ScienceBlogs Channel : Environment

Can't think of any more amusing Curry jokes [Stoat]

William M. Connolley none@example.com — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 17:22:48 -0500

Not that any of the existing ones are that good, either. Anyway: I slagged off her post on attribution a while ago, and then forgot (or couldn't be bothered) to slag off the nonsense she wrote about uncertainty (although my Judith Curry is now blogging, which is probably a good thing, because now instead of nitpicking other people's blogs she is now attempting to say what she thinks. Unfortunately this results in some very strange things is becoming every more clearly correct. Having to make a coherent argument is quite hard; Curry needs someone to read her stuff before she posts it). Anyway James (who can do the probability stuff better than me, and is certainly more authoritative than me or Curry on whether it makes sense) is unimpressed, and conveniently points to mt quite forthright.

But since I'm here, I wanted to talk about Heresy and the creation of monsters wherein Curry talks about Climate Heretic: Judith Curry Turns on Her Colleagues which plaintively asks Why can't we have a civil conversation about climate? And the answer, at least in Curry's case, is that she often doesn't know what she is talking about (see the above) but has frequently seen fit to say it in various blog comments, and subsequently failed to apologise for her errors. The ones that stick in my mind is Currygate and her denigration of DC's charges of plagiarism against Wegman, for which she now looks very stupid (there are far more, those might not even be the most exciting, but they are the ones I can remember). It is very difficult to have a "civil conversation" if people have, effectively, no honour - if they feel able to make false statements and then run away from them. In fact this is very much a divide between the "skeptic" and "science" blogs - all the "science" ones I know of, and bother read, make an effort to be accurate and correct errors.

So, to conclude: of course Curry is happy to attack and discuss the SciAm article - because that article has completely missed the point of the criticism of her. Whether Curry has, and is evading it, or it has just passed her by, I don't know.

Refs

* Attribution errors
* Round in circles with Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the hydrological cycle and sea ice?
* Currygate, part 3: the key papers exposed

Read the comments on this post...

Mystery emo skinks of Tonga! [Tetrapod Zoology]

Darren Naish none@example.com — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 07:09:00 -0500

There are about 3800 lizard species living on the planet today; accordingly, it can sometimes be a bit difficult to keep track of them all. Furthermore, new species are described on a very regular basis, and there's little doubt that many more species await discovery. Matty Smith (from New Zealand) recently encountered the lizard you see here while in Tonga, and he's been having trouble identifying it.

Ever one to take on a tetrapod-themed identification challenge, I had a go at identifying it, and I'd be interested in your opinion should you be able to help.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

NCSE and climate change [Greg Laden's Blog]

Greg Laden none@example.com — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 16:12:21 -0500

Read the comments on this post...

Roadtrip observations of workers safety (sort of) during highway construction [The Pump Handle]

Celeste Monforton none@example.com — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:00:00 -0500

I recently logged 1,300 miles in a rented white PT Cruiser traveling on I-94 from Chicago to Milwaukee and Madison, WI, down I-65 and I-74 to Cincinnati and up I-75 to Detroit. Along the way I saw dozens of road construction projects to expand traffic lanes, repair overpasses, and repave the road surface. Workers were dutifully wearing hard hats and reflective vests, but these protections seemed completely inadequate for the deadly hazards in their midst. Vehicles were zipping past within a few feet of the workers, with only a line of plastic barrels as a barrier. At one site near Dayton, the company must have run out of barrels and the only thing between the workers and the fast moving cars were some beat-up orange traffic cones. Workers visibility---already impaired by the inadequate lighting for night-time work---was further clouded by thick plumes of dust generated by the chopping, cutting and grinding of the concrete. Other workers with their own tasks in the vicinity were forced to breathe in the respirable dust, a hazard that causes irreversible lung damage, including silicosis and lung cancer. With the dust came the deafening noise and its full-body assault on their cardiovascular and nervous systems. Would the workplace conditions been so grim had it not been the dark of night, or with a safety inspector on the scene?

