This was brought on by Wretchard's dissertation on love.
Dante believed that loneliness was the memory of happy times lost. And for perhaps that reason, the demand for love will always be greatest among those who have only heard rumor of it and glimpsed it, fleetingly, but once.
The comment section is especially good. This comment:
She could have had whatever she wanted from me, and destroyed me.
Caused this reply:
Love is very dangerous. It requires more trust than most are willing to give. To bare your secrets. To bare your soul. To admit your price.
You see the results all too often - "(s)he treated me like dirt and I was happy to accept it."
The net? Most folks are looking for advantage. Which puts the folks in love at a serious disadvantage. Gibran had the answer - love anyway - pay the price.
Or Alfred Lord Tennyson: 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all'.
I'm pretty lucky. The love between me and the first mate just keeps getting better (with the usual hitches - we are dealing with humans here) over time (37 years so far). As usual I'm a little late to the show.
We have here a shining example of a Japanese official whose face was not saved. He was none too happy about it.
The Minister is not too happy about Koriyama City removing the radioactive surface soil from the school yards to reduce radiation for the kids.
The public officials in Koriyama City in Fukushima are doing something to proactively protect children by removing the big source of radiation (soil in the school yards) that could harm them gravely. A very rational and compassionate thing to do, though it's just too bad that Fukushima I Nuke Plant continues to spew out radioactive plume far and wide and Koriyama's effort may be in vain in short order.
But it still seems infinitely better than letting the children play outdoors based on an arbitrary number (3.8 micro-sieverts/hr) picked by the national government for this emergency.
That is about 33.3 milliSieverts a year if exposed 24/7/365. About 3.33 REM for those of you who are old school. That is a LOT for some one not working in the field. Especially if they are children. Of course the exposure is limited. Not counting what they drag in from the playground.
Some of the parents from the area have deposited some playground material with government officials.
Furious parents in Fukushima have delivered a bag of radioactive playground earth to education officials in protest at moves to weaken nuclear safety standards in schools.
Children can now be exposed to 20 times more radiation than was previously permissible. The new regulations have prompted outcry. A senior adviser resigned and the prime minister, Naoto Kan, was criticised by politicians from his own party.
If they didn't just bring the dirt in bags but also spread it around the area will have to be declared a rad hazard area until it is cleaned up.
This may be a case of no choice but it does seem unwise. Some women working at the Fukushima plan exceeded their allowable dose. There is some question about how this should relate to monitoring children.
This incident raises a very interesting point: Since school children outside of the exclusion zone are allowed a recent and upwardly revised 20 mSv/yr maximum allowable dose (essentially the same amount allowed for female Tepco nuclear employees), will these kids have their doses individually monitored also? Will they be pulled from school if they exceed 5mSv over a 3 month period, as is the practice with female nuclear employees when they exceed their doses?
I would expect the Japanese authorities to exhibit a greater sense of caution with the children. Their upper level limit is generous, to say the least. Parents should be informed of the statistical and potential risks associated with these exposures, and should be presented with other educational alternatives should they choose to opt out.
LIKE MOST Japanese parents, two months ago Takayuki Sasaki barely knew what radiation was. Today, he thinks about little else. "I've sent my kids to my wife's family in Tokyo," says the baker and father of two. "I told her to stay there until it's safe, but who knows when that will be? We've all been left in the dark."
Seven weeks since the start of Japan's worst nuclear crisis, political tremors are intensifying in the prefecture that hosts the ruined Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Sasaki is among thousands of parents in the prefecture, about 250km northeast of Tokyo, demanding that the government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan reverse a decision to raise radiation limits for schools in the area by 20 times.
The decision has come in for withering criticism by government adviser Toshiso Kosako, who announced his resignation on Friday after denouncing what he called the prime minister's "whack-a-mole" policies on the crisis.
"The government has belittled laws and taken decisions only for the present moment," said a tearful Kosako.
He added that new guidelines upping the acceptable annual radiation exposure in Fukushima prefecture's elementary schools from one to 20 millisieverts "are inconsistent with internationally commonsensical figures.
"They were determined by the administration to serve its interests.
From what I have seen so far most of the decisions made have taken only the most immediate concerns into consideration. Like the decision to silence Toshiso Kosako after he resigned in protest.
Ministry of Education and Science has set the annual radiation exposure limit of 20 milli-sieverts for children to use school yards. According to Mr. Soramoto, "Professor Kosako thinks the radiation level that children could be exposed to is 5 milli-sieverts per year at most. It is regrettable that Professor Kosako's point of view cannot be aired."
