Places to Donate for Haiyan Relief

This list will grow in the next few days - Eli

Interaction has a web page of about 40 suggestions, mostly US centered

UPDATE:  Two other suggestions, more off the beaten track

NAFCON:  National Alliance for Filipino Concerns. NAFCON is a national multi-issue alliance of Filipino organizations and individuals in the United States serving to protect the rights and welfare of Filipinos

TEAM RUBICON:  Team Rubicon unites the skills and experiences of military veterans with first responders to rapidly deploy emergency response teams.  They have deployed a strike team to conduct a medical search and rescue mission in the Philippines in response to Typhoon Haiyan.  Some matching is available

From KVUE TV in Texas

TO FIND VICTIMS AND SHELTERS: Google launched a crisis and relief map including evacuation shelters, crisis areas and relief drop zones. Go here for the map. Google also launched a person finder. If you're looking for loved ones in the area that may have been affected or if you have information about someone, go here.

RED CROSS: The Philippine Red Cross is working to provide rescue and relief supports to those affected by Typhoon Haiyan. To donate directly to the typhoon relief efforts, go here and select "Supertyphoon Yolanda (HAIYAN)" from the "campaign" drop-down menu.

The American Red Cross has also deployed two people to assess with efforts in the Philippines. They suggest donating by sending a check to your local Red Cross and writing "Philippines Typhoons and Flood" in the memo line.

CARE is delivering food, water, shelter and other essentials to the survivors of the typhoon. To donate to CARE's efforts, go here or call 1-800-521-2273.

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY plans to give 30,000 shelter repair kits to those that were affected by the typhoon. To donate to the Disaster Response Fund, go here.

UNICEF is accepting donations to provide children affected by the typhoon with clean water, food and shelter. To donate online, go here. You can print a form to be mailed in by going here. Donate over the phone by calling 1-800-FOR-KIDS (1-800-367-5437).

SAVE THE CHILDREN is also working with affected children in the Philippines, Laos and Vietnam. Donate to the Typhoon Haiyan Children's Relief Fund by going here or by calling 1-800-728-3843.

WORLD VISION has launched an emergency response to provide food, clean water and shelter to an estimated 400,000 people. Donate online here.

WORLD FOOD PROGRAM USA is helping to provide food and other assistance to those affected. Donate online here.

CONVOY OF HOPE was already in the Philippines providing assistance to those affected by the 7.1 magnitude earthquakethat struck there a few weeks ago. They're expanding their efforts to include assistance to typhoon victims. They currently have four shipping containers full of food en route to the Philippines and are preparing containers full of hygiene pouches, canned foods and fruits as well as 100 water filtration units. To donate online, go here. You can also donate by calling 1-417-823-8998.

INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL TEAMS CORPS sent a team with medical supplies to assist with the injured affected by the typhoon. You can go here to support their efforts online or donate to the organization by calling 1-800-481-4462.

From Time, some others

OXFAM has emergency responders on the ground to assist with relief support. The organization is asking for contributions to its Typhoon Haiyan Relief and Recovery Fund online.

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS has had 15 members of an emergency team in Cebu since Saturday. The organization is sending more staff to assist with medical and psychological treatment as well as items such as medical kits, vaccines and hygiene kits over the next few days. An additional cargo with an inflatable hospital and medical material is being prepared to leave later this week. Donate online.

From the Toronto Star:

CANADIAN RED CROSS  The Canadian Red Cross has been assisting its Philippine counterparts since Friday, working to meet the needs of individuals in crisis.

HUMANITARIAN COALITION  The Canadian aid coalition of CARE, Oxfam, Plan Canada and Save the Children have been working with its member agencies on the ground in the Philippines since the disaster struck.

GLOBAL MEDIC The Canadian emergency-relief charity has departed for the Philippines and is focusing on water-purification in the affected regions.

Canadians looking for information on friends and relatives who may have been caught in the affected areas can call Foreign Affairs’ 24-7 Emergency Watch and Response Centre at 1-800-387-3124 or 613-996-8885.

Still others

PHILIPPINE RED CROSS: Donations will help mobilize teams on the ground with rescue and relief efforts.

CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES: CRS is helping with the storm's aftermath by getting supplies and staff into the area.

Trust everybunny but cut the cards.  Some good advice on donating  from WCNC

COLLECTING CLOTHING AND GOODS WITHOUT VERIFYING THAT ITEMS CAN BE USED - Unless you have verified that a charity is in need of specific items and has a distribution plan in place, collecting clothing, food and other goods may end up being a wasted effort. Relief organizations often prefer to purchase goods near the location of the disaster to help speed delivery and avoid expensive long distance freight costs. Also, sending non-essential items may actually slow down the charity’s ability to address urgent needs.

SENDING DONATIONS TO INEXPERIENCED RELIEF EFFORTS - Good intentions alone are not enough to carry out relief activities effectively. If the charity has not previously been involved in disaster relief, or does not have experience in assisting the overseas nation(s) that have been impacted, this likely will hamper their ability to work well in the affected areas.

RESPONDING TO ONLINE AND SOCIAL MEDIA APPEALS WITHOUT CHECKING- Don’t let your guard down just because the appeal is online. Don’t assume that since a third-party blog, website or friend recommended a relief charity that it has been thoroughly vetted. Check out the charity’s website on your own.

DONATING WITHOUT DOING YOUR HOMEWORK - Find out if a charity meets recognized accountability standards. If you want assurance that the charity is transparent, accountable, and well managed, see if it meets the BBB Wise Giving Alliance’s 20 “Standards for Charity Accountability” by visiting give.org. The following 25 organizations are BBB Accredited Charities (i.e., meet all 20 BBB Standards for Charity Accountability) that have announced on their website that they are accepting donations for typhoon relief activities. Donors are encouraged to visit the charities’ websites to find out more about the nature of the assistance they are providing. Some organizations are engaged in immediate relief while others are focused on longer term recovery efforts. This list does not include all of the charities involved in typhoon relief.