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Pouches, pockets and sacs in the heads, necks and chests of mammals, part IV: reindeer and a whole slew of others [Tetrapod Zoology]

Darren Naish none@example.com — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 09:13:00 -0500

I really must get this series on pouches, sacs and pockets finished. Last time, we looked at baleen whales (and then I got distracted by Caperea): in these animals, a large, inflatable laryngeal sac is used in producing loud, resonating noises (though roles in gas storage or the mechanics of exhalation have also been suggested).

Another ventrally located laryngeal sac is present in the Reindeer Rangifer tarandus [photo above, by Karen Laubenstein, from wikipedia, shows an Alaskan reindeer with wonderfully elaborate antlers]. The sac originates from the trachea close to the epiglottis, is present in both sexes (though is much larger in males, reaching 4000 cubic cm when inflated), and can extend asymmetrically either along the left or right side of the neck (Frey et al. 2007).

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Who ya gonna read? [Stoat]

William M. Connolley none@example.com — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:58:57 -0500

Thank to Hank, who spotted this.

If you go to Nature's upcoming climate publication, there's an online quiz they're using to decide who gets a freebie: https://www.sunbeltfs.com/forms/nq/subscribe.asp.

At one point it asks what climate-related blogs you read. Naturally, only the finsest quality blogs are listed. There are three blogs:

_Bright Green Blog
_Real Climate
_Stoat
_Other (please specify)

As Hank notes, "Bright Green Blog" -- the Christian Science Monitor's effort -- ended on "February 16, 2010 [a]fter 22 months and some 500 posts".

So, despite their ability to drink prodigous quantities of beer J+J don't make the cut (how does she do it? I suspect a switcheroo), much less the likes of RP Sr :-).

Doubtless this posting will help keep me up in the lists of high-content-quality blogs.

Oh, and while I'm here, in a minor gesture towards substance: in Announcement Regarding Supplemental Material the Journal of Neuroscience explains why it is dropping supplementary material. They raise some interesting issues but I'm not convinced by their conclusion.

Read the comments on this post...

Ecological tragedy in Vietnam: not a children's story [bioephemera]

Jessica Palmer none@example.com — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:52:51 -0500

Wildlife of Vietnam, by Brendan Wenzel

This bundle of exotic animals by Brendan Wenzel is whimsical, yet unsettling. On the one hand, it would be perfect for a children's book; I imagine a tale in which the animals overcome their natural animosities, cooperate to free themselves, dump a hapless and ineptly nonthreatening poacher in the river, and return safely to their various homes, in the happiest of ecological endings. But we all know that's not how the story really goes.

Read the rest of this post... |

Slow Time, Fast Time [Casaubon's Book]

Sharon Astyk none@example.com — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:46:18 -0500

One of the tensions in my life -is that between two kinds of time. "Fast Time" is the world I live in, the one with a two hour meeting scheduled at 7pm, my husband's classes at 12:35, Eli's bus at 8:15 and 3:30... payments due by the first of the month, etc... It is the world run on clocks and calendars, where expectations can be fixed and formalized. All of us live in fast time in some measure, some of us almost completely, others only barely. There is, however, no good way of escaping it entirely.

I also live in slow time. Slow time is the world of things that cannot be subject to fast time - things that take their own time, that you cannot schedule, that get done when they are ready. This is the time in which the wheat is ready to harvest, in which babies are birthed, in which winter sets in for real, in which children learn to walk or read or ride a bicycle, in which the plums ripen, in the ill recover strength, in which bread rises, in which change happens. These are things that occur, as the saying goes, "in their own sweet time." They cannot be hurried - and that is part of the problem, since we often are in a hurry, tied as we are to fast time.

The two are connected, of course, and often in conflict. How often do we need to go back to work in fast time before we are recovered from our illness? How often do we need to be somewhere at the same time the plums are ripe and ready for harvest? How often do we pass the child who had not mastered a skill set ahead, because fast time defines the school year, and there isn't time enough to wait for him to read or learn algebra completely. How often do we schedule the c-section for the day that's convenient, harvest the corn early and then pay extra to dry it with fossil fuels?

It doesn't work only this way - sometimes things that belong to the territory of fast time take their own sweet time - the project at work that turned out to be more involved than you thought, and won't be done until it is done. The house that the builder promised by February, delayed in the excavation stage and then when the plumber was ill. The meeting that reveals a deep chasm - or better yet, deep possibilities, that will take their time to be resolved or brought to fruition.

