New Laid Drumlins

If I have bone to pick here is the assumption that the layering represents something slow acting.  It makes way more sense for a summer’s melt to surge after every rainfall as gathered rainwater fills a channel flushing sediments into the drop zones first fast and then very slowly.  The sediment is constantly replaced by the continuous melting of the ice.

 

Thus a drumlin would form close to the retreating edge and be heavily layered.  As the ice rotted away the channels would open up eliminating further deposition and limiting erosion.

 

The layering is actually confirmation of their swift emergence and actual history.

 

Rain fall gathering on a glacier escapes down sinkholes and finds its way to surface material and then burrows its way out forming a river like channel.  It is quite possible that a drumlin is simply the bottom of such a vertical channel.

 

New-laid drumlins

 

http://environmentalresearchweb.org/blog/2011/01/new-laid-drumlins.html

You can find some surprising things at the bed of the glacier. Normally it is inaccessible to direct observation, but these days most glaciers are retreating. If you don’t mind waiting a bit — and glacial geomorphologists don’t really have the option — then keeping a close eye on what is emerging can be very informative.

In a paper published recently in Geology, Mark Johnson and co-authors present another surprise: nice fresh drumlins. Múlajökull is an outlet glacier, draining one of the ice caps in Iceland. Like almost every other glacier, it has been retreating. Like only a small proportion of other glaciers, it is a surging glacier — which is going to set the cat among the pigeons when we have had time to think it over and decide whether the surging is relevant. For the retreat of Múlajökull has exposed a field of drumlins.

Johnson and his co-authors were able to show that the drumlins consist of multiple layers of till, sediment carried by the glacier and deposited by a mixture of lodgement — expulsion from the moving ice — and deformation of the sediment over which the ice was flowing. The evidence suggests that each of the till layers represents a surge of the glacier. What is more, at least one of the boundaries between till layers is an erosion surface. That is, the lower layer has been truncated before the upper layer was draped over it.

This is yet another confirmation that the old question about drumlins, “Are they formed by erosion or by deposition?”, was the wrong question to ask. The answer is “Sometimes one and sometimes the other, and often (as at Múlajökull) a bit of both, with some deformation of what was there already mixed in”.

The resemblance of drumlin fields to baskets of eggs has been remarked on before. Lowland Britain is covered with them — tens of thousands of eggs. What is most interesting about the Múlajökull drumlins is that they are new-laid eggs, and the hens are still busy in the coop.

Nobody believes that the drumlins we see today in places like Great Britain and central North America have changed much since the retreating ice margins exposed them to view thousands of years ago. All the same, drumlins that are henhouse-fresh exert a powerful pull on the geomorphological and geological imagination. This is because of actualism, the ingrained principle that the present is the key to understanding the past. The likelihood is that there are lots more drumlins still forming behind the present-day retreating margin of Múlajökull, and as the authors point out we know as yet of no other drumlins that are in process of formation.

One thing that bothers me about the Múlajökull drumlins is that I have trouble seeing the multiple till layers in the photograph that is supposed to illustrate them. But among the reasons why I am not a sedimentologist is that dirt is not very photogenic, and I am prepared to go along with the authors’ interpretation of what they saw in the field. Let us take it that these drumlins are indeed layered, and let us go one step further and accept their evidence that the layers have probably formed during the successive surges of the glacier. (They come along every 15 to 20 years, short-lived advances of a couple of hundred metres, punctuating a retreat that has been going on for about 200 years.)

Does this mean that there is something special about drumlins that are shaped by surging glaciers? Surging glaciers are sufficiently uncommon, and drumlins sufficiently widespread, that it is not likely that surging behaviour is a necessity for drumlinization. It is, however, interesting, and maybe significant, that the deposition probably accompanies the surges and not the longer intervals of retreat, during which there was either erosion or at least non-deposition.

