How much are polar bears worth as a species?

There are lots of ways to go about answering this question.  I'll just pursue one line of reasoning.

My governor thinks that  "hundreds of millions" is too much to try to protect the polar bears' environment.  Actually, the Anchorage Daily News reported,

An independent economic review*, paid for by the state and a private corporation, estimates the designation will cost hundreds of millions of dollars in added expense for the oil industry and lost revenue for state and local governments.

Much of the ADN story comes right from the press release on the Governor's website, which says the results of the report (not the report itself) have been released.  There's a link to his letter to the Secretary of Interior in which he says "hundreds of millions or even billions in just the next 15 years" (as opposed to the Interior Department's estimate of $650 million over 29 years).

So that's just costs to Alaska and oil companies in Alaska.

But what is a reasonable price for human beings to pay to maintain polar bear habitat in the world?  Let's assume that 'hundreds of millions" is about $400 million.   What can you get for $400 million?

 

 

 

1. One day of war in Iraq. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Four auctioned pieces of art.  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
    
3. 1.5% of all pizzas consumed by Americans in one year.  ( Pizzaware says Americans consume 3 billion pizzas a year at $30 billion.)  I bet that's less than all the left over slices that got thrown out. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Knik Arm Bridge with a couple hundred million to a billion to spare.  (Official bridge site says $650-700 million.  An anti bridge site says federal highway report puts total costs at $1.5 billion.)
   
   
5. What Americans spent last year to see Transformers:  Revenge of the Fallen ($402,111,870)
   
   
6. Half of Alaskans' Permanent Fund Last year ($875 million total to divide)  or we could spread it out over several years.  I know Alaskans consider this their money, even the ones who accuse Obama of being a socialist.  But not even to save the polar bear? 
   
   
7. 4.5% of what Americans spent on veterinary care for their pets in 2007.  We spent $10 billion on vet care in 2007.  ($41 billion altogether on pets.)  I know that pets are family members to their owners, but I'm sure some of this wasn't necessary or even prolonged a pet's suffering.   We can spend it all on cats and dogs and birds, while we let the polar bears disappear?

Think about your great-great-grand kids studying history 100 years from now and asking questions like -

"You mean they spent the money needed to save polar bears on  pizza? to buy four paintings? to see a movie?. . .?"

OK, I understand this is just the money the governor says it would cost our economy and oil companies to fulfill the conditions of the Endangered Species Act and not all it would cost to save the polar bear.  (And we don't know that his numbers - vague as they are - are accurate either.  And he doesn't consider the benefits that would accrue because we make the effort to save one of the most magnificent animals on earth.)  And I recognize that the Governor challenges whether these actions would even do anything positive for the bears.  The point though is to say that if we wanted to save the species, there's slack in our budgets to do it.

A point I don't get into here is that human thinking and economic incentives are set to the keep the status quo.  We could create alternative life styles that would be more earth friendly without sacrificing living rich human lives (and lots of people around the world are working on this), but it does mean making perceived sacrifices and Americans like what they have.  We focus on what we would give up, not what we would gain.  And the companies. that sell them what they have, bombard them with advertising to make sure they keep buying more.

Sure, there are lots of questions that can be raised about the Endangered Species Act and polar bears, but I think that our governor thinks small and short term on this issue.  To frame this as jobs versus polar bears is stunted thinking.  Once the polar bears are gone even a couple billion dollars (which we do have sitting in the Permanent Fund) won't bring them back.  What happened to being good stewards of the earth? 



*The 'Independent'  economic review was done by Econ One Inc.

Econ One Research, Inc. provides economic research and consulting services. The company focuses on areas such as contract disputes, antitrust, intellectual property, patent infringement, regulation, and unfair competition. Its clientele includes Atkinson & Thal, Keker & Van Nest, American Central Gas Co., Enron Corp., GE Capital, Hughes Electronics Corp., IBM Corp., PepsiCo, Inc., US Department of Justice, and The World Bank. The company caters to airline, energy, oil and gas, healthcare, retail, and telecommunications industries. Econ was founded in 1997 and based in Los Angeles, California with an additional office in Texas.

