@Stradee,
Hi to all good Wildclickers. And we are all good. A click a day keeps the bulldozer away.
Gads, I think I've already told most of my flying stories in past postings. But, HEY - there are new people aboard.
Ok, one flying day in Vietnam I was flying from the clear side to the monsoon side of the country. (It was monsoon on one side or the other all the time) As I approached the rainey side the sun was behind me and I saw TWO complete circles of rainbows - one inside the other. They were beautiful solid rings with no end. Great sight.
@danon5,
Yep, we WildClickers are a good group.
Nice story, Dan.
Guess the prettiest flight was when we brought the kids on a short flight over San Francisco. We didn't see much of the city because we were above the fog, the sun was setting - appeared we were sitting on a beautiful white cloud that spanned for miles.
I don't know if you've ever flown over SF, but the vistas are quite spectacular. It's a quick trip though - SFO vectors small aircraft every few seconds it seemed to avoid near misses with airliners.
Today, small aircraft pilots must file a flight plan for everywhere. sad
Oh, fergot to mention that d.i.l.'s almost hubby is a pilot! He flies Charter Jets
Clicked.
Sleepy.
Forgot to collect the #'s.
Will catch up on the weekend.
Have a great Earthturn all!
January 30, 2009
New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rain Forests
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
CHILIBRE, Panama " The land where Marta Ortega de Wing raised hundreds of pigs until 10 years ago is being overtaken by galloping jungle " palms, lizards and ants.
Instead of farming, she now shops at the supermarket and her grown children and grandchildren live in places like Panama City and New York.
Here, and in other tropical countries around the world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing’s " and much larger swaths of farmland " are reverting to nature, as people abandon their land and move to the cities in search of better livings.
These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest " an iconic environmental cause " may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.
“There is far more forest here than there was 30 years ago,” said Ms. Ortega de Wing, 64, who remembers fields of mango trees and banana plants.
The new forests, the scientists argue, could blunt the effects of rain forest destruction by absorbing carbon dioxide, the leading heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, one crucial role that rain forests play. They could also, to a lesser extent, provide habitat for endangered species.
The idea has stirred outrage among environmentalists who believe that vigorous efforts to protect native rain forest should remain a top priority. But the notion has gained currency in mainstream organizations like the Smithsonian Institution and the United Nations, which in 2005 concluded that new forests were “increasing dramatically” and “undervalued” for their environmental benefits. The United Nations is undertaking the first global catalog of the new forests, which vary greatly in their stage of growth.
“Biologists were ignoring these huge population trends and acting as if only original forest has conservation value, and that’s just wrong,” said Joe Wright, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute here, who set off a firestorm two years ago by suggesting that the new forests could substantially compensate for rain forest destruction.
“Is this a real rain forest?” Dr. Wright asked, walking the land of a former American cacao plantation that was abandoned about 50 years ago, and pointing to fig trees and vast webs of community spiders and howler monkeys.
“A botanist can look at the trees here and know this is regrowth,” he said. “But the temperature and humidity are right. Look at the number of birds! It works. This is a suitable habitat.”
Dr. Wright and others say the overzealous protection of rain forests not only prevents poor local people from profiting from the rain forests on their land but also robs financing and attention from other approaches to fighting global warming, like eliminating coal plants.
But other scientists, including some of Dr. Wright’s closest colleagues, disagree, saying that forceful protection of rain forests is especially important in the face of threats from industrialized farming and logging.
The issue has also set off a debate over the true definition of a rain forest. How do old forests compare with new ones in their environmental value? Is every rain forest sacred?
“Yes, there are forests growing back, but not all forests are equal,” said Bill Laurance, another senior scientist at the Smithsonian, who has worked extensively in the Amazon.
He scoffed as he viewed Ms. Ortega de Wing’s overgrown land: “This is a caricature of a rain forest!” he said. “There’s no canopy, there’s too much light, there are only a few species. There is a lot of change all around here whittling away at the forest, from highways to development.”