Considering that 5 milli-sieverts per year is roughly equivalent to the US average dose per year (including diagnostic radiation) a doubling of that for a year's exposure seems reasonable. And since the exposure will not be 24/7/365 then there is also a safety factor built in. Which is a good thing. It means the exposure effect from the tail of the statistical curve will be minimal.
In the mean time the radiation is being distributed in sewage sludge. And the sludge is being turned into cement. Just swell fellers.
Highly #Radioactive Sewage Sludge in Koriyama City, 3,500 Tons Already Burned, 500 Tons Already Sold to Cement Company
Oops.
Price to pay, I suppose, for slowly forming a "consensus" on how to deal with the reactors at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. While the political heads gather to discuss what's safe to tell the general public, the radioactive materials have been doing what they are supposed to do under the circumstance: to spread.
Highlighting the ongoing problems that continue to make life hazardous in surrounding areas of the plant, wastewater end-products from Koriyama that are trucked out and used for construction are clocking high dose rates originating from Cesium 137 in the sludge.
This has to make you wonder why the sludge shipped out from various Fukushima prefectures wasn't checked for high radiation content before this particular incident. Apparently it was caught a bit late in the process - the article mentions "The solidified slag made from it contained 334,000 becquerels per kilogram" - indicating finished construction. I wonder how many structures have been built with the sludge, because they will have to be torn down.
Any wall made from this stuff would be humming with radioactivity - 334,000 Becquerel/kg throws off 45 microSieverts per hour at a 10cm distance, and that's just the gamma component of the calculation. From just 1 kg of this material, Beta exposure at a 1cm distance is a whopping 67 milliSieverts/hr, ensuring that anyone leaning against the wall is getting his/her butt massively irradiated.
He ends with this note:
This wastewater plant may be emitting radiation numbers as high as parts of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant. Now they have to go in there and calculate doses for the sewage treatment staff, plus everyone else who was in close contact with the material.
I dunno. Radiation contaminating the water and the water run off in the area? How totally unexpected.
Thanks to a tight supply chain and demands for cement for rebuilding tsunami damage it turns out the cement has been shipped.
928 tons of the sewage sludge [from Koriyama facility?] have been used since the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident, and the cement has been shipped to Tochigi, Gunma, and Ibaraki Prefectures and other locations. [The article doesn't say where.]
Radioactive cesium of 26,400 becquerels per 1 kilogram has been detected from the sewage sludge.
And that is not all the bad news.
There are 22 other treatment centers in Fukushima that sell sewage sludge. No news on them yet.
The Environment Ministry has ordered municipalities near the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to wait before removing radiation-tainted debris from the March 11th quake and tsunami.
The ministry will start monitoring radiation levels in debris next week to determine proper disposal methods for contaminated materials.
Vice Minister Hideki Minamikawa told reporters that his ministry wants to quickly carry out the checks to allow local authorities who clear radiation screenings to remove the debris as soon as possible.
Municipalities subject to the order are those in the no-entry zone within 20 kilometers of the plant and some designated areas beyond the 20-kilometer radius.
The Japanese government is about to begin releasing data projecting the spread of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that it initially withheld for fear of causing panic.
The data in question is in a computer system called SPEEDI that predicts the spread of radioactive substances based on actual radiation measurements at various locations and weather conditions.
I guess the time for panic is over. Unless you count radioactive cement and school yard dirt.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the damaged nuclear power plant in Fukushima, says it has increased the cooling water flowing into the Number 3 reactor after an increase in temperature occurred over the past week.
On Wednesday, TEPCO increased the flow of cooling water from 7 tons to 9 tons per hour for the Number 3 reactor. The temperature at the bottom of the reactor was 143.5 degrees Celsius at 11 AM on Thursday, about 33 degrees higher than Wednesday last week.
TEPCO has been using temporary pumps to inject cooling water into reactors Number 1, 2 and 3. Their fuel rods are believed to have partially melted down after the tsunami disrupted normal cooling functions.
The operator says the temperature rise was apparently caused by a temporary decline in the amount of cooling water flowing into the Number 3 reactor.
I'd love to see some of the more technical reports rather than just the news summaries. Or even better: be a fly on the wall that could understand Japanese. I wonder if they have any way of finding out the condition of the junk piles? And of course you have to ask yourself. Is it just lack of cooling? Or something else? Like occasional recriticality?