Is there, instead, significance in one or both of two observations made in the Johnson paper: that the drumlins appear to have formed very close to the ice margin, within a kilometre; and that they appear to have formed beneath crevasses that run parallel to the flow direction of the ice? The authors offer only a sketch of an argument for why these associations might be a source of insight. But drumlins have been a puzzle for more than a hundred years. More facts can only help, even if all they do is to make us confused in a deeper and richer way — but especially if they are new-laid facts.

Mortgage Swindle Thoughts

I do not know what more to say about the mortgage collapse, but this item names names and ends the fiction of Democrat innocence or even Republican tardiness.  I understood the danger itself in 1998 and watched it all then unfold without much grasp of the details.  Many others have the necessary depth to have done the same and they certainly present among the elected republicans.

In the end, a few hundred men and women will have to be tried for treason to set the system right.  That is what actually took place.

And understand something else.  The real victims are the poor and lower middle class who lost their dead end jobs and loan sharked houses.  The rest are diminished but survived well enough.

This was a financial swindle that used the vulnerable to loot the financial system itself.  It would have been better and cheaper to simply have written them all a one time check for the sum of $50,000.  Think about that.  Instead all that money is now hiding somewhere else mostly offshore.

No wonder the Russians wonder if we have gone mad.

Investigate This!

Posted by Ann Coulter on Jan 6th, 2011 and filed under Daily Mailer, FrontPage.

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/01/06/investigate-this/

The Republicans are back in charge in the House of Representatives this week, and not a moment too soon!

Forget “stimulus” bills and “shovel-ready” bailouts (for public school teachers, who need shovels for what they’re teaching), the current financial crisis, which is the second Great Depression, was created slowly and methodically by Democrat hacks running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past 18 years.

As even Obama’s treasury secretary admitted in congressional hearings, “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.” And if it’s something Tim Geithner noticed, it’s probably something that’s fairly obvious.

Goo-goo liberals with federal titles pressured banks into making absurd loans to high-risk borrowers — demanding, for example, that the banks accept unemployment benefits as collateral. Then Fannie repackaged the bad loans as “prime mortgages” and sold them to banks, thus poisoning the entire financial market with hidden bad loans.

Believe it or not, the loans went belly up, banks went under, and the Democrats used taxpayer money to bail out their friends on Wall Street.

So far, Fannie and Freddie’s default on loans that should never have been made has cost the taxpayer tens of billions of dollars. Some estimates say the final cost to the taxpayer will be more than $1 trillion. To put that number in perspective, for a trillion dollars, President Obama could pass another stupid, useless stimulus package that doesn’t create a single real job.

Obama’s own Federal Housing Finance Agency reported recently that by 2014, Freddie and Fannie will cost taxpayers between $221 billion to $363 billion.

Over and over again, Republicans tried to rein in the politically correct policies being foisted on mortgage lenders by Fannie Mae, only to be met by a Praetorian Guard of Democrats howling that Republicans hated the poor.

In 2003, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee wrote a bill to tighten the lending regulation of Fannie and Freddie. Every single Democrat on the committee voted against it.

In the House, Barney Frank angrily proclaimed that Fannie Mae was “just fine.”

Rep. William Clay, D-Mo., accused Republicans of going on a “witch hunt” against Fannie Mae and attempting a “political lynching of Franklin Raines” (which, in a game of “bad metaphor Scrabble” would have been a double word score).

Fannie was pressuring banks to write mortgages with no money down and no proof of income. What could go wrong?

In 2004, Bush’s White House Chief Economist Gregory Mankiw warned that Fannie was creating “systemic risk for our financial system.” In response, Barney Frank went to a champagne brunch with his partner “just because.”

Democrats saw nothing of concern in the Fannie debacle. Bad mortgages don’t contain sodium, do they? They don’t engage in “hate speech.” And they don’t emit carbon dioxide. There was nothing to catch a Democrat’s eye.

In 2005, when the housing bubble burst, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced a bill allowing Fannie Mae to buy up even more schlock mortgages, apparently reasoning that if owning some toxic mortgages is bad, owning lots of them must be better!

