We often see ominous headlines similar to the one above in the mainstream media. They can cause great concern. But it pays to look at the details. The headline is qualified in the first sentence of the press release with the phrase “may experience higher blood lead levels” but many of the media reports went with the headline. This headline came from a press release by the  Mount Sinai School of Medicine (see the entire press release here).  So, what methods did the researchers use to justify even the modified description?

The operative paragraph in the press release is this one:

“Researchers measured lead levels in soil and drinking water at 200 toxic waste sites in 31 countries then estimated the blood lead levels in 779,989 children who were potentially exposed to lead from these sites in 2010. The blood lead levels ranged from 1.5 to 104 µg/dL, with an average of 21 µg/dL in children ages four years and younger. According to Dr. Chatham-Stephens, first author of the study, these higher blood lead levels could result in an estimated loss of five to eight IQ points per child and an incidence of mild mental retardation in 6 out of every 1,000 children.”

There are many precise numbers implying rigorous research. But, the phrases “estimated the blood levels,” “potentially exposed,” and “could result” should raise a red flag.

The whole thesis of this research is based on guesswork and assumption. The researchers did not measure lead levels in children’s blood; nor did they test IQ levels; and they did not interact with 779,989 children. Further investigation reveals that all the numbers, including the reported blood lead levels, are extrapolations from computer modeling.

The paper title is “The Pediatric Burden of Disease from Lead Exposure at Toxic Waste Sites in Low and Middle Income Countries.” I could not find the full published paper, but I did find the abstract here. From the abstract we find that the numbers reported in the press release are indeed products of computer modeling, not from actual measurement. The paper in question is apparently a subset of a larger study by the same authors:“Burden of disease from toxic waste sites in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines in 2010″ which is available online. The methodology described there confirms that no blood tests were performed. So, all those impressive looking precise numbers in the press release are mere artifacts of the assumptions used in a computer model.

The point here is that while the contention of the research might be correct, the reality is that we don’t know because the researchers, as far as I can tell, never validated the modeling with ground truth. We know no more now than we did before the research was conducted and the relationship postulated.

I think stories like this reflect poor practice in both journalism and science. I also noted that the study was done in conjunction with the Blacksmith Institute, an advocacy group, so there may be some promotional incentive for the press release headline.

The principle danger from this kind of study, besides worrying the public, is that policy makers may read only the headlines and propose inappropriate solutions to problems that may not exist.

A version of this article first appeared in the Arizona Daily Independent.

See also:

Be wary of statistical traps

STARS and BARS – EYE ON THE NIGHTSKY – Restore the Clark SCIENCE CAFÉ.

Join the Arizona Experience at Sky Bar for a stellar evening in an astronomy themed science café. Lowell Observatory Outreach Manager Kevin Schindler will give a brief overview of the first observatory in the southwest and the plans to restore its 117-year old Clark Telescope– the telescope that discovered Pluto and recorded the first observations of the expansion of the universe. Today the Clark delights millions of public viewers. Find out what’s next for this historic treasure with the Restore the Clark campaign. Then, discover stargazing opportunities closer to home from the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association and the GLOBE at Night global starcount.

What: Lowell Observatory and Arizona Astronomy Science Café
Where: SkyBar (536 N. 4th Avenue, Tucson)
When: April 25, 6:45 pm

On-street and lot parking is available.

Speakers:
Kevin Schindler: Outreach Manager, Lowell Observatory
Keith Schlottman: Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association
Connie Walker: GLOBE at Night Campaign, National Optical Astronomical Observatory

The Clark telescope went into service at the Lowell Observatory in 1896. The Clark is one of the largest, most productive telescopes of its era and the first large telescope in the desert southwest of the United States. From 1961 to 1969, U.S. Air Force and Lowell cartographers made detailed maps of the moon based on observations made with the Clark Telescope. These maps were critical to the Apollo program, during which men landed on and studied the moon’s surface.

