India

The Birds Of India: New Guide

gregladen — Mon, 08 May 2017 12:02:00 +0000

The Birds Of India: New Guide

A Photographic Field Guide to the Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh is one of those next gen guides that uses photos but photos that are either enhanced or contextualized to serve the same role as drawings served in the old days, when drawings were better and photos were merely fun.

From the editors:

This is the only comprehensive photographic field guide to the birds of the entire Indian subcontinent. Every distinct species and subspecies--some 1,375 in all-

-is covered with photographs, text, and maps. The guide features more than 4,000 stunning photographs, many never before published, which have been carefully selected to illustrate key identification features of each species. The up-to-date facing-page text includes concise descriptions of plumage, voice, range, habitat, and recent taxonomic changes. Each species has a detailed map reflecting the latest distribution information and containing notes on status and population density. The guide also features an introduction that provides an overview of birdlife and a brief history of ornithology in India and its neighbors. The result is an encyclopedic photographic guide that is essential for everyone birding anywhere in the subcontinent.

Covers all 1,375 subcontinental bird species

Features more than 4,000 stunning photographs to aid quick field identification

Includes up-to-date facing-page text and range maps

Contains concise descriptions of plumage, voice, habitat, and much more

gregladen Mon, 05/08/2017 - 08:02

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birdwatching

Books

Books-Birds

bird field guide

Looks interesting. Shame a grandson has not long returned from a Uni trip to the Western Ghats. The price of this edition is affordable in the UK unlike earlier editions where on Amazon silly money prices are quoted.

Global Droughts: A Bad Year

pgleick — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 14:19:36 +0000

Global Droughts: A Bad Year

Populations around the world face many severe water challenges, from scarcity to contamination, from political or violent conflict to economic disruption. As populations and economies grow, peak water pressures on existing renewable water resources also tend to grow up to the point that natural scarcity begins to constrain the options of water planners and managers. At this point, the effects of natural fluctuations in water availability in the form of extreme weather events become even more potentially disruptive than normal. In particular, droughts begin to bite deeply into human well-being.

This has been a bad few years for people exposed to droughts around the world. Even normally occurring droughts have begun to be made more severe by rising global temperatures and climate changes. A particularly severe El Niño has played an important role: droughts are typically more widespread and severe than normal during El Niño years. Indeed, precipitation variability on land is strongly controlled by the characteristics of El Niño events.

Global droughts, April 27, 2016. From the Global Drought Information System.

At any given time, some regions and some populations are being afflicted by droughts. Right now, however, the first four months of 2016 – and indeed, for the past year – water shortages are afflicting a large number of people, over a wide area. Here is the current state of drought around the world:

India: Parts of India, including the state of Telangana and its capital Hyderabad, are suffering the worst drought in recorded history, leading to acute drinking water shortages, depletion of major reservoirs, and crop failures. Overall, ten of India’s 29 states and 330 million people – a quarter of India’s population – have been affected in 2016 by a combination of failed rains, contaminated supplies, and water mismanagement.

The Caribbean: A severe drought in the northern part of the Caribbean, including eastern Cuba and Haiti, has led to water rationing for over four million people on multiple islands. In Haiti, the drought has persisted for three years and is contributing to hunger and worsening poverty.

South America: Brazil has been suffering from severe drought for several years now, and impacts extend to Colombia and Venezuela, which are suffering from water shortages, lost hydroelectricity, and agricultural failures. The water in Venezuela’s Guri Dam, which provides more than half of the country’s electricity in normal years, is too low to provide much energy and the country is experiencing rolling blackouts.

Southern Africa: Extensive areas of southern Africa are also experience severe drought, including Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. South Africa suffered its driest year on record in 2015, influenced by El Niño. Urban water systems in Johannesburg are also experiencing severe difficulties in satisfying demand and Zimbabwe is facing food shortages and potential loss of hydropower from Zambian hydroelectric plants.

Somalia, the Eastern Mediterranean: Further north in the Horn of Africa, famine could kill thousands of people this year in drought-hit Somalia, according to the United Nations, which is seeking emergency drought aid. The larger region around the eastern Mediterranean is also suffering long-term drought: a study published recently found that the period between 1998 and 2012 was likely the driest in the past 900 years and other assessments have linked this drought – which is still ongoing – to social and political unrest in the region and to long-term climate changes.

Southeast Asia/the Mekong Basin: Drought-induced water shortages are appearing in Vietnam. The worst drought in decades in Southeast Asia has cut flows in the Mekong so much that salt water is moving up the river, damaging rice production and affecting fishing communities. In Thailand, estimates are that the drought will cut the country’s economic growth by 0.6 to 0.8 percent this year and the four largest dams in the Chao Phraya River basin hold only 14 percent of their capacity. These impacts are being worsened by record-breaking temperatures.

California: Finally, in the United States a severe multi-year drought hurt the Texas economy and then ended with historical flooding, while California has just entered the fifth year of below-normal precipitation, abnormally high temperatures, and reduced water availability. Studies identifying the influence of climate changes on the California drought have also recently been published (for example, here, here, and here), highlighting how a combination of natural variability with growing human influences may increasingly be a problem for societies struggling to deal with growing water-related challenges.

Peter Gleick

[Peter Gleick on twitter]

pgleick Wed, 04/27/2016 - 10:19

I’d bet every person in the Houston area would have taken drought this year in a heartbeat.

Over what they *actually* got, I mean.

Here in San Antonio, Texas waster is a constant discussion. In fact the city just voted build a pipe to supplement our failing aquifer. Yet people still make sure their lawns are perfect. Awareness needs to be raised about the SEVERITY of the issue.

