Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

On Experts and Global Warming

By GARY GUTTING
The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

Tags:

anthropogenic global warming, climate change, Global Warming, Plato, science


The Stone is featuring occasional posts by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, that apply critical thinking to information and events that have appeared in the news.

Experts have always posed a problem for democracies. Plato scorned democracy, rating it the worst form of government short of tyranny, largely because it gave power to the ignorant many rather than to knowledgeable experts (philosophers, as he saw it). But, if, as we insist, the people must ultimately decide, the question remains: How can we, non-experts, take account of expert opinion when it is relevant to decisions about public policy?

One we accept the expert authority of climate science, we have no basis for supporting the minority position.
To answer this question, we need to reflect on the logic of appeals to the authority of experts. First of all, such appeals require a decision about who the experts on a given topic are. Until there is agreement about this, expert opinion can have no persuasive role in our discussions. Another requirement is that there be a consensus among the experts about points relevant to our discussion. Precisely because we are not experts, we are in no position to adjudicate disputes among those who are. Finally, given a consensus on a claim among recognized experts, we non-experts have no basis for rejecting the truth of the claim.

These requirements may seem trivially obvious, but they have serious consequences. Consider, for example, current discussions about climate change, specifically about whether there is long-term global warming caused primarily by human activities (anthropogenic global warming or A.G.W.). All creditable parties to this debate recognize a group of experts designated as “climate scientists,” whom they cite in either support or opposition to their claims about global warming. In contrast to enterprises such as astrology or homeopathy, there is no serious objection to the very project of climate science. The only questions are about the conclusions this project supports about global warming.

There is, moreover, no denying that there is a strong consensus among climate scientists on the existence of A.G.W. — in their view, human activities are warming the planet. There are climate scientists who doubt or deny this claim, but even they show a clear sense of opposing a view that is dominant in their discipline. Non-expert opponents of A.G.W. usually base their case on various criticisms that a small minority of climate scientists have raised against the consensus view. But non-experts are in no position to argue against the consensus of expert opinion. As long as they accept the expert authority of the discipline of climate science, they have no basis for supporting the minority position. Critics within the community of climate scientists may have a cogent case against A.G.W., but, given the overall consensus of that community, we non-experts have no basis for concluding that this is so. It does no good to say that we find the consensus conclusions poorly supported. Since we are not experts on the subject, our judgment has no standing.

It follows that a non-expert who wants to reject A.G.W. can do so only by arguing that climate science lacks the scientific status needed be taken seriously in our debates about public policy. There may well be areas of inquiry (e.g., various sub-disciplines of the social sciences) open to this sort of critique. But there does not seem to be a promising case against the scientific authority of climate science. As noted, opponents of the consensus on global warming themselves argue from results of the discipline, and there is no reason to think that they would have had any problem accepting a consensus of climate scientists against global warming, had this emerged.

Some non-expert opponents of global warming have made much of a number of e-mails written and circulated among a handful of climate scientists that they see as evidence of bias toward global warming. But unless this group is willing to argue from this small (and questionable) sample to the general unreliability of climate science as a discipline, they have no alternative but to accept the consensus view of climate scientists that these e-mails do not undermine the core result of global warming.

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I am not arguing the absolute authority of scientific conclusions in democratic debates. It is not a matter of replacing Plato’s philosopher-kings with scientist-kings in our polis. We the people still need to decide (perhaps through our elected representatives) which groups we accept as having cognitive authority in our policy deliberations. Nor am I denying that there may be a logical gap between established scientific results and specific policy decisions. The fact that there is significant global warming due to human activity does not of itself imply any particular response to this fact. There remain pressing questions, for example, about the likely long-term effects of various plans for limiting CO2 emissions, the more immediate economic effects of such plans, and, especially, the proper balance between actual present sacrifices and probable long-term gains. Here we still require the input of experts, but we must also make fundamental value judgments, a task that, pace Plato, we cannot turn over to experts.

The essential point, however, is that once we have accepted the authority of a particular scientific discipline, we cannot consistently reject its conclusions. To adapt Schopenhauer’s famous remark about causality, science is not a taxi-cab that we can get in and out of whenever we like. Once we board the train of climate science, there is no alternative to taking it wherever it may go.

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Thanks sumac ---------- interesting stuff.

Here's one for tomorrow =

HAPPY B'DAY STRADEE!!!

