Early California: A Killing Field -- Research Shatters Utopian Myth, Finds Indians Decimated Birds

When explorers and pioneers visited California in the 1700s and early 1800s, they were astonished by the abundance of birds, elk, deer, marine mammals, and other wildlife they encountered. Since then, people assumed such faunal wealth represented California's natural condition -- a product of Native Americans' living in harmony with the wildlife and the land and used it as the baseline for measuring modern environmental damage. That assumption now is collapsing because University of Utah archaeologist Jack M. Broughton spent seven years -- from 1997 to 2004 -- painstakingly picking through 5,736 bird bones found in an ancient Native American garbage dump on the shores of San Francisco Bay. He determined the species of every bone, or, when that wasn't possible, at least the family, and used the bones to reconstruct a portrait of human bird-hunting behavior spanning 1,900 years.

Broughton concluded that California wasn't always a lush Eden before settlers arrived. Instead, from 2,600 to at least 700 years ago, native people hunted some species to local extinction, and wildlife returned to "fabulous abundances" only after European diseases decimated Indian populations starting in the 1500s. Broughton's study of bird bones, published in Ornithological Monographs, mirrors earlier research in which he found that fish such as sturgeon, mammals such as elk, and other wildlife also sustained significant population declines at the hands of ancient Indian hunters.

Biologists long assumed that the abundant wildlife in California some 200 years ago had existed for thousands of years -- an assumption "that is ultimately used to make decisions about how to manage and conserve threatened or endangered species," says Broughton, an associate professor of anthropology. "Since European discovery, California has been viewed by scholars and scientists, as well as the general public -- as a kind of utopia or a land of milk and honey, a super-rich natural environment," he says. "This perception has long colored anthropological research on the state's native peoples. The harvesting methods and strategies of native peoples have been suggested to have promoted the apparent superabundance of wildlife, and have been proposed as models for the management of wilderness areas and national parks today."

Broughton says his study challenges "a common perception about ancient Native Americans as healthy, happy people living in harmony with the environment. That clearly was not always the case. Depending on when and where you look back in time, native peoples were either living in harmony with nature or eating their way through a vast array of large-sized, attractive prey species."

The study may have broader implications. Broughton speculates that "utopian perceptions" of a pristine California teeming with wildlife "probably even influence how Californians view themselves, and how the world views the Golden State. The dream world of Disneyland, the glamour and glimmer of Hollywood, the Baywatch fun-in-the-sun culture -- all of this may trace a link to early historic descriptions of the land that now appear to be worlds apart from pre-European conditions."...

By analyzing the relative abundances of the birds, Broughton showed that the bird population diminished throughout the entire 1,900-year period represented by the shellmound. Species with the most significant population reductions were those most attractive to hunters: large birds and birds that lived closer to humans. Among waterfowl, large geese on land and in marshes declined sooner than smaller geese and ducks, but as the supply of large geese waned, an increasing number of small geese and ducks from estuaries were hunted and their bones dumped in the shellmound.

As nearby food sources diminished, native peoples increasingly hunted birds at greater distances--particularly cormorant chicks on island breeding colonies--and depleted their populations. The bones also show increased hunting over time of sea ducks, found only in open water and on the outer coast, as duck populations lessened on land and in marshes. After depleting larger shorebirds -- marbled godwits, long-billed curlews, and whimbrels -- natives then hunted smaller shorebirds such as sandpipers.

Broughton's conclusion that hunting by native peoples depressed bird populations came only after he rejected possible alternative causes, such as changes in prehistoric climate and reductions in bird habitat. For example, the decline in cormorants might have been caused by the climate disruption known as ElNi¤o . If true, the species most affected should be Brandt's and pelagic cormorants, which depend on food in ocean currents altered by ElNi¤o. Instead, the population decline was most pronounced in double-crested cormorants, which lived closer to Indian hunters.

