News roundup for Fri, Jul 16, 2021

14 Comments on News roundup for Fri, Jul 16, 2021
Are grazing animals used to prevent wildfires in California

Crops are getting damaged by the North American heat wave, and they are going unharvested because the field conditions are so hot they’re potentially deadly to field workers. Wheat could return as little as 25% of its normal production. This could drive wheat prices up precipitously.

We knew about the global rubber shortage, but there is also a tire shortage:

https://twitter.com/ai6yrham/status/1415128015642660865?s=20

There’s massive flooding in Europe after record rainfall.

Grazing animals are beneficial to the land in multiple ways: they help keep down the dry brush that catalyzes wild fires, they pack down grasses which helps to hold moisture in the soil and cool the soil, and they fertilize the soil as they mill about and graze. The combination of these effects can help reforestation efforts by creating a good environment for seedlings. As seedlings grow they provide shade which further cools the ground. Large scale application of grazing animals is an intervention the Western US needs to take seriously:

Waves of civil unrest, looting, and violence have rocked the region in and around a large port city in South Africa—a port city Johannesburg depends on logistically. The scale of the destruction is so vast that food distribution, energy production, and oil refineries have shut down. This occurred in the context of President Zuma being arrested for contempt of court. The intelligence and security services utterly failed in addressing the violence, and the military has now been mobilized—multiple days too late.

Synthetic fentanyl is killing Americans in droves. Overdose deaths grew by almost a third in 2020—largely because of fentanyl.

Bolsonaro has been hospitalized for abdominal pain and intractable hiccups. It sounds funny but hiccups that won’t stop are usually an indication of some other pathological malady.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will almost certainly result in massive waves of refugees. Ending the war is one thing, dealing with the humanitarian fallout is another. Europe is one the most popular destinations for asylum-seekers from the Middle East. The absence of “nation building” by the US in Afghanistan translates to huge costs to European nations in the wake of the pull out.

Situational awareness and the “flight” response saved one woman from the Florida condo collapse.

The world has over 189.7 million COVID cases. The world has gained 3.5 million cases in a week. Global case gain is on the rise. There have been nearly 4.1 million deaths in total. The US has had nearly 34.9 million cases. Over 624,000 Americans have died. There have been 318 deaths in the last 24 hours in the US. The US gained over 32,400 new cases in the last day. Indonesia, Brazil, the UK, India, and the US are leading the world in daily case gain in that order—The Delta variant is driving case growth in each country. A 4th significant wave appears to have started in the US:

If we want to stop Delta, we need to get more people vaccinated as fast as we can:

France mandated vaccines in order to get service in restaurants—nearly one million people rushed to get their shots. Maybe we don’t need lotteries after all.

Stephanie Arnold | cosmicpixle

Stephanie Arnold is an advanced practice psychiatric nurse and a doctoral candidate in UA Tuscaloosa’s DNP program. Stephanie moonlights from time to time at UCLA teaching mental health nursing. She also likes making cold-process soap.

  • 14 Comments
    • Karl Winterling July 17, 2021

      So, it looks like:

      1. Delta is more transmissible and more able to overcome weak antibody responses because there’s more of it in you when you get infected.
      2. There’s no evidence (I’m not an expert) that more virus = increased severity of infection or increased severity in kids.
      3. I’m not aware of any fully vaccinated person who’s under age 50 dying from the delta variant, so get your shot.
      4. Basically: avoid crowds, socialize outside, wear masks inside.
      5. Maybe read or play Dungeons & Dragons with your friends over Zoom rather than going to a pool party.
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    • Barb LeeContributor July 18, 2021

      “Crops are poor due to high carbon dioxide” was really painful to read for me because though a lay person, I spent a great deal of time learning about soil minerals when I was raising grassfed lambs and this article seems like a diversion from the real issue. Agriculture extracts minerals from the ground, along with leaching from rain and irrigation.  The crop takes those minerals with them when they are harvested.  The minerals need to be replaced, it’s as simple as that.  And they need to be replaced in amounts that are balanced with each other, just like human nutrition.  Too much of one thing, not enough of the other, will cause a deficiency of both for the plant.  Farmers consult agronomists and apply fertilizers that will produce biomass, not nutrition.  Applying other minerals only takes away from the farmer’s bottom line. Plants use minerals from the soil to catalyze phytonutrients into existence.  If they don’t have access to about 20 different soil minerals – in balance – they may grow but they will not produce nutrition.

      In addition, plants are genetically modified to grow in the absence of said minerals. 

      Plants require carbon dioxide to live. I wonder what narrative Scientific American is promoting to write such scare mongering stuff. 

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      • Hardened Barb Lee July 18, 2021

        Makes sense and very interesting.  Is the self-defense strategy to buy as much produce as possible from local small farmers?  Are they doing the right thing?

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Barb Lee July 18, 2021

        Apparently increased CO2 does impact the nutrient content of edible plants–especially rice. It’s not the only factor, clearly. When poor or contaminated top soil is added to the mix it’s even worse. I’m spending some time with some serious plant scientists this month. I will pick their brain on the issue and report back. 

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      • Barb LeeContributor Stephanie Arnold July 18, 2021

        Stephanie, if a corn crop is hybridized to the point of being no longer able to assimilate trace minerals from the soil, it’s fertilized with only anhydrous ammonia, and its protein content has been reduced in the last 50 years from 13% to 6%, most of which is indigestible zein, do you think that directing the focus to CO2 in the atmosphere makes sense?

        Poor soil is produced by extraction.  It is reversible, but at high cost.  Deflecting the focus of depleted nutrition to atmospheric CO2 enables that narrative and ignores the truth that extractive agriculture and modification of plants to be able to grow in biological slums is to blame for nutritional decline.