In either case, slow time and fast time often bang up against each other, and it can be challenging to give each one its due. We live in a society that gives strong preference to fast time - our answer to the conflict between them has been to live ever more in fast time, where things do not take their own sweet time. And there are some merits to this - my oldest, Eli, who has autism, for example, received early intervention help by the time he was two, rather than waiting, as in the past one might have, until he was five or six to diagnose him and begin addressing his delays.

On the other hand, there's a price to this - my nine year old had difficulty with writing and pre-writing skills when he was younger. Enormous pressure was brought to bear on us to give him early interventions like his brother, and we did, a little bit. What we found, however, was that Simon disliked being pressured, and responded by not wanting to learn to write, and was frustrated by the emphasis placed on what he didn't do well. He did not progress. We stopped the interventions, left him alone for a year without any reference to writing, and in the meantime, he discovered cartooning. At almost-9, other than slightly messier than average handwriting, there's little difference between him and his peers. What Simon needed was time - and so did Eli. But different kinds of time - one was served by fast time interventions that said that a child should be doing these things by this date, the other was not served by them.

Much of my life involved finding time outside of fast time to do slow time work - to give things the time that they actually take. My work is biological in nature, for the most part, and organisms are messy things. Days to maturity are estimates. Time to harvest depends on sun and wind and temperature and soil. Good flavor in a lacto-fermented pickle or a pan of goat cheese depends as much on time and temperature as it does my work and intention in them. Relationships take time - the time to get to a barter relationship with my neighbor can vary - one might have something to offer immediately, another might take months of friendly approaches and talking and time before taking that risk.

Parenting takes time - and it takes the time you have to give it, and always a little more besdes. Marriage takes time - sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Trees grow in their own times - the sugar maples I'm establishing now take my time and attention, but it will be 30 years before they return syrup. Who knows if my climate will support sugar maples by then? And yet they take the time they take - and it seems worth investing in their possible future.

Haying comes when it comes, in a stretch of warm dry weather. The tomatoes come when they come, with as much as a month between first ripe tomatoes. Peace between neighbors, or families being ready to talk about a touchy issue or make a life change comes when it comes. Elders needing care, babies being born - that happens when it happens and it throws our lives into disarray, as we try frantically to rearrange the fast time realities that say "you cannot give this all the time it really needs."

I have no good or simple answers for the conflict between fast and slow time. For some of us, barely making it, we may need to give over to fast time almost entirely, taking what little sneaked slow time we can get, but the most important thing is to keep body and soul together. For other people, caught up in too much slow time, without the anchor of fast time and the job that went with it, it might be necessary to find solutions in slow time - perhaps the garden and the children that had been going to daycare and embracing the work that needs to be done in its own time is a kind of answer to the despair of exclusion from fast time. For most of us, we are destined to be caught betwixt and between.

In a society that lived mostly in slow time - and much of human history did - there would be little need for me to assert the merits of this kind of time. Indeed, I can certainly imagine myself an advocate for standardization and formalization in some measures in a society that lived almost entirely slowly. But that's not the world in which I live - instead, we live in a world that heavily prioritizes fast time, and tends towards contempt for the idea of slow time.

In this world, there is nothing that should not be available on a fast time schedule - here strawberries and tomatoes may take time, but the time is erased with international shipping and hothouses. The time that a tomato takes - 60 days to transplant, another 75 to harvest, and a four month harvest season, that time is erased into the time it takes to stop by the supermarket in February on the way home from work - on the way from picking up your daughter at SAT prep classes.

Here I feel the need to assert the merits of slow time - of stopping sometimes to give things the time they actually require. Of having experienced, at least, slow time and the sweet, sweet time that things actually take when left to do the work as they do it. This is not an argument against early intervention, against breeding plants for shorter or longer seasons, in favor of letting earthworms build topsoil alone. It is an argument for seeing things, however, that take their own sweet time as being a thing worth having. For seeing natural time as something other than a burden, a pain that we must bear in order to get on to the next event and meeting. It is a case for suggesting that sometimes the answer is to hurry less, and to slow down, and that perhaps we do not always make our best choices on fast time.

