Michelle Obama Tackles Children's Diets

This is possibly the best possible use that Michelle Obama can make of the bully pulpit afforded her.  Everyone acknowledges the issue itself and yet it is difficult to divert political attention directly to it.

 

The press of course jumps on the story line that food woes are the direct result of ‘industrial agriculture”.  This is complete hooey.  To the extent that a problem exists it is because of choices.  If you are stupid enough to supply children with food that lacks nutrition and promotes obesity, then who is at fault.

 

Why does it take a national regulation to avoid loading up kids with sugar and starch?  Would you allow your own diet to be so dominated?

 

It does take a national initiative to support parents in determining what is appropriate.

 

In my own experience we rarely brought classic junk food into the home for our children.  In fact, I never understood why parents ever stocked most of this stuff in their homes.  Our children then at least had to walk (or run) many blocks to make such a purchase.  I also quickly got the children to man paper routes to produce the coin needed to actually buy the stuff.

 

It is not difficult to provide inexpensive and nutritious school lunches if you use some imagination.  Legumes are invaluable to support a properly balanced diet and allow expensive meat products to be eased out of the budget.  Much of the problem in the present day regime is adherence to far too many theoretical goals when what is normally called for is a filling comfort food able to carry the child to suppertime when the parents take over.

 

Recall how the simple expedient of enriching corn meal for tortillas in Mexico largely eliminates a major source of malnutrition.

 

It is not a case of money but of making sure good sense rules.  This is something Michelle is in position to possibly deliver with a first lady’s children’s initiative or foundation if necessary.  Go for it!

 

 

 

Michelle Obama vows to “move the ball” on kids’ diets

19 JAN 2010 9:00 AM

 

 

BY TOM PHILPOTT

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-01-19-michelle-obama-vows-to-move-the-ball-on-kids-diets

Her husband got dealt a difficult set of cards in taking over the post-Bush II presidency—and has arguably played them quite badly. He now finds himself in a tight political corner: caught between an emboldened Right, an angry Left, and a shrivelled middle.

But Michelle Obama abides, as fabulous and beloved by the electorate as ever. She has built up a tidy store of political capital. She plans to spend it “by spearheading an initiative to reduce childhood obesity that, she hopes, will create a legacy by which she can be remembered,” reports Sheryl Gay Stolberg in The New York Times.

Reducing childhood obesity is a goal that few could argue with. But really it’s an appealing way to frame a massive problem with powerful vested interests behind it: a food system that churns out low-quality, environmentally ruinous food and robust profits for a few companies.

If the First Lady plans to confront the issue in a serious way, she’ll soon be knocking heads with those very companies. She has already gotten a taste of the coming pushback, just by planting an organic garden.

It will take every iota of Ms. Obama’s considerable grace, smarts, and popular appeal to “move the ball” (as she puts it) on the diet-related maladies that confront the nation’s children. The sustainable food movement has never had a more appealing or high-profile champion.

PetroBank Ramps up THAI

It is rare that technological development advances smoothly.  I have been following this project for over two and a half years and this has been exceptional.  In fact the only issue anyone has had to whine about was the sand situation which was already well known but not engineered out of the equation until the original theory was shown to work.  All very reasonable.

Some writers have woken up to the actual importance of this technology.  It is correct to say that this can postpone peak oil for decades.  Observe that its first production development is set to produce 100,000 barrels per day.  It has effectively converted heavy oil into conventional oil for all intents and purposes.  Perhaps a bit strongly stated but close enough that it does not matter.  It makes oil sand mining almost obsolete but that will continue to be used to clean off the surface deposits.  All the rest will be exploited with THAI and not SAGD which is clearly obsolete.

We can expect Canada’s commercial oil reserves to now exceed one trillion barrels, or equal to all the oil produced to date worldwide.  Significant reserves throughout the USA will also become exploitable and all formerly productive fields will be subject to a good second look.  After all, at least half the oil was left behind.

In the meantime the US has zoomed back to been the lead global producer of natural gas thanks to success with shale gas. 

The bottom line is that the USA and Canada are about to be totally self sufficient in gas and oil even without any help from other energy technology. 

