Babble

    -I have not written here in a couple months and really do not have much new to say, but feel an obligation to say something to the three or four or fourteen people who actually read this blog. Like most Americans, Beth and I have been absorbing the news..."shooting up the evening news" ... as Jackson Browne once said, but it is not a healthy habit and generally serves to frustrate us. At such moments it is best to remember the essential advice of Buddhism  to not "grasp for opinion", for there is no changing human nature. Some people believe the earth is flat regardless of the facts, and the polarized nature of the country today simply exposes the wide diversity of perspective that human beings are capable of.  If the outright lies and delusions and moral depravity of  power hungry people force America into a violent civil confrontation, then this is just one more repeat of the historical record when people were forced into wars against slavery, or Nazism, or-more recently-against Mr. Putin. It is apparent that many people do not share my moral sense of justice and fair play, nor my respect for the science and facts and holistic thinking that I use to define truth, and I see clearly how and why societies and nations fall into wars.                           -In hindsight the overall death rate of Covid 19 was about 1.1% in the United States, ( John Hopkins University data) and more or less than that worldwide. Most of the dead were the elderly and those with comorbidity s -meaning everything from asthma to being obese. Did that mortality rate justify closing down the economy, or should the correct response have been to isolate the most vulnerable and allow things to progress normally? If the latter, many of today's supply chain problems might have been avoided and the present worldwide inflation may have been lessened. Of course, in April 2020 hospitals were being overwhelmed and much of the information about the disease was unknown, so the response was an attempt to minimize deaths while at least keeping the necessities of the economy functioning.  Those who were confined to their homes emerged with new perspectives on what was meaningful in life, while schoolchildren seem to have been negatively affected in their academics; covid affected everyone differently.                                                                                                                                                              -The war in Ukraine seems to encapsulate and expose all of the rhetoric that Americans claim to value regarding freedom and right and wrong:  A nation (Russia)with an egotistical leader(Putin) used specious excuses of nationalism and threats to its existence to invade its neighbor and reabsorb them by force into their 'empire'.  There was an alternative choice to coexist to the benefit of both nations, but Mr. Putin-being one of those aforementioned power hungry morally depraved leaders- chose instead to invade. After 8 months of war some American politicians are questioning their commitment by threatening to withhold economic support-despite the clear moral justification of the Ukrainians in defending their freedom against a despot. As of this writing the United States has spent about $60 billion? in Ukraine.                            By contrast we spent over $2 trillion in Afghanistan with almost 2,550 American soldiers lost and many wounded, and over $2 trillion in Iraq with at least 4,500 soldiers killed. In both of the latter conflicts the reasons for the fighting and the outcomes became questionable, if not totally wasted blood and money.  The core reasons for the Ukraine war appear to be similar to the reasons we fought for independence in the 1700's-freedom from what we considered a tyrannical power. No doubt threats of nuclear escalation may advise caution in Ukraine, but when forced into this war the Ukrainians have shown the courage and moral clarity that Americans should respect.                             That's my babble for today...top of my head thoughts that may or may not reflect the full truth of the world, but which I trust sound reasonable.       POSTSCRIPT: The American people-for the most part-rejected the election deniers in the mid term elections. That is encouraging to me. Here in Pennsylvania we elected a reasonable, intelligent governor over a January 6th participant and for senator we elected a  reasonable local man over a television star millionaire who does not even live here. 

TwoMoreBooks

  To anyone genuinely wishing to know how the world really works and is not satisfied with the simpleton soundbites provided by politicians or on Facebook and Twitter and some newscasts, here are two books to read. One details the virtual slavery and lawlessness that dominate much of the ocean trade, particularly the fishing industry, the other details the absolute corruption of the Russian empire, particularly Mr. Putin and his cronies. Most recently, Ravil Maagnov, a Putin critic "fell" from a hospital window in Moscow on September 1st and is the latest person to clumsily 'fall' from a high place.  Billions of stolen dollars go a long way in the hands of murderers, and the Putin book details the convoluted money laundering chain and violence and disinformation Putin and his thugs go to to protect their power.