He accused Republican opponents of his suicidal bill of being against affordable housing. (And that is a specific example of how liberals love the poor so much, they promoted policies to create millions more of them.)

As late as 2008, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who had received more than $133,000 in political contributions from Fannie Mae, called Fannie “fundamentally strong” and “in good shape” — which is the kind of thing the Politburo used to say about Yuri Andropov right after he died.

(Amazingly, Dodd was only the second most embarrassing Democrat to run for president in 2008, but only because John Edwards was also running that year.)

As the titanic losses were racking up, Fannie Mae’s operators, Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick, disguised the catastrophe by orchestrating a $5 billion accounting fraud — all the while continuing to pressure banks to make absurd, politically correct loans and denouncing Republicans as enemies of the poor.

In Gorelick’s defense, at least when she was wrecking the economy, she wasn’t able to wreck national security by building any more walls between the FBI and the CIA.

Have you ever noticed that whenever there’s a major calamity in this country, the name “Jamie Gorelick” always pops up? I think I’ll pull some articles about the Great Chicago Fire from Nexis to see if there was a “Gorelick” living on Catherine O’Leary’s block.

As Peter Schweizer points out in his magnificent book “Architects of Ruin,” which everyone should read, Enron’s accounting fraud was a paltry $567 million — and it didn’t bring down the entire financial system. Those involved in the Enron manipulations went to prison. Raines and Gorelick not only didn’t go to jail, they walked away with multimillion-dollar payouts, courtesy of the taxpayer.

(Here’s more fascinating Jamie Gorelick trivia: That giant wall she built between the FBI and the CIA, making 9/11 possible? It was financed with a risky loan from Fannie Mae.)

Under the Democrats’ 2010 “Financial Reform” bill (written by Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Goldman Sachs), Raines keeps his $90 million, Jamie Gorelick keeps her $26.4 million, and Goldman keeps its $12 billion from the AIG bailout.

Let’s get it back. Twelve billion, one hundred and sixteen point four million dollars might not sound like a lot to you, but it starts to add up.

Context Search Engine Readies Launch

This piece is from the web site mounted by the developers.  The principal is a person I have known for thirty years.  The next phase for this product is to get it up on an open site were you and I can learn to play with it.

We can treat the present class of search engines as first generation systems.  There were earlier badly limited systems before the advent of Google but google was the first that actually was seriously useful.  That was about fifteen years ago.

As an aside, the advent of google immediately made me aware of the need to create an online presence to use the new internet email systems and to locate myself uniquely.  I played around with various spelling variations of my name and came up with several prospective versions.  I discovered on googling Arclein that the only hit was a seventeenth century monk.  That was perfect for my needs.  Today google gave me over 50,000 hits, effectively still mostly related to my blog and myself.

This is a working second generation search engine and overcomes the principal difficulty with google and similar applications.  It appears able to sort out a context driven subset from the internet universe and is in the process is able to tackle complex queries.  Google is great at short simple queries but retards quickly as complexity rises.

Hopefully we will see this in launch mode rather soon.

The Correlation Search Engine

Frequently Asked Questions

    http://www.correlationconcepts.com/

Who are you people? How big are you? Where are you located? What is the company’s history?

  

Correlation Concepts is a virtual company - the Florida, USA-based research, development and sales services arm of Make Sence, Inc., which has core personnel based both in the US and internationally.  Although top level research, product architecture and sales strategy is executed only by key employees, we work with independent contractors and other corporations that provide us with all other required professional services.

While research in the technology has been on-going for more than 15 years, the initial software development was started almost 10 years ago, and active commercialization of the technology began in 2002.

 

What is a Correlation? What are N-Dimensional Queries? Is this just a different type of Search with new algorithms?

N-Dimensional Search supports those queries which are more complex and less obvious - queries that are closer to "real life human questions". For example, compare a typical search query, “pizza, Omaha” to an NDimensional Search Query: "Order 1234", "product shortages", "shipping point", "manufacturing location".