NHK has learned that shareholders of five electric power companies in Japan are calling for the utilities to decommission their nuclear power plants in the wake of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
About 400 stockholders of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the Fukushima plant, submitted official documents in support of the proposal.
Shareholders of at least four other power companies --- Kansai Electric, Chugoku Electric, Kyushu Electric and Tohoku Electric -- have made similar proposals.
On Monday, a group of 232 stockholders of Tohoku Electric submitted documents calling for the company to abolish its nuclear power plants.
The group says the potential risks of nuclear power generation are too great for any single company to afford.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Monday there should be no upper limit set on the amount of compensation to be paid by Tokyo Electric Power Co. over the accident at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
No wonder stockholders want to bail on nuclear power.
I may be slow on the uptake, but I am genuinely having trouble processing all of the anger that the killing of Osama bin Laden seems to have generated on the right. And I do mean anger; in certain teeth-gnashing right wing circles, people seem actually angrier over the death of bin Laden than they did over the passage of Obamacare. In a comment to a post about this anger, I asked,
Would they be happier if the raid had failed?
I think some of them would, and I noted that it is not rational.
As I was thinking this over, I learned from a friend's email that the Europeans are angry too.
...the disdain for American joy about bin Laden's death goes deeper than mere snobbery or concerns about local Muslims. It's not just that Western European intellectuals don't like the United States--they never have--but their unwillingness to countenance aggressive Western self-defense against Islamist terror is a function of their loss of belief in Western civilization itself. Many on the continent seem to have lost any sense that their countries and way of life as well as their faith is something worth defending. When it comes down to it that, and not the faux sophistication of Euro elites, is the difference between America and Europe these days.
For all of our problems and divisions, most Americans still believe in their country. All too many of our friends across the pond have lost faith in theirs. And that crisis in confidence, not good taste, is why Americans and not Europeans are celebrating the death of bin Laden.
Well, not all Americans are celebrating; many on the right are doing just the opposite. The difference between them and the Europeans is that it is not the killing of bin Laden that upsets the red meat conservatives, so much as the fact that Obama is seen as getting credit for it.
OK, then, so why not just credit Bush and move on to other issues? Either Obama adopted Bush's policies or he did not. If he did, then at least some of the credit goes to Bush, and it should be pointed out. But even there, I see a problem which lends itself to a cognitive disconnect. If Obama has adopted Bush's foreign policy, that would mean that he is doing something right, wouldn't it? And because we can't have that, then he can't be credited as adopting Bush's foreign policy. But we can't have that either, because that would credit him with having his own foreign policy -- and one which succeeded at killing Osama bin Laden.
I think this conflict might explain the torrent of irrational anger.
As to my own anger, I have been and still am angry at Obama for his socialist policies and wholesale disregard for the Constitution. So angry for so long that I long ago reached the saturation point. The killing of bin Laden is for me little more than an item in the plus column that will not change my disdain for the man's overall policies. I repeatedly predicted that he would engage in triangulation, and in this instance he has. Killing bin Laden was a smart move for Obama politically, and it was the right thing to do for this country.
I can't tell people what to do, but I think it might be a good time for angry conservatives to consider dumping the anger over the killing of bin Laden and returning to their traditional anti-Obama anger. After all, isn't he the same socialistic, Constitution-violating, postmodernist that he always was?
Because if they're not careful, pretty soon this irrational anger at Obama for doing the right thing is going to start looking silly.
European, even.
(And how silly is that?)
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Red meat traitor (01:18 PM)
Since 1994, I have been resolutely, unalterably, vehemently, opposed to the left. No matter what the right wing does, I will always vote for them over the left, even if I have to hold my nose. Even if I have to throw up.
I really wish you would rethink your vote for Obama.
It is one thing that I have never forgiven you for.
Traitor.
Bear in mind that I never liked red meat conservatives. I just hate the left more, so despite the effect on my mental health I tend to appease their enemies. Unlike Ann Althouse, I didn't vote for Obama and never will.
But people like commenter "Titus" are being assholes, plain and simple. If they keep this shit up, they will kill the GOP's chances of winning in 2012.
Maybe that's what they want.
If so, they are hypocrites for calling Ann Althouse a traitor.