      No, you are not going to be able to change the evil in the world, but try to be aware and support stores like Whole Foods and Aldi and Target, which do the best job at supporting sustainable fishing, and not support people like Mr. Trump who praise people like Mr. Putin. In my world at least, moral character, honesty and the rule of law mean something for a civil society to persevere. There are extremely brave, honest people trying to fight the thugs and thieves, and they are the ones doing their best to "drain the swamp" of the true slime.
 

Buzzard Swamp and the possible future...again

         Walked at Buzzard today as I do a few times a year and was thankful to see the beavers still active at pond #5. Their dam across the spillway was rebuilt with mostly mud after... DCNR workers?...demolished the first mostly wooden one. I am assuming it was the DCNR because they seem to have nothing better to do and I know it was not because the original wood structure had been causing any problem. This is an old algae and water lily choked pond emptying under the access road through a 5 foot berm; even the heaviest rain has plenty of room to expand laterally while the spillway is barely a trickle for much of the year; no raging torrents here. The beavers have made the pond level deep enough for fish and other wildlife.  

  I have not seen every species listed on the sign while walking here, but I have no doubt they are present for I have seen them elsewhere in the National forest and surrounding area. Otters, porcupines, bald eagles and other species not listed on the sign are relatively common as well.               Monarch butterflies have been added to the endangered species list because of habitat loss, pesticide use and the changing climate. There is ample milkweed here in the preserve but I did not see much of it being eaten by caterpillars. My daughter in law raises Monarchs to adulthood and does her best by growing milkweed in her gardens, but with the loss of oyamel trees that provide the Monarchs winter refuge in Mexico, this is not an easy fix. It would be sad to see the Monarch go the way of the passenger pigeon, but somewhere around 75-90% of the population has crashed in the last 10 years. (..an exact number is difficult to determine, yet along a different migration route in California their numbers have dropped from 4.5 million in the 1980"s to around 30,000 in 2019)  Unfortunately, as I have mentioned in other blogs, most species of insects have been affected by the loss of habitat, climate change and over use of pesticides. In many parts of the world total insect numbers have dropped by over 75% in the last 30 years...This is very disturbing...losing the butterflies and bees and flies and dung beetles and even mosquitoes will have profound effects on lifeforms up the food chain; insects decompose much of the dead, they pollinate many of our crops,and flowers, they provide food for birds and amphibians and fish...in truth all the effects of their loss is unknown, but this is a serious problem that most people are not aware of or do not care about. Abortion, and gun rights, and election integrity and economic inflation- as important as those issues may be- will seem minor when entire ecosystems collapse. I truly fear for our species over the coming century, and I do think that I am exaggerating. Never before have I hoped so fervently that I am wrong.

    ( ....as usual, click on pics to enlarge)
 

Wuhan Virus, the latest information-until more comes out...

This is how science works: Over time, scientists look for new evidence to try to arrive at a consensus of what truth is. Below is an article claiming that the virus began at the Wuhan market. Yet other evidence based on 'influenza' internet searches near the market in December 2019, as well as traces of the virus mutations in animals(or lack thereof) suggests that Covid may have escaped from the lab-perhaps after an infected animal was transported from an original bat source 1,000 miles away to the market, then taken to the lab for further study? Either way, to blatantly 'blame' China for the virus when such research is done in labs worldwide is simply ignorant of how science works. There is some credible but unproven evidence that Lyme disease escaped from lab research off the New York coast. Irresponsible? Perhaps, but unfortunately humans are fallible creatures in whom good intentions ( the atom bomb was invented to be sure Hitler did not get one first) do not always foresee the consequences.

"An international team of researchers has confirmed that live animals sold at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market were the likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic that has claimed 6.4 million lives since it began nearly three years ago.