Correlation Technology and the Correlation Search Engine (CSE) utilize “correlations” which are massive networks of associated ”knowledge fragments” to “connect the dots” and establish relationships between terms, phrases, concepts or topics.  The CSE – unlike any other search engine - works by analyzing the networks of knowledge fragments to identify the documents that made the most valuable contributions to the network – because those are the documents most relevant to the query. The CSE – unlike other search engines – does not use any similarity metric, link analysis, popularity (e.g.,” everything celebrity”), or binary logic. The CSE – unlike other search engines – delivers results that mirror the asymmetry that exists in real world data.  When the CSE connects the dots, the results make intuitive sense: enter  "green tea", "life quality", "metastasize" and the CSE produces results relating to cancer; enter  "cash", "terrorist", "charities" and the CSE  produces results relating to money-laundering.

Is the CSE a Semantic Web solution?

  

No.  Rather than trying to translate human expressions  into sterile constructs to provide improved machine comprehension, the CSE extracts “knowledge fragments”  from unstructured human expression and seeks to use the machine to deliver an automated approximation of intuitive  human comprehension. Can I test the Correlation Search Engine against the open Internet?

Yes, but we are limiting tests to several "slices" of the Internet that we have pre-loaded on to our systems. Is the CSE intended for general consumer use or is the CSE an Enterprise solution?

 Both. We will be launching an advertising-based Internet Search Engine to provide consumer access to N-Dimensional Search .Our research shows that N-Dimensional Queries equate to 15-16% of all Search Engine queries - queries which are often unfulfilled and abandoned today.  Metrics indicate that these queries would be among the most highly valued queries from an advertising standpoint, so we anticipate both significant consumer surplus as well as active advertiser participation.   The Enterprise model of the CSE will support N-Dimensional Search mining knowledge fragments from corporate digital assets. The Enterprise CSE will also be adapted for use as a KCE (Knowledge Correlation Engine) by incorporating a specialization layer to exploit specific vertical market needs (e.g., SOX, ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING, RISK MANAGEMENT, etc.).

Are you selling the Correlation Search Engine directly or through distributors?

 "Presently we are commercializing the platform through domains being spun out. In some cases a domain can use the platform on an "as is" basis. In other cases, the highest and best implementation would require an extension and specialization layer to drive results.

Anyone wishing to explore the uses of the platform for any particular 
domain is encouraged to contact us directly"

How many customers do you have? Who are your partners?  Is the CSE software ready now?  

We are preparing for the first general release of the CSE Enterprise Edition within the next six weeks. 

Beyond direct entry as an N-Dimensional Search Engine provider, we are working with specific leaders in specialized Vertical Markets such as SOX, AML, Risk Management, etc.

  

Who can I talk to about Correlation Technology?

Carl Wimmer and Mark Bobick from Correlation Concepts are available to answer all your questions.  Call Carl Wimmer at 702 767-7001 and Mark Bobick at 702 882-5664.

Contact: Mark Bobick m.bobick@correlationconcepts.com          Copyright 2008 Make Sence Florida, Inc.  All Rights Reserved

Solar Eclipse in Space

Video: Solar Eclipse Seen From Space

By Danielle Venton January 7, 2011    

     

The Earth-orbiting satellite Hinode caught this stunning video of the annular solar eclipse Jan. 4.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/solar-eclipse-from-space/

An annular eclipse occurs when the moon is slightly farther from Earth than usual and appears slightly smaller. When it moves between the Earth and sun, it covers the center of the sun, leaving a bright, fiery ring, or annulus, at the edge.

Hinode, a Japanese mission, studies the sun’s magnetic fields and surface eruptions. The satellite carries three NASA-developed telescopes that capture different types of light:

·                    The optical telescope sees visible light.

·                    The X-ray telescope, which took the video above, can see deep inside the corona.

·                    The ultraviolet-light telescope reveals the deep, high-temperature processes that heat the sun’s corona.