Grandpa's Gruesome Punjab Crocodile Tale

aardvarchaeology — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 18:22:22 +0000

Grandpa's Gruesome Punjab Crocodile Tale

My maternal grandpa Ingemar Leander worked as a sales agent of the Swedish Match Company in Punjab in the 30s before he got married. It was the adventure of his lifetime. Here's the story of his that I remember best.

Once when he went crocodile hunting on the river the party was a little clumsy and startled their prey into the water from the sandbank the animals had been basking on. Only one crocodile stayed behind and was shot. This turned out to be because it was in poor health. When they gutted the animal they found that a bone had pierced its stomach from inside.

It was the arm bone of a woman that the crocodile had eaten. The flesh was gone from her arm but her hand was intact. And so were the copper bracelets around her wrist.

I don't know what the hunting party did with the woman's arm.

aardvarchaeology Mon, 09/23/2013 - 14:22

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Poetic justice? The gruesome tale brings to mind Europeans going abroad and naming things.
"Norwegians give Scandi mountains a new name" Unilaterally re-naming a two- country mountain chain? I hereby name it “Ered Lithui”! (or possibly “Bara Några Berg”)http://www.thelocal.no/20130916/norwegians-give-scandi-mountains-a-new-…

I thought they were named "Skanderna".

-Sadly, people back then could not afford metal buckets that you could hang from long poles to collect water without exposing yourself to risk. Not exotic, just ordinary poverty.

Yes, but “Skanderna” is not a proper Norwegian name.
I borked the link: http://www.thelocal.no/20130916/norwegians-give-scandi-mountains-a-new-…
( OT)…and you don’t need to travel to exotic countries to risk demonic possession: 51% of Americans think Satanic possession is a fact. http://today.yougov.com/news/2013/09/17/poll-results-exorcism/

I once heard the First Aid Kit sisters perform "Satan Is Real" live in their interview mikes on radio. Priceless.

Team uncovers more archeological treasures in southern Turkey http://phys.org/news/2013-09-team-uncovers-archeological-treasures-sout…

This story fits the trope of "heroes go on a quest, kill monster/fight evil guys".
Nowadays we are stuck with "heroes drive across the mountains, face the Norwegian tourist guides and beat them at poker".

Matches are not hard to make. I'm surprised that there was a market for imports from Sweden.

Safety matches were a Swedish patent.

I still have a box of Swallow Brand Säkerhets Tändstickor, made in Malaysia under licence from Swedish Match J.V.

I just found out something I never knew before, despite a lifelong familiarity with their existence - the ubiquitous Redhead brand safety matches marketed in Australia are a Swedish Match brand.

Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives

gregladen — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 07:38:55 +0000

Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives

Let's look at Birds of India: Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives (Second Edition) (Princeton Field Guides):

The best field guide to the birds of the Indian subcontinent is now even better. Thoroughly revised, with 73 new plates and many others updated or repainted, the second edition of Birds of India now features all maps and text opposite the plates for quicker and easier reference. Newly identified species have been added, the text has been extensively revised, and all the maps are new. Comprehensive and definitive, this is the indispensable guide for anyone birding in this part of the world.

Of all the different regional bird guides that I've looked at over the last several months, including those I've got on my desk waiting for my attention, two are thicker than all the others, Birds of India: Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, and Birds of Melanesia: Bismarcks, Solomons, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. "What does that mean?" you may ask. "What does thicker have to do with anything?"

One word: Plastics. No, wait, I mean: Speciosity. Melanesia and India are big, the latter bigger, and also, it isn't really just India, it is South Asia including all those other countries mentioned in the title. Big gives you more species. But beyond that, these regions have a lot of species for other reasons. Many reasons have been proposed but two come to mind right now: 1) Diversity in terrain, and 2) being at the end of huge regions where species may get crammed into you like pebbles in a toddler's pocket.

Birds of India covers 1,375 species with 226 color plates shoeing each of then and numerous color morphs and varieties. The illustrations are high quality and the info is laid out in old style Peterson with maps and descriptions across from the plates.

There are nine species of eagles in this region. Countless owls. Numerous frogmouths. You will obviously want this book (or this edition if you've got the older edition in hand) if you are going to the region or live in South Asia, but even if you don't, but are big on birds, this is a nice book to have on your shelf for during your own surveying of diversity. For people living in certain temperate regions, I've recommended getting the corresponding tropical region's books (one or two anyway) so you can visit, virtually, the sister species of the brilliant rainforest birds that come to your back yard, like the Tanagers, but even if you don't live in the Old World you may consider this volume as the representative of the part of the world you don't live in.

____________________________________________

gregladen Fri, 11/09/2012 - 02:38

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Public health success story: India reaches polio-free milestone

lborkowski — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:26:00 +0000

Public health success story: India reaches polio-free milestone

The World Health Organization has confirmed that India has gone a whole year without having a new case of polio -- a major milestone in a country that was once plagued by the crippling disease. BBC's Fergus Walsh explains that the country won't formally be regarded as polio-free until it's gone another two years without a case of the disease, but reaching the one-year mark is still an occasion for celebration. In an earlier piece, Walsh describes the massive polio vaccination effort that has allowed the country to achieve this success; India's government partnered with the World Health Organization, Rotary, UNICEF, and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

Public health successes like this one require a sustained commitment from institutions (governmental and non) and participation from support from entire populations. And when it comes to viruses, we can't truly declare victory until they've been eradicated worldwide. Last fall, Maryn McKenna highlighted disturbing findings from an indpendent monitoring board, which warned that global polio eradication efforts need to address negative news and criticisms more productively in order to get back on track. And Walsh notes that nearly one-third of the polio cases reported last year were in Pakistan, which shares a border with India and could lead to reintroduction of the virus there.

