I made a remark at Climate Progress that the net shift from grassland to crops had been relatively tiny in the past five years, here's the clip, followed by a longer explanation. I expect to update this if necessary. There's enough to make the conclusion.
"Tiny" being about the percentages.
Here's how it goes starting with the five state chart in the article.
1.3 million acres / 640 acres = 2,031 square miles.
I compared that shift to the total farmland in the five states.
Nebraska
Nebraska’s farms and ranches utilize 45.5 million acres – 93% of the state’s total land area, so over 70,000 square miles in agriculture and ranching.
Iowa
Iowa land area is 60% row crops, 30% ranch
Iowa has total 55,857 square miles,
so agriculture and ranching has over 50,270 square miles.
South Dakota
75,811 square miles of land
of which 90% is in crops or ranches, or approximately 68,229 square miles.
A recent report showed 16.55 million acres harvested in fall 2012, or 25,859 square miles in crops.
That number does not include the rangeland.
North Dakota
69,000 square miles of which about 90% is in farms or ranches.
Minnesota
79,626 square miles
20% of Minnesota's corn crop goes to ethanol.
By the time I saw just the numbers from Nebraska and Iowa, it meant that the 2,000 square mile shift in five years, spread out over the cropland and grazing land of five states was going to be well under 2%.
UPDATE: If we add up all the crop and range land together for the five states, its around 297 thousand square miles, of which a net shift within it of 2 thousand square miles over five years is 0.6% over five years.
Meanwhile... in 2004 the Amazon rainforest shrank by 10,000 square miles
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7907725/#.USvtmBkhdek
More recent report is that the Amazon rainforest shrank 93,000 square miles in the past ten years that is a loss off of the rainforest's 2.4 million square miles. That's a rate of over 3.8% over ten years.
UPDATE:
If the rainforest loss was averaged for five years instead of ten, that would be 1.9% over five years, quite a faster loss than the 0.6% net loss of grassland in the US over five years.
As it is, I wouldn't want to overlook that it takes somewhat less time to reestablish a grassland than it does a rainforest! Neither is a trivial project, as conventional crop farming can leave pesticide and herbicide residues that preclude the regrowth of a full grass land ecosystem
What could be said more carefully (based partly on the north central US map) is that parts of Iowa and the Dakotas changed over from grassland at rates that exceeded the rate of loss of Amazon rainforest. It is not correct to say that the whole five-state agricultural region experienced a shift at the rate of the rainforest.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Calling low carbon Moses; we need to cross the Red Sea
I believe us die-hard climate hawks urgently need to understand the
political/social/economic nuts-and-bolts of transition to low-carbon.
The president’s “all of the above” makes us uncomfortable not only
because it allows more CO2 generation, but because he’s offering the
public a view that allays some real anxieties that we have not
adequately addressed.
Too many climate hawks snap back with, “They should install solar panels or wind turbines,” in a way that is just as ugly and insensitive and uninformed as, “Let them eat cake.”
There are whole communities utterly dependent on coal-fired plants for their electricity, and even though it’s like living in bondage, the community members have to be able to see a path through the proverbial Red Sea to get to something else.
We need a Moses who walks among the people.
A low carbon version of Johnny Appleseed would help.
I cross posted this at Climate Progress.
Too many climate hawks snap back with, “They should install solar panels or wind turbines,” in a way that is just as ugly and insensitive and uninformed as, “Let them eat cake.”
There are whole communities utterly dependent on coal-fired plants for their electricity, and even though it’s like living in bondage, the community members have to be able to see a path through the proverbial Red Sea to get to something else.
We need a Moses who walks among the people.
A low carbon version of Johnny Appleseed would help.
I cross posted this at Climate Progress.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
broaching rationing
In the struggles to turn the tide of fossil fuel use, several approaches have been advanced. These approaches range from personal lifestyle decisions to cap-and-trade to carbon tax, and some have broached rationing.
