12.3.04

Important Notice

To all scientists and journalists writing about wildfire: Incorporating the phrase "burning questions" is no longer considered clever. Please plan accordingly.
Stentor Danielson, 23:35,

Belgium?

Because of my subtitle, I get all kinds of searches looking for something involving "scraper." But "scraper made of the Belgium"? I suppose if Europe was a giant flint core, then knocking off Belgium would leave you with a nice scraper.
Stentor Danielson, 16:48,

Mmm ... Unnatural Mold

A Food Fight Over A Fungus ... What comes out at the end is a matter of perspective — luscious artificial meat patties that taste just like moist chicken, or dangerous vat-grown "vomit-burgers" that are sickening consumers from coast to coast. The product is Quorn, a fungus-based meat substitute that millions of Europeans have eaten for years. It entered the U.S. market in 2002 to rave reviews by consumers, but was quickly met with a dogged anti-Quorn campaign by an influential consumer group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Michael Jacobson, the CSPI's executive director, claims that Quorn, which he derisively terms an "odious" "mold"-based product, makes people ill — and he wants every last nugget expunged from American soil. ... "Quorn is about as far from natural as you can get," Jacobson recently wrote. "There is an abundance of healthful meat alternatives made with things that come from farms, like soybeans, mushrooms, rice …. If you're going to sell a food that comes from a lab, a test tube, or a giant vat, it should at least not make so many people sick."

I'm in no position to judge the scientific evidence about the safety of Quorn, although banning it seems excessive -- why not treat it like any other allergen, like peanuts or milk, that stay on the shelf but are clearly labeled so that affected people can plan their diets accordingly?

What makes me distrust Jacobson is his resort to rhetoric about unnaturalness. Take his comparison between soy-based meat substitutes and Quorn. Soy is grown on a farm, but soy farming is about as unnatural as a farm can get -- huge stretches of monoculture (in the US, often planted with genetically modified plants, or at least high-tech hybrids) tilled and harvested with huge machines and treated with industrial fertilizers and pesticides. But even if you buy organic soy meat, Gardenburgers don't grow themselves. After harvest, the soybeans have to be taken to a lab where they're extensively processed to make the meatlike products that end up on store shelves. There's nothing in the degree of processing involved that would favor soy over Quorn.

The "mold" issue is a little less objectionable, as "mold" connotes "possible allergen" better than "mushroom" (the company's original description). "Mold" may be a bit unfairly loaded, though -- after all, penicilin and blue cheese are molds, too.

The problem is that "unnatural" and "mold," while rhetorically suggestive, don't speak directly to the question at issue: do people actually get sick from eating Quorn? I'd happily eat the moldiest, most unnatural thing if direct investiagtion of its health qualities had vindicated it. Then again, if you feel that powerful food companies and uncaring bureaucracies are arrayed against you, perhaps you have to fight dirty in order to get public opinion to back you up. Would the L.A. Times have even written this article if Jacobson had spoken in a more scientific manner?
Stentor Danielson, 11:45,

Most Evil Mollusk Ever

Study: Zebra Mussels Promote Algae Growth A new study has found that the presence of zebra mussels in inland lakes promotes the growth of a blue-green algae that produces a toxin harmful to people and animals. The study, conducted by researchers from Michigan State University's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, found that lakes infested with zebra mussels have, on average, levels of a blue-green algae called Microcystis three times higher than lakes without the mussels. The infested lakes also have about twice the level of microcystins — poisons produced by the algae.

Stentor Danielson, 01:34,

10.3.04

Activist Administrators

... is the title of my latest OSP post. Sometimes I have as much fun creating the graphics that go with them than writing the articles. It's a somewhat different medium than cartooning, since I can't use words, and I have to splice them together out of photos (which cuts out surreal things like humanoid donkeys and elephants).
Stentor Danielson, 12:47,

9.3.04

Fire And Newcomers

Fireproofing Rules To Stem Wildfire Threats ... In addition, 30,000 Deschutes County [Oregon] property owners will be notified in April that their land has been classified as forestland-urban interface. The 1997 law can make residents liable for $100,000 in firefighting costs if they fail to trim flammable grass, brush and trees. State foresters estimate forestland-urban interface — the woodsy areas on the outskirts of towns — cover 3.5 million acres and contain 250,000 homes. Many are occupied by residents new to Oregon or rural living who do not understand the natural role of fire in the forests and who fail to take common-sense precautions. Under Oregon’s new fireproofing rules, homeowners will have two years to voluntarily certify that they have created a 30-foot firebreak around their homes by removing dead vegetation, trimming limbs that could carry fire onto the roof and mowing dry grass. Oregon’s new rules follow the lead of California, which in 1982 began classifying fire hazard zones and in 1991 began requiring fuel breaks, greenbelts, private water sources and brush-free driveways accessible to emergency vehicles.