For the moment, though, it's worth congratulating India on its success and remembering that ambitious public health goals are attainable and worth reaching.

lborkowski Fri, 03/02/2012 - 10:26

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Public Health - General

India

polio

Any thoughts as to why their is no mention of the 60,000 cases of acute flaccid paralysis in India... in a fomer era these cases would have been classified as polio... the 60,000 people paralysed do not understand the political difference between polio and AFP... clinically there isn't any...

In polio surveillance, samples from AFP cases are analyzed for evidence of wild polio virus. According to CDC, India has a high rate of nonpolio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP). But to a patient or family inclined to be skeptical of lab results, I can understand that this might look like the polio virus is still circulating.

India's public health network is ever improving. Tactics and practices from the country's successful collaborations to erradicate smallpox in the 1960's and 70's are probably assisting them with the polio effort. It is amazing what a growing, well oiled public health network is capable of.

Diagnosing TB in developing countries

lborkowski — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:07:54 +0000

Diagnosing TB in developing countries

SciDev.Net's TV Padma reports that tuberculosis experts are looking to India to develop affordable TB-testing kits. An estimated four million cases of the disease go undetected, and two million TB patients die every year. India has increased its efforts at finding and treating cases of the disease, but diagnostics still present a challenge, Padma explains:

TB tests come in a range. Latent infections can show up as a reaction when the protein, tuberculin, is injected under the skin. Blood tests may reveal immune molecules (gamma interferon) produced by the body to protect against the bacterium.

A surer test is the chest X-ray where white spots indicate infection. Microscopic examination offers further confirmation, though this method picks up less than 70 per cent of infections, dipping as low as 35 per cent in some settings and in patients co-infected with HIV.

TB is reliably confirmed when sputum samples are cultured in a laboratory with nutrients, but this technique takes two to four weeks, is costly and calls for technical training.

Last year, WHO endorsed an accurate two-hour test using DNA technology, but this is yet unaffordable in developing countries where the bulk of cases occur.

Padma outlines some of the challenges of developing a test that can be widely used in developing countries:

But, developing newer, cheaper and quicker test kits is not easy. For one thing, there is little consensus on benchmarks. Observed WHO's Puneet Dewan: "The tools on the table are all compromises between accuracy, simplicity, cost and time."
McInsey India's benchmarks include 90 per cent sensitivity and specificity; results within 24 hours; use of urine or blood samples rather than sputum; instruments that are compatible with tropical environments, portability and ruggedness.

A key criterion on the list is that the cost to the patient should be under US$ 1.2 per test.

In a New Yorker piece published last year, Michael Specter explores the challenges of diagnosing and treating TB in India. He begins with a visit to a woman named Runi, a mother of 16 who lives in a slum in the Indian city of Patma. Runi visited a private medical clinic after developing a painful cough and let "someone who called himself a doctor" draw and examine her blood; he told her she had TB. But the test she received wasn't one that can distinguish between latent and active infections. Specter explains the implications:

In India, China, and Africa, at least two billion people have latent infections. Yet every day thousands are told, mistakenly, that they are sick and need treatment. That's what happened to Runi. Soon after she received her diagnosis, Runi began a regimen of powerful (and toxic) drugs provided by the public-health service, and she stuck to the program for the required six months. Not long after finishing, however, she started to feel worse than she ever had before. "This is the tragedy of our TB-control program,'' Shamim Mannan said as we watched Runi's children play. Mannan, who is from Assam, a few hundred miles from Patna, serves as the Indian government's chief TB consultant in the region.

"Officially, she is cured,'' he said. "But how would we know? She took a test that showed she had the antibody for TB in her blood. So do I. So do five hundred million Indians." As Runi stooped to gather fuel for the stove, she began to cough, lightly at first and then with alarming force. Every cough sounded as if somebody had shattered a pane of glass.

"Now she really is sick,'' he continued, explaining that Runi's TB was no longer dormant, and that taking drugs when they are not necessary often makes them ineffective when they are. "This is what happens when tests mislead us. She will need the drugs again. If they don't work properly, she will be in real trouble. She has almost certainly infected some of her children. That makes everything harder, more expensive, more painful.''

Specter not only makes clear the importance of better diagnostics for TB, but explores some of the dysfunction in India's healthcare system, which leaves many poor patients paying for shoddy care outside of the official health system. The problems are daunting, but the last section of the article has a hopeful reminder:

The uncertainties and dangers of diagnosis remain the greatest obstacle to successful TB treatment, in India and throughout the developing world. For that to change, investments from international aid organizations and from private companies will be necessary. That may seem unlikely, but it has happened before, most notably with AIDS drugs. In the nineteen-eighties, when AZT became the first effective treatment for H.I.V., the annual cost for each patient was ten thousand dollars. People in the West, who were rich or lucky enough to have good insurance, could afford it. In countries that struggle to provide basic immunizations against diseases like measles, though, AIDS treatments were a fantasy. Then various groups, including the Clinton Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, joined together to push for lower prices. Generic manufacturers, led by Cipla, the Mumbai-based pharmaceutical giant, began to churn out highly effective medicine at a small fraction of what it cost in the United States. Political pressure mounted, officials of the World Health Organization joined the call for cheaper AIDS medications, and today the governments of poor countries like India can buy those drugs for an annual price of less than a hundred dollars per patient. These drugs are normally distributed in bulk, through international AIDS organizations.

A similar effort will be required to lower the cost of diagnosing tuberculosis. There will also have to be a transformation in how TB medicine is regulated. That may seem like an insurmountable barrier, but, with the proper incentives, the system could work. Again, one can look to the history with AIDS medicines for a model. Because Cipla and other Indian pharmaceutical companies are frequently inspected by international regulators--such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration--governments are willing to buy their products. That's one reason that Indian firms have become the most important manufacturers of generic AIDS medicines in the world.

