Creature Feature: A Very Smart Bird

US Person has posted previously concerning the intelligence of Corvids {01.09.14}. Among the most intelligent of these birds, is the New Caledonian crow. (Corvus moneduloides). In this series of experiments by researchers at the University of Aukland, NZ the crows demonstrate their functional understanding of the principle of water displacement under various conditions--water versus sand, light versus heavy, narrow versus wide, solid versus hollow. These experiments show the crow's advanced cognitive abilities and tool use. In fact these crows manufacture their tools such as hooks, which they use in the wild to catch insects and larvae. If humans perform a similar behavior of shaping a three dimensional form from a natural material it is called "carving". In the last video segment a crow needs only two tries to use the hidden connection between a water filled-tube containing food and only one of two separate water columns. Could a human toddler make the functional distinction any faster?

Governments Agree on Polar Bears

credit: NBC, Svalbard male starved  

Update: The latest news on the struggle of polar bears to survive in a rapidly warming Arctic is not good. A new study says the population of southern Beaufort Sea bears has declined a terrifying 40%. Published in Ecological Applications, journal of the Ecological Society of America, the study authors conclude that within a decade (2001-2010) the number of bears has been reduced from 1500 to 900. This population is at the edge of polar bear range, so it is clear that warming is taking a heavy toll on the ice dependent bear according to a Canadian wildlife official. Subadults are being particularly hard hit says the study by lack of sea ice and low prey abundance. Unless immediate steps are taken to relieve the polar bear from other source of mortality, Earth's largest terrestrial predator is headed for extinction (14.05.11, A Refuge for Ice Bears).

{11.11.14}The Convention on Migratory Species meeting that just ended in Quito, Ecuador approved greater protections for polar bears (Ursus maritimus) who are facing extinction due to a radically warming Arctic. Appendix II listing means that signatory countries must put conservation plans in place, but does not prohibit killing bears as an Appendix I listing would require. Dr. Masha Vorontsova, head of IFAW Russia said the listing is a recognition by 120 countries that polar bears are endangered by climate change, hunting and pollution. US Person thinks the listing is an important first step but more action is needed if the polar bear is to be saved from extinction. The meeting also decided to prohibit the capture of live whales and dolphins for use as human entertainment.

Canada's refusal to offer full protection to polar bear has come under scrutiny of the Commission for Environmental Co-operation, a body set up under the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA). Research predicts that two thirds of polar bears will be lost by 2050 due to Arctic sea ice melting. The Commission doubts sufficient consideration was given to research. In 2007 the USGS said several polar bear populations in Canada would disappear entirely. The US decared polar bears endangered in 2008. Canada, which has an active polar bear hunting trade, listed the bears as only a species of special concern in 2011 under its endangered species law. The Commission's secretariat called for an investigation of Canada's enforcement of the Species at Risk Act based on the best available science and has given the country 60 days to respond. Canada is subject to increasing international criticism for its government's resource exploitation policies. The Center for Global Development ranked Canada last amoung the world's 27 richest countries for its environmental record. Canada dropped out of the Kyoto protocol and the conservative government accused of intimidating goverrnment scientists who speak out on environmental issues.

The polar bear population on the western shore of Hudson Bay has shrunk by nearly 10% to 850 bears in under a decade. A sharper drop in the survival rate of cubs puts the entire population in danger of collapse in a few years. Government population studies as yet unreleased to the public are grim. Polar bears of western Hudson Bay have little chance of long-term survival. Hudson Bay's ice free season has expanded by about a day or the past thirty years. Last year it was 143 days long. Scientists think that when it reaches 160 days, polar bears will starve to death because they cannot hunt seal in the spring. As a result of this slow starvation, females are 88 lbs lighter than they were in the early 1980s and they are having fewer, lighter cubs that causes fewer to survive.

Toontime: Larger Principles

[credit: Rick McKee, Augusta Chronicle]

The Current Occupant's grant of temporary amnesty to a limited number of illegal immigrants who have managed to survive five years in this darwinesque country without committing serious crime, and who are willing to pay taxes, is a perfect example of just how skewed towards nativist conservatism the nation's politics has become. In former decades his actions would have been applauded by liberal elements in both parties as a rational response to a festering problem; now it is considered a treasonous or even worse a socialist usurping of Congress' constitutional powers. As he made clear in his televised address all recent Presidents have implemented deportation amnesties of various sorts. Legal scholars agree the President has the constitutional authority to do so. In reality what the "emperor" has done is belatedly act to satisfy a increasingly powerful segment of the Democratic coalition. By 2050 Anglo-americans will be a minority.