I remember an article in Scientific America back perhaps thirty years ago in which it was observed that including Canada’s tarsands gave the country a quarter of the global resource.  Since then a lot of oil has been discovered elsewhere so the ratio has hardly stood up.

We have burned one trillion barrels.  Another trillion is in place in conventional reserves and Canada has a spare trillion in reserve that is now readily produced just like conventional oil in terms of overall impact.

Some may want to quibble over my bandying about the trillion word, but the fact we gave up counting a long time ago when we hit two thirds of that value.  It cost money to properly show these values and it has to be worth while. 

Petrobank Ramps Up THAI  Operations

2010-01-06 19:38:00

http://www.emediaworld.com/press_release/release_detail.php?id=846198

CALGARY, ALBERTA--(eMediaWorld - Jan. 6, 2010) - Petrobank Energy and Resources Ltd. ("Petrobank" or the "Company") (TSX:PBG) is pleased to provide an update on our THAI^TM projects.

Kerrobert Project

The Kerrobert THAI^TM project is a 50/50 joint venture with Baytex Energy Trust. This joint venture project highlights the global applicability of THAI^TM technology in conventional heavy oil resources. We believe that a significant portion of the estimated 20 billion of barrels of unrecovered conventional heavy oil resource in Saskatchewan can be commercialized using THAI^TM.

At Kerrobert, we have been on continuous air injection and the wells have been on production since late October. Since this project involves mobile oil, our original plan was to utilize temporary hydraulic pumps on each well to create a drawdown pressure across the horizontal well and, as combustion gas production increased, we would cease pumping and flow the wells by produced gas lift. As previously reported, the initial fluid production volumes were tested at 180 to 300 barrels per day per well, with oil cuts ranging from zero to 40%. However, during the transition phase to gas lift we learned that liquid inflow to the production wells exceeded the pump's capacity, which limited our ability to draw down the wells and also caused frequent pump failures. On December 21, 2009 we re-configured the pump in KP1 to improve its pumping capacity and we are currently re-configuring KP2.

Since the re-configuration, fluid production rates from KP1 have ranged from 250 to 420 barrels per day with oil cuts averaging 36% and reaching as high as 65%. We have also increased the air injection rate to 50,000 m3/day and the produced gas rate has increased to 8,000 m3/day. Well bore temperatures are rising with toe temperatures consistently in the 120 to 140 degrees Celsius range. Produced gas composition confirms high temperature combustion and we have recently measured an improvement in the API and viscosity of the produced oil. We expect to have the KP2 pump reconfigured and producing at similar rates to KP1 within the next few days.

Surface facilities have been operating smoothly with only minor cold weather and early start-up related issues. We have not had any solids or produced sand. The next expansion of our air compression capacity will be installed at the beginning of April. Due to the current pump limitations, we intend to replace them in the near future with a higher capacity design, targeting 500 barrels of oil per day ("bopd") per well. We are also finalizing our plans for the development of the initial earned lands which would encompass up to 20 additional production wells in this portion of the pool. We plan to commence this expansion in the third quarter of this year.

Conklin (Whitesands Project)

At Conklin, we effectively shut-in the majority of our production from August to November to facilitate the re-drilling of the P1 and P2 wells. The P1B and P2B replacement wells were then placed on production at the end of November as planned, and air injection rates have been increased to close to design capacity. In a re-start situation such as this, early production consists of bitumen and condensed steam from the pre-heating period. We are now seeing the expected increase in combustion gas and improving oil quality and oil production rates. P3B has been choked back during the start up of the new wells to manage the gas balance between all three wells.

Total oil production has reached 350 bopd and, although overall facility efficiency has been impacted by severe cold weather, we target increasing total Conklin production to 900 bopd by the end of the first quarter. We have now revised our maximum target production for the Conklin pilot to 1500 bopd and we anticipate reaching this production level in mid 2010.

May River Project

The May River Project is our first large-scale commercial THAI^TM application on Petrobank's oil sands leases west of Conklin, Alberta. The May River design builds on the experience gained from the Conklin facility, and incorporates many of the simplifications that have been successfully implemented in Kerrobert. The project will be built in phases, with initial production capacity of 10,000 bopd and an ultimate capacity of up to 100,000 bopd.