While new forests may absorb carbon emissions, he says, they are unlikely to save most endangered rain-forest species, which have no way to reach them.
Everyone, including Dr. Wright, agrees that large-scale rain-forest destruction in the Amazon or Indonesia should be limited or managed. Rain forests are the world’s great carbon sinks, absorbing the emissions that humans send into the atmosphere, and providing havens for biodiversity.
At issue is how to tally the costs and benefits of forests, at a time when increasing attention is being paid to global climate management and carbon accounting.
Just last month, at climate talks held by the United Nations in Poznan, Poland, the world’s environment ministers agreed to a new program through which developing countries will be rewarded for preventing deforestation. But little is known about the new forests " some of them have never even been mapped " and they were not factored into the equation at the meetings.
Dr. Wright and other scientists say they should be. About 38 million acres of original rain forest are being cut down every year, but in 2005, according to the most recent “State of the World’s Forests Report” by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, there were an estimated 2.1 billion acres of potential replacement forest growing in the tropics " an area almost as large as the United States. The new forest included secondary forest on former farmland and so-called degraded forest, land that has been partly logged or destroyed by natural disasters like fires and then left to nature. In Panama by the 1990s, the last decade for which data is available, the rain forest is being destroyed at a rate of 1.3 percent each year. The area of secondary forest is increasing by more than 4 percent yearly, Dr. Wright estimates.
With the heat and rainfall in tropical Panama, new growth is remarkably fast. Within 15 years, abandoned land can contain trees more than 100 feet high. Within 20, a thick rain-forest canopy forms again. Here in the lush, misty hills, it is easy to see rain-forest destruction as part of a centuries-old cycle of human civilization and wilderness, in which each in turn is cleared and replaced by the other. The Mayans first cleared lands here that are now dense forest. The area around Gamboa, cleared when the Panama Canal was built, now looks to the untrained eye like the wildest of jungles.
But Dr. Laurance says that is a dangerous lens through which to view the modern world, where the forces that are destroying rain forest operate on a scale previously unknown.
Now the rain forest is being felled by “industrial forestry, agriculture, the oil and gas industry " and it’s globalized, where every stick of timber is being cut in Congo is sent to China and one bulldozer does a lot more damage than 1,000 farmers with machetes,” he said.
Globally, one-fifth of the world’s carbon emissions come from the destruction of rain forests, scientists say. It is unknown how much of that is being canceled out by forest that is in the process of regrowth. It is a crucial but scientifically controversial question, the answer to which may depend on where and when the forests are growing.
Although the United Nations’ report noted the enormous increase of secondary forests, it is unclear how to describe or define them. The 2.1 billion acres of secondary forests includes a mishmash of land that has the potential to grow into a vibrant faux rain forest and land that may never become more than a biologically shallow tangle of trees and weeds.
“Our knowledge of these forests is still rather limited,” said Wulf Killmann, director of forestry products and industry at the United Nations agriculture organization. The agency is in the early phases of a global assessment of the scope of secondary forest, which will be ready in 2011.
The Smithsonian, hoping to answer such questions, is just starting to study a large plot of newly abandoned farmland in central Panama to learn about the regeneration of forests there.
Regenerated forests in the tropics appear to be especially good at absorbing emissions of carbon, but that ability is based on location and rate of growth. A field abandoned in New York in 1900 will have trees shorter than those growing on a field here that was abandoned just 20 years ago.
For many biologists, a far bigger concern is whether new forests can support the riot of plant and animal species associated with rain forests. Part of the problem is that abandoned farmland is often distant from native rain forest. How does it help Amazonian species threatened by rain-forest destruction in Brazil if secondary forests grow on the outskirts of Panama City?
Dr. Wright " an internationally respected scientist " said he knew he was stirring up controversy when he suggested to a conference of tropical biologists that rain forests might not be so bad off. Having lived in Panama for 25 years, he is convinced that scientific assessments of the rain forests’ future were not taking into account the effects of population and migration trends that are obvious on the ground.
