Casaubon's Book

Poultry is a Feminist Issue?

Category: Economy • women • women's work

First of all, may I ask which New York Times editor was responsible for permitting the coinage "femivore" to pass into language. Talk about illiterate (linguistically a "femivore" would be someone who ate women) and uneuphonious - yes, yes, I get that you want to get a Michael Pollan reference in there somehow, but come on... any writer worth her salt could do better than that.

Now to the meat of the thing - the essay, which profiles Shannon Hayes's book _Radical Homemakers_ attempts to argue that focusing on food has given women a new set of choices.

Hayes pointed out that the original "problem that had no name" was as much spiritual as economic: a malaise that overtook middle-class housewives trapped in a life of schlepping and shopping. A generation and many lawsuits later, some women found meaning and power through paid employment. Others merely found a new source of alienation. What to do? The wages of housewifery had not changed -- an increased risk of depression, a niggling purposelessness, economic dependence on your husband -- only now, bearing them was considered a "choice": if you felt stuck, it was your own fault. What's more, though today's soccer moms may argue, quite rightly, that caretaking is undervalued in a society that measures success by a paycheck, their role is made possible by the size of their husband's. In that way, they've been more of a pendulum swing than true game changers.

Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food -- who these days can't wax poetic about compost? -- it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?

You'd think I'd love this, wouldn't you ;-)? And in some ways I do, but I'm troubled by it too. It may well be that Peggy Orenstein's (the Times article's author) "friends with coops" are taking the first steps in a radical disconnect from their culture of affluence, but it is more likely that they are getting chickens so that their lucky kids won't have to eat factory farmed eggs. This, in and of itself is not totally trivial - every contribution to reducing the number of CAFOs in this country is a good one - but without larger context, it isn't an answer to the problem that women have rotten choices. It isn't a third way if it is only viable for affluent women. Nor is it a third way unless it represents the accomplishment of something meaningful - if it establishes the possibility that others could have the same set of choices.

Orenstein uses the word "precious" here - and I think it may be in her community. Contrast that, however, with the women that Hayes is writing about in her book (full disclosure, Hayes once contacted me about interviewing me for the book, but from one thing and another it never happened) - most of them with household incomes under 40,000 dollars, most of them engaged collectively (with extended family or partners) in a project where everyone, male and female, does a lot of domestic labor. Hayes' work is about rejecting consumer culture and the assumptions about the "housewifization" of economic activity that make invisible domestic labor, that translate into valuelessness. She focuses on women in _Radical Homemakers_ but finds that the most successful households are the ones that have the highest degree of egalitarianism - that is, what's radical about it is that everyone involved is working to expand the household informal economy and limit the control exercised by the formal economy. All of this may be true of the women Orenstein knows - but there's no indication of it in the article.

I have often argued that the version of American feminism that largely succeeded - the one in which freedom was framed in the terms money and the right to work 60 hours a week for someone who times your bathroom breaks - succeeded because it was so very profitable for industrial capitalism. Besides the enormous pool of new workers, it offered new consumers, and created a large market for households to purchase services once done for free by women.

My argument has never been that women alone should have continued to provide these services for free, but rather that it is no accident that parts of the feminist vision that would have been less profitable, like state subsidized childcare, or a truly egalitarian distribution of domestic work did not succeed. It was far more profitable to send everyone to work and privatize the making of meals, the cutting of lawns, the tending of children - and to shift the labor onto the poorest and often least white folks around. Since only the most affluent of us can afford to pay nannies and house cleaners fairly, the equity that affluent women and men achieve often is built on the backs of poorer people who take on the labor that they escaped.

Housewifization of labor renders the household economy invisible, and things that are invisible can be infinitely exploited. Reclaiming the household economy, then, is a radical act. Making the case for the economic and social value of household labor, and making it the valued territory of both men and women does make a major shift in the culture. Refusing to exploit other people - only using the labor of others when you can pay them fairly is a radical act. Reducing your dependence on the industrial economy, your vulnerability, and having a measure of resilience in the face of economic instability is radical. But it only works if what you are doing isn't precious - if you aren't just making sure your lucky kids have clean food and contact with clean ground, but that others do as well. It only works if what you are doing is not the recreation of a simulacrum of a household economy - rather like Marie Antoinette's farm, where she milked cows on a silver stool - but an actual household economy, where domestic work produces a meaningful part of your household economy. And that requires fundamental shifts in how you view your home, your family, your economic and social culture. Otherwise, it is just precious - and empty.

