EVERGLADES restoration deal reached between Army Corps and Florida after years of disagreement

Posted on August 16, 2009

Via MrClean1982 on Flickr, an interesting and humorous image of an American white ibis (Eudocimus albus) in the Florida Everglades.

BREAK
A master agreement has been reached between the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that puts the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan back on track. From MiamiHerald.com:

The “master agreement” details how the South Florida Water Management District and the Army Corps of Engineers will share costs and duties for 68 projects Congress approved in 2000 to restore the natural flow of the River of Grass.

Both sides hailed the agreement — reached when the Obama administration relented in a dispute over land values likely to shift as much as a half-billion dollars onto the federal ledger — as a breakthrough that should move restoration from talk to action.

. . .

Terrence “Rock” Salt, a deputy assistant secretary of the Army who oversees the Corps, said construction could begin within months, starting with reclamation of 55,000 acres in the Picayune Strand, site of a Southwest Florida development that flopped decades ago. The Corps has $41 million in stimulus funding for that job.

. . .

Over the next two years, the Obama administration has budgeted or is seeking congressional approval for almost a half-billion dollars to begin restoration projects, including ones to restore freshwater flows to Biscayne Bay coastal wetlands, overhaul the C-111 canal to keep more water in Everglades National Park and build a reservoir to bolster Broward County’s water supply and limit seepage from adjacent Everglades marshes.

Down the road, the agreement also could potentially open the door for federal help to complete Gov. Charlie Crist’s controversial $536 million deal to buy 73,000 acres from the U.S. Sugar Corp. and convert them to massive reservoirs and pollution-treatment marshes.

Meanwhile, Florida’s Burmese python problem literally continues to grow bigger and bigger. From MiamiHerald.com:

Staff at the Okeechobee Veterinary Hospital routinely handle large animals. Along with pet dogs and cats, they treat hogs, horses, cows and bulls.

But the enormous critter that slithered uninvited onto the hospital grounds Thursday stunned everyone. It turned out to be one of the biggest Burmese pythons found roaming free in Florida.

The constrictor stretched 17 feet, two inches and measured 26 inches around at its thickest point. It weighed in at a staggering 207 pounds — four pounds more than the Miami Dolphins’ brawny No. 1 draft pick, Vontae Davis.

. . .

Florida wildlife managers pointed to the find as the latest, and largest, evidence that the exotic snake, which has settled into the Everglades, is spreading across the state.

“The capture of this large python shows us how well these snakes can thrive in the wild and create a dangerous situation after illegal release or escape,” said Rodney Barreto, chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “It also illustrates why the FWC is partnering with other agencies to implement python control measures in South Florida.”

Two weeks ago, the FWC began an experimental permit program that allows reptile experts to euthanize Burmese pythons on state-managed lands around the Everglades, where the population is now estimated to number in the tens of thousands.

But the python patrol didn’t bag the giant snake that made its way onto the hospital’s 20-acre compound.

. . .

Wildlife officers scanned for a microchip, required for pets under state law since 2007, but found nothing.

The images below show a Burmese python that was caught and killed by a South Florida Water Management District employee. The female python measured 16.2′ in total length and weighed 117-pounds with 59 large oviductal eggs, which were all fertile. The images are credited to Skip Snow/Everglades National Park.

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HEALTH CARE REFORM: Dissenters against meaningful health care reform haven’t done their homework

Posted on August 15, 2009

It’s clear that the dissenters of health care reform aren’t happy about how our elected officials are driving policy in Washington D.C. However, I’m not happy with how these dissenters have passively and wantonly been a catalyst for disinformation on health care reform.

Furthermore, it’s obvious, by listening to their criticisms of current efforts to reform health care, that these anti-health care reform protesters haven’t done their homework. How can you criticize a politician, a policy, a reform bill, politics, or anything else that’s related to our government or the public affairs of our country if you haven’t considered the facts or taken the time to understand the challenges facing our country?

To me, these protestors appear xenophobic and ignorant when they exclaim hogwash like, “I don’t want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country.” As a criticism against the Obama Administration, these town hall protestors are using words like fascism, Marxist, Nazism, or socialism very loosely or incorrectly.