Broughton believes the Bay Area harbored a prehistoric native population of 50,000 to 150,000 before Europeans arrived in the 1500s. He believes that birds and other wildlife rebounded only after early European explorers came into contact with natives, infecting them with fatal diseases such as smallpox, malaria, and influenza and killing off as much as 90 percent of the Indian population. As a result, hunting pressure diminished, and by the mid-1800s, geese and ducks "were so abundant you could kill them with a club or stick," he says.

Until Broughton's study, "the general consensus was that pre-European humans living in North America had little or no effect on continental wildlife populations," says a commentary by John Faaborg, editor of Ornithological Monographs and a wildlife biology professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Except for "special cases" of ancient natives decimating bird populations on islands -- such as Hawaii 1,000 years ago -- many scientists view "negative effects on bird populations as a modern phenomenon, one that came along with burgeoning populations virtually throughout the globe," he adds. But now, Faaborg writes, "We need to reconsider our impressions about human impacts on bird populations in the distant past. Jack Broughton makes an excellent case that native peoples living in the San Francisco Bay area harvested enough birds to deplete populations and even cause some local extinction, perhaps as long as 2,000 years ago."...

More here






Are the Ethanol Wars Over?

Even the brain-dead method of producing it from corn may now be economic

Ethanol--the gasoline substitute made by distilling corn or other vegetation--has long been the subject of intense debate. According to its critics, ethanol does little to improve air quality and may actually contribute to smog, costs taxpayers billions of dollars in subsidies, and doesn't do much to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Ethanol's defenders say its environmental effects are more positive than negative, the so-called subsidies are mostly federal and state tax breaks, and as the cost of making ethanol falls while the cost of fossil fuels remains high, ethanol could substantially reduce the nation's oil consumption and even overtake gasoline as the preferred transportation fuel.

Ethanol was in the news recently [January 5] when General Motors, Chevron, the state of California, and other partners unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show a plan to greatly expand the use of E85, a motor fuel composed of 85 percent ethanol. GM already has manufactured 1.5 million "flexible fuel vehicles" able to run on E85, but they seldom do because the fuel is not widely available. Chevron announced plans to provide the fuel at selected gas stations, and Pacific Ethanol, another one of the partners, announced plans to build four ethanol plants in California over the next two years.

I've observed this debate for many years as a citizen and as a scientist. As a citizen, I don't like subsidies or regulations that distort markets. But as a scientist, I've long supported ethanol as a "win-win" proposition for farmers and consumers alike. I view the recent announcements as evidence that ethanol has reached a tipping point, and that the debate over the fuel may be over. Ethanol's advocates have won.

Many people are surprised to learn that Henry Ford used ethanol to power his first automobiles. Decades later it became cheaper to pump oil from the ground than to distill ethanol from plant matter. Now history is reversing itself as oil prices climb and improvements in production processes make ethanol the more affordable choice.

Ethanol is called an oxygenate because it is 35 percent oxygen by weight. When mixed with gasoline it allows the fuel to burn more cleanly, thus enhancing octane. Some ethanol opponents complain fuel filters must be changed more frequently, and they are right about that. Ethanol loosens deposits and residues, making engines cleaner. It's not a bad thing.

For many years, ethanol opponents claimed the energy needed to make a gallon of ethanol was greater than the energy value of the ethanol. More recent studies show a positive balance of between 25 and 50 percent. Continual improvements in the chemical engineering of the ethanol manufacturing progress will ensure additional gains are made.

Currently nearly all ethanol is made from corn, but it can be made from any easily grown plant material or even municipal waste. Sweet sorghum, a tall grass widely cultivated in the Midwest and Arizona for forage, silage, and feed grain, may be a more efficient and lower-cost feedstock than corn. Advances in genetically modified seeds will soon create corn with a higher starch value grown specifically for ethanol production.

While the price of corn can be volatile at times, it will rarely affect the price of ethanol. This is so because a major portion of income from economic production of ethanol is the dry distilled grain (DDG) that remains as animal feed once the starch is removed from the corn for fermentation. When corn prices go up, so does the value of the DDG. A bushel of corn will produce 2.7 gallons of ethanol with 17 pounds of feed left over, enough to create four beef steaks or eight quarts of milk. The price of corn has been under $2.00 a bushel for some time. Average yields per acre through the nation range between 140 and 160 bushels. Continued agronomic improvements will lead to yields above 200, which are already common in some areas.