Utility Shelves Ambitious Plan to Limit Carbon
By MATTHEW L. WALD and JOHN M. BRODER
WASHINGTON — A major American utility is shelving the nation’s most prominent effort to capture carbon dioxide from an existing coal-burning power plant, dealing a severe blow to efforts to rein in emissions responsible for global warming.

American Electric Power has decided to table plans to build a full-scale carbon-capture plant at Mountaineer, a 31-year-old coal-fired plant in West Virginia, where the company has successfully captured and buried carbon dioxide in a small pilot program for two years.

The technology had been heralded as the quickest solution to help the coal industry weather tougher federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions. But Congressional inaction on climate change diminished the incentives that had spurred A.E.P. to take the leap.

Company officials, who plan an announcement on Thursday, said they were dropping the larger, $668 million project because they did not believe state regulators would let the company recover its costs by charging customers, thus leaving it no compelling regulatory or business reason to continue the program.

The federal Department of Energy had pledged to cover half the cost, but A.E.P. said it was unwilling to spend the remainder in a political climate that had changed strikingly since it began the project.

“We are placing the project on hold until economic and policy conditions create a viable path forward,” said Michael G. Morris, chairman of American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, one of the largest operators of coal-fired generating plants in the United States. He said his company and other coal-burning utilities were caught in a quandary: they need to develop carbon-capture technology to meet any future greenhouse-gas emissions rules, but they cannot afford the projects without federal standards that will require them to act and will persuade the states to allow reimbursement.

The decision could set back for years efforts to learn how best to capture carbon emissions that result from burning fossil fuels and then inject them deep under-ground to keep them from accumulating in the atmosphere and heating the planet. The procedure, formally known as carbon capture and sequestration or C.C.S., offers the best current technology for taming greenhouse-gas emissions from traditional fuels burned at existing plants.

The abandonment of the A.E.P. plant comes in response to a string of reversals for federal climate change policy. President Obama spent his first year in office pushing a goal of an 80 percent reduction in climate-altering emissions by 2050, a target that could be met only with widespread adoption of carbon-capture and storage at coal plants around the country. The administration’s stimulus package provided billions of dollars to speed development of the technology; the climate change bill passed by the House in 2009 would have provided tens of billions of dollars in additional incentives for what industry calls “clean coal.”

But all such efforts collapsed last year with the Republican takeover of the House and the continuing softness in the economy, which killed any appetite for far-reaching environmental measures.

A senior Obama administration official said that the A.E.P. decision was a direct result of the political stalemate.

“This is what happens when you don’t get a climate bill,” the official said, insisting on anonymity to discuss a corporate decision that had not yet been publicly announced.

At the Energy Department, Charles McConnell, the acting assistant secretary of energy for fossil energy, said no carbon legislation was near and unless there was a place to sell the carbon dioxide, utilities would have great difficulties in justifying the expense. “You could have the debate all day long about whether people are enlightened about whether carbon dioxide should be sequestered,” he said. But, he added, “it’s not a situation that is going to promote investment.”

His department has pledged more than $3 billion to other industrial plants to encourage the capture of carbon dioxide for sale to oil drillers, who use it to more easily get crude out of wells.

The West Virginia project was one of the most advanced and successful in the world. “While the coal industry’s commitment and ability to develop this technology on a large scale was always uncertain, the continued pollution from old-style, coal-fired power plants will certainly be damaging to the environment without the installation of carbon capture and other pollution control updates,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, co-author of the House climate bill. “A.E.P., the American coal industry and the Republicans who blocked help for this technology have done our economy and energy workers a disservice by likely ceding the development of carbon-capture technology to countries like China.”

A.E.P., which serves five million customers in 11 states, operated a pilot-scale capture plant at its Mountaineer generating station in New Haven, W.Va., on the Ohio River, from 2009 until May of this year. But the company plans to announce on Thursday that it will complete early engineering studies and then will suspend the project indefinitely.

Public service commissions of both West Virginia and Virginia turned down the company’s request for full reimbursement for the pilot plant. West Virginia said earlier this year that the cost should have been shared among all the states where A.E.P. does business; Virginia hinted last July that it should have been paid for by all utilities around the United States, since a successful project would benefit all of them.

Five years ago, when global warming ranked higher on the national political agenda, the consensus was that this decade would be one of research and demonstration in new technologies. A comprehensive 2007 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded that global coal use was inevitable and that the ensuing few years should be used to quickly find ways to burn the cheap, abundant fuel cleanly. But with the demise of the Mountaineer project, the United States, the largest historic emitter of global warming gases, now appears to have made little progress solving the problem.