Furthermore, given that “the total US tax burden is less than that in most industrialized countries” and as state budgets are running in the red, these town hall protestors seem selfish to me when they complain about not wanting to pay more taxes. Basically, these protestors are driving the type of policy that has resulted in our country’s current woes. Maybe most Americans aren’t ready for change, or perhaps most Americans are perfectly content with the status quo, but I’m certainly not. From Katy Abram at Senator Arlen Specter’s town hall meeting:

I don’t believe this is just about health care. It’s not about TARP. It’s not about left and right. This is about the systematic dismantling of this country. I’m only thirty-five years old, and I have never been interested in politics. You have awakened a sleeping giant. . . . I don’t want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. . . . What are you going to do to restore this country back to what our founders created, according to the Constitution?

Lawrence O’Donnell, while filling in for Chris Matthews’s “Hardball”, exposes Katy Abram’s ignorance of the issues surrounding the health care debate:

Katy Abram on “Hardball” says she’s upset about having to fund government programs as a taxpayer, but the federal government has a responsibility to drive policy. As a taxpayer we have a responsibility to pay for these programs—there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Furthermore, Abram mentions she has a $5,000 deductible! Consequently, I imagine it’s hard to meet a $5,000 deductible while also paying the exorbitant costs of private health insurance. Additionally, when her parents retire, they’ll participate in a single payer health care system—Medicare. Clearly these dissenters of health care reform are relying on sources that have purposely spread disinformation, because the health care industry doesn’t want the status quo to change, since they’re making so much money! From the NYTimes.com:

Ms. Abram described herself as a stay-at-home mother from Lebanon, and in many ways she was representative of the almost entirely white and irritable crowd, most of whom were from the area. Based on interviews with several dozen people who attended, it appeared that about 80 percent of those who showed up opposed the planned changes to the health care system.

Many said they heard about the meeting from e-mail alerts sent by conservative and antitax groups like the Constitutional Organization of Liberty and the Berks County Tea Party, along with Mr. Specter’s own mailings. Some voiced sentiments that were heard recently on conservative radio shows, though those interviewed said they resented being characterized as mobs or puppets of lobbyists, emphasizing that they represented only themselves. “I demand my voice!” read one sign outside. “You work for me,” was a refrain yelled inside the auditorium.

At the same time, those who favor a health care overhaul, urged to attend by unions and liberal groups like the Service Employees International Union and Health Care for America Now, said they were motivated by concern that the government might not go far enough. Only the government, they say, can take on a problem as big as health care.

Here’s another great Lawrence O’Donnell interview:

Some facts that illustrate the need for health care reform:

Canada spends more than a third less per capita on health than the United States and still covers everyone, whereas the U.S. system leaves 46 million people without insurance.

Via

Cost of current House healthcare plan: $1.042 trillion over 10 years

According to a report “submitted to Congress by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation,” healthcare reform as it stands now would cost “$1.042 trillion over 10 years . . . [but] that cost would be partially offset by program savings of $219 billion over five years and added revenues totaling $583 billion.”

% increase of employer health insurance premiums in 2008: “5.0 percent – two times the rate of inflation.”
Even though no national healthcare plan currently exists, the total national health expenditure as % of U.S. gross domestic product in 2008 and 2018: “The health share of GDP is projected to reach 16.6 percent in 2008 and 20.3 percent by 2018.”
U.S. obesity-attributable medical expenditures in 2003: $75,000,000,000 (yes, that’s in billions). More data can be found here and here.
Research suggesting % of Americans that could be overweight or obese by 2030: 86%

If I’m spending twice as much, I’d expect to have the better outcomes.

Despite not having some type of universal coverage, how does the U.S. rank in overall healthcare expenditures? #1: “The United States spends at least 40% more per capita on health care than any other industrialized country with universal health care.” (from a 1999 source)
How does the United States’ health care system rank in quality: 37^th(from a 2000 report). According to The World Health Report 2000 – Health systems: Improving performance:

The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of GDP on health services, ranks 18 th . Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second- placed Italy.

Discussion of Michael Moore’s Sicko—“Bill Moyers interviews former health insurance industry executive Wendell Potter, who left the field after almost 20 years to become a health reform advocate.”

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POLITICS: Change suffocated by right-wing disinformation, lies, and propaganda

Posted on August 14, 2009

The tea baggers, the birthers, and the protestors at town hall meetings aren’t offering any remedies or solutions to our country’s woes. Mostly, they merely shout loudly and make outlandish and untruthful claims. The performance—nourished by corporations, Fox News, and other special interests—is embarrassing and alarming. More from Paul Krugman:

Sure enough, President Obama is now facing the same kind of opposition that President Bill Clinton had to deal with: an enraged right that denies the legitimacy of his presidency, that eagerly seizes on every wild rumor manufactured by the right-wing media complex.

