Originally Posted by Odin

This says it all.

When the model doesn't match the reality, one should start looking for things which are occurring that weren't predicted by the model. One such mechanism has been the development of lingering summer wind pattern that pushes the whole ice cap towards the gap between Greenland and Europe. On the leading edge of this wind push, more ice is getting into warmer water, resulting in melting and casting off icebergs. On the tailing edge, more dark open water results more light absorbed into heat.

It is not clear, though, whether this new wind pattern is an anomaly of the last few years, or whether it is a new normal apt to happen more years than not. Until we do know, we won't really know if the ice coverage curves are apt to return to slopes suggested by the older models, or whether we should extrapolate the rapidly falling satellite data curve.

But the observed rapid down slope suggests the expected cascading feedback mechanisms are being engaged. Less ice now leads to less ice in the future. Even if the new wind patterns don't develop in future years, we have jumped a decade or so ahead along the melting curve, and there is no reason to expect we'll jump back up.

I for one will be watching reports of melting permafrost. One of the next mechanisms to trigger would be a large release of methane greenhouse gas.

Though I must admit that denialists denying would be the more predictable and rapid expectation.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Not as crazy a guess as I was originally thinking it was ...

http://polardiscovery.whoi.edu/expedition2/index.html

Don't you understand? The science is settled. There's no more science to do on the basic question -- and anything that engenders doubt on the basic question is therefore unscientific dogma. Q.E.D., baby.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Don't you understand? The science is settled. There's no more science to do on the basic question -- and anything that engenders doubt on the basic question is therefore unscientific dogma. Q.E.D., baby.

Nothing is ever settled in science, we can know an approximation of the truth but, since we are finite beings we cannot know with absolute certainty. But, if we wish to function in the world as individuals and as a society we must ACT on the knowledge we have, especially when the knowledge is telling us "DANGER! DANGER!".

Originally Posted by The Rani

Weren't you the one so skeptical of common sense/knowledge and incomplete science not so long ago?

Besides, "knowledge" can not speak or give warnings. Once again, your totalitarianism is showing.

If Taylor's showing anything, it's simply that he's young and impatient. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He's advocating doing something about the problem, not that the science is totally complete. I'd bet the two of you would agree on many of the solutions.

So why pick on him and call him crap like "totalitarian?"

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

He's advocating doing something about the problem, not that the science is totally complete.

Exactly.

Originally Posted by The Rani

It's not crap or picking on anyone; it's an honest observation.

So you really do think he's totalitarian in his outlook, or leaning that way?

I know you'll never get it, because you see everything on this forum like some kind of battle, and you think that I should be on your "side."

I don't expect that. What I'm tired of is seeing people's viewpoints exaggerated, on either side of the debate.

And geez, doing "something" about the problem when you don't even know for sure if there IS a problem seems a little ridiculous, doesn't it?

There is solid evidence that the climate is warming. Humankind will have to make some kinds of adjustment to that change, no matter how much of it is actually attributed to human causes.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

There is solid evidence that the climate is warming. Humankind will have to make some kinds of adjustment to that change, no matter how much of it is actually attributed to human causes.

Absolutely correct. Rani will not start dealing with it until the water is lapping at her lawn. I suspect that when she yells at it to get off her lawn, she'll get the same response that Canute did.

Originally Posted by Pink Splice

Absolutely correct. Rani will not start dealing with it until the water is lapping at her lawn.

Or a few Bangladeshi refugees decide to set up camp on her lawn.

Originally Posted by The Rani

I guess you guys must have run out of "logical argument." Ok by me.

Rational argument with you is pointless.

********************************
Last sentence deleted by order of Craig Cheslog 30 JUN 08

Originally Posted by Pink Splice

Rational argument with you is pointless. I'm just waiting for one of your customers to come in and help you with Step 5 of your own twelve step program, all at once. The process should take less than four minutes.

Don't you mean Step 4?

Originally Posted by Odin

Or a few Bangladeshi refugees decide to set up camp on her lawn.

IMHO, while using concrete examples to make a point might generally be considered a good thing, using that particular concrete example against The Rani might have been in bad taste.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Semo and Perv, please stop being so rational. We have moved on to ad-homs here, which have nothing to do with facts, logic, or especially good taste.

Me, rational around you? Since when is lust rational?

Originally Posted by The Rani

He thinks he knows everything about my life, but it's all in his head.