Repugnants are no dummies, they know that statistic is staring them in the face. Their strategists are resorting to some fairly clever tactics to offset the Democratic numerical advantage among current minorities. One of these tactics is the program called "Interstate Crosscheck". In the twenty-three Republican controlled states the computer system is used to prevent double voting across state lines, a legitimate device to prevent rarely committed voting fraud. Despite identifying thousands of suspects, there has not been a single conviction for double voting.  In the hands of partisan state officials the program is used to purge voting roles of tens of thousands of names. For example in North Carolina an incumbent Democratic senator was upset by a Repugnant by just 48,511 votes. Crosscheck eliminated 589,393 potential NC voters from the rolls! With numbers like that who needs policy differences? In Colorado where Senator Mark Udall (D) lost by 49,729 votes, Crosscheck deleted 300,842 names as potential double voters. No due process there, folks. Crosscheck purges swamped the margins of victory in Alaska and Georgia too. According to research by Greg Palast for Al Jazeera America these purge lists amount to nothing more than common names, many of them obviously not Anglo-amercan. An estimated 1 in 7 African-americans, 1 in 8 Asian-americans and 1 in 8 Hispanic-americans are affected.

This interstate purging of voter roles is the pet project of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), a conservative, Oxford-educated white man. Ever since Katherine Harris, a Repugnant Secretary of State for Florida, played a pivotale role in awarding the presidency to George W. Bush, the Republican Party has focused on ways of reducing the Democratic Party's numerical superiority. A cynical obsession with restrictive voter registration laws in the name of crime-fighting is the result. The Government Accountability Office estimates voter turnout in Kansas has declined 1.9% primarily among minorities and young voters because of difficult voter ID laws. The supression tactic is working as the latest midterm results show. Interstate Crosscheck has been embraced in Ohio, again considered to be decisive in the presidential election of 2016.

Conservationists Sue to Protect Walruses

courtesy: USGS

Struggling with the undeniable (except in Washington) effects of climate change six prominent conservation groups have sued the US Fish & Wildlife Service to protect Chukchi Sea walruses from damage by oil exploration. Royal Dutch Shell has conducted exploratory drilling at Hannah Shoal, a primary feeding area for the Chukchi Sea walrus colony that gathers in this area as ice receeds from the Arctic Sea in summer. Walruses (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) use sea ice as a diving platform to reach food on the continental shelf, but now sea ice has receeded north beyond the continental shelf. Water depths exceed two miles making it impossible for the walruses to feed. Deprived of their usual habitat by warming sea temperatures, walruses are returning to shore to rest after swimming out to the feeding grounds about 75 miles off the Chukchi coast. Thirty-five thousand walruses gathered at Lay Point, Alaska this summer near where more drilling may take place. {01.10.14} Shell's intial season in 2012 was marked by failure and near disaster as a drilling rig grounded on shore in a storm. {17.04.13) The company intends to return to drill its "Chukchi Sea Burger" prospect near Hannah Shoal. During 2012 operations Shell crews reported 338 sightings of a total of 8,678 walruses, many in large groups.

Conservationists through their attorneys, Earthjustice, say that oil exploration activities will drive walruses away from the feeding area. The federal wildlife agency typically understates adverse impacts because of institutional bias. Walruses are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, but the rule change being challenged allows "incidental" killings in conecting with oil and gas exploration. The groups say a finding of "no significant impact" is erroneous and arbitrary since the process failed to consider walrus travel corridors between the Shoal and coastal haulouts. [more photos]

Senate Blocks Keystone XL Bill

Landrieu: soft on oil

After a vote in the right-wing dominated House of Representatives approving the Keystone XL Pipeline project, Senate Democrats voted to block a similar bill in the Senate by one vote. The President still needs to approve any pipeline that crosses a US border. The bitumen pipeline from Alberta, Canada is an environmental disaster. Approving it would be totally inconsistent with the administration's expressed committment to reducing CO₂ emissions; but the entire oil industry and the Canadian government is pushing hard for approval. The project is considered a major link to even more exportation of bitumen, the most unclean form of petroleum. Without the high capacity pipelne direct to Gulf coast refineries, strip mining for tar sands--hugely destructive of the boreal forest, toxic, and energy intensive--is barely economic.