The regulatory application for May River's first phase was filed with the Energy Resources and Conservation Board ("ERCB") and Alberta Environment in December 2008. The application has been deemed complete and is now moving through the regulatory process. We have received the supplemental information requests ("SIRs") from Alberta Environment on March 31st and from the ERCB on July 17th. The responses to both the SIRs were filed mid-December and we anticipate approval in early 2010. To provide investors with more insight into the Alberta regulatory process, our application with the SIRs and all related documents are available on the ERCB website at www.ercb.ca.

Front-end engineering and design for the May River Project was completed at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009. The design incorporates self sufficient power generation utilizing low-BTU produced gas, produced gas sweetening, and future add-on capability for carbon dioxide capture. Unlike other existing oil sands projects, our project will be a net water producer, rather than a water consumer. These design elements combine to make the May River Project an environmentally sustainable process for oil sands and heavy oil development. The project is also designed to utilize a modular approach with direct and immediate applicability to heavy oil projects world-wide.

Dawson Project

The Dawson Project is located near Peace River, Alberta and will be developed in the Bluesky formation. The regulatory application for the project was filed on April 2, 2009. We received Alberta Environment's conditional approval on June 26th and ERCB's SIRs were received at the end of November. We expect to file our response in the next two weeks. This project will incorporate our learnings from the Kerrobert project and will demonstrate the THAI^TM technology in a mobile Peace River oil sands reservoir.

Petrobank Energy and Resources Ltd. is a Calgary-based oil and natural gas exploration and production company with operations in western Canada and Latin America. The Company operates high-impact projects through three business units and a technology subsidiary. The Canadian Business Unit, operated by Petrobank's 64% owned TSX-listed subsidiary, PetroBakken Energy Ltd. (TSX:PBN), is a premier light oil production company combining high growth, long-life Bakken reserves and production with legacy conventional light oil assets, delivering industry leading operating netbacks, strong cash flows and production growth. The Latin American Business Unit, operated by Petrobank's 67% owned TSX listed subsidiary, Petrominerales Ltd. (TSX:PMG), is a Latin American-based exploration and production company producing oil in Colombia with 16 exploration blocks covering a total of 1.9 million acres in the Llanos and Putumayo Basins of Colombia and 2.6 million acres in the Ucayali Basin of Peru. Whitesands Insitu Partnership, a partnership between Petrobank and its wholly-owned subsidiary Whitesands Insitu Inc., owns 75 net sections of oil sands leases in Alberta, 36 sections of oil sands licenses in Saskatchewan and operates the Whitesands project which is field-demonstrating Petrobank's patented THAI^TM heavy oil recovery process. THAI^TM is an evolutionary in-situ combustion technology for the recovery of bitumen and heavy oil that integrates existing proven technologies and provides the opportunity to create a step change in the development of heavy oil resources globally. THAI^TM and CAPRI^TM are registered trademarks of Archon Technologies Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Petrobank.

Forward Looking Statements. Certain information provided in this press release constitutes forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate", "expect", "project", "estimate", "forecast" and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Specifically, this press release contains forward-looking statements relating to results of operations, future well performance reserves, and the timing of certain projects. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect. Actual results achieved during the forecast period will vary from the information provided herein as a result of numerous known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors. You can find a discussion of those risks and uncertainties in our Canadian securities filings. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general economic, market and business conditions; fluctuations in oil prices; the results of exploration and development drilling, recompletions and related activities; timing and rig availability, outcome of exploration contract negotiations; fluctuation in foreign currency exchange rates; the uncertainty of reserve estimates; changes in environmental and other regulations; risks associated with oil and gas operations; and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. There is no representation by Petrobank that actual results achieved during the forecast period will be the same in whole or in part as those forecast. Except as may be required by applicable securities laws, Petrobank assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements made herein or otherwise, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Resources and Contingent Resources. In this press release, Petrobank has disclosed estimated volumes of "contingent resources" or "resource" estimates. "Resources" are oil and gas volumes that are estimated to have originally existed in the earth's crust as naturally occurring accumulations but are not capable of being classified as "reserves". The following are excerpts from the definition of "contingent resources" as contained in Section 5 of the COGE Handbook, which is referenced by the Canadian Securities Administrators in "National Instrument 51-101 Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities". "Contingent resources" are those quantities of petroleum estimated, as of a given date, to be potentially recoverable from known accumulations using established technology or technology under development, but which are not currently considered to be commercially recoverable due to one or more contingencies. Contingencies may include factors such as economic, legal, environmental, political, and regulatory matters, or a lack of markets. It is also appropriate to classify as "contingent resources" the estimated discovered recoverable quantities associated with a project in the early evaluation stage. "Contingent resources" are further classified in accordance with the level of certainty associated with the estimates and may be subclassified based on project maturity and/or characterized by their economic status. "Resources" and "contingent resources" do not constitute, and should not be confused with, reserves.