Her's the Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program

Modifications in bold are mine:

1. We admitted we were powerless over X'r snark—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

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LAST PARAGRAPH DELETED BY ORDER OF CRAIG CHESLOG 30 JUN 08

Originally Posted by The Rani

I'm waiting for a reply from the webmaster on this one to see if he's willing to finally put an end to your bullshit. If not, fuck it, I'm outta here for good.

Eh, don't give the dude the satisfaction of pushing you out of here, so to speak.

Originally Posted by The Rani

... What I'm really interested in finding out is if the same standards of decorum are to be applied to folks who express "popular" vs. "unpopular" opinions or ideas. If not, who the fuck needs this place anyway? Leave it to the mutual masturbation club, and find something better to do.

That's what I'm thinking at this point, anyway. Although, I guess I've broken the rules at this point also, so I'll probably get banned along with him ... hee hee!

So what do you want to hear? That Wally was out of line. Fine. Wally was out of line, W-A-Y outside the line. But then, you knew he would go there, because you've been pushing his buttons. Like you said, you're the pro here.

So instead of pushing your buttons, Wally broke the keyboard with a sledgehammer. Pissed you off, too. But then, you already knew that.

What a bizarre bunch of people we have here. It's like watching a slow-motion train wreck.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

What a bizarre bunch of people we have here. It's like watching a slow-motion train wreck.

Time to end the trainwreck.

I've passed a number of milestones this year. My GI relatives are all dead now. Had to stop playing poker, since my upper respiratory tract can't take it anymore. Years of second-hand exposure as a child, hazarous chemical/radiation exposure, etc , etc. My Mom needs more home health care support than ever. That 30th HS reunion was a shocker. Being forced to take on more responsibility at work, without extra compensation (I fill 3 job slots). I'm taking action about that.

And it's time to take action about this. M&L's post was a needed shock to the system.

Since most everything is waiting on November 2008, it's time to take a break until then. Somehow, I think most everyone will still be here...

Wally.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

What a bizarre bunch of people we have here. It's like watching a slow-motion train wreck.

Nah.........It's not as interesting as a slow motion train wreck. More like watching a pathetic drunk's liver rot.

I don't know, but It seems odd that one finds posts like these (sounding like a bunch of drunks at the local bar having the same spat they have every time they get drunk together) on a forum thread entitled Global Warming. Seems it would be more appropriate to have said spats on another thread entitled something like "Psycho Drivel" or "Pathetic On Line Relationships Go Awry".

This cancer of snarky interpersonal squabble seems to infect every thread this bunch bothers to visit. Just look around. Regardless of the topic, it seems to regularly come back to he-says-she-says personal bullshit (my 1%) that would be better carried out through IM or email posts thus saving all those interested in the thread topics having to read through the second rate drama in hopes of finding some fleeting reference to S&H.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

Bullshit. (There's my 1%, and if I get banned for that, then c'est la vie.)

Getting banned for using BS is not likely ... nor desired.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

... The Rani and Wally got along just fine (in the sense that they had little to do with each other) until two buttons were pushed. The first was pushed when she came in on "my" side in a fairly heated argument about a certain kind of bias here and the second was pushed when Mustang told Wally that The Rani was a shrink. In other words, he was hostile toward her before any of the button-pushing talk started. The only buttons she pushed were daring to disagree with him (by agreeing with me) and being a member of an elite profession. That's when he became increasingly hostile toward her. Now, whatever happened between Wally and me happened between Wally and me, but it's a load of bull to try to paint The Rani as the instigator who set Wally off because she wasn't.

You see Suj as an ally, but I see fer as an independent actor ... of long standing. Suj instigated nothing, but she knew how to find the soft spots. Her typical modus operandi is to joke, snark and poke fun. Some people don't do well with that if it hits a nerve. I have rhinoceros skin, so I just poke back. You, Wally and several others are more likely to be offended. That's the only point I was making.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

... The simple fact of the matter is that I pressed Wally's big red button (inadvertently) by daring to disagree with him when he posted his opinion of an online survey of tabletop gamers, and that's what really set him off. For some reason, he takes the long slow death of his corner of the hobby (wargames and the roleplaying game Traveller) very personally, and that's why no matter what his current mode of attack is, it almost always comes back to roleplaying, comic books, and fanboys. He's really rabid about that particular issue and he has melted down over it before on one other forum that I'm aware of, and possibly others that I'm not aware of.