Even though the vote may cost the Democrats another Senate seat in oil-soaked Louisiana (Mary Landrieu, former chair of the Energy Committee, who lobbied for the bill), US Person thinks the Senate Democrats did the right thing for the country and the world. With gasoline prices projected to go below $3.00/gal [see chart], the pipeline is not needed to meet America's energy needs. Nor is it a 'job creator' as its hucksters constantly claim. If built it would create fewer than fifty permanent jobs according to the State Department, which rubber-stamped the pipe's environmental assessment. What the pipeline does do is give Canada access to international oil markets at the expense of the United States' national interest. Climate stabilization will be impossible if tar sands are exploited at the rates planned by Keystone's developers. The UN's environmental program report says the world will face "severe, widespread and irreversible" effects from climate change unless all greenhouse gas emissons fall to zero by 2100. It's no joke, Sherlock.

Monsanto's Evil Seed

More: Last week EU politicians backed a plan to ban genetically modified crops on their soil even if given Union wide approval. A previous compromise would have required negotiation with a biotech company if the member nation wanted to prohibit use of its products. The plan approved by EU's parliament would allow member states to ban cultivation of frankencrops on environmental grounds. So far Europe has only approved two GMO crops for commercial cultivation and one was later blocked by court action. Monsanto's frankenmaize MON810 is the only one grown within the EU. Spain and Portugal have been growing it for a decade. Parliamentary approval of an opt out makes it more likely that frankenfoods will remain limited on the continent. France and Germany are both opposed to GMO crops while euro-conflicted Britain favors them.

{17.11.14} Unlike timid Oregoonians, the citizens of Maui, Hawaii voted against growing or testing of GMO (genetically modified organisms) crops. Corporate giants like Monsanto poured millions of dollars into Oregon to prevent required labeling of frankenfoods. They achieved an expensive, but close victory. Their advertising tactic was the usual: fear of higher food prices, conveyed by images of trustworthy folks such as nutritionists and farmers (see graphic). The vote on Maui was close too at about 51% in favor of the moratorium. Corporations are not gracious loosers because they have huge resources with which to wage prolonged litigation. Monsanto immediately went to federal court to request an injunction against the referendum being implemented. The case is assigned to a federal magistrate that earlier invalidated a law regulating GMOs on Kauai. Maui's initiative supporters filed in state court to ensure enforcement of the winning initiative. According to their attorney, they will request the federal court delay action until the state court has had an opportunity to rule.

Monsanto owns or leases more than 3000 acres on Maui and Molokai. Dow Chemical's agronomy unit, Mycogen Seeds, would also have to shut down its development and production operations. Since 1997 Monsanto has filed about 145 lawsuits against people to protect its patented GMO seed. Monsanto is not alone in its vigorous defense of corporate "personhood" at the expense of real, if misinformed, people. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, an industry trade organization, sued the state of Vermont for implementing its GMO labeling law. Vermont's law was supposed to take effect in July of 2016. Last year Syngenta and Bayer sued the EU for placing a limited ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, shown to be lethal to bees. Just ask the tea party crazies. They will tell you if people have to die to protect corporate profits, it must be God's will.

The Madness of Abenomics

These charts have stock and currency traders drooling, the rest of us mere mortals are inclined to yawn if we understand their implications at all. The US and Japan stock markets are riding a cheap money high. Appropriately on Halloween the Bank of Japan announced it would institute another round of death-defying of monetary easing otherwise rationally known as money printing. Governor Kuroda said his bank would purchase annually ¥50 trillion worth of government bonds and ¥1 trillion of exchange trading funds  (QE 11 below). The markets went wild:

charts courtesy: John Mauldin

The announcement means Japans monetary base will expand by 60 to 70 trillion a year, which means the Bank of Japan's balance sheet has expanded by 50% compared to the Federal Reserve's 25%!  That's why it is death-defying-- like the guy walking a tight rope between two skyscrapers marked "Depression" and "Hyperinflation". No other central bank has attempted printing money on this scale. It is said that Prime Minister Abe keeps a stock ticker in his office. Perhaps he needs the reassurance. What such an extreme moneytary policy is doing to his country's moribund real economy is reflected in these charts:

Some commentators are calling the latest machinations from Japan, "a Ponzi scheme", a term that term is becoming trite. Former Reagan budget director David Stockman puts it differently, "Japan is an old-age colony which is headed for bankruptcy. It has no prospect for measurable economic growth and a virtual certainty that taxes will keep rising...it is still borrowing 40¢ on every dollar it spends." The good news is that stock markets outside Japan will benefit enormously because the country plans to re-invest 50% of its $1.8 trillion pension portfolio in foreign equities; understandable when Japanese government bonds are yielding less than 1%. Governor Kuroda's Halloween trick was going nuclear on a 5-4 vote and blowing up Mr. and Mrs. Watonabe.