They've done a lot of consulting for the Alaska Department of Revenue on the gasline and also for the legislature. They're heavy on economists.  It would be interesting to see how much money this company has made from its Alaska government work and whether the interest in future contracts might have influenced how they calculated costs in this report.   We know this happens, even egregiously, as when  Arthur Andersen switched its Enron accountants for ones more willing to agree with Enron's calculations.  Enron was another of Econ One's clients - did they help Enron cause the California blackouts? Probably not, but they do energy and gas work and it's worth asking.  It would also be interesting to know which private company helped pay for the report.  Don't have time for that now.

[Update:  I missed that when I first read the ADN article.  It says:

Arctic Slope Regional Corp., an Alaska Native corporation, also paid for the report, prepared by Econ One Research Inc.]

This License Plate Took Me a Little Longer to Figure Out

 Perhaps because I thought my neighbors were more devout.  First I thought it was about someone who likes food.  But that was a stretch.

I'm usually pretty good at this. I started reading letter language when someone gave me a copy of CDB long ago.

    Maybe this is how novelists pick up characters.  They take a license plate like this and imagine the person who paid money for it.

Four Years Today - This all began with turn indicators

On July 12, 2006, the first post went up on What Do I Know?  Probably no one except me saw it.  There's one comment, but it didn't go up until October.

There were 93 posts from July  to December 31, 2006.  There were 526 in 2007, 739 in 2008, 624 in 2009, and 391 so far in 2010.

So here's the first post:

What do turn indicators indicate?

Why are there people who don't use their car turn indicators? It's such a simple thing to do - just flip the thing up or down. Then the vehicles behind and in front know you're going to turn. Also the pedestrians. Watching at a corner I cross a lot, I see that most cars do use the indicator. But why doesn't everyone? Some ideas:
1. Just don't think about - no one ever told them it was important
2. Lazy (you've got to be really lazy to not flick the thing up or down)
3. Already got the steering wheel and (fill in the blank - coffee, cell phone, etc.) in the other hand
4. Think it doesn't matter because no one's around
5. Think it doesn't matter because they're in the left turn only lane, so of course they're turning left (is that ok?)
6. Want to keep others guessing.
7. Just rebelling against all rules

So, do you have some other reasons?

I think people should just be trained to do this when they learn to drive, so it becomes completely automatic for any sort of turn or lane change.

So does it mean anything when someone doesn't use it? Are non-indicators just more self absorbed than others? Do they have more trouble thinking about how their actions affect others? It's so easy to do and such a civil thing to do - saying "just letting you know I'm turning."

Anyway, watch when you're at a corner and see what percent use their turn indicators. Will it be different for different cities? Different countries?

1 comments:

Desmond said...

i am sure it is different in differnt country. e.g. in Beijing, it would be 30%...

There was one more post that month: Spittle Bugs

The posts for August 2006 were (remember, these are in reverse chronological order):

• Free shuttle from airport to downtown SLC
• World Trade Center II
• World Trade Center - Part I
• Best Secret Powerpoint Tip
• Dirt
• Verifying
• Going Digital

 My first picture was posted on August 6, 2006.  (August 6 is a special day in our household, but I think that's coincidental.)

Switching from NL to Spain at Bear Tooth World Cup Showing

In 1990 we were in Hong Kong for the World Cup in Rome.  That meant the games began around 2 or 3 am.  For the three or four weeks of the World Cup, Hong Kong workers came to work sleepier than normal.  My son was part of this obsession.

Since we don't have cable at home, I don't watch much sports, but after being in Berlin on a couple of football Saturdays in May, I did pay attention to the world cup this year and even saw  bits of games if they were on while we were out somewhere.

Since about 700 million were reportedly going to watch this game around the world, it seemed like I should join in on this communal world activity. The ADN said it was free at the Bear Tooth, doors opening at 10.   So I got there at 10.

The line already went all the way around the building.


















Someone was passing out tickets as I looked for the end of the line so I took one. 






