Synonymous With Failure

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

~ Prospero, The Tempest

My friend Richard has been saying all along that, sooner or later, young people are going to rise in righteous fury when they figure out that not only is the economy never going to recover from monetary debt, and they will lose all their shiny toys - but the world they inherit will be one of horrible ecological deprivation on a previously unheard of, global scale.  I used to think that was a bit of hyperbole but lately when I look at some of their creative expressions - like the work featured in this post by Tokyo digital painter, YTK Morimoe - I get the distinct feeling that some of them at least are already excruciatingly aware of the perils that will afflict them, and the rest of the species who share this planet with us, for perhaps the rest of time...all courtesy of their parents and grandparents.

I've been spending every day in the hospital since my dad required triple bypass surgery.  Outside I can see it's warm, and for a week the sun has been shining in a crystal clear cerulean sky.  Inside, we are encased in a claustrophobically air-conditioned, plastic bubble.  First we were in the intensive care unit and now the cardiac wing, both with rooms inhabited by mostly very old people, frail and weak and wrinkled, kept exquisitely clean by the fastidious staff.   None of them can have more than a handful of years left to them anyway, and yet massive amounts of money and effort are being expended to keep them alive.

Naturally I'm all in favor of prolonging my dad's life, but the inescapable fact is, such extraordinary medical care (like industrial civilization itself) exists at this miraculous pinnacle of achievement at the expense of the children that are standing, waiting in the wings, for their turn on the stage of life, a performance that will be aborted.  It's utterly amazing to see the amount of disposable petroleum-based products involved in modern hospital equipment.  There are only so many resources on this finite world, and this departing generation has used up far more of them than any previous cohort, and they continue to do so right up to the very end.  There seems to be very little concern about the fact that this is directly reducing the capacity of earth to sustain future generations, a moral travesty of the most immense proportions conceivable.

I guess that the percentage of people who know - truly understand without any false hope - that the trajectory of human history is a seamless juggernaut towards self destruction is tiny compared to the oblivious billions.  There seem to be various camps that only occasionally overlap - the overpopulation crowd, the peak oil crowd, the climate change science crowd, and a few obscure deep ecologists who have the greatest perception of the interlinked nature of all the rest.  Then there are two or three people who think nuclear war will render all those other issues moot.  To further cripple any chance of a unified movement to address the inherent quandaries of overconsumption, the doomsayers are further divided into those who expect a rapid, violent collapse and those who anticipate a gradual decline in living standards mainly affecting the undeveloped world and the poor.

Personally, I think we're headed towards an eco-pocalypse punctuated by such randomly erratic savage wallops that it will become an inescapable realization to everyone that we have fouled our black swan's nest beyond reclamation.  It already would be if people weren't so willfully stupid - it became apparent to me almost as soon as I began to learn about climate change in earnest.  Fred Pearce's book about amplifying feedbacks detected in paleoclimatic episodes, With Speed and Violence, is convincing all by itself.  Interestingly enough, he has since "gone emeritus" and recanted, or at least retreated, from the implications of exponential upheaval.  I think he scared himself.

The way I look at it, there's a race on between peak oil and consumption, climate change, and pollution, to see which destroys industrial civilization first, if a nuclear conflagration doesn't surge out front...and we've got ring-side seats at the finish line. Because I absolutely do think it's going to happen soon enough for anyone reading this to witness. There is so much collapsing already, but people don't recognize it, nor do they realize how swiftly collapse is accelerating. The droughts, floods, melting ice, acidification of the oceans, and forests dying from pollution - especially the ozone killing vegetation, because that has never, ever been a factor in previous climate change - ought to give a clue though.

There's a reason popular culture is obsessed with zombies and doomsday - it's just been plain obvious that we are growing exponentially, and unsustainably, on a finite planet ever since we ran out of continents to conquer and exploit. It's equally clear that after we burn every lump of coal and every drop of oil and gas, the last man standing will burn the last tree. With rare exceptions, it's intrinsic to who we are.

From the extreme weather and the demolition of Arctic summer ice, it's looking more and more like it really won't matter much that all the trees are dying from pollution - although it cannot help but accelerate climate change, and insofar as agricultural crops are also diminished, famine.  But even though the trees are spectacularly mutilated here on the Cape, I'm not going to focus on that today, so if anyone has arrived at Wit's End seeking information about trees and ozone, try a post from last summer...or one of the pages linked at the top.

Instead I'm going to focus on a remark my mother made, which pertained to the Protestant religion (which she knows something about as her grandfather was a preacher) but could just as easily be about any other.  Nana said something along the lines that the primary purpose of their belief system to assure those lucky enough to be at the top range of wealth that they actually deserve to be better off than the majority, the mere fact of their privilege being an indication that they are favored by god because they are superior in some way.

So perhaps for those of us who are doomers, we can take some comfort - it might be the only comfort - in realizing that the human race is predominantly composed of mindless idiots and repulsive moral lepers, who totally deserve to be extirpated from the panoply of species, perhaps the sooner the better since the longer we are here, the more we ravage the rest.

As if any more evidence were needed, take this review in the NYTimes of a movie called Compliance.  The article is titled "Ever Meek, Ever Malleable" with this bright headline:

I tend to think the review is too kind.  Human attributes the author describes as meek, malleable and gullible, I would just call puerile, venal, and easily corruptible.

Ionesco's Rhinoceros

But then, I woke up on the cynical side of the bed this morning.  Here's an excerpt:

It’s an essential parable of human gullibility. How much can people be talked into and how readily will they defer to an authority figure of sufficient craft and cunning? “Compliance” gives chilling answers.

Made on a modest budget and set during one shift at a fictional fast-food restaurant called ChickWich, it imagines that the manager, a dowdy middle-aged woman, gets a call from someone who falsely claims to be a police officer. (I haven’t spoiled much yet but am about to, at least for anyone unfamiliar with the real-life events on which “Compliance” is based.)

The “officer” on the phone tells the manager that he has evidence that a young female employee of hers just stole money from a customer’s purse. Because the cops can’t get to the restaurant for a while, he says, the manager must detain the employee herself in a back room. He instructs her to check the young woman’s pockets and handbag for the stolen money. When that doesn’t turn up anything, he uses a mix of threats and praise to persuade her to do a strip-search. And that’s just the start.