Often called the “People’s Telescope,” more than a million visitors have seen through the world-famous 24″ Clark Telescope in the past 20 years alone and it’s time for it to get a complete overhaul.

They start: “An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed. Life may have started from systems with single heritable elements that are functionally equivalent to a nucleotide.”

Some of their speculations and conclusions:

“Linear regression of genetic complexity extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life = 9.7 ± 2.5 billion years ago.” That is older than Earth.

This cosmic time scale for the evolution of life has important consequences:

(1) life took a long time (ca. 5 billion years) to reach the complexity of bacteria;

(2) the environments in which life originated and evolved to the prokaryote stage may have been quite different from those envisaged on Earth;

(3) there was no intelligent life in our universe prior to the origin of Earth, thus Earth could not have been deliberately seeded with life by intelligent aliens;

(4) Earth was seeded by panspermia

(Panspermia: Theory that life on earth originated from organisms coming from outer space); I wonder if this begs the question. However did life originate elsewhere?

(5) experimental replication of the origin of life from scratch may have to emulate many cumulative rare events;

(6) the Drake equation for guesstimating the number of civilizations in the universe is likely wrong, as intelligent life has just begun appearing in our universe.

Physicist Luboš Motl, a fan pf panspermia, has some comments here.

Some of their other speculations:

“In summary, the functional complexity of human civilization grows exponentially with a doubling time ca. 20 years, but we do not see any signs of an approaching “technological singularity” when humans would be replaced by intelligent machines. Instead, we expect a stronger integration of human mind with technology that would result in augmented intelligence.”

 - Big Bang’s Sheldon Cooper can hardly wait.

According to NASA, a CME is “a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space and can reach Earth one to three days later and affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 900 miles per second, which is a fairly fast speed for CMEs. Historically, CMEs at this speed have caused mild to moderate effects at Earth.”

A CME is not a solar flare. A solar flare is an intense burst of radiation coming from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots.

A CME contains matter with much less radiation. According to NASA: “The outer solar atmosphere, the corona, is structured by strong magnetic fields. Where these fields are closed, often above sunspot groups, the confined solar atmosphere can suddenly and violently release bubbles of gas and magnetic fields called coronal mass ejections. A large CME can contain a billion tons of matter that can be accelerated to several million miles per hour in a spectacular explosion. Solar material streams out through the interplanetary medium, impacting any planet or spacecraft in its path. CMEs are sometimes associated with flares but can occur independently.”

A CME can cause a geomagnetic storm:

“The Earth’s magnetosphere is created by our magnetic field and protects us from most of the particles the sun emits. When a CME or high-speed stream arrives at Earth it buffets the magnetosphere. If the arriving solar magnetic field is directed southward it interacts strongly with the oppositely oriented magnetic field of the Earth. The Earth’s magnetic field is then peeled open like an onion allowing energetic solar wind particles to stream down the field lines to hit the atmosphere over the poles. At the Earth’s surface a magnetic storm is seen as a rapid drop in the Earth’s magnetic field strength. This decrease lasts about 6 to 12 hours, after which the magnetic field gradually recovers over a period of several days.”

We may experience some interference with electronic communications.

Savory was a member of the Rhodesian Parliament and had to go into exile after opposing the policies of Ian Smith. In 1992, Savory founded the Savory Institute in Boulder, CO, and the Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. You can watch videos of his 2009 lectures here and a February, 2013, lecture here (22 minutes).

Savory’s basic thesis on grazing is this:

“In the past, large wild herds of herbivores such as caribou and buffalo migrated over the land to find food and avoid predators. These herds grazed, defecated, stomped and salivated as they moved across the grasslands, building soil and deepening plant roots. Once these herds had migrated onward they would not return to an area until it had recovered.”

“Unfortunately, over time, the wild herds disappeared and were replaced by small numbers of domestic, sedentary livestock. Without the timely stomping and excrement of large numbers of animals, the cycle of biological decay in these grasslands was interrupted and the once-rich soils turned into dry, exposed desert land.”