The chicken coop can be a symbol - it takes a service that has been done exploitatively and destructively, and says "I can do this myself, non-destructively and without exploitation." But it works as a symbol only when you recognize the larger context of the act - the industrial chicken is a legacy of our desire not to know what price is laid on others and on nature to meet our desires, it is a legacy of our sense that the household economy doesn't have value, it is a legacy of our sense that ordinary and everyday things aren't important - it is an enormously powerful symbol if you are aware of what underlies it, and live your life in accordance with what it symbolizes. But if all it is is a coop, a way out of the conversation that begins "Oh, do you work?" well, it just doesn't work.

Sharon

Posted by Sharon Astyk at 9:41 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Want to See Something (ok Two Things) Really Cool?

Category: Book Stuff

First of all, I present to you, the cover for my new book (not yet finished, but it will be really soon) forthcoming this fall. I didn't think it was possible that they could come up with something prettier than the cover for Independence Days (which you can see on the sidebar), but I think they did.

I admit, I'm pretty impressed by it! Plus it fulfills the maxim that all my covers must have food on them, whether the books are about food or not.

Second of all, if you want to see someone's impression of me headlocking a fellow science blogger in a free-for-all, I'm in panel three of this very funny comic:

http://ataraxiatheatre.com/2010/03/12/what-erv-really-stands-for/

Clearly, I need to do more direct battle with my fellow science bloggers - and cultivate a better vocabulary in creative name calling.

Sharon

Posted by Sharon Astyk at 9:16 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

When Cheap Food Isn't Cheap

Category: food

The Miami-Herald is reporting today that food stamp use has more than doubled among Floridians in the last three years:

More than 2.5 million Floridians are on food stamps, up from three years ago where 1.2 million residents received assistance.

DCF Secretary George Sheldon told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Tuesday that Florida's food stamp rolls grew the fastest in the nation since 2007.

Some of this is due to increased efforts on the part of states to expand access, but it is also, I think, a compelling measure of the economic situation. But it is more than that - food stampls, as I've been arguing for many years, are important because as they become more universal (we're already at 1-in-9 Americans using food stamps, next year's numbers will probably be 1-in-8, and many states are at 1-in-6 - and American children are at 1-in-4) food stamps become more important. They shift from a safety net program to a basic food subsidy that serves a larger and larger percentage of Americans who can't afford food. And that should look very strange to all of us.

The case for industrial agriculture has rested heavily on cheap food over the years - the idea that it was worth all the subsidies, the land degradation, the health costs because we all had plenty was a fundamental premise of the move to industrial farming. But if industrial agriculture can't provide affordable food even with its massive subsidies (at this point a large portion of industrially produced food is being subsidized twice - first at the agricultural subsidy level and then at the food stamp level) what is the compelling case for large scale industrial conventional production?

Perhaps the focus should move. Michael Pollan has proposed, for example, that food stamps should pay double when used at farmer's markets. Right now only about 40% of all farmer's markets in the US are set up to take food stamps - making food stamp and WIC acceptance universal, and doubling pay outs when used to buy healthy food would do a lot both for local agriculture and for those who are struggling to eat and eat well.

The case for bringing agricultural subsidies to small family farmers is more complex, and among others, Gene Logsdon has argued that subsidizing organic agriculture (which is beginning to occur) may not be the answer:

This is supposed to be good news. Our dear government has finally recognized that organic farmers are at least as deserving of bribery as all those sinful chemical farmers. After all, industrial agriculture gets $17.2 billion dollars in direct payments every year so surely a little bit of money ought also to go to holy, humble, horse and hoe husbandmen who also help keep the world from starvation. In fact, organic farmers now have their very own farm subsidy program under the Environmental Quality Incentive Program to the tune of $50 million bucks. Ain't that wonderful?