The man sitting next to me was from Barcelona and he overheard me when I called my son and answered Holland when he asked who I was rooting for. J was too, I think because Gus was rooting for Spain. "Are you from Holland?" the man asked. Then he told he he was from Barcelona and he'd met the Spanish players from Barcelona because they were friends of friends.









Then it began.  A few people in front stood up for the Dutch national anthem and it was clear there was a Dutch contingent - even a woman wearing a very Dutch white cloth hat.

Choosing the Dutch was pretty arbitrary.  I didn't really have a reason to go either way and after a while it sure looked like Spain was playing much better ball and the Dutch were pretty rough.  And in American sports, male players are supposed to act very macho and not show any signs of pain when they're down.  I'd been hearing about the acting talent of the World Cup players, and today I got to see it.  Every fall was a life threatening injury of great agony until the ref called the penalty (or not), then the player was up and fine.

Until the Dutch player de Jong kicked Xabi Alonso in the chest.  Watch it yourself on this YouTube. (It's only ten seconds.) It was terrible. 




I'd already found that my body, despite my decision, was rooting for Spain, and with this kick to the chest, my body and my head got back together.


So, when Andres Iniesta scored a goal for Spain with about two minutes left in extra time, I cheered loudly with the other Spain supporters.








Then I retrieved my bike from the crowded rack and rode home.

Anchorage Trailer Trash

I would hope regular readers would know that I wouldn't refer to people in such a negative way.  In fact I'm speaking quite literally here - trailers reduced to trash.  This picture is from the trailer park at Piper and 40[42nd]. 

Here's a picture I took of the park in 2008 when this fence had just gone up.  You can see that it was full of low cost housing.  Here's a picture I took last week at the same spot along the fence.

View at fence opening  July 2010

View at fence opening August 2008

This used to be full of trailers with little gardens.

The trailer park at 40th and Piper takes up quite a bit of space and I'm sure the property value is much higher than when it first became a trailer park and maybe the owners feels they can use the land more profitably.  Or perhaps they've gotten older and just wants to get their cash and the new buyer wants to build.  Who knows?  Trailers seem like a poor option where the winters get really cold, but they also aren't cubby holes in long dark corridors.  The people at this park had quick access to the out of doors, little yards and gardens.

I recall news stories in past years about trailer park closures and people not being able to find space to relocate their trailers.  I can't find any of those stories online.  But my sense is that the number of trailer parks is shrinking and there are fewer places that people can park them.  Here's a google list:

I'm not really making a statement one way or the other about this.  I don't know enough to do that.  Things change.  I'm just putting this up for the record.  Maybe others can interpret what this means for Anchorage and the people who live here.

There are still trailer parks around.  Just a few blocks south of the now defuncting Piper/42nd trailer park across Tudor, at Piper and 46th, is a small trailer park with maybe half a dozen trailers.

Weird Weather, New Road, Amy Stewart

The weather has held steady for about two weeks now - "lows high 40s-mid 50s and highs to the mid 60s".  We've had interesting clouds.  Then today it was sunny and warm.  When it hit 75˚ F (23˚C) this afternoon I decided I needed a bike ride to the Botanical Garden and back.

And that's when I discovered that Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue is almost ready to open.  At left is where it begins at Elmore Road across the street from the Muni buildings south of Tudor.  Anchorage folks remember a long time back how our city where we're told there is no racism rejected naming any of our streets after MLK.  When logic gets really silly ('changing 9th Avenue to MLK Avenue would disrupt the [alpha-] numerical integrity of our streets' - really they said that!) it means people are covering up their real, less savory reasons ("We're not naming any street after that commie N.")[Thanks Jay, I forgot the alpha]

[Update July 10:  I found this picture from the same spot last August - that brown spot in the middle is a moose.  I don't think they are welcome here any more.  And I guess it looks greener than I suggested

But it seems the more left leaning side of our population has finally got a street named after MLK.  There is a bit of a catch though - it goes through parkland that the libs really wanted to leave parkland.  Clever those road builders.  In any case, the road, which I'd seen previously as this brown swath through the woods south of Tudor and which blocked the bike trail from the Native Hospital to Tudor Municipality Buildings for a couple of summers now, is pretty much ready to be opened.