If India becomes a major player in the production of affordable TB diagnostics, its economy could improve along with its TB prevalence rate.

lborkowski Fri, 11/04/2011 - 10:07

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Great article, however most people in the developing world don't even think twice about TB, never mind TB in their own country (ex. Canada). In the Canadian north TB prevails like it does in developing nations; yet this is never brought to anyones attention.
It is great to want to support and improve medical practices internationally and I believe this is extremely important; but is nationally not just, if not more, important? Likewise, national awareness.

Next-generation Aerosol-sampling Stations to Head for India

ksnyder — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:07:29 +0000

Next-generation Aerosol-sampling Stations to Head for India

This guest post is written by Stephen R. Springston, an atmospheric chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. After receiving his Ph.D. in chemistry from Indiana University, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Utah before joining Brookhaven in 1986.

Stephen Springston

After studying clouds and climate in Oklahoma during tornado season and storms atop Colorado mountaintops, a group of atmospheric scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory will soon be helping to sample the skies over India.

We've been asked to share our expertise on conducting ground and aircraft field campaigns, and have outfitted two mobile laboratories with equipment to be deployed during the Ganges Valley Aerosol eXperiment (GVAX), a nine-month field study aimed at researching how aerosols -- small particles like dust and soot in the air -- affect the formation of clouds and amounts of rainfall. Findings from the study, conducted by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility, will be used to improve computer models that simulate Earth's climate.

Peter Daum, chair of Brookhaven's environmental sciences department, has been advising the lead program scientist, Rao Kotamarthi, of Argonne National Laboratory, on aircraft operations for the study. Daum will also be visiting sites in India later this week to talk with our counterparts there about strategies for deploying the Indian research aircraft.

An Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor, which measures mass and chemical composition of submicron aerosol particles in real time. The instrument will be part of the mobile laboratories being deployed to India.

Then, this summer, during the peak time of aerosol formation in the Northeast, we'll get a chance to test out and fine-tune the mobile research units here at Brookhaven before they are deployed to India later in the fall.

The units are two of four designed and equipped over the past 18 months by scientists, technicians, and others at Brookhaven with instruments purchased largely by Brookhaven for DOE under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The India-bound units are designated Mobile Aerosol Observing System - Aerosol (MAOS-A) and Mobile Aerosol Observing System - Chemistry (MAOS-C). They are highly customized mobile shipping containers that provide environmentally controlled space for research-grade instruments (some made and designed at Brookhaven), plus sampling inlets and computers for control, storage, and communications. Together, the two laboratories contain more than 20 individual instrument systems used to measure atmospheric parameters needed to better understand the effects of aerosols on climate. All are installed and fully connected in shock-isolated racks for transportation, with an easy on-site setup process that requires just a couple of days.

In the fall, both units will be leaving for the town of Lucknow in India. Members of the Brookhaven team will travel to India to set up and start the units, after which they will be operated by Indian site technical staff. Once installed, the tools will actively take data for approximately two months.

For more information:

ARM news release on the kickoff of GVAX

ARM feature story describing the whole range of instruments involved in the study

ksnyder Tue, 06/14/2011 - 09:07

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Climate

Instrumentation

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Ganges Valley Aerosol eXperiment

India

Mobile Aerosol Observing System

Peter Daum

Rao Kotamarthi

Stephen Springston

U.S. Department of Energy

Climate

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Environment

And It Is Back...

sastyk — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:13:33 +0000

And It Is Back...

The Food Crisis, of course. In fact it really never left - since 2007 we've had more hungry people on the planet than ever before in human history, and while we've seen brief declines in the numbers of the hungry worldwide, those declines were of such short duration that they were essentially meaningless - earlier this year when the UN trumpeted that the number of the hungry had dropped back below 1 billion, it admitted that this excluded Pakistani flood victims, the impacts of the crisis in the Russian wheat crop and a host of other late-year issues.

On the lists of guests no one ever wants to invite to well...not eat dinner, the food crisis is probably number one, but it has a way of continuing to intrude. The thing about food is that it is both simple and complicated - very simple, in that when people don't have enough to eat, they die. Very simple in that just because we in the west became preoccupied with our own fiscal troubles doesn't mean that hungry kids stopped being hungry. Complicated, in the sense that food system responds to a great number of events - and we can expect it to keep on responding.

Why is it back? Well, a combination of factors. First, as we've seen over the years, it is simply impossible in our fossil-fuel drenched agriculture to separate out energy and food prices - high food prices and high energy prices go together. We invited the food crisis back to dinner as we began consuming more gas and oil after the recession.

Climate change played a role - consider the role of the drought in Kenya, where 1.3 million people are presently at radically increased risk of starvation. Consider the recurrence of export restrictions, characteristic of the 2008 food crisis, which began in August with the Russia's ban on wheat exports. 11 other countries now have major exports, including India's ban on exporting pulses.

The race against environmental degradation offered another invitation - last year the UN special envoy on the right to food observed that China's ongoing need for ever-increasing food imports is being fed by heavy topsoil loss and over development of good farmland, and of course, those problems are endemic across the developed world as well. Credit Suisse projected Asian food price inflation to hit 15% next year.

Remember, almost half the world's population spends more than half their income on food - price increases here affect families dramatically. In the US where one in seven (and it will probably shortly hit one in six) families is on food stamps (up from one in ten less than five years ago), it is very clear that food security is one of our vulnerable points, and that rising food prices will affect everyone. But for the world's most vulnerable, this is a disaster.

If 2008 is any measure, it may be a disaster for a new group of victims - those of globalization. What we saw in 2008 was that while the majority of the starving were stilll the traditional poorest people in the world - the landless or barely landed small farmers in rural districts, who lacked the land base to grow enough food to feed themselves, there was a newly emergent group of hungry. These are people who left their inadequate pieces of land to follow the jobs to the cities, and now found themselves both unable to afford food, and also unable to grow it.