Climate Comedy

This bit must be classed almost as high comedy.  The IPCC’s reputation is descending into the abyss as a direct result of the recent revelations.  This item merely adds fuel and has come to light because of the revelations of climate gate.  It appears that I have vastly more related qualifications than ‘the world’s top climate scientist’.  After all, economic theory attracts folks whose mathematical skills are at best minimal. 

 

Now it turns out that our genius has been collecting endorsements like a sportsman from those most benefiting from his regime.  This whole scene would shame a practiced con man, who I would expect to be far more subtle.

 

The trail of this reported finding is even more unbelievable. The New Scientist is certainly a reliable science magazine and typically does an excellent job of confirming sources.  Yet it is still journalism and is certainly able to get things wrong.  That is why I always note the source of a given story and try to maintain a strong element of skepticism.   Over time though, everyone can get caught.

 

The most famous gold salting scandal of all time caught out and destroyed men with solid careers and decades of experience checking for exactly the type of fraud pulled.  The weight of success eventually warded of all newcomers with the sheer weight of manufactured evidence and the weight of known authorities who had claimed to have reviewed the data and had.  In short, the snowball kept gathering mass until no one could stand against it.

 

In the end, you had to know it was fraud in order to see what was in front of you.

 

The same situation has occurred with IPCC.

 

 

THE NEW CLIMATE CHANGE SCANDAL

Glacier melt claims were 'speculation'

Monday January 18,2010

By Anil Dawar

 

FRESH doubts were cast over controversial global warming theories yesterday after a major climate change argument was discredited.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/152422/The-new-climate-change-scandal

The International Panel on Climate Change was forced to admit its key claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The report was based on an interview with a little-known Indian scientist who has since said his views were “speculation” and not backed up by research.

It was also revealed that the IPCC’s controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, described as “the world’s top climate scientist”, is a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics and no formal climate science qualifications.

Dr Pachauri was yesterday accused of a conflict of interest after it emerged he has a network of business interests that attract millions of pounds in funding thanks to IPCC policies. One of them, The Energy Research Institute, has a London office and is set to receive up to £10million from British taxpayers over the next five years in the form of grants from the Department for International Development.

Dr Pachauri denies any conflict of interest arising from his various roles.

Yesterday, critics accused the IPCC of boosting the man-made global warming theory to protect a multi-million pound industry.

Climate scientist Peter Taylor said: “I am not surprised by this news. A vast bureaucracy and industry has been built up around this theory. There is too much money in it for the IPCC to let it wither.”

Professor Julian Dowdeswell, a glacier specialist at Cambridge University, said: “The average glacier is 1,000ft thick so to melt one even at 15ft a year would take 60 years. That is a lot faster than anything we are seeing now so the idea of losing it all by 2035 is unrealistically high.”

The IPCC was set up by the UN to ensure world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change. It issued the glacier warning in a benchmark report in 2007 that was allegedly based on the latest research into global warming.

The scientists behind the report now admit they relied on a news story published in the New Scientist journal in 1999. The article was based on a short telephone interview with scientist Syed Hasnain, then based in Delhi, who has since said his views were “speculation”.

The New Scientist report was picked up by the WWF and included in a 2005 paper.

It then became a key source for the IPCC which went further in suggesting the melting of the glaciers was “very likely”.

Yesterday, Professor Murari Lal who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said: “If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, then I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments.”

Last year the Indian government issued its own scientific research rejecting the notion that glaciers were melting so rapidly.

Before the weakness in the IPCC’s research was exposed, Dr Pachauri dismissed the Indian government report as “voodoo science”.