Robert H. Socolow, an engineering professor at Princeton and the co-director of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative there, said he was encouraged that some chemical factories and other industries were working on carbon capture without government incentives.

Mr. Socolow, the co-author of an influential 2004 paper that identified carbon capture as one of the critical technologies needed to slow global warming, said that there was a trap ahead. “Lull yourself into believing that there is no climate problem, or that there is lots of time to fix it, and the policy driver dissolves,” he said in an e-mail. He added that for companies like A.E.P., “business wants to be ahead of the curve, but not a lap ahead.”

Happy Birthday dear Stradee !

Happy Birthday Stradee. Come on back.

time for a fresh thread perhaps?

any preferences for starter topics from recent articles?

Hi ehBeth --- yes, plenty of topics from sumac's articles. My guess is more concern to save the planet for our children's children.

Thanks for clicking all....................

ahhhhhhhhhh I like that

if anyone else would like to start a new thread, please call dibs - otherwise I will mull on the new frame and start something when I get back from visiting hamburgboy/hamburger

Swordfish
Human impacts on terrestrial predators have not only decreased their abundance but also resulted in extirpation of populations and subsequent range contraction. Species in these conditions face “double jeopardy” because their populations are both smaller and found in fewer places. Pelagic predators have much greater mobility than terrestrial predators, suggesting, perhaps, that range contractions may not accompany reduced abundance in these species. Worm and Tittensor, however, found this not to be the case. Three large, global fisheries databases were used to quantify the presence or absence of 13 tuna and billfish species at 5° intervals over all the world's oceans, and across three decades. Nine out of 13 of these species have experienced significant range contractions, and those with the greatest decreases in abundance have had the greatest reductions in their range. For example, Atlantic blue fin tuna has experienced a 46% decrease in range size. Such contractions remove apex consumers from many regions where they were previously present—a factor that could have a large impact on the marine ecosystem.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 10.1073/pnas.1102353108 (2011).

New Herbicide Suspected in Tree Deaths
By JIM ROBBINS
A recently approved herbicide called Imprelis, widely used by landscapers because it was thought to be environmentally friendly, has emerged as the leading suspect in the deaths of thousands of Norway spruces, eastern white pines and other trees on lawns and golf courses across the country.

Manufactured by DuPont and conditionally approved for sale last October by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Imprelis is used for killing broadleaf weeds like dandelion and clover and is sold to lawn care professionals only. Reports of dying trees started surfacing around Memorial Day, prompting an inquiry by DuPont scientists.

“We are investigating the reports of these unfavorable tree symptoms,” said Kate Childress, a spokeswoman for DuPont. “Until this investigation is complete, it’s difficult to say what variables contributed to the symptoms.”

DuPont continues to sell the product, which is registered for use in all states except California and New York. The company said that there were many places where the product had been used without damaging trees.

The E.P.A. has begun gathering information on the deaths from state officials and DuPont as well as through its own investigators. “E.P.A. is taking this very seriously,” the agency said in a statement.

In a June 17 letter to its landscape customers, Michael McDermott, a DuPont products official, seemed to put the onus for the tree deaths on workers applying Imprelis. He wrote that customers with affected trees might not have mixed the herbicide properly or might have combined it with other herbicides. DuPont officials have also suggested that the trees may come back, and have asked landscapers to leave them in the ground.

Mr. McDermott instructed customers in the letter not to apply the herbicide near Norway spruce or white pine, or places where the product might drift toward such trees or run off toward their roots.

For some landscapers, the die-off has been catastrophic. “It’s been devastating,” said Matt Coats, service manager for Underwood Nursery in Adrian, Mich. “We’ve made 1,000 applications and had 350 complaints of dead trees, and it’s climbing. I’ve done nothing for the last three weeks but deal with angry customers.”

“We’re seeing some trees doing O.K., with just the tips getting brown, and others are completely dead and it looks like someone took a flamethrower to them,” he said.

So far, the herbicide seems to affect trees with shallow root systems, including willows, poplars and conifers, he said.

Underwood Nursery is replacing the trees, which its liability insurance covers, but faces a $500 deductible for each incident. “It’s already cost us $150,000,” Mr. Coats said. Some landscapers are finding that their insurance does not cover the tree deaths at all.

The chemical name of the product is aminocyclopyrachlor, one of a new class of herbicides that has been viewed as safer than earlier weed killers.