The fact that slow time has a place in our society does have a few lingering acknowledgements - summer vacation for kids is a lingering acknowledgement not of children's need for an unstructured couple of months in the hot weather, but for children's participation in the slow time of hay and harvest. The week or so most people take at the darkest time of the year is an acknowledgement both of our lowered productivity in the deepest of winter and our need to celebrate the slow time return of the light and life.

We grew and evolved on slow time, and the place fast time has tken in our space is new to us. I make no claims about what that means, only wonder what how we are changed as we live at a pace and in a time that has little precedent. What I do know is this - when I can allow things to take their own sweet time, that time is truly sweet.

Sharon

Read the comments on this post...

Massive stretches of weathered oil spotted in Gulf of Mexico [A Few Things Ill Considered]

coby none@example.com — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 06:55:25 -0800

Like rumours of Mark Twain's death, the claims of the disappearance of BP's oil spill have been greatly exagerated.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Once more on little Caperea [Tetrapod Zoology]

Darren Naish none@example.com — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 07:42:00 -0500

Given that we're all enjoying gawping at Caperea so much, I may as well finish up and use the rest of the photos that Joy Reidenberg kindly provided. First off, here's the skull from the side.

It's really weird: that lower jaw shape is utterly unlike anything else present in baleen whales, being comparatively deep and 'heavy' in appearance, with a downward flexure near the tip (is it just me, or does this look a bit like a flamingo mandible?). In comparison, the lower jaws of rorquals, grey whales are kin are laterally bowed, beam-like bones with cylindrical cross-sections. Those of right whales are much deeper, but they're still not much like the Caperea lower jaw; they're fairly straight and lack the down-curved anterior portion. As usual we have no idea why Caperea's lower jaw is like this: remember that (to my knowledge) nobody knows what it eats [UPDATE: not entirely true - be sure to see the comments below], or how it eats (is it a skim-feeder, like right whales, or a lunge-feeder like most rorquals, or both, or neither?). Anyway, here's the skull seen from below...

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

The art of the eco-mindshift [Greg Laden's Blog]

Greg Laden none@example.com — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:30:46 -0500

Read the comments on this post...

More wikifun [Stoat]

William M. Connolley none@example.com — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 14:31:21 -0500

My previous post refers. There are lots more things to say; this post doesn't really say any of them but veers off at a tangent. Let me know if you get bored.

The tangent to start with is "no-one from outside understand how wikipedia works". An obvious example of this is Lawrence Solomon (my apologies for mentioning: it is more honour than he deserves; but he is a convenient example), who says:

Connolley did not wield his influence by the quality of his research or the force of his argument but through his administrative position

There are several problems with this statement: the first is that I haven't been an admin since last summer (13 September 2009 to be precise; and in case you're uncertain, that case had nothing to do with Global Warming). But more important are wikipedia's conflict-of-interest rules, which prevent admins doing controversial things in the topic areas they edit (if they edit; some admins drop down to hardly editing at all once given the bit. Not me). In case you think that rule is just a formality, and as easily evaded on wiki as it is by city dealers: no. All my edits (and admin actions) are and were scrutinised avidly by any number of highly unfriendly eyes and anything violating the rules would have been reported (in fact there is a section William M. Connolley's use of administrator tools while involved in that previous, remarkably stupid case, but you'll notice none of those are in the GW area).

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Cholera Outbreak in Haiti - and in Central Africa [The Pump Handle]

Liz Borkowski none@example.com — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:48:01 -0500

Months after it was hit by a devastating earthquake, Haiti is now battling an outbreak of cholera. So far, more than 1,500 cases have been reported and 142 victims have died of the disease, which causes severe diarrhea. The treatment is straightforward - rehydration therapy to reverse potentially deadly dehydration - but relies on hospitals being able to handle surges of weakened patients. It's been a century since Haiti last faced cholera, and until now everyone had been relieved that the earthquake hadn't spurred an outbreak.

