Now, with the same map in overlay (lower right):

LAX flight paths ca. 2004 (source):

]

[Insert sardonic Economist caption here.]

Where’s Jared Diamond when you need him to reaffirm your master narrative?

[S]ince 1948, manure generated by U.S. meat-producing animals has been reduced 25 percent while production of meat has increased 700 percent.

The US population increased roughly 110% in the same period.

“The General Tommy Franks Leadership Institute and Museum,” 507 S Main St, Hobart, OK, according to maps.google.com:

(abu muqawama)

From Wikipedia:

A good book on the subject: Mangold and Penycate, The Tunnels of Cu Chi (Berkley, ’86), notable for aerial photos of graffiti carved into jungle terrain.

(kottke)

Strangely, it’s not an excess of clear-cutting that is the problem; this time, it’s a lack of clear-cutting that is creating environmental worries. Environmentalists may hate clear-cutting, but lynx love it—because when trees are cleared away, a dense spruce-fir thicket often crops up in their place, and those thickets attract snowshoe hares, the lynx’s primary prey. Biologists say lynx are thriving in Maine because massive industrial clear-cuts following a spruce budworm epidemic 30 years ago have grown into hare-rich thickets. But regulations reducing the size of clear-cuts in the Maine woods—products of state legislation passed in 1989 and amended after a divisive environmental campaign in the late 1990s—are now eliminating those thickets, and eventually, the hares that live in them. Over the next decade, the unintended chain reaction is expected to dramatically reduce the number of Maine lynx—the only lynx in the Eastern states, and listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The sooner we do away with the idea of nature, the better it will do.

(mealypotatoes)

(hb)

Source notes that (amidst all the toney, pseudo-historical historical debates about journalism) perks like the Big Pic will likely fall to budget cuts.

(keith dawson; the title’s from his venerable .sig)

(silhouettemasterpiecetheatre | jk)

Using the data from the inspectors’ survey, we can assume that one-third of 150,000 colonies die off over the course of six months. Supposing that during the same time the number of infected but not yet collapsed colonies declines (as it would if the most destructive phase of the problem is behind us), then using standard equations that govern epidemics we can conclude that we must have started with at least 10,000 infected (but not yet collapsed) colonies.

If we knew the true number of healthy colonies at the beginning of the six months, as well as the probabilities that an exposed colony will become sick and that a sick colony will die in a given amount of time, we could also calculate the number expected to die in the future. Since we don’t know those quantities, we must do the calculation for every possible set of values.

If we knew the true number of healthy colonies at the beginning of the six months, as well as the probabilities that an exposed colony will become sick and that a sick colony will die in a given amount of time, we could also calculate the number expected to die in the future. Since we don’t know those quantities, we must do the calculation for every possible set of values.

He concludes:

Our first priority should be to gather more accurate information about the bees’ disappearance. The war against colony collapse is about numbers.

The numbers are about the bees.

(BTW: time for a moratorium on “war against” this and “war on” that. They don’t work. And while we’re about it, how about a moratorium on “X is [optional: really] about Y” formulations, which smack of misapplied therapese.)