Savory’s solution is to concentrate grazing in small areas and move the cattle frequently. I have seen this method practiced in the Cape Province of South Africa when I was doing geologic exploration there many years ago. There, the land is very flat as shown in my photo. There are miles and miles of miles, as one South African colleague put it.

The Savory setup in terrain like this is to establish a central water source, then encircle it with six to eight, relatively small, wedge-shaped pastures enclosed with barbed wire. Cattle are grazed in one or two of the wedges and moved frequently. This short-term, intense grazing does help restore the grasslands in this area.

Would this method be beneficially applicable to cattle grazing in Arizona? To find out, I consulted a friend who is a cattle rancher in Southern Arizona, an expert on desert grasses, and familiar with the Savory system. The answer is “no” at least in Southern Arizona, because:

The Savory Method is highly intensive, requires enormous expense in mini-pasture fencing and constant moving of livestock. Desertification is certainly a concern in Africa. But here it is of less concern because of our intensively monitored and managed systems (developed largely on the Santa Rita Research Ranch in the Green Valley area by U of A agricultural experts). We manage according to agreement with the Forest Service and State Land Department based on this locally-derived science. Desertification is simply not happening in this area.

The pattern here is larger pastures with rest-rotation systems geared to our bimodal rainfall regime with the primary growth in the summer. Entire summer rest is provided (in fact, about 20 months) every other year on most of our summer pastures. Our herds are generally in one large pasture for a season and then are moved to pastures with forage that has had a significant regrowth period. This process seems to produce the best plant community including wildlife habitat and promotes sustainable or steadily above-sustainable production of herbage with the widest variety.

Our rugged, distant, forest pastures don’t lend themselves to mini-pastures: we’d have to drill many more wells or put in more miles of expensive pipelines. We would also have the problem of maintaining many fences cut by folks moving illegally north. The Savory system may well get good results in flatter, privately owned, access-controlled land, but that is quite different from Southern Arizona ranchland.

We see, therefore, that there is not a universal solution, but great benefit when methods of better practice are designed for local conditions. And in each case examined here, cattle grazing can benefit the environment.

While this result may be surprising to some and contrary to the precepts of radical environmental groups, it is just common sense that cattle growers have an economic interest in keeping the range healthy and productive.

See also:

Buenos Aires National Game Refuge This post gives a history of ranching in the Altar Valley.

Ranching and agriculture in Arizona, The Arizona Experience

There is another possible explanation, though it might be far-fetched: a small asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over southern Arizona. KOLD News reports that someone claims to have seen “a lot of debris slow falling and shiny” on the east side of Tucson just after the boom.

Remember just two weeks ago, an asteroid exploded over Russia creating sonic booms and a shockwave. Maybe that asteroid had a small traveling companion.

UPDATE MARCH 1: The Arizona Daily Star reports that the Air Force said the boom was caused by an F-16 Fighting Falcon jet from Luke Air Force Base going supersonic “at a legal altitude” just northwest of Kitt Peak.

]]> http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2013/02/28/did-an-asteroid-explode-over-tucson/feed/ 4 http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2013/02/16/assault-weapons-a-machine-gun-from-1718/ http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2013/02/16/assault-weapons-a-machine-gun-from-1718/#comments Sat, 16 Feb 2013 15:56:07 +0000 Jonathan DuHamel http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/?p=1714 Proponents of stricter gun control have a problem with the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”   One of their arguments is that our Founding Fathers could not have imagined the rapid fire weapons of today.  But, in fact, during the time of the American Revolution there were at least two weapons that could fire much faster than the standard muzzle-loading flintlock rifle of the time. (h/t Syver More).

In 1718, James Puckle invented and patented what was essentially a machine gun.  According to Wikipedia, the Puckle gun “had a pre-loaded cylinder which held 11 charges and could fire 63 shots in seven minutes [9 shots per minute]—this at a time when the standard soldier’s musket could at best be loaded and fired three times per minute.”  The gun was intended for use aboard British ships to repel boarders.  Although the Puckle gun was never widely used, it was known at the time of the American Revolution, and the concept was certainly known since Leonardo da Vinci designed a rapid fire weapon in 1481 (see here).