DuPont, landscapers and others had high hopes for the product. It has low toxicity to mammals, works at low concentrations and can kill weeds that other herbicides have trouble vanquishing, like ground ivy, henbit and wild violets. It works on the weeds’ roots as well as their leaves.

No firm estimate exists on the extent of the tree die-off. But Bert Cregg, an associate professor of horticulture and forestry and an extension specialist with Michigan State University who has fielded many calls from landscapers and inspected affected trees, said the problem existed across the country. Many extension services have issued warnings, Dr. Cregg said.

“This is going to be a large-scale problem, affecting hundreds of thousands of trees, if not more,” he said. Imprelis is used on athletic fields and cemeteries as well as on private lawns and golf courses, he noted.

While landscapers are replacing some of the trees, they cannot replace large mature ones, meaning that some homeowners have lost some of their biggest and oldest trees.

“I’m very concerned,” said Amy Frankmann, executive director of the Michigan Nursery and Landscape Association, who has heard from many members and who says the disaster could threaten the livelihoods of landscapers whose insurance will not cover the cost. “Absolutely. One member is looking at having to replace a thousand trees.”

Mark Utendorf, owner of Emerald Lawn Care in Arlington, Heights, Ill., has seen dozens of customers’ trees turn brown. “It’s unfortunate, because the product works exceedingly well on turf,” he said.

“It kills creeping Charlie, and that’s something that’s very hard to kill,” Mr. Utendorf said, referring to a type of ivy that has been known to take over lawns.

He noted that the product had been viewed as part of a more environmentally safe lawn industry and a game changer. “I hope people will give DuPont a chance to make this product work,” Mr. Utendorf said, adding that he was still using it, though very carefully and not where there were conifers.

Imprelis went through about 400 trials, including tests on conifers, and performed without problems, according to experts at DuPont and at the E.P.A. The agency reviewed the herbicide for 23 months before granting its conditional approval, meaning that all of the safety data was not yet in but the agency judged Imprelis to be a good product.

Even if the product is eventually proved to be a tree killer, it is considered unlikely that the E.P.A. will ban it, experts said. The agency would probably work with DuPont to change the herbicide’s labeling or to mandate larger buffer zones, they added.

Imprelis is not approved for use in New York and California because both states have separate review procedures for such products. New York State officials say they have told DuPont that it has detected two problems: the herbicide does not bind with soil, and it leaches into groundwater. The state has told DuPont it will therefore not allow Imprelis to be sold unless the company provides evidence to the contrary.

California officials say they are still reviewing the product.

The United States Composting Council, meanwhile, warned in May that grass clippings from lawns treated with Imprelis should not be composted because the chemical survives the process and can kill flowers and vegetables that are treated with the compost. That warning is included on the Imprelis product label.

Dr. Cregg, the extension service specialist at Michigan State University, said it was possible that many of the affected trees could recover if left in place for a year to a few years, even if damage appeared severe, because he had seen such a turnaround after similar damage to trees. “A lot of it comes down to the homeowner’s tolerance,” he said. “How long can they stand to look at this thing in the yard?”

Janet and Robert DaPrato of Columbus, Ohio, are facing that question as they gaze upon a 10-foot-high Norway spruce that started withering a month after a worker applied Imprelis in their yard. Then the needles fell off.

“The tree looks pretty well dead,” Mr. DaPrato said.

Baboon Study Shows Benefits for Nice Guys, Who Finish 2nd
By JAMES GORMAN
At last, good news for the beta male.

From the wild to Wall Street, as everyone knows, the alpha male runs the show, enjoying power over other males and, as a field biologist might put it, the best access to mating opportunities.

The beta is No. 2 in the wolf pack or the baboon troop, not such a bad position. But conversationally, the term has become an almost derisive label for the nice guy, the good boy all grown up, the husband women look for after the fling with Russell Crowe.

It may now be time to take a step back from alpha worship. Field biologists, the people who gave the culture the alpha/beta trope in the first place, have found there can be a big downside to being No. 1.

Laurence R. Gesquiere, a research associate in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton, and colleagues report in the journal Science that in five troops of wild baboons in Kenya studied over nine years, alpha males showed very high stress levels, as high as those of the lowest-ranking males.

The stress, they suggested, was probably because of the demands of fighting off challengers and guarding access to fertile females. Beta males, who fought less and had considerably less mate guarding to do, had much lower stress levels. They had fewer mating opportunities than the alphas, but they did get some mating in, more than any lower-ranking males. After all, when the alpha gets in another baboon bar fight, who’s going to take the girl home?