Rationing has some features that most of us alive today have never experienced personally, though I heard about it from my parents' generation who lived through World War II.
One is more cooperative behavior, such as pooling coupons to make a birthday cake.
Another is legitimate barter, such as sharing a car ride with someone willing to use their gasoline coupon as partial payment.
Another was the chagrin when a commodity is not available at any price, even with careful accumulation of rationing coupons. When metal products were in short supply, my mother took a full day going from store to store in Philadelphia seeking an iron, which she really needed to dress properly for work.
To the best of my knowledge, my parents did not participate in a black market for goods, but sooner or later everyone heard about that activity.
Rationing has some features that most of us alive today have never experienced personally, though I heard about it from my parents' generation who lived through World War II.
One is more cooperative behavior, such as pooling coupons to make a birthday cake.
Another is legitimate barter, such as sharing a car ride with someone willing to use their gasoline coupon as partial payment.
Another was the chagrin when a commodity is not available at any price, even with careful accumulation of rationing coupons. When metal products were in short supply, my mother took a full day going from store to store in Philadelphia seeking an iron, which she really needed to dress properly for work.
To the best of my knowledge, my parents did not participate in a black market for goods, but sooner or later everyone heard about that activity.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Often and lightly, the snow I shovel
I have shoveled snow twice today, and expect at least one more round
before bedtime, I'm feeling aware of the risks of snow shoveling such as
wrenched backs and heart attacks. In my case, frequent shoveling of
light two-inch layers of fresh fluffiness is much less risky for my
health than waiting for a six-inch layer to form and congeal with the
setting of the sun. Besides frequent prompt visits to the drive way, I rely on a shovel with a bent handle that makes it a lot easier to push snow or lift it.
This reminds me of Jared Diamond's essay in the New York Times in which he explores misplaced anxiety. He draws attention to "the importance of being attentive to hazards that carry a low risk each time but are encountered frequently." Such as, falling in the shower, or a the risk of a tree toppling on one's tent.
Diamond pointed out he doesn't stop taking showers, he's just careful about how he goes about it.
Aren't there more applications?
In the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, the designers of the nuclear plant gave it a 25 year operating life, and that meant it would have been unlikely to have been damaged by a 100-year earthquake or tsunami. But the operators of the plant keep it going for 40 years, increasing the likelihood that the plant might eventually be damaged.
Something might only happen infrequently, but give it enough time, and that event becomes nearly inevitable!!
This reminds me of Jared Diamond's essay in the New York Times in which he explores misplaced anxiety. He draws attention to "the importance of being attentive to hazards that carry a low risk each time but are encountered frequently." Such as, falling in the shower, or a the risk of a tree toppling on one's tent.
Diamond pointed out he doesn't stop taking showers, he's just careful about how he goes about it.
Aren't there more applications?
In the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, the designers of the nuclear plant gave it a 25 year operating life, and that meant it would have been unlikely to have been damaged by a 100-year earthquake or tsunami. But the operators of the plant keep it going for 40 years, increasing the likelihood that the plant might eventually be damaged.
Something might only happen infrequently, but give it enough time, and that event becomes nearly inevitable!!
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
coffee insecurity
Jacob Mammen, managing director of India's Badra Estates coffee growers:
“..you have a sense of insecurity. Things are slipping out of your hands.”
In an interview in "Coffee farmers adjust to climate struggle" Seattle Times
Hat tip to Climate Progress blog
Indian coffee growers are not alone in facing unstable climate conditions.
Coffee growers in Colombia have an amazing array of coffee varieties to offer, based on subtle differences in altitude, climate and soils. Yet in recent memory, many Colombian coffee groves were hit with exceptional rains, damaging crops.
According to Mark Pendergast, coffee isn't really the second most valuable commodity after oil, but in 2006 coffee was the fourth most valuable legal agricultural commodity. That said, many of us are deeply attached to coffee, so on the scale of emotional reactions, scarcity of coffee is right up there with scarcity of petroleum, wheat, sugar.