The revelations are the latest crack to appear in the scientific consensus on climate change.

It follows the so-called climate-gate scandal in November last year when leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit appeared to show scientists fiddling the figures to strengthen the case for man-made climate change.

The scandal prompted critics to suggest that many scientists had a vested interest in promoting climate change because it helped secure more funding for research.

Last month, the Daily Express published a dossier listing 100 reasons why global warming was part of a natural cycle and not man made.

Historical Emergence of Christianity - Part 1

The historical rise of Christianity as the dominant western religion is well understood after Constantine made it the sole imperial Roman religion beholden to the Roman state.  In fact this single step was possibly the most important innovation in global history.  The idea of a corporate church was originated in a form that was meant to be immortal and in the process survived the Roman Empire and continues to this day as well as its derivative sects.  It subsumed the Roman civilization and carried its embers forward as it reconstituted itself through the barbarian lands.  Its history is that of Western civilization for the past fifteen hundred years beginning with Constantine. Their natural children are the legal entities of the joint stock companies that have produced the modern global economy.

Constantine did two things that must be fully understood.  He assembled all the Christian scholars and had them prepare a canon from the available texts available as to be the sole unique officially authorized text to be used thereafter.  This was done and it formed the New Testament.  They also added the much larger number of accepted texts of the Judaic faith as an underlying reference work that were integral to the teachings of Christianity. This became the Old Testament and naturally held in less regard than the New Testament by the faithful. The New Testament is in fact a radical departure from the Old Testament.

He then had all the source works destroyed as well as any other scriptures about in order to eliminate any form of competition.  He was not totally successful, but over the centuries simple negligence did most of the work as non canonical works were merely not copied.  The result is that our primary source for the rise of Christianity in the first four centuries is a carefully edited package that strips the human aspect of the history out in exchange for a divine history that is much more useful as a basis for religious enthusiasm.

Therefore the human history can only be reassembled in conjecture and snippets of actual data.  In fact the field is crowded with extravagant speculation including the recent popularization of the Da Vinci Code.  At worst, they make great stories that help folks explore their own religious feelings even when they know it is rubbish.

My own readings have led to a minimalist conjectural history that is worth reciting.  Again we are reading between the lines and the facts to discover an extraordinary human being who took his time and place and redirected religious history.  There is more to it than that of course, but we can recognize the least of it perhaps.

First we need to understand the local context.  It is reported that Jesus was born in the last years of Herod the Great’s reign.  This is important because Herod originally inherited and ruled an impoverished kingdom no better of than its equally uninviting neighbors and no threat to anyone.  Their revenues were scant.  They did have a religious sect however and a fairly famous temple dating from the Bronze Age.  Someone got the brainstorm of empowering priests to travel to other cities on the Mediterranean littoral to create new converts who would pay a handsome fee. Somehow it all worked and the result was a steady income coming back to Herod and the temple in Jerusalem. Yes this actually happened and it was the foundation of Herod’s wealth and continuing success.

The result was new Jewish communities in the major cities throughout the Roman Empire rather loosely controlled and managed if at all by the temple in Jerusalem.  We can be sure that they were enthusiastic and evangelical.

During this era, the Roman Empire extended its protection around the Eastern end of the Mediterranean to everyone’s chagrin.  Herod held them at bay but his successors had less skill. Strong tribal and religious feelings were sustained and eventually blew up in a total revolt after three generations.  We know this history but those living in Judaea did not and got on with their lives in what had become under Herod a prosperous well populated province.

Into this world Jesus was born. His father was an established tradesman, carpenter or woodworker, but obviously skilled in a world were joinery was important.  He or his wife was perhaps of important family lines connected to the heroic tribal past.  Yet that heroic past was likely a millennium old which meant that all members in the tribe had now similar pedigrees.  More likely it was added in as an argument to support claims of kingship long after the fact.  That was not important.

What was important was that the child was a natural genius.  Somehow he got an education and with this he accessed the supply of local scriptures and became expert. He likely had an eidetic memory.  When he was presented to the local cadre of scholars, he astounded them and this memory is passed down to us. This recognition naturally led to his been recruited into the ranks as a student and leaving his family.