Government efforts:  (Ongoing, obviously these are not final amounts and the list of countries is only partial)

United States:  US Embassy in the Philippines immediately released $100,000 for relief.  Military flew in C-130s, carrying personnel and equipment
 
Australia: Pledged $A10 million immediately

European Commission  Pledged E3 million immediately

UK:  Support package worth $9.6 million

Germany:  Flying in aid and rescue teams are on site now

New Zealand: Providing NZ$2.15 million

Canada Pledged up to $5 million US to aid organizations

Taiwan: providing immediate cash aid of US$200,000 and the

Singapore:  donated US$40,000.

Japan:  Medical rescue team dispatched

UAE: Dh37 million

Does the World Need a Category Six For Cyclones

With the disaster in the Philippines wrought by super typhoon Haiyan, once again the unseemly arguments appear about exactly how fast the winds were blowing at landfall and aw gee there were worse storms, the damage to global GDP was minor.  Eli however, and some others have another question.  Would it be useful to reformulate the Saffir-Simpson scale?  Actually two.  Would it also be useful to coordinate the new Saffir-Simpson scale with the Enhanced Fujita scale for tornadoes?

The argument, at least the one the Bunny is making, has nothing to do with climate change, and everything to do with policy, construction codes, public safety and history.  Both the Saffir-Simpson and the Fujita scales were designed for public officials to use in determining how to react to cyclones and tornadoes.  The ranks are set not so much by wind speed and other parameters such as precipitation, as to the expected damage that a storm would do.

Eli will argue that forecasting and construction progress has overtaken the Saffir-Simpson scale and it is time to revise it.  Moreover, while there are few places which are subject to both hurricanes and tornadoes, a uniform scale would prevent the public from perceiving a lesser/stronger danger when warnings are issued.  The Fujita scale itself was revised in 2006 with this in mind by the Wind Science and Engineering Center at Texas Tech

Although the Fujita Scale has been in use for 33 years, the limitations of the scale are well known to the users. The primary limitations are a lack of damage indicators, no account of construction quality and variability, and no definitive correlation between damage and wind speed. These limitations have led to inconsistent rating of tornadoes and, in some cases, an overestimate of tornado wind speeds. Thus, there is a need to revisit the concept of the Fujita scale and to improve and eliminate some of the limitations.

FUJITA SCALE			OPERATIONAL EF-SCALE
F Number	Fastest 1/4-mile (mph)	3 Second Gust (mph)	EF Number	3 Second Gust (mph)
0	40-72	45-78	0	65-85
1	73-112	79-117	1	86-110
2	113-157	118-161	2	111-135
3	158-207	162-209	3	136-165
4	208-260	210-261	4	166-200
5	261-318	262-317	5	Over 200

The new scale was built by polling experts on the upper and lower bounds of wind speed that would cause different types of damage to various types of buildings and structures (including trees).  Details, as always, at the link.  The experts then aligned the Enhanced Fujita scale to the old Fujita Scale.

This history is important, because defenders of the Saffir-Simpson scale, including Saffir, claim that there is no need for a category over 5, because at 5, nothing is left.

Eli has seen one reaction from a hurricane forecaster which is typical

CAT 5 is already catastrophic.  What is to be gained by our making a distinction between catastrophe and armageddon?

CAT 5 landfalls are rare, three times in a century for the US. When there is a clear forecast of a CAT 5  hurricane landfall, motivation levels are already so high that additional stimulus is likely to produce a decline in rationality and performance among evacuees. Even if a hurricane were to reach CAT 6 or 7, it would most likely be weakening by the time of landfall. Since the object of the game is to communicate with people in a way that helps them make life saving decisions, we don't want to redefine the SS Scale in a way that exaggerates the hysteresis in public perception that already occurs when a formerly very intense weakening---but now weakening---hurricane approaches landfall.  

Eli begs to differ.  Nothing is left maybe, with the construction techniques of 50 years ago.  Even in favelas, third world shanty towns, there is the occasional masonry building, and especially with roof straps and other techniques, such buildings can be used as shelters from low end Category 5 storms.  With more money, bunnies can hurricane proof their burrows, but when hit with a > 200 mph gust, well. . .

And thus the need

UPDATE:  For a somewhat different POV which reaches the same conclusion see Climate Crocks 

Coby chimes in 

Three words missing from the Caldeira/Emanuel/Hansen/Wigley letter supporting safer nuclear power

The letter's here, with the operative sentence "As climate and energy scientists concerned with global climate change, we are writing to urge you to advocate the development and deployment of safer nuclear energy systems." I would change the ending of that sentence to safer nuclear energy systems if fiscally prudent.

I personally couldn't support the letter as written just as I couldn't support the reverse, a letter urging unqualified opposition to nuclear energy. The reverse may be somewhat worse in the real world, because I think much of the opposition to nuclear energy isn't empirically based but tiered off of Cold War era ideological battles. Still, I don't see a whole lot of empiricism going on here. Why not urge advocacy and deployment of carbon capture and sequestration? CCS certainly has economic issues but adding 40% to the cost of coal might still keep it cheaper than nuclear, and CCS of biomass power is a carbon negative solution, one of the very few available. I'm not saying we must do CCS - maybe it doesn't pencil out - but then the same flexibility should apply to nuclear.

Just adding those three magic words may not be enough. We might need to finish the sentence  as safer nuclear energy systems if fiscally prudent and if nuclear proliferation issues are addressed. Nuclear power won't be a large solution to the climate change problem unless it spreads to many countries where it doesn't currently exist, maybe virtually all medium-sized and larger countries. Al Gore used to be a national security guy before he went green, and I think proliferation is one of the reasons for his nuclear skepticism.

Finally the sentence might need to read if fiscally prudent and if nuclear proliferation and terrorism issues are addressed. Terrorists causing catastrophic radioactive releases or getting their scheming hands on some radioactive material from these thousands of new nuclear plants around the world could be problematic. I'd concede this one isn't as important as the other two, but it's there.

The letter writers are right that accidents and nuclear waste, the issues most opponents emphasize, are way overblown, but they take a big step from that point to saying nuclear is therefore a good idea.

I'll stay a nuclear waffler for now.