We've been attached to coffee for generations. William Penn, the wealthy founder of the province of Pennsylvania, once sent a pound of coffee as a present to his wife in England.
I have said before that it may take a coffee shortage to move Congress to act.
“..you have a sense of insecurity. Things are slipping out of your hands.”
In an interview in "Coffee farmers adjust to climate struggle" Seattle Times
Hat tip to Climate Progress blog
Indian coffee growers are not alone in facing unstable climate conditions.
Coffee growers in Colombia have an amazing array of coffee varieties to offer, based on subtle differences in altitude, climate and soils. Yet in recent memory, many Colombian coffee groves were hit with exceptional rains, damaging crops.
According to Mark Pendergast, coffee isn't really the second most valuable commodity after oil, but in 2006 coffee was the fourth most valuable legal agricultural commodity. That said, many of us are deeply attached to coffee, so on the scale of emotional reactions, scarcity of coffee is right up there with scarcity of petroleum, wheat, sugar.
We've been attached to coffee for generations. William Penn, the wealthy founder of the province of Pennsylvania, once sent a pound of coffee as a present to his wife in England.
I have said before that it may take a coffee shortage to move Congress to act.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Digression on elephants and tsunami, a physics puzzle
Off topic, but I love puzzles.
This one is related to a story about elephants that came out of the 2004 Indonesian earthquake and tsunami.
In the story, a group of Indonesian work elephants became agitated and pulled up the stakes that supposedly held them tethered. They ran away from the sea, uphill, followed by their also very agitated human handlers. Shortly thereafter, the tsunami arrived ashore and the flood swept inland, but at lower elevation than the vantage point of the elephants and their attendants.
The social life and work attitudes of the elephants would be a delightful topic in itself, given their tolerance for being staked out as long as other things like food and safety were satisfactory.
But I also wanted to know more about when the elephants sensed there was danger.
Here's what might be a nice word problem for a promising freshman physics student.
Elephants can hear sounds as low as 14-18 Hertz frequency.
Tsunamis in the open ocean have far lower frequency than the range of elephant hearing (big hint), a wavelength can be 200 km, with a velocity of 800 kmh, and an amplitude that might be a few cm to a meter at most, not really noticeable to ships at sea.
When a tsunami approaches shallower water, it is compressed, so it slows down, reportedly to around 50 kmh, its wavelength shortens, and its frequency increases. In terms of wave compression, like audible sound, the tsunami's pitch rises. With the compression at shallower water, the tsunami's wave amplitude also rises, sometimes to an astounding height.
Figure out the tsunami wavelength condition necessary for an elephant to be able to hear a tsunami coming.
If I knew the decibel sensitivity of an elephant at 14-18 Hz that would add to the fun. There's a relatively old reference (Heffner and Heffner, 1982) that found a seven-year old female Indian elephant had a threshold of about 64 dB at 16 Hz. Maybe there's more recent research. In human terms 64 dB - at an accessible frequency - could be an air conditioner or dishwasher, hardly as painful as an alarm.
Then we'd want to know how far the tsunami was from the elephant, so we could guess what would be necessary in intensity for the elephants to react as if they'd heard an air-raid siren. Did it even need to be loud, or just dangerously different?
It would also be credible to examine if the elephants had other modalities to sense danger. Did they feel something unusual through their feet? Or even smell something strange as the sea pulled away from the shore..
June 11, 2013 Add in. Stanford University seismologists have suggested a tsunami warning system that uses sound cues from an earthquake.
"We've found that there's a strong correlation between the amplitude of the sound waves and the tsunami wave heights," co-author Eric Dunham, a Stanford geophysicist, said in a statement. "Sound waves propagate through water 10 times faster than the tsunami waves, so we can have knowledge of what's happening a hundred miles offshore within minutes of an earthquake occurring. We could know whether a tsunami is coming, how large it will be and when it will arrive."