The manager’s boyfriend later assumes the duties of watching over the detained employee. Cajoled and coached by the voice on the phone, he makes her do those jumping jacks, which are meant to dislodge any hidden loot. By the time he leaves the back room, he’s also been persuaded to spank and then sexually assault her.

Preposterous, right? But the details in the movie are more or less consistent with an incident at a McDonald’s in Kentucky in 2004. And that incident was part of a series of hoaxes in which a prank caller manipulated workers at McDonald’s franchises and at other fast-food restaurants into the kind of invasive, abusive behavior depicted in the movie.

History has amply documented the human capacity for cruelty and quickness to exploit vulnerability, and “Compliance” touches on those themes. But it has even more to say about the human capacity for credulousness, along with obedience.

People routinely buy into outlandish claims that calm particular anxieties, fill given needs or affirm preferred worldviews. Religions and wrinkle-cream purveyors alike depend on that. And someone like Todd Akin, the antihero of last week’s news, illustrates it to a T. The notion that a raped woman can miraculously foil and neutralize sperm is a good 10 times crazier than anything in “Compliance,” but it dovetails beautifully with his obvious wish — and the wishes of like-minded extremists — for an abortion prohibition with no exceptions. So he embraces it.

This is what wiki says about the story that inspired the movie (there are many more fascinating details about the events, arrest and trial at the link):

The strip search prank call scam was a series of incidents occurring for roughly a decade before an arrest was made in 2004. These incidents involved a man calling a restaurant or grocery store, claiming to be a police detective, and convincing managers to conduct strip searches of female employees or perform other unusual acts on behalf of the police. The calls were usually placed to fast-food restaurants in small rural towns.

Over 70 such occurrences were reported in 30 US states, until an incident in 2004 in Mount Washington, Kentucky finally led to the arrest and charging of David Stewart, a 37-year-old employee of Corrections Corporation of America, a private-commercial firm contracted by several states to provide corrections officers at private detention facilities. On October 31, 2006, he was acquitted of all charges.  These incidents were the inspiration behind an episode of Law & Order: SVU featuring Robin Williams as the hoaxer, who identified himself as "Detective Milgram", an obvious reference to the famous Milgram experiment that tested obedience to authority. The incidents also inspired an award-winning short film, "Plainview", which played the festival circuit in 2007/2008, and the 2012 film by Craig Zobel entitled "Compliance", which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. 

This is from the wiki entry about the Milgram experiment referred to above:

The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.  Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, "Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View".

Those experiments involved electric shocks - for an even more horrific example, so vicious it had to be abandoned before completion, check out the Stanford prison experiment, and watch one of many videos about it on youtube, this one an excerpt from The Evilness of Power, in which the professor who devised the experiment observes, "What's interesting is day by day, as the situation degraded, we all adjusted to it.  That is, each day's level of violence and abuse was a platform for the next day."

Also entertaining is a documentary about the making of the film Heaven's Gate, the production of which is a study in hubris, often described as "synonymous with failure".  But it's a grand, quintessentially human colossus of a failure.  In part two Cimino, the director says, of his meticulous and fatal attention to detail, that without strict authenticity,  "...mistakes like that can jeopardize the audience's belief in the picture, and then the story is thrown into jeopardy and the whole movie is thrown into jeopardy."

An extensive investigation published in the Daily Mail describes "...the true cost of green energy" in an article, Pollution on a Disastrous Scale.  It describes the extraction of rare earth metals in China, widely used in the production of "clean energy".  It also inadvertently gives ancillary support to the notion that it is not possible to replace more than a fraction of fossil fuel with wind and solar.

On the outskirts of one of China’s most polluted cities, an old farmer stares despairingly out across an immense lake of bubbling toxic waste covered in black dust. He remembers it as fields of wheat and corn.

Yan Man Jia Hong is a dedicated Communist. At 74, he still believes in his revolutionary heroes, but he despises the young local officials and entrepreneurs who have let this happen.

‘Chairman Mao was a hero and saved us,’ he says. ‘But these people only care about money. They have destroyed our lives.’

Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.

Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.

This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.

Rusting pipelines meander for miles from factories processing rare earths in Baotou out to the man-made lake where, mixed with water, the foul-smelling radioactive waste from this industrial process is pumped day after day. No signposts and no paved roads lead here, and as we approach security guards shoo us away and tail us. When we finally break through the cordon and climb sand dunes to reach its brim, an apocalyptic sight greets us: a giant, secret toxic dump, made bigger by every wind turbine we build.

The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs.

For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.

Retired farmer Su Bairen, 69, who led us to the lake, says it was initially a novelty – a multi-coloured pond set in farmland as early rare earth factories run by the state-owned Baogang group of companies began work in the Sixties. 

‘At first it was just a hole in the ground,’ he says. ‘When it dried in the winter and summer, it turned into a black crust and children would play on it. Then one or two of them fell through and drowned in the sludge below. Since then, children have stayed away.’

As more factories sprang up, the banks grew higher, the lake grew larger and the stench and fumes grew more overwhelming.

‘It turned into a mountain that towered over us,’ says Mr Su. ‘Anything we planted just withered, then our animals started to sicken and die.’

People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.

Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found. 

Since then, maybe because of pressure from the companies operating around the lake, which pump out waste 24 hours a day, the results of ongoing radiation and toxicity tests carried out on the lake have been kept secret and officials have refused to publicly acknowledge health risks to nearby villages.

There are 17 ‘rare earth metals’ – the name doesn’t mean they are necessarily in short supply; it refers to the fact that the metals occur in scattered deposits of minerals, rather than concentrated ores. Rare earth metals usually occur together, and, once mined, have to be separated.

Neodymium is commonly used as part of a Neodymium-Iron-Boron alloy (Nd2Fe14B) which, thanks to its tetragonal crystal structure, is used to make the most powerful magnets in the world. Electric motors and generators rely on the basic principles of electromagnetism, and the stronger the magnets they use, the more efficient they can be. It’s been used in small quantities in common technologies for quite a long time – hi-fi speakers, hard drives and lasers, for example. But only with the rise of alternative energy solutions has neodymium really come to prominence, for use in hybrid cars and wind turbines. A direct-drive permanent-magnet generator for a top capacity wind turbine would use 4,400lb of neodymium-based permanent magnet material.