The raging food riots in Tunisia are one logical outcome of rising food prices and the inability of young people to get work and buy food. We should expect more food riots - in 2008, the Egyptian government had to set its army to baking bread for its hungry people, and governments all over the world trembled because hungry people are angry people. World political stability depends on food stability - and climate and energy issues are likely to make food stability a thing of the past.

It may well also be a disaster for more of us than we think, with impacts most of us in the Global North never suspected. In 2008, I wrote an article arguing that much of the economic growth that had trickled back into the developed world over the last decade had been subsidized by profit increases for corporations made in the global south. The emergent middle class in places like China and india were feeding the world's economic growth. The folks who had new disposable income may not have consumed as much as Americans, but their cell phones and cokes and increased meat consumption and the books and paper they bought for their kids to go to school were an essential part of economic growth. I wrote:

Now it might be worth asking - where are those 175 million new starving people coming from? Before they were starving, who were they? And the answer would be that many of them were the people who left their farms in China and Vietnam and Indonesia and a host of other places to go live in the slums of various cities and work there. They were the people who were just getting by - the ones who sent a daughter to the factories and who did day labor in construction building up the economies. They lived quite close to the edge, and then, they crossed the edge when food prices began to rise. Now these were the lowest level new industrial workers - they weren't buying cell phones, but they might have bought a few things that they wouldn't have when they needed every penny for rice or bread - they sent their children, even their daughters to school, and bought clothes and pencils, they might save up for a radio for the family, and all these things, over millions of people, added up. And they produced more than they were paid for the economy as a whole - their work was more valuable than their salaries could account for, as is the way of things. But now they aren't buying those things - their kids are out of school, there is no money for radios or batteries, and there's no food - so they are working less, getting sick more, contributing less to the industrial economy, unable to make money selling things to the other people in their neighborhoods, because their neighbors have no extra money for anything either. Not only are they starving, but they've stopped adding money into the economy - and stopped spending it on anything but food.

Meanwhile, the next tier up in income were the people who had a little more than just enough - enough and a bit to send back home to their families, to get a cell phone and some jeans and buy meat a bit more often. These people worked pretty regularly at the new jobs - in factories, in building, in making the new globalized economy. And they spent money too and moved it around within their communities, and back into the global economy - the spent a little money buying coca cola, which came back this way. Now they aren't starving yet, but the rising cost of food has pushed them too - now the coca cola and the meat are gone, except for the holidays, and there won't be any more jeans. Because now the money goes for food - they have food to eat, but not enough for those other things. And so the money increasingly doesn't move around that much - because the farmer who grew the rice they are buying spent most of his money buying fertilizer. And so the money is headed mostly back to a few small companies - without a lot of stops around the neighborhood.

It is easy not to pay attention to such small things, and small people - after all, they aren't spending much money, and their wages aren't much. But they produce the stuff we need, they move money around - and hundreds of millions and billions of these small personal economies add up to quite a lot. And the money that they made went places - it took trips. The money a poor Chinese worker generated in productivity went a bit into his pocket - and some of that went back to American corporations that made things. And a lot of what he generated went into companies that invested in other things that fed our economy. And some of it went to the Chinese government that used it to buy up dollars and other things that seemed to have some value. It is perhaps not totally surprising, then, that as the Chinese worker got functionally poorer because of rising food prices, there was less money to pour back - times some millions.

And so it goes, down the ladder. The new workers, and the lubrication they provide in the global money system are being systematically impoverished, and what money they do spend goes to an increasingly narrow band of companies - instead of spreading the money around, money goes for very basic things - mostly food, and mostly basic foods. And the farmers who make the basic foods mostly send that money back to a very small number of companies - the ones that produce oil and the ones that produce fertilizer - many of them located in the same countries and places.

What is reducing the amount of productive work accomplished, and moving the money increasingly only into a few pockets? It is the high price of food.

Yesterday, Nicole Foss at The Automatic Earth wrote a piece arguing that the unified enthusiastic assertion that we are in a recovery should make us all nervous - that markets are never more certain than right before they reach a crisis point:

We are now seeing a firmly established received wisdom that recovery is underway and that the Fed has saved the day with quantitative easing. Bullishness is at an extreme. The psychology of the market is the opposite of what it was at the March 2009 bottom. This represents a large red flag, as sentiment extremes are major indicators of approaching trend changes. It takes time for a position to be widely accepted and internalized, and the greater the extent to which that has happened, the closer one is to a reversal. I think we are close to one, but it really doesn't matter whether the top is this week, next month, or even next year. It is coming soon enough that evasive action is thoroughly warranted now.

Is she right? I don't know, but I am wary of the euphoric claims that the economic crisis is over - this seems as unlikely as the claim that the food crisis was over. These things have a way of coming back, as we are seeing. Moreover, I would suggest that the very drivers of some measure of recovery are about to be torpedoed. It is hard to grow the economy when it turns out that an increasing number of people have to put all their resources back into simply getting enough to eat. We have entered the territory of the vicious circle, in which the complex intersections between food, energy, economy and environment begin to become horribly clear through repetition.

Sharon

sastyk Wed, 01/12/2011 - 04:13

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You and readers with an interest in this issue may also be interested in the analysis I published this week: The Predictable and Preventable Food Catastrophe of 2011-2012

This is a pretty good article, too:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/10/the_great_food_crisis_…

I think the situation is likely to become considerably worse as the stem rust strain UG99 spreads to the two major wheat producers, India and China. There, it could reduce wheat yields by 80%. It is hard to imagine what the consequences could be, especially as it seems there have been difficulties in breeding resistant varieties.

Indeed this is a vicious circle. One hopes that The Fed has at least engineered a softer landing that what was to become, but I doubt it.