The Good Life

Je rêve toujours d´me tirer, d´me barrer, 
D´me tailler, de foutre le camp
Moi qu´aimerais tant m´arrêter d´cavaler
Prendre le temps D´avoir des chats, des petits chats,
Des chiens, des tas d´enfants,
Un vieux fauteuil au coin du feu
Où me laisser glisser à deux,
Avoir mes bouquins sous la main
Qui s´ouvrent d´eux-mêmes
Aux pages que l´on aime
Et qu´on relit sans fin
Parce qu´on les aime

Un petit clocher de Cocagne
Que j´entendrais tinter
L´hiver tout comme l´été,
La nuit, le jour, sur la campagne
Me donneraient envie de n´plus changer ma vie,
On verrait chaque soir
L´tourbillon fou du monde devant la télé,
Mes chats, mes chiens roupillant à nos pieds
À poings fermés
Et qu´au dehors le vent d´hiver
Se donnerait un mal de chien
Pour faire plier les peupliers
Que nous aurions plantés à deux
Et les soirées d´automne couleraient
Douces et monotones
Et chaque nuit on se dirait "chéri, on réveillonne"

Aïe! Quelle petite vie de Cocagne
L´hiver tout comme l´été
J´pourrais pas m´en lasser,
La nuit, le jour, dans ma campagne
Ni vue et ni connue dans mon petit coin perdu

Mais v´là qu´il faut me tirer, me barrer,
Me tailler, foutre le camp,
J´ai même pas l´temps d´m´oublier
Un instant loin du présent,
Adieu mes chats, mes petits chats, mes chiens
Adieu le vent,
Ce vieux fauteuil au coin du feu,
J´m´y serais jamais planquée à deux
C´est bête ce rêve que j´fais chaque jour
Dans ma p´tite auto
En venant du bureau
Qui pourrit ma vie de nostalgie.

Your friendly water district lobbyist, reporting out

Our water district goes to Washington DC twice annually to either look for help or avoid regulatory problems with our environmental restoration, flood control, and water supply projects, and my turn was this last week. The team had 21 meetings in 2.5 business days, occasionally splitting up.

FWIW, the shutdown is still affecting government function - permits we hoped to have received are now behind schedule.  The Corps of Engineers contracts out a lot of its work, so it first issued stop work orders and then issued start work, both of which take time.

One of our messages to government regulators was that we're doing the right thing because we want to, not just because we're told to, in the hope that it earns us some trust. I played on my background with environmental groups  like EarthJustice and Natural Resources Defense Council. We have a recent example of taking water we import from the Bay Delta area for water supply and using it to keep a crucial steelhead-bearing stream wet - no regulation forced us to do this (to be fair, we get a lot of that water back when it percolates underground).

The meeting with EPA was pretty interesting - staff there said that the new Administrator, Gina McCarthy, is definitely prioritizing climate change and water. I talked about how we're committed to carbon neutrality by 2020, but I chose not to bring up our climate divestment policy -I thought that might be controversial. Not always easy to figure out what to emphasize in these 30-60 minute meetings.

Hopefully these trips are worth the costs - we contract with consultants to represent and lobby for us there, but they say they're convinced its important for the regulators to be able to attach hometown faces to the projects they read about on their computers.


UPDATE:  should add this as well - our water district was featured on National Public Radio for our all-new Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center that will treat recycled wastewater to drinking water standards (although it won't be drunk, yet). Recycled water is good and bad from a purely climate perspective. Good in that it's an adaptive response to the loss of snow in the Sierras. Bad in that it takes a lot of energy to run reverse osmosis systems, but good in that it takes much less energy to recycle wastewater than it does to desalinate ocean water. Overall it seems like a good idea to me from a climate perspective, although conservation is better still.

The case for climate divestment in one sentence

Investors in fossil fuel companies make profits by imposing climate change on the world's most vulnerable, and on everyone else.

Extremely Cross Cultural

The Better Tasting Jellyfish Appetizer

Among the things that the bunnies will have to adapt to is the better tasting jellyfish appetizer.  Served everywhere in China, the best anyone has to say for it is that it is tasteless, somewhat like eating boiled rubber bands, but not so flavorful and twice as chewy.  Dano brings the bad news to Rabett Run.


Recently several news stories ran on an incident in Sweden that sounds like one of those old-timey “strange but true” titles: jellyfish clogging the water intakes of a nuclear power plant in Sweden. Just a strange news item, right? Well, no.

What does this incident with jellyfish have to do with the bunnies, anyway? The increasing incidents of jellyfish “invasions”, stings on beaches, and the fantastical occurrences in the Sea of Japan are indirect indicators of ocean health. And ocean health affects us all, even the tiny lagomorphs.

That is: the ecosystem processes that control jellyfish populations are out of whack. Predators that eat jellyfish are being “fished down” – humans are being forced to consume ocean protein farther and farther down the food chain. We can see increasing indications from space - DMSP and Suomi NPP photographs show vast armadas of fishing boats using lights to attract squid to nets. Just a generation ago these fleets were fishing for higher value fish but those fish are mostly gone now. What will the catch be when the squid are gone? Will it have to be jellyfish if the trend continues unabated? (Whether jellyfish have sufficient protein per unit area is another question) 

But let’s address the underlying issue – human population expansion and the need for increasing amounts of protein from the earth and oceans. Unfortunately, this pattern is all too common in the ecosystems on earth: a population of an organism increases in size and exhausts critical resources in an area, and the population crashes. Humans are increasing their global reach and will soon reach limits of key resources – especially water and soil. We know this because we think we do a pretty good job of being able to measure water withdrawals and soil loss.

We are beginning to see more studies attempting to quantify what such key resource shortages will be and when. More studies quantifying loss is good. But we haven’t begun to see good studies in cognitive research that quantify how scientists can make their findings compelling and actionable to the population at large. The bunnies have been discussing some of the latest research. What do they think? How do we transfer these findings into action for the public?

If not, expect a run on hot sauce, at least as long as the jellyfish last
.