In the pollution-blighted city of Baotou, most people wear face masks everywhere they go. 

‘You have to wear one otherwise the dust gets into your lungs and poisons you,’ our taxi driver tells us, pulling over so we can buy white cloth masks from a roadside hawker.

Posing as buyers, we visit Baotou Xijun Rare Earth Co Ltd. A large billboard in front of the factory shows an idyllic image of fields of sheep grazing in green fields with wind turbines in the background.

In a smartly appointed boardroom, Vice General Manager Cheng Qing tells us proudly that his company is the fourth biggest producer of rare earth metals in China, processing 30,000 tons a year. He leads us down to a complex of primitive workshops where workers with no protective clothing except for cotton gloves and face masks ladle molten rare earth from furnaces with temperatures of 1,000°C.

The result is 1.5kg bricks of neodymium, packed into blue barrels weighing 250kg each. Its price has more than doubled in the past year – it now costs around £80 per kilogram. So a 1.5kg block would be worth £120 – or more than a fortnight’s wages for the workers handling them. The waste from this highly toxic process ends up being pumped into the lake looming over Dalahai. 

The state-owned Baogang Group, which operates most of the factories in Baotou, claims it invests tens of millions of pounds a year in environmental protection and processes the waste before it is discharged.

According to Du Youlu of Baogang’s safety and environmental protection department, seven million tons of waste a year was discharged into the lake, which is already 100ft high and growing by three feet each year.

In what appeared an attempt to shift responsibility onto China’s national leaders and their close control of the rare earths industry, he added: ‘The tailing is a national resource and China will ultimately decide what will be done with the lake.’

Jamie Choi, an expert on toxics for Greenpeace China, says villagers living near the lake face horrendous health risks from the carcinogenic and radioactive waste. 

‘There’s not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment. Ores are being extracted by pumping acid into the ground, and then they are processed using more acid and chemicals.

Finally they are dumped into tailing lakes that are often very poorly constructed and maintained. And throughout this process, large amounts of highly toxic acids, heavy metals and other chemicals are emitted into the air that people breathe, and leak into surface and ground water. Villagers rely on this for irrigation of their crops and for drinking water. Whenever we purchase products that contain rare earth metals, we are unknowingly taking part in massive environmental degradation and the destruction of communities.’

The fact that the wind-turbine industry relies on neodymium, which even in legal factories has a catastrophic environmental impact, is an irony Ms Choi acknowledges.

‘It is a real dilemma for environmentalists who want to see the growth of the industry,’ she says. ‘But we have the responsibility to recognise the environmental destruction that is being caused while making these wind turbines.’

Even Lady Gaga knows that it's more than a mere "dilemma":

"...we as a society are taught politically and religiously that the Apocalypse is coming, it's on its way. But what I'm saying with my show is, ‘We're there right now: this is the Apocalypse.' The fact that we're surrounded by cement and we've already killed everything means the Apocalypse has happened."

"So the idea for me is to give a sense of repose and solace to my fans, that we're here, we did it already, and now it's about accepting where we are and looking more joyfully into the future. And then the Apocalypse is over and the stage becomes very minimal and all that's left is me with a piano, in the middle of the destruction."

This isn't the sort of music that is to my taste, but it expresses my sentiments, so here it is...lyrics below.  Thanks to Dave at Decline of the Empire for the link.

We're setting sail

To the place on the map from which no one has ever returned

Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool

By the light of the crosses that burn

Drawn by the promise of the women and the lace

And the gold and the cotton and pearls

It's the place where they keep all the darkness you need

You sail away from the light of the world on this trip baby

Pay, you will pay tomorrow

You're gonna pay tomorrow

You will pay tomorrow

Save me, save me from tomorrow

I don't want to sail with this ship of fools, no no

Oh, save me, save me from tomorrow

I don't want to sail with this ship of fools, no no

I want to run and hide

Right now

Avarice and greed are gonna drive you over the endless sea

They will leave you drifting in the shallows

Drowning in the oceans of history

Travellin' the world, you're in search of no good

But I'm sure you'll build your Sodom like I knew you would

Using all the good people for your galley slaves

As your little boat struggles through the warning waves

But you will pay, you will pay tomorrow

You're gonna pay tomorrow

You gonna pay tomorrow

Save me, save me from tomorrow

I don't want to sail with this ship of fools, no

Oh, save me, save me from tomorrow

I don't want to sail with this ship of fools, no

Where's it comin' from or where's it goin' to?

It's just a, it's just a ship of fools

All aboard

Jolly Good Show!

Congratulations to Alice, who won Reserve Champion at the United States Equestrian Federation Young Horse Dressage Competition Five-Year-Old division on Elfenfeuer yesterday...and today, National Six-Year-Old Champion on Somer Hit!

So bleak is the picture

So bleak is the picture... that the bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century.

~Philip Shabecoff, New York Times Magazine, 4 June 1978

I can't believe that as of today fewer than 300 people have viewed this on youtube.  It's about the arctic ice - how fast it is melting, far in advance of predictions - and what it means for the rest of the world which, as it turns out, is quite a lot.  Oh, maybe everything when the jet stream becomes locked and there isn't anything benign left between extreme droughts and floods, just as Joe Romm's book, Hell and High Water, anticipated.  The animation in this presentation is fascinating, and so clearly explained that even the average comatose american teevee zombie should be able to comprehend it.  Below is a partial repost from Climate Code Red, with the most recent terrifying charts.  This astonishingly rapid, record-obliterating summer melt season, which still has several weeks to go, will be looked back upon - for whatever brief period humans are still around and retain the ability to contemplate the past - as an epic event in our accelerating march towards irrevocable ecocide.  You can follow the death spiral with more-or-less daily updates at Neven's Arctic Sea Ice Blog.