        Contaminated soil is – what?  Please define.  Contaminated soil is likely due to the use of excessive fertilizers – those that are used to create carbohydrate rich biomass.  But not just that, fertilizers that are applied so heavily to the point where normal nutrients like potassium, have accumulated in the soil at levels toxic to plants.

        Example:  The equestrian community faces an epidemic of metabolic disease in horses.  Why?  Soil is depleted to the point of – or so grossly overfertilized – the biosynthesis of nutrients within forage plants is halted at the production of sugar and starch – carbohydrates. The production of proteins and other phytonutrients is halted for lack of full spectrum minerals with which the forage plant may catalyze them into existence.  The result is rampant horsey diabetes.

        Grass tetany – a disease primarily of ruminants.  Considered a magnesium deficiency disease, when in fact it is most likely caused by overfertilization with potassium, which inhibits the uptake of magnesium by forage plants.

        Magnesium is generally not recommended as a fertility amendment because it **doesn’t increase yield**. And yet magnesium is a key catalyst in the production of proteins.  Magnesium may not be present in those proteins, but that is the nature of catalysts; they cause chemical reactions without becoming a part of them.

        There are  diseases of herbivorous livestock that mimic parasitic and microbial diseases which can ultimately be traced to deficiencies and imbalances of minerals.

        If you read the right articles on “The Green Revolution” you will see how modern agricultural practices and chemicals have saved billions of lives, but many of those billions live with gross malnutrition problems.

        Everyone has their own view of things. This is mine.

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Barb Lee July 19, 2021

        The contamination I had in mind was heavy metals like lead, for example. All of your points are excellent and valid. Learning about another plant stressor does not detract from existing ones. I don’t think CO2 levels are high on the list of plant-growth concerns for either Big Ag or small farmers. It’s just another data point. 

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      • Hardened Barb Lee July 19, 2021

        Dogpatch I’m guessing you’re highly critical of hydroponic farming, yes?

        I still want to know what I can do to defend my nutrition aside from becoming a farmer.  Stephanie maybe that would be a good topic for a future article.

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      • Barb LeeContributor Hardened July 19, 2021

        Hardened, I am not critical of anyone or anything they do.  Given the right nutrient solution, a hydroponic plant might be very nutritious; hydroponics just bypasses the nutrient exchange process between roots and soil microbes.

        I don’t know what any of us can do to stop nutritional decline in foodstuffs, unless you can garden and preserve.  But if you want to pursue “how” nutrient dense food is created, you could start here: https://www.midwesternbioag.com/about/about-biological-farming/  and get Gary Zimmer’s book “Biological Farming” .  I am not connected in any way to the company.  I just own his book, but I’ll probably have them analyze my garden soil this fall and get recommendations for soil treatments.

        Another book is Neal Kinsey’s “Hands on Agronomy”. kinseyag.com

        Real agronomists.

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    • Hardened July 18, 2021

      From the linked article:

      A photograph of a topless Bolsonaro lying on a hospital bed, with a man who appeared to be priest touching his right shoulder, was published on the president’s social media accounts alongside the message: “God willing, we’ll be back soon. Brazil is ours.”

      “Brazil is ours” are not the words of a public servant.

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      • Cia Hardened July 21, 2021

        I think Brazil e nostro means that Brazil is his and all Brazilians’ beloved homeland which all are committed to loving and serving. Nothing sinister.

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      • Hardened Cia July 21, 2021

        Oh that’s helpful context, thank you.

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    • Cia July 21, 2021

      I don’t think the US could have done nation-building in Afghanistan. The Taliban won because most Afghans feel that it represents their land, culture, and religion very well and they don’t need another one, and resent attempts to impose one. I am like most Westerners, angry at its treatment of women and dissenters, and I am convinced our ways are better. But we did not have the ability to change their way of thinking and impose our system of representative democracy and human rights. I wish we had. I don’t agree with everything in this article, but the author soberly explains the futility of what we tried to do.

      https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/magazine/2021/07/06/afghanistan-war-malkasian-book-excerpt-497843

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Cia July 22, 2021

        It’s true that it’s difficult to clean up the mess, but I’m not convinced we did enough to try. It’s questionable policy to wreak destruction in another country (all the while accomplishing vanishingly few of the driving objectives and simultaneously making things worse geopolitically for all involved), do little to build back, and then walk away from the situation leaving Europe (for the most part) to foot the bill in terms of housing the displaced. It’s dangerous, actually. These failures radicalize enemies and alienate our allies–both of which are terrible outcomes. It’s a dismal display of US intervention. Perhaps it was time to cut our loses. I think we are underestimating the future costs of our current failures. 

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      • Cia Stephanie Arnold July 22, 2021

        I think we had to invade when Osama bin Laden was hiding there and al Quada had its mujahideen training camps there. Their decision. We did a lot to protect women and promote the education of all children. We were criticized for not prohibiting the cultural practice of dancing boys who are exploited by adult men. But could the US have eliminated a popular local custom? I was horrified. by the girl who was mutilated because she wanted to go to school. But again, while we tried, how much could we do to change a deeply-rooted attitude toward women and education? We did not make the mess, and there turned out to be little we could do to change it.  I think our sudden withdrawal was entirely politically motivated and had nothing to do with the well-being of any Afghan, which was irresponsible. I think Europe would be well-advised to shut its borders and be judicious about who is allowed in. We’re trying to help those who worked with the US, who are obviously in danger now. We are no longer rich, stable, and prosperous, and I don’t think we should try to do the impossible. It was Afghans working with the Russians opposed by nationalist Afghans which triggered the endless war starting in 1979, and so weakened the Soviet Union that it was an important factor in its fall. Maybe there are enough Afghans now who’d like to work with the outer world for internal change.

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