--
Oh science is satisfying.
This one is related to a story about elephants that came out of the 2004 Indonesian earthquake and tsunami.
In the story, a group of Indonesian work elephants became agitated and pulled up the stakes that supposedly held them tethered. They ran away from the sea, uphill, followed by their also very agitated human handlers. Shortly thereafter, the tsunami arrived ashore and the flood swept inland, but at lower elevation than the vantage point of the elephants and their attendants.
The social life and work attitudes of the elephants would be a delightful topic in itself, given their tolerance for being staked out as long as other things like food and safety were satisfactory.
But I also wanted to know more about when the elephants sensed there was danger.
Here's what might be a nice word problem for a promising freshman physics student.
Elephants can hear sounds as low as 14-18 Hertz frequency.
Tsunamis in the open ocean have far lower frequency than the range of elephant hearing (big hint), a wavelength can be 200 km, with a velocity of 800 kmh, and an amplitude that might be a few cm to a meter at most, not really noticeable to ships at sea.
When a tsunami approaches shallower water, it is compressed, so it slows down, reportedly to around 50 kmh, its wavelength shortens, and its frequency increases. In terms of wave compression, like audible sound, the tsunami's pitch rises. With the compression at shallower water, the tsunami's wave amplitude also rises, sometimes to an astounding height.
Figure out the tsunami wavelength condition necessary for an elephant to be able to hear a tsunami coming.
If I knew the decibel sensitivity of an elephant at 14-18 Hz that would add to the fun. There's a relatively old reference (Heffner and Heffner, 1982) that found a seven-year old female Indian elephant had a threshold of about 64 dB at 16 Hz. Maybe there's more recent research. In human terms 64 dB - at an accessible frequency - could be an air conditioner or dishwasher, hardly as painful as an alarm.
Then we'd want to know how far the tsunami was from the elephant, so we could guess what would be necessary in intensity for the elephants to react as if they'd heard an air-raid siren. Did it even need to be loud, or just dangerously different?
It would also be credible to examine if the elephants had other modalities to sense danger. Did they feel something unusual through their feet? Or even smell something strange as the sea pulled away from the shore..
June 11, 2013 Add in. Stanford University seismologists have suggested a tsunami warning system that uses sound cues from an earthquake.
"We've found that there's a strong correlation between the amplitude of the sound waves and the tsunami wave heights," co-author Eric Dunham, a Stanford geophysicist, said in a statement. "Sound waves propagate through water 10 times faster than the tsunami waves, so we can have knowledge of what's happening a hundred miles offshore within minutes of an earthquake occurring. We could know whether a tsunami is coming, how large it will be and when it will arrive."
--
Oh science is satisfying.
Brief note on Briar Patch of Carbon Tax
The Obama Administration announced it doesn't plan to introduce a carbon tax.
Now a carbon tax is a messy prickly topic, with lots of twists and turns that we don't fully comprehend, yet.
I reflect on Brer Rabbit’s interaction with Brer Fox.
“Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please,” said Brer Rabbit. “Only please, Brer Fox, please don’t throw me into the briar patch.”
And what if some Brer Foxes flung the Obama administration into the briar patch of carbon tax? Not such a bad end, really.
Now a carbon tax is a messy prickly topic, with lots of twists and turns that we don't fully comprehend, yet.
I reflect on Brer Rabbit’s interaction with Brer Fox.
“Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please,” said Brer Rabbit. “Only please, Brer Fox, please don’t throw me into the briar patch.”
And what if some Brer Foxes flung the Obama administration into the briar patch of carbon tax? Not such a bad end, really.
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These states typically have around ninety percent of their land in farms; Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota. Iowa has 90% in crops alone.
The danger of dust-bowlification is already enormous, just based on how much land is already in annual crops.
Since I respect your comments as very informed, factual and constructive, I was hoping you could elaborate a little more–perhaps with a few actual numbers.
Your takeaway messages are quite different.