Behavioral researchers have not ignored the female baboons: other studies have shown that the females have a whole different system of rank, which is inherited from the mother and rarely subject to challenge, so that is one kind of stress they do not have.

The study is both impressive and surprising, said Robert Sapolsky of Stanford, a neurobiologist who did groundbreaking studies on stress in baboons and was not involved in the new study. “What’s cool about this paper is that being an alpha and being a beta are very different experiences physiologically,” Dr. Sapolsky said.

Robert M. Seyfarth of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies baboon and other primate behavior, said, “I think it’s a great paper.”

“It’s a wonderful sample size over many, many years,” said Dr. Seyfarth, who was not part of the new research, and it shows that “the males at the top are under a lot of stress, and there’s a cost.”

Earlier work by Dr. Sapolsky showed that in baboons, the lower the social rank, the greater the stress. The one exception was during periods of instability, when top males faced many challenges and their stress increased. It was good to be king, he found, but a lot better when the realm was quiet.

The new study showed that top-ranking males had higher levels of stress whether the social structure of their group was stable or in tumult. Researchers collected fecal samples to measure levels of stress hormones called glucocorticoids.

Levels of stress are important partly because of the health effects of stress hormones. In the short term, in immediate fight-or-flight situations, the hormones work to energize the individual. Long-term stress levels are a different matter. “In the long term, you fall apart, or are subject to diseases,” said Jeanne Altmann, an emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton, and senior author of the new report.

The health effects are unclear for the subjects of the new study. “Wild baboons are getting lots of exercise and not getting cardiovascular disease,” Dr. Altmann said. And baboons do not stay at the top very long.

For humans, chronic long-term high levels of stress hormones can increase the risks of disease or worsen existing diseases. Dr. Sapolsky argued, in a major review paper in 2005 in Science, that socioeconomic status in humans, the best equivalent to social rank in other primates, affected health not just because of access to medical care, but because low status meant more chronic stress.

That does not mean that the new findings can be used to draw conclusions about the health of vice presidents and lieutenant governors compared with that of their bosses. “We’re not sort of a strict dominance hierarchy species,” Dr. Sapolsky said. Humans pick and choose among many hierarchies. A low-ranking employee, for instance, might run a youth baseball league, or be the top skydiver in his local club.

While the new study does not have a direct application to human health or social structure, Dr. Sapolsky and Dr. Seyfarth said, it certainly raises questions about possible unstudied costs of being at the top.

And it does suggest some reproductive strategies among baboons that may be worth thinking about for the majority of men who plan for the future, worry about gas mileage and slip out the back when the fighting starts.

What if, Dr. Seyfarth said, the beta males are hanging around and doing “pretty well for a long time, rather than very well for a short time?”

Another Dirty Water Act
Republicans in the House of Representatives — with the support of some key Democrats — seem determined to destroy the intricate and essential web of laws and regulations protecting the country’s environment. Their latest target is the hugely successful 1972 Clean Water Act.

On Wednesday, the House approved the cynically named “Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act,” a bill that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to oversee state water quality standards and to take action when the states fail to measure up. This bill is not about protecting states’ powers. It is about allowing industries, farmers and municipalities to pollute.

Among its chief sponsors are John Mica, Republican of Florida, who is angry at the E.P.A.’s recent crackdown on the agricultural pollutants that are destroying the Everglades, and Nick Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia, who is furious at the agency’s effort to stop mountaintop mining from poisoning his state’s rivers and streams.

President Obama has rightly threatened to veto the bill if it survives the Senate. Absent federal oversight, states are likely to engage in a race to the bottom, weakening environmental rules to attract business.

This assault on the Clean Water Act reminded us, briefly, of 1995, when a Republican-controlled House under Newt Gingrich tried to undermine the same law. That effort enraged independent voters and energized moderate Republicans.

These days, moderate Republicans are as scarce as hen’s teeth, and independent voters are preoccupied with the budget and the economy. This is all the more reason why the Senate and President Obama must ensure that this destructive legislation goes no further.

Boy, I hate the see that wheel go round again. Our waters are still much more dirty than from the times I remember as a youngster. We could actually swim in stream, ponds and rivers without worry. But, that was over 60yrs ago.