Led by University of Arizona virus evolution expert Michael Worobey, international teams of researchers have traced the start of the pandemic to the market in Wuhan, China, where foxes, raccoon dogs and other live mammals susceptible to the virus were sold live immediately before the pandemic began. Their findings were published Tuesday in two papers in the journal Science, after being previously released in pre-print versions in February.

The publications, which have since gone through peer review and include additional analyses and conclusions, virtually eliminate alternative scenarios that have been suggested as origins of the pandemic. Moreover, the authors conclude that the first spread to humans from animals likely occurred in two separate transmission events in the Huanan market in late November 2019.

One study scrutinized the locations of the first known COVID-19 cases, as well as swab samples taken from surfaces at various locations at the market. The other focused on genomic sequences of SARS-CoV-2 from samples collected from COVID-19 patients during the first weeks of the pandemic in China.

The first paper, led by Worobey and Kristian Andersen at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, examined the geographic pattern of COVID-19 cases in the first month of the outbreak, December 2019. The team was able to determine the locations of almost all of the 174 COVID-19 cases identified by the World Health Organization that month, 155 of which were in Wuhan.

Analyses showed that these cases were clustered tightly around the Huanan market, whereas later cases were dispersed widely throughout Wuhan -- a city of 11 million people. Notably, the researchers found that a striking percentage of early COVID patients with no known connection to the market -- meaning they neither worked there nor shopped there -- turned out to live near the market. This supports the idea that the market was the epicenter of the epidemic, Worobey said, with vendors getting infected first and setting off a chain of infections among community members in the surrounding area.

"In a city covering more than 3,000 square miles, the area with the highest probability of containing the home of someone who had one of the earliest COVID-19 cases in the world was an area of a few city blocks, with the Huanan market smack dab inside it," said Worobey, who heads UArizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

This conclusion was supported by another finding: When the authors looked at the geographical distribution of later COVID cases, from January and February 2020, they found a "polar opposite" pattern, Worobey said. While the cases from December 2019 mapped "like a bullseye" on the market, the later cases coincided with areas of the highest population density in Wuhan.

"This tells us the virus was not circulating cryptically," Worobey said. "It really originated at that market and spread out from there."

In an important addition to their earlier findings, Worobey and his collaborators addressed the question of whether health authorities found cases around the market simply because that's where they looked.

"It is important to realize that all these cases were people who were identified because they were hospitalized," Worobey said. "None were mild cases that might have been identified by knocking on doors of people who lived near the market and asking if they felt ill. In other words, these patients were recorded because they were in the hospital, not because of where they lived."

To rule out any potentially lingering possibility of bias, Worobey's team took one further step: Starting at the market, they began removing cases from their analyses, going farther in distance from the market as they went, and ran the stats again. The result: Even when two-thirds of cases were removed, the findings were the same.

"Even in that scenario, with the majority of cases, removed, we found that the remaining ones lived closer to the market than what would be expected if there was no geographical correlation between these earliest COVID cases and the market," Worobey said.

The study also looked at swab samples taken from market surfaces like floors and cages after Huanan market was shuttered. Samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were significantly associated with stalls selling live wildlife.

The researchers determined that mammals now known to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, including red foxes, hog badgers and raccoon dogs, were sold live at the Huanan market in the weeks preceding the first recorded COVID-19 cases. The scientists developed a detailed map of the market and showed that SARS-CoV-2-positive samples reported by Chinese researchers in early 2020 showed a clear association with the western portion of the market, where live or freshly butchered animals were sold in late 2019.

"Upstream events are still obscure, but our analyses of available evidence clearly suggest that the pandemic arose from initial human infections from animals for sale at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in late November 2019," said Andersen, who was a co-senior author of both studies and is a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research.

Virus likely jumped from animals to humans more than once

The second study, an analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomic data from early cases, was co-led by Jonathan Pekar and Joel Wertheim at the University of California, San Diego and Marc Suchard of the University of California Los Angeles, as well as Andersen and Worobey.