I can't speak to this, so I'll defer any opinion by saying h-m-m-m-m.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

... Under most circumstances, I wouldn't bring that up because it's dirty pool to mention things that have taken place on other forums. But you're presenting a narrative in which poor Wally was driven to personal attacks after being victimized by The Rani, and I'm not going to sit idly by and let that narrative go unchallenged because it's complete and total garbage. The simple fact is that Wally has problems that have nothing to do with The Rani (or me, or Zilch, or DA) and this place provides him with an outlet to vent the anger and frustration that those problems generate. And he has said as much before, and in his own words.

So you find this to be Wally's venting space, but don't see yourself doing the same. OK.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

... He has chosen these forums because (for the most part) they're unmoderated, and certain posters are willing to excuse and/or defend his personal attacks. They're willing to do that because he chooses the right targets (i.e. those whose opinions make them unpopular) and he offers these posters just the line they want to hear after every childish outburst.

You come out swinging at times, too. A post this long on a subject this personal tells me you're swinging now. But then, we all do that once in a while.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

... And, if you don't believe me, I offer your own post as evidence. I mean, not for nothin', but it's funny how it only takes a little bit to get your finger (and the fingers of other posters) wagging when The Rani or I step out of line (even if it's a matter of perception), but Wally can go way over the line without a peep from the usual suspects. Indeed when somebody points out that he's out of line, there's always somebody there to excuse and/or defend his bad behavior. That's how we got where we are now. In reality, Wally was hostile to The Rani before she "touched" any of his "buttons", but your version of the story is one in which she was asking for it.

Since you only saw what was on the forum, I'll let your comment slide.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

... Now, I could dust off my sociologist's hat and use this as an opportunity to explain how in-groups and out-groups work, and how that relates to the declining quality of discussion here, but... well... screw it. I've been singing that song for a long time now, and if you haven't picked it up yet, you never will.

This is a forum of people with many reasons for being here, but none that i know about are here as petty dictators. I find it enlightening and enjoyable. Beyond that, I have no great expectations.

BTW, I was part of the minority when I first arrived, and Marc Lamb, then part of the majority, was a much more serious a poster. Times change.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Don't you understand? The science is settled. There's no more science to do on the basic question -- and anything that engenders doubt on the basic question is therefore unscientific dogma. Q.E.D., baby.

From my perspective, the way to unsettle an established scientific theory is to provide data which the theory cannot explain, provide calculations that better explain the data, or develop a theory which better explains the data.

Cuss words and personal attacks just aren't the same thing.

This is a never ending pissing contest, which I chose to end, for my part at least. No one here is going to concede more than they already have, but I'll leave this as a parting note.

We all tend to support those that support us, and tend to weigh our feelings that way too. To do otherwise is to be either pathological or saintly. I don't see anyone here that clearly falls in either camp.

I feel I have friends here, but I don't look at anyone on this forum, even Marc and the still unidentified HC'68, as enemies. I plan to keep it that way ... if I can.

Good. Fine. Can we all move on now?

Originally Posted by The Rani

Uhhh ... yeah ... Justin's comment was in reply to my post (including, yes, evidence!) about another possible cause of Arctic melting, but nobody seems to have been interested in discussing that. Not ONE serious response to that so far, other than his, which was sarcastic in tone but still made a serious point.

I did try to dig into a bit. I spent an hour plus trying to find some basic numbers. How many vents are in that ridge? How much heat is transferred into the ocean by a typical vent? Multiply the first number by the second, and one might get the amount of heat said vents put into the Arctic Ocean. How does this compare with the amount of heat absorbed into the ocean from sunlight and the atmosphere, and how much leaves by IR black body radiation?

Also, is there any evidence at all that the amount of heat from geothermal sources is changing? As the submarines cruise the various ridges, how many old vents do they discover inactive, and how many new vents open up?

Much of this data doesn't exist yet for the Arctic. From all I've been able to find, there has been too much ice up there until recently to dive under. Still, I can't even find numbers for the Atlantic or Pacific ridges. I would really like to know if the heat output from the vents is of the same order of magnitude as the solar heating. Atlantic numbers would do to learn if geothermal is a significant player.

But the articles being written about the submarine dives is gee whiz stuff about the new life forms they find around the vents. One finds nothing that links the vents to over all ocean temperature models.

Which makes me suspect the vents aren't a major player in the ocean temperature models.