This will be a good year for eclipse fans. With four partial-solar and two total-lunar eclipses upcoming, watch for more sun shots.

Gifford's Shooter and Mental Illness

I think that we can get one thing straight.  This individual was seriously mentally challenged and by any conceivable standard needed custodial care.  If it was been managed by drugs, then custodial care was even more indicated as those drugs are difficult to sustain and going off them is the norm from reports that I have noted.

There is really no grey area with this chap.  He was nuts long before he got his hands on a gun and unloaded it into a crowd around Gifford.  Had Gifford not been there, would we have even heard of this?

This type of mental instability is completely identifiable, unlike recent examples of teenage depression responses that are just as dangerous.  It is inexcusable to provide close monitoring and necessary intervention.

  The rules are simple.  On your meds, you check in daily and off your meds, you join a contemplation retreat to enjoy a drug clear mind.  This allows maximum freedom of action for an afflicted person.  The real miracle is that we can manage it with meds at all.

This is not too great a price to pay in order to both protect society and manage the human resource in a positive manner.

If we are fortunate, some practical good may come out of all this.  In the meantime, my condolences to the affected families caught in this horror.

Giffords shooter shows pattern of psychiatric derangement; no clear political affiliation

Saturday, January 08, 2011

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Learn more:

http://www.naturalnews.com/030953_Gabrielle_Giffords_shooting.html#ixzz1Aase6diB

http://www.naturalnews.com/030953_Gabrielle_Giffords_shooting.html

(NaturalNews) Of all the senseless acts of violence we've seen over the years, today's shooting at a Gabrielle Giffords public event in Tucson really strikes home. I spent time in the company of "Gabby" Giffords and met many members of her staff during her first run for Congress. I saw her as a "balanced" representative (a former Republican turned Democrat who still, for example, supported Second Amendment rights) who I thought could bring some new energy into Washington, which seems to perpetually suffer from "Good 'Old Boys" syndrome.

That she has been violently attacked by an individual who is obviously mentally deranged is shocking and extremely disturbing. Almost as disturbing is how the mainstream media has latched onto this story as a way to demonize anyone who believes in the U.S. Constitution. The shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner, is, by any sensible interpretation, mentally deranged. Yes, he mentioned the Constitution among his various ramblings, but he also listed the Communist Manifestoas being among his favorite books. In addition, he released a YouTube video containing unintelligible ramblings of repeated nonsense phrases, including references to the government taking away "grammar," of having a colorful bird on his shoulder, brainwashing and what he called "conscience dreaming."

The utterly false and irresponsible accusation floating around certain circles on the 'net that Loughner was some sort of extreme right winger who targeted a Democrat is extremely irresponsible and hateful. Giffords was pro Second Amendment and publicly supported the right of the People to keep and bear arms. She's actually a gun owner who urged the U.S. Supreme Court to protect Second Amendment rights. She was also a huge supporter ofa stronger border with Mexico, which has traditionally been one of the key positions of Arizona conservatives. Giffords can't be pigeonholed into a label, you see. Her views are far more complex than "Democrat" vs "Republican." She is certainly no "left-wing liberal," and the attack on her doesn't appear to be politically motivated at all (see below).

A pattern of psychiatric intervention?

What's clear from the shooting is that Loughner was gunning for EVERYBODY, not just Giffords. He unloaded multiple rounds (15 - 20 rounds, according to press reports) on anybody and everybody standing nearby: Children, adults, etc.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? A young white male, disillusioned, confused, mentally deranged... and opening fire on innocent people? That's the pattern we saw in the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, and it turned out that the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were on psychiatric medications.

In fact, numerous public shootings have been carried out by those who are either on psychiatric medications or who have recently stopped taking them (which can be just as dangerous in the short term). Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold talked about how their world had become like a dream, where they couldn't tell the difference between the dream world and the waking world.Those are now virtually the same words as Jared Lee Loughner who, in his various ramblings, talked about "sleepwalking" during the day and "conscience dreaming [sic]" at other times.