The researchers combined epidemic modeling with analyses of the virus's early evolution based on the earliest sampled genomes. They determined that the pandemic, which initially involved two subtly distinct lineages of SARS-CoV-2, likely arose from at least two separate infections of humans from animals at the Huanan market in November 2019 and perhaps in December 2019. The analyses also suggested that, in this period, there were many other animal-to-human transmissions of the virus at the market that failed to manifest in recorded COVID-19 cases.

The authors used a technique known as molecular clock analysis, which relies on the natural pace with which genetic mutations occur over time, to establish a framework for the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus lineages. They found that a scenario of a singular introduction of the virus into humans rather than multiple introductions would be inconsistent with molecular clock data. Earlier studies had suggested that one lineage of the virus -- named A and closely related to viral relatives in bats -- gave rise to a second lineage, named B. More likely, according to the new data, is a scenario in which the two lineages jumped from animals into humans on separate occasions, both at the Huanan market, Worobey said.

"Otherwise, lineage A would have had to have been evolving in slow motion compared to the lineage B virus, which just doesn't make biological sense," said Worobey.

The two studies provide evidence that COVID-19 originated via jumps from animals to humans at the Huanan market, likely following transmission to those animals from coronavirus-carrying bats in the wild or on farms in China. Moving forward, the researchers say scientists and public officials should seek better understanding of the wildlife trade in China and elsewhere and promote more comprehensive testing of live animals sold in markets to lower the risk of future pandemics.

Funding for the research was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. "

POSTSCRIPT: June 3rd, 2023- A Chinese researcher recently said something along the lines of "don't rule out a lab leak", so the secrecy among the Chinese government is cracking a little...My personal thought is that viruses from infected animals/humans were being studied in the lab-as is common- and someone had a lapse in protocol...

Hope or Hopeless

    "I used to think that the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that with thirty years of good science we could address these problems, but I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that." - Gus Speth, founder of World Resources Institute, environmental lawyer, in 2008

      Below is my recent email to Doug Mastriano who is the republican candidate for governor of my home state of Pennsylvania, who among other frighteningly ignorant behaviors- such as attending the January 6th riot- has stated that climate change is "fake science." 

>It is not necessary for me to outline all the reasons that your delusional attempts to de-certify my legitimate vote following the 2020 election are a disturbing threat to democracy; your public comments indicate you lack the moral and ethical fiber to understand my arguments. What is more disturbing is that so many of your fellow Republicans support, or, at least, enable such dangerous thinking.  If you and your comrades truly do not see that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are similar personalities and that the only thing differentiating them is the American constitution and the moral strength of people willing to defend the rule of law and moral decency, then for the survival of the Republic I hope you lose the election by a landslide.<

As I watch so many people accept so many simplistic 'explanations' and 'solutions' to complex social, economic and environmental problems, I must admit that I am losing hope for the future of this planet-never mind just the United States. It is not that people disagree with my viewpoints, rather that they refuse to seek the facts and reality about what is going on, which in some cases is just a simple Google search away. Too many of them are willing to ignore truth in order to stay in power and foster their agenda. Recently, some have fought tooth and nail to overturn Roe versus Wade while having no plan for the coming births of unwanted babies nor the increased misery of women and children -most of them black- because of insufficient resources. This by people claiming to be Christian followers of Jesus Christ. Although trillions have been spent on war and weapons in the past decades, to allocate money towards health care or day care is somehow un-American'socialism' in their way of thinking. To me, treating all life- not merely embryonic human life-with compassion is a more valid definition of 'God'..and even more vital and relevant is the larger problem of resource depletion in a world that simply cannot sustain billions more people seeking the American lifestyle. Drilling for more oil and throwing more pesticides on mono culture corn fields is Not going to save us from future suffering.

So now the west is running out of water, as predicted long ago:

    "In 1986, environmental journalist Marc Reisner published Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, a landmark book surveying water use in the American Southwest. Having interviewed hundreds of people about the Southwest and learned the history of the region’s water infrastructure, Reisner concluded that more water was being pulled out of the West’s waterways than could be naturally replenished. He said the Southwest was due to run short on water, soon....Nearly 25 years later, a group of researchers has put Reisner’s assertion to the test, checking to see if there is any scientific truth behind it. Armed with modern data from across the Southwest, the group, led by ecologist John Sabo from Arizona State University, found that many of Reisner’s claims were legitimate, and still hold true today.