Rule number two: "Conservation practices that farmers have already adopted are not eligible for payment." Amazing grace. If you have already been doing what every responsible farmer should be doing, you don't get any money, sucker.

Logsdon goes on to observe that with the inclusion of "transitional" farmers and the emphasis on giving money to those previously making the biggest negative environmental impact, the subsidies will go disproportionately to industrial organic producers.

But at a bare minimum we could ask ourselves about whether agricultural subsidy payments should exist at all? Most organic and small scale producers would be happy just to have the playing field levelled a bit. At a minimum, we need to ask ourselves this -if the food we get industrially is unaffordable in an environmental sense and unaffordable in a practical "how do we get dinner" sense, what's the case for conventional corporate ag again?

Sharon

Posted by Sharon Astyk at 8:45 AM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Peep!

Category: farm stuff • seasonal cycle

Note: It hasn't happened yet here, although we heard them down the hill in the valley yesterday. But we seem to be having an early spring, even though we've still got more than a foot of snow to melt off. I wrote this last year, and though the precise circumstances are different, the need for that sound is just the same. I know I owe y'all new content, but this one seemed appropo. Has spring sprung for you?

Spring doesn't come easily in upstate New York - she wrestles with Old Man Winter for a long, long time before he gives up. The first sign is the daffodils, up a small amount in February, giving false hope, but also inspiration - proof positive, as they fight through layers of snow and ice that spring may come in the guise of a fresh girl, but she is one tough young lady. But I have to remind myself - green stems do not mean spring.

Then comes the inevitable thaw, and the smell of wet earth, that scent that screams spring, but isn't quite because you'll have more frozen nights and wintry days yet. The grass, uncovered, greens up faintly, but the dominant colors are dull grey and brown, and we hold our breath for the change that can't come fast enough. The crocuses bloom, and that is a small change, a step forward, but the real thing hasn't come.

The birds come back, new ones each day - first the robins, of course, still in winter, but a tiny flit of hope for an end. Then the grackles come in waves (it is hard to be excited about grackles, but in winter, one can be happy about anything that prophecies its end). Then a bright dash of red winged blackbird, and then a sudden burst of new birds each day. But delightful though they are, the birds in themselves cannot carry spring.

Here, spring isn't a color, and it isn't a smell or a taste, and it doesn't even have wings (although it might have feathers, a la Emily Dickinson). Oh, spring has flavor - wild strawberries and overwintered spinach, dandelion greens and wild asparagus. Spring has smells - warm wet earth and daffodils, hyacinths and grass, and colors - the clear pure yellow of daffodils, the purple of crocuses, that sweet gold-green that blushes trees and the reddish tint of buds that preceeds it, the vibrant green of new grass. But it is none of those things.

It is a sound, a single sound, the end of wintery silence when the Peepers wake up and begin to call to one another for love. Peepers, for those of you who don't live where they do, are tiny frogs, who make a sound not entirely unlike the sounds of katydids or crickets when heard from a distance, but different, wonderfully strange and sweet up close. They are far too loud for their tiny size - standing next to a pond full of them, you would think you might go mad - except that after a long muffled winter of snow, you have to listen just a little longer.

One year, just once, I heard them begin to sing. We went to the wetlands on the edge of our property, walking along the road, and we stood in absolute silence and waited, and heard just one peeper take up the song for the first time - or maybe it just seemed that way. By that night, the whole watery area was in chorus, but just at the beginning, it was just one lonely peeper, calling out for love, hoping that somewhere there was someone else for him. It was strangely magical, and every year I try to duplicate it, to be there when they awaken, and spring truly begins.

This year we went, day after day, long before it was really likely that we'd hear them, when there was still ice along the edges of the water and patches of snow in the woods, but we went. And even Asher knew that when we got to the wetlands, we should stand, and be quiet and wait. And we would, hearing new bird songs each day, until something disturbed us. Yesterday, we got back late from the Greenmarket and errand running, and everyone was tired, so we did not walk out. And at chore time, as I was cooking dinner, Eric came back in and told me that the peepers were calling. We had already put the boys to bed, but ran upstairs, and opened the windows so that they could hear it too.