Sufficient For a Thousand Losses

Eli thought it worthwhile to point out that Ken Cuccinelli's loss can be ascribed to many causes, many of which were sufficient in and of themselves, but all together yielded yesterday's result.  While the government shutdown, his pursuit of Michael Mann, his position on contraception and abortion all contributed, the Bunny's special correspondent, a feline friend in Fairfax points to another self-inflicted wound that was especially hurtful on Cuccinelli's home turf:  his remarks on the parallels between immigration enforcement and pest control.




When you compare immigrants to rats as he did, it does not help you with what is probably the fastest growing demographic in Northern Virginia.

Speaking on the conservative radio show "The Morning Majority," the attorney general launched into a critique of Washington, D.C.'s pest control policies, which he claimed protected rats from being killed.

"They have to relocate the rats. And, not only that, that’s actually not the worst part, they cannot break up the families of the rats!" Cuccinelli said, incorrectly suggesting that the District’s 2010 Wildlife Protection Act forced pest control specialists to dump them across the river in Virginia.

Cuccinelli then made his comparison.

"So, anyway, it is worse than our immigration policy," he said. "You can't break up rat families. Or raccoons, and all the rest, and you can't even kill 'em. It's unbelievable.

McAuliffe, the rat, even went so negative as to use Cuccinelli's comment in spanish language advertising and it had traction

While Eli Freely Giggles

While Eli freely admits to being left of center in US terms, but somewhat in the center or even a bit to the right as far as civilized countries, the Bunny's reaction to many things varies between puzzlement and amusement.  No better venue for both to play than today's Virginia gubernatorial election where indeed, the players deck has been shuffled with a vengence.

It is interesting how Ken Cuccinelli's  politically trivial pursuit of, in Willard Willard's images, Sidney Crosby, aka Mike Mann has bit him in devious ways.  His opponent, Terry MacAuliffe, is not the best loved, especially on the progressive side of the Democratic Party from which many of the ground troupes come, but what enthusiasm there is has been generated by their vision of Cuccinelli which the Attorney General's enthusiastic jihad against Mann and UVa played no little part in forming.  Even more importantly Cuccinelli has been pounded by the staying away of the money club based in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. 

And the most interesting thing there is Mark Kington.  Kington as those bunnies who took their Alzheimer medicine may remember, was the Vice-Rector of the University of Virginia, up to his armpits in the coup against the President, Teresa Sullivan.  Robert Geraci, an historian at UVa has been trying to figure out what happened.

Both Warren and "Climategate" crossed my mind when the BOV announced Sullivan's "resignation" on 10 June 2012. By then, half the board members were McDonnell appointees. But when no overtly political angle established itself in the press, and attention settled on issues of online education, finances, management styles and curricular cuts, I went with the flow – despite suspecting none of these explanations had more than a shred of evidence behind it (which is still the case today), and a nagging feeling that those issues aren't "hot" enough to account for the meanspiritedness of the board's actions and the lack of transparency in its conduct.

But then, I found a reference to the Joe D and Helen J Kington professorship in environmental change. In 2011, board vice-rector Mark Kington donated $1.5m to UVa to endow the chair in his parents' memory. Amid the public protest after Sullivan's removal, Kington resigned from the board (the only visitor to do so). Kington's gift was matched by UVa alumnus Paul Tudor Jones, who had written an editorial a week after the coup praising the board's action, when, at the same time, Charlottesville's the Hook reported that Jones had been directly involved in it. In short, both men were involved in the dismissal of the president and were the co-funders of a chair in environmental change.

Of course, even though the department strongly backed Mann, the appointment was blocked at the Dean's office or higher, something unusual

So, a university that aspires to raise its profile in the sciences tossed aside the judgment of its own environmental scientists, spurning the opportunity to hire one of the country's best-known climate experts. Given Mann's high profile and the intensity of opinions about him, it is hard to believe that the blocking of his rehiring by UVa was not related to "Climategate". Whoever was responsible for blocking Mann's appointment abetted, in effect, the rightwing campaign against him and against an entire field of research – even if they may have thought they were only protecting UVa's reputation.

But something even more unusual happened this summer and fall.  Kington stoned Cuccinelli

Mark Kington, an Alexandria venture capitalist who gave $83,000 to McDonnell in 2009, said he steered clear of Cuccinelli because “his position on climate change to me was a real non-starter, and I told him as much.”

Kington, a moderate Republican and former business partner of Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), said he would not have supported Cuccinelli even if climate change weren’t an issue. “It may be time to vote for the third-party candidate,” he said, “if only to send a message to the Republican Party that we need pragmatic solutions, not positions that are unbending.”

Oh well.

Pulling Teeth

The Minamata Convention on Mercury  is a first step toward ending human addition of mercury to the environment.  Minamata, a city in Japan, had the misfortune of becoming synonymous with mercury poisoning when the mercury waste from Chisso Chemical's production of acetaldyhyde there resulted in then mysterious neurological damage to fishermen, their families and those who ate fish caught in the adjourning bay.  While the source of the illness was found, not before much damage had been done, and those severely impacted were identified, there is still controversy about how many people were sub-critically impacted

"There are still many unresolved issues," says Masanori Hanada, a social policy specialist who heads the Open Research Center for Minamata Studies, attached to Kumamoto Gakuen University.

Among them: finding ways to identify patients with less severe mercury poisoning symptoms, and figuring out how low-level or early-life exposure is affecting people as they age. There are also fierce, ongoing battles over who should be counted among the victims of Minamata disease, who could number just a few thousand or up to 100,000—depending on who is counting.

Since many were affected when young, this is not just a question of finding minor problems

One part of the challenge, critics of the current system say, is that screening for signs of methylmercury poisoning was done several years after the crisis and in a piecemeal way. Another is that even people who were exposed to biologically harmful levels may not be aware they have symptoms. "I cannot distinguish by feel whether I'm touching someone's hair or their shirt," says Hajime Sugimoto, a 52-year-old, third-generation Minamata fisherman who lived in Tokyo and worked odd jobs during the ban on fishing. He says he also cannot tell when he has his hands in cold water. But when he was a child, "I thought this was just normal."