Before we go forward I will address the embedded mythology surrounding his birth for which there are several aspects.  The easiest is the three wise men.  We have the present day tradition of the recognition of the Dalai Lama to inform us as well as others who are part of the same culture.  It is completely believable that three Buddhist monks could journey to discover a great soul.  It would certainly have an impact on the recipient and his family.  Whether it happened in the case of Jesus can never be known, but that it happened at all is certainly possible and more surely the story itself got around.  This is a real world explanation for the legend itself.

The aspect of been born in the midst of a local census is not too exceptional and serves mostly to fix the approximate date of his birth.  The further tale of Herod’s reaction is a simple lift from the tale of Moses and was hardly likely there either.  The appearance of the three monks would have been remarked upon and remembered and certainly explains the direction of his later career.  The rest appears to be simply embedded after the fact.

That leaves us with the legend of the virgin birth.  Again this is an embedded idea that was possibly expected and acceptable in the time and place and which gives modern sensibilities some difficulties.  There is actually no reason to think that this birth was anything more than it seems.  An established tradesman acquired a bride and began a family.  End of story.

However, fifty miles to the north we have the city of Tyre and the cult of Baal.  Within this cult there was a ritual whereby young pubescent women presented themselves to the temple to be randomly assaulted by whoever was allowed as a rite of passage.  Naturally children would be produced who would be viewed as children of the god.  It also explains the evidence of child sacrifice associated with Phoenician practice.  Jarring as this practice is to modern sensibilities, it explains the source of the idea of the virgin birth to start with and why it was accepted in the culture at all.

The star of the monks may or may not have been real.  More likely it was a signal visible only to the monks themselves and was plausibly stronger than usual.  I suspect that this fits well into these traditions.

Thus we have a young student who has possibly been sponsored by these monks to be properly educated so far as was possible in the time and place.  This is not a negligible proposition.  Greek scholarship was available in Aramaic as was studies in Hebrew Scriptures.  Because he was special and because money was available it seems likely that he got access to an excellent education and been a prodigy, he was able to absorb everything available before he turned twelve.  Thus we have his extraordinary performance before the scholars of the temple when he was tested by his peers.

He was now in the eyes of his culture, a young man in need of additional training in distant centers of learning.  That provided two options.  The obvious one was Alexandria.  It is plausible that he first went there to perhaps polish what we would describe as his classical education.  This need not have taken a great deal of time as he had already been so schooled and likely needed only to review a few obscure texts and to debate a number of issues.

Tradition now finds him in India at the age of fourteen studying Buddhism.  This tradition is not minor and it makes perfect sense that such a scholar would travel to the major source of Holy Scriptures and religious doctrines.  We have no good reason to not accept this tradition because he clearly made an impact and mastered the languages and the available written material.  This must have taken the full fifteen years that it appears he was there.  It was no small challenge.

It is also reasonable that during his stay that he translated core documents into Aramaic in preparation for his return to his homeland. They would be necessary as a basis for the opening of a new center of Buddhist instruction.  He returned as a fully trained Buddhist monk with all the necessary tools for establishing Buddhist monasteries.

My key point here is that such a career was possible even without the recognition of lama hood by the monks, but rather unlikely.  Money and initial acknowledgement actually made it inevitable.  The ultimate confirmation is his very existence and the content of his teachings which we will address in part 2.

Sea Change for Salmon Husbandry

This is extremely promising for the aquaculture industry.  Fundamentally, everyone has assumed that salmon need to spend their life in the ocean.  Now it turns out that that is not true at all.  The consequences are huge.

 

We still have the issue of feed.  I am aware of work on replacing part of the feed with grains and I assume that will continue.  They are suggesting here that they can approach 1.1 to 1, except I heard that tale two decades ago.

 

I think though that we may have a far better option available.  It is expensive to raise fish in tanks.  So raise them in the lakes of the boreal forest.  These lakes have often been fished out and are forced through a serious die off every winter that decimates populations.  These salmon can in fact live in these lakes.  The lakes themselves are easily closed off to restrain migration if the fish are released only after they are properly sized.

 

The fish can be initially raised and fed in lakeside pens until they are so sized.

 

Far more important, small lakes are covered during the summer with mosquito and black fly larvae which should augment the feeding regime and perhaps keep the local environment somewhat more livable.  The reason this food supply is so substantial is that the winter die off has wiped out their predators.  Thus introducing a huge supply of active predators into the lake means that the natural food supply can be used.