In Latin America and Asia, birthrates have dropped drastically; most people have two or three children. New jobs tied to global industry, as well as improved transportation, are luring a rural population to fast-growing cities. Better farming techniques and access to seed and fertilizer mean that marginal lands are no longer farmed because it takes fewer farmers to feed a growing population.
Gumercinto Vásquez, a stooped casual laborer who was weeding a field in Chilibre in the blistering sun, said it had become hard for him to find work because so many farms had been abandoned.
“Very few people around here are farming these days,” he said.
Dr. Wright, looking at a new forest, sees possibility. He says new research suggests that 40 to 90 percent of rain-forest species can survive in new forest.
Dr. Laurance focuses on what will be missing, ticking off species like jaguars, tapirs and a variety of birds and invertebrates.
While he concedes that a regrown forest may absorb some carbon, he insists, “This is not the rich ecosystem of a rain forest.”
Still, the fate of secondary forests lies not just in biology. A global recession could erase jobs in cities, driving residents back to the land.
“Those are questions for economists and politicians, not us,” Dr. Wright said.
Good catch posting remarks from our new secretary of the Interior.
Beth, the weather here is warm today - temps mild.
If degrees are any indication at all, Feb and March should be interesting weatherwise.
sue, the White House blog is a good place to find current issues and how the administration is dealing with the changeover. Interesting stuff.
Thanks for the rainforest article! Nature, huh?
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
WH blog link: {at the top of the page, click on links of interest}
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog_post/Cleaninghouse/
@Stradee,
All clicked........ Great going all.
@Stradee,
Great going all. Here is one of my most favorite quotes of all time. =
-------------
"Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web,
we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect."
Chief Seattle, 1855
@ehBeth,
Well, I'm clicked for today.
Keep those keys tapping for Rain Forest folks....
@candide,
Thanks for keeping the home fires burning, stradee and danon
S'good to see sumac around.
Hey candide - great to see you resurface!
Now if we can just track down alex ...
~~~
You and your 300 friends have supported 2,927,096.6 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 220,422.6 square feet.
You have supported: (0.0)
Your 300 friends have supported: (220,422.6)
American Prairie habitat supported: 68,823.3 square feet.
You have supported: (17,956.4)
Your 300 friends have supported: (50,866.9)
Rainforest habitat supported: 2,637,850.7 square feet.
You have supported: (189,033.1)
Your 300 friends have supported: (2,448,817.6
@ehBeth,
Sending some heat your way, ehBeth.
Creaking along...........
@danon5,
Temps are dropping again tonight, so a little heat's appreciated. Not too much though, don't want a fast melt.
A little heat on the way, Beth.
Temps here very warm, but rain for Wed and Thurs says the weather guy.
Have a good evening, all ~
Good earthturn wildclickers
Where is Alex???
I know
He's remodeling the new B&B he and the Mrs. just purchased.
sue is landscaping the University grounds
and Stradee should pour another cup of coffee...
as our resident fastest and best clicker of all time will say
"creaking along"
Thank God whatever planet was retrograde has finally righted {er sumpin}
Been a very strange past few days.
Hope all have a terrific day
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
Stradee, read this.
ebruary 3, 2009, 10:00 pm
Guest Column: Fish Shares and Sharing Fish
By Aaron E. Hirsh
Aaron E. Hirsh
It is the last evening of the marine ecology course my wife and I teach each year at a field station in Bahía de Los Ángeles, a small fishing village on the Gulf of California. We’ve invited four local fishermen to join us for dinner, and they sit now in plastic chairs on our patio " the guests of honor, with a dozen college kids gathered before them like disciples.
The eldest of the fishermen, Memo, rubs his grizzled chin in somber recollection, for one of our students has just asked a pointed and painful question: Which species have disappeared in his lifetime?
Sea CucumberA sea cucumber in Galapagos, Ecuador. (Alex Hearn/Charles Darwin Fund, via European Pressphoto Agency)
Solemnly, as though he’s reciting the names of his own deceased ancestors, Memo begins: the sea cucumbers, the fan clam, the lion’s paw scallop . . . . He’s working his way back in time, I think, moving from the most recently vanished toward the creatures that disappeared when he was a child.