To help identify other such "quiet" victims, a team led by Shigeru Takaoka, a physician at the private Kyoritsu Neurology and Rehabilitation Clinic in Minamata, has been doing its own surveys. At the International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant in Edinburgh in July, they reported finding extensive signs of methylmercury poisoning in more than 1000 people living on the coast of the Shiranui Sea, which contains Minamata Bay. "These people are not like the victims seen in the [famous] photographs, but they are Minamata disease patients," Takaoka says.

And, of course, as with lead poisoning, even "minor" damage, taken over a large number of people can be major.  In the case of lead, lead pipes, lead paint, and tetraethyl lead are legacy issues which can be mitigated by removal.  Lead solder is being replaced slowly.

Mercury will be more difficult. First, because emission from coal is a large source (that is most of the fossil fuel emission shown in the figure).  In theory at least, scrubbers could handle that.  Most difficult will be getting a handle on what is called artisanal mining.  With the surge in the price of gold, millions (Eli never exaggerates, estimates are 15 million) are trying to earn a living panning for gold in South America, Africa and Asia.

The process is simple, toss some mercury into the ore, form an amalgam between the gold and the mercury and then vaporize the amalgam freeing the gold in the pan, but pushing the mercury into the atmosphere. In addition the slurry with traces of mercury has to be discarded somewhere.  Neutral mercury atoms are not the problem, nor is the amalgam, like in most of our teeth, where it is locked up, but the damage is on deck when the mercury oxidizes, or becomes incorporated into organic compounds, which it will, sooner or later.

 Most mercury released to the atmosphere is in the gaseous elemental (Hg⁰) form, which has a long atmospheric lifetime (6 to 12 months), allowing hemispheric-to-global mixing and transport before deposition. Elemental mercury reacts with atmospheric oxidants such as bromine to form the highly water-soluble divalent mercury species (Hg^II) that is rapidly deposited to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Some of this mercury is reduced back to Hg⁰ and reemitted to the atmosphere; the remainder cycles through soils and the oceans over time scales ranging from decades to many centuries until it is resequestered in the lithosphere (4).

How can this be dealt with?  Given the poverty of the miners, the only way will be to find better methods of separating the gold from the ore.  Such methods exist, but habits are hard to break and the equipment (which can be pretty simple) will almost certainly have to be provided to them.

But wait, there is more, of course, being bunnies, you knew there was more, and you probably thought that it might have something to do with climate change.  If things heat up, reactions occur more rapidly, so in a warming world, the conversion of atomic mercury to other forms will speed up.  Increased precipitation will wash soluble inorganic mercury into aquatic systems and soils.  To the extent that there is a  CO2 fertilization effect, well there will be more inorganic/organic mercury found in soild.

And then there is the Comstock lode. Fires in the Western US are on the increase due to bark beetle infestations and higher summer temperatures in general.  Hmm.  Right where the silver and gold mining finds of the 19th century.  While the mercury based methods for separating gold and silver from ores have been replaced in many cases and, of course, it is easier to control emissions from large facilities given regulations, that was not the case in the 19th Century

The Carson River Mercury Site includes mercury-contaminated soils at former mill sites, mercury contamination in waterways adjacent to the mill sites, and mercury contamination in sediments, fish and wildlife over more than a 50 mile length of the Carson River, beginning near Carson City, Nevada and extending downstream to the Lahontan Valley. Contamination at the site is a legacy of the Comstock mining era of the late 1800s, when mercury was imported to the area for processing of gold and silver ore. Ore mined from the Comstock Lode was transported to mill sites, where it was crushed and mixed with mercury to amalgamate the precious metals. 

and, of course, other gold and silver rush sites across the Americas.  Jerome Nriagu has a paper on that

Cuccinelli fights off stench of doom

As faithful readers of Rabett Run know very well, the Virginia DA, Ken Cuccinelli, attempted to persecute climate scientist Michael Mann (of Hockey Stick fame), but Cuccinelli was stonewalled by the University of Virginia, Mann's former employer.
Cuccinelli, a Republican, is now running for Virginia Governor against Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat. As the Tuesday election approaches, Cuccinelli "fights off stench of doom", according to Politico.
Cuccinelli is a Tea Party favorite, and denying global warming is now mandatory dogma for any politician expecting to get Tea Party support.
I just finished reading Max Blumenthal's 2009 book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party. Blumenthal chronicles the rise of the Christian right wing in the Republican party. Although the Tea Party doesn't appear in the book, and is not even mentioned in the index, the Tea Party is a re-packaging of Republican grass-roots activists, who regrouped after the 2008 defeat (too late for inclusion in the Blumenthal book). It was a master stroke of propaganda to have Republican grassroots activists pose as some kind of grass roots revolutionaries. Blumenthal's book is brimming with insights. He documents that a typical Christian right-wing leader often had one favorite issue, which would vary from one personality to another. For example, Jerry Falwell's original pet issue was racial integration: he was against it. When public schools were desegregated, Falwell proclaimed that segregation was ordained in the Bible, and he and others set up a parallel system of all-white private schools. Only later did Falwell champion other issues (guns, abortion, gay rights, creationism).

Jonathan Chait Is Wrong

Jonathan Chait is wrong, for many reasons.  Joe Romm and Charlie Pierce do the dozens on Chait's politics, Eli is going to take a minute to talk loonies. Chait's argument is that opposition to Keystone is a distraction, that the central issue for the Obama administration is regulation of power plants.

My view, which I laid out in a long feature story last spring, is that the central environmental issue of Obama’s presidency is not Keystone at all but using the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate existing power plants. 

Eli pointed out that the Obama administration was going to use regulation as a club, oh about four Brian already discussed Chait in May.  Chait cites the Congressional Research Service which reported that the pipeline itself would raise US emissions only by a small amount.  OTOH, as Simon Donner points out, development of the oil sands adds enough carbon to the atmosphere to take us through a 6 C world. Many argue that if Keystone is not built, the Canadians will build pipelines east and west to export the oil.