 

The fish population will still need to be fed over the next winter, but that can be planned for and perhaps may be a mostly grain based diet.  After all we are simply carrying them over the winter until spring brings back the insect larvae again.

 

Winter feeding through the ice should not be difficult since we presently do ice fishing anyway.  In fact I suspect that the fishermen will help since it helps their sport.

 

I am sure these methods can be applied to other fish species, but we are most experienced with Coho at present since it happens to be ready for harvest inside of two years.

 

Sea Change: Environmental Group Gives First-Time Nod to Sustainable Salmon-Farming Method

 

An aquaculture company devises a new, sustainable process that raises Pacific Coho salmon in freshwater

 

By Clare Leschin-Hoar   

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/coho-salmon-farming_1.jpg

SALMON SOLUTION: A new farming technique for Pacific coho salmon has received approval from a consumer education group that advocates for sustainable fisheries

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coho-salmon-farming&sc=CAT_ENGYSUS_20100114

Farm-raised salmon has long been the poster child of unsustainable aquaculture practices. Issues of escape, pollution and inefficiency have plunged it deeply into the "avoid" territory of environmental groups—until now.

In a report released January 14, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program is taking the unprecedented step of approving a particular method for farming Pacific coho salmon that is currently employed exclusively by the Rochester, Wash.–based AquaSeed Corp. The sustainability nod from the consumer education group means that these salmon also will be assigned a green "Best Choice" rating on Seafood Watch's Web site. The approval follows several months of intensive site visits by Seafood Watch scientists and reviews of the company's production facility, feed ratios, fish contaminant and pollution discharge levels, and more.

The salmon, to be sold under the SweetSpring label, have also been shown to contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, placing the salmon on Seafood Watch's newly created Super Green List, which denotes that the fish is good for human health without causing harm to the ocean. To appear on the Super Green List, the salmon must provide the daily minimum of omega-3s (at least 250 milligrams per day) based on 28 grams of fish, and have PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) levels under 11 parts per billion (ppb). AquaSeed came in at 335 milligrams per day of omega-3s and had a PCB level of 10.4 ppb.

"This is the first farmed salmon we've ever talked about as a good source [for food, since the program's inception in 1999]," said Geoffrey Shester, senior science manager for Seafood Watch. "This is extremely exciting. It's not an experimental science project. It is mature to the point where there is real potential to scale it up."

The farming method

The AquaSeed Pacific coho salmon are raised in a freshwater, closed containment system, which is not how salmon are conventionally farmed. Salmon in the wild live primarily in saltwater but swim to freshwater every year to spawn. Traditionally raised farm salmon are grown in open-net ocean pens. This has led to problems such as nonnative species escaping into the wild and pollution as well as sea lice infestation and disease, because there is no barrier between captive salmon and the wild version in surrounding waters. Plus, traditionally raised farmed salmon require as much as five pounds (2.3 kilograms) of meal made from smaller fish caught in the wild for every pound (half kilogram) of salmon meat, a level that is considered unsustainable by environmental groups.

AquaSeed's salmon are grown in land-based, freshwater tanks ranging in size from 60 centimeters to 15 meters wide depending on the salmon's developmental stage. Containment tanks prevent escapes and problems with sea lice infestation that have plagued open-net ocean pen operations. Also, a high-end salmon feed and selective breeding has helped minimize fishmeal use, reducing the ratio of pounds of wild feed fish to produce pounds of farmed fish to 1.1 to one—a number AquaSeed owner Per Heggelund says he expects to whittle further.

"What's interesting about this is this is they've taken salmon back millions of years evolutionarily, to the point where they're freshwater again," Shester says.

Now on their 17th generation of pedigree breeding, the egg-to-plate operation is in the process of providing the salmon with a DNA fingerprint to help thwart any unauthorized breeding. AquaSeed's core business is selling "eyed" salmon eggs (eggs that have developed to the point that their eyes are visible) under the Domsea label to salmon farms in Japan, China and other countries. They've also been working to conserve endangered wild Pacific salmon stocks by maintaining an isolation and breeding facility operation, protecting 40 distinct families of salmon.