I don't know if anybody here caught Stuart Staniford's recent blog entry highlighting the steady, amazing, and just plain disgusting rise in unemployment for 16-24 yo males. http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/01/employment-for-young-american-men…

This huge pool of young men is sitting there and being wasted.....people in their prime of life and energy, and we've created an economy in this society that has no use for them. Even IF they spend upwards of $200K on higher education, there are few jobs for them. There is no manufacturing anymore and there can be only so many lawyers, web designers, stock analysts, and web journalists and bloggers.

Now most of us are pretty familiar with the 50 Million Farmers thesis, and it gets me to wondering, just how this society and economy is going to go from millions upon millions of un and under-employed young people, to utilizing them once again for something useful such as growing food?

Right now it seems we have an economic and governmental system that taxes the dwindling number of office cubicle and other white collar workers in this country at fairly high rates, and then spreads that $$, at least somewhat, towards the legions of others scrabbling along the bottom, sitting home, maybe playing with a video game. It's a really gross form of wealth redistribution going on here. It would be far better if we could get real employment doing something useful back to the lower and lower middle class young people of this country. But for now we're stuck. I guess spreading at least a paltry amount of money to those with nothing to do somewhat delays the next revolution and keeps the Powers That Be in power, longer.

Of course this system we have also takes large numbers of young men and leaves them nothing to do but take up arms in the Middle East on behalf of The Powers That Be too. It's just that even that job doesn't utilize enough idle young men and women as it used to.

Personally I think we're here partly because of the fact that most in the US remain aghast at the idea of hands-on, manual work, especially farming as Sharon's last piece on the Cambodian family in California hit upon.

We have an idea of where we need to go. How do we help those around us get there?

Jonathan Maxson@#1

Are you sure the Russians are feeding wheat to their cattle or did the price of their compound just go up because the barley, sorghum and soy crops were also hit by the drought?

I can't think of any compound that uses wheat that is not flour mill or bakery waste (and even that is pig feed). By the time something that rich worked its way through rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum the herds would be dying of thirst and falling over from induced Dysentery.

I suppose anything is possible but it would be a lot cheaper to buy yellow dent and milo from us than to use wheat as feed.

Your description of Chinese workers' consumption being squeezed by rising food costs actually sounds a lot like what's happening in the US with rising healthcare costs - many people who used to be able to afford to buy clothing, electronics, and restaurant meals regularly can no longer do so because their healthcare expenses keep growing. Job loss is probably a bigger factor these days, but even before the current recession healthcare costs were eating up a growing share of GDP.

I hope China doesn't experience a sharp rise in healthcare costs along with food prices - although with an aging population, that's what it might be facing.

All of this is true, of course, but if it was mentioned above, I missed the role the enormously increased speculation in ag "futures" now plays. Of all the factors involved, this is the only one that could actually be rather quickly legislated out of existence. All that would be necessary would be to return to past practices; where only people who actually grew, stored, transported, or used ag products were able to participate in the futures markets.

Now, a great proportion of futures are owned, bought and sold, by people who never intend to actually take possession of a physical commodity; they're only in it for the profits in trading paper.

It serves no one but the speculators. They claim their participation "provides needed liquidity" that makes the markets work better- but in fact, that's just a big fat lie. The futures markets worked just fine before speculators were allowed in.

What all that extra "liquidity" does is push prices steadily up. And when some speculator takes his profits? Who pays? Somebody does; and the answer is- the end user. The ones who need to eat.

I think the only word that comes close, for me, to describing the removal of pennies from the pockets of the hungry, to fatten already bloated Wall Street types is - obscene.

I was wondering the same thing as Greenpa - how common were these wild within-year swings in food price before the super-rich accumulated so much money that they couldn't find enough credit-default swaps to gamble on and started gambling on commodities? It's not likely to be a normal seasonal phenomenon, since the peak can come at any time of year.

In addition to increasing prices, I've heard reports of shortages - cabbage in South Korea, where it is eaten daily by most people in the form of kimchi, onions in India - I think Pakistan may have halted exports to India to ensure there are enough for their own citizens, and chilli peppers in Indonesia - the government is recommending people grow their own. None of these reports have indicated exactly what is behind these shortages, though.

@Prometheus #5: That's a great question. I'm going from Lester Brown's teleconference and transcript. He mentioned Russia, the Ukraine, and Kazakhstan taking hits on wheat, barley, and hay. He explained that there is no international trade in hay because it is so bulky. Here are Brown's words, per my post: "With less grass for grazing and less hay to carry Russiaâs 21 million cattle through the long winter, farmers will have to feed more grain. In late July, Moscow released 3 million tons of grain from government stocks for use by livestock producers and millers. Supplementing hay with grain in cattle rations is costly, but the alternative is to reduce herd size by slaughtering livestock. This would, however, lead to higher milk and meat prices."

@Greenpa and Dewey on speculation: absolutely an issue. I cite an excellent article on this in the 4th item in my post. But Sharon's analysis is right on the money. It's the way all these factors are converging that makes this such a "wicked" problem.

Jonathan Maxson,

A small point, but there is international trade with some hay. I know of some horse farms in the Boston, MA area that have bought hay from New Brunswick, Canada. I get what you're saying that there is no super long distance trade in hay, but I think moving hay even 500 miles is stupid. Still, it some times still moves that far.

I wouldn't suspect 500 mile hay is going to happen all that much in the future.

Greenpa, I did mention speculation very briefly in the article, and I agree with you. The thing is, I think that the speculation is simply a logical result of the fact that energy and food supplies are going to be tight. Like you, I'd like to see playing economic party games with hunger made illegal, but I find it unlikely that it will be, simply because what else do you bet on in an unstable market? I'd sure as heck bet on food to be useful in the future ;-P.

I don't see the speculation as separate from supply issues and the economic cycles that come with them - food is going to be an attractive investment for a long time. And I admit, this is the kind of thing that makes me wish Jews believed in hell, so I could consign the people who make food unaffordable to the poor to eternal torment.