In the early ’90s, he reaches the sharks; in the ’70s, the sea turtles; in the ’60s, the giant sea bass; and in the years of his childhood, the great totoaba, a six-foot croaker that was once pulled from these waters by the million.
As he nears the end of his list, it’s hard not to imagine what might have been: a wildly plentiful eco-system, yielding its riches year after year; and these very men, supporting themselves and their families with relative ease. But instead, they work harder each year, driving their fishing boats ever farther, pursuing a meager haul of reef fish.
What went wrong?
Since the mid-’50s, economists who study fisheries have basically understood the fate that has befallen these waters. They call it the tragedy of the commons.
If a fish population is controlled by a single, perfectly rational agent " an idealized entity economists refer to as “the sole owner” " he or she will manage it to maximize its total value over time. For almost every population, that means leaving a lot of fish in the water, where they can continue to make young fish. The sole owner, then, will cautiously withdraw the biological equivalent of interest, without reducing the capital " the healthy population that remains in the sea.
But if the fish population is available to many independent parties, competition becomes a driving concern. If I don’t extract as much as I can today, there’s no guarantee you won’t take everything tomorrow. Sure, in a perfect world, you and I would trust each other, exercise restraint, and in the long run, grow wealthier for it, but I’d better just play it safe and get those fish before you do. The race for fish ensues, and soon, the tragedy of the commons has struck.
Memo and the men sitting next to him probably do trust one another, and therefore might have been able to manage their local fisheries for their common, long-term good. Not so, however, the large fishing vessels that came here from Oaxaca and Japan. For those foreign parties, which passed through but occasionally, and surely did not know when or if they’d return to fish again, it seemed shrewder, evidently, to extract as much as possible, as quickly as possible.
Around the globe, the same dynamic has unfolded in one fishery after another. Since 1950, the harvests from about a third of the world’s fisheries have collapsed to less than 10 percent of their historical highs. A 2008 United Nations report estimates that global fisheries, currently worth about 80 billion dollars per year, could be worth more like 140 billion " if only they were managed properly.
There are, however, exceptions to this trend. Interestingly, they do not exactly fit the economist’s notion of a sole owner, but rather seem to show that larger collectives can approximate the farsighted thinking and behavior of that ideal agent, provided two key elements are in place: first, fishermen must have a durable rather than fleeting stake in the value of their fishery; and second, each fisherman must have good reason to trust that others will act as responsibly as he does.
A few hundred miles south of where we sit with the fishermen is Isla Tiburón. In the 1970s, an indigenous tribe called the Seri were granted permanent and exclusive rights to fish the waters around Tiburón and in Infiernillo Channel, which runs between the island and mainland.
The Seri are not, strictly speaking, a sole owner. There are about five hundred of them, all with the right to take shellfish from tribal waters. However, they live close enough to their resource that they can monitor its status daily, and close enough to each other that they can catch a fellow fisherman who takes too much when the resource is running low.
With their lasting stake in the fishery, and through their close bonds of community, the Seri have approximated the sole owner: they have managed their resource for sustainable yield rather than short-term gain, and today, Infiernillo Channel harbors the richest shellfish beds in the region.
The narrow channel is easy for the Seri to patrol. By contrast, the tribe’s other fisheries, on the opposite side of Isla Tiburón, are open to the sea and therefore difficult to monitor. Consequently, those waters have remained accessible to all. And, as you might have predicted, the shellfish populations there have collapsed to levels comparable with other locations in the Gulf. The two sides of Isla Tiburón are thus like a case-control study in the benefits of secure ownership of a fishery.
In certain respects, the Seri are a distinctive case. However, small artisanal operations, which are generally based in a single community, compose a substantial portion of the world’s total fishing effort. They employ 50 of the world’s 51 million fishermen, and take half of the world’s annual catch. Managerial success at this scale is therefore a significant and heartening sign.