Arctic sea-ice melt record more than broken, it’s being smashed

by David Spratt

Climate change impacts are frequently happening more quickly and at lower levels of global warming than scientists expected, even a decade or two ago. And this week the Arctic has provided a dramatic and deeply disturbing example.
     According to IARC/JAXA satellite data at Arctic Sea-ice Monitor from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the sea-ice extent of 24 August 2012 of 4,189,375 square kilometres broke the previous record in the satellite era of 4,254,531 square kilometres set on 24 August 2007. Back then the were scientific gasps that the sea ice was melting “100 years ahead of schedule”.
     [The 24 August figure is subject to revision the next day, the but point remains that record has been broken or will be broken in next day or two.  The NSIDC chart using 5-day running averages, so it is a few days behind.]

JAXA Arctic sea ice extent to 24 August 2012. Updates:http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

What is astounding is that the record has been broken with three to four weeks of the melt season to go, and that the rate of melting this month is unprecedented in the modern record. Check the chart above (click to enlarge), with the red line mapping 2012 sea-ice extent. The slope of the line is much steeper than in previous years for August.
     Looking at the data, the daily rate of sea-ice loss for 1-24 August has been 99,029 square kilometres per day in 2012, compared to:

• 2007   62,976 square kilometres per day
• 2008   72,785 square kilometres per day
• 2009   53,859 square kilometres per day
• 2010   55,109 square kilometres per day
• 2011   63,342 square kilometres per day
• 2012   99,029 square kilometres per day

And last two days have been 119,219 and 148,125 square kilometres per day (they use 2-day running average, so latter figure subject to revision).
     It is remarkable that rate of loss is so much greater than previous years this late in the melt season, and at present shows no sign of easing.
     The ice is now much thinner on average than in the past, as the extent of multi-year ice declines sharply. Thin ice is easily smashed up by storms and rough seas, and that’s what’s happened this year. In early August, a huge, long-lived Arctic ocean storm decimated the sea ice area which was melting out at a record rate, before the high waves and winds shattered the Siberian side of the ice cap.  But there have been subsequent, less well-reported, cyclonic storms churning up the ice, which may explain why the melt rate has not eased off in the last 10 days.
     What the minimum extent will be this year is anybody’s guess. It depends on weather conditions over the next three weeks, and how much ice is now just above the threshold (of 15 per cent sea-ice in a given area) and is currently counted as sea-ice, but likely to be below the threshold by the third week of September.
     Even if the ice loss over the next 3-4 weeks was similar in magnitude to previous recent years, the season low could be around 3.5 million square kilometres. Maybe a good bit more, perhaps somewhat less. We will have to wait and see.
     The next chart, amended, from NSIDC shows the 2007 fourth IPCC report projections for Arctic sea ice (blue line) and projections for RCP4.5 (representative concentration pathways) (red line) being used for the forthcoming fifth IPCC report in 2014. Actual observations are in black, and I have taken the liberty of sketching in grey what it will look like if the 2012 figure is around 3.5 million square kilometres.

Sea-ice extent projections versus observations. My 2012 guestimate in grey. (Pink and blue shading show 1 standard deviation from averaging results from all of the model runs)

The implications have been discussed on this blog many times before: we are likely heading to a summer sea-ice-free Arctic in the next decade, a view becoming more commonplace in the research community.

Coronary Tree

This blog is ostensibly about trees, and the damage being done to forests by air pollution.  It was always intended to function as a repository for any information I can find on that topic, with my interpretation of articles and research.  I happen to think it's extremely imperative that people understand a dangerous trend that is typically being ignored.

But, the purpose of Wit's End has also been to serve as a chronicle about my personal journey of discovery, encompassing despair, protest, and wherever possible, amusement - and well, just about anything else that strikes my fancy.  If you arrived here to learn about ozone and what it is doing to trees and other plants, you should skip this entry and go directly to the website devoted exclusively to the toxic impacts of ozone, or maybe even read the entire free book.

Because, I haven't had time lately to compile anything new about trees, I've been busy with family.  Even though - who knew this? - there is such a thing as a Coronary Tree!  Here's my dad's:

Doc, who is 84 years old, had triple bypass surgery Tuesday and is recovering nicely.  The lines of circles in his coronary tree diagram indicate where his heart grew collaterals spontaneously, to compensate for the blockage developing in the existing arteries - a miraculous feat which the surgeons attribute to his robust health, thanks to the 5000 miles he bikes each year...and to his irreproachably abstemious lifestyle.  He's inordinately proud of himself for surviving this ordeal (as he should be - already sitting up and cracking jokes!) and thinks everyone should view his triumph far and wide.

His granddaughters sent him pictures from far-flung places.  Maxine, who is scuba-diving in Hawaii, sent him a heart.

Her sister Alice, who won the first phase of her dressage competition at nationals in Illinois, sent the blue ribbon.

Meanwhile, Sophie is both performing surgery (on a horse)...

 

and receiving some from a fellow clinician (who is removing gravel from her arm after a spill in a bike race).

Isn't it funny how one little blog post encompasses so much?  Hearts, trees, bikes, oceans, horses, surgery...

 and three beautiful accomplished daughters and a dad I'm so proud to be related to.

Love to all of you.

Update!  Alice was written up in Dressage Daily:

Alice Tarjan and Elfenfeuer (Florencio I-Elfensonne by Sion) the first combination to perform their Preliminary Test for the five-year-old division set the standard no one else in the 14 horse field could rival. The Oldenburg mare owned by Tarjan (Oldwick, NJ) scored an overall 7.66 after earning high marks for submission, 8.0, and 7.8 for their canter and general impression. They also scored 7.7 and 7.0 for their trot and walk respectively in the Preliminary Test, which counts for 40% of the overall Championship score. Tarjan and Elfenfeuer were the winners of the East Coast Young Horse Trials held in May, at Morven Park, Virginia.

Elfenfeuer is competing in her first Markel/USEF National Young Horse Dressage Championship after having bypassed the annual event as a four-year-old. Heading into Saturday's Final Test, Tarjan is hoping the mare will be more settled in her second Championship test.

"She was really tight and on the muscle (today), it was not our best test. (Saturday) I hope she is a little more relaxed and we can have fun."

Update update:  I know, all these blue ribbons are getting tedious.   Alice won the 6-year prelim on Somer Hit today:

Nature Debauched

On August 12, a young woman lost her life.

In northern Idaho, a U.S. Forest Service firefighter died on Sunday when she was crushed by a falling tree while working to contain a 50-acre (20-hectare) blaze in steep, forested terrain, Forest Service spokeswoman Elizabeth Slown said on Monday.

