product in Nestle's factories, but 3,000 litres of water to grow the agricultural produce that goes into it. These 3,000 litres may be outside his control, but they are very much a part of his business.

Excerpts from The Economist 23 August 2008

(I read this article just as I received in the mail a story from the Glen Canyon Institute, dedicated to draining Lake Powell on the Colorado River in Utah. For years they have been predicting severe drawdowns from Lake Powell, and climate warming is expected to accelerate that drawdown. Now, the shocker is that the Scripps Institute of Oceanography says that even Lake Mead, downstream from Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon, may be empty by 2021. Aside from the uncertainty whether this will actually happen by that date, it's obvious that the insane growth binge in Las Vegas and Phoenix will more than come to a halt; it would have to reverse. No more gushing fountains, emerald green lawns, golf courses, swimming pools? How could the gods do this to us?)

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13. Nature notes

Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret. "You may drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she will keep coming back."

I was reminded of this when a friend inquired about whether she should plant currants (in the genus Ribes), which are known to be a host for the damaging white pine blister rust. My response:

Not a problem; keep all of them. White pine blister rust has been a problem disease for a very long time. I worked summers on fire trail crews in Glacier National Park in the 1940s. We had the choice of keeping fire trails cleared or being on the blister rust crew, clearing all Ribes (currants and gooseberries) from the national park! It was exhausting, but Mother Nature made it clear that she was not to be told how to manage her forests. The National Park Service finally gave up this headstrong, ecologically illiterate approach and have not pulled Ribes in recent decades.

Native currants and gooseberries are widespread in California. In the mountains we have white pines (sugar pine, Western white, limber, whitebark) that are vulnerable to blister rust; however, it doesn't seem to be a serious disease in California. Also, we do not have white pines except in the mountains; Monterey and most other pines planted in lower elevations are all in another pine group which is not susceptible.
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"Hippie" Apes Not As Peace-loving as We Thought

Bonobos, endangered primates found in the lowland forest south of the Congo River, have earned a reputation as the free-loving hippies of the great-ape world, thanks to their liberal use of sexual activities for everything from greetings to conflict resolution. Before this week, scientists thought bonobos only ate small animals like squirrels and rodents. But this Monday, a German report revealed that the apes actually hunt and eat other great apes, citing at least 10 instances in which bonobos set out on hunting trips specifically in search of chimpanzees, which they sneakily ambushed in the trees from below.

This week's findings don't show a correspondence between warrior-like tendencies and male dominance, since bonobo societies are actually ruled by females, who participate in the hunts. The findings do, however, have important implications for models on early human evolution: Along with chimps, bonobos are thought to be humans' closest living relatives.
From the Center for Biological Diversity

(So much for matriarchy)

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14. What you can't do in Connecticut

It's illegal to:

Pirouette while crossing a street

Play scrabble while waiting for a politician to speak

Sell pickles that don't bounce. To be officially a pickle, it must bounce when dropped.

(Heard on Says You, Sunday 4 pm, KQED FM. There were other gems, but I couldn't write them down fast enough.)