The newness of so many residents of interface areas seems like it may necessitate a greater degree of legal enforcement of fire policy. Recent arrivals haven't been around long enough to be closely connected to either the local environment or the local community. Stephen Pyne has frequently mentioned the connection to environment issue -- people who work on the land and know it well will have much better knowledge of how the local environment works and what its demands are than will people who just came for the scenery. But he tends to overlook the issue of connection to the community. Non-governmental solutions would have to work through cultural mechanisms -- the development of a consensus among locals as to what sort of fire management they want, the absorption of a cultural lifeworld that motivates people to take action and to see the landscape through the lens of good fire policy, and the use of social pressures to generate compliance. But all those mechanisms are weakened when your community is made up of people who haven't imbibed the local culture long enough, particularly if (as is the case with so many suburban developments) the town lacks a vibrant downtown or other elements that would encourage the development of social interaction. The only solution, then, is to embed fire policy in the legal structure (at a state level, in order to be ready to go with each new village) and enforce it individually against residents.
Stentor Danielson, 19:57,

Polluting Pennsylvania

Rendell Promotes Green-Space Initiative To finance the [open space conservation] initiative, [Pennsylvania Governor Ed] Rendell is proposing an $800 million bond issue that would have to be approved by voters. He said the bonds would be repaid through fees levied on waste disposal and on chemicals that are released into the state's air and water. ... The new fees include a surcharge of $5 a ton on trash dumped in the state's landfills, half of which comes from out of state, and a toxic-emissions fee of 15 cents a pound up to a maximum of $5 million a year for each business. Businesses generating less than 10,000 pounds a year would be exempt. Funds generated from the toxic-emissions fee would be used to replenish a program started under the late Gov. Robert P. Casey, the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Fund, which is now nearly out of money. "Make people who pollute the environment pay the costs of cleaning it up," Rendell said. ... "One man's fees are another man's taxes," said State Sen. Robert J. Thompson (R., Chester County), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "No matter how you cut it, it is an increased cost to somebody." Thompson said the question he and his colleagues were looking at was how the programs could be funded without adding undue burdens on businesses or taxpayers.

That's funny, it sounds to me like the proposed fees/taxes are quite likely to decrease costs to businesses and taxpayers. Monetary costs are easy to point to. But pollution -- both the stuff whose emission is being taxed and the stuff that would be cleaned up with the resulting revenues -- impose costs on the businesses and citizens exposed to it. If taxing emissions burdens industry, then perhaps they'll have an incentive to cut down.
Stentor Danielson, 19:20,

Cartoon Creativity

Maybe this is why I haven't made it big with my cartoons -- when I draw cartoons, I try to make them have a point or illustrate some sort of argument. But it seems that only around 50% of actual professional cartoons do that. If that's the price I'd have to pay, it's not worth it. I don't think I could look at myself in the mirror if I drew yet another cartoon showing Martha Stewart decorating her jail cell.
Stentor Danielson, 01:43,

Remedial Statistics For The Bush Administration

I just came across this mention of another case of the EPA ignoring an executive order that eerily parallels the logic used to set aside the environmental justice order. Their philosophy is that as long as the mean looks good, it doesn't matter if the variance puts some people in really bad shape.

In late January, Inside EPA reporter Liz Heron obtained EPA documents through the Freedom of Information Act revealing that the agency failed to comply with two executive orders requiring it to study how the administration's mercury plan would affect children, minorities, and low-income populations. "What they said to me was that they were trying to protect the entire population, so it wasn't necessary to look at the effects on specific population subsets," said Heron. "Their logic is that if their end goal will benefit everybody, it will help susceptible populations as well."