But what about the other half of the global catch? Two key elements may enable a small collective to act like a sole owner, but one wonders how those same principles can possibly be applied to large industrial fisheries, which take place not in the context of local waters and close community, but over vast areas of ocean traversed by vessels that rarely even see one another.
Even those vessels operate, for the most part, in the waters of a certain national government. You might expect, therefore, that a good governmental manager could simply think like a sole owner, and set the total annual catch at the level that would maximize the long-term value of the fishery.
In practice, however, that doesn’t work. It sets off a race among vessels eager to catch as large a fraction as they can of the year’s total allotment, and there are many harmful consequences of such a race: Fishermen are pressured to fish even when conditions are difficult or unsafe. All the fish arrives in a hurry, which gluts the market and lowers prices. And vessels are built much bigger than they need to be, simply because they’re racing each other for catch. In fact, the 2008 U.N. report estimates that half the world’s fishing capacity could be scrapped with no change in total catch.
A managerial mechanism that seems to work better is called the “individual transferable quota”, also known simply as “fish shares”. Fish shares entitle a fisherman to take a predefined fraction of the total catch allowed by fishery managers. And since it’s the same fraction every year, going far out into the future, the fisherman has a durable stake in the fishery: if the fish population fares well, his shares increase in value; if the population declines, so too does the value of his shares.
What’s more, management through shares favors efficiency. The share-holding fisherman can work when conditions are good and fish prices are high. And since he’s in no great race to catch, he has no incentive to supersize his gear.
A number of large fisheries in Alaska and New Zealand have achieved sustainability under management strategies that include shares. More generally, a recent study, which looked at records from 11,135 commercial fisheries over the period from 1950 to 2003, found that fisheries that were managed using fish-shares were less than half as likely to collapse than fisheries managed in other ways.
Still, managing a large fishery is not as simple as selling shares. Managers must make accurate assessments of the total catch that a fishery can support. And, just as importantly, enforcement must be adequate to convince fishermen that cheaters will be caught. Otherwise, shareholders cannot trust in the responsible behavior of their peers, and the race for fish will resume. In fact, that is exactly what seems to have occurred in certain Australian fisheries that have collapsed in spite of operating under a management plan based on fish shares.
And no matter how well they’re enforced, there is one virtue fish shares lack: ecological breadth. Shareholders have an economic incentive to protect those aspects of the ocean’s ecology that impact the species they fish, but no such incentive to protect everything else.
A broader management strategy, which many marine ecologists favor, is to set aside parts of the ocean and protect them from fishing altogether. Fishermen sometimes resist this idea, since it threatens to exclude them from profitable waters. However, recent work suggests that marine reserves may pay the fishermen back for their sacrifices. By harboring the largest breeding fish, which produce spawn of greater number and quality, reserves can contribute significantly to fish populations outside their borders. Ultimately, fish shares and reserves may prove mutually supportive management strategies.
The waters around Bahía de Los Ángeles have recently been declared a marine reserve. When a student asks Memo what he thinks of this new designation, he only shrugs and looks out at the water. But I think I understand what he means. For while I’m certainly in favor of protecting this place, I also hope Memo and his community will be granted some form of ownership over the waters they’ve fished for years. If a few success stories from elsewhere around the gulf " and the globe " are any indication, granting secure tenure to locals like Memo may be the best form of protection.
February 4, 2009
Dark Days for Green Energy
By KATE GALBRAITH
Wind and solar power have been growing at a blistering pace in recent years, and that growth seemed likely to accelerate under the green-minded Obama administration. But because of the credit crisis and the broader economic downturn, the opposite is happening: installation of wind and solar power is plummeting.
Factories building parts for these industries have announced a wave of layoffs in recent weeks, and trade groups are projecting 30 to 50 percent declines this year in installation of new equipment, barring more help from the government.
Prices for turbines and solar panels, which soared when the boom began a few years ago, are falling. Communities that were patting themselves on the back just last year for attracting a wind or solar plant are now coping with cutbacks.