According to an updated article, the Forest Service is still "planning" on conducting a formal investigation.  My guess is they will never adequately explain why the tree fell, and this is another tragedy to be added to all the others that continue unabated - from the jogger in Philadelphia, the family sleeping in their tent in a New Jersey campground , the baby in his mother's arms at New York's Central Park Zoo, the motorist in Virginia last month...and countless others in storms.  I'm afraid we are getting used to the idea that trees crush people on a routine basis.

20-year-old Anne Veseth of Moscow was a firefighter for the Nez Perce/Clearwater National Forest.

The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest supervisor says Veseth was struck Sunday afternoon when one tree fell and crashed into another tree, causing it to fall in a domino effect.

There are enormous wildfires blazing in other countries and states in the US as well, including Washington.  You can search for status at the Incident Information System maintained by various government agencies, which is the source of this map of the Taylor Bridge Fire in the southeastern region of the state.

 They featured this ironic sign.

Of course, record-breaking drought and heat are major factors in the number, size and ferocity of these uncontrollable blazes.  On the other hand, trees falling unexpectedly and more wildfires are just two of many disasters that can be expected to result because vegetation is in dieback due to the ozone it absorbs.  Washington State is not considered to be even unusually dry, and yet it is the location of some of the worst of the fires:

If you look carefully, you can see the windmills still standing in the far left corner of this aerial photo of charred hills.

Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources

These are screenshots from a video that shows an army helicopter scooping up water from a pond to carry to one of the fires, a Sisyphean task if ever there was one.

No wonder the forest is burning - look at the bare tree branches beneath the helicopter, and in the treeline in the foreground of the image below:

There is a video embedded in a news article from Canada about the precipitous decline in the population of a caribou herd that migrates between Quebec and Labrador.  It's worth watching, because the interview conveys better than the article just how concerned officials are, and also that no one really has any idea why the death rate is so rapid that the herd is in danger of disappearing - although Minister French, pictured in the screenshot below, does mention food supply, but without any explanation as to why it has become insufficient to support the caribou.

Neither he nor the reporter in the next image remark on the very dead trees in the background, or wonder whether perhaps vegetation dying off from toxic invisible air pollution - oh, and having decreased nutritive quality in what remains - might have anything to do with starving wildlife.  I'll paste the text of the interview, after the remainder of pictures from my visit to Lexington.

The University of Kentucky Arboretum was disappointing - the young trees were in poor shape, and the old ones were conspicuously dead...although I did find a perfect rose.

As usual I want to point out that both old and young trees are about equally (fatally) affected by the composition of the atmosphere.

Even very young trees have corroded bark.

And big old trees became hollow and rotten long before this year's drought.

Chlorotic, yellowing leaves are classic symptoms of ozone.

I suppose someone thought this tree that died before it's time would be less depressing as a bottle-holder.

I made Sophie stand in front of this trunk because otherwise it would be difficult to imagine how huge it is.

These pieces were cut from the upper portion - the base must have been even larger.

The arboretum has left hulks strewn around the grounds.

See the little new sapling that has completely brown leaves?

This tree, like many others is turning fall color in early August - which is known as premature senescence.

Here is the transcript of the report about caribou:

A new survey by wildlife officials in two provinces shows an astonishing decline in the population of what had been a major caribou herd.  The George River herd, which migrates between Quebec and Labrador, now has a population of about 27,600 animals, according to a census completed in July.  That's down from 74,000 animals in a 2010 census, and a drop of 93 per cent from a census done in 2001. [down from 800,000 in the '80's according to the video]

"Predators play a role, we know disease plays a role, but these are minor factors. It could be a total tsunami, if you will, of variables that are coming against them right now," said Terry French, Newfoundland and Labrador's minister of environment and conservation.

Wildlife biologists have not been able to explain why the numbers have dropped so far, so fast, but they expect even worse news in the months ahead.  

The herd is expected to drop below 25,000 animals by this October, because more adults are dying than calves are surviving.

Hunting of the herd has been severely restricted over the years. French said discussions are continuing with aboriginal groups about banning the hunt altogether.

"We are certainly looking at a total allowable harvest — you know, set a number of the amount of animals that can be taken. Whether that number will be zero is yet to be seen," he said.

French also said concerns that the herd could be wiped out are real.

The US Forest Service has just published a new report, a collaborative effort with dozens of academics, called Changing Climate, Changing Forests:  The Impacts of Climate Change on 
Forests of the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada.  Since it draws on research that was published in 2009, it is based on data that is already obsolete in our shattering ecosystem, and conveniently doesn't account for the rapid decimation that began in earnest starting in 2008.  It's interesting anyway because it is meant to be a comprehensive synthesis of research from the Northeastern US and Canada which "...shows that the climate of the region has become warmer and wetter over the past 100 years and that there are more extreme precipitation events."

So whether the "experts" want to blame drought for tree decline elsewhere, which they most certainly prefer to air pollution, it doesn't apply, apparently, for this particular region which has become wetter over the past 100 years, yet where dead trees are so common they feature prominently even in the first two photos chosen to illustrate the publication.  This one has bare branches protruding in the foreground - and many standing dead pines across the lake.

Did they choose these deliberately to demonstrate the death of forests or can they just not find a picture anymore without dead trees in it?

Following in italics will be excerpts from the study, which represent pretty much the only references I could find that had anything to do with ozone.  The rest of the photos are from my recent drive across Pennsylvania.  This is countryside that has all the voluptuous appeal of a formerly seductive but hopelessly degenerate victim of debauchery...kind of like Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet.

I stopped briefly on Route 30 after I crossed a bridge where suddenly, in the midst of forests and farm fields, appeared a giant pile of metal scrap far below in a ravine.

 There are crushed cars and other unidentifiable heaps of twisted, broken, rusted iron and steel.

The brown tops of trees, probably mostly locust, overshadowed the junkyard.

 A large machine scurried back and forth like a frantic crab, ceaselessly sorting the piles.

Meanwhile, directly across the highway on the other side of the bridge, logs were stacked in rows.

For miles the highway was clogged with huge lumber trucks, and signs even inside the state parks warned motorists to make way for them.

Here too, large machinery was busy.