I missed the moment spring came to my place, but I expect that, no matter how hard I try and duplicate a near-miracle. Mostly, you don't see deep change happen, even though you know that it is occurring. You go out in the garden after an absence of a few days, and wonder how those tiny seedlings became those deep-rooted plants, or you look at your daughter and wonder how it is that she's lost the look of a toddler and become a child, with nobby knees and a galloping gait. Mostly the biggest transitions pass us by, and it is enough to say that you didn't miss anything important in its entirety. They say on hot nights in July you can hear the corn growing, and just once, I did hear the peepers awaken, but mostly the greatest transitions pass you by and that is our lot in life.

In a purely practical sense, were you looking at my mud-colored, snow patched landscape, you might wonder what changed, why I say that spring came. We still have more mud than green, things are still changing only incrementally, the daffodils still aren't yet open, although the purple crocuses brighten each morning. Things still squelch, and I know better than to plant out today - the peas I put in today will, as usual, sit waiting for dryer and more settled weather and end up being harvested at precisely the same time as the peas I plant out in two weeks - so why bother, except, of course, that I am chomping at the bit to plant anything outside. Seedlings are great, but they are not sufficient to sustain me.

All I can say is that I know this is it because it is - not very useful, I suppose, but I know that now no snowfall, no late frost, no burst of winter will make a difference in the consistent forward motion of energetic spring. So I wait to plant, the waiting is made easier by the singing of tiny frogs, frogs I almost never see, whose presence I would not suspect were it not for those short weeks in which their music dwarfs the birds and my noisy family, and shakes the foundations of winter. He's done for.

Spring has won, again. The rest will come slowly, achingly, and then it will burst upon us, and some people, looking at the flowers, the grass, the budding trees, will nod and say "spring is here." And we will smile at them and agree that it certainly is, and hold quietly the fact that we heard spring happen, and were there, if not for the golden moment, just after life returned anew.

Happy Spring,

Sharon

Posted by Sharon Astyk at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

ACS Paper Predicts Peak Oil Within the Next Few Years

Category: Peak Energy

In an American Chemical Society paper, "Forecasting World Crude Oil Production Using Multicyclic Hubbert Model" authors Ibrahim Sami Nashawi, Adel Malallah and Mohammed Al-Bisharah propose:

Even though forecasting should be handled with extreme caution, it is always desirable to look ahead as far as possible to make an intellectual judgment on the future supplies of crude oil. Over the years, accurate prediction of oil production was confronted by fluctuating ecological, economical, and political factors, which imposed many restrictions on its exploration, transportation, and supply and demand. The objective of this study is to develop a forecasting model to predict world crude oil supply with better accuracy than the existing models. Even though our approach originates from Hubbert model, it overcomes the limitations and restrictions associated with the original Hubbert model. As opposed to Hubbert single-cycle model, our model has more than one cycle depending on the historical oil production trend and known oil reserves. The presented method is a viable tool to predict the peak oil production rate and time. The model is simple, accurate, and totally data driven, which allows a continuous updating once new data are available. The analysis of 47 major oil producing countries estimates the world's ultimate crude oil reserve by 2140 BSTB and the remaining recoverable oil by 1161 BSTB. The world production is estimated to peak in 2014 at a rate of 79 MMSTB/D. OPEC has remaining reserve of 909 BSTB, which is about 78% of the world reserves. OPEC production is expected to peak in 2026 at a rate of 53 MMSTB/D. On the basis of 2005 world crude oil production and current recovery techniques, the world oil reserves are being depleted at an annual rate of 2.1%.

It looks like this is an interesting attempt to adapt Hubbert Linearization to other factors. It is interesting, and the major news sites seem to have taken notice, which is good. That said, they seem to be using high estimates for Kuwait, perhaps because the paper comes out of a Kuwaiti University. But I think what's important is the degree to which the paper validates Hubbert's methodology. You can quibble about the OPEC projections, or any given figure - since reserves are such a contentious subject, what I think is more important is that it is coming out of an OPEC country, with a peak date in the near future.