Can you do any better, Rani? Can you point me to a computer ocean temperature model that includes geothermal? Can you find data on how many vents and how much heat is typical per vent in an ocean ridge? Do that, and I'm sure Mike A could throw numbers back at you.

But without numbers, there is no science. Sorry, when you and Justin generally come at me with something odd like that, it usually doesn't take much digging to find someone who has debunked it. You came up with something odd enough that it seemingly hasn't been debunked yet.

What Was Behind the Honey Bee Wipeout?
By Gina Covina, Terrain
October 16, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65289/
On Alan Wilson's table at the Oakland Farmers' Market, row after row of glass honey jars catch the early morning sun that angles down Ninth Street. Some of the honey gleams a reddish brown, some a paler amber, depending on the particular mix of flower species the bees foraged. All of it was produced by Wilson's colonies, which number a third of what he had last fall, before the infamous bee die-off that afflicted growers around the world. "I'd better get the honey while I can," one customer remarks.

The flurry of media attention given this winter's bee losses, now labeled "colony collapse disorder," has updated the world of bees for a heretofore-clueless public. Our image of honeybees is a lot like our bucolic images of farm animals -- and just as far from the brutal truth of today's corporate agriculture. We picture fields of clover, blossoming orchards, the wildflowers beneath the trees, filled with happy bees industriously gathering nectar and pollen to take back to the hive. As the bees gather pollen, they transfer it from plant to plant, thus assuring cross-pollination.

Fewer people can picture what happens at the hive, where the bees feed the protein-rich pollen to their developing brood. The adults live on honey they make from collected nectar -- sipped from the throats of flowers into the bees' honey stomachs, disgorged at the hive into the hexagonal wax combs made by the bees, fanned by bee wings to evaporate excess moisture until it reaches the perfect syrupy consistency, and then sealed with a wax cap to keep it clean and ready to sustain the colony over the winter. In order to do all this, bees rely on a diverse range of flowers blooming over a wide stretch of the year.

The honeybee (Apis mellifera) is a European native, one of very few bee species in the world to store honey in bulk and live fulltime in large colonies (30,000 to 100,000 individuals). It is the only bee with a long history of intensive management by people. For almost all of this time, and continuing today in many parts of the world, the rosy picture of bee life painted above is largely accurate. But when beekeeping meets industrial agriculture, the result is very different. Colony collapse disorder may have many contributing causes, but it comes down to bees hitting the biological limits of our agricultural system. It's not so much a bee crisis as a pollination crisis. And we may end up calling it agricultural collapse disorder.

It's a rare beekeeper in the United States who can survive by selling honey. The trade loophole that has flooded this country with low-cost Chinese honey for the past ten years guaranteed that (fortunately for beekeepers, that hole has just been plugged by new federal tariff regulations). The only income remaining has been in pollination services. Alan Wilson's bees are rented out for almond pollination starting in February. After that they go south to the orange groves, then all the way to North Dakota where they make clover honey. Wilson's Central Valley location near Merced has little to offer bees over the dry summer months except roadside star thistle and the brief flowering of cantaloupes in August. Nearby agricultural chemicals are a concern, especially the defoliant used on cotton before harvest. Just the drift from the defoliant has taken the paint off Wilson's hives. Still, this year he plans to keep his bees closer to home where he can manage them more intensively and try to increase their numbers.

Every commercial beekeeper has different arrange-ments, but each involves long-distance trucking and the California almond crop. Almonds are entirely dependent on the seasonal importation of honeybees. Growers can't get crop insurance coverage unless they have at least two bee colonies per acre at almond blossom time; some growers use up to five colonies per acre for heavier yields. Over 800,000 Central Valley acres are planted in almond trees. As beekeeper Randy Oliver says, it is "monoculture at its absolute worst -- they don't allow one species of weed to grow": mile after mile of bare soil and almond trees. No native pollinators can survive on this wasted landscape to ease the honeybees' burden, and nothing lives to sustain bees before or after the almond bloom.

Truckloads of bees begin to arrive as early as November from all over the nation -- it takes virtually all of this country's commercially operated pollination colonies to cover California's almonds. While the bees roll down the highways, hive entrances boarded up, or wait in Central Valley bee yards for the trees to bloom, they're fed a mixture of high fructose corn syrup meant to replace nectar, along with soy protein meant to replace pollen. (Some beekeepers, Wilson among them, have switched to beet syrup as a safer though more expensive alternative.) Oliver sums up the patent absurdity: "When bugs from the east coast have to be trucked to California to pollinate an exotic tree because California has no bugs, it's a pretty whacked-out agricultural system."