This opposition cannot be appeased. Some pundits claim that Mr. Obama has polarized the country by following too liberal an agenda. But the truth is that the attacks on the president have no relationship to anything he is actually doing or proposing.

Right now, the charge that’s gaining the most traction is the claim that health care reform will create “death panels” (in Sarah Palin’s words) that will shuffle the elderly and others off to an early grave. It’s a complete fabrication, of course. The provision requiring that Medicare pay for voluntary end-of-life counseling was introduced by Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican — yes, Republican — of Georgia, who says that it’s “nuts” to claim that it has anything to do with euthanasia.

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CONSERVATION TIP #1: Understand that unlimited economic growth is impossible, to understand why conservation and environmentalism are indispensable to preserving civilization

Posted on August 14, 2009

I would argue that most conservationists and environmentalists understand that we live in a world with limited resources (so unlimited growth is impossible); otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be conservationists or environmentalists in the first place. Since we live in a world with limited resources, small changes in behavior—in the aggregate—in addition to policies that bring about big changes are important in alleviating our propensity to increase entropy—or the unavailability of energy to produce work, thus goods and services. Consequently, extracting energy from renewable resources, consuming or using less goods and energy, thus generating less waste, are important in conserving energy within a closed system (e.g., Earth). However, this concept isn’t commonly or aggressively distributed by the media, politicians, or in our school systems.

For example, I find the complacency of relying on fossil fuels and the subsequent impacts of relying on fossil fuels extremely worrying. During the 2008 presidential elections a hot topic was offshore drilling. An alarming number of Americans believed (and many still do) that offshore drilling was an appropriate remedy to our energy woes. However, what happens when we exhaust offshore energy supplies? Therefore, shortsighted policies do nothing but exacerbate the problem. Consequently, save the offshore supplies for when we really need them, because to me, a smarter policy is modernizing the grid, utilizing as much renewable energy as possible, and getting gas-guzzlers off the road. Investing in appropriate technologies is important too. Furthermore, although the markets can foster change, the markets often bring change too late. Therefore, the federal government has a responsibility to drive policy. That policy should reflect the maximum sustainability that’s possible to achieve with current technology and resources. Considering the various competing interests, such a policy would be difficult to hammer out but certainly not impossible.

I believe utilizing more nuclear power has its problems as well—the biggest being nuclear waste. Drought is also the Achilles’ heel of nuclear power, so like coal-fired power plants, nuclear power relies heavily on water resources. Furthermore, I believe nuclear power is a lazy remedy to our energy woes. Nuclear power should be a tool to solve our energy crisis, but it shouldn’t be pursued aggressively.

Our current paradigm of development is undeniably unsustainable, and it’s unsustainable because we use energy unsustainably. This behavior results in less energy for future generations and high energy prices. Certainly, the economy of the United States can absorb high-energy prices but only to a particular amount and for a certain amount of time. Driving your family around in an inefficient vehicle such as an SUV might make you feel safe, but what type of world are you leaving your children?

For instance, when we burn coal it turns to ash, so the same amount of energy contained before the coal was burned can’t be extracted from the ash. The same applies when we extract crude oil and produce diesel, gasoline, kerosene, petroleum gas, or the many other products we create from crude oil. After these products are burned, the energy they contained before being used can’t be recaptured. Furthermore, burning these products produces pollution. Likewise, consuming food and drink provides fuel for our bodies, but the end product—or the waste—is essentially useless. Rusting iron and steel illustrates the entropic process as well.

The concept that unlimited growth is impossible, and we are limited by how much energy is available reflects the Second Law of Thermodynamics, especially the concept of entropy. More from Tushara Kodikara at Scoop.co.nz (emphasis added):

However, a litany of environmental problems, including destruction of the ozone layer, climate change, acid rain, deforestation, overpopulation, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, desertification, floods, famine, overfishing, hazardous wastes, expanding landfills, fresh water depletion and the depletion of nonrenewable resources, to name a few, are symptoms of the shortcomings of the current economic system.

The planet is approximately in a steady state. Neither the mass nor the surface is growing or shrinking and the flows of energy inwards and outwards are roughly equal. Energy and matter enter the economy as inputs, are turned into goods and services, and leave as wastes. This flow is known as throughput.