Sharon

Posted by Sharon Astyk at 12:04 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

We're Gonna Need More Pie

Category: humor • pie

I'm back from my northeast travels - I had a great time at both NOFA and NESEA, and am slowly recovering from a glazed state of sleep deprivation to something sort of coherent enough to finish the book (3 weeks to go!). But I'm still sleepy and tired, so to remind you that Pi day is coming, I include my classic (ok, if I have any classics ;-)) essay on why the world can be saved with Pie. If you are inspired to follow up with a submission to the Pi-day contest, that would be awesome.

The other day I got embroiled in one of those endless discussions/debates/headbangings about what the best approach to greening the planet is. Of course, all of you know that my defining characteristics are my reasonableness, aversion to confrontation and sensitivity, so my role here was to calm the hot tempers and settle the differences of others, which I do from my sheer love of humanity. I provided a calm and rational perspective that I know helped settle everything right down, because that's just the kind of healing, caring person I am.

Ok, just on the off chance that anyone involved in that conversation says otherwise, I want ask you upfront, who will you believe - them or me? After all, the people saying I was fanning the flames of this stupid umm...integral argument are nothing more than two or three hundred ordinary voices, where as I am a professional idi...author. I daily produce hundreds of words that are pulled randomly out of my a...er...finely crafted and honed for maximum effect. Sometimes the words even make sentences. Once in a while even grammatical sentences. These words are read by as many as eight or nine people around the world every single day. So you can certainly imagine that my ravings...um wisdom should outrank the sworn testimony of several hundred people.

So you'll be proud to know that I, of course, natural leader that I am, did come up with a healing solution, something that we could come together on, a real commitment to change, a possible solution to the profound difficulties wrought upon us by the Great Change that comes sweeping (ok, stupid metaphor deleted)... But I did have an idea.

The idea was pie. And my position is that I'm for it. I know this is just the kind of hard-edged, radical position taking that you can expect on this blog, the reason you know you can turn here first to hear opinions that are beholden to no one...except the guy up the road with the cherry trees, who I can't afford to piss off if I want pie. But this kind of risky political statement in favor of pie is just the sort of thing I know you'll wish to support by donating a large portion of your salary to keep me going. Just click on the button on the sidebar that says "big heaping wads of cash."

I'm in favor of pie. I mean, what could be better than pie? It is commonly associated with good, noble things like motherhood, America, light bondage and domination, clowns and the federal reserve, so how could we not be for pie? In fact, who isn't for pie? Well...

I have to tell you the ugly truth. There are powerful anti-pie interests in our government, and people working night and day to restrict your pie access. But we here at Casaubons book (Who is "we" you ask in puzzlement? Well, Sharon has obviously gone off the deep end writing her book, as you can tell from this post, so mostly the voices in her head. But they sometimes wear cool hats, and one of them is named "Leo.") are committed to bringing you the truth about pie access and other equally crucial issues, like socks and beer.

It occurred to me, as I was healing the rift brought on by unnamed troublemakers not named Sharon, that pie can do a great deal to heal our environmental crisis. For example, today's climate change and peak oil news was particularly awful. There's the coal, the wars, that we still torture.... There's the fact that even if we halved our emissions, global warming will keep going for 600 years. And then there's the financial news...

All in all, I think the only possible reaction (other than hysterical weeping) to all this bad news on a cold, snowy afternoon is to put on fuzzy pajamas, bunny slippers and eat half a pie. Or to drink a lot of local beer, I guess. Heck, you could drink beer and eat pie together.

Yes, I know that's pathological of me, but sometimes a retreat into pathology is rather comforting. I doubt I'm the only person who has ever responded to the bad news about our environment by thinking "apple or pumpkin?" The reality is whether we believe in stockpiling ammo or creating sustainable ecovillages, the need to derive comfort where we can is our common ground.

Pie can bring us together. And that unifying power isn't limited to the peak oil movement - pie can cross religious, cultural and national boundaries. While there may be deep cultural divisions between those who believe that you should make your sweetened orange vegetable pies with sweet potatoes and those who vote for pumpkin, I believe these barriers can be crossed, if only we'll just take a piece of each with a lot of whipped cream.