While we have no proof yet that psychiatric drugs are involved here, we do see a very suspicious pattern of mental instability that suggests a likely connection. The sleepwalking behaviors Loughner describes are, in fact, common side effects of psychotropic drugs such as Ambien, which is famous for causing people to actually "sleep drive" into town and suddenly awake in the middle of the road, driving their car in their pajamas, with no knowledge of how they got there

(http://www.naturalnews.com/019413.html).

I must stress that we don't yet know whether Loughner was on sleeping medications or psychiatric drugs, but his behavior fits the pattern of someone who was: The lack of touch with reality, the violent and indiscriminate shooting, and the interweaving of the dream world with the real world. These are red flags of someone who is either suffering from a severe nutritional deficiency that affects brain function (vitamin D, for example, is important for preventing schizophrenia) or someone whose brain has been chemically altered through pharmacological intervention.

The phrase "young white male" should scream out the obvious statistical link to ADHD drugs, by the way. NaturalNews is attempting to determine whether Loughner was previously on psychiatric medications.

What is VERY clear at this point is that Loughner was not of the presence of mind to be rationally affiliated with ANY political party: Not on the left, nor the right. His apparent psychosis takes him way out of the realm of rational participation in any particular philosophy. Even his favorite books listed on his Myspace page adhere to no particularly consistent overriding philosophy. He was, however, fascinated with the question of what is real versus what's just an imaginary dream. He was a fan of Alice in Wonderland, for example, as well as George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Don't be fooled by the MSM coverage of this story

Although there is still much more to emerge from this tragic event, it is clear that this is not some simple story about a disgruntled patriot who wanted to kill a Democrat. In fact, Loughner was no patriot at all: He openly talked about burning the American flag.

Rather, this is really a story about mental illness in America, and the roots of this mental illness are undoubtedly partly found in these elements:

• The chemical contamination of our food and water (fluoride, food additives, etc.)
• Widespread nutritional deficiencies that promote mental illness
• The scourge of the psychiatric drug industry and the widespread drugging of teens and children

... and also, quite possibly:

• The "programming" of young males with extremely violent video games which are now also used in the military to desensitize young adults to the violence of killing. Loughner, by the way, was reportedly a military recruit.

As more facts emerge from this story, we will do our best to cover them here on NaturalNews. I am personally angered by these events as well as the mainstream media's outrageously dishonest attempts to twist this story into some sort of "gun nut" angle, which it most definitely is not.

I am also extremely saddened at the loss of life that occurred today, right in Tucson, virtually right next door to where I used to shop for organic produce at the Whole Foods on Oracle (used to be Wild Oats). That was not a "bad" part of town. That whole section of Tucson is actually the safer part of the town. In many ways, it is the "yuppie" part of town where the wealthier folks lived, with their high-end schools. Loughner attended one of those high schools on the northwest side of Tucson, I've been told. He was not part of the far rougher schools on the South side of that city.

My heart goes out to Giffords, her family, and the other victims of this senseless crime. Most especially to the young child who was reportedly shot, and the federal judge who was reportedly killed. Several Giffords staff members were also harmed or killed (we don't have solid details yet). I can tell you that, from my personal experience, the Giffords staff members are very dedicated, hard-working honest people and none of them deserve this kind of treatment. I may not agree with all the political decisions of Giffords (she voted for Obamacare, for example), but neither do I condone any use of violence to settle such disagreements.

But remember, this was not an act of political activism. This was an act of madness carried out by a mentally deranged individual. I do not believe Giffords' political positions had anything to do with it at all. After all, Loughner shot at all the other people in the crowd, too, and he had no way to know their political views either.