Another relatively rapid fire weapon was the Ferguson Rifle invented by British officer, Major Patrick Ferguson. The Ferguson Rifle was a flint lock, but it was breech loading rather than the standard muzzle-loaded rifle.  It could fire up to seven rounds per minute, two to three times faster that the muzzle-loading weapons of the day.  This rifle was used by the British against the Americans in 1777.  For more information and a video of a re-enactment firing of the Ferguson Rifle, go to this link.

The “failure of imagination” argument falls to the facts of history.

Yesterday, objects speculated to be meteorites, possibly fragments of asteroid 2012 DA14 hit an area of Russia. “A series of explosions in the skies of Russia’s Urals region, reportedly caused by a meteor shower, has sparked panic in three major cities. Witnesses said that houses shuddered, windows were blown out and cell-phones stopped working. A bright flash was seen in the Chelyabinsk, Tyumen and Sverdlovsk regions, Russia’s Republic of Bashkiria and in northern Kazakhstan.” This meteor actually hit and destroyed a building.

See story and videos here.

 More on the story and photos here.

“The meteor — estimated to be about 10 tons and just 2 meters across — entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a hypersonic speed of at least 33,000 mph and shattered into pieces about 18-32 miles above the ground, the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement.”

 The Environmental Protection Agency, the home of junk science, environmental radicals, and political zealots, is active on many fronts promulgating regulations that will close down American industries, our electricity supply, and our economy. The EPA is not required by law to consider the economic consequences of its regulations. That oversight should be changed.

 Let’s take a look at some of EPA’s recent actions and proposals.

 The war on coal

 New regulations regarding emissions of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and ozone may greatly increase the cost of electricity, cause some power plants to close, and endanger our ability to produce adequate power. (See: http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/?p=874 http://tinyurl.com/bkccgpb )

 In Arizona, EPA is using alleged haze in the Grand Canyon as an excuse to target coal-fired electric plants and is particularly targeting the Navajo Generating station, near Page, AZ. EPA rejected Arizona’s proposal for modifying the plant and instead wants the plant to install “selective catalytic reduction” to control nitrogen oxides, at an added cost of $48 million per year. In spite of the additional cost, the EPA proposal will have no noticeable effect on haze as shown in my post: http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/?p=1451. This one plant supplies the electricity to run the pumps bringing water from the Colorado River to Tucson along the Central Arizona Project canal. If the plant survives and installs the mandated catalytic devices, the cost will raise our water rates (See Arizona Daily Star).

 The EPA is also harassing other coal-fired plants in Arizona. The State of Arizona is suing the EPA over this issue (see here). Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said of the EPA, “”This is an absurd action that would significantly raise utility rates for most Arizonans without providing any benefit to anyone.”

 In Georgia, the Georgia Power company said it will close 15 fossil-fuel-fired electric units, impacting nearly 500 jobs in the state, due to the high cost of complying with EPA regulations. In Texas, because of the EPA, Chase Power cancelled plans for a $3 billion coal-fired plant near Corpus Christi which would have employed 3,900 workers.

 Biofuels and invasive species

 The EPA protection of the environment apparently doesn’t apply in the realm of biofuels. The Heartland Institute reports that the EPA is proposing the introduction of two invasive grass species Arundo donax (giant reed) and Pennisetum purpureum (elephant grass), as advanced biofuel feedstock under the federal renewable fuel standard. Pennisetum purpureum is an African grass that thrives in warm climates, multiplies rapidly, and crowds out other vegetation. Arundo donax, native to India, is already a feared invasive plant well beyond the subcontinent. California, Colorado, Nevada, and Texas, classify Arundo donax as a noxious weed.