Pie can be a powerful political motivator as well. Right now, money tends to be the most powerful tool in politics, but let us not underestimate the influence of pie. Pies in the face are a powerful tool of political resistance in Europe. I've heard rumors that Bill Clinton sent the Haitians back because the republicans offered him all the blueberry pies he wanted. Dick Cheney regularly sat around nude, plotting his attacks on Middle Eastern countries while eating entire mince pies. During his campaign, Obama made strong statements in favor of pie (this, actually, is true).

This kind of inside information isn't easy to come by - the author had to send several pies to congressional aides. Fortunately, they are sleep deprived, wired on coffee and often morally bankrupt so bribing them with pie is very, very easy.

But pie is also essentially, deeply democratic. Pie is an essential ingredient in town-meeting style democracy in many New England states, along with baked beans. And pie is about democracy - fundamentally, pie (and pasties, empanadas, dumplings, wontons and all the other pie relatives) are about stretching high value foods to share with everyone. If you have six apples and ten guests, someone gets screwed, unless you put them between two crusts with some spices and call it pie - everyone gets a piece of sweet apple, everyone gets some crust. Pies are a way of getting maximum enjoyment from high-value foods. Meat, fruit, spices - these things are special. But they can be enjoyed regularly if carefully combined with other ingredients. They are about democracy, frugality, comfort and family.

And pies are things that you have to produce either for yourself or in your locality. The truth is that frozen pie crust tastes awful, and that Sara Lee pies taste like corn syrup, which is what they are mostly made from. Real pie - good pie comes either out of your kitchen or a local bakery or diner where they make it fresh every single day from real ingredients. Pies are part of a whole lifestyle - if you want to eat pie, you have to cook, or you have to have a little Mom and Pop bakery. And those things are democratic too - as opposed to corporatist.

Sure, you say, but if I eat too much pie, I'll get fat. And lord knows, that's a real possibility. But here's the thing. How many of you have ever met a really fat Amish man? I haven't. And they eat pie more or less constantly, or so my Amish neighbors tell me. The trick is matching the pie to the pie lifestyle.

Pie can power a human-powered lifestyle in the way that junky processed crap can't. Certainly the Amish cookbooks I've seen are filled with pies. And back when dessert (or breakfast in New England) was routinely pie, people were a lot thinner. One might argue that pie isn't what makes you fat - it is not living the pie lifestyle. Because the pie lifestyle means picking berries or walking to the bakery. It means eating pie as a treat, and as the place where you put your special festival foods that you don't have all the time, while most of you meals are simple. (If you do get a little plump, perhaps these gents can help balance out the pie.)

Instead, for many Americans, breakfasts is false pie - poptarts, which despite a plastic resemblance are not pies at all - because they aren't actually food. The poptart lifestyle makes you fat, the pie lifestyle makes you thin, or thinner. We need to speak out against the fake pie and its accompanying lifestyle.

Pie makes you thin. It brings about democracy. It brings about agrarian or relocalized societies and economies. It provides comfort, crossing political lines. People talk about oil as the "master resource" but perhaps we need to start reconsidering the power of pie to create a sustainable, human powered economy. Pie-centered societies, ones that provide a chicken in every pot pie, are what we're striving for. We can all consume less, and still have an evenly distributed piece of the pie.

Which is why I must say to you with a heavy heart - we are facing peak pie. Corporate interventions, and the "better than homemade" slogan has resulted in a US population that mostly doesn't know how to cook anymore. Millions of people think that pumpkin comes from a can. Farmers are still going out of business at an appalling rate. The majority of our pie ingredients are contaminated by pesticides. Our ability to provide for our pie needs is deeply threatened. We are facing the final destruction of the pie lifestyle - and the end of the last remnents of our democracy.

So what can we do about it? How can we fight back for the pie lifestyle, for Mom, Teddy Bears and Apple (or Peach) pie? The only way to deal with this depletion crisis is to start living the pie lifestyle. Bake a pie today from locally grown ingredients. Eat a pie today, and use it to fuel human powered activity - dump your leaf blower and get out a rake, get rid of the power mower and bring out the push mower, lose the chainsaw and get the bucksaw down.