Eli, Eli, as he said, looks at the loonies.  Oil extracted from tar sands is expensive oil, ~$85/bbl to produce as an estimate.  Then you have to refine it, but refining the bitumen from the tar sands is itself expensive, and can only be done at refineries that have a special, expensive piece of equipment called a coker for refining heavy oil.  Most of the refining capacity for heavy is in Houston, where it was built up for handling the heavy oil from the Oronoco basin (e.g. Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago).  This econopolitical fact drives the relationship between Venezuela and the US.  Both parties need each other economically.  The cost of the refined bitumen probably has to be below $100/bbl to justify investment, and the $85/bbl for extraction leaves a very small margin for refining.

The Keystone pipeline would be the most economical way of moving the bitumen to Houston.  Shipping via other methods, such as pipelines to the Canadian coasts and then by ship to Houston, or by tanker to Houston (rail or truck), or building new cooker units at Canadian refineries, simply puts the cost of tar sand oil well beyond what the future prices of oil are thought to be.  Thus, development of the tar sands depends crucially on the Keystone pipeline being built.

A useful thought on the issue is the failure of alternate energy policies in the Carter administration (1976-1980).  No one was going to seriously invest when the Saudi's could turn on the tap and produce at a cost below (then) of $1/bbl.  Other sources of oil were developed, not when discovered, but when production costs from those sources were lower than the projected cost of oil in the future.

Anybunny seeking more detail should read Derek Leahy at the Canadian deSmog, and Simon Donner at Maribo.  They are Canadians, not loonies.

Halloween

To the Editors: Victor Davis Hanson doesn't understand income taxes

My LTE published by the Mercury News:

Hanson fails to understand tax rates

Victor Davis Hanson (Opinion, Oct. 25) strips more from the credibility of his arguments than anything else when he writes of the quiet desperation of the 1 percent in Silicon Valley, beginning with his assertion that they pay well above 50 percent in aggregate income tax rates. Hanson is unaware that a marginal rate applies only to income above the rate cutoff -- the amount a person earns below a rate cutoff is taxed at lower rates. A California couple has to earn more than a half-million dollars annually to begin paying slightly over 50 percent income tax on the additional money they make. They would have to earn many millions of dollars annually before their aggregate rate exceeds 50 percent. We're discussing far fewer than 1 percent at this point, people who can afford to give back to the California economy that helped them build that wealth. The rest of his argument is no better.

Hanson's Op-Ed read "Beneath veneers of high-end living, there are lives of quiet 1-percent desperation. With new federal and California tax hikes, aggregate income-tax rates on dot.commers can easily exceed 50 percent of their gross income." And it went south from there.

I expect a couple would have to make over $4 million annually to have a chance at 50% aggregate income tax rates, but that's making the ludicrous assumption that $4m includes no capital gains and ignores deductions. If you define income the way people usually do, as salary plus commission plus all investment income, I think few people below $10m annually pay over 50% in aggregate income tax. And while Romney's 14% rate was probably an outlier, the vast majority of people making over $10m have lots of investment income and pay very little. This doesn't include payroll taxes but those become a rounding error when your annual income exceeds $4m, and other taxes are also unimportant unless you've chosen a bonfire of vanities lifestyle.

Buffett said he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary, and he seems more accurate about the wealthiest than Hanson.

In other financial news, the US budget deficit is the lowest since the 2007-2008 fiscal year, at $680 billion. Interest on the debt is $415b, so the US is effectively spending only $265b above revenues and the rest is debt turnover. We're very close to having an operating/primary surplus in the near future, probably not a good idea with a still-limping economy.

Should be standard feature in high-rise neighborhoods

From SFGate:

Residents of the small Norwegian town of Rjukan have finally seen the light.

Tucked in between steep mountains, the town is normally shrouded in shadow for almost six months a year, with residents having to catch a cable car to the top of a nearby precipice to get a fix of midday vitamin D.

But on Wednesday faint rays from the winter sun for the first time reached the town's market square, thanks to three 183-square-foot (17-square-meter) mirrors placed on a mountain.

Cheering families, some on sun loungers, drinking cocktails and waving Norwegian flags, donned shades as the sun crept from behind a cloud to hit the mirrors and reflect down onto the faces of delighted children below.

People who live on the north side of high-rises could get sunlight the same way, with remote-controlled mirrors on the south side of adjacent buildings directing reflected sunlight.

Little quality of life amenities like this can reduce the downside of high-density living and increase the number of people who choose that option.

The Four Seas Interludes

To be played as the oceans warm

Krugman part 2: you can get pretty far just by regulating coal

Eli's excerpted Krugman's book review of Nordhaus below, but there was one other part of the review that especially interested me:

[Nordhaus] more or less ridicules claims that climate change isn’t happening or that it isn’t the result of human activity. And he calls for strong action: his best estimate of what we should be doing involves placing a substantial immediate tax on carbon.... 

Why is putting a price on carbon better than direct regulation of emissions? Every economist knows the arguments: efforts to reduce emissions can take place along many “margins,” and we should give people an incentive to exploit all of those margins.... The answer is, all of the above. And putting a price on carbon does, in fact, give people an incentive to do all of the above....

And yet there is a slightly odd dissonance in this book’s emphasis on carbon pricing. As I’ve just suggested, the standard economic argument for emissions pricing comes from the observation that there are many margins on which we should operate. Yet as Nordhaus himself points out, studies attempting to analyze how we might most efficiently reduce carbon emissions strongly suggest that just one of these margins should account for the bulk of any improvement—namely, we have to sharply reduce emissions from coal-fired electricity generation. Certainly it would be good to operate on other margins, especially because these studies might be wrong—maybe, for example, it would be easier than we think for consumers to shift to a radically lower-energy lifestyle, or there might be radical new ideas for scrubbing carbon from the atmosphere. Nonetheless, the message I took from this book was that direct action to regulate emissions from electricity generation would be a surprisingly good substitute for carbon pricing—not as good, but not bad.

And this conclusion becomes especially interesting given the current legal and political situation in the United States, where nothing like a carbon-pricing scheme has a chance of getting through Congress at least until or unless Democrats regain control of both houses, whereas the Environmental Protection Agency has asserted its right and duty to regulate power plant emissions, and has already introduced rules that will probably prevent the construction of any new coal-fired plants. Taking on the existing plants is going to be much tougher and more controversial, but looks for the moment like a more feasible path than carbon pricing.