Oliver's 500 bee colonies -- he was lucky, with losses under ten percent -- follow a relatively short migratory truck route that takes them from Central Valley almonds to Sierra foothill wildflowers to Nevada alfalfa. He attributes his success to fewer and shorter moves, reliance on pasture forage for much of the year, and avoidance of artificial feeding. "Some of these guys move their bees a dozen times a year," he says. Popular pollination routes include apples and blueberries, which rely on honeybees for 90 percent of their pollination, peaches (50 percent), and oranges (30 percent). Farmers won't bother planting squash or melons if they can't get beehives in place by bloom time. One-third of all US crops depend on honeybee pollination.

It hasn't been this way for long. Even 30 years ago growers could rely on a combination of native pollinating insects and local honeybees for most crops. In 1970, there were 35 beekeepers in Alan Wilson's area; now there are two. As farms grew more and more of fewer and fewer crops, using petrochemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, vast tracts of land have gradually approached the reductionist goal of supporting no life at all except the target crop. It's not just the almonds -- every crop is grown this way. That's why it's called industrial agriculture, or factory farming.

Bee researchers have been calling bees "the canary in this coal mine," a different version of the birds and the bees. A quote attributed to Albert Einstein has been popping up all over the Internet: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Einstein never said it, but the instant ubiquity of the sentiment says everything.

Though the media only picked it up this year, bees have actually been in trouble for the past couple of decades. Mites -- parasitic insects small enough to use bees as their hosts -- jumped from other species to honeybees, another example of collateral damage from global transportation. First tracheal mites in the '80s, then varroa mites in the '90s -- even before last winter, the world's honeybee population had declined by half in 30 years.

UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen points out that before the mites arrived, winter losses of five to ten percent of a beekeeper's colonies were the norm. The mites increased yearly losses to 25 percent by the late '80s, and now we're at 40 percent or higher, with some years better than average and others catastrophic. Randy Oliver says, "If we made a list of collapses of the last 20 years, this winter's would not make the top five." Last year's losses were bad for Alan Wilson, but the last four years together have decimated his colonies by over 90 percent. The only beekeepers doing substantially better are the very small percentage practicing non-chemical mite control coupled with little or no trucking or artificial feeding -- in other words, labor-intensive vigilance combined with lower pollination income. It's not a financially viable option for many fulltime beekeepers.

The difference with this winter's losses is not having an identified cause, and therefore no quick (even if temporary) fix. For tracheal mites, beekeepers developed nontoxic preventive treatments -- Alan Wilson successfully doses his bees on a mixture of Crisco, sugar, and peppermint extract. Varroa mites proved trickier, and beekeepers started down the slippery slope of synthetic insecticide use. "Until the mid-'90s nobody dreamed of using chemicals in beehives," Oliver says. Once they did, the race was on, with insecticide-resistant varroa mites evolving neck-in-neck with the newest chemical treatment. European beekeepers, who have had the varroa mite longer, have pretty much given up on chemicals and use an Integrated Pest Management approach. US beekeepers who go this route find it labor- and attention-intensive, and effective within its parameters (not eradication but healthy bees living with a smaller number of mites). According to Oliver, "We're just prolonging our agony as long as we continue to use chemical treatments."

Everyone agrees the honeybee buzzed into the 21st century carrying a heavy load of stress. Colonies were weakened by mites, perhaps by chemicals used to kill the mites, and probably by at least some of the 25 different viruses carried by varroa mites. Add in a fungus, nosema, that's tolerated by healthy bees but a problem for already weakened hives. Then there's the stress of long-distance truck travel, longer distances for more bees every year. The small hive beetle, an African native recently found in Florida hives, posed another challenge; aggressive African honeybees attack the beetle, but European bees, bred to be docile, let it overrun the hive.

Cell phone interference has been proposed as a threat to bees, based on reports of a German study showing bees unable to find their way home in the presence of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. This particular theory must be called inconclusive at best, since the study was not designed with enough apicultural knowledge to produce reliable results.

No bee taken from the hive for the first time, as was done in the study, would be able to find its way back, since bees navigate primarily by landmarks, not electromagnetic homing sensors. Their first few excursions are short orientation flights, not blind trips in a box to a release point.