Currently most ethanol plants burn natural gas, whose price has skyrocketed in recent years. Cheaper energy is available from burning kernel corn itself. As corn furnaces already on the market expand into ethanol plants, production costs will drop significantly. Natural gas at current prices will yield 1,000 BTUs (British thermal units) at a cost of about $17, while corn produces the same amount of heat for half as much. The comparable price for propane is near $34 and for oil is $23.

A typical ethanol plant produces about 45 million gallons of ethanol fuel per year and has a capital cost of $50 million. It produces 132,000 tons of dry distilled grain from 17 million bushels of corn, provides 36 quality jobs with a collective payroll of $1.5 million, pays about $8 million for energy, and has total expenses in the range of $55 million per year. Obviously these plants boost rural and farm economies.

One can argue, using the numbers cited above, that the industry may no longer need subsidies, without at the same time denying the industry would not have emerged without them. Similarly, ethanol may provide too small a share of our total transportation fuel needs today to significantly improve the nation's energy security. But if the industry continues to grow and gradually supplant gasoline, perhaps a longer time frame will show the subsidies were worthwhile.

Unlike the much-hyped and -subsidized wind and solar power, ethanol is an alternative fuel with genuine promise of social and economic benefits. Its foes and proponents alike would do well to set aside their past disagreements and start planning for a fast-growing and environmentally sustainable industry without the needless costs of mandates and taxpayer subsidies.

Source






ANOTHER UNDERESTIMATED CLIMATE FACTOR: VOLCANOES

And another unpredictable one -- though there seems no likelihood that they will stop. The "research" reported below is of course just a modelling exercise (i.e. elaborate guesswork) but similar exercises are the principal basis for all the scares

Ocean temperatures might have risen even higher during the last century if it weren't for volcanoes that spewed ashes and aerosols into the upper atmosphere, researchers have found. The eruptions also offset a large percentage of sea level rise caused by human activity. Using 12 new state-of-the-art climate models, the researchers found that ocean warming and sea level rise in the 20th century were substantially reduced by the 1883 eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia. Volcanic aerosols blocked sunlight and caused the ocean surface to cool. "That cooling penetrated into deeper layers of the ocean, where it remained for decades after the event," said Peter Gleckler, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). "We found that volcanic effects on sea level can persist for many decades."

Gleckler, along with LLNL colleagues Ben Santer, Karl Taylor and Krishna AchutaRao and collaborators from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Reading and the Hadley Centre, tested the effects of volcanic eruptions on recent climate models. They examined model simulations of the climate from 1880 to 2000, comparing them with available observations. External "forcings," such as changes in greenhouse gases, solar irradiance, sulphate and volcanic aerosols, were included in the models.

Oceans expand and contract depending on the ocean temperature. This causes sea level to increase when the water is warmer and to recede in cooler temperatures. The volume average temperature of oceans (down to 300 meters) worldwide has warmed by roughly .037 degrees Celsius in recent decades due to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases. While seemingly small, this corresponds to a sea level rise of several centimeters and does not include the effect of other factors such as melting glaciers. That sea level jump, however, would have been even greater if it weren't for volcanic eruptions over the last century, Gleckler said. "The ocean warming suddenly drops," he said. "Volcanoes have a big impact. The ocean warming and sea level would have risen much more if it weren't for volcanoes." Volcanic aerosols scatter sunlight and cause the ocean surface temperature to cool, an anomaly that is gradually subducted into deeper layers, where it remains for decades.

The experiments studied by Gleckler's team also included the more recent 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, which was comparable to Krakatoa in terms of its size and intensity. While similar ocean surface cooling resulted from both eruptions, the heat-content recovery occurred much more quickly in the case of Pinatubo. "The heat content effects of Pinatubo and other eruptions in the late 20th century are offset by the observed warming of the upper ocean, which is primarily due to human influences," Gleckler said.