(Emphasis added.)

The Republican Party has consistently opposed market mechanisms to help the environment, forcing us to use regulations instead or let the environment go to pot. Some times regulations work better than others, but it would be helpful if the Republicans just gave the market a chance.

Lewandowsky Invariance

At the end of the 19th century physics had a significant problem reconciling Newtonian mechanics with Maxwell's theory of electricity and magnetism (E&M).  Roughly, very roughly put, this boiled down to the invariance of physics across frames moving uniformly with respect to each other.  One needs to calculate the time and position of a body, or an electromagnetic wave in one frame compared to that in another moving uniformly with respect to the first.

In human speak this is figuring out how the same process appears when one is moving on a train as opposed to when one is standing the ground watching the train go by.  Of course, both the train and the Earth are moving, and the train could be a really fast space ship, but we really do not need to go there.

The Newtonian solution is a Galilean transform, that time is the same everywhere and that the difference in position changes as the product of time and velocity, e.g. r(t)' - r(t) = - vt, where t is time, v the relative velocity between the frames and r(t)' and r(t) the positions in the two frames at any time t.  Within this picture, the Newtonian physics remains the same for both the observer on the ground and the one on the train.

For the physics described by Maxwell's equations this does not work.  One needs a more complex looking set of equations called Lorentz transforms.  These allow calculation of such things as the wavelength and energy of an electromagnetic wave, e.g. light, radio waves, in one frame given the time and position in another.

With this key idea, and none of the mathematics, we can appreciate Einstein's contribution.  Physics  should be independent of the rock we are standing on when we measure it.   One way out was intensively explored by Michelson and Morley and others (here and here).   They showed that the laws of E&M did not change when the frame of observation changed.  Therefore, Einstein concluded that the Galilean frame transform was the one that had to be modified.  This leads to a set of Lorentz invariant transforms for particle motion, and prediction of such things as time dilation, the energy equivalence of mass, E = mc², and more, each having been observed and shown to obey the predictions of what is called the Special Theory of Relativity.

The Theory of Relativity became established science within twenty years.  Some recognized its importance and correctness quickly, for example, Max Planck.  On the other hand, the theory remains distasteful to many, mostly not scientists.  Exploration of that distaste is instructive and there is no better place to start than Einstein's take

This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.” 

and 

Anti-relativists were convinced that their opinions were being suppressed. Indeed, many believed that conspiracies were at work that thwarted the promotion of their ideas. The fact that for them relativity was obviously wrong, yet still so very successful,

There is an historical and philosophical literature about this.  The role of Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway's book, Merchants of Doubt, belongs to Milena Wazeck's  Einsteins Gegner:  Die Oeffentliche Kontroverse um die Relativitaetstheorie in de 1920er Jahren (Einsteins opponents:  The public controversy about the theory of relativity in the decade of the 1920s).  Eli has not yet read that book (on order from Amazon) which is untranslated from the German, but there is a review by, Jeron von Dorgens On Enstein's Opponents and Other Crackpots that sets the stage nicely.

One of the first things that jumps out is how the witches of denial cooked relativity and climate change in the same kettle.  Wazeck observes that the physicists who opposed Einstein, and it did get personal, were those who were fearful of being sidelined by the shift of the field to a more mathematical approach.  In the same way, the professional opposition to climate change science was rooted in the observational climatologists seeing a threat to their work from the climate modeling community, the Tim Balls, the William Grays, the Pat Michaels,  of the world, and the regional climatologists, the Roger Pielke Sr.'s.

And, of course, there were the citizen scientists, as Roy Spencer would put it, or in Wazeck's description

Although they had previously played no role in German academic life, during the 1920s scores of self-proclaimed researchers alleged to have proved the theory of relativity to be scientifically incorrect. Because the arguments set out in hundreds of ensuing publications frequently rested on fundamental misunderstandings of Einstein’s new theory, their accounts have largely been ignored by traditional history of science.

Is there any better description of Chris Monckton than this of Arthur Patschke

Non-academic researchers like Patschke announced public lectures, submitted essays, and tried to establish contact with Einstein and other leading scholars in order to warn them—as well-intentioned colleagues—of the falsehood of the theory of relativity and to convince them of the veracity of their own scientific worldviews. Patschke and others like him were often simply ignored; in other instances, it was patiently explained how their criticisms of the theory of relativity had completely missed the mark. But because their observations were anchored in specific worldviews, Patschke and his associates were immune to this type of criticism. 

well, except for the well intentioned part, but that too soon vanished, and the roots of this are explored by Waneck

The controversy surrounding the theory of relativity was exceptionally heated. In many pamphlets one finds what might be described as a martial rhetoric of damnation; his opponents also staged acts of protest that sought to inflame public opinion against Einstein’s work. A complex process of marginalization and protest helps to account for the heated responses to Einstein’s theory. 

Of course, for scientific denialism to gain traction there have to be political and philosophical motivations.  Politically, while anti-Semitism played a major role, it must not be forgotten that Einstein's outspoken and well known pacifism did not play well on the right of post WWI Germany's political spectrum, where defeat and disgrace was blamed on internal enemies (of course, including Jews, liberals, social democrats and communists).  Moreover, the theory of relativity in removing time from its immutable privileged place stirred fierce resentment especially among those who regarded it as a world view rather than a scientific theory. Perhaps it would have been better to call Einstein's work the Theory of Consistent Physics

Still one cannot separate the gathering storm which lead to Hitler and the political context in which the Theory of Relativity was demonized.  Von Dorgen writes in his short book review (go read it and say to yourself every paragraph, hey Eli recognizes that, he read it yesterday at WUWT, at Curry's, etc)

Conspiracy theories tend to do well in uncertain times: they create order in chaos. Hence, they thrived in post-World War I Germany.  Just as there is no real point in debating conspiracy theorists, there was no point in explaining relativity to anti-relativists, Wazeck astutely observes. Their strong opposition was not due to a lack of understanding, but rather the reaction to a perceived threat. Furthermore, anti-relativists were convinced of their own ideas, and were really only interested in pushing through their own theories; any explanation of relativity would not likely have changed their minds. Initially, relativists, and in particular Einstein himself, were willing to engage in correspondence or debate with their critics. By the early 1920’s, however, they concluded that sufficient common ground was lacking, and likely chose not to further waste any valuable time.

and, where have we seen this

Nevertheless, anti-relativists were convinced that their opinions were being suppressed. Indeed, many believed that conspiracies were at work that thwarted the promotion of their ideas. The fact that for them relativity was obviously wrong, yet still so very successful, strengthened the contention that a plot was at play—and some anti-relativists were convinced that the co-conspirators were Jewish. Jews were held to dominate both the newspaper business and the new discipline of theoretical physics; they could thus easily advertize one of their own (Einstein) and his fallacious work (relativity). Gehrcke, for instance, kept emphasizing that the successes of relativity could only be explained by a state of “mass hypnosis”, brought about by excessive and one-sided reporting.