I like the article re the alpha and beta males. I never had a serious problem with the alphas - they yell at me and I tell them where to stick there dumbassed head... Never had a problem after that - usually. There was an evening during summer just before my Junior yr in High School - I stopped at a small cafe on the way home from a movie where I saw a friend of mine and his girlfriend being harassed in the parking lot by three guys. I recognized one as being a freshman in college and known for being a bad ass. I went to the car and asked what the guys were doing - they then surrounded me and at that point I saw my friend drive off. The three guys were all in front of me trying to pick a fight. I just said no - but mostly kept quiet with my eye on the big guy. Finally the big guy - on my left side - said,"He's not going to do anything." And, I saw him draw back his arm to hit me. I was fast in those days and popped him in the mouth. He fell down and I was right on top banging his head in the dirt. The other two didn't do anything because by then the whole cafe was outside watching. The big guy got up with me on him and we started boxing. He never hit me and I popped him a couple of light ones when I heard someone saying the police were coming. Nothing else happened that night, BUT, the next weekend I went to the movie with my horse riding partner and his girl. Hearing this name calling and laughing I turned around and all three of those same guys were sitting right behind us. After a short while my friend who was about four yrs older than me jumped up turned around and told the guys to shut up or else. They shut up and we watched the movie.

Alphas aren't all that brave when tested in the right way.

Thanks for saving another tree today......................

A Look Into the Ocean’s Future
There is simply no exaggerating the importance of the oceans to earth’s overall ecological balance. Their health affects the health of all terrestrial life. A new report by an international coalition of marine scientists makes for grim reading. It concludes that the oceans are approaching irreversible, potentially catastrophic change.

The experts, convened by the International Program on the State of the Ocean and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, found that marine “degradation is now happening at a faster rate than predicted.” The oceans have warmed and become more acidic as they absorbed human-generated carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They are also more oxygen-deprived, because of agricultural runoff and other anthropogenic causes. This deadly trio of conditions was present in previous mass extinctions, according to the report.

The oceans’ natural resilience has been seriously compromised. Pollution, habitat loss and overfishing are dangerous threats on their own. But when these factors converge, they can destroy marine ecosystems.

The severity of human impact was reinforced last week when scientists concluded that seven commercially important species, including marlin, mackerel and three tuna species, were either vulnerable to extinction, endangered or critically endangered according to I.U.C.N. standards. The solutions that might help slow further degradation include immediate reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, a system of marine conservation areas and a way to protect ocean life that goes beyond national jurisdictions.

This is the work of nations, but such goals require pressure from ordinary citizens if there is to be any hope of bringing them about in the face of opposing political and economic interests. As the new study notes, changes in the oceans, caused by carbon emissions, are perhaps “the most significant to the earth system,” particularly because they will further accelerate climate change.

That sounds really serious, sumac. I have read and heard many years ago that humans know more about the moon than we do about our oceans.

The trees we save each day help the oceans.

Hello Danon. We are bracing for the heat due here by Thursday. Afraid it is going to stick around for a while too.

Here is an interesting article about fighting disease in trees/


Scientists Fight a Deadly Oak-Tree Disease
By JOHN UPTON
On a hot summer day in 2008, a pair of plant disease researchers made an extraordinary discovery as they toured a hillside forest in San Mateo County: a stand of trees that had not been infected by the killer disease known as sudden oak death.

The healthy swath of forest, located on watershed lands owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, is now being used as a laboratory for the largest experiment ever conducted in the wild on a promising preventive treatment for this fast-spreading scourge.

If the experimental treatment works, it could blunt the epidemic’s devastating impact on oaks and on tan oaks, which are not technically oak trees but share many of their characteristics. That, in turn, will preserve shade for trail hikers and protect wildlife that rely on these native trees for acorns and habitat.

Sudden oak death, caused by the pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, has killed more than a million mature oaks and tan oaks in California over the past two decades, turning shady oak forests in Big Sur and elsewhere into weedy wastelands in as little as six years. Many parts of the utility commission’s 7,300 acres of forest on the Peninsula have already been hit hard by the disease. At least one out of 10 oak trees there died between 2006 and 2010, and many healthy trees were cut down to slow the disease’s spread.

The pathogen spreads via water, including windblown rain, and transplanted soil. Its advance has been considered inexorable, and the discovery of the uninfected patch of forest was considered sheer good luck.

“When we first came here, we couldn’t believe that there was no disease,” said Matteo Garbelotto, a forest pathology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is helping with this and other sudden oak death experiments. “It seems to go in the upper jet stream of the air. It moves along ridges, it affects the higher parts of the tree. and then it starts raining down and moving down.”