 The leaves along the road were all burnt like this sumac.

 The toughest roadside weeds were necrotic.

 A close up of locust leaves shows why the crowns look brown from a distance.

Even when they aren't brown, they are thin.

Apparently, rural Pennsylvania harbors a huge car graveyard, not far from that bridge.  In the bright light, they shimmered blindingly in countless thousands.

I happened to pass by the memorial site where Flight 93 crashed on September 11, 2001.

All around it now are wind turbines.

Perhaps if, instead of mourning in America, we'd been installing them with a few solar panels in the years since Carter was President, 9/11 would have never happened.

The highway winds up and down mountains - I was surprised at how steep the terrain is in western PA.  Even though there are billions of trees, always now, there are many standing stark and wizened above the shrinking canopy.  These pictures are from the eastbound descent of Mount Ararat, starting at around the 2,464 ft. elevation.  Following are excerpts from the Forest Service report.

p. 21-22, "Confounding Factors"

Air Pollution  Air-borne pollutants can change productivity and inluence how trees respond to climate change. Some of the most important pollutants in the Northeast include ground-level ozone, acids, and nitrogen compounds.

Ozone  Ground-level ozone can damage plant tissue and decrease photosynthesis. Studies suggest that ozone damage can off set CO2-induced gains in productivity and make trees more vulnerable to other stresses (e.g., McLaughlin et al. 2007). Ozone levels, which are already high in the Northeast, may increase with climate change as plants produce more volatile organic compounds, which then react with nitrogen oxides to produce ozone.

Acid Deposition  Acid deposition already occurs across the Northeast and may increase, especially in high elevation forests, if climate change produces more cloud cover and precipitation. Acidic deposition can impair nutrient availability, reduce reproductive success and frost hardiness, cause physical damage to leaf surfaces, and increase susceptibility to decline.

Nitrogen Deposition  Nitrogen is an essential nutrient, but too much nitrogen can mobilize acids and damage forests. Just what the potential impacts of elevated nitrogen deposition in a changing climate will be remain unclear. Some research suggests that nitrogen deposition could help off set natural nitrogen limitations that will persist in the future. Other studies suggest that these limitations will not be important because rising CO2 may allow increased plant nitrogen uptake and increased nitrogen-use efficiency.

p. 25

Leaching of Nitrogen from Soils  Nitrogen is a basic element that is fundamental to 

the growth of plants. In the Northeast, nitrogen limits forest growth under most 

conditions. Too much nitrogen, however, can have detrimental effects on soil, trees,

and surface waters. Taken together, nitrogen pollution and climate-induced changes in nitrogen cycling have the potential to cause profound shifts in nitrogen dynamics of Northeast forests. Evidence from both empirical studies and simulation modeling suggests that both the faster organic matter decomposition in warmer soils and the more frequent soil freezing events associated with reduced snow coverage can accelerate nitrogen losses from Northeast forests. One way this may happen is by effects on the process of “nitrification”, or the production of nitrate by soil microbes. Once nitrogen is converted to nitrate, it is subject to leaching from soils to surface waters.  This acidifies the soil and enriches the receiving surface waters in streams and lakes. Several soil-warming experiments across the region showed a general increase in nitrification of up to 50 percent with increasing temperature (Rustad et al. 2001). Soil freeze events, which are projected to become more common with less snow coverage, have also been linked to increases soil nitrate leaching (Fitzhugh et al. 2001).  This process can result in spring pulses of nitrate in stream water (Likens and Bormann 1995).

Leaching of Base Cations from Soils  Base cations, particularly calcium and magnesium, are important nutrients that help buf er acidic inputs and support forest growth.  The supply of soil calcium is particularly important in northeastern North America because acidic deposition can deplete exchangeable soil calcium and other base cations from forest soils (Fernandez et al. 2003). Climate warming and increased rainfall has the potential to accelerate the rate of base cation loss from soils. Warming-induced longer growing seasons, especially combined with higher growth rates and the potential shift from conifers to hardwoods, may increase the annual calcium and magnesium uptake by forest vegetation.  The increasing amount and intensity of precipitation plus the potential increases in the infiltration of water into the soil in winter may result in increasing rates of soil leaching and the cumulative loss of soil calcium and magnesium.  Model results indicate that increases in base cation leaching are linked with elevated nitrate leaching (Campbell et al. 2009).

Plant Uptake of Nutrients and Water by Roots  Trees have extensive networks of fine roots which provide a large surface area for water and nutrient exchange with the soil. Many symbiotic fungi, including many common woodland mushrooms, are associated with roots. Because of their central role in water and nutrient cycling, fine roots and their associated fungi will play a pivotal role in determining how forests respond to climate change. Evidence from several experimental manipulations suggests that climate change will alter the dynamics of fine roots (Arft et al. 1999, Burton et al. 1998).  Palatova (2002), for example, showed that a 60 percent reduction in precipitation plus the addition of nitrogen, at the rate of 89 lbs of nitrogen per acre per year (100 

kg nitrogen per hectare per year), resulted in a 30 percent decline in fine root biomass after 2 years of treatment in a Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) stand. An experiment at Hubbard Brook suggested that soil freezing associated with reduced winter snow cover can kill fine roots (Tierney et al. 2001). Decreased growth and increased mortality of fine roots can reduce nutrient uptake and cause elevated leaching of nitrogen and phosphorous to surface waters (Fitzhugh et al. 2001).

p. 33

Armillaria is a common root and tree butt pathogen. It is currently widespread in eastern deciduous forests. Typically, it is a secondary pathogen, killing only weakened or stressed hosts.  As such it contributes to structural diversity, provides habitat for wildlife and microbes, and aids in the recycling of nutrients. Since Armillaria is already well established across the Northeast, the effects of climate change on its further dispersal are of minor interest. What is of concern is 

how it will respond as forest trees are stressed by climate.

p. 38

The IPCC identified the importance of reducing other environmental threats as a way of adapting to the complex issue of climate change. These other threats include habitat fragmentation or loss, pollution (including acid deposition and nitrogen enrichment), overexploitation of natural resources, and the introduction of alien species (Fischlin et al. 2007).  Reducing these other stresses may increase the ability of forest (and other) ecosystems to tolerate climate change (Julius and West 2007).