Come to think of it, this is more or less the logic of Bush's argument about the economy -- as long as GDP is growing, there's more total wealth around, so on average everyone is better off. It's irrelevant from his point of view that lots of people are out of a job and so aren't actually getting any of that extra wealth, which is concentrating in a few hands.
Stentor Danielson, 01:20,

7.3.04

Hey Big Spender

If you want to know how bad our current Congress's financial irresponsibility is, consider this: It has provoked Dave Barry into writing a column that, while referencing sex with squid, is for the most part overtly political.
Stentor Danielson, 16:58,

Same-Sex Wildfire

I have a Google News Alert set up to notify me of stories about wildfire. But since Google lacks reading comprehension, I wind up getting emailed about stories that use the word "wildfire" as a metaphor as well. The latest round of such stories to hit my inbox relate to comments by conservative leaders such as Bill Frist comparing same-sex marriage to wildfire. My initial reaction was "sounds good to me," akin to Morat's comparision of same-sex marriage to an avalanche that can't be stopped.

But being a fire ecologist, I thought it might be interesting to dig into the metaphor a bit deeper. I think the conservative use of the wildfire idea draws on outdated ideas of what wildfire means, and that looking at same-sex marriage through the lens of fire ecology shows how the same-sex marriage* wildfire is good for our society.

The associations that Frist wants to evoke are that wildfire is destructive, out of control, and demanding of almost paramilitary measures to keep it down. Wildfire is started either by a cruel vagary of nature (lightning) or a malicious person, and comes to bring woe to all the innocent homeowners and cute forest animals. It seems lively and exciting, but leaves lifeless desolation in its wake. This parallels the idea that same-sex marriage is ignited by either a cruel vagary of genetics, or by wilful indulgence in sin. It brings woe to all the innocent heterosexual marriages by threatening their sanctity. And it seems exciting (witness the flamboyance of stereotypical gay culture, and the appeal -- irresistable to the straightest of us, by some accounts -- of the idea that sex should be fun), but leaves behind it the heartbreak of meaningless irresponsible sex and the destruction of procreation and child-rearing. Wildfire in its most fearsome aspect laughs at barriers placed in its way -- crown fires leaping the widest firebreaks, hot winds lofting firebrands over firefighters' heads. This parallels the fear of a slippery slope, on which gay marriage propels us past legal barriers like defense of marriage acts as well as past any philosophical or moral standards that could justify condemning pedophilia or "man-on-dog." Under the old view of wildfire, massive paramilitary measures were necessary to keep things under control -- what Stephen Pyne calls the "Cold War on fire," using high-tech planes, bulldozers, and chemicals and loads of footsoldier manpower to quench any stirrings of flame. Similarly, conservatives feel same-sex marriage calls for drastic measures, from amending the constitution to blocking schools from hinting to kids that homosexuality may exist or be legitimate to "ex-gay" reeducation programs.

So much for the Smokey the Bear/Bambi vision of wildfire. What have fire ecologists learned over the last quarter century? First: wildfire is inevitable. Suppression worked at first, but costs spiraled out of control and wildfires came back with a vengeance. The structure of wildland fuels makes it necessary. Similarly, same-sex households will not go away, both because the causes (be they genetic or environmental) of homosexual desire will not go away and because the structure of a liberal democratic society ensures that people will have a rationale and an ability to put the question on the table again and again.

Second: fire is good for the environment. The scorching heat of a fire releases seeds from cones. The treeless postfire landscape is a landscape of opportunity for vigorous new growth. Ash is nature's fertilizer. Similarly, same-sex marriage is, in the long run, good for society. It helps homosexual people, obviously, releasing them from the bonds of homophobic institutions. It's good for straight people like myself because it affirms and activates our society's commitment to equality and liberty.

Third: fire is good because it is disruptive. An undisturbed climax forest may not be an ideal realization of a landscape's biological potential -- rather, it may be an ecosystem in a rut, limping along under its own dead weight. The same can happen to societies, dragged down by an encrustation of tradition. Further, fire's disruption has a random element, leaving a mosaic of landscapes with different patterns of growth, fostering a healthy biodiversity. Same-sex marriage does the same in pointing to a society that doesn't put all its eggs in one family structure basket.

Fourth: fire forces us to make hard choices. Fire management is a prime example of the way not choosing is itself a choice. Homeowners, municipal planners, and foresters have to decide what kind of tradeoffs they're willing to make in managing the environment. You can't expect to write fire out of the landscape -- rather, you have to learn to live with it (and it with you -- our ecosystems evolved in the presence of anthropogenic fire). Similarly, the push for same-sex marriage forces us to make choices about how we structure society, how we deal with sexuality and family. Ignoring homosexuality or passing the buck to tradition don't cut it in a situation that demands justification and taking responsibility for choices.

*I think most of what I'm saying can be applied to the gay rights movement in general.
Stentor Danielson, 16:10,