Steady state economics draws from the work of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971). This explains how the second law of thermodynamics can be applied to the economy. In a closed system such as the planet, where the energy balance is around zero, the availability of useful energy decreases. Production of economic goods transforms matter-energy from a state of low entropy to a state of high entropy. Entropy is a measure of the disorder within a closed system.

The second law implies that matter can only be recycled a number of times and that energy can be recycled. However it takes more energy to do the recycling than the amount of energy being produced. The law also implies that creating order by means of producing goods will create greater disorder elsewhere in the environment. Therefore the entropy law puts a limit on how much we can produce. Therefore unlimited growth is impossible.

The planet’s interdependence has its limits too, and in turn limits growth. The environment provides vital services such as non-renewable resources which excessive economic growth exhausts. Forests, for example, can be considered as floating lakes. They hold topsoil in place, preventing erosion; help absorb rainwater, thereby preventing flooding; and they also remove carbon dioxide, produce oxygen and many other important ecological services. Deforestation removes all of these services.

However, in neoclassical economics, this forest can be turned into books on the topic of the ecological services of trees and people can go to the library and learn about the ecological services trees provide. This economic theory treats factors of production as substitutes; natural capital can be replaced by human capital or physical capital. If there is less of one (such as labour) it can be replaced by another (machinery) and you can still get the same output.

Before the industrial age, when the economy was small compared to the ecosystem, physical capital was the limiting factor. Fish in the sea were abundant. The number and capacity of fishing boats determined the catch size. Today however, Daly argues, the factors’ roles have changed—the economy has become very large relative to the ecosystem—making natural capital the limiting factor. The depleted fish stock in the sea will determine the number of fish that can be taken as opposed to the technologically advanced fishing fleet.

. . .

Until recently, the world economy had been growing, and yet we still have extreme poverty. It should be obvious that what actually grows is the reinvested surplus, such as profits and the benefits of growth go to the owners of the surplus, who are not the poor.

Another argument of those who oppose the steady-state economy and think that the current system is the answer is that of technology being able to solve our problems. We shouldn’t worry about peak oil, as electric cars will become cheap and viable for everybody. However, there are a couple of issues here. There is a limited amount of platinum available in the world. This is an important component for the vehicle’s battery. There is not enough platinum to produce enough cars to replace the current petroleum-based vehicle fleet on the planet.

This blind faith that technology will solve all our problems is just that, blind faith. These solutions will be far more expensive than the preventive measures available. These solutions may in fact cause more problems rather than solving the current environment problems.

The most important point is that petroleum isn’t just used for fossil fuels. It is also an important chemical feedstock used in just about every produced good. It is literally the lubricant for the world’s economy. Under the current economic system, a substitute should be able to replace this vital feedstock. However, this substitute is not forthcoming.

Photo source for attribution here and here. The authors or licensors of these images do not endorse my work or me and their images are protected under an attribution license.

Exergy image found here.

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NEW SPECIES of tropical pitcher plant discovered

Posted on August 12, 2009

A new species of Nepenthes pitcher plant has been discovered in a remote region of the Philippines. After being rescued, they described the mammoth carnivorous plant. Apparently, some missionaries who became lost in the wilderness originally discovered it. Consequently, a research expedition of pitcher plant specialists returned and found it.

The new species of tropical pitcher plant has been named after David Attenborough—Nepenthes attenboroughii (pictured). Furthermore, the newly discovered species is also described as being “the largest of all pitchers and is so big that it can catch rats as well as insects in its leafy trap.” Additionally, according to a thread on Terraforums.com, “It seems unfortunately this species is critically endangered and present as less than a few hundred individuals in just one location.” From the BBC News:

Word that this new species of pitcher plant existed initially came from two Christian missionaries who in 2000 attempted to scale Mount Victoria, a rarely visited peak in central Palawan in the Philippines.
With little preparation, the missionaries attempted to climb the mountain but became lost for 13 days before being rescued from the slopes.

. . .

Accompanied by three guides, the team hiked through lowland forest, finding large stands of a pitcher plant known to science called Nepenthes philippinensis, as well as strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms which they could not identify.

As they closed in on the summit, the forest thinned until eventually they were walking among scrub and large boulders

“At around 1,600 metres above sea level, we suddenly saw one great pitcher plant, then a second, then many more,” McPherson recounts.

“It was immediately apparent that the plant we had found was not a known species.”

David Attenborough in the video below describes the tropical pitcher plant family and N. rajah: “It’s so big that it catches not just insects but even small rodents, and one was recorded that had in it the body of a drowned rat, so if ever there was a carnivore among plants this is it.”