[Despite their admission that ozone and the nitrogen cascade are stressors in forests, not too surprisingly, I think this report grotesquely underestimates the effects of both.  But wait, my favorite part is coming up, which will give a taste of just how unrealistic foresters are...We can save the forests from climate change...by burning trees!!]

p. 37

Mitigation III: Replace Fossil Fuels with “Smart” Biomass

Sustainably managed forests can supply woody biomass for energy production. Most scientists agree that the displacement of fossil fuel by wood from existing harvests is likely to result in a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, provided that the wood is harvested sustainably and used in efficient applications such as community-scale combined heat and power biomass energy systems. Wood biomass projects can provide additional income to forest landowners and may prevent or defer the conversion of forests to other land uses and thereby prevent the emissions associated with forest conversion. However, the carbon benefits from biomass energy production are not guaranteed, and will only be secured if the forest management is sustainable and energy generation is efficient.

Carbon benefits not guaranteed...only if forest management is sustainable???  These are ludicrous suppositions, but never mind...

Once I got down to rolling hills I was thrilled to find a fantastic abandoned farmhouse to rival the beauty I saw in Virginia.  It is situated next to a pretty pond.  I pulled off onto the shoulder and hopped out to take pictures, quickly before anyone might accost me for trespassing - but a noise above distracted me.  A kingfisher was scolding me furiously from his perch on the line that stretches parallel to the road, above the water.

He looks like he has a bad case of bedhead.

Several times he swept over the water, complaining loudly all the way across to the opposite shore, and back again, even diving a couple of times.  It's only the second time in my life I've ever seen a kingfisher, so it was kind of exciting, even though he made it clear he resented my intrusion.

Finally I turned back to the house, which is surrounded by trees that look more or less like this one.

It has been neglected so long that the siding has lost any vestige of paint or stain.

This big old tree has dead branches and fungus growing from the trunk.

Whereas this dead tree has no branches at all.

Most of it is still lying on the ground where it fell.

The sun glinted off the metal roofing.

The porch was too rickety for me to get very close.

I was afraid the entire edifice would come crashing down.

The leaves on the trees are blighted.

Based on the dimensions of the hearth and the construction, this house likely dates from the very early years of the 19th or even 18th century.  I suspect the windows are replacements.

I didn't dare go in, so the interior pictures are from peeking through a broken pane.

This inside wall was probably originally an exterior wall, and the wing behind it a later addition, because it's made of huge boards.

I've seen many old houses growing up in Ipswich, but never built quite so sturdily.

Underneath the clapboards are solid boards.

Where the clapboards have disintegrated, you can see the clay or mud lathing between the boards, used as mortar.

Some are almost two feet wide, and at least two inches thick.

Again I have to wonder why a house so lovingly built was left to crumble.  Once 60% of Americans were farmers, and now that number is more like 2% - average age, 60 years.  This is the legacy of the Great Depression, when industrial agriculture and monoculture destroyed the family farm.

One of the two old barns lists to the side behind a newer shelter which is also unused.

In this shot from the side, where most of the clapboards have fallen off the first story, the wide boards are intact.  You won't find anything like that available in a lumberyard today.  Those days were over long ago.

Another remnant of an old tree.  This is why foresters can continue to claim forests are healthy.  They keep sending up new growth - of course!  And it obscures the loss of the ancients, which aren't being replaced.

I'm still staying with my parents on Cape Cod.  Being avid gardeners both, Doc & Nana have been perplexed that their colorful impatiens appear to be mysteriously shrinking before their eyes.

credit

Then Nana heard on the radio that a fungus has begun attacking impatiens everywhere around the country, which naturally is of interest, since as Ozonists and Ozonistas know, fungus (and insects, and disease) just love to feast on plants that have been damaged by exposure to air pollution.  So I googled it.  Here's a news story - typical of many that popped up - by a gardening columnist from Boston, and pictures of a remote scenic overlook carved from a state park down a long, dirt road.

The number one challenge I seem to face each summer is fungus on many of my perennials, vegetables and believe it or not, this year my impatiens.  The most common fungus we all face is powdery mildew.

Powdery mildews, as the name implies, often appear as a superficial white or gray powdery growth of fungus over the surface of leaves, stems, flowers, or fruit of affected plants.  These patches of mildew may enlarge until they cover the entire leaf on one or both sides.

Although it usually is not a fatal disease, powdery mildew may hasten plant defoliation and fall dormancy, and the infected plant may become extremely unsightly.  Powdery mildew seems to always affect my vegetable garden.

...How about your impatiens, notice anything different this year?  Did you lose any and wonder why?  It wasn’t you, it’s a new disease downy mildew.

Impatiens downy mildew was diagnosed on impatiens (walleriana) in landscapes in Massachusetts for the first time in 2011 and has been diagnosed again in 2012.  All impatiens walleriana are susceptible. Fortunately, it is not effecting New Guinea or Sun Scape varieties.

Symptoms vary from off color foliage (slight yellowing) and slight wilting and curling down of foliage to nearly total leaf loss.  If the disease continues to progress, eventually the leaves and flowers will drop, resulting in bare stems with only a few tiny, yellow leaves remaining.

Downy mildew can be spread long distances by wind currents, water splash (overhead irrigation included) or by the movement of infected plants.  Infected plants should be pulled, roots, soil and all, bagged and disposed of. The area should not be replanted with susceptible impatiens species.

Fungicide treatments are not recommended for plants in the landscape since they are not always effective at eliminating the disease.

Allowing infected plants to remain in the landscape may allow the pathogen to overwinter as resting structures (called oospores), which may infect impatiens planted next year or longer.

In other words, there's nothing to be done to stop the spread!

By coincidence, Scientific American has an intriguing article, "Invasive Fungi Wreak Havoc on Species Worldwide" that is actually extraordinary and probably horrendously overlooked, like ozone.  It needs to be considered in light of the research about "Hissing Trees" being consumed by fungi and releasing methane, linked to in an earlier post, which is said to be ubiquitous in forests around the globe.  Could this have anything to do with the "Acidification of Earth"?

"I've never seen anything like this in wild snakes before," Allender says. "Nor has anyone else. In almost all organisms, fungi are opportunistic pathogens that attack compromised immune systems. These were otherwise healthy snakes," however, he says. Already suffering from diminishing numbers, the snake is a candidate for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's threatened species list.