Yeah, yeah, I could have made a rational argument and explained exactly how treason is specifically defined in the Constitution and that Ann Althouse did not commit treason by voting for the wrong candidate, but these assholes have about as much respect for the Constitution as the left.
Hating the left more than the right is no guarantee of happiness.
If the right thing is done for the wrong reasons, does it somehow become the wrong thing?
This is somewhat related to Sarah's piece about the immense desire on the left to see the killing of bin Laden as an excuse for ending the war -- as if for all these years we were at war with one man, Osama bin Laden.
How naive to imagine that ideology would ever work that way! True, there are instances in history in which one man can be so all-important, and Adolf Hitler comes close. But even if an attempt on Hitler's life had been successful, would that have meant the end of World War II, much less an end to the war with Nazi Germany? Of course not. Sure, it might very well have accelerated the end. And if the bin Laden killing accelerates the end, that would be great.
Tell you what. When I see Ayman al Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the rest of that scurvy crew of murderous thugs climb the steps to one of our aircraft carriers to sign the surrender documents, I might be willing to call it a victory.
But what these lefties and some of the Ron Paul types seem to forget is that we are dealing with people who have pledged to kill us.
When you're dealing with people who have pledged to kill you and have not backed down one inch, anything less than their surrender ultimately means your surrender.
Evolution is providing the inspiration for University of Adelaide computer science research to find the best placement of turbines to increase wind farm productivity.
Senior Lecturer Dr Frank Neumann, from the School of Computer Science, is using a "selection of the fittest" step-by-step approach called "evolutionary algorithms" to optimise wind turbine placement. This takes into account wake effects, the minimum amount of land needed, wind factors and the complex aerodynamics of wind turbines.
What a Nice Bit Of Work. Collecting energy which is mostly useless more efficiently is a big advance. Evidently storage - which is the real missing ingredient is more difficult.
Today in Scotland, as the Great Recession rolls on, and as newly reprimitivized "wind farms" replace more tried and true -- and apparently predictable - methods of electricity generation, history rhymes rather nicely. The BBC reports, "Six Scottish windfarms were paid up to £300,000 to stop producing energy, it has emerged:"
I guess wind is different. With normal power plants you pay for the energy used. With wind plants unusable energy now has value. Well not to civilization of course. But the wind farmers do quite nicely.
Rarely have I seen the blogosphere so alive with commentary as it is right now about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Just to make my position clear, I don't care what anyone thinks of President Obama's overall performance, but it is undeniable that this is a decided plus. M. Simon and I both said so.
Considering all of the trouble the country has undergone lately, people really want a reason to feel proud of their country, and by any standard this is a good reason. Even though the war is by no means over (as Sarah explains eloquently), the killing of Bin Laden is a major milestone, a victory people should be celebrating, and I am not going to detract from the celebrating in any way.
As to weighing in, I congratulate the president on a job well done. Can't remember the last time I did that. Was there ever a time? I don't know; if there was it might have been by way of sarcasm, as I make no secret of my disdain for the actions of this president and his administration, which I will of course continue to criticize. But I have to give credit where credit is due. He made the country proud, and as I don't want to say anything to detract from that, I really don't feel like wading through and weighing in on the predictable snark, the impugning of motives, the second-guessing, and conspiracy theories right now.
I would feel less than patriotic if I did.
However, I will say that he has gotten closer to having now earned his unearned Nobel Peace Prize (which, I would note, there had already been some international movement to take away).
So I agree what Glenn Reynolds' reaction to a remark made by Allen West that "Maybe he should think about giving back that Nobel Peace Prize." Quoting what he said in an earlier post, Glenn said,
I totally disagree. In the words of Keith Laumer, there's nothing more peaceful than a dead troublemaker.
As a SciFi ignoramus, I had to Google Keith Laumer, whose remark is all over the Internet.
Works a lot better than peace through surrender, and I am glad to see President Obama was willing to use it in defense of this country.
Blood sucking is as blood sucking does (11:20 AM)
There's a blog for greedy lawyers, which is nice to see, because I believe that deviants and other misfits need to stick together.
Hey, maybe I misspoke. I mean, is it really fair of me to describe greedy lawyers as "deviants" and "misfits"? To most people, "greedy lawyers" is a redundancy. Still, even if they are the legal norm, I think they're entitled to worship together at their own blog.
Anyway, from the "Greedy Associates" blog I learned about the next area of hot practice.