The Guardian's Rory Carroll reports that the outbreak is taking place in the largely rural region of Artibonite, and the most badly affected areas are about 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince. Although Artibonite largely escaped the earthquake, it did receive an influx of quake survivors - and without adequate facilities to handle a swelling population, water sources became contaminated with human feces.

Artibonite was already grappling with extreme poverty. I recognized the area's name because I'd heard a Planet Money podcast in which reporters visited l'Artibonite ("Haiti's rice country") to learn why the rice business in Haiti is so bad. The whole show is well worth a listen if you've got 19 minutes (the story starts around 1:45), but the show's website offers this summary:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

TV Review: National Geographic Great Migrations [The Thoughtful Animal]

Jason G. Goldman none@example.com — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 10:15:00 -0500

Last night, I was a guest of the National Geographic Channel at the historic Saban Theater in Beverly Hills for the United States premiere of Great Migrations, which airs internationally on Sunday, November 7.

Great Migrations is a 7-part TV "event," paired with an issue of National Geographic magazine, a set of kids' books, iPhone apps, and so forth. The mini-series, narrated by Alec Baldwin, focuses on the movements of animals across the earth in an effort to find food, to mate, and to survive. The first hour, which was screened for us, featured the migration of the monarch butterfly from Mexico to northern Canada and back to Mexico, the movement of the zebras and wildebeest across the Serengeti, the annual trek of dinner-plate sized crabs from the jungles to the beaches of Christmas Island, and the annual meeting of the male and female sperm whales near the Azores.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Chamber of Commerce's misinformation campaign about worker safety regulations [The Pump Handle]

Celeste Monforton none@example.com — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:39:42 -0500

Updated (below) 10/22/2010

Industry trade association are masters of using scare tactics and misinformation about environment, health and safety regulations to recruit and retain members. The latest evidence is the Chamber of Commerce's "This Way to Jobs" propaganda campaign, with the worn out message: regulations on workers' safety and environmental protection hurt the economy and businesses. A video cartoon promoting the campaign says: "

Washington isn't good at everything but recently it's been great at issuing regulations."

The sites features a photo of a small businessman, Ronald Myers of Hot Shot Equipment, who suggests that workplace safety regulations forced him out of business. He's seen standing behind a chain link fence, presumably his now shuttered small manufacturing shop.

The Chamber says:

"in the past two years we've seen a dramatic acceleration of regulations, rulemakings, and mandates."

I don't see it that way. The Obama Administration took office about 20 months. Since then, OSHA has only issue one, just ONE new regulation.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

The Gentlemen's Club [Casaubon's Book]

Sharon Astyk none@example.com — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 09:33:38 -0500

(Stachys, at about 3 weeks)

Today Stachys and Hemp enter the monastary. They are the youngest of the boys and at 8 weeks plus, it is time for them to leave their Moms. Stachys is just about 8 weeks, and at that point, could conceivably start breeding his sisters and his Mom (he's *huge* too - I need a current picture - he was a singleton and has gotten all of Mom's rich milk, plus Jessie's, ummm...circular physique). Hemp doesn't have that problem - he was wethered last week, but he'll be going home soon with a new family, along with Basil (who with brother Goldenrod moved up with the bucks two weeks ago when he passed the critical age shift). So Hemp and Basil need a little time to bond.

We hadn't planned to keep Stachys, but he turned out to be such a stunning goat - more than we ever expected when we were first focused on his innate cuteness (if one were to make a stuffed toy based on a nigerian dwarf, he would be it). He's large, powerfully built, with great genetic and a solid body type that if we ever raise for meat production, would really improve the breed. He's gorgeous, and so we're going to keep both Stachys and Basil until next year, and see how they grow out and fit with our breeding plan. This brings us to a total of four bucks in the gentleman's club, besides Tekky, our infertile doe who hangs with the bucks.

We're keeping two (although we will eventually winnow down to one) of Frodo's sons because Frodo is on the older side for a buck goat - the bodily stress of going into rut means that the boys live at most 7-9 years, and Frodo is six now. His genetics are astonishing - his mother Goddess is first in the nation among Nigerians in all three milk production categories: total milk production, protein and butterfat, and one of his daughters is in the top ten in each category. He's also a gentle, charming, easy to handle buck - and temperament is an inheritable trait. We don't want to lose Frodo's wonderful genetics prematurely, so just in case, we need his sons. But we also have every intention of keeping Frodo happy and healthy for a while.