 ”These two species are already harmful invaders in parts of the United States and should not be incentivized for biofuel use,” said Doria Gordon, director of conservation for Nature Conservancy Florida. “Both species can become so dominant that they crowd out native species and alter habitats.” A group of more than 200 scientists have sent a letter to EPA warning them of the danger and unintended consequences of this proposed action.

 Maybe the EPA wants the invasive species because its mandate for use of non-corn, cellulosic (plant waste) ethanol has not been realistic. Use of cellulosic ethanol, made with crop residue, grasses or wood chips, is a provision of the 2007 Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) enacted by Congress. In 2012, EPA mandated that 8.7 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol be blended into gasoline. However, the ethanol industry was able to produce only about 20,000 gallons in 2012. Even though is was impossible to comply with the EPA mandate, the EPA none-the-less fined gasoline producers for compliance failure and will require they use 14 million gallons in 2013.

 Ethanol and your automobile

 There is more trouble with ethanol. Currently, gasoline is blended with 10% ethanol to supposedly curb air pollution. Now the EPA wants to increase that to 15%. However, the American Automobile Association (AAA) warns that use of E15 as the new blend is called, will damage the engines of most vehicles on the road.

 ”The number of vehicles approved to use E15 – only about 12 million out of the more than 240 million light-duty vehicles – is limited, while the use of the fuel blend in non-approved vehicles can compromise a vehicle’s warranty:

 ”Less than 5 percent of cars on the road are approved by automakers to use E15. Approved vehicles include flex-fuel models, 2001 model-year and newer Porsches, 2012 model-year and newer GM vehicles and 2013 model-year Ford vehicles.

 ”Five manufacturers (BMW, Chrysler, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen) say their warranties will not cover fuel-related claims caused by the use of E15.

 ”Seven additional automakers (Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo) have stated that the use of E15 does not comply with the fuel requirements specified in their owner’s manuals and may void warranty coverage.”

 ”AAA automotive engineering experts believe that sustained use of E15 in both newer and older vehicles could result in significant problems such as accelerated engine wear and failure, fuel-system damage and false ‘check engine’ lights for any vehicle not approved by its manufacturer to use E15.”

 Burning food for fuel

 Ethanol mandates are essentially burning food for fuel. Even the New York Times has noticed some unintended consequences:

 ”Recent laws in the United States and Europe that mandate the increasing use of biofuel in cars have had far-flung ripple effects, economists say, as land once devoted to growing food for humans is now sometimes more profitably used for churning out vehicle fuel.”

 ”With its corn-based diet and proximity to the United States, Central America has long been vulnerable to economic riptides related to the United States’ corn policy. Now that the United States is using 40 percent of its crop to make biofuel, it is not surprising that tortilla prices have doubled in Guatemala, which imports nearly half of its corn.”

 ”In a country where most families must spend about two thirds of their income on food, ‘the average Guatemalan is now hungrier because of biofuel development,’ said Katja Winkler, a researcher at Idear, a Guatemalan nonprofit organization that studies rural issues. Roughly 50 percent of the nation’s children are chronically malnourished, the fourth-highest rate in the world, according to the United Nations.”

Soot and Dust and illegal human testing

 Another EPA campaign is about fine particulate matter in the air, soot and dust, the so-called PM2.5 standard, which the EPA sets at 35 millionths of a gram (micrograms) in a 24-hour period. Most air in the U.S. averages about 10 micrograms.

 According to a story by Steve Milloy in the Washington Times, Outgoing EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson testified about PM2.5 before Congress in September 2011: “Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It is directly causal to you dying sooner than you should.” “In scientific documents, the EPA has repeatedly concluded that any exposure to PM2.5 can kill, and it can kill people within hours or days of inhalation.” How does the EPA know? It conducted illegal human testing. (See: http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/?p=1517 )

 But, Milloy asks, if the particulate matter is so dangerous, where are the bodies? He was referring to recent air pollution in China: “Beijing’s PM2.5 levels peaked at 886 micrograms per cubic meter — an incredible 89 times greater than the U.S. daily average. Based on EPA risk estimates, we should expect the daily death toll in Beijing to have skyrocketed by 89 percent on a same-day and next-day basis.” Yet there have been no reports of a spike in deaths caused by breathing the heavily polluted air. Has the EPA has been exaggerating the danger?