As people are no longer responsible for their actions, I can see plenty of litigation by vampire victims -- who can basically work in collusion with the forseeable claim by vampires that the TV made them do it. Naturally, if the TV made them do it, then the TV industry becomes liable!
At this point, you might ask "who are the real vampires?"
Well, let's assume they are. In light of the old saying that "it takes a thief to catch a thief," isn't that a plus?
When Jack Hagerty closed on his new condo three weeks ago, he thought it had everything he wanted: a quiet, safe Glen Park location, easy access to BART and a backyard for his 10-year-old son. Turns out it came with an extra feature - a self-described "leather sex" enthusiast living downstairs.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
"He's entitled to his life," Hagerty said. "I just wish he'd told me sooner."
Hagerty said all was well until he announced that he intended to remove the carpet and padding in his unit to help with allergies. The downstairs condo owner explained in an April 24 e-mail that he opposed the idea.
"I am a sexual enthusiast and enjoy leather sex," the man wrote. "At times, it is possible and even likely that the sounds of leather sex will be coming from my bedrooms to your bedrooms without an effective sound barrier. While it is not my issue, you may find you need to explain things to your son as it could be confusing to him since it frequently doesn't sound as pleasurable as it is."
"I just don't think it is appropriate for my son to bear witness to that," Hagerty said.
But the neighbor says if Hagerty just left the carpet and pad on the floor everything would be fine.
Normally, we think of sex noises as involving moaning and groaning, and possibly screaming. But I'm assuming the noises here involve not only screaming, but the sounds of whips cracking.
There's some additional discussion of whether real estate agents have the duty to disclose such goings-on to potential buyers.
Rob Rogers of Zephyr Real Estate, who helped to handle the sale, said, "You certainly don't have to disclose someone's sexual preferences or what they are doing."
There is a duty to disclose facts which would be relevant to a buyer's decision, but there's also a duty not to assist a buyer in illegal discrimination. If regular and annoying noises were known to the seller and and not readily perceivable on ordinary inspection, failure to disclose them might bring rise to liability. The problem is, what might annoy one person might not matter to someone else. An opera singer who practiced at home might sound lovely to one person while driving another crazy. Some people might rather hear the occasional screams associated with leather sex than the sounds of a teenager learning to play an electric guitar. It also depends on the hour; loud music or a barking dog during the day might not bother me during the day, but I wouldn't tolerate it at night.
I'm not sure the noise is the issue with the leather guy, though. It's what the noise will mean to a kid who hasn't yet learned that for some people, pain is pleasure.
So I understand the dad's concern, but he might keep in mind that the sounds of pleasure can drive criminals away.
Like this car alarm.
I Wake Up Screaming (09:51 AM)
As you know I'm not one to see the glass as half empty. At least I hope I'm not. But the day after Osama's death, I woke up screaming. Before I even checked my facebook, I knew the vast majority of my friends would be going "We won, let's go home now."
I want to be told I'm wrong. I don't like being afraid.
Monday, May 2, 2011
The scientific origin of vulnerable species (04:25 PM)
In a Washington Examiner piece about Washington's job killing machine, Hugh Hewitt gives an example of how the Endangered Species Act is being manipulated to thwart oil exploration:
...in Texas, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service presides over the dunes sagebrush lizard's crawl toward protected status under the Endangered Species Act, which will quickly affect oil and gas exploration across west Texas.
The FWS was taking "input" last week and will continue to do so for a few more before acting to sequester tens of thousands of acres of resource-rich land from use.
These are just four fingers of the many-handed beast that the federal government has become. I am aware of each of them because my law partners and I practice in these areas and field calls daily from companies that have received a recall notice, or which produce food that will have to change its advertising, or who wish to build in areas that are dry 350 days a year but perhaps about to be regulated by the feds under new rules.
The lizard is just the latest in a long line of not-remotely-endangered species that get catapulted onto the "endangered species list" by radical environmentalist groups, with devastating consequences to land owners and those they employ in the building of residential or commercial projects or natural resource exploration.
This fascinated me, because I know the Sagebrush Lizard is quite common, so I took a closer look. It turns out that the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard is a species that until recently was a subspecies.
The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, Sceloporus arenicolus, (formerly known as Sand Dune Lizard and the Dunes-Sagebrush Lizard, Sceloporus graciosus arenicolus, a subspecies of sagebrush lizard), is an insectivorous spiny lizard species which only occurs in the Shinnery oak Sand Dune systems of extreme South-east New Mexico and only four counties in adjacent Texas. Sceloporus arenicolus has the second smallest range of all lizards in the United States.