Sharon

Nice timely article, Sharon. I have made some of your points in some of my recent blogs. I have a few additional thoughts. Most of our food production of course is produced by cheap available diesel. Absent that, food wont be produced, starvation becomes a risk. Remember the French Revolution. Economic inequality was a growing problem in 18th century France but it wasn't until bread became in short supply that the masses rose up. Food riots are VERY dangerous. When folks have nothing left to lose knowing they are dying..................

Interesting that you mentioned the connection between food and the riots in Tunisia. I listened to a commentary on the unrest on (I think) the BBC and there was no mention of food but when I did a little Googling I see you are correct.

My wife met her first economic refugees from the USA yesterday. An Australian woman and her US husband. Both lost their jobs and so they came to Australia but he wants to go back. (Something about the tiny shelves in Australian supermarkets in comparison to the USA apparently. Seems everything is bigger and better in the USA.) Anyway, there does not need to be any doubt about the direction in which the USA economy is heading. I suppose you have seen the graph here?:

http://www.swarmusa.com/vb4/content.php/282-THE-Most-Important-Chart-of…

It really says it all. After looking at that there is no need for further discussion. It is simply game over. Any further "stimulus" is actually killing the USA. (Fiat currencies mean we will all end up there eventually.)

Michael L, I don't want to be an excessive bummer for you, but I wouldn't be inclined to see Australia as a better bet than the U.S. You are getting hit harder and worse by climate change, your soils are older and water supply tighter, and you're just as fossil-fuel-dependent as we are. I would not be surprised if you ended up poorer than we are in a generation or two. (The advantage you do have is that you seem still to have a culture where many people pride themselves on knowing how to "make do" or at least thinking they do, whereas most Americans feel nothing but outrage at any suggestion that they might have to tighten the belt.)

Hi Dewey, I never said that Australia was a better bet than the USA (and I did say we will all end up in the same place eventually) I just see it as a little odd that there is still discussion from people thinking that the USA can pull itself out of this mess. Yes the USA is blessed with better soils than Australia and with more water. We are also seeing the Chinese coming in here and buying up our farms. Heaven help us when we run short of food and try to divert the produce from those to our own people. It would be interesting to see someone do a marginal productivity of debt analysis for Australia.

I wonder how enforceable all those land-grab contracts will be a few decades past-peak? The closer the exploited peripheral countries are to the imperial center, and the weaker they are, the more likely that military force will be used. I can't quite see China trying a land invasion and occupation of the U.S., although they might start invading African countries that decide they'd rather feed their own people than China's. If we just expropriate the land and tell them to go to hell, what can they do?

And the consequences are here. Interesting to see the WaPo spin on it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/15/AR20110…

The only thing here I found surprising was the statement that agricultural equipment is being stolen in Britain, and sold on the continent. Smuggling is an ancient and profitable enterprise for those on both sides of the Channel, but smuggling tractors seems like it would be just a little harder to sneak than smuggling brandy.

Another reminder for all those contemplating growing their own food; in any form: you really must give serious thought to security; before you spend a year, or 3, growing anything, animal or vegetable.

Inside the Outbreaks

mpendergrast — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:03:59 +0000

Inside the Outbreaks

Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.

The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978 to 1980 in Oklahoma.

When he explained that EIS stood for the Epidemic Intelligence Service, I was intrigued. Was there really an outfit with a name like that? As I learned more, I realized that I had the opportunity to write the first history of an organization that has had a profound impact on the way public health is practiced not only here in the United States, but across the globe.

This book took me nearly twice as long as any previous book, even though it covers a shorter time period than my other histories. (For info on all my books, see www.markpendergrast.com.) I could not have survived on the advance from the publisher, so I am extremely grateful to the CDC Foundation and the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation for the grants that made the book possible.

The project took so long because it involved so many characters and investigations, making it a challenge to write. I considered organizing it by disease or theme, with a chapter each on polio, cholera, chronic diseases, environmental health, or violence, for instance. But such an approach would have meant jumping around in time, and readers would have lost the historical context. Instead, I wrote the book chronologically, from Alexander Langmuir's creation of the EIS in 1951 to the present. That meant that most chapters contain a smorgasbord of investigations.

Thus, for example, Chapter 5, "New Discoveries and Mysteries in the Early Sixties," begins with the 1961 hepatitis A outbreaks traced to oysters in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and to clams in Raritan Bay, New Jersey, and then to intentional urination in potato salad at the officers' mess at Cecil Field Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida. Then it shifts to hepatitis B traced to blood transfusions as well as to a New Jersey osteopath-psychiatrist who put IV drips into depressed patients to deliver tranquilizers, vitamins, and "energizers," cross-contaminating with hepatitis B by reusing the same tubing. Then the chapter jumps to salmonellosis due to raw eggs in cake mixes, which led back to chickenfeed made from contaminated fishmeal. Then I wrote about Salmonella hospital infections traced to nutritional drinks made with raw eggs. Onward from there to a remote Bolivian village to retrieve a particularly virulent plague bacillus for the Fort Detrick biological warfare scientists, followed by an apparent outbreak of lethal encephalitis among Guatemalan Mayans that stemmed from mercury fungicide on wheat seeds that the starving Indians had eaten. From there to leukemia clusters in Niles, Illinois, cholera in the Philippines, Reye syndrome in North Carolina, and finally, a section focusing on Alexander Langmuir in his prime. And that's all just one chapter!

Despite the book's disparate contents, there are narrative threads that weave throughout the book, some of which I will introduce here.

Alexander Langmuir himself provides one such thread. The founder of the Epidemic Intelligence Service was a visionary leader who put his personal stamp on the institution. "We'll get EIS officers on an epidemic as fast as we can," he said. "Throw them overboard. See if they can swim, and if they can't, throw them a life ring, pull them out and throw them in again."