But this evening it was my private bike trail.

There's a way to Tudor and the various buildings around the ANTHC.

And then it ends at Tudor and Boniface.  That's when I learned the road's name.  



You'd think with this macho road through the woods here to Boniface, where Elmore Road traffic could then go north, that this would alleviate any need to push through the UAA-APU land at Bragaw.  You'd think.  It will still be a fight to keep those people who think in straight lines and get really uncomfortable when two points aren't connected by a road to go after that area that is park now and could be campus as the need for more university land grows.

There's also bike trail connected with this road and it's nice bike trail through the woods, but it isn't particularly good commuter bike trail because it's off on the edge of where people are and not going to work.  Though I imagine the folks going through bear country trails from Service High could then go west on this trail.  But they'd then most likely want to connect to the Chester Creek trail into town. 

Right near the State Troopers headquarters, where the sign said it was 81˚F

I continued on to the Botanical Garden (just up Campbell Airstrip Road from Tudor) where this sign was posted on the gate.  Amy Stewart's website says about her most recent book (the green one on the left in the poster):

Wicked Plants is a New York Times bestseller! National Public Radio says, "Bram Stoker meets Agatha Christie in this sophisticated little brew of botanical bogeymen."

 This workshop is tomorrow (Saturday July 10) and the talk is Sunday July 11. 








I rode back home through Campbell Creek Park where people were enjoying the warm weather next to the creek.











[Update July 10:  I meant to put up this 2008 map from the kidsneedparks]

Spying at the Tennis Court

Alan Furst writes spy novels.  In his 2008 The Spies of Warsaw we get a glimpse of the thinking that supposedly underlies the ten Russian sleeper spies who have so bizarrely come into our lives in the last week or so.

In the book we're in Warsaw, 1937,  where the military attache to the French embassy has been playing doubles at the Milanowek Tennis Club, located at "the manor house . .  . owned by Prince Kaz, formally Kazimierz, and Princess Toni, Antowina." He's not a great player - he has war wounds which make it hard to chase the ball.

The author tells us, after the game,

He managed almost always to hit the right note with these people because he was, technically, one of them - Jean-François Mercier de Boutillon, though the nobiliary particule de had been dropped by his democratically inclined grandfather, and the name of his ancestral demesne had disappeared along with it, except on official papers.  But participation in the rites and rituals of this world was not at all something he cared about - membership in the tennis club, and other social activities, were requirements of his profession;  otherwise he wouldn't have bothered.  A military attaché was supposed to hear things and know things, so he made it his business to be around people who occasionally said things worth knowing.  Not very often, he thought.  But in truth - he had to admit - often enough. 

As many commentators have observed, people like Mercier who is attached to the embassy, has a diplomatic immunity the so-called sleeper spies don't have because they're not here under diplomatic cover.  I also wonder whether we need a new word.  Spy ring congers up less wholesomeness than these people portray.  On the other hand, it seems that the media are having way too much fun spoofing these suburban secret agents.  I suspect there is a lot more here than we know and that these people are not as silly as so many seem to believe.  

In any case, assuming Furst knows what he's writing about, this sort of eavesdropping espionage isn't new.

What Do Peace Corps Volunteers Do When They Return? - A Few Alaskan RPCVs

 The Byers Lake outing the end of June was a chance for a few Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV's) from Anchorage and Fairbanks to meet half-way (more for Fairbanks, less for Anchorage) and spend time together.  I've posted about the flowers and bugs and the trail around Byers Lake, and now I'm finally getting around to post on some of the former Peace Corps volunteers living in Alaska who were there.  These are pretty brief bios.  These people are doing lots more things than I've captured.




Linda Pearson (Cline) was a volunteer in Malaysia Group 14 1966-68.  She was a teacher trainer in Simangang, Sarawak.  I know another former volunteer who was also in Sarawak (Scott Goldsmith at ISER) so I asked Linda if she'd been in a village with long houses.  She had.  These were probably some of the more primitive sites that Peace Corps volunteers served in, among people who had been headhunters not too much earlier.