Tucson cops, concealed carry firearms and more

There is a report that one individual in the crowd was carrying a concealed firearm and managed to bring it to bear in an effort to stop Loughner from committing further violence. This may have been a lifesaving action. Many people in Arizona carry concealed firearms legally, acting as a sort of "citizens response team" to prevent such violence from taking place. In fact, the Tucson police department, for which I helped raise thousands of dollars as part of my non-profit volunteerism there, is desperately short on cash and actually recruits citizens to help law enforcement do their jobs more effectively there.

I will write more about the dynamics of this, and the Tucson police force, in follow-up articles right here on NaturalNews. As someone who used to attend law enforcement meetings in Tucson, I know many of the high-ranking police officials on a personal basis, and I know them to be some of the most dedicated local law enforcement professionals I've ever met. Watch NaturalNews for more follow-up reports as we attempt to dig into this story and find out what could have possibly led to such an act of senseless violence.

We will also take part in any fundraising efforts that get organized to help the victims of this shooting. But the most important thing we can do right now is try to get to the bottom of what's behind this shooting and then take action to prevent such a terrible act of violence from occurring again.

Learn more:

http://www.naturalnews.com/030953_Gabrielle_Giffords_shooting.html#ixzz1AasR0UEl

7 Billion this Year

Without question we are conducting a massive experiment in population dynamics and it will be interesting to observe how it all plays out over the next two generations.  After that, we will have a lot of interesting answers to today’s questions.

I now think that Earth’s population can readily reach thirty billion and with a number of significant improvements in agricultural potential we have already discussed, it could go up to one hundred billion, while sustaining a vibrant wild.

For now we can take seven billion.

2011: The year we’ll hit 7 billion 

BY Lisa Hymas

31 DEC 2010

http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-01-year-we-hit-7-billion-population

Sometime in the latter half of this year, the world population will hit a new milestone: 7 billion people. Already? Didn't we just hit 6 billion? Yep, a mere dozen years ago -- and that's probably the last time you heard much about population. It takes a big, round number with lots of zeroes to get MSMattention.

So in 2011, expect to hear the P word a lot more than you did in 2010, and a lot more than you will in 2012. National Geographic is kicking off the action with a cover story and photo essay.

It's projected to take us slightly longer to get to the next big, round number with lots of zeroes -- 14 years instead of 12. While the total number of people on the planet is still growing fast, the nature and speed of that growth has been changing dramatically. This Economist video gives you great visual overview of the trends. (Is it just me or does that graphic look like a packet of birth-control pills?)

Even as we're adding people, we're also dramatically changing the demographic composition of entire societies, and creating different kinds of problems along the way -- like the challenge of aging populationsin many developed countries. Bryan Walsh of Time suggests that immigration could be one solution:

[H]ere's the planet we could have in 2050: an overpopulated, overstressed developing world and an aging, economically stagnant developed world, with inequality even larger than it is today. Is there any way to escape that fate? While development and education will be incredibly important (especially for women -- literacy is one of the best ways to reduce fertility), the answer may end up being immigration. Think about it -- in the future the developed world will lack young workers, and the developing world will have an excess of that resource. Immigration could be a way to balance demographics and economics -- alleviating population pressure in the poorer parts of the world while jump starting aging developed nations. The U.S. already does this -- immigration will providemost of American population growth. It would be a radical solution, given the political resistance to increased immigration in much of the rich world. (If you think it's a hot topic in the U.S., try Japan, which steadfastly resists assimilating foreigners, despite the dire threat posed by an aging population.) But it might be the only way to save our overpopulated planet.

So much juicy stuff to talk about this year.

UPDATE: I had included here a big graphic about population growth, but a reader pointed out that at least some of the info in the graphic was incorrect, so I've removed it. Here instead is a National Geographicvideo that accompanies the magazine's cover story on population:

US Bee Populations in Freefall

This item informs us that we have lost an astounding 96% of the bumble bee population.  The quoted causation is at best rubbish except for the use of pesticides.

We already know that Bayer’s corn seed pesticide is disastrous and implies a particularly damaging pathway for all bees.  Effectively, the pollen collected on and by the bees act as a pesticide collector to produce a cumulative load that eventually concentrates with the queen to kill her.  This is a purely mechanical problem that could never have been predicted and plausibly acts over a wide range of pesticides and has simply never been understood in this way before.