Make a pie and give it to a neighbor. Give out the recipe. Get together and make pies for elderly shut ins or the school bake sale or to buy solar lighting for the neighborhood watch. Throw a pie at a warmonger - we'll have a bake sale to raise your bail. Point to the coal plant builders and the energy wasters and tell people - they are against pie! Start "Pie Eating Veterans for the Truth" and tar polluters and heavy emitters with the scorned label "pie haters." Don't forget to mention that they don't like mothers, babies or kittens either. Have a town meeting and hand out pie. Give out pie at the voting booths, to hungry people in the park, to the shelter and soup kitchen. Try pies from other places, other lands - and send the money you would have spent on poptarts to good causes. When the world seems to suck, eat pie, and use that energy to get back on your feet and fight again! Pie can save the world!

Sharon

Posted by Sharon Astyk at 11:03 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Getting it Right In the Pi-Hole

Category: pie

I'm not going to be beating PZ Myers any time soon on readership, Dr. Isis in hot shoes or Comrade Physioprof in elegantly phrased obscenity, but I think I've found something that this blog can kick fellow-science blogger patootie at - the baking of awesome pies. After all, how many of those other blogistes actually have a food and cooking book to their credit? How many famously brought our nation together in the pursuit of pie (I'll be re-running the famous "We Need More Pie" essay tomorrow, since it is pure, ennobling, and well, because I'm off doing other stuff and need some gently used blog content ;-)).

It turns out that in a tradition that dates all the way back to 2009, science bloggers celebrate "Pi day" on March 14, with pie. Lots of pies. In fact, competition for the most awesome pie. With prizes, glory and honor. And we (my readership) could win it all for the glory of well, something or other.

Here's the deal: (Go here to see this with links and all the other details)
In 2010, the Pi Day Pie Bake-Off returns, but this year the rules are different, the prizes are bigger, and we are excited to have a co-sponsor for the contest: food website and staff favorite, Serious Eats, whose past coverage of pies has been impressive.

To enter the 2010 Pi Day Bake-Off, first upload a photo of your pie to Photograzing on Serious Eats. Then, email your pie submission to pi@scienceblogs.com. Please include your name, blog or website if you want us to link to it, and the link to the photo on Photograzing. We will email you to remind you when your pie has gone up for the vote, so you can pester your friends to vote for you.

Realistically, I have a book due in three weeks and no working digital camera, so the odds are good that my "Paleoclimatology Ice Core Flurry Pie" may remain only a dream. I am relying on you, dearest readership, to bring glory and honor to my blog. Do me proud, pie folk!

Sharon

Posted by Sharon Astyk at 3:23 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

More on Methane

Category: Climate Change • methane

Real Climate has an analysis of the methane release paper up, which is at least partly reassuring - partly.

CO2 is plenty to be frightened of, while methane is frosting on the cake. Imagine you are in a Toyota on the highway at 60 miles per hour approaching stopped traffic, and you find that the brake pedal is broken. This is CO2. Then you figure out that the accelerator has also jammed, so that by the time you hit the truck in front of you, you will be going 90 miles per hour instead of 60. This is methane. Is now the time to get worried? No, you should already have been worried by the broken brake pedal. Methane sells newspapers, but it's not the big story, nor does it look to be a game changer to the big story, which is CO2.

Actuallly, if you think this is an accurate metaphor, I'd say the answer is...yeah, there's something to worry about. Don't get me wrong, I agree with them that carbon is the central issue, and the shorter lifespan of methane in the atmosphere does mean that it has to be released quite precipitously to cause a major crisis. But think about the analogy - hit another car at 60 miles an hour and it is a disaster - some of the passengers will probably be kiled, but there remains the chance that some will merely survive badly hurt. Do it at 90 and everyone is dead.

This shouldn't take away from our attention on CO2. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be seriously concerned about this. Real Climate rightly puts this in perspective:

Anyway, so far it is at most a very small feedback. The Siberian Margin might rival the whole rest of the world ocean as a methane source, but the ocean source overall is much smaller than the land source. Most of the methane in the atmosphere comes from wetlands, natural and artificial associated with rice agriculture. The ocean is small potatoes, and there is enough uncertainty in the methane budget to accommodate adjustments in the sources without too much overturning of apple carts.