Linda's a UAF graduate and has spent a good part of her career as a School Counselor in the Fairbanks area. 





Tony Gasbarro was a volunteer the first time in the Dominican Republic where he was a forestry adviser in one of the first Peace Corps groups from 1962-64.

Then he returned to the US and had a career that included the US Forestry Services for five years, the Food and Agriculture Association (FAO)  of the United Nations in Rome.  Then he taught at UAF for 24 years.  When he retired, he rejoined the Peace Corps and spent 1996-98 as a forestry manager in El Salvador.  As a Professor Emeritus at UAF he's keeping active helping out at the university. 

Currently Tony is teaching one graduate course related to natural resources and international development.   He is also campus coordinator of the Peace Corps Masters International  Program at UAF.




Andrew Cyr worked in environmental education and outreach in Morocco from 2006-2008, particularly working on environmental income generation.

Now he works for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources as a resource specialist doing environmental assessment of gravel sales and land leasing. 






Denise Ramp taught English from 1991-93 in  Gabon. 

She got a degree in Nursing and Midwifery and made her way to Alaska.  She worked at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation (YKHC) in Bethel from 2004-9 and now works at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) in Anchorage.  







Larry Flemming was also in Gabon from 1996-98 where he worked in school construction.  (No, he didn't meet Denise until they were back in the US.)

In Alaska he works as a project manager for the Rockford Corporation. 






Kelly Malahy worked in Agro Forestry and Environmental Education in El Salvador from 2003-2005.


While she lives in Anchorage, she's temporarily in Fairbanks where she's at UAF getting a teacher certificate. 














Joe Sullivan is the catalyst who organized the weekend get-together.  He wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer when he was younger, but thought he needed a higher degree before joining.  So he got his PhD in Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures.  But he also got married and they had a child and the Peace Corps wouldn't take him.

So after a couple of years of college teaching he came to Alaska and worked for the Department of Fish and Game as a fish pathologist.  He also managed a damage assessment project and restoration projects after the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

When he retired from the state, he finally joined the Peace Corps and served in Zambia from 1999-2001 as a fisheries agent.  In 2005 he volunteered in the Peace Corps crisis corps and helped out after Hurricane Katrina.

He recently returned from several months in Zimbabwe where he was working on several volunteer projects. 

   
Carolyn Burgin Gray worked in Panama from 1965-67 as a community  development volunteer in the Azuero Peninsula near Las Tablas where  she  assisted doctors from the University of Panama testing her villagers for goiter. A self help project to build a USAID school was completed at the same time. A credit and savings coop was established for women of the area. She returned to work as a Peace  Corps recruiter 1968-69.  



Don Gray  worked near Calcutta, India, 1966-68, "Block Development Officer" in rice cultivation in West Bengal, and in well  construction during a drought in Bihar.

Carolyn and Don met at Stanford, obtained fellowships which were reserved for RPCVs going into education and they both obtained MAs in Secondary Education in the Social Studies.  On completion, they married and joined the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District in 1970 where they both taught social studies.  Carolyn, who also taught Spanish, retired in 1996 after which, among other things, she has been secretary to Northern Alaska Peace Corps Friends for many years.  Don retired in 1993 and then became a stock broker/financial advisor for Morgan Stanley and Wedbush Morgan Securities until retiring completely in 2005.


Don and Carolyn returned to India in 2002 where they noticed many crop changes and improvements in communication, (cell phones &  Internet), transportation and educational attainment since Don's service.  In 2008, Carolyn returned to Panama where she visited with old friends, and saw the village’s new community center, aqueduct, and water purification plant.

Some of the country links here go to a site with Peace Corps Journals online.  You can check it out at the link.

[UPDATE, March 10, 2011: There's a new post with video of Juneau Returned Peace Corps Volunteers relating where they served and what they did.]