Formerly a subspecies of the Sagebrush lizard? How does a former subspecies get to become its own species?
The dunes sagebrush lizard was elevated to a species in 1992 and this elevation was validated with molecular and morphological evidence in 1997
Elevated on whose authority? "Top scientists"? What sort of due process is involved? Considering the legal implications -- both to property owners and the general public -- of a threatened species designation, shouldn't all parties that might be affected have input?
Vulnerability is mainly caused by habitat loss or destruction. Vulnerable species are monitored and are becoming threatened. However, some species listed as "vulnerable" may in fact be quite abundant in captivity, an example being the Venus Flytrap.
I hate to pick nits, but I have some major concerns about the methodology of species classification, as well as the methodology behind the determination of "vulnerable" status.
I learned that there is considerable skepticism among scientists over the designation of similar Sceloporus lizards into species, because the various species can interbreed.
Sceloporus undulatus
The most widespread and variable Sceloporus in New Mexico. Infraspecific taxonomy is somewhat uncertain, and Sceloporus undulatus has been split into several species based on mitochondrial lineages by Dr. Leache of the University of Washington. However, these "species" apparently interbreed & do not correspond with morphological variation.
So if they interbreed, why would they be considered different "species"?
I don't know, but in this long scientific discussion, I found evidence that the creation of subspecies and the reclassification of subspecies into species might be based on factors other than pure science.
As an example of the importance of subspecies in conservational considerations, Sceloporus undulatus garmani, an arenicolous, terrestrial, cursorial, striped subspecies with reduced semeions (ventral color patches) appears to have become extinct, or nearly so, in parts of its range on the plains of eastern Colorado. On the contrary, another, very different, larger, cross-barred subspecies with well-developed semeions, S. u. erythrocheilus, remains common on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountain foothills, where it leads a scansorial life on trees and, mostly, rocks. The two subspecies occur within a few kilometers of each other in some areas, but no intergradation occurs and even gross sympatry is possible. Different conservational measures may be required for these two subspecies, but they would be difficult or impossible to prescribe or implement if no subspecies were recognized. Entire subspecies populations could become extinct if attention were directed to the species as a whole, which could be regarded as basically healthy. In cases such as this, elevating the constituent subspecies to species rank does not always provide a solution. For example, in the case cited, there is a complete, although stepped, continuity between the two taxa: S. u. garmani intergrades to the south with S. u. consobrinus, the latter with S. u. tristichus to the west, and that in turn with S. u. erythrocheilus to the north - a typical circular approximation of range, if not overlap.
Although the practical constraints of conservation efforts may require restriction of attention to the species rank, elevation of subspecies as here and as commonly defined to species rank would be a disservice to limited conservational efforts aimed at preservation only of major genetic resources.
Excuse me, but what has "conservation" to do with the elevation of a subspecies to a species? Has "science" has become an insiders' game where political considerations dictate when species are to be reclassified? If so, I am flabbergasted. But then, I grew up in a different era, when the scientific method prevailed, and scientists subjected each other to what was called "scientific scrutiny." It is one thing to for scientists to be interested in preserving species, but if species are being redefined to assist conservation efforts, than conservation (which is political) has contaminated science.
How can "scientific findings" be trusted when they translate directly into restrictive environmenal regulations?
While it is disturbing enough to find evidence that subspecies are being upgraded to species status for political reasons, what was even more disturbing (for me, anyway) was to discover this genetic analysis (PDF file) of numerous "subspecies" in a large, related lizard group. In addition to including the Dunes-Sagebrush Lizard (Sceloporus arenicolus, formerly Sceloporus graciosus arenicolus), the genus Sceloporus includes many other species, one of the largest being Sceleporus undulatus. Within undulatus, there have been numerous (11 or so) subspecies claims, and according to the study most of them turned out to be lacking in genetic support.
...our results indicate a significant amount of genetic structuring among the surveyed populations of S. undulatus. A notable result is the absence of fixed differences among the populations of S. undulatus. The lack of fixed allelic differences argues that S. undulatus comprises one large interbreeding species.
Got that, folks?
One large interbreeding species!