The uninfected patch of the forest was a tan-oak and redwood woodland, and the experimental treatment involves coating or injecting nearly 300 healthy tan oaks with Agri-Fos, a commercial fungicide. A similar number of nearby tan oaks, one of the state’s most common hardwood trees, were left untreated, for comparison. The experiments, begun in 2008, could cost more than $1 million.

This year, which began with a wet spring that was expected to help spread the disease, traces of the pathogen were found lurking in the hitherto uninfected forest.

“That suggests that within the next year or two we’ll find out whether the treatment works,” said Ellen Natesan, an ecologist with the utilities commission.

The fungicide has proved an effective tool for protecting residential oak trees, at a cost of $30 to $100 per tree, but efforts to protect oak forests in Oregon by dumping Agri-Fos from aircraft were largely ineffective. Scientists remain uncertain how well it can work in the wild.

“It boosts the immune response that trees have,” said Ted Swiecki, a plant pathologist working with the agency on the research. “The trick is getting this material into the plant so it can cause it to have this defense reaction. Short of doing a study like this, you really can’t tell how well it’s being absorbed into these larger trees.”

Regardless of how well the experimental treatment works, Ms. Natesan said it was unlikely that applying the substance to every oak in a forest would be financially feasible.

But she said, “You could create zones that are sudden-oak- death-free or have very little sudden oak death; you could use it to buffer the movement of the disease; you could create strips across the landscape to stop sudden oak death from moving quickly.”

The pathogen may have been introduced on nursery plants imported from Asia that can carry the disease but survive its effects. It kills oaks by inducing the formation of cankers on their trunks, which starve the trees of water and nutrients.

Left unchecked, the disease is expected to kill off 90 percent of California’s tan oaks and coastal live oaks within the next quarter-century.

“Maybe in the future you could use a virus or something to attack the pathogen,” Ms. Natesan said. “In the meantime, if we can just leave the forests limping along, there’s some hope.”

[email protected]

The lively morning calls of a rare species of gibbon has led to the discovery of the only known "viable" community of the talkative primates in remote Vietnamese forests, conservationists said Monday.
A "substantial" population of 455 critically endangered northern white-cheeked crested gibbons were found living at high altitudes and far from human settlements on the border with Laos, Conservation International (CI) said.
Researchers, who had previously found sparse groups in other areas, used the animals' "loud, elaborate and prolonged" calls to locate the creatures in Pu Mat National Park in Nghe An province, northern Vietnam.
The community represents two thirds of the total number in Vietnam and the "only confirmed viable population" of the variety worldwide.
"This is an extraordinarily significant find, and underscores the immense importance of protected areas in providing the last refuges for the region?s decimated wildlife," said CI president Dr Russell Mittermeier.
Gibbons, which are threatened across the world, are considered the "most romantic" of primates as they mate for life and serenade their partners with song.
Habitat loss and hunting for the pet trade and the "assumed medicinal value of primate body parts" are among the major threats to the creatures in Vietnam, the CI statement said.
White-cheeked gibbon numbers are thought to have declined by as much as 80 percent in the last 45 years, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
Mittermeier, who also works with the IUCN, described the species as "on the brink of extinction".
They are believed to be "functionally extinct" in China and while there could be significant numbers in Laos, CI said a lack of research means the situation in the country is unclear.
But CI said plans to build a road through the Pu Mat area to increase patrols on the Vietnam-Laos border pose a "serious threat" to the future of the rare primates.
"The major issue will be the hunting of these gibbons that were previously protected by the harsh terrain; so gun control will be vital," said primatologist Luu Tuong Bach, a consultant to CI who led field surveys for the research.
"Without direct protection in Pu Mat National Park, it is likely that Vietnam will lose this species in the near future."

We are losing many trees to a variety of conditions here in TX. I had four removed from close to the house - all pines and due to Asian long horned beetles. Also, have seen whole sections of hardwood trees dead from I don't know what. Talk about the heat - we've had over a month of three digit days here.

We have to click like the world's coming to an end to stop this;

Thanks all for your clicks.

More trees are asmiling..............................................

The Joy of a Sun Bath, a Snuggle, a Bite of Pâté
By KATHERINE BOUTON
Two ring-tailed lemurs, perhaps a pair, perhaps just two guys out to catch a few rays, sit side by side tilted back as if in beach chairs, their white bellies exposed, knees apart, feet splayed to catch every last drop of the Madagascar sun. All they need are cigars to complete the picture.