Thus a pesticide naturally safe at low dosages turns into a hive destroying cancer that eventually kills the queen.

In fact the characteristics of a colony collapse syndrome (CCS) conform to the sudden demise of the Queen and its sister larvae (who are all fed pollen).

The populations can recover very quickly and we will still have plenty of refugia out there.

Yet this can only begin with a complete review of all pesticide protocols for any sign of cumulative toxicity in the food provided to queens.

Bees in freefall as study shows sharp US decline

From the Guardian Jan 4, 2011

http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/44696

The abundance of four common species of bumblebee in the US has dropped by 96% in just the past few decades, according to the most comprehensive national census of the insects. Scientists said the alarming decline, which could have devastating implications for the pollination of both wild and farmed plants, was likely to be a result of disease and low genetic diversity in bee populations.

Bumblebees are important pollinators of wild plants and agricultural crops around the world including tomatoes and berries thanks to their large body size, long tongues, and high-frequency buzzing, which helps release pollen from flowers.

Bees in general pollinate some 90% of the world's commercial plants, including most fruits, vegetables and nuts. Coffee, soya beans and cotton are all dependent on pollination by bees to increase yields. It is the start of a food chain that also sustains wild birds and animals.

But the insects, along with other crucial pollinators such as moths and hoverflies, have been in serious decline around the world since the last few decades of the 20th century. It is unclear why, but scientists think it is from a combination of new diseases, changing habitats around cities, and increasing use of pesticides.

Sydney Cameron, an entomologist at the University of Illinois, led a team on a three-year study of the changing distribution, genetic diversity and pathogens in eight species of bumblebees in the US.

By comparing her results with those in museum records of bee populations, she showed that the relative abundance of four of the sampled species (Bombus occidentalis, B. pensylvanicus, B. affinis and B. terricola) had declined by up to 96% and that their geographic ranges had contracted by 23% to 87%, some within just the past two decades.

Cameron's findings reflect similar studies across the world. According to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the UK, three of the 25 British species of bumblebee are already extinct and half of the remainder have shown serious declines, often up to 70%, since around the 1970s. Last year, scientists inaugurated a £10m programme, called the Insect Pollinators Initiative, to look at the reasons behind the devastation in the insect population.

Cameron's team also showed that declining species of bee had higher infection levels of a pathogen called Nosema bombi and lower genetic diversity compared with the four species of bee that were not in decline – B. bifarius, B. vosnesenskii, B. impatiens and B. bimaculatus.

The N. bombi pathogen is commonly found in bumblebees throughout Europe but until now has been largely unstudied in North America. The infection reduces the lifespans of individual bees and also results in smaller colony sizes.

The reduction in genetic diversity seen in the declining bees means that they are less able to fight off any new pathogens or resist pollution or predators. "Higher pathogen prevalence and reduced genetic diversity are, thus, realistic predictors of these alarming patterns of decline in north America, although cause and effect remain uncertain," Cameron wrote today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Insects such as bees, moths and hoverflies pollinate around a third of the crops grown worldwide. If all of the UK's insect pollinators were wiped out, the drop in crop production would cost the UK economy up to £440m a year, equivalent to around 13% of the UK's income from farming.

The collapse in the global bee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon pollination by bees, which means they contribute some £26bn to the global economy.

Other identified causes of bee decline include parasites such as the bloodsucking varroa mite and viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods.

"Pollinator decline has become a worldwide issue, raising increasing concerns over impacts on global food production, stability of pollination services, and disruption of plant-pollinator networks," wrote Cameron. "In accordance with the goals of the United Nations convention on biological diversity to reduce the rate of species loss by 2010, such efforts to elucidate the causes and ecological impacts of bumble bee decline, in co-ordination with informed conservation strategies, will go a long way to mitigating further losses."