Tucson doctor Jane Orient, in a Wall Street Journal article, “EPA Science Is the ‘New Homeopathy,’ Doctors State,” says:

The “evidence” for the harm is very weak correlations seen in epidemiologic studies done in 1993 and 1995. Findings are contradicted by other studies. The EPA is now apparently trying to prove harm by subjecting human subjects to diesel exhaust in an apparatus some say resembles a gas chamber.

“Either the EPA is lying to Congress about the lethality of PM2.5, or it is engaged in illegal and unethical human experiments, subjecting vulnerable patients to a substance it believes could kill them instantly,” states Jane Orient, M.D., president of Physicians for Civil Defense.

 EPA colluding with radical greens

 On another front, we see that the EPA (and other government agencies) are colluding with radical environmental groups.

 From SPPI:

 U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) is warning of more secret “sue and settle” deals with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and environmental groups. In a letter today, Vitter encourages Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to join the 13 states’ AGs who recently filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with EPA asking for any and all correspondence between EPA and a list of 80 environmental, labor union and public interest organizations that had been party to litigation since the start of the Obama Administration.

 ”The collusion between federal bureaucrats and far-left environmental organizations entering legal agreements under a shroud of secrecy is the opposite of a transparent government,” Vitter said. “This is a problem across the country, but could quickly become a threat to Louisianans if we see the full weight of the EPA and Fish and Wildlife Service come crashing down on private landowners.”

EPA regulations are costly:

 A recent study commissioned by the National Association of Manufacturers critically assessed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s cost- benefit analysis with respect to six key regulations: Utility MACT, Boiler MACT, Coal Combustion Residuals, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, Cooling Water Intake Structures, and Ground-Level Ozone. The NAM study details the significant differences between EPA’s cost estimates and those of industry sources, while highlighting problems and inconsistencies with EPA’s methodology. Most importantly for manufacturers, the study estimates the impact of EPA rules on the manufacturing industry, directly and through indirect macroeconomic effects.

A key finding of the report is that “the annual compliance costs for all six regulations range from $36 billion to $111.2 billion (by EPA estimates) and from $63.2 billion to $138.2 billion (by industry estimates).” Notably, the study was picked up in the trade press and recognized by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which reiterated the study’s finding that “major new EPA rules could cost manufacturers hundreds of billions of dollars and eliminate millions of American jobs.” (MasterResource)

 Pretending that carbon dioxide is a pollutant

 Of course, the biggest EPA stick is its “endangerment finding” contending that carbon dioxide emissions pose some danger in spite of there being no physical evidence to support that contention. The EPA violated both the scientific method and the Scientific Advisory Board statute intended to enforce the scientific method when it made its highly influential scientific assessment in the Endangerment Finding. That the endangerment finding is purely political is shown by the fact that the EPA is getting all worked up about carbon dioxide levels of around 400ppm. But submarine crews work efficiently in carbon dioxide levels over10,000ppm. A group of scientists is challenging the EPA’s endangerment finding. See: http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/?p=1660

 The EPA has long been a rogue, radical agency, and a very expensive one at that. They seem incapable of exercising common-sense and are now merely an unscientific political tool.  Proper environmental protection is important and desirable, but we are not getting it from the EPA. It is time to defund the EPA.

 See also: The EPA’s Lisa Jackson: The Worst Head of the Worst Regulatory Agency, Ever

Snow rolls result when the wind catches snow on sloping ground under the right conditions of temperature, humidity, and wind speed.  Rolls can also be formed due to gravity if there is some disturbance such as snow falling off a tree.

You can download a Powerpoint presentation about these phenomena here.  (The file has been checked for viruses.)