We have two barns on the property, both quite small. The one nearer the house is a converted garage, with separate areas for poultry, kidding, and goats. At the top of the hill that leads up to our big field, there's a stable, built by previous owners for their horses. It is here that the gentlemen live, with fenced pastures that move regularly.

The reason the boys live up the hill is, well, male goats don't smell that great. During most of the year, it is a mild, musky ripeness, not unpleasant, but instantly recognizable (as Eric once said of Asher, after picking him up "Oh, you've been hugging Frodo!") But come late summer and autumn, well, it gets pretty intense. The boys also increase their attractiveness to goat maidens by peeing on themselves, which doesn't help. One generally doesn't want a buck goat right next door.

Now at this stage, our gentleman's club is rife mostly with the young and the pubescent. Only Frodo is fully sexually mature, but his ummm..essence is sufficient to infuse the entire community with a ripe goaty scent.

(Frodo having a snack with Tekky)

Our other buck is Cadfael, who we acquired this summer. Cadfael's lines aren't quite as impressive as Frodo's, but his Mom's udder is spectacular, and his Dad comes also from amazing milk lines. He's smaller than Frodo, which is good, also. Frodo's daughters will meet Cadfael for the first time in February.

(Cadfael peeking out from behind Tekky - he's bigger now too!)

Add in Goldenrod (the kids picked the name and we loved it for a buck!), who is Bast's son - Bast's Dad is Frodo's nephew, so he's a tight linebreeding on Frodo, and we've high hopes for him as well:

Tekky doesn't seem to get pregnant - she's been in with a buck now constantly since March and no signs of babies, so we've assigned her permanent wether status and she seems happy up there with her buddies. She's Selene's daughter, and Selene produces the most charming, personable goats in the world - she's everyone's best friend. We needed a "wether" up there anyway - that way, when some of the boys are out doing their job, we have someone in with the others.

(Coming through the rye!)

It is a surprisingly happy family up there, although all the boys, let's just say would be much happier left to run with the does. Frodo is particularly anxious to get on with the important business of making more goat babies, but since we don't want any babies before May, he's got to wait. We periodically let the boys out to browse a bit, and during those periods, the younger bucks go off and eat, leaving Frodo standing outside the fence that contains the girls, expressing his ardent passion for them in his inimicable, smelly way. We're pretty sure he'd starve to death if we'd let him stay there.

Half the reason we let them out is to browse, but the other half is because I love watching the joy with which the boys (and Tekky) run down the hillside. Frodo is older and slower, but the dancing and leaping that the boys do when they are free to roam and rejoin (even through a fence) the rest of the herd is fun to watch.

For all the scented disadvantages of the bucks, they are charming creatures in their own way, and after our experiences with drive-thru goat breeding (largely unsuccessful) it became absolutely evident that we needed to start our own gentlemen's club. And emerging from this process is the very beginnings of our plans for how to create low input, multi-purpose goats suitable to backyards.

My hope is to obtain some angora goats in the spring, and for next year, begin also breeding nigora, which is a fiber/milk goat that has yet to be fully standardized, but which has a lot of potential.

For this year, Frodo's stuck in the Gentlemen's club until called out in December to revisit the senior does - Bast, Jessie, Arava, Maia, Mina and Selene. Cadfael will get his turn come February with the girls born this summer: Meadowsweet, Calendula, Poppy, Licorice and Marshmallow. Goldenrod and Stachys will be left to grow some more and show their stuff.

I like to mention to people that we're running a Gentlemen's Club on the property - small scale agriculture needs some sexing up. I do try not to mention the smell, though.

Read the comments on this post...

Aging and Transportation [The Pump Handle]

Liz Borkowski none@example.com — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:56:16 -0500

The New York Times' latest "Room for Debate" discussion is entitled "2025: A Lot of Old People on the Roads," and it introduces the topic this way:

...the number of drivers 70 and over is expected to triple in the next 20 years in the United States. Older drivers are more likely to be injured, and they often reach the point where they stop driving voluntarily, even before someone takes their licenses away.
How will they get around, given that most of them don't live in cities or transit-friendly planned communities? What should transportation planners be doing, if anything, to prepare for this demographic reality?