Of all these factors, many beekeepers judge varroa mites the most consistently debilitating. But there's another weakening influence more obvious and more integral to the larger agricultural dilemma. It's the stressor Mussen calls the most important of all -- bee malnutrition. High-fructose corn syrup and soy protein are not any more nutritious for bees than they are for humans (see Spring 2007), and bees in transit and between pollination jobs often must subsist on nothing but these non-foods. Compounding the problem, we're talking genetically modified corn and soy, every cell of which contains a bacterial insecticide. Are bees not insects? US studies have indicated that Bt corn pollen does not kill healthy bees or brood reared on it, but a German study showed that Bt pollen led to "significantly stronger decline in the number of bees" in hives already weakened by varroa mites.

We do know that corn pollen in general is poor bee food, high in fiber and low in protein. The Midwest, up until now the country's best bee forage habitat, this year is being planted much more aggressively to GM corn as a source for ethanol -- aggressive meaning planting marginal areas and edges usually left to the asters and goldenrods that are high-quality pollen sources in late summer when bees need to raise the generation that will overwinter. Even when bees are out foraging for real nectar and non-GMO pollen, for much of the year they are likely to be ingesting a monocultured diet due to their use as pollinators for industrial-scale agriculture -- nothing but almond, then nothing but apple, then only watermelon. They're exposed to pesticides used on their forage crops as well. Oh -- and one more influence to factor into the equation -- very hot weather can damage the protein content of pollen, decreasing its food value for bees. Global warming is kicking our butts from more directions than we can comprehend.

Given these conditions, last winter's losses can hardly be considered a surprise. Neither can the failure of bee researchers to come up with one specific cause, much less a magic bullet cure. Still, the kind of thinking that got us this far continues. According to Mussen, "the only hope is the USDA Tucson lab" which is working on a liquid feed that bees can eat all year. Randy Oliver calls this the "holy grail" of bee research. The USDA's proprietary formula, if they come up with one that works, will be patented and licensed to a commercial producer, and the whole agricultural system may manage to lurch along for a few more years, complete with pollinators hauled from Florida to California in time for the almond bloom.

How did all those almonds get pollinated this year, on the heels of beekeepers' discoveries that half (in some cases up to 90 percent) of their colonies had suddenly gone missing? It wouldn't have happened without a change in regulations that allowed bees to be imported from Australia. Bee businesses Down Under went into boom mode, sending 100,000 packages of bees to the States. A package is a starter kit of about 10,000 worker bees and a queen, enclosed in a small screened box with a sugar water feeder. The receiving beekeeper shakes the package into a waiting hive, and given proper nectar and pollen resources, within a month a new generation of bees will be expanding the colony.

The Australian influx may be short-lived, as a colony of Indian bees (Apis cerana) was recently discovered living aboard a yacht off Australia. The Indian bee is host to yet another mite that could wreak havoc if it spreads to the European honeybee. Another factor in almond pollination this year was the rental price for a bee colony, which averaged $150, nearly twice what it was last year. This was the first year in which the income beekeepers realized from almond pollination surpassed the income received for the entire US honey crop. There's talk of opening the Canadian border for next year's almond season.

To paraphrase Randy Oliver, we're prolonging our agony by continuing with this profoundly unworkable agricultural system. Suddenly terms like "organic" and "biodiversity" shift from boutique buzzwords to elements of survival. This country has 4,500 species of native insects that are potential pollinators. On the East Coast, where farms are much smaller, more diverse, and broken up by uncultivated land, native insects account for up to 90 percent of crop pollination. Studies done on Costa Rican coffee crops have shown that yields are 20 percent greater within one kilometer of forest remnants. Canadian canola farmers show increased yields by leaving 30 percent of their cropland wild. It's all about pollination.

Fortunately for us, insects are quick to recolonize formerly dead areas. Hedgerows, windbreaks, wetlands, woodlots -- the particulars of restoration agriculture are easy and already known. It's the big picture that's harder to shift, from the extractive industrial petrochemical model to the biodiverse ecosystem model. Honeybees have upped the ante, giving us all the motivation we need to change -- do we want to continue to eat?

Originally Posted by The Rani

I have no idea what this could possibly mean. Of course there is such a thing as science without numbers.

This scientist would like you to enlighten him on this point.