Apparently (and I guess if we charitably assume political considerations were not involved), the species designations were based simply on morphology:
The patterns emerging from our analysis of S. undulatus are largely consistent with the first hypothesis of Zink and Dittman (1993). For example, apart from the close relationship between the grassland populations, we found little correspondence between genetic similarity and geographic proximity (note the placement of Florida and Ohio, or South Carolina with the western populations). We argue that the recency of divergence among the various eastern and western populations has limited the opportunity for differentiation. Hence, we found no evidence that geographical races are reflected in genetic differentiation. Therefore, we have the scenario where ''morphology'' (scalation and coloration) has evolved at a different rate than molecules and suggests that the subspecies reflect convergence in morphology.
It would be like calling different breeds of dogs "subspecies" based on appearances. Or like saying that racial differences in humans denote subspecies. I think it is worth noting that many fish and lizards have the ability to change color depending on background, and captive-bred Oscars lack the extra dorsal spot that wild Oscars have. That geographic changes might induce behavioral changes accompanied by morphological changes is not surprising, but it should never be a basis for establishing a subspecies classification.
Just how scientific are these scientists? Who polices them?
Considering what I have read, I am very skeptical about the reclassification (elevation) of the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard subspecies Sceloporus graciosus arenicolus to species Sceloporus arenicolus.
I am also skeptical over the methodology of how the scientists determine the population. According to a long analysis published in the Federal Register, they (or, I suppose, their students) simply look to see whether they can find the lizards:
In Texas, the species was historically found in Andrews, Crane, Ward, and Winkler Counties. During 2006 and 2007, surveys were conducted to determine the current distribution of the dunes sagebrush lizard in the State. Surveys were conducted at 27 sites (19 of these sites were historical localities) that contained potential dunes sagebrush lizard habitat in Andrews, Crane, Cochran, Edwards, Ward, and Winkler Counties. Dunes sagebrush lizards were found at only 3 of the 27 sites surveyed (Laurencio et al. 2007, p. 7). Two of the sites were in large patches of shinnery oak dunes that stretch through Ward, Winkler, and Andrews Counties. In north and western Crane County, shinnery oak dune habitat exists, but dunes sagebrush lizards were not found. One dunes sagebrush lizard was found at a site in Gaines County that is within the easternmost contiguous habitat that stretches from the southernmost population in New Mexico (Laurencio et al. 2007, p. 11). The sites where dunes sagebrush lizards were detected in either 2006 or 2007 likely comprise the last occupied habitat for dunes sagebrush lizards in Texas (Laurencio et al. 2007, p. 11). During these surveys the search time to find dunes sagebrush lizards was between 68 and 115 person-minutes. The species is considered rare at sites where it takes more than 60 minutes to find a dunes sagebrush lizard. By comparison, at some sites in shinnery oak dune habitat in New Mexico, 74 percent of dunes sagebrush lizards are found within 31 person-minutes. The longer search time required to encounter individuals in a given area may represent a lower number of individuals in that area. Future surveys should incorporate detection probabilities and utilize standard survey techniques for the species, in order to more accurately compare results.Show citation box
Dunes sagebrush lizard populations in Texas are all on private land except for the population at Monahans Sandhills State Park, a 1,554-ha (3,840-ac) park where dunes sagebrush lizards were thought to be extirpated after surveys were completed in 2007 (Laurencio et al. 2007, p. 11). In 2010, the park was again surveyed, and dunes sagebrush lizards were present (Fitzgerald 2010, p. 1). Monahans Sandhills State Park is a well-known historic locality that is the only area where dunes sagebrush lizards have been known to occur on public lands in Texas. It is evident that the dunes sagebrush lizard is still present at the park, but the negative survey data from 2007 suggests they may be present in small numbers, and that further monitoring should be done at this site.
So they looked, but could only find the lizards in 3 out of 27 sites. So they say. How scientific is that? If I drove there and found some running around, would that count? Or do you have to have a Ph.D.? (BTW, are they running around on private land with permission of the owners?)
And what about bias? How can "surveys" which point to the presence or absence of lizards be seen as pure science when the people conducting them are environmentalists conducting the studies with full aware of the political implications of their findings? Isn't that a classic conflict of interest?
It is one thing to seek legitimate protection for a truly threatened and vulnerable species, but how do we know this is a true species, much less a truly threatened and vulnerable one? Because "scientists" say so?
My worry is that these scientists are biased activists with a huge amount of power to regulate and control large numbers of people, in the name of "science" that they alone define.
Sorry, but when one group of people has the power to regulate the rest who have no say, that's tyranny.
That it might be scientific tyranny is hardly comforting.