There’s a perfectly good evolutionary explanation for this posture. Scientists use the term “behavioral thermoregulation” to describe how an animal maintains a core body temperature. But as the animal behaviorist Jonathan Balcombe points out in his exuberant look at animal pleasure, “The Exultant Ark,” they are also clearly enjoying themselves. A scientist through and through, Dr. Balcombe can’t help giving the study of animal pleasure a properly scientific name: hedonic ethology.

True to its subtitle — “A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure” — “The Exultant Ark” showcases surprising, funny, touching, sad, heartwarming pictures by photographers all over the world. Dr. Balcombe’s text is a serious examination of the subject of animal pleasure, a study that “remains nascent and largely neglected in scientific discourse.” But it also delights us along the way with Dr. Balcombe’s observations and examples.

On the subject of food as pleasure, for instance, he tells us, “Rats will enter a deadly cold room and navigate a maze to retrieve highly palatable food (e.g., shortbread, pâté or Coca-Cola).” If they happen to find rat chow instead, “they quickly return to their cozy nests, where they stay for the remainder of the experiment.”

Dr. Balcombe offers three primary arguments in support of the case that animals feel pleasure. First, pleasure is adaptive: Just as “pain discourages animals doing things that risk harm or death, which are not good outcomes in the evolutionary stakes,” he writes, pleasure “is nature’s way of improving survival and reproductive output.”

Second, we know for sure that pleasure exists in at least one animal species: humans. As Paul Bloom writes in his brilliant book “How Pleasure Works,” some pleasures are “uniquely human, such as art, music, fiction, masochism and religion.” Further, he writes, human pleasure often derives in large part from what we think a thing is (a Vermeer gives more pleasure than an identical van Meegeren). Dr. Balcombe argues that animals may experience their own unique pleasures, “forms of pleasure inaccessible to humans.”

His third argument is simply that animals are equipped to feel it. Since we know animals experience pain, why not pleasure?

Sex is a pleasure that in humans clearly has some nonprocreative aspects. But Dr. Balcombe points out that this is true in the animal world as well. He gives numerous examples; one particularly racy one (not pictured) is a pair of manatees embracing “with each male’s penis in the other’s mouth.”

“Love” is a term scientists are reluctant to apply to animals, preferring “bonding” and “attachment.” But look at the photograph (by Vicki Puluso) of two adult giraffes nuzzling a calf, the baby’s eyes half closed in bliss. Or a Japanese macaque cradling her infant (by Robert Parnell). Call it love or call it bonding, but, Dr. Balcombe writes, “the hormones are exactly the same in a human and a vole” — one of the most studied animals in the realm of emotional attachment — “and the evolutionary benefits align.”

Animals exhibit a variety of behaviors that certainly look like pleasure, and for which no evolutionary explanation seems obvious. We’ve all seen gulls or crows diving precariously toward the ground before swooping up at the last moment. “There is no obvious survival function to this behavior,” Dr. Balcombe writes, “which leaves me wondering if they do it simply for the thrill of speed, as a human skydiver might.”

Animals also indulge in substance abuse. Drunken birds wobbling after eating fermented fruit is not an uncommon sight. Birds may become intoxicated accidentally, Dr. Balcombe says, but reputation has it that elephants deliberately get drunk on fermenting marula fruit. A study from the University of Bristol in England points out that an elephant would have to eat four times its usual meal size to be affected. The same researchers, however, don’t deny that elephants indeed end up tipsy. The explanation may be a toxin in beetle pupae found under the bark, which the elephants also eat.

Every once in a while, Dr. Balcombe seems to drift a little too close to anthropomorphic supposition. Musing about a picture of a fledgling osprey, he writes, “I surmise that the feelings are similar” to those of a human “launching off a high aerie,” a feeling that is both “thrilling and terrifying.”

In his conclusion Dr. Balcombe argues that an animal’s ability to experience pleasure is a strong factor in considering the rights of animals. “The real arbiter of whether or not a being deserves respect and compassion is sentience,” he writes. “Being sensate to pleasures and especially to pains is the true currency of ethics.” It’s hard to deny that animals are not sensate to pleasure after studying these joyous photographs, and reading Dr. Balcombe’s persuasive arguments.

What a pleasure to read your article, sumac.

I'll take the goose liver pate, please - thank you.