“We asked, is it really as bad as [Reisner] said it is in the book, and are we still where we were in 1986?” explains Sabo, who assembled a group of experts to assess water, dams, fish, soil and crops across the Southwest using modern techniques. “Now we know the answer to both those questions: yes.” 

   Yet some states are still not implementing concrete solutions such as building desalination plants or pipelines to the east, or large scale recycling of wastewater. As they restrict the water used by the farmers growing crops in the desert- a questionable practice to begin with-people nationwide had better get used to higher prices for food... and on and on...No, I am not as hopeful for the future as I wish I could be, but I read science a lot more than many people, and I have followed the decline for years. None of this is a surprise to me, although the pervasive ignorance and denial and outright corruption of some people have been eye opening.

Golf and Grandson

  

 

         Beth and I were visited by six year old grandson Slaton for a few days last week during which we golfed twice. Slaton has been a true natural golfer since he began swinging a club at age two, and can hit shots straight and true with a fast swing that nobody has had to teach him. His parents have encouraged him over the years and in the past year he has been receiving formal lessons near his home in Texas. Today his best drives with minimal roll can be 75 to 100 yards and strangers on a nearby tee began clapping after watching him chip onto a green when he was only 4 years old. On the 94 yard par three that we played last week he missed putting for a par by inches... Impressive for a 6 year old.  Beth and I only started golfing 5 seasons ago but now enjoy it as a wonderful way to get exercise without breaking the bank...                   

           We also took a hike to a local waterfall, and of course fooled around  a bit... (click on pics to enlarge...)

Bees-updated

 A crab apple tree in front of the house is blooming now, offering nectar and pollen to insects, concealment for bird nests, then food in the winter when the berries are consumed mostly by starlings. The blossoms are short lived and fragile, and rarely last more than a week, but several species of bumblebees, leaf cutting bees, sweat bees, honeybees and flies pollinate them during that time. While there is a lot of press about the decline of honeybees, in my experience it is the bumblebees that do most of the pollinating for many of the wild and domestic flowers;                                                                          If they disappear the true contributions they provide will be noticed. 

     Bumblebee hives do not overwinter, so every spring a new queen who had sheltered in the ground or behind tree bark must start a new hive. That means finding a suitable place-usually underground-making comb cells, laying eggs and foraging for pollen and nectar with which to feed the larvae, until finally new worker bees emerge to expand the hive until autumn, when all of them die except a new queen who starts the process over. All summer those workers are pollinating many of the flowers we see along roadsides and in gardens, and while it can appear to be a thankless task for a hive that dies every year, that is natures
                                                      way. As human beings we should be appreciative I think.

         Below is a reprint of an experiment demonstrating the bumblebee ability to learn from observation, as published in Science magazine in 2017... Bumblebees are Not stupid insects deserving of the scorn some people give them...                                                                                              "The second experiment involved a platform on which rested three balls at various distances from the center. Bees were then presented with one of three different training scenarios: a trained bee that moved the furthest ball to the center, a magnet that could move the furthest ball to the center, or no training where just one ball was presented and placed in the center of the platform. The bees were then tested to see if they could accomplish the task of moving one of three balls to the center to receive a drop of sugar solution.

The results reveal that the bees were on average more successful when trained by other bees than with the magnet and that both were more effective than no training, with success rates of around 99%, 78% and 34% respectively. Intriguingly, unlike the demonstrations, the bees generally chose to move the ball closest to the center, a result that held even when that ball was black rather than yellow.

“This means that the bees didn’t just simply copy the demonstrator and could improve upon the demonstrator’s technique or strategy,” said Loukola. “The fact that they saw the task in different ways than the demonstrator shows a very impressive amount of cognitive flexibility.”

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