“I thought if there was any industry that was bulletproof, it was that industry,” said Rich Mattern, the mayor of West Fargo, N.D., where DMI Industries of Fargo operates a plant that makes towers for wind turbines. Though the flat Dakotas are among the best places in the world for wind farms, DMI recently announced a cut of about 20 percent of its work force because of falling sales.
Much of the problem stems from the credit crisis that has left Wall Street banks reeling. Once, as many as 18 big banks and financial institutions were willing to help finance installation of wind turbines and solar arrays, taking advantage of generous federal tax incentives. But with the banks in so much trouble, that number has dropped to four, according to Keith Martin, a tax and project finance specialist with the law firm Chadbourne & Parke.
Wind and solar developers have been left starved for capital. “It’s absolutely frozen,” said Craig Mataczynski, president of Renewable Energy Systems Americas, a wind developer. He projected his company would build just under half as much this year as it did last year.
The two industries are hopeful that President Obama’s economic stimulus package will help. But it will take time, and in the interim they are making plans for a dry spell.
Solar energy companies like OptiSolar, Ausra, Heliovolt and SunPower, once darlings of investors, have all had to lay off workers. So have a handful of companies that make wind turbine blades or towers in the Midwest, including Clipper Windpower, LM Glasfiber and DMI.
Some big wind developers, like NextEra Energy Resources and even the Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, a promoter of wind power, have cut back or delayed their wind farm plans.
Renewable energy sources like biomass, which involves making electricity from wood chips, and geothermal, which harnesses underground heat for power, have also been slowed by the financial crisis, but the effects have been more pronounced on once fast-growing wind and solar.
Because of their need for space to accommodate giant wind turbines, wind farms are especially reliant on bank financing for as much as 50 percent of a project’s costs. For example, JPMorgan Chase, which analysts say is the most active bank remaining in the renewable energy sector, has invested in 54 wind farms and one solar plant since 2003, according to John Eber, the firm’s managing director for energy investments.
In the solar industry, the ripple effects of the crisis extend all the way to the panels that homeowners put on their roofs. The price of solar panels has fallen by 25 percent in six months, according to Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, who said he expected a further drop of 10 percent by midsummer.
(For homeowners, however, the savings will not be as substantial, partly because panels account for only about 60 percent of total installation costs.)
After years when installers had to badger manufacturers to ensure they would receive enough panels, the situation has reversed. Bill Stewart, president of SolarCraft, a California installer, said that manufacturers were now calling to say, “Hey, do you need any product this month? Can I sell you a bit more?”
The turnaround reflects reduced demand for solar panels, and also an increase in supply of panels and of polysilicon, a crucial material in many panels.
On the wind side, turbines that once had to be ordered far in advance are suddenly becoming available.
“At least one vendor has said that they have equipment for delivery in 2009, where nine months ago they wouldn’t have been able to take new orders until 2011,” Mr. Mataczynski of Renewable Energy wrote in an e-mail message. As he has scaled back his company’s plans, he has been forced to cancel some orders for wind turbines, forfeiting the deposit.
Banks have invested in renewable energy, lured by the tax credits. But with banks tightly controlling their money and profits, the main task for the companies is to find new sources of investment capital.
Wind and solar companies have urged Congress to adopt measures that could help revive the market. But even if a favorable stimulus bill passes, nobody is predicting a swift recovery.
“Nothing Congress does in the stimulus bill can put the market back where it was in 2007 and 2008, before it was broken,” said Mr. Martin, the tax lawyer with Chadbourne & Parke. “But it can help at the margins.”
The solar and wind tax credits are structured slightly differently, but the House version of the stimulus bill would help both industries by providing more immediate tax incentives, alleviating some of their dependency on banks.
Both House and Senate would also extend an important tax credit for wind energy, called the production tax credit, for three years; previously the industry had complained of boom-and-bust cycles with the credit having to be renewed nearly every year.
Over the long term, with Mr. Obama focused on a concerted push toward greener energy, the industry remains optimistic.
“You drive across the countryside and there’s more and more wind farms going up,” said Mr. Mattern of West Fargo. “I still have big hopes.”