Unfortunately, the rattlesnakes are only the latest example of species falling prey to fungal attack in a troubling global trend noted by public health officials, zoologists and conservationists. Fungi have afflicted species as varied as amphibians, bats, arabica coffee, mangrove crabs, wheat, coral, bees, oak trees, sea turtles and even humans. (For instance, infectious meningitis is caused by a fungus.)

The most well-documented example is the lethal amphibian fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, commonly known as chytrid. Originally reported in 1997, chytridiomycosis has infected more than 500 species of frogs and salamanders on all continents where amphibians are found, and launched half of all amphibian species into evolutionary decline. Many other species affected by fungal disease face imminent extinction, such as the European crayfish.

To establish whether the data scientists were gathering really did point to a dramatic shift in a deadly trend affecting numerous species, Matthew Fisher, a reader in fungal disease epidemiology at Imperial College London, and his colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of past studies available on Web of Science, an online citation index provided by Thomson Reuters, ProMED (the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases) and HealthMap, which monitors disease outbreaks in plant and animal hosts. Their findings revealed that fungi and funguslike pathogens (oomycetes) account for 65 percent of the pathogen-driven species loss in the past half century.

Perhaps it is unsurprising in a global economy, but human activity such as international trade and military operations have intensified the dispersal of fungal pathogens, delivering new foes to unprotected victims and introducing new evolutionary opportunities to previously harmless fungus species.

Long thought to reproduce asexually through mitosis, where each offspring is the identical clone of its parent, scientists have discovered fungi can also reproduce sexually, via meiosis. By nimbly changing their reproductive strategy in response to new environmental conditions, fungi transfer genetic advantages from both parents—just like humans do—giving their offspring a better shot at survival. They also readily hybridize (interbreed between different species), outcross (selectively breed with individuals of different strains within a species) and recombine (exchange genetic material during cell division).

Zymoseptoria pseudotritici, a pathogenic fungus that damages wheat crops, is a good example. This recent hybrid resulted directly from the coupling of two genetically distinct, nonpathogenic fungi that had been brought into contact through human trade and agricultural practices. The offspring, unlike its parents, is a killer.

"If there is some new environmental condition in which they can't thrive, some fungi change their reproductive strategy and they reproduce sexually. Fungal sex is far more common than we ever thought. In terms of sheer numbers, they're among the most successful organisms on the planet," Fisher says.

One of the most sinister weapons in fungi's survival arsenal is its ability to hide in any life-form that is being shipped from one country to another—and then to wait out poor conditions. For instance, Phytophthora ramorum, the funguslike oomycete that has caused the die-off of native oak trees in California and Oregon in the past decade, probably hitched a ride on a non-susceptible host in Asia, mostly likely a rhododendron, through the ornamental plant trade.

"There were no warning bells for this disease," says Matteo Garbelotto, extension specialist at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Once the fungus arrived on the California coast, the warm weather and intermittent rainfall enabled it to move easily among hosts. "What we think happened was the pathogen moved from the rhododendron to the California bay laurel, where it can lay dormant for years. There is no direct oak-to-oak transmission," Garbelotto says.

When environmental conditions aren't perfect, phytopthora bides its time. "In dry years, they don't propagate," Garbelotto says. "Phytophthora is a zoospore, which means it goes through a swimming phase during its life cycle. If it's dry or the temperature is low, there is no outbreak. But when the conditions are right, an epidemic can go from nonexistent to affecting innumerable trees within a few weeks."

Not all fungi are bad—far from it. Without fungi we wouldn't have Penicillium which ages blue cheese, rots oranges and from which the antibiotic drug penicillin was extracted. "Without fungi, life on Earth would look very different," Fisher adds. "Forests themselves depend on fungi for their survival." Mycorrhizal, or symbiont fungi, have evolved mutualistically with plant-root vascular systems. They transfer nitrogen and phosphorus from the soil to the plant roots through these associations.

Fungi are among evolution's most successful organisms. Yet it took only a few generations for some of nature's most awe-inspiring assets to become some of its most fearsome liabilities for other species on the planet.

Why???  Remember the earlier sentence:

In almost all organisms, fungi are opportunistic pathogens that attack compromised immune systems.

That last sentence seems to beg the question  - WHAT new influence is compromising immune systems of "species worldwide", encouraging opportunistic fungal attacks?  Is it just because they are invasive, non-native - as presented in the article?  But what of the Armillaria mentioned in the Forest Service Report...the hissing trees from the Yale study...and the downy mildew decimating impatiens??

The prolific author at Freethought Police writes many poems, so frequently that I worry a little about how he manages the swirl of creativity that must be churning so dynamically in his psyche.  Here's a recent one I especially like, titled,

We'll Make Amends in the Afterlife 

I can tell everything’s gone wrong,

and that’s why I’m going to drive into the desert

and take my shadows with me

let them find their way into canyons and cliffs

and I’ll leave them there forever,

I’ll bring you back my desert flower mind

and I’ll bloom for you outside of space and time,

but for now I need to just drive

alone on the arterial haste of the toxic endeavor

we have sworn a thousand times to love but never

loved anything but the ruin, fear, and the waste

we missed all the intricacies of nature

for a quick taste of colors that eat the eye like autumn

and the leaves of the mind fall and we haven’t caught them,

we’ve raked them into trenches and the blaze clutches

greedily at the night, indifferent and ominous but pacific,

suggestions weaving their intrinsic soul magic though I could, but won’t

get more specific.

Michele in Quebec shared this video with me, which has some delightful shots of birds, insects and fox. Oh, those quirky adorable English!  They think they can prepare for peak oil using novel, holistic gardening techniques.  It's the same path Guy McPherson has chosen.  You can watch his latest presentation replete with the gloomiest of climate predictions followed by his paradoxically delusional hopeful solutions for survival and transcending collapse.  My favorite part is at the very end when he's asked whether he anticipates starving hordes to invade his little fertile paradise when the grid goes down.  He shrugs his shoulders fatalistically and says he really expects most people sheeple will just continue staring at their blank teevee screens, waiting for the water to be turned back on.  (Maybe I'm being unfair to sheep.)