Source





THE PROLIFERATION OF IGNORANT "EXPERTS"

(From Prof. Brignell)

I care not whether a man is Good or Evil; all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise man or a Fool. Go! put off Holiness
And put on Intellect.
--William Blake, Jerusalem

Since time immemorial ignorant people have come up with ideas that are self-evidently foolish to anyone with a basic training in science or engineering. It all added to the general entertainment and the gaiety of life. What has changed is that it is now being done by people who, like the snake oil salesman in the classic Western film, assume titles such as professor in order to impart authority on their pronouncements. It is all part of a general decline in standards of education and professionalism.

There was a time when every professional served some sort of lengthy apprenticeship. A climatologist graduated in physics and then went on to specialise, an ecologist did the same after graduating in biology. An engineer spent long years calculating mechanical and electrical stresses; so, like a trained footballer bringing a long pass under control without conscious thought, he could immediately recognise a nonsensical proposition by long-honed instinct. No competent engineer would entertain the idea of an airborne wind generator for a second, though he would not need to make the calculations unless called upon to do so. Now we have degree courses in X science, usually of a debased form, so as to be able to recruit students deficient in mathematical skills. The rest of us are then told "You may not comment on X, as you are not an X scientist!" Once you have graduates, it follows as the night the day that you will have professors, then the heritage is secure.

Computer packages are applied by people who have little idea of the mathematical constraints that apply to them. Political leaders are elected at an age where they are yet to learn from their early mistakes in life. The consequences are often dire, but by then the media have moved on to the next big story.

People set themselves up as "The Scientists" and preach to the world, usually to try to scare the pants off it in pursuit of some political (or quasi-religious) objective. When the Hockey Team found it necessary to deny the occurrence of the Little Ice Age, they blamed the end of Frost Fairs on the rebuilding of London Bridge, which had been restricting the flow, thus ignoring the second most fundamental law of physics - continuity of flow. Naturally, when challenged on this they then subsequently brought in talk of tides and weirs, all in line with Langmuir's 5th law. Of course, they not only deny the physics, but history, art, archaeology and even entomology. It was possible to trace the cold decline of the Viking settlement in Greenland by, for example, the species of flies that dominated, a highly temperature-sensitive indicator. The bones showed that they ate all their livestock, then finally their dogs. Even the President of the Royal Society was either disingenuous or ignorant of basic scientific concepts such as feedback and non-linearity in the diatribe that set off the whole global warming scare.

When the scaremongers were promoting the New Ice Age in the 1970s, they came up with quite ludicrous propositions for changing the Earth's climate; ones that made the Kyoto suicide pact look positively sane. Every now and then airships are in the news: there is a flurry of activity; then it all subsides. You only have to say one word to damn the concept - wind. On the other hand, and for no apparent reason, canal systems are allowed to fall into disrepair.

Some drugs are condemned before they are even really tried, because of some botched and inadequate trial, while others become the foundation of billion dollar industries on the same basis: a lottery. It is the age of the Expert. Time was when this word was only used by journalists and lawyers; scientists would, perhaps, admit to being specialists. Now half the adverts on TV are for dubious products and behaviours touted by self-styled experts. In Britain, many such promotions are sponsored by the Government and funded by the suffering taxpayer.

Whether it is in art, craft or science, true expertise derives from long familiarity and mastery of detail. In a world dominated by politics and the media, where the transient is king and superficiality the order of the day, people are encouraged to think that they can have several careers in one lifetime, but that of course is only in order to cover up problems of unemployment. Politicians delude themselves that, because they can destroy a great school overnight, that they can create one in the same timescale, but in reality it takes generations. This is the age of instant gratification; just add water. In just seven days I can make you a man.

So we have these instant inventions, nostrums and scares; not only from common or garden nutters, but also from those who set themselves up as The Authorities.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer,
For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars
--William Blake, Jerusalem

***************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************