This is yet another reason why public transportation is so important. Many people choose where to live at a time when driving to every destination seems feasible. Even if they can handle the rising oil prices and intensifying congestion that make driving more and more painful, they'll eventually reach a point where vision and reaction-time declines make it much harder for them to drive. These limitations shouldn't spell the end to an active, socially engaged life, but for too many elderly people, driving less means spending more time home alone.

Room for Debate contributor Elinor Ginzler of AARP makes the point that public transportation systems need to account for the needs of the elderly, whose travel requirements often differ from those of commuters. And both she and Yale School of Medicine professor Richard A. Marottoli note that improving the design of intersections can benefit the safety of all pedestrians and drivers.

Marottoli suggests some interventions - e.g., computer-based training for reaction time, classroom and on-road training for overall driver ability - to help older drivers stay on the road safely. Such steps can help people live more actively in the environments we have. At the same time, let's work on making the transportation environment as a whole more hospitable to people who aren't driving.

Read the comments on this post...

New New Haven? [Casaubon's Book]

Sharon Astyk none@example.com — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:57:33 -0500

I'll be there this weekend for the first ever Urban Adapting-In-Place event - I'll be speaking on Friday night about urban adaptation and on Saturday a whole host of local resources will come together to talk about New Haven's future. I think it will be absolutely wonderful, and I hope you will be there!

http://www.sare.org/mysare/Events.aspx?do=showevent&event=2734

Sharon

Read the comments on this post...

Did I mention that Caperea is really, really weird? [Tetrapod Zoology]

Darren Naish none@example.com — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 07:39:00 -0500

The recent discussion of Caperea's skeletal morphology (Caperea = Pygmy right whale) inspired Joy Reidenberg to send these photos of a Caperea skeleton, taken in New Zealand and used here with her permission.

In this view of the whale's thoracic region (we're standing beneath the whale, looking up into its ribcage), you can see that the transverse processes (the wing-shaped structures that project from both sides of each vertebra) are proportionally huge: so big that many of them overlap. The dorsal ends of the ribs - the parts of the ribs that contact the transverse processes - look strangely small and narrow by comparison, and also seem to have really loose connections with the transverse processes. Compare this with the ribcage of a North Atlantic right whale Eubalaena glacialis...

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Contractor racks up mine safety violations and unpaid penalties, also wins safety awards [The Pump Handle]

Celeste Monforton none@example.com — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:07:12 -0500

Estevan R. Benavidez's family says he was a happy-to-lucky, 20 year old. He graduated from Miami (AZ) High School in 2008, was a talented tattoo artist, liked to fish, eat junk food, and spend time with his young daughter. On January 9, 2010 he was working for Ames Construction as a laborer at the Freeport McMoRan copper mine in his hometown. He reported to work at 6:30 am, but he never made it home alive.

Benavidez was working with several other men to construct a new reservoir at the surface copper mine. The large lined reservoir holds a sulfuric acid mix used to extract the copper from the ore. The men were using excavators and rope straps to maneuver a 400 foot section of 24-inch polyethylene pipe down into the reservoir. The huge pipe got stuck, and the men used the straps and tugs with the excavator to it to try unjam it. When the excavator pulled it, the 20,000 pound pipe shifted. It knocked down the foreman Kevin Frantti and fatally struck 20-year old Estevan R. Benavidez. The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration's (MSHA) Fatality Investigation report says:

"The accident occurred because contractor management policies and controls were inadequate. A risk assessment to discuss the task and identify possible hazards was not conducted prior to placing the pipe. The procedures failed to ensure that persons stay clear of suspended loads."

MSHA threw the book at Ames Construction on Feb 28 with a $70,000 penalty for an unwarrantable failure to comply with a safety standard directly related to the fatality: prohibiting workers from being under a suspended load. They also received nine other citations, totaling almost $167,000 for violating other safety and health rules. Ames is contesting the citations and penalties.

Is Ames Construction some fly-by-night company with no experience doing this type of work??

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...