The rituals and institutions that Langmuir established have proven to be remarkably hardy. The annual April conference is a case in point, a wonderful springtime introduction to Atlanta for new EIS recruits who can marvel at the amazing presentations - talk about a smorgasbord! - while being wooed and assessed (and simultaneously wooing and assessing) in this EIS version of a fraternity/sorority rush. They then return to Atlanta in the sweltering July heat for intense training, during which EIS officers make friends that often last a lifetime.

Diseases provide other narrative threads. Polio, for instance, is a major focus from the beginning, when EIS officers studied possible fly transmission, then put the EIS on the map during the 1955 Cutter Incident, when virulent live virus survived in some polio vaccines, thus paralyzing some recipients. I wrote about the 1962 decision to switch from the Salk killed injected vaccine to the Sabin oral live attenuated polio vaccine, the subsequent surveillance that revealed how children and their parents sometimes contracted polio as a result of the oral vaccine, the eventual decision to switch back to the killed vaccine in the United States, and the current pursuit of polio eradication that is tantalizingly close to success but is still frustratingly difficult.

Similarly, readers can follow threads throughout the book about malaria, Reye syndrome, Salmonella, diarrhea, smallpox, natural disasters, refugees and war, psychosomatic illnesses, problematical alternative medicines, E. coli O157:H7 and other foodborne pathogens, injuries, AIDS, Ebola, and many other health problems.

Another thread traces the evolution of more complex epidemiological methods, from simple description epi and cohort studies to case control studies, random sampling, and multivariate analysis.

Another is the impact of politics and global events on EIS investigations, from the Cold War fear of biological warfare that helped create the Epidemic Intelligence Service, to the Reagan administration's shameful neglect of AIDS, to the Bush and now Obama years. And on another level, there are the politics of the CDC and the Public Health Service. For years the CDC flew under most governmental radar, hiding out in Atlanta, but that ended with Legionnaire's disease and the national vaccination campaign against the swine flu epidemic that failed to materialize in 1976, which I covered in a chapter called "The Year of Living Dangerously." That year also introduced Ebola and Legionnaires' disease.

Unsolved mysteries provide another thread. EIS officers don't always break every case, at least not right away.

Yet another theme is the growing diversity of EIS officers. In the 1950s, most were white male physicians. Today over half are women, around a third are members of minority/ethnic groups, and a substantial number of officers arrive from other countries. Many are non-physicians.
Another thread in the book is how businesses sometimes put profits ahead of public health, as in the case of Reye syndrome and the aspirin industry or toxic shock syndrome and Procter & Gamble, which made the Rely tampon.

Other themes that thread throughout the book are: increasing microbial drug resistance to antibiotics, emerging infections, and the broadening EIS/CDC involvement in chronic diseases and behavioral factors such as smoking, drinking, suicide, and violence - and now looking at the public health impact of climate change.

Another theme that emerges throughout the book is that a disproportionate number of health problems afflict the underprivileged, the poor, the oppressed.

Yet another thread is the lesson that individuals, with their own particular interests and personalities, can make such a difference. There are many instances in which curious EIS officers or alums took on a problem and just wouldn't let it go.

In summary, let me quote from the book's epilogue, "The EIS Legacy," about the nature and importance of the EIS:

EIS alum Patrick Moore observed: "Most EIS recruits are not run-of-the-mill people. They aren't doing it to make lots of money. We really felt we were putting ourselves at risk, selflessly facing down bad diseases to help other people."

In the early years, most physicians joined the EIS to avoid the draft, but many remained in public health once they realized that they could have such a powerful impact on thousands of lives. That same realization occurred to latter-day officers such as Scott Harper, who observed: "Working as an EIS officer in public health was exciting, important, and satisfying. Whether investigating an outbreak or writing policy for vaccines, I had the opportunity to affect many more people's lives than a clinician seeing 30 people a day." Kay Kreiss recalled thinking, "This is the best job I'm ever going to have, with infinite backup and no administrative responsibility."

Scott Holmberg added: "Being dropped into an outbreak, given the authority to investigate it and do the detective work, then apply that knowledge to curbing the current outbreak and preventing future ones - there's no better work in the world. Wherever you go, everybody wants the same two things - peace and prosperity. It doesn't matter whether their lips are stretched and they are dyed blue, or whether they sit in front of a computer. They are worried about family, friends, tribe, nation."

I then went on to provide a quick summary of illustrious EIS alums and how they have influenced public health. I also wrote about EIS clones, the Field Epidemiology Training Programs around the world. And I concluded the book with these two paragraphs:

In 1951, Alexander Langmuir seized a Cold War opportunity to fund a small training program for young epidemiologists who would keep an eye out for biological warfare while responding promptly to unintentional epidemics. Today these EIS officers are the world's premier front-line disease detectives.

For an obscure government program, the Epidemic Intelligence Service has produced remarkable results. Perhaps it has done so in part by remaining relatively small, nimble, and flexible. One of the lessons of the EIS history is the impact that one person can have. Put creative, intelligent, well-trained, motivated individuals into the right environment, and the outcome can save lives and lead to vital careers. EIS officers and alums have had an impact far beyond their original numbers. Today, with global public health bedeviled by substantial threats, the life-saving work performed around the world by these shoeleather epidemiologists is more essential than ever. The EIS program and its offspring have, in short, influenced and defined how field epidemiology and public health are practiced on our planet.

So there's a somewhat scattered introduction to this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks. I look forward to hearing from readers and I anticipate an interesting, fruitful exchange.

Here is the only photo someone took of me in a village in Niger when I was following EIS officers there:

mpendergrast Mon, 06/21/2010 - 07:03

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