"We didn't set out to be in a food fish program in a land-based facility," Heggelund says. "That wasn't our goal. We were more focused on the genetics—the livestock breeding of salmon for the normal traits of survival at certain stages of the life cycle, productive growth and feed conversion, and egg production."

Producing 90,700 kilograms of salmon a year, Heggelund is preparing to rapidly expand production on his 20-hectare farm, and is already working closely with large purchasers such as Compass Group and Whole Foods as well as Mashiko, a Seattle-based sustainable sushi restaurant.

Alligator Breathing

I am somewhat surprised that we only now understand this.  Since I have posted extensively on dawn age reptiles I recognize that there is a great deal we do not understand.  That alligators and I presume crocodiles developed this innovation during the rise of dawn age reptiles, one has to wonder why?

 

We have been addressing the fact that lungs were not overly important to some of these creatures.  Here we are looking at the plesiosaur and the large sea serpent that evolved to operate beneath the thermo cline in the deep ocean.  They collect oxygen through what are plausibly external comb like gills or fleshy surfaces.

 

That made the croc a transition animal between aquatic and fully land capable.  In a way we know little yet about what actually arose in the so called age of amphibians.  The sea serpent could easily be a survivor of that age.

 

It is possible that both air flow strategies arose at the same time for different reason we do not yet understand.

 

Breathtaking: Alligators breathe like birds, underscoring an ancient link--and possibly a survival strategy

 

By Katherine Harmon

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=breathtaking-alligators-breathe-lik-2010-01-14&sc=DD_20100115

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/blog/Image/alligator_bird_breathing.jpg

Avian dinosaurs—aka birds—have a streamlined way ofbreathing. Instead of sending air in and out of tiny sacs in the lungs like some other animals do, their breath flows in a single direction through a series of tubes. A new study reveals that birds are not alone in this adaptation: alligators also rely on this one-way inhale/exhale, suggesting that this form of respiration emerged a lot earlier in evolutionary time than had been previously thought.

These findings, published online January 14 in Science, indicate that this method of breathing likely emerged more than 246 million years ago, during the Triassic period, before the lineage that gave rise to alligators and birds split—rather than in later bird relatives.

"Our data provide evidence that unidirectional flow predates the origins of pterosaurs, dinosaurs and birds and evolved in the common ancestor of the crocodilian and bird lineages," Collen Farmer, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and principal researcher, said in a prepared statement. (The precise common ancestor of birds and crocodilians, an archosaur, remains unknown, but Farmer speculates that it might have been "a small, relatively agile, insect-eating animal.")

Today, having this unidirectional airflow helps birds soar to heights that Farmer said would "render mammals comatose." But could this little breathing trick have helped both the bird's flightless ancestors and the ancient crocodilians outlast others? 

"The real importance of this air-flow discovery in gators is it may explain the turnover in faunabetween the Permian and the Triassic," said Farmer. 

"Many archosaurs, such as pterosaurs, apparently were capable of sustaining vigorous exercise" despite a relatively oxygen-poor atmosphere, Farmer said. At that point in time, the planet was hot and dry, containing about 12 percent oxygen (compared to current levels of 21 percent) in the atmosphere, and a unidirectional flow might have meant better oxygen-intake efficiency in this harsher environment. "Lung design may have played a key role in this capacity because the lung is the first step in the cascade of oxygen from the atmosphere to the animal's tissues." 

The researchers were tipped off to this deep link by some anatomical similarities among bird and alligator lungs. Living members of the Crocodilia order, which includes today's crocs and gators, have long been a useful reference for evolutionary study because they have changed little in the millions of years they've been around. To confirm the respiration suspicions, Farmer and her colleague Kent Sanders, of the University of Utah Health Sciences Center, examined air flow through the lungs of live (though sedated) and dead (donated) alligators. They also removed some lungs and filled them with saline that contained small fluorescent beads to better understand how the fluid would move inside the lungs. Examining the fluid flow through all of these lungs, Farmer and Sanders concluded that substances were moving "in a strikingly bird-like pattern." 

Previous research has suggested that dinosaurs breathed like birds, but these new findings seem to indicate that even before the dinos came along, the lungs of early archosaurs weren't waiting to exhale.