For methane to be a game-changer in the future of Earth's climate, it would have to degas to the atmosphere catastrophically, on a time scale that is faster than the decadal lifetime of methane in the air. So far no one has seen or proposed a mechanism to make that happen.

We are not seeing evidence that clearly indicates abrupt climate change, and the change in methane concentrations is comparatively small. Nor do we know that this will lead to larger scale feedback mechanisms. That is, people predicting "now is the time to panic" are wrong on several levels - they should have been responding (not panicking) long since and so far, we don't know this will lead to the worst outcomes.

That said, however, the sentence that no one has seen or proposed a mechanism in which this happens doesn't really console me. In models and predictions prior to the revelation that methane levels were increasing, the assumption had been that methane wouldn't rise until fairly late in the game - ie, until recently, no one had expected gradual increases this soon, which suggests that the science still hasn't caught up.

The most likely outcome is that this will lead to a gradual increase in methane (and CO2) as the world warms. This is unhelpful, but only one of many serious feedbacks that make it harder and harder to stop climate change.

But we do know that while we may not have a useful mechanism for describing it, large scale methane releases probably have contributed to abrupt climate change the past, although not in the last 100,000 years, and it would be very much premature to indicate it is happening now.

But what I do think is that this is a useful contribution to the case of the precautionary principle - because what we don't know could very well do us a great deal of harm. As the Real Climate authors imply, carbon dioxide-caused global warming is a plenty good case for precaution, but there are factors that should make us nervous. We know that in historic terms the climate has changed very rapidly, over decades or even a few years. We know that an abrupt climate change would be a world-wide disaster. What we don't know is how likely we are to precipitate one, or even how one might be precipitated. And sometimes to "we don't know" we must add "and we shouldn't wait until we're sure, we should act now."

Sharon

Posted by Sharon Astyk at 9:25 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

This Can't be Good...

Category: Climate Change • methane

I haven't had a chance to read the original paper - I'm getting ready to head out of town and probably won't get to it until next week, but I just got a press release from U Alaska Fairbanks about a recent paper in this month's issue of Science that suggests that we've got bigger methane problems than we knew about.

From the UAK press release:

The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

"The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans," said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF's International Arctic Research Center. "Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap."

And

They found corresponding results in the air directly above the ocean surface. Methane levels were elevated overall and the seascape was dotted with more than 100 hotspots. This, combined with winter expedition results that found methane gas trapped under and in the sea ice, showed the team that the methane was not only being dissolved in the water, it was bubbling out into the atmosphere.

Shakhova, Semiletov and collaborators from 12 institutions in five countries plan to continue their studies in the region, tracking the source of the methane emissions and drilling into the seafloor in an effort to estimate how much methane is stored there.

From the New York Times today:

Natalia Shakhova, a scientist at the university and a leader of the study, said it was too soon to say whether the findings suggest that a dangerous release of methane looms. In a telephone news conference, she said researchers were only beginning to track the movement of this methane into the atmosphere as the undersea permafrost that traps it degrades.

But climate experts familiar with the new research, reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science, said that even though it does not suggest imminent climate catastrophe, it is important because of methane's role as a greenhouse gas. Although carbon dioxide is a far more abundant and persistent in the atmosphere, ton for ton atmospheric methane traps at least 25 times as much heat.

The paper is behind a paywall for those not in the reporting business, but I will link more as more comes available. If correct, this is not good news - the prior assumption was that increased levels of methane in the arctic were linked primarily to methane bubbling out of freshwater areas - but there's much more methane here to release.

Here's an NSF piece on the potential role of methane in abrupt climate change. I should emphasize here that we have no idea this methane release could cause something similar to occur, but this strikes me as a compelling case for the precautionary principle - precisely because we have no idea.

An abrupt release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from ice sheets that extended to Earth's low latitudes some 635 million years ago caused a dramatic shift in climate, scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) report in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

"What we now need to know is the sensitivity of the trigger," he said. "How much forcing does it take to move from one stable state to the other--and are we approaching something like that today with current carbon dioxide warming?"

Allow me to speak for all of humanity when I say...crap.

Sharon

Posted by Sharon Astyk at 3:42 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks