FROM NEW WORLD ZCIENTIST

Earth economist: The food bubble is about to burst

10 February 2011 by Alison George
Magazine issue 2798. Subscribe and save

We're fast draining the fresh water resources our farms rely on, warns Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute

What is a food bubble?       

That's when food production is inflated through the unsustainable use of water and land. It's the water bubble we need to worry about now. The World Bank says that 15 per cent of Indians (175 million people) are fed by grain produced through overpumping - when water is pumped out of aquifers faster than they can be replenished. In China, the figure could be 130 million.

Has this bubble already burst anywhere?

Saudi Arabia made itself self-sufficient in wheat by using water from a fossil aquifer, which doesn't refill. It has harvested close to 3 million tonnes a year, but in 2008 the Saudi authorities said the aquifer was largely depleted. Next year could be the last harvest. This is extreme, but about half the world's people live in countries with falling water tables. India and China will lose grain production capacity through aquifer depletion. We don't know when or how abruptly the bubble will burst.

With population rising, a fall in grain production would spell big trouble.

Yes. Tonight at the dinner table there will be 219,000 people who weren't there last night. But that's not all: we also have maybe 3 billion people moving up the food chain, consuming more grain-intensive livestock products. Then there is the conversion of grain into ethanol for cars, mainly in the US, where last year 119 million tonnes went to distilleries out of a harvest of just over 400 million tonnes.

What will happen if we carry on as we are now?

Civilisation as we know it can't withstand the stresses of continuing with business as usual. We've got to move, almost on a war footing, to cut carbon emissions, eradicate poverty, stabilise population. We must also restore the economy's natural support systems: forests and aquifers and soils. No civilisation ever survived that kind of destruction; nor will ours. We haven't gone over the edge, but we're much closer than most people think. If the heatwave that hit Moscow in 2010 had been centred on Chicago instead, we would be in deep trouble. The Russians lost 40 per cent of their 100-million-tonne grain crop, but we would have lost 40 per cent of our 400-million-tonne crop - a massive global setback.


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Conservatives again back Ron Paul for Presidential nominee

BY DAVID LIGHTMANMCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON-Texas Rep. Ron Paul won the straw poll of conservative activists Saturday as their top choice for the 2012 presidential nomination, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney finished a strong second-but among the newer faces, no one showed much strength.

Paul was the first choice of the 3,742 voters at the Conservative Political Action Conference with 30 percent. Romney got 23 percent.

Paul and Romney also finished one-two in last year's poll, with almost identical percentages.

In 2007, Romney won the straw poll, followed by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the eventual nominee, never a favorite of conservative activists, was fifth.

Perhaps just as significantly, the vote among other hopefuls was fractured this year, even after more than a dozen potential candidates paraded to the podium over three days to make their cases to a convention that drew more than 11,000 people from around the country.

While Romney got a boost, the splintered vote among other candidates was a signal that "there's no jelling around a candidate," said CPAC Chairman David Keene.

The key message, he said, is that "all of these potential candidates are seen as conservatives. People sort of like all of them."

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson was the first choice of 6 percent; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who did not attend the conference, also 6 percent; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 5 percent; Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, 4 percent; former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, 4 percent, and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, 4 percent.

Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, who did not attend, got 3 percent. At 2 percent each were former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who also did not attend, former National Restaurant Association head Herman Cain, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and South Dakota Sen. John Thune.

At 1 percent each were former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, now ambassador to China, who didn't attend the conference, and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

Paul, who ran unsuccessfully in 2008 and was not seen as a strong contender, was aided here by followers who have been long united behind the veteran libertarian. Officials at Young Americans for Liberty, a libertarian group, said they recruited about 700 students to attend the convention this year.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/12/2064004/conservatives-again-back-ron-paul.html#ixzz1DpaMHbdu

FROM CALGARY HERALD/ TORONTO STAR

U.S.-Canada security perimeter has existed for decades claims haarper

BY BARBARA YAFFE, CALGARY HERALD FEBRUARY 12, 2011 4:02 AM 

Those fretting about a loss of Canadian sovereignty resulting from a North American security perimeter might (!) want to consider Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent declaration that "a threat to the U.S. is a threat to Canada."

The statement was largely overlooked in media reporting on a White House news conference Feb. 4, when Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama announced talks about the security perimeter initiative.

But this is the second time Harper has delivered such messaging. In February 2009, when Obama visited Ottawa, the prime minister decreed: "Threats to the United States are threats to Canada."

This notion, in fact, "is a refinement, but consistent with" the 1940 Ogdensburg Agreement struck by then prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and then American president Franklin Roosevelt, reports former diplomat Colin Robertson, an authority on Canada-U.S. relations.

That agreement introduced closer Canadian-American military co-operation and established the Permanent Joint Board of Defence.

A country's military surely is the greatest symbol of its sovereignty and, in recent years, the two countries have arranged for their security bureaucracies to become more closely intertwined. This merging of operations has prompted little apparent nervousness or backlash on either side of the border.

Yet, when Canada and the U.S. talk about co-ordinating government regulations and standards, nervous Nellies come out of the woodwork to issue warnings about loss of sovereignty.

On the military side, since 1957, the two countries have co-operated through a binational North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad.

While this body for decades safeguarded continental air space, in May 2006, it moved to add the guarding of Canadian and American maritime approaches to its duties.

In February 2008, Canada and the U.S. signed an agreement allowing the use of forces from one nation to support the other during a civil emergency, when asked.



Read more:http://www.calgaryherald.com/Canada+security+perimeter+existed+decades/4270907/story.html#ixzz1Dk5sl3Dj

Iran Rallies Mark Revolution, Show Solidarity With Egypt's Protesters

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad says the Islamic Revolution that toppled the country's U.S.-backed monarch three decades ago has now spread to other Islamic countries, 

Ahmadinejad was speaking to crowds gathered in Tehran today to mark the 32nd anniversary of the revolution.

In a reference to recent antigovernment protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and other Arab countries, Ahmadinejad said, "Our revolution was not an ordinary political or national move, but as we see today, after 32 years, it led a global awakening and a new movement in the Middle East and North Africa."

During his speech to a crowd gathered in Tehran's Azadi Square, Ahmadinejad also called on Egyptians and other Arab people to defend their rights to be free.

"You have the right to be free. You have the right to national sovereignty.  You have the right to express your views and will freely on national and international affairs," he said. "You have the right to choose what kind of government you want and who should rule you."

Revolution Continuation

Iranian authorities and the country's state-run media say the current developments in Egypt are similar to those before Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and that what is happening in Cairo is a continuation of Iran's revolution.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called for the establishment of an Islamic regime in Egypt, where thousands of antigovernment demonstrators for more than two weeks have been calling on longtime President Hosni Mubarak to resign.

Iranian state television said the anniversary rallies this year show solidarity with the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

Hundreds of thousands marched today in Tehran towards Azadi Square, chanting slogans denouncing the United States and Israel. Some also carried placards in support of the Egyptian and Tunisian protests.


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FROM AFP

'Thinking cap' makes brain waves in Australia(AFP)
– 7 hours ago

SYDNEY — Scientists in Australia say they are encouraged by initial results of a revolutionary "thinking cap" that aims to promote creativity by passing low levels of electricity through the brain.

The device, which consists of two conductors fastened to the head by a rubber strap, significantly boosted results in a simple arithmetic test, they said.

Three times as many people who wore the "thinking cap" were able to complete the test, compared to those who did not use the equipment. Sixty people took part in total.

Allan Snyder, director of the University of Sydney's Centre for the Mind, said the device worked by suppressing the left side of the brain, associated with knowledge, and stimulating the right side, linked to creativity.

"You wouldn't use this to study or to help your memory," Snyder told AFP. "You would use this if you wanted to look at a problem anew.

"If you wanted to look at the world, just briefly, with a child's view, if you wanted to look outside the box."

He said goal was to suppress mental templates gathered through life experiences to help users see problems and situations as they really appear, rather than through the prism of earlier knowledge.


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FROM THE NEW SCIENTIST

Zoologger: The sharpest mind in the farmyard

When we look for examples of intelligent animals, certain species always leap to mind. Ourselves of course, and our close relatives the chimpanzees and other primates. Perhaps the cunning corvids – crows and scrub jays – with their prodigious memories and talent for deception. Dolphins and whales are pretty bright. Many would even agree that there is a sort of intelligence governing the behaviour of social insects like ants.

But sheep? Sheep are just thick.

Except that they aren't. Over the past few decades, evidence has quietly built up that sheep are anything but stupid. It now turns out that the humble domestic sheep can pass a psychological test that monkeys struggle with, and which is so sensitive it is used to look for neurological decline in human patients.

Woolly thinkersLaura Avanzo and Jennifer Morton of the University of Cambridge were interested in a new kind of genetically modified sheep. These animals carry a defective gene that in humans causes Huntington's disease, an inherited disorder that leads to nerve damage and dementia. The hope is that the Huntington's sheep could be a testing ground for possible treatments.

For that to work, they reasoned, researchers will have to be able to track changes in the cognitive abilities of the Huntington's sheep. So they decided to find out whether normal sheep could pass some of the challenging tests given to people with Huntington's. If the sheep passed, that would mean that the Huntington's sheep could be seen losing the ability as their disease progressed – and maybe regaining it if any treatments worked.

So Avanzo and Morton put seven female sheep through a series of increasingly tricky challenges. In one test the sheep walked into a pen that contained two buckets, one blue and the other yellow, with some food in the blue one. Over the course of a few trials they learned what was going on and always went to the blue bucket.

When the researchers put the food in the yellow bucket instead, the sheep changed their behaviour accordingly. They also mastered a subtler game in which the food was still in one of the buckets but the clue to its location was the colour of a cone placed nearby, not the colour of the bucket itself.


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