Anchorage Gets Noticeable Earthquake, No Damage Here

We were sitting at the dinner table when we both looked at each in recognition of the fact that the earth was quaking.  It wasn't big, it wasn't too long (a few seconds I'd guess), but there was no mistake that the house shook a bit.  The lamp above the table wasn't moving when I looked up afterward.  I've given up guessing the size because that's affected by so many things - like how far away it is and how deep it is and what kind of quake it is.  But if it was pretty close to Anchorage I'd guess it was in the 4 - 5 range.   I didn't check the clock, but it was probably some time between 7:05 and 7:20 pm.



I did go to the USGS site and report it. 

And now there's a map up at USGS.  And they report it as a 5.2 magnitude.

It's very similar to one I posted 11 months ago.

And for those who want to know more about the Richter Scale used to measure earthquakes, I have some information on that which I posted after the Haiti earthquake which was two points more than the one tonight, but with significant more damage. (Two points is 100 times more powerful.)

"Costco Reigns as the Biggest Offender"

Two years and 5 days ago I had a post called "Fishing at Costco."  I've updated it today in response to this post at  foodchange based on a new Greenpeace Report:

And while most U.S. supermarkets could stand to improve their sustainable seafood policies, Costco reigns as the biggest offender. Everything at Costco is huge—the same is true of the store's environmental footprint. Of the 22 IUCN Red List species, Costco sells 15: Alaskan pollock, Atlantic cod, Atlantic salmon, Atlantic sea scallops, Chilean sea bass, grouper, monkfish, ocean quahog, orange roughy, red snapper, redfish, South Atlantic albacore tuna, swordfish, tropical shrimp, and yellowfin tuna. The store's fish coolers really serve as a one-stop shop for oceanic destruction. . .

The non-profit's "Oh-No-Costco" campaign asks the store to put three measures in place: One, implement an effective and publicly available sustainable seafood policy. Two, provide transparent labeling so consumers can know what they're buying and where it came from. And finally, Greenpeace wants the store to stop selling all Red List fish, beginning immediately with Chilean sea bass and orange roughy.

Here's their rating for Alaska supermarkets:

[Note:  The formatting was much slicker in the original]

Your local supermarket(s) scorecard:

a.  Rating (max 10) 
b.  Sustainable Seafood Policy (max 100)
c.  Support for Sustainability Initiatives (max 100)
d.  Labeling and Promotion of Sustainable Seafood (max 100)
e.  Number of Red List Seafoods on Sale (max 22)
f.  Seafood Sustainability Score (max 100)

Supermarket (click logo for scorecard)	a.	b.	c.	d.	e.	f.
	6	70.22	64.75	52	8	63.24
	6	63.12	73.78	43.5	11	58.1
	4	41.37	50	34.5	12	43.47
	4	41.37	50	34.5	12	43.47
	3	32	35	38	17	32.25
	2	0	19	20	15	18.75

Greenpeace is known to play hardball.  I've tried to find a Costco response online, but Greenpeace seems to dominate this story online at this point.  I also can't find anything on Costco's website.  I tried calling the Debarr store, but it was after hours and no one answered.  You might want to ask your local store manager and fish manager about their sustainable fish policy and that you will decide whether to buy fish at Costco again after you read their response to Greenpeace's report.

UPDATE Feb. 27, 2011:  I did contact my local store the next day and they gave me Seattle contact numbers, but no one ever responded to me.  However, I noticed this in the Alaska Dispatch today:

Alaska Newspapers | Feb 25, 2011

Costco Wholesale, a major seafood retailer, has revised its seafood sustainability policy to halt sale of several wild species that have been nearly universally identified as at great risk.
The list, released in late February, includes Atlantic cod, Atlantic halibut, Chilean sea bass, Greenland halibut, grouper (Epinephelus morio), monkfish (lophius americanus), orange roughy, redfish, shark, skates and rays, swordfish and bluefin tuna.
Costco officials said they would not resume sales of these species until their sources are certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council, which has identified itself as the world's leading certification and eco-labeling program for sustainable seafood. . .