Such a qualification resonated with familiar anti-Semitic reasonings (it was a known anti-Semite strategy to claim Jewish hyping), and was well received in right-wing media. Yet, Wazeck denies any overt anti-Semitic motivations on Gehrcke’s part; in her perspective, a crucial distinction seems to be that he did not necessarily primarily intend to promote the rightist cause, as Weyland appeared to have attempted.

Oh yes, over at Dr. Roy's place this morning

I would guess today’s research funding lopsidedness is currently running at least 100 to 1, humans versus nature. Is that really how the public would like their tax dollars spent?

Eli is not the first to have spotted the analogy or even von Dorgen's essay.  Brenden DeMille had a piece in 2010 at deSmog

The entire analogy is filled with irony (Eli only does snark).  For example, the equivalents of the NIPCC was the "Academy of Nations" bringing together Einstein's opponents organized by Ernst Gehrcke in Germany and Arvid Reutherdahl, engineer and dean at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Alert bunnies may recognize that John Abraham, one of the most successful defenders of climate science, is, at the University, nee College, of St Thomas, and that the administration of the University acted admirably when Chris Monckton bared fangs and attacked John.

In conclusion, one must acknowledge that science denial is the same from every point of observation both in time and in space.  Eli formulates this as Lewandowsky's Denial Invariance Transform. 

Nearby (and especially distant) mountains don't prevent sea level rise/saltwater intrusion problems

Per Eli's post below, Judith Curry's put up a silly guest post by Rud Istvan saying that climate change poses no water supply problems to Caribbean islands. There are too many fish to shoot as Istvan gishgallops them in the barrel, so let's talk first about where he's right:  if nobody lived on these islands, then there'd be no water supply problems on those islands for those people who don't live there. In fact, a few people could live on those islands and if they always used far less water than the islands provided with a comfortable margin to spare, then again the problems from climate change would likely be minimal. His lamentation that humans are flawed is correct, while his claim that it doesn't count when climate change makes existing problems worse, not so much.

A brief aside:  I've heard a similar claim from far more credible people that climate change's effects on biodiversity is overemphasized because it only adds to other stresses, most notably habitat destruction that keeps species from being able to migrate to new areas. I'm not buying it.

So the main issue is Istvan's claim that if you can draw a line of any length on the earth's surface from A to B without going below sea level and where A is high up, then B cannot have a saltwater intrusion problem. He only references Caribbean islands, but I don't see why the argument doesn't apply everywhere. So his first example was Pico Duarte in the Dominican Republic, at over 3000m elevation:

Pico Duarte's also over 100 km from Santo Domingo, and still further away from many other DR cities. Some of the other peaks he mentions are closer to those island's biggest cities, except for Pico Turquina in Cuba, which is closer to Port-au-Prince in Haiti than to Havana. Moving water a significant distance isn't easy, and contra Istvan, it's made harder when the landscape is mountainous.

Examining his claim, you would think California with a top elevation of 4400m wouldn't have a problem with saltwater intrusion, but we do. Los Angeles has been battling saltwater intrusion since 1915, and now spends millions of dollars injecting freshwater and treated wastewater to keep saltwater out.  LA, btw, has significant mountains in the same county over 3000m tall, and still has the problem. LA probably has an advantage over many Caribbean islands in that its complex geology limits where saltwater can intrude.

Freshwater tends to float on top of salt water, which is good when you've got saltwater intrusion deep below ground but problematic if you live at sea level near the coast when sea level is rising. Coastal cities on continents tend to have saltwater oceans in one direction and freshwater-providing land in the other three. On islands that starts to get problematic, especially the smaller islands. Most contamination also occurs in the upper ground, so drawing from your uppermost freshwater because that's all you got raises another set of issues.

Finally, higher temperatures will mean greater water demand, for farming, landscaping, and for native vegetation that limit how much water gets past their roots and into the water table. My water district sees large changes in water demand depending on whether we have a warm or cool summer. In the next few years we plan to calculate how climate change is going to increase future demand, but it's safe to say that Caribbean islands will need more water for human activities while getting less of it in the water table.

So all that's pretty silly, but the most striking part for me is Rud Istvan's assertion that human mistakes harming the Caribbean societies count when they're committed by the people there, but not when they're committed by Rud Istvan and others who don't want to face the reality of climate change.


UPDATE:  my attempt to comment at Curry's got bounced back. I'll store the comment here for now, pretty much the same as above:

As a director of the Santa Clara Valley Water District in northern California, I would like to inform Rud Istvan that the existence of mountains in a general area does not prevent saltwater intrusion. In Los Angeles, for example, the 3000m San Gabriel Mountains are physically adjacent to the city in the same county, and still they have to spend millions of dollars annually fighting saltwater intrusion. Contrast that to Cuba's highest peak, which is closer to Port-au-Prince Haiti than it is to Havana.

It's also important to note that warmer temperatures increase water demand from both artificial and natural landscapes, which will further depress freshwater tables and increase saltwater intrusion.

Istvan might consider doing further research on these issues before he reaches for what appears to be simplistic conclusions. Climate change makes water supply problems worse as a general matter. Islanders (and for what it's worth, everyone else) may not have handled their other water supply issues perfectly, but that's no excuse to keep greenhouse gas emissions high.